Frankfurt

     After the flight from Denver to London, the trip to Frankfurt was easy, a couple of hours.  Thanks to the European Union, we didn’t have to clear customs in Germany.   (Does Brexit mean that folks will have to present passport or visa when they leave the Chunnel?)  

      We walked to the car rental place and were soon on our way.  We spent two nights in Dinkelsbuhl, an old walled town.  I missed all the interesting stuff, a walk around town, taking in the wall and all the old buildings.  The next day, I called on a doctor, who thankfully could speak English.

     Virus, he said.  He prescribed a “soft” antibiotic that would prevent me from getting a secondary infection, a dose of Ibuflam 600mg (ibuprofen, 400mg available over the counter), and some nasal spray to keep me breathing through my nose.  I went back to the hotel and slept the rest of the day. 

      I got up, dressed, walked four or five blocks, had a sausage and kraut, and back to bed.  The others had a good time, I think.

    The next morning, we paid our hotel bill and took off for Goppingen where the in-laws live.  We took some less-traveled roads, much more interesting than the autobahn, which is lined with trees or manmade walls, which keep the traveler from seeing much of the countryside.

     As we drove through towns and villages, we saw folks dressed in costumes.  We were told it was “Dirty Thursday”, preceding Mardi gras and Ash Wednesday.  On Dirty Thursday, the women of the village capture the mayor, who is not allowed to say anything for four days.  I’m guessing the custom gives women control of things for most of carnival week.  It is also a good excuse to drink a beer or two and begin the great celebration that ends with Mardi gras. 

     After checking into our hotel in Goppingen, a niece, Isa, came and led us to her parents’ house where we had supper.  It was here my disappointment in German beer sprouted.  It wasn’t bad beer, it was good beer, but it was Pilsner.  My imagination had conjured up a nice dark, malty, foamy brew, but so far, I had only Pilsner beers.

     We weren’t the only guests, as three other couples, were also present, all members of the family.  Fortunately for us, nearly everybody knew some English, and could translate for us when German broke out.

     On Friday, we all piled into one car and headed for Stuttgart.  We made a mandatory cathedral visit on the way.  We stopped in a smaller town with a big clock tower.  It also had a shopping center where the Goodwife was allowed a few minutes to take a look at a sewing shop.

     In Stuttgart, we toured the Porsche factory where Isa works.  Porsche has brought the assembly line a long way from Henry Ford’s time.  Many things are automated, but some things still have to be done by human beings.  Parts carts are totally automated, but it takes a person to load the carts with the right parts on the right tray before the cart wanders off to the assembly line all by itself. 

      The assembly line is multi-storied, but rolling off one conveyor, onto the elevator, off the elevator and onto the next conveyer is all automated.  All parts are timed to arrive “just-in-time”.  We watched two guys putting heads on engines.  One person hooked the head to a hoist, which moved over the waiting engine.  One person placed a gasket properly and they both carefully aligned the head as it was lowered onto the engine block.  A power wrench came down and zapped all the head bolts at the same time, about two seconds.  The engine headed for the next section.

     The Goodwife noted that most of the women were working the sewing machines in the upholstery section.  They were working with cowhide to cover dash as well as seats.  United States hides are verboten because the barbwire used to contain the critters scars the hides unacceptably. 

     To keep assembly line workers from complacency, they change positions every two or three weeks.  The engine people this week may move to bodywork next week.  Since several people can do several different jobs, one person’s absence doesn’t hold up the line.

    The day we were there, the factory planned to turn out 240 cars.  Needless to say, none of them were ours, though a future owner could watch his/her car being assembled.

     Timo and mate joined us at the Porsche factory.  Timo was a foreign-exchange student in Atwood for a year around the turn of the century. We all met the extended family in a local eatery, a pub-like place that served only wine, no beer.  It was noisy and I still didn’t feel very well.  No beer?  In Germany?

     On Saturday, we took three cars of folks to Lichtenstein castle.  It is not the country of Lichtenstein, just a castle named Lichtenstein.  It was remodeled into a hunting lodge.  The owner still uses it for that occasionally.  It was February and the castle, made of stone, was cold.  Living in a castle would be a sentence, not a privilege.

