Home again!

Home again!

© S, Bradley Stoner

So, it's been silence from the Square Peg guy for a couple of weeks. Not to worry, I didn't croak and Bingo Bob didn't kill me and bury me in the back yard. Nope. We went on a cruise. Drove down to Galveston and hopped aboard the Carnival Freedom, then headed southwest in the Gulf of Mexico bound for Isla Roatan, Honduras. Two full days at sea to reach our first destination. Isla Roatan is a relatively small island off the coast of the Honduras mainland. Not a whole lot to do there but visit the shops and look at the native plants since we didn't book an excursion there. We landed at Mahogany Bay and proceeded to wander about for the day. One good thing, I didn't lose my exercise routine... we walked about five miles a day on the ship plus a couple on Roatan. They had a banana (possibly plantain) tree growing in the shopping plaza, but the fruit wasn't ripe yet, so yes, we had no bananas.Never-the-less, we had a great time there and didn't spend much, looking at the local wares and crafts. Roatan probably won't invite us cheapskates back. 

Once back on the ship, we headed out to sea to arrive off the coast of Belize early the next morning. This was the highlight of our trip. We are hopelessly addicted to exploring ruins... particularly Mayan ruins and Belize has some great sites. Wish we could have visited them all, but given the time the ship was staying, we could only visit one. We opted for the palace at Cahal Pech, just outside of St. Ignacio and just a few miles from the Guatemalan border. Someday we'll make it there to visit Tikal, which is supposed to be spectacular. 

Since the ship had to anchor off Belize City, we had to take a launch to shore. That was fun. It took about a half an hour to get from the Freedom to shore and then we had just about a half an hour before boarding the bus to Cahal Pech. It is one of the oldest Mayan sites known, dating to the Early Middle Preclassic period (around 1200 years BCE) and, although not as spectacular as Chichen Itza in the Yucatan, it was still quite interesting.  Cahal Pech (Yucatec Maya for Place of Ticks) was the seat of power for the elite Maya or royal family and sat atop a high hill overlooking the confluence of the Macal and Mopan rivers, which served as the main trade routes in the area. It was continuously occupied for around 2000 years. This made the palace complex a strategic and highly defensible location.

There was one large temple and a smaller one that had been partially excavated on the east side of the main

plaza (Plaza B on the map). The steps were steep with a large rise (a good foot per step). The slight down-slope on the steps made climbing them a challenge. Unlike a lot of sites, you are still allowed to climb the steps in this complex. 

The site was overgrown with jungle vegetation when discovered in 1968 and the main plaza is still dotted with trees like the gumbo limbo or Tourist Tree, a medicinal tree used to treat rashes and sunburn; mahogany trees; and acacias. According to the guide almost every plant has a medicinal  use. One tree, called the give and take tree has razor sharp poisonous thorns whose only known antidote is its sap. Yep, they had one of those in the plaza as well. They had removed most of the thorns so tourists wouldn't be tempted to test them. Probably a good idea, given some of the people on the tour. Oh, and I must not forget Cacao trees... chocolate was very important to the Maya. One could probably say cocoa was their national drink. If only they had marshmallows.

The palace itself was interesting. Its construction used a unique arch known as a corbeled arch, a somewhat narrow arch pointed at the top. These were used in sleeping chambers as well as passageways. In the sleeping chambers remnants of green stone overlays could still be seen, green being the color of jade and emeralds which were held in high esteem by the Maya and used only in the most elite of family dwelling. 

The palace itself had three levels. The top most held the sleeping chambers for the royal family, with the "king's" being the largest and the principle wife's considerably smaller, but positioned so that only she could choose which other women to visit the king. The second level held the throne with a small plaza  (by comparison to the main plaza) below and paths for visiting dignitaries at a slightly lower level. The third level is reputed to be the location where the king could oversee the workers producing pottery, a main trade item produced at Cahal Pech. 

