Monday November 1, 2004 Bum-Bump, Bum-Bump…

Monday November 1, 2004 Bum-Bump, Bum-Bump…

My grandson CB now about to enter his fifth month in the world has an electronic battery powered—two double AA alkaline—white noise generator that my daughter found to her delight, that he loves. It measures about five by seven inches and just under two inches thick. If you didn’t know any better you would assume it was a radio. It has several push buttons along the top and a volume dial on the side. The buttons select a series of continuously playing sounds: raining falling, waves pounding the shoreline, and CB’s favorite, the sound of a gently flowing stream, among others.

Swath CB in his receiving blanket after he’s been fed, and with a pacifier in his mouth, all you need to do is flip on the white noise generator and he’s good for an hour or two in la la land. My sense is that naturally occurring rhythms found in the regular beat of pounding surf, the swifter tempo of gently flowing stream, are the origins of music within us. When CB and the rest of us entered the world the one consistent sound we all heard was the regular rhythm of our mother’s heartbeat. Thus, our first and most memorable impression of the world is of its regular, constant cadence of bum-bump, bum-bump, bum-bump…

That ceaseless, unrelenting pulse informs us from the start that we are within a living entity. And when we are wrenched from that relatively quiet, warm, dark cocoon of comfort into a space where our every sense is suddenly overwhelmed with sensation, we realize that we’ve entered a far more expansive living entity that is probing us, hurting us, touching us, talking to us, moving us about within a much larger, brighter, and noisier cocoon. That soothing rhythmic heartbeat is no longer assuring us, comforting us.

From the moment of birth, we are part of this larger living, breathing organism. Thousands of years ago, you would have been part of a tribe. Thousands of years later you had become part of a race. Years later you were part of a cultural and political identity: Greek, Roman, Persian, etc. Today, you’re part of a national identity: American, British, French, German, Japanese, etc. And at the micro level, we are part of a community—the San Francisco Bay Area, Orange County California, El Paso, Texas, etc. If you imagine each of these identities as a distinct living body, then you are a cell within that body. And just as the cells within CB and CB’s mom are driven by the bum-bump, bum-bump, of a beating heart, so too are all of us being driven by the rhythmic beating of this larger body.

You ever wonder why it is that when you first travel aboard for the first time or after a long interval to visit London, Paris, Tokyo or some other place that you feel out of step with everyone around you? You can easily blame it on jet lag but even after you’ve been in country you still encounter instances where you feel awkward and out of place. There is a natural rhythm that everyone within a community begins to move to. During the Monday morning commute, the same group of cars all drive down the same roads to go from home to work and later back again. On Saturday, other groups converge on shopping malls, grocery stores, and countless other venues. Each of those converging on a given place sharing something in common with the others around him/her, moving to the same beat. The phenomenon is illustrated by the ability of the hearing impaired being able to dance within a group and keep to the rhythm of those around them. Eventually the traveler arriving from abroad falls into the local rhythm and no longer strikes the dissonant chord within a crowd.

I submit that on a much larger scale the world is the living organism and all of humankind is collectively hearing the heartbeat of mother earth. Believe me, she is alive—living in earthquake prone California and feeling her move you appreciate how alive she really is. And just as the unborn infant within its mother’s womb is completely oblivious to the world outside her, we likewise are equally oblivious to the force beyond and within the maternal earth: a direct hit from an errant asteroid or comet from space, the eruption of a volcano with the force several times greater than Krakatoa and humanity will follow in the footsteps of dinosaurs.

Most of us live our lives oblivious to the natural rhythms that vibrate around us, but the older you get the more sensitive to it you become. Perhaps you begin to realize the vast distance you’ve traversed in such a short period of time looking back from the autumn of life and begin to count the heartbeats left before you cease to sense the bum-bump, bum-bump… at all.

Sunday October 31, 2004 - Past Life

Sunday October 31, 2004 - Past Life

The highway—California 101, Interstate 5, 10, any stretch of macadam or concrete—can pretty much serve as the metaphor for my life. You get on one of these thoroughfares and they take you some place. And I have been going to those places pretty much my whole life. I’m most fond of California 101 but I’m pretty attached to those long stretches of Interstate 10 through the desert of California, Arizona and New Mexico.

I’ve picked a highway to make my point because it depicts normal life at 70 miles an hour or more—for most of us it’s more. Starting out at 10:00 on a Saturday morning, My wife “I” and I get onto 101 at the Interstate 87 interchange just south of San Jose en route to Paso Robles some 150 miles or so south. At the interchange, 101 is a four lane freeway and it moves at or over the limit all the way through Morgan Hill and Gilroy where it becomes the two-lane each direction highway it was 30 or more years ago when we first arrived in California.

But what the road takes away in speed and lanes, it more than compensates in the stunning landscape through which it slices: rolling hills, in the fall and winter green and lush, in the late spring and summer dry and brown, all year round truly beautiful. South of Gilroy, development on either side of the highway is relatively sparse, mostly farms for as far as the eye can see. That all changes as you near the junction with Highway 129 and Highway 156 both heavily traveled by tourist and commercial traffic going west to and from the Monterey Peninsula off 101.

The next big town 101 encounters is the farming community of Salinas, grown considerably in the 30 years we’ve lived in the state. Beyond Salinas are the farming towns of Chualar, Gonzales, Soledad, Greenfield, King City, San Lucas, San Ardo, Bradley, and San Miguel, looking from the freeway much like they did in the 1940s and 1950s if not earlier, though they have been colonized by the occasional fast food restaurants and Quik Stop Service Stations offering gas and food.

All along the highway between Salinas and the towns further south there are miles of acreage under cultivation. And the stretch of 101 south of King City through King City and into Paso Robles for miles on either side of the highway there are vineyards with their neat rows of vines forced to stand in nearly perfect straight lines trellises of wooden stakes and lengths of wire that give the impression of soldiers at parade rest on an enormous field. Just before you reach Bradley a small town 20 or so miles north of Paso Robles, you pass through an operating oil field populated by a large herd of preying mantis-looking pumps rhythmically extracting the black gold from the ground beneath and on either side of the Salinas River that races 101 all the way to Paso Robles.

It’s about a three-hour drive to Paso Robles from San Jose, but our destination is further west on the California Coast, a small town south of Hearst Castle called Cambria. To get there you exit 101 at Highway 46 west and you drive over the Santa Lucia Mountain Range over a spectacular stretch of winding two-lane road as it climbs for nearly 40 miles until you reach the summit. There you have an absolutely incredible view of the Pacific—it’s no wonder a man like William Randolph Hearst built his home on the side of this mountain range. From this height, you can see the sun racing west toward Asia when the coast hugging fog fails to make its usual appearance. From the heights you can see south along the coast all the way to Morro Bay and the distinctive Morro Rock jutting up out of the water. You can see north all the way to Hearst Castle.

Once over the summit, another 20 minutes of driving and we arrive at Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. A right turn and another 10 minutes and we’re in Cambria. A left off Highway 1 on Moonstone Beach Drive and we’re at one of the bed and breakfast motels that sit all along this mile long stretch of road that parallels Highway 1. Each offers pricey rooms with ocean views but we willingly pay the rate to sit for a day or two and gaze at the Pacific, listening to the rhythmic pounding of the waves, and enjoying the on-shore breeze coming into the open windows. It’s a place where we go to enjoy a way of life that you can only truly have two or three days at any given time.

I began with the lofty suggestion that the highway was the metaphor for my life and this trip south is an example. We typically leave on a Saturday and arrive in the afternoon, spend the day on Sunday and return on Monday. All the way down, every mile you travel you’ve left some of your life on the highway behind you. And the drive back only makes that realization abundantly clear as you leave the peace and serenity of that time in your life that you stayed in Cambria to return to the life you left a few days before in San Jose. We’ve been making the journey to Cambria for the better part of 30 years and each trip we’ve left more of our lives than the last time.

We’re going again in the middle of November. There is no better place to leave a part of you than in Cambria.

Saturday October 30, 2004 – Moments Frozen in Time

Saturday October 30, 2004 – Moments Frozen in Time

I have thousands of pictures that I’m trying to catalog in some sort of meaningful order, but the task is becoming overwhelming. The vast majority of the pictures are prints we’ve taken from the time my wife “I” and I began dating back in the spring of 1965. There are early pictures taken with “I”’s dependable Ricoh, stolen during a burglary a few year after we arrive in California—but that’s another story. They stole the instrument and left the captured moments, which were the far more valuable commodity.

There’s a picture of “I” and her friend O taken in front of an exhibition hall at the 1965 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow Park on Long Island. The exhibitions and crowds long since gone, though you’ve seen the remnants of the fairground pictured in the movie “Men in Black” where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones confront the alien creature as he attempts to climb into one of the 226-ft New York State Towers—the structure is a space ship that will take the alien off the earth with the McGuffin (as Alfred Hitchcock called the object in a movie everyone is after).

The picture is out of focus and difficult to make out the very young faces of those two very pretty young women, but it nevertheless captures that moment with the sun shining brightly and “I” and O dressed in light summer dresses. It had to be late April or early May—my memory of the actual date is vague. In the background you can see the decorated exhibit halls and the throngs of people all moving from one to another. I remember how very carefree and happy we all were. AT&T had a picture phone exhibit in their hall where you could make a call to other sites all over the world where the then giant monopoly had set up centers for callers to show up at appointed times to see and hear their relations calling from the Fair.

All our lives are a sequence of moments some, like the one captured in that photo, more memorable than others. There’s another special photo of “I” and me, It was taken at the Copacabana restaurant and nightclub at 10 E60th in Manhattan by the staff photographer who would have prints for you to purchase before you’d left for the evening. We bought a large 8 by 10 in one of those folders with a frame that held the prized photograph. “I” is looking straight into the camera and smiling more with her eyes than her lips. I’m trying unsuccessfully to appear cool as I sat to the right of the camera and turned slightly to the left. Every time I hear Barry Manilow singing the song of the same name I think of that evening. Enzo Stuarti, an Italian Tenor—popular back then when he enjoyed a brief recording career, was the headliner that evening and his warm-up act was the comedian Rip Taylor.

The picture captures two young people starting their lives, neither aware they would be together this many years later. The fashion, the hairstyles, the room full of people behind them all color a picture of a time and a way of life that existed once but no longer. The Copacabana has long since ceased to be, probably replaced by something completely different, not even the disco of Manilow’s lyrics, though I should check my facts before making so bold a determination.

Then there is the picture of “I” and me at our wedding, two years later. The two people, though still young, are not the same as those pictured at the Copa. “I” had traveled from New York to Scotland to Australia and back again to the U.S. I had gone from New York to Japan and back. In the months of separation we had each become different people and the wedding picture reflected that change.

Fast forward another year and a half and there is a picture of “I” with our baby daughter “M”. From the time she entered the world embraced every living being around her. In the picture this pea-in-a-pod baby barely a few weeks old is looking into her mother’s eyes as if the two of them were in conversation. M remains a social magnet, the sort of person that others feel an immediate familiarity and comfort with.

In another picture our second daughter R, thumb in her mouth, is being held by her mother. Her long straight dark brown hair is held in two ponytails behind both ears; her bangs clipped to give a good view of her forehead and those lovely green eyes—though not obvious in this black and white photo. The occasion was a photo shoot being done by our friend P, a photographer/advertising agency account executive. His client was a large department store and he was convinced M and R would be perfect children's apparel models. All we needed was a portfolio of photographs and to list with the modeling agency that handled much of the model placements in Dallas, where we lived at the time. The photo shoot was far more enjoyable and memorable than the attempt to break into the competitive world of modeling.

