It was August of 1943 and my father was a bit shy of his 20th birthday. By this time he had been in the Army for three years, was promoted to Sergeant, and busted back down to Private (That’s another story). His unit had participated in the invasion of North Africa and they were one of the units that fought and beat Rommel and the Afrika Korps.

Dad in 1942, before he shipped out

 In Sicily, Patton was racing Montgomery for Messina, but the Germans controlled the high ground and Patton couldn’t move his tanks on the roads. The Ninth Infantry Division (my father’s unit) landed at Palermo and moved inland to try and clear the Germans. Rather than an all out assault, the 9th  moved in the mountainous terrain only at night, under the cover of darkness. They were so quiet, It became known as “The Ghost March” in military history books. When they attacked several days later, they totally surprised the Germans.

According to Dad, the attack went well and they scattered the Germans everywhere. In fact, the 9th had penetrated well to the rear of the German forward positions. The Germans were then trying to infiltrate their units back through the 9th so they could retreat. As one of the German units was trying to retreat that night, a German soldier saw Dad and fired a burst from his “Burp Gun” ( a small German machine gun). Dad saw the movement and tried to dive into a dry stream bed, but was caught in midair by three rounds, two of which lodged in his lung. A firefight then erupted between the two sides and it lasted quite some time before the Germans finally retreated.

 Dad couldn’t move or be moved that night because of the ongoing firefight. The next morning, he was loaded onto a stretcher and carried by hand to the nearest aid station, which was seven miles away. Before going, he was given a shot of morphine to ease the pain (Dad said it’s the best he ever felt – it was like he was floating three feet off the stretcher). Because they were in the mountains with no roads, probably few trails, and a major battle was still going on, it took them four days to carry Dad the seven miles to the aid station. He was given one more shot of morphine by a passing medic during the four days.

 Once he arrived at the aid station, they didn’t have the doctors to treat him there, so they loaded him in an ambulance and drove to the nearest “Mash” unit. There, they finally operated on him and removed the three bullets. They then evacuated him to a recovery station in Palermo. As he started to recover, he continually ached all over his body. The doctors checked on him and determined that in addition to the wounds, he also had an acute case of malaria. They started him on drugs immediately. 

 Between the wounds, and the malaria, it took him about 5 months to recover. Because of residual weakness, he did not rejoin the 9th Infantry Division, or the fighting. He was sent back to North Africa, where the Army, in it’s infinite wisdom, made him an MP and he was suppose to keep soldiers from doing the kinds of things he use to do.

The stories dad told about WWII were always funny ones. This one?  Years ago, a few days after dad had his stroke, I was sitting with him and asked what he was thinking. At the time he was laying on the couch and was pretty well exhausted from physical therapy that day. He didn’t say anything at first, but then after I prompted him again, he related the story of when he got wounded. It’s the first and only time I ever heard him tell it. I always knew that he had been wounded while in Sicily, but I’d never heard the complete story, nor do I think anyone else had. As he related the story to me he said that if the Germans didn’t beat him, he’d be damned before he’d let the stroke beat him. He was a strong man. I miss him, and his strength, every day.

Mom, a Chain Saw, and 911…..

Mom Snow (aka mom, Cathy’s mom, Faye, the Fayester) was always a tough and smart woman. I guess I’d known that since way back in the 1970s when Cathy and I first started dating. I didn’t realize how tough though, until one day in the early 2000s when we got a phone call from mom, letting us know she was alright.

Mom had moved from Illinois back to Alabama several years earlier and built her dream house on ten acres. After building the house, she started clearing some of the woods to make trails and build her beloved gardens. In the course of the clearing, a lot of oak trees came down, and these eventually became firewood for her wood stove.

Well, one year when she was about 70, she and her neighbor, Doc (who was a retired chiropractor and a few years older than she was) were cutting up some of the wood. Doc was using the chainsaw, while mom was holding the wood in place. Suddenly the chainsaw hit a knot and kicked back. In the process, it snagged mom’s sweatshirt and pulled her into the spinning chainsaw, which proceeded to slice her arm open.  

