There is an air of sobriety and sadness at this blog today as the news of my Father In Law’s passing takes deeper hold. Albert (or “Al”, of course, as he was known to his many friends) Cuadros died peacefully in the hospital at the age of 87 after a long bout with heart problems. Among the many things one could say about my relationship with Al is that I actually knew him rather well. This happens with persons to whom the notion of ‘complexity’ matters not. Nor is this to say Al Cuadros was not a man of penetrating intelligence, because that is also hardly the case.

Al believed in a world not paralyzed by analysis. He believed the simplest pleasures may very well have been the best. The love of his beautiful wife, Rosina and the adoration of his children were the penultimate measures of the range of what delighted him most. I say this because I know it to be true. Al considered all the world’s ideas deeply. He probed and analyzed and voted and argued, he advocated in his Union and argued inside and outside that. And, as a result, Al Cuadros found his meaning in life surrounded by living family and friends. I am utterly convinced he believed there was no better world, in this life or the next.

He also loved telling stories about his upbringing in Brooklyn. His father, a forceful, opinionated Colombian and his Mother, a beautiful lady of Mexican descent, deposited Al, kicking and screaming in the midst of the hugest American city of them all. His stickball experiences, his view of the Mob, the neighborhood and his experiences in high school and even earlier became a part of my own folklore as he rambled on about the forces which formed his personality. He could make Broadway live and in color in these retellings and I guess he found an exceptional listener in me, because I mentally recorded a billion tales of his childhood. I sometimes felt so privileged to listen in. And, sure, sometimes I got tired of that crap. But he always had some sort of lesson involved in his tales, I swear. They nearly always were related to embellish a complex point about life itself. The Bible of Al, therefore, became a satisfying secret stash of humanity, replete with lessons and containing elements of human emotional pain.

Al also flew during WW2 amid the atmospheric shrapnel and ultimate vulnerability of those heroic plane riders. His love affair with aircraft became his trade, working on something he loved for long years and retiring from basically the same job he began with following the war.

Al was a Union man, through and through. He honored the working man like few have the temerity to do these days. I am convinced my dearest impact on Al was to witness me working on their landscape in Incline Village for the 10-12 hours a day I put in up there. When I finished, in the years following, Al would proudly display his own efforts at the landscape – digging and prying boulders out of the Earth like a Virtual World’s Largest Shovel – and then proudly showing me his “terra-forming” – his expanding land mass in his back yard, made larger by dint of one wheelbarrow and one boulder at a time wrenched out of the surrounding Earth in a miracle of pure human labor. He would grab me within minutes of arriving there to give me the tour of our mutual efforts. I felt honored and shocked at first until I realized he considered us partners. That was when I concluded Al Cuadros was one extremely uncompromising and cool guy. He valued work and he valued what it rendered.

I am selfishly pointing out my own relationship with him because his impact on his children was so deep I can barely touch it. In fact, I feel humble in the face of such a total unconditional love, coming from a creature to whom the measure of a life is measured in the love he leaves behind.

I can think of absolutely no lesson more profound than this. Al Cuadros was a Giant to me, for reasons I can only hope to mirror in my own life. No one adult has more affirmed my own biases about why we continue on than Albert. He is one of those people who make life worth living. There is no higher praise.

I will really, really miss this great guy.

The over-sized racer on the inside/right, above, is my good friend and former business partner, Bill Hermant. The camera is not deceiving anyone – yes, he’s is that much bigger! This particular shot, as I recall, comes from a race in Denver, Colorado where he continued a pretty good year in 2007 with a 7th place finish in the World. And just ignore the couple hundred cleats on those tires, too. Bill was an interesting entrant in those races for a number of reasons – one, he was over 50, racing in a sport with a slew of 20 something’s and, two, because he is 6′ 3″ and around 210 pounds, hardly the predictable size either in a sport where the average size and weight is usually around 5′ 9″, 155.

