January - Peril in the Frozen North to Splendifferous Days in The Big Apple

Art and Paul decided to spend some time at "The Winter Palace" in Brooklin and I decided to horn in on the fun. They left right after the first with the dogs and I headed out a few days later.

Luckily my drive to a friend's house in northern Vermont was uneventful. I say "luckily" because inept work at the Subaru dealer in Raleigh left me without brakes. Luckily because I was at my destination.  Luckily because I was in Vermont, where every third car is a Subaru, many as old as mine,so they had the parts almost on hand and installed in less than an hour. The local mechanic was so amazed by what he saw that he took a picture of the brake caliper hanging by the hose. That's brake fluid all over the tire.

My overnight stay in Gorham, NH on the way to Maine was made the more thrilling by the -18 degree temperature and the 35 mile an hour wind. Your nose could fall off.

The new house proved to be quite winter-worthy even in the face of some very cold temps. Several of our friends there were either knocked out or on the recovery from some sort of cold thing, but we did get together with some of the others, so we didn't lose the thread of any of the major gossip headlines. I think these two snaps speak to the kind of weather we had. Just enough snow to be pretty, followed by bright blue skies.

Next stop - several splendid days staying with Chad & Matt in Jamaica Plain. We ate and drank and talked and laughed, both at home and in restaurants.  Chad arranged an after-work cocktail party in honor of my visit held at a bar named in honor of.....wait for it....  Carrie Nation the hatchet-wielding, anti-alcohol radical. Called herself a bulldog for Jesus.

There were ten of us in an enormous bar with who knows how many rooms. It was fun having my niece Emma and husband Andrew  join the fun with some of Chad and Matt's always delightful tribe.  After a few drinks several of us adjourned around the corner to the bar at the Omni Parker House and had a bit of a supper including the eponymous rolls.

Maggie Hunt and I had a fun lunch with Yo-Yo Ma at B&G Oysters. OK, he was a few tables away.  But the lunch was fun.  I wish I could retell one of the stories I heard, but think it best if it's told as part of a fiction. Return to Colony perhaps.

What followed for me was several action-packed days in the city with two names. The last several years I've been invited to tag along with Art and Paul and Karl and Katie for a long weekend of New York fun. This year my buddy Tom invited me to extend my time and stay with him at his great apartment. The intersection where he lives is either 110th & Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard or Central Park North & 7th Avenue. Guess which he prefers.

One day I walked 110th Street from the Hudson to the Harlem. West of Broadway the street is lined with lots of pre-war giant apartment blocks, some with wonderful decorations. That's me waving in the doorway.

   

Here we are crossing Broadway, where the street name becomes Cathedral Parkway as it passes close to St. John The Divine.....and the high rise built on the Cathedral's unused real estate.

Cathedral Parkway becomes Central Park North at Frederick Douglas Plaza which is also the northern end of Central Park West.

This wonderful quote is part of the plaza.

THE TYPES OF MANKIND ARE VARIOUS.  

THEY DIFFER LIKE THE WAVES, BUT THEY ARE ONE LIKE THE SEA.

You can then walk just inside the park for several blocks.

 past Tom & Paul's....

and the frozen Meer...

until we reach Duke Ellington Square at 5th Avenue....

which immediately becomes......

which marks the beginning of what is now called Spaha by real estate agents and called Spanish Harlem by the rest of us.

This is Park Avenue where the trains to Grand Central have come above ground.

Another name for the neighborhood.

And at the east end of 110th, gigantic modern apartment towers hanging on the edge of the Harlem River Drive.

Before we leave 110th, here's a snap taken from the apartment during the same week.

My, how I love being in The City. There could be so much to say about any given five minutes, but I'll just go through the week with one or two of the highlights of each day.

SATURDAYArt & Paul & I met  for a splendid, quiet, elegant  time at one of Art's traditional favorites,

Picholine.

SUNDAY

Matinee of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time". Every person I know who read the book said they were sure they could never make a play out of it. Well, I haven't read the book, and they did make a play of it. One-word review...."Breathtaking". 

