The Chronicle of Linnnn

Hollywood East. Naked Ambition.

2012-01-19T13:03:00.003-05:00

“If you got a lead part in a movie, but it had a nude scene, would you do it?”

She sat down next to me on the back steps of a vintage coquina stone mansion located in wealthy Coconut Grove and bounced the question at me as though we had been friends for years.

We were on location there shooting the insane asylum scenes for a picture called Nobody’s Perfekt starring Gabe Kaplan, Robert Klein, Alex Karras and his wife Susan Clark. The Director was Peter Bonerz.

I was one of three Production Assistants on the set.

I thought she was an extra.

Her hair was pulled back with a headband accentuating her cat-like eyes. They turned up at the sides like she was always slightly bemused and she squinted when she concentrated. She was my age, early 20’s, so I guess that’s why she asked me the question.

I can only suppose that she needed perspective from someone who wasn’t middle-aged, predatory and male; the basic profile of those who were making movies in Florida at that time.

Hollywood East, we liked to call it. That’s what we hoped for.

It was lunchtime. I remember this specifically because, as a Production Assistant, it was the only time I could sit down with my radio (walkie-talkie) off and not get verbally lashed for it. The first rule of motion picture Production Assistants was never to be caught sitting down, leaning against something or even squatting on a movie set. If caught, you’d best be puking or swelling up from some kind of sprain or insect bite because otherwise no one hesitated to call you out for slacking.

My role was to always be at the elbow of the First Assistant Director ready to spring into action at his every utterance. Once tasked, I was required to chirp out an audible “Copy that!” before scampering away to fulfill the request.

It was my job to police the lunch line making sure everyone ate according to rank on the set; the star actors first, then the producers and directors followed by the union technical crew, the Teamsters, the day players, the extras and then, after repelling the homeless guys who always snuck in, me, dead last and starving.

I was trying to wolf down something to fuel the rest of my 12-plus hour day. The second rule for P.A.’s was to be first to set with donuts before dawn and last to leave after posting the Production Report at night.

Her question caught me off guard.

“I’ve been asked to be shot nude and I turned it down.”

“But what if it was your ticket? The break that would make your career? Would you do it then?"

“I sort of turned down Playboy, so...”

“What? WHAT?! You’ve got to be kidding me?”

“When I was in college, a guy named Dwight Hooker came through town on assignment to find college women for a special feature in Playboy. I was modeling for a local Lerner’s store and my photographer set me up for an interview.”

“Did you have to be nude at the interview?”

“No. Wore a nice flattering Lerner’s swim suit and borrowed heels. Hooker took some Poloroids then. I thought it was a long shot but surprise! I got a call back for a test photo shoot at some estate with a pool outside of town. That’s where I would be required to show that I could, well, do it.”

“Pose naked?”

“Yes.”

“So why didn’t you? God, you probably blew a big opportunity…”

“I called my dad. We talked about it for a long time; about how it could mean making connections that would lead to a big time career; about how I felt about being seen that way by anyone passing by a news stand all over the world; about fame and money and its advantages and downfalls; about the character of the people who promote celebrity…All of which I told him I thought I was strong and smart enough to deal with. I was actually kind of leaning toward doing it…”

“Yeah? SO? Those are good arguments..."

“It was the last thing he said. He has lunch with his friends every day. Lawyers, judges, businessmen and doctors. All close friends. One of them is my godfather. Dad just let me know that it would be a very bad day for him should one of them pick up that particular magazine and see his daughter, me, in it. That was all I needed to hear.”

Her eyes widened a little and then she squinted, folded her hands under her chin and rested her elbows on her knees while looking out toward the gardens at that mansion. It was a beautiful dignified estate with great bones and history, cast for the day as an insane asylum.

The Assistant Director yelled, glaring at me, “We’re back in. New set up, let’s go!”

“Thanks for that. I guess that’ll help me give an answer to the guys shooting Porky’s. They offered me a big part.”

“Oh, yeah. I heard that was coming up. Wow. Well good luck, um, never caught your name? I’m Linda…”

“It’s Kim. See ya!”

Photos: IMBD

Video: Youtube

Smoking Nuns and Cafeteria Jesus

2011-11-29T21:20:00.011-05:00

St. Anthony Catholic School

"Hey, there’s a spot! We must’ve done something right along the way.”

“Yep. Karma. Maybe.”

Scoring a parking place right in front of the church was something we agreed seemed kind of tricky. Years of religious conditioning rolled our rational thinking.

St. Anthony Catholic Church

It felt awkward lucking into it, like we didn’t deserve it, so we quickly jumped out of Karen’s car and scurried across the road toward our old elementary school before anyone could tell us otherwise. It was a hot, cloudless Sunday morning assuring me (somewhat) that no bolt of lightning would strike down the two of us irreverent middle-aged delinquents in flip-flops for sneaking into school.

Especially if we serpentined.

Karen and I, a couple of 50-somethings who were notorious little trouble makers in our youth, just wanted to see our old elementary school again. St. Anthony Catholic School.

“I didn’t get picked to play Mary in the Christmas pageant. They chose Darlene. She had blonde sausage curls, straight A’s and was such a flippin’ saint all the time. Remember? The stable used to be right here in front of the convent..."
A news story about the St. Anthony pageant. T'was a big deal.

“I always had to wear my dad’s robe, my brother’s sandals and a hand towel on my head to be a shepherd. I think I even wore a beard one time. I was taller than everyone. I never got to be a girl in these things.”

“There were real animals though. I remember a donkey and a calf or something. Sheep too? I think I played an angel one time.”

“Did you hang by your waist from a tree like you were flying? I seem to remember…”

“Wasn’t me…”

“Everything seems so small now. It was huge when we were little. Even the Angelus Tower seems shorter now. We used to climb up there y'know. All the way to the top. Bill and John and me. Altar boys knew all the great secret passages…”

“Yeah, I heard they used to get the wine from the sacristy and drink it up there…”

“Well, I didn’t do that…I did, however, climb up to the school roof over the principal’s office once thinking I’d avoid getting busted for something or other. Found Sister J. there, her veil off, having a smoke. We promised that we wouldn’t snitch on each other for being on the roof. Or smoking. She had brown hair. It kind of marked me for life to see she actually had hair under her veil. Didn’t we think they were bald? I don’t think she stayed a nun…”

“No! Really?”

“Stack of bibles.”

Math class about '64 when Sr. M.T. tapped a stick while we recited times tables.
The girl with her back to the camera probably had her nose stuck
in a circle drawn on the blackboard. Looks a little like Karen...

“Aww, damn, the gym’s locked. Remember the locker room under the bleachers and when we had to wear these special jumpers for P.E.? They made us look like powder blue pumpkins. Well, so did our regular uniforms as I recall.”

“It always smelled so funky in there.”

“Probably because there was no air conditioning.”

“Can you believe we had no A.C. in 90 degree heat when we were kids? I don’t know how we did it. Let alone the nuns. May explain some of their behavior…”

“No hard soled shoes on the basketball floor! God, they got mad when we wore our loafers out there on the shine. I could slide almost all the way across in my socks.”

“I loved that crazy stage where we put on plays. It had real curtains we could open and close…”

“You were always directing something, yes, I remember.”

“Oh, I can picture the Christmas Fair here. My mom always ran the bazaar. We stuffed ourselves with cotton candy, candy apples, and hot dogs and then we barfed it all up on the rides later! It was weird to see the nuns and the priests out playing carnival games and just hanging around wasn’t it?”

“We’re walking around in a closed school on a Sunday…”

“What’ll they do if they catch us? Call our parents? We went here, we have permission!”

“Here’s a memory: On this very spot, right outside the cafeteria, I will never forget Jose the Janitor sprinkled his magic sawdust down where Terry puked after lunch.”

“I think Terry projectiled on a bunch of us in 1st grade too, during reading circle.”

"And right here they gathered in a clump. A penguin convention. All the nuns sent us home early that day in '63 when Kennedy was assassinated. Remember? They cried. Nuns crying. THAT was awkward."

“It’s a little spooky how much things haven’t changed isn’t it? Will you just look at this cafeteria with the turquoise tiles and the columns that flair at the ceiling and the weird statue up there of Jesus watching over everyone eat?”

Cafeteria Jesus
“It’s Jesus as like maybe a 6 year old all decked out in a fancy-schmancy medieval robe and a crown, like he was aware of his special powers even as a kid…”

“It’s the same, yes. Wow.”

“I have a question. Your mom volunteered in the hot lunch line with my mom right?”

“Yep.”

“Did she ever reveal how they could get the fruit salad chunks to suspend in the jell-o? And, really, what was ‘meat sauce?’”

“Nope. They were sworn to secrecy on the jell-o and I believe meat sauce was also a proprietary recipe.”

“Hey, first grade classroom is open. The alphabet is still up on the wall. It looks the same. Oh, damn. I’m welling up. What the hell? I never wanted to leave first grade. I hung on to Sister S.P. like a spider monkey the last day.”

The uber-cool Sister S.P. when we were graduating 8th grade. We knew she had hair.

“Sister S.P. was the best nun ever. She was so cool. She played kickball and ran the bases like a flippin’ gazelle. Taught us how to make crayons last forever. And to read. Dick and Jane and Puff.”

"Brave too. She stomped one of the biggest scorpions I have ever seen. Didn't hesitate, just crushed it!"

"Gross!"

“The old live oaks are still out on the playground too. I can see them out the first grade window like I did then. Man, did I daydream about recess in those days. All around those trees.”

“Hey, where’s the bench that used to be outside the principal’s office? I left my very own butt impression there and I am not happy they removed the thing!”

“The principal, Sister M. from 8^th grade, was a tiny woman. Remember? She had to reach up to put her arm around my shoulders."

"She had a hard time catching me. Most of us were too fast for her."

"She told me I had some ‘unusual views on things about which we will be having many serious discussions.’ Maybe my face-off with Darlene in a debate contest rang her bell a little, I don’t know. Topic was abortion. I kind of went all scientific on her head.”

“Well, someone had to debate the little angel.”

“C’mon. I’ll show you where I kicked a hole in the wall and was made to clean the boy’s bathroom on a Saturday as a punishment…”

When the coast was clear, we snuck back out of St. Anthony even though it really wasn’t closed for Sunday with catechism classes in full session all around, as we sheepishly discovered. We heard the Angelus Tower ringing the noon bell as we pulled away from our lucky parking space. It was intoning "Bye-bye, Bye-bye!" It was a gorgeous sound, so familiarly solid and reliable and yet so far away. Like a memory.

Later, we rode by Karen’s childhood home. She wanted to see the tree she climbed as a child and if the house had changed. We followed the house numbers right up to where she remembered, and the house was gone. Only a vacant lot remained.

It was a shock. Especially since we had only just wrapped the solidity and timelessness of our elementary school around us like a warm reassuring blanket.

Growing up was inevitable and a hefty helping of unwelcome change came along with that. Every cell in our bodies has turned over seven times since we ate our hot lunches under the watchful eye of a well-dressed deity.

It’s all a mystery, what endures and what disappears.

We both know that the ghosts of two free spirits, one too tall to play an ingenue and the other elfin and quick, will always roam those sacred spaces hand in hand plotting new shenanigans together in our dreams.

"Oh, Lenzen, that was sappy!"

"Yeah. So?"

Golf Course Gorts

2011-10-30T08:18:00.003-04:00

“Wake up. They’re back and they need our help again.”

I could hear Dad growling in a groggy fugue while she repeatedly bumped his shoulder nudging him awake.

“Well, go get my bag then. I thought you told them last time we were done with all that…”

“I did but this is serious.”

Mom trained us up early about unexplainable things. In fact, she was certain all could be explained if she just got a shot at interrogating the parties involved. She always quizzed us thusly -

“What are you going to do if a UFO lands on the golf course out back?”

“I’m to say, ‘Wait right there! I’m getting my mom and she’s got some questions for you…’”

“Correct!”

Unidentified flying objects were never poo-pooed in our house. Mom, ever the romantic, was fascinated by the topic. So much so, I think besides A Wrinkle in Time and anything by Maurice Sendak, the book I most remember reading at a tender age (although forbidden to, I snuck it by flashlight under my bedspread) was Mom’s copy of Interrupted Journey. It is the story of Betty and Barney Hill, a married couple who were allegedly abducted from a rural country road in Connecticut and experimented upon by space aliens. The experiments they recounted under hypnosis stood my hair on end.

Science fiction had me in thrall. For an “active” child with a hummingbird span of attention, this was a miracle. I was dedicated to movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Plan 9 from Outer Space on our local horror flick channel late on Saturday nights. Robinson Crusoe on Mars still does it for me.

Me and my brothers: Typical homemade costumes created by Mom

So between Mom and me, anything super or extra natural, or even paranormal with all its idiosyncrasies, was worth poking with a stick. Still is.

“Mom, who’s out there?” I called out from my bed that night hoping to halt her sprint down the hall to get Dad’s doctor bag. She didn’t miss a beat.

“Just one of the golf course workers. He hurt himself. Dad’s going to take a look at it.”

“Oooh! Can I come see?”

“Nope. You stay there.” She didn’t even look in my room at me on the return trip with the bag and towels. They were the nice towels reserved for guests. I'd get whooped if I so much as dried my pinky finger on them.

Naturally, I planned to sneak a look if only I could kick my way out of the bed sheets.

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t move my feet or arms, just my head and eyes. The cats, my fat warm Siamese cats were pinning me down, one on each side of me stretched out the full length of my body, their bottomless Siamese blue eyes sparkling. They purred and calmed me. Funny, I never even felt them jump up on the bed. The frangipani tree blooming outside my window sent a sweet cloud of fragrance drifting in. I felt sleepy, like waves of warm water were rocking me, but resisted with every piece of me. Then I pinched myself in the thigh – Hard!

Oh no, this all was too good to let sleep get in the way.

I listened really carefully so I would remember.

The usual night sounds on this suburban golf course were just the lonely scree of night hawks and the wind slapping around the eucalyptus trees and Australian pines. Occasionally the putt-putt sound of gas fueled Cushman carts would jangle by carrying the night shift golf course workers to their assigned chores. Every once in a while, on a normal night, I could hear them talking in low tones with each other in foreign languages as they groomed sand traps, mowed fairways and moved the holes around on the putting greens. That course was “play ready” every morning by 7 a.m. with only tire tracks left on the wet grass telling the story of the night’s tasks done there by shadow workers.

The Cushman cart that brought the injured golf course worker to our back door that night sounded slightly off to me as it idled in our yard; more like George Jetson’s cartoon commuter jalopy. The headlights on the cart sprayed light across the ceiling of my bedroom, but it wasn’t the usual tired yellow color. The light was intensely white, and a shadow play danced on the ceiling. Dad and Mom rendered assistance to the person outside who was moaning in pain, their shadows and others, expanding and contracting...

“How did he get this? Mmm-hmm. Ok. As he came through? Ok. Well, I can’t stitch him up as you know, his skin is too delicate, stitches won’t hold, but keep pressure with these towels on the wound until you can get back. I can set the bone though. Mmm-hmm, yes, it’s painful but you guys can block that right? Do that now so he’ll stop making those sounds. The neighbors…”

And the moaning stopped. I heard some shuffling and a muffled wet crack and then Dad.

“Ok! That should keep you until you can jump again. Let’s wrap this up with an Ace bandage…Good. Done. Would you guys do me a favor and quit using that damn thingamajiggy until you work out the kinks? Too many of your guys get mangled in it still…Thanks. And maybe find another doctor who lives on a golf course please?”

And then Mom.

“Oh no, he’s just kidding. You are welcome anytime. Never mind about the towels! Come when you can stay longer, I have a few questions…”

Fabulous photo courtesy of deserttrumpet at Flickr, Creative Commons

The Space Between Hell and College

2011-10-13T16:24:00.002-04:00

Bullies were always stereotypically singular and identifiable. They were the loner sweaty-faced angry kids who shoved and punched their way around knocking books out of the hands of the meek or making “meet me at 3 on the playground” challenges. They were always in the company of just themselves and the anonymous mob kids who watched, egged on and color commentated the rough handlings of these snarling malcontents like Romans in a warped Colisseum. The mob kids shouted louder when the dust rose, the fists flew. “Fight, fight. Fight!” The mob kids had to side with the bully so they wouldn’t be next on the bloody dance card.

Until now, I thought a bully to be handle-able. I never took the first swing, but if I was punched first, I had permission to end it right then and there. I believed that all a bully needed to quit was a good nose bloodying, or a knee to the crotch. I did my share of leveling the field in those days, both for myself and others. I stuck up for the ones who couldn’t fight. Not terrifically girlie of me, I know, but my sense of social justice was simmering.

If someone would just hold my glasses and my retainer, it was on.

If adults got wind of it, we’d endure a “come to Jesus” meeting. The bully, the prey, both sets of parents and the school principal usually cleared it up. Deal sealers like a “no contact contract” or the threat of a lawsuit would stop down the whirling gyro of anger and then, after an appropriate period of time, the bully casually targeted the next victim in the chute, and the games began again.

The bully was, for me, a surly kid sitting in a chair. A singular I could diminish with one well-aimed punch.

Fast forward to now.

The bully at high school is a cyberspace phantasm named Rumor. Its genesis is secrecy, anonymity.

Who knows what sneering voodoo princess hatched that first untraceable egg a year ago? Someone who hates the Girl’s spark, her courage, her confidence, her independence, her beauty, probably. Someone who took her boisterous “ah, screw it” attitude personally. Someone who wanted her love and loyalty...

But hatch it did.

It splits like an atom over and over again dividing exponentially along razor sharp web fibers sending soul killing lies and accusations from cell phone to laptop to hissing sibilant whispers echoing in steamy cement corridors. There is no bully to blame, no singular to bloody or restrain by law.

The bully is a ghost.

When the electrical storm of lies abates, Girl breathes, but just a breath or two. It comes again in waves, she knows. It’s not stopping, not flaming out. Friends don’t battle with her, stick up for her, fearing the ignition of their own personal incineration.

It is invincible.

It comes from the space between hell and college.

Pumped Up Kicks

2011-09-30T11:06:00.000-04:00

Driving my daughter to school before dawn yesterday,after the daily slap fight to control the tuner, I found myself enjoying a songshe had chosen on the radio. That alonewas a miracle with the gravitas of a full galaxy convergence, but this song wasgood. It had a fresh infectious beat andsome auto tune effects limning the vocals in a creative way.

The lyrics caught me too. Something about a “cowboy kid” rolling hisown cigs.

Robert's got aquick hand.
He'll look around the room; he won't tell you his plan.
He's got a rolled cigarette, hanging out his mouth, he's a cowboy kid.

Wewere cruising along to this tune, bobbing our heads and I lost track of thelyrics in favor of the cute pop beat and the actual riff of whistling threading through the melody.

“Ireally like this song. I guess that’sthe kiss of death for it then? If I likeit, it must be crap, right?"

Shelooked at me like I’d fatally fired a rogue synapse. “No, Mom. I like the song, but ‘like’ mightnot be the best word here…” I hardlyheard her. I opted instead to losemyself in the tune again, bopping down the road with my surly daughter.

Yea,he found a six shooter gun.
In his dads closet hidden in a box of fun things, and I don't even know what.
But he's coming for you; yeah he's coming for you.

