Mine eyes have seen the glory…

I’ve been to Gettysburg a handful of times as a kid, and read countless accounts of the battle through the years, but yesterday was the first time that I took the family. It was a gorgeous day, with weather more suited to June than March. We went to the National Visitor Center and Museum and then toured the battlefield. It’s days like this that illustrate the difference in our children.

20Prospect Junior just read The Killer Angels, probably the best historical fiction book ever written, and so he knew the characters and the backstory behind the battle as well as I do. He had only a passing interest in the museum, and the films, and just wanted more like than anything to stand on the battlefield and touch history. Like every 11 year old boy he dreamed of kicking the dirt and finding a bullet. He wanted to place his hand on every cannon and every stone wall, and try to feel the stories.

Lil’ Miss 20Prospect by contrast knew nothing about the battle, but was content to watch the film, and look at the displays, and ask countless questions about everything. Impressions matter much more than details or artifacts and the one thing she wanted more than anything was to walk the cemetery and read the names. Standing at sunset among the stones of untold numbers of lost soldiers stirred her imagination more than anything else could. Turning to me she said "Dad, don’t take any pictures here. It just wouldn’t be right." I couldn’t have agreed more.

The sun was a blood red ball burning thru the haze as we walked out through the gates. Watching it sink behind the blue ridge I felt proud to know they’re both my children.

the conclusion

It took another two weeks of discussion and negotiation before the end. During that time Kristine continued to feed me inside information about what she was doing, and how things were going between her and Steve. Every mention of them made me sicker, but I couldn’t control myself. I just had to know. Knowing only made me feel hollow and empty inside. So I proceeded to fill in that emptiness with alcohol and self loathing.

Spring break was coming. From Kristine I had learned that Steve was going to Daytona, and had gone so far as to tell her that he couldn’t guarantee that he would be faithful on the trip. Surely this would convince her I was the better guy. I would be going back to Batavia for the week, and I asked her to come with me. Then to my surprise and everlasting hope, she agreed. She would spend a few days, meet my family and friends, and then I would bring her back to Canton.

The day before break began, I had planned to pick her up and bring her over to my apartment for dinner. She was going to spend the night, and leave for Batavia with me the next morning. But when she walked out of the dorm, and climbed inside of my car she wasn’t carrying a suitcase. “I’ve changed my mind.” She said. “I’ve made a commitment to Steve, and I don’t think it would be right to go home with you.”

Outside the rain drummed down upon the roof. The windows began to fog up, closing out the world outside. We sat in silence. She made no move to open the door, or leave. Finally, I started the car and put it into gear. I went on a long, aimless drive into the countryside south of town. On the back roads down near Hannawa Falls, she asked me to turn into the beach.

“I used to lifeguard here during the summer” she said.

The beach was desolate, and ringed with a crust of melting snow. The pines crowded in behind us, ringing the beach with gloomy shadows. Out on the river, the ice was already wormy and dark from the rain and the slow approach of spring. I parked the car, and we got out. She walked to the edge of the river, it was so gray in the slanting rain.

“It looks so different this time of year”, she said.

I tried to imagine how it must have looked in the summer time, with boats out on the water, and kids building sand castles on the beach. I realized that summer was coming again, but I wouldn’t be here to see it. By the time the ice was out, and the beach was open I would be far beyond the wilderness of the North Country, but she would still be here. There was no escaping it.

Eventually we got back into the car, and I drove her home.

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” She said. “It doesn’t seem like it’s making either one of us happy.”

I couldn’t argue with her about that. I hadn’t been happy since we had first met. The last few months I had been alternating from despair to mania, but nowhere would I say that I was happy.

So the die was cast, and my fate was sealed. In June I would report to the headquarters of ABB Combustion Engineering with all of my personal belongings in the trunk of my car. I would spend 3 days there in orientation, and then receive my assignment in any one of 9 different regional offices around the country. I would spend the next few years of my life living in hotels, and eating in restaurants, as I toured the country one power plant at a time.

She had made her choice as well. In the end I did not pass the written test, and the job was offered to someone else. I couldn’t decide which of the three of us I hated more, but the only one I could punish was myself. So I focused my energy on that. I spent the last month of college, skipping class, turning in half finished assignments, and drinking just to forget. It didn’t work, and by that point it didn’t matter. I graduated with a 3.2 GPA, and weighed 20 pounds less than I had at the start of the year. When I left town after graduation, I did so hoping never to return.

Try as I might though, I could not escape myself. As Yogi Berra would say “No matter where you go, there you are.” I moved on with my life, and eventually came to realize those moments for what they truly were, an aberration. A peculiar and uncharacteristic period in time when I had lost my mind over nothing more than a set of brown eyes, and a soft voice. As my stories reveal, I spent the next 3 years of life drifting around the country, exploring every back woods nook and cranny I could find. I met people that would have profound influences on me, and help me to find out who I really was, deep down inside that dark well of the soul.

