Sam Hermanson, butcher by trade, saw this mountain country as a business opportunity and accumulated enough cash to buy a piece of property in the new world. This was where he decided to set up shop. North Fork, West Virginia. He would not budge, and here, finally, is where the Hermanson side of the family settled, and here also is where the narrative pretty much runs out, replaced by snippets and snatches of hearsay and recall. Katie Rose, my grandmother, mother of Elizabeth and five other children, Katie Rose and Samuel Hermanson were newly married before he left the Pale. Eventually, she joined him in West Virginia, and a flock of Jews descended on North Fork, most related to them both. I know very little about them other than there was a cousin so ugly she was called “Scheine der Monkey”, beautiful like a monkey, and there was the time my grandfather and his buddy, Chiel Shorr, were chased by robbers. Sam jumped over a downed tree trunk and dropped to the ground behind it, hiding himself from view. Chiel had no place to go but over the log and on top of my grandfather where they both hid, stacked, until it was safe to stand again. Chiel Shorr had been so scared he peed all over my grandfather. Of course, Uncle Milton, who would have told me this story, would never have said the word “pee”. He probably said, “Make a shoosh” which is how that particular function was described in my family, as in “Do you have to make a shoosh?” When I was growing up a mother across the street called it “tinkle” as in, “Go tinkle” which horrified me. Shoosh! Get it right. How hard is that to say?
My grandmother, besides raising children (one of whom, a boy, died at an early age, two, I think), cooked and served kosher meals in her house to the Jewish peddlers who passed through the region. My mother emphasized that her mother had servants in West Virginia, and my best guess is that they were “shvatzas” from Cinder Bottom, the Negro section of town. I get the feeling Nana had airs. Certainly, Elizabeth, her fourth child, did.
Katie didn’t take to life in North Fork. One doesn’t hear that Sam had any complaints. His butcher shop was successful but she wanted to move up to Baltimore where favorite relatives lived, like Tante Pesha and Sheine the Monkey. My grandfather didn’t want to leave, but the fire changed all that.
The town fathers concocted a secret plot to make a fortune. They planned to take out fire insurance then burn down the town, collect, get rich. Why I do not know, but my grandfather didn’t want anything to do with it. He was the only merchant in town who didn’t buy fire insurance. A gross miscalculation. One night the town burned down. Everyone collected. My grandfather was wiped out. To make matters worse, he was drunk the night of the fire. People tried to help him. They’d go into the shop and bring all the tools and furniture out whereupon Sam dragged it all back in. This is how my mother, Elizabeth, remembers it. The other thing she remembers was being carried across a bridge at night away from the fire. She would have been four.
The only place the family could go for help was Baltimore, and that’s how we got there. A man who spoke eight languages but could not read one was never again a success in business. I posit no cause and effect, just a simple truth as I received it. Sam wanted to go back to West Virginia, but Katie wouldn’t go with him, so they stayed in west Baltimore on Holmes Avenue, a brick, row house. Whenever I visualize the house I see my grandfather, sloppy drunk, staggering home on the sidewalk, supported by another man who for some reason I picture as Italian. Later that day he was found upstairs on his knees with his head in the gas oven, just in time. My mother is ninety-seven and still wishes she had named me after him. Samuel. Stephen. Samuel. Stephen.
I like my own name better.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
WHAT KIND OF JEW PULLS A TRIGGER? -- part 2
My grandfather, Louis, my father’s father, chose to leave Russia instead of serving in the Tzar’s army. He would have been about fifteen, and he traveled with a brother, whether older or younger I don’t know. Also, I don’t know my grand uncle’s name. What I do know (although I don’t know how I know) is that the two brothers decided to separate, my grandfather to stay in Baltimore, and my grand uncle to go out west and look for employment with the railroads. There must have been some correspondence between them because the story goes that my uncle actually did get work with the railroad. First payday came, but as the list was called out my uncle realized his name had been omitted. Same time he noted one of the names called belonged to a dead man he’d seen dead with his own eyes. Uncle’s hand shot up in the air, and the pay envelope went right to him. He took the dead man’s name as his own, so, right then and there, a whole chunk of family disappeared down the rabbit hole of immigration history.
My grandfather, Samuel, my mother’s father, is the root of another story. I tell you this as it was told to me by my Uncle Milton, the first scribe in our family. These were coalfield Jews, part of an immigration wave that came over from the Pale of Settlement in eastern Europe throughout the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century and settled in southern West Virginia, North Fork, to be exact, a small town on the north fork of the Elkhorn River. The Pale where Jews were forced to live by law included Lithuania, Poland, and western Russia. The way my family got to West Virginia was a love story, sort of, perhaps in the manner of one written by Isaac Bashevis Singer, “Enemies: A Love Story.” Here at last is the Hermanson version.
Somewhere in the vicinity of eastern Lithuania and the Russian border (what today is Belarus), love bloomed between my grandfather’s brother, Mischa Lazar, and Tante Pesha, a distant cousin and the daughter of an important man. According to Uncle Milton, their love was like a flower: it budded, it bloomed, it died, it rotted. Again, according to Uncle Milton, Mischa Lazar was a shlemazel, not to be confused with a shlemiel, the difference being that the shlemiel spills the soup on the shlamazel. Soup, Soup, Soup, Soup, Soup! One spilled soup too many and Pesha became a raving maniac, shrew of shrews, a bite like a weasel. She tore into him from tooth to tuchos. If people were around (as they usually were), she implored them to see how cursed she was: Mischa Lazar, the dunce, the dim, the damned. Who didn’t hear her?
One day Mischa Lazar disappeared, vanished as if he’d never been. Dogs were brought in. Trackers sent out. No sign. No sign never at all. It was assumed he was set upon by robbers and no doubt smoldering in a shallow grave by now. Pesha herself was sure of this. Ever since he disappeared she’d been getting chills in bed at night that meant a ghost walked over her grave. Who else could it be but him, that despicable lowlife, that “vantz”, that “shtucke drek?” But, the chills abated, and the days began. Days. Weeks. A month. Two months. Nothing. And then. Something. Word came back from a distant town, Vitebsk, that Mischa Lazar had been spotted, so the family sent my grandfather, Samuel, to bring him back. Samuel actually found him in Vitebsk (a town of some size) even though Mischa Lazar did not want to be found, and wanted even less to go back to Pesha. How my grandfather persuaded him to return home I do not know, but within a week he took off again, stole a horse in the middle of a moonless night, and disappeared into it. Remember, Pesha’s father was an important man. A big shot. A man of influence. He thrust a fat wallet at my grandfather and ordered him to bring that “mamser” back. So, this time, Samuel tracks Mischa Lazar all the way to Scandinavia, Sweden, where it was. That’s how we got the “son” tagged onto our name. Hermanson. How hard could it be to find a Jew fresh from the shtetl in Sweden (long black beard, long black coat, muddy clodhoppers)? Well, Samuel found him again. That night Mischa Lazar produced a bottle of aqua vit, drank his brother blind, and took off once more. Samuel wired Pesha’s father for instructions. “Find him,” bellowed the important man. Pesha wailed that she missed her Mischa, but no one believed her.
This time Mischa Lazar’s trail led across the ocean. He did not enter this country through Ellis Island, we know that, and some think he might have come through the port of Galveston. If so, why go all the way up to Baltimore, because that’s where my grandfather found him next, rather, found of him next: Baltimore, Maryland; the Hebrew Free Burial Society. The name Mischa Lazar was on its books. No last name. A nobody. A doctor claimed the cadaver for his experiments. My grandfather took to his room at the boarding house for seven days without shaving or shoes and sat mourning on a low and uncomfortable stool, the Jewish way: he sat shiva. On the eighth day, Samuel took stock and decided here was a business opportunity.
Sam outfitted a peddler’s pack with notions, gadgets, candy, toys, overalls, and other assorted ready to wear clothing, nothing fancy, just good quality. His plan was to head south and sell his wares on the way with hopes of setting up a business whenever he got to wherever he was going. By trade he was a butcher. The pack weighed a hundred pounds, so my grandfather bought a horse, too. While piecing together the bits of information about my grandfather’s travels, I came upon the most surprising old photograph: a well dressed young man on horseback – clean shaven, jacket, tie, fancy boots – with a huge smile on his face and a cigar in the side of his mouth like a big shot. Both horse and saddle were fit and fine. This young man was ready for business. This young man was a pack peddler! Why was I surprised? Because for years I had carried the image of an older, bent over, rabbinical type with a beard and clothes from the old country who trudged the hills and hollows of the south peddling his wares. The young man on horseback was anything but that. He was sure, confident, ready for the world. “Here I am,” he seems to be saying, “Just watch me!” He had an uncanny resemblance to my Uncle Josh, Samuel’s first born.
Samuel traveled across Maryland and down into West Virginia, way down deep to the Tug River, just this side of Kentucky, feuding grounds of the Hatfields in West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky, right there across the river from each other. My mother was actually delivered by Dr. Hatfield from this same clan. Early into the fever that propelled the world into its first world war, Dr. Hatfield came across a Negro giving a stump speech about how the “colored men’s gonna get all the white womens when their mens be away at war.” Hatfield pulled his pistol and shot the speaker dead. That same Dr. Hatfield was shortly thereafter elected to the U.S. Senate.
Anyone who has ever fully experienced Elizabeth Hermanson, fourth child of Samuel, will understand the irony of this situation.
By the way, Sam Hermanson actually ran into Mischa Lazar again. He had paid the funeral parlor to have his name put in their books. Sam wasn’t looking for him, but there was Mischa Lazar in West Virginia with a peddler’s pack of his own.
“I’m not going back to that “chalerya” again,” Mischa Lazar told my grandfather,
“Go where you want,” said my grandfather, “I’m staying here.”
He did, and brought the family over to join him, the only kosher butcher in North Fork, West Virginia.
My grandfather, Samuel, my mother’s father, is the root of another story. I tell you this as it was told to me by my Uncle Milton, the first scribe in our family. These were coalfield Jews, part of an immigration wave that came over from the Pale of Settlement in eastern Europe throughout the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century and settled in southern West Virginia, North Fork, to be exact, a small town on the north fork of the Elkhorn River. The Pale where Jews were forced to live by law included Lithuania, Poland, and western Russia. The way my family got to West Virginia was a love story, sort of, perhaps in the manner of one written by Isaac Bashevis Singer, “Enemies: A Love Story.” Here at last is the Hermanson version.
Somewhere in the vicinity of eastern Lithuania and the Russian border (what today is Belarus), love bloomed between my grandfather’s brother, Mischa Lazar, and Tante Pesha, a distant cousin and the daughter of an important man. According to Uncle Milton, their love was like a flower: it budded, it bloomed, it died, it rotted. Again, according to Uncle Milton, Mischa Lazar was a shlemazel, not to be confused with a shlemiel, the difference being that the shlemiel spills the soup on the shlamazel. Soup, Soup, Soup, Soup, Soup! One spilled soup too many and Pesha became a raving maniac, shrew of shrews, a bite like a weasel. She tore into him from tooth to tuchos. If people were around (as they usually were), she implored them to see how cursed she was: Mischa Lazar, the dunce, the dim, the damned. Who didn’t hear her?
One day Mischa Lazar disappeared, vanished as if he’d never been. Dogs were brought in. Trackers sent out. No sign. No sign never at all. It was assumed he was set upon by robbers and no doubt smoldering in a shallow grave by now. Pesha herself was sure of this. Ever since he disappeared she’d been getting chills in bed at night that meant a ghost walked over her grave. Who else could it be but him, that despicable lowlife, that “vantz”, that “shtucke drek?” But, the chills abated, and the days began. Days. Weeks. A month. Two months. Nothing. And then. Something. Word came back from a distant town, Vitebsk, that Mischa Lazar had been spotted, so the family sent my grandfather, Samuel, to bring him back. Samuel actually found him in Vitebsk (a town of some size) even though Mischa Lazar did not want to be found, and wanted even less to go back to Pesha. How my grandfather persuaded him to return home I do not know, but within a week he took off again, stole a horse in the middle of a moonless night, and disappeared into it. Remember, Pesha’s father was an important man. A big shot. A man of influence. He thrust a fat wallet at my grandfather and ordered him to bring that “mamser” back. So, this time, Samuel tracks Mischa Lazar all the way to Scandinavia, Sweden, where it was. That’s how we got the “son” tagged onto our name. Hermanson. How hard could it be to find a Jew fresh from the shtetl in Sweden (long black beard, long black coat, muddy clodhoppers)? Well, Samuel found him again. That night Mischa Lazar produced a bottle of aqua vit, drank his brother blind, and took off once more. Samuel wired Pesha’s father for instructions. “Find him,” bellowed the important man. Pesha wailed that she missed her Mischa, but no one believed her.
This time Mischa Lazar’s trail led across the ocean. He did not enter this country through Ellis Island, we know that, and some think he might have come through the port of Galveston. If so, why go all the way up to Baltimore, because that’s where my grandfather found him next, rather, found of him next: Baltimore, Maryland; the Hebrew Free Burial Society. The name Mischa Lazar was on its books. No last name. A nobody. A doctor claimed the cadaver for his experiments. My grandfather took to his room at the boarding house for seven days without shaving or shoes and sat mourning on a low and uncomfortable stool, the Jewish way: he sat shiva. On the eighth day, Samuel took stock and decided here was a business opportunity.
