F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Lake Clear

The North Country

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The View Out Our Camp's Front Windows, Lake Titus, New York (© F. P. Dorchak)
The View Out Our Camp’s Front Windows, Lake Titus, New York (© F. P. Dorchak)

My wife and I just returned from a trip to “The North Country,” or upstate New York. It was my dad’s 80th birthday, so we timed our annual trip back east with his birthday. Since there were several of us showing up, there was not enough room at their place, so a “camp” was rented on Lake Titus, just a few minutes outside of Malone, NY. An upstate New York camp is not a tent or KOA, but is a rustic-or-better building used as a camp. Most are rough, but some, called “Great Camps,” have many amenities and are the size of hotels. It just depends on how much money and effort one wants to put into building these things. Here’s a link explaining the Great Camps and their architecture, but just scale it down a bit for the “everyday person’s camp,” and you’ll get the gist. Anyway, we had a place large enough for the four of us. And it was right off Lake Titus, with a dock and paddle boat and kayak. And thanks to Phil and Meredith, who own the camp! Such terrific people! We had a blast!

Our flights in and out went beautifully. We met my brother, Greg, and his son, Alek

The Lake Titus, New York Camp. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 14, 2016)
The Lake Titus, New York Camp. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 14, 2016)

(Greg also has a daughter, Niki, but she couldn’t make it), in Vermont and we all drove to my dad and stepmom’s place, in waaay upstate New York. We did all the touristy things and revisited the old stomping grounds were Greg and the rest of my siblings and I grew up. Stopped by the old middle school we’d attended and walked about its halls (it was open—and I even ran into an old classmate of mine there who now works there; he told me several of our class now works there!). Stopped by the school’s auditorium where both Greg and I had acted in plays (I had been the gangster in “The House on Whaleshead Rock“; this is all I could find on it, but I do still have the play’s script somewhere…). This is where Greg got his start as an actor (he’s also a screenwriter, producer, author, and has even done Stand-up comedy in Las Vegas, Nevada—I’ve seen him perform, he was great, even working a drunk in the front row…), so it was cool to show his son and take pictures of it, though we couldn’t find all the light switches to switch on all of the auditorium’s lights.

We visited the old Lake Clear House, where we all grew up.

Visited Ausable Chasm.

Made multiple trips to Donnelly’s Corners!

Visited our paternal grandparents’s graves.

Frank Dorchak, Jr., Malone Golf Club Birthday Party (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 13, 2016)
Frank Dorchak, Jr., Malone Golf Club Birthday Party (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 13, 2016)

And there was my dad’s 80th birthday party! It was held in the banquet hall of the restaurant of the Malone Golf Club. There were over 70 in attendance, representing all the areas of his life from childhood, the Navy, his Forest Ranger service, to his current efforts with Clear Path For Veterans, and more. My dad spoke, sang, and we all danced. Some came up to say a few words. I spoke. Then, when it came to his birthday cake, he insisted on on having all 80 candles on his cake. In his words: “I earned every damned candle“! As he “blew” them out with a wave of cardboard or paper or whatever it was he was holding, the smoke filled the air above the cake, and Greg and I looked to each other. We both said, yeah, that’s gonna set off the fire alarms! Not two minutes later, yup, off went the alarms! After the fire department arrived, we took pictures of Dad shaking hands with the fireman who responded. We later sent an e-mail to the Malone Telegram and got an article in the Friday, August 19th, paper, the upper right corner of page A3! It’s quite large!

The rest of the trip involved hanging out with family, playing games, talking, standing and sitting around an outdoor fire pit at my folks’s place, and more. At the Lake Titus Camp, my wife and I swam and kayaked the lake. I’ll detail more of some of these and other aspects in some upcoming posts. But it was a glorious 10 days in the North Country, visiting family and reconnecting with an area of the world I love. I love the woods and waters of the Adirondacks and upstate New York and can’t get enough of them. Love visiting my Dad and stepmom, Wanda.

It was a great trip!

