Ditching My Son in the Amazon

Most sixteen-year-old boys should be sent off to military school until they’ve reached eighteen and are a little more mature. Sixteen is that awkward age between childhood and manhood; a time when their hormones are bubbling up and yet their brain hasn’t quite grasped its significance in their young lives.

Now send a sixteen-year-old down to South America on his own (actually part of a school field trip) and the equation changes even more. Leave him there for two weeks before joining him and you’ve got a stranger on your hands. He’s having a blast until you become his reality check back to the real world. It can be a hard adjustment for both of you.

Two weeks alone with a wealthy and lax family in Quito, Ecuador was enough to turn my son Brian into Jack London, Jack Kerouac and Tom Clancy all wrapped up behind the disguise of a high school sophomore, varsity wrestler, chess captain, honor student and overall macho man.

By the time I got to Quito, Brian had morphed into a self-reliant, somewhat self-centered young man. Probably very typical of any sixteen-year-old boy ‘literally’ on his own for the first time in his life.

Loosely organized by one of the teachers, the trip was supposed to introduce these sophomores from several area high schools to the cultural and geographical wonders of Ecuador and the Amazon. Yeah, not so much. But they did have a lot of fun.

Quito, formally known as San Francisco de Quito, is the capital city of Ecuador. At an elevation of 9,350, it is the highest capital city in the world. It’s a strange mixture of new buildings and old. New wealth mingling with extreme poverty. All of this surrounded by the magnificent Andes Mountains.

Once I arrived in Quito with several other chaperones, we were dispersed to various hotels until our bus left for the Amazon several days later. Brian became my city tour guide and all-knowing advisor whether I wanted it or not.

I’m not about to wax poetic about both my two kids. They were normal, healthy, active kids who acted like normal teenagers…much to my chagrin at times. This trip provided the perfect storm for this young man on the loose…until Dad came into town.

Attitude is a strange thing. Adults can sometimes hide it but kids usually don’t do so well. Brian was feeling very independent and not sure how to express it. So he did what a lot of other kids would do in a similar situation at home; ignore their parents and play the independent role.

At first I was amused by his new persona but after a couple of days it got very old.

By the time we got to some frontier town bordering the Amazon rain basin, Brian had shunned entirely me for his buddies and hanging out with them. He ignored me on the bus. He did all the typical, normal things most self-centered, self-absorbed young men do, especially in the company of young, amorous girls on the hunt.

At that point in the trip, I was ready to swap my little munchkin to some headhunter for three chickens and a goat. But frankly, what other parent hasn’t had to deal with an incident or two when their good kid was just acting like a little shit? No difference here.

An adjustment was needed. So I convened a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting. The three of us sat down and discussed his attitude and lack of sensitivity. After all three of us had our say, Brian got his act together and it was never an issue after that.

Once we were out of Quito our transportation was quickly reduced to using the local long-range bus system. Built for stamina and very rough roads, these transportation dinosaurs could do the distance. But creature comforts were left back at the station. The buses were built for the locals, which meant that if you were over five feet tall, your head would bounce up against the roof every time the bus hit a pothole or rut in the road. It happened a lot!

The seats weren’t much better. They may have worked for high schoolers but not grown adults. Stationary crunches became the norm once we found our seats. We were cramped and close together. Some of the boys weren’t complaining, especially if they landed next to a pretty girl. As an adult, I sucked in my gut and put on my happy face. There was no room for our luggage inside so it all went on top of the bus. If it rained, everything got wet. Our luggage got wet…a lot.

 

Traveling down to the Amazon rain basin from mountainous Quito entailed harrowing bus rides on dirt roads that simultaneously hugged mountainous cliffs on one side of the road and sheer drop-offs on the other. Not for the faint of heart or those with altitude problems. Fortunately our attitude issues were long since forgotten and Brian and I spent a fair amount of time, hanging our heads out the windows for the view.

River crossings were always interesting, especially since this was the rainy season. If the bus driver wasn’t sure about the depth of the river crossing, we’d hop a pickup truck along with the locals and try to cross that way. We were like the proverbial canary in the mineshaft. If we made it across, the bus should be able to make it too.

The Amazon River, according to many accounts, was named by Spanish explorer Fransisco de Orellana in 1541. The name was in honor of the female warriors he encountered on his voyage through the territory previously called Maranon. The Amazon rain forest is the drainage basin for the Amazon River and its 15,000 tributaries and covers 2,722,000 square miles. The river itself is 4,195 miles long. We got just a small taste of river life.

