Natural Traveler Magazine, Summer 2023

PhotobySharafinabintiTehSharifuddin

One’sdestinationisneveraplace, butanewwayoflookingatthings.”

HenryMiller

© 2022 Natural Traveler LLC 5 Brewster Street Unit 2, No. 204 Glen Cove, New York 11542

Summer 2023

Editor & Publisher

Tony Tedeschi

Senior Editor

Bill Scheller

Staff Writers

Ginny Craven

David E. Hubler

Jay Jacobs

Skip Kaltenheuser

Samantha Manuzza

Buddy Mays

John H. Ostdick

Pedro Pereira

Frank I. Sillay

Kasia Staniaszek

Kendric W. Taylor

Photography

Karen Dinan

Skip Kaltenheuser

Buddy Mays

Janet Safris

Kasia Staniaszek Art

Sharafina binti Teh Sharifuddin

Editor’s Letter Page 4

Fogg’s Horn Page 5

Idalia, The Woman Cacique Juliana Zeledon Page 8

JFK, My Part in His Career Frank I. Sillay Page 11

My Pilgrimage to Mecca Sharafina binti Teh Sharifuddin Page 13

Fort Davis Wanderings John H. Ostdick Page 16

On the Edge Ginny Craven Page 24

The Man Who Gave Us UFOs Buddy Mays Page 25

The Two Sides of Nashville Jay Jacobs Page 29

Then There Is Vito’s Tony Tedeschi Page 32

I Found My Self in Poland Kasia Staniaszek Page 38

The House at the Top of the Hill Kendric W. Taylor Page 46

Equilibrium Tony Tedeschi

Cover Photo by Sharafina binti Teh Sharifuddin

Page 58

Editor’s Letter

With our summer issue, NaturalTravelerMagazinereturns to its roots as a travel journal one that, ever since our first appearance as a weekly format has ventured beyond the “went here, did this, saw that” formula. This latest offering keeps to that ideal, although with stories that mine several distinct veins. John H. Ostdick, in his west Texas ramble “Fort Davis Wanderings,” drives five hundred miles from his Dallas home — in one of those few states you can drive five hundred miles in without crossing a border to explore a “nondescript town” that he proceeds to show is anything but. Jay Jacobs’ “The Two Sides of Nashville” takes a similar tack, showing aspects of the town often overlooked by locals and travelers alike.

Faraway places have their allure . . . but so might the small restaurant in your own home town. That’s what Tony Tedeschi found when he looked behind the scenes, and into the history, of his favorite local eatery, a family-run southern Italian gem called Vito’s. In an age when the Sunday papers gush over destination dining in places like the Faroe Islands places most of us won’t be heading to anytime soon it’s nice to be reminded that good food, and stories of the people who happily devote their lives to preparing and serving it, are often right at hand.

For the past several years, nearly all of the non-photographic illustrations in Natural Travelerhave been provided by a talented young woman named Sharafina binti Teh Sharifuddin. Sharafina, who lives in Malaysia, is an adherent of that country’s predominantly Muslim faith. Although she describes herself as never having been especially devout, she agreed to accompany her mother on an umrah a pilgrimage to Mecca and describes for us here not only the physical experience of traveling for the first time so far from her homeland, but also what it meant to be so deeply immersed in her spiritual journey.

A search for self by Kasia Staniaszek led her Poland. “We are a product of our ancestors,” Kasia writes. “The possibility of an ‘I’ implies the existence of those who have come before us.” She records parts of her journey with her beautiful black-and-white photography.

Juliana Zeledon’s “Idalia, the Woman Cacique” takes us traveling to a different cultural and spiritual realm, and to a stunning departure from its traditions. It tells the story of Idalia Andrade Degracia, the first woman to be chosen as cacique leader of her indigenous community, one of eight within the Central American nation. The word “patriarchy” gets tossed around a lot in our far more complex and pluralistic society but here’s an example of a patriarchy as ironbound as any on earth, and the remarkable woman who broke those bounds.

Travel, of course, is not always a voluntary experience. Here we offer stories of people put in places they never would otherwise have found themselves, thanks to the exigencies of military service. And they couldn’t be more different: Frank I. Sillay serves up a whimsical reminiscence of a Keystone Kops-worthy naval exercise, albeit with a jarring note at the end. Ken Taylor, in his short story “House at the Top of the Hill,” takes us to a dark and desperate realm of military experience, in the First World War setting he has explored so artfully in past issues of Natural Traveler.

There's travel . . . and there's travel, as in the alleged interstellar peregrinations of whoever might be piloting those "unidentified flying objects" or, as they are now called, "unidentified aerial phenomena" that have been spotted in our skies over the past seventy-five years. Buddy Mays looks up, around . . . and draws no conclusions, although he does report one inexplicable incident that he himself witnessed. His contribution to this issue, "An Ode to Kenneth Arnold," reports on a far stranger and more prolonged UFO (UAP?) sighting, one that helped lodge "flying saucers" in our national consciousness.

Travel on!

BillScheller

Fogg’s Horn

The Miscreant Meanderings Of Our Man Markus

View from the Airplane Window

...Ifyou’veneverlookedatapapermap, youwillneverreallyknowwhereyouare youwon’tknow,ironicallyenough, yourpositionontheglobe.

I flew from Boston to Minneapolis, on a bright cloudless day.

I slid into my window seat, which for once wasn’t over the wing. I always take a window, even though it’s a pain to get out into the aisle when the plane lands, or when, on a long flight, you have to clamber over your seatmates to get to the bathroom. I like to be able to look out of the window.

Looking out of the window on a plane has gotten to be like gawking up at skyscrapers in New York. It’s uncool; it makes you seem like a rube on your first trip out of Podunk. And, as usual, nobody else on my flight out of Logan that day had the slightest interest in the world outside. Most of the other window-seat passengers had their shades down, to keep the glare out of their devices.

For the first half-hour after we took off, I read a copy of the Globe I’d bought at the airport another uncool move, flipping and folding sheets of newsprint. That took care of the Massachusetts part of the flight, which didn’t offer any particularly interesting scenery. No big geography down there; just … Massachusetts.

Then I put the paper away and turned to the window. The world below was

unobstructed; visibility to the south was well over a hundred miles. Every detail stood out clearly.

The first thing I saw was a river, flowing from the north from under the plane to a point far beyond the wingtip. Just before it vanished in a southerly haze, it bulged from bank to bank, and a thin thread sewed the banks together: it was the Tappan Zee, the wide spot in the Hudson, and the thread was the new Mario Cuomo Bridge.

Much closer almost below the plane another river met the Hudson. I knew it was the Mohawk, and the filaments on either side were the New York Thruway and the Erie Canal. Next came Syracuse, just south of Oneida Lake the city and lake were flawlessly defined.

Oneida is a smooth plump lozenge of a lake. Further west, though, I saw, snaking south, blue waters with much more distinctive shapes: the Finger Lakes. The two largest and longest, Cayuga and Seneca, ranged far to the south; and, “far above Cayuga’s waters,” Ithaca and Cornell University stood in the haze. Next I saw forked Keuka Lake, along whose shores Doctor Konstantin Frank set New York vineyards against the Moselle.

The vista closest to the fuselage soon turned a steady blue. It was the southern reach of Lake Ontario. Just past the indent of Irondequoit Bay, another city appeared the one to which I had once sent dozens of rolls of Kodak film to be developed: Rochester. And had I been sitting on the other side of the plane, I’d have seen the CN Tower rising above Toronto.

A river not far ahead (not far, that is, at jet speed) divided New York State from Ontario. It flowed north from one Great Lake to another, and I thought of Gordon Lightfoot’s lyric, from The Wreck of the EdmundFitzgerald :

And fartherbelow,LakeOntario

Takes in what Lake Erie can send her

This river, the Niagara, bears that gift. And halfway along its way, I saw a puff of white vapor, where the Niagara drops calamitously off its drowned cliff.

There were no standout features on Ontario’s Niagara peninsula, at least none that were visible from so far above. But another Great Lake loomed, and although I wouldn’t see much of Huron, which spread north on the other side of the plane, I could look south along the Clair River, dividing Michigan and Ontario, past Lake St. Clair, and to the river flowing north into the lake. That river, and the city along its west bank, are named for the French word for strait: Detroit.

So then across Michigan, like so much of the Midwest a road-grid laid on farmland. Here I began to grow impatient for yet another Great Lake, and a speedcheck I wanted to make. When I saw water ahead, I got ready: as soon as Lake Michigan’s east shore was directly below, I looked to the second hand of my watch. I knew the lake was eighty miles across at its midsection, which was roughly where we’d

cross. West shore, nine minutes: 504 miles per hour.

On, Wisconsin. The next recognizable feature was a smaller lake, Winnebago. There it was, with its little cities of Appleton, Oshkosh, and Fond du Lac. Beyond, farms and woods — and, to my surprise, a real-life delineation as abrupt as any line on a map. A dense cloud cover appeared to start precisely above the Minnesota border, erasing any view of the ground and denying me my one last important landmark, coursing between St. Paul and Minneapolis. The Mississippi was hidden.

There was a dense cloud cover, too, over the other passengers, especially the ones who had pulled their shades down. It was the cloud of so what, who cares. The cloud of geographic ignorance and, worse yet, incuriosity.

Aside from the fact that teachers nowadays spend about as much time on geography as they do on civics, I blame the Global Positioning System, GPS. If you only ever use GPS, if you’ve never looked at a paper map, you will never really know where you are you won’t know, ironically enough, your position on the globe. You will shunt along like a rat in a maze, with no sense of the context of the maze, of the maze from above. And you won’t be able to enjoy the pleasure of recognition that I enjoyed on that three-hour flight.

Of course I use GPS. I use it to navigate complicated routes in cities. But I have pored over paper maps in every scale, over atlases and globes, since I was six, maybe earlier. I followed my grandfather’s finger as he traced the route he took with Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet in 1907 and 1908 traced it on the globe that stands on my desk today. So I needed no map when I looked out the airplane window. Even at 30,000 feet, I know just where I am.

Photo by Karen Dinan

Email from Costa Rica: Idalia, the Woman Cacique

By Juliana Zeledon

Caciqueisdefinedasachiefofanindigenousclanortribe.

When Tony Tedeschi, the editor of this magazine, offered me this opportunity, I hesitated. Not because I didn’t want to write for this impressive publication, but because I hadn’t quite figured out what to write about. Having the creative direction of a project can be exhilarating but also extremely challenging.

I tend to describe my mind as a war zone, and I say that in the best way possible. Many thoughts, colors, and ideas run through it at a hundred miles per hour. With that being said, it was very complex for me to concentrate on what to write about when there were simply too many things I adore about my country. I found myself looking at

ArtworkbySharafinabintiTheSharifuddin

every possible angle until I understood that they all show me the same subject matter: the people of Costa Rica.

An introduction

What better way to introduce the identity of my country than by presenting the people who make it what it is, as deeply as I perceive them as a writer, and as empathetically as I can as a person. Accordingly, I searched for weeks until I found the perfect person, even better, the perfect woman: Idalia Andrade Degracia, the woman cacique. A woman for whom the word “great” would fall short.

I have many positive adjectives in my vocabulary, and even more in my pocket dictionary, what the hell, there’s even more on the Internet. But I can’t seem to fit all the ones I would use to describe this woman in one column. Inspiring? Brave?

Knowledgeable? Great, yet Humble . . . ?

It all feels insufficient.

When I had the opportunity to interview Idalia, it felt more like a warm conversation than a rigid interview. I could write 20 pages about her morality, her truthfulness, and her loving personality. But I prefer the facts to open the conversation of her merits and accomplishments.

A woman cacique, the first in Costa Rica or anywhere in Central America?

(Noteofhistoricalcontext:Guacanagarix receivedColumbus,aftertheSanta Mariawaswreckedduringhisfirstvoyage. ThecaciqueallowedColumbustoestablish the settlement of La Navidad nearhisvillage, arguablythefirstEuropeansettlementinthe NewWorld,onwhatistodaytheislandof Hispaniola,hometoHaitiandthe DominicanRepublic.)

To understand the significance of Idalia Andrade as the first woman cacique requires some geographic and demographic perspective. There are eight indigenous communities in Costa Rica, with more than 104,000 people living in eight different

territories: Bribris, Cabécares, Malekus, Chorotegas, Huetares, Ngäbe, Bruncas and Terrabas, all of which contribute to our nation’s cultural diversity and identity.

In addition to Costa Rica, Central America is composed of six other countries, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panamá. There are 65 indigenous tribes between all seven countires. None had ever had a woman leader.

Daughterofacacique

Belonging to the Ngäbe tribe, in the south of Costa Rica, Idalia was born into leadership even if she wasn’t aware of it at the time. She is the daughter of Miguel Andrade, former cacique for the Ngäbe tribe, a man she describes as, “insightful, a pacifist at heart, and humble as no other man.”

It is customary for indigenous communities in Costa Rica to choose their cacique according to lineage, meaning the eldest son of the cacique is destined by birth to rule. Since Idalia had two brothers in addition to another sister her becoming cacique was beyond the remotest of possibilities, But hers is a story built on family and trust.

Until the age of seven, Idalia didn’t speak Spanish, only her native Ngäbe. She describes this as one of the biggest challenges she had to encounter, beginning with primary school and having to insert herself into society outside her tribal community. (Anyone who has sought to learn a foreign language knows how challenging and intimidating it can be, including myself as someone whose native language is Spanish, writing in English.) On the other hand, Idalia beat those odds, graduating primary school, high school, and finally college with the highest grades.

As the single mother of four children, Idalia was fortunate to have a support system allowing her to finish her education while her mother helped with her children. I was moved to my core when she mentioned that

after getting her degree in education, she gifted her mom the diploma, as a show of gratitude for the unconditional support she’d had.

An immeasurableloss

In 2019, her father Miguel, one of the most important figures in her life, passed away. Not only did it represent an immeasurable loss for her family, but for her community, the cacique had died leaving the position unfilled for a year.

Fundación Indigena Ambiental (Foundation for Cultural, Social and Environmental Development of Costa Rican Indigenous Ethnic Groups), contacted the Andrade family, wishing to reinstate one of the family members as the leader of the community. Enough time had passed, and such a move was imperative. As their birthright, the traditional choice would be one of Idalia’s two brothers, but they both kindly declined the opportunity, each explaining it was too much responsibility for their life’s journey.

Nonetheless, Carlos Chaverri, whose career included important positions in history and anthropology in Costa Rica, had worked side by side with Idalia’s father for years, and saw her as more than a daughter, but a future leader. She, on the other hand, was filled with doubts and concerns when presented with the proposal of becoming cacique. She would be going into uncharted territory for a woman. She conferred with her mother in the hopes that she would light the correct path for her.

Her mother knew exactly what to do. She had been, after all, the wife of the previous cacique. She encouraged Idalia and guided her through her uncertainty, allowing her to become comfortable in her abilities. “Your father would be proud,” was her motherly advice, enough to motivate Idalia

into taking the steps forward. Strong women are raised by strong women. She also was blessed with her brothers’ support, both of them agreeing to walk this journey alongside her. With unity comes strength.

She describes her first six months in leadership as intensely arduous. There were times when she was caught off guard and sent into a spiral generated by the patriarchal way of thinking and the oppressive response to change.

“She doesn’t know where she is standing.”

“She has no clue of what she’s doing.” Discouragement, rejection, and a lack of validation.

