Home School Dad

I confess. I'm a homeschooler, super-nerd from way back. I had a couple good teachers. One was my pa, whom we called Dad. Circulating on Facebook is a picture of him holding our baby more than 20 years ago. They're both laughing. I think he liked to laugh. He certainly liked to tell jokes, sneakily, with a straight face. I took one course from him, Genetics, and I remember other students mentioning that they'd be listening and taking notes and suddenly, whack, a funny had almost slipped by unnoticed.

When Dad was struggling with cancer, carrying things from one room to another presented a challenge. During a visit, I noticed an open Scientific American on a lamp table, a novel near his bed, and other magazines and books waiting almost everywhere. At the time, I thought it said something about his health. Looking back, I'm not sure. It might have been the way things always were.

I'd bet the decor of each of my siblings reflects his bookworm gene. Whether their brains also store starts and wait for finishes, I don't know. Let me take back "finishes." Homeschooling never ends.

"Sounds like multi-tasking to me," says Virginia.

Not really. It's more like Dumbledore's Pensieve, storing the memory and letting it rest while taking up another page, one topic at a time.

Just Desserts

We've been at this farming thing for 5 years now, maybe settling in.  Karen mentioned rabbits at dinner tonight.  Bambi (venison) I've gotten used to, and Billy (goat), Donald (duck), Chanticleer (rooster), Tom (turkey), I suppose Roger might as well be next.  I have yet to name a plant.  Maybe I should.

Before that seems very long ago.  Talking to some new friends on Saturday reminded me of 17 years ago and earlier, when I was their age driving to work each day. "You never regretted it, did you?" they asked, referring to dropping out of the corporate rat race.  Yes, no regrets, to quote a tattoo that's seen around these parts.  Maybe I should get one.

I've kept in touch with only one person from those days.  He's the only one I bounce ideas off and the only one I know who reads my books now and then.  No one around here except Karen has any idea what's in them.  What are all those rats up to?  Same old, same old, or have they moved on to new horizons?  Hey, any of you rats raising rabbits?

I understand a former boss has retired, appeared on MSNBC not long ago.  He used to convene all of us every Monday morning at 8 to review our weekly reports.  His language was worse than another former boss sentenced to 7 years in a penitentiary (mail fraud and racketeering; interstate transportation of forged securities) who kicked a hole in his office wall one morning and splintered a fake antique chair by tossing it across the room.  By the way, soon after he got out of prison, he was charged again, with a similar mortgage fraud scheme. He pled guilty and went back to jail.  The judge said during sentencing that his criminal activity could not be stopped "short of isolating him from all contact with humanity, like putting him on a desert island."

"Those were the days," says Virginia.

Synapses

Before I drove my mother to her dentist appointment this morning, I asked where the dentist was located.  I forget exactly what she said, but after she named a few nearby landmarks I caught on.  "Behind the A&P?" I suggested.  "No," said she, "next block over, behind...." "Oh," I said, "I meant behind the newer A&P, now Family Dollar."  Exactly.

That's how conversations go between old-timers.  Newcomers might not know what we were talking about, but we remembered the A&P grocery store's location on Main Street, near the theater, as well as its next location on Cherry Street.  A few blocks away was the store's competitor, IGA, oops, Dave's Market, or rather, now the Community Market.  This kind of thing helps liven up a visit to what used to be home, whether Bluffton, Chapel Hill, Northern Virginia, Baltimore, St. Louis, or Salisbury.  Snapshots, sometimes movies, accompany each return with increments of the past.

Wandering about town with my mother is like entering a Clue game board, or maybe Trivial Pursuit.  Vaguely familiar faces jog recollections, usually less than half right.  Maybe I guess a last name, maiden names for females.  The first name, if one comes to mind, is likely to be off by a birth or two, sometimes even a generation.  A friend of mine says he hates to "go home" because everyone looks so old.  Someone seen everyday, including a mirror's reflection, doesn't look nearly as old as a remembered face 40 years later.

During Monday's lunch, we sat with two women, my former piano teacher and the former organist of my childhood church.  Starting with their children, we branched out to other teachers and students, mostly with a musical bent.  I felt like a Boy Scout at a shooting range, taking wild shots at the beginning then steadily moving into the bull's eye.  I amazed myself by pulling names out of thin air, people who had vanished from my life forty years ago.

