Lewis – Page 2 – Sage Telling Your Story

May 25, 2016February 26, 2019

The Men in My Life, by Lewis

Preamble

I have lain awake at night more than once this past week thinking about what I might write on this subject, trying to find some common theme amidst the tenuous and sparse connections I have had with two of the three men with whom I have lived. Perhaps it was the place, perchance the time. Whatever the reason, I can honestly say that when it comes to the masculine persona, “Yay, verily, I have barely known ye.”

What are men afraid of? Is it a part of being “macho”? It seems to me that it is not related to sexual orientation. I see it even in this Storytellers group—men are reluctant to share their vulnerability, their pain. Perhaps it is because we are all Baby-Boomers or older. Perhaps it was growing up in the decades of seemingly endless wars, whether hot or cold. It could have been our heroes on TV and movie screens—Charlton Heston, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne. Perhaps it was ubiquitous homophobia, insinuating into our lives the scandalousness of showing tenderness or warm affection toward any man. Whatever the source, it is a theme that has run throughout my associations with men from my earliest days. And that has left a hole in my soul that remains unfilled to this day.

In recalling the men in my life and writing about them, wounds have been opened that never healed but were only glazed over by time and circumstance. They are the neglected infrastructure of my life and I have run into a deep pothole. Perhaps in writing this, I can throw some “cold patch” into it and smooth out some of the pain.

Homer

Homer E. Wright was my maternal grandfather, the only grandparent I ever knew. My mother was the oldest of six children growing up on the outskirts of Pratt, Kansas, in the nineteen-teens and –twenties. A couple of cows and a few chickens shared the yard. Granddad worked his entire life for the Rock Island RR. His wife, Alma, died in 1943 of colon cancer. He continued living in Pratt until he retired in 1952. It was then that he moved to Hutchinson to live with my parents and six-year-old “Lewis the Third” in a newer, larger house on which he made the down payment on the $12,500 mortgage. The house had three small bedrooms, one bath, a single-car attached garage, a large yard, and no basement. Because Dad used one of the bedrooms as an office, Granddad and I shared a bedroom. He got the bed and I slept on a wire-frame divan with removable cushions. (I can remember that I liked to sleep on my stomach and let one leg drop down into the cradle formed by the tucked in sheets.)

Granddad was very generous with his money. He bought us our first TV that same year—even before there was a broadcast station within range. He also paid for my first bicycle and only pet dog.

In 1955, we all piled into Granddad’s ‘52 Packard and headed for Washington, D.C., New York City, Boston, and Newport, Connecticut, to see the sights and visit aunts and uncles on my mother’s side. While climbing the Statue of Liberty, I left Granddad’s Kodak box camera on a bench at a rest stop halfway up the long, long staircase. It was gone by the time we came back down. I feared his wrath but, as with other emotions, it was missing in action.

When he died in November of 1955, he left each of his six children $15,000. My parents used the money to pay off the mortgage. We burned it in the fireplace.

As generous as Granddad was with his money, he was every bit as parsimonious with his personal attention. I have no memory of having a conversation with him or any physical touching. Even when he gave me a gift, it was not because he handed it to me. It just “appeared”. With a tip of the bowler to Winston Churchill, he was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that his offspring scattered to the four winds, Harold to a farm in the far southeast corner of Kansas; Carl to Alaska and Mossy Rock, WA; Merle to Stone Mountain, GA; Ruth to New London, CT; and Verna to somewhere in Texas. Perhaps it wasn’t Granddad. Maybe it was only escaping Kansas that was important.

Dad

Dad was the oldest of four boys born on a farm near Cheney, Kansas. I never knew either of his parents but he told the story of their losing their farm during the Depression. It was the only time he ever saw either of them cry. It moved him so deeply that he resolved to spend his working life helping farmers get the loans they needed to prosper.

My dad was much more approachable than Granddad. Before I was old enough for kindergarten, on Sunday mornings I would sit on his lap while he read the comics to me. I would ask him to “point” so I could follow along. It gave me a great “leg up” on learning to read myself.

His relationship with my mother was almost like a business partnership. If it weren’t for the Sunday evening every month that their bridge club met, there would have been hardly any socializing at all. My ex-wife remembers my mother criticizing my dad’s driving while vacationing. (My dad drove as part of his business. He put 30,000 miles per year on his company car without ever causing an accident.) They slept in twin beds–like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz but without the bickering—and even dressed in separate rooms. Dad was a “soft touch”. Everybody liked him. I think Mom resented him for being that way but her latent lesbianism meant she couldn’t stand intimacy, either.