Inspirationalstory

Unfortunately, this is a universal experience among women. We encounter this type of behavior in many stages of our lives. Despite this, Idalia rose beyond it, as confidently as ever. I’m beyond inspired by the resilience that Idalia has shown in her first year of leadership. This story will be inspiring for millions of women, especially for the indigenous girls and women, who aspire to work in powerful positions and change their communities; for women who work in male-dominated areas and encounter dismissive attitudes every day; and for single mothers who feel overwhelmed balancing motherhood and work life; and especially for little girls who are told they can’t do what the boys do.

This is not only an inspirational story but a historical event. One of those transcendental moments, which can change the course of history and set a precedent for the next indigenous woman to follow. This is why it is a profound honor for me to say, I had the opportunity to interview Idalia Andrade, the first woman cacique.

Email from New Zealand: JFK, My Part in His Career

By Frank I. Sillay

‘...weexperiencedasensationlikebeingintheelevator

whenitbeginsaspectaculardescent.’

When serving in the armed forces in peacetime, the enemy frequently turns out to be boredom. Thus it was on the morning of 4 June 1963 when MSgt Howell stood up in front of the assembled troops in the Data Processing Installation at The Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, California and announced:

“The Navy has expressed a desire to show off to President Kennedy, and while doing a practice run, they want to have some warm bodies to simulate the presidential party and the press contingent. Any of you who would like to sacrifice a day later in the week in this noble cause, put your name on the clipboard I have provided.”

ArtworkbySharafinabintiTheSharifuddin

My recollection is that he had a pretty good strike rate, and the DPI ran on a skeleton crew on the 6th.

Spectaculardescent

Bright and early, we assembled on the corner of the parade ground, immediately in front of our place of business, and were loaded into helicopters for the trip to the fleet off the Mexican coast. While not a unique experience, riding a helicopter still held an element of novelty for us, and we were in sightseeing mode for the trip. Baja California was laid out like a classroom display, and gradually we noticed some specks in the offshore waters. Suddenly. We were directly above these specks, and we experienced a sensation like being in the elevator in a skyscraper when it begins a spectacular descent. In less time than it takes to tell it, we were on the deck of the largest of those specks, the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, being yelled at by a bunch of sailors to disembark, and assemble “over there.”

As soon as we had done so, the descending elevator sensation we had so recently experienced on board the helicopter was repeated on the ship, as we had been directed to the forward elevator, which was now descending.

As soon as the descent began, I found that I was cradling in my arms Sgt White, who had previously been standing next to me, but now had his arms around my neck as his instincts sought the comfort usually associated with a parent.

Eventually, they settled us into a bunch of folding chairs, and the show began. The carrier was acting as the reviewing stand, while the fleet passed in review, with each element having a few moments to strut its stuff.

I can only imagine how pleased the Navy brass were that they had made provision for a

rehearsal, because absolutely nothing went as planned. No ships were sunk, but there were a couple of genuine close calls. The idea was for each weapon system in turn to draw up alongside the “reviewing stand” and show what it could do. One example involved a destroyer launching a missile. After a couple of false starts, the missile finally launched, but had no guidance. It was as if a 4th of July rocket had been launched without a tail.

Rocket launch

While the destroyer was still alongside the carrier, a submarine-launched rocket emerged from the sea close alongside and streaked off to parts unknown, narrowly missing the ship. The destroyer hurriedly moved along, and was replaced by a cruiser, which had not been on station for long when a submarine broached close alongside, splashing it with seawater.

The demonstration proceeded along similar lines until they loaded us back into helicopters and returned us to our base.

Some weeks later, life had moved on, and my name had come up in the annual rotation for mess duty, which lasted for a month at a time in the Marines.

My month at mess was more than half finished, and had settled into a routine, when, one day as we had just set up to serve lunch, we noticed something out of the ordinary was happening among our clientele. As they came through the doors of the mess hall, perhaps one person in three or four was holding a transistor radio to his ear, and there was a lot of conversation back and forth. t’s hard to remember now; facts were elusive and slow to emerge, but it gradually became clear that the President had been shot, and a whole new situation was unfolding.

Tranquility in a Sea of People: My Pilgrimage to Mecca

Story & Photos by Sharafina binti Teh Sharifuddin

I was never a devout Muslim. I was always secretly a skeptic. Someone who doubts what I can never see with my eyes. It’s weird how my brain functions, but when it comes to spirituality, I could never be in too deep.

So when my mother offered me the opportunity to go on a pilgrimage (or as we Muslims call it, umrah) to Makkah (Mecca) with her, many would have expect me to wholeheartedly agree to join immediately as they would have. But I did have some hesitancy to say yes. Either it was because my work situation was uncertain at the time or that, regretfully, part of me couldn’t see the benefit of it because of my still having second

thoughts. But after a long time thinking it over it, I decided to let go of any doubts and just go for it.

In preparation for the trip, I did my best to equip myself with the knowledge to perform the umrah, listening to the guide (mutawwif) giving us pilgrims a briefing and watching a series of videos on YouTube as well as reading some books. Even though I’d had some reluctance go, I still didn’t want to be all over the place when I was there.

When the time came, it all felt as if I were floating from moment to moment. In the blink of an eye, I went from Malaysia, my home country, to the land of Saudi Arabia. Even the ten- or twelve-hour flight felt like it

passed by so quickly. Or perhaps I was just asleep half the time. The mutawwif would call this whole process “time travel” repeatedly for some reason I could not remember, so perhaps that was why. I did appreciate the metaphor though, it made the whole thing sound cool.

Each day while we were there felt like a rush as we tried to get a space inside the mosque to pray five times a day, along with other religious activities that we wanted to squeeze into our time before returning quickly to our hotel to have our meal among the many other pilgrims staying there. After the first few times, it became something normal to us and somehow, it was a routine that I wouldn’t mind repeating through the rest of my life. To just think about your own spirituality without having to worry about worldly problems.

The absence of judgment was something I welcomed. Where I grew up, when you were within your religious community, there was always a lot of scrutiny from those who thought so highly of themselves and how certain things needed to be done that they demeaned those who lacked their level of religious knowledge. But at the umrah, everyone’s attention was only upon themselves, saying their prayers to God, performing their own solat (daily prayer) in

between and reading the Quran, which was my favorite thing to do

Despite a feeling of loneliness, there was also a sense of community since the pilgrims all do prayers together, but in between everyone is just in their own zone, concerned about their own connection to God.

The actual act of umrah was a test of will and patience. I had to share space with thousands of other pilgrims who were mumbling their own prayers to themselves. Other groups were huddled together and were chanting and shouting. On the surface, it all seemed like a chaotic mess, like it was the end of the world. Yet, despite being pushed and squeezed by people all around me, that did not bother me at all. It was surprising because I am the sort of person who would avoid big crowds and hated being around too many people. But throughout the whole time, I was staring at the ground hard and just trying to concentrate on what I was trying to say to God, lost in my own thoughts. And no matter how insincere I might have felt, I still did my best to lay out all I wanted to say.

My mother and I managed to do the umrah several times during our trip. As I’ve mentioned, I was never that devoted to my religion, but this trip provided an opportunity for me to heighten my spirituality and

connection with my maker. Would I say I succeeded in becoming more pious, more religious, more devoted towards my God? In all honesty . . . I don’t actually know. If there’s one thing for certain, I believe the effort is what counts more than the sincerity of it. There are so many voices and whispers telling me that if I don’t give all of my heart into this religion I was born into, I am not a true Muslim and that doubt has always haunted me But my relentlessness to ignore it helped me from giving into the depression of accepting it.

Of course, the real challenge was not the umrah itself, but coming back from the

journey and back to our original world and time, where we have to continue our lives with all our sins hanging over our heads. And so many temptations to commit sinful acts still linger all around. I know in the deepest part of my heart that it won’t be an easy journey from here. It wasn’t as if the umrah was going to make me change a complete 180 degrees from who I was before. Nothing is as magical as that in this world. But now I know I have to keep trying Trying to do better. Trying to be better.

Fort Davis Wanderings

Hey There, You with the Stars in Your Eyes

Story and Photos by John H. Ostdick

Inspiringdaytrailsandadarkmagicalnightsky

makeFarWestTexas’FortDavisaHappyPlace

During our 35-plus years of wandering together, my wife Michelle and I have assembled a diverse collection of “Happy Places,” confluences of people, place, or passion that especially resonate with us. During all those years, I’ve wanted to share the magic of Far West Texas with her but never found the occasion until last fall. It didn’t disappoint.

Everyone who wanders through the 2,709-acre Davis Mountains State Park in Far West Texas leaves with a treasured vista. I find mine while scuffling along the park’s

pleasant Indian Lodge Trail on a cool early November morning.

The straw-hatted Michelle stands to my right, hands on hips, peering down through a large cut in an exposed brown igneous rock to the white-painted adobe Indian Lodge far below. A prickly shoulder-high cholla cactus barricades the left foreground. Tall wispy grasses, bent oaks, and junipers flow down along the rugged terrain. The light is a soothing mix of bright illumination and canyon haze of yellows, greens, and browns. I pause to slurp some water and take a photo,

but I’ll not really need it for future reference. The image will stay vividly with me just the same.

Making a pilgrimage to this region is a rite of passage for the young and a blissful respite for the aging and for many a touchstone of belonging in this massive state. Once beyond the scarred oil landscape of Midland-Odessa heading West, the highest elevations and some of the most amazing vistas in the state beckon.

Fort Davis, an unincorporated town of less than 1,100, sits at the highest elevation of any county seat in Texas, 4,900 feet. As such, it remains cooler and receives more annual rainfall that the Chihuahuan desert that surrounds it.

The journey is part of the magic

We choose this time of year because it is a lighter travel window for the area, important to us because we avoid the burly lines of traffic that can rudely diminish the beautiful scenic flow we come to revisit.

We split our 500-mile-plus drive here from Dallas with a night at the Hotel Settles in Big Spring, a wonderfully refurbished 1930s hotel that stands 15 stories tall above the otherwise low-slung town, so that we can make a leisurely sweep through the usual

suspects Alpine, Marathon, Marfa on the way to Fort Davis.

The nondescript town, in a rocky gorge between two foothills of the Caprock escarpment in West Texas, derives its name from the nearby “big spring” in Sulphur Draw, which originally was a watering place for coyotes, wolves, and herds of buffalo, antelope, and mustangs. As with any frontier water source, the spring along the EastWest Comanche Trail that served as a conduit for early settler migration proved a point of contention between Native American tribes here and a campsite that early expeditions across West Texas frequented. Early cattlemen used Signal Mountain, ten miles southwest, as a landmark.

Upon its completion, the hotel was the tallest building between Fort Worth and El Paso. After a rich history (guests ranging from Lawrence Welk to Elvis Presley), it fell prey to ruinous effects the 1970s energy crisis had on the regional economy. It closed in 1982.

In 2006, native son turned Dallas-based global tax services success G. Brint Ryan purchased the hotel and invested $30 million in its renovation. The result is a surprise of location and impressive restoration, with some Ryan personal touches. Above the

HotelSettlesinBigSpring,

landing of the hotel’s grand staircase, a portrait of Ryan’s mother, Virginia Ann Wilson Ryan, who he credits with inspiring him to pursue difficult tasks in earnest, gazes out in approval.

Coming down the elevator in the morning, I am wearing a T-shirt celebrating the Texas Music Power Hour, Texas writer/musical historian Joe Nick Patoski’s weekly radio show tribute to the notable contributors to the state’s rich history (broadcast via Marfa Public Radio, online Saturday 7 p.m. Central time). We encounter our first Fort Davis residents, Rick and Cameron Pratt, who are on their way home from taking care of some business and visiting friends in Fort Worth. They are clearly glad to be out of the city traffic.

They also know Joe Nick, as well as other writer friends we have in common. Rick was a museum director for 37 years in Port Aransas on the Texas Coast before he and Cameron retired and moved to Fort Davis in 2018. They value what they have now.

“Be sure to tell everyone about all the snakes, scorpions, and wild spiders,” Cameron says, laughing as they head to their car. “After all, we want people to visit but not stay.”

We slide down through Marathon, pausing there to sink into the leather chairs of the library of the wonderful 1927 Gage Hotel. A group of 30-somethings pose on the boardwalk outside the adjacent White Buffalo Bar in Condé Nast Traveler-ish style, in pricey round-brim straw hats and boots. Throw a stone in any direction during high season, and you’ll hit a group of these folk.

According to state historical records, Capt. Albion E. Shepard, a former sea captain who had worked as a railroad surveyor, purchased land here and applied for a post office in 1882. Shepard apparently chose the name Marathon because the local terrain reminded him of the plains of

Marathon, Greece. And, as with most small frontier towns, its history is full of amusing tidbits — for example, a windmill in the middle of North First Street was Marathon's first jail. Drunks and other petty offenders were chained to one of the windmill’s structural legs; serious offenders were taken to the jail in nearby Alpine.

Although the sirens of massive Big Bend National Park (801,163 acres), which claims the entire Chisos mountain range and a large swath of the Chihuahuan Desert within its boundaries, call to us from a short distance across the highway (a park entrance is just thirty-six miles south), we don’t have the time to visit on this trip.

Instead, we breeze through college town Alpine (Sol Ross University), home to the delightful Front Street Books, a locally owned, independent bookstore that has an inventively curated selection of regional books.

Affixed to a nearby store window, next to a poster promoting Dia De Los Quesos, a queso contest and auction to benefit the Alpine Humane Society, a bumper sticker proclaims: “AUSTIN IS WEIRD (a T-shirt slogan from the Texas capital city) BUT ALPINE IS FAR OUT.” Because of the dearth of housing options in Fort Davis, many of its laborers, clerks, cooks, and waiters live here and make the climbing 30minute-plus commute.

The day is waning by the time we reach Marfa, the sky turning steel grey, black, and blue.

The small desert city, founded in the early 1880s as a railroad water stop, gained notoriety when the classic Giant filmed here, its striking Paisano Hotel getting a long Hollywood closeup from the cast’s actors. It became an arts destination during the last 50 years, first with New York artist Donald Judd igniting its evolution when he arrived here in 1973. He later founded the Chinati Foundation, purchasing an old army base to

display his minimalist installations. Two foundations ensure his legacy today. Other artists and writers followed. Cheekiness and quirkiness and sometimes overblown sense of self ensued.

Walls of deep blue clouds highlighted by awesome far-flung lightning strikes lead us along to the higher elevations of Fort Davis.

We spend our first evening at the Victorian-style Hotel Limpia, an institution of sorts. Throughout its history, the 1912 pink limestone structure and its 1920s-era annex’s twenty-one rooms and ten suites have provided haven for local ranchers and “Summer Swallows,” travelers seeking refuge from the state’s sweltering heat from as far away as the Gulf Coast.

Walking the town at sunset, the sky is an amazing splash of blues, pinks, and oranges, a sort of random rainbow splash without the arc. A pinkish tower juts down to earth, seemingly turning its spotlight on the sign in front of the cottages of The Butterfield Inn.

As the heart of the Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve, comprised of 15,000 square miles of West Texas and northern Mexico (the largest and only reserve to cross an international border), the night sky here seduces and intoxicates.

The reserve designation guidelines call for local governments across the Big Bend region to adopt stricter outdoor lighting rules. According to reserve officials, since the reserve’s designation the reserve area’s night sky has become three percent darker, a sign that light pollution is reversible with simple changes.

