Month: April 2023

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Osprey, Neto and Me

I love the osprey who spend summers on a tower at the edge of a pond at the Boulder Country Fairgrounds. The resident osprey pair fly in from separate far-away places about the middle of March. And the drama begins. 

Some of us follow the osprey every year, hoping for eggs to hatch and healthy baby birds who learn to fly.

 We don’t know where the osprey spend their winters and we wait anxiously for their arrival. We worry that they may not both arrive safely. Usually the pair arrives on different days. The fun begins as we watch them get to know each other once again. 

The osprey are bonded as a pair until one of them dies. Only then do they find a new partner.

It’s a policy not to name the osprey who return to Boulder every spring. But if they had names, they would be Lynda and Ernesto.

Neto and I are very much like the osprey. For one thing, I’m older than he is. We live far apart, in two separate countries, and once a year we meet up in a familiar place. We try to arrive on the same day, but never at the same time. When we get together, we trade stories about places we’ve been and people we knew together. I imagine that’s what the osprey do, too.

The birds spend time remodeling their nest and making sure they have food. The female shrieks, “Food… Food! I’m hungry. Bring me a big fat fish!” And Ernesto leaves the tower and swoops down to find a fish for them to share.

Nights are especially tender as they share space on their perch, high in the sky, and watch sunset together. 

This year both osprey arrived at the nest on the same day. That’s where mine and Neto’s story differ from the osprey pair. I arrived in Puerto Vallarta on Sunday, April 9, after an especially easy travel day. Friends met me at the airport and took me to lunch before I checked into Las Palomas, the sweet little hotel where Neto and I stay before going by bus to Mazatlán.

While my trip was easy and predictable, Neto’s journey was simply horrible. He boarded the bus in Mazatlán at 10:45 p.m., Saturday night, expecting to arrive in Puerto Vallarta five hours ahead of me. He slept all the way to the state of Nayarit. He awoke when two inspectors boarded his bus in front of a clinic, near the bus terminal in Tepic. It was 3:30 a.m.

“We believe some people on this bus have Covid,” the inspectors announced. “Everyone needs to be tested.” 

At 5:30 a.m., the inspectors allowed the young people to exit the bus, believing that only people over the age of fifty-five might be sick. A few elderly people in the front of the bus were coughing. Neto began to think he had a fever.

Passengers had to surrender their ID’s. They were not allowed to talk to each other or make calls on their telephones. Neto texted me to say he was going to be late. The passengers sat quietly on the bus for four more hours, until 9:30 a.m, when employees of the clinic boarded the bus and began testing people.

 At noon the passengers were informed that they all tested positive for Covid and would be quarantined for 24 hours. My plane was scheduled to arrive in ten minutes.

All the passengers were escorted off the bus and into the clinic. They were given a cot  and a sandwich. I received only sporadic texts from Neto, and most of them were too cryptic to understand. Was he really sick? Was he contagious? Should I catch a plane back to Denver?

I didn’t hear Neto’s voice again until noon on Monday, when he was allowed to make a phone call and leave the clinic. He was not allowed to get on a bus to Puerto Vallarta because, after all, he tested positive for Covid. 

Neto caught a taxi to a different bus company and decided to take a bus to Guadalajara. At 5:00 p.m, Monday afteroon,I received a text from Neto. He was in Guadalajara and expected to meet me at the hotel  in six hours, by 11:00 p.m. 

By midnight, Neto still wasn’t at our hotel. I called him. His bus was not the newer, faster, express bus that travels on the toll road. Instead, it was an older, slower bus that stopped in every small town to pick up more passengers.

At 3:00 a.m, Tuesday morning,  a lovely hotel security guard walked Neto to our room, where I was waiting for him. The trip, which normally takes less than eight  hours, took more than fifty-two. I was as happy as an osprey to see him again! It had been a long, hard flight!!

 

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Doc Evans

My father, Bob Jones, worked an average of 72 hours/week as a pharmacist at Swanson Drug on the east side of St. Paul. He worked three nights a week until 10:00 p.m. and every other weekend. On the Sundays he wasn’t working, we went to my grandparents’ house for dinner. My mother wasn’t happy about the arrangement, but I loved seeing my grandparents and my Aunt Margaret every two weeks.

When my grandparents died in the mid-50’s, we needed a new place to go. My dad found the perfect replacement: The Rampart Club in Mendota, Minnesota. Doc Evans, a local Dixieland celebrity, played there during the week. On Sunday afternoons, he opened the restaurant to families with children. There was free popcorn and pizza for sale. The restaurant smelled of beer and cigarette smoke. My most vivid memory, however, was the sound of toe-tapping, happy music.

My father was a pharmacist, but he was also a trumpet player. Someone stole his trumpet while he was in the Navy, and we never had enough money for him to get another one.  For years, Dad rode the streetcar to work. We were one of the last families to get a television. Any extra money went to pay for piano lessons.

When my grandparents died, they left my parents enough money to pay off our mortgage ($9000.00) and to buy my Dad a trumpet. Because we no longer went to my grandparents’ home on Sundays, there was time and money for family trips to the Rampart Club

These are some of my happiest memories. Doc’s band was one of the best in the Twin Cities, an area known as a mecca for good musicians. Doc was an excellent cornet player and band leader. You can still hear his music at: www.docevans.com. 

Two musicians, in addition to Doc, stand out for me. One was a blind piano player named Dick Rambert. It was the first time I realized that someone could “play by ear.” It was a skill that our teacher, Sister Aimee, strictly forbid. She insisted that we read music, instead, “like real musicians.”

The other musician who made us smile (and sometimes laugh out loud!) was Red Maddock. Red was a drummer and singer. He was also a clown. Doc, a serious musician, wanted us learn about the songs he played each Sunday. While Doc was teaching us music history, Red would sit behind him, twirling his drumsticks and making faces. Some of his songs had bawdy lyrics that only the adults understood.

Occasionally, other musicians would join Doc on Sunday afternoons. Harry Blons, a wonderful clarinetist, and Hod Russell, an incredible piano player, would sometimes add to the fun. Harry had his own band and Hod was his regular piano player. When they joined forces with Doc Evans’ band, the music was fantastic.

At some point on Sunday afternoons, Doc would announce it was time for “Name That Tune.” My father cringed. There never was a Dixieland song that he couldn’t identify just by hearing the first four notes, but he was too shy to shout out the answer. He pretended he didn’t know the answer or that he needed to go to the bar and order us a pizza.

Dad should have whispered the name of the song to my brother who would have gladly shouted out the answer. I was in Dad’s camp, being every bit as shy as he was. I would have rather cut off my right arm than raise it in the air.

After an unfortunate incident with Sister Aimee, in which she finally lost patience with me and slapped me ~ HARD ~ across my face, my father finally broke his silence and actually spoke. He called Sister Aimee on the phone and told her I would not be returning to classical piano lessons. Then he called Hod Russell and asked if he had room in his schedule for one more student. ME!! I was ecstatic. No more Beethoven!  My days of auditions and recitals were over. I was going to play Basin Street Blues and St. James Infirmary.

Thanks Doc! And Dad! And Hod Russell! You changed my life. Your music always made me smile.