Crossing the One Hundreth Meridian

Good morning. At least it’s good morning here. It’s Thursday, July 13, and I’m writing this from Avalanche Campground in Glacier National Park. More about Glacier later. I’m going to give a brief travelogue of a few days of our adventure. Then a story.

After our stay in Bessey, we headed into the Nebraska sandhills. They are called sandhills for a reason. They are really big piles of sand. For as far as you can see, sandhills covered was sparse prairie vegetation; bunch, spear grass and grama buffalo grass. The limiting factor to life out here is water. There are blowout areas where no grasses are found. And they have ants. millions, billions of ants. Very few places that you can walk without stepping on an ant hill. Don’t do that. It pisses them off. One reason we are not tent camping, at least not in this country.

We start to see prickly poppy, a magnificent white flower that accents the roadsides. We pass a one hole golf course, complete with golf carts. That must be a joke, but you know those golf crazy people. Lots of western meadowlarks popping about. Driving on Route 2 through towns like Theford (population 200), Seneca (population 33), Mullen (population 500), Lakeside (population 12), Ellsworth (population 32), Alliance (population 8,500) and finally to Crawford (population 1000). We start seeing trains go by headed east, loaded with coal. Each train has over one-hundred cars. Turns out they’re coming from Gillette in east Wyoming, where young, adventurous men mostly are mining lots of coal. Coal ain’t dead. We must have seen and heard fifty trains go by, each with three locomotives. All headed downhill to southeastern states to power electrical generation.

We entered the Ponderosa Wildlife Area near Crawford, NE where we had intended to camp. Just outside the WMA we begin to see acres and acres of what appeared to be fifty gallon barrels deployed on about a fifty-yard grid, hundreds of them. A very strange site indeed. We came to a sign that warned us of radioactive contamination. Not good. We drove on to the wildlife management area for a look see. Black flies drove was out. No one else around this open hot dry country. I waved down the only car we saw and it turned out to be two cheerful, retired geologists who had moved to the area fifteen years ago to open a ‘rock’ shop. They told us all about the uranium injection mine that we had just crossed through. Turns out that we were sitting right on top of it. The uranium is extracted from deep below the surface by injecting a highly basic solution into the ore which dissolves the naturally occurring uranium salts. That solution is then pumped to the surface into a settling pond where the water evaporates and they scrape up the uranium salt. They went on to tell us that uranium prices were down so this particular mind was not active but was under what they called a maintenance plan. They told us that we were perfectly safe and that the radiation levels were quite low. That doesn’t explain why Emily’s hair was glowing. The barrels are pump stations. So, the land is sieved with wells sucking the uranium out. “Does the land above the mine ever collapse since you are removing lots of subterranean material over time?”, I asked.  “It happens. It’s a problem”, they replied with eyes wide shut.

We decided to seek another campsite and discovered a park in Crawford. Another one of these free campsites in a well-maintained park. We camped beside a young man named Stephen, a musician, who was biking his way from Olympia, Washington to Lincoln, Nebraska to join others in his band, Oketo. He was carrying everything he needed in two bike packs. Lots of Eurasian collared doves and western meadowlarks in the park.

Next morning, we had breakfast at the Dairy Sweet just outside Crawford, bought some rocks at a local rock shop, and headed on into Chadron for supplies. That night we camped at Cottonwood Springs, a US Army COE recreational site, just outside of Hot Springs, South Dakota. Coyotes nearby. Headed for Badlands national Park the next day. Bird of the day, the lark bunting, state bird of Colorado. The ones we saw obviously preferred South Dakota where people are more genteel.

We drove through Wind Cave National Monument the next morning and saw a coyote. American bison, mule deer, pronghorn antelope and discovered our new favorite animal, prairie dogs. Thousands and thousands of prairie dogs living communally in extensive prairie dog cities. A remarkable, social society of just about the cutest, furry thing on the planet. In Pringle, South Dakota we saw what was billed to be the largest bicycle sculpture in the state, probably the only bicycle sculpture in the state if not in the world. We passed a monument to Crazy Horse in the making. This monument is in the vicinity of Mount Rushmore and the site of Wounded Knee. We didn’t go see Rushmore. Chose Crazy Horse instead. That seemed more appropriate since this land used to belong to Crazy Horse, his people and other tribes of Native Americans.