I'm not sure Mrs. Szabo believed me when I told her she had taught me one of the most important business lessons of my life.  I was at least 20 minutes late for a piano lesson because my voice teacher had run late.  "I figured you weren't coming," she said from her desk, looking as if she'd moved on to something else and I was interrupting.  Intimated by professors, she and he, I said, "I'm sorry, but my voice lesson ran over."  "You have a responsibility, too," she said sternly, "if he runs over when you have a lesson with me, you need to tell him and reschedule with him if necessary."  Today's Mrs. Szabo laughed, "Me, stern?"  "Definitely," I said, "we thought of you as being very stern, and your comment stuck with me forever -- 'you have a responsibility, too.'"

John Murray stopped by our table on his way out.  "Do you remember me?" he asked.  "Sure do," said I.  "You raced across the cornfield one day to bawl me out for setting off an M-80.  I climbed a tree and you found me."  Remarkably, he proceeded to recite the same story he told me that day, maybe 50 years ago, about the fellow who had seriously wounded himself lighting a firecracker.

"Sounds tiring," says Virginia.

She's right.  Working my memory like this is like sightreading music for 4 hours at a stretch.  Naps are welcome.

The Paperboy

Yesterday's mention of Niswander's Newstand set my mind wandering on my run this morning.  When I had a paper route, Niswander's was where the Greyhound Bus dropped my newspapers.  The driver would flip open the baggage bay and toss wire-wrapped bundles of Toledo Blades onto the sidewalk.  I'd search for the bundle with my name on it, twist the wire off, roll up each paper and slip a rubber band around it.  Meanwhile, the guy with the gray cap would pop inside to see if any passengers were waiting.  He'd be long gone by the time I'd filled my bicycle basket and spun off to make about 30 customers happy.  Friends envied my $3.50 weekly take, back when 60 cents bought a baker's dozen of doughnuts, more if you kept the clerk talking and she lost count.

A friend, I don't remember who, introduced me to sin at Niswander's.  He insisted they made the best lemon and cherry cokes.  After months, maybe years, of claiming bundles of newspapers out front without sitting inside, he coaxed me to the fountain counter.  To me, this was about as decadent as entering Joe's Bar down the block.  We didn't have pop (soda) at our house, except on Independence Day, when Dad took our orders and brought each of us our own 10-ounce bottle from the A&P.  I felt independent that day at Niswander's, looking around hoping someone would see me.

After weeks of rumors and uncertainty, sometime in the mid-1960s, the baggage bay of the Greyhound Bus came to town empty.  "Toledo Blade on Strike" I think was the Lima News headline.  I returned home empty-handed, with mixed feelings about my first forced vacation.

A few years later, this member of Retail Clerks International found himself involved in another strike, at the local Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co.  I collected a small part-time employee's stipend and occasionally marched a sign along the edge of the store's parking lot.  No scab here, I felt responsible, having filed and won a grievance complaint at age 16.

"I guess you won't be striking around here any time soon," says Virginia.

Pretty rare here, in a right-to-work state.

Year in Review

Karen and I often sit down this time of year and list the year in review, as if we were editors of a newspaper or magazine.  I never really thought about where this tradition came from, perhaps our experiences with Citicorp back when we had to prepare weekly and monthly reports.  Some day maybe I'll tell you about those weeklies and sitting down with Carl Levinson and his other direct reports to review them on Monday morning, afternoon, sometimes into evening.  No, I don't think I will.  I understand he's retired, so maybe he deserves to be let alone.  In case you're wondering, that was 17 years ago, before what's now called Citigroup got into its current mess (and after it had worked its way out of the last one -- it had almost failed before, more than once or twice, did you know?).

Anyway, this year's list would include adding on to the goat barn for turkeys, which joined our herd for a while until we put the "tur" in the freezer and replaced them with "don".  Which reminds me Adam lost a "key" to our Volvo wagon.  He thinks it may be hiding in the bottom of our famous local swimming hole, the "Straw Pond."  We haven't bought eggs in a year and a half.  Yesterday, Karen bought milk for the first time in almost a year.  That skim milk tasted almost like water on my oatmeal this morning.  Come on girls, have your babies!  "Maybe that's why you got sick," Karen suggested this morning.

