While visiting in Iowa, I ran into an old high school friend at a local eatery. I remember how in high school and junior high, I played basketball on the same team with him, I listened to his exaggerations about a probably non-existent sex life, and helped him on one or two occasions to get answers on Math homework (even then the teacher in me wouldn’t let me just give him the answers, I always made him work out the answers step by step).
Now he is a judgmental and basically crabby old coot. He is a Trump supporter, hater of immigrants who take American jobs, and an unpleasant arguer of politics. And the sorest point about his intractable coot-i-ness is the fact that, as a classmate, he is the same age as me and I am, therefore, just as intractably coot-y as he is.
So, how exactly do you talk to a mean old coot?
Well, you have to begin by realizing that it is not like the dialogue in a novel or TV show. This is a real person I was talking to. So, I had to proceed by accepting that he thinks I am an idiot and anything I say and think is wrong. Not merely wrong, but “That’s un-American and will lead to a communist takeover of our beloved country!” sort of wrong. I can then laugh off numerous Neo-Nazi assertions by him, make snarky comments about his praises for the criminal president, and generally get along with him like old friends almost always do. I play my part just as furiously as he plays his, and we both enjoy the heck out of it.
We are both of us crazy old coots, likely to say just about anything to get the other one’s goat. Getting goats is apparently vital to the conversations of real people. But we have more in common than we have as differences. We don’t keep score in our world-shaking debates, nor do we count how many goats we get. And that is how you talk to real people.
When Valerie awoke, she was no longer on the ground. Someone was carrying her and she had
someone’s jacket wrapped tightly around her bare body. Someone was gently, tenderly lowering her
into a bed loaded with comforter and quilts.
“Be careful of her head, Ray,” said an older woman. Valerie vaguely became aware that a young man
or boy was holding her, and lowering her onto soft bedding. “How did you ever find her in such a condition?” The woman was Patricia Zeffer, Ray’s
Mom. Valerie looked groggily up into the
face of her rescuer. It was Ray.
“I found her in the alley behind Martin’s Bar and Grill,”
Ray said with deep concern in his voice.
“She was just lying there, completely nude and unconscious. Did you call someone?”
“I am going to in a minute.
I will call the hospital in Belle City for advice. Then I’ll call the poor dear’s parents. I just needed to get a look at what’s wrong
with her.”
“She’s awake,” said Ray, smiling down at her as he pulled a
quilt over her.
“Oh, my poor, sweet girl,” said Mrs. Zeffer, “whatever
happened to you?”
“I… I’m not entirely sure.”
Valerie’s voice was shaky and soft, almost too quiet to hear.
“Did you see if she was bleeding anywhere?” Mrs. Zeffer
asked Ray.
“She had some bloody scratches on her shoulder and back,
maybe from an animal.”
“Are you in pain, dear?”
“No… I mean, only
where the cat clawed me. It stings.”
“Why were you in the alley naked? Did something terrible happen?” It was obvious from the look on her motherly
face that Mrs. Zeffer wasn’t too sure she should be asking this question.
“I… I don’t know. I
was with Mary Philips and Pidney Breslow.
I’m afraid they may be hurt worse than I am.”
“They didn’t hurt
you, did they?” asked Ray.
“Of course not.
Someone else…”
“Do you know who?”
“Mom, you better call the sheriff too. They will need to find Pid and Mary and make
sure they’re all right.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
Mrs. Zeffer hustled out of the bedroom headed for the phone downstairs.
“Ray, um… you found me naked?”
“I’m sorry,” said Ray.
“I could see you needed help. I
put my jacket on you. I… um… didn’t look
too hard.”
“Ah… it’s okay. You
saved me. You and Barky Bill.”
“The Martins’ dog? He
fought off your attacker?”
“Well, yes… kinda. I
think he killed my attacker.”
“He did? I didn’t see
anybody lying there in the alley.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have.
It was a cat. I think the dog ate
him.”
“You were attacked by a cat?
Come on, you have to tell me the whole story.”
Valerie did. She
filled Ray in on everything he probably didn’t already know.
“Wow, that’s really messed up,” said Ray. “The witchdoctor wants you as a virgin to
sacrifice to the volcano, but the cat wanted to eat you?”
“That’s how I understood it.”
“I’m glad the cat didn’t eat you.”
“You… ah… Ray… can I ask you something?”
