A Coffee Fiend Gives Thanks

It’s predawn on a recent Thanksgiving morning. I haven’t had coffee yet, and I’m in a daze, staring at that sweet old Quaker dude on the box in the pantry. I’ve no clue as to why I’m here.

“Are you going to make breakfast?” my husband asks.

“Yes…that’s it…thank you.” I sound like Stephen Hawking’s voice synthesizer before I get properly caffeinated. But now that I’ve been reminded what I’m doing, I pour oats in the boiling water, and the day can begin.

Finally the coffee’s ready. I take my first sip. Ahh…I’m grateful for this elixir.

Around Thanksgiving many people like to wax eloquent about the things they’re thankful for. My husband gets cranky as a cornered possum when asked to recite his gratitude list, which maybe explains why we’re roasting our own turkey for two again this year. But there are many things I’m thankful for, such as all the factoids I learn from my husband.

He’s at the kitchen table reading news on his iPad. “Did you know the world’s record turkey weighed 84 pounds? Those must’ve been some drumsticks.”

“Hah,” I say, “I bet it was an ostrich with short legs.

As I serve the oatmeal, our Jack Russell terriers mill around my ankles, ever hopeful I’ll drop a morsel their way. Their natural Tasmanian devil personalities are mellow in the morning, and I’m grateful to have these creatures that often look as dazed as I do before I get my coffee.

My husband eats breakfast while checking Facebook postings. “Our pal, Deb St. Julien, says she’s grateful for protein synthesis, cellular respiration, meiosis and mitosis,” he reads.

“Once a high school biology teacher, always a high school biology teacher,” I say.

“I’m glad we have Google so I can look all this stuff up,” he says. “She’s also grateful for quarks.”

“You know what happens when you cross a dog and a duck?” I ask.

“I give up.”

“You get a pet that goes, ‘quark, quark, quark.’”

He groans.

“You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it.”

“I’m going for a bicycle ride,” he says.

My husband takes off, and I start a load of laundry. Ahh…the washer and dryer. And running water. Pop in a basketful of dirty clothes, and clean ones emerge a short while later. It’s a miracle. Now that’s something to be grateful for. Laundry underway, I head for the garden. Who knows why getting dirt under my fingernails puts me in such a blissful state, but I can’t imagine anything more fun to do on a holiday than pulling weeds. At my age it’s about time I had a little fun.

When my husband returns, I have a mountain of weeds for him to haul to the compost pile. We work a few more hours together in the garden, and then, about the time we should take our showers and get the turkey in the oven, we hear a rat-a-tat-tat nearby.

We know this sound. They’re jack hammering in front of our neighbor’s house. The only reason they dig up the street on a holiday is because the water main has broken once again. Our water’s been turned off. We ask the workers, and they estimate it’ll be 6-8 hours before they restore service, and that’s if everything goes well.

“Ummm…I guess we aren’t going to get a shower anytime soon,” I say.

“What about the turkey?” my husband asks.

“You can’t cook a big dinner without water. You can’t even wash your hands.”

“Cavemen didn’t have running water,” he says.

“Cavemen only lived to 22.”

“But I’m starving,” he says.

“So find some takeout.”

“Excellent idea.” My husband leaves for the hunt. He’s gone over an hour. The sun sets.

Now I’m hungry, too.

When he finally returns, he has a big bag of food slung over his shoulder.

“It smells great,” I say. “Turkey?”

“Pad Thai and red curry.” So we have spicy Asian food for Thanksgiving, and we’re very grateful that one restaurant was still open. About 10:00 PM the water’s turned back on. After some sputtering and banging, our old pipes deliver plenty of water for showers. As the hot stream beats against my shoulders, it dawns on me that the fact we have water again means there will be coffee to drink in the morning.

Yes, there’s much to be grateful for.

My Dad the Super Hero

Lt. William Rachow, in Italy, 1944

This Veterans Day weekend I thought a lot about my dad, who served in WWII and survived to live out his particular version of the American dream.

His survival made my existence possible, so, of course, I’m grateful he made it home. I wish there were no such thing as war, but that kind of world is still in the making. And perhaps the creation of a peaceful planet in part has to do with generations of men and woman in uniform in the service of that goal.

My father passed away at the age of 87, and a group of serious men in uniform came to his graveside service to give him a full military send off. I was moved at how, after so many years of his civilian life, one airman’s service still mattered so intently to these young men.

