the sun'll come up...

on the five year anniversary of hurricane katrina, the networks have flooded the airwaves with images of a submerged, battered and beaten new orleans and gulf coast region taken in the days after the storm.

seeing those images again, the tension and uneasiness of those days leading up to katrina making landfall have resurfaced.

one might question why someone ensconced in the middle of the texas panhandle would have cause to worry about a storm 900 miles away.  ordinarily one might only have a general concern for people unknown. that concern expanded exponentially with loved ones living at the center of katrina's bulls eye.

the good thing about hurricanes is that the storm track can be monitored over days, even weeks coming up to landfall.  that's also the bad thing about hurricanes in that the storm track can be monitored giving time for  concern and unease to build as a storm's aim places loved ones in it's sights.

even here in little a-town we were touched in a major way by the beast that was katrina, having family living in the big easy then.  fortunately they had the opportunity, and good sense, to evacuate ahead of the storms' making landfall.  they were safe.

still the life they had spent years cultivating was changed.  though the second story apartment in the house on olga street was not flooded, the waters came up into the first floor structure and the roof was compromised by the wind allowing the flooding rains entry into what was "home" before the storm. "home" was no longer habitable.  the apartment on prytannia escaped major damage.

as the flood waters claimed the city and as they receded again the face of new orleans, outside bourbon street and the garden district, was the picture of devastation.  the vibe of the city took a hit.  as time passed,  thousands of those evacuated ahead of the storm, and after, didn't return.  it was not because they didn't want to but because in many cases the "home" left behind was no more.

time, circumstance and different opportunities eventually drew ours away from new orleans.  the lure was the same, the city was not.  secretly i celebrated having all gone from hurricane's way.

in time new orleans and the gulf began to heal.  the ruin that remained after the storm was cleaned up, repaired or rebuilt.  the draw that remained grew stronger as healing progressed.

b. relocated to california.  he did his all to become one with the big easy.  he was saddened by his leaving and vowed to return.  when he moved to the big easy he immersed himself in the mystique of it all. the mystery that is new orleans still pulls at him, he's still missing the city. nevertheless, he has taken a page from past experience and is immersing himself in the different vibe that is wine country.  living smack dab in the middle of the napa/sonoma valley wine country, he is well on his way to becoming a certifiable wine snob.as he grew to love new orleans, he is finding himself liking san francisco.  vastly different, but still good.   

i find a certain irony in his trading tornado country for hurricane country and the latter for earthquake country.  perhaps he simply enjoys living in "the danger zone."

j., his now ex-, returned to "home" to little a-town for a time after katrina. l.j. soon followed her here.  the lure of "home" for her proved weaker than the call of life in the big easy for the two of them.  she and l.j. were drawn back to louisiana by a pull as strong as a mother's love.  again, they live in hurricane way.

k. brought k. moved here from mckinney for a time. we were blessed having family near us.  last year ennui and the pull that is the big easy drew the two of them to hurricane way.

hurricane season is traditionally july 1st- october 31st. from that "season" comes concern for me.  k. and k., j. and l.j. living in harm's way has boosted my hurricane watch interest.  when each new system forms off the coast of africa, my hurricane antennae go up and they stay up until i see the threat to the big easy and the gulf has passed. hurry up, november!

and they're singing- ala keith urban                                                 
someday baby//     you and i are gonna be the ones//    good luck's gonna shine//    someday baby//          you and i are gonna be the ones//    so hold on//    we're headed for a better life

to them all, i say-- in my heart of hearts, i truly hope it's so.

to all the hurricanes yet to form, i para a phrase borrowed by horace greely. "go east young storms, go east".  aio

with apologies to jimmy buffet...

harrowing a bit of his song, "come monday"......

heading out to san franciso
to see the kids for a week or so...

come sunday, it'll be alright! (woohoooo.. the first of 11 days off the work.)

come monday, it'll be alright. (packing our bags for the trip to san francisco)

come tuesday, it'll be alright
come tuesday i'll be holding you tight
i've spent long, lonely days
now i'm on my way
cause i just want to be by your side

excitement is building here at soap box central.  come this time next tuesday we should be winging our way to san fran for fun and sun in the california wine country. better than that,we get to see bob and robyn and shelly and david for the first time since 4th of july weekend in'09.

