Joseph Manduke's Journals

Spring trout fishing on PEI

2011-04-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

The first day. Always a first day in these important matters of fishing among good friends and with fine waters. Not that this island is the ultimate in a purists adventure into a rushing arctic river. Nor the first place that line was cast as a child with father along the streams of youth...but a new place of great streams and wonderful new memories that stir the most from a deep almost deserted memory. Opening day of trout here was snowy and cold. As a young man, I only remember one day of fishing the Eastern chars, or brook tout in the high plateaus of the Allegheny that I recall snow falling as we removed the natural artworks called brook trout. These fish are natures jewels. Dark above and dotted with crimson and blue, white edged fins and creamy flanks...golden bellies. These are the trout caught here that have not yet been to sea. They are pure pleasure in the pursuit and eager hungry as the spring thaw awakens and all of us collective awaken to a spring leading to the summer sun. I never really expected that. In the memory of youth it was a time of great awakening and expectation. Rods brought out. Plans made. The early morning trip away to meet the streams and brooks...the air, racing clouds and chilling air ...bird song along places of youthful expectation. The winter is long at this latitude. It is far from the streams of the Arizona rim, later, and in most ways father still from the mountains and cold limestone valleys of the Cumberland gap of my youth. But it is trout fishing the same only modified by the geography and those who cast the line with me here. For those who do not understand that, or those whose memories are yet clouded by the unimportant or memories forgotten I can only say that it is as a wedding should be. The great expectations, hopes, and wishes of a powerful meaningful summer among all that can be profound and important at a time or renewal. The fish are a bit small, but the fill the pan well, dusted in flour and fried golden and a meal that means spring is here. Perhaps I should have fished elsewhere. My father is long a memory. We fished the streams of home and it remains a most important place of memory. Here we go out just a few miles from home here along along the Northumberland strait to fish. Not hours, but minutes to streams that hold many fish. That is why I remained and now that is why I remain. Pain of loss and suffering reduced to total simplicity. We will fish bait now and early here in the West, and as the water warms the flies will take trout...the sea run fish..will return. Larger and silvery from the time away , the meat pink and succulent from their salty foraging we will take some for the BBQ and release the rest. The odd salmon will visit but must be released. There is no finer past-time. Issac Walton observed that the simplicity and solitude of the stream and trout was a renewal of the soul. So be it. Time passed rather poorly against an amazing winter. A winter even these hardy souls said that they had not seen in years. Snow and gale. Snow and gale. Day after day along the shore buried in feet and feet of unmelting white. But the rain came and we went fishing. I met a lady. A true flower of a woman. Beautiful and fragile to intrude on my solitude. She is remarkable in that she distracts me from the brook. It has not been so for many seasons and I have been chided as a romantic. Again. Today was too windy and cold to go back to the Bradshaw and catch more trout. I caught 5 brookies Friday, my friends caught a few too. We returned to town and immediately cleaned and cooked the fished...still we were chilled to the core but it was the finest trout feast that I had had since long before. It has taken more than one winter for me to be able to grasp a new horizon. And the sun that rose from that horizon is the sun that breaks to pink clouds. The kind of sunrise portending a new adventure among people prior foreign, now friends. I changed my field boots and layers to evening wear and went out among those in my hometown. The strong Canadian beer flowed and the dance went along. Separated by only a thread we dance as family and laugh among the last remaining shadowed piles of snow. I remain in my Elba. Surely I miss fishing with my old pals and my son...even my father passed over 40 years ago. But all the souls are present. I remain here to fish, and coordinate that which must be written. All that is ones life is that which is a memory...the material passes away and rots as the last fall leaves are now gone...but the odour remains in the heart of that when one rakes and jumps into the leaf pile with children. It remains but is actually gone back into the damp red island soil.

Deep Winter

2011-02-20T20:06:00.000-08:00

So that deep winter speaks a blow of blast that means snow. Its my own fault as all know that I decided to render on my condition that lacks the real abilities to go...away...far away. Some of the island girls that I really do have a fond attachment thus have inculcated that as once I may have gone a fore then thusly shall I go away.

They are cute in their collective muse as I may stay as long as I please....but I suspect that only an excuse perfused thus that I may unknown and no threat to a simple state of being.

I at once went to a smelt shack of friends last a week. We trod heavy snow with some glee past along by the homebrew beer and Tignish shine. Therein I speared smelt in a small heated shack. The smelt stand close to bait and simply stare, if the fisherman is lucky, then they are un ceremoniously harpooned...making a delicious meal, dusted in flour and roasted in the fat du jour.

On a more personal note.....well it has expanded. Life here is much as 8 Th grade when I played football... there are cheerleaders, the undateable, the dogs, nerds, drunks, whatever. But everyone knows everyone so I remain amazed. Soon It may be time abode away to sun and surf...but not just yet...not yet...and snow...SNOW!...Yes a bit of that too... but a hardy sort we stand such a way that not much encumbers too long....but spring trout at 6 weeks makes me want to wait in Hibernia amongst my unleavened friends...yes truly mad...but oh so much fun.....

Shel would have liked this winter on island with me, as it will most likely be my last...the desert beckons....tanned Spanglish speaking ladies await..

Mid November Chill

2010-11-12T01:53:00.000-08:00

The incessant rains of late and high winds have finally departed into a chilly dry mid-November. There is not very much new to report but it has been so long that I thought that a basic update entry would be a good idea.

With fishing season over and the winter approach as well as work and family issues in my "social club", fall has grown quiet.. Mary has reappeared with renewed enthusiasm to spend time with me, much to the chagrin of many of my club. I have missed Mary's maturity and good sense, but not the acerbity and hard-nosed islander behaviour that was seen before. i am just going to enjoy our friendship, as I miss our movie dates and restaurant explorations.

Still always brewing as roasting chicory on my cerebrum at this time of year are thoughts of the south, kids, Yankee-land. American Thanksgiving is November 25th this year, my birthday. What fine memories that imagined within the memory of a wonderful pre-life . But I will remain and just wait as it causes no real difficulty yet to do so. The kids are both very busy and my proximity, as previously tested, added little to the actual amount of time we were together last trip home. Perhaps a trip home to visit when logical, anyway.

We keep abreast via telephone and face book as best as is possible. I hear little from old friends these days via any medium anyway. In any case, there are worse things than being an "islander'.
I often think of my elusive X wife and wonder if and when she will return here to be with her theoretical husband. It must be very hard for her to be with her clan all this time, if indeed that is where she is, especially after the life that she had over the last 17 years. As a writer it is an interesting study in human disillusionment. I wish her or them well as the case may be.

So its an expansion on hobbies old and new, exercise now that I am finally up to it and the re embrace of a more healthy fresher diet and avoidance of negative and depressed dypsomanical club members hell-bent on moral turpitude and hepatic cellular death.

Yes, I will have to try some smelt fishing when the ice comes to the harbour. Yes, indeed!

October

2010-10-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

This time of year is very special to me here on the island. Sometimes we would fore go a summer trip to the maritimes and wait for fall. In those years, we would usually stay at Indian Brook on Bras D'or on Cape Breton Island. Then, often reluctantly, we would spend some time here on this island.

The wonderful colours of the Cabot Trail, the warm people...the crisp air and maybe some fresh mackerel and blueberries made for a wonderful time before the the trip back to the desert. Then, I would bake or fry fish, make blueberry pie and enjoy our rented house along the shores of Bras D'or. Here we usually stayed at Cavendish near the park in a little old-fashioned motel cabins called the White Eagle, in the National park here.

Summerside then was a side trip then. Now it is my home. I am fully integrated here now with new friends and interests, but at time I am still introduced as "my Yankee friend".

Fishing has been less productive than in August, but i have gone to the wharf less these past few weeks. The weather has been unusually mild, but the chill approaches now as the tropical lows go past and the arctic highs arrive. The leaves are colouring and the birds seem anxious to depart for warmer climes as the sun goes lower and lower, and spirits wain for the approach of winter.

There has been little word from my remaining family except for the occasional "facebooking". It seems letters and phone calls are out of date, and that is where people socialize and chat now. I danced with Mary last night and we were to go to supper tonight..Chinese is the tradition...but there has been no word so I assume the date is off. Today marks our two year anniversary as a defunct couple. It is too bad too, as I was looking forward to it.

I almost just left yesterday. No place in mind, I just thought I would head East and stay in a hotel, maybe all the way to Cape Breton and eat blueberries and mackerel. But I decided against it and I am not sure why. Having the ability to go anywhere one wants is not always a reason to do it. Go to the airport and fly to the snowy Rockies, or just drive. A decision unmade again as it has been for me this time of year here.

Thus, I await an inspiration, a reason..raison d'etra". But fishing and a new month and week appear and I remain. placed in time along the beaches of memory, a place that love seems beyond the reaches.

Mid September..already

2010-09-14T21:14:00.000-07:00

The whole world changed here as hurricane Earl past a few weeks ago. I mean that the air changed into a cool damp maritime fall. This is off a truly balmy summer of sunny beach days and cheeks of tan. Now the clouds are different. The towering cumulus coming across the straight from the mainland with distant long streamers of moisture to the sea, as a dimming near solstice sun wanes.

So spirits wane also. The smiles are smaller now among the indigenous and the off-landers are gone back to work and school and South to what they all may think is a type of predictable life. Art Linkletter said "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans". A good quote.

The routine here of weekends dancing with Mary are now dissonant. The fact that we are now longer together is oft talked about at the coffee shops and at the dances. This could last years in such a small place, and perhaps I love it as its smallness removes me from the real terror or at least controlled fear of having to be somewhere else.

Of course Arizona comes to mind as winter looms. The base in Yuma, my home in Glendale ...the palms, grill, the soft sound of the Spanish from dusky girls and the smell of roasting anchos at our grocery. shooting big and small guns on and off the range. Traffic in Phoenix, and hundreds of miles of open low desert on treks between Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Yuma. The inspection flights into smoggy L.A. to shake up the reservists with unit inspections.

But I have mused on these before. The smell of rain on a hot desert, the wet ironwood and mesquite drenched in the monsoon thunderstorms. A need for a real tamale.

I enjoy the respite of fishing mackerel at our wharf. We are a colourful bunch. One Korean gentleman is there almost all the time that the gates are open. I know if he is gone, no mackerel schools are in. For a trout fisherman who grew up with small streams, seeing mackerel school and rush past the wharf edge in a feeding frenzy, chasing the prey bait fish, or capelin, it is worth considering.

It is not the Kenai river nor King Salmon fresh from the arctic into a raging Alaskan river, nor is it trolling for Wahoo off Maui...but at least the Wahoo are relatives of my little mackerel that provide a distraction as I await a call to do something else. The brook trout here are relatives of my salmon friends too so its all in the family.

In many aspects I feel a sense of freedom that I have not felt since my teenage years. Perhaps that is what retirement should be. I see so many chasing shadows of unimportance that I oft feel fortunate. Then I thought who am I to decide what is worthwhile to pursue. A friend yesterday, on a trip to Charlottetown, explained to me (or asked) "Aren't goals important"?

Yes they are if they are not cast in stone. I assure you that overall any plans made will probably turn out differently that expected. Not always bad, just different.

I said once in a journal in 1979 that " I want to go through smoothly, easily, and not like a heavy iron chain drawn over rocky ground."

This I have not achieved. The chain has been dragged, often unwillingly, over harsh terrain. But the effort in pulling it, the callouses, the pains define this place.

So there we have it as the second part of September starts and summer is already past. Change is the only reality that is constant. Here, as elsewhere, people fight change and pretend time is static. The illusion of perception becomes real and few strive for a distant sunrise.

Perhaps it is fear of life, or just fear of fear. A life with fear is no life at all.

Fall

2010-09-08T02:24:00.000-07:00

The amazing and idyllic summer ends as hurricane Earl washes away the hot dry summer this past weekend. The air has become markedly cooler and drier and the students are returning to school, the tourists from "away", returning home. I remain.

Fishing for mackerel from the city wharf has been the best it has been for years, allowing me to fill a few buckets with the tough-fighting fish-freezing many, eating fresh fillets, and giving many away to friends at the two social clubs that I am a member of here.

Many new friends have appeared in my path as my relationship with my island Mary ended a few weeks ago in a final date that was a painful and embarrassing experience. We went to the last barbecue of the season at the yacht club. The meal was excellent and reasonable. But I finally lost patience with all the pettiness and jealousy, saying my good-byes without as much elegance that I had planned. In such a small town as Summerside, everyone knows the story. There are pros and cons, everyone has an opinion. Mary and I will see each other at the dances, but our emotional weekend liaisons have ended.

Many of my new friends are associated with fishing here in town, or friends of friends from the house parties of the summer. Most are younger. I find solace in that as I am more comfortable around a younger crowd. This is probably due to my days teaching and of course, all the years with my now disappeared former young wife.

Finally I feel normal physically and mentally. The heartache retreating and energies advancing after a period of the post-relationship blues and the obscure illness that nearly killed me in February.

I have finally purchased long-needed items such as a new television, radio equipment, and fishing tackle.

There has been much effort in the restoration of my truck, the last remaining vestige of a prior life and a distant universe. At this time, I expect to remain here for the foreseeable future as there is really no other place that I would rather be. The children are very busy as the school year begins and they both continue to work. It seems to me that neither of them had anything like a real summer vacation, at least as I knew them as a teenager. It saddens me, but we all stay in touch usually via facebook, which dominates social communication in the new age. Letters are gone and telephone calls are becoming rare and short as real human contact gives way to the lol and omg of our internet age. I am glad that I also "grew-up" in that world, comfortable with electronics as is the gift of my radio hobby and business computer experience over the last 30 years.

My trusty old digital camera died as it got wet on one of my innumerable treks to the beach. I purchased a new camera which is pretty amazing. Its functions are, it seems, a kin to flying the space shuttle.

The beach, new friends, new toys has made this the most fantastic summer in many years. Not that the pangs of heartache don't surface from time to time...they do. Hopefully I can venture off island before the snow flies-perhaps a fishing trip to Cape Breton of the Eastern shore of Nova Scotia. Maybe a return to Salmon Lake lodge will seal the breach and provide solid conclusion to my married years and allow me to finally complete the biography.

The sun is brightly illuminating the Indian Head lighthouse on the point as it rises behind me here. The view from my seaside home. The harbour looks tranquil this morning. Pink mist awakening in the dawn, foggy clouds struggling lift away and the patches of blue sky revealed. Soon it will be time to go fishing, move on into the weekend of parties, dances, and cooler, wetter weather.

Thus is my life on this day in September, 2010.

August 11 2010

2010-08-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

Yes today is actually the 10Th. Tomorrow is a day of many birthdays. My daughter turns 18, my grandfather (Manduka) would be 109, my mom would be 91. i am not sure how common it is to have so many with the same birthday that are immediate family.

It was sultry here today, very Northeastern summer day with much heat sun and humidity after the rains. The evening now is cooler and dry-fallish. I walked over to the little park near my old home to visit my wishing pond. They have planted water lilies. no life that I could discern other than the putting about of the "water-boatmen". They are small insects that live in ponds. I remember as a child on the farm being fascinated by them, as only a 8 year old can be, in my pond that i have written so much about. As an old family tradition demands, I tossed a coin and made prayers for all those in my life I love or miss or both.

I rode shotgun today up west to Carl Campbell's salvage yard to assist my fishing buddy Glen Currie pick up his Toyota tercel. Carl put a rebuilt engine in it and it runs well. It was the same car that Shel had-perhaps Carl rebuilt her engine and put it in Glen's rig. I am still not sure why she never got it fixed, as it was a nice little car.

I spoke to my children today. Rhonda is taking them out tonight for a dinner in celebration of Alexis's birthday tomorrow. Alexis has to work and has no party planned. I was sad that I could not be there as 18 is an important day for anyone. Times slips away with amazing speed.

Joey even said that he may get a passport and take the 18 hour trip from Harrisburg up here. We will see. I remain rather entrenched here for the time being.

I am off to Carl's tomorrow for tires and a heater blower, and maybe a few other adjustments. they have taken great care of the old truck, but as winter looms there will be more to do.

today i was missing my Mary a bit. We shared the love of live music and movies, and good food. But the vast differences between us and the effects of her horrific childhood and relationships even I can not overcome. But I miss our romance. We had one last encounter last week at the wing. We kissed and talked in the Wing parking lot after the music. But I did not get the apology for her insults about my fishing pals that I needed to hear. So that at least for now, is that.

This is such a small town that there are absolutely no secrets. None. I have survived here by being affable and as generous as possible and that seems to work. My new social circle is both younger and more active. It includes males and females, which Mary would have not allowed. But i still miss the intimacy, as I have really been married or involved one way or another my entire adult life. So this is really new ground. For better or worse.

Hopefully I can make some beach time and get some fishing in this week. Summer is running down, trout wane and the mackerel arrive now.

It has been years since I had an amateur radio station. I am back on the air now and have simple chats with other hobbyists all over from South America to Russia, and California and Florida. Its a welcome distraction rooted in my childhood on the farm where I built my first transmitter from a Heathkit and strung my first home made wire antenna.

So that is August on the island for me. Live in the moment.

August on the Island

2010-08-05T09:45:00.000-07:00

July was a truly wonderful month. It was the best summer month that I have experienced in many years. The dimming of unpleasant partings and sad memories yielded to fishing, camping, and all kinds of pool parties, barbeque's and new friends. Released from various restrictive relationships-of all kinds, I am finally able to enjoy my toys, truck, friends and fishing gear.

We caught plenty of trout this summer. Both the standard Brook Trout of my youth and its sweet white flesh, roasted on a fire, and the sea-run version of the same critter, whose flesh is firm pink and succulent.

The camping at mill river park "up West" is of note. My friend Dave and fished and camped in hard rain, by a roaring fire that was aided by my supply of military fire-starting pellets. We even played a round of golf. After my initial failure at the frustrating game, I really enjoyed it.

camping in my old yellow tent with the ancient blazer along side was a sure source of nostalgia. Yes I dwell too much upon that, but I bought that tent in Alaska 28 years ago. The truck is only slightly newer, still running almost as good as it did as I drove it off the lot in Maryland that summer 20 years ago.

I do miss my children It is wonderful that we have facebook and other computer resources to keep in touch. Perhaps someday they will visit me on this island. Someday, when they are free of what constrains them.

Finally I have another amateur radio station. It is still under construction here, but will provide diversion when fishing wains and the weather turns, which will happen very soon at this latitude.

The mackerel are showing up at the wharf downtown. I sure enjoy catching them as they come insure to attack schools of small bait fish, called capelin. Many here don't like to eat them, as they are rather oily and heavy fish. But I enjoy a good "feed" of island mackerel. Here they are boiled, fried, or baked. I am quite along when I cut a fresh chunk off an almost live fish and enjoy saba, or the Japanese sushi word for raw mackerel. Then I miss Shel, as she loved sushi. Far from the meat and potatoes of Colorado, I introduced her to Japanese food at the Fish Market restaurant in Phoenix. She became an avid devotee.

The weather will turn cooler in a few weeks. The fall will come swiftly, suddenly with a first snow flake on or about November 1. It was then that I usually left the island to struggle back "home". As to where to go this winter, I am just not sure now. Nothing compels yet to leave. That day will come-but I am surely in no hurry. Yes, a very difficult place to leave.

2010-07-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful day to spend a Linkletter Park, right down the road from my home here on Prince Edward Island. In the summer heat, it is wonderful to watch in real time the thunderstorms boil up high in towering cumulus clouds, drift across the strait-and die. I could lose the hungry deer flies. They are helping me with my manual dexterity.

Mostly tourists dropping by in rented cars, local kids, and kids with kids on the narrow beach there. The tide was low, with piles of eel grass and stranded unfortunate jelly-fish, locally called "bloodsuckers" for no reason, drying glassy in the sun.

The birds seem happy. A song sparrow kept visiting me and proclaiming on the sole light post near the shore.

Here I cleaned the "cottage" and await the big rains forecast for tomorrow. Time for haircut and laundry...a non-beach day.

Paradise lost...found..lost again..found again...what a fantastic experience.

