British Sport Cars
Recollections from the Occasionally-Ghastly Past
Anybody who knows me is aware that I have always been a sucker for the pretty face of a British sports car. Like beautiful women, I have consistently in the past invested my all and everything into these automobiles with their smiling grills and pretty features and allowed myself to be seduced into believing how life will always be rosy and glorious when looked at and experienced from behind the wheel of a two-seater convertible. This kind of attitude has cost me money galore down through the years, caused me to suffer pain and angst while standing along the side of the road with the hood of the car raised waiting for assistance and wondering if a tow truck would arrive before unfriendly criminals and hoodlums and ax-murderers descended upon me and took my billfold and stripped my car, left me in a ditch bleeding and gnarled, caused me heartache and grief, and shortened my lifespan with stress and worry.
Yes, the sports cars have always been like women. They torture and tease and tend to bring one to the point of tears, cause one to at times to stand on the high cliffs of the psyche looking down into the abyss and wonder whether now might be the proper time to take the quick easy whoopsie-doo off the edge and put an end to all the suffering and nonsense brought on by a hunk of overseas metal. But also, like women, the cars also bring uncontrollable joy, make one smile for the briefest moments and forget the fiery hell one has previously been roasting within not so long ago.
This week marks another anniversary with Zelda, my 1971 MGB. This current milestone has made me think back to a few checkered occasions with my long litany of British sports cars that span almost five decades now. Here are a few of them, several good examples of how I am and always have been a damn fool for love.
Sally
My first foray into British sports car ownership came in the mid-70s when I bought something called a Sunbeam Tiger off a (appropriately) Sunbeam bread salesman. The Tiger was red with spoked wheels and almost ten years old at the time. The only times I had seen a Sunbeam before was in “Get Smart’ on television and watching Elizabeth Taylor wrap one around a tree in “Butterfield 8”. I named the Sunbeam Sally because she had a nice smile and there was that touch of alliteration there, and for a few years Sally and I commenced to roar around town and out into the country on wild rides most nights into the wee hours, and when I say “roar” I really mean it, since Sally was equipped with an engine the size of a small jet-liner and liked to with the slightest press of the accelerator take flight down the road with thunderous soundbites accompanying her. Being nuts as I was at the time, taking my life in my hands each time behind the wheel had some sort of weird fatalistic appeal to me. I can remember driving Sally to Pensacola for a week of hedonist behavior and watching the speedometer pass the 140 mph marker, laughing in the wind and the shimmying of the frame like a prized lunatic and trying to contort my body to see if I could possibly steer the car with my toes. It was not pretty. This is probably the abiding reason God chose to have Sally explode in the Kroger parking lot one day, to blow a gasket and crack a block and undergo all sorts of dire mechanical problems it would take a millionaire to fix. My co-workers at the time were so in sympathy with my loss that they went to a cemetery and stole flowers and wreaths from fresh graves, cloaked a Rest in Peace banner over Sally’s body and took an 8 by 10 picture of it. That picture still sits on my desk looking at me while I work. It is like the picture of the dead wife in the novel Rebecca, a reminder of love gone terribly wrong. The truth is Sally was taken from me by a benevolent Maker to save me from destruction, but there will always be that part of me, abject eegit that I am, that can’t stop loving her.
Elizabeth
Elizabeth was a 1979 MGB, British racing green, that I bought brand new from a high-end dealer in downtown Nashville. Elizabeth was great for a few months until a lady ran into the back of us at a four way stop, crushing the trunk and damaging the fuel cutoff control that, no matter how many times it was repaired, never worked completely right ever again. It was one of those wonderful MG things, which I came to know quite well, that couldn’t be fixed because it couldn’t be found or understood. I had to learn to live with what became a reoccurring mysterious malady.
Elizabeth would run fine for periods of time, then come to a complete halt and stoppage with no warning whatsoever.
She stranded me everywhere, in rush hour traffic, in distant parking lots, in Timbuctoo, many times in that well-known city in out of the way Egypt. I learned to hike. I learned to stand in front of Elizabeth and make threats. I learned to always take a book along with me so I’d have something to do until she decided to start up again, which she would, for no reason at all other than she wanted to.
Once I made a big play for a lady and took her to dinner and a movie on a summer night. When we came out of the movie we got in to take a nice drive beneath the moon, making it about fifty yards before Elizabeth sighed and gasped and said see you later. It was eleven at night and my date I’d tried so hard to impress had to help me push Elizabeth up a small rise to get into a vacant parking lot, then I had to leave this woman alone with Elizabeth while I trekked to a distant phone booth to call one of my grinning friends to come and pick us up.
End of romance. This woman was not in the least adventurous and had no sense of humor about being stranded in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
Elizabeth’s time was up when a tree fell on her on a calm summer morning while she was parked in my driveway, the sun shining down on her, no wind whatsoever, just a limb falling for no reason to crush her convertible top into particles resembling Chicklets. I knew right then I was beaten. I traded her in for a pickup truck that afternoon.
Martha
I waited almost ten years before I got back into the British sports car romance addiction thing again. I saw a shiny 1973 red roadster sitting in somebody’s front yard with a For Sale sign in the window. I drove by the house and gaped at the car for about a week until finally stopping and going up to the house and ringing the bell. The guy was nobody’s fool. He took my first offer.
Martha was okay for a while but was not to be trusted. It was not just her, but I had been burned before by her ilk, so I made certain to always have a second car available—a real car, loyal, faithful, trustworthy. I wasn’t going to fall prey to any British shenanigans again.
On a snowy night I got off work late and started up Martha to go home. My foot immediately went to the floorboard and I knew the clutch was gone. There had been no warning. It was as if Martha had waited until I worked way past closing and everyone had gone home and the snow was falling like runaway dandruff and ice had enveloped the earth. I had no choice but to walk home and leave her sitting there exposed to the elements.
The next day I learned that in order to replace the clutch the engine had to be pulled. Gosh, I thought, never heard of that one before. What a surprise. Then I learned how much replacing a clutch would cost me. Thank god I had no children, no college tuitions to pay, wasn’t divorced and didn’t have to pay out alimony. I finally managed to work overtime and make enough money to get Martha fixed and repaired, and after about two months in the shop I got her back and drove her to work. I parked on the rise above the store, put the gearshift in first and pulled up the hand brake. After I’d taken about ten steps I heard a clicking sound and turned around to see Martha rolling away, picking up speed as she headed through the lot toward the hilly driveway that spilled out into a suburban street. I tried to catch her. I was too slow.
