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Missing him, more often after nightfall, sometimes on long drives, or after waking up in a fog from a dream where I hear his voice as clear as if he’s in the living room, gives me pause to take a moment to remember.

Just last month, I pulled into the Denny’s parking lot to look for a space. I wasn’t that hungry, but I wanted to sit in the last place where we had breakfast together, and have a coffee. The lot was full, the line at the door too long for him, for sure. I did what he would have done; I turned around in the back lot to go somewhere else.

I inherited Art Cotton’s genetic disposition to vocalize that most things are not worth waiting for. Not for more than five minutes, anyway. I did just that, in a low voice, “I’m not waiting in line,” steering the truck toward the exit.

I’ll get back there sometime. The lot will have open spots, and that stool at the end of the bar will be free for the taking. That’s where I sat after helping the Old Man to get upon his—the second one in.

I stood behind him, his solidity still impressive, with my hands at the ready in case he slipped from the stool during the mounting phase. I did not touch him, but I remained ready, just in case. You have to keep in mind a man’s pride when helping him into a chair, especially if he spent the first years of your life putting you into yours. No one taught me that. A son knows. If you don’t, you haven’t paid enough attention to the many evident clues in everyday encounters.

I drove away, only slightly disappointed. It was not the right time to have breakfast alone; that time will come, but not yet. The crowd saved me from a series of melancholy sips of mediocre coffee.

I grabbed a substitute, a stand-in, at the Dunkin’ drive-thru. If he’d been the co-pilot, he’d have asked me to check with the tired-looking cashier if her decaf was fresh.

If answered in the affirmative, a decaf—regular—would have been on my list. Instead, I took just one, a medium, black, and drove back toward the house beyond the town limits, a place he had never visited. He would have liked it here, saying something like, “This is nice,” with a lighter tone, channeling Sylvester the Cat’s enunciation of the letter S.

Pop started doing the impression after he made all four of his kids laugh at the supper table while looming over a steaming bowl of my mother’s American chop suey, probably on a Wednesday evening, before hustling us to the Chevy wagon for mid-week prayer meeting.

Art knew his audience; he kept his slurred s-pronunciation between us, a private family joke. It made us all laugh far into adulthood when he sprung the inside joke at random moments.

You see, the Old Man was funny, even when the world was scary or serious.

While he scolded me many times for flippant remarks during moments that should be more solemn, I know he appreciated my sense of humor, mostly by his smirk when letting me know that this wasn’t a good time for that.

I found love in Dad’s smirk. I knew he was proud. Frustrated, oh yes, but proud that I didn’t let those dark or serious things waylay me from my mission, for a time unknown to all.

A couple of weeks ago, I stood in front of the mirror, unshaven for three whole days. Back when my knees didn’t ache when rising from a crouch, three days’ growth held few examples of gray, but now the white is the predominant strain, much to the chagrin of someone close to me who has told me many times that I appear to be a derelict when she is away. I cannot disagree, but I’ll shave when I feel like it.

I ran the back of my right hand against the grain of the manifestation from seventy-two hours of laziness, thinking to myself that the coarseness was impressive.

In a sudden flashback, I was six, wrestling with Dad on the floor of a wood-framed, white with black shuttered parsonage on Rt. 302 in Casco, Maine.

One of his signature moves when he came inside— out of the cold— was to hug me, rubbing his frigid face up and down on my cheek to give me a little whisker burn. Then, he’d take off his jacket like he was preparing for a bar brawl, tossing it onto the dark green three-cushion couch, challenging me to take him on to show him that I was “man enough” to defend myself against the fatherly friction.

I’d attack repeatedly, running at him, swinging, and he would let me believe that I had a chance; I didn’t. I barely had a chance of taking him down in my prime.

Godly, loving pastor persona aside, he was tenacious and strong. At 5’9 with shoes on, he wasn’t flabby at two-hundred and five pounds. Early poverty made him grateful for everything. However, if someone tried to take it by force, there would be injuries requiring hospitalization. You knew it by looking at him in his eyes. They smiled, but there was fire and brimstone installed long before he accepted Christ as his Savior.

My Dad grew up fatherless after the age of 8. My grandfather died in a woods accident. Pop’s training for fatherhood was a chronic alcoholic stand-in, whom my wonderful grandmother took in, thinking it better for the kids.

We called him Uncle Ed, but he wasn’t. None of us ever understood how sweet Irene could have married such a lout. Irene Hall was a saint, raising five wild boys and one wonderful daughter on her own, working full time in a western Maine mill town. The term “feral” was unspoken but appropriate.

