LEARNING THE ROPES

When my foreman neighbor gave me, a special education teacher, a laborer’s job building a local nuclear power plant, construction was a misnomer for me. A grunt at best, I swept, carried boards, picked up papers, mainly water cups. Small in stature, I only carried one board at a time until the foreman shamed me into more.

The water coolers were oases. Whenever possible, the men took a break, shuffled over to a cooler, drew the water slowly, sipped as if it were rare wine, threw all cups on the ground, squashed them with their boot, slowly walked back to their work station until their thirst made them turtles again.

Praying for lunchtime to arrive – a great sandwich and iced tea from my loving wife, supportive because a young marriage needed the paycheck. Mostly I sat alone on a spot shaded by a plank I had seen the others prop up for a modicum of heat relief.

And there was no work ethic, but a get-out-of-work ethic. “You’re moving too fast,” spat several times at me. Picking up paper that looked important, a manta ray of a man, hovered and shouted, “Keep your goddamn hands off that iron worker’s paper.”

One of the few Black guys on the crew, an older man, had a mop handle with a nail punched in the end, which he used to slowly spear the water cups thrown on the ground. Naïve, that first week, desperate to fit in,  I made one of my own, proudly could not wait to show the paper cup warrior I could assist him. He smiled nicely and said: “Them’s cups are mine, my job. Had it for years, made it up myself. About to retire so I am the only one allowed.”

Every Friday, the paycheck Lotto. A grizzled vet spent the whole morning collecting sawbucks to enter “paycheck poker,” where arbitrary numbers on the checks cost you a bit or won you a ton of cash and honor. Fridays were the easiest day. Nobody worked and all speculated about what they would do with their winnings. It was the height of camaraderie.

I just listened, amazed that most said they would buy the best whore, as I  had already heard them diss their crabby old ladies they were glad they could still fuck.

Trying to be cool, I made the mistake of telling them I taught Sex Education to a mixed group. It got me the only positive attention ever as they peppered me with questions about what I taught. Did I teach young girls about orgasms, boys about gays? Myriad other probs about a world that was prurient and hilarious to them.

August ended, and I left to teach, and I was glad to be away from the heat, sweat, and frequent derision. Fascinated by that alternative Hell. Glad I made good money.

That fall I heard the main building had burned down. Ran into one of the workers in a bar. “Was arson,” he insisted, "Definitely arson. For the insurance."

Originally published in *82 Review

50th ANNIVERSARY OF DEATH

       Recently driving down a long, rural road, the sameness of the route jogged my memory  to those young people who crashed and died on that Thanksgiving holiday so long ago. The accident had made it impossible for a while to commemorate that holiday, be thankful for anything.

For a few years after the crash I religiously remembered every Thanksgiving with terror. I refused to drive anywhere to celebrate. Part of it was sorrow, part of it fearful superstition. This made my first wife’s family unhappy and maybe contributed to the demise of our marriage.

Then that scene faded—death can fade, does fade, must fade and I remembered that holiday event less and less until finally Thanksgiving no longer conjured the understanding that I should not be on this earth, should not be happily retired, should not be able to drive anywhere any Thanksgiving, should not have grandchildren, should not be discussing burial plans with my second wife, should not myself be able to be thankful for anyone or anything.

I attended a small Midwestern college when a group from a large city in a nearby state decided to carpool to join our families for the holiday as we had done the year before and as most—not I—would do the next year.

Two cars were going and as we walked across that tiny campus to the parking lot to leave, I knew in advance which car I was riding in and who the driver was because I had talked to him in advance and arranged it. It didn’t much matter I thought because we were all going to the same suburban area south of the big city. 

Maybe one hundred yards from the cars, my roommate saved my life and ended his. I will call him Rob.

“Vince, you’re riding in Karl’s car?” Rob asked even though he knew that already. “Can I switch with you? Sherry is in that car and I’m kind of sweet on her.”

I quickly joked that I didn’t have any foreseeable love life. A shrug—“sure”—and I am still walking on this earth, driving on this earth, and Rob is not. Or Sherry, or Glenn, or Kaci, the Homecoming Queen, or Karl, the driver, who was committed for a while after the accident and died early.  

My roommate Rob has a backstory; he had stolen money from me. We didn’t get along; we didn’t like each other. Although unspoken, we already knew we would not be roommates at semester. School was easy for me. It was hard for Rob. He almost flunked out his second semester. Spanish almost killed him. I played around much more and got decent grades. Some jealousy, even bitterness arose.

Some people are also judged better looking. Rob was a dreamboat to the girls. I was a skinny guy afraid to ask out a shadow. I managed to ask a girl to the Spring Dance our freshman year. She said yes, then lied a bit later and told me she had forgotten that Rob had already asked her out. It was a weak lie. Rob knew I had asked her out and “snaked” her from me which was the term back then for cutting in on someone. That hurt. 

I could have been spiteful. I knew he was still dating that same girl from that dance. But here he was,”sweet” on another girl, the classic lady’s man. I could have said no to Rob’s request to switch cars, get back at him for being a jerk. But it never entered my mind. That would make this more dramatic, as if it needed to be. I just said yes and didn’t think about it then. But I would think about that yes for years. Just desserts? I don’t think it works that way. Lived too long to believe that. Life just happens. 

The two cars took off merrily down Highway 80, headed for home with our families and a joyous Thanksgiving. But first, for Karl’s car, the one I wasn’t in, was Gunther, a German exchange student with suitcases too large to fit into that car when they stopped to pick him up. Gunther could fit but not his luggage so they left him waving sadly by the road. Gunther and I had a few beers after the accident discussing why that wave was as sad and as glad for him as I was about granting Rob’s request. Gunther, head down in the bar, shaking his head to dispel the idea that the stopping for him caused the accident, knew that it did and it didn’t. Probably Gunther is still alive somewhere out there. Maybe not. But I’m fairly sure he lived many more years than those who would have gladly transported him. It made a difference that the car stopped. It would have made a difference if his suitcases were not so large.

Our two cars did not stay together. We did not see them stop for Gunther. Karl’s Ford Fairlane had whizzed ahead. We only caught up when their car had been crushed by a gigantic car van.  Later we learned they had suddenly come over a hill and almost ran into the back of a flag-less tractor plodding down the road in that farm country. Karl swerved to miss it, then pulled the car back, but the power steering (he later told us in his pain) carried him into the path of the van. He was thrown clear and lived to drown in his guilt. (We all knew what he could not accept. That any of us would have done the same thing. It was the tractor that caused the wreck. As far as we know, that farmer just kept going toward his field. No one noticed him at the scene. But he might have been there. We only saw the abundant signs of death like the desiccated autumn gleanings in the nearby fields.)  

Everyone else in Karl’s vehicle was crushed.

Moving down that road, in our car, we were singing another folk song—a French WW I song—Hello Amiens—one of a succession of folk songs we happily warbled when our driver, a music major, taught them to us. The car was joy and hilarity on one side of the hill. On the other side were the flashing lights of several ambulances and cars lining both sides of the road. Many other cars traveling on that lone highway taking us across the state had come over that hill and been shocked into stopping. It was instantly clear that something terrible had happened although at first we did not know what. We just pulled the car beside the road and leapt out. Within seconds, over by a smashed corn field fence was Karl’s car, as you would recognize someone you really knew well even though his face had been beaten to a pulp. Our hope  was skeletal at best, quickly shattering into horror. 

Within a few minutes we knew—everyone except Karl, who was surrounded by others and in a complete state of shock—had been mangled. 

My own grief was ratcheted up almost as soon as I crossed the road to the side the wrecks were on. The dinosaur-like car van was still heaving to my left, having shattered a huge section of fence. To my right were the ambulances, in the center the bludgeoned car. Immediately, a stretcher went right by me, carrying my roommate who looked like he was sleeping. There were no marks on Rob at all. I looked into the eyes of the man who held the front of the stretcher. The sun had gone behind a cloud and yet his eyes shown as blue as I have ever seen, an uncanny blue as if a light shone behind them. 

“How is he?,” was all I managed to get out.

“Oh, him?’” he slowed a tad and looked back at Rob,”He’s dead. Snapped his neck,” he reported as if he was telling me about the weather and he moved past us to the open doors of an ambulance. 

I do not remember another detail from that scene. Later I found out that all the others had been smashed badly including Sherry and that one boy had to be cut out of the car with a blow torch. Also, the Homecoming Queen was raced to the rural hospital where she died the next day, never coming out of her coma. Over and over people said without actually knowing: They died instantly. None of them knew what hit them. 

There were no more songs in the black roadster on the way to the city, still a long way from the accident. Some intermittent and halting words expressed our amazement that this even happened. The most common sentiment was that we could not believe it. It is easy to sound hollow when there is no way of comprehending something you never conceived. Particularly when you are young. Death does a good job of hiding, except on rare occasions, and is more of a horrendous surprise when the victims are young. 

We drove a long way. Then finally bathroom needs overcame the worst emotions and we stopped at a roadside oasis. I made a mistake, something I would have talked and laughed about later, but there was no laughter now. I went into the wrong bathroom. A woman at the sink screamed. I merely mumbled an apology and stumbled to the men’s room. 

At home, my Father gave me a big slug of whiskey which I hated as it burned a throat that had barely touched the stuff. But I do remember, it did make me feel like a man and I wanted to feel like someone responsible, someone who could step into this tragedy. But the reality for me and all the others, a reality that lasted for days, months, years, only becoming an echo which could be heard for a long time, the internal voice in our collective heads: Why him?Why her? Why not me? What did they do to deserve this? Should young people ever die? And, particularly for me, the most haunting: Why did I switch cars? Is there any meaning in this for me? Is it fate? Was it God, a God I was having a youthful, philosophical dialog with at the time, as so many college students do, their childhood faith faltering under the onslaught of academic reason? Is it fair? Is there any justice in the universe? 

Before I tell you the conclusions I came to back then, the denouement of my faith and worldly philosophy, hammered out over “green” beer in a small town bar with my fellow philosophers of suds and opinions, I want us to go to the funeral, one of the worst experiences I have ever had. 

The funeral was ghastly. The tragedy of young death, which is always unacceptable and about which you can never say—He had a good life— was multiplied by the fact that Rob’s father had had a severe stroke in his early forties and was wheelchair-bound and mentally reduced. When I came into the church, suffused with guilt—it was almost impossible to dismiss the thoughts of feeling incredibly glad you were alive, pinching myself fortunate that I had switched cars, and incredibly guilty because of the same. I was an emotional mess and dreaded seeing Rob’s parents. They may have known that we did not get along and certainly would have equivocal feelings about a surviving roommate although I will never know if they knew about the car switch.

The mom, reduced to a female version of Job, was pushing the dad in a wheel chair and I was in their direct line as I entered. Rob’s dad spied me immediately and wheeled away from the startled mom and rolled across the floor right up to me and embraced and hugged me as hard as anyone ever had. He refused to let go even when his wife caught up and tried to pry him loose. And throughout the entire incident he was keening: “Oh, Vince, you knew Robbie, you knew Robbie, oh, oh. He was such a good boy. You knew Robbie. Why did this have to happen!” over and over and over. 

