Nobody's Perfik

     There is something about a large body of water that attracts people to it. Lakes and oceans have long been drawing cards for folks.  There is something primeval in our makeup that does this to us.  We love to build our nests along their banks and shores.

     Anthropologically our species slithered out of the water. Literally, we were born from the protective waters of the womb and spiritually, many were baptized into a new life in the same. 

     Real estate developers have taken note of this phenomenon and we pay premium prices for our proximity to open water. 

     If you score a hotel room with a water view – even blocks away, the room draws a premium price. If you have a home in a similar situation, the value of the land under it increases exponentially and the real estate taxes are likewise affected.

     What happens when we are drawn to a body of water? It allows us to look horizontally farther toward the vastness than most anywhere else.  By and large, we are a literal species and it takes the cue of such surroundings to help us break away from that.  Our sightlines are expanded both literally and figuratively.  While our visual perspective stretches to a more distant horizon, our inner perspectives also are stretched.

     Many of us sit and stare at its beauty.  We watch how it captures the light as a kinetic sculpture and we become mesmerized into a deeper level of consciousness with its constant rolling motion. We are creatures of motion – beginning with the pulsations of our hearts, the blood racing through our bodies and the reflexes triggered by our neurons.  The waters predated our existence, they compliment our motion and will most likely postdate the visit of us knuckle draggers on the face of this planet. 

     Our tensions seem to dissipate and our thoughts deepen when we look out at water.  Our words are more carefully chosen and are more thoughtfully and sparingly uttered.  We slow down a bit and search deeper into ourselves gaining a better sense of our place in the scheme of it all.  Watching the waters has healing qualities to it.

     Growing up in northern New Jersey, there were three large bodies of water that had this effect on us – two lakes – Swartswood and Hopatcong (We called it Lake A-pah-kong) and the Atlantic Ocean.

     Thoughts of the oceanside resort of Asbury Park have haunted me for the past ten or so years – ever since I became aware of the metaphoric motion of its rise and fall.  I am just beginning to figure out why.

     From 1948 to 1955, once a year, our family would load up the car and take the “long” trip to the “Shore” for a day or two to sponge off our vacationing grandparents.

     The anticipation was part of it all.  We would each feel and express the excitement in our own way.

     Tension filled the air as Dad packed the car for the long drive before the superhighways came into being.  In those days, any drive over an hour was considered an epic adventure and Dad’s emotional state would rise to the occasion. He’d work himself into a lather, ready to spring in attack of expletive-laced commentary to anything that went astray from his expectations.  

     Any of the following tension producers would hold him on the edge of his personal emotional abyss.

• Would our old car make it one more time or would it just roll over and die a less than dignified death? 
• Would it “boil over?”
• Would the two good recap tires hold their treads at the high speed of 50 mph once we got onto Rte 9?
• Would the other two paper-thin threadbare tires be able to hold up for both ways – there and back home? 
• Would rain force the windshield to fog up – causing Dad to frantically wipe it down with his old yellowing crusty handkerchief as he drove like the possessed Humphrey Bogart in, “They Drive by Night”?
• Would the rain and Dad’s lead foot cause the vacuum powered wiper blades to stall when they were needed most?
• Would one (or more) of us kids puke from car sickness?
• With three kids and two window seats would there be a fight for  seating in back?

     And that was just the getting there part of the adventure.

     Once we were there it would be the jockeying and whining for permission and a ticket to go on the rides.

     “Smell the salt air!” Mother would swoon.  It took me years to learn the aroma came more from the creosote treated boardwalk than anything else. 

     Grandparents wanted to turn their backs on the excitement of the land-side of the boardwalk and sit on one of the benches to watch the water.  At the time, I couldn’t understand why, now I do.

     To me, Asbury Park was the most surreal and happiest place on the face of the earth.  It was so magical, all the hassle of getting there was worth it.

     The Boardwalk was the core and the ocean/beach was its anchor.   On one side were the eternally crashing waves of the ocean.  On the other side were ornate whitewashed buildings, offering everything from eat and drink to miracle product demonstrations – some even offered by a youthful Ron Popiel, salt-water taffy shops, games of chance and rides that appealed to both toddlers and adults. The rides were not what one would call the thrill rides of today; they were more genteel amusement rides.

