Ode to the Sea

i have been to the top of the highest mountain;
i have been to the hot dry desert;
i have been to ecstasy;
i have been to hell;
i have been to joy with no restraints;
i have been to the depths of sadness;
i have been in the belly of Rube Goldberg’s mechanics;
i have traveled with the Greek’s Homer;
i have been to the heavens;
i have ridden Aladdin’s magic carpet;
i have talked to nature;
i have been captured by a siren.

it was on the sea:

the mountain was my ship on the crest of a wave higher than the sky;
the driest and hottest desert was in the South China Sea in the doldrums;
ecstasy was the sea walking the path of light from the moon, taking my heart;
unrestrained joy was the sea beneath me carrying me to the islands of dreams;
depths of sadness was the sea taking me away from loved ones: “mid-cruise blues;”
Rube had to be involved with creating the steam system of a destroyer;
i traveled the Mediterranean to most of Odysseus points in his voyage home;
hell was storms with green water over the bridge,
spume obliterating the deep green of the ocean,
rolls to the point of no return;
fire in main control;
Aladdin’s carpet could not compare with riding waves at 35 knots on rolling waves;
“Gertrude,” the underwater telephone, let me talk to the whales who talked back;
and
my siren was the sea
calling me,
calling me,
still calling me.

There is no photo this year. Maybe later. The “NOEL” sign is undergoing major revision in my garage workshop. But my tradition of repeating columns around holidays, especially this one, continues, a blessing revealed to me by my mentor and friend, “Coach” JB Leftwich. Here’s my column from The Lebanon Democrat from long ago:

Notes from the Southwest Corner: An Embarrassing Christmas Moment

As I have noted previously, I am (will be) in Tennessee for Christmas, not in the Southwest corner. The below events, however, did occur near San Diego.

Have you ever had one of those days when everything turned into an embarrassment? I had a champion day like that several years ago.

It started innocently while I hung our outdoor decoration, a home-made “NOEL” sign from the eave of our garage, hoping to get it up before my wife’s friends arrived for their Christmas dinner.

Maureen and her six friends have been meeting monthly for dinners for 15-plus years. They had this December dinner catered, did it up right. It was Maureen’s turn to be hostess.

It was dark when I began. I was at the top of my step ladder attaching the second of two wires from the sign to a hook secured to the eave when the ladder lurched and toppled. I grabbed a metal ornamental grating above the garage door.

There I hung, my arm intertwined with the “O” of the sign. If I tried to drop, the sign could catch my arm and do some pretty bad stuff.

I yelled, but Maureen had Christmas carols at top volume and didn’t hear. I tried to think of what to do while simultaneously wondering how long I could hold on. The dog wandered underneath, occasionally looking up as if I was a very strange person hanging there.

After several minutes, a neighbor’s son and friend pulled into the driveway several houses away. As they emerged, I swallowed my pride and yelled “Help.”

At first, they could not discern who was calling. Then they spotted me and came to help. The dog decided to protect me and began barking threateningly. The boys hesitated. I assured them the only danger was being licked to death. They finally righted the ladder and helped me down.

I thanked them profusely and then studied whether I should tell Maureen or not. Now that I was back on solid ground, I decided it was too funny not to tell her. She was incredulous and not particularly amused.

I did not realize my embarrassment for the night was just beginning.

While Maureen made final arrangements for her dinner, our daughter, Sarah, and I went to a local spot for supper. The little place was an oasis of sorts in Bonita, where there were only Mexican, Italian, and fast food restaurants. The attraction was being different and having a wide-range of ales and beers for golfers finishing a round across the street.

When we arrived, two couples were at tables and three guys sat at the bar. As we neared the end of our meal, the largest of the guys at the bar walked to the door and then turned back. I noticed his eyes seemed glazed. Then he walked back to the bar.

Suddenly, this guy and the one on the other side grabbed the guy in the middle off his stool, slammed him into the wall and started pummeling him with their fists. The three male diners, me (instinctively) included, approached from one side and two cooks approached from the back. Sarah had retreated to the door with the two lady diners. I grabbed the big guy. He spun and fell backward, slamming us into our table, knocking it over with shattering glass. It gave me some leverage, and we spun to the floor with me on top and knocking the wind out of the big guy. The other two diners helped me hold him until he calmed down. The cooks had quelled the other assailant. The two left quietly.

