The Bell Curve -- Joseph N. Bell

My wife and I spent the Fourth of July holiday -- and my birthday --

with old and dear friends in Brevard, N.C. It was not only a blast, but I

learned a few things.

First and foremost was a reaffirmation of the importance of close

friends in our lives. Friends with whom you don’t have to be careful.

Friends with whom you can start far down the line in topics that might be

dangerous with others -- like the domestic performance of our current

president. Friends with whom -- because you know that nothing could shake

the firm grounding of your relationship -- you can mutually expose the

tender or excessive places you mostly keep hidden.

Clifford and Rae Hicks are such friends. They’re both out of

Marshalltown, Iowa, and the Midwest is deeply inbred. As an infantry

captain, Clifford was in the first wave of Marines to storm the beaches

at Bougainville and Guam in my war. As the editor of Popular Mechanics

magazine, he put up for many years with my bad photography on the grounds

that he would rather have a writer who took lousy pictures than a

photographer who couldn’t write. And he has written a series of young

adult books, some of which Disney has turned into movies. While this was

going on, Rae Hicks raised a family of three fine sons and ran a tight

household with efficiency, humor and delightful honesty. Still does.

They live in a rolling, heavily wooded corner of southwestern North

Carolina in a home they built that includes a spacious screened porch

that seems to float on the surrounding treetops. Fondling a martini on

this porch at early dusk -- especially to the accompaniment of soft rain

-- may be the most peaceful time and place I’ve ever known.

I dream about it when I’m feeling stress at home, and never did I need

it more than getaway day on this trip. Three days before we departed, our

main sewage line backed up. My wife’s sister and her family were to spend

the weekend with us, and her mother would then move in to dog-sit our

dachshund, who has never been farmed out to a kennel because the other

members of my family think it would traumatize her.

In this crisis, the plumber I called ran his line out for 120 feet and

then couldn’t get it back. He tried unsuccessfully for many hours to

break it loose, then announced he would have to find the line, dig down

to it, break in and retrieve his snake. That finally is what happened,

leaving a hole the size of a pharaoh’s tomb in our frontyard. But with

the generous help of a kind neighbor who stood by me from the beginning,

the system was working when we left and the hole filled when we returned.

We were with the Hickses for almost a week -- surely the ultimate test

of any friendship. It was long enough to partake in our hosts’ lives,

which included meeting many of their neighbors. And that led to the

second thing I learned: that despite the wonderfully disparate people and

geography of this country, the issues we deal with and the ways we deal

with them are quite often remarkably similar.

This was brought home especially at a community picnic where a retired

public relations executive from the American Can Corp. allowed as how

environmentalists are driving us back into the Dark Ages and even took a

shot at UC Irvine’s Sherry Rowland, our very own Nobel Prize winner. This

led to a debate about a local issue that had just been resolved and had

loud echoes of Greenlight.

A prime piece of real estate that included a magnificent waterfall

once used to produce a military product no longer needed was put up for

sale. The state planned to turn it into a park but was outbid by a

developer who wanted to put expensive homes on the site. When public

access became an issue, the state -- with strong public support --

exercised eminent domain and took over the property. We hiked to the

park, and the awesome beauty of that waterfall demanded to be shared. And

will be. But the lost tax income versus protecting the environment debate

continues.

We put on our own fireworks show that the home folks, distressed by

the Dunes defection, would have loved, and didn’t miss a single

cocktail-hour conversation on the porch. I even got away without

offending any of my hosts’ friends in a political argument -- although I

don’t think they would have cared.

But what I finally learned was that no matter how high the week took

us, home -- even with a large bald spot in our yard -- looked awfully

good. That’s one big reason exhilarating vacations work: We know we

can’t, nor would we want to, sustain the high. And so we’re grateful the

hole got filled, all of our systems are go -- and my wife can visit her

baby brother while my poker group meets on Friday.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.