Author Archives: admin

Unrequited Love

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In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
From “Locksley Hall” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

And when very young, to that which cannot nor should ever be.
Dr. Dave

When I was in the fourth grade I had a terrible crush on Jeannie, a blond, blue-eyed girl to whom I pledged my eternal undying love. Her twin sister, Carolyn, was a gangly brunette with glasses and braces. She was in that awkward stage through which some girls are destined to suffer and just didn’t hold the same fascination. As a callous and superficial nine-year-old kid, I saw Jeannie as beauty idealized – a living Barbie doll. Which, as most of us learn as we get older, is one of the worst criteria on which to base a relationship.

In my mind I would walk her home, hand in hand, and gently brush her lips with mine before she disappeared into her house. I would protect her from the slings and arrows of playground torment. I would be hers forever, and she, mine.

The only problem was she had no idea any of this was supposed to happen. We’d never had even a brief conversation in passing because I was too terrified to say anything. The best I could hope for was catching a glimpse of her as I rode my bike past her house, which worked out only once in two years.

Donna, the only girl I ever talked to, was more like a sister to me. We’d walk the block or so to her house and talk of simple things, much like two very good friends. Many of my adult relationships with women would follow the same two separate tracks of friend or love interest, something I’ve recognized only as I write this.

I continued to pine for Jeannie during fifth grade. She liked to play jacks with the other girls (go look it up, kids) so I bought her a set for Christmas – ten little metal spikes and a small rubber ball attached to a cheap piece of cardboard. I wrapped it and the next day unceremoniously shoved the package into her hands. “Here,” I said before turning away, avoiding the inevitable rejection.

My infatuation with Jeannie was potentially far more dangerous. I knew racial differences existed in the mid-1960s – when I was five years old a playmate’s grandmother called me a “little black liar” after a minor skirmish – but I was blissfully unaware that a poor Puerto Rican kid with kinky hair had no business being even remotely interested in a nice, middle-class white girl. I did not know that less than ten years previously a young African-American boy named Emmitt Till was savagely beaten to death in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman. I might have become St. David the Naïve, martyred for stupidity, were it not for being tragically socially inept. We moved to another school district two months into sixth grade and I never saw Jeannie again.

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;
Tennyson

Love may be deaf, dumb and blind, but karma has a wry sense of humor.
Dr. Dave

There was another blond girl in my new class. Anita was, as older folks would say, cute as a button: short hair; small, upturned nose; fair skin and bright, smiling eyes. Had I been paying attention I might have noticed, but avoiding further humiliation took priority.

A few days before school let out for the summer, our sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Jackson, organized a class trip to the Chiricahua National Monument, a “Wonderland of Rocks,” about two hours from Bisbee. That morning we gathered at the playground with our sack lunches where Mrs. Jackson and a few volunteer moms herded us into their cars. I felt honored to be invited into the back seat of Mrs. Jackson’s station wagon.

We headed out Route 80 to Double Adobe Road, memorable for the frequent, gut-dropping dips in the otherwise straight and boring black top. My family had made the drive a couple of times in our navy blue ’60 Chevy Biscayne, with the wide flat fins and the trunk that could hold at least a couple of bodies. My stepfather loved to take those dips at speeds far greater than the snail’s pace I was used to in town. From there we picked up US 191 North, passing through McNeal and Elfrida, then east on Arizona SR 181 until we turned on to Bonita Canyon Road and into the park.

The road rises gently for a few miles and Bonita Creek flows past the roadside picnic area where we stopped. We ate lunch, waded through the icy water and explored some of the trails. One girl cut her foot on a sharp rock in the creek and I cleaned it with alcohol I’d brought, figuring it might come in handy.

As we were getting ready to leave, Anita came up to me and, out of the blue, said, “You know, I really like you.”  As with Jeannie, we’d never spoken a word to each other (or at least that is what I remember), but now the shoe was on the other foot and I was stunned. Any flattery I might have felt was completely overwhelmed by sheer terror and I said nothing.  It’s only now that I realize my lack of response probably hurt her feelings, and for that I’m sorry.