Cowboykid. Six shooter. I remembered when weplayed cowboys with our cap guns in the back yard with my cousins. I chuckledto myself about sharing some genetics with Jesse James, many degrees removedfrom the immediate family tree…

All the other kids with the pumped upkicks you'd better run, better run, outrun my gun.
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you'd better run, better run,faster than my bullet.

Fasterthan my bullet? Must be some referenceto Superman. Faster than a speeding bullet. I spent a few seconds talkingmyself into some fantasy and out of what I had just heard. But then the storyof it broke through the contagious beat.

Daddyworks a long day.
He be coming home late, yeah he's coming home late.
And he's bringing me a surprise.
'Cause dinner's in the kitchen and it's packed in ice.

“Mom,you know what this song’s about don’t you?” She was familiar with my expression, a face clench when something hideous just dawns on me.

“Notuntil now.”

“Well,it’s about an abused kid who shoots up his family and his school with his dad's gun. You know, like Columbine."

Thesong was ending as I swung into the circular drive in front of Boone High. A silentstream of crusty-eyed disheveled teenagers shuffled by. Thesun was sending sprays of red above the horizon as my daughter jumped out ofthe car, adjusted her ass exposing low cut jeans, and threw her backpack over her shoulder.

She went to slam the car door…

“Bye, Mom. I love you.”

“Wait!”I blurted it out, a bee stinging my tongue.

I've waited for a long time.
Yeah the slight of my hand is now a quick pull trigger,
I reason with my cigarette,
And say your hair's on fire, you must have lost your wits, yeah.

I pictured myself jamming the car into park.

Isaw myself running, (better run), and dragging her back into the car. I saw myself burning tire rubber to leave that godforsaken place where every angry looking kid with a backpack now haunted mymind; where every bitter bullied kid plotted mayhem to make "them all" pay forslights, real or unreal, finally attaining the kind of cool only a killer canearn.

It wouldn’t matter if my daughterwas a gentle unassuming shy person or the sharply witty, loud and sometimes confrontivepersonality that she is. She’d still be one of all the other kids.

I saw myself there to rescue her from it. But I can't.

All the otherkids with the pumped up kicks you'd better run, better run, outrun my gun.
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you'd better run, better run,faster than my bullet.

[Whistling]

“Ilove you too. Be careful in there, ok?”

Thank you to Foster The People for their song Pumped Up Kicks.

Dad and the Purple Schwinn

2011-09-11T02:30:00.000-04:00

For Dad, with love, on his 90th birthday.

“Let’s take a bike ride!”

Dad liked to ride bikes along the golf course road before dinner some nights. Since our house was one of the first built on this new course on the outskirts of Ft. Lauderdale, he enjoyed checking out all the new home sites rising up from those scrubby sand lots.

He had his English racing bike painted rusty brown and equipped with impressive toe harnesses on the spiky corrugated pedals. My brother had his banana- seat high-handlebar Easy Rider thrasher. My younger brother still had a fire engine red tricycle so he was stuck rolling around the driveway in circles under Mom’s watchful eye.

And I had my brand new shiny purple Schwinn girl’s bike with the saddle bag baskets over the rear tire.

Or did.

“Ready to go? Where’s your bike?”

It was my birthday present and I hated it.

All my friends had ten-speed boy’s bikes with handle bar brakes. I asked for one of those. But somewhere my request got lost in translation, or Dad got a good deal, and I was burdened with a prissy purple Schwinn girl’s bike. It had only one speed and to stop I had to brake by backpedalling.

Ungroovy.

I was expected to ride that pixie dust and moonbeam mess to the school bus stop every morning, lock it up, and then ride it home every afternoon along with everybody. I felt like a sparkly unicorn leaving a slip stream of rainbows amidst a herd of sleek racehorses. It was humiliating.

But the purple Schwinn was gone. And, I only just then remembered what happened to it.

“Where’s your bike?”

Half way home that afternoon, the chain fell off the purple Schwinn and made me fall down. I was miffed and had two skinned knees to show. So I left it by the side of the road and walked home. I meant to tell Mom right away but forgot. I was easily distracted at that age by things like snacks, cartoons or dust particles floating in sunbeams. And looking back, I wonder if it was semi-subconsciously on purpose to forget about it. I just put it out of my mind. Now I had to ‘fess up.

Bike ride cancelled, Dad loaded me into his car and we went to pick the purple Schwinn up. But, oops, it was gone. Stolen. Apparently a shiny new purple Schwinn lying on the side of the road for three hours was too much temptation for those so inclined.

“Oh no, Dad! It’s gone. Gosh! Darn! Shoot! Maybe we can get a new ten-speed boy’s bike with handlebar brakes for me now?”

He gave me the “look.” It’s the one perfected by every pissed-off disappointed Dad since time began. He cleared his throat and issued the edict in a measured, yet intimidating, tone -

“You could not take care of the bike you had and you think we’re going to just run straight out buy you a damn new one? No. Now you will be walking…everywhere.”

Thus began my wilderness weeks of walking across wet golf course grass and vacant lots prickling with sticker burrs in the dank Florida heat to and from the bus stop. Much of the trek was spent swatting clouds of mosquitoes that lay in wait to chew me up and suck me dry.

No matter how much time I spent on my grooming each day, I always arrived to school a disheveled wreck with pie plate sized pit stains and soaking wet saddle shoes speckled with golf course grass. After school, I pretended I didn’t care as I watched all my friends hop on their ten-speeds and zoom off to 7-ll for Slurpees and penny candy. Or to the pier. Or the community pool. I was left to slog home, sweaty and downtrodden. I cried a lot. But only when no one could see. I still had my pride.

Nights I lay in bed and listened to tree frogs chirp in the eucalyptus trees. On my transistor radio a woman with an airy quavering voice trilled a song: “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone…” I fervently wished, even prayed, that my purple Schwinn would miraculously appear in the garage sparkling loyally waiting for me to wheel her out and ride. But no amount of wishing was going to fix it and surely Jesus had more important things to think about.

One day Dad stuck his head in while I was moping and reading in my room.

“Come on out here a minute.”

I spent a significant amount of effort dodging Dad’s attention during this time. So when he actually addressed me directly, I jumped like a cricket following him to the driveway where he was pulling something out of the trunk of his car.

“Fix this up if you want. One of my patients was going to throw it away, but maybe you might want it? There’s sandpaper in the workshop…”

It was a relic. Rusty from handlebars to wheel rim, this thing was a flaking stinking disaster. An ancient crone of a broken down girl’s beach bike, she was a beast. No ten-speed derailleur here, no handlebar brakes. She was fat all over, including the tires. And they were flat.

I was never so grateful as I was at that very moment.

For days, with help from Mom and Dad, I worked on her. I sandpapered all the rust off and found that she had at one time sported black paint. I soaked her rusty chain in Coca Cola and oiled it, used my saved up birthday money to get the bulbous white-wall tires repaired, and buffed up her pitted chrome parts to a righteous shine. I found an old chamois cloth and sewed a new seat cover. A smooth coat of black enamel Rust-o-leum paint finished her makeover and a white wicker basket garlanded with purple flowers strapped to the handlebars added a surprise feminine touch. She was a proud dowager wearing her Sunday hat in the islands; the flowers an homage to the long lost purple Schwinn.

She wasn’t pretty, but she was mine. And she could roll. Big and powerful, I could speed along just as fast as a ten-speed. Better than a ten speed too, I found out, was not having to fiddle with all the levers and pulleys. I just stood up on those pedals and rode like the wind.

The kids with fancy racing bikes were superior in every way, and they let me know it. But somehow I shook it off and just appreciated that big beast of a bike. My big beast of a bike.

I think Dad had me figured out.

I love you, Dad.

Click on titles for more family stories:

Dad Causes a Stir
Dad's Sunday Lesson Or Jesus In My Stomach

Dad Builds Character

Dad's Mandatory Family Dinners
Of Mice and Dad
Of Mice and Dad: The Tale of the Tail

Ordeal in Cordele: Aunt Polly

What The Arachnid Did

2011-08-10T15:17:00.001-04:00

A slim fiber was tapping my forearm as I tried to bridge the gap between falling and actually being asleep. It was pitch black in my room so I couldn’t see exactly what it was. It could be my hair, which is long enough to drape down to where my forearm was tucked up under my chin. Or it could be the bedclothes settling in the breeze from the ceiling fan.

The cat, Tom-meh, was in his spot at my feet so it wasn’t him whisker tickling in prelude to affection.

Tom-meh

I flexed my forearm and the sensation ceased.

Then it started again, so I flicked my arm slightly to dislodge the gossamer annoyance and settled into my pillow fortress aggressively confident I had solved the problem.

All eight legs touched down on my arm as though the thing had taken a few steps back and pole vaulted down onto my quivering skin.

Torn between thrashing like a maniac to get the thing off me or slowly moving toward the door to shed the arachnid outside, I attempted a little of both. I flicked on the light and stared at the interloper.

It stared back. We had a moment.

This monster was no Charlotte and I expected no pithy life affirming messages spun in a web above my head. Unless it was something like “Bite You.”

It was one of Florida’s finest, a gigantic Huntsman’s spider. They like to come in out of the rain and heat. To mate. You can actually hear them scuttling about when they dash across the ceiling.

When I was younger after a night of tequila and who knows what else, I woke up splayed on my bed with a half-eaten quesadilla in my hand and one of these spiders studying me from about two inches from my face. Life altering.

And then there’s the Jonny Quest episode with the big gi-normous one-eyed attack robot spider…Cue the high pitched scream here.

This one had a brown fuzzy body about the size of a dime and long spindly jointed legs all splayed out on my arm for stability. Or to make its next jump. Which would be right to my face.

And what’s with the attitude?

This spider had swagger, thuggishly bobbing up and down, popping and locking, preparing its next move.

Which was to jump down into my sheets and run like hell using the wrinkles as causeways to a hiding place behind my bed.

When the last of the adrenalin leeched out of my overtaxed system, I slept in the recliner with the lights on.

Next morning, geared up with my son’s paintball helmet, gloves, a large plastic cup and stiff paper, I set about capturing Mr. Legs “Fuzzy” McSpiderson for release outside in a more suitable environment.

Terrified of spiders, I still won’t kill one if I can help it. My method is usually really effective and better than flailing at it with a tennis racket as the thing limps away with maybe four legs left. Even more better than drowning it in bug spray until it flinches no more in a curled pile of imploded exoskeleton.

I place the cup over top of it and slide the paper between it and the wall or floor. Then I run to the door and throw it all in the yard like a nelly-girl usually with a scream and a little nervous dance. Spiders get it and, even after a rough landing, they scurry quickly away.

I looked for Legs, but not for long. Alas, there would be no pee-inducing nervous dance in the yard, no paper cup forced relocation of an alien life form to its former planet.

Tom-meh found and assassinated the Spider with Swagger and left his exploded dismembered carcass on my pillow as a gift, as cats will do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And just so you know I am not lying, enjoy these two clips.

Pomhenge. A Summer Solstice Smile.

2011-07-09T07:02:00.003-04:00

Hope Your Solstice is Swell!

^{Dog is Love.}

до свидания Dear Doctor

2011-06-03T08:43:00.000-04:00

_{Dr. Dmitriy Nikitin}

Dr. Dmitriy Nikitin, clad in green scrubs and a puffy green surgery cap leaned into my hospital doorway at three a.m. and said, “How are you doing?”

“I could use a big shot of morphine and someone to get that beeping to stop.”

He came in, left the lights off as he remembered I was sensitive, and snuffed the infernal I.V. alarm.

“You’re up late, Dr. Dmitriy…”

“Emergency surgery. All done now. I am tired…” he said in heavily accented English. Dr. Dmitriy was of Russian origins. “But since I was here, I check on you too.”

“Go home! Snuggle your wife. Kiss your kids,” I said. “I’ll get by.” He smiled a weary grin, waved, and slipped away down the hall. Nurse was there in minutes with a new I.V. bag and pain relief. I knew Dr. Dimitriy had a hand in the rapid response. It took an act of congress and a bribe otherwise.

I remember running my fingers across the immaculate row of staples that perfectly knitted up my stomach. I don’t hate my osprey feather scar at all. It symbolizes the many more years I will have in this life because someone knew how to give me that gift. Chin and Nikitin knew how.

The mysterious vocation of the surgeon provokes awe in me. The courage to hold the organs of another human in their hands, with a purpose to heal, is perhaps the closest to the divine as I can comprehend.

_{Florida Hospital Transplant Team}

I was dealt a royal flush, hearts, when the Florida Hospital Transplant Center took me as a patient. I had a big invasive benign tumor in my abdomen that needed to come out immediately before it put a strangle hold on my vena cava and eclipsed a kidney. Dr. Lawrence Chin was the lead physician on my case and Dr. Dmitriy Nikitin partnered with him. They gave me life beyond what I might have been dealt had I been born 200 years earlier.

Dream team doesn’t adequately describe.

Angel men might.

All my major surgery drama took place during the holidays, so I was a little blue as carolers made their way up and down the hospital halls. I bumped into them as I was taking my laps to the nurses’ station and back. You don’t walk around after abdominal surgery, you don’t poop. One must jump start the intestinal mill before one is deemed well enough. No poop, no go home. So I was walking, well, shuffling, with a purpose most days.

Finally the blessed event manifested, I flushed, and I lobbied passionately to be sprung from medical gulag. Dr. Dmitriy was on call, so he gleefully did the honors.

“Do your people celebrate this holiday?” he said as we bid farewell.

“Yes, indeed we do!” I responded.

“MEDDY CHREESMUS!” he bellowed, laughing. And, with that, he was gone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dr. Dmitriy Nikitin was murdered yesterday.

Shot and killed in the hospital parking lot by a man to whom he had transplanted a liver and a kidney. It has been reported that Dr. Dmitiry's fellow surgeons tried so hard but failed to save his life.

I can't write any more now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More in-depth background on Dr. Dmitriy:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/south/view.bg?&articleid=1341208&format=&page=2&listingType=natsouth#articleFull

And more -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1392772/Transplant-patient-Nelson-Flecha-shot-dead-surgeon-saved-life.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Cops & Daughter

2011-06-03T05:59:00.002-04:00

The cop was a giant. At least six foot six inches tall, he completely filled up our doorway. Even our normally loud territorial dog, silenced by the sight, slunk off to hide. The Officer of the Law wore all the tools of his trade, a non-cartoon array of weapons including mace, an enormous firearm and nightstick. The mirrored sunglasses and polished knee-high boots finished off his intimidating Terminator persona with strategic forethought.

“Someone here call 911?”

I already knew the answer. Her brother ran to me not five minutes prior breathlessly reporting that T. had just spoken with 911. Our garage sale wireless phone had speed dial programmed to 911 and she punched it. It was an accident.

But she copped to it.

“I did. On accident.”

“M’am, is there somewhere the young lady and I can talk?” His face was fixed in the stony rictus of pure authority.

I expected to hear a panicked yip of fear and the sound of her little bare feet rapidly slapping away to burrow into a closet hidey hole.

Nope. She stepped up.

“Want to see my room?”

She motioned the fearsomely expressionless cop in, waving the way to her room like Vanna turning letters on Wheel of Fortune. At six years of age, she was disturbingly mature.

He folded himself in half to sit on her teddy bear and unicorn festooned rocking chair, a big imposing Grendel throwing off all sense of proportion in her diminutive pink and purple fairy bower.

I lingered in the doorway nowhere near as composed as she was. Breathless with worry over what her moment of accidental curiosity would yield, I read of families being separated for days until a proper investigation was conducted.

I knew they take it very seriously when a kid calls 911. Even “on accident.”

“So you are T. according to what 911 dispatch told me?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Do you know what 911 is T.?”

“Mama taught me to call 911 if I needed help or something happened to her or dad…”

“T., do you need help?”

“No. I‘m fine.”

“How about mom and dad? Do they need help?”

“No, they’re fine.”

“T., why did you call 911?”

“It was on accident. I was playing with the phone and it just did it.”

“Ok, I believe you.”

The officer took off his sunglasses and smiled.

I could breath again as they finished talking, mostly one-sided in favor of the officer. He told her she should not play with telephones but that she should call 911 if she needs to, and how he’ll be glad to come and save her if she ever has a real emergency.

Then, we collectively confirmed that the “phone did it” via speed dial and all was resolved.

She shook his hand on the way out. Disturbingly mature.

Apart from “The Sacred No Tattoos Pact” when she double pierced her ears, we made another solemn deal when she curled her jade green polished toes over the threshold of adolescence: I will pick her up anytime, no matter what, no questions. Anywhere. If she senses that her safety is compromised in any way. Even if she makes a mistake that got her there.

No parental psycho eye-bulging freak outs, no wild shouting knee-jerk judgments, no I-am-the-boss-of-you conditions. I’ll just be there.

Midnight. Friday. She made that call.

“Come get me now. No questions.”

She was keeping her end and I kept mine. In pajamas, hair haphazard, barefoot, I went. Turning down the street where she was, six police cruisers were lined up in twos in front of the residence where I knew she was a guest at a “sleepover.” I called her cell and a boy answered.

“It’s T.’s mom. Where is she?”
“Mrs. T. just come around back to the pool house please.”
My stomach flipped.

^{A fairly accurate depiction.}

I grabbed my ID and walked, crunching barefoot on the gravel drive, to the pool house gate. Could've been hot coals and I would not have noticed.

It looked like an unsupervised house party gone nuclear, which is exactly what happens when truckloads full of teenagers drop in uninvited en masse. A small planned gathering of four girls had mushroomed into uncontrollable booze-infused debacle thanks to their incessant delivery of tempting cell phone text updates.

There were other silent hollow-eyed pissed off parents streaming in to pick up their own, their shadows preceding them like some hilariously terrifying zombie movie.

One of three cops asked me who I was there for. And I heard her name echo down through the pool area.

“Do you know how drunk these kids are? How old’s your daughter?”

“Sixteen.”

“The median age here is about that. Lots of alcohol. Weed too…Found a couple pipes.”

"My daughter does neither. She hates how people act with it.”

“That’s what they ALL say…!”

“Mom! Take me home. Please, let’s go.”

There she stood barefoot, totally sober, trembling and on the verge of tears.

“See? She’s fine.”

“Well this is a first for me…but Officer J. has something else you need to hear.”

Officer J. was the first cop to the pool house gate where he found T. chatting with a guy. The Officer’s flashlight in her eyes, she fumbled getting the push button gate lock open to admit him. Just then, with impeccably half-witted timing, the moronic kid she was with went all Law & Order and demanded a warrant. Naturally T. and Law & Order kid received “extra attention” when the squad of officers shut down the festivities and sat them all down to wait for parents to arrive.

Offering to clean up and put up the unleashed household dogs won her some points. And maybe a gold star for telling the drunken dolts around her to shut it when they shot off their unconstrained knuckleheaded disrespectful mouths.

Officer J. delivered a stern admonishment. The “company you keep” lecture fell on her like an anvil. She said “Yessir, yessir, yessir” in a hushed mantra.

Then he told T. something she already knew. Something a big scary law enforcement officer told her a decade earlier. Like her family, he would be there, no matter what, to save her should something bad go down. He was on her side, so don’t mess up.

