It rained all day Sunday and I went for a walk with Sam. It wasn’t a driving rain but rather a slow, steady rain - perfect for the flowers that had just been planted. Perfect for a quiet day off.
When I was a kid, sometimes, on a rainy day, I would walk to the far end of the middle school fields, down to the far corner where there was a small, hidden refuge.
This patch of solitude sat below eye level, down about four or five feet - which was not a lot, but it was enough to make it nearly invisible from a distance.
On one side, it was protected by a thin line of trees and brush, separating it from the streets and sidewalks beyond. On the other side were the approaching fields. But in between the fields and the shallow banks, there was a surrounding ring of overgrown grass and wildflowers, which made it nearly indistinguishable from the greenery beyond.
Aside from the ring of wildflowers and aside from the five foot banks, this refuge consisted of two main features. The first was a very small pond - a glorified puddle, really. The second was a large cement culvert which sat at one end of this small pond. Rainwater, collected by the various storm drains scattered around the distant school, traveled through the culvert, under the fields, before emptying into the pond.
The culvert was fairly large, certainly large enough to sit in. On those rainy days, I would climb down the banks of the pond and perch myself about a foot or so inside the culvert. With my feet pressed against one side and my back against the other, the small stream of water would pass under my legs, feeding into the pond just outside.
As I sat, I would listen to the stillness. There was nothing but the sound of the flowing water and of the rain as it fell on the fields and trees around me. From the shelter of this cave, I would watch as the raindrops fell on the surface of the pond, their ringlets growing and fading, over and over and over again.
It rained all day Sunday and I went for a walk with Sam. We took our umbrellas and drove to the train yard, where we parked and walked along the adjoining bike path. We walked down through the woods, past the newly planted fields, down to the iron bridge, where we stood in our rainy day silence and watched and listened as the river flowed beneath us.
After a while, Sam and I walked back through woods, back through the stillness. As we walked, I listened to the sound of our footsteps. I listened as the rain fell through the trees and tapped on our umbrellas. And I listened as the distant sound of river gradually faded away behind us.
It's been a while since I've re-posted something from the past and since this has been another long week and I'm completely fried, this seems as good a time as any.
Another good reason, at least for me, is that for some odd reason, this one has been on my mind. Here, from January 10th, 2014 is a Friday Night Video...
So, what will it be tonight? You would think with so many weeks
having gone by where I haven’t written anything, that I would have a
pretty good backlog going. But it doesn’t really work that way with me.
Most of what I put down here is pretty much spur of the moment- which
should be pretty obvious.
The family watched an old
movie over the holiday called “Remember the Night” and I was going to
write a little about it here, but I couldn’t find a clip of it that I
was happy with. Maybe another time.
Instead, I’ll go a completely different direction and post something from my childhood. I know, this is shocking.
I
have a feeling I’ve written about this before, but I don’t have the
energy or inclination to search back through this blog to find it. So I
apologize in advance if you've read something like this before- but
somehow, I think that’s pretty unlikely.
I think every
movie holds something different for different people. Maybe it’s the
movie itself, or maybe it’s where it was seen or who it was seen with.
Sometimes the differences might be subtle, sometimes they might be
profound. This clip relates to an early Saturday afternoon from my
preteen years in the early sixties. I think I must have been maybe nine
or ten years old. I can’t tell you much about that particular day, other
than it was raining- raining hard, as I remember. My brother and I,
along with the rest of the family, had been trapped indoors for I don’t
know how long, but I have the sense that it may have been for quite a
while.
Nowadays, kids might go to an indoor gym or rock
climbing on a rainy day. Back then, we had the Paramount Theater. Dad
decided to treat my brother and I to a matinee at the Paramount. He told
us they were showing “a western”. Back then, matinees were usually
horror movies left over from the fifties, but it wasn’t unheard of for
the occasional western to get thrown into the mix.
