Rescuing My Tormenter...

In previous posts I've written about my younger brother Tony and of his warped sense of humor. We didn't get along all that great up until we reached our teenage years. I either eventually got used to all of the practical jokes by then or realized that I'd soon be leaving home and my brother behind!

Little did I realize it though, that when I flew off to California the year after graduating high school, that Tony would show up two weeks later and go through Coast Guard boot camp alongside me!

Now I'm gettin' ahead of myself though.

I'm going to go back to the year that I was senior in high school. My brother and I were very active members of our church's youth group and so we pretty much were involved in all of its activities. Living in northwest Florida afforded all of us "kids" with lots of opportunities to enjoy the water, be it at the beach, creek, bayou, or a river. On one particular outing we decided to take canoes down the Blackwater River.

The river is very beautiful and it slowly winds itself through the Blackwater National Forest. The water is very clear and cold and there are white sand beaches located all up and down the river bank in frequent locations. Depending on the amount of rainfall, the river can either be very deep and move very fast or it can be shallow and slow. On the particular day that I'm writing about the former was true.

During the four hour trip I tried to distance myself from my brother Tony as much as I could. He just plain annoyed, almost all of the time. He also liked flirting with and teasing whichever girlfriend I had at the time. As the youth group took it's first break of the day at a very nice sandy beach area, my brother complained to me that he kept tipping over in the canoe. Apparently, he and whoever his canoe partner were at time, just couldn't handle the swift current very well.

I remember Tony telling me that he was going to take the rope that was tied to the bow of the canoe and tie it to his leg so that if they tipped over again, he'd be able to retrieve the partially sunken canoe more quickly. He was tired of having to hastily swim after it each time. I can clearly remember telling him that his idea was a very bad one and that he should not tie himself to the canoe! He appeared to agree with me at the time.

About an hour later and being in one of the first canoes to reach the next break area, I helped my girlfriend ashore and pulled our canoe up onto the sand bar. As I looked up to watch the other kids and canoes arrive, I noticed there was a partially sunken canoe floating quickly past the beach. After a few seconds, my brother's head popped up from the water and he was desperately gasping for air. I quickly realized that he had in fact tied himself to the canoe and it was dragging him under the swiftly moving current.

I yelled out to the others around me and asked if any of them had a knife on them, unfortunately none of them did. I quickly removed my glasses, handed them to my girlfriend and told her I'd be back in a few minutes. I ran for the water, dived in, and then swam after my brother as quickly as I could. After managing to catch up with him, I pulled him up toward the surface of the water and as I swam to keep up with the canoe, I kept his head above the surface.

My next task was to free him from the canoe. The only thing that I could think of was to try and force the canoe into a bunch of low hanging trees that were located along the bank of the river. After a minute or two, I figured how to do it and succeeded. As the canoe became wedged against the bank, I told my brother to hold onto a large tree root sticking out of the ground and to not let go of it. I then dove under the water and untied the knotted rope that was tied around my brother's ankle.

As I came back to the surface of the water, the rest of the youth group showed up. They made sure that my brother and I were okay and then they recovered the partially sunken canoe and took it back to the picnic area. As my brother and I were leaving the spot where the canoe had finally come to a stop and as he was thanking me for the rescue, it was then that we noticed several 'things' hanging in the branches right about our heads. Those 'things' turned out to be several large and very poisonous snakes.

The rest of that day went by uneventfully and for that I was very thankful!

The Special Box....

The other day, I was rooting around in the kitchen. I wanted to surprise my wife by having dinner fixed by the time she got home that evening. While looking though some of the kitchen drawers I came across a little metal box that had been painted red. The box had been manufactured with the intent of it's use to be that of a file for index cards.

Something right out of the 1960's.

As I held the box in my hand, a flood of memories entered my mind. Both from the 60's and from just a few years ago. I was suddenly inundated with recollections from two different era's simultaneously.

How strange is that? And all from the same seemingly insignificant little box.

My first encounter with the box which was painted an ugly green color originally, occurred while I was in the Cub Scouts in Nebraska, over 40 years ago. Each scout had been ask to bring a small metal file box with them to the next meeting, our Scout Master had a new project in mind for us.