     We went for lunch to one of the family’s apartment.  It was nice enough to take a walk followed by a nap.  Isa and Martin hosted us for supper our last night there.  Politics was on the agenda.  The family sang some folk songs for us.  We couldn’t join in.  Someone translated.  We would probably call them ballads, sad songs about life.

     We headed out Sunday for Dortmund with Timo leading the way.  We stopped to have a light lunch along the Rhine.

    

   

   We didn’t take the Viking River cruise.  We watched a ferry make a U-turn across the river with its load of autos.  No bridge in sight.

     We got to Dortmund in time to go to the brewery museum.  Dortmund used to be the Milwaukee or Golden, Colorado of Germany, a beer producer.  We didn’t see the modern brewery, just the museum.

    That evening, we met Timo’s family at a modern looking restaurant.  Inside, it was quite antique with heavy wooden beams and tables.  Outside, in the town square, a carnival was set up to celebrate, what else, the end of carnival season. 

      On Monday, Timo took us for a walk around a former site of a foundry.  It had been converted to a lake with luxury houses all around the perimeter.  Following lunch at Timo’s apartment, we headed back to Frankfurt.

     Tuesday (Marti gras) was one of the longest days of my life.  We got a wakeup call at 4 a.m.  We took the rental car back to the airport, and walked up to the terminal.  This time, we were ready for security, all our bottles in a plastic bag.  In preparation for our return to the states, we breakfasted at McDonalds in the Frankfurt airport.

    Our 7 a.m. flight took us back to Heathrow.  We had to change terminals.  They loaded us on a bus and we went through the back alleys of the airport.  We arrived at Terminal 5.  Though we had never left the airport, we had to go through secruity yet again.  I got my fourth and final pat down.

     At about 11:30 a.m. local time we departed for Denver.  Nine hours later we would land in Denver.  It was about 3 p.m.  We chased the sun all day.  At 7:30 p.m. I crawled into bed.  We had been up for nearly 23 hours.  Our European journey was over.  

     Some observations on Germany:  I expected Germany to be clean and neat, which it mostly was with a couple of exceptions.  The taggers are set lose there.  Walls and signs sport the same graffiti as we see in the States.  In Dortmund, near the brewery, it was very trashy.  Timo’s lady companion says whenever she has to travel that area, she makes sure her car doors are locked.  They blame it on the immigrants, who lack the German sense of order.

    We saw a lot of modern looking buildings, such as the restaurant, with antique interiors, as mentioned.  We also saw many ancient looking buildings that survived the war, as in Dinkelsbuhl, that had completely modern interiors, modern beyond what we are used to.  An example would be flush toilets with two choices of flush, one for liquid waste, two for solid waste.  They are water-savers.

     One final note, when we get to the “beam me up, Scotty” stage, foreign travel will be a lot easier.  No need for a pat down, maybe?

Europe Trip

     It wasn’t the fare watcher that I live with who discovered the great price on a round trip to London, direct from Denver.  It was a former colleague.

     Before Joe got into the teaching and farming business, he worked for TWA.  He knows the ropes.  Joe also has ties to folks in Germany.  He likes to visit them every few years. 

      One day he called and suggested we all go first to London, then on to Frankfurt, Germany.  The price was right.  There was one hang-up.  When he added the flight to Germany, the fare doubled.  Joe knew his way around that.  By scheduling a separate flight, he got the cheap rate to London and a fairly good rate to Frankfurt.  How could we say no?

     Besides, what does one do in mid-February except wish for spring to arrive?  It all seemed so far off when the planning and booking took place.  February 15 really did come, hard on the heels of a day, February 14, of doing singing Valentines for the barbershop chorus.

     We left Denver about 5 p.m. and arrived in London the next day at 9 a.m.  We bought “tube” tickets that would serve us for the five days we were there.  We commenced learning the subway system.  In due time we arrived at Paddington Station.  Joe booked a hotel two blocks from Paddington.  It was the St. David Hotel.  It became our home base, Paddington Station, our springboard to adventure.

