Scootin' da Valley: Shrimp for Lunch

I abhor change! I abhor change unless there’s some form of significant and guaranteed pleasure to be gained at minimal cost, and cost here doesn’t necessarily mean some monetary amount.

For over 40 years I’d worn aviator style eyeglasses with their large lenses set in metal frames. When I saw the upper part of my face in a mirror, that was how it was supposed to look with the large expanse of vision correcting hardware covering it. As I picked up my glasses from the nightstand a few weeks ago I heard a small “Ping!” and the left temple piece came off in my hand. It was the second time that had happened to me with that style of frame; the tiny spring inside the piece that was supposed to allow the temple pieces to bend outward to a small degree had snapped, rendering the entire frame useless.

Because I was leaving town for the better part of a week the day after the frame broke I did my best to make the glasses functional by using some malleable wire and solder. It worked, but it wasn’t very pretty, so as soon as I got back home I visited the optical department of my optometrist’s office and $500 and a week later I had proper functioning glasses again but with a huge difference.

“Burn me once shame on you. Burn me twice shame on me,” as the old saying goes. There was no way that I was going to get the same style of frame that broke the very same way twice. And so, the big change! I opted for a plastic frame rather than metal, and I shopped for a frame with temple pieces of a significantly different design that the ones that crapped out on me. My first noteworthy eyeglass style change in over half my life! I think the new style makes me look more distinguished as I approach turning 60 in a few months. Then again, it might just be wishful thinking, but I do like the “new me.”

I took my first scooter ride with the new glasses this morning on a forced ride. I say forced because when I got up and saw the gloom outside and the forecast for the day, scootering wasn’t anything that immediately came to mind. I took the car to the morning Mass and it wasn’t until I was back home and thinking about what I’d do with the rest of the day that taking the Piaggio out was even a consideration. I checked the hour by hour forecast at that point and with the rain still a few hours away and the temperatures in the mid 40s and decided that it was now or never so I bundled up and off I went, as usual with no real destination in mind.

I was nearly downtown when I felt the first little shimmy that whispered to me that something wasn’t quite right with the bike. I looked over the front when I came to a red light to see that the front tire which had experienced a bit of a chronic deflating problem a while back was perfectly fine. I glanced to the rear, but couldn’t manage to get an eyeball on the rear tire. I rode a little more, and again I felt an occasional bit of wobble. When I was able I pulled to a curb that wasn’t beside a gutter full of wet leaves, dismounted, and to my horror saw that my rear tire was halfway to being a pancake. If you could have seen my brain at that point as I thought long and hard about which gas stations near me had air pumps, it might have appeared as though it were going to begin running a marathon at the sound of a starter’s pistol.

The closest place I could think of was at least a half a mile away and around a number of turns that I’d have to make to get myself there. I rode slowly and other motorists seeing me taking the turns at a snail’s pace so I wouldn’t have to do a normal lean might have thought it was my first day on two wheels. I managed to get where I planned to fill the tire without incident and a dollar’s worth of quarters later I was back on my way to nowhere in particular. The tire held the air as I rode around for close to an hour, but I’ll have to keep an eye on it now.

I ended up on Main St. in Edwardsville, PA, wanting to get a picture of what had been a fabulous seafood restaurant for much of my life and where my favorite uncle and I got clams to steam on Friday nights when I was in junior high and high school. I hadn’t been near there in years and I knew that Vic-Mar’s had gone out of business, but didn’t know what became of the building.

It’s a pizza joint now, but in pausing to get the picture I got hungry for seafood, so off to Price Chopper I went. I thought about getting clams for lunch, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the mess of steaming them and then getting rid of the shells, so I decided that I’d get some shrimp, or perhaps a nice looking hunk of salmon or any other of the usual variety of meaty fishes that might’ve caught my eye and taste buds once I got to the back of the store. When I saw the $8.99 sign on the one pound bag of shrimps that were the size that a person of my means only sees at a high end party of some kind the decision was no contest. On the way home the thought occurred to me that I might very well have been the only person in the world at that point in time who was riding a scooter with a pound of huge shrimp hiding out under his saddle.

I rode on, just for the sake of riding and ended up at a nearby playground where I like to get a picture or two of the colorful gazebo whenever I visit. During my teaching years, I often went there at the beginning of a summer vacation to get a few pictures of myself smiling at the prospect of having a bunch of free weeks ahead of me, and then again in the late summer to photograph myself with my smile then faded and resigned to having to go back to another year behind the big desk.

It disturbs me sometimes to realize that in spite of having loved my job for most of my career, I don’t miss teaching at all. I read a bumper sticker years ago: A bad day of fishing is still better than a good day at work. Although I’ve never gone fishing, I understood the sentiment perfectly, and now that I’m retired it resonates in me loudly and clearly when I wake up every single morning from September through June and realize all over again that I DON’T HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL! Every morning becomes a small celebration of that wonderful fact whether it’s going to be a good day for riding or not because it’s sure as hell going to be a good day for something!

Like just standing in a colorful gazebo enjoying November.