In the twenty years since then, I have occasionally thought back to those six months, and what if anything I would have done different. Despite the pain and the heartache that I brought upon my own head, there is a part of me that thinks it was the best six months of my life. For like Cortez, if I hadn’t burned my boats on the beach, I never would have been able to commit to heading into the wilderness in front of me. In all honesty, this story embarrasses the hell out of me. I was young and stupid, and had no idea what love was in the first place. But if I hadn’t self destructed so spectacularly, I would have never figured those things out for myself.

A friend once told me that she had a rule. Don’t ever date a man younger than 25, because it takes them at least that long to figure out what they want out of life. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I’d have a hard time arguing with her on that one. It took me at least until then to sort myself out, and begin building the person that I am today.

I don’t know whatever became of any of the characters in the melodrama, besides me and Scott. I think all kids eventually learn the same lessons. We realize that the life we have lived is just make believe, like kids playing house. We try on identities, and act out roles as we think we are supposed to do. Eventually we come to realize that the world we inhabit is just a fantasy. Real life, and real experience lies in the dark woods in front of us. Some never accept it, and go on building castles in the sand. While the lucky ones step out into the forest and begin building relationships that really matter, and love that endures.

part 3

We set a date for the next weekend. Nothing fancy, just dinner and a movie. All week I felt a pain deep down in my gut, like a hunger I couldn’t feed. I survived on coffee and beer.

When I picked her up, I knew something was wrong. She was subdued in the car on the way to the theater, and when we parked downtown and crossed the street she cast furtive glances all around. Before the movie began I asked her what was wrong. She told me she wasn’t feeling well. I offered to take her home, but she insisted on staying for the movie. I put my arm around her as the lights went out.

After the movie she was full of questions about the plot. At some point she had fallen asleep. A fact she steadfastly denied, and only became upset with me as I teased her about it. Midwinter break was beginning, and my roommates had left for home already. When we got to my apartment, it was obvious that she was still in pain. I made her sit down, and gave her a glass of water. She insisted that she was fine, and did not want to leave. Looking up at me from the couch she said “I’m seeing someone else”, and I started hurting too.

She told me she hadn’t intended for it to happen. The night after we met she was at a party and had met another guy. He called her the night after I did to ask her out. What could she say? We hadn’t yet had our first date, so she was under no obligation to me. She consented and they had their first date the night after ours. The problem for her was she liked us both.

She hadn’t told him yet, and wouldn’t tell me who he was except to say that he was a classmate of mine. I was devastated. “What do we do next?” I asked. She had no answer. We sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity. She needed time to think, and told me to go home for the weekend. That she didn’t want to see either one of us until she knew which one she wanted. I got up and left the room.

I drove her home, and then I packed my bags. Hidden in my dresser drawer was a note. On a neatly folded piece of tablet paper in red ink letters it read “I think I like you.” I was more confused than ever. I lay down in bed and turned off the light. Laying there in the dark I looked up at the shadowy silhouettes hoping that if I could decipher them I’d make sense of the pain.

When I returned to school the following week, I had to speak with her. I had made up my mind that we were meant for each other and decided that I had to let her know it. I called, but she didn’t want to talk. She had told “the other guy” about us and he’d told her she had to choose. It could be one or the other of us but not both. She didn’t want to speak to either one of us until she had made up her mind. I tried to protest, but she hung up.

I went out of my mind. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I thought about her every minute replaying the events of the past two weeks over and over in my mind. Our dates together had always been in out of the way places, she had obviously been trying to hide from him. If only I had called her right away. If only I had taken her out the night after we met she’d have never met him.

I interrogated Kristine. She admitted that she had known since the first week, but had hoped that she would see that I was the better guy. I pressed her. She gave in. His name was Steve, and not only was he a senior, but he was in my major. In fact, we were in the same classes. I did not know him, but he apparently knew me. Kristine told me that he was the captain of the swim team and president of his Fraternity. I was torn with jealousy. I hated him, and I couldn’t even pick his face out of a police line up. I had to talk to her. I had to tell her that she would be nothing more to him than another swim medal.

So I wrote her a letter, and told her all of the reasons why she should be with me instead of him. In my letter I painted a picture of him as a shallow man, more in love with the idea of himself than he could ever be with any woman. On my way out of town to a job interview in Connecticut I slid it under her door.

When I got home from Connecticut the next day I had a phone message to call her. It was after ten when I called her, and she told me she was driving right over because we had to talk and it had to be face to face. I feared the worst. She covered the six miles out of town to our little apartment above the soap shop in what must have been record time. I felt a lump in my chest as I opened the door and saw the raging fire that was burning in her eyes. Scott and Kristine must have seen it too because they cleared the room in an instant.

She had my letter in her hand and had highlighted it like it was an assignment in Relationships 101. “How could I write such a thing? What did I mean by this?” she screamed. I apologized, I tried to explain how I felt. Since I couldn’t see her or talk to her, I had decided to write her a letter to show her the difference between him and me.

