"In My Room:" Brian Wilson spent most of his time looking out his bedroom window

Rob Tannenbaum wrote June 12 in the New York Times:

In songs like “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “California Girls” and “Good Vibrations,” Wilson did as much as anyone to depict Los Angeles and California as a land of bikinis and warm, honey-colored sunsets. The songs he wrote about the West Coast, he said in “I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir,” were “more about the idea of going in the ocean than they were about actually going in the ocean.” Wilson didn’t like waves, but realized how they could serve as a metaphor for life.

Wilson tried surfing once and his board conked him on the head. He liked looking out windows at other people surfing and driving hot rods. Tannenbaum went on:

The songs, he added, tell stories about teenagers. 'We base them on activities of healthy California kids who like to surf, hot rod, and engage in other outdoor fun.' He saw these activities the same way he saw the ocean — through a window.

This caught my attention because it says a lot of what writers do: watching activities through their window of imagination and not actually taking part in that activity. As Wilson wrote ("In My Room") he spent a lot of time in his room imagining what was happening outside.

I grew up surfing in Daytona Beach, Florida. I surfed for five years, 13-18-years-old. I gave it up the summer of 1969. My surfboard, a Greg Noll Bug, was stolen out of my family's garage. It was the last board I owned and the only short board. I also sold my beat-up old car that summer as freshmen weren't allowed to have cars on campus. Our house burned down, destroying the kitchen, my school clothes, and my father's Barracuda, 'Cuda as the cool kids called it. My eight brothers and sisters and my parents survived and we moved to cramped motel rooms. The End Times were coming, or so it seemed. I began to have dark thoughts, imagined a black ball rotating in my chest. My girlfriend was pretty and nice but she was going off to the state school and I was going to another state's school 400 miles away. I was slated to be a NROTC midshipman and I had no idea why except the Navy agreed to pay my way if I agreed to get ship-shape and squared-away which I failed at miserably.

Depression came to call. I returned home to my beach town, lied in bed, listening to surf sounds drifting up from the beach and rolling through my jalousie windows.

Brian Wilson suffered with crippling depression. I know how that feels. Wilson laid in bed and looked through windows and saw different lives. His head was populated with beaches and endless streets to race cars and meet girls. His head and heart were also populated with monsters and he didn't really write about them. He looked out windows and saw himself. 

When he was 20, Canadian Steven Page wrote the song "Brian Wilson" which was later recorded by his band, Barenaked Ladies. When he heard it, Wilson wrote his own version. But lyrics in the original go like this:

So I’m lyin’ here 

Just starin’ at the ceiling tiles

And I’m thinkin’ about

What to think about

Just listenin’ and relistenin’

To smiley smile

And I’m wonderin’ if this is

Some kind of creative drought because

I’m lyin’ in bed

Just like Brian Wilson did

Well I’m

I’m lyin’ in bed, just like Brian Wilson did, oh

So,

If everybody had an ocean

Across the USA

Everybody'd be surfin'

In Cal-if-or-ni-a

Or lyin' in bed, just like Brian Wilson did.

 R.I.P. Brian.

This aging M.F.A.-trained writer vs. Copilot's A.I. mind

This is my version of a prose poem that I dashed off late last night. Maybe it's not a prose poem. A ramble, maybe, or just a burst of words that flew out of my head. I've been doing that a lot lately. Words bursting from my mind with very little rewrite. It's fun, really, just to let the words flow. Freewriting is what I used to call it when teaching college composition. I would tell my students just freewrite for 10 minutes and then let's see if anyone wants to read their pieces. Don't think about it -- just write! Do as I do. And I would write for 10 minutes about any darn thing I wanted. Things like this:

So what do you think of Florida my old friends ask. I think what is it they want me to say that I find it the most magnificent spit of land in the U.S. of A.? They are friends so I can't lie. I find it confusing after 46 years elsewhere many elsewheres. Warmer than my recent home Wyoming but confusing. Old landmarks no longer exist or they exist in puzzling forms. The beach seems less magnificent maybe because it’s so managed. The 60s and 70s we drove the wide low-tide beach any time day or night. We drove high tide too with all the attendant risks. Mostly we were pushing Yankees out of the soft sand and sometimes they paid us because they were so grateful that their 1968 Buick LeSabre did not get gobbled by the salty-sea. We surf as the sun peeks over the flat line of the horizon. A tortoise surfaces beyond the breakwater and we hope it’s not a shark. The waves are surfable but just barely and it’s OK because there always is tomorrow and tomorrow after that. My old rental west of the interstate is now a development and the beat-up two-lane road is now named for a gated community called Tymber Creek and yeah that Tymber with a Y and all the timber cut down for new houses says thank you alphabet. On Hartford Ave my father is not out by the street, dressed in shorts and flapping button-down, with beer in hand, yelling at the surfers to slow down. I go to a funeral for a high school friend last week and the widower a guy who was my classmate and teammate and relies on a wheelchair post-stroke looks up and says, “You look just like your old man.” And I take it in stride because I do that’s a fact and I’ve heard that the old friend is incapacitated and it is not true not true at all. We share quips about our conveyances, him his fancy wheelchair and me my fancy spine-assisting e-scooter. We are a fine pair of ballplayers 1969 and we make scholarship choices and it works out for him and he returns hometown and I’m cast off into the cold and I don’t regret it now but I did hundreds of times. Our links to past lives are pulled until they almost don’t exist. I tell my new friends: Yes, this place is too crowded and this is a voice from the Capital City of the nation’s least-populated state. It’s a place where newcomers my students from Torrington and Hanna and Meeteetse say THE CROWDS!!! THE TRAFFIC!!! and we city-born ones say it will grow on you boys and girls it will grow. So what do you think of the new Florida my green-eyed senior citizen? I open the bedroom window, hear the waves breaking at night. The waves. 