I don’t remember that scene ending, but of course it did and left any ability I had to control my emotions in tatters. I stumbled into the sanctuary. They sat the family on the left side in the first row and us students on the right side front row. I cannot remember a word of the sermon. I guess the words were the standard comfort about the Resurrection and, in this case, a lament about the mystery of life that would take those so young with the assurance that Rob was with Jesus. But what I do remember is Rob’s father punctuating the sermon with loud sobs and cries of remorse and pleas for Rob’s return, something a man who had not experienced a stroke would never have done to that degree. It was so pronounced that the preacher had to pause several times. All of this undid me and I wept loudly, as many of the other young people did, and, in my case, my nose began to fill and I had no handkerchief so the snot poured out. It got so bad that I had to use the lapel of my sports coat to repeatedly staunch it, leaving an ugly, noticeable, embarrassing stain that I could not hide as I exited the service.

Thanksgiving was over as if it had never happened. The accident caused a pall at every table where the young people were still alive and I’ll never know if some of those families even celebrated that year. But it was over and we returned to the campus and the first thing I had to do was walk back into that room to see what Rob had left behind. I am not sure why, but it was left to the roommates to pack up the dead students’ things and get them back to the families. I don’t remember if I actually shipped it as I had no car, but I remember getting boxes and packing his stuff up as best I could and taking it out of the room at some time. I stayed alone in that room for the semester, then moved in with a friend for the second semester. I don’t remember if they gave me the option of leaving that room, but I know I finished that term still there.

The small campus, which was abuzz with the event, certainly the biggest happening in all of our time there, involved me in the strange phenomenon of being a kind of “hero,” answering scads of questions, giving details over and over, continuing to respond and all the time recalling that I did not have a good relationship with Rob. But repeatedly I said what a good guy he was, good roommate, good student, how tragic it was, how fortunate and guilty I was because that was what was expected and, a fairly articulate student, I played that role as well as one could, maybe partly because I wanted it to be that way.

But besides the choking up I felt when I first went back into our dorm room and saw his stuff, the only time it really got to me after my return to campus was when I went to the only class we had together—Geology—where our assigned seats had us just across the aisle from each other. Looking at that empty seat was truthfully a hard moment.

  How do I assess it now, looking back? How did it influence me?  The final denouement of this experience destroyed whatever faith I had back then and that was played out in a local bar with two of my college friends, the kind you drink beer with and pontificate on everything from your lack of success with the opposite sex, the current status of your education, the worlds of sports and literature and the inevitable examination of a God who would let this tragedy happen, with a bit of why me? or, in this case, why not me? mixed in. 

The more we drank, the deeper the conversation and the more it drifted toward theology. At one of these encounters, I read a letter to my companions dismissing God from my life for the reasons that most people do. If you are good God, why did you let this happen and, especially, in Rob’s case, why did it happen to a family already crushed by the father’s terrible stroke as well as the death of an only child? I thought it was an articulate letter, but my guess is that it was as sophomoric as my actual year in school, but I had the huzzahs and back slapping and confirmation of my compatriots as we downed pitchers of “green” beer, which was all that that rural state was allowed to sell back then, until we got literally too drunk and finished the discourse, in my case, with the tavern toilet bowl. Any youthful faith I had was flushed away.

After retirement, I went to our 50th Reunion and had the fires of the accident stoked and, as older people sometimes do, reflected back on that scene and reviewed all the emotions—the fate of switching cars—through the alembic of my age and experience. I even ran into one of the bar buddies who had been with me when I read my letter to God, an epistle I didn’t keep. The other friend, with whom I had completely lost touch after college as often happens even sometimes to the best of friends, died of cancer a few years back.

Jeff, the still living bar friend and I, during one of the visiting times that wise Reunion planners always build in, intentionally went to that same bar in that same small town. It didn’t have the same name as before—The Library then, Fuzzy’s now. But it was still there sans the “green”beer. No pitchers this time; we just nursed a draft apiece. We caught up a bit about what had happened in our lives, and remembered together another scary incident when I was driving a car back in the early morning from an all-night diner in that same town. I fell asleep at the wheel and, Jeff recalled, Rob grabbed the steering wheel just in time to prevent us from becoming breakfast for a semi. We both shuddered and I remarked on how close I came to being hit by two separate behemoths, surviving both for no reason I could ever fathom. And I realized that this same Rob, who was mostly a negative person in my life, had actually saved my life twice. A strange kind of Thanksgiving—50 years later.

WALK, EAT, POOP

I was talking to my dog yesterday and it seemed as if she was kind of upset with me. The longer you have a dog, the more the two of you can read each other's minds. I could see a disgruntled look on her face, but I could not figure it out right away. I don't know if she can talk to me or not and sometimes suspect she can, but I am just a tick in the Universes and don't know why that is not allowed although it would make communication much better. Instead, I had to muse a bit on what the problem might be. Of course,  she watches my every move, so I decided to reflect on what I had  been doing recently, trying to go back through my mind like when we try to find something we've lost.

What had I been doing that might disturb her? In the immediate, I had a nasty cold, but I didn’t think that was the cause of the snit. Because of that cold, I had been lying in bed for two days, coughing and sneezing and blowing and trying to drain India of all of its tea, one sip at a time. I was reading a lot because, as an older woman without  a partner, except for visiting friends, I cherish reading, always have. I was a literature major in college. Currently, I am devouring the feminist classic—“EAT, PRAY, LOVE”  by Elizabeth Gilbert, almost religious reading in my circle, as popular as any book of its genre in our times.

I’ll summarize it briefly. I remember that my disconcerted dog sat at the foot of our bed  instead of snuggling beside me and did not take her sharp eyes off of me. Because I was absorbed in Gilbert, I did not much notice. A dog is just supposed to be there.
Devastated from abandonment by her first husband at the age of thirty and after the end of another nasty relationship, Gilbert became chronically depressed and decided to take a spiritual journey for healing. She traveled through Italy, India and Indonesia. If you have read her book, you will understand how deeply moving and convincing it is. Take care of yourself, nurture your spiritual self  and love who and what you can as you navigate life in a more grounded and joyful way. It worked for her and it has worked for many.  It is the story of Elizabeth learning to move out of darkness into light. It is a process myriad women have chosen to experience in this age of female enlightenment and one that has helped me to heal from similar negative relationships.

From the title of this heartfelt piece you can see there is another purpose for my pen. I could of course have joined uncounted bloggers, diarists, memorists, or columnists in relating more specifically how this book affected me. But that has been done so much that it is not needed at all I think. In fact, were it not for the curious title of my piece, you may well not have read a word of this and rightfully so, for I am not even a writer, with which you might well agree. But the zany title pulled you in and the reference to Gilbert perhaps intrigued you. At any rate, here we are.

I am sure it affected my dog. It prompted me to begin to write the first book I’ve ever attempted, being like so many other literary people convicted that we  have an important book inside, though fearful of exposing our true self and wretched prose to the world, which many novelists through all the years have totally ignored.
This will not be seen as an important book. In fact, probably no one will read it, but I swear to you that it helped my dear rescue dog Butter ( shortened from Buttercream, which sounded too much like a pastry). 

As soon as I felt that this was behind her angst, I had a serious talk with Butter and she tilted her head in curiosity as she always does. But as I explained my revelation, for I will call it nothing less than that, her frown or concern, her grief turned into her version of a smile, which all dog owners recognize.

I told her the truth and apologized to her. I explained that humans, as much as we love our pets, put ourselves first, except in cases of life and death emergencies. Older and less inclined to travel, I have kenneled her a few times as, having recently moved to town, I had no neighbors I could really trust and did not want to use a service, which does not bother some people, but bugs me for some reason. As well, I have refused to walk her when it is too cold and I have left her at home for hours when I indulged in wild shopping and in other ways pointless to recount, I have abandoned my beloved pet. I have always said I was sorry though, and by her actions, I trust she has forgiven me.

I told her that some very rich people employ dog therapists and also purchase the fanciest outfits they can find, mostly for cold weather. Ribbons and buttons and bows as the old song goes. But I could not afford that and thought it was silly, wasteful and selfish. We live in a world with exploding refugee camps and families with inadequate basics, besides unhoused dogs and other animals, subject to the human panacea of mercy killings, etc. Unable and unwilling to take those actions, what could I do in lieu of that?

It hit me like the sleeping pills I sometimes think I need. Often, I read to my dog and she curls up and seems to love that and take comfort. But, of course, I only read human books and Butter, in our few years together, has  patiently listened to Austen, Dostoyevsky, Mary Wollencraft’s Frankenstein, Virginia Woolf  and Hemingway. I am quite literate and other dogs might have to listen to RedBook or Cosmopolitan or movie magazines. Pets do not get to choose their owners as it is a kind of canine roulette.

Enough drivel, making you wait to find out what I did. I decided to write a book for her that she might like, based on her real life, not fiction. It would not be a scary tale which might be true for other dogs; it would be praise and encouragement for what I knew was comforting to her.

Therefore, after asking her about my idea as a way of showing Butter that I wanted to include her ,and with acknowledgement of the wonderful, true and simple title Gilbert had chosen, I sat down an my computer and began to compose—WALK, POOP, EAT—for that is the peaceful and regular schedule for my dear dog,

Of course, I wondered if that title would work for other dogs? For example, for some time now Butter sniffs at her morning food (I often make special chicken broth to pour over her kibbles), nibbles a bit, and begs for the long morning walk I always take her on for her delight of sniffs and pees and to lubricate my aging bones. For a while she would eat first, then walk, then poop, quite regularly. I thought maybe I would change the title to EAT, WALK, POOP, as that seemed more normal, but I think people reading  this to their dogs would be able to figure it out and adjust accordingly.

Like Ms. Gilbert, as I am just finishing my first chapter, I ponder and explain why each function can lead to better dog peace, health and contentment. Walks are important to keep dogs fit. We take long walks through our area park every morning where she gets to sniff more than the shorter afternoon walks we take around our neighborhood. Yes, there are plenty of squirrels, rabbits, and neighbor dogs to entertain her and cause her to pull at her leash, but she knows most of them and they know her. In the park, there is much more to smell, sometimes deer or pheasants, which causes her to act as if she is much bigger than her small body.

Also, I feed her, as I said, by spooning a small amount of chicken soup on her kibbles to make them  more delicious. As well, she manages to beg bits from my meals, though I always lick the salt off and am judicious about what I give her.  (I almost lost Butter to chocolate once and raisins another time.)

Of course, Mother Nature insists all defecate.  I always take plenty of biodegradable poop bags with me and give a piece of my mind to those who are too lazy to do the same, both in our neighborhood and in the park.  

I believe it will be easy to explain the salutary effects of this regimen for both dog and woman ( or man.) when I read the book to her.

When I finish my book, which should be soon, as it needn’t be very long, I will take it to the best publisher  who I hope will publicize it widely. But, since I think there are probably more women in the world than dogs, it probably will not get much press. I just want to get it out there, read it to Butter, and mollify her. You should be hearing of the book soon. Happy reading ahead!

P.S. After reading this, I wondered—might I be unwittingly insulting Ms. Gilbert? Might I be trivializing the fantastic prescriptions she proposed which have helped so many, including me? But as I cogitated over that, which is vitally important to me, as kindness and respect in this world should be on the first shelf, I decided that humans and animals are different enough that suggestions for a better life can certainly be applied to both species. After all, a healthy human helps a healthy dog and visa versa as we strive to become each others' best friend.

