20 May 2013 Nine mile skid

Cassi Creek:  Yesterday I drove the second leg of a trip from Jefferson City MO to home in Chuckey TN.  I expected the leg to take about hours.  That would have resulted in the journey’s end at about 1500 according to my trusty companion Garmin. 

          The morning began well. I was showered, packed, and loaded by 0600.  The motel breakfast service opened at 0600 and I was the first guest to attack it.  0645 found me fed, gas topped off, and onto the interstate.  Fog rapidly rolled in on the Ohio valley and as I crossed the Ohio at Paducah drizzle began to be present in sufficient amounts to require wipers.

          When I filled up with gas at Nashville, the roads were still mostly dry but the clouds appeared ominous as they built in. 

          This is, I know, a recap from last night’s post.  It was a highly dangerous leg of the trip that I don’t care to repeat again. 

          I-40 is old highway across mountainous terrain.   It carries a tremendous amount of car traffic and a comparable volume of tractor/trailer rigs.  There are two rest areas between Knoxville and Nashville.  These are 58 miles apart.  I stopped at the area nearest Nashville to stretch and then returned to the road.  The rain began within ten minutes. and continued to Knoxville. 

          With combined fog and torrential rains, visibility rapidly declined to about 50 feet.  Those cars running without lights were nearly invisible.  Even more dangerous were trucks with white trailers and only their lower taillights showing.  Those trailers blend into the surrounding rain and road spray.  The relatively dim lights are next to useless.  In several cases, I was unable to see such a rig in front of me until I was in that 50-foot gap. 

          Along with anyone possessed of a will to survive the highway’s risks, I had my emergency flashers engaged and tried to keep up with the prevailing traffic.  Demonstrating a truly dangerous ignorance, three times I found a car in front of me suddenly stopping and remaining on the traffic lanes. 

          When the winds  gusting at sufficient velocity to affect the Pathfinder on a dry pavement, with ponding on the lower side of the curves and in the valleys, just holding the road became problematic during the worst of the storms.  Factor in partially resurfaced traffic lanes with a 1-2 inch drop from inner to outer lane.  Changing lanes required planning and concentration. 

          I pulled up the radar loop for that location and time this morning.  If I had been able to see what I was driving into, I would have pulled off at a truck stock or any place where I could wait out the storm. 

          The weather delay resulted in two additional road hours.  I had just enough time to unload the Pathfinder before it began to rain here. 

          I’ve driven on laterite roads during monsoon storms.  I was delivering a jeep load of fragmentation grenades to a perimeter bunker under blackout conditions when the jeep skidded off the road and landed on its side in a ditch. I’ve driven across Colorado and Kansas in blizzard/ice storm conditions.  Yesterday’s trip was near the top of my “I’d rather not repeat the experience” list.  After that drive, mowing and trimming are less odious.

          Like any landing, one can walk away from, ending up safely home makes the trip yesterday a good one.  Getting safely home is always good.

19 May 2013 highways 50, 54, and 61revisited

Cassi creek:  Miles add up more rapidly than they used to.  I’ve logged a lot of miles since 11May.  As I write this, I still have a lot to log. 

          Sunset last Saturday found me in Marion IL, trying to find a vacant motel room on a college graduation weekend.  I wound up in an over-priced, double, smoking room.  I need a place for the night, as the next major city was St. Louis.  Taking the room was the best option as my eyes were burning and fogging over.  I’d already run through construction zones with one-lane, patch and pothole surfaces and traffic cones and barrels everywhere.  I knew I had to opt for safety and get off the road.  That knowledge plus the presence of a Steak and Shake within walking distance of the hotel made the needed stop decision. 

          Saturday the 19^th finds me watching sunrise it approximately the same location.  I’m in a different hotel with a non-smoking room.  Easier to breathe. They’ll feed me breakfast before I go and whether they kiss me and respect me if of no concern.

          I have about 550 miles to cover today. I’ll get away about 5 hours earlier than I did yesterday and drive the construction zone in a better-rested state. 

Later.  Home again and off the road.  Drove through fog and drizzle from Marion IL to Nashville TN.  Then, the bottom fell out of the sky and the intelligent thing to do would have been to pull into a gas station or any place off the road.  I’ve displayed more intelligence previously. 

18 May 2013 Night on bald mountain

Cassi Creek:  I’m interested in finding as many of my clinical rotation classmates as possible. But the task, after 40 years, is going to be rather difficult. 

I have only maiden names for the women in the class.  Most, if not all of them will have married but may or may not have retained their maiden names. 

          One phone number obtained on line, served only to provide a “She’s not here any longer, we have no idea where she is.”  Another based on dim memories and a wild ass guess landed me in a HR voice mailbox.  Going to be a lot of that. 

I should enjoy the current Doonesbury comic strips. 

