Its For the Birds

I like to think of myself as a bird lover.

Not the kind that travels the country for bird –watching expeditions or one of those who keeps a life list of birds spotted and then brags about it to his friends. No, I’m more of a living room bird lover, the kind who likes to look out the living room window and then remark, “Hey, there’s a chickadee.” Not that chickadees are the only birds I can identify, but they are one of the four or five that I know about who live in my neighborhood. Because of my love of birds, over the years I’ve tried to help the little creatures that flit about my yard. My first attempt beginning several years ago was to help provide housing for the little winged dustballs.

 Over the years, I have invested a small bundle in birdhouses that I have built or bought and then mounted around the yard, defacing several trees in the process. So far, I have had exactly zero birds take up residence in my birdhouses. What I generally find is that the winged midgets live in houses of their own construction instead of my spacious and attractive proffered lodgings. My two-story, 12-room purple martin house is a case in point. I erected the apartment dwelling in 2010, but only one family of mud swallows inspected the place, sniffed, (imperiously, it seemed to me) and then left. Since then, a few other birds have stopped by, but none has stayed more than a week. I think that the business of selling birdhouses is a vast rightwing conspiracy foisted on us bird lovers by handcrafters at flea markets and craft shows. Since lodging birds hasn’t worked out very well, I have adopted other means of supporting them.

 I’m a bird feeder. I like feeding birds, probably because they remind me of my own habits. I get a kick out of watching the greedy little devils buzz around my feeders and devour my seeds like there is no tomorrow. Feeding the birds after the feeders have been empty for a day or so is a special treat. The fuzzy little chatterboxes just can’t wait for me to fill their larder. I can put out seeds anytime during the day and have half-dozen birds dive-bombing me before I put away the ladder. Those that wait ‘till I am finished generally sit on a nearby branch and scold me for being late with the food. After the feeders are full, it’s a hoot watching them chase each other away and then squawk or chirp proudly as they strut around the four feeders before they to gorge on my largess. But, bird feeding has also caused a number of problems. Beyond the mere cost of feeders, seeds, oranges, sugar and suet, I have had problems in keeping birds happy. In fact, it has been a long struggle between me, the birds, and several other critters that take pleasure in foiling my attempts to be a responsible birder.

 The critters that have caused the biggest problems are our local bears. Those beggars are determined to eat my seeds and, in the process, wreck my feeders. They generally wreak havoc early in the spring. Their springtime marauding happens when the lazy old bears wake up from a long winter’s nap only to learn that the rest of the world (that supplies their food) is not yet fully awake. Then, they turn to my feeders. I have also had bear problems later in the year when the mama drives away her youngster so she can receive the affections of the nearest male. The youngsters are often not skilled at finding food but they seem to find my feeders like a dog after a bitch in heat.

 I wouldn’t mind if the wooly bruins just ate the seeds, but no, they have to bend the steel pole holding the feeders, tear the tube feeders from their hooks then break everything else to get at the seeds. More than once, the black devils have carried away the feeders entirely, never to be found again. My poor, starving birds have to wait for me to find time in my busy retirement schedule to trek to the hardware store for replacement parts and then re-build the feeding platform and re-hang a new set of feeders. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

 Bears aren’t the only culprits. We seem to have our share of hungry raccoons also. Early one morning, I found four of the mangy furballs, all sitting in my platform feeder happily munching away. It is incredible how much they can eat in one night. I learned just how much the hard way when I left a 50 pound bag of sunflower seeds in the back of the pick-up truck that was parked outside. Some wily raccoon sniffed out my mistake, spread the word to all his friends in the neighborhood, and consumed a large share of the bag in one night.

 Smaller crittters also attack my bird food. I have a plentiful supply of red squirrels, fox squirrels and chipmucks who regularly attend the feeders. Of course, I discourage their direct attacks with the use of an inverted can mounted on the pole that supports the feeders. That helps a little. The birds don’t help though, as they shovel off seeds to the ground where the assorted buggers with tails gather for the bounty and laugh at the dog’s feeble attempts to chase them into submission.

