Florida Two

I don't understand the human need to be just like everyone else. It makes a person look, at times, incapable of thought and decision. They repeat what they hear as if it's fact.

In the case of modern Florida, this poor state is getting a big bad rap due to trendy remarks, even by editors and newscasters.

I have lived here a long time and we are not a "crazy" state or a state "where anything can happen", anymore than any other state.

Florida is not unique in its number of citizens who carry guns, its floundering education system, the number of alligators and insects that plague us, nor should our state be ridiculed that way.

The climate isn't even unique, in that much of the very south is the same.

Florida does attract too many people who are not willing or capable of remaining and putting down roots, so they flee and go back home, but in doing so, too often give crazy reasons for it.

Just don't believe everything you read and hear, because repeating it could cause you to seem off-base, and make Florida look bad, and that isn't good.

Florida One

What intrigued me about Florida as a kid was the warm weather all year round and the palm trees. I'd only seen pictures and they weren't enough. I wanted to experience it myself.

That happened in my twenties. A road trip covered the entire coast, down the west gulf side, on to the string of islands called the Keys, and back up the east Atlantic side.

During the 1970s, Florida was a quieter place than it is today. Where condominiums, stores, and parking lots are now, the land was wild and free back then. Who knew that it would so drastically change over the years?

Miami amazed me with its outer miles of Spanish-speaking people, I assume from Cuba, who owned the motels and stores and restaurants along strips of highway.

Miami Beach was wealthy old hotels and the rich and famous, who came to entertain or relax or show off their status and money. It was a Jewish haven, for the old and young alike.

Key West was quaint and small and strange, a place for escapees to mingle with their common interests and drugs. There was not even one large hotel then, when I went. Two years later, a chain motel was built to bring in people who didn't think that staying in a tiny cabin surrounded by unmown grass was ideal. It was a quiet island then.

In fact, all of Florida was quieter than it is today, and I miss that. I live here now and have for twenty years, and I miss the way it was.

Cuba In 1981, Log Fourteen: The Ending

Just before dark, the guards at the doors to the waiting room called for our attention.

An official said, in heavily accented English, that our plane was now repaired and we were to walk silently out of the terminal with the guards.

Throughout the long and heavy day, we tourists had kept a constant vigil on our small scraps of numbered papers, afraid that we would somehow lose them and be doomed.

Everyone frantically checked their pockets and gave a silent sigh of relief when the official said to have our papers ready. We all had them.

As we boarded the plane, the guards were waiting at the top of the steps with glowering faces, trying to intimidate us even further. It was beginning to tick me off.

They said nothing to us, just thrust out a hand and snatched our papers and passed it to a guard behind them. Now we had nothing to identify ourselves. That was scary.

The second guard checked our numbers with a list and marked it with a pen and passed the number to a third guard, who matched it with the number in the passport.

We were motioned forward and allowed to enter the cabin. It all took forever.

The stewardesses and stewards were a smiling mess. All we were allowed to do was smile back, then find our seats. Guards were in the aisles at the rear of the plane, refusing to move out of our way.

Really, I thought, how ridiculous. But I guess they have their laws to follow, the same as we do.

Once we were all seated, the guards gave us the "eye", then left the plane. The door was shut and we all breathed out.

Immediately, the jet began to move while we all buckled up. No one said a word. It was as if we were afraid to.

On the runway, as the plane turned to ready for take-off, the pilot's weary voice spoke over the intercom.

He asked us to just go to sleep during the flight because there was no food or drink and the cabin crew was exhausted, and he knew that we were as well.

And then he asked us to pray. He said he hoped that our plane was alright, but would we all pray for safety and a safe flight home, because only time would tell whether or not the hydraulic system was good again.

And when he clicked off, we silently prayed. The plane began to whine as if its engines revved and screamed, and then we started to move.

Faster and faster down the runway, and I thought, the air conditioner is working, so we're okay. We're okay, thank you God.

We had lift-off, and this time we ascended and began to soar, and the whole cabin began to shout for joy.

Women were crying with relief. I just sat there and breathed.

The captain came on and for the first time since we left Toronto two weeks ago (because he was the pilot who had brought us down to Cuba in the first place), he sounded normal, cheerful, and confident.

We applauded his speech of thanks and then, "Now, relax and go to sleep," order, and then we did.

