waking up as a child

As a child I woke up to sunshine. Even when the weather was rainy and overcast. I woke up to sunshine inside myself. That is part of the magic of childhood. Of my childhood. I woke up with an attitude of boundless possibilities. Of bright prospects. Except the one summer in grade school, when, for some deranged reason, I took a summer school class. How to make wooden puppets. It was taught by the one truly witch-like teacher at Tuttle. Her name is gone from my mind. But the memory of her visage still makes me uneasy. The poor woman was homely and impatient with children. She should not have become an elementary school teacher. She was fitted for a life as a matron at a women's prison. But somewhere along the line someone she trusted must have told her she should be a teacher. So she spent a lifetime intimidating children instead of keeping felons in check. The first morning I woke up that summer, the summer I was supposed to take her class, I experienced a keen sense of dread and dismay. These were foreign emotions to me up until then. Up until then I had gone about doing as I pleased, whether good or bad, and never worrying about the consequences. Good things meant pleasant rewards, or, at least, being left alone. Bad things brought a tongue lashing from my mother, which I accepted as the normal course of events that just had to be waited out like a thunder shower. So that first morning I simply stayed in bed. I had to pee, but I stayed in bed with my eyes squeezed shut. Pretending to be asleep. And mom came up to wake me up. But I wouldn't respond. It lay in bed, stiff as a board. She knew I was faking it. But she wisely decided not to make an issue of it. As a result, I was allowed to oversleep and to miss breakfast. And to miss the puppet making class. And miss the witch teacher. That poor old woman. She was in charge of the Patrol at Tuttle. The kids who got to wear a bright orange vest and wave a bright red flag had the awesome power to stop speeding cars on Como Avenue so kids could cross the street to and from school. Because sixty years ago that job was given to kids – adults had nothing to do with stopping traffic. Kids were allowed to take care of many things by themselves back then. Or maybe just ignored. Adults didn’t think of kids as a valuable resource so much as a nuisance that had to be kept busy so they wouldn’t intrude themselves too much. So dress ‘em up in a vest and give ‘em a flag to wave at traffic. As far as i know no kid was ever mowed down by a Chevy. The witch in winter made us Patrol members hot chocolate. But it was disheartening stuff. Thin and unsweet, with a mucous membrane forming on top of the cup. We accepted the mugs she gave us, then waited for her back to be turned to dump it out in the sink. Strange to say, every classroom at Tuttle had its own sink back then. Why? I guess to wash our hands. And kids used to throw up a lot more at school than they do now. If a kid turned green and raised his or her hand, the teacher gave a nod and the kid ran to the sink and hurled. I did it myself several times that i remember. Afterwards we sat back down at our desk like nothing happened. We weren’t sent to the school nurse or sent home. Kids were always vomiting. Teachers accepted it as part of the job. My mom didn’t worry when i came home from school to tell her i had thrown up. Unless i had stained my shirt. Like i said, kids were expected to share in the hardness and pain of life much sooner back in those wild and wooly days. Or that was my impression. My memory. And memory is always suspect. Don’t forget that. You never remember the truth. You remember a feeling or an emotion. Only inconsequential remembered details are the absolute rock bottom truth. And will be verified when we can “see as we are seen” after the resurrection. When I woke up as a kid I would stare at my bedroom ceiling. At the crack in the ceiling. It looked like the coast of an island. To me. I took myself to that island, that sunny island. Where there were palm trees and coconuts on the shore. Monkeys loping about with their charlie chaplin walk. I floated in the warm salt water until I finally drifted away from land. Then had to run to the bathroom. In the winter i awoke to the insistent clanking of the furnace in the basement. As soon as the thermostat was raised from the overnight 65 degrees to the daytime 72 degrees that behemoth down below shook itself from its torpor. Roaring to life with blazing fuel oil so that all the air vents expanded with the noise of a tray of cheap dinnerware falling on a concrete floor. I listened to that clanking while lying in bed with the covers up to my chin. I wore a pair of my dad’s capacious white socks to bed in winter to keep my feet warm. As the furnace clanked i put myself on a train. Swaying and clanking. Then stopping with a jolt as i got off with a suitcase full of R.C. cola and bags of Old Dutch Onion & Garlic potato chips. Then i’d be hungry enough to come downstairs for breakfast. In summer it was corn flakes. In winter it was cream of wheat. On sundays mom always made waffles. If i couldn’t fill each little hollow square of my waffle with syrup, if mom said ‘that’s enough!’ before each square was full, i refused to eat my waffle. Complaining it was too dry. Sometime i got more syrup. Sometimes i didn’t. But i always drank two big glasses of milk at breakfast. Then it was heave-ho, outside you go! Either to school or to frolic with my friends during summer vacation at Van Cleve Park. So waking up as a kid always meant sunshine to me. Nowadays i wake up twice each night to use the bathroom. Then have to read myself back to sleep. And when i can no longer keep my eyes closed i remember i have six pills to take. Supposed to be on an empty stomach. And don’t forget the vitamin d so your bones don’t get all brittle and start to break when you sneeze. That’s what the doctor said – ‘you’re losing too much calcium.’ he didn’t say my bones would break if i sneezed but he said i should take care not to fall down. He said take vitamin d. Lots of it. Amy buys me gummy vitamin d. Fruit flavored. So i guess i still wake up to sunshine. Because i wake up to her.

