March 26, 2016
Ormond Beach
Condo by the Sea
Lots has
happened since Emily broke her hip this past November 28 while traveling south on
the ICW, bound for the Bahamas.
My last
entry chronicles the day she fractured the neck of her right femur, a short section
of the upper leg bone. She had a surgical repair done the very next day at
Florida Flagler Hospital by orthopedist Dr. John Russell of Palm Coast,
Florida and a graduate of the Naval Academy.
Folks in these parts tell us Dr. Russell
has an excellent reputation. They say he is always up
to date on the latest orthopedic surgical techniques.
After a
liberal application of Liquid Nails to the fracture bone surface, he used a
Makita twenty volt cordless hammer drill to insert three, nine inch stainless
steel lag bolts in the long dimension of the neck of the femur, sucking the two
separated sections together. Next he installed twenty seven three-eighths
stainless steel staples around the perimeter of the fracture using a Bostitch
Heavy Duty staple gun, then covered the whole thing with two layers of two inch
3-M 393, Super Strong, High-Tack, Moisture Resistant, Nuclear Grade, Silver
Duct Tape.
The day
after the surgery Emily ran a full marathon and came in second in her age
category. A retired astronaut Navy Seal beat her by 38 seconds.
But just to
be sure the bones mended properly she entered Florida Peninsula Hospital in
Ormond Beach for rehabilitation. Daily for two weeks she did occupational and
physical therapy to gain mobility, balance and strength. She has worked
tirelessly in recovery.
While she
was there I lived on Flicka, which we kept at Palm Coast Marina, otherwise
known as the Palm Coast Geriatric Marine Center because so many geezers live on
boats there. Thanks to my lifelong friend Dennis Latta who grew up in Staunton
with me in the 1950s and 60s, I had a car. One of Dennis’ old clunkers, a very
fine vintage Ford Taurus. When he found out about Emily he called to say he was
living in Florida and insisted we use the Taurus.
Dennis and I
go back a long way, a very long way, to a time in Staunton when people
generally left their doors unlocked, when kids like us left home early on
Saturday morning and came home at dinner (maybe). In between parents didn’t
worry themselves to death and were generally relieved to be rid of us for a
while.
We grew up
Staunton during a time when a village did raise kids in a way.
In the 1950s and 60s in Staunton people in the community were generally on the
lookout for bad kid behavior. There wasn’t a whole lot of trouble kids could
get into anyway, but when they did the community was there to deal with it. Many adults didn't mind calling a rambuntious kid out for minor infractions.
For more serious stuff, eyebrows were raised. Comments were whispered, phone calls made. Adults
generally knew the kids roaming around the town. They knew their parents.
Probably went to school with them.
We grew up in
a time when folks went to the downtown areas of little hamlets like Staunton to
conduct business, with an occasional trip to Charlottesville for really exotic
items. You could find most anything within a mile or so of downtown Staunton;
doctor’s offices, dentist offices, the one and only King's Daughters Hospital,
at least one hardware store, lawyers (millions of lawyers), eateries, a pool
hall, newsstands, barber shops, the YMCA, churches (millions of churches),
pharmacies, photographers, funeral parlors, clothing stores, an appliance
store, florists, bars, the Staunton Leader, the ever so popular Woolworths Five
and Dime and our very own Montgomery Ward’s Department Store where, through a
mail order catalogue, one could buy just about anything, including guns.
If you could not get it in downtown Staunton you probably didn’t need it. Shopping centers and malls were just beginning to come into being. Staunton got its first in 1968. Until then we had (and still have) Terry Court, a small strip mall on the north end of town.
On
Wednesdays at 1:00 PM businesses and professionals closed down for the rest of
the day. I guess it was more important to have a mid-week break than to squeeze
another dollar out of the consumer. Business was good generally and conducted
by small, family owned concerns. Everybody knew everybody. Local industries
were tied to local communities in intimate ways. Basically they were extensions
of those communities. They provided health care, ample time off and on the job
training. It was not unusual for a man (usually a man) to work at the same
place for thirty, forty years.
Lots of community building activity was sponsored by industry and business. Each team in the ever so popular Staunton City Softball League was sponsored by a local business. There were plenty of small businesses to go around.
It was the
era of the ‘country store’, where a bunch of thirsty kids, fresh from a fishing
trip to the Bull Pasture River in Williamsville, could go pull a Brownie, or
Coke, or Dr. Pepper, or Grape Nihi out of the cooler, cut a chunk of strong
cheddar off the cheese wheel, grab a pickled egg or dill pickle out of a big
jar that had been there for fifty years, top off the nutritious meal with a bag
of chips and a few Mary Janes and get away for a buck fifty. A gallon of gas was thirty cents.