Rainy night after glorious days

2010-07-19T17:51:00.000-07:00

Cool rain now falls and the splatters make music along my leaky gutters. It has been a great stretch of days that I have spent with friends at Chelton beach. The place is one of those places.
There I cooked hot dogs and hamburgers, fries and sold ice cream at the little canteen there. That was the summer that Shel worked there and I went with her there to help out and enjoy the beach. That was the summer of 2007. In those days, Shel and I still lived together off and on between her various "relationships", always some kind of despiration, a feeling that I have never known. I didn't mind so much, as we were getting along as well as could be expected and I knew one way or the other our time together was concluding. I still enjoyed immensely, even the fights. She became my oldest daughter at the end.

She had to find an islander to eventually marry to stay here, as she knew my financial support had to end. I got her here, that was good enough. I transported her so she could date, which almost destroyed my poor truck. Funding ended, wife GONE.

Her pal Elwood who works at the park recognized me right away. He had helped Shel get her little car, and he asked about her. I told him that we were finally divorced in January this year, and that she had gone home to Colorado and family. He is a very nice, awfully poor man with an ill wife.

So now days pass without a concern that Mary will be calling, or wondering where I am. In a final conflict, she left in a huff Friday night mad that I had met my fishing buddies for a beer without telling her. Everyone says that I am better off, but after 2 years I do miss her many positive attributes. I am also very glad to lose the bad ones. The gulf of backgrounds was just too wide and we had been pushing it for months-but I will miss my Mary. Very much.

Perhaps some fishing this week and more swimming in the very warm sea. Its been an amazing July thus far. Summer is so short here each warm sunny day is a treasure. A far cry from Phoenix, where cloudless skies may persist for months.

I ordered a bunch of amateur radio equipment to replace the station that I sold here long ago to help Shel with her Colorado trip. It may help the long nights pass, talking to people around the word on shortwave.

My social circle evolves and most here have forgotten that I am not an islander. My children are very busy, so I may as well stay until I must leave, for whatever reason.

My little place here is humble, but convenient. I watch the property and show the vacant units as a favour to the landlord. Its his first property and he is a nice, hard working young man. His father saved my life in February, finding me very ill and non-responsive in my old apartment.

This is a very intimate place. A very small town with all the good and bad that that means. For now its home.

For today.

July 13 2010

2010-07-13T19:54:00.000-07:00

Well I heard from a very dear old friend today. She isn't very happy with me and perhaps deservedly so. I hope that we can reconnect without hostility. In any case I went up west today and went fishing near O'Leary. Then off to the West Cape beach and lighthouse. I took a great swim in the warm salt water and missed my old friend.

There was a young man selling fish on the road in O'Leary. I bought scallops and some flounder that I just ate. Excellent.

The Lobster Carnival is in full tilt right by my humble abode. I walked over and took some pictures that I put on face book. A warm breezy lovely evening.

But my heart is empty. I do miss all of the travels and wealth of earlier years. And my exquisite young wife. In any case, I can think of no place better to spent a summer.

I have extreme faith as my mother said..."Walk as if you are hand in hand with God, and all things within you shall arrange to be well".

I sure miss her, and my sister.

A Wonderful Sunday Evening

2010-07-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

Well I always write about the fishing or the beach. If I get much more tan I will probably get deported.What a great weekend. There was beach, dance, and some decent foods to enjoy. I must admit that I am very moved by the visit at my humble dump by a new friend. We had planned to watch movies. This amazing person was walking down Greenwood Drive to see me in the pouring rain. I decided that it was unacceptable and I found my friend in my old truck , in rain-gear walking to me. I brought her here.

We came back here to my place to watch the movies that my friend selected. Of course, my junk TV died during this....not being too embarrassed, we went out to buy a new TV.Well its Sunday and everything was closed.

We came back after the rain,,and talked. And talked. My friend can talk. I love it..I miss that.
But we played with the computer and talked about family faith and our mutual losses. We shared pictures and some painful memories.

It was a wonderful time time. But we live in a place that we have to be very cautious, as people talk here.

With a better TV I hope we can have another movie night. And frankly, I don't care what people say about it.

On into summer on the beach

2010-07-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

July comes to the island with warm breezes and the warming waters of the Northumberland Strait. It was nice to take a swim in the salt today. The fourth of July, uncelebrated here, on my mind. We had Canada Day here on the first, with fireworks and parties abounding. A few friends came over and we ate chicken and watched the fireworks. That was a first for me as I come out of the solitude and the angst of dealing with the loss of my sister and wife only a short time ago.

Mary and I went to supper at Gentleman Jim-I was in a steak mood. I took her to our beach here by my place and then to Linkletter Park. It was warm and beautiful as I parked the old truck right on the shore and kissed her. Sundays with Mary.

I did talk to my daughter a while on face book. She is smart, strong and almost too beautiful. My son is working almost constantly and involved with his friends and his music so I hear from him less. I miss him a lot, but I now know how my mother must have felt as I went off into life and had less and less contact. I sure miss my parents and unexpectedly , my sister.

So here i am along Green's Shore waiting to see what happens. Something will..it always does.

facebook is keeping me in touch with friends long absent. i enjoy that medium...the only real way I seem to be able to talk to my children.

Mary was warm, affectionate, and wonderful to be with this weekend. Time moves forward and I think I shall remain here at least for now. After all, I am getting a great tan, the old truck still runs as new, and it is home. Where I hang my hat.

Fishing as June ends

2010-06-27T16:58:00.000-07:00

Yes now it almost Canada Day which is July 1. It is a Canadian version of the US 4Th of July. There will be fireworks and a big party down at the bay walk (boardwalk) and beach 1 block from where I pen this. Perhaps this year it will be a bit warmer and there will be less mosquito's.

I went fishing with my friend Dave Elliot on Saturday (yesterday). First I managed to get lost trying to take the back roads to Coleman, about 30 miles West of Summerside. I had an appointment to meet and look at a small house there which I thought would make a nice fishing camp.It was pretty rough. My pal Dave is a master builder and carpenter and thought it was not a good idea, so we went to the legion in O'Leary. O'Leary is a nearly dead potato producing and processing town there that used to be a busy place. Both Dave and my friend Glen grew up there.

It is quaint as towns on the West Virginia panhandle. There is even a old store, closed, that has the old merchandise still in the window. A quaint old building with apartments above. Mary was quite upset that I would make such bold decisions without her approval, and we have been distant since Saturday night. She has not returned my phone calls and she went to the club last night and I stayed at the wing. It may be simple miscommunication or as Dave says, I am just a "bugger". The punishments aside, it was a great sunny weekend with big tides and a full moon. The fish seem to respond to that. I caught 4 nice trout near Coleman and just ate them with coleslaw and potato salad. Fishing and cooking these wild brook trout, I miss my son and the mountains streams of Pennsylvania (and Arizona) catching and cooking these amazing natural jewels.

Sundays always bring some sadness to me. Things close early and alone I am left to recollect, write here, and consider a future where it may be.

Its hard to beat a place to live on a great beach, wild trout, and eager young ladies. But I miss my older girl and during my revelries and travels, I miss Shel. Mostly I miss my kids. I speak to my daughter almost daily. She is directed and well balanced. Joey is very busy and lives a hectic life of some trepidation like his mother. I think they will both be well.

I am not so sure about me. But a summer of sun burn and fishing looms ahead. Just about 2 months before the weather turns back to the pre-autumn chill and rains leading to a sub-arctic winter that has to be felt to really know. As always to stay or go. At least for now I shall remain.
After all over staying a welcome is my speciality, and I now have a real social circle, flawed, but real acceptance among my little towns community.

It cannot continue forever and i am awful at endings. But sun and trout....I have seen much worse.

Joe Manduke Images

2010-06-22T00:52:00.000-07:00

Images

First Day of Summer in a Prescribed Paradise

2010-06-21T19:08:00.000-07:00

So summer arrived at 8 something here on the coast of North America that's sees it first. So be it. My evening was listening to blue grass music as its called here at our legion. I feel there among the seniors (I am close to the youngest participant) that I am among my Hatfield family, long lost, along some holla on the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy in West Virginia. Know that I only visited Williamson once, to visit the family cemetery. There Anse Hatfield, a hero of the Confederacy stands tall in marble along Mate Creek. Yes, Matewan fame. He was either my GGGrandad or Uncle depending on who slept with whom. In any case I was born dead-eyed shooting a revolver, so maybe there is something to the DNA thing.

My mom, Aunt and grand mom only talked in their hidden language among us....they would use certain letters to create whole words, for example "Fuff A Cause EE". Which meant face "face". Later I learned that during the feud they had to be careful about what they said. I think that secret way of talk among the Hatfield clan has never been said before...but I won't say it all...

Here the spring peepers of my youth on the streams are still singing. At this latitude it has just broken dark and its almost 10PM.

The trout fishing here on the island is pretty good. There are decent sea-run brook trout of the same type I caught with my father and son in the streams of Pennsylvania. When they go into the sea hey grow fatter and take on a silver tone. The little bright dots of blue-ringed red gone and bellies fat from a time in the salt. They are profound.

Here, I am completely "islandized". I am a member of the social clubs and accepted by nearly all the folks that considered me an off-lander and even a "Yankee". Its a gentle strain of people who crave the world across the ferry or the bridge but just can't go. Many have left for work in the Alberta tar sands or even the states. Those that remain lust for the annual Florida or Las Vegas vacation. My former and lovely young wife has either been deported for working without a visa or simply disappeared.

A fishing friend or mine, who has shown me great great trout streams (Up West-meaning anywhere West of our little town) works at the potato plant. He tells me that his job is to use water jets and flumes to get the crop into the hoppers. He works second shift sorting potatoes in a stark warehouse here. His name is Glen. His life is also an abject tradgedy but he is one of the few lucky enough to have a job, and looks forward to our fishing trips to his home town up West near O'Leary. There are some serious sea-trout to be caught.

My relationship with my island girl continues. She is stoic from a truly horrible childhood of parental loss, no running water, and struggling here in the 1950's. I am talking incest, physical attack, and rural horror.

Such a run from my personal background. When we go out she makes her face and hair flawless, trying to achieve a recognition for beauty that she has never known. She is Mary, the lady I see here. She is as far from Shel or a desert sunrise as a human could be, but she is my Mary.

Here as a retiree the days come and go. The tourists are starting to arrive and the hopeless little shops are opening. A place of real beauty-but one has to stay here to find it. Cape Breton is more rugged and prettier. Nova Scotia has Halifax and the great Eastern shore and the Annapolis Valley. New Brunswick, our "drive through province" has the Bay of Fundy and the Miramachi. And don't consider the awful "Magnetic Hill".

I have few complaints but I do miss my family and my desert-oddly enough. But the sun shines and my skin tans under a maritime sun by my abode alone along the beach.

Its what I wanted. No real financial worries, no relationship issues and a place to fish...a truck that will take me anywhere. I can see the point lighthouse from my home.

Still...I feel a missing..a longing..is this it?

My mom used to ask me during my business and consulting days-"What am I running from".

Maybe I can get out of block and finally write the story. Now that most of the pain is settling, and I actually have something to say.

OK-Maybe not totally "islandized". My gorgeous French-speaking dental hygienist said to me at the end of picking my teeth last week..."Your from the states!" Accent. I am working on it. Its easier to learn Canadian inflection than Russian when I went there so long ago on a UN mission.

She also said that she has rarely seen anyone my age here that HAD all of his original teeth...ok, I have one gold crown.

Old Stew and Cats

2010-06-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

So we move into a modest rainy summer on my island. Yes old stew. I just had a hankering (spelling) for the stew my mom made. I found an old soup bone, ripe with good island beef at our co-op. Yes, a turnip, island potato and whatever else I had in my larder. But its not MOMS stew-close, as she said when I was but a boy put the tomatoes in last-and her little basket of Herb's that I have so much trouble duplicating here.

It reminds me so much of her teachings about cooking and using fresh herbs in the pot. Also of Arizona, among the garden that was just beyond my home. All the fine food that I made with long lost wife.

Cats came tonight...my neighbour Betty in a panic. The local tabby had kittens in the pouring cold rain by my humble abode, outside by a pile of sticks. She had been in here, looking, gravid, but I turned he away. Well my neighbour Betty found the kittens and the are safe and warm, nursing in my humble place by the ocean. Tonight.

So the mom kitty and hers stay with me tonight.

A chance meeting

2010-06-08T18:10:00.000-07:00

That afternoon I had just left my office in Norristown, Pennsylvania. It was the fall of 1984. My pal and I always went to work out at the nautilus club on route 202 near the office. Then we would roll up old US route 202 to a place called Alphafa's. There would we have a beer maybe some snacks and my forever girlless friend Phil wait hopefully to meet the woman he wanted to meet.

There was a tall lady, dressed well sitting at the end of the bar. She was a bit loud but had a nice curly doo and was very friendly. As my friend shunk into his his seat (as usual) I asked the lady what she she did as we did back in the 80's. She said said that she was a computer type who worked at a bank. After a time she said she was waiting for a girlfriend, who was a veterinarian.After a time she offered to buy us a a snack. I was well moneyed and a bit amused, but we accepted.

At that time I had just broken up with my high school girl Carol, and was looking for a business oriented attractive girl to carry on with my dreams of HTS, my own environmental consulting practice.

Well the evening was over and I followed her out of the restaurant. she resisted, so I opened the door of her Audi turbo and offered my phone number. It was NO no no

But a week later I got a call and we went on a date to see the movie Ghost busters..she laughed so hard that the whole movie crowd was laughing at her not the movie

We were married a year later...there would be no Joey or Alexis...Shelly would not have her new marriage to ...something to consider Paul Perry, and I would not not be waiting on Prince Edward Island without that chance meeting so long ago....the moral being that chance meetings may not be anything but fate

2010-06-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

So comes on the spring. Much time has passed since the entry of the blue moon. The kids seem fine and I slowly recover from my ordeal of hospitals and health. In no way will I recount the experience of near death and all the usual BS that goes along with that.

The good news is I am breathing and I have been fishing. Fishing for fine fresh trout in the nearby streams. It loses something without my son and other disconnections but it is still beautiful and life-giving. (perhaps not for the fish)

The full moon of late May has waned to gibbous as June arrives mostly with a chilly rain. My habitation is not the charming place I was in up until this past winter, but it is warm and close to the beach.

I continue to miss family, both genetic and legally bound prior. My mission now is wholeness, a completion of the short story compendium and my own sanity.

It has been said by a famous person that the madness is only temporary-we shall see or sea.

Will I stay in this place of beaches of migrate to past fondness remains to be seen.

But after 6 months I have finally made a journal entry. There shall be more.

"Short Note" on the Blue Moon

2009-12-23T10:25:00.000-08:00

Its "Twice in a Blue Moon" for me. The winter solstice coming on Prince Edward Island with a warm snow-killing white Christmas destroying rain. Here for me among the decorated cottages and Victorian homes I walk in the evening to observe the frozen pond at our memorial park. Often a coin is tossed with a hope for all as always for an abundance.

This blue moon, or the second full moon within the same calendar month comes appropriately on December 31. The last such moon was on May 29, 2007. That twas the night before I was to travel to New Hampshire and pick Shel up at the airport after her last trip home, to Colorado. I am mired in the bizarre and ironic. This Christmas season marks the first time we are truly out of touch in nearly 18 years.

The end of this year marks many conclusions in my life and the life of our family. Romantically, a once very pleasant long-term relationship formally ends and a more stressful and more recent dalliance concludes simply and with a hint of relief. The death of my sister in October ends the existence of my immediate family on this earth save one (me). Both of my adult children are on their way into life in various states of confusion or over-confidence so much like teenagers.

So Christmas alone here on this island selected as my refuge seems just fine. Much better than the uproarious time two years ago here when emotions were so high as marriage writhed in its last ugly death throws. Nor as last year when I sat with my sister, ailing in her silent suffering, over a meager and reluctant Christmas meal during my now rare winter off-island. As for so many, this time of year for my family has been difficult. In our case, now only MY case, since the 1970's. I have written so much on that that it is time to move on.

It is also time now write the conclusion. Not this journalistic read here that is completed only out of reverence for 30 years of diaries penned by me, now lost. But to actually do "something". The novel or collection of short stories to be.

As a dear old friend has advised me many times, "You can do anything you want-create businesses, speak, teach, why are you just waiting?". Well for us the emotions run deep as does the brilliance. My sister was absolutely brilliant but in the actual world would have been and was considered a "loser". I wasn't. I created millions and just walked away from it. Now thats a tale someone might read. And I have learned the most from my friends turned enemies.

The experience of that loss has honed my instincts on human nature to a very sharp edge. For the most part its pretty ugly. The beauty of nature and a fine trout stream sustained me while I have endured my vacation here. It is the, the rare kind deed that is truly unselfish I search for.

The rarest concept to consider or act upon for today, at the time of this Christmas for all of us should be an act made or observed of true forgiveness. It is a very rare thing, this "forgiveness" and nary seen in fact by action other than meaningless words. Forgiveness is a tangible act of the spirit uniquely human. I seek a spirit that can really take that leap of faith. Another rarity is the ability to go through life without fear. This is a true Christian value. These are as rare as a blue moon, or rarer. Forgiveness within a life without fear.

Go on without fear. Ask yourself this year what are you afraid of-nothing? Losing your money, your lover,wife, family, gold, looks, car, house, food....the list is long and usually obvious. What about losing your soul? What is of value to you. Do you I have one?

Trust me on this matter I speak from experience. To fully push the envelope to prove a point may be madness, and perhaps I am guilty. As a writer I can only tell of what I have lived and what I have experienced, so perhaps its been worth it.

The New Year's of the Blue Moon should help you stop and pause-look up at the sky and figure out your real place in the universe. So few even look at the sky. Stop and observe it. If life still makes little or no sense walk away from all that makes you comfortable and try a new world and a new life. Experience that and grow as a viable spirit verses an automaton on a fake material world and a black and white life.

It has been said that a life lived in fear is half a life. I disagree. It is no life at all. Remember the mandala and its significance.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year-Go live it in honesty without fear, with charity, forgiveness and appreciation. For me that means going fishing with my son, maybe a trip home to Arizona and whatever is in my path that needs doing. What does it mean to you?

Mid-November

2009-11-18T08:05:00.000-08:00

Finally got a chance to sit and write a few lines. I have been busy dealing with my sisters estate from afar. Since I am in Canada I have to give administration of Aprille's things to the attorney, Joie Rehcamp. My son was going to take care of it but his mother has erroneously convinced him it will somehow put him on the hook for money. Now I will have to pay a lawyer to do what Joey could have done and earned himself a few bucks. But he is very busy with work and school so I understand. I just wish he didn't hang on his mothers every word, as she is often just plain wrong.

The realtor that I have hired sent some pictures of the little house. It looks ransacked. Aprille kept it so neat. Her TVs and most other electronics are missing. The new futon that she loved has disappeared. I think the cousins must have thought that I had not been there nor knew what was in the house. I gave Bettejean, the daughter of my mothers oldest brother, the refrigerator for a church donation. Perhaps that meant "help yourself".

I do not really care. But it is very disrespectful and I myself felt a bit violated. In our family, and perhaps in most, when someone dies alone, the first "relative" on-site takes what plunder they may want.

It is tough to see what few remaining trinkets and art I knew in my childhood alone in that place. I think of all the abandoned properties I have inspected over the years and of flea-markets. There the last remaining worthless but sentimental treasures of a past life fade away to the dump or someone else's nick-knack shelf.

Little things of beauty meant so much to my mother and sister. The paintings, driftwood, colorful glass of all kinds. Some items belonged to our Great grandmother , Mary Riley. I suspect that these won't be preserved as I am stuck here and have no truly reliable caretaker.

Cold and harsh is the modern world. I suspect at the conclusion of all this I may be able to return to the States for a time. The where and why and when has yet to be determined.

In any case its a bright cool day here on the island. Winter looms as does my 53rd birthday one week from today. I may never know why my 61 year old sister, who seemed healthy in March, just died alone. An old friend told me sometimes an artistic heart just cannot bear the ugliness of the world and reality of life here. I think that my son is right when he says his aunt died of lonliness. She was lost without our mother.

Somehow I have managed to be tougher and more resolute than my sister. I am not as intelligent as she was. But she was my preschool teacher and allowed me to love a life of learning and travel. After the disaster of my life with Shel and the inordinate amount of suffering that caused I feel that some are correct in stating I am too sensitive and a dreamer.

My mother told me all we retain are our dreams and memories. Perhaps I do not hold the keys to fort knox, but in memories and dreams I am rich. Both fulfilled and unrealized. Maybe when I leave this place finally mission accomplished I can write the tale and again sit in the sun.