Sam outfitted a peddler’s pack with notions, gadgets, candy, toys, overalls, and other assorted ready to wear clothing, nothing fancy, just good quality. His plan was to head south and sell his wares on the way with hopes of setting up a business whenever he got to wherever he was going. By trade he was a butcher. The pack weighed a hundred pounds, so my grandfather bought a horse, too. While piecing together the bits of information about my grandfather’s travels, I came upon the most surprising old photograph: a well dressed young man on horseback – clean shaven, jacket, tie, fancy boots – with a huge smile on his face and a cigar in the side of his mouth like a big shot. Both horse and saddle were fit and fine. This young man was ready for business. This young man was a pack peddler! Why was I surprised? Because for years I had carried the image of an older, bent over, rabbinical type with a beard and clothes from the old country who trudged the hills and hollows of the south peddling his wares. The young man on horseback was anything but that. He was sure, confident, ready for the world. “Here I am,” he seems to be saying, “Just watch me!” He had an uncanny resemblance to my Uncle Josh, Samuel’s first born.
Samuel traveled across Maryland and down into West Virginia, way down deep to the Tug River, just this side of Kentucky, feuding grounds of the Hatfields in West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky, right there across the river from each other. My mother was actually delivered by Dr. Hatfield from this same clan. Early into the fever that propelled the world into its first world war, Dr. Hatfield came across a Negro giving a stump speech about how the “colored men’s gonna get all the white womens when their mens be away at war.” Hatfield pulled his pistol and shot the speaker dead. That same Dr. Hatfield was shortly thereafter elected to the U.S. Senate.
Anyone who has ever fully experienced Elizabeth Hermanson, fourth child of Samuel, will understand the irony of this situation.
By the way, Sam Hermanson actually ran into Mischa Lazar again. He had paid the funeral parlor to have his name put in their books. Sam wasn’t looking for him, but there was Mischa Lazar in West Virginia with a peddler’s pack of his own.
“I’m not going back to that “chalerya” again,” Mischa Lazar told my grandfather,
“Go where you want,” said my grandfather, “I’m staying here.”
He did, and brought the family over to join him, the only kosher butcher in North Fork, West Virginia.
Friday, November 11, 2011
WHAT KIND OF JEW PULLS A TRIGGER? -- part 1
My father must have known the difference between a stool pigeon and a buzzard. He certainly knew the difference between a bob-tail and a jackass. However, he would not have known a wild duck from a canary, or a rack of antlers from a rack of lamb. Why then was I forever giving him birthday cards and father’s day cards that featured men of Anglo-Saxon character with sensible pipes clenched in their mouths and a smidgeon of grouse feather in their hatbands? If they were sitting in armchairs in their studies, there would be a brandy snifter on a side table. A fine double barrel would be displayed above the mantel. The men stared up and out yonder without blinking as they followed flights of mallards far above no doubt thinking of hunts past and hunts to come with their Eagle Scout sons whose names were followed by numbers.
Reuben Henry Foreman was not that man (and my Boy Scout career went south without ever going north). He smoked El Producto cigars, a five pack for a buck, drank a single shot of Four Roses in the morning and one again in the afternoon, put a quarter on the numbers every day, and was the only white man I ever saw read the “Baltimore Afro-American”, the city’s only Black newspaper. He didn’t do it for any particular reason other than he liked to read newspapers. If he could have read Chinese he’d have read a Chinese newspaper. One time I did see him with a book -- “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. It was upside down in his lap, and he was asleep. The men depicted on the greeting cards I gave him read “Field and Stream.” If you had asked him, Ruby would have told you his firm belief, but if you never asked him you’d never know.
Many years after his death, Jamie and I went to Baltimore so she could meet my family for the first time. My mother kept some old photographs under a glass top cut to fit her bureau. Jamie called me over, pointed out a photo of my father, and asked, “Who’s that?”
How could she not know who it was?
“My father, J. Who d’ya think?”
“You never told me he was crippled.”
“Who’s crippled?”
“Your father.”
“My father was not crippled.”
“Is this man in that snapshot not your father? Come here and look at this,” she insisted and pointed to a frayed, black & white photo of my father standing there smiling at the camera. The metal canes with arm support attachments that he used are clearly visible. They made a soft, clanking noise, pocket change, when they struck the ground. He was never without them
“Yeah, what’s crippled about him?”
“He’s got crutches! Two of them.”
“Canes!”
“OK. Canes.”
“Thank you. He got around just fine.”
“Yeah, Stephen, the man in this picture might’ve gotten around just fine, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a cripple who did it. Look at him. If the man in this picture is your father then your father was a cripple.”
The man in the picture is my father is a cripple. That man. There. Got it?
Finally, I did. Wow, did I! I was well into my thirties, but, not until that moment, did I ever think of my father as a cripple. Trying to grasp it for the first time staggered me some. I had never even heard the word “cripple” used in our house. It wasn’t avoided. It simply wasn’t, as if the word were magically deleted from every book and magazine that ever followed us home. If the word occurred within earshot outside of the house, if it registered with me at all, I would never have associated it with any image of my father.
I’m trying to find words to describe my feelings as this information made its determined way through to the bedrock of my heart. Little by little I got it. If you wanted to change a single word and only one single word in a manuscript of thousands of pages, millions of pages, you’d start on page one, program your computer, and instantly it would adjust. He would be She. Her would be Him. Past tense would become Present tense. It might become You. You’d feel the change – register a ping on the radar -- but you’d go on, and everything will be what it is.
Many years later (not to mention many years ago), I sat in the Los Angeles Public Library in downtown LA at a carrel stacked with books doing chump change research for a textbook company in Virginia and fondly remembering those by-gone days when people actually paid me real money to write things. I needed a nap. It came upon me suddenly like mustard gas. My head went down, I’m guessing with a thunk. I was gone, bodily gone, time gone, Dorothy in the poppy field gone, nothing there gone. I was deep inside that silence when the pocket change sound of my father’s canes was suddenly as real and immediate as it had ever been. My father was here, there, right next to me – Where? -- and what was happening instead was that an old woman with two metal canes was walking by. My father had never been more real to me than in the instant it took for my eyes to open. I heard him. He was there.
Reuben Henry Foreman was not that man (and my Boy Scout career went south without ever going north). He smoked El Producto cigars, a five pack for a buck, drank a single shot of Four Roses in the morning and one again in the afternoon, put a quarter on the numbers every day, and was the only white man I ever saw read the “Baltimore Afro-American”, the city’s only Black newspaper. He didn’t do it for any particular reason other than he liked to read newspapers. If he could have read Chinese he’d have read a Chinese newspaper. One time I did see him with a book -- “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. It was upside down in his lap, and he was asleep. The men depicted on the greeting cards I gave him read “Field and Stream.” If you had asked him, Ruby would have told you his firm belief, but if you never asked him you’d never know.
Many years after his death, Jamie and I went to Baltimore so she could meet my family for the first time. My mother kept some old photographs under a glass top cut to fit her bureau. Jamie called me over, pointed out a photo of my father, and asked, “Who’s that?”
How could she not know who it was?
“My father, J. Who d’ya think?”
“You never told me he was crippled.”
“Who’s crippled?”
“Your father.”
“My father was not crippled.”
“Is this man in that snapshot not your father? Come here and look at this,” she insisted and pointed to a frayed, black & white photo of my father standing there smiling at the camera. The metal canes with arm support attachments that he used are clearly visible. They made a soft, clanking noise, pocket change, when they struck the ground. He was never without them
“Yeah, what’s crippled about him?”
“He’s got crutches! Two of them.”
“Canes!”
“OK. Canes.”
“Thank you. He got around just fine.”
“Yeah, Stephen, the man in this picture might’ve gotten around just fine, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a cripple who did it. Look at him. If the man in this picture is your father then your father was a cripple.”
The man in the picture is my father is a cripple. That man. There. Got it?
Finally, I did. Wow, did I! I was well into my thirties, but, not until that moment, did I ever think of my father as a cripple. Trying to grasp it for the first time staggered me some. I had never even heard the word “cripple” used in our house. It wasn’t avoided. It simply wasn’t, as if the word were magically deleted from every book and magazine that ever followed us home. If the word occurred within earshot outside of the house, if it registered with me at all, I would never have associated it with any image of my father.
I’m trying to find words to describe my feelings as this information made its determined way through to the bedrock of my heart. Little by little I got it. If you wanted to change a single word and only one single word in a manuscript of thousands of pages, millions of pages, you’d start on page one, program your computer, and instantly it would adjust. He would be She. Her would be Him. Past tense would become Present tense. It might become You. You’d feel the change – register a ping on the radar -- but you’d go on, and everything will be what it is.
Many years later (not to mention many years ago), I sat in the Los Angeles Public Library in downtown LA at a carrel stacked with books doing chump change research for a textbook company in Virginia and fondly remembering those by-gone days when people actually paid me real money to write things. I needed a nap. It came upon me suddenly like mustard gas. My head went down, I’m guessing with a thunk. I was gone, bodily gone, time gone, Dorothy in the poppy field gone, nothing there gone. I was deep inside that silence when the pocket change sound of my father’s canes was suddenly as real and immediate as it had ever been. My father was here, there, right next to me – Where? -- and what was happening instead was that an old woman with two metal canes was walking by. My father had never been more real to me than in the instant it took for my eyes to open. I heard him. He was there.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
I HEARD A SOUND I SHOULD NEVER HAVE HEARD
This was originally written last August before the flood devastated our mountain top and took precedence over everything else. People are still out of their homes, some for good. Prattsville is struggling to survive. Some believe it will. Some don't. The homeless are a topic of conversation now that winter is for sure here. One woman's reaction? "Let them live in tents."
Outside my office window, the first snowfall -- heavy and wet -- is blinding white in the afternoon sun. I think I'll send this now.
Our old farmhouse has a huge wrap-around screen porch that separates us from the insects but not the sounds and sights of the valley. I sit there every morning I can with my first coffee of the day (laced with a spoonful of hot chocolate and too much sugar) and gradually reach lift-off. The other day I heard a sound I should not have heard this time of year, barely into August. Blue jays! They’re at least a month early – a cold weather bird – but they were out there shrieking to mar the peace of that morning. But why are they here now, and why are the seedpod propellers dry and ready to fall from the maples, and why am I beginning to see red and copper leaves already in grass that’s still tall and green? Just askin’…
I live where there is peace, yes, but very little silence. Only after a three day blizzard when the river is frozen and covered over with five feet of snow is there quiet – shh, the whole world white and still. When I’m in the city sounds tend to muddy together like a child’s fingerprint painting with too many colors. So many sounds out here, too, but they seem distinct to me. Like a medieval book of hours different sounds at different times help define the day. Each waking thing makes a sound. Each waking thing joins the world at its appointed time. Human sounds are the ones least heard, such as the occasional car or truck that passes our place. Like the residents of wartime London who could tell the type of plane flying over by the sound of its engines, I can tell which neighbor is driving by the house without looking. Max always honks, but still I know him by the squeaks and rattles of the tow-trailer behind his Dodge truck. I can tell who’s brush-hogging their field, who’s using the chainsaw, who’s building a new shed, who’s sighting in for hunting season. You get to know the valley’s dogs, too, especially at night when a bear walks across their property or the coyotes yip and howl, but the sound of an owl at sunset is the sound I treasure most.
I have a secret place. It’s on the mountain behind my house, an old stone wall in the woods, once a field, now second growth timber. I wander up there often and sit, look out over the valley and smile because no one knows where I am. Last Spring I sat there at dusk and heard an owl call from across the valley – hoo, hoo – haunting – and another owl from the woods somewhere around me called back. I don’t know what they were saying but they said it a lot, back and forth, their calls echoing across the valley. The river was too far down the mountain to hear, and the woods were as quiet as always when night comes on. But the owls were calling. And then they weren’t. I waited until I was satisfied that they had gone somewhere else, and then I walked home in the darkness, the only sound being that of my boots as they pushed aside the dry grass.
Outside my office window, the first snowfall -- heavy and wet -- is blinding white in the afternoon sun. I think I'll send this now.
Our old farmhouse has a huge wrap-around screen porch that separates us from the insects but not the sounds and sights of the valley. I sit there every morning I can with my first coffee of the day (laced with a spoonful of hot chocolate and too much sugar) and gradually reach lift-off. The other day I heard a sound I should not have heard this time of year, barely into August. Blue jays! They’re at least a month early – a cold weather bird – but they were out there shrieking to mar the peace of that morning. But why are they here now, and why are the seedpod propellers dry and ready to fall from the maples, and why am I beginning to see red and copper leaves already in grass that’s still tall and green? Just askin’…
I live where there is peace, yes, but very little silence. Only after a three day blizzard when the river is frozen and covered over with five feet of snow is there quiet – shh, the whole world white and still. When I’m in the city sounds tend to muddy together like a child’s fingerprint painting with too many colors. So many sounds out here, too, but they seem distinct to me. Like a medieval book of hours different sounds at different times help define the day. Each waking thing makes a sound. Each waking thing joins the world at its appointed time. Human sounds are the ones least heard, such as the occasional car or truck that passes our place. Like the residents of wartime London who could tell the type of plane flying over by the sound of its engines, I can tell which neighbor is driving by the house without looking. Max always honks, but still I know him by the squeaks and rattles of the tow-trailer behind his Dodge truck. I can tell who’s brush-hogging their field, who’s using the chainsaw, who’s building a new shed, who’s sighting in for hunting season. You get to know the valley’s dogs, too, especially at night when a bear walks across their property or the coyotes yip and howl, but the sound of an owl at sunset is the sound I treasure most.