yes, it'll be quite a summer
rental cars and west bound planes
for now we're off on vacation
R and R's not that hard to explain

yea, 'cause i love you so
it's the reason i just let you go

come tuesday, it'll be alright
come tuesday, i'll be holding you tight
i've spent long, lonely days
with my head in a haze
and i just want to be by your side.

t-minus 7 and counting....

aio 

flight of fancy...

on my usual noon run on wednesday i came upon a sight not seen in many a moon. it was at one of the "mandatory" stops at the triangle park off paramount. what caught my attention was, not one, but a flight of eight or so dragonflies. i don't recall having seen a dragonfly in a very long time. and here, out of the blue, a virtual dragonfly stampede. well, not exactly a stampede but a dash this way and then that way, often come to an abrupt halt to hover in mid-air as they are known to do. in my youth i thought of them as insect heicopters.



what is even more curious to me is that they were hanging out in the middle of a park, nothing but grass in sight. my best recollection is that i've alway seen them around water. be it pond or lake, the water's edge seemed to be the hangout of choice.


seeing them took me back to the times my dad would take me fishing with him at one or the other of the stock tanks on the t-bar ranch. fishing with my dad, catching fish or not, was a special time for me. i wonder if those times meant anything to him at all.



my dad was a man of few words. he operated something like the dad in a country song getting play these days. it sings about how this particular dad couldn't say "i love you" aloud but each time dad and son parted the dad would "check the air in my tires, all the belts and spark plug wires and ask when the hell's the last time you changed this oil?" like the son in the song "i didn't know it then, but i know it now." he was saying "i love you"--the only way he knew how.



thanks dad, for letting me tag along to the fishing holes and for letting me hang around all those smoky camp fires listening to your old hounds singing out "aoooh, aooh" signaling they'd come up on the trail of some critter or other. i love you too. aio

"lucky man"

with thanks to songwriters: turnbull, dave; cory, david lee and to montgomery gentry--


"but i know i'm a lucky man
god's given me a pretty fair hand
got a house and piece of land
a few dollar's in a coffee can

my old truck's still running good
my ticker's ticking like they say it should
i got supper in the oven, a good woman's loving
and one more day to be my little kid's dad
lord, knows i'm a lucky man"

how can a man know that, at the end, his life has done anything more than occupy space and time? for myself, i find it hard to know if my years on this earth have amounted to anything at all.

i would be forever in listing the things i've not accomplished in my life.

i haven't written a book for instance. there was a time when i read anything and everything louis lamour. having read most of his works, though perhaps formulaic, he made it look so easy. i thought i'd try my hand at writing an oater. i couldn't get past the first line.

i've not invented anything, although, i consider myself a fairly inspired southern engineer. there simply has not been any terrific ideas come to mind for some gadget or another that might make susie homemaker's life a bit easier.

i could go on and on, ad nauseum, about the things i've not done in my life. for the sake of time we'll not go there.

given those things not accomplished, how does one measure the measure of a life? my hunch is that is has to do with the little things. things that too often are taken for granted.

on the positive side, i've never been to jail. nothing is on record more serious than some few traffic infractions, but nada that would prevent my being trusted with the nation's secrets back in the day.

i've never had anything re-possessed for non-payment. there may have been a few late fees assessed but there can be a lesson learned even in that circumstance.

i suppose my life could be reduced to numbers. married-- 33+ years to the same wonderful woman; 3 kids, 0 grand-kids ( a real sore spot with me as all 3 have sworn they will never have children of their own. i'm praying for divine intervention on that front.) 35+ years working for the same hospital. an ???? number of patients that have come into, and survived my cares. i suppose i'll be there until i retire, if they don't run me off first.

the house we built together in '77 has $0.00 on the balance due sheet. the 2 of us kind of rattle around in it like bb's in an empty beer keg. without the 3 cats for company and entertainment our life these days stands a pretty fair chance of becoming exceptionally dull.

but, as i see it, there's a problem with reducing a life to numbers. if omitted from those 33+ years is the pain of loved ones lost. if nelgected are the tears of joy and remorse, the laughter and the pride taken in watching children grow and mature into responsible, productive adults. if left uncolored are the outlines of a life whose shared experiences together have made the years fly by. if only today is taken into account, if left un-recollected is the love that made days flow into weeks, weeks into yesteryear, then there is nothing. but there has been love. the love of a family that eased the way through the bad and celebrated the good. when colored in, the years together equal the sum of our collective memories and in the end sums up a beautiful life and worth it all. aio