That’s my Reno friend and ex-business partner, Bill Hermant, who is among the 5 Most Interesting people I have ever met in my life. This rough-and-ready guy meets every criterion as a “Man’s Man”, yet to watch him with his lovely grandchildren, you see a heart as big as the sky itself. He has the love of his very devoted wife, LaDonna, of his children, Kim and Bill, Junior, and of his employees. He also scores lots more love when he sponsors or else runs the softball teams I had played on for over a decade.

Most importantly, when the time comes, if necessary, this guy goes to war for you. We’re talking always. Bill is a man of intense loyalties. He has been ‘let down’ by his friends more than once, but in the Dictionary, when you look up the term “Loyalty”, then Bill Hermant’s mug shot should be right there.

Here is a shrunken ‘screengrab’ shot of what Bill actually owns:

(click on the image and it will take you to the website itself for ‘Reno Cycles & Gear’)

Bill began selling motorcycle parts for a living while living in Hayward, California. Bill grew up across the bay, in San Fransisco. Living in South San Fransisco, where the streets can be just a bit “mean”, Bill used to be a regular at Giants games in Candlestick Park. In fact, maybe one of the funniest things he ever told me was that he thought every kid went to hundreds of major league baseball games as a kid.    He was literally shocked when he heard that wasn’t always the case. But his upbringing grounded him and made him a very focused business person later in life – a focus he has always maintained to this very moment in time.

Anyway, he moved to Reno in about ’95 or so, setting up his ‘Reno Cycles & Gear’ brand and store. Here’s where he moved and also why he decided to ask about maybe partnering up in landscaping. He needed help, lol.

(click all images to enlarge)

Bill had developed a huge love for the game of baseball, then “mutatis mutandi”, softball. It was here – adult, slow pitch softball – where we met and subsequently stayed on teams together, playing literally hundreds of games. We honestly appreciated each other for a mutual competitive fire. As I got to know him better, I began to realize what a great and doting Grandad he was.

Then, incidentally,  when I found myself out of work one Autumn……..we’re talking at the worst possible time for a landscaper to be out of work in Northern Nevada,……. Bill saw my need – (and he showed me his personal residential need, lol) – and we developed a game plan to make a run at business together. Bill sprung for the purchase of a Bobcat – and a killer, heavy duty one at that which we bought through our third baseman, Brent Adams, (another oft-overlooked benefit of actually playing sports) which was in excellent, though very “broken in” condition. We bought a cheap little truck and we were off to the landscaping races. With the Bobcat, we went a little crazy and then accomplished a few wonders around his home.

We made a small creek and waterfall way out back at his home which Donna was so crazy about she kept her window open at night – in Winter – to be able to hear it. It started humbly enough – man it was dusty back there.

It evolved. Bill’s first comments as we were installing the first plantings were something along the lines of: “You mean I paid $350 for those sticks??”    Hell, it turned out Bill was normal! He didn’t know Jack Squat about landscaping!

The “sticks” worked out just fine, OK, just as our softball team did. He smiled later. We went from this………

To this:

And this:

And this………………. and then it was just the other parts of the bizz and sports we spoke of. At home, life was good.

Bill became – or always was – crazy about participating in sports in general. This is a key element here. He didn’t spend his time watching – this is a guy who wants to be in things, deeply. He was never the most gifted athlete, but Bill found ways to make himself valuable  in softball. He used strength, great reflexes and plain competitive spirit to lead every team he played on to just a little higher plane. We could lose games and he would often get morose, lol, while the rest of us were on our way to grab beer and yuk it up. Naturally, we pulled him hard enough in a bunch of cases to make sure he joined. No one wanted Bill frowning. But also, no one missed his reaction, either. His is the sort of influence you can’t buy.

Racing

Bill loves to race. He has become every bit the motor head but his competitive spirit is far more in tune with racing things. Bill loves speed, mechanical crap and loves to race. He raced often in Auburn, California in car races, on their dirt track. He still does. More importantly, however, what Bill ended up happening onto was the bizarre, crazy and hyper-competitive Ice Racing field, which he jumped into in the mid-90′s and which this 50-something meat eater even still enjoys.