She didn’t understand, and I doubted she ever would. Hell, I don’t think I understood what was going on inside my head either. We had been dating less than three weeks and I had managed to lose almost ten pounds. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. Like a mad monk I was fasting in the hopes of a revelation, or a vision, anything that might tell me how to put the pieces of my rapidly spiraling life back together.

She calmed down, and I told her that I knew that what I felt between us was genuine and real. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel it too.” I pleaded, “I can see it in your eyes.”

“That’s not the point.” She argued. “How dare you tell me how I feel. How dare you try to manipulate my feelings.”

I begged and pleaded for her to forgive me. Like a scene from a daytime soap opera, she tried to leave, but I caught her in my arms. She sobbed. I felt her warm breath, and tears moisten my shirt.

“I came here to tell you one thing” she said, “but now I want to tell you something else”.

And then she cried some more.

We sat down on the couch in silence. After a half hour she told me that her Dad was having heart surgery that Friday. She was worried sick about the chance that she might not ever see him again. I had no idea what to say, except the usual empty assurances. After a few more minutes of silence, she stood up, put on her coat, and left. She told me as she walked out the door that she was meeting Steve for breakfast the next morning. Her honesty killed me.

In the following days I tried to focus on my class work. I ate food for the first time in what seemed like weeks. I slept. I thought that if I could just focus on the details the pain would go away. It didn’t. Every time a car crested the hill I looked to see if it was her. Every time the phone rang I held my breath.

On Sunday she called. We talked about her Dad’s heart surgery. He was doing better. If all went well he’d be home in a few days. I told her about the job interview in Connecticut. I was in consideration for two positions, one on the engineering staff in their Hartford headquarters, and another in the field service department. The field service job paid a little more, but it meant that I would be living on the road all the time. I probably wouldn’t have an apartment for at least a year, and even then it could be in any one of the fifty states. If I took the job in Hartford I’d only be five hours away.

It helped to talk about nothing. I knew that after spending the weekend at the hospital with her Dad she didn’t have the strength to talk about the one thing we couldn’t stop thinking about. I asked if we could see each other during the week. She hesitated. “I’m not sure I’m ready yet.”

“When will you be ready?” I asked.

She couldn’t say.

“Are you seeing him?” I asked.

Silence.

I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I had just wandered out on a frozen lake, and heard the ice beginning to crack. Should I stand still? Should I try to run?

“Call me when you’re ready” I said, and I hung up.

Winter was ending. It rained the whole week. Water pooled up in the still frozen fields, and flooded out onto the highway. Passing cars left plumes of water behind them like comets. I wrote poetry, awful poetry. I wrote poems about love and death, the worst kind of bad poetry. It didn’t make me feel any better. It just made me feel like a sap.

I wished I was a hero from a Hemmingway novel. I wished I could hang up on her, then drink scotch and shoot animals without feeling remorse. Instead I sat in my fetid little room, drinking cheap beer and listening to the most morose music I could find. Graduation was just 10 weeks away. I should be dancing with coeds in the neon lit bars downtown, and spending my nights in wild Bacchanalian carnival. Instead I was lying on the floor of my bedroom staring at constellations of shadows on the ceiling, holding my aching stomach and drowning in self pity.

I asked around to find out who he was. It didn’t take long for me to find someone that could point him out in class. He sat in front of me everyday and I didn’t know it. Six foot two, with his receding blond hair cut so close to his scalp that he looked bald from a distance. He definitely was more physically imposing than my ever shrinking 155 pound frame would ever be. “My god, he must just tower over her” I thought. I pictured them together. I wanted to stand up and make a scene.

Instead I just sat there taking notes as the professor scrawled formulas across the blackboard, and spoke of the laws of thermodynamics. Letters, numbers, symbols, that created a language only scientists and engineers could understand. I thought about how absurd we must all look scratching hieroglyphics into our notepads. Little pencil and paper machines for calculating the flow of heat from one body to another, as if our little calculations could control it. “No”, I thought, “We can’t control it. We can only measure it.”  I wondered how she measured it. The movement, the heat, a clinical detachment as she compared us in her mind. What formulas did she have scrawled in her notepads that could take such things and assign a value, calculate a number, raise it to the nth power, and divide it all down again into love.

I drank until I threw up. And then I drank some more. When the world finally went dark I didn’t dream. Daylight just brought more pain, real and imagined. Kristine told Scott she was worried about me. Scott just wondered what my problem was. “Love.” I told him. He nodded and took another sip of his beer. What could he say? It was a problem without a solution. He had his own concerns with graduation looming, no job offers, and a fiancée with two years of college left before they could be married. I didn’t blame him. I envied him.

The job offer from ABB arrived in the mail on Wednesday. I had been accepted for the field service job, but turned down for the one in Connecticut. I was thrilled and terrified at the same time.

I stopped by her room, hoping she wouldn’t refuse to see me. Standing outside her door I swore I could hear the sound of my heartbeat echoing down the hall. What if Steve was in her room at that very moment? What if she slammed the door in my face? I swallowed hard and knocked. She said “Come in”. She was alone thank God. Sitting at her desk with her reading glasses on typing on the computer, she instinctively took her glasses off and tried to hide them in the top drawer. I smiled.

