Tangled Tales of An American Family

By Cecil Hoge

As the end of this year approaches I am on the cusp of a new rowing record for December. This year I have managed 12 outings as of December 23. Going rowing is easy for me since I live on the water and my dock is only a 100 from my back door. So, provided weather and tide permit, I go rowing as many as I can, no matter the season. Last December, I managed to go rowing 13 times. That was my previous record for December. But I am confident that I can eek a few more rowing sessions, bringing me to a new personal all-time rowing record for December.

That prediction is no shoe-in – at the moment a winter storm is raging. And as you can see from the picture above weather and tide are not permitting. So far it is raining with 20 to 30 mile per hour winds. And since my front lawn and the walkway to my dock are presently flooded, it is not presently practical to go rowing today.

The weather forecast for the next few days is not encouraging either since later this afternoon the rain is supposed to change to snow and the air temperature, presently in the low 50s, is supposed to go in the low teens. The prognosis for wind and temp is also not encouraging – the wind is forecast to continue blowing a 20 to 30 mph and the temperature is forecast stay below 23 degrees Fahrenheit / -5 Celsius. Besides I have some family obligations in 2 days…it seems Christmas is upon us.

Some will say rowing in December is truly crazy, but these days I treasure the opportunity to get out on the water, no matter the season.

And yes, as you may guess, it can be quite chilly on Long Island this time of year. And if the old Northwest wind happens to be blowing at 20 to 30 mph, as is its want in December, January, February and March, that can up the chill factor further. But I am never cold because I dress appropriately. I wear a Mustang Catalyst Survival Coat. It’s a beauty…made with heavy duty rip stop, waterproof nylon with foam flotation sections in the arms, the chest and the back. As such, it almost impervious to frigid winds and, best of all, the foam sections provide US Coast Guard Approved flotation. November through April, the Coast Guard requires you to wear a Coast Guard approved PFD (personal floatation device). So I is warm and legal when I go rowing.

But the flotation coat is not my only preparation for winter rowing. I wear flannel lined pants for extra leg warmth, a Filson wool hat and a pair of $9 Wild Wear gloves. I got the gloves at truck stop along the New Jersey Turnpike and with the large fluorescent yellow patches on the gloves, they stand out in a crowd and keep my digits warm and toasty.

I have other gloves that you would think are better suited to my use. Some cost $50, some cost $90, some cost over $100, they come from NRS, Duluth Trading, LL Bean, but no matter what the brand or how waterproof or how well-lined the other gloves are, none compare to my $9 Wild Wear gloves.

When I go rowing at this time of year, I get a special sense of peace and calm that comes from being out on the water. And while the air is colder in winter, it is also fresher, with the generally Northwest winds bringing fresh, clean air down from Canada. And when it is not raining or snowing, the skies can be a clear baby blue and the clouds giant puffy white cotton candy balls floating across the horizon. Everything is cleaner and fresher in the winter. The waters of our bays, which in the summer are a brown muddy color and have large globs of algae floating on the surface, clean up their act in the winter and the brown silty color disappears and you can even see the blades of your oars clearly in the water. Best of all, the great globs of algae are chilled out and migrate to the bottom of the bay for winter.

At that time of year, one can almost believe that our waterways are pure and clean, loaded with sea life, but that would be going a stretch too far. In truth, there is little sea life in these bays…be it spring, summer, fall or winter. But in the fall and winter, as the boats get hauled off of their buoys and transported off to their winter homes, the waters become calm and clear because boats are no longer motoring back and forth. In fact, in the winter I can often see the bottom of the bay as I row by.

I like rowing because it transports me to a place outside of what is considered the real world. In fact, it transports me to a place that many folks rarely get to see…the natural world. And while the natural world has been significantly altered by us humans, it is still there. I would argue that the natural world, the outside world, is in fact the true real world. Whenever I go rowing on the waters that lead from my house, I always feel I get away from the enclosed life of houses and offices and come upon a calmer, cleaner, fresher and more peaceful place.

Now in the winter, there are plenty of days that because of tide or weather or both, it is impractical to go. On those days, I either walk our quiet streets or use the elliptical up in our bedroom. And while walking or exercising on an elliptical can provide fair and good exercise, it is not nearly as fun or as peaceful or as calm as rowing. For one thing, when you row you a clear open view of the water and the land beyond and there are no obstacles directly in your way. Walking on the street with trees and houses on either side or using the elliptical in our bedroom, I feel enclosed by comparison.

Now I get the same open feeling about kayaking, but the exercise is not the same because in kayaking you are using just your upper body and arms.

Kayaking and rowing are really two different activities. Both are enjoyable and both provide true exercise. In kayaking, there is always the temptation to pause for a moment and take the view in. I call that “lallygagging”. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is downright pleasurable. In rowing, it is different and, yes, you might pause from time to time. There is no law against that, but rowing also has tendency to create “rhythm”. You get into this very repetitive, hypnotic motion of your arms and legs moving in repetitive cycles that is its own pleasure and addiction. So, with rowing, there this tendency to continue and not stop. Best of all, in winter, because you are using both your arms and legs, it is a much warmer form of exercise and your legs do not get chilly.

So, in my trips I generally row a little over 2 miles. Usually, I bring a beverage. In the summer, a seltzer or a water. In the winter, a cup of coffee or a seltzer or a water. I know that it is not a very wide selection, but it is what I drink these days.

Speaking of these days, we all have enough to worry about. With a sly Pandemic that keeps creeping back with new and different mutations, with high inflation and high gas prices, with logistic bottlenecks, with shortages of various products, with a war in Europe, our plate is full.

But when I go rowing, I forget the problems of the world, the problems of my business, the problems of everyday life. On the water, the world looks different. With a 15 to 20 mph wind blowing down from Canada, the sky is often a baby blue, the water a deeper darker azure blue and the temperature a refreshing 35 degrees Fahrenheit. That temp and wind velocity may not sound inviting, but it is. Out on the water, there is only me and the swans at this time of year. In the sky, I will see an occasional hawk or osprey or eagle circling around, checking the bay below for hapless fish ready for the plucking. On nearby docks or the shore, I will see Great White and Great Blue Herons, Canada Geese and various varieties of ducks, terns, sandpipers and seagulls. It is another world.

So when I go rowing, I am not considering the problems of China. I am out on the water getting whole body exercise, breathing in clean fresh air, basking in the sun and wind, happy that I am alive and lucky enough to be out on the water. For me, this is the real world and I like it.

I do feel sorry for Emperor Xi. He is having a tough time. China is trying to deal with new variants of the Coronavirus raging there and their “No Covid” policy has now been completely abandoned, but that nasty Coronavirus keeps giving our poor Emperor Xi more problems. They are experiencing a new surge of the dread virus and in spite of “opening up” they are still suffering from periodic shutdowns of factories and cities in China. This must be disappointing and downright embarrassing for Xi. He had a good run for over 2 years and could proclaim his “No Covid” policy a true success. But the tables have turned. Bloomberg and the The Financial Times have just reported that China has had over 250,000,000 cases of Covid in just the first 20 days of December.

I am guessing this is no exaggeration. While we do not use China for products as much as in the past, I still have 4 Chinese suppliers and they all report confusion and chaos and surprise about the “opening up” of the country. Previously, they had expressed some doubts about the “No Covid” Policy, but now that it has been abandoned, they seem even more confused. My Weihai supplier of inflatable boats is still required to test every employee every 2 days and that has been going on for the last 2 years. Imagine having a small stick with some white gauze on it, stuck up your nose every 2 days you go to work for the last two years.

My Dongguan supplier called me on Christmas Eve to wish me a Merry Christmas. I thanked him for that and wished him Happy Chinese New Year even though that does not happen until January 22nd. In talking, I asked him how things were going in China. He told me he had caught Covid 3 days earlier and 90% of his employees have gotten Covid in the last 10 days. That did not sound good to me.

But Xi is not the only guy on this planet with some problems. Vladimir Putin also has his plate full. He thought that NATO would be weakened and the invasion of Ukraine would result in a glorious victory in 3 days. Alas, the days passed and the war in Ukraine continued, like so many other wars, which once started, did not go as foreseen. And now almost 11 months into the effort, it seems victory remains out of reach for Czar Putin and Nato, instead of being weakened, has been strengthened. Another case of the best laid plans of Mice and Men.

I think something should be said about the terrible brutality of this war and terrible hardships it must impose on the Ukrainians. It is well known that Putin claims that Ukraine was always the property of Russia, but Mr. Putin does not tell the truth about that. Yes, Ukraine was many times in its history a vassal state of some larger power, but the larger powers were different in different times.

The Vikings had early go with Ukraine, Poland occupied it on various occasions, The Austrian Hungarian Empire also controlled Ukraine for some time. And let’s not forget Adolf Hitler, who armies occupied Ukraine during World War II. And of course, there is the fact that Ukraine became an independent country in 1991 and there was something called the Orange Revolution in 2004 when Russia tried sneak back into Ukraine and Ukrainians overthrew that effort.

Yes, Ukraine has had a long and sad history, but the fact is it is an independent country by the choice of the people there. And, if Putin did not figure that out before he went into Ukraine, he should know that by now. Ukraine does not want him there. The truth of the matter is that this war is a sad and tragic development effecting the peace and stability of the world. At moment, it is hard to see what Mr. Putin can do. He does not seem capable of winning, but he does not seem capable of ending the war. And so it goes on, jeopardizing the whole world.

This brings us to predicament of President Biden. The good President had wanted to save the planet when he came into office, so among his first steps was cancelling oil pipeline construction and restricting drilling of oil and gas. Joe just wanted to encourage people to use electric cars. And while all these things will no doubt be helpful in the future, it did not occur to our President that if you decide to send all sorts of arms to Ukraine, Czar Putin might get angry and try to use oil as a weapon. I would call that a blind spot.

It should be obvious that Russia produces about 30% of the world’s oil and gas and that Russia might want to use that fact to help with its Ukrainian goals. And it probably should have occurred to President Biden, his advisors and the leaders of the EU and UK that when you institute sanctions in response to the invasion of Ukraine, that Russia might not be happy about that.

And perhaps, another consideration should have dawned on the leaderships of the U.S., UK and EU. That is that they are not the only countries in this world buying gas and oil and that maybe, just maybe, Russia might have some other customers quite delighted to buy their oil and gas.

Then there might have been some review of the populations of the world to gain a bit of insight. Yes, the U.S., EU and UK are prosperous areas of the world, but in fact, altogether they only represent about 12% of the world’s population. And so, some consideration of what the other 88% of the world’s population might think about the war in Ukraine and the new conflict zone between the West and the East.

So the question arises whether the countries imposing sanctions on Russia wondered where the other 88% of the world stood? The attitude of Russia was probably pretty easy to see. And yes, there are some other countries that presently seem to be on our side. Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia, but it seems that no one realized that China and India might want to use this unfortunate situation as a buying opportunity to get oil and gas at a bargain. Surprise, surprise, that is exactly what they did.

So much for some of the world’s problems effecting 2022 and posing giant questions for 2023.

I have some problems of my own. This year my wife and I faced some major milestones and records. And that in itself was troubling enough.

Consider the various milestones or records that we faced this last year. The first one that occurred earlier in 2022 and that was our 50th Anniversary of being married. That is generally thought to be a good thing, but I am having a hard time digesting that single fact. Married for 50 years…yes, that is good thing…I truly love my wife and I am proud we made it this far. And yes, it was a great achievement. Not many couple can claim that.

That said, I think I would prefer to have just passed my 20th Anniversary. After all, that is pretty good record…a lot marriages these days do not last 20 months…some do not last 20 days. And if it was my 20th Anniversary, then I would be a whole lot younger and I am sure I would feel better about that. And I am pretty sure wife would also prefer we just passed her 20th anniversary.

And that brings up another milestone, or record you might say. As of September, I turned 80 years old. OMG might be a newer generation’s remark about that. I might say Holy Manure myself. Perhaps, I might augment that phrase. And yes, I am mighty happy that I am still alive. And yes, as I already mentioned, I am mighty happy to still be able to go rowing at my age at this time of year…or at any other time year. But 80 years old seems like a pretty big number to me and I am definitely not happy about that. 50 would be better.

And that is still not the only milestone or record. On January 1, 2023 our son turned 50 years old. Considering the fact that he is autistic and was not expected to live that long, turning 50 was also a mighty big milestone and record.

Now, you may say I am cheating a little bit here by including my son’s 50th birthday as a milestone or record of 2022, but I feel it is completely fair since I distinctly remember my wife going into labor before midnight, December 31st, 1972. So, the fact that it took my son a few hours to get out is not the deciding factor in my mind. The fact was he was on the way at the end of 1972 and that makes his 50th birthday a 2022 record.

I will also mention that my wife began planning his birthday party at least four months ago, so this milestone or record has been hanging over us for a long time. And if I think about the 3 events…50 years married, 80 years old and and my son’s 50th birthday, I have to say this has been a very trying year.

By the way, I do want report that I did break my old rowing record. Not by much to be sure. I chalked up 14 rowing sessions, one over my previous record. But a win is win. Now I do not count rowing in December as one of the 3 stressful events or milestones of this year. In truth, rowing is stress reliever.

Now, I can report that we are already in 2023 and, despite the stress and turmoil caused by world events and these 3 major records or milestones, we did manage to get through 2022 and celebrate all 3 events successfully. Our wedding anniversary was celebrated at North Fork restaurant with family and friends, my birthday was celebrated in September at another restaurant with some close family and friends and our son’s birthday was celebrated at home yesterday with more than 30 family and friends.

So, in spite of high inflation, a looming recession, a war in Ukraine, an endlessly determined Coronavirus, product and food shortages, predictions of gloom, doom and World War III, we got through all 3 major milestones to 2023 and while the looming problems of world have not been solved, they have not yet spun completely out of control. And certainly, I hope and wish these problems reach a peaceful and calm solution.

So, now that it is 2023, what did I do?

I went for my first row in 2023.

I launched my rowing SUP off my floating dock this morning. I noticed that the mirror at the back of my rowing frame was loaded with heavy dew drops making it impossible to see through the mirror. I did not bother to reach forward and wipe the water away. Today, I am going to row the old-fashioned way, blind to what is in front of me. Of course, after thousands of rowing trips from my house, I pretty much know my way.

The weather was favorable for rowing as you might be able see from the above picture…a flat low bank of clouds hung over the dark water of the bay, the sun was trying unsuccessfully to break through, the temperature was a comfortable 48, the wind had laid down and was almost non-existent.

I rowed out on to Little Bay, set up my little Bluetooth speaker and start streaming music from WFUV, my favorite NY station. As I rowed out around the old washed-out bridge that used to lead into Strong’s Neck, The War on Drugs started their song, “I Don’t Live Here Anymore”.

In Setauket Bay I rowed past 50 to 60 swans off to my left. I did not disturb them and they did not disturb me. Off to my right, high up in 2 tall trees, I saw 2 hawks hanging out on the Strong’s Neck side of the the bay. No doubt they were scanning the water and the land for edible fish or mammals.

I rowed further to the mouth of Port Jefferson Bay, my bluetooth speaker playing Joni Mitchel, The Rolling Stones, Gorillaz and Billy Idol along the way.

On the shore ahead of me, I hear 2 loud shotgun blasts. My view was still obscured by dew drops on my mirror, so I could not see who was shooting. I presumed it was a couple of duck hunters trying to blow away some ducks. I swung my rowing SUP around to see first hand what I could see. It did not help. I saw no duck hunters and no ducks. Those guys must be well camouflaged on the shore.

This seemed like a good opportunity to row back away from that shore and those duck hunters, wherever they were. I know buckshot cannot go too far, but I feel it was better to put some distance beteeen me and the duck hunters. I rowed back home with more music on the bluetooth, sliding quietly over the water, my blades barely making splash sounds. On the way back, the sun began to peek under clouds as I approached the old washed out bridge.

Going along, I thought about this little rowing trip of 2023 – my journey today was a little over 2 miles there and back.

That made me think of what it must have been like for Caleb Brewster, the young American spy in Colonial Days who used to row a small whaleboat from Strong’s Neck to Fairfield, Connecticutt. That’s a good 12 to 14 miles one way, depending on which secret spot he started out from and which secret spot he landed at. It was an essential job, since George Washington needed information on where the British Army and British warships were located. It was different time, but Caleb must have been pretty tired after rowing 24 to 28 miles on just one of those trips. So, my little trip was pretty puny by comparison.

I continued home. By the time I got into my cove, all of the dew drops had evaporated off of my mirror and I could see my dock perfectly as I approached it. I don’t think Caleb had a mirror when he made his spy rowing trips. It might have been very useful.

As I pulled my rowing SUP up on to my floating dock, it occurred to me that this was not a bad way for an 80 year old to start a new year.

By Cecil Hoge

March, 2022

I would have thought we have enough to trouble us with the recent Pandemic, the coming and going of Beta, Delta and Omicron, the acrimony between the left and right in this country, the disputes over basic facts and realities, the dramatic rise of inflation, the sad history of gun violence in this country, the altercations between peoples, races and countries and many other persistent and present problems afflicting our society, but it seems fate is not satisfied with these simple and recurrent problems. To all of those, we must now add the new War in the Ukraine.

And yes, in the words of Laurel and Hardy, we have gotten into another fine mess. Unfortunately, this situation is not like a Laurel and Hardy movie which you can watch as those two clowns find themselves in greater and greater trouble and laugh until tears come into our eyes and all the sadness and absurdity is replaced by uncontrolled mirth. No, this is not one of those situations. This problem is a really big mess and a truly serious situation and it is not certain how it will turn out.