Once Dad put me down on the braided rug after a spin or two in the air, he’d repeat the razor burn trick as a jovial punishment for taking him on. Sometimes he’d beat his chest after my loss and roar like King Kong, then mess up my hair with a softer hand and let me know that I was tougher than I looked.

Those whisker burn moments, followed by a soft touch and a dose of confidence, gave me precisely what I needed on more than one occasion throughout my career.

Show up, do what you’re supposed to do, walk away proud, and don’t be afraid to do a Sylvester the Cat impression when applicable. It’s worked for me, and I learned it all from him.

Missing him, more often after nightfall, sometimes on long drives, or after waking up in a fog from a dream where I hear his voice as clear as if he’s in the living room, gives me pause to take a moment to remember.

I’d certainly welcome a good dose of whisker burn again.

From the Jagged Edge of America, I remain,

TC

I’ve unfollowed a couple of excellent creators over the past three weeks.

Originally, I followed them because of their skills at writing, building, mechanical know-how, and humor. I knew their views were not mine, but I can overlook that for the sake of sanity. I don’t need to know every detail of what you dislike or who you hate for whatever reason.

One thing you can count on when dealing with social media is that twenty percent of the folks you read for content, enjoyment, laughs, and a break from the everyday ho-hum, is that they are going to let loose on a tirade, probably when they are mad about something that happened on a national scale.

If you start off with politics as your muse, you’ve set the bar, and there are a lot of folks who want to read your views or opinions on our 50/50 split (give or take) in these here United States. And you certainly can expound on your politics, but don’t make it all about that every day. Just as I’d probably not sit around and talk politics all day with a group of friends, I don’t need a steady diet in my social media reads.

I know what I believe, and I know what I think about daily. If I followed your writings because of politics, that’s on me.

If I follow you because you are interesting, skilled, funny, angry, with a side of sarcasm, I don’t really need to know much more.

I got a note from one of them, a good person. I explained my reason for the unfollow, and we had a good exchange. I gave them my opinion, probably one that they didn’t know I had. I’m a dichotomy of ideas, and I enjoy someone trying to change my opinion in person, but not on the socials.

Why do I write this today? I have no idea. I read a variety of viewpoints, searching for them sometimes. But I like people, and dislike a few, based on more than their political leanings. We can disagree, and I can still find you a good person whom I count as a valuable friend.

I always relished that about our country.

My friend, a different one, unnamed as of this writing, told me this morning that he has unfriended a couple of folks, but later called them to tell them that they are different in person than they are on social media.

He said, “We are, of course, still friends, but Facebook friendships do not equal or come close to our real friendship. So don’t take it personally that we are no longer deemed friends by the Facebook definition, because I’ll still have coffee with you and we are still pals.”

I liked that approach.

I’ll keep it light, here, mundane, if you will. Darkness permeates our everyday lifestyles far too much. I need some levity, enjoyment, and casual laughs.

Thanks for following.

If you’ve been a supporter or member in my BuyMeACoffee support group over the last few years, I want to say thank you so much. Consider it in the new year, it’s how we keep the pages filled with missives. You are the straw that stirs the drink, as they say. Whoever they are.

Stay out of trouble this week. Please?

From the Jagged Edge of America, I remain,

Just TC

Noogle; it’s a thing.

For those of you who shower on the regular, this is a warning. Towel off your fingers before you use your phone in or near the shower.

Recently, I learned to Noogle—Nude-Googling, Noogling, in verb form.

Noogling is alive and well in the Cotton Compound. Here’s how it went down.

I was shopping for new shampoo at Walmart. Never before this year have I been concerned about the price of soapy products. I would grab items on my list—a list mostly scribbled in my head—add them to the cart, and move along. I’m ashamed to admit that I wasn’t comparing the cost of one against the other. It’s a shameful and wasteful way to shop. I apologize.

I always keep a dandruff shampoo around the house, mainly because in past years I would get a dry scalp about mid-winter. Head and Shoulders would always fix it.

Two years ago, I purchased my last bottle. Retirement eliminated my dry scalp. Add that to the list of benefits of leaving police work for whatever I do now. I’m not even sure I know what it is; at least there’s no job description, but it doesn’t cause dandruff.

I digress.

Well, I noticed the bottle of blue shampoo, shower-side, was nearly empty, and, trying to avert disaster with winter approaching, I swung my grocery cart down the soap and shampoo aisle to grab another. The price difference between the name-brand and the store-brand was shocking. I tossed the cheaper version into the rolling steel basket of indebtedness.