Later I was honored to speak at Dad’s memorial. This is the story I shared with family and friends:

B-24 bomber

Imagine it’s September 10, 1944. We’re in a B-24 bomber flying over enemy territory. We’ve dropped our bombs, and Germans are firing back from ground and air. We’ve lost two engines, and then a third is hit.

                 

For the men in this plane, this is turning out to be one terrible, rotten day. But they aren’t dead yet. They’re now over Yugoslav territory when the pilot gives the order:

“Bail out!”

Twenty-one-year old, William Rachow (eventually to be known as my dad), is the bombardier on this mission. He opens the bomb bay doors and helps the crewmen take that leap of faith into the wild blue yonder. Then Lt Rachow steps into space himself.

He pulls the ripcord, and the miracle of the silk canopy is above him.

They say at times like this your whole life flashes before you. Lt. Rachow notices it’s a beautiful September day.

He thinks of the letter he received form his bride Rogene and the way it still smelled of her perfume. She’s expecting their first child. He has a lot to live for.

He looks for a place to set down. The meadow looks good, but the parachute takes him to a tall pine. He tumbles through the branches. It’s not pretty, but he makes it to the ground with only a few bumps.

Will he be met by enemy troops known for hanging all captives? Or by Russians with a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later?

Lt. Rachow is lucky to be found by Partisans sympathetic to American troops. The bad news is, none of them speak English. He must put his trust in hand signals that they will take him to safety.

He’s given a bed for the night, fed bread and eggs in the morning, and he’s taken to a British compound nearby where several days later he catches a C-47 supply plane back to his base in Italy.

The whole crew makes it back alive. One has an injured leg, and another had the seat of his flight suit blown off by flak, but otherwise they’re alive and well and find the courage to carry out more missions and eventually make it home to heroes’ welcomes.

I didn’t hear much about my dad’s war adventures until many years later when I went with him to a reunion of his squadron. There I learned Dad’s buddies called him Rocky. They told stories of his heroic deeds.

He was always there for them, they said. He shared what he had, money, cigarettes, even oxygen. One told me about when his mask froze at 30K feet, and my dad handed over his own oxygen. Apparently Rocky didn’t need extra oxygen no matter how thin the air got.

I already knew my dad was an everyday hero, working hard, helping family, friends and strangers alike. And I knew how much he loved our mom, Rogene, the first girl he ever kissed. From the way he joked around with her, to the way he held her hand the day she died, he made it clear she was a precious gift.

And later, when he was so blessed to find Irene and marry again at 80, he impressed me all over again with the way he appreciated and loved her.

I’d seen these things with my own eyes, but I wondered why he didn’t tell stories of his own heroism.

His buddies gave me the answer. “Rocky was our hero, but he never tooted his own horn.”

This was true.  My dad didn’t brag, but was strong under fire. He was able to take a leap of faith and trust in the unknown.  And he knew how to show love and gratitude for the ways he’d been blessed.

That’s my definition of a super hero.

Crazy for Smart Phones

Ms. Rachow would like to dedicate this column to Siri, the disembodied voice in her new mobile phone that did all historical fact checking for this piece.

While growing up in Nebraska, I didn’t dream it would one day be possible to delete emails and post to FaceBook while my husband drove our pooches and me to the beach.

Until just three weeks ago, I wondered why I’d even want to be so obsessively connected. But I confess…I’ve joined the hordes of zombies who are infatuated with constant connectivity.

My insanity was a long time in the making and involved a hundred or so marital “discussions.” The arguing began in 2007 when the first iPhone came on the market. My husband, being an aficionado of all new tech goodies, wanted to get on the smart phone track then, but we still had a contract with the wrong mobile provider…ya-da, ya-da…not a great financial idea to switch horses in midstream.

Besides, at that time we had year-old flip phones that were excellent in many ways. They had terrific sound quality and were so easy to operate I could make a call with one hand while keeping the other on the wheel and my eyes on the road. Using a handheld cell phone while driving was still legal in California in those ancient days.

Months passed, and with each generation of new smart phones, my techie husband would make the case for getting our mobile-phone butts out of the Dark Ages and into 21^st Century reality. Over a billion people worldwide had taken the plunge into a lifestyle where it was possible to be connected 24x7, no matter where one was or what one was doing.

