Somewhere Beyond the Sea

There are street corners in our lives. Favorite hang outs, haunts, temporary residences and fleeting memory makers that are but moments in time. They captured our imagination for a while, holding sway to wondrous thoughts and dreams and illusions. Then, as quickly, they were gone and replaced by yet another set of realities as our lives moved forward once again.

Army barracks at Presidio

Basement Apartment in Denmark

Apartment on University Ave

For me, it was an Army barracks at the Presidio of San Francisco, a basement apartment in Denmark and a decrepit relic of a once palatial residence in Northeast Minneapolis. All temporary residences until something better came along. It was, to coin one of my favorite tunes at the time, ‘Somewhere beyond the Sea.’

Lake Nokomis has always held a special place in my heart. Even before dropping out of college, entering military service and leaving civilian life behind, the lake was a magnet for my dreams, illusions, and high hopes for the future.

Around the turn of the century, the lake and its development was a part of Theodore Wirth’s grand plan to capitalize on the string of lakes in Minneapolis.  He was one of the driving forces that transformed Minneapolis into a city known for its parks, lakes, and outdoor recreational opportunity.

Lake Nokomis was the largest body of water near my home. While it didn’t chorus the siren songs of passing ships and meandering waters that crept down to the Mississippi delta, it did feed my psychic with its calm waters and the strange natives who inhabited its shores.

It was often a destination point for my long distance bike rides and a contemplative mountaintop without the elevation. It was a stolen glimpse into the wild and carefree antics of other youth who perhaps had more clarity toward their future. Nokomis became an icon for what I thought the future might hold for me. It became my inland ocean on that distant horizon.

But instead of salt air, there was the sweet scent of pine. Instead of seagulls floating overhead, Robins stalked worms in a blanket of green. Instead of ocean waves crashing against the shore line, there was the gentle lapping of water moved only by a passing canoe. It wasn’t the same but it was about as good as it was going to get…at the time. That was before Uncle Sam took me away for two plus years.

By March of 1966, I was back in my old habitat…or so I thought.

After escaping the regimented confines of olive drab, I had quietly slipped back into the real world and, of course, had to return to my old haunts like Lake Nokomis. It was like hearing an old song which brings back distant memories of your past life that are so real and clear you can almost taste it all over again.

The lake hadn’t changed as much as I had. It was back to that quagmire of dreams unfulfilled, a confusing relationship and travel plans that were shacked by a year and a half of college left to complete. Yet somehow, the lake brought focus and clarity where the fog of reality clouded my vision of the future.

Circling the lake and meandering its shoreline brought out my contemplative nature and opened my world to all kinds of possibilities; both real and imagined. Even before that warm summer of ’66 had begun, I would venture over to my own inland ocean to walk the shoreline and imagine those frozen waters lined with bathing beauties and bronze gods. There was something magical about that expanse of water and shoreline and meditative mounds where a young man could imagine what the real world might be like after graduation.

Would it be a career in advertising (‘Mad Men’, here I come) or a return to my pre-hippie roots in San Francisco or travel around the world on a tramp steamer as I had fantasized about for years. Somehow, Lake Nokomis brought all those wonderful thoughts, dreams, and wild ideas to the surface even in the last dying gasp of winter.

Dinkytown

Like my old hippie haunt, Dinkytown, Lake Nokomis became my oceanic home away from home. I could look across the shore line and see Rincon Beach, Half Moon Bay, Huntington Beach, Sunset, Malibu or Laguna Beach. It was all there for the imagination.

A casual circumvention of the lake last summer brought back old memories displaced by today’s reality. The old unofficial high school beach is still there. The girls look the same except they seem younger now and show a lot more skin. The boys still act as if they are all by themselves playing Frisbee or soccer. But now when the boys take off their shirts there is more exposed ink than a platoon of Marines or a bevy of truck drivers.

 It used to be young white kids fishing off the pier. Now it’s immigrant families hoping to hook an evening meal. I’m sure they were there back then but I never saw them. I noticed porta-potties in place of the bushes where we used to go. Couples still walk arm in arm like they’re in some three-legged race and oblivious to the world around them.

