STAYING ZEN : THE ART OF CHILLIN’ OUT AT THE BEACH

“Mother, Mother Ocean, I’ve heard you call.

Wanted to sail upon your waters since I was three feet tall.

You’ve seen it all. You’ve seen it all.

Watch the men who rode you

Switch from sail to steam

In your belly you hold the treasures

Few have ever seen.

Most of ‘em dream, most of ‘em dream”

                                  Jimmy Buffett

“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.”

                                                                           ~ Zen proverb

Sometimes in our hectic lives even the most ambitious among us desire to turn our backs on the daily pursuit of power and success, to leave the suburban sprawl behind and to embrace the enchanting but unprofitable art of beachcombing. Like our prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors who started some of the mounds around St. Andrews Bay, we may choose to begin our intertidal zone scavenger hunt for shells, driftwood or some other part of Poseidon’s treasure on one of Bay County’s many isolated Gulf front beaches [see the BAY COUNTY’S BEST GULF BEACHES box in this article] but even if we don’t get a kick out of having the chance to enjoy Neptune’s blessing by getting something for nothing, a nice stroll on a peaceful beach is a great opportunity to decompress in the salt air, to calm your soul , to “give your head some space” and in the current cultural vernacular, “to stay Zen.”

The word “beachcomber” made its first appearance in print in Herman Melville’s 1847 book OMOO. Melville used the term to describe unemployed sailors who foraged along the beaches of Pacific islands for the remains of shipwrecks. Over the course of the next 166 years, the term has been associated with deserters, free-loaders, bums, drifters and in some cases, the criminal class of wreckers who were known to set up false beacon lights to lure ships onto shoals. Wrecking became such a tradition in the Shetland Islands that Christian preachers there once included this appeal to the Almighty in their prayers, ”Lord, if it be thy holy will to send shipwrecks, do not forget our island.”

Well, times have changed and these days it’s not your Mama’s beachcombing.

Not only do we have “Dr. Beach”, “Dr. Beachcomb” and pricey expeditions that promise “full immersion” within “the beachcombing experience”, we have the annual International Beachcombing Conference, beachcombing autobiographies and self-help beachcombing books that “explore self-being” while bringing a “simplified perspective to beachcombing.” In other words, BEACHCOMBING, INC. (made up of a variety of shamans, neuroconservationists and born-again eco-environmentalists who desperately need copy for their next book or mixed media presentation) is now selling a mixed bag of beachcombing gear and amazing adventures in unadulterated nature.

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Beachcombing is really not a tough sell for the corporate beachcomber because it’s hard to argue with the joy beachcombing brings us.  A simple walk surrounded by the beautiful backdrop of shifting sand and shimmering surf, accompanied by the sounds of rolling waves and shrieking shorebirds, somehow has the magical ability to transform us, to bring us deep contentment and to return us to memories of our childhood and our families. In fact, there’s a great deal of scientific curiosity concerning exactly why the sea has this ability to suddenly bring us deep contentment. In the midst of the stress of work, smart phones and deadlines, we often find ourselves daydreaming about our beachcomber life and find ourselves revisiting our excursions in our imagination.

On just about any beach on Earth, beachcombing takes you through some really cool nature but Bay County beachcombing has an added bonus that makes it unique to all of North America. These Gulf front beaches are absolutely, astonishingly beautiful. When clear water comes in with the tide, it doesn’t take a trained eye to see the spectacular display of color produced by sunlight upon the exceeding whiteness of the sandy bottom. Any painter of landscapes who can concoct the right combination of pigment and is able to get just some of that beauty down on canvas, deserves to charge a good price for their work. 

From the intersection of Highway 98 and Florida Road 386 in Mexico Beach on the east to the Walton County line in Inlet Beach on the west, Bay County is blessed with over 40 miles of cherished Gulf-front beaches. Even though Bay County is only 100 years old, accurate maps of the area have been available for almost 250 years. During this time the sea has pounded and flattened this strand of sand many times and over the years, geographical terms like St. Andrews Island (1766), Crooked Island (1827), Sand Island (1827), Hummock Island (1827) and Hurricane Island (1855) have come and gone. This is not the place for a discussion about wave erosion and marine geology but, suffice it to say, the form and extent of the sandy barrier between the bay and the Gulf have changed over the years; in fact, there are no true barrier islands in Bay County anymore, only peninsulas. Even with all this geographical alteration, high rise condominium construction and urban beach, much of Bay County’s shoreline remains in the same natural state it was when the Spanish found it: a quartz white sandy beach with a few scrubby weeds in the dunes.

It’s hard to believe that beachcombing would become a potentially criminal activity but that’s exactly what we have in our present day. Everyone knows there’s always been rules and regulations at the beach like “no dogs”,  “no glass containers” or “walking on sand dunes or sea oats prohibited”, but now we have the threat of  “no shell collecting allowed” or barriers that keep people from walking on the beach such as closing walkways that go through the dunes to the beach. The recent events pertaining to the locked beach walkways at Bid-A-Wee are not the first time this conflict between the private and public has occurred on our beaches. Bay County has seen the horrific results that can occur when private property owners become a barrier between the public and the beach. In the summer of 1930, the owner of Long Beach Resort decided a great way to limit access to this treasured and limited public resource was to pistol whip a man the owner claimed was trespassing “on property of the beach “ when the man decided to relax in the sand just west of the resort. While his entire family stood by in shock, the “trespasser” not only was struck against the head repeatedly with a pistol by the Long Beach owner but was also kicked repeatedly in the groin. This assault resulted in permanent brain damage and impotence in the “perpetrator” and he ended up having to be institutionalized in Chattahoochee but not before May 23, 1931, when someone walked up to the owner of Long Beach Resort as he was getting out of his car on Highway 98 near St. Andrews and sent him to an early grave with a load of buckshot in the face.

The bad arrests on Shell Island during the summer of 2006 were amicably resolved but they exposed the erosion of legal principles as old as the common law itself but you know something’s happening to our right to walk on the beach in the United States when an agency like the Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources issues a standing prohibition that “denies the removal of any natural artifacts from the public beaches of Hawaii.” Could this type of regulation be in some Bay County beach’s future?  For beachcombers, the hunt for shells, driftwood and artifacts is as ingrained within us as our own DNA so we bristle when we are permitted to pick up unoccupied shells but not allowed to take driftwood or sea glass. The marine resource enforcement bureaucrats who come up with all this “look but don’t touch” mumbo jumbo, are afraid we might remove an important clue from some ancient shipwreck blown to shore. So next time you find a gold coin on the beach fronting Spanish Shanty Cove, feel free to photograph it but make sure you leave it in the sand the same way as you found it. Always remember that touching anything on the beach could cause terrible erosion or destroy the natural oceanfront camouflage so important to insects and shorebirds.

