Falling Down

I guess you could say that I am a guy who fell down the hole.  16 years ago in the summer of 06, we were just discovering the depths of my 6-month-old Noah’s chronic asthma. Those days were like learning that there was a threat and then later you learned the threat belonged to you. During those early late-night ER runs to DHMC, I noticed that there was something wrong with me. I had pain, I was limping and some of it seemed to be lower back related. I blew it off because I figured this was something residual from when I had back surgery back in 2000. Noah had something serious to deal with. This needed all of our attention.  I wanted denial to make it go away but it was becoming clear that it was not going to happen that way. 

The summer progressed and things began to get even weirder. There was an ill-fated trip to camp in Maine (without reservations) that did not work out.  We ended up driving all the way back home through the night.  I recall having to stop for 20 minutes at one point and noticing this strange almost tendril-like resonation wrapping like fingers around my skull that started at the back of my neck. so many of these oddities I kept dismissing since raising a seven-month-old and a three-year-old was distracting enough. I started to notice that my fingertips to halfway up my arms I had this tremendous pain as if I had my arms submerged and 200° water. It grew and became center stage. I began to wonder if carpal tunnel was like this and if it was, then I have not understood how severe it was or taking things seriously enough! As the weeks went by, all of my joints began to burn and swell. I started to suspect that I had Lyme disease. I made a VA hospital appointment. They referred me to rheumatology, six weeks out. They took blood and sent me away to fend for myself for the next six weeks. 

As we crossed into the fall of 2006, I could not exist in a day unless I ate ibuprofen like it was candy. My range of motion quickly closed in on me and before I knew it, I could not move. I REALLY could not move! It took tremendous effort to get out of bed. I had to take a steaming hot bath to start my day. I could not dress myself anymore. My joints would dislocate with minimum impact. I was just about to turn 41, and my life was over. We had a baby and now, I was going to be this huge burden.

 I worked on a dirt road in Weathersfield Vermont. On a crisp clear fall day, you could look east from that road and across the river at Claremont New Hampshire. I could actually make myself walk 3 miles during lunchtime. At first, I could not walk at all, but each day I would force myself to walk as normally as I possibly could. After a while, my stride and range of motion would open up and for that hour in the brilliant autumn sun, I was normal again. The fall colors and the smells surrounded me. Sadly, 20 minutes after I sat down at my desk, I was 110 years old again. 

When I look back on this, I think I took some chances, like hiking my little family down to Silver Lake up in Goshen Vermont where my family and I used to camp in the late 60s and early 70s in an old bus. 

Finally, six weeks passed of me dealing with this mess every day. On that day of my appointment in rheumatology, I wanted them to see it for what it really was, without any painkillers, or anti-inflammatories. I brazenly did not take any of these things and even worse I was told to fast after midnight. I spent the day up there, full-on flare from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. It was brutal! We had to wait for results to come in from the lab and then meds. 

It was confirmed that I had rheumatoid arthritis. I was to immediately start steroids and then a cancer drug called methotrexate. RA is when your immune system malfunctions and your white blood cells get overactive and identify your joints as a threat and eat away at them like acid. You were left with degraded joints, bone on bone, crippled and disfigured. Methotrexate suppresses your immune system, makes half your hair fall out, and makes you more susceptible to catching viral infections. 

After doing everything I needed to do at the VA, my body was one giant scream, like the painting. Of course, I did not have any money on me and with my sugar levels in the basement, I needed to find food fast. My careful scientific analysis determined that a #2 value meal at McDonald’s would probably fix this quick, fast, and in a hurry. I also needed ibuprofen and water. My plan was fairly simple. I went to Walmart in West Lebanon, got a bottle of Dasani, and wrote a check for $20 over the amount. This would buy the food I needed and put something into my stomach with the ibuprofen. 

I got out 800 mg of ibuprofen and went to open the bottle of water. My compromised joints just hurt and flexed in unhealthy ways. I was this close to the first step of not wishing I would die right here and right now. I could not even open a simple bottle of water!

 I found a young cashier. I felt very odd asking for help. At face value, I looked like I was capable and still looked like I was in my 30s. I held the bottle out to her, “I know this seems like a strange request, but could you please open this?" She opened it right up and I was so grateful. I then went on to McDonald’s and by the time I got home, I was pretty close to my usual in-pain self. I started the steroids at night and within a couple of days, it was like the thing never happened to me. 

In the weeks, months, and years that followed, I learned how to manage this alien thing that had control of me. I played with medication times and days. There are so many people who cannot handle methotrexate. My new limitations were something that I had to come to terms with. In my first year, I could not imagine making it another 20 years. There were not a lot of long-term studies about RA so it all seemed pretty hopeless. I really thought that I was doomed and this was not going to end well.  The meds scared me and I had to really force myself to start them in the first place. I observed other people who had what I had and tried other methods of dealing with it and even some who chose surgical options. It was really not a good thing. 

I decided a couple of years into this thing that the only way that I was going to live with this was to handle it the same way I handled all serious challenges. Anger and rage beat my greatest demons. I knew this was how I would survive. I would not lie down and just let it take me. 

In my life, I have gleaned some of the best methods from the most abstract of sources. For me, it was the words of the outlaw Josey Wales that made such a difference in my life.“When things look bad and it looks like you’re not going to make it, then you got to get mad, I mean plum mad dog mean, because if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is."

 With those words, I made it out of my 20s alive, I quit smoking for good and they are what allow me to do anything even when I feel that I cannot. When the pain is too much for me, my rage pushes me hard to move on through it, like a car driving through a showroom window. It may not be the most eloquent solution, but it has allowed the 16 years with RA to be possible and on my terms. Most importantly, it has allowed me to not be a burden on my family and for my sons to have a father.  I cannot put a value on that and I would not change it for anything.

Much more to an old comfort

 Day four of Covid. I have watched half seasons of TV shows just simply to make them go away. But the real comfort is found in what I always do when I am sick. I watch old episodes of M*A*S*H.   Watching each episode is like finding pieces of myself that I have not seen in 40 or 50 years. Like a large glass vase that shattered into hundreds of pieces. These pieces of me lay on a desolate floor that is untouched by the passage of time. The theme music, sounds, and visuals were such a peg in the contemporary consciousness of who we were in the 1970s and 1980s. I have an associative memory.  My memories of every moment of my life are stored secretly in the things I was seeing and the sounds that I was hearing.  This causes so many things to start coming back to me. The shards of my young self are in these pieces of glass, the sounds, the images, and my associative memory take me back in time to my grandmother's house.  I can hear her talking with my sisters in the kitchen.  I can smell the food she is cooking.  I see my dad‘s and my mom‘s young faces. I feel closer to my 15-year-old self than I have in years.  I know deep down that I am given a second chance at a memory that I have not had of Dad or Grandma in decades. Of all the gifts one can receive, this is priceless. I don’t really know what I am going to find but I know that I look forward to it.