Yes, I need the healing, anti-bacterial life force of goat mammary emissions, which brings me to Hellgate, an important lesson for me this year.  That "race" helped destroy my running regimen for December.  Having rested the week before, which basically eliminated any mileage at the beginning of the month, the 46 miles I finished battered me down and probably yielded my immune systems to this cough/cold I've been fighting for a week and a half when I haven't been running because a little exertion sets me into a coughing spree and we've pert near run out of goat milk.  So, after 11 months of fantastic running that put me on track to complete my first 2000-mile year in years, I'm ending up shy with 1940.  Shy, did I say Chy?  That's our jenny (a new word for me in 2010).  Or "chi," pain-free running, which I did experience all year until my falls during Hellgate.

"What's the lesson?" says Virginia. 

Relax, run for the joy of it, and don't complicate it with visions of heroics, award jackets or age division trophies.

Gosh, I only barely got started on the list, didn't I?  My musical highlight had to have been playing the first movement of Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor with the local orchestra in early March.  Thanks, folks, for that opportunity.  People who play like me don't often get to do something like that.  The monster concert holiday singalong wasn't too shabby either, plain clean fun (not counting "Santa Baby," unless we agree it was sung by Mrs. Santa and not that other girl).  Meanwhile, banks have been buying the "Practical Guide to the Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act," released during the summer after a mad dash.  Thank you, readers.

More later, maybe -- greenhouse, court appearance, visits with friends and family, just read through old blog entries.  The next step for Karen and me, according to custom, is to try to predict 2011.

King for a Day

Back at the castle, one day between trips to Ohio and Pennsylvania, the Lady of the Manor, a/k/a the Queen, greeted the King and Prince with venison lasagna.  Several of the subjects quacked, a few whined welcomes, and the Boxers begged for belly pats.  The egg layers couldn't care less. 

Or were the whines expressions of suspicion?  My day began with unfinished business, a return trip to the abattoir.  When I arrived home with two full coolers, I glanced at the goat paddock with a twinge of guilt, not yet a full-fledged farmer.  Tonight's dinner plays out the deal I mentioned in an earlier blog -- continuing carnivore versus virgin vegetarian.  We sort of agreed that if we could not eat Shasta and Dodger, then meat markets would become off-limits.  Unlike the protein most of you eat, I like to think they were happy from birth to death.  In fact, not too many birds, butterflies, rabbits and other creatures suffered as they traveled from farm to table -- which is not the case with the out-of-season produce that graces grocery shelves throughout the year.  Tears have been shed, something that most likely can't be said for most of the hamburger and green beans (look at them under a microscope sometime) devoured here and around the world.  We, kings and queens, sit on the top of many pyramids.

My trip to Bluffton often reminded me that big rocks to little children are simply stones to adults.  On the morning I ran past the Community Market to buy a couple "expensive" navel oranges for my mother, the house that guards the entrance to the skilled nursing facility surprised me.  Not only could I see it from the town hall, it was merely blocks away.  My 4-mile trudge through waist-high sludge to elementary school had shrunk to less than a mile. Today I ran to our post office and local bank before launching my 8-mile round-trip to Arrowhead Lodge, reminding me that we live near a small town, too.

"You smell like gasoline," says Virginia.

She's right.  This afternoon I cranked up my Stihl and divided a few logs into firewood.  Welcome home, King!

Let the Children Play

This morning I ran past an elementary school playground. Little bodies scurried up the ladder of a slide. No one yelled, "One at a time!" I expected them to hurry back to climb the ladder again, but as soon as they slid off the metal they raced to the nearest swingset. Memory tugged. I found myself on the playground of Bluffton Elementary, about 50 years ago. Rushing to the swing instead of the ladder felt exactly right.

We gathered in a circle to choose teams for kickball. I forget how we designated team captains. Maybe we remembered whose turn or birthday it was. Some of us knew we'd be picked first and who would be last. Selection happened fast because we wanted to play. The next day, if Jimmy remembered his bag, we might shoot marbles.

"Where are the teachers?" I wondered this morning. They were where they should be, gathered under a tree, visiting. The children, like 50 years ago, didn't need someone telling them what to do or worrying about being a few feet away in case they fell off the ladder or bumped heads running to the next attraction.

I hope this playground is not unusual, with its old-fashioned equipment and laissez faire attitude. It reminds me of our 2000 trip to New Zealand, when we showed up to sea-kayak Milford Sound. I asked, "do you want us to sign a waiver?" Our guide laughed, "no need, you'd be thrown out of court if you sued us." We need that -- a culture of knowing risk-taking, of taking responsibility for our choices. If you drink coffee, you know it's hot, so don't spill it.

"Too many rules spoil the broth," says Virginia.