Each of these captured images record brief seconds of a past life. The sum of all these photographs are an infinitely small proportion of the total seconds in any of our lives. Nevertheless, collectively they represent a past existance, the ghosts of our younger selves. Remarkably properly cared for, the recordings will have a far greater lifetime than any of the people captured within them. Perhaps, as some believe, the photograph captures a bit of your soul.

Friday October 28, 2004 – Journeys

Friday October 28, 2004 – Journeys

At the beginning of this month, October 1st to be exact, My wife “I” and I embarked on a journey from San Jose to the southland. We left home around 10:00 AM Saturday morning heading south on California Highway 101 toward Gilroy. Thirty years ago, we would have taken 101 all the way to LA. But sometime in the early 1980s, when first our oldest daughter M and then our youngest R started at the University of California Irvine, we discovered Interstate 5, the high-speed, straight-as-an-arrow freeway that runs from the Canadian Border all the way to Mexican border. In the process it slices California in half vertically. I’ve always viewed both 101 and 5 as highways of discovery and new experiences. Every trip south when the girls were at UCI, we witness yet another change in each that represented their continuing journey into adulthood.

Now, a decade and a half later, both are grown with families of their own. M and her clan living in the East Bay 30 of so miles north and east of San Jose, R living the Mediterranean life of Orange County. M and her family and my wife and I are both driving south to celebrate the christening of R’s second baby, a baby boy barely four months old and weighing nearly 20 pounds all amassed on a steady diet of mother’s milk. We call him CB. “I” and I had both M and R baptized catholic but the girls only attended church when we visited my mother and father in Texas, both devote Catholics in their 80s. The church and its wonderful ritual provides them peace at a time in life when you start thinking about the next journey we will all have to embark upon in time.

CB was being baptized Catholic in a lovely church on a hill with a commanding view of the Pacific Ocean. CB’s sister “A” was baptized at this church barely a year earlier. M’s children, our granddaughter E and grandson M, were also baptized in a Catholic church that sat on a hill facing west toward the Pacific Ocean—about 70 or so miles beyond—with a beautiful view of the rolling hills of the East Bay. The Catholic church understands the need for a natural setting that embodies peace and serenity and comes a beauty that inspires a belief in something greater than humanity. CB is about to enter the world as defined by the church: baptism followed by communion, confirmation, marriage, and last rites. I’ve probably not listed them all as I’ve not kept up with the religion.

This is one of many roadmaps of life that each of us can follow. M and R were shown the road—as the three other grand babies have. M and R traveled the road anytime we visited their grandparents who would invite them to attend church. Both daughters took to these visits much as they did our visits to museums, great cities, natural wonders, etc.—experiences that affected them and helped form a view of the world they inhabited. Now the fourth grandchild was being shown the road, though he is far to young to form an impression of it. His reaction to the ritual—as for most of the babies accompanying him—was to cry at being subjected to something he did not find pleasant. Once the water part had past he returned to contentedly sucking his pacifier.

We celebrated the event for the milestone it was: CB becoming a Catholic. Since his dad is Italian it was only natural that we have a big Italian meal, a bottle of wine, and a white christening cake that M and R had a local bakeshop decorate appropriately. It was a white cake. Though M, R, and I are devout chocoholics, it would send the wrong message to have had a chocolate cake, with all its associated sinfulness. (We don’t realize how much religious propriety affects our lives until you notice something so trivial as the color of a cake.) CB was as nonplussed by the party we had for him as he was for his christening, though he did smile more at the party.

“I” and I had gone through this same ritual some 30 years earlier with both M and R. For M the celebration was among the three of us. For R, the event was a far bigger production. Instead of absentee godparents, she had them in the flesh. Instead of a small celebration at home, R had a feast of friends in family with more food than anyone could manage to eat courtesy of devoted grandparents. Now, this many years later, the ritual repeats with the next generation of doting grandparents, parents, and children who are looking down the same road but seeing it for the first time.

Thursday October 27, 2004 – The Rhythm of Life

Thursday October 27, 2004 – The Rhythm of Life

Everyday, the human population all over the world wakes up each morning at roughly the same time—somewhere between 6:00 AM and 8:00 AM and they perform a morning toilet ritual—the less said the better. But imagine that at dawn everyday, the water supply to a city suddenly experiences its greatest demand as toilets are flushed, faucets turned on over sinks, and showers spray water or tub fulls of morning baths are drawn. All these people in first-world countries performing the same chores at the same time as their neighbors. And the process is continuous.

As the earth rotates, the sun hurries toward Asia and the start of a new day at the International Dateline in the Pacific. Japan, Korea, China and others all start to stir in bed and to stretch in an effort to climb out of the restful sleep that has carried them through the night. All of these awakening people begin to stir and to bring life to a city, suburb, or rural community as the Sun chases the last remnants of dark further into the distance. The millions of people drawing on the water supply to a region also flip switches and turn on appliances drawing suddenly and heavily on the regions electrical grid as generators labor to keep up with demand.

As the day moves on, the quiescent land outside the buildings housing these countless numbers of awakening people likewise sees a surge in activity. The weight of innumerable feet impacting concrete and macadam, Tons of metal bodies pressing on millions of rubber tires filling streets that hours before had so little activity as to be eerie. The quiet that had accompanied the night likewise has been noisily driven away with the cacophony of sounds emanating from throngs of people and machines, no single sound distinguishable from the general level of noise except the shrill of horns and sirens.

Once this region has been set in motion, the sun carries on illuminating another region and loosing the same level of bedlam. The process continues until the Sun reaches the Western edge of Europe and the fever pitch of activity in the Far East begins to slow, the collective humanity becoming tired and eager for escape from the mad rush that has driven them throughout the day. All the while the Europeans are now racing madly toward their collective goals many of which are intricately linked with those of Asia. It’s like a remarkable relay race with one region handing off to the next. Electronic transactions moving East to West, the trading of goods and services, money like the electricity and water flowing to facilitate the completion of enormous sums of commerce from a multi-million-barrel oil purchase in Dubai to a Visa card charge for running shoes at Marks & Spencer on Oxford Street in London.

By the time Sol has reached the American continent, the Far Easterners are deep in slumber while the Americans begin to make their demands on the resources of the planet. Water, fuel, human energy and all being drawn upon, but by what? What indeed but civilization itself. Civilization is a machine built of wood, concrete, steel, and every building material mankind’s ingenuity can produce. And this machine is powered by human creativity though it runs on fossil fuels and every available energy source—atomic, solar, wind, and rushing water. Each day that human creativity is consumed—solving problems, overcoming obstacles, finding new activities for human endeavor: think personal computer and World Wide Web.

But creativity is a renewable resource. Each new generation brings forth a new pool of intelligence to carry on the inventive process. And the earth keeps turning as it chases the sun around the universe. I’m reminded of Sisyphus, the Greek who so loved the earth that the Gods punished him with the task of rolling a huge rock to the top of a hill and to watch it roll down whereupon he would repeat the chore for eternity, like the endless cycle of life.

Wednesday October 27, 2004 – Chasing Memories

Wednesday October 27, 2004 – Chasing Memories

My wife “I” has begun exchanging e-mail with childhood friends from Scotland through a UK-based website that helps lost classmates have the equivalent of a reunion on-line, which is pretty much what “I” has been engaged in. Hearing about her e-mail exchanges, I feel like the spouse bought along to a reunion, enjoying the sight of so many adults acting like kids again.

It happens on-line as well. “I” explains to me that she downloaded a picture of one of the alums that was a few years younger. Though she knew the younger girl and saw her clearly in her mind, the picture of the much older woman looking out from the picture was as foreign to “I” as a complete stranger. Memories tend to defy the passage of time, almost become argumentative about it.

“I” explains that in another e-mail exchange a boy also younger than “I” decided to list the names of all the families on the block where they lived in Carmyle—something “I” had planned to do this very evening. Let’s call “I”’s friend “B”. He had been a pal of “I”’s younger brother and described at length in his e-mail funny moments the two young boys shared all those many years ago.

It was a true case of Kismet for “I” and her two renewed acquaintances to reunite. All had found the UK site within a couple of days of one another and each had decided to register and write a bit about themselves in the “description” that the site provided free. To produce a revenue stream, the site charges to allow members to contact one another, seven British Pounds. Needless to say, the site made a few pounds on this lot.

“I”’s two new mates are both living in Canada. “B”’s siblings all decided to leave Scotland, a brother and sister both reside in South Africa, though his 90-odd year old mother is still alive and enjoying her life, not far from the neighborhood. “I” remembered his mother as she gave “I” a pair of warm bed-socks for keeping warm when “I” was leaving for New York City, after leaving school and turning 18.

“I” wondered aloud why none of her classmates still living in Scotland hadn’t taken fingers to keyboard and joined in the nostalgia. I suspect for them the neighborhood is not that far away, probably a place they drive by or walk past ever now and again. The neighborhood, though changed dramatically as one generation has given way to the next, has not changed as noticeable for those who remained behind since it has evolved before their eyes. Unlike ex-patriots such as “I” and her Canadians, who still remember it those many years ago, unchanged, idyllic, innocent, and so very young.

A couple of years ago, a close friend of mine in my teen years, decided to track me down. I was relatively easy to find. My parents still live in the same house we’ve lived in when my friend and I were younger. He lived four or five house up the same street from us on the other side of the road. Instead of calling information and asking for my parents phone number—it’s listed in the phone book, he purchased a compact disk with phone numbers from all over the country.

He found the listing for my folks and called them and chatted them up for a bit. He asked them for my address and phone number and soon enough I received a letter from him, in which he brought me up to date on his life since we parted decades earlier. His life had carried him to Washington where he now lived surrounded by children and grandchildren. He said he would call and we could catch up over the phone.

About a week later I get a call from him and we talked for a while. I caught him up on what had happened in the Texas neighborhood where we both grew up. I had left after he and his family had moved to California and he never had cause to return. He was surprised to learn of the kids we grew up with and what had become of their lives.

After about an hour on the phone we had pretty much covered what we still had in common. The path I took in life differed greatly from his, though I must admit he was a great influence on my younger self. We were now older men with vastly different views of the world and very little in common to share except the past.

I suspect “I” was experiencing many of those same feelings. How transitory is life. For one moment you’re sitting in a fine restaurant eating an incredible meal or you’re experiencing a moment of wonderful bliss listening to a fine piece of music and just as quickly the meal is over, the last bars of music have been played and those precious moments are suddenly part of the past. Life does not permit you the luxury of dwelling at all on any moment though the sad moments seem to last far too long while the happy ones seem so fleeting and elusive.

If there were only a way to record a great meal the way you can bootleg copy a moment of musical magic.

Monday October 25, 2004 Why I Run

Monday October 25, 2004 Why I Run

This morning was the second straight day I resumed my morning run, though in more recent years, it has come to resemble a jog rather than a run. Besides swimming, running is the most demanding enterprise to which you can subject your body. I tried bicycling and you can work up a sweat, but it would take me a great deal more time and distance to do so than running. The act of running has become somewhat of a religious experience for me. To do it well, you must clear your mind completely of thought once you've reached this state of quiescent thought you give your mind over to the repetitiveness of your body and its forward progress, one foot touching the earth, pushing with just the right amount of force to catapult the body forward until the other foot repeats the motion. In a finely tuned athlete the motion appears effortless and the body hardly seems to touch the ground with each foot fall. Watching this runner from the side as he runs along a fence of about his height, you will see the runner's head trace a straight line along the length of the fence. There is no wasted motion propelling the body up, only well-directed energy moving the body forward.

