Accidents Will Happen: Part II

     When last we met, I had been describing my surfing mis-haps.  Now that I have been properly humbled, it's back to more misfortune at poor brother Timmy's expense.  

     One day back in the late fifties a wonderful and strange new phenomenon occurred at school.  A solitary figure was seen careening down a walkway on a hill while standing on a small board.  There were wheels under this board.  He looked like he was surfing down the hill.  He was scooting along pretty fast and he was hooting and hollering and whooping with joy.  All of us at Punahou School who had seen this exhibition were witnessing our first skateboard ride.  We immediately ran up to this "sidewalk surfer" to see how such a miracle had been performed.  This sidewalk surfboard was nothing more than a small plywood plank about five inches wide and a foot and a half long.  

     The heel and toe portions of a skate, the kind with metal wheels that you attach to your shoe, had been hammered flat and nailed to the bottom of the board.  By leaning to the left or right while standing on the board you could get it to slowly turn.  In this fashion you could gently slalom down a hill as long as the substrate was fairly smooth concrete or road-bed.

     Within an hour or so of getting home from school, all the kids in our neighborhood had made themselves skateboards from their old skates.  Roller skating was so passe'.  That sissy stuff was for girls and stupid kids who were too oblivious to realize they were being totally dorky.  But smashing one of your old skates flat and nailing it to the bottom of a small board; now that's totally cool. 

Pictured, is the kind of skate we used to make our skateboards. 

      Comparing the skateboards of today to what we rode around on is like comparing a Corvette to a Model T.  The old metal wheels of those skates weren't really up to the rigors for which they were being repurposed.  As long as you were pushing yourself around on level roads and sidewalks you were OK.  Things could get a little dicier on hills.

     Timmy's Nose Dive Onto The A'a.

     Behind our house was an extinct volcano called Koko Head.  On its slopes, Henry Kaiser had built a subdivision called Koko Kai.  Our little neighborhood road, Portlock ran along the edge of the ocean and was very flat.  The new roads in the Koko Kai suburb had some fairly dramatic hills on them.  We gave each of them names from our Hawaiian surfing lore.  Pipeline, Sunset Beach, Waikiki etc.  The steepness of the hill was matched by the seriousness of the surf spot.  The gentlest hill was Waikiki.  The steepest hill was called Waimea for the famous surf spot on the north shore of the island that got up to forty feet in the wintertime.

     One day Timmy and I felt that we had mastered the art of skateboarding well enough to challenge the awesome downhill grade of Waimea.  With skateboards in hand, we hiked up to the top of the hill.  Making sure that no cars were coming (most of the new houses weren't occupied yet) we gave each other a nervous smile and in the words of young stupid siblings the world over we said to each other, "Here goes nothing.  We're probably gonna get killed!"  And with that salute we jumped on our boards and headed downhill.  The idea was to slalom down the road so we didn't just head straight down which would have generated way too much speed.  However, after the first few seconds we realized we were accelerating so quickly we could do nothing but go straight and hoped to God that we made it to the bottom intact.

     As the big brother, Timmy had pushed off in front of me and I was about ten yards behind him.  By the time we were halfway down Waimea we were traveling somewhere just below the speed of sound.  Suddenly I heard the sound of metal grating on asphalt and I saw my brother lurch forward.  One of his front wheels had come off and his skateboard came grinding to a halt.  My brother also came grinding to a halt.  Unfortunately his grinding consisted of pitching forward onto the asphalt in a prone position.  I managed to avoid the carnage of broken skateboard and broken brother and coasted to a stop at the bottom of hill.

Pictured below is an artists rendering of that terrible day.  In the lower left we see Timmy, briefly airborne, much to the horror of an innocent bystander with blond hair and a pink mini-skirt.

