Patrick Egan's Blog, page 32
March 18, 2018
NASA Director Sends Wife To The Moon
[A rare photo of the then Mr. Kramden, with wife, Alice and neighbor, Edward Norton. (ca. late 1950’s). Source: Google search]
Washington, D.C.
The Chief of NASA, Dr. Ralph Kramden, has big plans to celebrate his wife’s birthday. He intends to send her, literally to the earth’s only satellite, the moon.
A short time ago, Dr. Kramden finally succeeded in making a large sum of money on a project, that together with his friend and neighbor, Mr. Edward Norton, had been working on for many years. With his new-found wealth, Mr. Kramden enrolled in the Aerospace Department of the University of Brooklyn. He eventually earned his doctorate by emerging himself in cutting edge research regarding the legendary and elusive propellent factor utilizing the positive spin of the negative Higgs-Boson particle coupled with the entropic variations of the magnetic properties of the Fermion and Charm quarks when related to the Absolute Zero behaviors of the graviton particle in zero gravity isolation.
This was a continuation of his sixth grade science fair project he presented when he attended The Town School in Manhattan.
The news of the intended lunar mission came on the heels of President Donald Trump’s public dedication of his deep-seated interest in research into such topics as climate change, evolution and space exploration.
“I am signing this Executive Order to relocate $15,000,000,000 to pure scientific endeavors…good things…for scientists…great people…for the pure joy of knowledge even if there is no immediate monetary return. I remember hearing that we have laptops because of the space program…good stuff,” said the President at a recent news conference.
“Now, with this funding, I can give my wife, Alice, what I’ve always promised her. I used to tease her when we lived at our old apartment at 328 Chauncey Street in Bensonhurst that someday it was going to be ‘Bang, Zoom…to the moon!'” said Dr. Kramden. He was flanked at the press conference, held appropriately at the Air & Space Museum on the Capital Mall, by Alice and his Associate Director, Dr. Edward Norton (Sanitation Specialist for the International Space Station).
The Marine Band stood below him on the white marble steps. When he completed his prepared statement, the band began playing Dr. Kramden’s own composition, You’re My Greatest Love.
When Dr. Kramden turned to his future astronaut-wife, he was heard by many to whisper: “Baby, you’re the greatest.”
This reporter had difficulty finding a dry eye in the crowd of 12,000 who had gathered in the heavy rain to hear the historic announcement for themselves.
This is a great day for America and a great day for Brooklyn!
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March 10, 2018
BREAKING NEWS: Cartoon “bad boy” Goes Berserk–Pictures At Eleven
[Source: Google search. Copyright:North American Syndicate]
So, this will likely be the last story I will file in my so-called stellar career as a reporter. I pulled the night shift of all things…at my age! I’m standing in the drizzle on the safe side of the police crime scene tape. It’s yellow, just like in all those crimes shows on TV (which is where I get most of my action these days). As I approached the back-end of the small neighborhood crowd, I noticed my left shoe was having problems of its own in making a smooth step a reality. I leaned against a dead elm tree, actually the only tree left on the block, and hiked my foot up to see my sole. Just as I suspected. I had stepped on a well done wad of Bazooka chewing gum. I scraped my shoe against the broken cement of the sidewalk but it just made the situation worse. I gave up and turned my attention to the modest white single family house at 2251 Pine Street. This section of Wichita had seen better days, even for Kansas.
I sidled up to a guy I used to work with at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans back in the day.
“So, wudda we got here, Sid?”
“Hey Clyde,” he said, “nice to see you in these parts. Way too hot in the Big Easy, don’t you think?”
“August in Kansas is no Spring-time in England,” I replied wearily. “So, wudda we got?”
“You got lucky tonight, Clyde. That’s him inside. He just came to the window and yelled something like: “I can’t take it anymore…it’s too crazy a world for a kid like me.”
“Whose ‘him’? I asked yawningly.
“It’s Dennis ‘the menace’ Mitchell in there. He’s holding his parents hostage. Apparently he has a jazzed up sling-shot. He’s sixty-eight now. His poor parents are in their nineties.”
[The only known photo of the Mitchell family. (ca. The Good Old Days). Source: Google search & Wikipedia]
“THE Dennis ‘the menace’? Bad boy of our youth? I used to follow his antics every day in the whatever paper I was working. This is the kid with the yellow hair, right?”
