The Gift

A loud rapping at the door awoke me from a deep dreamy sleep. It was early, too early to be awake, and certainly too early to be out in the streets pounding on doors. I thought that there must be some emergency in town and ran to the door to find out whatever news there was from whoever was there. Much to my surprise, there was no one at the door ready to identify themselves and their message, and yet a package with my name on it had been left at the door. It was a most curious circumstance, and yet I saw no real harm in it, because secret gift giving was the hallmark of the holiday season. I myself had delivered many a gift in that manner over the years.

The package was heavier than it should have been from its size, and once I had it indoors I eagerly opened it to find out what it was and who had sent it. Alas, there was no identification of the giver, and more's the pity because what was inside was a most remarkable carved wood box, worked with figures of animals and dragons all over, in a magnificent shade of red. Whoever sent it to me must have been a prankster, though, because I could see no way into the box, no clasp or lock announced itself, no hinge or platen presented itself as a means to the inside. I was locked out, and most frustrated by this unfortunate turn of events.

I had tried everything to open the box, short of using tools and damaging it. It made no sound when shaken but there was something inside, no wood could weigh that much even if it were solid. The grain pattern could be seen and was continuous with no discernable marks other than the carvings.

I had a hard time concentrating at work that day. Arriving home that evening I decided that I would simply drill a hole into the mysterious gift to see what was inside. As I carried it down to the basement I felt as if I wasn’t alone. When I turned on the drill press I know I heard someone draw a sharp breath. I powered off the drill and searched the basement for an intruder and found nothing. Returning to the bench I selected a small bit and proceeded to drill into the bottom-center of the piece. After only an inch or so the woodturnings turned from white wood to gray metal. I reached to turn the drill off and felt the presence again and heard a voice… “Release”. I felt an intense sense of urgency as I again checked every corner and closet for an unwanted visitor.

I went to my bar and poured a glass of bourbon to try and shake off the tension. “Is that good whiskey?” came the voice from close behind me. I whirled around to find an old, gaunt man dressed in a gray civil-war uniform. He extended his hand, “my name’s Glen, I ain’t had a drink of good whiskey fer a long spell.” I felt as if I was being electrocuted but I shook his hand and retrieved a glass from the cabinet and poured a generous portion from the decanter. I produced two cigars and a light and asked, shaken, “can I help you with something?”

As we enjoyed our cigars and bourbon, my mysterious guest told an eerie story, “Durin’ the war there was Chinamun that was some kinda wizards. We’d see ‘em on the fields after a battle lookin’ over the dead. They’d take a lump o’ dirt or some such thing an’ say prayers over’n it. I seen one of ‘em after I got hit. He was kneelin’ an’ prayin’ in front of the tree that was behind me when I got hit in the chest by a Yankee cannonball; went right through me an' stuck in that maple tree. I don’t know what happened next but it seemed lak a lotta months went by an’ I could see the tree an’ this little Chine'e feller ever’day a-prayin’ by that tree. One day I seen ‘im cut it down an’ take a piece home with ‘im. He carved all them animals on it an’ I been trapped in thar ever since. I thank ya fer a-letin’ me go."

The man faded from my sight as he finished his glass, he retained the extinguished cigar butt; chewing it as he smiled at me and disappeared.

Beer Diving

One of the best beer drinking games I ever played was called, “Beer Diving”. In the mid-eighties I was the lead singer and bass player for an “East coast hotel lounge” band called Keystone. The band got its name the usual way, we had a pending contract and no name; so we sat around “brainstorming” (smoking and drinking what was available), to come up with a name to put on the contract. We finally got very tired of the whole thing and the name was thrown out…”yea, that’s perfect”, “cool name”. All positive comments flowing as we got up to leave, the band was named.

