Tag: travel

Before Computers, Even Before Reading and Writing

September 6th, 2026

My friend lent me a book to read. It’s called The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. Davis is an anthropologist who has been around the world. The book describes various isolated indigenous cultures and what happens to many of them once they encounter Western technology and values. The stories are ugly, filled with violence and disease. There is sometimes genocide involved. Davis emphasizes what is lost when these cultures clash. The indigenous population has often accumulated centuries of wisdom that generally dies along with the tribes. A deep, intuitive connection with nature is almost always a casualty when an indigenous group succumbs to Western influence. The author mourns the disappearance of hundreds of languages, customs, and world views. I tend to agree with much of what he says in the book, but not all of it.

The first chapter in Davis’s book is the best in my opinion. He vividly describes the history of the peoples who live on the islands in the Pacific Ocean. Before the Europeans came, these tribes roamed the sea from New Zeeland to Tahiti to Hawaii to Easter Island. They did all this by dead reckoning. They had no compasses, no maps, no chronometers, no GPS. Davis talks about a journey he made with a friend of his, one of the descendants of these early mariners. He speaks eloquently of this man’s skill in guiding a sailing canoe across hundreds of miles of open water, and all without the aid of modern technology.

So, how did Pacific Islanders cross the ocean without modern equipment? The way Davis explains it is that in each community there was (and sometimes still is) a “navigator”. The person is trained from early on in life to know the secrets of sea navigation. The author mentions one such navigator being placed in a tidal pool as a small child to learn the feel of the ocean. Over time, a navigator learns skills that have been passed down through the generations. A navigator becomes familiar with the types of clouds, with the currents and swells in the sea, with the marine animals, with the winds, with time and positions of the stars as they rise above the eastern horizon every night. In the mind of the navigator a myriad of signs coalesce into a gestalt that allows the person to find his way to distant islands. The navigator is an essential member of the community. In some ways, the individual ranks higher than the chief.

The story of the navigator is amazing. Somehow, it makes me think back forty years to my experience as an aviator in the U.S. Army. Can a tribal navigator’s path be compared to mine? Maybe not, but I want to try.

A navigator in the Polynesian tradition is a unique individual. He possesses talents and skills that nobody else in his culture has. He is chosen and trained at an extremely young age. From early on in his life, he sits high in the hierarchy of the tribe.

I started flight school when I was twenty-two. In the eyes of a navigator, I would appear to be a very late bloomer. I never acquired the intense connection with flight that the navigator has with the sea. I never had the lineage of a navigator. I was just some guy with the physical and mental aptitudes necessary to pilot a helicopter. I didn’t need to come from a family of navigators. I just needed to bust my ass and then sell my soul to the Army for a few years. I never had to memorize an endless multitude of details in order to fly. I had tools that helped me. I had books and weather reports and flight instruments to aid me. I had technology.

The navigator almost always knew where he was and how to get where he needed to go. The author describes the navigator as being in trance while he did his job. I get that. There were times as a pilot, not many but enough, when I was in that mental state where I was just doing. In an emergency I would just act. I would be one with the aircraft. It’s a Zen thing. There were moments where I was in the “place before thinking”. So, in a small way, I can relate to the navigator.

Is the navigator’s way of life better than mine was? I have no idea. A navigator crosses the sea, but he never gets to fly. On the other hand, he knows and understands things that I can’t. He is special. I’m not. It might be better that I am not a chosen one. One disadvantage with traditional societies is that there is a lack of opportunity. A person gets pigeonholed early. In Western culture, even with all our faults, there is at least the possibility that an individual might choose their own way in life.

I think we should try to understand and preserve ancient wisdom. I also think we should properly use the knowledge we have in our culture and maybe integrate the old ways with the new. It would be worth a try.

Buying Crappy Souvenirs

August 22nd, 2026

Traveling on a long road trip with a restless five-year-old is an endurance test. Our grandson, Asher, is a good kid and we love him dearly, but he can be relentless when he wants something, and he often wants something. On our journey from Wisconsin to Texas and back, Karin and I had to make frequent stops to fuel up the car, take bathroom breaks, and give bribes to Asher. It was nearly impossible to leave a truck stop without buying him some kind of crappy souvenir. In a way it didn’t matter what he got, as long as he got something. We could have shown resolve and refused to purchase anything, but that would have made for a much more stressful ride. So, Karin and I took the path of least resistance and bought Asher some badly made consumer items every day on the trip. Here’s some of what he got:

At a Love’s in Illinois, Karin bought him this ball that looked like the head of Skye, a Cockapoo character from Paw Patrol. The object was truly hideous. It was just this smiling head without a body attached to it. It’s like Skye had been sent to the guillotine. How does a kid even play with that? Does he play catch with it? “Here, Grandpa, throw me Skye’s head!” Asher wanted me to pretend the head/ball was talking. That freaked me out. It was way too macabre.