 I put out a variety of food for birds; sunflower seeds, nyger, suet, safflower and of course, oranges and sugar water for orioles and hummers. The suet is a mistake since it attracts woodpeckers. The woodpeckers go from my suet to the logs on my house or the boards on my barn to peck away for their desert. My barn has several long rows of holes made by peckers who were searching for bugs on my board and batten. So far, the logs on my house are still intact as I keep alert for the telltale rat tat tat that identifies a pecker who wants attention or a bug meal. My favorite pecker is the Pileated, the bird who seems to be almost as big as I am. I am sort of glad that he is shy and doesn’t like seeds or feeding stations.

I’d like to tell you more about me and my local bird population, but I can see from my perch at the computer that the feeders are empty again so it’s time to ignite the feeding orgy. “By the way, there’s another of those screwy upside-down birds that looks like a chickadee hanging around.”

 

Grandpa Bill

Pickles, Peaches, and Tomatoes?

 

 

W

e have been in sort of a pickle here in Roscommon. It all started with the unusually warm weather this spring and summer. It was so warm that the Mrs. got hot under the collar when the temperature soared above 80°F early in the spring. Not knowing what else to do, I called the furnace man who suggested installation of an air conditioner. Although I nearly choked at the cost, I agreed and an air-conditioner soon graced our backyard. Things around home cooled after that and we had a durn nice summer even with the hot weather. I spent a good portion of my summer standing in the back yard with a hose in hand, watering the tomatoes and beans while the air conditioner hummed and the electric meter whirred. The consequences of all that heat and all that watering is that come fall, I was up to my patuttie in beans and tomatoes.

 

I decided to pickle the overflow crop of green beans. I treated them with vinegar, salt, garlic and dill to make what the cookbook calls pickles, but I would call pickled beans. Anyway, after I had produced several quarts of pickled beans and eaten so many that my mouth was beginning to curl in a permanent sort of sneer, it came to me that I needed to do something with all those quart cans full of pickled beans. The Mrs. said I should can them. (Canning: [kan’ing], n, an antiquated practice of putting food in cans for preservation. A practice unknown to most civilized men ). I soon learned that canning involved a number of skills that were completely foreign to me: washing, sterilizing, steaming and re-packing jars to avoid air bubbles. The final foolishness was spending an hour or more watching a giant bucket of water boiling so my poor beans could simmer in the vinegar solution and the rubber seal would consent to set tightly on the Ball jars. It was just ridiculous.

 

All that vinegar wafting around the house must have stirred some primeval activity in the Mrs.; she decided she would make and can pickled beets. The odor of the house had just returned to normal after my pickling and canning operation when, true to her word, she came home with a basket of beets and a big bottle of vinegar. Soon, the house again filled with that pungent smell of vinegar as she blanched, boiled, steamed and sealed several jars filled with little red balls that she said were baby beats.

 

But she didn’t stop there. After the beets, it was pickles. This time, it was ‘honest-to-God pickles made from cucumbers. I asked the grocer if he could deliver vinegar directly to our house. Upon my questioning, the Mrs. said she was making bread and butter pickles, although I didn’t see either bread or butter in any of the finished jars. While she was busy pickling, I watered the garden.

 

Just about then, my tomatoes got red. I picked ‘em and we ate as many as we could, but not nearly enough to deplete the harvest. I began to worry that all that red juice in my system might affect my plumbing inappropriately. All I could think about was what if I had to have an emergency physical exam that required me to pee in a cup. If I peed red, no doubt I’d be off to the emergency room with some doctor who knew nothing about ripe tomatoes ready to carve me up. The solution: can some tomatoes instead of eating them all. I filled the big bucket with water and began the interminable wait as the water heated slowly on the stove. I avoided any sort of pickling.