MS Copilot rewrite: 

My old friends ask what I think of Florida now. After 46 years elsewhere, I'm confused. It's warmer than Wyoming but different. Old landmarks have changed or vanished, and the beach feels less magnificent because it's so managed. In the past, we drove on the wide low-tide beach anytime, even at high tide with risks. We helped Yankees stuck in the sand, sometimes for a fee. We surfed as the sun rose, hoping to spot tortoises, not sharks.  

My old rental is now a development, and the two-lane road is named after a gated community called Tymber Creek. Hartford Ave has changed too; my father no longer yells at surfers. Last week, I attended a funeral for a high school friend. The widower, a former classmate now in a wheelchair, remarked that I look like my father. We joked about our conveyances, reminiscing about our scholarship decisions from 1969.  

Living here in Florida, I tell my new friends it’s crowded, especially compared to Wyoming. But I hear the waves breaking at night, and that remains unchanged. 

MS Copilot is not wrong but it's bland is it not? It just doesn’t get some things. Surprisingly, it does get other things. I thought about breaking up my big block of type into separate paragraphs. Copilot detected the change and did exactly that. AI scares me a bit. There are times, usually late at night when I am writing things down, when I wonder why I write at all. Really, why?

How does the fog come in on the day after Christmas?

The fog comes/on little cat feet

Thought of this Carl Sandburg poem as I sat watching the ocean as fog crept in. Cats weren't on my mind as much as the view from Tom Renick Park in Ormond-by-the-Sea. My visiting daughter stood beside me. Waves rolled through the fog and crunked on the shore. The surf wasn't bad. Rollers breaking outside but you could ride them out of the fog like a vampire surfer. Three young surfers appeared suddenly, boards under arms, walking north on the beach. No wetsuits. Gotta admire those guys. Two days ago there was sun and a bit of wind and all the surfers wore wetsuits. Must be the wind. The fog today traveled on a light north breeze. We were shielded by the adjacent condo high-rise. Still, tiny mist dabs fell on my exposed legs and dotted my windbreaker. I kept expecting a cat to appear but the only sound was traffic along A1A and kids on winter break cavorting in the playground. No way to hear little cat's feet. I imagined it just the same.

Watching surfers the day before my 74th birthday

They are tiny figures on the outside sandbar, straddling their surfboards, heads bobbing up with each oncoming wave, and then obscured again behind the froth.

I know how it feels, this waiting. It’s not like other kinds of waiting, waiting for a traffic light to turn, waiting in the grocery store line, waiting for school day’s final bell.

It’s waiting for the future, waiting to see the heft of the wave, the promise of the day’s best ride as the sea moves beneath your board and lifts you up and it’s up to you to see where you go and what you do

And sometimes it’s a bubbling brute of whitewater that pushes you off the board and into the drink and depending on the wave size, how much time you spend cartwheeling until you emerge to find your board.

These young surfers out there today, they wear leashes and their boards spin with them and sometimes into them.

In the 1960s, the boards were bigger and unleashed, could whack you good if close enough, the skeg or fin a sharp knife that can leave a mark.

My surf life was short, a high school thing that I left behind in my twenties and I don’t know why.

Some of today’s surfers will be out on the waves in twenty years – remember how young you were at 37, half my age now? At 17, 37 is forever years away, 74 is so far down the line that it doesn’t exist except among those old people who clog the roads as you speed to the beach before the waves get blown out.

Age beached me. I can’t walk. I can swim with a floatation device. I can get to the beach by car and use my walker to get to the water, let it lick my toes, take me back to 1967 when a December day with waves was good enough but not as glorious as a July day with surf and 80-degree water and my fellow surfers surround me and I spy my girlfriend pull up and park and she waves and I return the wave and feel as if I will live forever this way, a young man in the ocean, just waiting for the next wave.

The sea calls my name

Wind from the ancient sea

A hurricane-force wind blew down the pine onto my roof on a February day. The house shook and I looked out the front window to see the pine cantilevered from the ground to the roof. Damn it’s Super Bowl Sunday and I have a game to watch but that’s how it is in Wyoming where there are plenty of mighty winds but no hurricanes. Like in “Oklahoma” where “the wind comes sweepin’ ‘cross the plains,” in Wyoming, the wind comes sweeping across the Gangplank of the Laramie Range right through Cheyenne and on to Nebraska. Wind from an ancient sea, nothing to stop it but my tree and my roof and a limited imagination.

