Disneyland v Disney World

                Disneyland v Disney World

   I asked my youngest daughter, Virginia, where would she like to go for a Daddy-Daughter weekend and she replied, “Disneyland!”  We have already been to Disney World a couple of times so she wanted to be able to compare the two parks.  Personally, I didn’t care where we went because all that I wanted was to spend some quality time with my daughter.  It seems excessive to fly to L.A. to go to an amusement park but the trip was painless, as we had a direct flight from LAX to Louisville, and it wasn’t that expensive.  Virginia was happy because she got to pick the park, the rides, and even the restaurants for the whole weekend.  I was happy because I was able to make some new memories with my daughter as we spent a lot of quality time together.

   The biggest difference between the park in L.A. and the one in Florida is how compact and convenient everything is at Disneyland.  For example, we could easily walk from the front gate to our hotel and we had a plethora of restaurants to pick from outside of the park.  This is significant because it cost me ninety five dollars to eat at the Naples Ristorante in Downtown Disney and almost half of that to eat at The Cheesecake Factory, which was virtually right across the street.  A second major difference is that Disneyland consists of only two parks.  A section of the California Adventure Park is dedicated to the Marvel Studios and it was there that we witnessed Spider-Man jump from one building to the next, had our picture taken with Dr. Strange, and saw the Black Panther take on some bad guys in a street fight.  It was great to see all of the characters live.

   Unfortunately, the one thing that Disneyland and Disney World had in common was the long lines.  We spent over two hours waiting to ride “Web-Slingers” for example.  Although that was the longest that we had to wait, there were several other rides with wait times exceeding ninety minutes.  By the end of the second day my hips were really hurting me from standing for so long and now I know that I am only good for two days at Disney.  It would have been better to buy a Fast Pass for fifteen dollars for each ride, a price that I would have gladly paid if I had known that the wait time was going to be so long.  Still, I promised Virginia that we could make the trip again in 2023 if she wanted to give it a whirl.  The only caveat is that it has to be just Virginia and me because I want her full attention if I am going to spend the time and money for a major trip.

Epic Caribbean Cruise

 An “Epic” Caribbean Cruise

A good tour guide can make even a dull excursion interesting and that is why I was glad that we found Tony to show us the island of St. Maarten. He was a true character who didn’t mind doing a little personal business while he showed us the island where he had lived for his whole life. For example, Tony made a stop at the place where his very pregnant daughter works so that he could drop off some cash and a few slices of Conch Cake, a local delight that contained no conch but a whole lot of butter and sugar. Tony said that he had to sneak it out of the house because it was so good that his girlfriend didn’t want to share it with anyone. Also, we made a stop at the place where Tony lives so that we could meet his two grandsons. The younger boy was nicknamed “The Little Terrorist” because he was always picking on his six year old brother.

What I appreciated about Tony was that the 62 year old man was how open with these two tourists from Kentucky. For example, Tony said that his father was wealthy but, because he had “too much kids,” no one inherited much when he died. Tony worked at excavating for his father, and still has huge and powerful hands to prove it, before becoming a supervisor. Now that he is retired, he leads tours when the cruise ships are in port and in his spare time he volunteers to take the old folks to their medical appointments. He picks up work wherever he can and once did a couple of shifts for when the movie “Speed II” was filming in town. “Sandra Bullock was a very nice lady but Chuck Norris was nice as well.” Some of the other celebrities that he has seen on the island where Lionel Richie, Michael Jordon, and Lil Wayne. St. Maarten’s is known for having famous people fly in for the New Year’s Eve celebrations and Jeff Bezos, who has a $450 million dollar yacht, arrives annually so that he can park it in the bay and bring in the new year in luxury.

Tony grew up on the island and showed us where his house used to be. In 2017, Hurricane Irma, a category 5 hurricane with winds up to 300 mph, shook and removed the walls and ceiling from the foundation of his house. Tony said that he went outside to watch the hurricane but when he saw a huge cargo container flying by at about twenty feet off of the ground, he decided to go back inside to take shelter until the storm passed by. Irma devastated the island. A “Planet Hollywood” hotel was completely destroyed and its rusty skeleton frame was still standing by the beach. Another hotel was completely rebuilt when the wealthy owner shipped in 200 workers, and all of the building materials needed, to start the hotel all over from scratch.

On our tour of St. Maarten we passed many roundabouts and in the middle of them were statues of local interest. For example, there was one roundabout in a busy intersection that had an enslaved man who had been frees and the chains around his wrists had been broken. In another area the roundabout had salt pickers and a third had a variety of transportation workers.

Meanwhile, motorcycles passed us dangerously to the right and left; Tony said that they had a death wish. The two most popular places to go on the island are Airport beach and the nude beach. Since we had time, we drove to the airport and watched as the planes dropped within 100 feet of us as they flew down to the runway.