Access to the palace via the passageways could easily be defended by a very few warriors since all were essentially choke points. The steep sides of the complex, choked with rain forest, also made any assault difficult at best and easily repelled. 

I have a bunch more pictures, but I've probably bored half the audience to death by now. But hey, for you less interested in things ancient, they have snorkeling, swimming with the dolphins, zip lining, and all sorts of other things to do on the stops along the cruise. 

Nights on the ship were a kick. If one is so inclined, there is a casino on board that operates in international waters. I bet once on roulette, doubled my money, and quit, much to the chagrin of the house. My lovely blew a few bucks on that quarter game... the one where you put in quarters in hopes of pushing off more quarters than you put in. She won bunches on the first night, then lost it all the next two. If you play that game, play it on the first night. After that I think they rig the game so quarters don't fall so easily. We preferred going to the comedy club. They had some darn good comedians. General audience shows early, adults only late.

Anyway, we're back now. I haven't figured out why vacation time seems to go so much faster than work time. That sucks. Ah well, I have catching up to do on my writing.

The Square Peg – Bingo Bob’s Beautiful Bombastic Bash

The Square Peg – Bingo Bob’s Beautiful Bombastic Bash

© S. Bradley Stoner

Well, after the Duck Drop a few years back, I didn’t think any homemade celebration could come close to a community sponsored one. Turns out, I was wrong. I underestimated the resolve of a transplanted New Jerseyite (and yes, that’s correct… I Googled it) to outdo the natives of his adopted state. Understand that Texans go big on New Year’s, 4^th of July, Veteran’s Day, Oktoberfest, Halloween, and Christmas. Since we particularly like things that go bang, New Year’s and the 4^th of July figure quite prominently in the bang department. Matter of fact, on the ten point scale of the global bangometer, it registers somewhere around 15. Yep… off the scale.

Fireworks are big business in Texas even though most incorporated cities ban their use inside the city limits, San Antonio included. Killjoys. Not that such bans in the least affect fireworks sales or their use by unauthorized entities (i.e., your average homeowner). I think the attitude is, “they can’t throw us all in jail.” Not that there’s a whole lot of effort employed by the local constabulary. They’re more focused on real issues, like keeping inebriated citizens out of cars and on the road. And we all thank them for that. Nobody wants to spend the New Year dead.

True to form, Bingo Bob set about his preparations for New Year’s early. Daily trips to the Alamo Fireworks stand just north of the city limits were begun after work the entire week after Christmas. Now, we couldn’t be sure, but watching him daily, we estimated the cache of explosive devices to be nearing a ton before the big day came. If somebody had dropped a match in Bob’s garage, they would have made a new era contribution to the space age by putting ol’ Bob on the moon. Luckily for Bob, and the moon, no premature ignition occurred.

As twilight fell on New Year’s eve, you could see the neighbors hauling lawn chairs out of the garage and you could smell the popcorn. Somebody brought out a grill and started cooking hot dogs. You could feel the creeping excitement. I’d like to say the show started with a bang, but it actually started with sparklers and pop bottle rockets. An impatient neighbor down the street hauled out his Roman candles and he and his brother-in-law commenced to shooting flaming balls at one another. Mothers shooed their children inside, but let them back out when the two ran out of fireworks. One of the more “progressive” set of parents allowed their little darlings to pull the tabs on “poppers,” those sad non-explosive excuses for noisemakers. More adventurous families explored the wonders of Snakes, Smoke Bombs, and Black Cats. Exciting stuff.

Bob kept us amused with an array of Fountains, wheels, chasers, cracklers, and such, but was obviously saving the heavy artillery for the final countdown. Most of the older folks and those with very young children had given up and headed inside before Bob started arranging the mortars, repeaters, and sky rockets on his driveway. People started coming back outside… even the ones with little kids. You could hear the buzz of excitement. It was kind of like finding out about a kegger when you were in high school… you knew it wasn’t legal, but you couldn’t stay away.