Knowing also that the squeeze bottle of body wash was getting to the point that I’d be squirting hot water through the top to make it last three or four more scrubbings, I perused the shelves for a bit of that.

Pre-retirement (and during my dandruff phase), I bought, from eye level shelving, interestingly enough, the best-smelling stuff —or so I thought.

I went with the standard red bottle (brand name withheld unless they decide to pay me for endorsements, or get me a big white horse to ride around on shirtless —look away; it would be hideous), but I looked at the price. Wow!

Two shelves below sat a blue bottle of something that purported to smell like sandalwood, and four bucks cheaper for the same amount. Not knowing what sandalwood would smell like without shampoo and body wash, I picked it up, sniffing around the cap in case the seal was weak.

I smelled nothing but plastic and a little bit of generic Polo, either worn by the clerk who placed it there or by another guy who was value shopping. He probably doesn’t have dandruff either. But I don’t know that.

It was then that I spotted the bottle of 3-in-1 hair, body, and face wash. I didn’t sniff the bottle to ascertain if it smelled like citrus and musk, but I know I wouldn’t be able to tell you if it was musk or mushroom, citrus or sour cherry; I only knew that 3-in-1 means savings.

Truthfully, it’s only 2-in-1 because I’ve never used a singular face-washing concoction before, figuring out early on that my face is part of my body, and saving that money for toothpaste. I look at it as a bonus body part, but Suave sees it as a heck of a selling point.

And I never smelled the contents of the bottle until I needed to figure out how to open it without breaking the pump mechanism.

This is where it gets weird.

Gloriously showering, quite delighted with myself for replacing three things (two, really) with one bottle of something-or-other, I gleefully manipulated the little pump in all directions but the correct one.

I couldn’t get it to open. I’ve broken these devices before, so I’ve relegated myself to keeping them upright in the shower, spilling some into my hand when needed as they stand there, capless. I wanted my relationship with the new bottle to be better than anything that came before it. There would be no savings if I spilled it.

I yelled out the door of the shower after ham-handedly handling the bottle for about three minutes.

Luckily, I thought, the S.O. was home, but probably in a Zoom meeting about forty feet and three doorways away from my future soapy scrubbing.

I yelled out, “Honey, I need help. I can’t open the pump bottle.”

There was no answer. Whether ignoring me for what she feared to see, or because of significant events on the screen before her, she didn’t respond.

Knowing better than to slip and slide my way toward her meeting, and her imminent job loss for having a naked guy show up in the background holding a bottle of discount 3-in-1 bodywash within his paws, I grabbed my phone from the counter. I need her employed for insurance purposes, after all.

A slip-and-fall would be so much worse without full coverage.

For the record, this is when the Noogling occurred. The phone screen lit up, but my wet fingers didn’t give me the traction I needed to delve into the idiosyncrasies of unseating the pump from its secure perch, sucked down tightly to the bottle of 3-in-1 citrus/musk.

I finally dried my hands on a towel, delved deeply into YouTube, and found hundreds of tutorials on unseating the pumps on squirt bottles containing this and that. Shivering, I watched only one. But it was enough.

With that many videos being made and disseminated, it seems that my new friends at Suave might, in the future, find some open space on the back of their bottles for a pictorial review of pump retrieval. There are directions on most everything. Sure, it would be too small to see, but that’s probably because it’s cold outside the shower.

I digress.

The key is that the cap securing the pump to the bottle must be tightly closed, even to the point that it would be enough to keep your mother’s July green beans safe from botulism in the glass quart Ball jars for up to 3.5 years post-canning. Yes. That tight.

I followed the directions, turning the pump in the opposite direction, and it popped up.

I only found that pertinent information out during the Noogling (nude Google) session. Dripping on the floor —the amount of water that cascades through the overflow tubes at the Hoover Dam during a powerful late-spring rainstorm.

The musk and citrus have a pleasant fragrance, married together by the shampoo scientists at Sauve, and I have since used the perfumed soap on my body, face, and hair with no ill effects.

The dandruff has not returned, but if it does, you can be sure I will be happy I purchased the screw-capped version of the discount Equate. I’m all in for saving, but I’ve learned a valuable lesson about pump-tops.

Go ahead, Noogle it. Make sure you pull your curtains together, too. My neighbors are birch trees; yours may be human.

That’s all I’ve got.

