My mom and dad are at *my place in the Keys* and I'm not

Sucks to be me right now, huh?

Mom and Dad are spending a week at The Cat House with Tom. Dad's a Renaissance Man and can do anything. At 80 he's more active and productive than I am. And he looks younger than I do.

Dad and Tom are building walls, from what I gather from the daily (sometimes hourly) phone calls. They're building a wall between (I think) the master bedroom and its closet. It already had a wall, but I want a pocket door in it to save space, so they've worked on that. They've made soffits for the air conditioning ductwork. They're going to make a closet in the upstairs bedroom. There are no closets upstairs; lots of space under the eaves of the house, but the ceiling is so low in those that only "short" things can be hung. Where did the people who used to live there put all their stuff?

(Actually, Tom found a big stack of shirts left in one of them. And a lot of junk was just tossed into the backyard and under the house.)

Mom has been cleaning windows and sweeping. Those floors catch and hold onto dirt and dust; they're down to the subflooring and it's not in good shape. The cats shed enough to create entire new cats.

On Monday they'll head up to their favorite vacation spot near Daytona and spend two weeks there with some of their friends. It used to be a little 40s or 50s Mom and Pop-style motel right between A1A and the ocean. Maybe 10 rooms. It's been sold several times in the last few years for increasingly insane amounts of money and will eventually be razed and turned into luxury condos. I hate to see the remaining pieces of Old Florida sold off and gone forever.

We first went to Florida in 1955 or '56, after Dad's parents, sister, and brother-in-law moved to Miami. I vaguely remember that first trip. I was convinced that the ocean was in Muck and Poppa's back yard and I was terribly disappointed when it wasn't. That trip is when my life-long love affair with Florida started.

We visited them every summer for two weeks. At that time we didn't have any friends whose families took vacations anywhere, much less 1000 miles south. We spent most of the time inside--they had air conditioning. We'd play in the yard, go to the beach a couple of times (Dad absolutley hates getting sand in the car), go shopping some (I mean, wow, they had a K-Mart back when there were none up here!), eat at the very old McDonald's nearby, take walks in the evening, play with the colorful snails that crawled up the shady side of the house.

At least once each trip, we'd all pile into the car and take a ride through the Everglades (mosquitos are BAD in the summer; I can't wait to go in the winter) or out to the (then) new Miami airport, or, once, to Key West. I was five that year, I think. I was not at all interested in the gorgeous water, palm trees, and other sights; all I remember is that I was really really thirsty, and I remember bumping across countless bridges. When we got to Key West, it stunk of fish. There'd been a recent fish-kill; we didn't want to stay long. I remember nothing else of the island.

And now I'm going to live 30 miles from it. I still don't quite believe it.

Googles

I'm noticing a bunch of google searches for "Paul Capon's The End of the Tunnel" or "The Cave of Cornelius". Would you kind folks who are searching for those titles and land here please leave a comment? I'd love to meet people who read that book.

Also, if you're searching for Lucentis or eyeball injections, please leave a comment, too. I've had six of 'em, and if I can help someone who needs them, I'm glad to do so.

Another happy thing

My, my, my, two in one week. This morning I left another minimal description of a book I read as a child. And it was answered within a couple of hours.

The book is The End of the Tunnel aka The Cave of Cornelius by Paul Capone. From the description on ABE's Book Sleuth's site:

"The Cave of Cornelius aka The End of the Tunnel by Paul Capon: Four children searching for a lost treasure of the Romans which they believe to lie somewhere in a cave near their home, stumble upon and into a secret world beneath the earth which is inhabited by descendants of the very Romans whose treasure they have been seeking. These people, with their debased Latin and their partly archaic and partly modern appurtenances, guard their secret and their habitat rigorously from the upper earth. Fortunately the children make contact with a contemporary who has long been a prisoner and who has the aid of a "native" girl. All escape by a complicated water and cave route which brings them out eventually in Paris - via the catacombs - with treasure and fame, leaving the secret of Sutteranea behind for good."