Somebody turned up a TV really loud as the announcer shouted, “Ten… nine…” About that time, Bob set off the first mortar shell, it’s launch announced by the hollow thwunk, followed by a thunderous blast and a shower of crackling sparks as the star shell burst overhead. By the time the count hit zero, shells were being launched every few seconds. Dense clouds of burnt powder began to drift across the roofs. Sparks dribbled down, causing some nervous Nellies to unlimber their garden hoses, but none actually reached even the highest roof. This went on for several minutes until the repeaters kicked in, spewing shells out rapid fire. Now I’m not going to say it matched the big commercial shows, but it came pretty darn close. Yep, ol’ Bob did a bang up job. Heck, we didn’t even mind helping to clean up the chaff from the street and contribute garbage can space for the spent mortar tubes the next day.

“Well, Bob,” I said, picking up a tube, “that was quite the show.”

Bob sort of stared at me blankly and motioned toward his ear with his free hand. “What?”

For a minute I had forgotten how close he was to all those booms, so I just gave him a thumbs up.

Bob nodded, grinned and yelled, “Just wait ‘til the fourth.”

I’m thinking about taking a trip out west that week. I don’t think I can take that much fun all in one year.

The Square Peg – Woo Hoo… The Duck Dropped!

The Square Peg – Woo Hoo… The Duck Dropped!

© S. Bradley Stoner

Time: New Year’s Eve, 2004, 23:00 Hours. Place: Havre de Grace, Maryland. Occasion: New Year’s Celebration. It’s Woo Hoo time!

The east coast. Not my favorite place to live, although I have lived there… for two years. It was a company thing. Understand, I had lived in the west most of my life. I prefer it that way. There’s just a feel to the west you don’t get in the east. Seems to me that everything moves way to fast in the east. People in a hurry. Cars in a hurry. Planes in a hurry. Trains in a hurry. Heck, even the buses are in a hurry. Who ever heard of a bus being in a hurry? I like the pace a little slower, life a little more laid back. You know… the west!

Still, I had my family with me. Yep… we actually moved there. On purpose. Sort of. So, us being us, we made the best of it. My lovely put up with my penchant for Civil War history. We toured Antietam where the Battle of Sharpsburg occurred and left the legacy of being the single most bloody day in the young history of our nation. And, like a lot of battles, it had no clear winner… and a whole lot of individual losers on both sides. Then there was Gettysburg… you really can’t get a good sense of the battle there without visiting it. Books, maps, and pictures just don’t do it justice. To understand the battle, its scope, and its horror, you have to go there. But, lest I digress too much, suffice it to say there’s history there… a lot of history. And we took in as much of it as possible in the short time we spent there. Although I often was on the road, I was home most weekends and we made the most of it. I’m glad we did,

Besides, there are lots of other things to see, and you’d probably be amazed at how rural some of these states are. Westerners might also be surprised at how small these states are. A day’s sightseeing might take us through Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey and back home before seven in the evening.  Unless it’s a holiday… then traffic sucks and you’re lucky to get to the next town by ten that night. If there’s an accident… well heck, just shut down and listen to music. You’re not going anywhere. We once spent four hours listening to music on I-95. Ever see an eight lane parking lot?

Anyway, as New Years 2005 approached, my lovely was looking for New Year’s celebration locations. Baltimore was out. Too #@!^ many people… and they had pickpockets. Not for us. So, she looked for something small town. We’ve done lots of small town celebrations. Some are fantastic. Some, not so much. This time she fixed on a little thing called the Duck Drop in Havre de Grace, which was just a few short miles from where we lived in Bel Air. Now, New York has its ball drop… everybody knows that, but why a “Duck Drop?” Well, turns out that Havre de  Grace fancies itself as the duck decoy carving capital of the world. They even have a museum of old carved decoys right up to modern master carvings. Yep, you might say they give a duck about their heritage. So, in keeping with that, they don’t drop a ball from a high pole in Havre de Grace… they drop a duck. Not a real one, of course. PETA and the SPCA would have a fit, and that just wouldn’t do for the second most liberal state in the Union.