"When we make a deal, we stand by it." He was looking directly at me.

She said again, “Yes. Sir.”

And we went home.

^{Photos from Creative Commons.}

Killer Luck

2011-06-03T05:57:00.004-04:00

In college, I played Miranda in Shakespeare’s The Tempest so my mother came to Tallahassee for opening night. Trussed up in a whale-bone corset that ruthlessly flattened my boobs and compressed my lungs, I was directed to perform gymnastic physical action on a multi-level stage set while speaking unerringly in Elizabethan English.

Mom was proud anyway. After saying goodnight backstage, I saw her stroll away chatting with a group of people going to on-street parking where I assumed she had left her car. The next day, over breakfast, she went on and on about how impressed she was with a friend of mine, the stage manager of the play. How in the world had she met Suzy?

“I got a little turned around. Suzy found me walking along by myself and escorted me to my car. She told me in no uncertain terms, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t ever walk on campus here alone!’ It turned out I had parked right in front of her sorority house. What a coincidence!”

That was Chi Omega, always confused with my sorority, Alpha Chi Omega, at Florida State University.

Both houses were within walking distance of a ramshackle beer joint dive called The Silver Dollar. One January night, the Dollar was smoky, loud, smelly, and stuffed with rowdy frat boys. My theater major boyfriend didn't show, so I was pouty.

My sorority sisters wouldn’t let me leave though, and badgered me to have fun and relax, annoying me even more. I sat at the bar emanating "bug off" vibes, guarding our pitcher and tab. Someone sat next to me, leaned in, and with bold familiarity, placed his hand on the back of my barstool, disallowing escape.

“Hi,” he shouted over the music.

“Hello.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Ted. “

One of the girls headed to the dance floor on the arm of a hooting frat boy. “Hold my purse, Linda?”

“Ok.”

“Linda is it? Want another beer, Linda?” Persistent.

“No.”

“Dance? Linda?”

I finally looked squarely at him, hoping to burn his face off with my stare. He was older, professorial looking, in a black turtleneck and charcoal slacks and Italian slip-on shoes. Probably some grad school dude trying to score. Annoyance turned into fight or flight. Make that fight. I wanted to punch him.

“No. Ted.”

I bit his name off in one crispy syllable and bared my teeth in a cold smile.

His laser beam focus clicked off. He turned and asked my friend Cayla to dance. He moved like a scarecrow, all knees and elbows, bobbing his head around until he made her look at him as he asked questions. He would put his hand to his ear so she would have to get closer to him to talk. My stomach turned.

Once the music changed, Cayla hastily disengaged, narrowly missing a slow dance, and rushed back to our group.

“He’s a creep. Don’t dance with him.”

Someone said, “Isn’t he at the Law School? Thought I saw him there…”

“Yeah, in the library and he jogs down Park in front of the house. He’s around.”

I’d had enough. “That’s it. I’m out of here. See you all back at the house.”

I walked home at midnight alone, navigating rapidly from one puddle of yellow light glazing the wet cobbles to the next. Staying in the glow of the streetlights seemed safe.

By solemn pact, the “sleeping porch” at my sorority was dedicated to sleep. Windows swathed in black out curtains, eight bunk beds decked out with girly comforters, pillows, alarm clocks, and stuffed animals made nests for serious hibernation. Big rule: Do not ever turn on the light.

That night, our sorority chapter president burst through the door and broke that rule into shards. She turned on the light. My eyes tried to focus on the clock. Three thirty in the morning. She called out our names from a list loudly, roll call style.

There was gossip at that time about some of us who would pack our blow dryers and a change of clothes to spend the night “elsewhere” (code: at boyfriend’s). There was frantic pearl clutching and wide-eyed whispering amongst the legacy belles that it reflected poorly on the morals of the sorority. Proudly saving themselves for marriage, they didn’t want to be associated with sluts. The persistent church-lady drum beat ticked off sisters who did spend the night with their boyfriends and thought it nobody’s damn business.

Indignant, I railed like a harpy from my upper bunk.

“What the hell? You’re on a witch hunt, aren’t you?”

“Shut up. I have to account for everybody.”

“Oh, so it comes to this, does it? Everybody who is not here will be kicked out? For something that’s nobody’s business?”

Pale and terrified, she pulled me into the hall where our weeping House Mother and law enforcement were waiting.

“Oh, will you shut up! Just shut up! Greek women have been murdered in their beds tonight. Help me find everybody…”

In the morning, I found a pay phone to reach my folks. The residential phone system couldn’t accommodate the crush of students calling home to say they were fine. Not murdered in their beds.

Mom opened her newspaper to a front page image of Suzy, the safety conscious stage manager, peeking out of the Chi Omega house front window at the police and the roiling press, her eyes haunted and smudged underneath. It was the money shot. Mom said it felt as though Suzy’s haunted eyes were looking right at her, reminding her not to walk alone, ever.

Opaque in her grief, Suzy had seen much. Once in a staccato conversation, our eyes awash but not weeping, our hands clenched together and pressed white hanging on, she told me about the pools and spatters of blood. Soon thereafter, she asked to be called by a different name: Brooke. She said she just liked it, but I always wondered if this was Suzy’s way to render powerless that episode in her life.

Two of Suzy's sorority sisters were dead. Two more were critically injured. A fifth woman, a dance major, was attacked in her duplex not far away. He used a piece of oak firewood to render them helpless. Cruel irony in a town so softened and canopied by those magnificent sheltering trees. Crueler still, when all was revealed, the murderer’s rooming house was called The Oak.

I had a hard time getting through sociology that semester without my classmate, Margaret. She was one of the two who perished.

Frat boys with shotguns began sleeping in sorority house living rooms. Parents came, silently packed up their daughters, and left. Some of us began to sleep “elsewhere” quite a bit more after that. Not another word was spoken about it.

They caught him a month later, the murderer, heading west in his modified yellow VW bug. The passenger seat had been removed. He was not done yet. The press photograph showed a disheveled wild-eyed lunatic version of someone we had all seen around, in the Law Library, on the street. At the Silver Dollar. Ted.

We wordlessly passed his photo among us, confirming permanently, like a bad tattoo, that we had been in the presence of something sentient but empty. We had met something inhuman that, in our blithe naiveté, we thought never could exist in our fairy tale lives.

We had been assessed, researched and catalogued. We had been the focus of a methodical hunter of humans.

Were we rejected as prey? Or next?

Or did we just get cosmically lucky?

Some months after Ted Bundy was imprisoned, we started to settle down. Our collective guard was still up, but things began ordering themselves normally as routine and classes began to blunt the terror.

My boyfriend and some buddies decided to split a cheap hotel room and watch a highly touted prize fight on the hotel TV system. We loaded up beers and food and, while the guys watched the fight, we g.f.’s just hung out making snide comments about how boxing is barbaric and how our men were Neanderthals for liking that blood sport.

When the fight was over, and the wine gone, some friends left. Others of us just fell asleep where we were. I double checked the door lock obsessively until I was told to calm down and cut it out. There was no bolt and that didn’t sit well with me. But I fell asleep.

A click, a screech and the bang of the door forced open snapped me awake. My eyes focused on the stranger in the room, surveying handbags and booze. He had a scar that ran from his hairline diagonally to his chin.

My boyfriend and his pals jumped up and rushed him, shouting, brandishing bottles as weapons.

The intruder calculated his percentages in a nanosecond. Not good. Outnumbered by big, scrappy, streetwise guys, not the frail elderly travelers he was used to robbing. He flew out of that hotel room – right into the arms of the cops. They said he had a long record and they just needed to catch him in the act, so they staked out our party and waited for him to strike. We were the unaware bait of their sting operation. We found out later he was armed.

What no one knew is that I was armed too with a .22 in my purse. I had recently started carrying.

Scar-face was a recidivist loser. Prosecutors saw no need for us to testify at a costly full-blown trial. He was caught red-handed and armed. He pled guilty. But we still had to give our statements by deposition.

I was on my own at the Leon County Courthouse when it was my turn to be deposed. The lobby echoed the hustle-bustle of police, lawyers and court drones. I waited on a cold white marble bench to be called when everything suddenly ground to a halt. People stopped scurrying and focused their attention on the door.

A slow motion processional of soberly suited and uniformed people toted boxes of documents toward the court rooms. The man in the middle of the group was cuffed and shackled, clinking with every hobbled shuffle step. Waving to some, smiling at others, he was having his day. Under other circumstances, he’d have kissed babies and signed autographs. We were his rapt and captive audience.

Ted Bundy’s teeth, set in a tightly controlled smile, glinted and shimmered like waves over asphalt on a hot summer day. His eyes turned toward me, widened a little and he nodded in greeting.

“Hi… Linda, isn’t it? How’ve you been?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
_{Graphics from Google Creative Commons, commercial use with modification allowed license.}

String of Dreams

2011-01-31T07:25:00.000-05:00

As I awoke one morning, the string of dreams that amused my subconcious all night were still vivid enough in my memory that I thought I'd do a little experiment and write them. There is no real punctuation either. Are your dreams punctuated? A Sunday morning oddity...

There was a young teacher with brown hair who was to teach us

and the plays and the performing would come later as is the rule

she was directing Alice in Wonderland and I could have the Cheshire Cat

if I passed the math

so I struggled and struggle

but never really knew the math

and knew I would fail

but I put on the costume anyway

it is diaphanous and masked my face with cloth

but when I smiled the grin would be seen behind the chiffon

I was lost in the maze of school corridors going to the test for some time

as were others

but I found my way after asking to borrow a pen from a lady at a desk

who looked at me like I was lying when I said I return all pens I borrow,

I opened the door and my seat in the crowded hall was across the room

and in the front where the teacher said you are just in time

so I bow to her silently but like royalty and sit

and a folder with sparkles was placed in front of me to open

when we were commanded to.

In silence at first all the costumed children broke the seals on the folders

and slowly as we all looked inside there was no test

no math test

just a gilt program for the play Alice

with all of our names next to the characters we were to play

and the low murmur became a tumult as we sighed relieved, no math test.

~~~

And then I was in business attire at a Mexican restaurant

with the woman who worked at disney

and felt it her mission to explain islam

and I had to go to the restroom and so did she

so we went down a stair case

and there was a perfectly common men’s room

but the ladies room was not

and Sue was in front of me in line and when she went in

one of the walls of the restroom was clear glass

and the people waiting for tables outside could see into the ladies room

so I didn’t stay

and the wall with the door to the room was a flat

from a theatrical set

painted black.

~~~

And then I was on top floor of a hotel that looked like a ziggurat

with high jutting balconies wrapping around

and no rails

everyone else went down in the elevator

but some guy with a tie and a mix CD of tunes I had never heard

offered to teach me how to descend by counting my steps every floor

so I would (n’t) walk off the ends

so he blindfolded me and walked with me down each level

and we counted our steps

a couple more longer each floor

until he picked me up in his arms and began running

saying trust me

and I was terrified

but trusting that he knew what he was doing

because he was counting

he knew the math to the ground floor.

~~~

Standing with another woman

I suspect my best friend

with our boots propped up on the bumper of the car

we’re both wearing hats and waiting

he came riding down the side of the rode on horseback

and we ride to meet him

he hands her a whisk broom from out of his pocket

and she rides on ahead

and I trot by and grab a broom too

and we turn away from the car

which looks broken

and ride to the herd over a culvert

and I say

when we get this bunch in to where they’re going

we’re going back for the car right?

He says no never going back

but there’s a computer and a diamond ring in there

what if someone breaks into it?

Doesn’t matter he said and reined his horse around

to pursue the other woman who had traversed the culvert

and was working the herd in the opposite direction

I wanted to do the job and do it in a day

but I knew I would disappoint him

because my hips and knees were already hurting

I wouldn’t be able to walk by midday

deciding to stay with the car

looking back over my shoulder it looks more like shelter.

Where There's Smoke, There's Grandpa

2011-01-21T07:54:00.000-05:00

^Grandpa

^{Harvey Kopp}

“I smell smoke! Mom! SMOKE!”

Sweaty from the long slog from the bus stop home, I opened the door and knew something was up. I raced from room to room frantically looking for the source of the pungent aroma that was tickling my nose.

“Where’s it coming from?” called out my Mom from the kitchen.

I pulled the pantry doors practically off their hinges, peered under beds, burst into bathrooms, yanked open closet doors, until I found it. It was a thin grey swirl of smoke wafting up from the glowing end of a cigar.

“GRANDPA!”

“You got me!”

There hunkered down in the guest room closet, the prize at the end of “cigar smoke hide-n-seek,” was my Grandpa puffing away, flashing a brilliant smile and bubbling up a booming belly laugh.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him hard enjoying his scratchy cheeks, his pure white impeccably groomed hair, the feel of his dress shirt and tie. He smelled deliciously of Old Spice, and the slight tang on his breath of the welcoming Budweiser beer my mother gave him upon arriving.

^{Tree-froggin' Grandpa. I had to be peeled off...}

Grandpa was down from St. Louis for a visit and this wiggling giggling granddaughter could not have been happier.

Harvey Kopp may have had hard times and heart breaks during his life. Probably did. But he never let things get him down.

A self-made man sired by beer-brewing German immigrants, he made his life an adventure from his days of hawking newspapers on the corner as a boy (Extra! Extra!) all the way to becoming notable in St. Louis retail circles.

To my eyes as a single-digit kid, Grandpa consumed life with a healthy appetite. When he was around, things just tasted, smelled, sounded and felt enhanced; more delicious, sweeter, more real.

^{Grandpa posing as a mannequin his store window.}

And a whole bunch funnier.

^{Grandpa in his element.}

Grandpa flew to Florida frequently to see us and to enjoy some well-deserved rest from being a shoe store owner and salesman.

Shoes for men in those days were serious.

Grandpa specialized in fitting men with sturdy, all-leather Stacy-Adams shoes, manufactured in the good ‘ol US of A. These shoes were handed down fathers to sons, worthy of being re-soled over and over again. They had life spans with sharp dressed businessmen in St. Louis including CEO’s at beer companies and baseball sports figures. Even the fellows who “managed” the "oldest profession" patronized Grandpa’s shop on the down low for showy wingtips.

Soles with souls.

We still have a couple of pairs of Stacy-Adams shoes in my father and brother’s closets. The days of serious well-made American manufactured men’s shoes took a downturn with the eventual flood of cheaper made imports from overseas, but Grandpa rode the wave at its zenith.

^{Me, my little brother and Grandpa beachin' it.}

Once my mother could peel me off Harvey (I notoriously clung to him like a tree frog) his transformation from dapper traveler to beach bum would begin.

His goals in Florida, in addition to messing around with his grandkids, were to get tanned, do crossword puzzles, enjoy some beers, and play golf or cards wherever available. Once settled, he would carefully hang up his business duds and don a pair of comfortable swim trunks and sunglasses for optimum relaxation.

And, always, a Hav-A-Tampa cigar not far away, either actively lit or smoldering away waiting for the flame from his silver flip-top lighter.

His left over cigar boxes were cherished objects where I kept all my kid treasures. All three of us kids took them to school to hold broken crayons, fat pencils and glue much to the chagrin of the nuns.

Those boxes smelled so good.

Grandpa’s base of operations was the patio behind our house that overlooked the Country Club links. There he was a Coppertone slathered king lion surveying his vacation domain.

And that is where the family-famous tradition of the Patio Party began.

My brother and I, feeling left out in the evening when the adults gathered around the bar for cocktails and smoked mackerel spread canapes before dinner, doled out the pestering, persistently, until Grandpa proposed a remedy. If we settled down, he would throw a private and exclusive Patio Party with us for lunch the next day.

We held up our end.

^{Patio Party!}

The next day, mom fixed tuna salad sandwiches with sweet gherkin pickles on the side, Kool-Aid and a Budweiser for Grandpa. Then we put on our 'swim trunks' (underpants) and sunglasses, slathered on the Coppertone and ate lunch on the patio with Grandpa.

Afterward, for dessert, we got to pull Grandpa's earlobe and he would blow a puff of smoke to our unending delight.

^{The famous patio where it all started.}

Grandpa taught me how to play cards on that patio. Gin and poker. I learned from a pro. He honed his prodigious and lucrative card playing skills at the Norwood Hills Country Club and the Missouri Athletic Club frequently winning his plane fares to Florida or Boston. Or to Cuba where he played golf at beautiful resorts prior to Castro.

To this day, at home card games or casinos, I know I am going to win when I smell cigar smoke drift by. Where there is smoke, there is Grandpa.

From that patio Grandpa would also plan his attack on the fairways and greens of the Country Club course. We always kept a bag of clubs in the garage for his visits and he would join foursomes at formal play during the day or swing away solo at dusk carrying his putter, wedge and 7-iron to the 13th fairway tee box. If we were good and didn't stalk him like baby ducks up and down the frog's hair, he'd dump out a dozen or so balls on the green and teach us how to putt. "You drive for show, but you putt for dough!"

Sink a good long putt, well read, and the prize would be a "smiley" ball; one with a big gouge out of it where Grandpa had crushed it off the tee leaving a gash like a smile. Many a cigar box was filled with smileys.

^{Can you bowl while smoking a cigar?}

Grandpa even made the task of changing our diapers a show of prestidigitation as though by sheer magic our diapers would mystically correct themselves. It was a boffo Vegas act before it's time.

After popping his knuckles and assuming a fighter's stance in front of the changing table, he would gingerly confirm that the one being changed was not harboring anything solid in the cottony reaches of the nappy.

Then, with cigar gripped tightly between his teeth, Grandpa would unpin both sides and grab one end of the diaper, count 1-2-3 zip! and yank it. The cascade of baby laughter he would provoke was roll-on-the-floor funny.

^{Photo booth}^fun^.

But one day, Grandpa's diaper check was not thorough enough.

1-2-3 zip!

The warm brown contents flew in every direction plastering the walls, ceiling and us kids, and even splattering his glasses. My Mom still can't catch her breath from laughing at the memory of the Pollock-esque mess dripping from all ends of the room.

Grandma was there for that episode as well. I just remember she threatened to pee herself she was laughing so hard.

Verda, my Grandmother, and Grandpa Harvey separated at one juncture in their marriage. I never really understood what that meant until I was much older. They were still both there laughing and having fun with us together sometimes. So what did that technicality matter to a little kid?

They never actually divorced. Grandpa just moved into the MAC, hung out with his golfing and card playing buddies, and dated Grandma like she was his sweetheart.

The bond was strong. As strong as their respective independent streaks.

Funny how these things get passed down.

^{Grandma and Grandpa, together laughing, Fort Lauderdale beach.}

Grandpa was the first person we ever heard snore.

He could rattle the window panes at night, and we would hide under our covers and giggle at the rising snorts and the falling wheezes that played like a comic bagpipe symphony through the walls. He would laugh with us the next morning when we would try to imitate his leonine night noises.

Sneep! Snorp! Grrrowww!

But one night back in his digs at the MAC in St. Louis, all alone and unexpectedly, Grandpa's snoring got the best of him and he went to the big Patio Party in the sky.

When I was told, and things calmed down, I remembered where he kept his extra shaver and supplies under the bathroom counter so he could pack light on the next visit. I still dab a little Old Spice on my wrist to remind me. Just a little sense memory to conjure up the willing and loving spirit of a man who ate life like a fabulous meal served up on a patio long long ago.

Is that cigar smoke I smell? Hi, Grandpa.

^{Jon, Mom, Chris, Grandpa and me.}

Postscript:
Chris and I were reminiscing recently, and Grandpa came up. I was going on at how much Chris resembled him.

Chris, who was quite a bit younger than me at the time Grandpa was with us, said: "Damn, I wish he was here still. I feel like you and Jon got to know him so much better. We'd have had so much fun together."

He then high-tailed it out the door to 'drive to the store' for unspecified supplies, as we all do when trying to shake off the sad.

While there, Chris asked the woman behind the smokes counter if she had something other than the cheap cherry or apple flavored plastic-tipped cigars that were displayed.

She reached under the counter and tossed Chris a box of Hav-A-Tampa cigars.

Hi, Grandpa!

Winter Solstice Greeting. Yule Smile...

2010-12-21T18:59:00.001-05:00

^{Dog is love.}

Solstice.

The darkest of times will pass tonight...And as our earth turns back to the light, sending you sincere wishes for a very Merry Christmas and a hopeful, prosperous New Year.

With heartfelt love to all,

Linda

Photoshop graphic generously built and gifted to me by the fabulous Erik Sherman

Moon Eclipse Bubbles Howl Run

2010-12-16T19:32:00.000-05:00

“A full lunar eclipse? Well, we just have got to do something about that…” said Lisa.

Right then, I should have remembered what the word lunatic meant.

It was August 17^th, 1989, and the four of us were wrapping up our day quite late at the recently opened Disney MGM Studios. It was never a 9 to 5 day for us, and it was ticking up to midnight. Our work motto in those younger more resilient days was that sleep was for weaklings, and you can expect to sleep when you die. So we just worked pretty much 24/7. And when we played…

I was concluding my phone calls as crew scheduler making sure multiple camera crews reported on time the next day equipped with what they needed. Amy, a production manager, was running down her notes double checking her gig just one more time, her feet propped up on my desk, laughing at some loony irony of the day. She is an expert at irony.

Tiersa leaned on the doorframe of my office. She had just come from her realm in the executive trailer where she was gal Friday to the Vice President of the Studios. As I recall, she was there to tell me to quit sneaking into his office and moving things round to annoy his starchy perfectionism. He could tell things were disturbed by the shifts in the dust on his desk. Me driving him crazy was driving her crazy too.

And, finally, the tall blonde drink of water who could lift or throw anything as far as any guy on the crew, Lisa, strolled in from Lighting & Grip world, bored, anxious and looking for something to do that Thursday night.

It was a convergence of dangerous females, all single young career chicks with no male encumbrances at the time. We were too competent, tough and bossy for just any guy, so that would have to come later. Plus working at the theme park made it pretty slim pickins’ for eligible straight guys anyway. So we put some carpe in the diem all for ourselves.

Somebody dubbed us “The Girl Gang” because whenever there was a party to plan, amp up, or burn down, we did it. And still made set call the next morning.

That night we were spoiling for an adventure. The prospect of seeing a full lunar eclipse first hand just spoke to our southern pagan hearts.

Lisa owned a Ford Explorer with four wheel drive and wanted to take us “mudding” in the cow pastures somewhere out behind SeaWorld where the streetlights wouldn’t wash out the eclipse spectacle.

And, she knew where there was a sale of good champagne at an all-night liquor store. It turned out to be Dom Perignon. We bought a bottle apiece and shot the corks at each other right away taking big swigs straight from the bottle. No prissy flutes would survive the night anyway.

At the time, many roads around the theme parks would be paved beautifully but you could, if you knew where, round a corner and drop off to rutted dirt in a second. That’s where we went off-roading.

Lisa at the wheel, and the rest of us screaming like an asylum on fire, we bucked and rolled and hopped all over that big stretch of pasture land, holding our champagne bottles like gyroscopes to keep from spilling a drop. Bonking our heads on the ceiling of the car, we saw great grey washes of dirt and mud from puddles and probably quite a bit of cow poop shoot up from under the wheels until her Explorer looked white in the moonlight.

And it was serious moonlight. Full, low and blazingly white with a face-shaped mottling of grey.

“I gotta pee,” announced Tiersa, and we stopped on top of a rise. That’s what passes for a hill in Florida. Tiersa gingerly set her white dress-up shoes on the ground and scurried off a ways to take care of business in spite of being dressed still in office chic attire. I made the mistake of going directly in front of the Explorer and Lisa and Amy flipped on the headlights just as I could do nothing but squat there and call them names while mosquitos bit my bright white butt.

But then, it began. The moon that was laughing at us with a full round face began to change. A red wedge gradually encroached on his cheek like a rash slowly taking over the moon’s face. He looked down on us and it almost seemed as though his expression changed to fear and bewilderment. What is this eating my smile? In a short time, the moon turned red and expressionless. Like a blush at some embarassment. A penumbra of white light backlit him like a movie star.

We sat on the bumper of the Explorer and quietly sipped our champagne looking up in awe as the shadow of the earth consumed the moon.

Could have been me.

Could have been any one of us, but someone howled like a wolf.

And the rest of us chanted in our own howl harmonies. Echoes of what may have lurked in our genetic memories as a natural reaction to the harrowing sight of a blood hued moon just burst out of us.

The red disc began to pull across the moon revealing his hearty happy face again, and we howled louder.

Until the deer-blinding hunting lights from the trucks lined up on the next rise came on and we heard,

“Hey ladies! What’s up? Let’s party…Whoohooo!” Dub in the leering, cackling, teeth-challenged, hygiene-resistant trollish laughter here.

Some stinkers had snuck up on us.

We jumped into the Explorer like wet cats and took off.

They pursued us a while, hooting and hollering and quite frankly scaring the hell out of us. But we lost them about the time we cleared a low hillock and came down into a cow wallow with a sticky wet thud.

We stuck right up to the floorboards in muck, all four wheels spinning in futility.

We sank up to our kneecaps in it too when we stepped out of the vehicle. Even Tiersa sunk in her white dress-up pumps which were almost sucked off her feet in the mess. No amount of rocking or stuffing dry materials or empty bottles under those tires was going to get Lisa’s Explorer out of that sucking quagmire either.

We waded out, found a utility road where power lines snapped and sizzled over our heads for miles and made for the lights toward Kissimmee on foot. The four of us. The Girl Gang with our arms around each other’s shoulders, covered in mud and poop.

And glory.

None of us missed our call the next morning. Not a one.