He is quite highly-regarded in Europe, where this sport was actually invented to give the amazingly huge number of motorcycle racing fans something to watch during Winters in the off season. What happened instead was the bloom of yet another wildly popular racing niche which became an organization and category all its own. He once showed me an interview he made with an English magazine, where he spoke about how invigorating it was to race in front of relatively huge crowds of Europeans who, he said “Already know who I am.”  Hell, he had fans, 6,000 miles from home!

The “Downside”

Naturally, among other things aside from international Notoriety, what became of all this was an incredibly long and varied litany of injuries. He is also one of the the hardest-headed humans in history too. Just ask Donna!

Once, he and Donna flew to Washington, DC because the airport in North Carolina had been ‘snowed out’. It was during a real mega storm, dropping 3 feet of snow on the Eastern Seaboard. He had a certain number of hours to make Greensboro in time to race so they rented a car and drove, he and LaDonna. It sounded very thrilling as they did indeed make it on time – but just. By the time he got out of the car, it was almost race time.

On his first lap, someone takes him out and he crashes face first into the hockey boards (all indoor ice racing events are in hockey rinks). He breaks his nose and really hurt his shoulder, as I recall. (I believe the legs were another year     )

Anyway, what he remembers is looking up, dazed, and some woman pointing at him and screaming “Oh my God! Look at his face!!” Knowing Bill, he had blood spattered all over himself. Another ghoulish portrait in Red! 

The world can be cruel. Well, he made all the other races that day, broken stuff and all and then flew home for his patch-up. After all, there was softball within a couple weeks. No one could picture that scenario – LaDonna, his wife was apoplectic about his even thinking about practicing in his various casts (a yearly lament, lol) -  but he proved up to the task! And we probably won our softball championship as per usual. There were quite a few.

I go on about all the personal stuff because he is just easy to talk about. But there’s more to him.

Bill has historically given oodles of time and energy to Reno Special Olympics. He has a depth of concern over infant retardation which might just be his finest quality. And let me include his lovely wife here as well. He can always be counted on to donate time and green energy to this cause, as well as many others.

His social standing in the community of Reno is large and respected. His premises host the yearly Christmas Ride Rally For Tots, an event where bikers gather presents for disadvantaged youth. His shop also hosts a very cool Reno-specific festival called Street Vibrations, which is a motorcycle equivalent of their famous Hot August Nights. With the local Harley Davidson dealership, Bill and his Reno Cycles & Gear provides a place for partying and collecting.

Here, Bill is seen with Arlen Ness, famous motorcycle constructor and developer, at Street Vibrations in Reno:

(Bill’s the big guy –    )

And here is probably what Arlen arrived in Reno riding (The Victory Vision):

Bill sells more Polaris off road vehicles than any dealer west of the Mississippi. His shop is probably the best shop in Reno. He speaks with clients personally and in depth, not just to sell things, but to ascertain and assess their needs. He advocates spending wisely.

Landscaping Partners

Bill and I oversaw a 5 year run of varied successes. In the end, the economy reduced our chances at success to pretty much zero with the advent of the Economic Crisis and I have to admit to my own personal exhaustion causing the end of our run together. He would never have given up, the truth is. I admit this freely.

Our successes were pretty cool, however. We did tons of great work in all sorts of different ways – using the newest machinery and products and constructing the bulk of projects we see in this blog. Yes, almost everything in here which is Reno-based was done during our partnership. He loved visiting projects, knowing the working guys intimately, signing paychecks, rubbing elbows with clients and simply developing the business. He had far more business acumen than I could ever dream of possessing. And far, far more patience.

It was also very cool talking in the third inning of a game where our opposition was spitting nails in frustration as we paraded to the plate scoring huge runs, when Bill would lean over and ask: “How’s Juan’s back?”

