How to Quit Smoking Once and For All

I smoked two packs a day for 50 years and tried to quit on and off for 20 of those years. I’d run out for a few puffs when it was 10 below and 118 above. Light one up every time I started the truck, walked outside, and after each meal. I would get that cough and the nicotine stained fingers that start the thoughts of “Man, I’ve got to quit.” And I would.
I would throw away the few remaining in the pack and the lighter and swear that this was the time the quitting would last. And without fail, it would last for a couple of days. Maybe, even a week or two. But the thought of wanting a cigarette was unbelievably persistent. It would get so bad at times that I would catch myself drooling. Not being able to shaking the thought of that desire was my Achilles heel. It would lead to one and then back to the usual.
I quit once and for all with Chantix. The miracle was that from the last cigarette I smoked a year and a half ago until today, if I have ever thought about smoking it was for a few brief seconds. No more drooling or blaming my truck for turning into Circle K, or the bombardment of needing a cigarette thoughts. The desire was fleeting and the strength of commitment to kicking the habit was much easier to maintain.
I would like to say that I could have done it without Chantix, but I couldn’t and didn’t. So don’t waste your time trying either. Chantix works once and for all.

The Longest, Loudest, and Craziest Holiday of All

If you haven’t thought that the New Year’s holiday was the longest, loudest, and craziest holiday of them all, then you haven’t celebrated the New Year in Aruba. They do much more than bang pots and pans together at midnight , or sit in front of their TV watching a ball drop in New York City, or sing and sway to the big band sound of Auld Lang Syne.
The holiday in Aruba officially begins when the Chinese ship docks at the downtown harbor on December 28th. I saw the newspaper headline “Klapchie Arrives” on Friday the 29th. The staff at the resort where I was working seemed overly excited that morning. When I asked my supervisor, “What’s going on?” He rubbed his hands together in a frenzy and said with a conspiratorial grin, “ Klapchie.”
“Klapchie?”
“Fireworks.”
When I went to the bank with my son in tow, I told the teller that we needed some cash for Klapchie. She laughed when I asked for $50. “You better take $200,” she said smiling, “and get a nice pagada.”
A pagada is a long string of firecrackers that can be bought in various lengths. There must be about a hundred little finger sized firecrackers per foot with every tenth one the size of your thumb. The pagada ends in a massive finale of interwoven wicks and sticks that is a foot square. The idea, I was told, was to roll out the string the width of your property. It would, not only, ward off the evil spirits from entering the property, but also, provide the residents with good luck to start the year.
My son and I bought a fifty foot pagada and a large grocery bag full of firecrackers, rockets, helicopters and an assortment of items that were a mystery to us New Year’s neophytes. We paid a little under $50. Cheap, I thought.
The pagada custom which no one explained extends to the closing of each business for the year. So beginning on that Friday afternoon, as each store closed, the employees would gather along the fronting street and set off a pagada the width of the property right down the middle of the road. As you can imagine, traffic came to a halt while the celebration burned noisily down the pavement. The noise, and smoke, and flying red paper could last for 10 to 15 minutes for a hundred foot business frontage. The business district behind the resort was especially loud because the narrow streets and two and three storey buildings endlessly echoed the exploding sounds for all to enjoy. The celebration for most businesses did not end with the Klapchie finale but continued with drinks and food and music in the parking lot. The businesses that had a good year had a band with a semi trailer full of speakers that could drown out a Rolling Stones concert. These mini celebrations continued all afternoon and evening across the island.
The pagada for our resort was set off at 1 PM on Saturday. It was a tradition that attracted thousands of people, was over a half mile in length and took an hour to reach the finale which was a tightly bound ring of cherry bombs five foot in diameter. Five million fire crackers in all and an explosion at the end that knocked your socks off. It took twelve people about two hours to clean up all the remains.
While we originally intended to set off our grocery bag of pyrotechnics on Sunday evening which was New Year’s Eve, we got caught up with all the neighbors and the neighborhoods that traded explosions beginning Friday night and dispensed with our entire load. We reloaded Saturday morning with three grocery bags and two eight inch rockets. Beginning at 7 am Saturday and continuing throughout the day and late into the night you could hear the explosions and see rockets light up the sky.
I remember seeing people lined up Friday at the veterinarian clinic. We learned that they were there to buy pet tranquilizers. By Saturday night, we were beginning to see why. From our front porch that Saturday night, no matter which direction you turned, you could see something exploding in the sky. We are talking big time rockets with big time booms at the end. Anything you have ever seen or heard at a fireworks event, you could buy and you could launch. All of Aruba was the launching pad….and this was only Saturday night.
New Year’s eve. While we were at a formal beach party with plenty of loud music, you could still hear the intensity of Klapchie rising as midnight approached. The kids and I snuck off several times that evening to the roof of the resort and looked out over the island. Aruba is about three miles wide by twenty miles long and from our roof top vantage point you could see that every nook and cranny was lit up with the reds and blues and greens of 10 and 12 inch rockets. By midnight a small group of us had gathered with champagne in hand on the roof. I want to tell you, that at the stroke of 12, as the cruise ships sounded their fog horns, this island erupted. It was like a war zone … the ground shook, colors flashed, pagadas roared to a deafening crescendo … it was unbelievable. It was everywhere. Trying to describe it, impossible. Within 15 minutes, the sky was filled with smoke and the acrid smell of spent powder.
We were home by 1 am to contribute to the excitement. It took us about three hours to shoot off our supply. Our finale was dropping the 8 inch in diameter rockets into a galvanized launching tube and watching them light up and shake our little part of the island. What a night. Another custom is to visit your friends and relatives throughout the night and into the morning. Klapchie is set off with each arrival and each departure. Our neighbors had lots of friends and relatives, tranquility returned and the longest, loudest, and craziest holiday ended about 7 in the morning.

