One Week of Winter

It's already Spring, but I'm going to write about Winter. You see, everyone around town is talking about how we went from Autumn straight into Spring with no Winter at all. Some folks are happy, but some are not. They say that it would have been great to have at least one good snowfall so that they feel like they at least had some winter. That actually happens quite often in Cincinnati, no good snowfall at all, but I don't point this out to them. I don't want to rub it in while I'm telling them that I did have Winter! I had several days of winter with a couple of good snowfalls up in Vermont where I visited Joanna and Seth during the Christmas Holidays.

Paul and I drove up together and left on Christmas Eve Eve Eve around 7 pm. We stopped at our favorite rest area at Chautauqua Lake near Jamestown, New York, hometown of Lucille Ball. This rest area is a small distance off of the interstate, perched on the side of the lake with a gorgeous vista, is never crowded, the car lot is far from the truck lot, and (get this) it has a night watchman. The bathrooms are spectacularly clean, airy, dry and tiled beautifully as though it were a hotel. I almost felt like I should check in! But instead I just washed up, brushed my teeth, and went back to the car to sleep. Since it's winter and New York, we were a little concerned about staying warm. Paul refused to leave the car running, thereby burning up precious fossil fuels. So we compromised by turning the heat on full blast while we were in the bathroom with the hope that the car would stay warm through the wee hours of the night. I was skeptical, but we were warm as toast.

The rule is that the first person to wake up starts driving. The benefit is that they are treated to a wondrous morning view of the lake.

See! Who wouldn't want to wake up to this!!?

I always wake up first, so Paul always misses this.




After getting situated back on I-86 my first order of business was to find coffee. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can find a Starbucks. But more often I find a Dunkin' Donuts. They abound in New England for some reason. We purchased breakfast to go but it wasn't that great. Paul bought a munchkin (donut holes) variety pack and found that they really are all the same. They just put different coatings on them and pretend like they are different flavors. At various times in the day, we kept eating them hoping for something good. It got to be a joke where one of us would say with huge appeal, "You wanna munchkin!?" and the other would just laugh. We couldn't wait until they were gone.

After driving the yawning breadth of the great State of New York we finally entered Vermont. Entering Vermont is exciting because you think you are almost there. But you never are almost there because Vermont has no short cuts. So we drove over hill and dale enjoying the scenery. We drove over winding two-lane mountain roads that had rumble strips down the center line. We passed through quintessential New England hamlets all decked out for Christmas. We drove through snow and ice and sunshine and past ski resorts and farmland and wooden covered bridges until we finally arrived at our destination:







Smuggler's Notch Resort.





This notch or pass in the Green Mountains has a long history of being used as a smuggling route. In the early 1800's when the US government imposed an embargo on English imports, the British shipped to Canada instead and smuggled the goods down through Vermont. And once again during Prohibition, liquor was smuggled from Canada down through New England. The smuggling route uses the thickly wooded Long Trail that has caves and caverns which were handy for storing goods.

This old print on the left is a little over-dramatized, I think.

Because the notch looks more like this:



The next day, Christmas Eve, we all went snowboarding. That is, me and a bunch of 20-something year olds. I board very carefully taking no risks because I can't afford a broken wrist (or anything else for that matter) in my line of work. So I was the old lady conservative snowboarder playing catch up to all the kids. But the little darlings all politely waited for me at intersections and lifts. Thanks, guys, for not leaving me wondering where you all went!

That night we celebrated Chanukah. Same as the night before. In fact this Jewish holiday is celebrated for 8 days running. Why don't the Christians celebrate Christmas like that? Perhaps if we had time to spread it all out, it wouldn't be so stressful. Last I checked there were 12 days of Christmas, for goodness' sake.

After the party, Joanna and Paul and I somehow squeezed Joanna's things in with all of our stuff (I had been lovingly toting around all my Christmas presents that I didn't want to leave in the freezing car overnight. But I was ready to leave them under a tree for good!). We're talking presents, suitcases, snowboards, and other gear!  Then we went to spring Thunder from his dog sitter and squeezed him in on Paul's lap. He was greatly excited to be free and with us and going for a ride all at once! The true Christmas spirit!

Driving along Vermont back roads through small towns on Christmas Eve is like viewing Christmas card after Christmas card.

Paul's Girl

 Once we got to Jo's house, the first order of business was to vamp up the furnace. Brrrrrrr! Then we had a hot drink, decorated the Christmas tree listening to A Very She & Him Christmas and put all the presents under the tree! We kept wondering why it was still so cold in the house. Then Joanna realized she had lit some candles directly under the thermostat. It didn't know how completely freezing it was 10 feet away and so the furnace did not click on!

T

The next morning dawned cold and grey with snow flurries in the air! Jo and I made coffee and snuggled into the living room gazing at the pretty tree and talking. We wondered when it was safe to rouse Paul from sleep without suffering his wrath and decided to start breakfast instead.

