Why There Are No Aliens

UFO

Recently the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence announced that the Pentagon will be required to release a public report concerning unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The committee is comprised of a rotating membership which includes notable senators such as vice presidential hopeful, Kamala Harris, and one time presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, who chairs the committee. The senatorial braintrust on intelligence is expected to impose rules outlining the manner in which the Department of Defense (DOD) shares with the American people what it knows about UFOs. I, for one, can't wait to find out what our government has been hiding from us for decades about unidentified aerial phenomenon.

The advent of the smart phone some twenty years ago afforded all of us countless lifestyle changes. Email and the internet at our fingertips offering us unfettered round the clock online communication and purchasing, portable music catalogs, a camera capable of taking pictures of ourselves, not to mention there is no longer a need to carry a pocket full of dimes to feed a hepatitis infested payphone. The best thing by far is that millions of cameras have captured unparalleled footage unseen decades ago. Just search for anything on YouTube, and you'll get plenty of videos.

There's recordings of plane crashes, meteorites streaking across the sky, bull riders getting their teeth knocked out, trains careening off the rails, passengers getting worked over on United flights, chimpanzees tossing shit at people. Everything we used to read about is now captured by someone with a smart phone. It's a great time to be alive.

Female Big Foot

There's even a video of a Sasquatch's side boob. Yeah, I know someone faked the clip back in 1967, but there it is on the internet. The fact is you can find video evidence documenting just about everything that happens. I searched on "dancing man wearing horse mask cooks wild mushrooms" and got this. The only topic that never results in clear footage is a search on UFOs.

It's not that there isn't any videos of unidentified flying things. There's plenty of clips capturing strange objects hovering in the sky. There just isn't any of a flying saucer coming in for a landing, followed by two dude bro aliens in silver spacesuits taking soil samples. Most UFO footage is blurry lights at night or shaky images in the day.

I have a friend who is really into the whole UFO thing. He goes to conventions in which the keynote speaker claims to have been abducted by aliens. He's certain that extraterrestrial life exists, that they visited us thousands of years ago when they built the pyramids. He can't tell me why alien cow tipping often involves evisceration, but no matter. He's been to Roswell many times while investigating the spacecraft mishap which occurred in 1947.

I read that some guy who was on the original task force investigating the incident at Roswell swiped a piece of metal from the smoldering wreckage. He claimed it was light as aluminum but strong as steel and contained hieroglyphics. Unfortunately, the guy lost it. He was quoted as saying that he couldn't remember where he put it. The dude misplaced his chunk of alien spacecraft? I lost the string for my weed wacker. Occasionally I misplace my keys. I'm getting old and forgetful, but if I had a piece of an alien spacecraft, I would prominently display it in the dining room next to my wife's Gorhams silver tea set. It would be a conversation piece. Everyone who came to dinner would marvel at my piece of alien flying saucer wreckage. I would polish it regularly. It would be proudly displayed on a mahogany stand with a small brass plaque that read,

Part of an Alien Spacecraft

1947

If he really did lose a piece of an alien spacecraft, it would've certainly turned up on eBay by now. Until there is a video on YouTube recording a flying saucer landing in Central Park, and two aliens jumping out looking for directions while a third relieves himself behind a tree, I'm holding out that we're alone in the universe. It's a good thing too if we are on our own because based on just about every sci-fi movie I've ever seen with the exception of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, aliens who visit Earth generally do so to mess us up and take all our stuff. Still many people believe consummately that aliens are out there, and they regard our planet as the premiere destination bovine dissection hotspot. If aliens do exist, what are they waiting for?

God knows we could use some help down here.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on June 13, 2017.

On Father's Day

He grew up in West Sheffield, just outside of Quebec, Canada. At 22 as a noncitizen he joined the US Army where he worked as a cook during World War I. He carried his honorable discharge papers with him everywhere he went. In fact they were on his body when they pulled him from the Hudson River in 1938.
 

Henry Languedoc

His family emigrated from Canada to New Bedford, Massachusetts where they found work in the many mills. The census listed him as a "laborer" then later as a "mechanic." His name was Henry, and I don't know how he met Nativa, but they married in 1924, five years before The Great Depression.