She didn’t make it all the way down to the hill, but just decided to veer off a bit to her left and clip a couple of cars before running into a bascart return corral. Luckily, I had insurance, but I said some things out in that lot that day to Martha that couldn’t ever be taken back.
I’d grown smarter over the years too. I put her up for sale. I took the first offer.
Emily
I went more than twenty years before I considered owning a sports car again. I retired in 2012, and one of the first things I did was behave like an imbecile and check Craigslist to view the inventory. I was determined I wouldn’t be made a fool of again by a pretty face, I would cast my lot in the romantic wars of two-seaters with some other company, some different nation’s product. There would be no further British presence in my life.
That’s when I saw Emily.
She was shiny black. She had polished spoke wheels and her body was impeccable. Take her for a drive if you’d like, the seller said, and so I cruised the neighborhoods of Spring Hill, wandered out on 65 and watched the needle rise effortlessly to 70. She was a 1979 B; she was 33. I was 62. I figured we’d both been around some, that we would be good for each other.
One morning the key stuck in the ignition and I had to have Emily towed to get fixed. She’s leaking a little oil, I said, can you fix that too? It took almost a month before I got the call to come get her. I gave the mechanic my arm. I gave him my leg. I threw in my eyeteeth as a tip. On the way home smoke began to rise from the floorboard. I tried ignoring it, but it soon began seeping out from the dashboard making it difficult to see. A car pulled up beside me and a fellow yelled out the window, “Hey buddy, your car’s on fire.” I had to pull over to the shoulder and Emily had to go back to the shop.
Rinse and repeat.
After many ordeals Emily came home. A few days later I went to meet my wife for dinner on a Tuesday afternoon, singing along with Linda Ronstadt to “You’re No Good” on the radio. A Mercedes pulled out of a lot and I watched it come toward me from the side, figuring sooner or later it would stop. It managed to do just that when it hit me, obliterating the passenger side, knocking me twenty-odd feet, bending the steering wheel in my hands like I was Superman from Krypton set down in Music City.
Emily was T-boned. Emily was totaled. She would never be on the road again. I felt that old pervasive feeling of doom and sadness wash over me once more while I watched the wrecker haul her away.
Zelda
I found her on ebay. She was in Washington state, 2000 miles away. There was a picture and a box to place a bid. I put in a figure and waited a week. An email came and said that I was the winner.
I named her Zelda. I drove her around and waited for her to break down, to blow up, to fall to pieces before my eyes, but nothing happened. She chugged on. On occasion she needed things, a starter, a battery, a distributor, and there were times when the mystic MG part of her came and made itself known, like the way the speedometer stopped working on weekdays and then functioned perfectly on Saturdays and Sundays, but that was okay. I learned to live with her and she learned to live with me. Don’t ask for too much, she told me. I am old. I am 47. That is 329 in dog years. Ah, Zelda, I said, but I am old too. I have learned to never ask for too much and to be pleased with very little. And when a miracle comes along. To be overwhelmed.
And so we are content, Zelda and I, happy in our tiny road trip world.
And one other thing.
I found myself standing at a gasoline pump on a June afternoon, filling Zelda’s tank with high test. A beautiful girl approached me, dark raven hair, smiling blue eyes, cheekbones high and prominent, all the things a man’s dreams and visions consist of, those I carried with me all those many moons before.
“My daddy had a car like that,” she said, running her fingers across Zelda’s fender. “He used to take me for rides in it when I was a little girl. I just love cars like this!”
“I do too,” was all I said, for I was old and this sort of chance encounter and time was long ago gone. But it was nice to remember such things.
I got in the car and Zelda started up just fine. The motor made a nice purring sound as I drove away, and I knew the beautiful girl was standing back there at the station watching me and Zelda disappear down the road. The top was down and the sun was shining and it was another in a long series of wondrous days.
Halleluiah.
Five Things I Remember About My Brother
My brother Jerry died last week in a small town in Florida. Jerry was 71. He was tested a borderline genius and was also pretty much nuts 90% of the time; I don’t think anyone who knew him will argue about either of these statements. He was an electrician and a guitar player and a dog-lover when he was at his best; when he was at his worst he was a holy terror. Nobody knows this better than me. I was his kid brother.
Five things I remember about Jerry:
I knew eventually she’d be smiling. I knew that despite herself she wouldn’t be able to keep the little corners of her mouth from turning upward.
That’s the thing I remember about Jerry the most, that talent he had of making you smile even when you wanted to kill him. He had this way of doing that to you.
Intoxicated Basketball and Scrumptious Splendiferous Fare-Thee-Wells
(A few words of wisdom from my fickle friend, the Summer Wind)
Back in the 80’s (that horrendous decade where culture took a nosedive and what was bad was suddenly deemed fairly good by people who had no notion of what was good in the first place) I spent a lot of afternoons after work (Kroger Company, 38 years on the ol’ rockpile) playing basketball in my driveway with a fellow who worked with me a lot of years and a guy who delivered Krispy Kreme doughnuts to our store three times a week. Danny (not his real name, but I’m trying to protect the innocent here, even though this fellow never qualified as innocent by any stretch) was a high school dropout who was a pretty smart dude underneath it all, even if he always tried to present himself as a first class dumbass to the world. I’d worked with Danny for years, since the day he got hired at age 16 and I got assigned to show him how to bag groceries. That was the day he told me he needed a job because he was getting married the next morning. His bride-to-be was as pregnant as a girl could get, he told me with a smile, so it looks like I need a job. Immediately, then, I knew he was crazy. This meeting was in the late sixties, so we flash forward a decade and a half to our after-work basketball days. Danny is now on wife #3, two kids toddling around he calls the dwarfs (the 3rd wife is of course Snow White) and things are not looking good domestically for him. He is having trouble with Snow White in the same manner he had trouble with wives #1 and #2. He is also having trouble with his girlfriend. And her husband. Danny always had girlfriends through all his marriages. His girlfriends always had husbands. There was always a lot of drama going on, which always seemed to make Danny smile and emit chuckles. He was so screwed up I couldn’t keep from smiling and chuckling either. It’s true I wasn’t exactly sane then either.
