Flights

In about thirty minutes Lola will be here to take me to the airport. I'm flying Southwest and do not anticipate paying $15 to check my one bag. American Airlines, as you may know, is now charging $15 for your first bag, $25 for your second bag, and these charges carry with them no promise of greater care in the handling of your bag(s). In fact, they carry no promises at all.

Gas prices, that's the reason. A congressional panel is now meeting to question the CEOs of the five biggest oil companies, and their questions are quite accusatory in nature. One questioner asked one CEO how much he makes per year, and the CEO answered, "I don't know." I leave that for you to ponder.

I don't like it. But I also don't like the idea that anyone who makes a lot of money is evil. Another ponderable.

But I'm writing to mention another kind of flight, the flight of all birds from my yard except crows. I mentioned it before, but it wasn't quite official back then. It is now, and I have taken down the wreath and thrown it away. A sad day. Maybe next year my finches will come back. We'll see.

No doubt I'm writing this blog to help the time pass quickly. I'm anxious, don't usually take evening flights, the day has seemed long. I've never "cruised" before, nor has Alyce. It's hard to wait, and yet this seems a courageous thing for me to do--take a cruise. You can ponder that one, too, if you want.

North to Alaska

On a Holland America cruise ship, the Amsterdam, to be specific. Leaving tomorrow night on an airplane for Seattle. Alyce and I will meet up there, stay the night, board next day, or, I should say, embark next day. Wanting all my family to take good care of themselves while I'm gone. Hoping all will be well at my house. Hoping some of you Boise Schiesses will drive by and check on it now and then. Knowing that when I get home, I won't lock myself in the garage the next day. (Besides, I have a hidden key.) Hoping this cruise will be a good rest for Alyce. And fun for us both.

And Yet Again

I told Tommy that rug does not belong on the back lawn and to take it back into the garage. Now! He just looked at me, and I had seen looks like that before.

“Don’t give me that look,” I said. “Get that rug and take it back to the garage.” He turned and slunk away.

Tommy was, at that time, Richard’s new friend, Border Collie/Chesapeake Bay Retriever mix. A beautiful chocolate brown dog of some nine months who spent each day alone in my garage and back yard while he waited for Richard to come home and who had not yet outgrown his need to chew up things, regardless of how many chew toys and rawhide strips Richard provided. My rugs—yes, they’re old and in the garage, except for the one on the deck which had to be thrown away, but they are still mine and not his—pillow parts (Richard’s but still mine), whatever he could get at and apparently nothing poisonous or volatile because he survived. These were his chew things of choice.

Actually, I liked the dog and thought he was a good one. He had some beauty, barked only rarely, did not whine, knew what it meant when he was told to go to bed and did it, only dug a few, maybe twelve, holes in my back yard, and loved Richard. Richard, who was here and lonely for his wife. No. A dog cannot take the place of wife and family, but this dog was a friend and loyally so even after only two weeks. It felt like love, I’m pretty sure.

Something Else About Love

So, the woman who just came into this waiting lounge and yelled at her husband, would we say that her love tank is empty? She embarrassed him and the rest of us, too. Not sure if she embarrassed herself. She accused him of not caring because he was sitting in the lounge instead of being out looking for her.

“Sitting there reading a contract,” she said, as if that were a crime. “There are millions of people here,” she said. “I could get lost.” Then, after a short pause, “What’s our first rule?” I could not hear his answer, but she said, “No,” quite disgusted. And then she explained, as if he were a five-year-old, that their first rule was to not get separated.

Why hadn’t he been looking for her? That’s what she wanted to know, and yet I suspect she knew all along he would not look for her, and I suspect they both knew all along she wouldn’t get lost. It’s only the downstairs waiting area of the Salt Lake airport, after all. I suppose what she wanted was just something from him, some small effort, to show he loves her. That’s not so much to ask. I wonder what he felt, what he hoped for. Perhaps a quiet moment there without her. Or he might hope he could have a quiet moment with her there beside him. They are a sad pair, neither knowing what to do.

