I'll Fly Away

Hello World,

Well, I don't know about where you are, but in the local area in the two weeks since I've been back from vacation, we have had some of the worst weather in the entire year, which I would have thought was impossible, considering the horrible weather we were having before I went on vacation. So at least in July, I really did have the only good week of weather in the whole month when I was at Wildwood, and not because I have any pull with the weather providers, heaven knows. In fact, we were watching a program on the History channel about how governments are using massive concentrations of Ultra Low Frequency waves to control the weather, and I said to Bill that if it's true, they certainly haven't learned how to change it so that it's any sort of improvement, that's for sure. Bill said later on the Weather channel, they were discussing the bad weather conditions, not only here but all over the country, which they described as "anomalous." They went on to explain that weather systems had moved in and caused unusual weather patterns in different areas, and instead of moving on, had just stayed and stayed and stayed, keeping the same bad weather in the same place over a long period of time. "And that's how you get anomalous weather," the correspondent chirped happily. Bill felt compelled to point out that the same thing in the same place for a long time was exactly the opposite of an anomaly, and the dinosaurs and I would have to agree with him, although when it comes to weather, it's safe to say that there are no standards anymore.

Speaking of my vacation, it may be true that my previous note, about my adventures in the wilderness, was long and boring, but somehow still managed to omit certain key elements that were supposed to be included. So for what it's worth, here's a few more tidbits from the campground cavalcade.

After Bill left on Monday, I finished unpacking the rest of my camping equipment from the car and got everything set up, then drove into town for dinner. There's a McDonald's right on the main drag, and while I usually don't go to one by myself, I wasn't afraid of it, because I've had careful instruction from Bill over the years about the intricacies of the McDonald's system. For instance, he tells me that there is nothing at McDonald's that is referred to as "small," the products come in your choice of "regular" and "large." Full of confidence, I march up to the counter and request a regular fries and strawberry thick shake. (I won't order an ordinary drink, because nowadays, they sell you a cup and make you get your own drinks from a dispenser, which is too complicated for me, especially when I'm on vacation, but they can't ask you to make your own milkshake, at least not yet.) I admit that I'm not prepared for what the youngster asks me next, which is whether I want the ones off the Dollar Menu. Here, all I can do is shake my head and tell him that he's asking me a question that I have no answer to, and realizing that he's dealing with a novice, he explains that the fries come in small, medium and large. So, it turns out that the only thing I thought I knew about McDonald's was wrong, and it's a sad state of affairs when a grown-up person can't even order fast food and get it right.

The next night, my dinner plans hit even more of snag, when I went to the same pizzeria that I've been going to every year, and found they were closed and boarded up tight. There's another pizza place across the street, but I always found it very intimidating, compared to my usual place, which seemed more friendly and welcoming, especially to vacationing strangers. But I could see there was no alternative but to try the other place, or have no pizza for dinner, so I crossed the street and resolved to make the best of it. The other place has long since gone upscale, with an attached restaurant, and serves a wide variety of special dishes, with prices to match. But I found their pizza was good and not too expensive, although for drinks, your choices are bad soda or nothing, which is not my idea of a choice at all. I didn't realize until later the major drawback of this well-heeled establishment, compared to my usual place, was that there was no sports television playing in the background. They always seem to play the All-Star Game while I'm on vacation, and I watch the coverage when I'm at the pizza place, and catch up on what's been going on in the wide world of sports while I've been relaxing in the woods and the waves. I didn't think of it until later, but it really blew a hole in my week to miss out on the game and updates, and I felt even more out of touch than usual.

Speaking of being out of touch, things have really turned a corner out at Wildwood, which used to be a technology back-water beyond compare. Just this year, I found they had replaced the old soap dispensers in the old Roundy with new automatic dispensers that spritz foamy soap right into your palm, as well as those automatic paper towel dispensers that you wave at and it shoots a paper towel at you. Of course, it only took until Tuesday for the soap dispensers to run dry and they never refilled them, so I guess some things never change. Also new this year, for the first time we noticed people being able to use their cell phones at the beach, where previously the only place there was enough of a signal was at the top of the hill by the parking lot. I can't tell if the phones are better, or they built new cell towers closer to the beach, but it's distinctly different, even just from last year.

Something else different this year was that I never saw a chipmunk the entire time I was out there, and this is the first time I've ever been to Wildwood that I have no chipmunk pictures at all. It's true that it's been going in this direction for many years, where there are fewer chipmunks, and many more squirrels, compared to the way it used to be. Lately, it would often take until the middle of the week, when the park was almost empty, for me to see chipmunks on a regular basis around the park. But even when I didn't see them, you could always hear their chirps and chatters from one side of the campground to the other, no matter where you were, any time of day. This time, I never heard a chipmunk all week, and that was very strange for me, because the sound of chipmunks is the signature theme song of the park, and always has been. I know there are still chipmunks there, because Bill saw one, and I know that if I went farther back into the woods, I'm sure I would still find them in abundance, away from the craziness at the campsites. But it was still sad in a way, and on top of being on two unusual sites, it didn't seem as much like the usual camping at Wildwood as it usually does.

