Working in the dark

In the fall of 2006, I was covering a high school football in southwest North Carolina; actually, I was trying to cover the game. They turned the lights off in the pressbox, and I couldn't see to write my notes. And since my computer didn't have a backlit screen, I couldn't write on the computer, either.

To make matters worse, they had about 20 people in a pressbox meant for 15 people, and it was impossible to work. So at halftime, I went into the stands. I figured I'd have room to work, and I'd have enough light to write. I could write on my notebook, true, but the batteries didn't work in the computer.

After the game, I called to the paper and gave them the score and stats. I told them I'd write on the bus back.

The problem was that I couldn't plug the computer into an outlet on the bus, and the bus driver wouldn't turn the lights on so I could write. So, desperate, I asked the coach if we could switch places. "Rudy" was playing on the monitors around the bus, and in the flickering lights of the football movie I wrote the game by long hand on a yellow notepad. About 15 minutes before deadline, I called the paper and read the story to an editor.

Whew!

Oh, there's a postscript to this story. The next week, my wife bought me a small light with a head piece, so I could type and write when the game was blacked out. Naturally, the next pressbox didn't have lights, either, but my little Borg light worked perfectly. After the game, I did my interviews and went back to the pressbox to finish writing. The pressbox folk locked me in and left; I finished, sent my story via email, locked the pressbox, walked to my car and drove home.

Piece of cake.

Refracted lighten your day

Twice, I've had unusual encounters with rainbows.

When I was a young man, I was walking a ridge in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and I saw a rainbow ending against the side of a mountain! I walked across the ridge and moved under the rainbow, but I couldn't see any colors but sky blue when I got there. No pot of gold, just a pleasant tree-covered area with little undergrowth. I sat and enjoyed the moment; then, I got up and continued walking, and the rainbow appeared again.

Years later, I was living in South Carolina and visiting Clemson University. There was a concrete-sided pond in front of the library, and sprinkler jets were firing mists all around the lake. THERE WAS A TINY RAINBOW ABOVE EACH JET OF WATER! I had already checked out something from the library, and I was sitting on the side of the hill enjoying the day. Within minutes, that hill was covered with people looking at the tiny rainbows.

Boy, I wish I had had a camera with me.

Uneasy lovin'

I always wanted a dog, but it never worked out. My dad got me one as a boy, but it died three days later from heartworms. I didn't name it and never petted it.

When I was about to turn 50, my wife and I got a pretty dog from the animal shelter that we renamed Lady, and I thought I was set. I'd get unconditional love, all the licks on the face I could stand, a constant companion. We'd walk in the park; she'd come runnin' when I'd call "Lady, come!"

Instead, I got a little hardhead who only seemed to come around when (a) she was hungry or (b) she wanted to go outside. I'm not talking about going outside to answer nature's call; she just wanted to be closer to nature and farther from me.

Three times in 10 days, she got out of the yard. The first time, I drove out, she saw me, I stopped and opened the door, and she jumped into my lap. The next time, the next day, I had to herd her down a driveway, and she jumped into my wife's van. A hot dog was the lure. The third time, she gave us a merry chase. In fact, I couldn't find her, and I gave up, with the hope that she'd go home. I felt like I was being stalked, so I looked in the rearview mirror and saw Lady racing up the road behind my car.

She wouldn't get in, but she finally went home, again to a hot dog in Holly's hand.

When we got a second dog, a collie named Katie, I started getting more loving. Once Katie came out of her shell -- she was shell-shocked for about two weeks -- she'd sit beside me at the computer. Lady would be in the basement or outside most of the time.

Slowly, though, Lady's behavior changed. She wasn't quite as finicky about her food. Katie would eat just about anything, and Lady would look on with envy, then go back and eat a few more morsels of her Kibble. Sometimes they'd switch bowls, to see how the other half was eating.

Katie's presence has meant more attention. Once Katie started lying beside me, Lady would come around for companionship. She's spent less time in the yard, probably because she had a canine companion.

The whole dynamic changed again when we got our third dog, Buddy. Lady acts as his surrogate mother, and they play constantly.

But occasionally, I get Lady's companionship and full attention ... during a lightning storm. Before Katie, Lady would go to the basement and huddle alone in the corner during storms. No more.

As I write this, the lightning's sparking overhead, and hail is hammering the house. Katie's in her cage, and Buddy's out in the hallway. Lady's in the safest spot in the house, under my desk. Her nose is between my size 14s, in easy petting distance. Sometimes, I have been at the computer during lightning storms, and Lady was in the unsafest place in the house: in the nook between the desk beside me and the file cabinet. It filled her need to be tucked in a den in her pack, but there are plenty of electric wires to fry a 40-pound North Carolina chow hound.

But Lady feels safe here.

If I could figure out a way to simulate the rain (tape recording?), the lightning (strobe), and the thunder boomers (Dolby Surround Sound), I'd never be alone again. Lady'd be right here, huddling between my feet or up against my leg.

Safe and snug and loved.