He had been afraid that our system was flawed. There had been no way to test fly the plane. He hated that, putting so many passengers' and crews' lives at risk, we learned.

The stewardesses had thoroughly gone over the "crash and landing in the water drill" with us before we took off this time, because the Cuban authorities had told the captain before take-off, "Don't come back."

The flight crew woke us up over Ontario. The pilots landed at the Toronto International Airport, and when we touched down, the cabin went nuts again, shouting and applauding.

As we cheerfully disembarked, the entire flight crew stood at the front of the plane to shake our hands and wish us well.

They were beautiful people to me, with their tired eyes and bright smiles, especially the pilots and the engineer who all desperately needed some rest.

I will never forget them.

Nor do I ever intend to return to Cuba. Once was enough.

I had a great time and enjoyed the people and the island.

It's too bad the ending left me with such terrible memories of people who should have been kinder to us through our scary ordeal. It wasn't right.

What they did.

Cuba In 1981, Log Thirteen: Hours Of Uncertainty

Our plane sat outside the terminal where we could see it from the confines of the waiting room.

We were not allowed any word from the crew on what was happening, because the crew was forbidden to leave the plane.

We could see stewardesses in the open doorway, getting fresh air from time to time. We could see how hot they were, their faces red, their crisp uniforms welting in the heat as the hours passed.

A member of the cockpit came out to sit at the top step of the portable stairs and was told to go back inside by the guards on the tarmac. I felt so bad for all of them, innocent people who didn't deserve such punishment. They had no more to eat or drink than we did.

The food and drinks in our little cafe inside the terminal ran out by noon. The female staff felt sorry for us. They had never experienced what was going on, because it had never happened before.

They all went home. Hours later, one of them returned with fresh melons. She sliced them and proudly handed them out to us. It was a wonderful thing for her to do, and she refused payment for it.

Around four o'clock or so, a group of Russian tourists arrived to await their flight home. They were all men in their twenties and thirties.

They talked boisterously and eyed the Canadians as being oddities. Why were we all here, looking so disheveled and tired, one asked in broken English.

The room was really crowded now. Some of us had headaches. Nothing was happening with our plane.

And then a small jet landed. It was a private jet from Toronto, carrying the parts we needed. The crew had purchased from a place in Louisiana what we required, then received permission from Cuba to land in Havana. On board were Canadian engine mechanics. No Americans were allowed in Cuba.

I watched and watched. The flight crew, exhausted by now, seemed to pick up with hope now that help had arrived.

We waited and waited, and still no word from our plane.

The young Russian men set up a card game. Chairs in a circle, luggage piled in the center for a table. Cards came out, voices became animated.

Every time a man played a card, he raised off his chair and slammed the card down on the table with a loud shout to accompany it. I watched with delight. I had never seen a card game quite like that. I had never seen cards like they had, either. They were very entertaining for hours.

When their flight arrived, I was sad to see them go.

It grew quiet and dull and stuffy in the room.

Outside, the crew of our plane began to look desperate. They were hungry and thirsty. It was becoming horrible for all of us.

Cuba In 1981, Log Twelve: The Russian Dream

The waiting room grew hot with the overstuffed presence of tourists who should have been happily on their way back to Canada, but instead were stranded in Havana with nothing more than a scrap of paper and a scrawled number as their sole identity.

Other flights came and went in the night, crowding their passengers all in that single room.

The washrooms became filthy, messy, and smelly with no one to clean them. Toilet paper ran out. Someone threw up in a sink and left it there.

There was nothing to drink except strong Cuban coffee and imitation sodas. We were served breakfast with a small glass of rationed orange juice, toast and fried eggs and some kind of sweet jam that we couldn't identify.

Trash cans in the waiting room were over-flowing, the stuff on the floor being kicked aside on your way past them, making a pathway.

People slept in chairs, legs stretched out, throats snoring loudly, all men, of course, not caring.

There was nothing to read, no radio to listen to, no television to watch. Just tourists to stare at and who stared back at you.

My own wish, going to Cuba, was to see a Russian tourist there, a big woman wearing massive furs making her the size of a barn. She would have a bear of a face. I could picture her in my mind and I was determined that my wish came true. Just one such woman was all I asked.

Sure enough, a Russian tourist plane landed in the afternoon, and yes, we were still there thirteen hours later, and I watched, at the wall of windows to the tarmac, to see who disembarked.

