Birthday Remembrance

Noel Laflin

3-28-24

 

My friend Jeremy could have been celebrating his 61st birthday today, but the fickle finger of fate had other plans for him, apparently.

 

As it turns out, an insidious syndrome that snuck into the country somewhere in the late '70's (like a sneaky thief in the night), and steadily infected folks both young and old across the land, eventually found this particular young man, too, and laid him low at age thirty-three.

 

Some famous young men throughout history also died at thirty-three - Alexander the Great and Jesus both come to mind (and being Maundy Thursday, the latter fellow definitely stands out today.)

 

And although my friend was neither conqueror nor Messiah, he was a very sweet and loving guy in his own right, even if he never made the history books, let alone the scriptures.

 

But I remember him fondly, and just thought I'd like to share that with you all today.

 

So, here's to you, kiddo.

 

And if you are listening, you are still missed.

 

Leap Day

 

Leap Day

Noel Laflin

2-29-24

 

It comes as no surprise that those who happen to be born on Feb. 29 have the rarest birthday one could have — only getting to celebrate their “real birthday” once every four years. According to the History Channel, it's estimated only five million people around the world have this birthday.

 

My old friend Mike was born in a leap year. He invited me to his "third" birthday party when we we in sixth grade. He made a big deal about it, laughing at himself, which in turn made the rest of us laugh. He might have been the only friend that I ever had who had the rare distinction of being a leap year kid.

 

We went through grade school, junior high and high school together. We were in Scouts and on the track team together as well. We weren't very good runners, but that didn't really matter at the time. We just enjoyed one another's company, regardless of the circumstances.

 

We lost touch with one another after graduation, but reunited at our 20th high school reunion. He introduced me to his wife and said he was a cop in Chicago. The three of us hung out for the evening and reminisced about our childhood adventures. It was a good night.

 

When I attended the 30th high school reunion, I remember I so wanted to see him again, but saw his name on the "In Memory Of" board where we checked in and got our name tags so folks didn't have guess who they were talking to.

 

Consequently, that evening proved to be a little lonelier.

 

I don't know why I am telling you all this right now, but I guess being a Leap Day makes me think of the kid who used to make me laugh.

And I wish he was still around so that I could send him a card,, congratulating him on finally making it to his 18th birthday.

 

Keeping Us Safe

 

Keeping Us Safe

Noel Laflin

2-26-24

 

My former Scoutmaster, Dale Wilcox died on Valentine's Day - He was nearly 91 years old.

 

I have many fond memories of the man, but perhaps my favorite happened on a dark July night at Camp Ahwahnee in 1966. I was thirteen at the time.

 

We had left the comfort of our campsite that particular afternoon and hiked to the wilderness portion of camp know as Bracken Fern. As the place was crazy with the ferns for which it had been named, we all built individual lean-tos covered with the hardy plant.

 

But as evening turned to night, two older camp staff members found our campfire hidden away in the woods and quietly joined the rest of us as we sat around the flames seeking its comforting warmth.

 

Jokes and stories were bandied about, as teenage boys are bound to do when there’s a campfire dancing playfully before them, not to mention a massive star-filled night above.

 

But as the evening grew late and the two staff men were departing, one suddenly stopped and said he hoped we would all survive the night as we were in Muzuki territory.

 

Of course, that led someone to ask what that meant exactly, but the fellow who had dropped the line said not to worry, it was just an old legend that had spread over the years, and not to take it as true.

 

Well, that spurred us on to asking about the ‘old legend,’ naturally, which is all the impetus the fellow needed to tell us about the madman Muzuki who lived in a cave not far from where we camped (a cave that had yet to be found, they said), and was known to creep into lonely settings like this, kidnap sleeping boys, and drag them back to his lair – never to be heard from again. It was out of retribution, or so was said, for something bad that had happened to the madman eons ago.

 

Of course, the two played off of one another with their description of Muzuki – the crazy eyes, the tattered rags he wore for clothes, the yellow fangs, the rotten smell of the man, etc.

