Ken’s Ramblings – Page 6 – Palm Beach Bike Tours

August 9, 2009August 9, 2009

Santa Fe’s Dennis O’Leary: Who Was He?

Wife Lila and I visited the Santa Fe (NM) National Cemetery in June to find the graves of her father and her uncle. I’ll get around to posting that story some other time.

Virtual friend John Gorentz, AKA Spokesrider, combines cycling and historical research. He recently posted about searching for the tombstone of a farmer who knew enough of a local Indian dialect to intervene in a dispute over apple trees in the 1800s.

Indian Graves at Santa Fe National Cemetery

That got me thinking about some photos I took of some tombstones at the Santa Fe National Cemetery. Some of them didn’t have names; some just said “Civilian” or “Navajo” or “Scout.”

This one had a name – Mrs. Butt – and the qualifier, “Apache Woman.”

I did some quick searches and found that a lot of graves had been relocated to the national cemetery from far-flung forts over the years because of neglect and vandalism.

I don’t know if that’s where these came from.

Who was Dennis O’Leary?

While looking for those pictures, I was drawn to some shots of a statue that was near the Indian graves.

It was a very detailed sandstone carving of a young soldier leaning against a log. It is the only statue in the whole cemetery.

Inscribed on the stone

His name: Dennis O’Leary
His rank and unit: Private, Company I, 23rd Infantry
His date of death: April 1, 1901
His age at death: 23 years, 9 (?) months

Eyes staring into nothing for 107 years

When I took the picture, I was haunted by the idea that this very lifelike stone soldier had been staring with lifeless eyes for 107 years.

I wasn’t sure what conflict he was engaged in when he died, but I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to find out. It turns out that there are more questions than answers about Pvt. O’Leary.

Was O’Leary a suicide or a TB victim?

Charles Hillinger of The LA Times wrote a very good piece on the tombstone in 1985.

Legend has it he was an unhappy soldier stationed at the remote outpost. He is supposed to have carved the statue in his free time out of sandstone in the mountains not too far from the fort, even engraving the date of his death on the tombstone.

According to the story, he wrote a suicide note describing his carving and its location and asked it be placed over his grave. Then he reportedly shot himself.

Military records, however, show a Pvt. Dennis O’Leary died of tuberculosis at Ft. Wingate on April 1, 1901.

Yet, the legend has persisted ever since the remains of O’Leary and the statue were moved from Ft. Wingate to the Santa Fe National Cemetery in 1911, when the fort was disbanded and all its graves moved here.

If anyone knows the REAL story behind Pvt. O’Leary, the folks at the national cemetery would like to hear it. Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t ask them about the statue.

Bike Content: because we had a lot of ground to cover, I didn’t bring my bike. Santa Fe, with lots of congestion, had lots of cyclists on the streets. They could make as good or better time than the gridlocked cars. Santa Fe was the first place I had ever seen Sharrows in the wild. They seemed to work well.

Interestingly enough, the cemetery has a signboard of prohibitions, which includes “No Sports Activities in Cemetery,” with pictographs of a runner and a bicycle with the “prohibited” slash through them. If you’re using the bike as transportation, not as a “sports activity,” I wonder if they’d bust you?

Approximate grave site

August 6, 2009August 6, 2009

The Fat Cyclist: Some Days It’s Really NOT about the Bike

One of my daily routines is to read about a dozen bike blogs to catch the buzz.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the sites mentioned The Fat Cyclist, written by a guy who is no longer fat because of his cycling.

In its early days, it was much like any other bike blog: heavy on bike porn, ride reports, funny stories.

Then it – and The Fat Cyclist’s life changed.

A thumbnail sketch of Fat Cyclist in his own words

Besides being a middle-aged guy who loves cycling, I’m also the father of four kids (2 boys, identical twin girls), and the husband of a woman — Susan — who is fighting metastatic breast cancer.

So while I still write lots of the jokey stuff I always have, I’m now more inclined to write the occasional serious post, keeping my family and friends (including the hundreds of friends I’ve made on this blog, but have never met in person) up to date with how that battle is going.