     Sights, sounds and smells all played key roles in the excitement.

     The planks of the wooden boardwalk was soaked through and through with creosote and laid out in a herringbone pattern except for a northbound and a south bound trail of parallel boards for man-powered, shaded wicker chairs to glide riders smoothly along the midway.  

     The surreal part in my mind came from the juxtaposition of the frantic immediacy of attractions on the boardwalk with the vast eternal crashing of waves and the rolling of the ocean on the other side.

     The air above it all mingled the sounds and aromas of both contrasting sides. It also carried a parade of slow-flying biplanes trailing fifty-foot advertising banners, “Visit Palace Amusements” or “Don’t miss Ripley’s Believe it of Not”. 

     Even more regularly up and down the coastline were the blimps.  U.S. Navy blimps out of the nearby Lakehurst Naval Air Station crept along the shore as if no one ever told them that WWII was over and German U-Boats are no longer lurking off the shore.  The drone of their low RPM motors added to the concert from the breezes. 

     During the daytime, the breeze came ashore from the cool Atlantic.  In the evening, it would switch and go from the land out to sea. Thermals.

     But when I was a kid, it was mostly about the rides. One of my first rites of passage came when I was told, “You cannot go on those boats anymore, you are too big!” I loved a ride of “motor boats” connected to a central shaft and floated in a tight circle in a shallow pool.  I’d sit there, going round and round and could pull the string and ring the bell that was mounted in front of me. It was the same as the little fire trucks but without the water. Big stuff for a little guy.

     But when I outgrew the kiddie rides, bigger kid rides beckoned.   

     I could then drive my own real motor boat in the narrow channels along the edge of Wesley Lake.  I could now ride on the better merry-go-round that featured horses that went up and down, listen to a first-class Wurlitzer mechanical band that played clangy, slightly out of tune happy music and each time around I could try to pick a golden ring for a free ride. We could go on the Ferris Wheel whose lower reaches were inside the Palace Amusement building and it rose through the roof allowing a spectacular view of the entire area.

     A few years ago, I returned to Asbury Park and was saddened to note that even in a state with the population density of New Jersey, the resort area lay in ruin.  There is a unique kind of sadness that permeates an abandoned, rotting amusement park.  It had been that way for over 25 years – as if it was the Chernobyl of New Jersey and no one wanted to be near it.

     How could that have happened? Had a Godzilla risen from the ocean and scared everyone away?  

     In a way, that’s what happened although Godzilla is a metaphor for the social ills of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s that came home to roost in Asbury Park.

     The fiery breath from Godzilla came from that very same population density that at one time had sustained it.  It illustrated the rage spewing from frustrations of inequalities within that populace. Many places in the area burned during riots in the early 1970s. Some of the fires attributed to the riots possibly were fraudulent insurance fires. It was as if the Tunnel of Love at Palace Amusements had become the Tunnel of Despair.

     The roar of Godzilla encouraged tourists to use the new superhighways and low cost air travel to yield to the seductive lure of more distant, longer seasons in Florida, Puerto Rico and Mexico.  

     The final ingredient of Asbury Park’s demise came from the smell of Godzilla’s breath – Governmental corruption, criminal enterprise, under-funded entrepreneurs and quick buck artists who took their fast profits and ran.

     When I surveyed that ruin, fond memories of a childhood were also turned to ash. Even the ocean, while it continued to roll on as if nothing else had transpired, carried evidence to the contrary.  It deposited refuse of a culture in trouble as used syringes and products of human disregard fouled the sands of the beach.

     Walk along the boardwalk to Allenhurst on the north or Ocean Grove on the south, the instant one steps across that invisible border to either town reveals the difference between night and day – between squalor and grandeur.  It is remarkably sudden and definitive.

     Finding a way to make this area an asset for all socio-economic levels remains a challenge. 

     There appears to be new hope on this day as more sound and upright investment has begun to transform the area in a new direction.

    Some of the remaining old grand buildings that stood neglected and rotting are either being restored or demolished. The shell of the old carousel building is being converted into a community theatre and new structures are being built to accommodate art galleries and restaurants.

