From Sea to Shining Sea

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America! God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

 

After our European vacation last summer, we decided to concentrate on a domestic vacation this year. Because of Pam’s teaching schedule, she prefers we travel between mid-May and mid-August. Earlier this spring we discussed where we wanted to go, and we decided on two trips.

 

The first trip was to Carolina Beach, NC. We booked a condo on the beach for early June. Carolina Beach is located about 15 miles south of Wilmington, NC. While we had visited Wilmington several times, we had never been to Carolina Beach. It seemed very similar to many of the other East Coast beaches we have visited. There is a downtown of sorts with a couple of larger hotels, a large Ferris Wheel and an amusement area.

 

The beach road is lined with three-to-four story apartment buildings on columns with room for parking underneath. Several blocks east on the other side of the inland waterway and marina is the main highway to Wilmington. It is lined with shopping plazas, restaurants and beach shops.

 

The trip from our home to Carolina Beach is nearly 700 miles and we took two days to get there. We stopped in Mt. Airy, NC the boyhood home of Andy Griffith and supposedly the model for the fictional town of Mayberry in his TV show of the 60s. I had thought about spending some time there to check out his boyhood home and other sites, but I read some questionable reviews about his home and some of the other sites, so we decided to move on.

 

When we arrived at our rental condo, we were unable to open the lockbox holding the keys. The combination has been emailed to us a couple of days before we arrived. After repeated attempts to open the box, I phoned the renter and left a voice mail. To his credit, he texted me a phone number and he said he would arrive in about 10 minutes. When he got there, it took him several attempts to open the lockbox.

 

Once we finally got inside, we discovered it was a delightful apartment with a wonderful view of the beach and ocean. We had a very nice several days on the beach and received a nice tour of Wilmington from a college friend of Pam and her husband who live in the nearby suburb of Leland, NC.

After our six days at the condo were over, we packed up and drove to Southport, NC to spend a couple of days with a couple from Ohio that we have known for about 40 years. Their condo had an extra bedroom suite that had its own entrance. Paula and Dave lived in a huge, gated community called that has almost 5,000 residents on about 6,000 acres. This community has its own fire department, a couple of golf courses and even a library.

 

On our way home, we took a slight detour to Greenville, NC to visit my old friend Sam Barber. He is now 93 and he co-authored a book with my brother Tim called “Go Down Moses: The Wings Over Jordan Choir.”  We visited his house, and he prepared an excellent lunch for us. After checking into our motel, we joined Sam and about a dozen friends for dinner. It was a fun evening, and it was good to see Sam again.

 

About four weeks later, we flew a direct flight from Cleveland to Seattle on Alaska Airlines. I really like the fact that there is no connection on the way, so it took about 5 hours instead of 8 or 9 with a connection and layover.

 

We arrived at SEATAC, Seattle’s airport about a half-hour late and the terminal was extremely crowded, and the baggage area was being renovated. It took us a while to find our bags and then we went to the area where shuttle buses to the car rental facility. We had to wait for three busses before we could get to the car rental center. The service at the Budget rental counter was extremely slow even though I had a reservation. We schlepped our luggage to the elevator and found our car in the assigned space.

 

There was one problem. Another group was loading luggage into the Hundyai we thought we were getting. I talked with the group, and we compared paperwork, and we had both been assigned the same car. His booking was with Avis, and it is a partner with Budget. We went to the counter in the parking garage and waited about 10 minutes for the only clerk on duty to deal with another customer.

 

After some negotiation, we agreed that the other couple could have the Hundyai, and we were given a Jeep Wrangler. I was surprised at how roomy it was, and it had a comfortable ride. My biggest objection was it had poor mileage of only about 23 mpg on the highway. We still had a three-and-a-half-hour drive to my niece’s house in Chelan, so we decided to stop for the night at motel in Cle Elum, WA that was about halfway to Chelan.

