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Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Pierre

 During the year of 1950 and for most of the rest of my childhood I lived at 400 North Park Avenue in Dothan Alabama. It was at the time a pleasant green lined street that contained a mix of nice upper middle class houses sitting elbow to elbow with inexpensive white framed houses. Huge pine trees stood like sentinels perfuming the air with their fragrance in the yards surrounding the houses looming above them. Several of these houses were rental properties and the families came and went with frequent regularity. The children that came with these families often became friends during the sometimes brief period they lived in our neighborhood. Of course the more affluent families lived in the larger nicer homes and there were many of them. It has all ways been a bit of a conundrum that houses of such diversity all lined the same street.

Next door to us lived a family that we were related to and they had a daughter named Starr. She and I were best friends growing up and were often together. It was great having a playmate living right next door. Not that we didn’t fight and fall out with each other because we often did. But we were friends and all ways got back together. Starr had a tangled mane of blond hair that flowed out behind her when she ran and we ran everywhere. Hanging out together most every day we usually managed to get into some small bits of childish trouble. She was smart, mischievous and witty for a child of so few years and was terrific in school. Our favorite pass time during the sweltering heat of the Alabama summers was to take our bicycles and petal them a few blocks away to a small brick store poised on the edge of what was then a bad neighborhood. We really didn’t know what that meant but were cautioned not to go any further that “just to the store.” The brick building had an enormous Coca Cola sign painted on the side that faced the street and was one long room filled with edible treasures. They sold groceries, candy and Popsicles.  Freezing cold drinks rested in water filled coolers where we loved to thrust our hands and arms. We were there for the popsicles and the candy not the groceries, needless to say. During the summer months when there was no school Starr and I would take our bikes to the store and buy as much of the brightly colored plastic wrapped tantalizing candies as we could afford and all ways an icy Popsicle to eat on the way back home. We pushed our bikes eating as fast as we could because we could not drive our bikes and eat the icy treat at the same time. Invariably the Popsicle melted and ran down our arms dripping off our elbows onto the sidewalk. We reached home with dyed rings around our mouths and long brightly colored sticky stripes of dried sugar and colored water tracing down our arms. Starr and I spent much of our time wandering the neighborhood secretly exploring and looking for that perfect “hide out.” We were in a continuous search for that secret garden where we could feel concealed and have a clandestine spot that no one else knew about. We loved to hide and watch the goings on from a private spot in the shrubbery where we were silent objective nonparticipants in our imaginary miniature world. We watched the comings and goings of others, innocent voyeurs in a pretend kingdom of misunderstood mysteries that was somehow exciting and illicit.

One afternoon Starr and I were playing in the side yard of her house when we heard the back door of the house next door open and close. New people had rented the house and we knew nothing of them. A small boy dawdled from the back door and wandered out beneath a fragrant mimosa tree where he promptly bent over and pulled his pants down completely to his ankles. He arched his back, clenched his naked shining white buttocks and sent a yellow stream of urine high into the air. It shot well above his head leveled out and then gently returned to earth. It was an impressive golden perfect half circle. This phenomenon was no news to me as I too had done the same thing in the back yard of my house. Having three older brothers and a father who intrinsically knew that the entire world was our bathroom I learned by seeing.

Starr apparently was unfamiliar with the perverse behaviors of little boys and had probably never seen a penis. She was an only child with much older half brothers. Watched over and protected we were both innocents and knew nothing much about anything. We did however speculate on most things unknown and prevaricated wild stories to explain what we did not understand. Starr and I raced off giggling after the spectacle we had witnessed. Nearing the street Starr abruptly stopped and turned to me with sparkling eyes and blurted out, “I‘ll bet his name is Pierre!” She then burst into laughter.

I am very sure that was not the little boy's name after all we were living in south Alabama but for Starr and me he would forever be known as Pierre. 

tbd

Monday, February 9, 2015

Leaving Venice

Long before the sun rose to cast its golden mantle across St. Mark’s square igniting the incredible iridescent mosaics on the facade of the cathedral and illuminating the winged lion on top of his pilaster, I couldn't sleep. A deep dark storm front filled with torrential rain blew in from the Adriatic. It stifled and smothered the faint glow from the small lights adjacent to the fog covered canals that filtered through the watery passage where we waited, by a perfectly arched bridge adjacent to our now almost invisible hotel. I felt as though we were in a 1942 film noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and other actors in long black trench coats where something sinister was afoot. Our party had been awakened at 3:15AM from fitful sleep by calls from the night clerk at the Columbiana Hotel in Venice in order to meet a Venetian taxi boat driver who would ferry us to the airport across the distant bay through the fog and rain. The first and last plane from the Venice airport that day we could not miss! The airport seemed an eternity away beyond an impenetrable black unknown watery distance through a curtain of rain! The expected intense rains were certain to flood the St. Mark’s Cathedral, the square and many of the shops surrounding the area. The conundrum is that while you can push the flooding waters out of the shops, churches and other areas, it runs directly back into them. The water in Venice has no place to go but up, becoming a tragedy of monumental proportions that will continue to be magnified in the near future, the very near future. It is in all probability too late all ready to be averted. Venice is doomed. The magnificent murals in the Doge’s palace, the churches, the palazzos and everything else in the city will soon be as lost as Atlantis. Currently platforms have been constructed in order to be able to traverse St. Marks Square and gain access to the cathedral during elevated water periods like high tides and excessive rainy seasons.


