Rocky Mountain High

“I’d love to be there watching early in the morning
The sun comes up and crowns the mountain king.
If by chance you dare to be high up on a mountain
I swear that you can hear the angels sing.”---Merle Haggard

It’s not true that nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning, even though Gina Hawkins has set up her Daybreak Bar & Grill just outside Asheville.  Three weeks ago, Captain Travel took you out west to blindingly beautiful Utah and Arizona, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.  This time we move just a snippet east to busy Colorado and enchanting New Mexico, where the elk and the mariachi bands play.

“There are more things in Colorado, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  William Shakespeare said that, or he would have if he’d ever been there.  Just outside Grand Junction lies the splendiferous Colorado National Monument, one of the most stunning sheer-walled red rock landscapes in America.  Near tiny Montrose is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, famous for its plunging vertical drops, craggy spires and dark, shadowed walls.  In the southwestern part of the state is Mesa Verde National Park, a breathtaking high-desert plateau famous for preserving thousands of Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites, including over 600 spectacular cliff dwellings.  And right smack in the middle of bustling Colorado Springs is the spectacular Garden of the Gods, famous for its towering 300-million-year-old (but who’s counting?) red sandstone formations set against the backdrop of snow-capped Pike’s Peak.  And it’s free!  But if we have but one short visit to the Centennial State, a mere few days to inspect and be dazzled, we’re first heading straight for this guy: 

Rocky Mountain National Park

Located a mere 55 miles from booming Denver, Rocky Mountain N.P. is 415 square miles of sheer glory, filled with 60 mountain peaks over 12,000 feet high, small permanent glaciers, glistening lakes, sprightly waterfalls and assorted wildlife.  Unlike other national parks, it even has a trail patrolled by a phantom fisherman named Larry, who appears out of nowhere for brief chats and then disappears into the ethers.

The primary artery through RMNP is the venerable 48-mile Trail Ridge Road (secret identity: U.S. Highway 34), the highest continuously paved highway in the United States, connecting the towns of Estes Park and Grand Lake.  Eleven miles of this highway is above the treeline, the elevation near 11,500 feet where the evergreen forests finally tap out.  Trail Ridge Road offers thrilling views, plenty of wildlife sightings and spectacular alpine wildflower displays on your way to the Continental Divide,

First time hikers adjusting to the altitude can try the 3.2-mile Emerald Lake via Bear Lake trail with stunning views of Nymph, Dream and Emerald lakes, which offers a lot of bang for your buck.  Curiosity seekers looking for Larry can start at the Ouzel Falls Trailhead in the southeast corner of the park.  The hike, itself, is a reasonable 5.4 miles out and back, but you’re liable to run into Larry anywhere.  A conversational sort, he told us he was from “west of Chicago” and came to Rocky Mountain each year to fish, but he carried no backpack or gear, just a simple fishing rod.  In the middle of a chat, Larry is prone to rush off to fish, but then will appear two miles down the road ahead as if by magic, smiling “Howdy, strangers!”   All of which might have some rational explanation, even if we can’t figure it out.  The kill shot however, is our photographs, which were taken by actual cameras back in the day.  When the film was developed, Larry was missing from the prints.  The backgrounds were there, and we were there clear as bells, but no Larry.  We asked an amiable park ranger about this phenomenon, but he just smiled nervously and said, “There are no answers, only mysteries.”

RMNP’s bedroom community, Estes Park, is as cute a little town as you’re likely to find and home to the infamous Stanley Hotel, world-renowned for its paranormal activity and supposedly Stephen King’s inspiration for his book, The Shining.  Visitors frequently report disembodied voices, phantom piano music and doors that open and close of their own volition.  Dollars to donuts, Larry has a room on the second floor.

2. Maroon Bells.  Seems like every time we picked up one of those outdoorsy magazines featuring The Ten Places You Have To See Before You Vaporize, Maroon Bells was always high on the list, even though we didn’t know a soul who had ever been there.  Once, twice, three times a mention is one thing, but it never stopped, so we decided to go take a look.

Maroon Bells is a piddling 10 miles from Aspen, home of the rich and famous, but if you’re poor and unknown there’s always the inexpensive town of Basalt, just 28 miles away.  The Bells consist of two iconic adjacent peaks upwards of 14,000 feet, which get their color from iron-rich hematite in the mudstone.  The mountains overlook a pristine glacial lake which on a calm morning creates a flawless, mirror-like reflection of the peaks.  In Summer, the surrounding valley fills up with lush green meadows, spruce forests and bright bursts of wildflowers.  It’s one of those rare places where you can remain in the moment, tear up the afternoon agenda and keep finding more reasons to stay.  There is an easy one-mile trail which wraps around the lake and a more challenging 3.6 mile round-trip trail to Crater Lake, which gets you nearer to the rugged twin peaks.  Sorry, no phantoms.

Got another day or two?  Slide over to Great Sand Dunes National Park, a geological wonderland near Alamosa, famous for the tallest sand dunes in North America, spanning over 30 square miles.  The massive, wind-carved dunes soar up to 750 feet against the rugged 14,000-foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  You can climb the dunes or rent a specialized sled or board from nearby outfitters and roar down the massive ridges.  Siobhan, having neglected to pack her board wax, said she rather not.

The basket ride to Sandia Peak.  "May I please be excused?" asks nervous passenger.

Do You Know The Way To Santa Fe?

Maybe you’d like to start in Albuquerque and head north, especially if you can make it for The Big A's annual Mariachi Spectacular in July or the International Balloon Festival in October.  For the former, every mariachi that ever there was will gather there for certain because that’s the day the Mexicans have their picnic.  It’s worth it just to see the hundreds of mariachi bands in brilliant full regalia playing El Rancho Grande or Cielito Lindo fifty or sixty times.  Besides, you can buy Michoacan Brown in the parking lot.

There is also an exciting tramway at the edge of town that will carry you to the top of 10,678-foot Sandia Peak if you are not Siobhan.  “I eschew the tramway on the grounds that it is very high and scary,” said she.  “And what if the cars bump into one another?”  We talked her into it by telling her to close her eyes til the ride was over.  At the top, we bought our first oxygen canister ever so we could breathe easy.

Santa Fe, which oozes history, charm and big money is a gem set in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at an elevation of 7000 feet.  “The City Different” is globally renowned for its distinctive Pueblo-style adobe architecture, vibrant arts culture and rich Native American and Hispanic heritage.  The state capital boasts over 250 art galleries and major institutions like the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and the terrific Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.  You might want to visit in early July for the annual International Folk Art Market, a three-day festival which celebrates folk artists and heritage art from around the world.  This year’s fandango features 153 master folk artists from 53 countries, so you don’t have to skip over trinket booths, grandma’s jam emporium and all those ladies with the $20 bars of homemade soap.