Then when we could stand it no longer we woke him up! He was right there on the futon after all. He reluctantly agreed to get up and then, as is our Christmas tradition, Paul plays elf and hands out the presents one at a time so we have the luxury to ooh and aah over each one.

Seth and Raffi arrived bang on time for breakfast, and we had a feast!


The rest of the day was spent not doing much, as Christmas should be. I volunteered every time to take Thunder out, and instead of one quick freezing jaunt around the back yard, we went on a Christmas Day neighborhood romp. I put on coat, hat, snowboard mittens, and Joanna's wonderfully warm and stylish snow boots (I decided I would buy some too) and Thunder and I went exploring.


It was funny to see the moment Thunder realized we weren't just going around the back yard. As we approached the back door he pulled that direction and I pulled toward the driveway. As we approached the car, he waited for me to open the back door for him. And when he realized we were going for a walk (!) his joy knew no bounds! I took him mostly to the cemetery because it was peaceful and quiet. Snow fell gently as we walked respectfully around. I love cemeteries! I love to read the tombstones and guess at the lives of the dead and think about their marriages, their children, the sentiments they wrote on the grave markers. One whole corner was filled with only children. I wondered if there had been some epidemic, but the years of death weren't all the same. Possibly several epidemics. Or not. Maybe just a children's corner.

When we got back, Thunder was eager to tell his Momma and Papa where he'd been. His Momma told me the cemetery is off limits to pets for obvious reasons. Ah well. The birds and squirrels and dear doo doo in there and nobody stops them. Plus I made sure Thunder did his business at home as usual.

Cooking Christmas dinner was delicious, warm, and cozy with Joanna's scrumptious recipes. Oh, and manhattan cocktails for the cook(s)!

We were making beef tenderloin, and a savory vegetarian flaky pot pie for Paul, but luckily he shared it with the rest of us. A deep red Christmas wine completed the meal. I don't remember dessert. Did we have dessert, Joanna?

 The day after Christmas, Seth and Raffi went skiing early, hoping for that elusive "powder". I decided to try to summit Mt. Mansfield in the snow and cold. My long-suffering children agreed to accompany me. Mt. Mansfield is the highest point in Vermont, and I am trying to summit all the highest state points in the East.






Having studied the trails the night before, we decided the best way up in the snow and ice was to snowshoe up the toll road. We geared up and hit the trail in good spirits.

The toll road crosses some of the ski runs at Stowe. So we had to hurry across the trails making sure that we didn't get in the way of an oncoming skiier or boarder. Joanna didn't like this and felt in their way. But we managed to make her cross a couple of times!






The day sunny and cold, the trail sun-dappled, the views spectacular, and the road long. We were nearing the top, maybe 3/4 of the way along, when we took an appraisal of the hike. My feet were like ice blocks, and I was running out of energy. The kids were tired but their feet weren't cold. We realized the toll road didn't actually go all the way to the summit, but only a trail which would be steep, windy, and icy. We decided to come back in summer!

Once we made that decision, we turned and bolted for the car like homing pigeons.

I'll be back, Mansfield! It was worth a try! What a beautiful mountain.

At home we had a warm drink and Joanna fell immediately asleep.










I started to read but was sleepy and fell asleep too!

Thunder was sleepy as well, although he didn't go snowshoeing with us.








That night we celebrated Paul's birthday early in Montpelier. And so ended my one week of winter in 2011-2012.

We celebrated Chanukah.



 

 We celebrated Christmas.

I got a week of snowboarding, snowshoeing, crisp cold air, jaunts through the snow with Thunder, beautiful wintry vistas, nighttime drives with churches, snow, and Christmas lights.

Vermont always has winter!

Visitation

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us
And we see nothing but sand;
The angels come to visit us,
And we only know them when they are gone.
~George Elliot

My nephew recently posted an article on Facebook about St. Bernard dogs and how they are known as the Alpine Rescue Dog. St. Bernards are often portrayed wearing small barrels of brandy around their necks. The brandy was supposedly used to warm the lost victims of snowstorms and avalanche found by the dogs.

I couldn't let that one go without commenting. I think I quipped something like, "What about the rest of us skiers? What do we get? Just because we're not lost! Where's our brandy? We have to resort to stowing a flask under a pine tree somewhere on the ski slopes, and good luck finding it again."

While I was thinking about the subject, I decided to google St. Bernards to see just why they were so good at alpine rescue. It was discovered by monks at the hospice at the Great St Bernard Pass in Switzerland in the 1700's, that because of the heroic dogs' uncanny sense of direction, resistance to cold, tremendous sense of smell, and ability to discover people buried deep in the snow, they could be sent out in packs of two or three alone to seek lost or injured travelers in the snowy mountains. Often the dogs would find the victim, dig through the snow and lie on top of the injured to provide warmth. Meanwhile, the other dog would return to the outpost to alert the humans of the stranded pilgrim. Sounds like Lassie times three, doesn't it?

Then I found that the whole legendary flask strapped around the dog's collar and brimming with delicious brandy to warm the stranded traveler and pull him back from certain frozen death is pretty much undocumented. But, heck, I still buy it. Without the little barrel of brandy, I think the story loses much of its charm.