The Old Funeral Home. Chapter 6. Part One.

 

The Old Funeral Home  Chapter 6 Part One

We have taken a hiatus from the writing of this novel slash memoir. We started in the giddy springtime. (of our first year being remarried) then at the end of a full ripe summer we stopped. (ran out of ideas and triggers) Amy’s ears were getting worse. (it seemed like to him because he was tired of having to enunciate every word) My voice and imagination were growing ragged.

Now it is the new year. The first day of the new year. 2023. And we start again. 

But where do we start? I have to speak much louder and be more articulate for Amy to take my dictation. It wears me out rather quickly. (sorry, my hearing is as it has been since getting back together with Tim, I just make sure I hear and ask questions if I don’t. So to avoid the questions and the tedious conversations about what I thought I heard he tries to speak more clearly and slowly. And so it makes sense that he gets worn out.) I am tempted to just spout a series of haiku, and let the reader tear away the veil of obscurity. But that would be cheating. ( hahaha. Our memories are vague enough that it seems like cheating to write what we do since to rely on memory for what used to be or what happened is a work in obscurity already!!)

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One reason I loved that place is because it was crammed with books. The old funeral home in Tioga, ND, had books in the sewing room, in the back bedroom (library – bedroom) and the basement seemed to be walled with paperbacks (it wasn’t because we had flooding every year in the basement so all the books had been brought upstairs to the library that was the spare bedroom when one was needed. There were five bedrooms in the basement that used to be rooms for prepared bodies to rest while fitting them to their casket. Mom had done a remodel of the basement and put up covered sheetrock to make the rooms more appealing to the kids who slept there. It was pretty creepy to think about the kind of business that had to happen in that place. Especially if you were a teenager with a vivid imagination anyway!)

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I never asked Amy when we were courting why there were so many books around; where they all came from. But I’m asking her now. So “Amy, what’s the deal with all those books?”

“Well, Tim, those books are a representation of my mother’s love of reading. Her passionate unrequited love for learning in a formal institution. Her desire to instill in her children the value of reading and to fulfill her insatiable appetite for reading. She had several collections of great works. Earl Stanley Gardner’s 70 books. Louis L'aMour's 120 books. Zane Grey’s 40 books. National Geographic magazines from 1955 forward, same with Readers Digest magazines and Church magazines from 1966. We kept macaroni boxes, the three pound size, to store the magazines on the shelves. It was effective though not the prettiest look. 

Moving to a new home didn't happen often because we had lots of kids and stuff ( clothes and a few things for each person) but lots of books too. When we moved from Williston to the bar in Ross, ND in 1964, I don’t recall the unpacking of so many books but I remember several bookcases that my dad had made. They got ruined in the basement of the old funeral home because of the flooding. Mom had purchased a metal DIY bookshelf kit to line the walls of the bar first. Then the trailer house of the farm in 1972 because the tiny two bedroom house on the site would not hold our 11 children family. The day we moved into the old funeral home July 31,1977, child number 12 came to reside with us. We began our library in the basement until we discovered the flooding was annual, in the spring. I helped move the library upstairs when I came home from college one summer. When I graduated and came back to Tioga to teach I moved to the “Mother-in-law’s house” out behind the house. It was a three room place with a nook for a bathroom that I don’t count as a room. Moving to that place made sense because the spare bedroom had become a Teenager’s room as the little girls were growing and needing their own space. The metal bookcase was moved upstairs to the library in TOFH until one day it tipped and Dad –  being retired – put up fitted wooden bookshelves to hold the books and photo albums. The sewing room held the video collection of old video cassette tapes. There were some audio cassettes as well. Mom was big on recording everything. She had one of the first home movie cameras on “super 8” film. She graduated to a camera that filmed directly to a cassette tape as soon as that was available. My little sister has transferred much of that to DVD’s and we have a 5 disc set of all the footage.”

