Biographical – Page 4 – Snail Trek Blog

The High Cost of Living

During just the first two months of 2022, the price of a can of Campbell’s tomato soup at Kroger rose by 25 percent. The rising rate of cars and fuel prices have far surpassed Campbell’s soup, a bellwether of staple food economics. Even the price for mattresses, where one might be inclined to recline, hoping to forget about all this, has skyrocketed.

Have you ever tried to run up a downward-descending escalator? That escalator is the current state of economics. We’re all running hard to keep up, but getting nowhere.

The high cost of living is upon us.

The uneven, up-down, zigzag floors, walls and ceilings of a funhouse are just that—fun—for awhile. It’s a relief to come out the other end, having survived the intractable and dizzying balancing act. But when will this economic funhouse finally settle down? The cost of living is skyrocketing.

I prepared myself for my customary morning walk on Friday, Good Friday, to be exact, the Friday before Easter. I doused myself with deodorant in the off-chance that Joe would want to chat. I often meet him mid-stride on my walks, as I quietly lurch down my familiar back streets. Joe likes to hail me from across the street. It took Joe several months to learn my name. For many weeks, he christened me with the name, “Frank.” I get that a lot. Upon introducing myself, I’m often mistakenly called Frank, perhaps because I mispronounce my own name. “Frank” comes out much more distinctly than “Craig,” which I myself sometimes choke upon, getting stuck somewhere around my tonsils, the place in the gullet reserved for salt water gargling. “Frank” seems a much more straightforward, tongue-forward appellation.

After several dozen more exercise walks, I finally trained Joe to learn my real name. Now I get, “Hi, Greg.” Never mind. His intent is good. My next task is training him to discern the difference between a “G” and a “C.”

Anyway, Joe is a retired school teacher who cares for grandchildren on occasion and walks his dog with religious fervor. There used to be two dogs on his leash, but last year the golden retriever perished quite suddenly in its sleep after being diagnosed with cancer. How do I know this? Joe freely invites me into his world to share the trivia in his life. In some way, I am gratified to be trusted with the rigors of life by this one-time stranger. He lays out a welcome mat into his world.

On this day, this Good Friday, while chatting curbside with Joe, I suddenly realized that I had not paused my Apple Watch exercise timer for today’s discourse interlude. So I attempted to gently drift downstream away from Joe, despite his attempts to close the growing gap between us.

I lurched and forged ahead, leaving Joe to ponder the correct pronunciation of my name, and determined to mark my exercise miles and minutes. The late fitness guru, Jack LaLanne would be proud.

Abruptly, mid-stride in my exercise brain haze, I half-stuttered a step, lurching sideways like a crab skittering from a codfish. A full step would have landed me directly upon the remains of a rabbit, car-flattened. This bit of brown fur was once a beautiful creation. I lingered over it in awe and consternation.

It was laid open, a beautiful handiwork of its Creator, dissected by an automobile tire. It was still a thing of beauty, but a Picasso re-arranged structure it was. The parts were there, but not in the originally-intended design.

Why did this rabbit meet his demise on my exercise street? Why on Good Friday, just two days before Easter? Was it some sort of omen? The implication was obvious—could it indeed be the Easter Bunny? A horrific thought.

My Good Friday Bunny soon disappeared from the roadway. The next day, during my walk, he was but a flattened pelt with most of the fur missing. And the following day he was gone, nowhere to be found. Surely, he had not been raised on Easter Day, this Easter Rabbit. No, indeed, surely not. But the irony was not lost on me, his coincidental death on Good Friday and disappearance two days later—contrasted with the incarnate God-made-flesh, the real Easter Hero who perished on Good Friday and was resurrected on Easter, two days later.

These days, as we all know, it costs a lot just to stay alive. We know something of the high cost of living with each visit to the grocery store or fill-up at the gas station.

When our friend, Mr. Rabbit, tragically met the Goodyear tire while crossing the road that day, he experienced the ultimate high cost of living.

But the alternative Easter narrative is the one we will to choose to remember. It’s the one in which, on that triumphant Easter morning, there was offered a permanent, never-ending solution for the high cost of living.

