Donkeyland—! Sketches of a Shoeshine Boy

No Laughing Matter

2009-11-30T15:22:00.000-08:00

(Donkeyland, a Side Street Saga—a 1950)

They were rather a grubby and unruly bunch (The Donkeyland Gang, so the police called them, us), and they were sometimes pretty rebellious, but just the same, like any other large neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the 1950s, and early ‘60s, they had their self-importance. They pert near all stuck together. Just suppose you had a few too many drinks in the neighborhood, on a weekend night, and you felt a little argumentative, or confrontational and not reluctant to a fight yourself, and you happened to meet someone, a stranger, down around the turnaround where the guys hung-out, and he got smart with you, and you gave him a little lip back, “Come on lets duke it out!”
And the stranger got ready to punch you out—
He better not do that. The devil only knows how many of the neighborhood guys you’d have on your hands. It would be like Custer’s last stand. They’d come forward like lightening, appearing out of nowhere, out of the allies, and houses and behind trees, and garages, as it were.
Now you take anyone of them guys. You could trust those fellows (well, most of them). None of them would stick a knife into you anyhow. That’s what they’d not do.
And just think of it, most of the girls from that neighborhood would marry into that bunch. I suppose that’s no way to put it. But that’s how it was. There were a few fellows, crazy like bananas, and there were a few smart-alecks of the neighborhood, young men who should have known better, encouraging the crazy one’s to do crazy things. I don’t remember any philosophic ones, but Roger would make wise-cracks about people…and Doug was one of the smart-alecks, and Jerry (we called him Ace) and Dan (just crazy Dan) were two of the crazy’s. And Gunner was Mike, my brother, who liked to windup the engines in his hotrods lay rubber on the street—as they referred to it back then, and mouse was really Gary, the mechanic, and Chick Evens, the poet (that’s me), to name a few, and there were a lot of cousins among the Lund’s.
On the weekends, especially on Friday nights, and sometimes all day on Saturday, thru Sunday afternoons, there’d be a party out there at Jerry and Betty Hino’s house. There’d be beer, plenty of that, and wine and sometimes there’d be some whiskey, even sometimes friends of the bunch in the neighborhood would show up, drop a name, and join in on the party, folks who really were not of the neighborhood. And some of us drank so hard, and in time died of the sickness. But Betty was always friendly and willing to share her hot meals to those who would stick around and drink for several hours. Between the two, Jerry and Better, I think they had fourteen-kids (from previous marriages).
And there were among us, all kinds of rough people too.
There were several girls unmarried, Nancy and Carol, and Jennie, and her sister Jacky, and Katharine and her twin sister (whom Chick Evens dated both Jackie and Katharine for a season), and Jennie married, one of the Lund’s and there were two Nancy’s, one married a Lund, another David. And there was Shelly, who dated Roger; her father was the caretaker from Oakland Cemetery, near Cayuga Street.
But the parties never ended, nor the drinking, and sometimes dancing and singing and just general hell raising and maybe a fight or two. And when you turned sixteen or seventeen, when you looked older than you were, and found an ID, that said you were twenty-one, “What the hell?” most of us said, it’s my neighborhood, and off to the two bars that were on two corners one across from the other, by Jackson and Sycamore Streets. And there’d you’d start your bar drinking—thinking as we thought back then—a man’s king in his own neighborhood, ain’t he?
Chick, one of the two Evens’ boys, playing guitars with Bill K., and Sonny M., and singing Elvis and Rick Nelson songs, were sullen and seldom looking for a fight when they’d go drinking, and they were much like that at home. They’d rather be drinking and singing songs, like Johnny Cash’s, “Ring of Fire,” or Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel” or Rick Nelson’s “Traveling Man,” than breaking into boxcars for several cases of beer, or selling stolen copper back to the junkyards, from where they originally took it, although, Chick Evens was not innocent of those crimes completely.
And during those now far-off years, many of the boys ended up at Red Wing’s incarceration center for breaking the law— a sort of boystown, and some of boys ended up in prison and jail. These were the hard-boiled young men stilling cars and using them for racing in the neighborhood, among other things; which was no laughing matter.
And pretty near everyone smoked cigarettes—and in later years, pot, and there wasn’t any boy in the neighborhood who could out drink Ace, or out fight Larry. There was even a few that didn’t drink like Pat, who did much weightlifting, but those fellows you could count on one hand. And we’d say, “He’s fine, don’t bother him about drinking, he’s got to keep up those muscles,” and we all understood, Pat even got Chick Evens into weightlifting, and Pat’s sister, as pretty as a doll, never hung around with the bunch, I suppose she didn’t like everyone howling drunk.
I wasn’t much of a neighborhood guy, but you could live in it, if you were by a hair's breadth, friends with the neighbored itself. They lived. They married and had children. Now of course they are pretty old. Ace, perhaps seventy or more, he bought us boozes all the time (being underage); he was the oldest of the group. I’d like to know how their doing now, for they’re nearly all gone I hear. Some died, in the Vietnam War, alcoholism or/drugs, heart attacks, cancer, took them, and some were carried off to a state instruction; also accidents took a few like Sid and Kathy. Perhaps there were thirty of us, a few more a few less.
It was just a little strip of land, called Donkeyland, a mere street called Cayuga was the epicenter, which is now empty, a parking lot, and empty spaces, I suppose somewhere in that near vicinity, a new neighbor has taken its place, so I heard, with no code of honor. There will always be at least one such place; before us, there was the Mississippi Rats (a decade earlier), so I heard, and new one of those guys, they’d now be in their eighties.
We all played softball in that empty lot next to my grandfather’s house, and we got silly drunk and cross-eyed, in that empty lot, and turnaround (which was next to one another), and some of us, habitually silent, and some of us, had odd habits.
The neighborhood had no plan in life just innumerable funny angles, and eventually we all went to work, settled down. It’s like this: many of us simply crept out from under the bushes and did what we had to do. They were quite a bunch of men and women, and for the most part as I look back, it was no laughing matter, none of us took a disliking for the other, just some of us like me, walked quietly away.

No: 526 (11-28-2009)

Rape at Indians Mound (a Short Sketch)

2008-06-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

Rape at Indians Mound

A Chapter story from the short story called: “Bittersweet, Were her Kisses!” Written 2006, reedited 6-2008(Based on a true Story—1966)

[The Rape: 11:00 PM] I heard a voice calling for help, and then the voice called my name,
“Dennis, help, help, he’s raping me…!”
And so I left the party with its bonfire blazing, and crackling, and flickers of light, fire light from the wood rising high into the atmosphere. We were over on Indian’s Mound, across from a street called, Mississippi, off Cayuga Street. A party was going on for the kids that were graduating in 1966, I had graduated a year prior, but I knew all the kids, the gang, and then some.

“Please stop, help, Dennis, Dennis!”

I now confirmed it was Sandy’s voice I heard. I had brought her to the party, she wanted to come, I told her it was not wise, that the guys would get drunk and who knows what then. But she insisted, assured me she’d be careful, and not provoke anyone, or flirt all that much. She was at one time my girlfriend, I dated her a while, and then we seemed to drift off, and remained good friends, and I had not seen her the past few months all that much, except for this evening, she had asked me prior to take to this specific party, and she became familiar with a face she had seen at another party I had taken her to, a while ago, this face, Greg was his name, was a relative to a few of my best friends at the party.
I walked about the bushes looking for where the voice was, came from, said, “Where are you Sandy?” feeling the voice had to be her’s, I had a bottle, glass bottle of beer in my hands, looking here and there for her. I was now perhaps thirty-feet behind the fire, in the bushes, and there was Greg straddled over Sandy, slapping her, and tarring her cloths off, like a madman, calling her every name under the sun, like me he was drunk, perhaps drunker,
“What you doing,” I asked Greg (it really was a rhetorical question at best, I mean he know, she knew and I knew what he was trying to do).
In a puzzled way, Greg’s reply was, “What do you think I’m doing!”
So he know, I knew what he was doing to Sandy, and didn’t care who knew, so I said it as plain as he said it, “I know what your doing, you’re trying to rape Sandy, so stop it ,and get off her.”
“Get out of f… out of her, f…off!”
He was at the point of inserting his penis into her, and I said again, “I mean it, don’t do it—stop now!”
He repeated his vulgarity, but with a more stern voice, a voice that said to me: you’re disrupting my magical climax, my moment.
I pulled at his shoulders, and he shrugged me off, saying his choice two words, “f... off!” And proceeded to slap her again, I said in a rapid voice, “I can’t let this happen!”
But he paid no attention to me, and to my dismay, I grabbed him by the hair, twisted his face with his neck halfway around his body, and hit him with the bottle, perhaps two or three times, I don’t know for sure, and he fell backwards, laboriously, he ached himself, somewhat, like an infant,
“What did you do that for!” he cried, it’s funny; he knew everything else but that.
—I had thrown caution to the wind—I agree, Greg lay there on the ground, bellowing, his nose smashed flat, both eyes closed to sheer slits, his face one red facade of pulped fleshy tissue and blood, but through the slits of his eyelids his eyes still blazed with old darkness, it was a ferocious attack, I know, my hand still on the beer bottle, I then dropped it. His jaw, face, and head were in pain. I had knocked men down with one blow, or one straight and solid kick before, but not like this, I buckled him to the ground. I felt myself slipping, I like he was tired and half drunk, my legs trembling, but nonetheless, I rallied to Sandy, who was white from fright, and bruised in her face from his backhand slaps, she received, with her nose bleeding and a raw jaw, other bruises were on her thighs and back.
I heard in the distance a voice say, “Hey, what’s going on?”
When Sandy was being rapped, no one said a word, now when Greg was crying, the gang was starting to worry, a funny dilemma I’ll never understand. Thus, People were starting to gather and come over my way, by the bushes; I was at the end of my vitality.
I needed to get out of there, I knew it, had I stayed any longer, it would be me on the ground trying to fight his relatives I’m sure. I grabbed Sandy by the hand got off that hill quickly, Sandy still in a panic state.

(As years would pass by, Greg would never see it as rape, or if he did, he would complain I used excessive force, and he was right, I perhaps did, and really didn’t have to, I could have beat him fist to fist, but he didn’t allow that, he just wanted what he wanted. He never looked at what he was doing wrong, only that I wronged him. As I would tell him in time, it was one drunk to another, with the perpetrator, crying about his wounds. He was not sorry for what he did, he was simply sorry he did not get away with it. That somebody had the nerve to stop him, and stop him period, without respect, or with the same regard he was giving Sandy—which was zero.)

The Hospital

Greg was taken to the hospital; a number of stitches were used to close his wounds, ones that would leave scares.
As for Sandy, she also was taken to the hospital, for trauma, and bruises, and rape, which she did not name the culprit. The following day, I got a phone call from Sandy’s mother telling me how grateful she was that I stood firm with the man trying to rape her daughter. And she asked who he was, and I simply said, “Ask your daughter, if she wants to tell you, it should come from her.”
On the other side of the coin, Greg’s parents sent me some messages, several of them, from Greg’s family and friends, that they would not forget what I had done to him. He remained in the hospital for a few weeks for recovery.
My response was to his mother, “If you’re so upset, why not call the police, and tell them what I did, and what your son was doing, when I did it, and we can leave it up to the judge to decide if I was using excessive force or not.
I would perhaps have gotten a Blue Ribbon for my bad deed, as he and she, put it. Sandy assured me, her mother would press charges should Greg’s parents try to press charges, if we went to court, thus, it would be a rape case, not a assault and batter case, and that would put Greg away for a very long time, in prison, so everything was hushed up.

Tarantulas' Unver a Gibbous Moon (a chapter story

2008-06-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

The Green Sea of the Amazon (from the short story)

March/Summer of 2000 AD, in South America, the Peruvian Amazon, 125-miles from Iquitos (one of several chapters from the story of “The Green Seas of the Amazon”)

Tarantulas’ Under a Gibbous Moon

We were out and under the light of a gibbous moon, a romantic scene indeed, if you can eliminate the mosquitoes, and a few other items, the: the ants, and spiders, and snakes, and so forth, and few big cats dashing through the far-off distance between trees like a flash; nonetheless, the light was as if there were a hale around it, a radiation emanating from it.
The lodge was a good distance from us, now with our guide, in the thick of the jungle, the Amazon. This time there was no path to guide us, not like when we went to the Canopy, or the jungle village, but Avelino assured me he didn’t need one, it was his ‘backyard,’ so he said, matter-of-fact, he said that too many times, it made me suspicious, so I brought my flash light with, plan B, in case he lost his night vision.
Now we were in the dense jungle, a flashlight in his hands, and mine likewise, I guess he was no fool, he was bragging, trying to impress, I liked the guy, but I didn’t like the chances he took with his ego, at my expense. I was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, and even I at night, walked where there were arc lights, the moon was for the animals, not humans, that’s why God gave us electricity, we don’t have the eyes for the night, not modern man anyhow or city slickers.
The moon over our heads we could hardly see anyway, not now, the thick of the jungle was camouflage it—masking it, it peeked its beams through a few spaces of the leafage, but that was all, not even enough to see your hands if you wanted to wash them. Thus, looking for—none other than the big spiders was our mission this evening, the Tarantulas; my wife was with me, and I mean with me, almost on my back, almost had to piggyback her to and from wherever our jungle leader, Gunga Din or Tarzan, was take u s.
We were lucky in that we got our own personal guide and the other group three or four couples to group got one guide for them all. It was, as I wanted it to be, but not always did things turn out the way you wanted them to, on such excursions. We had gone Purina fishing the day before, I ate three perinea that evening, it was delicious, but bony.

As we walked into a deeper part of the rainforest, we past many large trees, larger and thicker than the thickest pillars of any cathedral I had yet seen (except one), and I’ve been in many cathedrals around the world: from Istanbul to Rome, and throughout South, Central, and North America— (and the biggest pillars I’ve yet to discover I found in an underground cathedral, in Colombia, outside of Bogotá called: La Catedral de Sal; 83-feet round; second place St. Paul, Minnesota, Cathedral, 42-feet, perhaps the Catedral de Sal had a larger circumference than the tree, if so it was the only pillars that could match these trees I saw; all along our sides was entangled shrubbery, a wealth of green—immense and at times burdensome. Rosa, my wife, walked shoulder to shoulder by me, if not a foot behind, and as far as I knew Avelino was walking every which way, it seems he knew and didn’t know his backyard as well as he said. But somehow we got him to slow down a bit, lest we get lost, and God help us then.
For me, a few of the stops we made, I got to rest when needed, plus we had stopped earlier in the day at Aveliono’s home village, perhaps—two-hundred natives to the area, several houses on sticks, or I should say, wooded four-by-fours; and a large school house, a square box type building, with a tin roof, and thin wooded sides for walls, not much but it served it purpose—
it now came to mind—as we walked through this thick foliage of a jungle at night—the story he told us, that being: his village was alongside the river, “We got to keep a good eye out on the children, they run off, and get into the bulky high grass, and the big cats come and pull them by the necks, or the snakes come and swallow them whole, but mothers can’t be everywhere all the time, can they…” so he said, rhetorically, with a look at me, a glace from the side of his left eye, as he turned his head to see if I was listening, as we walked from structure to structure in his village. And then he introduced us to his sister-in-law, as she appeared—seemingly out of nowhere, on the platform, of the school building.

All of a sudden we stopped by a big tree, our guide was checking out holes here and there, now he looked, stared at a thick trunk of a tree, it was perhaps thirty feet round, and its roots extended a half foot out of the ground, and a big hole was under one root—he saws it, the largest root it seemed of the tree, or what I could see of the tree, it was dark and the trunk and roots of the tree filled my eyes, and I dared not take them off what he was looking at.
“It’ll all work out,” he said looking at Rosa, and putting his stick into the hole, thinking perchance, Rosa might freak out or something. Rosa was behind me, I was about four-feet from the hole, and of course our guide was almost on top of it, possibly two-feet, with his stick inside of it, moving it about, disrupting—if indeed there was a family meeting going on down deep in it.
Then I saw, and I’m sure Rosa saw, long hairy, red creepy legs coming out of the hole: extending out inch by inch … all will be ok,” he said, not sure if he was talking to us or the creature inside the hole with the rustic legs halfway out; the legs turned out to be bushy like, more reddish-brown, huge spider legs, no, Tarantula legs: larger than my whole hand, legs longer than my fingers, as thick as my fingers, beady eyes. Rosa moved just a tinge,
“Where’d he come from,” she said.
“It’s his home,” said Avelino, “I woke him up, just for you.”
Rosa stood still, stone still by my side, almost on top of my shoulder and back, the creature seemed to have arched himself, lowered his back, as if to jump, and I was amazed, as the eyes of the creature kept staring at me, or so it seemed, and Avelino waved his long magic wand (or stick) around its legs, as if it tranquilized the creature, kept him from jumping, moving too fast. Now the creature stood still, as if guarding its hole, its abode, and we watched Gunga Din do his thing, around them legs, then he took the stick away; I had my flash light on the creature all the time. Then another long legged thick legged tarantula came out, perhaps the mate, as if to either protect its mate, or join in on the festivities. But the second one never came out all the way, like the first one did; it kept its guard, and remained halfway in the hole. And he was leaning over to get a better view of what he was doing, and I was leaning over with the flash light, and Rosa was leaning over on me, and the gibbous moon could be seen slightly through a porthole it would seem, the green sea tops of the trees.
“Be calm Rosa,” I said, I could hear her heart beating, and her breathing was heavy. She had my wife and sidekick only one month, he had gotten married in February of 2000, an it was now March, and I was finding out she was quite brave, even if she was scared, it did not make her run or hide or cry or anything, just extra couscous.
at this point, for less than a year, we had been married but been my she wanted to be part of everything, and she was. For such a small or short woman, she had the guts of a charging elephant, so I was learning
So here we were with two monstrous huge spiders, with beady eyes staring at us, and I guess it was to me, the funniest thing to see this stick tranquilize them to the point of curbing out the danger, to where there seemed not to be any. Fine, it had at that point been a full day, and therefore—after this escapade—we went back to the lodge and had a good night’s sleep, but first we ate our fish.

The Wild Huckleberry Boy (a short sketch)

2008-05-31T21:07:00.000-07:00

The Wild Huckleberry Boy
(1955-1958)

I called my friend, Michael Rosert, Huckleberry, or Huckleberry Mike; perhaps the reason being, he was wild, like the Huckleberry plant, he grew wild in the conservative City of the Midwest, a native St. Paul boy.
The Huckleberry is a fruit of Idaho, but the wild Huckleberry grows in the woods kind of a false berry. I might have chosen to say I was like Mike, but I think as I look back, he being a year or two younger than I, I followed him usually, not the other way around, and probably I was more influenced by him, then he, I.
The huckleberry comes in red and blue I am told, depending on the species, and they are grown according to the customs of the environment, the area they live in, and he accordingly became who he was because of that—and as you read on, that statement may make more sense.
I suppose also I called him the wild berry, or Huckleberry, because of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, they were like one another in many ways a century apart but nonetheless, of the same stock; there are so many reasons when I look back, at Mike, that I can relate him to the Wild Huckleberry, and now the quick synapse of Mike and me.
We did a lot together in those few formative years (1955 thru 1958). He lived in the inner circle of the city, I perhaps in the middle circle of the inner city, he lived in the more rummaged area, you could say, near Linda Macaulay, a girl we knew from school (St. Louis, by 10th and Cedar streets), and once I fought Mike over her, that is to say, over her honor, something like that, or perhaps it was my honor, and he said something I didn’t like and he wouldn’t take it back, and eventually he did, because I won of course, the fight, since I was a half foot taller than he.
On manly occasions before we went out for our adventure of the day, I’d have to wake Mike up, this was a process. I’d climb his apartment complex, up the side by the drain pipes, onto the second floor, scale the window ledges, knock on the window, and his mother and father, one would wake up, they all slept in one big room, two beds, a sofa chair, a divider for Mike (a table to the side, in a little cubbyhole of a room, called he kitchen, with three painted white wooden chairs) the divider, consisted of a cloths hanger, and a sheet draped over it, and I’d knock on the window and the mother or father would say:
“It’s your friend again Mike, he’s at the window, why’s he got to knock on the window, tell him to use the door.”
But the downstairs door was always locked, and one of the other tenants never came down to open it and neither did Mike or his family, so it was as it had to be I felt.
Fine, Mike would get up, open the window, and I’d wait in the kitchen as he readied himself.
Then we’d often head on downtown, walk along the Mississippi River bank, look into the caves, find an old bum or drunk, go kick him in the feet, throw sand in his face, and run like heck. Usually we’d end up on the Robert Street Bridge, looking over it as he scolded us from below, laughing our hearts sick.

I think Mike liked to tease the bums a lot, fill old wine bottles with unthinkable substances and give it to them, and again we’d jump on our bikes and peddle like the Roadrunner would, down to that old bridge. Then in the afternoons we’d go into Woolworth, or Grants department stores, and buy cigarettes out of the vending machines, and if the manage was looking, run again. In Junior High School, I went out for track, and the reason I think I was so good—for I won all state—was because I had so much prior experience with Mike running from those bums, and managers and so forth.
Once we went out to a farm, we talked Mike’s father into taking us, and we never saw a pigs, giant hogs testacies so huge, and they were huge, and we laughed so hard in front of his mother and father, we had gut aches, and when we had to explain why we were laughing, insanely, it made it worse, and the father laughed, and the mother didn’t know what to do and said, “You guys are so silly.” And we were, and even she couldn’t hold it back, and had a little chuckle too, but was a little red in the face.
There was a summer, one summer if I recall right, we went searching through vacant houses, rummaging through, they were building new government buildings, and many bridges, and highways, in downtown St. Paul—in time people would refer to that section as ‘Spaghetti Junction,’ (and in a decade have to tare down half those multi million dollar bridges for wider ones, and replace them elsewhere) well, it was tenant housing for the most part, and my brother had his paper route there, and I and Mike searched those houses, got a few items, and jumped over a few bums sleeping, again running from them on occasions, but once I found a map of the United States, 1846, and I treasured that, and told myself: someday Dennis you’re going to see it all, and I have seen 46-states out of fifty to this writing. On another day, I found an old picture, framed, it was of Notre Dame de Paris, again I treasured it, and I went to Paris four times in my life, and perhaps forty-times inside that cathedral. It’s funny, but true; we sometimes fulfill childhood dreams, even if it takes a life time.
We’d go out to Como Park, Mike and I, walk around, and if he or I had a few dollars, or cents, we’d go on a ride. Once we had our picture taken from one of those old camera men, with an old camera on an old tripod stand, and for half an hour the old man tried to get us perfect, “Stand here, stand there, over there, its to sunny there, move over here in the shade,” and so forth, and then took the picture, and it got sun in it, and Mike had fifteen cents, and I had a dime, and the picture was thirty-cents, and so we were five cents short, and Mike told the man, “Look, the sun got a portion of the picture, so why not cut us a deal, make it twenty-five cents,” and the man did, and we got the picture. Mike got the negative; back in those days with those kind of cameras, you first made a negative, then the picture, and I got the picture, not sure why, Mike paid the better half, if I recall.

Well, this writing is more of a tribute to Michael Rosert, of those far-off days, the wild huckleberry, the one who used to push all those buttons on the elevator, at the Emporium Department store riding up and own the elevator as if it was his private jet, and perhaps it was.

May 31, 2008

Christmas in Luxembourg, 1975 (Ville de Remich)

2008-05-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

Christmas in Luxembourg, 1975
Ville de Remich

Part Christmas Eve Day

From Germany, I headed west, to Luxembourg, crossed the boards with little to no difficulties. I went by car, a 1967-VW, dull green in color, it was not the best running of cars but it seemed it could make at two-hundred and fifty miles, so I decided to take a quick trip. The road was dotted with quaint, rural hamlets that most people associate with fairy tales. It was midwinter, and winter in Luxembourg, is not as extreme as it can be in nearby countries, and I had been to Europe a dozen times, and during this tour duty, I was stationed near Darmstadt, Germany. For a land locked country, it had what I would call pretty standard climate. It was a day before Christmas. The trees were filled with crystal like frost, as I drove through an area that seemed the landscape had its share of wooded extremes. A very beautiful and pleasant area, it was brisk in the woods, and when I drove out of it, it was cool, with a warm sun leaning on top of my car. I had my two boys, Cody and Shawn with me, twins; they were five the previous October. I found myself in a little quaint village called Ville de Remich, I didn’t see much of it, I stopped the car to have breakfast, the street was of cobblestone, and the guesthouse, was old Germanic in style, the owner with an apron on, looked at me and my two boys, it was Christmas Eve morning, and no one was in the guesthouse, no guests that is, no one but the proprietor, and he was I fear about to say: we are closed, but his wife walked up, and asked,
“…do you need something?”
“Yes,” I said, “for me and my boys, a room for the night and breakfast.”
“Well, ok,” she said, “but tomorrow is Christmas, and I do hope you will not be staying over that day, we are always closed.”
I assured her we had just come for the day and evening, that we’d like to have breakfast if possible, and we’d be gone early Christmas Morning. In between, we would go to the nearby cemetery I noticed on the way down, and climb those 100-steps up to its domain, and visit the city. And she and her elder husband both looked at each other, then back at my twin boys, and me, “Ok,” they confirmed, and I filled out a guest slip.

Breakfast

The boys and I sat outside around a wooded table, and chairs, my car parked alongside the road, and cars being driven by, it was chilly, but not cold, cold, everything in the café area was put up on tables, the chairs and ashtrays, and so forth, a message they were not expecting any company on Christmas Eve day.
I ordered eggs and bacon, toast and jam, milk and coffee for the breakfast, and all three of us, Shawn, Cody and me, sat waiting, I think our mouths were salivating, we were hungry. I had thought she understood the order, she brought three pouched eggs, which I did not know how to eat, but would learn quick, I had to ask him how to go about it, “You just crack the egg on the top with your spoon, the shell,” he said, “then dig out the inside of the egg and eat it.”
I had a hard time doing that for some odd reason, can you imagine the boys. Anyhow, we did not get bacon, but we got bread and butter and jam, and that was that, and the boys did get hot milk and I got coffee, and that again was that, I dare not complain, although I left a kind of empty blank face, when I paid for the meal.

And then we did go on to see that cemetery, and the village and that night I bought two large beers and drank them down, and kind of stared out the windows, looked at my boys, cut, blond hair, blue eyes. They were good boys, never complained much, or cried much, only fought and laughed with one another too much, but not creating any profound disturbance.

Part Two: Xmas Day, 1975

It was Christmas day, and we had said our goodbyes to the owners of the guesthouse, and had about 250-miles to travel back to Darmstadt, or thereabouts. As we got on our way, it seemed to be a long road back, our brakes were going out, mental on metal, squeaking and burning up, and you could smell them. The twins knew something was wrong but not exactly what. As we drove further, into a hilly area, the sky turned dark, and the transmission was jamming in first gear, couldn’t get it out, thus I drove in first gear for miles. The heaters had stopped working and the fan belt had broken, the car spit and sputtered; when we’d get to a long hill, I turned the car off, and rolled down the hill allowing the motor to cool, and then popped the clutch to start the car again—it was indeed a long and trying morning, and extended into the afternoon, and we got no place it seemed, I mean we should have been back home by 4:00 PM, but it wasn’t going to happen, we’d make it home by 9:00 PM that evening.
It was turning out to be a worrisome Christmas Day. The boys had insulated snow suites on, I had purchased them in Minnesota, oversized knowing they could and would grow into them, and glad I did. Finally we drove along side of a guesthouse, it was closed for business, but in the back of the building, some lights were on. Actually, we were on a lonely road, deserted somewhat. And I really didn’t know what to do, and I put the hood up, of the car up, and knocked on the door, and asked to purchase some food for the kids (the woman of the house, brought out sandwiches for the boys and me), and they speaking German, and me a little German, along with English, and sign language, I got the message through. The middle aged man in the house saw the car, took a look at the motor, knew we were in trouble, and went back to his garage, and found an old fan belt, it was too big for my car, very loose the say the least.
“You got to drive slowly,” the German said, indicating if I didn’t and if I went over too many bumps, the belt would fly off and perhaps get entangled into my motor, and loosen up or break my fan.
Well, what could I say but thank you and I had a hot cup of coffee, and the boys got some more bread and cheese with ham, and they would not take any money, it was Christmas, and they felt they just couldn’t. It all took an hour or so, and I felt I was intruding, but in life to get a step ahead, is exactly what you got to do, intrude, lest you die where you stand, waiting for somebody to say something only to find out they will say nothing. And I think they both bite into their lips, wanting to say, “Wish we could have you stay until morning,” it was now about 3:00 PM, we had left at about 11:00 AM, and it was now even darker, gray dark, not black dark. A snow storm was building up slowly.

