Star gazing

Seahorse was a hundred and fifty when I met him.

I think it was 1978; it's a little hazy because all I have to go on is how old I think I was and I'm pretty sure I was around 11 because I don't remember having glasses at the time. Could be wrong.

Seahorse  was called that, as the story goes, because he'd attached a little Johnson Seahorse outboard engine to a canoe once to troll a river. Sounds like him.

By the way, I don't recommend that.

His last name, ironically, was also Johnson. His daughter married Uncle Crazy Legs, and the irony is doubled from what my audience has no doubt noted in that she had no need to change her surname as a result.

I think that made him my Great-Uncle-in-Law, but the protocol, as protocol commonly does, escapes me... and, as is my custom, I have digressed.

He drove a little Mustang sports car, usually, he admitted, drafting at 135km/h (that's 85 mph for my southern friends) behind Greyhound buses as the cops never stopped them, and at the time, at least, his grandkids - my cousins - thought he was the Coolest Granddad on Earth.

They probably weren't wrong.

He owned a 1957 Dodge Crusader that was both Salmon Pink, and available for use in at least one of my cousins' High school graduations. I recall waxing it for one such occasion. Beautiful car. Push button clutch.

He was one of those guys that built the Canadian West with his bare hands, and left the blood and sweat of his toil with a shrug as he moved to his next  job. I met him to look at some history.

Dad was interested in BC's Flathead Valley. In the very early 20th century, there was Oil exploration there, and, as it turns out, Seahorse was on the crew that built the oil derricks that tapped wells in the region. Obviously, they didn't find much. Turns out that's good.

Nearly a hundred years later, these sorts of derrick are portable steel rigs on the backs of very large trucks, travelling in convoy, quick to set up and dismantle, leaving  - you hope - only a clearing and a capped pipe surrounded by a bit of fence in their wake. Not so then.

The derrick Seahorse helped Dad find was in the bottom of a draw down off the forestry cut road in a large clearing, made for the camp. Some of the remains of the camp structures were still evident, and the Derrick itself was in the middle of the clearing, towering timbers intact. It was HUGE.

That particular location became, for me in my youth, Flathead. We camped under that derrick for most summers for years to come, dragging that silly little tent trailer, building smokehouses in the riverbank, storing Pop Shoppe pop in river-rock cooler I built in the stream, fly fishing for hours, hours and hours, having shooting competitions, and playing Soccer-baseball with a dozen kids when we all met up.

And sitting in macramé lawn chairs, looking at the stars.

There is very little in the way of light pollution in that particular location. As a result, you can see the mass and sweep of the entire Milky Way Galaxy during a new moon. It's really something I'll never forget.

Dad was as good a guide to the sky as one could reasonably expect. He was better at bushcraft, of course, but at least he could name a few constellations for a pack of awed kids, having just survived a truly phenomenal Ghost Story.

My only real regret is that we never had a telescope to bring. We did have binoculars, of course, and pretty good ones. So there you are.

My friend the Angry Scientist had a telescope, and a pretty good place to use it in his youth. His parents had an acreage just out of the Sticks on Matevic Road - that was my real introduction to astronomy... and archery, as it turns out.

He would have loved to see that sky. We did see sky like that later, he and I, on a trip to Fish Lakes... but that's one of those stories for another time.

I have a telescope now. It's just a little one - but it's a start.

There is a hydro lease behind my house. The light pollution is pretty bad, given where I live, but you can still see a few things. Youngest Boy, at the tender age of eight, has already seen the craters of the moon as defined by its terminator, the rings of Saturn, and three of Jupiter's Moons.

And he's Interested.

We'll be taking it north with us on whatever trip we get to muster the Land Yacht toward. I can only hope to find a sky like Flathead... but probably not.

It doesn't really matter. Every time I look up now, I think of Flathead, that derrick, Dad, the Angry Scientist, and Seahorse Himself.

Thanks, guys.

Irreverance and Derelection

I learned something very important shortly after my  40^th birthday – nearly 6 years ago now.

With only the occasional exception of my Lovely Wife, Nobody’s looking at Me.

I dunno if It's a universal truth for the condition of being male, over 40, in Western Civilization... Or it's Just Me.

This is not a complaint, by any means. It was nearly as freeing 5ish years ago as it was when I made the same discovery of my relative invisibility – at least to my class mates - in high school. My audience will note that one of the most commonly wished-for superpowers is, indeed, invisibility… with Telepathy a close second.

And here it’s innate for me. But it’s problematical. Back after I left high school, it suddenly evaporated completely on me; probably as it was bestowed upon me by my peer group… and I changed peer groups. Now… Now I find it breeds complacency to the point of dereliction.

Best not to ask me about the Telepathy. I’m a Dad. Their mother is even better. Drives our boys insane.

We used to accuse Dad of being… well, at least, dressing… like a Derelict.

Perhaps that seems harsh. Dad liked – when not playing School Principal – to dress strictly for comfort. This worked out to green cotton pants (loose). Pants. Calling them chinos would be excessively kind, and probably historically inaccurate. A sweatshirt of an indiscriminate colour over a plain white tee, his black and grey wool hunting coat, mangled black cowboy hat, and a pair of Greb Kodiaks, unlaced… Insoles hanging out.

Add a shock of Mad Trapper White hair sticking out and a grizzled full beard, and you get the picture.

And Yet.

And yet from 8 to 5 Monday through Friday until 1997 he cut a western-professional impression in a suit and well-shone (but well worn) cowboy boots. He’d come home and hang up the image with the suit, and slip into irreverence. 

Yep, Irreverence. Dad was accused of that once by a fellow he’d met somewhere west of the sticks on some hunting trip or other with his oldest friend from the Old Country. He loved telling that story. 

I think he wore irreverence on his sleeve like a badge of honour – unknowingly at first – but after he was classified that day… with pleasure and a certain aplomb. Hence his out-of-school mode of dress; it was, in hindsight, a complete shucking of civilization for comfort and convenience. He dressed like a derelict because out of school, he had nothing to prove to anyone, and no one to impress, and took very little seriously.

Perhaps subconsciously I have - imperfectly - taken that page from the book of Dad. While at work these days, post forty, in my business-casual corporate culture, I dress like a man in dire need of a monkey and a yellow hat.

So? I like chinos.

It occurs to me that I must more completely adopt the page from the book of Dad, however. Not only do I not Clean Up as highly (ie – no suits, no ties) – but I also may take a few too many things slightly too seriously when not at work… and, thus, my usual decayed manner of dress-off-duty at least all matches, and is indicative of a particular style.

My Lovely wife will tell you, that style – and my favourite summer uniform – the Black shirt with the outlined orange dragon, surmounted from the bottom up in yellow and red flames, with matching flaming shorts – is the stuff nightmares, and she prefers not to be seen with me in public when I’m wearing that.

Perhaps I should rethink this, since nobody’s looking at me anyway. Completely adopt the page, at least the not-at-work part, and descend into irreverence. It strikes me that my Dad was a lot more fun to be around than maybe I am.

Less Harry Callaghan. More Heathcliff Huxtable. 

Couple years ago I'd shop in pjays. Why did I stop that? Nobody's looking at me. Seriously. Who cares?

Maybe I’ve already (finally) started.

Ask Youngest Kid about trolls some time. I need a new Summer Shirt.