I never knew the Krispy Kreme salesman’s complete name—he was just Big Bill to me. Big Bill was about 6-7 and a few years younger than me (I was suddenly at the age where everyone I met was younger than me) and had once played basketball for one of the area high schools that maybe won the state tournament—my facts get muddled over time. Big Bill was also black, which tended to make my white neighbors look out their windows to see what the three of us, two honkies and one brother, might be up to in my back driveway on those afternoons.
What we were up to was shooting ball and drinking vodka and Irish whiskey until we couldn’t stand up anymore, then leaning up against the garage and laughing our posteriors off at the stories Danny would tell about his affairs and marriages, and then we’d discuss how many women Big Bill went to visit when he was supposed to be running his route, and then we’d talk about how my old half-breed hound walked sideways and looked like Fred MacMurray in the face. We would whistle the theme from “My Three Sons” every time he ambled by and collectively fall over in a heap like nothing in the world much mattered to us…which it didn’t.
I mention all this rigmarole because the other day I drove by my old house from those days and it didn’t look the same to me anymore. At least it didn’t look like I remembered it back in the day. It seemed like it was smaller, like it had shrunk or withered some, and I couldn’t imagine how some of those large strange puzzling wild events that had transpired there during my sojourn could have occurred in such a cramped space. I looked at the front door and couldn’t imagine Big Bill even being able to fit through, and the back driveway seemed way too small for three drunken men to shoot three pointers or chase after balls that bounded into the backyard where a creek ran and legions of black snakes wrapped around tree limbs and hid in the weeds. Intoxicated basketball, I remembered, always had its moments of dodging reptiles. Spirits and snakes had a way of mixing together and raising the old pulse rate.
I drove away down that historical street and pondered the shrinking of my old abode. It came to me then how my house and the current state of the world I found myself stumbling through were tied together in their own weird way and were one in the same if you cocked your head and looked at it at precisely the right angle. I thought about how for months now I’d been seeing places and buildings and items I’d once had memorized just up and pull the abracadabra change on me. I would come up on something from the way back when and suddenly get a little jolt for my eyes and other assorted brain matter. The building wasn’t there anymore, the business had closed, what used to be a store was now a condo. Churches my friends had attended had For Sale signs sitting at the front door, car lots had no cars, vacant fields suddenly had sprouted buildings. My high school looked like it had been bombed, but it was only new construction. I knew from the look of it with its holes and gaps and rubble it would be built back as something unrecognizable to me, so it might as well be it had never truly existed.
But hey, I’m a big boy. I’ve learned a few things in my time. I know nothing lasts forever. I know how eventually change has got to happen, even if I am an old dinosaur and I’m not really appreciative of that comet circling overhead that’s heading my way. A person has got to accept these things, I tell myself. A fellow—even an old relic recently on Medicare like me—has to adapt. This is nothing unusual, I think. It’s just like a lot of things in life. You’ve got to learn to go with the flow. Heck of a river this is lately, though. It’s hard enough paddling through all these dark waters without all those lurking monsters and demons of the deep circling the ship and waiting on the opportune moment to jump into the boat.
Still, I probably wouldn’t have voiced too much protest if this matter of altering shapes and disappearing landmarks had only confined itself to inanimate objects, but like it seems in the day to day grand pageant of life, circumstances and events soon began to tackle matters of real import, like life and death and love and the lack of it and all that jazz.
Folks started expiring, dropping out of the Big Parade like cicadas in the swelter of summer. First, it was an acquaintance from high school (cancer); then the Doom Express persuaded an old pal to fall off a tractor and have it run over him, which was certainly proof enough that accidents do happen and a fellow can check out just like that with no fanfare at all. Then a guy, who once was a best friend but had disappeared just like that way back when within himself via drugs and personal woes and tragedies and just a general descent into an existence which was not really life or death but a puzzling combination of both, decided to forego the art of breathing too. I found myself on the funeral circuit all at once with a bad case of the Bye Byes, a visitation here, a burial there, so much so my social calendar seemed to teem with signing registers and viewing the remains of people I knew while noticing how odd and strange the hue of death looked on them.
I did a lot of viewing and listening and watching and thinking during those celebratory grieving days and nights devoted to the departed. It came to me during one of those visitations how these excursions to funeral homes and drives to graveyards and daily consultations with the obituaries were beginning to have an effect on how I was looking at things here still above ground.
The Dead Game, I call it—it’s where I start alphabetically and look at last names in the morning paper and see if any of them ring a bell. Do I know any of these people? Are they related to somebody? If I know them or they’re related, it’s a point for me. If they’re strangers it’s a point for the other side. Lately I seem to be winning the daily Dead Game, knowing more dead people or dead relations than perfect strangers, which is a little unsettling.
I studied my pals and their poses in their caskets and decided they didn’t look a bit like their old selves but mainly resembled crap and ruin and the beginnings of decay which was not the least bit attractive on them or to have to look at either. I arrived late for one visitation and found myself alone with the deceased. We’d been tight back in the day, but that night I found we had little to say to each other. Those days were gone. So I busied myself studying the register out front to see who’d come by earlier I had missed, old friends male and female I’d grown up with back when there were phone booths and gas was about a quarter a gallon. Not too many people had shown up I saw, but I told myself it was a holiday weekend. I figured they’d all come for the funeral the next morning. I was wrong. During the service I could count everybody on two hands and have a couple of fingers left to scratch my noggin and wonder why.
This sort of stuff just kept on happening. Folks ceased to be, nobody took much notice, life went on, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. I was all of a sudden beginning to get accustomed to it.
The last engagement on my social calendar came a couple of weeks ago as a visitation and funeral doubleheader. I had tickets to see the Reds and the Tigers in Cincinnati during that time, but the rains came and washed out my plans, and I had no excuse but to attend another ceremony. This time it was my long lost best friend from early childhood, who had stopped being my best friend four and a half decades before when drugs, alcohol, marriage, and a general form of madness led us down different paths.
