Dream Boat

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Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Big Jim were all my heroes when I was a boy. I lived vicariously through Mark Twain and his characters, reading his many books much to the chagrin of Mrs. Mc Mahon, my fourth-grade teacher and perhaps more importantly, a customer of my growing lawn service. Later in life, I visited his Hartford home and the office where he published in Virginia City, Nevada.

One Sunday afternoon, while uncrumpling the many dollar bills I had stuffed into the damp front pocket of my Levis, my mother was sitting idly in her recliner puffing one Pall Mall after another. When my count reached fifty-five, she said “What did you just say?” “Fifty-five”, I repeated. “Did you say fifty-five dollars?” she asked again. “Yes, fifty-five dollars. That is how much I earned this weekend.” She leaned back in the old cigarette scarred recliner, threw her shoulders back and shook her head simultaneously blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling and mumbled, “Son, do you know you have earned more this weekend than I took home after taxes and all the payroll deductions this past week?” She worked as an entry level clerk in the federal bankruptcy court and told me years later that her highest annual earnings year was twenty-five hundred dollars. The irony was that her second husband was a wealthy older man who had offered her a Lincoln Continental, a beautiful home on a fashionable Miami Beach street and a lifestyle of the rich and famous…country club, bridle trails and a private plane. I’m not sure I ever understood as I watched her struggle with night school, entry level jobs and deprivation, but she never whined about her life and got up every day and went to work. No matter the bottle of wine she consumed the night before. She was a remarkable woman. I concluded later that one can take the girl off the farm but can’t always take the farm out of the girl.

But I digress. I dreamed of a life on the water, any body of water; a river, a lake or even a large swampy area would do. The Miami River divided my small community of Miami Springs from Hialeah. The “Springs” began as a high brow golf course community which was developed by aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss and became a bedroom community supporting greater Miami. Early in the nineteenth century, steamboats would travel westward, divide the Everglades and ultimately arrive on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico providing low-cost passage for people, animals and cargo. In my youth one would only see an occasional open pleasure boat and negros hovering along its banks with cane poles and cork bobbers fishing for catfish my mother said white folks would never eat. “They live in the mud,” she would say, “and are bottom feeders.” I would join them every chance I got and sit under the bridge listening to the clackety clack of cars passing overhead avoiding the brutal afternoon sun. I would catch an occasional bream that I would have to throw back because I never learned how to clean them. My mother wouldn’t have cooked them anyway. One day, fishing on the banks of the river at a fish camp at the twenty-mile bend, my mother was sitting on a low stool reading when one of my fellow fishermen pals knocked her flying off of the stool. When she regained her composure, the assailant pointed to a four-foot water moccasin that was slithering away at full speed. He had been wrapped around the stool legs just inches from her calf.

One afternoon after school, I threw down my pole and climbed a wooden fence that protected a marina on the Miami River, well not a marina but a rickety private home with a tie down area on its sandy bank where two older lapstrake wooden, brass and teak sailing yachts were moored with a faded decaying sign in front of the structure that advertised “Boats for Sale”. Finding the house dark and quiet, I removed my shoes and quietly slipped aboard the larger of the two boats and discovered the hatch unlocked. No sooner than I went below, I heard a shrill feminine voice shout, “What the hell are you doing kid? This is private property; you have no business here. Do you want me to call the police?” “No ma’am,” I stammered as I poked my head out of the hatch and said something unintelligible while she looked me over to determine if I was a threat. When she saw I had taken my shoes off to board and was a mere five-foot nothing and after I had confessed my love of boats and sailing, she came aboard and offered to show me around. She explained why the boat had a center board trunk, its purpose, turned on the radio and allowed me to listen to a little of the chatter and offered me a chart of Biscayne Bay to look at. “This”, she said, “is a lapstrake yawl that was built in 1942 by a famous boat builder whose name I don’t recall. Yawl means the mizzen mast, one of two masts, is centered behind the wheel. The boat behind us is a sloop and is referred to as a sloop because it only has one mast.” She explained starboard and port and smiled before she added, “Listen, I have to get to work, but you are welcome to come back sometime. Just don’t sneak over the fence and make sure I am here. My husband who is a retired Navy chief and I operate the marina, but he works in Hialeah for the city and is only here on weekends.”

As I reminisce, I have come to realize that a woman selling sailboats in a secluded and obscure bend in the murky river, was probably happy to see a kid snooping around who not unlike herself had a love of boats and all things water. The woman and I spent about thirty minutes together during my first visit. I don’t remember her name or if she even told me her name, but I promised to return and assured her I would not sneak aboard again.

That spring, I visited the marina several times and only once was it locked up tight with no hope of entry. I honored my pledge to not climb the fence. I noticed the original sloop tied up behind the yawl was gone and a large cabin cruiser was in its place. Upon my next visit the only boat tied up was the original yawl which evidently hadn’t sold. The sloop, the woman told me, belonged to a customer and had only been in the yard for repair.

As I write this, it comes to mind that it is a small wonder I am here today writing this account. The fifties were a safer, quieter time and although I rode my bike without a helmet, swam in the reptile infested canals, skated the broken sidewalks on metal skates screwed to my shoe soles with a key I kept around my neck on a string, brushed my teeth with toothpaste stored in a lead container, drank out of the hose bib, hitch hiked all over South Florida, swiped the used cars off the back lot of a local car dealer, I somehow managed to survive without any broken limbs or jail time. On hot nights I climbed the privacy fence surrounding the Green Mansions pool after midnight for a cool swim. I once found myself confronted by a volunteer Virginia Gardens cop after he told a friend and I to “Get in the cruiser.” We had been reading comic books in the local drugstore, much to the chagrin of the new owner. I entered the car while my friend ran. When the cop gave chase and left the car door open, I made for the hills. Well, there were no hills in Miami, but you get my drift. One night, hitch hiking home from the movies, the same friend and I mistakenly accepted a ride with four disreputable men who offered us center seats in their old Ford. Soon after entering and moments after recognizing the error of our ways, a red light lit up the car interior and the same cop and a partner stopped the car we were riding in, ordered us out and said, “You boys get your asses home. Those four gents are not some of the communities finest.” Fortunately, the cop that had confronted my friend and I a few weeks before was talking to the occupants and didn’t recognize us. I quit hitchhiking for at least twenty-four hours.

