Foodies have "amuse-bouche." Readers have flash fiction. Writers make up little stories about whatever comes to hand. 

She wasn't Betty Boop, not exactly, though that unsettling glint in her eye suggested she warn't no Campbell Soup kid. 

She'd maintained an over-the-shoulder flirtation with any old observant gaze for –– let me count this out –– more than 75 years. Didn't a glamorous little thing like her just get tired of her role? Didn't she want to shake out her hair, shrug those shoulders square, and frown from time to time?  

At least she was out of the closet. Nobody likes to spend a lifetime –– a literal lifetime, if you do the depressing math –– holding on in the dark.  And whether she was the vivacious creature she appeared, or if, like Jessica Rabbit, she was just painted that way, that face made it harder to shut a bifold door.

So she there she hung in the window. Peeping. A coquette such as she must peep, surely. With that coy, art-deco fan of cloth –– a peignoir draped over her shoulder, I think with matching wee mirabou mules on her off-screen baby feet. 

Maybe seven decades gave a gal perspective along with a few chips and pallor.  She might have burned as wooden matches, or splintered as a chair polished by generations of school-children's sit-upons. She could have backed a mirror or a dresser drawer. She might have moldered in an attic or ended in a bin.

Instead, she waited liminal, looking in. A few characterless companions for company. The time passes.  
​

As many of you readers know, each March brings the Everglades Challenge, which is an unsupported, human-powered adventure race of some 300+ miles along the left coast of Florida. Vessels of astonishing diversity push off the beach at Fort DeSoto at dawn on the first Saturday in March and make their various ways south and across the Everglades to Key Largo, Florida.

What is the Ultimate Challenge? Just a lot more sleep-deprived, salt-encrusted, navigationally puzzling ooey-gooey goodness!

Spawn will (knock wood) depart as usual from the beach, but instead of ending in Key Largo, their race will continue for another 900 miles, up the right side of the state, across the top of Florida, and then back to the beach where it started.

1200 miles in a small boat. 

Wheeee!

The big twist? Once they approach the Georgia border, they'll switch out of Spawn and into a canoe. (I know! Jeesh!). There's a long paddle through narrow and skinny water (possibly less skinny, but still narrow, depending on the preceding weeks' rainfall. There's even some Class III whitewater.), which prohibits both Spawn's mast and her generous width. 

The event's rules permit sailors to transform into paddlers mid-race, as it were, and, naturally, requests they change back when the course permits...which will happen AFTER the 40-mile portage.

Forty miles! Pushing their canoe! On a country highway!

​Wheeeee!

Training started this past summer. 

This will be a world of difference from the two-day sprint of past Challenges. 

The team's goal is to get it done.  In under three weeks.

The laundromat: a hotbed of outrage.

Maybe it's a North Country thing, this expression of grievances. Every day is Festivus and they have a problem with you people. 

I've resisted the impulse to post the rather frequent road-side rants –– partly because I have very little access to the web, but also because it seems so unkind to broadcast these beefs or private tragedies any farther.

The farm with the big hand-lettered sign about the "Careless Driver who Ran over our Dog..." or the beautifully manicured lawn with the sign: "Community Propane SUCKS!!!!" or, the one I can't quite read and am afraid to stop for a photo or a closer look, which starts "This is NOT a parking Lot! It's Private Property..." and ends with "Now get OFF my PROPERTY."

I visited Saratoga Springs as a 15-year-old on a 4-H trip of some stripe. I suppose it had to do with Horse Bowl or another equine-related activity. It was meant to be a treat, spending the day at this classic horse-racing center.

​I don't remember how we got there, or why we were sitting in a dining room listening to some adult talk about something or another. For seemingly eternity.

But what I do remember, with vivid, visceral detail? The sensation of the tiny packet of catsup between my restless fingers. I flipped that packet between my fingers the way a magician moves a coin from knuckle to knuckle. It had a particular squeezy resistance to pressure when I flexed a fist.

And then it didn't.

A small packet of catsup, I have every recollection, can be propelled by hand to a distance of two banquet tables.

The teaspoon of tomato-based condiment can, demonstrably, touch base with at least five innocent bystanders. And for the remainder of that day in Saratoga Springs was divided into thirds: first third: horror and mortification. Second third: silent apology. Third third: suppressed hysteria.

