Author: John Becton

I was born in Asheville NC in the first half of the last century. At 18, I left for Chapel Hill to attend the University of North Carolina. After graduating with honors in English, I spent three years in the Boston area, earning a Master of Divinity degree, then returned to Chapel Hill "for one year." I'm still here. Much of my public relations career gave me a lot of experience in journalism. Creative writing has been a life-long interest and avocation. In 2016, I published a collection of short stories, "Life Among the Letters," available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I have a wife, three adult children and five grandchildren.

The earliest major news story I remember

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been answering various questions my adult children have posed. Some would be of little or no interest to the general public; a few feel too personal to share outside the family. A recent one was “What’s the first major news story you can remember living through as a child?” It might resonate with others.

The earliest major news story I remember now as being a current event rather than history was the presidential election of 1952. I don’t remember hearing about anything else outside my little sphere at that time or before. I probably did, but paid little or no attention. Likely, I didn’t understand. The election, however, somehow grabbed my 5-year-old attention.

I was surprised years later to learn that the Korean War had taken place in my lifetime. Yes, I was very young. Also, we — like most people — didn’t have a TV. And even if we did, it wasn’t until Viet Nam that wars were “streamed” on TV news nightly. If my parents ever talked about it, that didn’t register with me.

I must’ve known that the current president’s name was Harry Truman, but I don’t recall being conscious of that fact. I’m not sure of the first time I heard that two men were running for president, but I clearly remember seeing on a cereal box photos of Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. (This may be what imprinted the event on my brain.) I knew nothing about them, but Eisenhower was smiling and Stevenson was not. So I repeated a campaign phrase I’d begun to hear and said cheerfully to my parents something about wanting to share the phrase, “I like Ike!’ To which my father immediately said — not cheerfully — that it should be, “I don’t like Ike.”

So I learned that we voted for the Democrat, not the Republican. It’s kinda ironic now, considering how unlike the current Republican Party Eisenhower was. The majority did like Ike. When he was inaugurated, a few weeks before my 6th birthday, I understood the significance enough to go next door and watch the ceremonies on TV. I never heard my parents say anything negative about him after he became president.

This wasn’t long before the second major news story I remember. I was very aware of it because it affected me directly. That was the polio epidemic in the early ‘50s. I was aware of a lot of discussion of it, reports of people’s lives being changed by getting it, photos of iron lungs. I remember a summer in which we hardly left the house at all. We played a lot of Monopoly on the front porch.

Then there was the Salk vaccine. I wavered at first, fearing shots, which did hurt more then than they do now that needles are made of harder metal, which can be sharpened more finely. But I feared life on crutches or, worse, in an iron lung even more. So I was part of a major news story when they began giving shots to school children. A few years later, we got the Sabine vaccine, administered on a sugar cube. Without hesitation, I took that, too.

Somewhere in there were news stories about the dramatic drop in polio cases nationwide from year to year. The total in 1956 was a little more than half that in 1955. Then in 1957, there were about a third as many as the year before.

30th anniversary of our new home

Thirty years ago — July 22, 1991 — my family moved into our new house. It was, for me at least, our dream home. Still is.

The family included a high school student, now a marketing professional in New York City and the mother of my grandson; a daughter entering middle school, now a physician in Philadelphia and the mother of my three granddaughters; and a kindergartner, now in Austin adding a Ph. D. to his two masters’ degrees.

We have a 10.6 acre, wooded lot in a neighborhood with 12 other similar lots. The logical spot on which to build — where the house wanted to go, according to one of the architects — turned out to be pretty much in the middle.

My wife and I had our bedroom put on the ground floor, realizing that some day, we wouldn’t want to be walking up and down stairs a lot. It’s been “some day” now for a few years. We were required by code to put a rail on the front steps. We ignored that rail for a long time, but now we understand the reason for that requirement only too well. Similarly, there’s a stool in the kitchen that fits under one corner of the island. It rarely left that spot for many years, but now I sit on it as much as possible while preparing dinner.