 

The preposterous thing about all this pickling and canning was that it delayed our normal fall practice of harvesting fruit for wine. As soon as we finished with the vinegarizing, pickling, canning and so forth, we began our search for fruit for wine. We soon discovered the full extent of our summer’s weather-induced calamity. Sadly, we found that this year (at least in Michigan), there isn’t any fruit. The cherries and apples froze in the spring, and the berries failed due to the heat and dry summer. We had staked out several wild elderberry bushes for fall picking to make elderberry wine, but there were no elderberries. Other searches yielded no wild grapes, no raspberries, and no currants, nothing. Our fondest hopes for a bountiful 2012 wine season melted like ice cream in front of a six year old.

 

So, our summer was all pickles and no wine. I am reflecting on this terrible sequence of events as I indulge in a large glass of our 2011 peach wine. 2011 was a good year for peaches so we have a supply of a flavorful wine. Next year, instead of drinking wine, I guess I’ll be eating pickles and peeing red.

 

Grandpa Bill

 

 

A Week-End Getaway... at MacDonald's?

We received an invitation for a wedding in Chicago for the daughter of friends. The invitation said the wedding and reception was at the Hyatt Lodge in Oak Brook, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. We decided to attend. I was somewhat reluctant since I’ve never attended a wedding that I enjoyed because I always felt sorry for the groom, but this one turned out to be completely different; it was a treat. The ceremony and reception were outstanding and the venue was exceedingly pleasant. Did I mention that the affair was held at MacDonald’s?
As I understand it, Ray Kroc, the brains behind MacDonald’s restaurants, promoted his first grill -man, Fred Turner, to General Manager. Apparently, Fred turned out to be the real deal and the pair earned billions, enough to convince them to build a fancy headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois near Kroc’s home. But, they weren’t satisfied. They went on to build a training facility, Hamburger University, and of course, that demanded a campus, a hotel for students, pathways to and from the hotel, gardens, etc. They sort of super-sized things.

Today’s campus hosts Frank Lloyd Wright –inspired buildings on 88 acres of rolling terrain that features gardens, forests, and lakes all held together by trails and paved pathways that invites visitors to sample the pleasant surroundings. Somewhere along the line, MacDonald’s leased the hotel to Hyatt and it became a commercial travel lodge. Of course, customers of the hotel can roam the MacDonald’s campus at will and enjoy the luxurious gardens and the lake, Lake Fred, that fronts the hotel. Lake Fred is an example of a gardener with an unlimited budget. It is ringed with huge limestone rocks, thousands of plants, and a pathway that leads to an island featuring a small Japanese garden. Of course, the lake includes numerous fountains with lights for nighttime illumination everywhere along its scenic spots. Kroc and Turner spared no expense in building their campus.
The interior of the lodge is equally luxurious. See their web page (http://thelodge.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels-thelodge) if you want to see photos of the rooms and public spaces in the building. Keep in mind that Kroc’s students were mostly franchisers or managers who owned one or many MacDonald’s restaurants, hence Kroc wanted to wine and dine them while ensuring their adherence to his strict standards in running the restaurants. The lodge and the campus is a great place for a wedding.
The wedding was held in one of the spacious public rooms of the lodge. The bride was beautiful and the groom was dashing, although I suspect he was a probably in a dazed state most of the time, surrounded as he was by so many females giving orders that he had to follow. Anyway, he made it through the ceremony with only a single mistake in forgetting that he was the husband during his recital of the vows.
The wedding included a ceremony where the groom and bride each poured a small amount of colored sand into a larger container. This was said to be an ancient Indian practice that seaIed a marriage. I can’t tell you any more about it because I didn’t understand it although I suppose it hinted at some sort of union. I am guessing that the groom and the most of the men in attendance failed to grasp the deep significance of the ceremony and I trust that the unfortunate breaking of the glass holding the sand will have no significance to the longevity of the marriage.
The bride and groom showed extremely good sense in sparing the attendees the tiresome and silly practices commonly encountered at most weddings. First, we were spared the long wait as pictures were taken before the ceremony so that we thirsty party-goers could rush from the wedding directly to the bar without interference. The bar was well-stocked, the bartenders congenial, and the hors d’oeuvres were delightfully served in the garden amidst the red and orange Begonias and Impatiens while the ornamental grass dipped in the warm breeze from Lake Fred. Even the guitar player had the good sense to strum tunes that were recognizable and appropriate.
When dinner was called, the bride and groom entered with the usual fanfare. They proceeded to cut their wedding cake while we were still interested and then settled down for dinner without the annoying fawning and kissing that can spoil a good meal. The toasts were short enough to be listenable, and we had an excellent dinner that was not interrupted with garters being flung about or foolish introductions of grandmothers deemed healthy enough to get dressed and have a few snorts with the younger crowd. Even the dancing after dinner was passable as those who were able and sufficiently clear-headed bounced around to music that some must have understood. I enjoyed their foolishness.
The entire affair was a delight. You should’a been there.

