Mitchell Way
Right off the bat I know that many of you will scoff at the notion that there may be a spirit world. The idea that there are good spirits as well as a slew of very unsavory ones is to some, a laughable idea. Yet the movie industry makes millions of dollars each year on movies based on the occult and the living dead.
I have long suspected that we have ghosts in our house. The original structure was built in 1890 so it has a lot of history. One night during the time we were giving it a complete renovation, I was upstairs pulling ship lap boards off the walls and tossing them through a hole to a pile outside. It was 10:00 pm and there was no light except my one bulb shop light, although I was there by myself I could hear children’s voices and I stopped several times to shine the light around the empty house to see if I could find the source. Later one of my young step-sons told me he was afraid of the lamp beside his bed because a face would appear in the lampshade.
I really hate to use the term “band geek” but I guess that is exactly what I was. I think the term was conceived by the football players who hung out in the jock hall at high school. They had nothing better to do than to whistle at the girls and polish the pins on their Letterman jackets. They would huddle in groups like a band of jackals and label students as they walked by:
My wife Cheryl walked across the gravel parkway to her school bus which sat parked partially out of the bus garage. It was a new bus to the school and hadn’t made its maiden voyage with students yet.
“Morning Sunshine,” called another driver who was walking to her bus. “Here we go again!”
All the buses had been pulled partially from the garage stalls by Arnie the bus maintenance man. The engines were all running, and the lights were turned on. This was to aid the drivers with their morning pre-trip inspections.
Sitting in the cushy air-leveling driver’s seat, Cheryl shut off the engine. With the air system fully charged, she was going to bleed the air brakes. She pumped the brake pedal repeatedly, each pump sending a blast of air to the ground under the bus.
The air pressure, which started at 120 pounds, had dropped to 90, then 60, then 30. Then . . .
Honk! Honk! Honk! Honk!
The bus horn went off.
“What the heck?” Cheryl screamed.
The 10 other drivers stepped from their buses and looked over at the new bus. They covered their ears to silence the dreadful sound. A flock of migrating geese flying over the bus garage split formation. One goose appeared to fall out of the sky.
Frantically trying to shut off the alarm while at the same time plugging her fingers in her ears, Cheryl’s curly platinum hair began to straighten.
Bounding up the steps into the bus came Arnie. He was wearing his noise canceling earmuffs.
“I got this! I got it!”
Cheryl jumped from the bus, the palms of her hands covering her ears. Arnie frantically pushed and pulled buttons.
“Blasted computerized buses,” he yelled. His face was red, his eyes bulged, and perspiration drops ran down his face soaking his coveralls.
The other drivers were now leaving the yard, not in their scheduled order, but more in a panicked retreat. Like getting to higher ground to avoid a tsunami wave.
The door of the office opened. Out walked the bus manager pulling on her sweater. She strolled across the parking lot toward the bellowing bus. The look on her face hinted that she thought all her drivers were morons.
Arnie was now in a state of emotional shock. His hands gripped the steering wheel as he stared blankly through the front windshield.
The bus manager climbed up into the bus and prying his hands off the steering wheel, she laid him on his back in the center aisle.
Then, restarting the bus, she allowed the air pressure to build, and the horn shut off.
“You’re late for your route,” she said to Cheryl as she pulled Arnie by the feet down the bus steps.
And so, for the first day’s morning run, there were brand new riders being picked up at new stops which caused all forms of chaos and confusion. The little kindergarten children who saw Cheryl for the first time as she opened the bus door, gasped, grinned, and ran up the bus steps to hug her and sit in her lap, mistakenly thinking she was Mrs. Santa Claus.
The radio chatter was frantic:
“Bus 201 to base. 201 to base.”
“This is base, go ahead.”
“I’ve got a puker. Mayday, Mayday. He’s at the back of the bus. Oh my gosh, he’s barfing again. It’s running down the center aisle! Mayday! Mayday!”
“Bus 201, this is base. Follow proper hazmat cleanup procedures after returning to the garage.”
“What? I didn’t sign up for this. Can’t Arnie do it?”
From somewhere in the shop Arnie yelled, “I’m not doing it!”
“Sorry 201, it’s your job. I’ll have the mop ready when you get back.”
Then, after the morning run was over, the drivers came back at 3:00 for the afternoon run to take the kids home.
“Base to bus 211.”
There was no answer.
“211, come in.”
“Base, this is 208. These route directions can’t be accurate. I’m in a housing development and the road dead ends. I’m going to have to back all the way out.”
“This is base. Don’t back into any parked cars this year.”
“Base to bus 211. Come in 211!”
“This is 270. I can hear you clearly. I’ll give him a call.”
“270, if you can hear me, he should hear me.”
“Bus 211, this is base.”