Drop-Off

I checked my mother out for a blockbuster weekend and had to return her this morning. Don't take me wrong; she's 88 and lives independently. A couple from her church planned a whirlwind drive to Charlottesville with Lexington right on their way, so Mother hitched a ride like a college student. Thanks to cell phones, I waited only 5 minutes on Friday and no more today, at the same gas station drop-off. In the meantime, we spent half of Saturday at the annual Mennonite Relief Sale in Harrisonburg. Anyone up for a $2,700 quilt or a $1,000 Martyrs' Mirror?

This takes me back about 22 years to the day I traveled to our employer's processing center in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey with a fresh face from law school. As we waited to check in at the hotel I asked if he'd like to go for a late-night drive to the city. His jaw dropped, "The Big Apple?" I nodded. "Sure," said he.

We agreed to meet in the lobby in 10 minutes. Off we went. When we approached the Holland Tunnel, my passenger muttered, "A toll? What's this for?" It was my jaw's turn to drop, "You've never paid a toll?" He said, "Never. How ridiculous! We have to pay to drive on a road?" Where had he been all his life? In the Midwest, I guess.

This short drive remains one of my favorite trips to the city. If it had happened today, he'd have used the word "awesome" so many times -- in reference to the lights, the action, the landmarks, the people -- I'd feel obliged to give a lecture on what the word once meant. "It's noon at midnight!" he exclaimed at one point.

"Don't forget," says Virginia, "why are you remembering this?"

On our return, before we crossed the river, I said, "Oh, we haven't been outside the car. Would you like to step out so you can say you walked a few steps in New York?" I could have pulled his door shut and driven away, but I wasn't up for that much excitement. Instead, a black stretch limo stopped behind us and as I waited for my friend to return, several people stepped from the shadows and approached its back right window, one-by-one. "Hey!" I shouted, finally the one with ants in his pants. He jumped in and off we went. I'm glad to report that today's drop-off did not offer that kind of excitement.

Funerals

Today reminds me of the Friday of Dink's funeral.  Dink died young, after believing and living the motto, "take care of your luxuries and your necessities will take care of themselves."  His wife had many happy memories because that philosophy worked well for them.

After the ceremony, I went to my office, on the fourth floor of a building in downtown Baltimore.  I stepped from the elevator and felt as if I'd entered a twilight zone.  Sunlight from the windows around the periphery cast shadows on an eerie quiet.  Someone was saving money on ceiling lighting.  From each desk glowed a blank computer screen.  I searched for an explanation.  In the biggest corner office, a pile of shredded paper formed a pyramid in the middle of a large conference table.  Closer inspection revealed "Pay," "to the order," ".00," "First," "Group," and unintelligible partial squiggles.  Friday normally was payday.  Not this time.

I had arrived too late for another funeral.  I mourned alone, until the elevator bell and a security guard yelled, "What are you doing here?"  He suggested I gather my things and leave.

"What then?" asks Virginia.

I complied.  It was 1985 and I was lucky.  I found my next job within a couple months.

Take a Whiff

When I was in elementary school, we crawled under our desks when our teacher announced an air raid drill, our hands clutched around our heads and necks.  "Duck and cover!"

Around that time, too, I vaguely remember a school nurse promising it wouldn't hurt before she pricked the skin on my left arm, just below the shoulder.  I didn't believe her -- or why would she say it? -- but she was right.  Later, my lesion itched but it didn't turn big and ugly like those of some classmates.  The scar that remains marks me as a baby boomer.  Later, I remember going with my family to our local elementary school three times, to take a sugar cube version of the vaccine.  Maybe one was Salk and the other Sabin, or maybe the sugar cube version was for something other than smallpox.  Who remembers?

My younger brother had a special name for the kids who received the honor of wearing orange straps across their chests and monitoring hall traffic at the beginning of the school day -- "hall-buh-doodies."  I don't remember what they did, but some of them seemed to think they were miniature policemen.

I'm remembering these things not because it's September, which is when school resumed when I was a kid, but because I smell the first day of school.  It's in the air.  I realize for most kids around here, the first day of school was 3 weeks ago, but I didn't smell it then.

"How many smells can a human smell?" asks Virginia.

10,000?  100,000,000?  Who really knows?