It escaped me why it was so appealing to be on the Internet all the time. It seemed just crazy, mind numbing, whacky, insane, and stupid, stupid, stupid.

I said exactly that many times, but my husband’s not much swayed by emotional arguments. He grew up in the icy wasteland of Quebec where the slightest show of emotion can cause parts of one’s frostbitten face to fall off.

Of course, beyond the first year of marriage one does not win arguments by foot stomping alone. One must remember one’s spouse has inherited his father’s propensity toward pinching pennies.

Whenever the smart phone subject came up, I calmly asked, “What will our data plan cost once we get smart phones?”

Suddenly my thrifty husband would decide our ancient flip phones were gems to be cherished for as long as we both should live.

Nevertheless, he kept up on the new generations of smart phones. Via his research, I learned some users loved the BlackBerry, which seemed pleasantly fruity to me. And others liked the Android…a connected cell phone and a character in a sci-fi novel. My husband liked the iPhone best, although I never asked why.

It wasn’t my job to know all the details of mobile devices. My task was to blindly argue against all smart phones as the technology seasons came and went.

Our old flip phones continued to work well even as they became strange relics of a bygone era. It seemed there were grown men who’d been born after we first got those old phones. I was perversely proud of this, but I also noticed I was less and less willing to let anyone under 30 see me make a call. The flip phones were as embarrassing as our ever-more frequent invitations to join AARP.

However, it wasn’t embarrassment that finally tipped the argument. It was getting puppies.

It turns out if you have pups you need to photograph their every milestone.

“The new iPhone has a fantastic camera,” my husband said.

“We already have cameras,” I countered. But there was a crack in my voice. I already knew how challenging it was to share photos with our conventional cameras. Yes, the world could to wait to see our endless puppy shots, but when one is a new parent, one gets a little overly exuberant.

Still I dragged my feet. I hated to put our perfectly functional flip phones out to pasture. It wasn’t until my husband’s took an “accidental” header onto the pavement that I finally accepted the inevitable

This morning my husband washed cars and repaired the roof himself to save money to pay for the data plan on our new iPhones.

Now we’re off to the beach with dogs and these magical mobile devices. On the way there, I’ll delete emails from the AARP. On the way home, I’ll post the new shots of pups running in the surf.

Crazy? Yes. Happy? Oh, yeah.

While U Wait

Ms. Rachow dedicates this column to all my new friends on Facebook and all my old friends in the real world.


Some things in this life take forever. Waiting for that check that’s in the mail. Waiting for your kids to realize you did know a thing or two about life. Waiting for your spouse to say, “Honey, you’re absolutely right. What was I thinking?”

However, there’s nothing that takes as long as waiting for the first little green tomatoes to appear after your plants start blooming. If you’ve never grown tomatoes, and never plan to, keep reading anyway, because I’ll give tips on what to do while you wait for anything.

Tip # 1. While you wait, celebrate somebody’s birthday.
I was lucky enough that my friend Sally’s birthday, complete with chocolate cake and plenty of champagne, arrived on the day of the first tomato blossoms.

While I looked longingly at all the lovely red balloons around the party room, I recalled a certain twenty-first birthday when I thought being legal drinking age meant that I could handle an entire bottle of champagne. No matter what they tell you, hanging one foot over the edge of the bed doesn’t help. You will wait forever for the room to stop spinning.

At home after Sally’s party, I took my flashlight out to the garden to check on the plants. For all I knew, those little tomatoes might be sneaking out at night, like the toys in the nursery. But nada.
Tip # 2. While you wait, ask advice, and, if you’ve been invited to another party, go to it.
Seeking wise counsel, I emailed the tomato expert Jim Alexander. His plants already had lots of little tomatoes. “How long must I wait?”

“Three days,” he replied. “It is written.”

Jeez, I could write a doctoral thesis in the time it was going to take for those tomatoes to appear. That reminded me that my friend Nicole was having her “I Finally Got My PhD” party. Great timing. More celebrating while I waited.

I spent a few pleasant hours at that party. When asked to offer advice on life after a PhD, I told Nicole, “My grandmother always told me if life gives you cucumbers, make pickles.” At least cucumber plants don’t make you wait forever before the baby cukes appear.