A nightcap at the Limpia’s adjacent Blue Mountain Bistro bar speeds a restful night’s slumber.

A drive with a view

The next morning, a hankering for some savory chilaquiles verde calls me to Las Lupitas, at the edge of town on 17 toward Balmorhea. A sign on the small restaurant’s

wall urges me to “Count the Memories Not the Calories.” I’m all in.

A man in his 60s wearing a Green Bay Packers hat joins two other locals at a table at the far end of Las Lupitas, exchanging pleasantries. He has just returned from visiting his daughter in Green Bay, and expounds on the challenges of the 1,600-mile drive from there.

A 50-ish couple from the Dallas-Fort Worth area sitting across the restaurant engage us in conversation. They’ve been coming to the Lodge at least once a year for many years. They recommend Room 118 at the Indian Lodge for the view, if it is available (they just checked out from there).

Tastily sated, we head back into town to the Stone Village Market, adjacent to a motor court that dates to 1935. The market is an essential part of a pleasant stay here, as well as a gathering spot at various times of the day.

Inside, a stubble-faced man wearing a flannel shirt and Tractor Supply hat earnestly works on his cell phone while a visiting couple lays out their breakfast burritos at the table behind him. Two men in black cowboy hats and dark jackets stand outside by their cars, sipping on coffee and jawing goodnaturedly with another, bare-headed local.

The deli that runs along one side of the market is a town asset, offering breakfast burritos, made-to-order sandwiches, an assortment of meat by the pound, oversized cookies, and soups of the day, today a savory potato jalapeno. Stone Village provides quality meals for those days when restaurants in town may be on limited hours.

The Black Bear restaurant at Davis Mountain State Park’s Bear Lodge, for example, used to be open seven days a week, breakfast, lunch, dinner, but like many places here has had to adapt to today’s local realities. The restaurant now closes Monday and Tuesday, and only serves breakfast and lunch on the other days because of a chronic shortage of available labor. Based on what

you can make here, there is just very little rental housing available.

Stone Village has the essentials every camper might need, outside of bags of ice.

My ice search takes me to Porter’s, which dates to 1945 but has recently expanded into a larger location. It is more grocer-hardware-centric, offering a wide selection of campsite goods and foodstuffs for campers (including ice). It also wanders into the esoteric, such as a BB gun display in the automotive aisle that exhorts shoppers to “start them out right” with a BB gun and supplies of targets and cleaning kits.

My slow-moving cashier Don apologizes for “being a little scattered, but I was at the hospital early this morning for a procedure.” He was at work at 9:30, just the same.

Ice chests stocked, we venture to a scenic route that begins on 118 just past the Fort Davis National Historic Site, proceeding toward the McDonald Observatory. Beyond the scenery, I want to travel this road in the daylight to refamiliarize with it before a trip in the dark the next evening.

Road signs warn of possible bicycle and horse encounters ahead. We see neither, but three deer show themselves just before the cutoff for the Fort Davis Riding Stables. About 30 minutes in, Spur 78 leads to the Observatory Visitor Center. The two main

structures of the observatory, a research unit of The University of Texas at Austin and one of the world's leading centers for astronomical research, are perched atop Mount Locke and Mount Fowlke.

The two-hour-plus loop drive provides plenty of inspiring scenery along stretches of brown, pinched highway. Sawtooth Mountain steals the show, rising in jagged formation to an elevation of 7,686 feet above sea level. Its shallow, rocky soil provides a home to scrub brush and grasses that give Sawtooth, on private land protected by a 2016 conservation easement, a rich patina.

The loop returns us back through downtown.

On this breezy afternoon, the flag in the marching compound of the Fort Davis National Historic Site is snapped to attention. Intermittent recorded bugle music emanating from outdoor speakers bounces awkwardly on the wind.

The mountains, fort, and town get their name from Jefferson Davis, who ordered construction of the fort while serving preConfederacy as U.S. Secretary of War. The all African-American Ninth U.S. Cavalry was stationed at the fort from 1867 to 1875. While many of the original structures are in ruin, several buildings have been restored and outfitted with 1880s-era furniture. As we

Sawtooth Mountain steals the show.

approach an officer’s quarters, a woman in a wide-brimmed hat greets us pleasantly from a chair on the porch.

Barbara Curry, a retired professor, has been a gradual resident of Fort Davis. Several years ago, she sold her Richardson (suburb of Dallas in North Central Texas) house, bought an RV, and began volunteering at parks throughout Texas. At first, Curry volunteered at the fort about a month at a time, but she was smitten. Now, she spends six months or more volunteering here.

“It’s my happy place,” she says, uncoached.

Registering with history

We check into the Indian Lodge, probably one of the greatest accomplishments of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps works program in Texas. While the Lodge is currently closed until the beginning of 2024 (upgrade to the water system and pipes, courtyard renovation, infrastructure work on the Black Bear restaurant), the park’s more than 90 campsites remain open, and it is operating a full schedule of activities.

Charles Ewing, Interpretive Ranger/Volunteer Coordinator for the 1930sera park, coordinates hiking tours and history/nature talks. Hired last June, he is rebuilding the volunteer program that fell off during the worst of the COVID-19 outbreak.

“A lot of people tell us this is their favorite park in the state,” Ewing says. “The unusual terrain is not what they expect especially out-of-state visitors. People are awestruck by the beauty, which is how I felt when I first came here.”

The East Texas native attended UT Austin in the 1990s and hung around the Hill Country for 20 years working as a schoolteacher. He began making regular camping trips to the Fort Davis area during his early Austin years. During his many subsequent trips here, he and his partner began looking for real estate, finding an old

adobe that needed a lot of work. After working on it during trips out for several summers, Ewing made a permanent leap.

“For me, this place represents a bit of the old frontier,” he says. “You kind of feel like you are on the edge of civilization out here because you are so remote. Most evenings we just sit on our porch and just watch and listen. You don’t get that feeling in the city.”

Marauding javelinas have become trained over time to wander the park’s tent area looking for food. “If food is left out on a picnic table in an unlocked cooler, javelinas will knock them open and take away your food,” Ewing says. “We had a woman once who swore her site had been vandalized. Of course, it was the work of a javelina.”

Of course, this is a wilderness area, and that comes with the usual creepy crawlies tarantulas, scorpions, snakes. Snakes generally go dormant once the weather turns colder, although visitors might find them sunning during transitional seasons.

“We had one coach whip, also known as a red racer, a really long non-venomous snake, that liked to stretch out across the road in the sun,” Ewing says. “We relocated it multiple times, but it would come back.”

Ewing explains that he almost stepped on a rock rattler during an August hike, because the grass had been growing and the snake had found a little hiding place. “When it is warm, you definitely need to be looking out for snakes.”

The park, recognized by American Bird Conservancy as a Globally Important Bird Area, is home to more than 260 species of birds and provides refuge to several species of concern. Hikers often surprise Montezuma quails along its trails. The park’s bird blind, which includes an enclosed viewing station, a shielded outside patio, and watering and feeding stations, affords a great gander at scrub jays, white-winged doves, and acorn woodpeckers.

Ewing’s favorite park spot, however, is the first overlook off the internal Skyline Drive, the Keesey Canyon Overlook. Keesey Creek is a tributary to the spring fed Limpia Creek, which cuts drainage reliefs of 500 to 600 feet into the canyon walls, exposing rocks from volcanic activity of up to 30 million years ago. The mountains and canyons here provided sanctuary for Native Americans through the late 1800s.

“If you park at the turnout, there is a short hike (about 15 minutes each way) to the actual overlook, which has a stunning view,” Ewing says. “There is a bench up there. In my opinion, it’s the best view in the house.”

The snowman in the moon

As darkness approaches, we make our way to the McDonald Observatory for a “Star Party” (reservations required).

Although the sky is brightened by a waxing gibbous moon, the view from the concrete benches at its outdoor amphitheater is mesmerizing. Moonlight bouncing off the stone seating (bring a blanket to sit on) mixes with the red safe lights, making for anotherworld atmosphere. The evening presenter’s powerful laser pointer used to highlight constellations in a 30-minute introduction is awesome.

Five telescopes with apertures ranging from 8 inches to 22 inches comprise tonight’s magnified celestial moving feast, focusing on the Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, an old star cluster and a newly formed one. The Moon-gazing is fascinating, focusing on “snowman” moon craters, a series of five aligned craters of graduated size (the station supervisor informs that the largest of the craters, where Surveyor 3 — the third lander of the American uncrewed Surveyor program sent to explore the surface of the Moon in 1967 landed, is 95 miles across). The craters do indeed fashion a snowman image.

At another station, a vivid Saturn almost looks like an animated cartoon. At the Jupiter station, I watch a moon emerge from

the shadow of the planet, a black dot framed by three other bright white moons. The newly formed star cluster looks like an exceedingly bright diamond explosion. We manage to make it back in the darkness without running into any javelinas on the highway (it’s a thing), although we do pass a band of racoons, our headlights reflected eerily in their eyes.

Our last morning in town, we drive past volunteer Ewing’s favorite Keesey Canyon overlook to the end of the winding 1.6-mile Skyline Drive (also built by the CCC), to where we find two other parties standing transfixed near the edge of a canyon.

On a ledge across the way, six tan Aoudads – also known as Barbary sheep –perch on a dark-rock outcropping, staring right back. (The Aoudads, originally from North Africa and introduced to Texas in the 1950s as exotic game, have a long set of horns that curl back into a crescent shape, and a distinctive strip of long, shaggy hair on their neck and chest.) The stare-down goes on for a bit, with the humans blinking first, moving on.

A short distance away, a mile-long trail from an awesome overlook leads down to the historic fort below. The climb back up is steep and littered with loose rocks, so some locals drop a car down below before guiding visiting friends to the fort.

MichelleatMcDonaldObservtory

On our way back along Skyline Drive, we drive past Ewing’s favorite overlook. Sure, it’s a darn good one, but I figure he has his vista and I have mine.

We are doing a one-shot trip back to Dallas, so we hit the road early. In keeping with our general other-folks avoidance theme, I’m timing our departure to reach Balmorhea State Park, 33 miles away on State Highway 17, shortly after it opens at eight. I’m counting on the chilly morning discouraging too many visitors (in season, reservations for day passes are recommended).

The 1930s CCC-built state park is home to a 1.3-acre artesian spring-fed swimming pool, a veritable oasis in the desert. I hit the jackpot, as I have the chilly waters all to myself (as I can’t convince Michelle it will be so wonderful). According to Texas, Parks &

Wildlife Department materials, more than 15 million gallons of water flow through the pool each day, gushing through the local San Solomon Springs from its source 40 miles west in the Apache Mountains. The pool, 25 feet deep in some areas, holds 3.5 million gallons of water. The water temperature runs between 72 to 76 degrees year-round.

I carefully maneuver down moss-slippery steps into the fish- and turtle-rich pool. The bracing, exhilarating water swallows me. I spend the next 30 minutes floating about, smiling at small passing fish, and staring down an occasional large turtle that surfaces out of curiosity.

I’m in heaven, the perfect cap to this dip into an otherwise delightfully dusty slice of Texas. Another Happy Place, indeed.

Aoudads – alsoknownasBarbarysheep – perchonadark-rockoutcropping

On the Edge

By Ginny Craven

I gaze down from the precipice, and the depth surpasses comprehension. The dirt crumbles beneath my feet, but I step back just in time.

Still. I travel the cliff edge; it’s a treacherous path – perverse in a way – it demands torturous moments that confront the damnation beyond the brink.

My eyes are magnetized – a forced stare into the nauseating depths – beyond reality, without foundation.

I have vertigo; I am dizzy at the gaping chasm. Will I fall from the edge or plunge myself into swift relief?

Who is this teetering here on the brink?

And, the brink of what? Ecstasy? Hell? Or even oblivion . . . the most unfathomable pain of all.

An Ode to Kenneth Arnold

The Man Who Gave Us UFOs

Story & Photos by Buddy Mays

I wish I could claim that my liver was once examined by beings from another planet, or at least that I have taken a joyride in an alien spacecraft, or at the very least, exchanged nods with a skinny little green dude with an overgrown head and goggle eyes somewhere in the wilds of the world. But I must not tell a lie. I have never had a face-to-face encounter with creatures from another planet, and I don’t know anyone who has. My two brushes with what most people call UFOs, or

Unidentified Flying Objects, or Flying Saucers, were distant ones, hardly worth mentioning, but I will anyway.

The first one took place when I was a 14-year-old wannabe cowboy living with my mother in a trailer house on the edge of an alfalfa field in Tularosa, New Mexico. I remember turning on our radio during breakfast one Saturday morning in search of Elvis or Jerry Lee, but instead of “Great Balls of Fire” blasting out at me, I heard an

announcer say this (or something like it): “Statepoliceareadvisingmotoristsnotto drive southonUSHighway54toOrogrande andElPaso.Officershavereportedthata largemetalobjecthaslandedonthehighway, andcarenginesarestallingiftheyapproach.” It was 1957 and although I didn’t know it, there had been numerous reports of flying saucer sightings in the Tularosa area on the news. I asked my mother what she thought. “Probably the Army,” she said.

My second UFO encounter occurred in 1969, at about midnight, in the desert 30 miles west of Las Cruces, New Mexico, where my lab partner and I were trapping wild bats for a zoology research project. The sky was clear and brilliantly lit by the Milky Way, and as we hunkered on the desert floor sipping coffee and waiting for Tadarida brasiliensis to fly into our net, I noticed a large, bright light in the sky, coming towards us from out of the west and traveling fast. When it reached a point directly overhead, the light split in two, half heading north and half heading south, until both disappeared over their respective horizons. Aircraft, whether commercial or military, cannot do that. Whatever we saw that night was not from the local airport.

The flying saucer furor/fascination in America began on the afternoon of June 24, 1947, when an experienced pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted a chain of strange lights skittering across the sky at a speed no human-made craft in the late 1940s could possibly attain. Flying his single-engine CalAir plane near Washington’s towering Mount Rainier, Arnold was cruising at just under 10,000 feet in clear weather when he glimpsed an unnatural flash of blue light ahead of him and to the north. Several seconds later the single light became a string of lights, and as they moved closer, Arnold could make out a row of nine roundish, shiny objects, each one about 60 feet in diameter. They were flying in tandem and moving at

tremendous speed. Arnold later said their flight was “like saucers skipping on water.” Thinking quickly, he timed them as they flew between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams 48 miles to the south; the string of objects covered the distance in one minute and 42 seconds, a speed of about 1,200 miles an hour.

Arnold flew on to Yakima, Washington later that afternoon, where he mentioned his encounter to several pilot friends. After refueling, he continued on to his final destination in Pendleton, Oregon. Word of Arnold’s encounter traveled quickly, however, and the following day he was detained and interviewed by reporters from a local newspaper and from the Associated Press. In the following weeks, as word of Arnold’s sighting spread, dozens of other reports of mysterious flying “things” poured into police departments and newspapers across the Pacific Northwest. Several of them corroborated Arnold’s story. One man, for example, told police that he had seen three strange objects flying over Richland, Washington at tremendous speed, heading toward Mount Rainier about one half-hour before the Arnold sighting. Another report was from a United Airlines crew enroute to Seattle, who reported that on July 4th , several disk-like objects had paced their plane for 10 to 15 minutes before suddenly vanishing. Over the next few months, Arnold was questioned by various news outlets as well as military investigators from the Air Force, and in the years that followed, thousands of visual and radar sightings of baffling flying craft were reported to authorities. Many of the sightings were hoaxes, of course, perpetrated mostly by attention seekers or conspiracy nuts. Others were simple cases of mistaken identity. The “Roswell Incident” was one of these. Although many people still insist that a flying saucer crash-landed near Roswell, New Mexico in 1948, scattering debris and supposedly alien bodies across the desert

(and that the bodies were hidden until the government finally constructed Area 51 in Nevada to house them), in reality the debris came from an experimental, top-secret, highaltitude spy balloon program called Project Mogul. The “bodies” were dummies used in high altitude parachute testing.

