wellswriting

My Father Loved The Lakes May 8, 2012

My father loved the lakes. They were his go-to place to get away with his family.  He loved fishing, but it wasn’t the sport of fishing he loved. He didn’t have a tackle box the size of a suitcase and he never had a fancy rod and reel.  His style of fishing was a reflection of his personality, straightforward and uncomplicated. Put a worm on a hook and catch a fish. For Delbert Wells, fishing was an excuse to spend time with his friends and family.

Through the 70’s and 80’s, every major 3-day holiday was a time to go to our home away from home, Santa Margarita Lake.  The number one activity at the lake was as you can guess, fishing. Dad would “get up at the crack of dawn,” which often wasn’t as close to sunrise as it sounds, but it was the coolest time of the day.  He’d take whichever of his kids he could wake up then and we’d go out on a boat with his best friends Dick and Roy (oh, the stories to be told from these two).  We’d go out on the lake when the water surface was smooth as glass, and we’d start fishing their favorite coves, working our way further and further back to where only boats could go.

Dad, Dick and Roy would spend the morning telling their stories that I never got tired of hearing, even if I didn’t always fully understand them.  It was more about the way those three interacted that was the entertaining part.  Roy was the comedian, Dick was the grumpy old man and my dad was the straight man with the deadpan delivery. Occasionally there was the excitement and interruption of bringing a fish on board, but mostly it was about the time together alone on the lake.  Dad was always there and ready to help us kids take care of our bait and help us land the bluegill and catfish. He wasn’t the one telling the most stories, and for those of you who knew him, that is saying something. But he was inseparable from those mornings.

Starting with the marina at the front of the lake, there are 13 floating boat docks tethered to the shore where the bathrooms for the anglers are.  Most of the docks are around the wider main body of the lake, but the last one is located way back in a long finger we called the narrows. It was the landmark that signified the unofficial end of the morning fishing trip.  The old timers to the lake called it Pier 13, where dad and the rest of us went to unload the morning’s coffee and other beverages before heading back off the lake ahead of the afternoon heat.

On our way to pier 13

This weekend we went back to Pier 13.  As in the years past we had one large boat like the one Roy owned and we had a rented aluminum outboard boat like the ones dad and Dick would have shared in renting.  As you see from the pictures, there was a large group there, including dad in an unassuming container. We toasted our goodbyes to dad where some of our fondest memories of him will always be.  He will forever be inseparable from that place and our final tribute means he will be there at Pier 13 in body and spirit forever.

Arriving as a group at Pier 13, Margarita Lake CA.

I’m on the right. This is just after we tosted goodbye.

People Everywhere! April 4, 2012

It started with a simple idea.  My son was taken by the images of the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate park after watching an episode of California’s Gold on PBS. We live just a few hours away so we decided to go on an overnight trip there for the start of the kid’s spring break.  For some reason this trip seemed different than trips to SF in the past.  I’ve been there many times so I expected a culture shock, but not in the way I experienced it this past weekend.

The crowds were shockingly dense. Disneyland park dense.  Rock concert dense. Standing in line at the DMV dense.  Maybe spring break had something to do with it, but wow this was not the thing I was hoping to experience.  The picture here was taken at 9 am in the Tea Garden on Monday. Within one hour of taking this picture the place was filling up fast and the Zen of the place was gone.

We drove down to Fisherman’s Warf, but we never stopped. Too crazy.  We drove up into China Town and got out there where the crowds actually worked in our favor providing cover from the shopkeepers trying to pull you in to see their cheap imported wares. It was fun to see the kid’s reactions to the explosion of sights, sounds and people.  The reprieve was in the Exploratorium and the CA Academy of Sciences where admission charges naturally regulated the masses.

I know there are people who thrive on the crowds, but not me.  I was glad to come home to my rural life.  I absorbed experiences that will probably find their way into my writings and my kids got to experience the sights of the city.

Day Life Milestones Reached March 19, 2012

I have been on some crazy deadline roller coasters with my day job lately.  I am happy to report that I can see the surface as I have risen from the dark depths of 14 hour work days and weekends with nearly zero downtime.  One of my projects has been cleared to bid and another is finally ready to go sit in the bin at the Division of the State Architect. The latter is a school project that I have loved working on but look forward to letting it set until its fresh.  In the mean time, I plan to give my wife and children some of the attention they’ve missed and I hope to wrap up my next WOTF submission (yes in that order).  Unfortunately, success in passing deadlines inevitably leads to more deadlines.  Recent staff changes means that I finally inherit another project that has lingered miserably for the past year under others.  I hope that my drafting team which is starting to hit a production rhythm can help put the trouble child project back in line efficiently and without taking too much of my off-hours time away.

Writing wise, I hope to start finding some imagination time again.  I have a novel nearly finished, two very good short stories to complete and I have fallen behind submitting other stories to the markets.  But first, I must start simple.  Flash cards for my son.

Albert Einstein Must Have Had Had A Lot Of Deadlines February 28, 2012

Albert Einstein must have had a lot of deadlines for his work at the patent office in his early days of formulating the Theories of Relativity.   The other physicists of his age were working at cushy university jobs and I don’t imagine them being saddled with deadlines and the pressures of watching a calendar date approach as fast as a minute hand seems to move on a clock.  But if Einstein was under the gun for deadlines, he would have realized that time does speed up in proportion to the weight of a deadline.

I say this because my own deadline driven career has been operating at near light speed lately.  I’ve seen dates put on a calendar months ago morph from “achievable at a leisurely pace” to “oh my god”.  As the deadlines have drawn nearer, it’s as if all of the clocks have sped up.  What used to be a twenty-four hour day somehow became twenty-hours then fifteen, and despite increased effort, it seems that the more work I do, the slower the progress seems to get in comparison to the deadline.

That’s when I realized the image of the clock.  You can stare at a clock and not really see the minute hand move, but it does and after 60 seconds of staring, it’s moved without you realizing it.  The days in the calendar are working against me like this.  Two weeks ago I thought two weeks was going to be more than enough time for something that I thought would take a week, but time operating like it does for me right now, it turns out I needed a month.

Man that Einstein was a genius.