Then, there’s the physical changes.  I had most of my hair then, although I think I had 18 months of growth trimmed off for the class picture.   I weigh somewhat more now, and I’ve long sense given up wearing my surving pair of jungle boots. 

Cue music, roll the Disney animation.

           

17 May 2013 When in doubt, twirl

Cassi Creek:  When lost, listen to the music play.  If twirling coincides with the music, so much the better! 

          The development of satellite radio services has brought into being, something light-years from the radio programming available in my youth.   I grew up in the Midwest, that vast region between the mountains to the east and those to the west that was populated by 50 – 5000 watt sundowner AM stations.  That’s right, AM stations that signed off at local sundown. 

          The hours between dusk and dawn were the hours when we learned to try tuning in the 50,000-watt major urban market stations that were below the radio horizon, but sometimes could be caught on what was called “the skip,” the reflected signal bent back to earth by the Ionosphere.  That signal, often static laden and inconstant, did not cover the entire middle states.  That left large areas of the nation with no nighttime commercial radio to listen to.  And in concert, that left immense highway miles through nowhere between here and there where whining static and distant thunderstorms filled the AM dial. 

          The expansion of FM outward helped.  FM, however, is line of sight and has nearly the same gaps in coverage as those ancient AM stations. 

          Stay tuned for the miraculous * track

16 May 2013 40 years and getting older

Cassi Creek:  “10 degrees and getting colder”  describes a search for fame and fortune that must be, at least temporarily abandoned in an effort to keep food in one’s belly.    Fame and fortune are difficult goals to realize under the best of conditions. 

          40 years and getting older, today’s edition, is about a chance encounter causing me to wonder where my classmates from clinical training have landed.  The rotation consisted of 16 students out of approximately 80 applicants, plus 3 Vietnamese who were supposed to return home and help form a cadre to teach clinical lab skills and procedures at a medical school in Saigon. 

          I doubt the women from VietNam can be located today.  However, they may have fled the NVA advance and wound up as immigrants. 

          A couple hours on line suggests that Kent M Feldsien, our clinical coordinator died at the age of 60.  He and I would sometimes take a day off and go fishing at one of the Missouri trout parks.  On one occasion, Charlie Spies joined us.  We three also skipped one day to go rabbit hunting.  We always caught fish, we never shot a rabbit.  Photographs of us in our blaze orange vests with our shotguns showed up in a photo [presentation at the UMMC hosted graduation that we, as a class, highjacked. Instead of a Path resident running the graduation, we collectively demanded Kent be offered the honor.  The Path department balked and we told them to cancel any ceremony unless Kent was the featured  speaker.  Surprisingly, they backed down. 

          I thought  I had  located one classmate, Anne E DeClue , now a physician.   A phone call this morning revealed that she has relocated.  The search starts over.  

15 May 2013 Reminisce all night long Cassi Creek: Ran across a rare occurrence yesterday. I met a Physical Therapist who very strongly resembles one of the women who did clinical rotations alongside me. In fact, after questioning her origins and comparing a 1972 class photograph, it appears that they are related. This caused me to do something I rarely do, look back at old classes and classmates. I have a PDF copy of that composite class photograph. That I do is also a strange coincidence but more of that later. I’ve never attended a high school reunion of my graduating class, and most likely will never attend one. I doubt that there is sufficient reason or interest in staging such an event for a 1973 MT class. However, since I received the class photo, I’ve wondered about a few of the classmates I recalled most vividly. There were two males in the class, Charlie Spies and me. Charley was married when the class began and so was I, Both VietNam vets, we’d shared many of the preliminary courses after we returned to campus. Charlie later was divorced from his first wife and married a classmate, Donna Shine. I know that they worked in forensic toxicology but have no idea of their current location. I recall Patty Bax who wanted the top graduating slot. She was an extremely intense young woman, very serious student, and I seem to recall her wearing an NROTC uniform. There were three young women from VietNam, bỏ lỡ Vui, thưa bà Hong, andthưa bà Ha. Ha and Hong were married and were careful to remain circumspect. Vui was not married and I believe enjoyed her time here as much as possible. They were participants in a medical schools exchange program. We sent the Path Dept chair, who returned with some serious parasitic infestations. Pathologist instructors included Dr. Asa Barnes, Dr. Daniel Rosenthal, Dr. Lamont Gaston, and Dr. Wally Rogers. One of the Path residents, a Dr. Vardiman who was a bit stiff in manner, inadvertently loaned his name to a new map projection when he uttered the semi-immortal words, “ If feces were red, the whole world would be pink.” Charlie and I found this too good to pass up. A red and pink Mercator projection soon appeared in the student lab. I’m looking for updates for Linda Allen, Patricia Bax, Angela Carlton, Anne D Declue, Jackie Ellenberger, Deborah Hart, Donna Harrison, Constance Marolf, Valerie Meuller, Virginia Mugford, Shiela Nelson, Bethel Perrin, Donna Shine, Charles Spies, and Shirley Toedebusch. I have a partial location for one of the women in the rotations. The chance that this entry will initiate any further contacts is slim. However, I have the time to write this today. As sung by Trout Fishing in America, “Reminisce all night long, but you can’t get there from here.”