     "Oh no.  Oh God.  Poor Timmy!  This is gonna be bad; real bad!", I muttered to myself as I hurried back up the street to supply what little aid and succor I could.  In those days our typical neighborhood "outfit" consisted of a pair of shorts and nothing else.  As I got closer, I could hear the cries and anguished whimperings of poor brother Timmy.  I could also see the damage that a forward dive onto the asphalt at just-below-the-speed-of-sound could do to a mostly unclothed body.  Boy howdy, it was not pretty.  Large portions of his front side had been scraped off and he looked like he was wearing a ragged suit of blood.  Poor Timmy.  Together we walked home with skateboards in hand; him (not so) softly whimpering and me clucking and making soothing cooing type sounds trying to comfort him (fat chance!).  

     "Hey Timmy; it could have been worse.  You're not dead and hey!  We can repair your skateboard!"  I picked up the wheel that had fallen off.  "You're young.  You'll heal pretty quickly.  Then we can go back up Waimea and show her who's boss.  You know what they say; Ya gotta get back on the horse that threw ya!  Just think; some day in the not-too-distant future when you're all healed up, we'll look back on this day and chuckle merrily as we remember Timmy's nose dive onto the A'a!"  (Note to non-Hawaiian readers:  A'a is the Hawaiian name for the sharp choppy kind of lava that is created when it flows slowly.  It is very hard on tires and hiking shoes and certainly would be very hard on the tender naked flesh of a young mostly unclothed boy...)  The real agony would begin tomorrow when the scabs started to dry up and Timmy would be swathed in bandages like Borlis Karloff in "The Mummy".

     One other accident of note wasn't really an accident as much as foolish behavior on Timmy's part.  In 1964 my brother decided, with the encouragement of an English teacher at our boarding school, that if Tom really wanted to be a writer the only place to go to school was back East where the bulk of the literary establishment dwelled.  Besides, it would build character.  To be a good writer, one must suffer.  Or some such lofty drivel.  My dad wanted us boys to go to Stanford.  When my time came I did as I was asked and had a moderately marvelous time there.  Timmy, at this point in his life, was in a contrary mood.  By that I mean, whatever our dad wanted; Tom would do the opposite.  So off he went to college in the East.

     Williams College is one of the prestigious Ivy League schools.  It's located in the extreme northwest corner of Massachusetts, far from civilization as the rest of us know it.  I remember getting my first letter from him while I was in my junior year at our boarding school; "Dear Mickey,  Fall in New England is everything it's cracked up to be.  I decided to go out for the cross country team and we have been running through the glorious autumn countryside.  I have enclosed a couple of the fall leaves, resplendent in their hues of orange and red and yellow.  Enjoy.  L&K, brother Timmy"  (or words to that effect).  

     I turned over the envelope and out fluttered a few dried gray leaves.  Timmy didn't take into account the long canoe ride that his letter was going to have to take in order to make it all the way from New England to Hawaii Prep. Academy in Kamuela, Hawaii. 

Here's what Williams looked like in the fall.  How lovely!

     Soon old father Winter showed his doughty white beard at Williams.  The temperature plunged, the snow fell and the sky lowered to the point where poor Timmy couldn't tell where the snow ended and the horizon began.  This is when the outdoor activities ceased, everyone bundled up and stayed indoors until Spring.  Assumedly, they were studying so they could graduate and take their place at the helm of their fathers' law firms and multi-national corporations, etc.  At this time, like the other Ivy League schools, Williams was not co-ed.  If you wished to enjoy the company of ladies, you had to visit what were called "The Seven Sisters" schools.  Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Wellesley etc.  Because of the remoteness factor that meant traveling a fair distance and our hero did not have a car.  These institutions of higher learning were sometimes called "suitcase schools" because if you hoped to have a chance for some nookie, you had to pack your suitcase and travel.  In my brother's case it meant hitch-hiking. 

    Picture Timmy, a young innocent country mouse from a tropical climate, bundling up as best he could, donning his new galoshes and standing by the side of the road in the freezing snow with his thumb out.  I ask you: WOULD YOU PICK HIM UP?  No.  I thought not.  So apparently, Timmy spent a lot of time standing by the side of the road with the thumb of one mittened hand sticking out shivering in the snow.  I never found out if he ever got lucky with a member of the opposite sex.

