James M. Redwine

Scotland

Hail From Hell

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Peg and I traveled to Scotland in 2017. We did not rent a car then because the British Isles have age restrictions on driving. After having to drive on the wrong side of the road in Ireland in 2013, we accepted the wisdom of those regulations. Then after surviving the Oklahoma thunderstorm on the highway last night in the dark, I suggest all driving everywhere should be reserved for no one under 30 or over 40. Only quick and 20-20 drivers should be on the roads. Author’s note: we weren’t the only ones who should not have been blindly swaying from lane-to-lane last night. There must have been thousands of too young and reckless and too old and feckless operators of potential death machines dodging hail and guessing where the road should be.

The Redwines in Scotland

It reminded us of our Scotland trip to the Isle of Skye. We stayed in the small town of Broadford and one day took a shuttle to the even smaller town of Portree. When we slowly and carefully got off the bus, we saw a sign that said, “Caution, elderly people crossing”. We were amused and even took a selfie; of course, we were almost 10 years younger then.

One of us got hearing aids a couple of years ago but they are more utility as earrings than listening devices. One of us was too vain to admit to any hearing difficulty but the uselessness of the set we bought justified the age-denial.

Picture by Tony Ricketts

The reason we were on the road back from Indiana was our children had thrown an 80th birthday party for Peg and a 75th party for her brother. It was great and enjoyable, especially because all we had to do was get there and back; we did, but barely. Peg rode in the back seat so she could lie down while I drove. Normally, Peg navigates as I would have had Christopher Columbus in Greenland. If I can see the Big Dipper, I can guess which way is north.

Usually, we do not encounter monsoons and Peg can shout directions to me with little damage being done. Alas, as they said about elderly Aunt Edith in the movie Christmas Vacation, I couldn’t have heard a ‘dynamite truck exploding in a nitroglycerin factory” during the hail last night, so her increasingly panicked screams to “Watch Out!”, fell on truly deaf ears.

Well, we got back to the ranch about 10:00 pm and hurried into the cabin as we yelled at one another. Some of the conversation I did hear went something like this:

Peg: “Jim, get in here before the lightning strikes again.”
I heard, “Where did you pack the medicines?”

Jim: “Peg, you’re all wet, do you need a blanket?”
Peg heard: “Peg, don’t be such a wet blanket.”

Peg: “Put the dirty clothes in the washer.”
I heard: “Jim, it’s time you did the washing for a change.”

This morning the sun is out, the rain and hail are gone and Peg and I are trying to recover. As we live on the prairie, we have deer, armadillos, etc., and wild turkeys that often appear in our yard. In an attempt to make amends to Peg for shouting back to her when she had shouted at me that my driving was going to get us killed, I tried to tell Peg we had some turkeys pecking in front of the veranda.

Jim: “Peg, come look at the preening tom!”
Peg heard: “Peg, where’s my toothbrush?”

Peg: “Jim, you need to get a photo of those turkeys.”
I heard: “Jim, quit being such a turkey.”

Regardless, all-in-all it was a wonderful celebration and another exciting adventure. However, it is a good thing that we are not likely to be attending another 80th birthday party.

 

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A Wee Philosophy

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Peg & Jim Redwine at the Scotland Border, 2017

Robert Burns (1759-1796), Scotland’s best-known poet and farmer, was ploughing his field one day when he upended a mouse’s winter nest. The poem Burns wrote in the original Scots language, “To A Mouse”, is as difficult to decipher as Peg and I found trying to comprehend conversations when we visited Scotland. Therefore, I will cite the English version that in part says to the “Little, sleek, cowering timorous beast”:

“I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
And justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes you startle,
At me, your poor earth-born companion and fellow mortal?
….
But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes of Mice and Men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain .…”

Then Burns turns his thoughts inward towards his own fate:

“Still you are blessed compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But Oh? I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see, I guess and fear.”

