Spring

Today, Saturday, December 20th 2008, I find myself in my same old, comfortable cubicle, at the Wichita airport waiting for air traffic to clear over O’Hare. Tomorrow is the first day of winter, but winter has already hit this area early and hard. This year is less comfortable for other reasons besides the weather though. Each year comes with it a unique authentic stamp and this year’s stamp is engraved in bold red economic ink.

Yesterday, when I entered the Kansas plant for our year end inventory the production expanse loomed large and bare. There was the feeling that an invisible elephant was living in the wide open expanse of concrete that lay there naked as large as a football field. This is the first time that concrete floor has seen the light of day since the plant reopened in 1993 after it had been idled for (3) years due to lack of orders.

After walking the empty production line I entered the break room where the factory workers had assembled for their annual inventory instructions. There was a thick cloud of smoke hanging in the air. I’d thought that break areas were smoke free but obviously not this one. I found a corner where the smoke was particularly thick and sat down to take a few deep breaths, sucking in the second hand smoke, hoping that I could get some of the same benefits that the other employees were getting from it. Presently the production manager opened the meeting. He announced that the plant had just received orders for 20 homes and that they would be opening up for production after Christmas shut-down on January 5th. Here, in the bread basket of America, the economy is more based on a booming farm industry than on the RV industry like Elkhart, Indiana. The production manager further announced that corporate had cancelled plans to gift the usual Christmas Turkey for this year due to budget cuts. A cheer went up among the line workers when the manager went on to say that the foremen and sales force had taken up a collection of over a $1,000 to buy Christmas turkeys. Everyone, at the Kansas plant, would leave for Christmas break with a turkey under their arm.

I watched the workers during inventory and was impressed by their desire for teamwork. I’d seldom seen so many people so interested in working together. It couldn’t be only for the pay check. I think it probably has more to do with the attitudes of the people riding the desks of purchasing manager, production manager, sales manager, and general manager. That community spirit of, we are in this together, seemed to make its way from the foreman’s meeting and eventually onto the plant floor. I’d brought with me, from Indiana, six (6) watches in order to reward the recipients for 10 years, a small token of appreciation for their years of toil on the line. The General Manager was out into the plant to find his workers moments after he’d opened the box in order to give out the watches. He’d told me that several employees had asked about the watches and were waiting for them. They could continue to wait for their recognition and letter of appreciation but they did not have to wait any longer for their watches. I wished my life could be so simple. Tomorrow morning, Sunday morning, I imagined that I ‘d find it a whole lot easier to get up and bring in breakfast to our corporate payroll department as they labored to prepare paychecks for workers in Kansas; so that workers could receive their pay checks before Christmas.

The loud speaker jolted me back to reality as they announced the flight leaving for Las Vegas. Delays are always blamed on the weather and this delay is no exception. The weather in the winter is so much less conducive to life that it makes all the sense in the world to blame anything bad on it. I sat in my stall for a moment to dream of the changes the spring will bring. Actually, the Hutchinson Kansas economy has made a living off the winter roads and runways in Chicago since the 1930s. I’d spent this morning touring the salt mines of Hutchinson since I knew there was no rush to get to the airport. They have a tourist elevator that took me down the 650 foot below the Earth’s surface to the level where that salt mines are located. There the tour guide explained how the salt deposits had developed in one of the more recent eras in the Earth’s history some 225 to 275 millions of years ago. The mine has 67 miles of 50’ wide mined out caverns supported by 40’ square collums. The mine employs 4 miners and an 8 man maintenance crew on each shift. The mine has recently gone to two shifts because the price of salt has recently doubled. I did hear that they have stopped using salt on our roads recently but I didn’t know that it was due to price. The tour guide said that there is enough salt below Kansas to last for a million years at our current rate of use. The temperature in the mine was a constant 68 degrees with no humidity because the salt immediately sucks the humidity out of the air that is pumped in from the Earth's surface. As a result, Disney stores all of its old movies in the mine. Two truck loads of movies are shipped in each week from various parts of California. Almost every country in the world stores its old records in the mine. Maybe the tour guide was getting a little carried away, but this is Kansas. There is little chance of terrorists finding the secrets of imperialist countries if they keep them 650 below ground in a secluded salt mine. It was 21 degrees on top and 68 degrees at 650 feet. I wonder what the temperature is at 1000 feet down. Maybe winter isn’t so bad after all.

