To read about Ron’s four months in Micronesia, go to the archive to your left and click on “Marshall Islands Story Project.”

Jill and I spent a week in Florida visiting family. Her parents live in Sun City, just south of Tampa. Their house backs to the Little Manatee State Park and so they see a lot of wildlife. Bobcats wander the neighborhood on occasion. Wild hogs root near the back yard. The alligator control people took two gators from the pond across the street but they have yet to get the big one (nine feet). He’s cagey, they say, and won’t take bait. Jill’s parents, who have lived here for only a year, regaled us with gator-attack stories. Said Mrs. Eicher: “Why, a jogger decided to take a rest on a foot bridge. She dangled her legs in the water and a gator snatched her and ate her up!” Mr. Eicher said: “A laborer was hot after a hard day’s work. He jumped into an irrigation canal for a swim. A gator got him.” They seem to relish these stories and tell them nearly with delight, as if describing a wondrous sunset. I suppose that, as people who have not been eaten by gators, they feel lucky.

Their neighbors across the street heard scratching at their front door one morning. When they opened the door, they found a turtle as big as a dinner plate waiting to pass through. Apparently their new house was in the path of a turtle route. The route might have been there for centuries. The homeowners picked up the turtle and took it to the pond on the other side of their house. The one thing life in Florida makes clear is that we are crowding out the animals. We visited my brother and his wife at their gated community in Orlando. Inside the front gate there’s a bulletin board for neighborhood announcements. This week it said, “Bobcat alert.”

Apparently every middle-class home-owner in Florida has a large screened back porch, which they call a “cage.” These cages are quite big – generally as big as a two-car garage and twice as tall. They look like aviaries and every time I glance at one I expect to see parrots flying around inside. I did see a parrot perched on the shoulder of a man shopping at a Goodwill. Wherever Jill and I travel, we visit the Goodwill or Salvation Army thrift store. You never know what you’ll find. In a Maine Goodwill, I bought an Irish wool sports coat for six dollars. In its interior pocket was a forty-year-old pay stub belonging to the original owner. It, too, was from Ireland.

After it rains (it rains a lot in Florida), fire ants crawl to the top of the cage that belongs to Jill’s parents.  This is where the ants attempt to dry off. Lots of these tiny ants fall through the cage screen, however, and drop into the swimming pool, where they gather in seething clumps. They don’t drown.  “That’s how tough they are,” Mr. Eicher says. He likes to swim every day. You can do that in Florida.

 Jill and I didn’t see any alligators during our visit, except for a small dead one by the side of the road. At this time of year, gators spend most of their days on the bottom of their lakes, we were told. Every lake has gators. We walked into the swamp on two occasions and we heard many things plopping into the brackish, leaf-blackened water. My brother said he once saw a ten-foot python hanging from a tree on one of his nature walks. Florida’s the kind of place where people feel no qualms about setting loose their exotic pets. All Jill and I saw were birds –egrets and herons, which are lovely — and lizards. I’ve never seen so many lizards, not even in the Marshall Islands. Speaking of which, I’m surprised how balmy and tropical Orlando and Tampa are, even though they are 30 degrees north of the equator. When I was living smack-dab on the equator, I wasn’t any hotter or sweatier than I was in Florida.

While we were antiquing, a store-owner cornered Jill and chatted at length, apparently under the belief that this would make Jill buy something. When the woman learned where Jill’s from, she said, “Baltimore? They have a lot of blacks there, don’t they?” Jill explained that, yes, it’s a diverse city with a diverse population of African Americans. As if this were encouragement, the woman said, “I wouldn’t live in Orlando. They’ve got three or four murders a day now.” Jill was dumbfounded. Baltimore, which ranks among the cities with the nation’s highest murder rate, averages – at its worst – one murder a day. The woman continued, “They’re even throwing bricks at people from the overpasses!” Actually, the brick-throwing occurred in Jacksonville many years ago over the span of a month. I haven’t heard of a similar incident since then, at least not in Florida. Orlando seemed to us quite benign, like one big shopping mall where every other business is named Gator-this or Gator-that.

While at another antique store, I heard this exchange behind me: “Oh, the Taliban. They’re a nasty bunch.”

“Damn right. Terrorists. they’re gonna ruin the world.”

