What makes family members close? What are the forces that push them apart? My cousin Paul’s daughter, Katherine Thompson-Thompson recently inquired of him about the relationship with the four boys in the family. Why were we close especially in our younger years? I am the oldest and Scott , my brother is next in line. Bruce is my oldest cousin and Paul is the youngest of my cousins is turning 50 on Easter Sunday. Kim, my sister came into the picture just before we left New York City in 1972.

From my perspective we have a small family, my father had one sister Anne and my mother was an only child. I suppose it starts with that the size of the family. While Bruce and Paul had a few other cousins from Uncle Winston’s side they were our only cousins. Our families never lived close to each other. Scott and I lived in with our parents Murray and Nancy in New York City and then in Seattle. Anne and Winston lived in Toronto. Bruce remains in the Toronto suburbs and Paul lives outside of Chicago. The last time all five cousins were together was at my Father’s memorial service in 2013.

So Katherine, since you asked…..

Our parents were great friends, well as good friends as you can be living a 10 hour drive away and ultimately with most of the North American continent between them. Anne and my mother kept in touch by writing letters. Phoning Toronto from New York was typically limited to a few hours on Sunday when the long distance rates were at their lowest. They were the ones who kept in touch. Had it been up to Winston and Dad I doubt the families would have been as close as they would have been. Anne and Mom were sisters of different mothers. I remember my Mom hoping Anne and Winston would eventually move to Vancouver, BC but Anne would never leave the older folks that depended on her for day to day care.

Our parents also vacationed together and had fun together. This fun included, spending rainy days in a leaky canvas tent, getting food poisoning, car troubles, marathon games of Rook (Google it) and Coleman Stove meals. Even in their later years they took a few vacations together and those are probably some of their best memories.

When Bruce and Paul were young it was a happy day in New York when the mail delivered the latest letter from Anne describing my cousins’ “Antics” and these were killer stories. Scott and I would beg Mom to read these over and over. Bruce helped Anne out with chores around the house by washing the bathroom walls with soiled cloth diapers from the diaper pail. Pots and pans spend more time on the floor of the kitchen than in the cupboards and every wall was a canvas.

Scott and I were very excited when Bruce was born. I still remember looking in on my sleeping infant cousin Bruce in Toronto and trying to wake him up so we could play with him. He was a little brother.

We all enjoyed hockey, we enjoyed competing, we enjoyed getting into trouble together and when we were together we spent time together. We all liked golf and played as much as we could when at Cape Cod. We played golf before Bruce, Paul and Scott were married.

I can’t say now that we are all close. Paul and I are close and can talk about pretty much anything. We are closer than we are to our own siblings. Part of that was because I had a job that brought me to Chicago several times a year and we had the chance to play a few rounds of golf, head out to coffee to catch up and keep the ties close. It wasn’t always that way. When Paul and Mary were just starting out they were plenty busy and other family members were closer

Now Bruce and Lois will be taking an Italian cruise with Kim and Rick. They will create their own bonds.

Being family does not mean you will be close. Why have I kept in touch with just 2 friends from High School when I had so many friends when I graduated? What about my college friends? In the end, we will be close to the people we are close to and some of them might be family and some not.

To me, if our Moms had not been friends then we would not have been close. Everything else that happened just happened. Well memorable vacations happened together. New Hampshire, Maine, Cape Cod, Prince Edward Island and many more. We left our mark everywhere. But I think at least once a week, Anne and Nancy sat down to write a quick letter to each other, I’m sure many crossed in the mail. Down in the Seattle house basement there are boxes of letters. I’m not sure if Anne has saved my Mom’s but if you are interested in a little history you are welcome to take a look when you venture out West.

Paul and I are close because we talk about meaningful stuff, life, love, work, family, kids, parents, our history, our challenges, our victories and our failings. Yes we talk about golf but to us that is meaningful. Paul knows more about me than anyone in the family. It just worked out that way. But it all started with our Moms being like sisters. Had either of them had a sister it probably would have been different. I don’t think it is much more complicated than that.

Thank you for reading!

Beneath countless manicured lawns in America lives the enemy. Rarely seen the mole leaves unmistakeable evidence of its existence in the form of small piles of dirt. Sometimes it is just one or two piles, sometimes more than ten. Left unchecked the mole can transform a yard into a miniature replica of a First World War battlefield.

