"The wind went and pulled me into the hurricane..."

(title quote: Something Corporate, Hurricane)

"It was one of those hot, silent nights, when people sit at windows listening for the thunder which they know will shortly break; when they recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes; and of lonely travellers on open plains, and lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning." - Charles Dickens


In September of 1989, I was a 19 year old college student, a sophomore music major. My parents were over 200 miles away, back at home. It was hurricane season. In the 9 years that my family had lived in the Myrtle Beach area, we had never known a major hurricane. Sure, a few of them had passed through the area and my dad and I had prepared things the best we could, taping windows, clearing the yard of potential flying debris, tying down the storage buildings, and similar things. We even had a tree from the yard next door fall into our yard once, tearing up the concrete pat that had been poured around it. My dad and I cut it up after it fell and cleaned up all the debris. Once, we realized in the middle of a minor, category 1 hurricane that we had forgotten to tie down the storage buildings. We had two metal sheds with a carport built between them to shelter our golf cart. We ran out into the storm, with my mother shining a flashlight from the back door, and tied the buildings down, staking in the thick rope with tent pegs that we hammered into the ground and tying it to the sturdiest of our trees as well. All the while, we were pelted with things... acorns, pine cones... pine cones with sharp spines on them. They hurt and left painful welts on our backs and shoulders. My father made it a point of pride that he never left our mobile home during a storm. Only the foolish would run from puny hurricanes!

Still, we had never known the fury of a real storm. In September of 1989, that changed. On September 11th of that year, a tropical wave moved off Cape Verde, Africa. By September 13th, this tropical disturbance became Hurricane Hugo. While still well out to sea, Hugo became a category 5 storm, but mercifully weakened to category 3 before slamming into Puerto Rico, causing huge amount of damage in Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean.

"We've got a low pressure system and a northeast breeze
We've got a falling barometer and rising seas
We've got the cumulonimbus and a possible gale
We've got a force nine blowing on the Beaufort scale."
- Billy Joel, Storm Front

After moving back over the open Atlantic and into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, Hugo regained some of its strength and once again became a category 4 hurricane. As Hugo approached the South Carolina coast, I called my parents and began begging them to leave. I was sure that a storm this strong would destroy their mobile home, only about a mile inland, and if my father's stubbornness made him stay home, I feared for his safety.

I must have effectively communicated my fears, because my mother started calling hotels along the route they would have to take inland. My dad was working as head of maintenance at an ocean front high-rise condominium, so he had to be one of the last to leave the building after everything was secured. In the final few hectic moments of preparations, while he and his crew were locking the elevators down at the level of the third floor, to keep them secure and above the potential flood level, he dropped his Mag-Lite down the elevator shaft. The flashlight was still on, but time was running out and he decided to leave the light at the bottom of the shaft and pick up my mother to head for whatever hotel she had found.

When he arrived home, he discovered that the evacuation for this storm was unprecedented and that the nearest hotel room was in Asheville, NC. This was about 6 hours away in ideal driving conditions. I told them to start driving and I would find them a place to stay.

I went to the music building and started asking around the department to see if anyone had a place for my parents to stay. My trumpet teacher had a mobile home on the lake nearby, but the projected path carried the storm over that lake and I didn't want them to drive 200 miles inland, only to be in a situation that was just as bad as the one they left.

My piano teacher had a friend with a spare bedroom upstairs. She made a quick phone call, and my parents now had a place to stay for a few nights. When they called from a rest area pay telephone, I informed them of their lodging arrangements. They were flabbergasted to discover that a family who had never even met them, and had never even met me, were going to take them into their home. They were overwhelmed by the hospitality and generosity of these strangers.

Meanwhile, I quickly signed the volunteer roster when the college posted them, looking for volunteers to respond to emergencies on campus during the storm. The projected path was now calling for the storm to pass directly through the town where I was attending college, and where my parents were now going to be staying.

The storm made landfall just north of Charleston, South Carolina on September 21st. Hugo flooded the city and caused huge amounts of damage. The most devastating winds were in the northeastern part of the storm. Sullivan's Island and the Isle of Palms were hit particularly hard, along with the small fishing village of McClellanville, where a high school that was being used as a shelter flooded, forcing the terrified occupants to climb into the ceilings to escape the rising water.

"Ah, it's hurricane season
Batten down the hatches boys
It's hurricane season
Rain blurred on a night like this
You'd think there's nothing left on earth
The wind measures out the size of my bones
and tries to tell me what they're worth
Then it all starts up, gets out of control."
- Billy Pilgrim, Hurricane Season

While my parents went to sleep in their strange surroundings, I stayed awake in my dorm's common room with the other volunteers. Occasionally, a campus official would enter and assemble a crew to respond to some occurrence on campus. We were watching reports of the storm on the large screen television in the basement common room. There was a reporter driving in the Myrtle Beach area and bright flashes could be seen to the south. The reporter said that it was probably transformers blowing out due to flooding. We were pretty confident that even if the storm passed directly over us, the damage would be minimal, since we were 200 miles inland, but according to news reports, the storm was retaining much of its strength even as it moved inland, spawning tornadoes along the way.

"Well, the wind is blowin' harder now
Fifty knots or thereabouts,
There's white caps on the ocean.
And I'm watching for water spouts
It's time to close the shutters
It's time to go inside."
- Jimmy Buffett, Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season

Before long, I was put on a crew and sent out to the college's administration building to secure the basement doors, which had blown open in the high winds. We went out in heavy raincoats with chain and padlocks and rope to secure the doors. With this accomplished, I went up to my room, where my roommate was sleeping with the television on. I dried off and tried to sleep. It was after 2 a.m. on September 22, 1989. The storm had turned to the north and was now going to spare my college the worst of its winds and rain. Unfortunately for the residents of Charlotte, North Carolina, the northward turn took Hugo directly into that city.

In the morning, I went to where my parents were staying and we went to breakfast together. The restaurant was showing news reports of the devastation my parents were trying to call friends who had stayed behind to ride out the storm. In the days before cell phones, it was proving impossible for them to reach anyone, and equally impossible for any of our family in New Jersey to reach us to find out if we were safe. We quickly saw news reports about our town. The reporter was standing in the median of the main highway into the Myrtle Beach area and National Guard troops were not allowing anyone into the area. He was reporting on how the towns of the Grand Strand had fared and he mentioned that Garden City was 90% destroyed. This was our town.

Our family in New Jersey heard the same reports. They weren't even sure if my parents had gotten out of town. My parents were sure that our mobile home was gone. There was helicopter footage of our area, showing mobile homes strewn all over the landscape like toys. Things did not look good.

Due to my father's job, he had a work pass to be among the first to return to the area. He called the highway patrol and found out when he would be allowed to return. We also got in touch with our family in New Jersey, who were greatly relieved that we were safe.

After a couple of days, my parents were allowed to return home. They called me when they arrived, and told tales of National Guardsmen patrolling the streets. My dad had to show his work pass at checkpoints all over town. Everything east of Highway 17 was closed to everyone except those with high priority passes, like my father's. Our house was still standing. The awnings were ripped off several of our windows. There was a hole the size of a basketball in the living room wall, which extended through my dad's recliner. The sand that had passed through this hole had sanded down the wooden tables in the living room, wearing off the finish. The back door was also missing. Whatever had entered through the living room wall evidently passed through the recliner and out the back door. It was, most likely, a large pine cone or similar object.

I quickly made arrangements to drive home to join my parents. My brother was still in the hospital in Columbia, so we didn't have to worry about his safety. He was okay.

When I arrived, I saw the damage in our neighborhood and began taking pictures. My dad told me that what I was seeing was nothing compared to what he had seen down by the beach. The next day, I drove him to work, keeping his pass in the car after I dropped him off. I drove all over the Garden City area, taking pictures of the horrible damage. Even my father's warning didn't prepare me for what I was to see in the area east of Highway 17. I took over 200 pictures that day.

When Hugo hit, it left almost 6 feet of sand on Waccamaw Drive, the road along the beach. All of the ocean front pools and decks were gone. Water had risen to the second floor offices of the high-rise where my dad worked. His office was gone, as was the ground floor store and restaurant. He was surprised to find his flashlight, still illuminated, at the bottom of the elevator shaft. The silver coating on the lens reflector was worn off, but the light still worked fine. I recoated the reflector and we used that light for several more years. It was a testament to the strength of the Mag-Lite. We wanted to write a letter to the company, but never ended up doing that.

When my wife and I moved into our new house about 4 years ago, my photo album of pictures from Hurricane Hugo was misplaced in the move. My wife and I launched a thorough search of the garage this morning, finally locating the album. She scanned a few of the pictures, so that I could post them here. I will end this post with a photo tour of the destruction that I found that day while driving around with my dad's work pass. I've always been fascinated by storms, from simple thunderstorms to tornadoes and hurricanes. One of my favorite books is Isaac's Storm. These pictures document the damage brought to Garden City Beach by Hurricane Hugo. There have been many worse storms before and since, but this one was personal.