 An interesting observation regarding M*A*S*H back in 2020. I recall a Facebook post about the show. So many people chimed in with very heartfelt sentimental memories. One person replied, “I have never watched it and I never will. I do not think war is funny!“ Of course, I bristled at this statement. He was putting M*A*S*H down for glorifying war or making fun of the suffering. Of course, M*A*S*H was the exact opposite of that, and it made its anti-war statement with such craft. So I responded that had he ever watched M*A*S*H he would know that it was actually the all-time anti-war show. They used its incredible popularity to show the absolute senselessness of war. How politicians and generals mastered sending young people away to die in war and that outcomes were measured in mathematical equations. It showed the innocence of those involved, a stark human view, stripped free of all the facade.  In a television show that lasted 3 times longer than the war it depicted, the creators of this masterpiece had the opportunity to take war apart with molecular honesty. The angle at which its story was told was beautiful as well. The story shifted to interesting perspectives in so many creative ways, but over all, it was told by a bunch of people who never asked for any of this and had placed before them a conveyor belt of young boys on the edge of death. What came next was the incredible sacrifice of everything that made up these doctors and nurses in an effort to not lose another one. I can recall instantly two episodes in which the war was infiltrating their dreams. I have no doubt this would happen to me if I were in the shoes of those doctors. I once got to see one of these units in Saudi Arabia. They are actually called CASH units (Combat Army Surgical Hospital). I delivered a truckload of supplies from Log Base Alpha. 

I’m glad I responded to the Facebook commenter this way because I received a reply from him that said “I did not realize this. I will have to give it a try sometime.

M*A*S*H gave us so much and I have a feeling that as far as my own personal memories are concerned, it has yet to give more.  But today, I want to just say thank you for the sick day comfort it provides.  M*A*S*H is like a warm familiar blanket.

Please Don't Pass the Potatoes

 Every now and then, I feel like I might be losing my identity.  It started innocently enough today while I was in my 8th hour of splitting wood this weekend. I was listening to the Splendid Table podcast episode 758: Summer Parties with Nicole A. Taylor.  She is the author of the new cookbook, Watermelon and Red Birds, and also The Up South Cookbook: Chasing Dixie in a Brooklyn Kitchen.

Her segment was on the foods of Juneteenth and took a turn into southern potato salad. Her enthusiasm for this beloved side dish came through with a fireworks-ish delivery. She points out that the supreme potato salad-making artist is a "special person" who can read flavors off the back of their hand. "And it always tends to be that very special person that's super funny, or super stylish, they have a personality because potato salad is its  own conversation and it tends to match that person." She sold me on the idea that if I go somewhere and I hear people asking, "Who made the potato salad?" Then I will know that I am in the presence of that "special person".

Ms Taylor, after hearing you describe how you create your potato salad, I believe I would have a difficult time not trying it.  This is where the conflict begins.  Potatoes and I, well to put it lightly, things have not been good.   My parents tried SO hard to get me to eat potatoes.  My father, unstoppable when determined could not win in the battle to get me to eat this starch at any age.  I was raised in the age before microwaves.  In the early 70's you were not American unless you served potatoes at seemingly every meal. I was not allowed to get up from the table, until the potatoes were gone, which meant, I never left the table, until bedtime.  This was before microwaves, so in the morning, the cold plate of potatoes was placed before me for reconsideration.  I did not yield.

My father told the story of the period of time in which I seemed to be eating the potatoes.  At least that is what he thought until the kitchen developed an odor. We had those old chrome-leg, vinyl-covered kitchen chairs that were popular in the 1950s.  Ours had cracks in the vinyl, which to a young person like me, offered a rare opportunity.  In retrospect, my father was pretty proud of me for my creativity.  At the time, I am sure there was probably some good old-fashioned spanking.

Flash forward to 1979, we were living on Earl Street in Bristol CT and my wonderful mom had been making a homemade beef stew from scratch.  A jar fell off the back of the stove and broke into the stew pot.  Because of the broken glass, we threw away the stew and drove down to the McDonalds in Bristol center and ate in the Dodge.  At the time, I felt it was the best thing ever since the stew contained potatoes.  The ungrateful fourteen-year-old self that I was, rejoiced. If you are reading this Mom, I am sorry.  I know you worked hard to make that stew.  It was a Thursday night and you worked all day.  I appreciate both, the home-cooked meal and the fast food.

People still just cannot understand how significant this is for me.  Even social media cannot comprehend my unique, by which I mean "correct" perspective.  How many times on Facebook do I see one of those inane scorecards that list like 50 foods and you have to count 1 point for every food you hate, except, there are NO POTATOES listed on this scorecard!  It is starting to feel political now! Because of this, I tend to score zero on these.

In a coffee pals survey at work, we were asked the question, "If you could only eat one meal every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?" My manager answered "Shepherds Pie".  It struck me as funny because his favorite basically is my definition of hell.

After years of marriage, my own wife called me weird last night and gave me that speech that I have heard a thousand times about "I have never met anyone before you who does not like potatoes." The years of resistance still do not sink in.  Is this that difficult to comprehend?  I have been pretty straightforward about this, well except for that strange Cravin incident in 2010.

In June of 2010, my son Noah returned to the ICU for 10 days, 18 months after his big stay there at the hospital for asthma-related treatment. I went down to Cravin's store in the hospital food court area to get lunch for Donna and I.  Donna stopped after the first bite of her mashed potatoes with a look of surprise.  "Wow!  These potatoes are great!" "Like that can happen" I murmured under my breath.  "No, seriously!  You need to try these!"  Something about her drive on this subject made me think, "I probably won't die!"

The next thing I knew, I assimilated the taste and texture (both of which I was born to hate), and then I took another.  "I actually don't hate this!"  2 more spoonfuls.  "I might actually like these." Suddenly, Rod Serling was standing there facing the camera talking about a man who had just taken a hard right turn, into the Twilight Zone. "I feel like everything I ever knew was wrong!" Donna definitely enjoying my joining the potato drones of the world.