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A Tribute To Mac

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As I’m going back over all my old short stories, I found this little tribute I’d written back in 2000. It is about an incident that happened to me while I’d been a boy in the 70s. It was about one of the family dogs we’d lost. I’d been there when it was killed. I’m glad I’d written it up when I did, because I’d apparently already begun to forget some of the details I’d written up. Well, we are talking some 40 years, here! I even had to ask my dad about one set of details as I’d written this up a couple weeks ago.

I’ve delayed posting because I’ve been looking for a picture of Mac…but I just can’t find one! Which is weird, cause I’d seen pictures of him—and his grave—in my possession. I must have lost them over the years, or someone else has them. In any event, if I do find one, I’ll add it into this post after the fact.

As with most of what I write, it doesn’t quite end as you might expect it to end…and which is why I’ve posted it to this site rather than my other one. I like that about my work. I like that about the weird things that happen to me in my life.

Embrace the weird.

 

A Tribute to Mac

© F. P. Dorchak, Sept 17, 2000

I remember Mac like it was yesterday. Mac was the best pal any kid could ask for. He never asked for much: food, shelter, and friendship. Okay, and a constant supply of attention. You see, Mac was a black Labrador Retriever, one of our family’s pets back in the 70s. I loved him so much that as an adult I’d also named the Black Lab we’d had “Mac” (his official name for those AKC papers was “Lord MacTavish du Lac”), as well.

My dad says we got Mac from one of his dad’s bosses who lived “out west.” My grandfather used to chauffeur for the president of the board of Phelps Dodge Wire and Cable. All I do know was that for a kid just barely a teenager, the dog was big! Paws as huge as your own feet!

Mac took a while getting used to coming to us when we called him, but I guess that was to be expected. We lived in The North Country, as it was called by those who live there (upstate NY, the extreme northern end of New York State; we lived in the Adirondack Mountains) and what with all that open space…well, it took a while. But Mac was fun-loving, as all labs are! I remember…

He had this one big tree branch that was actually longer than himself, and he always used to play with it and drag it around with him all over the place. There wasn’t a day you wouldn’t look out and see him dragging it somewhere, playfully growling and head shaking back in forth in the excited frenzy of play. Or find him under the shade of some tree on a lazy summer day, patiently (surgically!) chewing and whittling away at the limb with his teeth. He loved that danged stick. He must’ve actually bitten off several inches of it, because I swear, after a while, it looked shorter….

And Mac was always there for us kids. In fact it wasn’t all that unlikely to see one of us kids sleeping on Mac’s side as he slept. We called him our “Portable Pillow.”

But…the inevitable happened one day.

 

I was going to take a bike ride a couple miles down the road to check on the mail at the Post Office, when Mac came running up to me from somewhere wanting to come along (we didn’t always keep him leashed, which wasn’t a great thing, I know, but it’s how many operated up in The North Country). Well, by this time Mac was pretty regular about coming when called, so I decided, why not? Off we went.

Mac stayed by my side as I rode one of my brothers’ bikes (his had a basket, mine didn’t, and I needed that for any mail I might collect; it was a red “banana” bike;  mine was purple) down the road. I was pretty impressed to say the least, though I was also wary about the traffic, of which there wasn’t much to begin with. If I called him, he came. I was feeling pretty good about my buddy, Mac.

We made it to the Post Office and Mac came inside with me, all happy and excited. I can still remember that day, some 40 years later. Everyone knew everyone in this hamlet of Lake Clear, including one’s pets, so we all said “Hi.” Then, much like that Miss Almira Gulch, from The Wizard of Oz, there was this one old lady in there collecting her mail. She was one of those ladies who made an issue out of everything: “Oh there ought to be a law about this” or “Oh there ought to be a law about that.” Wrinkly and bitchy (sorry, this was how I’d described her when I’d written this in 2000, so I’ve kept it as-is). The type that also revels in scolding kids for anything and everything. Miss Almira Gulch.

Well, as Mac roamed the floor as I collected my mail, the lady turned to me after seeing my dog, and told me that someday my dog would get hit by a car, the way it was running loose. “There ought to be a law…” I just knew she must have been thinking then. I said, naw, he comes when he’s called real good and we don’t let him out loose that much (really, I said that? Again, this was what I’d written in 2000, so…). Besides, Mac was a careful dog, I said. The lady left, and Mac and I said our goodbyes to Post Office personnel. We were back on the road, mail in basket, Mac at heels.

