Author: bdharrellauthor

A retired bellyacher, sometimes writer and guardian of the dog Filbrix.

The Final Sixteen Finds

I am a Geocacher – Have been for over 19 years. I won’t be much longer, so, I decided to journal the end of my caching “career” with a series of posts dealing with this particular hobby, winding it down and putting it to bed.

PART 1

Before I begin:

I began Geocaching a little over nineteen years ago. It was on Mother’s Day weekend in 2002. A friend of my (then) wife’s described a game she was playing using something called a GPS receiver to look for “Caches” out in the woods. I invested in a GPS receiver (GPSr), looked up the Geocaching web site (Geocaching.com) and taught myself how to enter what was on the web site into the GPSr so I could go out caching.

The first find became a comedy of errors. We (Me, the wife, our two kids, a dog (Mocha), and Celeste, the wife’s friend who introduced us to the sport) went out to Lake Texoma to see if we could find “Smooth Sailing” (GC3941), an early cache placed a mere three months before we found it.

We went to where we thought would be a good place to start. Thirty minutes later, we were back at the car, regrouping. We were within 500 feet of the cache, but there was no way we could get there from where we were. Drove and found another place which we thought was a good place to start. Less than ten minutes later, we found what we were looking for. We decided on our caching “handles” then and there, signed the log, exchanged little “gifts”, and went forward from there.

For about two years, we would arrange to take little trips as a family to find caches. A great majority of those caches were of a standard type, consisting of a surplus ammunition can containing a logbook and various “McDonald Toys” (Happy Meal extras). We had a camping trailer which allowed us the freedom to discover new caches over a wider area than just our home base of Allen Texas. We found caches from Wyoming to West Virginia on our road trips – including a visit to one of the early geocaches (Mingo – GC30) and a first to find in Nebraska!

By around 2005, we were burned out as a family. I found myself divorced and doing a solo gig. There were a couple of girlfriends who were mildly interested in going caching with me. One suggested going out in the nude to some of the more remote caches. After doing some research, I found that there was someone out on the west coast who was doing exactly that. Called himself “Nudecacher”. Another girlfriend went out with me a couple of times but was decidedly lukewarm about the whole thing.

I met my present wife in March 2007. She was lukewarm about the caching thing, too, but didn’t mind if I went out locally by myself. While I had quite the run on caches both with the family and by myself, I found that I was slowing down in the rate I went after them. Part of the slow-down had to do with making several moves, two of them within a year of each other (another story entirely), changing geography and a realization that some of the places I was going were not entirely safe. For instance, I was returning from a cache when a mountain lion crossed the path I was on! Shook me up, for sure.

For the past couple of years (2019-2021), my finds dribbled off to nothing. Sometime in June, I got a note saying that my premium membership in Geocaching was set to renew on August the eighth. I looked to see that I was sixteen or so caches away from hitting one-thousand caches.

That became my goal.

One thousand caches and I would be done.

It was not an easy decision to make. At the same time, I could no longer rationalize going out to try to “Find Tupperware in the Woods” as I once did.

So, I took a deep breath, consulted the Geocaching maps, and decided on going after those final sixteen caches. This is my blog on my final adventures.

Be Seeing You!

ONLY the Right People…

I’ve been carefully watching the news lately. Here in the Lone Star State, the governor has declared another emergency session of the state legislature to pass a voting bill of some sort. The bill didn’t pass in the regular session, nor did it pass in a previous “emergency” session due to lack of a quorum. Democrats in the legislature flew to Washington to keep the necessary quorum away so that the bill does not pass and get sent to the governor for his signature.

I don’t know exactly what’s in the bill. From what I have been able to learn, the bill came up in response to last November’s loss of the Presidency of the United States by Donald Trump. Trump claimed that there was massive election fraud and that there needed to be reforms passed to prevent the same sort of fraud in the future.

From my point of view (seeing what has already passed in other states), the intent of the bill is to see that only the right people go to the polls to vote in the next election.