Just Grow a New One

I laid down my gardening tools, sat on my haunches, and watched the torso-less green and tan lizard tail twitch on the still, brown mulch. Slower and slower it convulsed until several minutes later it lay still, convinced finally that reassembly to its body was not forthcoming, and no further electro-nerve impulses would be sent its way.

“Ah, it’ll grow a new one,” I mused, half-pretending that it was not I who had inadvertently severed said lizard body from its tail with a power hedge trimmer. In fact, I know not whether all lizards or only some lizards can re-grow various missing parts.

Too bad humans cannot re-grow body parts; such ability would have found useful service for Grandfather Axel’s right index finger, or at least much of it, down to the middle joint. Grabbing severed finger with his other hand, Axel tried to re-attach it himself, jamming and ramming it onto the remaining finger stub without success. I’ve no doubt that the finger actually gave him no hope—no slow-motion twitching and thrashing about like the aforementioned lizard tail that I had sat to observe. Still, onward he jammed, until reality eventually set in. The severed finger would not revive.

What was left after his unfortunate power saw incident was a stub, a stub that years later, and for many years thereafter, Axel would poke into my abdomen at mealtime with exceeding encouragement, deeply stub-prodding as if he could discern slight voids where food ought to be.

“Ah, there,” he would declare, “There’s just enough room there for another slice of tomato and a meatball or two!” I would eagerly down the tomato and meatballs to fill the gap.

I, also, possess an injured right index finger, though my injury pales next to that which Axel suffered at the cruelty of the power saw. My own injury is due to an errant softball hurtling toward my head. Just in time, my hand, and the tip of my extended index finger in particular, shielded my face. The resulting lifelong souvenir is a fingertip that can no longer point straight. To point in a desired direction, I must purposefully aim it slightly up and to the left. Otherwise, giving directions to a traveler might result in a trip to Chicago instead of Milwaukee.

“Just go that way,” I point, “you can’t miss it.”

“Excuse me, which way?”

Twenty centuries ago, the first Catholic pope, who possessed no medical certifications, amputated an ear. Saint Peter and his companions, in the solitude of an olive garden, were suddenly set upon by a band of religious legalists. Under duress, Peter drew his sword and swung it, amputating the ear of one of the intruders. Malchus, now earless, happened to be the slave of the Jewish high priest, and a member of the party sent to arrest Jesus. Not a good thing to happen.

Jesus, the ultimate Primary Care Physician, would have none of the violence. Picture Jesus picking the bloody ear up off the ground, brushing off any olive residue, and reattaching it. Unlike my Grandpa Axel’s attempted finger reinstatement, Jesus’ reattachment held fast, a very good thing for both Malchus and Peter.

It’s reasonable to seek attachment in a chaotic world. Detachment from meaningful purpose and the people and things we love is not easy, and reattachment is not always possible. Sometimes, what we need most is a loving, stubby finger poke to the stomach and to hear, “Hey, I made it. So will you. You’ve got room for more.”

Demise of the Flies

When I bite into Cheerios, depending upon how long they have been soaking in milk, I anticipate a certain crunch, a crisp crumbling of the exterior wall of the oat circle, giving way to the welcome tenderizing by the milk moat surrounding it.

When drinking a beverage while watching evening television, one does not anticipate such a crunch. Instead, there should be the silk-smooth sensation of a liquid draining down the esophagus after a vibrant, refreshing taste exchange with an appreciative tongue.

While it’s not exactly the esophagus, my larynx is a well-behaved esophageal neighbor. Some years ago in a doctor’s office, a skilled specialist remarked on the size of my larynx. I sought his help after suffering unfortunate damage to my throat cartilage from a blow to the throat. Looking down upon me in the examining room were signed photographs from the doctor’s former appreciative patients; Barbra Streisand lovingly encouraged me that I had an excellent doctor. “Wow!” exclaimed my doctor upon initial examination, “I’ll bet you can really sing loudly! I’ve never seen a larynx this big!” This statement, coming from Barbra Streisand’s former doctor, caused me to swell with pride. And, yes, darn it, I can sing loudly, and hold a tune at that; after all, I had made it into my college men’s glee club. Admitting a slight boast, I confess that I can swallow a dozen pills in one pharyngeally-enlarged gulp.

