Happy Birthday Bro!

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

My brother, my father and I took a “guy’s night out” one Thursday afternoon. I was 20 years old and between classes in college. My father had long retired and my brother was self-employed, so our time was our own.

The problem was: what to do? Any decent movies playing, at least one of us had seen. We could out for dinner, but it was still mid afternoon. If there were any sports on TV that day, we’d never know it, none of use ever got the “sports nut” bug so stereotypically male.

Finally, my brother hit upon the perfect plan, and we all went and boarded a plan to Mazatlan. We went to one of the premier resort areas in Mexico for the express reason that … well, we didn’t have anything better to do.

We found a hotel that was quite a distance from the regular tourist area, though the huge MAJOR CHAIN Hotel was clearly visible in the near distance. We were directly on the beach with an unobstructed view of Mexican sunsets over the pacific.

We had some misadventures, one or two involving shrimp and Montezuma’s revenge, a different (and unrelated) one involving a large letter E in a circle with a line through it (means no parking) and several suicidal taxi drivers, but overall, it was a great time.

Toward the end of the trip, my brother and I sat out on the porch of the hotel and we chatted, just the two of us, Dad having gone to sleep. We spoke of anything and everything, and got to know each other better than we ever had over twenty years.

It was strange that we had to travel to a foreign country to really connect with each other, especially when we lived in the same city for so long, but maybe without the distractions, in the dark, with the rolling surf echoing in front of us, maybe that was where we needed to be to see each other with fresh vision.

That was more than 20 years ago, and I remember that night with crystal clarity. Of the three intrepid adventurers that set out for land unknown, I am the only one that is still on this earth. My father died 12 years ago, my brother followed five years later.

August 27 was my brother’s birthday, and that night in Mexico is the one that comes to mind every year as I remember his boisterous rolling laughter and the light in his eyes so bright you could read by it.

Happy Birthday Glen.

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

My wife and I have two very dear friends – sisters – whose mother passed away yesterday morning. She’d gone to the hospital for a few test, related mostly to a leg injury and the doctors discovered the blood pressure in her lungs was so high it was straining her heart and her blood was not getting oxygen.

That was about a week ago. The sisters were told that her mother had maybe a month left of life, and so they brought her home, allowing her to die in the privacy of her room and the warmth of her family.

I’d only recently come to know this grand woman. I’d not the opportunity to know her long, and I’d not the foresight to know her well. The memories I carry of her are fleeting and superficial; they cannot begin to broach the accumulated depth of 81 years of family, toil, heartbreak, and joy.

I will remember her smile, though. A warm and honest, open and happy smile she had. Her genuine joy to see you, never mind how long or brief it had been since the last visit, was like a warm fire on a chilly night.

I saw her rarely, I knew her almost not at all, but the loss of that bright smile has made the world just a little grayer, and I will miss it.

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest
– Hamlet Act 5 Scene 2

You watch my back - I’ll overlook yours

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

Two stories to tell today; they’re kind of related.

One:

Once, when I was about five or six, I was riding in the back seat of our car. We’d gone somewhere for the day, and were returning late that night.

I'd declared the entire backseat as my personal playground, and I didn’t need to worry about seatbelts – the car didn’t even have them.

At one point, I propped my chin between my parents, resting on the top of the bench seat and looked around up front for anything to distract me just a little longer.

The inner workings of a car were still a mystery, and anything left of the radio was pure unexplored territory. I spotted a little shiny metal button in the corner of the floor near my father’s left foot. I asked what it was.

Dad seemed to be feeling a bit more garrulous than usual and told me it was a switch to change the headlights from low-beam to high-beam.

(If you remember cars that had those, you may proceed to feel old now).

I was fascinated; it was just like Mom’s sewing machine.

He even demonstrated it for me. He stomped it once, and the car in the far distance could be easily seen, another stomp and the car once again disappeared into the night.

“Do it again!” I squealed, excited at a new discovery.

Obligingly, he did it again.

Too cool!

For the next five minutes, the three of us spoke of headlights and driving and other random things. I was happy just be a part of the “adult” conversation.

Then we were pulled over by the highway patrol.

The patrolman approached our car very slowly and cautiously, his hand never straying far from the gun slung against his hip. When he arrived at my father’s open window, the relief in his eyes at seeing only a small family in the car and not the Manson family he’d been expecting was obvious, even to a six-year-old.

“Everything OK here?” he asked.

My parents looked at each other, totally confused. The only problem any of us knew about was the cop’s.

“Ah... yeah, everything’s fine.” My father replied.