Men, men, and more men, wearing Russian garb of all seasons, and then, there she was. In all her glory. In all that stifling heat. The Russian in the gigantic fur coat and hat, the woman as big as a barn with a face like a bear. My wish - my dream - was right here, and I almost died with delight.

She came charging into the crowded and messy waiting room like some gorgeous princess from Siberia, an amazon of a woman who fought Arctic wolves with her bare hands, skinned them, and dropped their sorry hides across her massive shoulders.

She spoke loudly in Russian to no one in particular. She was amazing. I could not stop grinning.

"You see?" I said to my friends. "I knew she would come!"

They had all scoffed at me in Toronto. No woman would wear her furs to tropical Cuba, they said. But I knew. There just had to be one vain woman, big enough and bold enough to do it. And here was living proof.

She must have been dying in that heat, but she never once shed a drop of sweat or the tail end of a wolf from her massive back.

Now that's stoic, I thought. Truly stoic.

Cuba In 1981, Log Eleven: That Fateful Night of Departure

We arrived in the dark and we were to leave in the dark - Cuban rules back then.

We boarded the plane and the cabin was warm, an immediate sign that something was not right for our quiet escape.

The plane taxied to the runway, picked up speed, lifting off and into the night.

But we didn't gain altitude. We kept flying low over the water, way too low for my tastes. We were going nowhere.

The captain's voice spoke. We had problems. The plane was losing hydraulic fluid, which meant that all controls were affected. He said that we weren't allowed to return to the Havana airport. It was illegal. And we couldn't make it to Miami, Florida, a mere two hundred and twenty-eight miles away, over the dark and deep waters.

We sat there, stunned. The cabin got warmer and warmer; air conditioning wasn't working. The crew huddled near the cockpit door, out of sight, listening to the captain radioing home for help.

The plane continued flying low over the water, in slow, wide arcs while the captain spoke to the officials in the Havana tower, begging them to let us return- and soon.

Finally, he came over the intercom and his voice was shaky, so that made us all nervous.

He said:

- No plane has ever been allowed to return.

- We were in a desperate situation, so the Cuban authorities would make an exception in our case (or we would have ended up in the sea).

- Officials would board our jet.

- We weren't allowed to say one word to them or to each other. They demanded our silence. They were in charge.

- We would forfeit our passports to them.

- They would give us each a piece of paper with a number on it. It would be our only identification to them.

- Keep the number safe. If we lose it, we would not be allowed back on the plane when it was repaired. Instead, we would be put in prison, and good luck with that. Our captain could not stress enough how important that slip of paper was.

- We would disembark under guard, and be returned to the waiting room where we would remain under watch at all times, as prisoners who could not leave the room.

Did all of this scare us? You bet it did, especially seeing the crew as nervous as they were.

It all happened exactly as the captain said. The authorities had stern faces and black, glaring eyes. They said nothing. We said nothing. They reached for our passports, then they scribbled on two torn pieces of paper, stuck one piece in our passports and handed them to another official, and gave us the other piece of paper.

We were told to leave the plane with the guards. Our captain stood beside two officials at the plane's door. He looked distressed, and I felt sorry for him and the responsibility he had weighing on his shoulders.

Inside the terminal, we were told that our airline, Air Canada, would pay for our breakfast at six a.m., but any other food we had to buy ourselves.

I can't imagine the frantic conversations that had taken place on the plane while we circled, dumping all of our fuel into the water so we could land safely, conversations between Air Canada headquarters, the Toronto International Airport, and the southern American airports, all people trying to help us find the parts we needed to repair our plane, so we could leave Cuba and pretend this had never happened.

To Be Continued

Good Ole Lies You Tell Your Kids

1. Santa Claus: a jolly, fat man who wears red and white and employs little alien men to make toys at the North Pole, that place where Canadians live in igloos year-round, then gears up eight little flying reindeer, fills a sleigh with about six billion toys in one gigantic red bag, and spends the night invading every single house in the world where a kid lives, and never ever gets caught, arrested, booked, and sent down to do hard time, for breaking and entering.

2. Easter Bunny: loves eggs. Loves even more the anticipation of sneaking into hen houses and stealing about six billion eggs right out from under the pathetic little squawkers. Then he single-handedly paints them, or turns them into candy or solid chocolate or even hollowed-out eggs with chocolate shells. Tricky. Then he skips through the land carrying two billion baskets of beautiful and teeth-rotting eggs to all the girls and boys. He too never does time for break and enter.

