A Time in Appalachia

Authors note: This a work of fiction. Any similarities to individuals mentioned herein is a pure coincidence.

For the many years during my childhood and youth when my family and I visited to upper Susquehanna valley, we stay at a small cabin in the deep rural valley near the village of Wyalusing. All found by chance and my father's ever present lure of adventure, the discovery of the Smith place at Homet ferry would change my life, and many that who my life has touched. I was just looking at the small water color drawings my mother made on such a trip. The pair in my modest harbour side living room here. They depict with a primitive and profound truth, in muted greens and tones of the earth our idyll along the river. My sister and I, her red hair and her artist heart peer out across the vista at the rocks, far above the river valley. Clear in the image is the large, kidney bean shaped island in the mist. Nearly 40 years later I would still canoe with friends and family around the island, always remembering to stay right for the channel, or pick the wrong side and portage in a few inches of water(or is it left?).

Great fish are found here that are almost legendary. In fact the name itself of Towanda, a nearby town and county seat, means loosely in Delaware. "place of many fishes." For a long time the travel to this place was to be for fishing in the river and many fine trout streams that begin in the rugged endless mountains and discharge into the still wild river. Usually, the real reason for my trips here after my father died were for solitude and recollection. After dad died, my mother really withdrew from the world but to care for us. My sister would remain home always, brilliant and disabled. Mostly from the stark cruelty of this world. I would very successfully go on into an engineering discipline, much as my father had desired. Mother would have preferred medical school. She was probably right.

So often armed with a pocket full of money, great gear, friends, later wives, and children along I would return to the places. Sometimes it would get a little rough with the locals on a Saturday. After a day of fishing and an evening of beers and twangy bluegrass music made by old and young folk from the surrounding hills the locals could get rowdy. I never had any real problems, as I could usually suggest that I buy a beer to stop the argument. Some places favoured a group of locals known as "Pooles". This term isn't really used openly anymore and considered an insult. The name derives from an early settler named Cyrus Van Der Poole. This Netherlander settled the area long ago and his descendants mixed with the natives, blacks, french and whomever else was going or coming. Later these people populated an area South of Towanda-or "South Towanda". That is explained to me to be anywhere south of the US 6 bridge over the river there. On a night out I have met these people. Some still with straight jet-black hair and an intolerance for alcohol. But some pretty, if not sometimes bawdy, girls.

Later losing my taste for camping , I would stay at the prominent local hotel there. It was a modest place in a basically poor town, that still had stately Victorian homes. All the last wealth of the lumber boom of the 1800's now gone. You see, the deforestation of the Appalachians provided all the lumber for the building of the eastern cities during the industrial revolution. Logs were ripped from the pristine old growth forest of ancient hardwoods and floated south. To places like Williamsport, or Harrisburg and shipped east by rail. The huge annual runs of American shad and other ocean fishes are almost gone. There is a huge power producing dam at Conowingo, Maryland. Efforts are being made to help the fish, but with the forest still 500 years from real maturity, the industry, and factors which may not be known, it will a long time until the Delaware's get there fishery back.

On one such trip I saw a pair of older guys pushing chess pieces in the lobby of the motel. Curious and my ears ringing from there mountain band playing in the basement bar (where I had been all night), I said hello. The one guy had a fishing license on his hat and was sucking on a corn cob pipe, unlit. The other was tall, gaunt, and somewhat cadaverous, cranky. I introduced myself and found out the fisherman was Phil. He lived in the retirement place nearby. Will was the owner of the motel. His black hat had a naval ship designation from WWII. I can't remember the ship name, but I think an Atlantic fleet cruiser.

Well over the course of this trip I played a few games of chess and got know the two men. They were no competition for me on the board, as I had been playing tournament chess since childhood and was a rated master. But we still had fun , and when the ego's went away I gave some chess lessons.

Phil was a very pleasant and cheerful old guy who could barely hear. He invited me to go fishing with him. I was solo that trip and welcomed some non-business or non-family company. He showed me a place south of town he called "The old gun club". We got there across the mountain from town, about 20 minutes. I was shocked to see that the place he had picked was the other side of the river from our childhood family summer cabin. The old ferry had brought the wagons across there and the road is still intact, but pretty rough. It was the exact spot that mom had painted, hanging forever in my living room. Fate is an odd and awesome thing.