As a veteran, my grandfather was entitled to a bonus for his military participation in The Great War under the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, a federal law passed in 1924 granting veterans a "bonus" certificate that would be redeemable for cash after a maturation period of twenty years. A later act in 1936 replaced the earlier legislation allowing veterans to receive distributions sooner. According to his discharge papers he served in the army from August 1917 to April 1919 entitling him to a sizable amount. After receiving his bonus, he travelled to New York City where my father believed he was robbed and murdered. He was found in the Hudson River, known then as the North River, in New York City on 30th street. The death certificate indicates that the cause of death was "Asphyxia by submersion. Undetermined Circumstances." At the time he was a laborer for the Works Progress Administration, WPA.


Nativa Fecteau

Maybe it was because we shared the same last name or the mysterious circumstances of his demise, my grandfather always intrigued me. Leaving his family in the middle of the depression to work for the WPA must have been a tough decision, but my father always claimed that his dad was a drunk who never sent any money home. My dad recalled a few stories of his ole man, but one I heard more than any other. Once his father told him he would meet him in front of a downtown store to buy him a new bike, a balloon tire Columbia my father often admired.

"Be in front of the store Saturday morning, bright and early," Henry instructed.

My father was maybe ten years old. He mistakenly told all his friends that his dad was going to buy him the prized bicycle. After making his way downtown early one spring morn, the young boy dutifully waited in front of the storefront. He never had any money to ride the street cars so he would hang onto the outside of the trolley as it sped along. Late in the afternoon, his mother found him still waiting in front of the store.

"He's gonna come!" he insisted.

Unable to convince her son to leave, Nativa reluctantly left him there. She probably knew better, having been let down more than once in her life. She returned in the early evening to collect her oldest boy, who finally relinquished his post. He sobbed quietly in his seat on the trolley ride home. No one ever becomes accustomed to disappointment. Back in school on Monday, Raymond absorbed all the comments from his middle school friends, one of which said,

"What did you expect? Everyone knows your ole man is a bum."

My dad didn't defend him. The plight that his father left him and his brothers in was difficult in the best of times. It was exasperated by the widespread economic strain caused by The Great Depression. My father said that they moved around a lot because,

"We always stayed one step ahead of the landlord."



Raymond, Robert and
Ronnie with their Father

My dad had two brothers, Bob and Ronnie. My Uncle Bob lives with his wife, Corinne, in Exeter, New Hampshire, after raising their four boys in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. As a boy my father lived with his mother and brothers in different apartments in Providence and Cranston, Rhode Island. My dad seemed to always lead the way into whatever mischief the boys could conjure. Every Italian had a grape vine in their backyard which provided superb ammunition for slingshots. They would swipe the unripe grapes from the vines which were hard and perfectly round and shoot them into the open factory windows of the Narragansett Brewery. There was no air conditioning back then so the supervisors would open the large windows for ventilation. The hard grapes would splatter on the walls. My dad often recalled,

"Someone always came to the window and yelled, 'Hey you kids!' then catch one right in the forehead."
 

My father and Bob had Red Rider BB guns. My uncle's was confiscated by the police after a report of someone shooting out some windows. He claims to this day that my father was probably the shooter. Once my dad was in the woods with his air rifle when he came upon a kid who asked,

"Is that a Red Rider?"

The Coal Mine at the Ledges

"It sure is," my father said.

"Can I see it?"

My father let the stranger look at his rifle. The dude turned the gun on him saying,

"Stick 'em up! Now don't follow me," then off he went with my dad's BB gun.

Somewhere out there is a guy boasting to his children how he jacked a Red Rider BB gun from some hapless kid. My father and his buddies sharpened sticks and ran around the woods as a tribe they called "The Lances." They would beat on an old garbage can to get the group to convene at "The Ledges," their tribal land which was a patch of woods isolated by factories, houses and stores. One time my father showed me the remains of an old coal mine he and his friends played in which is now behind a store off Cranston Street. While researching my family tree I discovered an address for the three boys and their mother, "950 Cranston Street." An online map revealed this image.


Tongue Pond

Not far from their apartment was Tongue Pond. The brothers built a raft from scrap wood and paddled about the small lake. They told the youngest, Ronnie, not to go out on the pond alone, but he did anyway. My uncle today believes his little brother probably had ADHD because he never seemed to listen to anyone. When he turned up missing one evening in the spring of 1940, his mother summoned the police. An imposing Irish motorcycle patrol officer, Officer Lonigan, showed up and questioned my uncle who led him to Tongue Pond. As they neared the lake, Officer Lonigan saw something floating on the surface. He waded into the water as my uncle remained on the banks.

