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Turkey Trot

Turkey Trot

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When I was in the seventh or eighth grade, I thought I was a pretty good sprinter.  I remember a track meet that was held at the Shore Regional High School, between the four  elementary schools that fed into the regional high school.  My event was the 100-yard dash (and maybe a 400 relay as well, not sure I remember).  I was in the second group of runners, sort of the “B” team who were not quite as fast as the “A” team.  I remember sitting in the bleachers waiting for my event.  The week before I had heard or read something about how sugar can give you a burst of energy, and so thinking this was a good idea, I snuck a couple of Hershey bars in the waist band of my gym shorts with the plan of ingesting them prior to my event.  This was brilliant, I thought, kind of like giving a racehorse Lasix before their big maiden debut.

The problem was that when I went to get my Hershey bars from the waist band of my gym shorts, I discovered they had melted and as a result my plan was foiled.  I had to throw my Hershey bars away.

Ah, it probably wasn’t a good plan anyway.

Though I am not 100% sure, I believe I won my heat but got smoked in the finals running against the “A” top finishers.

I came out of it with a medal anyway, and a lesson on stuffing Hershey bars in the waistband of my gym shorts in June.

In high school, I let my athletic aspirations be second to growing my hair long, listening to music, being interested in girls, and doing other things I shouldn’t have been doing.

I suppose there was a lesson in that as well.

 

Later in life, I picked up running again.

Which came in handy when I met Kim because she was a runner too.

I think our running peaked in 2014.  I would be turning 58 years old that June and had a goal of completing a half-marathon.  That Spring and Summer, we did as many ten-milers, 10 Ks, 15 Ks, and 5 Ks as we could find.   And I completed my half-marathon that April, participating in the Long Branch Half Marathon in New Jersey.

It was great, but I think the best thing to come out of that experience that year was that I finally got over my fear of writing and having someone other than me read the words I had written.  That year I wrote a weekly blog called “A Happier, Healthier Me” as part of the job I had at the time.  This led to my Musings starting in January of 2016.

I haven’t run much at all in the last ten years.  Walking, maybe, but not even walking as much of that as I should.

This week, while driving through downtown Herndon, I saw a sign for the Herndon Turkey Trot on November 22 at 4 PM.  I thought the 4 PM time was a little odd, it started to get dark around 4:30, but when I got home, I decided to look it up online, thinking it might be fun for Kim and me to do.

I learned the race was open to ages 4 and up.

The first 400 pre-registered got a long-sleeve T-shirt.

Registration cost was $40 each.

But here was the kicker…runners had to complete the course in 45 minutes or less.

I thought, well, I don’t really need another T-shirt.

And $40, $80 for the two of us is a lot of money on my current budget.

But, here was the real issue, I didn’t think I could finish the course in less than 45 minutes.

The 5 Ks Kim and I have done the past few years, we have walked.

And though I know there is all that pre-race adrenaline, with the gear on, and the number, and the pre-race stretching going on, there is also the possibility of humiliation.

But let’s face it, it’s not the tee shirt, it’s not all that camaraderie, it’s not the post-race bananas and free Gatorade…it’s the self-satisfaction you get when you just finish.

So, I thought, who needs all that?

I just needed to prove to myself I could complete a 5K in 45 minutes.

 

I heard a sermon this week with a guest speaker who was a successful businessman, and he was talking about failure and the rewards one gets from the lessons learned from failure.

He only admitted to failing twice in his lifetime, which I thought was a bit of a stretch.

But good for him.

I thought, gee, if failing was the ticket to success in this life, I should be the King of the Universe right now.

But I understood his message: don’t let failure stop you, don’t give up, keep striving, and in the end, you will be a winner.

 

So, this morning, I went up to my closet, dug out the running tights that used to make my kids cringe, put on some running layers, got my running gloves, and my hat, and like a gladiator leaving the tunnel and entering the Colosseum, I opened the garage door, and strutted out into the public.

