Side Show

 Sometimes, when I'm trying to get back to sleep on a restless night, I'll think about the street where I grew up.  Though it's changed radically in the last 65  years, the homes on that small block remain the same.  Their appearance, and the people who inhabited them are no longer the same, but as I go up and down the block of this post-war little suburban neighborhood, I can still fill the houses with the names and faces that inhabited them back then.  Of course there were always a couple of homes where I drew a blank.  Either they had no kids or their inhabitants were far more transient than everyone else.  

The last time I did this roll call of names and faces, I remembered an older couple, Doris and Henry, whose kids were grown and on their own.  I recalled how they took my sister and me to the circus when I was ab out 8 or 9 years old.  They must have asked our parents and missed taking their own kids on some level.  In any event, my sister and I went to the circus with them sometime around 1955 or so.  

While I do remember the huge tents, the railroad cars, the clown cars, and the big top, that's not what stays with me.  Even the elephants, the trained horses, and the trapeze flyers, while memorable, aren't the primary memory.  There was a woman who spun around high above the crowd holding on by her teeth to a rope of some kind.  The ringmaster and the circus music all hold their place in my memory.  But something else remains paramount.  Something I retain from that experience stands above everything else.  We went to the Side Show.  

Of course Side Shows no longer exist, because our culture (for the most part) has evolved from the time we put "freaks" on public display.  But at that time, this was a big deal nd these abnormal people often found being a part of a side show was a good way to earn a decent income and see the world.  

The side show I attended had the usual  suspects.  There was a bearded lady, a giant, a "fat lady" and all manner of "midgets and folks of unusual height, big or small.  Just writing this description now makes me violate the politically correct rules of describing people who are not the norm.  

The man that was billed as the "Giant" was unusually tall.  He sat in a chair in front of a circus type poster that often accompanied each participant.  We walked from one "booth" to another as if these folks were in a gallery of the absurd.  The "giant" had a six pack of empty 7-Up bottles next to his chair, as if he'd drunk each one continuously to quench his giant thirst.  There was a man who swallowed a sword right in front of us!  In another mini-stage sat a woman with no arms or legs.  She wore a light yellow dress that covered her torso but it was impossible to determine how she balanced herself.  Nobody spoke, we just gawked.  I recall she was not as young as other members of this show.  She appeared to be over 45 or 50 to me then.

 

The most unusual thing I recall was the man who had "alligator skin" on his back.  He came out of a curtained off area wearing a bathrobe.  After explaining that he grew concerned one day about a scaly growth on his back, he went to a doctor who was equally mystified.  Eventually, what resembled alligator skin covered his entire back.  He then turned around and faced away from the small crowd that had gathered and removed his robe.  Standing there in a bathing suit, he revealed what did appear much like the skin covering an alligator.  No other explanation was given a there were a few gasps from the audience at seeing his condition.

As this most memorable day came to a close, Doris and Henry took us to a souvenir stand and said we could each have one thing.  My sister chose a glittery baton that she twirled for a few years afterward.  I chose a plastic sword.  I never tried to swallow it.  Alligator skin was not available.

Saving our Lives

 For the last month, I've been teaching a writing class at my local community center.  It occurred to me after meeting many retirees in a Tai Chi class that many of these folks have great stories to tell and that doing so would enhance memory and social interaction.  The later, of course, is vital in these post COVID years.  

I've been pleasantly surprised at how this little class is going.  I figured that if  took all the best practices and prompts from my teaching career and offered them in an non-threatening manner, that there would be interest in spending an hour a week meeting and then doing a little homework to rekindle the declining art of "creative writing."  Of course, all writing is creative writing, but people sometimes need permission or at least a vehicle to go ahead and indulge in the practice. At our age, we write to save our lives, literally and figuratively.

At our last meeting we read and discussed models where we write about our families.  Either a relative or family friend that spoke with an accent, had original pronunciations, or expressions or perhaps was just a character worthy of a portrait or sketch.  The assignment was to return next week with a vignette and we would all share and respond to each other's work.

