Tag: Life Stories

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Ice, by Ray S

The invitation read:

Cocktails

6 PM
Friday, the 25th of November, 2016

Arriving a little after six that evening I was greeted by the hostess’s daughter and ushered to meet the other two guests. Maybe another man or two were on the way, but at this moment it looked like it would be my turn to respond politely, if not wittily and interestedly in what subject the ladies brought up.

Seated on the right end of the sofa sat Ms. Dorothy dressed in her robe looking very much like, I might imagine, the Dowager Empress. The opposite end of the sofa was occupied by Laura who also managed an occasional run to the pantry to replenish snacks or ice.

The cocktail table was set with an inviting selection of tasty foodstuffs.

All of this was surveyed by our hostess, Mary, who was in command of the most important part of the evening’s ritual. Here on a silver tray stood a tall glass cylinder and stir stick. Then the ice bucket and the necessary stem glasses. With a grand gesture Mary dropped each ice cube into the pitcher. Then came a bottle of Queen Victoria’s Best. No measure was needed. To my amazement Mary had a very practiced eye that resulted in four perfect double Martinis—olive or a twist, your choice.

The long glass swizzle stick gently massaged the gin and the ice cubes. Remember, “Always stirred, never shaken.” The other element of this communion of happy souls that surprised me was the absence of any Vermouth, however, rest assured no one but I missed it, and I survived.

© 5 December 2016

About the Author

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Raindrops, by Ricky

I have never liked rain or the drops in which it arrives. I know some will chastise me by pointing out, “But farmers need the rain to grow our food.” I’ve even used that phrase to my children as they grew; another case of like parent, like child. Nonetheless, I don’t like rain.

My dislike began at a very early age. When it rained, my mother would not let me go outside to play. When I did manage to sneak outside, I would end up totally soaked before my mother made me come back inside, followed by being placed in the bath tub to get clean. I always felt that I was already clean, just wet. However, the bath did replace the chill with warmth. Perhaps I deliberately got wet, and thus chilled, just so I could take a warm bath. Somehow, that doesn’t seem probable.

In elementary school, my teachers took over for my mother and forbade going outside when it was raining, thus ruining many a recess. Strangely, in the winter months, we could go out and play in the snow and eventual slushy-snow getting very wet and cold. No warm baths in school. We had to sit in our wet clothes and shiver until a combination of room temperature and body heat dried our clothes enough for us to warm up.

High school brought no relief from the “no outside activities when it was raining” rule. However, I was in complete agreement with staying inside. I had joined the Boy Scouts when I was in 7th grade and personally experienced a couple of campouts where it rained. Being wet and dirty with no chance of a bath or shower and sleeping in a damp sleeping bag, permanently changed my outlook about playing in the rain. From the second such campout and beyond, I HATE being outside and wet. Then came Deborah.

I first met Deborah on December 21st 1968 at the home of my current crush and her best friend. We eventually began dating and on our first date, we visited the Florida Caverns State Park near Mariana on the panhandle of NW Florida. On the day we arrived the sky was mostly overcast and threatened to rain at any time with brief moments of sunshine. We had a two-hour wait before the cavern tour group for which we had tickets would begin. As it was lunch time, we decided to have a cookout and eat before the tour.

We had no matches or lighter and Deborah was nonplussed and began to bemoan the loss of a cookout fire. I was upbeat and not bothered at all by the lack of such fire-making tools. When Deborah asked me why I was still gathering various twigs, sticks, and kindling to lay in the grill, I told her I learned in the scouts how to make a fire without a lighter or matches. She did not believe I could do it and because the wood appeared too damp to burn. Naturally, I felt that she doubted my truthfulness and challenged my ability and skill. I had done this many times in the scouts so I was supremely confident I could do it again. Confidence riding on the back of knowledge.

I was only 2 or 3-years out of my scout troop and in the glove compartment of my car was my homemade flint “stick” and a scout pocket knife. The wood was all arranged and ready. I told Deborah to watch and learn. I drew the knife blade across the flint sending two hot sparks into the tinder. After two-seconds the tinder exploded into flame igniting the kindling and the cookout fire was lit and we ate a hot meal. After that event, she thought I could do anything, like walking in the rain with her.