We stayed for twelve days in Madisonville, Texas, in a Best Western across the street from a Buc-ee’s gas station. To those who are unaware, a Buc-ee’s is a monstrous filling station with dozens of pumps and a store the size of a strip mall. They have everything there, including a BBQ brisket sandwich that is to die for. They have toys and activity packages that kids can take in the car on a trip. The items aren’t really that bad, but all of them somehow advertise for Buc-ee’s. We bought several things for Asher. Some he liked, some not. There was a small coloring book that worked with a pen that you filled with water. Asher liked drawing with the water pen and seeing the colors that were embedded in the paper become visible.

We stopped in an obscure convenience store/gas station in Tyler, Texas. Asher demanded a prize in that place. He selected a toy that is difficult to adequately describe. It had a clear plastic handle on the bottom that was filled with tiny pieces of candy. Attached above the handle was a blue plastic dolphin with what appeared to be a propeller sticking out of its mouth. On the side of the dolphin was a yellow hand crank. When Asher turned the crank, the propeller lit up and spun rapidly. It looked like a glowing disc. That was actually kind of cool. Unfortunately, when he cranked on the handle like an organ grinder, the toy spewed out some horrible circus music like a demonic calliope. He began playing with it in the car, and after less than a minute, both Karin and I demanded that he stop. It was a toy from hell.

At another Love’s we reluctantly purchased a stuffed animal for Asher. It was a large, pale blue, morbidly obese seal. Asher fell in love with his new stuffie. He insisted that I do “stuffie talk” and speak for the seal. The seal is now known as “Big Blue”. I had to make up a special voice for Big Blue. Now, Big Blue has his own background story. He lives at the North Pole and hangs out with Santa’s reindeer when he isn’t swimming and fishing. Asher takes Big Blue to bed every night. I have to admit that the seal is rather huggable.

The seal was worth the money.

Reunion

February 8th, 2026

I received a letter a week or two ago from a couple high school classmates. They are busy organizing a 50th anniversary celebration for the Class of 1976. I find it almost impossible to wrap my head around this development. Based on the letter, there has already been a massive amount of planning and preparation involved with this event. They have arranged a tour of the old high school. The organizers have a dinner and party set up at a local hotel. There are detailed instructions in the letter about how to pay for reservations. Still, I have lingering questions:

“Why? Why do all this? Why bother?”

At the risk of stating the obvious, fifty years is a long time, and at least in my case, a lot has happened during those years. What do I have in common with these classmates from five decades ago? What do I even have in common with the person I was back then?

Probably not much.

I have kept in contact with a grand total of three of my high school classmates. I’ve only seen two of them during the last decade. If I went to this soiree, I doubt that I would recognize anyone. I expect that nametags will be necessary for any sort of socialization.

The letter asks people to “meet us in the Grand Ballroom at 4:30 for dinner, conversation, reminiscing, dancing, cocktails, meeting old friends, and making new ones.” Dancing? Seriously? How many cocktails will people need for that?

What about reminiscing? This implies that a person wants to talk about what it was like back in high school. I am hard pressed to recall much that is worth remembering, much less discussing. Do I really want to converse about the days when I was young and stupid? I once read an interview within which John Lennon was asked about getting the Beatles back together. He sarcastically replied to the interviewer that it would be like going back to high school. I can understand Lennon’s viewpoint.

When I look back half of a century, I don’t feel nostalgia. I recall most of all that burning desire to get the fuck out my hometown. I wanted to see the world and have adventures, and that I definitely did. When I really think about it, it is clear to me that almost everything I did while in high school was part of an effort to go somewhere else and to be somebody else. Paul Simon best described my feeling at the time in his song, “My Little Town”. The lyrics go like this:

“In my little town, I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all.
And he used to lean upon me as I pledged allegiance to the wall.
Lord, I recall, in my little town,
Comin’ home after school, flyin’ my bike past the gates of the factories,
My mom doin’ the laundry, hangin’ out shirts in the dirty breeze.
And after it rains there’s a rainbow and all of the colors are black.
It’s not that the colors aren’t there, it’s just imagination they lack.
Everything’s the same back in my little town,
My little town, my little town.

Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.
Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.

In my little town, I never meant nothin’,
I was just my father’s son. mmm.
Savin’ my money, dreamin’ of glory,
Twitchin’ like a ginger on the trigger of a gun.

Leavin’ nothin’ but the dead and dying back in my little town.
Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.
Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.
Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.
Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.”

That song tells part of my story. Eventually, years later I returned from California to my place of birth. I came back a very different person. I came back mostly because my wife and I had a baby boy and he needed more family than just us. Was it a good decision? I have no idea, but that’s what we did.