ONLY THE RIGHT PEOPLE.

Sounds like someone has their nose in the air, not wanting to mingle with the “Great Unwashed”.

Some years ago, I belonged to an organization which I presumed to be open to any and all who would come through the front door until a contemporary of mine stated to my first wife that the organization in question accepted “Only the right people”. It was, in my mind, an elitist attitude. It did not belong in that organization.

Nor does that attitude belong in our political system.

But it’s there.

A bill to see that only the right people have the opportunity to elect our politicians appears to be on its way to being passed if the Democrats in exile in Washington blink and allow the governor his quorum.

Really a damn shame. I liked voting.

Be Seeing You!

Rest and Relaxation

I’m back to the grind this evening (Tuesday) after spending a couple of days at The Hideaway Ranch and Reserve for some much needed rest and relaxation.

“But you’re retired, aren’t you? You should be rested and relaxed all the time.”

The person posing that question would be entirely correct, if it was true. Even being “retired”, there are times when getting away from one’s own home is beneficial. There’s a lot to be said for driving the better part of three hours through two major (and several minor) cities through some rough weather to sit on the front porch of a cabin just to listen to the peace and quiet.

Even tucked out of the way in my little corner of the DFW Metromess, there’s not that much in the way of peace and quiet. I walk out my back door to entertain the dog Filbrix by throwing a tennis ball and am usually greeted by the barking of one of the neighbors’ dogs or noise from the minor highway a quarter mile away. Add air traffic headed to the airport less than five miles away and the occasional siren from someone’s emergency vehicle racing by and my little corner becomes a cacophony of irritating sounds. If I were hard of hearing, I might not mind it too much, but…

Contrast to my major occupation for the past couple of days. I sat on a rocking chair listening to squirrels chattering, trying to bait the dog Filbrix, happy noises from kids at the swimming hole a quarter of a mile away, cattle lowing, goats bleating, and various birds happily chirping away. There were, for a short time this morning, sirens going off somewhere in the valley below us, but they were incidental – likely being tested for their effectiveness or for setting off the cattle. Take your pick.

There were quiet conversations with the better half and a sing-along session (entirely unrehearsed) lifting my heart and my soul. Even the conversation we had while checking out at the ranch with our hosts was a delight to the ear.

Anyhoo, we’re back home now. Rested, relaxed, and looking forward to that next little island of peace and quiet.

Be Seeing You!

Reservations Please

Someone quipped the other day that the reason people need to retire at 65 is that they need the time to make all of the doctor’s appointments they’ll have. After the past couple of months, I have little doubt that they’re right.

My current count is that I have at least half a dozen professionals concerned for my welfare; my Primary Care Physician, the doctor who does colonoscopies, a Colorectal surgeon, a Cancer specialist, my optometrist, and my ophthalmologist. I’ve met most of them in the last 18 months and will have numerous follow-up visits coming up in the next six months or so.

It’s starting to get to a point where a fellow can get confused as to who needs to see him and when.

My most recent visit was with Dr. P, the Cancer specialist. That was last Monday to follow up a visit I had with her about six weeks earlier. She and Dr. N (the Colorectal surgeon) are keeping an eye on me for the next five years, or so because of the cancerous thing found by Dr. R (the colonoscopy guy) back in… I think it was in April. Maybe May. It’s hard to keep track.

Not that I mind. As I have stated before, I was damn lucky to have had a prompt diagnosis and removal of a cancerous polyp before it had a chance to go and invade another part of my body. I much prefer dozens of doctor visits, a few more colonoscopies, bi-annual CAT scans and innumerable blood draws to the alternative.

But it takes time. And organization.

There were a couple of appointments I lost track of which got resolved earlier today. I had a pair of appointments to see the Ophthalmologist at some point in September, but was unsure of when they were. Not a problem. A quick call to Dr. B’s office confirmed both appointments. I was sure to write them down on my calendar. I also knew that I had another appointment with Dr. P (indicated on the lab results I had on the internet), but had no idea what time to show up. A trip to the mailbox and presto! She sent a letter telling me when to show up. Sigh of relief.