Ed Granlund took great pride in his lawn. When the first attack occurred he vowed to fight. I’m not sure of his initial strategy but I do know it came to a point where he was losing the battle. Enter The Mole Lady! Three mole carcasses and a couple hundred dollars later Ed was back in control of his lawn. It was impossible for Ed to know that the battle had just begun and this struggle grabbed my interest in two ways. I was intrigued by Ed’s obsession with the pesky creatures and the impact on the appearance of his front yard. Additionally I simply found it amusing that someone would hire The Mole Lady at a great cost. If Ed had hired Orkin it might not have hit my radar but The Mole Lady caught my attention. She gets paid by the kill, a pure business transaction.

After a week went by Ed stopped complaining about the money spent to vanquish his enemy and life in Redmond went back to normal. I was not witness to the moment that all changed so what I am about to tell you is mostly from the account told to me by Sue, Ed’s wife and Ed himself.

It was a beautiful Sunday summer morning. The coffee was brewing in the Granlund household and Ed in his bathrobe stepped out onto his front porch to take in the newspaper. Sue reports a never heard before voice emanate from Ed, a combination of rage and terror. Once she determined the house was not on fire and the world was not coming to an end she discovered the horrible truth. As Ed, from the porch, looked down on his front yard, all he could see was seventy five to one hundred piles of dirt left behind by an army of moles. No part of his lawn was spared and they ran up and down the edges of his driveway all the way over to his garden. It was as if every mole from miles around had come to avenge the death of their fallen comrades.

Inappropriate words came from Ed’s mouth, on a Sunday no less. I can just imagine the thoughts going through his head, looking at his yard all torn apart and the calculation of what it would cost to get rid of the legion of moles. Ed had now entered into the fog of war. Retirement would have to be put off, armed guards hired around the clock and the neighborhood association would issue sanctions on the Granlunds. All that Ed had worked for was gone, gone down the miles of tunnels below his house.

Moles are built for living underground and digging. For the most part they are loners and get together only to mate. Moles can tolerate more carbon dioxide allowing them to live in the confines of their tunnels in a low oxygen environment. They spend their time digging around looking for food, earthworms and bugs. Watering your lawn increases the chance of moles in your yard because water attracts the food moles eat. Vibrations in the soil alert them to danger. The front paws of a mole are built for tunneling with an extra thumb thrown in for good measure. The eyes and ears of a mole are tiny. Looking at them front on all you see are the digging feet and a nose.

Moles do not eat plants but will damage the root enough to kill the plant. They are largely considered to be a pest but according to Wikipedia they are a protected species in Germany. They are an odd creature to be sure.

He is still fuming. Ed’s lawn is a wreck. How does something like this happen? In one moment there is peace and tranquility, in the next, chaos. Life is fragile. One moment your house is an asset the next it is a money pit. Well that’s what friends are for and with friends like Ed’s you don’t need moles. It started as a simple thought and I mentioned to Brian Sargent that it would be funny to put a few piles of dirt on Ed’s lawn just to screw around with him and then have him call The Mole Lady back only to have her find piles of dirt with no tunnels underneath. But we couldn’t stop there.

And so it came to be that late that Saturday night Ed’s two mole friends filled up a metal garbage can with dirt and then proceeded to, with coffee cans, put the little dirt piles all over Ed’s yard. We were sure someone would wake up because we were laughing so hard. And yes I wish I had been there that morning to see Ed’s reaction but to this day I still laugh at the thought of the scene one Sunday morning many years ago. In the interests of Ed’s health we had to fess up to the deed. It was a mole to remember!!!

Thank you for reading!

The moment summer begins the days shorten with every full rotation of the earth, first by seconds then by minutes. I enjoy all seasons yet summer is the one I look forward to the most. Summer is the season I miss the most. Summer is color, warmth, smells and sounds, it is life at its fullest with the sun on my face. Even summer rain has a rich texture. And if my life is to be as long as my Father’s then I have twenty seven summers left to embrace.