“Yes, Val. I can’t
promise I know the answer, but you may always ask.”
“Thanks… uh, Ray… you saw me naked in the alley?”
Ray blushed and looked away from Valerie’s face. “Yes, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry… but… um… am I the first girl
you ever saw naked?”
“Well, I…”
“I know you never had any sisters…”
“No, I didn’t, but…”
“I mean, it’s okay if I’m your first.”
“You aren’t. Mary
didn’t tell you about me, huh?”
“Well, yes, but… I mean, no… well… what was she supposed to
tell me?”
“About why I need friends now? Why she thought I needed to be a Norwall
Pirate?”
“About why you are so sad all the time?”
“Yes.”
“No, not really.”
“Well, you see… um, I have a girlfriend already.”
“You do? And you’ve
seen her naked?”
“Um, yeah. You see,
she’s pregnant.”
“She is? Who is she?”
“Carla Sears from Belle City. She’s the prettiest girl in my class.”
“And she’s gonna have a baby?”
“Yes.”
“Your baby?”
“Yes.”
“So, you’re gonna get married, then?”
“No. Her parents
won’t allow it. They blame me for the
whole mess… and I suppose they’re right.”
“She’s going to have the baby all by herself?”
“Well, that’s one of the things they are talking about… I
mean…” Ray’s eyes were filled with
tears.
“You mean they might…?”
All Ray seemed to be able to do was nod.
“Oh.” Valerie’s eyes
began to gush tears too. “I’m so… sorry…
I mean…ah…”
She reached up and put her arms around Ray’s neck. When she did, the quilt and the jacket fell
away, revealing her naked self to him.
She was past mere embarrassment, but she held on. He cried against her neck.
As he struggled for control of his emotions, she knew they
had to talk about something else.
Anything else. The walls around
them were painted a warm, sunny yellow.
“This room is very pretty.
Is it your room?”
“No,” he said simply.
“It was my brother Bobby’s room.”
“Your brother?”
“The one that died before I was born.” Ray had enough control to pick up the fallen
jacket and put it back around the naked girl.
“I never knew him.”
“That’s sad too.”
“Yeah. And hard. I was the replacement child for Mom and Dad.”
“Replacement child?”
“They knew if they had another child, especially a boy, that
he could be a hemophiliac too, just like Bobby.
But they took the chance anyway.
They were heartbroken by his death, and well…”
“So, they had you.”
“They did. And now
I’m…”
“You would be a great dad, Ray… if they… um…
“Yeah… but they won’t.”
Valerie squeezed him tightly. She was beginning to see things in a way she never had before. Ray was worthy of love.
Of the people in the school picture from Rowan Rural School #4 (a one-room schoolhouse from Midwestern history and lore) all the ones who survive are octogenarians. Three of the survivors were at our family reunion for Great Grandma Hinckley’s descendants. My mother and uncle were there. Their cousin was also there. The school house stood on the Aldrich corner, near the house where my Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich lived, the farm house of a farm that’s been in the family for over a hundred years. My mother and Uncle Don and Uncle Larry could easily walk there. The rest came from country miles around by horse-drawn wagon.
This is not a school-bus wagon, but rather, an oat-seed spreader. So, almost the same.
Uncle Larry is now gone, but they have survived from the time of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the time of Criminal President Doofenschmertz Jehosephat Trumpennoodle. Things have changed. The house I now sit in was, back then, a place with a windmill and hand-pump for water, an outhouse for bathroom chores, and a radio for entertainment.
If they hadn’t endured through World War Two, and Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare, and the assassination of JFK, we wouldn’t even be here. We are the children of hardship, endurance, and conviction of the rightness of life on Earth.
We saw progress through the creation of Disneyland, landing the first man on the surface of the moon, Bugs Bunny cartoons, Scooby Doo, and the Pink Panther… Nixon and his Watergate break-in, Hee Haw and Lawrence Welk, Laugh-in… President Ford falling down stairs, Saturday Night Live, the Peanut-farmer President, Reaganomics… the Iranian hostage crisis… Saved by the Bell, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones… The invasion of Panama… Operation Desert Storm… the second war in Iraq… the downfall of Saddam Hussein… Thundercats, Jerry Seinfeld, Friends, the Wonder Years…
I am especially impressed that they lived through all those Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethons. And Leisure Suits… Aagh!
