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“I’M SMOKING AGAIN!”

May 19, 2020
ANECDOTES, FAVORITE THINGS, PLACES
9 Comments

BY: JAMES F. O’NEIL

“Aficionado: A person who is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about an activity, subject, or pastime.”

My Uncle Bill wanted me to become a gentleman salesman; he was disappointed when I became a Teacher in Chicago.  Yet in a way, I was that salesman in the classroom, selling English grammar, composition, and literature.  That satisfied him somewhat.

He smoked: Pall Mall cigarettes and White Owl cigars.  He was determined to teach me the ways of a “gentleman” ((he was an executive for US Steel): cigars and scotch.  I was smoking Camel cigarettes. [https://memoriesofatime.blog/2013/08/05/pack-of-camels-please/]

So on occasion, usually after a family gathering, he would offer me a good cigar (perhaps a Garcia Vega), and a glass of scotch. I’m not sure now whether single malt, or the age.  It was scotch.Then we moved away, and I moved away from cigars and scotch until later in my life.  I smoked until 1972; I was 31.  I had been smoking for 12 years, then suffered from severe bronchitis.  “You should stop smoking,” I heard the examining doctor say.  “That’s not very forceful,” I countered.  “Stop smoking!”  I did, then, at that point.  (“Cold turkey,” whatever that means.)  I got better, and was better at scotch (and vodka).  Too much.  Until six years ago.  (“Cold turkey…”)

Now retirement has brought some new drinking delights: Arnold Palmer iced tea and Diet Dr Pepper, with cigars.

Cigars?  My two sons have become my Uncle Bill: introducing me to A. J. Fernandez, Rocky Patel, Ramon Bueso, and other tobacco-leaf friends of theirs.  I have my humidor, cigar samples, lighters, catalogs, and conversations with them as I learn and enjoy.

I smoke outside, behind our cozy 860 square-foot condo.  My lawn chair faces the two-lane busy street, busy with cars, beer trucks for the tavern across the street, public transportation buses (I can see the bus stop not far from my resting place), and trucks laden with wares of all kinds for the large grocery store, its parking lot always filled.  Even not far away is a fire department house, with two engines.  Sirens and lights.  Excitement.  And ambulances for the hospital a few miles away.  Ah, retirement.

Using Mayo Clinic’s Guidelines for Tobacco Use (“How many cigars can I smoke a week?”  “NONE!”), I limit myself to no more than two a week.

Enjoyment and relaxation.  So much better than a cigarette.  Oh, I used to light up a cig after a meal; that was really good.  Or have a smoke while sitting on a bench relaxing; that was good, too.  Cigarettes, however, are pressure pleasures.  (“Gotta have a smoke!”  “Gotta extra smoke?”)  (“How much?” “A pack a day.”)  Cigars are relaxing pleasures.

One or two puffs, maybe three, a minute, rolling the cigar between the thumb and fingers, not coughing, not inhaling.  Just relaxing.  Puff.  Smoke.  Make as much smoke, look at, watch, the smoke.I sit under the trees, the clouds.  I see the Chinese Restaurant Take Out customers across the street.  Then the setting-sun light, the parking lot lights switch on full blare.  Maybe it’s quiet.  In the quiet I’m lost–and soon the cigar, I realize, has burned down to the label, or I am so relaxed, or it has become dark.

Or the mosquitoes…

Time to go inside.  Time passed so quickly, either alone or in conversation with others.  But that cigar. . .

A cigar is as good as memories that you have when you smoked it. —Raul Julia

One of the joys of cigar smoking is it allows us to delve into interesting thoughts and observations.

[It is said that Freud smoked 20 cigars a day…]

 © James F O’Neil 2020

 

I MARRIED “SONJA HENIE,” FIGURE SKATER

January 26, 2020
ANECDOTES, EVENTS, PEOPLE, PLACES
5 Comments

BY: JAMES F O’NEIL

“I want people to see a real person on the ice.  I want to seem tangible, hard-working, passionate about my skating, not just going out and doing something I’ve rehearsed a million times.” –Ashley Wagner, American figure skater.  [BrainyQuote]

* * *

Who takes ice skates on a honeymoon?  We did, in October 1963, to the Wagon Wheel Lodge, Rockton, Illinois.