When I start each run, this is my holy grail reaching a state of grace that allows me to achieve this level of perfection. But alas, I am not the image of this graceful being but rather a quasimoto by comparison. I lack the sense of precise timing to achieve the regularity of movement one foot hitting at an interval and at a distance exactly the same as the other. Still I take great pleasure in making the effort. And running has become a form of pleasure for me. The body seems to long for the surge of adrenalin that courses through your physical structure moving blood at the very extremities of your feet and fingers along the superhighway of arteries to that marvelous muscle of the heart. It glories in the sound of feet slapping concrete and macadam with a rhythmic beat hough in my case offbeat.

Physical exertion has become a metaphor of the eternal struggle that we all endure. All of us struggle to get through the day, coping with one crisis after another. It is little wonder that a good number of us choose to hide from the harsh reality of this struggle. When I was growing up I was taught by my family and the world around me that a man has got to do what a man has got to do. For me I have to run. I have to continue to test my ability to do this very essential part of being alive. I like to think of the modern world as the manufactured version of the Serengeti. Like the lush African Savannah, the modern world is teaming with life. Just as on the Serengeti there are predators and prey and you have to know which one you are, sometimes the former, sometimes the latter. The natural instinct to fight or flee has to be well calibrated.

I find the act of running every day engenders in you an instinct for surviving all the day-to-day crises that confront you. Your ability to size up situations as diverse as merging onto the freeway or reading the body language in a business meeting is enhanced as a result of that daily physical exertion. Running nurtures and cultivates those natural instincts that all of us had and used extensively when we were among the wildlife on the Serengeti. Athletes have this sense, which comes from a competitor's need to read the playing field and instinctively adjust to its ever-changing environment. But the sedentary life of sitting in front of computers all day and driving back and forth every where we need to go tends to dull these instincts, to allow them to loose their edge.

What I've learned tells me that I'm at my best when I'm near the edge of what I think I can do. In running, it's pushing myself to beat my time yesterday by a minute and repeating the process the next day. Eventually, I'll reach a limit of what I'm physically capable of doing, but there will come a day when there is a great tail wind, and the stars are all aligned, and my body draws on some inner strength I had no idea it had and I manage to soundly beat my personal best. On those days, I feel as if I could run on without ever stopping. After one of these runs I've experienced a sense of inner bliss that is very similar to being in a state of grace and you get the feeling that anything is possible.

Sunday October 24, 2004 – A Weekend Reminiscence

Sunday October 24, 2004 – A Weekend Reminiscence

Last Friday, during lunch, I decided to do a Yahoo search on the word Carmyle, the name of a suburb of Glasgow, Scotland. My wife “I” was born and raised there and I was curious about its history. The small village lies on the north bank of the River Clyde, 4 miles (7 km) south east of Glasgow's city centre (British spelling). In the 13th Century the Bishops of Glasgow established meal mills nearby and the village developed as a result. In 1761, a muslin factory built in the area caused the village to grow. In 1780, the discovery of ironstone in the area saw the founding of iron smelting works and in 1829 the Clyde Ironworks was the first to use the hot blast process invented by James Neilson.

I sent the description of the town to my wife “I” in an e-mail and she has spent some time this weekend searching exploring the other links that crop up when the search term “Carmyle” is entered into a web search engine. Her first stop was the site of the Carmyle Bowling Club, which contains a list of members who have distinguished themselves in competition. She recognized a number of the names listed. The club claims the land where it now resides and had used for lawn bowling and angling since 1904. It was in 1960 that a proper building with a licensed bar replaced the makeshift shelters and huts used up until then.

She next found a link with a map of the area and I listened as she described how she walked from home to St Joseph’s Catholic School each day. The school was located underneath St Joseph’s Church and the teachers were an assortment of characters that anyone would recognize from a Monte Python skit. The headmistress was a tall imposing woman who had the build and demeanor of an Army Sergeant Major. Each morning she and her classmates would arrive at school and play until the school day began, boys on one side of the school in their area and girls on the other side in theirs. No one was allowed into the school until the day began. And it began with the janitor’s loud whistle.

As soon as the sound rang out, girls and boys would form lines (queues) according to their classes in school. Absolutely no talking was permitted and the headmaster on the boys’ side and the headmistress on the girls’ enforced the rule. When the signal was given all the lines would file into school and into their respectively classrooms. To hear my wife tell the story, the teachers were there to inflict learning and punishment in somewhat equal measure. There were the teachers who were into personal contact and you might expect a slap up side the head for errant behavior or not being in possession of the correct answer. Others meted out punishment with a strap across an outstretched hand. Of course none of this corporal punishment ever got mentioned at home. This is not to imply that the school was a sadistic nightmare, but rather education with an edge.

She discovered another site, which contained some pictures taken of classes that came after her. She recognized some of the young faces in the photo, most smiling at the camera expectantly. The boys were dressed in short pants and shirts, some having sweaters, others without. The girls all wore short sleeve dresses some with sweaters, others without. All of these young faces looking out from the screen are now grown adults decades removed from their younger selves captured for a moment some time in the distant past. Their celluloid image pulled from some drawer or photo album, digitized and posted for access the world over.

“I” ended her Yahoo search on one of those UK-based classmate sites, which happened to have alumni of St Joseph’s school listed. As she read down the list a few names she hadn’t seen in many years flashed out from the screen. Needless to say “I” completed a profile and posted it on the site. In it she recited all the teachers at the school she remembered and the names of a few close classmates.

All in all, it was a pleasant reminiscence for a rainy October weekend.

Saturday October 23, 2004 – 2004 Election & Thrilla in Manila

Saturday October 23, 2004 – 2004 Election & Thrilla in Manila

We’re ten days away from Election 2004 and my wife “I” and I are trying to decide on how we will cast our ballots. We’re each card-carrying independents but “I” likes to tell you how she stands on candidates and issues. I’m a more secretive type that refuses to let on how I will vote on any issue or candidate to the great consternation of my two daughters and to the amusement of “I”, who thinks she knows my political leanings.

My oldest daughter M is a unapologetic liberal—democrat—and my youngest daughter R is a independent minded conservative—Republican. M lives in Northern California, while R lives in Southern California. These two pretty much cancel one another out, though each has earnestly tried to change the other’s mind without much success. "I" and I raised two free thinking, independent minded kids and this is the result.

M thinks I’m becoming a republican. “I” and I benefited from the incumbent president’s lavish tax cut—as did both M and R—thus the belief on the part of M that I’ve been seduced by the dark side. On the other hand, R is convinced I’m a democrat because I’m a Silicon-Valley tech head and all of them are anybody-but-Bush democrats.

The truth of the matter is an independent has a right to move between these to polar extremes depending on his or her perception of the candidates. But this election is producing a dilemma demanding a judgment no less weighty than the one demanded of King Soloman by the two women both claiming the right to the same baby.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, I liken this Election year's battle to the great Thrilla in Manila between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. I’m going to argue that Kerry is the white version of Muhammad Ali and Bush is the equally white version of Joe Frazier.

Ali, the handsome, suave, articulate, graceful man, was the fighter you loved to watch in the ring because of his consummate grace. He was lean and tall and with a complete command of his body and those fast moving hands—an elegant fighting machine that could throw a verbal jab with the same stinging impact as those gloved hands of his.

To watch Kerry is to bring to mind the young Ali: tall and imperial in appearance, standing in front of a crowd arguing his case with a fighter’s passion, taking apart his opponent’s position on issues, questioning his opponent’s motives for waging war in the wrong place against the wrong enemy, challenging his opponent’s ability to rule.

Joe Frazier, the blunt weapon, built to take a punch while waiting to deliver the lethal knockout blow that Ali knew all too well could easily put him on the mat. Frazier was the man who took aim at his opponent and relentlessly pursued him, waiting for the opening to deliver his winning punch. Not flashy, but certainly deadly and with the heart and determination to confront his opponent and battle to the end.

To watch Bush is to see those same elements. Given a field of battle, he will always look for ways to change the contest to gain an advantage. While Ali tried to make Frazier open up and fight a fast punch and block fight, Frazier slowed the tempo, forcing Ali to come in close where the advantage would swing to Frazier. The debates were an example, Kerry won on points—if you were keeping score and in Kerry’s corner. Bush won on showing up, taking the verbal assaults, and making his case to those on his side of the ring.

The great thing about the Thrilla in Manila is that you had seen two of the greatest heavyweights in any era, duel 14 rounds to a finish that left no doubt about the greatness of both. The thing about this election is that only history will determine if the winner is due any measure of greatness.

Politics really sucks.

Thursday October 21, 2004 – Damn Yankee

Thursday October 21, 2004 – Damn Yankee

What a day this has been! The night before the Boston Red Sox defeated a demoralized Yankee machine, ending the curse of the Bambino and giving the Pinstripes the distinction of being the only major league ball team to blow a three to nothing lead in a best-of-seven series and loose the Pennant. In the process they gave their archrivals the honor of being the only major league team to come from a three-nothing deficit to win a pennant. On Mt. Olympus, Zeus and the other gods are having a great laugh at the Yankees' expense. As in life, the gods punish the proud and haughty and for the Yankees the comeuppance was long overdue.

That was last night and the euphoria of the event carried over into today and my sister a transplanted Texan now Boston resident and rabid Red Sox fan screamed long and hard in the final innings of the sixth game in the series. Unfortunately, she chose to visit the family in El Paso right as the Bosox were in the most contested game of the Pennant race. For her, last night was denoucement—a case of a Bostonian ever mindful of her inferiority complex when confronted by the Yankees being on pins and needles thinking that any minute the lead Boston had amassed during the early innings of the game would be lost to the hard charging never-say-die Yankees. But three nights of Boston’s relentless refusal to allow themselves to be defeated had taken its toll on even the greatest of franchises.

I guess New York recognized that Boston was not to be denied again. Boston was the 90 lb weakling finally confronting the bully who didn’t know how to cope with an adversary that refuses to cower. It wasn’t so much a lesson in the virtue of sportsmanship as it was a lesson in life: confronting your adversaries and refusing to back down no matter how desperate your situation appeared. And anyone watching the third game of the series had to have concluded that the Bosox were beyond redemption. Perhaps thats the nature of come-from-behind victories, that you confront your own demise and will yourself, not to die.

What a great experience to have been in Boston when the Red Sox won the Pennant in 2004. I was reclined on a sofa in San Jose watching the drama unfold like the gods on Olympus watching the athletes perform for their pleasure and their favor. Last night thumbs down all around for the Yankees.

Wednesday October 20, 2004 – Following the Current of Life

Wednesday October 20, 2004 – Following the Current of Life

You’ve lived a lifetime following whatever current was carrying you along. When you first slipped into the fast moving stream you hadn’t a clue as to where the current would take you, only that you were anxious to begin the journey. At 17 with few financial options as the 1960s were beginning, you saw a world unfolding around you that was filled with great adventure. Europe was a playground for wealthy Americans as was the Far East, especially Japan rebuilding full throttle just over 20 years after a devastating war. You wanted to see this world, to experience it the way you had read in books, the Europe of Earnest Hemingway, the far east of Joseph Conrad. It didn’t matter which, you just wanted to explore.

When the Navy recruiter offered to provide you four years of college in exchange for a tour of duty that would be over on your 21st birthday, what better bargain could you have struck: a little over three and a half years in exchange for enough tuition to attend most any public university in the country for four years. You weren’t ready for college anyway. You wanted to experience the world before you returned to the abstract world bound within the covers of books, the world of other people’s experience. That’s how the journey began. And all along the way there were divergent tributaries that would carry you in new directions.