It was post
War World II. Veterans were going to school on the GI bill. The average middle
class family had a few dollars to spare and many women were able to stay at
home and do the important work. Middle class folks could generally afford the
‘necessities’ of life, a few luxuries and an occasional vacation, maybe a drive
down to Virginia Beach or, in my case, a long painful run to the West Virginia
coal fields to visit one’s crazy relatives. In that way the middle class drove
the economy. The middle class was the job creating force in small town America,
notwithstanding today's common misconception that paternalistic rich guys are
the job creators.
There were
just a few big box stores in remote places like Charlottesville and Richmond.
Corporate America was just beginning, quietly, to consolidate its political and
economic power by buying politicians who would start writing laws and
regulations to that end. But we did not know that then.
Sundays were
very much different than today, at least in terms of commerce. Sale of certain
items on Sundays were governed by a set of “Blue Laws”, originally passed
throughout the thirteen original colonies to regulate public behavior on the
Sabbath.
In the 50s
and 60s in Staunton we lived with remnants of those laws. Stores that did
venture to open could, by law, only sell those items deemed ‘necessary’.
Definitely not alcohol, tobacco and, oddly enough, some clothing, household
cleaners, mops and brooms, etc. The blue part of blue laws referred to the blue
tarps shop owners were compelled to use to cover counters containing prohibited
items.
Democrats
and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Detroit Tiger fans and Yankee
fans, church goers and heathens, blacks and whites and Jews and Gentiles lived
side by side, figuratively speaking, more or less in peace.
I’m talking
about Staunton in 1960. By 1968, my second year as a cadet at the Virginia
Military Institute, the national scene was rapidly becoming a mess. Vietnam did
not help. The daily six o'clock news generally included a somber report of body
counts of Americans killed in that conflict. There were protests at the
Democratic National Convention that and riots in more than a hundred
cities. Nixon lied to us about bombing Cambodia. Martin Luther King and Robert
F Kennedy were assassinated. Donald Trump does not scare me.
But Staunton
was paradise to a bunch of kids in the early sixties, especially if one in the
bunch had an old jalopy to ride around in. Our knowledge of the world was not
as broad and deep as today and, being fourteen years old, we were preoccupied
with other important matters. Like our to get our hands on some beer and a few Rum River Crooks.
There was
racial and religious prejudice and overt discrimination, no doubt. And
segregation. The first black student, Timy Vickers, came to Lee High in my sophomore year, a
very brave young man indeed. Staunton had two parks, one for ‘us’ and one for ‘them’.
There was petty crime and occasionally a murder, which really shook up the
community. People were generally not armed, certainly not with automatic
weapons.
But eighteen year old Diane Crawford was armed on the night of April 11, 1967, with a .25 caliber hand gun she had recently purchased at our Montgomery Wards. A gun she used to kill twenty year old Carolyn Perry and nineteen year old Connie Hevener who were closing up High’s Ice Cream in Terry Court. Connie had been teasing Diane about her supposed lesbianism. Carolyn may have been collateral damage. Diane murdered them both at point blank range. After that fateful night, in the ensuing months while the murder was being investigated, Diane actually continued to work part time at the ice cream parlor. After a while she left Staunton. An innocent man was charged with two counts of murder, acquitted of one. The authorities never brought him to trial on the second charge but never dropped the charges either. Go figure.
The crime
went unsolved until just a couple of years ago when Diane Crawford moved back
to Staunton over forty years later and confessed to the murders just days
before her death from kidney failure. To make this tail even more intriguing,
she also told investigators that the police officer who was the first person to
arrive at the crime scene, Davie Bocock, a personal friend of Diane's
supposedly, had helped her dispose of the murder weapon. He died in 2006. In
fact Diane died at the Bocock farm.
You can’t
make this stuff up.
There were
fist fights at bars and in school parking lots but nobody ever got shot as I
remember it, notwithstanding the High’s murders. Some young hoodlums were
thought to carry 'switchblades'.
I was not aware of any political discord, but the truth is I wasn’t aware of much of anything, being fourteen years old and all. The only thing that I was sure of was that looking deep into the bright eyes of a freckle-faced, pig-tailed girl in the second row in homeroom was firm affirmation that heaven was a real place.