It was a strange gathering, this visitation and funeral, strange in the sense that this person I had known so well so many years before now rested before me as an utter and complete stranger. I thought about how many times I spent the night at either his house or he at mine, the bicycle rides we took as kids all over creation and East Nashville, swimming, playing basketball, smoking our first cigarettes together on a school playground. I looked at him reposed there and I didn’t know him either in the real world or in an imaginary one, and I knew that wherever he was and from whatever venue he was watching from that moment he didn’t know me either. We were strangers, he and I, but it didn’t stop with us. All the old faces I saw shuffling through to view him were in the same boat, glancing at him, noticing me, nodding to each other. Words were said and stories were told, and sometimes there were smiles and instances of recognition and memory.
But not really.
The thing of it is we remember so little. We forget so much.
The next morning that room for the funeral was maybe half full. I sat in the back and tried to determine who I knew and who I didn’t. Something about a person here and there looked familiar, but I didn’t know their names. They were so few. The people I would have known from the days of youth and shared moments were not there, not present. A few had wandered in the night before to pay respects, out of decency or obligation or maybe even curiosity—who knew? They were absent for the funeral that day though, gone back to the lives they lived now, no more akin to the past and the way time swallows lives up and makes them unrecognizable, indescribable, foreign, as if what went on in that lost time before had never truly happened at all. I listened to a preacher describe the life that had passed. It came to me the preacher didn’t know this man either, like I didn’t know him, like any of us don’t know anybody else when it all comes down and the curtain falls.
I drove home the long way after that funeral. I thought about how I had been this man’s first best friend when he was a boy, and I thought about how I, as his first best friend, had a few moments before been his last best friend who had come to say goodbye. I thought how that sort of fact ought to mean something, but it didn’t. I was just another stranger he had encountered along the way. In the end it hadn’t made any difference whether I had made an appearance or not. I kept remembering that line in The Great Gatsby when Jay Gatsby got buried and nobody showed up.
I shifted gears and said it out into the air. It just seemed to fit with everything in my sound and sight these strange no one remembers your name days.
“‘The poor son-of-a-bitch,’” I told the sky. I wasn’t sure the sky was listening.
Visit my website http://www.ralphbland.com
From the Piker Press (2/9/15)
You Can't Sit Down Ralph Bland
I'm not even going to go into why I'm where I am for all this, because it's for sure I could brainstorm all day and still never come up with a clear-cut answer. The thing of it is I've got to where I've taken up the habit my late mother once reveled in, that being, reading the obituaries in the morning newspaper every goddamned day. It used to drive me crazy how, back when Mother was alive, poring over the death notices to find out who'd succumbed over the past twenty-four hours provided her the most enjoyable opportunity to get her rocks. I mean, some folks like the comics, some people the sports, some even like to read about local and national happenings, no matter how bad and depressing all that might be, but very few rational human beings find pleasure in discerning who's bitten the dust in the past day. Maybe it wouldn't have bothered me so much if my mother hadn't started engaging in this grisly practice until she got up in years and had death looking over her shoulder, or she needed to keep up with who of her friends she didn't need to send a Christmas card to anymore, but that wasn't the case. I can recall being a little kid and watching her spread the newspaper out on the kitchen table with her trusty scissors by her side, ready to clip out an eye-catching obit the second it presented itself. It was almost like an early variation of the Kevin Bacon game, where Mother searched through all the names to find some survivor or organization or area in some dead person's life that in some far-out way somehow or another related to her. I thought it was sort of sick then and I still think so in a way, yet I invariably catch my eyes running down the columns just like she did once I arrive at the obituary page. I have to admit there's something sort of addictive about the process. Anyway, that's how I came across Rebecca's mother, or the person who used to be Rebecca's mother, as the death notice indicated. I always skim over the last names and don't stop to read any of the gory details unless one of them rings a bell, because I'm trying my best not to make a science of all this, and just the act itself makes me feel a little guilty, like I'm doing something I should be ashamed of and don't want anybody catching me doing it. Unlike her daughter, Donna Williams always seemed to like me. Rebecca's father, Charles, I was certain despised me, while the family dog, Dolly, a black mutt who resided in the back yard, wanted me dead along with the rest of the human race. Rebecca fluctuated somewhere in her feelings toward me from occasional high-voltage desire to low-grade contempt, but Mrs. Williams always smiled and was polite and offered courteous conversation whenever I came over to pick up Rebecca for a date. We shared snippets of conversation while Rebecca finished doing whatever it was she did to appear ravishing, and as I look back now, the only times I actually sat down in a chair in Rebecca's house was during those chats with her mother. Rebecca never invited me to dinner or to come watch TV or listen to records. It was always me picking her up and taking her somewhere to spend money, and as I look back now, that utter lack of ever being seated should have indicated to me that my relationship with Rebecca Williams was never going anywhere -- except to dinner, or concerts or movies -- only to places where I could blow lots of cash I didn't have on a girl friend who really wasn't in actuality my cut and dried girl friend at all. So Donna Williams was dead now, all eighty-one years of her, and when I ran across her name in the paper I felt the wave of recognition pass through me like a mild electric shock, a slight tingle just strong enough to jog my memory and spur my brain into gear. I spent a couple of hours thinking about Rebecca and Donna and Charles and Dolly the dog and the relationships we once had with one another, and I knew I had to go by the funeral home or suffer the possibility of going bonkers from the curious voices whispering in my head. What I really wanted to do was pull in the funeral home's parking lot and case the place, just sit there with the motor running and the heater keeping me warm and watch who went in and out the front doors of the building. I've always opted for the chicken's way out. But I finally convinced myself there was nothing really to be afraid of. Donna and Charles were both dead, Dolly surely had been put to sleep by this time, and Rebecca could be nowhere near the ravishing dish she once was. I could go in and pay my respects without suffering any pangs of regret and loss. Times have changed, I told myself. Years have gone by. Nothing is the same as it once was. There are a lot of things to worry about these days but the past isn't one of them. The past is a long time gone -- long gone like Donna and Charles and Dolly. It has no say-so over what goes on now. I'd never been in this particular funeral home before. Most of my prior experiences with bereavement visitation had occurred over on my side of town, in my neighborhood, in areas where I felt