Date:                           June 26, 2008

Location:                    Grand Island, NY

0800

            This is the best of times, and this is the worst of times, and this is the time for me to explore my simple tale of 2 cities.  One “city” is a visit to my granddaughter’s rite of passage known as her 6^th grade graduation and the other city is a simple fish and chips dinner.

            Being at the Grand Island KOA has, at its best offering, allowed Connie and me to become a more consistent participant in our grandchildren’s, and their parents, life this summer.  For grandma and grandpa that has been a blessing.  We can only hope that it is not too much of a burden on our family.  Part of the proximity pleasure of our summer location is that we could easily attend Beth’s 6^th grade graduation.  Grandma even had the pleasure of making her dress for the occasion.  It was a bit of a chore, but still a pleasure for the seamstress and a perceived honor from the recipient.  Beth was adamant that “Gram-cracker” make her dress, once she knew the possibility existed.  It seemed to be a meaningful gift and moment that both grandma and granddaughter could share.  From a slightly biased position, I think grandma did a great job and granddaughter looked fantastic.  Beth looked very appropriate and stylish as she walked across the stage to receive her 6^th grade diploma and a very impressive collection of awards for academic prowess and educational deportment.

            It was as Beth sat on stage with her North Collins school mates that I was to visit the first of my 2 cities.  Beth was, due to grandma’s creation and design, very properly attired in a simple yet eloquent dress that neither hid her beauty nor seem to place it on a street corned for sale.  Many of the almost teenagers that strolled across the stage on this evening were in costumes that were inappropriate and unbefitting their age.  Slinky crepe fabric draped across a burgeoning body is not, in my humble opinion, proper attire for a girl still awaiting the arrival of all of her body parts.  Some of the girls seemed almost too comfortable in the Jezebel attire that adorned their forming bodies.  Other poor children were noticeably very uncomfortable in the revealing and provocative costumes that some pimp had dressed them.  I was not sure if I should feel sorry for the little children or angry at the despicable parent that was trying to steal the last moments of innocents and youth from their children.

            I had entered, sadly again, the city of over sexed under appreciated youth we call our early teens years now days.  Yes, I sound old and stuffy.  But I truly do fear that we will pay for the theft of the youth of our children.  Anyone that is beyond the age of consent knows that youth is all too fleeting and adult responsibility must be learned, and should be taught from proper guidance and example.  Slinky, revealing dresses that belong on bodies in the windows on the streets of Holland do not have a place on our children at their 6^th grade graduation.  Parents, get your heads out of your rectums these are your children.  They are not your property for sale on a street corner.  Let them live their childhood.  Adult responsibility and sexual forays into society will come soon enough, but please not at the end of elementary school.  Please don’t thrust these munchkins into stress of the worst of times before their’re due.

            The other city of my diatribe is, as it is the classic novel, somewhat the antithesis of the former.  Connie and I drove along the Niagara River, which is not really a river, to a small eatery for a simple dinner.  This is not note worthy nor is it monumental.  But it is a chance for 2 older geriatric to relive a moment of a long gone youth.  Our evening meal was made and served at a silo located along the Niagara River.  Yes, it was that kind of silo.  The top of the silo was ringed with a patio supplied with picnic tables and we ordered our meal in the center, or the actual enclosed part of the silo.  Again, I reiterate that this is not overly eventful.  But, it was a youthful excursion to a time when you might take your best date to a drive-in and have a soda or a hamburger and not be in a world of gilts and plastic.  We did drive up to the silo and we did have a soda, I even had a real milkshake made with milk and ice cream.  It was a date with by best girl and for a moment as we sat on the swing in the near by park and watched the water from Lake Erie flow into the Lake Ontario maybe we did revisit our youth.  As the sun sat over the Canadian side of the flowing straight it was a very pleasant reprieve form adulthood as our troubles seem to flow away with the water as it made its long progression form the Great Lakes on the west to the Atlantic Ocean on the east.  This was a visit to the best of times.

            It is a far far better thing to live your youth as long as you can and not hurry to the demands of adulthood any early than is demanded of you.  And as you age it is a far far better place to go as you revisit the simplicity of your youth at each and every occasion that may present itself to you.  You have a choice of 2 cities in which you can live;  one of over stressful pressure to grow up and become something that you may not be prepared to be yet;  or, slow down a bit and live your youth experiences so that you will, as you reach a senior status, wish to revisit as often as the opportunity arises. 