"...what a lovely adventure begins, hurricanes and all." - Richard Bach

"Some things I may have taken for granted again and again..."

(title quote: The Academy Is..., The Phrase That Pays)

"There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place." - Washington Irving

Yesterday was the first day at my new job. I haven't started the writing yet, because I wanted to get the transition into this new retail job settled a bit before I added another challenge, but I'm starting to settle in, so maybe by the end of the week, I will be ready for that.

First, I must say that the corporate climate at my new job is drastically different than that at my music store job. I have learned that my dear friend from high school really hasn't changed much over the past 20 years. There is much more of a pecking order at this new job than at the old one. Since I am a management trainee, I immediately jumped a few stations in that seemingly rigid "caste system." At the music store, the manager does just as many menial tasks as the newest part-time associate. At the game store, management is rarely expected to do such things as vacuum, dust, or straighten merchandise on shelves. I am being trained by an assistant manager and a 3rd key candidate. The ASM shows me how to do a lot of management tasks, and the 3rd key candidate helps me learn how to handle dealing with employees like her, who will be under my leadership. It's not nearly as exciting as the music store, but can be fun at times and the pay is better. The maturity level, even among the adult employees, is significantly lower than at the music store. I am going to withhold judgement for a while until I learn the job better, but so far a comparison between the two jobs is not like apples and oranges. It's more like apples and pork chops. I'm keeping an open mind. I will be writing more about it as I gain more experience.

"If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing." - St. Augustine

Other than having sore legs, I don't feel any more tired or stressed after working double shifts for the past two days than I did previously. Once again, we'll see how I'm doing at the end of the week. So far, I have come to the conclusion that my old job condition me to long hours and high stress to the point that I'm actually getting better at problem solving and making sales as I'm more tired. I'm a night person anyway, and I think I've been getting more sleep since I started the double shifts because I am consciously taking care to avoid burning myself out. I just want to make sure I have a good handle on the new job and feel that I am going to stay with it before I burn any bridges with the music store job, since I currently like that job better. It just doesn't provide enough income to pay the bills right now, even if the writing job starts paying what I expect it to at first.

I really haven't had the time to promote this blog as well or as much as I was before, so the number of visitors I've been getting each day has greatly declined since I had my crisis a few weeks ago. My visits have dropped to about a third of what I was getting per day before. I'm going to be renewing my effort to write every day, comment, and reply to comments, but I'm not sure what else to do in the time I have available to get my number of visitors back up. Suggestions are welcome!

Today was my wife's turn to be involved in a car accident. She was stopped at a traffic light when a SC Department of Transportation truck slammed into the back of our car (now both of our cars are damaged). She called me for advice, herself inclined to not call police, but I advised her that if there was damage to the car, she needed to call it in. She said she felt fine physically, but is now quite sore from the impact. It was hard enough to leave her with a huge welt from the seat belt and cause her head to impact the steering wheel. The rear bumper of our car is damaged, but is likely not even enough damage to meet our deductible. Her neck is now sore from the incident, but we are also currently between health insurers, so she declined being examined by the EMT and has so far decided not to get checked fro injuries. I have warned her about the dangers of pinched nerves and other injuries, but she doesn't want to cause any more negative impact to our already fragile financial state. It is just impossible to get ahead.

"Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour. " - Arthur Schopenhauer

The other day, I went to the bank to make a deposit. The teller had to bring a bank manager over during the transaction, who asked me if I was aware of the current balance of my account. I informed her that I was indeed making a deposit and was well aware of the balance. She still felt the need to say in a conspiratorial tone, "Well, I just want you to see how low it is." Then she wrote my balance on a sheet of paper and showed it to me. The next day, I received a call at home from the bank. The teller informed me that she had given me fifty cents too much change in the cash I received along with my deposit and that I was to bring that change back to the bank immediately. I was working during bank hours that day and the next. Then it was the weekend. She called again the next day asking where her fifty cents was. On Monday, my wife made another deposit, only to be chewed out by the teller for not bringing the fifty cents to the bank sooner. She paid the fifty cents, but we are both pretty upset about our treatment by these bank employees. We feel that if our account had a much more significant balance, we would not have been bothered so much for the fifty cents. That just doesn't make sense to me. I'll bring the fifty cents on my convenience, not theirs. After all, it was their mistake, not mine. I'm still not sure that I actually received fifty cents too much change and would love to know how they decided that I was the one who had received the extra change. It just makes me want to move my account after both my wife and I were treated like children for this. I know ti would have no impact on the bank if we moved our account, and that if our account was important enough to matter to them, we would not have been treated that way.

"Arrogance and rudeness are training wheels on the bicycle of life -- for weak people who cannot keep their balance without them." - Laura Teresa Marquez

Finally, I know that for myself and my fellow Americans, today was an important day in the history of our country. September 11th, 2001 changed the nation irrevocably. That day changed us collectively and individually. It changed the way we view our government, and it changed our government. It changed the way we view our fellow man, altered our level of trust for people of different nationalities than our own, and our response to that day changed the way the rest of the world views us. The brick that is 9/11 has been mortared into place in our nation's construction. It cannot be removed from the edifice that we have become. It is right there. If you look around, you can spot other bricks that have been permanently secured into place, such as Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, and even July 4, 1776, which is our nation's cornerstone.

"History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days." - Winston Churchill

No matter what opinion you have of the events of that day, and our nation's reactions to those events, it is undeniably one of the dates that everyone who was living at the time will always remember where they were and what they were doing at the time. At age 37, I have a few days like that behind me. For example:

I remember exactly where I was when I heard the radio announcer proclaim that Elvis Presley had been found dead at his home. We were on our way to eat dinner at The Barrier Reef in Sussex County, New Jersey.

I remember where I was when I found out that John Lennon had been killed. I was eating breakfast, preparing to leave for school, when I again heard the news on the family radio.

"Hard times, baby well they come to us all
Sure as the tickin' of the clock on the wall
Sure as the turnin' of the night into day."
- Bruce Springsteen, Waitin' On A Sunny Day

Finally, on September 11, 2001 I was sitting at my desk in my office at the school where I was teaching, the one I just left a few months ago, when my father called. He was at his job as a golf pro... okay, not a real golf pro, he works at a miniature golf course, with the television on when the show he was watching was interrupted with the breaking news that a small plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. He called me immediately to share the news. I couldn't turn the television in the classroom on right away, but did turn it on in time to see the second plane hit. The only people with me were my wife and one of my students, who had late arrival but always came to school at the normal time to hang out in the band room, work on homework, and talk to me about life. That was actually a common thing for students with late arrival. They came to the band room because it was often a better place to be than home. We kept the television on for the rest of the day, as did pretty much every other teacher in the building. We helped the students to process the information the best we could before we turned them loose into the world, many of them to homes where they would have no other people to talk to or help them deal with the emotions and fears they were feeling.

“There is a history in all men's lives." - William Shakespeare

I cancelled marching band practice that day, but we played football on Friday night. It was an away game and security was tight. It actually started raining early in the game, and we quickly abandoned the bleachers and boarded the buses for home. Many events around the nation were cancelled, but South Carolina high schools played football. Not too long after, we had our annual Saturday All-Day Band Practice. A lot of information and misinformation was still being reported at that time, and the students heard the news during our lunch break that we would be going to war. Many of them were nearing selective service age, or had siblings and friends who were, so they were struggling with the conflicting emotions of considering military service, or worrying about the possible reinstatement of the military draft. There were a lot of emotions rampant that day. Our traditional performance at the end of the day (we rehearsed from 8 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. and then gave a final performance for all parents and other invited guests in the stadium at the conclusion of the day) was awesome and the students bonded that day. There were a lot of tears, and circles of students joining hands for spontaneous prayer. I endured a great deal of criticism for allowing students to pray together in the end zone after practice, as well as for allowing my student leaders (mostly seniors, some considering military service) to mention these topics and events in their addresses to the other students just prior to our final performance of the day. As far as I was concerned, if it was the predominant topic on their minds, it needed to be shared and worked through while they were still all together and had each other to rely on for support.

Think what you want of the event, or of our reactions to it, it is still the anniversary of something incredibly significant in the history of the world. Everyone who lived through that day will have distinct memories of not only that day, but of the weeks that followed.

“I've never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don't understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now." - Sophia Loren

"Go work in retail and spare the suspense."