“Oh, I mean nasty, nasty.”

“You mean unclean?”

“They’re all homosexuals, you know.”

“I didn’t know!”

“That’s why they hate women.”

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To read about Ron’s four months in Micronesia, go to the archive to your left and click on “Marshall Islands Story Project.”

Jill and I got a cool, old toilet from a neighbor, so we decided to install it in the first-floor powder room. The modern toilet that occupied the powder room was running on and on so badly I had shut off the water. It had one of those irritating ball floats that I’ve never been able to adjust right. And the flapper for the outtake hole was thoroughly unreliable. It was the only new toilet (as opposed to vintage toilet) in the house and it had failed. So much for modern conveniences.

Our powder room’s not large enough to accommodate the bowl of the cool, old toilet. But we happen to have a lot of old-house surplus, which is to say that we happen to have two other cool, old toilets we collected for installation. And one of those bowls is small enough to fit in the powder room. But the wall-hung tank is too large. So we went out and found a smaller tank (which is not easy). Why this trouble for an old toilet? Old toilets have really good flushing power. New toilets can hardly get down a kitty turd. In 1992, the feds made old toilets illegal because old toilets waste a lot of water – 3 to 5 gallons a flush.

The Energy Policy Act, as it was called, was a good idea, but had unfortunate results. Most new conservation-friendly toilets simply aren’t strong enough to swallow the serious business. So we end up flushing twice or thrice. As a result, the plunger has become a too-common fixture in most bathrooms (where is your plunger right now?). Short of an approaching tornado, nothing incites panic in me like the sight of waste water rising in a stopped-up toilet. In the scheme of day-to-day life, the soon-to-be-spilling-over stopped-up toilet is the realest of disasters. It’s right there at your knees, an odorous upwelling of your most intimate solitary act. What could be more embarrassing, especially at a stranger’s house?

(Powder rooms by the way were originally little closets where a gentleman or –woman powdered his/her wig in the days when such folk wore wigs, i.e. 200 years ago. Well-off couples sometimes had both his and hers powder rooms. Somewhere along the line – probably the Victorian era — people started calling the guest bathroom a powder room. It’s like calling the bathroom a “restroom,” a nicey-nice term that has surprisingly wide circulation. Originally, there was a toilet in our basement for the maid and work-people. I don’t know what they called that. We took it out and turned our larder closet, on the first floor, into a powder room.)

A lot of do-it-yourselfers are wary of old toilets. They’ve heard the old ones leak and are unreliable and overly complicated. Not true. Toilet technology hasn’t changed in a hundred years. We’ve got a 1920s Crane in our master bath that works like a dream. Really, the only difference between old and new is that, on the old, the tank hangs on the wall and holds more water. That doesn’t mean you have to use all of that water. You can half flush or, in the case of Number One, flush only after a number of visits. You can also put a brick in the tank to displace the water if you think there’s too much. We are mindful of conservation in our household but want the option to flush big-time when the occasion calls for it.

I believe the higher tank of the old toilets gives gravity a better change to do its work. (And I can’t believe I’m still talking about toilets.) Nowadays you can get a turbo-charged modern toilet, with a pump to replicate the Niagara action of the old toilets. But the electrical energy expended defeats the conservation savings the new, tiny toilets are supposed to offer. Since 1997, manufacturers have been allowed to install a two-flush option that makes modern toilets more competent for the hard work. You can spend a whole lot of money on a new toilet. But I’ve yet to see a new toilet that has the charm of the old.

Here are some toilet facts. We have over 222 million household toilets in this country. Interestingly, that’s not quite one toilet for each person. And it’s well below the number of cars per capita: 8 cars for every 10 people. If you ever find yourself in New Delhi, be sure to visit the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets. The flush toilet dates back to 1000 B.C. That automatic-flush public toilet we’re so accustomed to (and yet don’t trust) came into existence in 1980. A 1947 sanitation study found that Baltimore had more outhouses than any of America’s seven largest cities.

Every year Americans buy ten million new toilets. Toilets account for 30% of household water use. That’s 2.1 trillion gallons a year. No nation uses more water for its business and no nation has been more particular about its bathroom hardware. Though Americans didn’t invent the seemingly hygienic porcelain apparatus, we made it the throne it is today—in part because we had the wide-open spaces to turn the water closet into a bathroom. The bathroom we know today got popular in the 1920s, when American designers went tile-crazy for that sanitary look. The master bathroom of our old house has tiles from floor to ceiling. That way you were sure you could wipe it clean, no matter what the mess.