We all waited in a dimly lit room of the hotel lobby anxiously waiting for the taxi speed boat to arrive and arrive it did, at exactly 4:00 AM. The driver loaded the luggage into the front of boat while the six of us were closed in the covered space behind the driver. He expertly ferried us through the inland canals of Venice, abutted by tall Renaissance buildings soaring skyward like two poised hands ready to clap. It was silent as a tomb except for the humming of the boat’s motor. We didn’t talk.  By the time we reached the Grand Canal and the more open waters of the Venetian lagoon it was still really too dark to see anything except the lights across the water and their glistening reflections on the inky surface. The Italian driver pressed the throttle and the boat exploded forward. The speed was apparent by the lunging and skipping of the speed boat, at times almost leaving the water’s surface sailing through the air as we flew across the murky water propelled through the darkness. We would obviously make it on time if we weren’t killed in some fiery crash in the bay with some other boat also speeding through the night headed God knows where. We did however make it on time and after dragging our luggage across a paved walkway for a mile or so we came to the airline counter with time to spare. Checking in at Lufthansa’s counter, I wondered just who I was in my imaginary scenario; “Humphrey Bogart”, I hoped but probably Sidney Greenstreet. Linda was Lauren Bacall, maybe but just who would the others have been? Let me think……

Tuesday, January 27, 2015



Brayden Christmas morning of 2014

Brayden is our first grandchild. He is a sweet and delightful child and in every way the first born. He is quite responsible and caring for his younger siblings and attentive to them as well.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

This is a story I wrote sometimes back and only shared it on my BlogSpot. It is mostly told as it happened and as best I remember it…..which may be somewhat distorted from the expansive distance of time and poor memory.


Talking Back

This is a short chronicle of my opening few days in the first grade at the local elementary school where I first went when I started school. The name of the school was Highlands Elementary. It was a manila colored edifice that sat on a small rise in the area that was our neighborhood. It was surrounded by large fields, mostly dirt but in spots invested with clover, Bermuda grass and assorted weeds. There was an overabundance of tiny red oval iron filled rocks mixed liberally with yellow dirt.  The intermittent swing set, merry go rounds and rusted slides spotted the field all ancient by the time I arrived for my first day there.
The year was 1949. I was five years old, and the youngest in a family that had four sons, no daughters. Mother had always wanted a girl, which is understandable with three boys (hard tails as we were referred to) already in house. In anticipation of my birth she had picked out several names she liked, being so sure that I would be a girl. Rosemary was the one she most favored. Had I been a girl I would have surely gone through life with that name. Daddy however had other ideas. He was a staunch Republican and wanted to honor Thomas E. Dewey and John W. Bricker, who were running as the republican nominees for president and vice-president in the 1944 Presidential Election. Daddy was certain they would win in a landslide. He was going to name me John Dewey Daughtry but lucky for me Mother knew that the town idiot was also named John Dewey, so she vetoed that name. Determined, Daddy chose my moniker from this same pair of losers and had it on my birth certificate before Mother got out of the delivery room. I have often wondered if Daddy had been a Democrat, would my name have been, Franklin Truman Daughtry, after Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman as they were the nominees from the Democratic Party who eventually won the election.