Tragic events in life have a way of etching themselves into a ten year old boy's mind. Now a man of ninety, my uncle recalls the story with striking detail as in the officer's name, the low sun filtering through trees and reflecting on the surface of the lake while insects dotted over the dark water. He describes Officer Lonigan soiling his uniform as the big man unhesitating entered the water to retrieve his brother's body. My uncle always ends the story there as the rest is most certainly unfathomable.


The Boys with Their Mother

Families of the Silent Generation often experienced unimaginable loss and hardship. My father once told me of his older brother, Adrian, who died after one year from a reflux condition that is treatable today. My grandmother took him home after the doctors in the hospital determined that nothing could be done for him. Nativa developed a distrust of the medical profession which later in life caused her to ignore symptoms of cervical cancer. While researching Adrian's life, I learned that two weeks after he died, my father was born. I often wonder how a young couple survived such a tragic loss in the middle of the depression, then welcomed a new boy, my father, into their life. When I found Adrian's grave at Saint Francis Cemetery in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, I learned that there was no marker. My grandparent's probably didn't have any money for a headstone. I had one made and installed a short time later.

My father and his brothers lived an adventurous life outdoors, unencumbered by computers and electronic worlds. One time after discovering an abandoned house in the neighborhood, curiosity overwhelmed their young minds as they pushed in a basement window to investigate. My father said that the house was completely furnished and looked as though someone had left after breakfast never to return. Dried cornflakes were in bowls set on the table along with an ashtray containing several crushed cigarette butts. A newspaper, dated five years earlier, was on the table. The beds were turned down showing the distinct outlines of the people who had slept in them. My father claimed that he spooked his brothers who bolted for the basement window leaving my father alone laughing heartily. Eventually, he panicked and ran for the exit as well.

When my grandfather was found in the Hudson River in 1938, the most destructive hurricane was bearing down on New England. Nativa's brother-in-law, Anthony, her sister, Laura, and their oldest son, Andre, along with 11 year old Raymond all travelled by car to New York City in the middle of a hurricane to attend the funeral on Long Island. There wasn't enough room for Bob and Ronnie who stayed with their maternal grandmother, who spoke only French. My father said that his mother was unhappy with him for being more excited about a trip to the city than saddened by the death of his father.

"That's your father!" she would sternly exclaim.

My dad hated his father for abandoning his family. Sixty years later, I found my grandfather's grave via an online search. I was very interested in visiting the cemetery. My father initially agreed to go, but then felt he was reliving the past by being only interested in a trip to New York. It was later that I learned he was ill. Like his mother he distrusted doctors. He ignored the chest pains, not even telling my mother. He likely declined to go with me due to his health, but at the time I imagined that the memories of his father's abandonment were still seared into his heart, the wound remaining unhealed after all these years. Fortunately my uncle took his place since he had never visited his father's grave.

My uncle is my godfather. On the ferry, he expressed a different view of his dad than the one I always heard. He said that in those days there was comparably very little government assistance. People felt that if you came onto hard times, your family would help out. My uncle told me that his parents had little support from his mother's family, and they didn't even know anyone on his father's side. As we neared the veteran's cemetery, we met up with my uncle's oldest son, Ronald, a prominent lawyer in the city. The three of us found Henry's grave.

A few months afterwards my father unexpectedly passed away. We all saw him as a strong man who ran five miles a day. It was a horrible shock made all the worse knowing my dad departed without ever forgiving his father. My uncle's perspective might have been tempered by the years he spent in a seminary before he decided he liked women too much to become a priest. My father remained with his mother working odd jobs. He turned over his paycheck to his mom who gave him 50 cents for himself. He set up bowling pins when he was thirteen and later bussed tables in the Shore Dinner Hall at Rocky Point, the local amusement park. When he was in high school, his mother got him a job in a soap factory she worked in. He told me that was the first "real money" he had earned allowing him to hit up the Coke machine at work as much as he liked. Once he drank seventeen sodas during one shift. He said he never tried that again.

My father enlisted in the Merchant Marines during his last year of high school after being rejected by the Navy for color blindness. After World War II, the government didn't recognize merchant marine service even though they took heavy losses in undefended convoys ferrying men and supplies in Liberty ships to the European theatre. He was an able body seaman who stood watches looking out for floating mines. If he saw one, he was to call in a sharpshooter. He said that at night everything looked like a mine. Once he alerted a sharpshooter who took umbrage for raising the alarm when a mine couldn't be found.

