BLITHERING, BUMBLING, AND RAMBLING #15

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

Growing up in Sutter County, Yuba City was the county seat. “Home of the Honkers” was colorfully depicted in large letters on the side of the high school. Ever since moving to our current home , the lot we sit on has become something of a bird sanctuary. It seems that from the very beginning there was something about the place that attracted our fine feathered friends. Probably the pond in the back. It started with the ducks.

When we first moved in, the walkway to the front door had garden beds filled with ivy and star jasmine plants. It was dense, and a duck hen came into the growth and laid eggs in a nest she put together each year. She hunkered down (I could have said “ducked”)as foot traffic went by, and 95% of our visitors never knew she and her nest were there. This created a scenic moment the first year, when the ducklings hatched, and the mother walked out of shrubbery with a line of about 5 new arrivals behind her. She led the family down the walkway across the lawn, through the side yard, into the back lawn, and into the pond out back. We only caught a partial glimpse of it that first year, but it was enough to keep us in anxious anticipation every year when we saw the duck return to nest.

We got used to this, and always knew when the arrival date was getting close, and hoped we would see it all the way. One year, they nested in the small strip of ferns right outside our front door. Again nobody noticed they were there. Until one day when UPS was delivering a package, and stepped back from the door after ringing the bell and stood inches from the nesting Ms.duck. Ms.duck squawked loudly and reached out and nipped the guy’s leg while flapping her wings. The UPS guy jumped 10 feet, and squealed a bit too.

Our kids grew up feeding the ducks bread crumbs in the back pond. Which was how we got introduced to the geese. They honked their heads off as they headed towards the bread crumbs. They tended to bulldoze their way towards the fence where we were tossing crumbs, and made the ducks grab -and -go to get out of the way. When they landed on the pond in group formation it is like a scene from a movie. But when they rear back and do that hiss at you, where they hard stare you, warble their tongue, and fully extend their neck toward you, well the free lunch is over, Honker!

So we started to shy away from the geese, because they were kind of pushy. 

But then, the Canadian Geese popped up. And unlike their rude Grey Goose cousins, they muttered low honks, politely waited their turn, and co-existed with the ducks without any bullying or hissing. Ok, a few more crumbs for our Canadian friends. And when they took off, flying low, in formation across our yard, honking signals to each other as they head back to Saskatchewan (or maybe Yuba City) yes, it really was worth every crumb.

We still have a few ducks around, although they don’t nest by the house anymore. They tend to stay closer to the water, and outside the fence. Soft quackers, short walkers, always one waddle step ahead of the geese. Pretty good neighbors to have. Just picture Daffy Duck waiting in the tules, staring at my house, when a Canadian Goose swims towards him asking “Where’s the guy with the bread, eh?”

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I was watching an episode of Ozark on Netflix with Debbie. It was a tense scene where one of the bad guys has his evil henchmen bring in one of the good guys, tied up, hooded, driven into the middle of nowhere, for a conversation. As soon as the good guy is un-hooded, the bad guy offers a plate of food, and starts to eat some himself. The good guy won’t touch it, and the bad guy continued the tense conversation, while he ate piece after piece of different kinds of fruit. To add to the suspense, it looked like the good guy was going to be knocked off any second.

I leaned forward on the edge of my seat and watched intently. As the music got more dramatic, and the bad guy chewed through his plate and stared at the good guy, I felt …….strange……..hunger? Doggone it, this scene was making me hungry. What?

Yeah, two people got killed in that episode, and it ended on a cliffhanger suspense scene, and all I could think about afterward was how I have a craving for some berries. It made about as much sense as watching a Spiderman movie and suddenly having to have a bowl of Gumbo. I probably should see a therapist. One who specializes in Cinematic-Suggested-Produce-Craving-Phobias. Or maybe just fill up on chips and dip before the movie starts. I lean toward plan B.

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COLORFUL CHARACTERS

2005- Quantico, Virginia. I am at the FBI National Academy for training. On the very first day I arrived, along with 249 other guys from police departments all over the world, I got into the elevator to go up to my room on the 4th floor. Already on the elevator were two guys from some PD in an east coast state. I can remember their accent, but not the state. Just before the door closes, in walks another guy, who was, without a doubt, the TALLEST cop I will ever meet. He barely, by a millimeter or so, cleared the roof of the elevator. That was all the elevator could fit and the door closed. We were very close to each other.

One of the east coast guys asked the tall guy where he was from. The tall guy said Tennessee. A couple seconds of silence followed and I was in an awkward position because I was standing between the tall cop and the two east coast cops. I was looking straight at the tall guy and there was only a couple of inches space between us and he was taking up about 50% of the elevator. With the remaining three of us squirmed into what felt like the smallest elevator in the world. I thought, my first day . What’s next?

The tall guy had a nickname. It was “Tree”. His buddies from the surrounding southern agencies called him by it. I thought better and called him by his name. He was a very easy going guy, with a deep baritone voice. His laugh, sounded a lot like Lurch on the Addams Family. Yeah, really.

Later, also during my first week there, I am walking down the hallway on the 4th floor one early evening, and in the distance, I can hear music. Bagpipe music. Seriously. I followed the sound down the hallway and found out it was coming from out front near the walkway, but I couldn’t spot the source. My roommate at the academy was a guy from a sheriff’s office in Arizona. I told him about it. “Well that’s good news” he said. ‘I thought I was hearing things”. 