Betty Hoober is Gone

Dear Friends:

Betty Hoober is gone. Even though I know she is gone and will never be back, when I drive by, sometimes I wave to her vacant house. When she lived there, it was required to wave to her house whether she was visibly in residence or not. If, Lord forbid, you happened to forget to wave and she was in her customary seat by the porch window, you would soon hear about it from Betty.

Betty was a Roscommon character. She was our neighbor for several years and her leaving was sudden even though we knew it was overdue. She lived in the bright yellow house just down the road from us and she stopped by on occasion to chat. Chatting with her neighbors was her hobby. If you wanted to know anything about anyone in the neighborhood, Betty was the one to ask. Some might call it gossip. They would probably be correct although it was Betty’s entertainment so it was hard to fault her since she was an older woman with nothing much else to do.

Betty was a friendly sort; open and congenial and she expected the same from you. After meeting her, most people would learn her life story. She wasn’t shy about asking personal questions either, although, truth be told, she was more interested in telling about herself. Betty was also one to speak her mind. If you didn’t stop for a visit often enough, she was sure to tell you about it.

In addition to chatting with the neighbors, her hobby seemed to be looking out her porch window to keep track of the cars that invaded our neighborhood. Whenever a car went by that she didn’t recognize, you could expect her to come calling shortly with the inevitable question, “Did you see that brown car that went by this afternoon?” If there were ever any criminals in our neighborhood, they wouldn’t stand a chance with Betty on the job. She would know their car, where they went, where they came from, and, given an afternoon, their names and any dirt about them that happened to be known in the county.

Betty came from the south and adopted Roscommon as her home. Her story was like that of thousands: after the war, with jobs aplenty and salaries rising, lots of folks from the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee came north to work in the automobile plants. Betty and Lester were among them. Betty worked and raised one child, Dean. Although the family lived in Detroit longer than Kentucky, their legacy never left them. Betty had a pronounced accent and a manner of speaking that belied her birthplace. She was definitely a ‘down-home’ sort with a focus on the fundamentals of living and little time or interest in modern technology, world events or the complexities of modern life. With Betty, it was more about children, loving, getting along, and the price of milk.

After Lester retired, he and Betty moved to Roscommon and set up housekeeping in the modest yellow house along our road. Lester enjoyed his retirement for a few years and then died suddenly. Betty liked Roscommon and decided to stay on even though she had no family in the area and her only son, Dean, seemed content to visit by telephone. Betty’s only overnight visitor was her grandson that she called Little Dean. We could tell when he made an occasional visit by the leftovers in Betty’s yard. Over the years Little Dean left a boat, a shed, a trailer and a few other odds and ends that he couldn’t find room for in his own yard downstate.

Betty seemed happy for most of the years that we knew her. She talked about her loss of Lester but never complained of loneliness, apparently content to watch over our neighborhood, talk with the neighbors and take care of the business of daily living. Betty’s appearance seemed to fit the North Woods. She had grizzled gray hair, a girth that seemed equal to her height and an absence of teeth unless she was on one of her visiting forays around the neighborhood. She didn’t seem particularly upset if you caught her without her teeth, mostly she grinned and said she wasn’t fully dressed. She wore a coat or a sweater most of the time and complained about the snow in winter although she didn’t let it stop her from climbing in her Pontiac for a neighborhood tour.