Looking at my calendar, I get to see everyone except for my optometrist in September and October. I get to see her in January, depending on when the others want me to be on their dance cards when I am due for the next round of visits. Oh, and I need to make an appointment with Dr. R. to run another colonoscopy next April or May.

I’m definitely going to have on my track shoes.

Be Seeing You!

Civic Involvement

Didn’t have much advance notice, but it seems that tomorrow (Monday July 19th) is the deadline to file for city offices in the November election. I’ve thought about running for something myself, but never got around to it. Like most of the people in the city of Princeton Texas, I don’t really feel engaged enough to do go ahead and run.

My maternal grandfather ran for and won election as the mayor of a small town in West Virginia. Thing is that he was a well-known businessman and for that matter, there weren’t but a handful of people in that small town who didn’t know him. He also ran for state senator at one time. Didn’t win, in part because he wasn’t too well known outside of his little town, and in part because his party wasn’t the predominant party in that place and time. I had no idea that he ran for state senator until I found a campaign pennant in one of the closets of his home when I was a teenager. (And yes, I had permission to go there!)

I’ve found that things are a little different here in the Lone Star State in as far as local elections are concerned. For one thing, races are non-partisan. There are no Democrats, there are no Republicans. In theory, at least. Most candidates belong to one of the parties or the other, with sly little nods and winks to let people know that they belong to one of the parties without openly declaring so. One of the candidates in the last election went so far as to have a small, red white and blue elephant off on one of the corners of his campaign sign. Yeah. Non-partisan.

Another difference I’ve found is that once one is elected to office, he or she is almost guaranteed to have a lifetime appointment. The mayor of a city where I used to live was in office for at least twenty years, starting the year that I moved here. I’d heard the story of another mayor in another city here in the DFW Metromess who was in office for over thirty years… and was re-elected again! Now, there’s job security! There was a bit in the local news about the former mayor of Allen – he’s having a recreation center named for him. He attended the ground breaking last week.

The mayor here in Princeton resigned a year or so ago and we held a special election to install his replacement. We lucked out and got a woman who actually stepped up to the plate and did what needed to be done. I was especially impressed with her involvement when the big winter freeze struck back in February. She’ll likely be on the ballot in November. I’ll vote for her this time around. Next time, well, we’ll see. If she becomes complacent like some who seek (or who occupy) public office, I might support someone else.

For me, I think I’ll stick to keeping up with me, mowing my lawn, feeding the hummingbirds, tending the garden and taking the dog Filbrix out for walks a couple of times a day. I don’t usually adhere to the policies of the party in power… or for the opposition, either. Probably won’t fit in with the local politicians, regardless. Besides, there appear to be several younger people interested in running. They just might need my support at the polls.

Be Seeing You!

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Some entertaining dregs and vestiges to brighten up the day…

According to my Farmer’s Almanac, the earth was the farthest away from the sun the other day. Aphelion, I believe it’s called. We will be moving closer to the sun until we reach Perihelion sometime in early January. According to the Almanac, at Aphelion, the sun appears 7% less bright than it does at Perihelion. On the same day, the freshness date on my favorite cola-flavored drink expired. I wonder if the tastiness of that drink will be 7% less tasty than it was on the day before it expired. Not going to name the drink.

Here’s an interesting tidbit – Pepsi Cola and Episcopal are anagrams. Who knew?

When I feed the cat, the cat refuses to eat until I feed a portion of her food to the dog. Maybe she thinks I am going to poison her and wants the dog to act as a guinea pig.

The city of Princeton Texas is getting a lagoon. It will be part of a development on a Farm Market road to the north of the city.

Woot!