(title quote: The Academy Is..., Black Mamba)

Wake up think fast, three weeks have passed. We are changing. No sleep, no gas, no excuses will pass these lips because were shapin' up to be all you wish you could have been to write the hits and to turn their heads and to open eyes (open your eyes) to a brand new season, a brand new season.
- The Academy Is..., Season

I guess it's pretty easy to tell what I was listening to on my ipod on the way home from work today. The Academy Is... is a Chicago band who recently gained a lot of attention with their second major label release, Santi. I prefer their older stuff without question and don't even own Santi, so I was listening to what I consider their best CD, Almost Here. It's a great CD and I highly recommend that you at least give their itunes clips from this CD a listen.

Back from commercial...

"Yesterday is calling you,
Won't let you get away..."
- William Tell, Yesterday Is Calling

Yesterday, I had a rather interesting and, for me, quite troubling experience. I think that at some point, we have all known someone, or several people, who cause strong negative feelings within us whenever we see them or hear their voice. If you've ever had caller ID, you have probably experienced those visceral reactions whenever you've seen their name appear on that tiny little screen. With my former job, I have had many such people in my life.

I've stated before, and I'll reiterate, that people in the Myrtle Beach area seem to have an entitlement mentality. They think that others exist to clean up after them, solve their problems, and do their bidding. Once again, this attitude was rampant among my band parents.

Over the past eight years, there have been several names whose sudden appearance on my caller ID or cell phone display while the phone was ringing caused a strong negative reaction within me. This reaction was sometimes purely mental, but sometimes had physical manifestations. I would often make excuses to not answer the phone because it was easier to find out what they wanted and investigate what it would take to resolve the situation than it was to speak to them without warning. They were judgemental, demanding people who seemed to think that their problems and wants were the only ones I had to deal with. They knew no boundaries and would call at any time, often multiple times each day for many days in a row, with things that had to be taken care of immediately. Often these were mundane, low-priority tasks, upon which they placed an inflated sense of importance and urgency. I don't know what causes this mentality exactly, but it was one of the things I hated most about the people I dealt with in that job.

My manager at the CD store mentioned today that out of all the retail stores he's ever worked in or managed, this store has the worst record of customers being inconsiderate. They think nothing of picking up stacks of CD's or DVD's or games and taking them to a listening/viewing station, then depositing all of them in a huge pile somewhere out of the way, making no attempt to return them to any semblance of order. When these people leave the store, there is merchandise scattered everywhere. They seem like extremely nice people. They just think that the people who work in service related industries exist solely to take care of them. I know it is part of my job to clean up the store and take care of customers, but these people would never, I think, leave their own belongings in this condition.

“For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment." - Mark Twain

Yesterday, I was reminded of one of those names in a forceful manner. Though I have not been diagnosed with it yet, I am fairly sure that I am suffering from some post traumatic stress from the deaths of my former students, including the suicide, and other stressors that occurred in such close chronological proximity over the past few years. Yesterday was one of a few times since I left my last job that I have approached having what I would consider to be a panic attack. My manager left the store for his dinner break, leaving me alone in the store. A few minutes after he left, I was finishing taking checking out merchandise for a customer, when the phone rang. Reflexively, I grabbed the cordless unit and glanced at the caller ID as I reached for the "TALK" key. I froze in panic when I recognized the name on the device. It was a name that has haunted me in the past. It was the name of a former band booster club president who used to call me every day, multiple times a day, just to check up on me, remind me of what tasks I had to accomplish at work and what needed to be done, find out how I was doing, and generally overstep his boundaries.

“The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." - William Faulkner

What could I do? I had to answer the phone, and my reflexes were already causing me to press the "TALK" key and hold the phone up. I answered the phone as I was trained to do, with one exception. I did not identify myself by name. I also changed my speech patterns and vocal timbre slightly, while not exactly talking in a strange voice. I let a little more of the "New Jersey" slip into my speech than normally occurs and spoke a little more rapidly than normal. The voice on the other end of the line belonged not to the man whose name appeared on the caller ID, but instead, to his son. I taught his son my first year at that school. He was a great student and my teacher's assistant and percussion captain. He served as a percussion instructor for me for a year after he graduated. I didn't identify myself, or acknowledge my identity. Indeed, I left my voice in its "disguised" state for the remainder of the short conversation. He was shopping for a game for his Nintendo DS. We didn't have it in stock. End of story. Yet, I was still shaken by that name on the caller ID screen in my new life. I imagine that once I move into the area's main mall while in management training for the new game store job, there will be more encounters of this type. I'm going to have to condition myself to handle them better than that.

“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." - Thomas Jefferson

By the way, don't think that changing one's voice is such an unnatural thing. I believe we all do it. Think about the changes in vocal attributes we make when talking to a child, a pet, someone who does not speak our language fluently, an older relative, our spouse, a doctor, one of "the guys" or any number of others. We make subtle changes to our speech patterns, vocal timbre, cadences and tone for almost every situation in which we find ourselves. When speaking to predominantly Southerners, I find myself lapsing into a bit of a drawl, speaking more slowly, and using words like, "y'all." When I speak to my family from New Jersey on the phone, I lapse into a more Northern vocal persona, with my pronunciations showing some of the New Jersey accent from my younger days, with words more suited to the conversation. Try to be aware on your next dozen or so conversations if you are tailoring your speaking to your audience. I bet you are.

Yesterday was supposed to have been the final day of employment for one of my co-workers at the music store. She had been employed there for over five years, and her commendations still hung on the wall of the back hallway and manager's office. Yet, it was obvious that she had become disgruntled, and that her heart was no longer in the job. She made careless errors, took shortcuts, and discouraged good work habits. She spent hours on the phone during her shifts, and even retreated to a corner of the store with her boyfriend occasionally. She was bitter and anti-establishment. Her employment predated the tenure of the new manager, and she was an interim manager while they replaced the previous manager. She resented that things were not done "the way they were always done before." She resented this new person telling her what to do. She finally reached an agreement with the manager to terminate her employment in a tense, but amicable state. Saturday, she failed to show up for her final shift. The manager was planning on allowing her to continue her employment after he was reminded that I would only be working the occasional shift after today, but her failure to arrive for work rendered that arrangement unworkable. He finished her "no re-hire" paperwork within the hour, and forwarded it to the corporate office via email.

Today, the manager, desperate to cover his shifts without hiring someone quickly and carelessly, asked me if I would work more shifts for him than I was planning in the coming weeks. I agreed, but will only do it until he finds a reliable part-time employee. I don't want to work two jobs every day for more than two weeks. I gave him notice that I was leaving, but he forgot and scheduled me anyway. I think he thought that if my co-worker was encouraged to resign and he gave me more hours, that I would renege on the other job and stay with him. Alas, I cannot do that. I don't want to ruin my reputation with the other company, my chance for higher pay, more hours and a management position, or my friend Chad's reputation, since he put that on the line to get me the position. So, tomorrow, I begin my new job, then drive to my old job and close the store. I will be working about twelve hours. I've done it for the past 8+, maybe 14 years, and it will greatly enhance our currently bleak financial situation, so it's no big deal, but I'm not going to do it for long. I need to focus on myself and my life, relationships and writing at this point. If I do it for longer than two weeks (on a daily or almost daily basis - I plan to continue working the odd shift here and there for him if he allows), somebody please come down her and slap me.

I must get some sleep soon, since I am working such long hours tomorrow, and training at an entirely new job, but I am going to relate one short, but spooky story first.

"...the beginning of the war between man and machines." - John Conner, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Once, when I was about 16, I was playing D&D with some friends in my room, which was originally my brother's room, but which I inherited when he was checked into the hospital on a more permanent basis. I had only recently gotten a VCR in my room. My parents had it for a short time, but never really learned how to use it, so when my brother left, they moved it into my room. We were gaming that night, when I noticed my friend Tracy (yes, he was present to witness the boy that disappeared from his neighbor's driveway that night from my previous story) staring off to my right and behind me with a frightened look on my face. He backed up slightly, as much as sitting on the floor of that small room would allow, and we followed his gaze. In addition to myself, his brother Phillip, our friends Charlie and Chris, were in the room with us.