Never flinched

Fat Cyclist wrote an unflinching account of his wife’s heroic struggle with cancer and the toll it took on him and his family. He did it with grace and style that made your spirit soar on her good days and to make you feel her pain (and his) on the bad days.

Susan died last night

I would have added my condolences to his posting this morning, but 1,258 folks in the blogging community had beaten me to it. If you have trouble getting the site to load, keep trying. The server must be getting hammered this morning as the word gets out.

Lance Armstrong was right

Lance had it right. Some days it’s really NOT about the bike.

July 28, 2009July 28, 2009

Invasion of the Land Crabs

Friend Mathilde and I decided it would be a nice evening for a night ride on Palm Beach’s Lake Trail. We hadn’t ridden together since the LOST Full Moon ride where she did the Frog Dance two months ago.

The temps were nice after being at the broiling level during the day, traffic was non-existent and the winds weren’t all that bad. A perfect combination.

What’s that?!?

On our way back from the Palm Beach Inlet (the cops were putting the park to sleep just as we pulled up), I saw something in the middle of the trail. MP blew right on past, but I stopped to check it out.

“Is it a frog?” MP called back hopefully.

I could tell she was warming up for another Frog Dance.

I checked it out; It checked ME out

Sorry, MP, it wasn’t a frog.

It was one of our many land crabs. They, like many other organisms in Florida, reach peak reproduction activity during the full moon in the summer.

MP remained unmoved by him (her?)

I guess she only identifies with frogs (she IS of French heritage, even though she claims she didn’t watch a single minute of the Tour de France this year).

I can remember seeing carpets of living and dead crabs on A1A along the ocean in years gone past. There was no way you could avoid them. I don’t know whether development, traffic or hungry crab lovers have taken their toll but it seems there aren’t as many of the crabs around as in the old days.

Like something out of a horror movie

Hurricane Frances peeled back the roof on The Palm Beach Post’s bureau office in Pt. St. Lucie in 2004. Terry Williams, one of my telecom techs was dispatched to see if the phone system was salvageable.

He got to the office just before dark and picked his way through debris and watersoaked ceiling tiles by the glow of his flashlight.

He had just reached the spooky bowels of the building when he heard something moving.

“Scurry, scurry, scurry, scratch, scratch, scratch.”

He’d take another step, stop and listen and the sounds would start again.

“It was just like in the horror movies where you’re sitting at the edge of your seat screaming, ‘Don’t go in there. Don’t open that door.'”

Suddenly his flashlight beam picked up eyes

It was a HUGE crab. And it was waving his claws menacingly at him.

Terry knew that land crabs are naturally shy and pose no threat to humans unless caught and handled.

Terry just wasn’t sure that the CRAB knew that, particularly since this crab had lots of buddies taking over the office with him.

Telecom Techs are made of strong stuff. Ignoring visions of being picked clean and leaving nothing behind but bones and his toolbelt, he made it to the phone room where he determined that the only place in the whole area that the ceiling HADN’T come down was right over our equipment.

He opted to return in the daylight to salvage it. I couldn’t blame him.

[Note: Terry shot the two pictures at the bottom of the page.]

June 22, 2009June 24, 2009

44 Years Since Baby, the Rain Must Fall

A real stinker of a movie – Baby, the Rain Must Fall – was released in January 1965. I’ve attached an Amazon link but, trust me, you do NOT want to watch it. I’ve tried three times and never made it all the way through.

What’s special about Baby, the Rain Must Fall?

My high school buddy, Jim Stone, and I were cruising around town, ending up at the Rialto Theater to catch the new movie, Baby, the Rain Must Fall.

The Rialto was owned by his girlfriend’s mother, so we could get into the movies for free, watch them from the projection booth and – Jim’s favorite – pop popcorn in one of those old-fashioned theater poppers.

This night, though, something unusual caught our eye.

There was a new cashier and she was a real cutie.

Jim’s level of fidelity to his girlfriend was just about as high the fidelity of my car’s AM radio speakers, so we flipped a coin to see who would get shot down first.

I’ve won only two gambles in my life

My birthday came in #258 in the 1969 Draft Lottery, which made it virtually certain that Uncle Sam wasn’t going to give me an all-expense-paid trip to Southeast Asia.