Dad had no idea how to parent. Mother handled all the disciplining, including spanking. He didn’t know how to be truly tender, either. When he found the dog Homer had given me dead in the street—I’m not sure it wasn’t his car that did it—he was annoyed at having to find a spot in the backyard to bury him. The only “heart-to-heart” talk I can ever remember having with him was when I was entering middle school and he felt obligated to tell me what a jock strap was for. I think he was more uncomfortable that I was.

Still, I felt I understood Dad more than I ever did Mom. I think I adopted many of his ways, especially the way he took care of business in his office at home, sort of like being there but not being there. That was true of me much of the time while my kids were growing up. It is the biggest regret of my life.

Laurin

There’s a neat kind of symmetry to having been in love with one woman and one man. It would have been even more remarkable were I able to say that I was single for the first 26 years of my life (true), married to a woman for the second 26 years (also true) and then married to a man for the final 26-year installment of my life. I only got to live with Laurin for half that long. Had he not been twenty years older than I, we might have made it to that milestone.

Laurin and I filed for divorce from our wives when it became apparent that we had something truly special going on between us. He had been married for nearly fifty years and he and his wife had five children, all grown. Laurin had the “hots” for me from the moment we first met. He was not shy about expressing it. The way he looked me in the eyes without saying a word embarrassed me in the extreme. His directness was something I had never encountered before in a man.

I was at that time in the process of getting in touch with my innate sexuality. I was seeing a gay therapist in Ann Arbor. He was urging me to go slow. The fact that Laurin lived 55 miles away in Flint, where he taught high school social studies, gave me the space I needed to sort things out. It took a lot of sorting—seven years in fact. We stayed in touch through letters—the snail-mail kind. By 1998, I was openly investigating the gay culture.

That May, I attended a weekend financial seminar for gay men and women over 50. The keynote speaker was Quentin Crisp, author of The Naked Civil Servant. Laurin was there also. We picked up where we had left off. Laurin’s wife had been living for many years in Hylton Head, South Carolina, where they owned a condominium. Although we still lived 55 miles apart, we met on a few occasions for dinner or to attend the monthly meetings of Body Electric in Detroit.

I wrote Laurin a letter to inform him that I thought I was ready to take our friendship to a deeper level. I had been reading books by men who were gay but living a closeted existence within a heterosexual marriage. In the car one day that May, I told my wife, Janet, about a case I had read about involving a Mormon couple who took annual vacations to New York City with their children. She would spend the week taking the children to museums, concerts, and the theater while Dad would check out the gay bars. At the end of the week, they would resume their “normal” existence back in Utah.

Janet’s response was to ask me, “Is that what you want?” I said, “No”. She asked what it was I did want. I told her that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with a man. That night, I slept in our son’s former bedroom and we began the process of getting a divorce.

Three weeks later, I participated in a workshop for gay men seeking deeper same-sex relationships. I waited for a response to my letter from Laurin. Nothing came. A couple of months went by; still no response. Finally, one of us called the other. I don’t remember who was which. I asked Laurin about the letter. He said, “What letter?” Turns out, I had typed the letter but never mailed it. Freud lives!

The die had been cast, nevertheless, and the two of us began to plan a vacation tryst in a place with sand, palm trees, and privacy. But first, we needed a trial run. We arranged to rendezvous at the very cabin in Lakelands Trail State Park, MI, where we first met. I was there to greet Laurin as he drove up. He got out of his second-hand Cadillac and immediately removed his toupee and flung it across the trunk. For both of us, the moment marked the end of pretending to be who we were not.

Laurin was unlike any man I had ever met. He delighted in his body and in mine. He was spontaneous, direct, and completely devoted to my happiness. His favorite movie was The Unsinkable Molly Brown (he was a Colorado native). Early in the movie there is a scene where Harve Presnell and Debby Reynolds are laying in the grass under a tree. He sings to his love, Molly, “I’ll Never Say ‘No’”. Laurin vowed that he would never say “No” to me—and he kept that promise for the fourteen years we were together. (This is not to say that he never did things I would not have approved, if given a chance.)