Some of the ideas I had for its design dated back to my early adolescence. When I was about 12, I enjoyed looking at the “house of the week” in the Sunday newspaper, as well as sketching out various floor plans I imagined. Eventually, I “designed” my dream house. I don’t know what became of that sketch, but when I was in high school, I recalled it to mind and put it on graph paper, to scale.

I didn’t know that version still existed when we were working with the architects, but not long after we moved in, I found it in some old papers. There were similarities between it and the real blueprint that were striking.

We put the girls’ bedrooms and bath on the second floor, with a separate HVAC system. Once the second one entered college in 1998, we began closing off the upstairs when no one was at home there.

A year before we moved in, we went to a potluck for the high school cross country teams and families. The hosts had been in the newly-constructed house about a month. I thought it was nice of them, but maybe not so smart. A month after we moved into our new home, we hosted that year’s potluck. Area carpets in rooms with wood floors were remnants from carpeted rooms. I hung the art work the night before the event. The kitchen had no back splash.

A year later when my daughter and her coach decided we’d host again, I realized people likely cut us slack the first year, but now we had no excuses for a subpar event. We finally went out and bought real area carpets a week or two before the gathering. The back splash was in place, but I felt more pressure to be a good host than I had felt the previous year. (It went well, as have other such events through the years.)

Ours was the second house to be built here. The first was next door. We had begun getting to know those neighbors a year earlier when we had bought our property and they had begun construction. Over a few years, other lots sold and houses were built. In each case, by the time the new neighbors moved in, we had become good friends.

In recent years, several of the houses have changed ownership. We meet the new neighbors, but our friendships don’t have the incubation time that original construction provided. The ambiance of the neighborhood has changed over time.

The neighborhood was created by a long-time friend from a section of land that has been in her family since colonial days. The acreage she retains and on which she lives is adjacent to our neighborhood. We can walk to her house through the woods.

Even after 30 years, we haven’t grown tired of seeing deer close to our house frequently. We also have foxes, ground hogs, raccoons, ‘possums and, now, interloping coyotes, though we don’t see these regularly. Squirrels, on the other hand, run around and over our house constantly. Well, we do live in an oak forest. We have a good variety of birds. There are rabbits in the neighborhood, but I’ve never seen one up on our hill. So far, no bear sightings here, but there are some in the area.

Easing back in

When COVID restrictions were finally eased enough so that I could get back into the gym, I struggled to complete “workouts” that before the pandemic had been “warm-ups.”

In my younger days, my primary and preferred way of staying in shape was running outside. That begin being more difficult in my 60s and nearly impossible in my 70s. My knees and back rebelled, and with age came less tolerance of cooler and warmer temperature. I did more walking, which can be boring to a runner. Another drawback is that it takes longer to burn off calories than running. And that too has to be restricted to my ever-narrowing window of comfortable weather.

So I’ve grown to depend on the climate-controlled gym, with its variety of equipment that allows me to measure how much work I am doing. During the pandemic, it became too easy to vegetate. I began to enjoy being lazy. Eventually, though, I did not enjoy getting out of breath merely walking up a few stairs nor the extra pounds that far exceeded any amount I’d ever imagined possessing. Then I began to remember and miss how good I used to feel after a thorough physical workout.

Yet, of course, I couldn’t pick right up where I left off. The less exercise you do, the less you can do. I had to start slowly, increasing workouts by small increments. I don’t have a timetable for getting all the way back to where I was, but I’m moving toward it.

The experience is similar as I am becoming able to shift from Zoom to in-person encounters with others of my species. I’ve always enjoyed interacting with other people in a variety of contexts, but I’m among those whose social interaction batteries run down more quickly and need longer to recharge. I find now that, just as with my heart, lungs and muscles, my battery needs to build back its strength. I can’t immediately fill my social calendar as full as it was before the days of sheltering in place. I’m sure this is true for many other people.

I admit that the sheltering may not have been as difficult for me as for more extroverted individuals. It was, to an extent, a respite from social anxiety. Eventually, though, I began to miss specific people and specific activities. I remembered how good it felt to be together in person. I’m sure you know what I mean.

So as I gradually increase the time on and speed of the treadmill, bike and elliptical machine, I’m incrementally increasing the frequency and length of opportunities for human contact. In both cases, getting back into shape to be able to enjoy it once again.

