December 14, 2017 Six Years Passes So Damn Quickly

 

Life flies by so very quickly.  Our grip on the now, and on life itself, is tenuous even in the best of times. In the silent spaces of reflection that occur when one grows older blurred images of moments lived well, lived poorly, and spentmundanely flash in our minds. Like scenes out the window of a fast-moving car or a faster moving train, they appear and vanish in a moment. It is only when we sleep that we get a longer look at the past we wish we had grabbed more heartily. The past we wish we had held much closer to our bosoms. My advice to the young is to let your arms extend as far out as possible as you embrace life.

It was quite late last night that I turned my face away from the center of the bed. Facing the wall, I worked through my various prompts for bringing sleep.  Quickly I spiraled into the dark abyss of a restless mind held deep within a sleeping body. Recently dreams have been flooding my sleep in the early hours of the morning. These phantom world images and constructions are all over the place. My dreams have included scenarios ranging from me getting busted for selling opium to finding myself stuck in a mountain village with no coin and no knowledge of the language or culture but having arrived there at the end of a Disney roller coaster ride.

Last night’s dream was particularly vivid.  One minute I was talking to a dear friend sitting on a beat-up old blue green couch on the front lawn of the house I lived in over 50 years ago in East Lansing, Michigan. Next I was looking at the same scene only I held an old photograph that captured the moment instead of being there in person. Finally, I was looking at the side of the seven-story building that covers the spot where that old barn-shaped house used to be. A bar, apartments, and far too many years have obliterated all traces of the place and space. A profound sadness took hold, so many grains of sand have passed through my fingers.

Waking up I knew there was no way I was getting back to sleep. Reaching over I grabbed my watch and saw it was 6:25 AM. I tried not to stir for a few minutes hoping I was wrong and sleep would return. It didn’t and I got up as quietly as possible to avoid waking the other occupant of the bed. In the kitchen I grabbed oatmeal and some coffee. Sitting down at the dining room table, I opened up my phone and checked the news, my email and then moved on to Facebook. There it was in the suggested memory, two young men trying to get some extra sleep in the back of a car rolling down a lonely stretch of road between Sarnia and London, Ontario. I smiled and the sadness stirred by the dream faded like mist burned off by the day’s bright light.

On December 14, 2017 East Lansing suffered bad weather. Despite it being a sunny day patches of ice were all over the roads and highways from storms the night before. However, the day was clear. Having lived in the north country long enough we knew that the longer the sun was out the less dangerous the US Interstates and the Ontario freeways would be. Still, we had to add a couple of extra hours to the travel time to Lester B. Pearson airport in Toronto. 

All packed the night before, the car loaded with our suitcases, all we had to do in the morning was get up and head out. Leaving slightly earlier was an inconvenience and nothing more. But for those young men, sleeping was a priority. Itwould be a full day before they would sleep again. Me: I had just downloaded a photo app on my phone and I was damned sure going to document our first foray to the continent. Hence the sleep shots.

At about 11:30 PM that December 14th, after two de-icings, our Air Canada Rouge flight took off from Toronto destined for Lisbon Portugal. A holiday lark, nothing more. We would hit Lisbon and Porto. Back then I thought we would have seen all the worthwhile things to see in Portugal in that span before heading home via Canada on Christmas Eve. Backthen, I thought this would be just the first of many serial trips to cities all over Europe. Funny, life had other plans for me.

In the last six years since that first flight to Lisbon I have retired and have spent over a year and a half living in Portugal. Ihave gotten a tax ID, I have entered the national medical system and become a resident. I have travelled north and south through the country. I have visited towns in almost all corners of the country. Now I live in a three-bedroom apartment on the 1st floor of a 5-story building. We have a balcony that runs from one side of the apartment to the other. In warmer weather, April through October, I eat my meals on that balcony. 

In the past year I have made friends with people from all over the place from all sorts of backgrounds. There have been habits formed, such as drinking milky coffee in the afternoon or eating a pastry in a padaria. I have toured churches, museums and out of the way towns. I have attended concerts and entertained guests passing through town. Standing on the banks of the Rio Tejo I have watched tall ships parade down the river. Surrounded by thousands I watched a carnival parade.

Between December 14, 2017 and December 14, 2023, a mere six years, my life has changed for the better. Neverexpected to be an emigrant, nor expected to get used to drinking an imperial beer with lunch. I  never imagined I would hang my laundry on a line off the back of my apartment on the regular. But this life I stumbled onto by accident, it is better than good. To steal a line from out of the 1980s I am so much closer to fine.