     We had been to the British Museum before, but I wanted to see again the Rosetta stone and all the Egyptian stuff the Brits “transferred” to England.  The first time I saw that, I felt they had done an injustice by removing so many artifacts from the country of origin.  This time, I felt thankful that so many things would be preserved, out of the hands of the IS “delinquents” who have destroyed so many antiquities in the Mid-East.

    We aren’t as young as we used to be.  After five hours of looking at stuff, we were done for the day.  Another three or four days would be necessary to do justice to all the things in the British Museum.

     Our second day found us at the tower of London.  We viewed the Crown Jewels.  They were presented entirely differently than they had been in 1990.  We passed on the Beefeater tour, so we missed a lot of things, like the dungeons and torture chambers and the chapel with its headless bodies beneath the basement floor. 

      Instead, we spent a couple of hours viewing famous paintings in a gallery nearby (can’t remember which one).  Not being a great appreciator of art, nevertheless, I felt the magnitude of greatness I was among by estimating the insurance value of each room we visited in the gallery.  Not for nothing have I watched Antiques Roadshow.

     Day three found us taking in the tower of Big Ben, which is closed for a year of renovations, but we still looked at its exterior.

     We also looked at Westminster Abbey.  It was Sunday and church service was in progress.  You can’t take a tour of the place on Sunday.  Visitors are welcome to attend the church service, but you have to wait for one service to end and another to begin.

     We looked at the Parliament building, too.  When the most recent idiot ran his car into pedestrians on the bridge near parliament and knifed a policeman, we all could say, “Hey we walked on that bridge.”  One of the things we noticed as we walked around the parliament building were the cement barricades separating street from walkway.  At the time I conjectured that they were intended to prevent a truck from crashing through the gates of parliament.

      When the London car-murderer hit the news, I thought, there is no 100% way to protect against attacks by idiots.  Even if we could develop a foolproof idiot-detector, I am afraid most of us would get caught in its jaws at some time or another.  It would be like in “Mayberry RFD” when Barney, left in charge by Andy’s leaving town, has the entire town’s population locked up in jail for various violations.

      As we were all very tired, we retired to the hotel for a nap.  We took care of a few details, such as taking our clothes to a laundry, scheduling a cab to pick us up Tuesday morning at 5 am to take us to the airport.  We visited Paddington main station, different from the tube station.  There we had an informal tea and did a bit of shopping for stuff like bottled water and ibuprofen to help relieve the cold I was starting to develop, or redevelop.

      Monday was the last day in London.  We visited the War Museum, mostly WWI stuff, though there was a small collection of WWII things.  We had enough of people killing people, so we took in the Tate Gallery.  Again, lots of famous paintings, not one of which I can remember, sorry to say.

    Tuesday 4 am wakeup call found me feeling really lousy with cold symptoms, but the show must go on.  Our cab driver was from Iraq, so we talked international politics at 5 am, all the way to Heathrow, where we had to clear security. 

     I could write a fair-sized article on going through airport security, starting with DIA where the TSA guy had me hitch up my jeans Herkel-fashion while he checked my pant legs all the way up to the point he determined I had nothing foreign in my jockey shorts.  Something about me arouses suspicion in the security people. 

     Some of our party of four got a pat down in the four encounters we had with airport security, but I got singled out and patted down every time.  Could it be my cocked eye?

      The first hurdle we had to clear at Heathrow security involved liquids.  All our liquids and gels had to fit into one Ziploc bag.  It took quite some doing for the Goodwife to get all her liquids and gels in one bag.  I took a couple of her things.  A kindly bloke working the assembly line in front of the metal detector machine helped me get my Ziploc bag closed around the bottles and tubes.  Perhaps he could see I was in pretty poor shape with my head cold.

     While this was all taking place, we got separated.  We couldn’t find Katie.  We looked all over before we went through the final security check.  Finally, we determined to look for her on the “other side”, and if we didn’t find her, we would have to summon professional help. 