“Didn’t know I wore glasses did you?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“I bet you thought I was perfect in every way.” She said and smiled, looking up and to the side in that way of hers that drove me crazy.

“Oh well” I said, “The secret is out, you’re human after all.”

“Damn. Will you ever be able to look at me the same way again?”

I laughed relieved to see she didn’t hate me. Not openly anyway.

“I’m sorry I hung up on you.” I told her.

“Let’s not talk about it.” She replied. “I’m over it.”

“OK, That’s not why I came here anyway” I said. “I got the field service job.”

She was happy for me, and the smile on her face was genuine. She wanted to know details. I sat down in the chair opposite her desk, and drank in the attention in her eyes. Sitting there in that crowded little room talking beneath the yellow cone of light from her desk lamp I felt relieved. Whatever had happened between us could be put in the past. When the time came to leave, I stood up. She didn’t move from her chair. “When can I see you again?” I asked.

“What if I just want to be friends with you?” she answered.

I didn’t know what to say. Surely I didn’t need any more friends. I wanted her in ways far beyond that.

“I’m not sure I could be happy just being friends.” I answered.

She frowned, and said, “Well, to be honest, I’m not sure I can either.”

“Have you made a decision yet?” I asked.

She looked away, and I could see she was crying. I wanted to go to her, I wanted to comfort her, but I was frozen with indecision.

“I can’t stand to see you hurting like this” I told her. “I’d rather give you up than cause you pain.”

I don’t know what made me say that. Perhaps it was the mushy love songs I had been marinating in for days. Maybe it was the old cliché about loving someone and setting them free. But whatever the reason, I said it.

“I think you better go now” she told me. And I turned for the door.

The Girl from the North Country cont.

My friends, I swear to you, it was not my intention that night to start a new relationship. I hadn’t even known she would be at our apartment. Returning home from a few hours playing basketball at the gym, I was soaked in sweat, and couldn’t have smelled much better than the horses that pastured in the field outside. But there she was, unforeseen, unwanted, and irresistible. As we stood in the doorway saying goodnight, I was afraid to ask her out and go down in flames with Scott and Kristine listening from behind his bedroom door. So I let it go at goodnight. Not content with a simple goodbye, she said “Well, have fun doing whatever it is you do.” and blushed.

When she left I laughed out loud. She was nervous! This beautiful, engaging girl was nervous over me. How could that be? When I saw Kristine the next morning she came running over to me jumping up and down, “She likes you, she likes you! When are you going to call her?” I hesitated. I wanted to run right home and pick up the phone and ask her out that very night, but I didn’t want to seem desperate. I decided to wait one more day, and ask her out for next weekend. That night I walked around like I held a winning lottery ticket in my pocket.

On Sunday evening I called her, and after a half hour conversation that held all of the electricity and tension of our first, we decided on dinner. She chose a little family diner in her hometown of Canton, just ten miles away. I picked her up the following Friday and drove her to dinner. We took turns telling stories, more hungry for knowledge about each other’s past than we were for supper. She was a North Country girl, and had grown up on a dairy farm outside Canton. Her Dad was president of the local milk cooperative, and her mother came from a moneyed family down in Cortland.

The more we spoke, the more I felt like I had always known her. After dinner I offered her anywhere she wanted to go. She chose my apartment. Sitting in our drafty apartment in the dark of a winter night, talking until well past midnight I felt my grip beginning to slip. I hadn’t planned on a relationship. With graduation looming just three months away I didn’t want to find a girl I couldn’t leave behind, but here she was, and how could I say no?

I wanted to see her again the next night, but she had plans and I would have to wait. I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake looking up, as the headlights of passing cars projected shadowy figures on the ceiling. I was falling for her, and as much as I wanted to hold back I knew I couldn’t. So I fell. On Tuesday I went to the florist to get her a rose for Valentine’s Day. When I knocked on her door her roommate answered. She was at class, so I left my rose on her desk next to a bouquet of carnations, and I worried.

I could see it coming, but it was already too late. Like a car accelerating towards an intersection as the light turned yellow, I had already committed. There was nothing to do now, but press the pedal down further and hope the cross traffic would brake.

When she called to thank me for the flowers her voice dripped like honey from the receiver. We would see each other soon, next Friday. No dinner or movie, she just wanted to come over and play. It was just as well. I could hardly eat anyway.

She showed up at the door with a school bag over her arm. It held a pack of construction paper, scissors, and four cans of modeling clay. She said I made her feel like a little kid. So we sat on the floor in my room, making cutouts of animals, and clay figurines. She’d finish hers and set it on the desk next to mine, then squint as she cast a critical eye on them. “Yours looks more lifelike.” she’d decide, and her brow would furrow.

The next morning I drove her back to campus, looking over at her sitting in the passenger seat with my baseball hat, and sweatshirt on, I felt like I was dreaming. She had exams coming up, and I had a job interview in Connecticut, so it would be a few days before we could see each other again. Just knowing that, made me feel sick to my stomach.

