The Bahamas

A Cruise from Jacksonville, Florida to The Bahamas and back, November 27- December 1, 2014.

I overhear the conversation of the lady in the sauna on the deck of the stern. “My man couldn’t come with me on this cruise. He’s on probation. He can’t leave the state of Alabama!” she cackles.

***

The ride up and down Interstate 95 has become a bit of a grind for me during Thanksgivings. If traffic is smooth, the drive takes over seven hours, one way. But it is never smooth, not during Thanksgiving weekend. Inevitably, the vehicles all come to a complete halt at some point in South Carolina, both during the trip to North Carolina and then the trip back to Florida. A seven hour drive becomes nine to ten hours. 20 hours total of driving is just too much during a four day span.

So this year, I told my folks that I will plan to see them at Christmas, and booked a four day cruise from Jacksonville to The Bahamas.

I have never been on a cruise before, and I have never been outside the United States other than to Canada.



The cruise departs on the Carnival ship Fascination at 4pm on Thanksgiving. The weather is cold and windy. Checking in is a bit of a process. I stand in line, inching along through security, for about an hour and a half. Once on the ship, things still seem a bit claustrophobic. The cruise line serves a late lunch, and it becomes apparent to me that at least some of this experience is like being trapped in a giant, over-packed, floating Golden Corral buffet restaurant.

Many of these passengers look like Golden Corral is where they belong. Fat and boisterous, I watch them load their plates with food to even further pack on the pounds and expand their waist size.

I have come on this cruise alone, with the at least a faint hope of meeting a cute woman with whom I can pass the weekend.

Within a few minutes of standing in the buffet line, though, I realize that is going to be a long shot. I see only a handful of women whom I would care to meet, and they all have husbands or boyfriends guarding them. This is a Thanksgiving cruise, I remind myself. I should not have expected many singles. It looks like there are none my age or any younger. Also, there are a ton of kids on board.

Setting sail into the open ocean as the sun goes down, we pass under the Dames Point Bridge leading into Jacksonville. It is my first time being on a ship that will go completely out of sight of land. A strong, cold wind of 30 miles per hour pushes against the ship all night, and we dock in Freeport on Grand Bahama Island about 45 minutes behind schedule, at 12:45pm on Friday, November 28.

As part of the cruise, I booked what is called an on shore “excursion” through Carnival. I chose a 12 and a half mile bike ride around the Freeport area. Counting the tour guide and myself, only six people signed up for this. That really is not too surprising, given the builds and lifestyles of most of the people on board this ship.

But the bike ride is the highlight of the entire cruise for me. We ride through Port Lucaya, Taino Beach, and Fortune Beach before ending at the Garden of the Groves.

The bikes were pretty old and used, but they got us where we needed to go. The guide sort of laughed at me at the beginning of the ride when I asked for a helmet. He pointed out how flat the island was, saying the highest point is only 68 feet above sea level.

When no one else requests a helmet, I let it go. Once we get started, though, I know every single one of us should have been wearing a helmet. Traffic whisks by us only inches away at some points. In the Bahamas, they drive on the opposite side of the road than in the U.S., and the passing lane is reversed to be on the inside rather than the outside. We also ride over rocks and uneven ground.

During one moment, I catch sight of a tree that I have never seen before- an Australian pine, not native to the Bahamas. It distracts me, and I swerve a little, almost into the path of an oncoming car.

Still, the wind in my hair, the small downhill coasts, the beautiful blue shades of the water, and the feeling of freedom that comes from being on a bike make this a moment that I am unlikely to forget.

***

Night life is amusing on the boat. Kids run around everywhere. It is an unfortunate part of my temperament that I do not like children. I have never wanted kids, and more than one woman has ceased dating me once that fact became known to them.

There are over 700 children on this ship. I cannot walk 20 yards without one of them getting in my way, not paying attention to where they are going. And then the parent shouts, “Watch out, Josh! Look where you’re going!”

The kids remain oblivious.

The only place on the ship where I can find refuge is the Serenity Lounge at the stern. You must be 21 or older to come here. In the Serenity Lounge on the first night of the cruise, I almost get into real conversations with a couple of attractive women. But then their husbands or boyfriends alertly come and whisk them away, and I do not see them in this part of the ship again for the rest of the cruise. I have to smile that, after the first night, on a packed cruise ship, I find that I drink alone at the bar in the Serenity Lounge. There are other bars on the ship where people have gathered- with their kids running around behind them, of course.

The bartender in the Serenity Lounge is who I talk to the most. He is from Indonesia, and will not see his own wife and kids until February, he tells me. He is thin and a very hard worker, just like all the other employees on the ship. Most are Asian and their lean physiques are in stark contrast to the passengers on board.

I ask the bartender if he likes his work, if he likes traveling on a cruise ship.

“It’s a job, sir,” he tells me.

I ask him if he is looking forward to the end of this cruise. To my surprise, the last day of a cruise is one of the hardest, he tells me. There is no break. They have to load on more supplies and get ready for the next cruise, which will depart the same day that we dock back in Jacksonville.

During one of my walks through the ship, I stumble across a break area for the employees. All of them are smoking, and most have headphones hooked up to an iphone. They are oblivious to their surroundings.

The bartender has two young children.

“Do you want your children to come to America?” I ask him. “Are there opportunities for them in Indonesia?”

“I would like for them to come to America,” he answers me, “but not by working on a cruise ship.”

He looks around at the empty bar. “You should come back in the summer,” he tells me. “November and December are very slow months for this bar on the ship.”

On deck at night, the moon is beautiful over the dark water. My room has a TV channel that shows the location of the ship on the globe, sunset time, sunrise time, wind speed and direction, the speed of the ship, and ocean depth.

When I see on the television that the depth of the ocean is close to 9000 feet, I head out to the stern.

No one is out here. The wind blows strong. There are no surveillance cameras. I lean against the railing, trying to fathom that the bottom of the sea is almost two miles down.

I also realize that if the railing were to give way, I would be gone- simply gone. No one would see me go overboard. And I cannot swim. It would be a painful and most terrifying death.

I look out over the black horizon of the water.

“This is really the stuff of nightmares,” I say to myself.

“Isn’t it a wonder?” I hear a voice say behind me.

A young African American woman comes down the stairs from an upper deck.

“It’s a wonder, and it’s a little scary,” I say.

“People can choose to look at this and be scared. But I am just in awe,” she says. “You think you are in control of your life, and then you see all this and you realize: You are not in control.”

I nod my head in slight agreement, not willing to make the next jump that I know she does, that there is a God who loves us who is in fact in control of it all.

***

On Saturday morning, I awaken to find us in the port of Nassau on New Providence Island. Nassau is the capital of the Bahamas.

After a shower, I am about to get dressed to explore the city. I discover that all of my polo shirts are missing from the closet. I search all over the room, but they are nowhere to be found. The only conclusion that I can come to is that the housekeeping staff has stolen them when they came into clean my room.

I put on a t-shirt (the only type of shirt that I have, now) and some shorts, leave my room and go to the first Carnival cruise employee that I can find- a young girl setting up a food bar.

“Excuse me,” I say to her. “Who should I talk to? I need to report that some things have been stolen from my room.”

She gives me a look like I have just accused her personally.

“Sir, you just need to go and talk with guest services.”

Once I find that desk, I try to remain as calm and polite as possible. The man at the desk, a fellow from New Zealand, takes me to the side to complete the report.

“What exactly is missing?”

“Three Polo styled shirts: A red one, a blue one, and a garnet one.”

I catch him almost rolling his eyes. He types in my answers to a computer.

“Do you know the brand?”

“Izod. I-Z-O-D.”

“How old are they?”

“About a year.”

“How much were they worth new?”

“$25-$30, I think.”

I note that he never once refers to the shirts as stolen. He calls the head of housekeeping on a phone, and asks her to look for them.

Once that conversation is over, he says to me, “We don’t call security unless you insist.”

This seems like an odd thing to say to me. Obviously, you have a thief in your housekeeping staff. I do not say this out loud, but I am sure he can tell that is what I am thinking, especially after I tell him that I do not want any more room service for the rest of the cruise.

“We’ll keep this ticket open. Hopefully, the shirts will turn up. If you happen to find them, please let us know so that we can stop looking,” he says.

“Of course,” I answer.

***

I have had things stolen from me a few times in my life, and it is never a good feeling, of course. This has left a bad taste in my mouth about Carnival Cruise Lines, and about the guy who cleans my room.