One of the first jobs we had was at a Holiday Inn in Clemson, SC. The hotel was built around a central courtyard with tables, plastic trees, a giant hot tub and a pool. All of the rooms had a nice, sliding glass door, 3X5 balcony view of the center court. It was decided by the drummer and myself, that from the forth floor balcony one could get a good shot at the pool with a can of beer. The initial test was a success; we pulled a fresh beer out of the cooler, walked it out on the balcony and proceeded to lob it into the pool. Our guitar player was sitting poolside and dove in to retrieve it and seemed very pleased with the treasure from above. We then decided that the game should have rules and be interactive. The “quarter-beer-back” would call “HUT!” and the receiver would begin a run from 50 or so feet from the pool and dive as the beer was thrown from the balcony. If the beer were caught in mid-air the swimming receiver would then open it and chug it on his way to poolside. If the beer were missed the swimming receiver would retrieve it, open it and chug it on his way to poolside; simple rules do always make a good game

Froggy

Froggy
By
Skully
Friday, November 17, 2006

Warm, comfortable and secure under layers of soft blankets, lying on his stomach clutching his best friend. An endearing companion and a more than adequate replacement for pacifiers long since outgrown, was “Froggy”.

He was purchased from Sears several years ago from the 1970 Christmas edition of the catalog. His thoughtful Mother saw the sparkle in her baby’s eyes when he discovered it while eagerly scanning the wonderful toys in the magical pages.

Squeezing Froggy tightly and pressing his face against his soft, foam filled, polyester friend, he softly mumbled, “night-night Froggy.”

At once daylight intervened, the cozy and warm place at the edge of dreams became other than the normal playground. He found himself sitting at a desk covered with paperwork and implements of business. “Where are we Froggy? There is a TV here but I don’t know how to work it. It looks weird, and it says Windows and password.” Froggy just smiled and stared with his gleaming black eyes. “This sure is a big chair and desk, I’m scared.” He wasn’t really scared, as he was an adventurer at heart. He loved to go to unknown places and sit in silence and listen to the sounds, to learn the new place, to put himself into the environment and become part of it.

“Let’s go exploring, Froggy, let’s see what this place is.” He slid out of the chair, holding Froggy tightly, as they crept across the worn carpet into the next room. “This is the same as the other room, it looks just like the stables at the fairgrounds. I wonder what they watch on the TVs, and what is Windows? Look, there’s a kitchen and everything, a refrigerator and stove and a sink…there are machines humming and they have blinking lights all over them. It looks like the Apollo place on TV when those guys went to the moon. I hope we don’t get in trouble for being here.”

“Mike…MIKE…HEY MIKE! The system has locked up again.” A voice, distant at first, encroaches on perceived reality as the scene changes. “Look Froggy, where did all of these people come from?” “Mike, didn’t you hear me? The system is locked again and we can’t afford another day of downtime.” The office manager was in a state of panic as my head cleared. “It’s nothing, the Internet connection bounced and it dropped the VPN tunnel. I’ll cycle power on the router and we’ll be back up in about three minutes.”

A dream of dreaming in the past is unsettling to say the least, but wonderful as well. As I sit in my big chair at my big desk, in my cubicle, performing tasks that keep the millions of dollars flowing, I have a feeling in the pit of my stomach; one that longs for the warm feeling of my best friend that now lies entombed in a large Tupperware container in the corner closet of the basement. “I love you, Froggy!”

Essay from a friend

A good friend of mine who was an excellent writer, Bill Mucklow, sent me this several years ago. He is responsible for making me want to write so all blame is his.

How I Spent Last Week

An Essay by

Bill Mucklow

I guess one of the disagreeable things about being confined to a hospital (committed, I guess would be worse) is time. Unless you are sedated beyond senseless or in terrible pain, time works on your mind. Oh, there are those folks who can lose themselves in daytime drivel television, or melt with abundance of cable channels available in any self-respecting intensive care unit.
For me though, time occupied in thought and contemplation of events that brought me to the place and the ramifications rendered a most awesome awareness. For better or worse, for the moment at least, my world was within the walls of the Cardiac Care Unit.

Trying to pee, lying on my back occupied most of my first hours. I’m sure with all the wires glued to my body the nurses at the monitoring end knew when I chucked the concept and slipped my legs over the side of the bed. It wasn't anything they said, just the looks of disappointment. Like I’d cost them the pot in some perverse medical pool. I could have fought back and just soiled their sheets.