After we finished eating and cleaning up the trash, it began to lightly rain. We were under trees so it did not get to us in quantity but it did begin to run off the leaves and cause drops of water to drip down. As it turned out, I learned that day that Deborah loves to walk in the rain as long as it isn’t too much. She learned that I HATE to get wet outside. The result: I walked with her in the rain and ultimately enjoyed the time and conversation. The rain did stop and the sun came out so, we were dry by the time we entered the caverns with our tour group. We had a great time, but I still HATE getting wet outside. I wish the laws of Camelot prevailed here so, “The rain may never fall ‘till after sundown…”.

© 3 Apr 2016

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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The Drain, by Ray S

Finally the rain softly and lightly announced its arrival. Little by little the drops became bigger and more insistent. Finally it fell with full force pelting the window panes. A couple of claps of thunder and just as suddenly as the cloud burst had come, the clouds opened up and there was the sun again.

With umbrella in hand I left the house headed for my office. The sidewalks were all shiny and washed and gutters were still flooded with the tidal wave headed for the drain.

The walk to the office gave me the time to reflect on the long ago rainy time when we were six or seven. Four of us were playing “Kick the Can” in a vacant lot near the edge of town. A rainstorm like the one today came up and being caught all drenched, all of us simply stripped naked and proceeded to dance in the rain like little elves escaping the wolf in the forest.

The merriment was in full blast until a local constable arrived on the scene at the behest of the self-appointed morals squad, Mrs. Templeton. Hers was the only house near our play field.

We were rounded up with wet clothes in hand and sternly lectured to on the lack of morality and the nasty, dirty actions we were participating in.

Actually the thought of sex hadn’t even caught up with us at this age, except casually taking note of each others’ endowments, if even noticeable.

Another thought while walking, another time maybe five or seven years later evidencing the discovery magic of puberty and all of its causes and results. You could liken it to Pandora’s Box or letting the Genie or Johnny out of the bottle. With no thanks to Mrs. Templeton and later Sister Charles/Ophelia, some of we heathens began our long residence in the closet. I always envied my friend with the power and conviction to never get into a closet. He never needed to for he had always known who he was and the gay road was his high road. Some of us strayed down a path of conformity and even various degrees of happiness, then only to find the “honestly real me” before it was too late to live a liberated life.

At the intersection waiting for the “WALK” light I looked down at the curb and gutter to see the rain water and my memories wash down the drain, to wait for another rainy day and maybe the very right man to steal my heart away.

© 28 November 2016

About the Author

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Maps, by Phillip Hoyle

I like maps. They remind me of a map game we played at home when I was a kid. Mom would get out some old geography books and world atlases and hand them out to us older kids. Then she’d say, “Find the Europe map.” When we all had one she’d say, “Prague,” or “the Volga River.” She might say find the Asia map, and then call out, “The China Sea,” or “The Bay of Mandalay.” Her challenge for the South America map might be, “Asunción,” or “The Amazon River.” The first one to find the place—and show it to her—was the winner. The winner would then pick out the next place name, a river, city, country, sea, ocean, continent, and so forth. One of the special challenges of the game was that the maps were not the same, so a river might not be named in one of the books. I suppose it trained our pronunciation and our ears for the language suffixes that might indicate a location by country. The teacher in Mom created a number of these games for her children to play, but I especially liked the map game. 

Map-like Art Cards by Phillip Hoyle 2017
Migrating birds.

Now I paint on maps, print on maps, sometimes even write on maps. I collect them from brochure racks in tourist places and at rest stops along freeways. I tear them out of magazines and occasionally buy one at a convenience store. I look for them in antique shops and secondhand stores. I sometimes cover them with thinned gesso or acrylic paints to make a ground for a mixed media work. I splatter them, pattern them, block out spaces, or tear them in order to match some traveler’s dream. I print on them, draw on them, paint on them, glue other things on them and in so doing create places of memory or worlds of fantasy. Most of my map messages are personal, a few political. With these maps I travel, juxtaposing unusual images, feeding some internal need that is often unclear to me, the artist. I go to places in my art, places that feed me, soothe me, please me, challenge me. I often don’t even pause to look up the name of the place. I wonder what my mother would make of these map games I now play. But I know of all the unusual people I have befriended, she would be the most likely to understand.