Ebony White

It was the first snow of winter. A beautiful, young housewife sat at her kitchen nook sipping a dark ebony, Kona blend coffee. She was drawn into the shimmering black pool of her morning drink and the reflections of the ivory-white rim. Reaching across the table for her scissors, she pricked the end of her ring finger. She jerked her hand back. A small droplet of deep red blood appeared. She hesitated and admired the vibrant color before wiping her hand on a napkin. As she watched the snowflakes float like feathers across her view of Mount Bachelor, she daydreamed of a daughter with ebony hair, ivory-white skin, and lips as vibrant red as the blood in her veins.

Several years later, the young housewife had the daughter of her dreams. She survived long enough to touch the beautiful white skin and ebony hair, to kiss the deep red lips, and to name her beauty, Ebony White.

Ebony White’s father, after several years of mourning, married a former Oregon beauty queen who secretly practiced witch craft. She spent hours in front of her magic mirror challenging with makeup any sign of the aging process. She would often pose in front of the mirror and ask, “Tell me mirror, tell me true, whose beauty makes men say, Eeeew?”

“You da Eeeew,” the mirror would reply.

Satisfied, the queen would blow the mirror a kiss as she headed off to the mall.

As the years passed, Ebony grew more and more beautiful each year. By the time she was a teenager, she was strikingly more beautiful than the queen or anyone else in Central Oregon. One day when the queen asked, “Tell me mirror, tell me true, whose beauty makes men say, Eeeew?”

The mirror replied, “You da Eeeew in view, but Ebony White’s the Eeeew Delight.”

The queen was fit to be tied. She stormed from the room and ordered her appointment secretary, Bruce, to take Ebony out on the Deschutes River and drown her.  “Make it look like an accident,” she said sharply. “I’m off to the spa.”

Bruce coaxed Ebony to join him on an afternoon canoe trip. They floated and paddled for about an hour downstream before Bruce finally told Ebony of her stepmother’s command.  “Take this canoe and paddle to Portland,” he instructed.

Ebony White headed down river. After two days of fighting the rapids and rocks, she waded ashore and fell asleep under an ancient redwood. Benny, one of the seven Burpinstock brothers, wandered down to the river and discovered the sleeping beauty. “Are you alright, young lady?” he asked as she jolted awake.

Ebony told him of her plight. Benny led her back to the shoe factory boardroom where he talked with his brothers while Ebony ate  a sprout, spinach and tofu sandwich.  It was agreed that Ebony could stay at one of the cabins in the Burpinstock compound and help out with internet and walk in orders.