We finally made our way into Badlands national Park where we camped at the free Sage Creek campsite with about fifty other people. Tent campers, folks with horses. Nice, clean toilets mostly young adventurous people. That night we heard coyotes.

Nostalgia, nostalgia. This reminds me of a time long ago when I was in this country before. Sometime in the mid-seventies my lifetime friend Steve Moore and I came west and camped nearby under a full moon and woke in the early morning to find that we were sharing the camp with four or five big mule deer.

We drove through this stunning park the next morning. My kind of park. Very big, open, hot, dry, dusty and magnificent. Remarkable canyon views. Saw bison, prairie dogs, bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, mule and white-tailed deer. Very few visitors. Virtually no traffic. Not like Yellowstone. We bought gas at Cowboy Corner then drove on through Oglala up to Scenic. Long distances on gravel roads in this open, prairie country.

That night we camped alone in the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands by ourselves looking out over stunning prairie vistas. A golden eagle greeted us and sailed by on his way to supper. We watch a thunderstorm develop. You can see them miles away out here. The storm announced its arrival with fifty knot winds, hail, then hard rain. We sat in the car for about an hour and a half while it thundered, blew and poured rain. It was furious and relentless. God added spectacular lightning just for emphasis. It must have rained two or three inches in an hour and a half. Then it was over, just like that. Evening came and we sat quietly watching life unfold in the grasslands. The golden came back, soaring overhead, mule deer and coyotes at dusk. Passed a very pleasant night by ourselves on the prairie.

Next day on to Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where on December 29, 1890, US Army troops under the command of James Forsyth massacred one hundred and fifty to three hundred Miniconjou and Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux Indians. Two hundred of the Indian causalities were women and children. About ninety Indian casualties were fighters armed with bows and arrows, clubs and tomahawks and led by Chief Spotted Elk. Forsyth commanded approximately five hundred army troops, armed with artillery pieces and repeating rifles. Land where this tragedy took place is in the Lakota Pine Ridge Native American Reservation.

There are lots of pieces to this tragic story. Google, it and draw your own conclusions. There is a memorial of sorts, a community graveyard that includes a mass grave where the victims of this terrible incident were hastily buried. It also includes more recent graves of other native Americans from Wounded Knee and the surrounding area, many of whom were veterans of the U.S. Army, many who had served in World War II and Vietnam. I found it remarkable that the relatives of ancestors massacred there would so willingly serve in the very army that had slaughtered their ancestors. Maybe young native Americans in 1920 living on the Pine Ridge Reservation with very little other options in their lives joined the Army to get out. I think the answer goes deeper. I think it has to do with a certain resilience, flexibility and pride these people have. I don’t know.  

That night we camped at the flying V, lodge/campground just north of Newcastle, WY. We took our first shower. Now that may come as a surprise to you but deal with it. We were delighted to meet Twyla, who with her husband, owns the lodge. Nobody else here. We got the grand tour. She told us that they primarily catered to elk, antelope and mule deer hunters and, much to our consternation, prairie dog hunters or more precisely groups of people who came out to what she called “prairie dogs shoots”. This is where, guys primarily but not always, using high-powered, scoped rifles to shoot prairie dogs from hundreds of yards away. The more you kill in a session, the greater esteem in which you are held by your comrades. The prairie dog is considered a pest species out here, a varmint if you will. They are successful and plentiful in this country. Who the hell wants a prairie dog city tearing up property. I sure hope some more advanced civilization doesn’t one day come to consider humans a pest species and pick us off one by one for fun. That wouldn’t be civilized now would it.

Thursday, June 29 on to Sundance Wyoming and Devils Tower, a magnificent volcanic extrusion from which surrounding sedimentary rock washed away and left this magnificent fluted, 875-foot monolith standing guard over the prairie. We spent a large part of that day driving around in the Black Hills National Forest looking for a camp site. Covered a lot of ground but just couldn’t find an easy place to pull off. But we saw hundreds of white tailed deer. Camped that night back on the main road at Bear Lodge in a very fine site with a couple of the folks. Hundreds of white tailed deer during the day.

The next morning on to Montana, where the men are strong, the women good looking and the children are all above average. We came to be in Broadus, MT. Hang on to the reins and dig in the spurs, a story comes next.

