Natural Traveler Magazine

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of looking at things.”

Henry Miller © 2021 Natural Traveler LLC 5 Brewster Street Unit 2, No. 204 Glen Cove, New York 11542

Natural Traveler Magazine ÂŽ Autumn 2020 Editor & Publisher Tony Tedeschi Senior Editor Bill Scheller Staff Writers Ginny Craven Aglaia Davis Andrea England David E. Hubler Jay Jacobs Samantha Manuzza Buddy Mays John H. Ostdick Pedro Pereira Frank I. Sillay Kendric W. Taylor Photography Katie Cappeller Karen Dinan Buddy Mays Art Sharafina Teh Webmaster Will Rodriguez

Table of Contents

Editor’s Letter

Page 3

Contributors

Page 4

Fogg’s Horn: Remember, always yell, Hola!

Page 5

The Artist Anbreya and the Birth of a Novel

Tony Tedeschi

Page 7

No Cracker at the Middle East This Year

Pedro Pereira

Page 16

Images of Nicaragua

Buddy Mays

Page 20

A Failure to Communicate

Frank I. Sillay

Page 25

Uncle Walt’s Wallet

Bill Scheller

Page 27

Of Strings and Things

Jay Jacobs

Page 30

Sunsets Over Long Beach, Long Island

Karen Dinan

Page 33

Swimming with Rocky Marciano

David E. Hubler

Page 36

A Solitary Walker

Tony Tedeschi

Page 39

Alex and Lawrence -- Looking for Picasso

Kendric W. Taylor

Page 40

Your Friend Carl Is Doing it with Mirrors

Anthony Germaine

Page 51

Editor’s Letter ‘Used To’

By Bill Scheller If you grew up with a father like mine, you got used to “used to.”

“See that corner? Used to be a good cigar shop there. Over by the railroad station, use to be Bickford’s, good coffee. Where that crummy bar is, there used to be a place where I took your mother for ice cream after the movies. There was a men’s shop there, where the empty store is.

You went in, said you wanted to look at shirts, they used to lay six or seven out on the counter for you. ‘Here you are, sir.’ ” “Used to.” It came easy, when you spent your youth in a city that had already spent its youth, and its middle age. Paterson was on the skids, but it used to be a nice place.

These days, I live on the outskirts of a small town in Vermont, about as far from Paterson, New Jersey as you can get, But “used to” is still right outside my door. The woods out back used to be farmland, cut down to the soil and turned into pasture. I walk my dog Lily down to the end of the road, past a barn that will never see another cow, to a boarded-up house that used to be a summer retreat for an old lady and her grandchildren, and we head down a rutted dirt path that used to be a road to the next town. It’s lined with the remains of stone walls, that used to divide one 18th-century pasture from another.

So, I picked up the “used to” bug myself, even if it was second-hand — those stone walls aren’t part of my past, or my family’s. Of course, the whole world is “used to” territory, or there’d be no history. And, nowadays, we’re all mired in a collective and personal “used to.” We used to go to bars and restaurants, to the movies, or away for the weekend; or just to the hardware store without looking like we were about to rob a bank and without sidling away from anyone that came within six feet of us. If we were walking around Washington, D.C., like I used to when business called me there, we used to cut from one side of Capitol Hill to the other by walking through the

Capitol, stopping to look up at the inside of the Dome and at the statues beneath it — all without being stopped or questioned. We used to do a lot of things.

I admit I might be a special case. I used to have a girlfriend who called me “Miniver Cheevy,” after the character in the Edward Arlington Robinson poem who “sighed for what was not,” although I never went so far as Miniver, who “… cursed the commonplace And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; [and] missed the medieval grace Of iron clothing” I happen to like khaki suits, although I never used to own one. As for armor, I’ll gladly wait until the CDC makes it mandatory.

If I walk Lily in the other direction, we can access trails that lead out from what used to be an inn, but is now the Vermont campus of a Connecticut boys’ prep school. The school buses a dozen or so of the lads up here every so often, and they settle in for two weeks of rustication. I see them every so often, hitting the trails on cross-country skis or mountain bikes, and I recall the Duke of Wellington’s remark about the Battle of Waterloo having been won “on the playing fields of Eton.” I also think about how these boys have very little of the “used to” about them — those woodsy trails all lead to “someday,” a generally cheerier domain, when you’re sixteen, though lacking the sweet note of melancholy.

My father struck that note during the last months of his lucidity, when he took me to the lake where he spent boyhood summers with his aunt and uncle. He showed me where he had buried his dog nearly eighty years earlier, and told me about the things they used to do.

Contributors Follow the story of a 30-year journey to the publication of “Unfinished Business,” with Tony Tedeschi’s “The Artist Anbreya and the Birth of a Novel.”

(Page 7) One of the many subtexts of the pandemic year is all the live entertainment that did not take place. For Pedro Pereira it included the cancelation of his annual trip, with his good friend, Mike Boyd, to see their favorite band in “No Cracker at the Middle East This Year.” (Page 16) Since getting to Nicaragua any time soon is about as likely as one step on the moon, the next best thing is Buddy Mays’s “Images of Nicaragua.” (Page 20) Father-son relationships are often defined by complexities, as in Frank I. Sillay’s touching, “A Failure to Communicate.” (Page 25) Sometimes memories of the dearly departed come back vividly in some of the most mundane mementoes as in Bill Scheller’s “Uncle Walt’s Wallet.” (Page 27) Putting stringed instruments back together has a been a life’s work for Jay Jacobs, who has done so for a wide range of musicians from open-mikers to the celebrated. He writes about in “Of Strings and Things” and “How Do You Mend A Broken Neck.” (Page 30) Long Beach, Long Island is Karen Dinan’s recurring subject, her camera her paintbrush, her most recent canvases the stunning images in “Sunsets Over Long Beach, Long Island.” (Page 33) “Swimming with Rocky Marciano in the Mountains,” really? Well, yeah, kinda.

David E Hubler explains. (Page 36) Death and suffering are not the only prices paid during this pandemic.

Friendships have become casualties, as well. “A Solitary Walker,” by Tony Tedeschi. (Page 39) Kendric W. Taylor takes us back to his World War I era characters from last issue’s “Le Duc, Le Dauphin et Le Comte de Paris,” this time in “Alex and Lawrence -- Looking for Picasso” (Page 40).

Fogg’s Horn The Miscreant Meanderings Of Our Man Markus

Remember, always yell “Hola!”

I’ve always said that there are three Dominican Republics – Santo Domingo, the beach resorts, and the interior. I’ve spent time in all three, but it’s that last one where I had the ride of my life, and damn near got shot.

I was fresh from a tour of the Aurora cigar factory in Santiago, in the north central part of the D.R., and decided to head south into the hinterlands with a fresh box of coronas under my seat – the driver’s seat, that is, of a Jeep I’d rented a week before, in Santo Domingo. I first put up in a pleasant little town called Jarabacoa, a place where poor kids find golf balls in the weeds alongside a manicured country club, and smack them around with sticks . . . hopefully, thinks the traveler, on the way to the PGA tour.

I sat with a tumbler of rum, that first night in Jarabacoa, poring over a map that I hoped would show a way south that didn’t involve heading back up to Santiago and the main drag. What I found was a tortuous thread of road that snaked down to Constanza, a town in the mountains so untropical, I’d been told, that the farmers grow grapes and apples. There are billboards all over the D.R. advertising Constanza menthol cigarettes, so I figured it must be a cool, refreshing sort of place. After Constanza, though, the thread on the map

turned into a barely discernable broken line that skirted something called the Valle Nuevo Scientific Reserve, where 10,417-foot Pico Duarte, the highest peak in the Caribbean, rises from the forest. If that sketchy line was a road, I was going to drive it. It did, after all, appear to end at a paved highway . . . if it didn’t end in a ravine along the way.

Figuring that it wouldn’t hurt to ask around for advice before blithely ignoring it, I spent part of my day in Jarabacoa taking an informal poll of a carefully selected group consisting of whoever I met that spoke English, or at least understood English well enough to look at me and sadly shake their heads.

The first few folks I asked said that the road probably wasn’t passable at all. A priest at the Salesian seminary told me that a fourwheel-drive vehicle like mine might – might, he said – make it through. In a grocery, I found an American who reported that someone she knew knew someone who had done it on a motorbike.

Good enough, I decided. Before leaving the grocery, I bought a can of Maine sardines, a box of crackers, and a couple of bottles of water for the next day’s trip.

Just before setting off in the morning, I had a couple of leaky valves tightened on the Jeep tires, and told the mechanic where I was going.

“Vaya con Dios!” was all he said.

Getting to Constanza wasn’t too big a deal. It was a lousy road, but it was a road, and it passed through dusty villages where people carried machetes into farm fields and rode sturdy little horses. I even came across a bit of humor: on a cinder-block wall, someone had written “Ni el Malecón” – not the Malecón. The Malecón is Santo Domingo’s stylish seaside boulevard, and, no, this was not it.

After another tire repair, in the little city of the menthol cigarettes, I poked up a few dead ends before finding a road that climbed promisingly into unpaved oblivion. I figured that had to be the thread on the map, and it was. After a sharp elbow where I could look down into a now-tiny Constanza, farms lush with cabbages petered out and a scrubby forest took over.

Ten miles south, the road became so bad that I had to make sure my wheels rode the ridges dug into what had become a single lane of dried red mud. I hadn’t expected to see any further signs of civilization until I reached Hispaniola’s south coast – if, in fact, this goat path was going to get me there – but I remembered that I was going to pass through a scientific reserve, which would probably have some infrastructure. Sure enough, it did, in the form of a guardhouse, a gate, and a soldier. I asked him if this was the route to San José de Ocoa, a town maybe thirty miles south. “Si” was all he said.

Beyond the soldier and his gate, I entered an evergreen forest, where daisies and clover grew along the roadside.

Mountain peaks, including Pico Duarte, rose above fog-shrouded valleys. The temperature was in the fifties. This was a part of the Greater Antilles I’d never known existed.

I had climbed to level ground now, and had passed the concrete pyramid that marks the geographic center of the Dominican Republic. The road was still terrible, but I

was confident that I was going to make it through . . . until, just as I began a descent, I came up against a locked gate. It was cyclone fence material, and on each side were wooden posts and barbed wire. Unlike the scientific reserve entrance, this godforsaken spot had no guardhouse, no sign of life at all.

I could have done what would likely have been a sixteen-point-turn and made it back to Constanza before dark, but that idea had less than zero appeal. So I weighed my other options, and found there was really only one. I would put the Jeep into four wheel drive, nudge up against the fence, take my foot off the clutch, and bust through. If that didn’t work, I’d try it against the posts and barbed wire. Sorry, D.R. – the soldier at the reserve should have told me about this.

I’m not even going to send a check to cover the damage. So there.

Just then, though, whatever celestial imp has the job of keeping Fogg in one piece put an idea in my head: what did I have to lose by yelling “Hola!” once or twice? Of course there was no one around for miles, but why not?

“Hola! Hola!” I shouted, feeling like a dope and twitching my foot on the clutch.

But then, as I was going into my third “Hola!,” something else twitched. It was the dense vegetation on the right side of the road.

The bushes parted, and out came a teenage soldier with a Kalashnikov slung across his shoulder. He nonchalantly took a key from his pocket, and unlocked the gate.