After weeks of receiving condolences from just about everyone in Bend, the queen was relaxing in front of her mirror. “Tell me mirror, tell me true, whose beauty makes men say, Eeeew?”

“You da Eeeew in view, but Ebony White’s still the Eeeew Delight,” the mirror replied.

The queen was furious. “The Eeeew Delight must be banished from sight,” she yelled. After firing Bruce for insubordination, she gathered her books on potions.  Blowing off the dust from the leather-bound covers, she spent hours both sneezing, she had dust allergies, and thumbing through the ancient pages for a poisonous concoction that would finally put Snow White to rest.   The Red Delicious was ultimately her poison of choice. A beautiful red apple admired and consumed by Northwest vegetarians would be injected with the poison. A delight for the Eeeew Delight she thought gleefully.

With further help from the mirror, the queen was able to see Ebony White happily sending a test message to Billy Burpinstock, the company’s internet guru.

The queen set off at once on a shopping spree.  Apples were bought at Whole Foods. She stopped at the Goodwill Thrift Store for an outfit more befitting the Burpinstock image.  Her gathering of a ruffled petticoat skirt, gold-embroidered swing tunic, boho beret and tire tread sandals cost a little more than seven dollars.  She stopped at the neighborhood Quick Cut and had her hair done up in a seven braid cage.  Her last stop was at Todd’s Toyota dealership where she left her prize Mercedes to test drive an eco-friendly Prius.

It took a little more than five hours for the queen to reach the Burpinstock complex.  Set deep into the forest at the edge of the Deschutes Old Redwood Preserve, it was a tree huggers’ dream. Without makeup and dressed in the drab fashion of yesteryear, Ebony did not recognize the queen when she entered the shoe room.  The queen, a lady of the perfumed world, gagged at the faint smell of dirty feet.  Ebony helped the queen pick out a pair of blue Super Burpy Clogs.  After paying for her purchase, the queen handed Ebony the poisonous apple.  “A red delicious delight for your help, my dear.  Extra sweet, extra special,” she said and walked out the door.

Ebony White set the shiny apple on the corner of her polished ebony desk. It’s too beautiful to eat she thought.   But the temptation like that of Adam millions of years ago was too strong to resist.  She bit into the lethal concoction and immediately slumped to the floor.  Her breathing and heart beat slowed to an imperceptible rate.  When Bernie Burpinstock found Ebony sprawled across the floor, he deemed her dead.  He summoned the other brothers to the office.  “I deem her dead,” he said.

They moved her body to the conference room table and debated on what to do.  “Let’s bury her by the ancient redwood where I found her,” Benny suggested.

“No. No.” replied Bobby. “We should build a monument at the center of the compound and place here there.”

The brothers Burpinstock debated day after day, week after week, and month after month but were unable to reach a unanimous decision. So Ebony White’s body remained prostrate on the conference room table.

One decision the brothers did make several years after Ebony’s assumed demise was to build a factory in Thailand to take advantage of that country’s cheap labor pool. “Why pay our people a living wage when we can get the work done for peanuts and a bowl of white rice,” they said.  On their way to the factory’s grand opening their private jet developed engine trouble and plunged into the North Pacific subtropical gyre, a floating garbage patch of plastic the size of Texas.  The world mourned the loss of Bernie, Bobby, Billy, Benny, Barry, Buddy, and Buckley Burpinstock.

There lived in the outskirts of Spokane, the nerdy young son of a wealthy philanthropist, Gabriel “Gabby” Gates.  While his father thought computers could save the world, Gabby believed, “If every person had a good pair of  clogs, the world would be at peace.” It’s hard to fight, he reasoned, when each step  is a shuffle. When he saw the headlines, ‘Burpinstock Brothers Drown in a Sea of Plastic’ he saw the future of the world flash before his eyes.

“I will buy the company and shoe the world,” he told his dog, Gimpy. “We will have peace at last.”

After a fortnight of financial wrangling, Gabby took over the Burpinstock empire which included the prostrate body of Ebony White.  On his first visit to the redwood factory, the general manager asked what he should do with the delicate sculpture that adorned the conference room table.  Gabby inspected his new purchase and thought it a beautiful work of art. “Bring it along, Bruce.” he told his assistant. “I shall hang it over the fireplace at home.”