Here's my piece:  

Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Clery were the Bickersons.  They acted and sounded like that radio show couple that seemed to argue and bicker about everything they did.  Dorothy was my father's sister and her husband, Clery, was her partner in drama.  He hailed from another world.  Born in Montana, Clery was the opposite of his New York born, urban, somewhat cultured wife.  Her Jewish, well-read, pseudo sophisticated background clashed sharply with his work with tools, work with your hands, mechanically inclined mentality.  Opposites do attract.  

They had no kids but lavished attention in excess on a small terrier named Prissy.  Who names a dog Prissy?  My Aunt Dorothy, that's who.  Prissy swam in their backyard pool, would "beg" for table scraps, and was, in all ways, highly indulged.  She often endured being adorned with small hats, ribbons, bells, or anything Dorothy deemed humorous or attractive.  

My family would see Dorothy and Clery on holidays.  It was usually Thanksgiving at her house and Christmas at ours.  A typical Thanksgiving would see my parents, my sister and I arriving around noon and the big meal being served somewhere between 2-3 pm.  Clery, my dad, and I would mostly remain in the living room while my mom and sister would assemble the big meal in the kitchen.  By 1:45  I'd be called into the kitchen and given the privilege of licking the Mix-Master blades free of any clinging mashed potatoes.  Sometimes Uncle Clery's mother would attend these Thanksgiving dinners. We called her Grandma Errett and she was a kind, elderly woman in her late 80s, with beautiful white hair.  She was good for a few childhood stories that sometimes served to embarrass Clery, but one striking thing about her always held my attention,  Grandma Errett was a Spanish-American war widow.  She was one of the last women living to collect a benefit payment from the U S Government from her late husband.  I always wanted to talk to her about that, but never dared to take that chance.

After one such predictable meal, we all sat at the table and awaited the time when the pies would appear.  Gone were the platters of turkey and stuffing, the peas with white pearl onions, the green beans and both kinds of potatoes, yams and mashed.  Gone was the gravy boat, the two kinds of cranberry sauce, canned and homemade,  Gone were the dinner rolls.  All that remained was a well used cloth napkin and a dessert fork.  The adults had coffee cups and my sister and I had refilled water glasses.  Two kinds of pie would eventually make their way to the table.  The pumpkin pie was my favorite, but Grandma Errett always made a mince pie for Uncle Clery.  Usually he was the only one who ate the mince pie.  To me it represented the fruit cake of the pie world.  Something nobody wanted, but he always looked forward to it so there it sat, every year.  On this most memorable Thanksgiving, Dorothy and Clery were vigorously discussing whether or not the pumpkin pie should come out of the oven.  She insisted it was done.  He countered that it wasn't. 

    "Clerman," she always called him by his proper name when she meant business, "We're serving this pie right now."

 We all sat, plates empty, waiting for the decision.  Clery relented and Dorothy brought the pie to the table.  

Taking the silver plated pie server in hand, Clery, still mumbling low that the pie wasn't completely baked, proceeded to cut a slice.  He held the small wedge, balanced on the slicer out for all to see.  It trembled, it wiggled, it slowly slipped off the utensil and landed with a polite plop on the tablecloth, clearly underbaked. Uproarious laughter ensued.  Eventually, we all partook of a properly baked pumpkin pie. But the damage was done.  From that moment forward all pies were under deep scrutiny amid giggles.  

This aunt and uncle of mine were always a bit of a mystery.  They'd had separate lives well before they married and both worked.  My uncle had a skill that was in much demand in post war suburban living.  He refinished bowling alleys.  In the San Fernando Valley there were many bowling alleys and he worked for an outfit called Mar Lindo Lanes.  Loosely translated from the Spanish, "beautiful ocean" lanes.  Clery had the look of a 1940s man about town.  He sported a pencil this mustache with black slicked back hair that must have worn a Zoot Suit sometime in his youth.  On occasion, he'd deliver a few big boxes of discarded bowling pins to our garage.  Splintered and cracked, these wooden discards made excellent fire wood.  MY sister and I would pick out the best  ones and use a basketball to play "Bowling Alley" with the neighborhood kids.  Using a basketball and setting up a makeshift bar, we'd challenge each other to a game while drinking all manner of cocktails made from one ingredient: water.  This neighborhood attraction didn't last very long because we got tired of setting up the pins and repeatedly knocking them down.  We also had to stop and pee too often.  Uncle Clery always drove a Cadillac.  Always.  It was part of his semi-gangster look.  He smoked a pipe and often didn't mind me showing my neighborhood posse how to access the gas tank on his 1956 Cadillac by pushing in the round part on the left tail light.  Very James Bondish well before James Bond.