A legacy of visions.

FALL

2009-10-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

So the fall is almost gone now. Its brilliant and very crisp. I found out from my son last Friday that my sister passed away at home sometime around that date. A visitor couldn't get an answer at the door so the police were called, broke in and found her in final rest in her living room chair. I had wondered why my calls and letters had been unanswered. I knew she was lonely and not feeling well when I left to return home last March.

I just wish I could have stayed local and been of some help-but at least we had our final trip together to the New Jersey shore of our childhood. I had hoped to stay nearby longer but dealing with family realities in Harrisburg and the unfriendliness of it made me long to return to the island.

Aprille had wanted to visit but I had to drive round-trip again and I just wasn't up to it after the ordeal in Pennsylvania last winter.

The family is all together again now save for one-yes, the last of the "Manduka's"- I hope my children get on the stick with career and weddings so I can see some grandkids-one thing is for sure I am next on the list.

Aprille was cremated at Newmyer funeral home in Harrisburg as per her request. The ashes are at our cousin Bettejean "Sis" Weber's home of Etters, and are to be scattered about my mothers ashes in the rose garden at the family home at 3937 Walnut Street.

I am glad cousin sissie (Mom's brother's-Harold Hatfield daughter) and her husband Russ have tried to help my sister and check on her during my travels. It is a shame my children, only a few miles away never really got to know or understand her life and talents, and pains. She was much like Van Gogh, but in actuality a much better artist.
She was my mentor and teacher who had me reading and doing math, playing chess at age 5.

Her intelligence misunderstood caused her pain and rejection in a cruel world. At age 61, missing her family and probably still our life on our Bucks County farm in the 60's and our trips to the Mexico, Florida, Canada and the New Jesey shore and Wyalusing (Homet's Ferry,PA) as children, succumbed as only a sensitive can to the ugliness of a wanton and brutal modern world, perhaps as it is.

She expressed herself in her music, writing and most of all art-I hope it can be preserved as her testimony.

Hurrican Bill

2009-08-23T17:09:00.000-07:00

Well what was touted as a big storm really seemed like a few Arizona monsoon thundershowers to me. But it was my first maritime hurricane. Wow-its been a long time since I have written. This is due to the fact that I have an uncomfortable computer position and weak wi-fi connections.

What a great warm August! I didn't get as much fishing or beach time as I have been futzing around with Mary a lot. I am taking a break from that now and I doubt it will go over well..but I need some space and thinking time.

Shel seems quite happy in her new life and has blogged about it on this server. Now I come to the annual event of deciding whence to remain here and be hard-frozen or go off somewhere else to do whatever.

The kids have been okay with predictable Rhonda and girlfriend/boyfriend issues. I am planning on finally getting my truck fixed-a check showed up without explanation from my sister so it will be well spent.

Otherwise been fishing a little but my hands have been sore and spoiled it a bit.

I have plenty more to espouse upon and photos to post. I actually have two handwritten essays ready to go-hopefully this week.

One story discusses my dependence upon "signs" to decide various actions that I may take or not. Fall approacheth..I await a sign...or just winter it out again?? Guess I could go home and go back to work. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Canada Day

2009-07-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

Well there is a lot to say on my fourth Canada Day here on PEI. I won't elaborate in this post but later when I can. I am working on the "Golden Coffin" essay and I will post that soon.

The whole town was down at the baywalk for fireworks tonight. Mostly school-aged kids and young families. The cool misty rain started just as the fireworks ended around 10:30. It was a night requiring a jacket and my hands grew a bit numb sitting on the fence for an hour. They started at 10, as that was really when it was dark enough at this latitude on July 1.

No mail from anyone other than Phil Benjamin today. He lost his birth certificate and I reminded him it had been in his dad's house in Monroeton in the safe. The house that should have been. Another gift from Rhonda to the family. The latter-day loss of two homes the kids could have had. I hope she is happy with the few dollars all the pain yielded. Watch the karma, Shel always says.

No word from her either but payday approacheth. She will probably be heard from. Happy July to all-back to creative writing soon, I promise.

Summer in Summerside

2009-06-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

I have often commented on how this island is perhaps one of the best places in all of my travels to spend a summer. But allow for the fact that it is overcast most of the time. Each really bright warm day is a jewel from the sun gods. Often the wind shifts bringing shockingly cool air from some place still icy or of icy seas. My little beach at Green's shore, the "Bay walk' as we call it here is really a eel grass choked tidal flat.

The sand is coarse and brown and the sea smells 0f organic decay. I love it as it is as it should be, but many a passerby comments upon the weeds and the "smell". I can hear them as the walk by on the boardwalk while I am lounging hour after hour on the coarse red-brown sand.

They trot by with dogs and kids, some chattering in French, some on phones, some speaking too loudly about a local affair or their world travels. Please. I learn more while on the beach than I do at the wing or legion on Saturday night. My friend Mary doesn't like it when I socialize, especially with female friends. She hates it when I dance facing the seated folks. I think she hates my tan, and she sure dislikes my computer. I am also advised that my life is an abject failure and my misery is my punishment from God for my misdeeds and crimes against humanity, Rhonda, and Shel. I consider this as I soak up the sun and write here by the sea.

Somehow my punishment seems to be what all the moneyed folk walking on bay walk and touring the island for a few days long for. Early retirement. affordable housing. Cable TV. I guess I have missed the point somewhere but I am trying to figure out what everyone is so afraid of and what they are working so hard to accomplish.

I have done all of that. College. Started a business, made millions. Tahiti. My airplane, fleet of cars, my Mercedes, mansion and servants, Shel among them. Now I wait on the beach. All of the material props removed I am still on vacation. Those who visit here have to leave to return to whatever reality someone told them was the proper way to comport themselves. Pay your bills. Follow all the rules. Act like a sycophant-yes sir or ma mm. Don't question authority. Be afraid , yes awfully and horribly afraid.

For tomorrow you may be broke. Don't take a risk. You may lose your home, wife, car, airplane, nanny, or mistress. OOH Noooo! Been there and done that. Still on the beach. Clothes clean, hair cut. And the ladies still like me.

The big loss is the fact of my own bewilderment. Everyone is taking it all way too seriously, and usually about matters of little or no importance of issues over which one has little or no control. They are the same thing.

My quandary is that for most of my time in life it seems that someone wants to steal my joy. I know that misery loves a good friend, but what is it about me that drives the unhappy masses insane? Maybe I just attract the wrong people. At my first job, I was hated as a rebel, but was one of the most cited and admired professionals in my organization. Later, in business I made millions making it seem easy. Then I was ridiculed for taking too many vacations. Hell, that is why I started my own company in the first place!

Then when I lost all that because wife one thought she could steal and somehow operate my "easy" business I married a young blond and moved to the desert southwest. Here I started another small business and worked on my hobbies, fishing, shooting, and the art of relaxation.

Being too happy at that, wife two decides too get what she can and seek paradise at my expense after still angry wife one has me handcuffed for failure to keep her in the mansion, which she of course lost and screwed up after she ruined the business that she desired to run so badly. Must be my fault.

Blond wife decides that she has to make me angry so Ill go away so she sleeps around and ruins my truck. Of course I decide to stay in paradise to wait on her return, which never really occurs unless she is homeless and without a boyfriend at the moment, or some other payor.

Sure I should be all twisted up about this. But I am still on vacation as I sit on the beach and watch the ants dart about their serious purposes. Life is great. I sincerely thank all of my friends and lovers who have pointed out how awful my life is and what an evil bum I am and always shall be.

Maybe Ill move to Hawaii when I get bored again.

Next entry, "The Golden Casket Syndrome".

Cloudy second day of Summer

2009-06-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to report a quiet few days of rain. pretty cool for summer, but ah, the maritimes! I am at the library as my wireless at home is down. I had a banking problem that I think I have solved and pretty much just waiting out the last week of June until payday.

the its parts for my old truck and a fishing trip-hopefully some more pix and real writing for here. It has been a prolonged period of writer block and Internet troubles. I hope will soon end.

All quiet here as summer gets into swing and I can finally do some overdue swimming!

Quiet weekend

2009-06-14T16:42:00.000-07:00

It has been too long since I made an entry. My Internet connection has not been as easy as in the past. Finally got back out to do a little fishing. Its been mostly small brookies, but I did catch and release a small smolt salmon near Bedeque. My first PEI salmon! The Alaskan Kenai it is not, but there are a lot of fish and fishing spots close by. My truck needs serious work so my travel is limited. Frankly, fishing here is a rather lonely experience without my son.

Mary went with me a few times . We grow closer. She is a fine woman and a real lady and we spend most every weekend together. Weekends with Mary...before it was just "Sundays with Mary". Last week it was even" "Sundaes" with Mary", as we went to the St. Eleanor's dairy bar after supper.

I did get an email from Joe Moltzen. He sent some pictures of he and Kevin Geraci fishing salmon on the Columbia River. They both look prosperous but we are all aging-my high school fishing buddy's. It strikes a bit of a spear in my heart, but I am glad they have done well and missed the trials I brought upon myself.

Frankly, I think again now of going home. It has gotten complicated. I also got a note from my sister. She seemed OK, but complained of some pain. She refuses to see a doctor as she is sure that she will have to pay, but with medicare and medicaid she can get what she needs.

My lost wife did send an email around the 3rd of this month asking for cash. That always breaks me-and in a different reality I would love to help. The coldness there after 18 years of love and friendship is astonishing.

Cool and Wet

2009-05-19T06:17:00.000-07:00

Well damp and cool here in my quiet reclusion. My entries have been less frequent than I would really prefer as my WiFi connection at my place seems to have evaporated. So its the library or sneak my laptop in here to my friends while she is at work. I know that sounds dishonest but she is a radical "anti-technology" type. This can be quite quaint, charming and all that but since this format is my primary connection to both business and my children, it is , at the minimum, "inconvenient".

I did hear from my son with an update. He seems well with school finished, and he is frustrated with dating and work. My work problem is solved at the moment (retirement). The "dating" issue, which in my life never lasts long, is a non-issue. I mean that when I meet someone it goes to serious so quickly that it can be annoying. Trying to stay single has been a challenge in my life.

In any case, I hope to get the truck's front differential fixed and finally get out and fish some more at some point. The "lilac run" of sea-trout should commence here shortly. I am amazed at the streams I have seen-small wild brook trout streams like home-but way too few. Small jewel-like trout fill them. I search for the grown-up fat fish that have been out to sea, and have come home to spawn. Some are 5 pounds, or more. Thats a big brook trout-anywhere!

I am in total writer block for some time now. There has been insufficient time for me to be alone and brood so something interesting will emerge from my brain. I can't let it go on forever.

But its said to be 70 degrees on Thursday, and I may finally fit in another beach day. My summer agenda-tanning and fishing. Maybe something else will come up.

No news from my distant separated "non-wife". I finally figured out that her friend's supposed "Love and Life" blog was just an attempt to annoy me. Both her and her "friend" have fallen electronically silent. It is really too bad that has happened. I do miss those beach days with her long ago in San Diego, the Bahamas, even Cavendish. But it has been explained to me that when I took the vow of poverty, she took flight.

Maybe I should have just stayed in Highland. Well I am "stuck" here in paradise now.

My sister wrote a note last week. She is feeling ill and had the neighbour cut her grass. Joey never stopped by to visit his Aunt, but he has had a busy month. So on into June we go.

Spring Rains

2009-04-23T04:59:00.000-07:00

So spring finally arrives here on the island. Warm south winds bring the delayed spring here north and far east of my ancestral home. It always seems the seasons are a month off here. The cool returns in late August and Spring on or about May 1 at this latitude. Its really the icy waters that control the weather. Its been warmer on the mainland. Here, it will take several months for the increasing sun to really warm to a moderate temperature.

I hope to get out this weekend to chase some sea-trout up west. "Up west" means the Acadien part of this island, that begins a few miles from here. There, French is widely spoken and the streams are cleaner, wilder.Its not that critical that I fish immediately, as I have all season to pursue the brook trout that has been at sea as they return to spawn. The sad part is that so many streams here are silt-chocked due to agricultural run-off. That combined with the not rare enough ignorant release of chemicals from careless farmers fields has hurt both the commercial and sport fisheries. This saddens me as I imagine what a paradise this place must have been before settlement and deforestation long ago.

More trees need to be planted and stricter rules enforced. But the economy is poor here and farmers rule. Soon the "tourist" season will begin. Each year it seems that fewer people visit the island. The obnoxious bridge has removed some of the mystery associated with a visit here. Upon our first arrival in the early 90's, a ferry was required to reach this shore. The isolation, although subtle created a unique language and genealogy here that I am just beginning to figure out. My lady Mary is such an example. Often I still don't know what she is talking about. Yes, these folks are separated from the Yanks by a common language.

We go out on weekends dancing. I challenged Mary to identify anyone in any of the clubs who doesn't have a blood relative in the room. She balked, but when we asked about it, everyone had kinfolk in the place. Mary's cousins are always there. Another sensitive point is the large number of physically or mentally challenged people I see everyday. I was told this is because in Canada, the folks are more integrated and accepted. In fact, my theory is that the reduced gene pool is the root cause. This would sure to yield harsh words, or a punch in the nose should I openly disclose it. Much like the isolated valleys of the mountains to the south, this place and its culture was born in the harsh reality of rural life. This includes poverty and inbreeding among the families here.

I know many people who have never been off the island and only rarely go to Charlottetown, the provincial capital about an hour away.

My friend Manny Gallant came by. He asked me to put some of his driftwood sculpture on EBay. I have done so, but I am dubious of the outcome. He makes items from big old Malpeque Bay oysters and driftwood he collects at Holman's island. Pronounced "Mawl-Peck", from this bay come the finest oysters in the world.

Like many lifetime fisherman here, he is nearly illiterate. I find this charming and at times envy him, as I have written before. He explains he has been in a boat nearly since he could walk, and had little time for schooling. The usual harsh childhood, similar to Mary's and many other shaping an island stoicism that is tough for a soft educated spoiled Yankee to grasp. Alcoholism and brutality shaped many a childhood here. This is shown by the angst of failed lives and relationships, broken angry families, and an unearned ignorant pride that it creates in a soul. Some of this is evidenced in my own family. My first wife's mother was raised in such an environment on Newfoundland. The transfer of her pain effected the mother of my children, and even flavours some of their attitudes and fears.

But I love this place. Carefully backing-off on my Yankee attitude and my own ignorance, I have been slowly accepted as an "islander". But with my unique surname here, and without kin, I remain separate.

But I sure look forward to the trout and the beach. In fact this is one place that I can live in a "resort" and be able to live a normal life on my pension. I still struggle with a possible return to the states and a job. Mary would be crushed should I make that choice. It seems my children do OK without me, perhaps thrive without the fear that their mother would go mad if I was nearby. But I may try again.

Its that or make a life here for the time being. Its not so bad. I fear "island fever", which is one reason I decided not to settle on Kauai for a bit. I have to take my own advice, as I gave to my son, "one day at a time, and enjoy life as it come". As my much missed mother had advised.

Trout Season on Prince Edward Island

2009-04-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

Many years have past since I actually went out on a cold spring morning to observe this rite of spring. In fact, I cannot remember the last time. Year after year I had planned this event with my son in Pennsylvania. I think we last came close in the spring of 2007 at Clark's Creek just before my ever-predictable return to this island.

I attended a friends funeral here on the Tuesday before our fishing season started. My friend Lloyd from our local legion was 74, and a well know local fiddler. We would sit and chat about mostly religion among the artifacts of war drinking draft Canadian beer. While Mary and I were in church on maundy Thursday, Lloyds wife Shirley waited and Lloyd never came to church where she was to meet him. She found him dead on the living room sofa, after returning home concerned. Lloyd was never late for mass at St. Paul's.

The funeral was the Catholic rite of internment and a high mass. It was nice to attend the sacraments again, but I will miss my friend. The tears welled with memories of past losses of all kinds, and thoughts of the future losses to come. Now I feel part of the town. I had been to such events before, but not for someone that I knew well. The funeral included fiddling and I felt close to home, somewhere west of Harrisburg, in a mountain halla or maybe at the Oriental Hotel in Juniata county.

Those events set the stage for trout season here. The dark calm morning was icy cold with some snow on the ground and calm winds. I left at 5 AM as the season begins at 6:00. The selected spot a few miles East of Summerside on the upper Wilmot River, near an place called Marshbank's pond. The Wilmont empties into the sea about 4 miles below my spot and is straight and wild as it mixes into the salt of Summerside harbour. I could barely see, but parked by a bridge and walked down to the small stream. It was clear with a brownish bottom and some debris. The spot reminds me of the Yellow Breeches near New Cumberland. It isn't all that wild at that point, there are summer cabins and trailers, reminiscent of the rest of Appalachia.

A few cold bodies waited nearby as the crescent moon dropped lower opposite the planet Mercury in a bright frigid azure sky, Mercury shining as the morning star afore the rising sun. The folks spoke in muffled tones of how good the river is, and how they had caught big sea-run trout here over the years. We all cast (all 4 of us) at 6 AM and waited as the sun stubbornly climbed and our toes numbed. The young fellow with his brother and grandma across from me caught a small trout about 6:15. Ice formed on my rod tippet as the line was retrieved. I cast and drifted bait for 2 hours and with no fish, then sat in the Blazer and recorded in my audio diary.

The water is simply too cold, and most trout arrive here later in the spring. Later, I fished the nearby pond with no results. I don't feel too bad-that one trout was the only one caught that I witnessed.

One thing I found odd was that the island has no "non-resident" fishing licence. We all pay 30 bucks, unless we want to fish for salmon and pay an extra fee. All salmon fishing here is catch and release.

I also realized in my hasty departure from Pennsylvania, I left my small lure box in my son's car. I also have his rod and vest. So I will probably move from bait fishing to fly-rod as the weather warms, unless I get a few spinning lures here.

This day after the season opener is cold and breezy and bright. The air will remain cool another month or longer until the surrounding icy sea warms from the strengthening spring sunshine. I have many other streams here and ponds to explore. But it just isn't home nor the same without my boy along. I just have to pretend that I am that teenager that I was with my first car, before my first girl was in my life-driving around with my rod looking for meaning in a stream or on the rural roads.

I admit to being a bit homesick at this time of year. But I will probably remain on the island a
while this time. Life is easier to deal with here for me. But I miss my family and the pain remains vivid of yet another futile attempt to be with family and haunts. So as the lonely roving fisherman of the Pennsylvania back-roads found in the 1970's, I will find here places that can fill the void, maybe catch a fish and kiss a girl-attend the mass, and try to make sense of the issues of the day, both mine and the desperate pursuits that drive the people in the real world-far from this place. Far from my island. The rite of spring, a rite of life.

Transition Day on Prince Edward Island

2009-04-02T04:30:00.000-07:00

So today begins the second day of the first full month of spring. Three weeks have past since my return to my adopted home. Mary has been a gracious host but as we spend more time together I see more clearly how our different paths in life have made us so different. I realize also at this point in my life she is a great friend and in reality has probably saved me from some difficulties now thwarted. My old truck was moisture sensitive this morning as an unforecast and therefore unexpected icy- cold damp north wind driven drizzle prevented ignition this morning. Mary bundled up like an Eskimo and has gone to walk up to her work today on Victoria road.

Tomorrow I hope the truck will start or I can get some wire drier and get it running. A trip to Carl's to get those ignition parts put on and an oil change is now imperative. Also tomorrow I am to pay Allan Brown for my rental on Convent street. I am really looking forward to finally unloading and organizing my "kit" and having some alone time. Not only to catch up on the writings but to reflect on the time with Mary, and my recent winter in Pennsylvania with family.

I have been struggling to a conclusion for my writing. Now I feel that I have to make one. But conclusion means where I draw the line-to what end. I mean to stay here, take another stab at PA, or go radical and try and make it back to Arizona at some point. I have decided April is the month of rest-some sea-trout fishing here on the island, and contemplating the summers. In fact, I really have to decide in May where I shall remain.

I had an email from Joey today and he seems OK, and he wants me to call tomorrow around noon his time. Then of course it will be dancing at the "Wing" with Mary and since its a popular band, "Misty Waters", maybe the "Rock and Roll Girls" will reassemble again. Since Mary and I paired off, the old group has been no more. I saw Judy and Joan at different times around town. They seemed ill and bloated and sad. Great sadness here. Great poverty and tragedy hidden in semi-superficial Canadian bliss.