I am no marriage counselor, but I can say some things with surety now that I have so much to look back at. So I ask, What makes better sense than to love your husband? your wife? Give without worry over what you get. It requires some maturity, and it requires unselfishness, qualities most of us can find within ourselves. Yes, we can.

Mid-Night Adventure

I locked myself out of my own house last night, actually 1:30 a.m., a first for me. I had brought a pair of slacks down to wash and opened the back door to see that all was as it should be in the garage. Everything looked fine, so I turned the lock as I stood there. But there was a smell I couldn’t identify, so I stepped into the garage and let the door close behind me. Great.

The house key in my car did me no good—that’s right, the car was locked, car keys just inside the back door. No cell phone; it was in the house. No spare key hidden in the garage (there is now, you’d better believe). No lights on in any neighbor’s house. I was stuck.

Yes, I could call Lola, but I'd have to wake a neighbor to use a phone. At 2 a.m.? I didn’t want to. Didn’t want to bother anyone. Didn’t want anyone to know what a stupid thing I had done.

Five hours before I could hope for anyone in the neighborhood to be up, and I was already cold. I had to get resourceful. I put the slacks on over my pj bottoms and tried the door again. Still locked. Funny.

Maybe something in the garage could unlock the thing. After trying a tiny screw driver, tiny saw blade, paper clip, nail, and what I will call brute force, and having no success at getting in my house, I began to look for anything I could use to keep warm through the night. Found a pillow that smelled of petroleum, but hey, an old Mexican blanket with the same smell, and a tarp, and planned for a hard night by the back door—between the fridge and the garbage can. I spread the tarp on the mat and then thought there must be a sleeping bag on one of those garage shelves Wayne had built, so I climbed on the old wooden stool that had belonged to Grandpa Schiess, pulled down a black plastic bag, and found my own sleeping bag in it. I lay down—note the correct use of the verb.

As I struggled to find some comfort, I thought of things. 1. Have a key in the garage for such emergencies. Okay, I would take care of that in the morning. 2. Maybe the ladder would be tall enough to reach my upstairs deck and I could climb up and go through my bedroom door. I got up, carried the ladder to the deck (and it's dark and cold outside, you know). Ladder way too short. Back to the garage, and thank goodness I didn't lock that door, too. 3. Try to sleep. 4. What about when I need to use the “facilities” of which I have none in the garage? 5. Try harder to sleep.

I can’t say I was entirely comfortable, but eventually I was tired enough that I did sleep a little.

When I woke I checked the sprinkler control clock, 5:47. I checked the neighborhood, no lights on. At 6:20 I saw Clarks had their lights on. I walked down, knocked on their door, rang their bell. No one came. I turned to go back home and saw the kitchen light in Shuells’s house. I headed there, scaring Pam Shuell only slightly. I used their phone to call Lola. She might still have a key to my house. She made a search but found no key. (6. Make sure my kids have a key.) I told her about my ladder idea and thought maybe Bryan could negotiate the climb up and onto the upper deck. But Mr Shuell heard me, said he had a tall ladder, came over, did the job, let me in, and here I am to write the happy ending.

For a while this whole thing made me feel very old and very stupid. But when my neighbor told me he had locked himself out many times and what he does now because of it—always leaves a certain door unlocked because his kids have lost all the spare and hidden keys—and when I remember everything I tried to do and then look at the little bed I made for myself, I realize I may be old but not too old to think, and I’m not stupid. This was an accident. We all have them.

A New Family in the Neighborhood

Crows are nesting in the Hessings’s cedar tree, which hangs way over into my front yard. I did not invite them and, frankly, do not want them here. They are predators. Okay, fine. They can’t help what they are. But because they are here, my finches are not. My finches, my house finches, who have nested in my Christmas wreath every spring since 1992, are not coming this year.

I love those little birds, the male with his orange head and throat. They build their nest together and take turns sitting on the eggs. I could stand in my laundry room and watch the whole thing, from selecting the nest site to the flying exit of the last baby. Last year all four eggs hatched, and how those babies squawked for food. I watched them learn to fly, even the runt. Then off they went, and I took down the wreath and washed the wall again. Some years I had two finch families. Too bad. That’s history.