Doc stopped the chainsaw and set it down, and started running around the house. Mom called out “Doc, what are you doing?”. Doc answered back “Looking for a phone book to call the hospital!”. Mom back to him – “DOC! DIAL 9-1-1!” That stopped Doc from running, and he quickly went to the phone and called. He went back to mom, and helped her keep pressure on the wound. A short time later the ambulance arrived, and took her to the hospital, where she received 22 stitches in her arm. It was after that, that she called to let us know that she was alright, that she’d only sliced her arm open while chainsawing some wood…..

We laughed about the story later, and retold it whenever the family was together. Then, a year or so after mom passed away, the story came full circle. One evening at the farm, I was in our garage and was bitten in the foot by a copperhead. I was in the garage cursing and yelling, and Cath came to the back door. – “What’s wrong?!” Me back to her – “A F@$&#}! Copperhead just bit me!” Cathy, started thinking “what do I do? What do I do?”, when she heard her mom’s voice, clear as a bell, say “CATHY! DIAL 911!”, which she quickly did. The ambulance got there, and took me to Warrenton, where they administered the anti-venom, and I was OK (although I had an extremely swollen and sore foot and leg for awhile).

Yep, mom was a tough lady, and her toughness stood out when a crisis was pending. She stayed calm and helped herself when Doc was panicking, and kept Cath calm a few years later when I had my own incident…..

Mom, a Butcher Shop, and Her First Glasss of Wine……

I was back in town for mom’s 85th birthday, and we had steaks and martinis the night before her party.  If you want to grill great steaks in Ottawa, there’s only one place you buy them – Polancic’s Meat Market, and that’s where I bought them.  As we were eating the steaks, mom said “you know, the Polancic brothers worked at the meat shop right next to Grandma’s house before they opened their own shop”.  No, I didn’t know this.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t know there had been a butcher shop next to Grandmas.  “Oh yea, it was owned by Mr. Steinbach.  He’s also who sold Grandma and Grandpa their house”.  Now, I was really interested. 

 It turns out that Grandma and Grandpa had rented the house from Mr. Steinbach for years, before buying it from him around 1940 (for the princely sum of $4,400).  When they were renting the house from him, a condition of the rental was that Mr. Steinbach was able to live in the house in the “back bedroom”.  That room was off limits to the kids unless Mr Steinbach invited them in, and a whippin’ was the penalty if caught.

One day when she was 7 or 8, mom was in the kitchen and the door to Mr. Steinbach’s room was open.  She couldn’t help herself, and went on in.  Once in the room, she was looking around and there was a trap door open to a different part of the cellar.  She went over to the trap door and there was Mr. Steinbach in the cellar.  He saw her about the same time and asked if she wanted to come down into the cellar.  He held her hand and she walked down the steps.  Low and behold, there were several large barrels in the cellar, one with a spigot in it.  It turned out that he was having a glass of his homemade wine.  He had another small cup there, filled it and handed it to mom, who sat down with him and had her first wine.  They drank the wine and had a nice visit for a while.

After they finished their wine, they both went up the stairs and Grandma and Grandpa were in the kitchen.  Mom was evidently feeling the effects of the wine and was walking a bit funny.  The adults were all chuckling at her staggered steps right up until she slipped and fell against the stove and cracked her tooth.  That started her to crying, but it turned out she was alright.

 

 It worked out well for mom, as she later had a job working  in the butcher shop in 1944 or ’45 when she was 13 or 14.  The Polancic brothers were already working there then, learning the trade.  Later, they opened their own shop.  Today, it’s on the north side of town (and is run by one of the sons and their grandsons).

I love the connections that are in small towns.  I felt lucky to learn about this one.  

I was not born an environmentalist, but I have come to care greatly about the environment and the future, particularly for this great country of ours. That’s a big reason I am on the executive board of The Nature Generation (NatGen), a nonprofit focused on preparing youth  for the environmental challenges of the future, by connecting them with nature today.

We all travel different paths in life to get to where we are, and my path towards environmental concern started as a boy growing up in Illinois in the 1960s.  Looking back, there were a couple things I remember, that sort of amaze me now. The first was that there was always trash along the side of the road.  Always.  And a lot of it. The second was the fact that if you fished in the Illinois River, you would never catch anything but carp or bullhead because the river was so polluted.  I liked to fish back then and anything we caught, we’d throw on the bank because you couldn’t eat them due to the pollution.  That was just the way it was, and no one seemed to think anything else about it.