At the end of our tour Tony drove us by where his father had his funeral. Because his father had made a lot of money with his excavation company and through real estate, he was well known throughout the island. Tony’s father was so popular that the funeral director had to turn people away from the service. Only family members were allowed to attend the visitation and even then the funeral home was packed from wall to wall. I stole a line from “The Big Chill” when I said that “I could never get that many people to come to my funeral.” Tracey picked up on the reference and, right on cue, countered with another line from the movie; “I’ll come. And I’ll bring a date.” Tony laughed out loud at our repartee. And with that our two hour tour of St. Maarten’s ended.

The second great tour that we took was in Barbados with our nineteen year old guide, Evan. He gives tours on the side as is studying to be an art teacher. What I appreciated about Evan was the fact that even though he is a young black man, he didn’t sound bitter or angry as he told us the stories of Barbados’ history of slavery. He could have made us uncomfortable by becoming bitter as he told us of captured runaway slaves were put into cages in what is now called “Freedom Square.” To make matters worse, the local businesses at the time had the cages removed because the enslaved people made too much noise in their cries for pity, and they smelled bad. Evan remained professional as he pointed out to us where the slave market was located and the still present auction block where the enslaved Africans were bought and sold. To cover up the sins of the past, Bridgetown put a statue of Admiral Nelson on the auction block. It has since been removed because the locals thought that it was inappropriate to put a statue of a famous British lord in Freedom Square since Barbados had achieved independence from the UK in the 1960s. One final note on slavery was the fact that a parking lot had been built on top of a mass grave for enslaved people. The choice was to take that expensive downtown real estate and either turn it into a cemetery or make it a parking lot and, as Evan said demurely, “the parking lot won.”

As we continued with our downtown tour, it became clear that Bridgetown was not interested in preservation as most of the historic buildings were run down and in a state of disrepair. The two exceptions were the Mutual Life Assurance building, the most famous historic building on Barbados, which was built with the 20 million dollars that Britain had paid for reparations for their part in the slave trade. Mutual Life held a place for the local planters could meet and find a way to look after each other. The other building was a synagogue. Barbados has had a strong Jewish population since its colonial days and it was the Jews who figured out how to turn the local sweet grass into rum. Everyone grew rich as the Jews taught the process to the Portuguese and the Dutch.

One final excursion of note was when we went to ride “The Flying Dutchman” and the “Canopy Zip Line” on St. Maarten. Tracey and I have done zip lines before but “The Flying Dutchman” is the world’s steepest zip line at 1,050 feet in elevation across 2,800 feet of cable. We screamed all of the way down the mountain and hugged each other in exhilaration once we arrived at the bottom of the line. Before we dropped we watched as a grandmother tried to calm her granddaughter’s fears about zipping down the mountain. I always like to play the comedian and so, when I saw that the girl was nervous, I said that “if something bad happened and the line breaks, it will be the worst four or five seconds of your life.” The seventy year old lady was nonplussed and replied, “then it will be over.” She didn’t say it with remorse, more like it was a matter of fact and that maybe it would be a relief. But then she skipped to the starting line and screamed with joy as she took the leap off of the platform. I learned a lot from that old woman in the few minutes that I watched her.

People look at me askew when I tell them that Tracey and I went on a cruise because everyone is afraid of COVID, but we felt perfectly safe. Everyone on board had to test negative before they were allowed on the ship. Three ports (St. Lucia, St. Thomas, St. Kitts) refused to let us come on their island but to make up for it, Norwegian Cruise Line gave us 20% off of our next trip. We immediately went down to the front desk and ordered our next cruise. The “Epic” has a great gym and that is important to me since I worked out for 90 minutes every morning. And because we have been on this ship several times, Tracey knows it well and can find her way around without assistance. There is a bar on the top deck with huge umbrellas so Tracey can perch herself there and became best buddies with the bartender. Norwegian gave us other perks like a handicapped room on the 14th floor for no extra charge and free admission to the specialty Japanese and Brazilian restaurants. Finally, because the ship was at 50% capacity due to social distancing, the wait staff was literally standing behind us at dinner to serve us. It was nice to have so much attention.