Stepping off the ship into the crowded port of Nassau, I put my wallet in my front pocket with my hand over it, and try to forget about my shirts.

Bay Street is the main tourist area. It runs east and west. This is not genuine Nassau. Shops like these, t-shirts and jewelry- one can find anywhere (though I later learn the Bahamas is a great place to purchase diamonds in part because there is no sales tax and DeBeers deals directly with the merchants).

I have about four hours before I need to be back on the ship and it sets sail. I decide to walk south, away from the coast, for an hour and a half or two hours, and then turn around and head back.

The walk south goes uphill, and I get a decent view of the harbor to the north. From my map of Nassau, I see that there are several embassies nearby, and I think I spot one- though I cannot tell what country it represents.

The city changes once I begin the downhill walk. Now, I am getting into the area where the native Bahamians actually live. This is what I want to see.

I come to a park with a baseball field. I consider getting my camera out and taking a picture, but then think better of it. Three guys are sitting around the edge of the park, and they watch me. Though it is near 80 degrees, they wear hoodies, with the hood pulled up over their heads.

I know I look like a tourist with my backpack and my bright Florida State baseball cap- not to mention my white skin.

Instincts tell me to not stop to take a picture. Keep moving.

Further down the street, a car pulls into the small parking lot of a shop. The lady who gets out looks at me with curiosity before going inside.

As I walk and get nearer to the business, she comes back out and hops in the driver’s seat. As I pass, she shouts to me from her open window, “Excuse me, sir?”

I turn to look at her.

“Are you a tourist?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am.”

“Then you need to turn around and head back in the direction you came. You are in a dangerous neighborhood and you look like a target, especially wearing that gold watch.”

I immediately decide to take her advice.

“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate that.”

“Stick to Bay Street,” she says. “That’s the safe place for tourists.”

“Okay.” I nod and smile and start to walk away.

“Love you!” the woman says.

As I walk back past the park, one of the guys in the hoodies crosses the street and is about 30 yards behind me. I am not sure if he is following me, but I think about what I am going to do if there is a confrontation.

The stolen shirts are still fresh in my mind, and the theft is a source of irritation and anger.

Even more, I am agitated and frustrated that things have not gone as I hoped over the past few weeks with a girl that I like back in Florida. I was happy around her. It is particularly painful because I feel like she got to know me well, perhaps better than any woman has ever known me. And then she quite suddenly chose to stop being around me and go with another man. It was and is a shock to my system. It is the kind of pain that drains hope from my soul of ever meeting a woman that I can trust. It is the kind of pain in my body and mind that creates a sort of madness behind my eye sockets… I look forward to when these feelings subside.

Anyway, I decide that I am done being the victim for today. If this hoodie guy comes up to me and demands that I give him my wallet or watch or something, then I am going to forcefully tell him what he can go do with himself. He is going to have to knock me down to get those things.

If the situation escalates and he pulls out a knife or a gun- well, then I like to think that I have the bravado to play out the end game right here. “Murdered in Nassau” has a colorful ring to it for the final chapter of my life. I think I would prefer that ending to something like “Died alone in a nursing home after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s.”

So, I walk along for a little while longer, and then quite deliberately turn and stare back at the guy, trying to make eye contact with him. He becomes squirrely at my movement, and looks down and away from me. I continue walking. When I turn again, he is gone. I make my way back to Bay Street.

***

Now that I only have t-shirts to wear, I know that I need one or two nicer shirts for dinners on the ship. The food at dinner time is my second favorite part of the trip, behind my bike ride in Freeport. I do not eat much during the day, when the food is obviously of cheaper quality, to save my appetite for the high quality evening meal. I have lobster tail once, during the captain’s dinner where everyone dresses in formal attire. And every night I have multiple helpings of broiled Atlantic salmon, jumbo shrimp cocktail, artichoke dip, pumpkin bisque, Italian minestrone, onion soup, escargot (for the first time), steamed white rice, and for dessert, melting chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, or amaretto chocolate cake with butter pecan ice cream.

It amuses and amazes me that, with all this great food on the dinner menu, I watch some families order nothing but loads of pizza and French fries.

I do not want to wear a t-shirt to these dinners, so in Nassau, back on Bay Street, I stop in "Senor Frog’s", a chain of bars in the Caribbean. Senor Frog’s also sells a line of clothing, and I look at a golden colored collared button down shirt made of rayon. The shirt is about the perfect size off the rack.

“Does rayon shrink?” I ask the attendant.

She gives me a warm smile. “No, that shirt should not shrink when you wash it.”

So I buy it for $32 and wear it to dinner.

After dinner, I step out on the stern deck of the Serenity Lounge, looking at the stars and the sea. A pretty woman in a red bikini sits alone in the sauna, and for a little while it is just the two of us. She smiles at me.

Drink in hand, I am waiting for the liquid courage to kick in so that I can go up and talk to her more easily.

Before it does, though, a man whom I overhear is her husband joins her in the sauna, along with another couple. I cannot help but overhear a story that the guy from the other couple tells:

“So they had given me ecstasy. And I had never taken that before. Man, when I got on that drug, I was freaking out. I picked up a butcher knife and was just walking around the house. I knew I was going to cut somebody or cut myself. They tried to get the knife away from me, but I didn’t want to give it up. Finally, they got the butcher knife away and got me to lie down on the couch. Man, I laid there, looking up at the ceiling fan, for seven hours. I didn’t blink that entire time. I was just staring at it. My eyes dried out so bad… Ecstasy’s a powerful drug, man.”

Everyone in the sauna goes on to share some stories of their own drug experience.

I sigh.

I cannot relate to that. I have no stories to tell from a drug experience. In the dating world, I think that makes me a bit of a square. Everyone, it seems, everyone has used drugs, and many continue to do so. It does not matter your station in life. Whether you are homeless or whether you are a lawyer, whether or not you are religious and go to church- everyone has used drugs. The hypocrisy of what I see from this every day in my job is really disgusting. Rich people with drug problems can check themselves into an expensive rehab and are treated with kid gloves. Poor people caught with drugs by the police get prison.

I suppose church might be the best place to find women who do not want you to use drugs with them, but I cannot force myself to get high on Jesus with them, either. And just saying something like that makes them angry and ends any hope of getting along… It is what it is.

One of the waiters has noticed that I am sailing alone. I can tell he is from an Asian country like Indonesia or the Philippines. His English is not the best.

“Mr. Nathan, you should come back on cruise at different time,” he says to me one night at dinner. “Too many kids on this cruise. December will be the same, lots of kids. You should come in February. What is the holiday you have in February?”

“Valentine’s Day?” I ask.

“Yes!” he exclaims. “More people like you on that cruise. No kids.”

I laugh. “I don’t think a Valentine’s Day cruise would work out too well for a guy sailing alone, either.”

My response goes completely over his head, though.

“You come back in February, Mr. Nathan,” he repeats. “What is holiday again?”

“Valentine’s Day.”

“Yes!” he exclaims again.

We shake hands when I leave dinner for the last time. He smiles, and we wish each other good luck.

***

Back in my room, as I undress for the night, I notice a small closet door, away from the main closet. A memory comes rushing back to me.

“Oh, no.”

I open the door to the small closet and sure enough, there are all of my Izod shirts hanging on the rack. I forgot that I had put them all in here.

I immediately get dressed again, head to the front of the ship and the Guest Services Desk, and apologize.

The next time I see the steward who cleaned my room, I apologize to him personally and tip him some money. He seems to want to have nothing to do with me, though, and I cannot blame him. I almost wish the shirts had been stolen, now, so that I would have been right in my assumption.

***

After the cruise, when I arrive back home in Live Oak, I do a load of laundry. My golden "Senor Frog's" shirt shrinks too much to be wearable, and largely disintegrates in the clothes dryer.

***

One of the prettiest sights on the cruise is sunset on November 30. We are well out to sea, and so the sun actually goes down over the water.

Along various points on the horizon, clouds shower rain into the sea as the sun sets.

I have heard some stories about the ocean flashing green right at the point when the disc of the sun drops below the horizon. It is depicted in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, so I watch carefully for this.

Right as the sun goes down, I notice that when I blink, the ocean toward the horizon appears to be a different shade of blue, and close to green. It only happens when I blink and only lasts an instant. I guess that it is because the rods and cones in my eyes are a little off in discerning color from watching the setting sun for a couple of minutes straight. Perhaps that is what people are seeing when they claim to see a green flash. But who knows?

I am glad that I went on this cruise, and I look forward to more adventures in traveling. I think if I sail again, though, I will see if I can book a singles cruise.