Falling in love again with taking a stroll down a lonely beach may be the perfect way for each of us to take control of our cluttered lives. In May of 2013, Cruzan Rum took the “beachcomber lifestyle” as the state of mind and the way of life they want to brand onto their rum. In their television commercial, the viewer finds himself adrift within the towering waves of a stormy sea and hears the announcer say, “You are drowning. You are literally drowning in a figurative sea of busyness. When…wait! Is that?” The viewer suddenly sees an island on the screen and hears a greeting from a voice with a strange accent, ”Welcome! Welcome to the Island of Don’t Hurry where life never moves too fast and Cruzan Rum flows freely. For two hundred and fifty years our pastime has been ‘passing time.’ Join us. Come leave your hurried life behind.”

After introducing you to the National Bird, a rapping parrot who “can fly but chooses not to” and showing a domesticated tortoise hauling a cart of rum on the beach, the announcer gives you a preview of the national sports of “Zero K Runs” and “Sleep Yoga” along with advertisements for “Monkey Massages”. Then the announcer ends the ad with the words, “Slow down and enjoy the Don’t Hurry lifestyle wherever you may find it. When you hurry through life, you just get to the end faster.”

There’s is a tendency to underestimate our experiences walking the beach. How much is “pretty” worth to you? The value to the elderly or infirm of their entire life’s catalogue of beach scene memories has not been accurately calculated but a nice testable hypothesis would be whether pleasant memories at the beach are a great predictor of late-late-late life satisfaction.  Stay tuned…

BAY COUNTY’S

BEST GULF BEACHES

       #11   City Pier Beach – This spot might have made Number 11 on our list but this beach is definitely Number 1 when it comes to memories for the Baby Boomers. This was the location of the old Wayside Park and the site of countless summer picnics and winter walks on the beach for families in the 1950s and 60s.

#10   S. Rick Seltzer Park Beach on Thomas Drive – A walk in either direction introduces you to the Grand Lagoon Peninsula and will lead one to excellent venues where you can take a break from your travels, relax at a bar overlooking the beach and enjoy the eye candy.

         #9 County Pier Beach – A two-mile hike east of here will take you along an urban beach under the shadows of towering condominiums. This stretch was once the center of all activity on PCB. Today there are few memories of the “Good Old Days” still standing but Goofy Golf located across from the pier has stood the test of time for almost 60 years. Its theme could also stand for Bay County’s beaches: “This is the Magic World, where the ages of time abide in a garden of serenity, with perpetual peace and harmony.”

         #8   Bid-A-Wee Beach- The locked iron gates on the walkways are an ugly nuisance but the 1600 feet of unoccupied beaches and dunes have delighted the entire public since the beginning of time and have been dedicated “for Park Purposes” since 1938.

         #7    Laguna Beach- West of the Panama City Beach City Limits, this 7/10 mile of dunes and beach is the first on our list that takes us completely away from the tourist mayhem and traffic gridlock so choose this beach or one of the next six when you are a little cantankerous and having problems “staying Zen.”

          #6     Sunnyside/Santa Monica Beach- Put ten toes in the sand and head in either direction. The cares of the world are waiting to left behind.

         #5    Mexico Beach- The seventeen miles of beaches between Pinnacle Port and Moonspinner on the west side of the Bay County seem like they’re light years away when you park your car next to this roadside slice of paradise located next to the Gulf County line and with the lack of commercial development, you’ll feel like you just stepped back into the “Old Florida.”

         #4    St. Andrews State Park Beach- Gorgeous beaches, the jetties and the gateway to Shell Island but it does have one little disadvantage: an admission charge and the place doesn’t open until 8 o’clock in the morning and closes at dusk. Annual entrance passes can be purchased each year for $60 but they are only good for you and your car. Your passengers will be charged two bucks a head.

         #3     Phillips Inlet Beach- You may walk to this beach through Camp Helen State Park and the entrance fee is a little lower than the one at St. Andrews. An alternative is to drive down Highway 98 a bit and park at the Inlet Beach Access parking spaces just across the Walton County line at the end of Orange Street. The beach is only a hundred yards away and the walk from there to Phillips Inlet is one of the most beautiful in all of North America.

         #2     East Crooked Island Beach- This a U.S. Air Force property but with no gates and no need for paperwork. Be prepared to show an ID and if you walk over three miles west down this pristine, unoccupied beach, you might get turned back when they launch one of those drones out into the Gulf.

         #1     Shell Island- Bay County’s sparkling jewel shimmering in its tranquil, watery seclusion. This subtropical paradise is home to the northern limit of the wild sabal palm tree and even though it can now be accessed by land via Tyndall, it is still functionally an island. Tyndall’s portion is called Tyndall Beach and you can visit it if you have the right kind of paperwork with the Air Force. Leave only footprints. Only trash litters.

This article was published in the MAY-JUNE 2013 issue of PANAMA CITY LIVING MAGAZINE Volume 8 ~ Issue 3

THEODORE TOLLOFSEN: GRAND LAGOON’S SOLITARY MAN

“Don’t know that I will but until I can find one, a girl who’ll stay and won’t play games behind me.

I’ll be what I am: a solitary man, SOLITARY MAN.”

-Neil Diamond

One day in 1954, Claude Willoughby, hired in ’49 as the first manager of St. Andrews State Park, stopped by a ramshackle squatter’s cabin built beside the shimmering blue green waters of Grand Lagoon to check on the condition of the tenant and found the old man unconscious and sprawled out on the floor. Later that same day, the state park’s most legendary resident passed away at a local Panama City hospital; so ended the strange intriguing nautical life of Bay County’s Nordic version of Robinson Crusoe, Theodore Tollofsen.

By ’54, Theodore, better known as Teddy, had lived the primitive solitary life of a castaway for at least 25 years on a spit of sand that is today occupied by one of the most popular state parks in Florida, attracting almost a million visitors each year. It certainly wasn’t so crowded when Teddy first showed up, shipwrecked on Grand Lagoon after a 1929 hurricane. Eighty four years ago, there were no jetties, no full service marinas, no Thomas Drive, no close neighbors and although Teddy’s part of Grand Lagoon was only four miles across the bay south of St. Andrews, it was centuries away from the running water, electricity, telephones and city sidewalks of Panama City.

There are a couple of stories about how Teddy and his boat ended up wrecked on the southern shore of Grand Lagoon but one fact is certainly known: Teddy blamed himself for the demise of his beloved vessel and to the day he died he would affectionately pat the decaying wreckage of his boat and, in his heavy Scandinavian accent, explain to visitors,”The boat wrecked here and so we’ve stayed together.”