Later when I inquired about the potatoes at the store I found out they came from one of those Sysco food service squeeze bags.  I felt so violated until I talked with another guy at the store later on who assured me some serious "doctoring-up" was happening to make them taste like they did.  

I don't know who that guy was from temporary insanity land that day, but I can tell you now, he scared me.  If you can't trust yourself.

I know the struggle to help people understand that I must come from a parallel universe in which potatoes either do not exist or they are an invasive species.  Even tonight, Donna asked me if I wanted a potato pancake that she engineered from leftover mashed potatoes.  I declined of course.

I can honestly say that I cannot remember ever tasting potato salad. I am sure that I was forced to perhaps in a dental-style chair with belts restraining me, or was that a dream.  Anyway, Nicole A. Taylor your description of potato salad, the people who make it, the art that it is, and most profoundly, your potato salad, I promise to try your recipe if I ever have the pleasure of meeting you.  I may be from a potato-hating parallel universe, but what could possibly stand against the heart and soul of what you described when talking about potato salad.

Until then, please don't pass the potatoes.

Just Another Brick in the Flavor Wall

 Dropping Noah off at school on a beautiful June morning, I've returned to face the ten dump truckloads of dirt that I volunteered to take. I need them, but I need them to take the forms that I need them to. That is okay. It is my famous "Give a Mouse a Cookie From Hell" scenario. This needs to happen, but you can't spread dirt till you stack firewood in the shed, you can't do that until the rest of the splitting happens, you can't do that unless... And So It Goes. I suspect that deviously, my garage is probably involved, I just know it is! 

Work time begins soon. I could sit and watch the news, but I don't want all that negativity in my life on such a beautiful morning. Lately, for me, it is been about understanding that I can finish things.  I have learned that having too many unfinished projects damages me into thinking that I am succeeding at nothing. It is a house of cards. 

So what about the kitchen? I am years beyond just going to stores and buying ingredients that become fantastic meals later on. In fact, with many composite ingredients, I have learned to create many myself. Chili crisp and chili oil for instance. Yes, I can buy this off the shelf and just crack open a new jar. It's convenient, delicious, fast, and comes with a price. What about Mirin? Same deal. I do not use Mirin too much, but when I buy it, it seems like I am always on the last ounce of it in the bottle. Money again. So what do you do when you have 15 minutes to burn in which you can do something to remind yourself that you are capable of completing SOMETHING?  Just a little sense of accomplishment that uses that time block wisely investing time and resources. 

The brown sugar is low. Downstairs to retrieve a 4 lb bag of sugar I go. By the way, when did they change these bags from 5 lbs down to 4 anyway? Deception lives everywhere, especially in Commerce. Food processor, molasses, and half of the 4 lb bag whirl their way into brown sugar. Then it is time to go to work for the day.

 

You may wonder why I put myself through all of this. To start with, a penny saved is truly a penny earned, right? My $20 tire changer and $59 balancer have saved me about $1,000, with more savings to come. This is real money.

Brown sugar though? I buy staples and turn them into things that modern society is brainwashed into thinking that they have to buy at a store, inadvertently I'm elevating the experience. You eat at my house and there are all these differences in small places such as chili oil and mirin, brown sugar, fried shallots, pickled onions, homemade teriyaki sauce, homemade rubs, vinegar, and sauces that are otherwise packaged and bottled, you crossed the line from black and white to Technicolor to your senses. The end result cannot be duplicated just by telling someone to marinade or brine before composing!  It's more granular.  In this way, the flavors make a grand entrance. This is a far cry from going to Dunkin Donuts and getting a breakfast sandwich that tastes more like cardboard and it does actual food that its appearance suggests. 

When you give it a chance and make use of things you have, you just might find that you have crossed over into the flavor zone that you did not know existed.  The food blasts colorful flavors at you like that autumn day that you know as you take photographs of it, that the end result will never truly capture what you are seeing right now.

I highly recommend this.  No one has the time to make everything, but pick something you love, research it, and give it a try.  I just know you will find joy in doing so.

A Chef’s Block

Rice is life. About that stuff that went down last month. I was walking on a long journey to places I did not know or understand. I knew I was not eating. I knew I was not sleeping. Somehow I felt that the momentum of my entire life could push me through the valleys of cold depth that I was traveling. It never occurred to me that this defies logic and physics. I did not care. I supported this corner of the world with the things I had acquired. And I foolishly thought that they could endure. All along the way, I never lost my inspiration and that was the one thing I was very pleased to find. After all, I have spent so much time being equally unimpressed with everything under the sun.

 I raced toward the western horizon with my foot on the floor. 2 AM had just passed, and then it happened without warning. The engine stops. I feel my emptiness wrap around me as it catches up to my lost momentum, like dropping from the speed of sound that suddenly overtakes me. I did not know that this was even possible. Where is my inspiration now? Where is my drive? I just sit on the side of a lonely desert road, hours before dawn allows me to see what sort of mess this is. I am really lost. I don’t know what to do with this.

 I turn the key but there is no life. Even worse, I don’t even want to turn the key! As the first hour passes my darkened mind considers throwing the keys into the desert and just walking down the road. Betrayal kills me at the thought of this. Adding this to the list of things I have treated so recklessly. I keep asking myself, what now? But the answer is not there. Who am I now? I quietly sit in the dirt. I evaluate all that I have. I have decided the sunrise could come years from now or even perhaps never again. I am aware that only I can do that. The question is, do I want to? Like other things in my past, getting up can only happen if I embrace falling down. So I sit.

 I feel the coolness of the ground. I am connected to the earth. Almost accepting the loss I have suffered is actually helping even though I have no idea how. In the quiet, I know the sun is going to shine again. There is a blind faith inside of me that says a passion to be is still here. In my silence, I can see the light of something from a distance, like an old friend coming into view. Rage is coming to breakfast. Where have you been? I know now, that I can get up off the ground, turn the key, and with passion and fire inside of me, I can do it! I can cook again! I can really cook! That unending source of ambition and fire and creativity lives breathes, and jumps again! How I have missed that. As my speed and momentum build, the sun breaks the horizon and I say the words with an honest heart. I promise to never take this for granted again.