I have a secret place. It’s on the mountain behind my house, an old stone wall in the woods, once a field, now second growth timber. I wander up there often and sit, look out over the valley and smile because no one knows where I am. Last Spring I sat there at dusk and heard an owl call from across the valley – hoo, hoo – haunting – and another owl from the woods somewhere around me called back. I don’t know what they were saying but they said it a lot, back and forth, their calls echoing across the valley. The river was too far down the mountain to hear, and the woods were as quiet as always when night comes on. But the owls were calling. And then they weren’t. I waited until I was satisfied that they had gone somewhere else, and then I walked home in the darkness, the only sound being that of my boots as they pushed aside the dry grass.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
IRENE -- FLOOD -- AFTERMATH
“Losing your house means everything to people. I know that, but if you’ve lost your child…” She shrugs. “What does it mean? When it looked like we would have to evacuate, all I took were my son’s ashes and his pictures. I couldn’t have lived without them. The rest doesn’t matter.”
Sandy Kiley and I stood talking in the spacious wooden shed that serves as their family’s farm stand. They grow the best fingerling potatoes in Greene County, and service the finest restaurants on the mountaintop which is what we call our small nook of the world. Sandy and Bob, her husband, owners of RSK Farms, consider it fortunate that they’ll have potatoes for the next two months. Their other crops were destroyed in the flood caused by Hurricane Irene. Their lower fields, the ones bordering the river, a flood plain, yes, but the best soil, those lower fields are nothing now but twenty-eight acres of fist sized gravel. What will the Kileys do? Sandy shrugs. “One day at a time,” she says.
The Kileys live and farm in Prattsville, New York, the hardest hit village on the mountaintop, a small, old town of 650 where I often shop at Jim’s American Supermarket and the Agway, Prattsville, now gone. The Kileys along with the rest of the town are in survival mode. Main St. with its FEMA tent, portable showers, food pantry, clothing drop-off, and port-a-potties looks like a refugee camp. Houses gape open. Porches in shreds. X’s spray painted on houses set for demolition. Small mountains of muddy debris outside of ruined homes display contents that were once belongings: waterlogged rugs, splintered furniture, possessions now junk, less than junk, worthless. Mud all over. What will these people do?
They are doing it. They are not the type to back down. Rebuild or what? They see no choice. One family, completely isolated from the road, constructed a make-shift bridge across the water. The DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) came in and ordered them to take it down. The family refused. This is how they had been surviving. A confrontation brewed. The National Guard called in the state troopers who were thought to back the DEC, of course. Not at all. The troopers arrived and backed the locals, their neighbors, and told them to continue doing whatever they needed to survive. Morale is surprisingly high. Neighbors help neighbors, and there are volunteers from as far away as Michigan. In my valley, twenty-eight neighbors trapped for a week without phone or electricity, cooked dinner as best they could and ate with each other every night.
Certainly, the horror stories are many: the Chassidic old man who watched his wife drown in their kitchen when he waded out to snag a boat and couldn’t get back to her; she had been a Holocaust survivor; the farmer who watched two hundred dairy cows drown; houses literally floated away; trailers torn in two. But the aftermath – how these people are surviving and rebuilding – is an equally compelling story. The core values of these people, when not inflamed by irresponsible politicians, are strong and resilient, the kind of work ethic that made the United States the dominant industrial power in the world. Rosie the Riveter, tillers of Victory Gardens, teen-aged members of the Civil Air Patrol, Junior Achievement (Remember that?) – these are symbols of American strength. These are the people of Prattsville working to rebuild their lives in the face of a national economic crisis as well as a natural disaster, now caught in a political shoot-out between wealthy politicos who tie emergency aid to cuts in job programs. True, FEMA has a large tent in town as its headquarters. They are here to help, but word is getting around that a woman who lost her home valued at $102,000 was handed a check for $560. People are angry. No one seems resigned. The goal is to survive, to survive and go one better, and that’s what they will continue to do. Most do not want to go anywhere else. This is home. There are so many entities at play here. Other nearby towns suffered dreadful devastation as well: Lexington, Windham, Fleischman’s, Margaretville, Arkville. Looks on faces are the looks of the shell-shocked. Still, they are determined to go on, to make it better than it was before. I am privileged to be in the midst of them. People want me to tell their stories, and I intend to do just that.
Sandy Kiley and I stood talking in the spacious wooden shed that serves as their family’s farm stand. They grow the best fingerling potatoes in Greene County, and service the finest restaurants on the mountaintop which is what we call our small nook of the world. Sandy and Bob, her husband, owners of RSK Farms, consider it fortunate that they’ll have potatoes for the next two months. Their other crops were destroyed in the flood caused by Hurricane Irene. Their lower fields, the ones bordering the river, a flood plain, yes, but the best soil, those lower fields are nothing now but twenty-eight acres of fist sized gravel. What will the Kileys do? Sandy shrugs. “One day at a time,” she says.
The Kileys live and farm in Prattsville, New York, the hardest hit village on the mountaintop, a small, old town of 650 where I often shop at Jim’s American Supermarket and the Agway, Prattsville, now gone. The Kileys along with the rest of the town are in survival mode. Main St. with its FEMA tent, portable showers, food pantry, clothing drop-off, and port-a-potties looks like a refugee camp. Houses gape open. Porches in shreds. X’s spray painted on houses set for demolition. Small mountains of muddy debris outside of ruined homes display contents that were once belongings: waterlogged rugs, splintered furniture, possessions now junk, less than junk, worthless. Mud all over. What will these people do?
They are doing it. They are not the type to back down. Rebuild or what? They see no choice. One family, completely isolated from the road, constructed a make-shift bridge across the water. The DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) came in and ordered them to take it down. The family refused. This is how they had been surviving. A confrontation brewed. The National Guard called in the state troopers who were thought to back the DEC, of course. Not at all. The troopers arrived and backed the locals, their neighbors, and told them to continue doing whatever they needed to survive. Morale is surprisingly high. Neighbors help neighbors, and there are volunteers from as far away as Michigan. In my valley, twenty-eight neighbors trapped for a week without phone or electricity, cooked dinner as best they could and ate with each other every night.
Certainly, the horror stories are many: the Chassidic old man who watched his wife drown in their kitchen when he waded out to snag a boat and couldn’t get back to her; she had been a Holocaust survivor; the farmer who watched two hundred dairy cows drown; houses literally floated away; trailers torn in two. But the aftermath – how these people are surviving and rebuilding – is an equally compelling story. The core values of these people, when not inflamed by irresponsible politicians, are strong and resilient, the kind of work ethic that made the United States the dominant industrial power in the world. Rosie the Riveter, tillers of Victory Gardens, teen-aged members of the Civil Air Patrol, Junior Achievement (Remember that?) – these are symbols of American strength. These are the people of Prattsville working to rebuild their lives in the face of a national economic crisis as well as a natural disaster, now caught in a political shoot-out between wealthy politicos who tie emergency aid to cuts in job programs. True, FEMA has a large tent in town as its headquarters. They are here to help, but word is getting around that a woman who lost her home valued at $102,000 was handed a check for $560. People are angry. No one seems resigned. The goal is to survive, to survive and go one better, and that’s what they will continue to do. Most do not want to go anywhere else. This is home. There are so many entities at play here. Other nearby towns suffered dreadful devastation as well: Lexington, Windham, Fleischman’s, Margaretville, Arkville. Looks on faces are the looks of the shell-shocked. Still, they are determined to go on, to make it better than it was before. I am privileged to be in the midst of them. People want me to tell their stories, and I intend to do just that.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
IT WASN'T KATRINA. IT WAS IRENE
August 30, 2011
The following was intended to be a brief response to an e-mail from my friend, Ellen Stern, who'd seen the news that my piece of the mountain had taken a pounding and wanted to know how we'd fared. Judging by the length, I guess I got carried away, but so did Irene. We've seen many a Catskill mountain thunderstorm, tyrannical things with sheets and bolts of lightning coming from both earth and sky, an awesome show of force. But they don't last very long. Then came Irene: no thunder, no lightning, not even much wind, just relentless rain. Twelve straight and constant hours of it. It was like being trapped in a room as the water rises above your neck. In some cases, that's exactly what happened. A Poe story. The Titanic. I was going to say that other natural disasters, like earthquakes, are, at least, quick, hit and run, over fast, but they really aren't at all, only the earthquake, and that feels like eternity.
This seems to be more of a blog than an e-mail, so let's call it that. A blog. Working on a computer almost as old as my daughter and can't access usual blog format. So this is it. I'm writing in Boston as the phone and power are still out back home in Spruceton Valley. I'm a little discombobulated due to the evacuation -- can't quite get my bearings -- but the kids are their usually sterling selves making me feel very comfortable. I do feel uneasy at having left some of the neighbors behind. My intent had been to stay as well. The storm was over. The river was dropping. The danger passed. Why not? The weather was exquisite.
The morning after the rain subsided I was out on what used to be the road lugging flotsam to the creek side when my neighbor from the lovely little horse farm up the road walked down drinking her morning mug of coffee. We bad-mouthed Irene for awhile as she slurped her coffee, and I started salivating because I hadn't had coffee in three days. "God, what I wouldn't give for a cup of coffee," I cried. "Wait here," she said, walked back to her house (She had a generator and was using it two hours a day), and returned in a few minutes with a pot and a mug, lots of 1/2 & 1/2 and sugar, just like I like it. Two of our young volunteer firemen managed to get up the valley in ATV's to check on us. They came up during that seven foot blizzard, too. The owner of a small cabin down the road collected firewood tossed up by the river, lit a bonfire, and invited the rest of us. At another time his place was the one room schoolhouse. That night the sky was radiant.
Jamie, from her side of the country, followed the news on both CNN and the LATimes. She'd heard reports of old people trapped on back roads and figured I must be one of them. Might've been trapped. Didn't feel old.
As for her side of the country, I'll be there soon, 9/13-9/21, speaking at the Screenwriting Expo, Friday, 9/16, 4pm, LAX Westin Hotel. Topic: Your Screenplay;Your Novel. Hope to see some of you there and elsewhere.
Sorry for the digression. Had to get that in there.
Now.
A few of you have already seen a version of the following. It has been tinkered with, however, so not exactly the same. I wouldn't mind if you checked it out again.
Dear Ellen:
No matter the adventure, it usually comes down to this: don't mess with Mother Nature. Of course, Michelle Bachman said it was a message from G-d to cut the budget. From my POV the message from G-d was: you're on your own, Stevo. I'm fine and now in Boston with the kids, but this Irene lady was the real thing. Our house survived with no damage but a flood in the basement, but the old, hand-built stone retaining wall to the stream next to the house was turned into rubble, and the water came over the bank and inched toward the house as the downpour dribbled out: fourteen inches! Twelve hours. The river in front of the house slammed at a harsh angle into our stream emptying into it, and the road basically buckled and blew. At one point I watched the river breach the bank it had just battered away -- this was fast stuff, wave-like, no trickle, no slow flow -- hammer its way over the bridge, and make the road its own. Move over, sucka! Road never had a chance. Mind blowing destruction everywhere. A farmer nearby watched 200 of his cows drown when the river took out his pasture. Prattsville, where I often find myself, was destroyed. Not an exaggeration. Jim's American Market took in four feet of water. Agway pushed off its foundation and filled with mud, friends stuck on the roof watching the water rise as the Nat'l Guard sent for more boats. Jamie followed the flood on the news from Los Angeles! Over in Windham, the Catskill Mountain Country Store -- you, Katie, & I ate lunch there -- gone. Drew, the owner, watched a wave push a car through his building. It's transfixing to watch big maples and ash trees churn by at high speed as boulders grind along the bottom. You have to believe what you are seeing but you can't. Power and phone were (and are) out in Spruceton Valley. Friends stranded up the valley walked out to where they could be evacuated by the Nat'l Guard who were everywhere they could be although that wasn't nearly as many places as they were needed. I opted to stay figuring I had enough food and water for a week which was the estimate we were given. There would be others within walking distance, and, anyway, I had to find a way to the auto mechanic to have my brakes fixed at 8am next.
I hear of a possible route, so, fingers crossed, I drive down the valley astonished at the destruction, cross the final bridge past a sign I ignored, and took a bunch of back roads (cf: Robert Mitchum, Thunder Road, ca. 1953) which eventually got me to Haines Falls Auto. Palenville, one more town down the mountain, could no longer be reached due to landslide and blow-down. OK. Got the brakes fixed, bought food and dog food, and headed back over the mountains to a great view of the valley, but, more importantly, I thought I could get cell reception there, did, called Jamie who was relieved and said the family wanted me to pack up and drive to Boston. I know the kids love me but are they gonna love me for twelve days in a row? After that I'm going to LA to give a talk at the Screenwriting Expo.I wouldn't be home for weeks! I told her to tell everyone I was fine and so was the house but let me think about it. I just bought food, etc. etc. So I drive back to the valley conflicted, reach bridge #1 -- Remember the sign I ignored? -- am stopped by a roadblock of state police, Nat'l Guard, and highway guys who tell me that if I go in I can't get out for a week plus I had to leave my car and walk. Not one more vehicle was going over that bridge. Four miles up through a flood zone? With shopping bags in one hand and my ancient, crippled dachshund under the arm opposite? "Come on, Brad!" (I know the fellow. His father used to have a dairy farm on Jenkins Flats). It didn't matter I knew him. Or his father. The bridge had a one foot tear in it since I crossed that morning and was twisting counter clockwise. A plan developed. There was a government truck on the other side of the bridge. He'd give me a ride up and leave me there, or he'd wait fifteen minutes for me to pack my bag. OK. Seven days ("Maybe," said Brad). Seven days -- maybe more was Brad's subtext -- seven days without being able to communicate with the family, and the family having no idea what's going on. "Twenty minutes, " I said to Brad. "Fifteen." "Come on!" "Just go." Twenty minutes later after packing a bag and turning off all the power switches so the sudden whenever-it-would-come surge of electricity wouldn't blow our whole house out the instant Central Hudson gets it going, I'm in a truck being evacuated from my own home. Who said we were in charge? The good stuff was neighbors helping each other out. The only service station with gas and power jacked his prices up a dollar a gallon. A caller announced this on local radio, and when I finally drove out of here I saw his prices were again the same as everyone else's. So now I'm in Boston with the kids, on my small level a refugee having been given 15 minutes to pack and leave, but this is by no means the worst of what could have happened to me, did happen to many of my neighbors, or what has happened other times and other places. I'm the fortunate one, but I can imagine those times and places like I never have before. So much stuff to remember to pack. So much stuff forgotten. I left my computer glasses on my desk and a Hebrew National salami in a beer cooler on the front porch. A Chassidic man in his eighties watched as his wife of a lifetime drowned in the kitchen. He'd waded out to snag a boat and couldn't get back to her. She had been a Holocaust survivor.
