"All the world is a stage from 35,000 feet.
And the airports all seem to repeat.
But the lights of the city look especially warm,,
When it's home that shines so bright through the gloom."
When I was seventeen and ready to leave home for good, I had no idea what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be, or where I wanted to go. All I knew for sure was that I didn't want to be there... in that little ''ville. I had dreams - the urge to travel - to see the world.
Which is probably what enticed me to enlist in the U.S. Navy at that early age. Their advertising slogan "Join the Navy and See the World" offered me everything I wanted: to ride on a real bus, a seat on a train, to fly on a plane!
Little did I realize how quickly those dreams would be fulfilled when I had to ride a bus to the airport, fly to Chicago, and catch a train to the Naval Training Center at Great Lakes - all within the first twelve hours after leaving.
What does one do when their entire portfolio of dreams is completed at such an early stage? Why... expand it, of course. Ironically, the Navy didn't provide me the keys to see the world. While it did show me Memphis, Tennessee and all of southern California, it was left up to me to choose a career that permitted the travel I wanted. I chose wisely.
Joining the ranks of Field Service Representatives for a major defense contractor, I suddenly found myself right back in the U.S. Navy - as a civilian on board an aircraft carrier. I spend the first year with my new company away from home; in Australia... in Singapore... in Japan... in the Philippines... in Korea... in Iran... in New Zealand... in Pakistan... at sea.
My travel experience continued to expand with each passing year. I wondered at the fjords in Norway, the plains of Spain and Turkey, the geysers and cleanliness of Iceland, the Castles of Wales, the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London, and the rugged beauty of Victoria in western Canada.
I believe travel is an experience to be shared. While it might be exciting to follow the footsteps of you ancestors while in Scotland, it's even more so when you see the excitement in the faces of your children when they discover something new. My 19 year old son still speaks of a different world discovered when, at age 12, he walked out of the hotel in Paddington near downtown London to rush across the street to the small produce stand to buy fresh strawberries for his mother's breakfast. That world was alive with people, taxi's, double-decker buses, and people. Quite different than walking out of his house in suburbia - where he never even saw his neighbor except for perhaps an occasional trip to the mailbox at the curb.
My son has scuba'd the Great Barrier reef and the Blue Hole in Belize; drifted over wrecks in Cozumel; and touched bottom at 101 feet. He's asked for 'another cruise - this time alone' as his college graduation gift. He has spent more time with me in Chicago since leaving home for college than he has at home. He is, it seems, a chip off the old traveling block.
My wife has the same travel bug. My job continues to take me away from home about fifty per cent of the time... and at every opportunity she and the family dog join along. During every visit - in practically every state - she makes the same request... "Can we sell the house and move here? Please?" This past year we have spent over six months in Schaumburg, Illinois. She has found a shopping paradise - albeit one with a hefty sales tax.
But of all the places we've been, there always seems to be that one place that feels exactly right. Just like home. You know it the instant you get out of the airport. Palm Trees. Water. Ocean. Each of us in my family recognize that the ocean is where we like to be. We all loved Tucson - the desert beautiful in it's own right. We enjoy Santa Barbara - the lifestyle Bohemian at it best. We like Fort Worth - a very small big city. And yes, I still have a soft spot in my heart for Kentucky - home. It gets easier every time to pack up and go visit the old homestead. My son is in college there. Maybe someday we'll even live there again.
And we once spend a month near Grayton Beach in the Florida panhandle. And that is the place we all agree that has us wanting to return more often. The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico call to me. My wife likes the beach. My son... well, he just likes anyplace... as long as it isn't at home...
The view from the front lawn ... needs a little water...
And the sun set on yet another . . .
. . . another Schaumburg day."
The days are beginning to get a bit longer - even allowing me time to get to the hotel and snap a shot or two before the sun sets completely in the west. The land is so flat here that it seem possible to see all the way to California from the fifth floor of a hotel . . . I really think I see the port of Avalon, way out there in the distance...