We slept with bedroom windows wide in the middle of winter. Furnace so efficient we cranked it down but were still warm as toast in our beds. I came to bed late, Chris already sleeping, and the wind would ruffle the dainty curtains etched with palm trees. The wind lulled me to sleep. Trees might come crashing down or maybe just big branches but this was Wyoming and trees were scarce and far between. As I fell asleep, I imagined the wind with a salt tinge, fresh from the ocean, traveling the thousand yards from the beach to our little house and through the wide-open jalousie windows and the beat-up screens and into my memory where it remains.

And last night, I heard the ocean while reading in my house a short walk away from the Atlantic. It’s wide, the ocean, wider than Wyoming and the entire West with its gangplanks and sweeping plains and rock-ribbed cliffs. I threw open the window and realized the ocean was kicking, stirred up by some force beyond the horizon. It was loud, as if waves were breaking at my tympani. I rushed to bed, tucked myself in, memories of the surf kicking up and into my teen-age room, promise of big waves tomorrow, surfing with my brother, gone these ten years, the sea calling us as if it knew our names.

The accountants who got us to the moon, July 1969 -- Part 3

Hurricane Dora hit a couple weeks into the new school year. The lead story in that morning’s News-Journal featured an illustration of a swirling Hurricane Dora with an arrow pointed right at Daytona. Still, our parents sent us to school. Midway through the day, the nuns made us pray for Dora to hit somewhere other than Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church/School/Shrine/Nunnery. They finally sent us home. 

My father evacuated us to the mainland. We went as far as a motel along U.S. 1. I spent the night listening to WROD 1340 on my transistor radio and tracing Dora’s progress on the tracking map I ripped out of the morning paper. At the window, I watched the gusts batter the palms.

The storm brushed by Daytona and moved on to St. Augustine and Jacksonville. We returned to our modest house in an Ormond Beach community designed for middle-class vacationers and now was temporary home to the migrating hordes of engineers, technicians, and accountants planning the moonshot. The hurricane had turned our house into a white cinder-block island surrounded by murky water. We turned our picnic table upside down to make a raft and poled across the backyard.

During the next couple years, we bought a house in Daytona and stayed put. The ninth kid was born. We visited the Jacksonville zoo and marveled at the city’s new shopping mall. In January 1967, right in the middle of Father Lopez Green Wave basketball season, my father announced that the need for accountants on the Apollo Moon Mission was coming to an end, at least in Florida. He could stay with G.E. but only if he agreed to be transferred to Cincinnati. He had a big family to feed. Other G.E. employees who declined to move to Cincinnati or Schenectady or Boston now were pumping gas or checking in Georgia tourists at beachside motels. 

The good news about him leaving is that he didn’t want to drive his 1960 Renault Dauphine to Ohio during the winter. Since I had conveniently passed my driving test in December, he was leaving me his car and chauffeuring duties for the ten people remaining at our Hartford Avenue house which was going up for sale on Monday.

Next: Cincinnati or bust?

You will forget things, micro-essay

You will forget things. As you age, that’s the mantra you hear from people who think they know better. Nobody tells you this: you forget how to forget. The past rolls in like the Florida East Coast waves I once surfed. That’s me on my long board walking the nose on a wave spawned by a tropical storm. I am 16 and my shoulders already are scorched by the sun. I will be riding this wave as a 71-year-old living in Wyoming’s high prairie as my dermatologist burns off a rough patch birthed that day at the beach. I am 28 making love with my girlfriend in a Colorado mountain stream. The water so cold, our skin warms from the friction of our bodies. Do you remember… starts my wife, 66, the one from the stream, and I say I cannot forget and it seems like the right thing to say but what I really mean is there is no way that I can forget, that even if we had split up during the awful times that we want to forget I could not forget how, in the shade of quaking aspens, the sunlight vibrated across your skin, your blue eyes on me. My last thoughts will be of waves and water, you and me. I will not and cannot forget. That’s old age, the truth of it.

Welcome to the Poetry Hotel

Write short, said all the experts. Be concise. 

I first heard this advice as a student reporter for my university paper. Give me 500 words. Give me 750. Later, when I covered high school sports for a big city daily, I sometimes had to rush back to the office and knock out a piece in 15 minutes or file by phone or via the Jurassic fax machines of the 1970s. Keep it short. And for God's sake, get the score right. 

Naturally, I went on to write a novel and a passel of short stories which weren't very short. It was nice to have all those words to work with. A well-crafted short story can still be a challenge. You have to limit the number of characters and set the story in a few scenes. Still, a 5,000-word story gives you some room to breathe.

I've reached 106,000 words in 424 pages on the historical novel I'm writing now. I am not finished with the draft. Not sure what the final count will be before I query publishers. Much revising to do.

My latest published works are much shorter. They're prose poems featured in YU News Poetry Hotel, Paul Fericano prop. Five pieces. The longest is "Flying Nurse," which comes in at 340 words. The shortest is "Welcome to Zan Xlemente, Zalifornia" with 182 words. Each tells a story and might be labelled flash fiction if they were on another site. I don't see how it makes much difference if people read and enjoy them. Maybe not enjoy so much as make you think about worlds not your own. Read them at https://www.yunews.com/mike-shay-poetry-hotel.

