Wendover - It’s a Dry Heat

Many, many years ago when dirt was still young, I flew in the first operational F-16 squadron at Hill AFB, UT. This was the early 1980s when we were at “peace” but the Cold War was the Thing. I was in the 4th Tactical Fighter Squadron (4TFS), the Fighting Fuujins. The airplanes we flew smelled like new cars and the performance…well, zowie! We were the new kids on the block as far as fighters. Rumor was the F-16 performance was so good it jeopardized future production of other fighters, like the F-15, so we were told NOT to toot our own horns or be arrogant or trash talk anyone. Right. Our fighter wing and squadron had deployed to Norway and to a competition in England but we weren’t really able to show our stuff in the U.S. The biggest simulated combat training were the Red Flag Exercises, massive air-to-ground and air-to-air exercises held at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, NV several times a year. We were aching to go but didn’t get a slot for months after we went operational.

At last we were assigned a slot in July. July! And unlike the hundreds of other aircrews, support crews, and airplanes, we did not get to deploy to Nellis. No…we were deploying to Wendover Airport, UT. Now…there’s not much at Wendover Airport. That’s an understatement. Wendover sits at the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats 120 miles or so west of Salt Lake City. It’s where the Enola Gay practiced some of its bombing procedures in World War II. But the base closed decades before we went. All that remained were a few buildings to support the still functioning airport, an old hanger occupied by someone off limits for us to contact, and a few dozen old barracks mostly falling apart at the seams. Why, do you ask, is there a functioning airport in the middle of nowhere. Well, Wendover the town, is divided by the Utah and Nevada state line and there are many casinos on the Nevada side. The interstate on Friday nights use to be a solid line of headlights going from Salt Lake City to Wendover and the reverse of that on Sundays. I digress.

An Army combat engineering team deployed to Wendover to bring the airfield up to standards for the F-16 and as much as possible for the aircrews and support teams. They put up a huge tent which was a chow hall, clinic and operations center. It may have had air conditioning, I don’t think so. The Army cooked us “Hot A’s” in the morning and at night. In the morning, they gave us box lunches, I don’t remember how we stored them, coolers probably. Maintenance had tent hangers sort of and huge fuel bladders.

The Army team fixed the barracks by patching the floors, hanging curtains on the doorways, putting fans in the dozen or so rooms we occupied but…no air conditioning. They refurbished an old swimming pool and tapped into the VERY deep well to fill it. The water was ice cold, actually too cold to enjoy but everybody had to try it. Once.

We hadn’t been allowed to drive our cars and so were on foot. We could walk to the casinos but only did that a couple of times in the two weeks I was there. It was better just to sit out in the cooling night desert air, discuss the day’s victories, and look at the stars and moon. And drink beer. It was an awesome trip…the full moon this week took me back.

Piano…And Me

Next to the James at Berkley Plantation

Sitting on a bench like the one in the image above is fraught with peril…memories come tumbling down, sometimes so fast they don’t stick. I sat on this bench next to the James and memories did come rushing in but, unusually, one did stick: me and my journey with the piano. Starting at the beginning…

One hundred and thirty years ago when people wanted music for entertainment, they had to make that music, no boom boxes, portable radios, AirPods, etc. Look at 1920s high school photos, images of young adults, family gatherings, etc., and you’ll note many people played saxophones, drums, pianos, accordions, all sorts of instruments. Small groups would form to play at dances, festivals and everywhere people gathered. At the heart of this musical ubiquity was the piano, pianos were everywhere. Especially in my family. My great grandparents, on my father’s side, had divorced sometime around 1900, a rare thing in those days. To live, my great grandmother was the “Women’s Dean” at Springfield Normal College in Springfield, a tiny town in South Dakota. Women’s Dean meant she was the house mother to young women in Summit Hall at the school. She taught piano to many of the students, including my grandmother who also became a piano teacher. And that’s where my story starts.

When my family visited my grandparents when I was very young, we’d often listen to my grandma play the piano and sing. We lived six blocks apart so visited quite often. Piano playing in their house was a regular thing, especially during the holidays. When I was 9 my parents bought a “big” house (1,000 sq feet) and my grandmother gave her piano to us. Horror of horrors, I knew what was coming since neither my mom nor my dad played the piano. I was right, shortly after we moved in, “Piano lessons for Lee.”

