By Goose

I’ve known Mike Miller for a very long time – gone camping to Gilsum and worked summers for him. With all this time to get to know him there are a few things that I’ve learned, like how he thinks. He has a fascination about studying people and their actions in certain situations. When we worked together I noticed that if I said something or did something that was the slightest bit amusing to Mike, it was instantly up on the blog. For example the Cell phone Incidents and the Slug Throwing. This interest in studying people has rubbed off on me a little, and I did not really notice it until my trip to Colorado this past December.

A few years ago my aunt and uncle on my mother’s side bought a house in Silverthorne Colorado. Silverthorne is in the Rocky Mountains surrounded by three major ski resorts – Breckenridge, Keystone, and A-basin. These Mountains have given me the best skiing experiences in my life, so far.

When I was there this year Denver got hit with 18+ inches of snow. The airport was closed and the city was almost shut down. Now we were having some of the best snow for skiing so that was AWESOME, until it came time to go home.

The two days before we were supposed to leave for home the airport had closed because of the snow. I kept on looking at my flight hoping it was still scheduled, and I found there were until about 5 hours before I was supposed to leave. My cousin’s flight was canceled and things were looking grim, so we all decided to drive to Tennessee, and I would fly home from there. But then I found out that my flight was on, so I was taken to the airport. I checked-in at the curb for my plane. Then I said my good byes and walked into what look like a refugee camp.

I could not believe what I saw. The lines for the check-in counter were 300 people long. I was a bit hungry so I tried to find some food. NOTHING! All the cafes had run out of anything that was worth eating. I decided that it would be best if I went to my gate , but I found the security line looped around the whole airport.

I was in shock. It wound through all the ropes and then though all the cots, and people that had been stranded there for 2 days were around the airport. Knowing that I did not have that much time to spare, I hid behind a pillar and when no one was looking, I darted into the line and continued on my way. No one even noticed. When I got to my gate there were people there fighting for a flight to just get out of Denver. They wanted to find a way home, but seeing that it was near Christmas there was nothing for them.

It was really interesting to look at how certain people were dealing with their situation. I said to myself what would this situation look like if I was in Mike’s shoes, and it opened my eyes to people’s behavior patterns. Some were just patrolling back and forth looking for a flight that had one seat that they could use to get out of Denver. Others were just yelling and swearing and just making fools of themselves. I felt so bad for them, but there was nothing I could do. I was just one of those lucky ones that had their flight leaving almost on time.

I was very grateful that I made it home for Christmas, but I will never forget that I was one of those lucky ones.

Icy Roads

Matt, while home for his winter break, sometimes drove my truck which was invariably tuned to old time radio shows.

“Dad, I’ll be driving along for five minutes and then realize I’ve been listening to complete gibberish.”

I do like that word gibberish and it’s relative gibbering. One of those shows described a mad scientist (are they any other kind?) who created hybrid human monkeys he called his “boys.” The telltale noise emanating from the threatening forest? Gibbering.

***********

Jeff and I had knocked off maybe ten of those home improvement projects when I chastised him for sitting down. It was the end of the day, and I wanted to complete one more task. He looked at me and said, “Listen, mothafucka, I’m on vacation.” For that one you might have had to have been there, as well as his own rejoinder when his days off had come to an end. ”Work’s gonna feel like a vacation.”

***********

It’s about eleven at night and Karen’s caught me cleaning out her refrigerator. Yeah, I guess I was manic. She asked, “Are you going nuts?” She looked so concerned that I had to take the question seriously. I mean, I might have been, but I didn’t think so. “If I were, you’d know by my stare.”
To which this woman with far more on her mind than I, replied, “If you are, I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

***********

Good friends of my parents decided at age fifty or so to adopt a child. Given their age and possibly their previous lives (he a priest, she a nun), they knew they’d face skeptical agency heads. Nevertheless, they trundled down to their local Catholic Charities where the woman in charge placed a photograph in front of them of the available infants. They oohed and aahed at each face, but one baby really caught the prospective father’s eye. He pointed to the smallest one and said, “There’s something about that baby’s eyes I don’t quite understand.” To which the church lady said, “That’s not a baby, that’s a Cabbage Patch doll.”

************

I did it again. Twice.

I’m next to the dairy case at Idylwilde and in my cart are three carefully selected items. I maneuver around a woman stuck in front of butter and milk, stop, and then drift off while pondering what yogurt to select. Finally, I snap back and scoot away with the cart. Then I hear, “That’s mine.” Then, “THAT’S MINE.” “Oh,” I reply. “I’m sorry, I’m always grabbing the wrong cart.” She barely smiled.