When we arrived at our apartment in Babenhausen, Germany (although we had actually left from Darmstadt on the trip), the boys were tired and fell to sleep like two little sheep, and I sat up, had a beer, a cigarette, and was thankful for the trip, and got rid of that junk heap of a car a week later.

Written: 5-30-2008

An Afternoon in Gibraltar (a short and quick romance)

2008-05-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

An Afternoon in Gibraltar
((and along the Costa del Sol) (12-1997))

“All right. Yes. Now will you let me tell you what I want to do?” I told the young lady.
Now that I look back I don’t even recall her name. She was sitting on the bus; we had combed the Costa del Sol that is along the coast of Spain that connects to the Mediterranean Sea. There were twenty-seven of us on the bus. She sat by me during two days of the trip, we talked, she was pretty, about twenty-eight years old, I was forty-eight. No expectations. She was from Bucharest. And now she was sitting with me in a little pub, on a cobblestone street in the land of Gibraltar, a British annexed state, with its own kind of sovereign; her with a glass of wine, me with a glass of coke, and both of us eating a sandwich each.
“Now that we have come this far with each other,” she laughingly says, “as you were about to do, tell me what you want to do the rest of the afternoon, I think that is on your mind—something tells me you decided before you got off the bus to climb that rock (The Rock of Gibraltar).”
We were, for the most part, on its bottom rim.
Her dark eyes penetrated my blue, and she must had been reading my mind, because that is exactly what I was contemplating, and about to suggest if she wanted to keep me company, and I did suggest this to her, and she more than willingly took this as a fill- in for the rest of the afternoon.

We took the taxi as high as we could up the big rock, considered one of the ‘Pillars of Hercules’. Then I said,
“I’m going to climb into the cement cage like area on top, with that cannon extending outward from us, you see, it’s there is a little tree by its side?”
She looks, a sign on the highway fills her view, a little further up the road (she looked at the sign, the little tree, said), “It says Dennis, no trespassing.”
“Yes,” I replied, “but I am no prisoner of course to such rules, they are to protect the uncurious, or better put, the unadventurous.”
She looked at me as if she was a shocked salesgirl, and then my face changed to: chose which way you want to go, up or down, but I’m going up, and I started climbing up the rock’s side, and it was straight up, up, up!
“I’ll beat you up there,” she said, and she started immediately climbing.
These of course were the wrong words coming from a woman, and I had to meet the challenge, and she was wrong, I beat her, and the taste of victory was good, she gave me a kiss on the cheek, and we strolled about the World War II, vintage tower of sorts, overlooking the area below. For the moment we both were contented, you see, it was perhaps the best view on all the Rock of Gibraltar. Below you could see the small airport they had, small as it was, the Tram that came up the Rock near us but not near enough to protest we were there, if indeed an official was on board, the winding streets leading up the Rock were visible, a few of the residential monkey’s were being fed by the tourists, below, they looked like peanuts, but a few had climbed nearby, they were really all over the mountain, as the legend goes: “When the monkey’s disappear, so will the people (something like that).”
Then my friend from Bucharest said, “That tree,” pointing to the small tree, “I can climb it higher than you,” and the bet was on. And she climbed it to its tip, and it swayed with the wind, matter-of-fact, the wind at this level was a bit noisy, loud, which only told me we were next to the clouds. I looked about to see if the police were anywhere, and we were safe.
“Your turn Dennis,” she said. Then a second, then quickly, she slid down the tree to a standing applause.
She now had stopped speaking, reaches her right hand out to the tree, as if to say: your turn, unlighted eyes, two arms, legs and eyes standing like a soldier waiting for me to climb up the rainspout looking tree, thin, almost as thin as wheel spokes in a boy’s bike at its very top, not really that thin, but towards the top, and the bottom was not really all that thick.
Now I was taking into consideration the dimensions of the tree—and I foresaw a red-light when I would near the top. I started to climb, and in no more than a few feet I could feel the tree swaying with my weight, thus I remained idle, looked down at my Romanian female friend, calm with a smirk she stood, less excited, as I remained hanging onto this bony tree, almost like being suspended twenty fathoms deep in the Mediterranean, and then I knew I was defeated, lest I climb to its top and allow the tree to break into, and that would be a sin, it was the only tree on this side of the upper part of the rock.

What did I learn that afternoon I ask myself, perhaps not a thing about me or climbing, or Gibraltar per se, for I had learned all that before I got to Gibraltar, out of books. But nevertheless, I always like looking at that part of my life trips; I think what I may have discovered at such an odd age, is that this new generation was competitive, challenging and perhaps underrated, they could have fun with older men, without crushing too much of their ego, she was cleaver, and perhaps that was an asset, as long as it was under control.

Written 5-30-2008

A Day in Tanager (Post Cards to Myself)

2008-05-29T23:33:00.000-07:00

A Day in Tanager
(Post Cards to myself)

This may sound funny, and I’ve done it more than one, and I bet a few of the readers here, have done this likewise: send post cards to yourself, so you get the stamp, and logo of the location you are at! Here are four post cards sent from Tanager to myself in Minnesota, the fall of 1997.

(Post Card One) Here I am, in Tanager, bogged down, hope I can survive the day; the people here drag you down like a ship anchored at sea. I came in from Spain, across the strait. Tanager is full of people. I bought several post cards, I’ll write the out for myself, send them to me from me. Everyone here tries to sell you everything they got, with a hard luck story I don’t understand. I’ve never encountered such pushy people, they follow you down one street onto the next (and wait outside for you if you happen to go into a store) and if you buy something from them, you got the whole street on top of you. I pushed one guy away, heavily and with force, and he got incredible mad. A few of the places that sell rugs, seemed flushed with success, they didn’t use efficient machines to make their rugs, rather human bodies to get the job done, I suppose a little slavery like they do in Turkey, rent the kids out for five years in making rugs. I purchased a small one; the cats and chickens that run about look like skinny eels with legs and feathers and fur.

(Post Card Two) We ate inside the Kasbah, five of us, four from the trip I was taking in Spain, and we ran off to Morocco Tangier (two brothers, doctors from Puerto Rico, we actually had lunch in Seville a few days ago, and I got to know them quite well), and one lady who is alone, and begged me to take her along with my entourage (says her husband is diplomat, and busy at the moment, wherever), and one lone individual, a young thin male, I think he said he was from Canada; it would seem, I was selected to be there leader on this excursion, which was my idea on the bus, and it leaked out and here we are. It is hot, inhumanly hot on these dirty streets, drearily dull. I am not sure what we ate, or what it cost, it was just food, and I am not sick, so thank God for that. I once saw a movie, where the drama took place in Old Tangier, well, it is still old, and looks just like that movie, nothing has changed from the 40s to this year, 1997. My camera is working well. I want to be sure I get these post cards, there is a post office down the road but it looks, or doesn’t’ look appropriate, meaning, I fear they will take the stamps off the post cards and keep it for cash, they do such things hear I understand, but I bought duplicates, and will write them out just in case.

(Post Card Three) A few hours ago, I took a tour of the city, went by some famous houses from the 30s, 40s and even 50s, movie stars used to live in, live here in Tangier, and some still do, can’t figure out why, the sight of Tangier is mystic, and a good deal cheaper than London or New York, but to me it is only good for a day, but any longer, it would be a hard luck story on my behalf, or better yet, as the Army would say, a hard luck tour. People walk around with long, sharp and thick knifes for sale—what gives, I mean, if was not on this tour of sorts, I’d not dare to walk these streets alone.

(Post Card Four) This will be my last post card; will be heading back to Madrid in two days, and out of here, presumably in two hours, back on that tug boat or whatever you call it, it was a bumpy ride over, I dread the ride back. This day, in Tangier, was interesting though, if not ill-omened. I would prefer Paris any day to Tangier, although I did like the gate going into the Kasbah, it had a real Moroccan style to it. Rode a came in the city, actually I sat on a camel and had my picture taken, borrowed a Moroccan s hat, cost me a buck to have a picture with it on. They got you coming and going here. I also like the lighthouse, we stopped by it, checked it out. I think I’d prefer Seville if I had to chose between cities to live.

A Friend, from Lilli Ann, to China Town (a short Sketch)

2008-05-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

A Friend, from Lilli Ann,
to China Town
(San Francisco, 1968)

From the very first moment we’d meet, Dan would give off a sudden and odd sense of a person understanding my undertaking in life. But it came at the oddest time, under odd circumstances. I was living in San Francisco, back in 1968, and Dan just started working at Lilli Ann, where I was working, I had been there for four months, Lilli Ann was dress designing company. We kind of bumped into one another, and he was looking for a place to live, he and his spunky brother, half brother, a few years younger than us two, at present they were being kicked out because of their rent being raised, and unaffordable for them.
I was working out at the karate dojo in Castro, living on Dolores Street in an old mansion, a female Colonial, retired from the Army, rented the rooms out. She was tall, with short blond hair, medium size boned, and kind of orderly. What you’d expect I suppose from such a person.
On the other hand, Dan was about my height, five food eight, perhaps Irish, like me, sandy brown hair, and took a different style of karate up, but was interested in some of my moves. He was considered good in his style, but I was considered better, if it came down to testing one another under fire.
Now I had been dating Colleen, she was ten-years my senior and she was looking for a place to live also. She had a white Cadillac car, and a good job. I’d often get a ride to work from her, and she’d have me buy her material, for making cloths, Lilli Ann was considered to have some of the best textiles in the world, Adolph Schuman, often went to France, checked out the mills to insure he got the best. In any case, it was a good arrangement, and we’d drink, got drunk and made love together when we were both available.
Well, she moved in, after Dan, but I met both of them around the same time, Dan a month earlier. And we all got along together. I suppose back then, it was all we could do to hold together, drink, and work together, and flop out together. We were all becoming a group of sorts. Dan’s brother was part of the group, but less a part.
I drank quite a lot in those days, and Dan found a girlfriend at work, a Spanish gal and had me talk to her, kind of fixing him up, I knew her better than he. And thus, they started dating, and she became part of the group. She liked me, and was concerned about my drinking, she told Dan so, and Dan told me, and I told Dan to tell her, “Mind her own business.” Fine, she took it lightly and somewhat avoided me when visiting Dan, and at work she smiled as usual. I think she was torn in that she’d have liked to have had a closer relationship with me, but it didn’t turn out that way, surely drinking was part of the issue.
As I implied, I came in drunk a lot, and fell to sleep a lot, or passed out a lot, and it was Colleen who was living in one of the rooms near Dan, and she was drinking and laughing with Dan and his brother a lot, and one evening, I came home, and heard them, they were having a party in their room and she was flirting, trying to kiss Dan, and yelled at her and Dan and the brother, less at the brother, and of course she scolded me for being jealous, and I told Dan, stay away, even if I didn’t care to date her anymore, and he said ok, with a slanting eye, and she said no, with a grudge. She said, “I am not your property, I am free to date and do as I please, I am not subject to you.”
It did come to pass, she left, and probably for the wiser. But I thought a lot of Dan for doing what he did, he avoided her, told her, and I heard him say it, “It’s best we keep our distance, I don’t want to lose Dennis as a friend, he was my friend first.” I guess he felt he owed it to me, I mean, I got him the apartment, and perhaps the girlfriend, at least the first date, and his brother got to smoke his pot unworried about the law, in his apartment, life was good. Plus, he didn’t really want an affair with her that might leak back to his new unofficial girlfriend.
As time moved on, Dan got more involved with his girlfriend, and I respected that, and we did less and less together, which was ok, but I seemed to have lost a good friend in the process, one I took time to cultivated a friendship with, and that hurt. But I would find out in life, there was much ahead of me, and perhaps there would not have been time to cultivate that friendship beyond what we did. Consequently, we did in our short time all we really could do. When my mother visited the city he even went to China Town with us, she liked him as well as I, and that was not a surprise to me.
I learned back then, I suppose, a good friend is worth its weight in any kind of precious metal; they are far and in-between, in one’s life time.

Written 5-29-2008

Lilli Ann, Meeting Adolph Schuman (1968, a short Sketch)

2008-05-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

Lilli Ann,
Meeting Adolph Schuman
(1968)

I had worked for Lilli Ann, for about eleven months, and met Adolph Schuman, back in 1968, and a few months in 1969, a half dozen times, although I didn’t care to run into him, it was uncouthly each time, but impossible not to, Mr. Schuman, Adolph Schuman, was the owner of Lilli Ann, his wife being Lilli Ann. (‘While he operated the Lilli Ann Corporation, Adolph Schuman also held a number of political and governmental offices. At various times, he served as finance chairman for the presidential election campaigns of John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy; Director of the Commission for National Trade Policy; Chair of California World Trade Authorities; and on the Council for the Department of Commerce. He passed away in 1985.’)
Adolph Schuman came by me one afternoon, as I was stacking cloths in bin, said “You, what are you doing, put them cloths down properly, no, no, and you’re fired!” I got reinstated by the administrator that same afternoon, which was more practical. (He was an eccentric to me, and perhaps I to him.)
Well, that wasn’t the only time we met, we met on Christmas, Christmas, of 1968, I drew the design or logo for the event, and at the event, in the basement floor of the establishment, I met him again. He was more at ease with me, and me with him this time. I guess he reminded me of my grandpa, and I smiled, yet tried avoid him, tried to and if I couldn’t I smirked or smiled or played dumb.
“Here,” he said, handing me a bottle of Scott Whisky, “No,” I said, I don’t drink the stuff,” I liked beer, but I didn’t tell him that. Anyhow, he looked at me wired, and Dan, my friend, whispered “I’ll pay you for it later, half priced—take it,” and I said, “Mr. Schuman, I’ll take that bottle,” and he smiled, perhaps heard Dan’s whisper.
The third time I met him, he was running away from a woman, and it was not his wife, it was a lovely young model, and to my understanding his steady, if he had such a thing, with a big, big, big pearl on her finger.
I had seen her around, but not running around like this afternoon. Well, I got out of the fire lane, he was running from her, and she was not far behind him, “Grab this door, hold it, and don’t let her pass,” he told me. And I did, as he said, and she came to a standstill a foot away from me, remember I’m just a peon, “Well,” she said, “are you going to move or am I going to move you?”
I moved, what could I say, I mean, it was a Catch 22, I couldn’t win either way.
Well, we are at number four now, and I am having lunch at the café up the block from Lilli Ann, and Adolph Schuman comes into the Chinese restaurant with his poodle, or perhaps it was hers, that gal that told me “Move,” or suffer the consequences. Fine, I never really had a conversation with Adolph, never said more than a few words, nor he to me, and I kind of liked it like that. I mean, what would he and me have in common, but he looks over at me says something to his administrator or manager, I think he was called by both titles not and then, my friend, as far as manager friends go, and I am called over to his table, and told to join them, and to bring my food. For some odd reason, I got scared, I usually didn’t, but even my hands started to tremble a bit.
Now I am sitting down with Adolph, the Administrator or male manager, the female assistant manager, and they are all talking, he asks,
“Where is your family from?”
“Russia,” I say.
“Oh, a lot of Turkish Jews in Russia.”
“I don’t know about that, Mr. Schuman,” I say.
“Go ahead and eat, well just talk as we eat,” he says.
In good health, we ate, but I was having the hardest time eating, getting the food to my mouth, as he along with the other two all seemed to make me self-conscious. I mean I never ate with a millionaire, and he was actually down to earth today. He wasn’t the grandpa figure anymore, just a man in a café with a dirty dog by his leg, and I thought that was a bit improper, but I didn’t say a word to that effect.
As years went by, I got into a little business, and was worth 1.3 million dollars in 2002, making about $200,000-dollars a year, not as much as Adolph (in 1940, his sales were one million dollars alone, and in 1982, 40-million, he died at age 73, in his office with all that money he gave to his family, a heart attack they say, and his business ended soon after), when folks came to talk to me, poor folks, eat with me, I noticed sometimes they were nervous, and I always went back to the little China café on the corner of the block to remember Adolph and me, and I tried to make my company comfortable with them, I think Adolph tried for me.
It was sad they closed the place down after Adopt died, I feel privileged to have met the designers and managers and so forth, of that day and from that company, and they were among the world’s best.

Written 5-29-2008

Indian Blanket and the Mohawk (a short Story)

2008-05-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

Indian Blanket and the Mohawk
(A Sketch in Life—1953-57)

I was but a kid back in ’53 to ‘58, my brother Mike, two years older than I, we seemed to get along better then, better than now that is. When we were both young we’d play in the backyard, up a ways was a long embankment, with rolling hills behind (I once put a fire to that hill, but that is another story); anyhow, we’d lie on our Indian blankets by the house in the backyard, play cowboys and Indians, Mike had a Mohawk, thus, you know who he was in the drama, daring he was, it was the last few summers I’m talking about, prior to our moving, from Arch Street to Cayuga Street, we even built a tent out of those old Indian blankets, we were together nearly all the time back then. Then one day we up and moved, as I previous and briefly mentioned, we just disappeared: grandpa, mom, me and Mike, we up and disappeared just like those days did, playing on the Indian Blanket, Cowboys and Indians. Oh I know, I was but seven years old, he was nine, and we were young, so very young between those years, of 1953 to 1958. Things change, it is part of life, I know this, and well they do, we must move on, correct? Oh yes, yes indeed, that is part of the encirclement, the grip and squeeze life has on us, and we have our own children then, and we hope they will carry on the saga, the compressed life we are given.
Mom used to talk to Uncle Wally all the time about those far-off days they seemed to have had, with so many memories to linger on—I think they had more to say than they do nowadays at the United Nations. They talked about old times, I heard them talking, she told me so also, and I thought, what will Mike and me have to talk about when we get old, and now we are old, or getting there and we still do not talk on such matters, have not found the secret of reminiscing. Harboring no disrespect, it is not Mike’s forte, Mike don’t talk much, doesn’t waist words on dead dogs, when there are live lions. It is just the way he is, so I guess I got to write it out for him, lest we die without a word of tribute for those far-off days on the Indian Blanket, and similar episodes, God forbid that be the solution, maybe he forgot, but we used to play those silly games. I suppose he’d not be happy if I told his friends he did, the Indian sage that is, he was always so self-conscious on how he looked to his friends.

Dedicated to Mike Siluk
Written: 2003 (reedited 5-2008)

Niagara in October (a short sketch)

2008-05-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Soft Leaves of Autumn
(Niagara in October, 1999)

Back in the ‘90s, I traveled a lot by myself, it made life easier, no contemplation on what side of the clouds I needed to stand on to please the woman or whomever I may have been with. I mean I had many travel companions in my life, nothing intended bad to say about them, but there have only been two folks I can travel with without friction, and no need to mention them here, they’re not in this story, although at the end I may.
Niagara, autumn in Niagara, I thought about that before I went there, laid down on my bed while the morning sun crept through my window, saw the autumn leaves in Minnesota floating off the trees onto the ground in my backyard on Albemarle Street, thin, and tanned they were, as if in a stage of old age, so they seemed.
I am always surprised to see autumn, but this autumn I told myself would be nice to fly up to Buffalo New York, and rent a car, drive from there to Niagara, and see the falls. I was in Buffalo once, back in ’72, when I went for my second hitch in the United States Army. I suppose you could say, I was mentally already established in Army life, I was in Erie at the time, and got bored with my job, had been in Vietnam in ’71, and Erie in ’73, and back in the Army in ’74. Missed the sites, although I would not spend any time in buffalo anyway, on this forth coming trip, I would simply rent the car I was talking about renting, and I’d drive right on through to Niagara.

I was very devout in those days to my mission, like an old soldier, if I decided to go to a place, see a certain thing, that was that, and thereafter, who cares, anything goes.
I liked traveling on the moment, thus, I grabbed some money, this one weekend, a four day weekend, holiday, my holiday, and became what my friend Jack Kerouac called part of “The Dharma Bums” understanding I would be by myself.

I talked not much more than the average person to myself on these one man excursions, and always told myself: “Dennis you can meet—if you want—anyone, anyplace, at anytime, anywhere,” and how true that belief was, and it always worked, if I wanted to talk, I simple talked, if wanted to be with someone, it was not hard to arrange, if I wanted a girlfriend for the night, it usually wasn’t a problem either: although in 1999, those were not the things I was thinking of, but I knew it from prior experiences, plus wherever I went, someone would usually tell me: “If you’re looking for a good time, I suggest you go here… (or there).”
I learned one main thing in life, and I kept it deep in my soul, that being: if you count or wait for someone else to travel with you, you may never go, and if you count on them on a trip to make you happy, you will be disappointed, thus, it is better to travel alone, than to travel with someone who is going to cut the guts out of your trip. And if I could, I would, amplify that to the height of the Empire State Building.
Well, I travel light, real light, a small suitcase, and what did not fit in it, that I wanted, I purchased when I got to my destination, I had to carry the suitcase onto the plane, if not it didn’t come alone with me, that was a rule I made for myself. Too much waiting in the lines to pick you luggage, I could be at the hotel by that time, too much carrying and tipping, and so forth, not worth the effort. By the time one got to the hotel going through all this, from past experience, I was tired; too warn out to even take a shower, a day of the trip missed, gone, and you pay for it—what’s it worth?

—So here I was, at Niagara Falls, in October, my birth month: I bade farewell to Minnesota, and all the little bums back there, and I washed my face, on a freshly looking towel in my room, and I was out walking alongside Niagara Falls, picking up the autumn leaves along its stream that led to the falls, they looked like firewood, heated to a bright red-hot and yellow, orange, cheese like color. Most pleasant to the eyes, I told myself.
“What is going to happen to this leaf?” I asked myself, as I picked it up, along with a few large ones; inside their veins was a splendorous twilight of colors, of God’s person touch. Happy I was, and no one to say: you silly boy. No, I was sober, or drunk on life, that’s the way to live; all alone and free in the soft leaves of autumn.
Oh, the only other two people I could have enjoyed Niagara with, would have been my mother, and she was back home, and my wife Rosa, whom I would not meet until my next trip, which would be to Peru, in December, of that same year, nine weeks away.

Note: Written while in Lima, Peru, 5-29-2008. Written with the intentions to let the reader know that traveling can be as much fun, if not more, alone, than with someone needy, it is of course a matter of choice, but one needs to look at and count the cost, for when you take someone with different expectations with you disappointment is usually not far away.

The Lone Ranger Lunchbox (short story, 1957)

2008-05-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

The Lone Ranger Lunchbox
[1954-1957—109 East Arch Street, St. Paul, Minnesota]

[1954-1957 at the Winter School] We couldn’t always afford the hot lunches at St. Louis school [in St. Paul, Minnesota] during my elementary years so my mother bought me a lunchbox, a Lone Ranger designed lunchbox, and I was so very proud to own it: yes indeed, very bigheaded about it also, I suppose, if kids had heroes, and not absorptions, he was kind of my hero. And my mother would make my peanut butter sandwiches, from none other than Peter Pan Peanut Butter jars, not sure if they sell that kind anymore; then of course came Skippy Peanut Butter down the lane, and a little computation, I was nine-years old then.
I think we went back and forth with which peanut butter, I was trying to figure out which was best for my lunchbox, I mean, it had to be the best for the Lone Ranger lunchbox, for I was carrying his symbol about, and I was his representative, even had a secret badge, and belonged to a club of his if I recall right. And amongst those sandwiches, were a lone banana or apple, or orange, I hoped not the orange always, it was too messy, and I’d just stick a finger in it and suck out all the juice, and go wash my hands. Thus, I preferred the banana.
Then my brother Mike and I would march on down to school, and when lunchtime came, I’d march on down to the basement of the 1886, schoolhouse, and eat lunch in the lunchroom. There were different times for lunch for different classes and grades, and so Mike being two grades higher than I, ate before me, and left school before me, at 2:00 PM, verses, my 4:00 PM. But I always prayed mom would forget to buy wax paper for the sandwiches, and have to give us .25-cents [or was it .15-cents?] for lunch: yes I preferred the hot lunch to the cold, although I liked bringing my Lone Ranger lunchbox.
But yes, yes undeniably, there was a problem though: when mom put the ham onto the sandwiches, and wrapped them in wax paper, by noon the following day, they’d be soggy, really saggy, like a sponge full of milky something or another—the bread that is, and you’d have to drag the meat off and out. But I never said anything, lest I end up with peanut butter five days in a row.
In the lunch room Linda Macaulay the eye catcher of my study room, we had two grades in our room, and between thirty and forty students [big rooms, and lots of heads to look over, at and around], as I was about to say, Linda Macaulay, she was the prettiest one in class, and we sat together now and then, more than, than now, but it happened. I even stuck up for her once, that is, fought over her I should say. I suppose I was trying to be like the Lone Ranger, the hero, like Mr. Clayton Moore, God bless his soul, now gone and not forgotten though.
Anyhow, this is the tale, the story of my first lunchbox you could say, in those far-off days of my youth, when I was being formed, and we become whom we are often times by our heroes, and I am sad to say, there are not many sports folks, movie stars, singers or any one out there worthy to emulate nowadays—even many parents are bad examples, I guess the dollar has soaked their souls likened to those ham sandwiches I just mentioned a while ago; or they are to lazy to discipline them.

Written in St. Paul, Minnesota 8-2005 (reedited, 5-2005)

The Old Russian Bear (Short Story, 1973)

2008-05-28T20:54:00.001-07:00

The Old Russian Bear
[The Old Russian Bear: 1973]

Old Grandpa Tony [Anton] swore more than most people prayed, and I’m talking about the clergy. He was all of five feet tall, complete, that’s all he stood, I always thought he was at least six foot tall myself, even when I went to high school and towered over him, but no, he was only five feet tall, period. It’s not the unpardonable sin, I know—to swear, but if you added them all up, all the cussing words he done in front of me, and then there is 24-hours to the day, it would top the Andes, and then some. But he was kind enough to allow my mother, brother and myself to live with him, in his house during my formative years. And back in the fifties, it was rough, so I suppose I can say, thanks gramps. But the Old Russian Bear, used to say:
“I tell you vhut you gottaa wtch dem boys Elsie (his daughter, my mother)—dhay make-too much noise!”
All the time we had to be quieter than mice in the house.
“Well,” I heard mom say once, “I can’t watch them boys every second of the day?” to grandpa.
Grandpa thought about that for a while, a minute or two, “I gonna throw dem out den!” he said.
I think he started telling mom that from my thirteenth birthday on, steadily. He liked my brother Mike for some odd reason: perhaps I didn’t pay him much attention, or for that matter any attention. I was very active, meaning: overactive, I could never seem to slow down, and that may have bothered him some. Nowadays, they give kids pills up the yen yang to slow them down: back then, mom would say: “Go run it off…” and out the door I went, and I’d run a mile here or there, and come back and eat up a storm, that seemed to do the trick.
“Yes,” mother would say, “I’ll tell him to play outside more…” (I was but ten, at the time).
I think it all started one day when I was in Earnest’s car, a 1950 Chevy (my mother’s boyfriend for forty-years), and mom was looking at me in the backseat, and I was about seven years old then, and I asked about this and that, many questions, too many questions, I never could be settled too long, and she noticed that, and would try to answer my numerous questions, and she’d get tired, and say:
“Stop! You’re wearing me out….”
So when I got older I bought an encyclopedia set and read it a few times from start to finish: a to z. One year I read 400-books, after all my other activities. I slept four to six hours all my life, until I got ill, and slept 10 to 14 hours; made up for all that lost sleep.

