Three Minnesota Vignettes

Three Minnesota Vignettes



I


The Landlord King
(Poetic Justice; a Minnesota Vignette, 2006)




When Dennis Harley got into the tenant-housing business, they called him ‘The Landlord King.’ He ended up having several structures around town, buildings, single houses, duplexes and so forth. Dennis Harley paid his five-employees good wages, the best ever paid about here. That may have been his mistake because folks thought he was rich and easy.
They (his employees) began setting him up, robbing him a little here, and a little there.
They figured he didn’t know it (even his daughter Zaneta, who did the cleaning of the halls and his son-in-law Mike who did light maintenance, along with John and his wife, the caretaker of one large building of Mr. Harley’s, who lived in a given free apartment, with all utilities paid, the handyman, or fixit man); but the truth of the matter is, it didn’t much bother him (or so it appeared).
It would seem—when his wife brought up the issue—it simply amused him, he’d say “You get know the people better in such cases, their character, honesty, who they really are.”
It seemed to puzzle his wife.
His wife Rosa, would catch his workers loafing, all five of them, and confronted them, which only seemed to annoy the son-in-law, and his daughter.
But Mr. Harley was cleaver and generous, he again appeared to overlook some of that.
“Well,” the three said “let’s burn his house down, kill him before he finds out, or leaves the country and takes us out of his will (for even John was in the will at one time).”
The three went whole-hog on their employer, and around 4:00 A.M., on a winter’s morn, lit a fire in the garage by Mr. Harley’s car, and ran and hid, thinking the car would explode and thus, aflame the whole house; having fired all three of them a month earlier.
The son-in-law raved and swore and declared within the neighborhood, to the neighbors he’d get what was coming to him (of course the house didn’t burn down, it was poorly lit).
Dennis Harley kept quite when all this was happening, and sold the house they lived in, and all the other property he owned, and decided to leave the country and live a quiet and comfortable life, and took all three out of his will. And he just laughed and said to his wife, “They’re all fools, spoiled fools, they could have had it all, and my son-in-law in particular, traded it all for the few cigarette butts his father gives him, after he’s done smoking, about ready to stomp on it; yes, he traded for a cigarette butt.”
So Mr. Harley and his wife were all fixed for life and the three, Mike, Zaneta, and John, sat solemnly on their rickety old rented front porch, hoping their new landlord would be half as generous, wondering where Mr. Harley vanished to.

No: 530 (11-29-2009) SA


II


Firelight!
(The old and the poor; a Minnesota Vignette, late 1950s)




He was getting old, a little round shouldered, where at one time he was solid straight. He had avoided all his good physical habits. He took life as it comes; when he was young he had been too hasty, although his balance, poise and moments were right on. Hence, he put his overcoat on, took his cane and walked outside into the gray twilight, could hear the tires of cars, soft-voices echoed from a distance, too chilled too quick to speak, muttered something to himself (“I want to kill someone today…”).
He had come out of his house to a spot along the side of the Cobblestone Street he lived next to—it was a gray twilight, he glanced up and down the street, and then he just did what he come to do. Poverty was too much for he old timer, and it had lasted too long: of course he was in debt to everyone he knew. He and his wife were at the point, eating cat food.
Oh, he seemed happy enough, but he was just tired of it all, he breathed deeply and straightened up his shoulders and said, “I want nothing more to do with man and his world.”

When his wife came looking for him her shoes had holes in them, her toes sticking out of the front, her pajamas, shredded for the most part—from endless washings, she had been sitting by her hearth. She screamed a second time for her husband, to no avail, then tiptoed to the front porch window, drew back the curtains, looking out across the porch onto the street (a premonition you might say).
That’s all she did and then she saw her husband lying dead in the street, trampled over by automobile tires.
“It’s a wonder,” she said “that he didn’t go insane.”
And just seeing him there, all alone, that must have made her heart stop beating. All that remained of the two was the firelight from the hearth, in the little house on Arch Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota (and it was a cold, cold winter).
The cane the old man had taken with him, to help him walk was broken over his thigh, the rounded top, hooked tightly around his palm and fingers, as if in a fist.
Now they both lay silent, with both their minds gone, and the city block they lived on, empty, and the fire in the hearth had died out. The old woman had fed the last of the fire (for warmth and light) with the bills and the envelopes they came in—to the hearth.

No: 527 (11-29-2009) SA


III

The Onion Lawyer!
(A Minnesota Vignette, late 1960s)




He had an onion hid in his handkerchief—and when he wanted a few cheap tears the lower while presenting his case in the courtroom, would bring the handkerchief out, and wipe his face, and eyes, and a flood of tears would let loose from those dark eyes—and the jury and judge would most often let his fellow clients off with lighter sentences, if not dismiss the case.
He would tell the jury up front—while those tears flooded his cheeks—tell them, honest men must stick together. He said he was the man, the lawyer for the poor, down and out, a man of the people for the people, and such men as he and they must stick together. Behind those tears was a cold, iron-hearted man and he’d point his finger, shaking it at the jury.
“Set him free, gentlemen!” he’d cry.
Seldom if ever, did anyone get a conviction, he rarely lost a case.
If it was up to this lawyer, no one would have been accountable for anything, among his clientele.
“The lawyer,” everyone said “should have been an actor.”
And had they reviewed his past employment, they would have found out, he was.

No: 529 (11-29-2009) SA

The Saigon Affair

(1972)


Now in the spring of 1972, the streets to the prison camp were all bare and muddy; I rode to Saigon from the prison camp. We passed a truck loaded of captured Vietcong on the road, and I looked at them and the countryside there beyond. The trees were sparse and the grass was tall and it all was of a yellowish-green, to dark green-greens, with tints of brown in-between. There was wet dead grass on the road from the wide rows of tall shrubbery along the edges of the side road, and Vietnamese women were working alongside the opposite side of the road, in a nearby rice field, a few men with oxen, plowing to and fro, making ruts, as our jeep crushed stone and rock and in-between wild wet grass between each axle. It had been raining in the area for a week straight. We came into Saigon past the factories and nightclubs and then residential houses and villas on the many narrow streets. I was Lieutenant Colonel Cooper’s driver, Staff Sergeant John J. Weber.
The Colonel’s face was long and thin, droopy eyes, long arms, small shoulders, walked slowly with his hands half curled up, he took small steps when he walked; I didn’t not know him all that well. I stopped the jeep at the Officers Club on the Air Base in Saigon. I got out of the jeep I handed him his bag full of papers—and he went inside to see the one star General.
I walked down the gravel driveway looking at the club and over towards some barracks, through an alley smoking one after the other cigarettes—just trying to spend time. Then I went back to the club, went inside, found the Colonel with the General, three hours had passed, he was sitting at a table in a back room with maps and all kinds of paperwork about.
“Hello,” he said to me when he saw me. “General,” he added, “This here is Staff Sergeant Weber, my driver.”
The General looked much older than what he was; his face was dried up like a prune.
“Sergeant Weber was a Licensed Psychologist before coming into the Army, why he never became an officer is beyond me,” query the Colonel.
“I’m fine being a Sergeant,” I said. And the General said, “How is everything Sergeant?” adding, “The war is just about over, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Colonel, do you want me to make arrangements for your quarters this evening, or are we going back?”
“What do you wish me to do General?” he asked.
“You haven’t been up here for awhile, I’d guess Colonel,” said the General, “have you?”
“No,” said the Colonel.
“I believe it,” remarked the General.
“It has been bad at the secure unit (meaning the military incarceration compound or center outside of Saigon).”
“I’ve always felt you were lucky to get that assignment, away from the ongoing fighting, and attacks—the real war.”
“I suppose I was, or am…” whispered the Colonel.
“Next year it will be worse, we’re going to making a major drawback, and the VC (Viet Cong) will attack more readily and heavily I assure you. It is too late to save the country.”
“Yes, I believe so,” stated the Colonel.
“I don’t think they’ll attack in full force since the rains have started, the Vietcong is training an Army to take over the South once we leave,” said the General.
“How is that girl named Xia doing?” asked the General, with a sly bent eye when he asked.
“All right,” commented the Colonel, not liking to have had to answer that question, especially in front of me.
“Yes,” said the General, “you stay in Saigon tonight and go back to-morrow with your Staff Sergeant. I’ll be sending somebody with you that knows you.”
“Who?” asked the Colonel?
“Xia, she wants to see her brother.”
“I’ll be glad to see her, bring her along but that’s not protocol sir?”
The General smiled. “You’re very good to say that. I’m very tired of you taking advantage of our prisoners. If she wasn’t his sister to one of your inmates, I wouldn’t bring the issue up. And don’t worry about the Sergeant, if he’s half the person you say he is, he already knows what’s going on.”
“Is it so bad?” remarked the Light Bird Colonel.
“Gerson, isn’t that his name?” asked the General, but he didn’t wait for the Colonel to answer. “Yes. It is very bad and worse. Go get cleaned up, and I’ll find you tomorrow, and don’t go looking for Xia; (The Colonel was taking liberties with Xia, in payment of allowing Gerson to have an easy life inside the military detention center) I heard about it,” said the General.
“How’s that,” asked the Colonel.
“Yes, Xia wrote me.”
“Where is she now?” asked he Colonel.
“She’s here at the base hospital. She has had a breakdown over it,” said the General.
“I don’t believe it,” said the Colonel.
“It has been very bad for her,” said the General, “and it seems silly to me Colonel to lie on a bed with one who despises you, then lay back and ask her to marry you, after you threaten to punish her brother if she doesn’t. But I suppose it’s better than nothing.”
He stood up as if to walk out of the room, “Sit back down,” said the General, “unless tomorrow you want to be a Major, and you maybe anyhow.”
“Tell me all about everything, and the Staff Sergeant here can analysis it.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” said the Colonel, “other than this affair, I’ve led a quiet life in the Army.”
“You act like a hurt man,” said the General “is there something wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” said the Colonel.
“Well, this war is killing me, slowly,” said the General, “it makes me very depressed at times, and even more so when I hear things like what you’re doing with your power and influence, and rank.”
“General,” commented the Colonel, now worried, “I simply had over stimulated human impulses, no more.”
“Oh,” said the General, then the phone rang, and the General asked me to answer it, and I did.