Aunt Dorothy worked as a secretary in a savings and loan.  She was always a character with her overindulged dog, her spoon collection, and her penchant for reminding my father that he ran over her doll with his tricycle 40 years earlier.  Dorothy and Clery's house was so different than the home I lived in.  Her bathroom had rugs and Glade air freshener.  Her kitchen had all manner of chotchkies.  And then there was the den.  A dark room in the front corner of the house contained everything that didn't fit in anywhere as well as a piano.  I'd often retreat there and feign music ability by plunking out what I considered jazz.  Then one day I chanced to open the piano bench and found buried treasure in the form of sheet music.  I discovered Duke Ellington's Mood Indigo among other classic pieces.  I had no idea that he was into Jazz and years later would regret that I never had the opportunity to talk to him about some of the seminal figures like Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller.  I should have picked up on a hint when one day the piano was replaced with a Hammond organ.  Clery rarely played for us, but the he did he transformed himself, donning glasses and looking very much the musician rather than the mobster.  He was able to play fairly well despite the fact that he'd once sawed off the tip of his left index finger and had plastic surgery to create a blunt pointy stub complete with a malformed fingernail.  As a child, I always wondered where the plastic was on that finger.  

Postscript.; We stopped going toDorothy and Clery's house for Thanksgiving after my mom died.  I was 19, in my sophomore year of college and my sister had married and lived in another city.  A few years later, I left Southern California and only returned occasionally.  Never on Thanksgiving. My dad told me Uncle Clery got into some legal trouble and had been arrested for something like "lewd behavior." His dark side finally surfaced, I figured, not completely shocked.  A year or two after that, my dad told me he died.  Apparently, he drove out to a lake north of the valley, parked, and proceeded to take his life via the exhaust pipe of his beloved Cadillac.  I later figured out that Grandma Errett, now in her 90s had outlived all her children.

Aunt Dorothy lived on and ultimately outlived her brother, my dad.  She'd write my sister and I from time to time making sure we would help her make decisions as she aged and assuring us we were beneficiaries of her estate.  About a year before she died, she befriended a couple who once gave her  ride home from a medical appointment.  Over the next year, as her eyesight declined and she began to show signs of dementia, these good Samaritans convinced her to sigh over her home and entire estate to them.  The last time I saw her, a friend took me over to her home for a visit.  Reminding me that she was now "Legally blind" about every 10 minutes, I met the swindling friend who was evasive about any documents that she signed.  When the house cleaner took me aside to tell me something, the whole picture emerged. In broken English she whispered, "You Aunt want to give you some money, but she won't let her."  Before I left I reminded the bad samaritan just who I was, but knew deep inside, the damage had been done.  The last image I have of Aunt Dorothy is her joy at being given a Milky Way candy bar from this evil grifter as she struggled to open the wrapper.

How Blue Can You Get

 I've been reading Imani Perry's fascinating collection of essays called Black In Blue, which is a brilliant meditation on the color blue in Black culture.  Aside from the many historical references and anthropological connections between the significance of the color blue in African and African American culture, Perry delves into many areas that might not be well known to those outside the culture.  For example, the way we know where the graveyards for many who were enslaved were is through the presence of periwinkles on the ground, planted there.  Former slaves were not allowed to have grave markers (imagine that!) so their descendants marked the sites with blue periwinkles so they could be located and remembered.  Another thwarted attempt to erase the past and strip people of their identity.

The book goes into important explanations of blue notes in the development of the blues and jazz music.  But there are other connections present that extend all the way to the reason why Coretta Scott King wore a blue dress on certain occasions, to the use of indigo dyes in African and then American work clothing.

