When You Were Just Ten

 When You Were Just Ten

Noel Laflin

8-30-20

When growers began to let the orange grove go wild, since it was just a matter of time before the bulldozers would come and topple the trees anyway – making room for a church and its parking lot to take the place of a perfectly fine playground for all of the neighborhood children – tenacious vines started to take hold, creeping their way up and around many of the old trees.

The vines grew fast and strong in no time at all, allowing ten-year-old boys the opportunity to fashion a fort within a tree – a place to hide from the sun, or enemies, or better yet, hang out with friends, telling one another stupid jokes, and corny ghost tales once shadows lengthened and twilight faded.

But if it was a view one sought, well, the sturdy vines with purple flowers provided perfect ladders to the top of many trees, and could be scaled by skinny kids (frequently mistaken for monkeys) in a matter of seconds, up to their own private crow’s nest.

Weight from those boys would create a gentle bowl - not unlike a real nest - from which one could stand, crouch, or lazily stretch out and comfortably take in the view.

To the south lay the supermarket, and beyond that old Center Street and the elementary school – unless your pal went to parochial school which was in the opposite direction, but still visible from their perch.

To the north lay downtown – to the west were the familiar roof tops of their home street.

But the coolest view of all lay immediately east of them – just spitting distance away actually: the town cemetery, filled with ancient giant trees of its own, spooky old mausoleums, and sad statues.

As evening would begin to close in on long, lazy summer explorations, the crow’s nest was a fine place to be as lights from the town began to glow, church bells from a half a mile away tolled out the hour, and distant train whistles grew closer.

There was a sharpening of all the senses from such a height.

Especially when you were just ten.

Closing Out 1970

Closing out 1970

Noel Laflin

8-28-20

A couple of months ago I lamented about what I could not remember from the first Friday night campfire of 1970 – after all, it’s been half a century, of course.

And here I am at the end of August, 2020, and thinking about the last Friday night campfire that closed out that same 1970 season fifty years ago tonight.

I can’t remember a thing about it either as it was so long ago – but I know it happened.

The next day, the last official day of summer camp 1970, kids would leave and the staff would begin to tear down and store all of the tents, cots, and nasty mattresses from all of the campsites. They would be hauled onto the old camp stake bed truck and driven back to the pool’s changing room and showers, silently waiting for winter. Mice would take up new residence in the lumpy, stained mattresses once again. Water lines and the pool would be winterized, bows, arrows and rifles from another era safely locked away in the old Scoutmaster’s lounge, the trading post inventoried, boxed up and shuttered, staff cabins swept out, the kitchen scrubbed a final time, individual recreational areas like the rifle range, archery range, nature center, and handicraft lodge secured for the next nine months.

What had taken us a week to set up was somehow all undone in a day and a half.

Then the staff said our goodbyes to one another and headed home too, as school was but a week away for most of us.

And so the events of half a century ago are tidied up and stored away once more. Memories are dusty, but some survive. For me, it was the making of another great friend or two, running off to Deep Creek at least twenty times that summer, and knowing that there were Friday night campfires that must have been pretty good – even if the details are sketchy now.

Again, for what it’s worth, whenever I did lead a song, I hope that I was in tune, at least. An unreliable memory tells me that I was, of course – or so I probably lie to myself.

Trade Offs

Trade Offs

Noel Laflin

8-28-20

I attended my very last sales meeting six years ago today.

Having a calculator handy (aren’t mobile phones clever?), I just did a rough estimation and figure that I must have sat through approximately 500 sales meetings during my working days - and that works out to a couple of thousand boring hours cooped up indoors with, for the most part, overbearing sales managers. I was offered the title once, but did not want to become the guy I most disliked.

After that last meeting, I have since spent thousands of hours out of doors watching birds and such, hiking as slowly as I like and getting to know more about nature than I ever imagined possible. And that’s coming from an old Boy Scout. I have a few pictures to prove the point now.

The pay is lousy, but there are no obnoxious managers, or clients, for that matter - just loud hawks and ravens most days - and hummingbirds every day.

Not a bad trade off.

I wish I had retired fifty years ago.

Mr. Majestic

 Mr. Majestic – or maybe it's Ms...

Noel Laflin

8-24-20

I call him Mr. Majestic, even though he may be a she – it’s difficult to tell with hawks – unless, as a falconer once informed me when showing him a photo of a Cooper’s hawk and asking him whether it was male or female, to which he responded, “You never want to get that close to find out.”

And so the gender of our neighborhood red-tailed hawk remains a mystery – but his/her majesty lives on despite my curiosity.

Mr. Majestic took up residence in our neighborhood about a year ago. He claimed the highest pine on the hillside as his own, perched at the very top on most days. You can hear him call out from a quarter mile away, and clearly see his outline atop the pine from just as far away, as the red-tailed is the largest of the hawks out this way in East Orange.