“Well,” the patrolman said, “when you flashed your lights at me twice, I thought you were trying to flag me down, like you had a problem.”

None of us realized the disappearing car in the distance had a revolving light on top.

My father, in a reflexive B.S. move I’d have thought was beyond him, said, “Oh, the carpet rolled over the switch and I was trying to clear it with my foot. I guess I must have hit it while I was doing that, Sorry!”

It was an almost jaunty “Sorry”- like a greeting.

His response was immediate, well spoken, plausible, and a total fabrication.

I was so proud of him.

I was proud of me too, because I kept a completely straight face as I looked the officer right in the eye; more importantly, I didn’t say a word. I kept quiet until we were back on the road and the highway patrol was long gone.

My dad had lied. It was the first time I’d heard him lie, and I thought it was the funniest thing ever.

But the point is: I covered for him.

OK, that was background for story number two.

Two:

I tell people I have never had a speeding ticket, nor have I ever had a moving violation. Ever. It’s not for lack of trying, mind you.

And that’s – almost – true.

The actual truth is; I did get one. Once.

I was 17 at the time, and my parents and I were driving back from Minnesota to Arizona. We had moved a couple of years prior, and that summer we traveled back to Minnesota for reasons unknown. I drove most of the way as Dad was already experiencing declining health, and I had the bottomless stamina of any 17-year-old.
Mother was in the passenger seat as we drove through Colorado, Dad was in the back seat having a nap.

The national speed limit was 55. In other words, the national speed limit was thirty miles an hour slower than I was going.

The patrolman came out of nowhere - literally. One moment, there was nothing on the road for miles, and suddenly BAM! there he is! right behind me with the light bar on his roof looking like a hyperactive Christmas tree.

Pulling over, I gathered my thoughts, rehearsed my excuses, put on the best, most innocent boy-next-door face I had in my collection, and prepared to look “shocked” and “dismayed” that I could actually be going that fast!

“I had no idea! I’m so sorry, and I vow to pay closer attention to all of my gauges from now on! I have learned my lesson, yes sir, and I know how dangerous speeding can be!”

The patrolman came to the window, ticket book in hand. I took a deep breath and readied my “Is something wrong?” look, but before I could say a single vowel, my father rose from the back seat like Dracula coming up from the grave and said, “I knew you couldn’t keep up that speed without getting caught! I told you to slow down hours ago. I said that if you kept up that speed, you’d get a ticket.”

He was right; I’ll give him that. I got the ticket, and he laid back down on the seat, his duty faithfully discharged.

I should have ratted him out when I had the chance.

In the house of stone and light

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

Will Rodgers once said of the Grand Canyon: “It’s a great place to throw old razorblades”. In order to truly understand that bit of wisdom, you need to go in there and see for yourself.

In 1987, my wife and I set out down the canyon with backpacks and bottled water hanging from every conceivable spot on our bodies.

We planned very carefully for the excursion, we bought backpacks for sleeping bags and tents, we bought sleeping bags and tents! We bought new shoes for the hike and we packed all night.

Sounds good, huh? Almost like we knew what we were doing?

OK, the backpacks had no frame for the hips, so the entire weight of the things pulled down on the shoulders. They were pretty cheap - because I am too - so they never did fit quite right and I hiked down twisted, rubble strewn pathways a mile above the pit looking like Quasimodo in search of Esmeralda.

Now for the boots.

In the last decade, Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Payless have started carrying size 13, and 14. In the late 80’s size 13s were fairly hard to come by. I grabbed the only pair of strong, sturdy boots I could find in my size.

I had left Minnesota 12+ years ago, so forgive me if I was a little slow on the uptake when I bought them, but after all that time in the desert, I just didn’t recognize snow boots when I saw them any more.

The thing that makes snow boots so effective in the frozen north is they prevent air or moisture to pass through to the foot. At the top of the canyon, the temperature is in the low 80. At the bottom, it’s in the 100s. At the top of the canyon, the snow boots felt good, if a little warm. By the time I stopped for the night I would have babbled troop movements and given my CO’s home address if the enemy would have let me take the boots off. But I digress...

Going down in the canyon is breathtaking, but so is smoking a pack of cigarettes. I know - I did both – at the same time.

There are several trails down into the canyon. The most popular is Bright Angel. It’s fairly well carved out of the face of the cliffs, it’s wide enough and traveled enough that you can rent a burro and ride it down the canyon. There are others that are a little more challenging - and then there’s the trail experienced and reckless climbers and thrill-seekers attempt just to keep that competitive edge: Hermit Trail.
As neither of us had ever hiked before, nor had the faintest idea of what to do in the wilderness, that was the trail for us.