We live within ten miles of my old school. We live within ten miles of the hotel where they want to have this shindig. I could easily attend. Sure, Karin and I would have to find a babysitter for our little grandson, Asher, but we could figure it out if we wanted to do so. I don’t want to.

Faulkner once said, “The past is never dead. The past isn’t even past.”

He’s right. My past is an integral part of my identity.

I don’t need to go somewhere and wallow in it.

Waddle

February 4th, 2026

Asher wants stories. He does not want to hear stories from books. He wants my wife and I to make up stories extemporaneously. We try to oblige. Often, he asks for a story when one of us is busy. It’s difficult to come up with coherent tale when you are driving on the freeway or cooking supper. So, we do our best and Asher is sometimes dissatisfied with our feeble efforts.

He hit me up for a story this morning just before breakfast. That was poor timing in that we are always in a rush at breakfast. The boy needs to eat, take his vitamins, brush his teeth, and dress within a half hour timeframe. It’s hard to squeeze a story into that schedule. I agreed to give it a try.

Asked him, “What do you want the story to be about?”

He grinned and said, “A penguin!”

“Okay, this penguin…”

“Grandpa, you have to start a story with ‘Once upon a time’.”

“Okay, so, once upon a time this penguin…”

“Grandpa, what was the penguin’s name?”

I made up a name for the penguin. It was wrong. I asked Asher,

“So, what should his name be?”

“Waddle.”

“Okay, so once upon a time, Waddles the Penguin….”

“No, no, no! Not ‘Waddles‘! It’s just ‘Waddle’! That’s what penguins do!”

“Okay, so once upon a time, Waddle the Penguin came from the South Pole to some place warm. He didn’t like it because he was too hot, so he went to a grocery store and snuck into a freezer display case and started eating Cherry Garcia ice cream. Waddle didn’t have a spoon, so it was kind of messy. He had to eat with his flipper. Then a customer came and got freaked out and the customer yelled, ‘I don’t want to buy a penguin! I just want a carton of Cherry Garcia!’. Waddle left the store.”

Asher asked me, “Then what happened?”

“Hmmmm, he walked back to the South Pole.”

“That’s a long way, Grandpa.”

“Yeah, it took him a while. When he got to the South Pole, he looked fo his best friend named Fisher.”

“Why was his friend named Fisher?”

“Because that’s what penguins do. They fish.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, Waddle gazed around at all the other penguins, but they all looked alike to him. So, he yelled out, ‘Fisher!’, but none of the other penguins answered him. Then he went to the edge of the ice and saw a penguin in the water fishing. Waddle asked him, ‘Are you named Fisher?’, but the penguin in the water said, ‘No, I’m just fishing’. Waddle wandered for a long time, but he finally found his friend, and they were both really happy.”

Asher asked, “That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

He wasn’t satisfied, but it was time for him to eat his oatmeal with strawberries and bananas in it.

He begged me for a new and better story after school. I told him about a man who sailed to the South Pole to sell refrigerators to the Waddle and his penguin friends.

Asher didn’t like that story either.

Back on Brady Street

August 25th, 2025

Asher starts kindergarten at Tamarack Waldorf School on September 3rd. This is obviously a big deal, both for Asher and for Karin and me. Going to school will open up a whole new world for Asher. He will get to know his teacher, and he will make friends. He will have to learn how to follow a schedule. He’s never had to do that before. Asher has mostly done what he wants when he wants, and for the most part we, as his guardians, have been okay with that. That all changes in a little over a week. He is going to have to get up early, eat breakfast, get dressed, and go to class for the morning every morning. I’m almost certain he will balk at this, at least until he gets comfortable in his class and starts looking forward to doing things with the other children.

I will mostly likely be driving Asher to class each morning. I am a morning person, unlike my wife. The Waldorf school is close to downtown Milwaukee, which means Asher and I will have a half hour drive to get him to class by 8:00 AM each day. Traffic will suck. My wife did this kind of thing with our own kids twenty-five years ago. We know the drill. Since Asher will only be there until 12:30, it is kind of iffy as to whether it is even worthwhile for me to drive back home once I drop him off. I might as well stay in area around the school while he is in class.

Tamarack is located on Brady Street on the lower eastside of Milwaukee. It’s close to Lake Michigan. Tamarack uses the old school building from St. Hedwig’s Catholic Church. The steeple of St. Hedwig’s towers over the other buildings on the street. It is the anchor for the neighborhood. The school building is ancient. It has classrooms with high ceilings, tall windows, and hardwood floors. The school has a feeling of solidity and durability. If you listen closely, you can hear the voices of previous generations of children laughing and yelling in the halls. For me, there are ghosts in the school. Even if I am surrounded by the new parents and their kids, I can still feel the presence of the people who taught and learned in that place a quarter century ago. The school contains echoes of the past, but it is also vibrant with the energy of the latest generation. It’s like life is coming full circle.