While reading this book, I carried an idea in the back of my mind about one of the most interesting and unforgettable people I have ever come across.  In the late 1970s I attended an Oral History conference in San Diego.  While there I came across a self-styled storyteller called Brother Blue.  His "costume" was obviously blue, complete with bits of colored yarn streaming off his blue jacket and blue pants.  He wore a blue beret, occasionally played a harmonica (aka blues harp) and often spoke in rhyme.  He proudly announced that he was the first person to receive his Ph.d in Storytelling.  I did not know it at the time that his wife was a noted oral historian.  Brother blue was also adorned with blue butterflies drawn on his face and hands as well as pinned to his clothing.  He can best be described as a poet, storyteller, street performer.  

Much to my surprise and delight, Imani Perry's book has an entire chapter on Brother Blue near the end of the book.  I was overjoyed.  The information gave me much more insight into Hugh Hill, aka Brother Blue.  He was considered the unofficial poet laureate of Boston because he often performed in Harvard Square.  

At the time I first encountered Brother Blue I was working on a radio program about people who rode the rails and the music of hobos and rail riders.  In San Diego I had heard Brother Blue tell a story called "Bobo the Hobo." I really wanted this for my program because it not only fit the theme, it was a beautiful tale that would add both insight and storytelling to the music I'd already collected.  Ironically I did not have a tape recorder with me at the conference. I did, however, pick up a flyer about future Brother Blue appearances and noted about two months later, Brother Blue was slated to be in Oakland, California, where I was then living.  When the appointed evening came, the weather was miserable.  In a nasty downpour, I excused myself from a social gathering about 7:00 pm and headed to a small theater in downtown Oakland.  Protecting my portable recorder from the rain, I made my way to the rear of the little theater.  There was a smattering of folks in attendance. At the scheduled time, Brother Blue emerged from behind a curtain and with bells jingling, and a blue spotlight on him performed "Bobo the Hobo."  I stayed for about an hour and then, with recorder and new cassette firmly secured and protected made my way home.  Brother Blue became part of my program called, "Ridin' On Down." an oral history of Hobos and Rail Riders.

I recently learned that Brother Blue died in 2009 at the age of 88.  He certainly left his mark. a beautiful blue one.

Walk in My Moccasins

 They are soft.  That makes them feel good on your feet.  These palomino colored moccasins are custom made.  When you go to the shop, you take off your shoes and they trace the shape of your foot on paper.  This blueprint for your pair begins the process.  The leather is seductive.  It's hard not to stroke it.  It's tactile, like the softness I once felt inside a horse's ear. 

They lace up and afford ankle support.  I love that they go perfectly with blue jeans.  I wear them daily from Spring 1967 to early 1969, when I alternate them with Frye boots. 

 "Moccasins by White Hawk", were made by artisan Win Fairchild, owner of Fairchild Woodcraft, a Blackfoot Indian crafts store in North Hollywood, California in the 1960s-1970s.

These Moccasins make a statement.  They are part of the uniform that says I work for the counter culture.  They say count me in as one who values social change and social justice. I'm aware of cultural appropriation. Though at the time the term wasn't used.  To consume and display something from native culture was something that showed no harmful intent.  Not then.  My intentions were always respectful.  I wanted those mocs for the way they looked, and what they say.  

The soles of the moccasins have a thin hard rubbery soul.  No leather touches the ground.  I  walk mostly on pavement, so the soles take some wear and tear.  Eventually, after about 5 years, the leather under my big toenail on the right foot wears thin.  A small hole emerges.  This pinhole size breach remains tiny, but concerning.  I can stick a small piece of duct tape underneath, invisible, matching color.  Eventually, the years take their toll and because I have a full-time teaching job, I wear them less and less.  Over the next 5 decades, I move a few times, and these Fairchild Moccasins get buried deep in my closet.  One day, I realize I no longer have them.  I could never trash them, not me.  I must have laid them to rest with some sort of ritual, but I can't recall how.  Repression is a defense mechanism, isn't it.  

I don't think they are available anymore.  In retirement, I have lots of opportunities to wear a pair daily.  I'll look into this, with no expectations, but fond memories.