During the months before his death, Teddy must have had a foreshadowing of things to come. He’d begun selling some of his possessions to visitors and had told Willoughby about where to find the money he’d stashed in his shack in case he passed away. Teddy wanted the money to be used for the final expenses associated with his burial.

Toward the end of his life vandals and burglars had become occasional visitors to Teddy’s cabin. The thieves were probably attracted by the nearby abandoned army post at the jetties that had manned a gun battery at the jetties during WWII to guard Panama City Inlet. Even with the improvements made by the army during the war, the jetties area was still not very accessible by land and a four wheel drive vehicle was necessary to traverse the six miles of dunes that separated the area from Highway 98. Nevertheless, the army barracks were vandalized and Teddy’s cabin had been plundered. Teddy believed that a box containing his 1911 U.S. citizenship papers and his U.S. Navy discharge papers from WWI had been stolen during one of the crimes. For this reason, Teddy never received any form of a pension during his lifetime.

After Teddy’s death Willoughby found the money in the shack Teddy had told him to use for burial expenses along with a box containing all the personal papers that Teddy believed to have been stolen. Willoughby used the money from the shack along with donations to give Teddy a proper burial. The city donated a plot in Greenwood Cemetery and as many as 100 attended Teddy’s funeral, including some Tallahassee dignitaries. One story goes that Teddy’s grave was at first marked with ballast stones from a foreign vessel yet another goes that the ballast rocks came from the wreckage of the beloved boat which first brought the Norwegian to the watery seclusion of Grand Lagoon. In the present day, the second story seems so much more appropriate as one visits Teddy’s grave and sees ballast stones set in the concrete around his burial vault.

Because of the friendship Willoughby had established with Teddy, visitors to St. Andrews State Park’s new Environmental Interpretive Center can catch a glimpse of the little estate on Grand Lagoon that sustained Teddy for a quarter century. It was Willoughby’s job to demolish Teddy’s dwelling and outbuildings and to dispose of his possessions. This wonderful exhibit of a few of Teddy’s tools and personal items along with photographs donated by Willoughby provides us with a window into Theodore Tollofsen’s life as a castaway.

Norwegian fishermen are world famous for building  cabins and cottages on the beaches of northern European islands to house themselves during the summer fishing season. For Teddy a winter on Grand Lagoon was probably the equivalent to a summer near the Arctic Circle so Teddy, who ran away to sea at the age of 14, utilized his nautical experience in the construction of his little home on the lagoon. Not only were Norwegians at the end of the 19^th century the most desired deckhands on the world’s sailing ships but they were also famed on the Gulf Coast as wreckers and salvagers so it was understandable that the shutters on Teddy’s cabin would be zinc plated skylight hinges retrieved at low tide from some wreck in the Old Pass. The inside of Teddy’s cabin contained so many nautical items that you felt like you’d just climbed below deck into the captain’s quarters. A wood cook stove was the centerpiece of this Spartan affair with a built in table and bunk. Nine lanterns of various designs hung, stood or rested around the small room along with a battery powered radio Teddy used to hear the news and weather of the day. The inside of Teddy’s cabin contained so many nautical items that it looked like he’d raided a maritime museum. The ornately carved nameplate of the TECUMSEH crowned one window. The Tecumseh was built in Gloucester, Mass. In 1911 and sank in the Old Pass at Land’s End, possibly in the same hurricane that wrecked Teddy’s boat in ’29.

Teddy’s resourcefulness with the driftwood and the wrecked lumber that came in on the tides of the Grand Lagoon Peninsula was also evident in the small structures that surrounded his cabin. From his lumberyard, which included everything from pieces of plywood to massive 10 inch by 10 inch pilings, Teddy constructed a small pier on the lagoon with a fish cleaning house. A single concrete block served as the step off his front porch and salvaged lumber was used to build a smokehouse, a well cover, privy, storage shed, chicken coop and “South Florida,” a raised roofed sleeping platform without walls built about three feet above the dunes behind Teddy’s cabin in order to take advantage of the summer breezes and avoid the season’s heat and mosquitos. Keeping with the nautical theme, Teddy’s hen house was covered with tarred cotton fish net.

In addition to the heat of the summer, the cold of winter and the sting of mosquitos, Teddy also had to adapt to less that crystal clear drinking water. He had hand drilled a twenty foot deep well through layers of sand, muck, shell, clay and hardpan to get to a stream of dark brown, tannic acid stained water. Willoughby told a story about how Teddy’s well water was so brown that Teddy would often forget to drop in tea leaves when he brewed his “tea.”

For refrigeration Teddy dug a root cellar in order provide a cool space to store his chicken’s eggs. In addition to eggs, Teddy’s breakfast often included oatmeal and sea greens. Sea greens are green leafy algae of the genus Ulva that grows on the rocks of the jetties and is exposed at low tide each day.  Teddy thrived on the abundance of seafood and his smokehouse was filled with split mullet and maybe a ham or two from one of the wild pigs that inhabited the Grand Lagoon Peninsula at that time.

Teddy was reclusive and lacked any close neighbors but he still needed money so at least once a week he’d make his way into town, either by rowing or by motoring his small boat across the bay and walked the streets of St. Andrews peddling the fresh flounder he’d gigged the night before or searching for odd jobs such as repairing nets or rigging boats in the marina. Teddy may have turned his back on society but he certainly didn’t turn his back on the dollar. He needed cash, not for liquor, he claimed to have given up drinking in Mobile in 1907, “I quit drinking in Mobile after I figured I’d been a fool long enough.”; nor for tobacco. Teddy never picked up that bad habit but he did need cash for canned milk, oatmeal, grits, sugar, flour and tea as well as for radio batteries, chicken feed, lamp oil and outboard motor fuel.

Teddy apparently had little need for human companionship in his sandy solitude but he did have a soft spot in his heart for animals. He kept cats and he had his yard birds and he told Willoughby a story about raising a pet hog. After saving the little pig from drowning in shallow water near Shell Island, Teddy placed the little porker in his boat and took it home to raise.  Within a year the pig had become Teddy’s constant companion and had acquired a love of fishing. The moment Teddy picked up his cast net or his homemade rod and rusty reel, the pig clamored into the boat, positioning himself in the bow and placing his front hooves up on the gunnels, ready for a bumpy ride on the bay. Things rocked along well for about a year but by then the pig had grown so large that he’d almost sink the bow of the boat and out of necessity Teddy passed his pet hog along to a fellow Norwegian in St. Andrews. Stories vary on whether Teddy’s pig ended up on the dinner table or lived out his days in the neighborhoods around Beck Avenue.