Maine & Canada

Friday, September 12, 2014, Live Oak, Florida.

None too early in the morning, I get on the road to North Carolina. I am going to spend the night with my parents in Lumberton. My brother arrives at their house in the evening, just a short time after me. He comes in from Wilkesboro, NC. We have a nice, home cooked meal by mom of roast beef and vegetables.

As I watch television with my parents that night, I hear a thud out on the front porch. Dad and I exchange looks.

“That’s the cats,” he says. “They’ll jump off a chair after a frog or something. Sometimes it scares us good.”

The next morning, September 13, all of us pack our luggage into Mom and Dad’s Nissan Altima and ride up to Garner. My uncle, Dad’s brother, lives there and drives us to Raleigh Durham International Airport. We fly Southwest Airlines to Baltimore for a brief layover, then on to Portland, Maine.

We arrive late in the afternoon. My Uncle Jerry and Aunt Janet (Uncle Jerry is Mom’s brother), will be coming in later tonight, also from RDU. We rent a maroon Town & Country Chrysler minivan for the trip up the Maine coast and into Canada.

We check into the Comfort Inn that afternoon. I have not eaten anything all day except for the airline peanuts, so we all head out for a meal. Uptown Portland is where we first look for a restaurant. There are plenty of places, but nowhere to park. All of us are so hungry at the present that we do not desire to struggle with this. I want a nice place to eat, with no fuss. On the way to uptown, we passed a restaurant that I had never seen before called “The Sea Dog.” It is close to our hotel, and we head back there.

“The Sea Dog” is a great restaurant. I learn that it is actually a small chain, with two or three other locations in Maine, and also a couple in Florida. I order a sort of seafood pot pie. Mom has New England Chowder, the best New England Chowder that she has ever had in her life, she says.

It is such a late lunch that mom and dad are satisfied just to have snacks for dinner, a few hours later. I want to go out somewhere, though. My brother accompanies me to Buffalo Wild Wings in Portland. It is my first time ever going to this chain restaurant. I am impressed with the number of big screen televisions all over the place. Tons of college football games are on, along with major league baseball games.

The food is so-so, though. It certainly is not a healthy place to eat, as basically the place just serves wings with a large variety of sauces, and fries or onion rings.

I smile at one of the women sitting at a table next to us. She is with a group of about four or five other people. After my brother and I have been there a while, they leave.

“Did you notice anything unusual about the table beside us?” he asks me.

I look over at it and shake my head.

“None of them ever said anything. They were all using sign language.”

“Huh. Neat,” I say. “A place like this would be nice for them, then, to watch all the action on the different TVs and not be bothered by the noise.”

After finishing our meal, Adam and I take the minivan out to the airport and pick up Uncle Jerry and Aunt Janet.

Sunday, September 14.

After checking out of the hotel the next morning, we head to Freeport, Maine, just a little north of Portland. This is the location of the LL Bean store that Uncle Jerry really wants to visit. By far, most of LL Bean’s business is done through on-line ordering, but this store is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

There are some surrounding outlets and restaurants in Freeport as well. For the first time in my life, I order a lobster roll. The Linda Bean Restaurant in Freeport also has a small stand just outside the main LL Bean store. This where Adam and I enjoy them. The bread is hot and buttery, but the lobster meat is actually cold. I think that I would like it better if the lobster was hot, but it is tasty, nonetheless, and makes for a nice late morning snack.

Later, the family enjoys a lunch at Amato’s in Freeport. I have a plate of spaghetti with Amato’s custom sauce.

After Freeport, we head northeast on Highway 1 to the town of Ellsworth, where we check into the Hampton Inn.

I want the family to enjoy a good, authentic Maine meal. On the hotel clerk’s recommendation, we visit the Union River Lobster Pot restaurant in downtown Ellsworth. Cauldrons of boiling water set outside of the restaurant, along with large tanks filled with lobsters.



I order “The Lobster Pot,” the featured meal of the restaurant. A whole lobster is brought to me inside a blue metal pot, along with steamed clams and corn on the cob. I have never eaten a whole lobster before- only lobster tail at the chain restaurant, Red Lobster (and I have not seen a single one of those restaurants in Maine).

It is also the first time that Mom or Dad, Uncle Jerry or Aunt Janet have had lobster. The waitress brings us bibs, shell cracking instruments, and an instruction sheet on how to break apart and eat a whole lobster.

All of us just sort of stare at the creatures when they are presented.

Dad is a little bothered by the fact that they are boiled alive, and so am I for that matter. I wonder how much pain a crustacean feels, how much suffering is involved when they are placed immediately into a vat that is boiling hot. I realize that this lobster in the pot in front of me was alive probably less than minutes ago. The tail is curled up underneath its body, like it is in the fetal position.

“The soul has not even left the shell yet,” Adam says.

The meat is extremely tasty, though.

It is actually quite easy to get the meat out of the tail and the claws. I peel the rest of the shell off and taste a small amount of some grayish meat before I realize what it is.

“Is this the brain?” I ask the waitress. She nods.

“Are you supposed to eat the brain?” I ask.

“I don’t,” she says, and makes an “ick” face. “I see people who do, but I wouldn’t do it.”

The size of the brain of the lobster is much larger than what I thought it would be, which also makes me wonder about the suffering. Lobsters often visibly respond to me when I walk up to look at them in the tanks.

I finish the meal with the best slice of blueberry pie that I have ever had.

After the meal is over, we all get back into the minivan.

“Wasn’t that the best meal that you’ve had in Maine?” I ask Uncle Jerry.

“No, I wouldn’t say that,” he responds. “I had a bowl of cereal this morning.”

You can get live lobsters everywhere in Maine. There is a tank of them for sale in the Walgreens across the parking lot from the hotel. A bright red lobster, in a tank by himself in Walgreens, seems to wave to me with one of its claws when I enter the store and pass by him. Perhaps years from now, people will look back at all this slaughter and boiling and be disgusted at the holocaust and hellish type conditions these creatures were put through. Or perhaps not. I hope they do not feel much pain or suffer. I hope the death is instantaneous when they are placed in the boiling water.

Monday, September 15.

From Ellsworth the next morning, we drive south to Acadia National Park.

As I make my way up stairs to the park’s visitor center, I notice small piles of stones, with one on the top of each pile that looks like an arrow. These are cairns, used to mark trails.

Inside the visitor center, I review their collection of field guides and discover perhaps the best guide to plants that I have ever come across. It is called “Plants of Acadia National Park.” Filled with colorful photographs and a couple of useful identification keys, this book catalogues almost 900 species of plants that can be found not only in Acadia, but all over New England.

From there, we head to the top of Cadillac Mountain. Depending on the time of year, one can be the first person in the Western Hemisphere to see the sunrise from this location. The top of the porphyritic granite mountain offers a great view of Bar Harbor as well.



It is cold and windy on top of the mountain. With my binoculars, I can see a lighthouse in the ocean to the east.

After coming down off the mountain, we continue around the loop road of the park. I enjoy a turkey sandwich for lunch at the Jordan House inside the park. It offers a great view of Jordan Pond, which is more like a lake.

While in Acadia, we also take in locations called Sandy Beach, Thunder Hole, and the Wild Gardens of Acadia.

Sandy Beach is quite small, but it is what passes for a beach in Maine, whose coastline consists almost entirely of granite.

Thunder Hole is a place where the granite meets the ocean, and during a storm the waves crashing into the rocks creates a thundering noise.

The Wild Gardens of Acadia contains all sorts of plants and flowers native to the park. The plants are all meticulously labeled. This, along with Cadillac Mountain, is my favorite part of the park, though dad tells me that he is more impressed with the frogs on the lily pads in a little stream that runs through the garden. I do not think either of us have ever seen frogs literally on lily pads, the way they were portrayed in cartoons and children’s books when I was growing up.

After leaving Acadia National Park, we drive into the town of Bar Harbor in the late afternoon. I really like the town, and would spend the night here if I was traveling alone. The pubs and taverns look like they have some character to them, and I think that I would meet interesting people inside.



The family splits up for an hour to go shopping, but I use the hour to walk down historic West Street. The houses along this street are gigantic and old, some now divided up for nonprofits or inns. I also come to a place on the water that has a stone bridge leading to Bar Island. The tide is up at present, though, and the bridge is under four to eight feet of water.

That evening, I convince my family to return to the Union River Lobster Pot in Ellsworth. While I really enjoyed my lobster meal there, as did my brother who ordered cedar plank salmon, the rest of the family is not interested in eating lobster again. They all order something different this time. I have a plateful of clams both steamed and fried, along with some homemade crab cakes.