Having packed our 1962 Corvair, my new bride-wife had tucked in her ice skates; for we chose our honeymoon getaway partially for its beautiful Olympic-sized skating facility available for us.

SKATING RINK AT WAGON WHEEL RESORT HONEYMOON

But I’m jumping a bit ahead of my story filled with memoriesofatime.

I never knew, all the while we were engaged, that my fiancée was a skater.  Not much mention, as I recall, was made of our hobbies, like stamp collecting, piano playing, ice skating, collecting Air Force shoulder sleeve insignia, and the like.  The two of us were so submerged in our work, and in our college courses, that there was little free time for hobbies.  An occasional lazy summer Sunday afternoon in Lincoln Park was a delicious treat.

So, when we were setting up our apartment before our wedding (we–gasp! –did not live together before our Catholic marriage!), I noticed a large square shoe box on her pile of stuff to be put away: Riedell.  White box, blue print, with an ice skate and silhouette of an ice skater on the top and sides.  “Do you skate?”  I asked on that warm Chicago October evening.  “You never told me anything about it.  I didn’t know,” I spoke. 

SKATE WITH PASSION!  SKATE RIEDELL!!

* * *

Sonja Henie (8 April 1912 – 12 October 1969) was a Norwegian figure skater and film star, a three-time Olympic Champion (1928, 1932, 1936) in Ladies’ Singles, a ten-time World Champion (1927–1936) and a six-time European Champion (1931–1936).  She won more Olympic and World titles than any other ladies’ figure skater.

At the height of her acting career, she was one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood and starred in a series of box-office hits, including Thin Ice (1937), My Lucky Star (1938), Second Fiddle (1939) and Sun Valley Serenade (1941) [Wikipedia], and It’s a Pleasure (1945).

Henie retains the record of most consecutive titles, sharing it with skater Katarina Witt.  In addition to traveling to train and compete, she was much in demand as a performer at figure skating exhibitions in both Europe and North America, becoming so popular with the public that police had to be called out for crowd control on her appearances in various cities.

Henie is credited with being the first figure skater to adopt the short skirt costume in figure skating, wear white boots, and making use of dance choreography. Her innovative skating techniques and glamorous demeanor transformed the sport permanently and confirmed its acceptance as a legitimate sport in the Winter Olympics.

Probably most young girls wearing ice skates, learning figures and jumps, aspired to be the next Sonja Heinie.

* * *

Once upon a time, Susie Braschko (before she became Susan O’Neil on 10-12-63) grew up in Des Plaines, Illinois.  Near the farmhouse where she lived lay a marshy area and watery pond where in winter her dad would set up a skating area for her and her brother.  She was a skater here, long before thoughts of Sonja Henie or the Ice Capades, Ice Follies, or Olympic Gold.  Here on the pond she learned to fall, and get up again.  And tasted the desire to want lessons.

Thus, it all began, with her dad driving her to Park Ridge, Illinois, to an ice-skating school (in an old theater)

for classes and lessons–until she had her own car to make her own way to the ice rink…and to her idol and teacher: Michael Kirby who once had to carry her off the ice–!–how, like a perfect gentle knight, as her calf bled from a gash-clash with another skater’s blade.  (Hospital stitches were needed.)

* * *

Michael J.R. Kirby (February 20, 1925 – May 25, 2002) Canadian figure skater who competed in men’s singles, was also (for a short while) an actor, and a one-time ice rink owner and skating coach.  When he turned 16, he became a Canadian national champion, winning the silver medal at the 1941 North American Championships and the gold at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships, 1942.  He turned professional, joining the Ice Follies in 1943. 

In the later 1940s, he moved to Hollywood, appearing in several movies.  In 1947, while he was skating in a West Los Angeles ice rink, the manager asked him to skate with Sonja Henie, the rink owner.  He joined with her, and later had a role in her film The Countess of Monte Crisco.  He also became part of Sonja’s Hollywood Ice Review, which went to Europe and England.