Dennis Latta
was fiercely independent as a kid. He was the first guy in my group of friends
to own a car. He was the guy with the jalopy. Actually three cars. All bought
and paid for by him. None of them cost more than $175. And they were cars to
behold. The first was a 1958 Ford sedan. The front seat mounts were broken but
that was easily repaired by strategically jamming a two by four under the seat
and holding on to the dash board. A sudden stop would have ensured that one
would be thrown through the window except that holding on to the dash meant
only the possibility of a broken arm. Nineteen fifty eight Fords did not have
seat belts.
His second
gem was an English Ford. Yes, an English Ford. Manufactured by the Ford Motor
Company in Canada and Britain, Dennis’ model had the steering wheel on the left
side, the “right” side. The English Ford was not a big success in America. It
didn’t go far, especially Dennis’ particular jalopy. It blew up soon after he
bought it.
Number three
was a black Chevy sedan with a grey replacement hood. The first hood blew off
one day. This particular example of fine Chevrolet craftsmanship was equipped
with see through floor boards (code for rotted out). One had to be careful not
to step through and lose a foot. Of course those gaping holes were very
convenient for jettisoning empty beer cans.
What Dennis’
fleet lacked in fine body work they did not make up with fine custom interiors.
But they ran, relatively speaking, as long as he kept a couple of gallons of
oil on hand. One could run a small factory on the oil Dennis dumped into his
exclusive line of vintage automobiles. But, by God, they were his cars. Bought
and paid for by him. And he joyfully hauled moochers like me and Paul Shelly
and Herbie Foster and Ron Seyford and Ronnie Kappes around Staunton from
basketball court to basketball court, sock hop to sock hop and an occasional
drive-in movie.
Dennis was
an independent contractor at the age of ten. One could not have a paper route
until the age of twelve so he bought papers from the Leader for 3 cents and
peddled them around town for 5 cents, realizing a grand 2 cent profit on each
sale. He gave ACME Barber Shop a paper daily for which he received an
occasional haircut. A nearby bakery paid him in fresh baked sugar cookies for
its daily paper. Add in steady income from retrieving pop bottles at Staunton
Braves baseball games (a whopping 5 cents/bottle) and Dennis was considered by
us to be independently wealthy by the age of fourteen.
He went to
work in circulation for the paper when he was fifteen and was writing sports
articles soon thereafter. Dennis knew when he was that twelve year old kid in
Staunton Virginia that he was going to be a news man, specifically a sports
writer, and that is exactly what he did.
He attended
college at the Richmond Professional Institute (now the Virginia Commonwealth
University) where he got a degree in journalism. During a very successful
career with a long stint in Albuquerque, NM he covered and wrote about college
and professional basketball, football, baseball, boxing, wrestling and many
other sports. He has been to the NCAA Final Four twelve times the Indy 500
fourteen times and covered the likes of Mohammed Ali and other notables in
Vegas boxing matches.
Dennis
Latta, my friend from Staunton, Virginia. Today I’m driving his old Ford jalopy
around Ormond Beach. Some things never change.
So while
Emily worked hard on physical therapy at Peninsula Hospital I rode around
trying to find a place for us to live, for we had decided it was in her best
interest to stay in this area and be followed by Dr. Russell for a while.
Finding a
place to live in this area can be a daunting task in January through March. For
that is when every seventy-five year old person in Canada and American living
above 35 degrees north latitude invades Florida to escape old man winter.
Condos, townhouses, motel and hotel rooms, garage apartments, flats and every
other available living space is occupied during this period by old geysers
looking for Ponce de Leon's fountain of youth. These days that is offered in TV, magazine and bill board ads for sex enhancing
drugs, med-alert bracelets, incontinence pads, catheters, powered carts,
orthopedic devices, senior housing, reverse mortgages, last chance life
insurance policies, burial insurance, drugs for “senior” disorders (don’t read
the fine print), orthopedic surgeons, urologists, neurologists, physical
therapists, counselors, chiropractors, faith healers and palm
readers.
But we were
lucky. We found places to stay and stay we did. The last two months we have been
living in a fourth level condo overlooking the mysterious and every changing
Atlantic Ocean. Dennis’ clunker has performed perfectly and we have not gone
hungry. Not too shabby. Emily has had to eat my cooking, which has been
adventurous on occasion.
Emily has
received excellent care from teams of competent, skilled and empathetic health
care providers. I have weathered two kidney stone attacks and hive outbreaks
(brought on no doubt by the current political nightmare unfolding in America)
and we both survived colds.