But back to my esophageal interaction with beverages. A few months ago, while sipping my favorite beverage of choice while watching late night television, my wife explained what transpired because I didn’t recall it in detail. She explained that upon a certain fateful beverage sip, I inexplicably launched myself out of my chair, straight up, arms flailing outward while discharging the offending beverage several feet into the room. It was the classic television spit take—eyes bulged, buttocks clenched, the spew of mouth content arcing across the room.

What I had spat out possessed fur, accompanied by dangly-leggy things, and a sizable center pouch. This is what I guessed it comprised of, considering I had munched it several times before realizing it had no welcome place in my mouth or digestive system. It was a housefly, pierced by my teeth, its anatomy rearranged. I had very likely decapitated it before my oral explosion.

I had never had that happen before or since. Until last night. It was a déjà vu experience. Last night, I picked up my glass. I sipped. My lips recorded that same grotesque texture, that furry interloper touching my lips, the same sensation I had experienced several months prior. Another housefly in my glass! But that previous episode had taught me a lesson; my lips quickly sealed tight against the fur and the dangly legs and the bulgy, multi-mirroring eyes of another housefly. This time I locked him out of my mouth, just barely, and into my glass he went. I held the glass to the light to examine the floating corpse. Yes, he was indeed immobile. Drowned. Dead. I tentatively fished the deceased housefly out of my glass and placed him carefully on my beverage’s fabric coaster.

He has lain there for two days now, time enough to check for any possible movements or twitches of life, for I do not think a fly possesses a pulse. Time to discard him, whether disassembled by a trip down the garbage disposal, consolidated with the other trash bin rubbish, or centrifuged down the toilet.

Although a solitary fly possesses both a mother and father, and probably thousands of sisters and brothers, it’s difficult to get worked up over the death of a fly. It’s just one fly. Gone, never realizing it was alive.

But imagine the simultaneous hatching of billions of them, all headed your direction. Pharaoh rightly owned that plague sent him with the message: Hey. Listen up. Obey. Straighten up and fly right. Fly right.

So I ask myself: this one, lone, dead fly—what message did he carry to me?

The Decades

Each new decade of our life signals new ends and new beginnings. Perhaps a new decade reminds us that maybe, just maybe, we are ushering in a smidgen of new wisdom into our lives. If we are fortunate, grateful endings and unspoiled new beginnings can be a part of this decade-aging process.

This year, I rounded that new decade corner by entering a new, “I’m Now-in-My-70s” decade. Make way! I’m already seventy-times-round-the-sun age! How could that happen? Just yesterday, it seems I was making a figure of my first grade reader’s mascot, Penny the Cat, cut out of construction paper and handsomely colored with crayons. Years became decades. Navigating college lunch lines and managing social circles pushed thoughts of Penny far to the side. Falling in love and finding a job and raising a family, all while trying to figure out who I was—and would become—were exhausting and all-consuming. More aging decades of ends and new beginnings emerged and disappeared into fog. And then came the Golden Years and retirement, that vast canvas scroll of uncertain length. So much already behind. Formal education, done. Children, grown up and on their own. Check. Career, or make that plural careers of unequal lengths and varying quality. Got ‘er done. In hindsight, was I actually designed to evolve into whom I have become or what I have done? Never mind. It’s all in the rear view mirror, all bound together, sometimes tidy, sometimes barely held with crude baling wire.

There remains one unlikeliest constant companion in all this sea of decade-swapping change—my primary care physician. He increasingly populates more appointments on my calendar with each passing year. He is now 87 years old, and I thought he was elderly when I first retained his services, 25 years ago. He’s a remarkable man, having reared two sets of twins and a several others as well. On his days off, my doctor is a flight instructor at the local airport, something he’s done for 40 years.