© 20 March 2017

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Winter Shades, by Louis

Winter shades means for me memories that kept recurring this past winter which was like so many others. To catch up, I also missed, I noticed, the prompt for Feb. 27, “Where I was on 9/11.” I would like to respond to that prompt also. I assume that the prompt “Backseat of the car” was for March 6, which I also missed but to which I would like to relate my reaction.

Memories

“Where I was on 9/11”: 72-16 = 70-14 = 66, so that I was 66 years old when that happened. I was still employed at the Division of AIDS Services in the New York City Human Administration. I was taking the Q-65 from College Point headed for Flushing where I was planning to board the Long Island Railroad stop, located at the corner of 41st Avenue and Main Street. This train was bound for Manhattan but was stopped at 61st Street (which is still in Queens County). Before boarding the train, while still on the Q-65 bus passing through a swampy road, I had a good view of far-off World Trade Center Towers, since, where I was there were no tall buildings. I saw a large volume of smoke coming out of the side of one of the twin towers, and I thought to myself it will be a technical feat to fight a fire so far up on a sky-scraper, meaning I did not at that point know the whole story, and did not learn until much later. Still that would make me an eye-witness though I was not actually in Manhattan at the time so avoided getting poisoned.

I was kind of happy I did not have to work that day. A surprise day off. Whoopee!

I returned to Flushing where I visited the gay sauna where I had a few regular boyfriends. I met one and had a very good time. It is kind of embarrassing to admit that I was enjoying myself while three thousand people were suffering and dying. But who knew?

Backseat of the Car: my father, DeWitt Brown, repaired air conditioners, TV’s and refrigerators for a living. He also repaired and collected junk cars. One John Doe worked for my father, and one evening I sat with him in the backseat of one of my father’s junk cars, we talked, and we had our honeymoon. In a trite sordid way, it was quite romantic, I thought.

©13 March 2017

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

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Hair, by Lewis

Off the top of my head, I have very little to say about hair. It and I have had a major falling out over the past fifteen years or so. In fact, I first sought out a dermatologist about my receding hairline when I was in my mid-20’s. He gave me this black ointment that smelled like axle grease to spread on my forehead while showering in the faint hope that it might slow down the recession. As with my hair itself, he and I quite soon had a parting of the ways. As I have related here before, even at the tender age of eight, an encounter with ringworm left me with a premature bald spot that forever after made me a huge fan of the old Carl Anderson comic strip, “Henry”.

[Conversely, I regularly shave my body as the random and sparse nature of my hair there put me squarely in the middle between bear and twink (the term “blink” comes to mind).]

In summation, when it comes to my appearance, hair has always been an issue. At least here and now I can say that I have perhaps gotten a little of my frustration off my chest.

© 25 January 2016

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.

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Leaving, by Gillian

This topic got me humming ‘Leavin’ on a Jet Plane,’ the old Peter, Paul, and Mary hit, which got me thinking about leaving on jet planes – or not.

It was 2003 and I was heading for DIA for a flight to London. Unfortunately, it was Tuesday March 18th of that year, and Denver was in the grip of one of the worst blizzards in the city’s history. All day, as the snow fell and the winds raged, I repeatedly checked on the departure status of my flight. Each time I was assured it was ‘on time’, even though every other flight out, or in, appeared to be cancelled. Eventually we could delay no longer and Betsy and I battled our way through at least a foot of heavy wet Spring snow in Betsy’s ancient Honda Civic – we had no four-wheel-drive vehicle at that time – and somehow made it to DIA. Sure enough, my flight was still listed ‘on time’ so Betsy left to fight her way back home, which by some miracle she was able to do.

Right on time we began boarding our plane; the only one visible at the entire airport with it’s lights on. The rest were hunkered down: abandoned, dark, and dormant. Meanwhile, the snow kept falling. The plows went doggedly up and down one runway which we London passengers began calling ‘our’ runway. But, no matter how the plows tried, they could not keep the surface clear. The snow was simply coming down too hard. After a couple of hours we moved away from the gate and onto the white runway. Some cheered. Most peered apprehensively out of the windows. Safely on the runway, engines roaring, we sat. And sat. Almost three hours later we slunk back to the gate. We were not leaving.

