The Way Back

Today I'm going back about as far as I can go.

Have you ever had a flash of the past hit you out of nowhere?  A picture from some otherwhen that just pops into your head?  Maybe some gray and fuzzy old pages out of a mental album?  Everybody probably has at one time or another.  You have a deja-vu moment from way back when and it feels like it might have been important somehow.  But then as fast as it came, it's gone; swept back into dusty corners by bright sunlight and busy days.  Whatever it was, you don't have time to fool with it and it was so long ago, it doesn't matter anyway.
But then again, maybe by some chance sometime, the old, faded photo sticks for a moment and you pay attention for a while.  That happened the other day and as things do...one led to another.

I was just kind of idling at the table with my coffee, ticking over easy before the usual rush to get out the door.  From wherever it was buried and for whatever reason, out of the blue I remembered a memory.  I have no idea what brought it on and I guess it doesn't really matter.  It was suddenly there out of the fog and just like that, I was somewhere I hadn't been in a very long time.  Before I knew it,  there were more dimly recalled places and people out the past and for a little while that morning, I was thinking of things I hadn't thought of in decades.

The trigger was a gauzy picture in my head that seems kind of like a worn out newspaper photo.  It was of me watching my Mom working on an old dresser.  She was getting it ready for my baby brother, painting and fussing with it.  I can even see the room she was in.  I was only about two years old when he was born, is it even possible to remember that far back?

That quick flash made me dig a bit more until I came across a very faded, dim memory of my long-gone Grandma Thorton.  It's an impression more than a memory but I can feel her in a rocking chair in a living room somewhere.  It's dark and I can't see her face but I remember her and I know it's her.  Somehow, it's comforting to know that I know.

From there, I poked around in the cracks and found another old picture of me running home from the neighbors house across the road, scared and confused because Mrs. Brown was crying and I didn't know why.  My mother told me that the president was dead and I think she cried too.  I remember the television was on and everyone was afraid.  I couldn't understand it but I remember it.  John F. Kennedy was killed in 1963 when I was four.  How can I still have that stashed away?

I went on down the alley and found more than I can believe.  Where did I keep the pictures of my Grandfathers house and the feeling of how it frightened me?  How do I still remember the big clock and box of wooden blocks.  How did I know he didn't like us much even when I was so small?

I tripped over the Sunday jaunts in the station wagon to 'check the store' when Dad was a grocery man.  Not much was open on Sunday then and he had to make sure the coolers stayed on until Monday morning.  We rode cardboard boxes on the rollers and conveyors that ran around the storeroom and chased each other on pallet carts up and down the aisles.  Dad would let us read the comics on the rack as long as we put them back when we were done.  Sometimes there was an ice cream cone afterwards but I mostly remembered the cool, dark grocery store with the big curved windows and rows of deserted cash registers.  It was like another world.

Somewhere too there's visions of a cottage on the St. Lawrence that was our vacations for a while.  I can picture a big back porch and an ancient record player that cranked out "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" over and over.  I can see the river and the path down to the dock through the weeds but not much else.  Another summer hideout was a place on Seneca Lake that had a big dock and a million steps down to the water.  Seems like it rained a lot but it's so faded that I can't be sure.

I found the the worn out memories of hand-me-down bikes, old hand-pushed reel lawn mowers, the two-wheeled garden tractor with a Radio Flyer full of kids wired to the drawbar, my oldest brother coming home from the Navy with stitches from a car crash, my sister going out on Friday with a pack of girlfriends, another brother in leather riding out on a chopper and that same younger brother with the now-old-again dresser who helped build a plywood fort and who fought epic battles with arsenals of crab apples from the backyard tree.  Tucked away among the cobwebs was pictures of snowdrifts higher than our heads and a parade of much-loved but long-forgotten dogs.  There's parts of me almost completely lost.  Small things like being terrified of thunderstorms and airplanes.  Laying in bed watching car headlights move across my wall at night and having nightmares from watching scary movies with the big kids; and larger things too, like a long line of friends now gone and a string of places now long unseen.  Names like Hally, Tim, Laura, Lallie, Ronnie, Clara, Donnie, Carl, Frank, Susan, Ginny and all the rest...what became of them and how do I still remember them?  How much more and how many others are hidden in old desk drawers in the back of my head?  Sitting there at the table, I knew I'd never know.