Tuesday, September 16.

We head out in the morning, up Highway 1 bound for the Canadian border at Calais. The road begins to follow the St. Croix River, which divides the U.S. from its northern neighbor.

We stop at a Dunkin Donuts shop in Calais just before crossing. I ask the lady behind the register how to say the name of this town.

“Callous,” she says, “like you have a callous on your hand.”

At the checkpoint, the Canadian Border Patrol agent greets us in both English and French. Mom tries to take his picture, but I warn her not to do this.

They ask the agent if he minds if they take his picture.

“Actually I do,” he says, “for several reasons.”

The town on the other side of Calais is St. Stephen, but we quickly find that Highway 1 turns into a sort of interstate in Canada, a very empty interstate. The quality of the pavement is great, but there are hardly any vehicles on the road, in either direction. This is the farthest east that I have ever been as well. Once we cross into Canada, we enter the Atlantic time zone and lose an hour.

We zip up to St. John. Along the way, Adam spots a bald eagle perched in a tree along some open swampland. He points it out to me.

In St. John, after checking into the hotel, we have lunch at Wendy’s. There is some confusion over the exchange rate and the amount of change given for American cash. Uncle Jerry did not expect to receive change in Canadian money, but Adam buys it from him as a souvenir.

We drive around St. John, which got its boom as a ship building town. We visit the Reversing Falls, a place where the tide comes in so strongly that it reverses the flow of the St. John River and creates a sort of rapids. While observing these rapids, I also spot a seal swimming in the water.



That night, we eat at Vito’s, a nice Italian restaurant that has been in place for a number of years. I order spinach lasagna.

Wednesday, September 17.

After an early morning run on the treadmill in the hotel workout room, I walk outside and take in the brisk Canadian morning air. Beside the hotel is an open field of New England Aster and goldenrod flowers. In the distance there appears to be a granite quarry.

We get on the road south and head back to the United States. In Orono, Maine, we visit the University of Maine, first having lunch at “The Family Dog” Restaurant. I have a nice chicken sandwich. The owner of the restaurant tells us the best places to visit on campus.

We take in the hockey rink, where I note that the school’s hockey team took home NCAA national championships in the same years that Florida State (where I went to school) won national championships in football: 1993 and 1999.

We also see the football stadium and walk onto the baseball field. It is artificial, but not Astro turf. The plastic grass actually has bits of sand and ground up rubber in it, making the surface softer than Astro turf.

I go inside the University library while my family waits outside. The library reminds me a lot of where I went to undergraduate school- Western Carolina University. Some of the desks along the walls are designed like bunk beds, with students able to climb ladders and study in a desk mounted over a person beneath them. I also note that the library does not appear to have air conditioning.

At the University bookstore in the Student Union, I pick up a history book that is required for one of the classes on campus, Changes in the Land by a historian named Cronon. I take a few minutes to read some of the pages, and I am so struck by how illuminating this writing is that I decide to order a copy of the book for myself.

I also make a brief visit to the planetarium on campus. It is brand new, and not yet open for business. Boxes line the walls, but the director of the planetarium points out the telescope to me, the largest in Maine. It has a computer system that will let the scope know when the sky is clear rather than cloudy, and open up the lens for observation.

My brother is a big Stephen King fan, and knows that the author lives in Bangor, just a little to the south of the University. While in the library, I go to a computer and quite easily find the address of his house. We punch it into our GPS and ride there. Adam is rather surprised that I could so easily get the address. The house has an iron gate with a spider web design in the center and two bats with wings spread, mounted over the hinges.

We return to Ellsworth to spend the night. This time, we eat dinner at Helen’s Restaurant. I have a seafood platter with stuffed Haddock, along with another slice of blueberry pie for desert.

Thursday, September 18.

In the morning, we drive south on Highway 1 and stop in Camden. This is a nice little town on Penobscot Bay. We eat lunch on at the Camden Deli, where I have another lobster roll.

Farther south, we head to Boothbay Harbor. The family drops me off at the Botanical Gardens of Boothbay while they continue on into the town.

The Gardens have an incredible and beautiful display of plants and flowers. I try to make note of some of my favorites: The Blue Lace Larkspur, the Knockout Mystic Illusion Dahlia (Dahlia Hybridia), the Shrubby St. John’s Wort, The Southern Star, Artist Blue Ageratum, the T. Rex Stonecrop. If I had to pick one that was my favorite, at least for what was in bloom at this time of year, it would be the Bat Faced Cuphea.



When the family returns to pick me up, they all talk about how much they enjoyed the feel of the town of Boothbay. Mom found a great Friends of the Public Library used book store, though they were only open for another 15 minutes when she arrived. She manages to buy one book that she wants before it closes.

We drive on into Portland, and have dinner at the Sea Dog again. This time, I have a delicious plate of mussels and linguini, along with a coffee cheesecake for desert.

I am having trouble getting the rest of the folks to enjoy dinner like I do. Adam orders a brownie with ice cream so that I do not eat desert alone. He offers some to Mom, who says that she is too full. To my amusement, though, when we get back to the hotel, Mom eats a granola bar with some coffee.

Coffee is what she needed, she protests to me.

The Sea Dog offered coffee, I point out to her, it just had Jameson whiskey in it is all.

Friday, September 19.

The weather in Portland this morning is as cold as it has been all week. The wind is blowing and the temperature is in the 40s or perhaps low 50s.

As we wait along the harbor to board the boat for a lighthouse tour, Adam spots an artistic display. We walk up to it and discover that it is a piece of the Berlin Wall. It is obvious from the graffiti and the government signs remaining on the wall which side was the west and which side was the east.

The trip out onto the water is cold and windy, but also enjoyable. The Portland Head Lighthouse is the most impressive sight. We get rocked back and forth pretty well when a huge cargo ship speeds past us out to sea.



Adam spends the entire ride up on the top deck, where the wind is the strongest. Dad stands at the bow of the boat for most of the trip, taking in the sights and the elements.

That night, we have dinner at one of Dad’s favorite restaurants: Cracker Barrel. These are all over North Carolina and the southeast United States. I have a nice meal of rainbow trout, corn, pinto beans and cheese grits.

After dinner, we go to the planetarium at the University of Southern Maine and watch a show on IBEX, a satellite in space that is mapping the outer edges of the solar system, or the heliosphere. The operator of the planetarium also gives a talk and demonstration of what the night sky looks like that evening.

The next day, Saturday, September 20, we fly back to North Carolina. During the layover in Baltimore, we pass a large group of WWII veterans dressed in the same blue t-shirts. Most of them are in wheelchairs. My brother guesses that they are going to Washington, DC to see the WWII memorial in the Washington Mall.

When we get back to North Carolina, Uncle Ken, my dad’s brother, treats us to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, Ragazzi's, and we arrive back in Lumberton in time for me to watch the Florida State and Clemson football game on television.

The air is much warmer in North Carolina than it was in Maine.

I am appreciative of the time that I got to spend with my family on this trip. It was relaxing, and I enjoyed some nice food. I am glad that everyone was healthy enough to enjoy it with me.

Taking a Break

For the past couple of years or so, I have made the effort to post a blog entry here pretty much on a weekly basis.

I am going to be slowing down a bit, at least for a while.

Not writing blog entries should slightly speed up progress on the novel that I am attempting to complete, but the main reason that I need to take a break is to re-energize.

I have been told that my entries of late have gotten a little dark, and are not as enjoyable to read.

We all as humans have our sad stories and moments of pain. Though this blog is about my personal experiences, I also try to make it entertaining and perhaps useful for people. They do not need reminders of the depressing things in their lives.

So, I will take time off and see if I can build up some positive energy that triggers fond memories from my life.

In September, I plan to take a vacation to Maine with my mom, dad, my brother, and an aunt and uncle. I will definitely write about this experience. I have never been to Maine before, and we also plan to cross over into Canada.

I will probably post some entries before then, too, though I am not sure when.

Another Level

The World Cup is going on right now in Brazil. If I had grown up playing soccer, I am sure that I would enjoy watching the games much more. As it is, I grew up playing baseball.

So now, church league softball games in Live Oak are the highlight of my week.

Whatever skills that I acquired for softball did not come easy, though...

Lumberton, North Carolina. 1989-1992.

Coach wants to put me at catcher on my Little League team, but Dad tells him that is not a good idea, because I am “bat blind.”

