Christmas Carols at the Bar

     We saw them standing outside the bar as we drove up. “Ah, the smokers,” one of us said.  When we got out of the car, the smell of cigarette smoke drifted across the ice-covered street.

     Should we really go into this bar?  But we had been there before, a year ago.  It was a nice place.  A noisy place, but friendly.

    As we passed through the smokers and our leader started through the doorway, one of the smokers, a young man said, “Here comes the real singers.”

     “What?  You know us?” I said.

     “Yeah, you are a barbershop quartet?”

      “How do you know that?”

     “I just know,” he said.

      “You work for Santa Claus?” I asked.  He laughed and I was the last of the four of us through the door.

     Inside a band was playing in the corner just to the right of the door.  They were on a small raised stage.  They had four or five microphones and speakers.  I didn’t really look at them as I threaded my way past the bar.

     “Let’s head for the back,” I said.  Three of us got the booth as far away from the band as we could.  It was a bluegrass band playing Christmas carols.  Folks at the bar were singing along.  Ted had disappeared.

    The evening began at 7 p.m. in the parking lot of SOJ church.  I was a bit early as was Ted.  We were sitting in his car perusing the evening’s repertoire.  A lady got out of a car and started across the parking lot in front of us.  She hesitated, looked at the church, which showed only security lighting inside, turned, looked again, finally started back towards her car.

      Ted stepped out of the car and asked, “Do you need me to help you get into the church?”  Ted has a key.

      “Well, I was going to attend the advent service tonight.”  Suddenly, I remembered the announcements from Sunday.  The final advent service wouldn’t be at the church.

     I leaned over to call through the open car door, “They’re meeting at the beer joint tonight, for beer and carols,” I said.  “I don’t know which beer joint, though.”

      “Oh,” she said.  “That’s right.  I forgot.”  She went to her car and was gone.  The other two guys pulled up beside us in their cars.

     We went on to our date at the country club singing for a Rotary Christmas party.  We had fun.  I hope the Rotarians did, too.  There was a real live Santa Claus there.  He was handing out presents when we got there.  He introduced us.  We sang.

     I got to ask Santa a question.  “How are you getting along with your new reindeer?

     “You mean Rudolph?” he asked.

     “No, Rudolph is one of the old ones now.  This one has kind of a funny name for a reindeer.  Olive, I think.  Her name is Olive.”  Santa shook his head.  The other guys in the quartet started muttering at me.

      Finally, one said, “There’s no reindeer named Olive.  What are you talking about?”

      “Well if there is no reindeer named Olive, why do we sing, ‘all of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names?’”  Santa high-fived me.  We sang our last song and left for the church parking lot where we left our cars.

       A beer sounded good.  It was only a little after 8 p.m.  We stopped at a bar we had been to once before in a shopping strip near Lemay and Drake.

      Seated in our booth, the three of us waited for a waiter, debated whether we had to go to the bar and order for ourselves, or what.  Ted finally showed up.  “We’re up next,” he said.

       “Whattya mean?  You didn’t.”

       “Yes I did.  As soon as the band gets done playing this number, they are taking a break and we’re singing.”

      The band stopped playing and we worked our way from back of the building to the front.  This time I was looking.  First, I recognized John, the widowed bass player in the SOJ church’s bluegrass praise band.  He was standing by the end of the bar.  We shook hands and said hello.

      On stage was the fiddler and leader of the bluegrass praise band.  It wasn’t the praise band with him.  It was another band he plays with.  Then I saw the pastor and several other folks I recognized from having sung at SOJ a few times in past years.

      This was the beer joint where the final Advent service was being held.  No wonder Ted had an “in” with the band.  So that’s why the guy outside among the smokers recognized us, having just seen us three days ago when we sang at church.  Were all those guys out there smoking in front of the entrance Lutherans?  Was the lady there, the one in the parking lot I told I didn’t know which beer joint?

       My detective skills should be labeled “defective” skills.  Or my power of observation is limited.  Head-slap, Duh, and all those things.

      We sang three Christmas songs, stopped by the bar, got our beers and headed back to the back.  Ted wasn’t done. 

      In the other back corner, across the room, sat a guy wearing a Marine cap.  Nothing would do but we sing the Marines Hymn to him.  “But Ted, we can’t sing while the band is playing.”