His assistant not used to wearing clogs and distracted by his ‘this face seems familiar’ thoughts, stumbled through the doorway and dropped Ebony White to the floor. The impact dislodged the poisonous wedge of apple caught in Ebony’s throat and she began to cough. Bruce, looking up from his prone position on the display room floor, passed out. Gabby grabbed Ebony White’s hand and helped her up. Dizzy from her years of horizontal life, Ebony grabbed onto Gabby’s arm for stability and they shuffled off together into the midsummer Oregon sunlight.

Mistaking the wobbly clutch of Ebony White for affection, Gabby eagerly proposed marriage to her in the back of his Volvo limousine.

Five hours away, before her favorite mirror, the queen exploded in anger. Her tears washed away the makeup that hid the wrinkles and blotches of an aged face.  An image of wretched ugliness was imprinted on her brain.  “Da Eeeew is through,” were he last words.

After the last snow flurries of March and as the countryside turned to a blanket of green, Ebony White and Gabby Gates held the outdoor wedding of the century. With the world watching on their smartphones and wearing free, commemorative, white Super Burpy clogs distributed worldwide by the Gates Foundation, the couple exchanged their vows of love. They and the world shuffled around happily and peacefully thereafter.

Searching For a Daughter-in-Law

Searching for a Daughter-in-Law

          We were standing knee deep in the tumbling waters of the Rogue River. We stood side by side casting into a small pool above a line of boulders. The trick was to get the fly to drift through a narrow gorge that led to larger pool about ten feet below the waterfall where the trout line up like kids in a cafeteria line. The reward of a perfect cast
was seeing the trout rise out of the white caped water to claimed our offering. It was in this pastoral setting of tall pines, swirling water, and rock outcrops made smooth by thousands of years of passing currents that our conversation turned to marriage and the beginnings of a family.

My son, Todd, was in a serious relationship with a beautiful woman and mother five years his senior. She had two children approaching their teens and would need a reverse tubaligation to have more. She was also eighteen months from forty which meant serious conversations about marriage and additional children needed to be addressed. She was willing to have the surgery if he really wanted more children.

Todd is a chemist. He works in a precise analytical environment far beyond my understanding in biogenetics. While analytic, his heart led him into the field. His mother died of cancer and he hoped to alleviate that pain from other lives. He put his mind and heart into the question: Do I really want to have more children? The easy part was the medical research. It revealed that the success rate for her reverse tubaligation was
about thirty five percent. With the odds against them, he needed to focus on what he could live with and without.

Todd and her children’s father got along quite well. The father lived nearby and was involved in his children’s daily lives and activities. They all went to the soccer games and the recitals. They shared Thanksgiving meals and Easter egg hunts. They shared beers and shared laughs. It was not a situation where the kids did not have a father figure or the tensions of a bitter separation. Todd understood that he would not be their dad. He
could be a friend, an adviser, a care giver but he probably would not be thecentral male figure in their lives. If they didn’t have additional children, could he live with that?

He did not search for answers alone; he involved friends and family that knew him
best.

His mother died during the fall of his senior year at Texas Tech. He had spent the
summer watching her suffer the revenges of cancer. The extreme pain, the
withering effects from robust strength to fragility, and the inability to help
ease that suffering had a profound effect on his psyche. He rode the emotional
roller coaster as best he could. He got through classes but his relationships
suffered. When it’s hard to have fun, it’s hard to have friends, especially, in
college. After graduation, he moved to Portland, Oregon and lived with his older
sister and her new husband. He needed the familial closeness and the time to
sort out his direction. He delivered liquor in the morning and snowboarded in
the afternoon. The fresh powder of Mt. Hood and the adrenalin rush snowboarding provided helped clear his mind and mend his soul. He was there for the birth of his two nieces and loved being called Uncle Toddy. As he saw his sister and family grow, he felt the need to get on with his life as well.

He left the glimmer of Portland for the agrariancountry-side and university town of Corvallis. He joined a biopharmaceutical company that specializes in the discovery and
development of RNA- based drugs. To quote their website – the company “has
developed and optimized derivatives of its proprietary antisense chemistry
(phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomers or PMOs) that can be designed to
target the diseases through several distinct mechanisms of action”.  He’s been there over ten years and while we talk about his work on a weekly basis, I couldn’t step in and give him a hand for even a minute.