In fact, in several ways, I didn't seem like the usual seasoned camper that I usually appear to be. It all started when I took the time to blow up my air mattress while Bill was still there on Monday morning, so it would be ready for me when I needed it Monday night. Not so fast! When I climbed into the cot that night, I found that the air mattress had not even a slow leak, but apparently a very fast leak, and it was already flat before I ever got a chance to use it, thanks not. Then it was on Tuesday, which was not a particularly windy day, when I came up from the beach and found the rain fly had blown off the tent and was scattered all over the campsite, which was a first for me. Bill and I had carefully erected it on Saturday, and it stayed in place for three days with no trouble, as in fact, it usually did. It seemed that two of the strings that I was using as tie-downs snapped, and that was enough to make all the poles fall down and the rest of the strings to let go. The funny thing about it was that without the rain fly, more than half of my tent is nothing but mesh screen, and you can not only see right through it, but everything that's in the tent besides, so I'm glad that I didn't leave my dirty underwear laying around. I reinforced the strings and propped the poles back up and figured that would be the end of it. Alas, no! When I came back up from the beach on Wednesday, which was also not a particularly windy day, the same thing had happened all over again, only this time it was different strings that snapped, but with the same results. This time I replaced the strings with bungee cords, figuring that they would have more give to withstand the strain of a little wind without breaking, and that did seem to solve the problem for the rest of the week. But between the fly-away rain fly, and the bad smoky campfires that I was building with rotten wood, I must have looked for all the world like some novice who had never been camping in my entire life, rather than the battle-scarred veteran of countless campaigns in the wilds. I must say, after years of ridiculing the amateurish attempts of other campers, this was a very humbling experience for me.

Two other new things happened this year, including a large brand new Walgreen's that they just opened behind the McDonald's, and literally within walking distance of the enormous CVS that has been on the other end of the parking lot for several years. I thought the CVS might close once the Walgreen's opened, but apparently not, and in fact, Bill and I shopped in both of them while we were there, so I guess there's enough business to go around. The other new thing was even more unexpected, because there shouldn't have been anything new about it at all. Every year, I take a drive down to the old part of town, with the landmark church and historical markers, where the Post Office and the General Store used to be, back in the old days before the town became such a happening burg and they turned all the farms into runaway commerce instead. Nothing much changes in the old part of town, and I like to take pictures at the duck pond, with the old mill behind it, prosaic reminders of those halcyon days of yore, and the dinosaurs and I ought to know. I do this every year, and there's nothing unusual about it, but this was the first time that I've ever been there taking pictures, and found a professional photographer there at the same time, taking pictures of a happy couple for some special occasion, and since discretion is the better part of valor, I elected to pack it in and take my pictures at another time. I guess you can tell that modern times have finally caught up with Wading River, when you have to make a reservation to take pictures at the duck pond, for heaven's sake.

This other thing isn't new (it has Governor Pataki's name on it, after all) but this was the first year that I saw the brochure for the New York State Parks Tree Replenishment Program on behalf of the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Apparently, state parks are losing thousands of trees due to storms, disease, insects or just plain old age, and they've established a program where residents can make contributions in order to support the replacement of those trees, thus helping the environment and everything in it. (I would invite you to check out their web site and get all the information for yourself, except for the fact that they don't seem to have one.) They say that a wall recognition plaque of all donors is displayed at Jones Beach State Park Information Office at the Central Mall, and the various contribution levels are named after different trees. For a donation of $50-$249, you're at the Holly level, while $1,000-$2,499 gets you on the Cedar level, and over $5,000 is the Oak level. Now, I'm as much in favor of trees as the next fellow, and perhaps more than most, but I'd be surprised to drive all the way out to Jones Beach and find a whole lot of names on that wall plaque at the Oak level, I can tell you that.

One thing didn't change since before my vacation, because just when we thought the tide of celebrity funerals was over and done with, we lost a few more of the famous and obscure alike, as if July held some mystic appeal that they couldn't resist. It was yet another wave of demises that swept away the matriarch of our invisible cats while we were away, which surprised me, because Muffin was never one to follow the crowd, just because everyone else was doing it. So there were some surprises in this vacation, from the pizzeria to the duck pond, from the chipmunks to the soap dispensers, from the air mattress to the mighty ($5,000) oak, and let's not forget the wandering rain fly. I guess for anyone who's ever wondered why they call it a "fly," now we can answer that question once and for all, by golly.

