a quiet day of sorts

I was supposed to be on the road home at 0400, but it didn't work too well. My sister got sick.

Tomorrow is another day, and will be a day of travel.

The plan was this: Sis picked me up when I got off of my boat a couple of towns away and I was to stay there for a few days until she went home to Florida, where she lives. I'd catch a ride to Philly and pick up my truck and then I'd drive home to PGH. That's where I live.

We'll see how that works out. Probably it'll be OK if I can keep my patience. My sister travels with three dogs, which is a circus on wheels. In the absence of the dogs, my sister and I travel the same way. We drive until the hallucinations come or until we get where we are going, whichever comes first.

We get that from our father who once drove us as little kids from someplace in Michigan to Boston's South Shore with only stops for gas, pee there or wait until the next empty tank.

Of course, traveling with three dogs changes things, as dogs have to be walked every so often, and they must be fed and watered. Sis is good at that in that she knows where she can get a place to stay that caters to people like that.

The two beagles are pretty good, but the Cocker is totally retarded. I that it would seriously believe that humans are not the only species that suffer things like retardation. The Cocker is retarded.

My late cat, Tokie was a pretty good traveler. I'd get a beer or soda case, the flat kind, and put kitty litter in it and put it on either the passenger's side floor of the back of the pickup in a manner that it wouldn't slide all over hell. Because I had a sliding rear window and a cap on the pickup, Tokie would have he run of the truck. Food wasn't an issue, water was a bitch. We could drive for hours with few problems.

Tokie was a trip. He could walk with me on a leash, which is very unusual for cats. I could bring him anywhere on the leash simply by putting on sunglasses and grabbing a white cane. In his role of 'Seeing Eye Cat' we were seldom challenged, and the pair of us could generally be counted on to raiise a cloud of dust in the middle of a snow storm.

I'm thinking of posting our adventures together on this blog. Be forewarned: If I do, keep liquids away from your computer while you read them. You WILL snarf.

I told my wife that I spent some time with the woman that ran my reunion, and she seemed OK with that, which is fine because everything was on the up and up. It is, too. Although we do not live together, she is still my wife and although she seems not to acknowledge it, my first loyalty is still to her.

When I knew I was geting off the boat, I got in touch with the woman and we decided to meet up and swap notes. When that was decided, it left me in an interesting situation.

What do you say to someone you haven't seen in forty years?

As you may have figured out by now, I can be a bit of a ham actor, and my sense of humor can be very keen. This can get me in one of two situations; either I will end up at the Right Hand of God, or at the paddle store up on Shit Creek.

While we were communicating, I found that she did in fact have a sense of humor, it certainly wasn't of the type that could handle an old salt like me coming on full bore. Truth is, most women can't and the ones that can are either in 2 catagories, stripper-type mentality or a very rare breed. The former are to be avoided at all costs, of course. The latter are priceless and a joy to be around. The latter are generally pretty solid in their self identity and are of the type that can handle virtually anything. They are very few and far between.

Picture this: The imaginary meeting.

Me: Agape, hangdog, very disappointed, sad look.

Her, sensing a major disappointment, her face slowly dropping until she says something like "What did you expect?"

Me: Shrugging, making a 'what the hell'type of recovery, "I was actually hoping for a coked-out stripper because I haven't been laid in six months." This followed by a semi serious sort of look.

I can be as deadpan as Buster Keaton.

This would result in either one of two reactions. One, of course, it total outrage, the other would be gales of laughter followed by a comment along the lines of "You haven't changed in forty years!"

Of course, either reaction would make a great episode of 'Candid Camera', and in reality, it would have been one hell of a laugh, but I wasn't willing to put someone like her in that kind of position because I simply didn't know.

As it happened, I took one look at her and when I saw that she hadn't really changed since the second grade, my face lit up and I gave her a big hug.

Then I got to spend a couple hours with the prettiest girl in Miss Elwood's 1958 second grade class.