But before all that, remembering the Hershey bars in the waistband of my gym shorts, I ate one of the Baby Ruths and the Butterfingers my son-in-law Leon had sent me packing with in a zip-lock bag the other evening.

Now, using the stopwatch feature on my smart watch, I hit start, and off I went.

Kim and I had already established a three-mile route so I knew where I needed to go.

Through the neighborhood and down to the Sugarland Trail, I thankfully only encountered one neighbor.

Crossing the creeks carefully, I plodded along, breathing heavily, one foot in front of the other.

Checking my watch, just a few times, it seemed my pace was too slow, but picking up speed seemed like a long shot.

“Who has the Lasix?” I thought as I was approaching the last creek crossing and facing the all uphill last quarter mile back to my garage door.

Taking small steps, but moving steadily, I approached my driveway.

Not to be deterred by failure this time, I thought I would just take the weekend to recoup and as the message said, try again on Monday.

When I hit the garage door, I looked at my smart watch stopwatch and the time said…

Forty-three minutes and seventeen seconds.

There was no big timer waiting for me, no cheering crowds behind the string of flags and traffic cones, nobody to take my photo crossing the finish line…

But it was all good.

Breathing heavily, my heart pounding, a little pain in my chest, through the garage door I went into the house, while I waited for the ambulance to arrive.

No, just kidding about the ambulance, I actually felt pretty good.

And proud of myself that I proved I could run the Herndon Turkey Trot in the required time, and since I didn’t need another tee shirt and I don’t want to spend the fory bucks, I no longer had the need to run the Herndon Turkey Trot 5K.

Because today, November 21st, at approximately 12 PM:

This Turkey…

Former member of the “B” team…

Not the King Of the Universe..yet

And definitely qualifying as “ages 4 and up”…

 

Trotted.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

That’s me in 2014 with my Team Move For Hunger teamates at the Long Branch Half Marathon
Happy Thanksgiving Pop!

Happy Thanksgiving Pop!

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Thanks, Pop

Thanks for giving.

Thanks for giving me life, a home, and safety.

Thanks for giving me a family and holding it together to this day.

Thanks for loving my mother and for giving me a sister and a brother, and another brother too.

And thanks for giving us Jesus by making us go to Sunday school.

 

Thanks for giving me a life where everything wasn’t just given to me.

Thanks for giving me a chance to make up my mind,

And for giving me the freedom to learn and make mistakes.

Thanks for not giving me everything I wanted and for teaching me to appreciate what I have earned.

Thanks for teaching me to respect work and those I work for, and that all work is important.

 

Thanks for giving me your blue eyes but not your hairline.

Thanks for giving me Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Weary Willie on Halloween too.

And for making all those holidays memorable as a child.

Thanks for giving your time in service to our country and me the advice to join the Army even though I didn’t listen.

And thanks for not giving me shit when I knocked the lights off the top of the firetruck with the overhead door of the firehouse…and when I did it the second time too.

 

Thanks for giving me your attention when I required it.

And thanks for giving others your time even though there were times I may have felt I needed it more.

Thanks for giving me your hand and your strength when mine wasn’t enough.

Thanks for giving me patience…patience I can now give back to you.

And thanks for whatever you felt you did for me, even though I might not have realized it at the time.

 

And especially thanks for giving me another Thanksgiving when we can share some time together and make another one of those holiday memories.

And for being a good sport once again when I make you wear goofy stuff like Turkey Sunglasses.

Thanks, Pop.

Thanks for giving.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My dad’s Weary Willie act. It was a rite of passage for Carl, Gary, and I to share one Halloween as his sidekick.
A Thanksgiving from the past. Maybe 1965 or 66?
Dear Mr. Fantasy…

Dear Mr. Fantasy…

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Dear Mister Fantasy play us a tune
Something to make us all happy
Do anything take us out of this gloom
Sing a song, play guitar
Make it snappy

This week’s nagging song in my head has been Dear Mr. Fantasy, a song from their 1967 album “Mr. Fantasy” by the band Traffic.

I read that Jim Capaldi, the drummer in the band wrote the lyrics to the song one early morning while he was coming down off of LSD.