_______________________

UPDATE, Oct. 19, 2021:

Easing back into exercise is going as well as I’d hoped. Easing back into in-person encounters is more difficult, so far, than I had hoped. No major problems, but more social anxiety at times than I’d prefer. And my interaction batteries aren’t holding a charge very well.

I posted a brief comment recently on Facebook, referring to this blog post and noting that it is proving more of a challenge to return to social interactions than to get back in the gym regularly. I took it down after the first two people to react used “ha-ha” emojis. This told me I had not communicated well. I failed to make it clear that this is a disappointment rather than a whimsical comment. I don’t find any humor in the struggle.

_______________________

UPDATE, April 2022

I suspect that many others have had and are having similar experiences. Now, our calendar has started to look more like it did pre-pandemic. At this point, four social events in five days leaves me feeling emotionally similar to the way I feel physically after that same grouping of vigorous gym sessions, though I can recover more quickly from the gym.

Insufferable suffixes

As most people know, the word “alcoholic” as a noun means “someone addicted to alcohol.” This usage is older than any of us. It’s easy to see that the word was created by adding “-ic” to “alcohol.” (It was repurposed from the even older adjective “alcoholic,” meaning “pertaining to alcohol.”)

In more recent times, it has become fashionable to indicate craving for, obsession with or indulgence in whatever by adding “-oholic” or “-aholic” to the end of said object. Not “-ic,” but “-oholic.” It keeps part of the word “alcohol” though not referencing alcohol.

A popular one is “workaholic.” Addicted to workahol? Also, “chocaholic.” Shouldn’t that be “chocolatic”?

And we have “shopaholic,” “sexaholic,” “foodaholic” and many others. I’ve recently seen “musicoholic” and “dogoholic” groups on Facebook. I once heard someone try to coin the term “theateroholic” to describe a — well — theatric person. In response to a question in a Facebook post about dependence on driving, I commented, “No, I’m not addicted to gasohol.”

Indeed, few, if any of these cases of “-oholism” are addictions on the order of alcoholism.

Another overworked suffix that broke into our language (by dark of night?) in the ’70s is “-gate.” You know the story. Some people wanting to ensure the re-election of the current president broke into the national headquarters of the other party. That office happened to be in the Watergate Office Building in Washington DC.

Within a couple of years, William Saffire began coining “-gate” terms for a variety of scandals. And the — er — floodgate was opened: Vietgate, Irangate (or Contragate), Billygate, debategate, emailgate and nannygate, to name just a few.

And the phenomenon hasn’t been restricted to politics. Scandals in entertainment, journalism and other areas have been tagged with the “-gate.”

In the sports world, we’ve had inflategate, bountygate and Astrogate, among others. I once was part of a “vendingate” controversy, which I described in a previous blog post, “A Boost in Status.”

The Wikipedia article “List of ‘-gate’ scandals” provides a long list.

All because of the name that had been given to the building where one political party happened to rent office space. One could wonder: What if it had been called the Amsterdam Building? Or the Suffolk?

Are we faced with a gateaholic crisis?

What I might say about my mental health

If I wrote my own mental health confessional, I would begin by saying I’ve struggled with depression most of my life. I would note that for many years this condition went undiagnosed, but therapy brought to light indications of the illness going back at least to when I was 9 or 10. I guess I would admit that the first time I seriously considered suicide, I was 10.

I would talk about difficult feelings I was having by the fourth and fifth grades and beyond, even up to the present. About making decisions, some more significant than others, that weren’t the best choice, even though on some level I often was aware they weren’t the best when I made them. About feelings of despair and low self-esteem. About difficulties in processing feelings and accessing relationships. About hurts that lingered.

I would include something about the unhelpful things I’ve heard from an early age. One was a bemused “Now, don’t be bitter.” Another, “You’re too sensitive.” How about “we’re not laughing at you; we’re laughing with you” — when I was not laughing? “Snap out of it,” was the commonly suggested cure for people with conditions such as mine. Similar are “get over it” and “suck it up.” One parent once lamented, “I don’t know why you have to be so different.” The other once complained that I was “always miffed about something.”

