Deletion

I deleted some online contacts, today. One was Byron Quick. Byron passed away a few years ago. He was a nurse, and a Georgia cracker, and had been a fellow staff member at www.TheFiringLine.com, and at www.TheHighRoad.org. I hunted with Byron, and took meals with Byron, and was his guest, once. I miss his company.

Another was William Bligh-Glover, MD. I wrote here of his passing. I never met him. Still I thought of him as a friend.

Another was Jason Pittman. Jason and I were students in grade school through high school, together. His mother was my teacher. His father was an assistant scoutmaster of my troop. Jason, I am given to understand, fell into drugs and depression (who knows which caused the other), and he took his own life. He had been an Eagle Scout.

The day after his father was buried, I watched my Chief, a friend, delete his father from his cell phone, saying that it was silly to keep it in there. I shook my head, not sure that I could do such a thing with such a cavalier attitude. But I don't think (looking back) that he did it without thought. A photo or a note or a subscription to or a social media "friendship" does not a relationship make. You carry that in your heart. It is not a flag, that you wave.

I don't believe in ghosts. I wish that I did. But I've got some of these people's transferred personalities stored within my wetware*, and so I guess that they live on. In the meantime, this picture reminds me of an adventure in Georgia with my friends. I think that Tamara was already gone, but I don't recall who took this picture. JPG or John may recall. That's Byron in the middle.

_____________________________

*If I could, would I be stored as a RAM AI, like Neuromancer? If I were simply a ROM AI, I would want to be deleted, like Dixie Flatline. 

Fifteen Years Ago Today.

Fifteen years ago today, I got up with a little bit of a hangover, and went to play a miserable game of golf with my two best friends, Scott and Bill. Y'all may have noticed that I don't talk much about golf on this blog. That's because it doesn't interest me to talk about. But it's a pleasant walk with a pair of good friends, and occasionally hand-eye coordination pays off. Also, it's an excellent way to polish your judgement of distance and wind.

After putting up a score well north of 100 (I never have seen the point in fudging my score, or adjusting the way my ball lies without taking a penalty. What's the point?), I went back to my house to get showered and changed. My fiancée was at the hairdresser's, getting ready. I was to meet her at the church.

We were getting married that afternoon.

I was muddy, and sweaty, and probably non-too-savory from the toxins that I was sweating out from the shindig that my friends had thrown me the night before. I got in the shower and drained the water heater, and then had to wait for the water to heat back up to shave.  Finally, I glanced at my watch as I put on my tuxedo. Ooh-- 3:20pm. Cutting it a bit close, for a 4:00pm wedding, with a 15 minute drive.

This was when I discovered that the vest was a size Small.

I'm not a Small. I'm not even a Large. I'm more in the range of XXL.

They had gone on and on about how the groomsmen had matching vests in one color, and the groom had another colored vest that complimented them but was distinctly different. I thought about where the tux place was-- 3.8 miles away, through town. I got my keys, and left at 3:30pm. Driving through town, there wasn't much of a way to speed up the drive. I arrived at about 3:40pm. I dashed in, told the girl at the counter the problem, and demanded a larger vest. She searched and found one, and then removed, if I recall correctly, about 19 straight pins from it before adjusting it to me. I was impatient, and told her that we'd have to make do with how it was. I fled the store, and hopped into my pickup, at about 3:53PM.

Google Maps claims that the 8.5 mile trip from the mall to the church takes 13 minutes to drive. Under normal conditions, I would have to agree, and on weekdays at drivetime, you can double that. But this was a Saturday, and I was wearing my wedding tuxedo and was en route to my own wedding. I decided that I would never in my life have a better excuse to speed.

The 1989 Ford F-250 extended cab pickup with full-length bed was a big old beast, somehow the same length as the King Cab that year. It's heavy, and handles like an ocean liner. Mine had dual tanks and a 7.3 liter International diesel engine, that put out stupid amounts of torque, and seemed to want to give me 12.5mpg no matter how I drove it. The speedometer only went up to 85, but playing around with a GPS, I had learned that it would do 103mph before the governor kicked in. I jumped the median from the access road, and floored it.

While en route up the hill to the church, I saw a slow-moving car tapping its brakes, as if the driver were lost and checking the house numbers. I blew past my friend Bryan and his wife, parked at the church, and walked in. It was 4:00:30 PM by my watch. My dad, who was standing in the lobby and looking anxious, laughed and shook my hand.

I joined the pastor and my two groomsman in the anteroom, off the side of the church. We sent someone to inform the bride that we were ready. And we waited. And we waited. For over 20 minutes, we waited. It turned out that my mother in-law, not content with the professional hair-do that my wife had just gotten, wanted to mess with her youngest child's hair some before sending her down the aisle.

Finally, the music played, and the pastor (a retired military man) led the processional to the alter. Interesting training kicked in; we all began on our left foot, and marched at 120 steps per minute in 30 inch steps to our places. Such is the so-called Quick Time march, which my friends and I had learned in high school JROTC. Thus, in very short order, we were in place, and watched the woman who presently would become my bride be escorted up to us by her elder brother. It seemed like that their march took several minutes.

The rest is kind of a blur. The pastor used his opportunity to give a sermon that I didn't want. We picked up candles and used them to light a single candle together, and I found that the candle wasn't really a 24" taper, but was actually a white-painted metal tube with a spring pushing up a small insert candle, to keep the "tapers" the same height. I grabbed the thing, and the spring shot out the bottom, and I somehow caught it, shoving up the wax insert just before it went out. I managed to light the communal candle without burning down the old church.

Then, it was over. I kissed the bride (as such she now was), and we turned to meet our future. A friend caught this moment with her camera. It was murky in that old church, so I hope you'll forgive the poor picture. (I think she only had 100 speed film.) 

The vest really doesn't matter much, does it?

We retired to my amazing friend Paula's house, and took some more pictures. My friend Blake served the most amazing barbecue and beans and smoked ham that I've ever eaten. My friend Kevin served the beer that he and I had brewed using his grain sparge system. (I got rave reviews on it, but of 10 gallons, I only got half a plastic cup. Figures.)

I removed my wife's garter, and flung it to the waiting bachelors before an amazing sunset. An hour or so later, I was told that it was time for us to leave. Apparently, the bride and groom are expected to leave while everyone else is still there, so that they can throw rice at the couple.