The precision of his work helped develop a precision in his lifestyle. His sister
noticed the difference. “He was a slob,” she told me once. “I would have to
pick up after him every day. Now everything has its place. His house is
immaculate. He’s organized, he plans ahead. Where will we have Thanksgiving?
Who will bring what? Christ, it’s six month away. Now he drives me crazy.” With
the girls, he is still Uncle Toddy. Goofy, rambunctious and with the ability to
bring the decibel level of playfulness to new heights, he is the one visitor they wait for and the one they run the fastest to see and hug.

She told him he was the perfect uncle. The girls loved him and just the mention of
his name brought a smile to their faces. “You have helped in their development
in so many ways. You would be a great father. I see it in you. You love being
an uncle. You’ll love being a dad even more.”

He traveled to Virginia to visit his younger brother and his family over the Christmas holidays. With two boys, Todd was in his element. He taught them new noises to make when playing with their toys and to expect the unexpected when he roared into the
room. He spent Christmas day on the floor exploring with them the wonders of
each new gift until they were too tired to run or crawl another inch. He watched them run to meet their dad at the door and was amazed that his little brother had settled so comfortably into family life. ‘The kid that always had a sports car,” he told me over the phone, “now drives a van. Instead of playing tennis every day after work with the guys, he comes home to play with his boys.”

He spent New Years in Texas visiting his drinking buddy and college roommate. A father of two with one on the way, he too was happy with the sacrifices family life entails. Sure he’d missed a few ski trips because they didn’t want to leave the children with a sitter, but he’d missed a couple in college too when he was too broke to travel.

So we stood side by side, knee deep in the sparkling currents of the Rogue, and
talked about marriage and the beginnings of a family life. He had decided that
he wanted children of his own and that as much as he loved the lady he was
with, the chances of them having children were far from certain. Had they been
married and unable to conceive, he would have considered adoption. “But I have
a choice,” he said casting across the stream. “I’m choosing to find a new lady
to love and grow old with, to help raise a family with and to do all the things
you did with mom.”

Well, that was a few month ago. Corvallis is a small town. It is like the small pool across the river where the fish are lined up like kids in a cafeteria line. You can’t tell from here which one is a keeper or if any, for that matter. It is in this pastoral setting of tall
pines, swirling rivers, and rock outcrops made smooth by thousands of years of
passing currents that my son wants to marry and raise a family. He is looking
for a serious relationship.

As for me, I’m searching for a daughter in law that will love my son and let me
take their kids up to a little spot I know on the Rogue River….where the sun
glimmers through the pines and where family memories are made.

Has Anybody Seen My Scissors?

What could be better than playing 9 holes of golf every morning before the daily meeting at work? What could be better than playing golf every morning on a Caribbean
course with ocean views of paradise at every turn? What could be better than
playing with a great group of guys where laughs and good natured kidding followed
every shot? And to top it off, you get to play for free.

Well, almost free. After 5 years, I developed a double callus on my right big toe
from the twisting and turning. It wasn’t until five years later that that callus split and became infected.

I was sitting with my leg out stretched on a hospital bed. The doctor’s back blocked my view of his poking and prodding.  It wasn’t until he turned and said,  “I’ll be right back. I need a drain tube,” that I could see the results of his fiddling.

So I sat for half an hour with this pair of scissors jabbed through my great toe. I had enough time to call my wife and daughter.

“The podiatrist sent me over to the ER,” I began. “The doctor here said he was going to insert a drain tube. I’m going to need a ride home.  Bring the camera,” I said hanging up.

Emergency rooms are pretty wide open. Doctors, nurses, interns and an assortment of the sick and wounded mill about. My great toe was a magnet for rubber necks. Most were
curious as to how I managed to plunge a pair of scissors into it. Some, I could tell, wanted a closer look. “Yeah,” I would say to them, “it goes all the way through.”

"Oooo...I see the tip of the scissors," my daughter gushed.

The most memorable line was from the doctor, himself. When he finally returned, he moved around the tools in the tray next to the bed and, finally, said, “Has anybody seen my scissors?”