On Reading Crime Series, Bosch et alia.

13 November 2023

 

Warm day today, high 60s F. Very humid. Did one load of laundry. Just stuff that dries no matter how humid it is. Walked 1.67 miles this morning at a pace that was faster than 3 mph.  Have a couple more walks to do before bed. Bought a Christmas tree topper These are the easy things to identify and list. I have not checked my email or the news. My stomach can't handle it yet.

 

For the longest time I have not been reading.  In the early part of last week, I decided to ease back into it. For me when I want to start reading in earnest again I begin with a crime novel, or a police procedural if you like. Picked up a stand-alone book by a gentleman who writes tons of crime series. The book was The 6:20 Man by David Baldacci. And then I finished four more Baldacci books, the John Puller series. And then much to my surprise I found a Bosch book I had not yet discovered. My iPad is earning its keep right now.

 

I think reading these crime novels is a throwback to the time when I was a kid and math was still interesting. I mean for me the idea that there are immutable facts like 1 + 2 = 3 was a very comforting one. To some extent crime novels are like math formulas.  If the gun is of a certain caliber, and if the bullet came from the gun, and once we are able to identify the fingerprints as belonging to that guy, he did it. Immutable. But in reality crime novels are more akin to further advanced math problems with a number of variables and we are told to solve for whatever =x. There is much mental fun in making logical leaps when diving into these trashy tales.

 

Crime novels have an order of operations.  From my experience it runs like this: 

 

Identify there is a crime as opposed to self-harm or misadventure. Identify the crime's nature.  Focus on the obvious suspect with the help of a neighbor, or that guy in the crowd who offers only two words, points and disappears. Rule out the principal suspect due to DNA or an unknown hair on the murder weapon. Have the investigator put in mortal peril only to be saved by either a.) a burgeoning love interest or b.) a fellow investigator who hates the hero but is committed to truth and justice. Have the investigator come back to “the basics,” or “reread the file.” When he or she looks at the crime scene crowd shot photo and sees that guy in the crowd who said two words the mental light turns on. This is telegraphed to the reader by the hero's thought of, ‘If he just got there how did he know about the frozen banana found in the victims colon?’ Finally comes the mad dash to stop the perp before there is another crime and another victim. Tragedy is averted and the criminal is caught or killed. Bruised and battered, there is an implication that the hero and the love interest or the former despised coworker have a long future together.

 

When I finish the Bosch story I have to move on to some serious literature. Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending is next in the queue. Don’t know the story, but it is a Booker Prize winner. Usually, I enjoy reading either the actual Booker winner or another book by the author who penned the winner. Can’t let the mind atrophy. Plus I’ve got time.

Times Are Dark, Let Us Work Together

 

Sunday has come again. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the case because I can hear the congregation across the courtyard singing. But has anything changed?

 

Each day this week I read the headlines. They screamed destruction and death, distrust and dysfunction. Oh, the horrible things that are now the resting state of our world. A week ago, following a similar seven-day assault on my spirit’s reserve of hope and compassion, I started to write a piece stating our world rested on a precipice. Ultimately the piece concluded with a statement that I didn’t know if our sphere would go over the cliff head first or step back from the edge. I even looked up the term precipice to make sure I was using it correctly. Here it is. 

 

Precipice - prec·i·pice /ˈpresəpəs/ (noun), A very steep rock face or cliff, especially a tall one; "we swerved toward the edge of the precipice".  I searched for a definition of the phrase standing on a precipice.  If you say that someone is on the edge of a precipice, you mean that they are in a dangerous situation in which they are extremely close to disaster or failure. “The king now stands on the brink of a political precipice.” – Collins Dictionary (collinsdictionary.com).

 

Around me I see a complex world, a planet filled with hatred. This virulent animosity is more often than not, fueled by economic disparity cloaked in righteous indignation. Individual or group righteous indignation can arise from many sources but two main ones stick out: tribal and religious (and these two can be very, very intertwined). Ours is a world stuck in a cycle of conflict generation after generation. True believers vs infidels, red vs blue, baby killers vs individual rights advocates, blue eyes vs brown eyes, and dark skin versus light skin pigment; pick one, pick two, and you will find people willing to kill and die for the distinctions. But if you dig down the real battle is about who gets more rice, beans, bread and drinkable water.

 

Samuel Clemens in his later years was bitter. He endured the death of most of his family, an era of economic depression, bankruptcy, and his works falling out of favor. He was a learned man and a skilled writer. As his fortunes declined and his woes increased people abandoned him. Ultimately, the world’s ugliness beat him down and he hated the world and its people for it. I am not there yet, but I can get there. Still, I have some small measure of hope left alive inside of me that the world can right itself at least enough to avoid climatological or nuclear destruction based on divisions that at their root are economic.