    Asbury Park has finally found new energy and opened itself to legitimate resources to redeem itself.  The creosoted boardwalk has been replaced with less noxious materials and the salt air now carries a breeze of hope.

as another football season gets off to a sputtering start…. 

     It was a strange name, that Bubber Narby had. He was a local hero, the star running back of the 1956 Roxbury Gaels high school football team and I wanted to be just like him. 

     As a seventh grader and late bloomer, I longed for two things, acceptance and to (ahem) bloom. I assumed one would lead to the other in no particular order. 

     Comic books, even then my primary source of information, were laced with photos of bodybuilder Charles Atlas luring me, “Give me 15 minutes a day and I will make a He-Man out of you!”  I certainly had fifteen minutes to spare each day. Other ads depicted the classic bully kicking sand in Freddie Feeble’s face, and then Freddie’s girlfriend walked off with the bully. I wiped the sand from my eyes, filled out the coupon and frantically checked the box, “Rush delivery” and mailed it to Charles Atlas but his response must have gotten lost amid his muscle-bound laughter.

     My sister was first to enter the mysterious world of high school.  On fall Saturdays of her freshman year, she’d meticulously prepare her tin Cavalier cigarette can* noisemaker with a charge of rattling stones and we’d join the thousands (OK, maybe it was hundreds) of others and go to the local games and that is where Bubber came into my consciousness.  My naivety was an even greater challenge than my physical development and when I saw the shoulders of those football heroes, I wanted to look like that. I didn’t realize those shoulders and other protective pads were a guy’s version of falsies.

     The scene altered the course of my psyche for the next few years.  Not only were muscular football heroes accepted, they were idolized with raucous demonstrations of laudatory praise led by short-skirted, elitely lovely teenage girls called cheerleaders. The parents even got a “hello” cheer for the heroic fruits of their loins.   

     When my turn for high school came and even though I possessed the speed and agility of a concrete highway construction lane divider, I made the team.  I was good at getting in people’s way – a valued skill in the game of football.  My quest for Bubberhood had begun.

     Senior year, we opened against those same Roxbury Gaels who had won the state championship the previous year while our band of fearless warriors had won a single game – having only edged the Budd Lake Montessori Fighting Toddlers…in overtime.  (We also had a tie game versus the McCormick family home schoolers – but only because three of the McCormick kids had come down with the flu). 

     Opening kickoff was on the very same field where Bubber had romped to glory – in fact during pregame warmups I actually might have slipped on some of his sacred previously jettisoned bodily fluids.

     At the opening kickoff I immediately got in the runner’s way, he dropped the ball and we went on to score.  Near the end of the game, I accidentally caught one of their deflected passes between my knees to preserve a huge upset win. I had achieved Bubberhood!! 

     Every kid should have a moment like that. But it was only a moment and in hindsight, that was the best thing of all. 

     I had reached my goal in that first game and immediately began to think more globally.  The more global my thoughts, the more time I had to ponder them from the bench as each game came and went.

     On a more pragmatic level, to maintain my coveted place in Bubberland I had to stay after school each day and run around the practice field crashing into my classmates until well after dark.  It got cold and wet and the fun of it quickly wore off.

     By mid-season, pacifism was increasingly attractive. The concept of one group of people dominating another by first demonizing them (“Kill those evil Saints!”) and then attacking did not make much sense to me, although it was a good introduction to an oft-repeated American pattern of foreign policy. 

     I lasted the season, got my picture in the yearbook but Bubberhood waned – never to return.

     My 13 yr. old granddaughter Monika recently saw a photo of me from that glorious season, “Grandpa is that really you??” 

     For eternity I am and shall remain on page 110 of the 1962 yearbook in my tight-fitting blue and grey – number 25!! Svelte, muscles tensed, my eyes gleaming with Bubberlike intensity! Ready to tackle somebody! Anybody! 

     Monika was impressed.

     Aw, shucks!  Even though I’m now on Medicare I could still go out onto the field and occupy even more space but what’s the point? Back in the fall of ’61 we had won the big game and I’ve since moved on with my life.