It seems appropriate in this year of uncertainty to lean on this season of fantasy, with our Mr. Fantasy being Santa Claus with his reindeer and such, to look for something to make us all happy.

Something, anything to take us out of this gloom.

 

Kim and I spent Thanksgiving with my parents.

I recently found the Word file that was our 2012 Christmas letter.  I remember I called my mother and father from a landline I had in my office and recorded these conversations on my cell phone while I talked to them over the speakerphone.

This was my dad speaking:

We were poor then. Times were hard. My father and I used to pick up coal from the railroad bed near our house; we had a coal stove then.  Sometimes we would go down to the beach in Sea Bright or Monmouth Beach and wait for the pound fisherman to come in to the beach.  The pound fishermen would pull in their nets and fill their boats with fish, then ride the surf in to the beach where a team of horses would pull the boats up.  The fishermen would throw us fish they didn’t want and we would bring them home in buckets.  And in the winter the ice fish, the cod fish, would freeze in the waves and land on the where we would pick them up.

We had a Christmas tree…..dinner would be lutefisk (dried cod fish), fiskebollers (Norwegian fish balls) and pickled herring.  My mother would make pies and root beer, and I would put the caps on. 

We would go down to the church in North Long Branch where my mother and father would go every Sunday. My father helped build that church.  It was mostly Scandinavian fishermen from Monmouth Beach and Sea Bright.  They didn’t have Sunday school and they only spoke Norwegian so as kids we didn’t go much at other times of the year.  But on Christmas, there would be chairs lined up on each side of the room.  They had a coal stove and a Christmas tree was in the center of the room and we would march around the Christmas tree and sing songs, which was the Norwegian tradition.  The whole family would get an orange and a box of hard Christmas candy to take home, that was great……

I remember one Christmas I wanted and got a wagon, the kind of wagon that had sides on it that I could take off like a farmer’s truck.  But I guess I did something bad and my father took it away from me.

A big thing for us on Christmas morning was the fire truck; we would all go outside and wait for the fire truck to come. When I saw it   I would leap the hedge.  We would get a box of hard candy and an apple and see Santa Claus…. this was in the thirties, I was born in 1929. (Carl E. Christiansen)

And this was a paragraph from the letter with a story my mom told:

When my mother was a child, her bed was actually in the dining room of their house separated from the living room only by a curtain.  One of the most important parts of Christmas for my mother has always been the Christmas tree.  You see when my grandparents put her to bed in the dining room every Christmas Eve there was no tree up in the living room.  But when she awoke on Christmas morning there was always a beautiful Christmas tree decorated in the living room, put up while she slept soundly in the next room behind the curtain.  One year when times were tough, my grandfather tried to slip in an Arborvitae tree instead (more like a cypress tree than a Christmas tree) that he had cut down on the property.  When my mother woke up she freaked out.  Now, I have seen my mother freak out a couple of times in my life and I can assure you my grandfather never tried to pull that one again.  When I spoke with my dad the other evening he said my mother had five Christmas trees set up in the house and outside.  I apologized to him because I think my wife gave her three of them.  But it’s nice to know my mom still likes her Christmas trees.

 

This Thanksgiving weekend we revisited some of those stories from Christmases past as we sat around the table.  The memories and the words to describe them don’t come as easy as they did in 2012 which is sad because months after I recorded that conversation, I upgraded my cell phone.  The T-Mobile guy did the transfer of my data to my new phone, looked at me and asked “you want to check it before I delete everything?”

“No, I’m good, I trust you,” I told him.

The day I went back to find that audio file and realized it was gone, I was really sad.

Though my mom still loves her Christmas trees, she is keeping them all in the attic this year, with fewer things for my dad to have to navigate around.

But Kim and I plan to put up our tree today, decorate, and take advantage of a little of the fantasy of season in a year that might seem like Mr. Capaldi’s bad acid trip.

And of course, remember the real meaning of the season.