That’s what made Laurin so precious to me. He went wherever I went and vice versa. We couldn’t get enough of each other. I had finally found a man who truly enjoyed my company, who wanted nothing more than to wake up next to me in the morning. For the first time in my life, I felt that I truly mattered to another man. It was like heaven.

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

May 10, 2016February 26, 2019

Compulsion, by Lewis

According to Wiktionary, the word “compulsion” means “an irrational need to perform some action, often despite negative consequences”. Standing up at full length and looking back upon my lifetime with eyes wide open, I can find nothing in my past that comes even close to an act that might reasonably be characterized as a compulsion.

I am reminded of a movie I once saw with the title of Compulsion. It told the story of Leopold and Loeb, the young privileged Chicagoan youths who, the 1920’s, murdered a boy for the sense of power and superiority it gave them. Of course, not all compulsions are so grim but all, it seems to me, have a negative connotation. Compared to Leopold and Loeb, my fondness for candy and salty snacks seems downright trivial. Yes, such indulgences can have negative consequences but only for me. But there is nothing unnatural about liking such things, as millions feel the same way. Jaywalking can have negative consequences but it is a rational act.

[I am cutting this essay short, as my Microsoft Word is behaving irrationally and–dare I say it–compulsively.]

About the Author

March 25, 2016February 26, 2019

Keeping the Peace, by Lewis

KEEPING THE PEACE

…IN EIGHT EXTREMELY DIFFICULT STEPS

(OR LEWIS’ RULES OF ORDER)

1. Don’t interrupt your adversary. Listen fully until you understand completely their position.

2. Say back to him or her what you think they said. “Did I get that right?”

3. If they say, “That’s not what I said (or meant)”, ask them to repeat. If they say, “Yes, that’s right”, continue.

4. Tell them specifically why you disagree. Ask them to repeat what you just said.

5. When the area of disagreement is clear to both parties, then: a) agree to disagree, or b) agree to break off the discussion until another day or until a mediator can be brought in or until areas of disagreement can be clarified or fact-finding takes place.

6. Never shout, threaten, or resort to ad hominem attacks.

7. Never make the argument personal or ego-centered.

8. Apologize if you step over the line. [Never be afraid to admit that you are wrong.]

9. Remember, above all, that cutting the baby in half is no substitute for lacking humility.

About the Author

March 14, 2016February 26, 2019

Hospitality, by Lewis

Hospitality is one of the great lessons of the life of Jesus. But human beings have been exhibiting its essential nature for as long, I suspect, as they have walked this planet. It is told in the lesson of the Good Samaritan who stopped to minister to a man, likely a Jew, who had been beaten and robbed on the road to Jericho. It was the impetus for the Hippocratic and Boy Scout Oaths. It is the inevitable consequence of the Golden Rule–to treat others as you would like them to treat you–and, according to Wikipedia, is found in some form in almost every religion and ethical tradition.

In today’s troubled world, hospitality seems to be in short supply, for example, among the Israelis and Palestinians, Shia and Sunni Muslims, the Muslim Brotherhood and secular Egyptians, Tea Partiers and moderate Republicans, Tea Partiers and Democrats, Cheese Heads and Vikings, those who cling to guns and those who cling to their loved-ones to protect them from guns, those who like sushi and those who like cheeseburgers, those who believe a landlord should be able to evict a destitute tenant into hostile streets but a woman should be forced to carry an unwanted child to term and those who believe that a rapist’s semen or a failed condom is not a down payment on a nine-month lease on a woman’s body.

Yes, the world needs all the hospitality it can get right now. That’ s one thing I like about the Sharing Our Stories group–we treat each other like we would rather be here than anywhere else at this time and we show it in ways that are kind and liberally-minded. This is the kind of safe atmosphere that encourages creativity in us all. And what is hospitality if not the nurturing of the human spirit in all its variety?

[Footnote: Initially, I could think of very little to write about the subject of “hospitality”. I was about to write just a brief sentence or two about that subject and then launch into an essay on “Hospital Fatalities”, about which I am much more passionate. But I thought that might be type-casting me a bit so I deferred.]

About the Author

February 25, 2016February 26, 2019

Time, by Lewis

Is there any cliché about
time that has yet gone unwritten or unspoken?
I don’t feel comfortable making generalizations about the subject of
time. I can only speak my own truths
about time, if I can figure out what they are.

