The picture above was taken Sunday afternoon, March 19 when I visited Elkhart, Illinois on assignment for the best news weekly published in the greater tri-state area. Barely visible just to center right are grave markers of Elkhart’s founder. The markers are at the top of the big hill you see every time you drive by Elkhart on your way north on I-55. For decades, I’ve wondered about that hill and I was privileged to tour it as few do thanks to some help from some new friends. Details soon, you know where.
The sinus cold has pretty much “left the building,” but it left behind congestion in my ear canal to my mouth, causing me to be about twice as deaf as usual and about as off balance as when I’ve had a good interface with a bottle of Wild Turkey 101. The result is a condition which I call Half Death (HD), not to be confused with HDTV. The peril of the condition was mercilessly clear to me when I substitute taught French all day at Springfield HS Friday. Yes, I speak a little French, and that seemed to surprise the students who seemed to appreciate my effort. Speaking French is not a requirement for subbing in a French class. Anyone who can read lesson plans — and Mrs. B’s were probably the best I’ve encountered since I started subbing — can sub French. I was lucky. The classes were fine. As the second year class watched a Rick Steves travel video about France and answered questions on a work sheet I had distributed, I finished Lee Gurga’s excellent Haiku for Poets; a MUST READ if you have any appreciation and curiosity about haiku. As the words from Steves reached me just over the semi-white noise of students behaving like students with a substitute teacher, as though I were wearing a large jug over my head, I felt as though I was looking down at me sitting at the desk with the a room full of students in a room darkened for the video. I remembered speaking to them briefly at the start of class and taking attendance with my mouth moving the right way but feeling my voice more than hearing my voice. Almost none of the students were adversarial, and most of what I said during the entire day was de regeur; just the formality of sharing required information. With this goofy stopped up ear, I truly felt removed a step or two from happy consciousness. And the only time it really bothered me was when I was situated to embrace depression, reading a fine book silently and not being able to really tune into the world immediately around me.
I’ve been wrestling with additional work from a web client who wanted me to revise her CIVAG (Central Illinois Visual Artist Galleries — www.civag.com — content. The results to her from the five hours spent Saturday and probably three more hours likely Monday to finish the revision grate on my heart like a power sander against my nose. I chafed at almost every minute spent Saturday on this effort because I KNEW the results would not be worth the time spent, I KNEW I was not going to bill her for my effort because she has been the most vocal and financial supporter of CIVAG since it started last year, and because I KNEW I would have to delete more arts content elsewhere at the CIVAG pages to accommodate her revisions. Could I dare explain this to her? Heck no. The only cure is more support for the effort from others. THAT wish seems right up there with my chances to play in concert at Carnegie Hall. As an author wrote in a terrific story about learning how to fly from aircraft carriers, when a pilot augers into the ocean behind the fantail (back) of the carrier or loses power taking off and rides his airplane to Davey Jones’ Locker, it’s not a matter of pilot skill or no skill. “It’s just the breaks of Naval Aviation. And that’s how I’m dealing with this silliness from the artist. “It’s just the breaks of Naval Aviation.”
I was well and truly nearly discombobulated over my pending road trip Sunday. My 86 Escort had transmission problems earlier this year, I had a hunch it needed oil (though I added a quart Saturday afternoon) and it hadn’t seen highway since I last visited a former college hearthrob in Tallula the year Kerry moped his way to defeat. I even wrote a short note in L E G I B L E longhand and placed it beside a copy of my will on a front room table, so any authority coming into the house after tracing the license plate of the charred wreck on Interstate 55 would understand I saw the inevitable before I determined to go meet it face to face.
One thing I have come to appreciate as a historian of aviation and the deeds of brave men and women. DUTY trancends the rest. I believe part of the mission of the US Marine Corps (someone correct me if I get this incorrectly) is “Duty, Honor, Country” I believe in that. And it was a white kuckle drive north, listening through half-deaf ears to the wonderful newly-muffled sound of my car, straining to hear clues of transmission, bearing, engine block and tire failure every foot of the way and hearing nothing but the rush of the wind. I even kept my radio turned off so I could hear better. The drive home was much easier; no white knuckles, and I was driving past the airport almost before I knew it. In fact, by the time I realized I was almost home, I could hardly remember the earlier part of the drive home.
So I can exhale now, though I still dread finishing the artist site revising. Also have four aviation articles to proof and semi-edit for the American Aviation Historical Society Journal, a task I relish. Will describe that crazee volunteer action later this week.
Thanks for reading.
Live long . . . . . . . . and proper.