Toward the east all I see is the reflection of the sun off the glass building - and a few planes going into O'Hare.
Oh, and yes dear, I did stop at that store you asked me about... see, I took a picture of it too, just to improve my case.
Nice day.
Yes, Maryland . . .
. . . there really is a Mr. Winter."
graphic credits: BaltimoreSun.com
It had been a good winter - unlike last year where the wind would rip through the blue jeans as if they were lightweight pajamas instead of 4-ply denim; where the trip to the bare spot across the parking lot - the only place within miles of the hotel that actually had dead, brown grass showing through the ice and snow - was an exercise in sadism for both he and the dog. While she had been quite content to do her business on the carpet in the hotel room and he so tired that he almost let her, he had done his duty and walked the dog. She never forgave him for it.
This winter was different. He had walked the dog in February while wearing a T-shirts and no jacket. The dog (and the rest of his family) did not spend the winter in Chicago with him. The son was away in college and the wife was teaching again so he commuted each week between their home in Baltimore and the hotel in Chicago, spending only the weekends at home. But not this weekend, There was work to be done and would be staying in Chicago.
"You do know that they are predicting snow...?" his wife asked... "So you might as well stay there. If it snows here, I'm not coming to pick you up at the airport."
He smiles. "Yes, I have heard that before...it's supposed to snow here too..."
"I mean it." she said again. "Stay there. I'm not coming after you."
On Saturday, he sat and watched the flakes fall on the cars in the parking lot below. It had been hours since it started and yet only the slightest white tinge was visible from the 5th floor windows. "Yes, not like last year..." he thought.
He wondered how home was doing so he picked up the phone and dialed. There was no answer on the other end, so he hung up, intending to call again later, but forgetting.
On Sunday, his wife called. "Did you get any snow?" she asked.
"Some. Not really. You?" he waited.
"Oh ... a bit ... around 2o inches or so..." she told him. "More than I can stand. Good thing you didn't come home... you would have been stuck..."
He smiles, glancing out the hotel window into the glistening sunshine. It's not as warm as yesterday... but it is a sunny bright day ... and no snow. "Yep. Not like last year..."
"No Public Restrooms"
Go Do It On The Floor
Thursday, June 9, 2005:
Woman denied use of public restroom at Rochester thrift store
By ADAM D. KRAUSS
Democrat Staff Writer
akrauss@fosters.com
"ROCHESTER — The local Salvation Army thrift store is planning on allowing shoppers to use the restroom from now on after a Somersworth woman urinated herself Wednesday when employees would not allow her to use the bathroom.
Police were called to the scene by a store employee around 10:53 a.m.
The woman, who requested anonymity because of the circumstances, said she stopped at Walgreen's to use the bathroom before making her weekly trip to the Signal Street store. The 42-year-old "every day mother" of four, who suffers from anxiety and depression, said the medication she takes makes her "have to go to the bathroom a lot."
"I went over to the (store) for not even 10 minutes and then all of a sudden I couldn't even move," she said. "I needed to use the bathroom ... asked them and they said no and I begged them and cried and made quite an ass out of myself and they said go ahead and pee on the floor so I peed on the floor standing near the bathroom that they would not let me go in."
The woman named the store employee who told her to "pee on the floor," but that employee declined to speak with a reporter.
Carol Hirt, the store manager, witnessed what took place. She said the employees were following a longstanding store policy not to allow people to use the bathrooms and were not aware of the codes. Stressing nobody was trying to be mean to the woman, Hirt said it didn't make sense to her that the woman didn't take their advice and go to a nearby business to use the facilities as other patrons do.
"If she had the time to shop and the time to argue with us then she would have had the time to go to the bathroom," Hirt said. Later in the day, Hirt said, "We were just told ... that we have to do it (have public restrooms) so we'll do it."
Hirt said this is the first time something like this happened, but not the first time customers, young and old, have relieved themselves in the store, like in dressing rooms. "I'm very sorry it had to happen," she said.
Link to the full story here.