A writer uses different techniques with each form. A novel requires expansion while a short-short involves winnowing. If a traditional short story is a slice of life, a short-short is a slice of a slice. Some of mine start life as a short piece and stays that way as I've said what I wanted to say. "Zan Xlemente" is an example. Some, however, start life as longer pieces that I take the scalpel to. "The Future of Surfing in Wyoming" started  as a multi-part story, "The History of Surfing in Wyoming." In it, I imagined the surf scene 1,000 years from now if global warming does its worst. I added rewritten versions of surf songs and turned it into a performance piece I presented at readings in Casper and Sheridan. It wasn't easy to transform a 4,000-word piece into one with a mere 252 words. Check it out on the Poetry Hotel site and see what you think. I'm in Room 66.

What comes first -- the writing or the crazy?

The Electric Lit site carries some cool articles about the writing life. A recent one was about writers and mental health. I've often wondered; what comes first, the writing or the crazy? Are people drawn to writing because they are crazy? Does the solitude and navel-gazing of writing lead to depression? It's possible that the writing just deepens an existing depression. 

Here's some possible explanations:

The Swedish researchers offer one potential explanation for their results: social drift. Individuals with severe mental illness often have a hard time holding a steady job. Some may turn to self-employment—including in artistic fields. But it’s not clear why this should apply more to writers than to other artists.

Another possible explanation can be drawn from the theory of depressive realism, which essentially claims that depressed people are depressed because they see the world as it is—depressing. They are “sadder but wiser.” Writers have to be careful observers of human nature and society. Painters and composers can take inspiration from suffering; but writers have to: drama comes from misery—comedy, perhaps even more so. Depressive realists may often be drawn to writing for this reason.

Writers (me included) love to include our bizarre jobs in our bio. Chicken plucker. Tobacco picker. Manny. Before he was drafted, author Tim O'Brien worked at a slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouse Five author Kurt Vonnegut wrote ad copy at GE. Poet Philip Levine worked the assembly line at the Chevy plant. Poet and fiction writer Lolita Hernandez worked 30 years at the Detroit Caddy plant. Some writers take odd jobs in order to write about them. George Plimpton and Barbara Ehrenreich come to mind. 

Because "author of the great American novel" is not a job category on Craig's List, writers need jobs. Judy Blume once was asked about the first thing that a writer should do. "Get a job," was her reply. That's what we used to yell at our fellow surfers when we drove down Daytona Beach. "Get a job!" Surfers are faced with the same dilemma confronted by writers. Surf or work? Or... What's the best job to have where I can surf in the morning and make gobs of money doing a brainless activity at night? 

Some of us insist on getting day jobs as writers. In Denver, I wrote sports and features for daily newspapers and suburban weeklies. I was managing editor of an entertainment weekly. I was a free-lance editor and writer and, later, an editor of corporate publications where I wrote about fan belts and rubber hoses.  Until you've read one of my scintillating pieces about a Gates fan belt, well,  nevermind -- I wouldn't subject you to that. I did write a humor column about the strange creatures who inhabited the corporate parking lot. One day, I was summoned into the chief's office:

Chief (crankily): We must write something about the crazy drivers in the parking lot. I almost was run over twice this morning.
Me (enthusiastically):We could publish a boring missive from one of our vice presidents who could chide his minions about their bad behavior.
Chief (frowning): Think of something better.
Me (smiling stupidly): May I take the week off to go to the mountains? I think a lot better up there.
Chief (glowering): Take a slow walk in the parking lot of quitting time. That should give you some ideas.

I did as he suggested and almost got run over twice. I immediately went home and was greeted by a squawking brood of children. They reminded me of a flock of crows (technically, a murder of crows) and I was inspired to turn the parking lot transgressors into various kinds of misbehaving birds. The chief was so impressed that he promised not to fire me that week.

What does this have to do with writers and depression? While I was writing it, I wasn't depressed. One maxim I learned about depression is this: "When depressed, learn something." You could change that to "write something." While you're writing, you're otherwise engaged. It doesn't cure depression, but may hold it at bay for awhile. It's a physical disease, as physical as allergies or cancer. To keep it at bay, I write. I also take two different antidepressants, exercise regularly, eat a healthy diet and learn something new every day. I also work a steady job that involves writing and editing. It takes time from my fiction writing, but if I didn't do it, I would have no insurance and no income. I could abandon it all, go to Florida and become a beach bum. Then I'd have a bunch of punk surfers yelling at me to get a job. It would be deja vu all over again. I couldn't help being depressed.

Dear Florida: Sorry we burned all of that coal but it couldn't be helped

The February issue of National Geographic features an excellent -- and scary -- article about the effects of global warming on south Florida. As the planet warms and sea levels rise, Miami is destined to be either 1. A floating city; 2. nonexistent. Some are planning for the inevitable. Many are not.

National Geographic maps show one of the worst-case scenarios for sea level rise. In 2100, a five-foot rise is expected, which would inundate most coastal areas.

If sea levels rise five feet, nearly one million of the current homes near the coast will be below the average day’s high tide.

--clip-- 

In total, some $390 billion worth of property could be damaged or lost—a sum fives times as great as Florida’s state budget.