Saving

I remember when my parents' washer died.  I'd call it "our washer" except when I moved out, I discovered it wasn't "our house" any more.  Like Adam's room upstairs.  It's still Adam's room, but the next time he comes home from school he's going to notice some changes.  The furniture has been rearranged and some new stuff has joined the picture, including my Kurzweil keyboard.  I'm having trouble resisting the view from his front window, so the things that make up my fairly mobile "office" may end up there soon.  I'm reminded of the time I thought "my things" could take up space in my parents' shed forever.  They asked me to take them to my house.

As for the washer, they didn't rush off to Lowe's to buy a new one, not because there wasn't any Lowes (there wasn't) but because they had to save money first.  It seemed like a long time to me, I was just a kid earning about 4 bucks a week delivering the Toledo Blade except when its staff went on strike.  Perhaps I missed my steady income, but I remember enjoying the vacation more than anything, like being able to waste time sleeping until 7 or 8 on weekend mornings.  Once when I complained about having to get up so early, my dad settled me down with, "you shouldn't worry about that at your age; if you get tired you can take a nap."  Nap?  What was that?  I might spend an afternoon lying on my bed, but most likely I'd have an open book and a bag of fresh applesauce donuts bought for 60 cents a baker's dozen at the downtown bakery, which hasn't been there for a long time.  Now we have to make our own.

Sometimes I regret not pretending that we had to save for things like washers and dryers.  Our son probably figured our credit card drew from a bottomless pit because we paid it off every month and used the frequent flyer miles to visit places like San Antonio, which I discovered on a business trip, back in the late 80s when Texas real estate dipped in value.  Think I'm kidding? The past couple years talking heads have been insisting the current financial crisis was caused in part because real estate values fell, something that had never happened before.  I went down to San Antonio to help with some litigation involving badly appraised loan collateral.  One house had a hole in the yard, partly dug by a swimming pool contractor who must have not have realized the owner wanted a pool liner.  I had returned home with rave reviews about the Riverwalk.

"You're rambling," says Virginia.

Sometimes I like to ramble.

The Country Mile

As I ran along the country roads of Ohio last week, I remembered the Riverfront Mile, a 1-mile road race in St. Louis along the edge of the Mississippi River.  As I recall, the finish line was visible from the starting line.  Being able to see where we were going seemed to make that mile shorter than four times around a track.

I've finally reached that point on this book I'm writing.  Three more days and it will be finished.  I now have a schedule for those 3 days and if it gets interrupted for some reason, it won't matter much because the hard part is done.  I've saved dessert for last.

"What on earth does any of this have to do with running Ohio roads?" says Virginia.

Well, I was thinking, how about planning a race called "The Country Mile?"  Outside Bluffton, where I was visiting, most of the country blocks are square miles.  As I ran, I came across several spots where I could see a mile ahead.  Police would only need to block off one intersection, and that would only be for 10 or 15 minutes. 

No train tracks.  Make a note of that.  I remember hearing about one race that went very well until a train chugged in and blocked the route.  The runners who had to wait were very unhappy. I'd like to order no train this week, please.

Student Housing

A few minutes ago, Adam called to say we need to pay the rent on his apartment by August 1.  He's going to share the apartment with 3 guys -- that is, assuming the building is completed by move-in on August 27.  Can you imagine a brand new 4 bedroom, 4 bath apartment for junior year?  No wonder the average college student these days takes 5 years to finish school!

I'm reminded of the 4-room 20' x 20' house I rented for 3 years of law school.  The $100 monthly rent was pretty sweet even then.  Rev. J.C. Burnett was our landlord.  The activity next door prompted one friend to comment, "I hear the safest place to live is next door to a Mafia don."  Two doors down the other way was an African-American church that often provided dinner music.  I figured it took me a half-hour to dig each square foot of my garden, a former junk heap that yielded buckets and buckets of broken glass.  I also rented a couple 25' x 50' community garden plots that kept me busy shelling peas while I cradled a 15-pound textbook in my lap.

"Did you feel safe?" asks Virginia.

Always -- except for the night I went fishing behind the stove for a salt or pepper shaker that had fallen.  My wire clothes hanger fishing pole found its way into an old 220-volt receptacle that had never been disconnected.  Fortunately for me, the current grounded on a metal conduit halfway up the wall.  Unfortunately, the metal conduit carried natural gas to the stove.  The metal melted instantly and became a blow torch.  Fortunately, the firehouse was only a few blocks away.  I threw bucket after bucket of water on the wall until the firefighters arrived.  The house lasted another couple years before it was condemned for a new street right-of-way.