And I wouldn’t suggest you “prosclaiming the Palmist” to find the prophecy of the coming of Jesus, though you will find references in Psalms, better to look to Isaiah:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

 

And now I am off to find a Christmas tree!

Friday the 13th, 2020 Style

Friday the 13th, 2020 Style

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Hard to believe that it’s Friday, November 13th  in this year of 2020.

Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks and it appears that our end of year holidays, so heavily invested in family, are in jeopardy.

Covid concerns are ramping up again.

 

Thankfully, the election has come and gone.

And lucky for us, all those celebrities we couldn’t have lived without got to stay in America.

I don’t know about you, but I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in Bruce Springsteen’s house about 12 midnight on November 3 when Trump was posting a comeback.

But seriously, when it got right down to it, I had to remind myself…”Curt… John Legend and Chrissy Teigen are threatening to leave the country if Trump is re-elected…”

I just couldn’t imagine.

The Voice without John Legend?

That did it for me!

 

My Friday the 13th started a little early on the evening of Thursday the 12th.  My wife had got a new gadget to cut up all those ingredients for making her potions, tinctures, and syrups.

In addition to using it for the above, I quickly determined I could use it to cut my cucumbers for my salad.

But it didn’t take me too long to learn that it works really well on fingers too.

Not wanting to waste the cucumbers I had already sliced I tried to find the lost portion of my finger amongst the cucumber slices.

“What are you doing?” my wife asked sternly as she watched me putting pressure on my bleeding finger while using my other hand to go through the cucumbers.

“Looking for my finger, I don’t want to waste my cucumbers,” I responded.

“Throw them out you are not eating them that’s disgusting!” she said loudly.

Disappointed, I threw out my cut cucumbers and the piece of my finger and focused more on controlling the bleeding.

Then I cut up another cucumber.

 

One day many years ago when Kim and I first moved into our house in Herndon, Donny brought home a baby wild rabbit.  We had lots of rabbits in the yard back then.  We don’t see too many anymore, maybe because of the foxes.

But Donny was really happy about his little rabbit and wanted to keep it as a pet.  I, however, in my sometimes to a fault need to do what I think is the right thing, told him he couldn’t.  It wasn’t right to keep an animal from the wild and it should be returned to its habitat I explained so very parentally.

Needless to say Donny was very disappointed and not at all happy with me.

After Donny’s accident whenever I thought about this incident with the rabbit,  I always felt really bad about how I made him feel by not allowing him to keep it. Even now as I reflect back on this memory I think to myself, what a jerk, you could have loosened up a little.

A year and a half or so later, I think it was Martin Luther King’s birthday weekend 2004 when we had no kids because they had extra time off from school and they were off with their friends, I had this great idea that I thought would show I could be spontaneous and selfishly, would make up for some of the guilt I felt over denying Donny that rabbit, even though I couldn’t share it with him.

I marched Kim into a PetSmart that weekend in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia on a mission to adopt a cat.

When it was all said and done we not only adopted one cat, we adopted two.

They were sisters.

Molly and Mona.

We agreed to all the rules and requirements, not to declaw them, and to keep them as house cats.  The house cat thing didn’t last long though because Mona it turned out, was like Mufasa when it came to the kingdom of our backyard.  She would roam the yard and protect us from critters.  Molly on the other hand enjoyed just hanging out on the deck more like her humans.

After about seven years Molly would succumb to cancer and be put down.

That left Mona alone who now could claim the inside of the house has her domain as well.

And she lived a good life.

Until today.

On this Friday the 13th Mona made her last ride to the vet after 17 years.

 

This year continues to be one of challenges and changes, some foreseen some unforeseen.

Like the year Donny died, for Kim and I, we just have to realize that God’s got this.

And though my little guys from Florida won’t be visiting me for Thanksgiving as planned because of the increase in virus cases, I will get through my disappointment.

And I will admit it’s a little weird without the cat meowing at us this evening, it’s nice to know Mona is interred in one of the gardens in the backyard which was her kingdom that she liked to roam so much.