The first of these was a test the Navy administered to all new recruits entering the service. Your score determined what direction your tour would take. Score badly and you were destined to scrub decks, work in mess halls, or any of a number of other shit assignments the Navy had to offer. Some score took you into the bowels of a ship as a fireman—the guys who tend the ships engine and drive systems. Another score had you pushing papers in the purser’s office. Your score had you repairing electronic equipment. You had no choice in the matter. The Navy ordered you to attend nearly two years of schools to teach you everything there was to learn about communications equipment and computers.

When you left the service, your resume listed experience repairing gear no one in the civilian world recognized or appreciated, except some recruiters for Bendix Corp. They happen to have the contract to maintain all the tracking stations around the world that would be communicating with the new Apollo Space Craft soon to be orbiting earth but thereafter to begin a journey to the moon. You arrived in Landover, Maryland to being work in Greenbelt—a 30-minute commute from Landover on the Beltway girdling Washington, DC before Apollo 1 killed astronauts Ed White II, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee in a blazing launch pad accident on January 27, 1967. The job lasted a year after which you were anxious to get back to Texas where you could attend the University of Texas at a ridiculously low tuition rate, much lower than anything you could find in Maryland.

A job in Dallas seemed to emerge out of nowhere. Actually you pulled a discarded newspaper from a trash can in the office where you worked and there in the paper was a half page ad for Collins Radio Company. They wanted technical writers to work in Richardson, Texas—just north of Dallas. The interview went well and within two weeks you had an offer.

Collins Radio in Dallas and the University of Texas at Arlington took the better part of the next five years of your life. It was the best time of your life because during that time everything was possible. You still had seemingly unlimited options as you began your undergraduate studies. The great problem was deciding what you wanted to pursue. As you had always done, you let the current take you to a science degree in the exciting world of economics.

In hindsight, the degree was quite inspired for what you would end up doing. Ultimately economics is the motivating factor for all of mankind’s endeavors. It is the force that keeps us from taking up arms and killing one another, though, we manage to do quite a bit that as well. In the aftermath of Viet Nam, which your enlistment in the Navy completely exempted you from participating in, most large-scale conflicts became economic wars between great nations. Japan and Germany first emerging as great economic powers to challenge the dominant economic force of the U.S. The rest of Europe would follows as well as other nations in Asia but that would take time to play out.

When you left UT Arlington with that coveted degree the Navy had promised to pay for and you had earned, life suddenly got serious. You were no longer trying to decide what you were going to do with yourself, you now had to start doing it, whatever “it” was. Furthermore, you had amassed added responsibilities along the way, a wife and two young daughters. They had been waiting for you to begin the working life of a real head of household provider.

At the end of six years in Dallas, it became obvious that there wasn’t much opportunity waiting for you when you left the comfortable confines of the University. It was time to find a place where change was the constant, where there were plenty of fast moving streams to carry you to the next place in your life. Six months out of school and another answered newspaper ad recruiting technical writers for a new company in California found you packing family and belongings and making the journey west into the lush Santa Clara Valley at the southern end of San Francisco Bay.

You arrived in the early 70s just as the personal computer was about to be born. The stream you entered was a river racing to an uncertain future, white water rapids for as far as anyone could see. You had spent all your working life in large institutions, first the Navy, then Bendix, then Collins, and now you were with a start-up, who had just gotten purchased by Xerox, a company with far more money than good sense. You were now being carried along pell mell in a current that would eventually take you to where you are now, 30 years later, still looking for and finding currents to carry you always hopeful of finding one more before the stream runs dry.

Tuesday October 19th 2004 – In Praise of the Trade Show

Tuesday October 19th 2004 – In Praise of the Trade Show

There is nothing quite like a large hall about to be converted into an trade show exhibition. Whether it’s the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas right after New Year or something more esoteric like SuperComm in Atlanta, the process, the people, and the finished product is the same. What differentiates individual events is the packaging. The same layout in Las Vegas or Atlanta is transformed by the signs, the lights, and the elaborate displays participants bring to make themselves stand out.

My first major trade show—where I was hired for my first job in journalism—was the West Coast Computer Faire, which long ago went the way of all great exhibitions that fail to evolve with their crowd. The West Coast Computer Faire crowd was every geek with a pocket protector who in the late 1970s wanted to acquire or build onto a computer he already had. This was a trade show with no pretensions, a table containing some equipment to display or sell, a couple or three geeks that could describe what was on the table inside and out and tell you what it could and couldn’t do. The dress code was grunge casual and anyone in a suit was suspect.

The guy who was interviewing me had on a suit and I was wearing a sports coat, long sleeve sports shirt—it was cold in San Francisco in the fall, and dress pants that contrasted just enough with the jacket. He was an advertising sales person, “TB”, who became quite well off thanks to some shrewd investments in one of the magazines springing up to serve the information starved group inside Brooks Hall—then the only convention center in San Francisco.

He and I were both standing at an economic crossroad. He was smart enough to take the road that was just opening up and accelerating. I was content to ride the one he was leaving. His road led down the path of first the hobby computer, then the home computer, and finally the personal computer. He was following the crowd that had found a tool and were busy using it to do things—write programs to balance checkbooks, store recipes, play games, etc. I was with the crowd that was concentrating on building and making the machine better.

The nature of any trade show is to bring people together and force them to look at the world around them differently. Inside Brooks Hall each of these wide-eyed entrepreneurs saw that they were not the only ones with a computing widget that everyone had to have. In many instances they saw guys with better ideas than theirs. But they also saw others who didn’t have a clue. The exhibitors inside the hall got a chance to see how their prize was actually perceived by someone who was presumably looking for what they had to offer. Since this was seat-of-the-pants capitalism, the vast majority had built stuff that received varying degrees of acceptance. The ones with the most acceptance got to do it again.

I think of a trade show like a brain with hundreds of individual neurons and each encounter in the exhibit hall affects both. Each provides the other a different outlook, a new piece of information. These continuing interactions get assimilated by the participants and each develops a new understanding of the world assembled—in this case—within the confines of Brooks Hall. I didn’t participate in that first conference, but I was hired as an editor for the magazine. “TB” was part of the management team and I had to get his blessing before an offer was made. This was the magazine he would soon leave for greener pastures.

In the conference I attended the following year and for many years thereafter, I came to experience the process of assimilating large amounts of information in a very short period of time. I would have appointments every hour beginning when the show opened and ending when the lights were turned off in the exhibition hall. And once the lights were turned off, the process continued more informally in suites within hotels scattered around the exhibition hall.

When I did manage not to party until midnight, I would try to make sense of the notes I had taken during the day, adding details I remembered during a second reading, finding unanswered questions that I could ask of someone else the following day. I found rummaging around an information dump immensely pleasurable.

A story would eventually emerge from this fire-hose-feed information transfer. The first cut would lack the order that a careful re-evaluation of the story would impose during the editing process. I’ve always found news accounts written by reporters on deadline to have that quality of describing the facts as presented, not as assimilated and refined into an understanding of what this gathering was all about. From a fashion trade show there might emerge a trend not quite understood when propounded by one or two designers, but completely obvious when the entire hall seems to be following it.

The stories that eventually overlooked the inherent instinct in humans to socialize and to emulate one another. We are after all herd animals but little if any written reporting comments on the behavior of the herd as it transforms a large empty hall into a marketplace and then fights to win the hearts and minds of those within the space. Looking down from way above the exhibit hall below the observer sees a mass of two legged wildebeests, resting before galloping off in a new direction.

Sunday October 17th 2004 – Out with the Old In with the New

Sunday October 17th 2004 – Out with the Old In with the New

What do you do on a Sunday if you’re not involved in a religious following? Last Sunday, my wife “I” and I decided to visit Santana Row Shopping Center for breakfast and window-shopping. The Mall extends south from Stevens Creek Boulevard along Winchester to Interstate 280 and from Winchester along Stevens Creek east to Interstate 880. The area within that near perfect square of real estate is largely Santana Row.

We arrived by exiting 280 North at the 880 Interchange and taking the half cloverleaf off-ramp under Stevens Creek Boulevard right where San Carlos Street ceases and the road turns into Stevens Creek. The off-ramp swung us around onto Stevens Creek heading west, through the intersection on the other side of the 880 overpass. A right turn puts you into Valley Fair Shopping Mall but we proceed straight looking for the left turn lane that would take us into Santana Row.

Making the left turn, suddenly we were in a Mediterranean village and probably somewhere in Italy if the architecture could be a guide. We had been transported from the Santa Clara Valley across the North American Continent, the Atlantic Ocean, through the Straits of Gibraltar into the center of the Mediterranean Sea to the boot of Italy. My wife and I suspended belief and imagined we were in that distant peninsula, northeast of Tunisia after parking in a multi-story parking structure.

I had visited that boot-shaped country on a couple of occasions and the problem I was having with the wannabe was the immaculate perfection of the place: no liter, no panhandlers, no street performers, no Vespa motor scooters, no smells of a place that has been lived in for thousands of years. The wannabe place would take some more living before it even appeared as if people populated the place. Now, it had the appearance of a theme park that closed at night reopening the following morning.

In reality it is the chic shopping mall of any major metropolitan center in the world as you pass the 680,000 square feet of boutiques, shops, gourmet stores and restaurants: Anne Fontaine, Anthropologie, BCBG Max Azria, Borders, Bottega Veneta, Burberry, Crate & Barrel, Diesel, Donald Pliner, Eli Thomas, Cole Haan … I could be in South Coast Plaza in Orange County, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, or any of a number of upscale shopping theme shopping malls.

I knew the land on which this mall was built, which previously housed one of the Town & Country Villages that that developer Ron Williams created in the 1960s. The village comprised rows of sprawling one-level Spanish-style buildings of stores and restaurants. One Town & Country Village is still going strong at the junction of Embarcadero Road and El Camino Real in Palo Alto, a bike ride from Stanford University. In 1963 when I was visiting a high school friend while on leave from the U.S. Navy, we hung out at the village on Stevens Creek. It was the Christmas before I was to be discharged from the Navy and he and I drove across Stevens Creek in his Willys Jeep, to the Macy’s in Valley Fair Mall where I purchased a matching earrings and a necklace set for “I” before we were married.

But the Town & Country Village had long since lost its appeal for shoppers drawn to the fully renovated and expanding Valley Fair. It was a no-brainer to sell the land to Federal Realty Investment Trust, which quickly demolished the old village and began construction of the multi-level shopping, living, and office complex. When you walk down the sidewalks of Santana Row—the main street of the mall, you are walking along a canyon of multilevel buildings that form a wall that dams the street on either side, except there is no sign of life on the upper floors—probably because it’s Sunday.

The New Santana Row shopping mall came into being like a house of fire. More accurately, on Tuesday, August 20, 2002, Building 7, under construction and to be the largest of the nine buildings at the site, caught fire and burned to the ground in one of the most spectacular blazes the city has seen in recent history.

The 11-alarm fire on August 19, 2002, at Santana Row construction site and the nearby residential neighborhood was the largest structure fire in the history of San José. It involved more than 200 firefighters from as far away as San Mateo County, and it caused damage estimated at more than $100 million.

In the course of the fire, which began around 3:20 PM and burned through the rush hour, airborne ambers from the fire touched off 15 smaller fires on nearby rooftops and buildings. Hardest hit was the Moorpark Garden Apartment complex south of the fire.

In the aftermath, the city came to the rescue of the developer. Santana Row would be a tax revenue stream for San Jose, which was suffering from the dot.com bust just like the bankrupt dot.coms. Curiously, this city government had backed the development whereas past mayor Tom McEnery—the San Jose Convention Center namesake—opposed it. He believed the mall would draw shoppers and visitors away from downtown, making it more difficult to develop the city center, though the number of multi-level condominiums cropping up in and around the city center would seem to contradict this assertion.