The loonie remains under 80 cents giving my American pension a nice boost. In fact living here gives me a 20% pension increase at the moment. The American car companies move relentlessly to bankruptcy, unemployment soars, and foreclosures continue. The vast American economy in its illness sickens the tiny dependant Canadian economy as when in a siege, ancient armies threw rotten carcasses into a city to sicken and kill the inhabitants. Not that any of this was really intentional (?), but it was avoidable.

For me, on a fixed livable income, depression and deflation are welcome. Poverty causes price reduction, improving my standard of living. If the loonie crashes against the greenback, I win. Sad, but true. Yankee in paradise. I just hope my truck starts and I can catch a few sea run brook trout.

I have heard from my absent and remote "wife". She is still in Charlottetown carless. She has asked me to to find a small book of quotes she had by Norman Vincent Peale. It was always in our bathroom on Central Street. It was a gift to Shel from her friend Tracy. She somehow thinks that I have it. I will look through my stuff, but I am almost sure she took it during her move-out period or it is still in the bookcase at 67 Central Street. I will look. But I told her that I may be able to get another one on Amazon. But she wants that book. I asked why the sudden wave of nostalgia and had no response. We have both lost so many material things of sentimental value. Shel makes me very sad. The awful fact is I am still in love with her, even after this terror, and I find it hard to give Mary 100%.

What a winter!

Spring on Prince Edward Island

2009-03-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

Well perhaps it goes without saying, after this long delay in writing here that once again the adventure has taken another turn. Things went south with my army buddy Jason at the Juniata county house and it was time to leave, rather abruptly I might add. I bailed in with my sister and we took an impromptu but traditional (and traditionally expensive) trip to Atlantic City. We spent a few days with our old friend of childhood, the New Jersey shore. My pals at the little Greek restaurant remembered us and we had some good food there at the end of Kentucky Ave. We had a great ocean view suite at the Renaissance Hotel, room 907.

At that time 2 weeks ago I had just planned on renting a place near the kids and just continue on with the family reunification mission. The place south of town was marginal but affordable until something else better came along. Joey and I took a ride down to scope the place and he agreed I should probably not be stuck down there on I-83. So after a night at the kids place and a hassle parking the Blazer, I just decided to drive back here to the Island.

I went on a pizza delivery with Joey and emotionally told him I was heading North again. I think he was sad, but perhaps relieved too. It had been a strain as R never knew I had returned to PA for over 3 months. Alexis had an incident with her man involving a forbidden stay over discovered by mom and her man, causing much stress on the kids.

So it was back to my island home to stay with Mary until I find a new place. I felt silly giving up my place here of nearly 4 years for only a few months-but at least I escaped most of the worst of the island winter. I just rented a nice place on Convent Street, about two blocks from my old home. I move in next Friday.

It has been nice to spend time with Mary, but it is not tension free. We have been dining and dancing-she is a great dancer and cook, a truly lovely lady. She really wants me just to stay here with her, but our personal situations complicate that at the moment. I need some alone time to regroup and decide if I am here to stay of if I will try again to move south, with better planning this time.

There is a possibility I may just stay on the island. Its affordable and beautiful, and I had a real homecoming celebration from the folks at the dance clubs, my neighbours-even the store clerks. Such a small town. Deep with many sorrows but also a place of great beauty. Once again I will miss various outdoor events with my son, so long planned, that just never seem to happen even with all of our maximum efforts.

So a few months here or a few years? Maybe my kids will visit me this summer here.

Shel has emailed me with car trouble. She does not yet know that I am back on the island. For better or worse I am going to remain incognito until I am fully established in my new place. Mary has hinted that I have no place else to go-giving her a powerful upper hand at the moment-for two weeks less a day-then I am back in my own place and free to sort things out.

I would not have returned here directly without Mary. Perhaps not at all. But I am still unsure about our long-term situation and I feel I may be over-playing my hand a bit just to get along until April 3. For sure I am stuck here until that time-another blissful prison.

After I am back in my own place I can sort out the next couple of months. I have serious decisions to make before June 1. More on that later. Sure miss the kids. Visit interruptous.

The End of February

2009-02-26T03:34:00.000-08:00

Just trying out my laptop on battery power only. Its early morning here in the mountains with a warmish springlike rain just before the sunrise. My compatriot's have already stirred and gone to work. Simon is up and awaiting his nearly hour long trip on a bus to school. AHH...ruralia. I am not sure that I could ever really go back to a city, although completely comfortable there too. Especially after living in Summerside and always longing for these mountains of my youth;

Yes I am somewhere South of Wyalusing and Towanda...but not that far in terms of fishing or basic philosophy. My mission today in this warm rain is to use the old fishing map and find some new haunts near here to explore.

I was overjoyed yesterday to find, in a small town near here, a place to buy worms and a car wash. The town is Mount Pleasant Mills. Just South of the famous trout stream, Penn's Creek.

It was sure good to wash off 2 months worth of salt The removal of that surficial outrage is also prophesy. So I am here as it seems until I can complete the circle - the Yellow Breeches of my youth in Huntsdale. Opening day of trout season 49 years after I first walked that stream and took trout with my father. The question remains will I walk alone, as Shel has suggested or shall I go with my son and new friends?

Oh-the battery lasts 15 minutes.

My Favourite Month

2009-02-23T22:05:00.000-08:00

Well not really. I haven't written this month here, but I have made audio recordings and a long-hand old style journal entry. Life goes on here in Juniata County. I feel as distant from Harrisburg as I did on the island as the kids are still hard to reach. My working roommates come and go at all hours, but are generally well mannered and respectful. We had one disagreement and I really do think one of them was trying to force me out, in that I have a nice furnished two rooms, good heat, my computer and a big cable TV.

I may be wrong. In any case the landlords young son Simon, 11, is now staying with us. He wanted to get away from his mother in Kentucky. Jason asked if I would help him with his homework. Well its beyond that, I make him breakfast and see him off to school and take him fishing and feed him when he gets home. His father works long hours for the railroad and told me he has little patience.

Some of Simon's friends already refer to me as the "nanny", in an odd twist of fate. But it gives me something to do. Mary says I am being abused. She has a problem that I see now-she has never been loved and sees human caring and protectiveness as some kind of weakness. Unless it is towards her of course. I think she is too cold and too demanding for me. Talk about the classic "Guilt Trip", to coin a phrase. I told her that I am a free spirit and that go where I please. She says that I can't. Don't tell me "can't".

The other reason that I haven't written is that my old PEI computer died. I bought this laptop on Ebay. Most all of my work and images are on line so I didn't lose much.

The good news today was that I heard from Shel. I had wrongly threatened to turn her into the RCMP for what is really a non-issue. I was very upset after an ice-cold email she sent that was just too much. I told her today that I am just glad that she is safe and happy and that I will leave her be. The awful part of it is that if she needed me, I would probably leave right now. Probably. After all she is still my family and shall remain so, I hope that over time we can at least establish a correspondence-that would be wonderful.

That all means that when I crossed the bridge into New Brunswick on December 3rd, that world and really a 20 year cycle came to an end. I have been amazed for all of my internet presence and writings, how few people I hear from, really hundreds whose lives I were in have simply vanished.

I have a few new DVD's I bought-one is the "Edge" with Anthony Hopkin's. The film is very hard for me to watch.

So I wait to decide my next life or Port 'O Call. We'll see as the winter wains and maybe my heart gladdens in a new horizon, always warmed by the fondest of memories-being truly in love. Maybe I will be myself again. Its been 5 years. Some may say longer.

Second Storm

2009-01-29T22:11:00.000-08:00

A second snow and ice storm passed quickly by leaving a few inches of snow. It seemed so trivial compared to the storms of last winter on the island. I admit to being a little isolated here among the mountains of my distant past. All here consumed with work, lack of work, relationships or lack thereof. I guess I haven't been very good company as I am somber and a bit reclusive here.

I was up the past few nights thinking of Shel, Mary, my kids, and sister. Joey did send an email. He is upset still over his girlfriend and his hectic schedule. I surely do miss him, but I am putting no pressure on him to drive the almost 40 miles here to visit in addition to his busy life. He suggested that I come down and visit with Lexi this weekend.

Mary and I talked a bit today after nearly a week. She scolded me and warned that Windsor (our crazy pal from the "Wing") said my calls would get less frequent and I would finally disappear. Mary does do the female thing with vague accusations and mild guilt trips, but she misses me and has never tried to manage an "international" friendship before. OK its more than a "friendship".

I have made and listened to some of my audio recordings. The CBC Compass news show is on via Livestream each night and I admit to it being emotional to watch it. Boomer Gallant is the weather guy. I used to watch him do live weather out my window on Central Street.

Mary said she is still going out to dance with Eva and sometimes Wilbur, but the rest of my "Rock and Roll Girls" no longer go to the Wing. In an odd way I think I broke that group up after my time with Judy Griffin and later more serious time with Mary. The Lady Mary.

I miss that simple place. It was nice being in a real town with people and active social events like our weekly dances. No such thing here that I can see. This is harsher. Chilly compared to all of the people I knew in Summerside. I asked about Manny Gallant and Germain Fougere but they also have disappeared.

So I wait. Stay or go as the old story goes. I told Mary that I was having second thoughts about leaving PEI-that it might have been fine just to visit for Christmas and then to go home. Joey warned me that I may not see much of him. But I had to try.

Shel has disappeared. I even miss her nasty mails-at least I knew she was OK. OH-I could find out everything if I snooped her out. I was thinking since it is almost payday I may hear from her-the pattern since late 2004. At least then she put on a happy tune and it was pleasant to pay for her apartment, phone, food and whatever there. I really thought it my duty then and that she may decide I am an OK guy anyway. That all really hurts-but I had to know the truth no matter what the cost. I think I now do.

Home in Appalachia

2009-01-16T07:19:00.000-08:00

Waking up on a sub-zero morning here on the west bank of Susquehanna, among the ancient ridges and the valleys of the mountains beyond Blue Ridge I am home. In my last entry I tried in vain to explain my personal concept of home. Only someone who has spent his life in travels in work and play would understand. I have often joked that I have been in a plane, train, boat, or car going somewhere all of my life. Often I think it began in the now fading memories of trips with my family to Florida, the Canadian Maritimes, and Mexico as a very small child. Being to young to remember much of that in the 1950's I find my powerful memories near the place I am now.

My extended vacation on Prince Edward Island even after a few months in the past seems almost remote. The emotional voice of my Mary there, here accent and semi-inquisitive Eh? bringing me back to mackerel at my wharf in the fall, and her warmth, her cooking and simplicity. This is truly something to miss. After "having it all", I often tell those who may listen about the beauty of simplicity-true freedom sans materialism and the rush for ephemeral success among the harried and strained world.

I will from now on consider this home, the "Oriental House", as my young son might have called it, the "camp".
Son says it is much like Westline, the old inn there. Perhaps this is the southern camp and that the northern. Westline is so far north and west of here it is really beyond Appalachia in some sense. This is remarkably similar to the interior of PEI, without the forever nearby sea. Not so much the French "Up West" there, more like "Out east" near the stunningly beautiful country near East Point and North Lake. There when the weather is right, the Cape Breton highlands can be seen. From the sea the mountains at the end of this chain meet the ocean. That is an unforgettable scene, especially as to my first trip there with my family around 1960, and later trips with wife 2.

My fellow campers here are Jason who is a railroad supervisor. He is suffering a painful divorce in his mid-30's and here we have commonality. The other pair of residents are the "sons of Dixie" as I call them. Seemingly forever travellers from the deep south, they are working temporarily near Harrisburg. The whole crew speak in a charming drawl and show the scars of a less than satisfactory life. The pair are father and son that I suspect are on the trail together out of real need, but there is simple bonding there that is touching. It saddens me as I feel lost as I hear them talking quietly for hours at night in their bunks with a closeness which for years has eluded me for years with my own children. Of course I have my trips with Joey to Arizona's rim, and Westline. Both kids to the fish hatchery in Huntsdale, and my one trip with them to Island Beach Park, New Jersey. It was there I have a photograph of my father on the beach, with me. It was his last trip to that special place before he left us.

There is the single trip I took with my daughter to Pittsburgh in 2006. She was still a little girl then. But no more.

Today is Friday and some locals may gather. We play an odd gambling game at the rustic little bar-much like the Pine Tree Inn of old. We pass a box of dice and lie about our scores and bet a quarter. I guess that's called "liars poker". I am not very good at it.

The deadline approaching with Mary for a return, the elusivity of my children, and my sisters problems place my decisions on "place" outside soulful serenity. Yes, where your heart is. But when it is scattered to the winds, all points nearly of any reachable place, I must find root in the solace of memory. But perhaps the constant chase, as my mother asked "what am I running from?", was rooted in the travels she and my father provided before I can remember. Always happier with any new vista and mission, no matter how painful, I now must decide on a home for an extended period. The questions are beyond resolution today. But it is only Friday. The weekend at Turkey Ridge and Ox Mountain, Appalachia.

Mid-Winter Deep Freeze

2009-01-15T18:21:00.000-08:00

I note today that the weather here today is almost the same as PEI-but without the constant brutal winds and sea-effect snow. Have been a bit under the weather and perhaps settling after a bit of a virus, but it is almost gone now. Jason made chicken and dumplings for the camp after his grandmothers recipe. It was quite good. Almost like mom's but he uses no vegetables.

An email came from Joey today. He likes his social sciences classes as I did as a young lad. He said he is free Saturday and may come up with his girl and her son, with her parents permission. So be it.

Mary and I talked a while this evening. We have this decision date of February. If I am not back by then we are to "break up". I barely feel I have had enough time to decide if the kids are OK yet. Maybe I didn't mention that I got a call from a headhunter that wanted me in Iraq NOW. They had already started my paperwork for a 14 month deployment. After talking to Mary and my son (who both broke down), I declined the "opportunity".

Miss Mary but I am not leaving here yet. If it takes more time so be it. I am afraid that she could be the right one, but the kids have to come first at this time. I actually think Mary doesn't believe that I am coming home. The entire concept of "home" has become so vague to me at this point its non-resolvable.

I have sacrificed for a sweet embrace for many years only to lose the very foundations of my own being. It will not happen again. You see, its choice between home, and "home home". An elusive definition.

No mail from anyone else in Canada-that one I think now after a last nasty attempt at extortion has given up-my ultimate sentence for not rolling over this time is eternal silence. A German tradition-to be "shunned", or as in the Becker/Konig familiy "to be disowned".

It is railroad ties. That means that one Becker Uncle didn't pay the other Uncles about 10 bucks for railroad ties on the prairie 40 years ago. The debtor Uncle was dis-owned and died alone in a trailer somewhere near Grover, Colorado. Dead of being "shunned". Shel always predicted that fate for me. She has worked hard to accomplish that. Oddly enough I am still on vacation, wondering what it would be like to live life guiltless, admitting no wrong at any time. It might be paradise-until the balloon bursts.

Oriental

2009-01-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

So I write again. Here at the base of Turkey mountain I am home. Long last. The wood stove heats and my son and I just ate a 20 inch trout I found under a covered bridge by the house. And the Amish. All around they confirm but do not really satisfy my curiosity of the simple and plain life.

Many unpleasant mails from my distant non wife. Quiet. In the Appalachians we have quiet. Maybe beyond the island. I hope to make a study of this culture.

Joey my son was here today. Only 30 miles north of Harrisburg but a different world. I need time to learn this place and my son, my daughter.

The fact that I caught an amazing trout less than a mile away is telling. The little rural bar on the hill seems sad after the step dancing of my island life. I will wait.

The mountains here abound with game. And soon the warmth will return and I shall fish the streams of youth-and new places.

My dads guns now adorn the wall. Soon to be used again.

Weekend after Christmas 2008

2008-12-29T17:56:00.000-08:00

I had better blog a bit while I still have easy Internet access. It would be odd to go back to writing in a clandestine paper book, perhaps never to be seen or read again. Not that these are widely read as to the boring routine of my life, and my painfully journalistic style. So be it. In fact I really do tell most all on line, making my life an open book. My immortality on this world.

Joey called around noon on Saturday morning. I had run out to look at a house in Pinetown Friday morning, and it rained overnight. The house may work out, but the truck hated the cold damp rain and fog and stubbornly refused to start. Joey arrived here around 1 to get me. We loaded the fishing gear and a few things and went back to the Bradley Drive house to spend the weekend. Rhonda had gone to West Chester to be with Ed and we had my old home to ourselves. We ate, talked. Alexis is going through tough but predictable teenage relationship issues, both with her NJ boyfriend and with her needy friends. Joey admitted he was stressed by school, work, his car, and his mother. Thrust into the world without all of the pre-training and support I had, he is scared at times.

I need to show them all the love and support I can-too little too late, to be sure. But required of me as much as anything Ever has been, and probably much more. Some of Joey's friends came to jam in the basement. I had live music for a bit. Guitars and drums experimentally as only lonely teenage boys play. It brought back memories of those years. They are good kids. We watched Star Trek and I think those young men were surprised. They got it, at least some of it. We were all up to late. Sunday, everyone planned to go to the Colonial Park Mall. I wanted to go fishing, and it was 60 degrees, but Joey wanted to meet his girl and her son there. So we went there, ate mall teriyaki chicken, and socialized. Alexis and I went off to shop as she wanted to get a sexy outfit for her trip this week to New Jersey. I must admit some unusual and new emotions taking my 16 year out for a skimpy red dress and VERY high heel black shoes. Lord, she must be 6 foot three in them. She has lost weight and is so skinny she could easily compare to the ultra thin models everyone oohs about. I am concerned, but at this juncture can only give all of my support and advice when I can, or invited too. It is a new world. But not altogether unfamiliar.

I felt out of sync at the mall. The culture, people, glitter odd to me. This bustling glamorous place so reversed from our sad little mostly empty mall in Summerside. As a prisoner newly released to the real world after years in a solitary cell I was. The quiet quaintness of my other "home". The manners, the soft lilt of my Mary's island accented voice. I might have been scared, as if in a bad dream state that comes during a fever. Bright unhappy images of excess and loss, then the dark, restless sleep after a waking sweaty feverish flash of images.

The time is moving past so swiftly now its visceral. I feel the moments clicking by, like an old camera.

We were all tired after the mall day. I watched "Iron Man" with the kids at home and we had pizza. I felt fed, loved, and relaxed. Maybe even as the kids agreed for the first Christmas in many years.

This morning we got up late again. I sensed tension in Joey as it was the day to pick mom at the train station and clean before her return. I could feel the fear. But he made time to get gas, stop in Dauphin for worms and head on out to Clark's Creek. It was cool, sunny, and serene in our woods. I had forgotten my boots and heavy winter shirt. My feet were wet and cold and I loved it. Joey has been trying to film our adventures, but the camera battery is intermittent. We fished an hour or so. I caught a fall fish and a small wild brook trout a la Thundershower Run-Westline. Joey's reel fell off his rod (my rod of 35 years, now his) and he was a bit upset. We took a time dragging the stream, successfully, with a stick for the reel. An old Mitchell 408. I wasn't leaving that antique gem at the bottom of the creek, even if as it seems, we are the only fisherman ever there.

We went back home and I fried the small trout in butter and the three of us shared it. That was good.

Finally, I helped Joey clean up as Alexis got ready for work at her costume-shop mall job. She thinks she may get fired. She has been late and they are unhappy. I told her to find another job. She has to work as mom won't share any of the child support money with her. The girl hardly eats and has to buy her own clothes-you see, that is why I resisted support payments all those years. Yes, exactly.

Joey brought me back and all was OK here on Canterbury drive. My hostess announced that "the police are coming". I asked, "for me?, jokingly. No she said. During her cruise (last week and then some), someone broke into her safe and stole 5000 in cash and her morphine supply. I felt bad for the officer. The young ex-marine took the report, searched my room, shook my hand and left. It really was a bit much. Obviously, the kid who "takes care" of her who had all the keys would be my suspect. I always knew something was wrong after the "pot pie" incident and the trip to New York and the gas money caper.

All is calm now and it will be good to go to the other house-the serenity peace and welcome boredom of Pinetown. We will see.