Truly, youth is wasted on the young.

I acquired a Bisbee High School yearbook during a trip back to Arizona in 1972. Carolyn, Donna and Anita had become lovely young women. Jeannie was the All-American girl; I would not have been surprised if she’d been elected Prom Queen. Some of the guys I’d known in grade school, on the other hand, hadn’t quite gotten their edges smoothed out. Ricky, the class clown whose twin sister once yelled, “Sit down, Junior!” in class, wore sunglasses for his yearbook picture; he might have had a future in stand-up comedy.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.
Tennyson

What he said.
Dr. Dave

More than half a century later I can only imagine what happened to them. Maybe they all got married, had kids and grandkids, and lived happily ever after. Or maybe, like most of us, the joys were enough to withstand the inevitable pain and sadness that occasionally tests even the best relationships. I’ll never know, and some things are best left undisturbed.

But wherever you are, thanks for the memories.

Spring flowers © Can Stock Photo / sborisov

 

Christmas Blues

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Some of us really hate “the most wonderful time of the year.”

It is difficult, no, it is impossible to explain our aversion to Christmas to anyone who hasn’t struggled during the holidays. We are likely to hear, “Whassamatta wit’ you? It’s Chris’mas, fer Chrissake! Stop being such a downer and get into the spirit!”

“…Crappy toys flying off the shelves
Midgets dressed up to look like elves
Spread good cheer or burn in hell…”
Denis Leary (1)

It wasn’t always this way for me. I looked forward to Christmas when I was a kid, especially the smell of a fresh-cut tree permeating the house with a scent that we enjoyed but once a year. We’d buy a tree from the stand some local fraternal organization had erected in a parking lot, then haul it back home. My parents struggled to get it into that rusting metal tree stand without losing too many needles, and then adjust the crooked trunk until the tree was as straight as possible.  We’d untangle the lights and clip them to the tree branches, sometimes swapping screw-in bulbs to balance the colors. Finally, we’d take those fragile glass ornaments from their thin cardboard boxes, shake a wire hanger loose from the pile and carefully put them on the tree, hoping they would all survive until January.

But things changed. The details aren’t important; let’s just say I cringe when I hear John Denver singing Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas.  It got worse after we moved from Arizona, where everyone was pretty much on the same socioeconomic plane, to the Midwest where I discovered the haves and have nots. That the sun disappeared behind endless grey skies between November and April exacerbated my own depression.

One dismal winter day in 1974 I found “The Death of Christmas: Interviews with forty-three survivors,” in the bargain bin at Follett’s Bookstore, across the street the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  The proceeds from this 1971 book raised funds for the Neediest Children’s Christmas Fund in Chicago. On the cover a sad black Santa with an empty toy sack stood in the snow before three poor urban kids, a heartbreaking sight. The title page featured this illustration (2) by John Fischetti, an editorial cartoonist for the now-defunct Chicago Daily News.

A quote from one of the “survivors” summed up my feelings: “Christmas is for the rich to enjoy, the middle-class to imitate, and the poor to watch.”

A few years later I was walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago one miserable December evening for reasons I’ve long forgotten, as I certainly didn’t have the kind of cash one needs to shop there. People hurried along the sidewalks like salmon rushing upstream to spawn. Women in furs. Businessmen in overcoats and severe looks. All the stores windows were brimming with faux Christmas cheer—the kinds of decorations no ordinary family would even think of buying—enticing the wealthy with diamonds and furs. “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

A young woman sat on the cold concrete, leaning up against the marble front of a jewelry store, eerily illuminated by a light above the display window. She was rocking a young child wrapped in a thin blanket. The child’s mouth was open in a silent cry – I suspect the little girl may have suffered from cerebral palsy. A small container with a few meager coins lay at their feet. People passed them by without a glance and my heart ached at the wretched scene. I stood looking at them for a few moments, feeling helpless and confused. I don’t remember giving her any money; I think I was too shocked and ashamed. I’ve never forgotten that little scene from more than forty years ago.

