Novel. The Old Funeral Home. Chapter Four. Part Two.

 

The Beloved at her computer. Wednesday. March 30.

2022. She often brags to me: "I can do boring."

She well knows I cannot. That's what keeps

me from doing much with Family Search.

The tap water in Tioga was delicious. That's because they put in a new well in 1991. I reported on it. Because, at the time, I was the News Director for radio station KTGO. Dave Guttormson, manager. 

Full Disclosure: I was actually just a deejay, but Dave let me do news on the side just so I could maybe somehow with god's blessing and if there were a blue moon get a regular broadcast news job again so we didn't have to live with the Beloved's parents in the Old Funeral Home. I didn't get paid any extra for it.

I don't remember how I got hired for the position. Most anyone could get a deejay job there. Even the Beloved's sister Ova. The station was a daytimer -- it could only operate from sun up to sun down. I manned the board from noon until sign off. In winter that was just four and a half hours. The station's format was country-western. I have always loathed country-western. Except for Homer & Jethro. 

We'll get back to that loathing in a moment, folks.

But first I want to go back to KSAL Radio in Salina, Kansas. After I got released from my contract to be Ronald McDonald in Wichita, I was able to latch on to a news job at KSAL. It lasted all of 2 days. The first day at work I wore a necktie, as was required in the employee handbook. The second day I showed up wearing a bow tie, and was summarily fired for insubordination. For wearing a bow tie. As Jonathan Brewster says in Arsenic and Old Lace: "I have led a strange life."

Anyway. Back to Tioga, with the new well. That water was great. I drank glass after glass. It was always ice cold, coming out of the North Dakota tundra as it did. Everyone drank tap water. There was no such thing as bottled water in town. Except for Perrier -- which only a Rockefeller could afford. Anybody else who drank it was considered a foreign spy or effete Hollywood snob. It was the stuff that Thurston Howell the Third would have on Gilligan's Isle if he could get it.

The best tasting water I ever had was as a kid in the summer. When we'd slake our thirst straight out of the vinyl garden hose in the backyard. After fermenting in the hot sun all day, that tube of water, bursting with toxic chemicals from the vinyl, had a toothsome tang I can still smack my lips over. It's probably why I grew a second liver.

As you can tell, I'm not big on chronology in this memoir/novel/taradiddle. I've given up telling you what year this or that happened. I'm depending on the Beloved to do it. If she wants. She likes detail. I like vagueness. 

In the summer at KTGO I was putting in long hours, working from noon until after 9 p.m. At least they seemed like long hours to me. The roustabouts in the Tioga oilfields, of course, were working 48 hours straight. But they were being paid a relative fortune for it. Whereas my salary, if I remember correctly, was a measly five bucks an hour.

I introduced one of Willie Nelsons songs by saying, on the air, "Here's Willie Nelson singing Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain. This is a favorite of mine, because it gives me enough time to hit the john."

I got reprimanded for that by Guttormson in a curious way. He demoted me from doing any news to just plain deejay and gave the news position to a friend of his, an itinerant plumber. 

This did not sit particularly well with me, although I didn't receive a pay cut or anything. Still, now my chances of getting another news position were beyond the point of nil.

At the same time I had a flourishing side gig going on. Writing Letters to the Editor for the Minot Daily News. They would print all that I sent them. They were humorous letters, along the lines of Petroleum V. Nasby, (Google it -- it's a real person.) So I had high hopes that if a real radio job never came along I might be the next Mark Twain. But I wrote a letter lambasting country western music, saying it all sounded like 'a drunk in a brick alley arguing with a prostitute." It got printed in the Minot Daily News. And for that, Guttormson fired me.

Where did we go after that? I don't remember. Maybe the Beloved does.

I remember we once went to her high school reunion in Stanley. Each alumnus was invited to stand and give a brief history of themselves since graduating. Part of the Beloved's verbal autobiography was: "We have moved 28 times since being married -- and we're not even in the military!" 

[The Beloved is too busy folding laundry to add anything to this particular part at the moment.]