Somehow I am skeptical about this lagoon. The city appears to be having problems maintaining the infrastructure it has to accommodate what was scheduled to be built before this lagoon popped up. There are streets in dire need of repair here. A fellow could be deep in debt to a tire shop before he knew it if he traveled some of our city streets on a regular basis.

Four Hundred. Seven. Flip. Six.

I repeated that several times coming from the front of the house back to the kitchen to prepare lunch. We were having fish filets. To prepare them in the air fryer, I set the fryer to 400 degrees, put the fish in for seven minutes, flipped the fish and then cooked for an additional six minutes.

We got the air fryer a couple of Christmases ago. One of the best additions we’ve made to our kitchen.

I wonder if the food coming out of the air fryer will be any less tasty a few years from now. Guess we’ll find out.

Be Seeing You!

Let’s Get Famous

About a month ago, a fellow named Jerry Salley released a video, “I Take the Back Roads”, telling about how he takes the back roads when he goes and visits friends and relatives in his hometown of Chillicothe Ohio. It should be noted that Mr. Salley is a major force in Bluegrass music as a singer/songwriter, producer and record label executive. Quite an impressive resume if you were to look it up on the internet.

The video caught quite a few of the people from Chillicothe Ohio on my Facebook feed by surprise. None more than me. My surprise came from quite a few years ago when a kid and his mother were ushered into the radio studio where I was working, asking if I would play a record he had just made. Sure. Why not? The owner’s mother ushered the kid and his mother into the studio, with the unstated request that I needed to play the record.

The record itself was a forgettable ballad written by a pair of Tin Pan Alley writers and picked up by either the kid or his mother to record in Nashville in what was likely a demo pressed by a “Vanity” studio. The point was that the record was made in Nashville, a city which had (and still has) a certain cachet to it as a place where “Anyone can make it here!” While the song was forgettable, the kid had a voice, and he was local. We played the record a number of times before it wound up in my collection of curiosities and one-offs.

There was at least thirty years between by brief meeting with Jerry Salley and my running into his name again through some reference on the internet. A lot of water passed under the bridge in those years.

I had a relatively lackluster career as a radio “disc-jockey” during many of those years and have had contact with quite a few wanna-be singers who had gone to a studio to make a demo record. They were also happy to give me one of their recordings in hopes that I would play their hopeful hits on the air to launch them to fame and fortune. Most of those recordings made it as far as the trash bin.

One of the stops I made was to a radio station along the Ohio river where I went for an interview. As part of the tour of the facility, I was shown a studio filled with junk, assuming that was where “Marconi dropped his stuff and ran.” (An inside radio joke when encountering a radio station abounding with old, outdated equipment.) I was told that at one time the radio station had a side business of recording anyone who came through the door wanting to make a record. A little further research confirmed what I had been told. The station in question was one which had been a major force in that part of the Ohio River Valley back in the day. You pays your money, you sings into the microphone and you get yer record which the station would play a time or two before the next aspiring singer came along.

No doubt that there are hundreds of other radio stations out there which at one time or another appealed to the vanity trade… not to mention more than a few independent studios which do the same thing. One of them was set up a few miles down the road from my former hometown by a fellow who made ends meet by being a substitute teacher on the side.

Joe Waters spent quite a bit of money and time setting up what he named Appalachia Sound Studios in the little burg of Massieville Ohio. While he had a few people using his facility, he was always on the lookout for other avenues to generate revenue. At one point, he composed and tried to sell commercial jingles. Sometime in the eighties, he appeared to be on the cutting edge, opening a video store – Video Avenue – renting VHS movies for home use. His biggest success came about when he set up a school to teach people how to run a recording studio.

As I said, a lot of water passed under the bridge between the time Mr. Salley and his mother visited me while I was working at WBEX in Chillicothe Ohio and the video he made showing bits and pieces of Chillicothe as a backdrop to a very good tune he wrote and sang. If there is a point to be made, not everyone hits the “Big Time”, but those who do are the people who keep at it long enough to see their efforts pay off.