     The First Day

 So there I was in the sixth year of my life and in the first grade. My birthday was in November but I was allowed to enter school, even though I didn’t turn six until  the 22nd of November.  This turned out not to be such a great idea. Mother and Daddy had not bothered to teach me very much  such as how to spell my last name, where I lived, what my phone number was or even how to wipe my own ass. I put this off until the first grade because I had a nanny that did everything for me including the wiping business. All of that seemed a somewhat nasty business and I wanted no part of it. When the first grade teacher realized I didn't have any of those vital pieces of information she assumed, (rightly so) that I was mildly to severely retarded. There was really nothing much I could do when she said “Write your first and last name on your paper”. I frantically looked around at the other children quietly doing what they were told and hoped to see one of them writing down their last name thinking that perhaps I could just copy what they wrote. Who knew you had to know things before you went to primary school, certainly not me.
Quickly it became apparent that none of the children sitting close enough for me to copy were going to write my last name. Even at that early age I had few qualms about cheating! This was the first time I realized how much my experiences in education were going to suck. Later this would become more and more evident. Being the shrewd little boy that I was I simply copied down onto my paper what the neighboring student had written on her paper. The teacher then said, “Write your phone number and your address too”; which I suppose is common information for most first graders. I knew nothing! The last name I copied from my neighbor’s paper and the address from the little boy on the other side, as though it were mine. Yipes! I didn't know diddly squat! Later that day the teacher asked why it was that I lived with Rosalind when we had different last names. Not knowing what to say I told her that my parents were dead. She said that she thought my last name was Daughtry, I said it was before they died. This little piece of deception went along quite well until later that day when my mother came by to pick me up for lunch. You might say that the manure finally hit the proverbial fan right then and there. Mother was embarrassed because of what all I didn't know (there really was a whole lot) and I am positive, not quite sure how to cover up the fact that she had not taught me anything. Later that day when I got home after school, mother sat me down determined to teach, in one afternoon what she hadn't bothered to teach me in the first five or so years of my life. In all fairness to her she had a busy schedule of going for Coca Colas with her cousin, Mary Lou in the afternoons. After all I was the fourth boy and she had really wanted a girl. Not to mention she also ran a house full of boys who were hungry all the time and usually up to something that she had to ferret out with little help from my father.

 The Second Day

The second day of the first grade I decided that I would just not go back to school any more. I rolled myself in the blanket at the end of my bed and went back to sleep. Somewhere around 11:00 my nanny found me when she came to make up the bed. More problems! Mother took me back to school after a pretty good thrashing, apologizing to the teacher who at this point was a pretty confused woman.  Things did not improve in the coming days.

 The Third Day

The third day of school I brought what we called a “log Roller” marble to class. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever owned, a clear perfectly round red crystal circle an inch in diameter. To clean it and it always needed cleaning I put it into my mouth and swished it around and then dried it off on my shirt. This third day of the first grade however the marble, for some reason escaped the sucking grip of my tongue and slipped to the back of my throat just down into my wind pipe. What followed was even more embarrassing. My face, being deprived of oxygen began to turn blue and I had a desperate and panicked look on my face. The teacher leaped up from her desk and raced down the aisle towards me. As you might imagine this caused me even more distress and I swallowed really hard. The Marble was lodged blocking my windpipe and all air ceased to pass. It was inaccessible, well beyond the reach of my tongue or fingers! I began to make strange little involuntary sounds when I tried to explain what was wrong, it sounded like eerhrg and geeeakh! The teacher seemed to be in even more distress than I was and that was a lot! Thank goodness she had the presence of mind to whack me in the middle of my back. The marble was dislodged and went, I knew not where but I am pretty sure I swallowed it. The emergency was over. She wanted me to explain what had happened so I hunched my shoulders up and down a few times and turned my palms towards the ceiling raising my eyebrows  as if to say, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!” She had a resigned look on her face and wandered back up to her desk. For many weeks I continued to look for my crystal log Roller but it never showed up. Can’t tell you how many times I tried to cough it up. I loved that marble!

The Fourth Day

 The fourth day I awoke after my near death experience of the previous day, determined to do better at school. Wrong! The next day just after lunch a little girl named Camille threw up her lunch right in the middle of the aisle in the middle of class. I was in clear line of site when it happened and had an up close and personal view of the entire mess. There were partial diminutive pieces of Tangerine suspended in the mess and my stomach began to churn and feel very strange. I thought I too was going to throw up. I didn't but the little girl who sat just next to the spot where the puddle occurred began to heave and she too emptied the multihued contents of her stomach on to the floor beside the other. More tangerines! The teacher seemed to have lost her composure to say the least and took the rest of the class rapidly out on to the playground for an unscheduled recess. Arriving back to the room the janitor had carefully removed the tangerines and the rest of the unspeakable mess. We began again. One of the children in the class raised her hand and said that she had to go to the restroom, then another and then another. The teacher had about had it at this point (this was not one of her better days) and loudly exclaimed that the next person that asked to go to the restroom was instead going to the Principal’s office.  Well, that let me out of asking even though it felt as though my bladder would explode. My penis (though I had no idea what it was called in the first grade) had gotten so hard that the front of my pants stood out and looked really weird and I knew that if I stood up to leave the room all the other children would see my predicament! No pun intended! I began to panic! In a foolish act of desperation I pulled my wooden color crayon box out of my desk and pretended to be looking for something therein. Luckily I had on shorts and I placed the crayon box between my legs. I twisted my penis down to where I had a pretty good shot at hitting the box with the urine. It worked and my bladder now 20 percent less filled was slightly better, however crayon boxes really do not hold a lot of urine especially when they are so filled with crayons.  Who knew that crayon boxes wouldn't hold liquids? Well, the urine began to seep out of the box. It ran down my legs and briefly pooled beneath my desk.  Lo and behold it then began to migrate ever so slowly up the aisle towards the teacher’s desk. Crap! Then it happened. I got tickled at my impossible situation and try as I might I was unable to hold the remaining urine. I just let it go. And go it did! My pants were soaked and the urine trail began to travel at what appeared to be a north easterly direction about twelve miles an hour directly up towards the teacher’s desk. Everyone in the class realized what was going on except the teacher. They stared directly at the slow trickling golden liquid path that meandered up the rough wooden aisle ever so slowly. As unbelievable as it now seems not one child said a word, no squeals, no laughter only dead silence. It was as though they were transfixed, hypnotized by the liquid as it gathered momentum headed up the aisle. To me it looked like a tsunami headed for the front of the room! The teacher finally noticed and scrambling quickly took the class out for yet another recess. Except for me, I was walked to the principal’s office and promptly sent home. I got to go home for the rest of the day. Luckily this was the first grade and I was not arrested as I was almost positive I would be. Being so embarrassed about my inability to control my bladder in school I took my short pants, my underwear and the pair of urine soaked socks and stuffed them down into the unfinished wall in the bedroom closet of my room. They remained there for the entire time my parents owned the house. There is no doubt that they are still wadded secretly in that dark space bearing silent testimony to my weakness.  

