Rosie the Cockateil:

Rosie joined our household several years ago. Previous owners did not pay much attention to her and we got here through a friend. The morning I asked Terry if we wanted a bird I hardly had the question our of my mouth and Terry almost shouted we'll take her.

Rosie had a problem beak. The upper beak extended over the bottom beak which is not natural. In the end I believe it is what caused Rosie's demise. She could no longer feed herself and that ended her life.

The important thing is Rosie's life. She had a large cage. We left the door open when we were here and she was free to move about as she wished. She did not fly well, the previous owners had clipped both flight feathers and tail feathers. Eventually they grew out, but she never did succeed at flying. Each attempt was iffy. Sometimes she landed, sometimes she crashed, but her flights were most often an adventure because you didn't know where she would end up.

She was a very standoffish bird. Rosie was not accustomed to being handled, therefore didn't tolerate our handling her very much. From time to time she would perch on our shoulder or sit on a hand, but petting her was out of the question.

Still we grew to love her and took her into our family. We cared for her, she got a big cage, good food and we spend time talking to her and loving her as much as she would allow.

The last few days of her life she became a lover. She flew to us, she nestled, curled in Terry's hand to sleep. She tried to eat, desperately. In the end I think she gave in and just wanted to be held. Last night she sat on Terry's lap, curled in her hand, snuggled and wanted to sit on our dog Cilia. (I'm having a hard time writing this section) She would get on your shoulder, lean her head against your neck and go to sleep.

This morning when Terry uncovered the cage she was sitting in the bottom with her head tucked under her wing. That was unusual for she never slept on the bottom of her cage but always on a perch or the plastic tray nest she had adopted. She never moved again. About 9:30 Terry looked in the cage and said Rosie is lying down, I think she is dead. I picked her up, she was gone.

My mind is filled with all kinds of poignant images of her last days. Was she pleading for help, was she saying good bye? I don't know but right now I am greatly disturbed by the thought, should we have taken her to a vet? It is too late now.

Enough of the morbidity. I never thought I would like a bird. My daughter Jenny had one and I had a hard time with its noise. Rosie's behavior was different. She would run across the bottom of her cage at night telling you that she wanted to go to bed. If I approached her cage and told her to get up there she would climb to a perch and wait until I covered the cage. She would be quiet all night long, except for one night when Al the cat sat by her cage. I grew to love her and find myself weeping over a bird.

She responded vigorously to the alarm calls of Blue Jays. That was a little annoying at times, now I wish she would call out again. Terry has her cage covered until she can work up the nerve to clean it. I sit here wishing she would peep.

I buried her alongside my first Golden Retriever Captain. They were both good pets and maybe in death they will be good to one another. I know this about Captain, he will take good care of her.

Well, Rosie the Cockateil we shall miss you. You really had a good impact on our lives. I wish we had done more for you, but you were loved.

Sport Fishing On Lake Superior: A Kids Memory

A family friend had a small cabin cruiser that was also used as a sport fishing boat. I do not remember their names. I was perhaps 8 years old at the time. The volunteered to take me out fishing one summer day on Lake Superior. Downriggers had not been invented yet and the technique for the old time sport fishermen were to use out riggers. These were long poles that when laid out horizontally reach out from the boat some 20 to 25 feet. You took your line with a silver spoon lure and place the lure in the water and let out about 50 feet of line. Then a beer bottle weight was attached to the line. A beer bottle weight was an old beer bottle was filled with lead and a screw eye was allowed to set in the molten lead. When the lead cooled you broke the glass and had a heavy lead with in the shape of a beer bottle.

So you clipped the beer bottle weight to the line about 50 feet up from the lure then let the line play out from the reel. Now the fishing reel was one of those gigantic deep sea type you see in the fishing films. Sometimes as much as 500 feet was let out.

Releasing the outrigger pole you swung it so it became parallel to the boat and clipped your line to a snap at the end of the pole. Now when the pole was set perpendicular to the boat your linewas in effect about 25 feet away from the boat and the lure then tended to be to the side of the boat instead of directly behind.

Now, sit and wait. When one of those huge Lake Trout struck the lure the outrigger would help set the hook and when the fish fought the pole it would snap the line out of the clip on the outrigger and you then fought the fish mano-e-mano back to the boat.

This means you had to reel in 500 feet of line that had a fish on it, a bottle weight that probably weighed six or seven pounds, the weight of the steel core line and the pressure of the water on the whole mess. Whew!

