The long delayed arrival of Spring

Early "wire rope" bridge - Reigelsville, PA - Friends of the Delaware Canal Luncheon

When the American Shad come up the river from the Ocean to spawn, you know it's Spring. These fish are credited with "saving" Washington's starving soldiers at Valley Forge. Alosa Sapidissima are the guests of honor (so to speak) at the local Shad Festival.

The farmhouse for the farm that was made into a housing development that my parents live in.

A tree downed by the ice storm blocks the Delaware Canal towpath near Washington Crossing, PA.

My neighbor finally put his Christmas tree out at the curb for pickup the last day of March. Another sure sign of Spring.

The eatery at the side of the Perkiomen Trail is once more open for business. A nice sign of Spring - I'm kind of attached to this one.

Hard to see in the photo - but the surest sign of Spring to me, are the "return of the turtles" that climb onto logs to sun themselves!

In the past week, the Daffodils have exploded into bloom. I was overjoyed to see these guys!

A Forsythia bush at the Morris Arboretum.

Pots filled with Tulips greet the sun at the Arboretum.

And, yes, the migrating Orange Cones are back...

A bright moment during a dreary winter

It has been a long, cold, snowy, and hard winter. Today, it is raining. My mom says, "Be thankful, you don't need to shovel rain." And I am thankful. The grass is beginning to turn green again, and the spring flowers are on their way, sprouting upwards to greet the newly arrived red-breasted Robins.

The winter started before Thanksgiving - the hard times started a few weeks before that when my dad got sick once more. He spent last Thanksgiving in the hospital. At Christmas time, he was back in the hospital for a few weeks. He ended up getting a pacemaker implanted. But his health didn't improve much. By mid-February, he was back in the hospital with pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs) threatening to drown him. He was miserable and cranky.

Each week during that period, it seemed we got more snow - and I shoveled and shoveled - mine, the office, and my parents. Especially my parents so that emergency workers could get in to my dad if need be. We got 10 times our average amount of snow this winter (so far). It wore us out.

It was extremely cold too - single digits for days and days - and those days, the wind seemed to always be howling. A winter ice storm knocked out my power for several days - no power meant no heat. My folks have a heat pump, but single digit temperatures meant back up heat from an oil burner. They ran out of oil a couple times - and it was cold waiting for the oil delivery truck to come the next day.

Throughout this hard winter, the folks at my parent's Church have been a rock of support for them and for me. They called every week just to check up on how my dad, my mom and myself were doing. And they prayed. They prayed for my dad to regain his health.

This past Sunday, my parents went to their Church. They were stunned when they were given a beautiful, hand made prayer quilt.

The lady that made it, started it back in February, when far from home, I took my dad to a strange hospital and needed someone (anyone) to just talk to my mom and help her remain calm. I found a phone number on my mom's cellphone "Prayer Chain" and dialed it. One of the members of their church answered, and I told them what was happening.

The next day, my dad was much improved. They drained the fluid in his lungs (nearly 2 gallons were to be removed by the end of his crisis) - and he slept comfortably for the first time in many weeks. His regular doctors had misdiagnosed him, saying his breathing trouble was due to a "common cold". Fortunately, the strange doctor so far from home, figured it out. My dad has been much improved, and as my mom puts it, "like his old self once more!"

My mom brought the prayer quilt to me at work. We admired it, and more so, we admired the thoughtfulness of the person that made it.

Do to others as you would have them do to you. There is so much power in it.

The trip to Japan

ChicagoLady commented on my riding on the high speed Bullet Train in Japan, and asked I tell more about that trip. My memory of parts of the trip are still quite vivid, even if it was a while ago now.

My grandparents and I flew from Philadelphia to Los Angeles and visited my grandmother's younger sister, my great-aunt Eleanor, for a day or two in Chula Vista. We boarded a Pan Am 707 and flew into Honolulu, Hawaii. The only part of Hawaii I've ever been to, and twice at that, is the airport! Once re-fueled, we took off again, with the plane taking a "detour" over Pearl Harbor. We were still climbing, so I only got a glimpse of the place. We landed in Tokyo and tired and jet-lagged as we were, we took what seemed to be a many hour tour of the city, including the Emperors Palace. Mostly I remember the mental haze that jet lag brings me.

Sometime later, we went to Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bomb exploded in anger. I recall two things - the city had been rebuilt and was sparkly new - there were no "old buildings" to be seen. I also recall a native Japanese gentlemen that came up to me and said, "It sound strange, but we are in odd way thankful, for all old buildings to be gone. Let us build new, modern buildings, good for business, modern machines." I can recall my grandmother gasping when she heard this.