  Williams College in Winter.  Looks chilly doesn't it?

      One of Timmy's best friends from boarding school also made the plunge and went to Williams.  Curtis Tyler was a big affable fellow and he and my brother and a few others all hung together at our boarding school.  Curty's dad worked for one of the big fruit packing corporations that preyed on Central and South America and the Caribbean.  At the time the Tyler residence was in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  So Timmy and Curtis headed down to Puerto Rico for that first Christmas vacation.  To say that our hero was ready for a little sunny R&R would be an understatement.  

     On their first full day in P.R. they took the family water skiing boat out and spent the day water skiing and drinking in the lovely sun and clear tropical days that P.R. is known for when there are no hurricanes lurking about.  My brother hadn't been in the sun, much less equatorial sun, in many months.  I imagine he was as white as a sheet.  At the end of that first day he looked (and felt) like a cooked lobster.  In 1964, there was no such thing as sun block.  The sun tan lotion that was available in those days, Sea and Ski, and the like, didn't provide much protection from the conditions that Timmy had just experienced that day.  

     That night, he was in serious pain with extreme sunburns over most of his torso.  Even a shirt felt like torture.  That night all he wore to bed was a pair of Madras Bermuda shorts and a pair of athletic socks.  He couldn't sleep and finally at 3 AM he decided to seek some relief by bathing his over-cooked body in the soothing balm of the sea.  Hey; why do you think they call it balmy?  So off he ran in his shorts and socks through the streets of San Juan to find some seaside relief.  

     On Timmy's last visit to Happy Acres, I set up a movie camera in the backyard so we could drink and reminisce and perhaps chuckle a bit.  I managed to make a little video out of the portion of the film that pertained to Timmy's Christmas trip to Puerto Rico.  I'll let this YouTube snippet tell the rest of the story.  Enjoy!  I sure did.  Next up:  More bad stuff that happened to da Mayor!  Timmy's off the hook, for now...

YouTube video link: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWjlG_bnUkY 

     Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres
    
     

Accidents Happen: Part One

     Everyone has accidents.  The nature of the accidents have to do with our age, where we live and what we were doing at the time.  I am thinking of the accidents that befell my brother and me as we were growing up in our ocean-side house in Hawaii.  I imagine some of our misfortunes were of the generic variety; skinned knees, sprained ankles, little fingers pinched in door ways; that sort of thing.  An accident can happen with something as innocent as a tether ball.

     In our front yard, for awhile when were were kids, our dad had set up a sturdy steel-poled tether ball set.  Timmy and I and our neighborhood gang wiled away many a pleasurable hour smacking the tether ball back and forth.  I quickly learned that the taller contestant had the upper hand as he could hit the ball in a higher arc which the shorter opponent couldn't quite reach.  The final result was the ball quickly spinning itself tightly around the pole; followed by the tether-ball victory dance.  My brother and I were about the same size and height and our tether ball matches got quite spirited.

     One day as we were playing my brother went to hit the ball as it came winging toward him and, inexplicably, he missed the ball entirely.  His momentum threw him to the ground and as he put out his arm to break his fall, instead he broke his arm.  Oh boy!  Our first cast!  I'm pretty sure my brother got heartily tired of telling his school mates what had happened.  To make him feel better, we decorated his cast with witty sayings and crude drawings of him lying on the ground next to the tether ball set with a crooked arm.  Classmates joined in the fun with their signings of the cast also making fun of the poor little crippled boy.  

Below is an artist's rendering of that terrible accident.  I'm on the right.  Timmy's on the left and you can clearly see the compound fracture of the right radius and ulnar bones.

     I believe the itching was the worst part.  Tom solved the problem with a straightened coat hanger.  Thankfully he didn't break the skin down in there so he avoided infection, possible gangrene, necrosis and amputation.  For that I know we are both very thankful.  Our parents probably wouldn't have let us keep the tether ball if poor Timmy had to play with one arm...