Georgia's place.

If Georgia’s on your mind, her Ghost Ranch, where she lived for many years is a mere hour’s drive from Santa Fe in Abiquiu, which translates to “wild chokeberry place.”  Arthur Peck, one-time editor of Nature magazine, told O’Keeffe in no uncertain terms the setting for the ranch was “the best place in the world” and he’d seen plenty.

The ranch is now a retreat and education center owned by the Presbyterian Church and open to the public for a small fee.  Georgia O’Keeffe’s little cottage exists intact, along with her tiny farm and a garden that is still tended.  A camera in the garden maintains a 24-hour vigil and the live feed is relayed back to the museum in Santa Fe, so watch the canoodling.

Muddying The Waters

“Are you sure this is the right road.  We’re in the middle of nowhere?”---S. Ellison, who asked three times.

A few miles south of Vallecitos, New Mexico, you have a choice.  You can head straight for Taos or meander on south to the famed springs of faraway Ojo Caliente, where you’ll never be again.  Only a fool wouldn’t turn.  As always, the best of hot springs pop up in the most unlikely places and often the hardest to reach.  The Hot Eye, which calls itself “this secluded oasis,” is no exception.

Ojo’s legendary waters have been soothing and replenishing body, mind and spirit for thousands of years, the place being one of the oldest health resorts in the United States and the only one with four different sulfur-free healing mineral waters.  The accompanying hotel and full-service spa offer a barrage of restorative treatments, daily yoga classes and 11 acres of hiking and biking trails to tickle your fancy.  They’ve also got mud.  That’s right, mud, but this stuff has “healing properties” and absorbs impurities, exfoliating dead skin cells as it dries.  The mud is immersed in Ojo’s magic waters, which are uniquely rich in Arsenic, Lithia, Soda and Iron.

Siobhan deigned to try the mud, which the management called “a special pore-purifying mineral-rich clay.”  Bathers slathered the clay to their bodies and often their faces, then sat or lay on rocks and benches until the mud began to crack in the desert sun, before rinsing off in the warm mud pool or an outdoor shower.  Fellow bathers told us tales of remarkable, life-changing skin replenishment and occasional religious conversion.  One enthusiastic Filipino lady spoke of a ritual in Nueva Ecija where the believers gather before dawn, completely coat their bodies in mud from local rice fields and make masks out of dried banana leaves, which sounds suspiciously like a Georgia Bulldog pep rally to us,

A few males, all non-partakers, cruised the basking benches, eyeballing their muddy prey.  One grandpa, overwhelmed by clay fumes, told a grandma she looked hot.  Siobhan raised an eyebrow and looked at me.  I assured her she looked hot, too, but all things considered I could wait until she hit the mud relief pool.  Sometimes I look back and regret my hasty decision.

The Place Of Red Willows

….or so the Tewa people called Taos.  Their descendants are still there, many of them living in one of six northeastern New Mexico pueblos, including the most famous one about a mile north of Taos which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the oldest inhabited communities in the United States.  Taos Pueblo offers a fascinating, uncommercialized glimpse into Native American heritage.  Residents still live there without running water or electricity in order to preserve their ancient traditions.  Visitors who are enured to theme parks should understand they are walking through an active residential neighborhood, not an amusement village, and taking photographs of people or approaching private homes might earn a flaming arrow through your hat, or at least a frown.  Guided tours are not only available but highly recommended. Tip: Don’t ask about Tonto.  He was a Potawatomi, anyway.

Taos is a legendary arts colony and mountain town with a youthful vibe.  Skiers congregate there in Winter and the city is a thriving hub for artists, galleries and museums, while being more affordable than Santa Fe.  Just outside Taos to the west sits the famous Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, the fifth-highest suspension bridge in the country, spanning 650 feet over the Rio Grande Rift.  The gorge below is an 800 foot deep canyon cut through ancient basalt lava flows and rift sediments.  There is a convenient direct-dial phone to the Suicide Hotline on the walkway in the center of the bridge in case you get any ideas.

West of the bridge further out on the mesa is the largest off-grid neighborhood in the world, Earthship Taos, featuring self-sustaining homes designed to completely disconnect from municipal infrastructure.  The homes there come in all shapes and sizes, built with recycled materials like dirt-packed tires, cans and glass bottles.  Thick earthen walls provide natural heating and cooling, maintaining a steady, comfortable temperature year-round.  Energy is exclusively generated via independent solar and wind power.  All household water is harvested from rain and snowmelt, filtered and reused in indoor botanical gardens before being treated and utilized in outdoor landscaping.

Again, this is a neighborhood the residents of which are not particularly thrilled to see gawkers marching through their begonias.  You can, however, book an overnight stay in an eco-friendly Earthship or arrange a guided tour through the Earthship Biotecture Visitor Center in Taos.  It’s definitely worth a visit and fascinating to see a number of homes in the process of being built.  If you ever wondered where old tires go to die and be reincarnated, this is definitely the place.

Earthship Taos currently spans 630 acres of high-desert mesa.  Over half the land is communal, including a 347-acre greenbelt that will never be built upon.  Platted for 130 homes, it currently contains about 90, with a population of roughly 150 residents.  Standard family homes commonly range from 1200 to 1500 square feet, but there are luxury models that exceed 5000 square feet.  Anyone building there must adhere to strict covenants, zoning and architectural guidelines, but you’d never know it from the riot of shapes, sizes and colors.  Many of the buildings look like they were created by ten-year-olds set loose with new-age erector sets.

Tired of sky-high electric bills?  Eyes glazing over from passing the same chainstores and urban blight every day?  Always wanted a place in the high desert of New Mexico with pristine air and interesting neighbors?  Have we got a deal for you!

Earthship model home.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com 

     

  

The Hat Trick

Blase sports fan that she is, Siobhan has nonetheless picked up a few terms that she seems to like.  ”Hat Trick” is one of them we hockey fans learn early, credited to a skater or soccer player who achieves three goals in a single game.  It has its origins, however, in English cricket in 1858 when a bowler retired three batsmen with three consecutive balls.  Flabbergasted at the miracle, the crowd took up a collection for the fellow in the stands and the money was used to buy the bowler a new hat, ergo the Hat Trick.  Now when anything presents itself in threes, she asks me, “Is that a hat trick?”  I guess we’ll need some rules.

Having been married three times, do I get credit for a hat trick?  I don’t see why not, although some might argue that a failed goal doesn’t count.  Still, a marriage is a marriage if the license is legit, the minister asks the questions and the loving couple answer in the affirmative, even if the prelate is a ship’s captain, an Elvis impersonator or an ordained representative of the Universal Life Church.  Speak now or forever hold your peace.