Afterwards, in company with Stephen Pascal, we adjourned for a bite and some chat to 

You don't necessarily go to Sardi's for the food, although I do go for the Steak Tartar and the well built cocktail. You go because you can relax surrounded by theater/New York history. Stephen has traveled in some of the more rarefied atmospheres of The City, so always brings something fun to the conversation.

MONDAY

Matinee of the movie "Boyhood". One word review ..."Touching"

A bite at Fiorello's, which has become our default restaurant near Lincoln Center.

Overheard along our banquette: Two women, one with a baby, talking about the father of the baby and his disapproval of her relaxed control of said baby, "Well, I don't know what he's complaining about. I never let her near the harpsichord."

Evening performance of "The Bullpen" , a one man show performed by the author, who inhabits 18 characters, mostly locked up, involved in two trials. One-word review..."Extraordinary!!"

TUESDAY

While Paul & Art were up to their own diversions, I took myself down to Grand Central for an Oyster Pan Roast at The Oyster Bar and walked The High Line, which is a spectacular re-imagining of industrial waste, in this case abandoned elevated train tracks.

Karl and Katie got to town and we all attended "The Merry Widow" at the Met. And while it's always great to be in the house, and yes the singing and yes the orchestra, still, the One-word review...."Meh"

WEDNESDAY

Prime seats for "The Book of Mormon". It was right on the edge of painful to laugh that much for that long, but it's the kind of pain I can live with. One-word review....."Everything-I-want-in-a-musical."

Follow theater like that with a meal in this room and you will have had a pinnacle New York day.

The pool

The Four Seasons

THURSDAY

Tom finally had some time in his schedule, so we went to see "Birdman". After attending several live shows already, it was quite fun to peek behind the curtain, albeit through a somewhat surreal lens. One-word review....."Interesting".

FRIDAY

The day was occupied by the walk across 110th. I think you could do something like that on every block of this awesome island. 

Friday night the Metropolitan Museum is open until 9PM

This area in front of the Museum is now the David Koch Plaza

I went there in particular to see

  Thomas Hart Bentons America Today Mural

City Life and Subways

is one of nine large panels, framed and sectioned with aluminum.

SATURDAY

Matinee of "A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes"

These actors prepare for and serve a dysfunctional family Thanksgiving Dinner 

without a single prop or piece of funiture

with a set that is the window you see here and another one just like it above it.

The seating is like a sports event.  The floor in front of the two windows, where most of the action takes place, looks like a basketball court, and while the family is  working its way through every mini-crisis ( add a leaf to the table?, where's the special dish? what do mean she's coming?), in the window above sit two men dressed as sports announcers, calling each of the "moves".  One-word review......"Funtastic" 

Evening performance of "It's Only a Play". An updated Terrence McNally classic with, as is apparently necessary, a star studded cast. A play about a play seemed an excellent finish to the week, and was.   Even if a performance or two seemed phoned in, the One-word review..."Irresistible"

The next morning I decided to skedaddle in advance of the Blizzard of the Century - which missed The City.

By the end of the week, which was also the end of January I was into my four day drive to Arizona, almost all of it on Intersate 40. Aside from the much needed respite with Fred and John in Albuquerque, the countryside went by in a 75 MPH blur, but I do remember the states by the billboards I saw.

North Caroline - Tobacco & Furniture

Tennessee - Loretta Lynn & Horses 

Arkansas - Guns & Jesus

Oklahoma - A new Nation & A new Casino every 50 miles

Texas - Loans for farmers & Special seeds

New Mexico - How many miles/hours to Gallup, Winslow, Flagstaff & How many motel rooms each one has.

Arizona - The distance to natural amazements. Meteor Crater,  Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon.

I hope you've enjoyed traveling along.

ARRESTED ! ! !

I've been in jail in a few places in the course of my checkered ( no... harlequin ) tumble through life and though I have no scars from those incidents, I do have a few good stories.  I decided to share this one because I have pictures to go with it. Sorry about the quality some of the snaps, a lot of them are from 30 year old slides.