He relocated to Chicago, establishing a chain of instructional ice skating rinks beginning in 1948.  He received an offer from Ice Capades, a company that both produced ice-skating shows and developed ice-skating centers.  Leaders hired him to bring ice rinks like his Chicago-area studios to cities across the country–and around the world.  Nevertheless, success waned in the late 70s, due to the lack of interest and support for ice skating; most of Kirby’s ice studios closed.  Later in life he was an ice-skating consultant and then the author of a biography on Sonja Henie.  (Sonja retired in May 1956.)  He died in 2002 of renal failure, in his home at Orange County, California.  [Thanks to Vikki Ortiz, Chicago Tribune, January 15, 2010]

MICHAEL KIRBY

Many skaters who went on to compete nationally got their start at Kirby’s Chicago-area skating studios.

* * *

Sue tells, humbly and modestly, of her abilities and skills, of how much she learned and how much she so desired to go on in skating.  But, as fate would have it, two of her friends were chosen to audition for the Ice Capades, one successful: “Jennie.”  Sue, though, could never make the cut, for she was 5’0’; 5’7’ or there about, was the minimum height requirement (generic costume sizes).

THE SKATING TRIO

No doubt disappointment set in with the breakup of the friendship and “teammate-ship,” onset of high school and jobs, and family obligations.  (Her father died when she was a junior in high school.)  So, the skates were put aside, put away, for a short while, a few years.

* * *

I didn’t ice skate much, growing up in Chicago.  I was one of those who used hand-me-down skates and tried my best in a non-Michael Kirby city park rink.  Later, years later, I tried with a group of young adults in the bleak mid-winter, skating on frozen lakes near Mundelein, Illinois.  And that was it: end of skating, end of grouping.  Until the honeymoon, of course.   

It was then when I made a complete fool of myself, as I slipped and slid around on the ice, more comfortable sitting down as my new bride skated figure-eights around me, triple-jumped over me (I thought), and smiled as she posed as Ina Bauer, encircling my frozen limbs.

INA BAUER TECHNIQUE

But we had “the time of our lives!”  Babies later (two) found us living in Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” all potential skating rinks in the winter.

One of the larger lakes near our home (in 1966) was Lake Winona.  The Park Rec provided skating opportunities, complete with crackling ice, motion, and bumps.  Yet for the most part, a good venue for kids and adults willing to brave the winds and chills.  Sue taught both our sons to skate (but not this big guy), and became a Park Rec Skating Instructor, complete with choreographing a winter skate program.  All good rosy-cheeked fun.

Leaving Winona, we had not many ice-time opportunities for a few years after.  A backyard rink I once made, for one.  But an ice rink in a new shopping mall in Florida, where we traveled for a visit, in 1977.  The ice was calling her name; I called her my “Sonja,” this wife-mother who awed us when she got on that small rink by Macy’s and wowed the shopper-onlookers, who clapped at her not-forgotten Michael Kirby “routines.”

We were so impressed.

Fast forward: Our move to Florida, 1980.  New skating life gradually came to Southwest Florida Gulf Coast: Two ice rinks, one a professional rink with a team.  Open skating, classes for beginners on up, ice shows, private lessons from Olympians practicing in the area and coming from the other coast.  Skating teams, competitive teams for all age groups, hockey teams.  The Ice Crystals were born (women’s adult skaters) –and medaled, and received trophies, traveled to Las Vegas and San Francisco and other national competitions.  And Susie–Run-Around-Sue–with her poodle skirt and all, high-scored for her age group.

POODLE SKIRTS TEAM

So, costumes changed, and blades needed sharpening, and airline travel had to be arranged, and then even new skates.  There was rink rental/ice time (that Zamboni!), coaching fees, gas mileage, and other miscellaneous expenses (way beyond a simple city park rink cost).  From time to time, Sonja Sue went to adult free skate; she also managed to take her skates on vacation, to her Ohio cottage, using the practice ice of the Pittsburgh Penguins, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania–or on ice near Youngstown, Ohio.

SUE, BIG ICE, AND CLEMSON CLEM

Skater Sue, of course, had her share of falls, sore knees, bruises, twists, aches, sore butt, and from time to time a sore wrist or arm from pinwheels–or from an incorrect pull by a teammate.  Harder falls, then The Broken Wrist.

Broken wrist casts come in a variety of colors; she chose black, to blend with her costumes for the up-coming Las Vegas competitions.  And all went well, her team buddies holding her, supporting her when needed.

Nevertheless, that fall, that incident, set her aback, and recuperating time took much out of her.  The team, at the same time, had lost two or three members to illness; the small group barely had enough bodies to make a line across the midline of the rink.  The coach had her time cut back; the end was near.  The team ceased to exist.  The trophy case would never be added to by the adult skate group; only individuals competed from the rink.