Elle

Honor Guard

Hello World,

Alert readers may be wondering what the heck ever happened to me last week, and well may they wonder. For anyone who answered "camping out at Wildwood on vacation," that would be absolutely correct, so please contact me regarding your prize, although I feel it's only fair to warn you that it might be Monopoly money or a post card of Long Island. After all the hullabaloo of the previous week, I was really looking forward to some rest and relaxation in the woods, or know the reason why. Things got off to an inauspicious start when Bill's car needed to go to the mechanic's on Friday, when I was supposed to be packing it full of camping supplies, and even though it had just been there a few weeks earlier and given a clean bill of health. But we got it back, and got it packed, and actually left bright and early on Saturday morning, because last year when we left later, we got stuck in all sorts of traffic. Nothing like that happened this time around, and we got out there in record time, and even better, they let us check in early because both of the campsites were already vacant. It was just as well, because setting up turned out to be a whole adventure that I hadn't anticipated.

Those same alert readers may recall that when I made my reservations at the park, the two campsites that I usually reserve were already taken, so instead I reserved two similarly adjunct sites across the road. I figured that I had been in these campsites often enough, scavenging for firewood or whatever, that I was adequately familiar with them, and in my mind, they looked just like my regular two sites, but wider and flatter. That turned out to be not the case at all, as they were full of trees, and one of them had a cement platform. The trees were close together, which would have been handy for people with hammocks to string up, but posed a problem for me as I was trying to find flat open spaces for two tents, two picnic tables, the fire bucket and clothesline. Putting the tent on the platform was not an option, since it needs to be staked into the ground in order for the door zippers to work properly, and while I considered parking the car on the platform instead, in the end, it just stayed empty for the duration. All of this dithering really threw a monkey wrench into our usual set-up process, and so even though we started earlier than usual, it took a lot longer than I expected. Finally we just left everything else for later, and headed for the beach.

I will say right up front that the camping gods were smiling on me this time around, and I had the only good week of weather that there has been in the entire metro New York area all year. I couldn't believe that it was beautiful every day, and held up all week like that, instead of all the miserable weather we had been having up until that point. However, it was all of that miserable weather up until that point that kept the water in the Sound from warming up like it usually would by the middle of July, especially since my vacation was a whole week later because July 4th was on a Saturday. I won't say the water was like liquid nitrogen, but it was not for the faint-hearted, and took some getting used to on that first foray into the briny deep. But we took the plunge, and thanks to Bill's new camera mask that he got for Christmas, we even have bad aquatic videos to prove it. At the concession stand, the cheese fries were as good as we remembered them, and it was good to get back out in the sun and the sand after a year. Walking back up the hill to the campground, I found that all of those weeks of Walk Group finally paid off, as I had much more stamina to get all the way up that hill than ever before. Then we tackled the rain fly and the clothesline, which are a lot easier with two people than with one, and got everything ship-shape before leaving to check in at the Comfort Inn at Medford, the same place we had stayed last year. Even though it was a whole week after July 4th, every campsite was taken on Saturday, and it was shaping up to be a wild and raucous night, so we were just as glad to get out of there while the getting was good.

The hotel is nice enough and not far from the park, and just up the block from a diner, which is handy since there is no restaurant at the hotel. We had brought some DVD's with us and were planning to watch one after dinner, but found there was no DVD player in the room, and decided against watching a movie on Bill's laptop instead. Although there is free WI-FI in the rooms, Bill didn't have his network card, so things on the technology front didn't work out as well as might be hoped. In the morning, we stopped at a nearby Radio Shack and got a portable DVD player, so at least we wouldn't be stuck watching bad hotel TV for two nights in a row. The hotel provides a nice breakfast, which is always a special way to start the day, and much more convenient than carrying snacks around on your own. After our breakfast and shopping, we went back to the beach and had another lovely day, and less crowded than Saturday, which made it even better. We wanted to try some place different for dinner besides the same diner, so we found a little Italian restaurant near the hotel, and really enjoyed it. Back at the hotel, setting up the DVD player turned out to be its own version of "Mission Impossible," but everyone knows how Bill loves a challenge, so he finally got it up and running so we could enjoy a movie and that was a nice treat. After breakfast on Monday, we checked out of the hotel and Bill helped me set up my cot and shelves and lanterns that I would need at the campsite during the week. Then it was back to the beach, and while it might seem like just too much wonderfulness for two people, it was a good thing that we did.