And thinking and writing about elections and celebrities brings back with a smile another memory of the profound and grounding wisdom of a young boy who once reminded his Pop Pop that “Everybody in Hollywood Farts” and who also this very evening demonstrated to me very graphically through video the devastating aftermath that the different categories of hurricanes can have on the toys in his bedroom.

 

But let’s face it, like it or not, this is the year where you won’t find the finger in the cucumbers.

Might as well toss it out and get a new one ready to slice.

But God’s got this.

And we will continue to be held.

We will continue to find reasons to laugh in the face of sadness and turmoil, loss and distancing.

We will continue to adapt.

Because God’s got this.

And we have God.

The Thanksgiving Day Massacre

The Thanksgiving Day Massacre

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Her body was green and she had two vicious jaws
She polished her mate as she kissed him with her claws
She bit off his head so he would not feel the pain
She wanted his body so much she ate his brain

From Don Dixon’s “Praying Mantis” 1985

 

“Curt come here quick, what is this?” my wife yelled from down the hall.

One of our bedrooms has, over time, been converted into a year round plant room, though this time of year it was also filled with plants that had been recently moved from the deck to winter inside.

It was Thanksgiving morning, we were about to leave for Pennsylvania, Kim decided to check on her plants before hitting the road.

On one of the plants was a tan and orange cocoon like thing that Kim called me to look at.

As I was focusing on the nest- like structure, Kim blurted,

“Look! There are ants all over the leaves!”

I shifted my focus now to one of the long leaves and the “ants.”

Finding the leaves covered with insects I responded,

“Those aren’t ants… those are praying mantises!”

 

As a kid growing up in New Jersey I was always told it was illegal to kill a praying mantis.

And I grew old, never having any reason to challenge that.

Therefore, now standing in my spare bedroom, surrounded by plants, in the presence of my wife, and facing hundreds of praying mantises, in my mind I was looking at ten years to life…but I had to make a decision.

I lifted the plant and carefully carried it down the stairs and out on to the deck.

It was a cold morning.

In a short while, I looked again, they were all dead.

Mantis bodies littered my deck.

 

We threw our suitcases in the car and like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde we headed for the Pennsylvania border.

We were on the lam.

With me driving the get-away car Kim got on her iPad and did some research.

It turns out, a praying mantis is pretty scary.  They are carnivores, and there are some larger species that will hunt small birds, lizards, and mammals! They have triangular heads that they can turn 180 degrees, two compound eyes with a few extra regular eyes in the middle just because.  Their legs are equipped with spikes for pinning their prey.  But mostly in the US, they just eat other bugs.

Sort of.

They are also cannibals and will eat their siblings!

And the real kicker, the female will eat the male after mating!

Okay that’s enough…this is what Dixon was singing about.

“What about the protection…are they protected?” I asked as we left Virginia and entered Maryland.

She read from the internet site Snopes/Fact Check:

The belief that it is illegal to kill a praying mantis (a crime carrying a $50 fine as a punishment) has been floating around since the 1950s, and we have no idea where this bit of insectoid legal apocrypha came from:

“When I was growing up in New Jersey, I used to find praying mantises in our driveway and back yard every once in a while. It was illegal in NJ to kill a praying mantis, as I remember.”

There is not (and never has been) any federal or state law proscribing the killing of praying mantises.

No.

We were in the clear.

No Jail time.

No $50 times a couple hundred dead bugs fine.

Okay, okay so I am sure there is something your momma told you that you still believe too.

And besides, like that guy in the Snopes internet post, I’m from Jersey too where we have the Jersey Devil, Bigfoot, and Jimmy Hoffa.

What’s the moral of the story?

Love and trust your mother… but verify.

And check your plants before you carry them in the house, spring comes early indoors.

The Holiday Chronicles: Thanksgiving

The Holiday Chronicles: Thanksgiving

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Some traditional Thanksgiving images at a country store in Springs, PA.

“That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

It’s Thanksgiving week.

Monday, November 19 as I began to make some notes, was the day Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address, one hundred and fifty five years ago. The day Lincoln said “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.”