Now it is July 21, 2014. Another summer is a third gone. I’d meant to write this before spring’s end but life’s been busy, it always is. I need to slow down, soak in each day and remember summers gone by. I need to make the effort to make the most of each day before the air chills and the thin autumn clouds stretch across the sky.

One winter not long ago I was outside in New England a couple hours past midnight. The sky was dark, the air clear and cold. The stars were bright and it was totally silent. It was the dead of winter. Now the nights are full of sounds, tree frogs and insects, all very busy and the slightest breeze shakes the leaves out of their sleep. The summer nights are alive when most humans sleep and I enjoy that time the most when people noise does not keep me from hearing the sounds of the deep night changing as morning approaches. About an hour before sunrise the birds begin to stir signaling the change from dark to light. When the sun is up my awareness of sound becomes less as the visual takes over.

During my high school years I had a morning paper route for the Seattle Post Intelligencer that I worked before going to my daytime summer job. Had I not been up so early to deliver the news to my neighbors I might never have discovered how excellent this time of the summer day is. Nowadays I might linger in bed but often I’m up with the sun. In Seattle I can easily be playing golf by six.

Before my family moved to Seattle I spent my summers in New England, sometimes at camp in New Hampshire and always on Cape Cod for several weeks with my Grandmother. When Nanny moved to South Yarmouth I slept on a couch in the screened in porch. That was perfection, protected from the mosquitoes and skunks. In the Harwich house I retreated to the basement to escape the summer heat but the porch was much better.

So perhaps I have twenty seven summers left including this one. Nothing is certain this is true. I’ve been fortunate to live in perfect summer places, the Northeast, the Northwest and for a short time the Midwest. I’ve already had fifty six to enjoy with great memories.

Blueberries and strawberries
Ice Cream
Cross country drives
Cookouts
Summer camp
Jones Beach on Long Island
Nauset Beach on Cape Cod
Bike rides
Redwing Blackbirds
Mourning Doves
The Milky Way
Lemonade
Cold Beer
Campfires
Marshmallows
Baseball
Cape Cod
Staying up all night
Reading all day
Drive In Theaters
Wednesday the same as Saturday
Fireflies
Stickball in NYC
Fresh cut grass
The ice cream truck
Fifty four holes of golf
Jumping off bridges into cold water
Fireworks
Hotdogs and cookouts
Football workouts
Crickets
Fishing and catching nothing
Fishing and catching Northern Pike
Canoes and rowboats
Learning to ride a bike
Moonrise over the Atlantic on Cape Cod
Sunsets over the Olympic Mountains
Collecting bottles for the deposit money
Fetching balls out of the sewer
The smell of a charcoal grill and burgers cooking
Hikes up Mt. Washington
The sound of distant thunder
The lighting in a dark sky

Twenty seven summers….. What will my list be when those are done?

Thank you for reading!

Today is the first Sunday of 2014 and it is spectacular!!!!

I hope this year brings you peace!

Thank you for reading,

Doug

Somewhere deep in the National Archives of the United States is a woman’s suit that I first saw on a black and white television set in my parent’s bedroom late November of 1963. I have not thought of it much. But now, fifty years later as we near the anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I found myself caught up in the media’s attention given to what Jackie Kennedy wore the day her husband was shot and killed.

For me, November 22, 1963 pushed me into a new world. Up to that point the television had brought me Saturday morning cartoons, the beginning of the U.S. Space Program, Walter Cronkite and Situation Comedies. It was all pretty good until that day for me. But at some point, while watching the chaotic news coverage, I broke down, cried, put my pajamas on and crawled into bed well before my normal time. There are few details I remember other than that feeling of loss and sadness. I don’t think I stayed in bed long, little boys are restless and resilient and back out I came. All the television had to offer was the news about JFK. School was shut and the whole nation changed.

Caroline Kennedy, seven months my senior, had her sixth birthday five days after her father died and two days after her brother John Jr.’s third birthday. She is the only surviving member of her immediate family today. Gone of course are her dad, Jackie too in 1994 and her brother John went too early in a 1999 plane accident. Few remember a stillborn sister Arabella and Patrick, a brother who lived two short days in August of that same sad year.