“Cold up here,” I said in bad Spanish.

“Yes,” he said, smiling shyly. “Very cold.”

A mile or so down the road, I pulled over and ate my sardines and crackers, then fired up one of my Aurora coronas. Two hours later, I was at a resort in Barahona, on the south coast, telling my story to a Swedish guy at the poolside bar.

Remember, always yell “Hola!”

Unfinished Business . . . Charlie just kept babbling, “it’s only business.” That’s what he told me Stiles considered the entire affair, holding to a tough business position. “It’s only business.” This defense he felt would be accepted by anyone who bothered to consider what had been done there and why. In the final analysis, she was just a civilian casualty of the business wars. It happens . . .

Raymond Chandleresque “A complex thriller set in the cutthroat world of corporate maneuvering . . . Raymond Chandleresque . . . characterizations help to make Tedeschi’s thriller into an efficient, spirited romp . . . An enjoyably diverting mystery story.”

- Kirkus Reviews

“A provocative, insightful thriller. From a massacre in a Honduran Indian village to major corporate boardrooms where greed reigns, ‘Unfinished Business’ grips

Unfinished Business

Tony Tedeschi

Tony Tedeschi

you from the first page and doesn’t let go until the stunning conclusion. A provocative, insightful thriller.”

- Donald Bain Author of “Murder, She Wrote” books

company that launched the global communications revolution and “The Whitford Way,” about the nonstick coating company that has made the world run more smoothly. He has written for newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and abroad and is founding editor of the cultural quarterly, Natural Traveler Magazine.

Tony Tedeschi

Tony Tedeschi is author of “Live Via Satellite,” story of the

Unfinished Business She could only hope to put it all behind her, if the painting,

like that terrible day in her life, were relegated, emphatically, to her past.

The Artist Anbreya and the Birth of a Novel A Story 30 Years in the Making

By Tony Tedeschi

I’d sent an email informing her that I was acknowledging the influence of her paintings in the crafting of the female protagonist, Isabel Pineda, in my novel, “Unfinished Business.” I’d known the artist and her art, for almost 30 years, Sandra Hernandez at the time I’d met her, before her marriage to Donald Zimbelman. “Anbreya” is how she has always signed her paintings, a collage of the names of her three daughters: Ana, Brenda, Yadira. Although her home was in Mexico City at the time and mine on Long Island, we’d fashioned a long distance friendship, enabled by ever-improving ways to connect electronically. Despite the barriers of time and distance, we’ve had one of those special connections. It occurs when people share some inexplicable attachment, which becomes viscerally apparent as soon as fate vectors us together.

We’d met in Santo Domingo in 1992. I was doing research for the Dominican

Republic section I wrote for the Fodor’s Caribbean Guide. Sandra, fluent in English as well as Spanish, had a position as an auditor covering offices in Latin America for the U.S. Treasury Department. Our meeting was definitely one of those vector things. I’d finished my day’s assignments around 3 p.m., had gone back to my hotel, the Hispaniola, in the heart of the capital, and was having a beer at the bar serving the outdoor restaurant at the hotel’s swimming pool. It was just me and the bartender, no one at the restaurant or the pool area, until a woman, dressed in business attire, walked past and sat at one of the tables.

Given the between-meals hour, she was the only person in the restaurant. She’d brought some paperwork with her and was tending to it, when a man walked in and stood for a while, seemingly studying the landscape before him. After a few moments, he walked through the lacework of empty

table, I stood before the woman, her head down, still tending to her paperwork.

“You felt that,” she said with a lovely lilt of a Spanish accent. It was not phrased as a question. I was stunned. She raised her head and smiled. “Won’t you sit down?”

I never finished my beer.

‘I am a witch, you see’

The artist, Anbreya, in her studio in Mexico City, early ‘90s

tables and took a seat at one directly opposite the woman. I was sitting at right angles to the scene, sipping my beer, feigning disinterest, until the intensity of the man’s stare seemed a disquietingly aggressive act. Although the woman had her back to me, I couldn’t help but feel she must have been growing very uncomfortable with her situation. I found the scene very uncomfortable, but could think of nothing I could do to alleviate the tension. To inject myself into this scene appeared destined to end badly, from my personal perspective anyway. It would set up a rejection, which would leave me no place to hide, except having to slink back to the bar.

There would be no getting past the sheer emptiness of the landscape and an aggressivelooking stranger intruding on the space of a woman, with her back to me, not a posture given to making any outward sign that she wanted me in her life.

And then . . . I felt an electric buzz flicker through my body. Not jarringly, but definitely there. It seemed to compel me to act. I rose from my stool, leaving my halffilled bottle of beer on the bar, and walked toward her table, not so much as glancing at the man seated opposite her, whom I was sure was glaring at me. When I reached her

We had dinner together the two nights our assignments overlapped. Over dessert, the second night, she gave me a startlingly accurate picture of my life, read in the remaining strands of coffee that had crept down the sides of my cup, which she had overturned. It included the fact that my father had died earlier in the year.

“I am a witch, you see,” she said with a rivetingly beautiful smile. I have never doubted her, although, clearly some variation of benevolent witch.

We talked about our mutual interests in the arts. She spoke of the influences on her paintings of the great Mexican artists, as well as the surrealism of Salvador Dali. I spoke of my work as a freelance magazine writer and how often, once my articles had been submitted, I kept refashioning journal entries into plotlines for short stories and ideas for novels . . . And then, we returned to our separate worlds.

Through my work, I have met many people, interviewed many of them, many of them truly impressive individuals, some of those providing indelible memories. Few, however, create a connection. I knew from the outset that Sandra was one of those who did. The inexplicable electricity, which had brought us together, lingered on within the conjured plotlines I scribbled in my journals.

The only other time I saw Sandra was a few years after our meeting in Santo Domingo. I was headed for an assignment in Mexico City and she convinced me to stay with her and her three beautiful daughters at their apartment near the Zona Rosa in the

heart of the city. This time, I got to see some of her art. She had just completed a Daliesque painting, her interpretation of a failing romance. I’d been an admirer of Dali’s work for some time. His painting “The Persistence of Memory,” with its liquid clocks, is one of my particular favorites. Each time I’d seen it, whether at the Museum of Modern Art in New York or pictures of it in magazines, I’ve felt I was seeing something I’d not seen the previous times.

Now, I was having a similar experience with Sandra’s recently completed painting: a man’s face fading into the dark blue of a sky turning to night; a candelabra rising off a table with only the center candle lit, one of the other two having recently been extinguished, a whisper of smoke rising to the man’s face, which stared blankly toward the viewer; a piano on a beach, its legs lapped by a churning ocean, its keys spilling off into the water at the edge of the sand. All of it posing questions. Other elements in other paintings raised other questions, taking me down divergent paths the more I studied them.

There were mysteries, some more apparent through varying levels of transparency, others thickening to opacity where their hidden meanings were only in the eye of the beholder.

A lasting impact The experience would stay with me.

Eventually, it would inform the character of Isabel Pineda, the female protagonist in “Unfinished Business.” Through her paintings and the mysteries Pineda paints into them, she attempts to deal with the world with which she must cope. As her character evolved for me, it all but pleaded for someone who is drawn to examining and reexamining her art whenever he is around it.

As Pineda observes the intense interest George Caldwell displays toward her work, she begins to understand that there may finally be a sense of liberation for her through someone who sees who she truly is.

Years would pass with no contact between Sandra and me. Then something would trigger a need to connect; sometimes on my end, sometimes on hers. We’d exchange emails, occasionally talk on the phone. The persistence of memory, for me, somehow managed to linger.

By the late ‘90s, I had gotten deeply into business writing and my experience with companies large and small began to intersect with my years writing about my travels. It was time spent working in public relations for major corporations, writing business plans for clients at marketing communications agencies, alternating with travels to Honduras and Costa Rica, with their valuable hardwoods being harvested in once-protected areas; magazine and newspaper articles about the British Virgin Islands, where some of the most beautiful sailing waters in the world splashed against the coastlines opposite offshore banking companies.

From the scribbled notes in my journals, the memories of people I’d met or observed in these disparate settings had begun crossing the borders of the real to become characters who were taking on lives of their own in a plot they were creating, as if I were simply reporting on it. By 2000, I had what I considered a completed manuscript.

Although I worked with a literary agent at the time, she managed just ghostwriting assignments for me. I was a 59-year-old

Sandra at her home in San Antonio, Texas, 2020

journeyman writer with little if any future as a novelist.

Patience has never been one of my virtues. As a kid, I glued decals on model airplanes before the paint on their wings and fuselage had fully dried. Unwilling to wait for the ink to dry on my manuscript, I selfpublished “Unfinished Business.” I convinced a half-dozen book clubs to make it their monthly selection and attended the discussions about the book each time. Most were encouraging, but there was still no viable way to turn the positive reactions of a handful of local book clubs into something to peddle to publishers, especially without the support of an agent. I’d sent a signed copy to Sandra, but a few early exchanges with her faded like the extinguished candle in her painting.

Over the subsequent years, I’d turn to the digital version of my manuscript and play with the characters; some there already, some

new; adding subplots, eliminating others.

Typical of my work ethic is an almost obsessive need to make corrections, additions, keep improving. Late in this period, I’d met Lara Asher, a fine editor, who agreed to work with me on a revision.

I’d felt the refinements I’d made over the years would make for just some polishing on Lara’s part. During two rounds of her work with the manuscript, her edits were far more extensive and involved months of rewriting.

The result was a vastly improved manuscript.

I finally had the version I have always wanted, what I now considered the finished work.

So much had gone on over so many years, the origins of the book had become blurred. As I prepared a page of acknowledgements, I sent a message to Sandra acknowledging how her paintings had provided inspiration.

“Wow what an honor!” she answered.

“To be included in the acknowledgements.

Thank you, Tony. So happy for ‘Unfinished Business.’ It is an awesome novel. I wish you all the success in the world. Even though I have one copy, for sure I will buy another.

You made my day by sharing such great news.”

It was only then that I was reminded I had sent her a copy of the original, selfpublished version of the book, years before.

I began typing my reply: “At the start of this whole writing process, I just could not draw myself away from your art and how it fit with the world I was living at the time. It began to evolve as the representation for what my characters needed to come to grips with.

It can truly be said that without your art, this book would not have happened. And, I love that such is the case.”

She followed up with: “This is how I imagined Isabel.” Attached was a photo of her painting of Isabel Pineda. It was a surrealistic portrait of a woman, unraveling as if she were a spool of ribbon. Sandra had

painted it when I sent her the earlier version of the book.

I sat stunned, staring at the image on my computer. Finally, I mustered, “I love your depiction of Isabel.”

She replied, “If you have a place for Isabel, she is yours.”

I remained frozen to the spot, staring at the one-line message.

No matter what level of success I would ever achieve with the publication of the book, it would never overmatch the connection I was feeling for the lovely woman, the gifted artist, who had this shared experience with me.

I had been struggling with concepts for the cover, along with the book’s graphic designer, Jan Guarino, a gifted watercolor artist in her own right. When I sent Jan a jpg of the painting, all other considerations fell away. It was without question the cover art we had been struggling to find, as if it had been waiting in storage all these years for the appropriate timing to make its debut.

His name is Cesár A few days later, Sandra sent me a photo of her with Cesár, the tiny owl I’d met at her apartment in Mexico City.