It will be interesting to see forty years from now, if Santana Row has developed a character of its own as well as a reason to be that the poor Town & Country Village lacked. Or maybe the place will be bulldozed down to be replaced by something else, a fate, I suspect will not befall downtown San Jose.

Friday October 15th 2004 – Dinner at Paolo’s

Friday October 15th 2004 – Dinner at Paolo’s

When Willy Brown was da mayor of San Francisco he made the observation that Paolo’s was the one place he cared to dine when visiting the South Bay—those weren’t his words, but I think I got his intent, minus the “The City” snobbery his words must have implied. By South Bay, I mean San Jose, fifty miles south of San Francisco but worlds apart. But Paolo’s you can say is the place that brings the two worlds closer.

My wife and I had dinner there tonight. Our usual waiter, “R” wasn’t there. He was in Iran getting married, to a lovely young woman. He has been about to marry her for at least a year now. “R” is Iranian and quite mysterious as we’ve only come to know about him in snatches of conversation on slow nights at the restaurant. We usually go on a Friday evening just after the crowd dining in advance of the start of a performance at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts is hurrying out before the curtain rises.

“R” is a character that knows how to read people very well. He loves to kid with a couple or four-some at one table while engaging a neighboring table in the fun. He radiates a puckish demeanor that creates just the right amount of tension that he breaks with a funny gesture or remark that elicits a laugh. He’s a physical person that shakes your hand, looks you in the eye, and asks how you’ve been since the last time. He has the flattering charm that makes women feel special when he’s catering to them.

He had been absent for several months a year or so back and we had the impression that he was on some kind of extended sabbatical. One evening we entered the restaurant and there he was charming as usual. “Where have you been,” we ask. “Iran,” he replied. We were surprised knowing that he had once said he could never return. It was a slow evening. We were looking for a half bottle of a wonderful Barolo but the restaurant didn’t have any more in stock. He offered a full bottle of Chianti he thought we’d like and I agreed if he would help us drink it. Since it was a slow night he bought three glasses and in between the one or two other tables he was serving he sipped wine and told us a story of having left Iran with little hope of returning. He still has family there and longed to return. Several months back, he was given some assurances that if he returned he would be welcome. As soon as he arrived he was detained. He was unclear about what happened during his detention but his personal skills that served him well as Paolo’s must have served him well in Iran. He was allowed to return to the U.S. and was free to come and go without further bother. Hence, the current trip to marry and return with his new bride.

Dinner without “R” was enjoyable as usual. The Maitre’d and Sommelier “J” greeted us warmly excused “R” for running off to get married, without any concern for his regular customers and gave us a nice window table. The restaurant in the 1980s was located on East Santa Clara Street at Twelfth Street in downtown San Jose, the heart (city center in Europe) of which Yahoo Map puts at one block north of St James Park on North Second Street. San Jose streets are labeled north when they cross Santa Clara Street. Below the streets are labeled south in this case South Second Street. Similarly, First Street is the demarcation point for labeling streets east and west. Thus Santa Clara Street is west on the left side of First Street Facing north and East on the right side.

In 1991, the restaurant moved to new digs at 333 West San Carlos Street on the San Jose River Park literally a stone's throw from the Guadalupe River. Where we were seated we could see a lighted stairway leading down to the paved bank of the river, which had a nasty habit of flooding regularly every decade or until it was broken of this behavior by the Corp of Engineers just before Paolo’s took up residence. The restaurant is on the ground floor of a multistory high-rise office complex that houses a brokerage firm, a big four or five (with the mergers who knows) accounting firms, and other offices. The building sits right under the flight path for San Jose Airport and you can stand outside the restaurant, near the bridge that crosses the Guadalupe River to the Center for the Performing Arts and watch, American, United, Southwest, and other flights make their final approach into SJC. My wife and I both like watch planes take off and land.

The two of us began visiting the restaurant when it was on East Santa Clara. I first came across the place with my boss, a rotund Italian fellow that reminded me of Jackie Gleason, who happened to have a first name the same as the restaurants. It was a business meal, my boss was a publisher trying to sell advertising space, I was an editor the customer wanted to get to know better, and it went on for hours. I loved the food and the place made me feel like I was welcome to stick around and enjoy myself. Whenever PR flaks asked me where to host an event, I would point them to Paolo’s. There are few real pleasures in life but a meal at Paolo’s is one that is still relatively easy to indulge in. Tonight I had the Osso Buco, a veal shank that was tender enough to cut with a fork and the bone marrow, which I always save for last was to die for. My wife “I” had the Halibut special, “good enough for Jehovah,” she exclaimed. We washed it down with glasses of Chianti and finished it off with a crepe dessert topped with mascarpone cheese drunk on Grappa.

Life is good.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004 Silicon Valley Sunrise

Wednesday, October 13, 2004 Silicon Valley Sunrise

It’s 7:25 Wednesday, October 13, 2004; I’m on Northbound 101. The speedometer on the six-year old 7 Series Bemmer reads 70 and the San Tomas Expressway exit is coming up on my right. The car pool lane on my left and the other two lanes of traffic on my right are all moving at 5-MPH over the limit. It’s a great morning in Silicon Valley. The sun is just about to crest the horizon and you can see its rays beginning to shoot laser-like, bouncing off the high rises on either side of 101 at the Great America Parkway exit just beyond San Tomas. I’m passing Intel’s campus on the northeast side of the San Tomas-101 interchange and as I move under the San Tomas overpass, the sun’s rays are dazzling as they bounce off
· the twin high-rise Tuscan brown office towers—one bearing the name McAfee—in the complex that houses Birk’s Restaurant—once the hangout for the 49ers during training season;
· the twin silver and greenish towers just north and slightly east of McAfee—the one nearest 101 appropriately shouldering the name Sun, the adjacent one sporting WebEx on its top;
· the complex of three or four square and round silvery all-glass lower high rises—once the headquarters of one-time high-flyer S3 Corporation;
· the gleaming tall-enough-to-be-seen-from-101 silver Marian Statue of Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church looking too somber and pious for such a beautiful morning as she stands transfixed looking down on the fertile Santa Clara Valley at her feet on the north side of Great America across from the four towers,
· the windows of the Embassy Suites Hotel on the west side of 101 across from the old S3 complex,
· and the sun’s rays bounce off the back windows and rear view mirrors of every car in the four lanes of freeway in front of me blinding if the reflected rays hit you just right.

The moment passes as quickly as it began—the freeway is not conducive to gazing long and deliberately at a beautiful site. The freeway is like television, a constant flow of changing images flashing by you in the wrap around screen that is your car. It’s a repeat of a program that has been running on this channel for the better part of 25 years, though the setting has changed slightly over time. That many years ago when you first tuned in, the high rises were nowhere to the found. On Great America Parkway, the lone development was the just built high-rise Marriott Hotel. It is east of and now obscured by the taller buildings nearer the freeway. The only other structure of note along this stretch of freeway back then was Our Lady of the Peace Catholic Church. The Catholics have been in California since the beginning of the modern age in the state, after all. The car pool lane wasn’t around back then, when 101 was only three lanes either direction.

Underneath the Great America Parkway overpass, the traffic races toward Lawrence Expressway—the first exit I took on a regular basis when I first arrived in the valley. The sun hanging low on the horizon and with its intense glare is making the commute more difficult as drivers take extra time peering into their rearview mirrors trying to change lanes to get to their exit or get around a slower traffic ahead of them. The overpass hides the sun just long enough to look back and get a good idea of what’s behind and on either side of you.

The interchange at Lawrence Expressway has undergone an extreme makeover in the past decade to accommodate the volume of traffic streaming on and off the two intersecting multi-lane thoroughfares. The only interesting feature of the junction besides the interchange is the large apartment complex on southwest corner of the roads’ intersection. When my family and I first arrive, there was a large sign where the complex now stands that announced the coming of commercial and residential development. It would take nearly 15 years from that time in 1974 for the sign’s message to ring true. On the southeast corner of the roads’ intersection stands the Ramada motel, which has changed hands at least once since we arrived. It was a Holiday Inn back then and we spent a good couple of weeks there before moving into our first home.

Beyond Lawrence the next exit is Fair Oaks, which remarkably has not changed in the past quarter century. Besides an off-ramp to office complexes on either side of the junction, the exit’s other great attraction is the Lion & Compass Restaurant on the north east side of the interchange, a creation of one-time video game kingpin Nolan Bushnell. He probably still owns the place, though you never see him hanging out there any more. At Lunch you still see the older executives of Bushnell’s age, who still have their power lunches in the place. You still see people at different tables waving at one another or coming over to shake a hand promising to call or get in touch. Occasionally, you’ll see TJ Rodgers holding forth at a table full of his guys. You don’t see Regis McKenna there anymore but maybe it’s because I don’t lunch there as often as I use to.

Up another exit on 101 and we’re barreling past the Mathilda Avenue exit which like Fair Oaks has defied the ages and remained the image of its younger self, though the nondescript buildings on either side of the freeway have aged and their style—what little there is—reflects it. After the Mathilda overpass, you pass under the Highway 237 overpass, where motorcycle cops hide behind a column in the median to catch car pool cheats and then you come upon the largest stretch of open space you’re going to see on 101 from the intersection of I-85 some fifteen or so miles south of where I am all the way to San Francisco and beyond: the expansive Moffett Field Naval Air Station, now largely an incredible real estate asset belonging to who knows. Hangar One, the largest remaining dirigible hangars built in 1932 is the one glaring structure in the otherwise open landscape. The concrete runways once busy with the take offs and landings of P3 aircraft, the Navy's first land-based anti-submarine patrol aircraft, now silent except when the President of some other DC dignitary wants to visit the Bay Area without having to go through the public’s airport security.

At the end of the exit ramp immediately after the 237 overpass, a right turn takes you onto Moffett Field, a left takes you down what could arguably be the heart of Silicon Valley, Ellis Street, once the headquarters of Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation: west on Ellis past, on the northwest corner of the 101-Ellis interchange, what was once a pretty decent greasy spoon restaurant—I forget its name, about a block or two more on your right and there it was, an imposing multilevel office structure. This was Fairchild after it had become a real company. Others would argue that the heart of Silicon Valley was Walker's Wagon Wheel, the other greasy spoon/bar where all the founders of the major Silicon Valley companies hung out before really becoming rich and famous. It was located at 282 E. Middlefield Road, just under a mile from the old Fairchild headquarters. I say “was” because the rundown bar and grill had been forgotten by the guys who use to hang out there and the new guys preferred Chili’s or some other chain restaurant to hang out in.

Once past Moffett Field my destination is coming up pretty soon, though the traffic grinds to a halt from a swift moving 50 to 60 MPH down to stop-and-go as three lanes of single-occupancy vehicles crawl toward 101’s junction with I-85, which is now undergoing an extreme makeover—lane changes, freeway overpass being moved, new overpasses under construction, earth moving equipment moving earth, and huge dump trucks inbound toward, or outbound from the construction site. This is what my tax accountant lists as depreciation in my car expense entry. The traffic moves at the limit for the next three exits, Rengstorff, San Antonio, and my exit Embarcadero. I’m leaving the off ramp slowing to a stop before the red light at East Bayshore Road and it’s 7:38 AM. Another couple of minutes and I’m at work, the only car in the parking lot and I stand outside my office door, computer bag on shoulder and look out at the expanding sunrise. You could get lost in it but I have a days work to do for the man.

Tuesday October 12, 2004 Breaking the cycle

Tuesday October 12, 2004 Breaking the cycle

I've been going through some changes lately not of my own choosing but I'm pleased with the result. I had been running on a leg that had been complaining for a couple of days and finally one Thursday morning in early September, I pulled the muscle in my left calf as I was struggling up a hill and the muscle pain became so unbearable and I had to limp home. I had this happen once before about eight years ago when work mates encouraged me to join the annual DammitRun in Los Gatos. It was the same calf muscle.