Brady Street is an interesting neighborhood. It always has been. Early on, it was an immigrant community of Germans, Poles, and Italians. St. Hedwig’s is named after a Polish saint. There is still an Italian grocery store (Glorioso’s) a few blocks away from the school. Peter Sciortino Bakery is across the street from Tamarack. During the 60’s and 70’s, Brady Street was a hippie hangout. Now, it’s a narrow road lined with bars that cater to a mostly hipster crowd, young people with money. But the neighborhood is still quirky. The community is very LGBTQ friendly. The area is ethnically diverse. Brady is a good street for walking and browsing. There is a paradoxical sense of permanence and simultaneous upheaval. It’s a neighborhood that is alive.

I came to know that area in the 1990’s. I used to go down the block from the school to the Brewed Cafe for coffee. Sometimes, I went there by myself, and sometimes with my wife. Brewed is not there anymore. They closed down a few years ago, and now the place is a Brazilian coffee shop. The new coffee house is nice enough, but it’s not Brewed. The Brewed Cafe had this scruffy, working-class, antiestablishment atmosphere. Once a person managed to get through the front door, which never really opened and closed very well, they would see numerous pamphlets and posters advertising upcoming shows by local bands or political events or art exhibits. The front counter was small and cramped. At busy times of the day, customers lined up almost all the way back to the door. Once at the counter, a person could order coffee or other beverages. They had beer (it’s Wisconsin-almost every establishment serves beer). There was a tiny kitchen in the back where people made vegan sandwiches and other dishes. The folks working at Brewed all had more than usual number of tattoos and piercings. I’m sure they worked for minimum wage, but they got to pick what music was played in the coffee shop.

Even when there were only a few customers, Brewed seemed crowded. Space was at a premium. The tables were small and wobbly. If you ordered coffee, you got that immediately. If you ordered food, it showed up eventually. The walls were covered with works by local artists. The bathrooms were microscopic in size, and the walls were plastered with graffiti and stickers for bands that I had never heard of. The place was clean, but cluttered. Over the years, it had accumulated a variety of objects that somehow lost their purpose and meaning, but remained there, nonetheless. Brewed was oddly comfortable. Going there for coffee or lunch was kind of like going into somebody’s home.

I miss that place. I will have to find another hangout on Brady Street.

Going Home

June 27th, 2025

“There’s no place like home”. – Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz

Back in July of 1976, I joined the Army. To be more specific, I was accepted as a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. USMA is part of the U.S. Army, but it is a military organization sui generis. Nothing else in the Army, or in the world at large, even vaguely resembles it. I could try to describe it, but there isn’t enough space in this essay to make the effort worthwhile.

The first year as a student at West Point is brutal. It’s a harsh environment for a “plebe” (that’s what a freshman is called at USMA), and going to that school is kind of like attending an Ivy league college and doing time simultaneously. The first chance for a plebe to leave the place is at Christmastime. After five months of getting jerked around by upperclassmen, I was anxiously looking forward to going home for two weeks.

I didn’t get to go home. My home no longer existed.

In order to explain what I mean, I have to give some background information. Before I left for West Point, my parents had already decided to sell their house. They never mentioned any of this to me while I was still living with them. My folks loved secrecy. I grew up in a home where paranoia permeated everything. In any case, I found out about the sale of the house after it had already been sold. My parents sent me a letter with a newspaper clipping that advertised the fact that the old house was available for purchase. I did go back to my family on leave, but I went to a place I had never seen before in my life.

They say that you can never go home. That’s true. I found out immediately after I met up with my parents and brothers that I was an outsider. My five-month absence had left a vacuum in the family structure that had quickly filled. They were happy to see me, but I wasn’t an integral part of their day-to-day lives anymore. I was a just a visitor. That new status was hard to accept, at least at first.

Would it have made any difference if I had been able to go back to the house where I had grown up? Probably not. If anything, going back to that dilapidated old farmhouse would have made the change more poignant. Even if my family had remained in that home, it would not have been mine anymore. I would have still been a stranger there.

It’s been nearly fifty years since I last saw the inside of the old house. I think the structure still stands. It has to be well over one hundred years old by now. I don’t how it’s been remodeled over the years, and it really doesn’t matter. If I walked into the front door, I would still feel the presence of ghosts in the rooms. They would not be friendly ghosts. They would be there to trigger my bad memories of growing up in that place. I have plenty of dark recollections. I am not nostalgic about my childhood. I prefer not to be reminded of it.

You can’t go home. For some of us, it’s not even a good idea to try.