This means that I flinch when the batter swings in front of me as I try to catch the ball. Perhaps it is a problem that could be worked out with practice, but I have no desire to be a catcher, really. It takes too long to constantly be changing in and out of that equipment in between innings when it is my turn to hit: The shin guards, the chest protector, the helmet and mask. The shin guards and chest protector have all sorts of straps to fasten. Plus, the catcher takes a beating in every game, for sure. Pitchers throw the ball hard into the dirt in front of home plate. There are foul tips, and collisions with base runners when I am supposed to block the plate as they round third base.



Still, during one of our games while our catcher is putting on his equipment again (he made the last out at bat in the inning before), the pitcher, Matt, asks me to get behind home plate and catch while he throws a few pitches to keep his arm loose.

I do not bother to use the catcher’s mitt, but rather my regular glove that I wear at my regular position at second base.

As the pitcher hurls the ball at me, it snaps loudly against the leather pocket. That is how you know that you are catching the ball in the pocket of the glove like you are supposed to- the loud pop.

One after another he tosses to me, including a couple of breaking pitches. It occurs to me that this is one of the hardest throwing games of catch that I have ever played in my life, and it also dawns on me, now, that I am playing a level of baseball where I am expected to hit a ball traveling faster than what I am used to catching in the field.

I tell this to my dad after the game, and he gives me a look like I am a little strange, like it is an obvious observation that I have made.

***

“High school is where you really begin to learn how to play baseball,” I heard Roger Clemens say once.

Well, I am not to high school yet, but next is junior high baseball at Littlefield. Littlefield is grades 7-12, and I play second base on the junior high team.

One day at practice, we decide to use the pitching machine that the high school team does, inside the batting cage.

There is a warped spot on the rollers that shoot out the ball. Actually there is a chunk missing from the roller. If the ball hits that warped spot, then it is likely to spray the pitch anywhere. I am watching when, more than once, the machine shoots a high speed fastball right at the batter’s head.



As with becoming a catcher, I have no desire to get into the batting cage with that broken machine, and I complain to the coach.

He rolls his eyes, and I realize that I need to get in there to stay in his good graces.

Once inside, the ball never comes at my head, but my fear that it might, combined with the fact that these are the fastest pitches that I have ever tried to hit in my life, means that I have zero success putting the bat on the ball. It is highly frustrating.

“You’ve got to do something, Nathan,” the coach says. “This is how fast the pitchers will be throwing, now. Hold your bat out and bunt the ball.”

This, I can do.

In another practice, we are performing infield drills where the runner on first attempts to steal, and as second baseman I cover the bag.

The catcher hums the ball to the bag, and I go to one knee to field it. The runner sliding in hits my leg, just as the ball gets right in my face. My glove drops slightly, and the ball hits the top of my glove and barely skips over my head.

“Hmm,” the coach grunts disapprovingly. I narrowly avoided getting smashed in the face with the baseball.

Another day, the coach gets one of the pitchers on the high school team to throw to us in a simulated game.

The high school pitcher is a very hard thrower. He is also very wild, both in his pitching and in his life. He has been suspended multiple times for fighting, and I generally avoid him in the hallways.

I watched one game where he was pitching, and he threw a ball that caught the batter square in the face. The batter just stayed face down on the ground for a few minutes. When he did leave, it was with the help of other people, and he went on to the hospital.

I have no desire to get in the batter’s box against the high school pitcher, either. My younger brother is on the team, and to his credit and courage does step in against the high school pitcher. I stay on the bench, though, hoping the coach does not notice that I have not hit, yet. If the coach does notice, he says nothing about it. To my relief, the practice ends without me having to step to the plate against this wild, hard thrower.

I have a pretty decent season with the Littlefield team, though. I do not hit well, but I field my position at second base better than others who want to play there.

In 1991, the Robeson County school systems merge, and I go to Lumberton junior high school for my 9th grade year. The class is much larger than what there was at Littlefield, and the competition to make the junior high school baseball team here is much more intense.

During tryouts, I field a throw coming in from the outfield to second base. The runner is coming from first, trying to take the extra base. I catch the ball, but the runner’s slide knocks me out of the way before I can apply the tag.

The coach shakes his head at me.

“They’re going to be wearing metal spikes, now,” he says. You cover the bag like that, and you’re going to get messed up.



I think I do pretty well fielding my position in tryouts, but it is obvious that I do not have the throwing arm that other guys on the team do.

The coach watches me relay a cutoff from right field to third base. He has me do it a few more times, and I can tell he does not like what he sees as far as how quickly and accurately I can get the ball there.

Later, I field a ground ball and throw it to first the way that I always do. But the coach yells at me, “Charge the ball!”

Then he asks the rest of the team in a loud voice, “What kind of defense do we play?”

“Attack defense!” all the other players shout in unison.

Tryouts are not a pleasant experience, and neither is it a good feeling when I see the final roster posted on the gym wall early one morning when I arrive at the compound that is called the junior high school. My name is not on the list.

I realize that I have come to another level of baseball, where the ball travels faster with more breaking pitches, and the players wear metal spikes. It is a level where I am not good enough to compete, anymore.

One of the assistant coaches talks to me during an afternoon after school, encouraging me to work harder and try out for the high school team next year. But this is a transition I do not make. Instead, I join the cross country team in high school and earn a letter in that sport.

***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

I enjoy a softball game this evening, playing with high school and college baseball players who wear metal spikes, throw the ball like a rocket and can hit it out of the park.

Thanks to the baseball experience that I had growing up, though, I can hold a spot on this field and with this team. The captain keeps me in for about half the game, usually, and at catcher- which is a much different position in slow pitch softball than in baseball. I do not mind being a catcher in slow pitch softball.



Playing softball is one of the most enjoyable things that I do, now.

I also understand baseball better than any other sport, so I get more enjoyment out of watching a game than with other sports.

As a little league and junior high baseball player, I escaped the experience without any broken bones, concussions or a smashed-in face.

All in all, baseball and softball have been great experiences for me.

Claustrophobia

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Rather than heading out to hit the usual restaurants and bars of Live Oak on this Friday night, I am staying at home. I have dumped a little more cash at these places than I would prefer over the past couple of weeks, and also my body is telling me to take a break.

So I stay in and try to watch the College World Series- Ole Miss versus UVA- but that gets rained out. There is also World Cup soccer. This is okay entertainment, but I really do not understand the game of soccer well enough to appreciate it, and I grow tired of watching players flop on the ground in fake agony, only to hop up like nothing happened. I suppose if I had been raised playing soccer, like I was with baseball, the World Cup would be more meaningful to me.

So I am alone with my thoughts, sitting in my living room. After typing a couple of pages for the novel I am working on, I head out to look at the stars at around 2:30 am. My handheld planetarium/ GPS tells me that Saturn is up and points me to where it is in the sky. Unfortunately, oak trees block my view.



If I could see Saturn, I would bring out my telescope. The last time I viewed Saturn through my scope was in 2005 at Carolina Beach, NC. My scope is strong enough for me to clearly see the rings of Saturn.

The summer triangle is directly overhead, consisting of the stars Altair, Deneb and Vega.



Looking up at the stars is always a wondrous thing for me. It reminds me of how much there is out there to explore and learn. The human species has not even gotten started. Our existence is like the blink of an eye in the lifetime of what is to come.

Studying the stars sometimes triggers sadness in me, though. I admit that I am prone to little bouts with depression, especially on nights like this when I am alone. But I do not worry about that too much. In truth, I think it is a natural part of the human condition to be depressed at times. A person who is never depressed is not really paying attention to the world around them, in my opinion. Perhaps that is the happiest way to go through life, though- to stay busy with work or family or whatever and just not think about things too much. I am happiest now when I am at work, caught up in arguing a case in front of a judge or jury, or battling the prosecutor about some other matter. It keeps my mind occupied.

Looking up at the stars makes me feel claustrophobic as well. To think these stars in constellations like the Big Dipper and Orion are the closest to earth, and they are still thousands and millions of light years away, untouchable and unreachable, and to know that there are perhaps billions of galaxies- not stars, galaxies- out in the darkness that I cannot see, creates in me the sensation that I am like a frog trapped in a glass jar.

In law school, I experienced for the first time the frustration of not being smarter. I recognized that the professors there, and some of the students, could run circles around me intellectually. I sometimes as well felt their contempt for me in not being able to keep up.

This has helped me be more patient in dealing with clients in my job with the Public Defender’s Office, as I have seen other lawyers look at the clients the same way that I saw some professors look at me.