I learned Phil was very poor. He lived on 300 bucks a month. He lived to fish and pursue his radio hobby. There was real joy in him as he spoke of these hobbies. More than hobbies, his center of meaning. He was an excellent fisherman and a true angler. This was evidenced by his refusal to buy bait (he was not a fly fisherman!). He worked hard for about an hour turning over rocks for nasty "clippers". I had not heard that term before. He meant Hellgrammites. These are up to 3 inches long, black with nasty pincher's and a poor attitude. These are the larva of the dobsonfly, a stately, shockingly scary large insect that is completely harmless as an adult. Bass love Clippers. Nearly as soon as the bait hit the water, a small mouth was on. And sometimes big ones. These are among the strongest and fighting est fish in fresh water. Here to were big pike and huge channel catfish, Phil's specialty. He had picture back at his tiny apartment of a 50 pounder he recently caught by the bridge.

My new friend who lived in poverty by any standards was one of the happiest people I have met. As long as he was fishing, or taking apart an old radio, he was in heaven.

Between fishing and listening to twangy music, I would run into Will in the motel. He was grey. But he seemed lonely and intelligent. We would chat while he lost his chess game, or he would buy me a beer at his own bar in the motel. Later, I was told that was unheard of. I learned he had been an IRS agent and then a business consultant. He had purchased some small companies in Tax trouble and resold them for a small fortune. Over the years, he had married and had children. They were distant, but he owned most of this small town, and a lot of some small town in Florida.

I could talk to Will about business. I had lost as much or more as he now owned only a few years before. I was pretty low. He suggested I was too hard on myself. I should just go to Atlantic City and think. About how to reinvent my life and my fortune. I also learned that he had inoperable cancer.

Now the pallor and attitude made some sense. I didn't return to the area for almost 6 months. On a crisp early October day, I flew back to the east coast and drove to the river. The road from Harrisburg follows the main branch of the boulder strewn turbulent river almost all along the way.

I was anxious to visit with Phil. I was a bit concerned about his "pal" Will. Will had an odd relationship with poor Phil. Phil lived in complete but blissful poverty. Will seemed to have no other friends and was a millionaire several times over. As far as I could tell, he wouldn't even buy Phil a cup of coffee.

That evening, my phone rang in my room, number 12. It was Will. The desk clerk told him I was back and he needed help. He lived on site in an ordinary room on the other side of the motel, by the forever empty pool. I knocked on the door and a weak voice told me to enter. Will was long and thin on the messy bed. The room smelled of death. Cancer has a certain smell. I know. He asked me if I would re bandage his foot. His right foot was a festering purple malodorous bob. With my semi-medical background, or at least having some training, I applied antiseptic and wrapped it with fresh gauze bandage. "You need to have this professionally handled", I suggested. He told me he had, not much could be done, and he was just waiting.

He managed to get up and he took me down to the basement bar for a drink. It was a quiet Sunday, no Pooles, factory workers-no mountain band. "You know, I just looked at stock I bought in 1960 I paid 10,000 dollars for". "Oh, I replied". Well today it just hit, after 39 years, a million dollars". And this was one of only many of such "deals" he had made long ago as a savvy businessman. Apparently he had purchased an interest in a small bank in Harrisburg, and it had grown and blossomed over the years to a major banking institution.

I asked him what he was going to do as we sipped good scotch. "Well if I sell I have a tax problem", he said". The man is weeks or months away from death from cancer and he has a tax problem.
"Will, maybe you should donate it, build something for the community, or found a charity," I suggested.
"What the hell good is that going to do me" was the answer. I had no reply to that statement. Too, I had been rich, greedy arrogant only a few years before our last meeting. But I was queasy at this revelation. I tried to explain that when we have an opportunity to do good we should take it, if we can, an often when we really can't or don't want to.

As far as I know, Will left all of his money to one of several children. The assets were distributed. There is no "Will Johnson" foundation. Phil still lives in abject blissful poverty all these years later, fishing and now enthralled with a new hobby, the Internet. To the town Will owned he is barely even remembered but by we few. Phil mentions him to me by email around the date of his death each year, otherwise his name in not spoken. I had suggested to Will he at least give a few dollars to his best friend Phil. I would have loved to have the motel to run, and I told him, half joking, being just a working man at that last time when we met.