With each weigh-in at his medical office, I vainly empty my pockets of all extraneous possession. I deposit loose change, keys, pencils and pens, even dental floss on the table before stepping upon the weigh-in scale. Still, each succeeding annual checkup records yet another pound or two of additional girth. Then the inspection begins, first the easy stuff—ears, tongue, nose and throat, working up to the pokes and prodding in the belly and groin. The tour then explores those naked tender spots that I myself have never seen with my own naked eyes, those remote regions requiring my physician to navigate with finger probes, accompanied by comments, “Ah, I see!” But I cannot see any of it.

Last week, this primary care physician and I entered into a lively debate about arthritis pain medications and their accompanying side-effects. Prepared in advance for this discussion, I unabashedly displayed the sophomoric research I had gleaned from the Internet. He was not impressed. “So you want to suffer on a daily basis in the remote off-chance that this medication could shorten your life?”

“Well, yes, I don’t want to die unnecessarily,” I responded, rock-solid sure of my YouTube research footing.

“I have a different take on that,” he suggested. “We don’t have yesterday. We are not promised tomorrow. All we have is today. And I believe in living it, today, the best that we can. Make full use of today. Take the damned medicine.”

“Oh, and one other thing,” he continued. “You know, we’re all going to die sometime. Something or another will get all of us, right?”

Once I got home and the embarrassed flush had cleared my cheeks, my brain engaged enough to recall a passage from the book of Hebrews. Yes, that Hebrews. “By His death, He could break the power of him who holds the power of death…and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

Welcome to my 70-year decade. Should be a fun ride.

Virus Diaries: Uprooted

It began as a routine trek to retrieve the garbage cans from the street in front of our house. I could have left them there for a bit longer. But a good citizen am I, and mindful of the Good Neighbor reputation I am advancing.

Trudging down the drive, garbage can trailing behind, why not pick a few weeds on the way, weeds sprouted after recent rains, weeds whose miserable greedy roots suck my moisture from my nutrients from my soil in my garden. Pathetic chlorophyll freeloaders, posing among the properly planted and well-cultivated, invaders among my master-planned hybrid specimens.

I plucked one final garden-invading fiend. I thought I did. But it pulled back, hard. I yanked again, and again met unexpected resistance for so small a green growth. The final pull wrested loose its hold upon the soil, and its naked root danced in the air. I relished that this thing, like a hooked trout, would gasp and fade away.

But wait. The frail roots descended into an unexpected pod, split open like a bean exposed to moisture. This excavated thing was not a weed. Instead, I had uprooted a baby tree.

I felt a sudden guilt, the guilt that comes when a life is aborted. This thing was meant for a long and sturdy life, a life that I had destroyed.

Many years ago and quite by chance, I came across a high school friend at a bus station in Kalamazoo. Her youthful, carefree high school face had devolved into a lined, worn mask. She explained that she had had an abortion, and had never since fully recovered. Uprooting a life takes its toll.

And there lay my baby tree, uprooted. It was meant for grand things: nourishment for bugs and birds, shade for beasts and joy for two-legged guests. And seeds to birth new generations.

Limp and frail, I held its tiny trunk and naked roots in my hand. I met God’s creation, this tiny tree, in my front yard—now the vanquisher and the vanquished. I uprooted the tree, and, I suppose, it uprooted a bit of me.

Virus Diaries: Social Distancing—It’s Simple Math

Once it was all the rage: “Six Degrees of Separation.” We discovered that we’re each just six relationships away from everyone else. I know you; that’s one relationship away. And you know other people. You know Sylvester, and he knows people. Bingo, two relationships away. He knows Edna, and she knows people. That’s number three. Our relationships multiply exponentially. So if you do that at six levels, or “degrees,” you could know everyone on the planet. Friends of friends, and so on. So there! All people are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other. Six degrees of separation.

It’s simple math.