Jim lost the flip, and I got to give the new cashier a ride home.

Lila Perry was a keeper

Any girl who will keep seeing you even after you show up up unexpectedly and take a picture of her painting the house in curlers is a gal you’d better hang on to.

Not only did I like Lila, but I felt comfortable with her brother, John (see yesterday) and sister, Marty.

I didn’t even hold it against her that she didn’t vote for me in the Student Body Presidential election.

Our dates were unusual

I was working for The Jackson Pioneer, which was in our high school rival’s town, so she attended lots of events where she didn’t know a soul. On top of that, she’d be sitting in the stands while I was shooting on the field.

We seldom got to see the end of a sporting event because I had to go home to process my film. It wasn’t unusual that she’d end up stranded in the car listening to police calls while I was out taking pictures of whatever fire, flood or famine we’d stumbled onto that night.

I transferred to Ohio University

My buddy Jim convinced me that I had to get away from Cape or be stuck there for the rest of my life. I’m not knocking Cape. It’s a place I return to to recharge my spiritual batteries, but I’m glad he talked me into transferring to Ohio University in Athens, OH, my junior year of college.

Letters, audio tapes and phone calls weren’t enough.

After the first year, Lila followed me to Athens, moved into a house for International Students and took a job with the county health department so we could be closer together.

One day, Bob Rogers, chief photographer for The Athens Messenger, where I was working, asked when we were going to set a date. I said, “Pick one for us.”

He said, “June 27, 1969.”

For one reason or another, the 27th didn’t work, so we compromised on June 23. Because of the confusion, I can’t remember our anniversary date to save my life. I’m hard-wired to remember June 27.

I said I’d never get engaged in December

At different times, I was sentenced to serve as Society Editor during my stint at The Southeast Missourian. I swore that I would never get engaged in December nor married in June because of the glut of those events in those months.

As it turned out, I did both

Lila, by the way, is the beautiful girl in the middle with the long, white dress. I’m the one to her right who looks petrified.

We hit the 40 year mark today

The only reason that Lila hasn’t been nominated for sainthood is that Mother Teresa had a better press agent.

The night she planned her first big dinner party, most of the guests and I were locked in the university library covering a sit-in.
When we were in the middle of remodeling our kitchen, I took off one day short of a month to cover the Cuban Boatlift. Kid Two was about two months away and she was washing dishes in the bathtub.
Kid One’s due date was give or take about 15 minutes from when I was due back from doing a story about a cheerleader academy in Leesburg. Matt’s birth was announced to the world over the company’s two-way radio system.
I’d list more, but I think I’m better off if she is isn’t reminded about some of the incidents.

We’ve got a great family

Along the way, we’ve had two great kids who have married the greatest daughters-in-law in the world. They’ve somehow or another managed to find wives who have been as understanding about their flaws and foibles as Lila has been of mine.

(Although, from all appearances, they seem to score a little higher on the husband desirability chart than I do. It must be their mother’s influence.)

I’m one lucky guy

P.S. Baby, the Rain Must Fall is still a lousy movie.

June 21, 2009

John & Wyatt’s Father’s Day Fishing Trip

My brother-in-law, John Perry, is one of those guys I really admire.

If the world ever goes to hell in a handbasket, John and the cockroaches are going to be the last ones standing. There’s nothing he can’t build and hardly anything he can’t fix.

John can fix anything

We save up all of the stuff we either don’t know how to do, don’t want to do or would panic trying to do and beg John to leave Jackson, MO, to bail us out.

Nothing fazes him

When he came down to remodel our kitchen, he wasn’t all at bothered when he came eye-t0-eye to a family of possums living under the kitchen sink.

Note: no possums were injured in the remodeling project. I think John’s shorts may have needed another pass through the washer, though.

Wyatt came with him

His son, Wyatt, came with him this time. Foodie Jan Norris set them up with a neighbor for a father’s day fishing trip on the Coconut Rum II because they spent most of the week remodeling her bathroom.

Father’s Day Fishing Trip

Lots of fish going back home

John and Wyatt had a great day on the water. They caught (and released) a whole slug of fish and they brought back plenty to pack in dry ice and ship back home to Jackson.