We have
walked on the beach, visited wildlife management areas, eaten good food,
slept late, sat in the sun and gotten to know fantastic and inspiring
people. We survived NASCAR's Daytona 500 and Bike Week, during which
750,000 lunatics partied and motored around on Harley-Davidsons, Indians,
Triumphs, Ducatis, Hondas, Yahamas, Kawasakis, Suzukis, Nortons, BMWs, Moto
Guzzis, BSAs and many others classic cycles. We made it through two weeks of spring break with
daily reports of drunk students getting arrested for all manner of infractions,
being drunk leading the list.
On the
morning of March 8, I left the condo to take my morning beach walk. I have laid
out a two mile course and was intent on making it my vigorous daily exercise
session. So much for that. Turns out I barely break a sweat, most certainly
don’t breathe hard.
The beach
piques my curiosity. Birds, shells, wind, waves, sound, dolphins, turtles,
starfish and other cool things require my attention. So my vigorous walk
becomes more of a ramble.
There are
obligations. My new bird friends alone take an inordinate time to sort through.
The Laughing Gulls, Herring Gulls, Bonaparte’s Gulls, Ring-bills, Black-bellied
Plovers, Willets, Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings, Red Knots, Western Sandpipers,
Royal Terns, Forster’s Terns and Black Skinners have to be attended to. A Great
Egret or Snowy Egret or Great Blue Heron makes an occasional appearance.
A Great Blue Visits me on the Beach
A squadron
of Brown Pelicans sails by in a perfect V formation and one can only stop to
gaze in wonderment at these grand creatures. These days lots of them are moving
north in groups of five to fifty. They fly in formation at altitude, with a designated head pelican cheese leading the way. Lord knows how they pick that guy!
Then suddenly the leader descends and begins a
slow glide just off the water's surface. The V formation breaks up and they
play follow the leader in a long line, cruising along gracefully with scarcely
a wing beat, inches about the crest of a breaking wave. Suddenly the leader
takes a notion to gain altitude, the ‘second in command’ follows him and the
followers in turn float upward each gaining altitude, then just as suddenly,
the leader drops back down to the water’s surface, followed in kind by his
troops. The entourage continues their coordinated glide pattern, intent on
going wherever the heck they are going.
Off shore,
individual pelicans are fishing. One dives beak first at breakneck speed and
hits the water with a crash. Submerged now, he captures his prey in his
prodigious pouch, surfaces, expels the three or four gallons of water his pouch
hold, then gulps down the fish down. After collecting himself, he rises
ponderously from the water, gains altitude and prepares to do it all again.
I have to
collect the daily beach “treasure”, the perfect shell, starfish and sand dollar
skeletons, sea-glass, drift wood and other bits and pieces of stuff deposited
on shores wherever I am. All this stuff accumulates in nooks and crannies in
the apartment. I have never gotten tired or bored with the simple
activity of walking along a beach and picking up stuff.
It’s incumbent on me
also to check out any dead birds, turtles, starfish or other marine organisms.
They have their stories to tell.
I enjoy
contemplating the ever changing nature of the beach under the influence of wind
and twice daily tidal flows. Here, at this time of the year and this month
because of the convergence of the moon, sun and Earth the tidal change is
around four feet. Twice daily waves originating far out in Atlantic and
traveling long distances come crashing ashore, flooding the wide beach,
swirling and shifting sand around, stirring up shells and shell fragments and
living marine organisms; sea stars and sand dollars, clams and other shell
fish, copepods, worms and crabs and many others, all food for foraging birds
and fish. Everyday this diurnal cycle repeats itself, every day for centuries,
for millennia, for millions of years this cycle repeats. Everyday a variety of
birds shows up to feast on the ocean’s bounty. And I get to walk the beach and
watch the whole thing happen.
Then there
is the necessary survey of the daily gathering of fisherman. I have to ask the
obvious question, “Doing any good?” An important question, to be asked
delicately and cautiously, because a guy that is NOT doing any good could see it as a direct assault on his manhood.
The question, asked properly, leads to consideration and analysis of why he is not doing any good, if that is the case. Is it his bait? Shrimp? Live or dead? Cut mullet? Squid? Is the bait displayed properly? Is it better to fish at high tide? Low tide? Incoming tide? Outgoing tide? Is he ‘out’ far enough? Is it too early? Too late? Is he holding his mouth right? These are important questions.
Far more important than which blockhead gets the Republication
nomination for the presidency of these United States. That just takes the flip
of a coin since a blockhead is still a blockhead by any other name.
These
rambles are also beach clean-up days. This beach here is remarkably clean of human
debris although there is daily an assortment of plastic bags. Not many, but it
only takes one to choke a fifty year old Loggerhead Sea Turtle or a foraging
bird. Lots of folks walk the beaches in these parts, collecting trash. That’s
good news. I pick up what I find.