The couples pushing baby strollers around the lake are usually hipsters. He is in his press pants, white t-shirt and hat. She is sporting a flowered skirt or sarong. They’re pushing baby precious in their $800 stroller which is probably equipped with more accessories than my old Pinto. There are the obligatory latté cup holders, a pouch for all weather gear, IPhone holders, Wi-Fi and of course GPS.

In ‘66 the main beach was mainly for families and oldsters who would lie on the sand and soak up the sun. Now the main beach has a plethora of activities, refreshment stands and places to get a snack. You can rent paddle boards, canoes, kayaks, fishing boats, fishing equipment, sailboats and paddle-bikes. I guess Park and Rec. has to make a buck too.

I guess I hadn’t realized it at the time but Nokomis had become an icon for what I was seeking in my life. My summer of ’66 wasn’t quite “The Summer of 44” but it was nevertheless a pivotal point in my life. It was a summer of love and lust and confusion. Olive drab was replaced by Madras and blue jeans and the real world was slowly opening up to my young imagination. It came before that winter breakup, graduation and living in Europe. It came before my real world was augmented with loves found and lost, the sweet nectar of satisfying work, being a foreign correspondent on the West Bank and enjoying the ebbing foolishness of youth.

It came before I began work at Channel Two and met the nighttime receptionist there. A stunning blond who had focus and clarity and understanding. She’s been one heck of a friend for the last forty-seven years.

The lake is still a magnet for all kinds of people. They still come to play and rest and dream and enjoy the visceral appeal of what might be. It served that purpose for me. It brought excitement and comfort and finally closure to that part of my life.

A body of water can do that sometimes.

Risin Above Your Raising

I first read the phrase in a biography about Hank Williams. He was raised in the back country of Alabama in the 1930s. Hank was raised poor, uneducated and in a caste system that understood its place in American society. He and his kind knew where they stood among the classes. Any inkling or hankering one might have about moving out of that socio-economic strait jacket was quickly dismissed by those around them.

Nothing much has changed since then. In small towns everywhere, the elders still grouse about ‘the cities’ as if that deep dark metropolis was some far off distant black hole where young people go to be swallowed up by the evils of modern day society. The hometown lament usually goes something like: “They go off to get an education then return thinking they’re ‘much better and smarter than the rest of us.”

That age-old lament doesn’t have to be open, flagrant, or oppressive. It can and often is a subtle reminder that there are those who have and then there are the rest of us. It’s understood that the twain shall never meet, cross or intermix. Dog whistles are cloaked in terms such as ‘sticking with your own kind, thinking you’re better than the rest of us, and who do you think you are?’

It belies the truth that in America as elsewhere around the world, we live in a class society. As much as people would like to pretend that there are no classes in this country, the fact remains that many people see themselves in one class of some sort; be it middle class, upper middle class or upper class. Any talk about moving up recognizes the challenge to this reality of our modern day society.

My own family background proves fertile to this point. It was rural, agrarian and steeped in the traditions of the Catholic Faith. My Mother, grandparents and relatives all held to the same dictum; that they were put on earth with a role to play and that role had been spelled out long before they came along. Their parents, grandparents and other elders of the tribe had followed the same pathway to adulthood. They were all expected to do the same. There was never any question about what role they would play in their small, sheltered existence here on earth.

Those few isolated examples of town folk who left for the ‘cities’ were seldom addressed unless they returned and sought refuge in the simpler way of life. Others who left and never returned were seldom if ever talked about. It was if they never existed in the first place. There was and still exists to some extent a fear among the elders that evolution among the younger set is their own abandonment. It’s as if those who never left home envy and fear those who ventured forth outside of their comfort zone. Thus the dismissive term: ‘Risin above your raising.’

The reality is that we all are building on the basic structure our elders imparted to us. We are standing on their accomplishments so that we might see even farther into the distance and discover things they were only able to imagine.

