My eyes widened in disbelief as I stared at the photostat of a document issued more than a hundred years earlier. My hands, holding the copy of my parent's marriage license trembled. I placed the document flat on my desk and studied it. Yes,there it was in white on black, my father stated his marriage to my mother in 1896 was his second marriage. He stated his age, 25 and my mother's age 20.
My mother died before my second birthday and my father died before my sixteenth birthday. I never heard my sisters or my father's sisters mention an earlier marriage. Did he tell my mother he'd been married before? My mother did not read or write English and paianfully learned to sign her name.
Papa, I sent for this copy in order to verigy your age and mama's age when you married. Your niece, Goldy, daughter of your youngest sister, Etta, and I are the sole survivors of our generation and we are preparing a family tree to give to 200 descendants, your grandchildren and great grandchildren as well as those of your sisters and Mama's sister.
Now, quesgtions crowded my mind. How old were you when you married the first time? Were you still in Russia at the time? Did you and your first wife have children? Most likely you did, you and Mama had nine children. What happend to them? Did they die at the hands of the Cossacks? Or did smallpox or a influenza epidemic cause their death? Did you decide to come to America to start a new life after they died? I know you sent for Mama's sister and bother and your four sisters.
We never found a marriage certificate among your meager personal belongings. Only a prayer shawl, phylacteries, a pocket watch and a silver ring with a large ruby, along with your gold rimmed glasses.
All your sisters, Mama's siter and brother, and all my sisters and my brother have died. There is no one alive to tell me your secret. Your secret is safe and yours alone.

HAWAII - LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT
TIM GLASBY WEEK 7 LANGUAGE

“I’ll have another daiquiri, Timothy. And don’t forget to use those lucious blood red strawberries you found at the market. Add one of those little blue paper umbrellas with the Chinese writing on it, please, they makes the cocktail so festive,” intoned Brian, my best friend and benefactor for this weeklong trip to Kona, Hawaii.
“No problem, Big B.,” I answered.
I thought I was going to hate this trip to Hawaii as I’m a city person and the thought of a week in the sun and water was not my idea of a vacation. However, flying over the islands, I was awestruck at the color of the water. So blue that they must have named the word after this ocean.
I served the cocktail on the vine-covered Lanai of our condo rental. The ocean was only one hundred yards away and the methodical sound of the waves breaking against the lava rock formations gave you a feeling of overall contentment.
Sitting with the sound of the ocean and the muted tones of the sunset, a strange calm came over me. So this was what the hoopla was all about, the reason, after a person came to Hawaii, they were ready to sell everything and move here without a second thought.
I sat back and even the heat and humidity didn’t effect me. I was from the Midwest, so I knew humidity. The warm tropical breeze and the ultra-blue waves crashing on the beach made me realize why people called these islands paradise.
Drinking the sweet rum flavored drinks I looked around and was surprised how many birds that inhabited the small back yard. Their colors were splendid. The greens, yellows, and blues of their feathers were so vibrant that your eyes would shiver at the variety they offered up for your optic nerves enjoyment.
Running from under one of the bushes, a small weasel like animal stood on his hind legs and chattered at us as if we were encroaching on his space. Brian smiled and informed, “They’re Hawaii’s squirrels. Cute, heah?”
“Yes,” I replied. Did I ever tell you I had an uncle that was killed by a weasel?”
“No, really?” answered Brian.
“Yes, he was on the twain twacks and didn’t hear the weasel,” I finished.
“One more bad joke like that and you get sent back to the mainland,” he warned.
“Pretty severe punishment for one bad pun, don’t you think?”
The next morning we walked along the beach and found a tide pool. Brian had warned, “Wear tennis shoes as the lava rocks are really sharp.”
Entering the water, I was dumbstruck that it was so warm. It was like a bath. The clarity of the water amazed me. You could see all kinds of underwater stuff going on. “I think I like it here,” I offered.
“I told you it was close to heaven,” replied Brian.
Wading into the warm blue surf, I felt how uneven the bottom was so I took extra care not to be pushed over into the water but to no avail. A wave pushed me over and my hand touched bottom. “Owe,” I yelled. “What the hell was that?”
When I stood, my hand was covered with little black spines. There must have been some kind of dye in them as my hand was black under the skin. “You must have landed on sea urchin,” Brian said.
“Why didn’t you tell me about those?” I questioned.
“You never asked.”
“Ouch, what the hell was that?” I ran back to the beach and saw that my legs and arms had small welts all over them.
“Oh, you must have gotten stung by some of those little jelly fish,” he informed me.
“Don’t say it, Brian, I didn’t ask, right?”
“There’s always some price you have to pay for beauty,” he answered.
Stumbling along the beach and the water’s edge, my feet began to get sore and I asked, “ Why do my feet feel like they been flogged?”
“Oh, that’s just part of the uneven lava surface. Your feet will toughen up in a week or so and you’ll be fine.”
“Great, since we’ll only be here for five days,” I replied.
“I’ve got masks and snorkels for us. We’ll go down to Pappalupapapa Beach tomorrow. It’ll be a lot smoother and there won’t be so many critters in the water.”
The next morning we headed around the island to Pappalupapapa Beach and Brian was right about the beach being much smoother. The water broke at a natural breakwater and there was a boat ramp that gradually lowered into the surf. Again, the area, complete with the coconut palm trees and turquoise water was gorgeous. “Okay, put the mask and snorkel on we’ll swim out and I’ll show you all the fish,” Brian advised.
“Did you forget the part where I told you that I didn’t know how to swim, Brian?” I inquired.
“Don’t worry about it,” he assured me, “I’ll be close by.
“If I drown, I’m never speaking to you again.”