      “That’s OK.  We’ll wait till they’re done with this number.”  When the band stopped, Ted got us up and led us to the booth where the Marine and his lady friend were trying to have a quiet supper.  We sang.  They thanked us profusely.  We went back to our beer and our conversation.

     The band was packing up. The Advent service was finished.  In the relative quiet, we hashed over the night’s work, the year’s work, what next year would bring.  Dick takes off for Hawaii in a week and doesn’t come back until April.

     We were down to a couple of swallows of our beer, and near the end of our energy for the day.  The waitress came over.  “The man in the corner wants to buy you guys a round,” she said.

    “No, no, thank you, thank him,” we all said.  We turned and waved to the Marine.  Then we went to his booth and he got up, shook all our hands, and thanked us again, and we thanked him for his generous offer.  We explained we still had a job to do tomorrow, sing for a church’s widow’s group.  Can’t stay out too late anymore.

      We filed out of a much quieter place than we had entered.  Outside, there were no smokers.  The bandsmen had all their gear loaded and were ready to depart.  There weren’t too many cars in the parking lot.  

     It was closer to 8:30 p.m. than 9 p.m.

     

Trial by Jury

      The young lady stifled a scream.  She struggled to remain seated. The spider rappelled down the single filament.  Everything in the courtroom came to a halt.

     It came in the mail, the oversized postcard with the perforated tabs on the end that you tear off before you can unfold the triple-flapped card.  “SUMMONS FOR TRIAL JUROR SERVICE Larimer County” it said.

     My first action was to groan.  Then I thought of John Adams and the biography by David McCullough that I read a few years ago.  He left Abigail and family home alone while he spent years making dangerous trips across the Atlantic to lobby in England and France on behalf of his nascent country.  If he could give up years of his life away from home, business, and family, I guess I can devote one day in service to the country.

      Among the items of jury service outlined in the contents of the card were methods of being excused or postponing jury duty.  I read them, but I never seriously considered trying one of them.

      The card came in November, about a month before the date I was to report in December.  I put it on the calendar.  Soon, the date rolled around and I pulled the post card down and reread it.

      I had filled out all the requested information.  I had to phone a certain number on the afternoon prior to the date of service to see if the trial was still on.  I called about 3 p.m.  The canned voice informed me that juror numbers seventy-something through 125 should report between 8:00 and 8:20 a.m.  I was number 79.

      Other numbers were instructed not to report.  So I scheduled my day.  The alarm rarely gets set any more.  I set it for 6 a.m.  I checked out the route and the weather.  Rain-turning to snow likely.  Better give it an extra fifteen minutes, with weather and early morning traffic.

      I left at 7:15.  I walked into the building at 7:48 a.m.  I joined the line in front of the courtroom door.  Eventually I got to two gals manning ticket office-like windows.  She looked for my name.  She couldn’t find it.  I pushed my juror card through the slot beneath the glass.

      “Oh, jury duty,” she said.  “Go back out these doors and go straight down the hall.”  When I stepped out into the hall, I saw the big sign that said, “Report for Jury Duty” with an arrow pointing down the hall.  I never have figured out how I can miss big signs like that, but I frequently do.

      I turned into a doorway where the arrow pointed.  A lady at a desk amid file cabinets and other impedimenta that made the office seem crowded took my post card and removed a third of it.  She checked her list and checked a name, presumably mine.  She thanked me for coming in and directed me around another corner to the waiting room, a room full of chairs arranged roughly into two bunches, facing away from the doorway I entered.

     On the wall were two televisions showing all kinds of information, one tv for each side of the room.  It looked familiar.  When we went to license the new car, we sat in front of a television informing us how to speed up our visit and other information.  It must be the county way, I thought.

       The television was advising me about where to park, and where NOT to park, and ask the clerk if I need to go out to repark.  The telephone instructions, which I listened to twice the day before said I could bring a book, but electronic devices had to be shut off in the courtroom, so I opened my book and began to read.

      The tv had gone through three or four reps when I decided to watch beginning to end.  I was supposed to pick up a “jury badge” at the table just outside the door.  I looked around and some of my peers were indeed sporting big sticky tags on their breasts that said “JUROR”.