Sweet Dreams all you cowboys and cowgirls.

Buck and Slim on the move

A West Virginia Story

Finally, today, Monday, June 19 we got away from Stanton at 1030. We drove south on Interstate 81 to Lexington Virginia and turned west on Interstate 64. We are headed for a camp site in the vicinity of Gallipolis, OH for the night.

Flicka II Ready for Action

Close to Beckley, we passed the exit for Pax WV, the coal town where my mother was born in 1930 and lived with her sisters Janet, Louise, Edna Mae and Helen Jean and their brothers, Willie, Buck and Joe. They grew up in a shabby but quaint little house on the railroad tracks. Well, Helen Jean was actually not a sister. One of the other for real sisters who shall go unnamed was raped at a very young age by someone in the community. Helen Jean was the result. Family history is sketchy on this tragedy. Some have said that justice was done but not necessarily in the court systems. If there is a silver lining in a story like that it’s that Helen Jean was raised and loved all of her life as one of the sisters. And these sisters and brothers were loving people, each and every one.

One hundred and sixty-seven people live in Pax today, probably about the same as when my mother lived there. Her father and brothers, other male relatives and neighbors were hardscrabble coal miners or heavy equipment operators. Many drank hard in the off hours. Most smoked. Many ended up with emphysema and black lung disease. Some died in the mines. Many were disabled in mining accidents. A brother’s son lost a leg in the mines.

When my mother was thirteen or fourteen, the railroad took their house to expand their tracks. After that they lived in a series of trailers and other small homes. During this time, her father committed suicide leaving their mother, Cassie, and the children to fend for themselves. Joe, the youngest brother was killed one evening with a friend while crossing or sitting on the railroad tracks in an old Ford sedan. Details are scarce but I have heard more than one relative say alcohol was involved in that tragedy.

Many of the women in the village married miners. Some got out. First chance they got, my momma and her sister, Louise split for Staunton Virginia, where they got jobs as telephone switchboard operators. My mother met Kenneth, Louise met Melvin, and that was that.

My mother’s sister Janet, a saint on this planet, was married to Jim, a hard drinking, heavy smoking, equipment operator who worked for the mines in many capacities. In later life, he developed emphysema and black lung and spent much of his time under an oxygen tent. Not daunted by physician admonishment about smoking in an oxygen tent, one day he lit up, set himself on fire and, as they say, that was the end of
Jim.

Jim and Janet had four children, Scott, Greg, Donna and Eddie. Eddie, was born with spina bifida, a congenital condition in which the spinal cord fails to develop or close property. In Eddy’s case the lower spinal cord was open which required daily wound care to prevent infection. Most spina bifida babies are paralyzed as was Eddie, from the waist down. He was also hydrochepahic, a condition in which the deep structures in the brain accumulate fluid and cause the head to appear and in fact be enlarged. Eddie lived in a wheelchair for his twenty-six years.

In spite of his physical abnormalities and limitations, he was cheerful, smart and well-read for a ‘shut-in’ in those days in West Virginia coal field towns when home health services were meager at best. He was a loving soul with kind words for everybody, simply beside himself with joy when we showed up for a visit. He had quite a collection of 45rpms from the thirties and forties. It pretty much fell to Janet to take care of Eddie for his entire life. Being paralyzed from the waist down, among other maintenance health tasks, every day for his entire life she had to gently knead his stomach to facilitate bowel movements. Eddie died just about the time Jim went into his oxygen tent. So, Janet got to shift her caregiver skills from Eddie to Jim.

In my early years once every so often my father would clean up our 1957 Chevy Bel Air, load us in and away we would go on a ten-hour trek on Route 60 from Staunton through Lexington and over to Pax to visit the West Virginia clan. No interstate roads then.

During one of our visits Jim decided to pack us all into two cars and drive to Gallipolis, Ohio to attend an old timey, riverboat minstrel show. Gallipolis has a very fine city park right on the river. Imagine a sultry August night in 1962 on the banks of the Ohio River with hellgrammites and luna moths flying about. Hot dogs and hamburgers, French-fries soaked in vinegar, cotton candy, snow cones, cherry cokes and homemade ice cream. A magnificent paddlewheel steamboat docked on the banks, and after some necessary speechifying by local officials, a very fine theater company offers a minstrel show, complete with white folks in black face, singing gospel songs mixed with show tunes. It was marvelous, especially to a kid from Staunton, VA who had never seen such a thing as a paddlewheel steamboat. I will never forget than night and will be forever thankful to Jim for that evening. Rest in peace Jim.