15 May 2013  Reminisce all night long

Cassi Creek:   Ran across a rare occurrence yesterday.  I met a Physical Therapist who very strongly resembles one of the women who did clinical rotations alongside me.  In fact, after questioning her origins and comparing a 1972 class photograph, it appears that they are related. 

          This caused me to do something I rarely do, look back at old classes and classmates.  I have a PDF copy of that composite class photograph.  That I do is also a strange coincidence but more of that later. 

          I’ve never attended a high school reunion of my graduating class, and most likely will never attend one.  I doubt that there is sufficient reason or interest in staging such an event for a 1973 MT class. 

          However, since I received the class photo, I’ve wondered about a few of the classmates I recalled most vividly.  There were two males in the class, Charlie Spies and me.  Charley was married when the class began and so was I, Both VietNam vets, we’d shared many of the preliminary courses after we returned to campus.  Charlie later was divorced from his first wife and married a classmate, Donna Shine.  I know that they worked in forensic toxicology but have no idea of their current location. 

          I recall Patty Bax who wanted the top graduating slot.  She was an extremely intense young woman, very serious student, and I seem to recall her wearing an NROTC uniform. 

          There were three young women from VietNam, bỏ lỡ Vui,  thưa bà Hong, andthưa bà Ha.   Ha and Hong were married and were careful to remain circumspect.  Vui was not married and I believe enjoyed her time here as much as possible.  They were participants in a medical schools exchange program.  We sent the Path Dept chair, who  returned with some serious parasitic infestations. 

          Pathologist instructors included Dr. Asa Barnes, Dr. Daniel Rosenthal, Dr. Lamont Gaston, and Dr. Wally Rogers.  One of the Path residents, a Dr. Vardiman who was a bit stiff in manner, inadvertently loaned his name to a new map projection when he uttered the semi-immortal words, “ If feces were red, the whole world would be pink.”  Charlie and I found this too good to pass up.  A red and pink Mercator projection soon appeared in the student lab. 

          I’m looking for updates for Linda Allen, Patricia Bax, Angela Carlton, Anne D Declue, Jackie Ellenberger, Deborah Hart, Donna Harrison, Constance Marolf, Valerie Meuller, Virginia Mugford, Shiela Nelson, Bethel Perrin, Donna Shine, Charles Spies, and Shirley Toedebusch. 

          I have a partial location for one of the women in the rotations.  The chance that this entry will initiate any further contacts is slim.  However, I have the time to write this today.   If you are one of the people listed above, or know one of them, I'd be happy to provide you or them with a copy of the  photos.  I'd be interested, as well, in any updates and current photos to document 40 years passing. 

          As sung by Trout Fishing in America, 

“Reminisce all night long, but you can’t get there from here.”

James S Lenon  stev.lenon@gmail.com

14 May 2013 Pizza from the vault.

Cassi Creek:  People consider the first language you learn to speak as a mother tongue or milk language. 

          Is there also a mother clam chowder, a mother cheeseburger or a mother pizza that drags you swiftly back, salivating uncontrollably for a long ago favorite food? 

          The first time I had a pizza that wasn’t from a freezer case or that had a chef on the mix box was in autumn 1961.  I recall going into a new restaurant in the afternoon to try their pizza.  It was more exciting than I can describe, more delicious than any I’ve ever had since then.  It was worth spending bus money and walking home from uptown for the rest of the week. 

          It was/is owned and operated by a family who emigrated from Greece.  They’ve made a tremendous success of their business. 

          The pizzas were hand tossed in the front window in full view of customers and passersby by an older family member, uncle perhaps.  He always had flour-covered hands.  The waitresses wore dark skirts and most of them had white handprints on their butts.  Not acceptable today, merely a fact of life then. 

          I’ve eaten many pizzas there, dine in or carry out.  I’ve consumed many liters of coffee waiting to sober up enough to walk to the car that magically stayed in its lane and hit nothing on or off the road.

           I can recall one night when three of us spent an evening drinking in the Missouri River bottom lands then drove back across the river to get pizza.  We tried for the angle parking in the driveway to the state capital.  Somehow, the driver managed to park parallel to the road, in newly planted flowerbeds.  We figured we’d do more damage trying to correct the error so we made it across the main street to Arris’.  The waitress immediately came over with three cups and three pots of coffee.  Miraculously, we’d done no harm to anyone but ourselves.  We somehow escaped being ticketed for the parking violation, and two of us managed to avoid losing all the coffee and pizza. 

          Here’s the web site.  Look at the 1961 prices.

http://www.arrispizzaonline.com/#!untitled/zoom/c1k0z/imagewuq