—Grandpa would put his pipe in his mouth, pace the kitchen, mumbling, “Them god…d…m..kids.”
He didn’t want us boys to stay with him in the house, but he didn’t want mom to leave, she did all the work, and bought the television and the furniture, and did his laundry, and bought the groceries: she was an economic asset for him, as he was for her (or us). He bought the meat for the Sunday meals, paid the heat and water bill, and phone bill. They had a good system going I suppose. I always prayed mom would take us kids out of that environment, but it was as it was, and it gave me a father figure I suppose, he had good work ethics, and I suppose I got that from him. In any case, mom, she’d reinforce, by telling me,
“Nobody’s going to kick you out.”
And he never did.
When I grew up: went to Vietnam, and came back home for a visit, Grandpa, being in WWI, was proud of me, but he still had that bear in him, and one day he said something, and I got mad, and I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I said:
“Grandpa, don’t swear at me, if you don’t want me here I’ll leave, but if you swear once more I’m going to knock your ass!” and I walked away angry. I had always felt bad about telling Grandpa that, even to this day, it really wasn’t called for, I could have walked away like always, I just wanted to let him know, I was not that little kid you could pull his ears, when you didn’t like what was happening. And I was sorry for that, as I had said—but I did make up for it, I think. When he was too old (meaning, 83-years old, he worked up to 78) and his children were coming over to count his money (he had several children living at the time), and was threaten by them, I heard about it, and made myself present when they were present, and told everyone: the threatening was over, that if I heard about it again, I’d throw them out, everyone out, one by one if need be. I think, Grandpa may have heard it from the dinning room, not sure what or how he felt, but I guess, if I made up for that bad remark, so be it. On the other hand, he asked me to make him eggs, and I did. But I guess if there is an insight to this story, let it be this: we are more than we think we are part of our environment. In other words, I had a little of that Russian Bear inside of me also, and sometimes two bears don’t mix.

Written 9-2005, St. Paul, Minnesota (reedited, 5-2008)

In the Heart of the Whale (An attempt to rob a mother of her newly born, 1947)

2008-05-28T12:20:00.000-07:00

In the Heart of the Whale
(An attempt to rob a mother of her newly born, 1947)

Based on a True Story

St. Paul, Minnesota is a city along the banks of the rich river called the Mississippi, the river originates, lays sleeping almost in upper Minnesota, and runs the length of the country, downward to St. Louis, and onto New Orleans, and into the Gulf of Mexico, this is where I was born, in the heartland of the Midwest, you could say. It carries a tremendous amount of water, and its tributaries are countless. But this sketch, or story is not about the Mississippi or even myself, all that much, but about a failed attempt, situation, to robe a mother of her infant child, her newly born; the year is 1947, complete date: October seventh, the location: within the city of St. Paul, in the heart of the city, at a well know Hospital, it is early morning, Indian Summer as they say, autumn leaves are all about, mostly the colors of a dim rainbow. The cornfields outside the city are bare, and the air is cool, a woman is brought into the hospital the evening before she will give birth to a living child, she is unwed, living in the poverty area of the city, on a street called Igelheart, her name is Elsie.
“Bring her into the labor room,” says a nurse, “I’ll see to her soon.”
There are several other women in there about to have babies also, one who was having a hard labor the past two days this is going on her third day (she will endure labor for thirty-six hours), her name is Isabella, she smiles at Elsie, quite possible they could have been friends, but it will not work out that way, her child will die in the morning and the nurses will try to obliterate all traces of the stay, change a few things, but I’m getting ahead of my story.
Isabella did talk to Elsie, in broken English, and mostly Polish, she was seventeen years old, spoke little English, and Elsie, was of Russian and Polish roots also, and spoke a little Polish, or at least understood a little, and spoke good English. Many families back then came over from the Baltic area of Europe, to America, especially during and prior to World War One (for there was much famine and the uproot of war seeped throughout the land and it promised to be a long and dreary war, and so forth), and their families (both Isabella and Elsie’s) extended families, were part of this group, this legacy, and in the case of Isabella, they, her family, could hardly speak any English so she became part of this inheritance, as it was for Elsie’s mother and father, and thus this was the case at hand, and when they came into the hospital, there was bilingual Polish nurses to assist if need be.
Elsie was twenty-seven years old at the time, had one son, Michael, he was two years beyond this new birth to be, and she had just started working at ‘Swifts & Co.,’ as a meatpacker, in the bacon department, she’d work there for twenty-two years before they’d close the place down. Her pregnancy and labor was going along fine.
She was unwed (as I had previously mentioned), and had been dating two men at the same time, matter-of-fact, they were both friends of one another, but unaware of this, and of course back in those far-off days, it was considered a deeper sin, should a woman on any one occasion do such a thing, whereas, it was normal for a man to do this on a weekly bases, and of course for the man, he did it without shame, sin, or even an ounce of regret, matter-of-fact, he did it with fireworks, bragged about it at the bars, and got a standing applause from his audience.
Well, the nurse that had Elsie brought into the labor room, gave her history to the rest of the nurses, and without an ounce of information missing, it would suffice to say, she was the talk of the ward, and the unwed mother, now slave to her sins, her reputation was flooding about, no more skeletons in the closet you might say.
Her father was working, a painter and restaurant owner, but a few of her sisters were there present, the rest would come later—there were five living children, out of eight, three had died—two waiting in the waiting room, near the labor room. Elsie had not started dilating yet, no contractions, but Isabella was getting them, had been getting them, and then she’d stop, it was a long ordeal for her, the nurse had told the doctor they may have to considerer an incision, a cesarean to bring the infant out, lest the woman die from child birth, she was exhausted to the point her breathing was dim at best.
Most of what you are hearing, would be silent, or at best, chopping news, if not sporadically given to Elsie’s son, Dennis, some fifty years later down the road of life, which would have been no big thing—for what is not know, how then can it make a big difference, and so it all was and had to be quitted down back in 1947, it was priceless information and best for it to be forgotten, on the other hand priceless information seeps out often times does it not, if not directly, by osmosis, and perhaps Isabella would never know the truth of the whole matter, and surely would not have agreed with it I do believe. In any case, she could not even read a word of English, a home-made mama, you might say; but the nurses chose her to inherit the rising new child nevertheless, yet to be born; perhaps the nurses intentions were good, meant to be good, for there was no gain for them per se, in that they wanted the child to have a complete parenthood, no fatherlessness involved for the child, a father and mother made better sense perhaps, and since Elsie already had a child, well, it might be better for her, you know, raising one vs. two, to give up the child, unknowingly give up the child, but again, if you do not know, then you are unaware of the crime in progress, and times were not easy for a man, let alone a woman. And so I repeat myself, perhaps the nurses had these intentions, although unethical for their professions; and at this juncture, let me add the doctor in to this little crime scene developing: least he escape unharmed, and that would be my crime to the nurses.
It was now about 3:00 AM, and they brought Isabella and Elsie into one big room, a divided room only by a moveable cloth divider, the doctor was busy with Isabella, her contractions had worsened, and she was dilated to nine—in other words, about to have the child, her water had busted hours beforehand, and Elsie had dilated to seven, and her water had busted right after Isabella’s. They were both on their way to being mothers. Isabella’s husband was out in the waiting room, with Elsie’s sisters, there were three of them now, Betty, Anne, and Rose, and her brother Wally, the one she did so many things with when she was young, chumming about like Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
Indeed, it was time for Isabella to have the child naturally or to have it induced, a trying labor she was having, and she looked it, in that she was pale, dark rims around her eyes, her hair matted like a thorn bush, but she was alive, and the baby was coming out, she was pushing, pushing, pushing, Elsie could hear her cries, as for the child there was no movement in its limbs, the eyelids, nothing at all of the child moved impulsively—it came out quiet, too quiet—dead quiet! But the nurses hushed it up, smiled at Isabella, and scooted off with the baby to another bed.
The nurses looked at one another, the doctor stood silent, one nurse whispered something in his ear (cleaning the baby, spanking it, it making no cry, Elsie noticed the silence, waited for the cry, the cry that never came), and he nodded ‘ok’ to the nurses, and they moved Isabella quickly out of the room into a private room, now Elsie was alone, except for the child in the third bed in the room, and the dead child remained in that bed, behind the curtained divider, and the doctor went over to Elsie, it was now 4:00 AM, not many people on the ward, and those who were, were half asleep, that is, except for the crew in Elsie’s room.
Now Elsie was at nine, and she was pushing, pushing she knew how to do it the second time better, she needed no advise from the nurses, she also knew they didn’t care for unwed mothers, and hence, the child passed through without much trouble. A nurse grabbed the infant as Elsie closed her eyes for a moment, but just a moment, but that was after she saw the child was breathing, what color it was, a few other things—then when she opened them, she waited for the child’s cry that oh so beautiful first cry in life, the cry that says ‘I am here,’ perhaps God himself, put that first cry into the child’s heart when it was surrounded by water inside the womb of the woman, as if in the heart of a whale, protected from all the harms and hindrances of the outside world, it was to be a reminder to the mother the child has arrived alive, so the child was out of the belly of the whole now; the nurse had gone behind the other curtain, exchanged the babies, the live one for the dead one, consequently, to exchange them with the mothers. Elsie saw the nurse’s back end step behind the curtain, screamed, “Where is my baby, bring him here immediately?” she even knew it was a boy.
The nurse now stood silent with both children, one in her hands, the live one, the dead one laying on the bed, wrapped up in a thin white blanket, actually they both looked pretty much like one another, like two same chickens, raw and reddish in color, except one had gotten a bit pale. She put down the live child, picked up the dead one, went out to Elsie, to tell her, her child was stillborn—dead, the nurse stood to the back of the bed, about to make her deadly implication, only to hear the words:
“Bring my child to me now!” demanded Elsie.
“Wait a minute, Elsie, he’s being cleaned up, I, I‘ll get him for you in a moment.” Said the nurse, bewildered.
And it was just a moment, when she brought the living child back to her, and Elsie held it tight. It can only be conjectured, to give a solid reason that is, why the nurse turned her heart from one mother back to its original, we will never quite know the true reason of it, at least not in this world anyhow, but I can modestly say, I think the child’s Guardian Angel, was already hard at work, as was Satan’s dark intruding demons. And that my reading friends, is how I came into this world.

Notes on this Story, story based on fact: written 5-28-2008; information gathered over the years from Elsie, and given to her son, and from that this story was constructed, not all details are exact, some conjectures added, that seemed only logical or possible for the time and situation, and where there was no other place to take the story. Isabella is a fictitious name; although the mother did endure having a dead child, and the child was about to be presented to Elsie, Elsie knew the dead one in her arms was dead, horrified the nurse was about to say what she had planned to say, when she went to get the live one, the trauma was over. Of course this happening was hushed up by the hospital, nurses, and even Elsie for almost a half century, today it is not. But she didn’t die, having it untold; and I thank her for her bold actions. It was a time when perhaps such things happened, and justified for a variety of reasons, perhaps under the seal of humanity’s personal God. I do not mention the hospitals name, not that I fear of or for reprisals, it is easy enough to figure out where I was born for the curious reader, but because at 60-years old, I do not care to point fingers, I just hope they have more ethical nurses there now.

People of the Walk (Short Story, on Santiago, Chile, reedited, 5-2008)

2008-05-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

People of the Walk
(Santiago, Chile/2003)

If you have ever been in Santiago, Chile and spent a week there you might have recognize the People of the Walk, or at least in the year of 2003. They are the ones that have a certain street by the Palace area, and I guess they might call it the merchant area and they start gathering there about 4:00 PM. Sometimes even earlier, let’s say 2:30 PM. I’m not sure if they have some kind of a deal or not with the police, but they really stick together on this one street. No cars, just a walkway for the most part. I found it most interesting, also a little sad, a little frustrating, and a little impressed with the people, so many emotions for this group of slum merchants. Or call them down and out merchants. Or sole proprietors with little money. But whatever you call them, they are not afraid of work, and some of the Americans can take a good look at them, learn something, some of the lazy ones that is; they do not seem to be asking for a free ride—like so many Americans want all the time, thinking society owes them something.
Each day my wife and I would walk down this street a few times, around 10:00 PM or so (once at 2:00 PM, once at 4:00 PM also), and there were at least a hundred or more of these People on the Walk. They had a system, let me explain: they, the people of the walk, each had a bag, suitcase or some kind of carry case to haul there merchandise in, and about, something that could be folded up in a hurry, rapidly; the reason being, if the police came walking by, they could quickly fold their four-by-four foot space area mat (or whatever they used to put their merchandise on) fold it up quick, putting their merchandise back into the case and holding the case in one hand, and the mat in the other, and lean against the wall of a store, as if nothing took place.
Let me clarify, if not a mat, they would use, often times some kind of blanket or plastic material they could lay out easily, and they’d walk away—a few feet that is—as if they were not doing business. Then when the police would go—leaving their sight, their backs to them, they would put there goods back on the ground and sell them to the passerby, the casual observers, whomever, the general public.
I purchased a few items, from these merchants, they were good folk, and like anyone else, trying to make a buck, but in this case the hard way. Sometimes you would look behind yourself and the whole street, four to five blocks (of which they were selling on) were clean of merchants, thus you could be assured a few policemen were patrolling the area; although if you looked harder, they were resting against the nearest wall, and would again go back to business once the police disappeared, everything happened within a matter of minutes, it was business as usual then, watching this happen several times a day, actually made me dizzy.
The people were a sample of the whole city I believe, as young as eleven or twelve and as old as sixty or more, male and female.
Another interesting fact is that they all seemed to know one another and had there own little clicks—amazing it was, to say the least. It seemed to be understood—if not well known, that if the police caught a person, s/he could lose their possessions, and be put into jail, or simply have their things taken away from them. And that of course was their fear, and hopefully not their fate. But on the other hand, they had formed a kind of pack among themselves, a union of sorts, and when a few of the policemen took the merchandise, or was about to take it from a certain individual, they’d beat the policemen up, or tried. I guess it had been done. And here I was watching this from the second floor in a McDonald’s restaurant, looking out the window at 2:30 PM.
And so my trip to Santiago, Chile, had one interesting element to it, better then the sites I do believe, and that was ‘The People of the Walk,’ God bless them, for instead of stealing or robbing or selling drugs, they are trying to make an honest living, or as honest as possible, I do realize they do not pay taxes I suppose, and take money away from the stores they park their bodies against, but until the system becomes more fair in Chile, what can one expect, you got to eat, and everyone should be proud they are at least trying to sell something to stay alive. Nothing is perfect, but let us hope the government finds a way out for these folks, giving them a little more respect and expectations.

Written 2003, St. Paul, Minnesota, upon my return; reedited, 5-2008.

Ferocious Centipeded (Reedited 5-2008)

2008-05-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

Ferocious Centipedes
(1956, 109 East Arch Street, St. Paul, Minnesota)

As a child I lived for a long period of time in an extended family environment, my grandfather, Anton was the head of the house, and it was my brother and I, my mother, and two of her sisters living in a small three bedroom house, in what was known as the as outer rim of the inner city. The house was heated by a space heater in the living room. The ice man had to bring dried ice to keep our icebox cold; we had a well along side of the house for water, and there were old barns next door on each side of our house, being converted into garages. The City of St. Paul was quite conservative back then [Minnesota]. And many families lived like us—together in an extended family environment; those setups seem to be coming back some nowadays, with the shortage of houses in Minnesota, and high rents. They were hard-working folks, my family: uncles, aunts, grandfather, and my mother; my mother worked for Swifts, at the stockyards, and my grandfather a painter, worked for a few outfits, and eventually, acquired a restaurant, along with his day job as a painter and had someone work it when he couldn’t.
My brother Mike—two years older than I—and I slept in the bedroom next to the dinning room; my mother in the bedroom across from the living room; and my grandfather in the bedroom across from the bathroom. The two sisters slept on the couch and a rollaway bed, in the living room, and sometimes with my mother. This was during the early fifties [1951-57]. We did have plenty to eat on the table back then though, just not much money to do anything else. It was in 1956 we are talking about, in particular, when we got our large black and white television, and what a crown of glory it was for the household—a tank of a television in comparison to those of today, it must had weighted all of fifty pounds.
Of all these days, there are a few select that I kept in my memory vaults in the back of my mind, which I’m am about to tell you of one. My mother, poor woman, she’d be walking in the dinning room setting up lunch, or wiping down the curtains, and a centipede would appear; you know, those little creatures, wormlike animals with a hundred legs, one for each section of its body, slim body, and little antennas (modified legs, that can be poisoned fangs) you can’t really see those legs, unless you are on top of them. Little beady eyes and yellowish in color (they came in all sizes in our warm little house in the winters and cool in the summers: large, medium and small, all sizes I say, long and think and some big and fat), some a little more tan in color than others.
They could run when cornered I’ll tell you that, perhaps faster than the Roadrunner, that cartoon on television, and I suppose that is what made them more creeper than a mouse, more frustrating than a buzzing fly, especially for my mother, whom was deadly afraid of them.
But let me get to the point here. When she saw one, and I am now visualizing a certain day in the living room when she did, the sun leveling a ray right onto the floor, wooden floor, the table long and thick, in the dinning room, and what do you expect but day to lounge about, and do a little house cleaning before lunch, exacting what she was doing, I was in the living room watching cartoons, thus, out of nowhere a fair-sized and yellowish colored centipede with some inherent high energy, and its own separate collective motion for each leg to run in unison with the others, came dashing from its hidden abode, and it went so fast you’d think it had a tail for a kite, right across my mother’s white moccasins, she was wearing.
She’d jump and screamed when she saw the centipede; indeed she scream until her lungs almost collapsed. She definitely looked as though she needed calm down pill. Arrayed in a morbid, pale face, grandpa came running from wherever he was: basement, kitchen, cellar (feeding his pigeons), thinking the roof fell in, fell on top of her—only to find out he had to undertake the killing of a ferocious centipede, one that seemed to be going local, or in circles, and was a tinge skittish, thus, he took his bare foot, readied it like a hammer over this—call of the wild—and smash it, as he continued to chew his tobacco, quick it was, “Oh!! Said my mother, with a sigh of relief, as he walked away saying,
“I cant believe dhis, vhat is dhe matter with that woman!” and then came an entourage of four lettered words, that I do not want to spell out.
Next, she looked down at her white-moccasins, with beady-laced trim around the front of them, and in the center leathered, and asked me to go in the bathroom, get some toilet paper and clean the mess up, she just couldn’t get herself to touch the smashed creature, and I did.

To be quite frank, I never saw a more frightened person over a centipede in my entire life—; during these outbursts (and there really was not all that many), she seemed to suck up all the oxygen in the room she was in; grabbing all the attention to, yes, without a doubt, and I’d seem to get exhausted just watching it, watching these trials of fright, during those now far-off years, the years we lived at 109 East Arch Street. I really felt for her, I mean, I felt helpless wanting to help her, and perplexed at the same time, because I couldn’t; trying to figure out what was so scary about a bug, other than it was creepy looking. But I never made fun of it, we all have our fears, and we all pay a price for them, one way or another, that in itself is enough penance for allowing ourselves to be caught in the web of fear.

Then there was the spiders who loved to entertain my mother, and they seemed to paralyze her like the centipedes, to the point there was no escape from them, but to scream; and scream she did; again I say, old to the point grandpa would look at her when she’d go into those ferocious spells, and he’d utter, “Yeah, yeah (and the four letter words)…” and shake his head as if it was loose at its core. But I kind of miss those days. Well, kind of I say, she’s been gone now for a few years, and just before she passed on, I brought back a large dead tarantula, from South America, and told her if she could hold the dead creature, I’d give her a little pot of gold, and she held it, but only for a five seconds, and she got her five second pot of gold.

Written in St. Paul, Minnesota, 8-2005

Bucking in the Corral (a short story)

2008-05-27T14:36:00.000-07:00

Bucking in the Corral
((North St. Paul, at Kiddy Corner) (1951-52))

I stood there against the fence, about to join the kids inside the fenced for my ride on Dan. There, now in the corral, sunbeams started brushing across my face, I was a bit blinded, yellow hay soaking into the dried I noticed when I lowered my head to avoid the heavy sun beams, the mud was from the rain yesterday. I stood still, listening to voices of the people around Dan, the horse; another horse I don’t know his name, was by Dan, restless or so it seemed, it made Dan restless; I was listening, watching and not thinking about anything at all even when I heard Dan stomping in the mud like a mad mule, saw him stomping in the mud when I raised my eyes, I stood there with my eyes squinting, if not, almost shut at moments, I seemed to have been drifting a bit also as I waited for my ride, I was scared a little—uncertain, he, Dan the horse, the one I fed many times through the corral fence, the wooden fence feed him grass and hay in back of the farmhouse where all us kids lived five days out of the week, while our parents went to work, some of us staying over nights, Dan was hissing at people, not like him, but the horse behind him I think bothered Dan, neither did he like those who were trying to hold him steady, so one of the kids could mount him, kids and people all about; he was very resistant today, not like his old self, calm and reserved for the most part, and now he started to back kick, I was in the corral, waiting for my ride, behind the legs of old Dan…
“Are you hurt?” said a voice around Dan, tears now pouring down my face, yet I tried not to make a sound. Nonetheless, tears were pouring down my face.
I had felt a kick go deep into my ribs, pushing them inward, taking my breath way, as if I had just been deflated. Dan must have kicked me, hard I told myself, now under the upper body of Dan, lying in the mud. I confirmed to myself it was Dan who must have kicked me, a solid kick, Janet, the owner of the private, Day Care Center (where there was also overnight lodging for kids), grabbed me from under Dan, I was no more than five-years old.
“What’s the matter with you Dan!” she screamed, grabbing the harness, with her other hand, the hand she did not use to hold onto my hand, I was now standing on my own, still a bit dizzy. Then Janet, slapped the horses face, a good one, you could hear it.
“Calm down,” she threw this order at Dan.

I wanted to cry I wanted to say let me go to Dan, but she held him back, pushed his face away from me. I suppose it was enough that she had to grab me from under his legs before he stomped on me, and she was really upset.
She was telling the others to get this other horse, the one behind Dan out of the corral lest another stampede start. On the other hand, her face was saying, “I’m ever so sorry, you know Dan, and he loves you kids.”
My ribs hurt, and she noticed. Then she noticed also, a bee sting, a bee caught sticking out, along the rim of the saddle, almost between the saddle and ribs of the horse, Dan had been stung, the bee was dead now, or so it seemed. I suppose Dan tried in his own way to tell us about this bee, and we were looking at the horse behind Dan, not the little things, that caused big problems.
I can almost feel that kick as I write this out, old Dan, Janet and me.

At the Farm House

I now could hear Janet and the other kids downstairs,” Quiet,” she said to the kids…I was thought to be sleeping myself, but I wasn’t. I tried to see my bruised ribs, but my neck hurt trying to bend it along with my twisting over to see the backside of the upper part of the rib area.
“Has it stopped, the hurting stopped?” Janet asked leaning over my bed. She startled me in the dark, I was thinking of Dan, and here she came into the bedroom; I jumped, and my ribs hurt when I jumped.
“Yes, it hurts,” I told her, and she added, “It will pass in a few days.”
I heard her saying something to someone, “Ill have to tell his mother, and she’s not going to like it.”
She put a cool rag on top of and over my ribs, and she told me to hold it softly in place.
“I hope it does not leave a big burse, your mother will see it and I got a lot of explaining to do.” She commented.
I heard a phone ring downstairs, Janet turned to hear if it was for her, the voice said,” Kiddy Corner— she’s busy right now, can she call you back…?” Then I heard the phone receiver heavily put back into place. I got thinking about how I’d feed Dan tomorrow, if Janet let me.
Later on that night Janet come back up stairs, to my bedroom with a piece of beef and put it against my swollen rib side, tied it kind of with some gauze-tape.
“You’ll need this for tonight, beef will take the swelling down, it’ll help,” she said, with an unsure smile on her face now, an old remedy I guess.
I wanted to feed Dan tomorrow, I wanted to ask her if I could, I mean, I normally could, but circumstances were a little different now.

Originally called “The Corral,” written in 5-2005 renamed, and reedited, and revised, shortened, 5-2008.

Light over Lisbon (a short sketch)

2008-05-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

Light over Lisbon:
Last, of the 20th Century’s World Fair’s
(1998)

I said to myself, Dennis, you love to travel. You got a little business, and a professional job, and you’re 51-years old. The time is right. This is the last of the world fairs for this century. I sat on that thought for a week or so. Then I said, lets do it; meaning me. And so I took a flight to Lisbon, picked up a few books prior to my departure, one on traveling within Lisbon, and around it, and a book called: “The Night in Lisbon,” by Erich Maria Ramarque; very interesting; about WWII. Not that it would have a lot to do with my trip. But I like getting into the mood. And such things help me set the mood for my adventure. Books and great authors like Hemingway, who loved Paris, and Mary Renault who loved Greece, and Ramarque, who loved to write about Europe, they all have thus far inspired me to travel. After reading these books and then visiting the places I had read about, some of its history, visiting the location is much more interesting. You seem to know it, it belongs to you somewhat.
This was not the first time I used books, and great authors to pave my way mentally to visit a once in a life time geographic location in the world, such as Lisbon, and a once in a century World‘s Fair. I guess if the World’s Fair wasn’t going to be there, my interest would not have been as passionate as it was.

When I arrived in Lisbon, I went as usual, to my hotel first. And as usual, I could not really sleep. I figured out my system for jet-leg though. I usually try to adjust either by taking a thirty-minute nap after arrival at my destination, or look at the clock, and adjust to the time of the location, tired or not—and go about a normal day’s events. For an example, if it is 9:00 PM when I get to the hotel, then I get ready for bed. If it is 3:00 PM, I go get a cup of coffee, and plan a light day to follow. If it is 6:00 AM, I get another cup of coffee, make the day even lighter, and take that thirty-minute nap—if I can—later, and if it is 10:00 AM, I look for a nice location to have brunch, thus, my body seems to adjust, and again plan on smaller events.
This first day, in Lisbon, I went to the Tower of Belem, it was a reminder I to me that this area of the world once was a world power. It was built around AD 1515.
I think what I liked about Lisbon the most was that it had a little of everything at a halfway decent price; that is to say, a little of San Francisco, some of Rio, and a lot of the old winding streets of Paris, or Malta; and a number of grand churches. But this is not why I came, even though it was one of the best hidden secrets in Europe. It was because of the last World’s Fair, of the 20th Century.
About a year after I had attended the Fair, I heard that only about 100,000 Americans had went to visit the fair. Most were Europeans, to my understanding, and now that I think of it, it is pretty much on the mark, I didn’t notice many if any, Americans when I was there. I am not sure why, but there was, very little advertisements on it. I had found two articles on Lisbon’s World Fair to be, about six-months prior to it, was in some newspapers, and one particular article in a magazine in St. Paul, Minnesota. And that was all I ever heard of the fair. Maybe they didn’t want Americans there, who knows.
They did a marvelous job in cultivating the landscape for the project: old ships were colorfully decorated in the dock area, anchored down, and throughout the fairgrounds clowns and a monitorial, a tower several stories high, I went into it, and its grand aquarium, the biggest in Europe at the time, along with its many expositions of cultural foods, movies, travel guides and so forth, making it all available for the public or interested persons.
Although I liked the Worlds Fair, what I felt was lacking was the rides; or at least the kids, I guess the new World’s Fairs are more centered on business than family, something I learned.
The Midway area for what I am used to seeing at a fair—and nowadays they take the word fair out of it, and use the word ‘Exposition’, was more of a plaza type area for world cultural venders, as I’ve previously mentioned. Perhaps I was naive, but I asked myself: ‘…what happened to the roller coasters, the merry-go-round. No candy frost and very little circus type atmosphere.
It was more on the scale of an international United Nations get together I told myself. Very clean too clean; no hot dogs, peanuts, or candy; but some real nice well looking restaurants, yet, too conservative for my liking. But maybe that is how it is suppose to be. I guess I was judging it by the movie Elvis put out called: “It Happened at the World’s Fair,” which he acted and sang in during the early 1960’s.