Marine animals confuse plastic, in all its
forms, with food items. One study of 370 Leatherback Sea Turtles revealed that
one in three had plastic in their stomachs. Scientists report that thousands of
seabirds, turtles, seals and other marine mammals are killed yearly after
ingesting plastic or getting entangled in it. Thousands!
So you see,
my daily exercise session is a time consuming activity, heavy with responsibility. Not to be taken lightly. I came close to not going
out this particular morning but I finally drug my lazy butt out of the chair
and down the elevator. That’s a lot of work right there! I’m glad I did,
otherwise I would not have met John Allard.
So on this
day, March 8, I was out early. The sun had just come up, the wind was out of
the east, blowing hard at probably twenty knots with gusts maybe to
twenty-five. That wind was piling incoming waves up to four, maybe five feet
and pushing them toward shore. There was not another soul on the beach that I
could see.
A quarter
mile into my ramble I spied a person in a wet suit, crawling out of the surf on
his belly pushing a surf board along. Once he gained the beach he flipped over
onto his butt, sat up, and used his hands to push himself along backwards
through the sand, a little at a time. I thought he might be hurt, so I ran down
to help out.
‘Ran’ is a relative term in my world. If I had been going any
slower I would have been going backward. Sea cucumbers set a faster pace that I
do when running. Night crawlers craw faster that I run.
None the less, I got to the scene quickly enough and
discovered the cheerful John Allard, paralyzed surfer, out for a day of sport
and adventure.
John sported a mile-wide grin on his pleasant face. He
introduced himself and chirped away while sitting in the surf, directly
launching into his fascinating story. Unfortunately that was partly about a
motorcycle accident twenty years ago that left him paralyzed from the waist
down. He mentioned the accident only briefly, almost as an afterthought. The
real story, the story he told me gleefully, is how he is living his life now.
He was in DC
at the time of that tragic accident. Now he lives in Ormond Beach in sight of
the ocean in a flat on the west side of Florida Highway A1A, the main north
south drag along the Florida coast. Four of five times a week he hauls himself
into his wheel chair equipped with a rack for his surf board and wheels himself
across that really busy highway to the Al Weeks Senior State Park and down a
ramp where he abandons the chair, gets his surf board, waxes it up and butt
crawls, as he puts it, down a couple of hundred yards or so to the beach.
John in his Wheelchair with a Rack for his Surfboard
Turns out he
is well known in these parts and locals show up to help him around when they
know he is out and about. There is generally a Good Samaritan around who offers
to carry his surf board down to the water’s edge, but he inssists on propelling himself along
unaided to get there. He drags his board through the crashing surf (and believe
me, the morning of March 8, it was crashing), hauls up onto it like a
sleek harbor seal and paddles out toward deeper water. Sometimes a big wave
will knock him off but undaunted he gets right back on. Once in deep
water he lays on his belly on the board, raises himself up on his elbows and
waits for the perfect wave. He picks one, furiously paddles to gain it, and
rides it all the way to the beach, paddling to maintain momentum and
position on the wave. The wave breaks over him, under he goes and comes up
laughing, then paddles out to do it again and again. He is training hard these
days for a championship event for disabled surfers in the Dominican Republic.
Outbound to do a Little Surfing
I met him
that morning because he had come in early, having decided it was a little
rough. He was delightful, engaging and inspiring.
After the accident he spent some time feeling sorry for himself but one day realized he still had half of a perfectly functioning body, the upper half,
which included his brain and his brain was telling the good half of his body to
get on with life.
We both
laughed at the notion of a perfectly working brain in adult male members of the
human species.
He wished me
well. I did the same and just like that he was gone and I was on to complete my
beach walking responsibilities. More birds to count, more shells to pick up,
and more plastic to gather. I’m a better man for having met John Allard. Over
the next few days Emily and I were able to watch John surf from our balcony
apartment a time or two. He is probably out there right this moment, riding the
waves and laughing.
Search
U-tube for “John Allard, Paralyzed Surfer” for some video of this inspiring
guy, who will not give up.
I am happy to be writing again and hope you will enjoy my stories, such as they are. We will be in Staunton for much of April while Emily puts the finishing touches on her rehabilitation. Then we will return to Florida in early May to bring Flicka back up to her home on the Chesapeake Bay. Four time on the ICW. One can never get enough of this magnificant waterway.
We intend to try again for the Bamanas in the fall of 2016. Wish us luck.
Namaste