“You’re not going to drown,” He reassured me. “I swim and scuba dive all the time. Besides, if you drown, who’ll make cocktails tonight?”
I reluctantly took the diving mask and snorkel and walked out into the water. Again it was as warm as a bath and, at 53 years old, I received my first swimming lesson. I took to it like a fish out of water. When I tried to explain the fear of relaxing and breathing through the device, Brian reminded me, “Don’t worry, I’m right here, and besides you will always float.”
I felt as assured as when, growing up, we were huckleberry picking and my younger twin brothers were prodding a beehive with a stick. They kept saying, “Don’t worry, we can outrun them.”
With great trepidation, I finally held my face under the water and breathed through the snorkel. I could tell my breathing was so labored that it must have sounded like a steam locomotive above my head.
I was enthralled by the underwater beauty. The multitude of beautiful colors of fish was as stunning as the birds in the back yard. The big difference was I didn’t have to worry about drowning while gazing on the birds.
I explained that I had enough of swimming and swimming lessons and I would just sit and enjoy the splendor and he could swim and float and look at all the pretty little fishes while I got some sun. Returning to the condo we sat and drank cocktails and watched the orange glow of the sun setting and I was again taken in by the magnificence of our 50th state.
The next morning we headed out to Volcano National Park. It was a two and a half-hour drive south and when we got there we were charged ten bucks to enjoy another of nature’s attractions that should have been free.
It is a huge crater, fifteen miles around the edge and about five miles across. The terrain is much like the black and white pictures we saw from our moon. Skirting the crater are huge vents of steam coming up from the ground, Brian remarked, “Aren’t they incredible?”
“Reminds me of my dry cleaners,” I replied.
The trip back took over four hours, as there is only one two-lane road that circles the island. We went to a neighborhood restaurant and the bill for two with wine was almost $200.00.
Our flight left the next morning and, again flying over the azure water, I noted the beauty, also noting, as I rubbed lotion on the second degree sunburn on my face and back, cortisone creame on the jellyfish welts along my arms and legs, and bandaids on the cuts and bruises on my feet,“It’ll be along time before I need to experience this much pretty in one setting.”