 

After a decent continental breakfast at the motel, we continued to Chelan. The highway followed the Columbia River as it curved north from Wenatchee, WA. It was a scenic drive with the river on the right and mountainous terrain on the left. During the drive, we did see several bighorn sheep up in the hills.

 

My niece Angela and her husband Kevin live in a very nice house on a hillside with a beautiful view of Lake Chelan. During our visit we had fun visiting a winery, going to concert with a pretty good band covering rock songs from the 60s through the 90s and lounging in their pool that felt good with temperatures near 100 each day while we were there. The last night we were there, Angela and I had fun covering a couple of songs on the Karaoke machine they have. She has a beautiful voice, and we had a great time covering Elton John and Kike Dee singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” and Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty’s “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”

The next day we headed for Pasco, WA to visit my nephew, Neil. He is a social worker and an avid runner who lives in a nice ranch style house in a quiet neighborhood. He has a cat, so Pam and I had to book a hotel because I have a significant allergy to cats. We spent the following day touring the tri-cities (Pasco, Richland and Kennewick, WA) that are in the southeast corner of Washington.

 

We visited a park dedicated to the USS Triton, the first submarine to circle the world submerged. We had lunch at a brew pub not far from Hanford, WA that was one of the prominent sites in research to develop the first nuclear weapons used against Japan at the end of World War II. That evening, we were joined by my niece Angela and her husband Kevin who came down from Chelan.

The next afternoon, we all visited Neil and Angela’s aunt and uncle to celebrate their 60^th Anniversary. James Burney grew up in a small town in Alabama and joined the Marines while he was still 17. He then went to Vietnam on three tours of duty. While he was back in the US on leave, he met Fredine Hamilton who was in the US Army at an NCO club, and they instantly connected.

 

We had a nice visit, and I learned a lot about them. James and my brother Neil, who was married to Fredine’s sister Wanda, became best friends and spent a lot of time together. James was a huge fan of Alabama football (Roll Tide!) while Neil grew up during the Woody Hayes era at Ohio State. James told me he would always root for the Buckeyes because of their friendship, unless they were playing Bama.

Tragically, James passed away just a few weeks after our visit because of a heart attack. He was just a couple of weeks away from his 91^st birthday. We did not get to spend a lot of time together, but I will always remember him because of his friendship with my brother.

 

The next morning, Pam and I left Pasco and headed west towards our final destination, Long Beach, WA. After driving several hours driving through the stunning scenery of the Columbia River valley and the Dalles, we arrived in Long Beach, WA. This town could not be more different than the notable California town of the same name.

 

The Washington version is at the southwest corner of that state where the Columbia River flows into the Pacific Ocean. Across the river is Astoria, OR that is an active seaport and the town where President Thomas Jefferson established the first fort on the Pacific Coast for the new United States of America.

 

While in Long Beach, Pam and I went to the beach to dip our toes in the Pacific Ocean, which was outrageously cold for July. We also visited a cranberry farm that still operates in conjunction with Washington State University. During our two days in Long Beach, daytime high temperatures were only in the low 60s, but that felt great after the daytime highs in the 90s in Chelan and Pasco.

Also, I did feel some sense of accomplishment since we had now visited beaches on the both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans during the same summer. While in Long Beach, we explored a few shops along the main street and visited a small park dedicated to the cross-continent expedition of Lewis and Clark from 1804 to 1806.

 

We also visited the Flavel mansion which was built and occupied by one of Astoria’s most important families. Finally, it was time to head to Portland, OR to catch our flight home. While we headed to the airport, we heard news stories about the significant computer hack that affected numerous businesses, including airlines, that day.

 

Our “red eye” flight was scheduled to leave Portland at 11:14PM for Chicago, but it didn’t pull away from the gate until almost 2AM! So, we missed our original connecting flight from Chicago to Cleveland. As we landed in Chicago, the gate agent gave us two standby tickets for a flight to Cleveland that would leave about three hours later.