Hermit Trail goes 17 miles to the bottom of the canyon. We may have been crazy, but we weren’t stupid. We were only going to go down to the Santa Maria Springs about 4 miles away. Maybe that’s “we were stupid, but we weren’t crazy”?

The first 1½ miles dropped almost 1700 feet straight down.

All along the trail you see graffiti. I thought this was a shame until I began to notice that some of the graffiti that had been scratched into the rock bore dates in the 1800s. I was looking at a century-old defacement. I then saw beside them what the signs on the trail identified as ancient cave drawings and I had to wonder when defacement becomes an historical treasure.

I will never forget the sites as we journeyed down in to the canyon. Native Americans called the canyon the House of Stone and Light and when you travel down the depths, the reason becomes obvious. Every time we took another five steps, the canyon changed. I had seen the canyon many times from high atop the 7,000-foot cliff, but it was never the same one I saw in the midst of that hike. Each time I looked during the hike it was a different place.

There is no way to describe it; no picture can catch more than the most fleeting glimpse of it. It is one of the most soul awakening places I’ve ever seen. The very starkness and arid solidity of the Grand Canyon exudes what can only be termed “majesty”.

It’s solid rock in layers of color and reflection and contrast. We had to stop to gape and gawk, and even if I hadn’t been smoking two packs a day at the time, we still would have stopped just as often - I think.

We had plenty of food, and plenty of water, but what we ran out of was daylight. When the sun when down, not only was it too dangerous to continue hiking, but the heat left in one huge updraft and all the sweat we had collected on the way froze.

We found an outcropping and set up camp for the night. I finally was able to remove my boots and then thought that I might not be able to put them back on the next morning, as my feet were now easily a size 16.

I slept with them on and in the morning we decided that we should have started with something a little easier than Hermit Trail.

We were only a little way from the springs, but decided to go back out.

Uh huh.

Right

In the first 1½ miles, we had come down nearly 170 feet. Now we had to go back up again.

With my swollen feet.

That day I experienced my very first heat stroke.

My wife, though tired and hurting as much as I was, panicked as I sat down and contemplated spending my retirement days on the very rock beneath me. She ran the last ½ mile to get help, then came back to lead the help to me.

What she found was a hiker who was more experienced, thinner and a non-smoker. He had gone down to the springs as a day-trip. I hated him instantly. I did, however take some of his salt-tablets and with a nod to the first episode of Star-Trek and the salt sucking monster (Nancy Crater – I can’t believe I remember that!), I did manage to pull myself back up to the rim, leaning on my wife the entire time.

I celebrated my delivery from the rocky-heat-stroke-death by having a cigarette.

Yes, now that I think about it, I think it was “stupid, not crazy”.

Maybe both.

Blazing Eyebrows

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

Just next to the door into the garage, my father had placed an old chest of drawers. This was for his collection of whatever-he-couldn’t-think-of-to-put-somewhere-else. One day, in the top drawer, I found the greatest thing a pre-pubescent boy could.

Lighter fluid.

It was a yellow tin (this was during the medieval ages before everything was made of plastic), and had a little red replaceable tip cover. (No one in my house smoked, so I still have no idea why it was there in the first place, but as a collector of random treasures, I know from first hand experience that junk drawers automatically seek their own level. Once you start a junk drawer, it fills on it’s own.)

I snatched this tin and found an old tuna can somewhere and retreated to my room after a quick stop to get some matches from the kitchen.

Now, a quick word about my room: Messy. I had always been proud to be slovenly, and had litter everywhere. If you never clean up it’s easier to hide certain – errors in judgment. As the bed took up most of the room, it was the primary collection center. This particular day, I had left a mirror lying on my bed. It might seem strange, but it was actually one of the less – esoteric - things I’d had there. I had a little wooden box about the size of a footstool as a side table between the bed and the wall. On the other side of the bed I had a dresser, which was where I placed the tuna can.

I shot a few drops of fluid into the can and set it ablaze. It burned merrily for a few moments and then went out. It did it again, only with a little more. Same thing, only a little longer.

OK, if one shot burns for a moment and two burn for two moments, then a whole lot should burn for a whole lot of moments. Simple deductive reasoning.
I filled the tuna can about a third full and fired it off.

It burned happily, like a little campfire in my room. I watched it contentedly flicker away and only then noticed that I had made an slight error.

I had left the paper label on the tuna can.