Betty talked a lot about her health and last year she complained about feeling tired. It was a surprise some weeks later when she announced that she had visited a doctor and he said she was suffering from leukemia. After several visits, he told her that she had no more than 18 months to live. Betty decided she didn’t like her doctor so she managed to get a referral to another. After several weeks, she reported that the new doctor said she didn’t have leukemia at all. She had something else, she said, but she wasn’t clear about what it was, only that she had to take periodic blood transfusions. She said when it was her time to go, she would be ready and that was that.

Some months after Betty began seeing the new doctor, she collapsed at home and was taken to the hospital. I went to visit her and found her as feisty as ever. She didn’t seem to know what had caused her collapse, didn’t care, and was as anxious to leave the hospital as they seemed to be in discharging her. Her son Dean called while we visited and asked if she still had the big TV at her house.

After the hospitalization, Betty seemed to have lost some of her spark. Her visits became fewer and her conversation was marked by repetition and forgetfulness. Soon, Betty’s car was missing. She told me that ’they’ took her license and someone in the neighborhood must have turned her in. I suspect she was up to her old tricks of trying to find out who the culprit was. Shortly thereafter, I saw her car parked in her driveway and Little Dean was at her house. When Little Dean left, the car disappeared.

Over that winter, it became apparent that Betty needed help. Each time I visited, she said she had just talked to her son Dean and he was worried about her. I had never met the man and had never seen him at her house. During my visits, I asked Betty if she needed anything from the store since she no longer had a car. Other neighbors also helped by purchasing things for her. Several of us compared notes and observed that Betty was losing weight and becoming more confused.

Suddenly, a “For Sale” sign appeared in her yard. I asked her what was happening and she said she was going to move and Dean was helping arrange things. Some weeks later a moving van showed up in her driveway. I stopped and finally met Dean. I thought I was seeing double; he had a large waist, gray hair and no teeth and he talked with a noticeable accent. He explained that he was moving Betty to Colorado. He said he had always liked it there. He was uncertain about where they would live since they hadn’t made any arrangements about that. “There are plenty of places to rent,” his wife said. Betty smiled a toothless grin. Dean looked at her and smiled. I smiled and said goodbye to Betty.

Some weeks later, I learned from a neighbor that Betty had called. Betty reported that she and Dean had a disagreement on the way to Colorado and Dean dumped her (her words) at a nursing home and then continued on his way with her big TV. A few weeks later, about the time the bank took possession of Betty's yellow house, I learned that Betty passed away at the nursing home. I hope Dean enjoyed the big TV.

August 2012

August is camping month for us. Through hard-won experience, we have finally learned that by August, many of the nasty biting creatures have departed making camping more bearable. The awful sand fleas that crawl up your pant legs and leave red welts as a parting gift, the tiny black flies that are said to have driven normal men insane, and finally, the bane of the North Woods, mosquitoes, have generally departed leaving us in blessed peace for a month or more before the start of cold weather. Accordingly, we camp in August. We just finished a short camping trip of four days with our granddaughters. This was a vehicle-based camping trip in our 5th wheel. We camped at Rodgers City along Lake Huron at Hoeft State Park, named after wealthy lumberman Paul Hoeft . The heavily wooded park has a one-mile long beach that watches over the sun as it rises from Canada to Michigan, illuminating heavy stands of Moose Maple and Hemlock trees nestled among the more common birch and spruce. The granddaughters had a blast digging in the sand at the beach. Grandpa and Grandma got hernias chasing after them as they ran to the beach each day. The best-known feature of Rogers City is its calcite operation. Calcite, the chemical name for calcium carbonate, is the primary constituent of limestone. Limestone is quarried at Rogers City at the largest calcite operation in the world. The limestone is shipped around the country from Rogers City, primarily by Great Lakes freighters that regularly load at the deep-water port at the quarry. Rogers City celebrates its heritage and economic mainstay with a weeklong Nautical Festival held each August. We scheduled our camping trip to enjoy the festival. The granddaughters watched the nautical-themed parade, chased after candy from the fire trucks in the parade, watched an air show and spent one late night at a sensational fireworks display. They also ate oversized hamburgers, burnt marshmallows, S’mores, and hobo pies that we roasted over the campfire. Did I mention that the Mrs. and I enjoyed all those things, also? The only difference between us and them is that she and I gained weight from our excesses while the little ones seemed to need food all the time. Maybe the excitement at the parade, the beach, the playground, the fireworks and the campfire used up all the calories they consumed. It isn’t fair. Our next camping trip in August will be a little harder as we visit the backwoods without a vehicle or electricity at our beck and call. We will be making our customary once per year trip to the Canadian forests and waters east of Lake Superior. We plan to spend a week in the backcountry using a canoe as the means of transport. I’ll let you know how we fare and whether we have been able to lose the Rogers City calories and hernias.