 

“Well,” the oldest lad finally concluded, “sleep well!” And on that ominous note, he and his buddy quietly disappeared into the woods from which they came.

 

The fire, by this time was burning low, so Dale said it was time to turn in.

 

I said, “Where’s your lean-to, Mr. Wilcox?”

 

“Oh, I didn’t build one; thought I would just sleep here in front of the fire instead.”

 

And then, as if on cue, twelve of us ran to our laboriously created shelters built just hours before, grabbed our sleeping bags, and hightailed it back to the campfire. Everyone threw on more sticks, pinecones, logs, or anything else that would keep the fire burning bright.

 

I didn’t think it was possible to fit a dozen kids around the man the way we did that night – sleeping like sardines in a tin can, but simply and instinctively trusting that Mr. Wilcox would keep us safe – just in case an ancient, crafty, depraved, drooling madman crept out of the woods that night.

 

And yours truly was the closest to our Scoutmaster all night long. Some senior patrol leader I proved to be. But I figured that rank had its privileges, so I cashed in.

But the good news was, of course, we were all accounted for in the morning.

 

Noel Laflin

Eagle Scout Emeritus – and faithful keeper of campfire tales from long ago

Camera Possessed

 

Camera Possessed

Noel Laflin

12-4-23

 

A little over half a century ago, my father found two old cameras in a dusty box lying on Ruby’s garage floor.

 

Being in charge of our next door neighbor’s wish to clean things up before the sale of her home, my dad asked Ruby whether she wanted the cameras. She said they were both his if he so liked as she did not even recall owning either. They most likely had belonged to a sister that had moved out years before – but even that was just a guess on her part.

 

One was an old 35mm Ziess Ikon – circa the early 1950’s, still in a well-worn leather case. The other was a vintage Kodak folding camera, produced sometime between 1914-1927. It took a moment or two to locate a slightly beveled button on the Kodak which opened the front and allowed you to withdraw the lens on its bellows and lock into place. It was like a cool puzzle box in a way.

 

Upon inspection, it turned out that there was still film in the German made Ziess Ikon, so on a whim, my dad took it to be developed. The prints came back showing scenes from Knott’s Berry Farm’s Ghost Town and, strangely enough, photos of a familiar looking asphalt company situated along the Santa Ana River. What proved strange is that asphalt facility is where my father worked. It remained a mystery as to who had taken any of those random shots, especially as to where my dad worked. It always spooked us a bit when we wondered about it aloud.

 

What became even more mysterious were the missing shots that I took of an old graveyard in Minnesota later that summer. All the other photos from that trip had turned out, but the old creepy cemetery frames were mere blanks.

 

I decided the camera was haunted and never used it again.

 

But the vintage Kodak became a friend that accompanied me to summer camp a couple of years later and documented the building of an old log cabin. I figured that if we were building something that looked old, that I should shoot its progress with something equally old.

 

I had also built a small dark room at camp that year and developed 8x10 black and white prints late at night. The familiar warm images of the cabin and other favorite sites at Ahwahnee taken by the old fold-out antique Kodak were a joy to behold as they came to life in the developing and fixing trays.

 

If I had been shooting with the haunted camera there’s no way I would have spent nights alone, in the woods, sequestered in a small dark closet with whatever it did or did not decide to show me.

 

Both cameras now reside in a box on a shelf in my garage. They have been there for years - especially since the advent of the digital age.

I am pretty sure there’s no undeveloped film in either one, but wouldn’t it be cool if there was? If so, I hope it’s in the old Kodak and not the haunted zeitgeist disguised as a camera.

Day's End

 

Day’s End

Noel Laflin

11-21-23

 

As we walked up the trail and rounded a bend, the sunset came into view. Irvine Park, its foothills, and all beyond were overshadowed by the white, red, grey, black and pink in the sky above.

 

It was a keeper of a moment.

 

When it was totally dark a short time later, multitudes of toads and crickets sounded off, and owls started to hoot.

 

We parted ways at the base of the trail – Kyle wanting to explore the creek bed, and me, wanting to head home and get some supper.