Mother’s entryway table with pictures of Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich in the back
And their time is not completely up. Mother and Dad and Uncle Don still move on and go to reunions and bury loved ones… and tend to the needs of grandkids and great-grandkids… And pass on the good things to the next generation… and the next. So it goes, towards times not yet dreamed of.
I don’t believe my art will ever be gallery quality. I don’t know how long any of it can survive my own demise. My family is not overly concerned with preserving my piles of drawings and paintings. And I am not Van Gogh.
What I am is a hoarder of the things I have created. And one hope I have is that posting these things online will extend their existence at least for a little while.
I would remind you that I am a surrealist by choice. I generally juxtapose things and ideas and images that ate opposed in their interpretive import.
The old saying goes, “If you play with fire, sooner or later you will get burned.”
But I am not playing. I am writing. With fire.
The criminal we elected president knows what I am talking about. He speaks at rallies with fire. Currently he is trying to demonize Representative Ilhan Omar and the Squad, the four freshman Congresswomen of color whom he said were unpatriotic, enemies of our democracy, and should go home to their countries filled with crime, poverty, and communism. Of course, the Congresswomen are all American Citizens. Three of them were born here. This is actually the country they are from. So, this is an example of the kind of verbal fire that needs to be put out with cold water. Preferably before some enraged Trumpist actually assassinates a member of the Squad. The fire he spews is destructive and evil.
But, truly, the way to fight fire is with fire. Firemen use a fire-break to interrupt the path of the fire. You can bulldoze or chop the wood in the way of the fire. Or you can burn it in the opposite direction. Many forest fires are ended in this way.
And I have been writing my fiction with fire. Controversial issues taken head on and given a clarity that burns brightly enough to leave burn marks on the psyche and write messages in ash on the heart of the reader. This is why beloved characters die in fictional stories and bad things happen to good people… to make a lasting scar or burn on the idea-collections in the readers’ brains.
I have in the past few novels written about sexual assault, attempted rape, murder, greed, brutality, excessive anger, and the current work-in-progress tackles suicide. And I battle these raging fires with positive fires set from empathy, community and familial love, preserverance, determination, and simple faith. I am trying to fight fire with a better fire, destructive fire replaced by zeal.
Okay. So, I’m an idiot, expressing foolish ideas with loopy metaphors. But I can make you think. And thinking is electrical fire in the brain. And I have been steadily pouring gas on that word-fire.
As a rabid Dungeons and Dragons player, I have labored for years to build up my collection of miniature figures. Now, like the action figures and the dolls, the collection is growing so fast it may eat the house. So, in order to play with them and get some use out of them, I built a cardboard castle, complete with grid for playing D & D. It is a scene that can be used to play the game, but it is also a place to display my collection.
Toy companies have recently started putting out collectible miniatures in an almost D & D scale. They only cost about a dollar apiece. That makes them cheaper than candy bars. And I am diabetic, so I can’t buy candy bars.
I like to position them in my D & D background and take pictures of them, even though DC Superheroes are not…
When you get to your sixties, but are in poor health, you can’t help but obsess about your own mortality. No man lives forever.
That point was driven home yesterday. My aunt, whom I have known for my entire lifetime, had her 80th birthday on Monday. Yesterday she had a heart attack and died. It was sudden. It was shocking. It occurred five days before a planned family reunion of Great Grandma Hinckley’s extensive family of descendants. My aunt, of course, was related to all of us, so there is no way the reunion occurrs without a dark cloud over it.
Of course, there are many dark clouds hovering over us in these times, The threat of nuclear war has returned to terrorize us again in the way it did in the 50’s and 60’s.
The climate crisis threatens to make life on Earth extinct. That could all begin this year with crop failures due to excessive rain and flooding during planting season.
But the corn this year, which world-wide food supplies depend upon because of the versatility of corn oil in foods of all kinds, is taller than I am in July and beginning to sprout tassels. So there is reason to hope.
And our moron criminal president seems to be self-destructing instead of fulfilling the promises of Dr. Strangelove.
And I am reaching the final home stretch on my novel, When the Captain Came Calling. Soon this twenty-year story-telling quest to tell a tale of family struggle and fathers versus daughters will be at an end. I have successfully negotiated the suicide scene. I have also achieved the character balance and plot completion that had eluded me for a handful of years. The story is basically about family resilience in the face of adversity. It is ironically consistent with the adversity my family faces this week.