I am not sure Phil even went to the funeral that cold late fall day, a few weeks after I went back to California.

That was about 10 years ago now as I sit here along the sea. Its a warming June afternoon, and I am about to meet a friend for dinner at a seaside cottage. Right now I live a very modest life. Sometimes I fish, talk with the family or my few friends, and watch the tides. As I get older now and my children go on into their futures and my solitude grows I think of my two old friends from northern Appalachia. It sure wasn't Will's fault he had cancer and died, no more than my father's or anyone else's for the most part. At least those kinds of the awful disease, which has claimed so many who were loved. I am not sure Will ever knew love. I know he knew and had money. He was lifeless and nearly soulless. I say this with all respect, as he was my friend. Maybe only one of two, and we were only just beyond acquaintances.

I think of old Phil who is now saving pennies to buy gas for his old car to go fishing. He is always happy for his free lunch at the retirement apartments where he lives, he reported to me by email today. Next he is over joyed at the senior discount he gets at breakfast time at the Wendy's across the street. "Its 2 bucks for french toast and a glass of water,S/D", he says. I guess S/D is "senior discount". He hopes I will visit him and fish again as its been almost 3 years since my last trip to there, at least when having enough time to stay a while and visit. You see I haven't had much money either.

As time moves forward I think about these two people that were put in my path. The happy Phil, fishing into the future with his tiny pension among the mountains and the river he loves. The place he has lived his entire 70 years. With health issues now, he has asked me to be his executor and help him to divest his assets at that time. He asked me to have a flea market there and donate the proceeds to charity. Phil is disabled and rejected by nearly everyone as a madman. He has an old computer, a chair, table, and a broken TV. A failure at the end of his harsh and bitter life as this world looks upon him, and passes judgement.

I am pretty sure I'll end this life with a few more "assets" than Phil. But nothing is sure but the single moment we exist in, this tiny part of our only grasp on eternity. This moment-the now. May or maybe not I may accummulate "things" all over again. There is a boldly truthful futility to that pursuit. Joy and peace, as my mother professed are the most important. . But I assure you that I will not go out, if I am given that time for reflection, like Will. To be very sure, I will truly be sorry the day Phil is buried. I will be at the funeral, and later cast a line for him at the place he first took me, and then I took my my children. The place my mother sketched while my father and I fished the upper river, just below the old ferry crossing 40 years ago.

The Christmas Season 2007 Summerside Prince Edward island

Note:
This is not a prepared essay per se. These are renderings from handwritten manuscript journals written from around December 19 2007 to January 2 2008. Edited as to content as appropriate. I better type it out while it still exists!

Well the good news today was finding a little leftover lawnmower gas from Jerry's gas can and putting in the Blazer. It started and ran just fine after sitting a long time in the cold damp winter air. Shel got home at 3 and was true to her word. She found a huge cache of old soda and beer bottles hidden in a cubby behind one of her closets on the third floor. We took them, along with a few I found to the bottle depot. We earned a big seven bucks on that trip.

On the way over, she was pretty excited. She has taken a big interest in various business ideas and motivational materials. I told her that after all that , be careful of what you do, as it never turns out the way you think it will. Not that that is always so bad-she said that I was bitter. I tried to tell her that being the only one she knew that really had had it all, that what I miss of "it all" almost nothing I miss has to do with money.

Its was our times together, the special places, just feelings even during the tough times-even here and now. Like cooking with her this summer at Chelton. I didn't want to tell her one of my fondest memories is the two of us walking on the beach at Loche Shore collecting sea glass last November. That cold windy November day and the rough surf of Malpeque Bay. That was before I left last time to go to Pennsylvania.

I still returned to Loche Shore beach this fall, only once, briefly with a much changed Shel. I took a longer walk tonight. Mostly to look at the Christmas lights on the quaint bungalows between here and the sidestreets on the way to the boardwalk.My beach, the past refuge of my lonely summer now eerie-attached to the snow covered frozen bay, the lighthouses and distant bridge lights reminders of my final trip from the island soon to come.