Anyway,
I don’t remember Dad waiting to see if we wanted to go or not. Before I
knew what was happening, the Rambler was screeching up to the curb
under the big marquee. My brother and I barely had the chance to climb
out of the station wagon before Dad screeched away and disappeared into
the pouring rain. I’m not even sure we had time to close the car door.
Steve
and I worked our way through the wet mob outside and into the theater-
along with what seemed like a thousand other boys about our ages. First,
we made our way to the refreshment counter- where we stocked up on
popcorn, jawbreakers, fireballs and Jujy Fruits, then we made our way
into the theater where we “settled” into our seats.
I
remember the theater being complete havoc before the movie started. This
was back in the day when movie theaters had only one huge screen, and
most theaters, like the Paramount, had a balcony as well. From the
balcony, jawbreakers and popcorn rained down on those of us below, and
the noise level was something you might expect at a football game- only
louder. Finally, the room lights dimmed and the rain of snack food
abated slightly while a cartoon flickered on the giant screen in front.
This
lull lasted for maybe ten minutes until the main feature started.
Then, a deeper hush fell over the mob which lasted about thirty seconds
or so while the movie began. This was followed by growing murmurs of
confusion and the confusion grew into hostility, before things went
completely out of control- and it only got worse from there.
Here,
my friend, are some clips from "The Western” that me, my brother, and
probably every other little boy there, had been promised on this rainy
Saturday afternoon.
I
don’t remember for sure, but I think this was the time that they
actually stopped the movie, turned up the lights, and the manager came
out and yelled at us- just like at school. But it was pretty much the
definition of empty threats. What was this guy going to do- take names?
Call our parents? Assuming any of us would be foolish enough to give him
our real names, and assuming that he was going to take the time to call
the homes of hundreds of kids, this also assumed that our parents would
actually agree to come and get us. None of this was likely. He knew it,
and we knew it.
So, once something vaguely resembling
“quiet” finally came over the theater- at least enough for him to
pretend that his anger actually had some effect on us- the disgusted
manager stomped back up the aisle and back through the double doors. The
lights dimmed once again, and the movie, as well as all of the havoc,
picked up right where it left off- barely missing a beat.
I
never felt bad for that guy. As far as I was concerned, it was his own
fault. Who in their right mind shows a movie like this for a Saturday
matinee? You know you’re going to be trapped indoors with a bunch of
young kids- most likely all boys (did girls ever go to Saturday
matinees?). And you know it’s going to last for probably a couple of
hours. And you know, through nobody’s fault but your own, that these
kids are going to be all hopped up on soda and candy. So, you’ve packed
the cannon with this volatile mix and now you light the fuse with a
movie like this? What did he expect would happen? That manager should
have been out there thanking us for not burning the place to the ground.
Like
I said, movies mean something different to different people. I know Mom
likes musicals. I’m pretty sure she likes this one. But I’m also pretty
sure that when she thinks of this one, she’s not thinking about getting
hit in the head with jawbreakers or having buckets of popcorn dumped on
her. A part of me thinks that that's kind of too bad. This, I think, is
one of those movies that’s better when you see it in a theater.
As you know, Sam and I religiously run errands every Saturday. We might go to the bank, we might go to the post office, we might go to the Farmer's Market. All of those places are infrequent and optional. What's not optional is going to the local Food Club and the grocery store.
Oh, we might shake things up by going to the grocery store first, and then the Food Club, but it's always those two places.
As you also may know, I resent self checkouts. The Food Club has several of these and except for a couple of rare instances, I choose to have nothing to do with them - that is, until this past Saturday when Sam and I went on our usual errands and the Food Club felt it necessary to have only one manned register open.
I was about third in a long and growing line, and the first person who didn't already have anything placed on the belt, when an associate came over and asked me if she could ring me out on the self checkout register.
Sam and I followed her over to the other register, under the watchful glare of the other poor souls in line. What happened next? Well, let me let my email complaint to "Customer Service" do the talking. I wrote this when Sam and I first got home. Here it is verbatim (aside from the redactions)...