Friends, this makes no sense at all. Here I was, at a party with everyone that I gave a damn about in attendance, and I had to leave it early. What we SHOULD have done was go back to our house, changed out of our finery, and re-joined the party in blue jeans and flannel shirts. If you're getting married, do that, friends.

We went to a lovely bed & breakfast place that my best friend and his wife had provided for us, took care of a necessary formality, and watched Rowan Atkinson performing a stage bit, on the televisor. In the morning, there were chocolate banana muffins, and strada.

And we went home, a married couple.

My bride has borne me two amazing children. She has my love, and my loyalty. This is just the first multiple of 15 years.

Halloween.

• --On September 13th this year, I turned off the word verification Turing test on my blog. I've put most of the spam that I've gotten into a folder on my email. As of today, there are 444 such spam messages in there. The majority of my email now regards this blog, from "Anonymous," and exhibits one of three different characteristics:

1. It will compliment me as being such an extraordinary writer and providing such a useful blog.
2. It will be full of sentences mined from the net or just put together its own sentences with subjects, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and such pushed together to make a sentence that almost makes sense. Reading a paragraph of such sentences and trying to determine content will drive a person mad. End of line. Jump.
3. It will simply be full of links. Actually, they ALL have links. But this third variety will have nothing but.

• --I propose new legislation banning any October advertisement that includes any variation of the sentence: "[Nouns] so [adjective], it's scary!!!"  EG: "Prices so low, it's scary!!" "Food so good, it's scary!!!" Pull the advert; they're done for the month.
• --My high school freshman is making a mask to go roaming trick-or-treating tonight. She's taking her 10 year old sister, who is making some kind of raggedy witch costume. She makes pretty good costumes. Check out her dead bride costume from last year:

The dress was a costume dress that she'd picked up at a Goodwill for three dollars. The blood was some of her daddy's stage blood left over from graduate level blood spatter experiments.  She's miserable in that pic, because the stage blood, having been left in the garage, was about 55 degrees, and she was made to stand out in the fresh Halloween air to let it dry. She was cold.

• --Kids over 11 who arrive at my door tonight out of costume get no candy. Kids under 11 may get some candy, but they'll be told we disapprove, and that they need to sing for their supper. Also? They get the crappy candy, like Dumdums, or Good-n-Plenty.
• --I will actually be working an off-duty gig this evening for a couple of hours, controlling car access to an affluent community. Seems that the rabble locally less-affluent have discovered that their high-rolling neighbors give out the Good Stuff, and they all like to bring their kids. Problem: left to their own devices, man parents won't walk the sidewalks with their little kids; they will drive along beside them. This results in the hazard of people driving the streets while looking out their passenger side window, on the very night when there is the highest likelihood of a sprog darting out in front of their vehicle. My job will be to direct such parents to park their cars at the convenient lot near the entrance to the 'hood, and invite them to take a stroll with their costumed charge.  Such service will be rendered with a big ol' Officer Friendly grin. I have been assured that I am to be compensated quite well for this.
• --It's to be 73 degrees at 6:00 PM today, with a dry 5 mph breeze from the north, and not a cloud in the sky. The moon is only waning two days past full. It will be a delightful evening for a stroll with friends.
• --When I was about 13, my best friends' parents attended a church that taught that Halloween was evil. I was invited to a Halloween party with their youth group, and found to my dismay that they were all praying for the souls of all those kids who were caught up in the Satan-worshiping that surely accompanied the act of dressing up and unintentionally celebrating dark arts. The television show 20/20 had just done a big exposé on the apparent rampant spread of Satanism and people were wringing their hands all over. In retrospect, I think that there could have been no greater reward for the mullet-wearing teens with cans of spray paint and hopes of getting the townsfolk all scared, than that they would receive such coverage.
• --When I was 12, I was on a Boy Scout camp out on a fall night, when I went for an unsanctioned midnight walk with a friend*. I can't recall now if it was a Friday the 13th, or a Halloween night, but we came across a group of older teens in the woods who clearly were trying to work themselves into a tizzy. They had a girl screaming, and shouted. It was midnight. At one point, one of the young men stepped onto the dirt road near where we crouched and yelled the refrain to "Shout At The Devil!" I don't know about my companion, but I was rather impressed. It was right at midnight. I was pretty certain that if we were detected by the revelers, we would be murdered. I sharpened a large stick and we sat in the shadows, about 80 yards away. I suggested to my friend that we should go rescue the girl. My older friend pointed out that such an attempt would be foolhardy. I permitted him to persuade me. Later, we heard her talking and laughing. We crept away. To quote Robert Earl Keen in "Shades Of Gray": "...these are just some sorry kids/ They ain't the ones."*
• --I've just had that crappy Mötley Crüe song playing in the background while typing. It's no longer scary, nor does it sound that hard (it was mostly unlistenable to teen aged Matt G). It just sounds kind of crappy. Also? The metal umlauts are dumb. Yeah, I know-- I'm getting old.

_____________________________
*I had seen him get up and walk out of the campsite, and I hopped up and ran to catch up. He was a couple of years older and a minor hero of mine, but I was aware that he also had a naughtier streak, too. To this day, I have no idea if he actually had a destination in mind. I think maybe he was hoping to get the two miles to the highway and get to a convenience store for some cigarettes.

**Yeah, this is the Richard Shindell version with Cry Cry Cry, but I think that the lyrics are clearer than the original Robert Earl Keen, Jr version. Also, yes, I'm aware that the song was written later in 1997, about some kids who almost got implicated for the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, but the phrase has resonated in my head many times throughout my career, when I have run across some light-runnin' malefactors who distracted me from my search for real evil-doers.

Test patterns

Remember them? I can't recall the last time that I saw one broadcast. My wife and I were trying to explain them to our kids, who didn't understand why the broadcast companies would fail to broadcast content overnight. We tried to explain that people just didn't think that it was worth it. But then, again, wouldn't it cost the broadcaster as much to send out a signal of a test card as of a back episode of the Late, Late Show?  Must get a weigh-in from Roberta X.

We were explaining to the girls the traditional sign-off, which would explain some details about the station, explain when they would come back on the air, and then usually would play the national anthem with either an eagle flying, a flag flying, a fighter jet flying, or all of the above.  I admitted that, on most occasions, I was incapable of resisting the urge to stand and place my hand over my heart during the national anthem portion of the sign-off. My family exchanged that look that says, "Yeah, that's Matt/Daddy, all right."

I refuse to be embarrassed.