It was frigid with strong steady north winds, skin tingly to numb even through the my layers and trademark leather jacket. I walked a long time in the cold alone tonight. To my pier to toss a few coins and pray for my family, not sure am I if this is an end or a beginning. I have often classified my life as stages. High school, college, cars, my first professional job and the like. They are all discrete and perhaps this time marks the end of the "HTS period". That seems appropriate, but even my children are a product of that time, both born under and into that sign. No doubt my best memories beyond childhood are my times in Las Vegas and Phoenix with Shel and my son. It will always be my minds perfect view of the one time since childhood on the farm I had a real family.

And many of those southwestern days were hard. Little money after the divorce, at least at first, for a long time. Long drives- a scorched blistering Sonora or Mohave desert to go to work. It all seemed worthwhile for the people I loved to work for and to be with. Joey was great with Shel, as Alexis later would be but only very briefly. My last attempt to recreate that life in the Upper Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania in 2004 resulted in the move here. If I had still had HTS in 2004 none of that would have happened. Rhonda would have been satisfied and we may have stayed in Phoenix without ever considering a permanent move to PEI or Cape Breton.

Friday December 21

Today was cold and hazy with a few flurries. Big flurries that looked out of place, but festive. Shel stopped by after work and I helped her with her luggage for her holiday in Char'Town with her new friends. She said that she was sorry about not giving me a Christmas card, but I told her that she had given me a nice red wool scarf. She had parked her little green Tercel across the street at the motel. So we, both wearing black on a dark night both dodged holiday traffic on Central Street to cross it. There was much more traffic than usual today, it being the Friday before Christmas. She loaded up, we hugged and I gave her a kiss parent-like on the top of her head. My teenage daughter off for a visit. That was the emotion. I did shed a few tears, but only a few of sadness. I told her to be safe and we wished each other a merry Christmas.

I took a walk after my dinner of chili beans and leftover winter stew to the little store a few blocks north of the house. A rarity, I bought a 649 ticket. The store is about 6 blocks away on the main street, Granville. I walked back more slowly than I usually do when its this cold, trying to experience the town. The sidewalks are mostly clear of snow, but are covered with a thick coat of very coarse rock salt. Even after adopting the local custom of taking your shoes off at the door, my place has plenty of rock salt in it.

The Victorian homes are more stately on this walk than last nights garish decorations, lawn Santa's and flashing displays are not seen. These homes are modestly decorated with colored lights, usually small, but in striking colors. And only a few of them. My hunting boots purchased at an Appalachian Wal Mart when with Joey on a boyscout outing last fall crush the rock salt to powder with a sound not heard in Phoenix. The town was quiet and I think much like small towns back home were like in the 40's or 50's.

There is a small war memorial and park across from the back of our place. The snow seemed deeper there.

Chimney House Essay- First page

By the early 1990's trout season had become a big deal. It was to be done in a grand way at our home far from the DC beltway in Mechanicsburg. My little home-based business we started in 1988 had done very well. We had several offices, some doing better than others and I had purchased a huge home on the the Upper Patuxent near Highland , Maryland. To get away from all that, we had a smaller home near my mother and sister in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. It was a nice upscale country home in Lisburn, on Harrisburg's "West Shore". That meaning the west bank of the Susquehanna River.

The "Chimney house"-a named so coined by my young son due to the two big red brick chimney's it sported. This was our weekend getaway. Return to pastoral sanity. The house sat on a hill and rather towered over the wetlands bordering my youthful fishing dream-spot, the Yellow Breeches Creek. My hard work had paid off. I could walk down the steep stone-walled driveways to in a moment have a trout on. That year we had big plans. Friends and some staff were invited to come up for the weekend, fish, or just relax. This included Brian Feeney, my marketing manager and a few other close friends. It is also the time of the "scrabble game" More later. Shel had a cake made in the shape and color of a rainbow trout

Canadian Thanksgiving, 2007

Transcribed from handwritten manuscript

There is complete silence here-its high noon and I am in my little apartment near the harbour. Its difficult to think of leaving such a place. The task I had really come here to complete is concluding and its time to look ahead, at last. But its Thanksgiving today. The weather seems right, drizzling and just above freezing. Thanksgiving is celebrated here on this day, October first, and it seems much less intense a gathering than back home. In fact, nearly everything is less intense here.

