I called in the `Redneck Cavalry' to negotiate the `Prius graveyard' and rescue my daughter

This is Portland in a snowstorm. Not pretty.

This was an eventful week in the Sabo house. A lot happened, including Gabe suffering a spiral fracture of his left leg when he tried snowboarding down a snow ramp off our back deck following the dumping of a foot of snow here in Gloucester.

Evie had an exhausting trip out to Oregon by air that began at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday when she left for Richmond. She flew out of Richmond, made it to Newark, N.J., had a brutally long layover and then departed for Portland. Only to have her flight rerouted to Seattle due to heavy snow that socked in PDX. She eventually made it to Portland in the middle of the night but was stranded at the airport.

It's a helpless feeling knowing my daughter is stranded 3,000 miles away after a long night. The roads were nasty, we checked the MAX light rail and it looked like it was running to Clackamas Town Center and we were hoping maybe she could catch a bus to Canby, where Julie's folks live. But the buses weren't running -- everything in Portland was basically shut down amid a snowstorm dropping a foot of white stuff -- and the Tri-Met webpage recommended that after Evie got to Clackamas Town Center she walk the 7.8 remaining miles to Canby. In a blizzard. With her luggage.

Um, no.

I was desperate. I called my good friend in Corvallis, Matt Fields. Back in 2008, in similar conditions in December, Matt had taken me from Corvallis to the airport in Portland with no problem so I could fly back to Gloucester. I wanted to get the lowdown from Matt on how bad it really was in Oregon for this go around. It wasn't good.

Matt described Interstate 5 around Portland quite ominously as a "Prius graveyard." Gulp.

Then he offered to go fetch Evie.

"I've got the Excursion, it's got studs on the tires, I'll throw some chains in the back and head up there," he said. Like it's that easy. Well, it was. For him. Truth be told, it was time to send in the `Redneck Cavalry.'

That would be Matt. He's an Oregonian through and through. Hickory shirts, chainsaws, operates heavy equipment, woodsman, marksman (just ask the deer in western Oregon), farmer, mechanic, you name it. He put the rugged in rugged individual.

He's a solid Christian brother, as solid as they come, a family man and a follower of Christ. He's willing to help out a friend in need and go rescue his daughter in an Oregon blizzard that shut down 2/3 of the state.

Within hours I had a text from Evie saying she was passing through Woodburn on her way to Corvallis. They were southbound on I-5, well clear of the Prius graveyard by then.

I am so thankful for friends like Matt Fields. A true redneck brother. They don't make them any better.

We're Planning for a 2017 Wedding in the Sabo House

New Year's Eve was especially spectacular in the Sabo house this year thanks to a major family event/announcement: Ethan is getting married to the lovely Mandi Smith! Yes, she said yes! We were able to document not only the actual event, but some of the work that went into the "surprise" for Mandi. Ethan popped the question on a York River dock of a nearby residence after securing permission from the generous Sal Leone of Sal's Sicilian Pizza & Restaurant fame. Thank you Leone family!

Ethan lined a section of the dock with Christmas lights and he and Taylor built an "arch" fashioned out of a repurposed door frame fished out of the recesses of the Sabo garage ... an old closet door jamb has never looked so good and never been so useful! Ethan had a ton of help from siblings and yours truly on pulling off his big event. Taylor, especially, was helpful in creating the magical arch and Evie documented it all on camera. Without further ado, here's the pictorial!

Um, at least Ethan and Taylor had plenty of room in the garage to work!

Ethan and Taylor have always been real close brothers. Even when it comes to operating the compound mitre saw.

Professional craftsmen at work!

We know exactly what we're doing! Look at that cut!

Ethan with his wood building game face.

Hey Taylor, it looks like you've got things under control there so I'm just going to check the score of the Alabama-UDub game. 

Yep, go ahead and nail it right there bro. 

Carrying it across the threshold ... just about ready for painting! 

I'll let go and then you let go and we'll see if it stays up!

Whoa Nelli! She's staying upright!

Ethan: "Hey Taylor, you missed a spot."
Taylor: "Bro, the sun is in my eyes!"

The lads got the arch perfected and then Taylor and our friend who's visiting from Oregon, Parker Smith, helped him set it up on the Leone dock and get the lights strung up. MerriGrace got some music playing on the dock, where it was a wee bit breezy and chilly ... but things soon warmed up with the arrival of Ethan and Mandi.