Lincoln got a lot of things right, but that wasn’t one of them.

And what about Thanksgiving?

I watched a TV drama on Tuesday, it was their Thanksgiving episode.   One of the characters expressed his struggle to get through the Thanksgiving holiday each year.  I have heard that before, sometimes from people very close to me. It is true, not everyone has those warm fuzzy feelings at Thanksgiving.

 

When I was a kid we made Pilgrim hats, turkeys, and Native American Indian headdresses out of colored paper. Then we draped the classroom with chains made out of paper rings of brown, orange, and red.

Our characterization of Thanksgiving is attributed to a description in a letter by a Plymouth, Massachusetts settler named Edward Winslow in 1621.  More words that established a legacy.

But some argue that the actual first Thanksgiving occurred 60 years before that in Florida when the Spanish fleet came ashore and planted a cross in the sand.  They gave thanks for God’s providence and celebrated their safe arrival with a feast with the Native Americans they encountered.

Someone I love dearly said recently wouldn’t it be nice if you could pick your own Thanksgiving Day?  Celebrate and give thanks on a day when you or your family had something special to be thankful for.

Maybe there is something to that.

You pick your own day to plant your cross in the sand.

 

And it’s not just those emotional struggles.

Because look what we have done.

Like so many other things we have screwed up.

Thanksgiving is now all about TV deals at Walmart.

Colored paper and pilgrim hats replaced with colored ad circulars, coupons, and doorbusters.

Since now on the day after Halloween stores seem to go right to Christmas, someday Thanksgiving may just be part of the fifty shades of Black Friday.

“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here” said Lincoln of his words to help dedicate a cemetery at Gettysburg.

Someday as it pertains to the traditions of our Thanksgiving, the world may little note nor remember …what we do here.

 

Now as this Thanksgiving week comes to a close, whatever challenges we may have worried about are behind us.  Having spent my Thanksgiving in the farmlands of western Pennsylvania, it somehow felt more Thanksgiving like, more traditional. And the only real struggle I had was not reaching for the turkey since for me it was my first self-imposed pescatarian Thanksgiving.

And I hope yours was exactly how you wanted it to be, your cross in the sand, like you picked it yourself, without any struggles.

One to be thankful for.

Near Meyersdale, PA
A Very Special Unexpected Birthday Gift

A Very Special Unexpected Birthday Gift

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Dear Donny,

Today was your birthday.

It was a Saturday and much like any other Saturday we got up early because we couldn’t sleep. We had our coffee, checked our email and our Facebook, and did some work-work leftover from Friday.

We remembered your birthday on Facebook.

Many times I have described that time after Thanksgiving when the Christmas decorations come out of the trunks and down from the attic as bittersweet, as the memories are unpacked one at a time and placed on the tree or on the mantle. It is our darkness in the brilliant light of the season; fourteen seasons now to be exact.

And though we celebrated, laughed, and enjoyed this holiday as much as anyone, there will always be something that will be missing in our hearts as hard as we try to ignore it each year. That one thing we can’t unpack, hold in our hands for that short time, put away and wait anxiously for next year when we can take it out again and hold it once more.

If only we could.

But we do have our memories and each year we work hard to make sure we keep them alive because we don’t ever want to forget.

And normally by New Year’s Eve the lights are out, the tree is down, and the ornaments are packed away.

This year however was different, we were late. This year…..your birthday….. today, was the day that the ornaments were taken down and the lights rolled up, and everything returned to its place in the attic for another year.

And it really was different. Your mother and I were busy. We found some old CD’s and we listened to music that we listened to when we were dating. We were singing, we laughed,  and we were not sad.

“Tonight I ask the stars above, how did I ever win your love.
What did I do, what did I say, to turn your angel eyes my way”

We were happy.

And now as we prepare to sleep, we put this, yet another nice memory to bed. You see?  You can still make them!

Thank you for sharing, what would have been your twenty ninth birthday with us today. And thank you because on this birthday, it was us who received the gift.

Happy Birthday Buddy