I grew up in one of those sea-level homes a half block from "The World's Most Famous Beach." It's possible I learned my love of hyperbole from Daytona Beach boosters. I did learn to surf and love the ocean. At one time, I was thinking of becoming a marine biologist. My brothers and I arose every morning with dreams of good surf. Often we were disappointed. But we usually spent a part of every day in salt water -- or on it. I wasn't big on fishing but some of my brothers were. We were water people.  

I now live on an ancient seabed in Wyoming. Sometimes, when the wind blows from the southeast, I smell salt water. Sometimes I also smell the refinery, but that's another story. Parts of Wyoming's ancient seabed contain seams of coal produced by flora and fauna from those ancient seas and seashores. For a hundred years or so, we've been digging up the coal to burn in power plants that add pollutants to the air and warm the climate. In this way. we contribute to the sea gobbling up my old Florida home and, one day in the far future, providing some bitchin' surfing in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

In Gov. Mead's State of the State speech this week, he received applause and enthusiastic huzzahs from legislators when he said this:

“In coming years, I will continue to work with bulldog determination on coal initiatives, port expansion, new technology, and value-added products. And in coming years, we don’t need to let up, we need to double down. We must assure coal’s continuity.”

Surf's up!

From beach boy to beach cowboy

I'm not a Florida beach guy. Not anymore.

Salt water once ran in my veins. The sun freckled my skin on a daily basis. All summer long, I lived in my baggies and toughened my feet by walking barefoot on scalding asphalt on my way to the beach's hard-packed sand. My car wore surf racks and patches of rust. By the time I graduated from high school, it was almost ready for the scrap heap, although a neighbor forked over $100 so he could turn it into a dune buggy.

Nights and evenings, we worked so we could surf during the day. I was a busboy at a combination Kentucky Fried Chicken joint and a pancake house. We busboys spent a lot of time flirting with the waitresses, trying to get them into our cars for an after-work beachside rendezvous. When that didn't work, we'd drive down to the Daytona pier and see if any tourist girls were interested in canoodling with busboys. We lonely guys often ended up parked on the beach (you could drive on it back then) talking about our plans for the future.

I had plans. I didn't know what they were, but I had them. Life was waiting for me and I had no desire to remain a beach boy or, worse, a beach bum. The world was tough on me and I did return to the beach after being booted out of college. I surfed and worked, waited for the Army to pluck me from the waves and send me to Vietnam. But the call never came and I had to figure out the next steps. Traveled, returned to school, worked, returned to the beach again although spent less and less time actually on the beach. Guess I always thought it was something to grow out of.

My brother Dan found that the beach was something you could grow into. He surfed until he was almost 60, until leukemia claimed him late last year. His 50- and 60-something buddies all surfed. They formed a church called the Salty Church that is a block from the beach.

Meanwhile, I made my home in the Rocky Mountain West and only rarely looked back. Until recently. When retirement raised its head. Now I'm spending time at funerals and weddings of my loved ones in The Sunshine State. It's not the place I left in 1978. Scads more people, traffic, developments. I was surprised during my recent trip that you can still walk with your best girl on the beach -- and be the only two out there. It has to be windy and 45 degrees, but it can be done.

But as I said in a previous post, the beach is nice but I can't see basing a retirement on that one thing alone. I can't surf until I get my knees fixed and/or replaced. I don't fish, like some of the codgers I came across on my beach walks. My Celtic skin won't tolerate sunbathing. I don't own a boat.

The warm weather is nice. Lots of cultural offerings. My family members are there, as are old friends. I care deeply about my old Florida schools -- they shaped me.

Still...

Spend a few decades in a place and you change. I've lived in Wyoming since 1991, with two years off in the mid-90s to work in D.C. As it turns out, I still have salt water in my veins. That's because all humans have salt water in our veins, even those of us who live in the Land of the Ancient Seas. Millions of years ago, my little lot in Cheyenne was underwater. If I excavated my entire backyard instead of just my small garden plot, I would find fossils of sea creatures. When the wind blows from the south, I smell the salt air. It could be from the nearest saltwater patch in the Gulf of Mexico. More likely, it's the moisture by storms. Or it could be my imagination.

Most of the time, the wind brings the scent of the dry prairie or of snow from Gulf of Alaska storms. The landscape reveals no waves, unless I use my imagination and wonder what it would be like to surf a wave as high as the nearest sandstone bluff.

I have to admit that I am more of this place than of the place where I did my growing up. I am no longer a beach guy unless you count the fact that I have walked "the beaches of Cheyenne" that Garth Brooks sings about. No longer the beach boy but a beach cowboy.

Saying farewell to Daniel my brother

Paddle out for my brother Dan in Ormond Beach, Fla. Photo by Marcus Stephen. 

Hundreds of people gathered at the Salty Church Nov. 23 in Ormond Beach for the final send-off for my brother Dan. Wife, sons, daughter, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, friends. All the seats were filled and people stood along the back wall.

I sat in the front row next to Nancy, Dan's widow, and her children. My sisters and brothers and their kids surrounded us. A slide show portraying Dan's life played across the dual screens that flanked the altar/stage. I was raised Catholic, so the space at the front of any church is an altar. As a Catholic, of course, I can't sing, and am used to aging priests mumbling in English or, when I was a kid, in Latin. I still am startled when people play electric guitars in a place of worship.