And this is the week I chose to promote my book Recipes for Gingerbread Children. I had some success giving away copies of Snow Babies four months ago. And I had hoped to do the same for Recipes. It is also a book about resilience in the face of tragedy and adversity.
So, as far as I am concerned, the tree of life is a family tree. We are its branches, it’s knots and warped bark, its parasites and possibilities. And in its final analysis, many leaves are still soaking up the sunshine and nourishing every branch, even the dead ones soon to fall off. And I am not a dead branch yet.
Valerie-squirrel hustled out towards the alley once
more. How do you find your focus and
take back your own mind? Could it
possibly have something to do with not listening to nonsense from the mouth of
a witch? But things that were affecting
her now were things that came in clouds of purple gas from the mouth of the
Tiki idol called Oojie Magoober. Maybe
she had to not listen to him… or it… or whatever the hell it was. She scampered back towards the end of the alley
where she had first crossed paths with the little wooden man.
The alley was unnaturally quiet. She looked all around for Skaggs the cat, or
the dog Barky Bill. Not only could she
not see them with her little squirrel eyes, she couldn’t smell them with her
little squirrel nose. Well, that wasn’t
entirely true. She could smell the
poo-poo smells from the area where she knew the dog had to be because it was
chained up. But Barky Bill was not
boofing out cat warnings, or prowling around.
He was apparently in his little lean-to doghouse by the back door of
Martin’s Bar and Grill.
There were no other squirrels chittering. Valerie-squirrel was also deeply concerned
about what may have happened to Mary-squirrel and Pidney-squirrel. Did Oojie and the cats catch them? Maybe eat them? She shuddered to think such a thought.
So, she crept forward ever more wary and ever more
alert. Her little pointed ears were
perked straight up and listening intently.
She continually looked behind her for stalking cats.
It was eerie how quiet the alley was. Not only were the squirrels quiet, but no
birds were singing. No insects were
buzzing. It was as if Mother Nature was
holding her breath… worried about… something evil about to take place.
Valerie-squirrel timidly put her little nose to the spot in
the alley where the wooden Tiki idol had first appeared. Anyway, she was pretty sure it was the right
spot. But the smells were mostly
unfamiliar. She had not been a squirrel
long enough to really know what the smells all stood for.
Skaggs was on top of her before she could even look up from
sniffing the dirt. Cruel cat claws
pricked deeply into squirrel muscles and her squirrel heart practically
exploded with instant terror.
“Well, well, pretty little one. I wonder how beautifully you are going to
taste.”
“No! You cannot eat
me!”
“Let’s see now… are you not a squirrel and significantly
smaller than me?”
“Yes… but…”
“And do I not have you pinned down helplessly under my
claws?”
“Yes… but…”
“BOOF! Boof! Boof! Boof! Yipe!”
Barky Bill came rocketing out from hiding, leaping for the
terrible, awful, wicked cat. With full
force he reached the end of his chain and practically tore his own head off
straining against the chain-enforced back flip that came next.
“Ah, very clever, stupid dog. You thought if I couldn’t see you hiding
under that old piece of carpet I would never know you were there. But you forgot, that you are chained there,
and you never go anywhere else. And I
never forget where the maximum chain reach is.”
“You can’t eat her, cat!”
“You surprise me, stupid dog. I didn’t know you could animal-talk.”
“I can’t. I’m just a
stupid dog. But you can’t eat her. She’s not really a squirrel. You can tell by the smell. She’s really a human girl. You must leave her alone!”
“Ah, but the point is, she thinks she’s a squirrel. If she thinks she’s a squirrel, then I think
I can eat her. I also think she will be
delicious.”
Valerie-squirrel was suddenly aware of the real meaning
behind the cat’s words. “She thinks
she’s a squirrel…,” the cat said. But
what had Mazie said? Something about her
focus… Yes. Someone had definitely used magic to convince
her that she was a squirrel. But she
wasn’t a squirrel. Barky Bill knew she
was a real girl because of her smell.
And if she still smelled like a human…
Suddenly Valerie Clarke was lying there in the dirt in the
middle of the alley by the Main Street water tower, as naked as the day that
she was born. She was a human girl… all
girl… and definitely too large to be eaten by a cat.
Shocked, Skaggs leaped splay-footed into the air. He was totally taken by surprise by his
prey’s sudden change of form. He came
down awkwardly and nearly didn’t land on his feet.