 Originally published in the Writer's Club

EASY RIDERS

Back in the Day, traveling on old Route 45 on our way to Florida to see our mom: two brothers, a wife and girlfriend, and a brother-in-law. Hippies all, at the height of the Revolution: beads, colorful rags, no bras, holey jeans, long unruly hair. Hunger stopped us at 3:00 a.m. at a truck stop in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Famished, we barely noticed the packed parking lot as we trundled into the garishly lit diner, the Formica tables full. And we stood waiting to be seated.

No one seated us, but everyone stared at us, a palpable tension in the room. There were few empty seats, but we espied an open booth near the back corner and, eyes down, we headed for that haven. All the clinking sounds of a restaurant stopped as did all the talking. Just as we reached the booth, a sharp, distinct wolf whistle sliced the air.

We huddled down and barely looked at each other, hoping a waitress would rescue us. The eyes around us felt hostile, but a kind of mocking hostility, as if some kind of bad joke had entered the room.

It took our waitress, a middle-aged woman in a pink uniform, a bit to get there, but she finally came over with a big smile on her face. We all wanted to kiss her. She simply asked: “What do y’all need?” Oh yes, menus. But David, the brother-in-law, said: “Help.” He tried to laugh.

Saying she would return, she left us to figure out the unappealing food. Our hunger had vanished. If you ask me now what we ordered, I could not tell you one item, but I am sure the kind waitress brought us water glasses.

David figured out what to say, and we agreed; we would have agreed to anything to cut the tension that still hung like a shroud over the crowded room. “I know what we should tell her and ask her to let this place know! Let’s tell them we are in a Shakespeare play and have to wear our long hair and clothes as our costumes and didn’t change them because we just had a rehearsal early tonight.” If he had suggested that we were undercover agents to track down anti-War demonstrators, we’d have agreed.

When our server came back, David launched into his rap with a lot of head nodding and semi-chuckles from the rest of us. But just after he started explaining our situation in a please-be-sympathetic-way, the song on the juke box changed, the one sound that was always there even when the room began to talk again and the clang of silverware resumed. Out of that multi-colored box came the distinct and chilling sound of Merle Haggard wailing: An Okie From Muskogee, which was busting the charts in certain areas of the country, such as Bowling Green in south-central Kentucky.

The lyrics convicted us. We did smoke Mary Jane, drop acid, embrace free love, sport long, shaggy hair, wear sandals and beads. We were not proud to be Okies, wave Old Glory, or think white lightning the best thing to quaff.

And that song did not play once. It played again and again and again, as we sat there trying to decide when to run. Finally, one of us stood up and all of us strode, eyes down, toward the door, the cat-calls rising right as we headed in the direction of the blaring jukebox, near the exit area. Quickly, we threw two twenties down by the register, plenty enough to pay with a tip, the change irrelevant.

In the moment, we stood there, a large man with a matching belly, rose up in front of the jukebox and began doing the hoochie coochie.

We plunged into the even darker night, startling after the fluorescent bath we just left. Hustled to our car, started the engine, and crept out onto the road. That nothing bad had happened punctuated our sighs of relief, but that was short-lived,

As soon as we pulled out on the highway, a car, its bright lights beaming, followed us as close as you can get without crashing. My brother was driving, but we were all fantasizing on the same thing. That past week the movie Easy Rider had come out, and every hippie in the nation must have seen it. We had watched in horror as two hippies in the movie were traveling on motorcycles down a Louisiana highway, when a couple of locals in a pickup pulled alongside them and mocked them, eventually pulling out a shotgun and riddling their bodies with vengeance.

The car began to follow us even more closely. Ginger, my girlfriend, was the only one who spoke: “I think there’s four men in there.” No one replied. We were all wondering what we were going to do if they pulled out guns after they ran us off the road.

Our only hope was the next town, but we were in a rural world and had no idea if there was a next town. But maybe there was and maybe a friendly police station to duck into?

The car kept following. At any time, we expected to be run off the road.

But a next town did appear. Heaven! Nirvana! Paradise! Just as we saw the town sign, our would-be assailants pulled off the road, turned around and, we guessed, headed back to report their fun scare.

Sixty years later, sitting around, long hair now gray, listening to light jazz, sipping wine, all still alive except David, with my wife, Lisa replacing my girlfriend Ginger, we reminisced, recalling how even back then our country was badly divided.

Originally published in Bewildering Stories

HUMILIATION

In the 1950’s, in grade school, as a seventh-grade boy, I was a voluminous reader of everything. Not only did I love comic books, like any other boy in my neighborhood, but I also had a huge crush on Nancy Drew. I read everything Carolyn Keene wrote, and was in love with her detective heroine, who I saw as the elusive blonde that every schoolboy fancies. I read Nancy Drew as much as I could, and always had one of her books with me. It was only after my humiliation that I ever read a Hardy Boys book, a humiliation that suddenly pushed me toward those boy sleuths and away from my dream detective.

Nancy’s fall from grace happened that autumn. I can picture myself coming down the sidewalk to enter Hoover School with my books in my left arm and my current Keene favorite on top—The Password To Larkspur Lane. I had been half-way through the book, and was anticipating the first time I could ditch the teacher’s prattle. I wanted to resume my quest, to go deeper into that mystery, and spend some time with my fantasy.

Hurrying into school, I turned onto the front sidewalk and, looming in front of me, appeared two eighth grade trees: two angular, tall dark-haired girls standing in my path. Their long, bony, finger-branches pointed at me in unison.

“Look at that boy; just look at that boy! He is reading Nancy Drew; he is reading about a girl, a girl detective.”

They began to laugh hysterically, and call others over repeating their accusation every time other kids would join the scene. The laughter and finger pointing spread and I remember well what I did next.

I went into the school, took the Nancy Drew book to the library, hid it beside me, and left it on the desk, slinking away to my class. I never read her again.

Originally published in Suddenly, Without Warning

MONOPOLY ON ANGER

Our family never played games. We watched games other people played—all kinds of sports depending on which Chicago team was in season, the Cubs being the only one we had a choice on over the cross-town White Sox, the Bulls, Blackhawks and Bears being singular. My Father, Aunt, and Uncle even played those little white gambling cards religiously and, even though, for a number of bizarre reasons, their favored college team was Purdue University from nearby Indiana, they would pick against their favorites in any sport if they thought it would bring in some cash.

Due to the little white cards, Saturdays and Sundays, in the winter, when the games chosen for betting were listed, they really went at each other. The side bets they made between them were sometimes more important than the card bets they made through the local bookie and there were plenty of heated epithets thrown back and forth as the afternoon combats took place. My brother and I watched this all closely and were even allowed to bet “for fun,” though we quickly learned that telling one of the adults that we had won on our card when they did not was not appreciated. These were the games in our family except for a short stint with ping pong that fizzled enough for the adults, due to my Dad’s dominance of his brother, to let us play something on our own. Otherwise, it was The Games.

Therefore, when one Thanksgiving, after dinner was done and the women had done the dishes, out of the blue, my Father proposed a family Monopoly game, he sparked stunned silence. The family never played these kind of group games. However, he being a standard patriarch, seven of us gathered around the poker table that he and his male friends frequented on Friday nights and, of course, as the banker, Dad distributed the paper money and we chose the pieces.

Since then, like most Americans, I have played Monopoly until its repetitiveness and the steady introduction of myriad new games in the exploding play land of Middle Class America, caused it to be boring. But, at that time, it was new and fresh and exciting so those of us, my Father, my Uncle, my Aunt, my Step-Mother, my Grandmother on my Father’s side, and we two boys, ages twelve and ten, were privileged to gather around the green felt table.

The nature of the game set up the impending drama. Most Monopoly games are played by three and four people, not usually by the allowed maximum of seven participants. The full deck, so to speak, means that the chief goal of each player— getting a monopoly so you can build hotels and destroy the opposition, an American value since Rockefeller and his cronies—is extremely difficult to attain. It meant someone of the seven would have to luck into a monopoly or we would just dice our way around the board over and over without much movement towards a winner. And so it was for us that evening. All purchased some of the color-coded property, none got a monopoly, but a few got two pieces of land, notably my Uncle.

My Father was the banker, handing out the fines and money with gusto while smoking a cigar that made him almost look like the executive whose famous picture graces the bright red Monopoly logo in the middle of the board. The pieces—horse, locomotive, hat, thimble, all of them, went round and round, round and round.
Suddenly my Uncle spoke up:

“I want to buy a house.” Dead silence. Everyone at the poker table instinctively knew something was wrong. All the property had been bought. The game had stagnated. There was no chance to get a monopoly. Unless you bought a piece of property from someone.

“What! “ our Father steamed through the smoke of his cigar. “Marvin, how did you get a Monopoly” Eyes flaming with accusation.

“I bought St. James Place from Vince.”

Almost insanely calm, our Father asked: “ And how much did you pay my ten year old son? Did you low ball him?”

“$100,” was the quiet reply.

More silence descended than when Casey swung and missed.

An explosion. Our Father lifted up the poker table and upended it, scattering the players, the pieces, and the paper bills everywhere.

To my brother and me and our little sister who sat wide-eyed through the whole event as she was too young to play:

“To bed, now, immediately, all of you!”

Our family did not have a monopoly on trouble. All we children dealt with anger issues, but that game, which was as much apart of that era of Americana as black and white TV sets, after every one else at that Monopoly game had passed away, came up at Thanksgiving a few uncomfortable times.

Originally published in Euphemism Magazine

YER OUT!

Once the best fun, we collected baseball cards, sacred for poor, working-class boys before we could afford to go to a real game, before TV. Collected all the cards, a big deal and cheap. We could stuff boxes full: all the stars, along with the bench jockeys, shuffle fantasies before our eyes, each face our own miracle catch or towering home run.

In the winter, when snow and ice pinned us inside, we made a game with them. Placed the cards on the floor, each player in his right position, even a catcher. We had our own All-Star team, changed line-ups at whim. We were the managers! Teams took turns. With our index finger, we flicked the batter card across the wooden bedroom floor, a dirt field in our minds.

Where it landed determined the play. Hit another card—out! Land clean, a hit, depends how far it flew. A home run was atop the heating vent. Rooted for our favorite team: Pirates, Reds, Cubbies! Charted the league standings. Nine innings, whiling away winter. Played for hours until our cuticles bled from snapping floating heroes into the air. Heal in a few days—Batter up!

We had no idea of value—Cokes were a nickel. We did not know American greed
would soon make some cards—Williams, DiMaggio, Mantle—if we did not bend or crinkle them, worth enough to pay for college fees.

Comic books, then girls, took over. The cards sat in a box in the attic buried in an Easter basket with fake green grass. It looked more like a field than the old, brown floor. But a small, attic fire incinerated them. Childhood dreams went up in smoke.

Years later, our own children collected cards: “Mom, Dad, buy sets and keep them;
they’ll be worth a ton!” As good parents we stored them safely, not in an attic, but cellophane-intact, like rare books with perfect spines.

Years later, a surfeit of cards—America knew her business. Everyone collected and saved everything. The market crashed. Like a player who slid past second base—Yer Out!

Originally Published in Euphemism Magazine

MY INTRODUCTION AND RESPONSE TO RACISM

My story starts pre-Civil Rights (in the ‘40s and ‘50s), as I was raised in a middle-class white household, fairly standard, though my dad was a tavern owner (a bit of an unusual job in our suburb). I was raised around more Black people than most because my dad employed them. 