      After my scanning, wanding, and pat down, I had to visit with another lady who wanted to take a look at my CPAP machine.  All was well there, and when we finally crossed the final bridge to the concourses, there stood Katie patiently waiting.  She had been hustled quickly through all the security checks while we were still struggling with liquids and gels and Ziploc bags.

    Finally, we had plenty of time to sit down to breakfast before catching our 7 a.m. to Frankfurt.  It was the first breakfast we paid for, every other breakfast being provided by the hotel.  (Two eggs, “bacon” we would call ham, two boiled tomatoes, a scoop of baked beans, plenty of toast, and coffee or tea.  We easily lived on two meals a day while in London, starting with the robust breakfast.)   

      Off to Frankfurt.      

     

Yard Light

February 27,2017

“SUBJECT:  Light Removal”

“It has come to our attention that you have an outdoor light currently installed on an MVEA (Mountain View Electric Association) pole.  Lights other than those owned, installed and maintained by MVEA are not allowed on MVEA poles.  This light will be removed and left at the base of the pole.”

March 11, 2017

Dear Ms. Smith:

       Yes, I do have a light attached to an MVEA pole.  It, or its one predecessor, has been there for nearly 65 years, since MVEA first lit up our life in the 1950’s.  Unless I am mistaken, the light was mounted by an MVEA crew.  (I could be mistaken, as I would only have been 5 or 6 years old at the time.)

     The light was strategically placed to light up the yard, which at the time included a chicken house and a barn.  On the south end of the barn, just about ten or fifteen yards away from the meter pole that holds the light, we had a basketball goal.  The light provided enough illumination for many after-dark one-on-one, two-on-two basketball games or games of “Horse”.

     Of course, it provided the light to get to barn, chicken house, milk house, or shop on early winter mornings or nights.  It also provided a beacon for tired harvest crews headed home after a long day in the field.  It welcomed us home when we returned from school and athletic practices in the dark.  It provided a goal for visitors finding their way to our house after sundown.  In a scrapbook, a photograph shows my father changing the yard light bulb standing on a five-foot ladder perched on a huge snowdrift.

(March 13, 1977)

    Times have changed.  The barn and chicken house are gone.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the light’s nights are numbered.  Still, it seems that such a venerable institution deserves to have some type of “grandfathered” rights to continue to exist.  Perhaps it poses some type of danger of which I am unaware.    

       In reference to the offer you make in your note to me, I must decline.  It seems counterproductive in an age when we are trying to conserve electricity, and when much of our urban world is fighting a phenomenon known as “light pollution” that I would expend $12 a month to use electricity to add to light pollution.  One of the great things about rural living is being able to view the night sky, especially here on the plains where the sky extends 180 degrees from horizon to horizon.  I am not interested in any type of outdoor illuminating device that cannot be switched off or on.

     I am sure there is a very good reason for MVEA to make a rule prohibiting lights on MVEA poles, a reason of which I am currently unaware.  I am also sure that I will find other locations to place outdoor illumination, but for the immediate future, I will do without a yard light.  Since I won’t be using the yard light, my electricity use will be reduced by a small amount.  I guess that slight reduction in usage is in MVEA’s, and my, best interest.

We're here to serve you--on a platter.

Life in an R-V Park

     In January, an old man’s fancy lightly turns to going south, to paraphrase Mr. Tennyson.  It can get cool in the desert, but nothing like the freezing temperatures we experience in Colorado.  We have thought about going south for a while during January.

     Our trip to Tucson to take in the gem show also let us experience life as snowbirds, living in an R-V Park.  Jeri arranged for us to stay in one of her friend’s R-V.  She rented a space for the three nights we were there. It was a smaller vehicle, though far from the smallest we saw in the park.

       We were situated closed to the park shower, which we used rather than the trailer’s facility.

      We were quite comfortable during our three-night stay.  We didn’t spend much time in the R-V during the day, but I can see the place would get rather cramped in the case of inclement weather.  Getting accustomed to the smaller space will take some adjustment if we decide to try the R-V lifestyle.