Dave Blodgett - Assignment #8

Locale: Amoco Oil Company District Office – Garden City, Long Island – New York – August 1963

We’re looking for weak spots in the regional sales organization and have decided to replace you as New York District Sales Manager, Dave.
You’re joking, Ray.
No, I’m serious.
For God’s sake, I’ve won every regional contest for the last two years by a wide margin.
How can I make myself more clear?
Why in hell should the best district sales manager in the region have to sit here and take this shit?
It’s your attitude. You don’t have the same enthusiasm I’m told you used to have.
Right. I just got through dumping 25,000 tires on 550 dealers who couldn’t sell food to a starving man. I know damn well most of those tires will be returned to the warehouse when the dealers can’t make the payments, and we’ll put the poor bastards out of business. Now our genius vice president of marketing in the general office wants us to dump another 25,000 donuts on them. The company can’t afford such stupidity.
You are no longer the New York District Sales Manager.
Does my boss sitting over there in the corner with the silly grin on his face agree?
Yes.
So, what do you have in mind? I do have a job, don’t I, after busting my butt for 12 years?
Regional office manager.
What’s the salary class?
Nine.
Nine! You expect me to take a two-step demotion when I can’t support my family on what I make now?
We think you can handle the job.
Right. To hell with it! I won’t take it. What else do you have?
The general office in Chicago has an opening for a marketing research analyst, but they want at least a masters degree.
What’s the salary class?
Twelve.
Get me an interview, Ray.
They need someone who can be productive immediately. You couldn’t be.
Really? Get me an interview.
No. This meeting is closed.
Then I’m going right over your head to Blaine.
Why waste your time?
Because you don’t know beans, and this is a stinking, rotten deal!

Locale: Next Day – Regional Manager Blaine Yarrington’s Office in Manhattan

Blaine, I can’t believe you agree with our new regional marketing manager that I am a weak link in the sales organization and I should take a two-step demotion to office manager. You know I have the best record of any district sales manager. I don’t understand what’s happening.
Dave, that’s not the message Ray was to deliver. We believe you can go farther long-term in staff work. You have an excellent mind that is not being utilized in marketing.
Can you get me an interview for the analyst job in Marketing Research?
Certainly, I’ll get Don on the phone right now.

Locale:Two Days Later – Don Warning’s Office – Marketing Research Department - Chicago

We’re looking for someone with broad field experience who can handle the discipline of research work—designing studies, conducing field surveys, analyzing data, writing reports and making action recommendations. Your file indicates you have a BA in economics from Carleton College magna cum laude and that you were elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Twelve years in sales from the bottom up. Started in 1951 working in a company training station. You’ve been promoted five times.
Yes, sir.
Our analysts have strong academic backgrounds in behavioral science but no field experience. That gets us into trouble. We need your help. I can offer you a senior research associate’s position, class 12.
Thanks. I won’t let you down.
Good. Welcome aboard.

Locale: One Year Later – Warning’s Office – Annual Performance Review

Gil gave you an outstanding performance evaluation and a maximum salary raise. He also recommended you for promotion to staff director. You have helped us gain respect from the entire field sales organization, and we have received many thanks for your Weekly Market Monitoring Report.
It’s been a great year, Don. I guess I should thank Ray for getting me out of New York and into work I really enjoy.
Where is Ray?
He left the company. I guess Amoco’s investment in him went down the drain.
And what happened to the guy who replaced you as New York Sales Manager?
Bert? He lasted six months, resigned and leased a Mobil service station.

MY FIRST JOURNEY

When I was eight years old, my mother took me on my first journey to Harbin, a city about 20 hours away by express train. The reason for the trip was to bring home my older brother who was sent to study there.

The preparation started a couple of months before. The seamstress made me few beautiful dresses. We also had new clothes for my brother. My mother packed the best clothes and presents into the large suitcase. Finally, the day of the departure arrived. We boarded the express train. I was very excited looking forward to new places. I sat by the window watching the fields and villages go by, and I don’t remember when I fell asleep.