People spend a lot of
money trying to mitigate the effects of time on their bodies. They are usually rich, perhaps even as rich
as their plastic surgeons. I don’t know
what a facelift costs. I’m sure that it
depends upon a number of factors—the number of wrinkles per square inch of skin,
the number of square inches of skin per linear inch of one’s face, the elapsed
time since the previous facelift, the degree of satisfaction from the previous
facelift, the amount of time spent in the sun showing off one’s facelift, and
the percentage of body fat.

Also, I’m sure that, once
one has had a facelift, there is tremendous pressure to make some adjustments
to the birth date that appears on various personal documents. It must be extremely embarrassing to be pulled
over for a traffic violation only to have the officer look at you, then your
driver’s license, and ask you step out of the car, put your hands on the roof,
and receive a pat down on suspicion of having a stolen ID.

What must a facelift do
to one’s relationship with a twin who cannot afford to follow suit? Would they then introduce him or her as a
parent or much older sibling? And what
of the spouse who now must endure the clucks and chuckles from those who assume
that he or she has “robbed the cradle”? Upon death—still, I’m afraid an
inevitability—would it not feel unnatural to gaze upon the 90-year-old corpse
with skin stretched drum-tight across its chops and exclaim, “Oh, how natural
he/she looks?” And, of course, the worst
message such shenanigans sends is that all the rest of us, the ones who choose
to age naturally, are growing uglier by the day.

But I’m not buying
it. I think of aging skin as a beauty
mark. Nobody who’s into classic cars
would think of putting 2013 parts on a 1957 Chevrolet. Sure, we might hammer out the dents,
straighten out the frame, fix the rust, replace the worn-out springs, and spray
a new coat of paint on her, but we would never try to make her look like this
year’s model. I’m a 1946 model of a
white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant gay male who prefers to nuzzle the bumpers of
others like me and who doesn’t give a fig for brand-new sporty SUV’s with
programmable liftgates, reverse-view cameras, and touch screens. I’ve been around the block with beloved
partners of both sexes, fathered two children, had a 30-year career that
provided a comfortable life, and I want to look the part. I don’t want to pose for “before” and “after”
pictures where the “before” photo looks like an old picture of me after being
sucker punched in the mouth. George
Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying, “Youth is wasted on the young.” Yeah, and today youthfulness is wasted on the
old.

But the bitter old men of
Congress have found a way to exact their revenge. They have saddled our youth with endless wars
that ravage their bodies in horrible ways but mollify themselves by providing
medical care that allows them to survive to live a full life in a condition
that no octogenarian would envy. We load
the young up with student loan debt that makes the home loan of my generation
seem like chump change. We trap them in
$9 an hour jobs with no hope of advancement so that they are actually making
less money at 35 than they were at 25.
And, worst of all, we are handing off to them a world who atmosphere has
been poisoned to the point that their children almost surely will face a
lifetime of struggle for ever-dwindling resources. We have made sure that, for them, growing old
is the most coveted luxury of all.

For those of us who have
lived free of ecological and demographic constraints on how we live our
lives—how many children we have; how big a house we build or live in; how many
vacation trips we take to how distant a destination; how we get to work, to
church, or the store; how we feel entitled to anything we can afford—it is time
to reimagine our lives in a new way.
What truly makes us happy? Where
does happiness happen? What kind of
happiness do we want for those who come after?
What is true? How much time is
left before it’s too late? We are threatened
not by growing old but by growing apart from what we know in our hearts is true
and that time is not on the side of the young and we are responsible.

© 19 May 2013

About
the Author

Soon after, I retired and we
moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years
together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One
possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group
was there to light the way.

February 9, 2016February 26, 2019

Writing, by Lewis

There are probably more
classifications of writing than there are fingers on the hands and toes on the
feet. I have never been a fan of
fiction, which is a very broad classification, instead preferring non-fiction. Call it snobbery, but I find that I generally
have little to learn or gain from reading fiction. Fiction, even fantasy, is fine in the
movies. Movies take a couple hours of
our time. A novel takes much longer,
perhaps measured in terms of days.
That’s a huge investment of time on something which may add nothing to
my range of knowledge or, even better, my understanding of the human
condition. Of course, fiction works can
pass the time, engage the emotions, perhaps even edify and enlighten. But not knowing whether the characters and
events were based upon actual people or happenings means that, while I may
learn something about their world, I have no idea how to relate that to the
world I experience.