But of the tens of thousands of UFO sightings reported to authorities since 1947, many have not been explained. On a stormy night above Michigan’s Lake Superior in 1953, for example, the U.S. Air Defense Command reported an unidentified radar blip in restricted air space over Soo Locks, a strategic waterway connecting Lake Superior and Lake Huron. An F-89C Scorpion fighter was immediately scrambled from nearby Kinross AFB to warn off the intruder. The fighter chased the object for 30 minutes, finally overtaking it near the U.S./Canadian border at an altitude of 7,000 feet. Then a very strange thing happened. The two radar blips, jet fighter and UFO, seemed to meld, and a second later the blip from the Scorpion simply vanished. The blip from the UFO rocketed upward, and then it too disappeared. Neither the pilot nor the wreckage from the Scorpion was ever found.

Another unexplained event occurred in 1956 in southern New Mexico. Air Force major Bill Cunningham and sergeant Jonathan Lovette, both stationed at Holloman Air Force Base, were part of a search team scouring the desert of nearby White Sands Missile Range for debris from a recent missile launch. During the search, Major Cunningham heard his sergeant scream for help and when he looked up, he saw Lovette being hoisted into the belly of a hovering silver disc by a long cord of some sort. When the sergeant was inside, the craft accelerated straight up and disappeared. Three days later, Lovette’s body was found in the desert 10 miles away, his tongue, eyes, genitals, and anus surgically removed, and the body drained of blood.

In 1959, Project Blue Book, the code name for the study of unidentified flying objects, was established by the U.S. Air Force to investigate reports of UFO activity. Headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, the organization, from the very beginning, unfortunately seemed to be more interested in dismissing flying saucers than explaining them. During its life, Project Blue Book collected more than 12,000 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural or man-made phenomena such as stars, clouds, atmospheric disturbances, weather balloons, swamp gas, or conventional aircraft. In a summary of its investigations released shortly before it was disbanded in 1969, Project Blue Book issued this report:

NoUFOreported,investigated,and evaluatedbytheAirForcewaseveran indicationofthreattoournationalsecurity. Therewasnoevidencesubmittedtoor discoveredbytheAirForcethatsightings categorizedas"unidentified"represented technologicaldevelopmentsorprinciples beyondtherangeofmodernscientific knowledge. Therewasnoevidenceindicatingthat sightingscategorizedas"unidentified"were extraterrestrial vehicles.

Throughout the last half of the 20th century and into the 21st, reports of animal and human mutilations, mysterious disappearances, outright kidnappings, crop circles, and unidentified aerial phenomena, have continued. Saucers have been sighted almost everywhere -- San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix, New York, Atlanta, Miami, and most other cities, as well as in Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Everglades National Parks. Numerous pilots, both commercial and military, have reported encounters with UFOs, the most notable being from the military itself, particularly the

Navy. In 2004, warships from the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group tracked several unidentified aircraft that would suddenly pop onto their radar screens at 80,000 feet, descend quickly to 20,000 feet, stop, and hover. Fighter pilots from the carrier group chased, and eventually spotted, one such aircraft off the California coast. They described it as white, about 40 feet in length, and oval shaped.

In response to this and numerous other sightings and after decades of silence and denial, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2021 finally admitted that there are things out there (they call them UAPs or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) zipping through the skies over the United States and most other countries, and that they have no idea where the objects came from or what they want. Since that government announcement, more than 350 new sightings have been officially reported to ODNI. Nearly half of those, 171 to be exact, remain unexplained and, according to an ODNI spokesman, “have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities and require further analysis.” In other words, we (the ODNI) are as mystified as you are.

Kenneth Arnold passed away in 1984 at age 68. He was many things during his life Eagle Scout, all-state football player, successful businessman, top-notch pilot, published author, and candidate for governor of Idaho to mention just a few. Far more important, though, is the fact that without Kenneth Arnold and his initial UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, the world would have never known such classic movies as Close EncountersoftheThirdKind,2001: A SpaceOdyssey,E.T.theExtra-Terrestrial, IndependenceDay,orCowboysandAliens Can you imagine going through life without watching 2001: ASpaceOdyssey, or CowboysandAliens at least 20 times? My hat is off to you Ken, for helping to bring those terrific galactic travelers, fictional or otherwise, to life. Without you we would all be considerably poorer, at least in our knowledge of otherworldly cultural matters. I hope that somewhere in the Spiritual Cosmos, you and Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke get together often for coffee, doughnuts, and, of course, a lot of schmoosing .

Email from Music City: The Two Sides of Nashville,

Story & Photos by Jay Jacobs

Nashville, Tennessee is without a doubt the country music capital of the world, a storied city rich in American music history. Here, many legendary country music artists got their start, and went on to achieve worldwide fame. While many people are familiar with world-famous venues like the Grand Ole Opry, Ryman Auditorium, and the Country Music Hall of Fame, there’s another side to Nashville that tourists seldom see, what you might call the “Nashville less traveled.”

While my initial plan was to showcase that side of the world famous city, after more than a week of visiting restaurants, guitar shops, clubs and venues, I found that although you can try to separate Lower Broadway, the famous downtown strip, from the surrounding neighborhoods, they’re

inextricably linked by the music which is the life blood of Music City.

Like every town across America, Nashville has its people who live, work, go to school, and raise their families there, and in the surrounding areas. These neighborhoods are often only a short drive to the bustling downtown area, which is where most tourists go for the Nashville experience. But there’s the Nashville where the locals go to enjoy the nightlife, restaurants, and shopping, and I was curious to check some of that out. My good friend David Eng, a music producer who has a home here, and Steve Morgan, longtime local singer/guitarist, took me around to some of the guitar shops, restaurants and live music venues to sample Nashville off-thebeaten-path.

My first morning, we stopped for breakfast at the Flat Tire Diner, Scratch

Kitchen & Bakery in Old Hickory, a neighborhood eatery which is a cross between a coffee shop and diner. A parking lot, including commercial vehicles with local addresses, hinted that this was a popular neighborhood stop. Food here is tasty American fare, served in hearty portions by a friendly staff, who welcomed us like old friends with good food and a side helping of southern charm and hospitality. It was just the right fortification for exploration.

Third Man Records is a unique shop just outside the city, but with a great closeup view of the Nashville skyline. Owned by guitarist Jack White of the White Stripes and Raconteurs, the store’s collection included reissues on the legendary Sun label, featuring artists like Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, among others, a connection for those of us who were strongly attracted to early rockabilly music.

As a guitarist, I was excited to visit Carter Vintage Guitars, a store specializing in highend vintage guitars and amplifiers, located just outside the downtown area. For guitar players, this is a “must go to” destination. There is a scarcity of these rare instruments Therefore prices for these guitars, banjos, mandolins and other stringed instrument reflect this, ranging from accessible to very

expensive. Hanging along the walls, and on floor racks along the length of the large store were the kind of instruments guitarists, collectors, and aficionados dream about: vintage Gibson Les Pauls, Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters, rare archtop jazz guitars, Gibson and Martin acoustics, and a Bigsby electric mandolin priced at $50,000.

Blues Vintage Guitars & More turned out to be one of the most impressively stocked guitar shops I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. Vintage guitars of every major brand are hanging on the walls or sitting on stands in every room. After checking out the inventory, I plugged a Taylor T-5 into an amp and played it for a while. When it was first introduced, this guitar impressed me with its unique design, and smartly thought-out blend of acoustic/electric features, and it was a pleasure to play.

Jack's Guitarcheology in Lebanon proclaims itself, “Nashville area purveyor of dimestore, weirdo and specialty guitars.” It features a wide variety of stringed instruments, many of which are “off-brands” that don't have the name recognition of major manufacturers. Nevertheless, these lesserknown instruments are fast becoming collectible, and continue to go up in value. They also have an assortment of oddball

CarterVintageGuitars toiletseatguitar

items, like a unique “toilet seat' guitar.” Not surprisingly, I found one hanging on a wall in the bathroom. There are a few for sale, but you can have one specially made to order, presumably with your choice of toilet seat.

High point of a trip is an event called “Honky Tonk Tuesday,” held at a local American Legion hall. Fun starts at around 8 p.m. and can run to early morning. The parking lot was packed with cars, motorcycles, and pickup trucks, as well as crowds of people outside talking. This is the place to go during the week to have a great time, hear good music, hang out with friends, meet new people and/or go dancing. The backdrop of the stage was a huge American Flag done up in string lights. Once the band started playing the floor became packed with well-dressed couples kicking up their heels. Many of the guys wore cowboy hats and western boots, while a lot of the women dressed up country style. Couples had fancy dance moves, some downright outstanding. It was like stepping into a scene out of a fifties teen movie, or an episode of “American Bandstand.

It was inevitable that my journeys would end on Lower Broadway, the downtown strip

in Nashville famous for its live music clubs, restaurants and attractions. At night, the glittering, colorful neon lights rival Times Square for sheet gaudiness, but in a good way. Clubs feature live music, and many open onto the street so there’s nothing between you and the bands just steps away. Of course, we’re talking country music here, and every band featured skilled musicians and an abundance of hot guitar pickers. Going into many of the clubs is not for the squeamish or claustrophobic. Despite the press of humanity, everyone was having a great time.

As I exited the back door of Roberts Western World and out into the alley, I was a few steps from Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Old Opry, and world famous venue for major country music stars like Tanya Tucker, Ricky Scaggs and Darius Rucker as well as non-country acts like Ed Sheeran, Styx, Jackson Browne and the Indigo Girls. No trip to Nashville is complete without checking out this nightlife downtown, so for me, on the last night of my visit, mingling with the crowds here was getting a taste of what it’s all about.

AmericanLegionHonkyTonkTuesday

OriginalartbySharafinabintitehSarifuddin

Then There Is Vito’s

Story & Photos by Tony Tedeschi

Ittookthisfamilyof émigrés fromSicily,withnopriorrestaurantexperience, openingasuccessionofrestaurants,beginninginBrooklynin1982, beforesettlingintomyhometown,tore-establishtheauthenticity of ‘justlikenonna’scooking.’

My attachment to food, as something more than nourishment, started very early with my émigré Italian grandmother’s cooking, in the two-family house my parents, sister and I shared with my grandparents. Saturdays would invariably begin with those aromas, wafting up from her kitchen, through the floorboards into my bedroom, drawing me to follow those scents to meatballs from the frying pan before they could make it into the meat sauce. While she encouraged my delight as I devoured her meatballs, she

would always remind me that the sauce had to last all week, beginning with the big, midday Sunday meal.

At those home-cooked Sunday gatherings, if my grandmother could see the end of the table, there weren’t enough people there. Years later, I wondered if my friends, asking if I could “come out,” were just angling for a seat at Grandma’s table. Homecooked Italian meals were a ritual celebration of the food, with those intensely flavored components, even during the weekday suppers leading up to the start of the next

AngelaandMarioMarchese

round the following Saturday. Since those days, I’ve come full circle, through seemingly every variation on Italian cuisine, at restaurants far and wide, drawn more and more to my need to recapture that home cooking experience, which had faded over the years.

Googling the “most popular ethnic foods in the world,” places Italian consistently in the top three, often number one. I grew up in Astoria, part of New York City’s quintessentially suburban borough of Queens, where almost all of the homeowners in my neighborhood were Italian immigrants, who spoke with thick accents. It seemed like every other word was an Italian descriptive, in the dialect of the speaker’s region of Italy. Everyone’s grandmother was the best Italian cook on the planet. Everyone’s grandfather made the best red wine each autumn. My family even ran a restaurant/cabaret for a couple of years, where my grandmother was in charge of the kitchen because she was the best Italian cook on the planet. Those were days when the meat was sautéed with lard, for the “gravy” (never called meat sauce), which was as thick as porridge to cover the “macaroni” (never called, “pasta”). Nuance was not on the menu. But plates that were not wiped clean with warm Italian bread were an unacceptable dinner outcome. “What? You’re not feeling good?”

Decades and life changes have been dramatic since those days and the culinary variations, which have challenged my tastes, have almost obliterated memories of those dinners of my youth. Almost. But a certain nostalgia has remained as if the result of something printed on my DNA.

Having grown up with that history, to my way of thinking when ethnic cooking went from “food” to “cuisine,” with the attendant escalation in the check, lines were obliterated. Nuance became ascendant. For Italian food, it became a distinction between the pizza parlor with perhaps some

checkered-cloth-covered tables in the back, versus the white-linen restaurant with “gourmet cuisine” and wine poured by a “maitre d’” or even a “sommelier.” (OK, wait a minute, aren’t all those terms French?) So, meatball hero or ossobuco ala Milanese and seldom the twain shall meet? Even among those Italian restaurants, which have marketed, “just like your mamma’s or your nonna’s cooking,” my sense of taste can only get as far as: close but no ravioli.

So if that is the tagline for so many Italian restaurants, then why would you leave home to dine at some restaurant’s interpretation of mamma’s table or nonna’s? But Italians are a communal people. When entering Luigi’s Trattoria, there is no greater endorsement that you are a respected member of the community than the Luigi flourish from the man himself. “How you doin’? How’s the family? Did Lucia have the baby? Baby boy? God bless him.”

But while the evolution of Italian cuisine beyond home cooking has, for me, vaulted off into all kinds of culinary experimentation often wonderful experiments it has left behind the basic fare, moderating that portion of the menu to almost invariably ordinary: meatballs without the real tang, thinner sauces, pizza slices with the consistency of cardboard. Definitely no resemblance to my grandmother’s cooking.

Then there is Vito’s of Glen Cove

In 1992, my wife, Candy, and I moved to Glen Cove, New York, a city of 28,000 on the North Shore of Long Island. We immediately bonded with it and the area’s beautiful coastline and beaches; lovely greenspaces and nature preserves; vintage buildings, some even historic. Glen Cove is an independent city within Nassau County, just east of New York City, with its own municipal departments and police force, a bit of an outlier in the county. The longer we’ve lived on Long Island’s North Shore, the more we’ve felt blessed with an array of some

of the best restaurants we have ever patronized. For years, the suburbs of New York City have been the beneficiaries of professionals abandoning the restaurateur wars in Manhattan, waged as brutally as the battles to find a place on the Broadway stage.

“Traditionally, chefs trained in New York and then stayed, with the goal of running big kitchens or opening their own places,” The New York Times reported in 2014. “But if making it in New York was viewed as the ultimate measure of success, then leaving was something of a rogue move, maybe even an admission of defeat. No more. Smaller cities are increasingly attractive for New York chefs; there, they find savvy audiences who support innovative restaurants.”

For a family called the Marcheses, the journey was a bit more circuitous than a disgruntled chef crossing the river from Manhattan. It took this family of emigres from Sicily, with no prior restaurant experience, opening a succession of restaurants, beginning in Brooklyn in 1982, before settling into my hometown, to reestablish the authenticity of “just like nonna’s cooking.” Vito’s Ristorante & Pizzeria opened in 2014 alongside the local Walgreens at a strip mall in Glen Cove. Mario and Angela, both born in Sicily, met as

teenagers after their families moved to Brooklyn. They went through the strict Sicilian family courtship ritual, settled into marriage together and raised three children. To support his family, Mario began working in a local pizzeria near their home.

