Pleasantly Haunted

My Uncle Herb and Aunt Helen migrated north to Maine from Moorestown, New Jersey around 1957 or '58.  They were not really of retirement age. Both of them had good jobs. Uncle Herb was a Postman. Aunt Helen was head dietician at a fancy girl's school outside of Philly. Why they left the quiet shaded neighborhood in Moorestown was never revealed to me, but over the years I put some pieces together to come up with something I think was close to the truth.

Uncle Herb never recuperated from the PTSD he picked up as an island hopping Marine in WW ll. Neither my aunt nor Uncle Herb would talk about his time in the Pacific. Neither would my parents discuss it; at least not much. Over the years I did get my aunt to open up some, my parents to open up some.

My father explained it this way:

 A naive young man goes into the Marines; is trained to kill; then he kills for several years and the man who  comes home will never be the same man who went in. Some men recover, others don't. It's the way of war. Regardless, none of them come home unchanged. Uncle Herb never fully recovered. 

Moving to Maine may have been an attempt to help him cope with Life again. Whatever the reasons were, I will always be grateful they did move to Maine. I might not have settled here to raise a family if they hadn't. 

My visits to Maine as a child embedded a deep love for this part of the country. I was captivated by all the Nature that surrounded me. My hikes with my uncle still stand out as some of the most memorable moments of my young life. My interest in birds started then.

The bird above was the first animal I could identify that my dad could not. I first saw one on a Christmas visit to Maine at age ten I guess. A few years later, one landed on the feeder at our home in Oxon Hill, Maryland. My dad did not recognize it and just as he reached for the dog eared copy of "Birds of America", I blurted out, "Tufted Titmouse", and then proceeded to dance in celebration because I knew something Dad didn't. I later impressed Aunt Helen when I was tending her feeder some 25 years later, mentioning there were two Tufted Titimice on a branch patiently waiting for me to finish refillingl the feeder. 

Bottom line, whenever I see a Tufted Titmouse, my past comes back to pleasantly haunt me.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ............................

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I did not hesitate. I did not lose myself trying to pick a song for today's post. Only one tune would do. Here is 1977's Weather Report number, "Birdland". An excellent tune.