     Perhaps if our world leaders had all won their first games, it would be a more peaceful place to live these days.

Two more thoughts:  Evidence to the contrary, we DID wear helmets

* and my sister’s Cavalier cigarette can these days would fetch $150 on the collector’s market.

     Aging is a privilege. Not everyone is granted a passport to take that journey. It’s the lucky ones who get to grow old. 

     Brother-in-law Joe sent this recently:

     “During a visit to my doctor, I asked him, ‘How do you determine whether or not an older person should be put in an old folks home?’
     ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we fill up a bathtub — then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the person for them to empty the bathtub.’�
     ‘Oh, I understand,’ I said. ‘A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup.’

     ‘No’ he said. ‘A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want the bed near the window?’”

     As funny and self-effacing as it is, I would like to offer evidence to the contrary.

     With age we grow in insight, wisdom and integrity – even if we lose our keys more often.

     Exhibit #1 for your consideration…

Albert Einstein – Have you ever seen a photo of young Albert before he was recognized as a world-renowned genius mathematician?  I have not. Had Ol’ Bert been a kid these days, he’d have the notoriety of sporting his bad hair aboard a Special Ed. bus, en route to his little special classroom at the end of the hall with a bunch of other interesting kids.  If he’d sat in that classroom and written down his now famous e=mc², all would have said, “Who gives a rat’s patootie?”  And his parents would have been called in for a conference. Albert got better as he got older.

     Exhibit #2 – Have you ever seen a photo of a youthful classical Greek philosopher? O.K., I know there were no cameras then …Well how about a painting or cave drawing?  What did young Socrates look like?  What was he like as a kid?  What about Plato or Aristotle?  Did they play kick the can or dodge ball?  Did they ring neighbor’s doorbells and run away?  Did Plato prefer the swings or jungle gym at the playground behind the Parthenon? It is likely Socrates’ folks were often called in for parent conferences at his school when he repeatedly responded on essay tests, “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”  They’d take him home, send him to his room without supper and take away his toy olive press.  Obviously these guys got better as they got older.  Age gave them credibility. As for the youth of that day, they were relegated to posing for marble statues. 

     Exhibit #2.5 – Sigmund Freud – Is his youthful life ever discussed or examined?  Of course not!  We all KNOW what HE was doing then…oh, his poor dear mutti…she tried desperately to get him to sleep in his own bed and join Little League, the Boy Scouts or build his crystal radio set but he was otherwise occupied. Siggy got more respect and dignity as he got older.

     Exhibit #3 – We don’t need no stinkin’ example three.  But to be fair and balanced, as they say…

     Could you imagine an 87yr. old Michael Jackson singing and dancing to “Thriller”?  We DO have Chubby Checker placing his walker aside and pathetically trying to do the Twist at county fairs and block parties. He now travels with his personal chiropractor. There is a flip side to some things. 

     Could you imagine a senior’s tour of heavyweight boxers?  Instead of putting in mouth protectors, they’d just remove their teeth and put them into a glass under the ring.

     Lines in the face indicate wisdom of the ages.  It is interesting by the time we have a few things figured out, we lack the strength or chutzpah to do anything about it.  So we try to share our wisdom with the younger ones but they don’t listen because we’re just a bunch of old farts! What would the world be like if that was different? We’d probably still be using Betamax, 78s and playing Pong. 

     But in the area of the arts, as a true artist ages, he/she gets constantly deeper in their quests for self-expression. 

     Artists evolve over their creative lifetimes.  If they remain static, they are not really artists.  They lack the creative spirit.  They become re-creative instead – making the same things over and over. 

     I would even go so far as to state the true artists in the popular culture have evolved to do their greatest works in their 6^th, 7^th and even 8^th decades.  Frank Sinatra singing, “My Way” would not cut it when he was 23 – he’d sound like a whining two-year-old.  He had to wait a while to make it a credible song.

     There are down sides of aging, to be sure. The fact of the unavoidable permanent end to it is a bummer.

     We experience losses of loved ones and as we age are more likely to find ourselves staring at ceilings in health care facilities with the threat of being propped up to watch a lot of bad daytime TV.   �
     Coming to terms with the inevitable physical limitations that arrive knocking at our doors is not always a graceful process – if we fight it too much with lifts, tucks and spandex it can become hideous.