3. Tooth Fairy: ewww. Must be a wannabee mortician. Male or female? Who knows in this day and age. Again, it flits through your house in the dead of night, looking for little teeth under little heads on little pillows. That should freak out any kid. But he or she always leaves something behind, preferably cash.

4. Sand Man: a freak who unloads the outdoor cat toilet box in your kid's eyes if they won't hurry up and go to sleep.

5. Boogie Man: like nasty spiderwebs and dirty dust, this creature lurks in closets, pockets, and under the bed of a kid's bedroom, and at night will scare the crap out of your kid if he doesn't shut up and go to sleep.

6. Jack Frost: a Canadian phenomenon where again, a fairy - a male one this time for sure, because his name is Jack - breaks into your house when you are sound asleep, and paints, with ice crystals, your coldest windows, usually the ones that face west of Alaska, the Bering Sea, and Russia. Pretty darned scary.

7. Man in the Moon: one giant, grinning face that leers down at your child on a summer night when the moon is full, and gives your kid the creeps for the rest of his life.

Kids Are So Clever

Our village had a diner where I grew up.

The owner dipped ice-cream cones behind the bar. One scoop for 5¢. Two scoops for 10¢, and if you were really rich and feeling like a pig, three scoops set you back a whopping 15¢.

The owner had a soft spot for my little brother and me, so he'd sneak us two scoops for a nickel, provided the the little woman cooking in the kitchen didn't find out. But when she did, she yelled so the whole restaurant could hear.

"Don't you give those kids two scoops! We'll go broke doing that! Five cents is one scoop!"

He'd be busted.

The bar counter had a rack that held small bags of peanuts that sold for five cents each. It took a lot of penny-saving to buy one bag, so that's what we did.

One day, the owner had a vending machine parked on the counter, about four feet from the peanut rack. He said a man put it there, when I asked him where it came from.

These peanuts cost only one penny. I figured we'd only get about two peanuts for a penny, so we stayed away from that contraption.

The beauty of the machine though, all red paint and shiny metal, eventually wore us down that summer, so when we found a penny on the gravel parking lot on one of our meandering-through-the-village days, we took the treasure and went inside the diner.

The peanut machine was magical. Put a penny in the slot, turn the handle, lift the metal flap, and out would come the peanuts. We tried it. Tons of peanuts tumbled out of the shoot! We whooped with joy.

"Count them! Count them!" I yelled to my brother.

"Now I'll count the peanuts in one of those bags," I said. "We'll see which one has more peanuts, okay?"

We couldn't believe it! The bags held about one third the number of peanuts that had spilled out onto the counter from the peanut machine.

I whispered to my brother, "Whoever sells the peanuts in this machine is stupid. He'll never get rich."

We told no one of our clever secret. If we did, I knew the peanut man would charge more for them if he found out how dumb he was, selling so many peanuts for only a penny.

From then on, every time we found a penny, my brother and I would run to the diner and raid the peanut machine, and giggle ourselves silly over how clever we were to outsmart the peanut man.

You'd have thought we'd have grown up to be lawyers, being that smart, but we didn't.

Actually, I ended up marrying the peanut man in Toronto, and died laughing when I discovered who he was. He wasn't stupid after all. He was a smart businessman, who made his money dealing in peanuts, pennies, nickles, and dimes.

In gigantic quantities, I might add.

The Teacher Was No Saint

I'm certain that every person out there had a bad teacher at least once in their lives, and for those of you still in school, you know what I'm talking about.

The taste of a bad teacher stays with you forever, like pond scum in a swamp.

I was advanced to the senior room when I was only eight because somebody thought I was smart. The senior room had a female rooster for a teacher. She crowed and fumed at us kids day in and day out.

I was scared to death of her. She reminded me of a scrawny little Bantam horror of a rooster we had when I was really small. That rooster made it his job to terrorize my tiny brother and me whenever we went outside to play, by landing on our heads and pecking us. Of course, he always hid until he could fly out and get us.

The teacher had her sneaky habits too. I don't know anyone who liked that woman.

Mom made me give her a birthday card the year I was nine. That was the last thing on earth I wanted to do. Mom said it might soften her up a little so she'd be nicer, but hey, wishful thinking usually never gets you anywhere. And it didn't that time.