Now having been to Havre de Grace’s 4^th of July celebration, I figured, heck, this ought to be good. I mean, on the 4^th they had a big carnival for the kids, tons of crafts booths… and the fireworks… oh man! They shoot them off over the bay. It sounds like cannon fire coming from line ships. You can feel it! It almost transports you back to the War of 1812 with British ships of the line bombarding the defenders at Fort McHenry. Almost. So, with that in mind, I was expecting something special. I mean after a 4^th celebration of monumental proportions and laying claim to the Duck Decoy Capital of the World, how could it not be?

So, we take off early for the celebration and arrive at the site of the celebration, a school parking lot, around 11:00 P.M… and find no one else in the lot. ‘Uh oh,’ I think to myself, ‘this is going to be a bust.’ I look at the light pole and see the duck at the top. It’s a plywood outline with colored lights on it. Looks kind of like a mallard. Kind of. Yeah, I’m thinking we made a mistake. My lovely is more optimistic. She points out that we’re way early and that most of the celebrants will be locals. Everybody else near Baltimore will be crowding the waterfront, providing easy pickings for the sneak thieves. At least we’ll avoid those.

About 11:30 a parade of cars starts filling up the parking lot… and then the surrounding streets… and then the empty fields nearby. Son of a gun, there’s a good sized crowd gathering. Somebody starts a music and light show in front of the duck. It’s kind of cool… lasers dance to the beat. People are dancing, jostling one another in the crowd. We’ve copped a good spot atop a small knoll in the garden area for viewing the doomed duck as it falls from its lofty perch. A nice couple, with kids about the age of our youngest, park themselves nearby. It takes about thirty seconds for the kids to pal up and disappear, promising to be back before midnight, and we spend the twenty minutes making new friends. Sure enough, the kids materialize from the crowd about a minute before midnight.

The crowd grows hushed as the music stops and the announcer booms over the P.A., “IS EVERYBODY READY?” “Yes!” replies the crowd in a single voice, but not as loud as the announcer expected. “I SAID…. IS EVERYBODY READY?!” This time the crowd matches volume for volume… “YESSSSS!!!” The duck starts to inch its way down the pole, wobbling a little bit at the end of the cable. Then the countdown begins. “Ten… nine… eight…” You get the idea. When the count hits zero and the duck is down, the sky erupts and Auld Lang Syne blares from the giant speakers. Among the voices singing along with the music, the oohs and aahs punctuate every burst of brilliant mortar shells… mine among them. I love fireworks… the bigger the bang, the better, and this show had a lot of big bangs. I don’t know who funded this thing, but I’ll wager it rivaled Baltimore’s. It lasted almost a half an hour and ended spectacularly.

“Wow! What a show,” I said as we drove home than night. “What a great way to ring in the New Year.”

My lovely leaned close and poked me in the ribs. “Told ya,” she smiled.

So, here’s hoping y’all have all your ducks in a row for New Years… and may good duck drop in your lap!

The Square Peg – I Got Socks

The Square Peg – I Got Socks

© S. Bradley Stoner

Well, another Christmas come and gone. It was a special one for us. Our oldest came home for the holidays. And he brought a friend. No, he doesn’t have a new girlfriend… he has a new four footed friend. Her name is Montana on account of the fact that she was found in a rural area outside of town where people apparently go to dump pets they don’t want. Yep… she’s a rescue dog. She was just a puppy… maybe a couple of months old when oldest adopted her from the local shelter.

Now, y’all have heard me grumble about yappy dogs… they drive me nuts, especially when their owners leave them outside for hours on end and they never shut up. It’s enough to drive a person to distraction… or worse. So, I was a little concerned, because I knew Montana was not a big dog. Turns out, she wasn’t a little yappy one either. Small, yes, yappy no. She has the build of a Jack Russell terrier and the disposition of a Cocker Spaniel, but I’m not sure what mix she might be. She was a little shy at first, but I took care of that with a snicker doodle. Yep, I was her new bestest friend, unless it looked like her master was going somewhere without her. Then she abandoned me like last year’s calendar.