tbd



Wednesday, September 24, 2014


If Andy Warhol had taken a photograph of my grandchildren............maybe?

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

                                             Belle and Lena
1987

            In the white house President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski have an affair behind closed doors. Dow Jones closes above 2,000 for 1st time (2,002.25). Bryan Gumbel co-hosted his final “Today” show on NBC-TV. Secretary of State Margaret Albright announces she just discovered that her grandparents were Jewish.  In a small town in Alabama twin sisters sit on a veranda.

                Belle and Lena sat in twin green rockers on the front porch of their old Victorian house located about a block from the center of the small town they lived in. An ancient wisteria vine grew draped around the front porch rail and pulled relentlessly against it. A few out of season  fragrant purple blooms peeped from the dense green foliage and perfumed the air. Tired from picking cucumbers in the garden most of the morning and magically turning them into sweet pickles for much of the afternoon they briefly retired to the front porch for a late afternoon rest and a glass of iced tea. They loved to sit on the veranda in the early evening to watch the few cars and pedestrians that passed in front of their home.  Their neighborhood had declined and practically all of the children had long ago grown up and moved away to cities and towns far away from this small side street in Junction Center. Many of the adjacent houses were in need of paint and general upkeep. Little was done at this point to maintain the appearance of the area as nobody seemed to care very much one way or the other. The parents who so lovingly raised their children for the most part now occupied the town cemetery that was located just behind the new high school. The grave yard that had been there since the town was established was an overgrown place where the tombstones baked in the hot midday sun and wind blown buffalo grass, Queen Anne’s lace, other tall weeds and wild flowers gently caressed the knees of sun baked monuments situated above the departed former residents. It was ironic that the youngest and most vigorous of the town’s inhabitants should spend so much of their life being educated within sight of the graves of departed former town’s people. Their deceased grandparents, relatives and many old friends rested just over a dilapidated barbed wire fence that kept cows and horses from trampling the headstones and markers that defined the cemetery’s boundaries. The fence that separated the living from the dead was installed years ago so that the adjacent fields of lush peanuts and cotton didn’t overlap and impinge on the graves. There at the center of the cemetery stood a tall singular obelisk, the grave marker for a former wealthy local doctor. It towered over the graveyard and could be seen at some distance. It was a grey speckled granite edifice that marked the center point of the burial ground with the other graves circling like satellites.

                 The sisters rarely went to the cemetery to visit their relative’s graves because, as Belle was fond of saying, “Honey, we'll soon be spending all of our time there so why go now it if we don't have to!” Their final resting plot was determined many years before when their aging parents bought the white graveled plot in the south west corner of the field that was surrounded with rectangles of marble. One enormous camellia bush grew in the middle of the plot but offered scant shade to the marble headstones.  Purchased from the local United Methodist church they knew even as young girls that eventually they would spend eternity beneath the dirt and stones here in this modest grassy field.             Their parents and their younger brother Curry were all ready there eternally sleeping below the orange clay and dirt. Curry, their younger brother died while still in high school from a football injury to his right thigh bone. He suffered many months and finally died from blood poisoning after a botched surgery in a futile attempt to restore his health. The sharecroppers living down the dirt road who helped Stanford with the farm chores heard Curry’s pitiful cries in the night from all the uncontrolled pain he suffered. Finally when it was over and he had finally passed away the broken hearted parents and sisters placed him beneath a pink marble slab inscribed with his name, date of birth, death and the message that read, Curry, beloved Son of Mavis and Stanford, brother to Belle and Lena. Belle said upon each visit, “It is very unsettling to see your name inscribed on a tombstone every time you visit the cemetery; I must say! It is like an invisible metaphorical hand waiting to pull you underground! It just gives me the creeps and I do not like going there at all!” she said. Belle reminded Lena, “Speaking of metaphorical hands, remember the time all those buzzards took up to roosting in that old dead oak tree in the front yard of the house a few years ago? It was the most unsettling thing I have ever experienced, not counting seeing my name on a tomb stone. That, if you remember is the main reason we had the tree cut down, well that and the fact that it was going to eventually fall on the house!  I honestly hate those damnable harbingers of death and doom!”Lena exclaimed.