It started like any number of Sundays in 1984. I was living downtown and a few of us had gathered at Ratner's on Delancey. It closed in 2002 - R.I.P. chocolate babka, awesome onion rolls, smoked fish platters, latkes with apple sauce, and most famous of all, grumpy old waiters who could bang a coffee cup and saucer on the table and not spill a drop.....or not care if they did.

  
Among the party was Moi ( rhymes with "boy", or since we're starting at Ratner's, "goy" ) whose name and parentage are Chinese, but whose attitude is 100% American artist. Later that day she was joining a class of Chinese people studying English who were going around Manhattan on the Circle Line. We made a plan for me to take pictures as they passed by Delancey Street some hours later. 

I knew a great place to take that photo.

I loved that bicycle. It was absolutely the best way to get around the neighborhood.

In the background is the Williamsburg Bridge, which crosses the East River at the end of Delancey, carrying subways, cars and pedestrians from the old Jewish immigrant neighborhood to the new Jewish enclave in Williamsburg.  When it was built it was the largest suspension bridge in the world and probably the last one built with horses in mind. Today it's known for carrying the most bicycles of any bridge in the city.

Here's another picture of the bridge, from the other side of the river, looking toward where I'm located on the one above.

The place where I  went to take the pictures is the top of the bridge tower on the right in this photo. 

No, it was not open to the public. 

However, sometime earlier in the year while taking a ride to nowhere in particular,

I saw this door

which was, I discovered after scampering over a few lanes of traffic,

UNLOCKED!!

What could I do but take the stairs as far as they would go?

As it turned out, they went 355 feet to the top, through the inside of the structure surrounding the cables and to a ladder with access to the roof of that structure.

Here's a view of the top.

Between the two cables is a nice flat spot for sunning and reading, but you could also get on the very top.

That is the Circle Line boat coming up the East River

I'll finish the story in a bit, but here are a few of the scenic delights which made me so fond of this secret spot.

Looking back to Delancey Street

Note the seagull in the bottom left

Kinda makes you dizzy, no?

I'm pretty sure I was the only person in New York who knew about and used this location. 

So on that Sunday, I packed up my shoulder bag with camera, water, smoking material, and reading material ( In this case Candide ), and headed up the tower. And sure enough, just about when I expected them, up the river came the Circle Line boat.

That's part of the already abandoned Navy Yards in the background.

As they passed under the bridge, I could tell that Moi was on board because I could see a white scarf or shirt being waved back and forth. I responded by doing the same with my Hawaiian shirt.....this may have been a mistake.

 They continued on with the circumnavigation of Manhattan.

 

I continued with my top-of-the-world indolence.

As it was a pretty hot summer day, and the breakfast at "Ratty's" was fairly epic, and the climbing 35 stories, and the etc., before too long I had fallen asleep.  I'm not sure how much time passed but this is what I saw when I woke up.

I wondered why there would be a helicopter so close to the top of the bridge, so I got up and looked down and, sure enough, traffic was at a complete standstill. "Must have been an accident." , thought the innocent. The helicopter flew away and I returned to my reading. Not too long after that I heard someone shouting, "HEY, YOU!!!"

Imagine my surprise when I looked and saw a policeman, in flack jacket and helmet, walking up the cable and holding on to the two smaller cables on either side of it ( see above as the boat goes under the bridge ). Now that would be scary!  After I acknowledged him with a wave while he was still quite a way from the top, he shouted "COME DOWN!!".  Another wave and I slipped down the ladder into the structure, parted with the hash and pipe, scurried down the stairs to the waiting arms of some of New York's Finest and their squad car ( which had come up the automobile part of the bridge in the wrong direction from Manhattan ),  and wondered what would be next as we backed down the bridge and pulled off just a block or so from the start of the story. 

As they weren't sure if I was a jumper, a shooter, or some other kind of crazy ( guilty, your honor ), they asked some questions, often accompanied by incredulous eye rolls.  The names involved alone.

"What's your name?"

"Forest Hunter" (eye roll)

"What were you doing up there?"

"Taking pictures of a friend on the Circle Line."