Around the Corner

A memory seems to wait around every corner.  Yesterday morning I ran to the university track that sits at the nearest 4-way intersection.  For most of my life in Bluffton (1954-1974), we lived a few hundred yards northeast, across from the school's former track and football practice field and a city water tower painted with big letters "B L U F F T O N."  I would have climbed it if I hadn't been afraid of heights.  Even though the old track lies under grass, football has given way to soccer, and the tower has been dismantled, they would apppear on any map I draw of this town.

This morning, several young men were clearing brush from the corner -- ordinary brush that struck a chord.  Later, as my brother, mother and I leafed through a scrapbook of current residents at the Maple Crest retirement living center, John Murray peered out at me.  The same face had watched me 45 years ago and chased me down after I lit a cherry bomb.  He had found me hiding in the brush and shaken a trembling kid with his tale about someone who'd blown off his finger.

Minutes later, Gary Lora arrived to tune one of the center's pianos.  My mind riffled through its Rolodex in time to greet him by name, although I hadn't seen him in 40 years.  For the summer of my sixteenth birthday, his sister, Gloria, had "dated" my good friend Max, a fellow staff member at Camp Berry, B.S.A.  Televisions were contraband at camp, but on July 20, 1969, the Camp Director set up several in our dining hall.  Everyone gathered to watch Neil Armstrong set the stage for Michael Jackson's moonwalk.  We listened spellbound to his famous words, "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."

"We won that race," says Virginia. "I wish we'd attack alternative energy sources with the same resolve."

Me, too.

Dark Day, Dark Night

I'm in Ohio for a few days, visiting the village that raised me.  Many of the actors in that experiment are still here, including my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Kooker.

When I saw him handing out bulletins at church, I thought, "Can it be Mr. Kooker? He looks younger than I would have expected had I expected him."  Seeing him reminded me of November 22, 1963.  On that day, a boy in our class clapped when we were told that our President had been shot.   "That boy always was strange," said Mr. K.

Last night, after supper, we drove to the Dairy Freeze to stimulate the local economy.  Then my brother drove south of town, retracing part of the route our school bus had traveled.  On Zurflugh Road, we passed the farmhouse where this 5- or 6-year old found a key in the ignition of a John Deere and first felt the thunderous power of gasoline.  My father was a sprinter then.  In the soft grass of our side yard, Dad eased me onto the seat of a bicycle, gave a gentle push, and ran alongside as I wobbled to and fro.  Near the same site, my bare right foot found a hoe someone had forgotten to put away.  My tears spilled into a pail of water as it turned bright red.  The first time our townie babysitter came to visit, I raced to high-jump a low fence.  At the last second, I froze and planted my right hand on an electrified barb.  More red for this show-off.

Leaving Zurflugh, we tooled past Strattons' Woods, the site of a Boy Scout Camp-O-Ree I cannot forget.  A long line of scouts hiked back to camp from a football game at Harmon Field.  As our flashlights lit the road ahead, a drunken driver hit us from behind.  Brakes screeched, tires squealed and a boot landed in the cornfield a few feet from me.  I can guarantee that the rest of that black night was quieter than you've ever heard a hundred boys.  We did not laugh when we visited the frozen latrine the next morning.  For psychological care we attended a memorial service and struck camp early to return to our homes and families.

"How sad!" says Virginia. 

May you always walk or run against the traffic, plant your hoes with their blades down, avoid barbs, and not become President.

Not My Fault

Of course our snow is melting. It won't stay on the ground as long as it did during my childhood when days seemed like months and months like years. We dug tunnels in snowbanks and burrowed our way toward China, where men pedaled rickshaws under pointed hats. We knew these things because Dad had grown up there, he and his pet dragon who responded to an ultrasonic whistle. Off they'd fly to churn mango ice cream in the tropics.

During our search for 3-speed bicycles, we discovered Charlie's Bike Shop. Charlie noticed an orange tinge to Dad's skin, which sent them into a long discussion about China, during which I bought a dark-green Raleigh. My brother, Tom, splurged, then or later, on a 10-speed Carleton, the envy of us all in those days before eight sprockets and endless changes.

My Raleigh with its high-tech hand-twist gear changer was not a paper-route bike. For that, I used a Schwinn with balloon tires and a giant basket in front. Papers lay open so I couldn't resist reading while driving until the time I smacked into the front of a Chevrolet. Body quivering, I happily realized the car wasn't moving. It had been parked on the wrong side of the street. The car wasn't hurt, nor was I, but my front fender made an awful noise until I straightened it.