Over 4,000 people were stuck that night at DIA. The runways were closed and the roads were closed. Nobody was leaving. Most of the people were in the terminal and on other concourses, especially Concourse B which is always busy. Our flight had been leaving from Concourse A which is a little off by itself. The 500 or so passengers from that flight were the only people on the eerily dark and quiet Concourse A. The entire airport was without power except for that provided by the emergency generators. By the time we disembarked from our failed attempt at take-off, all the restaurants and shops were tightly closed up, dark and gated. So to bed without supper. Oh well! Come to that, without a bed either! We discovered that cots and blankets had been provided from DIA emergency supplies while we were spinning out wheels on the runway. There were not nearly enough, so we late-comers to the party had no hope. It was the hard marble floor for us.

Everyone seemed pretty cheerful all the same; nothing to be done about it. We all fanned out across Concourse A picking out a spot for the night. There was no hope of stretching out across a few chairs; they were all of the kind where several chairs are joined together in a row, with hard immovable arms between each. I remembered that behind the service desks there were rubber mats for the employees to stand on. Aha! That would soften that marble surface. I staked my claim by leaving my hand luggage in the middle of the mat and went off to see what others were doing. Of course our luggage was on the plane, and with carry-on alone it was hard to be very creative. Many of us hoped to use our coat as a pillow, unless or until it got too cold, with only a little emergency heat to keep us warm.

I sauntered over to a group of twenty or so in the midst of animated discussion. They were gathered around an old man being taken back to the U.K. for a final visit to celebrate his 90th birthday. No, they were all agreeing, he certainly could not be expected to sleep on the floor. He needed a cot. And a blanket. A raiding party of four young things was dispatched to the terminal, returning after a few minutes grinning broadly and carrying a cot and two blankets. They were greeted with cheers. Even pumped fists. Amazing, I thought. After a very few hours we had already become a village, a tribe, isolated out here, bereft of comfort, ready to attack that main body of refugees lolling around in the terminal in relative luxury, and simply take what we need.

After a pretty uncomfortable night for most of us, we nevertheless greeted each other cheerfully enough in the bathrooms in the morning. We had running, if cold, water; and, most important of all, we had flushing toilets. No morning coffee, no breakfast, but never mind, at least we had water to drink, and we’d be leaving this morning one way or another. Having encouraged each other in this way, we unanimously refused to see that it was actually snowing just as hard as it had been the day before and it now looked as if there was a good two feet of snow out there.

For a while we waited, expecting some official to appear momentarily with news. Nothing happened. Some child discovered, just playing around, that the phones were working. This was before cellphones were ubiquitous, and there were still banks of pay phones scattered around the airport. They couldn’t be working. Surely lines must be down? There was a rush to try them and they offered up the friendly hum of a dial tone. Unbelievable! After a wait for a phone to free up, I was able to call Betsy. She had spent a nightmare three hours getting back home from dropping me off at DIA, and of course had not been anywhere since. Assuring that I would call as soon as we knew about our flight, I joined the chattering people. That tribal village feeling was back as we fell over ourselves to exchange the news we had just heard via our phone calls.. It was as if we had been cut off from the outer world for weeks. There’s over two feet of snow. …. all the roads are closed in the city and in most of Colorado …… all the Interstates are closed; Denver is completely cut off ….. they’re calling out the National Guard to rescue stranded motorists …… it’s gonna snow all day and tonight and maybe stop tomorrow ….. the Red Cross can’t get here with food ………

The last two pronouncements left a little cloud of gloom in the air. Another whole day here without food? Another night on the cold hard floor? We gave a kind of collective shrug. Nothing to be done. Just fill the day.

A group of us went wandering off along the train tunnels, feeling like adventurous explorers. What would we find? Was there a food stash on Concourse D? Had more cots and blankets appeared in the terminal? Was there, by some miracle, coffee anywhere? We found none of the above. What we did find was water pouring in from the ceiling of the terminal onto astonished wet people, and, sadly, now wet cots and blankets, below. Apparently, so rumor had it, the weight of the wet snow had caused a rip in one of those famous tents on top of the Jeppesen Terminal.

Our little tribal band leaned over the railings on the second level and looked down upon the soggy scene below with, I am ashamed to admit, a certain grim satisfaction. That’s just what they deserved for hogging all those cots and blankets. Wondering, without much sympathy, how bad that waterfall would get, we returned to our village with the news.