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Now I may be wrong. And if I am, Amy will be sure to correct the record. But I remember stealing my first kiss from her against one of the bookcases in the basement in the old funeral home in Tioga.

I have always considered the physical contact of the lips to be the most sensual and exciting moments in a physical relationship. I just tested this out now, by getting out of my recliner, and bending over Amy's in her recliner. And kissing her long and passionately. I feel sorry for those who have no one they can kiss. I know what it is like to kiss, to be kissed, and not to have anyone to kiss. I would prefer to kiss Amy on the lips to an anchovy Pizza or even my name on the New York Times Best Seller List. (now that’s saying something!!!)

I have finished for now. (every sentence but one in the previous paragraph has begun with the word “I”. Knowing that it is a writing red flag for professional writing, I work at varying each initial word. Tim doesn’t really care. That’s ok with me. And I get a sense of comfort knowing that he can decide to be who he is and not care what someone else thinks. Of course, when we work with the AI tools and must meet certain standards, I have the work of changing the things he has written if the beginning of sentences are more than two that start the same.)

 

I forgot to mention how involved my dad was in the collections of books. Mom and Dad used to read to each other before the days of TV. Dad liked to read for a while before he went to sleep, when he was retired. Mom joined a book of the month club early in their marriage. She’d get a deal if she ordered a series. I think she got three books at a time. They liked the Perry Mason mysteries and the jokes in the Reader’s Digest. The westerns of Zane Grey and Louis L’aMour. I forgot to mention Edgar Rice Burroughs. And the three sets of Encyclopedias.I didn’t ever read any of those books until I was in bed for months, pregnant and bleeding. Convalescing at my parent’s home in Tioga. In a room with no TV, with children and nothing to do but watch someone else care for them.) 

a new year letter to my kids.

 

4:27 a.m. Sunday January 1  2023

Amy and i are now binge watching Grey’s Anatomy.  All 18 seasons of it. We watched it from 5 p.m. until nearly 11 p.m. yesterday. We ate shrimp and drank sparkling white grape juice. I fell asleep before midnight but woke up for the fireworks and then couldn’t go back to sleep cuz of heavy night sweats and hot flashes(symptomatic of something or other – i get them all the time – but not worth going to the doctor about.) amy got up at 4 this morning, and i soon followed. So now she’s in the kitchen in her white pajamas cutting patterns with parchment paper for baking and i’m in my recliner writing this – whatever it is – hoping i’ll get sleepy enough again to steal a few more hours of slumber. We don’t need to be up early anymore on sundays – church doesn’t start until 1 p.m.

I’m going to put cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions, and diced salt pork in the slow cooker sometime today to serve for dinner. But right now i’m not obsessed with it, so maybe it won’t even happen until tomorrow. After all, a cabbage lasts a long time in the fridge. 

I figured i’d be up early today, so i spent time racking my brains last night trying to recall a story or incident from my fabled past to share this morning, but everything that came to mind i’ve already written about. So instead i’ll dive into a deep and tedious analysis of my poetry from this past week. I may discover something about myself that i didn’t know before. You will probably fall into a deep coma if you are foolhardy enough to continue reading this dreck.

Stay with the wife whom thou lovest;

the grass ain't no greener elsewhere.

Cherish her faults and her graces;

brickbats and pouting her spare.

Start the new year with a promise

to understand more of her heart.

Joy will be yours if you try it

(and you will grow deaf when she's tart.)

I wrote this item two days ago, after reading Ecclesiastes 9:9 –

Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.

This is a prime example of a poem getting away from me. I wanted it to be about the profound joy in marriage, to celebrate the richness and enduring comfort of it. But instead the rhymes led me to create a flippant new year’s resolution. Not what i wanted to say at all – but i couldn’t resist the gag ending once i wrote it down.  I recall a long time ago the advice of a professor friend of mine, John McCabe, who wrote the first biography of Laurel & Hardy. He said “don’t be afraid to kill your babies.” meaning don’t be afraid to edit and rewrite your work. I should have done that with the above piece – but . . . but . . . i’m also a big believer in what Allen Ginsburg said: “first thought, best thought.”  i usually go with the first draft of what i write, because most if not all of what i write is ephemera anyway – here today and gone tomorrow. About as worth remembering as a hallmark card.

John McCabe – now there’s a name i haven’t thought about in a long time. He was the very first ‘pen pal’ i ever had. So here’s a memory to share that i don’t think youse guys know about.

My first season with Ringling back in 1972 i wrote a fan letter to john mccabe via his publisher Random House, for his book mr. laurel and mr. hardy. In the letter i told him that his wonderful book was directly responsible for inspiring me to go to clown college. I wrote the letter on ringling stationary, with the ringling logo on it, and put it in a ringling envelope, with the gaudy ringling logo on it. It must have impressed him, for Lo & behold, he got my letter and responded by complimenting my writing and encouraging me to continue to write about being a circus clown – and that he would help me write something that a magazine might publish.  Heady stuff for an 18 year old kid, i can tell you that.