The mermaid on the label was burning, as was the seascape behind her. I tried to blow on the label, to snuff out the flames, but I soon realized I was blowing burning fluid onto the top of the dresser was now beginning to crackle.

It was time to get rid of the evidence and pretend it never happened. The best way to extinguish flame was to blow it out, but my breath - coming from the side of the can - only sprayed the burning fluid onto the top of the dresser - which was also quite happily burning away .

Thus, the only logical recourse was to blow straight down. NOTE: This is why I was never good at logic. When you blow across a container, your breath travels to the other side. When you blow straight down, it has nowhere else to go but right back up in your face. Especially if your face happens be within an inch of a blazing tuna can.

I drew a breath like the big, bad wolf about to blow down the house of bricks, leaned over the can and blew. The resulting inferno attacked my eyebrows and propelled me back onto the bed.

Remember the mirror?

I landed perfectly centered on the mirror and shattered it. The bounce from the box spring and mattress catapulted me back into the air and I landed with my stomach on the wooden box, temporarily pinned between it, the bed and the wall, also temporarily unable to breathe.

Meanwhile, the home fires kept burning.

By the time I was able to extricate myself from the broken-glass-bed-box-wall prison and return to the fire, the lighter fluid had all burned off. The paint on the dresser though was still cheerfully in flames.

Even though I had the breath taken out of me in my fall, panic enabled me to find enough to finish blowing out the fires.

The top of the dresser was now charcoal except for a small ring that hadn’t been touched – that was where the tuna can sat.

I returned the purloined lighter fluid and threw out the can and the remains of the mirror. As for the dresser, I found that a nicely draped towel under the stereo and other items I piled on it looked rather fetching.

And, in a few days, my eyebrows grew back.

Glass Puppies

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

We have a baker’s rack made of wrought iron in our kitchen. It has little curlicues on the feet and the very top. It has a wooden table top about halfway up the length and then two more shelves (made of iron tubes) across the top.

I had gotten a “white elephant” Christmas gift from work - a bottle of oil marinating red peppers and jalapenos. I kept this potentially lethal oil on the wooden top of the rack. It seemed the perfect place for it; we had three glass bottles on that surface already. These held little bits of pasta that were more for looking at than anything practical.

On this same tabletop was our glass punchbowl – complete with 12 little glass punch-cups. On the first shelf above this were three old-fashioned style glass cookie/dry goods containers (like you can still get in Wal-Mart). These were filled with various items such as Kool-aid mix, packets of spices and so on.

The crown of this collection was the five-gallon glass jar that sat on the very top self. It held dog biscuits and we thought that keeping it six foot off of the ground would ensure that no puppies tried to bother it.

We had this arraignment for a couple of years, and it seemed to work out fine.

Then we got a new dog.

While my wife and I were busily watching TV, and the dogs were doing whatever dogs do when you’re not watching them, we heard a crash from in the kitchen. Unfortunate and messy, but it sometimes happens when dogs try to sniff the counter. The only thing to do is to clean it up quickly, before someone gets cut.

Before I could jump up from my chair, another shattering of glass came from the kitchen. Our new puppy had caught her collar on the curlicued feet of the rack and in the logic of very young puppies; she thought the best way to extricate herself from her restraint was by pulling hard.

When that failed to yield any results, she pulled harder.

She began sliding this large, iron baker’s rack across the floor. Each tug she gave toppled another piece of heavy glass to the floor where it exploded inches from her face. Every time another glass depth charge blew up in front of her, she panicked and pulled harder.

All the little glass bottles, save one, detonated on the floor as the rack was tugged to the center of the kitchen.

The five-gallon massive jar with the glass lid was one of the first to go. Before it came down, several of the little punchbowl glasses tried to break its fall. Instead, we now had delicate little shards of glass mingling with the gigantic shell of the great glass jar.

BOOM! When it hit, you could hear it throughout the house. Two of the old-fashioned cookie jars quickly followed.

By the time I could get to the little dog, we had lost all the glass on the rack save two small jars and - oddly- the punchbowl itself.

She had at least five pounds of glass shatter literally inches in front of her face. Glass had flown the entire length and width of my kitchen, yet our little puppy was completely unharmed.

It would seem God looks after drunks, fools, and puppies.
After I got her unhooked and set her in my wife’s lap, I started to clean up.
Shattered glass shards covered in a mix of Kool-Aid powder, pasta, pepper soaked oil and a few more pungent spices, with just enough dog biscuit pieces and powder to make it the consistency of mud.

I know we got off lucky.

She was completely unharmed.

And it wasn’t as bad as the dog who ate a D-cell battery - and a flea collar.

… but I digress….