“His name was Cesár.”

Caldwell, who had barely had time to study the painting beyond its basic components, turned abruptly.

“Th-the owl?”

The first words exchanged between Pineda and Caldwell in “Unfinished Business.” But, of course, why wouldn’t that be.

The book received a wonderful review from Kirkus Reviews, a leading publishing trade magazine.

“A complex thriller set in the cutthroat world of corporate maneuvering . . .

Raymond Chandleresque . . . characterizations help to make Tedeschi’s thriller into an efficient, spirited romp . . . An enjoyably diverting mystery story.”

It was published by Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing in paperback and digital formats and went up for sale on Amazon in mid-December 2020.

These days, as I stare at the beautifully framed painting of Isabel Pineda on the living room wall in our home, I think often about sitting at a bar in the outdoor restaurant at the Hotel Hispaniola in Santo Domingo, almost 30 years ago, when a woman, dressed in business attire, walks past and sits at one of the tables. That beautiful woman walking into my life . . .

The Art of Anbreya

Pandemic Blues: No Cracker at the Middle East This Year Maybe we’ll play a Cracker tune and catch up on times old and recent.

Story and Photos by Pedro Pereira

Each January around the 15 of the month, th

my friend Mike Boyd and I meet in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to go see one of our favorite bands, Cracker. The annual pilgrimage to the storied city that Harvard University calls home has become a tradition for us. Mike drives down from Northern Massachusetts and I drive up from the South

Shore. We park our cars in the same garage on Green Street, meet at the Middle East bar, and decide where to eat.

This year, there was no show. Cracker, like virtually every other band on the planet, is not touring because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So no annual pilgrimage to Cambridge. Sadly, the fate of the venue

where the band plays, The Middle East Downstairs, is uncertain. A year ago, the owner put up a “for sale” sign for the Middle East nightclub complex, which includes the venue and two restaurants. Then came the pandemic and the place shut its doors indefinitely.

Mike and I have seen some brilliant Cracker performances at the Middle East over the past decade. During our pre-concert dinners, we typically review the previous year’s performance and wonder how the night’s show will measure up. Truth be told, even if the set list is missing some favorite songs, Cracker always delivers. Cracker is a quintessential live band.

Frontman/main songwriter David Lowery isn’t flashy, but consistently delivers an energetic, passionate performance that shows a deep commitment to the music and the audience. He’s one of the hardestworking, most intelligent lead singer/songwriters in rock. He also isn’t afraid to call out a misbehaving audience member.

Once at a festival in Western Massachusetts, he “punished” the audience for throwing water bottles at the band (it was a thing for a while in the 1990s for some reason) by launching into a polka. Of course, the polka was then a staple of the band’s set lists but a casual festival audience (as opposed to dedicated fans) would not know that. gold-colored Stratocaster

1998 album “Gentleman’s Blues,” starts with this gem of a lyric: “The devil will send demons to fly around your wedding day.” He also wrote the countrified track “Mr. Wrong” from the band’s 1992 debut eponymous album, with the chorus:

Lead guitarist Johnny Hickman is more of a showman. He plays his gold-colored Stratocaster with effortless skill, easily alternating between sweet melodic lines that give you chills and big, gritty rock riffs that can make your teeth rattle. He is a versatile, smart guitarist who knows when to let it rip and when to hold back. He performs with gusto, punctuating his performances with his trademark grin.

Hickman is also a gifted lyricist, having written some of the band’s funniest songs.

“Wedding Day,” a murder ballad from the

Lowery’s lyrics are often observational, full of images, colors, smells and tastes.

Sometimes they are angry tirades, as in the opening track of 1996’s “The Golden Age.” The name of the song says it all: “I hate my generation.” And sometimes, he’s intentionally silly. After all, this is the man who wrote the line, “There’s not a line that goes here that rhymes with anything,” on the song “Take the Skinheads Bowling.”

“Skinheads” is a track from the debut album of Lowery’s pre-Cracker band,

Well, no, I'd rather not go and meet your family They’d probably send me back where I belong Don't want to hear about your Mr. Right ‘Cause he’s out of town tonight Baby, come and spend some time with Mr. Wrong For his part, Lowery is a study in songwriting contrasts. He delivers deadpan wise-ass lines in one verse and gentle poetry in the next. “Dr. Bernice” from the debut album is a good example. It starts with, “Baby, don’t you drive around with Dr. Bernice/She’s not a lady doctor at all.” Later in the song, he delivers imagery-packed stanzas like this one:

Though the wind may whisper a melody now We can’t find a tune of our own Though the world may whisper and blow in your face And tangle the hair on your head

A Growing Catalogue

The author and Mike hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire

Camper Van Beethoven, “Telephone Free Landslide Victory.” Camper has had a cult following since it was formed in the mid 1980s and it became a college radio darling.

The band was a pioneer in what came to be known as alternative rock. Camper usually opens the Middle East Cracker shows, which means Lowery does double duty fronting both bands.

With Lowery, you either get it or you don’t. More layers are stacked underneath the surface of the lyrics than a casual listener will notice. The song “Guarded by Monkeys,” from 2002’s “Forever,” is a veritable nerd-fest with some near indecipherable references to monkey statues in Bali, PGP keys and 51 daylights. In the end, it’s really just a love song in which the protagonist sings the praises of the object of his affection: “You are so beautiful/You should be guarded by monkeys.”

Mike may not remember this, but he actually gave me my first Cracker CD, the debut album, in 1994. I had casually followed the band but hadn’t yet bought a CD. However, I clearly remember the first time I heard “Teen Angst,” the band’s first hit, and its memorable line, “What the world needs now is a new folk singer like a hole in my head.” I was a reporter at the time and was driving on Route 3 North to the newsroom in Quincy, Massachusetts, when the song came on the radio and blew me away. It was brash with a killer hook and didn’t sound like anything else on the radio then.

The first time Mike and I saw Cracker was at Jones Beach Theater on Long Island.

I had recently moved there and Mike, who had been my housemate in Milton, Massachusetts, came down to visit. Cracker opened the show and was followed by the Gin Blossoms and the headliner, Spin Doctors. Though billed as the opening act, Cracker stole the show.

That first show has become a favorite memory. After two-and-a-half decades of friendship, Mike and I have built an extensive catalogue of memories we like to recount, laugh about and exaggerate when we get together. Some are Cracker-related: 1. There was the time I almost got into a scuffle with a big gorilla disguised as a Cracker fan for trying to edge me out of my spot in front of the stage.

2. Another time, Mike got us both cans of beer at the bar. When handing one to me, he let go before I had a firm grip on the can. He ended up wearing most of that beer down his pants.

3. Two years ago, Mike and I were having our usual pre-show catch-up at the Middle East bar and trying to decide where to eat when Johnny Hickman, the guitarist, walked up.

We struck up a conversation, Johnny shared some funny road stories.

Over the years, of course, these stories become somewhat embellished. The big gorilla was probably not that much bigger than me. And in our memory, Johnny talked to us a for a long time, but it was probably just a few minutes. Incidentally, it wasn’t the first time I had talked to the Cracker guitarist.

He had graciously posed for a selfie with me a couple of years earlier, and I had once briefly talked to him at a show in New York.

He’s accessible, personable and a hell of a storyteller.

Of course, the catalogue of memories of my friendship with Mike transcends Cracker.

We are former housemates after all. Our catalogue is varied and often humorous.

There was the time Mike and I were at the House of Blues in Cambridge (it’s not there anymore) and I asked him if he liked my shirt. He wasn’t enthusiastic: “Eh, it’s OK.” Then, out of nowhere, a female voice behind us says, “Oh, like he’s Mr. Fashion.” What moved the young lady to get involved is a mystery, but we still laugh about it.

Many years later, we were sitting at a bar (hmmm, there’s a pattern here) and he was telling me his latest tale of woe involving a woman. At one point, I asked the barmaid for a pen, and started writing on a napkin.

“What are you doing?” he asked. I told him we were going to write a song. Later, in my basement, we pulled out guitars, started playing some chords, and finished writing the lyrics that would become our only co-written

tune to date, “The Real You,” which starts with this grammatically challenged verse:

You say we have nothing in common Baby, I don’t think that’s true We both have bad taste in lovers And now there’s no hope for me and you Yet another time, humor – and its very essence – caused what would become one of the great controversies of our friendship.

Mike mentioned his friend Gary’s sense of humor, claiming he was “really the only naturally funny person I know.” I took umbrage. “But, I’m funny too.” Mike’s retort: “Well, yes, to me.” At which point the conversation spiraled into an absurd discussion over this fundamental question for the ages: If you’re funny to someone, are you funny to everyone else? We haven’t resolved this yet. But you bet it will come up again.

Sadly, it won’t be at our annual pilgrimage to Cambridge to see Cracker. I’m sure Mike and I will catch up soon enough.

Probably in the spring. We might break out the guitars, and we might not. Maybe we’ll play a Cracker tune and catch up on times old and recent. And surely we will add another memory to the catalogue: The year when we didn’t see Cracker at the Middle East because of the pandemic.

Crashing waves at sunset, Long Beach, New York Photo by Karen Dinan

Images of Nicaragua Story & Photos by Buddy Mays

Sandwiched in the geographical abdomen of Central America between Honduras and Costa Rica, the little republic of Nicaragua has never been an easy place to love. It has been bloodied and brutalized by a long and ugly history of constant internal conflicts; dictatorial leadership by corrupt and often murderous autocrats; and relentless American intervention, both covert and blatant, in its political and economic affairs.

Consequently, it has been overlooked for decades by tourists and the monetary blessings they bring with them. Even though its economy is stable and growing, the consequence of that financial deprivation is that Nicaragua is one of the poorest, and least developed, nations in the Americas.

That is the bad news. The good news is that despite its decades of trials, tribulations, and Yankee meddling, Nicaragua has somehow managed to keep both its coast-tocoast natural beauty and its cultural integrity intact. About the size of New York State, the country’s landscape is extraordinarily diverse.

Pacific beaches — 200 of them — are wide, clean and seldom occupied. Slightly inland, a chain of 23 volcanoes -- 19 of them active — spans the country north to south. Nicaragua’s interior, known as “Tierra Alta” (The Highlands), is mountainous and fertile, and home to thousands of small farms and ranchos, which grow everything from coffee to cacao to sugarcane, or raise cattle. On the sparsely settled and less developed Caribbean side, the tropical lowlands are blanketed by the second largest rainforest in the Americas (only the Amazon region is larger).

The city of Managua, Nicaragua’s capital, is ultra-urban and overcrowded, and was recently the scene of violent and deadly clashes between the authoritarian government of President Daniel Ortega and citizen protesters demanding change. Like any large city in Latin America, there are bad actors who will steal the shoes off your feet if given the chance. Much more attractive are smaller burgs such as Granada, Leon, and Esteli, colonial era towns filled with cathedrals, museums, outdoor markets and malecóns, aka waterfront esplanades.

Nicaraguans are sociable, gracious, and exceedingly friendly people and visitors are well-liked and treated with respect. Best of all, prices for food, transportation and accommodations, are way more than reasonable. The top-rated hotel in Granada, for example, the Hotel Plaza Colon, is less than $100 per night, breakfast included.