The next day, we arrived to our destination. My brother, who was 13, and a young man, his chaperon, were there to meet us. We got our luggage and took an open coach driven by an old horse. Since there were only four seats, our largest suitcase was placed by the coachman’s feet. When we arrived to our brother’s place, my mother paid the coachman, and we got into the house. Shortly after, my mother started to open the suitcases. Suddenly she asked, “Where is the largest suitcase?” “I don’t know,” said the young man. “Didn’t you bring it in?” “I brought these two in.” “But we had another one, the largest one.” Thus, began our two-months stay in Harbin. The suitcase has never been found.

TSE
10/07/07
Assignment #8

MY FIRST TRIP

My driver helped me out of the van and then unloaded my suitcase and a little scooter. I waited with thirty-seven people, most of us tethered to tubing connected to portable oxygen tanks, while Jim Barnett handed out luggage tags. “You can board the bus now and sit anywhere you choose.”
Those of us with oxygen tanks were all graduates of a course in Pulmonary Rehab Education Program and members of the PREP CLUB. Jim, the founder and leader of the program plans bus trips and cruises. He arranges for oxygen aboard the bus or ship, a concentrator for each persons room, and liquid oxygen for those who use that type.
When I first received the flyer for this trip to Laughlin, I did not plan to go. First, I am not a gambler. A gambler sometimes wins, I never do. I am not interested in putting money in slot machines. Second, I would miss my Thursday at the Braille Institute in Anaheim where teach SCRABBLE to visually impaired people. And Nancy, who teaches knitting and crocheting there, provides transportation to and from and with me accompanying her she can drive in the carpool lane. Besides, we both enjoy the thirty minutes together.
My daughter, who also uses oxygen, urged me to go. “You will enjoy it, Mom,” she assured me. She could not go on this trip, but traveled with the group several times. She also insisted I should rent a scooter. “Those hotels are huge. Your room could be a long way from the elevator and you don’t want to be exhausted by walking long distances carrying your oxygen tank.’
The drive to Laughlin, with a stop for lunch enroute proved uneventful. Mile after mile of desert landscape. At the hotel, I rode the scooter into an elevator, rode to the 14th floor of the Aquarius Hotel’s Arizona Tower and needed help to find my room. I could not read the room numbers, too small and too high on the door and long corridors with doors on both sides of the hallway dismayed me. How would I find my room? I asked Jim to get some scotch tape from the office and I taped one of my business cards with a logo showing the front cover of my book, Reluctant Pioneer,to the door at eye level.
It didn’t take long to unpack, we would only be there two nights. Jim brought me a supply of portable tanks, plugged in the concentrator and showed me how to turn the TV on and off.
My room, nicely furnished and very spacious and the bathroom looked immaculate. My first challenge faced me. How could I get the door open long enough to ride the scooter out. I managed that, found the elevator and rode down to the casino. It had the usual row after row of various slot machines, as well as tables for blackjack, poker, and roulette wheels. Lights flashed, bells rang to indicate slot machine payoffs, and people sat mesmerized before the slotmachines. The restaurants were at the far end of the casino, I located them and then I located a roulette wheel. I bought $50. worth of R$1. chips.
My daughter asked me to bet $25. for her, dividing the money to play three different numbers. None of her bets won. Then I began to place bets for myself. I played a line, three numbers at once with a single chip plus one additional number by itself. House rules required a minimum of $4. be bet each time. I won a few times and when I cashed the cips in I collected $73.
We ate supper in the Buffet Dining Room. Several of my classmates invited me to eat with them and Jim went to the buffet with me and carried my plate as I walked beside him with my cane. The food looked appetizing and I selected swiss steak, rice pilaf, and green beans. I found the neither the food nor the plate was hot. Having had a restaurant in Alaska, I realized either the steam table had not had time to get hot enough or the food was not hot when put in the steam table. They did not have cheesecake so I settled for carrot cake for dessert. The hotel provided a $5. off coupon so the dinner only cost $5.49.