I talked to Mary for a long time. She was emotional, sweet, upset and lonely. But strong. Strong as pain loss and faith make a strong woman. She is counting the seconds until I walk into the Wing, her house, or her arms. I honestly told her I just don't know if and when. Both children are asking me to stay here, this home, this universe. I must wait and see if it is still valuable to them after they return to school work, and the relationships.
For me the decision is do I make the sacrifice of a chance with a truly great lady on the island to be here. I sure sacrificed everything for Shel, not without pain , as I thought it was the right thing to do, and eventually we would all be a family again.

I must stabilize here and hope the decision on whom to hurt will appear. Perhaps its time for me to be there for them on their terms. But what of my Mary, and my island. That could be my most and final chance at peace and love in paradise. But what of the hearts of my own blood? I hope time tells me the truth this time.

Christmas 2008

2008-12-26T17:39:00.000-08:00

Well home for Christmas-the first time in 2 years. I won't say that it was a joyous day. No time with my children as mom in a rare turn of events stayed home this year. I did spent part of Christmas eve with the kids. Joey and I went to Giant so he could buy the dinner trimmings for Rhonda. Alexis gave me a present. The book "Buddha" by Chopra. It was the first real gift I have had for a time, and it was a very nice gesture by my wonderful children.

After having lunch with my sister, who was very sullen and always seems about to rage at me, I returned home. Actually Kelly did decide to have some people over. She invited me to watch "Its a wonderful life", her family tradition. Kelly is tense and sullen most of the time too. Tomorrow I am meeting a guy about a house in Pinetown, very close to the Chimney house, along Stony Run. It might be a good place to be for a time.

Yes, I do miss the island, my home and friends there-the frozen sea and the music, dancing with my Irish Mary, and the piles of snow. Well maybe not so much the snow. The weather here in the Lower Susquehanna valley is as I remember it. Mostly cold, gray, and damp. But markedly warmer than PEI. But yesterday, Christmas day was bright beautiful and warmish. My heart wasn't too warm. I feel a little displaced away from home, even being farther away from absent Shel. I do miss Mary.

So its a matter of settling here for a time and waiting to see what is the best course of action. About a week ago I asked the kids if they really want me to stay here at home in PA for a longer time. They were emotional, especially my daughter, and the answer was a fervent yes.

For a time I just thought it might not be the best place to be after the holidays, and I would push on to home to Arizona and try and re-enter that universe, sans a wife. Somehow Arizona without Shel seems like a void space. But that may change. I thought about a return to the island soon, but I just can't really face returning there in February-although I had arrived there to stay back in Feb 2006. That was a mild winter there. This past was not as the wind howled and there were 3 storms a week for months. Not flurries either. Rooftop blizzards.

So I am just waiting. If this house works out tomorrow I am just going to take it and wait for spring, seeing my kids and sister as best I can and they want too. It was the right decision. I need alone time to work on my writing. The block is slowly dissipating. In some ways I am still looking for the conclusion. As with my life with Rhonda, my life on the island has so many unresolved issues. I mean emotional ties that are weakened, but not entirely absent. Perhaps that is normal or a characteristic of my bizarre journey through life.

Time has passed swiftly here already. It is hard to believe After almost 3 years on the island, at first with lovely Shel, then alone but in our home, it has ended. I sometimes worry that the Yellow Breeches, my family, and my writing won't be sufficient to fill the voids. This "time heals all" is just a falsehood. But perhaps once more I can attempt to put together at least part of this broken home. Numerous previous attempts have failed due to money issues, jealousy and selfishness (on every bodies part, except the children). My audio recordings continue. My entries here go on sporadically. I even did a long hand entry is my regular diary, a journal Shel gave me sometime ago.

Kelly just stopped by and told me I could eat the steak that was in the fridge. She put an incense in my room and I guess she thinks I had the window open due to odor. In fact this is a very clean house, except for Shane's muddy paws. She seems to sleep all day, and clean all night. Maybe she wants me to hang around for a while. I will have to see how that goes.

The journey continues.

Home for the Holidays

2008-12-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

Well it has been a few weeks since I left my island home to return to central Pennsylvania to visit my family. It is ashame no one here has the ability to travel, or I may have remained on PEI forever. It is very unclear when and if I may return to my adopted island home. I left a tearful Mary on Water Street on the afternoon of December 3rd, to arrive here in Mechanicsburg late on December 4. The journey was tough as I drove nearly straight through. My old warhorse truck did well this trip and fuel costs were much less than in the summer.

My accommodations are comfortable but temporary. My hostess, Kelly Bingamen, is disabled and a bit erratic. I hope in a few weeks I can find a more permanent apartment until I decide if I am staying here, going back to PEI, going on a pilgrimage to Arizona, or something totally new.

It has been a real joy to see my children. They are both grown, beautiful-tall-strong, working and responsible. I have ostensibly missed their childhood during my ill-fated attempt to reconvene my illusive marriage. I am glad I made the effort. It is unfortunate that Mary got entangled in it all. At least sad that I am gone and we miss each other.

No good words from Shel. I assume she is still working at the Best of PEI market in Charlottetown. She has her dream. I am glad that I could help her to get there stay there and remain there. I am given no credit-she is only angry as she wasn't repayed for my last summer trip expenses and other matters.

I wish she would remain friendly until I can assist her when I can. The bitterness from someone that I am the closest to on earth is very disturbing and sad.

My place here is decorated with my items of tradition. The ship's wheel. Photos of Arizona and Shel, PEI, the kids-my big salmon from the Trask River in Oregon. Also are the paintings. The few I have have travelled far and wide. I hope to put some images on a Manduke family art blog. My mother and sister deserve some legacy. Their art is an excellent explanation of their minds and lives.

I visited Aprille at first. She became very angry when I couldn't take her shopping at an exact time. Joey was with me and we need all the time we can get. In any case, holiday plans here are unknown as everyone is pretty involved with boyfriend/girlfriend stuff and my sister hides on the holidays.

It may be that I may again spend another holiday season alone. Its sad as Mary wanted me on PEI to be with her family. The priorities of my life direct my often misery. But I made the decision to come home to the Susquehanna Valley and for now I am sticking to it.

It is a harsh cold reality compared to even the worst of the island. The true value of travel. Knowing truly where you want to be. Its where you can be and must be that are at issue. I rather think I will move on once the kids are back in school. But winter will end, trout season begin. Joey spoke of spring turkey hunting near our stream Clark's Creek. We saw turkeys there several times.

But there are Salmon and sea-run brook trout on PEI in many streams minutes from Summerside. There are fall mackerel at my wharf. But what of Big Lake and Crescent Lake in Arizona's high eastern mountains? Can I even go to Arizona and face that blond ghost that waits there for me by the palm tree and lake. Will the smell of spicy roasting ancho chili's on a warm evening, the warm soul-filling smell of fresh corn tortillas crush my heart?

But there is the prospect of a good tan and never-ending salsa music! Time will tell. Probably quite a bit of time. Once again I wait for the signs. My 4 year vacation continues...but is it permanent? What is.

Summerside Santa Claus parade

2008-11-25T10:40:00.000-08:00

It is all pretty amazing. I went to visit Mary last afternoon and she mentioned the parade last night. A frigid Monday night on this snow-bound island and there was a parade planned. I recalled from previous November's vaguely a parade involving Christmas. I had never really participated or really cared, as the holidays are not in recent years that joyful. Perhaps since my fathers death that cold winter day after New Years in 1972 is the time it became so much less a joy for us all.

But here we drove up to the mall and parked near the post office. The street was clogged with all the town, bundled children and the old too. Well below zero and it being an impromptu decision to see this quaint site, we shivered as Mary with childlike twittering and glee watched the parade. My Air Force cadets were in front, followed by our tiny local news rag the Pioneer-Journal. The hugely rotund cheery be mustached mayor went by, not unlike the mayor in the munchkin land of the" Wizard of Oz". The famous tale of greed and evil written by my Great-Grandfathers (David Chamber's) best friend, Frank Baum.

To my amazement even a septic tank suck truck was in the parade. Only here or somewhere deep within the spine of Appalachia. Our local radio station's float blared Christmas music and the children in the parade threw candy at the crowd. I even caught a pack of peanut M and M's. That was the first time I seen such a thing.

Long ago I journeyed as a teenager with a hunting buddy into Northcentral Pennsylvania. It was a cold November day there, above the place where the mapmakers place the compass. A sparsely populated land of mountains and moonshine, deer and pain. There coming into the dying railroad junction called Renovo, we observed a crowd playing baseball in the icy streets. It was 2 AM on a Tuesday night before deer season and we were scouting a campsite. Baseball at 2 AM in the snowy mountains of a dead town. I had never seen such a thing.

We followed actually "in" the parade down Granville Street. Huge snow piles made grandstands for most of the town on this cold dark winter night. Only here. Only in the quaintness of this and what is this place, at the surface. Above the poverty and howling winds and ice. But such weather and life, the sea, the snow, binds a people. It is a maritime camaraderie. It is unique in its cold and its pain, its warmth. My Mary childlike as we parked at the parades end, the Waterfront Mall close to my soon x-home, off Water Street. The huge potato ship the "Tasman Start", in port still as the harbour is now solid ice. There cookies and Cocoa are served free with colorful marshmallows and a live singer of Christmas tunes maritime interpreted with an acoustic guitar. The ship will plow out of the ice away with island potatoes bound for some near or far place. As I shall plow and pull away back to another time and a whole new world. Old in its memories, new in its loneliness.

Mary's fat cousin said nothing as she piled on the sweets. Mary, proud of her height, strength and by island standards, lithe form , scowled in disapproval.

I amazed my lady and the entire town by dancing with Mary on the mall floor to "Silent Night". She was amazed and the rather rag-tag bundled crowd looked on. I wanted Mary to have a special memory-I am not sure when I shall return to this place. My De facto "hometown".

I shall point the old red truck south in less than a week. My 52nd birthday is today. I talked to my son and we made plans. The valley of the Yellow Breeches beckons. To leave behind the pain, love, anger and the cold, wind blown Northumberland Strait. The forever winter, the snow.

First Snow

2008-11-20T19:30:00.000-08:00

So the first snow came to my island paradise last night. The wind howled from the North as rain turned to driving ice pellets, then a hard wet snow. Its all frozen now. The trees coated in sub-arctic white. My hands almost numb cleaning snow from the blazer, doors frozen shut tight under a leaden grey sky and strong North wind. The island to be for the next 6 months.

Soon I drive South to Mechanicsburg of all places. I have rented a home close to the chimney house and the Yellow Breeches of my youth. My son seems concerned that he cannot spend much time with me there. With his new and very busy life, the parents fade to less importance. This is as it should be. My Mary would rather bind me and keep me in her coat closet than to see me leave. I think Shel is also concerned. Perhaps mostly over money, but in my heart I hope its more than that.

My return to this paradise is uncertain. It is a long road-not the 1000 miles, but in the open hole that is where my heart is. I may decide to drive home here in January. To face an island winter. Or I may winter fish with my son along our streams-Clark's and the Breeches. I am not sure.

So a new adventure takes hold from a place where I know the Arsenaux's and Gallant's, the MacKenzie's-Oh, my Mary MacKenzie. Strong and tall and gentle and sweet. A body forged from winter walks and hard work. Quite a woman. Krinly eyes from having seven more years than me and from a life of many tears. Maybe I will return and marry her. I could and have done much worse.

So I sit her writing this blog...Oh, some read it. But all in all its for me and my beloved and far away children. Even my sister..she may never read these entries, but I know she will be happy to see her far travelled and often absent brother.

Most of all I am sad I can't see my mother. She visited me, I like to think, on the gossamer wings of that summer hummingbird that brushed my adorable wife's arm. The summer at Cape Traverse. Shel's paradise has become my place of reclusion. I write and dream and visit with now old friends. My Yankee accent gone, I am often asked if I grew up on the island. No Philadelphia university graduate twang remains. I hope it stays away. After all, I can speak idiomatic maritimes English now. Yes, it is a dialect unto itself. Will I always say "supper" not "dinner?. I am not sure.

I shall miss my little place near the harbour of both joy and pain. A big ship is in port today. White with bright lights against the angry red strait and the icy land. It is among the most beautiful places and feelings I have had in my journey. Yes, I have been all over this world. But this, and here, and there in central Pennsylvania are home home's.

I do miss my desert. The palms. The pool. My pretty young very spiritual voluptuous blond wife. The grill. The sound of spanglish and the pretty dark skinned girls that made me smile in the past dream of tacos and roasting chili's scented air on a mild winter night along Glendale Avenue. I think I will return there. But not yet. Not just now.

Heart strings tug against the lure of the palms. My river in Yuma. My pretty Apache girl bonnie and fishing with her in the Colorado River. Yuma is a dream spot too. Shel loved the downtown. Once I stood by one of her trees by Lute's casino there. I wept. She was with me in the little shops, at the organic date farm we loved on the California side. Sweet dates. My sweet girl. My love.

I won't find her there. My army job is gone. The ordnance expert. That was me. I walked away to come here that 3 years plus ago. I found much more. I know what love is now. I wonder how many really know?

2008-11-09T23:22:00.000-08:00

Warm Rain to Cool Blast

2008-11-09T20:13:00.000-08:00

The cliche that time rushes past seems apt today. I was thinking of nearly flying along the highway in my corvette between Grover, Colorado and Carpenter, Wyoming. It was the fastest I had driven a four wheeled vehicle then. We hit about 135 MPH. My then young brother-in-law was with me. The low prairie hills seeming to rush up and into a clear sky, the other side uncertain. Up and down. The Vette's fiberglass body seeming to float as the sixth gear could pull no more speed with that gear ratio and horsepower. What a rush.

Now I prepare to leave my island home for an undetermined time-perhaps for always. That seems unlikely but I can't see over the hill as the wind rushes past beyond the now security of my little harbourside apartment. There is a woman here who loves me deeply. There is another lost to the world beyond my reach who I love eternally but in vain.

Shel has said she is coming to get her remaining things soon. I have given my notice to my patient landlord that I must head South with the flocks now ahead of me to see my teenage children and sister. Leaving the women behind, my new social group-as flawed as it is, as well as the ocean vista, is painful. I feel I could relapse anytime and await the winter blow and snow piles-The driving maritime ice storms and warm hearts.

But all illusions end this way. Passage into and out of this torrent of time is but for the memories taken as are the breaths of fading lilac-scented breezes and the hint of deep true long lasting joy and suffering. Life is about loss and how it is dealt with in the turmoil that is a human soul. Grounded in my loves and stories of past glory-that fleets and ebbs with my harbour tides.

But what an honest and beautiful effort that has been made. In no way do I regret my awfully early retirement and mission to the island. Now after all it is home. I dance with my Mary each weekend. She makes island fishcakes as lovingly as my mother baked bread or taught me to love what is real and natural. Somewhere along this road of years I became a romantic dreamer. Lost in that which is the finest to hold and the most painful to lose. But what a driven glory.

I know now the deep sadness and rural hardships that shape the lives of those who feel imprisoned in this paradise. In the telling of life journey to my friends here I see the blankness of longing-the unknowing as if the words and images of my life are so strange that they are sometimes unsure and afraid. I have learned the dialect. I have learned the food and the joy of an ocean harvest and the bounty of of a place that is an Eden. So my wife was right to fall so far and deeply in passionate embrace to this place in the sea.

In my own heart the wanderlust of a thousand journeys takes root again. The long path back to reality and another country to the rush and crowds that toil for that which I have lost or simply left behind as worthless trappings of a vacant life.

So times sweeps on with me as the unsettled passenger. As across the prairie grasses in that angry red chariot of my overfunded impious youth. Look forward and not to the rear says the driver. She has no need for the luscious safety of the past. Its soft security darkened as the red-mud surf of my beach at Green's Shore is during the unrelenting harsh January blow across the ice filled bay.

No time to waste now. Only to collect the fragments that remain of here and her, and her. I only hope at full throttle someone hasn't just pulled out ahead of me over the next rise. I won't be able to stop.

Crisp Night of the Full Moon

2008-10-13T18:52:00.000-07:00

It has been almost two weeks since my last entry. I have continued my audio logs. The march of fall progresses as now we have the first frosts, red maple trees, and can see our breath. Not a whole lot of news from Shel. She is still looking for a place in our "big" city and says she will have her stuff out around November 1. I have missed her greatly but my girl is lost in her own fantasies-some about how truly awful I am and others about how truly wonderful she is.

I am still planning on leaving the island at some point. The details are a bit difficult as there is really no way to select a home on the other end-I really need to go there and look around. This will mean some time in a motel. I just hope I do really get some time with the kids or I might just as well stay put here.

At least the Canadian dollar has crashed along with the US stock market. This adds a few dollars to my pension on this end-actually discounting my rent by about 40% should the loonie stay down until the end of the month.

I spent a lot of time with my lady friend Mary this weekend. It is nice to be pampered by a lady again. She is a good cook and very spiritual and feminine. We went up to North Cape today to see the wind farm. She, born and raised on the island, had never been there. Its 60 miles from Summerside.

She has never been in a plane. She has been off island twice in 50 years. The tragedy of her island life-especially her childhood and marriage is a horror. But it is all too common a tale when individual lives here in the Maritimes are examined. There is pain and human suffering beside the red cliffs and pastoral beauty of the planted fields.

I really am not sure what will come of it. All I know is this chapter closes. Shel fades to a tragic memory, among the joyous glimpses of our storybook romance and marriage. The travels. The foods. The love-making. Her beauty. Washed away in a sea of red clay tears on a foreign beach-sunk deep into the red mud of the old clay roads.

Mary to give me solace in her maturity and simplicity. Mary to be hurt when I leave the island as she and a few others are quite in love with me. The enigmatic Yankee. A romantic warrior tossed on a exile shore.

Crazy Germaine is back. I have been gone all weekend. Jerry let him in. Its OK-but he can't stay here forever without paying rent. He rather takes over the living room and smokes in there. His English is so bad its hard to communicate. Hopefully he will make some fertilizer, sell it, and go back to the Magdalen Islands. Somehow I doubt it will all be that easy.

I had invited Shel over Sunday as I had some oysters and quahogs left over that Manny Gallant gave me. I never heard anything and continue to get cold, unfriendly mails. She claims to be coming over to organize this week. I am not sure why. So I asked her to give me a little warning. There is no way that she doesn't miss her life. She thinks she has improved, reinvented herself. She is now just another young girl with nothing, working a minimum wage job, uneducated, with a hollow future. It is a far cry from Arizona palm trees and a pool , no responsibility and no cares.

She will miss that as the years swiftly pass. I can reinvent all that rather easily. But there will be no Shel. Actually now I am unsure that we will remain the promised friends we agreed to be. It is really tough to lose a loved one. Death is an eye opening. I still miss my dad after 36 years. My mother, my rock and guide gone now just over 4 years. My beloved wife, gone on lies and tragedy now almost 5 years. But my best friend-alive and unrepentant, still breathes an easy breath while the tears of our souls rain on the lost hollows of the broken heart.

But I will still make the effort. I will email her with news of the travels. She shall be a central character in the novel. I hope she gives me an address so I can send her magnets and postcards. Perhaps she doesn't care. Never really did. Now I know why Germany lost a war they should have won. No quarter. No forgiveness. The savagery of the Hun. Blue eyes flashing, Blond curling. Blood flowing. Defeated.

Letter To My Wonderful Son

2008-10-05T20:23:00.001-07:00

Son,

I was very moved and a bit surprised at your mail regarding my fantastic mother. I know from the first time she held you as an infant that you had a close spitirtual bond. She was a very private person. I had always hoped you would have had the time to know her life. Especially the real powerful love she felt for my father, your and my namesake.

If you think of her, much that she wanted to tell you was blocked by the ugly situation you found yourself in. I mean the tension between your mother and me. She truly loved you and your sister. She was handicapped the the silly and unnecessary issues of the day.

I am most glad you knew this fine proper lady. She was the light of our family in her simplicicity, appeciation of beauty, and of life itself.

Only with much time will you know this gift.

I miss her greatly, as I do my amazing father, now and forever.

Just know that her blood flows in your veins, and she remains with you forever. She was most proud of her heritage, as founders of of our great country. Our people founded all that we love, and she stood as a beacon of that that is good. She had flaws. Often some sharpness, but always meant to build you high and to remind you of who you are.

That we both knew her, and are both products of the immense love she had for my father, your grandfather are gifts beyond earthly value.

My smile and pride brims in you and you lovely sister, my children.

When in doubt or sadness remember her. She has immortality.

Fear not.