I competed in a horse show at Skidmore College when I was in college. I don't remember anything about the horse I rode, or how I performed, but I can recall exactly the swoop and sway of the car on its way. The upperclassman driving us in his car talked to his audience of student sardines with liberal use of both hands, regardless the conditions of the road.

This time, the trip Saratoga Springs was just delightful. 

A pleasant drive. The Saratoga Lake Yacht Club welcomed us with extraordinary warmness, our visit to the racetrack was unmarred by condiment incident, and we came home with the sailing equivalent of blue ribbons...

​

The laundromat if you will. But it's evidently not just for washing clothing. 

The Management has had just about enough of this kind of thing.

I kinda wish I'd been here to see what went down. It's a fresh sign. 

Back in April in that first plague year, under the grow-lights, my sister sister looked at the monarda starts with suspicion. "Are these," she asked me dubiously, "bee-balm?"

​Me, consulting the inter webs: Um, yes.

No wonder these seeds had sprouted: the stuff had taken over a whole corner of her flower-garden. I could have as much as I like yanked out of her garden. For crying out loud. 

Sure enough. Those wee four-leafed starters from last year turned into thigh-high big bursts of vivid color: clear red, pink, deep fuschia. The scent is a bit like oregano, strong and –– allegedly –– unappealing to some of the hungry natives of the Would-Be.

I don't know if deer and rabbits and porcupine and woodchucks and all will continue to avoid the plantings. It's all one big experiment. I've put tasty fruit trees in the midst of all that color, hiding them among the strong scent and bright color until they are tall enough to avoid the predators themselves.

Meanwhile, call them bee balm or Monarda,  them what you will, the flowerbeds are hugely popular with the pollinators

We'll see if they take over the orchard. We'll see if they protect fruit trees. Knock wood, we'll see.

At the Would-Be Farm, the summertime nights are short but punctuated –– irregularly and ungrammatically punctuated –– by wild animals. My dreams are interrupted by the exclamation marks of heavy-footed porcupines, chittering raccoons, and the noisiest of mice stomping around the wide porch of the cabin.  

A light sleeper, I become the Defender of the Castle, flinging off the covers and springing into action during these nighttime ellipses.  
​

Mice are incorrigible. The original honey-badgers, they do not care, noisily scrabbling around for the possibly imaginary crumb of food at the bottom of the toolbox on the porch.

Despite my shouting and rattling of their hiding place, they go back to rustling and loudly chewing –– through anything –– until temptation is removed from their reach. 

Giving my drowsing spouse the usual warning, ("Sorry babe, I am going to make noise."), I leaped up and hustled over to the door. ​

​I threw open the door, and launched into the lecture I have prepared for the raccoons –– it starts "You need to think about the consequences of your actions!" and goes on, angry dadwise, in a crescendo that often includes the phrase, "Is this a good use of your time and energy? Really?" and so on –– when I saw my intruder.

Mr. Linton heard something like: "You need to think a–– It's a f@#ing BEAR!"

I slammed the door, flicked the deadbolt, and hurled myself back into bed, my heart pounding. Mr. Linton settled the covers over us both and said, "Well, that's one way to get your heart going."

Amen, darling.

PS: this was a relatively small bear, probably 150 lbs worth of youngster spending its first summer without Mom's supervision.

Though it resembled a burly dog, its movement was unmistakably bearish –– that flat-footed gait setting its curvaceous badonkabonk a-jiggling.

The previous morning, this fool bear (or one just like it) had been chased out of the back of the neighbors' car, whither it had been tempted by a broken window and a wealth of fast-foot packaging. Like dogs, bears must love having toddlers around. 

A bit of research reveals that black bears –– who were alive in the time of dire wolves and sabertooth tigers and American cave lions –– usually take the prudent course of running away to fight another day rather than standing toe-to-toe with aggression.

The strategy probably served them well, because black bears are still roaming while most other megafauna are fossils. Of course polar bears and brown bears also survived the last Ice Age, and they are not shrinking violets, so it's a theory for why black bears tend to run away when you make noise at them. 
 
Not to say that black bear are not dangerous. One or so people are killed in North America each year by wild black bear. If not the cardiac shock of finding one on the porch of a morning.