The following was intended to be a brief response to an e-mail from my friend, Ellen Stern, who'd seen the news that my piece of the mountain had taken a pounding and wanted to know how we'd fared. Judging by the length, I guess I got carried away, but so did Irene. We've seen many a Catskill mountain thunderstorm, tyrannical things with sheets and bolts of lightning coming from both earth and sky, an awesome show of force. But they don't last very long. Then came Irene: no thunder, no lightning, not even much wind, just relentless rain. Twelve straight and constant hours of it. It was like being trapped in a room as the water rises above your neck. In some cases, that's exactly what happened. A Poe story. The Titanic. I was going to say that other natural disasters, like earthquakes, are, at least, quick, hit and run, over fast, but they really aren't at all, only the earthquake, and that feels like eternity.
This seems to be more of a blog than an e-mail, so let's call it that. A blog. Working on a computer almost as old as my daughter and can't access usual blog format. So this is it. I'm writing in Boston as the phone and power are still out back home in Spruceton Valley. I'm a little discombobulated due to the evacuation -- can't quite get my bearings -- but the kids are their usually sterling selves making me feel very comfortable. I do feel uneasy at having left some of the neighbors behind. My intent had been to stay as well. The storm was over. The river was dropping. The danger passed. Why not? The weather was exquisite.
The morning after the rain subsided I was out on what used to be the road lugging flotsam to the creek side when my neighbor from the lovely little horse farm up the road walked down drinking her morning mug of coffee. We bad-mouthed Irene for awhile as she slurped her coffee, and I started salivating because I hadn't had coffee in three days. "God, what I wouldn't give for a cup of coffee," I cried. "Wait here," she said, walked back to her house (She had a generator and was using it two hours a day), and returned in a few minutes with a pot and a mug, lots of 1/2 & 1/2 and sugar, just like I like it. Two of our young volunteer firemen managed to get up the valley in ATV's to check on us. They came up during that seven foot blizzard, too. The owner of a small cabin down the road collected firewood tossed up by the river, lit a bonfire, and invited the rest of us. At another time his place was the one room schoolhouse. That night the sky was radiant.
Jamie, from her side of the country, followed the news on both CNN and the LATimes. She'd heard reports of old people trapped on back roads and figured I must be one of them. Might've been trapped. Didn't feel old.
As for her side of the country, I'll be there soon, 9/13-9/21, speaking at the Screenwriting Expo, Friday, 9/16, 4pm, LAX Westin Hotel. Topic: Your Screenplay;Your Novel. Hope to see some of you there and elsewhere.
Sorry for the digression. Had to get that in there.
Now.
A few of you have already seen a version of the following. It has been tinkered with, however, so not exactly the same. I wouldn't mind if you checked it out again.
Dear Ellen:
No matter the adventure, it usually comes down to this: don't mess with Mother Nature. Of course, Michelle Bachman said it was a message from G-d to cut the budget. From my POV the message from G-d was: you're on your own, Stevo. I'm fine and now in Boston with the kids, but this Irene lady was the real thing. Our house survived with no damage but a flood in the basement, but the old, hand-built stone retaining wall to the stream next to the house was turned into rubble, and the water came over the bank and inched toward the house as the downpour dribbled out: fourteen inches! Twelve hours. The river in front of the house slammed at a harsh angle into our stream emptying into it, and the road basically buckled and blew. At one point I watched the river breach the bank it had just battered away -- this was fast stuff, wave-like, no trickle, no slow flow -- hammer its way over the bridge, and make the road its own. Move over, sucka! Road never had a chance. Mind blowing destruction everywhere. A farmer nearby watched 200 of his cows drown when the river took out his pasture. Prattsville, where I often find myself, was destroyed. Not an exaggeration. Jim's American Market took in four feet of water. Agway pushed off its foundation and filled with mud, friends stuck on the roof watching the water rise as the Nat'l Guard sent for more boats. Jamie followed the flood on the news from Los Angeles! Over in Windham, the Catskill Mountain Country Store -- you, Katie, & I ate lunch there -- gone. Drew, the owner, watched a wave push a car through his building. It's transfixing to watch big maples and ash trees churn by at high speed as boulders grind along the bottom. You have to believe what you are seeing but you can't. Power and phone were (and are) out in Spruceton Valley. Friends stranded up the valley walked out to where they could be evacuated by the Nat'l Guard who were everywhere they could be although that wasn't nearly as many places as they were needed. I opted to stay figuring I had enough food and water for a week which was the estimate we were given. There would be others within walking distance, and, anyway, I had to find a way to the auto mechanic to have my brakes fixed at 8am next.
I hear of a possible route, so, fingers crossed, I drive down the valley astonished at the destruction, cross the final bridge past a sign I ignored, and took a bunch of back roads (cf: Robert Mitchum, Thunder Road, ca. 1953) which eventually got me to Haines Falls Auto. Palenville, one more town down the mountain, could no longer be reached due to landslide and blow-down. OK. Got the brakes fixed, bought food and dog food, and headed back over the mountains to a great view of the valley, but, more importantly, I thought I could get cell reception there, did, called Jamie who was relieved and said the family wanted me to pack up and drive to Boston. I know the kids love me but are they gonna love me for twelve days in a row? After that I'm going to LA to give a talk at the Screenwriting Expo.I wouldn't be home for weeks! I told her to tell everyone I was fine and so was the house but let me think about it. I just bought food, etc. etc. So I drive back to the valley conflicted, reach bridge #1 -- Remember the sign I ignored? -- am stopped by a roadblock of state police, Nat'l Guard, and highway guys who tell me that if I go in I can't get out for a week plus I had to leave my car and walk. Not one more vehicle was going over that bridge. Four miles up through a flood zone? With shopping bags in one hand and my ancient, crippled dachshund under the arm opposite? "Come on, Brad!" (I know the fellow. His father used to have a dairy farm on Jenkins Flats). It didn't matter I knew him. Or his father. The bridge had a one foot tear in it since I crossed that morning and was twisting counter clockwise. A plan developed. There was a government truck on the other side of the bridge. He'd give me a ride up and leave me there, or he'd wait fifteen minutes for me to pack my bag. OK. Seven days ("Maybe," said Brad). Seven days -- maybe more was Brad's subtext -- seven days without being able to communicate with the family, and the family having no idea what's going on. "Twenty minutes, " I said to Brad. "Fifteen." "Come on!" "Just go." Twenty minutes later after packing a bag and turning off all the power switches so the sudden whenever-it-would-come surge of electricity wouldn't blow our whole house out the instant Central Hudson gets it going, I'm in a truck being evacuated from my own home. Who said we were in charge? The good stuff was neighbors helping each other out. The only service station with gas and power jacked his prices up a dollar a gallon. A caller announced this on local radio, and when I finally drove out of here I saw his prices were again the same as everyone else's. So now I'm in Boston with the kids, on my small level a refugee having been given 15 minutes to pack and leave, but this is by no means the worst of what could have happened to me, did happen to many of my neighbors, or what has happened other times and other places. I'm the fortunate one, but I can imagine those times and places like I never have before. So much stuff to remember to pack. So much stuff forgotten. I left my computer glasses on my desk and a Hebrew National salami in a beer cooler on the front porch. A Chassidic man in his eighties watched as his wife of a lifetime drowned in the kitchen. He'd waded out to snag a boat and couldn't get back to her. She had been a Holocaust survivor.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Who Loves Ya, Baby?
Seven small and smaller towns constitute what we call the mountaintop, and Maureen Heffernan-Rich lives on a seriously back road west of one of them. I live seventeen miles away in a hamlet of a village of a town, so the only time I see her is when I bring my dog to board or be groomed. Maureen owns Siam Kennels and has boarded three generations of our family's canines: Hank, Mike, and, now, Bliss (Guess which one my daughter named?) Maureen could be mistaken for a drill sergeant if she doesn't like you with a stare that could weaken a smackdown bully, but, if she does like you, she presents a big hearted side and an off the wall sense of humor. Dog spoken here. The other day I took Bliss over there for a toenail clipping. I could have done it myself, but Maureen's fun to talk to, and I don't know anyone else like her, so I drove over. That day Maureen was ecstatic. She had finally figured out a way to make her fortune. A small test available to any married couple should do it. She intended to sell it mail order. That's what she said. Check it out.
HOW TO TELL WHO LOVES YOU MORE: YOUR WIFE OR YOUR DOG.
Lock your wife and your dog in the trunk of your car; wait one hour; let them out; now see which one is happy to see you.
HOW TO TELL WHO LOVES YOU MORE: YOUR WIFE OR YOUR DOG.
Lock your wife and your dog in the trunk of your car; wait one hour; let them out; now see which one is happy to see you.
Monday, August 15, 2011
TEIRESIAS & ME
In classical Greek mythology we meet a seer named Teiresias, a very old man who can see into the future. One day it occurred to me that the reason Teiresias could tell what was going to happen was because he knew what had already happened. He had already lived through it. He knew that history is cyclical and events repeat themselves albeit in different forms. Now that I am older and can look back over a wide spread of years, I extrapolate about a future that will include my children and their children. I sadly admit that I am not one of the hopeful. I see the Klan in other robes. I see globalization as the next incarnation of the plantation system, international conglomerates taking the place of elected governments. I see mercenary armies fighting myriad wars when they’re not stationed in D.C. clearing us out from Pennsylvania Ave. I do not relish the world my children will inherit. Ignorance reigns. It continues to astonish me, this willful ignorance, and as long as that willful ignorance is attached to fundamental, radical religion it will continue to grow more dangerous. Michelle Bachman and her ilk are real. She is not acting. The lady is a true believer, a religious fanatic, the kind that kills, and just look at her popularity. Please understand I mean only honor and respect to any creed that has at its heart the dignity and humanity of the rest of us, but most of my life I’ve felt that the true danger to the United States came from within, like beetles boring through the heart of an oak tree. Forget sharia law. It’s the beliefs of the radical right that worry me. On talk shows one hears these people whine and complain about being persecuted, but throughout the history of the western world they are the persecutors and always have been (Check out the Crusades, the Inquisition, lynch mobs, concentration camps, and pogroms for starters), militant and aggressive about a way of life that would set the United States back centuries and end life here as we know it. They are among us, folks, organized into a rabid cabal of self-anointed Dominionists and devotees of the New Apostolic Reformation (Rick Perry being one of their self-confessed prophets), with the aim of infiltrating our government so as to enforce their beliefs on us all.Please explain to me how this is different from radical Islam? I fear civil war. I fear a time when people who disagree with the government will be “disappeared”. I fear witches will once again be hung. I am firm in my conviction that anyone who believes Jezebel and three demons are in control of the United States (told to the press by another moron from Perry’s Response day) is a menace to our society. A huge part of me believes there is little we can do to stop this political and social (r)evolution, but another part of me believes in fighting back as heartily as possible. We are in a battle for the very soul of the United States of America. To co-opt a popular right wing slogan, “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned. Believe it.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Shelly On My Mind When Max Came By
I wondered why, after so many years of ever since,I was thinking about Shelly -- Shelly with the long black hair and heavily made up eyes -- Amy Winehouse eyes! Her death must have triggered this memory of the beatnik chick who worked the audiences of the coffee houses after I read my poems with a bread basket intoning "Bread for the poet. Bread for the poet." It was the beginning of my career -- I believe we made seven dollars one night -- and I thought she loved me. It actually was, I realize, the beginning of my career(nowadays seven bucks a night is looking good again), but Shelly, ah, dark-eyed, black haired sorceress, ran off to South America with a drummer. Is it a half a century now? More. Is she even alive? My guess is she's not still with that drummer in South America.