My father was a non-believing Jewish man and my mother a closet Catholic—that itself was an unusual combination for the times. Besides the prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” etc, I was given no sense of the Lord or any idea that God would love all people and remained unaware of the dynamics of racism in our country. As I reflect back on growing up, I distinctly remember two Black men in particular who greatly impacted my life: Jimmy, who I met early in my childhood, and Buck, a man I would meet later on.

Jimmy was my dad’s handyman. As a child, I didn’t know that Jimmy couldn’t marry the woman (Wilma) he loved.  I also didn’t understand that most of the world despised a Black man being with a white woman. Jimmy and Wilma, I found out later from my mother (who would talk about it when my father would not), couldn’t get married because no one would perform the ceremony. They wore wedding rings as disguises from the violence because, as my mother told me, she knew of interracial couples who were ambushed and killed. I found out from my father, one man had been lynched, a word I did not understand back then. 

But Jimmy and I had a special relationship. He was a man I really looked up to, and I understand now that he acted as a kind of surrogate father, involving me in the handy work he was hired to do by my often-absent father. He would always include me in his projects to the degree I realistically could do, like spot painting or holding a board he nailed, holding the dust pan, or getting the mop for the bucket. Most of my work with Jimmy was done while I was out of school for the summer, but even after the school day, Jimmy gladly included me.  He took away the boredom of summer days, and he made me feel proud of myself.

Jimmy had a saying, a little joke he often said to me. I thought it was a joke because my family always laughed whenever I told it, not knowing yet that my family, including my dear, sweet mother, was deeply racist. 

Jimmy would say to me, “Boy, we’re like two ice cream cones. You’re the vanilla one, and I’m the chocolate cone.” And he would laugh loudly and cause me to laugh every time he said it, so it was an easy transition to a family joke. I told that joke several times at the dinner table, and, for a while, whenever relatives or friends came over, I was asked to repeat the line. Everyone always laughed when I did. 

Then, suddenly, Wilma and Jimmy disappeared. The adults lied and told me they did not know why. Once I overheard (as children often do because adults don’t think they should have ears) that Wilma had done something. But the story of this couple was hushed, and I soon forgot about it. In no way did I connect it to racism. It was just not part of my thoughts, even when I heard the derogatory terms toward Black people thrown about.

It was not until we moved to a thoroughbred horse farm in another town that I understood racism; it came as a true shock to me. We had moved to the horse farm because my dad had become a very successful businessman—now owning five taverns—and became involved in the world of thoroughbred racing and gambling. In fact, he had won an enormous bet on his anniversary with my stepmother, enough to put a down payment on the farm.

Along with being successful and having 25 head of boarders in his stalls almost all the time, he had to hire farm workers with some experience. He hired a white man from Kentucky to be the manager, and this man, Frank, brought several Black men with him, including one called No Talk (who never stopped talking) and another nicknamed Buck, whose real name was James Payne. I was to learn later as I grew in my understanding of racism that it was common for white people to give and call Black people by nicknames or call them the infamous “Boy.” 

At any rate, they both came, and my brother and I, as teens now isolated on a farm far away from much of anything and so unlike our old neighborhood where we had gobs of friends, often did chores with these hired men after school. As we got to know them, they became friends and, after that, kind of idols because they were worldly wise and paid a great deal of attention to us, something our very busy and often-absent dad did not. As time went on, Buck especially became like a hero to me, perhaps even a father figure. 

Stories I heard around the farm made Buck heroic: one time, he tamed a mean stallion no one else could, and another time, Buck lifted a huge horse trailer all by himself. He became legendary in our small world, and I never thought of Buck in racial terms. I just really liked him, and we talked a lot. Despite dropping out of school in elementary and going to work, Buck was interested in my school and often asked me what I learned and urged me to go to college.

One event, though, opened my eyes to Buck’s reality and forever changed my perspective. When I became a Christian many years later and learned what God thought about all races, it strengthened my faith to know that Jesus was behind any effort for racial justice and that His church was to be as multi-colored as Heaven would surely be.

Buck, No Talk, Frank, my younger brother, and I met my dad for a horse sale at Arlington Park Race Track near Chicago, one of the most heralded of all race tracks. When we got there, Dad instructed Frank to have his men prepare the stalls and unload and bed down the horses for the sale the next day. He asked me if I wanted to come to the track kitchen with him, but I told him I wanted to stay with Buck and the others and would meet him there. Dad, Frank, and my younger brother went ahead. Only the Black men did the work, and I was just there to hang out because I wanted to.

Finally, the horses were bedded down, and Buck said it was time to go to the kitchen where everyone ate. No Talk had gone ahead of us, so Buck and I were the last to head that way. As usual, we engaged in lively conversation, me doing most of the chattering as usual. The track kitchen was a few barns over, and we arrived there in a few minutes. But once we got there, my life changed in a flash.

As we approached the kitchen, Buck stopped cold, right in mid-sentence. I remember looking at his face and seeing a look I had never seen. In hindsight, I think it was embarrassment, something so out of character for Buck that it shocked me. At the time, though, I couldn’t collect my thoughts and just felt strange.

I started to ask what was going on, but Buck took a few big strides and was gone through a screen door on the left of the whitewashed building. Above the door was a wooden sign painted COLORED. I just stood there for a bit, getting my bearings. Then I noticed on my right was another screen door: WHITES. Stunned, I went through that door and could immediately see a row of stools before a counter at the far end of the room. My father, brother, and Frank were each on a stool. I staggered to that area, a wall running down the center of the room but ending just before the counter. I slid into the stool near Frank and looked to my left.

On stools on the other side was a group of Black men, No Talk and Buck included. Buck did not look my way, and I knew instinctively not to try to get his attention.

I do not remember what we ate, but I do remember how uncomfortable I was, emotions from incredulity to anger coursing through me. For some reason, I knew not to ask my father then. I had heard of discrimination; I just had never seen it. It changed my life.

Later, I did ask my father about it. He said he didn’t like it either, but that was the way the world was. That’s the last he said on the matter. 

Over the years, as a non-believing radical protester through my graduate school years in the ‘60s, I became one of the leaders in the anti-Vietnam War movement and a prominent white presence under Black leadership in the Civil Rights Movement. Involvement in those protests are something that now, as an older man, I am justifiably proud of. 

In a few years, though, burned out by the lifestyle of that counter-culture and seeing the bankruptcy of violent protests, I met Jesus and have walked with Him for over forty years, been a pastor for social justice in two different churches, and was able to introduce and sustain racial reconciliation and justice groups for education and action in both churches before I retired.

 I attribute my involvement in this part of our nation’s history—one that has recently exploded again—to that seminal event with Buck. Once my oldest grandson asked me what racism was. His teacher had mentioned it in school, and he had heard some about my involvement in Civil Rights, as my family was raised to believe and participate in mercy and justice. 

I told him all about Buck. I will never forget Buck’s influence in my life, and I will always be indebted to them.  

Originally published in the On The Journey Blog

COMEUPPANCE

When you’re fifteen you think you know a lot and think the adult world knows very little and is really screwed up. When I came into my Grandmother’s house one day, I found her sobbing on the couch.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong!, Grandma,” I cried.

She could barely speak, mumbled and sobbed and covered her voice with Kleenex. Finally she settled enough to let me know the source of her sorrow. One of her favorite characters had been killed in an auto accident on the famous soap opera—”As The World Turns.”

Grandma was inconsolable, her explanation breaking into periodic wailing as I tried to comfort her with the bromide that it was just a TV program, that no one really died. But, I remember, it took her days to stop sniffing and talking about it to anyone who would listen and, I think, she even stopped watching it for a spell.

That was over sixty years ago. My dear grandmother is now long gone and so is that TV program, which lasted about as long as any soap ever did.

Last night, my wife and I watched the ending of the penultimate season of an action/mystery adventure we have viewed for eight years. We both think it is one of the best we have ever seen, keeping us anticipating each season, and on seat edge for every episode. This last year, particularly, was intense because the main mystery, the identity of the true parents of the female lead, has finally been revealed and produced a totally unexpected outcome as that young woman, who had evaded death for eight seasons, was unexpectedly shot and killed.

Although neither one of us wailed and carried on like my Grandmother, we were both deeply affected, both struggling to process the shock, which was still lingering a few days later.

We felt we lost a friend, someone we really admired, someone who should never have died.

Because I did not know the details of the death on that soap opera, I can’t tell how parallel the two deaths were, except they were both sympathetic women.

As I shared the grandmother story with my wife, I felt sheepish as I saw the comeuppance happen to me so many years later when I thought I was even wiser than my teen self.

Originally published in Potato Soup Journal

SNAKE

    I was walking in my favorite park when the strangest thing that ever happened to me  occurred suddenly and if it hadn’t been so scary I would have had time to think about it, but I just reacted to my fear and ran away behind a tree from where I saw a horrid snake, with a white face that looked like some kind of burnt pudding with red eyes. Its tongue flickered hungrily and it appeared to be blind, which is maybe the only reason it did not strike me when I first threw down the stick that I picked up by the bench. It was a long, gnarled kind of bent stick which, I remarked  to myself before I threw it away, looked a bit like a snake, but I never expected it to turn into one.

    I was quaking behind the tree and could not take my eyes off the snake which kept writhing as if it were cheated out of something. There was no one else around and I was afraid to move because it might sense me and strike so I just stood there in panic when the strangest thought came into my head.

    “It is just a stick. It may look like a snake, but it is just the stick you threw down so go pick it up and throw it in the pond over there.” A variation of that thought kept running through my head. At first I was even more terrified as the snake seemed to be becoming more hostile and was the ugliest snake I ever saw. I remember when I was younger having snake dreams and there were always three snakes in them and they were all hideous and one of them looked like the snake on the path before me.

    I was frozen and had no idea what to do, but the thought to go pick it up began to repeat over and over and the more it repeated the more calm I got. I cannot explain that. Even now as I think of this scene, it makes no sense and makes me shudder, but I did  go over to the snake, which actually rolled over like it was a cat or a dog as if it wanted me to pet its belly. But I didn’t pet its belly, of course, and reached down grabbing it just below its head. It began to writhe violently and I began to run with it held out in front of me toward the pond.

     There were two teen-aged girls by the edge of the pond and they screamed in unison as I ran past them with this white nightmare in my hand, struggling to bite me. I reached the pond and hurled the snake into the air and, as it plunged into the water, it turned into the same stick I found and then floated to the top and began to drift across the pond.    

    I found myself shaking violently and saw that the girls had run away leaving me alone. I went over to the park bench and sat down and saw another stick which I had not seen before lying in front of the bench. I did not pick it up, just stared at it a long time.

    Then I remembered the only other time I had heard of a stick turning into a snake. It was in the Bible and it was one of the ways Moses tried to show Pharaoh that he had God on his side, which he did by throwing his walking staff down, turning it into a deadly viper. Pharaoh’s magicians were able to do the same thing so it appears it was not that big a deal, but they weren’t able to do any of the other magic Moses was able to do after that like turn the Nile to blood or bring swarms of frogs or gnats or any of the other terrible plagues.