slightly comfortable, and most of the time I'd gone to those places because someone in my own family had died -- someone older, someone who had already run the gamut and had been leaning toward extinction for quite a while. I usually knew the crowd I was walking into. They were relatives, aunts and uncles and cousins and such, and though I may not have cared for them that much or been close with them, I at least knew their names and faces and had a general working idea where they were coming from. But walking into this new unfamiliar place I didn't know what to expect. To be truthful I was just there to check out old Rebecca. I wondered what the years had done to her. Mostly I wanted to know if I could still spy something in her that would tell me I was right in my feelings back then and the way she looked would show that now. I didn't want Rebecca to be just another middle-aged woman no red-blooded male had not in the past and would not now ever so much as give a second glance to. I've always liked to think that the women who spurned me in the past did so because they were so wonderful they weren't allowed in the Wonderful Handbook to have anything to do with a mere mortal like me. I like to think I had good taste back then. Inside there were three men in suits and a couple of blue-haired white women standing in a group beside the pews. Some of these people were so old it made me feel young again, like I was a college kid once more with my entire future in front of me, which was one hell of a stretch of the imagination. I'm fifty-plus, just so you know. For me to feel fresh and youthful takes a lot of liberal inspiration and boundless imagination. I walked down about three-quarters of the aisle and just stood there trying to determine if there was anyone in this room who'd ever possessed the spark to ignite the sexual fire that had at one time singed my soul thirty-something years ago. I wasn't even sure I was in the right place until I spotted Rebecca at the front corner of the room, talking to a bunch of grandmas. It had to be her. I had to look real hard and close and tried to remember her as she was and imagine her as she would be now. Then I tried to resolve if this woman twenty feet away from me was indeed the same person. The hair was shorter with some gray in it, and it was tough to tell from where I stood. Then I heard the laugh and saw the smile and I knew it was Rebecca. There are just some things that never go away. She spotted me and her eyes grew wide. I guess she couldn't believe what she was seeing. "Is it really you standing there?" she asked. "I never expected to see you again. I thought you'd disappeared off the face of the earth." "I saw the notice in the paper and thought I'd come by for a minute." I'm telling you, Rebecca didn't look bad for an old woman. I mean, she wasn't old -- she was a middle-aged woman, okay? She just wasn't a chick anymore. She wasn't a college girl of the sixties with her hair trailing down her back wearing faded jeans walking across a red-gold autumn campus with my eyes trailing after her and my brain telling me simply, I have to meet this girl, no bones about it, no matter what. This girl I have to meet. And here I am again. And I'm not a boy anymore. I'm a grown man. A year older than her. There are parts of me that don't feel like an old man, but I'm getting there. Maybe I'm not all the way in the autumn of my life yet, but the Fourth of July's a long time past. "It's hard to believe I'm seeing you," she said. She hooked her arm through mine and pulled me close, an act I never remembered her doing before. "Come on," she smiled. "There are some people here I'd like you to meet." She led me around the pews and began introducing me to a lot of little old church ladies who were present to soak up everything they could from this important social event. Each one of them gave me a Polident smile and looked at me like I was something far more interesting than I'd previously assumed I was. One woman -- eighty if she was a day -- grasped my hand and solemnly told me she was very glad to see me, for poor Rebecca had certainly been through a lot and needed someone to help her along. "You haven't told me about him," she said to Rebecca, holding up my ringless hand. "Where have you been hiding him?" Everybody in the vicinity thought this was real funny, and titters leaked out from a bunch of wrinkled throats. It was the kind of humor Rebecca had always liked, bland and uninspired with no cutting edge wit behind it at all. And it was the kind of moment that made me recall the way I had always felt around her, that we were at different levels looking and talking about different stuff, finding something interesting or funny that the other couldn't have found any less stimulating. It was the sort of moment that had always separated us, that had prevented me from ever telling her anything the least bit personal about myself. I sensed how I had never told her anything really, nothing other than constructed scenarios I wanted her to believe belonged exclusively to me, and I had never learned anything much about her either, other than the fact she grew up well-off (compared to me) and liked to swim at the country club. I had never been to a country club in my life, unless you wanted to count the YMCA in that category. But then, I doubted Rebecca had ever gone to the library to check out a book. I doubted she had ever drunk illegal alcohol when she was a minor or taken a toke from somebody's nickel bag. It didn't matter how much time had passed -- we still didn't have a whole lot to talk about. The only person in the building I could possibly converse with for five uninterrupted minutes was incommunicado now, resting in a casket and bound for a place I hadn't had my ticket punched for yet. So I was led around with Rebecca's arm hooked through mine and shown off, judged by strangers like I was in a dog show competition or something. Every elderly lady asked the same questions, wanted to know at the gist of it if I was married or not. The prevalent mood seemed to indicate that Rebecca should have a husband and I was the best candidate to come along in a while. This puzzled me, Rebecca not being married, so finally I couldn't help but pose the question to her. I just decided to get right to the point. "You mean to tell me you've never gotten married?" "I almost did," she said, choosing her sentences in her careful way, like she was afraid she might be eternally typecast if she slipped up and said the wrong thing. "I was engaged about six years ago, but my fiancé died on New Year's Day. He was in a terrible automobile accident. Maybe you read about it." I thought about the thousands of folks who'd died in car accidents over the past six or seven years and wondered how I was supposed to recall one particular fatal crash that had occurred. I thought about how that one incident meant the world to this woman from a long time past but didn't matter a thing to me now. It could be none of what went on with Rebecca ever really mattered too awfully much to me back in the past either, for it could have been Rebecca had been nothing but a trophy I tried pulling out of the world at large to fill a space in my life, to take care of a need I had. Maybe I needed a girlfriend back then so I wouldn't glimpse how empty the future might become if I wasn't somehow attached to someone. And maybe I needed this ex-girlfriend right now so I wouldn't have to look back at my golden youth of the long ago and far away and admit how empty and dull it had all actually been, have to face up to how this whole existence hadn't been very exciting or lyrical and anything near what my memory had cranked it up to be. In a fleeting instant I saw the both of us in this moment and in the past, and I saw Rebecca using me to fill up her big emptiness too. I was the one taking her to movies, feeding her at restaurants, picking her up in a car and driving her