The approaching holiday season triggers a predictable emotional sequence: annoyance; irritation giving way to righteous anger; resignation, relief when it’s all over followed by the post-holiday despondency. I’m annoyed when Home Depot and Costco start stocking Christmas decorations and crap in September. At least they have the decency to not play Christmas music until a week or so before Thanksgiving.

Then there’s Black Friday. The day after professing gratitude for friends and family, a roof over one’s head, and more than enough to eat, people get into fistfights over crap that will lose its appeal a few weeks into the New Year. I detest the term “Doorbusters,” which conjures a stampede of desperate peasants trying to buy their way to happiness, unaware they are being shamelessly manipulated by corporate overlords with far more money than they will ever have.

My irritation grows in direct proportion to the frequency of overly precious Christmas advertising on television and blossoms into righteous anger by late November when car commercials outnumber all others by about ten to one. Nothing captures the true meaning of Christmas like buying your spouse a luxury SUV wrapped in a gigantic red bow and telling your Yuppie kids some bullshit story about how Santa delivered it.

The post-Christmas crash follows the buildup to Christmas Day. It’s the hangover from the night before, except that night was six weeks in the making. Dried-up trees litter the curbs and dumpsters overflow with cardboard boxes and torn wrapping paper. Stores fire sale their Christmas crap up to 90% off, which gives one an idea how much it was worth in the first place. Wal-Mart starts stocking Valentine’s Day cards before New Year’s Eve. The college bowl games and the Superbowl are often anti-climactic, and I never liked basketball. Football pre-season is eight long months away.

I made a conscious effort to suppress my inner Grinch when I became a father. I didn’t want my kids to have the same dismal holiday memories I had, and I think it worked out reasonably well. (One year the oldest got a pair of pliers to pull the bug out of his pre-teen butt.) Still, the first time I read them The Polar Express I lost it at the end when Billy reflects: “At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound.” (3)

My son asked, “Why are you crying, Daddy?”  You’ll figure it out in about twenty years.

I’ve made my peace with Christmas. I take delight in the little things. Classic Christmas albums by Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis and the incongruous duet with Bing Crosby and David Bowie. Christmas movies like White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, and Die Hard.
The guy in the neighborhood who spells BAH HUMBUG on his roof in rope lights. (I wanted to put an inflatable Grinch on the roof, but Peg promised to shoot it full of holes). The look on the Chreasters’(4) faces when they show up at 12:15 a.m. for the Christmas Eve “midnight mass” that’s been starting at 11p.m. for at least thirty years.

Christmas Day is becoming more like Thanksgiving – dinner with family and friends, wishing all peace and good will, and trying not to be a dick in the coming year. Getting stuff isn’t important; being with those you love is the best gift.

Many still find very little to celebrate around the holidays, but some churches have stepped in to fill the void.  During the 1980’s the British Columbia hospice community started “Blue Christmas” services which have since spread to churches.

“…The idea of Blue Christmas is to acknowledge the darkness, and let it be dark. That is a quietly revolutionary act in an optimism-obsessed culture that would pressure even the Little Match Girl to look on the bright side. Some churches refer to the event as the “Longest Night,” because many services take place on December 21, the winter solstice, when the sun stays hidden longer than it does on any other night of the year. The structure varies widely, but common motifs include candles, music in minor keys, periods of silence, and time to privately share specific sadnesses and fears (say, by writing them down and placing them on a “tree.”). …” (5)

If you can still hear the bell, you are indeed blessed. Please say a prayer for those for whom hope remains elusive.

  1. It’s a Merry F@#%in’ Christmas (C) 2004 Denis Leary
  2. “The Outsiders” (C) 1971, John Fischetti. Used with permission.
  3. Text from The Polar Express (C) 1985 Chris Van Allsburg.
  4. Chreasters: occasional Catholics who show up only on Christmas Eve and Easter, largely out of some subconscious obligation to the memory of long dead relatives who will chew their asses once they reach Heaven.
  5. Graham, R. “Blue Christmas Services Honor the Dark Side of the Season“. Slate, December 21, 2016. Accessed on December 7, 2017.