Now that is some happy going on !

The young couple is something to behold but it's hard to take my eyes off that expertly crafted arch!

Awwwww. 

Well done son!

We're all so excited to welcome Mandi into our family sometime in 2017. She's a beautiful young woman inside and out who loves the Lord with all her heart and we're so thrilled for Ethan. The Lord is going to do great things through Ethan and Mandi! We love you!

Witnesses to a Christmas miracle: The Shepherds

This post originally appeared in my 12 Kids and Counting Blog on Dec. 22, 2009


I've been thinking about shepherds lately. We're having a Christmas Eve service -- 5 o'clock Thursday, you're all invited -- to sing some hymns and carols, read out of Luke 2 and I'll share a short message. As I read Luke's account of the birth of Christ, I can't help but wonder about the shepherds who saw the angel of the Lord. I've read accounts that 2,000 years ago shepherds were the pickpockets and thieves of the day. The sorry, no-account drifters who were troublemakers and virtually indentured servants. Things haven't changed much, perhaps. I've enclosed a link at the bottom of this post to help you see where I'm going with this thing.

But let me describe the life of a modern-day sheepherder in the barren Wyoming outback, where you might be in charge of a flock of 1,500 or 2,000 sheep: On call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your home is a 5 x 10 "campito" without running water. Have to go to the bathroom? Here's a shovel. You have no electricity. The searing summer days can hit 100 degrees. On Christmas Day at a sheep camp near Encampment, Wyo., look for a high of 14 degrees, with a low of zero. And snow. Your heat source is a wood stove. It might even work, particularly if you have wood. In addition to no days off, a sheepherder must be able to ride a horse and repair fences. Not to mention guard the flock against predators and poisonous weeds. Not only that, a decent worker should be able to assist in lambing, docking, castrating (Rocky Mountain oysters baby!), dehorning, shearing, vaccinating, drenching and medicating the sheep. Sometimes the work gets a little hairy -- or worse. Wolves are a constant problem in parts of Wyoming. Other places have bigger problems. On Sept. 14 in Sublette County, a sheepherder was attacked by a grizzly bear. Miraculously he lived. The bear left a 7-inch gash in the man's head, two punctures on the left side of his chest, three claw wounds on his gut and a punctured wrist. Oh, here's the kicker. The pay is $650 a month. And all the sagebrush you can see.

Yet these are the guys the angel of the Lord came to tell about the birth of the Messiah, our Savior. Why? Why not the Bethlehem Town Council? Or the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce, or Rotary Club? Surely a group of men existed in metropolitan Bethlehem that were far more qualified to have an audience with an angel of the Lord than a bunch of sketchy shepherds. This is what I love about God. He takes the sorriest, no accountenest knuckleheads and uses them for His glory. Read about their response to the news of the birth of Christ. I'd say they were transformed. Any thoughts on what kind of weight it carried when these guys started spreading the word about what they had heard and seen? No wonder Luke describes it thusly in 2:18: "And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds." (NKJV)

There's a part of me that would like to taste the life of a Wyoming sheepherder. What's it really like out there? How bad is it? Could I endure it for more than a few days? I can think of one redeeming aspect of a sheepherder in Wyoming. When night falls in that big sky that stretches from the end of the earth to the end of the earth, unobstructed by trees, or houses, or apartments, or skyscrapers, without artificial light flickering for maybe a hundred miles, you can look up at a billion stars and be amazed by the hand of God. I reckon that's what those shepherds were doing 2,000 years ago, before the angel even appeared. They were looking up.

Settling the debate of who's a `come here' in Tidewater Virginia. (It's not easy ...)

When Cultures Combine

'Come Heres And From Heres'

April 19, 2004|BY MATT SABO msabo@dailypress.com | (804) 642-1748

Natives and newcomers try to decide how long a person has to live here before shedding the 'outsider' label.

It is a vexing question, its answer fraught with rampant speculation and, of course, influenced by one's genealogical ties to the great commonwealth of Virginia. The state constitution is no help. Local ordinances do not address it. A Google search turned up no definitive answer.

Judy Schick bravely tries to answer it anyway.

"Mmmm, I'd say the only way you can be a 'been here' is if you've been born here," she says.

