A Web Cam to Happiness

You know people use web cams for many things these days.
Security for their homes, keeping track of the baby or the baby sitter,
or even an extra eye to make sure your pet is safe at home while
you’re not there.

Oh, right, there even used by those triple X rated sites for
“happiness” of another kind. But I’ll leave that one for your
imagination and nothing else.

Now for me it’s something totally different, and a “happiness” of
a very different kind. Because all I want to do is stare at the mountains.

That’s right just stare at the mountains like some crazy old man with nothing better to do. Watching the sun rise in the morning from Kensington and watching it snow like hell from my office here at Rockefeller Center. Look for that ever-elusive black bear that walked by my wife last year, or even count how many wild turkeys or deer prance around on my front lawn during the day.

From the second floor window of our house in the Catskills I mounted a Web Cam and I couldn’t be happier with the money I spent.

Just an IP address and BOOM!, instant gratification all through a DSL line. Well, actually an ethernet cable to a modem to a DSL phone line and then all the way to Brooklyn to my computer screen.

Probably hundreds of miles of fiber-optic wire, but hell, who’s counting anyway?

And the funny thing about all this is that when I’m actually upstate, I really don’t spend much time staring at the mountains. No, I’m usually working on something or digging a ditch somewhere. Because just sitting and relaxing scares the hell out of me and that’s something only “old” people do before they die.

Oh God, my mother used to stare out the window at 399 East Fourth all the time and watch the sun set over that factory in Boro Park.

Oh no, is it happening to me too?
I’m only 51??

Oh, that’s right, it’s only through a computer monitor.
So it really doesn’t count, right?
I said, right?

Anyway, I have to get back to work here.
Now where the hell did those wild turkeys go?

Ron Lopez


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