We were almost home, at that big downward-S-curving bend, maybe less than a quarter mile from home? Mac was trotting contently on the other side of the road, staying off the pavement. He had just crossed over there…when he’d decided to come back over to my side.

I swear til this day, that what I saw him do, he did. I actually saw him do this: as Mac went to cross the road, he looked first one way…then the other…then made his way across.

Now, whether or not he was actually looking for cars is arguable…but that was what he’d done.

It was at this time that a little compact sports car (I think it might have been an MG Midget, but something like it, top down, as I recall) came screaming out from around that bend towards us. Mac never saw it coming. His head was turned in the opposite direction—it happened immediately after he’d just looked down the way of the approaching bullet.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I seemed to have blocked out the thump that must have occurred, the screaming of brakes, and the skidding of car. I dropped my bike where I was and ran into the center of the road. The road here was banked at a good angle to meet the S-curved bend…and it was where Mac now lay…my Little Buddy was now a black mass around which red was actively leaking out and pooling. His mouth…his mouth was open at a sick angle…his tongue hanging out at an even sicker, unnatural angle. I remember seeing him still looking like he was breathing for a little while…roughly so. It looked utterly grotesque…hideous…and I didn’t know what to do.

I felt entirely helpless.

I’d shot my hands into the air several times in futility and disbelief…my eyes searching for somebody, anybody…anybody who knew what to do…to tell me that what I was witnessing was not reality…not what I was really seeing. That it was actually another dog lying there in a pool of its own blood in the middle of warm asphalt….

Nothing came out of my mouth.

I ran to the edge of the road…then back to Mac…then repeated my steps. Other cars began to stop.

I then ran to the door of a well-kept gray house that was right there. I rapped on the door and someone answered. I remembered trying to keep my cool…keep calm and not cry…as I blurted out what’d happened. I asked to use the phone. I called my dad. He answered. In the same calm but wavering voice, I told my father what had happened. He rhetorically asked me if this was a joke. That’s what people do in times like this. It’s the same question everyone asks while they try to forestall the inevitable realization. I think it was then that I started to cry.

I ran back out as my dad was on his way to…us. I went back to my Mac’s side. He was still bleeding…the blood still making its way down the road’s canted angle. I looked at his black body, disgustingly twisted…his mouth and tongue still that sickeningly hideous way they were when I left. I thought back to when Mac had looked both ways before crossing the road. Of what that old lady (I’d used a different term in the first draft of this…) had scolded me about Mac back in the Post Office.

And I thought of that damned little sports car…barreling around that corner like it was a Grand Prix racer.

I looked for it. There were people talking to the driver and its passenger. A guy and a girl. To this day I can still see them all standing “over there” in a group, in my mind’s eye.

I reached out and touched Mac…he was still warm. Warm but unmoving. I bent over and cradled him…praying he wasn’t hurt too badly…was not dead…hoping beyond hope he was fixable—

Was this a joke?

It wasn’t…and Mac would no longer be our Portable Pillow. No longer be whittling away at his huge stick in the shade of some tree. My dad had arrived, looking all official in his NYS Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Ranger uniform. His Everything-Will-Be-All-Right manner. He was used to scenes like this, I’m sure. Pulled dead bodies off of mountain tops and all. Now we were pulling our dead dog off the road.

We took Mac home in the back of my dad’s red ranger truck. The killers had apologized most remorsefully, saying they hadn’t seen our dog. Of course not. Most people don’t intentionally try to kill dogs while out for a drive during a beautiful, sunny day. They gave my dad all the money they had on them: about ten bucks, I seem to think it was.

We buried Mac up behind our house, before one of three gardens we had. I made a small wooden cross and carved Mac’s name into it with my pocket knife. I found Mac’s tree branch and brought it to the grave. I made two upright supports for it and suspended the stick across and over the grave. It stayed that way for most of my remaining years at home.