In other words, the mouse may have lost his present home, but it is not burdened with regrets from the past or dread of the future. Shelter alone is the mouse’s concern, but Burns is chained to past misfortunes and the possibilities of future disasters, much as each of us humans are. The mouse’s loss of a temporary home pales in comparison to mankind’s sentient reality.

Gentle Reader, you may wonder what these two conflicting perspectives have to do with anything. Of course, you may not even take note. However, to me the dilemma between the Wee Beastie’s loss of a nest and Burns’ acknowledgement that “ignorance may be bliss” came clearly into my mind when Peg said, “Jim, I smell a dead mouse in the kitchen”. Naturally, the onus was upon me to answer for the mouse’s demise and alter any more future consequences. I am married; I know the drill.

My first response was my fallback position for all domestic quandaries, I ignored it. Unfortunately, Peg was not willing to let nature deal with nature so waiting until the smell was gone was not feasible. Then I searched for a mouse corpse in the usual places, such as under the kitchen sink or near the pantry, nothing. Next, I checked around the outside of our log cabin to see if there was an odiferous source in Peg’s dried flowers, nope.

All easy solutions failed me. The dreaded, “Jim, someone (me) needs to crawl under the house to see if some animal (we have lots of them) died there and is rotting away”. Oh, the glories of flashlights, facemasks, knee pads and possible confrontations with Big Foot or perhaps an upset skunk. I donned my gear and armed myself with a large trash bag and a short-handled shovel.

After about an hour of banging my head and digging up suspect piles of damp dirt I declared a truce with Ma Nature and told Peg I thought the smell was well on its way to dissipation so we should just hang on awhile. You might already know how that resolution was received.

Sláinte

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Isle of Skye, Scotland 2017

Not long ago Peg and I visited the Isle of Skye in Scotland. We took a bus ride to the small town of Portree and chuckled when we were let off near an intersection with a sign that said, “Caution, Elderly People Crossing”. The sign had a drawing of a bent at the waist old woman holding onto an even more acutely bent old man leaning on a cane. It looked strangely familiar.

Portree is the capital of the Isle of Skye. It has a little more than 2,000 residents, most of whom pretend to speak English, but who really communicate among themselves in Scottish Gaelic. Alcohol is available as long as you do not order “Scotch”. The Scotch drink is “whiskey”. The locals are reservedly polite but do not hide their bemusement at American tourists, especially if the tourists resemble the Elderly Crossing signs.

Just as many other societies, the Scotch have an arcane yang and yin approach to regulating the use and abuse of alcohol. At our hotel the tiny bar was intimate and comforting. Dark walls and heavy wooden furniture were accented by the lone barkeep who was obviously accustomed to explaining the local customs to hapless American tourists. He was of ruddy, bewhiskered visage and a roguishly engaging attitude. He was reminiscent of the 19th century immigrants who brought their Viking-like culture with them to America. Peg and I were his only customers that bleary afternoon after our bus trip. He put on his best Scottish brogue to disguise the true meaning of his responses to my haltingly timid order for a double shot of Bailey’s as though I were addressing Cerberus guarding the Bar. He scoffed, rolled his eyes and his tongue then condescendingly informed me it was illegal to buy a double for one person. Then, with a twinkle he said, “Now, should you wish to buy a single for your wife and a separate single for yourself, that will work”. So, even though I had already ordered a “Scotch” for myself and received a primer on it being properly called a “whiskey”, I ordered as instructed.

This experience reminded me of my days as an underage American trying to procure 3.2% beer from a drive-through beer joint. It always seemed to me that the only thing the Volstead Act accomplished was to sharpen the imaginations of thirsty Americans and, according to my family’s lore, to keep my Uncle Henry’s moonshine still in business. It looked to me like Scotland had approached alcohol prohibition and regulation in a similar fashion.

Regardless, Peg did get to drown her ennui about “Elderly People”; the two Baileys did the trick. However, we both have remained acutely aware of how our strides might appear; we strive to walk straighter and more briskly, and, of course, without a cane.

Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland 2017