So Mr. Putin began his invasion a little over four weeks ago and the progress of that invasion does not tell us where this fine mess may go. Mr. Putin chose to invade Ukraine from 4 separate directions. Presumably, he did that in order to take over the whole country. Strangely and maybe hopefully, he has not been successful so far. Before this invasion began many predicted that the Russian army would roll over Ukraine forces in a few days and that, so far, has not happened. In the north of Ukraine, around the principal city of the Ukraine, Kyiv, the Russians have so far been thwarted from entering that city. In the South of the country, Mr. Putin’s forces appear more successful, but appear stalled.

Now there are many opinions about Mr. Putin’s invasion. Some have suggested it was an act of genius, that the invasion showed great ”savvy”, some have said Mr. Putin is great statesman, a person who should be respected. Most people in this country have said that this invasion was an act of dictator who had no right to invade a nearby peaceful country. That is the view of the present U.S. administration.

Even before this invasion began, the present administration predicted it would occur and made great efforts to get the UK and the 27 countries of EU to agree to their point of view and to forge a united and concerted approach to this problem.

And it must said, whatever your earlier opinions about Russia and its relationship with the Ukraine, the Biden Administration has been successful in getting both the agreement and support of the UK and EU. That said, trying to co-ordinate 27 countries that make up the EU and other allies around the world has not been easy. And it has been even harder to get all those countries to decide what harsh steps should be taken. But harsh steps have been decided on and if they were not as strong as some wished, they were far stronger than Russia thought.

Some have said we have not acted harshly enough. Some have suggested we should have armed the Ukrainians well before the invasion. Some have said we should establish a ”No Fly Zone” in the skies over Ukraine. Some have said we should give the Ukrainians jet planes, tanks and other offensive weapons. So far, the United Stated and its allies have only provided the Ukraine with humanitarian aid and tactical weapons of defense. And so far, these weapons have helped slow the advances of the Russian army.

It is said by some that Russia has legitimate argument to invade the Ukraine and that it was the enlargement and encroachment of Nato that actually caused this situation. And certainly, if you listen to the words of Vladimir Putin, he has long said that Russia has been wronged and the West has stolen away a border country that always was under the control of Russia. And while that is historically incorrect, it is true as recently as the demise of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine was a satellite country of Russia.

It should be admitted that some leading minds have predicted this was a coming problem. George Kennan, the American diplomat who first formulated the ”containment theory” to handle the Soviet Union predicted as much. He said that Russia would always require its ”satellite countries” and certainly the Ukraine had been a key satellite country of the former Soviet Union. George Kennan went on to say, late in his life, after the U.S. and the EU had decided to enlarge NATO, that Russia would never accept that enlargement. And certainly it is true that Russia is in the process of trying to correct what they think is a wrong.

So there are valid arguments that suggest if we had not expanded the EU and NATO, the invasion of Ukraine would never have taken place. And that might be true.

There is only one problem with that argument. The EU and NATO did expand starting 1993 and countries did join the both EU and NATO and those countries seem to like the fact that they did join. In addition, it must be noted that Berlin Wall did fall in November of 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed December of 1991. Finally, it should be noted the present country of Russia is different in size and population from the former Soviet Union. It also should be noted in August of 1991 the Ukraine became an independent democratic country.

In short, that was then, this is now.

This brings up the conundrum of the Ukraine. Yes, it had been a part of the Soviet Union. Yes, it is not a member of NATO. Yes, it is not a member of the EU. And yes, the Ukraine does not want too be a part of Russia.

Enter Czar Putin – Vlad the Bad has decided this is a great wrong, a terrible sin against Mother Russia. It now seems Mother Russia wants to reclaim one of its lost children. In Czar Putin’s effort to reclaim the Ukraine, he has now invaded that country. The invasion has not gone according plan. It is taking longer than expected and the Ukrainians have chosen to fight instead of welcome the Russian Army. This has apparently angered Czar Putin and in an effort to secure the Ukraine for Russia, the Russian Army has chosen to destroy the Ukraine. At least, that appears to be the strategy of Czar Putin.

There is the Conundrum in all this. Yes, maybe this war would never have occurred if the EU and NATO had not expanded, but the EU and NATO did expand. And yes, Russia has now invaded a nearby country that is not in the EU or NATO, but it happens to border on a number countries who are in either the EU or NATO or both. And yes, it seems clear that the Ukraine does not want to be part of Russia.

In the meantime, bombing and shelling and hypersonic missiles are raining down on the Ukraine. Ukrainian men, women and children are being killed. Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are dying daily in various parts of Ukraine. The U.S., the UK, the EU have slapped layer after layer of sanctions on Russia. And the fighting and the invasion still goes on. The Russian people and Russian oligarchs are finding their economy being affected and their access to banks, yachts and houses being denied. And many in Russia are not happy about this.

So what is the right thing to do? Let the Ukraine be conquered and destroyed by the Russian Army? Help a country in trouble and provide arms and aid? Establish a ”No Fly Zone” and confront Russia directly in the skies over the Ukraine? Send in troops and expand the war throughout Europe? Start a set of actions that could lead directly to World War III and the use of nuclear weapons?

Further complicating this situation are feelings and wishes of the Ukrainian people. They did not get the memo that they are now part of Russia. They were living a perfectly peaceful and relatively war-free existence up until 4 weeks ago. Yes, there was a simmering war in the Donbas region of their country, but that has been contained and limited over the last 10 years. Then there is the fact that Ukrainians do not want to be a part of Russia. They, in fact, have pledged to fight Russia to the last man, woman and child.

If you think the complications stop there you would be wrong. There are other worries. The 27 countries that compose the EU have some memories of World War II. Other border countries, such as Finland and Sweden, also have similar memories. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania also have long memories and all of these countries are afraid that Russia, if successful in the Ukraine, will keep going.

So the stakes are high and there is plenty of room for things to get worse. And yes, it is another fine mess.

By Cecil Hoge

It has been a busy few months. So many things to ponder. The Pandemic is still out and about, but seemingly more on the outs. The winter surge is fading and the summer surge has not yet come. Medical experts and politicians of both parties cheer the supposed end, saying the light is shining at the end of the tunnel and America is reopening. Meanwhile, new variants may lurk in the background.

Prices for all goods and services are raging and everyone on a budget who buys necessities and niceties is in a clamor over that. No worries for billionaires, multi-millionaires, reality stars, news anchors, tech entrepreneurs, trendy podcasters, social media influencers and brand ambassadors!

But for rest of us, inflation is a real concern. Yes, salaries are up, but it is a merry chase between prices and wages and somehow prices have the edge.

In the world outside of the U.S., Czar Vlad is rattling sabers and telling the Ukraine that it is our highway or obliteration. Slow Joe, our present President, says I’ve read your mail Vlad, it’s a war of choice and sanctions or you make nice nice and we might hold your hand.

Up in Canada, truckers are agitated over masks and vaccines while down here TV commentators and republicans cheer them on. I wonder if those same folks would be so enthusiastic if it was their garbage truckers not picking up their refuse.

Emperor Xi in the Middle Kingdom is trying to swat down Omicron in old Hong Kong…good luck with that. Meanwhile, the Olympics limp towards a conclusion.

There is a lot of information, misinformation and disinformation to sort through these days. Things come at us at a bewildering speed on a daily basis and it is not easy to sort out what is what. Hopefully, most of us possess come some common sense and we can discern the wheat from the chaff. Hopefully, most of us view events from different perspectives and consider different viewpoints and then make up our minds. Hopefully, we have some sense of past history to least understand the present in context of the past.

There are a lot of views about vaccines, boosters, masks, disinfectants, politics, soap, cures, inflation, stagflation and the economy. I will not try to muddy those waters here. Each person must decide for themselves how to approach the problems we face. And as we all know, many people have many different views.

A few things are certain: In 2019, a new disease started in China and spread around the world and began to infect a lot of people. This disease eventually appeared and infected people in every country in the world. In the U.S. over 900,000 deaths have been attributed to what was first called the Coronavirus. Over time, this disease also became known variously the Wuhan Virus, Covid 19, Alpha, Delta, Omicron, the China Virus and many other knicknames.

In time, it became a Pandemic affecting all parts of this world.

In this country, it is probably best known as The Pandemic. Of course, for those who have read history, this was not The Pandemic, it was only one of many Pandemics that have afflicted Mankind since history has been recorded.

The history of this new Pandemic’s arrival, spread and the different reactions to solve it are now pretty well known. First it spread in China, then it appeared in Europe. Shortly thereafter, it came to the United States, Canada, South America. It went on to spread to all of Asia, India and Africa. Within a year, The Pandemic had spread to every country in the world.

To date, almost 6,000,000 deaths worldwide have been attributed to The Pandemic.

Various solutions have been tried to decrease or eliminate The Pandemic. Many solutions have been proposed…washing hands vigorously, maintaining social distances between people, wearing masks, closing down restaurants, bars, hotels, stadiums, theaters, convention centers and other businesses. None of these measures have been sufficient to stop the spread of the Coronavirus…aka Wuhan Virus, Covid 19, The Pandemic.

Pharmaceutical companies entered into a great race to introduce vaccines which were first were thought to prevent the spread of the disease, but later came to be thought to prevent serious hospitalization and death from the disease. These vaccines were developed very quickly and started to be widely deployed about a year and half after the beginning the first virus infections.

Time and experience and the emergence of new variants of the original disease changed the perceptions of what the true benefits of the vaccines were. Nevertheless, those that had some faith in medical statistics and published medical studies could believe that at the very least the vaccines provided protection to most people against severe disease, hospitalizations and death.

This brings us to moment we now are. There now have been 5 separate variants emerging from the original Coronavirus. The latest variant, Omicron, has proven to be the most infectious. Fortunately, it has also proven to be somewhat milder. Even more fortunately, the Omicron surge now seems to be ebbing in England, Europe and the United States. Presently, experts are predicting the Omicron variant will fade with the winter chill.

What is not known is whether this variant or new variants will emerge to further pester humans. Time will tell, as they say.

At the moment if one is keeping score of the Coronavirus so far, I would give the bugs a solid 7. And if one sticks to the idea of keeping score, I would give the drugs a limpid 3, with the proviso that it is still unknown what the long term effects of having multiple injections of vaccines will be. Many may question the 3 number, whether limpid or not, choosing some other number between zero and 10.

Let’s put that judgment aside…the above scores that I have assigned to bugs and drugs are only temporary and arbitrary scores since it is not clear whether the game is coming to an end or about to go on for several more innings.

All of us have noticed that whatever the score you assign to the bugs of The Pandemic and to the drugs developed to defeat them, The Pandemic has altered the lives of many people. Again, if I were to score the effects of the Pandemic, I would give that a rousing 25. Again, that is an arbitrary score, but I think the effects of The Pandemic on people has been pretty big.

Not only did The Pandemic create affect our lives, it also altered the state of the economy. It should be admitted that when The Pandemic first arrived the American economy was on the mend and close to fully cured from previous ills of The Great Recession. Some would say the economy just before The Pandemic arrived on the scene was the best it ever has been, others would say, not quite, it was recovering from the terrible real estate and stock market collapse of 2008 & 2009 quite well, but maybe it was not completely recovered. Wherever you stand on that issue, it was very clear that the arrival of The Pandemic set us backward.

And from The Pandemic came many effects, actions and reactions. The government decided, rightly or wrongly, in beginning of The Pandemic to shut down offices, businesses, stadiums, theaters, restaurants, bars, convention centers, flights going in and out of the country.

This shutdown of businesses had the immediate effect of putting millions of people out of work. The government acted quickly to soften that blow. And those actions, sending sums of money directly to people and companies, did help many people and many businesses get by during the frightening and financially difficult times of The Pandemic.

The input of billions of dollars directly was very helpful in getting back on the road to recovery, but it was done by the simple method of the government printing money that did not exist. It was also true that the government of the United States printed money a few years earlier to get out of the earlier worldwide collapse of stock markets and financial institutions. So, it should be remembered that the government has propped up the the economy with printed money for almost 15 years.

That created quite large deficits for the government and had an inflationary effect on the economy because we debased the value of our currency to print our way out of The Great Recession and The Pandemic. It should be said that debasing the currency was probably a necessary evil in order to work our way out of these two great calamities.

With the printing of money we did not have came the inevitable and logical result: inflation.

This was further complicated by The Pandemic and some of the problems The Pandemic caused. That fact that shops and malls and restaurants were closed caused people to seek new and different purchasing solutions. Online shopping doubled in the first months of The Pandemic and what people spent money on also changed. So, instead of going to Disneyland or a movie or a restaurant, people ordered Take Out. Much of the Take Out ended up being sent in, as people had meals delivered directly to their apartments or homes. People were afraid to congregate in bars and restaurants and that was made easier by the fact that many bars and restaurants were closed.

People sought other avenues of entertainment. In home exercise equipment, streaming movies and drinking at home rose in popularity while the attendance of music festivals, trade shows, bars, restaurants and sports stadiums declined or collapsed. Air travel almost ceased and people sought activities that could done with social distancing involved. This created a new boom and appreciation home exercise, fishing, kayaking, jogging, walking, eating and drinking. So some activities were decimated while others boomed.

At the same time tens of millions of people rethought their jobs. Some got laid off, some found new occupations, some just stayed home.

All of these changes created new and odd declines and surges in demand, creating sudden shortages of toilet paper, household soaps, masks, sporting goods, groceries, cardboard, paper, warehouse workers, delivery trucks and people to work in technology companies.

And thus the economy experienced sharp declines and rises in odd and strange ways, creating huge demand for new workers, new goods and parts to make those goods. Companies were forced to pay higher wages to get people to man their businesses and that was good. At same time, because costs were rising in factories around the world and in this country, factories everywhere raised their prices and that was bad.

So inflation went from being benign at one or two percent to being a Tiger at seven and half percent. Wages rose along with prices, but it was a heady race and surely prices had the upper hand. So, I give inflation a score of 12 and wages a score of 9. Maybe that is right, maybe that is wrong.

As if that was not enough, enter Vlad the Bad! Czar Vlad had his own agenda and it just can not wait. Czar Vlad was in need of few more satellite countries and Ukraine looked mighty good to him.

Sleepy Joe, as he is known to some, our President, as he is known to others, has been trying to discourage Vlad the Bad, saying I know your game. We got satellites in the sky, we can see what you are doing…you are making a war of choice. If that is so, it’s sanctions for you. So, Sleepy Joe has been very indiscreet and rude in pointing out that Czar Putin may invade Ukraine, but he will have to pay some kind of price.

The price to be paid by Russia has been determined to be ”sanctions”, but as they say, the devil is in the details. Europe and England say they are fully on board, but Germany a little concerned about heat since most of that comes from Vlad the Bad in the form of natural gas. The thought has occurred to Germany that Vlad the Bad might be really bad and shut off the gas. So, a hot war in the Ukraine could result in cold homes in Germany.

So there we are and fine pickle it is!

By Cecil Hoge

I was an only child and that may be part of the problem. My parents gave me quite a bit of freedom to do what I wanted and that allowed me to decide what I did not want to do. I did not have sisters or brothers to take up my valuable time, to play with or to ask me to do things. And that also gave me more leeway to be lazy.

Early on I developed a lack of interest in making my bed and cleaning up my room. When going to school I quickly learned that you could work hard or you could just coast. I chose to just coast.

I will say I worked hard to develop some skills. I liked to work with clay in class, build small wooden forts, drop water bombs out of our apartment window and raise my hand to attract taxicabs. My mother taught me early on how to hail taxicabs and I have been a fan of that up until the era of Uber. I have since adapted to the use of Uber by allowing someone else to input the needed instructions on their cell phone. That has a double benefit: they do the work and they pay.

I grew up in New York City and that encouraged an early use of taxicabs and a dislike of subways and buses. That is not to say that I was an inactive boy. I liked to ride my tricycle on the sidewalks near our apartment on East 92nd Street…that is until I took my tricycle down a hill and I found myself traveling faster than a tricycle should. The result was not pretty: I hurtled over a curb at the end of block, went airborne briefly, almost ran under oncoming car and acquired seven stitches in my chin.

That experience was an important life lesson: Watch your speed!

That did not mean that I sometimes did not make great efforts to accomplish important tasks. As an example of my grit and determination, I once walked 60 blocks as a young boy, buying 12 boxes of Cracker Jacks in an effort to obtain one Captain Video Ring. Success was obtained on the 12th box. This also taught me an important life lesson: Persistence can pay off!

When I got older and went to college, my father remarried and I acquired a brother. That worked out well since my brother stayed in New York while I spent six years trying to graduate from The University of Virginia…two years to flunk out, two years to get back in, two more years to graduate. As you can see from this last sentence, I did learn the value of persistence.

And here I have to say, I also learned another important life lesson. You can coast through college, but you can’t cut two thirds of your classes, party 5 days a week and avoid flunking out. In other words, I found out that there were limits to laziness and sometimes you must apply yourself if you wish to accomplish something. Of course, that did not teach me what I might want to accomplish, but it did teach me how to finish something.

It is is true that I have worked continuously for 54 years and there are some people under the impression that I work hard. And it is true that I work hard on the things that interest me but I am only able to do that because I delete or reduce many other tasks that other people consider important.

Considering the fact that I am inherently lazy, I had to develop a system of laziness. There are many self-help books, articles, and websites devoted to telling people how to avoid gout, catch fish, make money, lose weight, grow hair, invest in stocks, be wise, have clear skin, but there are no books or literature or information online devoted to tell people how to improve and refine laziness. I thought I might correct this omission and explain my system of laziness.

I would like to point, while it may sound simple, being lazy is a kind of art. The trick is to do as little as possible and still be able to accomplish some important things, like, for example, supporting yourself and your family.

Now there are people who are very successful at being lazy, but not at supporting themselves or their family. But I say, where is the percentage in that? Being lazy is quite uncomfortable if someone is trying to take back your car, delete your cell phone service, cut off your cable service, kick you out of your home. No, laziness is of no benefit if you cannot enjoy your laziness. And that means simply that you must have some way to get by in life without being a burden on yourself, your family or your friends.