It's funny the way we age. The lines on my face were different than hers. Mine have come from too much sun, wind and too many long days at sea. Hers had an emotional look to them. They looked like the ones that come from working with people and all of the bullshit that comes with life ashore.

We both have a divorce apiece behind us, and I'm presently still married to a wife that lives a mile from me, a subject I will cover at a later time, but the mileage Sheila has seems different from mine.

Sort of like highway miles versus city miles.

More later

It's later.

My life has been very cut and dried. My worries have been pretty simple, when you think about it. Go to sea, deal with a fairly simple set of problems and then I'm off for a while.

One could say that the problems I deal with can be dramatic at times, but I'd have to say that it's overrated. truth is, it's pretty cut and dried at sea. As far as personnel go, it's cut and dried there, too. Either you can do the job, or you can't. If you can't, you're history. Simple.

When things DO get nautical at sea, it's somewhat simple, too. You simply do what you have to to survive and nobody generally 'Monday Morning Quarterbacks' you.

Truth is, I simply risk my life from time to time. My emotions really don't fit into the course of things very much because I don't risk my emotions .

The reason I go to sea is that I really can't handle life ashore very well. The bullshit and grind there is too damned frustrating because common sense seems to be in short supply ashore.

Although there politics everywhere, and aboard a boat there is no exception, everyone on board is bound together by common goal, namely reaching the next port and having a safe load or discharge. Ashore it is different. Everyone there seems to be pulling against each other.

It seems that everyone ashore seems to have a different agenda. At sea, the common goal tends to pull us together, as we are literally all in the same boat. The politics at sea tend to be pretty minor, like what kind of Oreos to buy, single or double stuffed, or maybe having to tell a crewman to leave his nasty socks in his laundry bag.

Fairly small stuff in the big picture of things.

My guess is that Sheila's miles are more emotional than mine. She's been in social work for over three dacades, raised a kid as a single mom and put herself through school. She has a double Master's, for Christ's sake.

She's had to make a life full of shoreside politics, people with hidden and open little agendas, empire builders and all sorts of shit I haven't had to deal with, yet her lines are soft and compassionate. It's also obvious she hasn't copped to drugs and/or strong drink along the line, unlike me many years ago.

When I was fishing, we'd put to sea poisoned. Literally poisoned. The victims not of drunkenness, but of alcohol poisoning.

But we were young, wild, in incredible physical shape and would sweat the poisons out of out body in a very short time. I quit living like this decades ago, and healed up, but look carefully. I'd almost bet the faint signs are there on my face. Shiela doesn't show this at all.

Looking at the picture I have of her from second grade, I'd have to say she simply was the prettiest girl in Mrs Elwood's class. She has a round, soft face, Shirley Temple corkscrew curls and the beautific look of a young girl that is still in awe of everything, one of life's true innocents.

Watching a cat have kittens would cause squeals of excitement. Watching a butterfly come out of a cacoon would draw such a look of total fascination and total awe.

Fifty years may have taken it's toll on her body, but the spirit is still there. It's interesting how much we've changed, yet how little we've changed.

Something happened while she was giving me a ride home.

I spotted a deer and we pulled over to watch. It's the first deer I've seen in that town in almost fifty years. The deer are coming back, I guess.

At home, deer are a too common occurance. I have several of them that use my yard as a highway. They are actually more of a pest than anything else, as they eat flowers and decimate gardens. I have to put Irish Spring soap in my flower beds to keep them away.

I watch the deer at home all the time, and even though this is the first one I've seen in this town in nearly five decades, my 6th sense told me to watch something else.

I watched Shiela watch the deer. I'm glad I did.

I saw all of the lines of 58 years of living on the planet disappear. The woman's face changed before my eyes. There was that childish look of wonderment and total awe I had seen before.

Shiela was, for a few fleeting moments, still the little prettiest little girl in Mrs Elwood's second grade class.





This from The Gospel According to Piccolo