I had made the drive down to rural Hartford that morning, jacked up on cheap coffee, replaying over in my mind how I would answer their questions, and sell myself. With sweaty palms the drive seemed to take forever, but I made it in time for the afternoon interview. This was my third round of interviews with this company and it would all be made, or broken by this trip. I needed this job badly, before graduation dumped me into the back bedroom of my parent’s house, over educated, under employed, and awash in debt.

The interviews had ended well, but late. I took my suit coat off, and loosened my tie, not wanting to let the feeling go. Alone, in a strange city, with nothing but my car, and a briefcase full of empty notebooks, and corporate brochures, I felt so grown up. No, I wanted to savor this feeling of freedom.

I climbed back into the car, and began the four hour drive back to Potsdam. It was the middle of the week, and I had blown off class to make the interview. Winter was ending in Connecticut, and already the brown grass was showing through the scraps of snow around the office parks. If all went well, I could be back in her room by 9 o’clock. She would want to know everything about the interview, what they asked me, what the position offered. I couldn’t wait to tell her.

Traffic was flowing fine all the way up I91 to Springfield, where I pulled onto the Massachusetts Turnpike and headed west. By the time I reached Albany, and turned onto the Northway, the sun had already set. Traffic thinned as I got north of Glens Falls and the highway began climbing into the edges of the Adirondacks. Just tractor-trailers, and myself, climbing and descending the hills, playing leapfrog on our way North.

Exiting the Northway, onto US 9, I left even the trucks behind, and turned up and into the mountains. When US 9 turned off towards Elizabethtown I continued on to NY 73, and the trees closed in on the sides of the road, until only a tunnel of pines remained. The banks of snow rose like hay bales along the shoulder. The road narrowed, but I only drove faster. It was past 7 o’clock, and I had the road to myself. The little engine in the Plymouth strained on the climb, but I wouldn’t let up. I knew she was waiting.

Through the heart of the High Peaks and the winter desolation, I kept on the gas. Husker Du was blaring inside the car, but outside only the silent trees saw me pass. I was driving too fast, and I knew it. One patch of ice, one deer in the road, one misjudgment of a curve, and all could have been lost in darkness, and ice, but there was no thought of slowing down. I threw the car into the turns, and downshifted on the descent to save the brakes. When the road straightened I jumped back on the throttle and accelerated over the frost heaves, the car leaping forward into the small cone of light in front of me.

Down into Lake Placid, and on through the slow, sleepy, towns of Saranac Lake, and Tupper Lake, I caught my breath. When I turned onto 56 to follow the Racquette River out of the mountains and back across the blue line, the race resumed, but the adrenalin had faded. Around 9 o’clock I pulled into the parking lot outside her dorm. The lights from inside glowed like gold. Stepping from the humid warmth of the car, my breath billowed like fog in front of my face. I put on my coat, and stepped forward toward the lights.

When I got to her room the door was open, and there were several other girls sitting around talking. I felt like I was interrupting something, but once she saw me she immediately put me at ease. She walked up to me, and put her arms around me and kissed me right there in front of everyone.

“How did the interview go?” she wanted to know. So I proceeded to fill her in on all the details.

Her friends took her hint, and excused themselves one by one, until it was just the two of us. She wanted to know everything about the job, how much it paid, how far away it would be. We had only just met, but I was already doing the math in my head figuring out how long it would take me to drive up to visit her on weekends next year.

“Has anyone ever told you how hot you look all dressed up?” she asked.

“No.” I responded. “Most girls tell me that when they see me naked.”

She laughed out loud, and I smiled wondering how long I would have to wait before she had the chance. I crossed the room, and sat down next to her on the edge of the bed. The door to the hallway was closed, and her radio was playing in the background. I leaned across to kiss her and she met my mouth with hers. She pulled my tie off over my head, and placed it around her neck.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“It looks better on you than it does on me” I answered.

“Do I get the job?”

“I’ll have HR put an offer together tomorrow.” I said

“What makes you think I’ll say yes?” she teased. “I’m sure there are lots of companies that would kill to have me.”

“I have a good benefits plan.” I said. We lay back on the bed kissing for half an hour, until she apologized that she had an early class in the morning, and had to get some rest.

I drove back out to the apartment, my mind racing ahead, already making plans for the future. By summer I could be setting up an apartment in Hartford, and she could come down to visit. We could make trips to the shore, and spend days together in bed, like people did in the movies. For the first time in my life, I began to imagine a life beyond college. A life cut and pasted from L.L. Bean and J. Crew catalogs, with ocean breezes and Labrador Retrievers running along the beach.

I had to get this job now. The only other interview I had been able to land was for a job that required me to travel 100% of the time. When I had first interviewed for that position, I had yet to meet her and it sounded like a great opportunity to escape Upstate New York, but suddenly I had a reason to stay. Leaving now would be the worst of all possible outcomes. She was only a sophomore and still had two years before she graduated. How long would she be willing to wait for a boyfriend she never saw? I didn’t want to think about it, but the thought kept creeping back into my mind.