That's it then. All you "come heres" who are looking to shake loose your outsider status have something to shoot for. Birth a kid wherever it is you've landed, and your progeny won't be a "come here."

Or maybe not. Schick is waffling after thinking about this problem for a minute.

"Well," she says, "I don't know that there's an answer."

Schick was born in New Jersey and arrived in Mathews via Indianapolis after she and her husband took a liking to the Virginia shoreline. She concedes she's 100 percent "come here." She even started the "Newcomers Club" in Mathews, where "come heres" flock like mosquitoes to flesh. The club has 48 members.

But isn't there a way to change from a "come here" to a "been here?" How long would that take? A decade? Twenty years? Fifty years? Having a momma who's a native?

"Never," says 56-year-old Tommy Darden, who runs rustic Darden's Country Store in Isle of Wight County. Getting to Darden's would be hard for most "come heres." It involves taking a left, two rights, a left, a right and then another left (or was it a right?) - all while negotiating narrow back roads and dodging locals wandering out to the mailbox across the road.

"To me, personally, when you're a 'from here' is when you know the back roads from here to there," says Mark Rowe as he cradles a midday beer at Harpoon Larry's off Mercury Boulevard in Hampton.

Rowe is a 38-year-old Floridian just two months into his Peninsula residency. He says people shouldn't fret about the labels because it all depends on the individual. Rowe claims to know the back roads -- at least to Harpoon Larry's -- and considers himself a "from here."

Darden actually agrees after he warms to the subject. "It's really hard to say. Some people seem to fit in and some people don't fit in," he says.

Some "come heres" move to the Virginia countryside and want streetlights, garbage pickup and curbs. They're "come heres" through and through, Darden says. Others fit right in. They stop by the store to chat and haul their garbage to the dump in the back of a pickup, or SUV probably. They're OK.

About this time Dean Stallings joins the fray. The 46-year-old, sixth-generation Isle of Wight farmer stopped by Darden's for a ham sandwich, iced tea and pack of Marlboro Lights.

"Come heres" drive ATVs through his cotton and corn fields and think it's their back yard, he says. They're not OK. A "come here" will "be on that list forever," Stallings says.

Of course, there are exceptions. Bonnie Lewis is checking out art in Mo Stuff in Bena, in the heart of Gloucester's Guinea. She was born in Wicomico in Gloucester County, moved away for 30 years, then came back. Doesn't that make her a "come here" with an asterisk? Or is it a "from here" with an asterisk?

Neither, she says. "I'm grandfathered."

Perhaps there's some scholarly research that can lay to rest this issue. Wouldn't you know it, the University of Virginia has a "come heres" specialist.

Daphne Spain, chair of the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning at the university's School of Architecture, wrote "Been-heres Versus Come-heres: Negotiating Conflicting Community Identities" in 1993. It's a study comparing Kilmarnock in Lancaster County to Philadelphia's Queen Village. In sum, rich folks moved into both places and changed the communities. They probably demanded garbage pickup.

Spain could see a change in status, though. Folks who arrived after Kilmarnock was "discovered" were "come heres." Those who had arrived before weren't. Others in the small, historically tightknit communities who had lived there for generations traced "come heres" back to two generations.

"No matter how long the family stayed," Spain says, "if their family wasn't from there it wouldn't matter."

The last word is left to Urbanna, on the watery fringes of Middlesex County. At Catman Cats, a boatbuilding outfit down on the water, Felix Herrin claims a person can be moved off the "come heres" list into "been heres" status by the authority of an authentic "from here."

He said this happened to him when his friend Larry Burch told Herrin he's not a "come here" anymore because Herrin has been in Virginia since 1977.

"It has to be bestowed by a `from here,'" Herrin says.

His wife, Tricia Herrin, is standing nearby. She is a real-life "born here" and is caught off guard.

"So he took you from a 'come here' to a 'been here?'" she asks incredulously.

"Yeah."

"I have never heard of that," Tricia Herrin says.

Felix Herrin shrugs.

"I'm still a 'come here' to my wife."

A true story of rogue Chesapeake Bay oysters the size of dinner plates

This is one of my favorite stories from my time at the Daily Press about some rogue oysters who somehow escaped from a Chesapeake Bay marine experiment and lived to tell about it. For a while at least. I hope you enjoy it.

On assignment in 2012 with an oyster. But not one of THE oysters.