So, when did you see your last broadcast test pattern and sign-off?

Friday random thoughts.

--My elder daughter's band class played their Spring Concert last night. They played the Chicken Dance (A.K.A. "The Duck Polka"). The band instructor, a fun-loving guy, turned around after one verse, called for the house lights to come up, and chastised the parents for not having danced. My wife and I hopped up and implored the others to join us in the dancing.  Very few did. I got some sour looks by fuddy-duddies. Scroom. Heh.

--My best friend's wife wants to get her CHL, and asked about how best to do it. She runs a fireworks stand and wants to be armed, with all the cash that they take in. There's also a certain, ah, clientele that tends to come in, which has made certain persons call it the 'Cracker Stand. Texas law doesn't require her to have a CHL to keep a gun at the cracker stand, but I'm glad to see her wanting to get one, so we'll try to help her expedite. There's not much time before the stand opens. I'll be starting with her from scratch. I think I'll attempt to employ a certain experienced firearms trainer to help me. My best friend, who also will probably attend the class, will NOT be present for her training sessions. We have found over the years that there is a tendency for Texas men to unintentionally assert a certain dominance over their female significant others during training. This interferes with good learning. It has little to do, in my experience, with the quality of the relationship that the couple has off of the range, and needn't be an issue with just shooting. (I realize that I'm speaking in vast generalities, here, which means that there's always an exception.)


---I can think of no song more appropriately titled than "Mush Mouth," here.

I finally understood one sentence: "And it goes a little sumpin' like this."
--Fun is the Radio Time Machine. (Works better in Chrome, for me.) Fun listening to the music from the year I graduated high school, the year I was born, the year my mother and father were born.

--My partner, who had been out on medical leave, came back to work this week. He picked me up for lunch today, and it made me happy.

--Things we should probably be telling our graduates:  Your life is going to get worse. Don't try so hard to be great. Don't make the world worse. You are not that special. Now you know that you don't know much, and have to learn your way into your success. 90% of your interactions with humans will be either negative or neutral-- when you have a positive one, don' let it go.

--Tomorrow marks the sesquicentennial for the Battle Of Puebla. On it, I work Friday night, then work a bike race on Saturday day, then go in to work a 12 hour shift Saturday night. Oof.

--I've GOT to get some reviews from the NRA Convention put up.

Remember when...?

Remember when real freedom fighters didn't have to throw themselves under the 11" wheels of police scooters moving at 2 mph* to get attention, like a malingering ball player?

Remember how, back in the early-to-mid 1960s, the folks fighting to stop oppression didn't have to invent oppressive acts? They were attacked by police with truncheons, and firehoses, and dogs, and unstopped mobs with bricks.

Remember how they did not whine to get out of going to jail, because they felt that they were doing the right thing by going to jail?

Remember how real protestors for freedom have really risked everything?

Quit blocking the streets. Grown-ups have things to do. Call us when you've got something real. It's not like there's no way to do so.
________________________________
*Seriously, in one video that I saw of one of the Occupy Wall Street incidents, the scooter was moving so slowly that I was impressed that the bike actually could stay upright.

A time to listen.

19 years ago last month, I took a trip with the woman who would eventually become my wife. We didn't know where we were going, really. We had a Ranger pickup, and some camping gear, and a very little bit of money, and a desire to go see some countryside.

We headed south, because we wanted to see the Hill Country. And we headed west, because we wanted to camp in the desert. We didn't know where we were going to camp until we pitched our tent, the first night, in the Monahans Sandhills.

We went on to explore the petroglyphs among the great climbing rocks at Hueco Tanks, because my father had told me of some interesting ones that he had found there. I went right to the ones that he was talking about. I had listened.

We went north from there, and, running on fumes, stopped at the entry to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park for directions for gas. The desk ranger laughed with a friendly smile, and advised me not to give up driving north; I had stopped 400 yards shy of a gas station just around the bend from the entrance. She invited us to come back to the park. 11 years later I did, and wished that I had come back earlier. But I had listened.

We got to Carlsbad, and saw the Caverns, and continued north to Carizozo, where we met the friendliest people I've ever met, who helped us with our ailing tire, and provided us shelter from a passing thunderstorm before giving us instructions to a (then) new campsite called Red Clouds, up in the mountains north. In these days of GPS, it is surprising to think that I found the remote campsite, up a gravel track miles off the secondary roads. But we did, and we marveled at the beauty of the oasis in the mountains, green and cool above the desert below. We had listened, and were glad.

We went on to Taos, and up into the Kit Carson National Forest, where another tire let go on us. We couldn't change it because the previous owner had put lock lugs on the tires, and they had been wallowed out by over-enthusiastic air hammering. We used a repaired foot pump every mile or so until we made it to a mountain general store, and learned that the last plug patch had been sold. A passing fly fisherman heard my plight, and pulled out from his truck an enormous tool kit, from which he removed a hammer and chisel, some giant Vise Grips and a breaker bar. He saved our trip, because he had listened. (The vacationing mechanic from Clovis would take no money.)

We went on to part of the Cibola National Forest, where if we had listened better, we would have donned some clothing before the National Guard helicopter flew over us at treetop level. We still laugh about that.

Then we drove home, across the droning emptiness that is far eastern New Mexico and West Texas. This is the Llano Estacodo that has worn out many a traveller with its sameness. It is miles and miles of miles and miles. For the first time in our trip, my someday-future-bride-to-be and I got snippy with each other. It was just the irritation that the nine-day trip was over, and our money was gone, along with our vacation time at our respective crappy jobs. But looking back, I fell in love with my wife on that trip. We listened to audiobooks on tape during that trip together (I recall Scott Turow's excellent Presumed Innocent was one.), which helped, but we also listened to each other. We told each other stories and anecdotes which are now old to each other.

Hear me: the roadtrip is an experience-building opportunity for you and your companion. In this case, my companion eventually became my lifelong companion. But I think back to trips that I've made with my father, and my best friend, and my roommates, which are benchmarks in our relationships. They're a great time to talk, and to listen to others.

Today's earworm: 1984

Count the '80s references in this awesome video by No More Kings: "Sweep The Leg."
I turned 13 later that year.

I count three early-eighties references right off-hand. Anyone else see more?

House Party XLIV

I turned in a request for 24 hours off this weekend, to burn some of the 400 hours of vacation and 80 hours worth of holiday time. I feel bad about having another guy work for me, but it's use it or lose it, y'know? Then too, there's the issue of where I went, and why.