River transportation in that part of the Amazon consists of mainly dugout canoes. Enormous tree trunks were hollowed out and a motor placed in back. Since it was the wet season, our pilot was always on the lookout for washed out tree trunks floating in the river. A collision with one of those battering rams could have easily turned our dugout over on its side and put bodies into the water.

The other word of caution was for us to watch out for snakes hanging from low-lying tree branches or snakes in the water. And, of course, the proverbial crocodiles, which loved to shadow our dugout canoe hoping to find a hand or two dragging alongside in the water.

Sleeping accommodations ranged from sleeping platforms in the middle of the jungle (Fortunately there were age limitations because I know where my son would have been) to sparse cabins. The only rule was to check your bedding every night for spiders, frogs and snakes. Then the next morning, check your clothes, boots, etc. before you put them on

The climate was warm and humid in the river basin, with an average temperature of 79 degrees and an average yearly rainfall of over 80 inches. In other words, it was hot and humid and nothing nor anyone ever dried out there. Wet, damp or moldy was the order of the day. Every day.

Brian and I agreed that the most memorable experience of the entire trip was our vision quest in a the pouring rainstorm. Each of us, student and adult alike, was marched into the jungle and then left alone (totally separated from one another) for a period of an hour or longer with only the sounds and smells and humidity of the jungle to assault your senses. It just so happened that our incubation period occurred during a very heavy rainstorm. I mean sheets of rain and visibility of about ten feet, if that, for hours on end.

The idea was to experience the Amazon rain forest in its entirety without the distractions of other people and outside influences. There was no way any one of us could have found our way out of there. We had to trust that our guide would come back and find us and lead us back to camp. It was awesome.

Brian and I both thought we’d died and gone to heaven. Hard to explain if you haven’t been there but it was a very thought-provoking experience.

The theme of torrential downpours continued with what could have been a very serious bus accident not long afterwards. Our bus was traversing some mountainous pass, climbing its way back out of the river basin toward Quito. In the early morning hours, our bus missed a small avalanche by mere seconds. Rocks and boulders plunged down the mountainside and crashed into a nearby stream. A torrent of water came roaring past our bus, rocking it on its springs. If we’d been broad sided by that mudflow of rock and debris, I’m sure our bus could have been swept off the road and into that stream. Kind of like, Ice Road Truckers.

Brian tried out a blowgun. He got pretty good at it. Fortunately you can’t buy a blowgun at Fleet Farm or Walmart.

Not to be forgotten but certainly not bragged about was my watching several amorous seniors come on to Brian as I was sitting at the same table. My young bon vivant laughed at my concerns and lack of understanding of the high school mating ritual.

Apparently they start even earlier in South America. And Brian, assimilating all things native, thought it only appropriate that he too initiate or at least assume their native ways.

Father thought differently and a compromise was reached. I kept my eye on him and he kept his eye on me.

Third place in memorable experiences would have to be the pool game Brian and I played back in Quito. While Snow White wasn’t there, we did play against three Israelis who were traveling through South America, a couple of Mexican nationals and several locals. A group of young girls from the neighborhood were our audience. And again I was struck by the irony of my sixteen-year-old son playing pool in Quito, Ecuador in the back room of a Pizza Hut with such an international group of players. Naturally, he thought it was no big deal.

Our trip to the Amazon was more than just a high school field trip. Instead it became our vision quest, a journey of self-discovery for both Brian and myself. For Brian, it was his first taste of other cultures, which only wetted his appetite for greater adventures ahead and inspired him to travel around the world while still in college. For myself, it was a continuation of my desire to explore options and opportunities that might expand my own creative horizon.

So while some other fathers might regale their buddies with their father-son bonding stories of camping trips or baseball games, I came to admire and grow very proud of my son in the dangerous backwaters and jungles of the Amazon River basin.

Dancing with Blindfolds On

If I smile at you, there’s a message there. Perhaps open for interpretation but still a message.

A wink also tells you something.

And if I gave you the middle finger salute, you’d get the point.

Now if I send you a text, you’d have to be able to translate:

            FYI     (For your information)

            IDK     (I did not know) (I don’t know)

            #$        (This is the text symbol for Starbucks)

            511      (Too much information)

            AAYF (As always, your friend)

If I send you an e-mail, you might get my intended message assuming I’ve been succinct enough.

If we go face to face on Skype, we can connect real time and (to a limited degree) read facial features and body language. It’s better than e-mail but doesn’t replace real face-to-face communication.