places. I was the one she needed to have as a representative of her past, a guy she could hook her arm around at moments like these and introduce, but the guy had to be one who couldn't stay, see, who couldn't sit down because he always had to be going. I wondered if it was forever that way with her, if perhaps the dead boyfriend of seven years past had been going somewhere too on that night he crashed, and if just before his farewell trip he'd had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Rebecca's mother, her father? Knowing Rebecca, probably not. Probably the poor stiff had to be going somewhere too and couldn't just sit down and take a load off his feet. Maybe he learned -- like I had now-- that he was only there to be Rebecca's boyfriend, her escort, and his role was to simply be a prop. I wasn't in a car accident, but I was just as dead to her as he was. I don't think she really wanted to let go of my arm. I'd met all her mother's friends and exchanged pleasantries with her sister and there for sure wasn't anything left to do but talk to her lawyer slash brother, who I'd met before he was a lawyer and was only a brother I hadn't liked much then, so I figured now that he was a lawyer and still her brother the chances were excellent I'd despise him as fervently as before. I supposed Rebecca and I could walk arm in arm up toward the casket and look at the flowers and look at her mother and blab for a minute about how this woman came to be today not alive, but that would have not been for me and Rebecca to do together, since an exchange like that was real and serious and not the kind of thing we had ever done before, and there didn't appear to be much sense in changing our itinerary at this point in time. So I left my old flame Rebecca with a kiss on the cheek and a slight hug. Her body elicited a vague response in me when it brushed against mine, but that was only because old Rebecca still looked good and I was between women at the moment and my imagination was trying to convince me here might possibly be a sure thing for a night or two. I decided my imagination might be a good thing to ignore for a change. Rebecca was okay on the outside, but in the end she was still Rebecca and I was still me. There were some things that couldn't be moved out of the way even with a heavy-duty two-wheeler. If I wanted to I suppose I could have slipped right back into being Rebecca's boyfriend and nowhere in the world would a heart have skipped a beat. After all, she seemed to need me in that role now more than ever before, what with everybody she'd been bolstering herself with all slipping into the deceased category. I would have probably done fine sitting in her living room, sitting at her kitchen table, sitting around and existing in all those places I'd never sat or been an entity in before. I bet I would have fit right in, like a comfortable old piece of furniture. But hell, I couldn't do it. Rebecca was really never my girlfriend. I'd been more than glad to use her presence to fill up those evenings all those years ago, but nothing was of such high importance today. Everybody had girlfriends back then, and I didn't want to be the only guy who didn't. See, a fellow had to be in college, he had to have a car and a little cash in his billfold to spend on that girlfriend, so with all that in the mix the world could see he was doing okay and wasn't a total screwup. He wasn't going to get weird looks from people because something was lacking in his life. But everyone was gone now. Everyone had vacated the premises for their own lives, where they married and owned houses and sired kids and then maybe gave it all up in a moment of reconsideration. I know because I'd done the same thing. I'd married and divorced, raised a couple of children and been hired and fired a couple of times. And yeah, I was still around and ticking along. I even have the numbers of two or three women to call if I need company for whatever reason that might be, but the fact is I don't really need a girlfriend or a companion too much these days. It's not like I have to be anywhere, you know. It's not like I truly care about where I'm seen or who I'm with. On the average I'd just as soon go home after work and watch TV. I know what I was doing with Rebecca and her mother was simply checking in. I guess seeing that obituary in the paper set off some sort of whistle in my head, and it became a drill like the old swimming pool game Find Your Buddy. I'm sure I only wanted to feel Rebecca's hand on my arm so I'd somehow know she was still out there and had been out there for me before. It wasn't like I was thinking about anything too serious. The sun was setting and the rush hour was in full force by the time I finally pried Rebecca's fingers from my arm and made my way across the pavement to my car. Because it was close to suppertime the cars in the lot were sparse and I didn't have to worry if anybody was parked too close or blocking my way out of there. I was free to go and join the swarm on the streets. What I did was stand there for a minute or two with the car door open and the keys in my hand. I wanted to leave and go through a drive-thru somewhere and go home to my ESPN, but I sort of didn't want to leave old Rebecca just yet. I knew that once I drove away that was it. I'd never see or hear from her again. She had no more parents around to die, and her brother and sister looked fairly healthy, or at least healthy enough to outlast me. I couldn't see myself running across their names in the obits anytime soon. I thought about going back inside and sitting down in one of the pews and staying a while, but there was something in me that knew that would never work. I'd never sat down before and there was no good reason to start thinking about starting now. So I stood there listening to the sounds of traffic. Brakes squealed and a horn honked. Radios blared way too loud. After a minute or two I came back to who I'd become and where in god's name I was, and I got into my Camry and drove away.
Article © Ralph Bland. All rights reserved.
Published on 2015-02-09
1 Reader Comments Anonymous
02/10/2015
11:58:54 PM
It's good to see you here again, Mr. Bland. Another beautiful and intimate story. I almost identify with Rebecca, wanting to take your arm and walk you around to my friends. Excellent work.
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Not Dead Again
I look at the timing of my last post and it occurs to me how sometimes it
takes a while to say something that just might possibly be worth saying. I’m
hoping this is one of those times, but one never knows these days until plunging
in headfirst and finding out if the waters are shark-infested or
not.
LONG LONG TIME is finally out in an edited version, unexpurgated for sure
but as error-free fact wise as I could persuade the publisher to get it. I won’t
go into any tirade about how in my advancing age the world certainly doesn’t
operate on pride and trust anymore, but let me say I am not impressed with the
work ethic of folks I’m encountering these days. I mean, I’m retired coming up
on two years now and so feel entitled to being lazy and worthless and no count
personally, but come on world, we can’t all behave like me. Somebody’s got to do
their job and correct my mistakes. I only write this drivel. I can’t be
entrusted with editing it too.
Seriously, LONG LONG TIME is out at last, and I am pleased with it. I
didn’t expect it to linger at the publisher’s for 14 months, but now that it’s
arrived I am glad to see it in print and in eBook so I can move on. I am
expecting novel #6 to be forthcoming in a matter of months. I am also working on
a pair of novellas, which I hope to publish as a joint volume in 2015. A long
novel is planned after that, providing I don’t expire in a mine shaft explosion
or have further possible deadly encounters with crazed hell-bent Mercedes Benzes
while toddling down the highways of Music City
USA.