Oh, the humanity. I did not deserve this! I was new in the neighborhood and the block was filled with kids my age. There was a tree strip at the end of the block, a river just a few blocks away, wide streets for baseball practice, a huge park and playground just blocks away, and so much more. Oh. My. God. A fifth grade boy’s dream. But, not for me.

My grandmother did not want to be my teacher which probably kept our relationship healthy but she did have a recommendation. I’ll call her “Mrs. G.” Now I am sure that Mrs. G was a great person, loved by her neighbors, her family, and her other students. She is probably a bright star in their universe of memories…but not to me. To me, she was a black hole that sucked all the fun out of the world. Well, at least my world.

None of the music was fun. They were called “Handel Exercises” and were meant to be done over and over and over again. Mrs. G sat next to me, encouraging and correcting, all to the time of that infernal metronome…tick, tick, tick. A sound that still brings back those months of fruitless labor. Mrs. G would have me curling my fingers, “Relax!” she’d say as I pounded away on some song from a thousand years ago. Tick. Tick. Tick. And, oh. The performances.

Every once in a while Mrs. G would talk one of the parents into hosting a small recital in their homes so we could play in front of others. Really. I could barely stand to play in front of myself.

And then, the worst. The annual recital. Each of us was expected to play at least two songs in front of all of her students and their parents in the main hall of Huron College. Hall. College. Audience. Not a secret, this was not a thing I wanted to do. However, the fifth grade me got no vote on the matter and so wrapping myself in the cloak of sullenness, off I went. Tick. Tick. Tick. Oh…and one of my songs was a duet with Mrs. G.

Rehearsal. Intimidating. I walked to the college, into the main building and found the auditorium hall. It was easily the biggest room I’d ever been in. Tiny by any standard today, but I led a sheltered life in my early years. And then, the next horror, two grand pianos on the stage. So there I was, standing on the stage, looking out at hundreds of empty seats, imagining them filled with music critics, and wondering what a grand piano was like to play. And naturally, it was different. And it sounded different. Played. Sounded. Different. Tick. Tick. Tick.

In her home, we’d practiced our duet, me and Mrs G. She sat next to me and played the high keys while I played the lows. At the rehearsal, she sat down at the other grand piano and tells me that she will be playing one piano and I the other. O.M.G. I counted the keys. My solo song was “Clair de Lune.” I don’t remember the duet. Of course, no sheet music allowed, all memory.

I’m pretty sure I blacked out during the actual performance, I don’t remember any of it.

Of course, I’d often battle my parents about my fears and loathings. The commitment was awful, I was forced to practice every single weekday after school for an hour. I could hear Ev and the other boys playing 500 in the streets. Every day was misery. Every single day. My mom and grandma would watch…”Curl your fingers! Play with flair, like Liberace!” I’m guessing that’s when I started grinding my teeth.

Sometime in the 6th grade my unhappiness and seething anger boiled over into a confrontation with my parents. Had they taken piano? What did they expect me to do with it? I was missing out on my childhood. And on and on and on. Tick. Tick. Tick. At last they agreed that if I would do one more recital the following year, they would honor my wishes, whatever they might be. Of course, they thought I would have a lightning bolt of inspiration and continue. But for me, it was a gradual loosening of the shackles. I struggled but made it through to the next recital. Again, I have no memories past walking into the Hall.

So now, sixty plus years later? Well, I’d learned to read music. Although, I think the bass clef is an alien interruption. I played guitar in the Bird Dogs, a reasonably successful garage band in the 60s. I played in a folk group at college. I can sit at our piano (oh yes, we have one) and play chord progressions in A, G, and C. So, I guess I got something out of those two years of misery. And this story. But…

I never asked any of our children to learn the piano. Now we have a grandchild! Tick. Tick. Tick.