Bill always carries his binoculars to the beach, and likes to watch the sailboats, barges, fishing boats and other marine traffic going to and fro, out on the water for business or just for the fun of it. While we were there on Monday, he spotted a catamaran making some good speed in a brisk wind, and when he looked a bit later, it seemed to have vanished from sight. It had a big blue sail, so he knew that he should still be able to see it somewhere, and he kept looking until he realized that it had capsized, and where the sail should have been, all he could see was one of the pontoons sticking out of the water with the unfortunate occupant of the vessel hanging on for dear life. Bill watched the fellow for about 20 minutes trying to right the craft, get the sail out of the water, and be on his way, but all of his efforts were unsuccessful, as the boat stayed upside-down and drifting farther out to the ocean by the minute. Finally Bill went and reported it to the lifeguards, and they sent out one of the crew in a kayak, but even two of them together couldn't turn the thing over and get it underway, so the lifeguard radioed for the Coast Guard, who sent four rescue ships plus a helicopter. All in all, it was a pretty exciting day at Wildwood beach, and the fact that the local newspapers weren't full of stories later about a catamaran and sailor lost at sea, is all because of Bill's presence of mind and quick actions. After that, The Hero Of The Day packed up and drove home, leaving me to my own devices for the rest of the week.

I found this an odd week for camping, and not just because I was on two unfamiliar campsites, thanks not. First of all, I have never seen so many spy sites at Wildwood ever in my whole life, and I have pretty much gotten used to the proliferation of covert operatives out in the woods by this point. Everywhere you looked, in every different section, there would be a single tent standing all alone, with no car, no people, no kitchen or chairs, no grill or campfire, or any evidence of food, sports equipment, beach towels, clothing or anything that would indicate that actual campers were using the site, rather than spies sneaking in for clandestine meetings in the dead of night. On the other side of my site, there was a lone tent standing at C-13, and I never once clapped eyes on the people that belonged to it all week. It was like that all over, and I've never seen anything like it. I found my usual site, C-35 was empty on Saturday when we arrived, then there was an old funky tent erected on it on Sunday with no evidence of people anywhere around, and it was gone on Monday. It stayed empty all the rest of the week, which was especially annoying to me from across the street. My other regular site, C-17 was occupied from Saturday to Tuesday, while the corner site of C-16 was empty except for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. This blew a hole in my theory that these three campsites had all been reserved early by a large extended family or a Korean church group, which is why all of them were already taken when I tried to make my reservations. Frankly, my theory made a lot more sense than what actually happened in reality. After Sunday, it was pretty quiet in the park all week, but it took until Thursday for me to be the only person on the inside circle of my section.

Speaking of Thursday, I was enjoying my nightly campfire when I couldn't help but notice what appeared to be distant lightning in the sky, although I couldn't hear any thunder. I turned on the weather radio to find out that there was a severe thunderstorm watch in central Connecticut with heavy rain, high winds, quarter-sized hail and local street flooding. The word must have gotten out, because all over the campground, you could hear the sounds of people battening down the hatches for the big blow. Now, I've been camping my whole life and rain doesn't bother me, but I draw the line at thunder and lightning when I'm in a tent, so I was prepared to grab my gear and sleep in the car instead. But in the end, it blew over without a drop falling, which surprised me, because I thought it sounded like a pretty serious storm that was going to do some damage over a wide area. I should have realized that it was never going to rain, once I took in all of my stuff from the clothesline.

When I came back from the beach on Friday, the whole campground was unrecognizable from the day before, with every campsite taken and crowds of people everywhere. Although I enjoy camping out in the woods for a week, it's days like this that make me glad to be leaving, and the idea of home starts to sound pretty darned good to me. In fact, I woke up at midnight to find people on C-14 setting up their tent right next to me, with their car headlights shining right in my windows. On Saturday morning, I overslept for the first time all week, and Bill showed up at the site before I got back from the bathroom, which was not helped by having to go to three different vending machines in separate areas of the park to get something to drink, and lost 50 cents overall in the process, thanks not. But we managed to pack up everything and get it stowed in both cars without incident, and checked out with five minutes to spare. After that, we went back to the beach, where it turned out to be another lovely day, in spite of the forecast. While we were there, a young boy had an accident and injured his leg, setting in motion another whole emergency operation full of special equipment and tactical forces to get him off the beach and back to civilization for treatment. I finally said to Bill that they weren't going to let him come to the beach anymore, the way things had been going. I've been going there for 50 years, and no one ever had to be rescued in that entire time. Now Bill was there on two different days, and both times, they had to call out the life guards, Coast Guard, helicopters and Police SWAT teams with all-terrain vehicles. If this is the new version of camping at Wildwood, I can't say that I care for it all that much.

After a long day, we finally had no choice but to pack up and head for home, although first we stopped at the deli to pick up sandwiches and salads to bring with us, so we wouldn't get home hot and tired and still have to come up with something for dinner. Even though we left later than we expected, we were surprised that there wasn't any traffic, and we got home with no trouble. We took the time to eat first, so unpacking after that didn't seem like so much of a chore. It didn't appear that the cats remembered who I was, but they were pretty sure that they didn't like me anyway. Of course, it goes without saying that I came home with the usual piles of dirty laundry, and I expect I'll be at the washing machine every day for a month before I start to see the end of that. You don't even want to ask me about my email, and I'm not sure that I will ever catch up on that in my lifetime. But I will say that I had a good vacation, with remarkably good weather, and it was better than it might have been with two different campsites, which is an experiment that I would hope to avoid in the future. I always say that there's nothing like a week in the woods to make you really appreciate the comforts of home, by golly, and the benefits of electricity and private bathrooms cannot be overstated in my opinion. Best of all, I've been here an entire week, and haven't seen the Coast Guard once, and the way things had been going, that's not something to take for granted.