Since the demise of Emily, my 1979 MGB, in April, I spent more than two
months convincing the insurance company represented by a lizard that they owed
me more than just a passing trifle for having one of their clients destroy my
car. It took quite a while to persuade them to see things from my point of view,
but I took the advice of one of my wiser friends and uttered the magic words of
“litigation”and “arbitration” and “court dockets”, and, lo and behold, suddenly
these claim folks couldn’t seem to pay me enough. I mean, the till was open and
the golden goose was flapping its wings. I honestly was overwhelmed. I didn’t
know Emily was worth so much, but I kept my trap shut and smiled and took, my
friends, the dough they were clamoring to give
me.
This is when I went crazy, but craziness, as most of you are well aware,
is necessary and comes in handy sometimes. I went on EBay and found another MG
in Renton, Washington, bid on it, won, and had it shipped to Nashville. This is
the first time I’ve ever purchased a car without touching it or test-driving it
first, an act which caused tremors and acute trepidation initially, but which
now has proven to be a better way of doing things than having me act like I
know what I’m doing while I look under a hood or kick a tire or drive around
the block. This act removed all my knuckleheaded self-posturing and reduced it
all down to the pure luck of the draw, and as fate has seemed to deem it thus
far, it was about time I had a little good luck. So I have a 1971 MGB now, and
she seems to start and run and not be prone to sit at the side of the road with
its trunk raised, which is certainly unique and refreshing and
new.
So far. (Knock on a Redwood).
She is green. Her name is Zelda. She is my 4th MG. Hopefully, love is lovelier the fourth time around.
Heck, it can’t be any worse.
OCTOBER 2, 2014: Summer, You Old Indian Summer
Indian Summer, the almanacs tell us, is that period of time at the beginning of fall when the temperature is warmer than usual. It is that period in the year when the light and the dark share equal time, when the stars appear brighter and the sky is bluer and the grass and the leaves are the richest finest green they will ever be. Grace Metalius says in the first line of PEYTON PLACE that Indian Summer is like a woman. The old song of the same name says it is the ghost that comes after springtime’s laughter. All of that is true and more. It has always been my favorite time of the year.
Because of many things. All this, perhaps.
On September 27, 2003, one of the dearest friends I will ever have departed this earth in a sad untimely fashion. Three days later he was buried on a hill in a country cemetery in a small town outside Nashville. No one could understand why he was dead. His widow rode with me to the gravesite. She was a dear friend too, and I didn’t realize at the time this would be the last time I would see her too. She disappeared from my orb, probably because seeing each other would only remind us of the husband and friend who was gone from us, and it was our business to forget such things. Neither of us did. For eleven years I made an annual journey to the small cemetery to stand and think and wonder, looking, I suppose, for some answer out there in the quiet solitude of the country. After eight years, the widow died. Maybe it was from a broken heart, I don’t know. It seems pretty to think of it that way sometimes.
On September 27, 2014, my daughter married a young man in a field on a farm way out in the middle of nowhere. All her friends made the journey to be there; they danced and laughed at the reception in a beautiful barn amid flowers and wedding cake and moonlight. I have never seen my daughter so happy. It was strange to me to think of how different the same date can be, how it can mean one thing to one group of people and something completely different to another. I thought back eleven years to that Indian Summer of 2003, thought of my friend’s death and burial and how that very same day my beloved cat disappeared and I never saw him again either. I thought of how four days later I married my wife on a Saturday night and how there was music and friends and moonlight there too. I brought myself back to where I was in 2014 this September 27, this Indian Summer, sitting in my new suit with beautiful girls in their bridal party dresses flitting around me, while I, accustomed now to my antique status, watched them all and thought about how I could write a book about this night, about them, and then laughing to myself at the thought, because it came to me I already had.
So on the last day of September in 2014 I stood at a gravesite and somehow it finally came to me. The sky was the deepest blue with nary a cloud and flowers of yellow and pink and red bloomed all around me. I thought of how there was peace for my friend here, peace he didn’t have enough of when he walked among us. I wondered if he understood it all yet, and if we ever met again, would he sit me down and explain it all to me so that even a knucklehead like myself might comprehend. I wondered if he’d met up with his wife, if this peace and understanding was shared by them both. I thought about how we the living who are yet here on earth could be ourselves happy enough if we came across this peace and understanding. It is like there is a link, if you look at it the right way. There is death. There are beginnings. Entrances and exits. Night and day and day and night until it ends, and maybe that’s when you get it, if you’re not smart enough to get it sooner. Me, I’ve never been that smart.
I was the only person in the cemetery. I stood thinking and waiting for everything to settle for quite a while. Then I drove back to Nashville. When I got home I sat on the patio and watched the birds and the squirrels. I drank a cup of coffee and talked to my three dogs. I petted them on the head a long time. It was a really nice day. It was Indian Summer. I couldn’t have asked for a whole lot more.
Visit my website http://www.ralphbland.com
May May 17, 2014 On the
day I turned sixty-four years old, rather than going out for lunch or buying
myself a present, I instead chose to mow my yard, since all the smiling
meteorologists on the local stations had repeatedly assured me for a week the
rainy season was coming and the next several days promised nothing but storms
and wind and slow-moving cold fronts, with the possibility of a tornado not to
be dismissed. Under such warnings, I decided to perform my three hours of manual
labor on this day of my birth, rather than to feel guilty and ashamed at the
length and overbearing lushness of the property as I watched from my window
later and felt like the lazy good for nothing welcher I truly am but strive to
keep hidden from my wife and the world. Also, because I have three dogs, it is
no fun walking in the backyard among tall grass and not knowing what I might be
stepping in.