Phlegmmy threw a bit of a shindig at her house for our beloved LawDog.

The food was rich and very plentiful. There was a case of Nerd Beer for LawDog (written on the side: "LawDog's! No Fraudulatin'!") And a case of Nerd Beer for the rest of us rabble.("Fraudulate all you want.")

The stories were thick and well-told. The weather, on Saturday evening, was shirt-sleeve-worthy. Christina, Vine, Old NFO, FarmGirl, Jennifer and EvylRobot, me and my wife, Phlegmmy, LawDog, Ambulance Driver, my dad and his bride, and others all chatted freely.

Old NFO (whom I cannot believe was not linked here. What the heck?!? My shame is boundless. I had him on my Favorites that I would click directly to him on my browser. Fixed.) handed me a couple of interesting pistols. There were grins when I double-checked each pistol before handling it. Apparently, this was something of a theme of the evening: EVERYONE multichecked each gun before handling. If only it were understood how common that action is among responsible gunfolk. I don't mean to say that it's absent-minded. I just mean to say that, when handed a firearm, I have the sudden urge to check the status of that gun that is as strong as the urge to pee after having a triple-iced-tea lunch.

Old NFO handed me a like-new S&W 637 that he's been talking about just flat giving me. I could not possibly accept such a generous gift without recompensing him with something, yet I couldn't afford to give him what it was worth. He kindly accepted a promise of a mere pittance from me. I later found out that Dad and Holly covered half of that! My heavens, but the generosity of the friends and family around me is amazing. Thank y'all. More on that gun in a later post.

EvylRobot brought his home-roasted coffee, which I incorrectly declared to be too darkly roasted, but which LawDog used his fancier French press to produce utterly superb coffee from. I restrained myself to only about 25 cups of that coffee. We reloaded the french press approximately 20 times during the weekend. Note to self: trust EvylRobot.

Ambulance Driver had called me earlier and asked if I wanted to go in with him on a nifty gift to LawDog: a signed first edition of Elmer Keith's hardcover book "Hell, I Was There!" I kicked in along with others (I'm sorry; I've forgotten), but this was all AD's idea.

My own meager contribution was a fair bit of good loose tea for LawDog, and some muslin bags to make teabags with on the run, and a couple of bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon for the the house, to belatedly celebrate Phlegmmy's housewarming.

As the air chilled and the hour got late, several of us retired to a very nice inn that was just two blocks away from Phlegmmy's house, and found our underpriced quarters to be very pleasant. We planned on going shooting in the morning after breakfast.

Come morning, a front had moved in. Shooting just didn't sound that fun. We broke our fast at a joint with heavy smoke coming from the barbecue pit. Note: ALWAYS choose the smoked meats at such a place. We camped at our tables until lunchtime, then moved back to the house, where we hung out into the Sunday evening. Phlegmmy fed us yet again with a very rich dish, of which I was only able to get two or three bowls* down.

I was glad to introduce my own wife to some people she had not met before, part of the tribe that I've become part of. She, ever the introvert, said little. She said she liked it.

LawDog, an introvert his ownself, was at home. He was among people that had come a fair distance to see him because they love him. He was at his home, with a lovely lady who admires and revels in him. I've seen the 'Dog stressed, and I've seen him happy. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn to suggest that he was happy, this weekend.

I hope my own 44th birthday is as good and filled with good cheer.

Happy birthday, friend.





_______________________
*Large bowls.

Don't forget to live.

A friend asked me recently why life was worth living. I told my friend, quite honestly, that it gives us the opportunity to love, and be loved.

_ _ _ _

On May 5, 1995, my best friend's little sister, Tina Minke, lost her life.

She was crossing the same railroad crossing that her brother Scott and I had crossed hundreds of times together while going to school or pretty much anywhere. The crossing had no crossing guards, and the brush along the tracks was so grown up around the crossing that you couldn't see a train coming until you had driven to the top of the steep incline at the tracks crossing. As the road there was gravel and dirt, one would spin one's wheels trying to take off again if one had stopped just short of the apex of the hill, at the tracks. So it was that we routinely would play a risky game of rolling up to the top of the crossing, glancing back and forth quickly, and then proceeding across without ever stopping. There was not a stop sign present, and it was inconvenient to stop simply for safety's sake. Tina lost that little game that the rest of us had played, and her little car was struck.

Her body was virtually unscathed, but "virtually" just means "not quite." Her neck was snapped to the side, instantly cutting her brain stem internally. Although she was CareFlighted to a quality hospital quickly, she was pronounced brain dead.

Tina had wanted to be a surgeon. She had been working through high school as a nurse's aide. She had a couple of scholarships waiting for her at Texas A&M, where she planned to go Pre-Med. As an honor student, no one doubted that she would be successful. She was driven. She was 18. She had just 4 weeks of high school left.

I didn't go to the hospital to see off the only sister that I had ever known. I knew that her family had many, many friends, almost all of whom would be converging on her house. I called in sick (trust me: I was physically ill) and went to her house, where I had spent about half of my life in my teens.

The house was empty. The family was saying their goodbyes at the hospital.

Like many of us, this was a disaster that occurred right in the middle of everything. May is a busy time in any high-school senior's household, and the Minkes ran a business out of their house. Despite the fact that Tina's mother Donna is a well-known neat freak, the house was in the same bit of disorder that 99% of our houses are, when we're not expecting company. And company was coming. I knew that this would be one more stressor to Donna.

I let myself in and started work. I started working the phone, which was ringing off the wall. Literally hundreds of people called from the community and from surrounding states, offering help. Each person, I genuinely believe, would have moved Heaven and earth if I could have given them a part of the task to do. For the mean time, I and others who showed up set up a schedule for them to come by. They all wanted to bring food.

I started mowing the lawn, then passed if off to a neighbor who insisted. Others showed up, and started cleaning, doing laundry, and such.

I can't convey how much love flowed from these people, these friends of my extended family. They loved the Minkes, and they loved Tina. We who were present worked together in a frenzy, not because the house looked bad (it actually looked great in about 30 minutes), but because it gave us something to do. I resolved to let no phone call be left unanswered, especially when I realized that it was Tina's voice on the answering machine. This meant juggling a lot of Call Waiting beeps.

My father got through. "Son," he said, "Call the Minkes. Make sure that they're not lingering around the parking lot of the hospital. There's a really ugly storm doing bad things there in Fort Worth. It's bad."