So I'm thinking about Shelly and Amy when Max comes by all pissed off and huffing in a way I've rarely seen him. Now, you'd have to search far and wide to find a guy as nice as Max. He makes a mighty effort to be fair and tolerant to all comers, but his new neighbor pushed him to the limit. You see, Max has a pot bellied pig among a variety of critters on his farm: cats, goats, horses, chickens, the pig, maybe a parrot (though I'm not sure about the parrot but wouldn't be surprised). And the pig crawled under a fence onto his neighbor's property. His neighbor is a newcomer from the city unused to the pace and ways of life here. He's also a drunk -- loud, pugnacious, intolerant, and as full of himself as he is with the whiskey -- the worst kind of urban invader who comes to these parts to drink himself blind until he needs to go back to the city on Monday morning. This is a specific breed, an invasive species in our corner of the Catskills. He arrogantly signaled for Max to come over on his property to talk, and Max said, "You wanna talk to me? Come talk to me," and plants himself in place. The guy's eyes bulged like an old cow's. He stood and stared like a slack jawed dummy, but that's all he did. If you've ever seen Max mad, you wouldn't move either. His body is hard work powerful with a low center of gravity, and he favors Harley t-shirts and tattoos. Of course, Max has a heart of cream of wheat, but you wouldn't know this by looking at him. So far, Max's neighbor has not taken him up on the offer of a pow-wow on Max's side of the fence. a good thing, too, because Max is near mad enough to..."If that guy comes over here," fumed Max, "I'm gonna kick his ass, drag him into my house, call the police and tell him the guy broke in drunk. You're a witness, right?" he said. "Gimme a call," I said. That's what neighbors are for.
Then we stopped talking about this bullshit because Max wanted to get off it. He didn't like feeling this way and insisted I follow him to a back pasture so he could show me how beautifully he had mowed it with the fallen grass arranged as if it were a hay field before bailing. Max was proud of how he had done it, and, indeed, it was as beautiful as a Brueghel painting. We stood there in silence. There was a breeze and a blue jay in the apple tree. "Well," he said after awhile, "Cheryl's gonna want me to start dinner. Burn 'er, bub," which is how Max says goodbye. "Burn 'er, bub." He walked back to his truck, and I stayed in the field. The aroma of fresh mown grass was intoxicating.
So I'm thinking about Shelly and Amy when Max comes by all pissed off and huffing in a way I've rarely seen him. Now, you'd have to search far and wide to find a guy as nice as Max. He makes a mighty effort to be fair and tolerant to all comers, but his new neighbor pushed him to the limit. You see, Max has a pot bellied pig among a variety of critters on his farm: cats, goats, horses, chickens, the pig, maybe a parrot (though I'm not sure about the parrot but wouldn't be surprised). And the pig crawled under a fence onto his neighbor's property. His neighbor is a newcomer from the city unused to the pace and ways of life here. He's also a drunk -- loud, pugnacious, intolerant, and as full of himself as he is with the whiskey -- the worst kind of urban invader who comes to these parts to drink himself blind until he needs to go back to the city on Monday morning. This is a specific breed, an invasive species in our corner of the Catskills. He arrogantly signaled for Max to come over on his property to talk, and Max said, "You wanna talk to me? Come talk to me," and plants himself in place. The guy's eyes bulged like an old cow's. He stood and stared like a slack jawed dummy, but that's all he did. If you've ever seen Max mad, you wouldn't move either. His body is hard work powerful with a low center of gravity, and he favors Harley t-shirts and tattoos. Of course, Max has a heart of cream of wheat, but you wouldn't know this by looking at him. So far, Max's neighbor has not taken him up on the offer of a pow-wow on Max's side of the fence. a good thing, too, because Max is near mad enough to..."If that guy comes over here," fumed Max, "I'm gonna kick his ass, drag him into my house, call the police and tell him the guy broke in drunk. You're a witness, right?" he said. "Gimme a call," I said. That's what neighbors are for.
Then we stopped talking about this bullshit because Max wanted to get off it. He didn't like feeling this way and insisted I follow him to a back pasture so he could show me how beautifully he had mowed it with the fallen grass arranged as if it were a hay field before bailing. Max was proud of how he had done it, and, indeed, it was as beautiful as a Brueghel painting. We stood there in silence. There was a breeze and a blue jay in the apple tree. "Well," he said after awhile, "Cheryl's gonna want me to start dinner. Burn 'er, bub," which is how Max says goodbye. "Burn 'er, bub." He walked back to his truck, and I stayed in the field. The aroma of fresh mown grass was intoxicating.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
On Being An Older Father
This past February I saw a beautiful theatre piece at the Geffen in LA produced by an old friend, Susan Rose Lafer. It was called In Mother’s Words: four electric actresses reading the words of playwrights who are also mothers, compelling words about different aspects of mothering from a purely personal point of view. So it set me to thinking: how about a few words from fathers which led me to remember a few words I’d already written when my kids were tiny and tinier. This essay was originally published in Newsweek and picked up internationally. It was years ago, like I said, tiny and tinier, but here comes Father’s Day, so I’m putting it out there again. Yo y'all!
ON BEING AN OLDER FATHER
Recently, at the wedding of the daughter of a close friend, a thought struck me: "My God," I said to my wife, "When our kid gets married, we're going to be so old we'll have to have it catered by Meals-On-Wheels!" My son, you see, is only two. When he is thirteen, I will be sixty, and the twenty-first century will be here. You can do the rest of the arithmetic yourself. I'll tell you this, however: it's a strange thing to suddenly find yourself reading the obituary section and Parents Magazine at the same time.
Sevi, my son, was a long time coming. I first began trying to have him one marriage and many lifetimes ago, and discovered myself infertile. It felt as if someone had died. That marriage died, too, but not before a harrowing assault by a battalion of fertility specialists. A man spends his entire life trying to protect his gonads then offers them up to a breed of medical practitioner equaled in cold-hearted arrogance only by Porsche mechanics. At least, a Porsche runs after a tuneup. No matter what those doctors did, my sperm count remained among the lowest on earth. So, I counterattacked with vengeance. I set about fashioning a life that took me anywhere I wanted to go. A child had no place in it. And I married a woman hell-bent as myself. She was also infertile. Children were out of the question. It was, we thought, the basis of our relationship until that night, years later, when the issue was suddenly, once again, as alive and insistent as an infant crying in the next room. I don't remember how it came up. We were driving home along rural roads in a rainstorm when my wife said, "You really do want a child, don't you?", and the thought came to me that not once in my entire life had I really felt that I would never be a father. The underlying assumption was simple: someday, somehow I would be.
"Yes," I answered, "Yes, yes, yes."
And, at that moment, I knew I would have one. It was overwhelming. My wife couldn't see or hear me in the utter darkness and driving rain, but I was crying.
The video taken when our adopted son was first handed to us shows a man with silver hair taking a baby into his arms. I don't think I look like a grandfather, yet most of my peers look like this, and their children are in college. But I'm fit and fairly certain of my powers. In some sense, I feel as if I've been in training for this all my life. What I've done is to reverse the time frame. My child rearing years will be the last third of my life instead of the middle third. I've been fortunate. While others my age were struggling with their careers and raising families, I was living a life of textbook adventure. My heroes had always been men like Gordon, explorer of the Nile, and Lawrence of Arabia. I don't mean to imply that I operated on their scale or with their skill; but, like these men, I was driven to pit myself against myself in exotic places. There is a photograph of me from this period that shows a man with a week's growth of beard leaning against a tree in a jungle. A cigarette dangles from his mouth. He wears a headband. His eyes look out at you with some amusement and more appraisal, the kind of guy, the sergeants say, you'd want beside you in a firefight. But I'm not sure I like him. The picture hides a lot. There is too much swagger. What I remember most vividly from those times, really, is the loneliness. I was attached to no one. I was building nothing to pass on. Nowadays everything I do has taken on a whole new dimension. Let me explain. Last Fall I put my son in a pack on my back and climbed the mountain behind our house to look for blackberries. Hank, our springer spaniel, who loves wild berries almost as much as he loves flushing pheasant, went with us. We saw deer and porcupine, the tracks of coon and coyote. Lightning had hit a tree I liked, and its roots had erupted from the ground, brown and tangled like a mass of wire. We found the blackberries, thousands of them, and I could not have been more happy and satisfied if the juicy berries had been the Holy Grail.
True, the adjustment to parenthood is not always easy, and, yes, being a father takes up an enormous amount of time. But who would I rather spend it with? I'm not a man who's interested in accumulating companies or commanding an army. I've served my time in the trenches of masculinity, and I don't have many illusions about these things. I fail to see where beating someone up is more satisfying than showing my son where to find the echo or suddenly hearing him speak a sentence where before he only dabbled in isolated words. He has enabled me to touch reserves of strength and love I never knew existed. Nothing is more basic. I will give my child a safe place to sleep. I will give him the food he needs. I will teach him to survive as best I can. And I will protect him with my life. There is a certain serenity in the simplicity of this formula. Sure, sometimes, it's a drag to get up so early in the morning; but, then again, I get to see his face at an hour when it is most innocent, when it is most open. To me he is a work of art, a creation as intense as the Sistine Chapel. The purity of his rage and joy astonishes me. If I can teach him to love, if I can put him into this world with the ability to handle it yet without the feeling that he must subjugate it, then, I believe, I will have done my job.
Am I a better father now than I would have been when I was younger? Yes. Would I recommend that every man wait to have children? Not necessarily. I believe it happened to me at the right time. I cannot speak for anyone else. I do worry about staying healthy and agile enough to be the parent I want to be, and I worry about what will happen when Sevi reaches his teens and begins pulling away at a time when, perhaps more than younger parents, I will want to hold him close. More than anything else, I am afraid that I might die when he needs me the most. However I have this feeling that I'm going to be around for a long time, that I might even get to be a grandfather, for God's sake. I wouldn't be surprised, but like the pitcher going into the fifth inning with a no hitter, I don't think I should talk about it.
Does there have to be more to life than this, I wonder? I guess so, because my wife and I just received word that our infant daughter is waiting for us to come and pick her up. We're told she has red hair, and I cannot wait to have her in my arms.
ON BEING AN OLDER FATHER
Recently, at the wedding of the daughter of a close friend, a thought struck me: "My God," I said to my wife, "When our kid gets married, we're going to be so old we'll have to have it catered by Meals-On-Wheels!" My son, you see, is only two. When he is thirteen, I will be sixty, and the twenty-first century will be here. You can do the rest of the arithmetic yourself. I'll tell you this, however: it's a strange thing to suddenly find yourself reading the obituary section and Parents Magazine at the same time.
Sevi, my son, was a long time coming. I first began trying to have him one marriage and many lifetimes ago, and discovered myself infertile. It felt as if someone had died. That marriage died, too, but not before a harrowing assault by a battalion of fertility specialists. A man spends his entire life trying to protect his gonads then offers them up to a breed of medical practitioner equaled in cold-hearted arrogance only by Porsche mechanics. At least, a Porsche runs after a tuneup. No matter what those doctors did, my sperm count remained among the lowest on earth. So, I counterattacked with vengeance. I set about fashioning a life that took me anywhere I wanted to go. A child had no place in it. And I married a woman hell-bent as myself. She was also infertile. Children were out of the question. It was, we thought, the basis of our relationship until that night, years later, when the issue was suddenly, once again, as alive and insistent as an infant crying in the next room. I don't remember how it came up. We were driving home along rural roads in a rainstorm when my wife said, "You really do want a child, don't you?", and the thought came to me that not once in my entire life had I really felt that I would never be a father. The underlying assumption was simple: someday, somehow I would be.
"Yes," I answered, "Yes, yes, yes."
And, at that moment, I knew I would have one. It was overwhelming. My wife couldn't see or hear me in the utter darkness and driving rain, but I was crying.
The video taken when our adopted son was first handed to us shows a man with silver hair taking a baby into his arms. I don't think I look like a grandfather, yet most of my peers look like this, and their children are in college. But I'm fit and fairly certain of my powers. In some sense, I feel as if I've been in training for this all my life. What I've done is to reverse the time frame. My child rearing years will be the last third of my life instead of the middle third. I've been fortunate. While others my age were struggling with their careers and raising families, I was living a life of textbook adventure. My heroes had always been men like Gordon, explorer of the Nile, and Lawrence of Arabia. I don't mean to imply that I operated on their scale or with their skill; but, like these men, I was driven to pit myself against myself in exotic places. There is a photograph of me from this period that shows a man with a week's growth of beard leaning against a tree in a jungle. A cigarette dangles from his mouth. He wears a headband. His eyes look out at you with some amusement and more appraisal, the kind of guy, the sergeants say, you'd want beside you in a firefight. But I'm not sure I like him. The picture hides a lot. There is too much swagger. What I remember most vividly from those times, really, is the loneliness. I was attached to no one. I was building nothing to pass on. Nowadays everything I do has taken on a whole new dimension. Let me explain. Last Fall I put my son in a pack on my back and climbed the mountain behind our house to look for blackberries. Hank, our springer spaniel, who loves wild berries almost as much as he loves flushing pheasant, went with us. We saw deer and porcupine, the tracks of coon and coyote. Lightning had hit a tree I liked, and its roots had erupted from the ground, brown and tangled like a mass of wire. We found the blackberries, thousands of them, and I could not have been more happy and satisfied if the juicy berries had been the Holy Grail.
True, the adjustment to parenthood is not always easy, and, yes, being a father takes up an enormous amount of time. But who would I rather spend it with? I'm not a man who's interested in accumulating companies or commanding an army. I've served my time in the trenches of masculinity, and I don't have many illusions about these things. I fail to see where beating someone up is more satisfying than showing my son where to find the echo or suddenly hearing him speak a sentence where before he only dabbled in isolated words. He has enabled me to touch reserves of strength and love I never knew existed. Nothing is more basic. I will give my child a safe place to sleep. I will give him the food he needs. I will teach him to survive as best I can. And I will protect him with my life. There is a certain serenity in the simplicity of this formula. Sure, sometimes, it's a drag to get up so early in the morning; but, then again, I get to see his face at an hour when it is most innocent, when it is most open. To me he is a work of art, a creation as intense as the Sistine Chapel. The purity of his rage and joy astonishes me. If I can teach him to love, if I can put him into this world with the ability to handle it yet without the feeling that he must subjugate it, then, I believe, I will have done my job.