Reading about the St. Bernard and contemplating the various instinctive qualities of certain breeds of dogs jogged a memory of mine. I was thinking about the very large dogs and how some of them are referred to as gentle giants, many without much instinct to attack in these modern times. Yet, their formidable size and powerful bark will scare the wits out of any burglar or, for that matter, anyone else who isn't used to their sheer massive presence, latent muscular force, and rumbling growl that could probably vibrate the furniture. And, gentle and friendly though they are, some will aggressively protect their family, especially children. Hence, many larger breeds make good guard dogs and great protectors.

So, wind back the clock to my children's young years. It was another choir rehearsal night and I was due there at 7:30 to accompany the choir. During dinner I had decided to leave the children at home this particular night. Joanna had much homework yet to finish, and Paul was sick. It was a cold winter night, and although I didn't like the thought of leaving them home alone, I thought they would be better off. Joanna could get her homework finished instead of wasting an hour in travel time, and instead of going out into the cold, Paul could get in bed early and get some much needed sleep.

As I wrung out the dishcloth and was putting the kitchen to bed for the night, I heard this great baying out in the side yard. I went to the window and looked out. The light from the dining room shown out across the lawn and I saw two great dogs standing on our patio. They were barking and glancing at the house from time to time. These weren't yelping yappy yips. These were deep reverberating bellows loud enough to wake the dead. "Great!" I thought to myself. "That's all I need is for these two to frighten the kids just when I'm ready to leave them alone for the evening."

I watched them and wondered where they had come from. I had never seen them before, and I knew they didn't belong to any of the neighbors. They didn't act particularly menacing, but they were so BIG!

I called the kids to the window and showed them the dogs. The three of us looked out into the night, our noses practically pressed against the cold windowpanes and our breath making frost on the glass. "What are they doing here?" Joanna asked.

"I don't know, I've never seen them before, have you?" They both assured me they hadn't. "But they can't hurt you. When I leave, I am locking the doors, and dogs can't unlock and open doors. So just ignore them and get your homework done. And, Paul, make sure you get to bed early tonight and take care of that bad cold. That's the only reason I'm leaving you home tonight!"

After I reminded them to not answer the door, not answer the phone, and call the church if they needed anything (no cell phones back then), I hugged and kissed them goodbye and left. When I crossed the side yard on my way out to the garage, I didn't see the dogs. "Good," I thought. "Maybe they've moved on."

At church I tried to keep one ear out listening for the office telephone. But there were no calls and at the end of the two-hour rehearsal I started for home instead of heading out to the grill with the choir.

As I pulled into the driveway, I scanned the yard for the dogs, but didn't see a thing. As I hurried down the walk toward the house, I looked all around the moonlit yard and up at the starry cold sky. Nothing stirred and there was not a sound nor any sign of the giant pair of dogs.

Inside the house all was quiet and peaceful. I tip-toed into Paul's room. He was fast asleep and I kissed his warm forehead, smelling his hair and silently saying the prayer I usually said as I tucked him into bed. Then I moved on to Joanna's room. She was in bed but wide awake.

I sat on the edge of her bed. "Is everything okay? Did you get your homework finished?"

"Yes. And I read Paul a story before bed and he got to sleep early." I smiled. What a little mother she is.

"And what about the dogs? Did they leave as I left because I didn't see them," I asked her.

"No, Mom. They came up on the front porch."

"They did?" I asked, a little alarmed. This was news to me. "What did they do? Were you and Paul afraid?"

"No, because they didn't bark or anything. And they sat one on each side of the front door. And they were looking out at the yard, like they were watching for something.

As this information sunk in, I thought for a minute, looking into Joanna's big dark eyes in the semi-darkness. They showed no fright at all, just thoughtfulness, as did mine.

"Almost as if they were guarding the house?" I asked.

She nodded yes. "And us," she added, after a pause.

"Hmmm," I said. "That is really interesting, isn't it? When did they leave, then?"

"They left just before you got home. I just now got in bed," she smiled, like as if she was confessing getting away with staying up late but knew I wouldn't be mad.

Wow. Those dogs were guarding my children for me. Guardian angel dogs. They were sent there for a purpose and when that purpose was over, they left with it. We never saw them again.

Flash back to the present. The next morning on Instant Message, I asked Joanna if she saw her cousin's Facebook post about the St. Bernard. I asked, "Do you remember those two dogs that guarded the house back when you and Paul were little and I had to leave you home from choir?"

"Yes!" she typed. "I had almost totally forgotten about them. But yes, I remember now."

"What kind of dogs were they? Do you remember what they looked like?" I remembered they looked almost identical. Great big dogs with massive heads and shaggy coats of fur. But Joanna didn't remember shaggy. She sent me a picture from online of what she remembered. It was a Great Dane. We even checked with Paul and his memory matched hers. So much for my shaggy coats. But then Jo and Paul got a better look at the dogs after I had left for choir. They saw them right outside the front door with the porch light shining on them.