“What’s the matter?” asked the General (after a moment of silence) I had to take in a deep breath. “Tell me?” asked the General, as I put the phone back down on the receiver.
“Yes sir, General,” I remarked.
“That’s better Staff Sergeant, now what’s up?”
“I feel like hell sir, having to tell you.” I said.
“This war is terrible, so go ahead and tell me.”
“Come on,” said the Colonel.
“We’ll all be getting drunk to night,” I said in passing, then dragged out of my mouth, “Xia committed suicide fifteen minutes ago in the hospital.” (There was a long, a very long silence, the General put his head down, as if in prayer, the Colonel, took in a deep, very deep breath, and let it out slowly, a sigh that had a grinding sound to it. I myself wasn’t surprised, just sad.) Then finally, the General said, “I know Colonel; you’re a fine soldier—you were a fine soldier, a fine Anglo-Saxon boy I presume growing up. I know this also, that you’ll have remorse, I know. Put some cognac in your glass tonight get real drunk, you’ll be a Major tomorrow; now you get out of my sight, and take the Sergeant with you.”
The Colonel shut up. I went over to get the jeep, the Colonel was looking at his silver leafs on his shoulder. “You see how it is sergeant.” He commented.
“Oh, yes, all my life I’ve encountered such subjects, but very few like you. But I suppose we must have them also.”
He looked at the ground, “I loved her,” he remarked; he was all mixed up, I do think. He looked up at me, at the ground again. And I simply said, “You’ll get over that.”

No: 522 (11-23-2009)

Intense Curiosity

(A vignette, about delicious Peruvian apartment Gossip, 2009)


The tenants, and owners, especially the women folk had started gathering in little groups and stood gossiping by the front door (fenced in with an iron gate) that blocked entrance to the hallway of the apartment building. In the beginning it was occasionally—the voices of one of the women would rise sharp and distinct above the increasing influx of other voices that seemed to hum along like a muttering rain storm throughout the hallway, especially into the first of the four floors of the apartment building and in particular to and through apartment one, where stood the iron gate, between the street and the apartment hallway itself.
The old man that lived in the apartment with his younger Peruvian wife, whom the gossip and noise didn’t seem to bother her, it did surely bother the old poet though; equally, the children that came running up and down the stairway, bouncing their robber balls as if it was a playground, leaving the gate open “for the robbers,” the old poet would say, or “they’re too lazy to close it, why don’t the parents teach them etiquette?” complained the old man, ceased at times, but would start back up again, as if etiquette learned was soon lost to old customs. And there were men folk fighting with their women folk, in which came the screaming, and a few drunken parties, echoing throughout the hallway. And then the loud music came, where he couldn’t concentrate, it came from those apartments (and even from the little grocery store across the street), to the point it towered over his watching television, or even trying to sleep and listen to his soft kind of music, it was the neighbors again, always the neighbors (noise just pure noise, invading the privacy of others, without concern, he’d grumble).
“Stop it!” The old man would yell, confronting them, telling the kids “…you’re going to break your necks if you don’t!”

His sharp little eyes saw most everything, he’d look out his side window (into the hallway), turning back his curtain, by his writing table, the old man pale with age, turned, stood up from his easy chair, walked away—feeling these were his antagonists, his American-Irish temper burning.
His wife went quietly out to investigate, always stirring and asserting herself, and asking the tenants and owners of the apartments to be more quiet, respectful—some always resentful in that—as they said ‘…it is only simply human nature to gossip,’ whenever they could. The habitual silence, or quiet, her husband demanded was a mystery to the concerning and discontented lives of the other Peruvian families in the apartment building, not all but most of them— whom the poet felt, worshiped noise, for it apparently had not affected the attitudes of those others in the building, or if it did, they didn’t say so, perhaps immune to it, or used to it, or too fearful to confront this issues. Actually the gossip in the hallway encouraged others, visitors to think the same way, and they stood now with the gate open in-between the sidewalk that lead to the street, and even gossiped longer. Why they didn’t gossip in their apartments was beyond the Poet’s grasp, it seemed more sensible, more private.

And the old poet thought about this, about this part of human nature, he called it ‘Intense Curiosity,’ something that happens at the moment, without due course of thought, or perhaps it was just pure rudeness. In any case, he now had a desire, a determination to look into this wasteful past time. He even conjured up, a theory:

“Perhaps we become like little animals of the woods, that have been robbed of motherly and fatherly love, thus, this gossip and or intense curiosity to talk, just to talk, and talk on and on and on, and for the most part, say nothing of worthy value, is a hunger to make up for lost time (likened to chattering little birds, or little squirrels chewing nuts); like being starved to near death of food, at one time in ones life, and consequently, never forgetting it, and making sure in later years, it’s there, available for the taking, in abundance akin to keeping it in a storage room, like God keeps his thunder storms. Even perhaps, an impulsive reaction, one can’t stop. ”

This old poet of a foreign tongue, still lives among them, still hears the sounds and chattering of those strange voices in the hallway, and music, in the Juan Parra del Riego housing area, in Huancayo, Peru, where merchants, clerks, lawyers, teachers, and a few well-to-do, others—occupations live, and one American, and he feels secret antagonism toward himself—not due of course to any flow in his own character.


No: 531 (11-30-2009) SA

“The Vanquished Plantations”

Opening Chapters to the unpublished book:
“The Vanquished Plantations”
Part one of book one, of four books and fourteen parts

(Book One: “The Vanquished South”)
Part One: The Tobacco Kings
1650 – 1865

Chapters:

The Tobacco Kings
In a Still Heat
Shep’s Valley
Shep’s Journey
Moonlight through the Pines




“The Vanquished Plantations”




The Tobacco Kings
(Myron Shep Charles Hightower, of Virginia, 1650)

Part one of five parts to Shep’s Story



The first known Hightower, Myron Shep Charles Hightower, who came over to America in A.D., 1650, who built a brand-new plantation in Virginia, as settlements took over Indian lands, brought with him twenty-Englishmen, and bought forty-slaves along the way, to do one thing, and one thing only—some miles outside of Jamestown, and it was to create a private enterprise, backed up by rich and private financial backers, who were bankers in England—capitalists, and grow as much tobacco as possible, to sell back to the English people. After arriving, and unloading, and settling in, they started what history would not record, and hired the immigrants that came to America prior to A.D., 1640, from what was known as England’s marshes. Perhaps a hundred of them, along with the slaves and the men Myron brought with him, within three years he had an enterprise that was paying off.
Although, it was not uncommon for ten or so workers to die each year for so called medical reasons, one year, the third year burials outstripped the hiring. The main cause of death was malaria, along with whatever disease the colonists brought with them from Europe. Malaria didn’t kill their victims right away, just weakened them for months on end, and in many cases the body without its proper nutrition could not fight it off, and coupled with a weak immune system, and lack of nutrition, and no medications, the environmental elements produced a full-blown death; after several relapses.

So here we had an ongoing dilemma, sick people trying to get better, with more than enough mosquitoes, all waiting to hit the bull’s –eye— the worker. It was said, before the Marsh-Landers came to Virginia, from England (so the Indians claimed) there were no parasites, or malaria to be found—who’s to say, it didn’t matter in the long run, the disease migrated to the Carolinas where it crippled and drained large portions of Cornwallis Army.
To Myron Hightower (born 1620), it didn’t become much of an issue, he had his business, and people were replaceable. And he built a large home in upper New York (state), where he planned on retiring. And in time as years passed, late in life he married, and had a son he named: Eugene Shep Hightower (born: 1670, died 1767, whom would die at the ripe old age of 97-years old) Myron had this child at the age of 70-years old who took over the tobacco business in latter years, all seemingly immune to the malarial diseases and relapses.
In 1734, Eugene’s wife gave birth to Charles Shep Hightower, whom was simply called Shep. At which time Eugene retired in upper New York, in his brick built home and invested into a Sawmill and hence, that ended the tobacco kings.