Hello, I've been a member for years, going every Saturday to your redacted location. Today was the first time in all of those years that I have been to this store and there was only one manned register open. I made a comment to one of your sales associates in passing, that you must be short handed today. The response I got was along the lines of, "No. The company is just trying to encourage customers to use the self check-out." If this is true, boy, is this a mistake! I was a loyal redacted customer for years, easily spending hundreds of dollars a month. Now and in recent years, I avoid it like the plague - and I'm not alone. The few times I go in, I usually regret it. There are often long lines and the people in those lines resent being "encouraged" to use the self checkout. I know this from personal experience. There is a reason people like the personal touch of those at the registers. In my opinion, you should be celebrating the service you offer, not undermining it. I am not a person that emails things like this lightly. It's rare, in fact. But I feel strongly that if this is the direction you're going, it's a mistake. In case you want to make sure this is legit, my membership number is: redacted. Thanks for you time.
Almost immediately, I received the following response - and before you ask, this is also verbatim. Any missing punctuation, words, sentences, or coherent thoughts are not due to the inadequacies of my copy and pasting skills. Here you go...
Hi redacted,
Thank you for contacting redacted.
I do apologize in regards to this happening in your local club. I know we are making improvements in regards to the local club to improved definitely not run our members away so again I do apologize about that. Please continue to be patient. I will be sending over an email to the upper management team of the local club to look into this matter and get it resolved. Your opinion does matter to us and it will be heard.
Thank you for being a loyal member.
This response is a little bit of an impressionist painting to me - in that it's giving me the impression, the feeling of an answer.
The other thing is, I wonder if the Customer Service Rep was supposed to insert the name of my local club in each place that it says, "local club." You know, something to personalize it. Otherwise, it becomes a little generic. Maybe they're banking on the fact that I'll be too distracted by tying to figure out what the missing words and sentences were.
Anyway, thinking that the Customer Service Representative and I were not quite on the same page, I, in turn, sent a response...
I want to be clear that my comments are in no way a criticism of
any personal at my local store. If anything, it's quite the opposite.
They are a huge part of why my son and I enjoy shopping there.
My
email is solely to express concern that if the Corporate Office thinks
that encouraging people to use self-checkouts is a positive move, it's
not (in my opinion.) You have a valuable resource in your personnel and
you may be underestimating the role they play in serving your customers.
Things went silent after that - until today. Today I came home to an email with a link at the bottom of the page, asking me to take a customer satisfaction survey because, "[my] feedback is important to [them]."
I clicked the link and it brought me to a brief questionnaire, of five or six questions. Each question offered a me a single choice from a selection of five or six responses.
It was one of those surveys that asked questions such as, how happy was I with promptness of the response. How do I answer that? The response couldn't have been any quicker but the choices for an answer only ranged from "extremely" to "not at all" and didn't include grey areas such as, "the response was barely coherent."
Other questions were asking me to rate if the issue was resolved and how happy I was with the resolution - again, all answers formatted in a preordained set of selections; again, with no shades of grey choices such as, "How the hell do I know" Or "I doubt it if you don't even understand my comment."
I don't know if any of this has any impact beyond me getting something off my chest. But in the end, it hasn't even done that. All it's done has added another item to the long, long list of things that I resent/frustrate me - the same list that contains, among other things, self checkout registers.
As I continue to travel on the dark and rutted road known as the SSI process, I had one glimmer of hope the other day. Out of the blue, a state health care card showed up with Sam's name on it. There was no accompanying literature, other than the multilingual disclaimer the card was attached to. But the point is, it showed up and I didn't have to do anything.
Then, I came to my senses and figured that I should investigate a little bit.
After a couple of phone calls and a couple of emails, I came to find out that, because Sam has applied for and qualifies for SSI (with certain restrictions), he automatically qualifies for State Health Care.
About a week after the card showed up, a thick packet of papers showed up in the mail. According to the letter that accompanied the thick packet, this was information about various healthcare plans from which Sam had to choose.