“There’s only one Dennis The Menace, Clyde. You know that.”
Sid looked back at the house that was now flooded with police lights. It looked like a movie site in Levittown.
I noticed some action behind one of the patrol cars. A slightly heavy-set man with gray hair was being handed a bullhorn. He pulled the trigger like the cop told him and he spoke into the back-end of the handheld megaphone.
“Dennis! It’s Mr. Wilson, your old neighbor. Please end this now and come out. Nobody will hurt you. You won’t be made to sit in the corner any more. Come out! Put the sling-shot down and step away from the window. They have sharpshooters out here. I don’t want you to get hurt. You can call me lazy as much as you’d like. Just come out. It’ll be like the old days, all over again.”
Mr. Wilson seemed out of breath when he lowered the speaker.
“It’ll never be like the old days…again. It’s been too long.”
I turned to the voice behind me. In the glare of the floodlights I saw a middle-aged woman wearing a clear plastic raincoat and a tattered babushka over her gray hair. She was lighting a new Marlboro from the fading glowing ash of an old Marlboro that had been smoked to within 2 mm’s of the filter. I turned away from Sid and approached the woman. She leaned against the dead elm and blew a perfect smoke ring through the rain.
“Hey, I know you,” I said as I got so close to her I felt like I was back on the Marlboro wagon again, except I preferred Lucky’s myself. “Yeah, I know you. You’re Margaret. Margaret Wade. You and the kid in there used to be childhood friends. He thought you were a bit too ‘uppity’ for him but you always told him you two would be married when you grew up.”
She looked me over like an odds maker at Aqueduct and I was the underdog. (Guess I still am but that’s another story).
[Artists rendering of Dennis in the corner. Source: Google & Wikipedia]
“Yeah, we was gonna be together one of these years but things just didn’t work out. After I got knocked-up in high school and had to drop out things went down hill faster than a Buick going over the edge of El Cap in Yosemite. Ever see Thelma and Louise?”
I shrugged. “Who were they? A vaudeville act?” I asked.
“Forget it,” she said resigningly. “Besides, he preferred the Mediterranean type. He got serious with Gina Gillotti but she called off the engagement when she met a guy who owned an auto upholstery dealership in Fresno.”
She looked toward the house.
“I shudda waited, played for time, waited for his hurt to heal. Then maybe we could have made some kind of life together. But, no. I had to be me. I had to have the biggest sedans and the best Chianti any kind of money could buy. Now, it’s too late. They’ll talk him into coming out. Then they’ll send him to an institution where he can play with his invisible dog, Ruff and that strange cat, Hot Dog. They’ll let him eat all the cookies and drink all the Root Beer he wants. They won’t force him to choke down any carrots or even take any baths. That’s the way it’ll be.”
I kept the eye contact.
“Was he really that bad? I mean he was just being a little kid full of mischief, right?”
“You got it, stranger. Nobody really understood him…except me. And now he’ll never know that.”
She took a long drag on the Marlboro. I noticed a bit of moisture on her eyelid. It wasn’t the rain.
“You know, he meant well, he really did. I felt sorry for the trouble he caused his folks. Henry, his dad, was forced out of the aerospace engineering work he did when his company outsourced all that talent. His poor mother, Alice left Henry once. Nobody knows that. She went back to the farm she was raised on to take care of her father. She stayed after his funeral. She had a mini-breakdown when she thought of going back to that rascal boy of hers…and this ‘hood.”
“Well, it’s been nice talking to you, Mr. Whatever. I gotta make it over to the Pink Slipper before happy hour is over. Happy Hour. What a laugh. The Good Old Days. Real funny. I need some me-time right now. Like I haven’t had enough of me all these years. Yeah, I gotta go and have a chat with some ghosts I know.”
She tossed the butt to the broken cement that passed for a sidewalk and twisted it out with the ball of her red stilettos.
“Hey, you don’t have too much gray hair, care to join me for a high-ball?”
I looked at her and then back at the floodlit house.
I let her slide her arm through mine. We felt brave and walked through a puddle without going all the way around. I guess that’s my life…going around the long way and never being brave.
Behind me I heard cheering and applause.
“He’s coming out. Stand down everyone!” shouted the Captain. “He’s not going to be any trouble to anyone anymore.”