            The sharecroppers that lived two hundred yards down the dirt road farmed several acres rented on shares from Stanford and his wife. They were black, very poor and struggled to make a living. His name was Luthor and his wife was Vie. They had two children, one boy Costanel who was sixteen and a daughter Janie who was twelve. Costanel helped his father on the farm and had finally gotten large and strong enough to be very helpful with the farm chores.  He sometimes drove the tractor with his father following behind planting the seeds and sowing fertilizer. They attended a Baptist Church further down the road where the Sunday school rooms doubled as an elementary school during the week.  On Saturdays Vie and Janie could be seen in the small yard with a blazing fire beneath a huge black cast iron pot filled with boiling water and dirty clothes. The weekly wash took the better part of the day and the clean clothes hung in the yard for most of the afternoon and sometimes would still be there on Sunday morning.
           

                The sleepy town square was just a half mile away. It was surrounded with ancient live oak trees that offered shade in the sweltering months of summer in the small township and provided a gathering place for the citizens and country farmers who brought produce and small animals to town for sale, show and barter. The town hall along with numerous assorted mercantile stores as well as a restaurant called Dan’s Down Town Diner circled the small green space that was the epicenter of the diminutive town. Once a bustling site for Saturday morning gatherings the square now serves as a place for pigeons and squirrels to reside and carry on their incarcerated lives within the surrounded confines of the square. Most of the now deserted storefronts have rusted tin and plywood nailed to what once was windows and doors providing entrance to the treasures within the stores. Hand painted “keep out!” signs offer warnings that trespassers would be prosecuted should they transgress. In the small town there were precious few people to trespass anymore anyway, so no one understood the purpose of all those signs! Belle rose from her rocker and shuffled towards the kitchen to replenish the amber colored liquid in her ice filled glass. “You getting another drink?” called Lena as she pushed her foot against the floor propelling her chair backwards and forwards creating a minuscule breeze that motivated her artificially colored red, beauty parlor curled hair. Inez at the beauty parlor had assured her that she was still young enough to wear that particular color even though Belle thought it looked absurd. Out in the street she noticed two black children on ragged out bicycles being chased by a black and white dog racing down the street shrieking to each other in fear of the pursuing canine. Lena heard one of the children scream, “It’s a Dalmatian dog and he’ll bite the shit out of you!” The children and the dog disappeared into the distance, still screaming and pedaling frantically with the dog following in hot pursuit.




Lena
The Day at the Train
                                                                                                                                                                         October 1943

The Second World War had been in progress since 1939 with 100 million people from 30 different countries involved before it ended in 1945. Holocaust; Dr.Joseph Mengele begins his service as a medical officer in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Anne Frank’s diary will not be published for four years.  

                Lena and Belle at seventeen had recently finished high school. Wearing a new flowered dress with her hair only just fixed Lena felt very beautiful and didn't want to walk in the heat and dust the mile and a half to town just to see a passing freight train. Lena was a beautiful girl and she knew it. Her face was slightly more symmetrical than her twin sister’s and therein lay the difference. Not by any means was Belle unattractive because she certainly was not. In fact many people thought she was the prettier one. Their father had taken the wagon pulled by two enormous mules into town earlier in the day and had not returned so walking was the only option. After learning the train was packed with young men, soldiers headed off for war in foreign countries she agreed to go with Belle who was determined to go no matter what. The walk to town was very hot even during the fall of the year like this particular sweltering dry day in October. After reaching town they stood with sweat beads on their foreheads near the railroad tracks and watched impatiently for the train to round the distant curve. It came into sight spewing black smoke from the smokestack and slowing somewhat. Ear piercing whistles emanated from the train as it approached the main intersection where Lena and Belle were standing.
            The train rolled past in a whirling cyclone of dust and debris. From the dry red clay beside the track the air turned orange as the wind from the passing train cars stirred the dry powder into the air whipping it skyward. Many fresh faced young men in khaki uniforms hung out of the windows of the train waving, whistling and shouting enthusiastically at the two beautiful young girls when the rush of wind blew their dresses up above their knees and whipped their flaxen hair about in all directions. Families and groups of other people standing beside the tracks clapped their hands and cheered the soldiers as they blew quickly into and out of the small town on the chugging train. Through this cloud of detritus the train passed rapidly. As the final car passed Lena saw a man standing on the rear platform outside the back of the caboose. His left hand was grasping the pole that supported the roof over the platform on which he stood. A dark suit covered his tall frame and there was sadness about him that she could see from the distance where she stood beside the track. His black brooding eyes were set on some distant point beyond where the tracks came together and met in the distance. He was the most beautiful man Lena had ever seen with broad shoulders and hair as black as coal. He stood still except for the movement caused by the gentle sway of the speeding train. His eyes remained fixed on the distant horizon. Lena felt her heart come unfixed from its usual place in her chest and fall noiselessly into the stones and dirt between her feet. The image of this stranger was burned into her mind like a tattoo. Besieged by this handsome outsider she turned to her sister and said, “That’s the man I am going to marry!” The train rumbled off into the distance gathering speed as it passed away into the countryside, growing smaller as it moved further away down the tracks. Lena could not avert her eyes from the diminishing train, longing for one more glimpse of the stranger. Tears filled her eyes and silently ran down her cheeks.