 

The world needs complex answers, not simple ones. We are far beyond the stage where “simple” fixes anything. But yet we yearn for easy answers. We long for quick fixes.

 

Watching America from afar it seems many people just want an authoritarian to step in and make things right. This is the path of people looking for an easy fix and it won't work. The person they are drawn to is not someone who has the demeanor, the intellect, the vision or the stamina to fix all the things needing to be addressed and addressed fast. The person they are drawn to is not a consensus builder, but rather someone who plays on racial, sexual, and economic prejudices.

My old law school professor once said, “If you want the A you must do the work.” The man I am speaking of has never been willing to do the hard work, and do it honestly. Bluster and rage will not conceal the fact that his primary talents are manipulating balance sheets and crushing the little guys hired to work for his companies. He doesn’t have the capacity to do the work, he has never had it.

 

Authoritarians don’t have an impressive record of fixing problems or treating citizens fairly or well. Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-Un, Putin, Franco, Pinochet, Salazar, the Duvaliers and the list goes on. They didn’t listen to competing, rational voices in opposition, they erased them. Pretty much each and every one of them had a slogan containing an implied promise of moving forward and making things better. Their PR people may not have come up with something as catchy as “Make America Great Again,” but it was all the same noise and gibberish. Wealth flowed one way and pain and deprivation the other.

 

Children are dying and hostages are at risk. Large swaths of the world’s waters are severely polluted. Global temperatures are increasing, the last 12 months being the hottest on record. Oceans fill with trash and microplastics. Deserts are expanding and ice caps are melting. A selfish, angry authoritarian is not the solution to our problems. Please don’t buy into bad choices based on a desire for a return to a world that never really existed. Face the world we have and work to fix it.  To my mind that means abandoning the previous President and moving on.

Grace Notes Late at Night

 

Grace notes – 1: a musical note added as an ornament especially : appoggiatura.

2 : a small addition or embellishment.

 

A small addition or embellishment…that second definition doesn’t quite capture how we use the phrase in non-musical parlance. A grace note in our lives is something lovely, but not a major theme of our existence. A grace note could be joy discovered serendipitously. Or it could be something that was bound to happen, but was beautiful in its occurrence. If you think about it I am sure you can come up with a wide array of grace notes populating small spaces in your life. For me a night spent in some cottages on the north side of Prince Edward Island, the Blue Crest Cottages to be exact, drinking a beer on a late August's chilly night while watching the northern lights is a perfect example of a grace note. 

So many nights in these recent years I have found myself at 2 in the morning contemplating the, "What should I have done?"s. I have played out the 'I really screwed that up's, and the 'I can’t make it right's of my life. There is almost always a great deal of reflection, (I guess that is the best term), I do before eventually drifting off to sleep. Intellectually I know the past is the past and it cannot be changed but sometimes I wish it could. Yeah, I know it is pointless allowing such thoughts to steal the hours I should sleep from me, but I can’t help it.

I think my parents hard wired my guilt, second guessing, and my near constant angst into my soul. Okay maybe it was them in conjunction with the Baptist church. Remember kids the part that burns most in hell is the part you sin with. At this point we stop and fan our nethers. Between the need to achieve and the fear of doing the wrong thing, my head just got so damn weird. Years of living have added only more crossed wires and smoking junction boxes.

When I first retired I had about two years where I fell asleep immediately.  The stresses from work retreated and the vacuum they left in my psyche was so large. When my head hit the pillow I was drawn deep down into the dark abyss of dreamless sleep. But with plotting the move to Portugal and making decisions about stuff back in Michigan the angsty second guessing and night nerves returned. Don’t get me wrong the move was a good move, but there were so many moving pieces that it tripped the old switch releasing doubts and angst about almost every decision I have ever made.

The other night as I waited for sleep to come I thought of a moment I had not thought of in years. I was in my dorm room during late fall 1977.  It was just turning five in the evening. As I stood there looking out the leaded panes of my window to the west the light through the trees was a beautiful amber color. The bells of the nearby People’s Church began to strike the hour. My room's radiator clanged as if it was thinking about supplying some heat, something it never did. Music drifted down the hall, something very mellow and mellifluous. For a moment, a small moment I was empty of all doubt and angst. I was happy and at peace. I felt at ease in the universe. A grace note in my life's symphony, that is what that particular moment was.