~~~

There will be a full lunar eclipse at 2:41 a.m. on December 21^st, 2010 – The Winter Solstice.

I hope you find your lunatic moment too.

December Star Party in the Sky

2010-12-13T20:51:00.000-05:00

Cinching my robe and sliding my stiff awakening feet into moccasins every morning in the hours before dawn, I step out with my canine companion, Bella, and we walk in the dark.

As dark as we can find.

The darker the pathway beneath our feet, the brighter the stars above.

We look up to dizzy ourselves tracking the lights. It's a star party and we walk the perimeter, earthbound with no invitation and imagine stories.

Everyone is dressed to the nines. They are brilliant, Perseus and Casseopia, in diamonds flung against a flowing garment of black velvet.

Or the gods allow hints in pin pricks letting through just a smidgeon of light from the multi-verse on the other side of the black paper canopy overarching us all. That light is too powerful for us to see. We'd be blinded by it given the full impact of its brilliance.   A disco ball universe.

Canis Major follows Orion on his nightly hunt, as loyal and content as my dog does. Belted by three gems at his waist, Orion's arm is extended pulling back his giant bow.

The Pleiades, seven soft sisters, crowd shyly near Taurus,  and sometimes flirt with Orion.  They are decked in milky gossamer, less boisterous, more radiant these December nights.

Castor and Pollux, The Celestial Twins load up their Roman candles and bottle rockets and fling them toward earth leaving crackling sparkling trails and tails...

It may be ice age frigid tonight, but the Geminids promise a real show for those hearty souls who will be looking up. If you do, you'll be sharing the spectacle with me. And, I will enjoy your company.
More celestial events to follow this month. And I have a story to tell...

_{courtesy hubble.org}

The Spike Driver on the Toxaway Ghost Express

2010-10-25T17:11:00.002-04:00

^{Moonlight. Lake Toxaway. "In Beautiful Sapphire Country."}

“Yep,” said Jimmy, “That’s where the colored spike driver dude is buried.”

Every once in a while, in the summer time when school was out, we’d ride Jimmy’s horses all over the Indian paths and logging roads that stitched across the mountains near Lake Toxaway, North Carolina. Jimmy was one of the only locals who would deal with us Floridian transplants every summer without wanting to beat the snot out of our spoiled flatlander asses, and for that we were actually pretty grateful.

Jimmy, a true native, showed us things and took us places we never would’ve realized existed.

On this day we, Jim, my brother Jon, two of the three MacClarty boys Mike and Pat and I, were out riding when Jimmy pointed out that grave. It was an unassuming lonely mound of dirt nestled into a grove of pines marked with a tiny white cross and some relatively fresh flowers.

“How I hear it, he helped build the railroad comin’ up here to the old Toxaway Inn way back in ‘bout 1900. Heard he had a pretty rough time of it up here b’cause he was the only colored man on that crew and how mean everyone was to him,” said Jim. “That’s pretty much all I know.”

“If he died in the early 1900’s, who brings the flowers?”

Jim winked and flashed a crooked smile. “It’s a stone cold mystery who keeps puttin’ them here all the time. I hear tell folks set out here all night just to see who does it but the next morning there’s new flowers and no one saw a dang thing!”

“Yeah, right Jim,” said Mike, “Just trying to get us to piss our pants aren’t ya? Cut the crap.”

Jim took off his hat, grinned bigger and scratched his head. “Just tellin’ you what I heard.”

We were riding on a logging road soon thereafter. It was narrow and flanked by an enormous rock face on one side and a gut-clenching drop-off on the other. I couldn’t look over the drop off and scraped my poor pony up against the rock face the whole time.

We discovered a great wide open cave carved out of the mountainside along that road that day and made plans to come back at night to camp out. We had to get our sleeping bags, flashlights, bug repellent and the all important beer.

Quantity not quality was the agreed upon beer philosophy.

Jim couldn’t join us on the camp out.

“Y’all just have a good time on your own. I’ve been there before so t'ain't so new t' me.”

Odd. Jim never missed an opportunity to party with us when he knew there would be beer. He probably just wanted to hound dog a new blonde-blue sweetie he was pursuing. We knew how to get back up there on foot, which seemed a little safer than by horseback anyway.

So off we rambled, three flatlander guys and a girl, at dusk. We hiked the distance to the cave beneath a red glowing sunset.

The camp fire was easy since all the tinder inside the cave was dry. It had a nice high flame and our shadows bounced and wavered on the back wall of the cavern. I wondered, between sips of Old Milwaukee, if prehistoric people had much the same visions provoked by those flickering images of sparks and shadows.

I thought of Plato.

Then I had to pee.

Camp out romance is not a delicate thing. Mike, who had a marginal 'thing' for me that summer, offered to come along while I stepped out of the circle of firelight. He often thought my having to pee was really code for it’s time to make out.

“Ok. Mike, one condition: I have to hold your flashlight while I pee so you don’t try anything shady, like shine it on me when I’m in the process. Got it?”

With no moon, climbing down out of the cave was tricky. We got down on the logging road and I found a spot near the edge where I unzipped and squatted careful not douse my boots in hot rental Old Milwaukee. With one hand I yanked up my jeans and zipped them. With the other hand, I kept the beam of the flashlight on Mike who was laughing hysterically at my prissy modesty.

He missed me going over the edge he was laughing so hard.

The edge of the logging road crumbled under my feet and I bounced, rolled, smacked and tumbled down the drop until I came to a stop on something hard, cold and metallic. The flashlight skittered away and blinked off.

“Oh, that’s going to leave a mark,” I announced to no one in particular.

It hurt but no broken bones, just probably bruises and scrapes. I patted the ground around me feeling for the flashlight and felt long cold metal perpendicular to splintery rectangles of wood.

Gravel.

The tar stench of creosote.

Railroad track! I fell on a train track.

Eventually my fingers found the flashlight and I flicked it on to light the tracks, shiny, narrow and curving into the distance, hugging the mountainside. I aimed the beam upward to see how I’d fallen and couldn’t believe my luck at not having broken my fool neck.

“Mike?” No answer.

Just wind in the trees and constellations swirling around a very black sky.

Standing, I turned the flashlight off to let my eyes adjust. A little way down just before a curve in the track, I could see a pin prick of light. It was swinging back and forth from right to left, then left to right again. Then it went still and I heard “clang…clang…clang” of metal hitting metal.

Then the light began its pendulum motion once again coming closer to me. It was a man swinging the light. A very tall powerfully built black man wearing a hat. Who was it? John Henry the legendary guy? My mind was fuzzy. He held a lantern in the one hand and a huge sledgehammer-like mallet in the other.

I could see him set the lantern down, and then raise the mallet over his head and with a powerful stroke, he’d pound down on the track, once, twice, three times – “clang…clang…clang!”

A rumble began teasing my feet and, faintly, a whistle blew somewhere in the distance.

I called out to him. “Hey! Where’s a good place to climb back up to the road up there?”

His lantern behind him, all I could see was his silhouette abruptly straighten up and peer at me. He waved at me to get off the tracks.

And suddenly it wasn’t just his lantern rendering him backlit in silhouette.

It was a headlight. A train’s headlight. A cyclops monster chuffing its route down those rails at a furious pace.

He waved me off frantically but I had nowhere to go. Neither did he.

The rumble was making pebbles vibrate up into the air around his feet. The whistle pumped once, twice and then intoned the long lost distress wail...

The steam engine towered over him like a dragon, black smoke from the stack and white clouds from the runnels filled up the space behind him.

Unbelievably, the man leapt off the tracks in one smooth jump. He leapt off into the yawning void where it seemed there was nowhere to go but down. Straight down.

A punch of displaced air riding in front of the locomotive stole my breath and flattened me against the mountainside where I willed myself to sink into it. Hot exhalations of steam from the engine breathed against my chest, and the deafening squeal of wheel against rail as the engine and coal car sped by me, inches from me, percussed in a rhythmic clack, clack, clack.

The cars rolling by were lit from within and the people inside were laughing, dining, toasting each other with glasses held high with care so as not to spill because of the train’s lurch and shudder. The fringes on the windows swayed and the people, fleeting images of wealth dressed in long bustled skirts and formal suits were… happy.

As the whistle echoed, and the caboose lights rounded the curve, I flipped over onto my stomach and made a mad adrenalin-fueled scramble up the dirt face I had come down. I made it scratching with my fingernails almost all the way up when I felt my hand grasped by someone hard. He pulled me up as my feet found leverage on tree roots.

Mike was pale and angry. “What the hell? I thought you shined me and went back to the cave, and when you weren’t there we panicked! Quit screwin’ around!”

“I almost got hit by a train and you’re panicked?”

“What train?”

“The one down there. Didn’t you hear it? The tracks are right down there. It was some kind of tourist train with people in it acting out some turn of the century thing. You didn’t hear it? See it?”

All three of them looked at me in the flashlight beams with slack expressions.

"Oh and there was this guy! A worker or something. He was hammering the rails when the train came. He jumped off the cliff down there! We gotta go see if he's ok...We have to get the rescue squad!"

"Um, by the look of your forhead, I'd say you were seeing things...Let's get back up to the cave."

A bump on my head was approaching the size and shape of a quail egg, and combined with all the scratches and bruises, I decided that pressing the issue further was futile. And judging from the outlandish jabber issuing from my lips, I even doubted what I saw.

A beer and half-assed first aid later, I tucked into my sleeping bag and listened for whistles. The guys took turns keeping me awake, watching me for signs of concussion. So much for camp out romance.

In broad daylight, I found the evidence of my descent over the edge. It was easy to find with all the freshly turned dirt and the foliage broken and crushed all the way down that drop off.

I sat on my rear and scooted down to where I must’ve landed.

There was Mike’s flashlight alright.

Lying right in the middle of a clay road.

Only the faintest indentations revealed where there once were ties, one after another, and where the rails must’ve been.

There was no railroad there anymore.

Just hard pack clay embossed with ghostly corrugated indentations where once there was.

Next to Mike’s flashlight though?

One lone handmade iron rail spike. I still have it.

***

Epilogue:

Lake Toxaway, North Carolina, was once a popular resort locale for the wealthy at the start of the twentieth century. The Edisons, Vanderbilts, Astors and Fords all travelled by train to the Toxaway Inn for luxurious rustic vacations on the largest man-made lake in the south.

The resort lost its luster and crumbled into memory when the dam broke in 1916 sending the lake in a tidal wave down into South Carolina sweeping folk and property along with it.

(A new dam was built in 1960, however, and the lake is back.)

That railroad spur for the privileged was built in 1900 by local crews across treacherous terrain and at great peril. One man, a black spike driver, was noted (and reviled by fellow caucasian crew members) for his practice of walking the rails at night to check for and repair damaged or poorly-constructed rail that could send a train plummeting down to its doom.

^{Like this one did...}

His lantern light waving back and forth is seen even now on the abandoned rail bed by those who know where to look for it.

The flowers on his grave? Still a mystery.

^{The porch on the old Toxaway Inn 1902}

^{A ticket folder for the railway. The ladies looked like this in the train...}

^{Interesting memo from 1901 announcing the train link called The Transylvania Railroad. Yes, it is Transylvania County. Where prompt delivery of your baggage is paramount!}

Priests, Lies and Boone's Farm Apple Wine

2010-10-19T13:16:00.001-04:00

Beth Anne leaned over and said to me in a big-eyed giggly whisper, “”Did you hear what happened to Father Dennehy at the basketball game Friday night?”

“No, what happened?”

“Can you believe that one of the cheerleaders walked right up to him and…”

The classroom intercom crackled and a chipper and efficient voice asked: “Will you please send Linda to the officer, Sister?”

“Linda, go ahead and take your things with you.”

Slinging my shoulder bag over my arm and gathering my books, I could feel the laser beam eyeballs of my fellow classmates as they fantasized luridly. They all hoped, I am sure, that something juicy would be coming down. I just hoped it wasn’t really bad news.

It wasn’t.

It was just one of those strange Mondays when a steady stream of girls, all cheerleaders, was being called down to the office at intervals. I hardly noticed who went or when. I didn’t even notice the odd sort of attention they were giving me when they returned to class and whispered amongst themselves.

Cheerleader drama wasn’t my thing.

Beth Anne was dying to finish her sentence, but didn’t have a chance.

My eyes and nose both were producing enough snot to annihilate an entire forest of Kleenex. I had a mean cold and all I wanted to do is get through the day, walk home, and curl up with my cat and The Fellowship of the Ring on the big green corduroy couch where, magically, no one could last longer than five minutes before falling asleep. I was sick.

It was eerie walking the distance to the office down the loggias devoid of bustling kids. Everyone was in class and it was surreal, or I was woozy from my malady.

Standing outside of the office waiting for me was Father Thomas Dennehy, pacing, arms crossed, and face mottled red. I thought for one optimistic moment that he might be waiting for one of the guys to show up for coporal punishment of one kind or another. But, no, he was waiting for me.