    I sat there for a long time pondering that tale. I did not know what to do. Then I began to weep. I did not sob or cry heavily, just a mild but persistent sniveling and I did not know why, but I could not stop the emotion either. This crying threw me into a kind of reverie, a kind of day nightmare, maybe you might call it a daymare, but I thought that  word up later when I decided to write this account down after this whole incident was over.

    In my dream—it must have been a dream because things happen in dreams that aren’t real and don’t make sense, but appear to be more real than reality— a group of people came up to me in that park.  It seems they were brought there by the two teens who approached me with this group of adults. The girls were pointing at me and whispering and I was really taken aback. But then I saw that other stick before me and I picked it up quickly and threw it in front of the group, making sure that it was far enough in front of them so that, if it turned into a serpent, it would not be able to strike. It was a good throw. When it hit and turned into a snake and began writhing and hissing—this one was a putrid green with a black diamond like shape between its eyes that made it look especially fierce—it was far enough away for the crowd to have  room to jump back screaming. They were in no real danger because the snake was definitely away from them and, unlike the other snake, it did not seem like it would attack.

    The group began to  shout at me all at once: “Who are you! What did you do? Get that snake out of here. Are you crazy?” Things like that.

     I found myself unafraid and just went over and grabbed the snake and threw it toward the bench I had been sitting on and it became a piece of wood when it clunked against the bench and fell down on the other side.

    A man approached me. He was large and angry.

    “How did you do that! Why did you do that? You better not do that again!”
 I tried to say something but nothing came out of my mouth. I knew I did not do this on purpose and did not want to do it and couldn’t figure out why it even happened or if it would happen again.

    I tried to speak and  finally some explanatory words did come as I tried to tell them what happened, but they did not want to hear what I had to say and it sounded made up even to me so I just stopped talking and we all just looked at each other in silence for a bit.    

    Then an older woman with blazing white hair came out of the crowd and said to me: “Do it again!” The crowd gasped and one of the teens half-screamed.

    “Do it again,” she commanded me.

    “I don’t want to.” I said. “I hate snakes.”

    But the crowd began to whisper to each other and finally turned to me and enjoined, as if one: “Do it again! Do it again! You are special; do it again!”
    They kept chanting and chanting. I went over to the bench and picked up that same stick. Nothing happened, but then I realized that I had not thrown it down. I threw it down. It  instantly became a skinny, brown viper this time, with an exceptionally mean face, and it immediately darted toward the group that ran screaming away. It stopped short as if it knew what it was doing and sidled over to me and began to rub against my terrified leg.

    I picked it up. I did not know what else to do. I threw it at a tree and it swirled through the air but when it hit the tree it was still a snake and began to slither down toward the group who were slowly coming back but when it touched the ground, it became a stick again.

    I just shrugged to the crowd and then I snapped out of my dream and just sat on the bench for a bit getting my bearings. But when I looked down I saw the stick lying in front of me and I did not know what to do. I just sat there and looked at that stick wondering, if I picked it up, would it turn into a snake again?

    What if it did? What if every time I picked up a stick and threw it  down it would become some kind of snake? What would that be like? How would people treat me? Would they be afraid of me if I didn’t throw the sticks near them? Would they put me on stage or television or make a movie? Would it make me rich and famous!

    I began to be really afraid. What if I picked up the stick and threw it and the snake attacked and killed me? But I knew deep down that it probably would not do that even though I did not know that for sure. It was just a snake and they were afraid of people and did not ever purposely attack anyone. No, it is people who attack and kill snakes because they are afraid of them.

    I remembered how the snake had talked to Eve in the garden, but then it was able to walk on two legs until it told that lie and was cursed to crawl the rest of its days on its belly and be despised and feared by all. I wondered if that is why God turned Moses’ staff  into a snake instead of a rabbit or a cat or something harmless? The people would have been just as amazed and Moses would have still made his point for God, but maybe the magicians could only turn sticks into snakes and not other animals.

    These are  some of the crazy thoughts I had as I sat before the stick for a long time deciding whether to pick it up and become dead or famous. Because there was little doubt in my mind that if I could keep changing sticks back and forth onto serpents I would become rich and famous and wouldn’t have to do my boring job any more and maybe a girl would like me enough to want to marry me, though a lot of girls don’t like snakes. I wondered, if I did marry, if my wife would also be given the power to change sticks into snakes. Maybe my family would have to live in a herpetarium or have one attached to our house and away from the kids. What if we could do this with more than one stick, even a lot of sticks?  Maybe the only stick that would do  this was the first one in the pond, the one I actually threw, not the one in the daymare?  Maybe that stick was enchanted and the one before me now was just a regular stick that would not turn into anything? Yet I knew I could not know unless I picked it up and threw it.

    I  also had no idea how long this power would last. Did Moses ever have to turn his staff into a snake again after Pharaoh let his people go? I know later he hit a rock with the same staff  and water gushed out. Maybe my stick would do that too or even other miracles?

    But why was I able to do this at all? Why had I not done it before?  Who or what had caused this to happen? Was this a gift or a curse and where had it come from? How long would this power last? What if I did it for a year and all these things happened and then the magic went away?  And, I kept thinking of course, what if a snake turned on me and killed me or my wife or one of my children or all of them or another relative or friend or even just a pizza delivery man?         

    Should I keep the stick locked up? I reasoned I would have to because I did not think my wife would want the stick in our room even if it never turned into a serpent on its own. I mean, what if it was on top of a low dresser and our dog knocked it off and it turned into a snake and killed our dog or hid somewhere in the house where we could not find it. No, it would have to be locked away when we were not using it.

    All these crazy thoughts went through my head while I was sitting there gazing at the stick as the evening shadows began to fall. I finally just got up and went home, throwing a backward glance at the stick, which was just lying there.

Originally published by The Chamber Magazine

UNTYING CONFEDERATE STRINGS

In a Chicago restaurant, a young black man took a job as a dishwasher. Later he would work as a ditch-digger, delivery boy, hospital worker, and postal clerk—all youthful survival steps before he found his true calling as an author.

In his writings and particularly in his most successful novel, “Native Son,” his cry of what racism can do to a black man was burned into the consciousness of American readers through the powerful and horrific story of Bigger Thomas.  Perhaps he opened his readers to the strength of Dr. King‘s Civil Rights message. And certainly his message laid bare the history that unveiled the terrible consequences of racism for so many African-Americans, including the real-life story of Emmet Till, who was tortured, pulverized, and left to rot in a Mississippi river because someone said he whistled. 

New to the North, this young dishwasher was approached by a white waitress.

“Young man, will you tie my apron?” She was heavy-set and her arms couldn’t reach around easily. She smiled nicely at him.

His hands froze.

“Hurry up, I’ve got an order waiting!”

Gingerly, his black fingers took the white strings and tied them, a looping bow, then pulled tightly, securing them in place.

“Thanks, “ she exclaimed before she whisked away.

Richard Wright later wrote: “I continued my work, filled with all the possible outcomes that tiny, simple human event could have brought to any Negro in the South where I had spent my hungry days.”

Originally published in Fewer Than 500

OLD PETE

When I was a teen, our nouveau riche tavern-owner Dad, who also raced thoroughbreds, won a huge bet on his Anniversary with our Step-Mother. He used the gelt for a downpayment on a horse farm and my brother and I, kicking and screaming, were spirited away from our safe, friend-filled neighborhood to isolation on that Farm. 

Apart from our friends, out seclusion was somewhat relieved by several farm hands, mostly Black men, called by the nicknames our Father gave them—No Talk and Buck, the ones I remember most. But Dad also employed an old, Czechoslovakian man who we called Old Pete, because he was old and because we never asked for his last name. 

He spoke with a thick accent and always called us Wern and Wic because he could not pronounce the V in our names. He lived in a broken down trailer on the property that was as filthy as he was. To our knowledge, Old Pete never took a bath in the three or so years he lived and worked there. The trailer did not have a shower and I don’t think our Step-Mother would ever have allowed his fetid self into the farm house and, shy as they come, Pete would never dare to ask. 

His job was to clean the stalls, his age and clumsiness barring him from working with high strung thoroughbreds, that work left to Buck and No Talk. My brother and I cleaned stalls too and did some of the feeding, a job we shared with Pete, a friendly and lonely character, who also, in my memory, never changed his clothes, always wearing stained overalls. 

Pete would try to talk to us in his broken English, neither of us much able to understand what he said. Hard to talk to and smelly, with the tobacco he constantly chewed staining the corners of his mouth in a disgusting way, we avoided him as much as possible. But, because of our extreme isolation, especially in the summers when we weren’t in school, we would deign to sit at a distance outside ( I think we braved the interior of the trailer once for a reason I can’t remember and left as soon as we could) to listen to him. It has been over fifty years for me now, but I recall he did come from Czechoslovakia when a child and mentioned that he had been married, but had no children.

Our Father, who employed a number of people with down and out circumstances because they were cheap and it was hard, disgusting work,—(one of them a Viennese horse trainer, who was not that at all and lied to get the job and lasted two weeks, dismissed when he was kicked and almost killed by a stallion; another a poor, late teen Mexican boy, who took such advantage of our house that our Step-Mother let him go after he asked her to pull his muddy boots off, but was like a happy, lost child when we let him watch horror movies and eat popcorn with us late on Friday night TV) tolerated Old Pete, despite his physical appearance and odor, and, partly because he felt sorry for him. I do remember Pete saying a lot: “Keep me, Mr. F. Don’t let me go; I have no place else.” And, indeed, we could not imagine anyone else hiring him. He worked on, slow and sporadic, realized in hindsight that he was in a lot of pain from arthritis, which he complained about but could not name. 

But, sadly,  Pete was his own worst enemy. Besides the filth, smell, poor working habits, often sleeping in, Old Pete had a drinking problem, which was not discovered for some time. He was able to buy his own food because the grocery store was a short walking distance away and he was adamant about doing it himself, despite my Step-Mother’s offer to shop for him. Later, we found out why.

When the verdict was all in, it appears that Pete drank about two six-packs a day. He drank openly at first, must have been drunk all of the time. Probably it was his antidote for the arthritis and the loneliness. But since he always did his work, methodically mucking the stalls, there were no complaints at first.

But after a time, it began to affect him and his work. You cannot drink such a prodigious  amount and not be negatively affected. Eventually he began to oversleep more and finally, totally drunk, he had a serious fall, cut his head badly and had to be hospitalized for a few days.

That was it for my Dad, who regularly fired his help in both his taverns and the Farm when they screwed up. It was the way it was back then in the post-Depression world. If you did not do your job, you were gone. We had not yet begun to understand that alcoholism was a sickness or that mental heath issues were real or that sometimes humans had bad circumstances they could not overcome.

I was there for the firing. When our Dad brought Old Pete back from the hospital, he told Pete that he had to move out in two weeks because of his drinking ( a warning he had been given over and over for some time) and that he would give him a month’s pay. Pete wept. He wept and begged: “Please Mr. F. I haf no place ta go. Don’t know what to do!” 

It touched our Father. He wilted before this pathetic man and gave him another chance, with one stipulation—no more drinking. Pete vowed over and over and wept in gratefulness at the reprieve.

But you might was well tell Jimmy the Greek to stop gambling. The grace did not work although Pete managed to hide his addiction for some time. But Pete continued to buy six-packs and hide them and, for a good period of time, hid his malady well and things went on, as Pete stayed on his feet mostly and turtled his way thorough his work.