In a Still Heat
(Indian Warfare in Upper New York, 1757)



Advance: There was a painting that shows Myron Hightower, kept high on the wall in Charles Terrence Hightower’s Plantation Mansion, in Ozark, Alabama. He was the first Hightower that came to the America, in A.D. 1650, he was born 1620, and had a son Eugene Shep Hightower, his portrait is next to Myron’s, born 1670, died 1767. And alongside that is Charles Shep Hightower born 1734 died 1800. Charles Terrence Hightower, born 1789 would die in 1869, a few years after his son would die in the Civil War. Charles had fought in the War of 1812, his picture is also there on the wall. But the picture, or portrait that is not there, is that of Captain Pip Greg Hightower, a cousin to Eugene Shep Hightower, born 1673, and this is the story of an Indian raid—less than a battle, that took place in 1757, one that wounded Pip Hightower, and killed him two weeks later. But the essence of the story is not of the Captain, it is of an old soldier named Colonel Colin Martin—for the most part; and it takes place in Upper New York State.


The Story

The old man sat there alone, his face raw from the wind and pained from life, his eyes scared and worried from a skirmish that was now taking place. His pipe fell out of his hand, smoke came out of his nostrils, and a gulp of air filled his stomach, he had inhaled from his mouth.
The old man was seated on a tree stump, in a clearing by the woods, “Listen,” he went on mumbling in English, “I don’t know what I’m doing, wish I could be fighting, and be more useful!” If only someone could take him to the fight, the skirmish—he’d do just that, fight.
He looked at the forest, its edge, knew that there was a valley, more like gorge down its five-hundred foot slope, its progression. He started yelling so much, his voice carried an echo.
For a moment the birds and a fox nearby and a hound nearby gaped at him. He knew the men were scrambling throughout the woods everywhichway to find the party of Indians that raided a homestead nearby killing all. Captain Pip Greg Hightower, and his Sergeant, Gil Brandt, along with forty-six militia men and two scouts, with muskets and blankets, had gone searching for them. “Kill them, Kill them!” were in all the hearts of the one-hundred eyes searching for the party of Indians.
As Captain Hightower’s men searched high and low, they noticed many abandoned fires, much more than the single party they were seeking after would have needed, or used.
For the old man, once a young soldier, and loving the taste of battle, the high, even the kill, born in 1673, was having his first nervous breakdown it would seem, not being able to fight. His heart was beating like a drummer’s partridge. He was too old for sough sounds, but he could hear them carried through the winds, coming from the soldiers and Indians, so there it was.
If only someone could understand the temptations of war a man carries with him who has seen much war—was the inner thoughts of the old man; if only his fellow soldiers could pick out the worry the old man had in his face for his fellow soldiers, he knew some were weak men, young men, men that had never been in conflict, in a battle, he prayed for them.

Now he could hear rapid fire coming from the gorge, down the slope, into the woods. There was a still heat in the woods, he knew such by heart, and he knew they’d be thirsty when they came out of it. He heard the shouts of the men, the stamping hoofs of horses, the treading of feet. If only he could get started, moving. But he couldn’t.
If he could make it to the edge of the hill, roll down it straight to ground level, end up at the edge of the woods, facing the gorge, he could nearly see everything, everywhichway, but the roll down the hill would be ridged and he could get stuck someplace in-between the solid top of the slope, and/or somewhere in the fluttered in-between. And it was fall with a ton of autumn leaves per square meter. And the sun and blue and squirrels would camouflage him, he’d never be found, and that was not the way he wanted to die; in battle, in a fight would be much better.
He saw a porcupine climbing up a tree; he could maybe do the same, halfway, see the fighting, but his arms were no longer as strong as they used to be.

Then it was twilight and he saw one line of marching men, rifles in one hand over their shoulders, their hats in the other hand, only sixty-eyes. When they got to the old man, they all were thirsty and fell out to drink the water he was guarding. The old man handed them cups, and he handed them rags to wipe their mouths, and sweat off their foreheads, “We got them all even two British,” said Captain Hightower to the old man who was looking up, “but I can’t figure out all those abandoned fires we saw.”
“What happened to the scouts?” question the old man.
“Killed in the undergrowth like wild boars,” said Hightower, adding, “the woods were dusty, branches slapping our hot faces, burns like an open wound with salt.”
Then Captain Hightower ordered two men to pick old man Colin Martin (retired Colonel) up and place him on a wooden platform, with poles—one man in front the other in back—and carry him back to the fortress. He had lost both his legs in a battle, several years prior.
The old man looked up, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, high overhead, nothing and in the woods nothing at all but leaves, uproariously, bursting leaves, covering everything. The woods ahead fell even deeper into a sleepy like mode— hollow, a quiet flow and a still heat, no birds, or squirrels, or wind now, instinct told the old man—looking at the heavily laden environment with leaves, noticing the leaves moving without the wind blowing, things were crawling in them, under them, human things.
“What did you say?” asked Hightower.
“Leaves talk; leave me here with a musket, and tarry to the fortress, all those abandoned fires… they’re all around us, all with us.”
The captain knew not to question the old man, he had been around, and fought more battles than any man alive he knew of. His instincts were good; he trusted them, more than he trusted a man’s thinking, or rationalization. And he was seldom wrong.

The sixty-eyes ran, never looking back, but could hear the crackling of arrows, and rattle of leaves and the old man’s heart started drumming again, as he shot one enemy in the chest. His half-body swayed suddenly against the branches and leaves piled up against a tree and went slack, like it had fell off a cliff, and his mind went into a galvanized senselessness, yelling like a wild dog at the Indians. It was the way he wished to die, in battle. His face gray and smiling and his lips moved, but his voice was lost.
An Indian stood before him (the militia now safe within the fortress). The Indian was oddly silent. He took the musket from the clutches of the old man, and could hear the old man discharge his last breath.

Shep’s Valley
(Upper New York, 1775-1786)
Part Three


In the old days, in upper New York, Charles Ship Hightower, lived in what was back then a rich and lumbering town. His family had come over to America in 1650—Shep was born 1734 (would die in Alabama in 1800). He, married Emily Hightower, grandmother to Emma, born 1755, died 1790, Charles’ mother, and Emma being Charles’ daughter. For a number of years there were plenty of logs to be cut, at which time Shep’s father owned the mill that cut the logs, and stacked them in the yard, sold them as needed, piles of lumber were carried away and many houses were built from his lumber. His son, Charles Terrence Hightower, would be born after all the Indian, and British and American conflicts were over, born 1789, a year or so after he would have moved to Alabama, from upper New York State.
He worked in the mill those prior years, with the great saws and wheels, belts and iron, operating the mill, and loading lumber. And he fought the Indians in-between. He had built himself a small cabin, which got burnt down by the Indians, one-story. Then years later there was nothing of the mill left, again the Indians did their dirty work, broken white limestone for its foundations—all crumbled to nothingness. Oh he had his neighbors come and clear the debris, his land, trying to rebuild the cabin and mill, and he had hired help, but it all seemed so fruitless, and then Shep and his wife became the hired help. His father being killed by the Indians, and his house burnt down likewise, and his mother had died prior to most of this ongoing conflict of pneumonia.

“There it is,” he’d tell his wife in later years, the mill, the cabin; he couldn’t even remember how it was what it was suppose to be. “I just can’t remember,” Shep would say in those far-off years. Perhaps didn’t want to remember, they were trying years to say the least.
“No,” Emily would say if her kids asked too many questions about those years “ask your father!” She was intent on supporting her husband no matter what, all their life they were sidekicks, so it would seem. She loved those younger days in upper New York State though. But Shep left the Valley, and they both moved down to Ozark, another member went on a little further, to New Orleans. Shep, he simply said one day to Emily, “It isn’t fun anymore here,” and he laughed, and Emily said, “I don’t know what to say,” and after that statement, she didn’t say a word, they just packed up and left; but there is an in-between to all this, prior to making it to Ozark, Alabama.


Shep’s Journey
((Atlanta) (1787-‘89))


In 1787, Shep and his wife Emily Hightower was traveling by covered wagon, from upper New York, down to Alabama, carrying just the basic needs from what was left out of Shep’s father’s belongings, and his burnt out homestead, which the Indians shattered. He and his wife suffered much under the Indians of the region, and requested no aid from anyone. He was very hungry for starting over and knew his youth was on his side, he had time to do what he needed to do, and he was going to build the most magnificent plantation in all of Alabama; although he had only a little money.
He was delighted with upper New York. It was a beautiful country, he said, just a bit too hostile for his blood, as was the previous war years. On his way through the costal states, territories, such as: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, they had gone through many towns, walked much, and seen much. Georgia he did not like. Yet they had a good time together, up to a dividing point there. It was early October, and the country was pleasant, but the Indians and the British had done some bad things. He talked about it a little in Atlanta, in spite of the war; he believed altogether in the Revolution, clearing the country of savages and the British completely. He asked in Georgia, “How is the movement going in Washington?” to a group of war veterans (which would turn out to be a mistake).
“Confusing,” a solider of the Revolution commented, “But it will get better, this is just the beginning, we won the war, but there will be more battles with the Indians. Why not settle here?” he commented.
“Why should I?” questioned Shep.
“You have everything here. It is the main spot down south here, everyone is sure of. It will be the starting point of everything down south, not Alabama.”
He said quickly his good-byes to the few and the group of revolutionists he met, to head on down to Ozark, Alabama, his father knew the banker there, a Mr. Ritt, and he would provide a loan for land, payable in ten-years. He couldn’t do any better than that. But before he got to go on his way, the revolutionists knowing—or figuring it out, that Shep didn’t do any fighting in the war, spoke to him about it.
“Why not?” asked one of the several revolutionists, “why didn’t you fight, it was a requirement!”
“No,” he said, very shyly, “I was never asked…” he did not like Georgia, and he didn’t want to offend anyone, lest a Revolutionist who fought in the war for his independence, so he said little more. He was very eager to get on his way, as was his wife likewise; he was sure he’d love Alabama now that it was autumn.
When Mr. Ritt, sent out inquires, seeking what might have happened to Mr. Shep Hightower, the last he heard was he was serving time in jail in Atlanta for draft dodging, for it was mandatory during those war years, to be in uniform, or hung, and there was no requirement that he had to be asked, it was his job to enlist voluntarily. His sentence was limited to three to six-months in jail—depending.