I typed, "It's interesting, isn't it? How they kept watch over the house while I was gone and then disappeared right before I came back."

"Yes," Joanna typed. "And it's even more interesting now to wonder what kind of evil mischief lurked in our neighborhood that night!"

"Yes, indeed," I thought as a chill tingled down my spine. I felt a funny kind of gratefulness to those heroic rescue dogs whose very brief visit became a part of our history. Perhaps tonight I'll pour a brandy and toast the two dogs who protected my darlings.

Boo Hinkley

Recently my daughter, Joanna, shared a link on my Facebook wall, "New Ghost Tour Hits Covington Haunts." She posted,

"You might be interested in this, although you must promise not to tell me anything about it, or ever mention it in my presence. :)"

American Legacy Tours, a local company, was kicking off a new tour showcasing the haunted side of the Licking River Historic District. Which is where I live, and where Joanna grew up from age 16 until she moved out at age 21. Joanna thinks our house is haunted. Naturally, she doesn't actually want to think about it at all, especially when she comes to visit me. So while she believes this tour would interest me, she has no desire to attend it, hear anything about it, or even know that I attended it.

In 2001 I bought this turn of the century house in this beautiful neighborhood that has been described as being "reminiscent of Charleston or Savannah." I started restoring it, room by room. When we moved in, Joanna had chosen the bedroom in the very top of the house, an attic bedroom where we had decided that, back in the day, the maids had lived. There was a second staircase in the back of the house, one level leading to the attic from the second floor and another directly under it leading from the second floor down to the kitchen. The staircase the maids would have used.

It all started one day when Joanna was home from college (she was a day commuter) in between classes. It was afternoon and she was sitting in the kitchen, having just eaten a late lunch. All was quiet as she sat on a high stool studying at the island table in the middle of the room. Suddenly she heard a loud whisper, "Joanna!" coming from the direction of the back stairwell, not 10 feet away. Her immediate thought was that it was her brother Paul, but instantly remembered that he was in school (Paul is younger and was in high school at the time). The next second, she realized she was indeed very alone. This had not been the distant hiss of the furnace, the hum of the refrigerator, or a sound from the neighbors next door. She was sure it was a voice, a loud whisper, a calling of her own name in this empty house.

Her heart pounding, she stood up, grabbed her purse, her car keys, and her half-finished can of coke, and left the house. She would hang out somewhere else until it was time for her evening class. She would even go to work! (Joanna worked for her father.) Anything was better than staying in that house. Her father told her later as she was leaving work that she could come back anytime she got "scared at Mom's house!"

Joanna told me what happened later on. I surmised that perhaps one day a long time ago, a maid had tripped down the stairs while carrying a load of laundry, or an armful of cleaning supplies. I pointed out that I had almost done that myself once, and commented on the steepness and relative slipperiness of the steps. This poor maid, I ventured, had fallen to her death at the bottom of the steps, perhaps breaking her neck. Ever since, she had been a lost spirit caught in the stairwell, fated to haunt it as a ghost forever more. This would account, I continued, for how cold and drafty it is in that passage. Actually I know that it is cold and drafty in that passage because it is located on an outside wall with no heating vents nearby, and it acts as a sort of cold air return.

You might think this girl has a lively imagination, and is predisposed to jump to unlikely solutions and preternatural causes of sounds in the house. Let me just say, it could possibly be due to her own mother's vivid imagination. For I used to tease my children mercilessly with haunts, spirits, witches and ghost stories.

One day, about a month after moving in, I heard on the news that a fisherman had drown in the Licking River near the bridge to Newport. The bridge is five houses away. The story reported the facts: it was past midnight, two fishermen were fishing from a boat, they had been drinking, one decides for whatever reason to jump into the water, finds that he can't really swim, or is too drunk to swim, the other is too inebriated to save him, and he drowns.

After a respectful two minutes of feeling sorry, I immediately dismiss the tragedy and practically rub my hands together with glee. I cannot wait to tease the kids. At dinner I relate the story to them and end with my own epilogue. The fisherman's name was Boo Hinckley and having violently met his demise practically in our own backyard, he will most probably haunt our house, our yard, or at the very least the riverbank at the bottom of the yard. They look at me with big eyes, then each other, then solemnly down at their plates for a few moments, until the younger one looks up with defiance in his eyes and says, "Huh uh, Mom, you're just teasing!" He spears a piece of meat with his fork and puts it in his mouth, then adds, "You're just trying to scare us. You know there's no such thing as ghosts!" More denial than bravado, I think.

Keep in mind that my two children both skipped two years of grade school upon entering their high school where this was a normal turn of events. So they were only 14 and 16 at the time.

A few weeks later, Paul and I were home at night, and Joanna was gone for the evening. I am the piano accompanist for a church choir and had to attend a rehearsal. Before I left, I stopped in Paul's bedroom where he was doing homework to make sure he would be okay for a few hours and say goodbye. I sat on the edge of his bed and enumerated my usual instructions: Keep the doors locked, don't answer the door, don't answer the phone, don't leave the house, call the church if you need anything. His eyes didn't leave the four-inch thick American Literature book he was reading as he automatically answered, "okay" to each bidding.