Chris Breslin, one of Dan's nephews and a divinity school grad, conducted the service. He opened up with a prayer, followed by a rendition of "Danny Boy" piped in from the P.A. system.

Dan's eldest son Ryan spoke first.

I was next up, there to say a few words on behalf of my brothers and sisters. Here are those few words:

I'm Dan's older brother, Mike. I grew up in Daytona and now live in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Dan meant everything to his brothers and sisters. Let me name them: They are me, Molly, Eileen, Tommy, Timmy, Maureen and Mary. [I name them all and point them out to the crowd]. They all are here today except our brother Pat, who passed away three years ago. Dan and Pat are surfing together now.

One thing about Dan -- you could talk to him. Now I know what you're thinking, Dan could debate politics and religion and philosophy for hours. When I say "debate," I mean "argue."

But when you wanted someone to listen, really listen, Dan was your man. I'd call Dan and say I was going through a rough time and I could count on Dan to listen, really listen. I did that more than once, as did all of his brothers and sisters. It meant a lot to us.

Dan's house in Ormond Beach was the central gathering place. Back in the 1980s, Dan found a job as an air traffic controller in his home town of Daytona. It's a job he did for 25 years, 22 of those in Daytona and three in Fort Lauderdale.

His house on Putnam Avenue became the headquarters for all Shay activities. My brother Tim and sister Maureen had their 50th birthday parties there last summer. There were many other birthday parties, anniversary parties and those memorable Fourth of July parties. Our mom spent her last Fourth of July at Dan's house, arm and arm with our father, watching the fireworks from Dan's backyard. I was up on the roof with other party-goers watching them watch the fireworks.

Not that Dan was a homebody. My sister Mary says that when they were in Houston during Dan's treatment for leukemia, they traveled all over the place. 

"We ate our way through Texas," Mary said.

Dan, Maureen and Mary took a memorable 12-hour jaunt from Houston to San Antonio to Austin and back to Houston. Family members traveled with Dan to the space center, submarine docks and lots of historic places. Molly went with Dan to Galveston. If Dan could have, and if there were any waves, Dan would have gone surfing. 

All of us traveled with Dan one time or another. In 1988, Dan and I traveled with a Habitat for Humanity group to Nicaragua. That was during the Sandinista era and the Contra war was going on. We were sitting in a meeting one day hearing from the Sandinistas about how the country one day would be a tourist attraction and a surfing paradise. A uniformed officer came into the room and removed Dan. I was a bit concerned, as Dan was conservative and a big Reagan fan. Five minutes later, Dan returned to the room. After the meeting, I asked Dan what that was all about. He said they just wanted to know his name and where he was from and what he was doing in Nicaragua. He gave them the answers and that was it. I told him that we were worried that he was being dragged off to a Sandinista firing squad.

Dan, Nancy and the kids traveled all over. During my time with Dan last week, he told me many tales of journeying to Turkey, El Salvador, Germany, Peru, etc. If you want to hear details of these travels, talk to Nancy or Ryan or Connor or Bryce after the service. They have lots of adventure tales to tell. 

As I said at the beginning, Dan meant everything to us. His departure leaves a hole in our lives. 

But as he replied to our sister Eileen when she asked if he was afraid of dying: "What do I have to be afraid of?" That was his strong faith speaking.

We miss you, Dan. There's an old Roy Rogers song, "Happy Trails." I'll spare you my singing it. I'll leave you -- and Dan -- with a couple lines from the song. I've personalized it:

"Happy trails, Dan our brother,
Until we meet again."

Others rose to speak. A friend from high school. An accomplished blues musician who went to school with Dan and had some things to say about Dan's musicianship when he was a teen bass player. An air traffic controller buddy who now works in Germany and flew over for the service. A friend who surfed with Dan the last time he ventured out into the waves.

Elton John's "Daniel" played while the slideshow recounted more of Dan's life and times. "Daniel my brother...."

When the service concluded, we walked over to the Granada approach. Police directed traffic while we all crossed A1A. In the picnic shelter adjacent to the beach, U.S. Air Force personnel conducted a flag ceremony for Dan the veteran. Four civilian aircraft did a flyover in the "missing man" formation. We then went down to the sand for a paddle out. For those of you unfamiliar with that tradition, surfers climb into their wetsuits and paddle out beyond the break. They get in a circle for a prayer for Dan and then toss their carnations into the Atlantic. We waded into the surf and did the same from the shore. I felt the sand scrape the pads of my feet, the water swirl around my toes.

The red, white and pink carnations ebbed and flowed with the tide.

Dan Shay, R.I.P.

I wanted to share my brother Dan's obituary with my readers. Over the course of the past year, I've posted periodic updates about Dan's struggle with leukemia and my tussle with heart disease. Neither chore was pleasant, but my brother fought a stone-cold killer in AML. A heart attack and its follow-up seemed easier to understand and deal with. I feel that I'm in it for the long haul, thanks to the wonders of surgery, medications and devices such as the stent and the implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD). It's doing its business 24/7, keeping my heart on track and standing by to kick-start my heart should it run wild. Whoa, Nellie, Whoa!