* * *

“I think you should consider hanging up your skates,” the doctor said.  Glum.  Gloom.  No tears, but sadness at the realization: a trip to the ER with back spasms, X-rays revealing a fracture at L-2, and degenerative spine disease.  A bad score on a DEXA scan was an earlier warning.  A dangerous combination should any kind of fall occur, especially one on a cold hard ice surface.  Osteoporosis.

And that’s the tale now.

She has her medals and her certificates, her videos, and her photographs; those can never be disputed.  These are her memoriesofatime.  For me?  By now, you might have wondered what role I played in all this narrative, other than as its author, with what are so many of my memoriesofatime.

Well, I was intimately involved with costume selection (“That’s nice.  I like the red one, too.”) or being chauffeur (“What time do I get you to the airport?”) or fixer (“I’ll get some thread and safety pins.”  “I have a bandage right here in my pocket.”  “Here’s my handkerchief for those tears.”); jeweler (“Are those really real diamonds she’s wearing for that number?”), and charmer (“You guys did so well!  You deserved 1st Place, not those young skaters.”), and even technical advisor (“Exactly thirty-three seconds.  Just right!”).

At times I was Team Husband, just being there for an evening or Saturday practice–drinking hot chocolate, reading a book, smiling often, eating a hot dog or piece of pizza, or simply watching, enthralled by a group of women doing skating routines that would be in competition.  Or single skaters practicing, doing jumps and figures and whatever else ice skaters do to make us smile, make us wonder how they can do that on two quarter-inches of razor-sharpened metal attached by screws to a white boot, shoe-laced tightly around foot and ankle.

“Anything I should know about foot-pounds of pressure?”  “And if you feel yourself falling, I want you to relax and . . .”  “And, yes, those blades are really sharp!”  

[See the movies Blades of Glory, 2007; The Cutting Edge, 1992.]

I seldom complained, about time and money, about illness and injury, cuts and bruises–and expenses for Biofreeze.  Our hobbies–well, her “hobby” was really a “passion,” as she called it.  My hobby was collecting zinc and lead diecast airplanes.  I never had the “passion” as she did.  Ever.

So, I would add, in closing, nothing.  That’s all what I want to relate about my own “Sonja Henie,” from our beginnings to now, a good skating time of some forty-five years or so.  I should mention that there was many a time that I could not believe how beautiful she was “out there, on ice” with her musical motifs and routines–and how often  I was choked up by a special performance (and am still moved watching her videos), and how you might even have seen me reach for my handkerchief to wipe my eyes . . .

© JAMES F O’NEIL 2020

SEND IN THE CLOWNS!

MEDAL WINNER

1949: MEMORIES OF A TIME LONG AGO

November 13, 2018
ANECDOTES, EMOTIONS, GROWING UP, PLACES
1 Comment

BY: JAMES F. O’NEIL

“I think I have serious latent Catholic guilt issues.”  –Grimes (Brainyquote)

A grey rainy late winter day in Chicago.  My dad and my sister are in the car (our ’37 Plymouth) waiting to pick me up from school.  I was in 2nd grade at St. Jarlath’s, near our apartment on Van Buren and Ashland (long gone now, concretized by the Congress Street-Eisenhower Expressway). My dad worked nights but came to get us home for lunch in bad weather.  What was the delay?  I’m inside the classroom, sitting under the teacher’s desk.  What was happening then in 1949?

Born in April 1941, I have few memories before 1944, though some child development specialists have told they could unlock the drawers holding those before-memories.  How many “major” memories do we get to keep?  Memories are the captured ones, say, the ones not ever forgotten, those “memorable” thoughts and stories that unfolded becoming our lives.  Choosing which ones to share, or to organize those recalled from time to time can be a daunting task, albeit a rewarding one (cathartic one?).  I am certain there were, in my first three or four years, those first baths, and birthdays–complete with cake and frosting in hair, or on the high chairs, and thrown about the room.  Perhaps early birthdays with games and balloons and smashed cake really do form the basis for celebrations of all kinds that come at later dates.