From somewhere, far away and faint, I would swear to this day that I heard a small boy cry out. I heard:
“Maggie! Come back!”
But, I knew Maggie wasn’t going back. There’s no going back for any of us. All those years…all those calendars are gone now.
[The sketch that may have started the hostage incident. Source: Google & Wikipedia]
March 2, 2018
Breaking News: Chubby Checker Slightly Overweight But Not “Chubby”
[Photo: Google search]
Washington, D.C.
In a stunning announcement, Dr. Rudolph Rowbottom of the National Institute of Health (NIH), has shocked the music world and exploded a decades-old myth shattering the common knowledge concerning the pop star, Chubby Checker.
“Yes, Keith Richards is most likely clinically dead, but we’re here to discuss a real legend of music, Mr. Chubby Checker”, said Dr. Rowbottom, 63, in an exclusive interview after a crowded news conference held under a slate-gray sky and a persistent and annoying drizzle that was punctuated by an occasional snow shower that fell earthward from nimbo-stratus clouds while standing on the steps outside the NIH headquarters just outside of the Nation’s Capital. His red-headed research assistant, a Miss Lola Cotton, 19, held a chartreuse umbrella that was decorated with the movie logo of Jaws over Dr. Rowbottom’s thinning gray hair.
“Thanks to the famous Height/Weight Charts developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, my assistant and I, along with our crack research team, have determined that Mr. Checker was merely slightly overweight and not chubby as indicated by his nickname. His height is not available in any public records but from various album covers and YouTube videos of him on American Bandstand, we have concluded that he is approximantely 5’10”. That, of course is an estimation that lies clearly within the boundaries of the Standard Deviation. Mr. Checker, upon being asked his name by the wife of Dick Clark after his first recording session, answered: ‘My friends call me Chubby'”.
(Mr. Checkers official weight is unavailable to the public and subject to doctor/patient confidentiality rules as well as HIPPA.)
“Ironically, he had just completed an impression of Fats Domino, when Clark’s wife replied: ‘As in Checkers?’ Instantly seeing a play on words, “checkers” and “dominoes” and “Fats” and “Chubby”, the pop star took the moniker and has been using that name for decades. It certainly sounds better than Ernest Evans, which was his birth name. Pardon me, but Ernest Evans sounds like a dairy farmer from Ohio,” Dr. Rowbottom concluded.”
Cutting reporters off in mid-question, Dr. Rowbottom and Miss Cotton hastened to a waiting limousine and drove away into the foggy afternoon towards Maryland.
As a reporter who was present at the briefing, I can add the following known facts about the legendary musical icon: Mr. Checker then went on to record a cover of The Twist (1960) which was first released in 1959 by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. Chubby’s version instantly went to the top of the charts. He became the “go to” guy for dance crazes like the haunting and immortal Hucklebuck, a dance still done at reunions of high school classes of 1960-1965 (with varying degrees of accuracy and physical agility).
In a little known footnote of pop music history, Mr. Checker was a childhood friend of the teen idol from Philadelphia, Fabiano Forte, who later became known professionally as Fabian.
Mr. Checker was born on October 3, 1941 in Spring Gully, South Carolina. One is left to wonder why he never went into country music, following in the footsteps of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton.
Yes, one wonders…until one realizes that few African-Americans went into country music in the late ’50’s.
Besides, I don’t think Dolly Parton sold as many 45’s as did Mr. Checker.
And, in 1961, when I entered high school and began to twist the night away at sock hops in the Owego Free Academy gym, I never heard a Dolly Parton song.
[Photo source: Google search]
February 7, 2018
Cabin Fever 101
[A view from the front door. Photo is unfortunately mine.]
Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan!
[Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!]
–Francois Villon
I can tell you where the snows of yesteryear are. I can also tell you where the snows of today are…and I can tell you where the snows of tomorrow, next week or two months from now are going to be. They’re on my front deck, my back deck and three feet deep in our tiny yard.
I wonder why the oceans of the world still contain water. Most of the moisture of our blue planet seems to be covering the 1.3 acres that surround our home. In the last week, I’ve shoveled enough of the solid form of water to fill the Erie Canal.
Which brings me to the topic of this post. Cabin fever.