I might mention but would not describe an incident in early adolescence when I was feeling so bad about myself that I expressed it in a way that engendered anger, making me feel even worse about myself. It left a deep scar. I’ve shared details only with therapists and my spouse. Therapists have said it was an obvious red flag. The first time I shared it with anyone was with my spouse. I became emotional and had trouble getting through it. That may have made it easier to talk about later in therapy.

Adventures in therapy

I would describe the first time I tried therapy and what led to it: During my sophomore year of college, I started noticing I was tired a lot, even for a college student. I continued to feel that way during the summer, the last summer I spent in my childhood home.

A doctor determined it was nothing physical and gently suggested seeing a mental health professional. When I returned to college for fall semester, I jumped through assorted hoops at student health, eventually landing weekly appointments with a psychiatrist.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see that the tiredness was a manifestation of depression, but you never heard much about depression in those days. It was not my diagnosis at that time. The doctor listened to me for 50 minutes each week for most of the school year, asking leading questions but offering few reflections on what I said. I got much more from one session with a college chaplain that summer. He was the first person who ever said to me in all my 21 years, “That must feel bad.”

As I would continue telling my story now, I would include reports of helpful therapy sessions. The first came many years later, when I finally shared with my family doctor how I often felt. I told him of the feelings listed above, as well as how I was no longer enjoying a number of things that had given me pleasure in the past.

He immediately diagnosed my condition as depression. My first thought? I was glad to know that I wasn’t crazy. That there was an identifiable reason for what was going on with me. A definable disease for which there was treatment. I knew intellectually that I “shouldn’t” have a lot of the feelings I did. This diagnosis provided an explanation.

So at this point in my imagined essay, I would talk about sessions of nearly a year each with three different psychologists spaced over several years. All were helpful, especially the first and third. I was not “cured” by any, though I gained some tools that helped me cope better. In time, I’ll go back for another tune up. Yes, I tried many prescribed anti-depressants, but I’m in the 40 percent for whom such medications are not effective.

I would want to note that someone with depression is not always down. We smile, we laugh, we enjoy. At times.

What would be the reaction?

It seems that more and more well-known people, including entertainers and athletes, are opening up about their own struggles with depression and other mental health issues. They want to help destigmatize mental illness. Some say it’s also therapeutic. As each comes forward, I ask myself if I would do well to do so, too.

Yet, I worry about how people would take it. What would they think of me? Would they treat me any differently? I wonder these things, even though I think more of people who share their struggles. And I don’t treat them any differently.

Or would they make light of it? Maybe the reactions would be similar to the unhelpful words I listed in the third paragraph above. Or similar to a reaction I often get on the rare occasion I dare to mention a physical health concern — i.e., “I have (or someone I know has) the same problem, only worse, and have (has) had it longer.” This response seems to devalue my concern.

Would I end up feeling better or worse?

Another barrier is that I haven’t completely stopped buying into the very stigma I want to counteract. That’s a little ironic, I guess, as is the fact that my depression-nurtured lack of self confidence makes it difficult to take this step.

The S word

If I did take it, I might mention suicidal thoughts. Or I might not. Or maybe just say I wish I didn’t know as much as I do about what it’s like to have them.

I could share significant difficulties I have with light deprivation. Or difficulties getting out of bed sometimes. Times of feeling bad that I feel bad. And how motivation can be a problem when feeling “what’s the use?” or struggling with low self-esteem. I could talk about a well-developed sense of “don’t belong,” which can crop up in almost any context.

That would probably lead to an acknowledgement of ever-present social anxiety. I could admit to worrying before a social event that I’ll say something stupid; worrying during that I am saying something stupid; worrying afterward that I did say something stupid. (Worrying now that this all sounds stupid.)

Then I might note how easy it is to be embarrassed by things others would just laugh off and humiliated by things others might just find a little embarrassing.

I would, if I could muster enough self-confidence, claim some ability as an actor. For the past few of my infrequent appearances in a play, when writing a brief bio for the program, I’ve thought of adding this to the list of past performances: Has portrayed a mentally-healthy person in everyday life 24/7 for many years. If I wrote my own mental health confessional.

