Fish Hooks and Fear

Everybody is afraid of something. At least I hope that's true. I'm afraid of drowning and of fish hooks.

Other people may like fish hooks just fine and not give a thought to their potential death by drowning. They may, however, be afraid of spiders, or air travel, or child birth, or potato salad that has been left out of the fridge for more than fifteen minutes, or being in a car that is spinning wildly out of control, or of the number 30, or of what other people are thinking of them, or of pizza sauce, or of public speaking, or of ObamaCare, or of slingshots, or of finding new facial wrinkles, or of not having adequate health insurance, or of losing a spouse, or of all left shoes, or of buttons too large for button holes, or of nuclear war, or of yellow crayons that have broken in half, or of 100 watt bulbs, or of being alone in later years.

None of these things cause me more than a smidge of concern, much less actual, outright fear. Drowning and fish hooks: what's the connection? Water? Boats? Fish in water? An event in my distant past that I have repressed so completely that I have absolutely no idea what it might be?

The Miracle Belt

Here's a story I find hard to believe. A few years ago, I was driving from my home in Monterey to Santa Barbara on a Sunday evening.  It's about a four hour drive. Just a little past Santa Maria, which is about three hours from Monterey, a strange sound began emanating from under the hood, the water temperature rose sharply, the power steering failed, and I knew I was in trouble. When I looked under the hood, I saw that the fan belt had broken. (Now, I know this dates me because what we used to call a 'fan belt' is now called an 'alternator and power steering pump belt'. I still call it a fan belt.)

I called for a tow truck and while I waited a highway patrol car stopped and the officer asked if he could help and then waited with me for the truck to arrive.  

He asked where I was going and I told him that I was a consultant to non-profit organizations and that I had a meeting early the next morning at the Girl Scouts regional office in Santa Barbara. The officer told me rather shyly that he wished that he had a job that allowed him to help people. This seemed strange coming from a person who had stopped to help me along the way. But this isn't the unbelievable part.

Assault on Laguna

Written in August 2003

I'm writing this at 31,000 feet, on a flight from Road America to Laguna Seca. I'm on a covert scouting mission, preparing the ground for the main assault, headed by my wife, Susan, of a sofa-and-coffee-table-laden moving van and various motorized vehicles. We've committed ourselves to planting the family flag permanently on the Monterey Peninsula, in California on the outskirts of Laguna, by Labor Day. We have no exit strategy.

This past weekend, Susan and I had spent a final weekend at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, scootering around Road America, watching the SPEED GT cars from the cozy confines of Thunder Valley and the ChampCar race from the hill overlooking turn five. Nostalgia abounded.

Wonder at the Possible

This is a Greek Easter story from my Greek-American childhood.  It’s a story of awe, of wonder at the possible.

We had Easter eggs like Americans did: brightly dyed in cups of water colored by little pellets and lifted out with a wire contraption that came with the pellets.

We also had Easter eggs given us by the priest on Easter Sunday.   Sharing hardboiled eggs came to our Christian church from the Jewish tradition of sharing eggs when sitting shiva, the eggs a symbol of the circle of life, of eternal life. We would line up and receive an egg dyed a deep, Christ-blood red.  The priest would say to each of us, ‘Christos anesti’ and we would respond, ‘Alethos anesti’  Christ is risen!  Surely, he is risen!

The Little Boy

This is a story about a little boy.  Like all children, he was magic.  The stars spoke to him through his window.  His feelings were color.  His father was a bright, intensive yellow, like the sun.  His home was a cool blue.  Every time he left his room the world was new.

There was a giant weeping willow tree in the large yard of the rich people who lived at the corner of his street.  Every day as the little boy passed the tree on his way to school or to the schoolyard to play, he stopped for a moment beneath its drooping branches which almost touched the ground.  Going under, he was the son of his parents.  He emerged with new attributes and eyes, as a fearless warrior or a dreamer within a dream.

Blue Suit in Boston

This is a story about being invisible, or about being so completely visible that no one can see you, like a lamp post at noon. Or, perhaps it’s a story about a blue suit or about rock and roll. But I doubt it.

Many years ago, I was in Boston on a business trip. I took a cab to my hotel after an afternoon meeting and was interested to see a great many young adults and elderly teens walking quickly in the same direction. They all seemed to be part of a counter-culture, non-conformist crowd since they wore indistinguishable jeans, shirts and hair styles.

The doorman at the hotel told me that they all were heading to a free rock concert that was about to start in an outdoor amphitheater just a few blocks away. So I followed the crowd, even though I was wearing attire that was completely conformist, which meant that it was strikingly unlike what everyone else wore.

Bi-Cultural in Cleveland

Like all of you, my ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.  We ate sweet potato pie and jellied cranberry sauce straight from the can with smiling and subservient red folk. We brought civilization from the East Coast westward to ever more barbarous lands until we reached San Francisco, which was, strangely, already here and already quite civilized.

Like almost all of you, I also came from somewhere else entirely.  In my case, my father immigrated from a small shtetl-like Greek village in the heart of Asia-minor; my mother’s family from Sparta, the only town in Greece to resist 400 years of Ottoman domination, primarily because it was so hard to get to and nothing grew there anyway.

Flat Track Bobsledding

When I was in high school, a friend of mine and I invented a wonderful new sport. As I look back on it, I’m shocked that it has not yet become an Olympic favorite. Although we never managed to name the sport, it could have been called ‘autobob’ or ‘flat track bobsledding’. It was a winter sport so I can imagine young American autobob athletes traveling to exotic ski resorts every four years to compete against the best flat track bobsledders in the world. Perhaps it’s not too late. Let me describe the sport to you.

During the winter in Cleveland, Ohio, home of the original flat track bobsled courses, the snow frequently lay heavy on the ground. When the roads became impassable, city trucks would plow the main roads and, if we were lucky, the residential streets. We’d wait for the trucks to come down side streets near our homes and push the snow to both sides of the roads, forming four foot high continuous embankments that sealed driveways, covered fireplugs and made the sidewalks disappear beneath the mounds of snow. Perfect autobob courses!

My First Two Crashes

I’m pretty sure that I had only two car crashes when I was in high school. I may be wrong about that. I remember these two because they involved girls. That was the memorable part.

The first crash occurred as I drove my mom’s little Anglia (an English Ford about the size of a VW Beetle) to a school picnic. A friend was riding shotgun and two girls were in the back seat. This wasn’t a double date or anything; we were just all going to the picnic. At least I don’t think it was a date, but one of the girls may have been putting a different spin on the situation.

First Day of School

It was the most important day of my young life and I was bursting with anticipatory energy. I was no longer a baby, no longer a toddler, no longer just a small, purposeless person. I was finally old enough to go to school! My mother was taking me enroll in kindergarten. I was very proud.

My mom helped me put on my new long pants (real long pants!) and shirt and my new shoes and socks. She combed my hair and made extra sure that I finished all my breakfast. It was very difficult for me to allow this lengthy preamble to the great activity of the day. I wanted to get my coat and hat on and begin the long journey around the corner to the school.