Bil Hermant – extremely good businessman, high achiever, a loyal and fantastic partner and a hell of an interesting man.

Here it is, Mother’s Day, 2012 and I find myself up and at ‘em and ready to go buy a Mother’s Day card locally before she awakes. I will call my ‘other Mothers’ (That sounds just bad, heh heh) as well – My ex, Alice, Mother of our gorgeous child, my sister Diane, maybe by sister-in-law Lisa and I’ve actually been working for my other niece’s Mom, Mary Beth, on remaking her garden into her dream garden – a wonderful chore but rained out this morning.

Anyway, I decided to reissue these posts in honor of my Mother – posts which I actually wrote back in February. So you can see, I am not a latter day Mom-lover ……not a fair weather Mother guy at all……I come by my love and care for those Mom’s who were unfortunate to produce us quite honestly.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you and to all those wonderful women who began life for morons like me.

I could – and may – just as easily write about my father, Fred Snedeker. But Dad passed away in 1983 and my Mother is still around, “fresh off” Father’s passing, still in love with the man after 42 years of marriage and now 27 years after his death. We pass December 22 each year in a bit of prayer and remembrance as it is one of Mother’s worst days. Her devotion to Pop honestly is an awesome characteristic which I can barely even imagine, considering the course of my own uneven married events. But she is most definitely what you see. She has been through so much in general, and she feels so young at heart and so full of life and curiosity at 92 years old, she will forever stand as a guiding light for me and innumerable others who have encountered her.

I returned to Louisville, as I had announced, on September 30, 2 years ago. It was a beautiful Autumn in Louisville that season and Mother and I traveled all over town.

It gave her a chance to walk and talk, exercise and do what she does so well – teach. She reintroduced me to the area and we also discovered much which was all brand new. Yew Dell Gardens, Bernheim Forest, the wonders of Main Street in Louisville including the brand new basketball palace – Cave Hill Cemetery, the glories of Cherokee Park, their old rental apartment on St. James Court where they renovated into magnificence an entire floor of a beautiful historical old home. We were peripatetic after my arrival, getting out all over town.

(She had taught – Accounting Principles –  at various small colleges in Louisville until she was 84. These were full loads, standing all day, after which she would often walk up to 3 miles per day. At 90, she had given up her season tickets to Louisville basketball games – what used to be my Christmas Gift to her every year – although I did accompany her and her great good friend Kathleen Drummond to the opening basketball game in the new arena – Yum! Center – for the Louisville girls against Tennessee.)

Here’s a cool pic of Mom grasping her little Beena Girl at our place in Reno. I’s say she looks rather pleased.

Anyway – this changed a bit after she suffered a couple of falls – while with me both times, sadly enough – and she has found herself just a bit less inclined to get all out and about, certainly not as much as when I first arrived. Her fragility has increased a bit, in short, although to this very day, she just finished 2 weeks on jury duty downtown. So she aint crippled, lol.

If one gets nothing else from reading this strictly personal tale of my own selfish interests, please know I do it because I can – for one thing. For the second “thing” – I admire this lady endlessly. For the third “thing”: even if I did not, I feel we gain from knowing older people. Their versions of history are remarkable and all-too-often silent. In our rush to buy the next new gizmo or catch the fab new TV sitcoms which so often determine our off hours, we overlook the hard yards the generations prior to us had to cross in order to deliver us to our Present. This person endured a period in our history which was at equal turns deadly, depressing and inspiring. When you ponder Mother’s birth year – 1919 – and what she may have encountered as an active, intelligent woman with an independent streak, you will find elements of the evolution of our National Consciousness represented nearly completely. It is supremely humbling to me, finding out about the casual cruelties administered to racial “others”, the poor and dispossessed and to women themselves during her lifetime and how she dealt with that.