The last time I visited the marina, the woman didn’t take me aboard, but said she had wondered if I might return. She told me she and her husband owned a small sailing dingy that had been in storage for a few years in a field a few blocks away. She offered it to me explaining it might need a little repair, but it may be a way for me to live my dream of learning to sail. The following weekend, I convinced my mother to help me locate the prize and assist me with my salvage effort. I was encouraged as we found the open field quickly, exactly where the marina lady told me it would be. The field was open with high weeds, occupied by the skeletons of several old boats, and an assortment of nautical detritus. We soon found my prize after a few short minutes, on its keel, half filled with green water and tadpoles partially covered with torn canvas. It was lapstrake with a faded mahogany transom and a mast and boom securing the remains of the canvas. It was clear it had been there quite some time, but that didn’t discourage me. I knew this would be the perfect craft for me in spite of my mother’s misgivings and could envisage myself sailing the expanse of Biscayne Bay with my best friend Rowser. Rowser was my forty-pound Shepherd-Chow mix. He had been my constant companion since rescuing him from a squiggling urine-soaked cardboard box and mass of whining siblings five years before.

At six pounds per gallon, it took both of our strength to upset the boat and remove the green water and half-grown frogs. When we did, we saw there was a hole in the canvas covered bottom about the size of a man’s hand. Not deterred, I convinced my mother to help me drag the gem toward her new station wagon. Just as I lowered the tailgate, from somewhere behind me, came a rough masculine voice exclaiming, “What the hell do you two think you are doing?” A scruffy looking, bearded and tattooed vagrant with ‘Popeye’ arms screeched again asking in an equally loud voice, what the hell we were doing, while concluding with “That’s my damn boat, ain’t your’n! Put it back.” Discretion being the better part of valor, that is exactly what we did. The two men who had ogled my pretty mother and helped drag the boat part of the way, quickly vanished and we stood face to face with a large, angry man. I tried to explain that the marina lady said I could have the boat, but the man sputtered something obscene and said, “Get the hell out of here, that woman promised the boat to me.” As we hurried away in the station wagon with our tails between our legs, I watched in the rearview mirror as the grizzled old seaman stroked the craft as if to say, “Boy, that was close, glad I was able to save you girl.”

I never visited the marina again and while this is not my only sea story, I did ultimately go on to learn to sail and have been blessed to have crossed the ‘Devils Triangle’ several times without incident…well, maybe one small incident that I’ll save for another time.

Westward Ho

We married and within thirty days were on the road to Colorado where I had been accepted at Colorado State University to finish my degree. I had served in the Air Force, after leaving home at fifteen. My new bride had spent her last year of high school living with neighbors following the transfer of her father for the fourth time. We thought we were quite worldly. Upon graduation, she rejected a marriage proposal and worked briefly in retail. She was soon accepted for Eastern Airlines stewardess training in Miami Springs, Florida. Miami was my first stop after leaving a missile base and the horrid, bitter cold winter weather in Wyoming. Following my future brides training, she took to the skies while I struggled to balance a full time job, college and dating. I slept very little but always came fully awake when I saw her. We met, I took her sailing on beautiful Biscayne Bay on an uncles forty foot sailboat. I fell hard. After that day, at times I would meet myself coming and going.

One night after an especially long day, she called and said”Get over here, I need you”, and hung up! I raced over to her apartment and found a hulking 240 pound, six foot high school wrestling coach intent on her rewarding him for treating several of the girls lounging around the pool to a bucket of chicken. I launched my one hundred and sixty pound skinny recent warrior self into her apartment on the third floor, got in his face, and he backed down. Leaving the apartment soon after, I looked over the rail at the pool and its concrete surround and thought, Whew, thats a flight I don’t want to take!

I realized how vulnerable I was after hanging up on her for some inane reason. I called back within ten minutes to apologize and ask her out the next night. She replied, “Sorry, I have a date.” To make it worse, I learned that her prospective date, a young Ensign, was taking her to a formal Coast Guard Officers mess. I had been a lowly Sergeant in the Air Force when I separated just months earlier. Hers was a glamorous job where she was surrounded by pilots, many I heard were promiscuous and successful men from every walk of life. I didn’t want to lose this girl when in the past I had really had no interest in a permanent relationship. Flying was more limited in those days to the affluent business traveler or pleasure seeker.

One time, after returning from a long trip, one of her roommates informed me she had been asked out by a Las Vegas performer. I was still reeling from the two dozen red roses sent by a former suitor that blocked the entry to her apartment one night when we returned from an exciting night at the library. I had been a security guard at the airline training school when we first met but as quickly as the powers that be discovered I was a youthful, virile male they decided I would be better suited for spending my nights in a bank and a geriatric grandfather given the opportunity to bed check the girls. I’ve had a few disappointments in life and this was certainly one of them.

After we married, our trip to Colorado was uneventful. It was exciting for me to watch her gleeful expression upon seeing the snow capped Rockies in the distance for the first time. She had never been west of Chicago and wasn’t entirely certain I hadn’t been lying about the mountains.

Once I graduated from college, I took a job I shouldn’t have. I was soon “let go” and quickly joined a national insurance company as an underwriter and outside representative. Aspiring to be a “Captain of Industry”, we accepted a transfer and a walkup flat outside of Newark, New Jersey. The apartment had no air conditioning. It was in an ethnic neighborhood so crowded, I could have climbed into the next door neighbor’s apartment through the bathroom window. Every sound at night was magnified, and I mean every sound.

Following a couple of years training, I was offered an opportunity in Seattle, Washington. We jumped at it. My native New Jersey boss who had never been out of the county, asked “Don’t you want to think about it? Think about what?”, I asked. “My wife is already mentally enrolling our daughter in school.”

I sold our small wooden sailboat I’d never been able to put in the water. My employer hired a moving company and loaded what little furniture and personal effects we owned into the very front cavity of a sixteen wheeler and we struck out towards the west.

I had to give up my full sized company provided automobile so it fell upon our two year old Volkswagen Beetle to become a beast of burden. We loaded our one year old in the far back cavity just above the engine, and our three year old into a flimsy car seat with a fold down table and restraint that wouldn’t have protected a rag doll had we had an accident over the next several thousand miles. Our luggage adorned the rooftop.

Off we went with a stop in Buffalo, New York to visit my new in-laws and get the fish-eye from my wary father-in-law. Then it was off across the country with the accelerator on the floor the entire way. Did I say the bug held not only two children, one in diapers, a twenty pound terrier (if you know terriers, you’ll understand), two parakeets in a small cage with what we hoped were enough diapers, bird and dog food to last a week. We also had an assortment of jackets and warmer clothing as we knew the weather would vary, as well as an assortment of houseplants that still are surviving fifty-seven years later. Piece of cake, right?