Tip #3. While you wait, if you run out of parties to go to, kill more time by joining Facebook.
In the past when someone mentioned Facebook, I’ve always said, “Huh?” Normally I prefer real friends who throw actual parties with great food and conversation. But, suddenly, getting lost on-line seemed like a marvelous idea. I could have endless cyber friends with just a few clicks. So I signed up.

Ah…the wonderful feeling of being 100 percent anesthetized and more where that came from. I followed the very easy instructions (if I could do it, anyone can), and before you knew it, I was a part of the Facebook community. It seemed that everyone I knew was already there, having a grand ol’ party on-line without me.

So I asked someone to be my “friend” and got an instant yes. I asked another and another, and I keep asking, and the replies kept coming in. I checked every few minutes. If I didn’t have more friends yet, I invited others to be my friends. I was the belle of the Facebook ball.
The dogs wanted to go for a walk. “You guys have to wait,” I told them. “I’m checking to see if I have more friends yet.”

“Where are my clean socks?” my husband asked.

“I’ll check on the laundry as soon as I check the messages on my wall.”

Then there were photos to post, groups to join, and things to become a fan of.

After about eleven hours straight, I got poked. Back in the real world, I knew what that meant, but on Facebook I had to ask.

“Just meant I was thinking about you,” my new “friend” Lucy explained.

By then I had 45 new friends, but some of them already had hundreds of friends and I couldn’t rest until I caught up.

Suddenly the room was spinning like I’d had a whole bottle of champagne. I heard a voice somewhere out there in the real world. It sounded like my husband.

“Aren’t you going to water your tomatoes today?”

“Oh my God, I forgot.” I pushed away from my desk and headed outside.

And there it was…the first, little, precious, green tomato.

How long did I wait?

Exactly three days. It is written.

First published in the Montecito Journal June 18, 2009

Ring of Fire

Ms. Rachow recommends Celebrity tomatoes and David Villa, the plumber. This column is dedicated to him and to all the other heroes in our community.

The first of May begins the annual tomato-growing race between fellow Journal columnist, Jim Alexander, and yours truly. Per usual, I’m late getting my tomatoes in the ground. It’s Cinco de Mayo before I have my pony-pack.

To make matters worse, the forecast is hot and windy. I figure I’ll water frequently, and the three-inch plants will be fine. I give each a splash of magic transplant solution. Then I hear the wop-wop-wop above. I wonder if the DEA is making sure those are really tomatoes.

Then I see the plume of smoke in the hills. Holy crap! It’s close. But I know the drill: Stack dog kennels by the door. Find purse, keys, cell phone. Get boxes of important papers and photos. Park the vehicles snout out. And then spend any available time left obsessing about what else to take in case of evacuation.

I watch the wind blow the fire away from us, giving plenty of time to pack more stuff: Three tubes of toothpaste, but no toothbrush. Six pairs of scissors. A dictionary. My penny jar containing at least three dollars.

I’m eying a stack of old New Yorkers when my husband gets home from work. We get offers of places to stay from Samarkand to Santa Maria. These people all know we’ll be arriving with four Jack Russells. It’ll be a true test of friendship.

Every half hour I climb a ladder in the back yard to see for myself that the fire’s still blowing the other way. I watch TV news. What they show on screen, I also see from my back yard.
We consult with neighbors. I pack eight bed pillows, two giant jars of ibuprofen, and a big bag of trail mix. And I fuss over those tomato plants. Fire or not, I’m determined to stay in the contest.

The wind keeps blowing away from us, and we still don’t have to leave. Over the next two days we hear tragic news of houses that have burned. And we get the great news that other friends’ homes have been saved. My legs are getting a great workout from going up and down the fire-observation ladder. And I keep giving those tomatoes water.

On Thursday the wind switches direction. The fire is now burning its way down our canyon. The police cars drive by, blaring GET OUT NOW. We decide to go to our friend Toni’s house. She has a spunky Havanese and two standard poodles, who I believe are up to the task of coping with our terriers.

I wonder what would be an appropriate hostess gift under these circumstances. I check the fridge and spot a big wedge of Jarlsberg. Toni is from Minnesota and loves any food that goes moo, so the cheese evacuates with us, too.

We spend the night watching the fire from her deck in Samarkand. It’s as if General William Tecumseh Sherman has come back from the dead. We wonder if there’ll be anything left of our “Atlanta” by morning.