My brother's heart stopped beating today some time before 4 a.m. MST. I got one of those middle-of-the-night calls, the ones that carry bad news. Dan was gone, my Tallahassee sister Molly said. Gone. Thirteen days ago the docs gave him two to four weeks to live. They were eerily accurate.

It was only Sunday night that I sat beside his bed and watched "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" with him and his wife Nancy. They held hands while the spaghetti western played out on the bedroom TV. I was certain that I'd seen the movie at the drive-in when it came out in 1968 but the scenes reeled by and none of it seemed familiar. It's possible that I was doing something else at the drive-in -- my algebra homework, perhaps -- and I just missed the important parts. 

At one point, I heard Dan snore and looked over at him. His pain meds were doing their job. He looked old and fragile. He gripped the TV control in his left hand and Nancy's hand in he other. She was sleeping the sleep of the dedicated caregiver, one who had been with Dan for most of 49 years. They met in the sixth grade at Our Lady of Lourdes grade school, where Mercy nuns tortured young minds and we came up with creative ways to return the favor. I remember seeing them hold hands way back when, one of those days when it occurred to me that they liked each other, they really liked each other.

That's a long time to really, really like someone. You might call that love. I do.

Here's the obituary I promised. It was a group effort:

Daniel Patrick "Dan" Shay, 60, was born in Denver, Colorado, and spent the majority of his life in Ormond Beach, Fla. He was an avid surfer, Harley rider, devoted husband and a loving father. He loved traveling to foreign countries (mainly to surf) and loved seeing his children experience different cultures. Dan was always planning for his next adventure. 

Dan was a 1971 Seabreeze High School graduate and honorably served in the U.S. Air Force as an air traffic controller for four years. He was a civilian controller at Fort Lauderdale International Airport for 3 years and Daytona Beach Airport for 22 years. In retirement, Dan started his own business, Daytona Gear, and graduated from Embry-Riddle in 2007.

Dan is survived by his high school sweetheart and love of his life, Nancy Breslin Shay, two sons, Ryan and Connor, both of Tampa, and a daughter, Bryce, of Ormond Beach; three brothers, Michael (Chris) of Cheyenne, WY, Tom (Tani) of Palm Bay and Tim (Jen) of Ormond Beach; four sisters, Molly Shakar (Jamie), Maureen Martinez (Ralph) and Mary Powell (Neill), all of Tallahassee, and Eileen Casey (Brian), Winter Park. He also is survived by 47 nieces and nephews and numerous family members and friends. He was preceded in death by his parents, Thomas and Anna Shay, and by a brother, Pat.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent for Uno Mas School, Costa Rica Church, c/o Salty Church, 221 Vining Court, Ormond Beach, FL 32176.

Dan is loved by many and will be greatly missed. Come tell your “Dan” stories at his Celebration of life on Saturday, November 23, at Salty Church at 1 p.m. There will be a paddle out at Granada approach following the service.

Surfer Patrol sez: "Let the Gay Scouts in!" w/update

I can't speak for the rest of Surfer Patrol, but Patrol Leader Mike Shay says it's OK with him if openly Gay Boy Scouts are allowed into our hallowed fraternity. LGBT leaders, too, although that's a long shot -- for now.

I can't remember the number of our troop, but we met in a church in Ormond Beach, Fla, in the 1960s. While the troop's other patrols bore names of Florida's wild animals such as Panther, Rattlesnake and Gator, my brother Dan and Bobby C. and I all voted to become the Surfer Patrol. As usually happens with surfers, our patrol was typecast as the troublemakers, which rarely happened in real life. Yes, we almost got out troop kicked out of Camp Lanochee. And yes, we did teepee another patrol's tent. And yes, our patrol members were much better surfers than we were Boy Scouts. We could shred, and did. But we were loveable. And we rarely caused any real damage.

When I hear reports that some church congregations have gathered together this evening to pray for continuing a policy of a non-Gay Boy Scouts of America, I say: "Bring it on!" Or maybe "Cowabunga!" Make all troops welcoming to all people, gay or straight. The Mormons say it's OK with them -- and hardly any of them surf. The United Methodists and the Unitarian Universalists and national Jewish leaders say its OK with them. As always, the Catholic Church is a problem. My brother Dan and I were Catholic school boys, outcasts in Baptist-heavy Florida. We all grew up in a time of vicious names, "queer" as a nasty slur, and "faggot." I don't think I used them, but I may have. I was a jock in the South before it became the New South. Let's face it -- even in the 21st century, gay-bashing still exists in Dixie. And in surfless Wyoming.

Let the sun shine in, B.S.A.! Surfer Patrol would dig that.

Update: Boy Scouts of America sez yes to admitting openly gay youth. Fundies freak out.

Bitchin'!

Keep an eye out for those great tomatoes

A watched tomato never ripens.

No matter how much I stand and stare, my tomatoes will not ripen into salad fodder. I do not have super powers!

But that's the best part, right? Wandering outside for the morning look-see and finding a red one -- or at least trending toward red. Want to pick that baby right off the stem and pop it in the mouth. Savor that homegrown taste. A burst of sunshine.

But not yet. Still harvesting broccoli and lettuce. Ate some fingerling zucchini and flowers in a salad. My lone surviving crookneck is growing ever so slowly and has not blossoms yet. It's next-door neighbor, a green squash, is ready to flower.