I called them. They were just leaving. I begged them not to go. They left anyway, just missing an enormous hailstorm that injured several people in that very parking lot. Softball-sized hail, it was reported. The Minkes made it home. That night, one of the worst thunderstorms that I've ever seen railed. It seemed like the end of days. It felt appropriate.

The next morning, a local gravel merchant, unbidden, arrived with gravel trucks and paved the Minkes' hundred-yard long dirt driveway with gravel and Flex Base. The storm had softened the driveway so that only quality 4X4 trucks could have made the ascent to the house, otherwise. Now, visitors could come pay their respects without getting stuck. (You may be sure that this would have weighed heavily on the Minkes, too.)

I've never seen such an outpouring of... ham.

For whatever reason, North Texas folk bring ham when a friend passes away. Smoked ham. Spiral-cut honey ham. Picnic ham. Boned and boneless ham. Whole and pressed ham. Sliced and otherwise. Boiled ham. Lunchmeat ham. We started freezing it. We started asking next door neighbors to freeze it. Then we started sending it home with visitors. If there wasn't 200 lbs of ham there, I'll kiss your butt... right on the ham of your choosing.

It turned out that Tina had signed up as an organ donor. Her parents were a little iffy on the whole thing, at first. It's hard to think of your daughter, whose shell is right there in front of you, breathing with the assistance of a machine, having her organs harvested and distributed to other people.

But they did just that, and have NEVER regretted it for an instant.

I've met the recipients of several Tina's organs. I've met the recipient of her liver. I've met the recipient of her heart. Her kidneys were used. Her blood was used. Her eyes were used. Tina led a clean living, and was healthy. She never got to be a surgeon, but she got to save a few lives with her 18 year-old organs. Parts of her live on, literally.

_ _ _

The funeral was emotional, and I left with a rose from her graveside. Crossing the fatal railroad crossing a half hour later, I placed the rose on the tracks. No one saw me.

But a few minutes later, a photographer saw the rose, and he published this picture of the same rose in the paper.

It had been a perfect rose, even if it had been picked just a little too early.

I miss my friend, and family member, who died 15 years ago yesterday.

Tina Marie Minke
November 24, 1976 - May 5, 1995

Laundry

I've often said that a defining point in a couple's relationship* is the point where they agree to do laundry together. It's a mix of the mundane and the sweet. The couple is so enamored with each other that they will choose to accompany the other even during a stunningly boring chore that most despise.

There are of course division points within this Waterloo. One is: Laundry Together, Separate Loads. This is safest. It even makes sense: both have this task to do-- why not do it at the same time at the laundromat, and get it done all at once?

(This can pretty much only be accomplished at laundromats. Except for the expense and the hassle of loading up the car and unloading the car, I kind of miss laundromats. When I was a bachelor, I would wear every stitch I owned before finally loading up about five or six loads of laundry to the coin-operated laundromat, and getting it all done-- a month's worth at least-- in about two hours.)

But the Separate Loads method will inevitably evolve into Laundry Together, Shared Loads. Your laundry partner will have just a small number of whites, or delicates, and there you are with your own half-load, and it will make perfect sense to share a load, even if you never leave so much as toothbrush at your Significant Other's residence. Don't want to waste another buck. It's simple economics.

But that way leads to sorting laundry together, which involves sorting dirty laundry together. Friends, I've long advocated not living together until married ("if you're going to act like you're married, get married."), partly because of the issue of sorting dirty laundry. It's an intimacy that some people aren't ready to face, the first time they have to reach for the Spray 'N' Wash to get out a skid mark from their belovéd's drawers. A marriage contract can provide the necessary ballast.
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So, back in October, 1991, I met this young lady, and we started going out. We spent a lot of time together, and by spring of '92, we were in that place in the relationship where we did laundry together.

One night, we were at the big coin laundry across the street from the university. My girlfriend and I had about 4 loads, and we got them all fired up. We decided to walk over to the grocery store and get some items for that night's supper while they washed. When we got back, we found that our washers were empty. As I looked around, I was approached by the laundry attendant. He was very direct, and slow. I put his IQ in either the Very Low Normal range, or the High Functioning Retarded range.

"You had not come back when your washers ended, so I took your laundry out," he said.

"Okayyy...?" I responded hesitantly. His shirt was buttoned to the top button and was tucked in carefully. His head was crew-cut with a zero-guard all the way around his head. His tone was initially a little bit accusatory, as if I had left a baby unattended. But he had done something nice for us.

"I put it in those dryers. Now you have to pay for that, and there is a bundling fee," he explained. "You can pick it up in an hour. I will have it ready." He wouldn't shift his gaze from my eyes. Most people don't look directly into your eyes like that.

"Okay... what, um, what's the price for this?" I asked. It seemed kind of presumptuous of him to have taken our laundry out and started up his "service" so quickly, as we had only just missed being back in time. The laundry was certainly not full, and there were machines idle. But something about his manner made us feel like he would snap if argued about. The laundry was kept neat, and he seemed to feel that everything was Just So.

"It is by the pound. I can not tell you how much it is until it is dried and weighed. There are the prices up there," he said, pointing behind him to a board with a schedule of prices for laundry done and folded, by the pound. It got a little more economical for each progressive weight by 5 lbs. Even as he pointed, he kept staring at my eyes. It was kind of creepy.

My girlfriend and I decided to just go to the video rental store next door to pick out a movie while we waited. We surely couldn't afford to eat out, now. (We were both so very poor.)

When we returned, my new simple friend was hard at work bundling laundry. We sat on some molded plastic chairs in a corner, and watched the inane show on the television hanging from the ceiling. Besides my girlfriend, me, and Our New Special Friend, there were only some immigrant ladies and their small children, who ran around unsupervised.

As I paid the guy to get our laundry out of laundry jail, one of the ladies that we had sat with began demanding of her children, in increasingly more frantic tones, "Felipe? Donde es Felipe? Donde es su hermano? Mi bambino!" (Where's Philip? Where is your brother? My baby!)

Everyone began looking around for the baby. I had earlier seen a very little baby sleeping in a car seat/carrier earlier, and was thinking of that kid. He had been mostly wrapped up in blankets.

At just this time, one of the laundry loads got off-center, and began to slam the drum against the housing. Thud. Thud. Thud.