“The owner said he’d teach me how to make pizza, but while I learned, I had to work for no pay,” Mario says. “Even after he started paying me, I worked long hours for low pay. Finally, I decided I’m working very hard for someone else to make money. I did that until I could open my own place.”

From a very young age, their son, Vito, knew he was born to the family business.

“He stood on milk crates so he could reach the register,” Angela says.

“My parents brought their hard work ethics and family recipes with them to Brooklyn when they opened the doors to their first pizzeria in on Avenue L in Canarsie,” Vito says. “It quickly became a staple in the community. Ten years of service, two pizzerias, and three kids later, they moved the family out to Long Island where they opened their third restaurant. I learned the trade, studying my father’s every move. ”

“When Vito had gotten old enough, he wanted his own place, so he found a realtor and went looking,” Angela says. “The realtor

WaitressFrancescaPiccirillodeliverswithasmile.

Photo to come

recommended the Glen Cove location, but we could see it needed a lot of work. Vito felt good about it, however, and was very persuasive.”

Getting the venue into shape is the necessary first step. Then comes the foundational food prep before you can open for business, begin serving customers and developing a patron base. That’s where someone dedicated to recreating an Italian matriarch’s home cooking as a business model is headed off into terra incognita, with those who see the dedication to the profit motive as paramount. Angela, however, had seen the Marchese home-cooking variation on that business model succeed in previous locations, with her family honing and perfecting their approach as they went along. Nonetheless, they decided to hire a chef for Vito’s, but then she came up against the chef mentality with the one they’d chosen to run the kitchen.

“You start setting up your soups and sauces a few days before you open for business,” she explains. “I was preparing a big pot of my chicken soup, when the chef and I had a conversation that went like this:

[Chef] ‘What are you doing?’

[Angela]‘I’m making my chicken soup, according to my mother’s recipe.’

[Chef] ‘That’s not the way my restaurant is going to work.’

[Angel] ‘That’s the way my restaurant is going to work. Our chicken soup is my chicken soup.’

[Chef] ‘So, you want to cook the way you cook in your house?’

[Angela] That’s exactly how I want to cook here I’ve done it before. It works.”

“All this while I watched him dropping whole onions into his soup pot with the skins still on. You could see right through the veal cutlet, he made. ‘Portion control,’ he said “I couldn’t see someone trying to change the recipes we had. He paced around out front

for a while, then he quit. At Vito’s, we have cooks, no chef.”

“Our recipes are not typical restaurant recipes, ”Vito adds. “We’ve tried very hard to create a sense of home cooking here. We’ve always wanted people to feel like family when they walk in.”

My wife, Candy, walked in one evening when I was away on an assignment. She bought a couple of slices of pizza, but she liked what she saw in the dining room, just past the pizza ovens. She asked to look at the menu, liked what she saw on it and told me about the restaurant when I returned. We’ve been regulars ever since.

The dinner menu is lengthy. I don’t ask which entrees are family recipes. You just know when that connection is made. Penne ala mamma, sautéed with garlic & crumbled sausage in spicy hot arrabbiata sauce one of my favorites has to be one of them. One of them. The melenzane rollatini: rolled breaded eggplant, stuffed with ricotta, drizzled with homemade tomato sauce and topped with mozzarella has got to be another. Gotta be. I have to believe that even items, which don’t date back to family recipes, are nonetheless created with the same sense of attention that would have been paid to the big Sunday dinner with my grandmother. Innovation becomes more tenable when you have such a solid recurring menu, and Vito’s does offer specials frequently.

“Vito and I do the recipes,” Angela says. “He reads up, he tests, he tries, and if we like the result we do it.”

Why not. Call it new entries to mamma’s menu.

Pizza fit for the Gods

Mario spends a good deal of his time around the pizza ovens. Recently I told him, I seldom order pizza. It’s not that I don’t like it, but it’s hard for me to consider pizza a dinner choice, especially when there are so many other items on the menu I’d prefer.

“Our Roman pizza,” was his terse answer. Reluctantly, I let him talk me into two slices. Everything about them was perfection: the taste of the toppings, luscious tomato and basil on one, pepperoni on the other, just enough mozzarella on both, and that airy, airy crust, which was baked perfectly to an uncharred brownness and just chewy enough. I was too repentant for my initial dismissal of pizza to ask for another, any other, with one of their specialty toppings.

The Roman pizza is one of son Vito’s crowning achievements. He became intrigued with making it, despite the effort he knew would be involved, but his commitment to it finally prevailed.

As with almost anything worth the extra effort, creating Roman style pizza is fraught with challenges. First off, the flour comes from Rome via an importer in Miami, which creates a dependence upon a long supply chain. Once you’ve got the principle ingredient there is the learning curve.

“There are days of prep, including days when you are just waiting for the dough get to where it needs to be,” Vito explains.

Then there were equipment issues. From the outset, it was apparent that the standard mixers and ovens were not going to work with the more demanding dough prep.

“Our mixers couldn’t handle it,” he says, “and our ovens couldn’t give us the desired temperatures, so we needed to add to our standard pizza-making equipment. When we finally had the Roman pizza where we wanted it to be, we handed out samples and it became popular instantly.”

I’ve written extensively about business and found a commonality of all successful enterprises is the solid foundation upon which to innovate. The innovative menu, built upon Marchese family recipes, is at its most basic foundation in the choice of the pasta side dish with each entrée. Despite the attention drawn to the main course, that little bowl on the side, with meat sauce, marinara or just plain tomato sauce atop your choice of pasta grabs its share of attention. There are other choices for that side item but I always order just tomato sauce. Just simple tomato sauce, which for me holds its own against any other, no matter how elaborate. The uniquely Vito’s version of the food pyramid has been enough to bring Candy and me back time and again, especially now that we know Vito went all the way back to the Romans, to find the foundation for his latest innovation.

After I’d gobbled down my two slices of Roman pizza, I was told it would be awhile before the next shipment of flour arrived from Italy. Well, while I wait, enjoying nonna’s style home cooking was never going to be a problem. I tell friends, go to Vito’s, close your eyes and put your finger down on the menu, then order whatever it lands upon.

Vito’sRomanpizza

I Found My Self in Poland

By Kasia Staniaszek

Thisphoto,takenattheNassau County Museum of Art,resonateddeeplywithme beforeIconsciouslyknewwhy.AstatueI’vewalkedpastmanytimesbefore, now markeditsplacesomewhereinmymind.Thismonth,Isetoutonasolotripto Poland,alsowithoutthecompleteawarenessofwhy.Atfacevalueitwasavacation duringabreakfromschool.Butbelowthesurface,atruerreasondwelled. This projectistheresultofthesehiddendimensionscomingintofocus.

Achild,blissfullyreachingouttowardstheworld,isheld,supported,androotedby themother.Throughtheshadowofthebranches,themotherisshownashavingroots ofherown.Weareaproductofourancestors.Thepossibilityofan“I”impliesthe existenceofthosewhohavecomebeforeus.Tolearnaboutmyself,Isetouttolearn aboutmyroots - mygrandparents and Poland.

Myheart.Mylove.Mymaternalgrandmother.

Celebrationasart,celebrationasritual,celebrationasareminder. Mypaternalgrandparentsteachinguswhatitmeanstoinhabitjoy.

Amusicalsermon.Listeningtomygrandfather playpiano,whowastaughtbyhisfather.

Stolat!Cakeformymaternalgrandmother’s83rdbirthday.

Therearemanyformsofnourishment:water,sunshine,connection, wildstrawberriesfrommyfamily’sgarden.

The House at the Top of the Hill

By Kendric W. Taylor Hehadslowlyregainedhisstrengthandmentalstability overthenextfewdaysasthedestroyersteamedeast.

All Hallows Eve, 1918. It was one of those rare nights of a calm sea on the North Atlantic crossing when the torpedo hit the tanker riding off their port side. The young officer standing bridge watch had been reminiscing over that evening a little more than a year ago at a hotel roof garden in Manhattan with his young wife, and at first thought his own vessel had been attacked. The early light was split by a tower of white-red flame, cutting the tanker in two with a thunderous blast, shoving his own vessel tilting to starboard. He had glimpsed just the barest shimmer at the tanker’s waterline an instant before the fumes in its empty tanks erupted in a colossal explosion, hurling huge pieces of her superstructure skyward. At the pinnacle of this boiling mass rode a pin-wheeling sailor in his white uniform -probably the gun crew –- turning slowly over and disappearing back down into the rising cloud of thick black smoke. When it cleared, nothing remained but churning water and debris. Nothing.

His ears pulsing with the shock wave, he hit the general quarters button as he lurched toward the voice tube, at the same time as the captain burst shouting out of his sea cabin at the aft of the bridge: “Shithouse Mouse! Flank speed. Where’s the messenger? Tell the engine room . . .” the rest was drowned out, as without warning , the first torpedo slammed into their own ship, piercing the port side of the engine room, punching through the hull before exploding, shooting flames up to the mainmast. It blew a 20- ft hole into the hull, rupturing it from the engine room forward to the first boiler room. This was immediately followed by hundreds of tons of water cascading into the compartments, killing many of the engine crew, and trapping the

boiler tenders in deadly steam. The ship immediately began losing way and listing noticeably to port as she settled. Already the other vessels in the New York-bound convoy were rushing past at full speed; scattering away from the danger zone like star bursts, leaving a single escort to search for survivors.

The Roof Garden

Seconds before, his watch almost over, he had been recalling that last night ashore. After six months of training, the final last part at the Naval Academy at Annapolis where he was commissioned he was going to sea for the first time, as a very young, very junior officer crossing the Atlantic on the USSSusquehanna , a converted passenger vessel carrying thousands of troops heading to the war in France.

The nightclub was packed, the women looking so fashionable in their bouffant hair styles and long evening gowns, but he knew his young wife easily outshone them. They had splurged that afternoon on her dress: baby blue silk, with tulle and lace cut just above the ankles, crowned by her glorious, mysterious, raven black hair, falling daringly long to the shoulders around the square neck of the gown the way she knew he liked it. All around them it seemed were tables of young people, many of the men in uniform, themselves heading to France. Yet, even amidst the excitement of departure, it was a war the men were going to, and if they outwardly chose to ignore this, those they were leaving behind knew. Anna Maria, his wife certainly did; he saw that in her eyes just a hint of concern, if not fear maybe, of their future – or at least trepidation over what it held in store.

“It’s ok,” he said, rubbing the back of her hand. ‘Everything is going to be fine. Ships are going across every day, and nothing is happening. We’re too fast for the Uboats.”

“I know, I know, but I just worry.”

“Well don’t. Please? This is our night to dance and be jolly. We can talk about what happens later.”

“You mean later tonight? In the room?” She gave him a sideways glance.

“No, silly, I mean after the war,” he responded with a blush, even after nearly three years of marriage. “Really , Mrs. Hearn.

“What we are going to do after,” he continued. “You know, the song the band just played: ‘the Yanks are coming, it’s all over, over there ’”

“That’s not exactly how the song goes, Edmund. “It’s ‘when’ it’s over, over there,’ I think it says. Or did Mr. Cohan say it was ok for you to change it?”

“Ah, you know what I mean. When we’re together again.”

“That sounds like another song. But OK, start with you,” she said.

“Well, you know, I had always thought of being an engineer, and I studied it at Dartmouth, but now I really think I want to build boats, and sail them.”

“Yes, you mentioned that. But this is after our honeymoon in Italy, yes? You promised me.”

“I did, and we will. And you?”

“What I have always wanted – to paint. You can sail and I can paint the sea.”

“Ah, like Turner?”

“No, no. He’s too murky and vague. You’d like him though, it’s said he used to strap himself to the mast to better observe the waves. I’m more interested in landscapes and portraits, like Mary Cassatt. You know, we’ve talked of her.”

“So we’ll go to Paris to study.”

“Oh yes, Edmund, Paris. We must have Paris. You can scout it out for us when you have leave in France. Find a place we might live later on. But, wait. Do they build boats in Paris?”

“It’s on a river.”

“Of course. How silly of me, again. And I will have ample time to paint?”

“Of course, and I will have ample time to kiss you, and ”

“Oh you think so, do you?

“With your permission, of course,” blushing again.

“Of course.”

“And we’ll have a big family, as we discussed,” he said, looking at her and smiling.

“Oh yes, of sailors.”

“And poets,” he added, “don’t forget Grandfather.”

“Yes. You love my granddad, don’t you?”

“Oh yes. What a bully life he’s had.”

“And all our children will go to Harvard.”

“Hey! What?”

TheShip

Back on the bridge of his ship, USSBrandywineCreek , amid the moan of the stricken ship’s siren, the muffled boom of exploding depth charges and the blasting of the two forward 6-inch guns firing away, the captain was fighting to save his ship. Reports were coming in from damage control parties, he was talking with the engine room, and all the while issuing orders to try and stabilize a vessel already losing power from its twin steam engines. The increasing list to port was causing storage lockers around them to burst open, hurling their contents to the deck, while charts and navigational gear were swept off the plotting tables. The signal flag locker groaned in its housing, with pennants sliding out of their cubbyholes, as Hearn felt the deck tilting even more beneath his feet, as he grabbed the binnacle to steady himself. In the huge cargo holds below, he knew the cars and trucks were straining relentlessly against their lashings, gravity pulling them dangerously close to breaking loose and crashing into the bulkheads.

The Captain shouted in from the port wing: “Mr. Hearn. Get down aft and report conditions there. Make sure ladders and ropes are overside, boats and rafts are ready to be put off.” With a quick “aye aye, sir,” he was through the hatchway and skinning down the ladder to the aft deck, just as the few surviving black gang shot out of the engine room hatch, shoved by the enormous blast of air rushing up from the flooding spaces. He imagined he could hear the screams of those trapped in the boiler room as the steam hit them.

Trying to shut out the chaos, he went over his options: fortunately, the huge ship was comparatively empty, carrying maybe about a thousand souls, instead of more than double that on the Europe-bound passages. These were odds and sods, as he heard the Royal Navy refer to them. This trip, the Brandywine’s manifest included returning government and military officials, minor dignitaries, along with some walking wounded. There were even a sizeable number of recovering cases from the influenza epidemic spreading through the trenches, the men too debilitated by deadly virus for further active service.

He had his own reason to be aboard – there had been no mail from Anna Maria now for months. He was proud of the record he had made during his months of sea time: his fitness reports were outstanding; he had been promoted from Ensign to LT JG, and he was considered a good seaman. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was inordinately proud of the gold stripes and a half on his sleeves, tarnished green from the sea air. Most of this time had been aboard the Susquehanna , a German ship of the Hamburg American Line. A 501-ft long, 10,058-ton passenger ship taken over by the Allies at the beginning of the war, it was overhauled and reconditioned, spiffed up and dazzle-painted in zebra stripes for camouflage. Based in Brest, they were kept busy back and forth across the Atlantic, hauling thousands of troops from America to France.

