Chapter 18 - march 2010 - hikes

©2011 Tom Weathers

Brenda did not want me to hike on Crowder's Mountain trails. She was afraid I would fall, get hurt. So, three months after she died I started hiking. I needed the diversion. Everything I did was basically a diversion. It was doing these hikes that I became aware of difficulty with my left knee, which was diagnosed as cancerous in November and which was replaced by an artificial knee in December. Arguably if I had not done these hikes and become aware of my knee I might not have gone to the doctor until after it was too late,

These are blog posts from the first hikes.

On Crowder's Mountain With Belarusians

Hiked Crowder's Mountain. That's a state park about 25 miles West of Charlotte. Managed to make it to the base of the Pinnacle this time. On the way back down I met some interesting people.

Rocky section of trail - have to be careful here not to turn ankle or twist bad knee.


Near Pinnacle - viewed from the backside. The other side is sheer. That's where the climbers go. I got to base but hearing loud voices above me I decided not to go through undignified contortions my bad knee would have required to hoist myself over last big rock.


Picking my way back down trail, I heard the same voices behind me, getting louder and louder. I decided to sit on a bench, eat my lunch and let them pass. Instead the clamored up beside me. The girl, a high school junior from Charlotte on an outing with her father explained they were formerly from Belarus. The father told me that it's a little country near Russia. The girl told me what she does in school and what she plans for her life work. She also offered some views of the world at large. We walked together back down the mountain, encountering a young man who seemed taken aback at first then smiled and spoke. When the trail split the Belarusians went one way I went another. But before that we told each other our first names and the father said, "God bless you Tom." Although I don't believe in that sort of thing, I told him, "God bless you Oleg". I might have gotten his name wrong because they seemed to be discussing that when they disappeared down the other trail.

Hiking a Different Trail

I hiked Crowder's again today, this time on a longer but less strenuous trail.

The terrain reminded me of the woods behind the house in Shelby where Doane Hulick and I played when we were boys. The same oaks, pines and other trees I cannot name. The same outcropped house-size boulders.

We pretended the rocks were forts and imagined fighting off unseen bad guys. Sometimes we carried real (but deactivated) weapons given to me my uncle Bob. Sometimes we were the ones charging up the steep slopes - plunging headlong through briars, proud of the blood.

Boys.

Today I saw five teen-age boys resting before making their final trek to the top of the mountain. One complemented me on my cane. ("Hey dude, I like your cane.") He might have been sarcastic - maybe not. Before he saw me, he was demonstrating a point with a clumsy karate kick. It had to do with Obama I think. When they left, one little fat guy with sad unruly hair stayed behind for a minute - perhaps gathering energy to go on. Catching me studying him, he said, "Have a nice day sir" then went on to join his buddies.

Not long after that a manically cheery old white guy whom I had encountered earlier running up the trail came running down the trail and said something manically cheery to me. I think he also made a joke to the three young people sitting nearby (it was a popular, busy spot) about how I was his son and he had given me an hour head start and he still beat me up and back - at least I think he was talking about me.

Crossing a couple of little streams I heard raucous frog croaking - echoing everywhere. Frogs yelling at each other (or for each other).

I also saw three dogs, two that were young, vigorous and friendly and one that was old, tired and suspicious (and overweight). The owner of the old dog asked (in response to my comment about old dogs and old men) if the dog could borrow my cane.

And I saw a yellow butterfy.

We Go to Mountaintop

Larry, Chucky and I climbed the Crowder's mountain peak and the adjacent peak - the one with all the cell-phone towers. Going up Backside Trail was really steep with steps cut into the side the mountain. Both Larry and I were queasy about going down that way (I was concerned about my knee and he was worried about vertigo) so we decided to go the down the alternate Rocktop Trial. Turns out the name fit. One section of rocky ridge was so bad that Larry and I (and a young woman in a group crossing at the same time) had to crawl on our hands and knees. On further we heard a number of sirens. According to the evening news a 23-year old man fell doing practice climbs. On Crowder's Mountain we chatted with a pleasant young man about that age who said he was going to do some climbing.

Larry eating peanut butter sandwich on Crowder's Mountain.



Chuck eating power bar.


Hawk soaring. Charlotte skyline - about 30 miles distant - barely visible on horizon.


Couple lunching near edge.


Crawling on my hands and knees over rough terrain. Larry and young woman crawl in front of me. Others walk.

Chapter 17 - march 2010 - random box (cleaning out the attic)

©2011 Tom Weathers

Contents of wooden box.

I started going through the attic in preparation for the next big move.

I had no reaction to most of the stuff. Old books that I did not think enough of to keep downstairs left me cold. Memorabilia from past offices no longer moved me. Papers that once seemed important now seemed trivial.

All that stuff was consigned to Goodwill - or the big green roll-out garbage can parked beside the front door.

But some of it was different...

I cried when I leafed through the snapshots of Brenda and me that Yancie had taken and that I didn't remember.

I laughed when I picked up the framed studio portrait of the younger woman with whom my father kept company after my stepmother died (the woman was wearing a saucy hat and smiling provocatively over her shoulder at the camera).