One of my classmates with whom I have remained in contact after graduation said to me, “I can understand the allure of being a Public Defender. When you’re talking with clients, you’re always the smartest guy in the room.”

I had never thought of it that way, but I suppose he is right. That view kind of takes the nobility out of the work, though.

Anyway, the stars remind me of law school and that I am not nearly smart enough to understand the universe the way other humans on this planet do. And even the most intelligent humans who have ever lived probably have the equivalent of a gnat’s comprehension of the true nature of our existence. There are those scientists who hypothesize that multiple other universes exist in other dimensions, perhaps an infinite number of dimensions and universes, both larger and smaller than our own. I suspect they are right, and all of this is just far more complex than I or any human can ever hope to fathom. There is claustrophobia at what I cannot see and sense and understand.



This is part of my frustration with religions, as well. Religions just offer too simple an explanation of our existence and purpose. Yet many people insist that you believe the same as they do, or you are not socially acceptable, and you also risk some sort of eternal punishment.

This blog entry is a ramble, but these are the things on my mind at 2:30 in the morning, in my back yard, looking up at the night sky.

Saturday night will be different. I plan to go out, have a nice meal with adult beverages, and enjoy listening to a band play Southern Rock music. I will watch the beautiful women of Suwannee County who also decide to come out, and I will try to have a conversation with them. I hope I will be generally distracted, and I hope it will be fun.

The House

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

“There it is,” my coworker says to me. “You see it?”

“Yeah,” I answer.

Looking out the window from the passenger seat of the car, I can see about two blocks back, a large two-story house with a turret.

We are moving 25 miles per hour south down Highway 129, so I only get a brief glimpse of it.

“Why is that house haunted?” I ask.

“They say a girl died there, and that she lives upstairs in that tower.”

“Really? How did she die?”

“I don’t know. But my sergeant said they once went into the house, into the upstairs part, and the door closed on them by itself.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That house is always for sale, too,” my colleague continues. “Anytime someone moves in, it’s not very long before they move out and put the house back up for sale."

“I’ll have to check that out sometime,” I say.

We continue driving on to the local bowling alley and enjoy some games with other coworkers.

***

A few days later, I am riding my bike in the early evening and decide to go over to the “haunted house.”

It is on Pine Street, surrounded by a nice group of other houses. Sure enough, there is a “For Sale” sign in the front yard. The house is larger and looks a bit older than the surrounding homes.

I park my bike on the sidewalk leading to the steps of the front porch, putting down the kickstand, taking off my helmet, but carrying the helmet with me.

Looking up at the windows of the turret, they are covered by thin, ghostly white curtains- except for one. In that window, the white curtain is pulled back, revealing only the blackness of the room.

When I step up onto the spacious front porch, I see a mailbox mounted on the wall. There is a slip of colored paper in the box that says “VACANT.”

Walking to my right, the windows of the house are covered with curtains and I am not able to look inside. Several paper wasp nests are high overhead under the roof of the porch. A couple of the wasps in the nest turn to look at me as I walk underneath, but stay put. Gigantic shrubbery marks the end of that side of the porch, so I walk back around to the left.

The left side of the front porch has even more space than the right, and is screened in.

I pull on the screen door to see if it will open, and it does. Some patio type furniture remains inside the screened in portion of the porch. Also, the windows on this side of the house are not blocked with curtains.

Through the first window on my right, I can see a spacious room covered in polished hardwood floors. There is no furniture whatsoever inside, but I see the wooden stairs leading up to the second floor of the house.

At the back wall of the porch is another door with a window. Looking through it, I wonder if perhaps the house is in fact occupied.

I see the kitchen. On the counter are unopened bottles of wine, two-liter drinks, and various kitchen utensils.

Now I feel that I should not be here, that maybe I am trespassing where someone actually lives. But then I see the refrigerator, with both of its doors open, and it again assures me that the place is vacant.

I am about to check if the door to the kitchen is unlocked when I suddenly hear a crash outside. I turn and run out the screened porch and to the front of the house.

My bike has turned over for no apparent reason.

I look around to see if anyone might have done this as I step off the porch, but no one is in sight.

To my surprise, I see that my bike has sustained quite a bit of damage from the fall to the sidewalk. The side of my seat is scuffed, as is the foot pedal where it made contact with the rough concrete. A rock or something has actually cut a hole into the rubber covering the end of my handle bar. And the headlight that I bought for the front of my bike, so that I can ride at night, is completely broken off.

I work on the headlight for a couple of minutes, as this is really disappointing. The light still works, but there is no way to mount it on my bike now, sad to say. The key plastic piece actually snapped when my bike turned over, so I have to put the light in my pocket.

How could this have happened? There is a bit of a breeze, but not strong enough to turn over my bike on a kick stand, I would not think. I also would not think that my bike would have sustained all these marks and damage from just tipping over on the sidewalk.

I look up at the tower, at the black window with the white curtain pulled back, and I wonder…

I mount my bike and get out of there.

***

Thinking back now to that day, I am a little puzzled at myself for leaving the house before I was done exploring. I meant to look through all the windows fully, and then walk around to the back of the house to see what I could see.

For whatever reason, though, I got on my bike after something turned it over, and I pedaled back home.

Perhaps in the near future, I will go back, finish checking out this haunted house, and see what happens. In the meantime, I have to mount a new headlight on my bike.

The Battle

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

I walk onto the back porch and hear water running outside. I know what that means.

My washing machine and dryer actually set outdoors, behind my house on a concrete slab covered by a small roof.

The past few weekends, the washing machine has been acting up, overflowing with water when I first turn it on and not going into the cycles. I have to manually turn the dial to get the cycles to activate. I have not bothered the landlord about this, because it only does it occasionally, and then the machine operates normally for the rest of the loads that day.

I step outside, and sure enough, the machine is running over with water. This is the second time it has done it today, though, and it is the rinse cycle. It has never overflowed on the rinse cycle before.

So I manually turn the dial, and all the water drains out. The machine is not going through the cycles like it should.

Hmm. I suppose I will need to call the landlord about this, now.

I step back to go inside the house, when a bug flies into the side of my head with a good deal of force.

“Jeez!” I say out loud. “Can’t you see where you’re going, insect? I’m standing right here.”

I do not see the bug or where it went, and I walk back into the house.

Later, I put in a second load of clothes after moving the first load to the dryer, and wait while the machine fills with water to see if it will overflow.

Yep, after a couple of minutes, I see that the water level is getting too high. I manually turn the dial and start the machine. I step back, and a bug hits me in the side of the head again.

Suddenly, I feel a burning sensation on my right shoulder blade.

“Whoa!” I yell, and take off running. Kicking over a bucket that I use to wash my car, I almost trip as I sprint out into the back yard, clutching my back. In my peripheral vision, I see a wasp chasing me. I keep running until the wasp veers off.

Now I understand everything. There is a nest somewhere close to my washing machine.

The decision on how to handle this is a quick one. Time for battle.

I give the washing machine a wide berth as I circle the back yard to get to the door. Luckily, I have a spray can of wasp and hornet killer under my sink. After I retrieve it, I take off my shirt and look at my back in the mirror. There is a puncture mark and a welt that has already formed.

Carefully, can in hand at the ready, I step back outside and creep around the corner.



I am only a few feet away from the washing machine, which hums away in its cycle.

But where is the nest?

I see an empty wasp nest under a corner of the roof, and douse it with the spray. I doubt this is the one that I need to be worried about, though. It has been there for some time. I also spray a dirt dauber’s nest and run back out into the yard in case any of them come flying out. None do. Walking around the back of the house, I spot two more empty nests and spray them. But I am still unconvinced that I have found the headquarters of the wasp that stung me.

Okay, I think to myself. I need to creep back up to the washing machine and see what happens.

My head on a swivel, I step off the grass of the lawn and onto the concrete slab where the washing machine sets. I am looking all around.

As I take a small step forward, I suddenly spot the joker. He is actually inside the light fixture, directly above the washing machine. I am much closer to him that I would like to be, and I freeze.



He is perched on the rim of the hole where the electric cord comes out, wings cocked upward, and he is looking directly at me. The nest has to be inside that hole.

I take careful aim with the spray can. Now, a good feeling sweeps over me. He has not moved, and I have him locked in my sights.

I press the button and score a direct hit in his face. He takes off flying away from me in a disoriented manner. Another wasp falls dead out of the hole. I am a little surprised that the one guarding the nest did not fall dead straight away as well.