A Note About COVID-19 The virus has taken a toll on Nicaragua, of course, but with just over 6,000 cases reported as of January 2021 and 165 deaths, it is far lower than anywhere else in Central America. For the present, the Centers for Disease Control has classified travel there as inadvisable, but with the number of new Coronavirus cases down to about four per day, that advisement may soon be changed.

Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral, the main cathedral in Granada is the city’s most prominent landmark. Originally built in 1583, it has been destroyed many times during the last several centuries. This latest version is from 1915.

Two guitar-playing musicians wander the Malecรณn, or lakeside walkway, on Lake Managua in the capital city of Managua, serenading tourists and local vendors with traditional Nicaraguan folk music. The songs are often a combination of works from indigenous tribes, European folk music, and from songs that slaves once sang on local plantations.

A young girl from a village in the Nicaraguan highlands with a container of indigenous ceramic artifacts, some of them real, some fake, which she sells to visiting tourists. She is standing near an active volcanic fumarole, one of dozens that surround her village.

Canvario Church in the Colonial city of Leon, built around 1810, is one of Nicaragua’s most unusual churches because of its architecture. The facade of the building is a combination of neoclassical and baroque styles and is unlike any other church in Central America.

This colorful, hand-made utilitarian pottery is sold by the artisan from her one-room shop in the small mountain village of San Juan de Oriente. Pottery San Juan is known and prized by collectors from all over the world.

An elderly caretaker sweeps out the inside of a small Catholic church in Grenada after mass. Seventy-three percent of Nicaragua’s population is Catholic, a religion that arrived in the country in the 1500s.

A Failure to communicate

By Frank I. Sillay

“When you think about Daddy,” my sister asked, “do you feel angry?”

I didn’t have to think about it, just replied, “Not angry, I feel sad.”

Dramatis Personae: Myself - nearly 80 years old. A stalwart Adonis.

My Sister - six years older than myself. Has the gift of seeing drama where little exists.

Our Father - Dead now for nearly 50 years, at age 75. A hard-working, straitlaced man whose life was mainly devoted to providing for his wife and children. Enjoyed fishing and the Grand Ole Opry.

I knew immediately the occasion she had in mind. There inevitably comes a time when a son rebels and faces up to his father.

In my case, I guess I must have been about fifteen years old, and the whole family were present in my bedroom at the showdown. I have long since forgotten the point of contention, but this was the last occasion on which my father offered corporal punishment to me, and the first occasion when I resisted.

It came to a stalemate, with my mother and sister going off like Catherine wheels, and the only damage done was a hole in the sheet rock of my bedroom wall. I had thrown an

alarm clock at my father. That hole was there for years.

Ironically, corporal punishment (which was commonplace in American families in the 1940s and ‘50s) was almost always administered by our mother. I can only remember a couple of occasions when my father played the part of Old Testament God. This was partly (possibly mostly) because Daddy was seldom home when we kids were little. His work as an equipment installer and troubleshooter for Western Electric (telephone exchanges) took him all over the United States for extended periods, especially during and after the war. I’m guessing here, but I suspect he may also have felt a distaste for the generally accepted practice of thrashing children. Having grown up as the second of ten children in a family where his elder sister, on one occasion, described their father as “the meanest man that ever lived,” it’s not hard to imagine a scenario that might give rise to such distaste.

My relationship with my father was never ideal. As the oldest boy in a large farm family, he was pulled out of school after the seventh grade and put to work. Several of his younger brothers received tertiary education, but his intellect and personality suited him for a life of study and problem-solving, which he was never able to enjoy. He always had a disproportionate respect for people with formal education and was determined that

his children should have the advantages that he had missed.

His personality was quiet and reserved – not without humor, but not outgoing, and never to be mistaken for the life of the party.

The love of his life, my mother, came from a strict temperance background, so he was happy to fall in with that lifestyle, especially as his father may have been a problematic drinker, and a couple of his younger brothers certainly were.

Imagine his chagrin when the reproductive lottery gave him a son who excelled at academic pursuits without effort, and regarded those achievements as having little value, preferring to seek notoriety as a tearaway and hell-raiser who managed to get kicked out of two high schools despite A grades. If ever two people were destined to talk past each other while not connecting, it was us. Just like in the Paul Newman movie Cool Hand Luke: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

Who was at fault? I was, he was, the innate perversity of circumstances was. The random fall of the cards played a part. I liked to see myself as being like the Luke character in the movie, Daddy just wanted an orderly, peaceful life leading to a success from me that he could be proud of. “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

In the basement of our house was a rectangular wooden cabinet about four feet long, with a single backlit dial and a couple of knobs. Along with it was a thing that resembled a cast iron tennis racket stood upright. I noticed that the latter item had a large horseshoe magnet attached to it and decided that my need for a horseshoe magnet was greater than any competing demand, so I pulled it to bits. While I was at it, I took the vacuum tubes out of the cabinet to experiment with how they worked.

When I was finished, the dump became the final resting place of what I realized, many years later, was a pristine example of

the first commercial radio receiver manufactured in the United States, in 1922.

This was just one example of my youthful idiocy leading to the destruction of things my father cherished. I acted in ignorance, not malice, but the result was the same.

When I look back across all those years, I am amazed by the forbearance exercised by my father. There was always a distance between us, but I was occasionally aware of him trying to reach across the gap.

In the 1970s, my parents visited us in New Zealand, while we were living in the house that I described in “A Christmas Ghost Story” in last winter’s issue of Natural Traveler Magazine. During that visit, I was building a new kitchen on the house, and this involved making a number of odd-sized double-hung sash windows. One evening, my father came out to hang around in the workshop where I was glazing the window sashes, to watch and engage in desultory conversation. By this time, I had learned that the secret of successfully manipulating linseed oil putty is to make sure that the putty is fresh and warmed up to body heat by kneading it in your hands. As the job proceeded, Daddy observed “Boy, you sure know how to glaze windows!”

This stands out in my memory as the highest praise I ever received from my father.

Within another four or five years, he was dead.

The last time I visited my parents, my father was occasionally drifting into the early stages of dementia.

Several years ago, I learned that the prefrontal cortex, the part of the human brain that plays a major role in personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behaviour does not reach full functionality in males until about age 25. The inescapable conclusion: on only a handful of my interactions with my father were both of us equipped with a fully functioning brain.

Uncle Walt’s Wallet . . . is a handsome piece of goods. “Real Alligator,” it says in small gold letters on the inside.

By Bill Scheller

What remains of my Uncle Walt lies in a columbarium at that big amusement park of a cemetery, Forest Lawn, in Los Angeles. Or that’s what I thought, until I discovered his wallet.

Walter Kechersen was my uncle by marriage. He was married to my father’s older sister, my Aunt Doris. When I was a boy I knew of them only as a mythical couple in a distant golden land; my contact was only through letters from Aunt Doris, written in green fountain pen ink and the immaculate longhand of public schooling in the 1920s, and in Christmas presents that came by mail from Bulloch’s in Los Angeles. They lived in Burbank, which I knew was where my other Uncle Walt – every boy and girl’s Uncle Walt -- ran his studio. Donald Duck lived in Burbank.

Aunt Doris and Uncle Walt had moved to California before I was born. Doris was the one in the family who had to get out of New Jersey, to get away from the mill whistles of Paterson, to put some distance between herself and a mother who didn’t use green ink and a father who sometimes drank too much . . . distance between her and a Depression girlhood in houses heated only by kitchen coal stoves. I don’t know where she met Walt, who I suspect grew up at a respectable remove from Paterson. After they were married they set up housekeeping at a seemly distance from the old city, in a cottage alongside a suburban lake. I have a wooden-bound guest book that they kept during their first year there. (Among its entries was a squib from my father, on leave after basic training and before heading off to combat in Europe.) That cottage, and its

talismanic guest book, were no doubt at the source of the family’s mixed feelings about Doris and Walt, their sometime suspicion that Doris, at least, was getting a little uppity.

My grandmother never kept a guest book.

Who was going to write in it? The coal man?

Burbank was the couple’s next stop. It was from Burbank that those green-ink letters came, sometimes with a photo of Noel, their beautiful collie dog. It was Bulloch’s stylish department store that sold Auntie, as Doris called herself, my Christmas and birthday presents. But only twice, when I was a boy, did a Lockheed Super-Constellation deliver Doris and Walt themselves to what was still called Idlewild. Nothing except getting on a plane myself could have matched the excitement of seeing an airport at night, and of finally meeting the mythical couple.

They never had children, which was why I came into possession of the guest book, a few of Auntie’s papers, and Uncle Walt’s wallet.

Walt’s cigarettes caught up with him in 1964; he was only in his mid-fifties when he died of lung cancer. By the time Doris died, at the age of ninety-seven in 2015, no one of her siblings was left except for her 103-year-old sister, my Aunt Grace, who was doing pretty

well but was not to be bothered with such minor family inheritances as the one that came my way, in a package put together by the one surviving friend who visited Doris at her nursing home. From Auntie to Billy, one last gift.

Uncle Walt’s wallet is a handsome piece of goods. “Real Alligator,” it says in small gold letters on the inside, and I imagine Doris got it for him at Bulloch’s. Alligator wears well, but it’s in such good shape that he can’t have had it all that long before he died – just long enough to fill it with the basics, and a few personal odds and ends. It was not the stuffed wallet of a pack rat, and it predated credit cards.

History tucked away Here’s his California driver’s license – five-six, 145; he was a little guy. Tucked behind it is a card stating that his employer has enrolled him in a hospital insurance plan.

“Communication with the employer will determine if the certificate is in force and the nature of the benefits,” it says. And who was that employer? It says right here, on the official identification card they issued. Uncle Walt was an engineer with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Colorado River Aqueduct. That means he was part of William Mulholland’s great creation, the network of dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts that made Los Angeles a metropolis. Like Mulholland, he was a selftaught engineer; I’ve never heard anything about his having gone to college or technical school. Of course, any mention of southern California’s water infrastructure brings to mind the movie “Chinatown,” but there were never any Jack Nicholson or John Huston characters in Walter Kechersen’s life. No one famous or infamous ever signed one of Aunt Doris’s guest books.

Next to the official ID is another card, suggesting the possibility of cinematic dramas that never took place, at least in Walt’s time

with the water district. “Civil Defense Emergency Pass,” it reads at the top, and below his address and vital statistics it states that Walt was “authorized to pass police blockades to perform his Civil Service duties.” I look at the card and picture my uncle hastening towards some imperiled section of the aqueduct, possibly after a major earthquake, and impatiently flashing his pass at a grim policeman. Did he ever have the same daydream? And what would he have done to save the aqueduct?

As was usual back before people kept pictures on their phones, Uncle Walt’s wallet has a removable photo booklet. But there aren’t any photos sandwiched into the clear plastic leaves; just an assortment of clippings from that other mid-century artifact, the newspaper page that carried quotes and sayings and snippets of moral uplift. Oscar Wilde appears, under the heading “Value,” opining that “The cynic is the one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” The lesser known F. W. Robertson suggests that “Life, like war, is a series of mistakes,” and ends by declaring that we should “organize victory out of mistakes.” And then another big name – Ralph Waldo Emerson, in a rapture over stars – “. . . every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their astonishing smiles.”