But all things are eventually revealed—for good or ill—my own life has taught me. One day Pete did not come out of the trailer for a whole day. This had happened before on occasion so we would knock on the door, he would groan he was sick, but he’d be up the next day.

One day in the Spring he did not emerge on the second day. My Father pounded on the door, part out of anger, part out of worry. No answer and the door was locked.

More pounding. Our Father shouted he would call the police or an ambulance, threats bouncing off the door like his fists. 

Finally, Pete opened the door. He was clearly very sick and very drunk, everything about him reeked. But, sensing his danger, when our Dad accused him of drinking, Pete began to cry and protested he was not drunk, just sick and our Father, partly because he did not know what to do and because he did not want to fire Pete, relented again.

For some time, Pete seemed to recover, do his work reasonably, and not appear to be drinking, but, in the end, it was a horse that did him in.

Our thoroughbred horse farm had stalls for about 25 head, mostly full of horses from the local race track that needed to rest and heal. Also, it had a torpedo sand training track, the kind of footing the real race tracks had, replete with a starting gate for getting horses back up to speed. Coming when needed were a variety of what were known as “bug boys,” young riders who were too inexperienced to ride in regular races, but eager to apprentice and earn some cash. They would come down for a day and work out the horses that needed it. 

Therefore, on that fatal day, two significant events happened—cataclysmic for Old Pete. It was a bright, sunny day and the current bug boy was out in the track area with my Father and some other horse owners to watch several horses work out to see if they were ready to return to the races. The bug boy mounted the first one, guided him into the starting gate, which even had a real bell, and took off around the sandy oval when that bell pierced the summer air. Because of the short distance, the horses would traverse that oval several times and this particular horse was flying. I well remember watching him with the same awe I always had when these magnificent creatures displayed their unique beauty and power.

And then it happened. Old Pete’s world came crashing down as the horse, with no warning, stopped suddenly, reared up, and threw the rider over his head. Fortunately, the bug boy was shaken, but not hurt seriously.

“What happened?” our Father called out as he and his cronies sprinted to the jockey, helping him up and dusting him off as the horse continued to run wildly around the track before he came to a natural stop.

The bug boy spoke in a breathless, halting way: “Something spooked the horse, Mr. F. A flash of light hit us both in the eyes. A glint. It caused the horse to rear. I couldn’t hold him,.”
“ A glint?” Everyone just looked at each other.

“ It came from the infield,” the jockey said, pointing to the interior of the track, which was covered with high weeds as it always was in the summer. “That flash came from over there.” He pointed toward the center.

It did not take long to find Pete’s folly. Our Dad and the other men ducked under the fence and walked toward where the bug boy pointed, kicking the tall weeds aside as they scoured the area. 

Nor too far in, the mystery was solved. Covered by the weeds were scads of empty beer cans, which Old Pete had stashed to cover his addiction. Evidently the sun had glinted off one of them and struck the horse in the eye, causing it to buck the rider off.

It was a long, sad walk back to the barn. And Pete cooperated in the way he did not want to. He did not respond when our Dad called out his name. He was passed out dead drunk near a far stall when Buck found him.

Despite my clear ability to remember all of this so many years later in graphic detail, I confess I do not remember Old Pete’s dismissal. Our minds allow us to block some memories. 

Now, I am just sitting here at my computer, penning this, with no memory of a good-bye. All I can see is the old trailer, that, for some reason I can’t recall, burned down during the next winter, no human able to live in it even though I am sure our Father hired a replacement for Old Pete.

Not every story has to have a moral. Sometimes they are just sad.

Originally published in Phenomenal Literature Magazine

A MODEST PROPOSAL: A View On Reparations

Recently, the City Council in Asheville, North Carolina voted to give Black businesses and groups reparations for the damage slavery had done to them. It was an unprecedented move and one that, if a more progressive government is voted in, may become a national initiative. That act harkened me back to over fifty years ago, where I had a singular experience at a radical political conference that was, in some ways, a precursor of that kind of justice.

We were at a Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) conference in 1969 in East Lansing, at Michigan State University.  It was a time when we young, white radicals of the New Left were having our minds blown daily, a term that was fresh then as was a lot of the new lingo and almost all of the new knowledge. For the first time, words like Women’s Power, ecology, gay rights, pro-choice and a myriad of other topics were presented in rapid fire at the various panels and rallies we attended. SDS had become the cutting edge of the Movement, leaving liberals in the dust, and would eventually provide the chief leadership nation-wide until its own hubris, because of a sharp turn to violence, helped destroy what was gaining steam.

Of course, one of the main topics was racism. Despite the fact that in 1968 King was dead and the Civil Rights movement had already made as many of its key advances that it would for many years, several of the speakers were brought into address that indelible stain on U.S. history. 

I chose to attend that session, always a hard decision because almost every topic presented was of interest to all of us. I am still not sure why because my engagement with Black activists on our campus had not gone well. In fact, they had rejected we white radicals—told us that they were wary of whites coming in and assuming leadership, needing instead to establish their own leaders, goals and tactics. Despite the fact that we radicals had marched in a lot of Civil Rights demonstrations and even marched to Selma and been Freedom Riders, we understood this need for a separate identity for the Black Movement, even more emboldened by the recent rise of Black Power, supplanting King’s non-violent message in some quarters. 

So we did what whites often do in these situations. Respecting the separation, we asked—What can we do? And we got the same answer that we always got—figure it out.

Recently my daughter in Los Angeles, involved in the recent protests over the murder of George Floyd, those events reminding me of my own past and prompting me to write this memory because, as you will see, it is just as relevant now as it was back then, asked the same question and was given the same answer fifty years later. Figure it out. Do the research as a white person, examine your own attitudes, and figure out what to do and do it. 

All of this was new to me as I entered that class room in East Lansing, not knowing what to expect from the speaker, who was a formidable Black man, dressed like a gang member, with gold chain around his neck, a prominent nose ring, and a Mohawk, sporting a sleeveless T-shirt with a radical slogan on it. 

We, almost all white men and women, sat in chairs as if we were attending a class lecture. No cool circling of chairs to be able to relate better as was the new norm in classrooms. Our speaker was sitting atop the teacher’s desk, swinging his legs back and forth as if impatient, and looking intently, even menacingly, into whose ever eyes dared to meet his. A quick glance from me and my head was down.

When we were all settled, the room mostly full, he began. If a wish fairy allowed me to recall in total any one talk I heard in my life, I think this is the one I would choose. But, that kind of wish fairy doesn’t exist, so you’ll just have to put up with my old memory. . 

I remember how he started, the first thing he did to demonstrate his point and rivet our attention like no other speaker I ever heard, and how he answered the persistent question—What can we whites do? Except this time, he did not tell us to research or figure it out on our own, but dared us to do something that literally blew our minds and which I have not forgotten all of these years and which, even now in the current turmoil, makes more sense than anything I have ever heard to deal with the racial disparities and inequality in our nation.

He started by bringing up that question—What can whites do to help? (I am paraphrasing his dialogue.)

“Thank you for coming. I am assuming you all are really interested in racial justice or you wouldn't be here so I thank you for coming today. I am going to address what I know every white radical always asks of Blacks—What can we do? What can we do to help the Black movement? And it is a sincere question as I know you really want to know and believe you are willing to do almost anything for the cause—and many of you have put your bodies on the line for Civil Rights—as you are doing against Nixon’s horrible war. So thank you for that too.

Then he gave us the answer, one I will never forget and one that is just as relevant now as it was back then.“Young ladies and gentlemen: You asked me what you can do to help my people. It is simple, but I don’t think you’ll do it. But if you do choose to do what I say, you will get measurable results and help us take major steps in redressing the stain and sin of white oppression of Blacks in this country since the first slaves stepped off that boat in Virginia in 1619. By the way, that’s 350 years ago. 

You see and maybe know that discrimination is not the main problem in this nation for my people. Oh, it is good to stop it. It is good to drink from the same water fountain, eat where you want, not rot in a separate doctor’s waiting room, go to equal schools, visit a library when you want, etc etc. And vote and be elected and move some of our people into key positions we were never allowed to be in before. Yes, the great Civil Rights Movement has accomplished all of that and more and all Black people are grateful and yes, how can we forget, reduced lynching to a footnote instead of a common practice. Nothing can and will ever take away from those victories even though there are still a lot of other barriers that need to fall. 

But the big picture for my people is not only personal—it  is economic. For the vast majority of African-Americans daily living, paying the bills, providing for your kids, getting health care, getting jobs that pay a wage you can live on—those are the things that are the hardest, most crippling. That’s what keeps the vast majority of Blacks and other people of color in financial bondage so that they cannot compete with the white world and instead stay in poverty and in ghettos in substandard housing and substandard everything. Despite our heroes like Jackie Robinson or even Dr. King, that is the true reality for us. An average Black family makes more than $30,000 less income a year compared to white families. That’s a $30,000 gap. And we wonder why so many people of color are mired in poverty. That is our deal. That is why we can’t move up and claim equality in our society. We hear pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, but there are no bootstraps.”

“You ask us what you can do to help? I’m going to tell you, but I don’t expect you to do what I am going to ask.

Go home from this conference and call a meeting of your close family. Tell them you have something meaningful to relate to them. Include your parents, siblings, grandparents, close aunts and uncles. You’ll know who you should invite.

When you are gathered, ask them this. Ask the older folks to list all their assets for you. How much salary do they currently make and how much do they have invested, how much property do they own, stocks, bonds, etc etc? And all of them will have a pretty good idea. It’s what defines them. They may not have exact figures but will know fairly well the sum total of their assets. After all, they will say if asked or if not asked—we’re saving it to pass this on to you and our grandchildren—so you don’t have to worry. 

  And they will ask you why you want to know that. They will probably think it is a way for you to have assurance about your future. But that does not matter.

You will not be coy or beat around the bush. Instead, you will briefly say something like this: ‘Dad, Mom, Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Lil, Uncle Bruce. etc., you know that I just got back from a political conference where I learned a lot. I know most of you don’t like that I went there, but you love me so I ask you to hear me out. 

At the conference, one of the speakers was a young Black man. We asked him what we can do to help end racism in this country. He was a good speaker, a professor at Michigan State, who made a lot of sense to us. He said that the economic disparity between black and white families was the biggest issue. There is over a $30,000 average income gap between the two. ( Ignore all uncomfortableness in the room. Speak slowly and clearly and stay focused and be as brief as possible.) He said if that income gap is not closed significantly nothing will really change the terrible disparity between the two races in our country. He said it is not mostly about friendship between Black and whites or even about privileges. He said it is about money and the freedom for Black people to fully participate in the society on every level, but now for scads of reasons, blacks are held back economically and can’t compete on equal footing so the discrimination over assets at  all levels will continue until that is changed.

(The room is getting more and more uncomfortable. You’d better proceed quickly now.)

So that is why I asked you to list your assets so you can reflect on how much wealth you have. Then, that speaker simply asked us to ask you to cash in half of what you own, still giving you plenty of assets, and give that money to Black business owners, to Black families for education, to building adequate housing, to allow the Black community to work hard the way you did to build up your wealth. To basically help Black people get on an equal footing so they actually have bootstraps you keep telling them they need to pull themselves up by. And you can throw in to help elect government leaders that will focus on lifting African-Americans and all people of color out of the economic doldrums to the financial freedom they need. And you can end with—thanks for hearing me out. If you like my idea, I and others will be glad to help you out in processing and doing this so we can have a better and more peaceful nation for all our people.’