So how does one come about to choose such a strange lifestyle? Was Teddy’s irrational attachment to the rotting wreckage of his old boat enough to explain a quarter century of self-sustained isolation?  Could Teddy have been mentally handicapped? He certainly had the opportunity to experience neurological damage. On at least two occasions during his career as a deckhand he’d been poisoned into unconsciousness before being shanghaied. He’d been struck by lightning on three occasions: once in South Dakota; once on board a fishing schooner in the Gulf; and once on Grand Lagoon near his little shack.

All of these things are clues to why Teddy chose the life of a rugged individualist but Teddy’s secret may exist in a mysterious photo Willoughby found after Tollofsen’s death in the long lost box containing Teddy’s personal papers. Teddy claimed he’d always lived a solitary life and had never married but Willoughby found a photograph of a bride and groom in the box and the picture of the groom bears a remarkable resemblance to what Teddy may have looked like before he became a shaggy gray headed and weather beaten old man. Could Teddy’s story be another Norse legend of the sea, one that includes one last dangerous voyage that left not a widowed mother and lost children but a lost love that asks the haunting, eternal question: “Is it better to have loved and lost or never to have loved at all?”

But in summing up the strange life of Theodore Tollofsen, perhaps the author of the 1950 article about Teddy in the Florida Parks Service magazine describes best how Teddy’s self-sufficiency and independence turned his life into a legend that lives on until this very day:

“For my money he’s a memorial to the frontiersman that has made our country the greatest in the world today, living proof that an energetic person can get his just share of fish and grits come hell or high water.”

Information for this article came from Jeannie Weller Cooper’s PANAMA CITY BEACH: TALES FROM THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL BEACHES, James Burgess’ SAND IN MY SHOES, and page 26, February 23, 1975 Panama City News Herald article entitled, TEDDY THE HERMIT. 

This article was published in the MARCH-APRIL 2013 issue of PANAMA CITY LIVING MAGAZINE, Volume 8 ~ Issue 2

SPRING IS IN THE AIR!
 Yellow Daffodils and Purple Japanese Magnolia Blossoms!
TIME TO CELEBRATE THE SEASON AND HEAD FOR THE BEACHES!

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
 Ecclesiastes 3:1
 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

  Much of Panama City has changed over the past sixty years. An international airport, modern highways, shopping centers and high rises have replaced much of what was almost a wilderness just after WWII. Change has been a certainty and our adaptation to change a necessity but some things haven't changed. The sun has its cycle, the moon its phases and the tides ebb and flow and in the month of March, the sun's warmth renews our world once more while the cobia move west just off Panama City Beach's shoreline along their ancient migratory path. As I write this column in the middle of January, most cobia are feeding in deep waters south of Panama City but in the next few days an ancient genetic program will trigger a secret and unique navigational system within each of these fish and the cobia will activate some sort of unknown compass needle to lead them through their spring spawning migration to breeding grounds in the Northern Gulf off of the Mississippi River delta. The sun passing over the equator on the first day of spring; the full moon on March 27th; the gradual warming of Gulf waters; all of these factors probably put the cobia on its path to migration but regardless of why they begin their journey, the maritime trail of the cobia leads through the water just off Panama City's shoreline and somewhere, somehow, exactly the same factors that lead the cobia to our beaches trigger the detonation of a DNA timebomb within each one of us and we drop everything we're doing and HEAD FOR THE BEACHES!

"It started long ago in the Garden of Eden 

When Adam said to Eve, baby, you're for me

So come on baby let's start today, 

come on baby let's play

The game of love" 
lyrics to THE GAME OF LOVE by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders 

Everyone has their priorities. College students need to study hard for an exam for that business course called HOW TO SPEND ALL MY PARENT'S MONEY. The family man worries about the possibility of his mother-in-law moving into his house and staying forever. It's spring. The IRS wants to have a talk with you. Your yard already needs mowing. Your kid's failing math. The house needs painting. The air conditioning is on the blink and it's gonna get hot soon. The bills are overdue and the credit card's cancelled. The human race is facing runaway inflation, third world starvation and nuclear terrorism. Another "useless jobs" bill is being passed in Washington, D.C. and to think you could hardly wait to become a grown up but locked within your DNA is an innate impulse that explodes within you at this time of the year and you decide just to leave your troubles behind. You pull out all the  beach stuff you stored before Thanksgiving and head across AMNESIA BRIDGE for another new year's adventures at the beach. It's the siren song of the surf, the salt and the sand that draws you back in a seasonal ritual. 

Some of you might be wondering where AMNESIA BRIDGE is located in the Panama City area but remember that before the advertising slogan, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," folks have crossed Hathaway Bridge and suddenly lost their memory of the 9 to 5 Suburbatory they just left and 48 or 72 hours later they go back to the same Suburbatory across the same bridge, automatically erasing all the files pertaining to what just recently occurred in Panama City Beach. 

Not only does this innate and cherished seasonal urge to merge at the beach occur in the genus species Homo sapiens who are natives and locals from Panama City but it also occurs in our neighbors to the north and the month of March begins a not so ancient migration south by many members of our own species who live as far as 150 miles north of Bay County. It is quite true that no one truly understands what kinds of unique navigational systems humans may have but it may be argued that just about everybody raised in an area as far north of Bay County as Greenville, Alabama and as far east as Albany, Georgia are imprinted with a homing instinct that works like clockwork. 

IT'S ALL THE SUNSHINE'S FAULT!

Perhaps you remember the movie CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. It may be contended that like the characters in the film, those raised in Southeast Alabama and Southwest Georgia have cultural influences from childhood that have pre-programmed each and every one of them, imprinting them with a homing instinct to return to the Florida Panhandle when March arrives.

Many tax dollars have been spent to study the migratory corridors utilized by the cobia as they move west through the gully between the first sand bar and Panama City's beaches but little has been spent to learn about the spring migration of our own species back to the panhandle. Could it be possible that we could reawaken the migratory spirit within "best and brightest" of these springtime voyagers to the Panhandle and channel them this way so that Panama City Beach becomes their destination of choice each spring?

The origins of the spring migration to Panama City by humans is cloaked in mystery, however, as far as we know, it can only be traced back about 60 years. Harvey H. ("Hardy") Jackson, Eminent Scholar in History at Jacksonville State University and a columnist and editorial writer at The Anniston Star, discovered an interesting 1960 Mobile Press-Register article that is an important document confirming that the onset of March's migration of our neighboring teenage "Goths and Vandals" from the north began as early as 1954.