Moonlight through the Pines ((1788) (Jail time in Atlanta))



You know how it is there early in the morning in Atlanta, with the bums in jail still asleep against the walls of the jail cell; before even the jailers are awake to eat their breakfast, before the wagons come by with goods, go across the square, and there be still the beggars just coming awake in the square, looking for their next drink, or getting a drink out of the nearby fountain. But if you are inside the jailhouse, in one of the side cells, you stand up, there waiting for you in the not so far distance, is the moonlight through the pines. The longer you look towards it, the more it seems to crawl over to you.
“Well,” said Shep Hightower to his three other jail mates, “I sure can see it,” he told them. “But yesterday morning, I couldn’t, I wonder why?”
“It isn’t that you couldn’t” said Rum Bum Raphael “you couldn’t have seen it. That’s all that’s too it.”
The other two came over to the bared in windows in the cell and they stood there looking out into the far-off pines. “There nice looking trees but I can’t see the moon,” one of the two said. “I don’t mean to make you two feel bad… (Referring to Shep and Raphael), he told them; “I tell you true I can’t see it!”
“Afterwards, when you’re feeling better, things will change, and then you’ll see it,” said Rum Bum Raphael.
“I know it,” he replied, “I’m all for it now. But later on I’ll be…” and he went silent.
“He makes his living with the boats,” said Raphael. Yes said Pig’s-eye Peter, from the upper Mississippi, “if I lose all this time here in jail, I’ll lose my living, I hope I can get out in ten-days, drunken and disorderly conduct, that’s why they put me in here, how about you?” he asked Shep.
“I think the fellows who put me in here,” said Shep, “needed me to argue with them so they could put me in here, because the one kept on…I can’t even pay my way out.”
“All this will not last, you know,” said Pigs-eye Peter, “maybe I’ll go back up towards Pig’s Eye, that area on the Mississippi, by what they call Minnsota, and build a bar; I’m getting too old for this.”
“Listen,” said Shep. “I don’t give a hoot, who’s president of this country, or mayor of this city, I haven’t done anyone any harm, that can talk.”
“Well, you’re here for somthin’” said Pig’s-eye.
“Yes, I’m here because of someone with a long tongue,” said Shep, “I was accused of evading the draft, I wasn’t in the war!”
“Do you know what we do with them?” said Rum Bum Raphael.
“Don’t get tough with me,” Shep said. “You folks asked me. I didn’t offer it freely.”
“Shut up,” said Pig’s-eye Peter to Raphael, “you’re liquor is still in you talking.”
“So you wouldn’t,” said Raphael.
“It’s just like I told you,” answered Shep.
“But you didn’t tell us much; I don’t understand right off, I don’t mean to be nasty. I guess it’s a disappointment, too. You look like a fine man.”
Shep didn’t even answer him.
“Maybe he’s not so fine a man,” said the third man, with no name.
“What’s that? A threat?” said Shep.
“Listen,” said Pig’s-eye Peter, “Don’t everyone be so tough so early in the morning. I’m sure Shep has done his share of fighting, he’s a broad man, he just didn’t fight in the war, and he’ll tell us why when the time comes.”
“So you’re sure I’ll do as you say,” said Shep.
“No,” said Peter, “and I don’t give a damn, but I may cut your throat when you’re sleeping for being a coward or draft dodger. I am angry now,” he said. “I’d like to kill you but you’re younger and tougher, so I’ll just wait!”
“Oh, hell,” I’ll tell you. “Don’t need to threaten so much.”
“Come on, Shep.” Raphael told him. The third unnamed inmate said, “I’m very sorry for what I said, I think we all are but we still got to know.”
The three of them stood in front of him, and watched and waited for him to speak. They were all older men, in their late forties or early fifties. They all wore bad clothes; none of them wore hates, and they looked like they had not a dime to their names. They talked plenty among themselves, knew each other, and they spoke the kind of English bums with no money spoke, drunks. Peter and Raphael looked like distant cousins; Peter being a little taller than Raphael and the third inmate. All three slim, dirty thick hair. Shep figured none were as mean as they talked, but he was plenty nervous when Peter threatened him, and no one said a word.
Then they threw a Blackman into the cell with them. The one with no name cried out, “Get this nigger out of here, what the hell is the matter with you jailers,” and the two jailers were laughing fiercely, holding their stomachs. One of the three men stood behind the Blackman, the other two (not to include Shep), stood in front of him, blocking the sight of the jailers, then there was a smash, Peter had hit the Blackman in the face, while the other two started kicking him, and Peter plunged his head onto the wooden floor, nearly broke his neck. One of the jailers’ shot a bullet over their heads. “Nigger,” yelled the jailer, “get on over here,” and the jailer took him out of the cell immediately; said Shep, “Take me out of her also; I’ll bunk with the nigger! It’s safer!” And the three white men took offence to that.

“They calls me Isaiah, cuz I looks fur the hand of God in all I does,” the Blackman told Shep, while both sitting on the lower section of the iron bunk beds, in the next cell, the Blackman trying to get his head and neck back up, it had been twisted and bruised pretty bad. “Here,” said the jailer, handing the Blackman a cup of rum, to settle his pain. And he stood up, walked over to the jail bars and grabbed the rum, and drank it, and Shep took a sip out of the same cup, right in front of the other three bums in the next cell, which infuriated those men more. The beating the three men gave the Blackman didn’t make them feel one iota bad about what they had done.
“You seem awfully brave about it all, over in that cell,” said Peter to Shep.
“I was watching how brave you were, one against three,” then the Blackman looked up, saw Peter, the Blackman was taller than all of them, pert near six-foot three. He looked in pretty bad shape.
“I’ll see you when you get out of jail,” said Peter.
“Don’t talk about it,” Shep said, “you don’t scare me, I’ve beaten better men than you, it makes me sick to even think about what I’d do to you, should you want to find out what sort of day it would be, you need only stick around.”
“Well,” said Peter, “we’ll see.”
“That’s up to you.”
“What sort of day do you think it will be?” asked Raphael.
“Just about like today, as you did to this nigger!” said Shep.
“All right, as soon as that day comes, we’ll both be looking for you.”
The man with no name simply said, “That’s fine, you folks just put it down against what you think you owe each other, I’m out of it.”
Said the jailer, “Have a bottle of beer, shut you guys up for a spell,” and he handed them a quart of beer through the jail bars.


When Shep Hightower served his time in jail, and was released—having told his wife, Emily about that situation, she was fearful they’d be after him.
“Don’t worry,” Shep said, “it was all big talk by drunks, rum business. Their lives are all drinking, no money, and big talkers; they have other business to attend to, just say your goodbyes to Atlanta, and don’t worry either about those boys.” And as they rode out of Atlanta that early Saturday morning, he showed his wife the moon’s glistening light through the pines, and noticed on the grass in the park area, Peter and Raphael, both sleeping off a previous night’s drunk.



The Ozark Ritt Bank

1788-1789


Shep Hightower went into the Ozark Bank (owned by the Ritt family) and sat down at a table. He and his wife Emily noticed the bank had new panes of glass in their windows, as if the war had at one time shot it up and was now fixed up. There were a few drunks on the wooden sidewalk outside, and a few drinking standing outside of the bar across the street, and some folks eating in a nearby restaurant.
An elder man was playing dominoes sitting at a table in the bank with a younger man; said the older man to Shep, “You must be Shep Hightower, I’m Albert Ritt and this is my son John, have you eaten yet I know you’ve been on a long journey, but I’ve been expecting you?”
We’ve had some boiled cabbage and beef stew, and black bean soup last night, even had a bottle of beer. My wife and I are both still plenty full. I’d like to get down to business. This is my wife Emily.”
And thus, Albert took a liking for them both immediately.
“How do you do,” said Emily.
“You will have some coffee?” he asked Emily.
“Thank you,” said Emily. “We are quite alone here?”
“Except for me and my son,” Mr. Ritt said. “You have land about seventeen miles outside of town, four-hundred acres of it.”
“Ah,” said Shep. “I had imagined it was something bigger.”
“It can be…!” said the elder Ritt, “we can triple that, when you pay for the first four-hundred!”
“On what terms?” asked Shep?
“I see,” said Albert, “would you mind leaving us?” he said to his son, although he looked as interested as ever and smiled at Shep and Emily as he left.
“He’s noisy,” said Albert. “He doesn’t understand much business yet, only nineteen.” He motioned for his lawyer and accountant to join them at the table.
“Oh, yes,” said Albert. “Now these are the circumstances that would—that have made me consider you for a non-collateral loan. I knew you father, and my father knew your father’s father, while in the tobacco business.”
“I’m broke,” said Shep.
“I see,” said Mr. Ritt. “But do you owe any money to anyone? Can you be libeled?”
“No,” said Shep.
“Quite so,” said Albert, “that in itself is something accommodating. I know that the good business folks in England trusted their fortune with your father and grandfather, and made well by doing so, I’ll trust you likewise. Your name is as good as gold.”
“I’d leave the next two years to you, land and all, plus $2000-dollars in cash.”
“Then what?” asked Shep.
“Of course you have to start paying back the loan, with interest and the cost of the land. Buy yourself some niggers to do the work, you can get them cheap now, fifty dollars a head, seventy-five next month, and ten-years from now they’ll be worth $800-dollars a head. You see it is quite simple, just don’t betray me. I expect you all paid up in five-years, land and all, plus twelve hundred dollars interest a year, and we’ll settle on a price for the land.”
“When would I get the money?” asked Shep.
“Five-hundred when you agree and sign this paper, and the other fifteen-hundred, when you start loading up your wagon with needed supplies, and buy those niggers I told you about. You can get them here, but they’ll cost you a little more or go on down to New Orleans, they got a market place for them. You don’t need the real fit ones; they cost you more, buy the weaker ones, and feed them.”