"Probably the asshole who stole my BB gun," my father once mused.

Raymond and Bob

After WW II he managed to get a good job at Gorhams as an apprentice silversmith. A few years later he was drafted in the Army for the Korean War while my uncle enlisted in the Navy right out of high school. My father never complained that his Merchant Marine service was not recognized by the government as prior service. He made the best of his second tour in the military by becoming an amphibious vehicle driver. True to form he found ways to get into trouble. One time he and his army buddies were walking in town when a marine officer pulled up to a post office while leaving his car running. Naturally my father thought it would be a great idea for he and his friends to take the car instead of walking. They drove around town until the MPs began chasing them. When they pulled over, they all took off in different directions. My dad, the driver, ran for a bar and hid in the stall of a bathroom. He said he saw the MP's feet run by him beneath the stall partition "just like in the movies." They caught all of them and tossed them in the brig. Unfazed, my father picked up a metal cup and rattled it against the bars of the jail cell as he yelled,

"You dirty rats!"

He avoided punishment by appealing to his commanding officer, who he knew was both a drunk and harbored an intense hatred for marines, by stating,

"They had it in for us."

His explanation was laced with a hefty amount of denial. Later he bribed a yeoman to intercept and destroy the CO's letter admonishing the marine officer in charge of the MPs.

My cousin, Ken, said to me at my father's funeral,

"I know in my heart your dad forgave his father before he died."

I wanted to believe that, but I know convenient movie endings just don't occur in the real world. I was bitter for many years afterwards believing that my father couldn't have put aside his own anger, not even for his own son. I became a father to two boys, who are the greatest things my wife, Christine, and I have ever done together. And on this Father's Day, I've come to realize that it is me who needs to ask for forgiveness from a man who lived a life of hardship which I can barely fathom let alone understand. I may not have had the idyllic life that my kids enjoy, but my trials and tribulations were nothing when compared to what my father and his brothers endured. Through it all, my dad never lost the ability to make people laugh, and for his whole life he remained a consummate humorist who always could be counted on for an impeccably crafted comedic story.

This Father's Day for me is about humility because in the end we are just dust and shadow cast aside with hopes of forgiveness.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on June 15, 2017.

The Value of Education

He enlisted sometime after the attacks on the World Trade Center. There were many men and women who felt compelled to do their part during the second time in our country's history which will live in infamy. He was a social studies teacher for a high school in Rhode Island. He had endured boot camp as a thirty something, and now was a college educated, low ranking enlisted service member in the navy. His name was Mark, and he was an invaluable member of my reserve unit.

Apart from being a sharp dude who could be counted on to complete any task, no matter how mundane or lofty, Mark always carried himself with respect, honor and charisma. Recently, I read his reviews on Rate My Teacher. Students expressed that he was the best teacher they had. I don't doubt it. One student wrote,

"He was my favorite teacher by far. He's a great person who treated us all with respect. He was incredibly funny, and always able to get students to follow him."

Mark could be counted on for an amusing story. He was the kind of guy who you always wanted to be near because he would tell you something to make you smile and often laugh out loud. He told me once that during weapons training a fellow unit member who was very quiet and reserved was shooting an M16 when he turned to Mark and said,

"These earth weapons are easy."

Mark wrote it down in his wheel book, the small pad military members often carry for important information. Mark was the lacrosse coach for a girl's team at a private school. He often would inspire his team with history laced motivational pep talks. He would say to the young athletes,

"Today when you're on that field, you're not just a college girl playing lacrosse. You're taking your place in line behind all the woman who came before you, who fought for your right to vote, who led the charge to allow woman into college, who protested for equal pay. Are you gonna let all those woman who came before you down? Are you are Valkyries, women warriors who will lead the path forward or are you followers? I think you're warriors!"

The young college athletes would cheer enthusiastically. Mark told me once that as they neared an opposing teams home field, one of the lacrosse players asked,

"Coach, can you do the 'Valkyries' one again?"

After the game, win or lose, Mark always took the team out for ice cream. He would laugh as none of the players ever had any money. They would all get Mark to pay, which he was more than happy to do. He said when they got back to the parking lot, all with their ice cream, the team members would jump into their convertible BMWs and Mercedes, and Mark would wonder if his clunker would start.