     The usual ointments to ease the worries about our physical demise are faith and fond memory and we access those “ointments” only after we struggle a bit unscrewing the lid of the jar.

     But there is a remarkable upside to aging and that is what the rest of this piece is about.

     As I rake the yard in the autumn (or sip some single malt and watch a hired hand do it), the breeze blows, the branches shake and I watch the leaves falling like a fractured rainbow. I think of Freddie. 

     Freddie the Leaf (The Fall of Freddie the Leaf: A Story of Life for All Ages by Leo Buscaglia; Holt Rinehart Winston, 1983) is a little fictional character who presents, in the metaphor of leaves falling from trees, an explanation of life’s processes.  It is a book intended for children but, as with many messages intended for children, it also helps adults.

     In the autumn we marvel over the colors of the leaves. There is a great appreciation for the face value of it all. If one were to dig a bit deeper with a little philosophy, it might be interpreted as nature’s commentary about God’s plan and the rhythm of life.

     The weathermen and botanists tell us of the scientific processes at work. We hear about the seasonal levels of moisture and chemical reactions that intervene as photosynthesis wanes, causing the tapestry of color to unfold before us. 

     Those are all pieces of the puzzle that we spend a lifetime trying to assemble in our minds and hearts.  Once they are in place, they fit together nicely.  But even with those considerations and scientific facts, I came to another perspective the other day.  Just as the caterpillar of the spring changes into a beautiful butterfly for its final days on this earth, the leaf of the autumn achieves its greatest beauty after its primary work is done, just before it drops from the tree.  That is a huge thing to think about, especially for us who are more conscious about the process of aging.

     There is a lot more to aging than simply getting cheap coffee at McDonald’s. 

     My high school English teacher would be proud to know that I still recall Wordsworth’s admonition, “Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” Once we are able to access the great privilege of retirement, we can begin to explore our true powers in our freedom with the wisdom of our years.  We can explore interests, new places, new ideas and we have time to make significant contributions to the lives of others.  

     There are those among us who volunteer to teach children in remote regions of China, Africa and elsewhere.  There are those among us who make visitations to Hospice, hospitals, and nursing homes to ease the pangs of loneliness. There are those among us who volunteer to help needy children.  Some explore their creative abilities and share them with others. Many seniors give credence to the term, “Lifelong Learners”. School is never out.  The leaves of our spirits turn into more vibrant colors as we take this path of great privilege. 

     As we begin to gain a sense of this rare gift of life, of the speed at which it comes and then goes, our colors begin to brighten.

      When  artificial values of our culture are cast aside, senior citizens emerge as truly beautiful people.

     It was a summer church service under the protection of a tent.        Days of great heat, uncomfortable humidity and frequent heavy rains had relented and given us an idyllic summer day for this annual event. 

     The tent protected us from the late morning sunshine and the tent also gave us a sense of community beneath its cover. 

     This was not what one would call a summer tent revival meeting that ends with a pile of discarded crutches, wheel chairs and walkers and folks dancing in the aisles…yet it did yield a residual effect of renewal.  It was very Presbyterian. In fact, it was Presbyterian – but with a designer’s touch. 

     The prosthetics left behind after this meeting was more in the metaphorical sense. For a moment we could cast aside our defenses of indifference and pretense and leave them in a heap out back.

     Designer/Pastor Linda K. stood before the gathering and connected the spoken and sung offerings of many. All seemed to point toward the idea of living in the moment…seeing and smelling proverbial and literal roses.  All the while, nurturing a sense of hope for the future as the path is lit for each of us in our own way.   �
     While contributions of members who volunteered verse lended to the theme, even more so, the venue itself – an Outdoor Education facility lent more.  Elk and deer sauntered over to observe the goings-on.  Birds fluttered about.  Flowers sprung from the ground, faced us and smiled. The cool, dry summer breeze wafted through the open-walled tent giving an assist to the brought-in flower arrangements, causing them to tumble over again and again. 

     Perhaps the breeze was telling us that for this one day, at least, we could leave those greenhouse grown flowers in the greenhouse and take more notice at what was already provided on site. 