Shep and Emily went off with the five-hundred dollars, and they both smiled at Mr. Ritt. He hid his money in his sock, and in the morning, asked the store keeper, “Where do you want us to start loading our supplies?”
“Alright,” said the storekeeper, “Mr. Ritt, said to let you charge up to $1500-dollars.”
Said Emily, as they were loading the wagon, “Shep, I think I’m pregnant, it feels like a boy. If it is, I’ll name him Charles, I like that name.” Shep immediately said, “No more lifting for you.”


A Rebirth of Shep’s Love

1789

After a while, after they settled in, built their first log cabin, bought three slaves, started to plant their first crop, he seemed to be in a circle of life, a perfect geometrical circle, with no beginning or end, with the child on its way; hence, there appeared even a to be a new and more softer love he had for his wife, as if he’d caught the early morning sun hitting a raindrop on their bedroom window, as if it had come all the way from heaven just to look upon her. And the sound of her voice appeared to change for him, as if it was Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. And he carried a letter in his pocket as he was doing the planting, as if it had kept the scent of a thousand roses on it, he’d look at it as if it was Emily herself. All in all, it was a kind of rebirth of his love for the woman he loved, and the child she carried inside of her for him.

The Old Man and his Rambler

Mr. Stanley was a plump, robust and mild mannered nondescript man of sixty-seven years old, who was our neighbor when I was growing up on Cayuga Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota in the late 1950s, who had worked somewhere in the city for the railroad. He retired in 1959; I was twelve years old then. He bought himself a brand new shinny automobile, a Rambler.
I’d visit him now and then, briefly hanging my hands and head over the wired fence my grandfather had constructed between them and us. He lived with his wife Anglia, and had a son, perhaps in his late twenties back then. He always wore his old railroad cloths, clean but old—blue jean trousers, with those straps that are attached to that go over and around ones shoulders, also he wore a blue jacket—railroad style, and a variety of hats, more like caps, railroad genre.
At first I wondered why he did what he did, wearing day after day that same old clothing (although I realized he was never going to a fashion show)—he even showed me once his railroad watch, it was gold plated, I think he said he worked for railroad some thirty-seven years, said, “This is what you get after some many years, not much but better than nothing.”
I got used to seeing him in those railroad duds (as we called clothing back then), even got used to those caps of his. He always looked he same, then one day he came back up the driveway to his house, parked a new 1959 Rambler in front of his house—a light creamy brown color to it, a little chrome on the sides of the car. After that first year, summer to summer, he knew that car pretty well; he could recognize a dirty spot on it at twenty-feet, with one quick glance, and he carried a rag in his railroad trousers, to wipe clean any blemish he may spot.
There he’d be standing in his driveway, washing his car, with that blank look, with nothing to look at but the car and the sparkling glitter of the back and front bumpers, reflections of sunbeams bouncing off those chrome plated bumpers, and even a slight glitter from the side pieces of chrome attached to the car. I remember his son came by once, paid him some attention, glanced over by the fence, said a few words, and then was gone.
“How do you do, Mr. Stanley,” I’d say coming home from school—somewhat yelling from a distance, and there he’d be washing that car again. He often times didn’t say a word, I thought maybe he was mad or was preoccupied, in one of those daydreams moments old folks get, or something—perhaps even he simply didn’t hear me, deep in thought about that Rambler. If the car was in the garage, he usually was either pacing in his backyard by his garden, the one his wife attended to more than he, and if he saw me he was quite friendly—so again I say, I doubt he was being rude, he just was not attentive.
He often just walked about hurrying, or fumbled, in and out of the garage, tinkering with something sitting on an old wobbly wooden stood that looked as if it was going to collapse from his weight at any moment.
His wife bought a birdbath that year of 1959, she often looked out the kitchen window, and she tinkered with that as much as her husband washed his car. I think it was a tradeoff, but I think his toy was more expensive than hers.
He and his wife, when not washing the car, or in the garden, or tinkering with the birdbath, they sat in their kitchen looking out the window, I often could see them from my backyard. Drinking coffee most often, and a few times I saw their son—who’d stop over now and then, more than, than often. That took them away from staring at me while I was playing my backyard, or digging into my potato patch and so forth. I don’t think the son ever looked at me but once or twice, I had only seen him in those years a few time likewise, never did he say hello, and just went about his business. I did more looking at him, than he at me I suppose.

In 1960, that fall I turned thirteen-years old, in October, three months later, the old man died, Mr. Stanley, I think he was sixty-nine years old then—had a heart attack. And right after that, that Rambler of his got put away, in the garage (likened to cloths in a cloths closest full of moth balls) for a number of years. His wife couldn’t see to sell it. I had asked to buy it a few times, after I had gotten my license at sixteen-years old, but she’d simply say, with a half grin and smile, “Sorry but I can’t seem to part with it, or get myself to selling it, although heaven knows, I could use the money…” and that was that. And then one day her son came over, took the Rambler out of the garage (because I saw him do it, but he didn’t see me watching him, although I was in the middle of the backyard raking autumn leaves), and that was all that was ever seen of that Rambler, from that day forward in our neighborhood.
I had noticed he seldom stopped by, but on occasions he did, and picked up his mother for Thanksgiving dinners, I remember that because she was well dressed one Thanksgiving, and I asked her, “Where you going all dressed up, Mrs. Stanley?”
“Oh,” she said proudly, “my son is coming to pick me up for Thanksgiving Dinner,” she had come out of the house to check on the birdbath, it was chipped I recall, and there were autumn leaves in the bath. I do say she got her money’s wroth out of that birdbath. And then her son rode up in a different car, not that Rambler, and picked her up, I don’t even think he looked my way, he had that same old blank look on his face his father had when washing the car—not that he was trying to be rude or anything, he just wasn’t paying attention—that is, not concentrating on anything that wasn’t in his direct radius of a few feet, to most anything around him beyond that. And off they went.
I thought about that Rambler that day, as they pulled out of the driveway, he evidently sold it, perhaps thinking she’d never get rid of it, it was a reminder of her husband, and perchance he noticed she could no longer bear to know it was in the garage, some twenty-feet from her outside door steps. It was to my guessing, she had come to the end of her grieving period.
In any case, she up and died, leaving her property to her son, although he had not seen me since I was a teenager, if indeed he had ever noticed me at all—at any rate, I was now twenty-seven years old. He evidently could not associate me with being that young boy in the backyard so many years ago, he said to me, walking to the fence, that separated them from us, he said for the first time ever, words to me, “Are you the new owner of the house?” realizing my grandfather who had own the house had died, but not realizing my mother had bought-out her siblings, and was now the new owner, but all of us had lived together all those years, when he was coming and going and visiting and never looking anyplace but in front of his nose, never turning about, to see who was making the noise in the backyard across that wired fence, or any other place.
Well, I had been off fighting a war in Vietnam, and to Germany for a number of years, while in the Army—and I was on my way to Italy for a new assignment. “No,” I said to him, meaning I was not the new owner, “I’m just here visiting,” I remarked; he didn’t ask who I was, so I didn’t say.
“I heard the old man who owned the place had died?” He said, as if not really interested, but for some reason said what he said more out of instant than carrying to have a conversion or perhaps he wanted to know his new neighbor, because he now owned the Stanley house. He didn’t know our last name (it was 1974). I said, “That’s correct,” and then he excused himself, to finish whatever he was doing, and from what I saw he was doing was cleaning out the house as if he was going to put it up for sale, or rent it out—as usual he was busy. And that was the last I had ever seen of him.