She is the rightful owner of the pink Chanel suit Jackie was wearing on the last day of JFK’s life. In 2003 Caroline made a gift to the National Archives of the suit. At the time of the gift it was agreed that nobody from the public would be able to see it for 100 years. I wonder, what will people think when they see the pink suit with the blood stains and will they have a sense for the sadness of that day now fifty years past. I wonder what people will see and feel in 2103, long after I am gone and long after my children are gone. If the United States survives another 90 years what will people think about our loss that happened 140 years earlier? For all of us who were alive on November 22, 1963 that suit took a part of us with it. If it does make it back into the public eye……. will they understand who we were and who we became that day? That pink suit holds in it the sadness of a family and the people of a nation. It holds a little bit of all our stories.

Thank you for reading.

October 12, 2013 – 7:05 PM. The night sky is clear in Seattle as I walk up a hill in the Magnolia part of town. A bright half moon is in the sky. Sunset was 40 minutes earlier and while the sky fell into darkness I could see several airplanes making their way to and from the local airports. Coming out of the Southwest sky I spotted a bright object moving toward the Northeast, bright enough to be Venus but moving like a plane. For many years I have looked for satellites at night as they travel around the earth and this was probably another. Its brightness hinted it might be the International Space Station. Easy to see with the naked eye, sometimes even in daylight, you can see its detail with only a pair of binoculars. Fifteen seconds later my iPhone SkyView app confirmed my hunch and my eyes followed the ISS with 6 people aboard for the remaining minute of visibility.

The Soviet Union launched and successfully put Sputnik into orbit 56 years ago this month, eight months before I was born. For 22 days it broadcast a radio signal until the batteries ran out and continued to orbit Earth until January 4, 1958. What a thrill it must have been to see the first satellite in the night sky as it raced around our planet every 92 minutes.

Since Sputnik about 500 people have been in space. Some went as far as the moon. We are still exploring. Try this one on for size, last Thursday on October 9, 2013 the spacecraft Juno returned to earth two years after its launch in 2011. It had gone to deep space and did not return to earth to come home but to get a gravity assist to continue its journey to Planet Jupiter. It came back to earth because we did not have any rocket engines powerful enough to get Juno to Jupiter directly. What imagination. The Earth gravity assist will increase the speed of Juno by16,330 miles per hour. The mission end in October 2017 after 33 orbits of Jupiter, falling into the planet as planned. It takes a bit of imagination sometimes to accomplish cool things.

As a young person I followed the space program from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo and stayed awake late into the night at a New Hampshire summer camp to see the first television pictures from the moon. 8 months earlier on a clear Christmas Eve night, my family driving from New York City to Toronto, heard the voices of Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders read a passage from Genesis while their capsule orbited the moon. All I could do was to look into the black sky and wonder. I was 10.

Nine years after going to the moon two spacecraft were launched, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They went into space to explore a lot of stuff and they are still tripping out there and Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space (deep space) beyond the influence of our Sun and our Solar System. 36 years later Voyager 1 & 2 still send us data.

We have sent spacecraft to Mars on August 6, 2012 after an 8 month trip Curiosity rover landed on the surface. This 9′ by 9′ (approximately) is roaming around the surface doing a lot of heavy work for us. Oh we’ve been firing stuff at Mars since the 1960’s and while there have been many failures we keep trying and some missions succeed. Satellites have been sent to orbit Mars and make a map for us and learn more about the physical characteristics of the planet. In addition to Curiosity other man made probes have made it to the Martian surface. Pretty cool.

Mercury? Yep, we’ve sent stuff there. Venus? There too. We’ve been a lot of places and perhaps in 40,000 years Voyager 1 will get within 2 Light Years of the star we call Gliese 445.

Ever since the late 1950’s the human race has been sending stuff and people into space. We’ve been very busy. My children are now all in their 20’s. For a large majority of their days since their first breath humans in spacecrafts have been circling the earth and looking down on our little blue planet.

I think about those 6 people now in the International Space Station (Oleg Kotov, Mike Hopkins, Sergey Ryazanskiy, Fyodor, Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg, Luca Parmitano). As I write this they are below the horizon to the Southwest and will not be visible tonight here in Seattle as they travel through space at 17,000 miles per hour. But I know where they are and I think of them. And I think of Galileo. Could he ever have imagined all that I have seen. What a time to be alive!! Perhaps that’s what made me stop and watch the ICC cross the sky, to think of my life, the places humanity has been in space and to show respect for the explorers above me.