  Then you became aware of things taking place more broadly, like a river on fire in Ohio due to pollution, or eagles dying from DDT.  And you start to think, it doesn’t have to be this way.  Earth Day happens, and we all start to pick up trash, and plant trees. The EPA was formed (under a Republican president), and we started going after polluters, and lo and behold, our air, and our water started cleaning up. Forty-five years later, and the world is different.   

 You don’t see near as much trash on the side of any road.  The Illinois River is rejuvenated, and there are bass, walleye, crappies, and other game fish.  There are bald eagles and waterfowl on the river, something I never ever saw in my youth.

My wife and I live on a small farm in Virginia now, and about 6 years ago I joined NatGen.  Living on the farm, my connection with nature and the environment is much closer.  The weather affects you more, streams cross your property, and you notice other things.  Woods that existed one day and are clear cut.  Large chicken farms that have the potential to affect the entire watershed.  Building projects with mud and sludge running into local creeks.  You read in the paper about a chemical company that has poisoned an entire community in Pennsylvania.  Your friends that have lived on the Illinois River for over 15 years have to move, due to the development of frac sand mining nearby. 

 You realize that the challenges to the environment are never over and this will continue forever.  Clean water, clean air, and a clean environment – they should be a given, but they aren’t.  NatGen is one of the organizations making a difference and educating our youth, so they can make smart decisions in the future.  I like to think that passing a torch to the next generation is a pretty good thing for our youth and our environment.  

Earth Day is this Friday, April 22d.  You don’t need to be born an environmentalist to care about the environment and the future.  You just need to care.

  *Would you like some more information? Check out NatGen on Facebook, or their website at: http://www.natgen.org/

  **Special thanks to my friend Laurie Bradach for the use of her photo “Ducks on the Illinois River”.

…..This blog post was first published on the NatGen website in February, 2016…..

Daffodils in the middle of the woods…..
 

 If you leave our house and take a right onto the gravel road called Swains Road, you dead-end in about a mile and a half. At the end of the dead-end is a trail that goes into the woods. Follow that trail for about 200 yards, and all of a sudden, in the middle of the woods, you will see several groups of daffodils. In the middle of the woods. With no house, no yard, and no people.

And then you start to look a little closer, and you see the outline of a stone foundation for a house. It might be a 20×30 foot foundation. And you also notice a pile of stone that might have been a chimney a long time ago. I’ve talked to “oldtimers” in the neighborhood, and no one ever remembers anything about that house. There’s a good sized tree growing up inside the foundation. There are a few old buckets and some broken bottles, maybe from someone doing target practice years later. There are no other houses on this property. There are other existing old cabins in the area that are around 100 years old, so I’m guessing this one might be older.   

I think about the house, and wonder who lived there. Someone suggested to me it might have been a hunting cabin, but I have a hard time believing hunters planted daffodils in front of their cabin. No, this was a family home at some point in time. This would have been well out in the country at that point in time (hell, it’s still well out in the country). Were they scratching out a living? Was it part of a larger farm? Were they happy? I think of the woman who planted the daffodils, trying to turn that cabin from a house into a home, and I like to think she was successful in doing that. Of course, I’ll never know. Eventually, they sold, or moved, or left, or were evicted. The cabin fell into disrepair, and came down, the wood disintegrating over the years, until nothing was left but the stone foundation. And the daffodils out front.

I’ve thought about digging up the daffodils and separating them, and replanting them up at our house. They’d gain a new life that way, and someone to look at them, and enjoy them every spring. So far, I’ve resisted the urge, and so, there they stand as silent guardians to lives gone by. Daffodils in the middle of the woods….

Opening Day!

I’m excited that I will be going to the Nats opening Day on April 7th this year with some friends. Beers, a dog, peanuts, and that thought that all things are possible.

 

Surely Opening Day is one of the true signs that spring has arrived in so many ways. Pitchers and catchers reported back in February, and gave us our first indication that winter wasn’t going to last for ever. But that was in Florida or Arizona, and most of the rest of us are somewhere “up north” where cold weather was still a reality.