My first marriage was to the brilliant Marilyn Todd of Austin, Texas at age 22, a very hasty and informal affair stimulated by her father’s unending efforts to bring her back home, legally or not.  I asked her if she would be more comfortable if we got married  and she nodded in the affirmative.  We only had enough money for one bus ticket, so I hitched from Gainesville to Folkston, Georgia and she left the driving to Greyhound.  We arrived in the early evening, thinking they had round-the-clock weddings there, but their advertising was in error.  The local firemen let us sleep in the front seat of their giant engine and we got married next day at what served for City Hall.

My second marriage, at age 30, was to Harolyn Locklair, a Miami model, in 1970 in a homey field near the Gainesville airport.  Harolyn had a five-year-old son almost ready to enter school, so marrying seemed the right thing to do.  It was a hippie extravaganza, with liberated doves, clouds of marijuana and ULC minister Daniel Levine presiding.  Much of the crowd retired to our house next to the Subterranean Circus for alcoholic refreshments, several falling unconscious on the front steps til the next morning.  Calendars are marked from such events.

Both wives were lovely people who had a hand in the success of either my Charlatan magazine or the Circus.  Suffice to say they had an imperfect husband unready to be married.  After going 0 for 2, I thought I’d pass on future nuptials and meander through life with temporary partners.  Every day, there were tempting candidates walking through the door of the store, plums just ready to be picked.  People criticized musicians for their abundant stage-door Johnnies, but I got it.

Enter The Salty Vet

Siobhan Ellison was born in Ipswich, England in 1952 and moved to the U.S.A. five years later, a member of a military family which made temporary stops all over the country before settling down in Rockledge, Florida.  She was an animal lover whose family took in dogs and cats and monkeys and the occasional horse.  From age 7, Siobhan knew she wanted to be a veterinarian and she was not deterred in this pursuit.  She eventually earned four degrees from the University of Florida in the hippie era, avoided all drugs and was barely aware the Subterranean Circus existed.  Shortly, she built a house and barn in Marion County and went to work for an Ocala veterinary partnership.  One of the partners was Ted Specht, my vet, who brought her with him on a visit to my Orange Lake farm in 1984.  It was not love at first sight.

At the time, I had a mare named Fast Janice, who was three-legged-lame after running through a paddock fence as a two-year-old and getting a sliver in her knee joint.  Janice had one baby on the ground and was pregnant with a second.  She moved around well for her condition but was taxed when near foaling.  Siobhan looked at me and gave an unsolicited opinion: “You should put this mare down after her next foal, she’s really struggling.”

Who asked you?  Ted and I knew her limitations, but Janice got on well enough.  Her first foal, a two-year-old, was blazing fast and she seemed to enjoy being a mother.  “Who does she think she is?” I asked Ted of his new mentee.  He assured me Ms. Ellison was unusually competent and knowledgeable for a rookie, but that was the last time he brought her to my place.  Some people! 

Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

Eventually, Ted Specht returned to school with the intention of becoming an equine surgeon.  One of the other members of his practice was assigned to us, a thoroughly unsatisfactory character who was always late.  Being in northernmost Marion County at Orange Lake, we were always among the last to get attention, typically very late in the day when none of us were at our sharpest.  I called Ted and begged for succor.  “Well, we could get you Siobhan Ellison,” he said.  “What she lacks in experience she makes up for in competence and dependability.”  Groan.  Not her, I thought, the grouch of thoroughbred country.

“She’ll get your mares in foal,” said Ted.  “Her track record is amazing for a new vet.”  More grumbling.  “Okay, send her out,” I finally agreed, less than thrilled.  But he was right.  The average number for in-foal mares was 65%.  The first year, Siobhan got all of them.  The second, 14 of 15.  And she started bringing popsicles.  Moreover, she had a nice face, long legs and a tiny waist.  One day, going down the path to check mares, she let down her hair, which was always in a bun or a braid,  It fell down her back to the bottom of her ass.  I think I might have been smitten.  I am a hopelessly shallow boy, I admit it.

Still, nobody falls in love with mere hair. So what is it that attracts one person to another?  We’re talking everyone here, not merely Marion County horse farmers (they’re all in on blonde barrel-racers carrying big American flags).  Physical attraction, of course starts the ball rolling.  Not to infer looks are everything but if you look like Ratso Rizzo, Taylor Swift is not going to be your prom date.  Second for many is Sexiness, which is ticklish to describe but you know it when you see it.  Speaking just for myself, Competence is sexy…the ability to manage an undertaking smoothly and with aplomb as if it were second nature to you.  Confidence is sexy, but not egotism.  A modest breast size is sexy, especially when it comes on an athletic body that can throw a ball like Derek Jeter and run like Courtney Dauwalter.  One day in front of the Circus a girl named Patty Bert ran over to a thrown ball, picked it up and tossed it back like a shortstop and I thought, “Well, lookee here…” 

Different strokes for different folks.  And yes, of course, honesty, loyalty, reliability, a spirit of cooperation…all are critical to a relationship, but we’re talking allure here, some mysterious magnetism that draws people in.  Intelligence can be sexy.  No, not Mary Martha McGonnigle and her recitation of the multiplication tables in third grade sexy, more like Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in Alien, who never panicked and thought three steps ahead.  Intelligence needs to be kept neatly folded in one’s pocket where it can be pulled out handily when needed.  People who flaunt intelligence are not sexy.  Nobody likes a showoff.  My wife is sexy for many of the reasons above, though she’ll certainly dispute it with you.  That said, she throws a ball like rapper 50 Cent, who once tossed an opening pitch at PNC Park so far to the right it nearly hit a pair of photographers on the third-base line.  You get legendary status for stuff like that.

Playing It Safe---The 30-Year Tryout

After a conscientious man has had two failed marriages in the space of 15 years, he might consider himself to have 4F husband potential.  This is not a problem for some habitual offenders like American minister Glynn “Scotty” Wolfe who holds the world’s record for monogamous marriages with an eye-popping 29, or 8-time experimenters Larry King and Mickey Rooney.  I am not, alas, a play-the-field kind of guy, despite the opportunities.  I once had two very nice girlfriends at the same time and it was a little…well…nervewracking with all the loud complaining and throwing of keys.  I prefer picking one off the tree, bringing it home and settling down happily forever after.  But as my good friend Martin brought up, “What if later you find another one you like better?”