In truth that means you must either be able to financially support yourself or get enough income from a liability lawsuit or a carefully planned marriage or well-designed prenup to be comfortable. And that should include all family members – your wife, husband and/or children – because who wants a whole bunch of people complaining all the time. Laziness is something to be savored, something to be enjoyed, it should not be impaired by other more mundane difficulties.

Considering the times that I have passed through, it is not always easy to employ my system of laziness. You have to be able to twist and turn and make adjustments according the times.

I have to insert here, when I was a young man I learned something very important about manufacturing efficiency and this proved helpful in refining a system of laziness. I was working in my father’s warehouse producing something called “AutoCast Fishing Rods”. There I found the secret of avoiding ”lost motion”. That is, I discovered that you could do the same thing two different ways and one way could be far slower and harder while the other way could be far faster and easier.

This taught me to always choose the faster and easier way.

When it comes to aches and pains, they say that motion is the lotion. But when it comes to efficiency, the less motion you expend in accomplishing a task, the better. When working on the fishing rod production line, I found the more economical your motions and more direct your actions, the more fishing rods you produced. I have since applied that technique in the pursuit of laziness.

Now, recently, a new development has occurred. The Pandemic came. While the Pandemic certainly had many terrible aspects, in one way, it proved to be a blessing in disguise. It truly upped my Lazy Game. Because the Pandemic altered many aspects in the way we work and live, it also opened new vistas in how to be lazy:

1. Working from home. Oh, let me count the many ways and opportunities that little change made.
2. Now, because you do not have to get up and drive to the office, you can sleep 30 to 60 minutes more. Even better, in most cases, you do not have to brush your teeth, shave your face or take a shower, although your partner may object to that if you do not shower after several days in row. You only have to dress from the the waist up – that saves a good 10 minutes a day. Yes, if you have some important Skype, Zoom or Microsoft meetings, it may be necessary to present yourself a little better – 2 or 3 strokes with brush through your hair should do it. Wear a shirt that appears to be clean and crisp. Maybe a swipe or two with an electric razor. Remember, some stubble looks sexy these days.
3. And of course, because restaurants and bars are less well attended, all you have to do is eat and drink at home. That saves a whole lot of lost motion and keeps many a drinking person out of jail. Takeout: I have been a fan of takeout long before the Pandemic. For years, we provided significant income to some of our local eateries and delis by buying takeout. Recently, because of the Pandemic, local restaurants have added an excellent refinement. It is called ”Curbside Service”. Now, you can call in your takeout order, drive to a parking space just outside the restaurant, call the restaurant to let them know you are there and they will bring the order directly to your car door. Wow. That saves an easy 30 minutes a week. Now you may ask why not take this one step further and ask the restaurant to deliver the takeout order to your door, but here I must state there are limits to the benefits of laziness. Specifically, this invites the likelihood of the food arriving cold and clammy. I hate cold and clammy food, so I make the effort to pick it up while it is still hot and ready for consumption.
4. Starting work in the era of Pandemic has been made easy with cell phones, PCs and laptops. In my case, it is just short and quick journey from my bedroom down the thirteen steps to my living room. I have taken over my favorite lounge chair in the living room as my office. It has an excellent view through large glass picture window out to my front lawn, my dock and the bay beyond. All that is necessary is to power up on my various digital devices and flip on the VPN. Voila, I am at zee office monitoring e-mails, reviewing incoming orders. Added perks – should the tide be rolling in and the weather conditions amendable, I can be out on the water paddling or just drifting on bay soaking up sun in just minutes. Should someone need to contact me cell or Skype, I can turn down the bluetooth speaker blasting some cherished rock song, pick up my oblong and say, ”What the hell do you want?” Actually, I am far more polite than that, but the point is that I can stay in touch on land or sea.
5. There are some drawbacks to working from the comfort of my armchair… other people talking in the background can muddle an important call, my VPN, provide by our rotten cable service, has a tendency to drop out 5 or 10 times day. Here, I have to take a little blame. So far, I have not complained to the rotten cable service because I am too lazy to pick up the cell phone next to me.
6. And of course, when working from home, you can schedule your own time. That means you can eat or drink when you want, put a log on the fire, take a sun break on the porch, go to the hardware store when you want, fix that loose doorknob when you want. These days they call that multi-tasking, but in my mind it really is improving work efficiency while being as lazy as possible.
7. The Pandemic allows you to refine your diet while reducing time and effort. I would like to suggest the following 3 diet solutions for a quick and easy lunch – 1. P&J (aka, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) – open 2 jars, smear some of each on 2 pieces of bread and you got yourself real meal, 2. grilled cheese – alas, you do have to clean the frying pan, but preparation is quick and easy, 3. cereal – pull out a bowl, fill it up with cereal and pour milk, add sugar as needed. These simple lunch solutions are quick and easy, tasty and nutritious and clean up is almost simple as preparation. Plus, they not only save you time, they save you money. They are the proverbial Win, Win.
8. The above are just a few of the ways the Pandemic has upped my Lazy Game.

But one should not forget the classics, so below I mention some other important classical methods to reduce and delete unwanted work:

1. Wear a hat – Why? This avoids the necessity of combing or brushing your hair, since your hat safely hides the state of your hair. If you are not going to an office to work, you can complete many important trips to grocery stores, hardware stores, marinas and outdoor bars without ever removing your hat and revealing you are a disheveled slob.
2. Never wash your car. It is best to depend on the Good Lord to send rain and do that for you. Should your car need more than the Good Lord’s assistance, take it to the local car wash. The time spent at the car wash reading magazines may to lead to some important discoveries about miracle diets, hair loss cures and new restaurants.
3. Never mow your lawn. It is said that there is much pleasure to derive from keeping your lawn green and trim. That surely is true, but there is more pleasure in watching someone else mowing your lawn and keeping it green and trim.
4. Do things in circles – instead of getting up to do one thing and then coming back to sit down, try to remember some of the 58 things your wife asked you to do and do one or two them on your way back to the chair. After all, if you are expending some energy to do one thing, it is not terrible to do one or two things more on the return trip. A good example of this is: if you are getting to bring your empty dinner plate back to the kitchen sink, remember to pick up a spoon and a pint of ice cream on your back. It’s a Win, Win.
5. Do not do anything that may extend your efforts without added benefits. Using the example above of returning from your trip to the kitchen with a pint of ice cream, you may consider that you may not want to eat a whole pint of ice cream. If that is the case, you may ponder taking out a clean dish and a ice cream scoop to download a smaller serving of ice cream. Banish that thought. You have already acquired the tools you need to accomplish your task. Simply return to your chair, pop off the ice cream lid, dig in with your spoon and eat as little or as much of the pint as you wish. Of course, this does require a trip back to the fridge to put the remaining ice cream safely away. But as they say in exercise, ”no pain, no gain.” And remember, by following my advice, you have avoided the task of pulling out a clean dish, dirtying it up and later having to wash it. Trust me, your wife will be much happier about that.

Yes, the Pandemic has provided the lazy with many opportunities to up their game. And the fact that some activities are not always practical to do, such as dining indoors during a plague or going to Disneyland, is not as bad as it may sound. These are really just self-economizing opportunities to save gas, time, money and up your Lazy Game.

By Cecil Hoge

August 11th, 2021

We are back in Montauk for vacation in the new normal. Everyone we speak to tells us that Montauk this summer has been “crazy”. Delmack, the Jamaican lady who comes and cleans our room each day, tells us Montauk has been “crazy”.

”People do not want to go in town…it’s just too crazy…no parking, cars jutting in and out everywhere, people everywhere, no space in the shops, no tables free in the restaurants…yes, Montauk is crazy this summer.”

It was not that way last summer when many stayed away from indoor restaurants and shops. The town was still crowded, the beaches were crowded and outdoor restaurants were crowded, but then many wore masks and many were far more cautious in their vacation celebrations.

The Pandemic still about, but far more people have been vaccinated and there is a sense that things are returning to some kind of normal.

But at the WaveCrest, our Montauk vacation residence, it seems normal is already here. In the mornings, there are beautiful sunrises most days. Early in the morning, the beaches are empty except for one or two fishermen and some eager early morning walkers or joggers. During the day, the umbrellas pop up on the beach and beach chairs are laid out and families and kids come and then girls looking for boys and boys looking for girls come and then, others looking for each other come…they all sit around in little clusters and the only sound heard except that of the ocean surf is the motoring sound of the beach buggy zipping back and forth, hauling umbrellas and chairs to their appointed places. As mid-morning comes the voices of kids and adults are heard drifting across the beach with the sound of the ocean murmuring quietly or roaring loudly with waves breaking on the beach.

Today, the ocean is murmuring…making a sound more like Long Island Sound than the great Atlantic Ocean. Other days, the surf is booming. We came the day after a tropical storm and then the sea was still fierce with waves crashing in thunderous booms. But no more, the weather has turned hot, the wind has dropped to a stall, the sun blisters everything that exposes itself for more than 20 minutes. It is as hot as Montauk gets. We are at the end of Long Island and usually cool breezes sweep over these rolling hills and somewhat barren landscape and generally it never really gets that hot. But these days it is.

Big Doings are going on in the world. The present President is struggling with his new job and his recent decision to depart Afghanistan. It is not going well, two bombs went off near the airport in Kabul and over 100 people were killed, including 13 U.S. servicemen. Leaving is not easy and whether it could be done better is on the minds of many. I have decided that our exit from Afghanistan was not correctly planned, but I have no knowledge of what good withdrawal would look like. Hopefully, something less than the present chaos. That said over 100,000 people have been flown out and many thousands more are hopefully waiting to leave. Whatever, it is not a pretty or a proud exit. For those who remember, it reminds one of the last days of Saigon.

On the stock market front, all is seemingly well. Markets seem to be drifting ever higher in this strange summer. Occasionally, the market take tip, but even when they do that they remain near all time highs. The immediate market collapse that was predicted by the former President, like the reversal of recent election results and the magical disappearance and demise of the Pandemic, has not come to pass.

In fact, on the Coronavirus front, Covid 19 has again raised its ugly face. As we begin this vacation, cases are running 140,000 a day, hospitalizations are again getting very high in certain Southern States and deaths are running over 1,000 per day. In short, in spite of vaccinating almost 50% of the population, the number of cases and hospitalizations are higher than at the same time last year. Deaths are running just a little above their levels at the same time last year. We shall see how that is proceeding as one vacation in Montauk melds into another vacation in Maine.

Two vacations in the same year may sound obscene, but, hey, we are getting on in age and we have to make the most of it…so, two vacations is this year’s plan.

One thing has not changed at the WaveCrest, that is the very convenient food truck called the WaveCrave. It is parked about 50 feet from our motel room door. That is a truly great feature in this crazy busy summer season in Montauk. All that is necessary is to mosey out of our motel room door, walk the 50 feet and give Steve my order for the morning. And doing so, Steve, the proprietor of the WaveCrave truck, fills me in on the latest.

”Montauk has been Crazy this summer,” he says, echoing the very words of Delmack, our Jamaican cleaning lady. We will hear that more and more as this vacation goes on and we go on to the next vacation. The word “crazy” seems to be the new byword for this summer.

“It’s really crazy…prices of everything are going up, people want their stuff fast and I can’t get no help…I’m looking, but you can’t find people to work.”

After some preliminary chitchat on the state of the summer and Steve’s business, I place my order with Steve – a Basic Joe (2 eggs, sausage & cheese on a roll) for me and a Nancy Atlas (3 eggs, avocado and some other health ingredients in a wrap) for my wife. Steve informs me that the two orders will be ready in 8 minutes. I go off and sit down at a nearby table where I can survey the sea and consult my oblong.

Oblong is the descriptive term given to cell phones by a Japanese writer I happen to be reading. “Klara and The Sun” is the book and Kazuo Ishiguro is the author. It is the the strange tale told by an AF (artificial friend) about a sickly young lady. Oblong is the term applied to peoples’ cell phones and I think it is quite appropriate.

After scanning incoming emails, I scan the news…it is not good. Nobody is happy about the mess in Afghanistan and the Covid numbers are stubbornly high. It seems that the disease has no respect for our wishes. That is worse for the present President, since he has promised to make it go away. Well, he promised to get out of Afghanistan and indeed he did that. But what a mess. The fight against Covid seems similarly messy. The more we vaccinate, the more the virus seems to stick around. This summer the problem is being blamed on the Delta Virus, the latest mutation of that tricky Coronavirus. 

”Cecil,” Steve calls out and I slip my oblong into my pocket and meander over to Steve. All is well, I pick up my breakfast orders and head back to the hacienda 50 feet away. My wife and I set up the little table on the porch where we can observe the first stirrings of people out on the beach. My wife sits in the portable rocking chair we brought, I sit in the comfy lounge chair that came with room. We sip coffee and munch away at our breakfasts. Out in front of our porch the waves break on the sand and a hot new day has begun. My wife complains that her sandwich is too big. Considering that it is advertised to have 3 eggs, that is no surprise. Fresh air blows in from the Atlantic onto our little porch overlooking the sea, the sun is getting higher, a few people are walking along the ocean beach. Life is good.

In Montauk, I spent the days going for a swim in the ocean while my wife enjoyed the comforts of her much larger oblong (an iPad Pro) and some good books, sitting in the rocker, overlooking the beach, her morning made in the shade on our covered porch. As noon passes, each day we ponder eating choices. This year we are determined to eat in as many restaurants as will have us. 

Of course, as a matter of ritual, we go to Gossman’s, which my wife finds lacking in the swordfish she ordered while I happily munch down what appears to be quite fresh tuna. Some days chicken, some days chicken feathers. Our meals with Gossman’s have been hit or miss recently with one invariably having a much better meal than the other. There are compensations for this not so reliable food service. You sit outside in the shade or inside the main restaurant with windows wide open. Either way, there is a great view of the inlet with boats parading in and out is just a few feet away. The sea air is fine to breathe and you can feel lucky in just being there, even if your meal ain’t what it should be.

In the days that follow, we slip into a pattern of breakfasts from the WaveCrave in the morning, swimming or paddling or walking along the beach and heading out in the early afternoon for a sit down meal at one of the many local restaurants. My wife has this theory that a late lunch is better than a lunch and a dinner so that is our solution to dieting. I have admit that two squares a day sometimes don’t always make it for me and often I hit the vanilla ice cream later in the day.

Early in the trip, I discover that I have forgotten my all important paddling gloves so I meander over to Amagansett to the Beach and Bicycle store to fix this omission. Beach and Bicycle quickly informs me that the summer has been “crazy” and that they are all sold out of paddling gloves. That is unusual because they usually carry a pretty wide selection of paddling equipment, but the lady informs me that there are “logistic” problems and that they sold out of all sorts paddling stuff. I don’t commiserate with her about “logistic” problems. Otherwise, I would spend an extra half day listing a litany of my “logistic” problems.

In any case, we both agree it has been a “crazy” summer. But all is not lost. The lady remembers they also sell bike gloves, so I buy a really sexy pair of TREK gloves with all sorts nice Italian names listed on them. The lady informs me they are the last pair she has and they are very good quality for just $65. These gloves are really more like bikini gloves, but I figure in the hot weather Montauk is experiencing, they might just be the thing I need. So, I snap them up before someone can come into the store and snatch them away.

And the $65. proves to be well spent because shortly afterward I ask her about where a good paddle spot might be where I can park my car. Most places on the East End require a Easthampton parking permit. For those of you who do not know it, Easthampton is the township that covers everything on the South Fork east of Southampton to Montauk. The parking permits cost 300 bucks a pop, but the real catch 22 is that the town doesn’t really issue any…you have a better chance of winning the New York lottery for 5 billion dollars. It seems the town of Easthampton does not want evil kayakers molesting their waterways and stumbling into their restaurants and stores.

Anyway, the lady gives me a tip on a great paddling spot on the North side of Amagansett off of Landing Road. It so happens that I actually know the spot and have paddled there several times before, but last year the Town of Easthampton had put up a sign saying parking stickers were required. The lady tells me that parking permits are no longer required there and so I get the good news I can go to what is surely one the prettiest paddling spots on Long Island.

Armed with this good news and my sexy new paddling (bicycle) gloves, I return to the WaveCrest…my mission accomplished. And of course, I tell my wife the good news. She remembers the spot and is happy to hear it.

On that good note, we head out for another afternoon lunch…this time to Duryeas. Now this a place that has a long history in Montauk. In the late sixties and the early 70s, there was a New York Assemblyman named Perry Duryea. He was reputed to be a very sharp and wise politician. He was known as the Silver Fox because of his silver white hair and trim frame. His family owned a lobster business in Montauk. In doing that, they set up some picnic tables out back where you could could come and have lobsters and beers. It was a pretty unassuming place, but it had really good lobsters, good fish and good beer to top it off with.

We used to go there for many, many years. Fast forward to the era of oblongs and the Pandemic and the same place has morphed into a super sleek and artsy-crafty seafood restaurant with some really good fish and lobsters at really high prices. I am not a fan of their service system which requires you to mark down on a paper menu what seafood specialities you want and what drinks you might require. As you come into the place there is a little sign informs you that “Everybody here is famous”. Whether that is to make you feel good or to attract famous people, I am not sure.

There is a nice French lady that, once the wait for table is over, leads you to a table. They have added some pretty striped cushions to wooden bench seats in one part of the restaurant and there is nice long dock with some nice tables and seats that leads out to several go fast boats that will, if you have an invitation, take you to some billionaire’s mega yacht. Pretty young ladies parade by on that dock past the tables of famous diners and on to the impressive GoFast boats.

The place is in one way very similar to original Duryeas, but now has been Euronized so the famous are sure to come and diners cannot escape for less than $200 a couple. And indeed, there are a lot pretty people pecking at their lobster towers while sipping some nice wine or a bit of the bubbly. And back to the subject of a wait, yes, there always is. Generally, it seems to be 20 to 40 minutes, although it may be faster for the chosen famous who occasionally drop by. The place starts and, no doubt, ends crowded, each day, presuming good weather, soft summer breezes and warm temperatures prevail.