Sunday Driving Recollections

 Writer's note:  This is the first published piece I ever wrote.  It was featured in the Island News (Port Aransas, Texas) on December 12, 1985. I always loved how Ray Cushing the editor added the editor note under my by-line:

Sunday Driving Recollections

By Mike Jackson

(Editors Note: Mike Jackson is a novelist and poet who works in the Public Works Department of the City of Port Aransas)

Recently, I indulged in a very old and mostly forgotten ritual. I went for a Sunday drive. If you don't know what a Sunday drive is, ask your grandparents. You see, decades ago, before you had to put up your life savings for a gallon of gas, every American family used to load up in station wagons and pickup trucks and go for the traditional Sunday Drive.

One reason for the Sunday Drive was to burn a tank of gas for no material reason. Another was to give parents a reason to get out of a house full of screaming, fighting, obnoxious children into an automobile full of screaming, fighting, obnoxious children.

In the car, there were games parents would play with their children. These games were used to keep children content during the drive. Games like, "the child that doesn't fight, scream or talk gets an ice cream cone of his choice". Back in those days, every family could afford an ice cream cone of their very own.

Another game was "Who could hold their breath the longest". But facts from the "1953 National Survey of Sunday Driving Parents" indicate that the most effective game to play with children was the "If you kids don't stop screaming, fighting and being obnoxious, you're going to be grounded till the age of retirement game".

Besides burning gas
for no material reason and complaining about all the other Sunday drivers getting out of the house and playing games, there were other important reasons for the Sunday driving obsession. 

The most important reason for Sunday driving mania was to drive 15 miles an hour in a 50-mile-an-hour zone, looking at the exact same sites that they looked at on all the other Sunday drives while driving 15 miles per hour in a 50-mile-an-hour zone.

Unfortunately, not all Americans were into the Sunday Drive movement, even during the Sunday Drive heyday. These people are easily distinguished as the folks in the cars behind the Sunday drivers screaming incoherently at the Sunday drivers for driving 15 miles per hour in a 50-mile-an-hour zone. The Sunday driver, in his innocent ignorance, never understood that the guy behind him probably wanted to do something really terrible, like drive the speed limit. 

What happened? America changed, gas prices jumped and everyone grew out of it. But it didn't end! The Sunday driver is still very much a part of America today! They are funded by Social Security and they all go south for six months of the year where they Sunday Drive 7 days a week.

The Great Dodge Space Time Disaster

It was affectionately known as 18 Mile Road. It ran north-south from Mustang Island to Padre Island in the South Texas Gulf Coast. Officially called Park Road 53 back then and today is known as Texas Highway 361.  I recall being on it for the first time in June of 1984.  There, a little south of Beach Access Road 1A, a large billboard screamed a happy message:  "Welcome to Miller Time!" Framed in fluorescent palm trees. Then in much smaller letters at the bottom of the full-size billboard, it helpfully added, “ and Port Aransas”. The sign sat like a guardian to the island I called home on a long 18-mile stretch of sand that had the Corpus Christi ship channel to the west and the vast Gulf of Mexico to the east. 

Here, now, I was getting acquainted personally with the 18-mile road as I walked along it picking up pieces of shrapnel with Mopar serial numbers on them, then also an entire driveshaft that will never pull duty again. I messed up.

The irony is, there was another driveshaft with a front universal joint on it sitting in the trunk of my now very damaged 72 red and black Dodge Dart. I had let it coast as far as it could after the violent storm that had ripped apart the underside of the car minutes earlier.

I would learn that this one simple thing had single-handedly cut two big holes under the floor of the front seat. Smashed open the tail shaft housing and bent the output shaft of the transmission. Broke the exhaust, and sent metal through the power steering pump and radiator. Something really bad did happen today after all. The odd thing was, I knew something was waiting today. Don’t get me wrong, this is not some weird auto mechanics 6th sense, although, in the years that followed, I can boast some car whispering credentials. No this was something else. There are just a few days and even sometimes minutes when a person stands on the brink of two forevers, completely encased in fog. You don’t really know that the tracks you are standing on are the switch, but to your very core, you can feel it. Time has gravity. I have felt this gravity manifest itself in three peculiar ways. The first, when something is about to literally explode and you are right there, time happens in choppy sort of photo frames. I believe this is because our senses naturally activate to a magnified super level that allows us to see microseconds expanded so we can read them. The second gravity time displays is the weird conduits it can draw. Noah was in the PICU in 2009 not being able to breathe, again the first time gravity was at play here too, then the conduit to my Dad telling me about not being able to breathe. It brought Noah to 1996 and my Dad to 2009. I then existed in not one time at a time, but strangely all of them at once.

The third gravity of time is what was happening on this day, March 4th, 1985. This is when you are on a pivotal day and you can feel the gravity of your different life pulling at you and the gravity of the life you have been living pulling you the other way. It is an odd but unmistakable feeling.

Something was different. For two months, I have been working in an oil refinery in Northwest Corpus Christi, on the Corpus Christi Bay. I was an instrument fitter's helper working under my dad‘s lifelong friend Jeri. The days were long and cold. Working high off the ground in hard hats and safety harnesses. Sometimes as high as 263 feet off the ground. There were fires and explosions, and the company put a $1 million life insurance policy on you when you began working there. This was a fact but I tried not to let bother me. Despite the fact that Jeri had at any given moment anywhere from 12 to 20 cars parked in his yard, I always drove my 1972 Dodge dart with a slant six motor making it the most economical vehicle out of any that we had between us. 

 I woke up at 1:15 a.m. in my Port Aransas Texas home. I was due to pick up Jeri in Flour Bluff around 6 a.m. on my way to the refinery. Port Aransas is on Mustang Island which is in the Gulf of Mexico just north of South Padre Island Texas. It was always a very long drive to work, but back in those days, you had to do what you had to do. That morning I could feel that something was different. I was on the precipice of change although a very involuntary one.

 I wrote a poem that morning over my cup of coffee called, “Taking What is at Hand”. 

Around 5 a.m. I headed south on Mustang Island on the long dark 18 Mile Road that led to South Padre Island. When Jeri got into the car I told him that I felt like I had stepped out of bed and into the Twilight Zone this morning. Something very good or very bad is going to happen today. Unfortunately, my money was on something bad. After all, I worked as high as 263 ft off the ground and it was not exactly out of the ordinary to have accidental explosions happen at the refinery. Gravity was everything. 