     He broke his arm again a few years later sliding down the side of a steep dirt embankment above the waste area of Ricky Moore's house where we had built our plywood fort.  Our gang were the good kids on the block.  We were only out during the day playing ball sports or surfing and occasionally snorkeling above the wonderful coral reefs that fronted our neighborhood.  Back then the coral hadn't been vandalized by beady eyed arrivistes; stripping it of the colorful reef fish and live seashells that abounded in our youth.  

Here's part of the "good kids" gang.  Da Mayor's on the right with brother Timmy behind me.  The little guy in the plastic boat is our kid brother Randy.  He doesn't quite know it yet but we're about to send him out into the open ocean with the crashing waves on what we hope will be the first of many spirit quests.  On the left, you can see part of the pier we walk out to paddle our surfboards out to our neighborhood surf spot, second reef.  (we're standing on first reef)

     Ricky Moore's backyard was just the right size for a game of home-run derby.  The snug little fort we kids had built past where the lawn ended was made of salvaged four by eight sheets of plywood.  We had cut a few holes in it to let in some light.  Since it was only four feet high we had to duck-walk to get in through the entry and would then sit in there for a few minutes shooting the breeze till we realized we were idiots for sitting inside this dusty squat little structure when we could be outside in the glorious Hawaiian sun playing baseball.  In our version of home-run derby (a show popular on TV at the time) whoever managed to hit the ball so it landed on top of the fort was the winner and new home-run king.  

     My brother was in the outfield when Peter Brown, who was famous for purposely fouling off pitches he didn't like, hit one up and to the right of the fort.  It landed on the bluff above and Tom went up to retrieve it.  In the act of sliding back down, he broke his arm.  We all heard the crack, followed by a great wail of anguish and pain.  Poor Timmy; he was kind of a klutz growing up.  Another cast; another straightened coat hanger.

     But my brother was not done with himself yet.  One day we were on the other side of the island (Oahu) which was considered being in the country in those days.  We were visiting some relative of our step-mother and we were to entertain ourselves with her son.  He took us to this beach behind which was a seawall with cement steps leading down to the sand.  My brother had a glass coke bottle in his hand as he was descending the stairs.  The stairs were steep and wet from the ocean spray and my poor but beloved brother was still in his "klutz" phase.  You guessed it.  His feet slipped out from under him and he fell crashing to the cement stairs.  He put out his hand with the coke bottle in it.  The bottle broke and cut his hand down to the bone, severing tendons in the process.  He had to have a wire cable installed in his hand to stitch the tendons back together.  So in addition to this, his third cast, he had a stainless steel wire sticking out of his palm.  Once again with the straightened coat hanger but this time he had to be extra careful since there were stitches in their too.  Poor Timmy...  what a klutz... 

     OK.  We've had enough fun at Timmy's expense for now.  We'll get into the skateboard mishap and the trip to Puerto Rico on his first college Christmas break later...  I don't want the reader to have the impression that I was much too clever to avoid the pratfalls of youth.  On the contrary.  I had two notable misfortunes that involved stitches but no casts.  Mine both happened in the ocean.  One surfing; one bodysurfing.

     Our neighborhood surf spot was directly in front of our house about a third of a mile out where the outer reef was.  We had a lovely little fishing pier that took us out past the first reef to where the deeper water was.  From there we would jump off the end of the pier with our boards and paddle out to "second reef" where the "big boy" waves broke.  There weren't more than about fifteen or twenty of the neighborhood kids that surfed so at any one time there were plenty of waves for everybody.  Our coastal neighborhood was in the lee of Koko Head crater which formed the eastern arm of our bay.  On the other end of Mauanalua bay was the back side of Diamond Head.  Past that was Waikiki beach where we had taken surfing lessons from the famous Hawaiian beach boys    