Much as I'd like to, I doubt I'll ever be able to sit still long enough to sort out all that stuff I've got stashed away in back of my eyes and between my ears.  That's a luxury for when I can park on the porch swing and watch the world go by, not today.  I'll bore my grandkids with reminiscing someday because that's what grandfathers do when they're not spoiling them.  For now, it's enough to spend a few minutes remembering and tapping it out.

Someday, I'll just have to walk back gently and knock quietly at the door to the old times and peek a little more.  There's a danger in hanging around and spending too much of the right-now in the back-then so I'll wait for the opportune time.  I know there's a whole pack of old hurts lurking about somewhere that are better off left undisturbed.  You bury some things because you need to and there's no good to come of opening up scars that have healed or dancing again with demons that you put down years ago.  But every once in a while, I don't think it does any harm to take a couple of breaths, turn off the world and look all the way back.  What you are comes from there after all.

If you're careful and tread lightly, it's like digging in any old attic or musty garage.  There's treasures to be found among the boxes and in the far corners.  You just have to close your eyes and look.

18

A milestone of sorts this week.  Elder Son turned 18 a few days ago and I'm left wondering how and when all that happened.  He's suddenly ridiculously tall, wears sneakers big enough to chock the wheels on an airliner and occasionally shaves the patchy fuzz on his lip.  It looks like the real deal no matter how much I try to deny it, his days of little-boy stuff are pretty well over.

I guess it's a common thing among parents as their offspring get older.  You get used to thinking of them as...well, children.  They're small, high-maintenance packages that you can't let out of your sight for a while then with startling abruptness,  you've got a near-grownup in residence across the hall.  A living, breathing semi-adult that you occasionally have to ask for technical advice on Skype or your iPod but who still needs your cash card to go to the movies.  The 6'2" adolescent tower sprawled out in front of a flat-screen with a computer on his lap and a cell phone in his hand can now vote, drive all night (with my gas of course), enlist in the military, buy his own 'M' rated video games and work full time (eventually) but in some ways, I still see him as my kid.  A much larger package to be sure but kid nevertheless.  Some things don't leave behind too easily.  I should know.

It's an odd combination of child and adult that just breezed by me at the computer, tormented the cat in passing and wiped out the 'fridge again.  He's dating a sweet girl who's already in college and acting above his age about it but at the same time, he's still hooked on X-Box and continuously has to be reminded to let the dogs out.  His room stays in much better shape these days (now that there's a girl in the picture) but smelly t-shirts are an ongoing issue and the Malibu may blow up before he remembers to check the oil.  God help him if he has to change a tire.  The big lug stuck to his guns and got in at a community college even after the disappointment of not being accepted into the same school as his girlfriend but gives me grief about loading the dishwasher.  All things in their own time I guess.  He still surprises me at times with conversation of a caliber that I don't get from many of my of-age acquaintances so I know he's a thinking creature, reluctant maybe but thinking nonetheless.  That in itself is a victory for us; to bring up a young man who can and will use his head for more than a place to hold sunglasses.  The ability to consider and question is a good trait to have and it looks like he found it.

I told Older-Son and his brother once upon a time that the only thing I wanted of them was to grow up not just men, but good men.  Good men before and above all else.  I think the both of them are headed in the right direction.

They're the best guys I know (parents are allowed to say that), even when the dishes aren't done and all the lights are on in the house.  But no matter how many birthdays and milestones pass, they'll always be kids to me...our kids, my sons.  The best part of us.

Now get off your butt and go pick up your socks...

Just A Cold Day At The Office

It's always something. I got a call a while ago to do a re-crew job instead of my regular point A to point B gig.  Sort of unusual but not unheard of and I didn't particularly mind.  Hey, a little variety once in a while is ok sometimes.

Turns out, a southbound crew had had a pack of trouble with their train along the way and had run out of time right on the main track.  They effectively become a cork in the bottle until somebody got there to take over and get the thing moving again.  We were nominated to hop in a van, chase them down and take the train on south.  Since we got about three different versions of where the train was parked, it took quite a while to actually find the crossing where they ended up but eventually, the cavalry came riding out of the sunset to the rescue.

Turns out there was a couple of railfans equipped with video already there waiting for something to move.  I've seen these same photogs out and about many times chasing us around the area but this time they got us starting out from a standstill instead of just rollling by.
Here's the results...



Thanks for the video guys...to me it's just a cold day at the 'office' but it's kinda nice to put on a show while we're at it.

Desperation Ride

I couldn't resist.  The thermometer cracked 40 yesterday and I went out on the mountain bike.  Yeah, I remember I groused a whole blog post about the cold and hating it so much but I'm also about done with being a houseplant.  So sue me...