(C)aged

Caged in a tunnel. That’s how I felt as I walked the boardwalk at Tuckahoe Creek Park, a wetlands with access only on the boardwalk. The boardwalk was wide, maybe 8 feet, with metal barred handrails, the vertical metal bars like those you see in jails. I’d seen only one bird, a small white heron which turned out to be a juvenile blue heron. I thought my walkabout was a bust and then I ran into another photographer, Bob. I’d guessed him to be a birder or wildlife photographer…or both…based on the bazooka like lens he wielded.

We chatted for several minutes, he showed me some of the images on his website, MomentNTime, many of which were taken on the very boardwalk where we were standing. He tells me that the animals get close, so close that he’s gotten some incredible shots of eagles, hawks, herons, otters, beavers, and more. All you need is patience, he says, and I know I’m in trouble.

He believes the animals have come to count on the barred railings to keep the humans caged, no threat to them. Because we’re not a threat, they come very close, sometimes just a few feet away so I know this long lens is probably a zoom. I’m not a birder, I take the occasional bird photo but I don’t have the equipment or passion. But I do enjoy seeing other’s work, his images of the park are quite amazing. He also provided some suggestions for other local parks with wildlife and water. My walkabout was no longer a bust. A green heron flew over us and landed in a dead tree just a few feet away. He posed for quite a while so I did his bidding and made this image. Not a bird image, but for me, an emotive image.

On the way back to the car I puzzled about mankind and nature. Was the cage of the boardwalk to keep humans from falling into or wandering around in the wetlands, or, was it to give the animals a view of mankind in a cage. Hmmm. Maybe both. The image below is through the railing.

Caged. Maybe. But, I enjoyed my brief captivity in nature’s zoo.

Friends & Father Time

River Friends Next to the James

True friends. It’s hard for me to make them, I’m a closet introvert and feel very guilty about my inability to make friends. Until the late 90s, friends came and went…slowly…one-at-a-time. In the late 90s/early 00s I stumbled into a group of soulmates but even this group drifted into the fog of time and distance. We individually get together once in a great while and a small subset of us meet weekly on Zoom. But for the most part, the friends of my early life are gone.

All told, until the 1990s group, I had only eight friends…and literally, one-at-a-time. I’m married to one of them, thank God. Two are dead, Four come out of the fog once in a great while and two are better off left in the fog.

As for the 90s group, when we do connect it’s like lightning, we’re transported back into time and then magically today melds with yesterday. Time and distance fade away, only incidental to the story. We all seem to reset and synchronize our emotions and personalities and celebrate each other and the group.

It’s dark…early in the morning as I’m thinking and writing this post, Venus is quickly fading into the rising sunshine. I imagine Father Time and My Mortality sitting at the table with me. Father Time is tapping his wrist, My Mortality shaking his head. Maybe I should call one of my friends. No. I don’t want to be a bother.

Wisdom?

Hollywood Cemetery

The days are shorter and sitting on the porch I think to myself the sun is more bashful. In fact, it’s pitch black. My electric lantern is glowing softly; in its light I see I’m guarded by my cat, Mr Beans, who is sitting like a gargoyle on a French cathedral. This time of day (night?) my mind wanders and randomly stops on a word or an event or a person or something inspiring me to jot down some notes, today’s word is “wisdom.” I should go to Webster’s Dictionary but it’s still dark and I don’t want to break the mood with a bright screen. Yep, these posts almost always start on paper. Imagine if you will, me hunched over my notebook with a lantern and a cat monitoring the words flowing out of the business end of my ballpoint pen. I digress.

Wisdom. I’ve heard and read stories of Older Folks, like me, imparting wisdom to the Youngers. I’m not sure that’s a thing anymore. In truth, I’m not sure what wisdom really is. Telling a child not to touch a hot stove? No, that’s not wisdom, that’s common sense.

I paused my writing. The clouds had parted and the dark pink sky highlighted a very bright Venus, the Morning Star. I turned off my lantern to enjoy the planet’s light. The sun eventually consumed Venus’s shine and I came back to earth. Back to…

Wisdom. I close my eyes and see youth sitting next to elders. The elders speak words of knowledge, experience, and intuition; intersections of story, time, observation, and emotion. I wonder if our culture is no longer concerned with the wisdom of past generations. I don’t think we have a deep conversation or connection with the land, the people around us, or a common way of life. Is that a bad thing? Well, we have to work for a living. We don’t have to care about the earth or each other. Like the apocalyptical saying, “It is what it is.” Easy, peasy.