Am I a better father now than I would have been when I was younger? Yes. Would I recommend that every man wait to have children? Not necessarily. I believe it happened to me at the right time. I cannot speak for anyone else. I do worry about staying healthy and agile enough to be the parent I want to be, and I worry about what will happen when Sevi reaches his teens and begins pulling away at a time when, perhaps more than younger parents, I will want to hold him close. More than anything else, I am afraid that I might die when he needs me the most. However I have this feeling that I'm going to be around for a long time, that I might even get to be a grandfather, for God's sake. I wouldn't be surprised, but like the pitcher going into the fifth inning with a no hitter, I don't think I should talk about it.
Does there have to be more to life than this, I wonder? I guess so, because my wife and I just received word that our infant daughter is waiting for us to come and pick her up. We're told she has red hair, and I cannot wait to have her in my arms.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
My First Fall
Actually, it wasn't. There were two priors but they were a few winters back on the ice and don't count because everybody slips on ice. Nothing unusual in that. The one I'm talking about now was a whopper, the mother of all falls, one completely unexpected, seriously designed to shatter bones and put this poor sucker in a home. One second I was up; the next second down. Here's how.
We have maple, apple, and Norwegian spruce trees behind our house, gnarled and ancient, and last winter's seven foot blizzard snapped thick limbs off those old trees as if they were cheap chopsticks. The following spring my brother, Joel, came up from Maryland to help me turn those broken limbs into firewood. We got out the chainsaw and went to work. Two guys, yo. "Ice Road Truckers", "Axe Men" -- Catch us on the Discovery channel, yo! The limbs on the ground were the easiest. Cut here. Cut there. Yo, y'all! Fireplace logs!
One piece remained: a substantial limb hanging from the trunk by a wooden hinge created when the limb snapped. We cut through the hinge but the limb hung up on a tangle of smaller branches. So I carefully worked it down to the ground where, since we were on a small rise, it began to roll. Slowly but inexorably it rolled. Either it was going to take me down at the ankles, or I'd have to jump over it. Which I did. Up and over it. Just as I was in the midst of congratulating myself for being so nimble at such an advanced age, I was suddenly airborne and hit the ground smack solid on my right hip. Full on. My brother said it looked like I'd bounced about six inches. It felt like a ten pound sledge hammered into my hip. I was certain I had broken it and about half the bones in the rest of my body, but I lay there cautiously wiggling everything I could wiggle until I convinced myself nothing was broken. Everything worked. Hold the 911. Still, it hurt, and, when my brother made to help me up,I let him. I walked around in circles for awhile trying to walk it out. Then we finished cutting up the log and went back to the house.
By this time it was painful to put my foot down. My hip sported a bruise the size of a hub cap and the color of rot. But I was absolutely certain that nothing was broken, and, to prove it, I'd walk up the seventeen steps to our second floor.
Just let me sit here a minute.
Time's up! Move it out!
And so I started up the steps determined to get to that landing way far up there higher than it had ever been before. Someone had moved it. Obviously. I do not need to belabor how awful were the next few eons of my life except to say this: pain shot through me with every step, but I could not stop. To stop would be to never again be able to take another step, and I had to get to that landing, didn't I? It didn't occur to me that this was ridiculous. It just had to be done, that's all. So, I did it, and it turned out nothing was broken after all.
But why did I do such a thing when I didn't have to? Masochism? There was no pleasure in this pain, though there was a flush of satisfaction upon reaching the second floor landing. Still, I wouldn't call it masochistic. The root of it goes deeper than that. It made me think about my father.
My father was a cripple. He suffered from a deforming condition known as Paget's. Nowadays an injection can cure it, but my father was born in 1900 when nothing could be done. He had been a straight and handsome man, but, by the time he died his legs were terribly bowed, his head was too big for his body, his shoulders dropped. He walked with the aid of two metal canes and had survived terrible internal damage brought about as his body closed in on itself. His organs, jammed into a smaller and smaller cavity, stopped working properly. Still, at the end of his life, the man remained on his feet working twelve hour days. I never once heard him complain, not about anything really, and certainly not his condition. A doctor told us that when my father walked it was like a normal man running with a twenty-five pound pack on his back. Yet, not only didn't he complain, my brother, sister, and I never thought of him as a cripple! I was truly puzzled when my wife, Jamie, held a picture of him in her hand and said, "I didn't know your father was crippled." "What're you talking about?" I asked. "Look at this," she said and made her point by getting me to look hard. My father really was a cripple. I'd never thought of him as that before. How much pain and dismay he must have felt! How hard it must have been for him to maintain his dignity! How could he not be angry? At whom? At God? He just didn't talk about it.
Many years after his death I walked across a substantial piece of Alaska with a local trapper who was preparing his line for the winter. We were a good twenty miles in when we separated for a week. He went down the line, and I roamed out from where I was. I'd bought a new pair of LL Bean hiking boots and prepared for the trip by running in them. But I came down with some kind of bronchial mess and couldn't get those boots worked in the way I would have preferred. I wore them, anyway, and, before we cleared our first stretch of these dreadful hummocks which slipped from side to side, I regretted it. There was no way to get good purchase. I never imagined the terrain would be that difficult. Mike, the trapper, moved ahead so quickly I couldn't keep up. He'd say, "I'll meet you in the saddle of that mountain", point, and disappear. By the time we reached the first line cabin twenty miles in, my feet were raw and bleeding, so I opted to stay where I was while he went ahead. I wanted to experience the solitude.
I warmed up some spruce pitch, rubbed it on my feet then bandaged them until I could barely get my boots on again. It worked well enough for me to hobble around and get a decent look at where I was, but I couldn't help but wonder how in the world I was going to hike the twenty miles back to the village? It didn't occur to me that I wouldn't do it. I just wondered how? I should have stayed off my feet while Mike was gone, but how many times would I ever be alone in the middle of Alaska? I wanted to take advantage of it to see as much of it as I could. By the time Mike came back a week later, the top layers of skin on both my feet were gone, and I could barely stand. If I could have taken off those damned boots and burned them I would have, but I couldn't do twenty miles of no trail in my stocking feet. Mike didn't think I could do it at all, and said he'd send a medevac back for me. "No, you won't," I insisted, "I'll get out." I was not about to have anyone come in and get me. "If you're not back in three days, look for the chopper," he said, took off, and disappeared around a bend in the river in less time than it took me to tie my boot laces. That river turned out to be a godsend. I walked in it as much as possible to numb my feet in the cold water. Without that water I couldn't have walked at all.Fifteen miles down, two days later, I had to leave the river and follow an old, grown over cat trail (made long ago by a Caterpillar bulldozer) the rest of the way to the village. I had never been in such pain in my life. I wore a backpack and carried a rifle which only made it more difficult. I banged my fists on my thighs and screamed at myself to keep going. If I stopped I'd never start again. Move! Move! Move! One skinless foot shuffling after the other. Move it! Move it! Your father didn't stop, and neither will you! When he walked, remember, it was like a normal man running with a twenty-five pound pack on his back. Remember? "You have a pack on your back," I said to myself. "Is that what this is all about? My father?"
Maybe. But I'm more comfortable giving you fact than conjecture.
I gasped with relief when I finally spotted chimney smoke. I'd made it, and that night Mike, his Athapaskan wife, and a couple of pick-up trucks packed with local tribesmen took me out and got me numb drunk.
I left those boots behind and haven't seen them since.
We have maple, apple, and Norwegian spruce trees behind our house, gnarled and ancient, and last winter's seven foot blizzard snapped thick limbs off those old trees as if they were cheap chopsticks. The following spring my brother, Joel, came up from Maryland to help me turn those broken limbs into firewood. We got out the chainsaw and went to work. Two guys, yo. "Ice Road Truckers", "Axe Men" -- Catch us on the Discovery channel, yo! The limbs on the ground were the easiest. Cut here. Cut there. Yo, y'all! Fireplace logs!
One piece remained: a substantial limb hanging from the trunk by a wooden hinge created when the limb snapped. We cut through the hinge but the limb hung up on a tangle of smaller branches. So I carefully worked it down to the ground where, since we were on a small rise, it began to roll. Slowly but inexorably it rolled. Either it was going to take me down at the ankles, or I'd have to jump over it. Which I did. Up and over it. Just as I was in the midst of congratulating myself for being so nimble at such an advanced age, I was suddenly airborne and hit the ground smack solid on my right hip. Full on. My brother said it looked like I'd bounced about six inches. It felt like a ten pound sledge hammered into my hip. I was certain I had broken it and about half the bones in the rest of my body, but I lay there cautiously wiggling everything I could wiggle until I convinced myself nothing was broken. Everything worked. Hold the 911. Still, it hurt, and, when my brother made to help me up,I let him. I walked around in circles for awhile trying to walk it out. Then we finished cutting up the log and went back to the house.
By this time it was painful to put my foot down. My hip sported a bruise the size of a hub cap and the color of rot. But I was absolutely certain that nothing was broken, and, to prove it, I'd walk up the seventeen steps to our second floor.
Just let me sit here a minute.
Time's up! Move it out!
And so I started up the steps determined to get to that landing way far up there higher than it had ever been before. Someone had moved it. Obviously. I do not need to belabor how awful were the next few eons of my life except to say this: pain shot through me with every step, but I could not stop. To stop would be to never again be able to take another step, and I had to get to that landing, didn't I? It didn't occur to me that this was ridiculous. It just had to be done, that's all. So, I did it, and it turned out nothing was broken after all.
But why did I do such a thing when I didn't have to? Masochism? There was no pleasure in this pain, though there was a flush of satisfaction upon reaching the second floor landing. Still, I wouldn't call it masochistic. The root of it goes deeper than that. It made me think about my father.
My father was a cripple. He suffered from a deforming condition known as Paget's. Nowadays an injection can cure it, but my father was born in 1900 when nothing could be done. He had been a straight and handsome man, but, by the time he died his legs were terribly bowed, his head was too big for his body, his shoulders dropped. He walked with the aid of two metal canes and had survived terrible internal damage brought about as his body closed in on itself. His organs, jammed into a smaller and smaller cavity, stopped working properly. Still, at the end of his life, the man remained on his feet working twelve hour days. I never once heard him complain, not about anything really, and certainly not his condition. A doctor told us that when my father walked it was like a normal man running with a twenty-five pound pack on his back. Yet, not only didn't he complain, my brother, sister, and I never thought of him as a cripple! I was truly puzzled when my wife, Jamie, held a picture of him in her hand and said, "I didn't know your father was crippled." "What're you talking about?" I asked. "Look at this," she said and made her point by getting me to look hard. My father really was a cripple. I'd never thought of him as that before. How much pain and dismay he must have felt! How hard it must have been for him to maintain his dignity! How could he not be angry? At whom? At God? He just didn't talk about it.
Many years after his death I walked across a substantial piece of Alaska with a local trapper who was preparing his line for the winter. We were a good twenty miles in when we separated for a week. He went down the line, and I roamed out from where I was. I'd bought a new pair of LL Bean hiking boots and prepared for the trip by running in them. But I came down with some kind of bronchial mess and couldn't get those boots worked in the way I would have preferred. I wore them, anyway, and, before we cleared our first stretch of these dreadful hummocks which slipped from side to side, I regretted it. There was no way to get good purchase. I never imagined the terrain would be that difficult. Mike, the trapper, moved ahead so quickly I couldn't keep up. He'd say, "I'll meet you in the saddle of that mountain", point, and disappear. By the time we reached the first line cabin twenty miles in, my feet were raw and bleeding, so I opted to stay where I was while he went ahead. I wanted to experience the solitude.
I warmed up some spruce pitch, rubbed it on my feet then bandaged them until I could barely get my boots on again. It worked well enough for me to hobble around and get a decent look at where I was, but I couldn't help but wonder how in the world I was going to hike the twenty miles back to the village? It didn't occur to me that I wouldn't do it. I just wondered how? I should have stayed off my feet while Mike was gone, but how many times would I ever be alone in the middle of Alaska? I wanted to take advantage of it to see as much of it as I could. By the time Mike came back a week later, the top layers of skin on both my feet were gone, and I could barely stand. If I could have taken off those damned boots and burned them I would have, but I couldn't do twenty miles of no trail in my stocking feet. Mike didn't think I could do it at all, and said he'd send a medevac back for me. "No, you won't," I insisted, "I'll get out." I was not about to have anyone come in and get me. "If you're not back in three days, look for the chopper," he said, took off, and disappeared around a bend in the river in less time than it took me to tie my boot laces. That river turned out to be a godsend. I walked in it as much as possible to numb my feet in the cold water. Without that water I couldn't have walked at all.Fifteen miles down, two days later, I had to leave the river and follow an old, grown over cat trail (made long ago by a Caterpillar bulldozer) the rest of the way to the village. I had never been in such pain in my life. I wore a backpack and carried a rifle which only made it more difficult. I banged my fists on my thighs and screamed at myself to keep going. If I stopped I'd never start again. Move! Move! Move! One skinless foot shuffling after the other. Move it! Move it! Your father didn't stop, and neither will you! When he walked, remember, it was like a normal man running with a twenty-five pound pack on his back. Remember? "You have a pack on your back," I said to myself. "Is that what this is all about? My father?"