Back to East Lansing.

“If you do that,” our speaker said, “and most of you will not have the courage. But if you do that, your folks will probably be aghast and tell you this is foolish and why it would not make a difference. That they had to work hard and that’s just what Black people have to do. They will not think of the inheritance they got or that Black people were in slavery and then under Jim Crow for decades, preventing them from succeeding, except for some individuals, particularly those who could hit a baseball far. They will not know or care to know about the history of Black oppression in this nation.

But, young ladies and gentlemen, if you want to know how to really change things in a significant way, that’s what you need to do and that’s what needs to happen.”

With that, he turned his back on us and strode from the room.

I do not remember what any of us did or said. I know I did not sit down with my rich Father and do what the speaker asked. Maybe it was an excuse, but my Dad had always said: “If you take all the money in the world and divide it up equally, in a few years, there will just be the same rich and poor again.” I was never able to counter his argument.

Now my daughter in LA, participating daily in these huge, stirring world-wide rallies  about Black injustice was told that she too should figure out how to be helpful against the oppression of people of color. And she is in the process of doing that and I am justifiably proud of that in a way my Father never could be. Different generations. I went to college and protested the Vietnam War. He never had a chance to go to college, participated in WW II through the Merchant Marines, and became a millionaire through the tavern business and investments, starting with a loan from his mother. The same was true for the rest of my reasonably rich Jewish family. 

I became a teacher, my wife a secretary, and though we do not have nearly the assets either of our families had, are more than comfortable in our retirement.

Suppose in her investigation of the problem, my daughter attends a meeting and a young, vibrant Black woman shows up and says the same things to her the 60’s radical said to us? And my daughter comes home and confronts me about our willingness and ability to cut into the vast economic gap between the races?

How will I respond?

As thousands are in the streets now due to police brutality which has morphed into a discussion about racial discrimination on all levels, the economic disparity has risen to the top of the list because that is the defining reality of why the chasm between Black and white life persists.

How will our nation respond? 

I’ll tell you the truth about me. Probably you want to know that. Maybe as you are reading this,  you are thinking or should think about how you would respond? 

At this point, I will not take half my assets and distribute them to people of color in any capacity. I think one or a few of us would not make that much difference and I can’t imagine how to promote and organize such a movement.  Certainly if the majority of white people did that it would make a huge difference. But I think given the weight of white privilege that is extremely unlikely to happen.  Perhaps that is a cop out and it is fine if you tell me that or believe that. I might decide later you are right. However, there are clearly things that individuals can do for specific people or families or for and with local community groups. I am not excluding them, just focusing more on the bigger picture because the problem is so big and the solutions so massive. 

But what I will do now is work very hard and urge people to throw the thugs out of office who run this country for the rich 1% and the corporate world and try to elect a government that will address these  issues—jobs, education, heath care, etc— by the way it begins to invest in minority advancement-reparations a key method—at all levels and I won’t let up, and neither will my dear children, until great and continual strides are made. In reality, in our nation at this time, that is the best we can do and, I truly believe, it will be enough for now. Join me/us  anyway you choose. 

I don’t believe that Black radicals in the 60’s expected us to ask our parents to do what he asked. I believe he knew that a personal appeal wouldn't fly.  I think he just wanted to drive home the problem. In 1729, Jonathan Swift modestly proposed that the English sell the Irish babies so the English could eat them in a variety of delectable ways so that they would not be a burden and could even help economically.  This proposal—a call for reparations—is neither that radical or shocking. That is why I decided to revisit this remembrance with its remarkable relevance for our day and time.

—Received Honorable Mention in International ARTS4US contest.

HONEYGLOOM

          My mother was raised by alcoholics in Arkansas, then fled to an aunt’s house in Gary, Indiana, when she was old enough, or as she liked to say, “just past majority.” She had been raised in the rural south, knew nothing about men and sex, knew nothing about much of anything. Later, she related that when she got pregnant with me, she stayed up all night reading a biography of Napoleon because she had heard that your baby (she correctly assumed I would be a boy) would be influenced by what you read the night before the birth and, somehow, believed I would be born the next morning.
          Stifled in Arkansas and desperate for a job when she moved in with her aunt and uncle, she scanned the local want ads and found one for a bar waitress at a town fairly far away. I will never know why she chose that one, since she only understood the word “waitress” and definitely not the “bar” part of it.
          Raised a quasi-Catholic—the only spirits her mother influenced her with were the ones that came from a bottle—she was hired on the spot by my Jewish grandmother who, given the nature of bars, was drawn to my mother’s Lana Turner-like beauty. She gave Mom the job and put her behind the bar washing glasses, because my mother did not know a single thing about booze. Instant trauma! Couples sat on the bar stools and made out right in front of her. She told me she learned to wash glasses with her eyes closed.
          But her eyes weren’t closed when she saw my good-looking, suave father, a stark physical contrast to this willowy blonde. They were smitten. She had never had a boyfriend, only some crushes when she was a ballet dancer in Little Rock—good enough, she told me, to have a particular restaurant move the tables aside so she could dance. My father—a life-long, arch womanizer until an early heart attack took him at 51, his pre-bypass lifestyle predicting his demise as it did for so many smoking, coffee-chugging, boozing, red-meat-gorging men back then—was mesmerized. My mother’s beauty and naïveté and probably her unwillingness to be physical without marriage propelled him to propose to her in six weeks, an offer not a single part of her meek and mild character could possibly refuse.
          Having no operable religion on either side, they went to a Justice of the Peace in the nearby county seat. After a quickie marriage, they excitedly held hands as they ran down the stairs toward their honeymoon car, where, to their utter shock, they were greeted by a policeman who promptly arrested them for disturbing the peace.
          Into the picture had come my father’s uncle, Art, a rich, influential tavern owner who paid the local Mafia for protection until he refused and they shot him in cold blood, a few years after the marriage, disguising it as a robbery outside his garage. But for now, he was just the influential jokester who had a flare for arcane humor and had decided that his favorite nephew and his new bride should spend at least part of their honeymoon night in side-by-side cells instead of each other’s aching arms.
          My father was articulate, my mother in shock. I am sure my father protested vociferously and got angry—his terrible temper was eventually one of the main things that destroyed this marriage made in haste, notwithstanding the wanton adultery. But his protestations reached deaf ears, and my parents were spirited to adjacent cells.
          They expected it to be short-lived, just a quick prank by Art which would pass quickly, but, despite some cage rattling by my father and a flood of Mom’s tears, the police ignored their pleas and left them in jail. Later, that strange uncle confessed he went out of town and forgot about them, but not before he had given the police, who were his cronies, strict instructions not to release the newlyweds until he gave the word.
          Early the next day, the anxious police captain called Art and my parents were released into their marriage. The story made the front page of the local paper the following morning, the picture showing them peering out from behind bars, Dad with his jaunty hat and Mom with her beloved Mouton coat, shock still all over their faces.

Originally published in River and South Review

RED TOMMY-GUN

We lived in the back of a tavern when my Dad went off to WW II, leaving my Mother to bartend and manage the place. I was able to listen and understand when my Mom gathered my brother and me around the radio shrine to hear the daily battle reports, every time wishing I could crawl through the radio, dive into the mud beside my Dad and help him wipe out those vermin. How could I destroy those Japs at 5 years old?

My Mom, though, a gentle woman who would not hurt a fly, had the best solution. She got me a gun, not store-bought. We were poor. Made it or someone did.  It was an awkward looking tommy-gun carved out of a single piece of wood, stained with smelly bright red paint, a gift and the way I could help my Dad destroy the enemy.

For months I lugged that gun around the bar room, which was fairly empty in the day- time, diving behind tables and chairs as I mowed down the Japs. Some of the afternoon customers patted me on the head as I shouted: “Take that. Take that!,” fantasizing the bulging eyes and fallen bodies I wiped out, never stopping until the bar began to fill up for the night and always sleeping with that gun instead of my teddy bear, always believing I was bringing my Dad home. 

Only years later, when I was marching and organizing against the Vietnam War did I flash back on what I did and realize that my barroom heroism was unpatriotic and had nothing to do with the death of my Dad. 

Originally published in Fewer Than 500 magazine

PARTY OFF

Why would a dark story come flying into my head at my grandson’s joyous birthday party? Suddenly sad, my mind swept back to that bleak Saturday afternoon, a cold but clear winter day.

Visiting my best friend George in his tiny house, furniture, leftovers from an unfaithful marriage, his mother abandoned with two kids and not much to make it pretty. 

I remember bare, spare. An odd-shaped table, unmatched chairs, a plastic K-mart tablecloth, bright party plates—cups and napkins embarrassing the rest of the room. And Kitty, George’s thirteen year old sister, sobbing in the corner on her mothers’ s heavy breast. 

No one came. Not one kid. The entire eighth grade class invited. Sometime later, after the four of us ate some of the too large cake, small smiles came through the tears, the repeated “Whys?” having faded away, Kitty would tell us. She had been to a few of “their” parties, always lots of kids, presents, fun, balloons, ice cream, cake, games.

She wanted one for herself, too innocent to know that class extends from birth. Too shy, she asked her teacher to pass out the invites, tried not to notice the lack of eye contact.

Wore her one pretty dress. Terribly poor, but Mom splurged on plates, cups, napkins, hats, party favors, ice cream and a huge cake, decided not to make it herself after a lot of lost sleep. Set for one o’clock. It was a bit past two when George and I arrived, heard the sobs, beat a quick path to his room to shut our ears.

Finally, a knock on George’s door. 

Mrs: “Boys, come out to the party. Your sister wants to share her cake.”

We came right out, Mrs. putting a party hat on each of our heads without asking, the same ones she and Kitty had already donned. The cake and ice cream were already served before us, each plate with a red plastic fork. 

We ate; it was good. Made small talk. You can’t remember small talk. We did not sing. 

As I stood at my grandson’s party, even as memory fades, I realized that all these years I had never thought about why it happened. Then, I was only old enough to feel sad. 

Was it the poverty, the house, the wrong-side-of-the-tracks neighborhood, that Kitty was not pretty, had acne, was overweight, sweat stains, even then, under her party dress arms?

Now I am able to reflect, surmise in my old, retirement, comfortable age, snap back to my own festivities—middle-class children, plates, cups, napkins, hats, favors, pizza, cake, ice cream, games, lots of presents.

Originally published in Adelaide Literary Magazine

O, LITTLE CHRISTMAS TREE

It just happened. We didn’t talk about it before in our old age. We had gone to the same lot for years after our increased salaries had allowed us to abandon the fake Christmas tree with the green toilet brushes we stuck in a wooden trunk that smelled like nothing and get instead the sweet smelling pines filling our tiny living room. We are thankful that our dear children experienced those live trees through most of their lives into adult hood when they now cut down their own trees every year and never have the toilet brushes themselves.
 
Without speaking, we chose a smaller tree. The kids want Christmas at their houses now.
 
“Mom, Dad, you have blessed us all these years. Now it is our turn to bless you.”