(Where did we go after that? (Tim went to Minneapolis and did some job hopping and apartment hunting. He lived with his parents while I stayed with the children at my folks house. I moved the three oldest into the library where it was warmer than staying in the little house. I stayed on the couch in the living room with Sarah’s crib next to me. Sarah was a sweet baby who never cried. My dad formed a relationship with her because she was so quiet. She got pneumonia and had to be hospitalized for a week during that winter. The kids and I went to the hospital to be with her. I worked for the school from time to time as a gymnastics judge. It was money but not very much. Tension was high between my parents and me because I had so many kids there and they had their own family. My little brother was not yet 6 years old! I remember one phone call from Tim where I told him in tears that I was so tired of doing this!)  I don't remember. Maybe the (my)Beloved does. (I don’t blame Tim for not remembering the way things went. He was working constantly at forgetting it.)

**************************************

I've started taking melatonin again. My current sleep pattern is to go to bed at 11p.m. and then be awake at 4a.m. I'd give anything to sleep a few more hours. When I'm awake so early and the Beloved continues her deep rest I like to write short religious verse for Twitter. Today I wrote:

When God looks down from heaven/I wonder what he sees/to give his heart deep pleasure/and set his mind at ease/The sinner's restitution, and kindness to a foe/I think make him feel better/than any chanting show.

I consider these rhymes as a sort of social media missionary work.

Also this morning I sent some verses to Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal, about the Post Office:

Ben Franklin ran the Post Office/He made it pay its way/Delivery was certain/and came neatly twice a day/The penny post they called it/knitting folks together by/encouraging the writing/of epistles fond or sly/Good Ben I'm sorry to report/the Post Office right now/has slowed to an eccentric crawl/mixed up like stale chow chow/Perhaps your portly spirit/with great humor to deploy/cajoling can get action/from this fellow named DeJoy/Otherwise dear Franklin/I'm afraid the mail is dead/with new trucks blowing greenhouse gas/while sitting in their shed!

The fleshpots of Egypt

 The fleshpots of Egypt are always at hand/making us slaves in our very own land/A famine of wisdom and plain common sense/leaves us with nothing but hollow pretense/Send us the manna of tolerance, Lord/Deliver us from dogma's dull rusty sword!

Haiku: 妻と散歩 A walk with my wife.

 

a walk with my wife

in the freshness of morning --

stepping on cold ants.

妻と散歩

朝の鮮度で-

冷たいアリを踏む。

a walk with my wife

to the rec center --

did you bring a towel?

妻と散歩
レックセンターへ-
タオルを持ってきましたか？

a walk with my wife

in her yellow coat and scarf --

I feel like strutting.

妻と散歩
彼女の黄色いコートとスカーフで-
気が遠くなるような気がします。

Novel: The Old Funeral Home. Chapter Four. Part One.

 

The Beloved in our kitchen at Valley Villa in Provo. Sunday,

March 27. 2022. She's getting a bowl of shredded wheat

ready for breakfast. She will use a lot of cream but no sugar.

Part 1

The old funeral home in Tioga seemed windswept in the winter. The same way Wuthering Heights was windswept in the novel. Located at the bottom of a hill,it was topped by the nursing home and hospital. It seemed to me that some kind of Stephen King cold dark horror flowed down from those buildings in the winter. Because it got gosh almighty cold, and the winds that howled about the old funeral home took on a desperate character. Often malignant. 

But that is the curse and blessing of a poetical mind like mine; like the weather, it tends to go to extremes. So as this piece is written on a balmy March morning  — a sunny 72 degrees – I am shuddering with imaginary chilblains at the remembrance of those cold, cold Tioga winters that I and my beloved spent in North Dakota.

According to the National Weather Service, the coldest place in North Dakota ever recorded was in Parshall on Feb 16, 1936 when it dropped to 60 below. And I can tell you from personal experience that Tioga was not very far behind. (I never thought to complain about the cold. In our family we just dealt with it. If it was cold, you just bundled up good. If it wasn’t cold you were glad to get out in nice weather. I think it was a lot of bragging about the cold instead of complaining. I often heard many people say things like “cold ‘nuf for ya?” and “the cold keeps out the riff-raff!” When the oil boom was in full swing we had many people come to North Dakota who had never experienced extreme cold. The weather reporters on all the radio and TV stations began to publish education about weather things. Things I grew up with because my parents and other family and friends all knew how to deal with the cold. Newcomers were “stupid” – uneducated – about it. Wind chill was important to know about. If it’s -20 and the wind is blowing at a simple breeze of 20 mph the wind chill is  -40. So it feels like -40 and you want to be prepared for  -40. That means cover your face, cover your head, zip up your jacket and wear either long johns under your clothes or show pants over your clothes if you plan to be out in the weather longer than a couple minutes. Always have extra gear in your trunk when traveling because your car can act up any time in that kind of cold weather. Stranded on the side of the road with the temperature so extreme has claimed the life of more than one unprepared poor sucker. And then you have the born and raised  North Dakotan who is still having outdoor BBQ’s when it’s 32 degrees Fahrenheit. People from California are ice blocks. North Dakotans get out their winter jackets at -20 and when the wind starts blowing more than 40 mph. By this time everywhere else knows that hell has frozen over and the Vikings will win the Superbowl!)