We followed his frightened gaze to my VCR. The luminescent blue counter on the front of the machine had begun to count forward rapidly... much faster than if it was fast-forwarding a tape, and without any sound. We all backed up, a bit spooked, and the counter stopped. Phillip poked a pencil gingerly into the tape door to see if there was a tape in there, but there was not. I reset the counter to zero and we continued our game. Within a few minutes, the machine began counting again. This time Tracy pointed. Either Phillip or myself then reached for the power strip and pulled the plug on the VCR. The display on the front of the machine went dark and the counting obviously stopped.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

This would have been a spooky occurrence, except that what happened next was astonishing. Before long, Tracy uttered a strangled, "Uhh... guys..." and we turned to see the counter on the machine brightly lit and this time counting down... backwards... as if rewinding a tape. The clock was no longer lit. The DIGITAL counter on the machine was the only thing operating. We all hurriedly left the room, ending our gaming session for that day. I kept the VCR for a while after that, and it never behaved that way after that night. The only other strange occurrence with it was when it started eating tapes not long after that. After using head cleaners to no result, I thought about tossing it, but didn't have money for a new VCR (they were still pretty expensive in the mid-80's), so I opened the case (I earned extra money in high school fixing and installing electronics like VCR's, portable and car stereos and even LORAN fish finders... when I bought my first CD player, my stereo didn't have auxiliary input jacks, so I bought the necessary components from Radio Shack and installed them myself... nobody ever taught me those skills and I don't know how to do what I do, but when I open up the appliance, I find that my hands just seem to know what to do) and found a thick greyish-brownish goop on the silver drum inside the machine. There was probably enough of it to fill a bottle cap. I cleaned it off and the machine served me for probably another year or so.

I hope that short spooky story holds everyone over until I get to write something longer.

"I should feel safe, but I don't, so I live off the grid - no phone, no address, no one and nothing can find me. I've erased all connections to the past, but as hard as I try I can't erase my dreams, my nightmares." - John Conner, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

"All of life's riddles are answered in the movies."

(title quote: Davis, Grand Canyon)

“It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it." - Andy Warhol

Ever since I was a child, watching movies has been one of my favorite pastimes. When we lived in New Jersey, my parents wouldn't let me go to a theater. I never understood why, but during summers in Sussex county, they would take me to the drive-in theater. We would take the mattress off the bed in the back of my dad's home-made conversion van and put it on the van's roof, where we would watch the movie. I saw some great movies at that drive-in. It was there that I was introduced to Jaws and Grease. It was there that I found out about the plane crash that killed several members of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd (I have a great Lynyrd Skynyrd story, but that will have to wait for another time). Yes, at a tender young age, I was watching movies like Jaws and listening to rock music.

“Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?" Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering "how come the kids don't call?" By your eighties, you've had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can't stand but who you call mama. Any questions?” – Mitch, City Slickers

When we moved to Myrtle Beach, I spent an incredible amount of time at the local theater. For some reason, my parents now decided it was okay for me to go to theaters, and I started hanging out there, sometimes for the entire day, watching movie after movie. I watched Return of the Jedi 14 times, and Raiders of the Lost Ark 9 times, in that 3 screen theater. I don't remember how my friends and I got to the theater, or to any of the other places we loved to hang out, but we got there somehow. It wasn't unusual for us to spend the day at a water slide, then dry off, change clothes, and spend the rest of the afternoon and evening at the theater. That was how I saw E.T. for the first time, with a horrible sunburn and shivering under the wet towel I had wrapped around my shoulders, sitting with some tourist girls we had met at the water slide. Movies have always been an almost sacred experience for me.

“When something happens to you that hasn't happened before, don't you at least have to find out what it is?” - Julian, Something's Gotta Give

I got my first VCR, an Emerson, in about 1987. My parents originally bought it for themselves, but my brother used it to record and re-watch the 1986 World Series, my parents never figured out how to use it, and it got moved into my room when my brother went to the hospital full-time, during the summer of 1987. My friends and I used to cram into my new bedroom, which had been my brother's before he went to the hospital on a more permanent basis, and my parents gave me his somewhat larger room, and watch movies we rented from the local video store. I was a big fan of horror movies and swords and sorcery adventure films, but we watched all kinds of movies. I spent so much time at Garden City Video that I got my choice of posters when they came down and when they reduced stock on movies that I liked, they gave me a copy that they would normally have sold.

“The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” – Bob, Lost In Translation

Even at the age of 17, I recognized this beach town as a trap, and was watching it suck many of my friends into the seedier side of life. I watched them succumb to drugs, alcohol, and crime. My friend Charlie, a member of our D&D group, found out that his parents were dealing drugs from their house, later set a fire in a high-rise condo that did an immense amount of damage, stole a car and ran to Florida to escape the law. I reached out to many of my friends through D&D and movies. Movies hold a certain wonder and magic. They have the power to heal. Soon after Charlie began to drift down into his life of crime and addiction, I invited a bunch of friends over who were close to him and we all watched Robert Downey, Jr., as Julian Wells, descend into the hopeless depths of addiction in Less Than Zero. Movies held us together.

“I have lost something. I'm not exactly sure what it is but I know I didn't always feel this... sedated. But you know what? It's never too late to get it back.” – Lester, American Beauty

In college, when everybody else was out partying, my roommate Jeff and I would rent movies and show them from about 7:00 Friday night, until about 2:00 Sunday morning. Anyone was welcome. It was normal for us to have as many as 15 people in our room watching whatever movies we were showing. The rules were simple, bring your own seating and food if possible. No drinking in the room. The summer before my sophomore year of college was a difficult time for me. The day my grandfather died, the girl I had dated for almost 2 years, and had helped take care of for months after her near fatal car accident, left me. That sophomore year of college, though I did do my share of partying, the movies continued, and we mostly only drank in the safety of our room, and we observed the rule of not drinking in the room during movie time.

“I know we're all pretty small in the big scheme of things, and I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference, but what kind of difference have I made? What in the world is better because of me?” – Warren, About Schmidt

Due to a terrible accident, one of my bizarre injuries, which I can now laugh about, my partying career was short-lived. We had a loft in our room, and after one night of particularly heavy drinking, we had to pull a chair over to the ladder to help us climb up to our loft and into bed. I have no idea why we didn't sleep on the sofa bed, or even the floor, under the loft, but we climbed up into the loft with the help of that metal-reinforced, straight-backed wooden chair. At some point during the night, we heard someone crying in the hallway. It was a friend of our. He was begging us to let him in, as he needed someone to talk to. Neither my roommate nor I felt like we could climb down the ladder to answer the door, but the friend was now nearing hysterics, so we decided, in our stuporous wisdom, to see what was wrong. I don't remember how it was decided that I was the one who would climb down the 7 foot ladder to answer the door, but it was so decided, and I began my descent. My foot never found the top step on the ladder and I plummeted 7 feet, well... actually, about 5 feet, with my tailbone impacting the metal-reinforced, straight wooden back of that ill-placed chair. I never made it to the door, and I don't remember what happened with our friend. I just remember screaming and crying as I rolled on the floor for a long time. I had trouble sitting for some time after that incident, and when I did sit again, I had to use a special pillow. That pain helped reduce me to my current level of alcoholic beverage intake, which is less than a half-dozen drinks per year.

“People change over time - you've got to expect that.” – Rachel, The Story of Us

Through all of this, the movie nights survived. When we changed rooms the following year, we kept the movie nights, and now that we had moved from the top floor of the dorm to the first floor, near the main entrance, movie nights became even more popular. It was that year, my junior year, that I took a risk and invited a freshman girl who I found attractive, to one of our movie nights. She wasn't in her room when I invited her, so I wrote the invitation on her message board on her dorm room door. When we started the movies for the night, I thought she either hadn't gotten the invitation, or that she wasn't interested, because she wasn't in the room, but she arrived soon after, with her roommate and a pizza, just in time for Joe vs. the Volcano. I think the next movie was Short Circuit. She became a regular at our movie nights for the remainder of that year, which was the last year that Jeff and I roomed together, so movie nights changed after that. That girl, who often fell asleep during movies, became my wife.

“What if this is as good as it gets?” – Melvin, As Good As It Gets

It's strange how we, or at least I, can mark milestones in life through the movies that we watched. Movies have always held a special place in my life, and always will. For a long time, I stopped watching movies so much, because of theater prices, the time commitments of my job, my inability to watch and remember to return movies in a timely fashion, and the fact that my wife and I never could seem to agree on which movies to rent. She has a knack for picking out movies that... don't always line-up with what it says on the box.

“I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few ever became any qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer. Until finally they got reduced to one, to who I am.” – Dave, The Weather Man

I think that my connection with movies is returning. I've watched more movies in the past year than I had in probably the past 5 years previously. This past weekend, we rented 3 movies, two of which ended up being excellent (I won't tell you that they're the two I picked out). One of these movies was an excellent mid-life movie, which got me thinking about movies that depict mid-life and it's assorted trials and tribulations. The movie that spurred this line of thought was Wild Hogs, which features a great cast, including Tim Allen, William H. Macy, Martin Lawrence, Ray Liotta, Marisa Tomei, and John Travolta. I was thinking that it was one of the best mid-life movies I've ever seen. So, this got me thinking... what other mid-life movies are out there? What mid-life movies have you seen? Which ones do you think were good representations of this period of life?

“Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life.” – Charlie, Adaptation

I've come up with a fairly exhaustive list, but I know there are other movies out there about the journey through mid-life. What are your favorite "second life awakening" or mid-life (not necessarily crisis) movies? I've included quotes from many of the movies that are already on my list. Any suggestions for movies to add to the list would be appreciated, as well as any thoughts about the movies already on my list. Okay, here goes my list:

About Schmidt
The Accidental Tourist
Adaptation
American Beauty
As Good As It Gets
The Big Chill
Bull Durham
City Slickers
Field of Dreams
For Love of the Game
The Four Seasons
Grand Canyon
In Good Company
Lost In America
Lost In Translation
Middle Age Crazy
Sideways
Something’s Gotta Give
Sweet Hearts Dance
Terms of Endearment
The Story of Us
An Unmarried Woman
The Upside of Anger
The Weather Man
Wild Hogs
Wonder Boys

Okay, like I said, I'm sure there are others out there. Can you help me find them?

“Half my life is over and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing. I'm a thumbprint on the window of a skyscraper. I'm a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage.” – Miles, Sideways

"Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone..."

"I've seen fire and I've seen rain

I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end

I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I'd see you again."

- James Taylor, Fire and Rain

When I was a child, my parents, whether consciously or unconsciously, gave subtle messages about which relatives we were supposed to like more and which ones we were supposed to like less. I know, not because they ever told me, but through intimation and innuendo, that my father's family did not approve of his marriage to my mother. In the tightly knit Dutch community of northeastern New Jersey in that time, my father's family, builders and carpenters of fine houses throughout the area, property owners with high standing in the Dutch Christian Reformed Church, looked down on my mother's family, laborers and tenants, not church-going people, unrefined. My mother was a beauty queen. She was Miss Northern New Jersey, and on her way to compete for Miss New Jersey, with aspirations of competing for the title of Miss America. My mother's dream was in modeling. She gave that up for my father.

"In each family a story is playing itself out, and each family's story embodies its hope and despair." - Auguste Napier

At any rate, my brother and I were always receiving the subtle messages that the Van Houtens were the "favored" relative, and the Millers were stuck up and snobbish. As children, we were "prepared" for visits to my paternal grandparents' house. We were indoctrinated. When my brother was young, before I entered the picture, my parents were both working, without a babysitting option, so they had no choice but to drop him off with my dad's parents for the day. He got the lecture. He got it in spades. He was told not to touch anything. Act like an adult. Sit on the couch with your hands folded in your lap. Don't ask for anything. Do only what you're told and speak only when spoken to. Stay silent and still. Do not do anything resembling play.

You see, they were "religious people." This meant, to my parents, that fun was considered sinful. They would dress Scott up in a suit, often a light-colored, or white suit. He always had to wear dress clothes at "the Millers' house," we all did. Whenever we went for a visit, we all had to put on our Sunday best. I hated going there, hated seeing my dad's parents, because of the strict code of dress and behavior that was enforced. It was a painful experience for a young child. They had a large, beautiful house with stairs and hallways and a basement that called out for exploration, a huge, wide open lawn that begged for games and the running feet of children, a small, hidden garden behind the house, ringed with trees yearning to be climbed, and a garage workshop filled with amazing tools and an upper level of hidden recesses that beckoned to us. It was all off limits. My grandmother had lost one leg and part of a foot to diabetes, and my grandfather had Parkinson's. They were frightening to us, to me especially, since we only went there when obliged to do so. Their ways and appearance were strange. My grandfather's shaking was scary.

As a child, I remember once when my father wanted to go to the house of one of my close friends, because he was also friends with my friend's father. He wanted to go drink with him, so he didn't want me along. He told me he was going to grandma and grandpa Millers' house. That way, I would have no desire to come along. I always longed to spend time with my dad when I was young, because he was only home long enough to sleep. He didn't really want me tagging along with him, and I remember heated arguments he had with my mother about his resentment and reluctance to drag me along with him. I was like a weight, an anchor, an albatross tied around his neck. So, he lied. He lied to me because he didn't want to hurt me. We have a long, proud tradition of that in my family (the biggest incident of this was when a girl I was dating in high school was in a car accident, and nearly died... he asked me to take a ride with him, but wouldn't tell me where we were going... he refused... we ended up at the hospital, where she was fighting for her life). I heard him tell my mother where he was really going. I heard him argue to keep from having to drag me along with him. Then, as he prepared to leave the house, I would ask him where he was going and if I could go along. He would tell me that he was going to his parents' house. We fought terribly about that when I was just a young boy. I knew he was lying. I accused him of lying. He made me feel like a miserable little boy for daring to accuse my father of such a thing. It says in the Bible, "Honor thy father and thy mother," he would tell me. Yet, I knew. I told him if he was going there, he had to bring me something from there to prove he'd been there. I even asked for the number off my grandmother's wheelchair once. It was a number "3." Soon, he began carrying around, in his car, an assortment of small, easily missed items from their house, so that he could produce one for me when he returned home. I lived in fear of having to go to their house and was miserable every time we were there.

"Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements." - Queen Elizabeth II

Many years later, when I was already married, and living near Charleston, SC, one of my father's sisters came to visit us, along with her husband. My wife and I were excited and proud to have them come to our house. When we had visited my extended family in New Jersey previously, this particular aunt and uncle had greeted us with open arms. They had showered us with love. They were my Aunt Beatrice and Uncle Dan. Most people would shorten Beatrice to "Bea." Not my parents. I was raised calling her "Aunt Beat."

After my dad's parents died, Aunt Beat and Uncle Dan moved into their house. The rest of the family was not happy with that. When my grandparents were in the final stages of their lives, there were horrible battles over who was the "favorite child" or who deserved what precious heirlooms. When people went to visit, they brought pre-marked pieces of tape, and stuck their names under the furniture and other household objects they wanted. When the dining room table was turned over after their deaths, there were more than a half-dozen little pieces of masking tape under it, with the names of my dad's brothers and sisters, some represented multiple times. The fight over their house was particularly brutal, almost destroying the family. Many of my father's siblings, my father included, wanted the money for the house more than they wanted the house to stay in the Miller family. Aunt Beat was the lone dissenting vote, and she was executor of the will, so she moved into the house. It took years for the family to forgive her.

When we went to visit Aunt Beat and Uncle Dan in my grandparents' old house, the place still possessed, for me, that aura of childhood fear. Uncle Dan had enlarged it, so that their daughter and her family could move in. This was also the subject of many family battles, but the work was well done. Uncle Dan had been a part of the family business, and knew how to treat that old house with love. During our visit, my wife and I became enamored of a particular shelf in the sitting room, and remarked on how beautiful it was. When we rose to leave after a pleasant visit, my aunt disappeared for a few moments, and reappeared, with a shopping bag. Inside was, not only that shelf, but all of its contents as well. She insisted we have it all. Thus started a kind of friendship between my wife and I, and Aunt Beat and Uncle Dan.

When they came to visit us in Charleston, Uncle Dan and I went golfing together. I took them on my illegal and unsanctioned tour of historic downtown Charleston (my interest in history and my love of sharing and presenting things have made me quite an adept, if unofficial and thus illegal tour guide for historic downtown Charleston... if you want the tour, come on down). We had a great time together. It killed my parents, not knowing everything that was going on between us. My dad eventually made the two hour drive to our house out of sheer curiosity. I think they may have visited more than once, but my memory fails me there. I'm sure my wife will remember, and when she tells me, I'll edit this to better reflect reality.

During our time with Aunt Beat, she told us many family stories. She told us things I never knew about my family. I had heard the story of the time my grandfather hired my brother to wash his car. He told Scott he wanted the inside as well as the outside thoroughly cleaned. My brother, at age fourteen, took the hose inside my grandfather's brand new Pontiac, and flooded the interior of that car with water. Aunt Beat told us other stories. She told us stories about things my parents did that the family questioned. She told us of the times Scott was dropped off at our grandparents' house as a child, when my parents could find no other babysitter. She told us how he was always dressed in a little suit and told to sit still and silent on the sofa for the entire day until my dad came to pick him up. She told us how ridiculous my grandparents thought this was to do to a child. They bought play clothes for my brother and allowed him to change into them as soon as my dad drove away. He was allowed to roam free over the entire house and property in his play clothes. Just before my dad was scheduled to arrive, my brother bathed and put his suit back on. He sat on the couch as if he had been there all day, and my grandparents told my dad what an angel he had been.

All of the lies, the false impressions that my parents and my father's parents carried, all of that was so unnecessary, yet it was essential. That is the essence of my family. That is the legacy we carry. I have no children, so this legacy will likely end with me, this legacy of deception and mistaken impressions.

"Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them." - Evelyn Waugh

One of the things my Aunt Beat always loved to do was run her hand through my hair. I can hear her voice right now, saying, "Oh Dar, what beautiful curls you have." She loved to touch my hair.