I don’t know how much longer after all this it was…days, months, a year?…but one day I’d seen Mac again. I’d been at the top of the long staircase of our 1800s house…I’d turned around to face the stairs while on the top landing…when I’d seen his happy black tail and butt. The tail was straight up into the air—and it and the butt were quickly heading down the stairs!

I was stunned. That was Mac! We hadn’t a black dog, in fact I’m not sure if we even had a replacement dog at this point, but it definitely was not a black dog.

As an adult I don’t hold any anger or animosity toward that “Miss Almira Gulch” or the couple that had hit Mac. Things happen. We all have to die sometime of something, I always say, and I believe there is more on The Other Side. As I also remember it, my dad told me that the couple was pretty shaken up from the accident. But, to this day, I still think about that scene. Of that couple…and how that accident might have affected them. Of Mac lying in the middle of that road. Of Mac looking both ways before crossing. Of that old lady’s ominous warning. I loved that dog. I’ll always miss Mac. He was more than just a Portable Pillow to all of us.

 

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St. John in the Wilderness Cemetery – Upstate New York Vacation 2014 – Part 4 of 4

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St. John in the Wilderness Cemetery, Lake Clear, N.Y. (Aug 15, 2014)
St. John in the Wilderness Cemetery, Lake Clear, N.Y. (Aug 15, 2014)

After visiting Ausable Chasm, the St. Lawrence River, and Boldt Castle, we made a drive past the old homestead and surrounds, including visiting one of NYS’s fish hatcheries (I used to bike down to the “Adirondack Fish Hatchery,” as it is now called, as a kid; there was no fence, then, and I’d walk among the pools of little fishies), and the local cemetery.

I like visiting cemeteries…I know, sooner or later it won’t be a “visit” (not that I plan on being buried), but I like them for several reasons. Anyway, I realized I’d never documented the cemetery I grew up near, in Lake Clear, N.Y.

The cemetery is part of the church we used to attend for part of my childhood (my family and I are no longer Catholic), and happened to be a short bike ride down the road from where we lived, the church located at 6148 State Route 30, Lake Clear, NY 12945. The cemetery is located in the opposite direction, to Lake Clear Junction, where you take a left (remaining on Route 30), then drive up just a touch, and you’ll see it on your right, just before the turn-off for the dump.

Anyway, I know—knew—several interred here. One was a childhood friend (Dirk Ewan), and one was Mr. Hohmeyer, whom I’ve talked about before. Dirk was three years older than me and a big dude. He was 17 when he died. I remember him having been a gentle soul…an extremely kind-hearted individual…which is rare in a strapping, seventeen-year-old (I could be wrong, but my young-self’s recollections seem to recall him being kinda big). His mom was a friend of my mom, and he and his family used to come down to the lake and hang out with us. Dirk, however, would never go into water above his shins. He was deathly afraid of it, and made no bones about it.

In 1974, he drowned.

An accident, but he drowned.

The Trapl’s lived down a little way from us, past the church. When dad had had a landscaping business (additional job, he was still a Forest Ranger), I’d go with dad helping out in any way I could, digging, muscling trees and such around, chopping out tree trunks. That last part involved Mr. Trapl. He labeled his place, “Trapl’s Yalna.” I don’t know what that means, nor the language. Google Translate said it detected the language “Azerbaijani,” and translated it into “just.” Anyway, one later afternoon-into-early-evening we’d been down there trying our damnedest to remove a tree trunk. As some may know, you don’t just “remove” tree trunks. Their roots extend at least as far down as their foliage extends upward. But we did our best, into the darkness, employing my dad’s truck, chains, and grit. I could be wrong, but I don’t remember having completed that job, but we gave it our best. We might have just cut around the visible roots and had been done with it, but I just remember all the grit and effort with my dad, and how cool it was, and that we were working into the “fall of darkness”!

One of our family members was buried (or died) here, May 7, 1968. There used to be a temporary marker. It’s long since gone.

I went to school with one of the Sayles family.

There were a couple other family names I recognized, but didn’t recognize the interred individuals.