My girlfriend and I looked at each other with wide eyes as we heard "Mi bambino! Donde es mi bambino?!?" and boom-boom-boom, as our New Special Friend stepped into my consciousness and said, "Sir, that will be nine dollars and forty nine cents."

"Boom! Boom! Boom!" went the off-centered washer. Someone must have put in a heavy blanket, or a quilt, or...

"Felipe!"

"Sir, I am going to have to ask you for correct change." I thought about that pile of blankets, with the baby in it.

Our jaws had gone a little slack before they finally found Felipe playing out in the parking lot. Turned out he was about three.

I married that girl on the last day of February, 1998. And even now, my wife of 12 years (as of Sunday) and I can still make each other laugh by exclaiming, "'Felipe!' Boom! Boom! Boom!"

See what doing laundry together can get you into?

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* I almost said "relationship between a man and a woman," but I suppose homosexual relationships have this, too. But then, I'm not so sure. There are vast gaps in my knowledge.

In the closet.

In my closet, hanging way over to the side, near the wall, is an old letter jacket. I received this wool, polyester, and vinyl monstrosity of clashing colors in the summer after my graduation from high school. In the spring semester of my senior year, I had lettered, and been fitted for a jacket. I was called in on a sweltering late June day to come pick up my prize. There, emblazoned across the left chest of the snap-up jacket, was a large sewn-on letter representing my high school, with the word "ACADEMICS" embroidered down one leg of the letter.

I wore it a few times that winter at U.T., then decided that it was silly to wear a high school jacket in college, and gave it to my younger brother, who started at the same high school a couple of years later. I don't know if he ever really wore it much. I found it in my mom's house when I helped her move a few years back, where my brother had left it. I took it back. It really needs dry-cleaning. It doesn't fit me anymore. Huh. Guess it shrunk. I don't know why I keep it.

It's geeky enough to have an Academic letter, so it's no worse, I guess, to admit that I picked up that letter for Extemporaneous Speech. I was an officer of our Speech and Debate team my senior year, and my partner in Cross Examination debate had left. While my buddies got to compete in the district U.I.L. tournament on policy debate, I was left alone. I was damned if I was going to start trying Lincoln-Douglas values debate at that late date. But, as an officer of the team, I needed to attend the 5A speech tournament. I threw together a file box full of periodicals, and entered the tournament in Extemporaneous Speech. I mean, how hard could it be, right? You give some speech about current events for 7 minutes.

Turns out, that the style is harder than it seems. There were two types of Extemporaneous Speech: Persuasive, and Informative. Well, Informative sounded closer to the gritty policy debate that I was used to doing (We used to make fun of L.-D. debaters, jeering "Who cares if Suzie Shortcake thinks vanilla is nicer than chocolate?!?"), so I went with that. You're supposed to prepare by cutting out articles from periodicals, and filing them neatly, and bringing your files with you to the tournament. You get called up, pull three written topics out of the hat, pick one, and then take 15 minutes to prepare a speech from information that you glean and cite from your files. You may put notes onto one single 4"X6" note card. This was nowhere near enough for a speech (and who had time to write one?), but would allow you to put your talking points, so that you could pace yourself, and end just before the buzzer.

I had hit the lottery on my very first try. I don't remember what the other two choices were, but the third choice was, "Give a description of what's happening with regard to the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan." Hell, that's all I had read about for years. I knew about the buildup and initial onslaught of the Soviet military, the response by the Mujahideen, the U.S. support of the Islamic freedom-fighters, the international Islamic build-up of Afghan resistance, and the ongoing withdrawal of Soviet occupation. I also happend to have in my files a very recent article that I hadn't even read yet, which had the new lines of local power drawn out. Most of my card space went to phonetic spellings of the Afghan names that I rattled off in my speech.

I started with 20 seconds of passionate description of a fictional battle between a hero and a hydra, and went on to compare the multiplying heads of the decapitated hydra to the multiplying problems of Afghanistan. I killed. The judges stood up and applauded. The tournament organizers out in the hallway came into the classroom that I had just given my speech in, to see what in the world was going on-- none of the other speech givers were receiving standing ovations from their judges.

As it turned out, there was one other guy who was better than me. I only got a silver. Eh.

So I went on to Regionals, and learned there that I had gotten lucky before, hitting it on the fat part of the bat. These new judges smiled politely. I did not advance to State. But I still got my jacket.

I later found that the ability to put together a decent speech with just a little prep time was a pretty valuable skill. I learned that the use of talking points kept me on my time schedule, and kept me from straying from my goal.

Years later, as a young cop learning how to do DWI/DUI investigations, I learned that there were some key pieces of information that HAD to make it into my Probable Cause Affidavit. What clues I had observed for the standardized field sobriety tests had to be listed. What time I stopped the driver was a good thing to know. What time I concluded that the driver was intoxicated was necessary for my paperwork. I needed to know what time we arrived at the jail. Important statements made by the suspect needed mention. I found that I would have this information "at hand," if I just jotted them down on the not-inconsiderable palm of my left hand. Occasionally, I would even have to photocopy my hand at the jail, if I found the ink was fading. With all the paperwork from book-in and from a DWI license revocation, I wasn't going to lose these notes.

And just a little meant a lot: "123; 131; 6/6; 3/8 bal, li, htt; 2/4 ft dn 2, 6, 7 & hop; 4-5 br, 95@ 151, SO221." meant:

"Stopped at 1:23 AM. Began SFST's at 1:31 AM. Subject displayed six out of six clues for Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus. Subject showed three out of eight possible clues for Walk And Turn, to wit: Lost balance during instruction phase, stepped off of the line, failed to touch heel to toe. Subject displayed two out of four possible clues for One Leg Stand, to wit: Put foot down at the count of 'two,' at 'six,' and at 'seven,' and the subject hopped while doing the test. The subject said he had four to five beers. The subject was arrested at 1:51 AM, and arrived at the Sheriff's Office Jail at 2:21AM."

So I'm not surprised that a politician giving a speech to hundreds of people personally and before assorted members of the print and broadcast media might put a few talking points on her hand. I am surprised that it's raising such a stink, from people who have never had to do such a thing before, and don't seem to know what they're talking about.

"When's the show going to start?"

In October of 1989, I went to see the Rolling Stones at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. At the time, I thought that I had better see them while I could, because they were so old, they might quit making music any day now. Heh. What did I know?