And, in honor of Noel the collie, Mary Carolyn Davies’ verse, “A Good Dog Never Dies.” Noel, who had shuffled off his mortal

coil by the time Walt left behind the wallet, appears in the only two photos that it does contain, both tucked into a side pocket. In one he sits next to Doris, on the steps of what was probably the lakeside cottage; it must be New Jersey, because she is wearing a winter coat. In the other, Walt and Doris pose in front of a palm tree, flanking Noel. On the back, in green ink, it says “Miami, Florida, Sept. 1946.”

That’s all – or that’s what I thought, looking through the wallet, until I came to a little paper packet in a corner of the billfold

section. I opened it carefully, and found a tuft of dog fur, collie-colored.

There was one more thing in the package from Aunt Doris’s friend, the largest thing. It was a metal canister labeled with the address of a Burbank veterinarian, a date sixty years past, and my aunt and uncle’s own address. The label also said “Noel, collie.”

My wife Kay and I set Noel free in our meadow, where the ashes of two other good dogs, who also never died, leavens the Vermont earth. Uncle Walt’s wallet, real alligator, ready to flash at that earthquake cop, lies on my desk.

Of Strings and Things Luthiery as a career has grown by leaps and bounds.

By Jay Jacobs

This time last year, I was pondering retirement in mid 2021 as a luthier at Sam Ash Musical Instruments in Carle Place on Long Island, where I’d worked for 24 years.

The alternative was work another year and accumulate enough funds for the home improvement projects for my house in upstate New York. Fate had other plans. Like everyone else, at the guitar/string instrument repair shop at Sam Ash, we were discussing what we’d heard about the coronavirus, which had originated in Wuhan, China and was spreading around the world.

As is always the case amid a crisis, life goes on and work had piled up, so I continued my daily routine of waking at 6 a.m., and opening up by 7. Judging by the reports that the virus would have a profound impact on businesses and social gatherings, time seemed of the essence. As I plowed through my workload, the crisis deepened and our shop-talk became more grim. There was a sense of urgency to get the long-term jobs done now. As craftsmen proud of the reputation each of us had built up over decades -- some 45 years in my case -- every job had to be prepared correctly, then executed with precision. Our clients deserved, and expected, nothing less.

On the morning of March 19, the manager told us the store was closing until further notice. But there was no indication of when -- or if -- we’d be coming back. One month later, I had used up all my accrued vacation, sick, and personal days, and was officially unemployed.

With no regular income to cover my rent on Long Island, living expenses, and the costs associated with my house, I made the difficult decision to give up my apartment and move to the house in upstate New York

on a full time basis. Several weeks later, I got a call from the manager informing me that the store was going to reopen in a week, but our 40-hour work week was to be cut to 30 and we would have to take a significant pay cut. No longer within reasonable commuting distance, and knowing that my reduced hours and salary would be insufficient to make returning to work cost-effective, I made the decision to let go any expectations of going back.

As I unpacked box after box, on the back end of my relocation, I came across photos and memorabilia from my long career in the music business; not only as a luthier, but also as a performer, songwriter, and guitar teacher.

One photo documented the honor and privilege of being invited to visit Les Paul at his home in Mahwah, New Jersey on two separate occasions, as well as attending his

75th birthday party at Manhattan’s Hard Rock Cafe. My very good friend, Wayne Wright, who did a stint in the Les Paul Trio, and was Peggy Lee’s long-time guitarist, brought me and a few other guests around to meet Les. Wayne’s resume reads like a who’s who of the top names in the music industry.

He accompanied the likes of Benny Goodman, Tony Bennett, Woody Herman, Ray Bloch, Peter Duchin and more, as well as releasing his own critically acclaimed guitar duet albums with Marty Grosz.

At the time, I was writing a monthly column for a local magazine called “The Music Paper” in Port Washington on Long Island. I asked Les if he wouldn’t mind if I interviewed him for a special “guest star” article, and he graciously consented. We also had a jam session that I taped with my cassette recorder. That tape is one of the most cherished possessions of my career in the music business.

Over the last few decades, luthiery as a career has grown by leaps and bounds. There are private schools that teach it. Courses taught by experienced luthiers are more akin to an apprenticeship than a formal school setting, and offer a more individualized approach. However, the way I started out was not so much by choice as by accident.

I was in my mid-twenties and had been giving guitar lessons in my neighborhood and dabbling with some basic repairs, mostly on my own instruments. A young woman brought me her nylon-string guitar to repair.

The bridge had separated from the top.

Although I hadn’t done a repair of that nature before, the guitar was useless to her unless it was fixed, so I gave it a shot. I glued the bridge back in place, strung up the guitar, tuned it to pitch and held my breath. The bridge held. I got to do my second such repair, on the same guitar! The owner took it with her to the southwest for a couple weeks where she left it in a hot car for an extended period of time. It was no surprise when the

The author with the legendary Les Paul

bridge popped off again. Leaving any guitar in extreme temperatures, hot or cold, is a surefire way to guarantee damage. I repaired the guitar again.

One day I got a call from her that a music store in the neighborhood was looking for someone to do some teaching and minor repairs. I was hired, and that got the career ball rolling. It came to a close after more than 24 years at Sam Ash, during the pandemic of 2020. I often tell people my job has been so enjoyable that I have always looked forward to going to work. In fact, I haven’t worked a day in my life; that’s how it feels when you get paid to do something you love.

It’s now the better part of a year since I became unemployed and moved to “the country.” Do I miss my former job? The answer is yes and no. Yes, because I miss some of my co-workers and customers, many of whom I became friendly with, and a few who have become good friends. Also because of the social aspect of being around people, something that’s in stark contrast to my new life in the Catskill Mountains where I’m fairly isolated, geographically and due to the pandemic. No, because without formal obligations, I make my own schedule and can finally lean into all those projects that I’ve been putting off. It’s a bittersweet feeling, but leaning more heavily to the sweet, with the last remains of the bitter fading a little more with each passing day.

How Do You Mend a Broken Neck?

The type of jobs that come into a luthier’s shop vary. Some are “drudge work,” routine stuff like fret leveling and dressing, which are tedious, but necessary. The bread and butter jobs are things like restringings and setups, which every stringed instrument needs to make it sound its best and play as comfortably as possible. One of the most satisfying jobs for me was repairing broken headstocks that had snapped off the neck of a guitar. Some of the instruments that came into my shop in that condition were very expensive models costing thousands of dollars. It’s surprising how often this particularly nasty accident occurs, almost always leaving the owner heartbroken.

Most weeks, I’d have at least a few that I’d be working on, since there were a lot of steps involved, which took quite a bit of time to complete. Every aspect of the repair had to be precise, from making sure the headstock was glued on at the correct angle, to matching the new paint perfectly.

My greatest satisfaction occurred when the customer picked up the repaired instrument and inspected it, with wide eyes and pleased smile. Comments ranged from: “Is this the same guitar I brought in? It looks brand new.” “I can’t even see where it broke.” It always made my day, and left me feeling good for a long time afterward.

George Benson’s D’Angelico Speaking of broken necks, jazz guitar virtuoso and entertainer George Benson had had the headstock on his D’Angelico broken off -- twice! Shortly after it was repaired the first time by another repairman, a clumsy, careless customer knocked it over, and it broke again in the same spot. The second time it happened, I repaired the break, and this time it was done correctly and held. John D’Angelico was a legendary, Manhattan-based luthier who built a limited number of instruments, most notably, archtop guitars. Those who own them are the fortunate few.

To many, D’Angelicos are considered the Stradivari of guitars, and the pinnacle of the guitar-builder’s art.

George Benson with his D’Angelico alongside luthier Jay Jacobs

Sunsets Over Long Beach, Long Island Photography by Karen Dinan

Swimming with Rocky Marciano in ‘the Mountains’ It was Rocky Marciano! In my pool!

We were sharing the same water!

By David E. Hubler

Between 1880 and World War I, thousands of recent arrivals passed through Ellis Island before entering di goldena medina, the golden land. Many of them were East European Jews who’d mostly been farmers in the “old country.” (Think Tevya the milk man). By the 1920s, a number of them opted out of their New World shtetls on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and decamped 90 miles north in Sullivan and Ulster Counties amid the Catskill Mountains, forever after known to generations of New Yorkers as simply “the mountains” or to others as the “Jewish Alps.”

Among them was a young man later known as “Old Man Grossinger,” who sailed across the Atlantic with my grandfather, according to my mother, the family historian.

Grossinger, like many of his expat friends, resettled in the mountains around 1914 and started a kosher farm. To supplement his meager earnings, he opened a boarding house to take in guests for weekends or longer. My mother recalled her visits to the farm as a young girl with a sense of pride and pleasure. “We were met at the railroad station and taken to the farm in a horsedrawn wagon,” she’d recall. “And all the food was soooo fresh!”

Another attraction of the Catskills was what we call today “ease of access.” Two railroad lines serviced the area from New York City, thus avoiding the necessity of 1) having a car and 2) driving the 90 some miles over poor roads for four hours or more. And if you didn’t have the former, you couldn’t imagine doing the latter.

As Catskills historian Harvey Frommer noted, “After World War I, boardinghouses

multiplied. Many evolved into hotels and clusters of cottages called bungalow colonies, and the region became a quasi-official vacation site for thousands of Jews from New York City and its environs. In its heyday, as many as 500 resorts catered to visitors of varied interests and incomes.”

Among the more famous was Grossinger’s. Just the one name evoked the high-class resort it had become many years after old man Grossinger passed on and the former farm was operated by his daughter Jennie, author of the Jewish bible of ethnic cuisine, “The Art of Jewish Cooking.”

From the “Roaring 20s” to the postwar “I Like Ike” ‘50s, the primary shared interest of Catskills guests, besides eating three (sometimes more) humongous meals, was finding a mate. Single women who toiled six days a week for 50 weeks a year behind a receptionist’s desk fled north like salmon to their spawning grounds in the Catskills where the hotels were staffed by CCNY, NYU and LIU students working as busboys, waiters, bellhops, and sometimes as tummlers, young would-be comics and entertainers paid a pittance to keep guests occupied with Simon Says games, shuffleboard tournaments and even daily exercises.

No doubt, the checking-in experience for some was highlighted by the greatest bellhop ever in the Catskills: a high school kid from Philadelphia named Wilt Chamberlain, who, before entering college in the early 1950s, lugged suitcases at Kutsher’s Country Club. At 7’1” tall, he could tuck more suitcases under his enormous arms than any bellhop anywhere.

There was some temporary coupling of course; but many a summer romance ended when the female guest’s two weeks were up and Cinderella went back to the Gotham Grind again. And many a young waiter returned home with enough money -- tips mainly -- to pay for the coming semester or two and with many good thoughts of the girl he promised to call when he got back to the city but somehow just never got around to.

Of course, there were also many successful marriages that were engendered by a Catskills romance. My parents, for one.

The Catskills would not have achieved such fame if the tacit aim of nuptials were not on the hotels’ activities list. As a result of my parents’ good fortune, the annual vacation most years for them, my sister and me was a week’s holiday at Chesler’s, a small resort hotel named, like many of the establishments in the mountains, after its owners. It wasn’t quite Grossinger’s, but they were close neighbors, just a couple of miles apart on the same road.