I looked at him quietly for a few moments and then glanced around his room. It was then that I noticed the caked mud on the carpet, with red hair embedded in it.

"Paul, where did that come from?" I demanded, hating dirt of any kind tracked into the house.

Paul glanced at the mud, obviously noting it for the first time. "I dunno. What is it?" Back to his story. Probably Edgar Allen Poe.

Then I remembered that I had recently cut Paul's hair outside. And it had since rained. He had probably been out in the yard, stepped through the mud and his own hair trimmings and then brought it all into the house. I gasped out loud, eyes riveted on the mud. That got his attention and he finally looked up from his text book.

"Well it's mud! With red hair in it!" I point out the hair in the dried crumbles of mud and looked up at him, my eyes wide with fear. "Boo Hinckley had red hair! Hair just like yours! I think Boo Hinckley was in your room!"

I knew that at any moment Paul would put two and two together and realize that the hair in the mud was, in fact, his own hair, and that he himself had brought it into the house on his own shoes. But no. Paul just stared at it for a few seconds and then looked up, waiting for me to say, "Just kidding!" And when I didn't, he did instead. "Huh uh, Mom, you're just kidding! You're just trying to scare me!"

I shrugged and said, "I don't know! What else could it be?" I could think of many other things it could be, least of all a dead man's hair clippings in some mud from our yard. As I thought Paul would think as well. But I left it hanging and just turned and left the room saying, "Finish your homework before video games."

I returned to a quiet house. I called Paul's name and heard a muffled answer from upstairs. I went to his bedroom and looked in and saw him huddled in a fetal position on his bed under his blankets.

"Paul, what's wrong!?" I thought he was sick. I rushed in, sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled back the covers from around his face. "What's the matter, are you not feeling well?" He was practically in tears.

I waited for him to answer, all the while my own fear mounting. "What's wrong?" I felt his forehead. "Did something happen while I was gone?" He clearly looked like he'd seen a ghost.

"I kept hearing these sounds downstairs. They were like clicks. And they would come and go. And I thought someone was in the house! But I was too scared to go and look. 'Cause of Boo Hinckley!"

I thought, "Kept hearing clicks? What on earth . . . " Then I remembered. My metronome, a device that tocks like a clock and is used for keeping a strict tempo while practicing music, was downstairs on the piano. It was old, left over from my college days at the music conservatory, and was a wind-up version, like you would wind a music box. Earlier in the day I was using it and found that it had been wound too tightly. In an attempt to get it "unstuck", I had left it on, knowing that it would stop and start until it unwound itself completely. It unwound itself for awhile, but then stopped altogether through the dinner hour and until I left the house. And then, almost diabolically, it waited until Paul was alone in the silent house to continue.

I felt so bad! I told Paul that it was only the metronome and tried to explain to him what had happened. He just kept mumbling about clicks and dead fishermen and mud on his carpet. I insisted over and over that I was just kidding and pointed out that it was his own hair in the mud on the carpet. Eventually he straightened up, sat up and got ready for bed. I think I must have offered him a nighttime snack of popcorn and coke or cookies and milk to make up for it all and get him feeling back to normal again. But he wasn't interested!

"Boo Hinckley?" my sister asked a few days later, when I was sheepishly retelling the tale. "Why 'Boo Hinckley', that wasn't really the fisherman's name, was it?"

"No, of course not," I said, "I forget the fisherman's real name. 'Boo' is for Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird. And Hinckley is the name of that guy who shot Reagan, remember?

She just looked at me shaking her head. "You are such a mean mother, how could you traumatize your own children like that?" But she was laughing too.

That Christmas season I decorated the outside of the house in real Victorian style with swags of greenery and white lights from the eaves of the front porch. It looked so pretty from the street with the Christmas tree twinkling in the front window. Then I looked in dismay at the rest of the street. No one else decorated outside! Not one neighbor. Except the building across the street and down one. It was an even bigger fancier Victorian house, but attorneys had turned it into a law office. There was one solemn little string of lights way up in the window of the third-floor attic. This attic room was next to a tower room, which always had a bright light burning in it at night.

One evening my children and I were walking out to the car. I commented on how none of our neighbors hung lights outside. Joanna, who would celebrate Christmas year round if she could, said in disgust, "I know! You would think that with all of these pretty houses people would want to decorate them. And no one does, except that one with the odd straight string of lights up in that window!"

"Oh, don't you know about those lights up there?" I asked. "There's a story behind that."

"No, what?" they both asked.

"Well, you know that's a law firm, right? It seems there is this little retarded boy who accidentally shot his parents and killed them. So the attorneys thought instead of locking him up in juvenile detention, since he's mentally retarded, they would keep him there instead. See the light in the tower room? That's where his nurse stays. So I guess she thought it would be nice if he had a little Christmas decoration. Even if it is pathetic."