So that’s why I wanted to revisit Gallipolis, Ohio.

But our first destination was a US Corps of Engineers lock and dam just outside of Belleville, West Virginia. A free camp site with bathrooms, just a few roaches, mostly dead, and a commanding view of the river and dam and lock through which barges are pushed and dragged by magnificent tug boats. Besides a few fishermen who left just after dark there was no one else there. It rained, we ate and hit the sack early. But not before watching a few barges and tugs negotiate the lock. The Ohio River lserves as a vital commerce artery for cities and towns along its course.

Mighty Ohio River, Belleville, WV USCOE Lock and Dam Barge Traffic

The next morning after coffee we hit out for Gallipolis for our visit. Not much has changed in Gallipolis. If anything, it seems smaller. Today about 3000 people live there and it’s seen better times. The park is still there and I’m told they still have occasional riverboats that come to offer shows, probably not white people doing blackface though.

There are a few notable people from the town, including a couple of professional football and baseball players, the usual mix of politicians, country music singers and artists. Two people of particular note in my view are Skip Battin, a musician and former member of the Byrds, the New Riders of the Purple Sage and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Now that’s something. Who among us has not listened to one of these groups. Raise your hand. If you haven’t, get a life.

The other is Bob Evans, noted restauranteur. You know those Bob Evans restaurants. To honor Mr. Evans Emily and I decided we should eat at one of his restaurants while in Gallipolis. That’s what we did. I had sausage gravy and biscuits. Emily her usual scrambled eggs and toast. After our meal as we were leaving two waitresses came bouncing out because they had seen our little trailer and were duly impressed. They demanded a tour which we delightedly gave them.

After that away we went, on Day 2 of our journey, across Ohio, through Chillicothe, around Dayton, staying well south of Indianapolis, onward through Champaign, Illinois and all the while, Mr. Evan’s biscuits and gravy were churning and turning and fermenting and fomenting a noisome concoction in my stomach. By the time we got to our next destination, a very nice public park in Gibson City Ill, I was running a fever, experiencing nausea and cramping and generally feeling lousy.

Gibson City, as we found many mid-American small towns do, runs a pretty cool operation when it comes to traveling campers. For ten bucks, you can stay in the small but pleasant city park. At dark the town shuts down so you pretty well have the park to yourself. The ten bucks includes access to very clean and pleasant bathrooms and a shower. That’s a good thing because I visited the bathrooms about a dozen times that night. I’m not sure I have even had food poisoning before, but I suspect I did that night thanks to Mr. Evans. No fan no more Mr. Evans. We shared the campsite that night with a thirty-something, tent camping, pleasant young lady riding a 500cc Kawasaki motorcycle from Florida to Portland, OR, by herself. 

The next morning, we ventured forth on Day 3, bound for the Mississippi River. We crossed over at Burlington into Iowa, passing great soy bean and corn fields growing in the black fluvial Mississippi flood plain soils. On to Fruitland, Iowa, population 173, where we camped on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River at an abandoned US Corps of Engineers recreation area near the Port Louisa NWR. No one else there. No facilities. Emily got to use her brand new Luggable Loo, or as we call it, the Lug-a-Loo. I’ll let you guess what that’s for. It rained in the evening, making for very gooey Mississippi mud. Watched two red-headed woodpeckers chase one another around a tree.

Day 4. Thursday, June 22. We drove to Muscatine passing river levees and more great corn and soy bean fields. Then crossed Iowa on secondary roads, avoiding Des Moines, generally on Route #92 to Council Bluffs, crossing the Missouri River at Blair, NE, then on to Scribner, NE, population 857 where we found the magnificent Dead Timber NE SRA just north on the Elkhorn River. The landscape changed considerably on the way across Iowa and into the Nebraska, getting more arid and open. The campsite and facilities were immaculate. One other camper. We ate and went to bed at dark. Later I got up to take care of business and was astonished to see literally tens of thousands of fireflies at work. The trees were lit up with them. Combined with the thousands of stars and the milky way on that clear night it was heavenly. God’s finest light show.