Elle

Meet the Parents

Friends, Romans and Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ears:

Well, this has certainly been a week and then some, and that's not even the half of it. I always say that it's just as well that we don't know what's right ahead of us, and this has been a prime example of that, because we would most likely not be happy to see it coming, and in fact, might be tempted to stow away on the next NASA mission to Jupiter or beyond. It seemed for the last two weeks, you couldn't turn on the news without hearing about some other celebrated person who had breathed their last, from the heights of fame and fortune, all the way down to the humble and forgotten, and more's the pity, I'm sure. In fact, it turned into such a wave of demises, that it swept away my Mom right along with it, like it was some sort of express train that she didn't want to miss. She would have been 87 in September, which is remarkable longevity among her family, and she was doing fairly well right up until the end, for which I credit her good strong pioneer stock, which the dinosaurs and I find so lacking in people nowadays. I was planning to take this opportunity to share some of my reminiscences about my mother, but then I realized that when my father died in 1997, I didn't have a computer, so I didn't have a chance to do the same thing for him at the time. So in honor of both of my parents, here are some of my favorite family anecdotes, in no particular order, and with the proviso that some of them may be exaggerated, while others might have been purely hallucinations on my part.

It was always easy to find family snapshots with my two older sisters at interesting places, like amusement parks, or visiting relatives, or at historical sites like the Statue of Liberty. Whenever I would ask why I wasn't in the picture as well, Mom always said: "Oh, we left you with Grandma." Anyone can tell that this has scarred me for life.

It was probably just as well, however, that I wasn't born yet when my parents took my oldest sister Linda and my other sister Diane to the Bronx Zoo when Linda was about 3 and Diane was only one. At one point, Mom and Linda trotted off to see the monkeys, and left Diane in the stroller in the care of dear old Dad. You can imagine their surprise when he met them later outside of the monkey house, and my mother took one look at the stroller and asked very calmly, "Alec, where's Diane?" Upon realizing that the stroller he was pushing was empty, my father promptly turned green and pelted off in the direction he came from, to round up the wayward toddler. She was discovered blissfully crawling in front of the tiger's cage, and was snatched to safety without incident, although it would be safe to say that my father never heard the end of it. Of course, if it had been me, I would have been at Grandma's.

It was no secret that my father was color-blind, which was too much of an obstacle to overcome in the hopes that he might develop some sense of fashion or decor, and he never did. Fortunately, my mother had more than enough for both of them, and she always made sure that things were "just so." It remains a mystery why she ever thought to send my father to the store to buy a table radio, and expect him to pick out one that would match the room it was intended for. When he returned with a bright turquoise radio for her kelly green kitchen, she rolled her eyes and immediately banished it to the basement, where it remains to this day.

My father had a well-deserved reputation as being able to fix anything, and he always carried with him a screwdriver, penknife and pocket flashlight, just in case an emergency arose and he didn't have time to go get his tools. It's not uncommon to see people at a diner or coffee shop straightening out the tines on their forks, with their fingers or other flatware. When you went out to eat with my father, you could expect him to bring out a pair of needle-nose pliers and repair their beat-up tin creamers with the bent and wobbly lids, until they were perfect and snug like the day they were made. He could do every table around us before the food was served.

Speaking of food, one day he and I were having lunch at IHOP, where we had never been before. The waitress who came to take our order looked us over and then announced, "Sir, your wife may be able to get away with saying that she doesn't know this girl, but anyone can tell that she's your daughter." Au contraire, I felt like telling her. (That's French for, "We left you with Grandma.") I noticed early on that whenever I went shopping with my father, he suddenly became a bachelor with no family. It was useless to try getting his attention by calling, "Daddy. Daddy! DADDY!!!" Every other man in the store would look up, but not my father, who was intent on whatever he was there for. I finally had to say, "Alec!" if I really wanted to get through to him. It was like once he entered The Store Zone, he had no idea who I was.