In any case, Siobhan soon insisted on more togetherness, she ensconced in Marion County, I in Gainesville.  Whereas I had what previous girlfriend Betsy Harper called “dark days” (racetrack palaver for any days at a given track that racing was not held) when I was busy at work or otherwise, Dr. Ellison advised that dark days did not work into her life plan, and she was more of a family girl.  The Subterranean Circus was fading, suffering the weight of the local paraphernalia laws which put me on a year’s probation and threatened my thoroughbred owner’s racing license, so it was not a bad time to make a move.  I emigrated to the lovely village of Fairfield, a rural patch equidistant from Gainesville and Ocala and motored the 25 minutes back and forth from Hogtown in an attempt to be a reasonable partner.  Must have been a good idea.  I am there still.  And I can promise you the number of juicy female temptresses out here is reduced considerably, though I suspect that old Chris Powell may be giving me the occasional eye when I drive near the property line like a bold knight on my shiny Kubota.  I think I’ll mind my own business, though, she has rattlesnakes over there.

Here Comes the Bride, Courtesy Of the Glam Squad

It was long a tradition of ours, or at least a habit, to truck on out to the Island Hotel in romantic Cedar Key for dinner on Valentine’s Day.  By the year 2015, Siobhan had amassed 30 solid years of fealty and good companionship, so her tryout period was almost over.  At dinner that night, I decided to dazzle her by popping the question.  Obviously delirious with glee, she said “Sure.”  There is no need for an exclamation point.  The Big Day would take place in June of the following year in Las Vegas, which we knew well from vacation travels.  A few months later, Siobhan had a conference there so I went with her to scout the raft of wedding arenas.

There are approximately 50 wedding chapels in Sin City, big ones, small ones, some as big as your head.   Cutesy standalone chapels, in-resort annexes, cheesy drive-thrus and oops, there’s another pop-up venue.  You can get married at any hour of the day or night by anybody from Elvis Presley to a tired-looking Charles DeGaulle to the Marquis of Queensbury in any attire including nothing and you can even be drunk.  Being a serious man with a deep respect for the sacrament, I chose the impeccable Little Chapel of the Flowers in Old Las Vegas.  It has three chapels of varying sizes and each has one wedding every half hour on Saturdays, so you don’t want to be late.  The Little Chapel would make your reception arrangements, bring the flowers, take the wedding photos, send the limo, starch your shirts and call in the venerable Glam Squad.  You want the Glam Squad.  When they finish with the bride, everyone at the wedding thinks there’s been some mistake because Cleopatra just entered the room.  Oh, and one other thing.  The Little Chapel can stream your ceremony to the universe so all the kids back home can watch.  Who ya gonna call?  Right!

At first, we were semi-eloping, no need for guests.  I did ask my best friend from childhood Jack Gordon to motor over from Laguna Hills with his wife Barbara because it’s just not right to lack a Best Man.  Siobhan called in her niece Ashleigh Ellison to be “Best Girl.”  Apparently, nobody really wants to be called a “maid of honor” these days.

Then my sister Kathy found out and insisted on coming, which roused my other sister Alice into awareness.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Florida, a plot was conceived by Siobhan’s brother Stuart and aviator Richard Helms (aka “Captain Noonan”) to fly in and out of Vegas on the wedding day, bringing with them Stuart’s wife Mary and a Fairfield friend, Greg Poe.  This motley crew called themselves the Wedding Crashers, and they may have felt like they’d actually crashed by the time their endless extravaganza had wrapped up.

Last Dash Heroics

“Pull out the stopper!  Let’s have a whopper!  But get me to the church on time!” 

The distance from the new Palazzo Hotel to the Little Chapel is a mere 2.3 miles, perhaps a mere 12 minute drive on the Las Vegas Strip with cooperative traffic signals.  But as we all know, there are sleepy traffic lights on every corner, very slow ones, which makes a bored driver grateful for all the dependable roadside wackiness available day and night in these environs.  Siobhan and Ashleigh had been taken to the wedding site by limo but I was bringing the rental car, the better to dash off to the Valley of Fire for wedding photos before the reception dinner.  The valets are inevitably quick in Vegas, but we were at a new hotel and their crew was hopelessly befuddled.  When the car finally came, I charged out onto the road and went the wrong way in my haste, making it virtually impossible to get me to the church on time.  I called my bride-to-be and gave her the bad news, which I expect would  bring out invectives galore from even the most reasonable of women.  It was then I had no doubt I’d found the right girl to marry.  Sounding unconcerned as could be, she merely said, Listen, you did your best…if you don’t make it we can just go to one of those drive-thru places.”

Once turned around, I set the land speed record for the distance on Las Vegas Boulevard, speeding like crazy, anticipating red lights far ahead so I would not have to stop, scattering would-be crosswalk creepers like stricken bowling balls.  When I turned into the parking lot, Ashleigh’s husband-to-be Florian was waiting to park the car, which I handed off like a relay racer and ran to the chapel only two minutes late and three minutes before they cancelled the wedding.  I mean, it was Saturday and there was another one scheduled in 30 minutes, right?  I handed the frowning chapel personnel Elvis’ “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” CD and assumed my position.

The ceremony itself went off like clockwork.  The music played, the wedding party marched in, the amiable minister pronounced, the loving couple kissed, the Wedding Crashers applauded and quickly hurried back to their plane for five more hours of fun flying.  The rest of the day was a whirl of driving to and from the Valley of Fire, stomping around this steamy (104 degrees) paradise, zipping back for the reception dinner with the Gordons and my sisters at Canaletto’s restaurant in the Venetian Hotel.

At the cake-cutting, the headwaiter came up with a final surprise.  Reading from aged parchment, he advised in a properly stuffy manner that “Having achieved the vaunted marital Hat Trick with at least one ceremony in Las Vegas, and having broken the longstanding speed limit for the Vegas Strip and having spent beaucoup dollars in the past three days, which includes our hefty tip, William Thomas Killeen is hereby officially installed in the Las Vegas Wedding Hall of Fame forevermore.  You may stand and kiss the waiter,”

Everybody likes to be famous for something.  Happy tenth, Siobhan!  It’s been memorable.

That’s not all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com         

Rednecks Cryin’ In The Rain

“Trump is like a dying ember

And when just memories remain,
We’ll remember through the ages
Rednecks cryin’ in the rain.”

It was inevitable, of course.  The Universe (aka “Jim”) always strikes back.   And when a madman pushes his luck to the middle of the table, Whoomp! There it is, a downpour of biblical proportions rains frogs on his parade.  You might tug on Superman’s cape, spit in the wind or even try to pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, but you don’t mess around with Jim.