Feb. 17, 1960, edition of the Mobile Press-Register, under the heading “News from Florida.” Headlined “Liquor Restriction,” it read:

“Panama City (Special) — The sale of beer and alcoholic beverages will be curtailed this year at three beach municipalities during the Alabama Education Association days March 15-20.
Panama City Beach Mayor Roy Martin, Long Beach Mayor J.E. Churchwell and
Edgewater Beach Mayor M.C. Buckley have joined in the move to ban the sale during the time several hundred Alabama teenagers are here at the beaches.This will mark the sixth consecutive year when sale of these beverages will be prohibited during the meeting time.”

In researching the veracity of this 1960 newspaper clipping, Professor Jackson interrogated several Bay Countians who lived through many A.E.A. Holidays from the Fifties and Sixties. They concluded that this news article couldn't be completely true and even if it was true, it wouldn't matter because,"Those kids could find cold beer in Saudi Arabia."

This teenage need for fake IDs during the month of March presents unique challenges for any Panama City Beach tourism development executive because it only takes one viral video of  Bluto yelling "Go Bulldogs" while urinating off of a PCB balcony to "negatively impact our brand."

Regardless, the month of April will get here soon enough and the job of any self respecting tourism executive is to effectively overcome all obstacles so the challenge is clear. We have a mandate to scientifically identify the SPRING BREAK MIGRATORY PATTERNS of our neighbors to the North and help them get in touch with their "homing instinct for the beach" so they can experience the joy of expectation which occurs when you know that within a matter of less than three hours, you'll have left all your cares behind and that your very own ten toes will soon be in the sand and you'll be looking south over the gorgeous Gulf of Mexico saying to yourself," MAN, I AM SO GLAD TO BE BACK AT PANAMA CITY BEACH!

 n psychological, theological, and near-death studies, resolving conflicts with deceased loved ones before facing a life review involves a process of internal reconciliation, active projection, and intentional emotional release. Because the loved one is no longer physically present, the individual must navigate this resolution within their own conscious and subconscious mind.

Experts, grief counselors, and spiritual care practitioners outline several primary pathways to achieve this internal peace:

1. The Practice of the Unsent Letter

Writing is one of the most powerful tools for clearing emotional wreckage. Individuals are encouraged to write an uncent letter to the deceased loved one with complete, unedited honesty.

• Express the unspoken: Pour out anger, hurt, confusion, or unfulfilled expectations without filtering the language.
• Acknowledge the bond: Write about what the relationship meant, both the beautiful and the painful parts.
• The structural pivot: Transition the letter from expressing grievances to a declaration of release (e.g., "I let go of the burden of this unfinished argument").

2. Inner Dialogue and Active Imagination

Using techniques adapted from Carl Jung’s active imagination or Gestalt therapy's empty chair technique, an individual can bridge the gap between their inner reality and the memory of the deceased.

• Externalizing the presence: The individual visualizes the deceased loved one sitting across from them or imagines a peaceful space where they can meet.
• Dual perspective dialogue: The individual speaks their peace out loud, and then—crucially—steps into the mindset of the deceased to imagine a response rooted in a higher, post-mortal understanding.
• Shifting the narrative: This process allows the subconscious mind to re-contextualize old wounds, moving from a dynamic of conflict to one of mutual human frailty.

3. Radical Self-Forgiveness

Many lingering conflicts with the deceased are actually rooted in belated guilt—things the living individual wishes they had said, done, or handled differently.

• Deconstructing guilt: Recognizing that both parties were operating from their respective levels of maturity, trauma, or emotional capacity at the time of the conflict.
• Offering self-compassion: The individual must actively forgive themselves for their past mistakes, understanding that holding onto guilt does not alter the past but heavy-loads the present transition.

4. Viewing the Conflict Through "The Loom of Fate"

Approaching the end of life often brings a shift in perspective, where individual conflicts are viewed as part of a larger, interconnected tapestry.

• The systemic view: Recognizing that the friction between loved ones often served as a profound catalyst for personal growth, resilience, or self-awareness.
• Finding the meaning: By reframing the conflict not just as a tragedy or a failure, but as a difficult, finished thread in the overall design of their life's loom, the individual can find a sense of completion.

5. Rituals of Release

Symbolic actions can give the subconscious a tangible marker that a conflict has been laid to rest.

• Burning or burying: Safely burning the written letters of grievance, or burying an object tied to the conflict, symbolizing that the energy has been returned to the earth or transformed.
• Meditative dedication: Spending quiet moments by a source of moving water (like a stream, fountain, or spillway), focusing on the sound, and mentally visualizing the resentment or confusion being washed away from the roots of their humanity.

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If you are exploring this for a creative writing piece, a personal project, or further study, I can help you expand on these concepts. Would you like to:

• Develop a step-by-step writing prompt or exercise based on the unsent letter technique?
• Explore how different psychological frameworks (like Jungian archetypes) explain this inner reconciliation?
• Draft a narrative scene illustrating an individual going through this process?

 

 

THE DISCOVERER by N.C. Wyeth

A SIDEWALK STORY by Robert Y. Register

Buck was so glad his son, Jake, had invited him over to his house along with a couple of Jake's childhood friends for a baked snapper dinner. Buck had talked to his sister earlier in the day and told her about Jake's invitation. She half scolded him, "Buck, you better appreciate having a son who wants to have supper with his Daddy on a night when his wife and son are at the beach." Appreciation and gratitude were Buck's sister's latest self-help buzz words so Buck assured his sister that every single day for the past week he'd been diligently practicing his gratitude and after supper had ended, the table cleared and with the other guests out the door, Buck tried to fulfill the promise he'd made earlier to his sister by silently and mindfully practicing his gratitude as he sat on his son's couch, digesting red snapper throats baked with peppers and onions along with some squash casserole and too much bread. 

"Gratitude practice. Just more of that superficial new age attitude of gratitude garbage. Gratitude practice. Sounds too much like 'football practice' to me. What a drag." thought Buck.

Buck quietly belched.

Buck yelled at Jake in the kitchen,"Hey, son, thanks for cookin' that magnificent supper tonight but when you finish those dishes, would you come show me how to get on the Internet with this thing?"

Jake walked into the living room drying his hands on a towel and said,"Hell Daddy, I don't know how to work that box either and Rosa ain't here but I do know how to get on Youtube."

"That's good enough," Buck replied and handed the controller to his son.

"Daddy, what kind of fishin' shows did they have on TV back when you were growin' up in Tustenuggee?"

"Well, back then Channel 9 didn't have a regular fishin' show but the Gene Rayburn Farm Show always had a fishing report that went along with the weather. Gene Rayburn had a farm show that came on the air at six every morning and on Saturdays he came on after Saturday afternoon Wrestling. Search Youtube and see if they've got any Gene Rayburn Farm Show"

Sure enough, somebody had saved the Gene Rayburn Farm Show from oblivion and had posted dozens of episodes on Youtube. Jake clicked on the first one and the father and son sat back and prepared to watch some authentic Tri-State television from 40 years ago.