Also according to that same letter, Sam had to make his decision and fill out the form, and the state needed to receive it two weeks from the date at the top of the letter. This date happened to be about a week before we received this packet and since I’m pretty good at math, by my calculations, I figured that this left us only about a week (give or take) to get this done and it back to them.
Reading through the helpful healthcare packet, I found they have a plethora of choices. They have your ACO’s, your MCO’s, your PCC’s and of course, your ACPP’s. Even though all of this may have been obvious and self explanatory to the layman (of which I am one) it was not as obvious and clear as you might think. (I was, however, grateful for the addition of more acronyms in my life. I have been feeling somewhat acronym-deprived as of late and this filled the void nicely. Thank-you State Healthcare Agency.)
Since I continue to have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, and even though the clock was ticking, I decided I had better put my instincts for immediate gratification and resolution on hold, and wait until the next morning, when I could call Sam’s doctor and ask them what plans they participate in.
So, the next morning, I spoke to a woman at the doctor’s office and she told me that they took something called the BMC plan and another one (which I forget) - but only the MCO plan for either. But, she added, they also take the PCC plan. Okay, that was good enough for me. I recognize those letters! Even though I had, and still have, no idea what they mean - at least it’s something.
Sam and I filled out the application that evening and I mailed it the next day, which was Thursday. Even with the “lost” week, this was still within the deadline.
With the form in the mail, there was nothing left to do now except sit back and enjoy life (and do some laundry.)
On Saturday morning, Sam received two separate letters from the state healthcare agency. Both of these letters stated that as of the fifth of this month (a mere three days after the date of the original letter,) Sam was now enrolled in an entirely different health care plan, with an entirely different health care provider, than the one he had just chosen.
Since this was Saturday and none of the state agencies were open, and since I was still enjoying life (and doing laundry,) I decided to wait and call first thing Monday morning.
On Monday, it was back to making phone calls. I called the Health and Human Services Office to try to get this straightened out. The helpful, semi-interested woman I spoke with, looked up Sam’s information and informed me that because Sam was no longer a minor, she “couldn't speak to me unless Sam signed a waiver.”
“Okay,” I said, “How do I get a waiver? " "You have to ask for one,” she said. *Pause* “Okay, who do I ask?”
Well, to cut to the chase and save us all some time, it turns out that I had to ask her for the waiver - which I did.
The form showed up in the mail yesterday. But rather than fill it out, Sam and I let sanity prevail. Instead, I fixed Sam some dinner, did the dishes - and then we went for a walk along the canal.
This weekend, we'll deal with the form and get it out in the mail. Then, hopefully, we'll get back to enjoying life.
And, with a little luck, I'll find some time to finish the laundry.
Here are some more photos from my commute. These were taken over the last few years and most, I believe, have been previously posted in various places around this blog. I'd tell you where, but I can't remember... and I don't want to dig back because I have an aversion to reading my older posts (and my newer ones too, for that matter.)
Despite constantly complaining about my commute - or more specifically, about the people in front of me on my commute - there are plenty of times when I think about how lucky I am to be traveling these roads. Some of these areas are quite beautiful.
Yesterday morning was one of those mornings where the cool of the morning clashed with the heat of the night - or maybe it was the other way around. But whichever came first, the end result was a heavy, low fog which blanketed much of my surroundings.
This picture doesn’t come anywhere close to doing the scene justice, but it was about all that I could manage at the time. A couple of miles from where I took this picture is where I come to a section of the road which follows down a valley and crosses over a river.
On mornings like this, the fog lays low and thick, hovering over the path of the river, yet it remains distinct from the upper mist which filters between the silhouetted mountains above. Behind the crest of these hills, behind the rising veils, the muted disk of the just rising sun filters through .
After the road crosses the river, it briefly becomes the main street of a small town. I pass an old grocery store, an elementary school and a post office - each of them quiet in the early morning hours. As I continue on, the road dips and winds and then climbs again, bringing me to the edge of a forest.
As I wind through the woods, the sunshine, first on my right, then in front of me, and then to my right again, flickers over hilltops and cuts through the branches until I reach the forest edge, where I travel down a sharp hill.