Maybe. But I'm more comfortable giving you fact than conjecture.
I gasped with relief when I finally spotted chimney smoke. I'd made it, and that night Mike, his Athapaskan wife, and a couple of pick-up trucks packed with local tribesmen took me out and got me numb drunk.
I left those boots behind and haven't seen them since.
Friday, February 11, 2011
When I Became A Liberal
In 1960 I was a newly minted Marine stationed at Courthouse Bay, Camp Lejeune, undergoing intensive training as a combat engineer. As I remember the day started with a three mile run (Whether it was before or after breakfast I don't recall) and continued in the field with high explosives, mines (We were the ones who put them in and took them out), and booby traps. We were also taught to make improvised explosive devices with whatever we had at hand. I remember booby trapping a box of nails thinking joyfully how it would shred a human being. We dealt in death and destruction, and were proud of what we could do. We never considered the consequences to ourselves -- after all, we were immortal; we were Marines; we had survived Parris Island. What could be worse? We never considered what the enemy would do to us, only what we would do to him. Maim him; destroy him. We were the force even Mao feared. We were the force the Germans in WW1 cursed as "Teufel Hunden", Devil Dogs. Sir, yes,sir, we were immortal.
One day a mate of mine returned from the base library with a book he had borrowed. He was a very bright kid whose father was a physicist at Oak Ridge. "You gotta read this," he said and handed me the book. I can still see his face clearly, though I can't remember his name. The book was "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo. I do recall watching the McCarthy hearings on television, but I had no idea of the Hollywood blacklist, still less of Dalton Trumbo, a guy with a funny name. "What's it about?" I asked my friend. "Just read it," he said. So I did. And I was stunned. I'd figured the book was some kind of boy's story, something you might find in a magazine like Boy's Life or Argosy. It was about page fifty when I realized what I was reading. The voice telling the story was that of a horribly wounded soldier, WW1, who had been in an explosion that had destroyed his arms, his legs, and his face. He had been reduced to a torso, a hunk of meat with a brain, no eyes, no mouth, unable to communicate, only to think. As he gradually discovers what he has become, so does the reader, and the shock of recognition absolutely stunned me. How that book ever made it into a Marine Corps library I do not know? My guess is that whoever ordered it had no idea what it was about. Just a good old book about a good old boy. Yeah, right. What it was was a devastating story about a man turned into a piece of meat, only with a mind that still worked, still thought, still remembered, still pondered, still cried out in the silence of his soul to be as he once was. It was an agonizing read, and the image of this poor wretch has never left me. It was the dawn of my personal politics. Gradually, the notion took root that I and my buddies, guys I had grown to love and trust more than anyone on earth, were merely pawns in the games of power brokers. What was engendered was not revolt but ambivalence, some of which is with me to this day so many years later. Being a Marine meant you had become a member of the greatest fighting force on earth. There were no Green Berets, no Navy Seals; there were only the Marines. And I was one. And I was so proud of it. Even today when I hear the Marine Corps Hymn tears come to my eyes. I straighten up. Do not mess with me. I am ready for battle. Note this: every American military unit has a song: Anchors Away, the Wild Blue Yonder, the Caissons Are Marching Along. Only the Marine Corps has a hymn. A hymn! Its final lines are, "If the Army and the Navy ever look on heaven's scene, they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines." And yet. The older I became the more entrenched the idea that young men were sent to die for old men who wanted things their way. And yet. When I was at Yale in the mid-sixties I seriously considered going back on active duty. Semper Fidelis. Go figure.
One day a mate of mine returned from the base library with a book he had borrowed. He was a very bright kid whose father was a physicist at Oak Ridge. "You gotta read this," he said and handed me the book. I can still see his face clearly, though I can't remember his name. The book was "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo. I do recall watching the McCarthy hearings on television, but I had no idea of the Hollywood blacklist, still less of Dalton Trumbo, a guy with a funny name. "What's it about?" I asked my friend. "Just read it," he said. So I did. And I was stunned. I'd figured the book was some kind of boy's story, something you might find in a magazine like Boy's Life or Argosy. It was about page fifty when I realized what I was reading. The voice telling the story was that of a horribly wounded soldier, WW1, who had been in an explosion that had destroyed his arms, his legs, and his face. He had been reduced to a torso, a hunk of meat with a brain, no eyes, no mouth, unable to communicate, only to think. As he gradually discovers what he has become, so does the reader, and the shock of recognition absolutely stunned me. How that book ever made it into a Marine Corps library I do not know? My guess is that whoever ordered it had no idea what it was about. Just a good old book about a good old boy. Yeah, right. What it was was a devastating story about a man turned into a piece of meat, only with a mind that still worked, still thought, still remembered, still pondered, still cried out in the silence of his soul to be as he once was. It was an agonizing read, and the image of this poor wretch has never left me. It was the dawn of my personal politics. Gradually, the notion took root that I and my buddies, guys I had grown to love and trust more than anyone on earth, were merely pawns in the games of power brokers. What was engendered was not revolt but ambivalence, some of which is with me to this day so many years later. Being a Marine meant you had become a member of the greatest fighting force on earth. There were no Green Berets, no Navy Seals; there were only the Marines. And I was one. And I was so proud of it. Even today when I hear the Marine Corps Hymn tears come to my eyes. I straighten up. Do not mess with me. I am ready for battle. Note this: every American military unit has a song: Anchors Away, the Wild Blue Yonder, the Caissons Are Marching Along. Only the Marine Corps has a hymn. A hymn! Its final lines are, "If the Army and the Navy ever look on heaven's scene, they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines." And yet. The older I became the more entrenched the idea that young men were sent to die for old men who wanted things their way. And yet. When I was at Yale in the mid-sixties I seriously considered going back on active duty. Semper Fidelis. Go figure.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Codger? Curmudgeon? Choose one. Uh, no thanks.
One day early last Summer Max and I sat on the front porch theorizing about why West Kill Mountain had thus far turned green only by its bottom half. It had been a brutal winter capped by a seven-foot blizzard, and both of us were ready for fat leaves and sunshine. The daffodils had flowered. The forsythia was a thousand bursts of sunlight. Lilacs were only two or three days away, but the top half of the mountain remained drab and barren. A few years ago a plague of gypsy moths denuded these mountains, and they looked like that. We felt we had been robbed of our spring. Caterpillars seemed to hang in mid-air, their silken threads invisible in the bright sun. Folks were burning larvae sacs out of their trees. They’d use apple pickers stuffed with burning newspaper to reach them. Then billions of black flies – I mean BILLIONS AND BILLIONS AND BILLIONS -- descended in an angry cloud to search and devour every morsel remotely resembling moth. Local scuttlebutt had it that the forestry department dumped them over the Catskills to counter the moths. There are lots of rumors, none of them corroborated, about what the forestry department does from bringing in wolves and mountain lions to problem bears from other districts. But, we were talking about flies. At least, the moths kept their distance. The flies infiltrated our wrap around screen porch with the skill of trained sappers and did their best to crawl into our ears.until one morning they were no longer there, none of them, none at all, not one. They’d disappeared as suddenly as they’d come.
So, Max and I, that early summer day sitting on the porch, unanimously decided that, since there were no gypsy moths around, West Kill mountain must be slow this year due to the penetrating cold. It took us two cups of coffee each to come to that conclusion. Then Andrea came running by.
Andrea is a model who lives a couple miles down the valley and runs the road when weather permits and sometimes when it doesn’t. She’s tall, from Oklahoma, a stunning mix of Black and Native American. Usually, we simply call out to each other, and she keeps going. This time she came up to the porch – the first time she’d ever done that – and she was laughing, pointing at me and Max and bent over laughing.
“Somebody ought to videotape you two,” she laughed. “Couple of local characters, all right. Couple of codgers like those guys from the Muppets.” She thought this was a riot. “I’m serious,” she said. “Talk into a tape recorder. I just know you got tales to tell. You’re livin’ history. Spill it.”
Um, wait a minute. Back up. Past beans, past living history, past stories to tell. Back. Back. Codgers! Hold it right there. Codger. Now, someone generations my junior might mistake me for one, especially if I haven’t shaved for a few days, but they’d be wrong. And anyway Andrea was looking at me through a screen that no doubt hampered her vision. The point is: I have worked hard at not being a codger, an ugly word, by the way. Codger. It sounds like you’re trying to spit up something. I like the word “curmudgeon”, its synonym, and, consequently, “curmudgeonly”. I like it’s sound and the odd way it looks, and, I admit, at one time I deemed it something to which I sort of aspired: the notion of the crotchety but lovable old geezer. I knew a guy named Bill back in Montana who aspired to some day be like his grandfather. The old man sat in the back yard with a .22 rifle and shot the pigeons that landed on the phone wires overhead. We laughed at such a cantankerous old fart, for that he was, but there was something in me that looked at this as a possibility. A cute, old guy, you know, a crank with a heart of gold. That guy.
One day – I don’t know if we were married, yet – but one day I was regaling Jamie with the notion of an old curmudgeon, convinced there was something endearing about it. I made sure to tell her about Bill’s grandfather. She reacted as if to a really vile smell. “What’s so cute about that?” she wanted to know. “You go that route, you go it alone.” I saw her point. I’ve got a notion of what I’d like to be as I grow older, but it ain’t that. If I ever flip old codger on you, kick my butt and tell me to act my age.
So, Max and I, that early summer day sitting on the porch, unanimously decided that, since there were no gypsy moths around, West Kill mountain must be slow this year due to the penetrating cold. It took us two cups of coffee each to come to that conclusion. Then Andrea came running by.
Andrea is a model who lives a couple miles down the valley and runs the road when weather permits and sometimes when it doesn’t. She’s tall, from Oklahoma, a stunning mix of Black and Native American. Usually, we simply call out to each other, and she keeps going. This time she came up to the porch – the first time she’d ever done that – and she was laughing, pointing at me and Max and bent over laughing.
“Somebody ought to videotape you two,” she laughed. “Couple of local characters, all right. Couple of codgers like those guys from the Muppets.” She thought this was a riot. “I’m serious,” she said. “Talk into a tape recorder. I just know you got tales to tell. You’re livin’ history. Spill it.”
Um, wait a minute. Back up. Past beans, past living history, past stories to tell. Back. Back. Codgers! Hold it right there. Codger. Now, someone generations my junior might mistake me for one, especially if I haven’t shaved for a few days, but they’d be wrong. And anyway Andrea was looking at me through a screen that no doubt hampered her vision. The point is: I have worked hard at not being a codger, an ugly word, by the way. Codger. It sounds like you’re trying to spit up something. I like the word “curmudgeon”, its synonym, and, consequently, “curmudgeonly”. I like it’s sound and the odd way it looks, and, I admit, at one time I deemed it something to which I sort of aspired: the notion of the crotchety but lovable old geezer. I knew a guy named Bill back in Montana who aspired to some day be like his grandfather. The old man sat in the back yard with a .22 rifle and shot the pigeons that landed on the phone wires overhead. We laughed at such a cantankerous old fart, for that he was, but there was something in me that looked at this as a possibility. A cute, old guy, you know, a crank with a heart of gold. That guy.
One day – I don’t know if we were married, yet – but one day I was regaling Jamie with the notion of an old curmudgeon, convinced there was something endearing about it. I made sure to tell her about Bill’s grandfather. She reacted as if to a really vile smell. “What’s so cute about that?” she wanted to know. “You go that route, you go it alone.” I saw her point. I’ve got a notion of what I’d like to be as I grow older, but it ain’t that. If I ever flip old codger on you, kick my butt and tell me to act my age.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
MORGAN STATE COLLEGE, AUGUST, 1963 - MLK'S BIRTHDAY, JAN, 2011
Forty-seven years ago. Wow, what a long time! I was twenty-two, a student at Morgan State back then, so, as Morgan was a Black college and I was the only white man in matriculation at the time, there was no way I could avoid the March on Washington and ever show my face on campus again. I had been a student at Morgan long enough to begin to grasp the cancer that was racism. Is racism. Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat. Courageous students in North Carolina sat in at a whites only lunch counter. I would be on that march. Period. I was determined to make a statement.
Morgan’s campus crackled with anticipation. Busses were hired to carry students to and from D.C. I don’t remember how I got there, but I don’t think I went on a bus from Morgan. Something tells me I went to the bus station downtown and took myself over on a Greyhound. I wore a suit and tie, polished cordovan wingtips, and a fresh haircut. I realized I did not want to be part of a contingent. It wasn’t, I don’t think, the ego’s fear of getting lost in the crowd but the inability to make a statement.because I’d be invisible, and, if I were invisible, what was the point?
I’d been cautioned by my mother in Baltimore not to get involved, however, as I’d been lying to her for most of my remembered life, anyway, I had no trouble assuring her not to worry. I had to go to work; I wouldn’t be there. Don’t worry, ma.
How I got from the D.C. bus station to the march I cannot remember, but I do remember being on the march itself: a nice, naive Jewish boy without a sign in an ivy league suit and button down shirt, all by his lonesome. I felt more exposed than any time before in my life. It was hot, but I kept my tie neatly around my neck and my suit jacket buttoned with the cuffs of my shirt a proper single inch beyond the jacket sleeve, and still I wondered if this was what it felt like to be stark naked facing a pack of snarling dogs? Not that I was. Not that they were. Not yet. That would come, but I have no memory of hecklers that day. I went with the crowd as it pushed towards the Lincoln Memorial and found myself in position to see Dr. King quite well while he gave his legendary speech: “I have a dream…” His words snatched those snarling dogs and shut them up quick. I heard the words clearly and knew I had just witnessed something extraordinary.