Therefore, I prefer to
roam the domain of non-fiction. In
particular, I find myself engrossed in the world recorded by my late husband in
his journals. For a decade, his world
was my world, for we were, to borrow an expression, joined at the hip. To read his journals is like watching a
faded, scratchy, black-and-white home movie of our adventures together. He and I are the actors in scenes which I may
have long forgotten and the memories now come flooding back in waves of tears
and reverie. I can fill in gaps in my
knowledge of his early life—names, dates, addresses, impressions. I can sense what motivated him to do, to be,
and to desire to be the person he was.
It affords me a level of connection with Laurin that is far more than a
longing or lustful glance can convey.
His written word gives me a window into his heart that was never so
clear in life and that is an immeasurable gift.

I am thus inspired to
begin to journal myself. Not exactly as
he had done. I will leave some things
out and, perhaps, add something in. But
I will attempt to make my journal be something like a mind-dump, so that
someday, hopefully, my own children, lovers, friends will have the chance to
know me in a way that I am far too shy to share openly face-to-face. The best writing, fiction or non, should give
the reader the thrill of knowing the author up close and personal. It should seek not to teach but to enlighten,
not to wow but to soften, not to impress but to shine a light on the path to
self-discovery.

About the Author

January 13, 2016February 26, 2019

Right Now, by Lewis

[Prologue: I wrote this piece amid the shock and horror of the shooting this past Friday at Arapahoe High School and the first anniversary of the much more lethal event in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. It seemed appropriate for the subject matter because it seems to me that our society must turn its full attention away from deterring acts of terror born of religious intolerance at home or abroad and toward the growing problem and many times more destructive issue of home-grown terrorism and we must do it RIGHT NOW.

As I have mentioned here on more than one occasion in the past, I grew up with guns and hunting. I was good at it. It was an outlet for the anger I felt inside for whatever motivation lie behind it. My victims were birds, mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians and the occasional street lamp. Their sacrifice sated for a few minutes or hours my need to feel that I was nobody to mess with, that I could make an impact, that my anger was something to be respected.

Sometime during my middle school years, I outgrew that emotional deficiency. Some boys don’t. In their teens-to-early-twenties, their hurt and pain overpowers their sense of decency. It is no longer sufficient for them to punish surrogates for their oppression. Their oppressors become their parents, peers, even strangers. Their victims can no more comprehend what’s going inside their heads than the lowly sparrows I brought down by the dozens.

One day, a neighbor saw me shoot out a street light. The police came and took away my pellet gun. My dad had to drive me downtown and sign a release to get my gun back. It was embarrassing. I never attempted something so stupid again. Perhaps the police had the right idea–take the gun out of my hands until a person of responsibility helped me get it back. I can’t help but wonder if society would have been better served if someone had taken my weapon away before my angry rampage got as far as it did.

I write this out of a feeling that–as many times more complex is the problem of mass shootings today–we must seriously consider how we can diminish the odds of something like the Columbine or Aurora massacres from happening again. I will now make such a case.]

When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When the only tool you have is a gun, every problem looks like a threat. A gun quickly turns a coward into a drunken cowboy who shoots first and asks questions later. In fact, if you have a gun, you don’t even have to wait for the answers because you’re guaranteed the last word.

I’m sick and tired of hearing the press talk about the “senselessness” of these school shootings. Are they really unable to put two and two together? People do senseless things a million times a second in this country but nobody dies. They knock things over, they kick things, they slam doors, they curse, they stomp around, they pull their hair out, they spit, they foam at the mouth. Sometimes, they may even get what they want…and nobody dies.

But you put a loaded gun in their hand and reason and dialogue and common sensibility goes out the barrel. In the New Town, CT, shooting, Adam Lanza cut down 20 children and six adults, including himself, in about 5 minutes. By the time police arrived, it was all over but the sobbing.

This is not an issue about Second Amendment rights, as the NRA would have us believe. (More on the Second Amendment in a bit.) No, it is about sales of guns and the profitability of the gun manufacturing industry of which the NRA is a vital part. Look at the front page of Friday’s Post and tell me that the horror and pain on that teenage girl’s face is the price we have to pay so that every paranoid gun-hugging freak out there in our once-admired nation can own as much fire-power as his delusional mind can conjure up. I don’t believe it, not for an instant. No, this is a battle between a society that values life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the most destructive, greedy, and self-serving industry that calls itself a champion of liberty.