      Limited space leads to other problems.  Rubbermaid-style containers stand in for garages and basements. 

       At night as we returned to our mobile bedroom, strings of lights around nearly every vehicle, trailers and cars, lit the way.  Still celebrating Christmas?  No.  Anyway, the lights weren’t colored. 

     Pack rat deterrent, we were told.  Everyone could tell a horror story about the destruction the rodents cause, chewing electric and water lines, not to mention the destruction if they find their way into an auto or R-V.  No need to tell us about that.  We know packrats.  I never would have guessed that the vermin would not cross a string of lights.  Many of the lights are solar powered, requiring small storage batteries, charged during the day to power the lights by night.

      Bob and Jeri had  fake rattlesnake under their trailer, the idea being that the fake reptile will discourage a real one that occasionally slithers into the park.  Other potentially bothersome wildlife include wild pigs called javelinas.  They can be quite destructive in their search for something to eat.  Be sure to get the garbage into the park dumpster—don’t leave it outside!   

      Coyotes also serenaded us on our nocturnal stroll among the R-V’s on our way to retire for the night.  For me, the wildlife is part of the charm of living in an R-V park, not a deterrent.

     We also talked about renting a home as with VRBO or Airbnb.  There would be more space, with no maintenance headaches that comes with an R-V.  But the R-V Park offers something we have lost in our lives in the city or suburbia.

     A sense of community.  Text messages, email, ubiquitous telephones, social media have replaced our sense of community.  The R-V Park offers a community, or communities, big time.  The park has various outbuildings, shower and restroom facilities, laundry sites.  There are also buildings where various groups meet or talented folks entertain park residents.  A bluegrass band performed on our last evening there.  We stopped to watch them warming up, but we were too tired from taking in the gem show to attend the concert.

      Another building serves as a library, which is maintained by volunteers (as are most of the activities).  Bird watchers, gourd painters, jewelry makers, card players, walkers and runners, just about any hobby you can think of all have their groups.  Don’t find the pastime for you?  Start a group.  There will be a place and time for you to meet.

      With the sense of community comes responsibility.  You must be a good citizen.  There are written and unwritten rules to follow.  The park is not exactly a democracy in spite of all the citizen input and volunteerism.  It is a sort of monarchy controlled by the park owner or manager. In “our” park, a sure way to be told (not asked) to leave is to have a yappy barking dog.

      Another way to be exiled from the park is to presume too much, to tell the manager that something is going to happen at such and such a place and such and such time rather than asking for his approval of an activity.  We didn’t witness anyone being deported.  I have only second-hand reports to support my conclusions.   

     All in all, the R-V Park has much to offer. We would miss out on all the activities and the sense of belonging they bring if we rented an apartment or house.  

     The big drawback for me would be the maintenance of an R-V, particularly in the offseason when it is far too hot to stay in Arizona.  (We heard horror stories of folks trying to reside there year around, paying $700 utility bills to keep cool during the desert summer.)

     A close second deterrent would be dragging an R-V around getting to and from the R-V Park.  I remember my dad saying he didn’t want to be dragging a trailer around behind a truck.  He had enough of truck driving.  I understand completely.  We would have to buy or rent a much bigger pickup if we decided to become R-V owners.

      The trip to Tucson gave us plenty to think about.  Going south in winter attracts.  The chance to meet interesting people, escaping bitter cold sings a siren song.  Owning an R-V repels.

     Maybe we can find an R-V, already in a park, we can rent for two or three weeks in January.

    

      

      

Gem Show

      The last couple of years, we have made a spring trip to Arizona.  We had a good reason—baseball spring training. 

     This year, we missed spring training.  Instead, we went to the gem show.  Rather than the Phoenix-Scottsdale area, we went to Tucson. 

    I’m not sure how it all began, but I think it was Aunt Jeri’s visit to Colorado last summer.  She must have let it slip that Tucson was a hotbed for gemmary come the end of January and the beginning of February.  Nothing for it, but we must go.