I sat in my airport cubicle continuing to dream of the changes that will come with spring. I always try to act like spring is here long before it gets here. Tomorrow, being the shortest day of the year, and the first day of winter, means that the rest of the world has a full three months to wait for spring. As you will soon discover I am not required to wait that long for spring. God and I have a little deal bargained out. Depending on the conditions on the surface of the Earth I am allowed to try to push the arrival of spring up 30, maybe even 40 days, if I am lucky. I remembered trying to bring spring in early about 5 years back.

It was a Sunday morning again, back when I first started sporadically skipping church. This was a brilliant but cold Sunday morning. The sun was bright though with the promises of spring. The day was March 9, 2003 and the ice was coming off the lake; I could not hold myself back. I headed off from the house about the time the rest of my family headed for church thinking that this was the day I would put my 26’ dock out into the lake.

This time of year there are no people at the lake. As I drove toward the lake I anticipated plenty of activity even in the absence of humans. The Canadian geese would be mating. And they really do make a spectacle of it, honking and snorting, dive bombing, and landing on the lake seemingly unaware of my presence. Now, since that time most of the geese are gone. I was present at the lake association meeting where 300 Canadian Geese got their sentence to be euthanized merely for shitting on too many neatly manicured lawns. The vote was nearly 100% in favor of rounding them up and killing them; I sure hope that my fate is never at the hands of the lake association as I’ve done much worse than any goose.

As I arrived at the lake I immediately went into the garage and donned my waders. The lake was far too cold at this early stage to enter the water unprotected. As I rounded the garage and headed toward the lake I immediately became aware that everything was alive with music. It was loud music that sounded like a pipe organ and then more like wind chimes on a windy day. Yet there was no wind this early in the day. I looked around angrily for the rock band or stereo system that had invaded my privacy. This was my day. Everyone else was supposed to be in church. But I could find no culprit to blame. Is this God? Is this in my head? The music was actually very nice when I stopped for a moment to listen to it. And so I just relaxed and let it go on in my head and continued toward the lake.

The last of the ice flow left on the lake had parked itself on the north shore extending 20’ and in some places 30’ into the lake; leaving the open water available for the mating antics of the geese. I stepped into the lake knowing that the ice would part to my touch been softened and made pliable by the warm spring sun. The ice did part for my boot but it was not soft or very pliable. I watched in amazement as I found the source of the music. The ice was uniformly divided into millions, even billions, of cylinders the diameter of a good sized tooth pick, each about 6 inches long. The cyllindars reminded me of the pick-up sticks I'd played with as a child. Since there was no wind the pick-up sticks stayed in tight formation all around the lake. There was just enough water movement to send up a roar of chimes as the little sticks of ice jostled easily together with the rhythm of the water. I gaped in amazement and reached down for a handful of the shining glistening chimes. One slipped from my grasp and I lunged for it hoping to save it from shattering on the ice. It did shatter into little pieces spreading and causing another level of harmony among the chimes. I realized I did have thousands, millions, even billions more chimes left and so I let all the cylinders slip through my fingers crashing like symbols to the ice below. Then I stepped greedily into the lake gathering handfuls of the little music makers flinging them up and into the air. I stood there for a full five minutes flailing about like a crazed director of a symphony totally lost in the magic of his creation. Then I became a rock star flinging the ice into the air watching it crash and explode into deafening prisms of bright lights as the crowds cheered.

Presently exhausted and wet from the experience I headed toward the pile of dock sections that had wintered in a stack along the shore line. There were three sections that had to be erected. The first section was 10’ long and 6 feet wide. The other two sections were only 8’ long. The three sections would afford a 26’ walkway onto the lake that little kids could fish from all summer long.

I pushed some of the ice out of the way and onto the lake and proceeded to screw the aluminum support posts into the soft sandy lake bottom. The first two sections of the dock went together quite easily in the space of an hour. From time to time I would sit on the newly constructed dock, the geese flying overhead and even splashing into the water close by, and dream of the summer’s activities that this very dock would participate in. Presently I man-handled the third dock section into a position on the outer edge of the second dock section. Then I proceeded out further into the lake to place the final aluminum supports. As I got to the spot where the supports posts could be lowered into the water, cold lake water began pouring over the top of my waders. The early spring rains had made the lake higher than normal and I just could not quite get out far enough, to the right spot, to lower the support posts.