That day at the fair the second day in Lisbon of five, I had lost my travelers checks, which were replaced the next day; either someone pick pocketed me, or they simply dropped out of my sport coat sometime during my visit. But I was glad to leave after a full second day of it, go back to the hotel that evening and rest, and would take some side trips in the following three days left in Lisbon.

The fair was just something I had to do, like when I went to Japan, I had to go see an International Sumo wrestling tournament. It was costly, but it was great. But after a while it got boring, and so I had to go to Mt. Fuji.
Lisbon would remain one of the great cities I would tell myself and other folks later on in life, as I am now telling you; I could actually live there if necessary, and I’ve told myself there are only six or seven places in the world I could say that about.
Along with Lisbon’s great scenery, and foods, it has a marvelous history. Portugal’s Temple of Diana located in the town of Evora, about a hundred-miles from Lisbon, a monument the Romans were surely proud of, as well as the inhabitants of the area, to this day.
One of the other great features of Lisbon, especially by night is St Georges Castle [Costello de Sao Jorge] which I could see each evening and morning outside of my hotel window, a nice reminder of their beautiful stone work.
But the one thing I loved the most and I don’t know why, was the Elevator de Santa Justas. I went up it perhaps five-times to the top café, had coffee and pastry. It is a cast-iron tower, designed by Mr. Eiffel who designed the Eiffel Tower in Paris; the iron building in Iquitos, in Peru, and the Iron Market, in Haiti, so I was told, and experienced each in its locations.

Reedited, shortened, and revised from a previous article, written June, 2005 (5-2008)

Love, from Vietnam to Sunset Boulevard

2008-05-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

Love, from Vietnam to Sunset Boulevard

In Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, had it not been a war going on in 1971 there, you would have thought, the beautiful bay, with its white sands were just the place for a vacation.

Behind a wired fence (in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam) was a village, near the white sands of the South China Sea, here young and pretty girls stood and waited for GI’s, they stood behind this fence until a GI (soldier) came up to take them out from behind it—a date, but when they returned back to the village and had to go back behind the wired fence, they had to pay the Cowboys, the young gangs of the village, lest they get rapped or beat up, so the GI was subject to paying a minimum of $3.00 for the date, whatever it may cost in-between, but if it was over the three-dollars they charged ten- percent. Thus, the girls never took money out, only brought money back in.

My name is Corporal, Siluk, and I want to tell you about Ming, she was behind that wired fence, and I was somewhat new to Vietnam, and I had the afternoon off, and I went to that village I was just talking about. And she was among the many. I crossed the dirt road, above me was the afternoon sun, baking my skin, the girls, pretty and full and frosty in bloom, arms swaying like twigs and branches to and from, from behind the fence “My name Ming,” said a voice, “and you see, I pretty girl, yes?” And she was very pretty, and added to her repertoire of words, “You like me?” she questioned, and what I could say but ‘yes,’ although, all the other girls were pretty, but she was the best of the best I suppose.
I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to do, especially in the afternoon, but I didn’t care to be alone. Across the bay you could hear some gun fire, the area had been under shell fire for a few days now, the Ammo dump was hit a week ago, Charlie dump, and the whole thing went up in smoke.
“You take me out for talk, eat and walk?” Ming asked me.
I looked at her, I made $350-dollars a month, and really only spent about fifty-dollars of it in Vietnam, nothing to spend the money on but fifteen cent beer, twenty-five cent packs of cigarettes, and a $3.00-dollar whore now and then, so I said “Yes,” to her statement. When a man doesn’t have to invest so much money in a woman, or whore, or whomever, he doesn’t need to expect too much in return, and I didn’t.
So the two of us were now walking along the white sands of Cam Ranh Bay, just as beautiful as Jamaica, we were talking to one another. Perhaps, both of us invisible to each other in the shadows under our feet, which made sounds as we walked, tranquil, with perhaps ironic thoughts unmentioned, but nothing too loud.
We sat on a rock, large stone, I was looking out into the South China Sea, we sat there as if we were both alone and perhaps in a way we both were.
“See,” she says, pulling out a picture of herself from her wallet. I looked, commented, “You look lovely in it, but you have a fur coat on.”
I didn’t mean to be sarcastic to her; it was more a perplexed statement, than a question. I mean you never needed a fur coat in Vietnam, and why would you put one on? Like a child, who once was a child, and perhaps when she took the picture, had childish dreams for a moment. I mean, she lived in a dirt city, a plywood hut city—fenced in like a chicken coop, with thin metal over her head for a roof, where chickens ran lose, and dogs were chopped up for stew. But it dawned on me sitting there, she, like all of us, had dreams, dreams that took her away from all this war and poverty, dreams from movies perhaps, to be in New York City sometime in her life, or Chicago, or even on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angels, I was there just before I was drafted into the Army, drove by Dean Martin’s nightclub, or so I was told it was his, and I saw a sign to that effect, and sure enough, if she was dreaming, she most likely would be wearing that fur coat, like Gloria Swanson in the old movie “Sunset Boulevard,” where she has that long fur coat dragging on the floor. But Ming’s was of course not that long, it was actually sportier than Gloria’s.
Anyhow, we got back up and strolled on the white sand, then she said, “Sergeant Sexton, left for the States two days ago, he was my boyfriend, he pay me 50% of his check to be girlfriend, he gone for three months, his mama dying, you be my boyfriend the same?” She asked.
I thought, ‘boy she’s cleaver, two for the price of one, and soon she’d have that ticket to Sunset Boulevard, and that fur coat on again, but it would be paid for in full.’
I asked, “Wouldn’t the Sergeant be made at you?”
“He no need to know, we no tell him!” she replied.
If I could laugh and I could, but I didn’t, and I dared not. She was all woman, and all child, and all dreams, and I didn’t want to rob her of any of that, and I didn’t want to be robbed of the few dollars I had, and I told her, “I can’t afford to be your boyfriend, but I like the walk along the sands of Cam Ranh By,” and she said, “You take me back to village, give me $3.00-dollar for cowboys,” and I did just that, and I bet as I am writing this, she’s perhaps living some place on Sunset Boulevard, long forgotten me, I wouldn’t doubt it.

Written May 27, 2008 (Original name: "White Sands of Vietnam.")

The Big Carrot (reedited, 5-2008)

2008-05-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

The Big Carrot
[186 Cayuga St., St. Paul, Minnesota: 1958]

Uncle Ernest, who really was not my uncle but my mother’s boyfriend for some forty-years found out my secret when I was eleven + years old, back in the summer of ’59, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He had about a half archer of land in the city, and a big garden and he gave me a small section of it, of the garden that is, so I could grow carrots.
Well, I was grateful, and so I tried to copy him by planting my seeds in a number of rows: not too close, not too far apart, and picking out the weeds, watering it when needed, and so forth and so on; but my carrots just didn’t grow like his: but my envy did.
Well, we lived next door to him—kind of lived next door, across from an empty lot, a big empty lot—dividing our houses: my brother Mike, my mother and my grandpa, we lived together; but it was grandpa’s house. And Earnest had two children who lived with him. And so it wasn’t a long hike to his garden: with a simple jump over the fence, which he never liked.
So it was that that every so often I’d go and check on my garden to see how my carrots were doing and they were not doing very well, not compared to his anyhow. This one day, summer day, 1958 (the year he traded his old 50-Chevy and bought his Ford Galaxy—500), I saw him go into his house—using the backdoor, my mother had just come down to visit him (he could see her walking from our home to his), and so I knew he’d not be back in the garden for the rest of the evening. They took turns going to each others houses you see, for the most part anyhow, but as time went on, and I got older, it seemed she preferred—his house, because of grandpa: it was his house, and he’d be ornery all the time, and—you know, its better left alone. And so that is how it was.
As I was about to say, Earnest went into his house, as I often called him back then, or Ernie, and I got to looking at his garden, he had many things growing but somehow I was more interested in how his carrots were growing. The top of his carrots were as round as my writs, and mine were as round as my thumb: this was not just, not fair by any means, so I felt, and envy set into me, like white on rice.
Consequently, I looked here and there, mostly at the backdoor that lead out to a wooden platform, an open porch kind of, to see if Ernie was coming, and he wasn’t. Carefully I dug around a carrot, and pulled it out, one big mama carrot of Ernie’s from the back row by the fence, surely I thought, he’d not miss this one. Then I padded the dirt around it so he’d not expect any dirty deeds (but life is never so sweet is it).
So the deed was done, and I went back home to watch T.V. with grandpa—I hid a few apples in the side of the sofa, because across from me was grandpa, who was watching me as usual, and watching TV as usual, and in-between me and the T.V., if it watching a western, as he liked, he’d spot my fruit, and say, “Vhen you e’er stop eating~!” his pipe half out, half lit, in the ashtray burning slowly, him in his sofa chair. Thus I’d hide it, and he’d think I was eating my first apple or orange, and it would be my fifth or sixth, you had to be on the ball.
Then he’d say, after his normal mumbling, and the commercials were on, not looking directly at me, but from the corner of his eye, “…ya, ya, ya, et, eet, eet, and vait tell you got to buy dhe food…” the old Russian Bear, never stopped complaining, especially about me. Anyhow, I had the two other apples in the corner so when he saw me eating the apple, I’d eat the seeds and all (I still do that to this day), and when he looked at me again, he kept seeing the one apple, never knowing I had three. He thought I was really eating slowly, two hours to eat one apple. He never was the wiser. So I had to have plan B, and C. Plan A, was no plan at all, I just ate freely in front of him, if indeed I only wanted a small portion for the evening.

Anyhow, about 9:30 PM, the next day, my bedtime was 10:00 PM, Ernie brought my mother home, walked her home, and they were in the kitchen. My mother asked me to come in the kitchen for a moment, and every time she asked that, I knew I was in trouble. And I did. Ernie was there with a big carrot in his hand, for a moment I thought it was just some vegetables from his garden he was bringing over (he did that quite often, and gave them to my mother or grandfather), and he said:
“Does this look familiar?”
“No,” I said, “Why?”
“I think it does,” said my mother, with an evil eye, or an inner eye looking through me.
“Well,” she said, “Ernie found this in your garden, and for some odd reason it didn’t seem to belong there with all your little carrots.” I had replanted it you see.
“Yup,” I said (I couldn’t talk my way out of it I knew), adding, “I, I didn’t think taking one carrot would matter, I mean you got all the big ones, I got only small ones.”
No logic to my statement, but at eleven years old has any kid got logic, or all that much to say? I think they were trying to hold back the humor of the situation, but it was theft, and it had to be dealt with. Little white sins, or distortions, or deletions, they all add up after a while and become big white sins, and then onto the big time I suppose, but I would never have made a thief, I got caught all the time, that is the few times I tried to get away with something.
“Didn’t it seem obvious that it would stand out?” asked my mother (I think my envy blinded me).
I looked a bit anxious for being caught; I guess I was sorrier for being caught, less sorry for taking the carrot: in any case, I said, “I never thought of it.” And that was the truth.

Written in St. Paul, Minnesota, 9-2005

The Shameless Summer (Poetic Prose--Reedited 5-2008)

2008-05-26T21:14:00.000-07:00

The Shameless Summer ((1959—the old mud hole of Cayuga Street) (poetic Prose))

The street was being torn up, to be a highway, a number of men worked at the end of the road where there resided two dead ends, South to Indians Mound, where we all stooped over and under and around the bridge they were building to look at the mud hole they created, where we swam, seemed to wait for us this year. The mud, lumped and cool, we swam in it slowly waved our muddy hands over the top of it, feeling the fresh wind above our heads, somehow we lost the scent of mud, and we were half naked, and some naked, and the highway to be we preyed it be, a few years down the road. So here we were all wavering under the shameless sun I was but twelve years of age, restless like everyone and as the darkness fell upon us all (night after night), a bright darkness from the moon, Roger, and me, Mike and Doug, and a number of girls lay face upward, on this stale mud water laughing and playing childlike, unreal, unimaginable: mud, mud for everyone, like a blanket it covered our skin Roger and his gal lay floating away, as it they were on the open sea, in some glittery movie, to be shown at the cinema; and the play went on and on and on, like dirty dishwater in a pan, but some how it all seemed rather healthy, back in ’59.

Note: The mud hole was not there the following year, but we must have gone to it a dozen times that summer. There is nothing like a little swimming pool, half mud or not, that can make the summer more interesting than normal, and it did. I think for Roger, it was a playground to seduce his new girlfriends, for me it was play yard to play in, but then Roger was a number of years older than I, perhaps four or five. Mike, my brother was now fourteen, and I think drinking and for him it was a show house to get drunk, observe and go crazy, booze was never his forte. All in all, it was a brazen summer.

1/21/2007 #1629 (Dedicated to the Old Gang of the 60s, of Cayuga Street)) St. Paul, Minnesota))

"Goldfish, Dying!" (a short fish story)

2008-05-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

[1958]

It is forenoon, the summer of the 1958. My mother just went down stairs, she says, “I won’t be long, I got to wash a few cloths.”

I’m at the sink, cleaning out my fishbowl. Grandpa is outside, trimming the lilac bushes; my brother is someplace with his new go-cart. As I was about to say, I’m cleaning the glass of the fish bowel in the kitchen, that is, taking the rocks out: replacing the water, cleaning the rocks, and I looking at my goldfish (I’m eleven years old); I remain standing at the sink in the kitchen, I think I’m thinking how am I going to get this fish from here to there, I think I am doing too much thinking.
Now I got everything ready: the new water, the rocks are back into the bowel, and I’m—I’m about to put my goldfish back into the bowl, and I’m thinking, and I learned from this episode in life, not to think too hard, you can get paralyzed, and I am thinking how to get goldfish from here to there: slowly I pick it up, pickup my glass with the fish in it—the goldfish, my intentions are to drop the fish in the rounded top (the hole) of the bowel—and I know I got to be quick—especially coordinated; I will have once chance, only one chanced, but I’m ready, so I tell myself. I’m already to pour the fish back into its home: yes I say again to myself: I got to do it hurriedly, but the fish is feisty very lively today (perhaps overfed them him yesterday, so I think, there are two of them, I have two quick witted fish, I think they are quicker than me anyhow, and I get the notion they do not like the environment right now they are in, and they are in this glass, not very big at all, I suppose to them it is no bigger than a closet, compared to the home I took them out of.
so I raise the glass up and as I start to pour the water into the glass, with the fish in it, into the glass bowel, with the fish, the hole of the bowel looking at me, the glass I took my eyes off of for a second, just a second, and my eyes seem like they are not adjusting perfectly, it hits the rim, the rim of the glass bowel and the fish fall head first (both) into he sink, and I panic, I’m panicking, hyperventilating, and I rush, rush, rush to save my goldfish, fingers all over the place, and they are squirming, sliding out of my hands, they are going to die, I know it now, death is lingering over and I’m responsible: I’m in a terror, fright, alarm…god, what can I do…?
do…do…do

I scream: “Mom…mom…my fi…as...fa…s…help!!”

My mother comes running up the stairs, thinking there is a tornado, or earthquake about to take place. Her face is not calm, and sullen, her eyes are brooding and alert—alarmed (here adrenaline has kicked in to high gear) within them I can see trouble for me: her expression is sudden, intent and concerned. My eyes are like marbles, the fish is in the sink wiggling all about, it might go down into the drain (I tell myself): I trip over my tongue, my words stutter out slowly: everything is upside down in my head, words coming out but saying only “fi…as…fa…s…help!”
I look at her and the fish: her and the fish: her and the fish “Calm down, “she says, then looks in the sink, says:
“Fish…all this over fish…? What’s the matter with you, I thought you were dying!”
She looks in the sink again, at me, at the fish in the sink, at me, grabs the fish, puts them into the fish bowel, one grab, two fish, so easy, too easy I say to myself, adding: now why could I not do that?
“Explain to me what is the emergency for you to be screaming so loud (she hesitates) the fish?” she asks staring into my marble eyes, with her sudden, intent and lack of concern for my fish (knowing there is really no emergency).
She of course knows it’s the fish, and I overreacted, but I was never one for under-reacting, at least in those early days, I think she knew this, and simply asked for an explanation, not sure why because she knew at this point what had taken place, perhaps to calm me down.
“I couldn’t get the fish…it was, was, was...go,gooo…ing to go down the drain, I thought I was ga-going to kill it, I mean, it was going to die in the drain…I got…I couldn’t get it, it, it…thought it would stop breathing...!”
“Do you want me to have a heart attack?” she says to me now, with a civil voice: no more concern, no more anger, just a sigh of relief, and a time for explaining.
“Does not call me up those stairs again to save another fish, next time…just make sure there is no next time, ok? Pickup the bowl, and put it where it belongs!”
“Yes,” I said, my tongued still a little tied, from the panic; now looking at my goldfish swimming around safely in my fish bowel, and my mother walking down the steps.

If you are asking, ‘Was it worth it—‘yes, I think so—but I’d never tell my mother that, but I’m sorry I caused her to think the worse had taken placed. She was protective in her own way, and perhaps came to fight a whale, and found out it was a goldfish, but that is part of being a parent, and I was a kid, leaning, and she was teaching, that’s how it works on this planet.

Written 9-2005 (No: 1)

Big Horse with a Wire (short story)

2008-05-26T20:14:00.000-07:00

Big Horse with a Wire
(Minnesota State Fair Grounds, 1961)

University of Minnesota Veterinarian Farms

I almost feel embarrassed telling this story, but I feel I must, sad as it might be. I was fourteen-years old when it happened, with two of my friends, Jerry and Donald. We had been to the State Fair, which was going on, it was August, and underneath a fence at the end of the fair grounds, was the University of Minnesota Veterinarian Farms, where they took care of sick horses, and cows, and so forth and on. I didn’t know this at the time, and was oblivious for most of the time this episode in my life took place. But it took place, and I remember it quite well, and that in itself tells you something, perhaps never to repeat it again. God has given us many gifts, life for us humans, life for the growing earth, and life in the animals, and they are all sacred I feel, in the sense, they are God’s creation. And to be used accordingly, be it dog, cat, horse and so forth. And so this is where this story is coming from. I shall have Rosa tell you the story on my behalf, Rosa my wife.

The Story

“Come on Dennis, grab onto the rope around the horses neck,” cried Jerry.
The horse was massive, and the three boys, Donald, Jerry and Dennis, had slipped under the State Fair fence, into the University corral, where a huge horse was, I mean huge, massive his back was the size of a surging whale, and when he galloped from one side of the corral to the other, like a storm, a local beast, wild eyed he was, and with slashing feet, he cut himself a few times on the barbed wired fence.
Dennis grabbed the loose rope while Donald calmed the horse down.
“I’ll heap you up on it,” said Donald, it seemed to be ten-feet high to reach his back. And once on his back—but for a second—Dennis slipped off the horse, and trying again, he again slipped off the horse, now twice, rolling from one side of the bare bake horse to the other onto the ground, and with a flushing face, trying to get up and pretend he was not in pain.
Again the horse took off, galloped into the nearby fence without any reduction at all, as if he couldn’t see the fence, or perhaps didn’t care. A crazy horse you might say. He slammed himself into the fence, as all three of the boys stood still watching it happen, shaking their heads as if puzzled, not knowing what was going on with the horse.
One sleeve of Dennis’ was ripped, a cut on his forearm, perhaps when he had taken one of those two falls; he wiped the August heat off of his face with the shirt, and noticed the horse was breathing pretty heavily.
“Jerry,” said Dennis, “what the heck is that tube and wire doing in the horse?”
Jerry looked at Donald, “You know?” he asked, then Donald looked at the fence, it said “University Veterinarian Farms,” and told Dennis and Jerry to read it.
“Maybe they are doing some kind of experiments with this horse, I mean look at the tube, it is inside the horse’s skin (and so it was, and it extended outside of it by three inches, you couldn’t miss it, it was although on the right side of the horse), and the wire on it must attach to something else,” said Donald.
“I got to ride that big boy, no matter what, he threw me off twice,” said Denis.
Dennis went on chasing the horse around the corral, caught him again, and Donald looped his two hands together, pushed him up and onto the horse, and the boy in a diminutive way with overalls, tightly squeezed his legs around the wide back of the horse, almost ripping the overalls in the crotch area.
Now the horse resisted galloping, and Dennis wanted him to, “Mama Mea,” cried Dennis, “Now what!”
The sun was almost on top of them, you could fry an egg on the fence posts. Now the horse started to produce a rapid beat with his hind hooves as if it wanted to buck Dennis off, but it didn’t, and then it did, he went flying in the air this time, and at that very moment a man came out of the barn yelling and screaming,
“These are sick horses, you boys get out of here,” and he was running slowly toward the boys.
“Is that a fact” said Dennis, with a bit of sarcasm; he was really hurting this time, as if he broke a bone in his butt, the ground was not soft by all means. But he jumped up to his feet lively enough, looked at the horse, “Well, let’s hightail it out of here, before we got to beat the old man up, and I don’t want to do that, and the horse he’s had enough I guess,” and they all three dashed to the fence.
“And if I see you boys again, I’ll hogtie you to the fence and…!” and he said no more the old farm hand, and took the horse by its rope and led him into the barn.

Written: 5-26-2008

The Hearth in Amsterdam (1974, a short story)

2008-05-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

The Hearth in Amsterdam
(From Dieburg, Germany to Amsterdam, 1974)

Two police men were riding down the cobblestone street on horses, alongside a building I stood, watching several folks standing inside a building, sipping on different kinds of wine, and I and my two twins, Cody and Shawn, just looked, one of them asked, “Dad, what they doing?”
“Tasting wine I guess.
We had just left the center of Amsterdam, where statues of lions were, and ended up wondering the streets. A young American hippie near the statueks asked me “Wanta-buy some pot?” and I never answered him, just kept walking.
Cody was in one arm, three years old, and Shawn in the other, and I carried them like two sacks of potatoes off the statues, and down to earth.
It was my first time in Amsterdam, and it would not be my last, I was, twenty-seven years old, a Buck Sergeant in the Army, living in a little city called Dieburg. I wanted to take my boys on a trip, they never really made much of fuss, and Cody was quiet all the way down on the train playing with his toy cars and Shawn looking here and there, inquisitive. I didn’t bring much luggage, and I supposed I should have found a hotel first, but I didn’t. I felt me and the boys needed some excitement first.
It was winter time, November, and there was a chill in the air. In those days I often just jumped up, grabbed some money and took off. Life was ever so fast for me, and I liked it like that. My apartment back in Dieburg, Germany, was simply bricks and whitewash plaster on the walls, too much to look at every day, so I went to castles up and down the Rhine, and Mosel rivers whatever chance I got, and to most all the countries surrounding western Germany. And this weekend was Amsterdam, and I had liberty to do so, no extra duty on the military base. The railroad ran unbroken from Dieburg, to Amsterdam, a hundred stops, but straight through, no disembarking to get onto another train.

It was now late, and the kids were tired, their heads leaning on my thighs, and falling to sleep as we walked, and thus, I found a midnight hotel, and I and the custodian talked about the night’s rent, and I argued that the night was half over, so he should give it to me for half price. And he said no, and then he saw my kids, and perhaps was overtaken by that, and said, “Well, I’ll give you a break, I’ll only charge you two thirds the price, and so we shook hands, and we had our room.
After settling down in the rooms, my tiredness had long sense departed, and I think the twins were also on their second wind, so we went downstairs of the small hotel, there was a fire in the hearth, and I ordered myself a beer, and the boys each a sandwich. Some invisible arm was put on my shoulder, said
“You come over by the hearth, bring your boys, warm up, and drink with us.”
I turned about and it was an older man, he had a smile with a flow to it, it was contagious, and I smiled back. Shawn and Cody were on each side of me, each on a separate leg, chewing away on their ham sandwiches.
The fact now was, we’d be really tired tomorrow, but the railroad ran back to Germany almost hourly so I felt if I overslept, no problem, I’d catch a later train out of Amsterdam. Thus, light-headed, I sat with my boys, the fire crackling, warm heat soaking through my pants, my legs being warmed up, the light from the hearth was like sparkling firecrackers, and I could have hugged those three fellows for inviting me over to the heath.

There were a few ladies in the background, whom seemed to drift here and there, one a waitress cleaning up things, actually the bar was closed, and it was just this group of guys by the hearth. A cat and a dog lying near the fireplace, but kept their distance as if not to take the heat away from us folks. Then a woman brought me a guitar, knowing I could play—I had mentioned it in passing during our conversation, and we sang some songs, I didn’t understand them, but who cares when you’re half lit up.

That evening, I put the boys to bed, and snuck outside for a moment, found a bar nearby open, and ordered a big beer in a bottle, to bring back to the hotel room. Two guys followed me, once out of the bar, then another joined him, and still another. I couldn’t fight all four I felt, let along being half lit, and so feeling incapable of charging these fellows, I simply broke the bottle against a stone wall I was passing by, and now I had a weapon, and they saw it, and they talked amongst themselves, taking their eyes off me for a moment, and I grabbed that moment, I ran down the sides street, couldn’t find my hotel at first, then it appeared out of nowhere. Bells were ringing in my head, iron bells, ‘I made it,’ I made it up the steps to the apartment, and jumped in bed or passed out I can’t remember, and counted myself lucky to have made back alive in the morning. The trouble was not unavoidable, had I stayed in the hotel room, and thereafter, I did. I never seemed to challenge fate twice; I was a quick learner in the area of survival.

Written 5-26-2008

The Oven (a short story)

2008-05-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

The Oven
(North St. Paul, Minnesota, 1951-52)

Who can remember when you are four or five the many things that made you who you are today, it is difficult, by the time you’re ten, you got layers and layers of sketches to write about, or at least I do. But you can remember a few fearful items, I sure, and as years go by, put the pieces together if one wished to get the full story out of the experience. And that is how this story came to being. My brother and Steve were the culprits, and we were staying during the week at what was called a boarding farm, “Kiddy Corner,” in North St. Paul, our mother, would pick me and my brother up on the weekends, until in 1952, my grandfather asked my mother to come live with him and bring the kids. So we left the farm for good, and the apartment in the city, on Igelheart, in St. Paul, and moved to 109 East Arch Street, with grandpa.

But that is really getting ahead of the story, and is simply just background.