We were young and enthusiastic and starting on a new adventure. Caution was not in our vocabulary. After all, we thought, if we could leave Miami in a ten year old Studebaker Lark with the floor so rusty we were nearly asphyxiated, we could survive anything in Germany’s “peoples car”.

We made it to Rock Springs, Wyoming in blistering heat and pulled into a third rate motel just before dark. My pretty wife hadn’t spoken a word since leaving Cheyenne and we hadn’t been married long enough for me to detect a look that means death if I opened my mouth. Once I returned from the motel office with the room key, she snatched from my hand, slammed the car door, still without a word, sprinted to the room, entered while leaving the room door wide open, raced the bathroom and slammed its door. When I entered with our meager belongings and the children, I could hear the water running in the tub. I don’t think she exited that tiny room for two hours. That was fifty-seven years ago. I learned very quickly that the best investment I would ever make is a large tub with a large capacity water heater.

For The Want of A Nail

It was a warm, humid North Georgia summer afternoon. The usual kibitzers were rocking on the porch of the FBO watching small aircraft land and takeoff on runway 24. The radio would crackle with the announcement by each pilot on every takeoff or landing. The only flight instructor on the field that day, a retired grading contractor and “Good Ole Boy”, was supervising a new students preflight inspection while removing his hat, scratching his head and rearranging his thinning hair.

I had been waiting for a couple of hours when suddenly I heard a muffled radio call that sounded as if it might just be the aircraft I was waiting for. A few minutes later, the pilot announced, “N6104L, five mile final for runway 24, Habersham County, N6104L.” Finally, I thought. Soon the little two seater was a dot on the horizon. Fluffy cumulus clouds were beginning to form at altitude over the airport. The afternoon sun reflected off the plexiglas canopy of a small low wing aircraft on a long final approach.

I had been searching for a small inexpensive plane for a couple of years, hoping I could introduce my son to flying and perhaps finding a way for me to enjoy my senior years with him. The aircraft I finally chose was an AA1 Yankee, a two seater, manufactured by American Yankee Corporation for only one year and then becoming the first of a new breed of aircraft to become known as Grumman’s. It was advertised to be reasonably well equipped and could be flown on instruments if necessary. There were not a lot of them on the marked and most of those I found just did not meet my needs.

A man in Oklahoma answered when I called about the aircraft described in “The Aircraft Trader”, a publication not unlike “The Auto Trader” but rather, dedicated to the sale of all types of aircraft, including helicopters. The man offering the plane had owned it for several years. It had the radios and equipment I wanted and sounded to be in fair to good condition for a 1969 model. It was also reasonably priced.

The dot on the horizon grew larger as the aircraft descended and passed the church steeple just off the end of the runway. A male voice announced, “Habersham, N6104L short final runway 24.” The aircraft bounced a few times, landed long, reversed course and taxied back to the apron in front of the porch where I was sitting. Yep, that is it, I thought. The pilot shut the engine down blowing dirt and exhaust all over those of us sitting on the porch. The prop turned over three last times and came to a stop vertically. It looked ok, but as I approached it I saw that it wasn’t a Bo Derek, but if a female I suspect it would be asked to dance occasionally. The paint was a little dull, its original blue paint was showing through on the wing walk surface, the interior was tattered and soiled in places , but intact, and the sliding canopy was stopped drilled to prevent further cracking. Ho hum nothing is perfect, I thought and overall the owner had not misrepresented it. Looking it over equated to looking in a horses’ mouth.

After an hour or so of study, a local aircraft mechanic of my acquaintance said, “Everything seems to be in order, engine and airframe times are what they were represented to be, it has never been a trainer and there has been no significant accident or damage history. I don’t think it is a bad buy,” he said. His assessment was exactly what one would expect from evaluating a thirty year old airplane. He said the radios and avionics were adequate and it actually had a wing leveler that would assist a single pilot in rough air. I bought it.

Soon after, my son signed up for instruction with the local grading contractor, also known as a flight instructor and after flying several types of aircraft was handed his private license by a designated examiner, in record time. I was very proud of him. I had promised that to celebrate having received his license, we would both take a week off of work and fly the Yankee to Colorado, but not unlike many “best laid plans”, it was not to be.

Unfortunately, within less than one hundred hours of purchase, the very same mechanic that had validated the airworthiness, advised me the engine was “making metal” and it may need a major overhaul. Not an inexpensive procedure. Welcome to aviation where one can make a small fortune by beginning with a large fortune. Rather than overhaul the existing engine, I decided to purchase a “new” engine and found one in Dallas, Texas. It offered more horsepower and was much more efficient than the original power pack. Within a few short months we were back in the air dreaming of fulfilling our plans to head west before weather would move in stopping us. We now had a “little fighter” that would climb faster, cruise quicker and carry more weight than any aircraft its size. To suggest were were excited would be an understatement.

The time finally arrived. We packed our clothing, some camping gear, all of the aviation charts we would need for a cross country flight, and stuffed ourselves and a couple of nutrition bars and bottles of water into the tiny cockpit. We departed Habersham County Airport early morning and turned southwesterly over the hills of North Georgia and into the flatland of Alabama. After about an hour and a half of flight time and watching our fuel gauges, we began our descent into a rural Alabama airport where the late morning temperature had already reached the hundred degree mark. Once we left the smooth air above the clouds and haze, the little aircraft began to dance in the turbulent air and would not settle down until both wheels touched the asphalt. Upon landing we observed the sky to our northwest thickening and growing dark. We watched as the cumulus cloud tops began to elongate and take on the anvil shape of a storm cloud.

Taxiing back to the FBO the hot asphalt took on the characteristics of a shimmering lake. The cabin quickly became a sauna. Neither of us could wait to get inside the building to both the air conditioning and restroom. Contrary to what some might believe, the young woman at the desk, was very attractive and had all her teeth. The restroom thankfully was inside. The far wall of the waiting room displayed a jumbo TV screen depicting rain and thunderstorms announced by green, red and orange colored shapes along our proposed route. We decided to divert south and had no time to delay. We quickly topped off the fuel tanks, climbed aboard and departed.

Oxford, Mississippi was our next stop where we planned a little sightseeing in William Faulkner’s hometown, a good steak and comfortable bed before departing early the next morning. We refueled again in Arkansas, spoke briefly with an eastbound pilot of a cabin class twin heading to Atlanta who had just travelled our route west and learned it was “severe clear”, but we should expect pop up storms and increasing easterly winds which were normal on the plains in the late afternoon. Take off was no problem until we reached the top of the highest trees at the end of the runway and the mountain wind tossed us around like a leaf on a millpond. We rose and fell straining our seatbelts jointly saying a Hail Mary and soon climbed into the smooth air above the haze. Fortunately the sun was behind us and off our left wing making visibility good. We crossed northwest Arkansas, passed over Bentonville where Sam Walton had his beginnings and soon left the hill country for the flats of Oklahoma.