And that’s not all. I have no robins in my yard, no quail, no sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, doves, junkoes, not even a magpie. And the goldfinches have deserted their feeder. It's the crows. I should be happy about this? I can’t. Also, I can’t do anything to change it. It’s against the law to kill the crows. I couldn’t kill them anyway, but I like to tell them I could. And I did think of calling my tree guy to come over and remove their nest. That’s against the law, too.

“Corvus brachyrhynchos
“The loud and frequent 'caw-caw' of this good-sized bird with shiny black plumage is quite familiar in southern Canada. Their return in late winter means, to many people, the advent of spring. [Southern Canada. Sounds like a good place for them.]
“The American Crow, in spite of its reputation as a predator, is useful to humans because it consumes large quantities of pestful insects. [We shall see. Is pestful a word?]
“The crow nests in trees where four to six eggs are laid after the breeding season. Immatures and adults often assemble in large flocks on their way to the southern wintering grounds. Many birds remain year-round in several parts of the country.” [Great.]

Charles Atlas, Vic Tanny, and Muscle Beach

In the late 1940s you could see an ad strip in comic books and newspapers about a 97-pound weakling at the beach with his girlfriend who was humiliated by some muscly bully kicking sand in his face. But the weakling was no dummy. He sent for the Charles Atlas body building plan and soon went back to the beach a muscled guy himself and beat up the sand-kicking bully, who for some reason was still there in the same place. Then, because of his muscles, the former weakling could get his girlfriend back—and any other girl he wanted.

I'm not sure I ever believed the ads, but I loved the look of the muscled body, and I liked the justice of the whole thing.

Charles Atlas was a real person, and I remember those advertisement pictures of him holding the world on his shoulder. He was a body builder who didn’t use weights but his own system, Dynamic Tension. In 1921 and 1922 he won the title of the World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man, which is what he called himself ever after. The contest that gave him the title wasn’t held after 1922 because its promoters knew there was no one else in America who could ever win the title away from Charles Atlas.

Charles Atlas had no gym. His was a mail-order business. But Vic Tanny had a gym on 4th Street just down from the Hitching Post theater in the town where I grew up, Santa Monica. In those days Santa Monica was small, and I don’t remember it being populated by the kind of ignorant stupid people Jay Leno finds there and then displays on his Jaywalking episodes. These folks know nothing and are proud of it. But that is another story.

I went to the Hitching Post theater—Saturday matinee for a dime—but I never went inside the Vic Tanny gym. (My brothers may have, I’m not sure.) What went on there remained a mystery to me. I think it was one of those upstairs places—step in from 4th Street and take the stairs to the second floor. My parents would never have allowed me to go. I may have asked. Besides, in the late 1940s women were pretty much excluded from body building gyms except as spectators, and few at that. And in the late 1940s I was no woman, only a small girl who clearly did not belong in a men’s gym.

But I have learned that it was Vic Tanny who changed the workout gym from a dark and smelly place to one of light, color, and even carpet, and he hoped his gyms would attract not men only but everyone. Eventually, they did, and he had 80 some Vic Tanny gyms throughout the country. Joe Gold was a frequenter of Vic Tanny’s Santa Monica, and we know what he learned there.

Muscle Beach? Yes, in those days it was in Santa Monica, not Venice, just south of the Santa Monica Pier. It was a place of interest for me, and when I could get someone to take me there I loved to watch the gymnastics and body building that went on. Those muscly, oiled bodies looked good, if a bit unreal. Nothing like any boy I ever knew. But Muscle Beach was not a place where I could hang out, even in my teen years.

Today a Gold’s Gym is within walking distance of my home in Boise, Idaho. It has lots of light and lots of women working out, as well as men. But I don’t go to Gold's. I drive on down the road to Curves to do my work outs. There’s not much atmosphere, not much excitement, nothing very fun going on at Curves. But I go, for the health of it.