Amazingly the whole day went by and nothing out of the ordinary happened. Driving away from the refinery and out onto South Padre Island Drive I breathed a sigh of relief believing that I was in the clear. I was just a weird 19-year-old with a lack of sleep and a wild imagination.

Just as I was slowing down for a traffic light however my car began to vibrate really hard. I knew that the front universal joint in my 72 Dodge Dart was close to going. I was going to change it, I really was! I had even bought a used driveshaft with a joint on it from a guy at work for 15 bucks. 

We made it to Jeri's house and normally we would have just jacked up the car and taken care of it with the one I bought.  But Jeri didn't have any tools because they were all in our toolbox at work. we made the heavy-hearted decision that it would probably make it if I took it slow.

 People in our income status on the island did not have telephones. Realizing that I was going to have to drive the car back to Port Aransas Jeri wisely told me that when I got to the island I should go to a payphone call person-to-person collect and ask for myself. When he answered he would say that I was not there and he would know that I made it home safely. Anyone my age and older know that this method of confirming info was standard procedure back in those days. Calling long distance was very pricey.

After picking up the pieces of my car all over Park Road 53, I sat back down in the driver's seat.  The realization that it could be a very long time till I drive this car again and perhaps, maybe never again.  When it is the only car you ever owned, that's huge.  I think it was the shock of the consequences that I felt as I sat there.  The shock wave was still unbelievable.  I worked like 50 miles from where I lived!  

There was more at work here.  I was miserable.  All of my youthful ignorance had been thoroughly taunted, mocked, and challenged.  "My" friends were actually my Dad's friends.  I had made none in the last 7 months that I was here in South Texas.  My days learning how to be an adult working at A Auto Supply last summer did little to break my immature defiance that was facilitated by not having my Dad during the years that I really needed him.

Working in a refinery with a bunch of construction workers as a helper was constantly like a brutal initiation.  It is a painful road to travel.  My cushy little teenage life in which I thought I had it all figured out was being smashed daily in the ring of people lining up to kick my figurative butt into something else.  I will say it was working.  The long drive back to the island gave me time to reflect on myself and slowly, I was turning dials and making adjustments to who I was.  

While working at the refinery, I was bitter and I felt broken.  I wanted to go where I felt like I used to.  Where I felt I had control, oddly, getting drunk and having no control.  I wanted my old life back, at least the fun part.  I never paid attention to what I would actually do with my life.  I was just thinking about Lone Oak Campground, partying with my friends.  As I worked high up on those metal vessels that looked like Mercury rockets with ladders, landings, pipes, and instruments on them, I kept telling myself: "I am doing this for Connecticut.  I am going back."

Of course, in my stupidity, I did not know that this was going to make my life even more pathetic than it already was, or at least how I thought it already was. But this morning, March 4th, 1985, I stood on the edge of two different lives.  I did not know that, but I knew something was amiss.  Yes, Mike, "something very good or very bad" was going to happen to me today. Check. Very bad, right?

It seemed like an hour had passed.  Then I saw it on the horizon.  A dark green storm moving at me at the speed of sound, or so it always seemed. Jeri NEVER drove slow, he totally did not know how to.  He had so many speeding tickets that now when he was getting pulled over, he and his wife would swap seats so that she got the ticket so he would not lose his license.  That one 1965 Chevrolet Super Sport coming at me at a high velocity was coming to my rescue.

Jeri skidded to a stop just ahead of me on the side of the 18-mile road.  His face fell with remorse when I told him about all of the smashed vital components all over the road.  He tied a rope from the back bumper of the 65 to the front bumper of my Dodge and towed me back to Port A on a rope faster than I have ever been towed in a vehicle before.

My first car, sat in the driveway indefinitely broken needing so much work before it would ever see the road again and my life continued.  I had to start driving Dad's 74 Chrysler Town and Country wagon, a loud, rusty, 440 cubic inch motor, 5100-pound monster of a car to work.  It was a $10-a-day trip and in 85 that was stupid money.  

The 18-mile road event was an explosion that set things in motion that from that day on, would not have happened otherwise.  Connecticut could not even be thought about as the Dodge was the only way that could happen.  I bought a 73 Dodge pickup for $75 from Cliff on the island.  It only had 2nd and 3rd gear which would have been fine!  But, the prissy little Connecticut boy in me "needed" 1st and reverse.  Brat!  So I was on a crusade to find a transmission and in 1973, Chrysler contracted these out to small machine shops which made it so there were so many different ones.  The month of looking around South Texas junkyards was amazing like a world of its own.  In the end, I found one for $150 in 1985, and since we were finding others for $15 but they did not fit, was like spending $1800 today.  

My 15-year-old sister had just moved in with us from Connecticut and there were more expenses.  Until now, I was really bad at assisting Dad with the household expenses, despite telling him that I would when I convinced him to move from his little dune-side cottage that was smaller and cheaper than the old 1950s mobile home that we now lived in that we rented from Jeri.  The million-dollar transmission was a pain point between Dad and me.

The truck leaked a ton of oil, so I had to fix it.  I was not always good at working on cars, and this was during that time.  It took me a stupid amount of weeks to change an oil pan gasket.  I hurt myself and threw plenty of tantrums.  My respect for my father runs very deep here.  He was quietly patient, but should probably have backhanded me several times to set me right.

The morning after I cut my knuckle open on the side of the sharp oil pan, it had gotten infected because it was dirty with sand and grease and my hand blew up like a balloon.  It was Sunday Morning Gentleman's Club time.  This was our excuse to drink beer and throw darts on Sunday morning between 10 am and noon or 1.  You could not do that on the beach as open containers were not legal until noon Sunday.  I could not really play that day.  Dad, in a most uncharacteristic way, looked at me and said, "Here Mike, let me look at that under the light.'  I placed my hand in his, and he gently turned it and looked at it as a concerned parent, gingerly touching my infected hand.  Then suddenly, the full force of his grip engaged and he crushed my hand in his, pulling and ripping the skin back and forth.  I screamed in agony, swearing at him as I went to my knees and yelled, "What did you do that for?"  He let go of my hand and said, "Well, you thought you were feeling pain before, what about now?" I should have known, this was a typical Joe Jackson thing to do.  Those eyes bore hard into mine, and very sternly he told me, "Now get into the bathroom and wash that cut out like you should have last night!"