A Personal Writing History

 Next week I start a new adventure.  I'll be teaching a writing class for Seniors who want to write about  some of their most memorable experiences.  "Writing from Memory" will be offered at my local community center and is open to people 60 years of age or older.  I decided to offer this class because in recent years I've met a number of older folks in my neighborhood and this idea has always been met with a positive response.  Aside fro teaching some writing skills and providing a platform for reading and getting feedback to their work, my main goal for this small group of "students" I will have is to simply have fun.  

One of the introductory activities in this class will be to write a personal writing history.  This will serve to introduce us to each other and inform me and my students what experiences, issues, skills, and expectations are in our little group.  Like everything else, I will complete each task and prompt with everyone.  Heresy personal writing history.

    One afternoon, from the 4-year-old days of my like I wanted to impress my mother.  I scanned a comic book I had for just the right word.  Though I couldn't read yet, I could spell a few fords, most notably M I L K and M O T H E R.  I figured to be a writer I needed to put words together so I was looking for a word to copy next to a word I already knew.  It was a cowboy comic book with colorful panels and lots of action that  I perused.   The notion that if I put a new word with one I already knew would be enough to call myself a writer.  

    To call myself a writer, this Western comic book, full of cowboys and cattle rustlers, good guys with white hats, and bad guys with black hats and 5 o'clock shadows, would provide just what I needed.

About 4 pages in the first story, there it was, a beauty, Only 4 letters long, it had a nice symmetry to it.  I could handle this one.  For the next 10 minutes, I dutifully copied my new word next to one I already knew. Having written MOTHER as neatly as I could, I decided the new word belonged right in front of it.  So there it was, ready to be seen by my mom.  I had written my first full sentence.

    My mom skillfully controlled her reaction.  "What's this," she smirked, half smiling, half suppressing a cautious laugh.  I had presented her with the sentence: DEAD MOTHER.  That was my beginning as a writer.

    Fortunately things improved from that rocky start.  Throughout elementary and middle school, my mom was there to critique my written assignments and somberly academic writing.  My dad helped too.  They continued to inspire and inform my work through high school.  By my first year in college my mom became critically ill, and by the end of that year, she died.  My attention turned to writing poetry along with the academic writing that increased exponentially.  School essays for my mind, poems for my soul.  

Because of the volume and content of reading I did as a college student, my writing really blossomed.  The voice that was always there found new life in essays, poems, and even a one act play.  I learned to defend my claims in Blue Books on 3-hour finals and to research and illustrate papers on everything from the blues as historical evidence to construct validity in sociological studies.

    After college I continued to write poetry, but this time mixed my poems with watercolor paintings influenced by the work of Kenneth Patchen and Paul Klee. When I revisit some of that work, I realize that I really have been an eyewitness to history and cultural change.  

    Throughout the 1970s I wrote curriculum with a talented group of educators that became lifelong friends.  But teaching was never enough, so I explored other interests and that led to a side career as a working journalist.  Serving as N. California correspondent for the two different Thoroughbred horse magazines, I wrote personality profiles, covered big races, and editorials.  Occasionally, I'd meet fairly famous people who inhabited this fascinating sub-culture.  I even got to cover the Kentucky Derby.  It was all I expected and more,  Truly, a once in a lifetime experience.

    While teaching writing, I continued to develop as a writer.  Being part on an on site research collaborative, I wrote pieces about everything from student motivation to the interpretation the dreams of teachers.  With each year comes new stories, novels, poetry and creative non-fiction.  The writers of recent years continue to influence me just as much as the writers of decades past.  I particularly admire the work of Toni Morrison, and the brilliant nonfiction work of John Krakauer.  

    With retirement came more opportunity to read and write for myself.  I co-founded The Gutter, a writing group in Portland, Oregon and was an active member for over 6 years.  Occasionally I have  been asked to participate in public readings mostly at local bookstores.  More recently, I stated a local discussion group on Sun Magazine.  The Reader's Write section always inspires and motivates new pieces.  I'vebeen lucky to have two such responses to their prompts published.

What A Life

 Tomorrow is the memorial for my mother-in-law, Betsy Minkler, who passed about a month ago.  She lived to be 100, and died shortly thereafter, as if that marked the finish line.  A perfect 100.  