No: 521 (11-23-2009)

President Osama’s: Pipe dreams

(11-2009)


I don’t know how much time this President needs to straighten things out, but it is sure taking a long time to get started. It’s a funny thing becoming the President of the United States, those running for it will nearly say anything, and do anything to get the position, and they already have their excuses figured out, on what they’re going to say, after the fact, when they can’t do what they said they were going to do, or could do, or try to do. Something tells me, Mr. Obama will need two terms to straighten things out that is what he’s going to say—(or perhaps has said it to his billionaire backers already).
He said he needed to straighten Mr. Bush’s affairs out, trying to get into the White House, but has done little to nothing on that issue, matter-of-fact, if I look at policy making, it would seem to me, he’s following Mr. Bush’s agenda. He’s simply taking troops out of one place marching them over to the neighbors, that is, putting them next-door (from Iraq to Afghanistan)—the balance in Military Personal has not changed one iota in the Middle East.
Some people will never get the picture, no matter what you do or say, you can throw mud in their faces all day long, and knock their heads on the wall, and they’re still going to come out hooraying for an imposter —out of silly promises and advertisements, and hype. It works, just look at the beer and booze drinkers, and the smokers in America (70% drink in America), it is all bad for your health, but Americans buy the stuff like water, air; because of advertisements, and hype, and believing in another’s pipe dreams. It works, believe it or not.
As far as the dollar goes, it was better when he took office I agree he had some momentum in bringing the dollar nearer to the surface, but it is almost back down to where it was, where it started from, prior to that, so his injection is starting to have the ripple effect—reversed! (People around the world are seeing what I am seeing what Americans are not seeing). The dollar abroad is a screaming eagle indeed, one in pain.
I thought Americans were more the thinking, examining, and rational people when it came to selecting a president, or such things of that nature, but this whole past election was a farce, and now we can see the proof in the pudding, it was all based on hype and emotion. It had to be, because there is no substance there, here, now! And how we ever got the two finalists we got, was also a scam, between the two we had to elect, or perhaps three, we didn’t have much to choose from, or selection. If indeed this is the best we can find, or do, we are in big trouble.
On the other hand, we make mistakes, some big ones, let’s hope we can live with this one another four-years, and not make a second mistake thereafter—god forbid. At this juncture, the only thing I see that we’ve gotten from this administration is empty hopes, and perpetual pipe dreams. He preached deliverance; this in itself was the pipe dream.

The Short Awkward life of Mac Remora

((1974…) (Europe))


Chapter One
Just Acquaintances


It was now after work hours for most of the military personnel on the Babenhausen (West German) Military Base, and Staff Sergeant Lee Erwin Wright went to the little grocery store on the base to buy some groceries, pretending not to notice Mac Remora, the manager of the small military PX, he was in a hurry.
“I’ve seen you around a lot,” said Mac, “can I help you with anything, such as pointing out where the squash is—it’s over there, over there by the potatoes (and he pointed), and other fresh vegetables (Lee had been looking about for some tomatoes and green peppers, mumbling aloud ‘where the heck are they’)”
“I see them now,” Lee Wright told him.
“I think I’ll take some of those big green peppers home with me also,” said Mac Remora, “now that I look at them, they really look big and green and hard, they’re real choice ones.”
“I suppose it’s the thing to do if you don’t want them to vanish,” Wright agreed, “I use them for spaghetti sauce.”
The young woman nearby started selecting a variety of fresh vegetables, putting them into a carry cart, lifting two of the green peppers out of the wooden basket, sweating in the hot little grocery store, trying to absorb the wind coming through the back opened door to the store, that blew through the back section, the outside of the store shaded by trees.
“I should have ordered more fresh vegetables and fruit on hot days like this,” remarked Mac to Lee.
“The bushels you have would appear to be plenty,” Lee told him, “most of the soldiers go to Darmstadt for their big shopping sprees, stocking up for a month, that is; you don’t want to spoil us customers (?)”
“Well, the distributor will bring what I want!”
“No matter what?”
“Sure,” remarked Mac.
Sergeant Lee Erwin Wright, had half an hour before he’d have to go back on duty, he had CQ (the overseer for the Company Headquarters for the evening). He had his uniform on, and he rushed to get out of the store, shaking Mac’s hand. He did not speak to him much as he prepared to pay, and leave (knowing he had to get back to his apartment, wash his face and hands, and go over to the Company Headquarters, sit the night away in an uncomfortable chair, answer phones, make the rounds of the military base, write reports, and hope he could leave the window open for the breeze without getting any insects into his CQ Room, and he didn’t want to be late).
This was the first time he and Mac spoke, to the first time they saw each other eye to eye, not just passing by. Matter-of-fact, he had seen him a few times in the Education Center as well, and he was seemingly always with a girl or a white soldier, as if they were pals.
He was an extremely handsome and well-kept Blackman; and appeared to have a decent civilian social position on the base, which he had for some five-years, making at the time far above a Sergeant’s pay.


Chapter Two
Night CQ


“He seems to be a good manager, isn’t he,” he asked Corporal Sims, who knew him better than he, now on CQ Duty, Sims being his runner incase he needed something quickly. Sims looked at him now. He looked at the Sergeant, and out the window towards the PX, as if he knew something, he had never mentioned before.
“One thing, I’ve heard, but I can’t say for sure, I don’t know for sure, he truly makes more money than that small store provides, he lives high off the hog, and his inventory is always off when the inspectors come.”
Mac was about six-foot-four inches tall, with a styled haircut, clean shaven, and with extremely sharp dark eyes with a faint impression of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, slightly noticeable when he smiled, he was thirty-two years old, Lee, twenty-seven.
“Well, here’s to the snake in the grass!” Sergeant Lee Wright said. He smiled at Corporal Sims when he said that, and not smiling, the Corporal looked curiously back at the sergeant.

Mac was very tall, slim waist, very fit, and built well, if you didn’t mind that distance end to end, he had a fast stride, stretch and reach. Regular-lipped, for a Blackman, and was considered quite desirable by German women, housewives and even female teenagers at the civilian military schools.
He dressed in the same sort of way, beyond the style of the day, and was known very publicly to be a fancy talker.
“Here’s to the snake in the grass,” said the Sergeant for the second time—in jest, “I can’t ever thank you for your information, I get the sense we will be meeting again, because something is on his mind.”
“Let’s not talk about Mr. Remora,” said the Corporal, “I’ve heard too many rumors about him.”
Sergeant Wright looked over in his office at the Corporal without smiling and now he smiled at him.
“It’s been a very strange night, and afternoon,” said the Sergeant “ought you not to put your hat on so you can go make the rounds, check out the motor pool, I’ll watch the telephones!”
“I might not put it on; it’s so hot out there!” said the Corporal.
“You might have a very hard time telling the MP’s why you’re out of uniform then, Corporal.”
“I could use a drink?” said the Corporal.
“I don’t think so, not on my shift anyhow.”
“But you drink a great deal?” remarked the Corporal to the Sergeant.
“No, not on duty I don’t.”
“But let me be radical, okay?” said the Corporal.
“Go check out the base,” said the Sergeant.
“I’d rather stay here and have a conversation,” said the Corporal.
“Don’t be thoughtless, Corporal, I need to write something to report, and if Captain Sharp comes by, and we haven’t made a round, he’s going to have our heads for dinner.”
“No trouble, I’ll just go do what I got to do, it’s a damn fine night to get drunk though.”
Sergeant Wright had seen it coming, but the Corporal made no noise, he noticed his shoulders and head were shaking as if to say: it’s going to be a long night.
“Are you upset Sergeant?” asked Sims.
“It doesn’t matter, it accounts to nothing. My nerves are like steel, just get going and do your job.”
“Yes,” said Sims, “I suppose I rate that for the rest of the night now (meaning to make his hourly rounds throughout the military base which took normally twenty-minutes).”
“Nonsense,” said the Sergeant, “you know I’ll do some rounds.”
“Forget what I said, nothing to this anyhow. I’ll not forget you sticking up for me the one night when I was drunk on duty; I won’t forget what you did for me then.”
“It wasn’t anything, nothing at all; it’s all gobbledygook anyway, just don’t get thirsty for booze tonight, all right?”
He didn’t answer; he just left the orderly room, and Headquarters, and did his rounds as the Sergeant demanded.


Chapter Three
A day and a day

So they sat there in the front of the Education Center, it was Saturday, sat there in the shade under some wide-topped umbrella looking trees, a busy road outside the gate of the military base, they sat on a stretch of grass that ran the length of the old World War Two barracks, now used as the Education Center, where they held classes from the University of Maryland. Beyond the stretch of grass, the iron fence to the base, across the highway, beyond all that, were two guesthouses, beyond that was the town-let of Babenhausen. When he saw Remora’s curiosity he put his pen and paper to the side, snapped up onto his feet. The other students turned away with their faces empty, and continued to write out their zoological papers.
“Mr. Remora,” said Lee Wright, “what you doing here?”
“Nothing; just thinking about attending the University of Maryland, I got 90-credits with Central Texas College, but Maryland will only take twenty of them, so I pert near have to start my college all over, how about you?”
“What’s that? What do you mean?”
“It’s quite complicated,” said Mac. “I suppose you got all your credits from the University?”
“So with ninety credits you still have no degree?” remarked Lee.
“Oh, yes. I can’t raise a beef, if I choose to complain they’ll not even take the twenty-credits. They prefer them to be from a university, not a community college.”
“How odd!” said the Sergeant?
“Not really so strange, not really—I just lost a lot of time and money in the education.”
Then Mac felt a slight embarrassed at telling him his situation, without him asking.
“We all get screwed, now and then, you know, one way or another.”
‘Good god,’ thought Lee, what a misuse of time and effort and money, just to start all over.
“Yes, we all take a thrashing,” agreed Lee, standing three-feet from him, both looking in each others eyes.
“I’m awfully sorry about you losing all those credits, but did you sign up for the University classes yet?”
“I just thought you’d like to know, we need not go any further with it, I mean what’s done is done, and yes I am in the process of signing up.”
“Well maybe we’ll be in some classes together?” Lee looked at him now warmly. He had not anticipated this.
“Let me know which courses you’re going to take,” said Mac “maybe we’ll go together?”
“Yes,” said Lee. “I’m taking philosophy here in Babenhausen, this next semester, and in Frankfurt Anthropology.”
“Frankfurt’s forty miles away, I’ll take the course with you, and we can drive together…” adding, “you can be quite sure on that, it’s a larger school there, and I think stricter,” said Mac.