 

We went to the gate and were fortunate to be the last two people to board a later flight to CLE. We made it home only about three hours later than originally planned, so I thought we were lucky to come through the major computer-hacked disruption okay.

 

It was a very eventful summer trip, and we are glad to be home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Afternoon of Laughs-The National Comedy Center

For my birthday recently, my wife Pam and our son Brian, accompanied me on a tour of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY. This small city is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from our home in Stow, OH, a suburb of Akron.

The NCC is in downtown Jamestown and is a couple blocks from the companion Lucy Desi Museum dedicated to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz who had one of TV’s earliest and most successful situation comedies. Lucille Ball was born and grew up in Jamestown and her gravesite in Lakeview Cemetery attracts many visitors each year. 

We spent about three hours at the NCC and could have spent more, but my aching back and feet said that was enough. One of the outstanding aspects was its multiple high-tech displays that allow you to access the work of hundreds of comedians and comic actors.

When you enter the museum, you create a personalized comic profile at a large touch-screen monitor. You are given a wrist band to touch and “log-in” and then you are asked to select your favorite stand-up comics, comic actors, favorite TV comedies and favorite comedy movies.

Throughout the museum, you tap your wristband to the different displays, and you receive videos and information about the comics in your profile. But our first stop was at the George and Jolene Brand Schlatter Theater where we saw an impressive tribute to Johnny Carson the Tonight Show hosted by a hologram of Jimmy Fallon. 

Because of time constraints, we decided to skip the tribute to Laugh In that was created by Schlatter. We did see numerous clips from that show throughout the museum and that theater presentation will definitely be part of our next visit.

There are dozens of interactive exhibits, but two of my favorites were the prop tables and the exhibit about talk show hosts where you could see clips of their best comedy skits, monologues and funny interviews. I watched clips from Johnny Carson, Dave Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and even Steve Allen. There was an awesome clip where Allen was hoisted 75 feet in the air to host the Tonight Show from a perch attached to a flagpole! 

The prop table allowed you to select a prop from a shelf and move it around on a large interactive table. I picked up a cast iron skillet prop and used it to see where it was used as a prop in a Three Stooges movie and several cartoons including Road Runner and Bugs Bunny.

There were several displays about writing comedy including one where you could display a portion of a script and then see the actual script on screen. I selected scenes from Cheers, M*A*S*H and others. There also was an interesting segment about that scene from the movie “When Harry Met Sally” that takes place in a deli restaurant.

In a promo video for the NCC, one visitor observed it’s, “…not a hall of dead guys,” and it certainly isn’t as it pays tribute both present and past comic actors and comedians.

Toward the end of the tour, there is a stage with a prompter and microphone where you can do Comedy Karaoke. I picked two bits: a Jim Gaffigan bit about Hot Pockets and another called Dad Jokes by Fozzy Bear of the Muppets. It’s a good thing Statler and Waldorf weren’t there to see that one!

We still had a lot to see, but it was getting close to closing time, and we hadn’t seen even half of the exhibits. The final exhibit was a series of interactive screens where you tapped your wrist band and received information about your comedy profile. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to finish that.

The next day, the NCC sent me an email with my comedy profile. It said I like Satirical/Topical humor, Observational humor about the ridiculousness of “normal” things and Absurd illogical or other worldly humor.

It was a great day full of laughs and happy memories.

Christmas Letter 2023

This was a year with a lot of ups and downs, but the three of us have arrived at the end of the year healthy and happy.

 

The new year started quietly. Brian’s Akron Aviators basketball team was in the middle of a bad season marked by a couple of coaching changes and the retirement of a key player. Chris found out in January that he needed surgery for a significant chronic problem. Pam continued teaching a basic accounting course online for the University of Akron and she hasn’t taught on campus since before the Covid year in 2020.