We had been caught in very heavy traffic getting there, and arrived about 45 minutes late. That turned out to be just fine, because the guys opening for them were just wrapping up their set with their biggest hit. They ran a little long with their guitar solos, and the repetition of the title line of the song, stretching their last piece to about 9 or 10 minutes. My best friend and I rolled our eyes a little, waiting to see Mick, Keith, and the rest do that voodoo that they do so well.

The rest of the 60k+ crowd lit up. A pair of lesbians near us made out. For country boys from the sticks, this was a bigger spectacle than a goat-ropin' at the county fair, to be sure.

When Living Colour left the stage, we were mighty pleased. And with good reason. The Stones put on the best show I've ever seen, before or since. A friend said, "Mick could have had every person in that stadium, woman or man."

Well. I don't know about that. But the show was awesome, and I still have the T-shirt.

But it's kind of a shame that I didn't get how telling the lyrics to Living Colour's biggest hit song were. Because frankly, it could be our current President's theme music.



Neon lights, a Nobel prize
When the mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You won't have to follow me
Only you can set me free.
I sell the things you need to be.
I'm the smiling face on your TV.
I'm the cult of personality.
I exploit you, still you love me.
I tell you one and one makes three. I'm the cult of personality.

Remembering rough weather camping.

Over at Random Acts Of Patriotism, ASM826 recalls snow camping back in 1969.

I recall winter camping in the 1980s with my troop.

We had Kelty sleeping bags, and Eureka 2-man backpacker dome tents. Being mostly in North Texas, it was hard to achieve an honest-to-Gawd two-day freeze-out in the winter. Sure, cold snaps happen in Texas-- as I write this, it's 14 degrees outside-- but planning to have the whole troop camp out during one is difficult. Some Scouts never got a full weekend freeze-out. I honestly don't remember if I ever got my Winter Camping badge, which means that I probably didn't.

What I did get a lot of was rain camping. Texas in the spring and autumn can be mighty pleasant, which means that's when we did a lot of camping. But that's also when some impressive amounts of rain comes in.

I recall one campout where we arrived at our site two hours after dark. I was 13, I think, and was new to the troop. I had an 11 year old tent mate, who had used the dome tents before, and began to set our tent up in the very spot where he had come to a stop when we fanned out from the central part of the camp area (The chuck box and the van that had brought us that Friday night.). I looked at the ground, and saw that, while his spot was flat, it was also at the confluence of two mild depressions that came down a gentle hill above us. I vetoed the spot, and moved us to a low ridge a few feet above it, and we set up there. I further irritated my tentmate by stopping to take time to carefully pull and re-pull the ground cloth so that it perfectly fit the underside of the tent, and folded the excess under the ground cloth, pulling it back out and redoing it when I found that he han folded it OVER, unwittingly making a basin. I dug a shallow trench on the uphill side only, and left the dirt on the downhill side of the trench, to be refilled when we struck camp.

There were no clouds, and the moon was full, with a halo around it.

About 3:00 AM, all hell broke loose as a thunderstorm ripped above us. The lightning in the clouds above us seemed just a hundred yards away, and was clearly visible through the fabric roof of the tent and the fabric rain fly above it. The noise was deafening. The rain pounded our tent like golf balls poured from a great height, and before long, some small hail joined it. The wind vexed our little dome tent fore and aft. My tentmate was at first scared. I told him to be quiet, and watch, and listen! It was thrilling. Before long, he and I sounded like people watching a particularly good fireworks show, muttering "Ooh! That was a good one!"

Over the wind and the pounding rain and the thunder, we began to hear other sounds. Yelps of other unhappy Scouts, as the rain began to enter their tents. One pair of boys had picked our abandoned low flat spot, and they were experiencing a very, very swampy time. Others had seeping occurring at the edges, where their groundcloths hadn't been properly put down, or the land just pushed water into their tent walls. Howls of frustration filled the camp.

But in our tent, my bunkmate and I laughed from within our dry sleeping bags, and enjoyed the storm.

Olfactory masculinity.

Brett & Kate McKay bring us a list of 15 smells that are associated with Manliness. I don't know about the bowling alley, and I never knew my grandfathers, but the rest is spot-on.

I think I might consider adding the smell of a working automotive garage, with axle grease, solvent, and fresh tires. Oh, and an old-style tire store. I think also that I associate the mixed smells of gasoline and broken earth, perhaps with perspiration, as a manly smell.

Now, I know that some will protest that there's nothing inherently masculine about sawdust or shooting, or gasoline and broken earth or the like. That's certainly true. My wife the sculptor uses our table saw as much or more than me, and can weld (another manly smell?), while I can't. She mows our lawn as well, and I shoot with too many women to count.

But I associate some of these smells with men of my youth, and I can't ever release that. As long as I don't treat women inappropriately because of my associations, I believe that I can accept that about myself.

Looking back.

When I went off to Methodist Youth Summer Camp in early August of 1983, I was 11.

I had already gone to Boy Scout summer camp at Sid Richardson Scout Ranch the month or two before. It had been a long week of hiking, canoeing, and sweating. More significantly, however, it had been my first week away from home.

At Boy Scout camp, I remember going to my tent one evening, and crying. I still can recall hearing my best friend, then and now, remarking on it to someone (his father?), who said, "Leave him alone." Fabric walls don't stop even gentle words of concern. Grateful for the time alone and yet embarrassed that my sobs hadn't been effectively muffled by the Coleman sleeping bag, I stopped, and by and by joined the rest of the troop for supper.

It wasn't so much that I was a Mama's Boy (I'm fairly certain that I was) that drove me to cry "I want my Mama" into my sleeping bag, as the fact that I was away for the first significant time while my parents were beginning the separation that would eventually lead to their divorce. While I later felt that things actually got better for us kids after the divorce (Dad was very attentive as a divorced father, meaning that we actually seemed to see more of him afterwards), it was a time of Change, and a boy who is uncertain during change seeks his Mama. She wasn't there. Only boys and good men who volunteered as Scoutmasters and Assistant Scoutmasters were there.

The next month (or the next-- a quarter century has obscured some facts), I went off to Church Camp. It was way up at Lake Texoma, and we all gathered at a large regional church to get on the high-capacity vans to go. My father took me up there, and as I waited to get on the van, he handed me a paperback book. He asked me if I was nervous about the time away, and I said that I was not. (I felt that I was past that weak point, so long ago, about a month or two before.) He told me that a lot of boys were not used to leaving their families for any time when they were eleven years old, and somehow managed to compliment me for being mature enough to deal with it. I felt embarrassed, a little-- I should be mature enough. Just look at me: about 5'11" to 6'00" tall, eleven years old. Probably about 170 lbs. I was man-sized, in most cultures. [But still a boy.]