"What's his name?

"Her name is Moi."

Eye roll accompanied by "Really!?"

They wanted to know who was playing the baseball game of great importance today. I confessed I had no idea.

"You were up there chokin' the chicken, weren't you?"

"No. You guys got there so fast I hadn't gotten around to it."

"Don't get smart with me. I can send you to Bellevue, you know."

Profuse apologies from the soon to be incarcerated.

By the time the cuffs were on, they all realized that this wasn't going to be any of their worst nightmares and we were headed to the local precinct.  The cop driving ( a bit of a cutey, I remember, let's call him "Officer Jimmy" ) allowed as how I was the best ( easiest ) collar he'd ever had. "Collar?" said I. "Yeah, you know arrested, taken by the collar."  He said that once we got to the station he was going torture me and then his girlfriend was going to torture me because he was supposed to watching The Game with her. He also offered the following advice for when we arrived at the station, "Tell the Sargent he looks like the kind of guy that would beat baby seals to death. He'll think it's funny." I allowed as how " I don't think this is a good place to check on somebody's sense of humor."  But as I approached his desk, Officer Jimmy said " This guy said you looked like somebody who would .. etc........."  Apparently everyone was relaxed.  While the Sargent was busy filling out forms I offered that if they didn't want people up there on the bridge, perhaps they should lock the door.  His response, with a gesture to an indiscriminate corner of the room, was, " The suggestion box is over there." I had to laugh.

Once in the day room, I was given  my own cozy iron barred relaxation area and waited while they called my local reference and finished all the necessary paper work for someone who had closed one the major bridges in the city.

When they asked for my belt and shoelaces I couldn't help but note that if I was going to kill myself, I had been in a pretty good position for that just a while ago. They had to laugh.

There was another major eye roll, this one accompanied by a sigh when Officer Jimmy, inspecting the contents of my bag, pulled out a package of Zig-Zags. Happily for me, he decided he didn't need to see anything else, put the papers back in the bag,closed it, and put it on the floor by his desk.

They teased me that if I had a better camera (at that time meaning German ) they could let me go as a photographer, "....but with this Japanese piece of shit.? No way."

I was told that there were laws on the books prohibiting the taking of photographs from the bridges. "Oh, is that left over from WWII and the Navy Yards?" Informed that I was correct I offered that I had actually taken some pictures of the Navy Yards from there. He shouted to the other end of the dayroom, "Hey, we got a communist here, taking pictures of the Navy Yards." The response from the other end was, "No, he's from Arizona. It's all just old conservative assholes!"  Some things never change.

During this time a DEA directive called Operation Push was trying to rid the Lower East Side of all the dangerous drugs sold on the street. Anyone arrested within a red-lined area was drug tested and examined at Bellevue.  When the suited agent came to collect me for testing, Officer Jimmy, Sweet Officer Jimmy,  sent him away as follows, "No, he was outside your area. We arrested him over the river."

I was charged with Reckless Endangerment and released without bond. On the way walking to Sally's  I looked through my bag and found a rolled joint.  I smoked it.

When I got to Sally's, Mikey, the 10-year old  New Yorker, offered this sage advice, "Well you should have known better than to be up there waving your shirt around on Sunday. That's the busiest day for that bridge."

After three court appearances, it became clear that Officer Jimmy had done a terrible job of keeping track of the paperwork and the city had no choice but to drop the charges.

I have not returned to the scene of the crime, so I hope when they were renovating the bridge the right person found that pipe. 

EARLY WINTER GETAWAY

Thom, desperate to escape the early onset of winter in Chicago, asked me find a cruise or something, anything. We flew out of Midway on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, leaving late enough in the day to miss the morning mile-long line ( literally, a mile! ) to get through security.

Vacations to Go lead me to a 5-night Bahamas trip out of Jacksonville with a balcony suite aboard the Carnival Fascination.

Our suite was just below the red line just forward of the mid-ship bump-out. 

THE SHIP

 Big, but not gigantic, she was built in 1994.  Our cruise had 2000 guests and 1000 crew.