A couple days later the music played again. After nearly a week of it, I decided to go out there and track down the mysterious bagpiper. Hey, I’m Scottish, it’s like a magnet to us. So I went downstairs and followed the sound. And found the guy, playing, marching in long steps as he pivoted back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the Academy Dorms. Aha! I waited til he was done playing and introduced myself.

He was a cop from a city in Illinois that was a suburb of Chicago. You probably were thinking it was going to be a cop from Scotland. So was I. He belonged to a bagpipe band, that played at events and competitions, and said they traveled all over the country to compete, or play at funerals or celebrations. 

I asked if he took requests. He looked at me grim and dead serious, and asked, “Like what?” I said Scotland the Brave. He broke into a huge smile and said, “Scottish?” Well, yeah. “Oh, thank god! “ he said. “All we ever seemed to get whenever there was a request, was Amazing Grace”. “I’ll probably have to play that song at least 10,000 more times before I die”.

I get that. A good bagpiper is hard to find, and shouldn’t have to play one tune every day. I made a mental note to never request that song. 

At the end of the Academy, there was a graduation ceremony. My wife and kids were there. Afterwards my daughter Kari said, “Did you see that tall guy from Tennessee , he was Gi-NOR-mous! “To which my daughter Erin said, “Yeah, and as he was walking up, somebody called him “Tree!”

I had to smile . Whenever I reflect on my time back there, I realize that on my list of unforgettable characters the Tree from Tennessee and the Illinois Bagpiper simply must be included. I also wondered, as did my wife and kids, how big ARE the patrol cars in Tennessee? That guy could barely squeeze into an elevator!

OLD FLAMES

Several years ago I went to my high school reunion and ran into the guy that was my best friend since first grade. We were both full of stories about all that had transpired since high school, and reflected back on adventures of our youth. And I relived the story about our high school Chemistry class. 

My best friend and I were partnered up during Chemistry, and we were doing our first experiment with Bunson Burners. I think we were about 15 years old and foolishly thought we knew everything. Yeah, well….

Our class was small, I think there were only about 6 others in it, besides us. So, there were only 3 other occupied lab tables with Bunsen Burners. The experiment was simple; we had to measure out two chemical powders, mix them in a test tube, and apply heat until it crystallized. We watched around us as everyone else started, and we mixed the two chemicals. We fired up the flame to its highest level and stuck the bottom of the test tube under the heat. We heard the conversations around us and figured it was going as planned. But…

As I held the tube directly above the flame, it got hotter, and turned a very bright red on the bottom. Unlike all the other groups, who paid attention when the teacher told them to move the tube in and out of the flame and slowly warm it up, I went instant-torch-mode. The reaction was swift. The tube turned bright red, made a soft popping sound, and fired a red comet of flaming chemical ball, across the room to the left. As often is the case when I panic, I formed a mental picture in my head of my parents screaming about how I set the school on fire. Where did it land? Glad you asked!

Along the wall on the side of the room is a series of shelves. On the top shelf, is a skull, for class/demo use (not real bone). So, the fireball smacks into the side of the skull, and sticks, and smolders out. It leaves a large black burn on the side of the skull. My best friend and I exchanged panic looks and scan the room. The other three lab tables are looking down at their work, the teacher at his desk behind us is looking down at whatever he was reading or writing. Nobody, apparently, saw it. Like, what are the odds? 

Thinking quickly, I put down the test tube and let it cool. The tube had blackened and cracked. My friend went over to the shelf and turned the skull around so the burnt side faced the wall. We waited, sure that someone would say something. Nada, bupkis, zilch, goose egg, zero (ok, I’m out of synonyms). We told the teacher our test tube had cracked. He gave us a new one, without a single word of caution about carelessness or safety hazards. Nice guy, huh?

But several people smelled the smoking skull and started muttering about it. My friend mentioned that our test tube had charred a bit when it cracked. A girl in the class, who walked by and stood within 2 feet of the skull said, “Yeah, I can smell it way over here”. A very uneasy silence followed as she stood there for a few seconds and looked both ways, as if sensing something was amiss. My friend and I froze and held our breath. Then class resumed.

We leave class and swear each other to secrecy. A year later, I am back in that same classroom for Open House Night. As my parents are talking I wander over to the wall on the side of the room and take a look at the skull. Yup, the burn mark is still there, and I turn it back to the wall. By the time I graduated from High School, no inquiry ever came up, and it wasn’t until after I had graduated from college, and a new High School had been built, that my friend and I started openly talking about it. 

It was many years after that I told my parents about it. My Dad said he thought he remembered the skull from the days when he was in school there. I said I always wondered what they thought when they moved the skull out of the room, and saw that burn on the other side. My Dad thought that was hilarious. He figured when they pulled stuff off the shelves there was probably a dozen more mysterious chemical burns and stains on the backsides of the shelf, and giggling former students who knew how it got there.

So it was a learning experience. From that point on, every training class or seminar I ever attended, I always made a mental note on the way in, as to where the nearest fire extinguisher was. And if you ever happen to see a very old skull on display with a burn mark about 1 inch in diameter on the right cheekbone, let me know. I’ll call my friend and we’ll get together with “skully” for a reunion photo!