    Out the door I went and grabbed two or three tags, sorted them down to one, returned to my seat and tried to separate the slick back from the sticky side of the tag.  Eventually succeeding, I applied the badge to my shirt.  Back to my book for another ten minutes.

     The lady who checked off my name and took my card came in to address us, informing us we now should watch a 20-minute video on jury service.  It explained that the badge was necessary so that any witnesses, lawyers, or even the judge should avoid discussing the case with, or in front, of us.

     The flick presented several people who had served on juries, including a judge who was called and served.  The drawing is random, names taken from such places as the state income tax forms and other records the county maintains such as driver’s licenses.

      About fifteen minutes before nine, the lady who had been our instructor up to this point, the jury commissioner she was called, introduced two people, a man and a woman, who would be the courtroom bailiffs or some such title.  They would stick with us until the end of our service when we would be dismissed. 

     The man called the roll to be sure we were all there.  We were, all thirty of us.

      In sheepdog fashion, they herded us up and took us to the elevators, the lady leading and the man following.  It took a couple of the elevators to handle all of us.  When we landed on the third floor, we waited outside the courtroom door until all of us had arrived. 

     At about five of nine, the lady opened the courtroom doors and we were instructed to sit in the wooden pews where observers sit.  They weren’t very comfortable.  There were three rows of wooden benches on either side of the aisle, not a very big room, really.

     Promptly at nine, we were instructed, “All rise!” which we did and his honor entered, sat, and instructed us to sit.  He said we were subject to some repetition because his instructions were repeats of the twenty minute tv show.

     Then he told us to look at the person on our left, then our right, then in front of us, then behind us.  This was seeming an awfully lot like church, the pews, the greeting one another.  We were to ask each of those four persons if they had heard what the judge said.  I was  in the front row on the defendant’s side, so I asked the defense attorney if he had heard the judge.  He did.

     Two or three people asked for and got headphones tied to a little radio very much similar to the ones we wore in Italy.  With everyone able to hear clearly, the judge went on.  He asked if there was any reason why anyone should not or could not serve on the jury.  One lady, a retired lawyer said she had prosecuted a case in which the defense lawyer had been on the other side.

  The judge asked her if that would prejudice her against, or for, the defendant.  She said no and she didn’t get dismissed.  The guy sitting next to me on the hard bench said he had had back surgery a few months ago and was unable to sit for long.  The judge said we would take breaks about every two hours, and if the guy was selected to serve, he would be assigned and end seat where he could stand as needed.  He didn’t get dismissed.  A couple of other people were involved with attorney’s dealings, but none of them got dismissed.

     The judge said we probably had watched court proceedings on tv, but we should listen closely to his instructions, because this was real and may differ from the dramatic interpretations of television. Then the judge entered into the case.  It was a criminal case.  The defendant was charged with DUI, lane violations, and some third thing related to operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.

     Several times we were admonished that the defendant was to be presumed innocent.  It was up to the prosecution to prove its case.  The defense need take no action.  The judge said they could play cards if they desired and offer no defense because it was up to the prosecution to prove their case.

     The judge also said the defendant need not testify, and that if he chose that option, we must not consider that a sign of his guilt.  It was  his right not to testify in his own behalf.  Hmmm.  We would hear all these admonishments again from the prosecutor and the defense attorney.

     When the judge figured he had covered all the ground rules, the male bailiff brought a clipboard from his seat to the right and behind the judge up to the potential jurors.  He had a seating chart and one by one, twelve of us were called up and assigned a seat in the jury box.  I was one of the twelve.  

     The judge called the two attorneys to his bench.  The speaker in front of me started hissing.  The folks wearing headphones were instructed to remove them.  I waited for an announcement to come over the speaker, but none ever did.  The “white sound” continued as the judge and the attorneys conferred at the bench.  After a while, I figured out that the speaker hissing was to keep us jurors from hearing the conference.  It worked.  It was much faster than having judge and attorneys retire to chambers, or whatever they say.                   

     The attorneys returned to their tables, the hissing stopped, and the judge singled out a couple of people to question first, ones who were involved with somebody close to the case I think.  Both were dismissed and replaced by two more names from the pool of folks still sitting on the benches.  Then the voir dire began.  The judge took the first crack at us.  He had eight questions for us to answer, most of which we had answered once or twice already.