My favorite customer was Mrs. Hahn, a grandmother to Fred, one of my future brothers-in-law. On a good day I could complete my deliveries in 45 minutes or less. I often stayed longer than that with Mrs. Hahn and her collection of vintage postcards. Where are they now, Fred?

My least favorite customer was the family I rarely found home. Sometimes I had a feeling they hid when I came to collect. Can you imagine refusing to pay 67 cents to an 11-year old paperboy? A month later, they would complain when I finally caught them and said they owed two dollars and 68 cents.

That was a lot of money to a junior high kid and still is to some people around the world. To me it seemed like pure profit since I'd already paid for their papers, kind of like a borrower who begins making payments on a charged-off loan, something I learned about later. Delinquency, default or bankruptcy carried a stigma that seems to have faded over the years. Now we can always find someone else to blame.

"That McDonald's coffee spill," says Virginia, "let's us off the hook. When you can get into court for spilling hot coffee on yourself, responsibility has become a relic of the past."

Images of Christmas

A blue-green glow, cast from outside by what we now might call vintage C-9 bulbs, circled my bedroom window in the red-brick house on Kibler Street and comforted the three-year old version of me inside.

A year or two later, in the farmhouse on Zurflugh Road, I sneaked downstairs in the middle of the night. Too big to wrap, not yet named Dobbin, a green-plaid hand-stuffed horse had my name pinned to his neck. In the morning I felt like a liar when I pretended to be surprised. Dobbin remained my bed-time buddy for years until Mother finally asked me if I were too old to re-stuff him a third or fourth time.

After moving to 430 West Elm, our family agreed to become a living manger scene. I thought my sister was going to change sex for Jesus. Instead, a plastic doll rested in the manger and she was a child like the rest of us. Back when photographers said, "Stay still; don't move," we posed as still as possible for what seemed like hours. I remember at this time Mother didn't like animalizing humans, "Don't call them kids; they're not baby goats" and "They're 'aunts,' not 'ants.'"

The house on Elm Street brought us a set of plastic dishes, gray for Dad, pink for Phil, blue for John, orange for me, and yellow for Tom. Mary and Mother might have to remind me what their colors were. These dishes were important for Christmas only because each of us left his or her bowl and maybe milk and cookies under the tree for Santa Claus. In return, he left us nuts, oranges and maybe Pfeffernusse. In our house, Pfeffernusse cookies were hard cookies an inch or less in diameter, so small it was almost impossible to stop crunching them.

Our Chinese heritage, adopted by missionary grandparents who raised their children in China, brought us another tradition -- making chiao tzu (or jao tse and various other spellings) around Christmastime or New Year's. These are traditional Chinese dumplings some of you might call "pot stickers" except they're boiled, not fried one bit. Everyone gathered to help construct them from flour/salt/water dough rolled into very thin, almost see-through 4-inch circles and a filling prepared with ground pork, bok choy or spinach, ginger, soy sauce and maybe a few other ingredients. We dipped a fingertip into a water bowl to wet the perimeter of each circle, placed a tablespoon of filling in the center, then folded the circle in half and sealed the edge. Mother or Aunt Alice Ruth dropped them into boiling water, let the water return to a boil, repeated this (I think), then the chiao tzu were ready to be served in bowls with a half-and-half mixture of vinegar and soy sauce and subjected to our eating contest. Who could eat the most? I recall that sixty-some was the record.

In our home we opened presents Christmas morning. Sometimes we had to suffer through breakfast first. Always, we had to endure the familiar and interminable Christmas story, worsened the year some of us stumbled upon the brilliant idea of acting it out, having forgotten how long minutes last when a pile of presents waits unopened. Later, when I joined another family, opening gifts on Christmas Eve seemed like a cop-out. Maybe that's why I didn't hang around.

"That's all water under the bridge," says Virginia, "but I agree, a bit of fun to remember. Look out the window. More water is falling on our white Christmas."

Christmas Out-of-Season

I was three and confused when I saw Dad carrying Mother down our driveway, across the street, through the alley to the hospital. At first I was worried, but smiles on other faces belied sickness and danger. She couldn't walk? Something fishy was going on. A few days later we met a baby girl at the hospital and brought her home. Christmas in August.

Twenty-five years later and five hundred miles away, I saw folks celebrating Christmas In August on the National Mall. Apparently they still do, in Washington, in New York City with the Rockettes, and elsewhere. I'm a scrooge in August (no offense intended, Sister Mary) and I still don't care much in August for the music I find comforting or nostalgic in December.