But the memories of our first three or four years?  I delight in all that is forgotten: the pain of early ear infections, of being one gigantic chicken pox when all the pox-dots are connected.  Scarlet fever, insect bites and stings, broken favorite toys, cough medicines, penicillin injections, Vicks-covered wrapped-chests, and more awful things that should remain in those memory drawers, not needing to be unhoused.  For what real purpose?

We hardly also remember all the good times, for they were not so traumatizing on the psyche.  Yet I would not mind the good memories that could be released: memories of first beach day (not a sun burn, of course, but the eternal sand castle building or perfect water temperature), train trips or miniature-train rides in parks or at carnivals, parties and Christmases and Easter egg hunts, and A&W root beer floats, and .  .  .  Release might involve the “good” with the “bad.”  (Personally, Dr. Jung Freud, I like it the way it is–as if I have slept through most of those first three or four years.)

Therefore, my life story begins in 1944: I was three.  That is a good start for my history.  My baby pictures tell enough of that, especially those with my favorite cousin Marilyn on one side and my sister, Janice, on the other side of me–all with our little knees showing.  Three joined at the hip, as it were, on Grandpa Schuma’s front porch.  THAT is the memory, the picture I want to keep alive forever as representative of my early-early life, the “good life.”

jimmy on GRANDMA'S PORCHTHE THREE OF US ON THE PORCH AT 5644 SOUTH SEELEY 1945

It is my school life, though, that has always been a nine-month chunk of my life cycle.  So much of my time, my daily life, was spent in school or around school or going to/coming from.  The summers, then, were sacrosanct with a life of their own.  That is why we probably use the expression so often “School Life,” from pre-K, or even nursery school, to whatever graduation point or final degree.

Overall, I grade my “school life” in the range of “good” to “above average”: C to B+, from first grade through my advanced degree programs.  In “My Life Story: Early Life in School: 1947-1949,” there exist a few milestones, like Baltimore Catechism (and hating–forever–memorization); First Holy Communion (and that dark blue wool suit seen in pictures);

jimmy's First Communion May 9, 1948

JIMMY’S O’NEIL’S FIRST COMMUNION MAY 9, 1948

a Confessional, for the first time.  The Milk Break: I loved milk breaks–any grade.  (And I wish I had gone to kindergarten to have had a blankie and a nap.  My vivid memories center upon “chocolate”: for morning milk [in glass bottles in metal cases, ordered a week ahead].)  Nuns-as-Teachers (I cannot remember their names or their faces, but I do have a picture of 1st and 2nd grade blackness.)  And, finally, the memory that I cannot ever eradicate: Being Late:  A rainy day when my dad was able to pick us up for lunch.  I was late.

Let me back up now.  Earlier that morning, I got myself into trouble.  I was talking to the kid across the aisle from me, no doubt my friend Peter Mendoza.  Now what do 2nd graders have to talk about in 2nd grade in mid-morning after Milk Break?  What is so important that is worth violating the Silence Rule?  (We had no Smart phones to keep us occupied.)

I cannot recall nor remember.  “I have no recollection of the event or the conversation,” politicians say.

Whatever it was certainly drew the attention of Sister Mary of the Rosary Beads, our nun-teacher.  My nun-teacher called a name-not-mine.  I thought I heard her call my name, “Jimmy O’Neil come to the front of the room.”  (Caught!  I was probably talking.)  Guiltily I stood up and accepted the punishment.  So I walked to the Time-Out spot near the blackboard.  A classmate was already there.  “Did she call your name?”  Soon I began talking to one rightfully punished standing by the blackboard.  “Jimmy O’Neil.”  This time I was called out for talking by the One-in-Black-Who-Saw-and-Heard-Everything, and told to go sit under her desk–a Final Punishing Place!  My memory of pulling away the teacher chair and crawling under the drawer and skootching next to the “modesty panel” still hurts.  And how was I going to explain my situation to my dad if I did not come out for lunch on time?  Fear of the Lord.  Guilt.  Crime and Punishment.

I was wearing a flannel plaid shirt.  Brown and white.  I happened to be wearing one of my collectibles: a metal pin-back pin found in cereal boxes, pins of railroads.