Father Dennehy was an Irish priest, complete with a folksy sing-songy brogue. He was highly valued as a “rainmaker” for the Archdiocese. He could squeeze every last penny out of a congregation to build a church, gymnasium or a school using every technique possible to extract pledges and cash short of holding us upside down by the heels and shaking it out of us. Or offering penances. When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from Purgatory springs and all that.

He begged, pleaded, scolded, guilted, coerced, blackmailed and even exerted mild forms of extortion. He was aggressive. And the Church loved him for it.

He was also well known amongst the guys for his no-hostages-taken disciplinary practices of getting their attention in a loud and physical manner and making examples. The good Father was a pugilist and enjoyed boxing with the boys to toughen them up. Many times I would see him paired off with one of the guys, bare-fisted, hopping around on light feet, sparring and ducking and lunging for fun.

But when he was not having fun, watch out.

Once Father burst into a class, pulled a boy out into the loggia by the back of the shirt, and smacked him down to the ground for some transgression. Another time he plucked a misbehaving scamp out of the school bus dragging him down the middle aisle by the kid’s hair and down the steps to the outside where he cuffed him, hard. Another boy received a shove so powerful that his head smashed into a blackboard and cracked it.

In those days, the guys shrugged it off, if not in need of medical attention. Astonishingly, I heard that many of their Dads had given permission for the Father to deliver this testosterone rage of rough justice as their proxies.

Even paddling.

T’was the way young men were broken and remolded in those days and the Dads and the Fathers were in cahoots.

Just the guys though. When Father had business with a girl, it was verbal, mean, and followed up by lengthy repetitive, almost begging for forgiveness, apologies.

And I apparently became the object of his attentions that morning.

“Sit here.”

I sat in the chair in front of his big wooden desk. The open windows were behind him and he left the door open. I was relieved that the receptionist was within earshot. Jesus was there too. A giant crucifix towered over us on a stand behind his chair replete with a depiction of our pegged and painful Savior hanging from it, His eyes cast down in agony fixed precisely at the person being interviewed by the Father.

He sat in his leather chair and put his elbows on the desk, tenting his fingers and resting them against his lips.

“Ye took yer friends out onto the golf course behind yer house Friday night and you got ‘em all drunk on apple wine, din’t ye?”

“Uh, what?”

“Did ye get yer friends drunk out on the golf course Friday night, little missy?”

“No.”

And I don’t know what possessed me, but I laughed.

His hands slapped down so hard on that desktop the telephone receiver hopped out of its cradle and skittered across the surface of his blotter.

“Yer LYIN!” he bellowed, “Ye think I don't know a LIAR when I put eyes on one? I happen to have solid evidence and the testimony of WITNESSES pertainin’ to yer activities Friday night. I know what ye’ve been up to. Ye may get what ye want by lyin’ with everyone else who will excuse yer wanton dishonest and sneaky ways, but ye can’t lie yer way outta this!”

The receptionist’s fleeing footsteps and the slam of the outer door made me lose a little courage and some control of my bladder as well. My nose dripped unattended. I had to keep my wits about me here.

“Father, I was home Friday night with my Dad. I was sick. I didn’t go anywhere.”

“No. THIS is what ye did, girlie. Ye got that older guy ye date to buy wine for you and the girls on the cheerleadin’ squad and ye all sat out there on the fairway in the dark and got drunk! THEN ye all came to the game, those girls got to jumpin’ around like they do, and they got sick…”

Dennehy had information. How the hell did he know I was dating a college guy? How did he know the golf course was a great place, second only to the beach at Lauderdale by the Sea, to hang out and get wasted?

“Not true. I was home on the couch sick watching Star Trek with my Dad, Father.”

“NO. YOU. WERE.NOT!” his voice was straining and I could see the cords standing out in his neck.

He picked up the phone receiver and waved it in my face. “We are callin’ yer Dad right now to get to the bottom of this and agree on a consequence.

And I want ye to know, missy, ye’ve lied to a priest here; t’is like lyin’ in the confessional, y’know.

Do ye t’ink yer goin’ to heaven when ye’re sich a liar? Ye better change yer ways, quit engagin’ in sinful behavior wit that delinquent boyfriend ‘o yers and get the drinkin’ under control. And especially quit yer lyin about it all! Hell is a consequence.”

“Jackson 33448”

“Did ye hear a word I said?”

“Yes, Father, Jackson 33448 is his office number. His nurse assistant is Marty. She’ll put him on the phone.”

The color of his face changed drastically to a butter colored white. He scowled and spun the numbers on his rotary phone and put the earpiece to his ear. I could hear it engage.

“May I speak wit’ the Doctor please?” Then puffing his chest and standing straight looking me square in the eye he announced into the mouthpiece, “This is Father Dennehy.”

I heard my Dad’s garbled greeting on the other end. The good Father wasted no time and asked the big question.

“Doctor, may I ask if you know the whereabouts of your daughter this last Friday night?”

I could hear Dad’s polite even cheerful voice relay the news to the now shaken man of the cloth.

“Home with what I think is just a bad cold. We watched some TV together. Why do you ask Father?”

With that, Father Dennehy stuttered and thanked my Dad in an awkward spray of non-connecting syllables, maybe even Gaelic was worked in there, and hung up.

He wiped his hand across his now perspiring brow and said to me, “You are dismissed. Please return to class.”

So I did. Classes had just begun to change and about five of the cheerleaders were eyeing me from the commons in an uncharacteristically curious display of interest. I ran headlong into Beth Ann who, with big dramatic eyes, finished the sentence she had begun just before my interview with Father Dennehy.

“Yeah, ok, this is great. You’re gonna laugh your butt off. That cheerleader named Shelly walked right up and projectile barfed Boone’s Farm apple wine all over Father Dennehy on Friday night! Right in his face! In front of everybody in the gym! Boy was he mad!”

“Don’t I know it?” said I.

Don’t I know it.

***

Fast Forward - 2010.

Father Dennehy, deceased in 1999, was accused just this last September of child abuse and pedophilia by a man who served as an altar boy at the parish within which the high school is located. There is not much more to say about it until the lawsuit is at trial.

The Tale of The Rower (Inspired by Canterbury Tales)

2010-10-12T15:24:00.002-04:00

He's tall, fit and athletic, this young man of might,

Whose arms are sure strong and his leg muscles tight,

Made verily so by rowing a four-man sport boat,

With movements sleek smooth and rhythms fair rote.

Spandex clad, hands calloused and game-face sore dire

He and his brave shell-mates seemed never to tire.

And when the splitting of water wears them far down,

Anew their strength and steel wills always come 'round.

To Nation’s fame, this hearty boy crew,

They pulled and feathered their oars and flew

In perfect oared sync down canals, bays and lakes

Inviting trounc’d nemeses to eat of their wakes.

One night when discussing bold victories physical,

He and his crew guys became quite quizzical

Of a new sport to conquer, and on which to boast

Called Parkour. In such, the urban landscape is host

Where no city sidewalk, wall or stair is barrier

To the tumbling, flipping or leaping Parkour harrier.

Instead of water, rival crews and timing to beat,

He’d with his companions, like spiders so fleet

Flip down from the rooftops and all breathless they’d run

Climbing bus stops and bike racks and stairwells for fun.

Not meant for competing, this free running art,

‘Tis control of the mind gives movement its start.

And, like rowing, to rule over nerves, fear and pain

With Parkour there’s grace and good balance to gain.

Yet after a night of flips, climbing and vaulting,

With agile young friends in the downtown assaulting

The sidewalks and walls and the nooks of the city,

Our Rower did something that brought him great pity.

At McDonald’s where all Parkour-ists had met up to snack,

He tripped on a small curb and fell with a smack.

Descending, neglecting his skills learn’t fantastic,

He fell on one hand, the angle so drastic.

And, in irony abundant no one could fair conjure,

His thumb he did break. His pride he did injure.

With thumbnail fac'd east in an unnatural twist,

The Rower did visit a hand specialist.

A surgeon who put the Rower well under,

To pin the one digit he had tore all asunder.

He awoke from the sleep with an oath on his lips

At McDonald’s, he said, he was cursed with the trips!

(Then the boy still all woozy from drugs dulling pain,

Did vow to hug mom and kiss girlfriend again.

No mem'rie he now of those words that he spoke,

But tender that strong man was sweet when he woke.)

Eight weeks for to heal and climb back in the boat.

Missing three crew regattas, that’s all she wrote.

But all was not lost, he allowed in the car,

His sweetheart apparently digs guys with scars!

A Dozen Eggs and A Plan

2010-10-07T15:29:00.001-04:00

The Beach Divas: Eileen, Des, Mary, Mary Anne, Sue, Anne Marie, Karen, Linda

I had a vision last weekend.

“Oh, oh! Time to go” announced Anne Marie guiding me to the car. Ever vigilant, she saw my eyes well up as I took in the stunning aqueduct-style architecture that now made up the façade of my old high school.

In our day, it was but four non-descript two-story buildings with one flat-roofed bunker in between. Now, with time and the support of alumni dollars, it was palatial.

This high school was no longer a non-air-conditioned geometric collection of shoeboxes squatting in a Florida sticker patch.

My vision that night was some kind of time machine revelation; a wavy broadcast special dissolve effect that kept shaving away the renovations. My vision melted the new expensive trappings like some crazy dripping Dali painting and left only the pure depiction of the original school, as I knew it during the day. I saw us walking those open air loggias changing classes, laughing.

My fevered misfiring chardonnay-addled brain was wrinkling time for me.

I love my brain for giving me these wrinkles as I grow older.

I love my brain because sometimes the time wrinkling folds pieces in, hiding memories that do not move me to tears. They move me someplace else entirely…Another tale for another day.

Here’s how all this happened: Seven of us 50-something gal pals, fueled by cocktails and the urge to relive some of the mischief we all got into when were kids, crashed the 50th Anniversary Celebration of our private Catholic high school alma mater in Fort Lauderdale.

Actually we met up for another beach weekend using this milestone as an excuse to get together again to eat, drink, reminisce, bob around in the ocean, nap next to the pool and laugh our collective selves silly.

None of us really wanted to go to the formal activities planned to mark the 50th Anniversary of our high school. The answer to the question ‘why?’ to any one of us was a shrug and a smile all weekend. Too crowded, might not remember anybody, don’t have anything to wear…

“Maybe I am seeing the people I wanted to see right here!” ventured Anne Marie as we sat for hours on the beach enjoying a day of perfect sun, clear water and delicious food and drinks leftover from dinner by Des the night before. Des loves to spoil her guests.

But that night the overwhelming urge to leave our mark on the 50th party eclipsed any age-appropriate behavior. We reverted to our 17 year old selves and devised a plan. We piled into two cars and drove right on in to the high school compound just about five minutes before the big event was to end.

The plan was simple.

It was supposed to be a “drive-by prank,” just like the old days when some of us cruised the crowded parking lot and mooned everyone loitering around the gym after a basketball game. The priests interrogated witnesses relentlessly for days after that to see if anyone would crack and roll-over on our fellow culprits, but no one caved.

It was supposed to be a quick rolling incident with an easy escape just like the time when some of us armed ourselves with eggs, removed our tops and drove around pelting anyone who dared look…Well, maybe that yarn goes against our “code of silence” for certain episodes. Oops.

For this escapade, now much older and more self-conscious, we toned it down. We didn’t want to get busted and we certainly didn’t think a fleeting glimpse of our vintage body parts would amuse anyone at this time in our lives.

The only risk was to commit social suicide and none of us cared one way or another if we did.

We took a great group photograph of the bunch of us, blew it up and scribbled “The Class of ’75 WAS HERE!” on it.

Karen was designated to jump out of the car, pick a good spot and tape that picture to the gym wall somewhere obvious, and then run like the wind, vault into the car and take off.

It sure didn’t work out that way.

As if mesmerized, we parked, totally abandoned the plan, piled out and scattered. It must’ve looked like clown cars in the circus.

Anne Marie, Eileen and Des went right into the gym and greeted everyone left at the event, Mary, Sue and I walked back to the athletic fields, Eileen even reportedly got up on stage when the alumni from the 70’s were called up.

But Karen, true to her original mission, taped that photo up on the gym door like a small blonde Martin Luther nailing 95 Theses to the church in Wittenberg.

The Class of ’75 was there.

The next morning, Sunday, Karen and I actually paid for breakfast at the Denny’s atoning just a little for a “dine and dash” incident a long time ago.

That guilt thing lasts forever.

“Whut choo like some pencake puppies? I hef to ask…” said our German waitress causing us to spew orange juice we laughed so hard.

Before starting the drive north to go home, we all met up one more time at Des’s house.
Des had already been to mass and had distributed communion to shut-ins, as is her habit and mission. The rest of us hold on to our Catholic practices tenuously, or not at all.

We have each other as a result of it though.

Saying good bye is hard now. I hate to leave the little fun bubble we create when we all get together. But our little lives must go on in separate places.

Karen was speaking on the drive back home of how it is a lonely glance backward in the rear view mirror sometimes.

“Oh you mean when Anne Marie or Des is standing there all sad faced when we’re driving away? Yeah…I told Sue there was to be no crying, damnit! Mary too!”

“No, I am talking about how high school is back there in the rear view, along with marriage, raising the kids, seeing them leave, for some divorce, watching our parents age and losing them, losing my husband Danny…All those things.”

All those things growing smaller and more distant as we dash ahead running generally above the speed limit.

“But we have to drive on forward,” she said, “There’re no u-turns.”

True.

But I know now who is in the back seat riding along.

With a dozen eggs and a plan.

Sunrise. Lauderdale by The Sea

Mary, Des, Eileen, Linda, Karen, Anne Marie, Sue at d'Antonio's for tapas, looking innocent.

The little bohemian resort with great beach. Reminded me of Mexico on the coast there.

Here comes the sun...

These hearts in the sand were drawn in a trail all along the beach one morning.

Mary Chesnut Blogged The Civil War

2010-09-29T10:06:00.003-04:00

Mrs. Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, 1823-1886, chronicler of the Civil War in the South, was a blogger.

She was just about a century too soon.

And, her work encountered a few delays before it found a place on the internet, like starting out in 1905 as a book with actual paper pages and ink words. However, her words are now available on the internet, giving her the status of blogger.

And writer. And author. And literati.

And she never got paid, unless you count the astonishing satisfaction of writing because she wanted to and could. She could not allow the vast panorama of life in her times, both large earth shaking events and small homely episodes, to go unrecorded.

No electronic keyboard, spell check, or formatting tools, she did it old school. The glow on her face as she wrote was undoubtedly from a candle flame. And the flame in her heart lit the rest of the way.

She’d crack open a blank page of “confederate paper” leather bound in a quarto sized notebook, dip her quill, and almost daily, pending illness or danger, scratch out in cursive an account of her very social life in wartime South Carolina.

Mary Chesnut’s diaries, all 45 volumes of them, sometimes spent time deep in a hole buried with the family silver to avoid confiscation by Yankee soldiers come to reap the spoils of war.

Of keeping her journal, she wrote:

"Why do you write in your diary at all," someone said to me, "if, as you say, you have to contradict every day what you wrote yesterday?" "Because I tell the tale as it is told to me. I write current rumor. I do not vouch for anything."

That sounds like we 21st century bloggers explaining ourselves.

Hers was not an academic or legalistic depiction of the politics or social conventions of the day. She wrote with a “delightful unconscious frankness” * similar to the raw and unselfconscious tone found in many modern day blogs. She wrote in her own voice, unpretentious and honest.

Of Manassas she wrote:

August 8th. - To-day I saw a sword captured at Manassas. The man who brought the sword, in the early part of the fray, was taken prisoner by the Yankees. They stripped him, possessed themselves of his sleeve-buttons, and were in the act of depriving him of his boots when the rout began and the play was reversed; proceedings then took the opposite tack.

Of Abraham Lincoln she wrote:

In the hotel parlor we had a scene. Mrs. Scott was describing Lincoln, who is of the cleverest Yankee type. She said: "Awfully ugly, even grotesque in appearance, the kind who are always at the corner stores, sitting on boxes, whittling sticks, and telling stories as funny as they are vulgar." Here I interposed:

"But Stephen A. Douglas said one day to Mr. Chesnut, 'Lincoln is the hardest fellow to handle I have ever encountered yet.' " Mr. Scott is from California, and said Lincoln is "an utter American specimen, coarse, rouge, and strong; a good-natured, kind creature; as pleasant-tempered as he is clever, and if this country can be joked and laughed out of its rights he is the kind-hearted fellow to do it. Now if there is a war and it pinches the Yankee pocket instead of filling it - "

Of her elderly husband and the African man who stayed, she wrote:

African Scipio walks at Colonel Chesnut's side. He is six feet two, a black Hercules, and as gentle as a dove in all his dealings with the blind old master, who boldly strides forward, striking with his stick to feel where he is going. The Yankees left Scipio unmolested. He told them he was absolutely essential to his old master, and they said, "If you want to stay so bad, he must have been good to you always." Scip says he was silent, for it "made them mad if you praised your master."

Of Southern gentility, she wrote:

Sometimes this old man will stop himself, just as he is going off in a fury, because they try to prevent his attempting some feat impossible in his condition of lost faculties. He will ask gently, "I hope that I never say or do anything unseemly! Sometimes I think I am subject to mental aberrations." At every footfall he calls out, "Who goes there?" If a lady's name is given he uncovers and stands, with hat off, until she passes. He still has the old-world art of bowing low and gracefully.

Of witnessing an auction, she wrote:

I have seen a negro woman sold on the block at auction. She overtopped the crowd. I was walking and felt faint, seasick. The creature looked so like my good little Nancy, a bright mulatto with a pleasant face. She was magnificently gotten up in silks and satins. She seemed delighted with it all, sometimes ogling the bidders, sometimes looking quiet, coy, and modest, but her mouth never relaxed from its expanded grin of excitement. I dare say the poor thing knew who would buy her. I sat down on a stool in a shop and disciplined my wild thoughts... You know how women sell themselves and are sold in marriage from queens downward, eh? You know what the Bible says about slavery and marriage; poor women! poor slaves!

Of changing households in hard times and her relationships with her servants, she wrote:

Wednesday. - I have been mobbed by my own house servants. Some of them are at the plantation, some hired out at the Camden hotel, some are at Mulberry. They agreed to come in a body and beg me to stay at home to keep my own house once more, "as I ought not to have them scattered and distributed every which way." ...I asked my cook if she lacked anything on the plantation at the Hermitage. "Lack anything?" she said, "I lack everything. What are corn-meal, bacon, milk, and molasses? Would that be all you wanted? Ain't I been living and eating exactly as you does all these years? When I cook for you, didn't I have some of all? Dere, now!" Then she doubled herself up laughing. They all shouted, "Missis, we is crazy for you to stay home."

Her voice sounds so familar. We hear her speaking as though she is sitting in the same room. She wrote what she knew and she did so to be heard.

Having had no children, she bequeathed her beloved words to close friend Isabella D. Martin to be published. And they were.

Entitled A Diary from Dixie as written by Mary Boykin Chesnut the parts of her journals that weren't too personal were published post-humously in 1905.