References
https://dinopedia.fandom.com/wiki/American_Lion
https://www.livescience.com/51793-extinct-ice-age-megafauna.html
https://www.backpacker.com/stories/ask-a-bear-do-ultrasonic-noises-repel-you/


Most Important Reference:  –– How to avoid being attacked by a bear:
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/bears/safety.htm
​

For a couple of months when I was in fifth grade, one of the neighboring horses escaped its field. Even then, the neatly fenced landscape of small dairy farms was sliding away from cultivation. It was possible for a large hoofed mammal like a runaway horse to make itself scarce amidst the uncut brush. It set my imagination on fire. 

* To break the rational universe, yes, the happiest of all combinations in the English language would be the impossible pairing of  "free" + "ponies."
​
But don't be a fool, man, the space-time continuum can't bear the strain...  ​

We were heading down to the river to do some paddling and fishing, four of us convoying our kayaks along a remote stretch of private dirt road when, like a big blue bird of happiness finally coming home to roost, abracadabra! A pony! 

As someone in a dream, I fed my prize a nibble of apple and rubbed her ears. I whipped up a serviceable halter from the bow line of my sister's kayak and dropped it over the pony's head and commenced the long walk to the Would-Be Farm.

My fishing companions had a variety of reactions. The retired state cop, visibly relieved at someone taking action, drove off saying he'd phone in the missing pony.

My sister echoed my exclamations of "A PONY!"  and took photos.

My sweet spouse suggested that I didn't need to move the animal anywhere. He left the second half of the sentence, "let alone bring it home" unspoken.

Do I need mention that it began to rain?  Or that, once at the Would-Be Farm, the pony ate a snack of grits, drank a bucket of water, took a vigorous roll on the newly cut grass, and trotted off in the direction of the wild back half of the Farm.

The first rule of farming? Right after "If you have livestock, you'll have dead stock," is "Fences first."

There is no comfortable spot to stow a beast of burden at present at the Farm.  I found a longer bit of line and made a more secure halter, and when the pony trotted back –– and toward the road –– I recaptured her.

Making sure she was familiar to the limits of being tied (she had showed a great deal of sensibility and calm on our long walk), I anchored her to a handy tree and ate a belated lunch.

The consequences of my actions tossed her sweet head and snorted impatiently. She got a hoof over the line and stood balanced on three until I put down my lunch and rescued her.

She snorted and backed with zero dignity into the tenting platform so that she could rub her butt against the edge of the deck.

She took a bite of the evergreen and theatrically rejected it, tossing her thick mane and blowing flecks of green around. She was bored, bored, bored!

It entertaining program, but not a sustainable one.

I laid the options out to my favorite skipper: "One of us will have to drive up the road and ask a neighbor with a corral if we can put the pony there. The other will have to stay and hold the pony's lead." Into the considering silence, I added, "Which one do you want least?"

He elected to hold the pony. The man surprises me. I gave him a pointer or two –– he generally dislikes the whole family of Equus –– and dashed off.

Luckily, there's a messy farmstead up the way with a handful of cattle and horses, plus chickens, and as it turned out, eight sheepdogs.  Beware the dogs indeed.  Standing on the running board, I asked the woman who emerged from the scrum of dogs, "Hey, have you by chance lost a pony?"

She was standing a couple of yards away from the fence inside which a variety of horses and ponies and cows were calmly eating hay. She gestured over her shoulder and said, "Honestly, I don't know. These are my husband's horses."

I thought: and THERE is a successful marriage.

I told her about my wild pony, and she said, "Hmmm, my father-in-law lost a pony last summer." (The youthful horse-crazy kid in me silently fist-pumped at this additional proof that wild pony herds are possible).

Then she said she'd better come take a picture and text it in case it was one of her father-in-law's. 

Yes. It was one of the father-in-law's bunch of horses, she told me. Name of Daisy.  "She's a wanderer," my neighbor said, "Though usually she stays on the other side of the river. It's a long way to walk."

We chatted a bit, and then my neighbor led Daisy away. "I'll bring the rope back," she said.

I sighed and then said to Mr. Linton, "So, you remember that time we went fishing and I caught a wild pony?"  

The triumph of love over barricades and differences: it's such a good story. Especially combined with the romance of the North American Frontier...

But so rare. So rarely true.

I'm not the only one who thought that great-great-something gram was a Native American. I was told so, and the folks who told me believed it. Plus, in that one photo of her at umpteenty-seven, she was tiny, and dark, and those high cheekbones...