I went to work at KGCX in Williston. One of my early morning duties before signing on at 6AM had me calling surrounding towns for their temperatures and rainfall.  In the summer the amount of rainfall was of crucial importance to farmers, because an inch or two less than normal meant a famine crop. I added one town to the list. Tioga. Even though they had no official weather station I called my Beloved at the old funeral home for the temperature. To this day I do not know if she referred to a thermometer or just made it up. (I used the thermometer outside my parent’s kitchen window which was next to the house phone. I had to get a flashlight and shine it just so or the reflected light would obscure the numbers. Sometimes Dad was still home when Tim called and he would scowl at me for the phone call. Dad worked in the oil field industry. He was usually dispatched to work by 3:30 or 4 AM. If he wasn’t gone then he was up at 5 waiting for dispatch to call. Work was very important to Dad. He wasn’t a tyrant about his duty to work. There was a quiet respect we all learned to appreciate. As Tim mentioned this was in the days before cell phones so the house phone was the life line for the family. Dad worked 10 days on and 2 days off for three rotations and then 10 and 3. That is unless the job he was doing was held over his days off and then he worked his days off. He didn’t care about that. He worked to provide a good place for our family.) But we got to chat each morning when I called on the station’s dime. 

Back in the Stone Age, before there were any cell phones, whenever you called outside your own town or city Ma Bell would charge an arm and a leg for these “long distance” calls. I remember with a cheapskates shudder the phone bill I received for August in the year I was courting my Beloved. It was over $100 dollars. After we were married, when people would ask why we got married, I would sometimes say “well, it’s cheaper than talking to her long distance.” That was 9/10ths joking!! 

Now I grew up in Minneapolis Minnesota, where it can get plenty cold. But it seemed like a more optimistic chill; the brutal cold of North Dakota is a brooding futile environment. But I will say this much, it breeds strong men and women. My Beloved’s mother was as sturdy as a cedar fence post. She never faltered, nor gave up on an idea once it had been planted in her deeply enough.

And my Beloved’s father was the sturdiest and strongest man I ever knew. Give him a thermos of hot black coffee and he could endure working 48 hours straight out in the oilfield in the middle of January. He could charm the birds out of the trees, but most of the time he wore the stoical mask of a Norwegian farmer.

My Beloved’s parents were truly “Giants in the Earth”, as written about by O. E. Rolvag.

***********************************************************************

One reader's recent reaction to our novel:

"Honest, sweetly painful, the awful endless effort to connect and have place… for indescribable reasons, the story, the tone and the emotions resonate."

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Haiku: ウズラの奇妙な叫び The weird cry of quail

 

the weird cry of quail

wakes me up in my wife's arms;

we missed church again.

ウズラの奇妙な叫び

妻の腕の中で私を目覚めさせます。

the weird cry of quail 

in the morning reminds me

to make sweet cornbread.

ウズラの奇妙な叫び
朝は私に思い出させます
甘いコーンブレッドを作るために。

the weird cry of quail

再び行方不明の教会

the weird cry of quail

in the black asphalt alley --

scratching at wet hulls.

ウズラの奇妙な叫び
黒いアスファルトの路地で-
濡れた船体を引っ掻く。

The Plagues of Egypt

 In Egypt Moses turned the streams to blood for Pharaoh's sake/But that stubborn autocrat no thought would undertake/to free the Hebrew slaves and let them go away in peace/and so a raft of plagues began without the least surcease/Bloody waters still exist around the world today/as people after people freedom's price still have to pay!

Biden Says Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘Cannot Remain in Power’ (WSJ)

 

Biden went to Poland to put Putin in his place.

He wants that bum to beat it and to get the coop dee grace.

Nobody told Biden that his powers don't extend

to autocratic Russians and their longed-for final end.

Maybe it is hubris and then maybe it is not.

But presidents do not fare well against a juggernaut.