A kid can't learn when they're scared of a teacher or don't know what she'll do next to them. Nor can they learn if they're being screamed at half the day.

So for all of you bad teachers out there, take note.

We beheaded our rotten rooster.

Sunrise Service - No Fun For A Kid

Every darned year when I was a young girl, the county Baptists picked a church to hold a sunrise service for girls in the CGIT groups. CGIT stands for Canadian Girls In Training.

I was forced to go to the group in our little church, and I hated it. I like Sunday School, but not CGIT. It made no sense to me at all. Whenever I asked anyone what we were training for, the only answer I ever got was "to be a good person in society." I already was one. I didn't need some women at Church telling me I needed to train for what came naturally.

Anyway, the Sunrise Service was a nightmare for me. Not for my older sister or any of the other girls. Just me. I have a weak system and tend to get sick easily. So having to get up at 5:30am when I was used to rising at 8:00am always threw me off.

I at least needed to eat something when I got up, but oh no, they would serve us breakfast after the service, so I was never allowed any food before we went. That right there made me sick.

By the time we arrived at the designated church in the cold and dark, I was ready to throw up. Which I promptly did. Every stinking year.

I was weak and pale and exhausted from all that throwing up, and then I had to sit through a solemn service in the church for an hour and try not to heave some more. A whole hour of boring, I might add.

Down in the church basement, tables were set up with place settings for all the good little girls and women after the service.

I liked cornflakes, but these came in tiny boxes, and I think we were supposed to be awed by this. Actually, the other girls all were - year after year.

The boxes had a perforated opening at the top, like two little doors. You poured the milk in and then ate. Picture it. Soggy cornflakes in a soggy cardboard box - so disgusting to me at any time, let alone when my poor stomach was sick already.

I went hungry. One bite of that horror and I wouldn't have made it to the little girls' room a second time.

After another half hour of noisy girl din and even noisier eating, I finally got to go home.

No amount of begging ever made my mother change her mind about forcing me to go. A neighbor lady even said I should stay home because my system couldn't handle it. She was probably tired of having to clean me up every Easter morning before dawn in somebody else's church.

Once I got home, I ate a little and then I had to go to Sunday School at ten, and then Church at eleven, and the smell of those powerful Easter lilies in the sanctuary sent me running for the washroom again.

I doubt that Easter Sunday was all about making a little girl sick in those days, but that's all it ever did for me.

Thanks to CGIT and my mother.

Cuba In 1981, Log Ten: Naughty Men

Our hotel had a rooftop terrace that surrounded a swimming pool. Nothing unusual about that, right?

Whenever we had nothing to do, we'd go up to the terrace and stretch out on padded loungers in our swimsuits and catch some Cuban sun. A lot of us went swimming, then stretched out to dry. I guess word got out that a bunch of female tourists were worth a trip to the pool terrace, so our second time up there, we noticed a bunch of young men - swarthy skin, black hair, and grinning faces - across the pool from us, and their grins were aimed at us. We were on display.

Of course, some of the girls started giggling. Some flirted. Some hid behind their paperback novels.

Sure enough, the men ambled on over and parked themselves on the terrace in front of us. They were fully clothed in slacks, shirts, and shoes. And they never stopped grinning. I couldn't figure out why they were even there.

The giggling girls got even gigglier. The flirting ones, the ones over twenty-five, got bolder, and the paperback hiders were shrinking into their loungers like melting ice cubes.

The men spoke Spanish, but their eyes said more than their foreign words. One reached for a bottle of sun tan lotion and began to rub it on one of the over twenty-five's legs and shoulders.

It became uncomfortable when the ogling men moved even closer, and when one tried to kiss a giggler, the male tourists yelled at them to leave.

There were so few of the male tourists who wanted to lie on the loungers up on the roof, so they were out-numbered. Plus, the Cubans spoke no English, so ignored them.

The Cuban men then tried to coax us girls into the pool, with grins and words and many gestures. Again, I thought that was strange.

One of the Canadian men, a friend of mine, had gone swimming, and then had dried off and disappeared. When he returned, he said, I should follow him, so I left the volatile scene of tourists and Cubans, and went with him.

On the staircase, he said, "You won't believe what's under the pool. Wait and see." He was laughing, really laughing.

I was telling him about the outrageous, flirting young Cubans on the terrace and he just kept laughing.