Traveling is a pain in the neck and I understand why people say that they don’t want to do it. My father in law, for example, always wanted to take a cruise through the Panama Canal, but when Tracey got serious about taking him, my father in law would not hear of it and wouldn’t even consider going. Now that our trip is over I can understand the way that he felt. There were a lot of things that went wrong. For example, I forgot our passports and vaccination cards and had to turn the cab around when we were on our way to the airport to retrieve them from our condo. When we arrived in San Juan we had to take a COVID test and, if the outcome wasn’t negative, then we would have had to spend two weeks in isolation. On our flight out of San Juan, we spent 10 hours in the airport on Sunday when our plane developed mechanical problems but the airline would not cancel the flight. Eventually they gave us vouchers for a hotel room and dinner but the restaurant was so busy that we had to wait almost three hours at the bar for dinner and dessert. Finally, on Monday, I received four texts giving me four different times for our departure. We decided to err on the side of caution and get to the airport early and spent an additional five hours waiting for a flight out.

Non Sequitars

• Evan asks for $25.00 for the tour. I pulled out the money and said, “I’ve been meaning to clean out this wallet for awhile.” Without missing a beat, Evan said, “and I would like to help you do that.”

• A collective groan came from the group of four sitting next to us when I said that Tracey and I are retired and it didn’t matter when we returned. I think that they groaned because they alll had to be at work on Monday. A little later on, I said to the group, “You should retire early and travel!” Of course, everyone says that but few are able to achieve the dream

  

Cheryl’s Early Years

 Cherylanne’s Early Years

My sister, Cherylanne, always seemed much older than myself. That is probably because she acted as though she were my second mother, which only makes sense because Cheryl and Mom were so close. Those two spent countless hours in the kitchen together and it was clear that Cherylanne was Mom’s favorite. From my earliest days, I remember those two fussing over their Weight Watcher’s diet; measuring their fruit in a small scale and toasting cheese bread in the oven. As she became older, it was Cheryl who cooked most of the meals and she took over other parenting duties as well. She put up and decorated the family Christmas tree, for example, because the holidays weren’t my parent’s thing. When it came time to celebrate our birthdays, Cheryl was the one who asked us what we wanted for a gift to make our day special. Often, Cheryl went out and bought the gift herself, after my mother gave her the money, but would also buy us something that came from her and she used the proceeds from her job to buy it for us.

Cherylanne had many jobs outside of the home. She worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken when she was sixteen and she boxed up the leftovers to place in our refrigerator so that the kids always had our favorite food to eat. Other jobs included being a cashier at Target, a teller at a bank, and a hostess at Mama Grisanti’s, one of our regular restaurants that my father liked to take us to. An anecdote from her time at the restaurant was when she received a tip of just a few coins from a check of over a hundred dollars. Upset at being shortchanged, Cheryl ran out to the parking lot before the customer had a chance to leave, gave the tip back to him and said, “Here! You obviously need this more than I do!”

This demonstration of gravitas was unusual for my older sister as she was not an aggressive person. The Cherylanne whom I remember while growing up was shy and an introvert. The situation became so serious that my father got an exchange student from Ecuador for Cheryl to become friends with. The young woman’s name was Ruth Brenz and the two became inseparable. For some reason, Ruth came to love banana ice cream and she walked to Baskin Robbins with Cheryl at least once a week to get the frozen treat since it was unavailable in the grocery store. There were other exchange students but it was Ruth who really helped to get Cheryl out of her shell.

I think that Cherylanne would have liked to have a big house with an even bigger family. To pass the time while watching television in the family room, for example, she used to make architectural drawings of her dream house and she made drawings of her ideal wedding dress. Cheryl was so good at drawing that a pen and ink rendition that she did of a bridge in one of Louisville’s parks was selected to be printed in her official high school calendar. Also, in her spare time, Cheryl liked to sew and the patterns and clippings were strewn all over the dining room. In my opinion, she was born to be the perfect wife with a big family. She probably would have liked to have ten children instead of just the one.

One of Cheryl’s teachers in high school was Fr. Wagner. One day, after class, my sister went to the old priest for extra help and he became impatient with her. Fr. Wagner told my sister that she would never be anything more than a housewife. That slight stayed with her and gave her the fire that she needed to continue with her schooling. Cheryl took a course from a local school to learn how to take dictation. When that didn’t work out, she attended Eastern Kentucky University and earned a degree in law enforcement. After she married and started a family, Cheryl went back to school and earned her RN while living in Pennsylvania and made a thirty year career as a nurse.

Now that Cherylanne has passed, I am afraid that all of these memories would be forgotten if I didn’t spend a few minutes to type them out. As I watched my sister laying on her deathbed with literally hours left to live, I realized that our bond really came from our early years together. Now that she is in heaven with my parents, I regret that we had lost touch and wish that we could have become closer instead of distant. The image that will always haunt me is of Cheryl, lying in a dark hospital room with the machines whirring and pinging, and no one was allowed in to comfort her in her final hours on this earth because she was contagious. She was a giving person who dedicated her life to helping other people as a nurse and yet there was no one at her bedside to even hold her hand as she perished. It was a sad ending for someone who deserved much better.