Date:                           June 24, 2008

Location:                    Grand Island, NY

0900

            Yesterday Connie and I had an exciting day of doing almost nothing.  This is not a bad note of depression, just a fact.  After the very busy weekend, it was a pleasant reprieve to enjoy the life of a “normal” retiree.  Connie got to read a book and I got to play on the computer making a spreadsheet in Excel that I will, probably, never use.  But, it was fun making and I can now track all of our activity weekends at the KOA and magically rate each event in the amount of money taken in or the amount of participation we were able to get form the campers.  It is a bit awesome what a formula and a bit of planning can do in an Excel spreadsheet.  By simply inputting our weekend numbers I can tally the year to date progress, the weekend progress and find the most successful offerings, all in the flash of hitting an “enter” button on my PC.  You have to love Microsoft Office.

            As a side note of tantamount interest to everyone, Connie and I managed to get new glasses this summer.  This is not overly interesting, but a fact.  After a month or so of wearing our new spectacles, Connie noticed that hers were not fitting as snuggly as she might like so we traveled to our local Empire Vision store for a little adjustment.  After the enormous amount we paid for these pieces of glass I figured they should make the minor tightening adjustments.  As we were walking in to the store I noticed that my new glasses seem to be a bit foggy and after a closer glance it seemed that the lenses were beginning to show small scratches.  I mentioned this to the technician/eye professional as he was adjusting Connie’s glasses.  To jump to the story conclusion, we went over to the store yesterday and picked up my new new glasses.  It seems that there has been a problem with the application of the coating on the glasses and mine were a fine example of what can go wrong.

            You ask, why do I care about any of this, and why is he babbling on about a few small scratches on his new bifocals.  There are two reasons: First, if your wife needs her glasses adjusted it is always best to take them to the experts and do it as soon as it is conveniently possible.  Second, it never hurts to mention a problem to someone that can fix it.  You might get a new pair of glasses.  Empire Vision was very accommodating and eager to see that I was satisfied with my purchase.  There was never a moment when they tried to blame me or my careless handling of my glasses for the problem.  Honesty and customer care does still exist in some business and it is refreshing to be on the receiving end of its example.

            I was going to spout off about politics this morning, but you can thank your lucky stars that I changed my mind.  Let me just say that my candidate as raised over a quarter of a billion dollars (yes that is with a B) to run a campaign of change and new direction.  He now finds it politically expedient to compromise his “stated “ principles, acquiesce to violate our civil and constitutional rights as citizens of a “democratic” government for political posturing and is showing his prowess as a powerful and extremely competent politician.  All of this is the name of change, what a crock.  I think I will vote for Ann Shirley Sullivan Bear.  She is the bear that sit on our bed each day and holds court with the other stuffed animals that rule our motorhome.  There is not a one of them that, I believe, couldn’t do a better job at running this country than any of the bozos now in Washington.

            Whoops, I slipped, and I promised not to talk politics. If a poor black kid form Chicago and manipulative women form the Whitehouse can run for president, why can’t I vote for Ann Shirley Sullivan Bear?

Date:                           June 23, 2008

Location:                    Grand Island, NY

0800

            Another week end is in the history books at the Grand Island KOA in western New York.  That is not a monumental piece of news but it is what is happening in my life and that is what this blog is all about.  It is also what just happens be on my mind this morning.

            Dealing with the public is an excursion into a land of never ending surprise.  There are so many levels of confusion filtering my opinion of the people that frequent our park that I feel like I have just gotten off the boat most of the time.  We try our best to appeal to the temperament of the people that come here for a rather expensive weekend of camping and some times we succeed and sometimes we fall flat on our faces.  This weekend seemed to have both reactions.  This weekend was our Mexican Fiesta. This may not have been the smartest idea in the blue collar shadow of upstate New York’s biggest city, Buffalo.  But, we thought it might provide some fun and it is our responsibility to offer new and fun stuff to our campers

            On Friday night we played it safe and offered a Nacho Party with chips, hot cheese sauce and sodas, all to be followed by a rousing game of bingo.  This seemed like a good way to touch the new with a Mexican snack and keeping the old with the geriatric game of bingo.  We had one person for nachos and 2 people for bingo.  I guess you could say that was a pretty large failure.  The grandmother and her granddaughter seem to have fun at bingo. They won every game.  I think Connie and I ate as many chips as we sold.

            On Saturday morning we offered a change to our regular pancake breakfast.  We made breakfast burritos.  This was a very new experiment for Connie and me.  We had never tried this before and had very little idea just what we were doing.  Our lack of knowledge seemed to  matter very little.  We had very few customers and ranked this experiment among our other failures. The burrito were actually quite good and every one of the very few customers complimented the chef on their out.  It was a good idea only maybe not in the right place.  It was too bad for the many that let fear and ignorance keep them away form our rather great tasting breakfast.