Quoting Tom Diaz’s brilliant new book, The Last Gun, “An American’s chances of being killed in an automobile accident are about one in 7,000 or 8,000 per year; of being a victim of homicide, about one in 22,000 per year; and of being killed by a terrorist, about one in 3.5 million per year.” Yet, over the decade between

September 2001 and September 2011, American taxpayers have spent over $1.3 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and homeland security, while backtracking on the issue of freedom from domestic terrorist threats birthed by Second Amendment demagogues.

The “Oligarchy of Five” sitting on the current U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment as if the first half doesn’t exist. This is odd for a bunch of “strict constructionists”. True, the language is quaint and the syntax poorly constructed. “Four-score-and seven years ago” is also quaint but we still quote that part of the Gettysburg Address.

Still, the Second Amendment follows the First and even the right of free speech has been found to be limited. A citizen is not allowed to shout “fire” in a crowded theater. (The way things are today, one might be on more constitutional grounds yelling, “open fire”.) Neither can you slander, libel, incite violence, obstruct justice, or disrupt the peace. Nevertheless, the NRA argues–successfully, if recent trends are any indication–that citizens should be allowed to “keep and bear [any and all] arms”, including weapons designed for the military.

Why the need for so much firepower? Well, in a vast number of instances among NRA members, it’s for protection from the very government that wrote the Constitution. So, in essence, the Supreme Court–one of the three co-equal branches of government–has ruled that the Police Power of that same government does not have the right to bar modern-day, would-be Enemies of Democracy from owning the most lethal hand-held weapons on the face of the earth. Is that not the very epitome of insanity?

It seems that the real enemy is not as likely to be found wearing a long robe so much as a bullet-proof vest or a backpack. The man who kills me is more likely to look like my son than a foreigner. Just because it’s hard to pick out the real enemy, does not mean that we have to throw up our hands and say, “Well, that was really a tragic occurrence. Let us pray for the families of those dead and those lucky enough to still be alive. May it never happen again.” No, we need to change the way we look at the gun problem and we need to do it RIGHT NOW.

16 December 2013

About the Author

January 4, 2016February 26, 2019

Flying, by Lewis

Although for me swimming might be “staying alive in the water”, flying does not mean to me “staying alive in the air”. It’s more like “staying sane while traveling”. Between spending two hours in the airport before the scheduled departure time–after circling the parking lot for fifteen minutes looking for an empty space; trying to fit everything needed for the trip into a single checked bag; anxiously waiting in long lines when not rushing to your next destination; fruitlessly searching for space for my toilet kit in the overhead stowage compartment; not knowing whether my connecting flight actually has an airplane waiting for me at the next stop; trying to fit my 95th- percentile-long legs between the seat cushion, fold-down tray which no longer holds a single thing that I don’t have to pay for, and whatever might be under my seat; being unable to get comfortable in a seat that I cannot recline far enough; putting up with whatever the passenger next to me is doing; and needing to have instant access to the loo which does not allow me to turn around unless I raise my hands over my head (in which case, I have no control over the directionality of my by-now-headlong-rushing stream), well, it just isn’t worth the time saved.

Furthermore, to me travel is more than a trip from Point ‘A’ to Point ‘B’. That’s for business people. I want to know the landscape between Point ‘A’ and Point ‘B’. The only way to do that is by automobile. Furthermore, I know that, when I reach my destination via air, I will have to deal with rental cars–the only enterprise with a business model worse than that of airlines. Either way, there will be relatives who will want me to sleep with their non-hypoallergenic cat, expect me to sleep on THEIR schedule, and leave me alone during the day while they traipse off to work. With no wheels, what am I supposed to do–paint the bathrooms?

No, while I’m driving across country in my very comfortable automobile, I have the pleasure of munching on my Pay Days, drinking my pink lemonade, listening to Sirius XM radio, conversing with my travel companion, and taking in the scenic countryside. (One of my travel secrets is finding off-the-beaten-path routes that encompass rolling hills, gentle curves, lakes, and streams.) My only regret is that I have not found a way to read a road map safely–I LOVE maps–while driving. As anyone who flies will understand, finding a competent co-pilot is not easy.