What the term masks is the exploration of potential. I tried to examine that principle in one of my first novels ‘Love in the A Shau.’ I continued that exploration of class mobility with my ‘Debris’ trilogy. It’s a message I try to impart on my grandchildren whenever I can.

Many of us find something we are reasonably good at where we can earn a living and we leave it at that. But that isn’t potential. That is simply today’s reality which doesn’t take us to the next level; whatever that might be. There is tremendous potential in all of us but we must first allow ourselves the freedom to try to find it even if it means failing all or most of the time. Nothing ventured seals the outcome even before you start. Continued effort raises the hopes that success is only another effort away.

Moving beyond what was expected of us as young people, no matter our present age, offers hope for reaching that potential and the satisfaction of knowing we did ‘rise above our raising.’

London Living

It was brief. It was exciting. But we knew it wasn’t real. Living in London for almost two weeks was a wonderful treat for our entire family last summer. We were ensconced in a nice but plain four story townhouse in Paddington not very far from the tube. Hopefully it will be the first of many such ventures abroad.

Surrounding us were row houses, public housing, apartment buildings and the English version of condo complexes. The atmosphere was all very urban, urbane and ripe for big city living. If you’re going to pretend big city living, one can’t do much better than London.

I gleaned some interesting market stats from the Super-Prime Residential Report from Knight Frank Real Estate. Super-prime is defined as the higher end properties in London; starting at two plus million pounds. Anything less than 1.5 million pounds and most of those properties are listed as ‘flats.’ Honestly, it’s a different real estate world over there.

Although London had been seeing some tough times recently with its housing market, it continues to be a safe haven for long term investments with increasing focus on income generation and longer-term returns. Prime Central London (PCL) has not experienced a double-digit price movement up or down for more than five years. By standards of the last four decades, pricing movements have become less extreme.

The London super-prime buyer base is extremely diverse with British, European, Middle Eastern, North American and more recently Chinese buyers seeking property as both homes and investments. Moreover, there has been a shift in the source of wealth away from the financial sector and towards more tech and entrepreneurial sources.

Two units down from our townhome, a similar unit had sold for over four million dollars (translated from pounds by my smart kids) four years earlier. Our unit was purchased for over two million pounds just a couple of years before. Now it had been transformed into a very busy VBRO in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in London.

Based on accents heard on the street, the Russians have found a haven for their money too. I was told that London never lost its reputation as a target market for Russian buyers, but economic conditions in Russia over the last three to four years have reduced demand to some extent.

Now I could understand the appeal of an area like Paddington. The Knight Frank Report went on to say: “It is a cliché but education and culture still play a massively important role for super prime buyers in London. With everything else going on, it’s easy to forget that people still want to study here, go to Wimbledon and Ascot and love the social scene. There is also a strong creative aspect to living in London, demonstrated by some of the deals by tech companies.”

This trip to London was vastly different from my first visit back in 1967.

Back then, I was just another lost soul wandering the cobblestone streets of Dicken’s city looking for folk clubs. I accidentally stumbled across the headquarters of the Beatles Corporation, got lost a couple of times in Hyde Park, and fantasized about shipping out on a freighter.

Back in the 90s, we took our kids to London during Christmas break along with a group of friends. Then repeated that excursion some four years later. Back then, the kids were in high school and old enough to appreciate the excitement of traveling in a foreign country.

This time around, so much had changed. The adults were in charge now. Sharon and I gladly followed them; grandchildren in tow. There were coffee houses near the tube station for morning briefings, gallery tours at the National gallery, the British Museum and The Tate. We soared high in the London Eye, discovered Harry Potter hideaways, strolled along the Thames, took in a show in the Theater District, and wandered the lush green parks.

The kids had their phone apps which told us when the next tube car would arrive, the closest restaurants, shops and entertainment. If we got tired of waiting, we can just dial up an Uber or Lyft. For daily use of the tube, we had our Oster Pass, which got us on all buses and the tube throughout the city.

 For a couple of grandparents it was a delightful way to rediscover one of our favorite cities with the entire family along. Who would have known that I’d be back after that first timid venture in ’67 with my best friend and most prized possessions right beside me?