Make your friends your family

When we moved to California in the summer of 1980 we knew no one, knew nothing about what California was really like, and had no friends nearby. For about a month. Then the children started school and we almost immediately met Ralph and Suzie Coley, neighbors whose daughter Jen was in the same class with Ruth at the local elementary school. They invited us to share Thanksgiving dinner together, knowing we were new to the community and neighborhood. They and Alan and Anne Christie adopted us and made us welcome, sitting around a round patio table made of a cable spool. They allowed the new folks to be part of their foursome. That act of kindness was the beginning of almost 45 years of friendship. Ralph and I could hardly have been more different. He was a hulk of a man, obviously a weight lifter from his college football days, solid as a rock and almost as thick. He was a beer drinker, an engineer, a jogger. I was a journalist recently moved from the East, a reader of books and non-athletic. It just didn't matter. We both had Florida and camping and diving in our pasts, and the Coleys and Christies opened their homes to us and made us a part of their lives. Ralph's idea of neighbor was the keep his door open, the pool clean, the barbecue grill hot and the hot tub warm. Withing weeks he taught me the essential California skill of hanging out in his back yard, drinking beer in the hot tub, and competing to see who could throw the empty cans directly into the trash can. He and Alan happened to jog by our house one day while I was in our front yard digging up some plumbing. They stopped, assessed the situation as engineers are prone to do, and promptly took over and happily dug, laid pipe and covered it up when done. All I was required to do was make sure a cold beer was waiting. Over the next few years we hiked and camped together in the summers, and took up cross country skiing in the winter. One of my favorite Ralph memories was a summer we were camped out at Utica Reservoir high in the remote mountains, using canoes to go out to islands in the middle of the water. We had a problem, though. All the six-packs of beer were gone, and that was considered an emergency. So after searching carefully in the trucks and cars, Ralph and Alan drove ten miles or so to replenish the suplies. In the winter we would cross country ski from where the highway was blocked by snow, down into the area around Lake Alpine. We dragged all the kids along, even when our son at three was so small he had to be carried out at the end of a tiring day. Those were good years of growing friendships, and I treasure them today. I even recruited Ralph to play soccer on the Killer Bee adult team, which he did happily until he pulled a hamstring and had to bow out. This week we attended (via the Internet) the memorial service for Ralph, who died in Massachusetts where the Coleys made a home for the last two decades. The service was full of love and good memories and we watched as Ralph's son Travis, daughter Jen and wife Suzie all remembered his with love. The children now have grey hair, and the grandchildren are grown. The Christies were sitting with the family. Just what he would have enjoyed: family and friends together, telling stories.. As the preacher said at some point, Ralph lived by the idea that we all should "Make friends of our family, and family of our friends." We were privileged to be among those friends. RIP Ralph. A good man who left his mark.

Florida Revisited

Indialantic, Florida -- A week on a warm beach in Springtime always sounds like a good idea. Particularly when we had just experienced a late snow in Murphys and temperatures that froze my tomatoes. And it was. So we did it. Pat and I changed our minds about never returning to the place where we met, a mindset shaped mostly by the weird politics of Florida today and the realization things could never be like they were when we first met. We were married and had our first home on Cocoa Beach in the mid-1960s at the peak of the Apollo Program. Pat worked for NASA and I worked for The Miami Herlad and then the Today newspaper. The lure of beaches and the wonderful feel and smell of Spring overwhelmed our misgivings, so we took off for a week in an old-fashioned motel. No one eer mentioned politics. The logistics (detailed at the bottom) got complicated but did not stop us from having a great trip full of nostalgia, memories and great walks on the white sand beaches. We spent the first night in a motel near the Orlando Airport, and drove up to The Villages --a mega-development for Snowbirds built near Ocala -- for a quick lake-front lunch with Pat's brother Ron and sister-in-law Anita, then drove south on A1A to our destination in Indialantic Beach, a tiny town tucked in between Patrick Air Force (now "Space Force) Base where Pat's parent lived and more beach towns. They are all buried in condos today, but we found our quiet spot. I found the Paradise Beach Motel on-line after searching for the closest thing I could find to an old-fashioned beach motel of the type that dotted the almost-empty beaches decades ago. It was perfect: recently re-modeled, only eight units all within 50 yards of the boardwalk over the dunes, complete with a good air conditioner and a kitchen, bedroom and bath.

It is not fancy, but just what we wanted.

Our vacation "schedule" was light. The only appointment we made was for me to be interviewed by a documentary film maker about our former beach neighbor Marty Caidin, a colorful charachter who happened to be our friend in the 1960s when he came to modest fame for writing books including one they made the movie "Marooned" from, and another that was the template for the "Six Million Dollar Man" TV shows. Every day started with lathering with sun screen and a walk on the beach before the sun got too hot. We did not get burned. We ate our way carefully through shrimp, chowders, hot dogs at Longdoggers, Greek, pizza and other Italian. Yes we gained a little weight. We visited friends. Ruth Ann Alibrando had worked for NASA at the same time as Pat, and when I was with the Miami Herald. Her late sister was a close friend to Pat in college and her late husband was a NASA official I worked with. Her current husband is a sculptor of beautufl metal art and they made us welcome, and sent Pat home with a gift of a Florida painting to hang on the wall at home. We also visited with Eugenie Amalfitano and her husband Carlo, sitting on the dock in front of their Indian River home, tasting treats and drinking wine and catching up on family. The hospitality they offered washed away the decades, and made us feel welcomed. Friends are the real treasure wherever you go.

We lost track of the days, which is what a vacation is supposed to do. We spent one wonderful day exploring our old haunts on the beaches south near Sebastian Inlet, now a state park. This is a place we used to camp, explore, fish and just hang out. The A1A bridge was built the year we arrived in Florida. We camped at a county park with friends Benton and Sandy Bingham. I had fished the pilings under the bridge with my late friend Ron Caylor, trying unsuccessfully to catch a Snook. At one time Pat way back then and I took our 12 foot aluminum boat out into the ocean inlet and caught a lot of inedible fish, but having lots of fun. And yes, the birds caught in one single photo below include a Pelican, a egret and Ibis and a Stork. They were all stalking a fisherman who was throwing his net for baitfish. The weather remained wonderful every day: low humidity, temperatures in the 70s and one wonderful massive thunderstorm that dumped about two inches of rain in an hour. Pure Florida. The logistics were challenging, particularly with all the added fees for the airline, the rental car and even the motel. But once I learned to use the APP for travel, we were set. I'll save the complaints for the vendors on the internet. A good time was had. Enjoy the photos.