My brother and Steve came down the stairs from the upper level of the farm house, where everyone slept (during the day, there were some twenty kids, at night some five or six), they walked me down with them, I was half awake. Janet the owner was sleeping, in the far bedroom down the hall, the opposite side of our bedroom, we all slept from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM daily, usually; Steve was the owner’s son, and he and Mike got along well, Steve being a year older than Mike, and Mike being two years older than I.
“You want to play a game with us?” asked Mike and Steve.
“Oh, yes.” I said, wanting to be with the older boys.
Mike and Steve watched each other for another moment, as if they were deciding if they should or shouldn’t do what they were planning on doing. I looked at them wondering when the game started, and they walked me over to the kitchen oven, and put me into it, closed the door. I remember being in the cramped space, never quite knowing exactly what the game entailed, just being gullible and following the blind, but I was there, it was dark, and I saw nothing, heard their voices fade.
There must have been air in there because I am writing this, but the boys went off and played some other place. When Janet got up, she asked where I was—the kiss of death was coming.
Mike and Steve looked at one another, ´now on the bottom of the steps, they had been outside, “We woke up early,” Steve expressed to his mother.
“But where is your brother Mike?” asked Janet.
They were next to the kitchen, and Mike and Steve must have popped their eyes wide open, looking at Janet and the stove, which you really could not see, but looking in the direction of the stove, in the kitchen, and the kitchen being somewhat divided into a room for cooking, and one for eating, a long table was visible, and around the corner, was the stove.
“We’ll go look for him mom,” said Steve, and Mike repeating what Steve said, Janet now thinking, and the boys hoping Janet will go outside and look, and they’d run to the oven, let little Dennis out, but Janet knew something was wrong, very wrong, good intuition.
“Where is he!” yelled Janet, in a frenzy.
“In the oven I think,” said Mike, and Janet ran to the oven, and Mike mumbled, “We forgot…”
She saw me sleeping, pulled me out, held me tight, I was breathing, but shallow, and she screamed something like “What has gotten into you both, get on up to your beds and stay there—and don’t let me hear you talking.”

Janet was really fearful that my mother would find out, and all hell would break loose, perhaps even lose her license to have children stay overnight, the county was always trying to take her to court on that matter. Matter-of-fact, she may have been the first overnight daycare center in the USA (yet it was a farm of sorts). At any rate, she gave me a lot of attention, and the boys were scolded for a week. And it all slipped into a faded fairytale, and my mother never found out until I was in my late twenties. My brother would bring it up a few times, and I laughed about it. But I suppose it was no laughing matter for Janet, especially when she saw me motionless, almost bemused—her face sad, brooding and inscrutable.

I suppose it told me, I wanted to be with those around me, at any price, and such a price I might have had to pay for that. You know what I mean; it starts at four and doesn’t stop until you forty sometimes, trying to be like the big boys, accepted into their presence, or like the Jones’s. And often times the culprits know this. Of course, I am now going to another level, I do not hold any grudges against Steve or Mike, never have, it was all in play, but play could have been a very costly thing for me, my mother, and surly my brother would never have forgiven himself. I am just glad the boys did not decide to cook me up like a turkey.

Written 5-26-2008

Mosquitoes in Sydney (A sketch)

2008-05-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

Mosquitoes in Sydney

Mosquitoes bit, such the blood out of you, but really do not harm you, until you get malaria, then watch out!

Supremely casual she lit a cigarette, put it in her mouth, talking around it, the music inside the bar is real loud, you can hardly hear yourself talking.
“What is it you’re thinking?” she asked me.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Ok,” she says with a smirk, looks through the doorway into the nightclub from the hallway.
The girl next me, sees her girlfriend now, whom was at another club with her, she has arrived, and to her she says “You came back all this way back from ‘Barney’s?”
“Not enough guys there,” she tells the girl I’m talking to, a lovely dark eyed tanned girl with blond hair.
“You were not there very long,” she replies. (Her face averted from mine, she’s looking at the tall blond haired guy doing his thing with two girls on the dance floor. (Her girlfriend peremptory yet quiet.)
She now has a cigarette between her lips, the cigarette and her head bobbing with the music that is seeping out into the hallway. I tell myself, chasing her, is like her chasing that blond haired guy, whom is slain to the lusts of his accomplishments in the bullring there. She is insanely immersed in grief over this guy, he is her quest for the evening, her challenge, so I tell myself, and so it look to me.
I sense she likes my company, and I am comfortable to be with, so I’ve been told, but when the it comes down to the end of the night, she’ll be with him, if she has to hogtie him, or strip for him in front of everyone. And I thin she’ll do it. I saw that once happen in Germany. When a gal gets a fixation on a man, it doesn’t matter if he is surrounded by a hundred naked men, she will pick that one out every time, until the challenge is over, then, put him out to roost in some empty field in the cold.
“Thanks,” she told me for lighting her cigarette, “Where you from,” she asked, and I replied, “I’m on leave from Vietnam, the war….”
“Oh, yes,” she comments, “we have some of our boys over there also.”
“So you’ve evidently been following this guy all night, is that correct?”
“Yes, from one bar to the next, and I’ll end up with him one way or the other.” (She now puffs rapidly at the cigarette, staring into the crowed dance floor.)

In life I would find out, women like her had the determination, but not much sense, and in the long run, well, to be honest, they were not looking for anything for the long run, it was now or never. It didn’t matter what I knew, or what might have happened between us, because she didn’t want it, all she needed was an affidavit for him to be hers for the evening. So I was wasting my time. But everyone likes to keep a second, in place, they look good to others to have men standing around you with their tongues out, and I simply said, “It’s too late,” and started to walk away, my back to her, actually, it was an insult to her, and she knew it, for I did not look back. She was enjoying what I called Dead Reality, the best of all reason to make love, no commitment.
“That’s right!” I told myself, listen to the voice inside of you; it will tell you when to avoid the execution forth coming.

I did meet another girl that night, I got drunker than a skunk, and when she woke me up in the morning, she wanted me to take her to the park, and we did, and I then left her alone. She came to my hotel room a few days later, asked me why I did not call her. And I was honest, I said I had only a week in Sydney, and I wanted to do all I could, and I was then heading back to Vietnam, and who knows. And she understood.

5-25-2008

Morning in San Francisco ((diary notes)(summer of 1968))

2008-05-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

Morning in San Francisco
[diary notes]

(August, summer of 1968) If you’ve been in San Francisco, you know then, how it is early in the morning with the tramps and young hippie beggars just waking up from the streets, those resting against the walls of buildings, coming out of the Mission building down the road a spell, before even the milkman delivers his milk; some of the bars opening up, and all night nasty movies still playing around the clock, three movies in a row for a buck, can’t beat the price. In the dumpy hotel I was in, on the seventh floor, a bed, an old dark brown wooden framed mirror on the wall across from my bed, a rug along side it, the iron bed squeaked as I’d jump out of it, up off it, and see if my face was healing. The hotel was on one of the side branches of the main street, leading off the main street, near it was a 24-7, café with lights still on. Morning was just breaking. A bum I met last night, the one who stood against the stone wall near the hotel and café was in the café this morning. He wanted my last silver dollar last night, or at least I told him it was my last, but it wasn’t, I just said it so he didn’t bother me about it but I liked talking to him, he seemed weak and frail, a light white and gray beard, perhaps my height, in his late forties, dark blue pants, and a ragged looking shirt, and a leather jacket that looked out of date for the times, but kept the wind from his arms and chest.

It’s the only café open on this street I told myself, looking through the windows he’s talking to a few friends, friends from the mission I think, I saw them there last night, after me and the bum stopped talking, and I wouldn’t give him my silver dollar, we went to the mission, he actually told me about it, and he and I listened to a preacher talk about Jesus and being saved and we followed him to the mission, he told me that is how it works: that being, you listen to him, and after he is finished, he feeds you, and it was true, and we ate, we sat by one another, didn’t talk much, and when he saw his friends, they sat down by him, and I didn’t talk much. I had told him I came out from Minnesota, a friend Tom, who lives across the bay set me up for a week at his house, he’s a welder I said, he also is from Minnesota, but I got this rash, Poison Oak, and he kicked me out, contagious he said, and he had two kids and wife. (I liked Tom, but that kind of got to me, although I couldn’t blame him much. He had to do what he had to do. But I was surprised to see his wife, she was as tall as a bean stock, perhaps six-foot one, and he was five-foot four.)
Anyhow there we were, four of us sitting at an old wooden table, eating gravy and chicken, hard biscuits, and flushing it down with coffee, it didn’t cost a dime, I got some more of Jesus in me, and that didn’t hurt. I suppose I didn’t care that I lied to him but I felt for some reason I had to (I didn’t know then, but I’d see this fellow again, some six months down the road, I’d see him walking the streets in San Francisco, and I’d say ‘Hello’ and he’d stop, look at me, smile and go on his way, he would be dressed in a $500-dollar suite, and trimmed beard, and look like Rockefeller, and I’d say: ‘Job well done,’ as he walked away, but he’d not hear me and he’d not turn around, he just kept on walking until he faded into the horde of humanity.)

Those mornings I’d walk the streets were chilled somewhat, and then the day would turn about with a cool breeze in the warm summer air. I’d walk by this hotel, nice hotel, well known, see this bum sweeping the outside, I stopped and talked to him, he said he been doing that going on fourteen-years. I couldn’t believe it. And he said, “I get to sleep down by the furnace, it’s warm there, I like it, private.” And he smiled with a grin, as if he swallowed a gold fish, I mean, he was happy with his simple life. I saw him off and on, nodded my head off and on when I saw him, and passed him by. He’d step clear of me, and face the street, like an old soldier, as if I was an officer, a General. As if I was waiting for a chauffeur. I liked him. Anyhow I’d keep walking looking for work, knocking on doors, listening to the sounds of the street; the tires go by, the horns and so forth. Then one day, a few months down the road, I picked up a newspaper, and found out he had died. Just up and died, he was sixty-six years old that was a ripe old age I guess. But what startled me, above all was not that, although it was sad—I even took a closer look at the paper, saw his face, affirmed it was the same bum—it read, “(so and so)…leaves $250,000-dollars to the hotel in his will.” I tell you, you just do not know a think about other people. Perhaps my first lesson in, don’t judge the person because he looks the way you think.

My friend, the stranger, as I had mentioned, was perhaps in his late forties, I was twenty-years old, would be twenty one in October, not old enough to drink yet, but I can drink in most any bar anyhow; and that’s what I was doing until I got this rash, and I dare not go into them now, lest they kick me out for having some venereal disease, it got all over my face, now it is just in blotches, and I drink my beer in the hotel room, I pay by the week. I made a deal with the hotel owner; I think you can almost name your own price here, $3.00 dollars a day, and if you want a bathroom in your room, it is $5.00.

I walked daily down the streets knocking on doors, looking for work, I stopped a few days ago and asked one of the hippie kids, my age, said to him, “You’re fit as a fiddle to work, why are you out here begging?”
And he said (with a smirk on his face, slowly as if he was giving me a lesson in life)
“How much money do you make?”
Well I pretended to be working, and said
“I make one dollar and seventy-five cents an hour,” I said that because Lilly Ann, a dress designing place said they would hire me next week, that is if I came back, and I think I will because I can’t find any other work. When I was working for ‘Swifts’ meats, back in Minnesota, in South Saint Paul, I was making $3.50 an hour, big money but I’m not in Minnesota am I. Anyway, he said to me, “I make Seventy Five dollars a day, and I work only eight hours,” and my eyes opened up wide, as folks walked by me and him, and they gave him change, he’d say,
“Any spare change sir, or madam,” something similar to that, but I couldn’t do it, it was a matter of pride I suppose. And he looked so sad when he said it, he could have been on T.V., a star, a movie star, and perhaps will be someday, that’s how things work out you know. One day a beggar, the next, a star. I would have liked to have done what he was doing, making money under false pretenses. He was a nice-looking kid, fellow I suppose.
“I don’t mean to make you feel bad,” he told me, “but it beats the hunger in the stomach, and paving the streets like you are doing for work, just doesn’t do it.”
Well, he wasn’t all wrong, was he?
“You know” the young fellow went on to say to me, said with a smile to me, or was it a mockery smirk, I can say, “its just a living…” he implied, and his hand went out to another customer, a woman in her late thirties, and she gave a quarter, I still cannot get myself to make a living like that, so I beat it on down the street.

I stood there a moment, and looked at the cars, going back and forth, a tunnel was being built as a transit system I guess, underground, it looked like it was on its last stage of its construction.

I decided on Tuesdays I’d go to movies, on Sundays I’d stay in my hotel room and eat chicken and drink beer. And so I did just that, and on the second Tuesday I did my agenda, I was watching the second of three movies, it was a dump of a theater, in the heart of downtown, and the place was sporadically filled with odd looking people, doing odd things, or at least they were not the things you did in the Minnesota theaters. Men with men, and women with women and everyone doing everything but watching the movie; it was in the afternoon, and the movies would go on until 6:00 PM, and these peculiar things would not stop until then. Be that as it may, I told myself, and enjoyed the movies, and if a woman or man came too close me I gave them the evil eye, and they readjusted their thinking.

I had gotten the job I was hoping for, at Lilly Ann, and had started work, and was no longer living in the hotel, or at my friend Tom’s house, I was living in the Dojo, in the Castro area of San Francisco. I had gotten away from the bums, and the trashy hotel, and was now in an area not as dangerous per se, as the downtown streets, but I didn’t figure on the folks being mostly, or highly homosexual in this area, and it made me plenty nervous, I was a ripe Midwestern boy, and every bar I went into someone, male, tried to but the make on me. At first I was too dump to figure it out, thinking they were just good old folks, but the likes of them did show, and confrontation did develop, and we would always separate with me shaking my head in disbelief. I was slim, with every inch of my body muscle, and toned well, and young, I suppose I had all the qualifications for a potential homosexual square, but I was to the contrary, except for the square part of it—meaning I was a tinge naive.

Written: 5-25-2008

Light in Seattle (a Short Story)

2008-05-24T22:14:00.000-07:00

Light in Seattle
(Winter of 1966)

I think she wanted revenge, an eye for an eye, for some undisrupted pain her husband inflicted on her, or perhaps it goes deeper into her childhood, I’ll never know, but whatever I said meant very little, on and during our trip from Minnesota to Miles City, Montana, onto Seattle, Washington, in our 1957- Chrysler, Jeff purchased from my mother for this trip. We got stranded in Miles City for a day, blew a piston in the motor, had to leave the car there, right in Miles City. Had to let the car roll down the mountain, slowly, and it was cold, snow up to our ankles, and Jeff’s wife, who we didn’t plan on coming with us, came at the last minute, decided at the last second to punish us all, and she brought her two kids along, I was emptier than a dry well in the Moabite desert for words when I saw this uncovering.
We had caught a bus out of Miles City, and Jeff had lost his billfold at the bus station, luckily an old lady found it, and my 19-year old bones became refreshed again, as did Karin’s 23-year old bones. I was learning in life, bad luck comes no matter what you do, and good luck also comes the same way, and in-between, you make your luck, however you can (and where there is no luck, you pray).
Karin was Jeff’s wife and this perhaps was the only glimpse of light we had until I saw the signs leading into Seattle. Once at the bus station, Jeff called his old Navy friend, it was about 7:00 PM, and it was getting dark quick, and it was raining, and I’d find out in time, it always was raining in Seattle, or at least for the time I was there. Anyhow, Jeff’s friend showed up, saw us all, two winy kids, a wife, a teenage (me), Jeff’s luggage, I took one long glimpse at his face and knew we were in trouble, and Jeff’s long time Navy friend at the end of the night, would no longer be his friend.
I don’t know what they said, I suppose he told him our hard luck story, whatever, he did not have much pity to spare, and told Jeff face to face, should to shoulder, eye to eye, he wasn’t in the hotel business.
Jeff stood silent, tightening his face, he was six-foot-three, and thin, and could be mean I heard, but seldom was. Had it not been for Karin, he might have punched the guy’s lights out, or tried, I think if he couldn’t have I would have helped. But that wouldn’t have solved our problem for the night, and so he escaped with a trashing of the mouth by Jeff, and that was the last we heard or saw of him.
“Look Dennis,” said Jeff, “we got to find a paper and rent an apartment now,” we were outside by a telephone booth, getting wet and cold. We still had most of our money left, gas was cheap, and I think it cost about .30 cents a gallon back then. Karin didn’t like Jeff asking me first on what he and we should do, she felt left out. She said right after he stopped to take in a gulp of air,
“No, I had nothing to do with this, you got me into all this, and you get me a house, rent one for us!” She made her point quite clear.
I figured out, sometimes you simple have to disconnect with certain people who do not want to connect, lest you tire yourself out to a tightly curled wire. And that was exactly what I was in the process of doing, disconnecting. Thus, my intuition told me to have a plan ‘B’ ready, an escape plan in place, it may come in handy. And so it would.

We, me and Jeff drank a few nights in a row at a lock bar, found a job and one evening Karin said, “Stop it, stop the drinking now! Do you hear me, or you both can leave.”
She made me think often, why did she come along, perhaps only to haunt me, or her husband, or was it she had no other place to go, I really don’t know. As I look back perhaps it was that she was ill, in the sense of depressed, and she had two kids, and was alone in this world. Not sure, I never asked, or perhaps didn’t care, I was young, and felt it was not my business to analyze her, nor if I tried, could I. But the adventure was turning into a nightmare.
That night she took the last two bottles of beer we had and drained them into the toilet. It caused me a little heart burn but it was no great loss. Jeff tried to reason with her, but she wanted his attention I suppose and the booze didn’t allow it. And I know if I said a word or two, it would simply be dropped into a bottomless pot, so I remained quiet for the most part. In time, in years to come, when I’d travel the world, this would come to light, meaning, I’d remember traveling alone was better than traveling with someone who demands too much of you, or more than what you want to give. And it proved to be an asset knowing this, and saved me many a nightmare I’m sure.
You see, I was almost a drunk at nineteen years old, and Jeff at twenty-six, I suppose this was getting to Karin, who was of course, to the contrary, just a tyrant.
In a way it wasn’t a big loss, so I laughed about it, it simply was another triumph for Karin.

—Jeff and I went for two weeks straight with eating only one peanut butter sandwich at lunch for work, nothing in the morning, nothing in the night. I felt sorry for the two kids and Karin, but we only had what we had, and we were down to three dollars, and it was bread and peanut butter for everyone. But one thing got to me, or at least I took note of, and felt it was funny, or unusual, it was that the kids were not complaining, and they were winy kids to say the least. And for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out, you know, that feeling that something is missing.

It happened in the morning, on a Tuesday, just before going to work, the milkman came early and said to us, as we were leaving, Karin and the kids sleeping, “Do you folks want the usual?”
“What,” Jeff said.
“The usual, your wife, Karin—she is your wife isn’t she? (Jeff nodded his head yes), well I usually drop off a half gallon of milk, some butter and eggs and now and then cheese.”
Jeff and I looked at the milkman, then each other, as he handed us the usual items, and we carried them into the house, somewhat num. Jeff woke Karin up, they all had been sleeping on the floor on blankets, like Jeff and I.
(I figured she had outsmarted us again, and didn’t care if we starved to death or not, her excuse would be: “I had to take care of us, the kids and me, you two wouldn’t, you just care about yourselves, so I just cared about us.” Thus, she justified the whole charade.)
Well, there really wasn’t much we could do about it, we’d get paid soon, and there wasn’t much light to be shed upon this betrayal, matter-of-fact, with the daily rain, and the dark hostility, resentment, and secrets Karin was pushing on us, there was no light at all in Seattle. She was surely laughing again, but not so loud, this time, rather in a hushed tone, this time, not to disturb Jeff too much, he was really mad, and in three days it would be payday.
I had plan ‘B’ now, and I would soon implement it. I wasn’t going to, but I figured this had to take place now, living with Karin, was no treat at all; it took all the adventure out of the trip. I planned on getting the last laugh, if only for a high, call it over-learning, I was taught a lesson, life teaches you such, that when it looks bad, it is bad, or better put, if you see smoke, you can bet there’s a fire, and it was smoky along our path from Minnesota, to Montana to Seattle.

It was payday, and they, the company I worked for, a window company, paid their employees up to date, up to the last day, actually a few hours in advance. I had asked my foreman if he could have the office pay me in cash, and they did.
On our way home, I bought three hamburgers, French fries and a coke, my stomach had shrunk to the point I could only eat one hamburger and the fries.
When we got home, Karin was buzzing around the house like a happy bee, happy bear after honey, and was very kind to me and Jeff. I could see, and I am sure Jeff knew, she was up to no good again. Her intent was to rob both of us, willingly. But I was no longer her prisoner, I figured, she could go drink her milk and eat her eggs all she wanted, I was not going to go along with what I figured I knew was on her mine. (She quietly reached for Jeff’s check.)
“I’ll cash both your checks, you both must be tired.” She said with a smirk on her face. She felt, or though because I was unspoken all this time to her nasty dealings, I was easy, didn’t put two and two together, or have a plan, she though perhaps I was her second husband, and subject to her whims.
“No need to cash mine, I already did.” I told her.
Her face turned an ill-yellow, “How is that?” she asked.
“I had the foreman cash it out for me at the company.” I responded, as if it was really none of her business, yet she was making it so.
Her smile left her faced completely, and we stared at each other for a moment, her trying to figure out a new plan to get my money. It was two full weeks pay, plus two days, and overtime, it was a big check, $375. Dollars; if anything I was now somewhat of an instrument for creating a dramatic moment in her life.
I turned to Jeff, and then back to Karin, said with a somber look, “I got my ticket for the 11:00 PM train back to Minnesota, and I’ll be leaving tonight.” I really had not, but I would soon, and they didn’t ask me how I got it, and had they, I would not have answered the question. The point being, I did not want to be talked out of leavening.
“What!” Karin said, and Jeff also looked surprised. I guess Jeff was hurt I didn’t let him know, but under the circumstances, he had no need to know, plus, it would only have given Karin time to talk to Jeff about throwing me out of the house early, and Jeff did not seem in charge, and I sure would not have stopped her.
I am not sure how to describe her mouth or whatever it was that hung in front of me, like an empty furnace, but it was heated…
“You have to pay us some money for staying here.” She said in a commanding voice.
“Sorry,” I said, “but I need the money to live on and get a place when I get back to Minnesota.” (Remembering on my trip to Omaha, when I got back to Minnesota with Jerry and his wife, I had no money, and I had to sleep on their sofa, and they kicked me out after six weeks, and I had to beg and borrow money to find a place to live, it was not going to be a repeat of this; matter-of-fact, I had rented out Larry Lund’s upper apartment, more like an attic for five months, if it wasn’t for his kindness, I would have froze to death come that winter back in ’66, and I was not going to allow this to happen again.
“Jeff, say something!” Karin barked.
Jeff did ask me for some money, he was a tinge sky on the matter, knowing the selfishness, and demands his wife made on both of us, and I had to turn him down also.
“Get out of here, go on!” she yelped. And I did gladly, and to be honest, I had the biggest light in my eyes, Seattle had ever seen.

Written 5-24-2008

Nabraska Fields (a short story)

2008-05-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

(Winter of 1967)

Omaha Bound

So, although in a sense Milwaukee (for the few minutes we spent there, and flew out of there in our 1961-Valient, I won’t miss the city at all), it wasn’t a good experience by far, the racial riots didn’t allow that, it was November of 1967, things were hot throughout the United States, in the white vs. black area.
Jerry was older by twelve-years than I, in actuality, this may have been his first escape out of Minnesota though; on the other hand I was nineteen-years old, and I had been to Seattle, North and South Dakota, and a few other places, and was thinking about San Francisco, but I wanted to visit Milwaukee.
In time, everything in time, I told myself. I am not sure why Jerry Hino and I picked out—of all places—to go to Omaha (other then it was on the map, and near Chicago), but I suppose it was a matter of elimination. When we had got to Madison, we were going to stay there, but it was so impoverished looking, and smelled bad from the stockyards, we hightailed it out of the city like two cats running from a bulldog. I suppose to an onlooker, we were like some unconscious unwanted creatures torn fiercely from the roots of the world (we were unshaven, and perhaps smelled bad ourselves, from the constant drinking of beer and sweating, in the car, as we drove aimlessly here and there, looking for a nest to roost in, by the likes of others—in addition, we were dirty, and untidy, we didn’t even know we were perhaps because we were half lit.
Jerry was escaping from a relationship, me, I was just trying to see the world, one step at a time. I perhaps thought I was like some Greek hero rushing off to Troy to battle with the Trojans. In time I would find my war in Vietnam, and go to Turkey, to the site of Troy, but today it was simply, a trip that started at St. Paul, Minnesota, and onto Milwaukee, and now out of Madison, Wisconsin; there we sat going down a highway,k peeing in an empty can, throwing it out the window, drinking another beer, refilling that, then all of a sudden Jerry says:
“Let’s flip a coin for where we go, Chicago or Omaha?”
It was a question, I suppose, but I simply pulled out a coin, and that was my answer, “Ok, I’ll flip,” I told Jerry, “heads we go to Chicago, and tails, onto that place here on the map called Omaha, matter-of-fact, what the heck is in Omaha?”
“You’re guess is as good as mine, but it has to be better than Madison—I hope!” said Jerry.
Oh well, we were too drunk to laugh, and too tired to think of another place besides those two locations, plus we didn’t have an abundance of money to be too selective.
“Well what is it?” asked Jerry.
“We are my friend, Omaha bound,” I said, and Jerry turned onto another highway, a few minutes later, and we were on our way.
It was Tuesday, and the highway was a mere empty road widening here and there, where construction was not, and we passed several small towns, a few taverns, we stopped at one to buy a six-pack of beer, and on our way we were—intact, blocked minded, sort of speaking.

It was the first week of November, and there really was no snow on the ground to speak of, although the ground was hardening, and the fields we passed were browning with the cold weather, and the crows and pheasants were out in the fields and the dogs the folks dropped off, out of their cars, the unwanted pets, they had bought for their children, and then had to watch and take care of because the children were too lazy, and they were to lazy to teach them not to be lazy, thus, dropped them off in the fields to did, to starve to death, who would be the wiser, perhaps the farmer will be kinder and pick the dogs and cats up, even though each farmer perhaps had twenty dogs now to feed from the irresponsible folks of the big city. And I looked at them running, some even after our car, hoping we’d stop I suppose, or perhaps their memory transposed our car into the car that they were thrown out of, thinking their owner had come back to save them. These were moments of gross and simple lusts of the people, forcible incarceration into idleness of the frozen fields of Nebraska; the newly bought dog pens, now thrown into the garbage so the kids do not get new ideas of getting another dog to feed and watch.
There was even a few deer in motion, shapes dashing across the highway, as if on an endurance run, passion and hope in their eyes, they too were on the hit list for the governments of the Midwest, too much overlapping, extended beyond their limits, that now they were drifting into the main cities, and bothering the noble people of the good State of Minnesota, yes indeed, these were the results of generations of deer, healthy, but in need of food. So the state hired hunters, killers to kill them all, vanish them from the city, this was their objective. Now they were in the Nebraska fields, like the dogs.
Anyhow, there was lots of room out here in the wild countryside, so I felt as we drove past fields that would produce corn, one after the other, almost hypnotised beneath the vast incredible and enduring land of growth of food. I had heard we fed half the world with our wheat and corn, and now I could see how. Every time I turned my head, it was empty fields, or straw bundled up for winter feeding of the farm animals. And then we got into the more condensed populist areas filled with watchful eyes and arrogance and less strays, new generations, and old ones sitting on benches waiting for buses, and asking each other unanswerable questions to pass the time of day away. We were going through Counsel Bluffs, a city next to Omaha, which was across a bridge, Counsel Bluffs being in Iowa, and Omaha, being in Nebraska. A new adventure was about to start.