Our next stop was Grove, Oklahoma and then we planned to overnight in Dodge City, Kansas where I had spent a weekend nearly sixty years earlier working on an abandoned World War II aerodrome preparing the surface for the annual American Motorcycle Races. This would be my first time returning to Dodge since 1957 which was an event I wrote about in my first book entitled “The Bridge Over Cedar Creek”.

We quickly refueled in Grove while two locals questioned our destination and plans. They offered us an airport clunker to use to have a catfish lunch on a beautiful southeast Oklahoma lake. Returning to the airport my son performed a thorough walk around and we said our goodbyes to the airport hangers on.

Our landing had been interesting to say the least, not checking the wind direction and after several radio transmissions we chose to land “straight in”. A big mistake!! A 15 mph tail wind nearly shoved us off the end of the runway. Only full braking and a little luck got us stopped. We inhaled deeply and taxied back to a small dilapidated hanger and office where two kibitzers were standing. “A little fast weren’t you fellows?”, one commented. “A little,” we said. “We underestimated the wind and could not raise anyone on the radio.” “I think the radio is broke,” one said, “but them winds really do get up in the afternoon.”

After the preflight, we boarded and taxied out to takeoff. The wind had settled somewhat and was manageable. We turned to a takeoff heading after the run-up and while turning heard a “PRANG” that should have told us something. It didn’t. At full power, halfway down the runway, just as the wheels left the ground, we had no rudder authority. We could not control the aircrafts yaw. My son immediately cut the power, settled back onto the runway and turned back to the FBO at the first turn off. The same two men were waiting for us. “What happened?” one asked as we shut down the engine. My son responded that we didn’t have a clue. “All of a sudden, as I reached full power, the aircraft started yawing left and I had no way to correct it.”

The other kibitzer, an older man, said “I know what it is. You broke a rudder spring. Them springs get broke real easy in stress and lots of folks forget to change them out periodically. The Yankee and Grumman series have a little spring what leads to both rudder pedals that center the rudder. If’n one snaps, the rudder won’t work on that side. It could be dangerous, but it’s not uncommon. People think airplanes are complicated, but they really ain’t. I have a couple of springs just like it on my tractor.”

My first thought was, Now what are we going to do? We are in a small Oklahoma town, miles from a major airport or city and have no idea where to purchase another spring or who would replace it. I visualized returning to the lake where we had lunch, renting a room or cottage and spending the rest of our trip a long way from the Colorado mountains. Almost as if the older man could read my mind, he said, “I think I may have one of them springs. I own one of them Yankees. I’ll check in my hanger.” He returned in about ten minutes which may have been a world record for someone holding their breath. “Yep,” he said. “Here it is, I even brung you some tools. Don’t take much.”

Within about ten minutes, my son had it repaired and we said our goodbyes once more. Next on to our penultimate stop, Dodge City, and then to Colorado.

Just To See Her Once More…

As the years pass, I become more amazed every day at what gains prominence in my mind and what no longer seems important or any longer serves to fire the neurons or synapses they once did. I guess that explains the old admonition to pilots that, “There are old pilots and bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots.” I have had a remarkable life in so many ways and as I look back with the benefit of hindsight and just a modicum of maturity, which some people may deny, I have to pinch myself when a picture of a person or an event enters my cerebral cortex, strolls through the hippocampus and plants an old memory in new soil. One of those memories is my Aunt Bernice.

Every few years and sometimes more often, I find myself in Jacksonville, Florida not far from a neighborhood and small brick home in the middle of the block on an asphalt street that was once crusted with sea shells, or so I remember it. 1620 Parrish Place, where I always felt welcome. There was a massive pine tree adjacent to the steps leading to the front door which had a couple of small windows. One window has a small hole that I created with my BB rifle. When I turn off Park Street where the old Navy housing project once stood, I slowly drive down the street, overwhelmed with nostalgia. Nothing appears to have changed. The house is a few blocks from the railroad tracks which I had to cross to visit several other cousins who lived just on the other side of the tracks where I would place nickels to flatten when the train passed. I never did find those nickels.

As I drove down the tree lined street, composed of small cottages built just before the war, I could visualize Bernices ‘colored’ gardener stooped in the flowerbed or Sarah, a half blind long time maid in the kitchen standing at the purple and white tile sink with a wet dish rag in her hand, admonishing my cousin and I if we didn’t behave “Soap Sally” would boil little children and make us into soap.

Many of the houses were purchased before the war and just after by young families and later, returning veterans. I remember my mother telling me in a hushed tone that Aunt Bernice and Uncle George had paid over three thousand dollars for the house at a time when fifty dollars a week was an average salary. It was beyond my comprehension knowing a small coke was a nickel in the machine and I could make a telephone call for the same price.

The homes were upscale from average but did not come close to the mansions on the river nearby where my cousin and I buried our treasure in the mud. Aunt Bernices’ house included a garage and a fireplace which was in the living room. Neither my cousin nor I were allowed to sit in the living room except to open packages at Christmas.

An elementary school was nearby which was named Fishware for some reason I still don’t understand and a back road leading to downtown where my Uncle had his Buick serviced. The A&P was on the corner and service station across the street had an outside restroom where I hid to avoid a whipping for a crime I did not commit. Just down the street was a drugstore with an entrance in the front and back. Once when visiting with my mother, my best friend in the whole world accompanied me to the drugstore. I entered by the front door and left by the back, forgetting Rowser. At bedtime, my mother asked, “Where is Rowser?” When we drove back and parked in front of the store a few minutes later, we could see him lying by the front door and as we watched, he raised his head off his paws every time the door opened and then settled back down with a sigh. It had been no less than ten hours since I had forgotten him. I had been crying, ashamed of myself, thinking he would be long gone or at the very least ensconced at the local dog pound beyond my reach. A kind soul had placed a bowl of water at his feet.

I spent most all my summers and Christmas holidays in Jacksonville before leaving to live with a foster father in Colorado at the age of fifteen. The days were hot , before air conditioning and the night sounds were rhapsodic thru the open windows due to the frogs that lived in a small pond under the bedroom window. At times the humidity was so heavy, Sarah, the colored maid, would change the sheets every morning.