My wife and I are partial to the Branzino which they serve whole with fish head intact and some delicious veggies and peppers and sauces surrounding the display. I have had similar servings of this fish in Italy and in Asia. And if the sauces are right and fish is fresh and veggies good, I really recommend that dish. We have had it at Duryeas a couple of times and each time we nominate it as our best meal in Montauk. As mentioned, I am not a fan of their self serve system. In particular, I do not like having to get up, walk over an order booth and order another wine for my wife and another seltzer for myself. I just think if you are going to spend $200/plus for lunch with your wife, people should come to your table and take your order and bring everything you ask for. But, it is what it is and I still think they do have the best fish in Montauk.

In Montauk, we ended up having many a lunch in many a place. Some were good, some were not. Pretty much everyday, I went for a swim in the ocean and for me that was grand. Several days, my wife and I went paddling on the North side of Amagansett in Acabonic harbor and that was grand…with birds aplenty, scenic water views and some tranquil peace on the water. On other days, I went for a paddle by myself, also in Acabonic Harbor.

During our stay in Montauk stock markets kept drifting upward. Some days the markets would take a momentary dip, but most days the markets would resume their relentless upward trend. Why stocks were moving upward was not exactly clear because economic reports were mixed and often there were earning disappointments in the case of individual companies or disappointments in employment reports. But the ever wise investors paid no heed to any economic concerns and markets just kept trending upward.

As the days passed in Montauk, the numbers of Delta virus cases began to steadily increase. And with the increase of cases, shortly thereafter came an increase hospitalizations and deaths. Since my wife is not a big fan of news, whether it comes on TV, internet or otherwise, I kept up with the goings on through my oblongs – my cell or my iPad. Because I like to look at charts, I took to looking at the interactive charts the New York Times publishes, like the one below showing the up and down progress of the Coronavirus since the beginning of the Pandemic until October 10th, 2021. By that time, the Coronavirus had kindly started to once again decline.

Of course, we all know that every media company has its agenda and the New York Times is well-known for its liberal leanings. That said, the charts I was looking at were tracking actual reported numbers of Delta variant cases, hospitalizations and deaths and these same numbers were also reported by many other media companies, as well John Hopkins Hospital, which has established a special section of their website to track the rise and fall of the Coronavirus.

As mentioned before, the rebirth of the Coronavirus through the Delta variant this summer was very embarrassing to Joe Biden, the present President. It was a key promise of his in getting elected to get control of the Coronavirus. And if one thing was very clear, it was that the Coronavirus was still not under control.

It is interesting here to note the various agendas of different left and right leaning media companies. Fox News was touting at every chance what a great tragedy it was for us to get out of Afghanistan, leaving our former friends and allies at the whim of the Taliban and what a great mess the immigrant problem was at the border. Strangely, this was the same media company backing the former President who declared it was policy of his to get out of Afghanistan. So, regarding Afghanistan, it would seem that Fox News was most upset that President Biden carried out the stated policy of the previous President in a messy manner.

And as mentioned, when Fox News was not talking about the collapse and terrible defeat of our efforts in Afghanistan, it was talking about the rush of refugees coming over the Mexican border. And indeed both of those things were happening in real time, so they both were true events.

Meanwhile, in another world away, CNN and MSNBC were busy discussing the terrible events of the January 6th “insurrection” and the fact that Donald Trump was still saying the election had been stolen from him. CNN and MSNBC ran videos again and again of the Congress being overrun by protesters and clips of The Donald saying he was robbed. It is also true that both those things were happening, but it was clear, and should be clear to anyone watching all three media networks, that each media network had an agenda and none were unbiased in their approach to the news.

Our days in Montauk were blessedly free from digital distraction and/or political discussions. We would get up, have a simple breakfast, swim or walk and go to lunch in the afternoon. My wife and I would have our 2 squares…that is, breakfast and a late lunch. After lunch, either my wife and I or just me would go for a paddle in Acabonic Harbor, taking in the scenic water views and watching birds happily munching on minnows and diving for larger fish.  

Dinner most days was then omitted. We would come back to the room, watch the sun fade on the ocean, catch a little tube and retire. The omission of dinner was generally good for the diet except in my case, because almost every afternoon or evening I would run down to John’s Drive In and augment my calorie intake with vanilla ice cream. It was maybe not the best dietary schedule, but it surely was quite pleasant.

Our several weeks came and went as vacations do. The meals were good, the swimming was good, the walking, the paddling and the relaxing on the porch overlooking the ocean was all good. And as everyone said, Montauk was crazy. The restaurants had lines and in the stores you had to walk sideways just to get past clutches of customers. Each night, the sun would go down as we would watch the waves breaking from the comfort of our porch. somehow, the memory of the crowded restaurants and stores would fade with afternoon sun.

But soon, as in all things, the time passed and we headed home, back to the real world.

For next two weeks we returned to our real hacienda, which was not hard to do, since Montauk is only 60 miles from Setauket. There I re-entered the world of work and spent my time on ”logistic issues”. That consisted mainly in chasing container shipments, trying to figure out when they get on a ship, off a ship, on a truck and off a truck and finally in our warehouse. It was a merry chase. Perhaps, merry is not the correct word.

When not working on getting products to ship and sell, I am spending my time working on the two new boat models I plan to introduce in 2022. I plan to introduce a new larger pontoon boat to be named the FastCat 14.4. It will hold up to 4 people and a 20 hp motor. It will go 22 mph and I have been testing a prototype of this model at my house all this spring and much of the summer. I am also developing a new larger expedition Travel Canoe designed to take large quantities of gear for extended trips on lakes and rivers. We have already gotten two prototypes of that model and a 3rd prototype is shown above. It is not quite right, but it is getting close. The model above is to be called the Travel Canoe 17. Both the 14.4 and 17 refer to the feet lengths of the two models.

This year has been both satisfying and frustrating. Sales are up for the second year in row, but headaches about getting orders produced, shipments sent, containers into our warehouse, having stock of different models and getting orders shipped out…all these problems seemed to have been magnified by 10.

And of course, we are seeing, like virtually everyone else on planet earth, price increases on everything and delays in production, shipping in, shipping out. All of these problems cause additional problems with customers. Explaining where shipments are, when they are expected and when they will be shipped out adds a great deal of work, especially when almost every shipment coming in gets delayed. 

I have been having things made around the world for over 50 years and I have never seen things this difficult, this screwed up. We are seeing this both in our fishing lure business and in our inflatable boat business. And whether it is packaging or shipping or materials or production, whether it is in the U.S., Asia or Europe, we are seeing day to day cost increases. And of course, that means that we will have to raise our prices for the coming year and what effect that will have God only knows.

So, Phil, the auto repair guy in Montauk, is not the only businessman unhappy with the state of the world.

This year, we planned something unusual…a second vacation. My wife and I have planned to go visit a cousin in York, Maine. So, after two weeks ricocheting between instructions to suppliers on new products and chasing existing products and pushing out old and new models, off we go to the great State of Maine.

To do that, we take the very convenient Port Jefferson Ferry to Bridgeport, Connecticut and after 20 minutes of wandering down some sorry looking streets in Bridgeport we manage to get on 95. From there it is quite literally a straight shot to York, Maine.

York, Maine is only a little over 4 hours away driving on Route 95. The nice point here is that you don’t have to think too much, since 95 leads directly past York, Maine. In fact, the only difficult part was following signs from the Bridgeport Ferry terminal to 95. It should be easy since it is less than 2 miles away, but at the very last turn, the one you need to make, the authorities have omitted to place any sign referencing 95. That led to a 15 minute detour around some of Bridgeport neighborhoods, but after several lefts, rights and a circle or two, we were on track, on the great highway 95 corridor.

Thereafter, it was all a piece of cake. and strangely, 95 was not its usual ”crazy”. It seems they have actually fixed some parts of that road, which from Bridgeport to New Haven to Providence always had bumpy, unpaved sections under construction to slow you down and slow your way through. This time the ride was blissfully smooth and without incident.

About 4 and half hours later we were checking into something called DockSide Guest Quarters. That consisted of an old Captain’s house on a promontory overlooking the York River and a nice collection nearby of bungalows with small suites overlooking York Harbor. Our room is quite comfortable. I should say rooms because there is an outer living room with a kitchenette to the side that leads directly to our bedroom. In front of the living room, there is a nice porch with the view you see in the picture above. We arrived at our quarters around 4 in the afternoon and immediately plopped down on the porch and watched a continual parade of boats coming into the river and going out into the ocean. York has long been an active little port with recreational boaters, lobstermen, lobster ladies, commercial fishermen, commercial fisher ladies coming and going with boats of many styles.

I can say we were happy with the hotel setup. It was indeed a very nice place. Because we both somewhat tuckered from our drive, we called my cousin to let her know we would catch up with her and her partner the next day. Since the day was getting on, I took over the main job of lining up victuals for evening. I accomplished that by walking down from our room, past the captain’s house, past the operating boat yard to a small bar situated directly overlooking York Harbor. There I ordered, guess what, two lobster sandwiches, french fries and cole slaw. While I waited for the meals to be prepared, I had a large seltzer and struck up a conversation with a husband and wife who were enjoying evening cocktails as the sun was slowly declining and the Maine chill was ascending. I asked what the summer had been like.

“It was crazy, all of Massachusetts and much of the rest of the country came this summer. The stores, the roads were all clogged with people and cars and it was impossible go almost anywhere.”

And so the operative word for this summer still remained ”crazy”. I talked a little more with the couple about York and the weather.

The guy asked me I where we came from. Long Island I replied.

”Well the weather is pretty much same. We don’t get a lot of snow in winter here. They do get a lot of snow 5 miles inland, but here the ocean keeps the temperatures moderate and generally the winters are mild.”

I did not want to disagree, but already it seemed to me that the weather in York was a good 10 degrees cooler than Long Island and that afternoon as the sun was setting, it was getting downright nippy. But no matter. I was happy to talk to the couple and get some info on York.

The guy turned out to be a kayaker. That gave me an opportunity to ask about put-ins, take-outs and nice places to paddle. It turned out that there was a nice scenic place to paddle right around the hotel. The hotel was situated on something called Harris Island. I would not have called it an island because a road led onto the island. My preferred term would have been peninsula, but who was I to argue with the locals? Anyway, my conversation with the nice couple gave me a pretty good idea where to go for at least that paddle.

The open bar had an interesting setup in order to provide food. About 20 feet from the open bar and tables with umbrellas was a food truck that made up whatever meals and snacks customers ordered. In no time the lobster sandwiches and sides were ready. I grabbed the bag with the food, finished my seltzer and said goodbye to the nice couple.

Within minutes, my wife and I were enjoying our lobster sandwiches in our quaint room overlooking the York River. Since we had savored lobster sandwiches in Montauk, that immediately led to a family discussion of who had the best lobster sandwiches. That was hard choice, but my wife and I quickly came to the belief that it was a close choice between Steeve’s lobster sandwiches at the WaveCrave or the DockSide Bar lobster sandwiches. We gave the to edge to the DockSide Bar which had lobster slightly fresher and juicier, but trust me it was a very close call.

We spent the next several days meeting up with my cousin and her partner, Kerry, and going sometimes to their house for lunch or dinner and sometimes, here and there in York for lunch or dinner.

My cousin is a therapist, so she deals with people’s problems, be they real, imagined, physical or mental. And I gather people in York have just as many problems as they have on Long Island. Her customers, aka her patients, suffer a wide variety of physical and psychological problems. I gather that many of her patients came to her specifically because they could not get help from their regular doctors. And whether the problems were physical or psychological problems, one thing was always true – their problems were real to them.

In the last year, because of the Pandemic, my cousin tells me the way she treated her patients changed. Pre-pandemic, patients came to her office and sat down in front of her and laid out their problems two or three feet away. Since the onset of the Pandemic, she treated patients exclusively by Zoom. And apparently, business by Zoom has been a boom. No lockdown threatened her business, which apparently became busier than ever, with back to back Zoom meetings instead of face to face meetings in her office.

I asked her how that was working out.

”Great,” she said, ”I do not have to leave my house and the patients seem more at ease to tell me what is really bothering them.”

And I gather a lot is bothering her patients, dealing with deaths of a relative or a loved one, suffering from bouts of insomnia, some with deep traumas coming from sexual assault at one time or another, some dealing with incessant pain, some dealing with a barrage of other physical ailments, some with deep insecurities about their jobs, their life, some with hard economic problems, some dealing with alcohol and drug abuse, some just freaked out by the stress caused by the Pandemic or money problems, some dealing with stress caused by the patients themselves. So my cousin was monitoring a host of problems and trying to advise and help her patients with all sorts of physical and mental issues.

And from what my cousin was telling me the business of coping with psychological and physical problems was booming. The Pandemic seemed to be multiplying the problems people faced day to day. Her days were fully booked from 9 to 5 with patients from all over Maine with many problems. How to advise all her different patients seemed to me a very difficult job, but my cousin Wendy had been doing this for years and apparently is able to work her way through other people’s problems.

I asked her if she thought dealing with patients was easier before or during the Pandemic.

”It is easier for me now because all I have to do turn on the computer. It gives me certain distance between me and my patients and, in many ways, it seems easier for the patients. They seem to feel freer to tell me what their real problems are. It is as if the computer puts a plexiglass wall between us and they feel free to express the truth because I am not actually in the room. One thing is for sure. There are a lot more problems out there and many more people need help.”

I tried to think what it must be like dealing with lots of people with lots of problems. In a way, I feel that happens with some of my employees. They sometimes have problems and sometimes I have to figure out ways to help them. But the operative word is sometimes. Thinking of my cousin dealing with non-stop problems day after day, I am not sure I would not develop have deep psychological problems myself just listening to other people’s deep psychological problems. I can only admire cousin’s fortitude in dealing with an endless parade of Zoom patients.

My cousin happens to be a fairly active lady, so during our visit we go kayaking on several days. She has taken the occasion of our visit to take a few days vacation so paddling is practical. Our trips were on the York River, which turns out to have lots of intimate waterways and scenic spots. On the second day we go for a paddle around Harris Island, which indeed turns out to be quite beautiful. The weather is cool, but not cold, with bright sun and clear blue skies and just a few cumulous white clouds. The spin around the island takes about an hour and involves paddling around a small bay leading to a narrow water path and then paddling under a low bridge to the other side of the island. It is the kind of paddle that puts fresh air in your lungs and new energy in your body.

In the late afternoons or evenings in York, we would head out to a local restaurant or head over to my cousin’s for dinner. She and her partner are vegetarians, so the fare at her house is all vegetarian. That is fine for me and my wife. We have had plenty of meat and seafood dinners over this summer. A couple of meals of veggies cooked freshly and deliciously by my cousin not only are healthy interludes, they taste delicious. So it all is a win, win.

Our days at the Dockside Guest Quarters start in a very similar way to the way they started in Montauk. The Dockside offers free breakfasts, so in the morning, I walk about 75 feet the Captain’s house and pick up a tray for breakfast. It includes a hot pot of coffee for 2, warmed buns, honey, jellies and jams and sometimes eggs or pancakes or french toast. And like our mornings in Montauk, we would sit on the porch, munch on the breakfast goodies and check out the waterviews. The view of the York River and ocean beyond was a little different than the sandy beaches of Montauk and the ocean beyond, but the feel of breakfast in York is much the same.

On another day, my cousin and drive inland to Scotland Bridge Road which conveniently has a bridge going over the York River. Just before the bridge is a place to pull over and park with an easy put-in to launch a kayak. It takes only a few minutes to inflate and setup up one my inflatable kayaks. We then launch and head up river with the tide, which is about a half hour from full high tide. That fact provides us with some current to paddle up river, which we do for about 45 minutes.

Unlike our earlier paddle around Harris Island the scenery up river is quite different and so is the weather. As we proceed upriver, the waterway becomes more intimate and marsh-like. The weather on this day is also a study in contrasts…it now being hot and almost sweaty to paddle. The sun burns down on us with an intensity I had not considered possible for early October in Maine. On this section of the river, it meanders through reeds and marsh areas, looking more and more like a salt water tidal marsh and no longer like a flowing river.

After paddling for about 45 minutes, I sensed from afar that my wife becoming a little bored by the fact that we were still paddling and so I tell my cousin it is time to reverse course. Theoretically, the tide should be in our favor and should be assisting us in our downriver paddling. Such is not the case, the York River is seemingly unaware that is should retreating back to the sea. It stubbornly wants to take us back up river. That required a little extra paddling on our part, but we did make progress and the scenery was all good. Eventually, we did make it back under the Scotland Road Bridge. And true to form, as soon as I opened the air valves of our kayak at the takeout, I could see that the river had reversed course and the current was now running briskly back to the sea. If only we had come back a little later on that paddle back we would have had a true cake walk.

The vacation in York was fine and uneventful. We spent a lot of time sitting on our porch sunning ourselves and admiring the York River and Atlantic Ocean beyond. It was busy a harbor and boats came and went from just before dawn until just after sunset. In the late afternoons we would walk to the captain’s house and sit on one the benches overlooking the harbor. It was a pretty site as you can see from the picture below.

And again, as every vacation, our trip to York, Maine came to an end and we got back on the great Northeast corridor and drove down to Bridgeport where we were lucky enough to catch an early a ferry and get home before the sun set. It was all good.

Back at home for next few weeks, much was the same. I was busy chasing containers, trying to figure out new prices for next year. On that front the news was pretty grim. Not only had all of our suppliers increased prices, but the costs for 40’ containers had taken an astronomical increase. In May of this year the cost of a container was $7,500. By August it was $20,000, by September it was $25,000. Since we can only get 200 to 500 inflatable boats in a container, this meant a huge increase in shipping costs for each boat. So, it became our sad duty to calculate how much we would have to charge extra for each boat. That is a kind of art…you have to choose between what you think the market may accept and what you think you need. I never liked the process of raising prices, but I have lot of practice. All I can say is that I think a lot price increases will only start working there way into the system next year. God help us all.