Vintage-1980s-Prr-Pennsylvania-Railroad-Train-Logo-Pinback

PENNSYLVANIA RR PIN-BACK PIN

I took off my Pennsylvania RR pin and played with it while listening to nun and students.  I began to formulate my excuse: The Lie.  I would lie and say I hurt myself and had to stay after for help.  I managed, at eight years old, in 1949, to plot a lie-story that would save me from home punishment for the double-punishment of the 2nd grade classroom.  I would show my injury on my hand.  I had to create an injury story.

I picked at the wrist of my left hand with the pinpoint of the Pennsy RR button.  I picked and picked until I began to bleed and open a wound.  I felt no pain.  No guilt either.  Time passed quickly.  The class continued its lessons without me as I picked and poked and bled.  Then the bell.  I heard all leave the room; the door shut.  All left except Jimmy O’Neil, forgotten under the desk.  Everyone forgot me.  I crawled out, with my bloody sore already scabbing over.  It was much smaller than a dime.  I went to the cloakroom for my coat.

Dad and my sister were waiting in the car, in the rain.  As I ran to the car, I let my courage come unstuck from somewhere.  “I’m sorry I’m late.  I was kept after for talking.”  (No mention of being forgotten by everyone, including my teacher.)  No more was said.  Moreover, no one asked about the sore on my hand; I didn’t tell any more than was required.

That’s it.  My brain, learning, and memory cells increased proportionately after 1949.  I know I learned the basics of how to count, to use the alphabet, and how to tie my shoes–even at school.  And, I’ve forgotten so much–trivia, irrelevancies, factoids.

Yet I cannot ever eradicate this one 2nd grade anecdote.  I want to keep it, not tug it around to depress me, but not throw it away either.  It’s a story by a little boy about a little boy.  Maybe it has some Catholic guilt within, maybe some fear of disappointing a dad (or worry about some punishment), or maybe it has a small step in my growing up.  For sure, though, I made certain I never ever had to sit under a teacher’s desk again!

. . .

“Every person’s autobiography is both unique and usual, the story of an individual life and of all mankind.  We are shaped by an inescapable human condition which dictates certain events and themes that will figure prominently in every life story.”  –Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox, Your Mythic Journey (1989)

©  James F. O’Neil  2018

 

 

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? ON VACATION?”

July 22, 2018
ACTIVITIES, ANECDOTES, EVENTS, PLACES
2 Comments

BY: JAMES F. O’NEIL

 “. . . I’ve been to the mountaintop.”  “I saw beautiful spacious skies, amber waves of grain, and purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain!”

July is nearly over.  Some summer vacations have finished, some already begun; all the same, some are still being planned.  “Beginning in October 2018, there will be direct flights from TPA/TIA [Tampa] to Gatwick [London].”  “I cannot wait!  I’d go in a heartbeat.” “But there is so much to see and do yet in the United States, why travel overseas?”  “There is also direct flight service by Icelandic Air to Reykjavik.”  Someday, maybe.  “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” says Rick Blaine in Casablanca.  Something like that, I say, “of all the Oh!-The-Places-You’ll-Go places I have been, including Hurley, Wisconsin (pop.  1540); Fargo; Raymond, Mississippi (pop. 1933); Bethesda, Ohio (pop. 1256, more with fracking crews); Las Vegas; Yeehaw Junction, Florida (pop. 240), I’ve been to more than others have; others, for certain, out-place me.  However, I’m not in any way in contention for a carbon-platinum Frequent Flyer Rewards Card in my wallet.

Getting from one place to another, nevertheless, has always distressed me, sometimes when I was younger, to the point of actually fainting before a trip, in anticipation.  (I do recall a near-meltdown not too many years ago while frustrating with packing a very large suitcase that would not hold everything, including my large bicycle seat.)  I hate packing, hate to pack.  I’d like to go, to arrive with my toothbrush and shaving kit–and with my medications, of course.  No luggage.  No carry on.  Maybe a book (paperback Proust, probably–or congested Kindle).  Then check in, relax, afterwards to see whatever I came to see.

What have I seen, from the top (35,000 feet: clouds and oceans, lakes and mountains) to the under (Eurostar–London to Paris–under the English Channel; the Metro; the “L” under the Chicago River)?  I have fashioned a memory-filled checklist, culled from journals, from Day-Minders and ticket stubs, in no particular order, priority, or chronology.  I am sure that as I write this (and later edit and revise) I’ll remember something, like “I forgot Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold, in West Virginia, the center of the Hare Krishna movement,” or “Remember that really great Cajun restaurant where we ate crayfish down by the bayou in Savannah?” “Yeah!  That’s when they were filming Forrest Gump outside our hotel.” 