In legend and lore, in story and in song, the subject of cabin fever is quite common. It is a well-known condition that affects those in the North Country. From the gold miners of the Yukon to the fur trappers of Manitoba, grizzled men with beards and red suspenders have been known to lose their minds when confined to a lonely cabin…while the snow falls relentlessly. Some simply open the door and walk out into the frigid swirling blizzard and are never seen again. Some crawl under their Hudson Bay point blankets and fall asleep while their wood stove burns low and then turns to embers and then goes out. Someone will find the body in the Spring time. Others have been known to take their own lives, once the bottle of hooch is empty. And, others have turned to their fairest friends and best buddies and put a bullet into an unsuspecting brain pan.
I, myself, was driven by near insanity to simply walk out the front door and into the Adirondack forest. But, the screen door wouldn’t open because of the snow accumulation. Besides, it wasn’t nearly cold enough…it was only -18 F.
I have been driven to violence. Two days ago I took a Macy’s carving knife (with a serrated blade) and hacked at a leftover breakfast burrito from the local health food store.
My misery knew no limits. It puzzled me because, well, we don’t live in a cabin, we live in a house with a number of rooms and a fair library in my den. There’s always cable television (something the gold seekers of ’49 didn’t have). No, we have Spectrum with 200+ channels but nothing worth watching. We have the internet, but how many anti-Trump postings can one person click “like” on? And, one gets weary of playing Spider solitaire 377 times a day.
So, what to do? Go out and shovel? No, we’re expecting 6-9″ this afternoon. Go to Whiteface and ski? The lift tickets are too pricey. Pay $90+ for a chance to get frostbite and/or a compound fracture of my left leg? Don’t think so.
I think I’ll find a comfortable position on the sofa by the picture window and begin to count the snowflakes as they fall, minute by minute and day by day for the next three months.
February 6, 2018
Mystery of the Paris Photograph
[Photo source: unknown.]
I don’t know where it came from. It was leaning against our brass lamp…since I don’t know when.
A year or two ago, I began to glean the Kodak slides and other photos that came into my possession after my father passed away in 2004. There was a collection of letters and photos that took me months to sort out.
Until.
Until I noticed a black and white snap shot of a place in Paris. On the reverse side of the snap was this handwritten note: “Paris, France, Jul. ’55”.
I have no memory of finding this photo in the belongings of my father or mother when they passed away…my mother in 1992 and my father in 2004.
But, where did this small snap shot come from? It appeared, but never noticed, on our little table where we watch movies and TV shows. It just showed up. Could I have set it aside at some point? If so, I don’t recall.
But, I can say that I know for sure that my mother or father never visited Paris in 1955. That’s something I would have known about. Or was there a secret visit to Paris by my parents when I was seven years old? I don’t think so. I would have noticed.
So, who took this photo and wrote the location and date on the reverse side? The Moulin Rouge, at the foot of the hill that leads to Sacre Coeur, in the Montmartre district, where the showgirls have small Parisian breasts and horses gallop across the stage and the bottle of Champagne comes with the dinner and your bill is about $100 for the evening.
It’s a historical place and a huge tourist attraction.
But, who in my family took this photo? Was it anybody in my family at all?
So, how did it end up leaning on the lamp of our dinner table?
January 13, 2018
Adirondack Angst
[After the shovel and before the car door incident. Photo is mine.]
Once upon a time not so very long ago, there was a man who lived in a house, with his faithful and patient wife, in the Great Wilderness known as the Adirondack Mountains. These mountains are located in the far reaches of upstate New York.
This man was sore of back and gray of hair. He had recently spent five weeks in the high desert of California. He went there looking for solitude and warmth, but instead he found himself surround by neighbors with strange cars and small barking Chihuahuas. He also wore fleece nearly every day, until it was time to leave…of course.
The man’s eyes stung from the smoke of distant fires and he went through five and a half boxes of tissues, so frightful were his allergies.
Upon returning to his home in the North Country, there was a January thaw that put his limbs at risk with the ice and constant dripping of masses of snow that had recently befallen the countryside. Then two days ago, his weather app on his iPhone bespoke of a new storm that promised a foot of snow followed by thumb-numbing cold.
When this man awoke this morning, he put off looking out of the bedroom window for fear of what he would behold. But, he also had another app on his iPhone that told him how much daylight was left in the day. He checked the temperature. It was 4 F. He saw that 75% of the day had passed. He decided he should get out of bed and shovel a path to the car and clean the snow from the car and try to start the car.