Except for more gravestones, it looks near exactly what it looked like when I lived there (sixties and seventies), except there was no chain link fence around the back…not sure about the front, but I don’t remember one, and it really wouldn’t make sense to have a fence in the front, if there wasn’t one surrounding its perimeter.

The only other memory I have concerning this cemetery is an amusing, odd one: I was 18 and was driving alone to the dump with a load, and as I passed this cemetery, the new (at the time, 1979) Styx (one of my favorite bands at the time) tune, “Renegade” popped on the radio. I thought that was “coincidental” at the time, which I would now term “synchronistic.”

“Oh mama, I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law
Lawman has put an end to my running and I’m so far from my home
Oh mama, I can hear your crying you’re so scared and all alone
Hangman is coming down from the gallows and I don’t have very long….”

Next post: Donnelly’s Corners—the best soft ice cream ever!

 

 

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Upstate New York Vacation 2014 – Part 1 of 4

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What Much Of Where I Lived and Where We Drove Looks Like! (Aug 2014)
What Much Of Where I Lived and Where We Drove Looks Like! (Aug 2014)

Yesterday (as I began this post, on Tuesday, August 19th), my wife and I returned from our trip to upstate New York to see my Dad and stepmom. The trip itself was great, we got to be with family, air out, see some more of upstate NY—you know, all the things vacations are supposed to be about—but the trip to and back was more of something out of “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles“!

We took red-eye flights. Haven’t done that in many, many, years. Our flights on the way out were not bad, but the return trip had us having to stay the night at a hotel in the D.C. area. We flew into and out of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Aéroport de Montréal (pronounced “Muh-ree-all”), Canada, something we’ve done in the past, but “done in the past” was, wow, 15-20 years ago, now that I try to put a number on it! Besides the obvious changes, the Canadian roadway changed dramatically…no longer was there that gnarly interchange out of the airport that I missed the last time out. Now, once you get out of the airport, it wasn’t nearly that bad, and when you factor in that we had been picked up and dropped off, that part was stellar! We didn’t rent a car, because to have done so would have cost us over $600! Good Lord, as much as plane fare! The rates themselves weren’t too bad, but, once you added in all the “fees” and “taxes”…then throw in Canadian “fees and taxes”…we about gagged! Do check all those add-ins when making rental car reservations, especially in another country. I mean, I like Canada, but, wow, holy crap on the car rentals, my northern friends!

We left late on a Friday night, to land in O’Hare, at oh-later-thirty, where we spent almost five hours waiting for our connecting flight

O'Hare Airport Slightly Left of 2 a.m. (Aug 9, 2014)
O’Hare Airport Slightly Left of 2 a.m. (Aug 9, 2014)

to Montréal in the early morning, eh? I finally saw a side to O’Hare that I actually liked: the after hours. Yeah, it truly does empty out! When we exited our plane and prepared to “bed down” for the night, one of the airline personnel did a really cool thing after talking with us: she returned with blankets that she handed out to all of us who had to stay the night in the terminal! Thank you, Really Swell Gate Attendant!

So, we took our blankets and sought out a place to lay down (hint: you can ask airline personnel for the least bothered, more quiet gates to bed down in), and hunkered down for the next four or so hours. I read Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep while my wife “slept.” For our last hour, I lay down and closed my eyes, but not sure I really “slept,” either. In any event, I haven’t stayed overnight in an airport since, wow, the College Years? But I really liked how the place empties out and goes “Twilight Zone” in the after hours (by the way also the name of a Twilight Zone episode).

Once we made it to New York, we had a great time, and did some hiking through Ausable Chasm, took a St. Lawrence boat tour of the rich and famous through “The Thousand Islands,” checked out Boldt Castle, and stopped by a couple upstate university book stores where I dropped off some of my novels for their book buyers to hopefully like enough to stock. We also checked out a salmon fish hatchery I used to bike down to as a kid (just outside of Lake Clear). Did our usual drive-bys of Barnum Pond, Lake Clear, Saranac Lake, and Lake Placid.  Drove through the Keene Valley area. Visited the St. John’s in the Wilderness cemetery, where I know some of those interred. We even saw some fireworks! And of course: Donnelly’s Corner’s ice cream (where I saw the heinous act of a lady taking a lick of her cone, then tossing it into a trash can! Where’s NY State’s Finest when you need em?). Donnelly’s is the best soft ice cream anywhere!