I recall seeing Mount Fuji - from the Bullet Train. It more beautiful than any photo I've ever seen of it.

We went to Taiwan and took a cruise on a lake. I don't know where the ferry was going anymore, but I remember by this time, being hungry for potato chips, and that two young school girls were munching something from a plastic bag. They must have seen me 'coveting' their snack, for they asked me, "You want some?" and when I said, "Yes! Thanks!" they gave me an unopened bag marked in bright red Chinese symbols. I opened it up and greedily ate a fistful. My face must have turned bright green or something, for the young girls started laughing at me. The bag contained some sort of fried, or dried octopus.

And I remember a short day trip we took while in Hong Kong where I "accidentally" walked into China and was escorted out of the country at machine gun point. The border crossing was an arched wooden pedestrian bridge. I walked half way over the at my grandfather's prodding, "You can say you were in another country!" when the two soldiers on the other side came to attention with ramrod backs and heels clicking. I took one more step, and they both lowered their guns at me. My grandfather was now yelling, "Come back!" So I took one more step to "cross the line" and then turned around and went back. We never told my grandmother about this episode.

Also in Hong Kong, we went to a floating restaurant, taking a Chinese junk (sailboat). While we were on our way to the restaurant, we encountered a huge ship wake, and several of the guest, all dressed in their finest, fell overboard. They were all quickly brought back aboard with little harm done beyond some wet clothes.

While in Hong Kong, we stayed in a hotel of 20-30 floors, and I wanted to go swim in the hotel pool. My grandmother said, "Okay, you put your bathing suit on and go find the pool." I wandered about the 4 or 5 star hotel for a while wearing nothing but my bathing suit carrying a towel - the signs where all in Chinese, until a bellhop said, "Use lift, push 'Ahh' button, it take you to pool." So got in the elevator and pondered the meaning of "Ahh" button. I saw one marked "P" so I thought, "Ah, the pool!" The lift swiftly went up to the "P" floor - turns out it was the Penthouse floor, the home of an enormously wealthy man that had a security-butler person stationed in the elevator foyer. This person said, when he saw me, "You not belong he." I told him I was looking for the swimming pool. He replied, "Go back in, push 'Ahh'." I looked at him questioningly, and he said, "I push foe you". So I got in and he pushed the "R" button. Turns out the pool was on the roof!

After my swim, we went to a swanky hotel restaurant, where I ordered spaghetti. Only me... in China, would order spaghetti... and the Chinese waiter, dressed in tails, with napkin over his arm, put it in front of me, and then when he saw how I started to eat it, said, "Oh dea-yah, not eat that way!" And with my permission, showed me the classic Italian manner of spoon-swirling one's spaghetti!

I remember the poverty and the open air markets of the Orient... the filthy water in the Thailand canals that people bathed in, washed their dishes, and brushed their teeth with.

The monkeys swinging in the forest outside the hotel, and seeing the bridge over the River Kwai in person and walking across it while whistling the Colonel Bogey's March...

And the long, long 40-hour flight home. The plane flew from Singapore to Hong Kong where it had to have a part replaced, which took 4 or 5 hours, then to Honolulu and Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

Attitudes

Recently, my mother found a couple rolled up pieces of paper in a box of things that my grandfather had in his attic. She gave them to me - and we discovered that they were my grandmother's high school and college diplomas. In all my years, I had never seen either. I knew my grandmother graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in the bitter year of 1930. One of her uncles paid most of her way.

So why were these diplomas never framed and displayed?

My mom told me that she never hung them up because they "bothered" my grandfather. I scratched my head and looked at my mom questioningly. Grandfather never finished high school and took great pride in his being a "self-made man." He didn't think a woman needed an education to do her duties in the proper place, that is at home. So the college diploma was an embarrassment to him and my grandmother never made an issue out of it.

How attitudes change in time always fascinates me - today, my brothers and I are proud of my grandmother's accomplishment - she not only graduated during the depression, but attended a "good school" and graduated in a time when many didn't go to college. My grandmother set out to be an English teacher - she never taught in a public school, but she did teach Sunday School for many years - and...

When I was a young boy, my grandparents took me to Japan. I remember my grandmother being mobbed on a the Bullet Train ride from Tokyo to Osaka (about a 3 and 1/2 hour ride) by 20 or more Japanese boys and girls when they learned she was an English teacher - they all wanted lessons right there and then. And so she held a class. When the train arrived at our destination, all the eager students "peeled away" from the confines of the two bench seats (they really could pack themselves in!) beaming with smiles and laughing in joy.

My grandmother had the biggest smile of them all.