The madman is having a bad spell.  Amused by moving his toy soldiers into puny Venezuela to steal its oil, he thought he’d double his pleasure, double his fun by bombing miserable Iran to kingdom come.  Alas, a funny thing happened on the way to the surrender ceremony---as with the Hydra, when you cut off the head of the serpent, two heads grow back.  The new government of Iran said, Go fish.  “Stick and stones may break our bones but see what happens when we close the Straight of Hormuz, Cracker!”

Oopsy!  Now what.  Okay, war’s over, we were just funnin’ you!  Had you goin’ there for a minute, right?  We’ll just bring all our ships and planes home now and everything will go back to normal.  What?  Oh, you’re going to get petulant on me now?  Bad Sport!  Some people just can’t take a joke.  Hello, Pentagon---is this General Pete?  Listen, genius, the mullahs are pissed!  Maybe we could send a nice card?  Yeah, I’m in the Hallmark section right now, but I can’t find the right category.  “Have a nice after-war doesn’t seem appropriate.”

The footing is like quicksand out there for Captain Trumpy of the Horse Marines.  Every breath he takes, every step he makes, he’s deeper in the soup.  He’s out of options, all he can do is emulate the whiny kid in the neighborhood who takes his ball and goes home.  Now all the other presidents start to laugh and call him names.  They’ll never let poor Trumpy play in any diplomat games.  And Santa won’t be baling him out.  He has GPS now.

“So they gather at the graveyard
Filled with animus and pain,
And they send him off to Jesus,
Rednecks cryin’ in the rain.
There won’t be any bagpipes
On the hills of Dunsinane,
Just the whimpers of the sheepflock,
Rednecks cryin’ in the rain.”

There Was An Emperor Caligula

It all started well enough for Caligula as the third Roman emperor.  Unlike his predecessor, the paranoid and secluded Tiberius, Cal was young and charismatic, came from a famous family and began his reign by ending Rome’s despised treason trials.  He organized lavish gladiatorial games and chariot races, much to the delight of the populace.  The new emperor completed construction of several buildings started under Tiberius, rebuilt temples and began construction of new aqueducts to ensure water supply to the rapidly growing city.  He built a new amphitheater in Pompeii and improved the port infrastructure of the capital, allowing for increased grain imports from Europe.  But then, like some other emperors we know, he cast an eye toward lavish personal projects.  He expanded the imperial palace and constructed two massive floating pleasure barges for his personal use at Lake Nemi.  He had affairs with married women, male prostitutes and even his sisters.  Then he fell seriously ill, was bedridden with delirium and drifted into madness.

Caligula brought back treason trials, a convenient means of getting rid of enemies.  He executed many senators and New York Times reporters.  Tales of Caligula’s naming his beloved racehorse Incitatus a government consul, however, seem to have been invented by the Roman Democratic Party.  After a failed invasion of Britain due to mutinous troops refusing to fight (“We ain’t got no quarrel with them Limeys”), Caligula declared war on Neptune, god of the sea, and even had the waves whipped.  He also ordered legionnaires to collect seashells as the booty of war.  Eventually, as always seems to happen with these deranged  emperors, he declared himself a god.  As the centuries passed, Republican traditions faded away, replaced by autocratic rulers, eventually establishing the Dominate, where the emperor was a godlike king and the Senate had only a ceremonial rule.  Sound familiar?

Lost In Space

Much as history will malign its crazy emperors, the supporting casts should not be forgotten.  Herewith, our Political Hall of Blathery:

1. Representative Ted Yoho (R.-Fla.)  Ted was actually in Siobhan’s class in veterinary school, though nowhere near the top of it.  He called when he first ran for office, soliciting contributions.  We passed, so don’t blame us.  Yoho got elected anyway.  One of his early statements was “One side of our government, or two-thirds of it, is running one hundred miles an hour toward socialism.  Conservatives like me are like Fred and Barney in the Flintstone-mobile trying to stop that.”

And later, on opposing tanning-bed spas: “I had an Indian doctor in our office the other day, very dark skin and two non-dark-skinned people, and I asked, ‘Have you ever been to a tanning booth?’  And he goes, ‘No, no need.’  So therefore the tax is a racist tax, and I thought I might need to go get to a sun-tanning booth twice so that I can come out and say I got taxed because of the color of my skin.”

Oh, shut up, Ted.

2. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County, Ariz.  Joe forced inmates to wear pink underwear, served them rotting food and housed them in a tent city which he proudly described as a “concentration camp,” where temperatures once reached a toasty 145 degrees, which isn’t easy.  Arpaio denied Latina inmates sanitary products and forced them to sleep on sheets soiled with menstrual blood.  He once created an armed posse which included brain-dead Steven Seagal, alleged movie star.

A quote: “I needed a place to put the dogs.  The prisoners ruined the jail, so I put the prisoners in the tents and I had a nice jail to put the dogs.  We treat the cats nice, too.  And the horses.  If a nation is only as strong as its weakest link, then America may be in trouble.  Hawaii may be our weakest link.”

We knew it.  There’s something in the pineapples.

3. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.)  Claimed the Obama administration went after BP because the giant Gulf oil spill was “part of this sort of blame game society, in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault when a catastrophe occurs, instead of just, you know…accidents happen.”  Paul also warned that unchecked illegal immigration would lead to a “borderless mass continent” that used a conspiracy theorist currency called “the amero.”

A quote: “With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies.  It’s not an abstraction.  I’m a physician.  That means that you have a right to come to my house and conscript me.  It means you’re going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.”

We asked the janitor, Rand, and he was okay with it.

4. State Representative Gordon Klingenschmitt )R.-Colo.)  Representative K. bragged about performing a gay exorcism to relieve a woman of “the foul spirit of lesbianism.”  He was once a Navy chaplain, so he could do that.  He also tried his best to perform a long-distance exorcism on President Obama because of some issue with the NSA.  Gordon swears that Obamacare “causes cancer” and that Obama’s former FCC chairman was driven by the Devil to “molest and visually rape children.”  Disturbingly, however, he calls himself “Dr. Chaps.”

5. Marjorie Taylor Greene.  “They’re changing our kids’ genders and they’re also, I think, putting chemicals in the water that are turning the frogs gay.”

Attention Sheriff Thacker—please get this information to Froggy the Gremlin ASAP.  The ramifications are unimaginable.

Always Leave ‘Em Laughing!

Good advice to any would-be dictator.  A little pudding with the bread and water humanizes a despot, makes him look like one of the guys.  But a little advice to all you tyrants out there---make sure they’re laughing with you, not at you.

It was one thing when Ugandan overlord Idi Amin titled himself “Conquerer of the British Empire” and “King of Scotland.”  It was those love letters he wrote to Queen Elizabeth II that got him hooted out of town.

