Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Good Life

Diekirch, Luxembourg; July 17, 1966. A Sunday afternoon. Here's what I was writing:

We just arrived here by foot; it is 5 kilos from Ettelbruck. I have a new rucksack that is jammed with a hard breadloaf, a stick of sausage, two kinds of cheese, a jar of pickles (the jar, on top of the cost of the pickles, cost 3 cents), two oranges, a bottle of wine and a package of what must be home-made potato chips. The latter was given to us by the lady in the shop where we bought the food. We'll stop along the path on the way back and have our meal.

Diekirch is a little smaller than Ettelbruck although it is the seat of the county, also called Diekirch.

While walking around Ettelbruck after my sausage sandwich yesterday afternoon we passed a Famille de Pension. The menu and prices posted outside looked good so after returning to our hotel and cleaning up some we went back to this place. It was late for dinner and we were the only ones eating. The waitress spoke excellent English and had six weeks ago married an American Airman. Her name is Palmyra. She jabbered and jabbered and we were there until 10:30pm. We had beef steak, french fries, salad, three beers and two coffees each. Only 162 francs ($3.24) each. Palmyra was interesting, showing us her scrapbook filled with pictures of the wedding and honeymoon. She said that the people here have a low regard for the Germans; there is not a street which could be looked up without viewing great destruction; in Palmyra's own home one coud stand on the ground level and look up to the sky. When her parents came back after the war everyone was required to have some sort of enterprise in order, I suppose, to get some sort of an economy moving again. So her family opened this Famille de Pension and today they still see their very first customer -- a German from just over the border. She showed us some of their guest rooms o the upper floor; they were beautiful and spotlessly clean.

I asked Palmyra about General Patton, whose forces liberated the city in 1944. "He is a god to us," she said. Patton, after the war, was killed in a jeep accident not far from here.

After leaving Famille de Pension we went into a bar we'd passed earlier on our afternoon walk. We'd noticed it had a jukebox. The song we played over and over was "Long, Long While" which here in Europe is the flipside of "Paint It Black" -- we'd never heard it.

After a while, drinking beer and playing that song over and over again, and while Dennis had gone to piss, the younger waitress came and sat beside me, saying "Excuse me." She sat talking with us until the place closed at 1 a.m. I spoke almost as much German to her as English and she understood me fine. This bar was run by this girl's mother and two of the girl's sisters. She claimed her name was Baby. At some point there was a ruckus at the bar. According to Baby, recounting the incident afterwards, one of the local men had asked if one of Baby's sisters behind the bar was, in Baby's words, "a girl for hire." The mother grabbed one arm and one ear and the insulted sister grabbed the other arm and the other ear, and there was a lot of shouting as they led the man to the door where they each farewelled him with a loud slap on the face.

We drunkenly and happily stumbled to our hotel.

And now we have rested enough. Dennis just snapped a picture of me writing, and we must start back to Ettelbruck.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Mini-Memoir: "You Might Die"

Ten or twelve years ago, visiting relatives in Indiana, I was sitting alone on the front porch enjoying a cigarette. I heard the screen door latch click. A grandniece, four or five years old, peeked out to see what I was doing. "Hi!" she said, coming out onto the porch, letting the door shut behind her. Then I watched her eyes widen in alarm as she noticed the smoke wafting skyward from the cigarette between my fingers.

"Ahmmm ... you're not supposed to smoke!" she said, her face a picture of genuine concern. "You might die!"

She paused, as if offering me a chance to explain my stupidity. I didn't quite know how to respond; I couldn't tell a cute child tend to your own damn business!

Then, after a pause, she switched to a brighter side, as if to allay any fear she might have caused with her remark, "But if you do die, God will be waiting for you ... and Aunt Peg and Grandpa Tom will be waiting for you too!" She was referring to her grandfather and great aunt, both of whom she presumed to be in heaven. "And they might play checkers with you!"

I hate checkers. I don't want to play checkers with anyone, dead or alive, and I supposed anyhow that if God was included in those who might play checkers with me ... well ... with his omniscience and all ... fat chance of beating him.

Then, my still having not responded, which seemed puzzling to her, she turned to go back inside. Halfway in she turned back toward me and let out a little gasp, pressing her fingers against her lips. "Oh! I forgot! My mom told me that I'm not supposed to tell grown-ups what to do!" And then, brightly, she changed her tone; flipping her hand toward me as if issuing a regal dispensation and declaring: "It's okay -- you can smoke if you want to!"

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Today I Came Upon A Poem I Really Like



Note to Myself
... by Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs at the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew in a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls under the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzle
or the doll's tiny shoes, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic.
Go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paperclips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience.

