Real People

Tom runs Tom’s Monterey Auto Repair.  He is a master mechanic and a good fellow.  Tyler and Edgar work as managers in Tom’s shop.  When I called last Friday afternoon it was Tyler who answered the phone.  I explained to Tyler that I was traveling across country and my vehicle’s engine light had come on some days before when the pre-glow indicator had failed to go out.  He asked several pertinent questions  about Odysseus and then told me they could check the vehicle out first thing Monday morning.  When I arrived at 7:30 a.m. on Monday morning Tyler told me he had already ordered a set of glow plugs.  I was impressed.  Then Edgar took over taking down all the necessary information.  Edgar ushered me into the customers lounge, turned on the electric heat to take off the morning chill, and told me there were places nearby where I could go for coffee or breakfast.  Tom came in a few minutes later to tell me a glow-plug was needed, but before he began to remove it he wanted to give me fair warning.  Usually replacement was a simple matter, but sometimes glow-plugs break off when being removed and if that happened the matter could involve several days and significant cost.  

An hour later Tom returned to tell me that the glow plug had been removed and a new one installed.  The oil change would soon be done and I would be all set to go.  Then he returned ten minutes later to tell me that a plastic nodule on the fuel line had broken during the glow-plug procedure and they were unable to obtain another one until the next day.  So I returned to Tom’s Auto Repair this morning, greeted by Edgar and Tyler as if I were an old friend.  After an hour or so, Tom came to the customers lounge.  He had replaced the fuel line nodule and done a quick safety check and highly recommended that I have a new tail pipe installed.  I asked him where I might have this done.  He recommended Robert’s muffler shop several miles away.  Off I went.  Robert did not have a large enough door or lift that could handle Odysseus. I asked if he could recommend another place.  Yes, he thought perhaps a muffler shop in Salinas had door and lift able to handle the RV.  

So off I went to Salinas and the All-American Muffler Shop, where I met Howard.  Howard has been installing mufflers for 30 years.  He dropped what he was doing and had his son who works with him do the same and they immediately built and installed a tail pipe for Odysseus.  While installing the tail pipe, Howard noticed two other issues and fixed them.  Odysseus is now road-worthy, thanks to Tom, Tyler, Edgar, and all the other mechanics at Tom’s Auto Repair—and to Howard and his son at the All American Muffler Shop.  They are the salt of the earth!  They are real.

(P.S. I’m sure you are wondering if I spent all my retirement funds for this service.  The truth is that all “this great service” cost less than what I normally pay for a maintenance service visit  for Odysseus back home!)

Glowing Again!

Today was spent at a garage in Monterey—a garage picked out from a host of other auto repair places in the area using the Internet.  What a gift it is to be able to read what other people think and feel about a business, especially when you are a total stranger in town.  Tom’s Monterey Auto Repair put the “glow” back in our RV, Odysseus, today.  Diesel engines have glow plugs—and one of the six glow plugs in Odysseus’ engine (#3 to be exact) lost its glow in Las Cruces, NM last week causing the engine light to light up.  An engine light can be an irritant when traveling (even though it offers a little glow) and can actually take some of the “glow” out of an adventurous and normally glowing driver.  So, Odysseus has its glow back and I have a little of mine back too, now that the engine light no longer lights up!  Plus, instead of just sitting and waiting in the garage, I got my hair cut, enjoyed a nice lunch, took a wonderful walk to Fishermans Wharf and met a number of unique people I never would have met if Odysseus hadn’t lost its glow.

BUT—isn’t there always a “but” when it comes to restoring a glow to anything?  While putting the glow back into Odysseus, an aged, fragile and brittle fuel line broke accidentally.  This little plastic part was not available anywhere in Monterey.  The ”part” was ordered and will arrive tomorrow.  I will return to the garage then and hopefully get a bit more of my glow back.  

Odysseus has taken us 127,000 miles in the past seven years or so, giving us an opportunity to visit friends and family in Texas, Minnesota, Washington, California, Arizona, Alabama, Idaho, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Illinois Ohio—almost every one of the lower 48!  We have enjoyed many of our national parks and monuments, including Glacier, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, Big Bend, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Arches, Rainbow Bridge, Organ Pipe Cactus, Sequoia, Death Valley, Lassen, and on and on.  While occasionally Odysseus “breaks down” or “loses its glow” we try to keep in mind all the places it has so faithfully carried us.

The journey of life is sometimes interrupted by engine light warnings and sometimes loses its glow.  Sometimes its aged, fragile and brittle fuel line springs leaks.  Yet, like Odysseus,  this “life” has carried us to and through so many wonders, so many beautiful, special and sacred moments, and given us friends, children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren.  We must always keep this in mind.  We must take care of ourselves by occasionally getting our glow plugs and fuel lines renewed.  This is necessary if we are to continue our travels.