And…there was even one possibly paranormal—definitely weird—event involving two dogs, one of them living. Wow. It still blows my mind, but more on that (and all the other mentioned activities) later….

As for the return trip, we arrived back at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International aéroport Monday, around 2:20 ET. The long and the short of it was…we didn’t leave the airport until after midnight.

The Gate We Were "86'd" To at Aéroport de Montréal (Aug 18, 2014)
The Gate We Were “86’d” To at Aéroport de Montréal (Aug 18, 2014)

Instead of O’Hare, on our return trip we were connecting through Dulles. But as we checked the airport monitors, we noticed our flight to Dulles wasn’t even displayed. It turned out that our plane was late getting into Dulles because of mechanical and weather issues. Nothing one can do about that. And to the “Angry Business Man Who Used the F-Word” who’d been in front of me at a gate attendant counter, you can’t blame the gate attendants! Seriously? This was your first rodeo, Mr. salt-and-peppered-hair, Angry-Business-Man-Who-Used-the-F-Word? Note to you: if you really were that important, I think you would have been on a charter flight. You wouldn’t be in that airport with all the rest of us “little people” taking standard commercial flights. But…to the Calm and Professional Gate Attendant (who told Mr. Angry-Business-Man-Who-Used-the-F-Word to “please watch your language”): you handled it most excellently, sir! International kudos to you!

Note to Pierre Elliott Trudeau International passengers: if your flights are delayed into that airport, they are removed from the flight schedules and the departure monitors, so they might not show up quickly enough on the monitors when delayed. I was also told that there are curfews in Canadian airports, but if flights continued to come and go, you’re allowed to stay, like we were, but otherwise, come curfew time, you will be exited from the airport to a hotel—at the airlines’ expense. The airlines will also give you meal vouchers. We received both. As we hung out at the aéroport , we ate on the airlines dime and met some interesting folk and had some good conversation! Thanks, “John” and “Unnamed Denver IT Dude”!

Another note: though you are given meal and hotel vouchers, if you refuse the hotel voucher and stay the night at the airport, you are

Anonymous Terminal Passenger at Aéroport de Montréal (Aug 18, 2014)
Anonymous Terminal Passenger at Aéroport de Montréal (Aug 18, 2014)

supposed to be given a $150 voucher. No one will tell you this, you have to ask (don’t let them try to tell you “they want you to get some rest” before your next flight, if you feel you can stay up; they just don’t want to pay out the dough, is what is really happening, here). And, I believe, it has to be used within 24 hours. That’s all I know, since we didn’t do this, but saw another who did do this. Also, you can be real “slick” and write your requests on a piece of paper instead of talking out loud and alerting other passengers to this little known fact—or anything else you might try to “bargain” for at the gate attendant counters. Doesn’t mean you’ll get any of it, but it might make the attendants feel better that you understand their plight in dealing with all the angry and inconvenienced passengers (if that kinda thing matters to you) and keep your bargaining secret (our hotel voucher was $73. Yeah, try to get a room for that price, without missing a flight, and you see it’s all cheaper than paying out $150 per person)!

We had to make a decision: stay the night in Montréal or in D.C. Thing was, even if we caught our flight out to Dulles, there were no connections until the next morning. Since we’d have to go back through Customs, if we stayed in Montréal, and were told in no uncertain terms that many actually do miss their early morning flights because of Customs (the lines can be quite long, as we witnessed during our near ten hours at P. E. Trudeau), we opted to get outta Dodge and make Dulles. So we did, and in Dulles were given a hotel room, where we caught less than three hours of sleep before we had to make it back to Dulles for the whole TSA ritual, once again. Here, I had to walk through the metal detector 3 or 4 times, because, it turned out, I had a foil wrapped stick of gum in my pocket. Yay. I was surprised I wasn’t strip searched after the second time, to be quite honest. Then my pack had been detained, because, I’d forgotten to dump the water from my water bottle, but other than that, we used our meal vouchers to grab some chow before out flight.