     Go we did.  Well, why not?  What’s going down in Colorado the last week of January?  Mostly the temperature.  Tucson offered some warmer weather.  It made good on the offer, the temperature being in the mid-seventies during our stay.  By contrast, when we stepped off the plane in Denver upon our return, we immediately saw our exhaled breath.  The mercury said 27 degrees.

     The gem show apparently runs for two weeks.  Two hours was a plenty for me.  The girls made two days of it.  One of Jeri’s friends had a sales tax license, which entitled her and her guests to attend the wholesale venue for dealers, jewelers, and such.  They spent five hours there and came home exhausted.

      The wholesalers dealt in bulk.  You couldn’t just buy one rock or one pearl or whatever.  You had to take stuff in bigger lots, like going to Sam’s Club instead of Safeway.  Bob and I had a leisurely lunch at a favorite local pub.  Two other “gem-widowers” dined with us.  We were quite content with our lot in life, especially when we got the blow-by-blow account of the day in the wholesale mart.

     The following morning found us taking a jaunt into the desert.  We had only to walk out of the R-V Park and we were in the desert.

     

      We were about a week ahead of the spring green up.  It had rained quite a lot two weeks before we got there, but the greenery that sometimes covers the desert floor was only just beginning to emerge.  Some things were beginning to bloom.

      It was a pleasant walk.  To appreciate it, all you had to do was think about what it would be like taking a walk back in Colorado.

     I had put it off as long as I could.  Attending the gem show was something I had to do so I could say I had done it.  We loaded up and headed downtown.  Our goal was a sports stadium, maybe a former home of some cactus league spring training facility. 

     The gem show was set up in the parking lot.  There were huge tents and smaller tents.  There were row after row of pop up type sunshades protecting vendors of all kinds.

  

     I saw all kinds of rocks.  I saw rocks I never knew even existed.  There were also jewelers hawking their handiwork.

     Among the vendors, there was one guy running a forklift.  Some of the rocks were that big, crystal geodes and the like, that it would take a forklift to move them.   One vendor told us, when we asked, that many of the geodes were from foreign countries and were quite expensive to ship.  If the thing doesn’t sell, they rent storage and keep it in Tucson until next year.

     Another fellow had a golf cart for hire.  He would take you and your merchandise to the parking lot.   The real shoppers had wheeled luggage like you see in the airport to  carry their loot.    

      We were there for two to three hours.  We barely scratched the surface of what there was to see.  There were seventeen or eighteen similar venues all around Tucson.  I visited one of them.

     Jeri summed it up best.  She said, “Well, I can cross that one off my bucket list—even if it never was on my bucket list in the first place.”  Ditto.

      Perhaps the real gem came when we got home.  It was cold, drizzly-icy.  We rode the shuttle to the parking lot on the west side of Tower Road.  I started scraping ice off the car windows.  The Goodwife said I’d better let her do it since she had on her winter coat and I only had on two light jackets. 

     We were four or five miles down the road when she said, “Darn!  I lost an earring.”  She wanted to go right back to the parking lot to look for it.  I said we wouldn’t even be able to find where we parked the car.  

      She called the parking lot, the phone number on our parking receipt.  Together, we figured out the bus we had ridden on.  The bus driver remembered us and where we parked.  Another employee went to the spot—and found the earring.

    By then, we were eight or ten miles down the road, but we turned around and went back, and sure enough, there was the missing earring. 

  

Bill’s Vent Pipe

     “Hey O, I need some help,” said the answering machine.  Have to respond.  After all, I am deeply indebted to Bill for all kinds of help, not to mention the tool loans over the years.

      “What’s up?” I asked when I managed to get him on the phone.  Since he had retired from teaching, I didn’t see him every day as in the old days, sometimes as seldom as twice a month at Lions meetings.

     “We’re remodeling the laundry room, rearranging things.  I need a plumber.”  I stopped by the next day after school.  He had moved the washer and dryer.  He had the dryer vent all done, the 220 volt receptacle wired and in place.  He had the water for the washing machine moved to his liking.  What he hadn’t done was the drain-vent pipe.  He had the hole cut through the floor for the drain.  He had the hole marked where the vent would go through the ceiling. 