     Being on the lee side of the island meant that the trade winds which blew almost constantly in Hawaii were off shore making for nice surfing waves when the Summer swell was in.  Late one afternoon there was a healthy offshore breeze and a decent swell running.  Timmy and I were out enjoying ourselves on our new Velzy surfboards that we had bought with yard work money; augmented, as I remember, with a contribution from Dad; to be worked off in the future.  I took off on a wave that was a little too steep for the angle of my board and it "pearl dived".  That's where the nose of the board is shoved under the water by the force of the wave.  The rider (me) falls off and the board rebounds skyward.  Because of the wind, all surfers are taught to stay under for a few seconds till the board has had a chance to fall back onto the water.  I waited a few seconds and then surfaced.  A moment later I felt my board come thudding down on my head.  My brother had seen the wipeout and told me later that it was the skeg (fin) of the board that came down directly on my head, hatchet style.  

     The board dealt me a sharp and painful blow and it made me very angry.  Spluttering and muttering I got back on my board and started to paddle back out.  I heard a shout from my brother and when I turned my head around to yell back at him in a very irritated voice, I could see what he was shouting about.  Blood was running down my head onto my back and dripping into the water.  

     I mentioned that our surf spot was about a third of a mile off shore.  A copious amount of blood in the water, the kind that springs from head wounds, is not the sort of thing you want what with sharks' amazing ability to smell blood in the water.  As quickly as possible we paddled back to the pier and headed home.  My father, an MD, took one look at my cut and pronounced it 
in need of stitches at the Emergency Room at Queen's Hospital.  Mom and Dad trundled me off to the emergency room, leaving Timmy behind to hold down the fort; hoping he wouldn't break anything...  like another arm... 

     Because my father was a well known Psychiatrist in Honolulu and did rounds in the Psychiatric ward, he and my mother, who had also been in the medical community before she married our dad, knew all the doctors.  I asked the emergency room doc if there was anyway he could do the stitching without shaving my head.  With a patronizing wink to my parents he said he thought that could be managed.  When he was done with the stitches he padded the wound with peroxide and said to come back in ten days to get the stitches out, at which point my father volunteered to do the job at home.  I looked in the mirror to see how much my saintly countenance was disfigured by this grievous head wound.  I was thrilled to see that the mixture of my blood and the peroxide had left the blond hair on top of my head pink.  "Bitchen!"  I thought.  "Wait till everybody at school sees my pink hair!  When they find out about my stitches and my near brush with death and our escape from the sharks, the fellas will be so envious and the girls... well, I should get some major sympathy from the babesters!"  If I play it right and Maria Hemmings hears about it, I might even be promoted to the A-list!

     So we're driving home; it's dark and for some reason I'm sitting in the front seat with my dad driving and step-mom is in the back.  We are about halfway down our neighborhood street when suddenly we see several sets of headlights looming toward us.  When my dad sees that these cars are not stopping he suddenly jams on the breaks.  I was not ready for this and pitched forward hitting my head on the windshield.  The cars coming towards us have also stopped.  My dad gets out to confront these joy-riding hoodlums only to find that what he was seeing was a bunch of shiny aluminum pie plates strung up across the road between two telephone poles.

     At this point my dad starts cussing; slams the door and strides over to the curb in front of the Cowens big front yard.  "COME OUT OF THERE YOU KIDS!  WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE AND WE ARE NOT LEAVING UNTIL YOU GET OUT HERE AND SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE!  MY SON IS SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT OF MY CAR.  WE HAVE JUST COME FROM THE EMERGENCY ROOM AT QUEENS AND HE HAS TWELVE STITCHES IN HIS HEAD.  I HAD TO SLAM ON THE BRAKES BECAUSE OF YOUR LITTLE PRANK AND HE HIT HIS HEAD ON THE WINDSHIELD.  GET OUT HERE NOW!  I KNOW YOU'RE ALL HIDING IN THE BUSHES.  MIKE!  GET OUT AND SHOW THEM YOUR STITCHES AND YOUR PINK HAIR!"