Baxter

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She dropped them off at the shelter; Baxter, the five-year-old Shih-Tzu, and the puppy. It was a difficult decision—they were her family—but she couldn’t care for them anymore. She was going into hospice and her time was drawing near.

Peg, and I had been looking for another dog ever since we’d lost Goldie, our petulant Pekingese. We’d gotten her and Gus, a 13-year-old Shih-Tzu with several health problems, from a foster family for the same shelter. They were life-long companions and the shelter didn’t want them separated. Gus was with us for two years; Goldie died five years later at the ripe old age of 18. We mourned their passing but eventually decided it was time to welcome another shelter dog into our home.

Peg periodically browsed the shelter’s website for dogs and found Boo-Boo, a mischievous-looking little dog. We thought this was a sign because Boo-Boo was our favorite nickname for Goldie, but we discovered he’d already been promised to someone. So, one afternoon we went to the shelter and spent time with several dogs. It was almost heartbreaking; they were all eager to find someone to love them. Most were bigger dogs or came as a set of two or three, more than we could handle.

We left and returned a week or so later. Peg went with one of the staff to check out another dog she’d found on the website. The woman at the desk said to me, “We have a pair that just came in. The woman who cared for them just entered hospice. Why don’t I introduce you?”

I met Baxter and his puppy companion in the enclosure—a jail cell with two diminutive convicts. The shelter people were more concerned about Baxter’s chances of adoption. “Everyone wants a puppy. Few people want an old dog.”  Old? He was only five! That’s middle age in dog years and he had far more energy than I did.

She suggested I take him for a walk, so I put a leash on his collar and we went outside. Baxter wandered along the sidewalk in front of the shelter, an inmate on parole. He sniffed at the shrubs, surveyed the parking lot and turned back.  By that time Peg had joined us. I knelt down and looked into his eyes. He appeared confused, wondering why he’d been left here with strangers.  I imagined him saying, “Please take me home with you.”

I looked at her and said, without hesitation, “He’s the one.”

In retrospect, I think he said, “What took you so long? Let’s get out of here.”

Baxter’s biography said he was “active,” “crate-trained” and “loves to play with balls,” so we went shopping. Peg insisted on buying a crate, which I thought was silly since neither Gus nor Goldie stayed in one. We also got a nice pad, a few soft blankets, food and water bowls, three miniature tennis balls and a couple of squeaky toys.

A few days later we signed all the paperwork, made a generous donation to the shelter, and walked Baxter out to the car. On the way home he sat very silently in Peg’s lap, leading us to surmise his bio had been embellished. Well, that was the LAST time he would sit quietly in a car, let alone on someone’s lap. Now he bounces around like a Superball when we’re on the road.

Baxter wandered about the house after we arrived. He ignored the crate in the family room, sniffed around the kitchen, then made his way upstairs to the bedrooms. He devoured his dinner right away; the shelter feeds the dogs twice a day and takes it away after 30 minutes, so you snooze, you lose. We went for a walk and then sat on the couch until bedtime, getting to know our new family member.

Peg insisted on having him sleep in the crate in our room, so we hauled it upstairs. I still thought this idiotic since our other dogs always slept with us. Baxter walked into the crate, turned around and then stared at me, imploring.

“He’s fine. He’s used to being crated,” Peg said.

“Yeah, well how would you like to sleep in one?”

She relented and open the crate door. Baxter immediately ran out, jumped the 30 inches to the top of our bed, curled up and went to sleep. The crate now houses his toys when he’s not flinging them around the family room.

He is my faithful companion and my muse, and we have our routines. I tried to have morning coffee and then take him for a walk, but he has trained me. Walk first; coffee later. You know how this works! He then stands guard on the bed in our guest room, staring out the window and barking at trespassers on the sidewalk: other dogs; people walking; kids riding their bicycles, delivery people and the mail carriers.