The plan was to drag out one of my old battleships...a two-wheeled, double-sprung, much-abused steel monstrosity from a big-box that weighs almost as much as my truck.  Heavy, slow, expendable, this is the tool most suitable for a ride in the salt and slush; I knew I kept it around the shed for some reason.

In another winter, I destroyed a similar big lug (actually, dissolved is a better word) cruising on salty winter roads.  Everything on it rusted solid in one season and no amount of WD-40 could bring it back.  Even the freewheel developed a nasty little suprise once the rust reached inside the cogs...it became common for it to lock up at random moments; a pesky inconvenience which made the bike into the worlds most dangerously unpredictable fixie.  You never knew when the ratchet would catch while coasting and at the very least, fling your feet off the pedals and bang your knees on the bars or at worst, toss your feet off and then jam the pedal against your calf.  This would lead to some 'epic' elephant skids and usually wad up the whole works in a roadside pile.  I'm really happy I hadn't discovered clipless pedals back then.  The idea of being locked onto cranks rotating like a washer on spin gives me visions of ambulance rides and knee replacements.  It was all thrilling for sure but not especially enjoyable.

I foresaw a similar fate for the current corrodable occupant of the garage.  A quick twist of the front derailleur shot down 'Plan A' though as the cable instantly parted at the bottom of the guide loop that 'Excitor' cleverly designed to retain any and all moisture where it can do the most damage.  That left the Trek up to bat.  I hated the idea of taking aluminum out in the crud but figured I'd stick to the trails if I could and avoid as much salt as possible.  Lucky for me, the snowmobiles have packed the paths as hard as a sidewalk and a couple of above-freezing days followed by clear, cold nights have iced everything solid on top.  Following the posted trails over the hill behind my house worked out pretty well except for an occasional drop into a soft spot that brought me down to a crawl.  Oh, how out of shape I am.  The climb up the hill damn near killed me and those stretches of softer snow just about buried me.  Who's idea was this anyway?
Eventually, I crested on the hilltop and stopped long enough for the fire to go out in my legs and my heart to quit pounding all the way up to the back of my eyeballs.  Whoever said it was cold out is a liar, I'm sweating like a galley slave.  As a side observation: You know, the world looks really strange when seen with a fuzzy purple fringe around the edge of your vision, the one you see right before you pass out from lack of oxygen.  No, I didn't pass out...yes, I wanted to.  Kids, I'm telling you true...I'm REALLY out of shape.

Once my breathing slowed a little and my heart settled to the point of no longer feeling like I needed a pacemaker, I collected myself, looked around and remembered one of the reasons why I started doing this in the first place...the view from the top:


I wound up in an open field on top of a hill with a view over the whole hometown valley.  Once again, I'd stumbled onto a place within a couple miles of home that I've never seen before.  If one thing hadn't led to another, I would have missed it again.  Makes me think I probably won't live long enough to see all the horizons, hidden little wonders and small mysteries to be found right in my own back yard...but it'll be worth a try.

A bit of R&R and now it's back down the other side of the hill.  This was all new to me but I know every marked trail has to come out somewhere so damn the torpedoes and down we go.  This piece of trail wisdom (or lack of) has led to some unplanned adventures before.  It is true that sooner or later, you'll pop out of the woods someplace so it's pretty hard to get lost, the catch is that you never know what might be lurking in between where you are and where you'll pop.  There's some really steep and deep places around here that are sucker traps for the unwary.  Routes that are designed for vehicles burning dead dinosaurs are particularly risky as the trail blazers don't worry too much about long, steep climbs when all they have to do is push a little harder with their right thumb to get out.  Wide, cleated tracks turned by big engines are one thing, I on the other hand have skinny, mostly worn out tires powered by very low octane old legs.  I've had to accept defeat and walk out more than once.
This time, I got lucky and no 'portage' was involved.  It was all descent...and steeper descent...and switchbacks...and ice...and soft snow...then a drop like a cliff followed by the sudden stop of the front wheel in a rut without proper notification to the rear.  I clearly remember watching Doc smacking himself in the back of the head with his own rear tire on a downhill once and now I know how it's done.  His classic endo tossed him in the pricker bushes though while I only fluffed to a landing upside down and half-unclipped in a Kama Sutra position, spitting dead leaves and tangled in bike, brush and a snowbank.  There's times like this when it's better to be riding alone as no one is there to laugh out loud while trying to sound sympathetic when you embarrass your silly self so blatantly.  Unless you happen to fracture your skull on the landing it's better.  Some things I'd rather not think about.
Unwinding from the contortions, I found no harm done but to pride so I got off easy.  I guess you have to pay somehow when you wander blindly around the woods in the dead of winter and this one was cheap.