     What was lacking was the drain with the standpipe and trap to drain the washer, and the vent that would serve the washing machine drain and protect the drain trap from being siphoned dry.  We agreed I would stop by the next day after school and do the plumbing, and Bill would cut the hole through ceiling and roof to accommodate the vent pipe.  It would all be ready when I got there.

     The next day, I threw in a pair of coveralls as I headed out for my day teaching school.  I knew from experience that if I went home after school, changed clothes and returned to Bill’s place, it could be late in the evening before I finished the job, especially if we ran into trouble, always a possibility where plumbing is involved.  There wasn’t much dirty work involved, as the cutting and crawling into the crawl space should all be done.

     It was done, too.  The drainpipe extended up through the floor a couple of inches, enough to get a tee glued onto it.  The hole in the ceiling was there, too, lined up with the drainpipe coming up through the floor.  The water lines were installed into the washing machine box.  All that was left was to cut and fit the drainpipe.

      I donned my coveralls, and set to work.  But Bill wasn’t there.  He had gone to get something, Jeanie said.  With a coupling and a short piece of PVC pipe, I extended the drainpipe up high enough to make room for the trap.  I lined the trap up so the standpipe went up to the fitting in the washing machine box, cut, fitted, and glued the trap and its connecting pipes.  All that was left was the pipe through the ceiling and roof. 

     The entire job took less than 45 minutes.  I was done.  The washing machine was plumbed. Bill still wasn’t there.  I removed coveralls and visited with Jeanie for a while, but still, no Bill.  I needed to get going, so I said, as sort of a joke, “Tell Bill when he gets home that you just got tired of waiting for him to get the job done, so you went ahead and did it yourself.”

      A few days later, I ran into Bill.  “Boy, do you have one coming from me!” was my greeting from him.

      “What are you talking about?”

     “You know,” he said.  I began to suspect, but I feigned ignorance.  “Putting Jean up to telling me she did that plumbing job.”  Oh.

      I didn’t press for an explanation.  The next time we all got together, we had a good laugh at Bill’s expense, but I needed to know the details.

     “I told him I got tired of waiting for him to get the job done so I did it myself.  Then he showed the pipes to everybody that came in and told them how I did it all by myself.  He had them admire how straight everything was and how proud of me he was.  So I had to tell him the truth so he would quit embarrassing me.”  Oh, again.

     The law of unintended consequences surfaces again.  The little lie was supposed to shame him into wondering why he couldn’t have done the job himself.  Pride wasn’t supposed to be part of it.

      I’m sure Bill retaliated.  I don’t remember how, exactly.  After all, there are quite a few examples of him pulling a practical joke on me, too many to know just which one served for that incident.       

     

Death Comes to the Country Club

     “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose gar-------“  The melody glizzandoed down the scale sagging through  bass into nothingness.  The jukebox went black.

     A brief two seconds before, the two girls marched past our table, both in obvious distress, one girl beside and slightly behind the other, the follower trying to comfort the leader as they headed for the exit door.  The leader slung her purse at the offending jukebox, hitting it with a bang.  That wasn’t good enough.  She took a slight detour as she approached the door and yanked the offending noisemaker’s electric plug out of the wall socket.

    “Damned alcohol!” she sobbed.

     Four of us were sitting at the table.  We had just finished our second round in the duffers’ tournament.  We were enjoying a little camaraderie at the nineteenth hole before we departed to each go his own way. 

     We were the early birds, starting our first round about 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning.  The duffers’ tournament was for those of us who hacked our way around with big handicaps.  It was also an attempt to get former members to come out and play a couple of rounds on the nine hole course, maybe get interested and take up the game again.

     It also appealed to the drinkers.  A tub full of ice and beer stood between the fourth green and the fifth tee box.  There was always the clubhouse, too.  At that time, a person had to belong to a private club AND bring his own bottle of booze in order to have a mixed drink in Kansas.  Count on it, there were plenty of bottles on the golf carts buzzing around the course.