Dead Timber Nebraska State Recreation Area, Elkhorn River

Day 5. Friday, June 23. Drove across Nebraska on Route 91/92 through towns like Clarkson, population 650, Humphrey, population 750, Burwell, population 1,200, and Dunning, population 103, finally arriving at the Bessey Ranger District  in the Nebraska National Forest, near Halsey, NE, population 76. From the entrance station we drove about twelve miles on pretty rough road to the backcountry Natick campsite where we found five people and eight horses. Gained about one thousand feet elevation. A gem of a camp site. In high and dry country. Clean vault toilets. So, what is a vault toilet. Well, basically it’s a big concrete box in which one provides donations of natural waste products. I’ll leave that to your imagination. We grade the toilets we use crossing the country according to condition, odor, cleanliness, etc. This one gets an eight. We had good water from a shallow well with a hand pump and lots of poison ivy to avoid. Ponderosa pines and killdeers accented the landscape.

                                     Good Advice

We have now crossed the one hundredth meridian, that longitudinal line that splits North America roughly into two regions. To the east where average annual rainfall in above twenty inches and to the west where its below twenty inches, some places substantially below that. Life out here for plants and animals starts to become a matter of managing a scarce resource – water. To the east, generally folks can grow most crops without irrigation. To the west, to reliably grow hay and other crops, one must irrigate. This spot marks a transition for us to hot, sometimes very hot, days, and cool nights. More on western water resources later.

A sign in Cozad, NE, just to the south of Halsey marks the spot where the one hundredth meridian intersects the routes of the Oregon Trail, the Pony Express, the transcontinental railroad and the Lincoln Highway. We are getting into big time cow country. Most people out here, in one way or another, work or support agricultural enterprises.

In Natick, we met Sue and Mike who had hauled their two quarter horses, Rough and Tough up that long road from Omaha for a visit and some high-country trail riding. They have been coming here for years. Cheerful folk living cheerful lives. They love their horses.

Landscape, Natick Campground, Nebraska National Forest

So that’s a recap of our first five days. Another story coming soon.

Thanks for reading and adios.

Prelude

Hello friends.

Its Saturday, July 8. Emily and I are now into the twentieth day of a grand tour of western regions of America. We left Stanton on July 19.

Over the last few years we have been cruising about in our stout sea boat, Flicka, a 1979 thirty-two-foot Allied Seawind II ketch. We have had have marvelous adventures traveling down the intra-coastal waterway (ICW) and cruising the Chesapeake Bay and coastal waters from Virginia to Florida. For now, Flicka is taking a well-deserved break and is living on the hard.

This summer, we are doing a four month, land based adventure, heading west with no particular destination in mind other than to see our son, Henry in Bellingham, WA and our daughter, Sarah in Hamilton, MT.

We bought a thirteen-foot travel trailer for the trip. By trade name it is a ‘Little Guy’, made by NuCamp Industries in Ohio. We call it Flicka II. It weighs only 970 pounds empty, basically a bedroom on wheels. No air conditioning, no TV, no frills. It does have a galley with a DC powered cooler, a two-burner propane stove and a five-gallon water tank and sink. We can easily pull it with our Dodge Grand Caravan. There is no set up, we can pretty much pull into any Walmart parking lot for the night, always a personal bucket list item for me. Absent that luxury, we are headed for public lands; US Forest Service forest and grasslands, BLM lands (Bureau of Land Management), national parks and monuments, county and city parks, wildlife refuges and the little towns in-between. There are plenty of out of the way places to camp. You have to seek it out. Check out freecampsites.net for a look.

So, we are going to roam our way across this great land. America has fabulous cities, great architectural and natural wonders, and many interesting cultural and historic places, all worthy of a visit. But it’s also filled with everyday working people living out their lives in small towns.  Many have not traveled far from where they were born. Many have ‘come home’ after long absences.  Some have come to small towns seeking a less complicated way. Like the lady from Seattle who had moved to Roundup, Wyoming, population 2000, to simplify her life. Now she is that town’s chairwoman for organizing Fourth of July festivities and other annual events which, surprisingly enough, in this very small town, are many. Life is certainly ironic sometimes.

These places may not be as glamorous and exciting as the big cities and may not be your usual and customary travel destinations but they sure have their history. Its these places and folks that I’m most interested in, people with stories just like you and me. People like to tell you their stories. Just ask them.