The Girl from the North Country

The winter of 89′ and 90′ had been a cold one. I can remember shivering in the drafty farmhouse apartment as the wind blowing through the walls was strong enough to part your hair. One night it was so cold I dumped my dirty laundry on top of the bed to try to add more insulation between me and the arctic air. And when that February sunshine finally hit the North Country that year, I was ready to explode with joy.

The last semester of my senior year of college had begun with an omen that should have convinced me right then to take six months off and finish my degree in the fall. Over the Christmas holiday I contracted the chicken pox while visiting my brother on Long Island. I arrived at school a week late from the break, still weak and feverish, and covered with red spots that made me resemble an acne riddled teenager.

The lead up to the holidays had been promising enough. After a three year drought I was involved in the first real relationship of my college career. No small feat at an engineering school where the men outnumbered the woman six to one. Her name was Kate and she was a friend of my roommate’s fiancée Kristine. Kate was a sophomore with a single room in an on campus dorm that promised convenient trysting. Like Kristine, she was a member of the drama club, and carried with her all the stereotypes associated with it. I knew the drama queens. I’d been to their parties. The ones where someone opens a wine cooler, and the mere smell of alcohol is enough to get them to take turns locking themselves in the bathroom over one perceived crisis or another. Then when everyone has had their chance to play the victim the party ends with everyone linked arm in arm singing along to Bette Midler’s “The Rose”. “Some say love it is a flower…” If I was lucky I’d be inebriated enough by that point it would be more amusing than embarrassing.

But the fact was I was lonely and desperate, and she was warm and inviting. At the start of my senior year I had moved into an off campus apartment in an old farmhouse six miles outside of Potsdam with my friend Scott. Living upstairs of an herbal soap shop run by a nice hippie couple had two main effects on my life. My clothes, and indeed my very skin, had taken on the smell of patchouli that permeated everything in that house. I had also become something of a hermit, so having a real flesh and blood girlfriend was a welcome addition to my sweet smelling monastic life. Scott’s fiancée Kristine had set us up on a date to the drama club fall banquet. As October ended and winter began in the North Country we had started dating.

It wasn’t love no matter which script you read, hers or mine, but it was entertaining. Our dates that fall were like a made for TV movie. She was self conscious and deliberate with every movement, as if the film was rolling. Tilt head, flip hair, forced laugh, pan out and camera fade to black. It was great theater until the night I returned from Thanksgiving break and stopped by her room. When I entered and tried to kiss her, she turned her head and offered me her cheek. She was quite an actress. That one gesture told me everything that the following month of negotiations was yet to reveal. The network had canceled us after a six week run. There would be no Emmy for Best Male Actor in a drama series.

So when I returned to school that January I had made up my mind. College was just 4 months away from ending forever and I wasn’t going to waste my time starting any more relationships that I wouldn’t be around to finish. I turned my attentions to finding a job, and enjoying what was sure to be the best semester of my 4 years at Clarkson.

Despite my plans, (and as anyone who has read my stories would suspect) my weakness for cold beer, and pretty girls would once more be my downfall. In a way it doesn’t really surprise me that as soon as I swore off women, I would stumble across one that I couldn’t resist.

The first two weeks were uneventful as I tried to catch up with the course work I had missed, and secure interviews with on campus recruiters. Then one Friday evening in early February I returned from playing basketball at the gym and noticed a blue “K” car parked next to Scott’s in the parking lot outside our apartment. It was odd to see a strange car parked outside at night. The soap shop downstairs had closed hours before, and it was unusual to have visitors to our place unless there was a party planned. Walking into the apartment I was surprised to find a petite, brown eyed brunette sitting at the kitchen table with Scott and Kristine.

Kristine introduced us. She was a friend of hers that was transferring to Clarkson after spending the fall semester at SUNY Geneseo. So I opened a beer, and pulled up a chair. She was quiet at first, but as Kristine began to work me into the conversation, she started to open up. She had been Kristine’s roommate the previous year, when they were both members of the Clarkson School, a program run by the University where high school students combined their senior year of high school with their freshman year of college. Before too long Kristine had left the room, and taken Scott with her, and I began to realize that Kristine was up to her tricks again. I didn’t mind. We were getting along quite well. She fired question after question at me, unafraid to look me straight in the eye, as if I were in a job interview. In a way I guess I was.

When she left to go home an hour later we were still alone. She lingered in the doorway and we searched for words.

“So, do I get the job” I asked her, and she smiled, her eyes looking up and to the side, as if the answer were written on the wall behind me.

“We’ll see how you score on the written test.” she answered.

Oh, if only I had just laughed it off, and let her drive away and out of my life I could have saved myself a lot of trouble, and heartache. I was 4 months shy of graduation. What would be the point of getting tangled up in a relationship? But I never did the sensible thing. No, despite my better judgment I started something that I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish.