            By now, Connie and I had decided that this crowd was a lack luster bunch of non doers and our weekend was to be a colossal failure.  This is not a major depressing event, just a bit of information that must be stored for future thought.  We still have a full day of planned activities and events, and if we offer it we must provide it; even if only 1 or 2 people show up for the event.  Our morning Arts and Craft class was as well attended as normal.  But, I guess if it is arts and crafts it does not matter that the project is Mexican as long as the little munchkins get to play at making something.  I made a new friend.  He was about 3 or 4 and he like to talk.  I can become a good listener and he became a great shadow.

            Our afternoon planned Piñata Party was expected to be a colossal flop.  The weather was portending rain and thunderstorms and this crowd is not the adventurous type.  But, we had it on the schedule and if it appears it must happen.  From somewhere in the back woods of the Netherlands a crowd of people appeared and we had a ball swinging a “special” stick at a suspended, brightly colored bull.  He was suspended from a make shift pole constructed of a drain pipe, some very brightly colored rope used to tie down our movie screen and a long piece of twine.  All of this was constructed and precariously positioned in our recreation hall and safe from the threatening explosion of Mother Nature.  Moms, dads and a passel of kids yelled, laughed and finally scrambled for free candy as the bull finally succumbed to the stressful beating he was talking and showered the rather large group with his bounty.  This laughter and candy gathering was followed by an ice cream social where I could hardly dip fast enough to keep up with the orders  Where had all of these people come from and where had they been up until now.

            Our day was completed with our normal excursion into the land of tie dye.  This has been a very popular event at this KOA and this weekend was no exception.  We had better than 20 people opt to make shirts of varying colors and swirls.  This was about normal, but quite unexpected on this weekend.  As Connie and I dragged our tired bodies home after a very long and full day we were feeling a little bit better about our weekend.  Somehow the sluggish crowd had come to life and we all seemed to be having fun.  We had made some weekend friends and they had some new experiences to take home.  That sounds like a successful weekend to me.

            Our final hurrah was to be a return to our normal pancake breakfast on Sunday.  After our fiasco with the breakfast burrito I was not too optimistic.  Maybe the people were a bit “spent out”.  Camping here is not cheap and it cost entirely too much to buy fuel to get here.  But again, if it is on the schedule we must provide it.  As the morning started I expected to shut down our breakfast early and be home in time for lunch.  For the first half hour and nearly the fist hour we had not had enough people to justify firing up the grill.  I kept telling Connie to not make any more batter or sausage because we would just have to throw it all away.  Then something happened.  I am not at all sure what it was or how it happen, but soon it was nearly an hour and a half later and we had made nearly $250 on breakfast.  It is all kind of a blur.  I was flipping pancakes like it was raining saucers form heaven and poor Connie was doing everything else; making the batter, frying the sausage, filling the juice glasses and taking the money, and also serving the customers.  It was kind of fun in a labor intensive, dead run kind of way.  Families were coming in groups of 6 to 10 or bigger and we were almost keeping up with the demand.  At about 10:30 when we served our last customer, we normally close at 10:00, Connie and I were just a bit exhausted.

            Our failure of a week end had been quite a success.  The new was not as well received as we might have wished, but those that did partake seemed very happy and enjoyed the fun.  The normal was very popular and profitable for KOA.  That is a good thing in this economic time we are now mired in.  A lot of people left with smiles on their faces and fun stories to tell their friends.  Hopefully making the expense of the weekend a but more justifiable.  I am still profoundly confused in any attempt to predict how a given crowd of people will ever react to any given situation.  I guess we offer and try to expand the envelope as best we can and let the customer decide if it is worth their effort to enjoy the activity.  I will never fully understand or try to predict the attitude of a group of campers.  I will admit that, on most occasions, a group of family campers are fun to be around.  I guess that is why we are doing what we are doing.  Some of the campers looked a bit mystified at us as we tried to explain some of our life style and adventures.  It all seems normal to both Connie and me, but it sounds almost other worldly to others as we attempt to describe our travels and full timer attitude.  But, I guess that is why we are here and they are not.

Date:                           June 21, 2008            

Location:                    Grand Island, NY

0615

            Yes, the time is right, for you that know my love for sleeping late, but that is the reality of being an activity worker at the KOA.  This morning Connie and I are heading out to prepare a burrito breakfast for our campers.  This is going to be quite an experience on many levels.  First we are in Buffalo where beer and hotdogs are considered a gourmet meal; secondly neither Connie nor I have any idea how to cook burritos.  Life can be fun if you just let it happen.