I don’t remember going back to Baltimore, but, that evening, my mother asked me how my day was in that way she had when she knew she’d nailed you. I said, “Fine.”
“Work was…?” she asked.
“Fine,” I answered.
“You lied to me,” she said, and I knew she knew, though she remained uncharacteristically composed.
“How’d you know?”
“Your cousin, Doris, called from San Diego. Her whole family spotted you today on tv.”
“Yeah?”
“Every network.”
“What’d they say?”
“They said you looked respectable.”
“I guess so,“ I said and wagged my tie.
“Where is this going to lead?” she wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
I wasn’t lying. I really didn’t. I still don’t.
Morgan’s campus crackled with anticipation. Busses were hired to carry students to and from D.C. I don’t remember how I got there, but I don’t think I went on a bus from Morgan. Something tells me I went to the bus station downtown and took myself over on a Greyhound. I wore a suit and tie, polished cordovan wingtips, and a fresh haircut. I realized I did not want to be part of a contingent. It wasn’t, I don’t think, the ego’s fear of getting lost in the crowd but the inability to make a statement.because I’d be invisible, and, if I were invisible, what was the point?
I’d been cautioned by my mother in Baltimore not to get involved, however, as I’d been lying to her for most of my remembered life, anyway, I had no trouble assuring her not to worry. I had to go to work; I wouldn’t be there. Don’t worry, ma.
How I got from the D.C. bus station to the march I cannot remember, but I do remember being on the march itself: a nice, naive Jewish boy without a sign in an ivy league suit and button down shirt, all by his lonesome. I felt more exposed than any time before in my life. It was hot, but I kept my tie neatly around my neck and my suit jacket buttoned with the cuffs of my shirt a proper single inch beyond the jacket sleeve, and still I wondered if this was what it felt like to be stark naked facing a pack of snarling dogs? Not that I was. Not that they were. Not yet. That would come, but I have no memory of hecklers that day. I went with the crowd as it pushed towards the Lincoln Memorial and found myself in position to see Dr. King quite well while he gave his legendary speech: “I have a dream…” His words snatched those snarling dogs and shut them up quick. I heard the words clearly and knew I had just witnessed something extraordinary.
I don’t remember going back to Baltimore, but, that evening, my mother asked me how my day was in that way she had when she knew she’d nailed you. I said, “Fine.”
“Work was…?” she asked.
“Fine,” I answered.
“You lied to me,” she said, and I knew she knew, though she remained uncharacteristically composed.
“How’d you know?”
“Your cousin, Doris, called from San Diego. Her whole family spotted you today on tv.”
“Yeah?”
“Every network.”
“What’d they say?”
“They said you looked respectable.”
“I guess so,“ I said and wagged my tie.
“Where is this going to lead?” she wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
I wasn’t lying. I really didn’t. I still don’t.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
MORE MAX & SOME ON STONE WALLS
I’ve roamed these woods and fields for more than 27 years now, and still I come across piled stone walls in unexpected places, centuries of grunt work done by hand. Country like this can wear you down. This land grows rocks as easily as it grows spruce trees. You can’t so much as plant a sapling without clearing dozens of rocks from the hole. If there were only a way to make some money off them!
Years ago, the first Winter that we lived here, I was tromping around after a major snowfall when a red fox led me to something odd. The sight of a red fox on virgin snow is rare and very beautiful, a ruby in the rough. He saw me first, I’m sure. Wood creatures usually know you’re there before you do. The fox stood on a small rise looking back at me over its shoulder. I stopped as soon as I saw it, and, nearly the instant I did, the fox took off at a trot towards a configuration of stones I’d never seen before, dove in, and disappeared. It must have been his den. Clear sets of tracks showed his comings and goings, and the piles of stone slabs seemed to be an old foundation. But it was deep in the woods and hard to reach, and made me wonder who had lived there? I figured Max would know. He’s lived most of his 56 years up here and knows about everything there is to know including local gossip. He stopped by later in the week, and I asked him. Turns out local scuttlebutt has it that at one time the insane were housed there. It must have been a cold and miserable place. I’m not superstitious, but now, during a storm when the wind wails and moans, my mind turns to Purgatory and the misery of lost souls. Of course, I don’t believe this, however, if I’d lived a hundred years ago I might have.
One day, Max and I got to talking about these walls. We’d both heard that landscape designers were pillaging them for the owners of second homes. Rocks with lichen were especially valuable, and rocks with lichen were what we had, tons and tons of rocks with lichen. We could take apart some of these hidden stone walls that no one could see and go to market with them. Being the astute businessman that I am, this idea went nowhere. Well, almost nowhere. Max raided a wall behind the barn, trucked the stone slabs to the front of our house, and then spent innumerable days putting them together again. Max would stand there and study the stones with the concentration of a chess player until he saw how best they fit, and now an old stone wall, precisely built and balanced, borders our front lawn. It’s a beauty, impressive as any stone wall is impressive, but, if you look closely to see how perfectly it’s been put together, it’s even moreso. Max is as proud of this construction as any sculptor would be, and the sight of it never fails to give me great pleasure.
Years ago, the first Winter that we lived here, I was tromping around after a major snowfall when a red fox led me to something odd. The sight of a red fox on virgin snow is rare and very beautiful, a ruby in the rough. He saw me first, I’m sure. Wood creatures usually know you’re there before you do. The fox stood on a small rise looking back at me over its shoulder. I stopped as soon as I saw it, and, nearly the instant I did, the fox took off at a trot towards a configuration of stones I’d never seen before, dove in, and disappeared. It must have been his den. Clear sets of tracks showed his comings and goings, and the piles of stone slabs seemed to be an old foundation. But it was deep in the woods and hard to reach, and made me wonder who had lived there? I figured Max would know. He’s lived most of his 56 years up here and knows about everything there is to know including local gossip. He stopped by later in the week, and I asked him. Turns out local scuttlebutt has it that at one time the insane were housed there. It must have been a cold and miserable place. I’m not superstitious, but now, during a storm when the wind wails and moans, my mind turns to Purgatory and the misery of lost souls. Of course, I don’t believe this, however, if I’d lived a hundred years ago I might have.
One day, Max and I got to talking about these walls. We’d both heard that landscape designers were pillaging them for the owners of second homes. Rocks with lichen were especially valuable, and rocks with lichen were what we had, tons and tons of rocks with lichen. We could take apart some of these hidden stone walls that no one could see and go to market with them. Being the astute businessman that I am, this idea went nowhere. Well, almost nowhere. Max raided a wall behind the barn, trucked the stone slabs to the front of our house, and then spent innumerable days putting them together again. Max would stand there and study the stones with the concentration of a chess player until he saw how best they fit, and now an old stone wall, precisely built and balanced, borders our front lawn. It’s a beauty, impressive as any stone wall is impressive, but, if you look closely to see how perfectly it’s been put together, it’s even moreso. Max is as proud of this construction as any sculptor would be, and the sight of it never fails to give me great pleasure.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Please let me know...
Folks, I'd much appreciate it if you'd let me know if you are receiving my blog, Growing Older.
You can reach me:
shf@wildblue.net
stephenhforemanblog@gmail.com
And, if you like it, please pass it on to your contact list.
Thnx
Stephen
You can reach me:
shf@wildblue.net
stephenhforemanblog@gmail.com
And, if you like it, please pass it on to your contact list.
Thnx
Stephen
Spruceton Valley & My buddy, Max
I live 4.6 miles up County Route 6 at the far end of Spruceton Valley in the hamlet of Spruceton, village of West Kill, town of Lexington, County of Greene, the northern edge of the Catskill range, upstate NY. I-phones do not work here. There is no cable. The local market is half an hour away. Sometimes an hour passes without a vehicle coming by the house. There is no rush hour. It is very quiet, and, in Winter when the creek is completely frozen and covered with two feet of snow, there is no sound at all. At some point, a single crow might caw once, brittle in the frigid air. Once swallowed by silence.
The first recorded deed on the property was in 1820. It was a farm and then, when we bought it, a hunting lodge with thirteen bedrooms, each with a sink equipped with spring-loaded faucets that snapped back the instant you let them go. You could lose a finger on one of those things. Changes were made, rooms knocked out. The house gradually became ours. It’s comfortable, and we love it, but don’t think Martha Stewart. High end it’s not. Some might say it needs work. It does. We bought the place complete with every plate, pot, pan, and piece of flatware, and, decades later, we’re still using them. The irony is that these same plates and bowls sell for a fortune now in antique shops and flea markets, and we’ve got service for about forty. Suddenly our stuff is chic instead of curious. . Everything recycles, even our dishes. Nothing short of a sledgehammer can shatter them, and buster, you’d better hit it just right. They will live forever. Certainly, they will outlive me.
My buddy, Max, came by today. I knew he would because we had a big snowfall, and he’d be out plowing people’s driveways. He stops in regularly, snow or not, and drinks two cups of coffee before moving on. We have a deal, Max and I. He can walk into the house any time without knocking then go ahead and make a cup of coffee for himself. Makes one for me, too, but the deal is that if I’m seriously working I’ll stay at my desk and not socialize. Fine with Max. He sits at my dining room table reading catalogues and magazines until the coffee’s gone and it’s time for another lawn or another driveway or a favor to do for somebody. Then he yells, “Burn ‘er, bub” and goes about his business. When he doesn’t show (which happens only when he’s away on vacation or with in-laws for holidays) I’ll often go days without seeing anyone at all. My closest full-time neighbor lives a quarter mile west. My children are in Boston, and my wife works in LA. My job is to write novels and keep the home fires burning. Good thing I like silence because I’ve got it.
Max plows our driveway and mows our fields, and he stops in at random times during the week, basically, to see if I’m still alive. Recently he actually admitted it – “Well, y’know, Steve, you’re getting’ up there. You might not look it but still you’re getting’ up there. I gotta look in on you time to time to make sure, you know…” Yeah, I know, and actually I’ve suspected so for years. His visits have kept me aware of my mortality in a way that nothing else does. We joke that he’ll find me one sub-arctic day stiff and frozen solid standing in the bathroom with my shotgun poked out the open window eternally waiting to ambush the red squirrels chewing the timbers of my house (Unless you have experienced a plague of red squirrels run amuck through your house in biblical proportions, don’t criticize.). More likely he’ll find me at my computer with the usual look of literary anguish frozen on my face, but I don’t tell him that. I’m not going to do anything to diminish my legend. Like a Frederick Remington scout or a Charlie Russell.free trapper I want to be remembered standing tall not hunched over a keyboard.like Scrooge’s clerk who didn’t have a keyboard, I know, but you get the picture.
The first recorded deed on the property was in 1820. It was a farm and then, when we bought it, a hunting lodge with thirteen bedrooms, each with a sink equipped with spring-loaded faucets that snapped back the instant you let them go. You could lose a finger on one of those things. Changes were made, rooms knocked out. The house gradually became ours. It’s comfortable, and we love it, but don’t think Martha Stewart. High end it’s not. Some might say it needs work. It does. We bought the place complete with every plate, pot, pan, and piece of flatware, and, decades later, we’re still using them. The irony is that these same plates and bowls sell for a fortune now in antique shops and flea markets, and we’ve got service for about forty. Suddenly our stuff is chic instead of curious. . Everything recycles, even our dishes. Nothing short of a sledgehammer can shatter them, and buster, you’d better hit it just right. They will live forever. Certainly, they will outlive me.
My buddy, Max, came by today. I knew he would because we had a big snowfall, and he’d be out plowing people’s driveways. He stops in regularly, snow or not, and drinks two cups of coffee before moving on. We have a deal, Max and I. He can walk into the house any time without knocking then go ahead and make a cup of coffee for himself. Makes one for me, too, but the deal is that if I’m seriously working I’ll stay at my desk and not socialize. Fine with Max. He sits at my dining room table reading catalogues and magazines until the coffee’s gone and it’s time for another lawn or another driveway or a favor to do for somebody. Then he yells, “Burn ‘er, bub” and goes about his business. When he doesn’t show (which happens only when he’s away on vacation or with in-laws for holidays) I’ll often go days without seeing anyone at all. My closest full-time neighbor lives a quarter mile west. My children are in Boston, and my wife works in LA. My job is to write novels and keep the home fires burning. Good thing I like silence because I’ve got it.
Max plows our driveway and mows our fields, and he stops in at random times during the week, basically, to see if I’m still alive. Recently he actually admitted it – “Well, y’know, Steve, you’re getting’ up there. You might not look it but still you’re getting’ up there. I gotta look in on you time to time to make sure, you know…” Yeah, I know, and actually I’ve suspected so for years. His visits have kept me aware of my mortality in a way that nothing else does. We joke that he’ll find me one sub-arctic day stiff and frozen solid standing in the bathroom with my shotgun poked out the open window eternally waiting to ambush the red squirrels chewing the timbers of my house (Unless you have experienced a plague of red squirrels run amuck through your house in biblical proportions, don’t criticize.). More likely he’ll find me at my computer with the usual look of literary anguish frozen on my face, but I don’t tell him that. I’m not going to do anything to diminish my legend. Like a Frederick Remington scout or a Charlie Russell.free trapper I want to be remembered standing tall not hunched over a keyboard.like Scrooge’s clerk who didn’t have a keyboard, I know, but you get the picture.
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