 

It was a dark hike to the car, but on a road I knew well.  I stopped at a favorite rock in a low retaining wall to capture a photo of all the fossils contained within. Holding the phone just inches away and hoping for the best on such a dark night, I clicked. The flash did it justice.

 

My phone dinged with Kyle telling me he could hear a screech owl. The kid was always a sucker for owls. Me too, and I must admit that I was a bit envious as I had not laid eyes on one for more than a year.

 

Then, as I finally approached my car I, too, heard an owl overhead in a sycamore tree. As I drew closer, a timer must have kicked in as all the park’s outdoor lighting suddenly flicked on, which startled that owl in the tree above. With a mighty screech, a great horned owl shot out of the sycamore, just feet away, and quickly sped off over the lagoon and into the night.

 

The owl-sighting drought was suddenly over.

That, too, was a keeper of a moment.

 

 

Young Explorers

 

Young Explorers

Noel Laflin

11-13-23

 

A group of preschoolers and their moms caught me searching the rock walls around the old boathouse this morning and asked if I had found anything interesting as they saw me bending down this way and that way - occasionally zooming in on something - in this case, searching for fossils hidden in stone.

 

I told the teacher what I was up to and this excited her greatly. She asked if I could show everyone an example of a fossil, so I was happy to do so. There was a good one close by and others that I pointed to across the lagoon in another wall.

 

I told her it was like a treasure hunt finding the rare rock that some thoughtful mason had cemented into place decades ago just so that someone (like us, I added) might someday come across and marvel at, just as we all were doing right now.

 

She asked the age of some of the examples and I told her millions of years old. She laughed and said they were obviously older than her. I told her I had her beat on that front, too.

 

I am hoping some future Indiana Jones was part of the young crowd today. With an enthusiastic teacher like this leading them across the park, it's definitely in the cards.

 

Eureka! Found Once More

 

Eureka! Found Once More

Noel Laflin

11-7-23

 

It took a couple of hours and three different scouting expeditions, but I finally located a cool looking rock that I first came across nearly three years ago.

 

It caught my attention the first time as those striking feather-like white markings stood out against the brownish red of the rock. I remember they kind of glistened in the sunlight as if to say, hey, look at me - I might be millions of years old but I still got it!

 

They are not fossils, but instead, really interesting looking crystallized mineral formations. The rock most likely tumbled down Santiago Creek from quite a number of miles away, based upon what I have subsequently learned as to where it might have originated in the Santa Ana Mountains.

 

Subsequent to its discovery, and to disguise its presence to others, afraid someone just might want to take it home with them (going to need a heavy duty backpack in order to do so), I turned the heavy rock upside down so that it would blend in with the other eight gazillion river rocks here in the area right off the creek bed. And in heavy flooding times, even where I stood, became part of the creek bed. The rock having landed here, God only knows when, is testament to that mighty force of nature.

 

Thus, turning it upside down so it looked like so many other rocks seemed like a good idea at the time, but would prove challenging in the long run, as already noted.

 

Fortunately, after those three failed attempts to locate it again, an off-chance photo hiding in Google photos, which showed some crucial landmarks, was most helpful in finally finding the elusive rock yesterday afternoon. Even then, it still took a while as trees tend to grow and the landscape alters, even in just three years – not to mention there were a lot of rocks that bore much in common. Let's just say there were few stones left unturned in the venture.

 

Finally, upon discovery at last - a jubilant eureka moment to be sure - I noted that the fire blackened rock was now split in half (maybe crunched when heavy trucks and tractors worked over this area a couple of years ago as burned out trees from the 2017 fire and subsequent thick overgrown brush were removed), but the section of stone that I wanted to see again was still pretty much intact. And because of the splitting, the cool looking interior is now visible, which wasn't the case before.

 

Once satisfied with a successful conclusion to this great adventure, I re-hid the rock and this time posted a feathered sentry to guard it.

 

So, the next time I get curious enough to want to view this little natural treasure again, all I need to do is find that bird and have him tell me where the hell, exactly, have I re-hid it?