     Beech trees swayed in the background as Linda led the service.  Their small leaves fluttered, turning each tree in to a kinetic sculpture of green…and with every flutter of each leaf, the contrasting shades of green from opposite sides were randomly revealed.  One parishioner stood to read the poem, “Trees”.  It fit well.

    Then I remembered a trip to my wife’s home Austrian alpine town, Eisenerz.  It is a mountain valley town and everywhere one looks into the distance, huge snow capped mountains loom overhead. 

     Before we had gone there, I worried how I might become complacent and bored with the closed-in constancy of those mountains.  But when we were there, each mountain was in motion.  Each changed with every passing hour of daylight.  Colors changed, hues changed, air currents changed, shadows changed and even outline shapes of the alps changed with the comings and goings of clouds.  The mountains were as alive as those leaves on the beech trees.

     The light plays upon the forms of the ancient mountains. 

     The light plays upon the leaves of the trees that change from season to season.

     The light plays hide and seek on the ground amid the shadows of earthly things and the light plays upon something as fleeting as a ripple in a body of water.

     God gave us light…light gives us life and new ways to see things that God provides.

     You have all probably heard these: If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one to hear it, does it still make a sound?  or…If a husband comes home with a new power tool and there is no one there to complain, is he still wrong?
     But here is another:  If a writer has no one to read what he’s written, is he/she still a writer?

     This week, there is one less reader of these posts than in the past. So in some way, I am now less of a writer.  

     This reader was special.  His place in my life was a primary reason why writing became an avocation.  And his place in my life was greater than that.

    Robert Graham “Bob” Kemper died last Monday.  He was Senior Minister of the First Congregational Church we love in Western Springs, IL and a primary reason we were drawn to that church.  He became much more after we were in the door and had taken the pledge of membership.

    Bob was a liberator. It amazes me that people with personal physical limitations (his was blindness via macular degeneration) have the inner strength and gifts of communication that help others transcend their own limitations.

     He freed me to develop a spiritual life of my own – without the guilt associated with the biblical illiteracy that remains with me.

     He freed a dramatic story of family life from my wife, Elsa. Shortly after we’d joined the church, he called and asked if she’d be willing to present the story of her family’s life in post-war (WWII) displaced persons camps and their immigration to the U.S.  That experience led us on a multi-faceted journey of exploration and presence among others that continues to this day.

     Bob was a teacher, deep thinker – philosopher and theologian. Yet he had a remarkable way of communicating his deep thoughts to others in a way that was understandable, practical and not intimidating.

     The church had formed a writer’s group under associate minister Leslie Ritter-Jenkins and I joined in.  Bob was not part of that group directly, but we met in the church library that was named in his honor after he retired. Books he had written rested on the shelves. Encouragement from the group and the aura of being in “his” library inspired me to continue writing. 

     At the time of the formation of the writer’s group, the concept of personal mentoring was popular and I sheepishly asked Bob if he’d serve as my writing mentor. 

     “Let’s go out to lunch and talk about it” was his response.  We went to one of his favorite restaurants in the Chicago ‘burbs – “Little Joe’s.”  In spite of his dear wife Margie’s concerns for his diet, Bob loved to find reasons to go there.  Little Joe’s is a greasy little hot dog and Italian Beef joint that caters to blue-collar, factory workers and other serious gastronomers, such as Bob and I.  Bob took to Little Joe’s like a little boy would take to a candy store.  He loved the Chicago style hot dogs and the greasy fries.  He was a fry dipper and so am I. 

     Bob tactfully declined to become my writing mentor yet, he remained interested in the path of cyberspace, paper and ink that lay ahead for me.

      Simply knowing Bob might read my offerings in the newspaper and/or on the website was inspiration to me.  He was a strong role model in many ways – he voice was clear in his writing and his message was concise.  I strove to find my voice in my writing in the same way.

     But most importantly, Bob was the quintessential Minister.  He was a conduit between me and the mysterious higher power to which mankind has assigned many names. He was a conduit between people – helping them connect.  He explained the church’s moniker that featured one blank quadrant representing “the truth of faith that will only come when we die.”