“You… you can’t do that!
Only witches have the power to see through spells!”
Valerie, now herself again, was feeling very woozy and
uncoordinated. She tried to get up from
the ground and failed, only managing to sit up in the alley dirt.
“The laws of magic cannot be broken by such as you… such a
weak-willed…”
“BOOF! Boof! Boof!”
Barky Bill lunged out to the fullest possible stretch of the chain, and
then the chain snapped. The dog had the
ugly white cat with the mismatched eyes neck-first in his jaws. The jaws tightened and you could hear Skaggs’
neck-bones snap. The cat went limp.
“I told you I would kill and eat this cat.”
“Yes, you did. Thank
you, Barky Bill. But how are you talking
with a cat in your mouth?”
“Oh, dogs can’t talk, miss. You know that.” “Yes, I suppose you are right.” Valerie was drained in every fiber of her bare body. She smiled weakly at the dog, and then everything went black.
*********************************Remember, this is promotion week for Recipes for Gingerbread Children********************
Once again I am giving away free Kindle e-book copies of one of my books in the hope that a few people will actually read it. In my previous experience I have found that everybody that has read one of my books has loved the book. The book this time is Recipes for Gingerbread Children.
Planning on making a trip back to Iowa becomes daunting as I get older and un-wiser. But I have to go home never-the-less. My octogenarian parents are both still alive and both still living on the family farm. I only get to see them once a year. And each year is more likely the last time than the year before. And it is not just them. I am nearly 63 and in really poor health. I have six incurable diseases (diabetes, osteoarthritis, COPD, psoriasis, hypertension, and chronic allergies… geez, it is hard to remember them all). And I am a cancer survivor. Which way the wind is blowing at the moment may completely alter my future.
Rowan, Main Street, with the water tower in the background.
The saying from the author Thomas Wolfe, the author I alluded to in the title, is, “You can’t go home again.”
In many ways that is an inescapable wisdom. I will go back to my boyhood home of Rowan, Iowa. And it will not be the home I knew. Most of the people I knew there as a boy are long gone… to the graveyard west of town, or to Minnesota, or California, or places distant and unknown to me.
And it is not just the people. The buildings have changed. None of the businesses are the same except for the Post Office and the Library. And the Library is in a different building than it was.
Morning mists beyond the cottonwood tree near Grandpa Aldrich’s farm place.
But the memories persist. I know where I am when I am there. It is the center of the universe as I once knew it. And the only reason I can’t go home again, is because I carry home with me wherever I go. And as fallen angels go, sometimes they simply pick themselves up, and fly towards home.
Catch a Falling Star 
Writing with Fire
The old saying goes, “If you play with fire, sooner or later you will get burned.”
But I am not playing. I am writing. With fire.
The criminal we elected president knows what I am talking about. He speaks at rallies with fire. Currently he is trying to demonize Representative Ilhan Omar and the Squad, the four freshman Congresswomen of color whom he said were unpatriotic, enemies of our democracy, and should go home to their countries filled with crime, poverty, and communism. Of course, the Congresswomen are all American Citizens. Three of them were born here. This is actually the country they are from. So, this is an example of the kind of verbal fire that needs to be put out with cold water. Preferably before some enraged Trumpist actually assassinates a member of the Squad. The fire he spews is destructive and evil.
But, truly, the way to fight fire is with fire. Firemen use a fire-break to interrupt the path of the fire. You can bulldoze or chop the wood in the way of the fire. Or you can burn it in the opposite direction. Many forest fires are ended in this way.
And I have been writing my fiction with fire. Controversial issues taken head on and given a clarity that burns brightly enough to leave burn marks on the psyche and write messages in ash on the heart of the reader. This is why beloved characters die in fictional stories and bad things happen to good people… to make a lasting scar or burn on the idea-collections in the readers’ brains.
I have in the past few novels written about sexual assault, attempted rape, murder, greed, brutality, excessive anger, and the current work-in-progress tackles suicide. And I battle these raging fires with positive fires set from empathy, community and familial love, preserverance, determination, and simple faith. I am trying to fight fire with a better fire, destructive fire replaced by zeal.
Okay. So, I’m an idiot, expressing foolish ideas with loopy metaphors. But I can make you think. And thinking is electrical fire in the brain. And I have been steadily pouring gas on that word-fire.
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