I remember asking my folks to purchase the 'box' for me. In response though, my father rummaged through his belongings and found the very old and well worn box that he no longer utilized. I seem to recall that he had purchased it in Alaska when we lived there a few years earlier.

After taking the box with me to my next Cub Scout meeting, the Scout Master informed us that we would be taking those ordinary little metal boxes and dressing them up. We were then each to start using the boxes to store keepsakes and photographs in. They were to serve as memory boxes.

I remember that night well. I painted my little ugly green box a deep fire engine red, which was quite appropriate since my father was a firefighter at the time. I then took black felt, cut it down to size, and pasted it onto the bottom of the box. After the paint dried, I took the sharp point of a knife and etched my name and a simple little design onto the top of the box. The design was simply two lines above my name and two lines below it.

I was very proud of my little memory box and I cherished it for years and years after I created it. I dutifully filled it with various memorable trinkets and some of my favorite photographs. For some reason though, once I reached my late teen years, that box just didn't have the same appeal to me any longer. I remember coming across a large empty cigar box one day, and being impressed with its size and design, decided that it would be a much more suitable container for my memories.

How quickly we change allegiances isn't it?

After emptying the little red box I had intened on throwing it away. But my mother quickly relieved me of the box though. She needed something to file away recipes in and the box seemed perfect for that.

Now, anyone who knew my mother would tell you that she did not like to cook. It's just a plain and simple fact. The fact is, my father cooked a lot of our meals when he wasn't working late, serving in Southeast Asia, or on a TDY somewhere. My mother did love us very much though and she knew how much my father and us kids loved deserts.

Deserts were a big thing in our house.

So, my mother really began focusing on desert recipes. Over the next 30 years, my mother filled that little box chock full of scrumptious recipes. Some of the recipes she wrote out in in long hand on little index cards. Others were either torn out of magazines or typed up and then taped or pasted to a index card.

And so, the other day, four years after having lost my mother to breast cancer, I stood there in the kitchen combing through that little box. There was something significant at seeing my mothers handwriting on those little cards and reading the little side notes that she had written alongside some of those recipes. With each and every recipe, I felt the love that my mother had for her family. In many ways, when she was alive, she had been unable to truly share verbally and from her heart exactly how she felt for us. But now, years after her death, I connected with my mother in a brand new way.

I miss you Mom.

Life's embarassing moments....

The really big ones started for me when I was in the first grade. I remember the first one like it was yesterday even though it's been over 40 years since that eventful day.

I was attending school in Alaska, on a military base. Back then "Fire Prevention Week" was a really big deal. My elementary school teacher had been reminding all of us students for days prior that we would be attending an assembly and that "Sparky the Fire Dog" would be on hand.

Now "Sparky", he was a really cool character and all of us students were really excited about his pending visit. Can you imagine how truly excited I got then, when I mistakenly thought that my very own father was going to be portraying Sparky? For you see, at the time, my father was an Air Force firefighter.

I do not know how I got it into my mind that my "Pop" was going to be Sparky, but into my mind it went. And so, on the morning of the big assembly, in front of my entire class I announced that my father was the man that was going to be dressed up like Sparky the Fire Dog.

The other kids starred at me in awe. They were truly impressed and I was ecstatic at my new found popularity. Just a few minutes later, we all filed into the gymnasium and found a place to sit and watch the fire prevention presentation. About half-way through the show, ol'Sparky made his appearance. All of the students stood and cheered and then eagerly waved to the character.

Me, I jumped up and down and tried as hard as I could to get my father's attention. But seeing that I was so far away from the place where he stood, I eventually conceded defeat.

The defeat at hand was much easier to take than the next embarrassing moment though.

Apparently, because it was so hot inside the gymnasium and inside the Sparky the Fire Dog costume, the man inside decided to lift off the large costume head and get some relief.

Can you imagine my surprise and the surprise of my fellow classmates when the man inside the suit was revealed to be man with black skin?

These days, that would not have been much of a surprise.

But let me tell you, back in 1966 - "surprise" doesn't even come close to describing the reaction.

Let's just say that the looks I received were not very nice. And then the additional reactions that I received when I tried to explain my mistake was even worse.

My temporary popularity had lasted less than an hour but the embarrassment of the event lasted for decades.