Since they arrived Christmas Eve, we did our traditional dinner… no, not turkey; that’s reserved for Christmas… subs. I don’t even remember when the tradition started, but it had to be the Christmas after the goose incident. We quit hosting family Christmas dinners after that and just hosted Christmas with snacks. It was more affordable (translation: I wasn’t allowed to go shopping for holiday dinners anymore). Turns out that worked well since most of my relatives wanted to be at home for most of that day. I did our traditional Christmas turkey on Christmas day. Did I mention how much I like turkey? I’m worse than that father on Christmas Story.

We waited until Christmas morning to open gifts. We used to open one gift on Christmas Eve until the boys grew up, but quit doing that when they moved out to be on their own. Of course, we had visions of gathering the clan every Christmas, but life kind of got in the way of that. So, when we do have the opportunity, it’s kind of special. In any case, we waited. We still manage to surprise the boys, but now instead of “Wows” and “Oh boys” we get, “Hey, I needed that. In fact I was planning on buying it.” It’s okay. It just shows how well we know them. I’m glad that hasn’t slipped away yet. That can wait until my memory is shot… then it won’t matter.

Now I know mentioned it before, but there’s not a whole lot you need at our age. Usually it’s something for the house or a new tool… and I don’t have any room left in my shop for a new tool. On the other hand, there might be things you want or even things you don’t know you want. For example I know my lovely likes scented candles and, while she usually buys them herself, I decided to step in this Christmas. Yep, got a big pine scented candle – hey, ‘tis the season, isn’t it – and a sugared pecan scented candle. Okay, she might have mentioned that one. It’s not sugar cookie, but it’s nice. I also know she likes those Dove soap gift packages and books, so I got her one each of those. Not very original, is it? But you have to understand, my lovely doesn’t wear jewelry except for her wedding and engagement rings. I found that out the first year we were married. She had mentioned she liked a pendant watch we saw. I thought. ‘Aha!’ I bought her this pretty little diamond studded gold watch pendant and my smug little self thought, ‘She’ll never take it off!’ I was so proud of myself. She still has it… packed away in the little leather bag it came in. She looks at it once in a while, though.

You might say, I learned a lesson that day. It’s called pay attention all of the time, not just as the holidays approach. You know what she likes? Scrimshaw, amber with little bugs in it, fossils, and oriental urns, plates and such. Oh, and reminders of our trips… but we usually get those when we’re there. She also has the second largest magnet collection in the world… at least that’s what I think… but they have to be from places one or both of us or our kids have visited. Oh, and I forgot… our annual Christmas ornament, but we usually get that before Christmas.

Me? I got socks. I didn’t know I needed them. That is, until I found out my sweetie was planning on turning my old socks into rags or chucking them in the garbage. Ever notice how when things just get downright comfortable, somebody decides they’re too holey, faded, or out of style. Sigh. I’m not complaining, mind you, I’ve kind of gotten used to it, and I must say my wardrobe does look better, both in condition and style, than it did when I was single. Besides, these are really nice socks… cushioned sole and everything! I like ‘em! Oh, I also got a new fishing rod and reel that’s perfect for pier fishing for smaller fish. That pretty well fills out my fishing gear. Almost forgot… I got one of those 5-Motor heated massaging seat cushions for my car to replace the one my lovely bought me three years ago that I wore out. If you don’t need a new car, get one of these, but be careful with it. Too much time on the massager can make you sleepy and, at my age, that’s not a good thing. Napping while at the wheel is unadvisable… not to mention dangerous and illegal.

Here’s hoping you got everything you wanted… or in some cases, deserved. Remember, there’s only 361 shopping days until next Christmas!