But wait a minute. Nowadays, on my daily walk, I count to six not by relationships, but by distance. I don’t want to “reach out and touch somebody.” No way! I want people six feet—or more—away from me. Today, give me “Six Feet of Separation.” The coronavirus has me jumping, keeping a street-width away from other walkers. My glasses fog as I re-breathe my mask-recirculated air. Because who knows? That less-than-six-feet-away stroller may have been around another less-than-six-feet-away walker, who may have been around another long-distance violator! Hang the formerly vaunted “six degrees of separation” theory! Spare us from those relationships six deep. And wide. And far. Keep me away! I’m all about “six feet of separation.”

It’s simple math.

One day, Mr. Coronavirus will turn us loose, and we might recognize life as we once knew it. When our gloves come off—literally—we’ll likely return to forging new “six degree of separation” relationships, which are just out of reach at the moment. And, yes, perhaps we’ll talk without needing to shout across the street.

Until then, we can be grateful, summing up both what we now have, and what we will then have.

It’s simple math.

Virus Diaries: Finding Fingal

(front row, first on left—with all ten brothers and sisters and parents)

This week, I’ve enjoyed spending time with my 140-year old grandfather. He immigrated to this country in 1891, when he was 29. Swedish-accented Fingal quickly hopscotched to Alaska in his quest for gold. And find it he did—mining enough gold to become a very wealthy Swedish immigrant.

Aged 140, I paused to let my grandfather gather himself for his story’s next chapter.

Fingal invested his new-found riches in Washington’s blossoming Yakima Valley. He bought up every small business that was available: grocery, hardware, dry cleaners, all the essential businesses, and hundreds of acres of prime land, ready for soon-arriving irrigation. And so, Fingal’s wealth grew.⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀

Until, that is, his unscrupulous, cheating small business managers realized Fingal had no business acumen. They overwhelmed his unsophisticated Swedish education, reducing his burgeoning empire to a fiscal nightmare. He salvaged some farming acreage, his lone investment left standing. He planted apple orchards, retreating to the lone farm house where he raised his family, including my mother, Dagmar.

Actually, I never met my grandfather. He died on August 16, 1945, just three months after my parents married on the front porch of the farm house. He arose from his bed for the last time for their wedding vows, six years before my birth. So the time spent with my 140-year old Grandfather this week has been virtual, with the help of ancestry.com.

During days of seclusion, there are stories surrounding us, closer than ever. We may be housed or virtually connected with family and friends whose stories we have never heard. It could be the perfect time to refresh ourselves with their life stories.

Tomorrow, during these homebound virus-afflicted days, I will return to my family archival photo and slide-scanning project, a project which I have conducted for many months. There, through pictures, I will again virtually meet up with Grandfather Fingal, the grandfather I never met.

Virus Diaries: The Toilet

During these global virus days, we are captives within our abodes. I have never asked myself, “Given the plague, where would I prefer to hole up?” We have already answered this question. We are holed up where we are holed up.⠀⠀

I am fortunate, protecting myself in the 1,600 square foot home that I share with my wife. Now that my field of vision is suddenly reduced, all around me in this household are curiosities that, in a larger world, might go unnoticed.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Take our toilet—no, don’t take our toilet! Were our world larger, proportioned as it used to be, I would need to anticipate my toileting needs away from the house. At Lowes Hardware—ah, yes, down the corridor at the back, on the left. Three urinals and four stalls await me. Our grocery store has one modest toileting compartment per gender, semi-hidden near the back, as if preserving it for employees only, nonetheless it is adequate enough for the task, or tasks, at hand.⠀⠀

My homebound toileting needs are now conveniently served just down the hallway; I have no need for an outside substitute in this giant virus-infested world. I enter the chamber, and the 12-volt motion-activated light invites me to safely stand or sit, as my needs may require. Regardless, I am welcomed by a non-judgmental porcelain creation of exquisite industrial design, hanging, as if perched, mounted directly on the toilet wall, defying gravity, for no part of this appliance touches the polished tile floor beneath. It’s a thing of cleanable genius, a World’s Fair-worthy sculpted beauty that I admire several times each day. Enlarged to gigantic proportions, it would make a wondrous waterslide.