                The mile and a half walk back home out the dusty dirt road seemed like a hundred miles. As Lena walked toward home she began to think and imagine exactly how she could meet the handsome sad man she had seen at the rear of the train. Maybe one day he would show up on the door steps of her home selling Singer Sewing Machines. When she opened the screen door and looked into his eyes she again felt her heart shift in her chest and thought she might faint as a great heat wave encompassed her. She felt that looking into his eyes was like staring up in to the night sky filled with stars. Perhaps she might accidentally pass him on the street and fortuitously brush his shoulder. He would stop and say, “Oh, pardon me miss. I did not mean to bump you.”  Lena would blush but still gaze into his dark brown eyes and knowing that she was all ready besotted with his charm would gently touch his arm and say, “Oh, it was nothing at all, sir. Don’t even mention it.” Thinking about these scenarios she felt faint but continued walking towards home next to Belle who by this time was sweating profusely. Their bulldog puppy Tige saw them approaching and raced across the dusty field to meet them leaping and cavorting in the rows of peanuts as they crossed the field approaching their house.

                Father mentioned the passing train that night at the dinner table and what he heard while in town earlier in the day. “Sad, sad how terribly sad it was, “he stated. Lena asked, “What was so sad? Belle and I were there watching the train pass and saw nothing sad, “she said. Their father continued, “There was a young man on the train from over near Mobile; a young Methodist minister carrying his deceased wife back to north Alabama for burial at her ancestral home. She died in child birth and her coffin was in the baggage car.” Lena’s mouth dropped open and she let out an audible gasp. Belle looked at her and said, “That was the man you saw on the back of the train and said you were going to marry him! It had to be!”Again Lena blushed.



Night at the carnival

November 1944

Russian troops land on Kertsj peninsula, FDR, Churchill & Chiang Kai-shek meet to discuss ways to defeat Japan, FDR, Churchill & Stalin meet at Tehran to map out strategy,  Chic Bear Sid Luckman passes for 7 touchdowns vs NY Giants (56-7), Jewish ghetto of Riga Latvia is destroyed.

            It was a bright November morning when Belle woke up and looked across the room expecting to see Lena asleep in her bed. She was not there. From down in the kitchen the smell of bacon drifted up into the bedroom and its tantalizing aroma lured Belle from the warm comfort of her bed. She walked down the wooden steps holding on to the banister rail. The textured wooden steps pressed up into her bare feet. There in the kitchen her parents were sitting across the table from Lena. Belle heard her father say, “You are not going to Mobile by yourself and that’s all there is to it!” Belle realized that she had entered midpoint in a conversation that had been going on for weeks in their family. Lena was determined to go to Mobile for a job interview that she had heard about from a cousin who lived in the coastal city. The teaching job was in a small school on the outskirts of Mobile in the country side.  Belle knew that Lena had little interest in teaching and did not like the Mobile area. She thought it was too hot in Junction City and the idea of going even further south to live in hotter temperatures was not appealing at all. Belle knew that Lena had ulterior motives for her move to Mobile. Lena looked at Belle for some support but Belle did not meet her glance. “Dad” Lena said, “Belle and I could take the train to Mobile and then get someone to transport us to the school for the interview. I am not going to sit around Junction City and waste my life waiting for something to happen!” “Belle, if I decide to let her go would you be willing to go with her to Mobile for the interview?” her father asked.” “Maybe,” Belle replied, looking at Lena with a sly grin.