The episode they watched was set in the old hotel located on the crest of the town of Tustenuggee's river hill. Gene Rayburn discussed the historic hotel's role in hosting the first meeting of the Wekiwahatchee Cattlemen's Association back in 1939. As Rayburn spoke, the television camera panned the hotel lobby from left to right, finally focusing on an old woman sitting at a upright piano playing a spirited version of the old song, Red Wing and in the current vernacular, you might say she was "rockin' out."

The old woman sang, 

"Now the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing,

The breeze is sighing, the night bird's crying,

For afar 'neath his star her brave is sleeping

While Red Wing's weeping her heart away."

[Youtube links for RED WING  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCYIoZp6lv8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUCzsFsCyaU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx5cZap5y2Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUBv0ruqjjU

A surprised and speechless Buck sat with his son on the couch in complete awe and astonishment as he watched and listened to his long-dead Grandmother singing and playing the piano on a four-decade old video recording of a Wekiwahatchee Valley televised farm show.

Red Wing wasn't the only one who was "weeping her heart away." Convulsed by great waves of crippling grief, Buck bent over holding his head in his hands as a full eruption of tears flooded his face, filling him with snot and causing him to gasp for air.

Jake sat helplessly and prayed that his father would soon recover his composure. 

As Buck fought to regain control over his emotions, he pulled out his bandana and blew his nose.

"Dad, I don't ever remember seeing you cry and I'm 39 years old!", exclaimed Jake.

"Sorry, Son, I guess it was seeing and hearing my Grandma again. Maybe I needed a good cry. Maybe it was her singing or the sound of that piano but it damn sure opened up the flood gates."

Jake asked, "So that was my Great Grandmother Lewis playing the piano? Is she the one whose picture's on your bedroom wall?"

Buck nodded affirmatively. 

Jake continued, "How miraculous! What are the chances of something like that happening! I asked you about whether there was a local fishing show from when you were a boy. We checked Youtube and the first clip we found opened with my late great grandma playing piano. There's gotta be some kind of force, some kind of power that arranges stuff like that! Think about all the strange coincidences that have occurred in our family! There's got to be a pattern!"

"Maybe so. Remember, you were born on the same day and in the same month that she died. April 4 went from being the yearly anniversary of the worst day of my life to being the yearly anniversary of the best day of my life: The day you were born! I don't know what's going on but I do know I miss that old woman so much. Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something. What a punch in the gut! I just couldn't hold it back." Buck blew his nose again. "Boy, I mean I burst out crying! That video of Grandma caught me completely off guard. I need to get home now before I bust out boohooing again. Thanks again for the supper, Jake. Right now I just can't explain my emotions. We'll talk more about it later, but just remember, that woman shaped my life."

Buck walked outside but before beginning his hike home, he let his eyes survey Jake's neighborhood which was located east of the reserved township section that held Old Town Tustenuggee.  The property, five acres with a large antebellum mansion on its east margin, was developed by the son of a professor at the local college back in 1920.  A street going east to west was built in the middle of the property and ten lots were platted on either side of this roadway. All the streets in Jake's subdivision ran either east to west or north to south. 

This was not true for most of the streets in Old Town Tustenuggee. Its street grid, unchanged since 1823, had been carved out of a wilderness by the order of President James Monroe after the Indians lost their title to the property. The land had been reserved from public sale because the government wanted it subdivided into a town which would stand on the south bank of the Wekiwahatchee River.  The one square mile township section on which the streets were platted was located on the spot where navigation on the river ended and a series of rapids prevented further navigation north from the Gulf.  Main Street in Tustenuggee ran parallel to the river from the southwest to the northeast along the crest of the hill that rose up on its south bank. Midway along the path of Main Street and perpendicular to it was Market Street which ran south from the river wharf up the river hill to the southern margin of the Old Town. All the other streets in Old Town ran parallel to either Main or Market Streets.

 Buck used his nightly patrols along Tustenuggee's 200 year-old street grid to unravel the chaos within his mind. Buck's mind was like a raging river and the only way he found where he could control that river was to develop habits of concentration which would build reservoirs of memories upon which Buck could exert some sort of mastery. Walking Old Town's streets became Buck's personal ritual and his formula for achieving the focus he needed in order to understand the world around him and how it existed in the past.  Old Town became the microcosm that Buck used to comprehend the macrocosm. During his nightly hikes, Buck felt that he often lost contact with his own era, giving him a thrilling sensation of somehow experiencing his world from simultaneous points in time. It was as though Buck was living in both the 19th century as well as the 21st, thus giving himself incredible insights into the heart, mind and life of old Tustenuggee. Buck was cautious about not allowing his exhilarating visions of fate and destiny to descend into dangerous fantasy.

At the end of the street coming out of Jake's neighborhood, Buck entered Old Town and as he walked north down East Boundary Street, he admired the bright colors of the blooming crepe myrtles which lined both sides of the street. Old Town consisted of about one hundred two acre city blocks. With the exception of some small triangular blocks at Old Town's boundaries, each block was 330 feet long and 264 feet wide and contained exactly two acres of land. Each of these identical rectangles of real estate was originally divided into 4 identical half acre lots. Buck recalled how amused he was when he discovered that the incredible symmetry of Tustenuggee's 1823 town plan was due to Henry VIII's need in 1534 to sell all the land he'd seized from the Roman Catholic Church in England. The Catholics owned one fourth of the cultivated land in England and King Henry VIII needed to sell it off quickly to get money to pay his debts and to fund his wars so he chopped the land up into little squares he called acres so folks would know how much land they were buying. Therefore, all the measurements needed by the surveyors to map Tustenuggee's city plan 200 years ago were established and standardized over 500 years ago in England by old King Henry VIII so the king could immediately sell all the land he'd stolen from the Catholics. Over 400 of these Tustenuggee lots were auctioned off at the first 1823 Tustenuggee land sale and in the present day, every title search for every subdivision of land in Old Town went all the way back to that first land sale 200 years ago.  

Tustenuggee doesn't have the same timelessness as the Grand Canyon or Zion National Park but, nevertheless, Old Town Tustenuggee has a timelessness. Within the two centuries that this tract of land has been occupied, nothing has interfered with the rights of property, the plan of the town or the rights of the inhabitants to use the public streets. When you cross the 99 feet of pavement of an Old Town Street, you walk across a space that was cleared by enslaved people two hundred years ago, maintained by enslaved people for decades and traveled upon by the descendants of those same enslaved people on the same day that you are crossing the street. For two centuries, if you ever wanted to see some results of slavery, all you had to do was walk the city streets of Old Town Tustenuggee. 