We went through a door, and there stood a bar, a huge place, dark and cool, lots of tables, a big selection of bottles behind the bartender, and a handful of men sitting around drinking.

My friend whispered, "See anything unusual about that wall to the right of the bar?"

I looked, whispered, "It's a funny color."

"It's a glass wall. Look closely. See the bubbles?"

I nodded. "Don't tell me!" I whispered.

"Yep. That's the pool. Those Cubans up on the terrace were watching the girls swimming from down here. And trust me, they had quite a view."

He couldn't stop grinning. I thought it was terrible.

He said, "Stay here, and I'll go swimming."

Sure enough, I saw him dive through the water. The pool was really deep and he had been a competitive swimmer on his high school team in Toronto, so he was fun to watch.

The men in the bar looked over, then seeing that the swimmer was only a man, went back to their drinks.

Watching my friend do his show-off antics in the water was hilarious. I started to laugh, so the men looked over at the swimmer. He was so entertaining.

And then he swam over to the glass wall and waved.

Immediately, the men looked as guilty as sin, and turned away.

I left the bar, laughing my head off.

When we told the girls on the terrace, in English, why the young Cubans were here, and why they wanted them to go swimming, they were mortified.

They shooed those men away like nasty flies at a picnic.

I asked my friend how he discovered the glass wall and he said he'd noticed that that wall didn't look right under the water. Of course, the girls hadn't paid any attention to the walls, which was what the bar men were counting on.

Poor, unsuspecting female tourists.

Funny as heck, though.

United States of America, Chapter Ten: Over The Border

There was a bus tour that said we could go south of San Diego and cross the border into Mexico.

For one reason - to get an hour's glimpse of Tijuana.

I thought, why not? Just this once.

Even back then, in 1975, Mexico held a reputation of being semi-lawless, and the city of Tijuana was no safe place to be.

But on a bus tour, how could you go wrong?

So I went.

And I was perfectly safe.

And I loved it.

The uniforms at the border, and the stern faces of the golden-skinned, black-haired border patrol were like watching a movie.

On the wide open main street, the bus parked, and the driver and guide told us to keep our money safe, our eyes open, and be back in exactly one hour or be stranded in Mexico.

I checked out little shops beneath the street level, some that ran in tunnels under the stores above, dark and loud with bartering Spanish voices.

In the streets, dust from sand swirled in tiny breezes. Citizens crossed wherever they wanted to, dodging old vehicles and donkey carts.

Men and women in colorful clothes walked alongside their carts piled high with their wares, as they shouted out what they were selling.

Small donkeys, dressed in wide-brimmed straw hats, ears sticking out through holes punched there, and colorful shawls draped across their backs, pulled the carts through the streets, very slowly.

The hour was too quick. I had to run to catch the bus, run across the dusty, wide street, dodging vehicles and people and sweet donkeys.

Or else I'd still be stranded in Mexico.

Today, Tijuana is a modern city that attracts a lot of border crossings for Mexicans and Americans, because it's barely fifteen miles south of San Diego.

Tourists can spend a few hours there to shop, eat, or watch a horse race, then head back to San Diego.

Tijuana started out as a village at the turn of the twentieth century, and has grown to over a million people, today, due to the above.

United States of America, Chapter Nine: San Diego

Now that was an experience I enjoyed.

Just driving through the city to the hotel was wonderful. What a pretty city. Hot, though, being in the south of the state. Hot and dry.

The hotel was parked on San Diego Bay, near the naval base; a room with a view of dark, gray, sleek vessels, massive things at their moorings on the blue water. A joy to see.

There is so much water around San Diego, something I loved to be near.

The zoo was so spread out that it took tram rides to see it, unless you could walk steep hills for miles.  The animals had to have been happier there than in a tight zoo of pens.

Even the aviary was huge. Birds landed on my shoulders and my head, without even asking me. Strangers paused to take pictures of me decorated in birds. Why the birds chose to land on me, I don't know.

There was no Sea World then or I would have gone to it, but what a perfect place they have for it now.

One evening after dark, I went to a favorite spit of land to watch the sunset and feel the salt breeze and listen to the locals who came to hang out, to sit atop wooden picnic tables, smoke cigarettes, and talk.

A movement came from the water, a dark movement, silent except for a soft intermittent swish of calm water.

And then a cloud slid off the moon and I saw.

Huge, dark creatures were slipping past the spit of land, as silent as if I was deaf.