I remember awakening to the sounds of the radio in the kitchen every morning and the metrical sound of coffee perking in a pot with a glass top that revealed its changing color. Breakfast was an everyday occurence, something I was not used to and the smells of bacon frying would permeate the whole house. Supper was always on the table when Uncle George arrived home after work. I learned early to enjoy sweet tea. Uncle George cooked breakfast on Sunday mornings consisting of flapjacks swimming in syrup and butter, bacon and eggs, orange juice and large tumblers of milk and of course coffee for the adults.

One Christmas morning, my aunt unwrapped a large box with enthusiasm. It contained a garbage can with a flip top lid. Crestfallen, Bernice looked at George quizzically and he said, “Well you said thats all you wanted!” Later, opening the lid, she found a beautiful pearl and gold necklace, Evidently, she had seen it once when they were together , but being too practical, passed it up.

My Aunt Bernice was a kind, thoughtful person whose deep and unusual southern accent has never been duplicated anywhere throughout my travels in the Southern states. Her sisters were even more unique. She always sent me a small amount of cash on my birthday and would look for opportunities on other occasions knowing my mother and I had few resources. Having left school in the third or fourth grade to help care for her younger siblings, the messages in the cards were often indecipherable. However, she always signed the card, “With much love and affection, for my second son.”Given the opportunity today to hear her voice or read a short note in her hand would be more meaningful to me than receiving the Pulitzer for literature.

As I write, I see her sitting on the back stoop, just outside of the garage and off the kitchen, shucking peas or tussling with her dog Pal. Oh, how I miss her! Thank you Lord for sharing this remarkable lady with me and if you would give me another opportunity, I would even let her kiss me again with that moist top lip that I tried with everything in my power to avoid when I saw her coming.

Plane Scared

It was a typical North Florida late spring afternoon. My wife, our two children and I had just departed Jacksonville after a perfect Mother’s Day with my mother and we looked forward to the trip home.

The Piper Cherokee 180 climbed briskly in the humid evening sky. There was little chatter on the radio, but a Bonanza pilot who had just picked up an instrument clearance to Atlanta remarked how little visibility there was climbing through the haze. The brilliance of the setting sun, windshield crazing, and the haze caused me to rely solely on instruments during my climbout from Herlong Recreational Airport.

The little airplane was running flawlessly. I knew that once I reached cruising altitude, the little turbulence we were experiencing would abate and I could anticipate the smooth air that generally accompanied nightfall. The sun was setting in a blaze of orange and red, with the occasional glint of light reflecting off the swamp. I planned to switch on the autopilot, sit back, and enjoy the beauty of the setting sun. the smooth ride and the persistent hum of the 180-horsepower Lycoming engine.

My 13 year old son wanted to take the controls for a few minutes, so once we were level at cruise altitude, my young co-pilot took charge. The quickly descending nightfall did not seem to concern him, and he didn’t seem to want to give the controls over to the autopilot. The airplane was humming smoothly and I could see a few lights below. I reached over and leaned the mixture, watched the exhaust gas temperature gauge settle down, and blam! The airplane began shaking violently and the engine made a banging sound much like the water hammer of an ancient boiler. Soon the airplane was shaking violently. I thought the engine might break loose form its mounts.

I pushed the mixture to full rich and pulled the throttle back to idle. The shaking stopped, but the quiet purr was gone and the sound was difficult to describe: a gentle knock with every revolution of the propeller. I checked the panel, oil pressure, fuel gauges, rpm, and fuel. The oil pressure was within the yellow arc. I increased the rpm again and the shaking began. We were in trouble.

The altimeter reflected 6,700 feet mean sea level. The wings were level, but I could feel the lightness in my seat that indicated a gradual descent. It was now almost dark and the lights on the horizon twinkled along with the stars above us. There was very little moonlight.

The panel was well lighted and the communications radio was set on the Jacksonville departure frequency. I knew we were somewhere between Folkston and Waycross, Georgia, over the worst of the swamp. Where could I land? I saw headlights on a long, straight road off my right wing and then suddenly the flash of an intermittent green light on the horizon.

I set up an 80mph glide, attempted to reach Jacksonville Departure a couple of times and finally switched to the universal emergency frequency of 121.5 MHz and declared, “Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

A controller responded to my distress call immediately and advised me that the Waycross airport was at 350 degrees and 12 miles. There was a hint of the sun settling below the horizon off the left wing and I saw the beacon again about 10 or 15 degrees to my left. The airplane was gradually descending and my heartbeat was increasing. Could I make it? We were at 6,000 feet msl.

The shaking had stopped and my family was looking at me for reassurance. My wife had given pillows to the children and I had tightened my seatbelt. Remarkably, no one had panicked. The cockpit was quiet except for the occasional exchange with the controller. I called out 5,500 feet but had lost the beacon. How could I miss it, I thought. We were back in the haze and had very little visibility over the nose.

The controller said the airport was aware of our situation and had turned the runway lights to high intensity. A Piper Cub in the pattern was coming our way to help follow us in or be able to report our location quickly if we did not make the airport.

We were now at 3,000 feet agi, but I still could not see the airport. I checked my gyro against the compass and learned we were 15 degrees to the right of the course. I reset the gyro and turned to 350 degrees and suddenly I saw the beacon and the blue and white lights of the airfield. I didn’t think I could glide that far, so I told the controller I might need to land on a highway beneath me. He responded, “That will have to be your decision, sir.” We were four miles out at 3,000. feet.

“The airport’s at 12 o’clock, two miles.” We might make it, I thought. The controller then remarked that we were beneath his radar coverage and ended his comments with “Good luck.” I pushed the rudder hard left and raised the nose a few degrees in order to line up with Runway 36. I then realized we were too high. I couldn’t go around, so I pushed the rudder to its stop, cranked in the opposite aileron and slipped the aircraft to the ground. We touched down in the grass just before the threshold of the runway, a little off the centerline. There was moment of silence and then noisy relief. We climbed out of the airplane and hugged one another and thanked God for our safe landing.

You Got Cool Man!