Jean-Bedel Bokassa declared himself emperor of the Central African Republic in 1977 and threw a coronation which cost one-third of the country’s GDP.  He had a solid gold throne shaped like an eagle that cost a mere $2.5 million, and 100 white horses pulled his carriage.  The 2000 guests at the party dined on peacock and elephant meat.  Alas, he pissed off the French, who overthrew him in 1979.  They gave the throne to Jerry Lewis.

Francisco Macias Nguema, of Equatorial Guinea, who had the pleasant nickname “The Madman of Africa,” didn’t like smart people.  He banned the word “intellectual” and anyone with glasses was suspect.  Frankie had his personal portrait on every banknote, even one-peso bills.  In 1978, he cancelled Christmas because he didn’t particularly like it, but relented two days later when the Pope scolded him. 

Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, however, was in a league of his own.  They laughed when he sat down to rule, but not for long.  First off, he decided to rename January “Turkmenbashi” after himself and April became “Gurbansoltan,” after his mother.  You can imagine the trouble singers had with April Showers.

Sappy also banned beards, opera, lip-syncing and all cars that weren’t white, also gold teeth (he had his own extracted to set a good example).

As dictators are wont to do, Saparmurat also built a 12-meter gold statue of himself which rotated 360 degrees so it was always facing the sun.  He also wrote a book, Ruhnama, or “Book of the Soul,” which every student, driver and government worker was required to read because there was an exam coming.  He said reading it three times would get you to heaven.  Hopefully, he followed his own instructions because he bit the bag in 2006 with a heart attack attributed to his heavy smoking, which, of course, he had banned for everyone else.

Anybody looking for a cheap rotating statue?  It’s gold, you know.  We’ll throw in a dog-eared copy of the Ruhnama for those dreary nights when you just can’t sleep.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com    

  

 

Standin’ On The Corner In Winslow, Arizona

This is the time of year Captain Travel reads his cards and letters from good little children out there looking for someplace to vacation this summer.  Now the Captain clearly recognizes that Juneau’s not for everyone and old people sometimes lose their teeth on rollercoasters, so there is no such travel thing as one-size-fits-all.  With that in mind, here are the best places to go in two of the better United States, each coming replete with an alternative for travelers who are difficult.  Happy trails!

1. Arizona---Grand Canyon.  Many visitors have claimed a visit to the Grand Canyon changed their lives, and indeed taking one too many steps backward for a photo on the South Kaibab Trail can do that to a person.  If you can’t tolerate a hike down into the canyon on the fairly roomy Bright Angel Trail, the South Rim Trail is a fairly flat, paved 13-mile path connecting Hermit’s Rest with the South Kaibab Trailhead, offering panoramic views and access to viewing areas like Mather Point and the Trail of Time.  Not interested in walking 13 miles?  The park’s free shuttle service will pick you up or let you off at several points along the way.

For more ambitious hikers, there are several trails to the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon.  Rookie hikers need not apply, especially in Summer when temperatures at the canyon bottom can be forty degrees higher than at the top (like 104 degrees on occasion).  It’s one thing to make the descent, another to climb back up the same day.  Fortunately, reservations can be made (well in advance) to overnight at the primitive Phantom Ranch, where the cabins are spartan and they don’t leave mints on your pillows, assuming you get pillows at all.  There is a good restaurant, however, and a nice creek to cool off in.  Extra Perk: If a nuclear bomb goes off somewhere in the world while you’re there, it will be at least 24 hours before you know about it.

Another alternative is a mule ride to the bottom and back up the next day.  Captain Travel made this very trip himself and he’s here to tell you it’s not for the weak of heart.  The ride takes approximately 5 1/2 hours in the saddle and no butt-soothing cushions are allowed.  Even if you make it down in one piece, you have to get back on that mule again the next day, so it’s 11 hours of ass-pounding glory.  As soon as the Cap’n got back to the top, he jumped in his car and drove straight to the kindly if criminally expensive Amara Spa in Sedona for tender loving care.

If you go, it’s expensive to stay inside the Park and rooms must be reserved months in advance.  The drive from lively Williams, Arizona is about an hour, traffic is decent and on a good day you might find a room there for $100.  If you have kids, or if you are a kid, they have faux gunfights on the main street most nights.  We always root for the dwarf. 

Alternative---Antelope Canyon.  Located just outside Page, Arizona, Antelope Canyon is that place you’ve been seeing pictures of for years with the smooth sandstone walls lit by sunlight shooting through cracks in the ceiling.   The canyon is actually divided into upper and lower sections, each offering unique views and spectacular photo opportunities.  The Upper Canyon is famous for its noonish light shafts, the Lower features a more adventuresome hike involving stairs and ladders and significantly tougher physical activity.

The Navajo tribe owns all of Antelope Canyon and all the guides are Navajos well-versed in the better photo op areas (they will be happy to take your photos and suggest the best places).  You will be driven to the canyon in the rear sections of bouncy trucks and find yourself wondering whether the Navajos have ever been introduced to shock absorbers.  Being a competitive tribe, they like to race their rattling vehicles to the destination, so don’t believe them when they tell you your seat belts are not necessary.

Stay in Page, there are plenty of reasonable hotels and barbecue joints, but be careful not to leave any champagne bottles in the trunk of your car.  Don’t miss the dramatic Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River just five miles south of town in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

Got another day?  Head for brilliant Sedona, stay at Sky Ranch and eat at the Mesa Grill snug up to the airport.  Views of the area from Sky Ranch are unsurpassed and the famous Airport Vortex is nearby.  Some say it will cure your lumbago and put added bounce in your step.  Others say you’ll skin your knees.

Got an afternoon?  On your way to standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, stop at the exciting Meteor Crater, a mere 18 miles east of Winslow just off Interstate 40 West.  The MC is the largest meteor crater in the United States, the grateful recipient of a kindly meteor carefully plunging to Earth in the middle of the desert roughly 50,000 years ago, leaving a 560-foot dent in the landscape.  It was a big hit, if you’ll pardon the expression, with Siobhan who has an affinity for large objects falling from the sky and leaving enormous holes in the ground.  You’ll need a t-shirt from the nice gift shop in the Visitor Center, which also features an 80-seat widescreen theater and Crater Trail access.  The trail winds around the perimeter of the crater and no, they will not let you go down to the bottom even if you’re a big tipper.

