The Letter

It was the third of January when I received the letter.  I remember vividly that it arrived in a purple envelope.  No, I guess one would better describe its color as lavender.  It was addressed to me.  The address was written in red ink in a delicate cursive, slanted precisely the way our second grade teacher had taught us.  There was no return address on the envelope to give me a hint as to the sender’s identity.  The postmark was smeared.  I did not recognize the name of the city.  The state looked to be CA, GA or possibly LA.  Maybe the zip code could narrow it down if I went online to look it up.

I was curious.  I don’t often get personal letters, if indeed that is what this was.  Most of what I pull from my mailbox comes addressed to “occupant” or “resident” or is clearly a bill, an advertisement or a solicitation from some charity.  Who even sends personal letters anymore by mail?  My curiosity dimmed several degrees.  It occurred to me that this was probably just a trick.  Some business or charity probably sent it and attempted to disguise it to look like a personal letter.  I’d gotten a few pieces of mail like this before and had felt foolish when I opened them with high expectations only to have my hopes dashed when I saw what was inside. 

I considered tossing the envelope unopened into the recycle bin with the morning’s newspaper.  How does that saying go?  Fool me once, something, something?  Oh what the hell.  Just open it.  So what if it’s just an ad or a request for money from some political group.  Just don‘t get your hopes up, that’s all.

I slid my letter opener under the flap of the envelope and made a slit to reveal the contents.  Hmm, lavender stationery.  I opened the paper.  There were three pages written in the same longhand with the same red ink as the address on the envelope.  I read the first line.

“You may be surprised to be hearing from me after all these years.”  I flipped to the last page.

“Fondly,” and no signature.  Think of that – no signature.  I stared out the kitchen window for a moment.  Then I laid the letter on the kitchen table and filled the electric kettle with water to make myself a cup of tea.

Down the Tubes

The summer of 2016 was quite busy.  My wife retired, my oldest son got married, my daughter became pregnant, and my youngest son moved back home.  In addition, my wife and I took some early steps toward moving from our home of 33 years in Pittsburgh across the state to West Chester which is the hometown of our daughter, son-in-law and future grandchild.  With all that going on, there wasn’t much time for rest and relaxation.  So when our 25-year old son invited my wife and me to go “tubing,” I thought it would be a great way to spend a summer day.

Tubing involves floating down a river while sitting in a big inner tube.  It’s kind of like the Lazy River ride in some water parks except you’re in a real river or creek and copious amounts of beer are involved.  My son-in-law, an experienced tuber, had taken my son and me tubing a few years back on the Brandywine near West Chester.  We had had a great time floating on our tubes, drinking beer, listening to music and taking an occasional dip into the cool water. 

Consequently, my son decided to invest in some tubes and found a stretch of Loyalhanna Creek that worked pretty well for tubing.  He had taken several tubing expeditions on the Loyalhanna with friends before offering to take my wife and me.  This would be a first for my wife and only my second tubing experience.  We got a later start than we had hoped due to some commitments we had that morning.  As the day moved toward mid-afternoon, we hurried out of the house to be sure we’d have enough time to enjoy a 3-hour float on the river.  As a result, I forgot my water shoes, which was the first mistake I made that day.  These streams are usually pretty rocky, so foot protection of some type is essential. Fortunately, my son remembered to bring his water shoes, so he offered his flip-flops to me. 

My swimming trunks didn’t have pockets, so I took along an old fanny pack to hold my wallet, phone and other essentials.  Tubing requires two cars – one upstream where you get into the river and one downstream where you get out.  I drove my car to the downstream point, parked it, locked it, grabbed the fanny pack and climbed into my son’s truck.  He drove a few miles upstream where we inflated the tubes and carried them down to the river.  Before my son locked up the truck, I carefully placed the fanny pack with my valuables under the front seat so would-be thieves would not be able to see it. 

My son tied our three tubes together along with the smaller tube that carried our snacks, our music, and most importantly, the cooler filled with beer.  We put the tubes into the creek and began our journey downstream.  The creek was a bit low that day.  There were several stretches, particularly at the beginning, where the tubes got hung up on the creek bed, and we had to get out and walk.  During these stretches, I was grateful for the flip-flops because the stream bed was quite rocky.  When the creek got a little deeper, we climbed back into our inner tubes.  It is surprising how little water is necessary to allow the tube to float, though you have to be ready to lift your behind when the lead tuber yells, “Bottoms up!”