            From the front yard the machine gun barking of Tige filled the air with urgent yapping. Stanford rose from his chair and ambled across the breakfast room floor to look out the front door. “Good Lord! What in the heck is all that about?” Stanford exclaimed. The girls jumped up from their chairs and moved toward the windows. Passing in front of the house on the sandy dirt road was a large truck filled with men dressed in clown outfits. Multicolored streamers flowed behind the vehicle and drug through the orange dirt on the road. Attached to the sides of the truck on the fenders were large festive signs that stated, “The Carnival is here! Come tonight and get half price admission!”A loud man shouted,”See the two headed dog, the snake woman and the crocodile man, alive and in person!” He shouted, “Come see the man eat a live chicken, the bearded lady and the one thousand pound man. See the sultana ladies from the harem of the sheik of Arabia!” A young boy perched on the rear of the truck banged an oversized drum in the dust from the road as the truck moved slowly down the road. One of the several blond women was dressed in purple transparent gauzy wrappings and as she leaned from the truck she exposed a surprising amount of cleavage from her sequined halter top. Stanford said, “Get back in the house girls! It’s nothing but a bunch of trash blowing down the road!” Everyone knew that carnival folk were just a bunch of riff raff and were always up to no good. “They are nothing but thieves and criminals!” Stanford said, “That’s all they are”. Little more was said about the passing ménage. Belle looked intensely at Lena and gave her a furtive wink. After breakfast the two girls helped with the dishes and then went out onto the front porch and sat on the swing. Belle began, “I am going to that carnival tonight. Do you want to go with me?” Lena replied, “You are not going anywhere. You'll get your throat cut at that horrible place!” “We’ll see!” Belle muttered. Over the distant horizon a dark thunderhead rolled into view. “Looks like we might get a little rain,” Belle muttered.

            That night after much politicking from Belle she and Lena fabricated a story convincing their parents that they needed go to a neighbor’s house half way into town. They left at dusk and walked the winding road toward the small town. Finding the carnival was no problem as there was only one place where things like carnivals and fairs had enough room to set up and operate. Approaching the entrance to the carnival they walked through an unexpected milky mist that had appeared at a depression in the ground like a gauze curtain draped across the landscape near the entrance to the carnival. They paid a small fee for the both of them to enter the grounds and moved into the midway where many of the town’s people were all ready there walking around looking. Barkers’ called to the passerby’s trying to lure them into the tents set up for housing the attractions. Men shouted, “Only costs a nickel. Come on in!” The girls paid the admission fee to see the one thousand pound man and passed into a brightly lit tent where a huge man lay reclined on a dilapidated mattress. He was immense. There seemed to be no end to him. His mass covered the mattress and spilled over of the edge onto the floor. Only a thin white covering wrapped his midsection. Overwhelming fleshy tissue seemed to encompass the entire room. Eating what appeared to be a chicken dinner there was a greasy glistening sheen circling the man’s mouth and clinging to his hands and fingers. He looked at the girls and winked. They left and went to the next tent.


            A sign announced “See the two headed dog, right this way!”  Belle and Lena paid their nickel and walked through the curtained door. The large room contained hundreds of formaldehyde filled bottles on wooden shelves. Many of them had fetuses with huge blue veined heads, snakes and worms that had been removed from the digestive tracts of children, a human heart, a child’s hand and many other things that made the girls blush and turn their heads away. In one corner of the shelf was a large fluid filled bottle with a small dog that looked as though he had two heads coming from a thick neck. One bottle contained a uterus and partially birthed immature baby. The girls were repulsed and left the tent after just a minute. They pushed their way through a yielding canvas curtain that opened into a tented room where many men sat in chairs smoking cigarettes staring intently at a raised stage where a ferociously blond, completely naked woman lay repeatedly thrusting her pink private parts into the open air. It was the woman in the purple gauze wrapping with the immense cleavage that passed in the truck earlier that morning. Belle and Lena retreated from a side door into the cool humid night air. A large bald man with a chewed up cigar and a stubbly beard just outside the tent said, “Hey! No women allowed in there!”

             They walked into the little crowd fearful someone from the town had seen them pass out of the tent where the blond woman was performing her show. Further down the midway they ran into two boys they had known at school. The four of them began walking together and talking about their plans now that they had finished school. Lena said, “I am moving to Mobile, Alabama and find the man of my dreams!” Belle commented, “Yeah and I am flying to the moon!” The boys both laughed. Belle and Lena left the boys and started for the front gate of the carnival and the trip back home. They were very quiet and the weather was worsening by the minute. Lightning flashed across the night sky and large drops of rain started to fall. Thunder rumbled across the distant fields and the trees beside the road began to quake and whip around in a synchronized dance with the wind. The girls knew they were going to get wet. The mist that shrouded the fair entrance had now expanded and encompassed the country side like an opaque curtain making it difficult to navigate their way back home.  Another flash of lightning briefly lit up the night sky and Belle saw a dark shadowy figure following at a short distance in the heavy fog behind them. She grabbed Lena's arm and pulled her closer.