Of course, I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t include the link to his song: https://youtu.be/nB1MTboYR2s

Be Seeing You!

My Calling

Everyone is supposed to have a calling. I wonder sometimes if maybe I’ve missed mine.

Maybe I haven’t.

Let’s catch up a little, first.

It has been a busy year in my little corner of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metromess. Like so many other people, I have been confined mostly to the house because of Covid-19. Given that I am in the prime age group to wind up in the hospital and/or dead should I catch the disease, I had decided to become a hermit until those times when I needed to go to the grocery store, or to outdoor services at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, or to take the dog Filbrix to Farmersville to walk on the Chaparral Trail.

I learned to operate within the confines of the house. Thankfully there was video conferencing.

When Covid raised its ugly head, I was more than halfway through the first year of something called Education For Ministry, or, EFM. It didn’t take long for members of our Thursday morning class to adapt to using our video conferencing link to continue the class almost as if nothing had happened. We finished the first year and slid quite nicely into the second year of our study with an overall view of what do we think of as being our calling.

I was quick to come to the conclusion that our calling is something within us… something we can do to share ourselves with others. The question became how to share.

The “how to share” came from an unexpected series of events.

Just before Covid-19 became a pandemic, I went to have my yearly eye exam. Something the doctor and I were keeping an eye on was the pressure inside my eyeballs. Since my maternal grandmother had glaucoma, we decided to err on the side of caution and go for testing at an ophthalmologist. I had insurance for the first time since I started seeing my eye doctor, so, I thought it prudent to follow her suggestion.

The good news was that I was able to get set up with an ophthalmologist somewhat quickly. The not as good news was that in order to use my insurance benefit, I had to be referred by my Primary Care Physician. Since I did not have a primary care physician, I had to establish one.

It took a while, but I was finally able to connect with a PCP by way of a telehealth link. I had a referral, I went in for testing and found that while I didn’t have an inkling of glaucoma, I needed to see the ophthalmologist again in a year, just to make sure.

I was also on the hook to see my PCP in person. Which I did. One of the first things he recommended was that I see a specialist to have a colonoscopy done. Something I didn’t particularly want to do. I dragged my feet. I had a follow-up visit with the PCP and he nagged me… making sure that the specialist’s office called me to have the colonoscopy.

I wrote a piece I posted on Facebook telling people that I was a patented coward, but I was going ahead to have the procedure done anyway. I got a fair number of hits on the piece, as well as a few comments.

Two days after having gone through the procedure (which wasn’t as bad as all that), the doctor called and told me that I had cancer.

Talk about something life changing. The only thing worse would have been not to have heard the diagnosis because I was laid out on a slab in the morgue not caring about anything.

Through the next month and a half, I posted news of my condition on Facebook, including updates with the good news that the cancer was localized and my doctors believe that they got it all. Each time I posted, I got lots of hits, lots of encouragement.

Which brings me back to the question of what I am supposed to do. What is my calling? I’m beginning to think that my calling is writing essays much like the one I am writing now, peppering it with little bits of humor, and giving people a good feeling – not particularly about me, but about themselves.

So here I am. In the last third of my journey on this mortal coil and I think I may have found myself a little niche. We’ll have to see. For now, I’m going to cap off the evening with a quick bowl of Corn Pops and head off to bed.

Be Seeing You!

Beginning at the Beginning

I’m off on another tangent… starting a new chapter. For the next few months (hopefully), I will be blogging about a new musical venture of mine… beginning at the beginning:

 

Forty-Seven Years, seven months and I’m not sure how many days after leaving high school, I re-connected with an old friend. This is the story of that re-connection and my efforts to have as good a relationship with that friend as I did when I attended public schools in the late sixties and early seventies.

That old friend was my cello.

I say old friend in a wistful way. Truth is that for a while, I hated the cello because my parents forced me to practice half an hour every day in the kitchen of the home where we lived in suburban Cleveland Ohio. It wasn’t until many years after I quit at the end of high school that I came to appreciate the instrument; eventually coming to rue my decision not to continue to play.