The first two tasks were accomplished with sweat, frost on his mustache and a lower back that had pleaded with him to stop the punishment.
Now to start the car. But, alas, he found all four doors frozen shut. Not to worry, he thought. I have a can of de-icer in the garage. He pushed the button and the garage door creaked open. He found the de-icer and pushed the button to close the door. It didn’t move. He tried to spray the little button but nothing but a faint hiss came from the spray hole. He shook the can and determined it was full, but not a molecule of de-icer was to be found.
[The frozen car. Photo is unfortunately mine.]
He returned to the house with the spray can, but he was broken of heart and frustration welled up in his soul like a backed-up toilet.
Why have the gods of the North Country forsaken him? Why did he feel as alone as a Democrat in Mississippi or a Quaker at a Microsoft convention?
Why didn’t he stay in California and buy more tissue boxes? What had he done in this life or any other life to deserve such anguish?
He checked the weather app on his iPhone and saw that the forecast predicted a low of -22 F for the overnight hours.
The old man poured a cold beer and sat waiting for the bathtub to fill. He had added about two cups of blue crystals that promised muscle relaxation. (It never worked before, but tonight would be different).
But this man had a plan. He would build a fire in the downstairs stove and he and his wife would have a dinner of hot soup.
All will be well tomorrow, he thought. After all, tomorrow is another day.
He sipped his beer and considered how existentially alone one is in the Universe. Or, at least in the North Country.
December 29, 2017
Joshua Tree Diary: The Road to Wonder Valley
[Amboy Road…to Wonder Valley. Photo is mine.]
I’m driving from Joshua Tree to Twentynine Palms. I turn left on Adobe Drive. Ahead of me is the largest U.S. Marine Training Base in the world. I don’t go there. I turn right on Amboy Road and pass the RV campground where we spent a week in 2016. We pass by and have memories of our stay there. Then I pressed the foot to the metal and headed east…toward the Mojave desert…and Wonder Valley.
I’ve been down this road before. We left the aforementioned RV park and drove down the Amboy Road. I thought at the time, seeing the increasingly isolated adobe houses, churches and trailers that nothing legal was going on out there.
I was wrong. At least to my knowledge.
I wouldn’t be writing this blog and revisiting this place if I had not run across an article in the New York Times digital edition on my iPhone. A writer from LA, Ivy Pochoda, had an article in the Travel section about “getting lost” in Wonder Valley and the music of the absolute quiet.
I had to revisit the place that I saw on my drive through in 2016. I’m glad I went back.
This is not to say that I got to know the few residents…I didn’t. But I spent a few hours in the Palms Restaurant that I glimpsed in ’16. This time I was serious. I wanted the storied french fries and have a mug of the only beer that was on tap…Pabst Blue Ribbon. I haven’t had a PBR in forty years. The fries were fabulous. We watched King of Kings on the TV…an Easter movie in the days before Christmas?!
[Photo is mine.]
We chatted with the soft-spoken bartender, Kevin, to try to get a sense of what it was like to live out here where nothing takes on a whole new meaning. Take my advice: if you want isolation and to get off the grid…go to Wonder Valley. But, it isn’t all sand and sage. The Palms has a very active social calendar. Sunday brunch usually finds the place filled.
The Palms Restaurant is a world unto itself. There is a backyard dining area where summer concerts (cowboy music, mostly likely) is played on a funky stage. The food is outstanding and very inexpensive.
[The backyard of the Palms. Photo is mine.]
There is a newsletter called the Sand Paper which connects the widely spaced residents of the Valley. Many musicians and artists make this their home. More than a few of them have painted the many murals on the sides of buildings in 29 Palms.
It is a kind of an oasis in Wonder Valley. Along Amboy Road are leftover homes and spooky desert shacks.
[Along Amboy Road. Photo is mine.]
[Yet another reminder of days gone by. Photo is mine.]
I probably could live out here…in Wonder Valley. Mariam definitely could not. But, there’s a peace and openness that has eluded me in the Northeast USA. The sky is endless and almost always clear.
There is the waxing moon. I could see the Milky Way nearly every night. In the winter, one needs one of those down ‘sweaters’ to fend off the night chill.