     A brief word to the reader.  We grew up in a small private neighborhood.  Just like in a small town, everybody knew everybody else.  The people who were now reluctantly leaving their hiding places in the bushes were the bad kids; the kids who got to stay out at night; smoke cigarettes; raid the liquor cabinet; and do sexual things together that were years away for me.  I was about to be paraded around in front of all the bad kids as an object of sympathy while my dad gave them a lecture.  Today, thinking back on this tragicomic incident, I'm reminded of that phrase "You'll never be able to eat lunch in this town again."  My father, of course, wasn't thinking about my part in all of this vis-a-vis the bad kids.  Namely, I might be an object of sympathy tonight with my stitches and my pink hair, but tomorrow in the harsh light of day, after the hoodlums had been forced to take down the pie plates under my father's wrathful eye, I would be persona non grata big time.  

     I could just imagine the scornful cat-calls that would be hurled my way as I walked down Portlock Road.  "There goes the little cry baby with the pink hair.  Poor little Stevens kid hit his widdew head!  Aah, poor baby!"  What really amazed me about this whole episode was how the force of my father's angry voice actually willed all the kids out of the bushes.  With growing alarm I began to realize what a calamity this was turning into.  There they all were like some sort of line-up of Portlock's Who's-who of junior hoodlums.  Dicky and Sheffy and Tobin and even Jojo Roberts who had been kind enough to give me a black eye several years earlier.  Plus there was Kinau and Stefanie and even Betty Ann who I had been harboring a secret crush on.  "Great!", I thought to myself.  "I am so dead tomorrow."

     I must say, secretly I was thrilled to see these wild ruffians who were contemptuous of everything good in the world (at least in my mind, at the time) crawling out of the bushes and sitting side-by-side on the Cowens front lawn while being lectured in the sternest voice I have ever heard my dad use.  "My dad", I thought, "Giving it to the Portlock Road punks for causing me to hit my head on the windshield.  If that isn't love, I don't know what is.  Bitchen!  You go, Dad!  Let 'em know how bad and evil they are.  I'll deal with the fall-out tomorrow."

     Several years later my brother and I were at one of our two body-surfing beaches, Makapuu.  The other beach was known as Sandy Beach.  It was about a five minute car ride from our house.  You may have seen President Obama riding waves in Hawaii on one of his vacations; that was Sandy Beach. Anyway, the swell was running at four to five feet which was about optimum for Makapuu.  I caught a nice wave with a rideable right shoulder.  So I'm happily barreling along going right.  As the shore-break wave starts to curl above me I start my pull-out.  This involves diving down in front of the wave and doing a half turn as you hit the water.  That way as the wave breaks above you, you're crouched on the bottom hugging the sand, ready to spring seaward leaving the breaking wave behind you.  This maneuver almost always works well and it allows the bodysurfer to avoid being sucked into what we called the washing machine.  That's where you get caught and sucked back into the whitewater and hurled around like clothes in the washing machine.  If that happens you can expect seaweed in your hair and in your trunks and sandy water up your nose and count yourself lucky if your swim fins don't get sucked off your feet.

Here's a picture of the leader of the Western World bodysurfing at one of the local beaches, Sandy Beach, about a five minute drive from our house.  Go Prez!  Uh huh!  You da man; you da MAN!

     At the last moment, as I was starting my bail-out, I see another bodysurfer barreling right towards me from the opposite direction.  We collided head on.  Stevie Wilcox, a fellow Portlock Roadian, was a year or so younger than I and a bit smaller.  However, he was part Hawaiian which meant, at least according to local Hawaiian lore, that he had thicker skin.  He got knocked out for a second but came to before CPR had to be administered.  I, on the other hand, with my thinner Haole (Caucasion) scalp suffered another head wound.  After I got to shore brother Timmy took a quick look top-side and pronounced my cut in need of stitches.  Once again; another head wound and more copious bleeding.  The scar tissue from my previous head wound had given way with this latest insult and the two scars crossed, leaving me with a big X on my scalp.

Here's just what I looked like when I looked up and saw Stevie Wilcox barreling right towards me for our head-on collision.  Ouch!