    Question 8 was a trick, he said.  It was really eight questions.  He asked the bailiff to turn the mobile post board around and each of us twelve must answer the eight questions on the back side.  1. Name, age, city of residence (really 3 questions)  2. Occupation  3. Marital status  4. Children and their occupations  5. Parents and their occupation  6. Number of years living in Larimer county and Colorado 7.  Can’t remember  and 8.  Relationship with law enforcement officer, relative, or friend.

    When my turn came, I could only think of one thing when it came to number 8.—the retired Fort Collins police officer.  The judge asked for a name and I gave it.  Then he asked if that retired officer would hold it against me if we found the defendant not guilty, to which I replied, “Not in the least.”  I didn’t get dismissed.

      Everybody got their turn, and a few got asked questions by the judge, mainly, would the person be prejudiced by whatever detail they mentioned.  In the end, the judge pronounced us all suitable, qualified jurors.

    Next, the prosecutor took his turn at us, fifteen minutes as timed by the judge.  The prosecutor was a young man, maybe late twenties or early thirties.  He seemed a bit nervous.  He repeated what the judge had said about the defense playing cards, that it was up to him, the prosecutor, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty of the charged crimes. 

    He then told us a story about coming home to find all the clocks in house flashing 12:00 a.m.  What could we conclude from that?  The power went out.  Yup.  Did we need other evidence or understand the details of how or why the power went out, or were we able to conclude on the basis of the flashing clocks that the power had gone out and come back on?  We were.

     Then he asked some random questions about things I don’t remember, picking one of us to answer.  I don’t think he asked me anything.

     The prosecutor was addressing someone on the other end of the jury box when I looked up to see the spider descending in front of me, to my left, right in front of the young lady next to me.  She saw the spider, stifled a gasp, tried to push her chair back and stand, decided she shouldn’t, couldn’t do anything.  Everyone turned to look at the young lady.  Most, I suspect, were too far away to see the spider.  Everyone could see her discomfort.

      For a moment, no one moved or said anything, not the prosecutor who stopped to watch, not the judge, not the bailiffs, not me.  A young man seated in front of the young lady and the spider turned, saw the spider, without rising reached and grabbed the spider.  He turned back around and first made a fist with the spider inside.  Then he clapped his hands, wadded the spider remnants with thumb and finger, brushed his hands a couple of times to discard the deceased’s body on the floor.

     Everyone snickered or chuckled.  The prosecutor picked up where he left off questioning us.

 After fifteen minutes, the judge interrupted him to tell him his time was up.  Then it was the defense  attorney’s time.

     The defense attorney was a an older man, I believe he said he was in his early 60’s.  He went down the list we had all had to answer.  He had been a criminal defense attorney for X number of years, etc.  He also told us a story, one that happened a few years ago.  It was during the Fort Collins flood.  He was dressed ready to go to work when his wife told him he couldn’t leave yet, the cows were out.  It was still raining but he went out and got the cows back in.  When he was done, he was soaked and he had manure on his boots.  He had to choose between changing clothes and being late, or going to work soaked and smelly.

     He went smelly.  The guys who guard the entrance to the courthouse made fun of him and one held his nose.  Then the attorney asked if the guard knew he had been around cows.  Yes.  Could he tell how many cows he owned, based on the manure on his boots?  Well, no. 

     Then he launched into a series of questions, directing them at random jurors.  He asked me why a bar had a parking lot.  For the customers to park their cars.  I felt like a steak being tenderized before hitting frying pan or grill.  If there is a parking lot, then bar customers must be expected to drive away after having a drink or two.

     Did we think that policemen or law enforcers were more honest than ordinary people?  Well, no.  The man to whom the question was directed related an experience of being beaten by a policeman and then charged with assaulting the policeman.

      The defense’s 15 minutes was up.  The judge explained, for a second time, that at this point, each lawyer would be asked to strike three people form the 12 assembled in the jury box. the result would be the six person jury this case required.  The bailiff brought his seating chart first to the prosecutor who studied it for a moment, then made a mark. 

     The bailiff took the chart to the defense table and the attorney studied it for a moment and made his mark.  Back to the prosecutor went the bailiff, and the process was repeated four more times.  At that point, each attorney had selected his three people to be removed from the panel.  The bailiff took the seating chart to the judge and retired to his place.