When the sun rises, things look peaceful in our neighborhood. The officers guarding our block let us back in if we offer a good story. The lady from across the street wants to look for her cat. I say I need to water my tomatoes. They wave us in with our promises we’ll re-evacuate ASAP.

After another sleepless night away, we’re allowed to return for good. Home was never sweeter. Somehow in all the smoke and wind, the tomato plants are a foot tall.

We barely have time to give thanks for our blessings before we realize our 60-year-old plumbing has chosen this particular day to get blocked. We have a home but no toilets.

Normally a roto-rooter man would arrive within an hour and solve the problem. But half the plumbers in town are under evacuation themselves, and the other half are busy taking care of plumbing issues in the burn areas.

We finally get someone to show up that evening, but the guy is so exhausted from extra duty that he locks his keys in his van. Instead of snaking our mainline, he has to call a locksmith. As soon as he can get in, he takes off.

It’s the next afternoon before David Villa from Stewart’s can show up and be our hero.

There are signs all over town thanking firefighters for their valiant efforts in putting out the blaze. The sign in front of our house also says “God Bless the Plumbers.”

First published in the Montecito Journal May 21, 2009

Nailing It

Ms. Rachow’s bucket list includes a romantic trip to the Grecian Isles. It does not include skydiving, bungee jumping or getting a Brazilian.

My pal Cricket and I are at lunch, and she says, “Wanna go get pedicures?”

Truth is, my toes have never been inside a nail salon. I’m from Nebraska, and while we might dance there until the Herefords come home, the only reason we’d consult a professional in regard to toes would be if an actual cow had stepped on someone’s foot and an x-ray was needed to see if any bones were broken.

However, I am a girl, and I do like colorful toenails. When sandal season looms, I buy a bottle of polish and have a do-it-yourself pedicure. At age eleven this was no big deal. Now, just a few decades later, it requires level-three yoga to get down there, but I can still do it.

Only problem is, every year it’s harder to stay within the lines. I know the cardinal rule is that the red is supposed to evenly cover the entire nail but not sneak onto the skin around it. Steady as my hand might be, I always manage to get some polish over the edge. It takes sixty seconds to paint it on and the whole rest of the week for the excess to wear off my skin.

Maybe Cricket and millions of other women have the right idea about hiring experts to do their nails. Now that getting a real pedicure is on today’s schedule my toes tingle with excitement.
Luckily there’s a nail salon just a block away. These places have been sprouting like Starbucks in recent years, probably due to the growing number of baby boomers who can no longer reach their own toes.

Inside, the first thing I notice is the aroma. I expect it to smell like chemicals, but I’m surprised that it also seems sort of yummy.

Cricket points at the menu board, indicating that I need to choose a flavor. Here the pedicures can be had in coconut, chocolate and peach. Chocolate might be the obvious choice, but we are not the kind of women who do what is expected. We both go for coconut.

I notice a sign that says “Pedi/Brazilian Combo, $55.” I know that “pedi” is short for pedicure, but have no idea what “Brazilian” might be. So as not to publicly reveal my ignorance, I make a mental note to ask Cricket later.

Now it’s time to pick our polish. The names of the O.P.I. colors are quite fruity: “Catherine the Grape,” “Going Ape-ricot,” and “Hey! Get in Lime.”

We’re directed to climb to our pedi-perches, roughly equivalent to climbing Mount Olympus. Our feet dip into fancy basins of warm water, and our toes are at the perfect level for the pedicurists to work their magic. However this is an awkward arrangement for the intimate conversation one has with a hairstylist.

We get soaked, scrubbed, sanded, massaged, trimmed, and polished. In the time it normally takes me to touch my toes, I have nails aglow with a color between cantaloupe and a Mediterranean sunset. I see why they call this “Melon of Troy.”

After allowing time for drying, the miracle worker below helps me on with my sandals. I empty my wallet, hoping the tip is adequate to express my appreciation for this transformation, and I bid my pedi-buddy, Cricket, adieu. While I attend to the rest of the day’s errands, I imagine all eyes are on my twinkling toes.

Since my feet are gorgeous, I figure the rest of me deserves some attention. I head for the gym. Today I dance through the lunges, squats and planks as if I have the feet of a goddess.

It’s not until I get home and change clothes that I realize gym shoes should never go anywhere near fresh polish. Nine nails have made it through unscathed, but one big toe looks as if I stuck it in melting orange sherbet.