So, we boarded out plane, and quickly realized…we’re in the very last row. You know, the seats that do not recline. And are right in front of the galley.

And the restrooms.

Yes, we’re on first-name basis with every butt on that flight. Just sayin.

I detail all the above, and it might sound rough and sucky, but we really had a fun time, met some interesting people, and took it as much in stride as anyone can on little sleep, and chalked it up to yet another “life experience”; it really wasn’t that bad, and the Aéroport de Montréal is really nice. I like airports and aircraft, like being around them.

The "After Hours" at Aéroport de Montréal (Aug 18, 2014)
The “After Hours” at Aéroport de Montréal (Aug 18, 2014)

One other thing: before we left for the trip, I had watched a little of the Twilight Zone episode, “Mirror Image.” When I returned from our trip and watched the rest of the episode, it struck me how predictive that little episode was! In it, Millicent Barnes misses her bus because of a “key event”…and on our return trip we ended up missing our connection. It can also be applied to my next post, on my Reality Check blog, titled, One Painting…Two Dogs. Okay, maybe to you it’s “a reach,” but to me not so. I don’t believe in coincidences [that are ignored as not important]…I believe in synchronicity and that everything’s tied to everything else. Don’t ignore all those little events in life!

We had a great time in NY, and, to be honest, if was kinda fun not knowing what would happen and when and living in the moment, with all these flight gyrations. Sure, no one likes to be inconvenienced, but I took the “time” to consciously live in the moment and enjoy whatever came our way. Go with the flow. As my wife napped (no one every really sleeps in airports, or so the saying goes…) I reveled in the Twilight Zone-like atmosphere of the fast emptying airports, soaked up the “deserted ambiance,” and read my King novel. Walked the emptied halls and gates. Observed all the in-the-background maintenance folks who come out at night…or who are summarily ignored and “unobserved” during the day, going about their jobs keeping things cleaned and stocked with toilet paper.

It was all good.

On Monday, check out my other blog, Reality Check, for a paranormal experience, titled, One Painting…Two Dogs. In the coming weeks I’ll post about Ausable Chasm, the St. Lawrence boat tour, Boldt Castle, and all the rest of the fun stuff we did!

In Honor of Herr Hohmeyer

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You know, it’s funny what we remember from childhood.

Today, I started the day by going for a walk as it snowed. I kept waffling: writing/chores/walk…walk/chores/writing…sleeping in/writing/tax stuff….

Walking won out.

I love “bad” weather, love it when it snows, rains, or it’s windy. Love the good stuff, too, but am just saying, bad weather doesn’t necessarily deter me from doing things. Having to do other things deters me from doing things. What to do first. But, today, the early walk won out, It was cold, blustery, and, as I mentioned—snowing.

In short, it was beautiful out.

And hardly anyone did I pass, given the weather and the early morning hours—it was great. Passed some dog walkers and a Park and Rec guy cleaning graffiti off a sign (I thanked him for that).

But every time I go out on my walk/hikes, I always think back to a guy who took his daily constitutionals past our house when I was a kid, which was a couple miles down from his place—a local restaurant he owned, called The Lodge. His name was Mr. Hohmeyer, and he used to be a U-Boat commander. That’s all I remember of him—besides his daily walks and eating in his restaurant. But what really stuck with me all these years was how he walked every day (at least in my memory of him)—and I believe he had a cane and maybe even sported an “old world” rimmed hat of some kind from time to time (damn, how the memories are beginning to fade…)? In any event, I’d frequently see him briskly (and I do mean briskly) striding down Route 30, cane in hand, head held high, back ramrod straight, always a wave or a “hello” as we hailed each other. He always seemed to be in a good mood, and I think occasionally, would give that cane of his a little extra “panache” as he strode on by.

He was cool to me. Fascinating to watch.

So, every time I go out for my “constitutionals,” especially in inclement weather, I always think of Herr Hohmeyer. I give him honor and a mental nod. I think about his brisk stride, his smiling face, and that cane of his, and I always wave to him in my head.

Bis spater, Herr Hohmeyer!