Not to be put off by Mother Nature, I became more determined to succeed with my task. I went into the cottage and shed my waders. Took off my wet clothes and then dressed in layers so that I could continue to work in the cold. I put on an especially heavy coat in order to keep the chill out. Then I went to the garage and pulled out the bright green canoe that a friend had loaned to me. I loaded the 12’ aluminum dock posts into the canoe along with all my other dock erection tools. I even stowed a trusty, two ton, come-along into the canoe just in case the dock need a little persuasion before fitting together.

With everything that I needed to complete the task I paddled through the ice flow and into position to lower the dock support posts. The work proceeded much more slowly as I had to work, while doing a balancing act, in the canoe. But I knew the work was worth every bit of it. The spring and the lake were just too glorious to be without a dock for three or even two more weeks. Finally the hardest, most awkward task, of floating that last 8’ section out onto its supports was complete. I floated the canoe into position on all four corners of the dock and used my wrenches to tighten the bolts that hold the dock in place for the summer.

As the job was complete I felt a strong glow of pride at having been a complete master of all the natural elements at hand. A surprisingly strong wind had come up while I was working and so I let the canoe drift out onto the lake a bit so that I could gaze proudly upon my handy work. The treated lumber of the dock had aged nicely to just the right tone of gray. The six (6) foot wide dock was cumbersome and very hard to handle but it was beautiful now that it was set in its place. Soon we would easily fit two lawn chairs side by side to enjoy the sunset on a summer’s evening.

Suddenly I noticed that I’d drifted way too far out into the lake. I found the paddle on the floor of the canoe among the various hammers, wrenches, and other tools. With a firm grasp of the paddle I drove it deep into the lake pulling the front end of the canoe around and into the wind. My weight was already shifted to one side and way to the back end of the canoe, The heavy pile of tools came rolling back toward my position in the canoe, the come-along and all. As the canoe turned, the wind caught the bow of the boat and lifted it ever so slightly. The tools shifted again ever so slightly. The shift was enough, just enough that I slipped out of the canoe and over its side, and into the freezing water. The canoe did not capsize. I breathed a sigh of relief as the canoe settled back into the water with all my expensive tools safe in its bottom. I grasped the side of the canoe as the wind continued to push it farther out into the lake. I hurriedly searched the shoreline for another human soul but there was none. Then I noticed something else. My heavy coat and layers and layers of sweaters and shirts could not keep the freezing water out. I began to panic as I felt the water weigh my clothes down and my breath began to come gasps as I became too cold to breath.

And I was rapidly drifting out into the middle of the lake. I looked to the other shore where we appeared to be headed which now seemed miles away. If I hung onto the side of the canoe much longer I knew I’d end up as one of the tinkling chimes along the shoreline. I made a decision. I would swim to shore. Without much of a thought I pushed off the canoe with as much force as I could pushing into the wind and toward my shore line. After several strokes I began to panic again when I realized that I making almost no progress toward shore. “What a way for it to end,” I thought, as my life passed before me. “And on a Sunday morning," I mused, "God must be punishing me.” I did not think to pray. I just let my self sink, thinking, “I must shed this heavy coat and layers so that I can swim.” I sank further, grasping at my tennis shoes, but they were tied on tight.

And then I made a second decision. “I will swim to shore with all these clothes on my back.” And I did. I could hardly breathe because it was just too cold. I put my head down into the water and doggedly stroked and stoked heavy clothes and all. As my feet finally touched the sandy bottom of the lake my breath came back. It came in huge croaking gasps that echoed back and forth across the lake. The gasps were so hoarse and loud that I was sure alarms would be set off in Wolcottville. Fire trucks and an ambulance would arrive shortly for my rescue.

But not a person noticed as I dragged my frozen body over the glacial stone seawall and onto the shore. I scrambled across the yard shedding my coat and layers as I went. I thought of only one thing. Warmth. I was completely naked as I fell onto the couch inside the cottage, my chest still heaving and the air still making a loud wheezing sound as it entered and exited my chest. After 5 minutes of lying on the couch I was able to get up and turn the heat up in the cottage. It was at least an hour before I was able to drive my truck around the lake in my truck in search of the canoe.

Finnally that announcement for the O’hare flight came. A slot had been reserved an icy runway in Chicago for our plane. I hastily posted my blog and grabbed up my bags. Knowing quite well that spring can not come soon enough. I’m quite sure I will usher in spring before its time again this year. It just has to be done by someone. It just takes too long to get here by itself.