     The tournament organizers started scheduling foursomes for tee-off about ten o’clock.  They worked their way backwards to accommodate all the people who wanted to play.  Four foursomes would tee off every hour.  The last hour or so was reserved for the good golfers, the ones who declared or qualified for the championship round.  There were always ten or twelve guys who played in the championship round, some deserving the privilege, some who flattered themselves and put themselves in the round.  There was an extra fee for those vying for the championship flight, and they would play a third round at the end of the day, 27 holes in all.

    The rest of us were put into “flights” based on our score for the first nine holes.  At the end of the second round, your score for eighteen holes was compared to the scores of everyone in your flight.  The lowest three scores in every flight won prizes.

     When all the championship guys had teed off around noon or a little after for their first round, then the early birds like us took off on our second round.  It was probably three o’clock in the afternoon when the two girls passed through and out of our life as we sat enjoying a beer and our comradeship.

     The door flew open and daylight flooded the basement room.  The steps led up to the graveled  yard that did double duty as parking lot and runway for golf carts heading to and from cart house to golf course.  We glanced at the girls as they stepped through the door.  They were both young, maybe in their early twenties.  Both were distressed.

     The door slammed and the girls were out of our lives as swiftly as they had come in.  We were sitting in the dim light again.  Nobody said anything.  We didn’t sit in silence too long.  Keith had been sitting with us.  He was the clubhouse manager.  He leased the kitchen upstairs and the bar downstairs.  He ran the small pro shop that sold mostly golf balls and wasn’t ever very busy.  He also had a small farm a mile or two from town.  He had left the bar in charge of a barmaid and was going out to do some quick chores at the farm before returning to close out the day in the bar.  He sat down with us for a while because his brother-in-law was one of our foursome.  

     Before we had time to say much, Keith was back.  He sat down and rubbed his forehead.  His face was white.  He said there had been an accident, an automobile accident just across the road from the number one tee box.  Two guys peeled out in a car, laying rubber.  The driver lost  control and ran into a tree beside a cart house.  The guy in the passenger seat was killed.

     We still didn’t say much.  What was there to say.  We did start trying to put two and two together.  It stood to reason that the two girls who just stormed through were involved somehow.

    There were quite a few witnesses to the accident.  Both guys in the car had been drinking. One of the witnesses was the local physician.  He ran to the scene.  He opened the passenger door and briefly examined the passenger.  “This man is dead,” he said.  Other witnesses said the doctor said he died of a broken neck.

     The driver walked away nearly unscathed.  Did he face criminal charges?  I don’t remember.

     Later reports said that all four of the people involved were from Goodland, that the distressed girl who squelched the jukebox was married to the deceased passenger. 

     All that information came out later.  As for that Sunday afternoon, the four of us finished our beer  with rather subdued conversation and departed.  My way home took me right past the scene of the accident.  The car was still there, up against the tree.  It wasn’t in that bad of shape.  Yes there was a major dent in the front where in met the tree, but nothing severe enough to have inflicted a fatal injury, it didn’t look like.

     The two girls who passed through the lounge in a few seconds, who flitted in and seemingly out of our lives, had a major effect on us it seems.  Some years later, our Lions club hosted a big meeting for surrounding communities, an anniversary or something.  I was manning the registry.  I didn’t recognize Rex when he came in.  When I looked at the name he signed, I realized he was one of our foursome that Sunday many years before.  He was Keith’s brother-in-law. 

     I introduced myself.  I said, “We played golf together once.”  He looked at me blankly, obviously not recognizing me.  I reminded him of the fatal accident that took place on that day.  He thought a moment, then lit up.  Yes, he did remember that.

     Now, thirty or forty years later, when I hear the tune “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,” the scene in the country club basement pops into my head with remarkable clarity.  I have carried it with me all these years.  I probably won’t lose it any time soon, as long as my head continues to function normally.  Funny that a chance encounter lasting a few seconds would have such a lasting effect.