String of Dreams

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

^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...

^{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

 “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.

~~~

December Star Party in the Sky

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

^{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

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.