In the meantime, stock markets have taken this period as a chance to go on to new all time records. Yes, the mavens and the economists and the pundits and the scalawags and the experts are all agreed. The markets can only go up. By end of this year, they predict markets will go up more. By the end of next year, markets are sure to go up way more. Happy Days are Here Again.

Thanksgiving has come and I still have not called this blog story a wrap. Many things have happened since we took our 2 vacations and I came back to work. Fall has come and winter is on the way. Most of the leaves on our trees have already fallen on our lawn. The temperatures have dropped day to day and winter winds have increased. I have switched over to rowing from paddling because that is a warmer form of exercise and two oars are more effective than one paddle in the brisk Northwest winds that are common in my little at this time of year.

This year has not been easy. My wife and son have been dealing with different health issues. The general atmosphere of the Pandemic rising and falling, rising and falling again, has not helped, the pressure and stresses of life going on, the early results of a change in government, the existence of old problems and new problems. And in spite all of the above, the strange fact that our two businesses are having their best year ever. So times is strange.

There has been much to be fearful of, much to be stressed out about and yet life has gone on reasonably well, with a strange sense worry interlaced with the surprise that there are some real world anchors that make you think not all is crazy, not all is ungrounded.

We end up having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with about 12 family and friends coming over. It has been a hard time for some, but all of us have made it through. We feast on a 22 lb. turkey that arrived by UPS two days before Thanksgiving. The stuffing, the sweet potatoes with roasted marshmallows, the turnips, the salad, the heapings of gravy, the mashed potatoes and more stuffing are all great and everyone agrees…it has been a hard year, but we have made it through and we are thankful.

The next day, Black Friday, so named because it is the day when retail stores supposedly become profitable for the year, is somewhat concerning. A new mutation of the Coronavirus has just been discovered in South Africa. It is thought to be more contagious than even the dread Delta virus. The new virus is named Omicron and it is thought to be a ”virus of concern”. Some speculate that it may evade vaccines and re-infect people who previously had Covid.

Stock markets around the world all take a sharp dive. They are still close near all-time highs, but suddenly there is the strange and unknown fear that markets may be subject to going down. Who knew?

In a slight paraphrase of a once popular song, ”We Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

By Cecil Hoge

None of us knows how long we shall live. I wish to take this moment to make a small summing up of what I have come across in writing this collective story of my family, myself and the times we live and lived in. I began this blog in 2011. It now 10 years since I have been posting stories about my family, myself and the times we are passing through. Perhaps in another 10 years I will write another summing up. Perhaps, in another 10 years I will be long gone.

I think of the changes in my own life and I find many of them strange. For example, when I was 16, I took a jet air airplane (a Boeing 707) across the Atlantic to Europe. It was only a few weeks after jet travel had been introduced to transatlantic flights. That flight from New York to Berlin was to meet my new family. My father had remarried and in doing so I gained a step-mother.

My mother was still alive at the time, but her life was already over.

When I flew across the Atlantic I thought about what might be the future of airplanes. At 16, I had a number of convictions: Airplanes would become far faster. Airplanes would become far more comfortable. Airplanes would become accessible to all. Of those three things only the last became true. Of course, in this time of continuing Covid, not everyone is ready to take advantage of air travel. The most surprising thing about the flight in 1958 and air travel today, such as it is, was that airplanes did not become faster. That was supremely strange to me. Then the fact that they became far less comfortable was also amazing to me. How could that be?

I will say jet airplanes have become somewhat quieter. I do remember the noise flying to Europe being quite loud, but then again, jet airplanes are still loud.

Most surprising to me was the fact that airplane seats today are far closer together than they were in 1958. And then there was the service. In 1958, stewardesses could bring things to you fast – drinks, blankets, plates, knives, forks, napkins, food…even in “coach” the service was great by comparison to today. Today stewardesses cannot bring you anything, period. And so the uneven course of progress proceeds.

I think about the different members of my family…what they did during their life…what I did during my life…what they might think of today.

Of all my family members, I would love to have conversation with my father about what he might think of today. He predicted to me and my brother in 1993 that the internet would change everything. And surely he was right, but surely he would surprised by the changes the internet has brought.

“When are you going to get on that goddamn internet?”, he would say once the first few people got on it.

“It is the new Western Union, it is the new telephone, it is the new TV”, even in the middle 90s, my father knew the internet would change all.

And so it did, but change came in many ways. I think my father would have surprised by its different mutations…perhaps, in the same way we are surprised about the many mutations of the Coronavirus.

I doubt that my father would foreseen the entire social media scene that has evolved …Facebook… Twitter… InstaGram… Left and Right Wing Websites …misinformation …disinformation … gay pride … transgender rights … new age cures … pandemic statistics … Capital riots … instant answers to new and bizarre questions … a hodge-pudge of commercial claims, goods for all, hopes for sale, fury for the furious, promises of tranquility and peace of mind for those on the elusive search for tranquility.

Indeed, he would have been surprised in many ways the internet has evolved and in the many ways governments and financial institutions and media outlets and pornography and truth and myth and everything between has spun out onto the digital universe. How much is essential to modern life, how much is worthless, how much is useful? Truly there are many sides to the internet and many questions it poses.

Thinking of what other family members might make of these new times. My uncle, Hamilton Hoge, started a company called U.S Television and I think he would also be surprised by the present times. He is in the family picture at the top of this blog story just to right of my father and mother. He was a marine who almost was sent off to storm Japan. A million men was the estimate of how many would be lost in the effort to invade Japan, but it never happened. Truman dropped the big one on Hiroshima and another big one Nagasaki and hundreds of thousand died in each city in minutes. And then the Japanese surrendered and the war was ended. My uncle got to keep his uniform, but he never had to wear it in combat.

After the war he came back and started a television company and like Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront”, he could have been a contender. But that was not be. My uncle Hamilton nevertheless had some interesting views on the future of newspapers. He thought everyone would have printer on the top of their TV and they would print out their personal newspaper whenever the desire to do so struck them. That kinda happened or at least some parts of that are in place today.

Today, we do not remember much about World War II or The Great Depression or World I or the Pandemic that came at the end of WWI. My uncles and father were born either before World War I or during World War I and they grew up in The Roaring Twenties and lived through The Great Depression and World War II. They got see and live through periods of war, peace, depression and prosperity that were interlaced with booms and busts and smaller regional wars.

My uncle Hamilton felt the Vietnam War was a war we should have finished. We should have won…it was a lack of will, he said, that we lost. My father did not agree, he felt it was a sad interlude of history. I felt it was a mistake and stain on our history.

We are presently in the process of disengaging ourselves from another regional war. The Present President has ordered the departure of all American troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. The military experts, the politicians, the pundits, the conservatives, the liberal and the biased…all are offering their instant analysis of that. Most say it is a mistake, some say it is a great deed and many offer a kaleidoscope of opinions in between.

I think of my great, great, great uncle, Andrew Shewan, who sailed in clipper ships from Scotland and England in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s across the Atlantic, around South America, across the Pacific Ocean to Australia, India, Hong Kong, Shanghai and many other Asian ports while trading goods for tea. What were his thoughts of his world and what would his thoughts be of this world…that is a mystery that time cannot undo.

You can only imagine what thoughts might be going his head as he left Scotland at the age of 23 as 1st Mate of one the world’s greatest and fastest clipper ships in the world, the “Norman Court”. He must have been a young and vibrant man. Andrew Shewan sailed repeatedly around the world from 1840s to the 1860s. What did he think of the new worlds he saw…South America, Pacific Islands, Australia, Indonesia, India and, of course, China? And what might he think of those same worlds in this digital age?

And on those trips around the world what did he bring and what did he take away? That is a complicated question and I cannot know the answer. I do know what he brought back tea, but what did he bring? I do know he went to India often before going to China. Yes, what did he bring and what did he take away?

Andrew Shewan was moral man, a long married man, a family man. He wrote a book called “The Great Days of Sail” published in 1923, just before his death. He lived a long life. He was, I believe, happily married, for over 60 years. He had great pride about sailing clipper ships around the world and I imagine it must been one of the most exciting, most demanding jobs on the planet. Imagine sailing at 20 knots per hour across the Pacific Ocean through seas and weather conditions experienced by few humans in what was then one of the fastest ships on the planet. It must not have been too different from being an astronaut today.

But what he bring and and what did he take away? Iron nails and knives from Scotland and England, Molasses and rum from the Caribbean, and, of course, supplies of food, fruits and drink for months at a time. And why did he go to India? I have seen the logs of some of the journeys he took and yes he did go to India, but why? Could it be he traded the iron nails and knives for rum and molasses and the rum and molasses for opium? Could it be he brought the opium to China and traded the opium for silver and then traded the silver for tea? I do not know, but that was how many clipper ships conducted their trade.

Imagine my great, great, great uncle setting out as the first mate at age 23 from England with his father, the Captain of one the great clipper ships of its time, The Norman Court. Imagine his father takes ill after two days at sea and father and son realize the father is dying. Imagine father and son, talking about what to do…abandon the journey, return to port and quit the trip? Father and son talked it over. Yes, they did return to port. The father disembarked, the son remained on board. They said their goodbyes and the son sailed to China, the first mate now a captain, responsible all goods and all souls on board, 22 other men now under his command at the age of 23.

Yes, it must have been with heavy mixed emotions when father and son parted company and no doubt the crew of 22 men also had doubts and emotions about the journey that were undertaking. My great, great, great uncle completed the journey at the helm of his 192’ long by 22’ wide clipper ship. He described coming through the gales of wind, 50 to 60 miles an hour, crashing through waves 30 to 60 feet, with each wave surging across the deck and forecastle, swiping it clean of any loose belongings…sailing at 20 to 22 knots for days at a time…dark and gray gale winds howling during the day, pitch black and boiling seas and ever roaring winds during the night.

He said that each time his ship hit a wave in those conditions, the entire ship would vibrate and make a humming sound like a tuning fork.

I suppose his thoughts at such times were a strange mixture of terror, exhilaration and ecstasy. Few on the planet could relate to his experiences…then or today.

I mention the above because I feel they are related to the here and now. When my great, great, great uncle sailed to China that Empire had already faded and fallen victim to the greater powers of Europeans and Americans. Today, the wheel of history has rolled on and China has regained its Empire, but it has not forgotten what the Western World did to it. And so the tables have changed. England is no longer an Empire. Germany and France are no longer empires. America has already had its century of Manifest Destiny, Empire and world dominance. The colonies around the world that once made Western countries rich and powerful are no longer, but the memory of what happened remains.

We cannot step into the future without treading through the past. Those who are stepping ahead often forget where those before them have trod, but the past is inseparable from future. In one way or another, it is all connected.

This leads me to think of my great grandfather, Joseph Milton Cunningham, attorney general of Louisiana. He wrote the brief for the State of Louisiana defending the decision of Plessy v. Ferguson. My great grandfather’s legal brief was reviewed by the Supreme Court in 1898 and the Supreme upheld my Great Grandfather’s arguments and the earlier decision rendered by courts in Louisiana. And the result of that case and the Supreme Court Decision, was school segregation and a reversal of some of the results of the Civil War.

I am not proud of that although I am quite sure that my great grandfather felt that he did the right thing. And on his behalf, it must be said that he was considered to be a highly respected attorney who did many good things for the State of Louisiana. That is part of this country’s history and the Supreme Court ruling that agreed with my Great Grandfather’s legal brief, affected the next 90 or so years of American history. Yes, we cannot disengage ourselves from our history. We are all part of our own family’s history and every family’s past is interconnected with our country’s past, present and future.

My Grandmother, Sidney Cecile Cunningham Hoge, was daughter to Joseph Milton Cunningham. She is in the picture at the top of this blog story, in the bottom row, sitting on the right of my grandfather. She grew up on a 5,000 acre plantation that was still tilled and tended by the descendants of former slaves of my great grandfather and his father. Sidney Cecile was a very prejudiced woman, but also a very strict and strong and strangely moral person. Of course, morality is often in the eye of the beholder. Still, she had large family and many friends and she was highly respected.

And of course, Sidney Cecile was the reason that my father and I inherited our first and second names…Cecil Cunningham. She was very upset that her sons were never able to make sufficient money to support her in the way she expected to be supported in her old age.

“Life,” she said, “is so unfair.

“They found oil on the plantation next door and few years later they found oil on the plantation on the other side of our plantation, but they never, never found oil on our plantation. And we had the largest plantation. Life is just so unfair.”

Years later she told me she was disappointed in the fact that her sons never made enough money to support her in the style she expected.

“Life is so unfair,” she would say again in her slow New Orleans lilting drawl, “Why my husband, Huber, had such good prospects. And for many years we had a fine life with nice apartments in the city and fine houses to go to in the summer, but then that damned depression came and my poor husband lost everything. But I thought my boys were growing, surely they would have good prospects, surely they will find a way to support me in the manner I have always expected, but that never happened.”

It would seem unfairness is also in eye of the beholder.

Personally, I thought her sons did a pretty good job of taking care of my grandmother. Admittedly, they had to work through the damned depression and truly times were tough, but my uncle went on found a TV company, which was a contender for a while, and my father went on to restart my grandfather’s old advertising company and he passed through prosperous and not so prosperous times and still was able to send me to various boarding schools and college and help support my grandmother and various other members of our family.

And as I have written, our four families, 3 brothers and a sister, were able to collectively hold the greater family together, have apartments in city and pool funds for a collective summers in some pretty nice houses in Southampton. And my grandmother Sidney Cecile was able to reap the rewards of that lifestyle still associating with society folks and keeping up appearances, even if their wealth was not so deep and long.

I never met my mother’s mother and so I don’t know what she thought of the times she was in or would think of the times we are in. She married my other grandfather who was a very rich guy at the time. That marriage did not work out and my grandmother went off to the Riviera in search of happier life. It was not to be…she died in her thirties, a victim of dwindling funds and too many parties.

My grandfather also did not fair well. He sold Shewan Shipyards, at one time the largest shipyard in America, to Bethlehem Steel for $15,000,000. That was a lot of money in those days before taxes, but my grandfather gave away some of it to his sisters and spent the rest of it on himself, gradually selling off works of art that in earlier years he had purchased. So what comes sometimes goes.

I still have a magnificent 100 + year old desk, a marble top table from the time of Louis XIV and a quite beautiful portrait of my mother done in 1920…so all was not lost and the connection with past and present is always there.

I wonder what my great, great, great uncle, Moses Drury Hoge would have thought of these times and the recent discovery by many Americans that were people in America’s past who owned slaves and some of those people actually had statues erected to them.

Moses Hoge was the official minister to the Confederate Army. He had a church in Richmond Virginia and he preached to Jefferson Davis himself. So Moses was somewhat conflicted. He did not believe in slavery although in fact he owned 3 slaves. They came to him from his wife, so he did not actually buy the slaves. Nevertheless, Moses thought slavery was regrettable and before the war he was not for slavery, even if he was not against slavery.

But the carnage of the war, the many friends and family members that he lost, hardened his opinion and in the end, he definitely felt that the cause of the South was right and true and the principle of States Rights should be upheld. Of course, history moved in a way contrary to that and after the war he accepted the fact that the South had lost and slavery was wrong. But he could not bear not to pay tribute to some of the former leaders of the Civil War.

After the Civil War was completed and the South was vanquished, he gave a speech to 10,000 Richmond residents on behalf of Stonewall Jackson citing Stonewall’s bravery when he served the South and faced his death. In doing so, Moses was personally responsible in having a statue set up in Richmond commemorating the faithful service and bravery of Stonewall Jackson. I believe that statue has been recently torn down and so world moves on and looks at things differently.

It would be my guess that my great, great, great uncle would not be happy about that, but that is only a guess. Moses Hoge went on to live another 34 years after the Civil War. He became a quite prominent Presbyterian minister, touring Europe, talking and meeting with other high church officials. In truth, he was a prominent church minister before the Civil War, but that event temporarily diminished his career. Moses then went on to reinstate himself among church officials and become quite a prominent force in the Presbyterian Church. His life ended strangely in New York City when he crossed the path of a trolley car.

I am thinking of another relative, my great aunt Princess Olga Obolensky. In truth, she is only a relative by marriage. My true aunt, Barbara Hoge, married Ivan Obolensky, Olga’s son. Olga was a princess and she grew up in the court of Czar Nicholas, but at the age of 23 the Russian Revolution came along and her life took a drastic turn. She was able to smuggle her two sons out of Russia shortly after the beginning of the Revolution, but after that things got really tough. Her life went from luxury and privilege to poverty and prison and then to more poverty and near death.

In the end, she made her way out of Russia and then she found her way to Berlin. That was like going from the frying pan to the fire because Berlin at that time was being bombed everyday by allied forces. Strangely, she stayed 3 blocks from where my future mother in law was living. They never met in Berlin, but many years later, my mother in law met my great aunt in America. Such is the strange motions of time and history and happenstance.

It was Olga Obolensky who first suggested I should write a book about my family. Well, this is not a book, this is a blog, but it does cover some of the bases.

I met Olga Obolensky in New York City when I got to meet my new uncle, Ivan. She had a elegant and stentorian voice, loud, authoritative and lilting. She would always remind me of my mother’s elegance.

“Your mother does not enter a room,” Olga would say, “She makes an entrance and when she comes in, all heads turn.”

I think that is pretty nice thing to say about anybody. Olga was very obsessed with appearances and it was always true that she never lost the sense that she was still a princess. Surely, her view of this world could be useful at this time. I am not sure she would be impressed by our present progress or our present sense of elegance.