The duration of the moment I was remembering lasted maybe a minute but certainly not two. As the chimes stopped I turned, closed the door, and headed down to the scrum of the dinner line in the cafeteria. As brief as it was, that moment was a real grace note in my life. When I focused on that moment, taken out of context of all the college dorm drama (and God was there drama), I realized pondering all the what ifs, and why did I dos, didn’t matter. I have had a good life so far.Yeah it has been, and remains, an enjoyable run. And as my mind bounced around looking for more grace notes, those small moments of joy, sleep came quickly.

Your transition to sleep from the waking hours may not be as troubled as mine. You may have few or no regrets. Still, there are times when we all lose focus, when we struggle with the nonsense that surrounds us. When those uneasy moments overtake you look for the grace notes you have accumulated over your life's span. These collected moments of joy and beauty remind us of the importance of living in the moment and being accepting of life's wonder. Cherish your grace notes.

Sunday, and Suddenly I am Humming the Doxology

The choices we make daily make us who we are. As today opens in front of you, choose compassion.

Hersch Wilson

Lisboa offers me a bright Sunday morning today. Been raining a bit. Two huge storms passed north of us causing much damage in the region of France.  However, big wave surfers must be ecstatic.  Nazare waves are supposed to be 30 meters or more. Those 98-foot-tall waves are something I would love to see. Might grab a bus and head there tomorrow. 

 I said it has been raining for quite some time now.  Seeing the sun and comparing two different forecasting apps I decided to hang some laundry out on the line. First load is washed and hung out to dry. Second load is in the machine and will go out in about half an hour. The final load won’t hit the line until one.  If it doesn’t dry by sunset, I am off to a self-service lavendaria for 15 minutes of drying on the high cycle.

I opened the window when I sat down to type. I am listening to the bells of one of the igrejias ringing right now which means mass is about to begin.  Shortly I will hear the strains of old familiar protestant hymns coming from the evangelical Baptist church across the courtyard. I look forward to this. Hearing How Great Thou Art and In the Garden in Portuguese resets my body’s calendar and refreshes my soul. Amazing how a simple melody can carry you away and lift your spirits.

This week was filled with stuff we did or got done. On Monday morning we replaced Francie’s subway pass. We thought she dropped it at the Baxia-Chiado metro stop but it was not turned in. Luckily it had only two days left on it. Getting the replacement took about an hour and a half of waiting time, a fast turnaround by Portuguese bureaucratic standards. On Monday afternoon having found our correct health center we stopped by and applied for our national health numbers. We were told it might take a bit to process this.  I submitted our request at 4:30 pm and we had both cards by 11 am the next morning. Such a turnaround from what I have been told is extremely fast. 

On Thursday night we attended to the symphony in the Gulbenkian hall. The pieces performed were a short symphony by Mozart and his Great Mass. I was raised on rock n’ roll and it was only when my oldest was in an orchestra that I got exposure to the classical. The symphony was wonderful and the Great Mass was very enjoyable.  I am not an avid fan of operatic soprano voices and the mass had a great deal of that singing. I got tickets for a New Year’s Eve concert by the Gulbenkian choir at the Sao Roque church. Loren my youngest has agreed to accompany me to this.

On Friday we travelled to a Christmas bazaar held by the various diplomatic corps with embassies in Lisbon. The French, Chinese and Indians had the biggest booths. Lots of colorful wares. We picked up a tanjine from the Moroccans and a table runner from the Indians. The tanjine has a number of preparation steps before it can be used. Right now, it is soaking in water for twenty-four hours. The drying in the oven and the oiling will come later. The table runner can be seen above.

After the bazaar we had lunch at a mostly vegetarian place. I had lentil meatballs and Francie had grilled tuna salad. Thefood was delicious and the company, the folks who invited us to the bazaar, was absolutely fantastic.

Yesterday was low, low key. Hit the men’s coffee hour at another location. Taught someone how to use Google Translate'sphoto application. Last week I gave him instructions on how to renew his metro pass at a nearby ATM, well any nearby ATM. The highpoint of the rest of the day was buying a pitcher for my ice tea. We also bought our first real Christmas decorations, a garland and balls to go on the table where our router is. What am I saying? The real high point was Francie’s dinner preparation, osso buco made with ox tail. Really, really tasty. Low and slow is the way to go.

Francie said something on the phone last night to a friend. Moving to Lisboa has been like moving into the dormsfreshman year at university. Nobody knows anyone and nobody knows how anything works. So, when you hear someone who speaks the same way as you do, you talk to them. When you go out with people you learn their backstories and you share yours. This is in some ways, the most connected I have felt to people in years.