     We drove home in our little pea-green VW bug with me riding shot-gun, the window open and my head hanging out so I wouldn't bleed on the interior.  As we turned into our driveway, our little brother Randy was practicing his rookie bike riding skills.  He took one look at my bloody head, shrieked and crashed his bike into the bushes.  As Timmy was parking the car, my mother came rushing out of the house, having heard Randy's cry.  "Oh my God!  What happened to you boys?!"  My brother told her he was fine it was just me with all the blood.  Before I continue this story I should let the reader know that I had a certain affinity for the dramatic.  Because I was in the oven for ten months before birth, my brother always maintained that I should have been born a Leo.  Leos are supposed to make the best actors.  As my mother rushed up to where I sat with my head resting on the car's windowsill; still bleeding profusely, with a baleful stare I raised my head, looked at my mother and said; "SHARK!".

     I'm not really sure what came over me.  Perhaps I wanted her to show me the same kind of concern my father had with my first head wound.  When she found out the truth I was lucky to be bleeding copiously at the time or they're might have been more blood shed.  To say that my step-mother was not amused at my ploy would be an understatement.  So off we go to Queen's Hospital Emergency Room again for some more stitches and pink hair.

     

     

Timmy spies a surfing dolphin

Brother Tom and I have rarely spent Thanksgiving together.  Mostly because he was living in Hawaii and I was in Mill Valley.  The one time we were together here at Happy Acres, we decided to visit our kid brother down in San Diego.  Brother Randy had to work on that Thursday so we decided to do it Friday night instead.  We drove down and stopped in a little Runyun-esque dive bar on Sunset Boulevard for Thanksgiving.  When Timmy and I walked in, the cocktail chatter ceased immediately.  We found out soon enough from a neighboring bar patron they thought we were cops.  

     Our neighboring bar patron was an older woman with stringy grey hair and a careworn face.  I figured that rehab or jail time had figured into her past.  "Huh!  You're cops; ain't ya?" she barked with a scowl.  Tom and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.  "No, no.  We're brothers on our way to San Diego to meet up with our other brother.  Here.  Check out our driver's licenses."  After checking our ID's and seeing the same last name she was satisfied, if somewhat disappointed that her spot judgement had been wrong.  With a gimlet eye she gave us the once over again and pointing at me she said, "Well...OK...so your not cops.  But you (meaning me) are the mean one!"  

     With that my brother and I howled in nervous laughter (a tacit acknowledgement that there was some truth to what she said.  I mean, next to my darling big brother; everyone comes off as mean.)  So ever since I have taken great pride in being the mean brother.  So the mean brother got to finally host another post-Thanksgiving get-together.  Timmy came up for a blessedly rainy weekend.  We were joined Friday night by my first fireplace fire of the year and two of our fellow acre-ettes, Matt and Davey.  Dave is a professional musician with great mastery of the guitar.  As the music director for the show band in the Navy for nine years he has a vast and impressive repertoire of pop tunes that he can play and sing.  With Davey on my acoustic steel string and later on electric guitar (Under the Boardwalk--The Drifters) and the rest of us howling possible harmony parts we had ourselves a boozy faux Thanksgiving hootenanny.  I served them the rest of the Thanksgiving dinner I had bought from the Whole Foods serve-yourself steam tray.  A fine time was had by all and for one special shining night-----I wasn't the mean brother.

     Without further ado, here's the column my brother wrote for his local fish-wrap post Thanksgiving weekend.  Enjoy.  


  Otter Views – Rainbow Monday

Tom Stevens for CST

In the rainy weekend’s aftermath, Monday produced the sort of skies favored by painters and photographers. Successive layers and ledges of gray framed distant cumulus towers that could have arisen from a storybook. All the grays were out, from charcoal, slate and battleship to pewter, pearl and dove.

Here and there, slow-moving shafts of misty sunlight slanted through ragged blue windows in the clouds. Probing the sodden world below like flashlight beams, these lit up all they touched and lent vivid  color to what had been drab. 