We sometimes go for a cappuccino around 2 o’clock. I swear he can tell time; he becomes impatient if I’m not ready. I switch to mocha in the winter, sharing the whipped cream with him. On Sunday mornings we go to McDonald’s for breakfast. (Walk first, remember??? Damn, it’s so hard to find good help.) At bedtime he reminds me I need a protein snack to stabilize my blood sugar. And, of course, he’s available for quality control.

Baxter is just as persistent when he’s in the mood for dessert. He’ll jump on the couch, paw my leg and grumble under his breath if I don’t respond.  His ears pick up and that little puppy smile crosses his face if I suggest going to Culver’s for a sundae.

Baxter is like a perpetual toddler. He delights in little things like car rides, treats, dinner and naps. His occasional snits blow over in a few minutes. Best of all, he doesn’t ask for car keys or money.

I travel a lot for my job and I usually leave a T-shirt on the couch while I’m gone. One day he dropped one of his toys in my suitcase while I was packing and now it’s a ritual. Bat, Spider, Crab, Taz and Mouse have all spent time on hotel nightstands. I take pictures with my phone and send them to Peg, but he isn’t at all interested. He is ecstatic when I return home. He does his little happy dance while looking at Peg. He’s back, he’s back! Let the rejoicing begin!  Lately he’s been bringing one of his minions to the airport to greet my arrival.

I had a dog when I was nine, but no one taught me how to care for him. My mother didn’t like dogs and my stepfather saw dogs as just part of the all-American home. In retrospect, I/we neglected that dog. Baxter’s entry into my life allowed me to atone.

At this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for our time together. We’re both getting older and slowing down – well, I’m slowing down. I try not to think about the inevitable parting, but who knows? At my age, we might just both ride into the sunset together.

Paradise Lost

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Obstetrics isn’t always the happy specialty. Tragedy is Death claiming one life during pregnancy. Unspeakable devastation is when both mother and baby are lost.

Linda was one of the receptionists in our OB/GYN office, and a single mother with a young daughter. She had known bad relationships and even worse situations but she rarely let them cloud her demeanor. She would smile even when she was angry, fuming over the latest frustrating phone conversation with a patient who had been unreasonable, irritated or just plain stupid. Being around her would make the worst day of work just a little better.

Linda met and later married Danny, a hard-working shop rat at GM who looked like Chuck Norris and worshiped the ground she walked on. No one had ever treated her so well and her face lit up whenever she talked about him. Maybe “happily ever after” was more than just a fairy tale.

Linda was ecstatic when she became pregnant and we were thrilled. Her ultrasound revealed her six-year-old daughter was going to have a baby brother. All of the providers took care of her during her pregnancy and we were looking forward to the new arrival. Someone arranged a baby shower; it’s what you do for family.

One cold, rainy night in October, two weeks before her due date, Linda dropped off her daughter at a Brownie meeting and headed home. On her way back, a man ran a stop sign at an intersection, slamming into her car and sending it down an embankment. The impact threw Linda out of the car which then rolled over her and her unborn baby.

When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics could feel the baby moving inside Linda’s uterus, even as she lay unconscious, but there was nothing they could do. The hospital was at least twenty minutes away and a baby deprived of oxygen has only a few minutes to live. Even if someone had delivered the baby with a scalpel, a rainy country road is no place to resuscitate a critically ill baby. They could only watch on in horror as the movement slowed and stopped.

The hospital’s obstetrics residents were waiting in the Emergency Department when the ambulance arrived. The paramedics quickly wheeled their gurney into a room which had been set up for an emergency delivery. Tthe chief resident dutifully performed a procedure he knew was futile.

I was at home that night when the resident called.

“I’m in the ER. There is a patient of yours, here. She was in an auto accident about an hour ago. We delivered the baby down here but… I’m sorry. Neither one of them made it.”

I felt sick and more than a little helpless. At first, I didn’t know what to do. I’m used to driving like a bat out of hell to the hospital to deliver a baby that’s coming quickly, but there wasn’t anything I could do that would bring them back. After the initial shock, I called Jenny, one of the nurse practitioners who had cared for Linda throughout her pregnancy. She called Hope, one of the other receptionists and a friend of Danny’s, who in turned called the factory.