Its other toileting convenience places it above a modest “Ford-level” appliance: the dual-sized wall-mounted push buttons release either minor or high-volume torrents depending upon the demand. But make no mistake, my ceramic friend is no competition for a “Bugatti-level” bidet-enhanced instrument whose performance flushes away all contenders.

An Artist in Darkness

“So you are a widow, living at this retirement center—what happened to your husband?” My question spilled out with unexpected bluntness.

“Oh, he was a doctor—a pulmonologist. He died in a mine.”

“In a mine?” I puzzled. The irony of a pulmonologist dying in a mining accident was inescapable. Was he researching black lung disease?

Carol cackled. “No! He didn’t die in a MINE! He died in oh-nine! As in 2009!”

I scrambled for cover.

Fresh from a Netflix docudrama about Ann Boleyn, I decided to up the ante of our breakfast chitchat and impress upon her my fresh-from-TV insights. But she soon left me in the dust, rattling off 200 years of English monarchy melodrama.

Checkmate. Nothing to do but retreat to, “umm-hmm’s,” and “ah-ha’s.”

Eager for a change of subject, I inquired about her education. “Double major in history and art,” she replied.

No wonder. She wisely avoided pressing me about my own educational pedigree.

She had called Boise home, but after her son-in-law’s fatal heart attack, she moved to be closer to her daughter. “In warm weather when they visited me, he would literally run up the nearby ski slopes for exercise. His death—well, it was totally unexpected.”

I asked Carol about her current art interest. “Being an artist can be a very lonely life,” she explained. “It’s only you and your art. That’s not enough for me. I need other people.”

I have never seen Carol without a hat, or sunglasses, or both. This art major, in her element with pastels and a sketchpad, lives in a dimly-lit world. A medical condition has rendered her eyes so sensitive that light pains her. In her apartment, drapes are drawn, the light nearly non-existent. Artwork hangs on the walls about her, barely visible. These days, this aficionado of form and color craves near-total darkness.

Carol abruptly excused herself. “Gotta go! Today’s New York Times didn’t arrive before I left for breakfast. Time for my crossword puzzle!”

Of course. The New York Times crossword puzzle. She has worked them for decades.

Watch out, art and history categories—Carol’s on the loose.

The Stewardess

Jan’s inaugural stewardess commission was on the World War II “Gooney Bird,” the twin-engine DC-3. They began flying in 1935. They are still in service to this day.

So is ninety-something, Jan. Over breakfast, she recalled her favorite flight crew.

“In those days, the unpressurized planes flew low. On long flights, our two mischievous pilots would open their cockpit windows and deploy long strands of chicken bones, all tied together with string. They let out enough line so the bones would hit and clatter against the windows of the unsuspecting passengers, provoking shock and dismay, while traveling at several thousand feet altitude.”

“I suppose turkey bones would have been too big and heavy for the fragile windows!”

Jan eventually graduated to DC-4’s, and to DC-6’s. The latter contained sleeping berths for upscale passengers, reminiscent of the era’s train transportation.

Based in Los Angeles, she served Hollywood royalty: Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, Hedda Hopper, Walt Disney, John Wayne, Barbara Hutton.

Jan lived in a stewardess dormitory, where a visiting pilot ran into Jan quite by accident when he lost his way, arriving at the wrong dormitory; Jan was smitten.

One day, after making repairs under the hood of her Model A Ford, which she had purchased from another pilot for $125, Jan drove across town to visit him. He invited her to Tucson, where he was based. So she spent the next several weeks “visiting her grandmother” in Tucson. Two months after they met, she married her sweetheart pilot.

“Did that turn out to be a good thing?” I was incredulous. She curled her index finger to meet her thumb, forming an “O,” as in “perfect.” “We had an amazing life together. We traveled to every part of the world. Greece! We loved Greece!”

Later that afternoon, accompanying my father down the hall, we once again ran into Jan. “Didn’t we meet you yesterday?” asked my Dad. Good try. I suggested to him that it had been just that morning.

Jan’s son, John, who happened to be visiting her, accompanied her down the hall. We introduced ourselves, yet I felt I already knew John.

After all, we could both recite Jan’s fondest stories.