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To read about Ron’s four months in Micronesia, go to the archive to your left and click on “Marshall Islands Story Project.”

Jill and I took our dogs — Frieda and PJ — for a week’s vacation in mid-Pennsylvania’s coal country. The dogs love car trips. One winter day they were Jonesing for a trip so badly, Jill and I piled them into the car and drove them around the block a few times. They were delighted. On this trip, we spent our time in the vicinity of Johnstown and Altoona. The hills here are surprisingly steep, considering their age. The towns are rocky pockets of mostly-crumbling buildings whose heyday was a century ago. That’s what we like, old stuff that’s seen better days. We learned that one of the largest bat roosts on the east coasts is located near Altoona, in an old church that was sold to the state park system as a bat sanctuary. You can see the bats hurling out of their hiding place at dusk. Big fans of bats, we took a video of them and put it on Youtube. Click here to the clip.

We walked the dogs hill and dale. These aren’t smart dogs. which means they’ll run themselves until they’re nearly crippled. The first day we were out, Frieda made a break for it. You’d be surprised how far and fast a squat little basset hound can run. Basset hounds are hunting dogs, second only to bloodhounds. They follow their noses above all other things. That makes them less than reliable. They are stubborn and independent. When the urge hits them, they run and run and run. On this particular morning, Frieda tore down a grassy hill and kept going. PJ followed and soon they were a quarter mile away, Jill and I hollering after them.

They led us to a creek. You would’ve thought Frieda had had enough but then, as we topped the hill (above the creek), she took off again. We found ourselves in the midst of hills that had been stripped for coal but not quite strip-mined, that is, not quite bared to rock. They’d been re-seeded and looked like they’d return to normal, more or less. Given how much oil’s going for per barrel nowadays, it’s no wonder the energy companies will take whatever they can get. It looks like it’s a lot of work for minimal gain. Click here to see the video I took as we chased Frieda all over the countryside.

In Johnstown, we learned that the infamous flood, which killed more than 2,000 people—which ranks it among this country’s worst disasters—was mostly the fault of rich folk who did not take care of the dam at their private lake upstream. The dam had remained in disrepair for years. In fact, the rich folk had narrowed it to accommodate passage for their horses. During a particularly bad rain, the dam broke, sending a 72-foot tidal wave down the narrow valley. The negligent rich folk were implicated but not charged with neglect. Soon after, they abandoned their summer mansions around their now-empty lake.

Jill and I stopped at a local diner for lunch and were surprised to find a few patrons smoking inside. I didn’t know anybody smoked in restaurants anymore. In the search of the most authentic road food, I ordered a meatloaf sandwich, which came with real (not reconstituted) mashed potatoes and gravy. We also got pirogues. And apricot cookies. The weight of the meal still sits with me. We stopped at a local auction at the house of a recently deceased somebody who owned a lot of cool, mid-twentieth century junk. Nobody in attendance was under forty. It seemed most were there to recapture simpler times in the form of baseball cards and war medals and kitschy ceramics and sixty-year-old calendars. I took photos of the attendees. It was a colorful bunch in a geezer, white-bread way.

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To read about Ron’s four months in Micronesia, go to the archive to your left and click on “Marshall Islands Story Project.”

Since my return from Micronesia, I’ve been doing a lot of housework. You can’t leave a big, old house like this unattended for long. Most of us live with the illusion that, at some point, we will get our houses so ship-shape that we will thereafter enjoy a life of minimal maintenance. I myself continue to believe that soon I’ll complete the last of our big projects and then—then—our old house will be less work This summer I have to replace the front portion of the garage roof, which is caving in because one of its twenty-foot joists snapped (years before we got the house). Jill and I also plan to restore the butler’s pantry to its original glory. In other words, the house isn’t done. And we’re eight years into the project. “We’ll never be done,” Jill says. “We’re close,” I insist. “And getting closer every day.”