Neither painter nor photographer myself, I felt uneasy bogarting all this celestial beauty. But then I reasoned pictorial artists had been tracking this chiaroscuro cloudscape since first light, as alert to each change as duck hunters in a blind. 

Monday’s cloud diorama ushered me down the coast from San Francisco, where I had spent the weekend at my brother’s place. Hoping to skirt morning rush hour traffic there and in Santa Cruz, I left early and drove south along Highway One. 

The radio carried a lot of palaver about “Cyber Monday.” Financial nabobs postulated that a big Cyber Monday might offset this year’s disappointing Black Friday. That event, I was told, actually begins for many shoppers on Thanksgiving Thursday. Some reportedly pushed the envelope even further, camping in a Best Buy parking lot in mid-November to be first in line on bargain night.

It’s all somewhat baffling. Tell me again why Americans are pitching tents out in the sleet, then fist-fighting and hair-pulling in electronics stores on Thanksgiving night? Is this going to be a national identifier for us now, like celebrity worship and obesity? Then, so be it. The British have soccer hooligans. I guess we can have shopping hooligans. 

Black Friday’s fistic excesses might explain the growing popularity of Cyber Monday. Why risk getting trampled in Best Buy or shin-kicked at the Genius Bar when you can shop safely from your smart phone? No, strike “safely.” Apparently Cyber Monday has become a bonanza for international credit and identity thieves. It should be called Hacker Monday.

Before these bleak thoughts could further sour the drive, I punched off the radio and glanced seaward. Dark squalls floated like jellyfish over the horizon, stinging the ocean with filaments of rain. In the drizzly shafts where sunlight met rain, candy colors suddenly appeared. This might have been Cyber Monday elsewhere, but it was Rainbow Monday along the coast.

The stretch of Highway One from Pacifica to Santa Cruz features several lofty, roller coaster hills that overlook long, empty beaches. As I came over the crest of one hill, the sun broke through and lit up a set of incoming waves. The water turned pellucid, coke-bottle green, and a double rainbow formed offshore. 

Just then, for a thrilling moment, I saw the dark torpedo shape of a lone dolphin within a wave, angling swiftly toward shore. The bodysurfing dolphin was lost to view as my truck sped on down the hill, but the double rainbow lingered for another half-mile, brightening the sky like two rolls of Lifesavers.

The play of colored light on dark backdrops is a Christmas season verity that can offset Cyber Monday. As December days shorten toward the solstice, there is increasing darkness to illuminate. Once the sun sets, strings of colored bulbs sparkle vividly to life. Holiday trees pinpoint the night with red, blue, yellow, orange and green. Spotlighted crèches, Santas and yard snowmen beckon passersby.

In rainy Decembers, the streets become a second winter sky as  shiny black asphalt mirrors holiday colors. Even traffic lights gain some seasonal cachet, their elongated flares of red, green and yellow glistening in turn from wet pavement. They seem to say: Don’t freak on Black Friday. Enjoy the signals.

In addition to rainbows, cloud towers and a bodysurfing dolphin, Monday’s coastal scenery included several Christmas tree farms newly open for business. This early in December, the cut trees are still numerous, still have all their needles, and are power-packed with piney fragrance. Winding slowly through Santa Cruz, I lowered the windows at each tree lot and enjoyed a brisk Doppler blast of evergreen.

For me, that fresh fir tree scent and the play of colored light on rainy pavement starts the holiday season. All else will follow: poinsettia pots in gold foil, holly branches on the mantel, menorahs in the window, friends and family arriving for parties, kids in reindeer hats, egg nog sprinkled with cinnamon, holiday light shows, and bundled carolers trying to remember if it’s 10 Lords or 11 Lords A-Leaping.

When the rain stops, another light show starts overhead. Constellations pulse and shimmer in the great black street of the winter sky. Stars and planets glow in festive strings: red, blue, yellow, orange and green. It’s all there, and it’s okay to bogart.