But then, that odd and unexpected thing had happened her letters had stopped just stopped. Months now had passed, and he had heard nothing. She had left their flat in Greenwich Village several months after he had enlisted and gone back home to her parents in the Hudson Valley. Then, later, she moved with her grandfather back down to Hoboken, his ship’s home port, in the spring of ’18. The hope was that she would be able to see her husband on one of the Susquehanna’s turnarounds. There was even talk of her volunteering for one of the groups that served hot coffee, donuts and cigarettes pier-side to the troops. That had never happened, of course –Susquehanna began docking at Newport News instead of Hoboken. And, even if his wife could have gotten down to Virginia, it was a short turnaround: passengers disembarked, cargo off-loaded, stores resupplied, coal barges alongside refilling bunkers, then new troops taken aboard and berthed, lines cast off, a long blast of the horn, and it was back out to sea.

All during that time, there were always her letters, until there weren’t. Her last letter had been so full of happiness. She wrote about the house that he had never seen. More of a cottage she said, perfect for the two of them. It has blue shutters, she wrote, which she particularly loved, so bright against the whiteness of the house itself. The windows let in so much light for her to paint, she wrote, that she hated to close them in the evening. She included a small gem of a watercolor of the house she had done for him. She had written him at least once and sometimes twice a day in all that time. That’s why it was so bedeviling – the letters just stopped. After waiting out an agonizing period to account for any natural delay in the over-stressed trans-Atlantic mail service during which he still sent her increasingly concerned letters, followed by cablegrams -- he finally went to the Red Cross for help. No answers from them either. At his wit’s end, he had asked his commanding officer for stateside leave.

“I can’t spare you,” his captain had replied sympathetically. “And even if it were possible, I can’t grant you compassionate leave just because you haven’t gotten mail. It happens all the time. You’re not the only one. Everyone in the AEF is looking for mail.” Struggling to keep the pain from his face, he saluted stiffly and turned to leave:

“Ah, hell, the captain grumbled disgustedly, calling him back. “You’re a good man Hearn. The goddamn war’s almost over anyway. If you can get somebody to take your place, I’ll approve. But you gotta get me an experienced officer. Someone good.”

It took an unbelievable stroke of luck mixed with minimum persuasion and a maximum bribe of a married college chum with a French girlfriend in Brest to swap

posts –- Hearn to go aboard their sister ship, the USSBrandywineCreek , bound for New York. In two days, he was heading back across the Atlantic.

TheSinking

He had no time now for anything but the perilous situation facing him. Events were moving so swiftly that only the endless hours of life boat drills on his old ship “the drowning drill,” they called it -- along with the highly trained crew in his division here on the Brandywine were letting them keep pace for the moment. But he could see how quickly the situation was deteriorating. Outside of another torpedo strike, he figured, his only enemy now was time – how fast he could get the passengers lined up at their assigned stations by the lifeboats – get netting, ladders and ropes over the sides, while making sure the elongated donut-shaped rafts hanging off the superstructure were ready for jettisoning.

Even though the crews were quickly ready, standing by the winches, boats prepared for lowering, passengers nervously standing in rows, wearing their kapok life vests or cork life rings, it was difficult keeping their balance on the slanting deck. The vessel was now noticeably slowing, the engines probably dead, the fantail almost awash. Finally, he heard the executive officer shouting up through his megaphone to the bridge: “Captain, all passengers assembled and ready to debark.”

Almost instantly, a forward lookout called: “torpedo 200 yards off the port beam.” The captain instantly threw the helm over to port, but the torpedo struck fairly at the bulkhead separating the coal bunker and mess deck, blowing open a hole nearly 20 feet wide. Clouds of black coal dust came shooting out, followed by a mass of coal, mixed with shattered pieces of wood from the lifeboats. It was the final blow; within minutes a breathless messenger had burst onto the bridge: “Captain, chief says there’s a hole in the mess deck’s plating big enough to drive a trolley car through!”

The emergency power cut off as the word came up to the bridge: “Comm’s dead, Captain.” This was followed shortly by the second officer shouting up from the main deck: “She’s settling fast, Skipper.” There was a long minute of silence on the bridge, then the order came quietly: “Pass the word: Abandon ship. Lower forward. Get those boats away on starboard. Rafts away.”

Down on the aft deck, it was already too late. If the first rule for old blue water sailors was always one hand for you - one hand for the ship, then the rule for one that’s sinking would almost certainly be – put your goddamn life vest on. And he hadn’t.

The noise above and below decks was deafening: a cataclysmic roar of shrieking steam, the insane rumble and crash as the bow rose, and the heavy equipment broke loose and thundered back toward the stern; and beneath them, the terrifying grinding as the huge plates holding the ship together began shifting. The six-inch bow guns still fired, only now further and further depressed downward as the bow continued to rise into the air.

He had been moving pretty fast across the rear deck toward the starboard vest locker, when that second torpedo came hissing in, trailing a wake of bubbles. The blast threw him off his feet, slamming him into the bulkhead, knocking the wind out of him. In the brief period it took for him to regain his senses, he was already sliding inexorably down toward the fantail and the sea.

He had lingered a few fatal moments too long at his job, he thought ruefully – what a good seaman before he hit the water. He had only time for a few strokes away from the sinking ship before exhaustion and his heavy bridge coat began pulling him under. He felt the sea closing around him as he raised his hand above the surface. A last thought flashed through his mind: “Oh God, now I’ll never know why ”

He had considered everything, every reason why the letters had stopped. Was there someone else? His heart said no, and his mind agreed: neither of them would do that, she was too intelligent, too strong, and, they both were too much and too early in their love for that to happen. He had already almost lost her once over unfounded jealously. He would not do that again.

The Red Cross had screwed up somehow? There were millions of Doughboys over in France, and thousands still arriving every day, and it seemed like everyone was always bitching. The YMCA wasn’t much help; too many Holy Joes out looking to lasso souls for Jesus. But it would get straightened out. It would be OK. Nothing could touch her.

His strength gone, too weak to struggle, he slid below the surface, his hand still outstretched when it was gripped from above by another hand, and he was laboriously hauled into a circling life boat, where he slumped into unconsciousness.

The Lake

He awoke curled across the bottom boards of a huge whaleboat, shivering, still wrapped in his soaking bridge coat. Too exhausted to assist in the rescue of those few afloat around them, his mind struggled to overcome the trauma of his plunge into the sea, still too stunned to process what had just happened to him, his arm sore from the stress of being pulled out. He felt his mind wandering again: he was glad there was no ice this far south in the Atlantic, too early in the fall probably. Anyway, ice always made him think of her.

It was cold that first time, out on the ice. He was over from school in New Hampshire, supplementing his summer job at the Club to help out with the Annual Winter College Week, to earn some Christmas cash. Walking by the frozen lake, he saw a girl weaving in and out amongst the couples on the ice, all graceful swoops and swirls, coal black hair sailing wildly along behind her. In seconds he was in the Ski Room, lacing up a pair of rentals, telling Ski John, the proprietor, he’d be back later, and in minutes was launching himself onto the ice with his short choppy hockey strides. There she was out in the middle, very boyish and up-to-date in a skating costume he remembered even now: thick woolen waistcoat, long woolen scarves wrapped around her neck and waist; floppy woolen knickers, thick woolen stockings up to her knees, and – unforgettably – all topped with a gay, hand-knitted Tam- o’Shanter over her luxuriant raven hair. (How many sheep went into that outfit, he wondered ungallantly?)

Normally shy around girls, he was in his element on the ice on skates he could show off, and he did, slicing in front of her and turning to face her as he glided along backwards, a skill developed as a defenseman on the hockey team at Lawrenceville.

She showed no surprise, and by the second turn he had made her laugh. That was it: they were friends. A couple of turns on the ice later, she seemed to slip. (How such an agile skater could slip, he wondered, again). He reached out his hand to steady her, and somehow they forgot to let go. Soon her glove was gone and her bare hand was in

his. He could feel the touch of her flesh shock through his body, making him grateful for the scattered flakes of snow that were cooling a face that he knew was turning bright red.

As they moved over the ice together, the amateur band playing on the dock, a bonfire on the shore throwing its warm glare through lightly falling snow, Christmas lights on the club winking at them across the white lawn in the early darkness, he was sharply aware of the moment -- more and more sure that this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.

The chill had finally reached them, and they steered over to a bench near the fire and sat for a moment to warm themselves. He asked her about herself, and she answered modestly: she was 18, a girl from a small Adirondack village, in her last year of high school there, and she was sure she wanted to be a painter. She was English/Irish, with an elegant touch of Italian from a much loved granddad and an Irish grandmother, whose legendary beauty was reflected in her own young face. Did he like Gilbert & Sullivan, she asked. He thought they were bully, he replied, and she said she had been one of the Three Maids From School, in the Mikado, in her school production, and was amazed to discover they were standing outside the ski house, looking at each other. Almost from the beginning, he had been working up to this minute, hoping for the courage to ask if he might see her again, and now time had brought the moment to him:

“Could we consider this a date,” he gulped in a voice even deeper than he intended to fake, “so I could be bold enough to ask you out again?”

“Oh fiddlesticks,” she smiled at him. “You’re not that shy, I’m sure. Besides, I was going to ask you,” she giggled, the same small smile moving her lips in a way that he knew he must memorize.

“After all, it is the 20th century. We could ride the jitney into town to the Inn,” she continued, “if you’d like to take me for a hot toddy to warm us after all this skating. I think I hear the bells on the horses coming up the hill.”

He had never had a girl suggest anything like this before, and was stunned and thrilled. Was ever a young man so lost to a smile and blue-green eyes? he thought. And to one of these modern women he had heard so much about? Here in 1912?

“Yup,” was all he could manage.

Later, sitting by the great stone fireplace at the Inn sipping toddies with extra cinnamon, he saw in those eyes the sunlit Mediterranean, in that black hair a vein of the deepest anthracite, in that voice, a sound as soft and moving as Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The warming fire was now causing them to shed hats and scarves and layers of wool, and in her case – to his joy what was emerging, could only be described as a magnificent figure. (Not that it had any bearing on his burgeoning courtship –- of course not). Overloaded with metaphors, giddy with the pure luck of the day, and sharing a second toddy, he contented himself by just looking at her. He kept hearing the song the band had played that afternoon:

“Letmecallyousweetheart. I’minlovewithyou. Letmehearyouwhisper,thatyoulovemetoo.”

His imagination wove in and out with the imaginary music; observing that face if she were a princess in some land of silence, she could rule her divinely happy people just by her expressions alone. At the same time, he determined to be ever vigilant against incurring one particular glance the one hinting at disappointment vowing never to let her down, lest he be the recipient of it. He would spend his time thinking of ways to say or do something for her that no one else would hear or know, so that when those blue-green eyes triggered that tiniest beginning of a smile toward him, it would be his alone. It was like a lady’s favor from knighthood days, he thought, a boon he both sought and feared simultaneously.

“What about you,” she asked.

“Oh,” startled back from silly love songs, he brushed through his family tree – not dismissively, only anxious to get back to her. He was 20, from a nice family, fairly welloff with a pretty much English heritage dating back to Alfred the Great, his grandmother said. He was from New Jersey, gone to school there, and now was at college at Dartmouth. That was it for him – now back to her -- he wanted to know everything.

Very well, she nodded, if you insist: her granddad came from a family of fireworks makers (Pirotechnicos). He had been a college professor, teaching art history in Florence. He had fought with Garibaldi in his youth, and later in life, possibly looking for new horizons, renounced his religion, became a Freemason, and emigrated to America. Unfortunately, there was no time to learn English, so he could find no work. Remembering his youth around Caporetto, he recalled the lakes there; how the men would cut the ice in the winters, store it, and then sell it to the mountain villages in the hot summers. He made it his American story: he worked and saved, finally going into business for himself, cutting those huge blocks of ice out of the frozen Adirondack lakes, hauling them in long flat sledges drawn by enormous farm horses to barns he had located around the area. There the blocks were stacked high into the rafters and heavily sprinkled with sawdust to prevent melting. In the spring they were re-split, washed down, and heaved onto smaller horse-drawn ice wagons that traversed the neighborhoods through the hot summer days. At each stop, the ice was chipped into smaller blocks, hoisted by black iron tongs onto leather mats or burlap sacks on the iceman’s broad shoulders, and taken to the back porches there to be installed in the family’s icebox. The village children loved the icemen, dancing along the dusty streets behind the carts through the neighborhoods, scooping the ice chips from the tailgate into their mouths by the handful, just for the pure cold pleasure of it.

It was a good business that had grown into a good living. He had married the daughter of John Dillon, a prominent local farmer, the first of his clan over from Ireland, who had prospered mightily, resulting for the granddaughter in a family amalgam of an Italian agnostic and an Anglo/Irish Protestant, that had somehow resulted in a line of Episcopalians, dotted throughout with various Catholic in-laws thrown into the pot. Nowadays the old revolutionary generally kept to himself, writing poetry (“I generally prefer poetry to people, except for you Anna Maria.”).

Growing up, her grandfather enthralled her with the glories of Florence, the art, the sculpture, its bridges, palazzos, the famous bronze doors of the Baptistery, along with the overwhelming glory and history of Rome, not to mention the orange groves of Tuscany. But it was not music or sculpture that lured her but his knowledge and

love of art; the splash and swirl of color, the soft intrusion of light through an open window, or rising from below into the frame. She particularly loved Vermeer, but it was Mary Cassatt she wanted to follow.

As Hearn continued to spend most of his time with her, he saw a girl that was highly intelligent, kind, considerate, wise and gentle in all things; one who had grown up in a classical house, with music, good books and art, and with a thirst for more of the same. Oddly enough, the tales her Irish grandmother had spun of going back to Italy with her handsome revolutionary for their honeymoon had created a longing for her own honeymoon there, whenever that might be.

One afternoon they had a picnic on the side of a hill, the Adirondacks rising behind them. She held up an orange she was peeling, “I want to go there, where they grow these, in Tuscany, where my grandmother saw them on her honeymoon,” she related. “I want to see the Sistine Chapel in Rome, I want to see Shelley’s house at the foot of the Spanish Steps, and I want to be there with my lifelong love, as she was.”

“You will,” he said, (He could deny her nothing).

In the months to come, they managed to see each other as often as possible. They never had a fight but one, and that escalated into disaster. Well into their courtship, right after his graduation from college, he had been away with some classmates for a celebratory weekend, and she was visited by a former boyfriend, who came to the house to pay his respects to her parents, and who was invited to dinner. She had mentioned this to him later in passing, and he made the fool mistake of being jealous, compounded by the fact that there was no reason for it, and he knew it. He left her vowing to make his absence forever. Naturally, as these things go, the old boyfriend took immediate advantage, making himself indispensable in providing slyly sympathetic support.

This lasted for several months – an eternity in a lost lover’s life, her absence itching and gnawing at him relentlessly, while the thought of her with someone else tortured him. When he could stand it no longer, he caught her one afternoon on a lovely spring day after art class. They circled the town’s park slowly, while he inwardly groveled and groaned, wringing himself out trying to explain how really sorry he was to have caused this, how they were so destined to be together, and how he could see no future for him without her.

“You hurt me deeply, you know,” she said, “not trusting me. How could you think that?”

“I know, I know,” was all he could reply, ”I hate myself worse than you ever could.”

“I’ve been seeing him,” she said, “did you know?”

He hadn’t, and the words bit into him from that snake of jealously.

“He’s asked me to marry him.”

He struggled to find the right words, ones that would not push her even further away, determined at least not to beg: “I love you with all my heart; I always will. It’s not too late; I promise I will never cause you to doubt me, ever again.”

“I don’t know. I need to think.”