So we kept corresponding. He taught shakespeare at lake superior state university in sault ste marie, michigan. 

When i went to mexico in 73 with steve smith to study pantomime with maestro sigfrido aguilar our correspondence really picked up. Several letters back and forth each week. I had finally settled on writing a piece about  playing the musical saw and mccabe was helping me smooth out the rough spots.

I bought my musical saw from the Mussehl & Westphal company my first year with ringling, and by the time i was in mexico i was pretty good at it. I carried it around in an old trombone case, but before going to mexico i worked with my childhood friend wayne matsuura to make a new carrying case for it. We used two heavy wooden slabs. Gouged them out and put hinges on them for the saw and violin bow. Then attached a sturdy leather handle. That thing weighed a ton, but i lugged it all over mexico and then with the circus again when steve smith and i were the advance clowns for the blue unit of ringling.

I submitted my musical saw article to reader’s digest but never heard back from them. I kept corresponding with john mccabe over the years and finally got to meet him when i went to the clown college reunion in 1985 down in venice florida. By then he was retired from teaching, his wife was gravely ill, and his own health was bad. He was there as the guest speaker for the reunion. At first he didn’t remember me at all when i introduced myself to him, and then seemed to resent having me around. So i made myself scarce. It was quite a let down for me, and i never wrote him again after that.  Still, i recall the thrill of writing to a real bona fide university professor and having him respond – that really meant something to me as a young college-bereft kid. I still get a kick being around university professors. And others who are educated and well-spoken.

Whew . . . i’m glad i unloaded that memory. Now i’ll never have to deal with it again.

ev'ryone's an expert

about the healthy gut.

they've got a probiotic

to stop it going shut.

I'm weary of their input;

why can't they just stay mute?

my bowels are very private

(although they like to toot.)

This one practically wrote itself last friday after i deleted yet another probiotic cookie from the website i use to check the local weather.  An army may travel on its stomach, but apparently seniors depend on their bowel movements to get around. Amy has me eating lots of yogurt and i take 2 tablespoons of Metamucil a day, so my innards are just fine, thank you, if a little gassy. 

I wonder if i wrote any haiku last week? I’ll have to check . . . 

Yeah, i wrote this one last tuesday —

Why is it a glass

Of lemonade is all that

I can think of tonight?

This one i wrote last sunday  —-

It is peaceful on

The cold freeways this morning

With jaded Santas.

I remember at the time of writing these they impressed me as deep and portentous. Now on rereading, they don’t impress me at all. Please don’t include them in my posthumous anthology of great works. 

(it is now 5:37 a.m. and amy has gone back to bed. I wish i could, but i’m not a bit sleepy. So i’ll keep writing – worse luck for you!)

One final poem. This one is from last saturday —

The Grinch used cancel culture on Xmas eve this year. He got a lot of bigots to boycott Xmas cheer. No eggnog in the punch bowl. No Santa and his sleigh. The elves were sent to gulags. And kids ate kale all day. 

I’ve been trying to understand just exactly what cancel culture is. I have a lot of twitter followers who are journalists, and they use that term all the time. It seems to be a highly charged hot button phrase – with conservatives condemning it and liberals defending it. As far as i can dope it out, it means ostracizing people and organizations that hold views you don’t like or agree with. Boycotting a company, for instance, because their CEO backs Trump's reelection or unfollowing somebody on social media like elon musk because he comes across as such a jerk and has fired a lot of employees at his companies.  If that is what cancel culture really is then getting upset about it is just a tempest in a teapot. People are always boycotting things in the United States, which i think they have a perfect right to do.  So anyway i made fun of the whole thing with the above poem. Very topical, don’t you think? And as enduring as a soap bubble. 

Well, this document is now over 1500 words long. So i better rein it in and end your suffering, my poor reader. It’s now 6 a.m., and the sun won’t be up for another hour and a half. I’ll do some reading and try to fall back asleep like amy.  I’m reading a book called Shakespearean by a newspaper editor named Robert McCrum. I think i may have already shared with you that i want to dig deeper into shakespeare, since it costs nothing to read his work and comments about him and his work. It fascinates me — as much as anything fascinates me nowadays.  I find that i get intensely interested in a subject for all of ten or twenty minutes and then either nod off or get distracted with thoughts of what new recipe can i discover using anchovies and tofu.

Adieu, mon amis.  Heinie Manush.