The return of mud time

Winter’s back is broken. It topped 60 degrees on the Front Porch thermometer the past few days. So warm I had to take off my coat as I took the dogs to the nearby dog park. It felt so good to feel that strong March sunshine beating down on us as they splashed through the mud holes. Spring has come a month early this year, if you can even call the past few months winter.

In college the big thaw was always a cause for celebration. Slipping, and sliding through the mud in our duck boots on our way to and from class, the inside of our brains itched with cabin fever and the need for desperate, pointless, acts of recklessness. Spring officially began with a bonfire somewhere, and a keg of cheap beer. Like the ceremonial first pitch of a ball game, throwing out the first drunk was the official start of the summer. Being dorm dwellers, and avowed Anti-Greek types, we had to be more creative that most when planning our annual rite of spring.

At some point, one of us had discovered an abandoned boy scout camp in the hills above Parishville, on the edge of Adirondack park. It could have been a movie set for a teen slasher flick. It was at the end of a long dirt road, that wound deep back into the woods. The road was impassible at one point, as a gully had been cut across it to keep people out. However, to a group of aspiring engineers this was a challenge, and one trip to a hardware store later, we had fashioned a rudimentary plank bridge that we could remove behind us, to keep the authorities from discovering us.

Clear Pond Rd. - Old BSA Camp Vigor of the Woods - White Hill Wild Forest, NY

Money was collected, and a few bushels of clams, and a keg of cheap beer was procured. On a Friday evening in Mud Time 1987, the residents of Brooks 2 arrived at the abandoned camp in a caravan of vehicles. It wasn’t long before a fire was roaring, and clams were steaming on the shores of the pond. There under the starlight, we danced and drank like savages in some primeval ritual. Eventually our firewood supply was exhausted. At that point people started removing wood from inside of the abandoned buildings and building the fire ever higher. The flames reached 30 feet into the air, before we began to succumb to the effects of the beer, and slump off one by one to find a place to sleep.

This became an annual event for us, but as the years progressed, and the boys succumbed to the fraternity dark side, our numbers shrank. Finally, the last year at Clarkson we just held the Spring kegger in the field out back of the soap shop. Oddly, I think girls outnumbered boys at that one, but by then I was deep into Marie and did not take advantage of the rare proximity of cold beer and warm coeds. Ah, foolish youth…

I may be in my 40’s now, but I have to admit, there is still a part of me that long’s for a good kegger around a bonfire somewhere in the country. It just doesn’t seem like Mud Time without it.

Calgon take me away

I’m done, I’m spent, I’m exhausted. It’s been one week since I left on this trip, and I am waving the white flag. Country road, take me home… etc.

Japan is an interesting place to visit, but I find that as I get older it gets harder and harder to maintain the pace of these week long trips without wearing myself into the ground. Right now I want nothing more than a pizza, a tall cold glass of milk, and couch. Instead I get 6 hours of waiting to get on a plane, and a 12 hour flight, before stepping back into life. Then follows a two day delay for my soul to catch back up with my body, and the worst of the jet lag to dissipate. So don’t be surprised if you don’t seen much on the intertubes much in the coming days.

So enjoy some music in the comment boxes below, and say sayonara to Nippon.

Godzilla vs. Mothra

OK, it wasn’t quite a monster week flick, but today was brutal and epic in its own way. I just put in a 15 hour day, a full half of which was spent in trains or train stations. Pressed cheek to jowl with the populace of Toyko for hours on end I began to sympathize with Godzilla. If I’d have had a pair of lilliputian Japanese twins to cheer me on I’d have probably gone on a Mothra like rampage. Instead I settled for a cup of Gelato on the walk back to the hotel. Never under-estimate the power of frozen Italian confectionery to soothe the savage beast. So instead I leave you with some pics of my previous visits to Japan. Forgive me for the lack of photogenic artistry this time ’round. It’s damn hard to take evocative photos of telephone poles and cinderblock houses. As anyone that has ever been here can attest, Japan is not the picture post card perfect photo of Shinto Temples and Cherry blossoms. It’s about as lovely as a convenience store dumpster.

Ichiban with a bullet

Laptop open, iPod tuned to the Replacements, I glide effortlessly above the never ending sprawl of suburban Tokyo. Blasting down the track at 60+ miles per hour on board the Shinkansen I marvel at the technical wonders of our age. How such technology could flower in such a short period of human history is astounding. Even as recently as my parents generation, a dumpy middle aged, middle management, white guy could never have dreamed of being here and experiencing the things I take for granted every day. I am a lucky, lucky man.

But as impressive as our age of electronic gadgetry and high speed travel may be, they pale behind the one advancement of mankind that has single handedly transformed the way we live. I am speaking, of course, of the To-Go Cup. Where would our culture be without mobile beverages? Say what you want about Mass-Produced-American-Mc-Culture, but where would humanity be now without our freedom from the tyranny of stationary refreshment?