      At this point, it was like the “reality” tv shows, the moment of suspense before the loser gets his notice to depart.  Only we didn’t have to sit through five minutes of commercials.  The judge asked these people to stand.  I was asked to stand, and I did.  But were I and my fellow standers the losers or the winners?

      “You are now dismissed, and all of you in the gallery.  You have completed your jury service,” the judge announced.  Sighs of relief, the sound of those seated on the hard benches rising and moving to the aisle, one or two sighs of disappointment (the young lady next to me, Little Miss Muffet, as it were, wanted to sit on the jury) filled the courtroom for a minute as we dismissed ones made for the door.

      I must admit that I had a slight bit of regret, as I would have liked to see how the thing came out.  I had studied the defendant and wondered why he would have chosen to hire a high-priced lawyer to defend him.  What was at stake if he lost the case?  Was he headed for jail?  Had he lost a job as a result of his arrest?

     He was a stocky fellow, maybe in his 20’s or 30’s, dressed in suit and tie, sporting a short haircut and neatly trimmed beard.  I figured he had been well-schooled by his attorney on proper dress and demeanor for his day in court.  I figure that, given the prosecutor’s youth and the defense attorney’s experience and manner, the defendant would probably be found not guilty, but I will probably never know the outcome.

       Since curiosity killed the cat, and the spider demonstrated that in this courtroom, anyway, presumption of innocence is not a universal right for everyone, I happily exited the courtroom.  The retired lady lawyer and I shared the elevator ride down to the main floor.  She said she had been called two or three times to serve on juries, but had never had to serve, had been dismissed in all cases.  I told her I suspected the two witness slated to testify were probably cops.  She said, “Definitely.”

      In retrospect, I think I got struck by the defense because of my stated friendship with a retired police officer.  I must write and thank Denny. 

      I thought even as I still sat in the  jury box, that I hadn’t answered question number 8, the one about acquaintance with law officers, fully.  We were good friends with the sheriff of Rawlins County, Kansas and my son-in-law is a game warden.  As it turned out, it didn’t matter.

     I walked out of the justice center and strolled through the rain to my pickup.  I was home by 11 a.m., having completed my civic duty for at least one year.  We would be able to attend “Holiday Inn” at the dinner theatre as planned without rush or bother. 

     

Italy Wrap-up

      We had four days to do our own thing after the tour ended.  We had arranged to stay in the same hotel.  Others of our group elected to stay awhile but in different areas.  Jim wanted to be closer to the train station, for example.

     Our first need was laundry.  We had our laundry done in Florence for 15 Euros, about 3 times what it would cost us to do it ourselves.  Randy told us where they went to do their laundry, so we decided to try that.  We made a dry run before we took the dirty clothes, just to make sure we could find the place.  We did find the place, twice.  It was probably 5 or 6 city blocks, so it wasn’t too far.  Besides, by now, we were good troopers, so to speak.

The Subway

      Laundry done and stowed, we set off for Vittore Manuel via the subway.  It was the closest thing to a wild goose chase that we experienced on our trip.  I think it was supposed to be a church, but when we got there, the building that had the name inscribed in stone turned out to be a police station.

     There was a huge park enclosed by a big canvas wall.  Here and there folks had torn a hole in the wall to take a peek.  We took a peek.  In one corner was an old ruin that looked to be made of adobe.  It could have been a church or a fortress.  The entire place was being revamped. 

     We took a walk up a street.  Most of the business were being run by Chinese.  The signs bore Chinese characters.  The restaurants advertised Chinese food.  We were in Chinatown. 

     We still had a half a day on our Metro passes, so we took the subway to The Republic.  When we popped out of the gopher hole from the subway station, we saw the ruins of a huge wall and a big fountain. 

     We took a walk and stopped into a church along our way.  You won’t believe it, but it was filled with art work.  We wandered around further and stumbled across the opera theatre.  Later, as we approached the subway station to head back to headquarters, we saw an ad for some program, some star, or something we were mildly interested in.  It was being held at the theatre we had passed.  But the program was that evening, we were a long way from our hotel, and neither of us could stay awake very late at night.