I was depressed at the thought of being inactive for the time it would take the pulled muscle to heal. I have been running regularly since 1980 and rarely have I not gone for a run every day. Now, I was literally imprisoned because even walking was painful after a couple of minutes of sustained effort. This muscle pull occurred just after the Labor Day weekend and I was moping on Saturday.

My wife "I" suggested I come along shopping at Target with her. I welcomed the chance to leave the house so I tagged along and when we got to the place it was mobbed. As we went up and down aisles we realized that the back-to-school shopping frenzy was in full force. We were about to give up and leave when I spied a row of bicycles and I was suddenly struck by a desire to buy one. I haven't been on a bicycle since I was a teenager--over three decades ago. I found a green 15-speed (sale price $59.95) and was about to wheel my gleaming green prize to the check out when "I" insisted I pick up a helmet, which I did, reluctantly--who needs a stinking helmet?

Running the gauntlet of the checkout lines we completed the purchase and I was set to ride my prize home and let "I" drive back by herself. She would have none of that--"you'd kill yourself on the street and besides both tires need more air." Somehow we managed to squeeze my green beauty into the back seat of the car and drove home.

I pumped up the tires, donned my helmet, promised "I" I would ride the bike trail that begins about a mile from our house and runs along I-87 all the way through San Jose and beyond. You can pick up the trail where Branham crosses over I-87 or where Hillsdale Blvd goes under I-87 (streets in south San Jose near the area of Willow Glen and Almaden Valley.)

The bike trail was deserted--fine by me--where I picked it up at Hillsdale and I-87. North it climbs up over a rise at the base of Communications Hill, the once-bare hill alongside I-87 that houses large dish antennas--hence the name. A group of home builders have begun building high-density multi-family attached condominiums--resembling an Italian hillside village--or detached homes on postage stamp size lots--the ticky tacky song gets stuck in my head when I see them.

With I-87 on my left and the expansion of homes consuming the hill on my right, I peddle furiously thinking I have a clear run to downtown San Jose. No sooner do I crest the hill than I see the trail race pell mell to a stop sign at a T-intersection with a bike lane sign pointing left under I-87. I follow the signs and find the Valley Transit Authority (VTA) light rail station off to my right after I emerge from the underpass. I turn right on Canoas Garden Avenue, which leads me toward Curtner Avenue a wide east-west road that slides under I-87. At Curtner the bike lane tells me to turn right and proceed under I-87 again.

At the other side of the overpass, the bike lane sign directs me left across Curtner where I can see the section of dedicated bike path resume at the start of the on-ramp leading traffic onto the freeway. Back on the bike path again, I start pumping for all I got passing first a lot on my right containing school buses, and then passing lot after lot of industrial storage buildings and equipment behind fences. On my left, the trail hugs the freeway and I can see where the freeway shoulder bed is disintegrating, with drops of nearly a foot or more in some areas.

More lots on my right and finally the bike path once again finds a train station. In this case it's the Alma Street Cal Train station-my first visit to the place. I've been riding for a little over a half and hour and I decide it's time to turn back, but not the way I came. The bike trail is depressing and the scenery blighted--with many great places to be ambushed and beaten or worse.

The bike trail continues right through the train station unobstructed until it ends at Willow Street, just a block or so north of the station. The area east of I-87 to Monterey Highway, a north-south thoroughfare that parallels I-87, is populated with single-family homes built circa 1950s-1960s mixed in with multi-family dwellings built later in some case. The neighborhood is struggling against the signs of dereliction to keep up its appearances. Every street in the area where parking is not prohibited is lined with cars on either side. Garages are for storage.

I turn right on Willow and head toward Monterey Highway for the return trip. It will bring me back to Curtner. A right turn there takes me back to the VTA light rail station where I can pick up the bike trail for the return trip home.

An hour and fifteen minutes later I returned home thigh muscles aching as never before--the pulled calf muscles seemed unaffected by the effort.

The bike ride made me realize that I had been living my life stuck in a routine that I had just broken. Even my body and mind realized the change. Different muscles had been used. A different terrain had been traversed in the course of the outing. New neurons were firing and I was seeing the world around me differently. Sometimes it takes blunt trauma to knock you out of a rut in which you've become stuck.

Monday October 11, 2004 Of Another Time, Of Another Place

Monday October 11, 2004 Of Another Time, Of Another Place

Over the years I’ve known my friend “M” in an number of capacities: first as a copy editor at the magazine where we both worked, then as a writer earning his living explaining the work of his patrons to the outside world, and more recently as an copy editor working on a magazine that I edited for a time. “M” is now a freelance writer working out of Brooklyn, New York. I’m on the opposite coast. We meet once or twice a year when I make it back to New York for a conference or he makes his annual sojourn west to meet with his major client.
“M” more than I was part of a rich publishing tradition that still remains in the legitimate media based in Manhattan: Time Warner and their collection of current affairs magazines, the major newspapers of most any major metropolitan area. We both worked at McGraw Hill when the publishing company had publications serving the high-tech world. The magazine was called Electronics and it was founded in April 1930. O.H. Caldwell was the publications first editor. His first editorial began as follows:
“For this vital pulsing electronic art a clearinghouse is needed—an engineering journal that will gather together these widespread activities; chronicle scientific and industrial advances abroad and here, and provide practical usable information which can be put to work. Such a journal must have scientific vision to look above and beyond the present; it must be courageous and devoted in its stand for progress and for expanding applications,,,”
The publication survived until the late 1980s when McGraw-Hill sold the property to the Dutch Publishing Giant. The Dutch, actually their American surrogate, took the venerable magazine and destroyed its last bit of life. Once the deed had been done the Dutch sold the magazine as well as another publishing company they had acquired a few years earlier to a Cleveland, Ohio-based, rust belt publishing company, where it died in the mid-1990s. Unhappily I was the editor who wrote the last editorial for the magazine, which by that time was a mere shadow of its former self.
“M” served on the copy desk at the magazine under Ms. “M” a Brit who had a very clear view of how the English language should be written and it was her style that made the magazine at its peak immensely readable. However, it was the ruthlessness of the copy desk on the editors in the field that made each piece submitted to the magazine something worth reading. I joined the magazine after both M’s had left but the copy desk still worked in the same deliberate fashion. The editor of the magazine back then was B who bore an uncanny resemblance to William Randolph Hearst.
L, the magazine’s publisher who I had worked for at another magazine, had recruited me. L liked me because I knew how to schmooze as well as bring in a story. The copy desk was then ruled and I use that term deliberately by “B”. When I would submit a story B would read it over once and hit me with a barrage of questions and in the process pointing out inconsistencies in logic, bad use of language, missing information, and I would spend almost as much time fixing these problems as writing the original piece. After I had completed all this work and had begun another assignment, I would get another call from B and the process with the first piece would begin again, not as extensive as the first time but equally tedious and I would get a sting of B’s tongue as he pointed my failings in the use of the language.
After the first devastating experience of having every word I had entered into my computer called into question, I became more disciplined and deliberate about what I wrote. Over time the session grew less lengthy as I would have anticipated much of what B was going to ask, but he got immense pleasure from finding something I had overlooked, nevertheless. It was the best time of my life because it was a place where people were really intense about getting the story right and making it readable. Nothing we every produced was ever good enough but the constant struggle to make it perfect always ensured the final product was better than anything anyone else was putting out.
I recount this story because after putting Electronics out of its misery I was hired by a start-up publication in Silicon Valley. I hired my friend M to move out from Boston—where he was living at the time, to Mountain View, where the magazine was based. My idea was to bring that same publishing ethic to this new publication. I also wanted to try to recapture that wonderful time again, but as the old saying goes, ‘you can’t go home again’ and it’s true. Mountain View was not Manhattan. Our younger staff found M’s style overbearing so the result was a far cry from what I had in mind.
I’m reminded of a poem I use to read to my daughters called “Each and All” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The poet describes coming upon delicate shells at the river’s edge, and bringing them home only to find that “…the poor, unsightly, noisome things had left their beauty on the shore with the sun and the sand the wild uproar…”
Nevertheless, we had a good five-year run and at the end of the millennium the publishing company was sold to a long time rival of the old Electronics for a goodly sum—the VCs got their money out of the venture with a return equivalent to rolling over CDs for the ten year period they invested in the property. The staff was assimilated into the acquiring company with many of the finance and support functions being let go. M and I got new jobs in something called custom publishing. I left after a year but M stayed on moving back to an office the publishing company had in Manhattan. He was let go about a year ago and resumed his freelance writing work.
The reality is that those noble words that began Electronics in the early decades of the 20th Century belong to another era, as does the magazine.

Saturday October 9, 2004 Discharging The Final Duty

Saturday October 9, 2004 Discharging The Final Duty

The sojourn from El Paso, Texas to Syracuse, New York had been made; the second to last duty my father owed to Mr. Charles Upton had been dispatched, though not in the manner Mr. Upton had specified: to be buried in the Upton family plot. In some ways the ending was appropriate for the circumstances of Mr. Upton’s life. He had left Watertown with his mother 50 years before, left behind the Family plot and all the things that tied him to the town and its surroundings. Upon her death 40 of so years ago, his mother had returned to take her place in the family plot. Mr. Upton, however, had chosen to remain in El Paso where he had set down roots and established a life for himself, at the foot of the Franklin Mountains, in a desert land that clings to and is nourished by the Rio Grande River.

No two places could be so completely different: Watertown with its clearly defined four seasons, a lush green land in Spring and Summer; a snow encased land in Winter and a land of natural, changing colors in the Autumn. El Paso with its beautiful desert, insufficient rainfall to support even a small fraction of its million-plus population, its dust storms, and extreme dry heat. It was the latter where Charles Upton chose to live out his life, but it was the former where he chose to be buried. After 50 years, people get to thinking maybe you’re not coming back. But Charles Upton did come back for one very important reason, his plot was paid for and he would be buried with his family. A Robert Frost poem says it best about homecomings: when you’re family, they have to let you in. I have to say, though, my dad and mom had been more family to him than anyone else on earth.

The return trip from New York on Amtrak 48 The Lakeshore Limited was eventful. There was a long delay between Syracuse and Chicago with the train stoped for a couple of hours and everyone on board watching workers scurrying along either side of the train. The train had struck a pedestrian and the delay was to determine how he had come to be on the tracks at the time Amtrak 48 came charging down the tracks. The daylong layover in Chicago was shortened considerably by the delay en route and my dad and mom made their connection and were bound from Chicago through Dallas and onto El Paso.

When my dad and mom returned home, they found something had changed and they realized it was they who were different. They had left the safe confines of their home, journeyed to a place half-way cross the country, paid a debt and returned. Along the way, they had had an adventure. I could hear the change in my father’s voice. For once in some time he had something to tell me about what he and my mother had done that had made them happy. Now, there was the matter of Mr. Upton’s house and belongings and this was a problem 10 times greater than fixing a cemetery mix up.

Mr. Upton was a pack rat who horded nearly everything he ever possessed. He had a 30-year collection of newspapers and magazines that the city inspector had told my father he had to get out of his home because it was a fire hazard. Within the house nearly every inch of open space was cluttered with “things”. And to accommodate the overflow, Mr. Upton had filled the garage in the back of the house to the ceiling with stuff: the things you would find at any weekend garage sale books on every topic imaginable stored in boxes and paper bags; musical instruments, accordions, guitars, keyboards, etc. and more than one of each. To go through the clutter in this collection is to understand the mind of Charles Upton. And there were pictures, prints of great masters, dime store decorative wall hangings, paint-by-number pictures, and some original work by unknown artist who had put their heart into creating the image now stored among Charles Upton’s possessions. These are the physical represents of thoughts, ideas, ambitions that lived within his brain.