And the small wooden box stuffed with random articles made me wonder. It contained several pictures, tattered and worn now of Genie, the little girl from Baltimore and me - an "art" shot of a girl from Celanese in the 1960s - a model airplane engine and an electric train motor - three 50-year old bullets from my last pistol - a folding knife from a camping cook set - a key fob awarded to me by Celanese in 1965 - a penny.

(I think the model airplane engine and electric train motor were all that was left of my attempt to demonstrate the invention "airplanes without wings".)

I always had unfortunate fascination with pretty women.

Also in the box was a page I had written (probably in the 1960's) titled "An Absurd Credo" in which I announced "The only confident mind is an insane mind" - and went on to proclaim "When God was destroyed on the absurd altar the human soul was freed from useless hope."

And there was a diary in which Yancie had written two entries. One was about a happy day with her mother at the Department of Transportation office when they went to lunch and spent all of her 20 "dollers" at Roses and Circus World. The other was about an evening at Wendys and the Dairy Queen when she was accompanied by her friend Amy and despite getting into trouble with the adults wrote "he! he! ha! ha! I had a really great DAY".

Asides
I take back my laughter at pop's late-life girlfriend. As someone would say, I am indulging in the arrogance of presumption. Besides, the girlfriend was a nice person who gave as much as she got. And her picture wasn't all that bad.

Looking for a theme to explain the things in the box, at least four of my items were expressions of grandiosity. The absurd paper was grand because it presumed that my opinion was worth writing down. The engine and the motor were grand because they were once intended to demonstrate the impossible. The picture of the Celanese girl was grand because it was pretty grandiose of me, a technician from the basement labs to approach this girl, whom I didn't know, and say, "May I take your picture" And the pictures of Genie and me were grand - well, just because that's always been my reaction when I see them.

I don't know about the bullets. In my own defense I don't think they represent anything.

Chapter 16 - feb 2010 - west palm beach (trip 2)

©2011 Tom Weathers

My last stop on the Florida trip was to see Joe Gettys, who migrated to West Palm Beach from the Center of the Known Universe more than 50 years ago.

Asides

My sister and I followed my father to West Palm Beach in the summer of 1956, after my mother died the previous Christmas (my father went down in the Spring). This is what I wrote in The Life and Times of Professor Ennui Pidawee about arriving in West Palm Beach:

...The first thing I noticed when getting off the bus where my 12-year-old sister and I had spent the last 20 hours in relative silence was how bright things seemed. The terminal, an ornate Mediterranean-style structure not far from the West Palm Beach yacht basin glowed white hot. It was as if my pupils had been dilated. Everything seemed sharp, like a photograph with too much contrast.

We moved back to Shelby in 1959, the day that Joe moved down from Shelby. The last time I visited (before this trip) was in August of 1965 when Brenda and I ventured out of Shelby in our black, un-air conditioned MG 1100 sedan. We stayed one day. The trip back took 18 hours. (The car was slow.) I wrote in an earlier post about that.

Pictures

Joe who lived up the street from me in Shelby when we were children. The day that I left West Palm Beach he moved and has now been there almost forever. He worked for Pratt and Whitney testing jet engines. I always refer to him as the "rocket scientist" which is pretty close to the truth.


Joe and Nancy on our way out to eat.


The building at the back of the house on the right was Joe's first apartment in West Palm Beach. This is where Bill H, Coleman, Frank and I descended in 1961 in Frank's Fiat 1100 sedan - where I borrowed Joe's 57 Corvette to go out with a dusky Greek girl named Dodson Aphrodite. The next week, back in Shelby, I called Brenda and this time managed to work up enough courage to stay on the phone.


Old Palm Beach High building where I graduated in 1957. It is a locale for dreams that overlap reality.


Princess - the 19-year old cat who only drinks running water, which I provided at 5:30 in the morning.

Chapter 15 - feb 2010 - south beach (trip 2)

©2011 Tom Weathers

On Thursday morning (the second day of the Miami adventure), we drove down the barrier island known as Miami beach and stopped to walk around the southern end, called "South Beach". The upper part of Miami beach is distinguished by big new hotels and by some old places like the Eden Roc that I remembered from my last trip here in 1959. South Beach is mostly smaller older places done in Florida pastel art deco. Even in the unseasonable cool, South Beach was crowded with exotic people from all over the world. English was not the language most often heard. Sexual orientation was not always clear. We ended up doing more walking then lunch in the Coconut Grove section of Miami. Also nicely restored, also exotic, Coconut Grove was a little less crowded than South Beach, maybe a little more mature. (It was on leaving Miami that we had the Porsche encounter.)


South Beach street scene shot accidentally in B/W from window of Bill's car - this might not be far from Princess Anne hotel where I stayed with friends for $1.00 night in 1959.


The place in the middle is where chainsaw work took place in Scarface - picture shot from across the road where Pacino's buddy waited in the convertible while drug dealer cut off guy's arm in the upstairs room - WmP turns out to be a fine tour guide. He knows where the good stuff can be found.


Upstairs lobby of little hotel beside chainsaw place.


In the same lobby where I try to appear cool in front of Scarface picture and end up simply fat and slumped.

South Beach art deco.


Down the road in Coconut Grove near a place with velvet furniture and figurines of flying ghosts - that's where we had lunch - see Bill's post for more words and pictures.