Why Me, Lord

Why Me, Lord? T

his year I have been spending a lot of time planting things and pulling weeds. Not of my own choice, you understand, it is because bad things seem to happen to me and I get hopelessly entangled in improbable projects through no fault of my own. I try to mind my own business and then, suddenly, here I am pulling weeds and planting flowers in the hot sun and asking, why me, Lord? The story of my weed pulling and planting may be instructional and so I am telling it here in hopes that others may avoid the same fate as me. I must warn you; the account may not be suitable for everyone since it involves an affair with another woman and an, as yet, unexplained night-time escape from Roscommon by a pair of upstanding church members. The story began about the time Marjorie and I moved to Roscommon and joined the local Methodist Church. On our first visit to the church we were greeted by a woman with a pleasant smile who engaged us in chit-chat before services began. Although she seemed pleasant enough, I assumed she had been stationed at the entrance of the church specifically to way-lay unsuspecting visitors like us with the intent of collaring us for some nefarious purpose like bell-ringing in front of a Wal-Mart or caroling at a nursing home for Christmas. To my complete surprise, she didn’t ask for anything. Instead, we had a short visit in the narthex after which we entered the main part of the church for services. I forgot all about her until the next time we visited the church and, once again, there was the pleasant gray-haired lady with the nice smile. She remembered our names and again we had a brief, but pleasant exchange about the weather only this time she suggested that we meet for coffee after church. We did, and Marjorie and I both enjoyed her congenial manner once again. During the after-church visit, I happened to mention my plan for taking up gardening in Roscommon. I may have even inadvertently led her to believe that I possessed some extraordinary gardening skills. I don’t rightly remember the details, but anyway, she chanced to mention that she had been asked to form a group who would be planning a church garden and wouldn’t it be a blessing if a man of my obvious talents would consent to offer a few opinions on the subject? The gray-haired lady with the pleasant smile who remembered my name said all of the foregoing with such obvious enthusiasm that, on the spot, I agreed to attend the organizing meeting and provide my advice. At this point in the telling, I need to interrupt my account to explain the facts of the garden that I subsequently learned later. Much later, in fact, and too late to be of any value in helping prevent my current predicament. As near as I can tell, the idea for the church garden began as an after-thought from a fund-raiser. Someone had the bright idea that they could raise funds for the church by selling bricks for $100 a pop if the bricks were inscribed with the name of a loved one. Fittingly, the bricks were called memorial bricks and most who purchased the $100 bricks asked that they be inscribed “In memory of John Doe” or something similar. The fund-raiser had already been completed when I joined the church and the funds already spent. What remained was an unlikely pile of bricks neatly stacked in the narthex with each brick having a name on it. After the bricks had remained on the floor for several months, some genius in the congregation conceived the notion that the church ought to use the bricks in some manner so why not have a Memorial Garden and use the Memorial Bricks in the garden? The question then became who would be foolish enough to take on the task of creating a garden and ‘planting’ the Memorial Bricks? Everyone in church knew the gray-haired woman with her ever-pleasant smile and her reputation as an effective volunteer for worthwhile projects. Maybe she could be convinced to take on the task, the Pastor reasoned. It turned out that she was too smart even for a seasoned veteran like the Pastor who had seen his share of fund-raisers and botched projects like church gardens. When the wily old preacher approached the gray-haired lady she said of course, she would be happy to help BY GETTING A COMMITTEE TOGETHER WHO WOULD TAKE ON THE ACTUAL TASK. Such was the situation when I happened to drink coffee with the gray-haired lady and agreed to attend the first meeting. She began the meeting of the Memorial Garden Committee with a little speech about the need for a leader who could take on the job of developing a garden. Most of us in the meeting used the next several minutes to study our fingernails. After an awkward silence, one man and wife team announced that the two of them would volunteer to become co-chairs of the effort. In short order, the wife took over the meeting and outlined a plan for removing sod from the designated area as a first step in creating a garden. The husband nodded his head and announced his plan to build a pergola in the cleared area. Things seemed to be progressing nicely until the pair asked for workers to implement the plan and, once again, a deadly silence prevailed over the meeting. I decided to study my fingernails again. After inspecting them carefully, I looked up to survey the committee members and from the corner of my eye I saw the gray-haired lady’s ever-present smile begin to fade. I surprised myself. “Aw shucks,” I said, “I’ll be happy to help get things started.” Her smile returned. So I helped in removing the sod. Later, I took on additional gardening tasks when I realized that, except for the couple who led the project, most of the other gardeners were either codgers so old they could barely pick up a shovel or goldbrickers with more excuses than a seventh-grade truant. Nevertheless, during the first year of operation the garden was laid out, the pergola was built and flowers were planted. Then a catastrophe struck. The co-leaders of the garden suddenly decided to leave the church – they sold their home and moved away, almost in the middle of the night, it seemed. Suddenly, it seemed to me that I was the only active worker on the committee and if we were to have a garden at all I would need to take charge. So I did. Fast forward several years. The garden has become a beautiful, quiet corner of the church as result of lots of work and help from several folks. Although I frequently grumble about the work and ask, why me, I admire the colorful perennials and the climbing vines over the pergola. I laid the paving stones under the pergola so that visitors could sit on the benches in the shade of the vines and gaze at the names of those who have gone before. Sometimes, when I work among the flowers and the shrubs and the trees and the Memorial Bricks under the pergola, I look at the stone I laid in memory of the gray-haired lady with the ever-present smile, and I imagine she is still smiling.