"The rain comes when the wind calls." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to leave the house for the first session with a new therapist (yes, I'm in therapy now... seems cliched, almost trite... aren't we all), my dad called. Aunt Beat passed away yesterday morning. "When it rains it pours." So reads the slogan on the Morton Salt container. So goes life. She had been on dialysis for almost twenty years. Her health had been in decline for a long time. She was a fighter, a strong woman, with a healthy dose of Dutch stubbornness and a strong will. She fought death long past reason. In the end, we are outmatched.

As I told the therapist yesterday morning, I have never really been able to process death. When Susie, the dog of my youth died, I knew it was coming. I held her and cried about it a few weeks before it happened. I wrote about it in my journal in my tenth grade English class, but when she died, there were no tears, no feelings I could connect with. As my grandparents all died, along with others, the reaction, or lack of a reaction, was the same. Even when my brother died, there were no tears. I never really went through the grief process. Thus it was when my three former students died, I never really came all the way through the grief process, except maybe with Jason, the first one, the one who died in the horrific automobile accident. Even though I sat in the front row for Cory's funeral, and I cried when I saw the huge mural board of his band memories on display, with pictures of us performing at Carnegie Hall, I still did not fully process the death. When Justin died, I avoided his funeral and family altogether. I was already too much of a mess to deal with it. He was the student that died of cystic fibrosis the same day my dad had a mini-stroke while driving, only months after Cory's suicide. Something is horribly wrong with my ability to process negative emotions like grief, pain, and loss. I detach. I don't express those emotions. They are locked up inside. I feel them, but I have no tools for expressing them in a healthy way.

"Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply...."

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am sad that Aunt Beat died. I haven't seen her in years, but the possibility of seeing her again still existed. About three years ago, another of my dad's sisters that my wife and I were very close to (we broke the pattern and were closer to the Millers than the Van Houtens) passed away. I miss Aunt Ag (short for Agnes, of course) too, because I always thought we would go back to Michigan and visit them again. I tried to get my dad to go to that funeral with me. He called his brother, Johnny, to ask who was going out to Michigan for the funeral. Johnny supposedly told him not to worry about it, that nobody was really making the trip from New Jersey to Michigan for the funeral, so my dad opted not to go. In the end, the rest of his brothers and sisters went, and he did not. My dad, as a cop for 25 years, has the same problem with this emotion that I have. He has seen so much, yet expressed so little. Growing up, dad always made fun of me for expressing emotion. I've always been an emotional person, but I learned to close that off to my dad. he was never available for discussion of any problems or emotion. He was the essence of Frank Barrone from Everybody Loves Raymond.

Once, when I was a teenager, my dad decided my brother needed a stay at the hospital, so he got Scott dressed in his warm-ups, and got my mom's mother to sit in the back seat with Scott and try to comfort him in the depths of his depression. While going over a bridge just a few miles from the house, nana (my mom's parents were always nana and pop, while my dad's parents were grandma and grandpa) felt my brother's hand slip out of hers. The car door opened, and Scott rolled out. They were going close to 60 mph at the time. There was screeching of brakes and cars swerving wildly in attempts to avoid my brother's flailing body as he rolled down the highway. One car came to a stop with its bumper above Scott's face. Nana urged my dad to go check him out, but my father refused to get out of the car. He refused to look to see if Scott was hurt, or even alive. Eventually, she got out and went back to find that Scott was okay. He had no broken bones, just scratches. His jogging suit was flayed, but his glasses never even fell off. They weren't scratched. This is the same person who once drove his car across the median of a highway at about 120 mph and under a semi-trailer, with the back tires going up and over his car, only to walk away uninjured. The driver's seat was just about the only recognizable piece of that car still intact. It's ironic that my father would be the one to find my brother when he died, the one to have to check for vitals. That must have taken everything he had. Yet, we never really process those emotions.

"Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains." - Henry Ward Beecher

We do anything to avoid pain, hurt, and loss. We go to any lengths just to be accepted and loved. Conflict avoidance is an art in my family.

"For after all the best thing one can do when it is raining, is to let it rain." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I'm going to call my dad in a little while, to see how he's doing. When he called yesterday morning, I could hear it in his voice, though his words told me he was okay. Stoic, as usual. I'm not working today, so I will probably go sit with him and not talk about the feelings we're repressing.

"Life is about timing." - Carl Lewis

Oh, the timing of things...

"Be still, sad heart, and cease repining; Behind the clouds the sun is shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Don't let your memories fade away."

(title quote: William Tell, Yesterday Is Calling)

“When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood” – Sam Ewing

A few weeks ago I was wandering around the electronic wilderness, with Google as my guidebook, when I happened upon a site maintained by someone who grew up in the same town in New Jersey that I am from. He graduated from the same high school as my brother, and was actually in the class one year ahead of my brother's. David Tanner is now a violinist in the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, in Columbus, Ohio. About four years ago, he took a trip back to our hometown and documented it thoroughly through his photographs. I spent hours looking through his photos of the places I frequented in my youth. It was an amazing trip down "memory lane" for me. I hope to find some way to get these photos onto a DVD (my CD/DVD drive/burner inexplicably stopped working recently) or find some other way for my parents to see them. My father hasn't been back home since 2000, and my mother has not returned since her mother died a few years earlier.

David and I have since exchanged a few emails, and I would like to share with you some of my childhood "haunts" through the lens of his camera (all photos: David Tanner, 2003). Thank you David for sharing these photos and allowing me to link to them.

"And sometimes I just . . .
Wanna go back to my home town
Though I know it'll never be the same
Back to my home town
'Cause it's been so long
And I'm wondering if it's still there..."
- Joe Jackson, Hometown

I spent the first ten years of my life living in an apartment on Maple Ave. The town annex building had an apartment above the meeting hall, and we lived in that apartment. The building was on property adjacent to Kilroy's Wonder Market, which is one of my dad's two primary jobs, his other being as a town police officer. The green roof just beyond the Exxon station is Kilroy's.

Kilroy's Wonder Market was our local neighborhood grocery store. It was no grocery "super store" but it was a indeed a market full of wonders for me as a young boy. I had the advantage that our apartment was literally on the edge of the parking lot for this store. Plus, my dad, and eventually my brother, worked there, so I got to wander freely through the back rooms, the meat lockers, the butcher shop, and even my favorite place, the basement. There were huge storage rooms in the basement, and when a truck was unloaded, the groceries would be sent down long conveyor belts into this underground wonderland, where they would be unloaded into the storage rooms. I loved the joy of being allowed to send a box down the belt, or taking one off the belt at the other end, or just watching them whiz by on their way from one end to the other. Another fond memory of Kilroy's is the Charles Chips can that always held pretzels that kids could take and eat.

"The childhood shows the man
As morning shows the day."
- John Milton

My father spent much of his time on duty as a foot patrol officer in our small downtown area. He was often found standing on the sidewalk on Rock Rd. directing traffic, checking in with the local business owners, and just being friendly.

One of my favorite meal as a child, and one I still love today, was an open-face roast beef sandwich and steak fries, all smothered in rich brown gravy. I know they had better "adult fare" than that, but I will always remember the Glen Rock Inn for that meal.

"Our whole childhood remains to be reimagined. In reimagining it, we have the possibility of recovering it in the very life of our reveries as a solitary child." - Gaston Bachelard

Our town was named after a large rock that was deposited by glacial activity. The local Native Americans called it "Pamachapura," or "stone from heaven." They built the town around that rock, and it still rests in the middle of a major intersection today.

I have always loved trains, ever since I was little. I'm sure a lot of that fascination comes from growing up living within a few hundred yards of two major rail lines. At the "bottom" end of Rock Rd. is the main line, while just a few hundred feet from our apartment was the county line. Both had small commuter stations and also carried freight operations. The sound of trains is one of the things I really miss about living where I live now. The place where Maple Ave. went under the county line always flooded when it rained hard. I remember standing in the rain with my dad while he manned the barricades, directing traffic around the flooded road. I also remember watching them pull cars out of there and several dramatic rescues of people trapped in their cars under that bridge.

Whenever my mother needed make-up or prescriptions, we would walk down to the Rock Ridge Pharmacy on Rock Rd. There was always a lot to look at while my mother did her shopping.

"Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder." - Leonard Cohen

There used to be an old service station on Rock Rd. called Castle Service. It was an Exxon, and my dad sometimes took our car there for repairs. One time, the water pump had to be replaced on an Oldsmobile station wagon we had. He took it to Castle and they replaced the pump in time for a trip out to our campground in Sussex County, Kymer's Campground. While we were out at Kymer's, my mom and I went to do some shopping in nearby Branchville and, while driving up a hill, the car suddenly made a horrible noise... the sound of ripping metal could be heard, and died, with steam pouring everywhere. Mom and I walked around to the front of the car and opened the hood, to find that the radiator fan had broken loose and deeply embedded itself into the radiator. It seems the folks at the Castle hadn't tightened the fan properly, and it broke loose as we were driving. That service station is now a Starbuck's.