I am a child of the Space Age.

Thank you for reading!

Doug

A Story

This story starts in Chicago on August 21, 1884. H. Chandler Egan was born on this day. He did not live to see his 52nd birthday. From what I have read he had athletic talent not limited to golf, yet it is because affection for golf that I know about the life of Chandler Egan. You see he designed West Seattle Golf Course, my course, the one I play most often. He won the U.S. Amateur in 1904 and 1905. He won a team Olympic Gold Medal in Golf in 1904 while winning an individual Silver Medal in those games.  By the way…. after all those years golf is back in the Olympics when the Summer Games commence in Brazil.

Chandler Egan had a great Amateur career but 1904 and 1905 was his apex. He went on to design many courses and had a hand in the redesign of Pebble Beach before the 1929 U.S. Amateur. A very impressive resume.

About a Story

Eight years after Egan died in Everett, Washington my friend Marc was born. Marc was born in Philadelphia and did not learn of Chandler Egan until 68 years later in 2013. I met Marc for the first time on the 12th tee of West Seattle Golf Course early in the summer of 2013. It was a chance meeting but Marc is hard to miss and as is typical on a nice day, the groups get a bit backed up waiting to tee off on 12. Marc and I struck up a conversation, I found out he recently divested himself from most of his earthly possessions and drove his BMW from Philadelphia to Seattle. Individuals who go to these extremes are usually fleeing someone or chasing someone. In Marc’s case it was both. Both were women this was not mob related. As far as I can determine Marc now owns a BMW, golf clubs, his clothes, a flat screen TV and over 100 Taylor Made golf balls he purchased for a great price a Costco. This reminded me of my favorite car bumper sticker – “It takes a lot of balls to play golf the way I do.” But I digress.

After my round I found Marc on the patio holding court with another member of his foursome and I sat down to join him for a beverage at the 19th hole. Phone numbers were exchanged and plans established to meet again and play 18 in the next few days. Marc described his drive across the continent. The highlight (or lowlight depending on your point of view) was when he hit a mammal while driving, turning his Ultimate Driving Machine into a Weapon of Deer Destruction. So truth be told, the title of this story is a little misleading because it was not a Moose. But the way Marc told it, the story was “Moose Worthy.”

About a Story

Four weeks later I played golf with a friend Gary in Portland, Oregon at his course, Waverley Golf Club. We played the “Egan” tees and as you might have guessed Chandler Egan designed Waverley too. Gary invited Matt (The Kid), a junior member at Waverley to join us and round out the group. A few holes into the back nine Matt and I got to talking about Waverley and the Egan connection to West Seattle. Matt told me that two weeks before he was up in Seattle to see friends and they played West Seattle. Small world, what were the chances. As we continued our conversation I started to mention some of the interesting people I’ve played with at West Seattle and after a time I started to talk about Marc. Marc reminds me of Larry David the actor, comedian, writer and television producer. So this is how I described him as I told the story of how we met…… at some point Matt paused and said…. “I think I played with this guy Marc. Did he hit a Moose (Deer) on his drive out from Philly?”

OK SO WHAT’S THE POINT?????

It’s all about STORY!!!!!! Think about it, if Marc had not had such a unique story Matt (The Kid) and I might have believed (but not with 100% certainty) Marc was the same person we both knew from playing at West Seattle. BUT – The story of Car vs. Moose (Deer) gave us total certainty we were both talking about the same Marc. The kid did not remember Marc’s name but he did remember the story.

1 – The story of Chandler Egan connected us with our two golf courses, Waverley and West Seattle.

2 – The story about meeting people at West Seattle led me to talk about Marc.

3 – The story about the Moose tied it all together.

People remember STORIES!!!! Don’t ever forget that. We will be remembered because of our stories.

You can go to Waverley and West Seattle and there you will find tributes to H. Chandler Egan. He never saw the full completion of his West Seattle design and he died while in the middle of constructing Legion Golf Course in Everett, Washington not far away. But he had a story…..And it is still being told.

Thank you for reading.

Doug Marshall