2. Utah---(tie) Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park.  They’re like BBQ potato chips, it’s hard to devour just one.  Fortunately for you, these two are a mere 80 miles apart and can be reasonably explored in a single week.  Don’t make us pick just one.  Bryce has its brilliant hoodoos, which you’ll find nowhere else.  Zion has The Narrows, a fantabulous 16-mile hike between 1000-foot canyon walls in and along the north fork of the Virgin River.  Bryce has Ebenezer’s country music palace and a nightly rodeo, but Zion has more hostelry choices, better restaurants and a death-defying hike to Angel’s Landing.  If you want to let attendees tilt the scales, Zion National Park draws five million visits annually, while Bryce gets two million.  Zion is massive, with a greater variety of things to do, benefits from a lower altitude, is closer to Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, and its bedroom community of Springdale offers all the amenities.  But as far as we’re concerned, the two go together like a horse and carriage.  As dad was told by mother, you can’t have one without the other.  Ask the local gentry and they will say it’s elementary.  Had enough?

Alternative---Monument Valley.  How do we love thee, Monument Valley?  Let us count the ways.  We love thee to the depth and breadth and height our souls can reach.  We love you in the morning sun and when the day is through, we’ll be looking at the moon but we’ll be seeing you.

Captain Travel is not prone to label a destination “spiritual,” but Monument Valley is the exception to the rule.  There’s just something about it that wakes up the echoes and haunts you long after you leave.  Merle Haggard famously sang, “If God doesn’t live in Colorado, that’s where he spends most of his time.”  We beg to differ.  Glorious as the Centennial State may be, we think Merle was off by about 90 miles, which is understandable.

You know you’re in for something special just approaching the place from the south.  The long entry on arrow-straight Route 163 feels like driving into an epic Western film.  The flat horizon slowly transforms as towering red sandstone buttes and mesas gradually rise from the desert floor.  The landscape shifts into vast sweeping vistas framed by spectacular 1000-foot geological formations.  You get the feeling you’ve been here before, and you have---as a child watching John Wayne in Stagecoach, The Searchers, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.  You wondered as an eight-year-old where in the world this magical place might be but never expected to find it.  Now here you are.

Looking out from your balcony at the Navajo-owned View hotel---and you will stay at the View hotel---you don’t see a landscape, you view a painting, set up on a colossal easel in the distance.  You know right away it’s a work of art because no natural scene could be so splendid.  All the hotel rooms face east, looking directly into the heart of Monument Valley and the iconic sandstone buttes, surrounded by endless cinematic desert.  Just after we arrived, dark clouds danced across the stage, followed by thunder, lightning and a hard rain.  No more than ten minutes passed and the sky lightened up and sent forth a brilliant rainbow.  “Is this just for us,” I asked Siobhan, “or does everybody get the Big Show?”   In late afternoon we went outside with several other amateurs and a few pros and took photographs as the setting sun lit up the monuments of this holy place.  Eventually, the visitors dissolve into the haze and you find yourself alone with the profound silence, isolation and vast dramatic scale of Monument Valley, and you know deep in your soul you are in a place like nowhere else.  The nuns were right after all---Heaven exists.

With Timmy of the Navajos at M.V.

That’s all, folks

bill.killeen094@gmail.com   

Old Friends

My old gym pal Robin Martinez was ten years older than me, thus in a prime position to point out the approaching ravages another decade would present.  She promised my seventies would be a transitional time when hikes would shorten, ambitions temper and a few plates taken off my leg press machine.  All true, but at least I held off til the latter 70s.

The 80s were another thing entirely.  “It’s a revelation when you get to be eighty,” she moaned.  “Every day when you wake up it’s some other body part in trouble.  It’s like you look left and right at the intersection, then a piano falls on your head from above.  I have arthritis and a few other ‘itises’ as well.  I can’t get down on my knees to wax the kitchen floor.  When I do, I can’t get up.  My eyes are going on me and I can’t drive at night any more.  The other day I fell down, so now I have a big stick.  I don’t think I’m gonna get out of this place alive.”

She did, though.  Robin made it down the rocky road to Nonagenaria, succumbing to immobility and Michigan at 91.  I wonder what she would have said about 90?

One poignant thing Mrs. Martinez left off her list of depressing outcomes is that the 80s are the years the big trees fall---the old friends you’ve prized and relied on for moral support are dropping by the wayside in alarming numbers.  If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, the road to 90 is littered with friendly corpses, not to mention the also-eligibles sitting in the highway oases waiting for a break in the traffic.  Every death is a blow, but some of them are TKOs.  Several Mays ago, we had our turn.

Stuart & Leslie with Bill at Christmas in Massachusetts

Stuart Bentler: He Was A Friend Of Mine.

Once upon a time, a University of Florida Architecture Department student named Stuart Bentler stumbled onto the newly-opened Subterranean Circus and said to himself, “This is good!”  Despite his straight-arrow appearance and respectable background, Bentler was like a kid in a candy store, shuffling through posters, meandering wide-eyed through the blacklight room, taking note of the hippie girls in tiny halters and diaphanous dresses.  Straight-laced architect or not, Stuart was not immune to fun, and this looked like big fun to him.  He bought a lid from someone in the parking lot and went off to see what he could see.  In a couple of days he was back, inviting us all to his duplex on Fourth Avenue just off Thirteenth, close to campus.  He promised he had “more music than anybody,”  He did, too.

Stuart had a reel-to-reel setup which allowed him to play any song he wanted almost instantly.  He had a lovely wife named Leslie who provided food treats.  He had Lite Brite games and luminous electric yoyos and an endless stream of enthusiasm for whatever the psychedelic onslaught offered next.  Nervous as he was (and a bit of a control freak), Mr. Bentler proffered one night that he might like to try some LSD.  I decided to abstain because rookie acid-takers were notorious for going off the trail and into the wilderness, requiring sober guidance.  Good thing, too.

In those days, most of the available acid was aided and abetted by a little speed, so after the user peaked it was miles to go before he’d sleep.  Stuart had a wonderful trip to the top of the mountain, but when he got off the ski lift he insisted on immediately retiring to a bed & breakfast.  We explained to him why this was impossible, but he kept looking for the shut-off switch.  “I think I’m going crazy,” he worried.  “Somebody take me to the emergency room!”  Nobody volunteered, of course, and it was hours later before he settled down.  You’d think the average Joe would take a lesson from the experience, calm down, take baby steps.  Not Stuart.   Despite his angst, the smitten architect came bounding up the Circus stairs the next day with a giant smile on his face.  “That was GREAT!”  he said.  “I want to do it again!”

Stuart with Irana Maiolo in Lauderdale

Adventures In Bentlerville

Stuart and Leslie got married, moved to Tampa and started a very successful architecture firm.  Patty Wheeler, my then-girlfriend and I visited and Stuart insisted on an LSD romp.  We wound up somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, playing disembodied heads.  You can’t do that with many people.  A year later, my pal Art Johnson and I were traveling to Red Sox Spring training games and we wound up in Tampa at midnight to discover a bowling tournament had usurped all the hotel rooms.  There are few acquaintances you would wake up under the circumstances, but I knew Stuart wouldn’t mind, and he took it as a lark.  “You have amazing friends,” said Art.