Even though the waitress wanted us to not pay our bill, we paid and left for home. On the way, I talked to my daughter about what I should have done (directed her outside before joining the fray) and what she should do the next time if she were ever in a place where a fight broke out (get out and away and not come back until she was sure it was over).

I was feeling pretty good as we arrived home. Then Sarah dashed out of the car, ran into the house and yelled to her mother in front of the caterer and her six friends dressed to the nines amidst fine china, Christmas decorations, and haut cuisine, “Mom, Dad got in a fight in a bar.”

Some days, I just can’t get a break.

May your holiday season be embarrassment free.

“As i have done in the past several years, i send you my Christmas greetings. May all of you have a most wonderful and amazing Christmas Season, and please, please, please (as James Brown would implore) remember the reason this all occurs every year.

NOEL.

Tomorrow morning, i will be sending a letter of complaint to KitchenAid. That letter is below. i wrote it several days ago to let off steam but a continuing conflict with just about any business entity i’ve run across in the last several weeks has led me to seek…er, justice, rightness, service…er, no, it won’t happen, but i have decided it is time for this curmudgeon to take a shot at the well-insulated, uncaring, except for caring about selling as much of their product as possible with no concern for quality or customer service: See, i told you i was a bona fide, pissed off, curmudgeon. i feel a bit like Peter Finch in the 1976 film “Network” because “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” i thought you might get a kick out of my letter:

KitchenAid
ATTN: Correspondence Team
553 Benson Road
Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Re: KitchenAid French Door Bottom Mount Refrigerator, 27CF FRDR KRFF707ESS

Dear KitchenAid Mis-managers;

I am writing this letter because your email communication does not exist, your phone contact puts one into an interminable automated voice tree, which eventually cuts off, and your “live” chat is not live and requires me to input my name, number, last four of my social security number, date of birth, next of kin, genealogy, address, email address, phone number, birth certificate, blood type, insurance, weight, height, criminal record if any (none, unless your continuing lack of service drives me to do something illegal), political and religious affiliation, and then all of the information in every document involved in the inadequacy of your product and repair service before the chat cuts be off because of the time limit on making an entry (okay, a bit of exaggeration, but it was enough for the chat to time out).

Yesterday afternoon, we had a contractor come to attempt repairs on your product (all of the correspondence and data can be provided upon request, and in view of your operation with this product) will be required to be submitted in triplicate at least a dozen times). The contractor repair man consulted with your “master technician” to determine how to correct a problem with frosting in the back of the slide-out bins, which was supposedly corrected about a month ago, not to mention to replace an LED light which had gone out, making it the third such light, advertised in your product info as lasting for the life of the refrigerator – This, by the way, this light problem has required us to pay $300 for the repairs/replacement because our purchase warranty had conveniently run out several months before the problems emerged (imagine that. And to my consternation, one cannot just replace a light bulb in one’s refrigerator.

We are waiting, with bated  breath, so to speak, for the maintenance contractor to provide a date of return to see if the latest icing fix worked and correct (ha, ha) the latest LED light problem. However, with the frequency of the problems now established, I believe we will continue to have contractors out so frequently, we will become so familiar we might invite him or her to dinner.

I am not writing you about my refrigerator or your dismal record of customer service. We bought a refrigerator in 1983. It operated with no problems (including a cross-country transportation) until we bought a newer model and moved the older one into our garage. When we “upgraded” (I am now convinced it was “downgrading” to a new non-KitchenAid refrigerator approximately five years ago, it was a disaster in just over two years (oh my, just past the warranty; can you imagine?). So we bought KitchenAid because we trusted your quality. That obviously was a mistake. Even though it cost $1600 more than the disaster, it is almost as bad. Even worse, it seems you are incapable of fixing it, or even communicating about our problems. I might add the replaced refrigerator we moved to the garage, getting rid of the 1983 model because of capacity difference (it was still working) is also working fine. Neither of those older refrigerators required maintenance other than my replacing bulbs.

The ongoing effort to get your refrigerator to work may be successful, but I don’t plan to purchase another KitchenAid product, and I will strongly warn any of my friends and acquaintances of the miserable response KitchenAid has made to correct the problem.

In keeping with your inability to communicate with your customers or provide even inadequate customer service, I do not expect a reply.

I just thought you should know what a money digging, piece of shame (and I cleaned that up four times) your company image has become for me.

Very sincerely and not very happy,

James Rye Jewell, Jr.