Oyster Survival Story Raises Questions

May 21, 2004|By MATT SABO Daily Press

A startling find of mammoth experimental bivalves left for dead yields a surprising conclusion: They're still alive, and they taste pretty good.

They were beasts of their species, orphans from a marine experiment gone awry that were lurking in the mucky bottom of a Rappahannock River tributary in Lancaster County.

Two girls out kayaking stumbled upon them last month. The girls lived to tell about it.

The behemoths did not.

They were two non-native oysters the size of dinner plates. A true full-meal deal.

Long since forgotten, the oysters weren't supposed to be there. They were among several hundred young bivalves put in the shallow tidal pond as part of a much larger 2001 experiment involving 60,000 oysters scattered around the Chesapeake Bay, said Jim Wesson of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

Vigorous, hardy and disease-resistant -- and perhaps somewhat quick and elusive -- the c. ariakensis bivalves are known as Suminoe, or "Asian," oysters. The two oysters, along with at least three others found later, managed to elude recapture when the experiment ended in 2003, even though Wesson said they all were enclosed in a mesh cage.

Wesson believes the oysters got stepped on and shoved down in the muck. Because one of the components of the experiment was gauging mortality, it was assumed the oysters suffered an untimely demise.

Wrong.

"As far as we knew they were gone," Wesson said. "If they disappeared, you would assume a crab or something would eat them."

Now Wesson knows otherwise.

"They live very well," he said. "Even the ones we got up were doing very well. We were testing how they would hold themselves up in the mud. If they can't compete with the sediment around them, they wouldn't live very well in the bay."

The oysters were taken to Stan Allen, director of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. There they met their death and were found to be sterile, just as they were when the experiment began.

Allen found them intriguing, but he doesn't advocate orphaning experimental oysters.

"It's not a good idea to keep them out there without some custodial care," he said.

The find has raised eyebrows -- and questions -- particularly now that the Chesapeake Bay is hosting experimental trials involving about 800,000 Asian oysters. The trials are sponsored by the Virginia Seafood Council.

"We're pretty concerned about it," said Mike Fritz, living resources coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay Program office.

The Asian oysters in the current trials are penned in secure bags, racks and floats -- not put out loose on the bottom, he said.

"We're doing everything we can to keep them under control, to effectively keep the genie in the bottle and not let these oysters get established as a population in the bay," Fritz said.

What sets the Asian oysters apart from native bivalves is that they seem to flourish in the same waters that, after a century of overharvesting and diseases, have been so deadly to native oysters.

It's unusual for native oysters to live through three summer seasons, Allen said.

Not so for the Asian oysters, obviously. Despite concerns that the Asian oysters could reverse their sterility, the Rappahannock group proved unfruitful.

"It's very helpful to know that the sterility holds and to know that they grow very well in the environment we have," Wesson said.

The EPA's Fritz said the Asian oysters in the current trial are being studied to see if they are susceptible to diseases, if they may be hosts to diseases or parasites that could afflict native shellfish and if they are suitable to live alongside other species living on the bottom of the bay.

While questions abound regarding the Asian oysters, one big question has been cleared up.

They taste good.

"They're not bad," Allen said. "I mean, not raw. Cooked, they're quite good."

It's time for a reset of the measure of success for families in America

What success looks like in the Sabo family.

We have a way of measuring success in America that centers around a consumer economy. It's the insatiable appetite for materialism and the accumulation of things. Tragically, it spills over into the church and our kids with devastating consequences.

Our uniquely American economy of success is measured by things we don't need but buy anyway. We drive big new SUVs so that we have ample room to haul all the stuff we bought at Costco back to our McMansions that have huge garages to store all of our junk accumulated non-essential items. We wouldn't be caught dead with flip phones so we're armed with the latest technology everything -- much of which we have to ask our teenage kids how to operate -- and our walk-in closets are bigger than the bedrooms we grew up in and have enough clothes and shoes contained within to outfit an island nation.

Our secular practices have carried over to the religious. Our churches are virtual rock concert halls, becoming glorified entertainment venues with bright lights, big screens and all the essential high-tech bells and whistles. It's merely churchtainment, an emotion-driven vehicle that's a shallow push for "relevancy" in a culture that's increasingly ambivalent to Christianity. As a result, on any Sunday in any city in America it's possible to go church clubbing in our churchwear without ever hearing the power of the Word.