I know I should march back to the nail salon for do-overs. This is exactly what Cricket would do. However I’m from Nebraska, the do-it-yourself capital of the world. So I buy a bottle of matching color and repaint the schmushed nail myself.

While I relax, waiting for the repair polish to dry, I remember I forgot to ask Cricket to explain “Brazilian.” So I query Google.

Probably I’m the last person living in coastal California who doesn’t know about this “revealing” procedure. Suffice it to say that if you wear board shorts and a tee to the beach, you don’t need it.

First published in the Montecito Journal April 23, 2009

Can You Dig It?

Ms. Rachow’s extended play list now includes “Big Yellow Taxi,” Joni Mitchell’s song with the famous line: “Pave paradise and then dig it up.”

The month of March didn’t come in like a lion this year. Rather it arrived via notice that the water main under our street was being replaced.

The first day, workers (graffiti artists) marked where the cable, gas and water lines lay buried. Bright paint against black asphalt made it seem these guys knew what they were doing.

Temporary “no parking” signs went up, and kids on skateboards got busy knocking them down. They’d invented this sport a few months earlier when our street was resurfaced. The flawless boulevard was a sight to behold. One couldn’t help but hum “What a Wonderful World.”

Lowly peon that I am, I dared not entertain the thought that it might’ve been wiser to replace the water main first and then repave. My job as a good citizen was to get into the spirit of living on the movie set of Apocalypse Now.

The high-pitched whine of the asphalt saw heralded the next sunrise. Then, behind it came a yellow digging machine whose dinosaur head stood taller than our house. Kerchunk-kerchunk. It grabbed bites of asphalt and hard-packed soil as easily if it were chomping into a giant sheet cake and then dumped it all into the truck that rumbled alongside.

Given the chorus of bangs and beeps, I figured my dogs would go crazy. But they were blasé about the din. The floor shaking seemed to comfort them. Or maybe they’d perfected the art of astral travel and were really at the beach while appearing to sleep on the sofa.

Since I couldn’t concentrate on anything more complicated than reading my horoscope (Expect big change in your life today!) I decided to stand out front and watch. One workman stood within inches of T-Rex’s head, calmly shoveling up crumbs the big boy had missed.

When the crew took a lunch break, I ventured farther to peer into a trench deep enough to make me woozy, but there was still no sign of a water main. However, I spotted the Cox cable and wondered if the gash in the conduit would have any effect on reception.

Yes, folks, they’d severed the cable line. Not that a person really needs TV and Internet service. Still, I figured it’d be a good idea to call it in.

A fleet of Cox trucks joined the construction crew. I wondered if there’d be a fight in the street, but a smiling cable guy assured me, “Cables get cut all the time.” (Translation: job security.)

The digger kept chomping, and the machines cut and pulled up a giant anaconda of iron pipe that had to weigh tons. Then they laid beautiful, blue, indestructible plastic pipe in its place.
The machines rumbled on, beeping and filling the trench with fresh soil. I heard a sound like a news helicopter flying overhead and wondered if our street project had made CNN. Turns out it was just the earth tamping machine whop-whop-whopping away. They covered the compacted dirt with heavy steel plates until it could be paved.

Five AM the next morning I went out with a flashlight to see if the newspaper had come. I saw the mighty Mississippi rushing down our street. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the water main had broken above where they’d begun digging, and this project had just expanded.

The roar of the water under the steel plates was impressive, and the fresh dirt from the trench had already been deposited on the once beautifully landscaped yard down at the corner.

For a moment I enjoyed the idea of waterfront property. Then I dialed 911. The operator who answered wasn’t overly impressed with a “city works” call but said she’d let the department know.

Next time I call 911, I’ll be a bit more dramatic: “Tsunami…possible drowning victims…open trench the size of the Grand Canyon!”

Soon city works engineers joined the construction crew and cable guys. They shouted about needing female adaptors and male adaptors, and considering how these guys were all pretty cute, I found this talk very entertaining.

There were more days of whirring, whining, rumbling, beeping and kerchunking. Everything that broke got fixed. The new main was connected. All the remaining holes were filled, and the final paving job began. I knew things were winding down when the driver of the asphalt truck was able to get a lunch-hour nap.

The job ended a week early, and now the silence is deafening. True to tradition, March goes out like a lamb.

First published in the Montecito Journal March 26, 2009