Our most immediate task upon my return was to take care of PJ, our aged pit-bull. He has long had a protuberant growth on his stomach—a skin tag—that Jill named the “mutant nipple.” When we got him back from the kennel, the mutant nipple looked like a small udder: a swollen, veiny pendulous sack of skin. We took PJ to the vet, who said, “You might want to take care of that.” That’s why we’re here! we told him. I imagine the vet is accustomed to seeing all kinds of unfortunate growths and mutations that oblivious pet-owners seem happy to live with. BTW: “Mutant Nipple” would be a good name for a rock bad.

The back of our garage got drug-tagged last week, as did most of the neighborhood. If you’re an urbanite, you’re familiar with drug and gang tags—graffiti’d signatures that demarcate a dealer’s territory. The tagger will paint them everywhere, across street signs, fences, garage doors, and the side of your house. We’ve got a drug market in Remington, the down-trodden neighborhood to the west, and another near Greenmount Avenue, to the east. They’re not exactly like farmers’ markets but they are open-air and offer a variety of goods. The key to creating a good drug tag is to make it fast and fluid—something you can do while on the run. It’s not exactly a signature, though it aspires to that kind of clarity. Most tags are ugly and indecipherable. I think they could do better.

The day after a tagging spree, you’ll see homeowners—like me—outside trying to undo the damage. I got lucky. I only had to repaint one portion of the brick at the back of our garage. While I was painting, an elderly gentleman paused across the street and danced around a lamp post for about five minutes. The music he heard was wholly his own. He wasn’t plugged into anything. He was wearing a sailor’s billed cap and a navy-blue vest that matched his shirt and trousers. And he carried an old doctor’s satchel. He could have been one of the eccentric homeless. He could have been an hallucination. Whatever the case, he seemed to embody a notion of bliss.

Right now, Will, my helper, is painting our cast-iron fence out front. A lanky man in his twenties, Will used to live down the street, but now he’s across town. He’s the hardest worker I’ve ever hired. He helped me dig out five tons of dirt from the back yard two years ago, a task that might have put me in an early grave had I not had his help. Jobless men often ask me for work when they see me working on the house. Though I’ve given some of them a chance, most I can’t accommodate. Two summers ago, when Will stopped by, I was impressed by how earnest and well-spoken he was. For a man who’s had a tough life (his mother’s an addict), he’s remarkably even-tempered and good humored. To his credit, he’s chosen to work as many as three jobs at a time rather than find an easier way to make ends meet. Still, I worry about him.

Jill said our bathouse was listing, so I climbed out the trap door of the attic and onto the roof. We used to get bats flying inside our house on a regular basis and were never quite sure how they got in. They are an endangered and thoroughly helpful creature. So I erected the bathouse on the roof two years ago. It’s mounted on six-foot-high pilings and is attached to one of the chimneys. I don’t know if any bats have found it yet. They may not like being so close to the roof. Bat houses must be made to particular specifications. If we get no bats this year, I’ll have to relocate the house to a more suitable site, probably off the third-floor porch.

While on the roof I looked for swifts. They arrive in May and soar and circle over our rooftops all summer and into fall, catching pounds of insects a day. They make their nests in our open chimneys (one pair per). We hear their twittering chatter at dusk and dawn mostly. I continue to be surprised by the wildlife we find in so urban an environment. When we first put in the garden out back, for instance, I wasn’t convinced we’d get butterflies and hummingbirds, but they come. Fortunately, we’re not far from the Jones Falls greenway, which is something of a sanctuary for urban wildlife. One afternoon as I was working on the roof, I saw a great blue heron winging that way.

From the roof, we can see Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. It’s a good place to watch July 4th fireworks. Firecrackers were popping off throughout the neighborhood until the early hours last night. Don’t forget that, when Baltimoreans view fireworks showering the Inner Harbor, they are replicating Baltimore’s triumphant resistance to the British naval attack of 1814. Fort McHenry, at the mouth of the harbor, refused to raise the white flag and—for 25 hours of bombardment—American troops hunkered down and took the beating. Francis Scott Key (Franky K to friends) happened to be in the harbor at the time (negotiating the release of an American from the Brits). Frank was opposed to the war but, ever a team player, supported American efforts as best he could. When the bombardment stopped and the Brits raised anchor, Frank was elated to the see Fort McHenry’s tattered flag still aflutter as the smoke cleared at dawn. You know the rest.

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