Monday, April 19, 2010

First Communion

I was looking through some things to find information to renew my Irish Passport and came across this. Guess my dad was in no hurry to get me baptized -- I was eight years old.


Saturday, April 17, 2010

Happy Birthday to A J Golaski

And thanks for a great hand-made card which I've treasured for 31 years!



Friday, April 16, 2010

Favorite Postcards: County Kerry, Ireland


My dad was born in County Kerry.  They have some scary roads there:


Below scenes of the coast at Castlegregory, the town he was born near.


Wednesday, April 14, 2010

"Horrible and Slanderous Insinuations" or, as The Who put it, "Meet the new boss ... same as the old boss."

The headline below caught my eye in a San Francisco alternative weekly in 1976. Or so I remember. I loved it that one would refer to one's self as "our humble person" and so I had to cut it out and add it to my (now practically unmanageable) pile of clippings. (Clicking on the article enlarges it.)


Sunday, April 11, 2010

Paragliding (Maybe someday)

One cold Sunday afternoon in February I was driving along the ocean. At White Crest Beach in Wellfleet I pulled into the parking lot. There were a dozen-or-so paragliders hanging out, waiting for the wind to shift, some of them practicing their take-off and control skills by scooting (so it seemed) along the beach but without ascending. All were bundled up in outfits against the cold. One guy did go aloft for brief back-and-forths, while another guy, a sort of instructor I guessed, shouted suggestions to him and the others.

Eventually this instructor-type turns to me, standing near, and says "Hi!" I ask him some questions ... how they controlled their altitude, and such. He explained as best he could to someone who never knows which way the wind is blowing. "I'd take you up tandem if the wind shifts ..." he says, and then, to everyone on the beach he shouts excitedly, "The white caps are gone! Hurray! Good sign!" ... and then, back to me, he finishes his offer, " ... if you'd like."

I'm thinking good god in this cold with just my jacket and hat? "How about when spring comes?" I say.


"Sure, I'll be around. It's great. Some days you can float above the dunes all the way to Nauset and back." That'd be about a 20-mile round-trip I guess. "One time, it was just a perfect day, I was sailing low and came upon this young couple going at it out in the middle of nowhere! She saw me and tapped him on the shoulder but he couldn't stop, couldn't even bother to look up. I just waved at her."


The paraglider pictured below was a tiny young woman who looked to weigh all of 90 pounds or so!

Today is beautiful and sunny and warm. I drove to the Wellfleet Library and then to White Crest Beach. But I knew there'd be no paragliders; the National Park Service bans the activity from the first sighting of a piping plover -- a cute bird which is an endangered species, and which nests on the beaches. There have been several sightings recently. When their eggs hatch and their chicks fledge -- which may be in early July, maybe later -- then the paragliders can return.

The amount of gear hauled to the beach bespeaks a serious dedication to the sport:


Wednesday, April 7, 2010

First Car: 1932 Dodge Six


(Google image)

A woman named Rosa Kinsey who, with a brother and a sister, ran a farm just southwest of Mentone, won a brand new car at the 1932 Kosciusko County Fair.  The Kinsey farm was one of several farms where my pals and I would be hired to stack baled straw in the mow, and then, a bit later in the summer, stack the heavier bales of hay.  One day in 1954, when I was fourteen, while waiting for a loaded wagon to be brought in from the field, I was snooping around the buildings around the barn and opened a door, expecting to find farm equipment stored within.  Instead of harrows or plows, there stood a 1932 Dodge in what looked like perfect condition.  I don't remember the mileage but it wasn't much.  I asked Rosa Kinsey about it and she said since I liked it so much I could buy it.  "How much?" I asked.  "Well, do you think $75 would be fair?"  I worked at this job and that job and saved my money and at the end of the summer Rosa signed the title over to me.

(I might mention that the Kinsey sisters, come noon, would seat us farmhands at their oak table, the table having been made extra long by the insertion of a couple-three leafs, and feed us the most sumptuous spread that I -- to this very day -- have ever laid eyes upon.  Everything was delicious ... there was meat and there were a couple styles of potatoes and there were probably ten or twelve bowls of vegetables and salads, and then, after this feast, the pies were brought out.  An additional testimony to the goodness of the Kinseys is the fact that they paid us boys $1.50 per hour while the standard pay for that work in those days was $1.00 per hour.)

I was so excited to own my own car that the first night it was parked alongside the curb outside our house I slept in it.  I just couldn't leave it.  The only problem was, being fourteen, I couldn't get a driver's license, so I had to have others drive me around, and it wasn't always easy to scrape together twenty-three cents to buy a gallon of gas.