‘Swimming’ with the champ That stroke of propinquity led to one of those singular moments in a young man’s life.(No, no, not that.) At the time Grossinger’s was the training camp of Rocky Marciano, the undefeated heavyweight boxing champion of the world (49 wins, 43 by knockouts) who was preparing to defend his title, perhaps against Jersey Joe Walcott or Archie Moore. I can’t remember who his opponent was. Like his later fictional pugilist namesake, Rocky Marciano’s training regimen consisted of a lot of road work at dawn’s early light. He’d jog for miles building stamina and leg strength. One of his favorite courses was the road shared by the two hotels.

Many a morning we’d arrive in the dining room for breakfast to hear the very early rising guests talk about having seen the Champ jog by earlier, and how he’d return their waves with one of his own. Boy, was I

Rocky Marciano at Grossinger’s

envious of all those old people. I was at that young stage of life when growth was linked to sleep. So I never did get to see or wave at the Champ on his morning runs. But I did get my revenge and was it ever sweet!

I was allowed to put on a bathing suit and head down to the hotel pool, a recent addition, after years of lake swimming in frigid waters. But not being a good swimmer yet, I did what seemed appropriate and safe.

I waded around swinging my arms in the water not getting too close to the deep end.

(Several years later, when I had learned to swim well, I jumped in and pulled my young sister out after she’d slipped on a wet spot and tumbled into the deep end. My heroics made me the talk of Chesler’s for a few hours that evening. But that’s a tale for another time.)

As I walked around in the water, I saw him leaning against the far wall, his arms resting on the top of the pool. It was Rocky Marciano! In my pool! We were sharing the same water! He wasn't swimming at all, just cooling off. I was too shy (frightened, maybe) even to say hello. And judged by the reaction of the others at poolside, so were they. I don’t recall how long he stayed in the water but I was determined not to get out until he did. “Swimming” with the Undefeated World's Heavyweight Champion was not

likely to occur again. Boy, did I ever regret leaving my Brownie Hawkeye back in the hotel room!

The funny thing was, he didn’t look like the menacing man in the ring who’d knocked out the immortal Joe Louis to claim the title in 1952. (By the “Tale of the Tape” Marciano was around 5’11” and weighed about 185 lbs.) My eyes never left him. I sized him up and tried to figure out where all his strength came from. I tried to calculate how much taller he was than I, not willing to stand beside him and actually find out. He had a gentle demeanor, just enjoying the water and the absence of an adoring, probably pushy crowd that he had at Grossinger’s all day. Here, we scattered few kept our distance in admiring silence.

A bit later, when he got out of the pool

and was drying off, he signed autographs for the few people who’d screwed up their courage to ask. My father, who’d arrived to get me back to our room, got one for me, and I held that autograph until I gave it to my son many years later for his boxing champions autograph collection.

A ritual our family observed each summer vacation was to take one afternoon and drive into Liberty, the nearest town, where my sister and I were allowed to pick out a souvenir or two in one of the town’s many tourist shops -- pennants, snow globes and other useless paraphernalia. That year there was nothing that I wanted. After all, I was taking home my Rocky Marciano autograph from the afternoon we swam together.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, January 2021

Colors in my Winter Open your eyes to seeWinter in all colors not just white, brown or just shades of grey ~ then you begin to see art in nature.

Spring hasn’t yet begun to emerge in the Northeast; we still have a ways to go. To stay present and embrace what is around us, I paint scenes within the season - my students follow along to learn...

I will occasionally take workshops with others whose work I admire in order to grow as an artist myself and bring back to my students the valuable lessons I have gathered along the way. This winter, I was able to bring back a big one: how to make a more tonal painting. In the process, I discovered something interesting about myself. If others call themselves "tonalists," then I must be a "colorist" - as I love using a very colorful palette in my paintings. I don't even know if this is a term, but I love the use of color too much not to consider it as something valuable and important to me. However, this new found skill of painting more in tonals was a big leap for me as it made me realize how valuable learning new skills and then applying them really is - that expansion of knowledge then turning it into practice. So winter was the perfect opportunity to bridge this approach to my paintings, combining more subtle colors outside with some of these new found ideas, then bringing them to life in my classrooms.

I guess the big lesson is to be true to your own style, taste, preferences and desires. But those masters that we love to follow can introduce new approaches. The goal isn't to paint like them, but to discover even just one small idea or concept to integrate into your own painting.

Colors in Winter

Spring is more than a month away, I am already planning to paint with more colors, more florals, things that bring us outside with the sun’s warmth on our faces. We sit here waiting to hear the birds start their songs and flowers begin their ascent above ground. I'm not great with being outside when it's cold and dreary. It creeps into my bones and muscles, so I explore in winter through my art. Embrace that, and explore it through your art.

❦

Jan Guarino 631-368-4800 w: JanGuarinoFineArt.com e: jan@JanGuarinoFineArt.com Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | YouTube Tutorials Baby, & Pet Portraits In Classroom and Live On-Line Classes Art Adventures

Winter’s Light

Alex and Lawrence -- Looking For Picasso Yet even at this remove, he was in the grip of the madness -- he flew to kill others

By Kendric W. Taylor

In the spring, Paris often surprises visitors with her trees along the boulevards already in their full greenery. It is possible for a pallid New Englander, say, to leave the brown, dank landscape of late winter in that harsh region, and to alight from their ship at Le Havre into the great customs shed, then doze fitfully in their compartment all the way to Paris, awakening as the train pulls into the gloom of the huge Gare du Nord, then rush along behind their steamer trunks to the taxi rank out on the street, and then suddenly see the trees down along the avenue in verdurous bloom, as if the visitor were stepping into an anciently magic place, as indeed, for anyone who has loved Paris knows, they are.

For Alex, gazing out her dormer window at the leafy streets and ivy covered walls along the sidewalks of Neuilly, the morning after meeting Lawrence, the excitement and awe over being in Paris and this turn in her life still lingered. Even the war could not spoil it: my goodness, she thought, the Etoile and the Arc de Triomphe were just beyond those tall houses there. Bending forward in a deep bow, not for any obeisance, she began her daily regime of hair brushing: flinging the golden brown cascade forward and down toward legs spread beneath her hiked- up cotton nightgown, then attacking it robustly neck to floor with long vigorous strokes.

In an instant, Alice had leaped upon her, spilling them both forward onto the bed where they had spent their first night in France.

“Isn’t he adorable?” Alice giggled loudly. “Freddy I mean. The ones we just met?”

“Alice,” she replied, shoving the other girl away exasperatedly, “don’t get involved with these boys. We’ve got too much ahead of us with people that will need our full attention.”

“But they need us, too.”

“No, they’re still healthy.”

“Alex,” the younger girl replied, “that sounds so cruel. What about the captain?”

“You mean Lawrence?”

“Is that his name?”

“Yes.” “They all seem so invincible,” Alex said, almost to herself. “But sadly vulnerable.”

“But you liked him, didn’t you,” Alice said. “I know you did.”

“Well, I’m not Elizabeth Bennett: seeing Darcy and making a judgment that I came to regret. I know how I really feel.”

“What?”

“I’m meeting him later,” she continued. “Lawrence,” she added, seeing the girl’s confusion. “Then that will probably be it. He’s going back to fight, and you and I are going to be very busy.”

“Who is Darcy? Another made-up French name?”

“No, it’s a made-up English name. What are they teaching at Miss Spence’s these days? Or better yet, what aren’t they. Oh never mind,” shaking her head as she looked at the thoroughly addled girl. “I’ll lend you the book. Now go and see if you can scout up a bathtub and lots of hot water so we can have a fresh start to the day.”

Alex continued to brush her hair. They would be so busy in the days ahead -so much to learn. She wanted to experience everything about this war that she possibly could. In a guilty way, she was almost thankful for the conflict. It had released her from home and family and convention. Already women in London were working as tram conductors, even laboring on the production lines at ammunition factories. For the first time in her life, she had freedom. And, she was going to take every advantage of it.

She was already planning to use whatever influence she had at the American embassy to get assigned as close to the front lines as possible, where she felt she could do the most good: problem is, she thought, what she really wanted was to get into the Red Cross Motor Corps. She would go through channels, but if that proved futile, she would not hesitate to pull what strings she could. After all, string pulling had gotten her on one of the first consignments to France.

In the meantime, romance was not on her calendar. Particularly not with an over-publicized flying ace that never seemed serious about anything except his friends.

***** “Over here, old man!” The small bar on the ground floor of the Ritz was dark except for a low light behind the counter. The tables were empty at this early hour -- indeed, the bar was officially closed. His two comrades sat in a far corner over a cluttered breakfast, feebly gesturing to him. They generally stayed at the Ritz while on leave in Paris -- what else was a substantial private income for? As it turned out, the Ritz in 1917 had provided endless hospitality to the military, including a separate floor turned into a hospital for wounded officers. A chunk of shrapnel in Freddy’s foot had brought him to the luxurious ward for a brief stay; he departed with his own key to the cozy bar.

Now, coming down the steps from the ornate lobby, Lawrence noted the ceaseless rain whipping across the rough pavement outside on the Place Vendôme.

A line of hansom cabs stood at the curb, black and dripping, the drivers sheltering near the grand entrance, horses stoic and twitching in the wet. No flying today. He would call the airfield later, just to confirm.

“Did you lads have a look at that sky,” he asked.

“Oh no, later, after some hair of the dog,” Freddy groaned, laying a hand gently over his eyes. “I couldn’t stand the glare.”

“Please, please, after the noise dies down – we’ll look then,” Albert muttered to the silent room, sliding empty glasses aside carefully to lay his head on the table.

“Well, the wind is strong,” Lawrence alerted them. “This front may move through faster than we thought. Save a little of yourselves in case we have to go back suddenly.”

“Captain,” volunteered Albert, the youngest, “there’s not a lot left in the old petrol tank as it is. The deuce of it is that we need at least a month’s leave in the old ladies home, and even then I’m not sure it would be enough to cheat the man in the white nightgown.”

“Well, the thing of it is,” Lawrence replied, shaking his head. “We are getting lax in the air. You know it and I know it, and we are all doing it. We have to be careful. Alert.” My lecture for the day, Lawrence thought to himself. It was impossible to talk of death with them, even though they live with it daily.

“In any event, we’ll soon be members of the American Army Flying Corps.

They’re supposedly transferring us in as a single unit.”

“Bien, mon Capitaine. Let’s have a drink,” Freddy chirped, coming alive at the thought. “Ah, to alertness! Anyway, at the rate things are going, the war is bound to last at least until 1930. We have time.”

“With the greatest pleasure,” Lawrence replied, smiling at the other two, knowing that fatigue was their enemy as much as the Germans, as the flak, even the flimsy crates they flew. No matter how good they were in the air, no matter how careful, fatigue waited to claim the ultimate kill.

“By-the-bye,” Freddy interjected, “that Alex is a knockout. Both gals are.”

“Now lads,” Lawrence responded in his most pompous manner. “Let’s it keep it light on the feminine front. They’re a wonderful relaxation, but one should never take them seriously. I hope that you’ll strictly follow my example in this.”

“Oh, Oui, mon Capitain,” they smirked in unison as he left them to their hangovers.

***** Alex was ready and waiting at the entrance of the hospital as the taxi containing Lawrence pulled into the courtyard. She had spent the morning being indoctrinated to her new duties, and the group had been given the rest of the day to get themselves settled and ready for a full day on the morrow. She had even time to change into an afternoon dress, probably the last chance she would have for a long time.