But Opening Day – not only the weather has turned, but there is also that sense of renewal that accompanies the start of the baseball season. All things are possible in April, and who knows what the year will bring. Growing up a Cardinal fan, there was almost always promise for the coming season. But on Opening Day, hope springs eternal for all fans – even if your team is the Cubbies. And this year, who knows, the Cubs may make a real run. They’ve got a good manager, and it appears both decent pitching and good hitting. We’ll know for sure in 162+ games, but for now, before Opening Day, the Cubs look like they could be the real deal.

The Mets? Sox? Yankees? Giants? Dodgers? Anyone could make a run for it. The Phillies Or Braves? Everyone says not this year, they are still rebuilding…but they said that about the Mets last year at this time. I’m looking forward to some good conversations with my brother-in-law about the Giants, and my nieces about the Cubs. Maybe a bet or two will get made before the season is over….

I’ve become a Nats fan since they returned to DC, and things are look promising here this year as well. Dusty Baker’s in to guide the ship, Bryce is coming off a monster season, and we have a couple of new players – maybe they can fulfill the promise that has seemed to exist the last three or four years. Hey – it’s almost Opening Day and all things are possible….

“Jumper! Get your a$$ back home!”……  That was the line that really caught my ear, and made me nearly cry, I was laughing so hard. But, let me go back to the beginning of the story.  

 

 
Last Sunday, Cathy and I were at the Bay. We didn’t really have anything to eat at the house, and decided to go out for lunch to one of favorite local places in St Michaels – Carpenter Street Saloon. We got there about one, and sat down. C-Street wasn’t particularly busy, and there were only a few of us at the bar. We ordered a couple of bloody’s and some lunch. The food came and it was as good as always. Some people left, some came in, and I guess at this point there were six or eight of us sitting around the U-shaped bar. One of the guys that came in later turned out to be a Volunteer fireman for both St Michaels and Tilghman Island, and had been one for something like 45 years. It turned out that his father has a house about half a mile from where we live on Tilghman, and he started telling stories about some of his time on the Bay.

He was a waterman and had done various jobs up and down the Bay. He started telling us about his time as a tugboat captain and he was taking his tug up to Baltimore. As they were crossing beneath the Bay Bridge, something came spiraling slowly down from the bridge above and plopped into the water just off the port side of the boat. They looked in the water and it was a very young pigeon. Evidently it had left the nest (tried to fly, was pushed, or jumped), but it didn’t really know how to fly yet and landed in the water. They netted the bird out of the Bay and brought him inside. He was alive but stunned. The captain decided to see if they could save the bird, so they dried it off and warmed it, and started feeding it. Oh, and they named it Jumper (figuring it had jumped out of the nest for good, or for ill).

Over time the bird got stronger and bigger, and the captain finally took Jumper outside to release him. Well sure enough Jumper could fly now, but after circling about, he came back and landed at the captain’s feet. He flew off a couple more times, but always came back, so he became something of a pet. The captain started taking him with him when he went down to work on his boat at the docks. As a matter of fact, Jumper would fly around down there, and occasionally pick up a screw or a bolt. He’d fly around with it a bit, and then drop it on the captain as he flew overhead.

Another time the captain was driving home from the end of Bar Neck and looked up and saw Jumper sitting on a telephone line above, with two doves sitting on each side of him. The captain got out of his car and yelled “Jumper! Get your a$$ back home!”. Jumper flew off and when the captain got home a few minutes later, there was Jumper sitting outside the house with a look of “Who Me???” on his face…

Jumper stayed on with him for about one and half or two years. Then one day Jumper was flying back and forth between the captain and his brother having fun, when a hawk swooped in and grabbed him and flew off. The captain ran inside to grab his gun, but by then the hawk, and Jumper, were long gone…. I suppose it’s a bit sad that Jumper met his fate that way, but I like to think he had a couple of pretty good years that never would have happened if they hadn’t netted him out of the Bay….

The captain (and others) told a couple of other stories, and the laughter around the bar was pretty good. It was a great way to spend a couple three hours there at C-Street. We finally paid our tab to Sarah behind the bar and headed back home.  

Since then, every time I think of Jumper and those doves sitting on the wire, I break into a smile…..