On the side yard, my pole beans have climbed the trellis almost to six feet or so. Had to cajole them up the trellis, as one of the plants had a fixation on the nearby wildflowers. It was tough to break up the relationship, but it was going nowhere -- I could see that and had to intervene. A few of the marigolds are flowering. I grew them from seed and they're taking awhile.

I'm making plans for next season's garden. I'm going to let the strawberries spread out and prepare for next spring. The garden next to the porch will become the berry patch and I'll move on to new ground for all the rest. I have a patch of grass than gets almost-all-day sun. The grass doesn't grow very well as I've never given it much attention. That's the next patch of lawn due for replacement. Already looking forward to next season...

Tomorrow is my father's birthday. He'd be 86 today but passed away in 2002. He wasn't much of a gardener when I was a kid. But when his nine kids began growing up and leaving, he turned to gardening. Ornamental, as you can grow plants all year in central Florida. He did grow kumquats, more for their looks than their taste. You can eat the grape-sized citrus fruit, and make some terrific jams and jellies from them. But so much easier to snag an orange for a snack.

My mom died young and my father later married again. This time to a dedicated gardener. Their house in Ormond Beach featured all kinds of tropical and subtropical ornamentals. What really pleased him, I think, was the well-manicured lawn, mowed weekly by a lawn service. No longer did he have to wait for one of his sons to return from the beach to mow the grass. For us, surfing came before lawns and gardens. Not true any more -- for the most part. My Florida brothers all have their own gardens, and spend more time on them than surfing. As for me, well, the waves just aren't that great on the beaches of Cheyenne.

Dad and Connie were members of the volunteer gardening corps at St. Brendan's Catholic Church where Chris and I were married 27 years ago. The gardens looked fine when the family gathered at the church for his funeral mass in spring of 2002.

Dad -- here's a gardening birthday wish from your eldest son.

Ridin' and ropin' those docile dinos

This photo by John Scalzi is great in so many ways. It's from Kentucky's Creation Museum, and shows a boy riding a statue of a baby Triceratops, which is Wyoming's official state dinosaur. The kid is having fun, and probably doesn't care a wit that Triceratops were never used as rodeo stock. Since it's rodeo season in the West, you can ask just about any cowboy -- horses and bulls are preferable to dinos. It's a fine idea, though, and one which should be considered if we ever get our hands on that dino DNA that was used so disastrously in "Jurassic Park." I think it would be much more fun to ride bareback on a Velociraptor, with others playfully nipping at your boot heels. But that's just me.

The Creation Museum contends that humans and dinos lived side-by-side. It also contends that the T-Rex was a vegeterian. Not sure what those big pointy teeth were used for. Maybe plants were tougher 6,000 years ago.

In Wyoming, we know our dinosaurs and our evolutionary history. That what makes the closing of the University of Wyoming's Geological Museum so sad. In a time of Creation Museums, we desperately need as much real science as possible. So budget cuts are made and the thing that UW decides is expendable is a museum devoted to the reality-based world. The move has been controversial. I heard news yesterday that private funding has been raised to keep the museum in business. Let's hope so.

More dinosaur bones have been dug out of Wyoming that almost anywhere else in the world. Plant and animal life from millions of years ago make up our massive oil and coal reserves. We boast an official state dinosaur and an official state fossil, the Knightia. I think we're the only state that puts so much stock in the ancient world, one that goes back way farther than 6,000 years.

I have a story called "The History of Surfing in Wyoming" that posits a post-global warming Wyoming (Wyoming Islands) where the surf is bitchen on the beaches of the Big Horns and Wind Rivers (formerly mountain ranges) and aqua-rodeo cowboys get their kicks riding sea creatures resurrected from the floor of the ancient inland sea. Reality-based scenarios are fun when it comes to science. But they don't hold a candle to the worlds conjured by the imagination.

I leave you with the Wyoming Islands version of the Beach Boys' Surfin' U.S.A. (feel free to sing along):

If everybody had an ocean
Across the U.S.A.
Then everybody'd be surfin'
Like Wyoming-yay
You'd see 'em wearing cut-off Ryders
Stetsons and (boots) too
A buzz-cut surfers’ hairdo
Surfin' U.S.A.

You'd catch 'em surfin' at Happy Jack
Casper Island Beach
Flaming Gorge and Lander
and the Big Horn Islands
All over South Pass
And down Encampment way
Everybody's gone surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.

We'll all be planning that route
We're gonna take real soon
We're waxing down our surfboards
We can't wait for June
We'll all be gone for the summer
We're on surfari to stay
Tell the teacher we're surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.

Rock River and Sundance
and Laramie Peak
Meeteetse and Midwest,
Big Surf Reef near Ten Sleep
All over the Wind Rivers
and Uinta Bay
Everybody's gone surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.

Surf Wyoming: Greg Noll in Cody

What is Greg Noll's van doing in Cody?

Mr. Noll catching the nightly rodeo? Mr. Noll riding the bucking horses in the nightly rodeo?

Ride 'em, Greg.

My third surfboard was a Greg Noll Bug. Short, but not too short. Probably better suited to SoCal surf than the mushy Daytona waves of mid-summer.