In the end, face-to-face is the most effective means of communicating. Unless, of course, we’re talking gender differences, generational differences, cultural differences and a myriad of other obstacles to getting our true feelings and thoughts and emotions across to the other person.

Communicating is such an ancient art and yet we still haven’t figured it out.

Most women are better at communicating than men. For most of us men it’s usually black and white. Gray is not part of our color pallet. Yes means yes. No means no. And I don’t know means just that.

What it doesn’t mean is: I have to think about it because I might change my mind whether I want to or not…that’s my right. It’s like static on the radio that one gender can decipher and the other can’t make sense of. Perhaps I’m just the less intuitive of the species but it just doesn’t seem that hard to communicates one’s thoughts. But it can be.

Many old married couples communicate without words or gestures. They know each others' moods, likes and dislikes, preferences and myriad of benchmarks for ‘how things are going.’ Usually she understands before he does.

But some generations before us have had a real problem with basic communications.

My Mother, for example. Raised in a staunch German Catholic farm family, her idea of communication was starkly different than mine is today. Just say German Catholic and there’s a built-in excuse if ever there was one. That one factor (her German heritage) would have been enough to explain things. But then add in small rural community, overpowering Catholic guilt, sexism and lack of education. Now you have all the ingredients for poor to non-existent communications.

My Aunts and Uncles weren’t much better. Their best communicating usually took place during card games. ‘Visits’ were meant to pass the time with safe, innocuous, meaning-less platter that never revealed anything beyond assumptions about the weather, crop forecasts and the latest gossip often generated after mass on Sunday.

Grade school, high school, even college wasn’t much better at meaningful discourse. The teachers lectured. We took notes and then regurgitated back to them via blue books just what they wanted us to hear. The Army wasn’t much different. Only recently have a lot of businesses begun to recognize that employees might actually have something meaningful to say about their business.

McDonalds just spent millions in research to find out that a customer’s first impression of their company comes from the 12-year-old working behind the counter. Seriously!

Then there’s the whole generational thing. Try communicating with a teenager sometime. Good luck with that. Read ‘Ditching my Son in the Amazon’ for my tip on how to enlist the aid of others to deal with this issue.

As I mentioned in my blog (In the Company of Old Men) it’s a challenge forging connections with someone you haven’t seen for over 50 years. Some of these re-acquaintances are content with an occasional coffee every once in a while. Others carry baggage and can’t accept their past for what it was or see the future for what might lay ahead. Some are okay with more frequent meetings. Occasionally someone will come along that you can really reconnect with. 

I’ve got a couple of friends like that. We can pick up wherever we left off and go on from there. They’ve led interesting lives that have always fascinated me. They seem genuinely interested in my writing. It’s always so satisfying to be able to pick up, after an absence of so many years, and just take off with our discourse from there.

I hope I can continue to meet more old friends who are traveling light without excess baggage. Those are always the most fun.

Modern Allegories on Communication:

I once went on a pilgrimage to worship at the altar of a seer. I came for wisdom and advice from this man of letters. But the prophet offered me little more than kernels of wisdom with only a trailing substance of matter.

Yet in my dissatisfaction I realized he had given me a gift. For his words, even in their vacuous state, were nebulous enough to force me to draw my own conclusions and forge my own pathway to enlightenment. His vapid guidance was the spark needed to ignite my own fire inside.

An avatar once invited me to dance but only wanted to stroll. How strange. Why put a line in the water if you don’t want to fish? So sad, I wanted to dance.

I came to educate my grandchildren but they taught me so much more.

As much as we change, we stay the same. The essence of who we are is often masked by the distractions of everyday life.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

                                                                           Chinese Proverb

FU

No!

It really means Forever Yours.

Denis

The Axman Cometh

When I was growing up the prevailing wisdom about kids was that they should be seen and not heard. As ludicrous as it sounds, many parents back then were taught from generations before them not to say anything to their children that might lift their self-confidence because it could go to their heads.

Children back then weren’t seen as little people with feelings and emotions and ideas of their own. They were simply an addition to the family, good for chores until they proved their worth. Then at some point, the girls were good for caring for elderly parents. That and getting married and having children and starting the cycle all over again.

In my case, it was a typical German Catholic rural farming family thinking. Pathetic!

So we never talked about feelings, emotions or any kind of oral history. They never spoke. I never asked.

Such a shame.