My four-wheeled pride had spring-loaded blinds for all four side windows and the back window.  One of my favorite memories is one time when my sister Sheila was driving it around town; her friend Janet Reed, was in the front seat; and my other sisters, Martha and Joan, were in the back seat.  Some of my buddies saw them so we started chasing them in whatever car we were in ... Sheila sped down this and that street in town, cut this corner and that corner, and tore down this alley and that alley trying to ditch us ... Martha and Joan kept looking back to see if we were still behind them.  All of a sudden Joan pulled the blind on the back window.  It was the ultimate "see how you like this, brother!"  It was so damned funny I remember how damned funny it was to this day.  We laughed and laughed and laughed and Joan and Sheila will laugh again when they read this blog.  

(photo illustration from "Instruction" book)

My brother Jim likes to say that I sold the car when I was a senior in high school in order to have money to buy a pack of cigarettes.  That's not correct -- I sold it to have money to go on our Senior Class Trip to New York City and Washington D.C., though I probably did buy a few packs with some of the money.  And Jim's version does make a better story!

Though I don't still have that fabulous car -- it had about a yard of leg room for the comfort of those sitting in the back -- I do still have the "Instruction" book that came with it. 


Sunday, April 4, 2010

Easter Sunday 2010

In terrible condition above.  Three days later, risen.  Cool!  And he's one of my favorite philosophers.  And, below, one of my favorite depictions of him.

*Top postcard, reproduction of La Piedad by Ribera, 1633.  Bottom postcard, no credits listed except "Printed in Spain Dep. Leg  B-40947-77".

Thursday, April 1, 2010

"On Newcomb Hollow Beach"


On Newcomb Hollow Beach
-- for Caleb, Kai, and Max Potter
I
On an April's first day
he woke with a plan:
he'd go to Newcomb Hollow Beach.
He'd take his gun, he'd take his life.
First, though, he went about town:
there were errands to run,
a bill at the market to pay,
a few odd jobs
that shouldn't be left undone.
Eventually, the road ...
to the ocean's edge.
II
He bore a pain born of a tragedy ...
bore his own hurt, bore the hurt of others.
These hurts and these pains would cease
on Newcomb Hollow Beach.
Those who loved him
and we who did not know him
would have wished to shout:
"Stop! Please don't! ... No! Don't"
But the shot rang out.
He was gone ... beyond reach ....
III
It's difficult to imagine
wanting to die, certainly not
on beautiful Newcomb Hollow Beach;
while needing to die can make some sense ...
wanting only for life to become better,
wanting for a son to heal,
for his friends' tears to end.
Now, though, month after month had gone by;
nothing seemed to be getting better.
He must have come to believe
it would not get better ...
so, yes, a gun ...
a definitive breach.
IV
Shocks, griefs, sobbings ...
a million tears were shed
on Newcomb Hollow Beach
by family, lovers, friends, and strangers.
The tide came in twice a day
washing those tears away,
leaving behind no explanations,
no consolations.
V
They stood his surfboard upright
in the sands of Newcomb Hollow Beach --
its red-orangeness brilliant
against the blue background of sea,
against the blue background of sky.
The scene, even amidst pity, was beautiful.
Offerings and homages: pebbles, feathers,
flowers, notes ... mementos set about;
his hammer was attached to his surfboard;
a photograph of him was put there too.
Sad, futile gestures. Announcements:
we came, we grieved,
we thought of you.
VI
His ashes were spread on the sand
and in the sea at Newcomb Hollow Beach.
Last night, a perfectly autumn night,
I walked to the scene.
The moon, taciturn, full, glanced askance;
it was not hers to wonder why --
she had work to do, tugging and heaving
an ocean entire, and she must move on --
to Lake Superior, I supposed,
then to Big Sur, to China, past Mumbai.
VII
I shed a few tears for him and for
other sadnesses that came to mind
on Newcomb Hollow Beach.
The makeshift memorial, the mementos ...
all such is long gone --
carried away by a tide
or removed by the Rangers.
VIII
Gazing at plankton in the water --
those phosphorescent essences --
I suddenly imagined them as ashes;
I then thought of each ash as a surfer,
and it occurred to me, of course,
that one of them might be he --
riding waves great and small
off Newcomb Hollow Beach ...
surfing happily through it all,
surfing through eternity,
hanging ten ... doing all the things
that surfers love to do.
IX
It made a pretty picture in my mind ...
a brief idea of paradise --
an idea which I'd, so to speak,
tried on for size.
Then, the time to go having come,
I turned and headed for home.
Walking along Gross Hill Road
the fancy fantasy I'd devised
on Newcomb Hollow Beach
struck me as, at best, silly.
Immediately, though,
it struck me anew ...
it wasn't silly ... wasn't silly at all;
it was just a nice soft cushion
against a tough reality.