 

Senator in Response to Your Question I can Unequivocally Say , I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been, Nor Will I Ever be, Courageous.

 

Courage, according to the Oxford dictionary, has two meanings. The first is, “the ability to do something that frightens one.” The second is, “strength in the face of pain or grief.” Over the months since Francie and I moved to Portugal a number of people have used the term courage to describe our experience leaving America as emigrants to Portugal. I really don’t think that is the right word.

Clearly the second definition is not applicable. The only grief or pain associated with our move is those pangs of hurt we feel watching our birth country stumble toward authoritarianism. Yes, I am talking about the Trump/MAGA juggernaut toward acceptance of the former guy’s “Do what I say and the Constitution be damned" mantra. Yes, I am also talking about the House of Representatives electing an election denier to the speakership. Leaving in one sense probably shows more of a defeatist attitude than courage if you boil it down to the essence. But sadness was not the prime motivator of our move.

Coming to Portugal was more like accepting the truth of a logical syllogism. I know it doesn’t have the same ring for someone to say, ‘you are such realists for having moved to Portugal.’ After my second bout of cancer, I gave up on my belief that I would work until I croaked at my desk. Following my surgery which took a fifth of my left kidney, I was pretty sure that the expiration date stamped on my bottom had moved up and no longer said, "Best before April 2033.” The date was probably a great deal closer to a best used by date of April 2026. 

Having decided that I probably don’t have a lot more time on this planet I started thinking what have I, what have we worked for all these years? Well first there was a desire to get out of Michigan's f#%king cold. Four seasons my ass, Michigan is really a place of 8 ½ months of cold and clouds most of that sprinkled with snow of some depth. 1 month wraps around those months with mud and false promises of beautiful springs and lovely falls (invariably a harsh rain comes and destroys the fall colors. Alternatively, it gets hot in late May and suddenly summer is just there.) The short remaining months are hot, humid and filled with tornado sirens.

Next there was the desire for the sea and fresh seafood. Both of us were water babies. Francie was raised in Volusia County and Daytona Beach and its waves were her ingrained memories. Me, my memories come from somewhere farther up the Atlantic coast , more specifically Ocean City, NJ, America’s family resort. The smells of salt water and frying flounder are wired into my head as the epitome of life’s best things. Watching waves for hours on end, well there is nothing better. Forty years in the Midwest of America seem like just passing the time.

Given those two critical motivating factors we looked about in America. The left coast was way, way ….way too expensive for two people who had worked in the heartland for forty years. The south was too, too…way too MAGA. Thus, we had to look at other countries. 

Loved Victoria, BC. However, it is expensive and old geezers can't legally retire there. I thought about requesting political asylum but the Canadian immigration folks have not been receptive to that argument from leftist US Democrats with 401(k)s in the past. So where could we find a stable government, decent health care and a not oppressive cost of living? If you have been reading the papers over the past five years Portugal is always near the top of the lists. And we had been to Portugal and liked it. And it is coastal. And there is really good seafood.

Okay, emigration paperwork is onerous. Opening a bank account is byzantine. Juggling the cash needed to get an apartment, gather furniture for the apartment, and airline tickets to our destination was a hassle (and obviously more expensive by half than we thought it would be). But we didn’t have any real fear.  There was some doubt, the “Are we really doing this?" moments. Doubt is not fear. Facing hassles is not the same as facing dire diagnoses or standing up to home intruders. Those moments generate real fear and require tremendous courage in response.

The closest I came to fear in this whole process was when a couple of butterflies cropped up in my stomach. This was as I rode the train up to my immigration hearing here in Portugal. Seriously, that's the worst of it. Maybe it is because there is an escape hatch. If at any point we decide we don’t like our life here anymore an airline ticket home is not that expensive. It would take us four months of rent to buy out our lease. We would take a few thousand dollars loss on the furnishings we bought, but I have pissed away more money on lesser things. We have a parachute and a ripcord if it all becomes too overwhelming.

In my mind moving here from Michigan wasn’t really that much different from moving to Florida. However, there are no asshats with Trump 2024 flags planted in their rusted pickup truck beds, waving wildly just behind the gun rack in the back window. Courage no, wanderlust filled yes. Crazy, yes. Impractical, yes. Longing for and looking for serendipity, yes. Maybe even adventurous in the sense you call somebody eating raw kibbe for the first time adventurous. We aren’t fearless explorers. We are those kids just out of college who want to wander Europe with a backpack, a dog-eared travel guide and raging hormones. Well, we are those kids just with more money, grayer hair, a need for more privacy, a need for clean sheets, a need for regular showers and with just a tad less hormonal lust. Oh, the guidebook is now on our iPad.

