Saturday

It's 42 degrees and clear. It was light at 5:30, and the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker was letting everyone know that it was time to get up! Others may rely on roosters, but we in Whiskey Hollow have an excellent substitute.

The forecasts for both today and Mother's Day are fine!

*******

Yesterday was one of those perfect Spring days ...... up to a point:

I needed to stay at home and wait for a business-type telephone call, but it was pleasant. I decided that it was time to "switch seasons," packing up PolarFleece pullovers and getting out summer gear. My daughter Allison called to make Mother's Day plans; Leon Howe came with lawnmower and trimmer and made the yard look (and smell) especially nice. Daffodils, tulips, pulmonaria and Forget-me-nots bloom, here and there, and a great variety of birds flit between trees and shrubs. Nice.

*******

The phone call finally came and then I went up town:

a crew from North Country Landscapers was tending a low hedge atop the retaining wall in front of Ms. Hill's home on Sanger Avenue .......

...... and a bed of tulips gleamed on White Street where, on February 18th, the scene had been quite different.

My cousin Dr. Elizabeth Stacy, who teaches at the University of Hawaii in Hilo, sent me a bright coral-colored vanda orchid.

An E-mail from Don Brown at the high school read:

"I know the owner of the "Yankee" Thunderbird. His name is Don Brown and he lives on White Street. Don Brown is a huge Yankee fan and he also has a striking resemblance to Mickey Mantle. Don did the car as a tribute to Mickey and uses the car, his likeness, and his stories to help promote the Mickey Mantle Organ Donor Foundation. I am sure that the owner was not offended about the mistake. I will personally let him know that his car was in the blog....he's my dad. "

Thanks, Don!

******

I had a few more E-mails and phone calls from people saying that they would be coming to Dick's "Damned Fine Party" on June 10th, but then came the call that that erased all of the pleasant Springtime images of the day:

Jean Davis' voice was shaking. "I have terrible news. Rick Gaiser died of a heart attack, this afternoon."

*********

This was not possible .... but, of course, it was.

All I could think of was Rick, a young lad, pulling a wagon to the office of The Waterville Times to show Editor Doug Sexton a huge fossil he'd found; Rick the night the Candee Block burned - in 1982 - a fireman whose hands were nearly frozen, accepting a pair of gloves from Jim Morgan but saying he couldn't stay in the store to get warm . "I've got to go back!" And Rick, calming and soothing an accident victim while they waited for the ambulance.

And then I thought of his family -
and how terribly sorry I felt for all of them,

and how much I wanted to tell Dick, who liked Rick so much -
but perhaps he already knew.

*****

Note. I debated, a long time, whether or not to include the news of Rick Gaiser's death in this post. There was no notice of it in this morning's Observer-Dispatch, but I know from the number of subsequent E-mails and phone calls that I received last evening that the news is widespread, and it IS, after all, part of "Life in a Small Village in Upstate New York." PsB