Now being soaked from shoulders to chamois from rolling in wet snow, I concluded that that was about the end of trail riding for the day.  I tiptoed down the rest of the sled path and found myself on a familiar dirt road.  I decided against any more bushwhacking unless something presented itself that I couldn't refuse.  As things were warming up, the trails were getting more and more sloppy anyway and the burning legs weren't having anything to do with climbs in two inches of mush.  I say to myself, "Self, it's a mountain bike, not a snow machine stupid, you're ridiculously weak right now and the next crash-landing might not be so easy...ride the back roads home and stay out of the drifts. Duh."  I'll go with that.

Concluding that it'll be a couple more rides before I'm ready for the big time again, I tucked tail and headed up the frozen dirt trying not to hit the salty mud puddles any more than I had to.  Save the bike at least.

Yeah, it's still winter out there but there's at least hope for spring I think.  Doesn't look like it in my last shot of the afternoon taken somewhere along one of those half-frozen dirt roads but I have faith.
After one more go at a trail which failed spectacularly, I managed to slog back into my driveway with the light fading and the temp. dropping.  Only 12 miles and change for the outing so not really a prizewinner or record-setter by any means but with luck, yesterdays little soiree in the snow is only the start of a really good year in the hills.  I have faith.

Is It Spring Yet?

Like everyone except skiers, snowmobilers and other assorted 'hardy' types, I'm looking out the window, watching it snow, groping my way through winter and waiting for the first glimmer of spring.  They say every year in the lead-up to winter that "it's going to be a bad one" and this time the naysayers might just have been right. 

I know, I know; if you live in NY, you have to expect crummy weather about 2/3 of the time anyway but by this point in the year, I've had about enough of the cold.  Nothing against you winter sports people but there's something about volunteering to go out in the snow unless you really have to that doesn't make much sense to me any more.  To each his own I guess but I'd rather be just a tad warmer in my old age.  Wet feet, aching knees and numb fingers have very little appeal to me anymore even if I wanted to tempt the fates and go outside.  Snow shoveling is pretty much my limit and I believe I've also had about enough of that for the year as well.  The driveway will have to melt it's own self 'cause I don't think I'm scraping it by hand again.

I think of the days when I rode a motorcycle almost all year-round and wonder how in hell I ever managed it.  My face would get so cold I thought it would shatter and it took all my upper-body strength just to pull in the clutch.  My leathers froze solid more than once while out riding somewhere in December or January but I rarely surrendered until I couldn't get out of the driveway anymore because of the snowdrifts.  When it really got down there, the old scoot would sometimes give up to the almost-solidified 50 weight oil and refuse to start.  No problem.  I'd jump the thing off the car battery and force it back to life but would I drive the car?  Nope.  Just add more layers and saddle up.  Ahh, to be young and tough.  And stupid, really stupid.
I distinctly remember drafting trucks on the interstate to get out of the wind and sleet riding north from Florida in October once upon a time.  Or hunting desperately for a motel in a New England snowstorm after we got run out of Montpelier Vermont by the local cops (another good story for another day).  New Years day and 15 below was probably the dumbest of moments but getting smacked in the face by an early-spring robin when it was about 25 above hurt the worst.
There's a line between dedicated and idiotic that I crossed repeatedly up 'till about 15 years ago but as time went on, those kinds of escapades made my knees ache for days and bleeding windburn lost a lot of its appeal.  Most times lately I don't even feel like venturing out to my truck to go to work when the temperature is below 30.  I think that's why I put the old Hog on the cover for now...a reminder that shortly after the inevitable season of mud will come a season of warm and I won't feel so much like living under a rock.  We'll ride again but the frost will be out of the ground and the salt off the blacktop before it happens.

The one and only consolation of winter in my opinion is that once in a while, the sun does peek out on a fresh snow and the world actually becomes a postcard place. 



Trust me, it looks a whole lot prettier in the daylight photo than it did when I was trying to drive home at three in the morning.  The snow was much less impressive when it was pitch dark out, the snow was blowing sideways in the wind and even the plow guys hadn't ventured out of their lairs for time-and-a-half yet. The only tracks on the road for the last 15 miles of my commute were my own.