There’s something about the desert that attracts me. Out in the emptiness, you rely on yourself and your neighbors.
And your trust in your own skills of dealing with isolation and that big void of land and the clear night sky.
December 27, 2017
My 400th Blog!
[Hi, I’m Fluffy. Remember me? My human, Pat, has used me in other posts in shameless attempts to peddle one of his books. I hope you like this one. You see, Pat suffers from severe Post Holiday Blues and if he doesn’t get a lot of likes and comments…well, I may have to be sent out to pasture, if you get my drift. Photo source: Google search.]
Writing four hundred blogs is not an easy thing to do. Even if you’re retired and have little else to fill your time. It’s an accomplishment of which I am proud. Some bloggers have written thousands…some have written three. I know how easy it can be for some people and much harder for others.
Back in the late 1990’s, I taught at the Town School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. One afternoon, the technology teacher, Al Doyle, mentioned to me that he wrote ‘blogs’.
“Blogs?”, I said. “What are they?”
“Anything you want them to be,” he answered.
I listened and learned.
Sometimes the words would come easy to me and, on more than one occasion, I struggled with ways to communicate my thoughts and feelings. Some bloggers have chosen ‘themes’ to address, such as marital problems, eating disorders, benefits of certain health foods, conspiracy theories, political rants and self-absorbed musings that interest only the writer.
I have chosen to go my own way. I have no theme. I write about topics that interest, amuse, fascinate, intrigue and beguile me. I have experimented with various writing styles and subjected my readers to topics that some would consider morbid or overly maudlin and sentimental.
But, that’s me. What you read is who I am and that is what you get.
I published my first blog on July 15, 2012. It was an excerpt from my novel “Standing Stone”. Since then, I have taken my readers on two cross-country road trips and a partial winter in Fort Myers, Florida when I learned to sail. I’ve shared my experiences at a rodeo in Yuma, a hike in Zion National Park, a stroll among the sand dunes of Death Valley, a frightening drive pulling our RV into the Yosemite Valley, a Thanksgiving in Orting, WA., a month in Joshua Tree, CA., and several trips to Europe.
I’ve shared memories about childhood sweethearts, meetings with childhood friends and even wrote about the first woman who ever saw me in my life…the doctor who delivered me in a Binghamton hospital on May 31, 1947.
I shared the birth of my grandson and celebrated the lives of my son, Brian, my daughter, Erin and my wife Mariam.
One of my favorite posts was titled “The Brick Pond”. It recalled childhood innocence and the coming of adulthood.
The blog that was the favorite of my readers was called “This Old House”. In this, I attempted to convey the sorrow of handing over the keys to the house that I grew up in, a house that was in our family for over fifty years.
I sincerely hope that you, my readers, have enjoyed reading these 400 musings from a humble and insecure writer…myself.
I hope I live long enough to celebrate an 800th blog, or even a 1,000 posting.
Let’s hope.
[Source: Google search.]
December 23, 2017
Joshua Tree Diary: Christmas in the Desert
[Desert view outside Joshua Tree. Photo is mine.]
This is where it all began, right? I don’t mean California…I mean the desert.
The Nativity story is set in the desert; much like the one I see from my bedroom window. Very much like it, except that desert, with the Star, is half a world away.
Two years ago, we celebrated this season in Fort Myers, Florida. There, the temperatures were in the low 90’s. I remember wearing shorts and sitting outside my favorite Java cafe, sipping an iced coffee. I had to position myself at an outdoor table so I could catch the AC’d air rolling out of the brand name outlets. The palm trees were wrapped in holiday lights, Bing Crosby was singing on the PA system, shoppers were hurrying into Bass, or Tommy…but the feel of the season wasn’t inside me. Red and green lights and Bing didn’t fulfill the images on Christmas cards.
Now, this year, we are enjoying the high desert of Joshua Tree, 29 Palms, Yucca Valley and the Mojave Desert. And, it’s chilly if not downright cold. Yet I know there’ll be no white Christmas here this year.
It’s hard to imagine experiencing the Yule without even the probability of several inches of white powder. That’s because I was raised in Upstate New York, where snow was mostly guaranteed. I built snow-people, skated with my childhood friends and tobogganed the longest slopes I could find. I studied the crystals of the flakes when I caught one on my mitten. I believe it’s true that no two snowflakes are alike.