My new bride and I left Miami in a Studebaker Lark with all our possessions and aimed the hood ornament north to New York, her home. We soon made a left turn and found ourselves in one of the most beautiful areas of the country, the mountains of Northern Colorado. A friend had given us use of his mountain cabin overlooking and just inches away from the Big Thompson River and downstream from one of the most beautiful small towns in America…Estes Park. (He was more than a friend. I have written a book about him (The Bridge Over Cedar Creek) so I don’t need to add anything further here.). We were surrounded by high snow covered mountains, a thirty minute drive to Rocky Mountain National Park and an hour from Colorado State University by back roads where I had enrolled to finish my college degree. The end was in sight. I had finished a year while in the Air Force, received a semester of credit for active military service and three quarters of credit were earned at Miami Dade Junior College. I planned to graduate within the three years allotted by the GI Bill. I did it in less time, but no one expected my GPA to qualify me for a Rhodes Scholarship. I worked full time as a bartender and after the baby came, my wife helped out by working in an eye doctors office. We spent every second Sunday traveling all over the state with our year old mongrel and six month old child.

Finally it was July and I graduated on a Friday. Sometime during the last year, we had acquired a 1959 Volkswagen Beetle. To suggest its paint was patina was a wild exaggeration. It could only be accessed by reaching through the wing window and opening the door from inside. The heater was wired shut and the bonnet was kept in place with baling wire. It got thirty miles a gallon and was trendy. After all, what self respecting college kid would be caught driving a Studebaker even if he was married and had a child on the way. Sometime during our early ownership, we drove it to Southern California to visit friends and Disneyland and had a service station attendant comment, “You didn’t really drive that thing from Colorado, did you?” That is where we had to wire the heater closed because it was stuck open and the heat was unbearable. We never anticipated the blinding spring snow storm, extreme cold and frozen windows we would experience crossing Raton Pass coming home. So much for youthful confidence.

Saturday, following graduation, we both agreed we needed a newer car. We also agreed we didn’t want any debt so we thought perhaps a used VW with fewer miles, a heater and one that could be entered by using the door latch. Good used Beetles were a hot commodity and there were none to be had. We left the dealership after making a deposit on a new blue 1968 Beetle and were sent to find someone willing to finance the one thousand dollar balance. Monday, I somehow convinced a banker to finance the balance and drove out of the dealership with our new pretty car. I still remember the chagrined look on the loan officers face when she asked be about employment and I said, “None, unemployed.”

On our first free Sunday, we visited an aunt briefly in Denver and then headed for Colorado Springs some fifty or sixty miles away. Just prior to reaching Colorado Springs, we discovered Castle Rock, a mountain by any definition but square and flat on the top. We learned that there was a precarious road leading to the top, so thinking, “Why not?”, up we went. As we topped the mountain, at the point of no return, we found ourselves in the midst of a gathering of the “Outlaws” motorcycle gang. There were no less than twenty motorcycles, twice the number of young bearded men and scruffy looking partially clad “ladies”. There was no turnaround or exit. Now I thought, “Genius, how do you get your pretty wife, baby and scruffy mutt out of this situation?” The leader of the pack, named “Cowboy” as noted on his denim shirt, had a minimally clad girl on the hood of an ancient Chevrolet closely examining her lower body region. Perhaps he was a gynecological student.

I drove a hundred feet or so to the edge of the mountain and got out of the car to see if there was an alternative exit. I quickly understood that unless I could fly, I was going to have to create a better plan. About that time, a greasy little munchkin with tattoos covering his arms and upper body, wearing Levis and a leather vest walked over and said “This is private property.” “Okay,” I responded, got back in the car and headed for the only way out knowing I might have to climb over someones Harley Davidson in my brand new car. I got out again, walked to the edge of the mountain looking again for any alternate route and taking my time to muster the courage to throw a couple of them off the mountain before I died. I hoped my military martial arts training would help me discourage a few of them. I then got back in my VW, rolled up the window and headed toward the exit. The munchkin moved his bike across the road to block my way. Oh good, I’ll only have to run over one bike before taking our leave, I thought. He approached the car and motioned to me to lower the window while his fellow travelers frowned and my pretty wife glanced at me as if to say, “Well what’s next, Papa?” Not unlike our first encounter, our midget gang member had little to say other than, “You got cool, man.” He moved the motorcycle and I pointed our new unscathed VW down the mountain. About half way down, I had to stop. My knees were shaking so badly I could hardly control the brake. So much for COOL!

Mox Nix

One of the distinct advantages of living a long time, and believe it or not there are many, is that there are some long quiet afternoons not filled with feverish and often frantic attempts to finish the day with all of one’s ‘rats killed’. l find myself daydreaming, reliving the memories of friends present and past and activities I never in my wildest dreams expected to engage in. I have learned in seventy-nine years that what one dreams about most often comes true, at least it has for me.

One of those activities is sailing. Although I grew up on the shores of Biscayne Bay, perhaps one of the sailing capitals of the world, I never set foot on a boat until I was an adult. Well, in fairness, that’s not entirely true. At about the age of twelve, an uncle offered me a weekend trip on his pontoon boat down the waterway under the guise of pleasure that turned out to be a disguised effort to have me babysit his two children. After I thanked him and joined two other boys at the beach upon arrival at our destination, no further offers were forthcoming.

I would often ride my bicycle to the edge of the bay and walk the pier in Bay Front Park dreaming about blue seas and calm winds. I even got thrown out of a boat yard once for sneaking aboard a forty foot wooden yawl because I loved the smell of teak. At times after reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, I would be awakened out of my reverie by the sharp sound of a teachers ruler striking my desk. I would draw pictures of sailboats and simple river barges. Once I tried to launch a friends’ canvas covered canoe in a canal only to have it immediately strike a piece of coral and sink with my provisions left floating in sealed jars and plastic bags. I lost a friend over that adventure because I returned the damaged canoe a few days later and fled the scene of the crime.

Fortunately, years later, life allowed me to experience most of what I have dreamed of. I’ve crossed the Gulf Stream on yachts, flown the Bermuda Triangle often in single and multi engine airplanes, dived the wall in the Turks and Caicos, swam to the reef off Okinawa Japan, frolicked in the oceans that line both of Americas’ coasts, fished in the flats of the Gulf of Mexico and visited the southern most point of the United States. All of these adventures have been exciting but one in particular was harrowing.

I met a new friend in my fifties and I took an immediate liking to him. After being introduced, I learned he was a very accomplished guy. We both loved and flew airplanes and in his case he captained some of the finest and most expensive aircraft ever manufactured. At one time he had “Slick Willy” aboard and was charmed by him. He was a sailor and like me, he loved and married a beautiful flight attendant. We both came from very humble beginnings, he having supported his siblings and parents working in a hot dusty tobacco field throughout his youth in rural North Carolina. He also served in the US Air Force and unlike me who only made it as far as Okinawa, he is a Vietnam vet. We both achieved the same rank. His name is Steve Gray and is one of the finest and most fair minded men I have ever known. It hasn’t hurt that we think alike politically. We have both received many gracious hands up and not hand outs. Oh, and did I tell you, we both have a fondness for exotic cars? If I told you the story of how he met his wife, you would admire him even more, but that is a story for another time when I delve into one of my favorite topics, “Serendipity versus Grand Design”. Needless to say, I value my friendship with Steve and Vicki. I am proud to know them both and whether it be serendipity or grand design, have been fortunate to share time and adventures with them.