He slumped away, his certain impending doom settling around his shoulders heavy and cold like a slab of her grandfather’s ice. A few blocks away an eon of time he heard footsteps, getting louder, coming up behind him. He turned to face her, resigned, waiting for the ice cold guillotine blade to drop,

“All right. I’ll come back,” she said, her beautiful face solemn.

Oh God the realization crashed in on him like a Beethoven coda prayers answered, wishes realized, dreams come true; those few amazing words she spoke making it the newest, happiest moment of his life! He grabbed her with the simple joy of it, their elbows interlocking, feet tripping each over the other, the two of them tumbling giggling to the grass in their excitement. A little girl passing on the sidewalk with her mother ran over, clapping her tiny hands at the sight.

“We’re going to get married,” he shouted at the child, all three of them now laughing happily.

“We’re getting married.”

TheVillage

Now, sitting there in the deserted wardroom of the destroyer that had rescued him, waiting for dawn, watching the cup of coffee left by the steward congeal in the cold, he thought back over the short, happy time they’d actually had as a married couple. He had remembered what he had told that little girl on the sidewalk, and when the right moment arrived, they wasted no time – straight up to Greenwich where there was no waiting period, and married at a lovely ramshackle hotel on the Boston Post Road. They spent their first night there as a legal couple, and the next morning took the train down to Manhattan and their first home – a small room and kitchenette in Greenwich Village, not far from Washington Square.

He had gotten work over in Brooklyn through one of her Irish cousins, at the New York Shipyard, as an apprentice shipwright. And his new wife – imagine! – began as a substitute teacher at the local public school. It didn’t pay much, but at least gave her the money for art lessons. If it was cramped, sometimes hardscrabble, they didn’t notice it, and the occasional checks from their families allowed small treats. They were together, learning their chosen trades, and more importantly, still exploring the depth of their love. He crossed the Brooklyn Bridge twice a day, lunch box in hand, while she scurried around the Lower East Side, teaching, learning, painting; both happier than they had ever been. Soon they would have enough to move to Paris, they hoped.

Her grandfather had treated them to the New York Armory Show in 1913. To her, it was amazing: there they were in that vast building on Lexington Avenue, all the avant-garde artists from the continent, all those she had heard and read about, daydreamed about: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse, Duchamp, Dufy, Picasso, Renoir, Seurat – it was overwhelming. Later, she even studied briefly with two of them – Americans and fellow Villagers Childe Hassam, and George Bellows. Birthday and holiday checks meant occasional trips uptown, to the museums, seats in the upper reaches of the Metropolitan Opera at Broadway and 30th street; they even got to see Al Jolson at the Winter Garden, where he shut down the show that night, and sat on the runway almost in front of them, singing favorites to the audience.

That event in Sarajevo in June 1914 was just another day in their happy life, passing with little notice, until the end of August, when Europe dissolved into a pit of mass murder. But even then, that was far away and little changed even at the shipyard. Then, on April 6, 1917, the US declared war and everything changed. As the hostilities drew the United States in closer, he knew he would enlist when the time came, but he was afraid to tell her. He was sure she had guessed, and he had even gone for advice to her grandfather, who could only tell him that he must do what he

thought was right. He told her that night and spent the following day trying to convince her why he must go. She finally – against her deepest wishes acquiesced. She knew how much this meant to him, and even somehow admired him for it -- as she did in most things – but she knew too, that was not enough. It was no victory for either of them; she knew, all it did was to make something almost perfect less so. Nor was it made better for him that she never gave him that look of disappointment. He joined the Navy the following day.

The Hill

He had slowly regained his strength and mental stability over the next few days as the destroyer steamed east. The Navy yards in Hoboken were in their usual congested turmoil as they arrived, and as soon as possible, he was hurrying down the ship’s gangway to the processing unit ashore. He managed to get through that fairly quickly - the ship’s laundry having made his uniform slightly presentable and wearing a borrowed garrison cap, he was on his way out the gate to the taxi stand. It was a short drive up the hill, to a silent house; he had known it immediately by the blue shutters. Dismissing the taxi, he walked up the front path. He saw the shutters were closed. The bell didn’t ring, and no one responded to his repeated knocking. At the front door, he could peer through the glass and could see mail piled in the foyer. It took him two houses on the block before someone could tell him what had happened. At the first, the man had a slight accent: “I’m sorry sailor; I don’t know anything about them. We just moved here, um, Friday, a week ago. With a final “Sorry,” the man moved back inside the closing door.

He felt suddenly warm despite the fall weather, and reached up and moved his cap back on his head, running his hand across his brow. He felt a quiver in the hand.

A neighbor from across the street had been watching from his lawn and crossed over toward him. He knew.

“You’re asking about the family that lived there.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, the Hearns,” he moved down the path toward the man. “My wife, Anna Maria Hearn, I haven’t heard from her in months.”

They met on the sidewalk. “I’m sorry . . . is it . . . Lieutenant?” glancing at the stripes on his sleeves: “They’re all gone,” he said.

“You mean they moved? Do you know where?”

“They’re dead, Lieutenant,” the man said quickly, shaking his head slowly.

“Anna Maria?” He felt the life squeezing out of him as if a giant clamp were crushing him.

“The whole family,” the man repeated. “Everyone. The Spanish Flu. I don’t know much else to tell you. I’m really sorry,” he repeated, seeing his face: “It was in all the papers -- about the epidemic in Europe. We’re so close to the port, you know, one of the seamen or somebody brought it in and it spread like mad. That whole household came down with it all at once it seemed, and it did for them all. The local authorities here didn’t know how to cope – all over town, they were taking people out- dead and dying. . Your folks here, no one in the neighborhood ever found out where the bodies were taken. They mostly kept to themselves anyway; she was a painter, I think. When the Red Cross came around later asking questions, no one knew what to tell them. Their man said they had originally gotten the wrong address. They said they’d come back and check again, but they never did – too busy I guess,

with so many sick and dying. You’re the only one been here since. We never knew anything about any husband in the Navy. Your folks there were never really here long enough to get to know. Nice, but like I said, they kind of kept to themselves.”

In that instant, his mind closed on the fact that he had touched the pinnacle of his being; this girl and the love she brought would remain true and untouched for them both from where she left it.

For a moment he was back with the old Brandywine : the waters closing over him, the hand reaching. He wished…

“What? Did you say something” the neighbor asked.

“Nothing.”

“Are you all right? This must be a terrible shock. Listen, come across the street, my wife can make some coffee . . . or a brandy?

“What? No. I have to get back to my ship,” he lied, not knowing what else to say, only wanting to get away from there. “Thank you. I have to go.”

He turned and walked down the street, the brown leaves falling in the touch of breeze; down the hill toward the port, to the ship he said he was going to, a ship that didn’t exist anymore, now shattered on the bottom of the Atlantic; toward a future now empty and eternal as the old Brandy herself. He tried to think of what he had to do now; who to contact. Who was left? What was he to do? What was left to him? He had to find a way.

He thought of that honeymoon he had promised her, the one she would never have. For some odd reason something he had read in college came to mind, words by Goethe, about Italy:

“Do you know the land where the lemon-trees bloom And oranges glow from the leaves’ dark gloom And a soft wind wafts from a cloudless sky, You must know that land? It is there, I long to go with you, my beloved.”

EQUILIBRIUM

By Tony Tedeschi

Abillowofbreeze flapstheclothatherknees

Theangularlightwarmshercheek. The salt-scarred terra cotta licks her feet.

Evenforasettingwithdozensofsailingcraft, berthedinthemarinainfrontofthe outdoordiningarea,attheRoadTownHarbourHotel,whereIwasenjoying breakfast,asthesunrosehigherabovetheSirFrancisDrakeChannel,thebrigantine schoonercoastingbetweenthemouthofRoadHarbourandtinyBellamyCaywasan attention-getter.

chop up run-on sent very late to “attention-getter.”

The multi-mastedsailingshiphadtobeatleasteighty,ninetyfeetandsleekasan outstretched eel. ‘53Corvette P-80ShootingStar SPEEDING BULLET!!!

Outstretched eel?

I looked up from my journal a moment, studied the action just beyond the mouth of the harbor, then continued.

Theschoonerhadnosooner(restructuretheinadvertentrhyme)droppedanchor, whenadingywasloweredovertheside.Acrewmembersliddownaladderintothe smallboat,tookasuitcasefromanothercrewmanuptop,abackpackhelddownto

himfromawomanondeck,thenassistedthewomandowntheladderandintoaseat in the stern. Thecrewmancrankedtheengineandheadedforthehotel’smarina.

I closed my notebook and watched as the small craft, in a long, lazy arc, approached the transient dock, several yards in front of where I was seated. After placing the suitcase and backpack carefully on the wharf, the crewman assisted the woman up, then headed his dingy back toward the schooner.

The woman slung her backpack over one shoulder, lifted her suitcase, walked up to the restaurant entrance, and stood almost directly in front of my table. Dropping the suitcase alongside her and shifting her sunglasses to the top of her head, she seemed to be studying the lay of the land. She was medium height, her body language, her clothes, even her expensive-looking suitcase, projecting a kind of understated elegance. Her blond hair was cut and coiffed into layers that would look right where e’er they fell, in whatever breeze. Fair skin and blue eyes gave off a decidedly Nordic look. These were all characteristics I generally found attractive, however, there was something about the way she embodied them, which said her physical appearance would play but one part in what defined her.

“Reception is up that path directly behind me,” I offered.

“Oh, I don’t have a reservation,” she replied with a smile that brightened her eyes, which now I could make out as strikingly pale blue.

“In that case,” I said, “do you have time for a cup of coffee, while you consider your next move?”

“Black,” she said, lifting and placing her suitcase across the armrests of a seat alongside mine and taking the seat opposite.

“Michael Rhodes.” I offered my hand.

She took it. “Tereza Grymes.”

“Nice suitcase,” I said. “Louis Vuitton?”

“The captain was a generous man.”

I called the waiter over and ordered her coffee and one more for me as well. He brought a cup and saucer for her, filled her cup, then refilled mine.

“Breakfast?” I asked.

“Had it on board. A farewell repast among friends.”

“Very nice.”

“But thank you for offering.”

There was the loud noise of a hefty nautical engine starting up nearby, then a launch carrying about a half-dozen passengers pulled out into the harbor and headed for the schooner.

“Your ride is picking up some replacements,” I said, adding some brown sugar to my coffee and taking a sip.

“They’re headed back to Cape Town,” she replied. “The schooner takes them across to these islands after Christmas each year, then ferries them home in time for Easter. I managed to latch onto this unique ferry service.”

“Impressive. Courageous. OK, daring.”

“Had had my fill of Cape Town.” She blew some air across her cup and took a sip.

“Very nice coffee.”

“Costa Rican. The main reason I stay at this hotel.”

She smiled warmly. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, one of the reasons.” I took another sip, then, “So, whoa, wait a minute, you rode that beauty across from South Africa. That’s gotta be a long, challenging sea voyage.”

“We island-hopped along the way.”

“There’s no hopping until you reach the Leeward Islands and by then you’re almost here.”

“Came across well southeast of the Leewards. We made a few stops along the coast of Brazil before heading north into the Caribbean.”

“I’m trying to wrap my head around all that time in open ocean.”

“Accommodations aboard the ship were quite nice. Predictably, we had a number of rough stretches. Anyway, I like ocean voyages.”

The brief repartee had nonetheless afforded me enough time to finish my coffee, usually a multi-cup experience each morning.

“You inhaled that coffee,” she remarked.

“I told you, Costa Rican. Heavenly.”

She stared at me a moment as if trying to discern some deeper meaning in our casual exchanges about the coffee, then, “Let me have your coffee cup,” she said.

“What?”

She reached out her hand.

“There’s very little coffee left.”

“I’m not going to drink your dregs,” she said with a laugh. “I’m curious about something.”

I stared at her questioningly.

“Your cup?” She persisted.

I handed her the cup. She took hers off its saucer and placed it alongside, then turned my cup upside down on the dish.

I looked at her quizzically, but she ignored me, staring down at the cup and tapping the bottom lightly a few times. Then she turned it over and began studying it.

“Hmmm,” she uttered, holding it so I could see inside the cup, then pointing at one of four threads of coffee that gravity had pulled toward the lip while she’d had it overturned in her saucer. “You see how this thread widens as it approaches the lip of the cup, it means "

“Whoa,” I replied, “you’re not going to tell me where I’ve come from by examining tiny streaks of coffee in the cup I was just drinking from? And, I presume where, I’m headed?”

“Look at this one thread,” she said, ignoring my comment. “Your horizons keep widening as you’ve grown older. You’re a traveler, an explorer.”

“OK,” I answered, “good one. But that could be an easy call. Why else would I be here?”

“You’re here alone. You travel alone.”

“I could be here on business.”

“Are you?”

“I’m a writer. I travel alone on assignments.”

“Part of the answer as to why you are a lone traveler is in this thread, right alongside the other. You see how it ends, almost exactly halfway to the lip?”

“Yes.”

“You lack companionship.”

“I don’t know. You’re here now, aren’t you?”

“Touché.”

She studied the lines further, then, “this one’s worrisome. Or maybe just sorrowful.”

I looked into the cup.

“You see how this thread is the opposite of the first one that was widening toward the lip? This one narrows. And you see how it’s broken. I’d say a broken home as a child.”

“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “Not so.”

“Then some other broken relationship. One that was hurtful in terms of what you lost.”

I just stared at her.

“Your marriage?”

“Yes,” I said, “Look, do we get to do your coffee cup next?”

“I can’t read my own.”

“So I get to do it?”

She didn’t answer.

“OK,” she said finally, “truthfully, what I am finding is pretty generic, pretty predictable in the lives of most people.”

“So what about you?” I questioned. “Where’s your broken thread?”

“Fair enough,” she replied, “but first let’s see if there’s anything else.”

“OK . . . I guess.”

She picked up my cup again. Once again, she seemed to intensely study some aspect of what she was seeing.

“What?” I asked, now hopelessly hooked into this whole exercise.

“This line,” she replied, “very unusual.”

“How so?”

“The squiggles? Very unusual. Gravity tends to pull all the threads in relatively straight lines.”

“And?”

“It’s closest to the cup handle. That’s the line that generally signifies equilibrium. Yours wavers. I don’t want to wander too far out of my zone here, but I’d say you are in a great struggle with yourself. That is, you’re in a struggle to find yourself.”

“OK, again pretty generic. Aren’t we all on that quest?”

“Yes, but it’s a matter of degree. You seem a captive of the search, almost unaccepting of when you’re presented with strong indications of where you have really landed. Unaccepting even when you’re in a place where you’d otherwise want to be. You are not comfortable in stasis. That original finding of you as the traveler, the explorer, it seems that you see the quest as the end in itself. Not accepting when you find a landing zone.”

“This is exhausting,” I said. “I don’t work this hard when I’m fending off my therapist.”

“I rest my case.”

“OK, then, what about you? You’re traveling alone. Hell, you’ve crossed the ocean in a sailboat. Where’s your home? Was it a broken one?”

“Kinesis is my equilibrium.”

“Kinesis? Equilibrium? How can perpetual motion provide equilibrium?”

“Equilibrium is not simply a matter of a lack of motion. It’s a balance of powers. In simple terms, a comfort zone. I am comfortable in the movement. Your movement is only a means to an end. Stasis is your equilibrium, but for some reason you fight it. You’re uncomfortable whenever you get there, when you’re simply in it. That’s why the turmoil in the coffee threads. You and I are both wanderers, but for me it is my path; for you it’s how you escape an equilibrium you don’t want to accept.