We found a surprisingly varied scene. Some people sat quietly reading a book from their carry-on or doing the crossword in yesterday’s Denver Post. Other groups played cards. Again, this was prior to the days of universal laptops and tablets and smartphones. Further down the concourse was a young woman instructing a very well-attended aerobics class. Across from them was a yoga group. Still further along, a young man and woman had gathered up most of the kids and were organizing games. Others had started kids’ relay races down the concourse, using empty toilet rolls as batons. It was really rather an incredible scene. And the best of it was, everyone was smiling and laughing and just generally enjoying the day.

Definitely a village.

When we crawled up off that cold hard floor the next morning, pretty hungry by now, the snow had lessened to flurries and the skies looked slightly less threatening. Surely today we would leave! But there was a mighty lot of snow on the ground, and the wind had whipped it into really high drifts. On the phone, miraculously still working, Betsy knew little more than I did. With widespread power outages it was hard for most people to find out anything. Her little Honda, she said, was completely buried, leaving not even a little hump in the snow to signify it’s existence.

But for the first time there was a great deal of activity outside. Snow plows resumed their valiant attempts to clear paths and trucks loaded with mounds of sticky wet snow disappeared from view. We sat watching every move from the huge windows. Surely we would leave today!

The day wore on. Our village returned to much the same activities as the previous day, but with a slight edge of grim determination and a little less real enjoyment. This was getting old. By afternoon a few planes were taking off, but ours was not among them. There was great excitement when word reached us that the Red Cross had arrived in the terminal, followed by some disappointment when all they had to eat was food bars; two each. But as the power was now back on, they did have urns of good hot coffee, and all 4000 people lined up for their drink and snack in surprisingly good-humored and orderly fashion.

Back to our village and one more night in my little nest behind the service desk, but, joy of joys, the sun shone from a clear blue sky in the morning and Betsy informed me in our morning phone call that the airport was officially open. Soon, clean unsmelly unwrinkled people began to arrive, trampling our village. Our tribe dispersed to various just-opened restaurants. Eventually our plane took off, right on time if three days late.

As the wheels lifted off the runway a great cheer arose from us all. We really were, finally, leaving.

© November 2016

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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To Be Held, by Betsy

When I was an infant, the scientists–physicians and psychologists–who knew everything there was to know about mothering, all proclaimed that holding your baby too much was not a good thing. The consequences of this seemingly natural human behavior was, in fact, risky. Babies could grow up expecting to be held all the time. They would become dependent on being held, they would become “spoiled.” Also at the time cow’s milk or cow-milk-based formula created by humans and promoted by the forces of capitalism, was better for a human baby than human milk which was, after all, only poor mother nature’s formula for what is best for a newborn.

Years later when I became a mother the same thinking was prevalent–except for the milk ideas. There had sprung up in recent years a group of rebel mothers called Le Leche League. The group promoted breast feeding among new moms. They had a book which described the benefits of not only the milk, but also the process of delivering the milk, not the least of which was to hold your baby close while feeding him. They held the notion that there is a reason the female human body is configured as it is. That properly and naturally feeding your baby required holding him close.

I actually heard many mothers at the time say “The problem is that if you breast feed your baby, you will become completely tied down to him/her.” When I told my doctor husband this, he had the perfect answer. “Well, a mother SHOULD be tied down to her baby. That is how a baby survives and thrives.”

My oldest child did not have the benefits of breast milk for very long. The pediatrician instructed me, a very insecure novice mom, to begin supplementing the breast milk with formula after two months or so. Why? Well, baby needs more milk and it was believed baby could not get enough milk from its mother alone. I soon learned that once you start the process of bottle feeding, baby learns really fast. It’s much easier for her to suck milk from a bottle than from a breast. It flows much, much faster out of a bottle and, well, they don’t have to work so hard to get it. Then, of course, they don’t want the breast milk, demand for the rich liquid plummets, and the milk-making machine quickly becomes non-productive.

I later learned that breast milk is the best, there is plenty of it as supply usually meets with demand, and it works perfectly for about one year, longer if one wishes, and if the feeding is supplemented with a source of iron.

Actually, in a society driven by corporate profits the truth is the main problem with breast feeding is that the milk is free, so long as the mother is properly nourished and hydrated. No one is buying anything. No one benefits monetarily from that method of feeding, no one except baby and mother. No corporate profit is to be made. Baby and mother alone benefit.