 

Early February was quiet except for a Valentine’s Day party held by some friends. Then, in late February a work crew showed up to clear a 40-foot-wide swath across the back of our yard. There is an easement for a natural gas line and a petroleum line on the rear section of our lot. The crew took down several trees including a couple of tall spruce trees that blocked the view of our house from a parking lot for a nearby bike-hike trail. 

 

In early March, Chris had his surgery and spent several weeks at home recuperating. Fortunately, there were dozens of March Madness games to keep him occupied and he continued to work on his first book that he released in July on Amazon.

 

The book is titled “First Alumni”, and it is based on Chris’s experiences attending a brand-new high school in the 1960s and being a member of its first graduating class.

 

By May, Chris had recuperated enough to attend a couple of Akron Rubberducks baseball games and we began to plan for a trip to Europe in August to celebrate our 50+3-year anniversary. We also took Pam’s brother Jeff and his daughter Veronika to a special exhibit from the Tudor dynasty period in England at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

 

In June we had a beautiful quartz countertop installed in our kitchen. We also entertained Chris’s niece Angela and her husband Kevin as they traveled to New Hampshire to visit their son Braden who is attending law school at the University of New Hampshire.

 

On August 7, we flew to Paris to spend eight days in the “City of Lights.” We also planned to visit Copenhagen for another five days before returning home.  We celebrated our Anniversary on August 8 with brunch at a sidewalk café, a walk through the Jardin d’ Tuileries and a stroll along the Seine River. We had dinner at another sidewalk café. During our week in France, we went to Giverny to visit Monet’s house and garden, toured the Musee d’ Orsay and visited the palace and gardens at Versailles.

 

After a week in Paris, Chris was not feeling well, and we went on to Copenhagen. Once we arrived there, we both tested positive for Covid. Following the CDC guidelines, Chris self-quarantined at the hotel while Pam found to a nearby grocery that had prepared foods for meals that enabled us to eat in our room. After five days, we both masked up and flew home.

 

In September, Chris hadn’t talked to his brother Ed in over a month and Ed’s best friend in the Dayton area contacted Chris saying he couldn’t get Ed to answer the phone either. Chris called the local police to do a well-being check and they found that Ed had passed away. We held a private graveside service and Ed was buried next to his grandparents in Columbus.

 

In October, Chris shaved his goatee and went to a Halloween party as Johnny Carson’s dowager Aunt Blabby. Other holiday events included a tour of Stan Hywet Hall in Akron and a holiday music concert by the choral groups and brass choir of the University of Akron. 

 

And finally, a crew from Ohio Edison arrived this week and dug an eight-foot-long trench in our front yard to repair an underground electric line. So, we began and ended the year with excavation, and I’ll need to get some grass seed next spring.

 

We hope all of you have a great 2024!

Covid Interruptus-Again

 

It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. We had planned to return to Paris and then visit other locations in Europe in 2020 to celebrate our 50^th Anniversary on August 8, 2020. However, the Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing by then and international travel was all but impossible.

Fast forward to 2023 and the pandemic is mostly a memory. Pam and I had isolated ourselves at home for much of the 2020 as restaurants, theaters, sporting events and other public gatherings were shut down. Things were still uncertain in early 2021, so we postponed our big trip until this summer.

Then, this past March, I had to have a significant surgery that put me on the shelf for several weeks. By late May, I had recuperated enough that we began to plan our “50 plus 3” Anniversary trip. In early June we booked a flight to Paris and reserved a hotel there for about a week. Then we booked a flight to Copenhagen, Denmark and planned to spend four days there before coming home.

We were scheduled to leave from Cleveland the evening of August 7 and return on August 20. That way, we could celebrate our Anniversary on August 8 in Paris, visit several sites there and then have a few days to explore Copenhagen. We had spent one night in Denmark’s capital in 2017 and were looking forward to seeing more of it.

While I had recovered from my surgery, I was still concerned about my chronic asthma condition before the trip. I had gotten a respiratory infection at the end of our trip in 2017 and that messed up our three days in Rome. But we went ahead with our plans and scheduled several tours in Paris for this trip. 