30 September 2013

About the Author

December 24, 2015February 26, 2019

Summer Camp, by Lewis

[Foreword: Some of you may remember my story of June
17th on the topic One Summer Afternoon, wherein I described my frantic and
futile attempt to qualify for the camp lake beach reserved for youngsters who
could demonstrate their ability to swim.
Had I succeeded in drowning myself in that attempt, I would not have
been able to write a second essay on the much-overrated “joys” of
summer camp experiences that continued to plague me throughout my tender years. I submit this in the hope that we can
dispense with any and all topics related to camping for the foreseeable
future.]

During the summers of my
9th through 13th years, going to camp became a sacrificial ritual imposed upon
me by parents who must have been desperate to get me out of a chair in front of
the television or out of BB gun range of sparrows unfortunate enough to inhabit
the branches of elm trees within three blocks of our house. The only condition was that I had to be home
before the Bermuda grass needed cutting again–a span of between 7 and 10
days. I felt that I was being punished
for being an only child. They could
hardly to afford to send any additional children to camp so there was always a
chance, as their hypothetical first-born, I could have had the option of
staying home.

My introductory stay at
camp was also the longest–10 days. It
was the camp with the lake that I wrote about before. We slept in cabins with, as I recall, five
bunk beds each–two along each side and one across the back wall. After about four days, I was struck with the
worst case of home-sickness I can recall having. I had made no friends, the food sucked, and I
had just the day before almost drowned.
I remember writing a letter to my parents in which I said,
word-for-word, “If you love me, you’ll come and get me”. I think I might have left a tear stain or two
on the paper, as well.

Oh, there were happy
experiences at camp, especially as I became more accustomed to being away from
home. I can remember sitting around a
big campfire at Boy Scout camp after dark, surrounded by woods while the adults
told us ghost stories. I have seldom
been afraid of the dark or ghosts and enjoyed watching a few of the other boys
who appeared to squirm uncomfortably or glance over their shoulders apprehensively. That gave me a sadistic sense of
satisfaction. I can remember a time when
a few boys came across what they described as a copperhead in the woods–a
sight which sent them running back to the safety of camp. I fancied snakes and wished wholeheartedly that I had been with them, as I would have tried to capture the snake so I
could study it.

One memory lies halfway
between those which were painful and those which gave me pleasure. It occurred during my last Boy Scout camping
experience. I, being one who has always
believed that the safest place to be after 10 PM is at home, was resting on my
cot in my tent when I heard a commotion outside. It seems that some of the more brazen boys
had pinned another Scout down, removed his pants, and run them up the flagpole–activity
for which I knew of no connection to being awarded a merit badge.

I remember thanking my
lucky stars that I was not the unfortunate boy who fell victim to such
silliness, as I was precisely where I was supposed to be–safely ensconced in
my bunk. Still, I began to wonder what
it would be like to have been among the perpetrators. It gave me a kind of warm thrill to think
about it, but only briefly, for within a few minutes, I heard the breathless
giggles of 12-year-old ne’er-do-wells approaching my tent. They threw back the tent flap and four rambunctious
boys rushed in and crowded around my cot.
One was carrying a flashlight.
Two of them held my arms and legs while the third flung the cover back
and pulled down my pajama bottoms. Although I could not see, I could almost
feel the heat of the flashlight. I was
horrified and titillated at the same time, not knowing which reaction might be
betrayed by my very stage-frighted anatomical barometer. “Please, God,” I thought, “don’t
let them laugh. And where the hell are
the adults?”

As you can probably tell,
camp to me was that brief interlude in the middle of summer when I wished I
were back in school…well, except for recess, of course. But that’s a subject for another day.

About the Author

December 16, 2015February 26, 2019

The Party, by Lewis

As I thought about the
topic for today, I realized that I have no particular “party experience” that
stands out as a highlight of my life. As
an introvert and basically shy person, going to a party seemed unnatural. Bill Cosby once described swimming as “staying
alive in the water”. For me, party-going
was like keeping my own sense of self-worth from drowning in a sea of
pretense. As I thought back on all the
“party scenes” from movies I have watched, it seems to me that the common theme
was related to disguise, deception, duplicity, and, yes, even death. So, I came up with one brief declarative
sentence that seems best to sum up my feelings about parties–

Parties
are where authenticity goes to die.

About
the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my
native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two
children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married
to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was
passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were
basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very
attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that
time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.

Soon after, I
retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13
blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.