There has to be an end to this.  I get so I'd do anything to see green again and dump the winter gear out of my grip.  I'll hang up the Carhartts and put away the snow shovels soon enough but 'till then, it's still winter out there and the old guy is bundling up for another trip.

Busted Flat...Waitin' For a Train.

It's a Sunday again...or at least it was when I started this entry.  And it's another one of those days.  I'm reminded of that line from my old girl Janice.  She was in Baton Rouge but Pearl knew what it was like..."...feeling near as faded as my jeans."  She sang her throat raw on the blues and died young but she knew.  Waiting to go to work and watching the snow fall.  I'm sick of winter and cold and wet and dark.  I need some sunshine.  Yeah...I need some sunshine.

Looking Over My Shoulder (In more ways than one)

I've been dragging my feet again.  Seems like there's never enough hours between trips to do all the stuff that needs doing...to say nothing of the stuff that HAS to be done.  Little things like spending 5 hours shoveling the driveway last week.  My shoulder still aches from that one.  I must be getting old...I've pitched snow and every other material that would fit on a shovel by hand since I can remember what a shovel was, now it hurts.  You know what I call this blog: "Adventures in Middle Age"...well, this middle age crap is not much of an adventure sometimes.  I wish AARP would take me off their mailing list so I wasn't reminded all the time.
Another milestone is coming up next week but I'll just let that one go by without much comment.  It's one of those 'as soon as you turn 50 you have to do this' things that have suddenly crept up on me.  I don't even want to think about it.

Billy Connolly describes the process so much better than I could anyway so I'll let him take it from here...Parental Guidance Suggested!

I can't wait.

 _______________________________

In the meantime, I actually have been busy doing stuff around the Ponderosa.  One example:  I finally got around and wired the first and second level for sound over the last couple days.  I missed having music playing all the time and that was one of the things that'll make this house my house.  It wasn't absolutely necessary but it sort of feels more like home.

Chasing Monster Cable through the walls and figuring out series/parallel wiring brought back memories of building speaker arrays back in my DJ days.  I built up a set that could bring on auditory destruction and possible hemorrhages at short range.  I miss those big stacks of but they were a little much to keep for a home stereo when I got out of the business so I let them go.  Wish I hadn't.  There's a whole population of future scions of industry and government that will never hear high frequencies or possibly much of anythng else because of that gear.  Those tweeters sounded like bacon frying at 120 decibels when you got too close and having your head six inches from the cabinet with everything in the red was definitely much too close.  It felt like icepicks in your head to me so I rarely ventured out front when I was really on the sliders hard but the drunk and foolish couldn't feel their eardrums disintegrating and so partied up close and personal with the cabs every time.  I saw extensive future sales of Miracle Ears down the line every time we played one of the Greek houses.
The highs and mids were factory but I built the bottom ends from scratch out of used 3/4" plywood, sawing away after hours at the Buildings and Grounds shop I worked in at the time.  They were cut from some old Altec Lansing A-7 'Voice of the Theater' plans I scrounged up somewhere and took most of a winter to cut, screw, glue and sand.  They were always pretty rough looking in plain old hardware-store flat black even when they were done but I loaded them up with new Peavey Scorpions that moved enough air to rattle the frat boys' piercings and pushed a pair of 1200 watt Crowns to the limit driving them.  It wasn't to unusual to have stuff shaking off the walls in the early evening followed by visits from Campus Security before it was over.  Even from my perch out of the line of fire behind them, my teeth would vibrate sometimes.  It was impossible to play records anywhere near the lows without cutting way back on the equalizer to kill the feedback through the tonearms.  How anyone could be out front for four hours at a crack was beyond comprehension.  I loved those babies but they were huge and even a house as big as Old Drafty just couldn't handle the mass.  It was a bad day when I sent them down the road.

In hindsight, I should have kept at least a pair of my secondary system's SP-2s and a CS-800 to fill in some of the corners of the living room had I known how everything would shake out.  That old 20/20 thing...
After all the head-scratching and wire stringing this week, I've got it sounding pretty good for what I've got these days.  It ain't too bad but that pro gear was the stuff so the glassware and wall hangings will be safe.  Eventually though, I'll get the place set up so I can zip the lid off the turntable case at the drop of a hat and 'put the needle on record' like old times.  It won't be the pounding of the frat party days but it'll do.  The neighbors are going to hate me.