THE BEST PART OF THE SHIP --- see below under THE CREW.

THE WORST PART OF THE SHIP ---  

The music was thumping loud until way after dark and yet every chair was full and people looked like they were talking or even napping. I don't think we would have used this area much anyway. 

THE WORST OF THE WORST  ---  Upon returning to the ship after a wow of a dinner in Nassau ( pronounced "nausea" by those in the know ), our loudness was in competition with two even larger ships ( 3-5k passengers each ) for "Who can make the most noise?" You could not pick out a single note in any of the three soundtracks, but the multiple colliding base lines might have given you a nosebleed. 

THE MOST FUN ON THE SHIP --- The  "Behind the Fun" tour in which about 15 of us were escorted, over the course of almost 3 hours, to parts of the ship usually not seen by passengers. Galley and bakery with comments from the chef. Storage areas for produce, meats, beer, etc with comments from the Purser. Laundry facility with comments from the head of department ( the machine that both dried and folded sheets in a few seconds was a standout here ). Engine control room with thorough comments from one of the engineers and live camera views of all parts of the ship part of the ship ( as opposed to the hotel part of the ship ) . Employees lounge and dining room as well as a classroom for language study, internet connections, etc. "I-95" on Deck 3 is the only stem to stern straight line path on the boat, for use by employees and fork lifts alike. And, of course, the bridge, where the Captain gave us a cordial welcome and quite a bit of his time answering our final questions.

THE BALCONY ---proved an ideal location for a late afternoon bottle of bubbles after an exhausting day of eating, reading, napping and perhaps sitting in the steam room or sauna.

You know, a chance to relax before dinner and watch the evening sky.

Or the moonlight on the water

Or just the water

The photograph I didn't get and the image I will never forget was of the rainbow as we entered a gentle tropical squall at dawn. It arched over the ship and had one terminus directly under the bow, where I was alone sipping my first coffee. 

THE FOOD

In an effort to be positive and brief, I would say the breakfast was as good as IHOP, the salad bar at lunch was every bit as good as Wendy's, and the dinners were on a par with what you might find at the the best restaurant in an almost forgotten mid-western town. Fear not gentle reader, we did not suffer.

THE CREW

As with other cruises they were mostly younger people from all over the world, but mostly from what's called "The Far East" (Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.) and the far east of Europe (Croatia,Dalmatia,Hungary, etc). Very few Americans or Bahamians working for an American company on boats registered in the Bahamas....go figure.

At any rate, wherever they were from and no matter what the job, they were all seemingly happy to be working and always attentive and cordial with guests. We quickly found the team of waiters for our meals in the dining room, engaged them in conversation about their lives and families back home, added some cash and were treated with exquisite care. When I tried to call B.S. when one of the hostesses said we were her favorite guests, she assured me she had no need to say so except that it was true.  She is also the one who defined economics for us, " In your country a thousand dollars buys a window. In my country it buys four windows.......and a door."

THE GUESTS

The small group of non-Americans aside, most of the rest of the adults seemed to be overweight, obese,or morbidly obese on the one hand, or scrawny over-tattooed crackers with never-removed caps, mostly worn backwards.  My first pass thorough the buffet I found myself behind someone wearing a Duck Dynasty t-shirt.  There were so many of the large types that Thom and I had to break down our award for "most overweight" by age, race, single, couple or family, etc. As you can see from the photo below, Thom is not a small fellow, but he was no where near being in the competition.

There were also just enough 3-7 year old kids to put a smile on any face. I don't want and have never wanted children of my own, but I do get a big hit of joy in the presence of that clumsy innocent inquisitive exuberance . On the other hand, the cruise the week before ours had an additional 600 children......enough said.

IN CLOSING, WORDS TO LIVE BY

On the advice of the highly esteemed Jan & Ed, we got off the ship in Nassau and took a meal at GREYCLIFF,  which is a 260 year old building that was a house, then an Inn, then a house, now an Inn, located across the street from the pink governor's palace. We walked there in the morning to get the lay of the land and it was gruesome, passing through the Straw Market, a very crowded maze of sidewalk hawkers and shanty shops ( "Licensed Hair Braiders" was my favorite ) to get to the relative orderliness of streets with shop after shop of diamonds, designer clothes, expensive watches, and of course T-shirts and alcohol. 