            Last evening we were assigned to entertaining our campers with a nacho party and rousing game of bingo.  One might have thought that should be a fun evening.  I must say that the evening was fun, on some level, but not too exciting.  We did get to use some new equipment such as a warmer and a sauce pump.  We did eat a lot of good nacho chips.  But, we did not have a very good turn out.  We sold 1 serving of nachos to a fellow workampers and we had 2 people show up for bingo.  How could a rousing game of bingo go so unattended in the suburbs of Buffalo?  The last time we had a bingo game at the campground we had so many people attend that we has to turn some away.  It may have been the excitement of a competitive game of bingo that called the throng or it might have been my entertaining way of not taking the game too seriously that filled all of our chairs and used all of our game cards.  Last night we were prepared.  We had extra bingo cards, extra bingo chips and extra chairs and tables for the crowd.  At 7:30 we had a long line of 2 people ready to play; A grandmother and her young tween.  We played the game and, at least, 2 people seem to have fun.  The competition was not too stressful and the young teen, or so, went home with an arm load of prizes.

            We are finding that reading the attitudes of the people that camp here is nearly impossible.  Sometimes the people seem to come out of the walls to partake in the provided entertainment and then sometimes the walls seem to eat the people.  We will see how our morning adventure turns out.  I am guessing that we will have a few leftover burritos.  So, if you are hungry and want to sample a very un-Mexican breakfast, we will save you a burrito.  By the way, this afternoon we are having a piñata party.  I am guessing that we will have room for a couple of new attendees, if you have nothing better to do this afternoon.  Work here is not stressful, it is just more fun sometimes than others.

Date:                           June 20, 2008

Location:                    Grand Island, NY

1000

            I woke this morning to a grey and rain portending morning and I realized that I was no longer parked along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in Carrabelle, FL.  It is not March anymore and I have been quite delinquent in my duties as a Blog contributor.  There are many reasons for this subtle, but dramatic turn in my life.  I am sure that none of this is really worth my time whining about or your time in reading about.  Suffice it to say that I got lazy and tired of waiting to hear from anyone that might be reading my efforts.  As terrible as I am at contributing to this media, you readers are monstrously worse at offering any sort of simple feed back.

            That was until I got a note from my sister.  Why is it always your sister/ brother that extracts your buried head and directs you in the proper direction?  My lovely sister let me know that I had become quite delinquent in my blog efforts and she was wondering just where in the heck I was and how I was doing.  Well, Caroline, I am in Grand Island, New York working as part of the activity team at the Grand Island KOA and I am doing just fine.  Maybe a bit lazy and feeling sorry fro myself, but that is just about normal.  I have noticed, over the last few days, that someone is going to my blog home page and it might even be someone that I know.  It might also be an oriental person that seems to have taken some kind of interest in my meanderings.  Who ever it might be, after you read this it is your responsibility to send me a note and tell me what you think of my thoughts, efforts and expressions.  If this dictate applies to you also you can reach me at: wfdo2@msn.com , that is my blog e-mail.

            What have I been doing over the last few weeks leading to months?  Mainly I have been being me and enjoying the life I live with my best friend.  We have moved from the shore of the Gulf of Mexico to a large island located in the middle of the Niagara River.  The sun has spent most of the time being a typical New York sun.  That means it keeps hidden behind the clouds and colors the days with a wide grey funk paint brush.  The temperature on this island retreat has allowed us to test and use our heat pumps, air conditioner and heat pumps again; sometime all in the same 24 hour period.  Connie and I are “working” as activity coordinators at the Grand Island KOA.  I know, I thought I would never work for this conglomerate example of an over priced campground again either.  It is, however, very close to the kids in North Collins and they have their camper parked right behind us for free.  The work is quite easy, most of the time, we are not caught up in the politics of disgruntled workampers due to the dynamics of our assignments.  And, did I mention that it is close to our kids?

            Connie and I have spent too much time following the historical political campaign that is unfolding before our eyes on TV and in the news.  So far, our candidate is on the winning side of the news and is poised to write new chapters in American history.  I am not sure it is a perfect chapter, but it is a long over due chapter and I am sure as the season progresses I will find time to regale you with my treasured opinions.  I have, at this moment, a note awaiting his response in his e-mail.  It seems that to this moment I have received only the automated response allowed by today’s electronic technology.  So much for the concept of change and respect for the common man’s opinion.  The automated response alludes to the busy stress of winning in Iowa.  At least the computer wonks could update their not so polite dis-ing of the American electorate.  Hillary, at least, answered my pointed and opinionated diatribes.  I may not have liked the answers, but they were a personal response, or at least a response form a person. Oh well, maybe Barack’s opinion of change and mine differ in definition.

            So world, I am here, still in good opinionated form and living in the grey funk of New York.  I will endeavor to keep my blog a bit more current (Caroline) and maybe I will instill some of you readers to drop me a line to encourage me to continue.  Connie just told me, “It is not a nice day.” But then it is a day and this is the latest offering of my addled mind for your enjoyment.