Written: 5-24-2008 (see: “Milwaukee Bound,” and “Rathole in Omaha,” for the other two parts to this story)

Rathole in Omaha (Short Story)

2008-05-24T17:14:00.000-07:00

Rathole in Omaha
((The Omaha Gambit) (November, 1967))

“Come on,” Jerry Hino said, it was morning and we needed to get an apartment there was a light film of snow on the ground, it was November of 1967 and this was my second great trip. The anxiety and dilemma of the night driven through Milwaukee had passed, we had driven from Minnesota, to Milwaukee, onto Madison, Wisconsin, and here we were in Omaha, Nebraska. In Milwaukee we had almost got shot. Anyhow, we had hightailed it out of Milwaukee, onto Omaha.
I was a little disappointed in the city; it didn’t look like much, I spotted Dodge Street right away, and we drove up and down it looking for an apartment. Jerry was running away from his girlfriend Nancy, and I was on an adventure of my own, my second one to be exact.
I looked about at the huddled set of crude buildings, duplexes and corner grocery stores, dotted around what I called upper Dodge Street, and down an offshoot, here and there (Dodge being the main branch to the tree).
In my adventure in Seattle, I ended up with Jeff’s wife coming along, and here again I got a friend who had left a love sick woman, for adventure, and I was hoping she’d not popup into the scene, and so far so good. Anyhow, we found a Rathole of an apartment just off Dodge street, and the duplex was side by side, so our neighbors were closer than white on rice. I didn’t really have a plan ‘B’ here if things did not work out, only hoping they would between Jerry and I, and they seemed to. He, like me, liked our drinking, and he was perhaps a bit over weight, him being about my height, five-feet, eight inches talk, and two-hundred and forty pounds, I was kidding, he was way over weight.
The duplex was grey, and I expect it was built in the ’80s, and it was as I said, 1967, so I mean, 1880s. We paid for two weeks rent, that was all we could afford for the moment, it cost us $65-dollars, and that was highway robbery if you ask me, I mean it was crude and meager accommodations. It surely was not unfamiliar with me for the times, during those years anyhow.
Jerry seemed to speak for both of us, and him being the elder, I took no insult to it, I often listened attentively during those drinking days, we had our stories to tell, and we told them, and laughed half the night. We must have gotten drunk every night we were in Omaha. And in-between I looked for work, Jerry did not, he slept the day away, as I looked; I think that was one of the reasons he and Nancy got into fights; I could be wrong. Anyhow, I went to the Omaha State Employment Office, and they asked me were I had come from, and why I was up there trying to take work away from the good folks of Omaha, who needed work worse than I. I had no other answer than, “I didn’t realize this was I was stepping on forbidden ground,” he didn’t like my comments, and told me to go back where I came from, and stop taking jobs away from other good folks. I know what I wanted to tell him, but I just shook my head and left the buzzard to his fields of corn.
I did find a job across the bridge in Iowa, good folks there I felt, working for Howard Johnson, as a dishwasher. It paid well, and the work was not hard, and I got a hefty discount on food, and usually they’d give me an extra portion, and I’d bring it back for Jerry, I think they thought it would be my late night supper, but supper for me was beer, not food.

Well, a few weeks went by, and Jerry sent his mother a letter, telling her how he was, not sure why he did that at first, I mean, I never did, I kind of felt no need to, we had just been gone a few weeks, not months or years. Anyhow, our address was on it, this now took away the secret of where we were, and of course Nancy got hold of the address, as you would expect. It was now inevitable, she’d someday show up on our doorsteps, but of course I didn’t know all this at the time. But it didn’t take long, and yes, she was there one evening when I came back from work, and again I was in bewilderment, but not as shocked as I was when Jeff’s wife, showed up from nowhere wanting to go with us to Seattle. I thought at the time: what is wrong with these guys, do they not have any stemma staying away from their patsy women, the ones they are running away from, can’t live with, or deal with. I had old girlfriends also, and I was glad to get away from them, and the farther the better, and the longer the better. In fact, I never went back to one I left, or anyone that left me, what for, once the bond is broken, it is broken, like my mother used to say: get off the bus, and find another.
I was perhaps their shadow the following two weeks; I think we spent a month to six weeks in that Rathole. I went on my own, visited the museum, which had a lot of Indian artifices, and we all got drunk at night, like always.

But to make this story more interesting, and build up the plot some, not much though, because it is really the end to the story, we simply went back to Minnesota, I lived with them for six weeks, they asked me to leave after that, since they had kids, and I was sleeping on the sofa, and you know, that gets old. Anyhow, I do remember the Jewish Store, down the block in our Omaha neighborhood. I spent some time down there, talking to the old redheaded Jew. Gold teeth, not in bad shape for fifty years old she had pretty nice curves, and I of course ripe at nineteen. Her place was a Rathole also, but I suppose, it went along with the neighborhood. The store had high ceilings, you could see the wooden beams, and there was dampness in the place, clutter, and everything looked old, can goods with rust on them. Perhaps she was a dope dealer and this was her front, but I couldn’t have imagined that at the time. I liked her, and she allowed me to come in and out and not buy a thing, and hang around.

5-17-2008

The Wine Closet (a Two Act Play)

2008-05-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

The Wine Closet

(A story of a boy who gets a closer view of realism, sincerity, honesty, and selfishness, and finds himself wanting)

By Three Time Poet Laureate,
Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.

Awarded the National Prize of Peru, “Antena Regional”: The best writer for 2006 for promoting culture (in Poetry & Prose)

Act One
Of two Acts

Wine Closet Door (Name for the area of the Basement in the House)

The curtain is down, the lights go on:

(Narrator, talks to the audience, and everyone can see the basement, and at present Dennis standing on top of stairs, about to walk down them:) in the basement, to the right of a flight of wooden steps (stairs, leading down into the basement) to its back, is an old greenish fading painted door, it is the wine closet (private, Dennis’ grandfather’s secret, or so undeclared anyhow, room where he keeps his wine, and vodka (140-proof). It is locked, with an old lock. A big gas furnace is to its left, newer air ducks, are stretched along the large beams of the ceiling. After moving here in the summer of 1957, shortly after, his grandfather (whom he and his brother and mother live with), he brought the old house, built in the ‘30s, up-to-date; yet the basement has an air of another time, not of the ‘60s, which is the present time, and you can sense and feel that. There are windows in back of the closet, small windows and high, a wooden table and several wooden chairs around the table, are near the far east corner of the basement, it is where his grandfather brings his family guests on the weekend to drink his wine, and beer and vodka.

No one is in the basement at present, but if they were, you could hear the sound of feet above you, especially in the kitchen which is right over the wine closet. You hear the click of the light switch; it is at the top of the staircase. Dennis is coming down stairs. You can hear the old thin wooden steps produce a crackling noise, the boards are not real firm.

Dennis is now by the wine closet door, he listens for foot steps above him, he hears none. This is the first time he has ever planned to do such a thing, his brother has brought his friends down many times to drink a few of his grandfather’s beers, and he has never got caught, so he feels, what the heck, he can do it, and who will be the wiser.

The air in the basement is cool, Dennis rubs his forearms, and there are some goose bumps, on them. You can see, he is concentrating on the lock, he has planned for it.

Dennis did not ask for permission, rather he simply picked the lock with a nail, that was flat on both ends of the top of the nail, the top being the part the hammer drives the nail into its destination. In his mind he is most concerned with the old newspapers he knows are on the shelves in the wine closet, he saw them several times throughout the years, he feels they must had been there when grandpa bought the house from Old Man Beck’s family back in ‘57, when he passed on, and he wants to take and examine the papers closer, perhaps take one or two, and replace them with newer papers, he is unsure how it all will work out, but he has half of the plan set in his mind, and it all is going to happen today, in a moment time. And when he does this, and he is now about to pick the lock, something unusual will happen in which he will have no warning, and thereafter he will have to cope with the rest of the day, and he will discover: realism may need to be looked at closer, as well as sincerity and honesty, and selfishness, within in of course. This will all play a part in today’s performance on earth’s little stage. Furthermore, let me say, this will be the first time in his life he will have to confront his emotions with what surprise is going to happen, with actions and thinking. In essence, will he react to his emotions or his thinking; perhaps he doesn’t know the difference, and things at thirteen-years old, they are the same. The lesson may be, and of course it is always up to the reader to pin point this dilemma, it is wise to react to our emotions vs. our thinking? Realizing of course, we have these emotions all day long, like a rollercoaster sometimes, and to react to them, may only mean, backtracking someplace along the line to straighten things out. Well I must say much more, least I tell you the whole plot, theme and insight, and that would not do. So I shall stop here and let the actors tell you the rest.

Scene One

The Basement, Dennis; the summer of 1962, 11:00 AM

Dennis

(He is now playing with the lock of the door, as if it was stuck, his devise, nail that is, is inside the keyhole, and he has twisted it this way and that way, and lo and behold, the door opens, he is humming, something like this ‘hum…hum…mmm…’ he sees the papers from the doorway, talks out loud to himself)

Look, yes, I thought so, a 1951, the ‘Saints’ (baseball players). Now they got the ‘Twins,’ big deal!

(He switches on his flashlight, holds it on the dates of the papers)

I’ll take this one, grandpa will never know, it’s got these folds to it.

(He pull the paper upward, then back, looks closer at it, the paper is brownish, from age, then he spots something green…he looks closer, it is a bill… he looks closer, a five-hundred dollar bill. He shuts his eyes, as if to clean them, and reopens them; to look again, to insure what he sees is real, really real. And it is, it is surely a $500-dollar bill. His face shows the expression of ‘unreliability’ that it can’t be real; in essence, in this matter, as if his sense and eyes are playing tricks on him.)

Dennis

(anxiously)

Now what!

(He pulls the bill out from under the paper, folding it back somewhat, and puts it on the upper shelve for the moment, he is working on the middle shelf, of three shelves. And as he pulls the paper out, under that he finds another five-hundred dollar bill. Again he holds the flashlight onto the bill to make sure it is real, that it reads what it reads, clearly, and it does. He shakes his head as if to say ‘unbelievable’, opens up his eyes wider, as if say, ‘now what’, takes in a deep breath, but he again is more inclined to check the papers out, and puts the $500-dollar bill with the first one on the upper shelf, and checks the new paper out he finds from the ’40. He takes the papers, the one that reads the ‘Saints’ and this new one. Grabs the two bills on the third shelf, hesitates a moment, listens to hear any footsteps above him, all is clear.)

Dennis

(he asks himself)

Heck, now what?

Sure, take it, grandpa doesn’t even know it is there, was there. I bet old man Beck put it there, yaw sure he did, it’s not grandpa’s, everyone around the neighborhood says old man Beck left a treasure.

(He sighs, a long sigh, takes the money and puts it into his top shirt pocket.)

Dennis

I better get out of here before someone comes, lock it lock the door!

(He is really nervous now, and is having a hard time with the nail relocking the door, but he gets it done by telling himself ‘calm down’ and completes his mission.)

Scene Two

Lorimar’s house, two houses over from his, 11:30 AM

You see the house, and a kitchen window, people sitting and talking in the kitchen, it is Lorimar’s family eating brunch, so it seems. There is a green Oldsmobile parked by the garage, in back of the house, in the driveway, a 1953 model, two doors, it shines. Dennis is standing at this moment in front of the back screened in doorway sees his friend Lorimar talking to the other folks. Among them is the mother and father of Lorimar, and his older brother Tom (Tom will soon become involved with all this, and he notices his brother gone, and looks out the window, sees Dennis standing by the cement steps). It is a warm day, and he wipes his brow, his two five-hundred dollar bills are in his top pocket, you can see the tips of them. He is mumbling to himself, talking out loud says (and the audience can hear this: “Am I a thief, or what?”; Lorimar looks out the window, sees Dennis, nods his head as if to say, ‘Wait a minute.’ Now you don’t see him, he has left the folks in the kitchen to meet with Dennis.

Lorimar

(on the back cement steps of Lorimar’s house)

What’s up, you look nervous, or something?

Dennis

(still in disbelief, he lets out a sigh)

Look at what I found in my Grandpa’s wine closet!

(Lorimar steps down from the top third stair, almost falls off it, he starts to put forth his hands as if to grab them, and look closer at them, but stops himself, and just peers into them as if they were some archeological find, in an ancient grave.)

Lorimar

(his eyes and face rise with his forehead)

Are they real? I mean I’ve never seen one before. Found them you say, aren’t they your grandfather’s? I mean, maybe you better put them back before he notices they are gone.

Dennis

I don’t know if they’re real, I never saw one myself, they look real, don’t they, I mean…I think they do. And I didn’t steal them, I simple found them…I was looking for old newspapers and, and—you know the rest…

Lorimar

(he stares, thinking a moment)

I’ll get my brother Tom to look at them bills, he’ll know for sure if they are real or not, he has a car business in his front yard, sells cars, him and Joe, wait here I’ll go ask him to come out and take a look (he hesitates, adds)…I’ll be careful about it, so no one suspects a thing, I’ll just tell him, Dennis wants to have you look at something, and my ma and father will not be the wiser.

(Dennis sees in the window Lorimar talking to Tom now, his father is the closest to the window, coffee on the table, curtains somewhat in the way. His father leans over a tinge, trying to find out what the mystery is all about, but trying not to be too suspicious, and Lorimar doesn’t tell him anyhow what exactly Dennis has to show him. Now you see Lorimar and Tom in the Pantry, next to the kitchen, and screened in door, he is explaining now what has happened, but you don’t hear him saying anything but by their expressions, you know this by heart.)

Tom

(Tom is looking at the two $500-bills in Dennis’ hands. Tom is about 23-years old, Lorimar is a year older than Dennis.)

Put it this way Dennis, I’m no expert in such matters, but those bills look as real as any one-hundred dollar bill I’ve ever seen, and I’ve never seen a five-hundred dollar bill before, and I heard they do have bills at the bank with higher denominations than one-hundred,…but I wonder if they are registered, I mean, no one carries around two five-hundred dollar bills, they are kind of like those Cashier Checks I think, people have them for safety reasons, so no one can simply go cash them. Lorimar said you found them in your grandfather’s wine cellar and you think they might belong to old man Beck.

(Everyone is quiet for the moment; a loud stillness fills the air.)

Listen Dennis, if you don’t know what to do with the bills, I’ll sell you my 1953, Oldsmobile, its cherry—you’ve seen it, right over there.

(Tom points to the car, and Dennis is looking, his eyes are as wide as the light bulbs in the car. It would seem at this juncture, Dennis has put out of his mind the possibility that it is even his Grandfather’s money, and has planted a seed somewhere in his brain that it is his money now, you can see it in his face, he is now holding the two bills as if they are his, and his alone, but nod his head as if to say ‘Ok,’ and hands the bills over to Tom.)

Dennis

Ok, Tom, here are the bills, and the car is mine, when do I get it? I mean, I’m fifteen-years old, not sure if I can have it in my name. I really do like that car of yours, it shines like the dickens.

Tom

(there is a silence between the three of them)

You will not find a better car for the price, Dennis.

Dennis

I suppose.

Tom

Well, do you have any second thoughts, I mean, are you sure you want to make this deal, I don’t want you coming back tomorrow and saying I did you wrong, or telling everyone I cheated you? Matter-of-fact, I will be checking out the legal procedure tomorrow on how to put a title card into the name of a minor, I doubt there will be any big problems. Here’s a set of keys, keep them; since the car is yours, I got another I’ll give them to you tomorrow.

Dennis

I suppose so, I mean yes, yes I want the car, I gave you the bills, I am just concerned about putting the title card into my name, I don’t have a license to drive, only a permit, next year I’ll get my license, but I can drive with a license driver I suppose, maybe my brother Mike will ride with me.

(Dennis is playing with the keys in his hand, as if he was a big shot, and a smile is on his face now, he never owned such an item like this before.)

The two five-hundred dollar bills have already been handed over, and Tom seems elated. Lorimar and Dennis go over to the car and check it out. Lorimar puts his hands on Dennis’ shoulder, he is about two inches taller, and says something to the effect “How’s it feel to be an owner of such a beautiful car,” you can faintly hear that. Tom has just walked back into the house, you can see him now through the kitchen window, he is showing the money the two bills to his father, and his father is looking stern with a little mystery to his look as if to say, ‘this can be trouble’. Tom has agreed to check out the process tomorrow in transferring the title card over into Dennis’ name, and that very well might be part of the conversation, the father, Joe is having with Tom, and his mother is walking into the living room, as if to say, this is men’s business, and she calls for her daughter, and they both go sit on a square wooden piano stool, as she gives her daughter lessons (the father’s name is the same as his son Joe Jr. who is twenty-one) he shakes his head a second time.

Scene Three

Inside the Dennis’ Grandfather’s house, 7:00 PM

(The phone rings, Dennis is in the living room, near the phone, his grandfather is outside cutting his lilac bushes, his mother, Elsie, picks up the phone, listens to the other person on the phone, her face seems to go through several confusing emotions, as if she is trying to understand something, and she glances at Dennis a few times. Her boyfriend Earnest is in the kitchen, her and he were having coffee, until the phone rang. She has a cigarette in her hands, takes a few puffs off it, blows the smoke out, then hangs up the phone, looks at the clock, and goes out into the kitchen, she now is talking to Earnest, as if getting advise, she squints her eyes, looks through the two rooms to Dennis by the television in the living room. Then she calls him over to the kitchen.)

Mother (Elsie)

Dennis, come in here for a moment, I want to ask you something!

(to Dennis)

Dennis

(Dennis is nervous; he senses it has to do with the car)

What is it?

Mother (Elsie)

(Earnest is sitting down, Elsie is standing up)

I just got a phone call from Lorimar’s father; he said something about two five-hundred dollar bills you found in grandpa’s wine cellar, what about it?

Dennis is acting somewhat as if he doesn’t know anything of what she is saying, a tinge smug, he plays with the keys in pocket a bit, but quietly. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, almost dumbfounded, his mother waiting for an explanation, and Earnest, drinking his coffee, staying out of the predicament. Dennis wants to say something but is unsure of what to say, he doesn’t want to lose the car.

Mother (Elsie)

Well, I’m still waiting for an explanation!
Dennis

(with a deep sigh)

I found them, two five-hundred dollar bills under the old papers in grandpa’s wine cellar. I wasn’t robbing him, I doubt they even belong to him, I was looking for old papers, and I found them, and I asked Lorimar to look at them and see if they were real, and Tom came out and said they were, so I bought his car, I mean I gave him the two bills for the car.

The boy was of course not lying, nor was he sorry for taking the money, you could see it in his face, a tinge bad in the sincerity area, and his mother was sure he was telling the truth, he was not know for lying, but now it seemed, she was unsure of the whole matter. She didn’t see any ‘I’m sorry,’ in his face for taking what did not belong to him; only perhaps sorry he got caught.

Mother (Elsie)

First of all, the money may very well be Grandpa’s he hides it all over the house, and if it was Mr. Beck’s, as you told Lorimar’s brother, it is still grandpa’s because you were snooping in his private closet, where you were not suppose to be; Tom is coming over with the two bills now, and he wants his car keys back, I guess you even went a bought a car, without me knowing.

(There is a knock on the door, Elsie puts out her hand for the car keys, Dennis gives them to her, and she goes to the door to meet Tom who is doing the knocking.)

Act Two
Of two Acts

The Reprieve (In the house, the next day, morning, the Grandfather was told the story by Elsie)
There has never been much of a liking between Dennis and his Grandfather, he took to Mike, his older brother, and seems throughout the years to simply endure Dennis, whereas, he appreciates Mike. Nonetheless, it really hasn’t bothered Dennis all that much, and in return that in itself may have bothered the old Russian Bear, who came to America in 1916; Dennis, he just keeps his distance, throughout the seasons, one by one. If anything, he is a little closer to his mother than perhaps his brother, whom is his senior by two years.

He would like to shut the lid on this situation of the two bills and car but he knows it will have to be settled between him and grandpa, even if his mother makes peace with him over this. Old grandpa, fought in WWI, tougher than hard ice, and just as cold. He realizes it will perhaps be a turbulent day, with a little nastiness coming from his grandfather, he likes to swear for no reasons, and this is a good reason to do just what he likes to do, so he his prepared to endure a mouth full of broken English, but he has lived through worse, in this quiet infested forest of his.

It is morning, and Dennis has come down the stairs from the Attic bedroom where he and his brother sleep, he sees his grandfather, he is pacing the house, walking from the front porch to the back pantry door. He stops suddenly, noticing Dennis, who has done nothing apparently: just standing there buttoning up his shirt. Dennis, he notices his grandfather seems to know something, and he is annoyed, but not as annoyed as Dennis would have expected him to be, after almost losing two five-hundred dollar bills, he is still convinced they belonged to Mr. Beck, and feels he got the short end of the stick in this situation, having lost the bills and the car all in one day.

Scene One

The next day, 9:00 AM, in the main area of the house

Dennis’ grandfather stops by him, Dennis says “Hello,” but it is so faint, I doubt his grandfather even heard him; in any case, if he did, he pretends not to have heard him.

Tony (Grandfather)

So, I guess you like to snoop in my things, never mind my things stay out of them, or I’ll throw you out of the house. Looking for papers, hogwash, you just snoop like always. Now you lie, and steal. Don’t let me ever catch you in there again!

(he walks away, but not heatedly as usual; surprising)

Dennis tries to say he is sorry, but it doesn’t come out right, more of an ‘I…mmm sor… (then he quickly says it) sorry,’ almost is a hush, and no sincerity to it, and then he turns towards the kitchen and enters it…

Both Dennis and Tony, are to the backs of one another, perhaps they are much like one another; Dennis fades into the pantry and you hear the back door slam, and Tony walks out onto his front porch, and again, you hear the door slam behind him.

Curtain

Act one written on the 22, and Act two written the 23 of May, 2008.

Poems of the Cayuga Street Gang of the '50s

2008-05-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

Δ
Neighborhood Poems
(Out of Donkeyland)

I See the Boys
((Of Donkeyland) (1960s))

I see the boys of Cayuga Street; it is summer (it is in the early sixties). They are sitting on the steps of the neighborhoodgrocery store, in the evening it will be the church steps(with the heat, and the summer winds).They are talking about the neighborhood girlschewing on green apples from old man Brandt's backyard.

These boys of the neighborhood, called Donkeylandby the police, are curds in their recklessness?Sweet and sour, like honey on fire:the jacks of folly, with fingers like bees.Here in the summer's sun, they sneak underbridges, catch pigeons, scale the beams withno doubt; even in the dark they feed their nerves.After twilight, after leaving the church stepsthey will go down to the train tracks open up a car full of beer, jump over thecrematory fence, and get wasted.

I see the boys of Cayuga Street, it is still summerthey divide the night and day with mental imagesthey got on dark shades.As sunlight paints in the moon, they are buildingbonfires in the empty lot (by Indian's Hill).I see now some will die young, some in the Armythe Vietnam War is going on, others willdie old, or in their 60s (I know of a few already)but this is still far-off....
There, in the night, everyone's sleeping, but the boysin the neighborhood turnaround (some have chains of keys hidden behindtheir coats: Mike, and Gary and a few othersthey will borrow a car or two, for a joyride).Here all the girls and boys hold their drinks high

smoking, joking, a fight or two, Big Ace makingloud noises like a fool, dancing—David laughing, I'm somewhere around; it's a love and drunken quarry.Oh, I don't see much promise of the boys, some ruin—but who knows, I might be fooled.They are becoming men, there father's were;the sons of the hard and grey, with a sparkleft for the playing field.

4-22-2008 (#2359)

Three Houses and an Attic

Three houses were on the embankment
we lived in one, to the far right,

a wiredfence stood between

our house and theirsalong with trees,

chimneys, and so forth.

The summers were very hot back then
in the ‘50s, boiled an egg on the sidewalk;

our attic bedroom was even hotter…!.

My prayers were said, stuffed animals
surrounded my bed, my brother on the
other side of the room, readied himself
to sneak out the window, and visit the
gang in the turnaround. And my mother
would say, “You boys are really quiet up
there…”; funny she never found out.

Notes: Funny isn’t it, but simple things are often remembered with a chuckle, at the time, I thought my brother was quite bold and daring, jumping out the window onto the pantry roof, and climbing down a ladder he had placed there, before he went into the house, for the evening. He had his plans, but I got the better of the sleep. #1513 (2006)

Cayuga Drag Strip: 500
Night, from an attic bedroom window

can be a dreary, if not ghostly dark thing…

street lamps reflecting glares from the
passing cars, raindrops hitting your
forehead and face; rustic and squeaky
metal sounds coming from nearby railroad
cars. But the worse of it was the drag strip.
A few of the gang boy’s would hotrod up

and down Cayuga street, as if it was
a drag way; consequently, hard to sleep.
My brother would simply say: “Can’t
you be quiet, go back to sleep!” Well,
it was easy for him to say, he had just
snuck back in the house from a heavy
night, through that window I wrote about
before, in a poem; he was you know,
one of those bone-headed hot-rodders!

Note: back in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, the neighborhood boys used Cayuga Street, as a drag strip, and you never knew when they’d pull those old 1940-Fords up to the corner, and peel rubber like, cutting ham. #1514

Empty Lot

In the middle of summer
in the empty lot, next to Indians Hill, (up the embankment was my grandpa’s housewhere my brother, mother and I lived), we’d play softball (reckless days of my youth).After the game, the Cayuga Street Gang was eager —with their wild wishes and all—to find some
lonely place and get plowed!! And we did.

Note: I don’t rightly know of any neighborhood that drank more than we did. Many of us turned into alcoholics, some still alive, some died from it, some recovered, I was one of those in the latter category.

—Farewell Donkeyland
(Memories and ashes)

I remember the last day in the neighborhood; it was in the year ‘68.After that day, I’d never return to stay—I’d follow the sunset; travel the world, become the person I wanted to become, I realized, it couldn’t happen there, not in that neighborhood, alas, but so true.

The day had a gleam of light to it, and in my body a hesitation, the air was fresh, it was a yellow morning, daybreak, it was April, I was outside the Mont Airy Bar; having said my last goodbyes over a beer or two, leaning a friend’s car.

I didn’t realize then, I’d remember so well such simple things, such as the cool Midwestern air of spring, the faces of the Cayuga Street Gang, and a hundred seemingly, inconsequential things, I was on my way to the cosmopolitan city of the west, the city by the bay, San Francisco.I remember her long—my neighborhood: some feelings now escape me, corners that hate me, yet life there went on, now mostly gone to memories and ashes, memories and ashes, like this poem.

Note: Our neighborhood was called Donkeyland by the St. Paul Police, of Minnesota; nicknamed by a police officer called Howe who use to comb Cayuga Street, and the rest of the neighborhood back in the late 50s and 60s. #1517

Old Mrs. Stanley
She sits on her porch and knits

in the mornings, bending at the
windowsill, with those old, old
waxed fingers, you can almost
see those old perturbing veins
from where I stand, she’s just
smiling away—looking up and
down Cayuga Street, checking
out the boys and girls, the gang:

my old neighbor, and widow,
at ninety-three, Mrs. Stanley.

When noon comes around, she’ll

switch windows, pull back the
curtain, in the kitchen, spoon
in her soup; check out the birds
in her birdbath, splashing water
all about, she bought it after her
husband passed on, perhaps from
boredom. She doesn’t care if
I’m looking over the fence, to see
her looking back, I’m just a
teenagers, wet behind the ears,
a neighborhood fact, a dupe.

In the evenings, in summer, she’ll
pull weeds from her backyard
garden, a few vegetables will grow
back there; not much to speak of,
carrots and cucumbers.
I think, or so it seeps up from deep
within my head, “Doesn’t she
have anything else to do?” I’m being
really kind of cruel, she knows this
from my looks…she really seems
kind of homeless to me, in that big
house, but she knows I don’t care;
and neither does she.

Now at sixty, I can kind of identify
with her, I’m in my little house garden,
pulling dead leaves off geraniums,
picking up dead worms, looking out
my bedroom curtains, trying to see
what teenagers plan on robbing me,
and how soon, will I be able to go to sleep.

Mrs. Stanley, her husband died about 1960 at the age of 67, if I recall right, after retiring from the Railroad, he didn’t live long after his retirement, perhaps two years. He bought a 1959-Rambler, drove it one year, and that was it, it sat in the garage for the next five years. Not sure why, Perhaps Mrs. Stanley loved him more than I could conceive. #1518 (2006)(reedited, and revised, 5-2008) If she could see me now, know me now, she’d say: “Dennis, you fooled me, you actually became somebody!”