Just the same, all I take from it all is currently, in real everyday life today – at worst – is that we were able to relish what we experienced since I have been here. Nor is it as if there’s not some mighty fine events which have taken place within the very walls of where we now live. While we haven’t set activity records, the love pretty much never stops in the persons of visits from her grand daughters and now her great grand daughters from the same gorgeous Meagan. Her other “grands” – my kid Alena, Mike and Lisa’s Beckett and Zoe, the very sunny Hannah, Meagan, Jenny and Aaron – simply exist as parts of a heart more than roomy enough to entertain stories and attention at any given time – on any given day.

It is often hard to relate to young folks what it means to have spoken and loved her Dad and Mom, for example, and hear about what life was like prior to automobiles and electric lighting. It was always amazing listening to her Dad speak of opting for a horse on snowy days to deliver the mail in the flatland and bitter winds of central Illinois during severe Winters.

Speaking of my Grandad and Grandma, they flank everyone here, with my Mom being second from the left, her sister Jody the Bride standing next to Grandad. My older brother and sister are obvious, as is the apprehensive young baby – me – seen in the foreground in the fashionable killer shorts.

But it can be equally instructive listening to Mother relate what the times were like as she grew up a kid in East Central Illinois in the ‘massive’ (insert cynical chuckle) urban metropolis of Humbolt, Illinois – population 350. Our visits to “Granddad and Grandma’s” house always involved pretty much an all day ride and were spaced throughout my entire life as a kid as near routine. We got to make Icons out of various elements of this setting – my brother Mike, for example, has these “often-chthonic” dreams of the huge corn silo’s which existed beside the railroad tracks which also bordered the home there. Inside those silo’s, Mike has encountered a Stephen King-like retinue of events and weirdness which inspire creepy deep psychic exhumations and symbols which that sort of setting completely appropriately provides. Think “Children Of The Corn”.  Also, inasmuch as we moved so often during our childhoods – with our Father being a contractor and upwardly-mobile at that – Grandad and Grandma’s place was of pivotal permanent importance to Mike – and even the rest of us – who went to something like 10 schools in 12 years.

Mother’s beginnings were humble enough – one of two daughters of the local Postal Dude who pretty much knew everyone in the local world, Paul Rogers and his wife Etta. In the end, Paul Rogers – her Dad – ran that route for 47 consecutive years. This placed them in a reasonable spot with permanent incomes as the Depression and the Dust Bowl wore on throughout Mother’s childhood. She was even able to attend college at Eastern Illinois University, where she met my Pop. Their stories are private but her confidences concerning their romance have absolutely warmed my heart like few other events. It is moments such as those where I almost always reflect on how incredibly cool it is to be able to share these splendid times with such an experienced yet loving Mom.

“The Choice” – whether to return to Louisville in person and launch things totally ready to help out –  arrived at one evening out on the porch at Mike’s home during one of our many Sunday dinners in Portland, talking with he and his wife, Lisa. It remains a decision I am more than content with and one which I actually wish more could share. I feel lucky now.

A cool look at the ‘fam’ – brother Mike, sister Diane gabbing at Meagan and Jeff’s wedding while Mom proudly looks on.

Whereas Mother had recently experienced a broken back (lol, true story) at the time of our sibling confab, and seeing as how she had also experienced a few financial setbacks, we sat and contemplated what we could do. The more we explored things, the less satisfying they were. I had recently stopped landscaping full time and had undertaken writing for a living. It was actually working, providing me with an income of at least some stability, even as new as it was to me. I had never really considered myself a writer at all, frankly, but life brings us to some odd crossroads.

I had a small epiphany: Why don’t I go live there a while? I mean, I am mobile now. My market is in the ether.

I broached the subject out loud, looking for holes to punch into the theory, and we decided it was impossible to find many, provided I didn’t mind the trip ‘back in time’ – to Kentucky and my early life. Hell, that one was easy at the time – it was actually exciting. That night we booked my flight, I made the local arrangements, and the rest is history.

But this is current stuff. Mother’s story is more Prehistoric!  (She’ll kill me for that, lol.) If there are no further posts here in the future, look no further than her room for the perp.