What I learned on my summer vacation by John Nogowski.
(This used to be a fun assignment for the first day of school - Hope it’s still fun!)
This column is being written at Gate A7 at the Omaha, Nebraska airport as we got here a bit early. I had a few minutes to sit down and say hello to everybody. Whassup????
Having the chance to spend a few days on the Connecticut shoreline and a few days in scenic Sioux City, Iowa on the edge of the roaring Missouri River was an interesting contrast in American life. To travel through Connecticut, everything looked lovely, in mid-summer. The weather was perfect, the houses, the towns all seemed as well-tended and classy as ever, as if there wasn’t a care in the world. And the fried clams were out of this world. (3 times in four days). In Sioux City, just now recovering from a terrifying flood, it seemed people were treading lightly, relieved that they made it through the weather and water but still a bit shaky that Mother Nature could wreak havoc like that. In Florida, we always have to worry about hurricanes and evidently now, little gators in our neighborhood pools. But floods are a whole other kind of worry.
The author, sharing the same haircut with the guy, recalls George’s Presidential ranking.
Writers always seem to find irony everywhere. Even on vacation. For example, we were seated in First Class on the flight to Charlotte from Tallahassee and were treated as if we were related to somebody important. The flight attendant/stewardess/”Waitress In The Sky” - Re: Paul Westerberg simply could not have been nicer, sweeter or more accommodating. When she asked if I’d like a drink and I said “Coke Zero” she was back in a flash with an ice-cold Coke Zero IN A GLASS. This was like something Prince or Kevin Costner would get. I had so much room, I was able to read my book with ease. I felt treasured.
On the second leg of the flight from Charlotte to Hartford, however, the worm, as the saying goes, turned. I was stuck - literally - in coach, in the middle seat next to a 315-pound Fred Flintstone-look-alike, minus Fred’s neck. Sporting a Moe Howard (Three Stooges) haircut, the look of someone who had forgotten something back at the hotel and a gruff, irritated manner, also unfortunately overlapped, by several inches, the boundaries of his seat. In order to avoid arm-to-arm contact, your correspondent spent the two-hour flight turned as if looking for something in the back seat. I will be writing to American Airlines to suggest seating people according to width.
Stopped at a light in Sioux City, Iowa, the car immediately in front of me was an old gray Honda Civic. Which wasn’t particularly interesting until I noticed it had a racing spoiler on the back. Then I got to wondering what sort of mind would think it was a good idea to put a spoiler on the back of a Honda Civic unless they were trying to be funny. Then the light changed.
The first time I’d actually held a genuine newspaper in my hands with one of my own stories in it was the Saturday Hartford Courant which, to my delight, carried my Substack column that I’d written about a speech writer Gore Vidal gave to the National Press Club 33 years ago. The Courant had run the column online earlier in the week so I was surprised to see it again. It was almost like a “Welcome To Connecticut, Nogo.” As many of you know, for 25 years of my career, I was used to seeing my stories in the paper. The Courant has been kind enough to run a half-dozen of my columns over the past several months but, of course, I only saw them online. Even after all these years, it was a thrill to unfold the paper and see my byline again. It cost $5.50 but it was worth it.
Thrill No. 2: When I wrote “Teaching Huckleberry Finn” six long years ago, I had hoped that maybe someday, they’d offer it in the bookshop at the Mark Twain House in Hartford. Maybe somebody interested in Twain, perhaps a teacher, might see it there and it’d be helpful in the classroom. That’s why I wrote it. But there are lots of books written about Twain and only so much shelf space so I figured it might be a long shot. So here I am all these years later, looking at the books on the shelf and bang, there it is! What an absolute thrill!
Thrill No. 3: The second leg of our vacation was to catch John playing some baseball for the Sioux City Explorers and to see him hitting a home run. When your son is a pro baseball player and you only get to attend a handful of games in person, the chances of you being there for a home run are slim. I was somewhere in Maryland, driving to Vermont when I heard John hit his first professional home run over the radio. Liz was asleep and I was watching from the corner of our couch when John hit a dramatic walk-off HR to win a game for the Explorers on Friday night a few years ago. He hit his only major-league HR in Arizona and we were at home, watching on TV. We did see a two-homer game back in Stockton, California, eight years ago but not many since. So it was really cool when, in the second game of a doubleheader he knocked one over the wall, came around the bases and pointed up to his biggest fans in the stands. That would have been worth walking to Sioux City to see that.
I’ve been keeping a close eye on the readership of these posts and the response has just been terrific, better than I could have anticipated. Thanks, everyone and please don’t hesitate to drop a comment. I read every single one and always will, promise.
Finally, I must confess, I have an addiction. To books. First place I visited was the Book Barn in Niantic. Three books later, including a 10-pound Gore Vidal collection, we hit a really neat RJ Julia bookstore in Madison, Connecticut got a Springsteen book. And there were more. Ultimately, Liz said we had better get another suitcase. Ooops.
Wow. Lots of diverse thrills. At least with the book addiction you loose calories carrying them….