“How old was I when . . . ?”  “Were the kids with us when we drove to . . . ?”  Our first trip (in 1977) to Florida, to Disney World, to Cape Kennedy, our first “grits.” “What are they?”  [NOT, “Girls Raised In The South.”]  “Oh, that’s Cream of Wheat.  Butter, please, and maple syrup, too.  Thanks.”  So, “Once upon a time,” [read aloud]: “I have, we did, we have . . . traveled to, stayed at, climbed, flown to, rode, ate at, moved to, drove, watched, swam in, driven along, peeked over, touched, walked the, accelerated in, viewed, sped upon, stopped, adored in, looked upon, rode in, stood beneath, rushed, stepped over, rested, visited, stood before, paused, leaned over, slept in, toured, crossed, ran alongside, wandered, cruised, stalled, transfixed . . . .  [Pick a verb.  Find a place, setting, activity (surely your mind’s eye already sees, the heart already races, the memory is activated).  Locate a picture or photo to accompany a special memoryofatime.  Open up a box of Nostalgias to munch on.  Have fond, sweet (though maybe icy, rainy, cold, slippery?) memories.]

For one, Stonehenge: BIG ROCKS, and Salisbury Plain, and the Romans in Bath.  On Chesil Beach (with Ian McEwan, no doubt, having walked upon the same stones), putting a few in my pocket for my travel collection.  And stony Hastings Shore, the English Channel lapping upon the feet of the bathers in the cold water, my thinking about Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Foyle and World War II.  One warm July Sunday, while on a noontime walk, seeing Stephen Hawking on a Cambridge street.  Three summers in Cambridge: university library, along the Cam River, bicycle riding to Grantchester, studying and tutoring, Selwyn College, trains to London for excursions, Globe Theater, writing, awe-ing, and . . . . 

I have also looked out upon the Pisgah National Forest, from the parapets of one of America’s finest castles, the Biltmore House.  The view was holy, overwhelming, awe-some in the glory of the Creator. 

However, most breath taking for me in life was standing alone before my trek up the dunes in the Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. 

SAND DUNES BY JEFF COTNERCOM

GREAT SAND DUNES PHOTO by JEFF COTNER

There I stood, amazed, a people-ant to those looking down upon me; yet from my perspective, those specs beyond, above, showed how insignificant I was, am, in relation to the forces and effects of time and Nature.  So I climbed and climbed.  No steps, like at Ephesus.  Steps.  To the Parthenon.  Huffing and puffing, like climbing those steps inside the Washington Monument many (younger) years before, or those leading to Monks Mound, “at one hundred feet, it is the largest prehistoric earthen mound in North America”: Cahokia, near St. Louis.

MONKS MOUND WIKIPEDIA

MONK’S MOUND from WIKIPEDIA

Reaching the “top” of the Dunes, I became engaged with a sense of cosmic realism.  I was a part of it all.  I looked out upon . . . the waters surrounding Mont Saint-Michel in France;   mont saint-michelor came upon the Pacific Ocean for my first glimpse at Seaside, Oregon, with its Lewis and Clark Expedition history.  On Goat Island, visiting a few times the crashing and splashing and misting and forcings of the Niagara River at Niagara Falls. 

Sue and Jim at Goat Island, Niagara Falls, NY

SUE AND JIM (YOUNGER THAN NOW)

Was I able to “slip the surly bonds of earth . . . And while, with silent lifting mind I’ve trod // The high untrespassed sanctity of space, / Put out my hand, and touch[ed] the face of God. . . ?”  

interior-hagia-sophia HAGIA SOPHIA

With God-places, I’ve stood within and beneath the great domed Hagia Sophia in Istanbul-Constantinople, have been shoeless in the Blue Mosque; prayed in Chartres Cathedral; knelt in Ely Cathedral, Westminster Abby, Notre Dame in Paris; walked the aisles of St Louis (Missouri) Cathedral and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. 