Perhaps our culture equates wisdom with wealth. Hmmm, well, sort of makes sense. Sycophants all sitting at the feet of a patriarch (no women allowed, of course) hoping for bits of wisdom. Property and money oozing through our legal system from generation to generation growing and shrinking on the wisdom of the holders. What a cynic I must be. That certainly can’t be our way of life. Right?

I look up, still no full sun but the sky is bright. I can’t see Venus anymore. And no one for me to tell about her.

Mr. Beans guarding me from hummingbird attacks

Fireflies

Catching fireflies to put in a mason jar was a thing when I was young. Using a nail and a rock, I’d punch holes into the jar’s lid and consider that the entire life giving effort needed to keep my fireflies alive. Sadly, most times the little creatures stopped flashing and settled to the bottom. I don’t remember but have a hope that I or my mom would free them before they died of starvation or loneliness.

Fireflies are like old man memories floating and shining in the darkness, my mind’s aurora borealis. Shimmering waves of fire weave in and out of the dark spaces in my head and usually defy my attempts to put them in a jar. (I’m reminded of Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle”) Memories close by seem to burn brighter. Far away memories are dim but sometimes get caught when I’m triggered by something I see. This weekend one of those fireflies slowed and spent time in my bottle.

I went to the Richmond Railroad Museum and walked through an old caboose on display in the yard. The walk through kicked off a trip down the rabbit hole of when I grew up in small town South Dakota. When I was very young, huge trains stopped at the busy station and kept Huron connected with the rest of the world. In those days most trains had cabooses and the cabooses had little cupolas jutting out of the roofline. In the cupola were seats for the brakeman or conductor, a lookout where they could view the entire train as well as the world around.

I’m told the ride in the caboose was rough sometimes causing injury to the occupants who weren’t paying close enough attention and sometimes even to those who were experienced and careful. The car was light and at the end of the locomotive’s whip. As I sat in the car I imagined the shaking, the clackety-clack of the rails, the dust and dirt kicked up by the dozens of cars in front, and the glory of sitting in the cupola and watching the train’s progress.

The image below looks into the heart of the caboose, the cupola in the top left, a bench that must have been a challenge to sit in, and the hard metal of everything, everything. I thought of the heat, the roar and shaking, the dirt. Where did they sweep the grit? Open the back door? Virginia’s dirt swept into Maryland’s landscape?

Oh well, I think I’ll let this memory out of the bottle and back into the wild of my memory’s youth.

Once Upon a Time…

Headstone at St John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond

Once upon a time… Is there a phrase with as much magic? Wikipedia tells me the phrase has been in use since 1380! Most of the tales starting with “Once upon a time…” ended with, “And they all lived happily ever after.”

I’m sure my parents read me stories with that beginning, but my memory of those words is of Walt Disney starting his television adventures with a very caring, “Once upon a time…” Those words got me ready for adventure, mystery, and feeling good. Of course, I didn’t know Walt Disney so I have to use my imagination about what kind of man he must have been. I think he’d be okay with that. Disney’s imagination kickstarted the Happiest Place on Earth in Los Angeles and an even larger destination in Orlando. Once upon a time, all were welcome there. I think all are still welcome inside all the Disney Parks but my impression is Disney World is getting to be like West Berlin in the Cold War.

I walked about yesterday at St John’s Episcopal Church, the site where Patrick Henry made his inspirational “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech. Or at least that’s what he supposedly said, no exact record of the speech was written down at the time it was given. Ah well… He made the speech to inspire others to support a war against England and what he considered the tyranny of taxation without representation, like in D.C. now.

I finished my walkabout at Libby Hill overlooking Richmond and an old smokestack, “Lucky Strike.”

And they all lived happily ever after.