“Base this is 250. My route says to stop at 4489 Hammerhead to drop off Ginny. I see her house, but the driveway is on the other side of the creek. I’m going to have to go three miles up to cross the bridge and go to the house on another road. That’s putting me 15 minutes late. Please call the other parents.”
“Base, this is bus 211. We’re you trying to get me?”
“Yes 211. Is Stanley Harding on your bus?”
“I don’t have a Stanley Harding.”
“Yes, you do 211. I’m staring at his name on your roster.”
“He’s not on my bus, base.”
“Base, this is bus 302. I have a flashing dash light that says, ‘Shut engine down.’ “Suggestions?”
“302, this is base. Nurse it home.”
“307 to . . . base. (Gasp) Base . . . come in . . .”
“ Go ahead 307, this is base.”
“License plate (gasp) Washington (cough) XLF3589 (gasp), Jacked up Black 4X4 (gasp) . . .He ran my stop paddle.”
“307, Why are you gasping?”
“Well, I ran after him.”
“What?”
“211 to base.”
“Base”
“Stanley Harding is on my bus.”
“211, when will you be at the corner of Tyee and Crowley to meet his grandparents.”
“This is 211. That would have been 20 minutes ago.”
Muffled grumbles came from behind the closed office door.
If she had been a smoker, she would have been a chain smoker. If she could drink on the job, she would have been plowed by 5:00, but this is the life of a bus manager.
As she closed the shop that evening and walked to her car, her right eye twitched. Her car key could not find the lock because of her shaking hand. With a few tears on her face, she sat behind the steering wheel, letting out a sigh of relief.
“Day one is over, only nine months more to go.”
Faith Family Life Getting Older Growing Up Misadventures Music Patriotism Pets or Pests? Snips Tributes
It must have been close to eleven o clock. I was in bed drifting in and out of sleep when I heard the bedroom door pop open. I felt the covers move and the bed settle.
“You need to get some new undergarments,” Cheryl commented as we walked through the Men’s department at Penney’s.
“These briefs will last another year. Don’t you never mind,” I shot back.
“They look like fishnet underwear. How long have you had them, ten years?” she asked, although she knew full well because she was probably the one who bought them.
I walked through the automatic sliding doors and into the main entrance of Billy’s, a small family-owned grocery store in Cataula, Georgia. The checker closest to the door looked up at me as I entered, and she stared. She was a young lady in her early 20’s. I could not help but notice that not only did she continue to stare, but she also started to follow close behind me.
“Where would your cold medicines be located,” I asked her.
“Um,” she said. “Right there on aisle three.”
She pointed and continued to follow on my tail.
What is the problem, I wondered? Has she never seen a man from the Pacific Northwest? Don’t people down here wear blue Jean cutoffs with wool socks and Birkenstock sandals?
I turned around to see her following no more than three feet away. She appeared to be fixated on the black hat on my head.
Cicadas, perhaps if you’re from the west coast you’ve heard of them but never seen one. They are interesting insects in that they live under the ground as nymphs for most of their lives, only to surface above ground to mate. My wife and I were visiting Cataula in the spring of 2024, a jackpot year for Cicadas. I say jackpot in the same sense as being at San Juan Capistrano when the swallows arrive from Argentina, or at the Nature Conservancy in Santa Barbara when 33,000 Monarch butterflies congregate.
We just happened to be at the exact spot where Cicada brood XIX popped their heads up out of the ground. It was like being in the right spot, at the right time, for a total eclipse of the sun, the blood moon, and the asteroid Apophis hitting the earth.
After 13 years underground as nymphs, the cicadas were emerging, coming forth from the ground like zombies in a horror movie. Millions of cicadas climbing onto trees and on buildings, shedding their old skins to reveal winged adults. It is estimated that there are approximately one million cicadas in the ground per acre, so in the state of Georgia alone there are roughly two trillion, four hundred eleven billion, seven hundred forty million coming to the surface.
The male cicadas serenade the females with their loud calls during the daylight hours, leading to mating and egg-laying. Once hatched, the nymphs return underground to feed on tree roots until the 13-year cycle repeats. Meanwhile, the adults, like salmon, mate and fall over dead leaving a massive mess on the ground surface to clean up. They have no predators except copper mouth snakes which find them to be tasty treats. Land owners have a choice of raking up the cicadas or having a yard full of pit vipers.
For those of you from the northwest, who have never been to the southeast side of the US and experienced the strange sound of a cicada, it is something as foreign to us as our Sasquatch screams would be to a southerner.
My wife and I were picked up from the airport in Atlanta and driven to my daughter’s home in Cataula. As we got out of my daughter’s car at her home it was late afternoon. What hit me first was the high humidity on the 80-degree day. What I noticed next was the sound.
It sounded like the neighborhood was underneath an enormous flying saucer which had a bad engine bearing. I looked to the sky around the neighborhood, but it was impossible to pinpoint the origin of the sound.