     Bob’s benediction continues to be an inspiration to me and countless others. 

     And now, Bob is filling-in that blank quadrant of the church’s moniker and I paraphrase his benediction for him:

Bob,

God go with you…

May He walk where you walk,

Guide where you must make choices,

Comfort where you hurt,

and Surprise you

by His continued love for you

and what you were

and what you did.

     Thank you, Bob Kemper, for all you have been, and will continue to be, for me.

     We just got home from a summer trip that included some fine educational opportunities.  For one, we visited the Cantigny Museum in Wheaton, IL.  There, I was motivated to learn all about Colonel Robert R. “Bob” McCormick. 

     Trying to be prepared, as always, I anticipated this stop along our route.  Just before we checked out of the previous night’s hotel, I went to the computer in the lobby to find out what I could about this guy.

     It had been a challenging stay at the Radisson Hotel in Moline, IL which featured “Sleep Number” beds.  With my characteristic senior citizen short-term memory loss, we had two number-related issues in that hotel – one was after breakfast we tried to return to our room.  After three hotels in three nights, when we got to our sixth floor (at least we remembered that), we forgot our room number.  We knew it was near the elevator, but which of those rooms was ours? 

     At 6:45 in the morning, we met some not so friendly people in various states of dress (or undress) as we tried each of the doors until our door lock card opened into a room where the luggage looked familiar and there was no one surprised by our visit.

     It was not room number 612 where the newlyweds were staying, or 613 where it was some businessman and his “secretary” obviously who’d been taking dictation all night, nor was it room numbers 614 or 615. 

     Our room was 618 and why hadn’t we been able to remember that?  I’ll tell you why…(second reason) it was because of those damn sleep number beds where I spent the whole night trying to find the number that would make my bed more comfortable than sleeping on a set of railroad tracks. 

     The bed was controlled by a remote device and every time I tried it, the TV would go on or off, change channels or the sound would mute.  Then I tried another remote and garage doors across the street began rising and lowering. Finally I tried the third remote and the bed instantly resembled the Great SanFrancisco earthquake before settling in to the South Dakota Badlands. When it got to the railroad tracks setting I resigned and gave the remote a flying lesson.

    So getting back to my original point…the next morning I was running on an empty tank with the windshield clouded over when I went to the computer in the lobby to “Goggle” (as they say) Colonel Bob McCormick.  

     On this Goggle (I think I had the right website that everyone always mentions, “Wanna know something?  Just Goggle it!”) website I learned that way back in the ancient times in which this McCormick guy lived, he was one of only two Colonels – for the sake of comparison, these days we have 32,746 of them -  you have to understand this was a long time ago. 

     One Colonel was, of course, McCormick, who later became the renowned pepper and ground clove magnate and the other Colonel went by the name of Sanders who later became very big in chickens. 

     The story goes that both were due for retirement from their Colonelship on the same fateful day in 18…something or other and showed up at the retirement place at the same time.  The processing line continued to get longer and more frustrating due to the retiring Generals who constantly cut in ahead of them. Even though waiting in line is one of the great skills one learns in the military, the wait was long and tough – in fact it was so long that Sanders grew a white beard as he waited. 

     In any event, the two Colonels spent their time in line talking about their plans after retirement. 

     McCormick was going to build himself and his family a great estate in the Chicago suburbs so his kids could go to good schools and breathe fresh air.  Sanders was returning to his ancestral home of Kentucky and had an idea for a new business – he’d wear a white suit and sell highly seasoned fried chicken with his secret blend of ten herbs and spices. 

     Ever the opportunist, McCormick listened intently while he fished around in the breast pocket of his perfectly pressed blue Colonel jacket.  Then he withdrew a red and white tin of his famous ground black pepper and presented it to Sanders – “Why don’t you make it eleven herbs and spices?  This final secret ingredient will be safe with me!”

    Colonel Sanders smiled and graciously accepted the offer and as we now know, the rest is history. 

     So with all that information swimming around in my head, I tucked my copy of the Chicago Sun-Times under my arm and turned down the offer of a tour of the McCormick mansion because I already knew all that stuff about its famous inhabitant.

     Travel is a great way to learn new things.