But DNA doesn't lie.  And a paper trail (or the electronic ghost of paper), which would reveal the story as it happened at the time, also fails to show an indigenous connection among my forebears. 

That little old lady in the photo? I can trace her parentage three generations back and they all document as garden-variety English settlers who farmed that corner of Appalachia. Some lived in Cherokee, NC, so there's that, but alas, no Indian princess for me. ​

*Yes, this title is a shout-out to the genealogy shows (one in the UK, one here in the US) of the same name. 

My Grampa Navy -–– called for his career –– had two brothers who died young. One was a handsome rogue, killed, as the story goes, in a bar brawl over somebody else's wife.

The other brother was a hero, a fighter-pilot who died during WWII when his plane crashed over the Everglades.

My sister and Mumsie stopped by Copperhill to visit kin on their way south in the 1980's.

​Sarah said the place was dire: the hill of copper laid open by mining, the land as barren and dead as the surface of the moon, effluent pumping through those hollers, cars abandoned in weedy front yards.

Decades later, the whole area was transformed for the Olympic Games, the river channeled and remodeled into a kayaking and canoe course, and the mine terraformed back into something human-scaled. 

All of which explains why Grampa Navy and his family moved to Miami. I only knew it happened when he was fairly young, and sure enough, there they are. 

The little family of five sprawling across two pages of the US Census of 1930 1930: Dad a construction worker, Mom at home, George –– Uncle Buck! –– a truck driver at 20, son Ed (teen Grampa Navy!) a 17-year-old theatre usher, and 13-year-old future no-goodnik Dennis not employed.  

With these birthdates and places of birth for both Grampa Navy's brothers, Ancestry.com. led me to Uncle Buck's 1934 marriage to Ina Pearl. Otherwise known as Aunt Betty, for which we can't blame her.  In Mumsie's version, anyhow, she was Betty by nature, Betty by name.  

And there the trail went cold for me. The mystery of Uncle Buck's death remained unsolved (or at least undocumented) for years. In a 1938 city directory, he's selling insurance, living in what later became Little Havana.

​In the 1940 census, he and Betty are still in Miami. He's a tire service man, and they have Betty's 10-year-old niece Nina, plus a boarder, Orban Strickland, living with them. Looking at the handwriting, I speculate whether Orban is related to neighbor Hokes Stickland, a neighbor.

The censuses (I pause here to look up how to correctly spell more than one census. Censuses it is, but censusses is also acceptable, as is a plural census) from after 1940 have not yet been made public, so I needed to seek elsewhere for intel.

​Opinion among my elders varied, but they thought Uncle Buck's plane went down in 1944.

I kept poking at the question and –– thank you Dawn N for the assist –– Newspapers.com eventually turned up the goods. 

A later article in the Miami News corrected the location of the plane crash to Melbourne Florida rather than Melbourne Australia.  It's an understandable mistake, especially as the crash occurred during the height of the Guadalcanal Campaign in the Solomon Islands on the other side of the world. Plus, it was a Miami paper, so Melbourne might have seemed veritable Antipodes.

I'm satisfied. I'll call Uncle Buck, a Naval airman, a war hero. I don't know his rank yet, but I don't believe he was at the wheel. Melbourne, Florida, by the way, is located north of Miami on the east coast of Florida, not very close to the Everglades, but it's at least the same state as the family legend. It might even count as the Bermuda Triangle.

There's so much left untold from the paper record. It's interesting to note that Hokes Strickland, his former neighbor, is among the pallbearers. I consider Aunt Betty, so cheerful in these sepia toned images with her young husband, widowed at 34. The good news is that after the war, she married again and is carried away by the tides of time. 


Memorial Day Update May 2021

Thanks to alert reader, Ken H., I got hold of the official Navy accident report.

​A training flight out of the Banana River Naval base (we race our sailboat on that section of the river each December!) crashed on landing after the failure of an engine. Five survivors, seven fatalities. The survivors paddled to shore in an inflatable lifeboat.  

As I read it, G.R. Wheeler, Uncle Buck, was not the pilot. He's listed as an "AS," an aviation equipment specialist, acting as "NFO" a naval flight officer on the plane. An NFO, as the inter webs inform, was often a specialist in a weapons or sensor system. A tragic accident, but still, as Guy, the nice guy at accident-report.com said, they gave their all, which makes them heroes.