But deserts are alike in many ways. Strange and exotic plants, sand, crying coyotes and the limitless sky…filled with stars and a crescent moon.
Ironically, though, it’s here, in the California desert, that I can feel the true sense of the Nativity story. When you’re raised with religious images of Joseph and Mary traveling across the desert, it’s hard to meld that into a backyard in New York, twelve inches of snow and a snow person. I’ve never traveled to the deserts of the Middle East so I can’t speak to the winters there, but I can’t believe that the winter in the Holy Land is much different than it is here.
True, they probably don’t have storefronts like these:
[Souvenir shop. Photo is mine.]
Or,
[Storefront lights in Joshua Tree. Photo is mine.]
But, maybe they do.
I can imagine the solitude, the expansive star-filled sky…and the silent peace that fills those scenes we were raised with, in the pages of the Bible.
About an hour from where I write this, a raging fires is destroying hundreds of thousands of acres near Santa Barbara. Peoples lives will be ruined. No holiday cheer for them.
No fires will come to the desert. There’s nothing much to burn. It’s vacant and austere backed up by isolation and loneliness. That’s the way deserts are. Places to get lost and places to stand and contemplate the ways of the world and to confront the Great Empty. That’s when you find that the Empty is not only a physical description of a desert…but also of your own mind. The Desert Fathers of the Old Testament sought these places out. The three great religions of the West were founded in the sands.
How different the high desert is. There is, outside my window, all of the above (along with our rented Toyota), but there is something missing. Beyond our sandy yard, beyond the Welcome to Joshua Tree sign, beyond the glow of Palm Springs and Los Angeles…something is dreadfully missing.
The peace. Where is the peace and love that the whole Nativity narrative implies?
It’s just not there.
[Note to my readers: The next post is very special to me. Please take time to read and comment on it.]
December 20, 2017
Coal For Christmas
Note to my readers: If you think you’ve read this blog before, don’t thing you’re getting senile…(the doctors won’t release such information)..this is perhaps the third, maybe fourth time I’ve posted it. Hey, maybe I’m the one getting senile. I’ve tweaked the story several times to try to make the narrative better, clearer and more truthful. This is not a made up story by me. It really happened.
It’s another year and another chance for me to share this holiday memory…Happy Holidays to you all!
I am a grandfather now, feeling every ache and sadness of my sevienth year. The stories that my father told me about his father have taken on new meanings. I’m the old one now. I am the carrier of the family history. When a recollection of a family event comes to mind, be it a birthday party, a funeral, a wedding or a birth, I get my journal and I write with haste, in case I might forget something or get a name wrong or a date incorrect. Or, forget the event entirely.
This is especially true when the snow falls and the Christmas tree decorations are brought down from wherever they live during the summer. It is a time to recall and celebrate the memory of those who have passed on. It’s time for a Christmas story. It’s time to think again about my family and how they lived their lives so many decades ago.
I was raised in the post-war years. My parents were not saying anything original when they would tell me, or my brothers, that we had to be good…very good, or Santa would not leave us any brightly wrapped present, red-ribboned and as big a box as a boy could hold. No, Santa would not leave such a wondrous thing. But he wasn’t so vengeful to leave nothing in our stocking. No, he would leave a lump of coal…if you deserved nothing more.
My father grew up poor. Not the kind of poor where he would walk barefoot through ten inches of snow to attend school or go from house to house asking for bread. It was just the kind of poor that would keep his father only one step ahead of the rent collector. His parents provided the best they could, but, by his own admission, he was raised in the poverty that was common in rural America in the 1920’s. My grandfather and my grandmother should be telling this story. Instead, it came to me from my own dad and it was usually told to his four sons around the time it came to bundle up and go out, find and cut a Christmas tree. I heard this story more than once when it was cold and snowy in the 1950’s. In the years when my father was a child, the winters were probably much colder and the snow deeper.
It was northeastern Pennsylvania. It was coal country and my grandfather was Irish. Two generations went down into the mines. Down they would go, every day before dawn, only to resurface again long after the sun had set. On his only day off, Sunday, he would sleep the sleep of bones that were weary beyond words.