Dad

Mail From My Son

2008-10-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

THE DAY SHE DIED

You never truly expect death to happen until it finally occurs within your life. When your young, you are so wrapped up in the present that you never truly consider the possibility you may die some day. However, when someone close to you finally goes, it can change your perspective on many things. This experience is usually not the most pleasant. For me, I’d say my worst experience was when my grandmother died. It was this event that caused to see the true value of life and the relationships we have with others. My views took such a drastic change since I saw the sadness death causes in others, the fragility of life, as well as my own regrets regarding my relationship with my grandmother. I hope that Readers’ Digest will help to honor her memory.

The most obvious revelation I had did not occur while my grandmother was dieing. I suppose I couldn’t really comprehend someone I had known all my life was truly leaving us. Rather, the revelation came the week following her death. Never before had I felt such an emptiness within myself and in others. My mother and father barely spoke to one another for days. My grandma May, as she had been known, was my father’s mother. For him, I suppose the tragedy was the worst of all. We had been through hard to times before, but nothing like this . My father would often sit alone in his room, usually crying, sometimes just staring into space silently. Being close to my father, this was difficult for me, I simply did not know what to say, so I left him to his thoughts. It was the saddest day of my life.

My mother and sister were also so affected by this in different ways. My mother seemed to be shut away from the rest of the world, getting lost in books or her cooking. My sister, like myself, seemed to have difficulty understanding grandmothers’ death. She and I would talk about it, neither one of us truly knowing any truly comforting thing to say to the other. Never before had I felt so alone.

Secondly, my grandmothers’ death made me truly aware of my own mortality for the first time. I had thought about death before, but never with this amount of clarity. All I could do was think about my own eventual demise. How, when, where would my life end? What would happen when I died? Would I simply fade away into nothingness? These thoughts and others plagued my mind. Never before had I realized how fragile life is or how brief a time we occupy this little planet. I would like to say these thoughts no longer linger within my mind but, my grandmothers’ death has an effect on me to this day. I shall never forget the fear and doubt which haunted me that week following her death.

The most difficult aspect of this event I was forced to overcome was the regret I felt for not appreciating my grandmother while she was still alive. We had gone to visit her every Sunday over the years. To me it was simple routine. In all that time I never really asked her any questions about herself or her experiences. She had lived for Eight-five years and I never took the time to find out anything about her. Now that she is gone, all I have are my memories of her. I still often think of our visits to her little house. I remember her dog which barked at anything that moved and the beautiful paintings she made. I miss her kind demeanor and her soft voice. I will never forget them. My grandmothers’ death was difficult, but it made me understand something. Life is precious. We must treasure our lives and the people we care for most. In the end all we have are our memories, so we might as well make some good ones while we can.

Strong winds, Angry sea

2008-10-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

So October arrived yesterday very gently. The warm afternoon and a glass calm harbour made for some nice relaxing fishing. It really wasn't my day. I only caught a few small smelt and 2 scrawny mackerel. But they cooked up nicely with island tomato-cucumber salad, farm fresh carrots and potatoes, and quahogs and oysters courtesy of Manny Gallant.

Manny is a soulmate fisherman and friend, perhaps business partner to be of mine. He pines away for his pretty wife. He opines that he is illiterate as he has been in a boat since age 12 to help with the family fishing business, and never went to school. I explain that I find it rather charming. This soulful man is healthy and prosperous. He glows with what I now identify as "Island Health". They have that here. Fishing. Can't read or write much. Oysters. Never been off island. Mackerel. Neat little farm. Artist wife. Never been in a plane. Inbreeding. Fresh quahogs. Big tomatoes. Healthy kids. 4 wheel drive. Divorce. Blizzards. Strong island moonshine. Hurricanes. I am in total complete envy. West Virginia on the Sea.

My soft tired educated body. I will miss this special place. Its rotund incomprehensible females. The shine. The bootleggers. Lobster at 4 bucks a pound. My wife.

I was sure that the last time I caught smelt I smelled something familiar-from a long ago dream-time. Yesterday I caught the scent when I landed the angry smelt-it was the smell of thyme and cucumber, that I had smelled long ago. The arctic grayling I caught in Alaska yarens ago smelled that way. Hence the scientific name of grayling, Thymallus. The arctic grayling is a sport fish somewhat like a trout. It has a huge very beautiful dorsal fin, almost like a sail. They are silvery gray and have tiny black and blue spots, as I recall. The fish used to range into the Northern US, but was extinguished long ago along with most good things during deforestation, pollution, greed, and mortal sin.

I have heard there are grayling stocked in the Arizona rim mountain lakes. To me, since I have spent a lot of the prior 15 years at those lakes fishing (for trout), I am unsure about any Arizona grayling. Maybe Montana or the U.P. of Michigan, but I can't confirm it. But in Alaska, grayling, like eagles are or were then (my last Alaska trip was in 1993), everywhere.

On the Internet I looked up smelt as the odour and even taste of these fish was grayling. Indeed they are closely related fish. The grayling has two distinct memories I will share here. When I took Rhonda to Alaska to go camping before we got married we fished grayling. I think I caught a bunch in a ditch by a culvert along the Denali Highway. It was probably 1985.

I took out our trusty little stove and cooked grayling along the road. Rhonda and I had fish together there, it was great. It is a very fond memory of my first wife before the dark times.

On the first trip to Alaska with Shel, wife 2, I fished grayling again in nearly the same spot. Actually, Shel only went to Alaska with me once. She was truly a child bride-barely 20 at the time of our trip.

I caught a truly impressive grayling, the largest I had seen. I wanted to take a photo of it. I asked Shel to hold the writhing fish up so I could take the shot. She, terrified of live fish to this day, refused. So you will have to take my word that that fish was 25 inches if it was a foot-thats a big grayling. (Alaskans consider grayling trash fish, pronouncing the name with a long A sound, ahhhhh, instead of the vowel-arctic graahhling.)

Here today as October begins the leaves are turning and falling very quickly. Very hard rain and hurricane force winds today made my evening walk difficult. The harbour was a froth of mud-red swells and shiny whitecaps, wind-whipped so salt can be tasted strong in the air in my living room.

I saw Cindy, but I didn't tell her I am moving out yet. The decision came painfully, slowly, but today I started to clean a bit and pack. I really have little to take south-just what I arrived here with 3 1/2 years ago.

Today 2 years ago I had been living on PEI 9 months. Shel asked me on this date back then, in 2006, to move out. It was then that the 6 month imbroglio with EIC and the Gustafson's began in Ottsville. It was really a wonderful experience and I had real quality time with my kids-even on the holidays. I know now that is why all that happened-it had little to do with business.

I will state for the record that both my Child-Centered Assessment and my E-Petz patents are great ideas. But I will have to do it myself or with family, without greed.

My pal Germain is back off to North Lake in search of Donnie Rose and Russian fish plant girls in Souris. I for one am about complete in my unpaid consulting services to Mr. Fougere. In fact, my friend Manny Gallant stopped by today. He has concerns about the business idea.

I told him I was glad to help, but that I am probably leaving, and that like the Gustafson's the chance of our colleagues (Fougere) business being a success were slim. Not because the idea is bad, but because of him.

Tomorrow I look forward to a calmer day and perhaps some fishing, and a call to the kids.

I guess I didn't record here that Shel stopped by Monday. She had said that she wanted to organize things. She still has no place and is living with Kathleen. There is much that both of us will have to leave behind-not the least of which are our hearts.

She was pretty angry at first. The issue of money and what bills are due being paramount. We settled that and she calmed a bit, looking stunning with bright blue-green eyes blaring and an adorable short-curly blond hairstyle-my Shel, my child-wife, who can't bear children. Tragedy within a tragedy.

She ate some of my cucumber salad and muffins. I had made cold coffee for her with creamer and sugar as she likes earlier in the day. I had to substitute honey for sugar, and I don't think she liked it so much. I thought it pretty good.

We actually parted on good terms. The one thing that sticks with me during her tirade was that she "wants her husband back". As if I am so different. so far, so much a distant memory. Oh save but one last chance to be a couple-she feels the loss too, but now moves into a new world.

Her world will not be the blissful days of lounging by our pool under the palms, with the smell of ancho chilies drifting on the wind. It will be 6 days a week of work without me.

It seems as Shel as an immigrant here has ended up a bit like my beautiful Russian fish plant girlfriends in Souris. 6 days a week of work and little money, in shared housing, praying for some escape after buying into the dream to live and work in Canada. To some of the girls, if not all I met, Kaliningrad is sounding better and better-to go home. That's a scary determination.

Maybe someday Shel will miss the palms, the chilies, and a real home too. She is part Russian, after all.

Up West and Real Work

2008-09-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

So since I met the "Doctor" of organic landscaping Germain Fougere from the Magdalen Islands, I have been involved in a new and fascinating business venture. Involved originally only to set-up a web site and be a general business and entrepreneurship consultant, I am now actually getting my soft hands dirty.

We take a similar trip in the big Ford Diesel truck of "Fougere Organic Landscaping" about twice a week. Again today we went to the "Old Man's", a very pious anglophone gentleman named Loren near Richmond. Loren has clear bright intelligent blue eyes and is nearly deaf. Fougere has been storing equipment and supplies there. We loaded the trailer with what I imagine was close to a ton of plants, rocks, gardening stuff, shells, and one very heavy ( about 600 pounds) cast iron crusher. It had been a while since I worked that hard and I felt alive again. Loren lives in a homemade hut that is sinking into the boggy soil. It is filled with interesting but valueless things accumulated over his long life. He gave me two religious books, one called"I Need A Miracle" by Pastor Benny Hinn. I think he knew exactly what I needed. He had preached as a young man in Appalachia. I was somewhat envious, perhaps the smallest of my sins to date.

He carves amazing images of geese from huge pieces of wood and carefully paints them as to life. His wood stove is rusting through the floor. He has no insurance as his home is not "insurable". His phone was cut off. The company putting the power lines from Summerside to North Cape's new windfarm is coming across Loren's fallow sad land. He hopes they will pay a fair price for the easement. Maybe 6000 dollars. Perhaps this 85 year old man will not have to freeze alone in the cold this long and soon to arrive sub-arctic winter. His son distant and somewhat of an ass I am told, away in the "real world" and business.

It was a great clear sunny day. The sea was beautiful up west along the "lighthouse trail", route 11. We stopped as always to see Fougere's and now my friend Danielle. We need a motor and PTO ( Power Take Off) to run the lobster shell crushing machine. They talked Acadian, which I am starting to get a bit of, thanks little to my long forgotten high school Parisian French.

We then stopped at Manny's place to drop the trailer we will unload tomorrow. Manny is a soulful, sorrowful outwardly cheerful man, an oyster fisherman who built his own solid boat and at 55 could probably pick me up at 180 pounds like a feather. It was a great cold night, the milky way bright along with the planet Jupiter embedded in it like a bright white luminous gem. Manny lives on a neat little farm near his oyster beds in the Northumberland Strait. The farm is very neat and cozy and Manny is one of those people you instantly knew if you had to leave a thousand dollars cash with him to hold, it would be there when you return. He gets a few crates of oysters each day after 10 hours of back breaking work raking the bottom of the sea in churning swells under blistering sun or freezing winds.

Manny gets about 50 dollars a crate for his oysters. The shells are infested with shell worms this year. They cut tiny perfect holes in the shells but don't harm the delicious meat inside. Despite that, only one oyster buyer on the island will buy Manny's "ugly" oysters. Oddly enough its the oyster wholesaler across the way from George and Brenda Henderson's cottage in Freeland. That is where Shel and I stayed long ago when we were first coming here each summer. Long ago, so it seems, when I picked the wild mushrooms in George's little pine forest and steamed them with edible jewels from the sea (to the locals terror and amazement). I had learned, being self-taught, mushroom collecting in the high pine and aspen mountain forests of Arizona. Also dimming into that past.

He grows nice tomatoes and a few other things in a small garden. He shared tomatoes with us-a real luxury this far north when the incredibly short growing season ends. Manny is finalizing a divorce after 10 years with the artist wife who his feelings for are well concealed but to a fellow sufferer glow in that slight moistening of eye with a glance towards her primitive oils hanging on the old wall, or with a little deepening of the fisherman's sun and wind-worn brow. The artist wife. How well I know.

Manny is quite the artist himself. He crafts beautiful decorative items from driftwood and large, ancient white oyster shells. He built a little gift shop near the road that is quite a nice cottage in its own right, matching the perfect yellow Victorian farmhouse. He cries inside. Artist wife gone and the tourists far and few between. Gone now until summer returns-a truly distant and abstract thought. As goes the artist wife.

I know I'll be sore tomorrow-that's OK. No news from Shel, but I got a nice email from my son. Tomorrow we unload the ton of stuff and I hope my back holds out. Then to the beach for seaweed collection to make the fertilizer product.

You really never know whats around the next corner. I just wish it was spring instead of fall, as winter looms and I have decisions to make about my home and life on PEI. Quite a change in paradigm in a couple weeks. Maybe work therapy is what I need. I am really back in the environmental field in a very physical way. I also obtained oyster shell chemistry data for product labelling. Fougere needs my patent and trademark help too, but that comes later as orders are filled and I create an Internet presence. Its pretty exciting.

I have my desk work, legal work, computer, and even outdoor physical labour in one of the most beautiful places on earth. How about that? Retirement? Maybe, but it beats the button-downs and smog and office politics of the big city, in the "real world".

Sundays with Mary and the PEI "question"

2008-09-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

So the first day of autumn is here. The day started cool, breezy and cloudy. By evening the sky cleared and it warmed the quiet town ever so slightly. Last night was my usual Saturday night at the "wing" as the air force legion hall is called here. I guess to distinguish it from the regular Canadian Forces "legion" that it sits beside. I met my friends Mary, Eva and her husband. Judy, Joan, and Rebe didn't show last night. There may have been a band elsewhere, and they are not big fans of Karaoke. Nor am I, but there are a few good singers and its better than sitting in my place waiting for emails from Shel or Joey. We sip water and dance rather badly I think. The attitude and music the very same as my nights spent in small taverns deep in the mountains of Appalachia during my years on the road.

Mary has become my special friend, after my very short relationship with Judy. Mary is a mature woman, tall with dark curly hair. She has lived her whole life on the island, born up the road a few miles in St. Eleanor's. She left the island once many years ago to go to her nephews wedding, I think, in Brampton, Ontario.

Her life has been a typical island, if not maritime tragedy. Her abusive mother kept her from her father who died, like mine, when she was 15. After a marriage that left her unable to remarry save she lose her support, she has had several variously awful romances. The last was with a trucker who was seemingly seeing another woman the whole time, 15 months, he was with her. This story is repeated in some form or another by almost everyone I meet here.

Mary and I dance and have been somewhat cuddly and close on the dance floor. We "waltz" as they call any dance to a slow song here, even when its rock and roll twist music. We often stay in embrace after the music stops and the dance floor empties-to the astonishment of everyone. Its good in some ways, but I doubt Ill get another date at the wing as I seem "taken". But it is a pure friendship and I suspect it will remain so.

I meet Mary Sundays and we talk for hours about family issues, good, bad, and ugly. Finding some comfort mutually in trying to discover why our relationships are so failed. It is quite sad. But the talks help. Today I showed her photos from my past lives-the big house, kids as babies playing at the New Jersey shore. My airplane, Mercedes, Chimney house-my red 'vette convertible with Shel lounging on the hood seductively somewhere in the mountain west years ago.

These are things as alien to her as a walk on the surface of Mars. I am attracted to her simplicity, lack of bitterness, and good church-going heart. Hours past and I just got home a bit ago. I missed my Sunday call to Joey as I had lost track of time. We sat today at the yacht club, as the mall was closed this Sunday, as it will be now as the tourists are gone away home, back to school, jobs, and the reality of the outside world.

One thing we discuss is my leaving PEI. Forever? For a month? Never? She overflowed like a happy teenager at a prom when I suggested I may not leave at all. It breaks my heart as I fear I may have to break hers. She won't be the only lady here that will miss me. And I will miss each and everyone of them.

No news today from my wayward Shel. Divorce now is imminent and I will have to file the papers soon. Shel wouldn't be able to, and she seems to think that we just go to the courthouse and sign a paper. It is , of course, more complex. I find the whole process distasteful and although I love my island, all those times I could have just stayed in PA with the kids makes me feel embarrassed. You see, I had three chances to stay in PA and chose each time to return to the island. Either to be with Shel or to try and get her to come home. As recently as August 5th, Shel was moving back in with me and/or going to Calgary with me. But no. It didn't happen.

So the three years I have been here seem a bit wasted. I mean that I could have had a little time with the kids as kids. But they have grown up, suddenly while I was here trying in vain to recapture a marriage that as I realize now was over in 2003. I guess.

I read Shel's journals from the 90's and she tells page by page of he unending love for me. Well it seems ended. One way or the other I must escape that bind. A new life-here on the island of dreams and sorrows, or back in harsh reality down south, in the states, my home home in Harrisburg to be near my beloved children.

Mail from an old friend, associate, and student at HTS

2008-09-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

Please don't conclude that I believe everything Brian Feeney or Rhonda ever said. LOL

I acknowledge that you were among the very first people to advance the very same environmental assessment protocols in use today. In fact, our company's Phase I ESA uses a checklist very similar to the one HTS used in the late 1980s. I might have an old HTS Phase I ESA somewhere around. I never present myself as self-educated in this work; anyone ever asks, I was originally trained by you. When I say this, it actually drives Roni nuts. Many Manduke-isms that were true remain true today. Sometimes I tell the staff things even today that I recall you saying to the staff almost 20-years ago.

I might be a harsh critic, but I am also a fierce defender of yours. I gave you superior recommendations for your job interviews.

I am still wondering why you aren't at the helm of one the largest ESA companies in the US. Someday I might figure that one out.

Jim G.

Mail from my fine son

2008-09-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

Dad,

Keep enjoying your fish. You sound a little lonely up there. I was thinking that if you came down we might not see each other that much but it would certainly be more than it is now. I've been seeing lots of homes for rent around here. There are definently places to stay. Even a place by the library caught my eye. Well, life has been good. Beautiful down here. Starting to cool off a little though. Been hearing about more hurricanes so I expect some rain. Everyone seems ok. Lexi got a job at Party City (costume place), started Monday. She enjoys it. It's cool. Mom transferred to another Dept. too. She also enjoys it. I still work at YP but I lowered my hours and have been enjoying it more lately. You would be proud, I'm attending church with Andrea and her folks now. There is a sermon and a parenting class I'm taking with her. I've been getting a great deal of postive messages lately from professors, the pastor and even my therapist. I'm trying to take your advice and live in the moment. Really happy at the moment. I'm looking forward to going fishing ,Star Trek, and good conversation again. Seeya dad. Love,Joey-----Original Message-----From: joe manduke To: Joey Sent: Tue, 9 Sep 2008 4:43 pmSubject: Tuesday Sept 9
Bink,

Just an update note-I won't call you until Friday or Sunday if you are around. Lots of rain here in and out as summer ends. The tall (sailing) ships are in town this week along with a parasailing meet-so big ships by where I fished docked-kinda cool.

I guess I said Shelly is off to Charlottetown to start her new life-obviously done in many ways so she can start a new life away from our town here. She is doing well and I guess I will just have to be happy with her friendship, if that survives-I hope so. OH, she sends her regards and love to you both..it is all exceptionally unfortunate and I have had some dark days pal, but it is time to try to come home. Any help you can offer I humbly accept.

Fishing has been slow due to wind and tides. But I am still munching on fish I have frozen. I have a french speaking guy, a fisherman from islands north of here who is staying with me until he gets his business going. Its ok but his english is weak and I am totally immersed in french for the moment-lol.

So there it is. The truck still needs work but I am confident it will come home. November 3rd is prob my departure day as most practical-we will see. Check the army location near the house and ask if they could help me for a month or so after this imbroglio-lol You can prob just stop by.

I am homesick as hell now, and want to try and make this happen as painfree as possible...any thoughts are appreciated...I know..just drive away..lol

Love you much

Dad

Finding a conclusion

2008-09-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

Just a short note. As a writer I really wanted some dramatic conclusion to my biography. The potential journey to Calgary with Shel for example, which never happened. Or her return to Summerside to make up and try and rebuild our lives. Never happened.

