The night air was warm and humid and pregnant with possibilities. As I relaxed in the RV, there came a knock on the door, which in itself is unusual. Then, even more unusual, a feminine voice said, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I need some help."
She was of medium height with straight hair, ordinary clothes, and not quite middle-aged. She continued that she was locked out of her mobile home, the one parked next to mine. And her husband was in Canada! Having no Watsonian companion, I was forced to deal with the situation solo.
(Here, gentle reader, please pause to consider how this situation might play itself out. Of all the possibilities, which do you think is most likely?)
She told me her name was Shirley and she had been married only two weeks. The mobile home was brand new and they had just moved in. She said that when she arrived home from work, she unlocked the door, dumped her purse and keys on the counter, and closed the door behind her to fetch groceries from the car. When she returned, the closed door was locked. She hadn't tried to lock it, hadn't done anything to lock it, but it was certainly locked now. And her keys were inside. That was her story, and for the moment I decided to take it at face value.
She borrowed my screwdriver and poked it at the door lock. Knowing that this would have little effect, I seized the opportunity to slip away and examine the mobile home, pointing my flashlight at the windows — all of them closed and locked. The place was sealed up as tight as a brand-new bottle of whiskey.
"What can I do?" she wailed. I decided not to take the heat on this one and calmly told her, "Call your husband. Tell him you're locked out." She accepted the cell phone I offered and punched in his number from memory. He answered. "It's me," she said, skipping the kind of endearments one might expect from newlyweds, and cutting directly to the matter at hand. "I'm locked out. [pause] Well, I don't know what to do. Send somebody out here to open the door!" She hung up and said, "He says he'll call the fire department and see if they'll come out."
A few minutes later I saw a huge truck pull into the RV park. At first I didn't recognize it in the darkness because the flashing lights and siren were turned off, but the long aerial lift ladder gave it away. I called out, "Shirley, your fire truck is here!" She giggled "My fire truck?" and waved at it. It slowly rolled to a stop in front of her mobile home and sat there, its powerful engine idling at a mild roar.
Three fire fighters climbed down — a silver-haired fellow in charge and two crew-cut rookies. Sadly, they weren't wearing their helmets, slickers, and boots, but were dressed informally, as if we had interrupted their card game or TV program. I watched them expectantly, ready to learn from these pros how to solve a problem like this. They examined the exterior of the mobile home. After several minutes of looking and conferring, they decided they could find no way in, aside from taking a fire axe and smashing a window, which they declined to do. They radioed for a locksmith.
By now a crowd had gathered to watch the proceedings. "She's locked out," I told them with an air of authority. I felt excited to be part of the drama, even if my part had been eclipsed by other players.
Twenty minutes later the locksmith arrived and picked the door lock in less than a minute. The door opened, Shirley walked in, got her purse, and paid the locksmith. The firemen drove away, their lights and siren still turned off. The excitement over, the crowd dispersed and Menominee took me for a walk.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Winter in the South
The Gulf of Mexico
There's a small campground on Dauphin Island, a mile off the coast at Mobile, Alabama. We spent a week there, enjoying the warm weather, the relaxed atmosphere, and especially riding the scooter around the island. I found a little cafe that serves freshly-caught seafood, and really liked their seafood gumbo. There was a small grocery that had a huge hardware department and served as the island's general provisioner and DVD rental. The only local entertainment or excitement consisted of watching the ferry load and unload its cars. It was peaceful and restored us after our mad dash away from frigidity.
We resumed our travels, heading west across Mississippi and Louisiana, staying near the coast for warmer weather. But not too close — hurricane Ivan had damaged coastal Louisiana only three months before.
Texas
In Houston, we stayed with my college roommate, who graciously let us park Cruisemaster in his driveway. He regaled us with tales of Hurricane Ivan, the third most destructive hurricane to hit the US mainland. He had defied the evacuation warning and stayed home to mind his house. The hurricane made landfall at Galveston, breaching the seawall and devastating everything there, before moving inland, passing directly over Houston, and smashing lots of glass in downtown skyscrapers. He and his house survived the hundred-mile-an-hour-plus winds, with only a couple of holes in the roof where tree branches crashed down. He bought a chain saw and cut up all the trees that had fallen. Flood waters reached part of his back yard, but fortunately his house was on slightly higher ground and narrowly escaped flooding. He was without electricity, phone, or Internet for two weeks, and the crew that finally showed up to restore power had come all the way from South Carolina to help. We were glad he was alive and safe and in good cheer.