But then you enter the gate at Greycliff....

and step inside the living room

We made our reservation and headed back to the ship, stopping along the way at the Pirate Museum, which was actually entertaining and informative. ( thanks again Jan&Ed ) As we left the museum the guy in pirate drag at the door assured us "Aye, lads, there's no more pirates in these parts. They're all in New York, running ships named AIG, Bank of America,.JPMorgan Chase........" His list continued until we were out of ear shot.

We took a cab back that evening and enjoyed one of the those meals. The waiters have all worked there forever, even though they're much younger then we are. The wine list has as many pages as a Dickens' novel and includes lots of big bottles with big prices. The menu is classic continental with a local twist.  We ordered the seafood extravaganza for two and ate til we couldn't.  I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the price of my casually ordered glass of Sauvignon Blanc cost $28.

Words of wisdom from the Maitre D' as I was apologizing for knocking over my barely touched first Gibson and he was escorting us to a different table,

 "As long as you're alive, anything can happen." 

Until the next time.

A REUNION, A COMIC NIGHTMARE, A BUMPY RIDE, AND A MEMORY

Right at the end of September I headed to Chicagoland to attend my 50th high school reunion....the first one I've ever attended. Bob Brink and I  ( friends from Cub Scouts through the A Cappella Choir ) had agreed to go and stayed with my sister. I was a bit slow on the draw finding my camera, but if you can imagine a couple of male deer pushing each other around in the sunny spot on the left, you will be seeing the view that accompanied morning coffee one day.  You can see how I might like staying there.

Both my sister and her husband also graduated from Oak Park - River Forest High School and had events to attend pertaining to John's 55th reunion, so, on Friday night, the four of us headed off to the same neighborhood to two different Irish Pubs. The Irish should figure out a way to regulate the use of the word "Irish".  Ours had all the charm of a small town bus station turned into a bar by people who like to drink too much: black walls and floors; fluorescent light over the pool table; the few bar stools occupied by lingering late afternoon regulars casting a suspicious eye on each new arrival; and, worst of all, cheesy plastic glasses for everything but beer ( I had a Guinness--or so).  It was the first time in a long time I had been to an event where interaction between people begins with staring at their chest, but, after 50 years and in a class that graduated 780 or so, name tags are definitely necessary.  I really did enjoy an albeit tenuous re-connection with several of the people who were there that night and look forward to more time with them in the future.

Here's what I looked like in 1964

My senior yearbook autographs provided some fun and a few surprises.  The worst was from a fellow choir member saying how much better this year was than last now that he knew I didn't hate him.  The funniest was from another friend from Cub Scouts. In the full page ad from a local bank reading "Congratulations to The Class of '64" he crossed out the "Cl" and signed it. The most intriguing finished like this, "You were a nice little boy until I corrupted you." Who was this person? He wasn't in our class. How did he corrupt me? Nobody I talked to over the weekend could quite remember him either. The one which evoked the most vivid memories read something like "After this year we could write our own Tropic of Capricorn." and made reference to another boy whose name was Peter Scraper. ( I've said it before, "You can't make this stuff up." )

Saturday we had a great tour of the high school in the morning The guide began by telling everyone that  "No, the boys don't swim naked anymore."  They still send over 90 % of the year's 700 or so graduates to college. There are facilities for every imaginable activity. Of interest to me were the three ( THREE! ) theaters. A black box, a small theater that seats 350, and a big one that seats 1700! There's a TV studio where daily announcements are produced. There's a room with appropriate decor dedicated to teaching Latin . There's a pottery workshop. On and on. So the kids there today are as lucky as we were lo those many years ago.

When I groused to Bob about the dinner at the Oak Park Country Club, he, whose life in politics has included a lot of banquet meals, said, "Well, at least it was warm." On the way home he told me that the woman across the table from us had asked if he thought that the woman seated next to me and I would make a good match. I don't know if he laughed as he assured her in the negative, but I sure did when he told me. 