One of my favorite places to walk to was Wilke's Delicatessan on Rock Rd. They had great sandwiches and snacks, and were one of the few places in town where I could get good Sweetened Iced Tea. That tea was a southern taste I had acquired from our many trips to Myrtle Beach. Wilke's sold what was basically a tub of the stuff, which I stuck a straw into and polished off easily.

"Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing."
- Eugene Ionesco

My all-time favorite place to go was the Glen Rock 5 & 10 on Rock Rd. Whenever I had a little money, I would take a walk down there and browse the amazing toy aisle, where they sold toys of all kinds. I remember that aisle as a riot of color and a world of fantasy and wonder. Parents probably see it today as a land of cheap imported junk, but it was a kingdom for children. Most of the time though, I would make my way to the counter and browse the huge selection of Matchbox cars in the rotating display case, usually purchasing one of these if I had enough money, or buying as many packs of Topp's baseball cards as I could afford. I loved buying baseball cards in the "rack packs" which were clear, with three small stacks of cards inside. I would search all of the packs until I found the ones with the most visible Mets cards and buy those. I've never chewed gum, so I didn't buy the "wax packs" that contained gum, unless it was all I could afford, or unless my brother made me, so he could have the gum. My brother and I also bought many baseballs from this counter.

We didn't have a Dunkin' Donuts when I lived in Glen Rock, but another of my favorite excursions was to check out the selection of Pez dispensers in the Rock Sweet Shop on Rock Rd.. Everybody in town knew me as "Little George" and knew my father, so I was safe to walk or bicycle all over town without worry. Everybody looked out for me, because everybody loved my dad, and I think people used to look out for each other and their children more then. I also, because of my "celebrity status," was allowed to go into places like the Rock and buy lottery tickets and stuff for my dad.

"A little curly-headed, good-for-nothing,
And mischief-making monkey from his birth."
- Lord Byron

The first bank I ever went inside of was the 1st National Bank of Glen Rock. It was just beyond the railroad tracks (county line) on Rock Rd. and very close to our home. It seemed like such an impressive building, inside and out.

Another place that always seemed to be filled with a dazzling array of colors was Beekman's Liquors on Rock Rd. I remember the sun streaming through the large windows and reflecting off all the different color glass bottles filled with strange and arcane liquids. It seems strange that, as a child of under 10 years old, I loved going into a liquor store, but it never had any stigma attached to it. It was just a store, and my parents thought nothing of taking me with them when they went there. In the south, there are the huge red dots that mark the liquor stores, and they are places of shame and fear. I don't really drink all that much. In fact, the two rum & cokes I had on Sunday night (GASP!) were the first alcoholic drinks I've had in months. We sometimes enjoy a glass of wine before dinner, but I never enjoyed drinking large quantities of alcohol. I average maybe four to six alcoholic beverages per year. I've never had a hangover, no matter how much I had to drink, so I don't have that to discourage me. I've just never seen the attraction in it. I spent one year of college partying and indulging in the excesses, but that brief fling with debauchery ended with another one of my bizarre and painful injuries that caused me to severely limit my alcohol intake. I will tell of it another time.

“No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there-well or poorly.”
– Joseph Brodsky

The police station where my father worked was on the lower level of the Glen Rock Municipal Building, which housed the court rooms and all the town offices. I spent many hours wandering these halls, hiding and exploring that building. I knew that court was a terrible place that my father hated to go, but that he had to spend time there because of his job. I guess most cops hate courtroom duty. I know my dad sure did.

Right behind the Municipal Building was the Glen Rock Fire Dept. This was a another building I spent many hours exploring. I also spent much time with a cloth and a spray bottle, polishing all the chrome on the fire engines after the firemen finished washing them. I loved those big red, shiny engines. Our apartment was just behind this building. If you look just to the right of the building, the trees you see were in our backyard (we didn't have a front yard, unless you counted the parking lot of Kilroy's). One time, my brother and cousin ran across our yard with their arms out and crashed through the windows on the back of the fire station. They needed a bunch of stitches, and had to work to pay for the windows. Of course, my brother and I always seemed to be working off paying for broken firehouse windows, since we put baseballs through them so many times, playing in the yard.

Right across Maple Ave. from our apartment above the annex was a large town park where my brother played baseball every afternoon, weather permitting. The field in this picture was the field he played on, that same field where I stood, just a few days after his death, and gathered a small plastic bag of infield dirt. This was Scott's field of dreams.

“To know after absence the familiar street and road and village and house is to know again the satisfaction of home.” – Hal Borland

My brother attended Glen Rock High School. I remember watching his graduation at the stadium just a few weeks before we moved to South Carolina. I also took my first guitar lessons in a room at the high school. We met in a student lounge there after school.

I spent a huge amount of time at the Glen Rock Public Library. I would often stop there to check out books on my walk home from my elementary school, Central School. There children's section of this library was another wonderland of my youth, and they showed movies in the basement sometimes. This was where my love for the written word was cultivated.

“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book." - Marcel Proust

Every day at recess and during many P.E. classes at Central School, we would with play on the playground, which was then made out of recycled tires, or play kickball on the lot. I was always the last person picked to any team, and I wasn't very good at it, or a fast runner, but I loved kickball.

My mom used to take me to Saddle River County Park often. When it was warm, we'd go feed the swans, play on the playground, or just walk. When it was cold, this was where we went ice skating.

Thank you for indulging me in my walk down memory lane. Sometimes we just have to go back home, to a time when things were, or at least seemed, simpler and more carefree.

"I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town
He'd tousle my hair and say son take a good look around this is your hometown
This is your hometown..."
- Bruce Springsteen, My Hometown

"All my pictures seem to fade to black and white..."

"Too late to stop myself from falling..." - Roger Daltrey, Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me

Okay, I know. The title quote, as well as the quote above were not written by Roger Daltrey, and his is not the most well known, nor is it the first, version of that song. It was written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin more than twenty years before Daltrey sang it for the soundtrack of a Joel Schumacher film called The Lost Boys.

"Don't let the sun go down on me
Although I search myself, it's always someone else I see
I'd just allow a fragment of your life to wander free
But losing everything is like the sun going down on me."
- Roger Daltrey, Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me

Yesterday, my primary duty at work consisted of organizing and filing the huge backlog of used CD's that we have in-stock, but not previously sorted in any meaningful way. Now, I have always enjoyed organizing my CD collection, so this was not an inherently arduous task. The difficulty was presented by the sheer number of CD's involved. I consumed my entire shift, plus an additional hour working on this project. I alphabetized and sorted into boxes well over a thousand CD's. The presence of most of them on our shelves, especially in our huge, disorganized bin of used CD's and DVD's, would not be missed by our customer, as the vast majority of these CD's are of dubious artistic merit. Many of the artists represented were unknown to most of our staff, and many had resided in this vast CD purgatory for many years. I did stumble across two amazing finds, one of which I felt compelled to purchase.

When I was in high school, I got my first car in 1986. Due to some shattered bones in my foot (another one of my freak injuries - I was babysitting my best friends' little brother and sister when I slipped on some pine straw and got my foot caught under their house... the bones shattered when I fell on my back, bending the foot at an impossible angle just below my big toe), I was delayed in taking my driving test, and then due to a careless driver who nearly slammed into me while he was turning into the parking lot of the DMV as I was concluding that test (automatic failure for near accident, even if it wasn't my fault, I was told), I was delayed from obtaining my license. I finally obtained my license and was able to drive the beautiful old car my dad had bought for me. I loved my '79 Mercury Cougar XR-7. Its appearance was almost an exact match to the photos above, with two notable exceptions. The hardtop was white and I purchased an expensive set of gold rims. Everything else, outwardly, was the same as those excellent photos above.

My Cougar was a car with a lot of personality. It was a huge battleship of a car. It suffered all the scars of a beginning driver with hardly a noticeable change in appearance. I sheared off a bumper bolt on a parking garage pillar when I was working as a "stripper" in a condo (no... get your mind out of the gutter... I stripped trash and linens out of dirty rooms in preparation for the housekeeping team to come in and clean them). I got broadsided by a Camaro while changing lanes one of my first days driving, but we both kept our heads and neither of us stopped driving... we both recovered and kept going with a friendly, if embarrassed nod of "oops" to each other (I spun all the way around, he was unaffected), but my Cougar received only a small horizontal indentation, marked by a line of white paint, just under the driver's door. I actually went out on deserted dirt roads and practiced for all of the driving difficulties that might come my way. I put my car into hard spins driving way too fast, and practicing steering my way out of it. I practiced sliding sideways around turns and practiced steering my way to a stop without brakes. If my mother would've known the things I voluntarily did in that car, she would've died on the spot. I spent a lot of time making myself the best driver I could be, prepared for any situation that might arise. The thought that my practice could be dangerous never occurred to me. I wanted to be a race car driver, remember?