From the moment the right-of-ways of Tustenuggee's streets were opened to traffic in the 1820s, they were given names like Adams, Madison, Monroe, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, all of whom were men who commented upon the evil of slavery. Tustenuggee even has a Union Street but over one hundred fifty years ago, all those street names couldn't stop some of Tustenuggee's citizens from conspiring to split the nation's churches, the nation's political parties, and finally it's government. Even the names of Tustenuggee's streets are daily reminders of its citizens' heritage.

As he walked, Buck decided that the only reason he was still upset about his emotional collapse at Jake's house that evening was due to his shame at showing weakness in front of his son. Maybe it would be better for him to consider how lucky he was to have discovered the video instead of feeling guilty about crying in front of his boy. 

Buck mused, "I'm like Jake. I'm wondering why all these coincidences keep adding up but maybe it's just a question of God helping those who help themselves. Pasteur said something wise like, 'Chance favors the prepared mind'. I'm gonna use this incident with Grandma to give me the push I need to reward my searching!"

While sauntering down East Boundary Street, Buck continued to be fascinated with the gorgeous colors of the crepe myrtle trees and as he walked, he enjoyed the comfortable certainty that he was a part of this place and that it was a part of him. He began to focus upon the happy memories of his boyhood days spent with his Grandma Polly. Buck considered how lucky he was in his life to have had a grandmother who was such a fine example of loving kindness. Maybe his memories of his Grandma's tenderness could help him to be a kinder, gentler and more loving man. Buck thought of his grandmother's favorite sayings. After his every visit, her last two parting words to him were always "Be good." Her favorite maxim was "Wrong won't ever make right" and her comments on current affairs consisted of observations such as "Buck, don't it seem like all these young folks getting married these days are going up to the altar with their fingers crossed? That didn't happen very often in my time." Buck remembered one of last things his Grandma told him before she died, "I never worry too much about how you'll do in this world, Buck, because you ain't got a lazy bone in your body and I know you'll always try to do the right thing."

Buck allowed his heart to navigate his path home and as he stepped along the sidewalk toward his destination, he passed houses that sheltered the men and women who tried to preserve the Union as well as the houses of the men and women who fought to shatter it. Over 50 of these antebellum structures still stand in Old Town Tustenuggee beside every sidewalk Buck traveled, each one a testament to the toil of the enslaved men who produced the wood and bricks from which they were constructed and who provided the labor that erected each one. Over the years, some of these old mansions have been broken up into apartments and as Buck passed one of these ancient buildings where he'd lived as a college student when he was going to Wekiwa State, he studied the Greek Revival exterior of the old building and contemplated his first lessons in love and romance which he learned back in 1969 in an upstairs bedroom of that old columned mansion.

"I have every reason in the world to simply find joy in existence," Buck reasoned, "but that crying fit at Jake's house over Grandma showing up on a Youtube clip let me know tonight I've got something hidden inside that's bothering me and I don't even know what the hell it is. Everybody has bad experiences. Maybe I keep dwelling on what was so good about them and forgetting about what was so bad. Anyway, before I pair up again, I need to work on my own life."

Buck pulled a small flask out of his pocket and took a sip of his tonic. There was nothing herbal or medicinal about Buck's tonic. It was simply a few pieces of cinnamon, lemon and wintergreen candy dissolved in cheap vodka but a single sip helped Buck maintain a proper buzz as he spent another evening exploring old Tustenuggee's sidewalks.

"It kind of feels like now is the time to walk down to the bar & check on the incoming coeds from the Wekiwa State Class of 2030 who hit town this week ready to test out their fake IDs and are arriving on the Strip right about now." Buck mused,"I bet there's some gals down there with play pretties so nice they'll bust the top off my eye candy gauge! Hey, let's celebrate the greatest of all time terrific T-town Tuesday, 'till Tuesday's gone! Like Grandma always said, 'Don't take things so seriously, Buck. It'll happen when it needs to happen. Be happy with what you got and work hard to make things better.'

"Maybe I might learn some things about myself on my little hike tonight and these days my old age has been telling me I've been hanging out in the bars long enough. I'm too young to be this damn old! Those damn Yankees on the island lied to me! They told me old age didn't start 'till 80 and it hit me at 75! I feel like I've been cheated out of five years! I guess my consolation is old age usually don't last that long plus now I've learned cranberry lemonade is the best thing to drink with your Miralax and it's best to keep a mason jar full of water next to my Efferdent container and I've gotten to be an expert at sticking urine guards inside my underwear.

"After tonight's catharsis, maybe I don't need the pandemonium of a Tuskenuggee barroom. Maybe now is the time to seek the sanctuary of  the serene Wekiwahatchee riverbank and its right down the street"

Buck's thoughts of the river reminded him of a little poem he wrote almost thirty years ago.

"Standing on an old street corner laid out in 1823,

Shaded by tall water oaks all around.

That's why I love T-town.

Sitting on a sandy bank with my feet in a lazy river

Watching the sun go down.

That's why I love T-town."

Buck asked himself, "Why would I want to live anywhere else?"

Buck expressed his appreciation out loud, "Crepe myrtles in the summertime and camellias in the wintertime courtesy of those wonderful old women decades ago who dedicated their lives to this town's neighborhood garden clubs. Old ladies, your long ago effort along these sidewalks was not in vain! Your lives continue to amaze and satisfy this aging son of the Southland."

Buck stopped and stood on the corner of East Margin Street and Adams Avenue while slowly turning himself around and concentrating upon everything within his field of vision. He counted fourteen beautifully shaped crepe myrtles, each one so covered in pink or red blossoms that almost none of the green foliage underneath was visible. Looking down, the streetlight now revealed the sidewalk below his feet covered with the coral red blossoms from Tustenuggee's splendid crepe myrtle trees and this vision produced a flicker of wonder which captured Buck's vivid imagination and the exquisite beauty of his floral landscape seemed to transport him to a time when East Margin Street had no pavement and modern marvels like automobiles, electric streetlights and flush toilets didn't exist.

Buck recalled the lines of that poem he wrote decades earlier, "Standing on an old streetcorner laid out in 1823" 

Buck thought that it was as if the crystalline rocks and silica within the concrete of Tustenuggee's sidewalks had somehow recorded the light and sound of two centuries of human activity and the bottoms of Buck's feet were developing a way to receive it and play it all back. He imagined the European scientists who first brought crepe myrtles and camellias to the Gulf South and made them a lovely mainstay of the Southern landscape. Not only did those scientists bring beautiful flowering plants but they brought the astronomical and mathematical expertise necessary to describe the exact position of this old street corner where Buck now stood and to initiate a concept of time that has ruled the lives of each generation up to the present moment and continues to see Tustenuggee's more enterprising citizens  striving to beat the clock each morning.