In Austin I met up with another college roommate who took me in his car for a grand tour of the area. It so good to connect after many years and catch up on what had happened to us, where we had lived and what we had done. He recommended the Texas Hill Country to us, so we headed there next and enjoyed the gently rolling hills. We relaxed and poked around the small towns there, Fredericksburg and Kerrville. I found good Texas barbecue throughout the Hill Country — in each new town, it was simply a matter of locating it. Yum!
Victoria is farther south and east, a medium-sized town we had visited briefly a year earlier. This time we decided to spend a month in Victoria and get to know it better. Its chief attraction for me was the tiny UU church with only a dozen or so attending on Sunday mornings, but nonetheless full of energy and good cheer. They took me in and made me feel welcome, not only at the services, but also for lunch afterward, for poker on a Friday evening, a barbershop chorus concert, and at a live theater production downtown, the musical "Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?" in which one of the UUs had a part.
I learned that the area is largely Hispanic, but not due to recent migration across the border — quite the opposite! Hispanics have lived in the Victoria area for many generations, tracing their ancestors back to original land grants, when Texas was part of Mexico. They are not dishwashers and gardeners here, they are prosperous middle class, respectable owners and staff of the town's businesses, the fabric of the town.
Next we spent a week on the Texas Gulf Coast at Rockport, just south of a whooping crane wildlife sanctuary. The whooping crane, one of the rarest birds in North America, is, of course, an endangered species. In 1941, there were only 21 birds living in the wild; today, about 250 birds make the annual migration from Canada to Texas. (There are also about 50 birds in a new breeding population that follow ultralight airplanes from Wisconsin to Florida.)
Molly Ivins once told a story about a Texas politician who went duck hunting and shot a whooping crane by mistake. A whooper, she observed, is about five feet tall. Your average duck, not so much. Do we want anyone in government who can't tell the difference?
I took a boat tour of the refuge, led by an avid birder, and saw more different bird species in one afternoon than I'd seen in the previous few years. Whooping cranes are shy birds, but we were lucky to get close enough to two pairs to observe them with binoculars and photograph them as they poked about in the mud looking for crabs to eat.
And then we began a slow retreat from our winter quarters, heading north and east.
There's a small campground on Dauphin Island, a mile off the coast at Mobile, Alabama. We spent a week there, enjoying the warm weather, the relaxed atmosphere, and especially riding the scooter around the island. I found a little cafe that serves freshly-caught seafood, and really liked their seafood gumbo. There was a small grocery that had a huge hardware department and served as the island's general provisioner and DVD rental. The only local entertainment or excitement consisted of watching the ferry load and unload its cars. It was peaceful and restored us after our mad dash away from frigidity.
We resumed our travels, heading west across Mississippi and Louisiana, staying near the coast for warmer weather. But not too close — hurricane Ivan had damaged coastal Louisiana only three months before.
Texas
In Houston, we stayed with my college roommate, who graciously let us park Cruisemaster in his driveway. He regaled us with tales of Hurricane Ivan, the third most destructive hurricane to hit the US mainland. He had defied the evacuation warning and stayed home to mind his house. The hurricane made landfall at Galveston, breaching the seawall and devastating everything there, before moving inland, passing directly over Houston, and smashing lots of glass in downtown skyscrapers. He and his house survived the hundred-mile-an-hour-plus winds, with only a couple of holes in the roof where tree branches crashed down. He bought a chain saw and cut up all the trees that had fallen. Flood waters reached part of his back yard, but fortunately his house was on slightly higher ground and narrowly escaped flooding. He was without electricity, phone, or Internet for two weeks, and the crew that finally showed up to restore power had come all the way from South Carolina to help. We were glad he was alive and safe and in good cheer.