Chapter Four
Themselves


They had unknowingly both decided at that point to break away from the norm, and not be independent, but a little more interdependent in selecting and going to university classes. They would eat together after school, find a bar and Lee would get drunk, as Mac never did, but he depended on Lee’s company, paid for his food, his meals, and drinks, even the gas, never asking for a cent, said once, “You’ll never find a better nigger than me!” And Lee assured himself he wouldn’t. At times Lee got too drunk to even talk, as Mac remained distinguished, and to those young girls around him, he was considerate, Lee was a little to the contrary. It might even have appeared to Mac’s admirers, it would be a damn sight easier for him to get rid of Lee, save his money, and not have to watch Lee drinking to kingdom-come, because this was seemingly more than a phase for him, more like a lifestyle.
“How is everything going?” Mac would ask Lee, during those drinking spells, that only stopped when he was on duty, and he’d answer, “Oh, I’m fine…” and continue drinking, and you’d think the night had gone to pot, but it didn’t phase Mac all that much. There was evidently a reason for Mac’s generosity.


Chapter Five
Black Market

“I’m sorry,” Remora said looking at Sergeant Lee Erwin Wright, looking at him in his American military uniform, his white American face, that was square and strong, and would remain that way all the way to his mid fifties, and Remora noted his wavy auburn hair for once, as he held his hat and the wind blew it all, everywhichway, his fine sparkling bluish-green eyes, only dimly dubious, a solid good nose, upper lip thin, lower lip fuller, a handsome jaw. “I’m sorry, amigo, but you must realize all those times I’ve taken you out to eat, and buy you drinks—oh don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind doing it—but I need a favor, I need for you to lend me your ration cards, for whiskey and cigarettes.” (Lee had been selling his rationed whiskey to a bar down in Munster by Dieburg, getting double its cost, but Remora had been spending twice that amount on his nightly drinking and eating after classes at the university. So what could he do, Lee thought. He was already in debt to him, and he liked Remora, and his sporty Mercedes he drove in, even borrowed it to him now and then. And here the provider was apologizing, because he couldn’t afford to continue his lavished living on him, if indeed he could not contribute something. What could he say?
“Don’t worry about the cigarettes, I got ration cards from several of my friends for that item, and I know you smoke, but I know you don’t drink whiskey, rather beer, I sure could use your card!”
Lee bolted like a rabbit, when a fox just grabs him, and gave him the card, he’d make perhaps even more than he was making, he knew every bar in town, and nightclub, and PX within fifty-miles. And for the most part, Lee Wright was thinking, what the heck you can do with a man like that, that talked so smoothly, but on the other hand was right, and generous, Lee surprised.
Lee looked at Mac with his cheerful bluish-green eyes, yet sturdy Army combat, war eyes, eyes that have seen death and destruction in Vietnam, in 1971, and Mac knew he was no coward, matter-of-fact, he knew he was or could be dangerous, even with his pleasant smile, if you didn’t notice how his eyes showed that, it was to one’s disadvantage (but Mac had heard, but not said a word on it—heard he taught a squadron at the 545th Ordnance Company, karate techniques, and played hard, so hard the squadron protested, and he stopped their training because they were as he said, “Cry babies”).
“In the morning if you like Lee, you can come with me and see how I do my black-market business, my buying. Maybe I can fix it up for you,” he said. “We’ll never get rich, but we’ll live well in the meantime.”
“Okay, in the morning if you like,” remarked Sergeant Wright. This was certainly the way to accept it, thought Mac; he could tell a thing or two about soldiers, he was one for two-years. He was all for America, even though he decided to live in West Germany, and had learned to speak German almost as well as he could speak English, and perhaps spoke more German than English. But of course, Lee couldn’t, I mean he spoke German, but could only understand, every fifth word or so, and his vocabulary was limited to perhaps one-hundred words, if that.

The morning had been as bright and warm as they come.
‘Here’s Mac,’ Lee mumbled to himself, outside of his apartment on base, in the housing area, where he lived. He walked over to his car looking refreshed and cheerful. But he wasn’t really odd, Mac thought, no, not odd, different, he knew much more than what he said, he’d not let on to what he did know either, always thinking, with that reddish completion.
“How’s Belinda,” commented Lee, Mac’s fiancée to be. He had only seen her once, a teacher that worked across the street at the American School, for the children brought over to Germany from the States by their military families. She was a pearl, he thought, a lightly black female that had—oh, much more class than Mac.
“Were getting along fine, I just don’t want to get engaged quite yet, but she’s pregnant, I just found out, so I guess I’ll have to sooner than later. Belinda was very impressive thought Lee, ‘You’re going to kill the very thing you love,’ thought Lee, because he knew Mac’s personality demanded he still get his oats out, in the wild female jungle, the one he creates and destroys. In many a night club women just flocked over him, some stripped in front of him, to get his attention. Whatever he had, it was as if it was voodoo or some black magic over these women.

As they went from PX, to PX, to German stores, and bars, Lee saw he had a network of buyers for his whiskey and cigarettes, and he’d even stop at a few apartments of soldiers, get their ration cards, he made a buddle of money this early morning, to forenoon—Sergeant Wright pondered. And he even stopped to say hello at a tennis court, to a young woman named Melody Brown (he didn’t know at the time, she was seventeen and the daughter to Sergeant Robert Brown, although she looked her age), Sergeant Brown being a sergeant that worked in one of the unites at the Babenhausen military complex. But he would later on find out much more.
Lee thought, ‘If indeed he had something going on with Melody, the Army was hard and cruel on such predatory things, and so were the soldiers with their daughters, revengeful on the predators. The girl was attractive, and he could see the young men around her were gone to pieces nervously with her, Mac approached her softened, and handled her as if he had magic.
‘They can’t know that much at her age,’ Lee thought. Lee was grateful that Mac had gone to showing him his life, but why? And why was he fooling around with a young, High School female,’ (so he concluded), he asked himself.
She came running over to his car as they were about to take off, “I’m coming with you,” she said, looking at Lee for an instant, then back to Mac.
“No, you’re not,” he said.
“Oh, yes, I am,” and she opened the back door and jumped in.
“You’re not staying for anything,” he said.
“Not for anything?” she said. Lee had felt he might have missed something in all this, but she was asking for it, and he was willing, and when she left, Mac got thinking, as she went off to cry as if he wanted to take her with him but it was for some reason too dangerous. To Lee, she seemed hell of a lovely kid, with all the woman parts, and she seemed to understand the ways of a man and woman, but didn’t she know she’d be hurt by him sooner or later? It was the damnedest thing, both playing the damnedest game.
Lee had asked to be dropped off at the NCO club (Non commissioned officers club) figuring Mac would put on another show for him tomorrow, or Monday, sooner than later, but he wanted no more today, and this would give him a time to straighten things out if they needed straightening out with Melody, because Lee’s senses told him, he was still thinking, pondering on her.
“You’re not coming, I’m going to Darmstadt,” he asked.
“No, you were really something this morning,” he said, “You wore me out.”


Chapter Six
Relieved of Position


“What now?” said Mac Remora, to the military inspector of his little Babenhausen store?
“I didn’t come out here to be boring,” said the inspector.
“Well, it hasn’t been boring around here,” said Mac.
“Oh, no, I expect not,” he said. “it’s been charming, but tomorrow is your last charming day—you’re being replaced, your inventories, and rumors and you’ve been under investigation for selling your liquor stock and rationed items to the local Germans, and making a hell of a profit,” said the inspector.
“You don’t know how I look forward to tomorrow,” said Mac.
“I suppose a robber gets tired of robbing his own stock,” the inspector remarked, “in any case, I’m glad to get rid of you!”
“Why not let up on the complaining, just a slight inspector,” said Mac.
“I expect I could,” he commented, “Since you put it so appealingly. “But you still may have to face fraud charges; we just need someone to point you out as his/her seller. Indecently we’ve had you followed.
“Oh, like a lion,” commented Mac.
Consequently, Mac Remora thought to himself: he’s going to try and prosecute ME, try and give ME a free ride right to the front door of the prison house, isn’t he? Or maybe that was just his fear taking over; perhaps the inspector just wanted him gone, out of sight and out of mind and just out of his hair. How should a man act when another finds out he’s a stinking thief. He felt the inspector was damned cruel but they’re all cruel he concluded, even if you’re straight with the records. Still, he had enough of the PX business, enough of their damn inspections. So he reasoned, as one often does to be able to accept the situation—oh yes, put horns on top of it, call it a devil, and be done with being polite: to the devil with it all. And that is what he was doing.