I am pretty sure she would think of the Pandemic as a sad time when sense of dress and decorum have been lost. But she would know about that, having spent time in prison, time trying to escape Soviet officials, time in a Communist hospital system in a brain-numbing job as a hospital director in a squalid Soviet city being bombed and invaded by Germans.

Olga Obolensky saw it all from the court and time of the Czar to the Russian Revolution to war plagued Europe to a kind of rebirth in America.

New York City had a formidable collection of Russian aristocrats, some impoverished and in-prisoned by their fate, some who cruised through this world seemingly untouched by bad luck.

One such person was Olga’s uncle, Serge Obolensky. He married in 1916 Catherine Alexandrovna Yurievskaya, the youngest daughter of Czar Alexander II. So, you can say he started out pretty high in life. He left Russia just in time to miss the Russian Revolution. In 1924, he married Alice Astor, daughter of John Jacob Astor. So, you can say he landed safely on his feet. Eventually, he came to U.S. with whole bunch of other Russians and they all settled in New York City.

Because I had a new Russian uncle, I came meet of these Russian ex aristocrats. I was very young at the time and I did not fully understand who they all were or their many varied histories. What I could understand was that some them faired far better than others. And I suppose all them would have different and conflicting views of what is happening in this time or what happened in their time. Certainly, the Russian Revolution changed their lives, just as The Depression changed my father’s and his generation’s life and, perhaps, just as The Pandemic is presently changing our lives. Of course, we know what transpired during their lives. We are yet to fully understand what will transpire during our lives.

I think of my mother often. I really do not remember all the things she told me. I remember riding around in taxi cabs with her, charging all over Manhattan. I remember her dragging me into Cartier’s to see some silverware and jewelry, into Zsa Zsa and Magda Gabor’s jewelry store to see more jewelry. I remember tagging along when she went with friends to the bar at the Carlyle, I remember going to The Stork Club with my father and mother. I always got to take away one of the miniature wooden storks with miniature glass stem vases that always held a rose.

My mother liked “creme de menthe” – a drink she first acquired a taste for in France. Her life must have been strange, coming from a background of great wealth, growing up on yachts and in 5 houses around the world. How she came to marry my father is a mystery. He was a man who was interested in making a mark in the world and he hoped to make a lot of money. I don’t think my mother was impressed. She just wanted live her life in comfort and style…ride horses, live a simple, but elegant life. Money meant nothing to her.

She was born in 1919. She married my father in 1941 and she died in 1963. Just 44 years old, a victim in the end of alcohol, cigarettes, car collisions and cancer. What she could have been no one knows. I do know she was both an Olympic Class horse woman and an Olympic class swimmer. I do remember her taking me to the Squadron A Armory on 94th and 95th between Madison and Park Avenues. There we watched horse jumping exhibitions and polo games. My mother loved horses. I never could get enthusiastic about that. It seemed dangerous to me and that was confirmed when I fell off of horses a couple of times. I guess I was a disappointment to my mother…at least in regard to horses.

What she might think of the last 15 years we have just gone through, with the Great Recession, the great recovery, the Great Pandemic and the Great Recession again and the many unknown unknowables, all that is a mystery. Surely, her time was also topsy turvy, born at the end of World War I, with her childhood in the Roaring Twenties and her twenties starting with Prohibition and the Great Depression, only to be ended by World War II. And after the war, the Cold War, the great scare about Nuclear War, Joe McCarthy and the dread Communists. Yes, there had to be a lot of confusion in the 44 years of her life.

My mother thought rock and roll was an abomination. I remember her playing old 78 records of her favorite big bands and singers from the 30s and 40s. She was convinced, like Bing Crosby, that there would return to that kind of music. Both Bing Crosby and my mother were disappointed in that hope. A new kind of music welled up out the youth of my generation and big comeback did not come back. All things pass away as Mr. Harrison says. And so it was for her.

I think there is more to tell about my strange and quirky family. Some of us have faired badly and some of us have done pretty well. It is hard to say what is a true success. If I had to name something…it would be to live happily within yourself and within your family, to love your wife, to like what you do and do what you like. I do not know whether it was Wilbur Wright or Orville Wright, but one of those two said, if you can support yourself and not be burden to your family, then you are success. I suppose that also is a good definition.

I will continue on with this blog. For those who might want more details about my family, please refer to the many stories on this blog site.

By Cecil Hoge

Something is happening here. But what it is ain’t clear. We have a new President. He seems to be concentrated on reversing everything that the past President did. The Past President, by the way, concentrated on reversing everything his predecessor did. So, now we have a tradition of Presidential Reversal. The New Edict: Do the opposite of what your predecessor did.

In a way, that makes things simple: you just to reverse whatever the previous guy did. Your platform for the next election is set. All you have to do is promise the opposite of the person before you. In this system, there seems no middle way. Rather, it is like a light switch going on and off…today no immigrants, tomorrow, immigrants come what may, today tax relief for the rich, tomorrow tax relief for the poor, today get rid of socialized healthcare, tomorrow expand socialized healthcare.

But even these differences are not very clear, because there are some subtle exceptions. It seems both of the last 2 Presidents think tariffs are good…at least, tariffs on China. Both the new guy and old guy agree that the guy before them left them an empty chest and a stack of problems that was created by their previous predecessor. Of course, they disagree on what problems each former President left.

The young 2020s are beset by an array of problems…some of which are new and unique, some of which are as old as the republic itself, some of which are as old as humanity itself. We are still dealing with the fallout of the country beginning with the institution of slavery. We are still dealing with the history that immigrant Europeans took over lands formerly occupied by Native Americans. We are still dealing with the battle between States’ rights and Federal rights. We are still dealing with free speech and what that entails. We are still dealing with myths and theories of conspiracies. We are still arguing over what is true and what is not.

At the same time we are still in the midst of a Worldwide Pandemic. An interesting fact that should catch somebody’s attention is that there have been more cases and deaths worldwide from the Pandemic in the first 6 months of this year than there have been cases and deaths worldwide in all 12 months of last year. As I write these lines we are passing through the 4th of July Weekend, our present President is getting ready to celebrate what he calls “Independence” from the virus (aka Coronavirus, aka Covid). And while there are many reasons to be grateful about the progress against the virus in this country, there are also some outstanding concerns that may make that celebration premature.

This is not the first or the last plague to sweep across different parts of the world, but this Pandemic is truly unique in its own way. It is true that at the end of World War I there was a similar Pandemic that swept across the world. It is true that after that Pandemic, the memory of the spread of that disease and war that had just ended faded fast and the 1920s became what was called The Roaring 20s. And so, shortly after World War I and the 1918/1919 Pandemic, the 1920s proceeded in a gay and vibrant manner.

It is thought by many a pundit that such will be the case in the 2020s. And so, all the economic gurus, all the stock market mavens, all the business billionaires, all the respected financial observers are predicting boom times ahead for foreseeable future…whatever that may be. And yes, the assumption is the same presumption as our present President – we have achieved “independence” from the Pandemic. With that presumption, there is this belief that “normal times” are just around the corner.

We now have inoculated more than 60% of our population with one vaccine dose or more. The economy is blasting ahead…but the upturn is from the lows of the Pandemic and not above the previous economic activity before the Pandemic. The number of people getting jobs is increasing rapidly. Restaurants, bars, hotels are welcoming people back. And yet, and yet, some strange things abide. We are still far short of the economic and employment levels achieved before the Pandemic.

And while the American public seems inclined to accept that Coronavirus as a thing of the past, the Coronavirus does not seem inclined to agree. Instead, it hesitates and mutates and pops up with surprising virulence in other parts of the world just as it seems to diminish and become more controllable here.

But controlling the Pandemic in the U.S. and having it rise up in other parts of the world is not the same as having it disappear and be forgotten. It is true that the number cases, hospitalizations and deaths have declined rapidly in this country in the last several months. Yet it is pretty hard to say it is under control – even now, 5,000 to 20,000 cases are being announced each day and while that is a lot less than this winter, it is not that much less than same time last year.

There are big differences this year. About 47% of the population has received both doses of the vaccine (the full course needed for full protection) and over 60% plus has had at least one dose. There have been some Snafus with the vaccines. Our present President had hoped 70% of all Americans would have had at least one dose of at least one the 2 vaccines in use. That did not happen, but we came mighty close.

More concerning is the fact that new variants of the Coronavirus have popped up – the Alpha virus, the Delta Virus, the Delta Plus virus. So it is obvious that just as we have a plan to protect our population against the virus, the virus has a plan to infect our population anyway. And this might be considered to be simple evolution in motion.

More concerning still is that the latest versions of virus are succeeding in becoming the most deadly, the most infectious and most dominant versions of the virus. Just as we are developing better pharmaceutical solutions to protect against the virus, the virus is mutating into more infectious and deadly versions of itself to infect people.

And it should be noted, just as we have been quite successful in reducing the present number of cases here, the Coronavirus has been successful infecting and killing more people than ever in other parts of the world. So our victory against this particular Pandemic can hardly be declared final. It may be that defeat the virus is just around the corner, but it also may be that virus is just about to sprout up again in the good old USA.

And so the new normal is not the old normal. And while it is true that the 2020s have begun to pick up speed, it is premature to say that the 2020s have reached the stage of roaring. To be sure, things are happening. Lumber prices for houses exploded in ways never before seen and now have recently retrenched some portion of their upward motion. Copper, that ancient commodity that has been so useful to the many purposes of humanity, whether to make brass, electrical wiring, jewelry, tools or pipes, has also exploded in price and is still happily in the stratosphere.

It is thought by the Pundits and the Mavens and the Experts and most Economists and the Fed that this explosion of prices is but a temporary blip that will soon pass away. All think we will soon be roaring along with little inflation.

Surely, prices have begun to roar. Many commodities and materials are also exploding in price. So the issue of fast rising prices is spread across almost all materials that are used to make things. Other prices, food, gas, heating, air conditioning, rent, house buying and transportation are going up rapidly. Getting containers to ship goods to the States is difficult and frustrating- it sometimes necessary to wait several weeks just locate a container and several weeks more get it on a ship.

And within this period of rising prosperity there are many shortages of different goods and many delays in getting those goods shipped from one place to another.

So something strange is happening, something hard to quantify. This is not my father’s Roaring Twenties. I remember what he had to say about that…it was a fun and exciting time…the alcohol flowed, the stocks roared and the Pierce Arrows, the Duesenburgs, the Packards reigned the highways. The parties were grand and the more Prohibition was ostensibly enforced, the more alcohol was indulged in.

All the economic pundits tell us another Roaring Twenties boom is upon us and it will last as far as the eye can see. Growth will be the new permanent condition. But somehow it feels as if we are not quite there.

This week new unemployment numbers are announced for June. And happily the numbers showed a strong increase in the number of people getting jobs. 850,000 people found jobs this last month, but strangely the percentage of unemployment increased in this country from 5.8% to 5.9%. Go figure. It would seem that the more people who get jobs, the more people who want jobs and so the percentage of unemployed to those wanting employment actually increased.

Heavens to Purgatroid, what does that mean? Something does not jive.

But do the stock markets care? No way, Jose. They blew it off and went on to higher highs because that is what the markets have been doing…going on to higher highs just like prices of just about everything. The pundits come out one and all and say, it is obvious the markets will go higher! Bonds, that former safe investment that used provide the elderly and the cautious with some reliable returns offer no returns that can outrun the debilitating effects of inflation. So we must invest safely in stocks…they are insurance in these fast moving times. And besides, the market mavens add, The Fed is your Friend.

I have to say I am agnostic about these opinions. Anyway, I feel I gamble enough in my businesses so I am not going to take the time to learn about gambling on some smart stock investments.

Speaking of higher highs, New York State has recently officially legalized Marijuana. Truly happy days here again. A more cynical person might think the Governor of New York was looking to divert his constituents from the fact that he had bad habit of hitting on young ladies. What better diversion than to legalize pot? But there is a complication – there always is, you know – you cannot buy Marijuana yet – at least, you cannot buy it legally. The State has to figure out how to maximize taxes from it and that will apparently take a year. In the meantime, you can smoke it and plant it, if you can find dealer to sell you the weed and the seed.

So big things are happening in the 2020s.

But all is not the same. Many of us now still work at home and some of us like that and some do not.

I spend two days working in my office and three days working from home. And when I work at home that allows me to schedule paddles or rows around the tides at my house – sea water is in my backyard twice day for 8 hours at a time and out for 4 hours at time. And so by working around my office and home schedules I manage to get out on the water 3 to 5 times a week, depending on weather and obligations.

Recently, I have noticed some changes on the waterways where I paddle, row or motor. This year there is a new, more prolific crop of algae about my bays. It is thicker and denser than last year’s variety. I am not a marine biologist, but I would guess a new species of algae has come town with thicker and denser strands that hold together as one great clump. When your paddle or oar hits one these dense clumps of green/brown algae it gets stuck. You have to maneuver your paddle or oar to carefully disengage. That doesn’t bother me. Last year I developed quite good disengagement skills and those skills still work with this year’s crop.

I am not quite sure what happens when one of our local knee boarders or water skiers whiz by at 30 mph+ being towed by their magnificent MasterCraft. I imagine when they hit one of these clumps they go for an unexpected ride and get the extra thrill of flying through air 20 feet before splashing down in the not so clean bay water. To each his own.

But the presence more algae and more pollution is not all I have noticed. It seems to me that the tidal currents in our 4 bays are running faster and stronger. I cite as example of this that I can now see tidal strong currents with running waves being created by the outflow or inflow of the tide. In the 40 plus years I have lived on these bays, I have not seen that kind of visible current in these bays. So I can only wonder: what is going on?

No matter, I watch the currents, paddle the waters and go my way…it is still a wondrous privilege to paddle, row or motor on the waters of the Seven Seas.

My wife spends her time reading, planting vegetables and flowers and fruits, keeping the house going. The garden is a big production each spring and summer. I am not the best helper, but I do bring 20 or so 40 lbs. bags of garden soil each year, spread them around and aid in the planting of various fruits and vegetables. My wife is the main boss in that department. I just work around edges because frankly, I am more of a hunter gatherer than a farmer, but my little efforts do aid her bigger efforts and strawberries and eggplants and tomatoes and asparagus and sweet potatoes and various herbs (not the above mentioned marijuana) are the results of her efforts.

My hybrid office/home work schedule allows us to take lunches with my wife at the local beach one or two days each week overlooking Long Island Sound. We pack simple sandwiches and simple beverages, drive to the beach and watch the scene of people walking, exercising, sunning, picnicking, enjoying the scenery like us, some wearing masks, most not now. Recently, because the mask regulations have been reduced, we also head to a local restaurant and have lunch or dinner once or twice a week. It is not bad way to pass through the Pandemic.

In my spare time, I work on various new inflatable prototypes and work on new designs. I do not think of designing inflatable boats or other products as work because I truly like to do it. And surprisingly, the older I get, the more new designs I seem to produce. This year I introduced new boat called the Sea Eagle FastCat 12. Now I am working on a larger model of that – see the picture above.

The first shipment of FastCat 12s, which were just introduced in May, was sold out before it arrived. The second shipment is already partially sold out and since it only arrives early next month, I am guessing that shipment will also be sold out before it arrives. It is not a terrible problem, but I do look to the day when we catch up with demand and actually have stock on hand.

FastCat 12s have been caught up in the worldwide logistical problems that are afflicting overseas production and present day shipping. They were designed by me and are made in Korea. The production was slowed by high demand for materials, inflatable boat parts and accessories. That resulted in long waiting times for delivery of materials and that resulted in the boats being produced later than they were scheduled to be produced. It is a common problem these days.

So, both production runs were delayed. The first production was supposed to be produced and shipped December (2020) and arrive in February 2021. That did not happen. Production of both the first and second productions were held up by lack materials and then both the first and second shipments were delayed, first because containers in Korea were not available and then because container ships were not available to take them to the States.

Welcome to the new world of delayed everything.

In short, materials/metals/commodities, inflatable boat materials are hard to come by, production is difficult to schedule, and inevitably, there are multiple delays in shipping and delays in receiving. The FastCats, as mentioned above were supposed to be here in February. Instead they arrived at the end of May. No matter, we have been blessed paradoxically with booming sales even as we struggle to keep up with the many things people demand . This situation is true in both our fishing lure business and our inflatable boat business.

I am presently finishing up with 2 new models…a larger FastCat and a larger Travel Canoe. The Travel Canoe was a product I designed about 5 years ago and have a patent on. The first year of sales was tiny…less than a 100 units. But the selling price was quite high – $2,000 – so it seemed valuable to continue. The first two years we offered this product with inflatable canoe seats…they were very comfortable, but not appealing to canoe enthusiasts who were used to and who preferred wood/mesh seats. In those two years the sales gradually and steadily increased. I surmised the gradual sales increase was a problem about seats.

At the end of 2019 I went off to Korea on one of my many Asian trips and redesigned the Travel Canoe to have wood/mesh seats. My theory was most canoeists would prefer traditional wood/mesh seats. And that proved to be true, I think.

Then the Pandemic came and with that tragedy came a strange new interest in inflatable kayaks, Travel Canoes and anything outdoors, so sales doubled last year and sales are way up again this year. So, my idea that wood/mesh seats would double sales might have been true. Of course, it also might have been the strange and strong new interest in outdoor goods driven by the Pandemic.

Indeed, it is strange to think, as hotel and airlines and restaurants and bars and stadiums and theaters struggled to survive, we were blessed with this new found interest in outdoor activities. The reason, of course, was clear – you can solo distance outdoors pretty safely and people figured that out real quick.

It is kind of strange that when I was in Korea, I predicted to my supplier that we might double our Travel Canoe sales just because of offering wood/mesh seats instead of inflatable seats. I am sure my supplier thought there was a bit of blue sky in that prediction. Anyway, the sales did more than double, but in truth, I cannot say whether it was my new wood/mesh seats or the Pandemic that made that happen. No matter, I will happily take the credit.