It’s amazing how quickly one can adapt to what in a normal world would be intolerable. Availing myself of the open-air toilet in the corner of my curtained cubicle while people milled about just a few feet away was an unusual--if not disconcerting--effort. For some reason I wondered about Lord Nelson’s instructions to his fleet before the battle of Trafalgar; England expects each man to do his duty. Here I was, doing my duty. Humor is the best protection in such situations.
After a couple of days in almost blessed solitude, my captors moved me across the unit to a room already inhabited. It’s just as well. The old neighborhood fell victim to over crowding in Intensive Care. Surgical patients moan and groan a lot. Us stoic cardiac types mostly lie there, clucking our tongues, bemoaning the almost certain loss of barbecued ribs, rare roast beef and chocolate eclairs.

Anyway, I guess my new roommate was less than fit. I’d found I could use the room’s telephone line for E-mail from my laptop computer. For obvious reasons, there were no permanent telephones. Well, right in the middle of composition of a treatise of my predicament, the luckless fellow--in the medic vernacular--had the gall to code. It must have been a minute, or so before someone noticed the gentleman had become, late.
Hell, it looked like something from a television drama. People running around as if someone had died. Talk about a Chinese fire drill. A nurse poked her head around the curtain. I guess to see how I was reacting to the closeness of the grim reaper. I was in the middle of a particular good sentence and mustered my best Churchillian scowl. I had a ringside seat in a death to life struggle.

The chaos was in certainty an orchestrated triumph--if even temporary--over eternity. With emotionless precision, some well-trained and experienced nurses and doctors beat back inevitability. I don’t know the long-term prognoses for the guy next door, but for a time he was restored to the bosom of life. An already healthy respect for some dedicated people deepened in my thinking.

Next day, I was shuttled off again. This time to the less prestigious, general population. The regular hospital. My roommate this time was obviously a rural chap. If his browbeating wife was to be believed, his name was Jackie. Further unsought information imparted, he was ninety years old and suffering from--among other things--Alzheimer's. I think he was trying to escape his wife. Why she was allowed to stay in the room all day is a mystery. She constantly berated and scolded him. Jackie, put your legs down. I don’t want to see your dirty parts. Nobody wants to see that old thing. Perhaps, she was just afraid of the passing of someone with whom she'd spent her life.

By nightfall--indifferent to posted hospital rules--several other friends and family joined her. My wife, Toni, arrived just in time to share a morsel of dinner with me. She gratified to hear, Jackie lost his snuff. A quick shakedown of his sheets and his relatives returned the foul mixture to it’s almost hysterical owner. We were both interested to learn; he indented to remove his catheter himself. Hit's again the law to do this to a man, he shouted toothless at a nurse. Hi'll have yea all arrested. The medic assured him he'd bleed to death if he removed the offending tube and it was doctors' orders.

I was right in the middle of a not too imp-palatable turkey breast when Jackie told all his company, Toni and me and at least half the floor, he had to shit.
Jackie! Watch your language, we got folks here.
I don’t care who’s here. I gota shit. And right now.

As someone searched for the bedpan, several of Jackie’s guests abandoned him for a more favorable climate in the smoking area. His wife and a couple of others stayed while Jackie served king and country.
Toni and I were laughing so hard I could hardly finish my dinner. Nothing bothers Muck low’s when they're eating, does it?
Certainly not. Food is serious business. Besides, considering I'm in here I'm going to have to change my part of the family crest from a knife, fork and spoon on a gravy field to chopsticks over a rice paddy with skinny fish.

AI gotta shit! Again from behind the curtain.
Well, shit damn ya. You don't have tell everybody 'bout hit.
I thought I was tough, but a little while later, my son Ed, showed up. He nodded as we related the events just passed. He replied it true family style; that would have bothered me. But now, I can eat a sandwich sitting on a corpse. Chip off the old block.

What did you do last week?