      We stumbled across an open market place that had vendors selling everything from fruit and vegetables to shoes and clothes.  The street was closed to wheeled traffic, so only pedestrians to contend with.

      We ambled into a bookstore.  It was  huge by Rome standards.  We figured out we were at Exhibition Hall.  There was a nice coffee shop built to accommodate 50 people, but there were less than a dozen in there.  There were several exhibit rooms scattered around the bookstore. They had removed a previous exhibit and were working on the next one.  Thus, no crowd.

     We took advantage of the peace and quiet and no crowd to have a spot of tea and a crumpet, or something like that.  We took the subway back to Spagna, the stop nearest our hotel.  Our Metro cards expired that afternoon, so pedestrians the rest of the way, we were.

 From the top of the Spanish Steps

The Spanish Steps, near the entrance to the Spagna subway stop, became our landmark.  We could always find our hotel from there.

     Saturday, we decided to visit some of the places we had already seen with the tour crowd.  Consulting the well-used map carried in my hip pocket, we re-found Trevi Fountain.  It was still majestic in the light of day, and it was still crowded.

    

     We followed the flow of the crowd.  The Goodwife ended up mugging with a genii, or whatever he was.  We watched him set up with the help of his assistant.

     According to the map, we could walk around this royal garden, so we tried.  We took a wrong turn which we thought would take us around the perimeter of the park.  Instead, we found ourselves in a busy tunnel, a long tunnel with quite a few noisy cars and trucks.

     Not a very nice garden, those tunnel walls.  Must we go back through to find our way home?

A couple of blocks onward and things started looking familiar.  Lo, we were coming up on the side of the exhibition hall we had visited yesterday, coming from another direction.  Nothing to do but drop in and have a cup of tea and a snack.  And the restrooms were also nice. 

     Now having some experience with where we were and where we had been, we were able to navigate our way past the park after all.  The park path took us past government offices and what we were pretty sure was a prison.  The government buildings had some of the best parking in Rome, or at least that part of it we had seen.

Bureau of Statistics?

     We came upon a plaza with a monument with a huge stone horse.  From there we could look out over part of the city.  Another hour of wandering around and we were ready for a rest.   

     Our visit to Chinatown yesterday, and having our fill of pasta for a while, sparked an interest in a Chinese dinner.  Back in the hotel, I googled it and found a Chinese restaurant about eight minutes away.  We paid 27 Euros for a three course dinner, one of the most inexpensive meals we had in Rome.

       We took  a circuitous route home past a busy center where we watched buskers, dancers, musicians busy on a Saturday night.  Back at the hotel, the Goodwife’s step counter registered 17,000 steps. 

      Sunday, we headed back to Poppalo.  The vendors were busy.  Young fellows tried to sell us flapping birds powered by a rubber band.  The birds actually flew.

      Some old guys had a circle roped off and were teaching kids how to ride a unicycle.  This was a different type of unicycle, no seat, no pedals.  It was one big rubber tire enclosed in a fender like structure.  The rider stood on foot rests down about halfway between the center of the wheel and the ground.  

      It must have been much easier to ride than the usual unicycle, because young kids who at first were quite wobbly and unsure of themselves were able to ride fairly easily after a few tries.  The device may replace the Segway.  I didn’t try one.

      A student military group played a concert.  We got in on the end of it.  They fell in and marched out of the square.  A man soliciting funds for a charity had a kids wading pool with a few inches of soapy water in it.  With a mesh device he controlled with two sticks, he could make thousands of bubbles with one dip in the pool.  If he could entice someone to stand in the pool, he could use a big hoop, again controlled by two sticks, to encase the volunteer in a huge bubble.  We looked for his collection bucket, but he didn’t have one.  How did he expect to make any money?

     We ended our stay with a visit to the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum.  We had seen the Da Vinci exhibition when it came to Denver, so some of what we saw was not new to us, but other things we had not seen before, so it was well worth our time.

     After a rest, we took our last stroll in Rome, as usual, looking for a meal.  We dined on sea food for our final meal.  Then back to the hotel to get ready for our departure.  Preparations included ordering a 5:30 a.m. taxi to the airport and a 4:15 wakeup call.  No clocks in any of the hotel rooms we stayed in.