"Love at Fourteen" (a Donkeyland Romance)

2008-04-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

Love at Fourteen (1961)
(A Light and Teenage Romance)

(Christopher Wright) I was fourteen years old when I met her, it was the summer of 1961, in October I’d be fifteen, and her, she I think was all of 16-years old when we met. I never blamed her for not meeting me at the tree, or calling me thereafter, I didn’t search for her either, she did ask now and then though about me, throughout the years, she ask how I was, if I was alright. I never talked about her to anyone, what for, it was just a summer romance, perhaps a lost summer, and the only one she and I, Nancy Pit and I that is, would enjoy together—the fancy-free exuberance of youth would embezzle us.
Perhaps I was dim, but a handsome young man I was when I met her, Jill set me up, wanted me to meet her; Jill lived across the empty lot from me, I hung around with her brother somewhat—Donald (or Donny), I suppose we were all friends in the neighborhood back then, Jill, Donny, and the other twenty or so young kids, and me, and here comes Nancy, a stranger but Jill wanted us to meet and I was curious. And I liked her fresh long wavy red hair, some freckles. She was peaceful to be with. We both seemed to be on fire, free as birds, but of course, no one is free when they fall in love, or think they are falling in love. Kind of a Catch-22; your emotions imprison you somewhat.
My body, I remember was hard, muscle hard, I was weightlifting at the time, and my mind had a stone wall around it, it seemed. I was weightlifting as I said, and sso my body was toned, and this one day I was bringing dirt back and forth from the empty lot to Jill’s father’s house, in a wheelbarrow. And she looked, I mean really looked with staring and blazing and desirable eyes at my sweaty body, my muscles glowing as afternoon turned into dusk—wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow. She followed me, told me she like what she saw. She looked at me as if I was so much, enough, perhaps too much, perhaps much more than what I really was. She had thought I was her age, as we had met and talked for the first month of the summer, then she found out she was two years older than I and left well enough alone, said little to nothing on the subject.
She was the first girl I suppose I ever dreamed of, one I could become comfortable with anyways.
The summer of 1961, was a hot one in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a growing one for me—we, Nancy and I, went to the drive-in-movies together, her and I and Jill and her boyfriend that is. We even went to Indians Mound (which was a distance from the neighborhood, having to crossover to a nearby hill, across a wobbling wooden bridge, perhaps from the Civil War days, and up some other hills and into a patch of trees, hidden from the Mississippi Avenue, where the police often monitored; we met the neighborhood gang there and drink (Roger and Doug, Big Ace and Lorimar, Donny and Jill and Mike, Ronny and another Nancy was there, Sam would marry her in a few years, and there was Larry the tough guy of the neighborhood, and so forth). It was during the second month of this summer I and she laid down under the gazing stars, foliage all around us, leaves piled high against thick old trees with thick bark on them, and she lay on top of me, and we rolled about, and I felt myself become excited, thus, I stopped—it scared me, I wanted to obey my impulse, my desire, but my mind said no, and Nancy was not fighting hers. I never regretted it, I think she did though, but I never exactly understood it, why I did stop. The best conclusion I can come up with was pregnancy; and I suppose I was a tinge bashful, and unsure of the situation.
She could have had any guy in the neighborhood, but her heart was alive for me, so it seemed, she even seemed to need me, and was never ungrateful; she made me feel as if I had some magical power over her, that she was breathless over me—perhaps my imagination, but it was as I felt, and if it was a way woman captivate men, she was working me quite well.
She often rubbed my back, I liked the touch of her doing so, and those were the last nights, and the last month of the summer, we’d see each other—hence, she seemed to pick up that habit more frequent, and with less doubt.
After we left that last night, the night she and I carved our names into a tree by my grandfather’s house, where I lived—near what the neighborhood called the turnaround—we told each other we’d meet in six years, I knew it was the last night—the very last night we’d ever see each other but I did for once what my heart and desires commanded, not what my head rationalized out (for I knew she’d soon return to Jill’s house and in the morning be gone). Anyhow, we stood by the tree and carved our names in three, hugged each other, tight, so very tight I think I could have broken her bones, had I not let go when I did.
We parted, she had some tears on her cheeks, but with smiles, the farther she walked in the twilight, the moon guiding her with the arch lights, down across the empty lot where we played baseball, and to Jill’s house, I watched as I walked up my steps to our screened in back door, until she simply became a shadow in the night, a it seemed so unreal, as if the magic that we thought was present, had just busted like a balloon, popped. Is this how love was, I asked myself. Is this was facing me in the future, I asked myself. What was I in store for? I looked a last time, and even her silhouette was gone.

As the years passed, she’d ask about me now and then, Jill would mention it, and then Jill got married. I had dreams, many of them of her, and perhaps she knew that I would—for she had planted them perhaps, only to blossom years later, but she got married, I heard unhappily, but it must have worked out later on for at the age of nineteen-years old, I never heard of her again. And I left it alone. Not sure why, perhaps not wanting to intrude, perhaps she felt I might someday come on a big white horse and rescue her. But I liked how it ended; it was like a romance in a book, happily. And I suppose what more can you ask for. It was a time when neither of us had any baggage you could say, a time when we grabbed the moment, and although it could have been more in-depth, we left that part out, and became good if not great friends. Should I ever meet her again, I can surely say, “Wasn’t a great back then?” And I think she’d really, with a smile and hug, and kiss on the cheek, “Oh yes, yes indeed, it was magical!”

(10-30-2007)(Revised and reedited 4-28-2998)

I see the Boys ((Of Donkeyland)(1960s))

2008-04-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

I see the Boys
((Of Donkeyland)(1960s))

I see the boys of Cayuga Street, it is summer
(it is in the early sixties)
They are sitting on the steps of the neighborhood—
grocery store
(in the evening it will be the church steps).
There is the heat of the summer winds
They are talking about the neighborhood girls,
chewing on green apples from
Old Man Brandt’s backyard.

These boys of the neighborhood, called Donkeyland
by the police, are curds in their recklessness?
Sweet and sour, like honey on fire;
The jacks of folly, with fingers like bees
Here in the summer’s sun, they sneak under
bridges, catch pigeons, scale the beams
no doubt, even in the dark they feed their nerves.
After twilight, after leaving the church steps
they will go down to the train tracks
open up a car full of beer, jump over the
crematory fence, and get wasted.

I see the boys of Cayuga Street, it is still summer
They divide the night and day with mental images
they got on dark shades.
As sunlight paints in the moon, they are building
bonfires in the empty lot (by Indian’s Hill).
I see now some will die young, some in the Army
the Vietnam War is going on, others will
die old, or in their 60s (I know of a few already)
But this is still far off….

There, in the night, everyone’s sleeping, but the boys
in the neighborhood turnaround
(some have chains of keys hidden behind
their coats: Mike, and Gary and a few others,
they will borrow a car or two, for a joyride).
Here all the girls, and boys with their drinks and
smokes, jokes, a fight or two, Big Ace making
loud noises, dancing—David laughing, I’m
somewhere around; it’s a love and drunken quarry.
O I don’t see much promise of the boys, some ruin—
but who knows (I might be fooled?)
They are becoming men, there father’s were,
The sons of the hard and gray, with a spark
in the playing field.

4-22-2008 (#2359)

Indian Blanket (A Sketch in Life--1953)) Dedicated to Mike Siluk))

2006-11-27T14:22:00.000-08:00

Indian Blanket
(A Sketch in life—1953))
Dedicated to Mike Siluk/By: D.L. Siluk))

I was but a kid back in ’53, my brother Mike, two years older than I, we seemed to get along better then, better than now that is. When we were both young we’d play in our backyard, up a ways was a long embankment, with rolling hills behind (I once put fire to that hill, but that is another story); anyhow, we’d lie on our Indian blankets by the house in the backyard, play cowboys and Indians, Mike had a Mohawk, daring he was, it was the last few summers I’m talking about, prior to our moving, we even built a tent out of those old Indian blankets, we were together nearly all the time back then. Then one day we up and moved, we just disappeared, grandpa, mom me Mike, we moved from Arch Street in St. Paul, Minnesota up a few miles, north that is, to Cayuga street; oh, perhaps two miles in-between, here and there.
No one from the neighborhood knew we had gone, I think, nor cared, and the next thing I knew, we were in our new home, it was 1957-58, and I played cowboys and Indians in the attic; getting pretty old for that I think, I was ten years old, Mike was twelve, at which time I had asked him to play with me, knowing he had his new friends of course in the new neighborhood, of course, “Don’t tell anyone I played with you this…(Little People, we called it).” I assured him I’d not tell, and perhaps that was the end of our Cowboys and Indians saga. What would take its place would be poetry, in the following year, 1959.
As I think back now, growing up too quick takes the fun out of life, perhaps it wasn’t too quick, and it just seems so now. So I can only say to the parents out there, let them play, they will not forget those far off days.

First Poem: Longfellow’s Window [1959]

2006-07-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

First Poem: Longfellow’s Window [1959]

It was perhaps May, the year was 1959; I was sitting on the top level of the attic steps, somewhat motionless, looking out the window into the backyard, we had a long hilly backyard, very green in the summer, grandpa cared for it like it was a treasure, proud, he even fenced it in after a number of years, after people trampled through it, as if it was a highway. The sunlight hit my face, it was a weekend and mother was downstairs doing something, perhaps housework, she was always busy. I had found some paper in a drawer and I slowly went to write, drawing my pen to paper, a word came forth, then writing again, a few more words, without looking at the paper my thoughts flowed through my mind, and my body was full of emotions. I slid the paper in front of my pen again, and noticed I had a stanza of some kind, then heard Grandpa’s old black mantel clock strike twice, it was 2:00 PM, next I went back into my silence, more like scratching with my pen now, words and syllables, rime and accents, trying to dance and sing with the pen, as words flowed onto the paper.
I re-read my first stanza, it would be, or become my first poem. I had listened to an old record [78] my mother had given me, by Jimmy Boyd, and so I came up with the name, “Who.” I think the song was named that, and it was a simple poem that needed a simple name, like the song. I had no idea of course I’d study poetry in the future, write 1400-poems, produce nine poetry books, and so forth and on. But that was the beginning, as all things must have a beginning, that is, all things must have its first step.
I found a second sheet of paper and copied the poem, and made the corrections I needed, it was now 4:00 PM, and dinnertime. (I had folded the poem, and put it into my pocket, asked my mother in her bedroom later if I could read it for her, and I did, and she liked it—of course, and then back into my pocket it went).
Next I went upstairs to the attic bedroom, where my brother and I slept, him on one side of the attic, myself on the other, a window in-between, this was on the opposite side of where the steps were, and the reason being the beds were there, was because the chimney stretched from the basement all the way through the attic, through the roof: too close to the window to put beds.
For the following week, I’d look out that window and figure poem two would have to be coming soon, and it would have to come out of that window, and it did. I was consumed, to realize I could express my emotions this way, instead of being crushed with them, holding them inside like excessive water.

It would be years later I’d venture out to see Henry W. Longfellow’s House, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and gaze through his window; then after that, I’d purchase an expense signature of his (original), singed “Yours Truly Henry W. Longfellow…. 1877” a great poet indeed.

Written 7/25/2006; El Parquetito, Café, Lima Peru

Vacant Houses(Donkeyland—1959))& Notre Dame—de Paris]))

2006-07-25T18:28:00.000-07:00

Vacant Houses
(Donkeyland—1959))
& Notre Dame—de Paris]))

There was a two year period in my life, between eleven and twelve years of age when I’d go with my friend, Mike Reassert, searching into vacant houses that were about to be torn down by the state, in Downtown, St. Paul, Minnesota, for building bridges, and new fancy government buildings. These were all residential homes, and apartments complexes at one time. The year was 1959; it was summer, and a weekend, Saturday, if I recall right. The particular building we went into this forenoon was behind the police station, which was on 10th Street by Cedar; a bakery was nearby, and Jackson Street parallel. Often times the doors were left open in these soon to be smashed and shattered residences, and tramps, bums would sleep in the hallways, they never bothered us boys much, and if one moved too quick we’d hightail it out of there like two wasps. Today we didn’t see any, and so we moved from the first floor to the second floor of this four-plex apartment building.
It was near noon, as we rummaged through the hallways into the littered apartment, litter everywhere in it, its windows gazed upon the street outside, its curtains half torn off their reels. An old elm tree was ripped out of the ground, its thick old roots naked in the sunlight, the light of the sun entered through the window so as to shoot a ray through the dirty glass, all the way to the ceiling, showing the gray old spider webs in the corners of the rooms; it was a one bedroom apartment, the bathroom dingy as gray lace. The once white walls were drab except for the ones where the pictures hung (I didn’t know then, what I know now, we live out our childhood in dreams, somewhere down the adult road of life, in stages).

(The closet.) Light barely passed through the window into the closet as I opened it, the light seemed to have had a tail, as it moved past the chairs of the kitchen, and a reflection of the light in the living room, shinned on the sofa chair as I looked through the archway in back of me now—both lights somewhat helpful; the closet had sawdust in it, perhaps rats or mice were chewing holes in the walls, every so often I’d hear one in a room, they gnawed on everything that had a shape. Then I saw a frame, a picture in it, I pulled it foreword, shook it a bit, to take the dust and particles off it, wiped the glass somewhat clean with my shirt and elbow, it was of an old church in Europe. I looked closer; it was of Notre Dame de Paris. “Hummm…” I wondered.
“Leave it be,” said Mike, “its too hard to carry back and lug all-round all day.”
“No,” I said, not sure why, it simply caught my eye.
As time would tell, I’d go to Europe, and from the first time in Europe, in 1970, to my last time in Europe, 2002 (perhaps a dozen times in Europe all together, and some five years total time spent there), I’d see many Cathedrals from Spain, to Germany, to Istanbul, to London and Paris, and Notre Dame, I’d see four times, and perhaps each of those times in Paris, I’d go to Notre Dame, every day, thus, going into the Cathedral thirty times or more—complete. Going right up to its bell tower once, and climbing along its top ridge, looking and examining its gargoyles —and the rest of Paris.

Written 7/25/2006; El Parquetito, Café, Lima Peru

Street-Fight: Larry and the Big Guy (Part I; Donkeyland; Cayuga Street Gang; 1964)

2006-07-24T18:17:00.000-07:00

[1964] With the corner of his eye he saw Larry, he carried a light coat, it was early summer, he looked as if he came from a baseball game, there were several of them that came down the stairs to the basement party, uninvited, to invade the party. Larry had punched out a wise guy earlier at the party and now he wanted his friends to get revenge for him. John saw them all coming down the stairs, and the big guy, the heavy one, asked, “Where is Larry?” but had saw Larry from the corner of his eye anyway, he knew him by instinct. Larry was half drunk, fumbling about, and he remarked, across the dance floor, softly, watching the man sidle past a few guys to get to him. John looked like he was ready to pass out but watched what was about to unfold closely, as I did, and was flinging his hands about. The party members were swaying with the music, flashing lights; the basement party was cramped, eager.

“I’ve seen what you’ve done to my nephew (whom was brushed badly, beaten like hamburger),” said the big man about two inches taller than Larry, who was perhaps six-foot one inch tall, and the big man perhaps forty pounds heavier than Larry, whom was all of 190-pounds himself. Most of the kids at the party were part of the Cayuga Street, unofficial gang, part of what the Police called; “ Donkeyland.”

“I’m Larry,” said Larry to the big guy. A punch came from the big guy’s right hand, it stunned Larry—then he grabbed Larry like a wrestler and hit him again, but then Larry checked him, and with speed, a jerk here and there, he hit the guy four times, but the big guy absorbed the punches, and Larry could not dance and box like he wanted. Everything was too cramped, too hot, Larry was too drunk; as a result, the man hit Larry again, and his head jerked back. I had never seen Larry beaten in a fight before, and this was looking like a defeat in the makings.

I was at this time 16-years old, in three months, I’d be all of 17, and my friend John, the same age, a relative of Larry’s joined in on the fight, with one of the friends of the big guy, and got slaughtered in the corner of the basement: a puffy face to boot. A few others got involved with the fight, then Larry who had fell to his knees, got back up, his lightening punches did not put the man out only punish him to the point of using his bruit force to push him down again, but he was puffing like a train, losing his breath; but he anticipated, Larry anticipated this I think, said, “Let’s go outside and fight, I got more room there.” And everyone, perhaps twenty kids, everyone from fourteen to twenty-five, went outside in the backyard, University Avenue was close by, a busy street, and behind that was the house were an alley divided the house and a bar.

Now outside, Larry waved the guy on to fight, and he started to and Larry got into his dance, like Clay, and the man before throwing a punch, trying to lift those heavy arms, received two from Larry; thus, Larry was now the aggressor, on longer on the protective side of the fight; hence, the big guy quickly picked up his coat from where he threw it on the ground, threw it over his shoulder, jumped in a car that had pulled up, jumped on the seat quick, as Larry picked up a long board, and chased the car, smashing the sides of it several times, but it got away.

The fight was over, Larry leaned back, caught his breath, “Let’s go back to the neighborhood,” and we all left to get drunk down in Donkeyland, on what was called: Indian’s Hill; as usual.

Written 6/3/06 [Part One: Donkeyland; the Cayuga Street Gang of the 60s]

First Knockout: Chick and Snipes [Part II Donkeyland; Cayuga Street Gang; 1960]

2006-07-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

I really couldn’t say, myself, but what I remember was we all stopped playing the baseball game and walked over to the new kid standing somewhat in the way of the players; he had moved in by Brandt’s house, called Snipes. He had a gray tea shirt on (muscle man shirt on), looked pressed even, clean. We were all dirty, and he looked too clean for us.

“Anytime anyone of you guys want to fight me, I’m ready,” he said, I noticed a smirk on his face, and he looked ready, but he looked as if he was going to walk away, so everyone walked over to him and started saying: ‘…me, me, let me, meee…have him…!”

Jack, my close friend wanted to fight him bad, and he was always hyper, and he was real comfortable with the idea at first. The train of guys (or so it seemed), all were standing in that empty lot around him now, Indian’s Hill in the background of us: everyone was gambling for the right to beat his ass now.

Jack said, “Let me kick his fucken ass (Jack swore a lot),” and the kid put up his fists and was ready to go, they only stopped because one of the other guys wanted him. Doug, and Roger, Larry (the tough guy of the neighborhood) and a few others and me all wanted him, but Larry was to big for the guy, and much older, and would have killed him, so he knew he couldn’t afford to tangle with him.

Now there was a circle around him, and he stood quietly, stone-still, as everyone wagered for the right to fight him, punch him out, every body wanted the right to punch him out, and I looked, just stared at him. I had been weight lifting, had several fights before, but was no tough guy, not like Larry anyhow, but was getting a reputation—somewhat.

“Can’t I have him,” I said, and everyone looked at me, I mean everyone, and they looked at one another, and Snipes looked at me, and he shook his head ok, as if it was ok for me to fight him, and when he did, I grabbed him and threw him on the ground, and I never stopped punching his face-in until someone grabbed me off of him (I think Jack): lest I make him hamburger. I suppose I was waiting to show the boys what I was made out of; this was a chance, perchance I was thinking that, I don’t know; they’ll tell me later how I was, I told myself. But I had lost control somehow, a light went off in my head, I didn’t like that, it was dull youth telling me to fight I suppose, but I had won the fight, light on or off it didn’t matter, to win was the main thing. But was it unfair? I mean I jumped the gun; didn’t give him a chance. But I didn’t look at the Golden Glove Rules, none of us did, I just punched, grabbed, and I didn’t squander any time in the process.

It was a few weeks later Snipes came to my house, asked me if I wanted to fight him again, since I did not give him a chance. I said I’d care to fight him, but I really didn’t care not to either, I wasn’t mad (and I knew I had to be mad, or take a few punches to get me made first, then I could fight). He said in his own way: I’m not afraid of you; not sure if I can beat you, your pretty strong, but I’m fast with my fists, and didn’t get a chance to use them, but if you’d rather leave it alone, I can but I need an apology for taking advantage of the moment. I said, sure, I’m sorry, but that’s the way I fight I suppose. Evidently he needed prep time; I needed to get mad time. I got to liking Snipes, but he suggested we stay a distance away from each other, lest someone get mad, and he didn’t want his family to provoke anything if I went around his house. I accommodated him, why not, it saved his pride, and who knows, I might have lost the second fight.

John L. Vs. Chick, Fight by Indian's Hill [Part III Donkeyland; Cayuga Street Gang; 1963]

2006-07-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

I didn’t know John L. all that much, not until 1964 anyway, I was all of sixteen years old, when we got into a fight. It kind of was provoked, night of us wanted to fight; John was a bit drunk, and we were in what the neighborhood called, ‘the turn around,’ which was next to my grandfather’s house where we lived, an empty lot, kind of, space between the park, and our garage, and the kid’s cars would turn around here to go back up the street.

That is where John L. was this one summer evening in 1963, and where I was, it was perhaps 9:30 PM, a dark 9:30 PM, and Larry (a relative of John’s) was egging him and me on to fight; there also was Ace (also known as the Big Bopper: Jerry S. was his real name, I had dated his sister once, she went to the same High School I did ((Washington High), and was a twin); anyhow, here we were, about seven of us, and Larry was egging John on to fight me, telling him he couldn’t lose (and when I heard that whisper: Larry to John, I made a decision there and then); I liked Larry, but he was much older than I, and we didn’t hang out together then, we were only distant friends.

“Come on let’s fight,” said John to me, looking at Larry for confidence and assurance. And I looked about, and heard everyone push for the fight to start, so I ran into the weeds, and out into the baseball field, Indian’s Hill behind me, and John ran after me, and then I stopped, and John froze somewhat: he didn’t expect me to stop and face him right on, know what to do was on his mind: so he went to throw a punch, and he missed, and I grabbed him and threw him on the ground, and started to punch away, punch his lights out, and he said: “Stop, stop, please, I give up!” And I let him up, and he said, “You got to go back there and tell them all I won, if not, Larry and the guys will beat the shit out of you.”

And so I agreed with that, knowing now they were related and that to keep peace: so we walked back, and they all stood looking at John and I, we didn’t act like two fellows just finishing a fight, a voice said: ’…who won?’ and I said, “John got me on the ground and I gave up, and so I guess he won.” My pride was hurt, but I survived the neighborhood, and in the long run, that is what mattered. But John and I turned out to be best of friends in time, and there are a few more stories to that. We even traveled to California together in 1967.

To an Old Dead Friend Reno[From Donkeyland-USA]

2006-07-24T17:53:00.001-07:00

In the heydays of the early-sixties car-loads of us neighborhood-bums ignorant and arrogant dreamers came crashing through the streets, funny we all remained alive, free-spirited Christian infidels, with stray spirits, many never find the way out, too good to be true.

Often I used to loiter past the old church steps to the Mount Airy Bar, time after time like you, waiting for something…. There in that neighborhood we got hooked, like two bears to honey, someone, somewhere praying for our souls, “Where is God, take me from this booze.”

Now I stand outside the consecrated ground remembering your high school smile, You lost, but like one who’d won… I gave it all up, long pursuit of God’s demon, man-slayers with drugs and booze, those transitory imps, fell off you lice back into the neighborhood, like friendly mice, when you died, in your early fifties, still covered, confused, and drugged, true to your boyish wariness in high school.

Old friend, I see your wife burdened, living a single life, on whatever she can, under your hand, she was nothing worn, waiting for you to come home, broken-hearted lioness, hands of stone waiting—then you hung yourself in prison.

#1374 6/25/06

A Drunken Voice from Beyond [1960-1983]

2006-07-24T17:36:00.000-07:00

There was those days, I farted my brains out after a good drunk I thought I’d never live to see twenty-five, at twenty and a half—; The clock never stopped for me to rest. I just coughed up slim Each morning from my chest, smoking those damn cigarettes—. Ah yes, indeed: bad breath: farting, and coughing, was my image.

Sleeping with the holes and whores, or whatever came around: I shall not accuse anyone of dirty socks: back then, at that time, For I was the worse of the lot, by far: not innocent, no trophies. My skin pale, a limp dick at times: red, pink blotches, swollen, I looked at times, as if was dead: amazing to be writing this.

“Who was I?” I’ll never know for sure, I’m not that same guy: Tight I was, wireless, no roots, a drifter, and half a brain low—: Spidery unsafe fucking whites, Negroes, Mexicans: everything! I had few smiles to give, no real goals, and a worried mother: The drunken road had no end: drinking, sneezing like smelly fish, Yet tenderly my mother took me in, nourish me, and I lived… To tell about this endless trip, my lizard-like hell: pitiful squid!

#1367 6/4/2006

Note: anyone who has sobered up after 22-years of drinking I take my hat off to them; I started drinking at 13-years old, and stopped at 35-years old; it is a hard balancing act, in a world that is off balance from the start. Therefore if you are recovering, good, if you want to try, good, if you want to die, and you feel alcohol is better than life, so be it; have it your own way, but perhaps you can leave the rest of us alone in the process, so we can enjoy life.

A Night with Tequila [Post, San Francisco: -- l969]

2006-07-24T17:10:00.000-07:00

Written, 2003 [revised 2005]

A Night with Tequila [Post, San Francisco: -- l969]

I was in-between going into the Army, which would bring me to Augsburg, Germany, and then on to Vietnam, and leaving San Francisco, where I had lived for a year, and practiced karate with the famous Gosei Yamaguchi, and worked for the famous cloth designing company, Lilli Ann. Thus, leaving San Francisco, I had went down to Southern California to meet with my brother, he and I then ventured down to Mexico for a day where I bought a bottle of tequila, with the worm in it. This would prove to be an adventure in itself, with an unforgettable night, linger in the future; notwithstanding, I will leave out the trouble that took place in Mexico, and be thankful we got out in one piece, and with my bottle of Tequila: and leave it at that, but let me add, the beer was heavy, and we almost got in a fight with several Mexican Soma -type looking wrestlers. In any event, we did make it out alive, as you are reading this, and therefore I must have.

And then on to [bask to that is] St. Paul, Minnesota our home city and state; --my brother, myself, his wife and two-kids went by car, and yes I carried my bottle of Tequila, all the way. I had never drunk the stuff before, and figured I’d save it for a special occasion, hoping it would come soon. Plus, it would be a new experience for me when I did drink it, that is to say, showing everyone that damn famous worm, everyone talks about. When you moved the bottle of Tequila about–you could actually see the worm floating every which way.

We spent a day in Salt Lake City, Utah, as we had found a cheap, small motel close to the inner city; my brother’s wife got chased back to the motel for being out past 10:00 PM without her husband, as she was trying to buy some groceries.

I think we had a good laugh on that, that evening.

I didn’t see much of the city, although I did look for a few bars, I guess everything was either underground, or they had some secret black market where they hid the booze, but there was no chance for a nice cold beer, I figured that out quick. In any case, the night came quick, and we all slept well; the morning came quick also.

We took turns—that is, my brother and I took turns driving his car over the long dusty roads, but the weather was pleasing, a bit warm yet it made driving comfortable.

When we arrived in St. Paul, it was but a few weeks before my brother decided to head on up to North Dakota, Grand Forks, to help put in a cement platform, for a garage in, helping out his father-in-law. I told him I’d go along and help if he didn’t mind, and it all seemed quite productive, for the most part. And when the day arrived to leave’ --yes again, I carried my bottle of Tequila all the way to the Dakota’s with me: almost as if it was a gift from the god’s.

٭

As we arrived in Grand Forks, we all stayed at my brother’s father-in-law’s house, the very house we were to do the construction work at, in the back yard. The hot weather was starting to leave the Midwest, and the cooler air was coming down from Canada, as September crept in slowly. It was a good time to work the construction part, that is, without sweating to death. The Midwest was extremes, hot in the summer and cold in the winter. In fall, it was perfect, especially for construction.