Also on the food front, my mother had her own recipe for Toll House Chocolate Chip cookies, and she would bake them by the dozens and dozens at Christmas and throughout the year. They were a special treat and prized by relatives, friends, coworkers and neighbors who might get a tin of them at the holidays. At home, we would eat them until we made ourselves sick, and raved about them anew whenever the latest batch came along. Mom churned them out tirelessly and gave them to her devoted fans with true generosity of spirit, regardless of how much work it was. As for herself, she wasn't much of a cookie eater, and probably wondered what all the fuss was about, when people would go into rhapsodies over these admittedly common treats. This proved our undoing many years later, when she was home alone and looking for a snack, so she pulled one of her own cookies out of the cookie jar, gave it a nibble, and pronounced it inedible. "It's hard!" she wailed. In spite of all our assurances that everybody loved them just the way they were, she refused to ever make them again, sending everyone else into paroxysms of despair, and she remained the only person who didn't like her own chocolate chip cookies.

Cooking was not my mother's only area of expertise, she was artistically creative in many ways, and we all had some of the most inventive Halloween costumes to prove it. We've been bats, little Dutch girls, cowboys, soldiers, geisha girls, ballerinas, brides, angels, squaws and race car drivers. One year, my sister and a neighbor were mashed potatoes and gravy. I once won a contest as a gigantic Halloween candy bag, and I probably still have the transistor radio that was the prize. Nothing stumped her, and everything she worked on was perfect down to the last detail. In the 1960's when "troll" dolls were all the rage, she made tiny Biblical costumes for mine, and I had a Troll Nativity that had to be seen to be believed, and even after they saw it, many people still couldn't believe it. Every year, each high school class put on a program of music and dance, and my mother was up to the challenge, whether it was leopards, scarecrows, ragdolls, horses, or my personal favorite, trees. There was no stopping her.

For as long as I can remember, every year in the spring we put up a big pool in the backyard, and took it down again in the fall. These were no kiddie pools, but 24-feet in diameter with four-foot walls and sloping to 5-feet in the middle. Lesser people than our parents would never consider tackling an operation of this magnitude with 3 small girls, who were not only no help in carrying anything heavy (in fact, we were often more of a hindrance than any sort of help) but also prone to giggling and easily distracted, even at the most critical points of assembly. Inexplicably, after the pool was finally in place, a few weeks later we would go on vacation in the woods for two or three weeks, when you would think we would have stayed home, after all the trouble of putting the darned thing up in the first place. Here again, you have the same three small giggly girls not being much help erecting a 12x12-foot old canvas Army tent, which weighed a ton, plus a 20x20-foot kitchen fly, as well as a caravan of supplies that would have made the Normandy invasion look paltry by comparison. How this massive undertaking was a vacation for my parents, I'll never know.

My father was patient to a fault and was also the resident super hero in our lives. In fact, I wouldn't be here now if he hadn't yanked me out of the undertow at Jones Beach when I was too small to save myself, and my sister Linda can tell the same story about him pulling her out from under a dock when she got caught under there by accident. But what sealed his place in family lore was the year that we went camping as usual, but for the first time with my sister's new contact lenses, which were just coming into vogue in the mid-60's. One day she dropped one in the tent, and it managed to fall between the planks of the platform, and into all the leaves and debris underneath, where it would presumably be lost for all time. Not on my father's watch! He was able to catch a reflection of it by shining a flashlight through the platform, and somehow miraculously, he sifted through all of the rubble under the platform and pulled it out, which is on the order of not only finding a needle in a haystack, but several haystacks. I think a person could legitimately rest on their laurels after that.

On the other hand, the one thing he never could seem to get a handle on was that his daughters would have boyfriends. My sister Linda met a boy named Donald and brought him to the house, and from that day forward, no matter who we met, or what they looked like, every boy that we introduced to our father, he would call him Donald. In retrospect, I realize now that it would have saved a lot of confusion and aggravation if we had just dated boys named Donald, and ignored everyone else while we were growing up.

Speaking of names, I have to mention when I first got my very own car, the purple Gremlin of lore and legend, I had an early fender-bender when I slid through a curve and hit a guard rail. I was fine and the car was fine, although both the front and rear bumpers fell off, since they were the first year they had invented impact-absorbing bumpers, and apparently hadn't worked all the bugs out of that idea yet. My father said that I should bring the car over to the shop and he could put the bumpers back on when he had time, so I did. When I walked into the service area, my father introduced me to one of the mechanics by asking, "Have you met my daughter, 'Crash'?" Thanks a heap. My father liked my Gremlin so much that he bought one for my mother, and although it was newer than mine, and had some other features, it didn't have power steering like mine. One day I borrowed it to run an errand, and while I was driving down a busy street, someone parked at the curb opened their door right in front of me. I turned the steering wheel completely over, and the car went straight as an arrow, narrowly missing the open car door by mere microns. (I always said that driving her car was like wrestling with an elephant.) I pulled over and jumped out of the car, grabbed the offending party by his shirt front, standing on my tip-toes to the extent of my five-foot height, and in the full fury of righteous indignation, I shouted at him: "YOU MORON, DO YOU REALIZE THIS IS MY MOTHER'S CAR???!!!" He must have thought I was a lunatic.