You may be asking what this has to do with Mox Nix, which is German and defined as “What’s the difference”. Steve invited me to help him deliver his thirty foot sailboat with the appellation on its stern from the Miami Yacht Club to his home base on St. Simons Island, Georgia. I jumped at the chance. St. Simons Island is another love we share. Both being long time pilots and knowing weather could be critical, we planned our trip for when the weather gurus in the windowless rooms assured us it would be a perfect time for passage. We drove to Miami, spent a night on the boat and departed the next morning on a beautiful South Florida day. The sun was shining and the skyline of Miami glistened on the horizon as we made our way off shore toward the Gulf Stream, rejecting the unholy “ditch”. The Gulf Stream offered a swift northerly current adding to our speed, much like a tailwind does in an aircraft. By the end of the day, we entered the cut in Fort Lauderdale and tied up in a small marina that offered showers and a nearby place to eat. We had dinner and kibitzed with our fellow boaters.

Early the next morning, beating east a few miles to make distance, we wound up again in the Gulf Stream and then turned north at the breakneck speed of six or eight knots. By mid-afternoon we were just south of West Palm Beach when Steve pointed out some pop-up cumulus clouds on the horizon. They were no threat we thought and at worst we could duck into West Palm if the wind arose. By this time we were on a gentle reach on a north-westerly heading and on a direct compass course to St. Simons Island. We hadn’t decided where to spend the night but the sailing was so gentle and the seas so calm we contemplated sailing all night. We sat quietly in the cockpit ruminating about the paths our lives had taken and thanking God for the beautiful time together, the fair weather and the calm seas.

And then, the breeze stiffened, the puffy clouds darkened and the top of the cloud developed into an anvil, a sure sign of a storm for even the most uninitiated. We still didn’t feel threatened because it is not uncommon for pop up storms in late afternoon in South Florida. It was still several miles away, a blue sky was on the horizon and in the direction of our passage. Then the wind began to shift causing us to “head-up” and turn more easterly away from the blue sky. Our pulses accelerated as we became concerned. The wind kept rising, we had to change our course more easterly and before we knew, it became necessary to take in some sail. I was beginning to feel sea sickness coming on and although a forty year pilot, I would easily get car sick in the back seat of an automobile or the rocking cockpit of a boat. The winds continued to rise. Steve secured his harness while the seas had risen from calm to six or eight feet or more. We both knew we had to take down the sail but by this time I was so sea sick, I was puking over the side and would be no help. Steve crawled forward, fought with the sheets and halyard and the jib came down, luffing wildly. I remained on the helm heading into the wind as best I could using the engine and he fought with the mainsail when suddenly a strong smell of gasoline emanated from the cabin. I held the wheel at arms length, puked from my toes all over the cockpit and searched the cabin for the origin of the smell. We had taken the engine cover off of the hot engine for cooling earlier. Gasoline was pouring on to the engine coming from a broken gas line offering no alternative but to shut it down. This was going to leave us only that steerage the main would allow and by now it was slamming back and forth uncontrollably. The act of shutting down the engine under these circumstances is analogous to shutting down an airplane engine at night, which I had already experienced once and did not want to repeat. Steve struggled in a wildly pitching boat and was soon able to reef the main sufficiently to hold us off the wind, allowing us enough time to declare a mayday. TowBoat US soon came up on the radio and advised us to stand by. Rescue was on the way. After the longest thirty minutes of my life, the rescue boat arrived with a single occupant who tossed Steve a line and slowly towed us through the cut to a marina in West Palm Beach. The tow boat operators parting words were,”You guys were damn lucky. I wouldn’t have attempted that rescue if I had known how severe the weather was inside that storm. Only the Coast Guard could have helped you.”

I slept well that night. The storm soon passed and we arrived safely on St. Simons Island a few days later, a thankful two sailors.

I still love sailing, but have long ago abandoned my desire to venture far offshore in a small boat. I will leave that to the intrepid likes Robin Lee Graham who wrote one of the best sea stories I’ve ever read.

Katie

My first dog survived 24 hours. My stepfather thought every boy needed a dog. He and my mother hadn’t been married long, when he came home early one Friday afternoon, with a very blond Cocker Spaniel puppy. After our greeting, he put him on the screen porch behind the house with a bowl of water and some old towels to curl up on. Not wanting a dog in the house, my stepfather was repairing the backyard fence to prevent the puppy from coming to any harm. I was fascinated by my new friend. Unknown to my stepfather, I decided to take him for a walk around the block. Few five year olds know much about canine behavior so I had no doubt either of us would be in harms way. North Bay Road was a side street that fronted Biscayne Bay and had little traffic. The few cars that used the street were primarily locals coming and going at safe speeds. The yet to be named puppy frolicked at my heels for about a block until we crossed an intersecting street and he spotted a cat on the other side of the road, in a blind curve. Seconds later he was in the middle of the street and a speeding car rounded the curve. No more dog! I ran home crying and interrupted my mother and a few female friends having tea and playing gin rummy. I tearfully announced what had happened. I told her the site of the crime and she sent me to my room while she retrieved the remains. The last time I saw my new friend was the following morning, in the rubbish can at the street.

The stepfather was soon gone and my mother and I had moved to a hotel in Manhattan and then returned to Florida, to an apartment. No place for another dog. We then moved to a small house in Hialeah with an unfenced yard. An aunt insisted I have another dog. Surprisingly, my mother agreed. A friends female German Shepherd had been visited by a neighboring vagabond and had just delivered six scruffy little puppies. When I met them, they were still wet from birth. I chose one, the runt of the litter, and as soon as he was weaned, he arrived to share my bedroom. No more outside dogs for me. He lived ten years, became the closest friend a youngster with no sibling living in a single parent home could have, and according to my mother, died of a broken heart because I had left him for the summer. His name was Rowser and I still tear up seventy years later when I think of him.