After standing at the intersection for a few moments, Buck turned toward the river and continued his trek down Adams Avenue. 

"I wonder if Adams is named after John Quincy Adams or his Daddy, John?", Buck asked himself. 

"Four Old Town streets were named after four of the first five presidents in 1823 and John Quincy wasn't elected president until 1824 so it must be named after his old daddy," Buck concluded. "Oh my God, President John Adams was part of the most incredible coincidence of all time! Both he and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and Adams' last words were 'Jefferson still survives,' not knowing that Jefferson had died a few hours earlier. Jefferson wrote the document and Adams successfully led the debate for its adoption in the Continental Congress. Jefferson called Adams the 'Colossus of Independence.' Now that awe inspiring coincidence was about the last thing I wanted to remember tonight after what happened to me at Jake's house!"

  Buck walked with his head in heaven and his feet on the ground as he contemplated how Tustenuggee's streets have always anchored its history but how its streets have not always been paved. For its first century Tustenuggee had no paved streets and those with the least wagon traffic became so choked with weeds during the summer that they barely maintained a footpath but the fact remained that the 99 foot wide public right of way along which Buck stepped tonight was an unchanged space since 1823 even though it had been the site of two centuries of uninterrupted twenty four seven human traffic.

 

 Tonight Buck's mind fastened upon his hometown street's timeless heritage which seemed to grasp him like a two century old time warp as he imagined how his present moments on a Tustenuggee sidewalk would impact his future. Buck quickened his pace as he walked toward the Wekiwahatchee as if to burn off some of his excess energy while he contemplated how the universe might be playing with his emotions. 

Step by step, walking would help to smooth things out as Buck thought, "Today is the first day of the rest of my life and if that's all I got is one more day then I'm gonna live it like it's my last!" 

Buck stopped to lean down and pluck a Bahia grass seed stalk. Seventy years of practice enabled Buck to expertly remove the blade of grass at the base of the stalk before sticking the succulent straw between his lips and resuming his journey down the Adams Avenue sidewalk. "I'm sure glad Bahia grass ain't toxic because this po' boy has chewed up a few bales of this stuff along the way." Crunching on his piece of greenery reminded Buck of how much Bahia grass was a big part of his life story due to his family's pioneering work in establishing Bahia grass as the preferred pasture cover in the Wekiwahatchee Valley and just like the name "Adams Avenue", it brought him back to the disturbing memories of tonight's Youtube video with Gene Rayburn talking about the 1939 formation of the Wekiwahatchee Cattlemen's Association in Tustenuggee's Indian Queen Hotel while his Grandma Lewis played the old hotel's piano. That video clip had bypassed all of his psyche's defenses and triggered an unprecedented emotional release that had both stunned and embarrassed Buck.

  The typical flow state stream of consciousness Buck usually enjoyed had been interrupted by the emotional interference produced by the aftermath of his mysterious catharsis and he knew he had to do something about it. If ever Buck needed to practice his daily personal rebirth rituals on the riverbank, it was tonight. 

"Another wonderful evening down by the riverside searching for what to think as I restore my uncluttered mind." Buck mused.

Singing out loud for all the world to hear, Buck did his best to mimic David Clayton Thomas.

"Someone is waiting just for you,

Spinnin' wheel, spinnin' true

Drop all you troubles on the riverside

Catch a painted pony on the spinning wheel ride."

As Buck strolled north toward the river, he recalled a line from the 23rd Psalm, "He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake." In a moment Buck experienced a sudden flash flood torrent of thought that produced such distress he was forced to dig deep within the long suppressed memory files of his inner reality in order to seek contact with the roots of his humanity. 

Gazing up into the streetlight's streaming triangles of light and shadow, Buck leaned against the flaky outer bark of the trunk of a crepe myrtle and allowed his mind to seize upon some recent facts which fortunately gave him the comfort he needed.

"It's those flash drives," Buck exclaimed. "Damn, that's it! Those flash drives had a lot to do with turning on my waterworks over at Jake's house tonight!"

During the previous week, Buck had received a small carton in the mail containing a dozen flash drives, thumb-size personal electronic storage devices, that some guy found in a box of computer parts he bought at a Pensacola garage sale. One of the flash drives was labeled with Buck's address and when the guy in Pensacola saw that the drives contained family photos, he'd mailed them to Buck out of common courtesy. Buck figured that the drives ended up at the garage sale because they had been in his estranged late wife's possessions which had been disposed of after her death by her live-in boyfriend.

Many years before her death, during the conflict that preceded their permanent separation, Buck thought the flash drives had been destroyed when his late wife piled all of Buck's photos, color slides and personal documents into the backyard barbecue pit and burned it all. Since their unexpected arrival in the mail during the week before, Buck had had little time to process the challenging task of now preserving all the documentation of his own 76 years of life since the distinct possibility certainly existed that Buck himself would soon be exiting the life he had lived these many years.

"Maybe all these recent coincidences are part of some cosmic electronic dress rehearsal preparing me for my life review which will be triggered at the time of my death by the massive release of neurotransmitters from my dying brain cells and maybe, just maybe, something out there has taken pity on my ignorance and decided to share some secrets to help me on my unending quest for the salvation of the eternal everlasting afterlife of Perhaps."

Buck found himself singing out loud again as 

the phantom juke box within his head suddenly switched tunes so Buck followed the melody it played.

"Take it easy, take it easy

Don't let the sounds of your own wheels drive you crazy.

Lighten up while you still can

Just find a place to make your stand and take it easy."

Buck's evening saunter down East Margin Street had taken him to its intersection with Main Street at the crest of Tustenuggee's river hill. Buck stood on the curb gazing at the blue-gray moonlit panorama of the vast landscape of the Scipio River Valley stretching out across the western portion of Tustenuggee's northern horizon. Standing silently, Buck contemplated this ancient intersection of indigenous trails which dated back to the end of the Ice Age. The importance of this small patch of earth where Jake now stood was cemented in 1823 when the surveyors who laid out every one of Tustenuggee's streets made sure each thoroughfare ran parallel to this ten thousand year old crossroads of indigenous commerce.

The sound of a distant train whistle captured Buck's imagination. Buck was fascinated with the way each train engineer gave his whistle a unique sound when he pulled its cord and it always reminded him of his Grandfather Lewis who was a train engineer. 

As Buck crossed Main Street, he mumbled, "At least on this little hike I'm labeling some of the things that may have contributed to this confusion and even though this was triggered by Grandma Lewis now I'm getting the feeling that this same confusion could have have been triggered by my other grandma, Grandma Cooper, my Mama's mother."