From the Jagged Edge of America, and smelling of musk and citrus, I remain,

TC

Thanks to all of you who buy the books, read the posts, and join me in support thought the BuyMeACoffee App. You are appreciated. You can also subscribe through Facebook if that floats your boat. Thank you. tc

For many years, my Mom and Dad lived in the apartment connected to my last home.

Their apartment was significantly larger than my section of the house, both sides having three bedrooms, but my parents dwelled on one level, outside the nifty loft over their great room.

One-level living is not to be overlooked as greater than most other options, in my opinion.

My S.O. and I have considered penning a book on multi-generational living, as we also, for ten wonderful years, shared our side of the home with her Mama.

One would think that doesn’t work anymore, the way society is wired, but it did.

My son grew up with the gift of being able to see most of his grandparents within a short walking distance, usually ending up hanging out with his grandfather on his side of the house on nights that the Celtics were playing. Sometimes I could hear them cheering from my side of the house.

I digress

Now, it wasn’t quite as sublime as the Waltons made it feel, but it worked. As Olivia Walton once said, or maybe it was the grandmother, “A house built with love has elastic walls.”

I don’t know why I recall that line, but I do.

One of the many interesting things that seemed problematic when it happened, but now is something I miss with some misty-eyed rearward glances, was a parking spot that was directly adjacent to my Dad’s small bedroom—his window in front of where I parked my truck.

In those days, I was the on-call detective for a week a month, also being secondary call for the other three weeks, thus putting me in and out of that driveway, with my headlights shining in his window, at all hours, multiple times a month.

He never complained. You see, my Dad would always keep the window open beside his bed, just a crack. That gave us many opportunities to discuss who got stabbed, or what convenience store was burglarized; you get the idea.

They were short chats, held in total darkness, me typically apologizing for waking him, or keeping him up with the noise of me leaving or returning. I did have the foresight to turn off my lights when pulling up near the window, but he said it never bothered him a bit.

My Dad was easy to get along with. Something you only realize—later— when you observe other people in contentious relationships with their parents. I have to also say, it was because of his personality, not mine, that we got on so well. He was that kind of man.

I digress.

Dad reveled in keeping his window open a crack, opening it wider if it was windy; I do the same thing. There’s something comforting about the sound and, of course, the feel of a breeze on your skin.

In the winter, when heating the house, I’d scold him a little bit. He’d say, “I only open it a crack, but I like it.” That was good enough to get me to shut up and consider all the times I’d left the door open to our family homes when he was paying for the heat.

Last night, as a weather front moved into Maine, the wind picked up. I opened the sliding back door to watch the curtains dance as the breeze rustled the leaves of the hardwoods just beyond the grass. I turned out all the lights and lay my head back in the recliner, in the dark, just taking in the wind.

It was then that repeated taps came from the other side of the adjacent glass slider. At first, I thought it might be leaves bouncing off, but it was more of a thump than a scrape or the light tickle of a floating leaf.

Even Ellie, lying beside my chair, lifted her head, as it simply wasn’t a common creak or moan of our place on the hill.

Without turning on the light, I crept to the glass and flicked on a flashlight I keep handy by the door to look for skunks or porcupines before I release my hound. Also, being aware that turning on an inside lamp would backlight me enough that whatever beast was trying to get into the house could see that I was defenseless at this very moment.

I shone the light around the back dooryard, seeing nothing. That is, until I looked down to find the fellow who is featured in today’s photo.

Apparently, he’d been trying to get an insect from the glass, giving it four or five(college-level) tree frog tries.

Of course, I talked to him or her, as conversation through open windows is one of my favorite things.

“Hey, pal, you make a lot of noise for such a small frog,” I said.

The frog said nothing. The cat eating the canary comes to mind, except that this is a frog.

“Nothing to see here, I don’t know where that bug went!” would be an appropriate thought bubble hovering over the creature.

If you look closely enough in the attached photo, you can see that he/she is holding tightly to whatever meal was derived from the back door. The snack is still tightly clamped within the frog’s jaw. The extra-long antennae hanging out tell the whole story.

Now, before someone determines that it’s my Dad revisiting me on a windy night—I do not believe that. I know exactly where my Dad is right now, but since the Red Sox were not playing, and the Celtics’ season hasn’t kicked in, he did have some time on his hands. It’s highly possible that he was enjoying the breezy night just like I was.

I left the frog to finish up, not knowing if my light was causing his pupils to dilate, but concerned that it wasn’t comfortable in the least to be watched this closely, at least at mealtime.