Once we got to a point where we were floating pretty freely, my son put on some music, we cracked open some beers and opened up some of the snacks we had brought.  The sun was shining, the water was cool and we were having a wonderful time laughing, chatting and enjoying the day.  The stretch of stream we were on was fairly isolated.  We saw no homes, businesses or even farms.  Trees and the surrounding woods lined both sides of the creek.  We saw some blue herons, deer and other wildlife as we traveled lazily downstream enjoying the sunshine, the blue skies and the beauty of nature.

When we had gotten to about the halfway point, my wife asked an innocent question.  “So what happens when we get to the car? Do we try to pack up everything or do we first drive to get the truck?”

I suddenly sat up straight in my tube as the realization of my second mistake hit me like a ton of bricks. “Oh, no!”  I had placed the keys to the downstream car into the fanny pack which I had so carefully hidden under the front seat of the upstream truck.

My son started laughing. 

“Are you serious?” my wife wanted to know.  I admitted that I was and started apologizing profusely.

We decided to beach the tubes while we figured out what to do next.  My wife suggested that we start walking back upstream.  If we followed the stream, we had to eventually make it back to the truck. 

My son stared at his smart phone for a few minutes and proposed an alternative plan. According to the map on his smart phone, there was a road just beyond the woods.  He proposed that he would make his way through the woods to this road while my wife and I continued floating downstream to the car.  Once he got to the road, he would walk back to the truck using the phone map, and then he would drive to the downstream car where he would meet us. 

My wife saw some major flaws with this plan.  First, she felt that separating would be a big mistake.  Second, neither she nor I had a cell phone so we had no way to stay in communication with my son.  Third, she pointed out that my son’s phone could run out of battery charge. Fourth, we couldn’t be sure cell service would be available in the middle of these woods.  Fifth, the phone’s map gave no indication of the terrain between the stream and the road.  Finally, my wife and I really had no idea whether we would be able to see the downstream car from the creek to know where we should get out.  She pointed out that my son was the only one of us who had done this before.

Logic and good sense dictated that I should agree with my wife and immediately start walking upstream. But sometimes I think there must be a “stupid gene” on the Y chromosome that activates at the worst possible time.  So of course I sided with my 25-year old son and his smart phone.

A huge argument ensued with the three of us shouting at each other in the middle of the woods.  Despite feeling strongly that her plan was our best bet, my wife reluctantly agreed to go along with my son’s proposal as long as we stayed together.   So the three of us walked across the shallow stream toward the woods.

As we stepped out of the creek, our feet sank up to our ankles in mud.  That should have been reason enough to make us reconsider.  Instead, we pulled our feet and shoes out of the soft, thick mud and slowly made our way up the bank of the creek. As we entered the woods, we saw there were no pathways, which forced us to forge a trail through briars and thick underbrush. At times we heard what sounded like road traffic, but after twenty minutes of getting scratched by thorns and bitten by mosquitoes, we seemed no closer to a road than when we had exited the stream.  At that point I fully realized my third mistake – not listening to my wife.  Coming to my senses, I turned our expedition around, now fully prepared to do what my wife had suggested in the first place. 

We slowly trudged back to the creek, the brambles and briars biting into the exposed flesh of our arms and legs.  When we arrived at the stream bank, we saw that we had traveled only about 100 yards upstream from our beached inner tubes during the half hour we spent wandering aimlessly through the woods.  Unfortunately, we had to abandon what little progress we had made in order to retrieve the tubes.  By now, the sun was sinking low in the sky.  Soon it would be dark.  With the tubes in tow, we began the long, slow walk upstream.  Now I was really regretting having forgotten my water shoes because the flip-flops were slowly cutting into the flesh between my toes as I made my way through the water. 

It took us more than an hour to get back to the truck.  We arrived just as dusk was starting to fall.  We hurried to load everything into the truck before it was completely dark.  Then the GPS in my son’s smart phone directed us in a convoluted way back to our downstream car.  What should have been a 10-minute ride turned into a half hour tour of the area’s country roads.  It was pitch dark when we arrived at the second car and headed back to Pittsburgh.  When we got close to home, we ran into a massive traffic jam because of construction in the Squirrel Hill Tunnels.  It was close to 11:00 PM when we pulled into our driveway.

My wife called my son-in-law to get his experienced opinion on what we should have done when we realized we didn’t have a key to the downstream car.  Without missing a beat, he said, “Walk back up the stream. That’s the only thing you know for sure.”  When she mentioned my son’s smart phone, he said, “One smart phone; two dumb men.”  Not content to leave it at that, he threw one final zinger.  “If at first you don’t succeed, do what your mother (or wife) told you to do in the first place.”

If he hadn’t been so right, I would have vowed to get him for that.  Somehow he had overcome the effects of that masculine stupid gene – at least for that day.  Maybe it comes from being raised in a home with only sisters. 

