Living In The Past

   In the northeastern section of Baltimore City lies a community named Northwood. The original Northwood, or old Northwood as it's called, begins to the north of what once was Memorial Stadium, former home of the Baltimore Colts and the Orioles. Where old Northwood ends, a miles or so up Loch Raven Boulevard. new Northwood begins. That is the Northwood where I grew up, and the subject of my book, The Boys Of Northwood.
   It has been many years since I left that enchanting place of my youth, many years since I bid the days of adventure goodbye and turned to the realities of adulthood. Fortunately I live near enough to revisit the realm where my friends and I once ruled, and at least once a year I do.
   The changes that I see are subtle but significant. The row homes. that stretch for as far as the eye can see, are still there, and holding up rather well. The woods, where our gang had so many adventures, still looks the same from a distance. Moving closer I see the erosion of the hills leading down to the stream that runs through its center. Northwood Elementary School, our hangout, and the home to many a makeshift baseball and football field, still stands tall, but not for long. The word is it will be torn down soon to make way for a larger learning facility.
   The three old shopping centers within walking distance of my home have new facades and tenants  Liquor stores and laundromats have replaced the drugstores with their soda fountains, counters of candy and baseball cards, and racks of comics.
   There was one thing that had remained the same throughout the years, one constant reminder of the past. Ms. Tilly Zeller, the mother of my close friend Jimmy, who lived directly across the street from my brother Steve and I, still lived on 1501 Burnwood Road. The last of the parents of the boys of Northwood to do so.
   My parents and the Zeller's moved there around the same time in the early 1950s, not long after the homes were built. Northwood was the magical place of our youth, but as we grew older, we left Northwood for other communities, some near, some far.All, save for one, Ms. Zeller, our neighbor from across the street.
   She stayed on through the years, and as the old neighborhood changed, she became the one constant; the one who remained.
   Ms. Zeller has recently left Northwood, for health reasons, the last of us to do so.
   Changes come to all places. Northwood has changed through the years, and will continue to do so. The magic may be gone but Northwood will always exist, and Ms. Tilly Zeller will always be a significant part of its legacy.    
         


                             

SOME CHRISTMAS OBSERVATIONS

It's that time of the year for my annual Christmas observations, so here goes.

Using pine spray on a fake Christmas tree is fine at first, but after a few days, the tree takes on a high school gymnasium smell.

Call me weird but of all the different Christmas Carol movies, I like the Albert Finney musical Scrooge the best.

I believe Elf should fall into the classic Xmas movie category. My wife disagrees.

Decorating the Xmas tree, I go for moderation. My wife, on the other hand, throws everything she can find on the branches.

My grandson is still confused about how Santa manages to get down a gas fireplace. He is certain his gifts will be smaller because of this fact.

The local Xmas music radio station plays the same 50 songs over and over. Gotta listen to Sirius for some variety.

The best Xmas song from my youth, Do You Hear What I Hear - Bing Crosby. Second place - A'Soalin' - Peter, Paul, and Mary.

I watched It's A Wonderful Life again yesterday. Am I the only one who thinks Potterville is a more swinging place than Bedford Falls?

And speaking of It's A Wonderful Life, I've always been curious as to what happens to old man Potter. Seems to me that even if everything didn't go his way, he still got to keep the $8,000. Not a bad payday.

I found leftover Halloween candy on our Xmas tree this morning. I told you my wife puts everything on there.

I always wrap the first couple of presents really good. By the time I get to the end of them, the boxes are a sloppy mess.

Yesterday I spent more time riding around the mall parking lot looking for a parking space than I did in the stores.

We're not expecting any company this year but my wife still has the inside of our house looking like the North Pole.

The older I get the later I sleep in on Christmas morning. When I was a kid, I'd wake my parents before the sun came up. Now I struggle out of bed at the crack of 9 a.m.

Maybe it's a holdover from my youth but I still don't like clothes for Christmas.

My favorite Christmas gift of all time: The Schwinn bike I got when I was twelve.

My least favorite: A ten book Encyclopedia set, the same year.

Putting up all the outside lights seems like a huge effort for the month they're displayed. Yet when I attempt to keep them on a minute after January first, my wife has a fit.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!       

WALKING ON AIR

   Each morning I follow the same routine. Before I leave my bed, I try to recall my dreams while they are still lucid. My dreams have always been impatient creatures of the night, too elusive to pin down for more than a few seconds.