So much is diminishing these days, years. As we decorated our little tree, we had to decide which ornaments to hang, which to leave in boxes instead of festooning the tree, loading it down with all the memories, what the kids made in school, the first ornament of our marriage, two gold metal figures kissing, the ornaments from events, Little League and figure skating, and vacations, Maine and Disney, too many to remember.
 
The angel remains, the one put a top our first fake tree with the color-coded instructions. She remains and looks down and out as always and wonders—Does she wonder?—why, like us, she is so much closer to the ground. 

Originally published in Quail Bell Magazine

PREVARICATION

Once I heard about an incessant talker who never stopped spewing words until someone told him that we all have a word quota and that he had nearly used his up and that frightened him and he immediately went into a deep silence until he was lying on his death bed and that same woman, now decrepit, told him that it wasn’t true and, on hearing this from her, rose up on one feeble elbow, glared at her and whispered—Good-bye—with as much venom as he could muster and died right into her smile.

Originally published in The Drabble

SPIDERMAN

I only remember two names from First Grade. No other kids, not even my teacher. I even forgot the name of my second grade teacher who told my Mom I was a genius. Third grade was sharp-tongued Mrs. Schrum. No one could ever forget Schrum because her dad owned the local pickle factory, the largest employer in our small area.

I do remember Don Fancher, the class bully, and Bonnie Bowie, the dark-haired class belle who was my first girlfriend, standing in for Margret O’ Brien and Shirley Temple.

How curious it is that children often, at an early age, begin to act out what they will become.  In high school, Fancher would roam the boys’ locker room like a prowling lion, threatening with his elastic belt to snap the naked rear of any boy who would not give him pocket change. Bonnie was a petite beauty who perhaps predicted the diminutive young lady who became my wife years later, a brunette at the beginning and a brunette for life.

Don, Bonnie and I were standing at the swing sets at recess. Once I had spouted off I was not afraid of spiders. Why I bragged about bravery toward arachnids I will never know. Perhaps it was to impress Bonnie as so many tried to do because she was the princess of the class. And she really seemed to like me, once pecking me on the cheek without warning. Don saw this and fumed as he was an awkward boy, ungainly, gruff and insecure like many nascent bullies.

He had heard of my bragging so one bright Spring day he approached Bonnie and me  by the swings, holding a stick, not to threaten me this time, but to transport a fierce looking black and yellow crawler with the harmless name of Garden Spider that terrified us all whenever we saw its sometimes throbbing web.

“Fein,” he barked at me. “Heard you’re not afraid of spiders!”
My breath fled. I remember the quizzical look on Bonnie’s face, her black button eyes gleaming, wanting to see what the bully was up to for he had challenged me in various ways whenever Bonnie was present, trying, like Bluto, to steal Olive away.

At the end of the stick was a huge black and yellow Garden Spider. It probably wasn’t that big but it seemed like a tarantula to me as even decades later I can transport myself back to that scene.

“Yeah, why?,” I snapped back, pushing my courage ahead of my abject fear, for I was deathly afraid of spiders.

“Yeah, why?,” instantly understanding what he had in mind.

“Okay, Fein, I heard you say you were not afraid of spiders. So let’s see. Let my buddy here crawl down your arm if you’re not afraid.”

To be tested at six years old! My entire reputation, a word I barely understood, flashed before me. Refuse and Bonnie would never look at me the same, the bully squashing me like the bug I was as I was indeed the smallest kid in the class, other than Bonnie, both of us the opposite of Big Don.

I had no choice. I stuck out my arm and Fancher nudged the spider on to the top of it. It just sat there a bit, checking out its new scene, no way in a hurry, unable to hear my pounding heart.

Every other part of my being froze, but I tried to look brave. My eyes focused on the top of the swings. I never looked at Don or Bonnie. The recess crowd collapsed around us.

Finally, eight black legs, the yellow shining in the sun, sprinted (hooray!) down my arm to my wrist where I quickly flicked the spider off.  A couple of girls screamed.

It felt great to be a hero, to stand tall before Bonnie, to forecast years later that I would be the one who strode into the principal’s office in high school with the courage to turn in Fancher for his bullying in gym class, which caused him to be suspended from school.

Bonnie moved away.  I am sure she does not remember the spider or me, nor does Don. Whatever heroism I demonstrated in life—no more or less a hero than most of us who navigate our average lives—I will remember the black and gold monster that liberated me.

Originally published in The Write Place At The Write Time

MRS. S______

Why would I not include her last name in the title? She can’t be on this Earth anymore, as I am tipping toward 80 and Mrs. S_____ had to be in her thirties when I was the star and the goat in our 8th grade history class. I really have no idea how old she was because kids at that age think everyone who has a job is an old person.

Mrs. S_____ was a student’s terror. Through all of seventh grade, when the subject of teachers came up, which it did back then when there wasn’t social media to inhibit conversation, when kids talked to each other and the lunchroom was the Internet, every student agreed on one prayer: Please don’t let me get Mrs. S_____ next year!

But I did and, even though I expressed the obligatory woe is me to everyone who asked, secretly I liked the challenge and challenge it was. She was formidable. She expected you to actually read the material and do your homework. No student in his right mind would ever consider cutting corners. Because Mrs. S_____ did what every student dreaded: She called on you! And she did not just call on you. She expected you to have the right answer or, more importantly, show that you had engaged the material. If you had not, she would know and her tongue became acid that would sizzle your ego smaller than an eighth grader could ever imagine. No kid wanted be unable to answer and pleading ignorance was like saying you didn’t know how to tie your shoes.

I can’t remember much about what we studied,—probably just the standard American history text— but I do remember that I liked her class though I am sure I complained volubly about how bad it was, how mean she was, so I could stay in good standing with my peers. Later, I was to become a history major in college and teach social studies much of my teaching life. How much did Mrs. S_____ influence that? Who knows? But I know she certainly kindled my life long fascination with history.

Despite all the learning that I did and the knowledge that she considered me one of her better students as manifested by her positive remarks on my papers and tests, two incidents stand out that had nothing to do with history and why, after over sixty years, I decided to write about Mrs. S_____.

The first was when I was thrown out of class. Was it because I failed to answer correctly or, on one particular day, wasn’t prepared? No, that never happened. This formidable teacher didn’t throw you out of class if you did not respond the way she expected. That would have been a blessing. No, instead, her tongue became a knife, eviscerating whatever soul an eighth grader possessed. “Do you want to flunk out of high school?” “Do your parents want you to work on a garbage truck (boys) or in a beauty parlor?” (girls) were a couple of the challenges she threw at culprits because, back then, teachers could get away with saying just about anything and it was virtually sacrosanct. Students had no rights and were lucky to be allowed to breathe in certain situations. And, for parents, if the teacher said it, it was the law even though most of the kids in our blue-collar area would never go to college and a lot would wind up on trucks or fixing people’s hair.

No, one day she asked for suggestions for class colors and, somewhat of a class clown in every other class I had, that jack-in-the-box jumped out of me and I ventured “Black and Blue”, which caused a big laugh from the class and a quick and stern: “Mr. F_____, you may go to the office.”

But I know she liked me, this big-bosomed woman, who was like a mother hen because she really did care about her students and their future and loved history with a passion. And, truth be told, when she had a student, frankly like me, in whom she saw some real potential, saw that they actually might go to college, actually did love history, she was even harder on you, but, also made you her pet in a lot of small ways. One demonstration of that was the most embarrassing event in all my time with Mrs. S_____ , perhaps in all the time I have spent on the Earth.

How many teachers do we have over the years? And how many from back then do we even recall? Not many. Think back yourself. How many?

This is mainly why I remembered Mrs. S_____ after all these years. Not because of the academic gauntlet she put me through and not because she threw me out of class for my quip. No, I most recall Mrs. S_____ because she danced with me.

In that world so long ago, the powers that be used gym class for a variety of things, not just sports. There was some mild sex education, but somehow we got instructed in that without that three-letter word being used much. And I remember too—it seems so strange now—doing a class garden in the Spring. But, mainly, I remember when we were introduced to ballroom dancing, which perhaps is more of a death sentence than public speaking.

And who should be the one doing the instructing? None other than Mrs. S_____.  I will never know why she was the one to introduce us to the one activity none of us wanted to learn. I cannot recall if we had P.E. teachers back then or if various teachers were just assigned occasionally to do that duty as part of their job. But, for whatever reason, Mrs. S_____ was picked, or, I suspect, decided to teach us the Foxtrot as an intro to ballroom dancing, something she assured our frightened faces, we would be very glad to have learned when we were a bit older, having no idea that Chubby Checker and rock and roll would wipe out that era in a short while.

We gathered in the gym, sitting in chairs around the room, the girls in half the chairs on one side and the boys on the other. Mrs. S_____ was in the middle. She was not a dancer type at all. She was not lithe and agile, but a large woman who one would never think would be the one assigned to teach ballroom dancing.

None of that mattered as we tried to sink through the back of our chairs while Mrs. S_____ first verbally explained the Foxtrot technique and then, without a partner, encircled her arms around an imaginary dancer and demonstrated the steps several times in front of our terrified eyes.

We all knew what was coming. Our friends who has graduated last year had told us: “She is going to pick one of you to show how to do the steps—and it won’t be a girl!”

Some poor boy would be the victim of her lesson.

You guessed it. I did not have a chance. I was kind of the class clown, was one of her better students, and was quite small and easy to drag around the dance floor and be held imprisoned in her large bosom while she stopped occasionally to explain each step. While I hung with her large arm around my neck, she began to move, dragging me more than dancing as we proceeded, sometimes, I do remember, leaving the ground as she twirled me around.

I do not know how long the lesson lasted. Eternity can last for a very short time. I am sure no another student made a peep. There were no smirks or titters as she cavorted with me. Not a single other student wanted to be noticed in case she decided to switch from me to someone else. She did not.

I cannot remember the depth of my humiliation. All I know is that I must have swallowed my soul, but, in reflecting back on this unforgettable scene, I can distinctly recall one curious thing. It was not the dance or being squeezed or having a red face or looking into the saucer-sized eyes of my horrified classmates that is stark for me. It was how Mrs. S_____ smelled. She smelled like pepper.

And that was my main struggle back then in that old gym. As Mrs. S_____ pressed me to her bosom, she smelled of pepper, though it is hard to believe that any perfume would smell like that. Maybe it was her sweat revealing that she used a lot of that spice. But those are just guesses now and who would even know or care? All I do know is that my main struggle in that archetypal humiliation was to keep myself from sneezing. I did not sneeze, but just allowed myself to be a dutiful rag doll or puppet or whatever you want to call me as she jerked and twirled my slight frame around the floor.

I do not remember the aftermath. I surely must have gotten some sympathy from my relieved class mates who were so glad I had been the guinea pig and not them. I know there were other ballroom classes with Mrs. S_____ and certainly other students were chosen to demonstrate and I know, because I would have remembered for sure, I was not chosen again.

And I can remember why I recalled it so graphically over sixty years later, for, in old age, the past exists far more past in our minds than future as we tend to look backwards, whether we like it or not and avoid, as much as possible, thinking about the scary future.

I was at the dinner table with my four-year old grandson and he picked up the pepper shaker, sniffed it, and sneezed into his food. Like a specter off his plate, the memory of Mrs. S______ rose up and the rest is history.

Published in Spillwords Press