So I never captured my stepfather’s tales of being a railroad station manager at the turn of the century in the Nebraska Territory when Indians still roamed the west and outlaws were a constant threat. Or riding the rails between Seattle and Vancouver during the great depression. Hanging bootleg whiskey bottles out the train windows on strings so the border inspectors wouldn’t find them. Working for the post office for 30 years and being retired for 33 years. Losing his daughter when she was 22, his wife when she was 50, his son when he was 45, and finding someone else when he was in his 80s (my Mother).

Or recorded tales of my mother growing up on a farm with seven siblings. Being smacked across the floor by her mother when she mentioned that the cat had just given birth to kittens.

First working as a maid to those rich people on Summit Avenue. ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ Saint Paul style. Then as a short order cook in the First National Bank Building in downtown St. Paul. Working for that nice ‘Jewish couple’ who took good care of their employees.

Or meeting my stepfather Erwin in her 70’s for companionship because she was afraid to admit maybe, just maybe, it might have been love she was feeling after all those years.

No reference or memory of my Father so I have nothing to hold on to or remember about the man who brought me into the world. Other than the fact that he smoked, liked to drink and died at age 48 of a massive heartache in some flea-bitten hotel in Montana. The story goes that he was on his way back to Minnesota, with Christmas presents, for the first time in four years after leaving us.

Fortunately that ‘don’t ask – don’t tell’ frame of mind pretty well dissipated by the time it was our turn to be parents. We were smarter with my wife’s parents. Fortunately we did video tape them and have captured at least an hour and a half of their memories while both were still cognizant of their surroundings and their past life.

I guess I should have asked: At what point in your life do memories become more important than dreams? Or could you have both?

I guess I saw my own role as father a little differently. Even though I wasn’t smart enough to deliberately build memories with my kids, it just happened somehow. I was lucky.

Many Saturday mornings found us all up at about the same time. They had the routine down pad.

“What are you doing?” They’d ask.

“Got work to do.” I’d reply.

“Can we come along?” They’d ask, already knowing the answer.

And with that, we were off to breakfast and an assortment of tasks, projects and or just plain screwing around.

First stop was always some cheap diner in town. My kids like to brag that they’ve been to every cheap diner in St. Paul. (unless it’s been torn down by now.) Always a treat as much for the clientele watching as for the mediocre food.

Our Favorites:

Day by Day Café  (wait staff was heavily tattooed and most were in recovery)

Mickey’s Diner  (once saw a guy there in a buffalo headdress and full regalia-so?)

Uptowner  (locals from downtown; a very diverse and eclectic crowd)

Cossettas  (Italians from the neighborhood and tourists from downtown)

After breakfast there might be work projects for the business or properties. ($10.00 an hour isn’t bad for a grade schooler plus lunch thrown in)

But the highlight of the day was always: The Ax Man.

The last stop on our all day Saturday jaunts was always The Ax Man Surplus Store on University Avenue. That shop had more assorted crap you never knew you needed than any other junk store in the Twin Cities. Fifty cents each was their limit and that was always enough back then to fill their small shopping carts.

From nuts and bolts to assorted tools, Chinese knockoffs filled a lot of the bins. From old incubators to newer oscillators to an ancient iron lung. The store had it all. Most of it totally worthless unless you’re in grade school or middle school. Then the place was a treasure trove of wonders for any imaginative kid.

Back then half a buck used to be able to buy a handful of junk that my kids desperately wanted if only for the moment. Brennan and Charlotte will now probably cost me at least a dollar plus each for the same results.

But even before the Ax Man comes into play for the grandkids, we’ve been collecting lots of prints of the kids growing up along with VHS and DVD remembrances.

I want to start my own traditions with Brennan and Charlotte here and the twins and Maya when we’re out in Colorado. Silly, sometimes stupid, sometimes meaningless antics or forages into experiences they might otherwise never have. I have no idea what is going to stick in their little heads but if I throw enough experiences at them something will form a lasting memory without my even knowing it.

And the grandchildren will remember us. It’s called full tilt digital and we intend to capture as many memories as we can. There have already been bazillion digital images

and YouTube videos. Then (hopefully my own comic strips and stories from ‘Sweetpea and the Gang’ for them to hold on to as a memory of Papa and Nana.

There will be trips to Palm Springs and other points West. Of course, we’ll include Colorado, Minnesota and in the future, traveling abroad. Maybe we’ll explore the back roads of America and do our own Jack Kerouac thing; my little Easy Riders and me.

And in the end, we’ll leave them with a legacy in print, pixels, bytes and, oh yeah, gray matter too.