I drilled in the reserves with Mark for more than ten years. Of all the stories he told me, one stands out as my favorite. Once he said that in college, he landed a summer job with a moving company. On the first day, he showed up at a house and was supposed to looked for a guy with a clipboard. The dude was directing all the movers hired to schlep people's stuff from one place to another. Clipboard guy was barking orders, sending people to rooms in the house. When he got to Mark, he said,

"Okay, college boy. Come with me."

At that moment Mark figured Schwartz was going to get his. The guy glanced to Mark as he neared then held out his pen followed by the clipboard.

"I don't like to write," the guy exclaimed, "so you write down everything that leaves this house."

After relinquishing the clipboard and pen the guy proceeded to pick up a box and head out the front door. As the years passed I retired from the reserves and lost track of most of the colorful characters I met in uniform, but I never forgot the sage advice Mark learned from his summer moving job. He said,

"The value of an education is that you get paid the same amount of money to write 'couch' than you do to lift one."

So true.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on June 6, 2017.

My Foray into the World of the Lower GI

Back when I was in my twenties, I was dating my future wife, Christine. Not only was she a strong, attractive, successful, smart woman, she also baked bread. I never had fresh bread before her. She insisted on making me a sandwich everyday. Tuna on fresh slices of wheat. Things were looking good, real good, until I started to have problems with my stomach.

Bread

Not to give away the ending to this story, but I didn't die. I went to my doctor complaining about the awful pains I was having in my gut. My doctor, back then, was a real jerk. He would sit at his desk with my medical record in front of him and ask,

"What am I seeing you for?"

I would always unload a smart ass, Will Hunting remark like,"dyspepsia" or "general malaise" or my favorite, "ptosis of the liver."

It used to chap my ass that all that documentation was right at his fingertips, and the dude didn't read past my name on the folder. I discovered that annoying your doctor is not a wise move. Sure they take the Hippocratic Oath and all, but they're also able to perform invasive procedures on you. It's not a good idea to irritate a person who can as a matter of profession stick something up your ass. Without examining me, my doctor announced,

"You need a lower GI."

"Whatever," I thought.

When I showed up for my foray into the world of the lower gastrointestinal tract, the nurse person looked at my paperwork then turned to me with an empathetic look, slightly more compassionate than if she had to tell me that I had the big C.

"What?" I asked.

"This one really sucks," she exclaimed.

Now I had already prepped for my lower GI. I didn't think anything could suck more than that. According to the instructions in preparation for my upcoming procedure, I had to get a "Fleet Enema Kit Number Two." Apart from the name sounding like the entire US Navy was going to take turns depth charging my garbage chute, it wasn't immediately obvious how unpleasant all this was going to be. I assumed that "Number Two" referred to, well, number two. The whole procedure involves a bag and a tube and some warm water as well as a bottle of nasty tasting fluid that will help you drop off some friends at the pool, except instead of pulling over to let them out, you're more like going to throw them out of a moving vehicle gangsta style. First mistake I made was not fully reading the directions that came with the kit which stated that I was supposed to dilute the bottle of fluid. Instead I unscrewed the safety cap and chugged it college style.

If you ever had to drink that stuff, you know it tastes like cheese that was stored at length under the cast on someone who broke his foot in a swamp. When I'm alone and I close my eyes and clear my head, the first memory which always come to mind is not my wedding day, not the birth of my children, not fond childhood memories. No, I recall the taste of that clear fluid I downed that day. After drinking the contents of the bottle, I was certain its role in this was to make you hurl so the food in you stomach doesn't even get a chance to gunk up your intestines. A short time later I discovered what that stuff really does.

If you don't know what I'm talking about then consider yourself lucky because once you go down the path of colon cleansing, you'll never think of your lower GI with the same fondness. Not to be graphic but that little bottle of clear fluid evacuated everything inside my body. Explosively. I crapped out everything I ate the night before and the day before that. When that was over, the warm water and tube (I'll leave it to your imagination where it goes) helped expunge stuff in which there was no way to tell how long was up there. I swear I knocked out some Milk Duds, and I haven't eaten them since third grade.

"Did you follow all the instructions?" the nurse person asked.