When a person lives to be 100 or more, their life becomes a paradigm for the century they experienced.  Born in 1925, the Roaring 20s were in full force.  One could easily argue that the 2020s are shaping up to be quite memorable in their own way.  

Betsy's century on earth was marked by World War, a "Great Depression," the development of Television, modern cars, space travel, global warming, the rise, and dare I say, the domination of technology in all phases of our lives.  Betsy rode in all manner of cars, from the early Fords to the electric Toyotas.  She dialed phone numbers and she spoke on phones where she need only touch one number to be instantly connected with a friend.  

And friends...she had many.  Betsy was a people person, once telling a pastor who came to see her near the end, that what she wanted to be remembered for was her love of interesting people.  Anyone here today could tell you a story or two about how everything would stop when she met a new person.

In her last years, Betsy ambled around her home in a walker with a personalized license plate that read Ol' Betsy.  The woman had a sense of humor.  That alone probably contributed to the reason she lived such a long life.  She may hold a record somewhere for number of memorial services attended in one year. 

I could tell Betsy stories for a good while, but I'll conclude with just one thought.

In my teaching career, I worked with many bright 11th grade students in an Honors English program.  One of the singular features of that course was the assignment of what was then called an I-Search paper.  This was an alternative to the traditional term paper where instead of using secondary sources, students would interview people about things they really cared about.  It could be a possible profession or even a profound philosophical question.  A historical event or something, anything, they felt passionate about.  Over the years they never ceased to astonish me with the topics they came up with.  One year, a student came up with the topic What's it like to be 100 years old?  I was overjoyed! I thought, what a great topic.  But it never came to fruition.  Ultimately she chose another topic.  I have always wondered what wisdom that paper might have contained.  Now I know.  

I'll close with something that I learned from an old friend long since gone who was a personal friend of Woody Guthrie.  Bob Dewitt was just about the most unforgettable character I ever met.  When the outstanding biography of Woody, by Joe Klein came out, it was entitled "Woody Guthrie-A Life."  Bob once told me it should have been entitled "Woody Guthrie-What A Life." I'll steal that line now and end with Betsy Minkler-What A Life.

Signs of the Times

 Like many in this country, I made my way to last Saturday's rally and march to speak out against the Trump regime's attempt to capsize democracy.  Thousands joined me at Naito Plaza in Portland.  Similar  marches were taking place in every major city in this country.  It was time, again, to take to the streets and put our bodies on the line.

I went by bus with a group of friends and neighbors from North Portland.  We were soon separated by the huge crowd, but no matter, we were prepared for that and made sure everyone knew how to get back home and felt free to exit the large crowd whenever we felt necessary.  At 78, my marching days go back to the late 1960s and it's hard not to compare experiences.  Of course the technology has had a major impact.  I noticed that all the speakers at the rally held a cell phone from which they occasionally referred to for notes on their comments.  People were constantly snapping pictures or making videos.  A drone hovered, repeatedly over the crowd and criss-crossed the vista recording footage of people on the street and all along the nearby Morrison Bridge.  

Many photographs were taken of the myriad homemade signs people held.  My neighbor handed me a sign to carry having been to a sign-making party the night before.  She saw I held noting and encouraged me to carry an extra she had.  My sign was a caricature of Donals Trump as Humpty Dumpty, a cracked egg, with the caption: "Eggistential Crisis."  I got many requests to stop so someone could take a photo.  

When I had the room to take a break, I jotted down some of my favorite messages the sign carries.

Here's what resonated the most with me:

Beware of Doge

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty

The Doge ate my Constitution

IKEA has better cabinets

This won't end well

We are ruthless, now act accordingly,

And, this one,  carried by an elderly woman who looked to be in her 80s, which made reference to the Israel/Palestinian conflict : Both Sides Wrong  End Genocide

There were many others.  Many, many, others including a repurposed fire truck with  a large sign reading "Turd Reich"  displaying the faces of Trump, Musk and a few others drawn as Hitlerian Nazis.  

The signs kept everyone laughing and calm, I think.  That's necessary when so many people are jammed together in a small space.  Of course the speakers included all manner of related and sometimes unrelated causes.  As Jimmy Durante used to say, "Everybody wants to get into the act."  That has come to be expected.