We are what we worship, essentially.

So where does that leave our kids?

We measure success in our kids by their accomplishments that we can post ad nauseum on social media. And we're motivated by our dreams of their success -- that we also can post on social media. The measuring stick is their future earnings and we're driven to ensure they're the top-performing kids inside and outside of our social circles.

We're consumed by the youth sports culture and no cost is too steep -- The best equipment! The top sports camps! The number 1 travel teams! -- to make certain our kids are the best at the one sport we select for them they pick. We're driven to get them into Ivy League schools so we make sure they do all their homework every night -- beginning in pre-school -- and harass any teacher who dares to give them less than an `A.'  We also make sure our kids are deprived of nothing -- whether it's processed food that's actually making them sick, high-tech gadgetry, prescription drugs to get them to "concentrate" and "focus," or colleges that will leave them indebted in perpetuity.

Meanwhile, they are spiritually impoverished.

We value all the wrong things and the consequences are tragic. We're lying to our kids by our actions, treating the world and the things of this life as the singular objective for them. It's the gospel of me. Sadly, it's a sentence of a life of emptiness. We're creating a generation with an insatiable drive to find fulfillment in things that will never satisfy.

These things I've mentioned, the houses, vehicles, sports, school, gadgets and other things, in and of themselves aren't bad. It's the place they have in our lives though that's the problem. It's their hold on us. They consume us. And it's reflected in how we value them and the resulting messages we send to our kids.

Take a step back. What's your measurement of success in your kids?

I've had to do my own reckoning in this. I've had to ask myself and pray through if what I'm valuing is what God values. Is what I'm seeking for my kids reflected in the life and teachings of Jesus?

They're hard questions. Especially in the culture we live in. Yet they are good questions. After all, what's more important? This temporary life and its earthly rewards? Or eternal rewards and a life together as a family with Jesus.

Jesus said that His kingdom is not of this world. So why are we so intent on creating a world for our kids that's the opposite of what He taught?

I can tell you this also. There's no greater joy I have in my kids, particularly my older kids who are making their own lives, than to see them following Jesus passionately. To know that for them, Jesus is both their savior and their Lord.

That's the true measure of success.

Parents, our kids and being faithful in an unreliable world

We are studying through 1 Corinthians on Sundays at Calvary Chapel Gloucester and we were working through chapter when verse 2 really spoke to me. "Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful." It's a simple concept and Jesus tackled it in the parable of the minas in Luke 19.

In this story Jesus told, essentially a rich ruler left of of his servants with some money and ordered them to engage in business until he returned. Some invested and traded and proved to be good stewards and were rewarded accordingly. One servant, however, put his mina in a handkerchief and did nothing, earning the ruler's contempt.

In the big picture, we can apply this parable told by Jesus to each of our lives. We're given a certain amount of time, resources and talents in this world. God expects us to be investing in the Kingdom and spreading the gospel as we await the return of Jesus. We're here to glorify God and carry out His work, quite simply. We're not asked to be brilliant, nor successful, nor dynamic, nor supermen or superwomen.

Just faithful.

If someone asked you to describe yourself, would "faithful" be a word that comes to your mind?

Would your kids use "faithful" to describe you? What words do you think your kids would use to describe you if faithful isn't one of them?

Our kids need to see us being faithful. Faithful to our spouses, to love them and speak kindly to them and to honor and cherish them. When things get hard -- and things get really hard in marriage -- they need to see us be faithful in working things out and forgiving.

Our kids need to see us being faithful in the practice of our faith. Faithful to read God's word, to pray, to be in church, to serve in church and to be faithful in our giving.

If our kids don't learn about being faithful from us, then who will they learn it from? Will they even learn about faithfulness?

Ask yourself this: What am I faithful to do? Is it work? Watch TV? Be on social media? Get your kids to every single sports practice and game? What we're faithful in reflects what's important to us. And our kids pick up on this.

In another parable, the one of the talents in Matthew 25, Jesus strikes a similar theme to the parable of the minas. Jesus lets us know we're to stay busy while He is gone, being productive and faithful with the gospel that's been entrusted to us.

The message is to use our time, money and talent for His glory to bear fruit for the kingdom. The application comes back to what each of us is going with what God has given to us.

Be faithful.

The world needs it. Our families need it. Our kids need it.