I got on the bus, and had an enjoyable ride with kids that I would get to know over the next 7 days. It's amusing that I still can remember some of the songs that we listened to on the radio; they tended heavily toward the Eurithmics. When I arrived at church camp, I found that our "cabins" were kind of bungalows spaced widely about the camp. I was in one with a group of 7 other boys of widely different cultures. I was neither the center point of our group, nor the outcast. I was an island unto myself; I was approachable, but discrete.

Well, a bit of loneliness almost set in, one night, when I opened my paperback (I think I was supposed to be studying a text for vespers, or something), and found an inscription from my Dad. I can't recall if it said anything more than "To Matt, Love, Dad." But does it matter? That's about the only part that matters in any inscription I've ever read: Who, why, and from whom. I seem to recall that he dated it. The paperback was a thick one, and had a painting of D.D. Harriman looking wistfully up at the stars with a spaceship in the background. It was The Past Through Tomorrow, a compilation of stories by Robert A. Heinlein.

I started with the first one, "Life Line." I was hooked.

My reading of Heinlein's works continued, with me consuming all that I could find in the school libraries (almost exclusively juveniles, but I found, inexplicably, a ratty hardcover copy of I Will Fear No Evil, which was racy stuff for a rural junior high school library). I kept it up long after the man died (I remember that hollow feeling, standing in Fultz's News when the counterman told me he had passed), and long after I had come to the conclusion that he was an idealist and a Dirty Old Man.

I don't doubt that a lot of my current philosophies have been influenced by a science fiction writer who died 21 years ago, and with whom I disagree about 1/3 of the time.

It's funny where you get your beginnings.

The fathers of the Greatest Generation.

Even before our Greatest Generation was born, there were those who fought the First World War to the first Armistice Day. So many died, that it was sometimes called "The Lost Generation".

There are a few --a very few-- who remember serving in that war.

List Of The Day is kind of hit and miss,

But their send-up of Olan Mills photography and similar studio photos from the '70s is nothing short of brilliant. I literally laughed out loud several times.

In this, the last day of 2007,

I ask my self: "Am I better off than I was a year ago, today?"

I have to answer, "Yes." for me, and me only.

You? I'm not interested in the global picture. I mean you, as you sit, today.

Better a year ago, or today?

Call it.

Stimulus: Response. Share with me.

Remember when, for a few years in the 1980's, music videos actually would, with some regularity, tell you a story?

No, I never had MTV.

But I saw a few videos back then, which were the years of my teens. I remember enjoying most the ones that at no point showed the musician singing, or did so only in the far background. Oh, the "Money For Nothing" video with Dire Straits shown on one of the background televisions was okay, I suppose. (though that video didn't tell a story-- it just set a mood.)
_ _ _

I am a big one for associating senses with occasions.

Strangely, I recall the lead-in riff from that "Money For Nothing" song best as playing in the background while my best friend Scott and I threw clay birds for each other in the August, getting our shotgunning eye ready for dove season.

The sight of an unearthly-orange cheese doodle receding to a tiny dot as it fell away from me as my girlfriend and I leaned over the rail of the Rio Grande gorge bridge west of Taos in 1992 is one image/memory my wife brought up to me the other day. (I married that girl.)

The smell of the rain up the valley hitting the desert creosote on a hot summer day brings back Alamogordo, NM, 1988.

The sulforous smell of a flare that I pop for traffic direction briefly pops flashes into my head the memories of:
--sitting on the front lawn with my dad and a large brown bag of firecrackers on an Independence Day in the mid-to-late '70s.
--another Boy Scout pounding my back in congratulations as I ejected the case from the little Stevens single-shot .22 at Boy Scout camp, some time in the early eighties. Our patrol had just won the marksmanship award in the only event that I could compete in, with my broken ankle.
--fear of getting caught, playing with a book of matches that I had sneaked out of my baby-sitter's house after school, in the fall of 1977.

The after-image on my retina left by my car strobe suddenly reminds me of my paternal grandmother "Big Mama" touching off a flash cube on top of the Instamatic 110 camera after much cajoling for me and my cousins to "scrunch together" in front of the Christmas tree.

The smell of broken evergreen needles always reminds me of a dozen different childhood Christmases.

The sound of compacting snow usually brings to mind the smell of snow. Please don't ask me to describe it.

The smell of popcorn and freshly-turned animal manure and hay (note to city folk-- Not necessarily a bad smell, unless you're near the carnivores) will inject very powerful circus images in my head.

The smell of clean hair and a whiff of some perfumes, along with perhaps the whiff of school (chalk dust and pencil shavings with floor wax) will sometimes bring back those angst-filled memories of teen interactions with girls. [To quote Rich Lucibella when referring to his love-making and his shooting: "Long periods of shameful failure, interspersed with occasional flashes of brilliance."]

The touch of unplucked feathers brings back memories of going through Dad's game bag when he came back form duck hunting in the early-to-mid '70s.

The sound of locusts always makes me feel hot.

The taste of boiling-hot, percolator-brewed coffee in a metal cup pops numerous camping and hunting memories into my head. (Of course there would be a coffee memory.)

Closed-knit, nappy green carpet evokes immediate memories that low brick rent house that we lived in when I was a young boy. Look down, see dark olive carpet. Look up, see bulls eye central air registers.

When I hear a small engine with a hole in the exhaust system, I'm taken back to numerous jalopies that I drove in my teens and early twenties.

When I feel scratchy crocheted mittens and scarves, I immediately flash back to being overheated from running, with frostbitten fingers and toes, taking my aluminum saucer up the hill to slide down yet again on a snow day, in the sleet and snow as a kid.

_ _ _
You know, I initially started this blog as a reference to a decent little video that I had run across, putting a pretty cool science fiction twist to a modern song by way of simple (today, I mean. Back in 1987, this would have completely blown the minds of professional videographic artists) computer graphics. The concept of stopping the waste of your "life" and going on to find joy is powerfully presented there.

But instead, I've taken you down a short walk down memory lane, regarding the way different stimuli can evoke powerful memories. Please: share with me (in comments) some of the more powerful ones that you've noticed in your life.