      One other thing about the hotel rooms.  They all used the credit card type key.  Just inside the room near the door, there was a slot that you slip your room “key” into, and that turns on the lights.  When  you leave, don’t forget your key.  About 30 seconds after you pull the key out of the slot, the lights all go out.  Keeps the guests from leaving the lights on.  One drawback, you can’t charge your device while you are out.  The outlets go dead, too.

      So our trip to Italy was done.  Our cab driver was right on time.  At that time of the day, not too much traffic.  Being dark, we couldn’t see too much on our trip to the airport.  We got there before 6 a.m.  We had plenty of time to get to our 9 a.m. flight. 

      Italy holds some great old buildings and monuments.  You have to appreciate those ancient builders who did so well, and the painstaking tedium that must have been the case for the artists and craftsmen who constructed so well.  I am thinking in particular of Saint Mark’s Cathedral In Venice, where the “pictures” on the wall were created using little colored chips about the size of one fourth of a fingernail.  If you can imagine the size of the place, it took a lot of fingernails.  

     Italy is an art lovers paradise.  It’s probably a wine lovers paradise, too. 

     I often thought, when we were in Rome, that I wished we had reversed our itinerary, visited Rome first and Venice last.  I certainly would have appreciated Venice all the more, with its quiet, traffic-less, clean streets.  But then, maybe I would not have appreciated Rome so much.

     About a month after we were in Venice, a high-water storm hit Venice, flooding many of the streets and courtyards we had visited.  As we watched news coverage of the disaster, we could recognize  most of the places.  It is sad to think that Venice will probably face similar events in the future. 

      In America, two or three hundred years is old.  In Italy, and Europe in general, two thousand years is old.

     As I view all the things humans have accomplished over the centuries, I feel a sense of pride in being a human.  Conversely, viewing the works of the past causes a feeling of insignificance. Our “three score and ten” doesn’t amount to much. 

The Coliseum

      As with Vatican City, we had to do some preliminaries before we could get into the coliseum.  We rode the subway to a station close to the coliseum.  We met our local guide who took us to, yes, you guessed it, a church!

     This one had something other than art to display.  The present-day church was built on top of not one but two other churches.  Down into the bowels of the earth we went.  The floor we walked on was on a level with some old faded artwork that at one time was high on the wall of the previous church.

     Apparently, they “cut” the old walls down and used the stone to fill the old church up to make a foundation for the new church.  Then the modern archaeologists came in and excavated pathways and discovered the old walls and a few artifacts of the previous church.

      We went down once more and found the first church.  Things down that deep weren’t in such good shape, but we could see where the old walls had been and how they had been knocked down part of the way to make a foundation for the second church. 

     I was reminded of the Jarvik Center in York, England.  When the cathedral there threatened to fall over, they did an emergency dig to build a huge new foundation for it.  In the process, they found three different civilizations, one from medieval days, one from Roman days (the Roman aqueducts were still functioning) and one from Celtic and Viking days.

      Being two stories down was impressive and oppressive.  It was chilly, damp, and dark down there.  After a brief rest during which we spread out to various coffee shops to find restrooms, we regathered in front of the church and commenced our march on the Coliseum.  

     It was quite warm above ground.  We didn’t know what to expect weather wise and had packed jackets and even long underwear for our Italy trip.  We only had one day when it threatened to rain on us, and most days we ended up carrying our jackets, it was that warm.  We were informed that it can be quite miserably hot in the summer time visiting the Coliseum.

      One of the advantages of being with a group, someone else stood in line and got the tickets, so we only had to stand and wait our group’s turn at the turnstiles.  Entering the Coliseum was further delayed by everyone going through a metal detector.

     So we had plenty of time to gawk at the exterior of the place.

Martin, our guide 

The crew, waiting in the Roman sun

     The place was quite crowded, and again we were told that this was light traffic compared to the summer crowds.  Who would want to go in the summer if the weather is hot and miserable and the crowds are huge?

      As we walked around the upper level, not quite the highest level, we couldn’t help but compare the Coliseum to a modern sports stadium.  The ramps and stairs outside the arena, the archways for entering and exiting, the bowl shape designed to accommodate a lot of spectators leads again to that question:  How did those guys build so well in those olden days?  How did they know to do all that they did?  What machinery did they have to raise stone walls that high and that strong?