An eerie silence met me when I walked into the room. The residents had gone back to the Labor unit and the nurses had moved on to other patients. The gurney was bloody; a scalpel and the placenta lay in a stainless-steel basin. Linda and son lay side by side, as if they were sleeping peacefully after a long labor. Her abdominal incision was still open but the bleeding one would expect from a fresh Cesarean was lacking. I covered her with a clean gown and a sheet. Jenny and Hope appeared a few minutes later, their faces pale and grim.

“Someone found Danny; he was working on the line. It will take him about half an hour to get here.”

When Danny arrived someone from the front desk escorted him to the room. I excused myself to make room for him and as I left, I heard the most anguished cry ever to come from a man whose heart had been shattered. The woman he cherished and her baby would never come home.

A few days later, I drove Jenny, Hope and Sarah, another receptionist, out to the funeral in a little town about half an hour away. Linda and Zach—she’d picked out the name a few months before—were in the same casket. I don’t remember anything about the service; how much can one remember after nearly twenty-five years?

After the ceremony we joined the procession out of town to a state highway, then onto one of the many rural back roads, to a small cemetery a several miles north. The cemetery drive was unpaved and rutted; we pulled off into the grass near the fresh gravesite. The afternoon was cool and sunny, not cold and rainy like the night they died. A breeze stirred the few leaves that had fallen; in a few weeks all the trees would be bare.

The minister spoke a few words before we gathered around the casket to say our goodbyes. We drove back to the office in silence, sharing a grief that needed no words.
I sometimes look back and wonder “What if?” Linda would be fifty-two now. Maybe she’d have been a grandmother by now as her daughter is now in her thirties. Perhaps she and Danny would have had more kids.

Zach would be twenty-four. He might have been a good kid, then morphed into a sullen teenager, giving his parents many a tale with which to embarrass him when he finally matured. Maybe he would have done a stint in the military and made his parents proud.

Cherish what you have, because you never know when it may be lost forever.

Eclipse

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It’s been a few weeks since the moon’s shadow raced across the continental United States at 1400 miles an hour, providing many with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view a total eclipse. The next one in the continental United States will be April 8, 2024. I’d like to pass on a few things we learned traveling to this one.

Plan ahead…WAY ahead. In January, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign organized a bus trip to Goreville, IL, the epicenter for Illinois, that sold out early. Hotels around the area sold out early as well; closest place I could find a room a couple of months before the eclipse was in Mattoon, about 150 miles north of Carbondale. Southern Illinois University was offering last minute lodging in dormitory rooms, or a 10’ x 10’ space in the Student Recreation Center, for hefty prices. The 2024 eclipse will also pass through Carbondale; you can watch the university’s countdown clock. Only 2400 more days give or take.

Get eclipse glasses early because they sold out quickly and make sure they are certified for eclipse viewing.  Amazon had to recall glasses which lacked certification, prompting at least one lawsuit for permanent eye damage.. Chicago’s Adler Planetarium distributed more than 250,000 pairs in the few weeks prior to the event and had 30,000 available that day. Plastic glasses that go over corrective lenses are likely to be less awkward than the mass produced cardboard and film ones. And no, putting sunscreen in your eyes isn’t a substitute.

Take the road less traveled. Interstate 57, the direct route to Carbondale from the Chicago suburbs, was slow going from Kankakee on Sunday, August 20. We left it just south of Kankakee at US 52 and drove the back roads through the heartland, passing through obscure towns (to suburban dwellers like me, anyway) like L’Erable, Crescent City, Woodworth, Cissna Park, and Rankin.

IL-49 becomes North 2nd Street as it cuts through the heart of Cissna Park. There’s a small public park on the west side facing the Cissna Park State Bank, The Ivy Arbor and the True Value Hardware Store on the east. We stopped on a side street across from the Post Office for a preemptive bathroom break.  It was warm, even under the shade of the trees, and quiet. Very quiet. None of the traffic noise to which I’ve tried to become immune. No barking dogs or shrieking children. A faint breeze rustled the leaves but the town appeared all but deserted.