.....to be continued……maybe?












Explanations


                Lena was the name of my Mother’s aunt who lived across the street from us when I was a small boy living in Midland City, she loved to grow flowers

The character of Lena is my mother’s sister

Belle was the name of the character of the prostitute in “Gone with the Wind”

The character Belle is another of my Aunts, fictionalized

Junction Center is a combination of Midland City and Headland, Alabama

The dark stranger on the train is my Uncle

Mavis was the name of the mother of a friend

Stanford is the name of a former neighbor

My father sold Singer sewing machines when he lived in Kentucky, was young and first married  

Curry was my mother’s youngest brother who died in high school from a leg injury

Tige was my grandfather’s bull dog

Inez was a beautician who did my mother’s hair for more years that any of us could remember

                “Dalmatian dog” is what the black children in our Jonesboro neighborhood called Jesse and Checkers (my Dalmatians) when I walked them around the block.

When I was a small child I went to the movie in down town Dothan alone late one afternoon and walked home afterwards. It was almost dark as I passed down the sidewalk leaving town and saw a trailer that had written on its sides, “See the fattest man in the world, only a quarter!” Having a quarter left over from the movie I paid the money and walked in. The window you looked through to see the immense man was too high for me to see over into where he was laying. Being so short I  jumped briefly up and caught a glimpse into the space where he reclined. In that tenth of a second my eyes saw over into the man’s little room and I saw him.  Although it was for less than a second it burned into my mind like a brand and after all this time I have almost perfect recall as to what I saw.

 In Dothan Alabama we had many fairs and carnivals come through town especially during the Peanut Festival. The sordid attractions I saw there, including the formaldehyde filled jars, the naked blond woman and the two headed dog are reflected in the “Night at the Carnival” section.



Tuesday, May 6, 2014

The Long Walk Uphill

Walking up the small mountain above the house into the wooded hillside this morning with Moose and J.D. I could not help but notice the many changes that have occurred since I was there years before. Asking myself why it had been so long since I had visited that particular spot I paused and pondered its beauty and made a small vow not to let so much time pass again before I returned. It has been too many years since I had been up to the higher elevations at the rear of our property. The dappled sunlight freckled the forest floor and moved with the currents of the wind as the trees danced above us dodging and burning spots of light on the forest floor. I climbed the incline towards the national forest that conjoins the back property line. Still early enough in this spring of 2014 I did not have to worry about the ticks and red bugs that feast on humans and own this part of the forest later in the summer. It was cool and breezy, a perfect crystalline blue day for climbing through the heath thickets and the rhododendron hells and was quite comfortable despite the rigors of the climb. The mountain laurel and rhododendron remained sound asleep and barely showed any hint of the spring time change in their as yet unfurled blossom and leaf buds.


The forested slopes were different since I had last visited. The many trees had grown larger and consequently weeded out the smaller, weaker versions of themselves and consequently proffered a more open vista than I remembered. There were a number of downed giant trees lying on the ground, sad like so many fallen warriors, decomposing, shedding their bark and now soft spongy interiors back into the moist yielding covering cloaking the earth. They had succumbed to high winds, heavy snows, disease and whatever other force that was at work there while I did not visit them. They lived their lives up on the hill exchanging with me, oxygen for carbon dioxide unseen and unthought-of by anyone. The inclined hill was covered with leaf litter and detritus shed by the indigenous trees and other plants from past years that had grown so deep that my feet sank into the spongy, moist depth of it. Not so many years ago an intentionally set fire on Rich Mountain burned for weeks and destroyed the nurturing cover and smoked the air so heavily that many people had to leave and find other places to stay till the leaf litter had finished burning. It took weeks.


This rarely explored area of the Rich Mountain wilderness is extraordinary with the fresh flush of spring on its face, still dripping with dew from the early morning. There was no sign of the showy orchid with the striking purplish and white bloom that appeared a few weeks ago nor the pink lady’s slipper that produces erotically, exotic pink blossoms for mother’s day each new year. I missed them as I walked this morning but am sure I passed within spitting distance of them and didn't notice. Moose and J.D. were with me running rampant through the underbrush so my attention was somewhat diminished for plant watching as my dogs are so entertaining. Periodically they would stop and have what seemed to be an all out fight just this side of a bloodletting for no apparent reason. Moose pounced on J.D. and intentionally rolled her for some twenty yards down the steep incline while her teeth snapped the air searching for a piece of Moose’s flesh. Afterwards they continued their trek undaunted by what had just transpired and seemingly devoted friends once again. They are mother and son and seem attached to each other but fisticuffs do occasionally happen, usually over food.



Coming down the hill returning home after a long strenuous hike I heard the rustling creek and noticed the showy white double file virburnum extravagantly blooming down by the water with wedding cake audacity, shedding petals and stamens with excessive abandon into the icy water.  upward