Meeting Dr. Boneright

Yesterday, Marjorie and I were sitting on the deck in the warm afternoon sun enjoying an adult beverage when Woody the Woodpecker landed on one of our aspen trees at the edge of our woods. (Woody’s real name is Pileated Woodpecker but he took his more famous name when Hollywood producer Walter Lantz encountered the bird during his honeymoon. Lantz reported that the annoying woodpecker kept the couple awake at night boring holes in their honeymoon cabin. Lantz used Woody for one of his cartoons and the bird became famous and an immediate success along with Lantz’s other characters Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck) Since Marjorie knew that a Pileated is an energetic searcher for bugs on trees, we sat entranced as the big bird began his search for dinner at about eye level. And then he did a strange thing; he began to climb down the tree backwards, rump end first, sashaying back and forth, but steadily descending the large trunk with an occasional peck at the tree. And then he was gone, presumably off to another tree with more appealing bug prospects. The bird’s antics reminded me of myself and own search for the meaning of life, traveling life’s highway, going backwards most of the time. Such is an apt description of the process I used to find a new Roscommon-area dentist to help manage my dental health. Of course, I didn’t take the matter of finding a new dentist lightly, I used my time-honored technique of closing my eyes and pointing my finger at a list of dentists in the telephone book. The practitioner that I pointed to was Dr. Boneright, a new dentist to the Roscommon area according to the yellow pages. He was a young man judging by his photograph (one plus), he had an attractive assistant, (another plus), and he was accepting new patients for his growing business. What else did I need? I called his office and made an appointment. Some days later I found myself in Dr. Boneright’s waiting room for my first dental examination. When Dr. Boneright came into the room, I was surprised at how young he seemed. I wondered if he had finished high school. He said hello and showed off a mouthful of pearly whites as he explained that he would examine my teeth and then discuss what work I needed. Before I could inquire about prices and billing, he had slipped a large metal spoon in my mouth, prized open one side of my face, and began his examination, thus rendering any further discussion impossible. I sat there quietly as he began using a small round mirror, a stick, and a flashlight strapped to his forehead. Apparently, he didn’t find enough problems to justify his fee, so he reached for another tool, a metal probe with a cruel pointy tip that he began pushing into my gums to my despair. This depravity seemed to stimulate him – I could hear what seemed to be a satisfied grunt as he pushed the probe around one tooth after another, inflicting one new sharp pain after another as he forced the probe into my gums when it didn’t go in far enough to satisfy him. “There she is,” he said.Suddenly he took the stick, the spoon, and the mirror from my mouth and leaned close to me as if we were about to plan a major heist. “I knew there was a cavity in there someplace,” he said. The next 20 minutes were filled with more fingers in my mouth and several x-rays taken only after everyone except me ran from the room. After that, I was left alone in