Like the man I spoke with on our first night out. We had pulled into the US Corps of Engineers Belleville Dam and Lock on the Ohio River north of Point Pleasant, WV, not far from Gallipolis, OH, for the night. You will hear about Gallipolis later.

The Ohio River has a number of dams and associated locks that facilitate commercial maritime traffic on the river. We were the only people at Belleville beside an older gentleman sitting in his car watching barges come and go. In passing I asked him what he knew of the dam and lock system. He spoke about that a little and then said that he had noticed that we were from Virginia. He shared with me that he too was from Virginia, specifically from Lee County, down in the southwest part of the state. Then he paused for a moment, looked out toward the river then back at me and said that he had grown up in Lee County until his teen years and had never known his father. He said he had always regretted that. Then he wished us safe travels and walked away.

So, on this trip I’m going to do a lot of asking and listening.  I will blog to report on places we go, the people we meet and the stories they tell. And tell some of my own as well.

All of us lead interesting lives and have our own stories. I don’t presume to think that what we’re doing is any more interesting than what anyone else is doing. So, I’ll point you to my blog and you can visit it as you wish. The address is http://flickavoyages.blogspot.com/. I’ll make periodic entries in a rough chronologic order. I’m already behind. We left on June 19 so I’ll bundle a few days together for each entry.

On the blog site, you can enter your email address to get alerts to postings. If you do read my stories I hope you enjoy them. Don’t hesitate to tell your own. Comment as you wish.

Happy trails.

Steve

Florida Living

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

Disaster

December 1, 2015, 0345. Wind calm, variable NE

A waning gibbous moon hangs in the southern sky.

Flicka is safely tied to a dock at the Palm Coast Marina in Palm Coast, Florida, about fifty miles south of St. Augustine, Florida.

In this writing, I chronicle events of the last few days, at once horrifying, uplifting and inspiring. We have endured much physical and emotional pain but have also received at least as much kindness and encouragement from strangers. 

This story starts on November 28. The night before we were anchored near Fort Matanzas, built by the Spanish in 1742 to guard the southern approach to St. Augustine. We had come there by first running aground at the entrance to the Matanzas River where constant shoaling shifts the channel around. One has to ‘feel’ one’s way in and apparently we weren’t ‘feeling’ so well, because we ran right upon the sand bar.

Luckily the tide was slack and beginning to flood. So we simply had to wait. Maybe put out a kedge anchor to keep the strong current from pushing us further onto the sand bar. Not big deal. One more lesson in patience.

While we waited, a boat full of good Samaritans motored by and offered assistance, which we accepted because it was getting dark. After some jockeying around and tense moments transferring lines and getting set up, sure enough the Samaritans were able to pull Flick’s nose into the incoming current and the deep part of the channel. Lines got dropped and as the Samaritans drove away we heard them gleefully shout, “Welcome to Florida.”

Never even got their names.

We made our way to the anchorage in the dark, successfully this time, and spent a pleasant night in the river, not far from the fort. The next morning was sunny, pleasant. Temperature hovering around sixty-five degrees. A new flood tide was on.

After bacon, eggs and the usual two cups of strong coffee, we successfully negotiated the river entrance, joined other boats headed south on the ICW and motored merrily along, passing Pellicer Flats to the west, with a narrow strip of land between us and the mighty Atlantic to the east.

The water was calm and flat, no wind, current setting to the north. We could have been sitting in our living room at home.

I was at the helm and Emily decided to go below to get our fuel checker stick. As she made her way back from the forward cabin she somehow got tripped up and fell. On the way down she managed to hit the companion way ladder and then the cabin sole (floor). And she hit it hard.

I heard the agonizing crash and a much greater agonizing moan.

Panicked, I yelled, “Are you hurt, are you hurt?” The ensuing silence was even more unsettling.

Finally she managed to say, in obvious pain, “I think so”.

I wheeled the boat around into the current and quickly went forward to deploy the anchor.

Down the companion way I went to find my poor wife laying on the cabin sole in a most unnerving position, in obvious pain.

I gently palpated areas of her body only to elicit more groans. It was obvious that she was hurt bad and sitting her up or getting her into a settee was out of the question. So I used pillows to make her as comfortable as possible and returned to the cockpit.