Yes, a lack of any intensity. No better way to recall this day than Thanksgiving on the farm, as only a 10 year old can recall. The cold wet morning romping through the ancient apple orchard towards the now dead toppled corn stalks in the fields beyond. In the distance a row of tall pines marking the imaginary boundary of my world. Skeletons of brown, fermenting apples of russet, green, and yellow fill the heavy cool morning dampness with a pungent, earthy memory. Crows fly at a distance, most likely seeing my shotgun and spreading the word in alert. My best friend in those years, my Shepard collie Ollie, tail wagging madly rushed down the corn rows. In moments with a loud "TERK" a ring-necked pheasant blasts, rocket-like skyward.

My single shot Stevens 20 gauge, the sweet sound of its explosion, the luscious smell of gunpowder in the cool mist. The bird falls and flutters, dying on the bare brown earth between the cornrows. It always amazed me how gently and with what reverence Ollie would pick-up a bird in his jaws like a fragile toy, and slowly walk, bow his head to release the bird, white neck ring bloodied, into my hands.

I would try to pick the shot off, but for sure there would be number six lead pellets in that Thanksgiving dinner. And of course the feathers would be great for tying flies in anticipation of a long away spring trout season.

Those solitary hunting jaunts with Ollie are some of my finest memories of childhood. Better still are too few times I hunted with my dad. Oh, we went out many times for the birds and other game on the farm and environs. But the best and fewest trips were the opening of Pennsylvania antlered deer season-a De facto state holiday. The Monday after Thanksgiving. Too few, as dad died the day after New Years, 1972. I was newly fifteen.

Its a distant place. Sitting with dad in the gun room. With my sister and mother around the always bounty of our Thanksgiving table. Roast fresh pheasant, yams, garden green beans, the fall turnips and fragrant pumpkin pies. The exposed colonial logs of the dining room ceiling and its wide, hand-hewn wide plank floor. The huge walk-in fireplace. I loved that fireplace. Rimmed with Moravian tile work tiles that told a story of Priscilla and depicted sailing ships. I never knew who she was. Her 18th century gown and the ships at full sail on a tossing sea. Perhaps it told her story of her voyage to the then colony, to our colonial aged Bucks county home.

My meal, alone here on this rainy day here in maritime Canada to be winter stew and whole wheat bread, my mothers recipe. Those days remain vibrant when I turn my thoughts to them. My family, my dog, on the farm. I peered into my pond, fascinated by the doings of the newts, small insects and colorful water plants in the spring-fed clarity. I could spend hours as a boy staring into that mystery. In those places, my love of nature was born. Only much later, as it is in a child's time, I would leave that place. The memory of silt from upland construction choking the life out of my pond.

November 9, 2007

From handwritten manuscript, part of material for "Short Stories"


Finding the best place to start a long and complicated journey can be a difficult decision. Long ago, I wanted to take my wife and very young son on a south pacific cruise. Most cruisers on the the trip I wanted chose to fly to Hawaii, and then sail on the Pacific Princess to Tahiti.Always the "contrarian", I chose to first fly to Pepeete and then sail the reverse route. But this is not a travel story pe se, but a life's journey in which I have chosen contrarian, dangerous, and often an amoral and end even an anti-social path.

Tonight I enjoyed some whole wheat bread baked, along with pumpkin soup.My mother's recipe for the bread, although mom would have recoiled at the soup-no such peasant fare for her noble son, who was touted as a small boy to be a future President, or to be destined for some other greatness.

Mom is gone over 3 years now, as are two wives, and far to the south two teenage children wonder if their wayward, unemployed notorious dad cares or not or why he is really hiding on a little known (to many) island isolated between the Northumberland Strait and Nova Scotia.

It's a raw, drizzly night on the island. It's also Friday and party goers drive too fast, or wait for cabs to hop between the few drinking halls with music tonight. Snow will soon fall. Maybe even tonight. The town will sleep off its strong Canadian beer and wake-up sad they spent money. Money is hard to get in the Maritimes.