Now she is off to Char'town and I remain fishing mackerel and writing these snippets. Not so much drama. Perhaps my time with some of my new Arcadian friends will add spice. Then I am almost sure now that I return to home to assist my children and sister. What an experience! Almost 4 years retired at age 51-living here and the travels-not too shabby. Sorry, but I have had a blast.

Especially this summer in Banff, Lake Louise, and with my son at special family places herein written. Of course there have been some hard times being retired. Greatly reduced income. Avoidance of buying unnecessary material things. People looking askance at a 50 year old retiree who has really been retired much longer than 4 years. Go figure?

A good friend-actually someone I trained in the environmental field said that since I live on a remote island in a foreign country, write poetry, and go on about my love of Michelle, that I am now persona non grata in an industry I helped build. So be it. If that is the colourless case of my fellow engineers and scientists (which I do not fully buy) then I shall remain a retired writer and fisherman and let them all be envious.

Labour Day 2008

2008-09-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

So the end of summer finally on the island. Of course there will be a few more warm days. But in weeks the leaves will change and fall away. A bright red carpet of maple leaves will give way to perhaps again incredible snow piles and the driving winter winds-for 6 months. It sure makes me think of a return to Arizona at this time of year. Shel is off to Charlottetown soon to work in the "Best of PEI" store. She is very excited and will find a place to live there.

Her cottage will be closed in two weeks and she said she may move in here again for a time. That is fine, as I miss her company.
The kids are doing well. Alexis is looking for a part-time job now that she is 16, and Joey seems to be enjoying college.
My sister still wants to visit me here-but the two round trips seems daunting now, and she is hard to predict.

Joey wants me back for Christmas and to just move back to PA. This is now finally a real possibility at long last. It is clear, at least today. that Shel will not be coming home. I was amazed when she said she would be going with me to Calgary when I went back to work. When that didn't come through and Shel decided not to move back in here in Summerside I was pretty crushed. So these next two weeks will assist me in rendering a decision as to stay or go from the Island. It will be tough in any case and I may just decide one more winter here will be fine.

I have been fishing at the wharf almost everyday day. Its raining today and I was going to go but the truck is pretty moisture sensitive and i have to wait for drying weather now.
People have instructed me on Mackerel preparation and I have enjoyed the endless supply of fresh fish.

It is amazingly quiet today. I will probably take a walk in the rain down to the closest pier and take in the storm over the harbour. No matter what I will miss this place as home, but with waning Shel and a needy family, perhaps time along the Yellow Breeches is long over due.

Sunny day after 3 weeks of rain

2008-08-21T15:55:00.000-07:00

Finally the sun appeared in Summerside today. I have been fishing for mackerel at the city pier. It was nice to sit out in the rain yesterday and fish. It reminded me of a cool spring day during Pennsylvania trout season on the Yellow Breeches long ago.

I had thought Shel would be moving back in after her job at Frenchy's in Borden ended in the fall. But she did get a job at the "Best of PEI" store in Char'Town starting September 8. She lost her purse and all of her ID during her move from Elayne Lord's place in Cape Traverse. I attempted to assist her in getting another drivers licence. but there are Arizona paperwork problems and I may have to take Shel to Halifax to resolve them.

Since nothing seems to be coming out of my Canadian job search, I am looking south again. I did enjoy my trip to Calgary and my short visit to Banff and Lake Louise. I am short listed on an Army job at the Red River Depot-but I am not sure about Texas.

In talking with the kids it may be time to bid goodbye to my place on PEI and go back to Pennsylvania. I know Joey would like that, and with no roommate again this winter, a long period of frozen ocean seems less appealing than ever.

It would be nice to go to Halifax with Shel. Maybe we can stop by our Port Dufferin house and share that moment one last time. I am sure the path will be shown to me, but it seems my time here with Shel is finally ending. It was my best effort in something I felt was most important for us both. Some battles cannot be won, no matter how true the intentions.

The weather looks good for a while now after 3 weeks of gloom and cool winds. The fish are in and the sun warm. If this is my last summer on the island, I want to make it as good as I can. The issues and realities of family down south are somewhat daunting after this idyll. But I have to do what is best now for Joey, Alexis, and my sister.

Sunset

2008-08-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

I see nothing as the golden sunset over the harbor of my exile paradise. So the job out west seems as it willl take a w hile. I was unhappy that my Shel didn't come into today from Borden. I danced ny heart out with some truly athletic ladies-quite happpy I can still move with them. My own former athletic abilities helped

July 19, 1979

2008-07-19T07:28:00.000-07:00

Nice today, warm and sunny. In the morning Ann came over and I took her back to the train. Now I will work on her car for a while. Dave and I got parts at the Penn Jersey. Later, we went with his friend Ed to Jersey to pick up a race car frame.

We stopped to eat on the way back. Carol and her sister took their mother to the doctor tonight. We all took a late ride to get gas in the mustang.

Modern note:
I think gas was about 40 cents a gallon then.The supply would last forever and always be cheap. There was an OPEC oil embargo some years before-which turned out to be prophesy. AH-the memories of youth!

Pretty typical summer day in the 70's. Ann was a classmate of mine from Temple Geology. She liked me and I worked on her 1967 mustang coupe. Being totally loyal to Carol, I never was with Ann. Her car was later stolen and never recovered.

Rainy Saturday

2008-07-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

Alexis in Harrisburg June 2008

I am sure it is time to place a new entry here. Although I do have my audio recording back, and as usual have stopped writing in my paper journals. It can be a bit discouraging, having tens of thousands of words to transcribe from old text-letters, journals, manuscripts unfinished and finished. I have felt that all the paper will become obsolete-or already has.

The only really permanents records will be left on-line, on sites such as this. So, as a painfully slow typist you see my dilemma!

I have had some good chats with the kids. Both really want to move in with me. But this is impractical as I am in Canada and they have school duties down south. My relationship with Shel remains strained. We were doing fine, but have degraded due to silly arguments and bad tempers over the past few weeks.

It seems my work future may be Alberta. The money is good and there are lots of things to clean-up and investigate. If nothing seems appropriate, it may be that with great sadness I may have to leave my island to be closer to the children, who now are really missing dad. The decision will be made quite soon I think.

Tourist season is in bloom here and its been quite warm The harbour water is now bathtub warm and although shallow makes for a nice swim only a short walk away. How does one leave such a place. Only family and money issues can do that. Otherwise it would be madness to leave here.

So pressures mount and decisions must be made. In the mean time I will try to continue writing, although in an awful slump now, and visit the beach. Life could be much worse than that.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

2008-06-25T16:21:00.000-07:00

Son and daughter June 2008 at Bradley Drive House, Harrisburg, PA

It has only been a week after my last entry here. The week seems like a short lifetime as so much has happened during this eventful period. First, let me say it was a glorious summer day here on the island paradise. I grow to appreciate a life here on PEI more, especially when I leave it. I flew to Vancouver on Sunday to discuss some environmental opportunities with an excellent firm there. I stayed at the "Terminal Club". and was treated professionally and cordially.

The CEO is a really nice, truly self-made man of simple roots on the prairie.

They need an office administrator and salesman for a planned office in Saskatoon, in support of

a large mining project in the potash deposits. Not really my area of expertise, but having dealt with mining issues in Arizona, and even Pennsylvania long ago, I have no fear of the work. In fact, its a great upside potential and the future for now is in work based in the rapidly increasing price of commodities like potash for fertilizer and oil.

I flew on Westjet from Char'town to Vancouver, with a brief stop at Toronto's Pearson airport. PEI is a real garden from the air. It was nice to see the snow-capped Rockies and the coastal range of BC. I had never flown coast to coast in Canada before. It was my first flight entirely within my adopted country. If the job is a go, I will need a work visa. I will stay at the company apartment in Vancouver for training, and perhaps write a corporate health and safety manual, then go to Saskatoon to a new life and a new world. If not, I will continue to interview, and enjoy the island until my final destination for this cycle is demonstrated.

I tried to call the kids but got no answer today. Shel cancelled our dinner date, as it was her bosses birthday. I have fallen low on her long list of more important social priorities. So be it. I told her she can visit me in Vancouver, or Saskatoon, and she seemed excited. She is very much stranded on the island. I have also felt that way, but the trip and camping with son helped, and our dinner with Alexis and Katie.

I sent a postcard and letter to my sister from BC. She is probably still waiting for me to take her to Island Beach. Perhaps I can still do that if I can take a break this summer. In any case, I worked all day today sending the BC company documents about references and credentials. I realize I have lost touch with some close friends, co-workers and old bosses over the years. I am seeking my old mentor Dr. Lane Schultz from Dunn Geoscience days as a reference. So many people are disappeared or even dead. I supplied Dan Salzler as a reference. We worked together in various capacities for years and he has always been a good job reference for me, and a loyal friend.

Jim Gossweiler, my real true apprentice, Steve Rose, and Leigh Floyd are the remaining references I have used. The hiring manager wanted names of old managers, which can be a challenge when you have been self employed or a sub-contractor to a nameless Army unit for so many years.

The position is really almost the perfect one. The Halifax job was good too, but I think the job out west has better potential.

I was pretty lucky on confirming my credentials and getting them to BC today, even though most are misplaced or lost in the 2 moves. The folks at AIPG, Nevada, and Alaska all helped, knew me, and submitted confirmation. With hope Ill get an offer this week and plan on closing this place up and moving to Vancouver for the duration. Otherwise on the island I stay and continue the search...all in God's hands now.

My little audio recorder broke, so I will have to get another one next week. I miss having that and making the audio diary entries. I oft wonder who will ever listen to them anyway. I do find it useful to go back over the years, hear my tone and concerns, the growth, pains, and triumphs. But it does force me to write more. And maybe now I can finish the biography with a good conclusion, a full circle story ending with my son a man in college, and his father being there, and there for his sister. I can only hope!

June 18, 2008 Wednesday

2008-06-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

Cool and drizzly today, with a little weak lightning. As last year, June is a cool gray month on the island of unused beaches.

I am actually feeling a bit guilty about not starting to write the entire tale of my holiday fishing and camping with my son. The project will require much more time and inspiration than I have right now. My trip notes survive, although sparser than I had hoped. A time in Appalachia, reliving my own youth. I mean the trip we took was a representation of my trips long ago, rod in trunk seeking fishing places and the colour of ruralia. We accomplished that. But the story begs far deeper for both of us in its revelations. The simplicity of the camp, stream, my old truck-camp food. Swimming the broad river, and fresh trout for a tailgate dinner in a remote place. It will wait a few days more to be told, as business looms.

I am flying to Vancouver Sunday to meet with a group that may need my skills in their enterprise. Two days in a new city, on a new harbour, far from this home. But yet not that unfamiliar, as my times in Seattle and San Francisco I suspect similar. We will see.

Talked with David at the Air force wing a long time tonight about the states and Canada. He is a retired teacher, and had many insights. We discussed the arcane "Aroostook" War. The conflict involving the Maine border long ago.

It was pizza day here, and I had many phone calls. It seems my draw into the world of commodity related environmental issues is where I am going. Well, its a new world. A lot of the problems I solved as a young man seem to be in good hands with the younger generation. I should be exuberant at the new chance-a new world, exotic places.

Still no word from Shel. I think she must be busy, or can't get on-line.

There is extra pizza for her here at home. I hope she comes back from the bush this week before my travels. In any case, I am prepared to send Vancouver postcard to Shel and my sister. The two lost souls in my life.

I did get an email from my son. He has a bass guitar now and he and a pal have started a band called "Rahal". It reminds me of my high school music career. Although short lived, it was fun. I also played the bass.

June 12, 2008 Thursday

2008-06-12T18:47:00.000-07:00

A spectacular late spring day here on the island of the red cliffs. The day was made even more special with the lingering crystal of the long near-solstice twilight. Most of the tourist facilities are open, including our little local lobster stand. I saw very few off island license plates diving home from Pennsylvania (home?). In fact, I saw nearly no out of provincial plates on the trans-Canada.

I came home with email to answer and dirty laundry. I was most impressed with my trucks performance. Other than some tire problems and less than eco-friendly gas mileage, the blazer ran well. I need some tune-up components and bushings, and a belt change-all relatively minor maintenance issues soon easily remedied. I gave Joey my classic high school Garcia fishing rod and a book, "On the Road", by Kerouac. Both seemed fitting gifts.

I spoke to a group out of Vancouver who need an office manager for a Saskatoon start-up. That was certainly unexpected, and interesting. Leigh Floyd called. We spoke mostly of our families and some about working together in the desert back in the mid-90's. Leigh worked for me in several capacities out west. We struggled through his divorce and he moved with a new lady to Michigan. It is good to have found him again-we laughed over field projects he managed for me, including drilling a well in the middle of Grand Avenue, in Phoenix. He reminded me another staffer, Mike Decker was there. I had forgotten him. He was a canoe enthusiast on white water and a guide. He studied geology at ASU and worked for me briefly. That night, Leigh ordered pizza for the crew. No one would deliver pizza to the middle of the street, so he had to go get it. Ladies from nearby "gentleman's club drove by. One threw a pair of panties at Mike Decker. It was the first I had heard that.

Later, Mike Decker was found murdered out in the desert far from Phoenix. The crime was never solved.

I will try and complete the story about son's graduation trip. There is much more to tell. Now I must concentrate on business. Put writing on hold for a little while.

Close of Fishing with my son

2008-06-09T14:20:00.000-07:00

It has been very hot on the mainland, far from my island home. We started out on our camping and fishing journey just after my son's high school graduation. I think it was a tough journey for him, but he is stolid. Here, at the econolodge in Mifflintown, along the Juniata of my youth, we conclude our journey. We started at Towanda and our traditional place of islands on the Terrytown side of the river. It was hot, we swam, cooked what we had. The fish were uncooperative with the heat. But we were greeted by every type of bug bird or Snake. Joey awoke one morning to report a giant black snake at the tent door. I explained black racers are harmless and he should be glad to meet the snake.

We decided after all to drive to Westline, and Kinzua Creek. Here we camped in an amazing thunderstorm in the Allegheny plateau, among ever increasing oil wells. But Thundershower run was clean and cold-we caught trout for dinner. I made a heart healthy meal of old bacon, butter sticks, potatoes, onions, and wild brook trout.

This morning after the rain, flocks of butterflies visited us. Mostly yellow swallowtails, but some others as well. It was very stirring.

Joey told me Homet's ferry carried some bad memories of his childhood. It was here, long ago, we played with the children in the river of my youth as the power struggle of the divorce raged. I was unaware of my now grown son's feelings.

We promised to find new places to camp and fish. Now my journey takes me back to work, at the request of my son. I am not sure where that will be. But college bills loom.

I am most anxious in any case to return to "my island". It will be nice to be cool again and see my sea.

Last day of May 2008 Prince Edward Island

2008-05-31T00:32:00.000-07:00

It was a glorious day today. The bitter ever present winds were gone , with bright sunshine. I still continue with phone calls from headhunters and others seeking my lifetime of experience with the world and its troubles. The other day, I visited Shel at the Cape Traverse cottage. We had burgers on the grill-a real treat! It had been a while. We walked to the nearby red-cliff ed beach and almost held hands. It is a most lovely part of the world I will separate from in only a few days. We had seen a hummingbird at the cottage window. It was a brief glimpse of a gossamer buff and black spectre. Later, while painting a deck, Shel said the bird was back. It came to her, hovered, came close, and brushed her hand, giving goosebumps and a feeling of awe on the dew-soaked, pine scented red cliff beach. My mother told me once that if she returned to this world after death, she would be a hummingbird-one of nature's most amazing creations.

My profound feelings for this amazing young woman , my wife are moving, passionate, and truly sad. No two people could be closer. But in this unfair world, other pressures often drive our individual decisions, our Christian free will.
Ill say here what I wanted to write to her on one of our unique pink "hoggnotes", little note papers that are in the shape of a happy little hog. (We always spell the endearment with two G's).

I was thinking of one theory of creation. That the universe began as a tiny spot in a great unfathomable explosion in a time untold billions of years ago. Then it kept growing and the universal mind that is God made all this by organizing the chaos. Then, some say, at some time in a nearly infinite future, it will all collapse and return to a singular tiny dot. Then it begins again, an infinite cycle, I wanted to tell Shel that I would love her forever, until the universe recreated itself, and we would be together forever, as God intended.

But I thought that in reality, I need to say nothing. My mother said, before she died to me, that all we need to say we have said between us. I truly miss my mother, the finest person I have ever known. I will love Shel until the universe reinvents itself-forever.

Wednesday, May 30, 1979 New Britain, Pennsylvania

2008-05-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

11:00
Low 59
Hi 70+

Humid with sun early today. Thunder showers at night. School was O.K., but hard. Its getting tougher, hang in there.Carol came over after dinner again, and we played with the skunk. Later, got ice cream and watched T.V., most is O.K.

Modern note:

I haven't talked much about my pet skunk of this period, Ollie (The same name as my Dog). Ollie I found one late evening around 1977 in a ditch along Dave Spulin's driveway, by his shop. It was a rural area near the old place of New Galena, near Chalfont, Bucks County. Well there was a tiny furball, mayby as big as a credit card, but black and white in the ditch. I said stop, a baby skunk!-of course, everyone said I was nuts. But I knew litter runts often got left behind. Skunks emerge and forage for food after having their litters in late February or March, then may return to hibernation. This little one looked brand new on this late April day when I found her. I just jumped out, held her tail down (even infant skunks can squirt). The skunk infant had been abandoned, so I had to raise it. I found out what I could and prepared a milk mixture with sugar, and the tiny creature grew. We found a very reluctant veteriarian in Hatboro to remove her scent glands. I confirmed then it was a female skunk. He said he made a mistake and would never do it again-as the sack burst and the chemical (a sulphur based alcohol) is pretty smelly! I also made a mistake, in line with jarring salamander eggs (essay). It is best to leave nature be.

I raised my infant skunk by hand with a doll bottle and my milk mixture. She grew fat and happy, to be about 10 pounds. I will say that she was much like a cat with a good soul. This animal had no negatives, and was mink soft and extremely clean. She always smelled a little musky, loved chicken and cheese, and was most affectionate. Often I would play with her on the lawn out front. She would stamp her feet, and dance. She would sit on my lap and preen and look towards the T.V.Turn around in a mock spray and stomp again. Her long hair was amazing, At some point skunks were raised for fur called "Alaskan sable". That is profoundly sad.

I was very involved with work after college. Carol decided to run off, and Ollie still lived in the garage under the old desk where she had made a place. One day, in winter, I went to start my race car 'Cuda. The skunk awoke and tried to run outside. Later, mom found her cold on the floor. I was away, but mom said she was dead and discarded her furry soft body. I later asked if perhaps she just was in and out of hibernation, as it was winter. Mom told me her heart stopped. In hibernation, many people mistake no heart sounds as death. It is possible Ollie died later and not after my violently loud racecar awoke her. I will never know. She was gentle, clean, affectionate, and fun. She was also, like all skunks, almost blind. I miss her as a pet and being. My little black and white puffball.

Later, a new girlfriend Susie Keck would buy me a skunk as a pet. The animal was wild and viscious, and bit. The beautiful creature should have been released into the wild, where skunks have few enemies but cars and owls. The secret of Ollie was that I raised her by hand with tremendous love. There is a human message in Ollie the skunk. The way we are treated when we are very small carries forever. Gentle fun kindness, or viscious wild violence Or now attention at all. The missing of these simple natural facts is why I never went into Psychology (I didn't?). Hence I worry about my children in my business-forced absences.

Sunday, May 27 1979 New Britain, Pennsylvania

2008-05-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

Low 55
Hi 60

Cool and mostly cloudy with some wind. Slept late. Carol and I went with Dave (Spurlin) to North Wales, also to the mall and looked around. We ate in McDonald's-wasn't too good. Later, prepared a cooked outside meal-Carol's sister (Dorothy Padden Trosky) and boyfriend Bill came over. Dave didn't want to stay, so he left. Afterwards we found Dave at Buck's shop and we went to Montgomeryville to see a movie "Alien", but we couldn't get near the place. We sat outside the 309 drive-in in audio range and watched it. OH GOD! Was good!
Especially for the price. Took a short jog later. Ate well today.