It seems that to be held IS important–not just for babies but for children and adults as well. Being held promotes healing, comfort, security, well being of all kinds. It is hard to imagine how it ever came to be regarded as detrimental. Yet the notion continues in some minds.

One of the first complete sentences my oldest child ever uttered was, “I want to behold.”

Of course when we first heard this we asked, “Behold–behold what? A star in the East?

“What do you mean, ‘I want to behold?’ Oohh! You need comforting and reassurance. You want to be held,” we said realizing that our brilliant three year old was not familiar with the passive form of the verb to hold.

Holding in a loving way and being held is loving behavior. What adult does not want to hold a kitten or puppy immediately when he or she see it. I think holding each other as an expression of love is something we learn or at least become comfortable with early in life. I think we could use more of it in this troubled world of ours. I’m all for it.

© 8 October 2012

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Ice, by Ricky

When I was 8 and 9-years old, I was living on my maternal grandparents’ farm in central Minnesota. During both winters, my uncle, Dixon, would take me out on the small farm lakes which were more like large ponds, to go ice fishing. We didn’t have one of those fancy ice-fishing sheds to keep us warm while fishing. We just bundled up with winter clothes and warm coats.

I never did care much for ice-fishing. It was always cold and I was anxious when walking on the ice, regardless of how thick it was. At ages 8 and 9, I didn’t weigh very much so the ice was not concerned about a little boy walking on it. I’m sure it was more upset by our chopping a hole so we could get to the fish.

Another reason I did not like ice-fishing was due to all the effort it takes before you can put a line in the water. Chopping a 10-inch hole in 12-inches of solid ice takes a lot of muscle power. I did not possess much power in my small muscles. My uncle, who was 12 and 13 during those winters, had bigger muscles, but it was still a chore to chip-out the hole – and then it had the audacity to keep freezing up while we fished.

Over the years, I have repeatedly been reminded just how slippery ice can be. One winter, I swore that I would not go outside without a pillow tied on my butt to cut down on the ice inspired bruises.

My first experience with “black ice” happened one January while I was driving from Rapid City to Pierre, SD at 2AM one Monday morning. I was driving a little Geo down the east-bound side of Interstate 90 moving at 60mph. The road consisted of long straightaways with occasional gentle curves. The roadway appeared to be completely dry. I needed to stop and relieve myself so I applied the brakes gently. The speedometer instantly went to zero as all four wheels quit turning. The Geo was still traveling straight down the highway at 60mph. After experimenting with the phenomena 3 or 4 times, I just let the car coast and guided it over to the shoulder. When it finally came to a stop, I opened the door and started to get out. Wham! I was on my butt again. My feet were out the door and my butt was sitting on the car’s rocker panel. Do you have any idea just how hard it is to get up from that position when your feet keep sliding away from you on the ice? After that experience, I still had to slide my way around the car to rough ground so I could relieve myself.

After careful and thoughtful consideration, I have concluded that the only good ice are the cubes one puts in a glass of water on a hot summer day.

© 5 Dec 2016

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Connections, by Phillip Hoyle

On the holiday the Clan, my partner’s family, gathered for one of their periodic get-togethers. As usual the food was good, the conversations lively, the four generations in constant communication over what is occurring in their lives. This time the gathering was at our house where matriarch Ruth, Jim, and I live. Jim had prepared a special feature: videos of past events, ones recorded by a late partner, DB, who had related to the family more years than I have. (I’m up to 14 years.) DB died a few months ago and the showing provided family members a reminder of his contributions to their life. I enjoyed hearing them laugh at how they looked back then. I listened to their conversations about what they were seeing and realized how we newer members had missed a lot.

The youngest child, Ruth’s great-granddaughter, a precocious and rather insistent five-year-old with long blond hair tied back with a bow that matched her beautiful spring dress, kept coming indoors where the videos were running to see if her mother was on the screen. To me the mother and daughter appear to be twins separated by many years—insistent, mouthy, strong. The little one enjoyed playing with me—high fives, snatches of conversation, laughs, and flirtations. She seemed to want my attention. Jim told me she had asked him toward the end of the afternoon, “Where’s Uncle Jim?” He said, “I’m Uncle Jim.” She said, “No, not you.” He said, “Oh, you mean Uncle Phil.” “Yes.” So I made a new connection to the family through its youngest member.

© 10 April 2017

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com