My pension pays for my rent here near the beach, some foodstuffs, a little very expensive fuel for my tired, aging truck. I even make a kind of beer. Its a concoction of water, sugar, yeast, fruit or other flavors if I had any. It makes what Mika Waltari may have meant when he described "The thin, bitter beer of slaves". in his book, "The Egyptian". Two divorces can have that effect on a contrarian ex-millionaire.

My former best friend and later wife of fifteen years lives above me, on the third floor. Its a big old yellow Victorian home butchered into four apartments. She was having a party tonight. The dance steps and heavy music were loud above me for the first time. I think she is celebrating getting rid of me, finally, apparently. She moved here almost four years ago. I helped her to pay all her bills. As a budding writer of children's books, she found a job working at the quaint little town's butcher shop, and later writing for the small island arts newspaper.

So I followed her in hopes of finding out if our lives were real or imagined. It was really all in my mind-she may have hated me for a very long time. Fifteen years age difference between us, is a lot these days. Not in the past (sometimes now) when men often of wealth or power took much younger women to wed. We had hoped for a family, to be my second. Built on love, a new beginning in Arizona, far away from the horrors wrought by my first wife, the businesses, the chaos. But she could not have children. This torment poisoned our spirits, and although staying together another decade, we couldn't recover from that and many other mistakes, of nature and otherwise.

We vacationed here in the Maritimes. She, lured by the island and "Anne of Green Gables", the red cliffs and pristine beaches. I always loved the other island here, Cape Breton, the seaside highlands, wild forests and big game. We had visited there when I was a small child. My mother and sister, accomplished artists, both in love with rough wild beach scenes. My father in love with any road trip, or anything even mildly Scottish. And it was a big trip for us in the 1950's. Its strange-there is a picture taken as a small boy with a piper at the Celtic college there. When I first returned to Cape Breton in 1992, driving a new red corvette convertible with Arizona plates, with my twenty year old blazing blond paramour, I think the same aged piper was still there unchanged. It must be the Canadian whiskey. I took a picture. It was nice to proof that some things remain the same.

My mother used to say all any of us take away are memories.This fact was so ingrained in me that I disregarded the risks of any material loss and pursued love.At least that is the way that I have justified many of my actions. The truth is I have lived a life in the pursuit of memories. To build experiences while here for the short time, not mansions. This story is about that pursuit. Its about trying to find out where home really is when so many places are or have been "home".

I am trying to find my way home. The mansions gone, the extravagance, cars, my airplane, which now belongs to a church in Texas. Amen. Most of all I want to try to explain my actions to my children. Well planned to millionaire parents, self-made working people, real entrepreneurs. At least, I was. Always a nanny or two since age one or so, it would not have worked any other way. It was only a few short years later that those two beautiful children were living in their grandparents basement. And I was with my blond creating a fantasy life, ill begotten in the Sonoran desert. You see, I was broke too.So the two families of this contrarian cad, one off with the child bride in Arizona, the other, a family that had lived in a primary residence in Howard County , Maryland. Six acres on a lake half hour from the D.C. beltway. A collumnated Georgian monstrosity, built to satisfy the worst kind of ego, and empty soul. The nouveaux riche. The staff of seven cooked, raised the kids, tended the grounds and served the needs of this master of madness-me. There were other houses and apartments. We hid our all-Columbian domestic staff in basement "compound" (the nannies lived upstairs) that was big as a partitioned bowling alley.

It was in this environment I met my blond. Nineteen and nanny number X . I can't remember how many nannies there were. It all happened so fast. No one could get along with my wife, so the nannies came and went on a regular basis. A church provided for us, or smuggled for us, the remainder of the household staff.Fundamentalists from Columbia, escaping the drug war. All of this happened because I got fired from a mid-level management job at a local engineering firm, and started a little environmental consulting business. We have to explore how I met my wife who I built the company with, the whys and fors.In fact our marriage was always more a corporate venture than a romance-but that was romance to us then in the go-go 80's. Others said that, not me. Jealous others, by the legion. We cannot appreciate the power of destiny until we are raged by it. Dragged, like a dry, uneven stone, pulled by pain across a rough, rocky surface. But when its happening, its soft, smooth, sweet like honey-cream.