After dinner, I returned to the routlette wheel and placed a few bets before returning to my room. I looked at the bathtub and although I last had a tub bath in 1994 when I had a difficult time getting out of an enormous, deep steepsided bathtub in Paris. But this bathtub looked safer, shallow and with a sturdy grab bar. I submerged in comfortably warm water and felt my muscles relaxing.
The king sized bed also looked inviting. I piled the three pillows on top of each other, and using the remote, watched the news a while.
Jim earlier asked me to call his room and leave a message when I wanted him to plug in the battery charger for the scooter. The phone, like most hotel phones, had nearly a dozen special buttons. I could not read the labels and I think I hit every button on it before I connected to the hotel telephone operator. Jim came a few minutes after I left a message for him and plugged in the battery charger.
I stayed awake most of the night. I’ve suffered from insomnia for many years.
Thursday morning, I dressed, managed to get the scooter out of the door, and found a café where I ate breakfast. When I eat somewhere new and am not sure of the quality of the food, I often order French toast, it is difficult to spoil French toast.
Then, I met Jim and six of our group to go to the next hotel where the theater showed first run movies. On the way there, my scooter went slower and slower and finally died. Jim pushed me and the scooter to the neighboring hotel. We saw a western. When I go to a movie theater I sit way down front. Jim sat with me but the others sat midway. After the movie, Jim again had to push me and the scooter. It is a good thing Jim is a husky, muscular man in his early forties. When we returned to the hotel, I gave him Roy’s telephone number so he could call and find out if there was some way to get the scooter going. As it turned out, Roy did correctly diagnose the problem and told Jim how to fix it. The battery was not making a good connection with the motor. Either it got bounced a little out of position in the luggage compartment or riding over the threshold of my room jarred it enough to interfere with the contact.
Thursday afternoon, I again found the roulette wheel. Only one man sat at the table. He played stacks of $5. chips and often won. I sometimes duplicated his selections and added to the $50. worth of chips I started with.
Our group met for dinner at the Outback Steak Room, we met early, a good thing as a long line of people stood waiting for tables after we were seated. Jill and her friend, Clarence, invited me to join them at their table. Clarence, a retired teacher and principal, told stories about his present occupatkion with a cruise ship which has eight hosts. Men who dance with the many unaccompanied women who go on cruises. He’d made many trips to Alaska, Austrailia, Greece, Russia. Jill met him when she took a bridge cruise.
We toasted each other with chardonet. Service was slow, our waiter new to the job, but the food, when it did arrive proved worth the wait.
After dinner, Jill and Clarence returned to other parts of the casino and I again went to the rulette wheel where I lost all my winnings plus another $50. I know it is illogical. I do not enjoy bingo because there is no element in skill but I do enjoy roulette and there certainly is no element of skill involved there.
When I returned to my room, I packed my bag, in order to have it ready for pickup by ten in the morning. The bus would leave for the return trip at eleven Friday morning. After breakfast, when I returned to my room, before I entered, four paramedics came running down the hall to a room near the far end. Jeanne, who had the next room,said “Chrissie is ill and we called 911 for her.” Later Jim said, “I’ve been running these trips for many years and this is the first time I’ve ever had to leave anyone in the hospital.” Really amazing inasmuch as everyone on the trip has medical problems, often more than the emphysema which makes the oxygen mandatory.
. Again, trip proved uneventful and we watched two movies on video cassettes. But, traffic proved much heavier and the return trip took longer than the trip to Laughlin, but by 6:30, when I left the bus, Roy waited for me.
I called my daughter as soon as I could. I did enjoy the trip. I look forward to going on other trips with the PREP CLUB, and a cruise through the Panama Canal in 2009. Here I am, making plans for going on a cruise in 2009, when I will be 92 years old. I remember that a little over a year ago I thought my death, from lung cancer, was imminent. I’m glad I was wrong about that.