A Shaggy Dog Tale About Karmic Justice.

 

How you read your gas gauge depends on two factors, your current economic condition and your level of life experience. If your pockets are a little light in the change and folding money department you tend to read an analog fuel gauge, you know one with a needle that runs from E to F in nanometers. With a little jingle in your pockets, you tend to fill up at a quarter of tank as opposed to when you are running on vapors. How experience factors in is that if you have never run out of gas you may be willing to run a little closer to the E mark than you should. In early 1986 these two factors became a bit of a perfect storm for my wife and me, and for one officer the Wilmington Delaware police department as well.

On May 4, 1985 my wife and I were married in the cloudy moist South on the eastern coast of Florida. Rain and grey marked our day. However, the inclemency was not an omen or a portent of ill to come for we are still married 37 years later. By the fall of that year, we had pulled up stakes moving from Michigan for the Atlantic coast. Oh, we got married in Florida because it was neutral spot, our families lived respectively in Florida and New Jersey and our friends lived in Michigan. Two of the three groups would be travelling so why not make it a Florida vacation for those two groups. It was because of my desire to live closer to my recently widowed mother that we commenced living in Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington was about 10 miles as the crow flies from where I had grown up, 10 miles and a whole social stratum away from where my roots were.

Weird town Wilmington, the place is very obsessed with status and anything that carries the hallmark of old money. Remember Delaware is the place where someone one paid three quarters of a million dollars for a low license plate number because of the perceived high status owning such a plate carries. A lower number is found on an older plate, a plate colored black as opposed to blue and gold. A lower number implies a longer time in the state and more political and social standing. Three quarters of a million bucks so your car had a number of less than 10 on it, oh-my-gawd.

Wilmington was all abuzz with economic activity at the time. It was a boom town filled with yuppie scum. The feds had popped the cap off interest rates and Delaware long the bastion of corporate America had abolished usury limits completely. As the big money flowed in following these miraculous events Insurance companies and credit card companies were opening headquarters all over town. Walk into a bar like O’Friel’s on Delaware Avenue and throw a Heineken in any direction and you were sure to hit a young middle manager from one of these emerging powerhouses of capitalism squarely on one of their flat right leaning heads. In Brooks Brother’s suits with discrete tattoos over their buff upper torsos that said “Eat the Poor” they were going to rule the universe. Ugh.

Having moved back with the hope of being a good son, something that really didn’t work out well for me, a close relative had found me a job. With a little jostling here and there, I found myself working for an insurance company, Alico, one of the AIG Group of companies. I was a corporate attorney but I really didn’t fit in. I wasn’t making much money either for despite television depictions corporate lawyers working in house for financial companies don’t all make wheelbarrows of money. Maybe it was because I was just nuts, or maybe I didn’t have the desire for status or the overarching lust for power that seemed to be the hallmark of the place, I was always the odd person out. I so didn’t fit in to the corporate world that when I left the company I got a plaque that said, “Some men travel to the beat of a different drummer, you travel to the beat of a drummer from the Far Side.” I liked it.

While I was indentured in corporate servitude my wife was working as a freelance writer. She was drafting things like college catalogs for small Midwestern colleges. Freelance work required long hours just like being a corporate attorney. We both worked weekends and often we worked late into the night. We lived in first floor apartment that was carved out of an old row house. Row house that is what we called these three-story brick units as kids. By the time Francie and I moved in these buildings were being called townhomes. Status you must remember causes people to do weird things, even to rename building styles; Wilmington was all about status. Too bad we drove a Ford Escort.

When you are young and living in this environment you do foolish things. You go out and eat at four-star restaurants but you buy economy gas and have no furniture. You dash about always and you sleep very little but you very definitely try to go to the right places. Sometimes things just get away from you and so it did that night on hill in front of the Wilmington police station.

The start of the actual story was that my brother whom I had not seen in some time was in town. He and a mate were staying at the Hotel DuPont, a very gracious and grand hotel. The Hotel is at 11th and Market and takes up the entire city block. Many major corporations book the theatre in the hotel for their annual meetings. My brother, his friend, Francie and I had met and had dinner at the hotel in the Brandywine room. I always loved eating in the Brandywine room because we would often sit below an original N.C. Wyeth rendering of an island painted with the most exquisite of blue colors.