When typos are OK

One day recently, my list of Facebook “memories” included an ironic juxtaposition.

Four years to the day prior, I wrote, “We saw this [production of ‘My Fair Lady’] last night. Many great songs with memorable lyrics, including lines such as ‘But use proper English, you’re regarded as a freak.’ “

On that day nine years ago, I had posted, “Here’s another important anniversary celebrated today: 65 years ago today, Jackie Robinson played in his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers.”

They may seem unrelated, but stay with me. When I entered the second post, I accidentally typed “payed” rather than “played.” One of my Facebook friends quickly trolled, “People who make fun of their friends typing should be more careful with their own.”

I tried to write it off by saying something to the effect that Robinson did pay a lot of dues for being a trailblazer. I chose not to point out the missing apostrophe — “friends’ typing” rather than “friends typing.”

But, more to the point of the jab, I don’t recall ever making fun of friends for typos or anything else. It is possible that I may have occasionally pointed out the irony created by a typo. If it came across as a personal attack, I should have worded my comment more carefully. You can be sure, though, that I stopped making such observations forthwith.

In fact, I have commented a few times that typos on Facebook — especially if one is sending from their phone — are absolutely excusable, even expected. Social media comments are conversation, not graduate theses or legal documents.

Here’s where the “My Fair Lady” post connects. As I wrote in another blog post, I am one of those freaks who cares about proper English. At the time of the typo dig, I was being called “grammar police” and worse. This is because, even though I never corrected any individual’s grammar, I occasionally posted general comments about common grammatical errors. I stopped that practice some time in 2013.

It was a small leap from grammar to spelling for anyone who enjoys the social media version of trash talking. I, however, get more enjoyment from irony, such as an unintended twist a typo might offer or the two posts cited falling on the same date.

A boost in status

We had an investigative newspaper reporter in our area for many years. He garnered the requisite amount of both praise and scorn that accrues to the most successful in his field. I won’t weigh in on those evaluations. I will just acknowledge the positive effect he had on my self image.

I was working in public affairs at the local medical center, owned and operated by our state. My salary was exactly one-tenth that of the CEO of the hospital. My position was roughly analogous to that of a second lieutenant in the military.

Yet this intrepid reporter promoted me to “honcho.”

The budget relied on patient revenue and whatever the legislature would kick in, plus charitable contributions. Administrative costs common to all good businesses include community relations, in-service training and employee relations. There were some programs associated with these objectives that were, at one time, covered by income from vending machines throughout the medical complex, rather than the patient revenue, tax money and contributions.

This did not escape the notice of our reporter friend. When the story broke, he said these funds were spent on “honchos.” I was a participant in three of the activities he listed: Chamber of Commerce membership, “a public affairs dinner” and a recreational softball team. Suddenly, I was elevated in status. I had never been a honcho before, but I stood a little taller and walked with a spring in my step.

As the second-largest employer in our community (the University being first), it is incumbent on the hospital to be a good corporate citizen. Participating in the Chamber of Commerce seems logical. Community-relations responsibilities within our office were assigned to me. So it made sense for the hospital to cough up the $25 a year it cost for me to be one of the individuals designated to represent it in the chamber.

What the article did not say about the dinner was that it followed an educational session, designed to help us do our jobs better, which we were required to attend outside regular work hours.

The softball team participated in the town’s recreational league. The hospital paid the entry fee. Anyone could be on the team, even players as lousy as I. There were a couple of guys pretty high on the flow chart, but most were much lower. At least one player worked in housekeeping.

After the “scandal” came to light, there were changes. Honcho though I was, I wasn’t privy to exactly how the raked-up muck was cleansed. I do know that the hospital started its own softball league, which I guess cost no money other than buying equipment, renting fields and the hours of staff time required to coordinate it. Community-relations activities continued to include chamber participation, paid for somehow. In the public affairs office, we still had the occasional professional-development session. Since they were still after hours, they still fed us, just not using vending-machine money.

In any case, honcho status had been conferred on me, and I wasn’t going to relinquish it.