They went to the Café Flore, on the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain. “I know last night I spoke of other plans,” Lawrence explained, “but the rain, of course: this place is very artistic. I’ve been told we might even see Picasso or some such luminary; Apollinaire comes here as well. The poet. Only now he’s a Poilu.”

“OK, Captain Smarty-Pants,” she replied, eyes glittering. “I’ve heard of them.

But, what’s a Poilu? Hairy . . . ?”

“It’s what the French infantry call themselves – hairy ones. It’s a filthy job.

Anything in the trenches is. But no war talk,” he shook his head slowly, “tell me about you.”

“All right, but you must promise to signal if Picasso comes in.”

“Oh, there he is! Kidding -- it’s just the waiter. They’re both bald.”

“I thought you wanted to be serious,” she said, frowning. “I have something I want . . .” she paused . . . “I’ve trained as a nurse, but I really want to get into the Red Cross Motor Corps. I want to drive ambulances at the front. What do you think?”

The question arrived simultaneously with the Picasso-like waiter; they ordered quiche and hot chocolate.

“What do I think?” Lawrence replied. “I do think they won’t let you. If you had training as a nurse, they won’t let that go to waste. They can get a hundred romantic fools to drive – men anxious for adventure.”

He saw the change in her face reflected in the mirrors surrounding them: “I’m sorry Alexandria. I really am. But I must be honest. It’s too important to you not to tell you what I think.”

They ate silently for a long while, her eyes seemingly on the food.

“Alex?”

“I must think about this,” giving him a pained look.

“Listen,” he said faux-cheerily, “I’ve been told about a place where the paintings and art are the latest in avantgarde,” he said. “We can go there after lunch, if you like, out of the rain. The Metro is just outside. Oh look,” he said suddenly, gesturing toward the entrance. “Isn’t that . . .”

“Don’t you dare!” ***** They awoke just at first light. The chill of spring filled the small room as they huddled together in the narrow bed, tucked up like Queequeg and Ishmael in their room at the inn. Despite the cold, the louvered balcony doors were open wide.

The goose down comforter tight beneath their chins, their bodies pressed closely together as much for warmth as intimacy, the new lovers considered the rooftops of Paris beyond the railing.

“I’ll stoke the fire,” he said.

“No, don’t get out, not yet,” Alex, said quickly. “Whose place is this?”

“The great Marshall Foch. He lends it to me from time to time: his pied-áterre, his little love nest.”

“You are an idiot,” she exclaimed, kicking at him with her bare foot.

“But only of the highest level.” He sniffed. “Really, it belonged to one of the French chaps in the squadron. Now it belongs to all of us. The Ritz is for parties.”

“Belonged?”

“Yes, he went west – shot down.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. That’s really bum.”

“Well, it wouldn’t do to take you to one of the places that accept couples without luggage.”

“I’m glad I’m here.”

“I’m glad you are too. I didn’t expect it. I mean, after the picnic yesterday fell through. I mean with the weather,” he stumbled on, embarrassed. “I didn’t know if you’d even meet me today; then we had this afternoon together – all of it -- you know what I mean.”

“But it was such a lovely afternoon,” she told him, “the lunch, the Jue de Palme looking at paintings,” her voice softening. “And the evening; the two of us, huddled under the awning at the café in the lovely rain. Drinking mulled wine. In Paris. I wanted to come here with you.”

“Why?” “I don’t know. The watch. My father would have liked it that you knew what to call it.”

“He probably wouldn’t like what I’ve been up to with his daughter all night.”

“I’m a big girl, Lawrence.”

“I’m glad the watch won you, but was there anything else?”

“Why do men always want to know why after a conquest?”

“In case we ever get another chance.”

“Well, that’s where you all make your mistake. No two women are the same.”

“Wait -- I don’t think of you as a conquest; you’re the only one that’s ever been here. But, still, why: my devilishly handsome appearance?”

“Because you made me laugh, and I was attracted to you. Then when you kissed me on the street in front of the bar that first night, I knew I wanted you. I suppose you think I’m awful.”

“No -- a liberated woman of the new twentieth century. The war has changed us all.”

“I’m just one tired of convention and hypocrisy,” she replied. “I didn’t come to Paris to miss out on everything. Why should the men have all the experiences?

Of course -- last night you said we would be lovers, so that took matters out of my hands. But it was still really my choice. And we all have so little time.”

“Well, we won’t even have what I’d hoped for. I can see light in the east, and it looks like it’s clearing. The chaps and I will have to return. They’ll want their airplanes back.”

“Do you mean you stole them?”

“They won’t miss them.

“I’m teasing, we drove in.”

“Lawrence, you said last night you came to France for adventure. Have you found it?”

“More than I could have ever imagined,” he said tiredly, loosening his hold on her body to rub his eyes.

“May I ask you something else?” she said.

“You always do,” he replied, reaching over to fan out her long hair over the pillow “What will you do after the war?”

“Hah!” He pulled his head away, turning to look at the low embers in the fireplace.

“What? What did I say?” She pushed away from him, reaching over to turn his chin back toward her. She sat up in the cold, absently twisting her hair into a long braid down over her shoulder. The brown of her hair seemed darker now in the early morning. She slowly drew him into her warm arms and pulled them both back down under the covers.

“I didn’t mean to . . .” she began. “Tell me.”

“The war will never end,” he said heavily, pushing her gently out to arm’s length so he could look at her face. “I’ll keep on doing my duty until I can’t do it anymore. The others count on me. You can’t let the other fellow down. You know what British schoolboys say: ‘play up, play up, and play the game,’” he recited.

“But it will end,” she said fiercely, suddenly caring immensely what happened to him: to both of them. “America will make the difference,” she added, trying to cover her concern. “It will end. You’ll see.”

“Now don’t cry. That’s not fair.”

“Well, I just wanted to know,” she repeated stubbornly, rubbing the heel of her hand against her perfectly straight nose. “I needed to know.”

He searched her face in the growing light: “I won’t survive,” he said quietly, pushing himself up in the bed. “Cold logic tells me that. Please -- I’m not being dramatic, only honest and realistic. I accepted that right after the first missions. There is so much to learn up there just to survive for a few days. Then, by some miracle, I did, and I got very good at it. I didn’t think I’d be this good: cold, and calculating. But there’s always a Fritz out there who is a bit better, or quicker, or luckier.” He gazed out the open doors at the sky for a long while. She let him have the silence.

“Also, the law of averages takes over at a certain point,” he continued, “and the odds of survival diminish with each patrol. I’m really surprised I’m still here.”

“But you are,” she said, reaching over to touch his shoulder.

“All right then, listen,” he said, turning back to look at her. “I have thought about it. And that’s the trouble. This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Greatest too, in the sense of historic. To anyone of our generation -anyone that is, who hasn’t been so petrified that they’ve kept their eyes closed the whole time. There are even those who actually enjoy it. The danger. Nothing ever after will match up to this -- good or bad. Nothing! So, if I do survive -- then what the hell do I do? I don’t want to be like Hobey Baker.”

“The footballer, from Princeton, “she asked. “What about him?”

“Nothing. Only that he was famous at 21 – All-American. Then when it was all over, he had nothing to look forward to that would provide even half the thrill he had already had.”

They looked at each other for a long time, and then he pulled them gently back together: “I’ve talked too much.”

“Will I see you before. . . if you do leave today?” she said into his ear.

“Let’s not make promises. I don’t like someone who doesn’t keep promises.”

The girl moved even closer to him.

“Hold me,” Alex whispered. “I’m cold.” ***** For the single beat of a heart he puzzled over the ripping and whizzing past his ears. Even over the noise of the heavy Hispano-Suiza engine, and beneath the muffling of his leather flying helmet, he heard it. For a single intake of breath, he sat immobile: “Son-of-a-bitch! How did he get there?”

Before the thought had cleared his mind, he had flung the control stick over to port, his shoulders banging roughly against the rim of the cockpit, the engine roaring, struts and bracing wires straining against the sudden, violent movement.

The brute of a Spad VII flipped over and down to the left, a glimpse through cloud of green and brown earth far below, then it grudgingly responded to his straightening of the stick by leveling off for an instant, reared up and over again as the stick was hauled back, his stomach riding behind it on a wave of nausea. The aircraft climbed up and rolled over on its back, hanging him by his narrow safety belt, his feet high above his head, blood thudding down into his ears and pulsing behind his eyes. Then it whipped through with a rush to level out high and slightly to the right of the tail of the German observation craft.

“Thank Christ, it must be a new pilot,” he sighed deeply, his mind finally ungluing: “He should have had me, otherwise.” He felt his heart pound heavily through his leather flying coat, the wet tingle in his scalp and armpits. For another moment he felt the vile sickness of fear in the pit of his stomach at the awful closeness of it, and then a deep breath brought a feral look across his face. He dropped the Spad down closer to the tail of the German Albatros C.lll.

“Scare me shitless, will you?” He throttled up to close the gap between the two aircraft, gauging the distance as tracers from the German rear gunner reached toward him. Hanging above the enemy machine for a brief moment in the Spad, he thought of his old Nieuport, a much more maneuverable craft, but lethal to the unwary pilot. As he slid in behind the Albatros, he could see plainly the white face of the gunner, hunched behind his hammering MG14, its single stream of tracers still falling short. He was reaching for the trigger of his own single Vickers mounted on the fuselage in front of him, when the German stopped firing. The gunner yanked futilely at the clearing lever of the parabellum, banged on it a few times, then threw up his gloved hands in disgust and sat back, folding his arms imperiously over the front of his bulky grey flying suit.

Lawrence maneuvered the Spad in closer, the defiant German in the rear seat filling the Vickers’ firing ring. Then, for no reason Lawrence could fathom, he hit

the rudder pedal and rolled left, creeping up even with the stubby nose of the enemy machine. The other pilot’s inexperience showed as he failed to immediately turn into the Spad for a shot with his forward gun. Perhaps the German knew the odds –with the Albatros’s top speed of less than 90 mph matched against the Spad’s 120, the Spad could easily outturn and outrun him. A dive would be fatal with the faster ship on his tail.

Still muttering curses, but careful to maintain his position abreast -- but not ahead of the German machine -- he began motioning vigorously with his gloved right hand, jabbing his thumb downward toward the allied lines and his own aerodrome. The German pilot looked across the interval between the two machines for a long moment, then leaned down into the cockpit, straightened up and fired a pistol at him.

“You son-of-a-bitch,” he bellowed for the second time.

The Albatros lunged to port, finally initiating a slow turn toward him. Reacting in a rage, he shoved the stick forward once again, pushing the Spad ahead into a dive, kicking the rudder to align it with the enemy’s path. Then, careful not to give the Boche pilot a clear shot, he raced ahead full throttle in a climb. Then, far ahead, with ample room to maneuver, he pulled the column yet further back, into his stomach, the aircraft beginning a loop, then switching at the top into a classic Immelmann, practically spinning the machine on its tail to revolve sideways down in the opposite direction. Now in a wing-down attitude, he rushed headlong at the Albatros, firing as he came. The Spad’s .303 caliber shells exploded through the enemy aircraft’s two-bladed wooden propeller, pieces splintering away as if spun off a carousel. The rounds sparked against the protruding metal cylinder head and exhaust manifold of the front fuselage as the enemy pilot jammed his stick forward to avoid a collision. Too late: the dive was too shallow, the German’s leather-clad head exploded in a red haze as the bullets hit, killing him even before he realized he no longer had a propeller. The Spad shot up over the Albatros in a climbing turn as Lawrence inclined his head to the left to see the gunner gesturing obscenely as he tipped over backwards, following the dead machine into its last dive.