"Nuh uh, Mom! You're just making that up, that's not really true!" said Paul, always the more vocal.

"No, it is true! Why would I make up a story like that?"

Because you are an evil mother. Because you are always making up frightening tales to spook your children silly. Because you are so cruel that you delight in scaring them half to death. Lots of reasons. But instead Joanna, nowadays a research analyst, wanted facts and reliable sources.

"How do you know there's a little boy up there? Who told you?"

Without missing a beat, I replied, "Tom Schneider did."

This shut them up. Tom Schneider is a friend of mine who had been a Covington Criminal Detective and now was a US Marshall at the federal courthouse across town. He knew everything there was to know about the legal goings-on around Covington.

But Paul, who not so long ago had been hoodwinked by the Boo Hinckley tale, caught up to me as Joanna lingered and stared up at the dark window with its feeble little string of lights.

"Mom, you're really just spooking us again, aren't you?" he pleaded.

I smiled, "Yes, Paul. It's not really true, I just made it up."

But we left Joanna in the dark. Until a few days later when I noticed that every time we walked past the house, she would glance up at the window as if hoping to catch a glimpse of this pitiful little boy, locked in an attic room with a nurse in attendance, with who knew what kind of future in store for him. Or maybe she was making sure that she never saw him, thereby supporting her own theory that Mom was once again just trying to scare the living daylights out of her.

"Joanna, that story about the little boy, you know? It's not really true, I just made it up, " I confessed.

"Mom! Why do you do that!?" she was actually mad. "I really believed you when you mentioned that about Tom Schneider!"

"I know, I'm sorry." I really was.

Months later I was in a Bar & Grill with a bunch of friends comparing ghost stories. I told everyone that my kids were afraid of ghosts. Then I related some of the stories. They all laughed, but one man said emphatically, "Well, no wonder they're scared when they have Lizzie Borden for a mother!"

A few years later, I was reading the October issue of "Old House Journal" magazine and saw with delight that it had a section devoted to readers' accounts of their own ghost stories from their own old house experiences. It was before dinner and both Joanna and Paul were home, so I thought it would be great fun to entertain us all by reading the stories aloud. Of course I did.

I read through four or five and everyone seemed to be enjoying them so I started the next.

"Dear OHJ, we live in Youngstown, Ohio, and own a turn of the century four square design house located in town. It is red brick with a front porch and some stained glass in the front. The interior has hard wood floors, ceramic fireplaces, and has two staircases, one in the front of the house and one that goes down into the kitchen."

"STOP!" says Joanna suddenly. "Don't read anymore!"

"But why? This sounds exactly like our house! It will be fun!"

"I know it sounds like our house! That's my point! Remember the maid? And the back staircase? Don't read any more, I won't listen! Put it away!!"

Of course I was more curious then ever to find out what happened on this couple's back stairwell. But seeing the fright in Joanna's face, I quietly turned the page and asked if it was okay to go on with a different story.

"You and Paul can if you want. But I don't want to hear any more."

"Okay, here is one from Maine. Far, far away, I'll read that one."

I started in on the next story and was only mildly surprised when Joanna stood up and left the kitchen. I'm sure she didn't go to her attic bedroom. Or even Paul's room which faced the attic stairwell. I'm not sure where she went.

She probably went to work.

A Trilogy of Bird Tales

I went off to Maine the week of Labor Day, as I have been doing these past few years to visit my friend Ann. Ann owns a snug and comfortable little camp (summer cabin) on East Pond in the Belgrade Lakes Region. (The sunset pictured on the header of this blog was taken from her dock.)


Vacationing in Maine is my chance to do a lot of lake kayaking, some interesting hiking, enjoy my annual dose of listening to the loons calling, and catch up with Ann and her family.






Best of all, I get to lounge on the dock and not expect myself to do anything else. Coffee on the dock in the morning watching the fog lift and the wildlife scurry into their day is essential.












And then wine on the dock in the evening while witnessing some of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever seen is each day's highlight.



















This year I came away with three new stories, all about different birds. (Surprise, surprise)








Loons

My absolute favorite bird in Maine is the Common Loon. This duck-like bird with a distinctively-shaped black head, red eyes, and black and white checkered back has won my heart over, time and again. They carry their young on their back. The call of a loon echoing across a lake is a sound not to be missed in this lifetime. They actually have several calls, the four basic are the yodel, tremolo, hoot, and wail. The wail is the most hauntingly beautiful, used mostly at night to keep in contact with other loons, and can be heard for miles.

While kayaking on two different lakes in the first few days, I found that the loons seemed to be gathering in packs of 12 or so. Maybe they were laying plans for migration, mustering family and friends, deciding who was going where, and when, etc. Or maybe they were just being sociable before the big flight and having end of summer lake parties. When I kayak and get anywhere near a loon, I silently stalk it. Being a very elusive bird, though, just when you think you are quietly gliding close enough for a great picture, they dive under the surface leaving you stupidly scanning 360 degrees of empty water until 30 or more seconds later, when they cunningly surface somewhere far away. In other words, loons are always swimming away from you.
