Who can own a football?

A recent family conversation about gender brought to mind a touch football game from the late ’50s. We were visiting relatives in Georgia. As I recall, we were there for Thanksgiving. On Friday or Saturday afternoon, some friends of my aunt and uncle came by. While the adults chatted, the kids went out to play. This included the visitors’ son and daughter, who were about my age, as well as my sister, my cousin and me. My sister is nearly five years and my cousin a couple of years older than I. We probably were joined by a few other kids in her neighborhood.

It was a lot of fun. The daughter of the visitors seemed especially to enjoy it.

At this point, let me throw in a background anecdote. A few years before this, my sister had asked for and received a football for Christmas. It seemed better than any of the two or three that belonged to me. At least it was newer. It was used by my sister and the other big kids. So I rarely got to play with it early on. But that’s really beside the point. The point being that in my world, boys and girls both played touch football, and either could own footballs.

I’m not sure I realized that was anything other than the norm. But there were pressures to conform to society’s gender roles. We, no doubt, acquiesced in certain areas. I think we’ve made some progress, but my use of the past tense two sentences back may have been wishful thinking.

There was the time when my wife was upbraided by some random older woman because our then-infant daughter was wearing blue.

Not long ago, I sat in a medical waiting room, a young father was looking at a magazine with his pre-teen daughter. At one point he asked, “Is that a boy’s room of a girl’s room?” She guessed “girl’s.” So he gently pointed out items (he) associated with boys, concluding that it was a boy’s room.

Anyway, back to that Thanksgiving game. When we returned to the house, the visiting girl said to her parents, “I want a football for Christmas!”

The reply, from her mom: “Well, that’s too bad.”

The girl was about the same age my sister had been when she got a football for Christmas. Her mom’s reply shocked me then and continues to annoy me to this day.

Just for fun: Ultimate short shorts

In various writers’ conferences over the years, I would occasionally hear about “short shorts,” stories with fully developed themes but significantly fewer words than conventional short stories. I experimented some with short shorts. This confirmed my suspicion that they are practically impossible to write. I even took a workshop, which was interesting, but frustrated me further.
To vent my frustration, I “rewrote” some familiar literary works as “short short stories.” I knew that none was really a short short — more nearly a précis. They don’t work well if you don’t already know the story. I was just having fun and even gave each a little twist at the end. Reviewing them, I thought maybe others also could have fun reading them.
They follow without titles, which I hope are not necessary.

*******

Even if her wicked stepmother didn’t make her stay home and do all the house work, Cinderella couldn’t go to the Prince’s ball. She didn’t have anything to wear. That situation changed, however, after her fairy godmother appeared, magic wand in hand.
“Who is that beautiful princess?” people whispered as Cinderella dominated the Prince’s attention. All the other girls, especially Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters, were envious. She dropped her glass slipper, hastening to beat the midnight curfew her fairy godmother had imposed. This turned out to be fortunate, because the Prince didn’t rest until he found the foot that fit the slipper. He proposed to the person to whom the foot was attached. She said yes, and always had something to wear after that.

*******

Juliet Capulet and Romeo Montague wanted to live happily ever after and to end the feud between their two families. They accomplished one out of two. The impetuous teenagers fell in love and eloped, even though (or maybe because) their families hated each other. The planned reconciliation was sidetracked when Juliet’s cousin Tybalt killed Romeo’s friend Mercutio and Romeo killed Tybalt.
Then the Capulets arranged for Juliet to marry a nice young man named Paris. Juliet was driven to consider suicide, but her priest persuaded her to fake it. She and Romeo could then sneak away together. Romeo, however, thought she really was dead. Crying, “Oh, my love, my wife!” he drank poison and died, but not before getting into a fight with and killing Paris. When she woke up and saw Romeo lying there dead, Juliet plunged his dagger into herself.
After counting the bodies, the two families decided to be friends.