Richmond Skyline

Old Men

I’ve been here and there in the years I’ve had. Some of the “here” have been really good and even some of the “there” was okay. But not all of the time. Much of the time I’ve had was spent racing around, what I used to call “Chasing the Dragon.” I should have been wiser and walked a bit more slowly through life. Too late now. Am I wiser? Hmmm. Even if I was a bit wiser, would anyone notice? Or would it be humoring the old man? Hah! That reminded me of a poem by my friend Ted King, a stalwart inhabitant of Minnesota’s cold clime and a citizen of Mary Tyler Moore’s happy place, Minneapolis. Without further BS, I bring you Ted’s poem (with his permission):

Old Men

Went for coffee today at the local shop.
Guess who was there,
at two o’clock in the afternoon.
Old men.
Old men like me.

Old men don’t order a double mocha iced latte fizz.
They order coffee. Plain and simple.
Thank you. Here’s a nice tip.
Next!
Old men are easy to please.

Old men like to take their time.
Partly because they can and partly because they have to.
Their hearts and backs are broken from years of trying too hard.
They need time to heal.
Even though they know they’ll never heal.
Nobody heals. You just get used to it.

Old men also need time
to re-train their brains.
So many years of thinking and worrying
about things they now know were not as important
as they were led to believe.

And they know it’s finally OK
to sheathe their swords.
There’s nothing so relaxing as a quiet libido.
But though they’re not the athletes they once were,
old men still have ways of making you smile.

Most importantly,
old men have the time and space to
actually know a few important things.
Finally.

They don’t talk about them, though.
Not much anyway.
Old men know
there are some things you just can’t know
until you’re an old man.
Like me.

Poem by Ted King, from his book, “Fresh Dirt” Art by Tom Cassidy

Salt Air - Setsunai

This week’s workshop asked us to look into our image archives and find something “Setsunai,” that is, an emotion and awareness acknowledging all things are temporary. This image of a woman watching the ocean even as it begins to surround her evoked that emotion in me. And I know even if I go back to this place, it won’t be the same. An example of setsunai is spending time with a friend you haven’t seen in a long, long time knowing you will part again soon. The time you’re spending together is full of happiness and yet tinged with awareness of loss or pain.

The purpose of the “archives exercise” demonstrated we are already making images with these concepts, just not consciously. The second half of this session is to go out and purposefully find images with setsunai.

It’s not all about the images, it’s about looking at life, people, things as well. You can’t help but know most are only temporarily here and might even show signs of fading. So…my theme…grasp the moment! Feel the pain of eventual loss or change but love what is…now. Setsunasa.

I’d Forgotten the Stars

Normally at 4:30 I sit on my screened porch and watch the sun come up. This morning I was determined to see the sky, the crescent moon, the stars, and there was a rumor of a meteor shower. I made coffee, left the lights off, and went out to the deck. With my camera.

I fiddled with the focus, the f-stop, the…Holy Moses, what in the world am I doing? I stopped, sat down with my coffee, leaned back and immersed myself into the sky.

“Where have you been?” I thought to the sky, knowing full well I was the one that had gone missing. Seven and a half decades of looking, not seeing, a trend I’m trying to reverse, or change. Crescent moon, winking stars, early, early glow of a summer sun. A perfect Petri dish for my imagination and memories.

When I was in fifth grade I’d sleep on the grass next to the trees in the backyard, stare at the stars, wonder what was out there, and if I’d ever get to space. Years later on a whirlwind camping trip with two of my college roommates, the three of us camped next to a Saskatchewan cornfield and studied the sky knowing Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon. Way after cornfields, I lived in Iceland and when night finally appeared, I was awestruck at the magic of aurora borealis. But then, the stars left me.

I took things for granted. People, places, things, relationships, well, pretty much everything. Looking, not seeing. If you live in the mountains, majesty is your norm. Next to the ocean…salt’s probably in your blood. Great Plains…space is the way of your world. City, humming 24x7. I lived all that. Emotionally expensive. Physically draining. Exciting. Breathtaking. Depressing. I began to evolve some 30 years ago with the help and companionship of my bride. I’m still working on it. I’m better, but still, I’d forgotten the stars.

Until today. It’s a good day.

The image is the one I took before it dawned on me (is that a pun?) what I should be doing. I’m not an astral photographer and don’t have the fancy equipment that keeps up with earth’s rotation, it’s all I can do to keep up. That’s why the stars aren’t “sharp,” but they were when I was seeing them.