Friends and acquaintances of my dad knew that the Upton house was available and one had made an offer to buy the place—my father and mother were the heirs to Mr. Upton estate, consisting of the house and all its belongings. Now, my father had a real problem. Keeping the house, which was free and clear and only required yearly property tax payments to maintain would mean a permanent place to contain Mr. Upton collection—at least as long as my dad was alive. Selling the house meant unloading the collection at a garage sale, probably giving the buyer or buyers an opportunity to find and profit from that one or more valuable pieces of whatever was lost among all the stuff that held only sentimental value to an old man.

Or as my father had gleefully explained to me one day over the phone, he could build a huge storage shed on a piece of property my dad had purchased from Mr. Upton years ago. The property, when it was purchased was on a piece of unincorporated land northeast of the city of El Paso. However, as the city limits had expanded the property was brought within the limits. The land was behind a commercial strip mall on the edge of a residential area. It holds a 1951 Oldsmobile—it had carried my family easily a 100,000 miles, two 1955 Buick, one 1960s Ford Mustang, one 1957 Cadillac, and one 1970s Lincoln Continental. They were all parked in a 2 by 3 array at the back of the property nearest the strip mall. Viewing a picture of the collection, I was reminded of a ghost freeway with two lanes of cars stuck permanently in gridlock traffic. In the middle of the lot was a 9 by 12 cinderblock building with no windows and a single door—it held my dad’s and my half-brother’s stuff.

The lot still had plenty of room and my dad explained he had come across a metal building that would sell for $9,000 for the discounted price of $2,500 plus shipping to El Paso. It was 20 by 30 feet so plenty of room to store all of Mr. Upton’s stuff with room to spare. He had ordered the building and it was on its way to arrive within a week. Everyone close to my dad had lobbied for the garage sale and a proper burial of Mr. Upton and his legacy on earth. His collection would go on absorbed by others with the same acquisitive inclination they shared with him.

As you might have guessed by the car collection on the lot to house the shed, my father is afflicted with the same acquisitive inclination as Mr. Upton. And in his heart, the possessions—all of them—are the only tangible proof—at least to my dad—that Charles Upton walked the earth and shared his life with my dad and mom. My father counted Charles Upton as the older brother he never had. By God, he was going to hold onto what he had left of him. The project, not yet complete, will involve a cement foundation of the dimensions of the metal building, with anchoring hardware precisely set into the cement. Once dry, the building’s walls and floor will be bolted onto the concrete foundation. And all the worldly possession of Charles Upton will be stored for at least the foreseeable future.

Once the building is complete and filled, my father’s last duty to Charles Upton will be discharged and my father will be free to live his life without concerning himself about the welfare of his departed friend.

Friday October 8, 2004 Journey to Watertown

Friday October 8, 2004 Journey to Watertown

When we left my dad yesterday, he was being compelled to right a wrong done to his lifelong friend Charles Upton, now deceased. Mr. Upton lay in a grave in a cemetery near Watertown, New York but his grave is one of two bearing his name. The one above his grave shows his dates of birth and death. The one a short distance away within the Upton family plot, shows his name and date of birth but no date of death. Righting this wrong done to his departed friend is one of two duties my father feels obligated to perform. And he performs this one with a sense of involvement and earnest desire to undo a wrong.

The first obstacle to solving the problem is getting from El Paso, Texas to Watertown, New York. They could drive, take a Greyhound bus, or take the Amtrak train. For as long as I can remember my father has journeyed all over this country in cars. I barely remember my first journey with him. He had come to take my grandmother and me back to El Paso from Biloxi, Mississippi. My grandma was in need of medical attention and being a dependent of my father, she was entitled to all the health care service the U.S. Army had to offer. As you might have guessed my dad was in the Army, a sergeant, back in Spring 1953—he was a slightly more senior sergeant when he retired in 1965, over twenty years since he enlisted at the start of World War II.

However, the car was out of the question. It would take some time to get the 70 something Lincoln Continental in good enough shape to make the trip. His other option a full-size 1970s Ford van with a modified V-8 lifted from a junkyard Ford van fitted to a transmission salvaged from another Ford probably from a different junkyard. This he favored for pulling the Land Yacht Airstream trailer, vintage circa 1960. I’ve traveled with my dad when he was pulling this trailer and it was a journey to remember. Like a one-man pit crew of a race car that barely made it into the pits, each night he’d pull out his tool box and go to work on either the van or the trailer. Now pushing hard into his 80s, with a fully healed hip replacement, and a healing knee replacement—don’t get me started on this, he was in no condition to drive, even if he rented a new car from Hertz.

As for the second option, he and my mom had traveled from El Paso to the outskirts of Washington, DC on a Greyhound bus before and he knew what to expect. He just didn’t like being cooped up for that many hours on a bus. The only option left was Amtrak. The train is an appropriate analogy for this journey, an elderly couple traveling across America on a train that the country was fast forgetting on a quest to right a wrong done to one of their own by a world that has become indifferent to the elderly and the dead.

My sister made the reservations and purchased the tickets to and from Syracuse. From Syracuse, my dad planned to rent a car and drive over to Watertown. That plan got changed when our youngest sister, who lives in the suburbs of Boston got wind of these plans and decided she would take charge. Instead of having Dad and Mom rent a car, she would meet the two of them in Syracuse and do the driving while they were in New York. That was the new plan.

Like all sojourns, my father’s trip to Watertown to attend to the details of Mr. Upton’s burial had more than one purpose. My father needed to find himself now that Mr. Upton was no longer around to fix my father to a common well-defined purpose. The trip was also meant to scratch an itch that my father had since, first Mr. Upton’s illness, then later my mother’s illness had firmly tied him to El Paso on a very short leash. He was biting at the bit to leave, to see something of the country he once crisscrossed nearly every three years—the typical length of a tour of duty at any one base in the Army.

The trip began On Monday June 7th Amtrak Pullman class, from Union Station in El Paso, Texas to Syracuse. New York. Four days outbound, four days return, with four days of sleuthing in cemeteryville accompanied by some sightseeing along the St Lawrence River. My mother and father had a reservation for the 4:00 PM train from El Paso. The train finally left at 10:00 PM that evening. My sister, the oldest of three younger than me explained that the late departure was the rule rather than the exception. The tracks that Amtrak runs on are owned by Southern Pacific and the railroad giant always gives preference to freight trains using the tracks over Amtrak passenger trains. This leg of the journey was to take them to Chicago where they changed trains and proceeded on to Syracuse.

The following day I called my Dad on the cell phone he’d acquired for the trip and found them on a bus heading for Dallas from San Antonio, a movie blaring in the background. The bus had entertainment to occupy the passengers’ time en route. The train had engine trouble and a bus bridge was used to ferry passengers on to their next connection. The next call later on Tuesday June 8th found my Dad and Mom on a train out of Dallas en route to Chicago. I learned that my Dad had gone to the men’s room as their train began boarding and he had not heard the announcement. He asked an Amtrak agent when the train would be boarding only to learn that the train was about to pull away from the station. The next thing my dad and mom are on a cart being rushed to their cabin on the train, neither of them capable of running nor of walking at a fast pace.

My call on Wednesday found my Mom and Dad nearing Chicago. I caught them just as they were pulling into the station. After a short uneventful layover in Chicago they boarded their connection and left for Syracuse, pretty much on their original schedule—all the delays notwithstanding. Upon disembarking Amtrak, my youngest sister met the two weary travelers and took them to a lovely bed and breakfast she had reserved for their stay in the area. It was a drive to get to Watertown from the B&B but my sister was driving.

When he arrived at the cemetery, my Dad saw his old friend laid to rest in the new plot bought to contain the old man after he had been unknowingly evicted from his family plot. My father recognized that he and his old friend were being screwed. The cemetery should have been obligated to compensate Mr. Upton by giving him another plot when the one his family had paid for nearly 100 years ago was taken away. And my dad knew that the cost of the additional headstone should also have been borne by the cemetery. However, my father felt as though it was more important to take care of the problems without the conflicts that a small claims court suit would entail. You could say he turned the other cheek, something my dad has done a lot of in his life, though I’ve known him to occasionally be the one striking a cheek—no one is perfect. The only other detail that remained to be taken care of was rectifying the missing date of death on the headstone within the Upton family plot. It would cost, of course, for someone to come and add the date to the stone. My father’s reply was that he would pay the cost. And, looking upon the stone, long unattended and in need of a cleaning, he asked them to clean the stone as well. With payment tendered, the cemetery assured my father that the jobs would be taken care of and that the cemetery would take pictures of the completed work and mail it to my dad. With the transaction complete, this second duty was finally discharged and my father felt a burden lifted from his shoulder.

Tomorrow the final burden.

Thursday October 7, 2004 The Last Days of Mr. Upton

Thursday October 7, 2004 The Last Days of Mr. Upton

Today, I want to tell you about my Dad and his friend Mr. Upton. I’m using Mr. Upton’s real name because he died recently nearing 100 years of age and with him his family line expired. There is a Thomas Hardy poem that laments this finality so well but it is beyond my recollection.

Mr. Upton was at least 10 years my father’s senior. He and his mother came into our lives when I was still an adolescent. His mother was infirmed and the two rented a house near ours in El Paso, Texas. My mother and father became close with Mr. Upton and his mother and in time, my parents began to share the load of caring for Mr. Upton’s aging mother, who became progressively more bedridden over time. Finally, she became too much for the three of them to handle, what with their jobs and us four kids to care for.

Mr. Upton reluctantly decided to put his mother into what today we call “assisted living” center. Back then it was called an “old folks home.” In a matter of months Mrs. Upton passed away, but the friendship between Mr. Upton and my parents continued. He became a regular guest at dinner on Sunday and the practice continued for as long as I can remember. My mother loved anyone who would sit at her table and eat their fill of her cooking, her version of Filipino and U.S. Deep South fusion. It was her way of showing love. Mr. Upton never left anything on his plate.

In his later years, Mr. Upton became increasingly withdrawn and housebound. This was quite a contrast to the man we remembered in earlier life who exercised daily and delighted in walking long distances. Old age had begun to catch up to him and at some point he retired to his home a few blocks from ours in El Paso and seldom came out on his own. My father would visit him regularly becoming the caregiver to the aging older man. When he turned 80 my father began to offload some duties of caring for Mr. Upton onto a Mexican maid named Eva, a bubbly, rotund middle-aged woman, who threw herself into domestic service.

My dad had reduced his duties to ensuring Mr. Upton had everything he needed—food, bills paid, medicine stocked and administered at the correct time each day, the house in good repair, etc. Eva was the one who manhandled Mr. Upton, shaving him every day, helping him clean himself, keeping his house clean and his laundry taken care of.

The toll of taking care of Mr. Upton began to show on my father over the past few years, though he never shirked his duty. He did begin to lament that he was bound to the old man and the burden of his duty was getting heavier and harder to bear. The older man must have realized the tough state the two of them were in. He had given up on this world and was anxious to get on to the next. He asked my dad one day, “Mac, why is death taking so long? I just wish I could go to sleep and get it over with.” My dad looked at his friend and said, “Mr. Upton we have to wait for nature to take its course.”

It wasn’t long after that Mr. Upton passed away. The day was like any other that my father recounted to me concerning the old man. Mom had prepared Mr. Upton his breakfast—grits and eggs, which my Dad had taken up and fed the small amount the old man was willing to take. Toward evening Eva had gone to the house to spend the night. Eva has a home in Juarez but likes to stay over on the El Paso side of the Rio Grande during the week to cut down the commuting. Having her stay in Mr. Upton’s spare bedroom was convenient for Eva and my dad who always wanted someone at Mr. Upton place overnight in case he had an emergency.