The dinner discussion was lively and surprising. While we were telling stories my brother’s friend and I discovered that we knew the same crazed liquor salesman from Detroit. It came about when he recounted a tale about a guy who was pissed off at being locked in a parking lot after hours. The gent missed curfew and the owner chained and locked the lot. The unhappy patron shot off the lock. I looked at Francie and noted that it sounded like our old friend Vern. The friend then said Vern’s last name and we knew it was the same guy. Hearty laughs all around at the small world aspects of this. 

Not wanting to end such a fun evening the decision was made after dinner to head out to Buckley’s Tavern just up the road inside Pennsylvania for a couple of mid-evening drinks. To pull this off Francie and I needed to get some things. First there was money to be obtained for drinking. This meant an ATM trip. Also, our old analog fuel gauge was not looking good. Its needle had recently made its bed on E and some gas was required. This meant we had to stop again at the nearest pump about 8 blocks away.

We went to the ATM first, which was just a short walk away from the hotel. Wilmington is a maze of one-way streets. Thus, there was no direct route between the hotel, the ATM and the gas station. After the ATM and a couple of turns we headed for the gas station. The street we ended up on took us past the front door of one of the city’s police precinct stations.

While not San Francisco the hill in front of the police station was substantial. You felt like you were on 10 per cent grade. The street was three lanes wide, all heading uphill. It was at the top of the grade that we needed to turn left onto another one-way street. Simple deal we were almost home free. I did say I was an entry-level attorney right? I did mention that my wife was a free-lance writer and that no money had come in lately, right? As we reached the top of the hill the mighty Ford Escort the plebian mobile made a muffled choking noise and died. Stone dead from petrol starvation it was.

So, to sum up what has happened so far, we are at the top of a steep hill, in the left lane waiting to turn. The car has died. With the engine’s demise due to a fuel deficient diet the power steering also died. Sitting in a dead car at the top of a steep hill your senses awaken. You become aware of things you never noticed before. In that moment of clarity, we both noticed that each side of the street was lined with either black and white police cruisers or with obviously unmarked police cars. And as we have no gas and as we have maybe some outstanding parking tickets, this is not a good situation all around.

I was the passenger and it seemed to me that the most reasonable idea was to park the car. We could then hike a few blocks down the street to the Arco station, get some gas and get out of there as fast as we could. However, we could not leave the car in the middle of the street. As luck would have it there was an open parking spot about two car lengths down the hill from us. This barren wasteland of blacktop was clearly visible in the midst of the unmarked cruisers lining the left side of the street. I got out of the Escort and prepared to direct Francie as she rolled the car back and into the spot. Easy right? Nayh.

As I noted at least once the Escort had power steering. When the power was out attempting to steer that car was like forcing limp spaghetti through the eye of a needle. It only took a yard or two of rolling to see that Francie would not clear the first unmarked cruiser. This is because she cut the wheel too tight. The tough box was getting tougher.

As luck would have it, a couple of detectives were coming out of the police station at that moment. As luck would not have it one of them screamed “Don’t hit my car”.

Trying to be polite I explained to the two guys who had not formally introduced themselves to us yet our predicament. I asked if they could have someone from inside the station to roll the first car back into the lower space. We could then roll into the upper space and go get gas and be on our way. One of the officers with his chest pumped up pulled keys out of his pocket and started to get into the first car. I said in what appeared to be a safe bet, “So you guys are police officers?” Detective braggadocio almost spat out the retort, “Nayh, we are thieves, the police just give us keys to make our jobs easier”.

In retrospect I can offer some opinions as to this officer's attitude. I spent twenty years getting to know many local police officers. In my daily routine, I’d listen to them tell their stories and gauge their demeanor and veracity. They, like any other group of people that hold power over another group of people, develop certain styles of exercising that power. Some people are calm and dispassionate and like that idealized parent exercise their power only when needed to correct a misguided course or when a firm hand is needed to curb just plain wrong actions. 

Others don’t seem to deal with the fact that they have power well. Maybe it is because they have never developed a stable sense of self-worth before acquiring power. Others are just dicks from the get-go. I think this officer was a dick from the beginning of his sucking air on earth. As I was standing there on the street humiliated by the lack of gas, and by the attitude of the cop, I wondered to myself how could this get worse? It only took a second to find out. 