“What is that noise,” I asked. “Crickets, frogs, some type of farm machinery?”
“Those are Cicadas,” my daughter Kalene said.
I stood by the car in awe listening to the sound. It was very much like seeing the Aurora Borealis for the first time. Very captivating.
And then I noticed them flying by, their wings humming, not like a bee, but more like a dragon fly or a large moth because these are very large insects with inch long black bodies, red eyes, and clear, orange-tinted wings.
“Wow, they are everywhere,” I said. “Flying through the air and dead on the ground like a swarm of locusts.”
And so, in my life journal I now have a notation which says: May 2024, experienced Cicadas!
Walking to the display of seasonal allergy medicines, I stopped and scanned the shelf for Benadryl. I did not realize that the young checker was inches away. As I bent down to grab a box off the shelf, I felt her strike. It was a good clean blow to the top of my head.
I stood up, pulling my hat off my eyes.
“What the heck?” I yelled.
“Oh, I almost got it,” she moaned.
I heard the drone of wings and the cicada which was on my hat, flew around and landed on my nose and we stared at each other, red eyes to blue.
Startled, I picked the big bug off by his body and held it in my fingers. The checker held out her hand, palm up for me to deposit the bug but I could see that she wasn’t excited to hold it.
“I tell you what,” I said in a calmer voice, “I’ll take it outside for you.”
I have since added to my journal: May 2024, experienced Cicadas, and customer service at Billy’s Grocery Store.
Faith Family Life Getting Older Growing Up Misadventures Music Patriotism Pets or Pests? Snips Tributes
My wife says that the only reason I have ears is to neutralize the pressure to my Eustachian tubes because obviously I never listen to a single thing she has to say. Apparently she is referring to last Sunday when I met her in the car after church.
“Did you see Mrs. Critchet’s hair? It’s bright blue!” I exclaimed.
“Duh!” she huffed. “I only mentioned it five times this week.”
“Duh”- a three letter word that can drag you to the depths of humiliation.
It’s been a long time since anyone has called me a potty mouth; even so when my wife hears the words, she still gets the giggles.
If any of you have worked in the industry world like I have most of my life, terms like “Lock, Tag, Try” and “Three Way Communication” are slogans that the safety departments drill into us to keep employees from getting hurt.
“Lock, Tag, Try” of course means to lock out a piece of machinery and tag it with an explanation of why it is locked out. Then you try to start the piece of machinery to verify it is indeed dead.
“Three-way communication” means that someone gives you an instruction and you repeat it back. Then, the original person confirms that yes, that is indeed is what he meant or in my case, I get a blank look and the requestor starts all over again.
I was lamenting to my wife Cheryl a few years back about being out of shape and how the young muscular guys at work were giving me a complex. She was quick to remind me that the best I could hope for was a simplex. Then she suggested that we take the grandkids on a hike in the mountains.
I found it hard to explain to my daughter Kalene that there were no such thing as haunted toilets. After my traumatic experience, I had a hard time convincing myself.
From the laundry room came a piercing scream … “My delicate underwear is completely tangled with your Velcro helmet liner! How many times have I told you…”?
I tried calming the situation by assuring her, “Don’t worry dear, good commercial grade Velcro is hard to damage.”
I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast as Cheryl entered with a large ball of fabric just taken from the dryer. I could tell by the look on her face that I would be buying new underwear when suddenly she looked out the back window and realized she had left the porch umbrella up all night.
“Oh crumb! Look at the umbrella rocking back and forth in the wind. I’d better go out there and collapse it before it gets torn to shreds.”
I was just out in my tool shed looking through some old cottage cheese containers which I use to hold nails, nuts, washers, bolts, and screws etc. I learned of this storage technique from the old man who lived behind me named Swede. He was a course speaking old man with a temper, but I was the only person he had for a son, so he put up with me. Swede taught me many things about hunting, fishing, bee keeping, and gardening, and he kept every spare nut, bolt, and washer in cottage cheese containers in his shed. I inherited them when he died. My only complaint was that he never would wash out the containers before he would fill them with stuff and today, I am trying to find one 3/8-16 x 3.5” bolt as I hold my breath while rummaging through one rancid cottage cheese container after another.
I met a man sitting on a sidewalk bench in Lynden the other day. He had a heavy Chicago Bears sweatshirt on, and it was obvious to me that he wasn’t a local.
I had a nudge from my inner self to say “hi”. He was a nice guy, but it was hard for me to understand the inner city slang he was using. Basically, I understood that he was in the county visiting a brother who had moved out from Chicago. The brother was encouraging him to move out before he got shot in the streets.
Iris and Lincoln Stodge live at 1835 Fernhook Lane, a very long drive through fields of corn which ends at the base of the Whatcom Timber Reserve. Iris and Lincoln are fourth and fifth graders.