Silence like that should be welcomed, not feared. It allows one to think, to become more aware of how small our existence can be. I am jealous of those people, but I imagine the few younger people living there can’t wait to head out to “civilization.” Be careful what you wish for; there will come a time, decades ahead, when you’ll wonder why you were so eager to leave.

Traffic was much worse on Monday the 21st. We took IL-16 west out of Mattoon then US-51 south to Vandalia, where we stopped at McDonald’s for another potty break and drinks. My wife overheard a woman saying the part of her family that decided to take I-57 was just sitting in traffic.  We drove west on I-70 to Greenville, IL, then south on IL-127 to Nashville, where traffic from the I-64 exit slowed us to a crawl. So, we turned off at the first country road and hightailed it down the back roads along with a few other savvy travelers to Sparta, a good fifty miles from Carbondale, but still in the sweet spot for viewing.

Google Maps was working overtime and finally gave up the ghost about 11am. It wouldn’t be functional until well after totality.

Plan liquid intake and disposal very carefully if you are an old guy with BPH and a nagging wife.  Peg takes a dim view of the time-honored guy tradition of pulling off to the side of a country road and whipping it out. We stopped at one gas station where ten people were waiting for one bathroom; I ended up going in an empty iced tea bottle. Either stop for breaks often or wear adult diapers and avoid the “why didn’t you stop sooner” lecture.

Look for rural viewing sites. Sparta’s City Park was full, but we found a small park south of town with parking for about 20 cars. There was a nice breeze, and plenty of room to watch the moon slowly overtaking the sun.  Thousands of miles of county roads form a grid around the cornfields in Southern Illinois and the population density is very low. Arrive early and bring something to eat and drink. We stopped at Sparta’s Wal-Mart before looking for a spot.

Take something to sit on. I’d forgotten the folding chairs I’d planned to take, so we sat on the landscaping stones surrounding the park’s sign.  One old guy sat in his car with his wife, with the engine and air conditioning running for over an hour. Yeah, gas was $2.09/gallon, but it’s still a waste.

Go a few days early and stay a day or so after.  If you have the time, plan on getting to your destination a few days before the eclipse and stay a day or two after.  We’d planned on driving to Springfield immediately after the eclipse as I had to work a hospitalist shift two days later. Sparta has a nice Holiday Inn Express and it would have been nice to avoid the mass exodus

Most people left right after totality, caravaning up country roads with stop signs or a blinking red light at major highway intersections. We alternated between several mile backups and racing to the next backup. It never occurred to the local cops or county sheriffs to direct traffic for a few hours; I would not have thought of it, either. A normally 2-hour drive turned into four. Luckily our exit into Springfield avoided the sluggish merge of I-72 and I-55.

If you want pictures of the sun before totality, get a filter.  Remember burning leaves with a magnifying glass when you were a kid? A telescope is just a more expensive and powerful version. Our local news station showed what happens to a camera attached to an unfiltered telescope: the mechanism was smoking when it was detached.

Taking a picture through eclipse glasses was awkward and futile. If you want to try this, bring along tape to secure the glasses to the lens.

Turn off your camera’s auto-correct. I tried to get shots of the fading light but the camera on my phone compensated enough to make my pictures useless for comparison. Here’s a side-by-side, using computer wizardry to uncorrect my shot.

The eclipsed sun is actually very small. Those magnificent pictures you see are taken through telescopes with high-end cameras and filters. The moon was smaller than I anticipated and one cannot see much of the corona with the naked eye. A pair of binoculars would have been handy.

The all-around sunset is spectacular. No, it does not get pitch black; it’s more like dusk. It’s dark enough to trigger street lamps and the cicadas started chirping but it’s still a thrilling experience. WGN’s chief meteorologist, Tom Skilling, sobbed when it finally happened.

Bonnie Tyler sang “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on a boat somewhere off the coast of South Carolina. I thought Pink Floyd’s “Eclipse” was more appropriate, so enjoy.