My friends, if you want the definition of a real loving parent, there he was.  There is no way I could ever have done that.  There were no medical facilities on the island.  It HAD to be cleaned as it was full of car grease and sand and bacteria.  My father never backed down from doing what hurt him when he needed to hurt us for our safety. He was beautiful.

Driving to Corpus was getting old. I think I may have only driven the truck one time to the refinery, so the rest of the time it was Dad's car that was eating me alive in gas and he was walking to work, because of my stupidity with the joint. When Little Jimmy, the first person I ever met in Port A got fired from the public works department of the City of Port Aransas, Dad told me to jump, and I did.  I was a shoo-in for the job that no one really wanted, cleaning the skid-o-kans on the beach.  My dad pointed out that when you have a job like that and you do it right, no one messes with you. 

It was amazing, my life became so different right away.  I was still having my butt handed to me in my innocent arrogance and honestly, things always seemed to go better if I could just shut my mouth and listen.  I was frustrated at times, but I was not above learning from my Dad and others too.

At the end of May, I went on a date that got set up with some friends that I worked with.  Talk about stepping on the proverbial banana peel, it happened to me.  One moment I was this single 19-year-old trying to figure out who I was and who I would become.  The next moment I was living with a 26-year-old who got married when she was 14 and had 3 kids, ages 10, 8, and 6.  She had just gotten out of a very abusive relationship that had lasted 12 years.  We were definitely not what the other needed but it happened and it was a firestorm that was so out of control in a coming of age in a tornado sort of way that by the end of the year, she moved back to the travel trailer that she was living in previously.  The both of us had the good sense to realize that she needed to be an individual and so did I, and within a month, called it quits altogether.  We still loved each other like people love each other when they endure a disaster together.  We remained friends but she changed me forever like no one else ever could.  The complexities of that relationship set things into motion in me that defined who I became in the years to come.  By the time I was 22, and living many miles from here, people would look at me after I told them how old I was and they would shake their heads and just say, "Lots of miles."

Working for the city, I grew up. My Dad did great things with and for me and I made friends along the way.  Because Dad and I were best friends, our friends were usually mutual, and I was ok with that.

Somewhere along the way, with all of the fine-tuning I did in the wake of lessons hard learned and dealing with consequences, I became a different person.  At the core, there still was some me, but I shook it all down and found a much more refined person.  When my life seemed to be repetitive within the confines of my little island, I wanted to move to Maine, to start a new adventure.  I wanted to write books and songs, something I did in much of my spare time now.  I started to realize that I could have whatever life I wanted.

I left Port Aransas in October of 1986 and never did make it to Maine.  I did get stuck in Connecticut for almost 2 years before finally making a life in New Hampshire in 1988.  My previous relationship made me a daredevil when it came to relationships and my life felt like an endless barfight. I was extreme in all the choices I made and I was so impulsive in making them. 

I believe that March 4th changed my course.  Had I stayed where I was going, I would have had a pretty predictable, pathetic meh life, but I did not.  That moment on Park Road 53 changed all that.  Eventually, after more self-destruction in Connecticut and New Hampshire, I once again found myself in Port Aransas in 1989.  I had the pedal to the floor, racing into self-destruction and not caring what anyone thought.

But then, there was Joe Jackson. What is a good dad? My answer would be so appalling to the average person. My Dad loved so clearly, in a Grand Torino sort of way. In the figurative sense, his life was given so I could actually live mine. He really did not know that he was doing this. He did not even remember what he did.  That thing that saved my life he did, made him feel ashamed when I told him. But he chose the nuclear option in order for my life to finally begin.  I became a different person on September 9th, 1989, when that full can of Budweiser came flying from the kitchen and into the side of my head exploding all over me.  Yes, it took more than a day of absolute rage inside of me to subside, but when it did, I knew more than I ever have and more than I ever could without this brutal wake-up that I was going to die soon if I did not change.

March 4th, 1985 was a turning point in which my life turned from what would most likely have been a benign, job, home, vacation, blah, blah, blah.  It took a hard right turn into a life in which I never knew where I was going to be later that day for many years.  That is the stuff that made me.  Like it or not, this is how I arrived, waking up on the floor and not remembering how I got here.

In the sound proof room

 When you are invisible, you are also silent under the radar and the effort to push sound over the walls from the depths of unseen and unheard that you are, drains you of what energy is left. You lay there on the floor with the side of your face feeling the subtle vibrations the ground provides. Too tired to speculate where they come from. Did you inadvertently remove an important coping mechanism? Did you actually take apart the landing you were standing on? You have been stuck in the mist for far too long. So many decades of screaming, “Onward thru the fog!” There has been a drive to shine and be heard. But, that keeps getting doused by the lack of air. Before you shine, you are stomped out. You don’t matter. You really don’t. So what now?

There is a War...Part Two

 When a good man goes to war, he does not know he is a man. He was waiting to know what he was and what he wanted, but now it is decided. He is unimportant. He is told the reason matters, but really, it does not. Only what side of the numbers he stands on will be praised on a spreadsheet somewhere. He does not even know what his dreams are nor who he will really become. Now because of the bravery in out of range, he never will.

When a good man goes to war, he realizes how inconsequential the rest of his life is. How supplemental it all was. It makes him wonder if any of it really mattered in the big picture. In his heart, his life, especially those in it matter so much, but he is not the one calling the shots here. It seems they were never really his to call. At these moments, the real predator seems to be nowhere, but he still exists, he is just unseen in the haze of the now. The world still is turning. On a side note, looking through a glass in the distance, he realizes there was always a war. To live and die in the war is what it is, what it started as, what it has been, what it is still, and what it will always be. He stands next to the river that is too strong to cross and mourns his own existence. He knows nothing but the war. On the outside he is cool, never losing control, but on the inside is screaming in the pain of the conflicts that burn forever. Secretly, he envies the oblivious ones. How nice it must be to just know nothing, how to not even know there is a war!

Both of me, opposite sides of the wall

I woke up with Miss World by Hole in my mind. I am pretty certain this will be the last outing with the camper this year. This will mean that it was out for three extended periods this year which will account for 18 days and all, I guess I can’t complain about that too much. The summer mind vs winter mind perspective is in the stratosphere, hovering over my little world, like invading forces occasionally firing barrages of common sense thought, followed by complete ignorance. March 4, 1985. The great Dodge Space-time Disaster was one of those pivotal moments in which I could feel myself standing at the edge of forever, but not being able to see but a couple of feet in front of me.