   You may ask why I bother with such a trivial undertaking. You might think (and would probably be correct in doing so) that dreams are unworthy of much concern. They are, after all, rather confusing and nonsensical imaginings of a brain reluctant to follow the body into shutdown mode. The mind still wants to play, even to the point of embarrassment and beyond. Why should we care what it does when we have no control of it? Let it have its fun and do not, by any means, place any credence in its bizarre ramblings.

   If you must know, the reason I attempt to recollect my dreams is that sometimes, though rarely I admit, my dreams allow me to do the impossible.

   In the last month alone, I have made wild escapes from zombie-like beings while defending a maze of tunnels on a world where this made perfect sense. For a short time, I became a resident in a house of candles, where the lack of electricity was never questioned. Instead the group of us (and I was young by the way) amused ourselves by hiding in the many dark nooks and crannies of the place, never wanting to be found but still fearing the dark. At another time, I was a soldier again, in the war fields of Vietnam, wondering how I arrived in the country once more after so many years away, and doubting that the luck of a reckless youth would follow an older man, wise enough to know the anger of bullets.

   More recently a theme has developed. My dreams are curious to discover how I would react to circumstances in my past, tweaked just enough to make the easy formidable and to make the safe dangerous. I must admit to not passing these tests with flying colors. If it has become a contest of sorts, a weird game with my sleepless brain acting as the rather sadistic host, then I admit defeat. I am much too old to compete against such a devious adversary.

   Perhaps I’m beginning to give the impression that the bad outweighs the good. It does not. My dream life often contains incidents worth remembering. Just three weeks ago I was, at some point during the night, in a sunlit field of almost unbearable beauty. I stood for the longest time soaking in the glory about me. I knew something miraculous would occur and it did. I soon felt myself rise above the windswept grass, not much, maybe a foot above the earth, but it was enough. I found that I was able to move be simply rotating my arms from front to back, as if I was pushing through water. It was so effortless I remember laughing, and so real I was sure could still air walk even when awake. And I tried. Oh yes, I tried, because if I did it once I could surely do it again.

   I have yet to revisit the field of my first walk on air, but I have air walked twice since, and accomplished other feats of amazement to boot.

  Each morning I lie in bed and try to remember my dreams. Often I shake my head in bewilderment, but sometimes I capture an elusive wisp of wonder before it returns to the night.

   On those mornings, I smile.    

A Time Machine

   It was late at night in the courtyard of a hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans when I took a trip back in time.
   It had been a long night reminiscing with army buddies during a reunion this past summer. We talked about our days and nights in Vietnam, and I added my recollections to the conversation. At some point, we began to discuss the music we listened to while in our olive drab captivity.
   In the army, in the 1960s, there were only three sources for music; the transistor radio, record albums, and reel to reel tapes. In Vietnam, armed forces radio was the only radio station available, and it wasn't much. The army's idea of rock and roll was The Association (they never got the drug references in 'Along Comes Mary') and Nancy Sinatra.
   In 1967, when I was in Vietnam, the music industry was exploding with creativity. Groups like the Doors, The Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airplane, and Moby Grape were rocking the bay area and The Beatles released 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' to an unsuspecting world. None of this music made it to our radios. The songs were much too subversive. Strangely, the army post exchanges at Long Binh stocked the albums, and other psychedelic classics, and soon we were grooving to 'Light My Fire' and 'A Day In The Life' on our PX bought record players.
   The more enterprising of us recorded their albums onto reel to reel tape decks, allowing hours of uninterrupted good vibes.That music provided the background for our lives back then. The music became an escape from the monotony of army discipline. It was our defiance. Our way of saying 'you have us for now, but in our hearts we'll always be civilians'.
   That summer night in New Orleans I let the songs take me back. It was so easy. I simply closed my eyes and listened and, sure enough, a few came to me. Reach Out (I'll Be There), Cherish, Summer In The City, Walk Away Renee - Boot Camp. Good Vibrations, You Keep Me Hanging On - A.I.T.  A Day In The Life, Summer Wine, Friday's Child, Windy, Light My Fire, Happy Together - Vietnam. Tuesday Afternoon, Green Tambourine, Pinball Wizard, In A Gadda-Da-Vida - Fort Monmouth.
   Music is my time machine. Certain songs take me back to the days of my youth, to a specific time and place. All I have to do is hear the song in my head and I'm off, repeating adventures, meeting friends I thought I'd never see again, and revisiting places I thought were gone forever.
   It's so easy to do, just close your eyes, climb aboard the song, and follow it home.
   I was alone. My friends had called it a night. It was one o'clock in the morning in the courtyard of a hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans and I went back in time.
   Some journeys end in an instant, others last a lifetime.   
                 