Pura Vida…     is a phrase we learned recently on a vacation with some friends in Costa Rica. It literally translates to “pure life”. But it means so much more, and is really about a way of life. Think in terms of carefree and optimistic….or “enjoy life”… Or “full of life”. The Ticos (what the Costa Ricans call themselves) use it as a greeting, saying hello, saying goodbye, giving thanks, or just commenting on what a great day it is. One dictionary translated it to “Life is wonderful; enjoy it”. And that is what we did in Costa Rica; enjoyed life.

On this vacation, while we visited some major attractions (The Arenal Volcano, and Manuel Antonio Parque), we stayed a bit off the beaten track. When in the Arenal region, rather than stay in one of the resorts in La Fortuna, we stayed in El Castillo, which was 30 minutes down a gravel road, with more than it’s fair share of potholes. El Castillo might have a couple hundred people who live there. Three or four restaurants, a couple of small hotels, a tiny market, a church, a soccer field, and a school…. That’s about it. But the people we met were all wonderful. At our lodging, in the restaurants, and just walking down the road. We were getting up early (6AM or so) to catch some birding and to see the sunrise on the volcano. We were walking up a road/path and meeting people who were starting their day “Hola…Buenos Dias….Pura Vida…”
 

 What was even cooler to see, was at 6:45 watching families take their kids to school on their motorcycles/ motorbikes. Either mom or dad would drive, and somewhere from one to three children would be on the bike with them. And always a smile, a greeting, a wave…..

When we went to Manuel Antonio, we also stayed a bit remote. Five of us shared a house that was about 45 minutes north of Quepos on a dirt road. The house had about 250 acres with it, so we had our own jungle. At night, it was pitch black. And the noise in the early evening and early morning was riotous. Unbelievable how many birds, insects, animals, whatever, were carrying on out there. We loved it and spent a couple of days there before heading into Manuel Antonio to do a mangrove tour, and later to tour the park and see the birds and animals. The tours were great, but we really enjoyed the remoteness, and the “localness” of where we were staying.

We plan to go back in the future, and when we do, we will probably log more beach time, stay at a hotel with a swim-up bar, and do a bit more restaurant hopping. For this trip, it was perfect the way it was. And I certainly have a much better understanding of Pura Vida. To quote from one of the guidebooks:

Pura vida! …. you need to consider that maybe…just maybe, your situation isn’t all that bad and that no matter how little or how much you have in life, we are all here together and life is short…so start living it “pura vida style”

 

I’m not musical. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even selected for our 7th Grade choir at Central Junior High. But, Cath and I have a small connection to the Grammys.

Cathy’s mom passed away 5 years ago. About 15 years before that she moved back to Alabama, from Illinois. When she arrived, she wanted to build a new house. Mom never wanted to inherit “other people’s problems”, and that included houses. She talked to her brother Russell, who is a builder, and he agreed to build her house. She selected an eight acre lot near Athens.

 

 

She gave him her plans, and he started working. For some reason, there was confusion about how deep the basement should be. Uncle Russell dug, and dug some more. When all was said and done, the basement was almost 20 feet from floor to ceiling. Mom wasn’t happy and let Russell know, but it was now too late to change and he finished building the house. Over the years, we’d visit mom and it was always an adventure going into the basement. The homemade stairs went straight down, and you’d almost have a sense of vertigo descending. Even later in life, mom’s face had a look whenever the basement was discussed.

In her last couple of years, mom decided to sell the house, but it never sold. Some folks thought she might have asked a bit to much, but in the back of my mind, I always suspected the basement. I mean, the height of the basement was that strange.

Mom passed away in 2010, and a year or two later, Cathy, Cindy, and Bonnie decided to sell the house. It was on the market for awhile. Several people looked, but there were never any offers.

And then one day it sold. It turns out that a large basement with a 20 foot ceiling is a selling point…..If you want to build a sound studio in your home. And your name is Brittany Howard. And you are the lead singer for the Alabama Shakes, based in Athens, Alabama.  

So that’s our connection. Brittany and Alabama Shakes won three Grammys this year. If you watch one of Alabama Shakes last videos, you can see some of the support posts and beams from mom’s basement in the background. I like that connection – mom and Alabama Shakes. Yet another way that she is still with us.