Arches National Park

Hope for the Despairing—Maybe?

I am spending this Super Bowl Sunday in my little motor home (Odysseus) at Monterey Pines (an RV Park of the Naval Post-Graduate School) in California.  My wife is with her mother and sister today, so I am enjoying a time of solitude.  

I thought of my friend, Lowell, this morning.  Whenever something “bad” is going on in our nation or in our community, Lowell always reminds me of something (he says) I told him many years ago.  He says I told him that our nation and our people have been through many difficult times and survived, and we will survive the present crises, too, whatever it may be.  This led me to think of my period of history that, in a few days, will span a period of 75 years.  This history includes a barely discernible memory of World War II or at least its aftermath, along with an  acquaintance with many of those who fought in that war.  In 1960, for example,  when I first enlisted in the Air Force, I came to know several survivors (still on active duty) of the nefarious Bataan Death March.  I remember (vaguely) the Korean Conflict (two of my teachers were wounded veterans of that ordeal).  I recall watching Queen Elizabeth’s coronation on black and white TV.  I can still see vividly in my mind the newspaper headline announcing the death of Joseph Stalin  and beneath those words a photo of the scary fellow in his casket. I can remember the Cold War era and the air raid drills we practiced in school and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Why, a man even walked on the moon in my span of history.  I lived through the “Polio Scare” and the discovery of the Salk vaccine that abolished that fear.  

I have lived through the Civil Rights Movement, the Viet Nam War and the protests against it, the return of the POW’s (several are personal friends), the Watergate scandal, the lies and cover-ups of presidents (both Democrat and Republican), the Pentagon Papers, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.  I saw the Berlin Wall built and I saw the Berlin Wall torn down.  I remember Fidel Castro’s rise to power in Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crises of 1962. So much history—more than I can possibly share in this blog.  The point is that  I’ve survived it all!  You have survived it and our country has survived it!  Our presidents have not been perfect leaders, indeed, some have been downright scoundrels, criminals and liars (Tricky Dick Nixon and the controversial Lyndon B. Johnson had serious issues with honesty).  So now, we have a tweeter president, who constantly lies, denigrates his opposition,  ridicules the press, and generally treats other nations and people like dirt.  I hope the words Lowell remembers me saying years ago will hold up under this present onslaught on our democratic way of life.  I hope we can survive—and in my best moments I think we will.

We must hang in there against the impossible odds!

Happenings Always Happen

We have arrived at our destination on the West coast (Monterey, CA) after twelve-days on the road and some 3,500 miles over the highways and byways of this America, the Beautiful.  Like every journey there are “happenings that happen,” some of which  are mentionable and some that are not. One of the  happenings for us happened in New Mexico when that abominable “engine light” came on.  I know little about automobiles, but after reading the owner’s manual carefully I decided we could “drive on.”  We’ll have it all checked out first thing Monday morning and go on from there. 

When traveling there are always risks (i.e. happenings).  When I ponder the fact that at 70 mph I am covering more distance in an hour than the pioneers in their wagons covered in a week (if they were lucky) I am astounded.  How, why, did they bother to keep going on?  The land they passed through was often barren land, a land without promise except in their eyes.  It was their vision which enabled them to continue in spite of all the happenings that happened along the way.  Broken axles, impassable mountain passes, sickness, weather—it all happened for them, but they kept on.  And we get a little anxious when an “engine light” comes on!  Or, we won’t go anywhere anymore because happenings may happen.  “Where there is no vision [determination,  dream, hope] the people perish” (or at least wither and dry-up like prunes, or“like a raisin in the sun” as Langston Hughes wrote).

Happenings will happen whether we are at home or on the road.  Happenings happen without any consideration or respect for  timing, place, or situation.   My oldest two grandchildren lost their paternal grandfather last week and as I drove along the highway I felt bad that I couldn’t be there with them.  Yet, I was there with and for them, even from a distance.  Cell phones and messaging technologies are miracles in our midst, allowing us to be there with those we love when we aren’t!  That’s a miracle (“an amazing product or achievement, or an outstanding example of something)!”

Happenings always happen and cannot be avoided no matter where you are or what you are doing.  That’s life—and the only life worth living is the one in which happenings happen.

Odysseus (the Adventurer) has brought us again across this land
--a land that is mine, yours--a land that is ours.

The Mojave, Joshua Trees, and Uncle Carl

The privilege of knowing my Uncle Carl was never mine, and yet, he became one of my childhood heroes.  I do not know what kind of person he was, what he thought, or what he felt, but then, children do not focus on these things.  Memory recalls his picture displayed on top of the piano in our family living room among the many others  displayed there.   He was a handsome man.  In childhood fancy I thought I favored him, or at least hoped that might be so. 