The day we were scheduled to depart, I received a text from American Airlines saying that our flight from Cleveland to Philadelphia had been cancelled. We were scheduled to go from Philly to Paris later that evening. Less than two hours later, I received another text saying we could take a flight to Chicago and then connect with a flight to Paris.

Brian had a work commitment that evening, so his girlfriend took us to the airport, and we boarded our flight to Chicago. That flight left about 20 minutes late and we only had about an hour to make our connecting flight to Paris from Chicago. We made a 20-minute sprint to get from one concourse to another at O’Hare but made our flight.

After the overnight flight, we arrived in Paris at about 11AM and took a cab to our hotel. They stored our luggage because the room wasn’t ready, and we found a nice sidewalk café to have lunch and then returned to the hotel to get our room. Our hotel was located near the Garnier Opera house and the St. Madeline church, and it turned out to be an excellent location.

That night we had a pleasant dinner at another nearby café and crashed at the hotel. The next day, we walked down to the Jarden d’ Tuileries and then to see the Seine River. The following day, we were scheduled for a trip to Giverny to see Monet’s house and garden. The tour guide met us at the hotel, and we boarded a van for the hour-and-a half trip. There was another young American couple of in the van with their five-year-old daughter along for the trip. As we started, I noticed the young girl coughing often, but she was wearing a mask. I put on my mask, and we proceeded to Giverny. 

The tour went well. Monet’s home was impressive and there were plenty of examples of his paintings as well as those of his contemporaries on display. We then saw the extensive gardens that covered several acres and were the inspiration for many of his paintings. We returned to Paris with the same couple and their coughing daughter.

The next day, we toured the Musee d’Orsay and had a very good guide named Humberto. He was from Portugal and very well-educated about the artists. I also like the fact that because he wasn’t French, a few of his comments were somewhat “tongue in cheek” as he discussed the significance of some paintings as they were related to the French Revolutions of the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

The next day was a rest day and Pam wandered around the area near the hotel and went window shopping while I sipped coffee and watched people. That evening we went to dinner at a restaurant near the Eiffel Tower and waited until sunset to see it lit up. There were thousands of people on the plaza near the Trocadero with multiple food and souvenir vendors and a DJ playing pop music. It was a very festive site, and I took a selfies of Pam and I in front of the tower. After taking my last picture, I turned and stumbled on the edge of a step and fell, banging my knee. 

We took a cab back to our hotel and I wanted to put ice on my knee, but there were no ice machines in the hotel. Fortunately, there was a small refrigerator in the room and placing a bottle of chilled water against my knee provided relief.

On Sunday, we got an unpleasant surprise. That weekend was the Catholic feast of the Assumption and nearly all the restaurants near our hotel were closed. Fortunately, about a block from our hotel, there was a small shop like a bodega and we bought ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch. 

That afternoon, we were scheduled to meet our tour guide for our trip to see the palace and gardens at Versailles. About 15 of us met our guide Oscar at a Metro station near the Invalides. We then got on the Metro for a couple of stops before boarding the train to Versailles. Once we got off the train, we had a very taxing walk to get to the palace. 

It was warm and humid that day and I couldn’t keep up with Oscar and the rest of the group. Pam tried to keep up with the guide but stay in visual contact with me. The station was 1.9 km from the palace (about 1.2 mile), and I didn’t think I could make it. We arrived at the entrance to the palace grounds and a new guide, Marie, was handing out the wireless receivers and headsets for the tour. She saw how late I arrived after the rest of the group, and she suggested I skip the garden tour and meet the group later at the entrance to the palace.

So, I went to the snack bar for a bottle of water and rest while Pam and the rest of the group toured the gardens. Pam said later that the garden tour involved a lot of walking, and it would have been very difficult for me.  About 45 minutes later, I met the group at the gate to the palace.