Back in Maine

Here's few seasonally adjusted pics of a blueberry barren which is on the way to groceries in Maine.

Early Spring, newly torched.

The day I headed south.

A thrice told tale

Paul was able to come up for the beginning of October and we three had agreed to do some entertaining of year-rounders.....which proved most excellent at both houses.  The husband of one of the couples, an historian by profession and inclination, gave us some very interesting information about Blue Hill as it changed with the arrival of "the people from Cleveland" ( early Rockefeller investors, etc. ). He told the story of the wife of a local couple who had been to tea at the home of one such family and had been invited to come, bring her husband and have an evening meal. The husband demurred, saying something like " There's no way I going to hang around with those ......." When she arrived, the hostess greeted her with a distressed look. "My dear, the serving girl didn't show up. Would you mind putting on this apron and serving?"

I tell that story because the very next night we were invited to the very charming cottage of a very new acquaintance for a dinner with several other men, all year-rounders and well known to each other. I hung up my coat and headed into the kitchen....OK, I was looking for the bar. "Well, what are you cooking up?" was greeted with "I want you to help me serve and clear tonight........if you don't mind." I remembered where the bar was. I would allow you to think me being a little too sensitive were it not that when I returned with my 12 oz martini, the next line,delivered with palms together and shoulders slumped a bit forward was,   "I've never been quite clear about your relationship with Art & Paul?" If I hadn't still been reeling from the last encounter I might have offered that Art gets me on Monday and Thursday and Paul on Tuesday and Sunday. He insisted, against my stated reluctance, that I taste his soup and tell him what it needed. When I told him that the chives that he had ready for garnish would probably brighten it up, he replied, "No, it needs lemon juice, cut me a lemon." There are more annoying details, but you get the picture. After refilling my milk shake glass, I repaired to the fire to find that Paul, unaware of all that had transpired in the kitchen, was retelling the story of the local woman at the dinner party.  Luckily, when I have extra cocktails, I'm not one of those people who exhibits anti-social behavior and the evening finished itself in due time. The next day one of the other guests stopped by the cottage while I was in heaven under a blanket on the front porch glider enjoying the warm sun and cool breeze, and offered,  "That was really horrible the way he treated you last night." Me, "Well, yes it was annoying." " I know him. He's like that."  

The next day I ran into the couple who had related the story in the first place. I gave them my update from the previous evening.  Caroline asked in an indignant tone, "Wait, who asked you those questions?!"  I replied, " Well, I'm not going to name names. Let's just say there's nothing more pretentious than a pretentious gay man." We all laughed and then laughed even more when Bill said,"Oh, no! I've got guys that can go up against your guys any time!"

Arizona on my mind

Donald and took advantage of some existing reservations to stay at the North Rim and at El Tovar on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, where it often takes a year to get a reservation. Despite the fact that both of us were having journey-limiting issues with our backs, it's always amazing to be there.   Sitting in one place you can hear a dozen languages in 20 minutes while admiring this view.

We were able to identify the French hikers by their fashion before we heard them speak.  We interviewed the servers and critiqued the dining experience. At the North Rim Lodge, the servers were a bit unkempt, including one open-mouthed gum chewer, and all had plans for the next six months while the North Rim is closed. At El Tovar there was not a button out of place.and our favorite server had worked there year-round for 15 years!

Crossing the Colorado at Marble Canyon

Along the way

8500 ft above sea level

Also on my mind is the party to mark the sale of Garland's Lodge after 40(?) years. It's worthy of a whole post of it's own. I worked there 1986-1993. It's where I was given the title "Captain Vacation". I can't attend but I've been looking through old photos and sent some along for the party. I'll finish this post with me as the "Kachina from Hollywood" at one of our mid-season troops ( employees ) parties...this one called "Come as your

Favorite Deity"

Til the next time.  Turkey Mayhem in the Mid-west. 6-Day Bahamas cruise. Road Trips, etc.