Carl served in World War II.  He died as a crew member on a test aircraft that crashed into a mountain in the Mojave Desert.  With these little pieces of knowledge there developed in my unconscious mind a concoction of ideas, impressions, and imaginative embellishments over the years.   A “golden myth” took root in me, a myth that would significantly impact my life in the years to come.  A golden myth is a fiction or half-truth that forms (consciously or unconsciously) and becomes a part of us.  The golden myth about George Washington cutting down the cherry tree is one example, lifting one of our Founding Fathers as an ideal for our society. There is no evidence to support the story as truth, but we have made it so.  Our lives are lived out of such myths, knowingly or unknowingly, and become part of our journey. 

The myth I developed about Carl, colored in many different hues over time, took on unreal dimensions as all myths do.  I recognize the myth now for what it is—a myth.  I’m conscious of how that myth worked its way into my life journey.   This awareness has not diminished the essential core of the myth.  My Uncle Carl remains a hero.  And I think of him each time I come to Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert and see Shadow Mountain in the distance where Carl’s plane went down, and  the Joshua trees that he must have seen too.  Here I am this morning, “looking out into another kind of time altogether, where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still."

Desert Hopping

We had a wonderful day and a half of rest here in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.  In just a little while now, as soon as the morning dawns, we’ll be on the road again. A fantastic full moon currently lights up the desert sky and nowhere have I ever seen more stars than in this desert’s sky. We stayed at Organ Pipe last February and I promised myself I would return for a longer stay the next time around.  I have kept that promise now and I’m so grateful it has been possible, for in the words of Robert Grellet, “I shall not pass this way again.”  

Like Big Bend National Park in Texas and many of the other National Parks, Organ Pipe is some 75 to 100 miles “out-of-the-way” which is why I suspect I shall not come to visit  here again. The fact that these parks and monuments are out-of-the-way is probably a major reason such American showcases have survived. Under the present political climate our parks and monuments are being threatened and I hope you will do all you can to keep them protected. There are 28 cactus species surviving here in Organ Pipe National Monument and the monument’s name comes from the organ pipe cactus which lives only in this place in the US (though it is common in Mexico).  In 1976 the United Nations designated the monument as an international Biosphere Reserve.  It is an out-of-the-way place of beauty and wonder and I hope, if you have opportunity, that you will go out of your way to see it.

We are “desert hopping” today.  We will leave the Sonora Desert and within several hundred miles find ourselves traveling through the Mojave Desert in California.  I even suspect that we’ll spend the night in the Mojave and I can’t think of a better place to spend the night than under a desert sky. “I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince).

Another sunset and the Super Moon at
Organ Pipe National
Monument

A Day of Rest in a Desert Place

We are in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (should be called a National Park and I don’t know why it isn’t) for a day of rest off the road. It was quite warm yesterday afternoon when we arrived and we donned our shorts in order to soak in as much of that warmth as we could.  In the back of our minds is the knowledge that we will, eventually, return to the mid-Atlantic where shorts will not be in style for several more months.

I was quite perturbed as I drove down Route 85 (south) yesterday and saw the immense “waste” strewn along the side of the road. It disfigured the face of the beautiful Sonoran desert.  Plastic bottles and bags clung to the mesquite and cacti like foreign invaders.  We spend a lot of time these days talking about “illegal aliens” but we seem to be unaware of the illegal and alien material with which we are desecrating our environment.  It is illegal in every state and there are signs everywhere indicating that littering the landscape is prohibited, but apparently few of those who travel our nation’s highways are law-abiding folk.  (Come to think of it, the same can be said about the use of cell phones while driving).  This problem of illegal aliens (and by the way, I do not use that term for human beings) invading our countryside must be stopped.  What if we built giant walls all along every highway in the nation (which would of course make corridors of toxic fumes which always happens in closed-in places) that would protect and secure us from these invasions of trash? 

While I’m ranting and raving I might as well get this “other thing” off my chest as well.   I love this desert land and can’t help raving about it.  At this very moment I am surrounded by hills, some covered with a forest of cacti and desert shrubs and others, which appear at first glance to be sheer rock, yet upon closer examination reveal a cactus plant of one kind or another showing up within its many crevices.  Behind me in the distance I can see the pinnacles of the Ajo Mountains, forming a wall more beautiful than any human could design or build.  I hear the birds singing as the sun begins to warm this desert place and some are making staccato sounds as they tap into the cacti to find a morning breakfast.  As David W. Toll wrote, “The Arizona desert takes hold of a  man’s mind [and spirit] and shakes it.”

Arizona Sunset at Organ Pipe National Monument
January 30, 2018