Because of some misguided decision on his part, my grandfather was demoted from mine foreman to a more obscure job somewhere else at the pit. Later in life, he fell on even harder times and became depressed about his inability to keep his family, two boys and two girls, comfortable and warm. It all came crashing down, literally, when their simple farmhouse burned to the foundation. After seeing his family safely out, the only item my grandfather could salvage was a Hoover. My father could describe in minute detail how he stood next to his dad and watched him physically shrink, slump and then become quiet. He never broke the silence after that and died in a hospital while staring mutely at a wall.
But all this happened years after that special Christmas Eve that took place in my father’s boyhood.
It was in the early 1920’s. The four children were asleep in a remote farmhouse my grandparents rented. Sometime after mid-night, my father woke up to a silence that was unusual and worrisome. It was too quiet. There were no thoughts of Santa Claus in my father’s mind that night—the reality of their lives erased those kinds of dreams from his childhood hopes. There was no fireplace for Santa to slide down.
He pulled on a heavy shirt and pushed his cold feet into cold shoes that were six sizes too large, and went down stairs to the kitchen where he knew his parents would be sitting up and keeping warm beside the coal stove. But the room was empty and the coal fire was burning low. The only light was from a single electric bulb, hanging from the ceiling on a thin chain. My father noticed the steam of his breath each time he exhaled. He called out.
“Mom? Dad?”
He heard nothing. Shuffling over to the door, he cracked it open to a numbing flow of frigid outside air. In the snow there were two sets of footprints leading down the steps and then behind the house. He draped a heavier coat over his shoulders and began to follow the prints. They led across a small pasture and through a gate. From there the trail went up a low hill and faded from his sight. He followed the trail. Looking down at the footprints he noticed that they were slowly being covered by the wind driving the snow into the impressions. A child’s fear swept over him. Were the young kids being abandoned? It was not an uncommon occurrence in the pre-Depression years of rural America.
In his young and innocent mind, he prayed that the hard times hadn’t become that hard. But deep within, he knew of his parents unconditional love and concern. He knew he and his brother and sisters were cherished.
He caught his fears before they had a chance to surface. His parents were on a midnight walk, that’s all.
At the top of the hill, he saw a faint light from a lantern coming from a hole near the side of the next slope. He slowed his pace and went to the edge of the pit not knowing what he would see. He looked down.
He knew this pit from summertime games, but it was a place to be avoided in the winter. The walls were steep and it would be easy to slip in the snow and fall the ten or so feet to an icy bottom. The children never went into the field with the pit after the autumn leaves fell.
He dropped to his knees and peered over the edge.
At the bottom of the small hole were his parents, picking fist-sized lumps of coal from a seam that was exposed on the hillside. At their feet was a tin bucket that was half filled with chunks of black rock. They looked up, quite surprised, and saw my father standing a few feet above them. They looked back at each other with a sadness that was heart-breaking. They certainly didn’t want to be caught doing this in front of one of the kids, not on Christmas Eve. After glancing at each other once, they looked up at my dad.
“Boy,” my grandfather said, “The stove is empty. Come on down and help us get a few more lumps, will ya?”
My father was helped down and after only a few minutes his hands were black from the coal. The bucket was filled. They helped each other out of the pit and walked back to the house together. My father and his father carried the bucket between them.
In a very short time the coal stove was warming up again. My father sat up with his parents until they finished their coffee and the house was warmed a few degrees. Dad kissed his mother and father and went upstairs to bed. He fell asleep, he always would say, with a smile on his face.
Twenty some years after the midnight trip to the coal pit, my parents and my two older brothers moved to Owego, New York. I was born two years later, in 1947.
When I was a young boy, my father took me aside one Christmas Eve. I had not been a very good boy that day, and I was afraid. Neither of my parents, however, had mentioned the threat that would be used to punish a child if you were naughty and not nice.
My fear left me. Father’s voice was warm and full of understanding.
“Pat,” he said, “if anyone tells you that you will get a lump of coal in your stocking if you’re not a good boy. Tell them: ‘I hope so,’ then wish them a very Merry Christmas.”
[Watercolor sketches by Paul Egan. Date unknown.]
[NOTE TO MY READERS: Today is December 20, 2017. If you enjoyed this post (again) please keep an eye out for a special blog that will be out just after Christmas. You’ll know how special it is to me when you read it. Have a happy holiday…whatever you celebrate.]