No, I didn’t look up whether the eyes of reptiles dilate, but I believe they do. And, I also surmised, since this is the Internet, that some of you would look it up and correct me if I was wrong.

I went back to my chair, finally dozing off with the pleasant wind and thoughts of the days past when I didn’t even consider how much could change in a couple of years.

But then, I thought, what a great night it was for that frog.

From the Jagged Edge of America, I remain,

TC

I’m not positive about why it took until the twenty-fourth night of September to transition into the autumn rush-mode, but it did.

Possibly, it’s because I didn’t get nearly enough done yesterday to hit the ever-moving target of a successful, fulfilling day.

When left to my own devices and without a defined job or jobs, I struggle with a bad case of “Wait a minute, where did I put that?”

Off I go, looking for the one thing that I don’t need at that moment, but know I will in the very near future.

It happens a lot with the four or five tape measures I lose and find consistently.

I have a couple that have all the increments clearly written on the tape, and I love them.

Sixteenths, and their tiny little indicator lines, dance in unison in front of my eyes when I stare too long, ciphering. The clear numbering of eighths appears to steady the itty bitty line dancers and allows me to focus better.

There’s nothing worse than having to yell to another mediocre tradesman from your perch on the ladder that they need to cut the board ten inches and the line just shy of the last quarter-inch mark before eleven.

I did no carpentry yesterday. Frankly, I never do carpentry; I’m a hack who has only dipped his toes into the field referred to as the building trades, and it’s only when I have to do it.

Oh, I will build things, but prepare to hear utterances that defy translation as I get halfway through a job and then discover that whatever I’d done at the start demands a do-over.

I did need a tape measure on two occasions yesterday, looking for one after another until I found the third that I keep in the door pocket of the truck.

I digress.

The rush of putting things away before the snow flies was emphasized when I found a gathering of leaves in the entry alcove at my house. I had not called the meeting, so they clearly have another leader who is not following my itinerary.

When I left for the weekly breakfast for schmucks, there were no dead, fallen leaves there. Upon my return, there were thirty in various stages of color, all of them recently released from the maples out in front of the house. I kicked them out of the way, evidently, in a subliminal swipe, an effort to ignore the inevitable.

When I went outside midday, I saw the lawn was littered with them, with more to follow.

I looked over at the aluminum boat, brought home from the camp in the woods to be stored in my buddy’s barn, and I could see that hundreds of leaves from various other trees were holding a conference in recesses of the hull. The free-from-the-tree detritus was piling in like senior vacationers waiting at the still-locked door of a four-thirty pm seafood buffet near The Villages.

It hit me like a ton of autumn, “Holy crap, TC, it’s almost October. You gotta get some of this crap put away!”

I am embarrassed to tell you that I’d just returned from the town office, registering the motorcycle that just came back from Dandy Don’s motorcycle repair facility. It’s been laid up for about three months for several surgeries. While it’s not really motorcycle season in Maine, I have to register it now because Dandy Don emphasized that I must ride it a hundred or so miles to find out if the fix was in.

I considered riding rogue, taking off the plate of the last guy who owned it with a sticker ending in 2015, and riding after dark, only.

I reconsidered, knowing that I don’t have anyone around anymore who would bail me out of jail. I can handle a few hours in the pokey, but I need to get home by four a.m. (or p.m.) to feed Ellie, depending on the time of arrest.

Don said, “Ride it for a while, TC, see if all of the noises stopped. If not, we can put it back on the lift this winter and maybe install another set of cams.”

So, now, with raking to do, I also have a homework assignment to ride one hundred miles on the motorcycle that has become a bit of an albatross. I’ll get it done, but I must also store that away in the same barn before the snow flies, too.

Say nothing of getting my boy down to camp to help me pull the dock out of the water at the lake before the H2O temperatures hit the level where we all sing soprano for the day.

Today, I’m giving in and preparing a punch-list to leave on the counter. A visible representation of my laziness will help with my misadventures, or at least put them in order of which ones to avoid for the longest time without a serious impact on my long-term happiness.

Four seasons are good, but three of the four demand a lot of work. I can’t lie, I really enjoyed the four weeks of summer.

Have a swell Thursday.

From the Jagged Edge of America, I remain,

TC

Make sure you check out our sportswear, featured in “The Good is Now” section on the home page of the website. Great shirts, lots of compliments are in your future when you “digress” in public. Thank you for the continued support over on the Facebook page, and the BuyMeACoffee app (see banner on main page to be a part of keeping this enterprise alive). I appreciate all of you. Thanks for reading and support. tc