      I have watched a couple of documentaries on the Coliseum.  One was speculation on how the contestants got into the arena.  They may have had hand operated elevators to bring them up to arena level.  There were tunnels and pathways to channel the contestants to the right part of the field.  We didn’t get to see much of that.

      A lot of the Coliseum is being renovated.  That is, they are trying to restore things to the original and keep the place from falling apart.  In a city full of ancient ruins, you see a lot of restoration work going on.

      As you stand there gazing at the 2000 year old structure, another thought enters your head:  If those walls could talk, what horror stories of human slaughter could they tell?  What kind of person would find that entertaining?  Maybe we have progressed beyond that.  Maybe.

     Leaving the Coliseum, we once again stood and waited.  This time, Martin, our guide, went in search of a lost soul who had somehow got separated from the flock.  Once our number was restored, we took a shorter tour of some other ruins in the neighborhood that are in the process of being restored.

      We were reminded that in the early Christian era, the popes often demanded that pagan structures be destroyed.   But the Romans were quite good at recycling, which explained why in a lot of buildings, the columns don’t always match, because they were removed from some pagan structure and used to build a church.  One column could come from one building and its mate could be from another destroyed building. 

     One of the last things we saw as we left, a church sat up on a little hill among all the other old buildings.  It was in opposition to the church we had visited earlier.  It had been built on ground level (an old painting showed it sitting at street level).  Sometime after it was built, the earth was removed from around it leaving it on its own little hill.  A set of stone steps had been added, which led up to the entrance.

      We divided into two groups after our local guide left us.  Martin took most of the group to the subway.  He pointed out that we were really in walking distance to our hotel.  We only had to walk across a giant courtyard, through a city center and we would be on the main street where we had alighted from our bus two days previous.

      We elected to walk, but I have heard too many times in my life, “you can’t miss it.”  We teamed up with two or three other couples and away we went.  Needless to say, I wasn’t in the lead.  Randy had a cell phone and used the navigation feature quite well.  We stuck close to him.

     Our leaders didn’t seem to need guidance.  We ambled across a beautiful garden, through a few tunnels and came out at a city center.  My landmark was a chariot with four horses high atop a building.  We had viewed them from many different angles during our day.  They were to our back when we reached the city center.

       Martin said, “Just straight across” the “circus” it would be called in London. The streets were like the spokes of a wheel, and the center was the hub.  Darned if I could figure out “straight across”, so we followed our two leaders.  They seemed to know intuitively which was “our” street. 

      We worked our way carefully across two streets and took the third one.  Soon we began to see familiar streets and buildings and we were back to our hotel.  As I recall that experience, I am reminded of one other thing about Rome.  Pedestrians do not have the right of way.  You had better by gosh watch where you are walking. 

     Well sir, after the Coliseum, our tour was nearly finished.  We had our last group dinner that evening.  The wine flowed freely and it got a bit noisy.  A Roman family had the misfortune to sit near the 28 of us.  After about 15 minutes, a few of them got up from their table.  I thought maybe they were leaving because we were too noisy.

     I asked the patriarch if we were too noisy.  He shook his head no.  Then I saw they were letting a couple of their ladies out to visit the powder room, so I relaxed.  The man came over to me and said, “Is not a question in Rome.”  We laughed.  Being too noisy is not possible in Rome, I guess.

    Technically, our tour ended on the morrow, but the only thing left was one more hotel breakfast.  Martin greeted us at breakfast and bid us farewell.  He was off to the subway, to the train station, where he would take a train to Venice and start the same tour with another group in three or four days.  Hmmm.  Not the way I would like to make a living, but it suited Martin.

    Many of our number were off after breakfast, too.  A few of our number stayed one more night in the hotel and were off Friday morning.  Another couple stayed until Saturday.  We ran into them at the hotel Friday evening.  They had walked the neighborhood visiting churches.  They couldn’t believe how many churches there were.

     We had gone a different direction, but with the same experience, seeing many churches.  We only visited one, however.  The advantage to visiting a church is you set your own admission fee.  If you want to sit and take a rest, you surely may.  If you are inclined (or reclined), you can do quite a lot of art appreciation, too.

     We still had a day left on our three-day Metro passes, so we decided we had better use them first and our shoe leather after they expired.