I wanted to ask her why her clothes didn't match. She was wearing a floral pattern against yellow with aqua pants. I began to suspect that being a wiseass got me into this mess in the first place so I told her,

"You mean the enema? Yeah, it cleaned out everything including my pride."

The nurse person had me change into that gown which you're supposed to tie behind your back, leaving your ass flapping in the wind, just in case any of your pride might still be in there. Medical professionals always make you wear that specific garment to assert their dominance over you. They say enthusiastically,

"Leave it open in the back!"

That way if you get out of line they can easily shove something in your ass while you're anesthetized. As if this procedure wasn't humiliating enough, they had me lay flat atop a cold table which contained the x-ray plates that capture the details of my lower GI tract. But before we got to that, I needed to get a bit of barium up into my intestines so my guts would show up on the x-ray. Unfortunately you don't drink the barium. A guy with a goatee in blue scrubs entered the room with a small bag of white fluid and a tube. The bag was smaller than the one that came with the US Navy Seal Team Two Underwater Demolition Enema Kit so I thought that this wasn't going to be all that bad after all. Following a brief explanation the dude starts the process of injecting barium. Now I was here because my stomach was bothering me, and I have to tell you, it didn't bother me near as bad as this procedure. The cold, hard table was discomforting enough without having 500 cc's of barium blowing up my intestines as well.

"When we're done, you can use the bathroom over there," goatee guy said.

He pointed over his shoulder to a wall with three doors.

"Which door?" I asked.

"The one over there," he said ambiguously.

"Which door?"

It was important to know.

"The one to my left," he declared.

The dude exited then returned a short time later with a big, white pillow. I thought that was nice of the guy because the hard table was very discomforting, then I realized that it wasn't a pillow he was holding. It was another bag of barium. This time 2000 cc's. I began to sweat. After what seemed like an eternity, goatee pillow guy emptied the bag into my swollen guts, then the x-ray part of the program started. I wasn't aware that the table I was lying on articulated to a vertical position so I could stand up for a few wallet size shots. When the pictures were done, a tech person popped into the room saying,

"We have to make sure all the pictures came out before you can evacuate."

So I just stood their in my bare feet before the x-ray table in a dress with 2500 cc's of barium up my exposed ass. The slightest move sent agonizing cramps through my bloated gut. If tech person didn't hurry up, she'd be the one who would need to evacuate. When she returned, she declared,

"Some of them didn't come out."

She left the room again then shot another series of plates while I stood humming King of Pain by the Police. When she returned, she announced that we were done. I bolted for the left door. When I opened it, I discovered it was a closet complete with a yellow bucket on wheels and a mop. For a moment I contemplated tossing the mop and taking a dump right in the yellow bucket Bieber style, but I opted for the middle door instead. It was locked. The bathroom was actually the far right door. Never in my life have I ever had to go that bad. As I was pumping the bilge, goatee guy rapped on the door while asking,

"Sir, are you okay?"

I knew if I didn't answer he would sound a code brown that would have gotten more medical personnel on the scene.

"Yeah fine," I said between agonizing cramps.

A few minutes later he returned,

"Are you sure you're okay, sir?" He asked.

"Yes," I said.

"You don't sound ok," he said.

I found this excruciatingly irritating. I wanted some alone time with my porcelain savior, and this guy was messing up my concentration.

"That's because I have a shitload of an earth metal up my ass!" I yelled.

Francis Nightingale got the message and left me alone. When everything settled down, I found my clothes and got out of there. A few days later Doctor Doom called to inform me everything looked normal. He recommended an upper GI.

"Great," I thought.

The next time I saw Christine, I told her an edited version of my medical story. We just started dating, and it was important for me to keep up the façade of a good catch.

"You don't think it's the tuna fish?" she asked.

"No," I answered.

"Maybe the refrigerator at work is not cold enough?" she surmised.

"Refrigerator?"

"You do put your sandwich in a refrigerator, don't you?"

"Ah, well no."

"Where do you put it?"

"In my desk."

So my stomach problems were caused by unrefrigerated mayonnaise and tuna on hot, fresh wheat bread. It would have been nice if my doctor asked a few questions before he ordered the most invasive medical procedure known to the Animal Kingdom. I chocked it up to stupidity.

And yes, she married me anyway.

Editor's Note: According to Robert's current doctor, this medical procedure is no longer performed as it was replaced by the colonoscopy, thankfully. Originally posted on June 20, 2017.