The Versailles palace is very impressive, and Marie did a good job explaining the history of the palace and the art pieces there. What bothered me was the size of the crowd. We spent at least an hour crowded with hundreds of other people as we moved from room-to-room through the palace.

When the tour ended, we were told that we could board a train to Paris at a closer station. The ride back was more relaxed, and we took a cab back to the hotel. We found a Japanese restaurant close to our hotel for dinner and I bought a bottle of Cutty Sark Scotch at the bodega.

 

We awoke Monday morning, and I didn’t feel well at all. I had a cough and had awakened during the night covered in sweat. We had a cruise of the Seine River scheduled for that afternoon, but I told Pam I didn’t want to take it. She found a coffee shop near our hotel, and I spent a lot of time there on Monday and Tuesday afternoons resting while she explored the area around our hotel.

Wednesday morning, we were scheduled to fly to Copenhagen. Our hotel normally provides a complimentary shuttle bus to the airport, but none were available because of the holiday. So, they provided us with a free breakfast that would have cost 32 Euro. But we had to take a regular cab to the airport that cost 60 Euro. 

Terminal One at Charles de Gaulle International Airport is a massive multi-level structure serving a couple of dozen airlines. It took us about 30 minutes to find the SAS Airline counter and then we had to stand in line for another 30 minutes to check our bags. Then we proceeded to go through security to get to the gate. But to get to security, we had to traverse an escalator and then we got on a long and hilly automated walkway. Yes, it was hilly and in my weakened condition I almost fell twice, the second time when we were getting off at the end.

As we waited in the security line, I noticed this one senior agent giving me the “skunk eye.” I was sweating profusely, and I was worried that he might pull me out of the line to check for Covid. At this point, I was beginning to believe I might have Covid, but I hadn’t tested myself yet. 

When we arrived at our hotel in Copenhagen, we were able to check in immediately and we dropped off out bags in our room and went to the bar to have lunch. After paying 26 Euro each for a large hamburger with fries, we went back to room. Pam went for a walk around the hotel. I decided it was time for a Covid test and it was positive. 

When Pam got back, we started to explore our options.

While she was out walking, I turned on the TV and one of the few channels with English was CNN international. Fortunately, there was a segment about the uptick in Covid cases around the world and Dr. Sanjay Gupta reviewed the current CDC guidelines for Covid—five days of isolation from the onset of symptoms and then wear a mask in public for the next five days. Since my symptoms started Monday, we figured I should stay in the room until the weekend and then wear a mask when we were scheduled to fly home on Sunday. So, I spent the rest of the week mostly in my room with an occasional visit to an outside patio off the bar area.

The Tivoli Hotel is about 14 stories and has 700 rooms. It also has the most phenomenal breakfast buffet I have ever seen that was included in the room price. I would put on a mask go to the buffet each morning and select my food making sure to stay as far away from people as I could. For lunch, there was a room service, which was expensive or some less costly prepared food at a small coffee shop.

Pam went sightseeing and did some shopping one day using the Hop-on-Hop-off bus. She also discovered that there was shopping mall about a 10-minute walk from the hotel that had a sizable supermarket with a prepared food section. So that’s what we ate for lunch and dinner during my quarantine. 

Finally on Sunday, we checked out of the hotel and went to the airport for the flight to JFK. The Delta flight went well, and we arrived in New York about a half-hour early. After nearly 8 hours in the air, we had to wait another 15 minutes on the plane for a gate to open. We then spent an hour going through immigration, getting our baggage and the rechecking it before going through TSA security again.

We had about four hours before our last flight was scheduled to leave for Cleveland. Then there was a mechanical issue with the plane we were supposed to take, and it took another two hours to before we took off. Brian picked us up at CLE and we finally arrived home at about 2AM.

We left our bags in the living room, and I filled a glass with ice and Evan Williams Bourbon and sat down in my favorite chair. After the Bourbon, I promptly crashed until morning. 

It was so good to be home!