Back to designing inflatable boats and new models, so this spring, I have been concerned on creating these two larger models – a larger FastCat and a larger Travel Canoe. The larger FastCat takes up to a 20 hp motor and goes 22 mph with 3 people. It is a kind hybrid pontoon boat. Pontoons boats account for almost 50% of the total rigid boat market in the United States. Of course, my larger FastCat is considerably smaller than a lot of cruise about, cocktail pontoon boats. And it is also as lot cheaper.

This introduces a theory I have: I think America is divided between people who can afford to buy a rigid boat – I guess 30% – and people who cannot – I guess 70%. Consider the fact that almost any rigid boat these days costs $30,000 or more. And if you look at the general average cost of boats, more is an understatement. Because the average may be much closer to $100,000 or $200,00 when you take into account everything from lowly 14’ aluminum duck boats to billionaire boy toys measuring 350 feet or so. Yup, rigid boats can be mighty expensive and that don’t begin to include that actual cost of maintaining, docking, launching and storing such things.

So, in my mind, I produce the only kind of boats that the majority of Americans can afford. And yes, some of the products we sell are expensive compared to other inflatable boats, but way cheap when compared to the rigid alternatives. So, I think I am in the right place at the right time.

Back to the models and explaining how designing them occupies time and mind. The larger Travel Canoe will be designed to carry more stuff, to run whitewater rivers, to take enough stuff to camp for weeks along a river or on an island in a lake or bay. So you could say that product is geared to a different segment of the market our 16’ Travel Canoe is after. The 16’ Travel Canoe is more like a day to week or so paddling canoe that fits in your car trunk.

To create these two new models takes a lot of time. I make simple drawings on my iPad showing dimensions and angles and views…top, side and bottom. I send them off to one of my suppliers and ask if they think can make that type of product – each product has different design needs, different materials, different construction techniques and each supplier has different manufacturing skills. If they say yes, they think they can make it, I ask them to make one or two prototypes from my drawings. When we get them, we test them – usually they work in some ways and don’t work in other ways. We then consider other changes to remake or improve them. I make more drawings and we make one or two more prototypes to see if were are getting close.

If we are getting close that is the time my brother starts getting interested in the project. He then makes new drawings in a much more sophisticated drawing program that I have no idea how to use. Anyway, that takes a lot more time, but it produces 3D views and true CAD drawings that are far more precise than what I can do. Then and only then, if all goes well, we issue an order for a production of 50 or more and an order to make production prototype for approval of final production.

As you may or may not imagine, it is a long process, usually at least 6 months to 12 months from the time of my first drawing to the time of the product on sale. But my part, making first drawings and getting first prototypes made never seems like work. For me it is pure pleasure because I feel I am developing things that never existed before. So, all through the Pandemic I had this kind of work and pleasure to pursue and that made the time easy to pass and the concerns of disease and danger and being closed in by the Pandemic much, much less. I can say I have been truly lucky in that respect.

Through all of the last year and half I always have the almost daily ability to walk out into my yard down to my dock and get on a boat and paddle or row or motor out. So I have been truly lucky in this strange period of flux and disease and opportunity, with hopes now of better times and still looming threats and doubts that all is not right, all is not yet booming, yet all is something new and unknown and uncharted.

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By Cecil Hoge

In this present time of worldwide pandemic, shifting political tides, disinformation, misinformation, high unemployment, impeachments, fake news and stock market speculation, I thought I might return to an earlier time when things were simpler and choices were easier. At least, they seemed easier at the time. So I am continuing my blog series – “It Was The Music” and going back to 1967. This one is Volume #5 of the series.

In the years I had spent in college, I had developed a greater and greater appreciation of music. My appreciation was not focused on the lofty heights of classical music or opera. No, my interests were in popular music. More specifically, in folk and rock music. Certain songs would come out and you would hear them on a radio in car or someone in my fraternity would have a new album and there would be one song playing that would infect and almost permanently sear into your brain. Somehow those songs became associated with a certain moment or a certain mood of the time. “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harem was one of those songs. Certain words and phrases clawed into my mind:

The room was humming harder

As the ceiling flew away

When we called out for a drink

The waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later

As the Miller told his tale

That her face, at first just ghostly

Turned a whiter shade of pale

I did not know it at the time, but the lyrics above were influenced by certain drugs. My colleagues and I were into beer and while the influence of drugs was being discussed and reported at the time, the actual drugs had not made their way into our fraternity house. That changed one or two years after I left college, but at the time we were just awestruck by the new music that we were hearing. Of course, it was not just the words, it was the instruments that blended with the words to create a new mood and a new rhythm …haunting, doubting, beautiful, melodic and dangerous.

I, like many of my generation, was struck by the sudden emergence of new popular groups and the rise of The Beatles was a prime example of that. At first I thought of those 4 guys as just producing pleasant tunes for the ears of young teenybops – “Love Me Do”, “Please Please Me”, “She Loves You” – these songs seemed composed by teenagers, sung by teenagers, for teenagers. But as time passed and more albums came, I came to think that they were a much more complex band.

When I last posted “It Was The Music – Volume #4”, I had just managed to graduate from the University of Virginia. A few days before my graduation, The Beatles latest album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” had just come out. It was that surprising album that made me and many others think that The Beatles were much more than just four guys who could sing some pleasant melodies for teenybops. That album, far more complex and utterly surprising, made me think the Fab 4 really were Fab.

In my last 2 years of college I also developed a love/hate relationship with The Rolling Stones. At first I thought they were just some scruffy druggies with these hard and harsh sounding songs that made no attempt to sound pleasant or nice or kind. As time went on, I came to think of them as truly great. Their songs, while snarling, dissatisfied and dissatisfying, had a different and more dangerous take on the times…whether it be wishing to Paint It Black or dissatisfaction with the commercial world or fleeting, tender and passing moments of new relationships…they had a sense of frustration, anger and change that was in the air.

And of course, there was folk music which seemed to start out with the likes of Joan Baez on the banks of the Ohio only to develop into parables of truth from the likes of Mr. Bob Dylan. And it was Bob himself who shape-shifted from old and semi-pure folk fables to harsher electric chair truth serums. The music was changing rapidly in those days and it was new and evolving. It was, to quote some opening words from Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man”:

“Because something is happening here but you don’t know what that is…Do you, Mr. Jones?”

In the last year of my long and winding journey to graduation, my hastily chosen major was Philosophy. That choice had been necessary since I failed all the other humanitarian alternatives and I had rejected scientific, engineering and mathematical courses as outside of my wheelhouse. After 9 separate courses in Philosophy in the last year at The University, I emerged, ready for life, with a degree in that vague art.

To celebrate the occasion, I headed home with a small entourage – 3 fellow graduates from The University and a girlfriend…Miss Penny Zetterstrom.

I knew my life was at a turning point and soon I would have to decide on my path in this world, but I figured there was time for all that. So we headed to my family’s summer rental house a few days after graduation and a fine time we had. My girlfriend and I held hands, and together with my fellow graduates, we all went to the local discos and bars for dancing and celebrations, visited the Southampton Bathing Corporation for swimming and sunning and went to the Meadow Club for tennis and, as I said, we all had a fine time.

My fellow Virginia graduates could not help noticing that I had some drop dead beautiful female cousins who were living in the same house and who were kind enough to accompany us on some of our nighttime activities. At the time, they ranged in age from about 18 to 21, so the stars were aligned for my college buddies. However, my female cousins at this time had discovered new forms of mind stimulation, developing their own new boyfriends and theories on socially acceptable activities. At the time they were seriously involved in listening to the Doors, The Moody Blues and, of course, The Rolling Stones. So, while they were happy to run around with us for a day or two, they went their way and we went ours.

My girlfriend, Penny, could not help but be overwhelmed and taken by the beauty and style of Southampton. The high hedges, the big, sprawling “summer cottages”, the lush green lawns of the Meadow Club’s tennis courts, the nearby beaches all enthralled her. My family were blessed that summer because this was one of their more flush financial years and they had rented the Zirinsky House. That summer palace, shown in the painting above, had 13 or 14 bedrooms, a wrap around porch able to accommodate hundreds, about 3 acres of land and a cottage out back designed for young folks to disappear and do naughty things. And, as Mr. Dylan says, it was all good.

I Decide To Become a Clam Digger

They say all good things come an end and so it was that summer. Two of my college mates soon realized that they had scheduled appointments for real job interviews. Penny Zetterstrom, my beloved girlfriend, came to the sad realization that I was not prepared to marry her that summer and so she returned to Virginia to be a Super Woman in the future. That left Rich Miller and myself to cogitate on our our situations and ponder our options. Neither of us had the presence of mind to schedule potential work interviews, perhaps because we thought, after just completing the arduous work of getting college degrees, we should lay back for a while before doing anything rash.

And that is what we did for a week or so after my other good college buddies and girlfriend deserted us… while they went off to pursue actual careers and life style changes, we settled into a life of swimming, beaching, sunning and playing tennis. In the evenings we would return to the hacienda with a couple of six packs of the less expensive bubbly to properly consider our options. One thing became very clear… neither of us wanted to pursue anytime soon a responsible career… it was just too early to put on the harnesses of life. Another thing became clear… we were quickly running out money in our efforts to maintain a life of style and leisure.

We considered these problems for another one or two days, maintaining our healthy schedule of swimming and tennis during the day and not so healthy schedule of beer consumption during the evening. As the days passed and options available dwindled, a sudden inspiration came upon us one evening after several of the said beers.

“I own a boat,” I said.

“I own a motor,” Rich said.

We had been ruminating what a great thing it would be if we could remain in the Zirinsky House for the summer. To do that, we would have to find some form of employment. That was a serious concern on my part. I had actually never held real job before, other than occasionally helping out in my father’s factory/warehouse. I know that is shameful but it is the truth. It occurred to me during this conversation of boats and motors that many years ago as a young boy, I had learned to dig clams.

As the beers dwindled and our conversation became more focused and animated, Rich Miller took a quantum leap in logic and made the following suggestion:

“Why don’t we become clam diggers?”

The logic of that was overwhelming.

“That’s a cherry idea,” I said.

Rich put his hand to his chin and asked.

“What do we have to do to become clam diggers?”

That set off more thinking and the requirement for two more beers. I posited we probably would need a clam digging license. Where would we get that Rich queried. The Town Hall I said…because we are living in a rented house I could claim to be a resident.

What else would we need? Implements of the trade. What were those implements? We did not know. Then, if we get the boat, the motor, the license, the implements of the trade, where do we go?

Easy, I said, Shinnecock Bay. Then how would we sell the clams if we got the clams?

We had a lot of things to work out, but our minds were moving swiftly and so did the remaining beers.

The next few days, we were all about activity – I headed over to the Town Hall. I found out that it was all pretty simple. You just walk in, ask for the clam digger license form, fill it out and pay $25 bucks. The folks at the Town Hall were very kind and accommodating… they even told us about Ray the Clam Digger… he apparently made all the implements of the trade… baskets, graders and the all important clamrakes… he was in nearby Hampton Bays. So things began to come together.

The day after Rich headed to faraway New Jersey to retrieve the motor – a mighty 5hp Johnson. The day after that, Rich and I headed to Bellport to retrieve my 16’ boat.

Well, as they say, the rest was history. Rich and I had a truly fantastic summer. We spent our days gathering one or two bushels of clams each and selling them that day to Catena’s, the local seafood market, at $32 a bushel. We spent the afternoons and evenings spending our hard-earned cash pretty much as soon as we got it. Should you wish, you can read all about Rich’s and my adventures as summertime clamdiggers in my nearby blog story, “I Graduate to Clamdigger”.

Around this time, 1967, a bunch of things were happening in what might be said to be the real world.

Just as Rich Miller and my other college buddies were graduating, in mid June of 1967 Jimi Hendrix was playing at the Monterey Pop Festival along with a raft of other music celebs or soon to be celebs…The Grateful Dead, Janus Joplin, Otis Redding, Buffalo Springfield and many others… it was the first of many giant concert venues with dozens of great or soon to be great music stars. This concert had a kind of vibe and there was a feeling that “Something Was Happening Here” and indeed it was.

But life was not all music. Other things, not so optimistic, not so fun, we’re happening around the world. General William Westmoreland asked Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for an extra 100,000 troops for Vietnam. We needed to finish the job, he said. There were already 464,000 troops in South Vietnam, but the General said we were winning slowly and we needed more troops to polish off the VietCong…that proved optimistic.

Just as our summer clamming season was coming to an end, in early September, Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California, urged the U.S. do more in Vietnam, suggesting we should consider nuclear weapons. Fortunately, that suggestion was never adopted.

My summer job as clamdigger came to a conclusion. Rich Miller, my college buddy and clam-digging partner, decided it was time to get a real job. He went off to a bank job interview and within weeks he had put the harness on and was going out into the world as a young banker. That was not to last, but that is another story.

That left me without a job at 6s and and 7s. The weather was becoming chillier by the day, it was no longer practical to continue my summer job as a playboy clamdigger.

So that fall, I stayed on the Hamptons and once again, considered my options. During that summer, I had noticed a new publication called The Southampton Summer Day. It had quirky and offbeat stories that pricked my imagination. I liked the humorous and irreverent style of the publication. Throughout most of my life, I had harbored a desire to become writer. I was not sure how to go about that, but I decided to call the paper and find out if they wanted to hire someone who wanted to be a writer. I got a fellow on the line who said he was the publisher. That surprised me. I was expecting a secretary to answer the phone. But, no, it was a leaner operation than I had mind.

I asked if they might be looking for a writer to help out with the work involved.

“Yes and no,” was the answer. After some further questions, the guy who answered the phone, suggested that I send some samples of “my work”.

I mailed some short stories I had written to the guy I had spoken to. His name was Dan Rattiner. The stories were not very pertinent to the paper, but at least they indicated I could type somewhat and put words down on paper in sentences. That apparently was enough for Dan to suggest a follow up meeting. That was arranged and a few days later I found myself sitting next to a thin guy with glasses in a diner that was near to East Hampton. I remember the Diner very well because it was next to a tank just off of the main drag leading into Easthampton. I never learned just why the tank was next to the Diner, but I gathered it commemorated something.

Anyway, the young man opposite me explained that while he might be able to use a writer and even publish some of my writer’s stories, he could not do so full time. He did say that my writing showed “promise”. I did not know it, but Dan Rattiner was to become rather famous over time and in the future, his paper, or papers, became mainstay publications of the Hamptons, growing from a small 18 to 24 page black and white tabloid format to over 100 pages an additional 24, 36 or 48 page color wrap featuring famous local painters on the cover. All that was to come.

When I first met Dan, his paper was mere shadow of what it became. It was 18 or 24 pages, all black & white featuring some scribble cartoons that Dan regularly turned out. But, Dan’s stories were humorous and light-footed and the cartoons he drew to illustrate his stories were simple and crude, but they fit the paper and it all worked.

In our first meeting, Dan pointed out that the paper was closing down for the winter and would not reopen until the next season. This was a disappointment since I was hoping to start my new career that very Fall, but apparently, I would have to wait about 6 months.

And then the young publisher revealed the fact that what he really was looking for the coming year was one or two delivery boys. Someone who could drive around a truck/van and drop off the papers at each and every location. Apparently, there were quite a lot of locations to drop his papers off to. It turned out that Dan was regularly publishing 4 papers, most of which were the same, but there were special editions for each of the Hamptons…so there was a paper for Hampton Bays, Southampton, Easthampton and Montauk. Each had a different name and each had some local content, but most of the inner content was the same for all the different papers.

An intriguing aspect of Dan’s business model was that the papers were free to anyone who wanted to pick them up. I thought that was unusual and I liked the concept.

Dan suggested we have lox and bagels for lunch. I did not know what that was, but being adventurous, I went with the flow.

Well, Dan, spoke glowingly about all the opportunities his paper offered. He explained how he had started his first paper, The Montauk Pioneer, a few years earlier and how each and every year it had made money, in just the last two years, he added new papers in Easthampton, Southampton and Hampton Bays. He had high hopes that one day his papers would become an important publication on The East End.

In addition to needing a delivery boy and a part-time writer, Dan pointed out I could be a part time type-setter, a part-time ad salesman, and/or a part-time secretary. Well, I did not know what to make of this job interview, but I liked the idea of working in the Hamptons as writer and if I had to be a delivery boy as well, that was all right with me. I had to start somewhere. So, I agreed to the plan.

That meant making some further compromises, so that fall, winter and spring I went to work for my father. I told him this was just a job to get through the next six months and I insisted on working in the factory, rather than in the office. During the days, I packed fishing lure orders, built frog lures, assembled some weird fishing rods my father had acquired. I learned to unpack, repack boxes, tape boxes, mail out boxes, load boxes on trucks, bring boxes to the post office, pick up the mail, deliver the mail and many other exciting things.

In the evening I wrote stories that I thought Dan Rattiner would like for his paper. That was not easy since I was writing them at time of season that paper did not operate telling stories that did not have much to do with the East End of Long Island.

The months passed quickly and quietly on the North Shore of Long Island as 1967 slipped into 1968. I worked that winter and spring in my father’s warehouse, packing, shipping, making rods and lures, learning many things that I then thought worthless, but came later to consider valuable. In my father’s warehouse, I ended up running a fishing rod production line. Considering my zero knowledge of manufacturing and my eclectic approach to it, it is truly a miracle that any of it worked. And for while, it seemed I was on the road to establishing myself as a failed producer of fishing rods, but I endured and somehow it all worked out.

My production team was a mixed group of high school burnouts, dis-employed and displaced workers and drug addled teenagers. At this time, many things were changing. At the same time I was trying to develop writing skills for my summer job to come, I moved from packing, taping and shipping things to making fishing rods. At first I worked during the day and wrote at night, then I worked at night and wrote during the day. The latter schedule seemed to work out quite well, even if it started in chaos and disaster.