He, or she, had quite the following of other red-tailed friends during mating season this past late winter and early spring. Like a song from a beloved musical, they flew lazy circles in the sky over our neighborhood all through those months. Then it made itself scarce for the next month or two, perhaps seeing to the raising of kids – but that is just speculation on my part. All I know is that Mr. Majestic is now back and scouring the neighborhood for tasty bunnies and such.

He startled me yesterday as I was watering the garden - coming in fast and silent from the east, crossing near eye level, and landed in a tall tree on the other side of my fence about seventy-five feet away.

The tree he/she chose is an Ailanthus altissima - or more commonly known as a tree of heaven. Some, like me, refer to the messy, invasive species as the tree from hell, as they are a nuisance, and hell to kill off. You may recognize the species as the stubborn tree that refused to die from Betty Smith’s 1943 classic, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”

But as much as I detest the constant sprouting of tiny, tenacious trees of heaven that try to sprout and take over my tiny garden, and over the fence, and down both sides of the canal that runs from east to west behind our property, I was, for once, grateful that this particular one stood where it has stood for the last twenty years or so and gave Mr. Majestic a place to perch, preen, and generally look regal for the next five minutes, before he sprung from his heavenly perch and flew back the way from which he came. I am also grateful that I had a camera nearby.

I was thinking that I should entitle this brief piece, “A Tree Grows, Despite My Best Efforts To Kill It, In El Modena.”

Nah – I think I will stick with Mr. Majestic instead. Or, maybe Ms. Majestic.

But I really don’t want to get that close to determine which it is.

No Calories - No Guilt

No Calories - No Guilt

Noel Laflin

8-19-20

August 19th is World Photography Day as it was on this date in 1829, French painter and physicist Louis Daguerre presented his photographic process to the French Academy of Sciences.

My favorite quote about photography is by photographer Diane Arbus who said,“Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.”

So, I tiptoed through the garden to see what I might steal.

Just over the fence a Cooper's hawk landed on a neighbor’s gate. It seemed like a worthy heist and carried with it no calories or guilt whatsoever.

Mother Goose Tale

Mother Goose Tale

Noel Laflin

8-5-20

Two different pairs of Egyptian geese built nests in large cavities of trees close to the upper lagoon this summer. One nest was in an old oak, about five feet off the ground, and the other nest was in an ancient sycamore tree, about twenty feet up; it looked like an old owls nest.

The oak couple produced five goslings, and ten days later the other Egyptians in the sycamore tree hatched one youngster. I wish I had seen mama goose grab that downy fluff-ball by the scruff of the neck and fly it some twenty feet safely to the ground - but, sadly, I missed that event.

By the time the lone chick from the sycamore nest was taken to the water, the oak goslings had shrunk in number, from five to three. Either predators or disease took down two of their members.

And by the time I noticed that the taller nest was empty and went looking for the new gosling, I discovered that he/she was now with the other family. Why, you may ask? I have no idea. But as I found its parents at one end of the lagoon basking in the sunshine, there, down the shoreline, was the other family with four kids - one visibly smaller than the others.

I am still mystified as to the arrangement and transfer of the youngest gosling, but such is the mystery of geese, I guess.

Days later, four goslings had dwindled down to three - but two of the kids are still larger than their adoptive sibling.

And that’s where it has stood for the last week.

All get along just swimmingly, from what I can see. Both oak parents guard the youngsters closely, hissing fiercely should a dog walk by, or chasing all mallards and coots off the lagoon if the fancy suits them.

It’s a strange and wonderful thing to watch these past several weeks.

Here’s hoping the current family of five stays this way for the foreseeable future.

Irvine Park

Irvine Park

Noel Laflin

8-4-20

Four years ago today, my friend Jay and I paid a visit to Irvine Park in order to shoot some pictures.

Until that day, I don’t think that I had been to the place since my teenage years, when I thought nothing of riding my old Schwinn fourteen miles in order to get there – and then another fourteen miles to get home. Back then I only saw the park as a destination and a place to get a drink of water, or maybe buy a Coke and a burger, before turning around to pedal my way back through the endless orange groves that seemed to magically connect the park to my parents’ house.

Over time – a half century, to be precise - I paid the ancient oaks, sycamores, hawks, squirrels, peacocks, woodpeckers, creek bed, and narrow-gauge train winding its way around two lovely lagoons (all nestled in our local foothills) little heed, as the once-endless orange groves disappeared, old familiar roads changed course, and I exchanged a bicycle for a car. But that first car, along with its numerous successors, never found its way back to the park – not until four years ago today.

Since then, I have been making up for lost time, hiking its roads, hills and creek. And, as luck would have it, I only live four miles from the park now, have a pass, a camera, and a desire to explore and document the place – its flora, fauna, geology, and history through every season – some might argue, obsessively.

But I’ve got to tell you – although some of you might have guessed it already – it never gets old - at least, not for me.

And as it never gets old, it keeps me from getting old – or so I like to tell myself.

However, time to end here as I just saw our neighborhood red-tail hawk pass over, flying in a northeast direction - towards Irvine Park. He was calling out too. I'll take that as a sign.