And quirky ones.  Stuart had friends, but then again he also had “pallbearers,” eight of them, who waxed and waned in his evaluation.  These were his best friends at the moment, the ones he wanted there to carry the box at his funeral.  One day, I moved up from Triple-A to the big leagues.  “I think you’re one of my pallbearers now,” he told me in a rare serious mein.  “What are the perks,” I asked.  “The pallbearers get first dibs on Leslie,” he said.

The Bentlers had two children, a boy and a girl, perhaps so Stuart would have someone to play with.  The boy, alas, was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, but won Stuart’s heart.  Before Stuart Jr. died in his late teens, he and his father traversed the country on a weeks-long pilgrimage to everywhere in Stuart’s spiffy sports car, keeping an incredibly beautiful journal full of pictures and postcards and handwritten musings on their discoveries.  No dinosaur gardens or putt-putt courses were spared.  It was the ultimate road trip all of us dream of, but it was also The Last Roundup.  Devastated at his beloved son’s death, Stuart Bentler abdicated to Europe for six months.  By then, he and Leslie had gone their separate ways.

Stuart visited often on his drives to and from Atlanta, where Leslie had settled.  In those days, cocaine was his constant companion, but his true love was alcohol.  Once opening his refrigerator, I found nothing but beer and Gatorade.  He asked Siobhan and I separately if we thought he was an alcoholic.  “Ya THINK?” answered she, in her own inimitable fashion.

We were there for daughter Katherine's spare-no-expense wedding and we got to meet Jan, Stuart’s new inamorata.  They moved together to Phoenix, where Stuart had a big new job, then later to Fort Lauderdale, where the partnership ended.  Since we were racing horses in Calder almost weekly, there were regular visits to the Bentler digs.  In my experience with the dwellings of architects, I have always admired their fixation on neatness and order.  The wall photos are always straight and everything is where it belongs.  Stuart carried this to anal extremes; the coathangers in his closets were spaced equally apart and his underwear and socks were neatly folded in their separate drawers.  Despite his questionable habits, he daily ran on the beach and kept himself fit and attractive.  And always good-humored.  Stuart was invariably effortlessly funny.

One night, Siobhan and I were waiting for him and a possible new girlfriend, who were arriving separately at a Las Olas restaurant.  Exactly one minute past the appointed hour, Stuart, impeccably dressed in sports jacket and his regular fedora, cruised by slowly in his convertible, suave as hell.  When he came in and realized his date hadn’t yet shown up, he went back out, circled the block a couple more times and repeated his entrance, this time to an audience of three.  I gave him a major eye roll, but he was unmoved.  “Presentation is everything,” he said.

Stuart Jr. gets a horse ride with Siobhan

Storm Clouds In The Distance

Stuart called from California one day while tending to a recently deceased aunt’s estate.  “I nodded off at a stoplight and bumped into a bread truck,” he confessed.  “Shit happens,” I told him, but it seemed odd because Stuart was an impeccable driver.

“That’s not all,” he relayed.  “I’ve been having all kinds of trouble.  Headaches.  High blood pressure.  Stomach problems.  I’ve seen three different specialists in two weeks.  I got a lot of tests.  They said everything is fine.  The last guy told me to see a psychiatrist.  I was on my way when I hit the bread truck.  Anyway, I called to ask if something happens to me, can I have my remains spread at your place?  I love it there, I always feel at peace.  It’s pretty and it’s quiet and you’re not moving anywhere.  Whattaya think?”

Jeez.  Are we overreacting?  “Come on, Stuart, you aren’t dying.  Something would have shown up in the testing.”  He said that’s what he kept telling himself.  The psychiatrist eventually prescribed drugs to get Stuart to relax.  They didn’t work.  I told him our graveyard was occupied by several animals and Siobhan’s step-father, but there was room for one more.  “I’ll be honored to be among them,” he said.  I told him to knock it off and check in at the Mayo Clinic.  “It’s the NFL of medicine,” I told him.

By the time Stuart Bentler returned to Florida a few weeks later, he was 50 pounds lighter and fading fast.  The Mayo doctors diagnosed amyloidosis, which attacks various organs indiscriminately and is virtually always fatal, especially when left undiagnosed for twelve months.  Siobhan and I visited one day and Stuart tried his best to regain his usual good humor.  “So you’re hinting there could have been wife-swapping, Leslie for Patty Wheeler back in the day?” he wondered, interest piqued.  “Not up to me,” I answered, getting a big last laugh from my old pal.  “How come nobody told me about it” he bellowed as we sadly marched off down the corridor     

Stuart repaired to his home in Fort Lauderdale, nursed by his stricken daughter Katherine, who refused to leave his bedside.  Aware of her tenacity, one day he told her he was feeling better and she should return to her place in Phoenix to attend to loose ends before returning.  As soon as she left, he stopped eating and drinking.  Not long after, the inimitable Stuart Bentler called it a day, passing off to that great Adventureland in the sky and leaving the world a far less hilarious place.  He left me his prized electric yoyo.

The Fellowship Of The Hats

It was a magnificent July day in Greater Fairfield when friends and family gathered to pay their respects and bid adieu to Stuart Bentler, cultural icon, father and child in adult’s clothing.  Guests poured in from Oregon, California, Arizona and even Boca to recount past experiences and trade Bentler stories.  Three large tables were laid out by Katherine, complete with floral enhancements, each containing enormous boxes of photos of the earlier Bentler years and the allies he had accumulated.  Tiny children flashed around the perimeter, discovering lizards and screaming their delight at frog encounters.  Mules were ridden, friendships renewed, tears and laughter shed.  Finally, there was the Ceremony of the Hats.

Stuart Bentler was a hat fancier, had one for every day of the month, a fedora for all occasions.  His finest hat, of shiny black leather, was made in Italy by Borsalino and worn only on special days.  It was placed on a bed with 50 others by his daughter, and his friends were invited in to choose a hat of their very own.  Having first pick, I took the prized Borsalino, which has become a personal friend.  Years later, I wore it to my wedding.  It’s on my Facebook profile and will be returning to Europe this Summer when we visit Paris.  The other headcovers went off to their various destinations.

The event chairs are slowly stacked and the tables assembled and rolled back on the caterer’s truck.  The weary children drag after their mothers back to their cars.  A few couples linger to look once more over the site of Stuart’s final repose.  The Sun lowers in the sky and looks forward to its own interval.  A valued life has passed too soon.  Stuart Bentler, man of the world, is gone forever.  But the hats, the sacred hats, march on.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

Feature picture by Peter Kundra