Modern note on this period in History:

Dave Spurlin would often cruise around with us. I had met him when I was 14 as he raced his dirt bike at the track behind my house-I got into bikes too and we became nearly lifelong friends. Usually we went around in his blue hot rod Chevy van, which only in 2006 was finally retired due to metal fatigue. Today married, in high school and long after he never had a girlfriend, and like everyone else, was in love with Carol's best friend Chris Brady. She actually lived in a junk yard and Dave was a parts buff motorhead like me. They never did really get together. Carol's sister Dottie reminds me a lot of Rhonda. She was nice, and a computer person in on the ground floor. She had been a teacher in Manheim, near Lancaster. We were all close. She had married a pharmacist (Trosky) young (I forget his first name).

They had an ugly divorce and I remember being around 17 and moving her furniture out as hubby looked on. It was said he couldn't just not help himself to his own drug supply. I really don't know the details. When we visited Manheim, I would leave the girls alone and walk around the town. I recall going into an empty unlocked church and just staying there a long time, playing with the piano. Later when Dottie started to date, our approval of the boyfriend was always required-she had some real winners. But Bill mentioned was a nice professional guy.

He had an old Ford Falcon Sprint, a 1966 I think (a small square car with a V8 engine). Since I was "Mr. Mustang" he often consulted me. We took them on a trip to the spooky Pitcairn estate (Bryn Athyn?) on really bad roads. It was there said the famous and reclusive heirs to the PPG fortune lived. We glimpsed a "Glass house", where genetically defective children supposedly were kept. They said the family always intermarried and that was the problem. I am not sure about that, but along with 'The one armed man", and the "Axe Man" tales told then in Bucks County ,it made for nice romantic scary trips with teenage girls. Those were the days. The private security guards in jeeps would always chase us away, so there was something up.

Dottie had been a teacher and was rumored to have had an affair with a student, a strapping high school kid I met. It was very odd. It was after that she got divorced, left teaching and went into computers. All rumors as far I am concerned, but something sure got fouled up.

I was every bit as close to Carol's family as to Shel's. Rhonda's family was always tense and effected, except for R's sister Janice (Urffer), who was a nice, beautiful Christian blond woman who had 13 kids. Mostly to annoy their mother, Myra Rosenberger. Just this past year I would attend the same Baptist church in Perkasie that Janice Urffer and her kids used to attend, during my "EIC" period in Ottsville. R's other sister Wendy was pretty nice and is an Air Force NCO. The youngest sister Sonia was a very pretty blond who mom doted on. I always thought they had been meanest to Rhonda. R was forced to leave home at 18 and marry Louis Sinoff. Sonia had a paid arts education and stayed home until Mr. Right came along.Talk about being surrounded by the German's-it never seems to end!

Janice had won a high school summer scholarship to study Spanish in South America. When she refused to return after being overwhelmed by an ardent Latin lover,the family created a story to get her home. They made it up that mom, Myra Taylor Mercer Rosenberger, was dying. Janice came home and was essentially kept under lock and key, as it was recounted to me. Janice never forgave her mother for that. Myra also always resented having children. She made her husband and children pay for it. This sometimes caused dastardly deeds to be committed, which I will not recount here out of courtesy. I think my own Rhonda resented the children , too-with tragic consequences, that are sadly I am afraid, permanent.

But I am a bit sad that when these break-ups occur you lose so much family. I guess the same things happen when people die. Why my friendship with Dottie ended when Carol took off with Greg Kolasa, or why my own kids cousins are alienated, and why the very close bond I had with Shel's sister Kim Becker (Kim calls me "Hogg"), the nieces, nephews and the really great times I had in the Rockies with Shel's brother's and the Konig's, shooting and fishing must be lost is an unknown. I guess it is the change in status-but it sure is sad.

Tuesday May 27 2008 Summerside, PEI

2008-05-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

Well today was very windy and cool, then it was warm enough for a bit to don the shorts and a tee shirt again. I took a walk and caught a few minutes of rays from warm sun. Its now about 6:30 PM and dark cool clouds and raindrops loom.As usual I can open the big old windows for air, but only for a short time. I will be going back to Moncton for a second meeting tomorrow. I am to be there at 2 o'clock. The environmental manager will be in town and David wants me to speak to him. I also had a call from a lady in Calgary about a sales position with an equipment manufacturer. It sounded somewhat interesting too.

Regarding my trip to Phoenix around the ninth of June, I still have no confirmation. The principal involved will be on vacation with his kids at Disney World until the sixth. With some luck, Joey and I will be in a campground somewhere by then-I told the headhunter in Scottsdale to try and set everything up and I will contact him on the sixth or seventh. I have concerns about all this travel at this particular moment, but it is time to push forward.

Shel was here last night somewhat an unexpected surprise. I didn't make enough food for her to have dinner, which made me a bit sad. She was here a long time working on her computer issues. She needs to send her story to a writing contest by Friday. My printer is out of ink, and I can't tell her that until tomorrow. If she comes in before Friday, I may be able to one of these other printers working. She called her mom last night. Apparently, Kim is having a lot of problems with Denise. There are some bad problems in all that. I feel we were really able to help and support Kim when we were out west. Now she is at the mercy of Shel's unforgiving family-a feeling I have known well almost 18 years.

So tomorrow should be interesting. After that, it will be time to ready all for the trip south. I am waiting for the final decision when I talk to Joey Thursday and finally see Shel Saturday. There are still a bunch of details to work out. Its been quite a while since I have been off island and out of Canada. I really miss it just thinking about it. It reminds me of when I left New Britain to go to Harrisburg to work so long ago. But I have been travelling my whole life. The road usually renews me. Maybe, finally, this will be the last difficult trip.

Monday June 18 2007

2008-05-25T14:23:00.000-07:00

I just found this third or "missing diary" of the three I have written here on PEI. It was in my brown business bag. Well not much written between then and now, but there are many audio recorded journals. I won't rehash the past. Today is a cool, breezy day. After a glorious "hot" sunny day yesterday. I went with Shel to her beach job at Chelton Beach. We argued like savages, but it was actually a good day. She works for Maggie of the "Steak Pit" here in Summerside, summers at the little canteen concession at the Chelton Beach Provincial Park. Its a cute job, as a college kids summer job. She makes hambergers and hot dogs, fries, chicken, ice cream, etc.

The beach is nice there and we made a deal I'll go with her a few times a week-not all the time so we don't get on each others nerves. I haven't been able to get the kids on the phone and no new email. Ill try again tomorrow.

Modern note:
The summer was really nice here on PEI in 2007. The times I went to volunteer at Chelton to cook at the canteen reminded me of jobs I had after high school. It was a lot of fun. We both got great tans, and had some quality time together. I had hoped to get back down south, but spent the whole summer on the island. Shel had just gotten back from Colorado, where she attended nephew Kelby Konig's high school graduation. She flew out of Manchester, NH and we had a nice but short little roadtrip back to the island. We ferried across Lake Champlain to Vermont and it was a lot like old times. I wish it could have been a longer trip, but Shel had to be back here for work.

Friday May 25 1979

2008-05-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

Clear
72 degrees

Partly cloudy today with some evening showers. School was OK- it was a long week-I'm glad its Friday! Carol and I got gas somehow the mustang's door was dented. I think out in front of my house. Could have been kids. John (Gustafon) will fix it next week. Watched T.V. late, good programs- "Hot Rod", "Vanishing Point".

Modern note: This period is during the final full year of college for me. I changed my major from Biology pre-med to Geology as I fell in love with the subject, professors, fellow students (only about 15 total) and the field trips. I loved Biology, but there was a coldness to my fellow Bio students on their way to med school. All except one, my good friend Bea Beatrix H. White. She was a brilliant Quaker girl from Morton, Delaware County. She became a doctor and researcher and I lost touch with her around this time. We should have been a couple, but I was totally loyal to my childhood sweetheart and neighbour Carol Padden. We spent all of our free time then at car shows, working at John "Gus" Gustafson's auto body in Ottsville, PA, or cruising around. Most of my social life then involved the car show circuit, when I was a high level Shelby Club member and judge.

Sunday May 25 2008

2008-05-25T13:39:00.000-07:00

Well the weekend that started out cold and very damp turned into a spectacular spring day today on the island. I put on shorts and a tee shirt and walked around town. It was filled with the smells of the gardeners and fresh cut lawns, and a few new blossoms. The tulips are up and some decorate my living room. Shel spent a lot of time here yesterday, at some food and was then off to do here weekend errands. She is submitting her excellent "Cathy the Clown" story to a Tucson writing contest. It is wonderful story based on fact. Shel befriended a bathroom attendant at a hi-end restaurant we used to frequent in Scottsdale. The lady was poor but very sweet, and volunteered at a children's hospital. The story is based on Shel's conversations with that special lady. It sure seems a long time since we were together in Arizona. Shel's blog, http://writervita.blogspot.com shows many Arizona photos and stories. It is sad she has left me out of the tale, as she has to keep her family from knowing that we are still close friends. The old German farmer thing-you break-up and you can't remain close. In many ways, Shel and I are closer than when we were always together. She is part of my family and shall remain so.

Very quiet Sunday as always. I was reading the parable of the feeding of the 5000 in the book of John. I love that one, and knowing that God can do anything in this troubled world is a great comfort to me. I heard from my old fishing buddy, my lonely old friend Philip Benjamin in Towanda. He was off to help his friend Carol, who is 85, cut grass. He really wants me to move back that way to go fishing. I told him I had decided to return to work and may stay here in the Maritimes, or maybe try Phoenix again. It becomes an issue of money at this point, as Joey is now quite concerned about college funds.

My contacts in New Brunswick said I may be able to remain on the island and still do some work there for them. It would probably be best to be in the office there during the week, which is very doable. I don't know much about the Phoenix position, and am supposed to meet there in about 2 weeks. I am sure that the correct choice will show itself. I really don't like the idea of permanently leaving the island, but that may change. Shel has been sweet, helpful, and very nice about the whole issue.

I would have loved to have made this a beach day, but its pretty chilly by the water. I spent some time in the little military memorial park by the house, in the warm sun. Kids were skipping stones bored at the little pond there. The pond needs some goldfish, which I may donate. I can hear the spring peepers in the evening here, in town. That sound is deeply stirring to me, with memories of springs long past. I often think that the sounds of the peepers, frogs, toads were the sound of spring long before there were any birds on this planet.

So a simple dinner tonight and I have some reading to catch up on, and there is usually a movie on Sunday evenings. It has gotten tough to find one here I haven't yet seen. They seem to repeat them. Erin Brockovich is on again. I did show that film to my environmental class at Gateway College. I really enjoyed teaching, and may return to it someday. I had a dream of creating a practical 2 year environmental degree in technology. That way, students could obtain real field skills and be certified to work in the industry with a two year degree. Maybe I can pursue that at some point.

Missing the kids, and as the time approaches to head home, I am thoughtful.

Wednesday, May 21 2008

2008-05-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

It is a cool rainy day here on the island. I had a nice evening with Shel yesterday. We had dinner together and discussed my upcoming travels. I go to Moncton for a meeting tomorrow and to Joey's graduation and a little camping down south next week. My sister wants to go to Atlantic City, so I am going to try to fit that in. She is going a bit stir crazy since she has been "carless". But she was getting robbed every time she went to a garage, so its probably a good thing. She told me she really wanted to sell the house and move somewhere, but she is unsure about where. She wants to visit the island, but there are logistical problems due to the distance involved.
I am also supposed to travel to Phoenix for another meeting in June, but arrangements have yet to be made-more logistical problems.

My sister asked me if I had posted any of my mother's poetry. Right now, I am not sure where that stuff is.I think Joey has it. On a sad note, I was working on some family history online and found my mothers name in her sister's obit from March. Heck of a way to find that out. My aunt Amie, Alma Elizabeth Hatfield Loughran died at the end of March. I told my sister about it on the phone yesterday. It was the first we had heard of it. My aunt was in her 80's and had been ill quite some time.

I think now only my Uncle Colonel David Hatfield remains of mom's siblings. Time marches on. I do have fond memories of my Aunt Aim and my grandmother, "Nanna" Alma Chambers Hatfield visting us at the farm, and our frequent visits there to their home in Upper Darby. They were always kind to me. And my cousins, and I have written about fishing with my cousin Dave, Aunt Aime's son in Wyalusing, PA in the 1960's. It is there I hope to go with my son very soon to do a little fishing and catch-up. I haven't seen my Uncle Dave since he was off to fly a mission during the Cuban missile crisis. He is a fighter pilot and bomber pilot and a veteran of 3 wars. It wrote frequently to my mother, but now that she is gone, I have heard nothing from him. Perhaps I will try and find him. I know he had email.

These family deaths really drive home the march of time. It is ashame that the family arguments over the years still effect communication with all of us. Since my divorce, I have been essentially ostracized. My poor sister, who feels isolated is still held in some contempt for minor childhood events almost 50 years ago. I think it is an effect of the "Hatfield clan". I have really been effected in my life by people's lack of forgiveness. Its just not Christian.

Friday, May 18, 1979 New Britain, Pennsylvania

2008-05-18T16:47:00.000-07:00

11:40 PM

Rotten today, just in time for the weekend. I knew it! School was fine. I am working with the staff of the Paley library to find a book for Aprille. In the evening, we went to the store. I got a pair of sneakers in Woolco. We watched TV later. The "Mod Squad" was reunited on the glistening screen. I don't like wet weekends!

May 20, 21 2006 Summerside, Prince Edward Island

2008-05-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

Today was a nice spring day. Went to the store breifly. I gave an old guy a ride. Shel worked today and brought home some meat. Those Steak pit steaks are the best on the Island. I played some chess and my rating is finally coming up, after years away from the game. Was on the radio later as Shel went to her friends house. I worked stations in Germany, Italy, and Cuba. I couldn't hear much else with this equipment, but it all seems to be working well. Had some IM's from Alexis's friends, but the kids weren't online today.
Pretty cool and rainy last night. Its not as cool tonight and less windy. Hate being cold!

May 18, 2008 Wonderful PEI weekend

2008-05-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

Today is Sunday and as the sun sets here on Prince Edward Island I am filled with good feelings generated by a truly great weekend. I went dancing with some friends on Saturday night. I am truly amazed as I continue to feel the Appalachian buzz to this place. The music and heritage of many people I meet here could be or is an echo of the central mountains some 1000 miles south of this place. Shel is enjoying her time out at the cottages. There is no phone or Internet and I sense a bit of "modern withdrawal" in her. So she stopped by to use the wireless and call some friends. We had a nice lunch and went shopping a bit-now our island stores open again in anticipation of the tourist season, soon to begin.

Ill be driving Shel's car to my Meeting in Moncton on Thursday. It will be easier on gas, and I enjoy driving her little car. Ill be driving my old Blazer back for the graduation, probably departing the island on June 1. I am pretty excited about it. I am also supposed to fly to Phoenix as an old colleague needs an office manager in Tempe. There are distinct advantages for me to stay here in Atlantic Canada. I am very excited about looking at some military facilities here, as well as some aging disused industrial sites begging for assessment and remediation. I am very excited about those opportunities as well. Phoenix beckons, but mid-July in the Sonora desert after several years here in the Northeast cool is likely to be a shock to the system.

Headhunters keep calling, but I am going to limit myself to only the best situations. Also, its nice to be close to family here on this coast. The cards will fall where they may. Shel will be busy all summer. Joey is working but for the week or so he has taken off for our fishing trip to Towanda and maybe Westline. Alexis is deeply involved with a boyfriend and her social network, and probably won't have time for dad. I think she is a bit angry with me-after all, I have been on the road almost since she was born. If not just plain work, constant travel with the Army. But I wouldn't trade my military experience for anything. The finest people I have worked with.

I had a nice call with Joey yesterday. He was pretty together and heading out to work. I need to get him a car. Mom gave his to her boyfriend and its seems permanent, and very unfair.
The weather has been fantastic. But for an icy cold ripple of rain that moved through earlier today, its been sunny and very nice. That cold sea breeze seems always with us, along the shore here until mid-July. Its an idyllic place to live, quiet and friendly. If I have to move to New Brunswick, I will cherish weekends here when I can visit. Shel said we can alternate, her visiting me wherever I go, as always, and me here as time allows.
Its shaping up to be a good summer.

May 15, 2008 Summerside, Prince Edward Island

2008-05-15T14:22:00.000-07:00

Today was another glorious spring day. I relaxed and slept rather late in the mid-week quiet of my rear bedroom. I am usually awakened by the bright sunshine which filters thru my old friendly tree, my white lacy curtains, and spring bird song. Goodbye winter-unlike any winter I have ever experienced, with as many as 4 major snowfalls per week. I thought of my childhood on the farm and those winters in the 1960's, but can't remember that much snow.

I walked down to the boardwalk at Green's shore, just a few blocks away as I sometimes do. Just to sit in the warm sun and still cold seabreeze, gaze fixed toward the mainland across the bay and straight. There is a little lighthouse at the entrance to the bay I hope to visit at some point. A lot of people were out walking themselves or with their dogs and little children. I picked a few tulips, that go unnoticed by the landlord, and put them in the case in my livingroom along with some daffodils Shel picked before she left for her long summer of work as a cottage manager near Borden. She seemed happy for it all, now with her future apparently secure for the time being. I will just go on missing her company, which is SOP now for to long, but I am afraid, a permanent time.

I spoke with Joey yesterday. It was very disturbing. He was going to a movie he really wanted to see (Iron Man,( and I think he had a date) But he misplaced his paycheck from "Your Place" restaurant and was having a fit. We talked it out and he seemed better. Hopefully mom gave him a few bucks so he could take this rare girl out. He was very emotional. I know that his high school graduation, mother issues, my long absence, as well as his now remote sister are all issues. Some of his mother's lack of confidence and financial paranoia has entered him. I am hopeful my visit and his start of college will help. I told him I was sorry I was away all this time, as other issues always seemed to take precedence. And his mother's annoyance at having me closer than 1000 miles was always an issue. It would seem this summer should address resolution of some of these things. With my separation from Shel completed this week after 4 years of effort to save our marriage, my heart is free to begin anew. At least much freer than it was.

I got a call from a company in New Brunswick that has a lot of work with the Canadian military. It is all pretty routine environmental assessment and remediation stuff, with some ordnance issues included. I am supposed to meet with them next week in Moncton, if I can arrange transportation. Its been a tight budget here most of the last year, with all the Shel issues and my generally falling pension checks. Tonight I will probably take my usual walk, toss in a few pennies at Queen's pier and say my prayers for family and a successful completion to this chapter of my life story., and now...(drum roll!)...

Tuesday May 15, 1979 10:30 PM
written at 92 Evergreen Drive, New Britain Pennsylvania

Mild today.Some sun in the afternoon.School was O.K.-things going along briskly in this second week It seems like 4 times I have been in Calc II. Did homework in the evening. Carol and I weeded her garden and and went to Arby's. I've been real hungry of late-I'm going to exercise daily instead of fasting. See how it goes. Most is O.K.

Monday May 15, 2006 Summerside, PE

It has been a few days since I wrote. I was a bit grumpy and Shel was snappy too.Today was warm, sunny, and nice -played chess, went outside briefly. Shel worked, came home, then went out again. She didn't seem well to me. She went to sleep while I was still playing chess. She softly said after a while, "Thank you for taking me all those places".

It was actually kind of touching, made me tear a little. She also got some good groceries and candy for me. She bought salt-water taffy and must have been thinking of our times at the New Jersey shore and elsewhere. Maybe she too is just a bit sentimental. On the radio briefly. A few CQ's, no contacts.

Overview

2008-05-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

It had been my hope to eventually copy all of my diaries, going back to January 22, 1966 into this medium. Unfortunately, all but one journal (1978) were destroyed. So we are stuck with my memories as needed and the events of the day. This format places the most recent entry first, so the reader will again have to deal with my "non-temporal " writing style. I have been maligned by some for writing various stories in an "out of order" manner. Perhaps that's how my literary mind works, or maybe just how the past presents itself to my consciousness. Another problem is my slow typing speed and sometimes low back pain which would have made placing over 30 years worth of daily diaries entries here anyway. No doubt that the reader would probably had balked at having to read page after page of how many eggs the chickens laid that day, the weather report, or crude sketches of the position of the Galilean moons of Jupiter as seen by a 10 year old with a telescope.
Junior high school, high school and college might have been more entertaining. That original series of diaries, which had gone down to weekly entries at best, ended on November 4, 1989, when my son was born.

Michelle says there is at least one other 1980's journal in her stuff at her mother's home in Greeley, Colorado. So for these first few entries I will tell the tale of the day, and maybe add the entries from last year and 1978 on the same day, just to create a contrast.