I was in awe. There were no sailors visible on these creatures. There were no engines loud enough to be heard.

Silent, secretive, powerful.

The United States Navy.

Canada, As Seen From Above

The land of ice and snow, Indians and Eskimos, igloos and teepees, lakes and rivers and wilderness and bears, boats and sawmills, bakeries and shoemakers. Canada.

No, wait. I'm describing the United States here. Past and present.

Doctors, politicians, teachers and store clerks.

It's all the same. Both countries have a lot of different races, from immigration and migration, marriages and native born.

The scenery is the same.

The weather is the same.

The education and workforce - the same.

United States has Hollywood.

Canada has Corner Gas reruns.

United States has massive armed forces.

Canada has snowballs.

Cuba in 1981, Log Nine: Mystery On The Beach

One morning, after breakfast, I went down to the beach before anyone else was there, and was horrified at what I saw.


Huge bluish, purplish, and clear blobs of yuck were everywhere on that white sand. Covered it, in fact.


I stopped dead. Looked up and down the beach.


Further down, a woman and a boy were stomping their feet as they moved along the sand.


Being careful to avoid the yuck on the sand, I picked my way around it, and made my way down to them.


The woman was small, about twenty-four years old, wearing a dress on her brown skin. The boy was about six and tiny, and he wore shorts and a t-shirt.


They were holding hands.


And stomping on large jellyfish!


In their bare feet!


They never said a word, just kept their heads down, and kept stomping.


I just stared.


I couldn't ask them, WHY?


I couldn't speak Spanish.


When they had completely destroyed the washed-ashore jellyfish and the beautiful beach, they just walked right by me, and went back to the tiny village from where they came.


Did they do the Canadian tourists a favor?


Why didn't they feel the horrific sting of the jellyfish?


One of the guides told everybody to stay off the beach until they could get someone to clean it up.


That took two long days, and the smell grew worse in the heat, until we couldn't stand it.


To this day, I have no answers to why the jellyfish were even there, or why those two did what they did.


I've seen small jellyfish around my dock and in the waters of Florida, but never any as huge as those I saw in Cuba!

Cuban Sandwiches

They're everywhere now.

People are arguing about who makes the best one and who made the first one.


The bread is a fat crusty loaf and must have originally been invented in Cuba a long time ago.


To slice it and stuff it with delectable things is one thing, but to press it down and make it flat, not fat, and crusty and melty and tasty, is another.


The first one I had years ago at a friends' house had been reheated in their microwave and it didn't do a thing for me, leaving me to wonder why they were nuts about a Cuban sandwich.


So off we went to Tampa in their little car, to the tiny restaurant in a tiny, out-of-the-way plaza.


I watched the loaf being sliced, the meat and cheese and everything else being slapped on.


But the press was amazing to see.


And then I ate.


People should keep on arguing about who makes the best one and who made the first one, for as long as they like.


But just keep on making them, because they have to be one of the coolest sandwiches ever invented.

Good and Bad Teachers

We all know who they are, don't we? It doesn't matter if it happened sixty years ago or yesterday - we know the difference in our hearts.

Good - They not only like kids and teens, they love them.
Bad - They can't stand you.

Good - Born for the job.
Bad - Should be wardens at the worst penitentiaries you can find.

Good - Receive loving gifts at Christmas from you.
Bad - Receive begrudged stuff because your parents made you give them something.

Good - Have patience and easy smiles.
Bad - Patience isn't even in their meager vocabulary. Smiles would crack their sour faces wide open and their noses would fall off.

Good - Say "good morning" and "goodbye" each school day, as if you're their very own children.
Bad - Tell you not to waste time vacating the premises if you know what's good for you.

Good - Teach, show, and explain until you get it.
Bad - Slap it on the board, ignore your questions, sneak out for a smoke when you all need help. You can hear them cackling through the closed door.

Yes - those bad teachers are cauldron witches, male and female and the questionable, alike.

They have lives after hours doing their best to make everyone around them as miserable as they are. And if they live alone, they pollute the very air they breathe with their ugliness.

Bad teachers yell at the kids.

They scare the kids.

The kids never learn much in their classrooms, unless it's how to treat their enemies on a bad day.

Good teachers you think of years later with a smile on your face and a pleasant sigh.