I patrol the rest of Idlywilde wandering like Jeffie in Family Circus until I’ve gathered all I need for my next two dinners. I pull up to the check-out counter and I reach into my cart, and realize I don’t recognize a thing. Where’s my olive tampanade, my plum tomatoes, and my overly expensive peanut butter brownies. And why is there a gallon of cider where my low fat milk should be?

La Rad

To put it mildly….

Friday (yesterday), I dropped Michael off at school as is our usual routine at about 7:40 AM. When I was driving back home, there were police, ambulances the whole nine yards heading back in the direction I had just left. I never thought something happened at the High School, as I was just there and all seemed normal.

Michael called me at 9:00 AM as I was on my way out the door to bring Matthew to school. He said someone was stabbed in the boys bathroom. I said do you want me to come get you. He said the school was in lockdown and I couldn’t come get him. At that point, the kids didn’t know who the boys were that were involved or if the stabber was still in the building. An hour later my neighbor called and said the boy who was stabbed had died and they were releasing the kids. He came home somewhat shell shocked. He said they were all in the cafeteria for one hour, then the gym for another hour, then dismissed, with little information. It wasn’t until we saw the press conference that we got names. He was in the same grade with the boy who died but he was new to Sudbury and Michael didn’t know him. He didn’t know the stabber boy either. That boy is on the cover of the major newspapers today, as is his victim.

Everytime they said “15 year old Freshman at Lincoln-Sudbury High School…” I disassociated.

Very tragic for both families. The family of the boy that died, whose name is James, just moved here from Natick. I’m guessing they moved here for the school system. Horrible. The other boy has some serious special needs and doesn’t live in Sudbury, he attended the school through an outreach program. I have not gone anywhere in town, as I’m sure this is all that’s being discussed. Nothing like having the fact that no one is safe -anywhere -ever –brought right to your school’s boys room. Adding to the creepiness of it is that this episode took place in East House…the school is divided into four houses. Michael’s house is East House. It’s probably the bathroom he uses when he uses it. There was another kid in another stall as this was taking place. The stabber boy went into the East House office, blood on his hands yelling “it was an accident”. A knife to the abdomen, heart and slashing of someone’s throat. Quite an accident. I feel so sorry for that kid too. Two lives over. He turned himself in without incident.

To the school’s credit, they did an EXCELLENT job containing those kids, telling them not to talk to the press and getting them out of there in an orderly fashion. Kudos to all of them for keeping our kids safe and for their compassion when I’m sure inside they felt the same feeling I did when Michael called to say someone had been stabbed. They brought hall monitors over from local schools (7 from Acton) to be on the safe side. As it turns out, the school JUST, two days ago, did a Lockdown training session. Prescient?

I am in an altered state by this. I am grateful he didn’t know either boy as that would make it ten times worse. After he came home yesterday he was either texting, IM’ing or on his cell all afternoon. I figure that’s his therapy. Networking. I asked him how he thought school would be come Monday and he said it would probably be very sad. “On one hand, a kid got killed there. But it’s still school.” They have grief counselors there this weekend. I asked him if he felt the need to go he said “No, but you can”. My wise son.

As for Matthew…he informed me he is never using the bathroom at school again.

I wonder what Monday will bring. Probably metal detectors.

While I am by no means comparing, I cannot fathom how Columbine recovered.

A small (though it may seem endless) portion of my drive home from Indiana. Give me some credit for driving with my camera carefully balanced, and not careening off the bridge and into the Ohio river

Patrick Woods, son of Patrick and Sarah Woods, five minutes old. (Sarah’s Linda’s daughter and smiling Dan’s step daughter.)

Art Buchwald

Several of my friends have persuaded me to write this final column, which is something they claim I shouldn’t leave without doing.

There comes a time when you start adding up all the pluses and minuses of your life. In my case I’d like to add up all the great tennis games I played and all of the great players I overcame with my now famous “lob.” I will always believe that my tennis game was one of the greatest of all time. Even Kay Graham, who couldn’t stand being on the other side of the net from me, in the end forgave me.

I can’t cover all the subjects I want to in one final column, but I would just like to say what a great pleasure it has been knowing all of you and being a part of your lives. Each of you has, in your own way, contributed to my life.

Now, to get down to the business at hand, I have had many choices concerning how I wanted to go. Most of them are very civilized, particularly hospice care. A hospice makes it very easy for you when you decide to go.

What’s interesting is that everybody has his or her own opinion as to how you should go out. All my loved ones became very upset because they thought I should brave it out — which meant more dialysis.