What had happened is that several years before my father bought the rights to this weird fishing rod product. It was called the AutoCast rod. It was a spring loaded, automatic casting rod. Not that the distances covered by this device were very impressive. In my father’s ad copy it said you could cast 50 to 70 feet, but I was never so lucky as to get it to cast more than 30 or 40 feet. No matter, it turned out that there a real market for this product. The best customers turned out to be paraplegics because they were generally physically unable to cast a fishing rod. So, the product had a true market base.

The sales of this thing were never that great, 5,000 or 10,000 units a year. My father was used to selling things in the hundreds of thousands, so you can say it was a lost child. That was up until the time my father struck up a relationship with a guy named Ed Downes. Ed turned out to be a kind of mail order / marketing / publishing genius. He owned a mail order catalog company called Madison House, which was bought with the proceeds of a product that Ed successfully sold as he emerged from college. That product was called “The Fur-lined Potty”. Ed ran a tiny classified ad in Esquire Magazine using this classic copy: “Gentleman, This Is It…The Genuine Fur-lined Potty!”

Now the product itself was pretty simple – a white enameled pot about 5” high, 10” around with a 1’ lip on top. To dress it up, Ed glued some squirrel hair around the flat 1” lip of the pot, hence the name, “The Fur-lined Potty”. To make a long story shorter, Ed had a hit on his hands. In doing so, he learned how to acquire, refashion and sell tens of thousands of the fur-lined potties. He also learned about advertising in magazines and he made $100,000 while still in college at a time when when $100,000 was really a lot of money. Esquire was so impressed by his regularly running little classified ads that they suggested he become classified advertising rep, which he did.

One thing led to another and when Ed got out of college, he went on rep more magazines and take on more products for mail order advertising. When my father met Ed he was already doing over $6,000,000 a year in mail order products and earning a hefty income from representing direct mail print advertising in number of magazines and newspapers. The match between my father and Ed proved to be made heaven. Ed put our AutoCast Rod into his Madison House catalog and soon he was selling over 5,000 rods year himself. Shortly thereafter a multitude other mail order catalogs took it on and pretty quickly the demand jumped up to over 50,000 units a year.

Enter humble me into the business…I only wanted to tape, pack and ship, but within a month or so, I found myself in charge 10 or 12 drug addled 18 to 22 somethings. A ragged crew it was. And need I mention, not only we’re the times and the music a-changing, so were range beverages and stimulants. Now all through college we were weaned on a steady diet of beer and other forms of alcohol, but now out college, in the real world, other world stimulants were coming into favor. In particular, wacky tabacky, also known as pot, ganja, weed, herb, grass and reefer, had become known to me and my nighttime workers.

It must said here that such things are not recommended for cohesive and precise manufacturing, but as Donald Rumsfeld once said, “You don’t go to war with the army you want, you go to war with the army you have.”

And so it was. My team of exiled high school drop-outs and some older, not so alert blue collar guys, were assigned the task of speeding up fishing rod production. I have to give some description of the manufacturing production line, which while not very sophisticated, was just that – a manufacturing production line. There 21 different production stops, drill presses, riveting machines, cutting machines, slotting machines. Along the way there were different parts that needed to be added or screwed on to the product, so there also things to pick up and put together and hopefully, we remembered to add the required elements.

You may imagine that my team was somewhat taken aback by the task before them when being confronted with a line of machinery and parts. Of one thing you could be sure, before starting every single evening, we would begin with a group meeting which included a discussion of production goals followed by passing around the sacred herb. After 20 to 30 minutes of mind stimulation and preparation, the evening production would get underway.

Now these corporate methods were not immediately successful as you might imagine. I believe the first evening we produced a total of 7 AutoCast fishing rods and several of those needed to be discarded due to “shoddy construction” or missing parts. The second evening was not much better. I think we got up to 9 units and our defect rate got down to 1 or 2. Considering the the day shift, run by my German stepmother, and some quite together young guys and gals, were churning our 200 to 300 units a day, our performance left something to be desired.

What to do? I thought. Actually, I had no idea, but I began to try things. The thing is, no matter what my approach, I tend to be competitive and persistent. So, I persisted. And gradually the production soared to 20 or 30 units a night. That still left some things to be desired. So I tried more things and the production did rise the next week to almost 100 rods per evening. In the end, what seemed to work best was me being at the end of the production line finishing things faster things just a little faster faster than the guys directly in front of me. That encouraged them to speed up. When they speeded up, the guys in front of them also speeded up, when the guys in front them, the rest of guys speeded up. Then I tried getting at the beginning of the line and feeding the first parts faster. Both systems seemed to work.

To finish this strange interlude, within a month or two we were producing 500 to 700 rods a night. And that was how I spent most the fall of 1967 and the winter of 1968. So my schedule became pretty set: I wrote short stories during the day and produced fishing rods at night.

Other things in the real world occurred. In October of 1967, Che Guevara, the famous revolutionary, was killed by Bolivian rebels. He had gained a cult following among lefties and revolutionaries and Vietnam protesters. And suddenly, he was gone. The myth had evaporated.

I was not a Vietnam protester, but certainly I felt the Vietnam War was crazy. Each night on TV, they would announce the number of U.S. casualties in dead and wounded, much as they have been announcing Coronavirus cases and deaths this year. In November, Joan Baez was arrested during an anti-war protest. In December, the British/French Concorde Jet was unveiled in Toulouse, France. A trip on that new plane from London to New York took only 3 to 4 hours versus the regular 8 to 9 hours by Boeing 707. Yes, things were happening.

Popuar music kept turning out new offerings that fall and winter: “Ode to Billie Joe” that mysterious and seductive song by Bobby Gentry about a couple throwing something off of the Tallahachie Bridge. Other songs came along and provided haunting warning signs that not all was right in the world. A prime example of that was Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s song, “All Along The Watchtower”. In that song, it was not just Bob Dylan’s lyrics, it was also Jimi Hendrix’s solitary voice and fearsome guitar that gave the song power.

In January, 1968 the Tet Offensive took place and sowed doubts that we could ever win the Vietnam War. It is hard to understate the effect the Tet Offensive had. For years, leading up to it, our leaders, mathematical geniuses like Robert McNamara, President Johnson, and military leaders like General William Westmoreland had said that Vietnam was a crucial key to America’s effort to keep Communism contained worldwide and as we went from a few hundred troops in 1960 to over 500,000 troops 1968, the general, the Secretary of State and the President kept saying that victory was right around the corner.

All of that 8 year history of hard efforts and high hopes, as our country went from sending a few hundred American “advisers” to Vietnam to hundreds of thousands American troops to Vietnam, was effectively denied, refuted and obliterated by the Tet Offensive. How could the North Vietnam launch an offensive and invade all the major cities of South Vietnam if we were winning the war, if after 7 years of efforts, after tens of thousands of American dead, after hundreds of thousands wounded, how could we be winning that wear?

In short, the Tet Offensive changed many minds, convincing many who had previously believed the cause was righteous, that the cause was fruitless and the effort to win was impossible. By this time, most of America’s youth, in addition to listening to new and daily emerging kinds of rock music, in addition to quickly acquiring addictions to all sorts of drugs, had already decided that the Vietnam was wrong, fruitless and a waste of blood, money and trust. So, for those of us who were young, most of us had long since lost faith in the war effort. Most of us had decided that it was the wrong war in the wrong place.

Now, of course, there was a big body of young men who were actually in the war in Vietnam. And their opinions about the war were nowhere near as clear. Many of them believed in their country’s need to be in Vietnam, many of them had lost buddies in the war, many of them had friends who had been wounded either physically or mentally during the war. And at the same time, the same rock music and the same proliferation of drugs was finding their way into Vietnam. And so, when these young men and women returned home, they found that they were held in contempt by their own contemporaries. This created more conflicted emotions between their patriotic duty and their actual combat experiences in Vietnam. And when they did return to what they considered their homeland, they found it different from the place they had left.

The Tet Offensive started at the end of January 1968. It came in three phases. January through March, May through June and August through September. By the end, it was said that we had won and the Viet Cong and North Vietnam had lost. But truly, that was a Pyrrhic victory. It turned out we had won the battle, but lost the war.

So the country was torn and divided about Vietnam, as I worked through that winter, with my band of somewhat befuddled and dazed and confused workers. It was a strange time in America and for me it was a transitional period from clam digger to factory worker on my journey to newspaperman.

Other disturbing things were happening on the American scene. In April, President Johnson decided not to run for President and that same month Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Shortly thereafter black riots erupted across the country. So there was, in addition to widespread protests in the U.S., a lot of of turmoil and doubt. And this general atmosphere of new music, proliferating drugs, ongoing war, rebellious and confused youth and the assassination of a black leader was all part of the tapestry of our lives in the first half of 1968.

And the turmoil that was going on in Americas was worldwide. In May, student demonstrations clogged the streets of Paris. In June, Bobby Kennedy is assassinated. In July Andy Warhol is shot by a model.

And this was happening just as I was returning to the high hedges and green lawns and sandy beaches of Southampton to start my new career as a newspaperman.

In the beginning my real job was delivering newspapers. That turned out to be far more elaborate than I imagined, although I must say, it was interesting. I would drive to a printer somewhere and pick up the papers…at first the location was somewhere on Long Island, but soon that changed to New Jersey. Dan had given me full control of a beat up Volkswagen Van. That van, I can say this because I have a long history of using them (in the coming years I was to use or own no less than 5 Volkswagen Vans), was very utilitarian, but it had some weight limits and disadvantages as a craft negotiating America’s highways.

Let me address the weight limitation issue. If one read a Volkswagen Van owner manual (Dan’s had long since been lost), one would find, somewhere buried in the many pages of text, that one should not carry much more than 1,000 lbs. of cargo weight. I did not know that at the time, but some things you learn from experience. Now, I am not quite sure exactly how many pounds each load of Dan’s Papers amounted to, but remember, in those days it was not called Dan’s Papers. In those days, there were four separate papers that Dan was producing weekly. As mentioned before, these were not too hefty for one paper considering it 18 to 24 pages of tabloid newspaper stock, but if you multiply that by 15,000 or 20,000 by 4, it adds up to anywhere from 60,000 to 80,000 papers, each 18 to 24 pages thick.

I do not know what the total weight was, but I can tell you this, it was way more the recommended max cargo weight for a Volkswagen Van. The added weight changed the driving characteristics of the intrepid van. Pickup, which with only one person and no cargo, left something to be desired, when loaded with me and 60,000 to 80,000 newspapers, left a lot more to be desired. Let give you a picture. Have ever come across a heavy loaded truck heading up a high hill? You might notice that the speed of the heavy truck is dramatically reduced, especially when loaded with 10 tons of gravel or 6,000 gallons of fuel. The case was essentially the same with Dan’s Volkswagen bus loaded with me and one week’s quantity of Dan’s different papers.

Now trucks carrying 10 tons of gravel or 6,000 or more gallons of oil or gas, are actually designed to do that, so even if they are slow, they keep a solid grip on the road. Not so with Dan’s Volkswagen when heading from New Jersey to the shores of the Hamptons. The weight in the van had a tendency create what I would call a free floating effect every time the vehicle came to any bend or curve in the road over 15 mph. That meant one had to compensate for the listing effects to the left or right. So just learning to drive Dan’s van was a real experience.

Combine that with the fact that once I got to the Hamptons I was expected to deliver the papers to each and every location that Dan had selected. And that, as I mentioned earlier, turned out to be one heckuva a lot of places. Specifically, I dropped off papers at every store, barbershop, restaurant, bar, supermarket, deli, dry cleaner, florist in the Hamptons. That is to say, every one that would accept the Free Papers. Not everyone was enthralled to have 30 to 50 newspapers set up somewhere in their location, but most accepted it as OK. At the time, Dan’s Papers was not so well thought of. Some people liked the papers, but many were indifferent and some were antagonistic.

In between delivering papers, I endeavored to write articles suitable for the unique blend of satire, frolic and quasi news that Dan spun out. It turned out that most of the stories that I had labored on the winter or spring before were of no interest to Dan, primarily because they had no Hampton or Long Island content.

There was one first writing assignment that I did get an early start on. And that was Dan’s “Guide to The Hamptons”. This was an additional publication that Dan printed at the beginning of the summer and my first real writing project started with working on that project. Parts of the guide were very boilerplate…like descriptions of local restaurants and bars that advertised. That consisted of 3 or 4 lines of copy. These were little blurbs that generally just regurgitated some advertising points about the different bars and restaurants. So they all had the same feel to them.

The part that turned out to be quite interesting, to me at least, was a history of the Hamptons. Dan explained the the Hamptons were really were a very old part of the country. I knew some of that because my family had rented one summer the oldest house in New York State. That was the Halsey House on South Main Street in Southampton. In order to widen my knowledge all things regarding the history of the Hamptons, I went to the local library in Southampton. At the time that was on Jobs Lane.

In working on “The Guide to The Hamptons” I learned many interesting and surprising historical facts about the The Hamptons, such as the fact there were over 100,000 Indians (aka native Americans) living on Long Island when the first Europeans arrived. What really surprised me was that there were many separate tribes and each controlled their own designated areas…there were the Shinnecocks, the Montauks, the Setallcotts, and several others. And apparently, from what I read, most of these Indian tribes were peaceful, but occasionally some other more warlike tribes would come over from the mainland to plunder the local crops and acquire some of the local Long Island Indian ladies.

I was also surprised to learn that it was the Dutch who first came to New York and Long Island and began purchasing land from the Indians. The Dutch settled in New York City and on Long Island, from the 1620s until around 1665. Then the Brits came along and displaced them. I think that is it a nice way to put it. So, New York City and parts of Long Island were first settled by Dutch settlers, then English settlers arrived with some large, well armored warships and quickly said, this land is ours. Now, some the Dutch remained, as did many of the Indians, but the English were the new guys in town.

I learned other things as well as I did my research. Somewhere in the late 1600s, the local Southampton drunk was punished for repeated offenses. Apparently, the jail facilities and amenities were limited and so they used a different form of punishment. Imagine the town drunk out on a big bender one night staggering around and howling at the moon, even scaring the local ladies and children. The next day he wakes up on a mud path that happened to be the main thoroughfare into town. So the good people of Southampton find this eyesore sprawled in the mud as they pass by in their local finery…well, maybe finery is too strong a word.

Anyway, you can imagine the local residents highly disturbed because this the third time they have found this guy sprawled in the mud after a night of keeping the owls awake. Something has to be done – so they put him on wooden platform with a large wooden post. The post has 2 wood cross boards that are attached to a hinge at one end. In between the 2 cross boards are 3 cutouts – one large, the other 2 small. The large cutout is for your head to go in, the 2 smaller holes are for your hands to go in. So, the town gets you to stand up on the wood platform and place your head and hands in this device. They lock you in for one, two or more days. Of course, the drunk gentleman stands outside with his torso and legs behind the post and his head and hands locked in between the boards in front of the post.

What a tempting target that must have made for the local kids as they pass by. A perfect excuse to throw some rotten tomatoes or melons or clam shells or other refuse. In the meantime, the guy stands there for hours and days, in bright sunlight or frigid darkness or on hot summer days or frozen winter days. The target of kids, flies, mosquitoes and perhaps manure. And as you can imagine, bathroom facilities were slim so whatever happened, happened. It is all enough to make guy reconsider his drinking habits.

So I learned a lot about the older times, past or present. Speaking of the present, important events were then happening in the Hamptons. I even got to include one such event in writing the Hampton Guide. That was the marriage of Zal of the Lovin’ Spoonful. I happened to be passing Saint Andrew’s Church on Dune Road one morning when several members of the Lovin’ Spoonful emerged from that church, gaily dressed in bell bottoms and tie die tee shirts. There were men, women and kids all spilling out of the Church…harmonicas, guitars and symbols were playing, rice was flying. It was the late Sixties, man. It seemed like a perfect example of new things happening in the Hamptons.

So, for most that summer I delivered newspapers and wrote articles for the papers. As the summer dragged on it came to my attention that I was delivering papers more than getting stories published. It was true that I wrote many of the blurbs describing local restaurants, but where was the art in that? So, I confronted my boss, Dan. He did not seem to react to my pleading to get more stuff published, but I kept pestering Dan and then one week he must have felt sorry for me because published 4 stories at once. That made me happier, but I could tell the writing on the wall…there was a finite limit to how much stuff Dan was going to publish!

More sadly, I found out there were not many other publishing companies that were interested in my quaint and quirky stories about the Hamptons. They were humorous and pleasing in their way, but no one took them seriously. I got bunch of interviews with different publications…The New Yorker, Esquire Magazine, Newsday, The Daily News, the New York Times, but none of those folks felt my work and my abilities were for them.

That led to me ultimately returning to my father’s business. My interest at the time was still not serious. I still viewed working for my father as a station along the way to finding my true career. However, something had happened that changed my view of father’s business. He had just acquired a strange new business that sold something that I had never heard of before. That was inflatable canoes. I did not know what that was at the time, but that business ended up attracting my attention and, ultimately, it became my long term career. And so it goes.

In August of 1968, Soviet tanks invaded Prague, Czechoslovakia. Later in the month there were demonstrations outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago and all the TV stations covered that.

In October, Jackie Kennedy wedded Aristotle Onassis, the shipping magnate. That seemed like a big come down after being married to the President of the United States. But, the handsome, young President had been assassinated and the living have to make their own life decisions and Jackeline Onassis Kennedy made hers.

In November of that same year, Nixon and Agnew went on to win the 1968 election.

In December, the first U.S. Astronauts orbited the moon.

Meanwhile, the war in Vietnam continued to spin out of control.

Yes, there was something happening here and no one was quite sure what it was.

Through it all, music helped me navigate this topsy/turvy period.