In Austin I met up with another college roommate who took me in his car for a grand tour of the area. It so good to connect after many years and catch up on what had happened to us, where we had lived and what we had done. He recommended the Texas Hill Country to us, so we headed there next and enjoyed the gently rolling hills. We relaxed and poked around the small towns there, Fredericksburg and Kerrville. I found good Texas barbecue throughout the Hill Country — in each new town, it was simply a matter of locating it. Yum!
Victoria is farther south and east, a medium-sized town we had visited briefly a year earlier. This time we decided to spend a month in Victoria and get to know it better. Its chief attraction for me was the tiny UU church with only a dozen or so attending on Sunday mornings, but nonetheless full of energy and good cheer. They took me in and made me feel welcome, not only at the services, but also for lunch afterward, for poker on a Friday evening, a barbershop chorus concert, and at a live theater production downtown, the musical "Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?" in which one of the UUs had a part.
I learned that the area is largely Hispanic, but not due to recent migration across the border — quite the opposite! Hispanics have lived in the Victoria area for many generations, tracing their ancestors back to original land grants, when Texas was part of Mexico. They are not dishwashers and gardeners here, they are prosperous middle class, respectable owners and staff of the town's businesses, the fabric of the town.
Next we spent a week on the Texas Gulf Coast at Rockport, just south of a whooping crane wildlife sanctuary. The whooping crane, one of the rarest birds in North America, is, of course, an endangered species. In 1941, there were only 21 birds living in the wild; today, about 250 birds make the annual migration from Canada to Texas. (There are also about 50 birds in a new breeding population that follow ultralight airplanes from Wisconsin to Florida.)
Molly Ivins once told a story about a Texas politician who went duck hunting and shot a whooping crane by mistake. A whooper, she observed, is about five feet tall. Your average duck, not so much. Do we want anyone in government who can't tell the difference?
I took a boat tour of the refuge, led by an avid birder, and saw more different bird species in one afternoon than I'd seen in the previous few years. Whooping cranes are shy birds, but we were lucky to get close enough to two pairs to observe them with binoculars and photograph them as they poked about in the mud looking for crabs to eat.
And then we began a slow retreat from our winter quarters, heading north and east.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Kentucky
The weather was Indian Summer and the trees were ablaze with fall colors. As is our custom, we took the blue highways through the small towns, and were charmed by Kentucky's winding country roads.
I visited the very house where legendary Bluegrass founder Bill Monroe grew up, and heard stories of his brothers and sisters, parents and uncle, the instruments they played, and the music the family made together.
Then the Kentucky Repertory Theater sucked me in. They were doing Amadeus, the Peter Schaffer play which I had never seen, from which the 1984 movie was made, the movie I loved. So I went to see their production and loved it too, so different from the movie, excellent in its own way, and a production that could hold its head high in the Twin Cities.
We stayed a few days in Owensboro, a medium-small town isolated from the interstate highways and therefore our kind of place. The people were friendly, the traffic was light, the restaurants were pleasing. I visited the Unitarian church on Sunday morning and joined them for lunch afterward. I learned that, decades earlier, GE had had a big plant there which manufactured vacuum tubes for radios and TVs. Today, no tubes in radios, no GE plant in town.
Toyota builds Camrys in Kentucky, and I visited their factory. The tour was impressive, led by a PR pro who knew all about everything and took us around in the kind of tram you ride from the parking lot at the state fair. Each of us wore a $300 Sennheiser wireless headset to hear the tour's narration. We watched teams of workers assemble the cars and learned about the Toyota way of doing things. The factory was so spacious that there was plenty of room for our tram to drive through the assembly areas. It was a very pleasant experience, and I came away with admiration for Toyota and the way it runs its business.
A couple of days later I visited the Chevy Corvette factory, and the contrast was remarkable. Our tour leader was an intern from the local college who had some basic training but no depth of knowledge about the company, the car, or the operations. There was no tram — the factory was too crowded — so we had to walk around the plant. There were no earphones; the guide occasionally shouted something over his shoulder, which we couldn't hear. I learned very little about how Corvettes are made, but did come away with an impression of the way GM runs its business.