"it's all in the game"

have you ever given serious consideration to the genius that is the human brain? the brain is indeed a marvel, capable of infinitely more than we ask of it. for most of us, we nightly slip away into a dreamland of sights, sounds, smells-- which can be fabulous and extremely "real", at least until the moment we wake up in the reality abandoned as sleep carried us away.

a computer has the capacity to store tons of information; sitting there on the hard drive, ready to be retrieved. the average human brain has all that capacity and more. however,unlike a computer, the human brain often retrieves unbidden, factoids from the reaches of matter and time.

for instance, as i was leaving work tonight, lyrics from 1958-- Tommy Edwards "it's all in the game" popped into my head. "many a tear has to fall, but it's all in the game... all in the wonderful game, that we know as love..." i've not heard the song, not thought of the song since ??? oh, somewhere around 1959 perhaps. still, those lyrics have been sitting somewhere in the old memory bank since the last time they were called forward, somehow biding time until called to report in at the front desk of my consciousness. i promise, i didn't purposely try to remember them but of an instant they were there. 1959-- it's been a minute. i guess they got tired of waiting. aio

"moments"

this in response to a recent post the gist of which was, "moments in life that take your breath away." there is another country song, "moments" by emerson drive, that enforces the message of that previous post quite nicely. part of the song goes, "lookin' at me now you might not know it-- but i've had my moments."

our oldest is in the midst of a whirlwind tour of japan. reading his posts about the things he's seeing, feeling and the general experience, i'm hoping that he's doing his best to record, pictorially at least, these "moments" for posterity. it's so much easier to do so in this digital age we live in. and i can't wait to sit down with him to see and hear about his experience. sitting here, considering all that he may be taking in, reminds me that there has been times in my life when i've had "moments" of my own.

i was drafted into the army during the viet nam war era. basic training was at ft. bliss in el paso. all inductees are trained as riflemen first, then it was off to ft. leonard wood in missouri for ait (advanced individual training). eight weeks of training aimed at making me a combat engineer. the combat engineer's task is aimed at easing the way for the combat soldier; building bridges across streams and rivers, placing explosive charges to clear trees to allow helicopters to land for resupply, for whisking the wounded and the dead back to the rear. not a combat assignment exactly, but combat engineers operate in a combat zone and most definitely are armed, prepared to defend themselves if need be and to take the war to the enemy should the opportunity present itself.

there was a "moment" toward the end of that eight weeks of training at ft. leonard wood, with orders already in hand sending me on to ft. benning in georgia for jungle training, that quite literally granted me the life i live today. among others, i was pulled from formation one afternoon and escorted to headquarters where they took our fingerprints. the army owes you no explanation for anything they do. you can imagine the anxiety rolling around in my head. "what the f*** have i done to warrant this, i'm thinking." long story short, they ran a security check which resulted in the orders to ft. benning being rescinded and orders being cut for me to go to ft. belvoir in virginia for training as an "atomic demolition munitions specialist." i went to ft. belvoir as a buck private and came out the other end, two weeks later, as a specialist 4th class with orders for a base in italy where i spent the remainder of my two year, active duty, obligation.

it was that "moment" at ft. leonard wood that allowed me a bit of travel around the splendorous country of italy. courtesy of uncle sam, i've laid eyes on the trash floating in the canals of venice. traveling by way of a eurail train pass, i've climbed the leaning tower of pisa, gazed on the beauty of michaelangelos's "david," in florence, and in milan i entered the quiet sanctity of the "duomo" cathedral. in rome, i've climbed the "spanish steps", made a wish in the fountain of trevi" and imagined the gladiators battling in the coliseum. i've walked st. peter's square and toured the basilica and the catacombs. then it was on down to naples and the ruins of pompeii left behind when mt. vesuvius erupted in 79 a.d.. i even took a ferry across to the isle of capris but, like a dummy, i didn't take in the blue grotto. instead i froze my butt off laying on a "beach" made up of melon sized rocks, wishing the time for the ferry back across to naples would hurry on.

images of all those sights are captured somewhat hazily in the reaches of my memory. i took pictures but where are they now? my kingdom for a digital camera. if only it had been invented then.

so my advice to our oldest, who most assuredly does have a digital camera would be, "don't spare the bytes." who knows when you might get back to see those sights again. record all you can. forty years from now, unlike the pictures in my mind, those "moments", courtesy of the digital images you're taking now, should still be crystal clear even then. aio