I can't wrap up this send-off for my parents without a send-off story that is truly worthy of the name. My mother belonged to a group of joggers (back in the old days when that was unheard of) and they would run in the park in the morning, but also socialize at other times. Dorothy Lands was one of the joggers, and her birthday was in the summer, so my mother organized a pool party for her at our house and invited all the joggers to attend. The party went off without a hitch and everyone had a great time, except for Dorothy, who had to beg off at the last minute. Not to be daunted, my mother organized a make-up party for another week that Dorothy could make it, and once again, the party was a big hit, and once again, it turned out that Dorothy was unexpectedly unable to attend. After that, it turned into a running joke, where they would have a pool party every week, and take pictures with everyone in the pool holding a big banner that said "Happy Birthday, Dorothy" and Dorothy would be the only one who wasn't there. If she had shown up for that first party, no one would have remembered a thing about it, but instead, it turned into one of our favorite family stories of all time, and remains a cherished memory to this day. There comes a time to all of us when our memories are all that we have to be comforted with, and it's these memories that keep our loved ones alive in our hearts, so let's all be sure to make the most of them.

The Baby Sister

A Piece of Cake

Hello World,

Happy July! While I know that it doesn't seem remotely possible that we could be more than halfway through the year already, that's exactly where we find ourselves, believe that or don't. And this would also be Independence Day weekend, which includes a day off from work for many people, which is enough of a reason to celebrate in my book, that's for sure. July 4th is a lot like Christmas, in that it is celebrated on whatever day of the week that it falls on, but many businesses were closed on Friday in observance of the holiday, which falls on Saturday this year. Around here, that gives our crack Flag Brigade two chances to shine, and so far, they've already done half a good job, by running up the colors on Friday, upstairs and downstairs, and also remembering to take them back inside after dinner. The other half of the job will be on Saturday, weather permitting, and we'll see if they can do the same thing again, and be a star-spangled credit to the neighborhood environment.

Speaking of the neighborhood environment, a couple of times on Walk Group lately, the "group" has been reduced to just Marathon Margie and myself, and she's a neighborly sort of person, so instead of leaving me in the dust with the faster walkers, she stays closer to my own pace, even though she could go much faster on her own. This gives us a chance to chat a bit along the way (although some of us, who look suspiciously like me, are doing more panting and wheezing than chatting) and find out about each other's job, family, church and assorted what-have-you. It didn't take long to discover that she's a girl after my own heart, when we came upon an empty plastic shopping bag on the sidewalk in front of us, and we both made a dive for it. I always try to pick up plastic bags when I find them outside, because I detest seeing them stuck in tree branches everywhere, and Margie is apparently of the same mind. So there we were, not only doing our part to hold up the integrity of Walk Group when everyone else bailed out, as well as improving our health and fitness, but also improving the neighborhood at the same time.

Only the shallow and captious among us would follow a paragraph about improvements with another one about the pastor leaving our church, after a mere 16 years that only felt like 100 years in the salt mines ..... excuse me, I meant to say 16 wonderful years full of inspiration and joy, I'm sure. I think I can safely say that his last sermon was up to his usual standards, with plenty of ..... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ..... I'm sorry, where was I? After the worship service, there was a delightful luncheon downstairs in the fellowship hall, full of enticing treats like fried chicken, pasta salad, beans with bacon, sausage and peppers, baked ziti, 3-bean salad, fried rice, fresh fruit, sweet potato pie, cheese and crackers, roasted vegetables, tossed salad, a cheese platter, and not one, but two different kinds of quiche. Of course, it's a law in this country that if you're going to have an event at a Lutheran church, you must have sheet cake, and we were taking no chances with the Dessert Police, so we had two of them, just to be on the safe side. There were presentations of some special parting gifts, and some people came forward and actually said some nice things about the pastor, after which he stood up to make a few brief remarks in his usual pithy style, and ..... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ..... I'm sorry, where was I? It seemed to me that they were vacuuming the floor and stacking chairs on top of the tables while he was still talking, but I'm sure I must have been too groggy and just imagined that. In any case, it was a lovely farewell, and well attended, which reminds me of a famously apocryphal quip about Louis B. Mayer's funeral: "Give the people what they want, and they'll come out for it."

Our substitute organist for the day was a very nice young woman who doesn't play for us as often as some other people do, but I wanted to make sure she knew that she was welcome to join us downstairs for the luncheon, so I invited her specially and made a point of saying that there would be cake. She declined, saying that she needed to return home quickly for a family obligation. I shook my finger at her and said, "I've always had the feeling that you're not really Lutheran, I mean, if you can walk away from a sheet cake, that tells me something right there!" She laughed.