Here now, I think I have wisdom. But, really, do I? If I did, then I could look at this late August day with the eyes of January. If I could do that, then this August day would be full of all of the richness it is entitled to. I know, I am still not ready though, because this only gets written in August and January. For me, there is no other way. Sigh.

 It is now 7:15 PM Indian Giver by Joan Jett is playing in my head. It’s a warm day and humid but damp.

  The uncertainty of what is ahead for all of us. Strange dreams of snowy roads and propane tanks just showing up out of nowhere. No rhyme or reason for the icy snowy roads and the fact that dragging a 100-pound propane tank through it makes any sense. The coffee is perking away, promising a good start to today. I find myself hoping it was just a little cooler today. 

There it is, that seasonal forgetfulness that blindfolds us. A strange misty dream of this moment, flashing forward to when I truly am dragging propane tanks in the snow. Living the dream, aren’t you?

Why am I so blank? (I know now, here in January. It is because I could only see some of the words in August, and they could never be complete until January 11. This is my problem. This is my reality. Not only did I need the time, but the pain that in August, I had not arrived at. The loss that comes in the weeks ahead…the weeks behind, depending on which writer you ask.)  My Anthony Bourdain book is sitting in the mailbox at home, it would be so nice to have. Then I did. I know him now. Our journey lasted from August till October, and what a long strange, and incredible trip it was.

7:20 PM on a Tuesday, August 31 down in the valley of Winhall Brook. The night air that one could wear like a garment descends upon us like a damp blanket. At the same time, 7:44 AM, January 11, knowing that valley sits in sub-zero deep freeze, desolate and what I knew it would be at that moment when I thought forward from August, these words prove that time travel is somehow possible and yet, there is a level of wisdom that allows us to be here now, that just cannot cross the terminator from one time to the other.

When you're down and low...

 I woke up Monday to learn that my friend Jim McLean died of COVID-19. Jim was a friend from the early 80s when I used to camp at lone Oak campgrounds in East Canaan Connecticut. I was close friends with his sister and he was close friends with my cousin Gary. His poor family is now having to carry on without him. Damn these people who have politicized a vaccine!  It’s been a hard week. 

On Wednesday, we had to put our Bogey down. I just can’t believe he is gone. I hate this. He was so much more than a pet to our family. I need downtime now. Before the frenzied race to winter begins in the fall. 

Tuesday. I really did not sleep last night. Tormented by the thoughts of Jim’s beautiful family having to move on without him.

There appears to be an obstruction in my ability to write on this trip. It came so easily when we were at Killington. I dare say that some of the paragraphs written were some of the best stuff I have done. I will be patient though as I think it will happen. Until then I just sittin'
waiting for the bus all day. So many sounds, mowing way off in the distance, wind rustling, tarps blowing, crows crawling, chickadees, water sounds, eggs boiling, noises from the camper.

It is now Wednesday, September 1st. Good morning. Sour Girl by Stone Temple pilots from 2000 is in my head. It was a song written about someone name Jeanette Jania. Another long night with hardly any sleep. Soon we will be out and everything down for the winter beyond the sound of the river there is the subtle undercurrent that the diabolical forces of winter await. 

September 1, they now begin stepping this way.  Don't you dare say that it cannot happen even now?  I have had seen snow very early in the season in my life. The earliest I have ever seen it was on September 11, 1979. 4 inches fell in Bristol Connecticut that day.

The coffee now officially begins to perk. The sound and the smells of coffee perking in a true percolator, on an open flame, are some of the finest interactions with our senses there can ever be. Decades ago everyone knew how to make coffee correctly (passive-aggressive dig intended I guess).  Around 75ish, a few people had automatic drip coffee makers or Mr. Coffees as they were referred to back then. But they were a joke. Lukewarm, weak, and plasticky. A disgusting assault compared to that stovetop bliss they left behind.   

So I started reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I must say that I am severely impressed with Mr. BourdAin’s stark honesty to admit the things that everyone else is too internally shocked. The honesty makes the rooms take on an almost holographic materialization. 

At times I wish I could go back to 1982 and kick myself right in the rear end. I’d like to believe that all of this literary regurgitation somehow is blog-worthy at some point. Isn’t that right Mr. Terry Ward? When I think of the hours that I spent reading Terry’s bleeding heart hemorrhaging off of computer dot matrix tractor paper by the light of a kerosene lamp in the cabin in East Alstead!  Wow!  My dad too was finding an interest in this person that was doing the same job as him and making a little bread on the side by sharing his hippie generation manifesto. As the pages rolled out of the printer, Terry found and then lost love much to our own discomfort as readers. But we stuck with you, Terry. Something about you was so maverick, that eventually, you graduated to a blog. The Internet bringing forward so many others just like you. There in Langdon New Hampshire, a tragic star was born or perhaps fell off the back of a truck. 

Nevertheless, we loved you, Terry, in all your whiny self lamentations. Why? Because somewhere in you, each of us saw ourselves. You, who did not worry about how embarrassing it was to bear your naked soul to strangers. We were thinking it, but we were too scared to say it. LinkedIn says that Terry Ward has published Notes from the Dump for 34 years and 11 months now. Yes, that is November 1986 through the present day. Terry is listed as going to the high school of Hard Knocks High 1957 through 1962. Terry is a reminder that we can all bring something new to the world yes anyone can, even you.

The Rain and it’s companions

Somewhere beyond the rain, somewhere beyond the mud, the mosquitoes, and the uncertainty, I believe there is peace. If I had to sum up this vacation week in July 2021 I would have to do it like this: Kenny Rogers gambler style. “Somewhere in the darkness, the gambler he broke even because in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.“ 

Yes, this vacation may have been about teaching me some valuable lessons. Everyone else relaxes, but not me. I needed something much deeper. Rain rain and more rain came down. I had the misguided idea that it was taking something away from me but in actuality, it was giving me something. 

51 years ago my family took a vacation in the old camp in the bus and Goshen Vermont. Dad, Mom, my uncle Brian, me, Brooke, and my infant sister Amy. While there it rained for four solid days. While individual memories are pretty static about those days one thing that really came through was the emotional whereabouts of my parents and all the adults and older kids in my family. I saw things this week I never knew, yet they came from inside me. How does that happen? As the latter part of the week progressed I felt sabotaged but on Saturday I finally decided to get out and hike. I went up the Brownsville Trail and down the Weathersfield trail and it was so fantastic! Even though I know why I hike, I forget why I hike. That cannot be allowed to happen!