As we unpacked the truck I asked my son, “When do you think we can try this again?”  I was, after all, raised in a home with only brothers.

A Chip Off the Old Block

A feeling of overwhelming sadness engulfed Frank. 

“All the great stories already have been written,” he lamented to no one in particular.  He closed the book he had been reading and stood up.  “And the best ones have been re-written over and over with an infinite number of variations.  Romeo and Juliet are transformed into Maria and Tony.  Boy meets girl, etcetera, etcetera,” Frank continued with a heavy sigh.

He headed back to the main road, walking past the monuments and tombstones.  The cemetery was one of Frank’s favorite places to walk and think.

“Why must the protagonist always start out young and full of promise?” he mused.  Even if they spring forth old and mean, they soon flashback to young and promising like Ebenezer Scrooge in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.  And old and crotchety is somehow always redeemed by the final page.”

                                                            *          *          *

He stared at the light forcing its way into his bedroom around the room darkening shades.

“I may as well get up,” he grumbled.  “Another goddam sleepless night in an endless series of sleepless nights.  What did I ever do to deserve this?”

He picked up the tumbler containing a quarter inch of tea-stained liquid from his nightstand.   He sniffed the residue of melted ice.  Even a glassful of whiskey had not been enough to deliver an hour or two of blissful unconsciousness.  He painfully negotiated the stairs down to the kitchen and placed the glass onto the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. 

                                                            *          *          *

“And he made everyone miserable with his presence, and then he died, leaving a mountain of bills for his unfortunate heirs.  Now why doesn’t anyone write a story like that?” Frank wondered aloud as he turned onto the main road.  It had been days since he’d written anything.

Now let’s see . . ., how about a story about a writer struggling to find a story?  Now that’s never been done before.  A wry smile spread across Frank’s face.  He began to walk a little faster as his bladder signaled the two-minute warning.  I shouldn’t have had that cup of tea before going for a walk.  He struggled to think of something else, knowing he still had a good ten minutes of walking before there could be any relief.

Who wrote the First Story? Frank pondered.  What would it have been about?  Perhaps it involved The Hunt.  He thought of the ancient paintings in those caves in southern France.  Every picture tells a story, don’t it?  The Rod Stewart song danced around in Frank’s head.  He felt his bladder relax; the urgency lessened.

Are words even necessary?  In the Beginning was the Word.  And what is the Word?  Everybody knows the Bird is the Word!  

“Noooo!” Frank shouted out loud.  He grabbed his head, trying to prevent the earworm from nesting in his brain. 

“Think Biblical,” Frank said to himself.  And the Word was good.  It was very good, and it was fruitful and multiplied.  Words became phrases, phrases became sentences, sentences became paragraphs, and paragraphs became chapters, short stories, novelettes, novellas and novels, each with a story to tell.  The stories could be fiction or non-fiction.  The stories might be written in prose or poetry, spoken in plays or sung in musicals, operettas or operas, containing words employed by the writer to describe some aspect of the human experience.

His thoughts stopped abruptly when Frank walked up the steps to his front porch, opened the storm door and inserted the key.  A quick twist and push and Frank was inside.  The urgency returned and he ran up the stairs to the bathroom.

A Simple Twist of Fate

He woke up the room was bare

*    *    *

He told himself he didn’t care

Pushed the window open wide

Felt an emptiness inside

To which he could not relate

Brought on by a Simple Twist of Fate. *

It’s funny how our lives can be changed so dramatically by a simple twist of fate.  An incident occurs.  It may be an annoyance, an injury, or something we hardly notice. But like a pebble tossed into a pond, it ripples across the fabric of time and space and changes what might have otherwise happened.

My father was drafted to fight in World War II.  Following basic training, he was shipped off to Panama to train with the glider troops.  During the training, he suffered a broken arm.  His unit shipped out, and my father was transferred to the regular infantry.  The gliders had no engines and limited maneuverability.  They were easy targets for the German anti-aircraft guns and suffered heavy losses where they were used.   My father’s recovery from his broken arm and reassignment delayed his arrival to the war in Europe.  By the time he got there, the Germans were in retreat.  My father survived the war and made it back home.  He got married, raised five boys and died at age 79.  But except for the twist of fate that resulted in his broken arm, he may have been one of the casualties among the glider infantry during the Normandy invasion.