the dental chair surrounded by various objects designed for inflicting pain. It wasn’t a positive experience. The doctor didn’t help my composure when he returned and told me that my cavity seemed really deep but he thought he could save the tooth without a root canal. I told him that I hoped he was right since I guessed the difference was several hundred dollars. He said he could do the job right away and he began loading my mouth with tools for his next sadistic adventure. Almost before I knew what was happening, he plunged a foot- long needle into my sore mouth and loaded me up with Novocain, then left the room again. I sat there quietly wondering what could possibly be worse than the cruel probe and the long needle. I soon discovered what it was. I awoke from my Novocain-induced daze when he and his assistant came back into the room. She proceeded to stretch open my mouth while he loaded me up with more tools, including a nasty-looking drill. It sounded like a chain saw when he started drilling but it seemed to operate more like an air hammer. I held on to the chair with clenched fists and curled toes. I could tell the dentist was making progress when smoke and flame started wafting from my open mouth. A foul smell filled the room and I suddenly realized it was coming from my mouth. Dr. Boneright abruptly stopped drilling and took his large fist out of my mouth that was stretched about four times its normal size. “How ya doing?” he asked. His question was accompanied by a diabolical smile that split his face. I was beginning to dislike the man. “Ids no tooo bad,” I said with a frozen tongue and a mouth full of tools. The doctor seemed to take that as encouragement because he leaned forward, reinserted the drill and began creating the Grand Canyon in my tooth. While he was engaged, his dental assistant continued stretching my mouth and spraying cold water, presumably to keep the flames down. At that point, the pain began. I found myself exercising my sphincter in a search for relief. I decided to speak up. “Dere iss sum pane wen du puss da drill sew hart,” I murmured. The doctor had suddenly become hard-of- hearing; he continued the drilling while I concentrated on my sphincter squeezing. My efforts in pain relief helped; either that, or the second level of Novocain kicked in because my memory of the remainder of the drilling is foggy. I only know that as soon as he finished drilling, I checked the dental chair beneath me to find that it was still clean, thus preserving a small measure of my dignity. The remainder of the procedure, filling the Grand Canyon with some mysterious concoction, proceeded without a hitch with the assistant doing much of the work. She seemed sympathetic and I liked her despite her prior excess in mouth stretching. Since my Roscommon dental visit occurred two weeks ago, I am pleased to report that my mouth has returned to its normal size and I can now sleep most nights without dreaming about an air hammer in my mouth. Although I haven’t received the final bill from Dr. Boneright, I think he has restored my dental health so I’m thankful for that. Oh, and by the way, if you happen to see a Pileated Woodpecker, for some while I suggest that you avoid visiting any professional who earns a living by inspecting body cavities. On the other hand, if there is someone you hate, I can provide you Dr. Boneright’s office address as a referral. Grandpa Bill