One evening as Ann and I were watching a sunset which we thought wasn't going to amount to much, but ended up being astoundingly beautiful as the clouds and light morphed it continuously into different color palettes, we noticed a dozen loons offshore about 100 yards. Even though they were so far away, I took a picture since I was snapping shots with wild abandon at the changing light.

Then one of us started a long and funny narrative, which took our attention away from everything except the story at hand, and set us both laughing, giggling, and, as Ann later insisted, cackling.

I think cackle is a strong and unnecessarily demeaning description. Cackle conjures images of witches chanting around boiling cauldrons. With warts on their noses. But I digress, what happened next is the point. The loons, as one body, turned and started swimming toward us!

Remember the tremolo? This call is described as sounding like "insane laughter" with eight to ten notes voiced rapidly and is indicative of agitation or fear. Did the loons think we were other loons needing solace or protection? Were they saying, "Calm down. It'll be okay, the flight isn't so bad. You know we can't stay in this place which now is a veritable Eden but in two months will be a frozen winter wonderland." Or were we disturbing their festivities? "Check out these humans, trying to trick us into thinking they are loons in trouble! How dare they mock us with their false SOS tremolo?"

Sea Gull

One bright and lazy afternoon we spent on the dock drinking gin and tonics and going for the occasional swim. Ann and I brought the Scrabble game down and were immersed in a game.

If you are a Scrabble player, you may well ask at this point, "Scrabble on the dock? What if the tiles fall through into the water?" Which in fact I did ask Ann, since my own mother direly warns against Scrabble on the deck at home for the same reason: tiles lost forever under the deck. Then Ann reminded me that wood floats!

Rick, her brother-in-law and my friend, was fishing. We were concentrating deeply on the game because the close score rendered it completely competitive. Imagine being totally lazy, soaking in the hot sun, yet being so concentrated on this game of words, and having maybe a little alcohol buzz going on all at once!

Rick idly commented about a sea gull he was watching out on the water that had caught a fish so big, it couldn't get it up out of the water to carry it away. We all looked out across the dazzling lake to watch this gull flailing, wings flapping, but its feet seemingly stuck as if glued to a hidden perch. Another gull, perhaps the wife, floated nearby. "Hahrold, I told ya it was too big, but do ya evah listen ta me? I told ya, don't dive for that one, how will ya evah get it home? But ya had to anyway, I shoulda known I was wastin' my breath!" After watching for a few moments, I turned back to the game. Where, oh where, was I going to unload this Q having no U? The game was nearing the end, I had to get rid of it, but hopefully pick up enough points, Ann was edging ahead!

About 10 minutes later, Rick pointed out that the bird was still struggling. Perhaps it was even caught on something. Ann and I snapped to and squinted out over the water again. Now our complete interest was aroused! A bird in trouble!

"Maybe it needs help! It's probably exhausted if it's been struggling all this time."

"Yeah, if it's been out there this long, it probably is caught up in something, maybe even some fishing line or something!" I frowned at Rick as if it was possibly even his fault.

"We need to help it!"

"Okay, what will we need? Some gloves. Something to cut the line, a knife or something."

Ann said, "I have gloves."

Rick wasn't caught up in the increasing crisis. He was sitting calmly, watching his line in the water, and in no mood to go anywhere or do anything. "You need to help us!" I said.

"What do you want me to do?!"

"I don't know, just help!"

He said he had to go up to his truck for gloves, and then to the bathroom and then he'd be down. By this time Ann had already run up to camp and back with gloves and I had found a knife in his tackle box. We pulled the kayaks down the bank and into the lake and were off.

Operation Save the Gull paddled quickly and efficiently across the water and then glided up slowly and silently to the bird. I think the wife had flown away by now. As we gently sidled up to him I started making soothing noises while asking Ann, what should we do now? One of us don gloves and try to pick him up? And maybe the other one of us can see what the problem is and possibly cut him loose?

The gull looked at us in disbelief for a few seconds and then quietly lifted his wings and flew away. He hadn't been caught in any branches, there was no fishing line tangled in his feet. Ann and I looked at each other and shrugged and headed back for the dock and our Scrabble game. Rick was just coming out of the house.

Back at the dock we watched the sea gull circling back over his fish. Perhaps he still had hopes of getting his super-sized dinner. If only the humans wouldn't interfere.

The Great Horned Owl

Ann couldn't wait to ask me about some owl hooting sounds she had recently heard at night. After I arrived at camp on the first day, I hadn't been sitting on the dock an hour before she gasped, her eyes growing big and said, "Oh! I need to ask you about a bird I thought I heard!"