After trolling around much of the afternoon and allowing me to have the thrill of steering the boat it came time to head for home. So I took up the line after the captain had released the line from the outriggers. As I brought one line it became very apparent that the weight was quite a bit heavier than the other rod I had brought in a few minutes earlier. Sure enough there was a Lake Trout on the line. One that weighed perhaps 4 pounds. Guess what, the bottle weight out weighed the fish. He wasn't big enough to trip the release on the outrigger so we dragged him around until he was dead. Some sport!

I took him home and my Mother made a wonderful broiled Lake Trout dinner. However I was scarred. The whole experience just seemed a little unfair. The excitement of the catch just didn't feel the same as even catching the Jumbo Lake Superior Perch I caught down at the Grand Island landing.

A Little Humor From the Past

This should be kind of inclusive of humorous events that come to mind from our family history. Recently a few short memories have been popping up so I thought I get them down, just in case someone else in the family has my strange, earthy sense of humor.

When I was perhaps 10 or 11 years old I went on a smelt dipping excursion with someone. I don't remember who now. We were successful and I was given a bucket about half filled with smelt to bring home. We lived at 820 West Superior St. in Munising, MI. Being young, tired from the excitement and it was after dark I was in no mood to clean the fish. Mom & Dad were out, so with no other options I ran cold water into the bathtub and dumped the fish in. I reasoned that they would certainly last till morning and perhaps Mom would help me clean them.

Morning came, and along with it came a squeal of concern from my Mother. She called me into the bathroom and I discovered all of the smelt, some 50 or 60 floating belly up in the water. That wasn't too bad. What was really bad is in their last desperate act of procreation they spawned in the bathtub. Fish eggs have a natural glue to adhere to rocks on the stream bed so the fish can come to term, ingest the yolk sac in the egg and then swim on their way. The texture of the bathtub was that of coarse sand paper. It took me much of the day and the better part of a Ajax powder can to get the eggs off the tub. Needless to say, my Mother had to suffer the indignity of bathing in a fishes spawn bed.

Another time:

We had company in the small apartment at 820 W. Superior. My mother was sitting on a couch in the living room participating in the conversation. She became very engrossed in the conversation and realized she had to go to the bathroom. I was sitting on the floor listening to the adult talk, enjoying being part of the scene. My mother left, went into the bathroom, came out and resumed her place on the couch. In a few minutes, I happened to look up and she was "jiggling." My mother was a heavy woman and jiggled when she laughed. Only once or twice did I ever hear her cut loose, most of the time she seemed to snicker and jiggle. Well here she was jiggling, so tickled that she could not talk for a period of time. Finally she managed to say, she had to go to the bathroom, but was so engrossed in the conversation that she had gotten up, gone into the bathroom, sat on the commode, flushed, got up wash her hands, but had forgotten the most important part. She forgot to go potty.

Another time:

My mother was a heavy woman. She wore a girdle. One morning I heard my Dad loudly proclaim that he had gone to bed the night before with his wife, but had awakened next to a horse. After all, there was a horse collar in there. Whereupon he proceeded to march around the living room with my Mother's rolled down girdle around his neck, somewhat resembling a horse collar. We all laughed, but Mom got after the old man for embarrassing her like that.

Another time:

I was in my bedroom in our apartment at 820 W. Superior St. My parents were home and it was just a day where everyone was kind of doing their own thing. I don't recall what I was doing, however my revere was broken by three distinct sounds kind of like a person clapping their hand loudly three times. Very distinct noise. I came out into the living room to see what the hell had happened. There stood my Mother, "jiggling" again. She was really tickled because she was standing and had her legs crossed to stop from having an accident. Well, here I am asking what was that, what made that noise? I do not remember how the story came out, but the fact is my Mother was a very heavy woman who wore a girdle. Well, in the privacy of her home she was encountering a gas problem and had to pass some gas, or "break wind." When she did, apparently the girdle was under a lot of stress and held the cheeks of her behind so tightly that instead of her breaking wind in a normal fashion it resulted in three separate and distinct explosions sounding a lot like someone clapping their hand. My poor Mother.

Just some examples of life at the Floria's in the mid-50's.

Recent events stir old memories

My Uncle Hollis passed away this last February. He was the last of that generation of family members for the Floria/Dean clan. The remaining family members are the 1st Cousins. To honor my Aunt Ann and Uncle Hollis a memorial was held in Traverse City on July 12, 2008. In addition to honoring the passing of Ann & Hollis the memorial was extended to cover all of the family members associated with the Dean's and seeing my Mother was the oldest of the Dean children I was invited to attend. My two sisters Carol and Phyllis were unable to attend.