After Fearless Fosdick jumped into the cruiser he without turning on the gas threw the car into neutral and began to roll the car back down the hill. He was watching the Escort and maybe me and I was watching him. Francie looked through the rear-view mirror. At about the same time I came to a realization that made me bite my lip. Francie came to the same moment of clarity and put her head down on the steering wheel so her facial expression would not be visible. Fosdick’s partner and I saw at about the same time what Fosdick did not. As the cop car gained backward momentum, the other officer screamed “Joe the doo……..r”. At the moment when I was drawing blood from my lip from biting it so not to laugh at all-not even a little bit, and the sound of crunching screaming metal came from the door of the cruiser crashing into the telephone pole.

The noises which included the whine of stretched metal, the pat pat pat of fragmented pelletized pieces of glass hitting the pavement and the crunch of wood from the telephone pole hung in space for a second. Then came the sound of a long bang as the driver’s side door hit the sidewalk. The unmarked car’s door was now attached to the vehicle by only one mangled barely connected hinge. Francie was banging her head on the wheel not to laugh. I was about to swallow my lower lip and the other officer was screaming, “You idiot” at officer dick.

It was awkward but in that particular maneuver, what Francie and I wanted had been accomplished. The police car moved one space down the hill. Sizing up the situation and thinking about what was the right course of action for Francie and I, my thought was I should ask if the two policemen minded if we moved into the space previously held by the now mangled cruiser. The clearly agitated driver more or less screamed “Why the hell would I care about what you two do?” So ever so gently, as the street was filling with other police officers (who were laughing their asses off as the non-driver was relating what had just happened) and with deftness motivated by fear and adrenaline, Francie pulled our little car against the curb and we skedaddled. As we jogged/ran to the gas station we laughed so hard we almost pee’d ourselves. Karmic justice is fun to watch.

Returning to the scene of the incident it was interesting to see all the police investigators combing the scene. There were tape measures out. People were taking pictures, lots and lots of pictures. Tablets were being jotted upon. Francie was required to produce her ID. The thing that was curious was that the cops took pictures of every angle of our car. When Francie asked why when he was shooting our car when we really had nothing to do with the actual accident, the photographer just walked away. Upon putting the gallon of gas I had just bought into our tank I asked the non-driving officer if we were free to go. He muttered an epithet so vile that I can’t repeat it here but pointed down the road. We turned the engine over and left. Given the way things were going that night we decided drinks and driving through Wilmington just didn’t add up. We cancelled the bar run. 

Before all his evil came to light, Bill Cosby did stand-up comedy. As a kid I listened to records with titles like “Why is There Air?" This was a riff based around the difficulty Mr. Cosby, who attended Temple University as a student aiming to be a physical education teacher, had dating a philosophy major. He in his ever fluid voice would get agitated and say she was always asking questions, “Why is there air?” He was always answering (in a hyper excited voice if the record was correct), “So we can blow up volleyballs and footballs and basketballs.” One of his riffs on this record, if I am remembering it right was something to the effect that parking tickets were sort of an inverse savings bond. In his case he came to this awareness when he hit a patch of ice and banged up his old beater of a car. A good Samaritan came by and lit flares up around the vehicle in his words “lighting it up like a birthday cake”, and he tried to blow them out so as not to have to go to jail over the glove box full of tickets.

Essentially, retribution was the root cause of the "doofus officer’s" scene investigation in our case. Wilmington had a parking ticket policy. If you had four tickets you were subject to the boot. If you had three or less tickets the parking authority would max them out quickly and wait for you to pay. We lived in an upcoming neighborhood where you had to buy a parking sticker; our permit was considered a hunting license for a parking space. If you found a slot in your zone that wasn’t otherwise prohibited you could park there all night. Our zone however ended right at our front door. We lived on the corner of a block so if the block was full you might have to park in the next zone. Depending on the meter maid's zeal you might or might not get a ticket for this. Well prior to the out of gas car/police car without a door, I had been holding three tickets for more than four months.

Not the following morning, but the next night after the door incident, the parking authority exacted Officer Fosdick’s revenge. We awoke to find the bright yellow boot of shame affixed to the driver's side wheel. It cost $125 in 1985 money to get that puppy removed and the folks at the parking office took their time about it. When we walked to the parking bureau no one would acknowledge the existence of the four-ticket policy or that it had been breached in our case. Additionally, no one was receptive to the, this was revenge, dialog I tried to engage in. Still, from the various eyes in the room focused on us, it was clear that ours was not a normal case.

Thinking back all these years to the incident makes me laugh. Yeah, it cost me $125 in difficult to find cash at the time. However, at least I am not the person whom for the rest of my police career would be known as "Crash" or "Door-less" or "Eagle eye." Sometimes arrogance gets its due, especially when it serves no purpose but to humiliate someone in need. WPD 0, Karmic Justice 1.