June 18, 2008 Wednesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.