Break Time

Eight years ago, in 2004, I had a heart attack. I woke up in early on the Saturday morning before Labor Day and knew something was wrong. I didn't have any chest pains but my left arm hurt and I felt sick to my stomach (my wife Roni said I was sweating heavily also).
Roni drove me to the local hospital and, after a nitro pill, I felt much better. I wanted out but Roni and an insistent nurse persuaded me to stay. A good thing as it turned out. About two hours later I had a serious heart attack, a sharp chest pain, chest heaviness, the whole bit. I was told later by a doctor, I survived that one only because of an attached nitro-glycerin drip.
Two days later I had a stent in an artery instead of a blockage.Everyone said I should feel better, but I didn't. In fact, as the weeks passed, I felt progressively worse. Two months later I decided I should take another stress test. By this time I could barely make it up a flight of stairs.
As I suspected, the test did not go well. My cardiologist called me that same evening and advised me to seek   hospitalization. And so here I was again, a scant eight weeks after my first surgery, back in a hospital bed.
A second stent was put in another artery.
Three weeks later, while sitting in my cardiologist's office, he asked me if I was a religious man. I told him yes. I turned out that a major blood vessel leading to my heart had ruptured (probably aggravated during the first stent operation). It had collapsed over 90%. A 100% collapse, according to my doctor, would have almost certainly been fatal.
After that, I had a few years of feeling pretty good health-wise, but two years ago I began to tire easily  doing chores around the house, like cutting the grass. Things just didn't feel right.
Another stress test and another heart catherization. This time the worst possible news. I needed  heart bypass surgery. I'll spare you the gory details and just add that I would never again want to go through the trauma of the procedure or the long recovery.
I went in for my two year post-op stress test on Monday, July 16, 2012. Later that same day my cardiologist called me. Everything looked great. My arteries were strong with not even the smallest blockage. They were pumping blood like there was no tomorrow. So now I have my tomorrows and, at least for now, I feel blessed. There have been so many close shaves in my life, so many times when I should have died.
In my latest life I have become a writer of sorts. I'd like to think I'm good at it, but it makes little difference to me. I enjoy writing and will continue to do so for as long as I'm able.
This summer I took a break from writing to catch up on my reading and, of course, put a dent in my chores list. When the weather cools I'll begin to write again. I have the beginning and end to my new novel on paper.  Much like life, the adventure is always in the many pages between.               

SUMMER DAZE

In case anyone is wondering why there has been a shortage of blogs from me lately, I have a simple two word answer; the summer.
Since I was a child I've never been able to say no to the summer sun. It beckoned me from my bed in my youth and it beckons me from my computer today. Simply put, I cannot bear to be indoors while a warm breeze blows outside my office window.
It was like that when I had a job and little choice but to stay indoors, as the summer passed me by, in a cubicle surrounded by people of an equally sour disposition.
Now, retired, I've become a child again, free of school, free of responsibility (well, maybe not that). I own the summer once more. I am free to walk park trails, or maybe ride my bike on them. I can hop in my car and roll down the windows and push through a July day on the road of my choice. Or maybe I will be content to laze about on my backyard deck and think of summers past.
As the years roll on faster and faster and the days in the sun get shorter, I find solace knowing each minute outside was a minute well spent. It's in those minutes that I'll live for the next three months. It took a great many years, but the summer belongs to me again and I won't let it go.  

Fair Is Fair

     I have found two excellent proofreaders and editors in my wife and her sister, Joan. Both think alike and pick up on many of the same grammatical errors. And here's the good thing. One always finds what the other one misses. Another good thing. They both offer excellent suggestions to tighten up the story timeline and the plot in general. They instinctively know story pacing. A third good thing. They work for free. Well, at least my sister-in-law does. My wife runs a tally on the hours she puts in looking through my pages. The time starts when she picks up her red pen and it ends when she sets it down. At some point I have to match the hours with house chores or other forms of physical labor
     She worked 14 hours on Swan Loch. I know this because she posted the hours on the refrigerator door. She then broke the hours down by chores and by the amount of time it would take to complete each one.
     Here is the way it looked:
     Weed the garden- 4 hours
     Paint the spare bedroom - 8 hours
     Stain the backyard deck - 6 hours
     Total - 14 hours
     My wife may be good at editing but her math skills aren't much. No sense in arguing about it. All in all, it's still a good deal. Thanks to her and her sister, Swan Loch will be available for sale within days.
     Now I must run. I need to get a jump on my editor's 'fair is fair' list. Lets see, paint the spare bedroom- 8 hours. Sounds like a plan.