Her journals became testament to a time of brutal homicidal war, the privations of a proud citizenry, and perhaps the only real truth about slavery and its nature in the South. Harriett Beecher Stowe wrote fiction and had no first hand experience on the issue. Mary Chesnut did.

And her journals became literature.

Perhaps our humble blogs, however flawed and quaint, will someday leave such a legacy.

*Isabella D. Martin, Introduction, A Diary from Dixie

***

If Mary's voice speaks to you as it does to me, don't miss the series:

The Civil War.
A Ken Burns documentary for PBS.

Mary's words glue the whole film together with elegance, wit and eye-witness truth.

Theme Park 9/11: We Wrote the Questions

2010-09-10T17:32:00.000-04:00

“Hey…Did you see this?”

Michael came running into my office and flicked on the television.

“Looks like there’s been an accident at the World Trade Center.”

We were just starting our day researching and writing the questions for a Studio theme park game show, based on the popular television phenomenon Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

We usually kept the TVs on in our offices to monitor breaking news on any subject from entertainment to politics, history to science. We worked seven days a week bathed in the glow of our computers and television screens delivering creatively entertaining queries for Studio theme park guests to answer for some pretty swell prizes.

The questions we created had to be very high quality and absolutely accurate in every way. And our little team of twelve researchers and writers rocked them out every day, brand new, shiny, fresh and fun, for the attraction on both coasts.

We were nerds in paradise and we knew it.

And we became very close friends in the process.

“Looks like a plane flew into it, doesn’t it?” said Michael.

And, indeed, the smoldering breech in the long grey side of the building did look like a cartoon impression of a plane’s wings and body with smoke pouring out of it.

He was shifting from one foot to the other nervously. “My dad has offices there but I think he’s travelling now.”

Mike’s dad was in the business of eggs. Among the many things of which Michael had innate knowledge, all of our questions regarding Judaism went through him. He was a wonderfully kinetic and funny New York Jew.

Then Shiraz bolted in to join us watching the television, buoyant and ready to start work. Always in a good mood, and full of vinegar, Shiraz was a great smiling kid who loved food and computer games.

“What’s going on?”

“Looks like a plane crashed into the Trade Center, Shiraz.”

An American Muslim, Shiraz was educated at Rutgers and his father was the Chairman of the North New Jersey Muslim Association. He had friends who worked in the Trade Center. He was betrothed to his intended wife in Pakistan.

“Looks like a small plane,” I said, “Why would anything larger be flying that low?”

Michael said, “It may not be an accident.”

And Shiraz said, “Let’s hope it’s just an accident…”

The news helicopters and camera feeds from every surrounding building adjacent to the World Trade Center were being broadcast on all channels as we flipped from CNN to ABC to CBS.

Some anchor woman was talking by phone with someone near the impact point. The man was speaking to her with otherworldly calm while the space around him melted like a Dali painting.

Images of both tall towers filled the television screens and we watched and rocked back and forth on our feet and groaned with every new observation of fire and smoke and the small dots, the tiny dust motes imbued with gravity, the men in business suits with their ties spiraling upward and the women in high heels, their hair streaming just falling, falling…

The cameras didn’t know when to look away.

“Oh! OH! God. There goes another one!” I barked.

“No, NO you couldn’t have.” Heather had joined us silently. A native of North New Jersey, engaged to be married, the tears were springing to her eyes. She could see the Towers from where she grew up.

“I did. It was so fast. Just a dot speeding by, shot from a low angle from the street…LOOK!”

The morning show anchor reporters we were watching on television, incredulous, doubted each other’s eyes just as we were until the control room could rack the playback, and yes, there was another.

Another plane.

Blasting into the second tower in a stream of fire and a rain of paper. A grey ticker-tape sprinkling of papers, all white and on wing like flattened doves riding the thermals down.

The four of us became instantly kinetic, turning away, turning back to see, holding each other, crying, hushing.

And then the Pentagon.

And then a field in Pennsylvania.

Landmarks in the United States.

A dawning realization bleached the color from our faces as all of our phones began ringing and our pagers went off in a concert of beeps and bells.

First response in a theme park is rapid, efficient and strikingly calm. By noon, with the concerted effort of pre-trained first responders leading us in strict evacuation protocols, all the parks were clear of guests.

Other than one hurricane, this was the first time the entire theme park complex was shut down.

When we were done assisting with the exodus, I instructed Michael, Heather and Shiraz and the others to go home, and stay home until notified.

Shiraz was to come to my home if he encountered any difficulty. His face drawn with a kaleidoscope of emotions, Shiraz blessed us all with a prayer and assured me he would be just fine. He was going to mosque.

We held each other in a collective hug, the moment distinct in its context. A microcosm of people, just four of us: Jew, Muslim, Gay, Christian, Male, Female, Young, Old wondering what was next.

Alone in our offices, turning off our televised windows to that morning’s horror, I sent the day’s quiz show questions electronically to the stages at both theme parks, one in Florida and one in California.

The show must go on.

I walked out of our bungalow into the screaming silence of an achingly vivid blue sky day and drove home.

A Cradle Catholic's Priests

2010-09-03T10:05:00.000-04:00

Father Mike

“Ack! Linda. Good to see you dear.”

“Ok, Mike, what in holy hell is going on?”

I had waited until last. All the blue-haired ladies had lined up in front of Mike’s station self-consciously patting their hair and arranging their rosaries just right. They all had crushes on Mike, a bespectacled, gouty man with a Boston accent, because, I suspect, he delivered to all those dirty-souled little biddies that squeaky clean feeling that forgiveness brings.

I tried to control my decibels and failed. The whole church heard me anyway when I entered the confessional to exercise my sacramental privilege of Catholic penance. All the little old ladies hissed and sighed at the sound of my voice.

Skipping the prerequisite formalities, I plowed right in. Loudly.

It was the first time I was back in the jump-seat for maybe 30 years. God knew my peccadilloes already because I had installed direct trunk line to heaven’s mailroom without the intercession of a priest.

I cop to my own sins directly.

And, I am innately suspicious, no actually conditioned to be paranoid, of voluntarily coughing up my failings to a black-frocked human being. It gives him what he needs: Power over my life. And in the olden days, I am sure that it did. That was then. This is now, however.

Mike is a different kind of priest though. And I needed answers.

“It’s like any family, Lin, and families have rotten apples. Just think about that. I am sure your family has black sheep who make everybody miserable with what they do. So do we. Pedophile priests are rotten apples and they must be cleaned out of the barrel. And they will be. Now let’s go have a beer at the Claddagh.”

That’s what I loved about Mike. He took one look at my face and knew what was on my mind. And over Harp beers we talked and talked…

He knew I was lapsing. No, my faith was losing me, and he still loved me.

Monsignor O’Looney

“Come stand here next to me young lady. Let’s just see what we have here.”

We knew that Monsignor O’Looney was coming to class for “Report Card Day” because the nuns became all tiddly and excited dusting off shelves and spitting on their hands to smooth down cowlicks amongst the “young gentlemen.” The monsignor was their celebrity crush all-Catholic style.

We kids stood as he imperiously entered the room in full black cassocked Monsignor regalia. O’Looney would thoroughly embody his authority by sitting king-like in the front of the classroom, removing his bi-nodal Monsignor hat with the red pom-pom on top, and by going through up to twenty-five reports cards. Out loud. In front of everyone.

His Irish brogue was a buzzing drone as he called each of us up to stand by him in the front of the classroom while our grades were read off for the whole class to hear, including conduct. I made sure I had visited the bathroom before each of these events because I didn’t want any puddles forming under my knocking knees.

“Linda, Linda, Linda. Do ye t’ink you’ve been mindin’ Sister here properly?”

“Yes, Monsignor. I do t’ink I have.” Shining a big smart ass grin out to my friends, they stared at me with fear in their eyes.

“Well, according to this, you’ve been a bit of a problem child. A “D” in conduct is nothing’ t’be smilin’ about! You’re going to stop that infernal whispering and fidgeting now, aren’t you? I want to see improvement in your behavior young lady. Your grades include a C here in Math as well. You’ll be bringin’ that up too before next time…”

And I always heard the “or else” lingering in the background like so much incense smoke. And never a mention of the A’s and B’s I earned.

Somehow I don’t think this kind of thing would fly in schools now.

O’Looney was on the scene long before I was receiving his rough attention for my report cards. In fact, I was just an egg in my mom’s ovary.

When my parents were engaged, it was this very man who would not allow them to marry in the church unless my Lutheran mother signed a document promising not to raise the children in any other faith except the Catholic faith.

“Luther was a heretic, y’know?” he snarled at her during the interview.

Father Pete

“What should I do now?”

“Pete, just put your hands in that incubator and bless my daughter. Please.”

Pete had peeled rubber to make it to the hospital the day my daughter was born. He was the new/ old priest at our parish and all the others were attending to weddings and funerals the day I called for help. Still not unpacked, he just got on his rental car horse and rode like the wind…

My daughter was born a little early but her heart and her lungs weren’t working on their own. We had to flick the soles of her feet and hope she would take a deep gasp and to coax her heart to beat and her lungs to expand.

When Pete arrived, she was lying on her stomach naked but for a tiny diaper and a pink visor attached to her eyes with velcro to protect them from the glaring bilirubin lights. She looked like a midget pink Power Ranger with bruised feet.

Pete’s hands were what I remember best. They were chubby and his gentle holy fingers sported a tuft of white hair on each knuckle. When he put his hands in through the incubator ports and placed them gently on Tori’s little body, the blessing just poured out of him like honey.

Tori wiggled and smiled.

Naturally, Pete became close friends with us in the English tradition of priests home visiting parishioners. His was always a knock on the door at dusk when he was winding up his neighborhood walk that day and wanted to undo all the good he had done with his exercise regime. After a scratchy kiss on the cheek, Pete would always make his signature demand.

“Where’s my ham sandwich and my gin and tonic?”

For the first time in my cradle Catholic life, we had a priest, a real live priest friend with spiritual benefits, at every one of our family events.

As is the practice in the Catholic Church, no priest really remains long enough in parish to put down roots, it gets too emotional, and Pete was transferred to Georgia after a while. We made plans to visit him next time we headed north.

At Mass one Sunday, the new priest in a matter-of-fact tone, announced that Pete had died. It was a punch in the stomach. I gasped so loud the church went silent and all heads turned to me. I felt my knees buckle in grief. I had to leave.

Father Manning

“Have you said your morning prayers?”

“My whole day is a prayer Father.”

“But have you said your morning prayers? No? You know you’re driving the nails into His hands yourself! Kneel down here now and say them!”

“But Father…”

“The bus will wait!”

Every morning Fr. Manning would stalk the bus stop interrogating us about our prayer life or obscure Baltimore Catechism questions. It was an art form to avoid him by arriving at just the right second to board the bus before he could sneak up and pin us down.

He scared us mostly with his graphic passion for the more violent aspects of crucifixion and martyrdom. He always told the stories of the saints who were made so by becoming lion food or for enduring the untimely ripping out of one or more body parts while still consciously professing the faith...

When I went on to high school, I didn’t see much more of him. I assumed his senility had advanced and he was being kept under a tighter rein much to the relief, I am sure, of the grade schoolers who had been tormented by him at the bus stop.

After I achieved a successful run as the lead in the school play, Father F-, a young progressive priest fresh from seminary, proposed that I do a new thing during the Mass at church.

He invited me to be the first girl ever to present the scripture readings at a full-on Mass. This was even before girls were thought of to be altar servers. This was going to break down some barriers…And I was thrilled.

For the first time in my life as a Catholic, I thought , “I can do this!”

It makes the whole Mass thing something in which I can really participate rather than passively sitting- standing-kneeling. No more hokey-pokey rigamarole through every dreary service…This was getting interesting.

So young Fr. F- and I rehearsed and rehearsed and studied and delved deeply into the theological interpretations of each piece until I felt like I knew exactly what I was sharing with the congregation perfectly.

And my father was so proud. Bonus!

The Sunday of my groundbreaking came and Fr. F- and my father proudly escorted me up to the church entrance. Suddenly, a figure in black blocked out the sun and my way in. Looking up, the butterflies in my stomach turned to vampire bats.

Father Manning.

He was in full black cassock and hat, literally shaking in anger with a look of pure disgust on his face. Looking closely, he had not remembered his dentures that morning so his face was all sharpness and angles. He spit a little when he spoke.

“This girl will not enter this church until we get something straight. She will not be allowed at the pulpit if I have anything to do with it.”

Fr. F- tried to intercede. “Alright Michael, it's ok. Maybe she can do the readings in front of it.”

“Absolutely NOT!” His voice was booming. “She is PROHIBITED from even approaching the sacristy by church law! It would be an abomination.”

My father, now so conflicted between his pride in me and the authority of the priest confronting us, blurted the central question, “Why?”

“Don’t you know? What kind of Catholic are you? She is female. She bleeds.”

Postscript:

I was moved to write about these priests, both good and bad, so that I might discover some way of reconciling my profound sadness and, yes deep anger, with the Roman Catholic Church. I feel mortally wounded on a spiritual level by the Vatican’s recent misogynistic rulings. Although as a cradle Catholic with obvious past healed-over flesh wounds from which I have recovered, I cannot reconcile the obvious categorization by the Church of women as potential egregious violating wounds on the body of the faith any more.

To borrow from Someone who would’ve found all this so very wrong: It is finished.

“Here's what the Vatican's internal prosecutor, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, said from the news conference in Rome, when asked to explain why ordination of women was included alongside of rulings concerning sexual exploitation of children and the disabled by male… priests: ‘Sexual abuse and pornography are more grave dealings, they are an egregious violation of moral law. Attempted ordination of women is grave, but on another level; it is a wound that is an attempt against the Catholic faith on the sacramental orders.’

In a report from the AP, reporter Nicole Winfield explained that "The rules...list the attempted ordination of a woman as a ‘grave crime' to be handled according to the same set of procedures as sex abuse -- despite arguments that grouping the two in the same document would imply equating them.... Scicluna defended the inclusion of both sex abuse and ordination of women in the same document as a way of codifying two of the most serious canonical crimes against sacraments and morals that the congregation deals with. “

-From Psychology Today by Regina Barreca, Ph.D

Make a Pie with the Pippin that Dinged You

2010-09-01T10:08:00.000-04:00

The apple tree in question was a remnant refugee of an old orchard that had been slowly eaten up by the development of the tennis courts at the Country Club.

Once an energetic engine of a profuse amount of fruit, it had been reduced to the status of landscaping and shade-maker overhanging the parking lot.

The maintenance men abused this tree by neglect, neither trimming nor fertilizing it, probably because it dropped a serious amount of fruit on the pavement every summer that would need to be cleaned up.

They wanted it dead.

And the tennis players often complained that the tree was lobbing its destructive little orbs at their Beemers and Hummers making unsightly dents.

Shades of Dorothy in the Oz orchard. And I think in some part, it may have been true. This particular apple tree had a way of exerting its presence.

The apple tree, my apple tree, makes what would be the butt uglies of the apple world. Small, worm chomped heirloom pippins with blackspot were the usual specimens.

But if you looked closely, underneath their seemingly inedible appearance, there lurked an appetizingly tight apple skin, the kind that snaps a little when you bite down. And that skin was colored gloriously in a dappling of red with small tracers of yellow and white. Or they were solid red with a sprinkle of yellow and green spots.

Biting down on these apples was to baptize yourself in the squirt of juice that would spring out and smack you in the square in the face. The cream colored flesh in each was streaked with red; delicately veined from skin to core.

And they were sour enough to make not just your mouth pucker.

My brothers and I had spent that summer playing tennis there between odd jobs and campouts. The apple tree provided snacks for us that quenched our thirst and gave us a little sour rush that I swear enhanced our tennis.

One day some kids, some spoiled rotten resort kids, were under the tree picking up apples, taking one bite out of each and then commencing to pelting each other with the half-eaten fruit.

When they finished destroying the apples on the ground they started to climb the tree, breaking down branches and kicking off bark carelessly to reach for the ones I had my eye on for eating.

My hackles went up and I tore off the tennis court and started walloping those little brats with my racket. They answered my wallops with some pretty well aimed shots with apples until I chased them off.

I had to pick pulp out of my tennis racket strings and out of my hair. Those brats dinged me in the head more than once. Kind of think one of them was a pitcher on a baseball team...

Anyway, it got into my adolescent head that day that I was in charge of that tree, even if it did produce some of the most imperfect fruit ever seen, and it was my duty to keep that kind of thing from happening again.

Which meant picking the apples.

All of them.

Before anyone else could be as wasteful and disrespectful as those kids.

I picked every last ripe apple off that tree and brought them home.

After one meal of fried apples, cornbread and sausage, we hardly made a dent in the inventory of sorry-ass ugly little bullet apples. I needed to get cooking on a way to use the rest of my crop.

Pie was the answer. I liked pie.

That's when 'ol Euell came into the picture.

Remember Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons?

Flipping through his book to find out how not to poison myself with wild mushrooms, I ran across his deceptively simple but amazingly tasty and flaky pie crust recipe, and it was on.

I made one pie as a starter and served a slice to my dad, who had dubbed himself the penultimate expert on pie . It passed the sniff test with a raised eyebrow, and with eyes closed he lifted the fork to his mouth. In the time it takes for his tastebuds to fire, his eyes opened wide and he blessed my efforts with a demand for more.

I made pies morning, noon and night for about a month. I smelled like an apple and sported an array of cuts on my fingers from peeling the little nuggets.

Mom, my biggest cheerleader got her gal friends to actually buy them and not just out of fealty to their friendships.

The pies were GOOD!

Dinner parties were being planned around my pies. I was being accosted all over that enclave for my recipe, what's my secret, how did I come up with the Perfect Apple Pie?

It actually got a little weird.

When the apples were all baked up and gone, I went to the tree at dusk one evening, my favorite time of day, and just sat with her.

"We done good," I told her.

And she dropped an apple on my head in answer.

Stack of Bibles.

^{The Tree Her Own Self}

Linda's Butt Ugly Apple Pie featuring Euell Gibbons Oil Crust Pie Pastry

Ingredients:

Crust-

Two cups of flour
Half a cup of vegetable oil
Quarter cup of milk

Filling -

About 4 cups of Granny Smith apples (Or sourest you can find!)
Half cup or so of sugar
Cinnamon to taste
Butter

Method:

Wash, core and peel apples and slice them into inch thick pieces
Place in a bowl and add sugar and spices, stir
The apples will make juice
Combine all crust ingredients and mix together with a fork
Divide into two equal balls
Dampen countertop
Take one pie-sized sheet of waxed paper and lay it down, it will adhere to the moist countertop
Put a ball of dough in the middle
Take another equal sized sheet of waxed paper and place on top
Roll out the crust btween the two sheets.
Peel top sheet off
Place pie tin face down on crust and flip it to line the pie tin
Fill pie with apple mixture
Dot the mixture with butter
Roll out second dough ball same way for pie lid
Cut out lattice or whatever cool shapes you want and top the pie
Pinch around the edges to seal
Some like to brush egg wash to make it golden on top
I like a sprinkling of sugar on top
Make sure to have steam holes in the top
Bake 350 degrees, 30 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly!

Photos: I took them except for -
Pie photo thanks to Travels with Gertie who uses the oil crust recipe too.