Dad had asked him what he wanted for dinner earlier and Mr. Upton had immediately answered “a bologna sandwich.” That evening dad brought the older man his bologna sandwich and he took a small amount before declaring he was tired and wanted to sleep. By the time my dad had returned home, Eva called to say Mr. Upton had stopped breathing. Dad called the ambulance and when they arrived, the old man had gotten his wish. He had died if not in his sleep, in his bed. The body lay in wait for a doctor to arrive and sign a death certificate.

From there Mr. Upton was taken to the funeral home where he had already made arrangements for his final rest. The arrangements were as follows. Mr. Upton’s family had a burial plot in Watertown, New York—just outside of Syracuse. He had a place in that plot that was paid for a hundred years ago. Everyone in his family was buried there and he wanted to join them in death. The El Paso funeral home was to prepare Mr. Upton’s body for travel and he would fly one-way in his coffin to Syracuse and from there by hearse to the cemetery containing his family plot for burial.

The first problem came when my dad checked in at the funeral home in El Paso to make sure Mr. Upton’s body was being taken care of according to his wishes. The body wasn’t. It was not in the coffin Mr. Upton had bought and paid for but in another coffin. His model, the funeral home owner declared was no longer being made and he had to be placed in another model. The coffin wasn’t much different from any of the others in the home but my dad admitted he was not up on the differences in coffins and they could easily and probably had stiffed Mr. Upton.

The El Paso funeral home’s job was to get Mr. Upton on a plane bound for Syracuse. At the other end my dad had made arrangements with a local funeral home to take possession of Mr. Upton’s body and ensure it was buried in the family plot. Once the body arrived in Watertown, another problem quickly arose, something the New York funeral home was unaware of or was reluctant to discuss with my father in their earlier conversations.

The family plot where Mr. Upton was to be buried was full. Some time years back a road had been run through the cemetery and it had cut into some of the Upton plot and the area that was set aside for Mr. Upton was now the imminent domain of whoever put in the road. You’ll have to purchase another plot the funeral home declares. Unwilling to argue across the distance my father reluctantly agrees to purchase another plot in the cemetery so that Mr. Upton could at last be laid to rest.

Besides the plot, did my father also want a headstone? Of course, he couldn’t allow his friend’s grave to go unmarked. Now, my father had yet another problem. It seems that the Uptons had decided to have one large headstone for the entire family in their plot. And the names of everyone in the family would be listed with their date of birth and when each passed away, the date of death would be added.

You guessed. There on the headstone as plain as day was Mr. Upton name and his date of birth all waiting for a date of death to be added. Not only did Mr. Upton name appear on two headstones, on one he was shown as still alive. This could not stand, my father concluded. He would have to journey to Watertown, find someone to add the date of death to Mr. Upton family headstone. And he would have to verify that the new head stone he had ordered for Mr. Upton new plot was correct and the old man was resting peacefully in his new home.

My Dad’s sojourn to Watertown, tomorrow and Mr. Upton’s legacy the day after.

Wednesday October 6, 2004 Memories

Wednesday October 6, 2004 Memories

Our house has an excess of computers, an early Macintosh Power Book in the attic before PowerPC. In the den-office, a G4 Macintosh deskside computer with 17-in LCD display. In another bedroom, two PCs, one that I’m typing on is an IBM ThinkPad 2000 vintage running Windows 98. On a dresser in the same bedroom is a Power Machintosh G3 late 1990s Vintage, a desktop machine with 17-in. Optiquest CRT display, both purchased at Fry’s.

The G3 has the information store for all my early work from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. The ThinkPad takes over where the G3 left off. And the G4 has all the files from both machines in addition to a large collection of JPEGs taken with a Nikon CoolPix 880, a brick of a camera that takes great pictures as well as below average video sans sound. I have taken hours of motion video with the Nikon not to mention 100s if not 1000s of JPEGs, mostly of grandkids, models that do not make demands and will pose at the drop of a hat without requiring anything in return. In addition, I also have a Palm Pilot in the dresser drawer that hasn’t been used in a couple of years.

My wife wants me to get rid of some of these unneeded computers and I’m tempted but I’m reluctant because the computers have become an extension of my brain. I can go onto the G3 and find a name of a person I interviewed 20 years ago complete with the transcript of the interview. I recorded lots of conversations and transcribed a great many. I have a learning disability to wit, I retain very little detail unless I write everything down or key it into a word doc. I see forest but have a hell of a time picking out individual trees.

In this massive collection of information I’ve acquired over time—I clip news stories from NY Times, and AP, Reuters, UPI and other news services not to mention newspapers and magazines worldwide—is my memories. I also have boxes of Reporter Notebooks squirreled away in desk drawers, suitcases, and boxes from my years as a journalist. Most ot the entries are mundane facts about the companies and individuals I covered, an interview with two guys in their office building somewhere close to Santa Cruz. The two guys have since become captains of industry having sold their interest in that company and started others or invested in others. There on the pages of the notebook are recorded what we talked about during that meeting. And the detail captured is so much greater than my memory can conjure up. I remember their young faces and a gesture that registered with me looking back in my mind’s eye. In a sense, the contents of the PCs’ hard drives, and on boxes of floppies, Iomega disks, recorded compact disks and other optical media, and written in the pages of all my notebooks is the recorded history of everything I’ve done since 1979. I have my notebooks from college and some short stories and journals from before that time. But my professional career is contained in all these diverse media.

The notebooks and the PCs are also a repository of my attempts at creative writing as well as a recording of the mundane things one does on any given day. I found one notebook recently with entries dated Feb. 8th, 1979. It contains a list of items to purchase for our new house along with the prices I had estimated or priced for each item: mailbox, water softener, garage door opener, furniture for the bedrooms, sprinklers for a soon to be installed lawn—there is a price for enough sod to cover the front and back yard.

The notebook also contains the scrawl of my oldest daughter then 11 years old and my youngest daughter, then 8 years old. The book also contains a whimsical poem I wrote to my youngest daughter on her 8th birthday. Looking at these entries, I can almost remember what was going on in our lives that many years ago.

The Palm Pilot contains my first attempt to put entries in the calender of the handheld device for all the great moments in my life. I began with the simple things, birthdays, baptisms, marriages, other events of our family life. But then I started adding dates like the death and obit of someone I found memorable. I recorded events like the resignation of Richard Nixon, the start of the first Gulf War, and other major events that I found noteworthy enough to be recorded. It was also a way for me to quickly determine when something happened. I started pushing the envelope of the Palm however and quickly determined that its calender would only go back so far in time. I transferred everything over to the ThinkPad and put the Palm in my dresser drawer.

I will probably get rid of the computers that are no longer being used. But before I do I will transfer all the data from the disk drives in each to whatever new computer we have at the time. I will then remove the disk drives and either bury or destroy them. I don’t want to give my memories to anyone else. They can have the computer but they’ll have to get their own memories.

Monday October 4, 2004 Orange County Trek

Monday October 4, 2004 Orange County Trek

Last Friday, we made the 400-plus-mile journey from Northern California to Orange County. It was a beautiful day for driving, a cool sub-70-degree morning with no fog, an open highway in the southbound direction we were headed along 101 for the 30-odd miles before heading west on Highway 152 over Pacheco Pass to the Central Valley where we picked up Interstate 5—that four-lane, straight-as-an-arrow 80-plus mile-an-hour road that slices California in half from San Diego all the way to the Oregon Border. It continues on to Canada once it leaves California, but that was another trip some twenty odd years ago.

If there were time, 101 all the way to LA and into Orange County would have been a prettier drive. The road runs from one farming community to the next in between the major metropolitan areas along the way: Santa Barbara and the suburban sprawl that clings to the freeway south into LA. All along its length 101 plays hide and seek with the beautiful Pacific. It is a drive that you really don’t want to rush. There is too much to see and take in. You get a taste of the farming communities along the length of the freeway as you drive through Morgan Hill and Gilroy, but the best parts are further south.

Unfortunately, we have places to go and things to do. So we opt for the fast track, Interstate 5. The run from 101 to I-5 is along Highway 152, which has its own pretty sights to recommend it. It starts as a two-lane road thought Gilroy passing one farm after another. The road winds through this hilly farm country with a vineyard on your left, a dairy farm on your right, other fruit and vegetable farms strewn along the road. How do these poor folks get to and from Gilroy. Highway 152 is a constant stream of traffic—cars, SUVs, and minivans, not to mention big 18-wheelers. On a weekend the line of traffic can go for long stretches without a break.

Highway 152 eventually does open up to a four-lane road. This happens at its junction with Highway 165. Once this junction is reached, we pick up speed going from around 45 to 50 miles an hour to over 70. We pass Casa de Fruta, then begin our ascent over Pacheco Pass—one of the deadliest stretches of road in California until they installed waist-high concrete dividers to prevent the head-on collisions that seemed to happen on a regular bases on the pass. When you crest the pass following long sweeping curves you begin your descent into the Central Valley. Along the way you pass an enormous man-made reservoir, San Luis Dam Complex, that has over the years steadily been drained of its water. It once had an enormous body of water all held back by a huge earthen dam. The water level once up close to the roadway is well below these days. Once beyond the dam, which looms large in your rear-view mirror as you head east, you race toward Interstate 5.

Once southbound you get into a steady high-speed run passing slower trucks and cars sometimes in the left lane, sometimes in the right. After about 30 miles we typically stop at the Apricot Tree a small restaurant on the western side of the highway for breakfast. We typically get there between 10:30 and 11:00. We make it at 10:45 this trip. Breakfast and a fill-up and we’re on our way once more. From this point on, the land on either side of the highway is flat for as far as the eye can see. There are farms that seem to stretch for miles. Twenty or so miles south of the Apricot Tree, is Harris Ranch another stop along the road for food, fuel and rest. Forty miles more and you pass Highway 41, another food, fuel, and rest area—it features an In-And-Out Burger that is always mobbed. Highway 41 is the first east-west road that will take you west to the coast. There are only a few,

The next major east-west road is Highway 46 which runs west to Paso Robles on the coast. From 46, Highway 5 runs toward the Grapevine, the last barrier that keeps the Central Valley from intruding on Southern California. Once over the Grapevine, you’re in the suburbs of Los Angeles. By this time it’s close to 2:00 and we’re getting a bit tired of being cooped up inside a fast moving car. Another hour and we hit LA traffic right before the rush hour. We leave Interstate 5 and merge onto the 405—down here, freeways are referred to with the definite article. The 405 moves fast until you reach the 101 where it slows as you begin a climb just after the Sherman Oaks Shopping complex. We’re in the car pool lane and move swiftly past four lanes of slow and go traffic. As we pass the Getty Center off to the right of the 405, the car pool lane eventually plays and out we’re stuck with everyone else moving at that slow and go pace past the junction with Interstate 10 and past LAX. Just beyond the airport, the car pool lane picks up again and we’re moving at the limit.

Driving south to Long Beach the entire freeway moves but just after Long Beach the regular lanes drop in speed with the car pool lane still moving at close to the limit. We pass the 710 then the 605 and suddenly we’re in Orange County: Fullerton, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, John Wayne Airport, Irvine, and finally the 405 rejoins the 5 at the Y and what looks like eight lanes of traffic—I’m usually to preoccupied to count—moves at a slow-and-go pace, car pool lane included, which eventually plays out a mile or two after the Y. Our destination in Mission Viejo and some Marriott Hotel off the 405. We make it just after 4:00 and pulling into a motel parking lot never felt so good.