Meanwhile, not waiting for July to roll along in its own sweet time, the organizers of the 86th annual Round Hill Highland Games decided to get a jump on things and have them on the last Saturday in June instead, once again at the lovely and scenic Cranbury Park in Norwalk, Connecticut. We were there as usual, and even got to the shuttle bus location bright and early, since we knew where it was and had already programmed it into our GPS device for good measure. We bumped into our friends in the lot and rode over to the park with them, where our first order of business was checking out the gift shop, which we had spotted last year for the first time, but forgot to go and see it before we left. This year, we made a bee-line for it as soon as we arrived, only to find it closed and locked up tight, in spite of the large OPEN sign on the door, which made us annoyed on top of being disappointed. But there's nothing like the sound of bagpipes to clear away the cobwebs, so we hurried off to enjoy the many-splendored extravaganza that is the Scottish Games, in all of its full regalia and high volume spectacle.

The opening ceremonies include a parade of all the pipe bands through the center field, with their dashing pipe majors and clan banners, which is a stirring experience for both sight and sound. (Although personally, I would have all of the bands draw lots, so that only one of them would play Scotland the Brave, instead of 12 or 15 of them playing it, including 3 or 4 in a row, which even I would have to consider as too much of a good thing.) The food vendors are usually the same from year to year, but our fruit smoothie purveyor was notably missing, which was unfortunate, although we were glad to see The Rolling Cones ice cream truck, which is always a welcome treat in hot weather, and the Games are often the hottest place we go all year. A new addition this time around was CC's Spiral Potatoes, which are fried potato slices that come in regular and sweet potato, and we found them deliciously different. It would be pointless to mention that they would have been even better with our usual fruit smoothie, and more's the pity, I'm sure.

On the mercantile front, the program listed nine vendors that would be selling their wares in tents on the other side of the center field, but it didn't seem that many to me. In fact, I found the pickings so slim that I wasn't even able to find something to buy as a souvenir, and I can't ever remember that happening before, in all the years that we've been going. The program helpfully lists all the vendors, along with a description and contact information, so later I thought that I might try their web sites and get myself a late souvenir remotely instead. Not so fast! At first, what appears to be their web site address is only true for a few of the vendors, while the others list their email address instead, thanks not. Even our friends, who usually splurge on foreign delicacies that are otherwise unavailable here, found little to tempt them this time around. We wondered if perhaps moving the Games earlier by a week made them conflict with another event on the Celtic festival circuit, and perhaps the rest of our usual vendors had chosen to attend the other venue at the same time instead. It's always interesting to see the different items that are available, but this time it was certainly less entertaining than we usually find it.

Speaking of entertainment, it was a pleasant surprise to find the Celtic fusion band Mac Talla M'or back once again, to thrill the crowds with their rollicking blend of guitars, percussion, soaring vocals and swirling bagpipes, of all things. This family band is a favorite at festivals all over, and I thought they might have gotten too big for the likes of Round Hill, but there they were, and we were glad of it, because live music in a tent is a treat that is all too rare for us these days. The tent was also being used at other times for country dancing, so there was a handy dance floor in front of the band, and some toddlers took advantage of this to prance around while the band was playing, which managed to be entertaining in its own way, while somehow being exhausting at the same time. For me, the highlight of their set was their unique and thunderous version of Scotland the Brave, played at full throttle and take-no-prisoners intensity, which is not for the faint-hearted, or those with sensitive hearing. This is a special favorite of mine, since I heard them do it last year at the Games, and although I have all four of their music CD's, it does not appear on any of them, so I was glad for a chance to hear it again. I suppose they might have tried to record it, but kept blowing the windows out of the studio, and finally gave it up as a lost cause.

There were also the usual competitions in highland dancing, piping and drums, plus races, tug-of-war and the heavyweight sports of hammer throw, stone put and caber toss. Apparently there are dancers and athletes who travel around to compete in these events all over, and you find the winners coming from places as far afield as Savannah, Georgia -- Blue Bell, Pennsylvania -- East Sandwich, Massachusetts and Ontario, Canada. Well, they're certainly not coming for the food, spiral potatoes or not, and in fact, is exactly the kind of thing that makes me wonder about people with too much time on their hands. Speaking of food, once we had enough of the pomp and pageantry of the Games, we climbed back aboard the shuttle bus to our cars, and headed off for the nearest Denny's in Danbury, which can only be considered "near" for desperate people who have no Denny's in their area, and look for any opportunity to visit one. Our indulgent friends agreed to guide us there, in spite of the distance, and we all enjoyed a hearty meal, including dessert, which was exquisitely decadent. Although we were oblivious to the staff yawning and pointing to their watches, we finally had to leave when the cleaning crew started sweeping up and wiping down the tables, which left us no choice but to head for home at long last. We were glad to have another glorious highland fling in the park, with all the bagpipes that anyone could hope for, and even the weather cooperated for a change, which I suppose only goes to prove that even our old nemesis Comrade Mischka knows better than to mess around with a bunch of guys wearing skirts and throwing around 150-pound tree trunks.

Elle