Fast forward sixty years and a lot of wonderful dogs later, including a beautiful Doberman Pincher while serving as a military policeman. While browsing in a bookstore, I discovered a new book entitled “A Dog’s Purpose”, by some author I had never heard of, that piqued my interest. It turned out to be a great read, the substance of which posited that special dogs reincarnate many times and come back to ultimately find their first human love. The gist was the dog in the story dies and passes through several reincarnations. A serendipitous late in life restored relationship with the boys childhood love, and a meeting in a dog park of the two where they came together with another dog which was to be determined to be the present incarnation of the boys dog. The quintessential last line was, “The boy had found his dog.” It was an emotional, warm story without expletives and later became a movie.

A year or so following reading about the return of the childhood dog to his aging boy, my wife and I visited a local pet store to buy some sort of cat trinket or bauble. Our last dog, a beloved Doberman Pincher had died mysteriously while we were on a ski trip a few years before, so I had decided that at this age and time of life I would learn to live with my wifes’ cat. He was one of a long line of felines I had learned to tolerate. After all, no respectable dog lover would be ready to admit affection for a cat. If the truth were known, a few actually wormed their way into my heart. I still try to keep that information under wraps.

I would normally have waited in the truck upon arriving at the store but for some inexplicable reason I chose to go inside and look around while my wife shopped for whatever it was she sought. The moment we opened the door, I heard dogs barking and headed in the direction of the sound. I found a small low fence surrounding a table and two chairs occupied by an elderly couple and a half dozen mongrel puppies. I had no interest and started to turn away when I saw a beautiful Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier loosely tethered under the table. It could not possibly be available for adoption. I remarked to the couple, “I love your dog, what breed is she? She is beautiful.” “Oh,” the man said, “She isn’t ours. She’s up for adoption. We’re just waiting for the right person or couple to come along. She is such a special girl. She came to us to be fostered because her owner could no longer keep her. She’s about three years old, thirty pounds, housebroken and so gentle a person can take her anywhere. If you have a truck, she will love you forever.” I crawled under the table, stroked her head and chest and received a few polite licks in return about the time my wife walked up. Upon seeing me under the table, she asked “What in the world are you doing under that table?” I looked up almost tearfully and said, “I want this dog.” She responded, “Honey we agreed we don’t need another dog, we travel so much and I will never again have another outside dog.” Rambo, our Doberman Pincher and his predecessor, an eighty-five pound German Shepherd, had lived in a dog house in the back yard. “Plus,” she said, “she is too hairy and too big.” “Oh no,” the old man said, “She is hypoallergenic, doesn’t shed and has no doggy smell. She actually sleeps in our bed with us.” My wife capitulated.

We completed the appropriate paperwork and the caretaker led her out to our truck assuring me they would take her back if she didn’t work out. She immediately jumped up between the front seats and sat on the console looking out the front windshield. Waiting a few minutes for my wife to pick up dog necessities, I scratched her ears and rubbed her chest while reassuring her in a low voice that all was well. She had been looking away but when my wife entered the truck on the passenger side and I started the ignition, she looked directly at me. She had a purple splotched tongue. Rowser had a purple splotched tongue. HE HAD FOUND HIS BOY. Although Katie is gone now, she gave us ten years of love and pleasure.

I have absolutely no doubt the author knew exactly what he was writing about. Thank you Bruce Cameron. I enjoyed the book and the movie.

Buttons

It was late afternoon and the hot west Kansas sky was deep blue with a layer of dust that rose hundreds of feet from the ground. There was very little breeze. The mares tails at altitude and alto stratus clouds indicated high winds probably as strong as sixty miles per hour pushing an airliner, a barely discernible silver spot on the horizon, east at a pace its throbbing engines could never achieve on their own. We had just finished a greasy early afternoon supper in a truck stop and would soon be looking for a cheap motel on the state line between Kansas and Colorado. Tomorrow we planned to be in our new home in the mountains that my bride had never seen. Not only had she never seen our destination but she had never been west of Chicago.

The parking lot of the aging diner was being repaved so we had to park our Studebaker in a dusty gravel lot fifty yards from the front door along with a half dozen semi trailer trucks and various rigs as well as an automobile or two. The trucks were idling and a wall of diesel fumes took our breath away as we approached the car. A large man in overalls with a three or four day old beard, sucking on an unlit cigar, emerged from the cloud of dust and diesel fumes with an ominous look on his face. He was scowling, but when he saw us approaching holding hands, his entire countenance changed and his face lit up. Once we got closer, he asked, “Is that your Studebaker parked out there?” A little off balance, we glanced at one another without saying anything and I turned to the man and asked, “Is there something wrong sir?” The smile broadened and he said “You’ll see!”

We had only been married a few months. The newness hadn’t worn off and the little mongrel we found in the local dog pound had barely gained a pound. She was a Terrier of some sort, pathetic looking actually, with big brown eys, fur that wouldn’t lie down and a skinny tail that wagged at every sound or look we sent in her direction. My new wife chose her and I chose her name. I had been stationed on Okinawa while in the Air Force and the Japanese word for dog was “Eneu”. That seemed appropriate for such a skinny unattractive mutt.

I knew I had made the right marital decision a few days after our wedding and soon after our lavish honeymoon on the west coast of Florida. I had financed the trip with forty dollars in tips I had made delivering hamburgers and shakes to the neighborhood airline people from my employment at the Burger Delight store. I awoke in the middle of the night, soaking wet, in our two room apartment sans air conditioning to the hushed sobs on the night following our rescuing the skinny little derelict. My bride, wearing her frilly pink negligee, was rocking Eneu in her lap, while sitting on the hard concrete floor, sobbing. I asked, “What’s the matter,” and she said through her tears, “She has kennel cough, please God, don’t let her die.” I knew I had a keeper. My friend Frank, who I wrote about in my first book, said, “Find a helpmate boy and treat her the way you did ‘courtin’ and you will have a long and happy marriage.”

The trip west was uneventful, unless one considers following two drunken good ole boys on a narrow mountain road somewhere in Virginia or showing up at my new in-laws home in Williamsville, New York, having never met them. They had not been able to join us for the wedding but then few had, including my mother. We left New York, crossed Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois. We found ourselves in a motel or two that were clean but in one instance I could not sit on the toilet without crowding the sink and the shower.

When we arrived back at the Studebaker, we found Eneu sitting on the hat rack at the back of the car between a box of tissues and a couple of books, her tail wagging, grinning at us with her huge brown eyes flashing a “Who me?” look. Pink feathers clung to her lips and stuck to her chin. The little hat my bride had so painstakingly made to wear to church as a youngster (a cherished keepsake) was in pieces on the back seat. The last words the trucker had said to us as he passed by were, “I’d name that dog Buttons!”