But here is the most important thing: This has been my decision. And it’s a healthy one.

The person who was the most supportive at the end was my doctor, Mike Newman. Members of my family, while they didn’t want me to go, were supportive, too.

But I’m putting it down on paper, so there should be no question the decision was mine. I chose to spend my final days in a hospice because it sounded like the most painless way to go, and you don’t have to take a lot of stuff with you.

For some reason my mind keeps turning to food. I know I have not eaten all the eclairs I always wanted. In recent months, I have found it hard to go past the Cheesecake Factory without at least having one profiterole and a banana split.

I know it’s a rather silly thing at this stage of the game to spend so much time on food. But then again, as life went on and there were fewer and fewer things I could eat, I am now punishing myself for having passed up so many good things earlier in the trip.

I think of a song lyric, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” I don’t know how well I’ve done while I was here, but I’d like to think some of my printed works will persevere — at least for three years.

I know it’s very egocentric to believe that someone is put on Earth for a reason. In my case, I like to think I was. And after this column appears in the paper following my passing, I would like to think it will either wind up on a cereal box top or be repeated every Thanksgiving Day.

So, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” is my way of saying goodbye

Dear Michael,

As we departed our Topeka motel with fearless driver Patrick manning the truck, we all realized that today would be the last day of our journey into the golden west. We’d been watching the weather channel each night, and now examined the grasslands closely for the promised signs of snow. On and on we drove through the endless prairies , livened only by the occasional oil well drilling into the earth with its proboscus driving into the flesh of the earth like a giant mosquito. Aha! Near Abilene (birthplace of Dwight D. Eisenhower, according to the informative billboards) we started to see patches of snow on the northward slopes around the road. The snow gradually became more extensive, until about 100 mi from the Colorado border the snow was continuous, covering the corn stubble in the farms to either side. We stopped at a Starbucks surrounded by oddly situated pseudo palms in the snow.

The wind gusted enough to make the truck steering a little dicey. At one point we slowed to a crawl seeing cars strewed in random directions on the road. There had been ground blizzards, and ice on the road made a couple of cars spin out of control, one in the median strip gully, and the other in the ditch to the right. Luckily for them, some kind soul in a pickup was using a chain to drag cars back onto the road. By the time we left Kansas at the “Welcome to Colorful Colorado” sign the road was clear, but the wind continued to gust.

Unknown to us, roads into Boulder were beginning to be closed due to high winds. At about the time we hit the Denver-Boulder turnpike, I 25 was closed between Denver and Fort Collins due to ground blizzards. Colo. 119 between Golden and Boulder was closed, as was the Longmont-Boulder “diagonal” highway. Blissfully ignorant of this, we tooled into Boulder onto the Foothills Parkway, turned East on Valmont road, and a few minutes later we were parking the car at Edison and Galileo streets opposite our Darwin Ct home. We’d been hearing about the 48 in of snow Boulder had had over the past 3 weeks. It was too dark to see, but maybe in the morning we’d see some big drifts.

Using the keys that our friend Fred Thrall had been keeping for us, we hauled in our foam pads, blankets and sleeping bags, and hit the hay. That night the banshees woke us up with their howls. Through the skylights over our bed we could see the bare limbs of trees swinging around, but no wind damage was done in our neighborhood. The wind speed got up to 115 mph , so it was a true “Chinook” (a down-slope over 90 mph). The next day dawned clear and warm, a perfect day for unloading the truck (that doesn’t look like 48 in of snow!) . Elsewhere in the Boulder area, some home and cars had been damaged by flying debris, but we saw no obvious damage ourselves. Patrick drove up to Lake Eldora ski area for a few hours of well-earned snow boarding. Our skier friends, Chuck & Esther, said that Eldora probably has the best snow in Colorado right now. Considering the poor snow in the East and in Europe, it may be the best snow in the world!

By early afternoon, with the help of Boulder friends and a couple of hired kids, we filled the house with boxes. In the coming weeks it would be like Christmas every day, with hundreds of boxes containing only dimly guessed stuff which we can open at our leisure, being surprised over and over again.

rakkity & the Mrs

We won’t get a phone until 8 am, Jan 15 (303 449 2125). DSL will be available from 5 pm (we hope).

Gallery

rakkity’s first snow pics:

Dear J & K,

I slept the sleep of the dead – I didn’t stoke one fire, surf one site, boil one pot of tea. But best of all, having gathered all that knowledge at your house, I dismantled the tub/shower valve here at the Fairfield Inn and soaked in truly hot water.

Michael