The final factory tour was at the Wild Turkey plant where they make Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey. The whole tour was quite informal, and our guide let us lean over the edge of huge vats and see the fermentation bubbles on the surface of the corn mash. The two-step fermentation, lasting a few days, was completely computer controlled, requiring only one person sitting at a computer monitor. Of course, the aging in oak barrels takes years, and most of the buildings were full of those barrels.
Kentucky has so many interesting places to visit! I ate lunch at Colonel Sanders' original cafe and museum, where he perfected his famous blend of eleven herbs and spices. He successfully ran this cafe for years before he started selling franchises and appearing in his white suit and string tie. I visited a state museum gallery honoring Duncan Hines, who recommended restaurants in the 1950s before he started his line of cake mixes.
We liked Kentucky and were enjoying it a lot, but further sightseeing was cut short by a particularly severe cold front sweeping down from Minnesota, so we fled south clear across Tennessee and Alabama with frigid temperatures nipping at our heels. We reached the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile, Alabama and watched the weather reports of temperatures in the teens where we had just been. But here on the coast the warm water kept the temperatures quite pleasant.
I visited the very house where legendary Bluegrass founder Bill Monroe grew up, and heard stories of his brothers and sisters, parents and uncle, the instruments they played, and the music the family made together.
Then the Kentucky Repertory Theater sucked me in. They were doing Amadeus, the Peter Schaffer play which I had never seen, from which the 1984 movie was made, the movie I loved. So I went to see their production and loved it too, so different from the movie, excellent in its own way, and a production that could hold its head high in the Twin Cities.
We stayed a few days in Owensboro, a medium-small town isolated from the interstate highways and therefore our kind of place. The people were friendly, the traffic was light, the restaurants were pleasing. I visited the Unitarian church on Sunday morning and joined them for lunch afterward. I learned that, decades earlier, GE had had a big plant there which manufactured vacuum tubes for radios and TVs. Today, no tubes in radios, no GE plant in town.
Toyota builds Camrys in Kentucky, and I visited their factory. The tour was impressive, led by a PR pro who knew all about everything and took us around in the kind of tram you ride from the parking lot at the state fair. Each of us wore a $300 Sennheiser wireless headset to hear the tour's narration. We watched teams of workers assemble the cars and learned about the Toyota way of doing things. The factory was so spacious that there was plenty of room for our tram to drive through the assembly areas. It was a very pleasant experience, and I came away with admiration for Toyota and the way it runs its business.
A couple of days later I visited the Chevy Corvette factory, and the contrast was remarkable. Our tour leader was an intern from the local college who had some basic training but no depth of knowledge about the company, the car, or the operations. There was no tram — the factory was too crowded — so we had to walk around the plant. There were no earphones; the guide occasionally shouted something over his shoulder, which we couldn't hear. I learned very little about how Corvettes are made, but did come away with an impression of the way GM runs its business.
The final factory tour was at the Wild Turkey plant where they make Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey. The whole tour was quite informal, and our guide let us lean over the edge of huge vats and see the fermentation bubbles on the surface of the corn mash. The two-step fermentation, lasting a few days, was completely computer controlled, requiring only one person sitting at a computer monitor. Of course, the aging in oak barrels takes years, and most of the buildings were full of those barrels.
Kentucky has so many interesting places to visit! I ate lunch at Colonel Sanders' original cafe and museum, where he perfected his famous blend of eleven herbs and spices. He successfully ran this cafe for years before he started selling franchises and appearing in his white suit and string tie. I visited a state museum gallery honoring Duncan Hines, who recommended restaurants in the 1950s before he started his line of cake mixes.
We liked Kentucky and were enjoying it a lot, but further sightseeing was cut short by a particularly severe cold front sweeping down from Minnesota, so we fled south clear across Tennessee and Alabama with frigid temperatures nipping at our heels. We reached the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile, Alabama and watched the weather reports of temperatures in the teens where we had just been. But here on the coast the warm water kept the temperatures quite pleasant.
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