At the bottom of the hill, I pass a pond on my left, and then I cross over a small river. On mornings like this, both of their waters are covered with wisps of awakening fog, fog which rises in slow motion, before fading away in the early morning sunshine.
I approach another small town and the second half of my ride becomes more mundane than the first. When I run into problems, this is where it usually begins. And these frustrations often overshadow the ride entirely. But I guess that's the way it is with a lot of things.
There are plenty of times that this drive can be frustrating, and I wish it didn’t put me so far from home. But there are parts of the drive that I often overlook, parts that are quite beautiful.
Like so many things, I'm sure that someday I’ll look back on all of this, even the frustrating parts, and I’ll wish that I could make the drive, just one more time.
If any of my kids ever catch me buying, or worse, reading a magazine like this, they have my permission to pull the plug - even if I'm not hooked up to anything.
I’ve been absorbed with SSI dealings this week. Rather than go on about all of the fascinating minutia involved (you’re welcome) I thought I would instead share some lovely photos of the walk Sam and I went on last weekend.
As you may know. One of favorite places to go on walks is along the bike path that starts at the train yard. This path isn’t maintained during the winter so this was our first visit since last fall.
When we arrived, I was a little surprised to see so many cars - probably about seven or eight of them. Usually, there are only one or two and more often than not, Sam and I are the only ones there - which, along with the scenery (and Sam's company - obviously) is the biggest selling point, as far as I’m concerned. Thankfully, most of the people there seemed to be leaving.
Our walk was a little bit longer than usual - maybe due to the overlong winter, maybe due to the nice weather. Whatever the reason, we followed the path as far as it goes, looped around some side streets and then headed back to the car.
This jaunt included, not only crossing the Bridge of Death, but it also included going as far as to pass by the lovely sewage treatment plant. The one or two times that we walked by this place in the past, not only was the view of the plant obscured by the summertime foliage, but apparently the winds had been blowing in a more fortunate direction. On this particular walk, neither was the case.
Anyway, onto the photos…
Here we are at the train yard, just before starting our walk. Off in the distance is a train getting ready to pull away. Between the train and ourselves (and out of view in this photo) is a pile of brand new railroad ties, each freshly marinated in a nice thick coating of creosote.
Anyone who knows Sam, knows that he’s sensitive to smells. It’s not unusual for Sam to start up with a barely concealed coughing fit when he’s within a half a mile of someone who looks like they might be thinking of lighting up a cigarette. As expected, the smell of the creosote was not to his liking.
Sam commented on the smell and I took this as my cue to give him a short and uninteresting explanation of what the creosote is used for - which, of course, mattered not at all to Sam. All that mattered was that it smelled.
So much for watching the trains. Time to go on the walk...
Here we are, or rather, here’s Sam at the beginning of the path.
This is a photo taken of the farm fields at the south border of the path. Two years ago it was filled with strawberry plants as far as you could see. Last year, it was filled with pumpkins. This year? Who knows. Stay tuned!
This is a view from the Bridge of Death. It’s hard to get a sense of just how high the water is and how rapidly it’s flowing. Even though I'm not crazy about the high, rushing water, Sam and I briefly stood and watched as all of the debris of winter washed away below our feet - all of the broken branches, all of the dead leaves, all of the lost skiers from up north - all washing away downstream, just like nature intended.
Here’s a photo of Sam, taken after we crossed the bridge and right after we passed by the treatment plant. Guess which direction the wind was blowing? If you guessed in our direction, you guessed correctly!
And here we have a photo of Sam getting away from the springtime aroma of the sewage treatment plant, and heading back over the Bridge of Death, back to the train yard.
By the time we got back, all of the other cars had left and with the train long gone. It was especially quiet. I enjoy these long walks with Sam and he enjoys them too. At least, I like to think so.
I hope we come back again soon and when we do, I hope that the water below the bridge has started to recede and I hope that the wind is blowing in the other direction.