Warm weather isn't the issue. I found Christmas spirit in New Zealand the two Christmases we visited, despite the lack of ludicrous lights. I think the near concurrence of Christmas and New Year's Day with their emphasis on newness makes August seem old and inappropriate. Maybe all the explosions in December and again on July 4 call for quiet in August.

"Wait a minute," says Virginia, "are you saying August could be a great time to remind us to hope for and believe in the possibility of peace, and a Prince of Peace?"

All right, not only August, but please, no "Granny Got Run Over by a Reindeer."

Tubular

"That's totally tubular, dudette." Hey, if you're reading this blog, you're tubular for sure. Seriously, have you ever considered how tubular we are?

We put our food down a tube. Our food leaves through a tube. It goes to the septic tank or public sewer through tubes. We hear through tubes, breathe through tubes, send blood through tubes, smell through tubes. Sex is tubular.

I suppose we could have stopped with bodily functions, but no, we chose to center the rest of our lives on tubes. We spin tubes on our way to drive-in banks, where we make deposits through tubes, which reminds me that when our family shopped at Gregg's Department Store in Lima our mother's charge-slip went to accounting through a pneumatic tube, while I stood there wondering if we'd have to put everything back where we found it.

On July 4, we light tubes and watch them explode. We carry tubes to find our way in the dark or to ignite disgusting smokes. The organ music I enjoyed as a child was created by tubes, as are the sounds of many other instruments -- woodwinds, horns and the Chinese sheng (mouth organ). We use tubes to hold lights, music stands, microphones, speakers, fences, and porch roofs.

We stick blueprints and fine art in tubes. People commute to work in tubes. Girls wear tube tops. We peek, spy and observe through tubes. Radios and televisions used to require tubes, and now those have become artwork (Marc Rust, http://www.sparklemachine.com/tubes/gallery.htm).

As a gardener, I depend on tubes. They're animals wriggling, working hard underground, while plant tubes carry nutrients to flowers and vegetables. When it's too dry, I use tubes to save my plants. Some people are frightened to death of tubes, whether tiny ringnecks or fat rattlers. Karen made her wine rack with tubes.

I understand surfers seek the perfect tube. We measure our dependence on Middle Eastern oil in tubes. To see a movie, a show, a video, almost anything -- and to think we're important -- we get on YouTube.

"Just breathe," says Virginia. "Think tubular. Please pass the celery."

Blue Snow

Our expectations have been met, and now it's safe to say exceeded. The actual white stuff has nearly doubled the prediction, so maybe we've come out the other end and have a right to be irritated that our expectations haven't been met after all -- as if we have any right to "better" weather.

What kind of farm is this, without a tractor? I was beginning to wonder this myself as we shoveled our lane for the third time in 24 hours. Last night I pushed the first six inches off the lane. By the time I completed my first pass, I was feeling a little bit like Sisyphus because the snow had kept falling, four more inches of it. I repeated myself. I should have set my alarm for 2 a.m. The third time around the stuff was so deep I had to lift it.

Today, whenever I raised my shovel to take the top half off the snow, just as the metal broke the surface, I glimpsed a glacial blue that reminded me of the gradually moving ice masses we'd seen in New Zealand and Alaska. Only once did I notice the mystic blue continue after I deposited it on the rising snow bank.

The snow is still falling, but it has slowed so I don't think we'll see the banks I remember once or twice as a child growing up in Ohio. A blizzard might do the trick, but high winds aren't likely. We dug what seemed to be mile-long tunnels in those banks and burrowed like ground hogs. By the time we tired, we had to wring our clothes out, leave them in the wash tub on the back porch, and scamper upstairs in our see-through tighty-whities to find dry threads.

As it turns out, Karen encouraged my son and his friend, both college sophomores home for Christmas break, to relieve me. They worked about 15 minutes, then came in for lunch. To my surprise, they went back out. I took a warm bath and a nap and woke up to a snowplow stuck near the end of our driveway. Apparently, the boys had invited a neighbor to help them finish their chore. "I guess shovels are better," our son told Karen on the phone as another truck arrived to pull out the plow.

"He's right," whispers Virginia, "shovels are the way to go. Think if everyone took time off to get the exercise. It might even help reduce our reliance on the Middle East or offshore drilling." Maybe, maybe not. Ambulances might have to fill up more often. Whatever, ours is a great farm without a tractor.