It takes a lot of money to shake a tyrant's grasp;

taxpayers who foot this bill are gonna give a gasp.

But in the Oval Office cooler heads may find a way

to keep our brave Joe Biden from producing a doomsday.

Let Putin gather all the rope he needs to hang himself;

we'll keep our prissy meddling upon a dusty shelf!

Haiku: 3月の偽りの暑さ The False Heat of March

 

The false heat of March 

promises little more than

a thick grey snowstorm.

3月の偽りの暑さ

少しだけ約束します

濃い灰色の吹雪。

The false heat of March

tricks worms out of the brown earth --

fat happy robins!

3月の偽りの暑さ
褐色森林土からワームをだまします-
太ったハッピーロビン！

The false heat of March

starts me making red chili --

foolish hope of spring!

3月の偽りの暑さ
赤唐辛子を作り始めます-
春の愚かな希望！

Novel. The Old Funeral Home. Chapter Three. Conclusion of Part 2.

 

The Beloved's hands on her keyboard in our bedroom,

where she is working on rewrites for client blogs. We

do five of these each week day. I find them boring.

But the extra money is needed to fund our smoothie

crusade.

I remember a field of chokecherries off a roadside while I was courting the Beloved while she still lived with her parents and siblings in the old funeral home in Tioga.

There was one particular day I remember in late summer. The sun caressed the weedy fields as she and I drove to the chokecherry patch. I knew she was going to marry me when I asked her. And that anticipation made me so happy I thought I might become ill with impatience. 

I had not felt such an intense and puzzling sense of joy since the missionaries had taught me the LDS discussions back on the Iron Lung at Ringling Brothers during rehearsals back in 1971. When they got to the part about the War in Heaven, my heart almost gave out on me and I had double vision. When I told the missionaries they would have to stop because I was ill they wisely replied that I was not ill at all -- I was experiencing the Holy Ghost testifying to me of the truthfulness of what they were telling me. 

And so we arrived at the chokecherry patch. Where I unwisely asked the Beloved if one could eat chokecherries raw. With a masked smile she assured me they were sweet.

They were not. The first taste nearly caused my tongue to leap out of my mouth and run howling away like a dog who has sat on a cactus.

But then, my Beloved has always had a puckish sense of humor. Today whenever I ask her to make me an omelette she immediately replies "Poof! You're an omelette."

There is nothing in the world I love so much as to hear her laugh, whether at her own humorous japes or at something we are watching together. I had a glorious time when we watched the TV series Monk together. Her screeches of glee at the introverted detective's many foibles were like medicine to my heart. The sound washed away years of sorrow and doubt like a river of warm honey washing over me.

This day I have not heard her laugh very much. It makes me wish I had a magic artifact that I could rub or shake to cause her to giggle and chortle on command. 

I don't think I ever did anything as a professional clown that ever made her laugh . . .

( I feel a certain pull to interject and say that he does make me laugh. He did make me laugh when we were courting. I laughed till I cried! – That is a title to a book written by the wife of Jerry Lewis, the comedian. She refers to the things that he did that were aimed at her to make her feel badly and actually hurt her and they were not funny any more. – There was a little of that going on with Tim and me. It feels like telling those things would not help anyone yet so it will be another time we might talk about some of those things.

He certainly did make me laugh. And he does make me laugh. Clouds of sadness did overtake me when we were married the first time so it happened like his selective hearing about the sweet/ sour berries. I learned from a study about human behavior that it takes ten times of doing goodness about a memory to overcome one bad memory. It holds true for me. I watched that formula work for my children in many instances too.

So the times I laughed at things he did as a professional clown… let me see. )

(Shock and awe are the things that usually get a laugh. The first time I heard his story about Mishu, the smallest man in the world, I laughed. The first time I saw his “sleepy man at church” routine, I laughed. When I hear him tell a new “did I ever tell you about the time. . .” , I laugh. He is always thinking of ways to make things new. And so we both laugh at bungles, foibles and mishaps. I think I really love to laugh. I smile at almost everyone as an automatic response to seeing a person. Keeping my smile – or keeping their smile – is dependent upon how receptive people are to me over time.)

I remember my covenant

 

"And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant."

Exodus 6:5

God remembers covenants while man forgetful stays/The Lord redeems his promises in all these latter days/The arm of flesh is nothing when compared to Heaven's might/And God will be a-coming down to win the final fight!