My decision to take up playing the cello at the tender age of 65 was rooted in a number of events; not the least of which was my quiet gentle whining about how much I missed playing the cello despite my enmity toward the instrument for a few of the years I played it. Since there is a lot of story, here, perhaps it would be wise to begin at the beginning…

 

*****

 

Whenever the subject of music came up, I told people that as a child I played on the linoleum.

I did more than that, really.

Until the school system gave us flutophones when we were in the fourth grade, I never played an instrument. There are, doubtless, parents out there who have bad memories of kids bringing flutophones or some similar apparatus into the home and wreaking havoc with whatever measure of peace and quiet they might have had.

Flutophones ended up being the gateway instruments to the bigger things like real flutes, real drums, real trombones and real violins. Close to the end of the school year, I recall being led into the school library and being told that I could choose any instrument I wanted to play starting when I was in the fifth grade.

I chose the cello for, what in my mind, was a very valid reason.

Sometime in the previous year, my eye was caught by an article in the Britannica yearbook showing young Japanese students being taught to play the violin using the Suzuki method. What struck me and led to my choosing to play the cello was that the violin students were standing up.

Cellos are played sitting down.

My fundamental laziness led me to choose what I would later find out to be the one instrument requiring more physical prowess than most other instruments.

After making my choice and telling my parents, the next step was to procure a ¾ size cello from a music shop in nearby Berea Ohio. With that came music lessons provided by the school district where I learned the fundamentals and eventually played tunes.

I don’t recall too much about the first two years of playing other than my parents being amused that one of my teachers during the summer session between the fifth and sixth grade was named Richard Tracy. They explained to me that men named Richard were usually nicknamed Dick, and my finally tying it into one of my favorite comic strips.

One thing I do recall was my loathing of having to practice.

I dreaded the half hour daily of having to sit next to the doorway between the kitchen and the main hallway and sawing away on the damn thing. In retrospect, my parents were doing the right thing in enforcing the practice sessions as it would provide me with a discipline I may not have otherwise had.

Toward the end of the sixth grade, string players from all Berea city school district elementary schools were gathered into an all-city orchestra. It wasn’t until after our performance that my father told me that the girl sitting next to me was the daughter of one of the Cleveland Browns. Dad was impressed despite not being a fan of professional sports, and Mom wondered how I got along with the girl now that puberty was starting to stare me in the face. Jill G’s parents lived in a mysterious corner of Berea, where we lived in adjacent Middleburg Heights, so there was little chance of social contact if any.

The seventh grade brought a few changes other than my impending adolescence. Most importantly, I was in junior high and lessons taught by employees of the school system came to an end.

My parents managed to latch on to a woman living near Berea High School named Mrs. Hiller to be my teacher. She taught out of her home and had the reputation of being one of the best, if not the best cello teachers in the Cleveland area. Somehow, I got to the front of the waiting line and got to have her as my teacher.

Mrs. Hiller challenged me. She wasn’t satisfied with just teaching the basics, she challenged me with music which might have been just out of my reach at the time I started but was able to master rather quickly under her guidance.

Another important change was that I had outgrown the ¾ size cello and was ready to graduate to a full-size instrument.

Part of the change had to do with the rental place going out of business. My father was reluctant to spend the money needed to put me into one of the full-size cellos that the fellow had available, so he scoured the local newspaper and found a full-size cello for sale. He called the number in the ad, grabbed me and took me to a birthday party at a house in a mysterious corner of Berea belonging to Jill G’s famous father.

He was hosting a birthday party for one of his Cleveland Browns teammates but managed to conduct the sale – even offering us a piece of birthday cake in the bargain!

A few days after we got home with the “new” cello, word slipped out about where we got it. It was only when my peers in the immediate neighborhood figured out that I didn’t get any autographs that I figured out that I should have gotten some autographs.