Goodbye My Friend

Andy

I met him in 2008 when my wife, Christine, and I moved into a new house. He was billed as a finish carpenter, but he was more than that. His name was Andy, and along with his wife Becky, they did all the intricate molding inside and outside of our house. Andy could do anything. He worked out complex ductwork, exotic cabinetry, exquisite metalwork and intricate molding. He was a visual spatial thinker. I know because that's what our oldest son is as well. Andy would describe how to do something while looking up into the air and mimicking actions with his hands. He bailed me out of a lot of jobs I fouled up by showing me the right thing to do.

Andy was a rough guy on the outside, but a wonderfully warm and funny person everywhere else. In his younger days he worked on a road crew in the midwest. Not liking the two hour bus ride to the jobsite, Andy along with a fellow worker scouted out a nearby river. They found a cave which they made suitable to live in. They caught fish in the stream for dinner. They bathed down river at night. Repurposing any wood they found, they fabricated comfortable places to sleep.

One night Andy and his friend were exiting a bar when they saw two guys beating up a Native American. Andy didn't think that was fair so he tapped one guy on his shoulder as he said,

"Hey."

When the guy turned Andy clocked him in the head with his hardhat. He and his buddy proceeded to take out the other guy. The Native American was grateful so he invited both of them to the reservation. Andy said while recalling the experience,

"Those guys knew how to have fun."

The Native Americans introduced Andy to hallucinatory mushrooms in an attempt to discover his spirit animal. Andy was a free spirit who embraced life as it was served to him. He said he spent three days on the reservation when he "finally figured out how to leave."

Andy was my home improvement mentor. I would come up with some knucklehead idea of how to do something, then Andy would step in and set me straight. He would often say,

"Give me five minutes, and if I can't do it, we'll do it your way."

His way always worked out. Many times I found myself admitting,

"Thank God I listened to you Andy."

One time I dropped my son, Aidan, off at Andy's workshop where he showed him how to use a ball peen hammer and anvil to make shapes out of copper. We talked, Andy and I, in his shop late into the night about all sorts of things. I was fascinated with his life on the road, and he with my military service. He never spoke about his mother. He told me once that his father announced to his children that he had filled the oil tank which should cover them for a month, then in the middle of winter his father took off. I don't know if he ever saw his dad again. Two years later after Andy graduated from high school, he filled the tank with oil then left himself. He lived a nomadic life, going wherever he could find work, usually on farms or in construction.

Andy and Becky

Eventually he met Becky and they married. Andy settled in one place and made a life building things for people. They made wine cellars, furniture and copper weathervanes. Three years ago he was working on installing a roof and skylights on our outdoor deck. We had elaborate plans for intricate woodworking, embellished with copper accents. Andy loved the challenge.

On a bright Sunday afternoon in August as I surveyed Andy's tools neatly stowed for the weekend just outside my window, I got a phone call from his son. As incomprehensible as the news was I relived the day I received the same phone call about my father years earlier. Andy's son informed me that Andy had died. I was speechless, heartbroken. How could someone so strong be gone? It left me feeling forgotten as if the world pulled away like a train from a station. I found myself having to move Andy's tools to a new position. I recoiled his long extension chord and discarded his coffee can full of cigarette butts. I didn't want to face that my friend, my mentor, the man I had come to depend on to tell me what to do was gone.

As days passed I slowly came to the conclusion that I would complete Andy's last job. I wanted it to look as good as if he had done it. I installed a beadboard ceiling. I wrapped poles with iron wood. I sanded the floor to bring back the grain. I learned how to make large screens for the windows. I installed copper hurricane lights. I flashed and roofed around skylights. It took me through to the next summer, partly because I'm slow, and partly because, I guess, I didn't want to finish.

The other day I found the circular copper vent which Andy made for our covered deck. It was the last thing my friend made with his hands. As the summer wore on I never got around to installing it. I decided to prominently display it on the gambrel end of my barn where it is today.

Unlike Andy I don't get close to too many people. I'm not good at making or keeping friends. My sharp tongue gets me into a lot of trouble. Friends and family usually tire of my banter and move on. I wasn't close to my parents or most of my family for that matter. I often say to my wife that when it is my turn to go, there won't be anyone there to greet me, but that's not true anymore.

When my time comes, I know Andy will be there to reach out his hand, and he will tell me, once again, what I have to do.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on May 30, 2017.