My father’s younger brother had just celebrated his 19^th birthday and was on board the troop ship S.S. Leopoldville with over 2,000 American soldiers.  The Leopoldville was carrying American troops across the English Channel on Christmas Eve, 1944.  They were green and inexperienced but were being sent to the front as reinforcements to fight in in the Battle of the Bulge which had begun a week before.  Five miles from land, the Leopoldville was hit by a German U-boat torpedo and sunk.  About 800 men were lost when the ship went to the bottom of the Channel.  My uncle abandoned ship and had to tread water for hours in the icy Channel before being rescued.  Suffering from exposure, he was sent to an Allied hospital to recuperate.  When he returned to duty, he was re-assigned to the Military Police and became an aide to an officer.  Except for the simple twist of fate of having his ship sunk, my uncle may have died in the heat of the Battle of the Bulge.  Instead, he celebrated his 90^th birthday last December.

Fresh out of law school, I was hired as an environmental lawyer in U. S. Steel’s law department.  The U.S. economy went into a recession shortly after I was hired.  The company attempted to cut its losses by closing several steel making plants, laying off thousands of workers, and imposing a wage freeze for those that remained.   Feeling uncertain about what the future might hold for me, I decided to leave U.S. Steel to practice environmental law elsewhere.  Meanwhile, U.S. Steel hired an attorney, Bill Kabbert, to replace me.  On September 8, 1994 Mr. Kabbert was returning to Pittsburgh on USAir Flight 427 from Chicago.  He had been attending a meeting with U.S. EPA that I surely would have been attending had I remained at U.S. Steel.  On its approach to the Pittsburgh International Airport, the plane crashed, killing all 132 passengers aboard.  When I heard about Mr. Kabbert’s death, I immediately realized that it could have been me.  It would have been me – except for a simple twist of fate.

* Simple Twist of Fate, Bob Dylan, © Ram’s Horn Music, 1974, renewed 2002.

"I Do My Best Writing With My Feet"

There, I said it.  Feel free to quote me on that. As far as I can tell, I am the first to say it.  I Googled it and came up empty.  And Google is the final arbiter of our collective knowledge.  You can quote me on that too, based on a second Google search.  So I claim first rights, and I’m publishing these quotes in my blog to cement my claim to them. 

Famous people are quoted all the time.  For example, Mark Twain said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”  Ben Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”  One of my favorite quotes is from Woody Allen:  “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”

 

I may not be as famous as any of those guys – yet.  But I’m working on it.  In the three years since my first blogpost, I’ve had over 3,800 views of stuff I’ve written.  In fact, I’m almost world famous.  Recently, I had three views from Germany and one from the Ukraine.  Of course, I’m still searching for that one great piece of writing that will break the internet due to the traffic jam of readers flocking to my blog.

I’m not sure what sort of article that would be.  Perhaps I will write one that will tickle the world’s funnybone.  I envision people excitedly saying to one another, “Did you see Joe Karas’ latest post?  It’s hilarious!  I thought I’d die laughing.  And not only was it a real knee-slapper, it was extremely insightful as well.” 

I looked over the past year’s statistics from my blog to see which articles were the most popular.  Life is What Happens topped the list with 40 views.  For those that haven’t read it (yet), it is about the distractions that demand our attention when we’d rather be doing something else.  I’d rate it about a 20 on the humor scale, but maybe a 70 on the insight scale.   So maybe I should write more about life using the wisdom that comes with experience.  But perhaps I should endeavor to push the humor meter up a bit to further entertain my readers. 

The Green Gargoyle was a close second with 39 views.  This is the story of how I came to buy my antique car – a 1950 DeSoto.  I’d give it a 55 on the humor scale – a few dry chuckles, but probably no out-and-out belly laughs.  Was it insightful?  I’d rate it a 35 or 40.  It teaches that things may not be what they seem, or to quote Kwai Chang Caine from one of my favorite Kung Fu episodes, “Expect the unexpected!”  So was it the humor, the insight, or do people just like to read about cars?  Perhaps the latter because coming in third with 38 views was New Car Fever.  That post talks about my purchase of a Chevy Volt last spring.  My wife and I took a road trip in the Volt and visited Yellowstone National Park, but that’s another story, maybe for a future post.

Tied for third was the only poem I posted in 2015.  Ode to a Rainy Day is about the utter enjoyment that can be derived from a day when the rain never lets up.  It was not intended to be humorous, but it probably rates high for being insightful.  It is poetry after all, even if it was rejected when I submitted it the Post-Gazette.

So I’m left to ponder what would really excite my current readers as well as those who haven’t yet discovered my work.  Should it be humorous?  Insightful?  About cars?  A poem? 

I will give some serious thought to what would be the perfect article for my next post.  

The best way I know to do that is by opening my mind to being inspired and taking a long walk.  After all, I do my best writing with my feet.  You can quote me on that.