I love that I have somehow become the leading authority among my family and circles of friends on bird call identification, as if I'm some kind of ornithologist. People will say, "Oh, we were out hiking in Utah, and we heard this bird and wish you had been there!" Or they will type in an email: What kind of bird goes TWEET TWEET tweedle dee dee? Once at my mom's house, my sister pointed to a pretty bird on a tree outside and asked me what it was. I couldn't see it and couldn't readily get to the window, and it wasn't singing, so she described it. I said, "I'm not sure, but if it's climbing down the tree trunk, upside down, it is probably a white-breasted nuthatch. My brother looked at me, impressed, and forever after, believed that I knew all there was to know about birds, their habitats, mating practices, diet, and migration.

Ann continued, "There are five hoots in all. Three and then two." She demonstrated, "Hoo hoo hoo, hoooo hoooo."

"Hmmm, that certainly sounds like it could be an owl," I offered. Her husband, Mike, said, "There were no hoots at all. I think it was some kind of mammal."

Oh dear. Now we had confusing data. Ann looked at me knowingly and shook her head. I could read her thoughts. "Pay no attention to him. We'll listen for it later tonight, and you will see!"

Ann and I had the week to ourselves and one evening after a late supper we had started a cozy fire and settled in for some reading. I could hear loons calling across the lake and was thinking how perfect everything was when Ann started. "There it is!! Did you hear that?"

I looked at her, puzzled. Yes, that certainly wasn't a loon, but since I hadn't been listening for it, nothing registered.

Then, "There it is again! See? Five hoots!"

That time I had heard it. "It is an owl! Let's go outside so we can hear it better!" I was up and out of the house in seconds. Ann was searching for her shoes, as her dog Lucy has a habit of moving one around the house, thereby separating them. It was dark as pitch outside, and I remembered that it was a new moon. I heard the owl calling from far away and then a second owl way down the lake in the opposite direction answered him. Ann came out with a flashlight. "Turn that off," I warned, as if an owl couldn't tell we were there anyway. We crept down the gravel road listening to the two owls, the one getting closer to us all the time. "I think it's a Barred Owl!" I whisper. "Because their song goes. . .wait, wait, no! It's a Great Horned Owl," I hissed triumphantly. "Listen to it! It's saying, 'Who's awake, me too! Who's awake? Me too.'" When the owl got as close as we thought it could, we still couldn't see it because of all the tall trees. It was just out of sight behind that big tall one in her neighbor's yard.

The next night I heard it first. We were putting away the Scrabble game and I had been listening because Ann noted the time the evening before--9:30--and it was getting to be that time. And right then, as if it was a cuckoo clock, the owl hooted out its call, "Who's awake? Me too!"

"There it is!" I called, and grabbed my fleece (it was drizzling outside) and a flashlight, and again was out the door in moments. I crept down the dark road, the raindrops in the pine trees making more sound than my feet on the gravel. Ann caught up and we ended up underneath the same tall trees as the night before. We heard the call and answer of the two owls, one from far down the lake and our owl coming closer until it ended up hidden away again out of sight but just above us! We waited and watched anyway, and were finally rewarded with the sight of him flying across an opening in the night sky. These owls have a wingspan of 40-60 inches! Everything was hazy with clouds and fog, though, so we couldn't see him clearly.

The following day, we were out in kayaks and I was studying the trees on the shore. "Ann," I said, "Maybe tonight before the owl comes, we should get in the kayaks and paddle offshore just to around this spot! I think the owl sits in that dead tree there and that's why we can't see it from the road, it's blocked by all those other tall trees." Ann agreed and we laid some plans.

The two of us had done night time paddles before and one night we were surrounded by loons wailing and calling as we laid back in our kayaks, floating on the lake, and looking up at the stars. That was a magical experience!

By the time the appointed hour came, a nocturnal excursion on the water wasn't as appealing. Instead I pointed out that perhaps from her neighbor's deck, we would have a clear view of the tree in question. Ann's neighbors weren't there that summer and she was certain it would be fine. So we put on fleeces, took flashlights, and scurried down to our "blind" before the owls came.

We did indeed have a perfect view of the tree. That evening, the sky was clear and the stars were brightly shining with no moon to compete with. I was in my element, anticipating the owl coming closer and closer, making his way down the lake shore, calling to his friend to plan their meetup, and then landing in the bare branches above giving us the perfect view. He would be so clear we would be able to see his "horns" or the tufts of feathers on his head!

9:30 came and went. 9:45, 10:00. Ann got tired and went back. And just as she did, the owls came. I was ready and watching, excited and barely breathing, knowing any moment he would fly into view. But he never did. He somehow circled around, as if he knew we were there, which in my realistic mind, I'm sure he did. Out of sight he answered his mate and then was gone. I gave up and went back to the cabin. Later we heard them again, in fact we thought we heard maybe 4 or 5. But the excitement had worn off--I must not be a true birder, after all. And later still, at 3 in the morning, I heard them very clearly, very close, right over the house! I tried to rouse myself. I should get up, get dressed, silently creep out of the house and down the road. But the bed was warm and I was too sleepy. "The owls know this," I thought. "They're no dummies." Maybe tomorrow night.

"Who's awake?"

"Not . . . me . . . zzzzzzzzz"