Sadie Hawkins Crucifixion

2010-08-20T11:09:00.007-04:00

"I think I have been shot!” I said to Keith, my voice raising up brittle and shocky over the dying music, “Why would somebody want to shoot me?”

Why me? I am just a nobody, I thought.

Then things went all trippy. The disco lights softened into dangling multi-colored cotton balls, the music began to echo and fade, and the room irised in as I felt myself collapse into his arms.

The Sadie Hawkins Dance was an annual affair that was intended to shake things up a little bit between the male and female denizens of Cardinal McStibbens Catholic High School. For one shining moment in time, the girls were permitted to ask, no, demand that the guy of their choice escort them to the event. Inspired by Al Capp’s hilarious, and now undoubtedly non-politically correct comic strip L’il Abner, it was strictly ladies night.

According to the comic strip, in the fictional mountain hamlet of Dogpatch, one of the town’s founding fathers had a romantically challenged daughter named Sadie who was approaching spinsterhood with no suitors knocking down the cabin door. So old man Hawkins decreed a special day for his daughter marked by a footrace where all the town’s eligible bachelors would get a head start. And when that shotgun went off they ran like jackelopes since if caught by an eligible bachelorette, a marriage would be the pact by Dogpatch law.

This boiled down, like corn likker in Pappy Yokum’s still, into this scenario at my high school: If the hot stuff star of the football team was asked by the bookish bespectacled allergically sinus-infected girl president of the Math/Chess club to the dance, he could not turn her down. It was a date.

We spent weeks before the dance watching the big men on campus bob, weave and serpentine if they had the slightest inkling some uncool mad crushing chick was going to corner them, poke their glasses up on the bridge of their noses, and commit them to a night a sheer embarrassment.

Me? Oh, yes. I had a dream date for Sadie Hawkins all thought out but shelved it. He was the very established boyfriend of Haley, the Cheerleader, and untouchable upon penalty of potentially intense mean girl scrutiny.

I was not a cheerleader. I was queen of the drama club.

You know the type.

But, as karma would have it, I got to spend a magical amount of unrequited time with my biggest high school crush ever.   Keith and I co-edited the school newspaper together. The nun in charge of the paper, Sister Janet, had a twinkle in her eye when she paired us up for the task and I learned at that malleable age to keep my hormones to myself in a “working” situation. It was post-adolescent torture.

Tall and strong with a competitive swimmer’s physique and deep ocean green eyes, Keith had perfect teeth and smiled constantly, even when pissed off, rendering me, all tied up in braces and Janice Ian angst at 17, weak kneed.

But I couldn’t show it.

His passion was photography and he gently taught me about f-stops and depths of field. I turned down invitations to water ski with him and his brothers because I was too shy to be seen in a bathing suit, much less photographed. The horror!

We spent many a Sunday afternoon at my house writing articles together, but mostly laughing ourselves silly about shenanigans at school. Or satirizing each other.

Keith was just plain kind to me but wouldn’t let me bail out on anything. I was proud when I could show him my spine in a situation requiring a stand. He made me strong.

One day we were up in the Journalism lab laying out the galleys together.

“Well, are you going to Sadie Hawkins?”

“No. Good God no.”

“Why not?’

“It’s stupid and I don’t want to humiliate myself.” I remember I bit off the words like they were crispy.

“Oh that was dramatic. You get an Oscar. Now, cut it out.” he said chuckling under his breath. He had a good chuckle.

He knew my hot buttons by then so he fiddled around with the waxed copy sheets for a while, pulling them up and rolling them down on the galleys with a T-rule waiting for me to chill.

“So…” I jumped like a startled cat, his voice seemed loud. “I guess I’m not going either.”

“What about the great and wonderful Haley? Didn’t she already get dibs?”

“Nope. She’s got other plans or something.”

“Ah.”

Exponentially awkward pause.

My eyes swung around in my head to catch him looking directly into them.

And suddenly I did not give two damns about being the subject of the cheerleader’s popular tyrannies.   They could all go stuff their pom-poms right up…

“Keith. I am asking you right now to accompany me to the Sadie Hawkins Dance. You got no choice. You’re going with me like it or not!”

“Alright!” he said with a huge grin. “Cool!”

^{Kevin, Keith, My brother Chris crashing the party, me, and Voni}

The big night arrived and I made a hillbilly bar-b- que dinner with cornbread, greens and homemade apple pie for him and a few friends at my house. We actually had a scandalous glass of wine. I pinned a pink carnation corsage to the denim overalls he wore in keeping with the Dogpatch theme of the night. I was costumed in a short denim skirt and a little poufy shirt with cap sleeves and actually went barefoot to the dance, just like Sadie would’ve.

I felt like I could’ve been popular that night. I felt beautiful and witty and daring.

We all piled into Keith’s car and went to the Sadie Hawkins Dance.

Kind of looked like this...

The school gym was decked out in hay bales, scarecrows and yellow, orange and red crepe paper dangling down like Spanish moss. Life-sized cut outs of L’il Abner, Daisy Mae and even Sadie herself were propped up for photo opportunities. The art classes outdid themselves.

It went so fast, two hours just flew.

The band didn’t stink, as it turned out, and we danced to Smoke on the Water, Layla, Free Bird, Walk This Way and Stairway to Heaven. It was a good time for great music in those days.
Unlike many of the mismatched couples that night, Keith bravely slow danced with me when the music prompted, close enough so that Sister Janet had to come by and make sure she could see space between us. Close enough to send the cheerleaders into a tizzy. Close enough I was floating. Close enough he was whispering in my ear.

“Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow?
And did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?”

It was the last strains of Stairway I heard when the band was winding down, and in Keith’s arms, we were just standing still. I could hear the nuns chirping “good night!”

“And she’s buying a stairway…to heaven.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Anthony Dugan swinging like a primate on the crepe paper decorations, tearing them down as the mercury lights came up in the gym. What an ass he was. Chose to ignore.

Something hit my arm, hard.

The force of it spun me around, out of Keith’s embrace and a searing pain welled up.

“I think I’ve been shot! Why would somebody want to shoot me?”

Keith stared white-faced at my arm and said: “Don’t look at it.”

But I did.

A six inch long carpenter’s nail had pierced my upper arm and had emerged out the other side. My poufy shirt sleeve was pinned to my arm like a poster stuck on a bulletin board.  A delicious touch of additional horror, the nail in my arm was still attached to the monofilament sixty pound test fishing line formerly used to hold up the decorations.

My arm was flailing wildly like a possessed marionette every time Anthony across the gym tore down another swath of decorations!

Seems the decorating committee hammered nails into the cement block walls of the gym, tied off fishing line to them, and draped crepe paper on the line. The force of Anthony’s efforts made one of those nails launch out of the wall with the velocity of a bullet and it found my arm.

Keith caught me and sat me down on the floor. He grabbed the fishing line and as a function of pure adrenalin, broke it so my arm would quit dancing.

Next I knew I was being carried to the locker room in strong arms. I smelled flowers and I could hear his voice saying, “I like the carnation you gave me, Linda. Keep your nose right there in that flower. Smells so good. It’s going to be all right.”

Postscript:

My dad, the doctor, was called and came roaring up to the gym in his convertible Oldsmobile, jumped out and retrieved Keith and I from the locker room.

Back home, dad sat me on the kitchen table, had mom stand by with towels as he felt around the nail to see if it was in something important, like an artery. Satisfying himself, he called Keith over to observe.

“I don’t think it’s serious. Ok, Lois on my count with the towels just in case she spurts a little.   Ready?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and braced.

“One – Two - Hey, Keith, my daughter has a big crush on you.”

And he whipped that nail out like lightning. Didn’t feel a thing.

Keith declined the offer from my dad to learn how to give a tetanus shot that night, even though it included the opportunity to see my exposed rear.

That’s why I had such a crush on him.

^{Rest in Peace Keith.}

^{Your stairway came a little sooner I guess. I’ll never forget you.}

^{Every time I see a pink carnation...}

^{photos: Personal Collection}
^{Some names have been changed in this essay to protect privacy.}

The Tarot of the Beach Divas

2010-08-09T19:23:00.001-04:00

^{The Beach Divas mascot sitting on the iconic Red Cooler.}

“So, if these chicks have turned onto Stepford Wives or something, y’know perfect in every way, I am so out of here in the morning!”

Karen arrived first and delivered this ultimatum with one hand on her car and the other clutching her keys. I flew down the path at the beach house to greet her with a hug that was thirty-six years delinquent.

That Karen arrived first made cosmic sense since she and I had been classmates from first grade through twelfth. Sister Simon Peter to Sister Janet Riordan.
Memories are tricky things, but overall I remember many times catching and matching the impish glint in her eye just before participating in some Karen-instigated episode of pure lunacy. We little Catholic girls did uncivilized and unladylike things that could make a grown nun cry.

And we never hesitated.

She was, and is still, small, blonde, with a crooked smile, a wicked sense of irony and a massive cache of mischievous energy. The events of the years had not pulled that out of her at all. Not even losing her beloved husband to a heart attack too early.

She is still Karen, yes, and although in her company I only stopped laughing when I slept, I could hear her faint underscore in a minor key resonating with mine.

She didn’t leave the next morning. She is the Queen of Pentacles.

We six 50-something friends gathered again at the shore of our mutual ocean this abnormally hot summer.
It was the first High School Pals Beach Divas Weekend. Karen, Sue, Mary, Mary Ann, Des and I all graduated from Catholic high school together and met up again, as people often do now, on FaceBook.

Go figure.

This was an offshoot event born fully formed from an impromptu class “reunion” we all had in April. I just invited all the women, (sorry guys) every one of which seemed to need a break from life in general, to join me at the beach for the weekend. Five could make it.

The rules? None.

Advice? Bring a towel and Don’t Panic.

Here’s the funny thing: None of us were super close in high school. We orbited in circles that would sometimes intersect and bingo-bango, a funny story to tell and re-tell. We’re all raucous storytellers when given the floor.

But now, we are fascinated with each other. Karen may have said it best. We’ve all travelled parallel roads getting married, raising kids, shepherding careers, and now we have circled back to each other as these life phases slowly release us.

It’s a checkpoint, a tag-off in the ring, a long awaited embrace. A wrinkle in time.

And a reason to drink and eat ourselves into a stupor.

Sue, Mary and Des showed up next bearing the now iconic “red cooler” full of happy hour nibbles and booze, the holy elements of the weekend in addition to the beach, the pool and as many life stories as we could fit in.

Sue, of the supernatural Caribbean blue eyes, is the warm radiant hug of this group. She married her husband very soon after high school and is still with him, the lucky guy. Her long brown locks are now short and stylish in a gorgeous shade of silver. She is an amazing wit, competing quip for quip with those of us with an annoying need for attention. She just waits patiently for an opening in the conversation, lobs a pithy intelligent observation in like a lit M-80 firecracker, and then stands back to observe its effect. She is another instigator, provoker, and maker of mischief. And she's always in for an adventure, enthusiastically organizing and fine tuning life around her. It is her hand that holds ours when things are hard. She gets me crying when we part ways. She is the Queen of Wands.

Mary was our true north for the weekend keeping the party hopping. Tall and gorgeous and a true sun worshipper, the pool was her domain. Getting all sandy and salty was not her deal, so she hung at the “cement pond” more than the rest of us who didn’t mind so much getting salty and gritty at the shore. She did not allow me to wimp out, ordering me into the shower to prep for dinner out. I obeyed. She is powerful when she gets a notion. And dirty eyeglasses make her crazy. She whipped off both Des's and my glasses and Windexed them, never missing a beat in the story she was telling. We will all celebrate when her stumpy little ponytail grows out and she stops smoking those short Virginia Slims. I wore her silver earrings to dinner like Joni Mitchell in the song Carey…”I’ll put on some silver." She is the Queen of Cups.

Des was a firefighter. Titanium holds her spine together, her back broken by an adrenalin and drug addled man who resisted violently as she attempted to help him to safety. She was one of the first women to serve as a firefighter in South Florida with stories of ill-fitting gear and crude practical jokes played on her by the guys that would light up lawyers for years. She won them over by feeding their spirits and stomachs after all. She served up homemade food and comfort meticulously erasing their unease at having a female amongst them when people were burning to death. She gave us stuffed mushrooms, shrimp and fruit. And a heart bigger than describable. She brings the Holy Eucharist to shut-ins now. I am unsettled in her presence since my faith lost me. She has seen things that would crumble me into pieces. She is the Priestess.

And Mary Ann came last, just in time for happy hour. She has one of those Dorian Grey pictures in her attic since she barely changed since high school. Model pretty, petite, a cardiology nurse and tough as nails. She had done double shifts that week, coped with a car that blew up in flames, drove another car all the way to her daughter in college, moved that daughter to her new residence, and ended up with us late in the day spent. And, she brought homemade cakes. And beer margueritas to be consumed in special stemmed glasses. The cake baking and the margueritas may have cast her as the Stepford wife that Karen feared, but she never flinched as we peppered our commentaries with juicy curses and crude anatomical references even adding a few of her own. By vote, she got her own bedroom for the weekend by virtue of how hellish her week had been.

In a gesture of pure female friendship, she slapped my fumbling hands away, grabbed my hairbrush, and French braided my unruly wet ocean tangled hair saying, “I don’t get to do this very often. Got to show your friendship when you can!” She is the Queen of Swords.

Over cocktails and throw-your-diet-out-the-window food, we got to know a few things we never knew before like –

Whose prom date fell asleep in the family station wagon sucking on the tip of his tie.
Why one entire family had heads that were flat in the back.
Why the Hansel & Gretel hotel on the beach had significance to one of us.
Why one of us had a perpetually sunny disposition at school due to sparking up of certain kind of cigarette every morning.
Why at the mention of one Catholic priest’s name, one of us cannot help but follow it up with “perv.”
Why there is a black kid in one of our current family photographs.
How one of us used to smoke cigarettes with a nun on the roof of the school.
Why the best light is in the car for tweezing eyebrows and chin hairs.
Who asked the innocent virginal red-faced Irish priest to elaborate on the notion of the orgasm as he tried to teach the “birds and the bees” class.
How one of us got a carpenter’s nail imbedded in her arm at a school dance.
How wasted we all got before basketball games riding around in a van named "Fred."
Who’s got the biggest surgical scar.
Who disappeared.
Who divorced.
Who died.
Who snores.

How the hours flew by, much like the years had, and we left each other threatening to slap each other silly if we cried.

Our mutual ocean had stretched out endlessly when we graduated from high school and set sail to make our lives.

The cards could not predict the tempests, doldrums, shark attacks and cyclones that would attempt to bring a drastic sea change to every one of us during those thirty-six years apart. We're too tough to let those things rock us, though.

For a short time, we navigated back to the shore from whence we launched, and made safe harbor. And not a Stepford wife to be seen.

Of Mice and Dad, The Tail of the Tale

2010-07-27T18:54:00.003-04:00

^{You got here half way through the tail, uh, tale. For the first part, click}^here.

^{Dad: "Now here's what we're going to do..."}

Seems mice get territorial when cooped up seventy-five to a cage and begin to eat the newborn offspring of competing mouse clans.

We kids never saw them do it, but dad did.

It must’ve happened as soon as each baby was popped out, dispensed like PEZ into the waiting jaws of a dominant marauding mouse lord.

The Great Mouse Experiment became a two-tiered teaching opportunity on a sociological level as well as biological.

Population explodes, things get sketchy. Take note.

“No problem,” announced dad, undaunted by the sheer surreal horror of it all.

And the “Maternity Ward” cage was instituted.

New litters went there until everybody calmed down.

^Awww.

Jump cut: One Saturday morning. The Time of the Mice.

“AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! John! JOHN! Come quick, come here!”

Mom screamed gloriously while running down the hall with her bathrobe flapping and her coffee and pink sponge rollers spraying everywhere.

“Whu? Huh?! What the hell? What’s the MATTER, damn it?”

“There’s a snake on the counter! S-S-SNAKE!”

He stomped to the laundry room in his saggy boxers grumpy from the “screaming mom catapult express” that launched his half conscious body out of bed.

He looked at the spot where she swore she saw a giant coppery red snake coiled on the counter top.

“It was staring at me!”

No snake.

Just the busticated clothes dryer and the Big Mouse Cage.

But the door on the Maternity Ward cage was nudged up slightly, and three new mom-mice and their pups were gone.

“I swear to GOD there was a snake, John!!”

Mom was quickly triaged and diagnosed with anxiety of some sort and got the day off with cool cloths on her forehead. She received a little help from dad’s doctor bag to calm down and she carried on nice long one-sided talks with us all day long from a reclining position as I recall…And dad finished fixing the clothes dryer.

We, the boys and I, were thoroughly blamed and shamed for allegedly leaving the Maternity Ward cage open. We were tasked with tossing the entire house to find the missing mice. They never reappeared.   Oh well.

Later that night, mom and dad returning from a dinner party greeted me in the foyer and were less than happy that I was still up and awake past the usual bedtime.   But they put a hold on discussion of the matter until they paid our sitter, Mrs. Jackson, and walked her to her car.

I stood like a soldier in the foyer as I had been told to do, readying the half dozen or so excuses for defying the bedtime order. What could I yank out of my butt before they came back in?

Improvisation is a skill, and I revelled in it.

Just wanting to watch “Bewitched” to prepare for Halloween wasn’t going to cut it, however.

It had to be good.

All kinds of things danced in my fevered little head:   Monsters , aliens, chocolate ice cream, the devil, growing pains in my legs, cat puke under the pillow – They were all at the tip of my tongue.

Never got to use a one of them.

Mom’s eyes, which started out squinty as she readied her signature barage of lambaste on me, suddenly bugged out on stalks like a cartoon.

Her mouth twisted to a hissing fissure of fear:

“John, look above her head! ABOVE HER HEAD!!”

“DON’T. MOVE. DAMN. IT.”

Of course I moved.

And above my head draped across a slat in the room divider was a thick full grown coppery red snake. It was about four feet long with silky black diamond-shaped markings, a flicking tongue, and flaunted three distinct lumps at intervals through its body.

It was sleeping off the mouse pup appetizer and the mice-mom meal of that very morning. Mystery of missing maternity mice solved.

“I told you! I TOLD you! I TOLD YOU!”

“You sure did, Lois. Now here’s what we’re going to do –“

Moving in slow motion like those guys on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, dad eased out the door to the garage to get a cage. Check.

I was to watch the snake closely so it didn’t get away. Check.

The boys were to continue sleeping like they’d been knocked out by cough syrup. Check.

Mom was to go sit in the car. Check.

We worked out our tactics carefully. Dad was still sore and fragile from a painful slipped-disc surgery and we didn't want anything to mess with that. So...

“Ok now, I’ll hold the cage, and you grab the snake behind its head and put it in. On my count…1-2-…”

“Um, dad?”

“What?”

“Question.”

“Oh, come on let’s go! “

“Is it poisonous?”

“No.”

“Ok.”

“1 – 2 – …”

“Dad?”

“WHAT?”

“How do you know?”

“It doesn’t have a triangular head. No venom sacs.  Non-venomous. I think.”

“Ok.”

“Ready? 1 -2 -…”

“What if I miss?”