“Well,” I said, “this explorer has to wander back to my place and get some work done.”

I started to rise, but she made no move to get up.

“Where to from here?” I queried.

“Don’t know. Haven’t really thought it through short term.”

“I assume you got off here for a reason.”

“Yes, but it’s just a short stay. I have a contract as a hostess on the Royal Cruise Lines Royal Duchess. I’ll meet the ship when it arrives tomorrow. She spends one day in port here in Tortola, then island hops the West Indies before passing through the Panama Canal for a voyage across the Pacific.”

“So then you don’t have accommodations for tonight?”

“I’ll manage,” she said.

I took a breath, studied her for a moment. “Look,” I said, “I have a suite at the hotel here, two bedrooms, kitchenette, living room. You’re welcome to the spare bedroom for tonight.”

She returned the studied look.

“No unsavory expectations,” I said. “I won’t encroach on your space. You don’t even need to make the bed in the morning. I have maid service. It’s a hotel, after all.”

Her look dissolved into a warm smile.

“How can I pass up such a generous offer?”

I returned the smile. “May I get your bag, ma’am?”

“But of course, kind sir,” she said, rising from her chair. *

While she spent the afternoon exploring Road Town, the islands’ capital on Tortola, I worked on one of a series of articles I was writing about the British Virgin Islands. My concentration upon my article was redirected frequently by thoughts of her

Witheachinterruption,Imarvelmoreattheimpactthatourbriefencounterat breakfastishavinguponmeandthequestionsthathaverisenaboutmypaththrough life. Initially,whensheofferedtofollowherstrangeprocedureforfindingperspective inmypast,thenpredictionsaboutmyfuture,Ithoughtitwouldbeafunintroduction toanexperiencewithanattractivewoman,anicebreakertowhereverthatexperience wouldlead.NowIamjustwrappedinaseriesofconfusingthoughts...

When she returned from her explorations, she accepted my offer to join me for dinner.

We dined at the second floor, al fresco restaurant above the harbor, as the sun dropped behind the islands in the Drake Channel and the sails of the charter yachts filled with orange light as they returned to their moorings. I told her that, as a journalist, I was incurably curious about the lives of the people I’d met, and asked her forgiveness in advance over the endless stream of questions I’d toss at her. Nonetheless, she was very free about describing what I found to be a fascinating family history.

“My father had been a cadet in an Italian naval officer training school, when Italy fell to the allies in 1943,” she said. “He was conscripted, unwillingly, by the Nazi army retreating north through Italy from their losses in Africa. He hated the fascists who’d taken over his country and their affiliation with the Nazis; there was no way he was going to fight for Hitler. His captors were not pleased, so he was sent to a prison camp in the Sudetenland, now part of Czechoslovakia. When the camp was liberated in 1945, he spent two months in Prague, living with my mother, before arranging transport back to his hometown in the Tyrol Mountains of North Italy, leaving behind his common law war bride and me on the way.”

“Well, I guess that explains the blond hair and blue eyes.”

“You’re very perceptive.”

“You damn well know your eyes are hard to ignore.”

“I thought you said you’d be burying me in questions, not interrupting my story?”

“Proceed.”

“My mother was Romani, a Gypsy, but descendent of the Vikings on her mother’s side. Ergo the pale blue eyes, wise ass.”

“Sorry.”

“She survived the Nazi annihilation of the Gypsies in Czechoslovakia because of her clearly Nordic complexion and her adoption of the family name Grymes, from the Scandinavian side of her ancestry. She’d been working as a hotel maid in Prague when my father got there.”

“Wait, Grimes, is a very British name.”

“When spelled with an i. My mother spelled it: g r Y m e s. Very Nordic.”

“Romani/Gypsy, ergo your fortune telling.”

“Ergo.”

Thus we traded life stories for several hours, over dinner and two bottles of wine, she pressing me on my journeys to destinations she’d yet to explore; me proceeding with my often lengthy accounts thereof, until the waitstaff was getting restless and the manager finally, diplomatically, explaining they were having to close things up. I told the manager if he could retrieve one more bottle of wine and add it to my bill, we’d be out of there as soon as he returned.

“On the house,” he said with a broad smile, and we departed. Settled into the living room at my suite, it seemed we were lost in more accounts of our pasts that would travel well into our futures. There was an almost reflexive dynamic to the ongoing stories .

“I’m curious about your near perfect command of English.”

“Near perfect?”

“Slight, not-quite-placeable accent, although very sexy.”

“Sexy?”

I smiled and nodded. “Yes, sexy. So how does a Czech in a Russian controlled country learn English.”

“I’d been permitted to take English in school to get a job as a translator for the few British businessmen who were permitted in Czechoslovakia during the Russian occupation. Our Russian overseers approved and were always subjecting us to debriefings. However, one of the businessmen, for whom I translated regularly, managed to secretly arrange a British passport for me and passage to the UK, where he set me up in an apartment. I knew I had to escape that arrangement and faded into the British populace. My basic understanding of how British business worked, via all my translating, got me lower level jobs in business and finance, but I was terminally bored. Thereby began my wanderings.

“Sounds like a plot for a spy movie. We could collaborate on the screenplay.”

“I’m more interested in your accent.”

“My . . . accent? What? You’ve adopted some of that English snobbery about American English?

“A bit of the . . . guttural,” she persisted.

“Guttural? Really?”

“Not really,” she said with a laugh. “Just my parry to the nerve of your questioning my accent.”

“Queens,” I said.

“Queen? What about the queen?”

“Not the damned queen,” I said with a laugh. “Queens,” “New York City’s quintessentially suburban borough of Queens.”

“Never been there.”

“If you’ve ever landed at JFK, you’ve been there.”

“On my list.”

I was quiet for a moment, my alcohol-stimulated mind, wandering back to the days of my youth and early adulthood. “Some of my fondest memories are from there.”

“Hmmm,” she replied.

“What?”

“Sweethearts? There must have been sweethearts.”

“Yeah, sure. But nothing ever serious. Just a kind of warmup for the dance. I left in my early twenties.”

“I don’t know,” she countered, appearing to resume that penetrating look she had used on me since she first walked into my life. “I don’t know.”

I had no reply and suddenly was feeling the crash from all the wine coming on with increasing intensity.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I feel myself rapidly running out of energy. And I don’t want to start slurring my words and ruining a pretty wonderful day and evening.”

“Me, as well,” she replied. “Thank you for a most interesting day and evening.”

We retired to our separate bedrooms.

I awoke from one of those alcohol-induced comas by what sounded like a muffled attempt at my name. My addled brain, begged to fall back into the neutrality of sleep, but then there it was again: “Michael.” This time barely above a whisper.

I shook what few cobwebs were still loose and functional in my brain and focused on the doorway to my bedroom, where she stood, lit softly by the security lamp outside my window.

“Tereza?”

“Michael,” she said, “I’m sorry to disturb you. I had a vivid dream I was once again in the throes of brutality of the Russian occupation. I’m terrified to go back to my bed and back to the horror of those days. Would you hold me?”

“Of course,” I replied.

She walked softly to my bedside.

“May I?” she asked, as she lifted my blanket.

“Of course. Of course.” I slid over a bit to make room for her.

She got in, folding immediately into the safety of my embrace.

“Thank you,” she said, gripping me tightly and nuzzling her head in the crook of my neck.

WhatalternativemomentsofsleepIgotduringtherestofournighttogether managedtonullifywhathadbeenthecinderblockeffectsofmyhangoverbetween moments of sheer loveliness.

The sun was considerably higher in the morning than my usual hour to begin writing fortified by the parade of my morning cups of coffee, as she crossed the threshold into the kitchenette where I sat at the table. I closed my notebook.

“Sleep well?” I offered.

“Yes,” she replied. “After that . . . interruption? I slept very well.”

“Hey,” I said, “I was the interrup-tee not the interrup-tor. Nonetheless, now I’m battling recriminations. After all, I did promise to be good.”

“And you were very good,” she said with a warm smile as she walked to the counter where the coffee pot stood. “Any coffee left?”

“Should be. Cups are in the cabinet just above.”

She took down a cup, poured some coffee then sat opposite me at the small round table.

“Oh,” she said, pointing to my hands folded atop my notebook. “I didn’t mean to interrupt . . . again. I can go sit out on the patio. Looks like a beautiful morning.”

“You’re not interrupting. Were it not for enforced breaks in my workday, I’d probably be writing nonstop from wakeup to bedtime. A good deal of it just meaningless observations and fanciful meanderings.”

“I’m sure that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but thank you for excusing this interruption.”

She took a sip, than stared at me through a very warm expression.

“What?” I asked. “Why that look?”

“You have very soft hands,” she replied.

“OK . . .?”

“Last night. Very soft hands. It was a very warm experience.”

“OK? Now you’re embarrassing me.”

She took another sip, then, “May I see your hands?”

I looked at her quizzically, but responded by holding out my hands.

“Turn them over, please.”

I complied.

“Let me see the left one.”

“It never knows what the right one is doing,” I said with a laugh, then offered my hand. She took it and studied it for a few moments.

“Would you like me to pour some coffee in it to accentuate the threads?” I asked.

“Very funny.”

“And?”

“Your life line is long, but faint.”

“Which means?”

“This journey of exploration, through which you have defined your life? It’s there. It’s long. But it’s weak.”

I smiled and shook my head. “You’re just trying to support your coffee cup reading.”

“Well, there it is. The supporting evidence. The heart line is the one I find most interesting, however.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“Your love line more accurately your search for love runs in an arc similar to your life line, although the two arcs concave away from each other, as if they are magnetic poles pushing in opposite directions. Then, what I find most unusual in your heart line is the breaks. Most unusual.”

“I cut my hand badly a number of years ago, grabbing for a ledge on a climb up a cliffside. That may explain it.”

“The heart line is strong at the origination point, then bumps along as it journeys through life, until it begins to diverge from your life line.”

“Two marriages may account for the bumps.”

“Yes, they would do it. But it’s that early strength in the heart line I find most interesting, especially when compared to the line’s weakness beyond the bumps.”

“Your analysis, please.”

“Difficult, but if I had to, I’d say your true love connection occurred early in your life, but either you didn’t recognize it, or you chose to dismiss it.”

“Well, that’s very disappointing. Do I tie a weight to an ankle and jump into the Drake Channel or . . . I don’t know. Do what?”

“I’m not trying to find some sign of hope here,” she said, “just reporting what I see.” She took another searching look at my left hand, “but one of the results of that injury is that the arc of your love line is redirected in some odd way, as if it is trying to turn.”

“Can I have my hand back?” I asked.

“Of course.”

She looked at me and smiled warmly.

“Our . . . encounter last night was just one more way station in your life,” she said. “Don’t misinterpret this. It was an act of love, very different from a purely libidodriven encounter. There was a real exchange of love there. But now I read it as one more experience in your search for love. It was an experience that was lovely for me. But and please don’t misinterpret this it was not helpful in moving you toward your destiny.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“No need to pursue this, Michael. You’re a lovely man. Know that. I wish you well on your path to equilibrium.

She spent the morning on the patio behind my suite, most of it beneath the shade of a tamarind tree, alternately rising and walking the short slope down to the Drake Channel to wet her feet in its almost indescribably clear waters, their light blue tint above the pinks and yellows of the coral reefs just beyond the shore.

I sat at the kitchen table facing the archway to the patio, catching glimpses of her as she made her short journeys down to the water. We both seemed to project contentment just to be in each other’s neighborhood. None of the torrents of words, which had defined our brief relationship, were necessary.

At one point, just up the slope from the waterline, she stood with her back against a pole supporting the canopy outside the door to the patio, luxuriating in the cool breeze off the water and whatever thoughts it was inspiring in that brain of hers, which I was convinced never rested. In this case however, it appeared that she had achieved some level of the equilibrium that she said I would achieve in stasis, as if she were showing me how it was done.

I stopped scribbling lines in my story. Instead, I wrote:

Abillowofbreeze

Flapstheclothatherknees, Theangularlightwarmshercheek. The salt-scarred terra cotta Licks her feet.

Equilibrium

A blast of the horn of the Royal Duchess put an end to her reverie. She gathered herself up from her perch on the patio and came inside.

“Well, Michael,” she said, “Gotta go.”

“I’ll give you a lift to the port, of course.”

“Thank you. That would be nice.”

At portside, we located the gangway to the crew deck. I carried her Louis Vuitton suitcase to it.

We embraced, then couldn’t resist exchanging a kiss.

“It’s been very nice to know you,” I said. “And somehow I feel I do know you.”

She just smiled for a moment, then said, “I’ve been thinking about what I saw in your heart line.”

“Really?” I replied. “Really? What about it?”

“The sign that your true love connection occurred early in your life. Life’s principal objective is to reconnect the yin and yang, most often across years and many miles. In your case, it occurred very early on, as if the connection had been established, perhaps even reestablished, in a remnant of the eternal present, which was still flickering at your landing here on our planet. Now I see that is what I saw.”

A shiver raced through my body. It almost staggered me.

“I . . .” but I had no words to finish with.

“Good-bye, Michael,” she said, then turned and started up the gangway.

NINE WOMEN NINE STORIES

Tony Tedeschi

Take Nine Women on vacation with you . . . Their short stories, that is.

Whether on the beach, at the lakefront, in a deck chair, an airplane seat or railroad berth, a story a day provides nine days of engaging reading. While each is a story unto itself, they stitch together into the larger romantic (mis)adventures of Michael Rhodes, world traveler, bon vivant, creative writer. However you describe him he’s nothing if not interesting subject matter. Although, as the writer, he is in control of the narrative. So, take Nine Women away with you. They’ll be happy to come along for some truly special vacation reading.

Tedeschi explores themes of love and loneliness, fiction and truth, by following a writer reflecting on encounters with a variety of women . . . This provocative collection will appeal to readers who want a searching, slightly pained confession of what a (fictionalized) man like this thinks when he thinks back on the women with whom he's felt a tingling chemistry. . . The mystery is how much of this is Rhodes’s projection. “I never know the whole story, unless, of course, I write it myself,” Rhodes muses, an acknowledgement that he’s forever guessing at what others feel. Nine Women suggests, with some poetry and insight, that for some men true connection is fleeting.

In early 1970s New York City, writer Michael Rhodes sits in a cafe observing women at another table In the stories that follow, Rhodes recounts his interactions with various women . . . Tedeschi’s collection calls to mind the Fellini film, “8 ½,” with its spotlight on women influencing a creative artist’s life. Some of Rhodes’s musings are more tantalizing than revelatory, leaving the reader wishing for more information about his “other semi-successful marriage.” Yet even the more fleeting encounters included here are memorable, including one with Gabby, a misunderstood young woman Rhodes met in Haiti who “managed to expose me as the lead character in my own story and definitely not a sympathetic one.” Imaginative, introspective explorations of the impact of women on one writer’s journey.

Kirkus Review

https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Women-Stories-TonyTedeschi/dp/B0C87PX12X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3CV1UKGYEUYII&keywords=Nine+women+ni ne+stories+Tony+Tedeschi&qid=1687202150&s=books&sprefix=nine+women+nine+stories+t ony+tedeschi%2Cstripbooks%2C67&sr=1-1

Sunset,VillaCaletas,Jaco,CostaRica

PhotobyBernieKirshbaum