Everyone looked the same, just older. The last time this group had gotten together was at my Cousin Deanne's home near Fountain, MI in 1982. It had been 26 years since I'd seen several of my cousins.

The memories were still alive and active. Living in Munising, MI I was not as close to the group in Traverse City so I did not see them very often. However, they were up in Munising numerous times, and I did visit Traverse City several times and have some memories of those visits.

My Cousin Art is about my age. I recall one summer I stayed with my Aunt Gertrude and Uncle Art for a week when they had a home on the shores of Grand Traverse Bay. Uncle Art had a small canal dredged into his property so he could keep a small rowboat accessible without having the try to maintain a dock. The summer I spent a week there Cousin Art and I made good use of that little boat.

Two activities stick in my mind, almost literally. The first was Art and I would row out from shore until we were in 10 feet of water or so and toss golf balls overboard. We would dive down to the bottom to retrieve them. This was no easy task as the bottom consisted of huge boulders that made the bottom rough and uneven. Sometimes the golf balls would get into cracks and crevices that made retrieval difficult. Nonetheless, as young adventurers we were successful most of the time.

The second memory prompted the statement about sticking in my mind. Art had a bow and arrow set for target practice. We took that bow and arrow set out with us on several occasions and would shoot the arrow into the air trying to get it to land as close to the boat as possible. The arrow traveled in almost slow motion. How high it went is anybody's guess, but given the bow was an old fashioned long bow and not too high in poundage the arrow probably went 70 to 80 feet in the air. You could follow the arrow in its trajectory. It would slow down, hit the apex of its flight and then turn over and start back to earth, or in this case water. Sometimes we got the arrow so close that when it went into the water and popped back up you could grab it out of the air. So we spent many an hour shooting that arrow into the air, never dreaming it might come back down in the boat.

Sure enough on one occasion one of us shot the arrow and we watched its flight soar high against the aqua blue Michigan sky. Slowly the arrow succumbed to gravity, slowed to a stop, started to fall backward, the flocking caught the wind and turn the arrow over so the blunt target point was now aimed in the down position. On the arrow came accelerating as the gravity that had slowed its upward flight now brought the arrow back to our spot. OUR SPOT! Holy Shit! Art was at one end of the boat and I at the other, as it became apparent the arrow was heading for us and we were ground zero we bailed. My head came back up out of the water in time to hear the arrow hit in the bottom of the aluminum boat with a resounding THUNK! It did dimple the bottom, thank God it didn't punch a hole in the boat, we would've been in deep trouble.

Needless to say the bow and arrow went back to shore and was used to shoot into a bale of hay. We resumed our ball retrieval exercise and kept our mouths shut. Art does not remember that incident, but I have recalled it several times. It is a good example how two kids can take a routine play exercise and turn it into an adventure. I will always treasure that memory.

A Remarkable Meeting

Last year I Goggled the name Floria. Through some digging and a letter I talked with a Kevin Floria on the phone. We apparently have some common ancestry. This summer I made arrangements to meet with he and his family in a little UP community called Engadine. I know from past discussions with my father that he had an Uncle Art Floria living in Engadine, but I never met the man. It turns out, that Art had a brother Charles and these men would've been brothers to my grandfather Burt Floria. Charles had a son Charles who married a woman named Arlene and she is the mother of Kevin Floria.

Saturday, July 5, 2008 I drove to Engadine and met Kevin and his brother Rick Floria, and the mother Arlene. I also met Kevin's wife, Janice and Rick's wife Barbera. We gathered around the dining room table in the family vacation home in Engadine located just across the street from Millecoquins Lake just east of Engadine.

We did trace our ancestry back to a common thread named Joe Flory. It seems old Joe was a bit of a rounder. He had a family in Ohio, probably near Toledo, and abandoned that family and moved to Mecosta County, MI. Joe married a lady named Eva Bancroft and had eight children with her. These children include Burt, my grandfather, Art the Uncle in Engadine and Charles, grandfather to Kevin and Rick. Upon moving from Ohio to Michigan Joe Flory changed his name to Floria. Joe Floria eventually left his family in Michigan and moved to Oregon where he apparently started another family. Joe died, or committed suicide on a train heading east to visit. Where he his buried is not known.

Kevin and Rick have two other brothers and a sister. Kevin and Rick live in the Lansing area, one brother lives in Chicago and another in Cheboygan, MI. They love the outdoors, hunt deer, fish and hunt ducks. They were a fun group to meet and we were together for perhaps two hours. Nice folks and a chance meeting that was very enjoyable.