We were anchored right in the middle of the channel which is not a good idea generally, but I had no choice. A few boats went by and I got stares of indifference and, I imagined, contempt at my audacity at having anchored in the channel.

Just then Good Samaritan number II came by headed south, under sail in a twenty-seven foot boat, two souls aboard.

“Are you OK?” John (as his named turned out to be) yelled as they went by.

“No”, I replied, “My wife has fallen and she is really hurt.”

John dropped sail, wheeled his boat around and slowly approached Flicka.

As he came abreast, he asked “How can I help?”

I’m crying as a write this, remembering Emily’s agony and the look of genuine concern on John’s face, the look on the face of this perfect stranger.

“Help me weigh anchor”, I said.

With not a moment’s hesitation he directed his companion, now at the helm, to approach Flicka and, at the right moment, gingerly boarded her and went to the bow to pull in the anchor chain while I drove forward. After he had the anchor aboard he came back to the cockpit and we talked briefly. He and his companion are from Tennessee. He bought their boat, which had previously been sunk, for fifty dollars, and now they were headed south to points unknown. He expressed his sympathy and, as his mate gently guided their boat abreast Flicka, took his leave, nimbly stepping back to his boat. They wished us well as they drove away.

I turned Flicka south and revved her up to 2000 rpms. Fortunately we were not too far from the Palm Coast Marina. I called ahead and explained our situation and a very nice lady said she would call the EMT people and get us set up for docking.

So away we went with poor Emily laying on the floor of the boat in great pain and me freaking out at the helm intent on not running aground or into any other boats.

We arrived at Palm Coast with EMT already there. Five crew members lead by a US Marine boarded Flicka, assessed her condition, made here as comfortable as possible and then loaded her on to a gurney. They had her off the boat in fifteen minutes. I had the good sense to stay the hell out of the way. These guys were fabulous. Cheerful, friendly, competent and very focused. Emily could not have been in better hands.

They started to load her into a squad transport vehicle and I, the basket case, stood there like a deer in the headlight, wondering what to do next.

That’s when Meg showed up. “Hello my name is Meg. “I’m taking you to the hospital. No protests please. I insist”, she said emphatically. Meg talked all the way to the hospital, telling me about her cruising life, the local taxi service, the best restaurants, the best physicians, why she and her husband decided to stay in Palm Coast. She told me the best short cut to take from the hospital back to the marina, naming all the back roads in order. She told me about her family and named other residents in the marina, affectionately known as the Palm Coast Geriatric Marine Preserve.

Meg was simply great. She delivered me at the ER entrance of Flagler Hospital just as the EMTs were off loading Emily.

It was not long before we were together again in an EX exam room. Two nurses and a nurse practitioner attended to her within minutes. The NP ordered an x-ray. Not long after that, in walked Dr. Russell, the on call orthopedic surgeon, to inform us that Emily had broken her hip, actually the neck of the upper long leg bone, the femur.

But he had a plan. Get Emily stabilized, manage the pain, do an MRI to get the best picture of the fracture and schedule surgery to fix it. Which is what he did. Within the hour she was admitted to the hospital and moved upstairs. Surgery scheduled for the next day, November 29.

Sure enough on that day at around 1300 OR staff showed up to take her to pre-op. Away we went. Dr. Russel installed three screws to stabilize the joint and fracture and afterwards reported that everything had gone  well.

November 30 was a whirlwind of  activity involving visits from occupational, respiratory physical therapy, Dr. Russel, the chief hospitalist, a case manager, a representative from a potential rehab center and, of course, the business office.

The very next day, December 1, 2015, Flagler discharged Emily to the care of another Florida hospital, this time to Florida Hospital Oceanside, in Ormond Beach, where she shall remain for anywhere from two to four weeks, undergoing physical therapy.

After that, well we will just see.

This was a pretty trying and of course totally unexpected experience for us. Just a few days before we were motoring along in ten foot swells in the Atlantic. If such an accident as this had happened to either one of us then it would have gone to a whole other level of serious.

But it happened on a dead calm day practically in site of a marina. Pretty lucky I’d say.

During it all, Emily was attended to by no less that fifty competent, dedicated, cheerful, empathetic and pleasant professionals.

We shall forever be grateful for their help in our time of need.