This was brought home again to me at 6am this morning as I walked the 2 blocks from my hotel to the nearest McDonalds and returned with a cup of coffee. And again, one hour later when I returned to the Excelsior Coffee shop and picked up another cup. But as Americanized as Japan has become, there are still some things that they are struggling to embrace. You can order a coffee to go, and they will give you a paper cup with a sippy lid full of top shelf Arabica brew, but they insist on placing the cup into a little paper bag, and handing it to you so that you can carry it with you like a school kid on their way to school. Clearly they have a lot to learn about the pleasures of mobile refreshment. Oh well, Rome wasn’t built in a day either.

So began another day of shooting about Tokyo in public transit, punctuated by brief interludes of head nodding, and polite discussion. 36 million souls coursing through the veins of this metropolis as orderly as could be. Nowhere else on earth do so many people exist in such close proximity, and appear completely unaware or each other’s presence. It’s amazing really. The level of politeness of the average Japanese citizen knows no bounds. They ride the trains and walk the streets in utter silence. Absorbed in their own little worlds, careful not to speak, or talk on the phone, chew gum, or eat or drink in public. In fact, one of the great mysteries of Japan is how they manage to survive without dehydrating. Despite the ubiquitous vending machines placed every 100 feet along the sidewalk, I have yet to see anyone drinking out of a bottle of Pocari Sweat, or Kirin Green Tea, or a can of Suntory Coffee Boss. I know, because I have been looking non-stop for the last 3 days. It’s become something of an obsession. So help me God, but sooner or later I will catch a Japanese person drinking a beverage in public.

In the mean time I will continue to oogle pigeon toed Japanese women in short skirts, devour as much raw seafood as is humanly possible, and defy convention by drinking coffee while I walk. Cause that’s just how I roll.

Lost in Translation

I don’t think I am the first person to ever say this, but Japan is a strange country. It’s been 17 years since my first visit and I continue to find things about the place that puzzle, and fascinate me. I’ll be going about my day, minding my own business, and then I will see something that makes me feel like Alice after she fell down the Rabbit Hole. Japan is an enigma, hidden inside of a paradox, wrapped in a riddle, and served with a side of sticky rice.

For this trip I’m spending the whole week, in and around the various suburbs of Tokyo. I’m staying at a hotel near our Tachikawa office, and using it as a base for daily visits to different Japanese customers. My Japanese colleagues and I have known each other for 5+ years, and have travelled together in Asia, Europe and the U.S., so they make me feel completely at home by treating me normally. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that they don’t make a fuss when I visit. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that one of them spent 3 years in Minnesota, and the other is from Osaka, and people in the Kansai area are known for being very un-Japanese. They laugh, they talk loud, they tell funny stories, exactly the kind of thing that is frowned upon in Tokyo.

The citizens of Tokyo have mastered the peculiar art form of sleeping while standing up. Ride any subway or train, and you will see them standing perfectly still inside of a moving train, or sitting with perfect posture on one of the seats, eyes closed, and chin resting on their chest. It’s amazing. I don’t know how they do it without falling down, or at the very least missing their station. But there they are like audio-animatronic robots that have just powered down for a few minutes to recharge their batteries.

We ride the trains for about 4 hours a day, punctuated only by short half hour meetings with customers where we sit around the table and smile at each other, while everyone speaks Japanese. I assume that they are discussing business, but I have a secret suspicion they are just commiserating with each other about having to entertain another round eyed devil. I have no idea if these visits do any good at all, but I do know that in Japanese businesses, nothing is ever accomplished or decided during a meeting. It is purely a formality, where information may be exchanged, but the meeting usually ends with no apparent progress towards anything. Only weeks later do you learn if some good has come of it. That’s the nature of a society where losing face is the worst thing that can happen to a person, and business decisions are always collectively agreed upon. To an impatient American like myself, business happens at a glacial pace.

Books about doing business in Japan are great at pointing out lots of little etiquettes that are supposed to be followed, and during my first few years of coming here I used to stress about these sort of details. Things like the proper way to introduce yourself, where to sit at a table, or in a cab, depending upon your status and rank. How to serve each other beer, and the proper way to eat with sticks. But after 17 years I’ve kind of stopped caring. Some of it I’ve figured out, and the rest I just look to my Japanese friends to point me in the right direction. I have found that making a fool of yourself, and being able to laugh about it is the surest way to connect with people from any culture.

In contrast to the buttoned up formality of a business meeting, going out to dinner is like hanging with a completely different crowd. Beers are downed, and food is ordered, and over the course of the evening they proceed to get drunk and loosen up. This is when I am at my smart alecky best, as the Japanese tradition is that what happens at the bar, stays at the bar. Subordinates are allowed to get plowed, and make fun of the boss to his face. In the morning it will all be forgotten. The key to surviving one of these nights is to politely let them out drink you. I long ago stopped trying to keep up with them once they start drinking. I decided that it was more entertaining, and healthier for my liver, to keep up for the first few drinks, but back off once their faces turn red, and they start getting buzzed. entertainment. So I am as fresh as a spring chicken this morning, while my colleagues are looking cadaverous in the fluorescent light of the office. A couple of cups of coffee inside of me, and I am ready to take on another day of cultural exchange.

One down, four to go.