He rapidly scanned the horizon, side to side, up and down – still giddy over the near catastrophic foolishness of having lost concentration for even a second – exhaustion combined with a few patrols where only the flak posed an immediate danger. He knew the price for lack of vigilance – it was the first lesson he had learned in air combat.

The sky was empty to the horizon, slate gray under the gathering high overcast.

There was no smoke from the Albatros as it plunged almost straight down toward the squared farmland below. He looked behind him once again, then followed in a long flat dive, watching the German machine impact into a narrow stream, its long wood and canvas top wing tearing loose and fluttering away in the last seconds before the crash, the fuselage collapsing onto itself like an accordion, as the engine drove deep into the stream bed. There was no explosion or smoke, only an angry splash and a drifting mist of steam on the meadow breeze. He leveled off and made a slow, wide bank in the thinning sunlight over the field. He could see no bodies. A troop of mounted cavalry came out of a copse south of the stream and galloped in the direction of the crash. He spiraled lower and saw they were British.

Hoping they would spot the friendly red, white and sky-blue roundels on the lower wing, he waved, pointing to the location of the downed German machine. Then he waggled his wings and began a long, slow climb to 10,000 feet. Glancing at his compass, he peered over the side for any landmarks that might pinpoint his location on his map. For the first time, he wondered where his wingman had gone.

As the adrenaline of the immediate air combat receded, he could feel exhaustion pulling at him as relentlessly as the gravity gripping his aircraft. The Albatros must have been watching him for some time – stalking along behind at a great distance, observing him alone and flying on an undeviating course. The Boche had to have decided that he possessed an overwhelming advantage of surprise to have taken such a chance with his underpowered machine. He had made an amateur’s mistake, and lost, and again, Lawrence had made an equally amateur mistake – violated a rule that had been drilled into him – never relax.

He and his wingman had taken off at dawn that day, into a morning sky completely clear of overcast. They lifted up over the horrible brown gash of the trench line before turning northwest to follow the scar out to the North Sea. The rising sun glinted an unhealthy pink off the flooded shell holes, giving the battlefield the look of putrefying salmon floating on a sea of suppurating mud. He could see no movement, but knew the British troops were standing-to that hour in their trenches, as they did every morning at dawn, to forestall an enemy surprise attack.

Soon they would be brewing up tea and gnawing on weeviled hard tack and cold, tasteless, tinned beef, probably packed during the Boer war, impatient for the day’s first rum ration. He didn’t envy them – on either side of the line.

Sometimes at night lying sleepless on his cot, he had pondered why -- what madness had brought these millions of men from all over Europe and around the world -- indeed as far away as the Antipodes – with more legions now arriving from the New World –- to gather here behind the greatest engines of destruction man had yet devised? Here, upon this most advanced and cultured soil, the locus of thought and art for centuries, ancient tribes had thrown off civilization and ripped and slashed at each other as of old, grinding and dismembering their bodies in the most remorseless and terrifying ways, for a gain of a few yards of territory. And here he was, floating above it all at mankind’s apogee -- riding in the supreme accomplishment of the race to date -- a machine that flew, lifting his spirit and temporal form into the air and freeing him from the earth. Yet even at this remove, he was in the grip of the madness -- he flew to kill others, flew without a parachute because the generals thought it cowardly (the British generals believed it might encourage their pilots not to fight). And, in further locus extremis, every second that his mind puzzled over the insanity of it all only served to distract him from the awful fate lurking in the sky for the unwary: a bullet disintegrating the brain, slow roasting in a fiery dive, or a terrible free-fall thousands of feet to shatter the temple of his priceless soul against the indifferent earth of France. Even trying to comprehend all of it was exhausting.

The two small aircraft had continued their long slow climb that morning before leveling off at 16,000 feet, high enough to see well behind German lines, and to spot any machines rising to intercept them. It was cold – nearly 20 below -- and the lack of sufficient oxygen provoked a feeling of lightheadedness as well. He was glad

of the flying boots: his feet and ankles were always the first to feel the chill. The two aircraft remained safely on their side of the lines, well out of range of German anti-aircraft fire. The Straits of Dover ahead filled the windscreen, and he waved to the other aircraft -- his close friend, “Le Dauphin” -- to get his attention. He swung left in a wide sweeping curve to retrace their steps along the front, his wingman close aboard. The rising sun on his back quarter warmed him slightly through the crystalline air. The beauty of the azure sky with its wisp of stratocumulus high above him, the geometric canvas of the green and brown squared fields below his dipped wings fixed his eye and lulled his senses into reverie. Lawrence often forgot how much he loved to fly, how solitary and rewarding it was to be up in this small cockpit, the smell of airplane dope and castor oil in his nostrils, the steady drone of the engine under its red nose cowling that kept him up among God’s other winged creatures. On training forays well behind the lines, he would often stay up after the others, looping and stunting for the sheer joy of it, chasing his shadow across the tops of the sunlit clouds, climbing high then swooping down across the fields at a few feet to startle the livestock and scare the villagers, the wind whipping in his face, the roar of the engine blasting across the still countryside. He felt the joy of being alive at those small interludes, almost as exhilarating as emerging the victor in a close combat. Always, he refused to think beyond the moment.

He shifted in the cramped seat and snuggled into his leathers. The light was well up now, and the sense of isolation was overwhelming in the bright newness of the day. He could see miles in either direction, his eye following the old Roman roads as they pierced the French countryside, leading straight from one spired town to another. Well off to the east, behind the German lines, he could see the fortress city of Metz gleaming purplish in the haze. Observation balloons were already being loosed at their tethers, floating skyward, oversized wicker baskets swinging below, spotters ready at their binoculars, the lenses flashing in the sun. These men were relatively lucky; they were allowed parachutes to float them to safety in case of attack.

He pushed his goggles up on his helmet, looking up from behind his windscreen at the vault of unlimited blue sky above his head. A sense of danger ate at the edge of his consciousness like a morphine addict’s craving. He tucked the stick between his knees momentarily and rubbed his face vigorously, smearing oil and gunpowder even deeper into his skin, then replaced his goggles. Unnoticed, he and his wingman had droned further and further apart, until visual contact was broken. It was then that the Albatros slid in behind him, the German pilot eager as he had been for his first kill. The Hun would have had it too, he figured, except for the single awful mistake of missing with his opening shot.

Now fully alert, Lawrence scanned the sky around him, adjusting his long white silk scarf around his neck. He had originally considered such neckwear an affectation, until his first patrol, when, after an hour-and-a-half of swiveling his head like a lazy Susan, his neck and chin had been raw and bleeding. He realized then the utility of the silk. The next day he had gotten his first kill, flaming an Albatros D.III he had pounced on directly out of the sun, spraying the German’s sharknosed engine as he dove past at full speed. The Boche had burst into flames, which quickly spread to the cockpit. At 2,000 feet, the pilot elected to jump rather

than burn to death. The Albatros had cratered into the center of a wide meadow, breaking in two.

Stimulated by the combat, he had sideslipped down onto the field for a bumpy landing, leaving his Nieuport ticking over while he clumped over to the smoldering machine. Yanking a wicked-looking Bowie knife from his flying boot, he cut a large square of fabric loose from the tail of the aircraft on which was imprinted a black Maltese cross. Rolling it up, he turned to sprint back to his machine when he noticed the German pilot lying quietly on his back a few yards away. He knelt next to the man for a moment. The German lay with his head crooked, his eyes slightly open, gazing unseeingly across the waving grass, his face and body unmarked and peaceful. He reached inside the man’s leather coat, patted the tunic lightly, careful not to press against the crushed torso, then removed the billfold and pay book he felt there in the pocket. In the evening at last light, a single plane from his squadron would fly over the enemy aerodrome, dropping a streamer with the German’s papers, notifying his comrades of his fate. As he rose to go, he knelt again briefly, and quickly unfastened the man’s expensive silk scarf, and laid it across his face.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, January 2021

Your Friend Carl Is Doing It With Mirrors

. . . Carl had just put in a new swimming pool in his backyard, because he didn’t want his kids to have to use the public pool.

By Anthony Germaine

“Your friend, Carl, is doing it with mirrors,” my father said.

“I had a partner like him, too. You remember Pete? He got a tax refund and spent it on an above-ground swimming pool, when he owed me seven hundred bucks.”

Pop was right. Carl never liked to pay out. Poor Miss Mazer from the bank was always calling for him, and he acted like somehow Miss Mazer was a pain in the ass for trying to get what he owed the bank.

When he really needed it, Carl always found money to get him past the rough spots. He accepted it from rich old ladies who lent mortgage money. He tracked them down through shyster lawyers he knew (more people owned a piece of Carl’s house than Carl did). He even took it from the guys with the crooked noses, “who taught you how to swim in the back seat of a Lincoln, if you didn’t pay up.” (One of Carl’s great lines.)

Our other partner, Paul, would just shake his head and smile.

He had some cast of characters at the frayed edges of his life. My personal favorite was Raoul of Bayonne. I never knew exactly what Raoul of Bayonne did; I just liked his name. And I loved Carl, like a brother, even after he “borrowed” my money and Paul’s to keep his creditors at bay. But not for too long after, not after I realized my wife was working so that his wife didn’t have to.

Paul and I broke it off with Carl, when we found that a check was missing from the back of the checkbook, then noticed that the account, which Carl looked after, was ten thousand light. Paul and I confirmed all this one Saturday when we came in to investigate, after Paul had noticed the check missing. It was a real Alphonse-Gaston routine. Both of us forgot our keys to the office. I went back home to get mine, because we had to do what we had to do and I lived closer to the office.

Then we confronted Carl. And he cried, because now he had to live with the realization that his two best friends would always think of him as a scumbag. It was a bitter-sweet characterization. I’d always gotten a lot of laughs out of Carl’s use of that word. He used to tell me there was no equivocating with scumbag. “After scumbag comes punches,” he’d say.

“When someone calls you a scumbag, you know where you stand.”

I guess so, Carl. I mean you said it; I didn’t. But I loved him like a brother, more than Paul did, and Paul had introduced us.

“Never go into business with friends,” my father had warned. He also told me never to lend money to family. That had nothing to do with this particular situation. It was just something my father had to get off his chest. He told me his brother used to stiff him for money, all the time.

My uncle died owing him money. And everyone had made my uncle out to be a saint because he died young. “If you stiff your brother . . . or your friend, you’re a real bum,” my father said.

Carl paid back all that he owed Paul and me and he’s not dead, but I haven’t spoken to him in years. The last I heard he was selling space for a new magazine, and still buying his kids shirts at Nordstrom’s. Paul said he’d heard Carl had just put in a new swimming pool in his backyard, because he didn’t want his kids to have to use the public pool to learn how to swim.

Nassau County Museum of Art, New York, September 2020

Natural Traveler MagazineÂŽ is a cultural quarterly, published each year as Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn issues in January, April, July and October.

Long Beach, New York Photo by Karen Dinan