Bad teachers make you kick the coffee table years later. They make you say you hope they met a miserable death, like hanging upside-down by one shoe caught on an over-hanging tree limb three miles above a canyon in the middle of nowhere, where even the buzzards and vultures turn their noses up at their carcasses.

Now you can think of them with a smile on your face and a sigh.

Oh, yeah.

The United States of America, Chapter Seven: Palm Springs, California, Part Two

The motel where I stayed was owned by two men who loved fashion. The rooms were softly decorated in wonderful colors and I had a yellow and white one.


It left such an impression on me, the effect of yellow and white and sun, that I bought deck furniture in those colors when I went home that spring, and it never failed to remind me of Palm Springs.


The temperature reached 115° in the shade during the days. I couldn't even breathe in that, so I ran for the air conditioning wherever I could find it.


The motel owners were friendlier than anyone else in town, and when it was time to head to San Diego, they pulled out a map and traced a route for me to take. It cut across country, through lush green hills, past miles and miles of black wooden fences, thousands of Aberdeen Angus cattle and bulls grazing in the sun, and ranch buildings so sprawling they looked like well-kept mansions parked at the end of long, paved tree-lined driveways.


Wealth was everywhere along those back country roads.


The motel owners had said I'd enjoy the drive as much as they did, whenever they headed down to San Diego with their cute little dogs to visit family and friends.


If it wasn't so unbearably hot in Palm Springs, I would have wanted to make my home there. It had a peacefulness about it, an aura that everything was special and to be savored at leisure.


But a friend years later sent me a postcard while he was on business there, and he said that on the sidewalks, the glue melted on the soles of his shoes, and the soles came undone. His shoes fell apart.


Now that's hot. I can't breathe just thinking about it.

The United States of America, Chapter Seven: Palm Springs, California, Part One

Back in 1975, Palm Springs wasn't all that large an oasis in the desert.

Mostly it was golf courses for celebrities, the rich, and the PGA tours.

Mostly, it was walled-in estates on curving roads in the foothills, so secretive that you could see nothing but stucco and red bougainvillea vines and massive, expensive palm trees.

There were small motels and small streets, a small mall, and spas for Hollywood over-weights to come for a week or a month to lose the fat and feel like a pampered queen while doing it.

Sambos Restaurant made the best eggs and coffee in town, so I went there a lot.

The first time I laid eyes on grits was at Sambos in the early morning just after dawn. A pile of white, with a dollop of melting sweet butter on the top of it, sat beside two eggs fried so gently that they melted in my mouth.

I didn't know what to do with the grits. They were bland-looking and definitely unappealing.

But the other patrons, I noticed, were eating theirs easily, as if they knew grits were a normal food in Palm Springs, maybe even good for you.

By the time my stay in Palm Springs was over, I ate the Sambos grits with great enthusiasm, even letting the gooey yolk of the eggs run all over the pile of white before I scooped it up on my fork.

I saw an interview later with a sitcom actress who went to a spa in Palm Springs to lose a few pounds, and she said she snuck out at night to head to Sambos to gorge herself on their tender fried eggs and grits. And I thought, yeah, I know what that's all about.

Long Ago Teachers: Field Trip

I had a really sweet teacher for grades one, two, and three.

She had to put up with a few bad boys who probably ended up in juvenile detention by the time they were eight, and the federal penitentiary the second they turned eighteen.

Who could take a class of kids anywhere when you had even one nasty little boy to ruin everything, let alone two or three?

But she really liked the idea of field trips. After all, the small city teachers had field trips for their students, and so did the small towns.

So, my teacher took us to the woods.

Wonderful! My favorite place in the world!

Just down the road a bit, then follow the hot train tracks to a farm, down a lane hill and across a green field, and on and on until she decided that, "here we are, children."

We sat in the woods and ate our sandwiches and drank our warm sodas from the general store. The store owner was given our orders a few days before, so he could be sure and have enough of what we wanted without draining his supply.

I always sat  near my teacher when we ate. She always had a huge, thick sandwich with canned salmon on it, so big she could hardly hold it.

I could never take my eyes off that sandwich.

I figured that a rich person could have a whole can of salmon on one sandwich and not go broke.

I figured that the ultimate, best thing in the world would be to grow up and be rich enough to put the whole can of salmon between two slices of bread, any old day you wanted to.

That was luxury.

To this day, no matter how much money I have had, I have never done that.

And I can't figure out why.

Because in my "little kid eyes", it's still got to be the best thing in the world.