That's the good news. The bad: so far, I've only been able to find copies of this book for $300-$1500!

So, I'm relieved that I finally found the (I think) last sought-after-book-from-my-childhood. But I'll be jonesing for it till I finally hold it in my hands.

That might take a while.

Happy things

1) A few weeks ago, we tried to buy Steve Wedemeyer's two cds online, without success. They were unavailable at the three online stores we tried. We asked him about them at the house concert a few weeks ago and he offered to send them to us. They arrived yesterday and they're excellent. His debut cd is Disclose; the second one is an ep by Steve Wedemeyer and the Irenes (The Irenes are two other guys from LTH, drummer Martin Lynds and bass guitarist Jim Gray. I'd love to hear the story behind that name.). That one contains my so-far favorite song by him, Can't Come Undone. That's on Last Train Home's cd Last Good Kiss, sung by Eric Brace. Occasionally at a show Steve will sing it; I love it both ways; I wish I could say why, but my mind has gone on strike. Again.

Anyway, we heard Can't Come Undone sung by Steve on Steve's myspace page (I'd link to it if I could, but myspace is banned here at work, for some reason or other) and I wanted a copy of it. Now I have it. Thank you, Steve--we'll see you June 1 at the wine fest. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy my very own personal copies of your music, and so will Tom.

(Please note that Steve's website is soooooo out of date; he's cut his hair, he moved back to Houston, and the dates shown were about 3 years ago. But, my God, that man can play a mean guitar. Steve, please, please, if you have a chance, please update your website. You got fans out here, dude.)


2) Another childhood favorite book find: For years I've been searching for a book I read as a relatively young child, one whose title and author I couldn't begin to remember. All I could remember was that it was about 4 children who had moved into a new neighborhood early in the spring/summer, there was some kind of illness around and they weren't allowed to meet any other children. They had to invent their own entertainment; it was written in 1956, I think, so television wasn't the household staple it is today.

So they scouted their yard (at this point, it seems that it must have been one big-ass yard; I haven't read it since I was 11 or so) and discovered that there was an island in the yard. I think there was an old, decrepit cabin or shack on the island, so they spent the next weeks playing there. That's all I remember. I thought the title might be "Almost an Island", and I searched for years trying to find a book with that title, or something close to it. I bet that searches even brought up The Invisible Island, but I wouldn't have paid much attention to it because I didn't remember anything about any invisible island. Two weeks ago I left an inquiry on www.abe.com hoping that someone would have some idea and point me in the right direction.

I didn't check the message board for almost two weeks; I'd actually forgotten about it till I searched for books in the Mushroom Planet series (very expensive books, as it turns out). (I still want them. I didn't even know there were more than two books in the series; there are 5.) So this woman had answered me within a few minutes, and she had the title and author of the book--The Invisible Island--and links to a website about the author and to a page at ABE with several of the books for sale. Starting at $115.

I love books. Love them. And this book means a lot to me, but $115? Up to $350? Sorry, that's way out of my league, even if I hadn't bought the camera. So I started a google search, and I found it. I found the book for $50.

Yes, it's a little ridiculous. I might have to work an extra year or two to make up for these purchases (there are always purchases, people), but it's worth it. Over the last 15 years or so I've found the 4 books that meant the most to me: When the Root Children Wake Up (which I found in the library of my elementary school one summer; it was the same book I'd checked out over and over in the 2nd grade; I left a note for the librarian asking if she'd sell it--I'd seen it online for over $100 and just couldn't pay that much--and she mailed it to me, saying that it hadn't been checked out in 30 years and she was glad that I loved it that much), Mystery Island and the other 7 books in that series, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, and now, within a couple of weeks of re-finding that last one, The Invisible Island. With that one, my childhood book collection is about as complete as I could have ever hoped for. I didn't think I'd ever find that book, or even the title, and it feels odd, somehow. I've searched for and tried to remember the title to that book pretty much my entire adult life, and now it's within reach.

Say, Tom, about that credit card........