"We learn from failure, not from success!" - Bram Stoker, Dracula

The practice came in handy several times while I had that car. It saved me from the broadsiding I mentioned, from sliding across a bridge while following my father during a terrible ice storm, and from a misjudgement I made in taking a curve too fast (didn't save me from making the misjudgement in the first place though), which caused me to spin all the way around at least three times. When I ended that spin, I was in the middle of an intersection, and I had managed to avoid all the oncoming traffic from both directions.

"No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be." - Bram Stoker, Dracula

That car was fast. I'm sure it had some serious engine problems, as it stalled often, went through three transmissions, and five radiators, but that thing could move. We used to drag race on the empty bus lot of the high school after band practice. A friend set up brackets for the races and kept a leader board. One of my friends actually drove a '69 Chevelle that had been cut and had an El Camino bed added just behind the front seats, fitted with a tow rig (boom and all) and a full drag racing set-up, complete with wheelie bars (yep, you read it right, a drag racing '69 Chevelle/El Camino tow truck hybrid). We had the two fastest cars around.

I also installed about 1,000 watts of stereo equipment in that Cougar. I had separate amps for the front and back, a custom bass box in the trunk, and twelve speakers... including removing the rear armrests and installing armrest speakers in their places. My friend Chad called my car "The Pacemaker" because he said you could throw someone in full cardiac arrest in the back seat and the bass would restart their heart.

"Despair has its own calms." - Bram Stoker, Dracula

"The Pacemaker" was complete with 2/60 air conditioning (2 windows at 60 mph - no other air conditioning) and fully customizable, directional, on-command dashboard lighting. That means that my dashboard lighting consisted of my friend Chad aiming a flashlight at my speedometer whenever I needed to know how fast I was going. The dash lights never worked on that car. You never forget the car of your youth. My memories of my late teen years are extremely intertwined with my memories of that car. Most of the pictures of my from that time are either me in my marching band uniform, or have that car in them. The one time it got toilet papered, my father cleaned up the mess before he went to work in the morning, so I wouldn't wake up and find it. He knew how much I loved that car and that I would have homicidal thoughts towards whoever had dared perpetrate such an act.

"How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams." - Bram Stoker, Dracula

By know, you are probably wondering how I got from Roger Daltrey singing an old Elton John song for a Joel Schumacher film, to cleaning out the CD bin at work, and into reminiscences of my first car. Either that, or you've given up on understanding me at all and are wondering what crazy places my mind will flit off to next. Or, quite possibly, you either didn't notice, or completely forgot about, how far we've wandered down these backstreets.

Some hurt bad some really dying at night sometimes it seemed
You could hear the whole damn city crying blame it on the lies that killed us
Blame it on the truth that ran us down you can blame it all on me...

Trying to learn how to walk like heroes we thought we had to be
And after all this time to find were just like all the rest
Stranded in the park and forced to confess
To hiding on the backstreets...

- Bruce Springsteen, Backstreets

One of my favorite movies of all time was The Lost Boys. Chad and I, who were almost inseparable throughout our high school years, ever since the day we met (he was in 8th grade, I was in 9th, on a band bus ride), have always been fascinated with vampires and Gothic literature. Yes, we were "goths" long before it was fashionable, or required black clothing and dark eye make-up. The Lost Boys was one of our favorite films. We identified with this movie. We were growing up in a strange little beach town in the late 80's where everyone seemed to be living with their secrets and sinister rumors. We were dealing with being outsiders, locals in a tourist town, outcasts from mainstream high school society. We were "lost boys" looking for our own place to fit in.

"Now you know what we are, now you know what you are. You'll never grow old, Michael, and you'll never die. But you must feed!" - David, The Lost Boys

When I found this CD in the used bin, it was like finding gold in a played-out mine. It was insanely cheap, as were most of the CD's in the bin, due to its longevity in the store and our desire to get rid of that huge white elephant of a collection of used CD's. I snapped it up and officially replaced my long since worn-out cassette of this soundtrack. I have amazing memories of oozing down the highways and backroads of this beach town in my old Cougar with this soundtrack blasting from all twelve speakers at near deafening volume. I have fond recollections of all of us "lost boys" (there were about 8 of us in all) in the back of a band bus on our way to or from some long forgotten football game or band competition, singing every song on this soundtrack from memory, as loud as we dared. We even sang the calliope tune To the Shock of Miss Louise, though it has no words.

I've been in a cave
For forty days
Only a spark
To light my way

I wanna give out
I wanna give in
This is our crime
This is our sin

But I still believe
I still believe
Through the pain
And through the grief

Through the lies
Through the storms
Through the cries
And through the wars

Oh, I still believe

Flat on my back
Out at sea
Hopin' these waves
Don't cover me

I'm turned and tossed
Upon the waves
When the darkness comes
I feel the grave

But I still believe
I still believe
Through the cold
And through the heat

Through the rain
And through the tears
Through the crowds
And through the cheers

Oh, I still believe

I'll march this road
I'll climb this hill
Upon my knees
If I have to...

I feel like I...
Like I wanna go home
What do I feel?
What do I know?

But I still believe
Yes, I still believe
Through the shame
And through the grief

Through the heartache
Through the tears
Through the waiting
Through the years

For people like us
In places like this
We need all the hope
That we can get

Oh, I still believe

- Tim Capello, I Still Believe

The feelings carried by this film, and by vampire lore in general are still something I identify with strongly. I grew up as an outsider. I was an overweight geek from New Jersey, transplanted in a southern tourist trap of a town that was, and still is, in itself, a living dichotomy of its Bible-belt location and its sin-city heritage. I was a geek in every aspect; band geek, gamer geek, nerdy fat kid with glasses. I grew up in a town at war with itself. This place had the ability to chew people up and swallow them whole. i had seen it happen to friends and acquaintances. I don't deal well with death, and I watched about one friend or acquaintance per year, on average, die because of this town, from 7th grade on. I watched friends become criminals and addicts.

"Gonna get back to basics
Guess I'll start it up again
I'm falling from the ceiling
You're falling from the sky now and then
Maybe you were shot down in pieces
Maybe I slipped in between
But we were gonna be the wildest people they ever hoped to see
Just you and me
So why'd you come home to this sleepless town
It's a lifetime commitment
Recovering the satellites
All anybody really wants to know is...
When you're gonna come down."
- Counting Crows, Recovering the Satellites

This town is a lot like The Lost Boys' Santa Carla. When I graduated from high school, I was determined to get out. I wanted to escape from here, but it called me back. This town captures its satellites and pulls them from orbit, one by one. Even Chad, who served a distinguished career in the Marines, earning commendations in the First Gulf War, Chad who wanted to become a writer, is back here and working as a manager in the local Game Stop.

"This is just a cover; we're dedicated to a higher purpose. We're fighters for truth, justice, and the American way." - Edgar Frog, The Lost Boys

The lore of the vampire is filled with that inescapable feeling of being an outsider. Vampires are forbidden to walk in the light of day. They are denied the things they loved in life. They are denied the salvation of religion and the peace of death and rebirth into the next world. They can live a life of pleasure and never be satisfied. They live on the life force of others, existing vicariously, if you will, through the memories and experiences of their victims. All around them are damned, destined to be pulled into their web of charm, deceit, and ultimate suffering. By outward appearances, most vampires are seen to be affluent, well adjusted, if eccentric individuals, who seem to be living a life of ease. It is their secret existence as tortured soul and root of evil that governs their life; their thirst for the life essence of their victims that haunts their every eternal moment. The vampire is the ultimate tragic figure. He has become what he is through little fault of his own, except perhaps some weakness of will that seemed trivial at the time, yet ends up damning his immortal soul for all eternity.

"One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damn vampires." - Grandpa, The Lost Boys

This week now past, has been one of the most difficult and trying times of my life. Of those times, there will be more I am sure. We all spend time adrift and in danger of crashing into the rocks and reefs of life's shorelines. We live one day at a time. We live by faith. We are reduced to our most basic essence. It matters not if the storm that caused us to break free was of our own doing, what matters is our survival, the survival of our very soul. We live on grace. Sometimes, grace is all we have.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me.
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

- John Newton, Amazing Grace

This is a difficult and dangerous time of life. Mid-life, this cusp of second-life awakening, seems to be when all of our past mistakes, all the ghosts of our past, come out to haunt our present and future. The dead walk, they escape our memories and our past, they arise to feed on the living. We are all "lost boys" and we hope and struggle to be found.

"We are all drifting reefwards now, and faith is our only anchor."
- Bram Stoker, Dracula