*******

Huck Finn’s friend Jim wanted freedom from slavery. Huck wanted freedom from his drunken pappy. First they got a series of adventures along the Mississippi River that even Tom Sawyer couldn’t have created, then one that Tom did create.
They missed the tributary that would’ve taken Jim into Ohio, floating instead all the way down the Mississippi before learning that Jim had already been emancipated. Jim, in turn, told Huck his pappy had drown sometime earlier in the same river. Thus, the Mississippi proved to be a somewhat indirect route to freedom for both.

*******

While antebellum Southern culture fell apart and General Sherman torched Atlanta, Scarlett O’Hara married thrice. The final time was to her true love Rhett Butler. Yet he could stand her only so long, which would’ve been his last two words to her had she not asked, “Why, Rhay-ut, what shall become of me?”
So his final two words to her turned out to be ” . . .a damn.”

*******

Listen:
Billy Pilgrim survived a plane crash that killed his father-in-law. Then as a younger man, he was a WWII prisoner of war, ticking off a fellow GI he knew was responsible for Billy’s death. When not a captive on the distant planet Tralfamadore with starlet Montana Wildhack, he married the boss’s daughter (she died in her car rushing to visit him after the plane crash), fathered two children, became a wealthy optometrist and talked to anyone who would listen about being unstuck in time.
“Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.”
So it goes.

*******

“I’ll get you Moby Dick!” Captain Ahab vowed.
He never did.

Notes from the beach

My wife and I recently returned from our annual week at the beach. For four decades, we’ve gone to Kill Devil Hills, NC, site of the first air flights in 1903. At the start, we happened upon the Cavalier Motel — now called Cavalier by the Sea — on the beach road at mile post 8.5, and it has become “our place at the beach.” With the kids, we always went during their spring break. After it was just the two of us again, we shifted to fall.

We get an ocean-front room with kitchen. Until a tall building went up next door a few years ago, we could see the Wright Brothers monument out the back window. We share a porch with the other six rooms (two others with kitchens) in the same building. There is an identical building next to us. Depending on the weather, we sit on the beach, the porch or inside, looking at the ocean through our picture window.

This year, I made a few notes and will share them here.

–One day, as I tried to imagine the back story of many of the people walking by, I wondered if other people have similar thoughts while people-watching at the beach. Then I wondered if they ever don’t have such thoughts.

I posed these questions on Facebook: “When you sit on the beach, watching people walk by, do you ever try to imagine their backstories? Do you ever not do this?”

The first two responses led me to realize the questions would best be directed at people with active imaginations, such as writers and story tellers. I ran them by two friends who are bona fide fiction writers. Both said they also sometimes create in their minds stories for people they observe.

–Walking on the beach into a strong wind, bundled up, slipping around in loose sand is a workout. Walking the same beach barefooted and in shirt sleeves, on the terra relatively firma uncovered at low tide is a delightful stroll.

–As always, there were a few kids dipping their feet in the November surf. On one walk, we passed two pre-teen girls doing so. The one with long legs executed a pirouette each time a wave hit her feet and ankles.

–And the dogs are always a delight. You can see them smile as they jump over or into the waves. Golden Retrievers never encounter a person who isn’t their best friend. We also saw one little dog that appeared to about the same dimension in three directions.

–I watched two people in wet suits take their surf boards out into the water to wait hopefully for a wave to ride. I mention this merely to use the word “hopefully” correctly.

–There were two groups of friends there this year while we were. I had two reactions. One was some envy because there have been past years in which we had a group of friends with us. The second was wondering if each group had been in a bubble prior to arriving. They didn’t practice social distancing and no one ever wore a mask.

–One guy was there for a couple of days, one room away from us. He began each day with a cigarette or three, sitting on the porch with a “No Smoking” sign staring him in the face. I wondered how he felt about law and order.

–One afternoon, there were four and twenty black birds, plus quite a few more, on the beach. You usually see just a few here and there among the more numerous seagulls. I don’t know if they were local or just passing through, but when they left altogether, they flew south.

–I took a lot of photos and posted some on Facebook, noting the location. Soon my phone would ask, “How was Cavalier by the Sea?” Was. Past tense. If the phone is so smart, why didn’t it know I was still there?

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A year ago, I shared photos of sunrises from the 2019 trip.
https://johnbecton.blog/2019/11/13/five-days-of-beach-sunrises/