In a moment, that wasp appears again, flying right at me. I let go with another stream of the poison, waving the can to spread the stream in the air, trying to nail him. Some does hit him again, and he turns away and flies high into the air, disappearing. There is no doubt he will die in a few moments.

The problem is solved. The battle is won.

There is another light fixture, this one above the dryer. I wonder if there might be a nest inside that one as well.

I look into the hole from about five feet away, but do not see anything. Better to be safe than sorry, though. I spray inside the hole with the wasp killer. In a moment, I see movement, and two wasps fall out of that light fixture as well.

This is only the second time in my life that I have been stung by a wasp or bee. The first time was at my house in Kissimmee in 2012, when I opened a trash can outside that had a nest on it.

From the research that I have done, I would guess that it was a "paper wasp" that attacked. The Wikipedia article on them says that they have facial recognition abilities similar to humans. I believe it. I could tell he was looking right at me and studying me before I sprayed him.

The sting causes me to feel a touch nauseous for about half an hour, and there is a little soreness, like one feels after receiving a tetanus shot. Over the next few days, the spot it itches some.

That wasp left a mark, too. As I type this blog entry, a full week after having been stung, there is still discoloration on my shoulder blade about the size of two quarters. It looks like I have a birth mark.

The wasp that stung me was unusually aggressive and unusually tough- or at least that is my opinion. Normally, I can get pretty close to nests and not be attacked, and normally a wasp falls dead immediately after the poison spray touches it.

It probably would have amused anyone who could have seen me yell and sprint across the yard after being stung, and then creep around the yard like an army commando with a spray can.

The First of The Few

Jacksonville, North Carolina. 2002.

The Cracker Barrel Restaurant in Jacksonville is one of my favorite places to eat. Though in my job as a security clearance investigator, my assigned city is Wilmington, which is well south of Jacksonville, the back log of cases at Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base means that I often make the trip there to help out with the load.



The water in Jacksonville and on the Marine Corps Base tastes different. It also has a slick texture to it when I wash my hands. I have noticed that the sinks at the Onslow County Courthouse and in the restrooms of buildings on the base are stained a dingy grey at the parts where water has washed over the porcelain for a period of years.

It makes me wary of drinking it. Still, all the soft drinks that I have been consuming at lunch and dinner are beginning to affect me as well. I can feel my system being loaded with too much sugar.

Normally, at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant in Jacksonville, I order a country dinner plate and a glass of root beer.

Root beer is what I order today, but the drink just tastes too sweet. From now on, I am going to have only water to drink when I go out to eat, even if the water in Jacksonville tastes a little strange. Hopefully, it is not as harmful as all that sugar and other chemicals from the root beer and soft drinks.

The waitress brings me the plate of sugar cured ham, mashed potatoes and corn, along with a smaller plate of biscuits and jelly.

I am wearing my light grey suit- one of the few days when I actually put on a suit. Normally, it is khaki pants, a sport coat and a shirt and tie.

I look at my hands as I un-wrap the white cloth from the silverware and lay it across my lap. I watch my hands as I reach for the glass of root beer, bring the glass to my mouth, take a swallow, and set it back down. I observe my hands as I pick up the knife and fork and begin cutting the ham into smaller pieces.

It occurs to me that I am eating alone. Unless the pattern changes, most of my meals from now on are going to be alone. I work alone in this job. My home in Wilmington where I live alone and type up my reports is my office. My boss is in Norfolk, Virginia.

Just recently, I have started venturing out to bars on Friday nights in downtown Wilmington. It is the first time I have ever done this in my life. I have never been intoxicated before. I order no more than two drinks- always Bud Light bottles- and then carefully drive home. Beer and alcohol taste terrible to me, and I am really going out to the bars to try to meet a girl. But I always find myself sitting alone, looking at my hands, watching them grab the bottle and pull it up to my face for a sip when I feel awkward or am trying to get up the courage to say something to a girl.

***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

It is an amazing fact to me that Olivia de Havilland, the actress who played Melanie Wilkes in 1939’s Gone With the Wind is still alive today, but that Leslie Howard, the actor who played her husband, Ashley Wilkes, died during World War II.

Turner Classic Movies is one of my favorite channels, and recently I watched a film starring and directed by Leslie Howard called The First of the Few.



Released in 1942, it is about the man who designed the British fighter plane, the Spitfire. I enjoy movies about aviation and pilots, from Top Gun, to The Right Stuff, Twelve O’Clock High, Catch-22, The Dawn Patrol, The Best Years of Our Lives, and the television show The Black Sheep Squadron. If I was any good at math, I would have tried to become a military pilot. But I could not come close to comprehending the math and science that the future pilots my age at the military academies and in ROTC in college were studying.

Anyway, what interested me as well about The First of the Few was that it is a movie about World War II, made during the war itself when the outcome for England was anything but certain. I am guessing that most of it was filmed in 1941, before Pearl Harbor was bombed and America had even entered the war.

I also already knew about the fate of Leslie Howard- that he was working on films to boost morale for England when a plane he was in was shot down by Germans over the Bay of Biscay in 1943. The First of the Few had to be one of his last works.

The character Leslie Howard plays, R.J. Mitchell, the man who designed the Spitfire, dies in the movie. This is the most dramatic scene of the film. The focus in that scene is actually on Mitchell’s wife, who is carrying his tray of food back inside the house at the moment he dies from illness. Her back is to him and, sensing he is gone, she gives a gasp. The volume on the audio of the movie is turned way up for those few seconds, so that her gasp is startlingly loud. Mitchell is way in the background of the shot, out on the lawn, and I had to watch closely to see his hand fall from his chair at the same moment she gasps.

For whatever reason, that scene of Leslie Howard’s hand falling as his character died, coupled with the knowledge that he died in dramatic fashion in real life just a short time later, triggered the memory of studying my own hands at The Cracker Barrel in Jacksonville, NC back in 2002.

I thought about all that again after another evening out on Friday night…

Live Oak, Florida. May 23, 2014.

I look at my hands as I sit at the bar, enjoying a rum and coke. It occurs to me that though I am at a bar where others sit, I am drinking alone. I have had multiple of these beverages. But I am not driving, and this is a holiday weekend, so there is no harm in it. The same beautiful girls, that I see week in and week out here, walk back and forth in front of me- showing no interest as usual. I smile. The haze of the alcohol dulls the pain of that realization, and I am actually feeling pretty good at the present, just watching them.

But that is enough for tonight.

I ask for the check, which is brought to me very quickly. I watch as my hands pull my wallet out, open it, slide out the credit card that I wish to use, and hand it to the bartender. In short order, I observe my hands write in the tip amount and then sign the receipt, and put the credit card and wallet back in my pocket. Now I have left the bar and I am walking down the street.

As I key into my house and flip on the lights, I know that this has been my pattern for years, now, and will continue to be the pattern for years, barring any unforeseen incidents.

Barring any unforeseen incidents… I think about that scene in The First of the Few where Leslie Howard’s hand falls from his chair. I wonder what he was thinking when just a few months later, his plane plummeted into the ocean. I wonder if he knew works like The First of the Few and especially Gone With The Wind would make him immortal in some ways.

I look at my own hands again and smile. It is all right. I am actually pretty happy. My life is happier than most people, and I am happier now than I have been at other times in my life.

Still feeling the effects of the alcohol, of course, I look at the pillows on my bed. Not bothering to undress, I collapse face first into them and go to sleep.

The Places to Be in Live Oak, Part II

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Another nice place for lunch is El Mezcal, a Mexican restaurant right beside the courthouse. They have a great $4.99 lunch special, and depending on what you order, you can get a large portion of food for that price. The chicken or steak fajitas, served with sautéed vegetables rice and refried beans is one example. Another is the pollo fundido, which is slices of chicken served with rice, sautéed vegetables, mushrooms and topped with melted cheese. El Mezcal also serves margarita specials, though I have yet to try any of those.



The Dixie Grill is probably the oldest restaurant in Live Oak, established in 1959. My colleagues and I often eat lunch here as well. The food at this restaurant is good southern or country cooking. Their pies, in particular the coconut pie and the chocolate pie, are made from scratch.



The Gathering is a restaurant worthy of our office lunch rotation as well. They have a fairly large menu serving burgers, sandwiches, chicken, fish and shrimp in a variety of ways. Their soups are also very good, though they do not have the selection of soup that the Downtown Café does. Both the Dixie Grill and The Gathering have a great breakfast. I usually do not eat breakfast in general, as I will almost always trade food for sleep in the mornings. A couple of times, though, I have gone to The Gathering after early Saturday morning court duty. The omelets that I had there were delicious.



The Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park is a great place to hang out on the weekends. Most Friday and Saturday nights, they have live music, and many people utilize the campground for the weekends or for vacations. The park is set along the eastern bank of the Suwannee River, just north of town.

The music on the weekends is typically country or Southern rock. But the park is known for the festivals it hosts at numerous times throughout the year. These festivals usually last from Thursday through Sunday and attract thousands of people from all over the country.



I admit that I am not the biggest fan of music and huge concerts, but I recognize some of the names that came to play this year, including The Allman Brothers’ Band and Willie Nelson. The concerts are outdoors, rain or shine, often with multiple stages featuring different bands playing at the same time at different points in the park…

Thunder Alley is the place to go bowling in town. Across the tops of the lanes, painted on the walls, are scenes and buildings from Live Oak. The artist is John Rice, who has a frame and portrait shop right beside my office. Some of his paintings of Live Oak hang on the walls in our office. I see him outside at various spots in town, working with his easel, canvas and paints. He has a neat sign on his front door that reads: “We do three types of jobs here: Good, Fast, and Cheap. You may choose any two.”



The bowling alley does not have black light bowling, as I was used to in college. They do have a good sound system for music, though, a pool table, and a full service bar. It is an enjoyable experience to go there with friends, have a few drinks, and bowl or shoot pool. I have ordered food there once- a chicken cheese steak sandwich with a Pepsi, which was very good. My conversation with the older lady who owns the place amused me.

I ordered water, at first, and she opened a cooler and gave me a small bottle of brand name water.

“Do you guys have cups of free ice water?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes at me and laughed. “No the water isn’t free here,” she said.

When I learned that the Pepsi was actually less expensive and came in a larger cup, I ordered that.

She had to fire up the grill just for me, as I was the only one eating anything at that point. When she brought out my order, I handed her a credit card.

She rolled her eyes at me again. “You’re going to pay with that?” she asked.

“You guys take credit cards, right?” I responded.

“We do,” she said begrudgingly. “But do you realize the amount of money I lose because of what I have to pay those companies?”…

The Suwannee River Library is a small but neat little public library that is across the street from the bowling alley. They often have programs such as “The History of Suwannee County” or a movie for children. I went to one program on migrating birds, taught by some local experts, and found it very informative. From the program, I learned of a great bird guide book, which I bought and have used to identify some birds in this area…



As I type this blog, I get a text message on my phone that we are having our first softball practice of the year tomorrow.

When I first moved to Live Oak last June, joining a softball team was a highlight of my summer. I am glad that I have been invited back for a second season. I am also looking forward to a vacation with my parents and my brother this year, but I have made the point that I would like the vacation to be in September, when kids are back in school and, most importantly, softball season is over. The games are only played in June, July and August, and I do not want to miss any of them. First Federal Sports Complex will be the place for me to be on weeknights during those months.

Mother's Day

Augusta, Georgia. 1983.

“Blue,” I say.

Mom smiles and nods. The index card is colored with blue crayon on one side. She turns the card over and shows me the word “blue,” written in ink in all lower case letters. Then she sets the card down in a stack and picks up another card.

“Green,” I say…

In the nursery of the church where Dad is a preacher, we continue this exercise of learning colors. It is at this time that blue becomes my favorite color.

***

Wake Forest, North Carolina. 1983.

At Grandma Carter’s house, the exercises have become more complicated. Rather than going to kindergarten, Mom is teaching me to read at home. I will begin school in first grade in the coming months.

She holds up a large card with a series of words that form a sentence. Each word is marked with pronunciation indications for me.

“No, it is the a sound,” Mom says. “Short a, not long a. A. Say that.”

My TV time is limited while I work with Mom during the day on these sorts of activities. I can only watch for an hour.

After we finish the day’s schooling, my brother wants to use his allotment of TV time to watch a re-run broadcast of BJ and the Bear.

I lay down on the floor, with one of the green pillows from the couch over my face while he sits in front of the television.
I peek out from underneath the pillow and also watch the show. I think that Mom does not notice this.

When the show finishes, my brother obediently turns off the television, but I protest that it is my turn for an hour.

“No,” mom says. “You weren’t fooling me with the pillow. That counts as your time.”

“But I couldn’t see anything,” I argue.

It does no good.

After I become an adult, Mom tells me that during the time when she taught me at home, she would often get frustrated with herself and worry that she was not doing a good job with me.

But the memories that I have of her and that part of my life are much more pleasant than my memories of when I began first grade at Millbrook K-12 school. I would have preferred to stay at home with her to continue my education.

***

Lumberton, North Carolina. Mid 1980s.

Many evenings after mom has spent a day teaching school and then come home, cooked and served supper, she stands at the sink washing dishes. The sink has a window to the yard and fields outside, and Mom is content with that.

We do not have a dishwasher in the house out in the country where we live at Route 7, Box 568B.

I watch her sometimes, looking at the back of her head as she gazes out the window and scrubs dishes without looking down at them.

“As long as I have a window, that is enough. I don’t need a dishwasher or want one.”

In addition to her regular State job of teaching children with mental handicaps, she is now also going to teach blind children with mental handicaps. She spends many days over the summer in between school sessions teaching herself Braille.

I listen to the sound of the heavy metal Braille typing machine. Mom has to mash down the keys very hard to create the raised dots on the special paper. It is a loud machine, and she has to lug it around wherever she goes.

***

Lumberton, North Carolina. 1990s. Saturdays.

We live in town, now, in a middleclass community called Lakewood Estates.

After cooking us a breakfast of scrambled eggs, grits, bacon, and biscuit toast with butter and jelly, Mom sets about the task of cleaning the house.

The chemicals that Mom is using in the bathrooms are too strong for me. I step outside onto the front porch and get some air.

After Mom finishes making the showers and sinks and toilets spotless, she starts on cleaning the hardwood floors. She goes over the whole house with a broom, and then a mop sprayed with another cleaning chemical of some sort.

When that task is finished, she does everyone’s laundry. Dad, hers, my brother’s and mine.

In between these activities, she stops to make us sandwiches for lunch. Then in the early afternoon, she cooks dinner for us. After dinner, she cleans up the kitchen and washes the dishes.

We now have a dishwasher, thank goodness, but Mom spends about as much time pre-washing the dishes, pots and pans before putting them in the machine as she did before when she stood looking out the window over the sink at the old country house.

Sundays.

While I am still sleeping, Mom gets up at 5am to study her Sunday school lesson and work on the lunchtime meal.

After church, the family sits down to a feast of barbecued chicken, or fried chicken, or roast beef, or ham, or sometimes all of this. There are green beans, mashed potatoes or white rice with gravy, corn, sweet potatoes, black eyed peas, green peas, and biscuits.

When we have finished stuffing ourselves on the tremendous food with a certain taste that only my Mom knows how to make, I go to the living room with Dad and my brother, and we turn on the television to watch the NFL games or baseball games or college basketball games.

Mom continues to work in the kitchen, cleaning up everything and packaging the leftovers that will be dinner tonight.

Monday morning, it will up again early for her to deal with the kids at school, followed by cooking dinner and cleaning the dishes afterward in the evening.

Dad, my brother and I dominate the television set, watching whatever we want- usually sports if it is on.

Mom does not like watching television. When Mom has finished the dishes, she goes back to the bedroom and reads a novel until she falls asleep on top of the covers of the bed. Many times I walk to the back bedroom and see that she is asleep with an open book on her lap, across her stomach or even across her face. It is not even nine o’clock yet.

***

Present Day.

Mom has Parkinson’s disease, now. It is slowly increasing on her left side. Unless she concentrates on it, her left hand trembles. She notices other people noticing this, though of course it is not something she chooses to dwell on.

“I do the best I can with it, each day,” she says.

Mom has not had a sense of smell for years, and I have all ideas that it was destroyed from all those chemicals she used time after time in cleaning the bathrooms for our family.

I wonder as well if the Parkinson’s disease could come from that. No one knows what causes Parkinson’s, but all those years of working with difficult children in the State school system, all those years of also making meals for us, constantly cleaning the house and our clothes and the dishes, a never ending cycle of exhaustion- that did nothing to help her body and immune system fight off the beginnings of the disease.

“A man works from sun to sun, while a woman’s work is never done,” I have heard my Dad say often.

Mom deserves so much more credit than that- a pithy rhyming expression or a blog entry.

I will never be able to repay all that she has done for Dad, my brother and me, and the love that she has given us.