As I got to meet the rest of my sister-in-law’s family, I think I must have been saving this bottle of Tequila for this occasion, for I had a sense it was not going to make it back home. I had hid the bottle in my brother’s car, and drank beer the first night I was there with the rest of the relatives. His wife had several bothers and we all sat around getting drunk, --talking about how we were going to go about building the wooden frame of the foundation, to pour the cement for the garage: that is, the ground work was already done, leveled and the wooden frame needed to be made, this could be done quickly in the morning with long two-by-four boards, thereafter, we’d do the cement work, and then we’d stay an extra day and have a get together, kind of celebration. It all sounded grand.

During this time I had met Paula, a friend of the family. I was twenty years old, and she was seventeen, we both seemed somewhat attracted to one another—time would tell.

٭

As we worked all day the following day on the cement, digging a foundation, putting up sides-boards to pour the cement, and measuring, along with putting in other sources of support like, stones etc., we finally did pour the cement, and it turned out better than what I had hoped for. We really did not need professionals, only a good thought out plan, effort, and a gathering of the willing.

Now it was party time. Paula told me to skip the get together with the family at my brother’s wife’s house, for the time being, and head on to her friend’s house, and join their party this evening, and we’d come back to join the family workers later, for they also would be having a party. It all sounded reasonable to me.

As we got to the party [7:00 PM] Paula introduced me to several of her young friends, and I pulled out from underneath my jacket the bottle of Tequila I had purchased in Mexico, the one with the worm in it.

Paula said,

“What is that thing in the bottle?” As she was reading the label that said ‘Tequila,’ on it, she added, “I heard of this stuff, it’s pretty strong, isn’t it?”

[A rhetorical question at best] “It’s a genuine worm alright,” I clarified, adding, “…that is what indicates it’s the original Mexican thing.” I really didn’t know what I was talking about—for the most part—but whatever the ‘thing [worm], meant,’ none the less, made for good conversation.

As we sat on the sofa in the living room of her friend’s house I checked Paula out, I liked her, she looked a little French-Canadian, that is to say, she had a natural tan to her skin, almost olive. She had short black hair, a shapely body, to include a pear like base [or underneath --about 5’ 3” inches tall, stunning looks, a real beauty.

We both had a few of the beers the folks at the party offered, and then I opened up the Tequila.

She asked me [pleadingly-with a touch of humor] “Should I try to drink the worm when it surfaces out of the bottle or see if it comes out of the bottle while I pour it into my glass, and then drink it?”

“Forget the glass, take a swig right out of the spout, and if you get the worm, swallow it. That’s the best way to do it. Let’s see who gets to it first.” We both smiled at one another, and down the ‘hatch’ we drank our first, longgggg-shot. I drank about three shots at once, --along with taking some salt at the same time putting it on my hand and licking it; someone had told me to do it, it was actually a little more agreeable with the salt, the Tequila that is. And then Paula did the same. No one got the worm; we again looked at one another and laughed.

“Ham m,” we both hummed at each other.

“Let’s try again,” I said contentedly...

As the night went on, a few of the folks from my brother’s wife’s family, along with my brother came over to the party to check on Paula and me. They saw we were drinking away like two silly kids. I was now 21-years old, I could legally drink, but Paula wasn’t, --I think they were more worried about Paula, being 17, and I suppose I may have looked a little dangerous to my sister-in-law, being with her younger sister.

They sat by us and had a few drinks of the Tequila, and then feeling all was well and under control left us to ourselves. They were only up the block about four houses in any case, meaning, if they needed to run to her rescue, they could. I think they were afraid I’d steal her away and run to Minnesota with her, --or her with me. We were just having a good ol’-time, no more, no less.

At 11:00 PM, Paula asked if we should call it a night, we were both getting pretty drunk.

“No, no,” I said, “Let’s finish the whole bottle and whoever ends up with the worm is the winner.” [Although the winner only got the worm.]

“Ok, Ok,” she atheistically said, at first glance.

1:00 PM

[Halfheartedly I told Paula.] “It looks like my turn to drink.” Yet, I could hardly find the bottle, let alone see the worm. At great length I put my hand out to grab the bottle:

“Ok, here it is,” I took a big drink, “…the worm is still in there Chick,” Paula commented. I looked I couldn’t see it, “I must of drank it,” I replied, no answer.

Morning

Paula [who has risen] “Who got the worm?” she asked, no answer. She moved about, trying to stretch, laying on the floor next me, where she had passed out, and I on the sofa had passed out right along with her [a pause].

“I think I got it,” I grabbed the bottle on the floor with the Tequila label on it, it was empty, and the worm was gone.

“I think I ate it, or swallowed it, and then I must have passed out,” I explained to her [a little stiffly].

“No,” she replied, “I think you tried to get the worm out, and couldn’t, and there was a little substance left, and I had the next try, and got it out.” We looked at each other [wearily] struggling to up on a smile and started laughing. Whoever got the worm we would never know for sure? But one of us did.

“I think Paula,” I commented, “…we both ate the worm, I got half and you got half. If I recall right, I got the worm out safe and sound, and poured the rest of the Tequila in a glass, and cut the worm in half, and we both had the last drink together each getting half the worm.”

“Really,” she said, [after listening for a moment].

“Absolutely,” I wasn’t sure of anything, but I dreamt it or for some reason it came out naturally. Who knows after you drink a fifth of Tequila what happened to the worm, maybe it walked away. Whatever the case, Paula was a little more agreeable with that ending to the worm.

Milwaukee Bound [1967--Fall]

2006-07-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

3

Milwaukee Bound
- 1967 [Fall]

Chris didn’t know it, but the following decade would be one of intolerance: and some growing pains. They lived in the same old neighborhood both Jerry Hines and Chris Wright, only two blocks west and down a block on Jackson Street from one another—this was Jerry’s and Betty’s house, just a hop-skip-and-jump one might say to each other’s abode. Across the street from Jerry’s house was Oakland Cemetery. Chris was twenty-years old and Jerry about twenty-nine—back then. Jerry being several years older than Chris Wright was available and usable in the sense of travel—something that was stronger than most anything else in his life for some peculiar reason, something that would stay with him all his life most variably; and so in the summer of l967, Jerry got into a dividing-harsh fight with his girlfriend Betty. Having told Chris about this, they both decided to go to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And this is where the story begins.
—Chris had a l960-Plymouth-Valiant [white], it didn’t run all that good but they, He and Jerry figured it would make it to Milwaukee, and so in the middle of the summer of ‘67, hot as a volcano, they loaded his car, when Betty was gone [Betty being his live-in girlfriend at the time], each grabbed what money they had, Chris having about $125.00 and Jerry about $250, and off they went.
As the miles went by on their way to Milwaukee, one right after the other, they kept drinking cans of beer, smoking cigarettes—chain smoking for the most part, as the Valiant strolled along the black asphalt interstate [s], making stops along the roadside to go to the bathroom, buying more beer at the nearest gas station, or roadside stop, drinking more beer, making more stops to take a leak: kind of a circular motion to these ongoing events. Matter of fact, they were making so many stops, they both got tired of stopping and started pissing into cans, and whomever was not driving would throw the cans out of window into the fields along the thruway; sometimes just barley missing cars if a good upper wind got hold of it. It was party time all the way, and for the most part, all the time for them two.
Now with loose conversations, the heat coming through the windshield, the breeze hitting their hands as they flopped out the window going down the highway, a bird wasn’t any freer. They lit cigarette after cigarette, talked, laughed, drank and sang. They didn’t do a lot of planning, but enough, --barely enough, but enough, their plan was: they’d sleep in the car until they found an apartment, then get a job, and stay in Milwaukee for a few months, then they could figure on what to do next—not a big plan or even an elaborate one by any means, but then the world and life was simply for them, and again I say, at least they had a shred of a plan, like a slice from a piece of pie. Their quest, their goal, if you could call it that, was to chum around, that’s what they’d do, and just chum around is what they were doing. Life’s responsibilities or demands were irrelevant, if not cumbersome, and if ever one was caught in a vortex of remoteness, Jerry was, he had enough for the moment of everything in life, yes, and in a way he was running away, as Chris was not. Chris was simply running to escape a city he saw too much of, he got the travel bug early in life; he was running to run. No one really knowing where they’d end up, at the end of it all to be exact, and no one putting anymore thought into it past the planning I had already explained: Chris again, was simply available, usable, along with willing, and had an ardent desire to see how far he could go, travel, and the farther the better.
Milwaukee

[The beginning of fall] It was a chilled night, as black as dark-ink, the moon was one-quarter lit, and if there was such things as ghosts, they seem to have been running back and forth across the moon’s light with a grayish robe of a mist. It was a little past midnight when they caught a glimpse of the highway sign that read:
Milwaukee to the Right, ‘…turn-off 2-miles,”’ and so Jerry, whom was driving did just that, took the turned-off where the arrow was pointing, whereby, we were on a one-way that lead us directly to the downtown area of Milwaukee. Chris’ face flashed with undeniable excitement, it was as if he was being reborn, his blood was regenerated, there was no logic or reason to it, it was a high: a desire filled, a craving to the top, like an empty cigarette package replenish, akin to getting drunk, a destination-high, a quest, all that and more: save for the fact that the boredom from driving helped turn the moment into a rage of excitement.
“Oh boy, I get to see the city,” he said with anxiety of not being there at that very moment. Jerry gave Chris a more mature chuckle to the fact they had made it. Specifically, about to make it into the city limits their destination.
“Just hang on, we’ll be there in a moment,” said Jerry, turning the wheel a bit to the left, as he was turning onto the entrance to the city: then straightening them out to go directly ahead you could not see lights appearing in the distance, an illumination of dotted-lights. They both smiled, they had almost or nearly gotten to their destination—it was getting closer by the second. Just down and around a bridge or two now.
The one thing they did not take into consideration was the times: it was the 60’s, and neither Chris nor Jerry, could bridge, or even conceive the white and black dilemma that was sweeping the country; for the most part, they were isolated from it. Oh yes it was on TV all the time, but until you are in the mouth of the whale, one never can conceive the depth of the situation, or should I say, the depth of the stomach of the whale. There had been some café, store, and tenant-building damage in the black areas of the City of St. Paul, but not much, not in comparison to the rest of the country. Back in those days, every city had its riots, its racial issues. It was like a plague; but St. Paul, being the conservative city of the Midwest, the City of Culture as it has been called, was almost naive to it. They also lived in a neighborhood that didn’t read books or newspapers all that much or watch the news, it wasn’t a big deal for or to them, only one black family lived in the neighborhood someplace—no one even knew when he had moved in but a few years back might be adequate: the black man had befriended Chris’ grandfather, and therefore was left alone. But no one ever saw a black man in the neighborhood before this, much less deal with riots.
No one came to the Cayuga Street area—or walked through the area without good reason, unless they lived there; for there was a gang of some twenty-two guys and gals that hung out on the church steps. It wasn’t called Donkeyland for nothing; for at one time it was the highest crime related area in St. Paul, and they boasted of that, and the police even tried to avoid them [them being, the whole area—the gang of sorts]; matter of fact, they nick-named it Donkeyland because there were so many hard-heads there: and yes, it suited them. They beat the police up if they chased them up Indians Hill, which was in the middle of Cayuga Street, right next to Chris’ house. But as I was about to say, as they rode down the turnoff, and on-into the city center, a white, a huge white car was following them. Chris first noticed it—a ting after they entered the outer rim of the center.
“Something wrong Chris?” said sleepy-eyed Jerry, driving.
Chris turned about for the third time to examine the white car, again seeing the car following them…then all of a sudden said Chris with a crisis voice, a voice trembling, a decadence to his face:
“Oh shit, look, look at what they just pushed out the damn car window, the white car—they’re…” almost along side of them now,
“…looks—J-j-Jerry, a damn shot gun…”
Jerry looked quickly, “What is going on?”
Then out of another window of the car, came a voice from a loud speaker coming right from the white car, you couldn’t make out what exactly was being said though—so they continued on, Jerry driving closer to the center of the downtown area now, looking at a gathering of people on two differed corners—in a four or five square block area; if anything, it looked like a protest, if not some combat zone; --the voice over the speaker now, indubitably said—[even louder than before]:
“Move out of the city’s area, immediately, or we’ll shoot!”
Chris looked at Jerry, “Where’s the way out Chris,” asked Jerry [the word shoot sticking in both their minds like a spider to a fly caught in a web,
“To the right, to the right, over there man…” Chris pointing toward a half lit up bridge: without hesitation, and responsive to his tone of voice, Jerry immediately turned the car southwest, and out they went as fast as that six-cylinder car would go.
In short, both Jerry and Chris’ temperamentally was shock, disbelief, and spellbound, but somehow they must had caught a sign that said, Madison, Wisconsin, for that is where they headed; and sometime down the highway they had stopped to check the map, and talk about Madison to see if both agreed of the new destination, prior to this stop it would seem they were both ill-balanced.
When they both arrived in Madison, not being able to find a job, they both would end up in Omaha, Nebraska, whereupon, just across the boarder was Counsel Bluffs, where Chris would find a job working for Howard Johnson’s as a dishwasher, and three weeks later Jerry’s girlfriend would show up, and that would be the end of the adventure. She’d stay until the end of the month, and they’d all return back together to Minnesota. It was for Chris the first of many adventures—antiquarian pursuits, and the first real racial confrontation.

First Kiss [1960]

2006-07-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

2

First Kiss
[1960]

If thirteen is not the year you grow up 40%, from being a simple kid to being a un- mystified, perplexed, bemused kid, I don’t know what year to pick out then. But it was for Chris, in many ways. His first everything it seemed; kiss, drink, cigarette, and sex, and I hate to think any deeper into this area in fear I may come up with a load of other adjectives, this was the year of what might be labeled: year of the mongoose: like a snake eater, he ate everything life had to offer.
Said Rodger with a little reluctance in the tone of his voice, yet wanting to impress the guys, and Chris, whom had never kissed a girl, thus, he was willing to share a kiss from his girlfriend, who now after ten-minutes of trying to get Chris into the mood to kiss her, was willing, as was now more than ever his girlfriend, so Rodger said:
“What do you think Chris, she’s ready to give you a big kiss, you ready?” said Rodger,
“No, I don’t know, I’ve never kissed a girl before,” Chris answered with hesitation, but more than willing to give it try now that he had time to let it settle in his mind, in the back of his mind, or so he was trying to convince himself.
“Does she agree without you making her?”
“Yes! She said ok, but the offer is not going to last forever. If you’re afraid just pass it up, it’s your loss: Sherry is waiting with warm lips, make up your mind.”
“No, I’m not afraid:” Chris took a deep breath, looked at Sherry, the other guys, her beautiful blond, silk-like hair, long shapely legs, dark blue eyes: her thin waist was more than eye-catching, rather very attractive to gaze at and now he was as if he was granted a poppers-rights. He was thirteen-years old, she was seventeen, and Rodger was nineteen. He always got the good looking babe’s, thought Chris, as several of the neighborhood kids were standing about waiting for the event to take place, which started as a practical joke when they found out Chris had never kissed a girl.
The gang was watching impatiently, making gestures to one another as if to say: let’s get this on the road, or forget it, it’s getting old news: their attention span was not concussive for another era they were born in the right place at the right time, as free as birds, and as strange as lions.
Chris decided at that moment as the gestures were being thrown back and forth, he’d make his move, to make the most of it, glancing at Rodger,
“Ok, I’m ready!” he confidently said with a heroic smile.
--Rodger was one of the main members of the unofficial neighborhood gang [what the police called: Donkeyland], or if you will, group-members, otherwise known as the ‘The Cayuga Street-Donkeyland Gang,’ so nick-named by a police officer that patrolled the area, and for the most part was partial to the kids. He had said once, and Chris overheard it,
“You guys down here, live in Donkeyland, and are a bunch of hard-headed kids.” I guess when he went to the St. Paul; Police Station where he worked it was well known as such; again, referring to the location of Cayuga Street by Oakland Cemetery, as Donkeyland. As a result, Chris did pick up on it and it never left his character [as it is now written here].
As Sherry approached Chris, standing at one time several feet to his side by Rodger, now stood next to him, making him a bit nervous, she was within two feet of his face, that is to say—both looking, staring—almost gazing with a glimmer, right into each others eyes (it was a magical moment for Chris). His heart was beating, pulse rapid, and his bowls he could feel in his stomach, in the form of cramps, he actually wanted to grab her for a moment, but did not. She smiled that soft, reserved smile he had often seen her give Rodger, then put her hand on his shoulders: “You ready, Chris?” she asked with a sincere, cheerful voice.
“Yup,” he commented, now breathing hard, and for a moment, not breathing at all. And then she touched his lips gently with hers, softly positioning them both (that was when he stopped breathing), as if to fill all the space available she had room for on his lip with hers; not wanting to slid off and catch the side of his mouth, but wanting a perfect kiss, and a little harder she pushed; she had already moved into, and onto his lips completely, within a foot of him now she moved the other foot closer as the kiss extended into a long minute, and her body was touching his, and the kiss became long and wet. Then slowly, and carefully, she withdrew from the process, from him. Rodger was a bit startled, and couldn’t help from staring like a hawk ready to devour someone or something, should someone say the wrong thing: he was by all regards somewhat surprised she seemingly enjoyed it; everyone looking at Chris for a response. But if anything, everyone was moved by Sherry’s performance, as was Sherry herself.
“Well,” Rodger said, “Did you like it?” Sherry still looking with a smile at Chris,
“I want another, another one, a second kiss…I mean, if it’s ok with you and her…?” said Chris with his eyebrows almost touching the top of his forehead, opening up his eyes wider as if to absorb every little piece of warmth the kiss gave. Everyone started laughing, that is, everyone but Sherry, she remained reserve and together, and simply displayed a smile: --that is to say, everyone but Rodger, who said immediately

[Frank and to the point]: “I shared enough; you’ve got to get your own girlfriend.” For Chris the kiss would last a long, long time. Sherry seemed willing to go for seconds but for the sake of preventing a war, she remained silent, as the several members stood in Lormer’s yard, two houses away from Chris’ taking in the moment, said very little, the magical moment, and entertainment had passed; -- Lormer’s house was where many of the kids went to play pool in his basement. Or as in this case, hang around the backyard and until his parents told everyone to scoot. His father was a top chef, and he was related to Frankie Yank Vic. Chris and he were best of friends, Lormer being a year older, a few inches taller, had a hook for a nose which the guys made fun of, sometimes calling him, “Eagle Beak,” but then everyone had a nick name back then it seemed.
He had a professional pool table in his basement, and his mother and daughter played the piano often, and when possible preached the Jehovah Witness’s Gospel to whoever would listen. Lormer had several brothers, all older; one who had just got out of prison one that hung occasionally around with the gang, and one that was older and was hardly ever seen. The daughter was but seven years old during this time, and was as spoiled as spoiled a child could be, and everyone made fun of it; she was as spoiled as, as a cat with five dead mice, wanting more.
The yard was huge; they not only had a front yard, but three sections to the back. At times, it was hard for either of Lormer’s parents to see what was happening in their backyard. Chris’ yard was also long in the back, with his house being on a hill, and the garage being below it, a little land in front of it, and an empty lot next to it, it became a turn-around for the gang’s cars on Cayuga Street, especially when they went dragging.
The summer was warm, and by the looks of things many other things were in store for Chris, not just this first kiss, but it was the catalyst to a long run play in life. He would measure all kisses according to this one possibly. Sherry’s father was the Cemetery Custodian, and lived with her family in the Cemetery, she would never be forgotten; her charm, beauty, and her kind approach
I guess we observe more than what we think we do, growing up, and this would be one moment that would migrate into Chris’ fibers. Another one being: a black family had moved into the neighborhood, and Chris’ grandfather, Tony, had befriended the male person, or only black man of a family in that neighborhood. As the gang within the neighborhood structure asked about him, and why his grandfather had taken a liking to him, Chris simply explained (now being older than that shoeshine boy),
“He walks and talks with my grandpa, what’s the problem, I suppose they must get off the same bus, or meet at the bus stop or something on the way back from work,” trying not to make much of it.
Chris got thinking, no one really knew where he lived, that was how important it was yesterday, but today, for some reason, they were wondering, the why of it had not come to surface yet; and this black-man had moved into the area about six months ago to Chris’ best guess. Oh sure there was talk about him, but no one ever seen him after dark, or when the whole gang was around. And the few that did see him, may have insulted him with a few bad remarks, but they were not laud ones, and he may not have even heard them. But surely he got some stares now and then. Therefore, at this point and time, he was more of a ghost than a picture on a wall you might say, no daily contemplations on this matter, that could have possible turn into an issue.
Chris had noticed his grandfather had walked with the black-man on several occasions. But for some reason, the gang of about twenty-two white-members, never fooled around with family or the friends of family members, kind of an unwritten code, and Chris knew this, and simply added to his statement,
“My grandpa doesn’t speak to many people, everyone knows that, I’m surprised he spoke to the black-man, he must be out of the ordinary.” That was the last anyone ever said anything on the matter. It was his grandfather’s friend, and the gang respected that. Had he said anything other than that, who knows what? At the time Chris didn’t know it, but this second impression of sticking up for a black-man was stamped on his soul also, as was the first, as a shoeshine boy.

Shoeshine Boy [1959]

2006-07-24T17:06:00.000-07:00

1

Shoeshine Boy
[1959]

Christopher Wright was walking home one evening; he was 12 ½ years old, a strong looking lad, reddish hair, determined if anything to make a few bucks. He had already made $4.35-cents; he charged .15 to .25 cents per shoeshine, depending on the bars he’d go into, and the composition. Yes, even at thirteen, or almost being thirteen, he was using psychology to make a living, or better put, to at least figure out if he could outsell his opponents, for there were other shoeshine boys on the beat. If he saw one, the shoeshine was automatically .15 cents, for he knew there were between .25 to .35 cents. Plus, when he charged .15 cents, he always got a tip, making it .25 cents anyway. The end result, it was a busy evening, and he had to get home by 11:00 O’clock, or his mother would surely be fuming thereafter [wondering and worrying], and so he made his last bar, leaned against the building next to the arc light, and started counting his pocket full of change.
—Not looking about, just counting, counting and recounting, with a smile on his face, it all came to $4.35 each time, thus, he was satisfied with the tally. Dust had crept in, as his blue-green eyes looked at the coins in his hand, and sensitive ears heard a voice, a demand,
“Hay boy,” it said, “hand it over…” the stern voice unrelenting.
When he looked up, holding two hands full of change, it was a tall thin white boy, about sixteen or seventeen years old, possible too tall for his weight; --Chris being about 5’5” at the time, and this kid close to six-feet he simply looked up, and straight into his eyes, not saying a word.
“I said boy, hand it over, or I’ll beat your head against the brick wall.”
Chris hesitated, somewhat in disbelief, then as he adjusted to the surroundings, taking in a deep breath, as if he had but a second to deliberate and spit it, a yes or no, he said,
“No-pp!” and the boy stepped two feet in front of him, grabbing his shoulders and pinning him against the brick wall. Now things were seemingly becoming a little gloomier.
“I said boy…hand it over or…!” another voice came from behind this tall white robber, it was a heavy voice this time—a strident voice, it had kind of an accent to it, and when Chris looked around the thin kid’s lower part of his right shoulder, he saw even a taller person than the white lad, a big tall black man: the scene became a bit dubious (was he going to rob the tall white boy after he rob me, Chris was thinking? Inasmuch as that was one thought, it was not his only; but often times when such things happen like this, one swears—hours pass by, when in essence it is but a few seconds if not minutes, yes, time for Chris was lost somewhere in-between. Before Chris could run and escape, or come up with something magic, something peculiar happened.
“Leave the boy alone… [pause],” said the rustic voice of the black man—as the pandemonium thickened the ghostly scene of the evening; Chris looked, at the taller black man’s eyes, eldritch-black, they had opened up wide, like umbrellas, big and broad and strong, real burly looking. The white boy didn’t pay too much attention to the voice behind him at first: only giving a morbid twitch with his mouth and eye [or at least that is what Chris observed], and then the voice said in a more gaudy way, a second time—more macabre than ever:
“You just can’t hear, can you, I said NOW!” and as the huge black man was about to grab the white lad, the white chap turned about, his eyes opened up as wide as White Castle Hamburgers, for they were right across the street from one of those cafés. With one hand the black man pushed the tall white lad away from Chris like a twig: making everything a ting more haunter,
“You want to make something of this,” he asked the white boy, adding, “If so, let’s get to it, if not, and get going before I flatten you on the cement.”
And the white lad was gone, just like that. The black man then turned to Chris [whom at this time was more concerned about getting home than a punch in the face],
“You best be getting on home, you’re lucky tonight,” he added with a grin and smile as if to say, ‘…can’t believe a black man stood up for you, --haw?’ Had he been reading Chris’ mind, for that did occur to him for a millisecond.
—Chris, up to this moment in time, never really knew a black person. But this deed or call it act of kindness or even endeavor on behalf of him was imprinting for the most part, his first encounter with a black person would stick thick with him the rest of his life. If anything, as he would progress in life, he would see the character of a person vs. the color before he made his future judgments, and not even know why; that is to say, he didn’t know why, until he was much older in life, when most people examine the ‘whys,’ and ‘ifs,’ of life. If anything, racism would be a foolish noun to him, not fully comprehensible, not fully accommodating, yet in life despairing moments would prop this noun up, here-and-there; it would not have the impact it had on others for him, it would not dominate his life, nor alter his sleep like others. One might oversimplify it, as he did, by scarcely looking at it, yet observing it he did, but such perfect simplicity would mean being somewhat naive, and if anything that may have been his worse sin in a world he was about to enter, for it was the being of the 60’s.

Discription of Dankeyland [1958]

2006-07-24T17:04:00.000-07:00

Advance [description of Donkeyland, the family in 1958]. We moved there in 1958, when I first saw it, the house my grandfather purchased for $7000. Dollars, it looked big from the outside, and was bigger even more so in the inside; an old Victorian home built around the turn of the century, old man Beck had died, and we were moving in. When I say we, I mean, my brother Mike, me Dennis, my mother Elsie, and my grandfather Tony, or Anton. Grandpa was an old Russian, from the Baltic area, born in 1891, came over to America in 1916, fought in WWI, and married, had eight children, my mother being the second to the oldest, Ann.
There are about thirty characters I will be talking about in these sketches, all are real, their last names somewhat changed, altered for legal purposes, but like it or not, it was as it was back then, as I say it.

Cayuga street absorbed two streets, and then it ran into Mississippi Street, it ran East and west. Mississippi Street, ran North and South, on the other end of Cayuga, was Jackson Street, and across the street was the long, very long Cemetery, Oakland Cemetery.
Beside us was a large empty lot, perhaps the space of five homes at one time, and a hill, we all called Indians Hill. On the other side of the empty lot was where my mothers boyfriend lived, they both worked at Swift’s Meat Packing Plant, in South St. Paul, his name was Earnest Brandt.
Behind our house was old Rice School, and down the block from Rice School, was the old Jew’s grocery store, small, but most were small back then; a legacy now gone.
To the side of our houses, on the embankment, for the empty lot was what you might call the valley, or plateau, were old Man Stanley’s house, and his wife [both retired; the old man [born around 1893] would die in 1960, and the woman [born around the turn of the century], would at 93-years old, in the 1990s].
In the years to follow, in the mid 60s, they started building a bridge over Mississippi, in the process, under the bridge, where the railroad was, its trains, yard and tracks, was now a large mud hole, our swimming hole.
Across the street on Cayuga from our house was where Roger and his family lived, in back of him was a foundry called Structural Steel, the whole neighborhood would work three at one time or anther, as each person turned 18-years old. Behind and to the south of Rogers house was the train yard, where they’d come in, and hook up with other trains and then deliver their load.
Alongside Mr. Stanley’s house was Lormer’s house, and up the block, on the second part of Cayuga Street, was where the Lund’s lived. In back of our house, on the block there was where Steve [Reno] lived. And down a few blocks, towards Mississippi, on a hill was were Sid lived. Jack Tashney, and his brother lived all the way down Jackson Street, at the end of the Cemetery.