I have wandered in wonderment, showered so often with kaleidoscopic colors of light from the stained glass magnificently built by crafters in so many “houses” of worship, like Saint-Severin in Paris.  Glass in Saint- Severin by Jean René Bazaine 1970.JPG

Outside, I looked UP: “Up we go!” “Into the next car, please.”: The London Eye.  “Look up!”: The Eiffel Tower: “No, I cannot go.  You ride up if you want.  But I will walk with you on top of the Arc de triomphe.”  “Sorry.  The Arch is closed today.  High winds and a storm coming” the St. Louis trip frustrating, though we saw enough of the Ole Man [Mississippi] River.  In 1966, I looked up upon the Empire State Building.  That was An Affair to Remember, my first visit to New York City.  (I didn’t ride up.)  But I was never Sleepless in Seattle, looking up at Mount Rainier, a glacier, and viewing Mount St Helens (not a far trip away).

So I’ve come to the end of the “Rick Steves Road Trip for Jimmy O’Neil”: vacations, trips, travels, excursions, journeys, stays, visitations, visits, pilgrimages–all part of a lifetime of activity, though a small part.  But when I consider how much time is spent in planning and preparing, from initial thought or utterance–“Where should we go this winter?”  “Where do you want to go for our anniversary?”  “Should we go to . . . again?”  “How much time do we have to . . . ?”–to the final credit card payment for the last meal of the trip or something bought in the duty-free shop, a vacation takes a long time in a person’s life.  No wonder we are so worn out after we return home, to rest.

Sometimes, though, the vacation place is “restful” itself, the reason for the trip itself: no touring, no running around, no shopping, just being there.  A beach.  A mountain cabin.  A quiet Walden Pond.  A cave.  A cave?  A cave on Paros Island, in the Cyclades Islands.  In May 2005, five of us adults took a memorable trip to our Greek cave.

A non-stop overnight flight from New York to Athens.  (I hate packing.)  A long bus ride from the airport (schlepping luggage) to the Port of Piraeus in Athens.  Then a ferry boat ride–BIG ferry boat, with people, trucks, cars–in the late afternoon with a dark night arrival (nearly missing our stop), finding a rental car (four sardines, holding luggage, speeding along curves and hills on dark roads, black-black outside), arriving at a car park in an asleep town, almost midnight.  “We have to do what?  Carry our suitcases up and around the hill to get to our place?”  Cursing all the way, punctuated with laughter about how we found this place.  Dogs barking at us, disturbing them, cats hissing as we snaked around homes, through alleyways, on walkways, tripping occasionally on a front stoop in the dimly lit “neighborhood.”  Huffed and puffed (of course) to the top, at the end-stop of the street.

PAROS CAVE-HOME.JPG

VACATION CAVE-HOME, PAROS ISLAND, GREECE in the HEART of the AEGEAN SEA

“What is this, a real cave?” as we entered through the front doors.  A cave-home, a home carved out from the promontory overlooking the town (LEFKES/LEFKOS).  Modernized: plumbing, furniture, fireplaces, electronics, electricity, rooms.  “AWESOME!”  I said, as I put my suitcase . . . no closets.  Platform queen-sized bed with solar tube skylight through the mountain above us, allowing light in, allowing us to view stars all night.  Two baths and showers.  Lemon trees outside, with a spectacular view of the entire town, whitewashed-in-Greek.  A 20-minute walk up or down to the chemist or bakery with chocolate croissants daily, or fresh baguettes.  Or the market.  Or to the rental car.  (We did not remain cave dwellers for the week: we explored the island, did visit another island and old Portuguese fort, sat on a beach, ate in different restaurants, visited a famous Roman quarry, among other activities–and even made fresh lemonade daily.)

What a unique opportunity that I will never forget, what an experience like no other in my entire vacation-ing life.  “Where ya’ been?” “I have been to the mountain.”  I have.  At the very top, UP, far beyond our cave, topped with giant (dormant) wind turbines.  I have been to the top of the mountain.  And it was good.

LEFKES on PAROS 2005.JPG

LEFKES on PAROS ISLAND, GREECE, 2005

 …

ADDENDUM

The Summer of 2018 will be memorable for no vacation.  Foot surgery instead forced an in-bed holiday.  Four to six weeks of no weight bearing, occasional icing, and some few hydrocodone tablets kept down travel costs considerably.  However, the electric bill may have spiked due to an overuse of audio and video, like Spotify, Pandora, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. 

© JAMES F. O’NEIL 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

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