Chapter Seven
Marriage


Three Months Later


One afternoon, late, Mac and Belinda had gotten married, she was showing, her blouses no longer tucked in, and behind her belt, and Sergeant Robert Brown had stopped Staff Sergeant Wright, nearby the Babenhausen PX, talk to him about his daughter, Melody. He was bearing a gun. He showed him the gun; it was hidden behind his coat, “Tell your friend Mac, I’m a good shot, plus he’s a big target, I’m going to shoot him. He rapped my daughter, and I can’t figure out why you are friends with him.” Brown remarked.
“Is it worth-while, go to the police?” said Lee.
“I did,” rebuke Sergeant Brown, “but there’s no hard proof! Maybe you can testify for me, get him to tell the truth.”
“There’s no good chance of it. He just got married and he told me Melody was constantly running after him, and to be honest, I saw her one day, clear as the day is long, likened a lioness after him.”
“It’s not very pleasant to hear my daughter is like that, she’s seventeen years old, no matter what, he took advantage of her,” said Brown.
“I should think it even more unpleasant to allow her to continue to do what she’s doing,” said Lee.

(Brown thought, daughter or no daughter, to continue to talk about it, was only going to cause more friction.)

“We’re friends,” brown said, “I don’t want to talk about that anymore, just let him know I’m after him—with a gun!”
“I wouldn’t think about that anymore, Robert, any person would be upset finding out what you’ve learned, but that’s all over. And if you shoot him, I’ll testify I’ve heard you threaten to kill him—don’t make me a part of your scheme.”


Nightclub


That night Mac got together with Lee for a short period, at a nightclub outside of Babenhausen; Mac having a soda and Lee a beer as usual. As they sat at a table, Lee listening to the night noises all over, with some lastingly emphasized words, he said to Mac, “Brown has a gun, he’s looking for you, says you’ve raped his daughter, he’s miserably in raged over it.”
The fear was there like a cold clammy half-hollow iceberg, where once all he’d show was confidence, he looked sick.
“Does Belinda know of Melody?” asked Lee.
“I told her the night before,” his voice was of a deep sound, sort of coughing and grunts, as if he was thinking hard, as he talked. Lee could hear him breathing heavily. He couldn’t tell him not to be afraid, but he did say, “I told him, confronted him, about the wildness I saw in Melody, and that while I’m here if he shoots you, I’ll testify to the police to his threats.”
“Is he dead serious?” asked Mac.
“Well, who’s to say, but he acted like it, until I told him he’d be accountable.”
“I’ll have to check into this, maybe report what you said to the police, I mean I’ll report it.”
“Do you think his threats carry that far?”
“It sounds like he’d like to carry them out,” said Lee. “If you get shot…” Lee started to say then stopped abruptly. “Talk to Melody, maybe she’d be the best one to straighten things out?”
“I tried already to talk to her properly,” said Mac, “she’s out for revenge because I married Belinda. It’s really all about that.”
“You must have told her you’d marry her then?” Lee questioned.
“I shouldn’t have chanced it, but I did. You can hit me whenever you want, it was stupid of me to have said such a thing, but it’s what she wanted to hear, and I figured it would pass, but she thinks it was a solid deal.”
“Marvelous,” Lee said.


Chapter Seven
Lo and Behold

Six Weeks Later


“I’m ready,” Staff Sergeant Lee Erwin Wright said.
“You set in front,” said Mac, Belinda doesn’t mind sitting in the back, then we can talk on our way to the airport, and she don’t have to twist about looking at you as we talk, her belly is getting bigger by the day gets in the way you know (they were heading to Frankfurt; Lee was being relocated to Alabama).
“Yes, darling, said Belinda. “It sounds less strenuous, doesn’t it?”
“Of course,” said Mac.
“Finished with everything here in Germany, is that right?” remarked Belinda.
Just then, a Corporal Will Wilson came running up to the car, “I’ll see you this evening…!” he said (a white boy, no more than twenty-three or twenty-four years old, his new protégé).
“Yes,” said Mac.
“I’m ready if you’re ready Lee,” said Mac.
“Must make the 3:00 p.m., flight,” Lee said. (Then it occurred to him, he found his self a new white partner. Chances were he’d not be bothered all that much in the bars, hanging around with whity, sure that was his hidden motive, especially when he hit on the white gals in the clubs.)
The car stopped at a stop light, “Is everything all right?” asked Mac.
“Everything’s fine, just keep going ahead and to the right, you know the way to Frankfurt!”
“He’s a marvelous friend, isn’t he Belinda?” said Mac.
He was sitting almost too relaxed driving, thought Lee, “Mac really likes you Lee,” said Belinda.
“What do you mean?” asked Lee.
“He doesn’t even borrow me his Mercedes, but you he does you!” she replied.
“Yes, I was always afraid I’d crash it, and have to pay to fix it, and that would be my paycheck for six-months.” Both Belinda and Mac chuckled.
“Oh,” said Mac, “you’ll never find a better nigger than me!” jesting.


…after that

And that would be the last time they saw each other, talked to each other. Oh, what about the gun-bearer? You see, Lee called on the phone trying to find out what took place about that mishap—if indeed anything at all—after he left, as a result, he ended up talking to Sergeant Sims, not being able to get a hold of Mac. He had said the following to him:
“For some reason, Mac had felt after you left, he couldn’t be hit, shot, he was safe—and perhaps in a way he was right—but he was found dead nonetheless, in a hotel room no more than two weeks after you left, such a shame, he had been with Melody of all things, that very night. Perhaps she lured him there, but the gun that Sergeant Brown had was not the murder weapon, not at all, the police clearly stated that (as if it was beyond a doubt) and to the best of my understanding—of what reasoning that is that can be derived from this calamity—neither he nor she could just leave each other alone, they could not just stop it (both in some kind of fixation, beyond lust and compassion, perhaps we can call it, a tranquilized compulsion, like smoking cigarettes, the craving comes and until you light one, it doesn’t go away, it puts you under duress—although I think Sergeant Brown mellowed down after you talked to him, and perchance wasn’t the culprit as the police first thought, and everyone first thought—but I repeat his gun was not the weapon, and all the concluding evidence pointed elsewhere for malice. For one thing, she, Melody was suffering, I saw her a few times, spoke to her in passing, we just simply ran into each other. But don’t you worry; you didn’t have anything to do with it. If anything you ironed it out somewhat, or tried to. At least I’d like to think so.”


∙

(Melody’s Story) On one evening about two weeks after Sergeant Wright left for the states, Mac and I got together at the hotel garden, he got quite drunk. He was a gentleman as always. I had seen him earlier on that day, coming down the walk in at Babenhausen Military Base, we were between a fence, it all happened so mysteriously. After I asked him what time he’d like to meet me at the hotel garden—he had not eaten—but said he’d be ready to go as soon as lunch was finished; about frothy-five minutes to an hour. I trusted him only in that he would show up, in nothing else did I have confidence in him, because he was mysterious about his life, about everything in his life—a compulsive liar, who stacked lie upon lie until he forgot where he placed each lie, and sometimes confusing them, I got the truth—but only by holding in anger and hate, and I knew sooner or later that anger and hate, and under that, as my psychologist said, was hurt—it would come out.
It was a windy day but the sun was coming out, and it looked by the time he got to the garden cloudy, dark clouds were forming, and I knew behind clouds was rain. So I asked him to get us a room at the hotel in Babenhausen Township. I was going to shoot him right there and then, but it was no longer a wonderful day, and it seemed so downright nasty to have him dead in the wet grass, the devil forbid. Yes, I shot him in the hotel room, turned the music on loud, and had a 22-revolver, and shot him in the chest and head. Then I left the hotel and started down the road—buried the revolver in a cabbage patch. I saw his wife drive by, she was wearing a yellow and red scarf around her neck, I helped him pick it out, he said it was for his mother, he was always mysterious, but I knew beyond a doubt he’d show up, it’s just like fishing, he was caught on my hook, and I on his.


Police Station
(Babenhausen, West Germany)


Police Officer (sitting sullenly in an interrogation room with Melody): I know you shot him, who else could have? We can’t find the gun, and we know your father’s gun is a 38 Special, and you’re the only one with reason enough. You have to own up to this (he said).

Melody Brown: ((Young Melody appeared not to hear the Officer, she was thinking: what in heaven’s name makes him say ‘I know you shot him’ he thinks I shot him) (she smiles, a reluctant smile to the officer, says to her mind’s eye: he needs to press the subject, to bring me into action.)) Thank you officer, but I can’t understand a word you’re saying, I think you had a few too many beers today. (Melody thinking: let him be with his scornful look, I could shoot him too, just like that, what’s the difference. Her second self says: ‘No, no, Melody you are too cold, it doesn’t make any difference what he says, he can’t prove anything unless he finds the gun in the cabbage patch, then he can trace it…’

The Chief of Police (talking to the Police Officer doing the interrogation, in private): Let her go, look at her she’s got her own demons chasing her, she’s not meant to be a killer, if indeed she killed him, and I’d bet a month wages she’d confess under harder and longer interrogation techniques; but let her go, we can close the case, we got enough crazy people out there to amuse us, and keep us busy, why torture an already tormented girl. Put the file in ‘Unsolved.’


No: 516 • (11-12-2009) Chapters one and two
11-13-2009, Chapters three, four, five, six and seven (and ‘…after that’)
Parts two and three (Melody’s Story and Police Station, written on 11-15-2009)
Much of the story based on actual events (ds)

No Laughing Matter

(Donkeyland, a Side Street Saga—a 1950)


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


No: 526 (11-28-2009)