The Winery
By
Skully
11/12/2006 8:00 AM


I have some property that is adjacent to a wonderful place, a winery of some repute in the hills of my beloved West Virginia. The wines made by the cellar master are competitive in taste and texture with expensive wines costing two or three times what these sell for even at retail. There are only grape wines, high quality grapes crafted into bottled bliss.

Some at this point would shout, “Real men don’t drink wine!” Actually real men have been making and drinking wine longer than beer or distilled spirits. Wine was first because it can make itself right on the vine if you leave the grapes on the vine long enough. What should really be the rule is “Friends don’t let friends drink white zinfandel…especially men”.

One of the things that I love about the winery is that it is not a “fu-fu, nose-in-the-air, unisex playground for yuppies, the place is actually perdy-damn manly, kinda like the folks at the Merietta winery out in California, they make great wines and still have time to go hunting. I start all my hunts at the winery, it’s a great place to gather your thoughts before heading down over the hill and a great place to end the day with a glass or three of good wine before heading home.

The winery kitchen is also very alluring. Aside from the delights of the pallet that are often created by those who frequent the winery, there is comfort and relaxation in the air. The fireplace is made from stone and is large enough to house the front of a small car. A storm-drain grate is the burner and can accommodate six or eight logs three feet in length if you can stand the heat. The ceiling is adorned with a full coating of old wine corks from all of the state wineries as well as a good selection from other small and large ones that grace the world. The cellar has plenty of oak barrels aging quantities of hand crafted wines and large stainless steel vats where hundreds of gallons of wine await the right time to either go into the barrel for aging or into the bottle for enjoyment. I have been fortunate to have this Eden to escape to in the midst of all of the daily cares of work and world. In all of the hundreds if not thousands of times I have been there I cannot recall ever feeling any stress, any burden. There have been many places that I have considered to be sanctuary but this place tops them all.

Well the wife and I are headed out to a nice breakfast somewhere; I’d better get going.

Well, here goes; I've never had a blog but it seems that it might be an enjoyable little hobby.
I just started it today and will be adding to it as time permits. I guess things that are built slowly last longer, so this should last a long time.

I fancy myself a writer so I'll copy and paste one of my essays:





SQUIRELL HUNTING PROBLEM
By
Skully
Monday, October 09, 2006

I have discovered to my dismay that my “hunting buddies” are no more. No, they haven’t gone to the happy hunting grounds in the sky; it seems that they have just lost interest. Opening day of Squirrel Season used to be a big holiday; now it is just me and my trusty side-by-side 12 gauge strolling quietly through the woods scanning for movement in the trees. The standard opening day used to consist of a great deal of fun. We would meet at the cabin on Friday evening and have a feast. We then would get up just before the sun and set off in different directions to hunt the morning quarry. We would meet back at the cabin around 10:30AM for lunch and to share tales of amazing shots and even more amazing sights. The day would end around 2PM and we would head for home to make savory squirrel stew and dream of the deer season to come.

Yesterday I got up at 3AM and headed alone to the cabin where I waited for the sun to rise. The morning was as brilliant as I could have hoped and the air was cool, around 40 degrees. I set off at a very slow pace, stopping every few yards to scan the trees and hillsides for bushy tails. The foliage is still very thick as the leaves have just started turning and only the poplars have lost any thickness. I was able to get only two by 11AM although I saw many more. My heart just wasn’t in it; even when I saw a pack of whitetail doe standing 50 feet away I just didn’t feel the rush that usually accompanies such sightings. I did however feel very much at peace with the woods; my mind was uncluttered and consumed only with what was within the range of my shotgun. I’ve never felt that peaceful in the woods before; normally I am a little stressed about getting my limit. Not stressed in a bad way, more like the stress of competition though I do not actively compete when hunting…well…you know, it’s a man thing. I think I may have wasted my first experience of being at total peace while hunting. I was probably unconsciously feeling sorry for myself; and missing the holiday feeling that has always been there on opening day.

Next week is opening day of Whitetail Archery Season; I am used to going it alone as my hunting buddies do not bow hunt. I hope that as I sit in my stand that I can re-visit the peace that I felt during my lonely opening day of Squirrel season.