“Run. Away. Now let’s DO it. – 1 – 2- 3 GO!”

I grabbed that snake behind its head and I felt it wake up. It whipped its tail around my arm, the tip of it went right down the front of my nightgown and emerged out the right sleeve, thrashing. The snake was beginning to constrict my arm!

It felt like an Indian Burn expertly delivered by that bully David Dunmar at school.

Dad was dancing around with the cage but I couldn’t put the snake in until it was unwound from my nightie.

So I shifted the snakes head, all flickery tongued and glarey eyed, from my right to my left hand and pulled the thing out of my sleeve like loose yarn on an unraveling sweater. I caught its flailing tail and shoved it and the head of the snake into the cage. Its coils followed. Dad snapped it shut at the speed of light.

“Ok. Time for bed!”

^{Ssssooo, what's for brunch?}

Epilogue

“Dad?”

“Huh? Wha? Son of a…“

“Sorry to wake you, but there’s another snake.”

“No there isn’t. You’re just all excited about the one we caught. Go to bed.”

“Yes. There is. She was in my room. I heard her.”

“You know lying is a sin…?”

“Stack of Bibles.”

“Damn it, girl! You better be telling the truth!”

“Here, want to see?”

“AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

And mom took her pillow, a generous shot of Wild Turkey (No. Really the whole bottle...) and slept in the car.

^{Family Wood Panel Roadster. Yes. We had one.}

Postscript:

Here’s how this happened as far as we were able to figure out.

Dad’s clothes dryer project necessitated pulling the machine away from the wall leaving an open vent to the outside of the house.

The rat snakes, which incidentally mate for life and travel in pairs, smelled the bonanza of mouse meals wafting by from the Great Mouse Experiment and just slithered in through the hole ecstatic, no doubt, for the gourmet windfall.

They hit the least difficult target first: The Mouse Maternity Ward.

Turns out red snakes (corn snakes if you are from Iowa) make great pets, don’t bite unless provoked, are silky smooth to the touch and beautifully marked.

We gave them to a nice young man, along with the mice. To keep.

Mom subsequently moved back into the house.

Stack of Bibles.

^{Photos: Serious dad - personal collection, mouse mom & pups - U of Wisconsin-Madison, red snake - Eckosnake at Flickr creative commons, family roadster - www.classiccars.com}

Click on titles for more family stories:

Dad Causes a Stir
Dad's Sunday Lesson Or Jesus In My Stomach

Dad Builds Character

Dad's Mandatory Family Dinners
Of Mice and Dad
Of Mice and Dad: The Tale of the Tail

Ordeal in Cordele: Aunt Polly

Of Mice and Dad

2010-07-26T07:39:00.002-04:00

“Are you sure they are both females?”

“Yes of course I am! For God’s sake, Lois, I’m a doctor!”

Chris’s birthday gift that year was two white albino baby mice with pink eyes. My dad was holding them up by their tails and peering seriously at their rear ends.   He nodded.

"Yes. Yes they are. Girls. Both."

They came in a perforated cardboard box nestled in cedar chips looking twitchy and silken and very cute with long pink tails.

Chris really wanted a rat because he read somewhere that rats make the most loyal pets, will willingly ride on your shoulder, and are very smart too. But as children of the Great Depression, the notion of rat as pet was incomprehensible for both my parents. Apparently they’d seen some as big as dogs in the day.

So mice it was. And two seemed like a good number at the time.

“They’ll keep each other company,” decreed dad.

From then on, the powder blue room with the bunk beds my brothers shared exuded the aroma not just of stinky boy times two, but also a heady miasma of mouse pee paired with tangy droppings notes underscored by a spicy hint of cedar. Eau de Rodent.

Chris chose to keep his little buddies in his upper dresser drawer which was deep enough that they couldn’t climb out. It was an open-faced mouse run complete with toilet paper rolls, an exercise wheel, various jingle toys, and the food/water array.

The cats were banished from the room for obvious reasons.

Sometimes their instincts were so overwhelming we could see their paws desperately reaching, claws outstretched, under the closed door just in case a stupid mouse named Dinner stumbled by.

_{Chris. Third in the birth order.}

Chris was totally in charge of his mice, making sure they were fed and watered and suitably exercised. That was the “you’re growing up now so you are responsible for your pets” milestone in action.
Nobody mentioned that mice were nocturnal and the boys put up with quite a bit of squeaking, wheel-running, and cedar chip rustling all night long.

Chris said that although it sounded sometimes like they were fighting, he was pretty sure they were just having mouse fun.

Some fun.

“Hey, son, you may be over feeding your mice a little. The one looks obese!” said dad at the dinner table one night.

“Aw dad, it’s just hungrier than the other one.”

And, it turns out, for good reason.

Very soon thereafter, we were treated to an adorable mouse nativity scene with four pink wriggly babies attached to MamaMouse (who looked pissed by the way) with PapaMouse looking on proudly.

Mom and dad locked eyes for a minute and telepathically "had words" before composing their faces and smiling at us.

“Well, this is great. We now have an opportunity to study the reproductive habits of mice.”
And did we ever.

Dad bought two more mice, non-albino with brown spots and black eyes, to vary the mouse gene pool in our experiment.

And off they went.

Right out of the gate there were two litters of pups, then four, the eight. Dad built a large mesh cage for the burgeoning population, moved it to the laundry area of the house, and created a log book documenting the various genetic legacies each litter manifested.

He pontificated at the dinner table about recessive genes and Mendel’s peas and gestational periods and even discussed the mating ritual (sex) to a certain degree.

Astonishingly, Jon and Chris were immune from getting whooped when they were caught excitedly viewing the action in the cage.

“Look, he’s doing it!"

" Eewww!"

"Holy crap that was quick. Look, he’s doing that other one!"

"He’s Mighty Mouse!"

"Did you see the size of his equipment? I want to be just like him!”

We were getting schooled right in the face. Our grades in Science were rising up the charts with a bullet to A+. Our teachers, like (Insert Nun's Name Here), were actually jovial and not calling for parent's conferences every other day. Life was good.

But, as with everything, it’s all fun and games until somebody eats the babies.

What th'?

(To be continued...)

_{photos:
1 fat 1 Skinny - U.S. Government Public Domain.}_{Pile 'o mices - howtogetridofmice.com. Chris - Personal photo c}_{ollection. Mighty Mouse from Bakshi-Hyde Ventures, Mighty Mouse The New Adventure}

Click on titles for more family stories:

Dad Causes a Stir
Dad's Sunday Lesson Or Jesus In My Stomach

Dad Builds Character

Dad's Mandatory Family Dinners
Of Mice and Dad
Of Mice and Dad: The Tale of the Tail

Ordeal in Cordele: Aunt Polly

Dad's Mandatory Family Dinners

2010-07-22T21:05:00.003-04:00

This post received an Editor's Pick and a Cover from Open Salon July 21, 2010

^{Yes. It's us. And a cat.}

“Get in here and eat this!”

Mom usually let half the civilized world know that she had slaved away over a hot stove to provide grub for our weekday night ritual of MANDATORY FAMILY DINNER.

The clash of silverware and crockery being slammed around usually punctuated her general well-established loathing for cooking, but we always ate well.

“Put on a damn shirt, hang up the damn phone, put the damn basketball away and let’s go,” said dad after his nightly bourbon and water and Huntley-Brinkley.

It was like herding cats to break us away from our oh-so-important kid activities for a meal, and dad cracked the whip buckaroo-style when he needed to. No shirt, no vittles was the rule. Bare feet were ok though.

We never wore shoes.

Every “school night” my little brothers and I would troop into the chic burnt orange and avocado colored kitchen to sit at the FAMILY TABLE that I had previously set with plates, glasses full of milk and utensils.

We each had our places and never deviated for fear of knocking the earth off its axis or something even more dire. Dad across from Jon, Mom across from me, and Chris being the odd third kid born later, sat on the end of a big brown Formica rectangle.

That worked out best as he, more often than not , had to make a hasty escape.

Dad had his iced tea in front of him, brewed very dark and sweating with cool droplets of condensation.

“Who’s saying grace?’

I would just stare at his tea until someone else volunteered.

Chris, the youngest and, by birth order probably the most reckless, rose to the occasion on occasion. He’d reverently fold his grubby hands, bow his curly haired head, suppress a giggle and shout at the top of his lungs:

“GOD’S NEAT. LET’S EAT!”

And if dad could’ve reached him, he’d get a smack on the side of his head. But because I was in the way, I usually got the brunt of his lunge.

I am an expert at ducking, which came in mighty handy later in life. Another story, that.

Everything was usually usual. Except for what happened on one very unusual night.

The nightly ritual began as usual and went something like this:

“What did you learn in school today?”

“Nothing.”

“Why is (Insert Nun’s Name Here) calling me?”

“Don’t know.”

“Did you feed the cats and the skunk and the guinea pigs and the mice (Insert Other Exotic Pet Here) today?”

“Yeah, dad.”

“How was swim practice?”

“Wet.”

“Who broke a glass today? Your mom told me…”

“He did!”

Jon and I point at Chris, who just rolled his eyes and loaded a fork with something to fling at us.

“D’ja clean it up?”

“Yeah, dad.

Then, after contemplatively munching his salad and looking at each of us curiously with half squinting horn-rimmed eyes –

Wait for it, wait for it…

“Want to hear what I saw in the office today?”

Mom: “No.”

All three of us in jacked-up unison, hands clapping with glee: “Oh yeah! “

Overruled.

Whilst savoring glistening piles of spaghetti noodles covered in chunky red sauce, parmesan cheese and meatballs, he would describe in extra technical (gory) detail a boil he lanced or a hemorrhoid he vanquished.

Who knew rubber bands were so handy?

Sometimes he’d tell about drunken puking handcuffed patients whose scalps he sutured together as the police waited in the corridor.

Or about the crazy nuts kid who pushed all the furniture up against the examining room door so not to get a booster shot.

(Dad’s nurse Marty, a wily ex-Navy nurse, tricked that kid into thinking dad was Clark Kent moonlighting as a doctor but on a special mission. The kid submitted to the needle rather than shame himself in front of Superman.)

We knew hemoglobin, and femurs, and synapses, and the sizes of big bore needles, and pre-eclampsia and metatarsals and uteruses and breech birth and sphincters.

He spoke of this mysterious virus that was killing men right and left in Ft. Lauderdale and how he could swear it was changing its nature to avoid antibiotic treatment.

He lavished tales upon us of extracting still wriggling tropical parasites and cleaning out suppurating insect bites and setting compound fractures that looked like broken tree limbs.

He gloried in all things that spewed, smelled, winked, leaked or had to be lopped off to prevent infection…Nothing was too sacred and nothing blunted our appetites for information or for dinner. All his case accounts, no names attached, were spectacular, the more intricate and invasive the better.

Dad was a medical genius. Marcus Welby, M.D. could suck eggs.

As the meal wore on, like clockwork, my brother Jon, every single night would get excited and spill his milk all over the table. Dad would then routinely end his tales by angrily sending Jon to his room.

Truth is, somehow dad thought Jon did it on purpose. He may have. Jon is the doctor now in the family.

And he always got out of doing the dishes that way!

Here’s what happened that particular magnificently messed up night though. Dishes were the least of it.

Dad, all spun up from telling tales, expressed his faux-fearsome disgust for the milk spilling with dramatic arm gestures and the threat of getting out of his chair, his hand on his belt.

Once the moose was loose, run away.

This night however, in mid-bellow, he froze, half out of his chair and his face clenched like a catcher’s mitt.

“OhhhhhDAMNITWHATTHEHELL.SON.OF.A .BITCH???”

Dad flopped back into his chair, threw his size 13 bare foot up on the table, literally splashing down into his plate of spaghetti.

A thin spray of arterial blood and sauce geysered up from it arcing over the table to gently, like a sacrament, anoint the face of my brother Jon.

Sticking out of dad’s foot was a large jagged piece of glass still sporting part of the Hamburglar decal from a Happy Meal of long ago.

Chris literally dematerialized in a slip stream of particles as though Spock finally got the transporter to lock onto his coordinates on a hostile planet.

Jon sat shocked and staring like Carrie after the prom. His face was spattered with blood like some demonic fusion of a Pollock crossed with a Warhol, a Dali and a smidge of a Picasso.

Mom, holding her hand over her mouth, lurched down the hall at a clip. She could be heard trying to discretely lose her cookies.

Dad just looked at me, then looked at his spurting foot, then looked at me and said:

“Get my bag. You’re going to learn how to stitch a wound tonight.”

Cool.

Click on titles for more family stories:

Dad Causes a Stir
Dad's Sunday Lesson Or Jesus In My Stomach

Dad Builds Character

Dad's Mandatory Family Dinners
Of Mice and Dad
Of Mice and Dad: The Tale of the Tail

Ordeal in Cordele: Aunt Polly

Lake Toxaway Community Center Bluegrass Friday Nights

2010-07-11T08:25:00.002-04:00

Repost for y'all who got the web site address last Friday night! Enjoy!

This post recieved an Editor's Pick and a Cover at Open Salon July 8, 2010.

Leon Shelton’s church funeral didn’t hold a candle to the real proper send off he received at the Lake Toxaway Community Center last Friday night.

For mountain folk in western North Carolina, nothing brings your soul closer to heaven, living or dead, than live bluegrass music.

And on Friday, Leon Shelton soared heavenward smiling.

I expect Leon met up with some familiar faces when he walked up to his Mansion in the Sky. Last year was hard on this aging Community since in addition to Leon, some other familiar smiling faces were missing, I noticed, leaving wide lonesome gaps in the patchwork.

Tiny, a Navy veteran and his darling wife Mary Ellen weren’t there to tell me more stories of their mutual military careers, how they met in a bar in the South Pacific, and that she fell for a younger man.

Tiny's White Squirrel Sculpture, one of four we own

Tiny wasn’t there to lure me out to his car to buy his hand painted resin sculptures of the rare white squirrel that lives in that neck of the woods. I have about four of them now.

He went first I heard, and she very soon after.

And Joe Byers’ wife Mary, an authentically sweet woman whose eyes sparkled with love and innocence, and whose voice now entertains the angels, went on last year too, leaving Joe standing alone, but strong, strumming his guitar on stage just plain missing their gospel duets together.

The Lamplighters promotional picture, Joe and Mary in the middle

For decades based out of the Lake Toxaway Community, Joe and Mary and some talented relatives toured the southlands as The Lamplighters, a popular bluegrass gospel band.

I heard a tinge of longing in Joe’s voice when he allowed that Leon now was “gonna get to see my Mary.”

They were so much the fabric of the place, I thought I would see them all there every time I visited, it never occurred to me they’d be gone.

Fridays are when this venerable community of characters meet up, eat up, listen up and graciously greet outsiders and newcomers like long lost cousins.

Let’s just put it this way: My dad, PapaJohn, will accept “a hug around the neck” from these folk but outright growls and straight-arms any public affection from the "country club set."

It’s a matter of what’s real and what isn’t for him. Always has been.

The Center a'hoppin on Friday night. It's a multi-purpose gathering place and disaster shelter

MamaLo and PapaJohn count Friday nights at the Community Center as their weekly foray out into the world for social, nutritional and entertainment needs.

MamaLo has long ago quit actually cooking food and defiantly, against all universal Grandma Rules, simply warms things up in the microwave. Her days of cooking meals from scratch are long gone.

She’s over it.

Got a problem with that?

So any chance to eat out and eat good home cooked vittles provokes a Pavlovian drool response in the both of them.

Supper at the Center on Friday nights is hand-made by pink-cheeked apron clad volunteers and served cafeteria style on those paper plates with compartments.

You can flat-out taste the love.

PapaJohn demands lock-step precision in his approach to the evening. He ~~annoyingly obsesses on~~ insists on arriving a full half an hour early to be first in line to buy his dinner ticket and fling down pillows on the chairs in the front row of the stage area to claim them for later.

When the music starts.

This works out great since MamaLo gets to flit like a hummingbird from one conversation to another in the supper line snaking back through the place and out the door on some nights. She gets all the skinny on who is fighting, who is making up, who has cancer, who is dallying outside of their marriage, whose kids are coming and going for visits, how many people have been washed over the Falls and killed of late.

All the juicy stuff.

MamaLo, in this way, “tops off” her very real need for verbal interaction.

At 89, PapaJohn is not inclined to talk much anymore.

Little no-nonsense white-haired Rose supervises the ticket table and the cash box with eye brows clenched and mouth pursed with stern authority. No ticket, no supper. (But everybody knows that in hard times, Rose would be the first one to quietly set a tray of food in front of you no charge. That’s the way it’s done, no question, no hesitation, no judgment.)

It’s deep down adorable when Rose’s stern boss face softens and she shoots saucy flirty glances to her balding bespectacled suspender sporting fiancé, Alan. Don’t you dare tease her about it though!

Supper on Leon’s night was a ketchup-splashed tight square of meatloaf paired with little boiled potato globes and green string beans dotted with bacon bits. Dessert was your choice of carrot cake, chocolate cake, apple pie all washed down with sweet tea or lemonade in styro cups.

No alcohol allowed.

After supper, I sat outside in the “smoking lounge” (an open air gazebo overlooking the ball field) with musician (And unofficial Mayor of Rosman, North Carolina) Clarence and singer Doug.

I heard enough risqué jokes from Doug to last a lifetime. With punch lines like “For thirty thousand dollars I’d take everything off except my earrings…”

I ate a bug I was laughing so hard.

Clarence. a Christian man, just smiled, finished his cigarette, and high tailed it out of there blushing.

Clarence, Guitar Man and the Unofficial Mayor of Rosman, N.C.

I looked for sweet dancing DeeDee rolling around in her wheelchair full of hugs and smiles, but her dad had surgery so she didn’t make it this Friday night. Carl, who usually runs the stage, had a death in his family and was among the absent. The Beautiful Couple were there preparing to glide on the dance floor like they have every summer and fall for years. But he didn’t look well. His oxygen tank was still hanging in a satchel at his side.

I think he’ll be seeing Leon soon.

Musicians from all over are invited to jam

We took our seats once the tuning up began. Leon’s little wife, Miss Wanda, came up on the stage and bravely, with no words, accepted a plaque from Joe Byers in Leon's memory. Folks took the microphone and shyly told stories on Leon, but mostly recalled what a regular gem this hardworking family man was.

Then, accepting his mountain inheritance, Leon’s son, Jason was pushed front and center to rip into his banjo version of Foggy Mountain Breakdown in honor of his father.

Young men and women with guitars, fiddles, mandolins and banjos joined the elders on stage in wave of sound that plucked at my DNA like a cellular memory. Clogging gals and buck dancing gents clacked and clattered onto the dance floor and set to keeping time with mountain foot percussion.

As much as I worried that Friday nights at the Lake Toxaway Community Center might be approaching that Brigadoon-like culture fade becoming just a smoky memory extinct from this ridiculous frenetic world, Jason’s quick smile and genius banjo playing confirmed that it will go on…

Leon, I am sure, saw to that.

Hey there Tiny and Mary Ellen! Mizz Mary! Got some sweet tea for me?

Clarence's rendition of Blue Moon of Kentucky with cloggers

photo of squirrel by me
other photos courtesy of jritch 77 photostream
video from K0star on YouTube