So during this vacation in the rain, being close to the dirt, I figured out that everything that was happening in the adult's lives during my childhood was after a catastrophic event. And everything that was our childhood was in the wake of that. Basically, the planets shifted, a star exploded and the enterprise crashed and then all of the adults in the family had to carry on because the world does not stop no matter what. It only felt like it did. I sort of feel ashamed of what my five and six-year-old self used to feel like. Back then I used to describe it like the world felt new. But for the adults in my family must’ve felt very dark. Vietnam is droning on, families were breaking up in records, all the things that the youth of the 1960s felt that they had accomplished realized that they got onto the conveyor belt their parents did and hopefully could do so well too. But our family was struck with tragedy. So we had to get together, we did family trips and vacations. 

Somehow I learned more than ever, that the adults in my life were amazing.  They carried us through and did a great job at it.  Even the teens in my life.  I recently had the opportunity to tell an uncle who is 8 years my senior, so he is more annoying big brother-ish something.  I got to sincerely tell him that his guidance really was a value in my life and in my wisdom, REALLY appreciate all of it, despite at the time feeling that he just wanted to cause me trouble.  That is as far from the truth as it gets.  All those who guided me growing up, are the finest people you could know.  I find it absolutely amazing that all of these realizations could come to me 50 something years later while I’m sitting in the rain close to the dirt. 

As I sit here at Larch Leanto, water streaming and bubbling behind me, birds singing all around. I know in my heart that in the woods the keys to the rest of my existence lies. I want and need more. Yeah, it is coming out in convulsions of history and information, but it has to happen somehow. Otherwise, it is a life left unfed and unquenched. The desire to explore forward but because of the lack of being in the moment, all of yesterday almost did not happen. It is funny how much Morning Pages has mutated into something I needed. We are all not the same, are we, Amy Landino?

I love the Leonard Cohen song In My Secret Life. Sometimes I worry that I had put too much into that life. As a child, I could journey deep into the depths of adventure. What was I running from to create such an incredible network? That network stayed strong too.  I wrote the novel "Lost in a Strange Life". What was I doing putting all of me into that and by day I was a mere passenger. I have to wonder what happens when these worlds collide? It is one of the reasons that I want to thru-hike but the biggest reason is that thru-hiking is also my greatest fear. I think it will break down the great wall between these worlds. Part of me welcomes that, the other part fears it so much. I worry about losing that barrier in old age and not knowing what life is which. Does that happen to others? My senior English teacher criticized my Recital (an abstract artistic composition I wrote in my senior year)  for the contradictions in it. But what if it was showing those contrast between life and other life. Now there is the masterpiece! maybe I will write another. That would be awesome. After all, Leonard Cohen did it kind of.

 OK, so the 1970 camping trip was 51 years ago. The challenges my parents had,  Amy wasn’t even six months old. Brooke was in a playpen in the van,  Brian was 11 years old and I was five. We went to Danberry to pick Brian up at Diane’s. This was back while they were still building the interstate highway system. The multi-mixer in Waterberry was crazy the top deck was not finished yet it was pouring rain and every time we hit a spot where the highway was missing the practically vertical windshield on my grandfather's 1968 GMC van could be hit hard by waterfall blast. 

This was one of the periods of time in which my dad‘s license was not valid in Connecticut. I suspect one of the many drunk driving instances was responsible for this. So, my mom who did not drive standard well was trying to drive the van in Connecticut. Once we go to Massachusetts my dad could take over because they didn’t check across state lines like that back then.

 Once we got set up in the bus solid rain fell for four days I remember that my parents had to be fit to be tied. I do not know if this was the plan but after the four days, we removed the plastic bamboo white blue and green curtains from the bus and installed them into the GMC van windows. Then we went to the Franconia New Hampshire area and camped in a campground that had a heated pool. I never like swimming but Brian sure did.  Brian swims like a fish and we couldn’t get him out of the pool. There was a ninety-year-old woman who had a crush on my dad.

 The rain now is stopped I do not recall a year of this much rain. I am totally discouraged. I don’t know what to do. All it even all it ever does is rain. It never stops, it just rains on and on. I hate it. The rage I feel is real with rain. I always attribute it to the many hours in the military standing in 40 degree mud and rain for seemingly days.  Enough is enough.  My head hurts my neck hurts, I need warmth and dryness. I hate this rain.

The Finest Hour

Monday, July 19, 2021

Woke up with no more Mr. nice guy by Alice Cooper playing in my head. "What’s the significance? I don’t know!"  (Peewee Herman voice). Despite the rain those incredible surreal never to happen again moments materialize in the strangest of places without warning! 

We went to bed last night in the tent. I was feeling like I might actually drift off to sleep fairly quick when my stomach had other plans. I reluctantly trekked across the road to the state park bathrooms. There was no one in there when I first arrived but after a while what sounded like three or four boys of various ages, pre voice changing age came in on a mission to pee and brush their teeth before turning in. Rolling conversations ensued amongst them. What sounded like the older boy of the group, possibly 11 or 12 years old said that he was going to the bathroom and to let mom and dad know. Two more boys remained at the sinks brushing their teeth. The little one kept drinking water from the faucet, over and over again. I could not see him, but I could just picture him hanging on the front rim of the sink on his stomach, feet flailing behind him, slurping water, gasping for breath in between drinks. 

The middle kid finally had enough and tells him “hey! Stop drinking so much! We’re headed to bed!“ The little guy replied, “it’s just water, so it doesn’t really count.“ The middle kid disagreed, “oh yes it does! Every sip of water equals a minute of peeing!“ Out the door, they went.

I was still grinning from the science of that water equation while there were various grunts from the end stall until the 11 or 12-year-old very quietly began to sing a song. I wondered if he knew someone else was in there. As the moments passed he sang louder and louder. The words came clearer as time went by, “how great, how great, how great is your love?“ Louder and very melodic, he could definitely sing. My guess is it was some sort of Sunday school song.  

An adult came into the men’s room and went into the center stall. The boy just kept singing away. I washed my hands and left. Back at the tent as I tried to fall asleep, I thought about the boy who is not afraid to sing in the State Park men’s room. Will he always have this innocent confidence? If so what will he do in life, will it be important in a family sense or important in the eyes of the world? One thing I knew, he has a good start with his parents bringing him camping during childhood.