If I stay out till quarter to three, I sang to myself under the mower’s
roar, would you lock the door?—all the while considering the myriad of events
that had preceded this morning of toil, not only back to my wild boy innocent as
strawberry days as I am prone to peruse too often, but truly just mainly to the
last few months that, as the Kingfish once observed, have had me running into
strings of bad luck lately. The Kingfish invested a bundle of money in a pumpkin
farm, then Halloween got called off. The Kingfish took a trip to see the Grand
Canyon, but it was closed. I. like the Kingfish, have tried to be careful, have
attempted in my limited erring manner to get somehow ahead of the game by
scheming, pondering, thinking, considering all the angles of each particular
move I might fancy to make here in the smack dab of my golden years, to just
keep from getting clubbed like a baby seal for a change. My fifth novel, long
delayed, showed promise of being released. All winter long, amid frosty
mornings and bone-chilling afternoons I made certain my precious MG was
started, taken for rides, had its oil checked, was just generally stroked and
rubbed and talked to and paid attention to in a manner I have never attempted
to lavish on a true to life woman before—not even my wife, who, were I to act
this way toward her, would quickly be wondering what exactly I was up to this
time. March came and I made certain I bewared its Ides. I knew already April
was the cruelest month, yet I tried my best to be polite to it anyway. Things
were looking up. I thought I not only knew the score but could name that tune
in one note just by laying low.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, I sing to the blades, now
that I’m 64.
The novel came out and appeared as a real thing. Then it disappeared.
Where did it go, I wondered? I don’t know, said my publisher, then he
disappeared too. For two weeks there was no sign of my book. Amidst this tumult
I backed my MG, my darling Emily, out of the garage on a Tuesday afternoon. The
sun was shining, the temperature oh so seventyish. I drove in the afternoon to
meet my wife for a free dinner. We were going to listen to someone from a
funeral home tell us all we need to do and have in place before we croak. I
wondered to myself, it is rush hour, I am going a long way, should I take my
other car? But, friends, the sun was shining, the temperature was oh so
seventyish. I drove with the top down and the south wind caressing my hair.
Linda Ronstadt was on the radio.
God, I thought, this is great.
So I’m going down Lebanon Road singing “You’re No Good” when a Mercedes
Benz barrels out of a parking lot and rams me like I am a tinker toy and he is
A.J. Foyt on steroids with the world’s most powerful vehicle. I see him coming
toward me and know I am doomed. My life passes before my eyes, and I think how
sad it is I didn’t get to attend the estate planning dinner first. It would
have come in handy. But somehow or another I survive the crash. My wrist is
sprained from bending the steering wheel but I am mobile and alive, but my
mechanic calls me the next day to tell me poor dear Emily is dying and we have
to pull the plug. I need to say last rites.
And so I mow and cut and trim these three weeks later like a good boy,
although the Ides have roughed me up and April was not only cruel but downright
vicious and May so far has not been merry whatsoever, but I am, as Steve McQueen
remarked in “Papillon”, still here, still around. Yes, the novel reappeared.
LONG LONG TIME was a long time coming, but it is out. I await still the
settlement of Emily’s demise. Insurance companies take their sweet time when
they are paying out. When I finish the yard I take myself to lunch at one of my
favorite dives. I rebel against
all the doctor has told me recently and have a thick dripping steak sandwich, a
basket of fat greasy French fries covered with salt, and a large fountain Coke
that stings my taste buds and makes my eyes water. I find it strange to be this
age of 64, but amazing that after all the bumps, bruises, sprains, and assorted
mayhem visited upon both my body and soul there is actually someone feeding me
and needing me at this crazy age when sometimes I feel like dancing and have to
find out if this is one of those times when I can or I
can’t.
Yours sincerely. Wasting away.
Recollections from the Occasionally-Ghastly Past
Anybody who knows me is aware that I have always been a sucker for the pretty face of a British sports car. Like beautiful women, I have consistently in the past invested my all and everything into these automobiles with their smiling grills and pretty features and allowed myself to be seduced into believing how life will always be rosy and glorious when looked at and experienced from behind the wheel of a two-seater convertible. This kind of attitude has cost me money galore down through the years, caused me to suffer pain and angst while standing along the side of the road with the hood of the car raised waiting for assistance and wondering if a tow truck would arrive before unfriendly criminals and hoodlums and ax-murderers descended upon me and took my billfold and stripped my car, left me in a ditch bleeding and gnarled, caused me heartache and grief, and shortened my lifespan with stress and worry.
Yes, the sports cars have always been like women. They torture and tease and tend to bring one to the point of tears, cause one to at times to stand on the high cliffs of the psyche looking down into the abyss and wonder whether now might be the proper time to take the quick easy whoopsie-doo off the edge and put an end to all the suffering and nonsense brought on by a hunk of overseas metal. But also, like women, the cars also bring uncontrollable joy, make one smile for the briefest moments and forget the fiery hell one has previously been roasting within not so long ago.
This week marks another anniversary with Zelda, my 1971 MGB. This current milestone has made me think back to a few checkered occasions with my long litany of British sports cars that span almost five decades now. Here are a few of them, several good examples of how I am and always have been a damn fool for love.
Sally
My first foray into British sports car ownership came in the mid-70s when I bought something called a Sunbeam Tiger off a (appropriately) Sunbeam bread salesman. The Tiger was red with spoked wheels and almost ten years old at the time. The only times I had seen a Sunbeam before was in “Get Smart’ on television and watching Elizabeth Taylor wrap one around a tree in “Butterfield 8”. I named the Sunbeam Sally because she had a nice smile and there was that touch of alliteration there, and for a few years Sally and I commenced to roar around town and out into the country on wild rides most nights into the wee hours, and when I say “roar” I really mean it, since Sally was equipped with an engine the size of a small jet-liner and liked to with the slightest press of the accelerator take flight down the road with thunderous soundbites accompanying her. Being nuts as I was at the time, taking my life in my hands each time behind the wheel had some sort of weird fatalistic appeal to me. I can remember driving Sally to Pensacola for a week of hedonist behavior and watching the speedometer pass the 140 mph marker, laughing in the wind and the shimmying of the frame like a prized lunatic and trying to contort my body to see if I could possibly steer the car with my toes. It was not pretty. This is probably the abiding reason God chose to have Sally explode in the Kroger parking lot one day, to blow a gasket and crack a block and undergo all sorts of dire mechanical problems it would take a millionaire to fix. My co-workers at the time were so in sympathy with my loss that they went to a cemetery and stole flowers and wreaths from fresh graves, cloaked a Rest in Peace banner over Sally’s body and took an 8 by 10 picture of it. That picture still sits on my desk looking at me while I work. It is like the picture of the dead wife in the novel Rebecca, a reminder of love gone terribly wrong. The truth is Sally was taken from me by a benevolent Maker to save me from destruction, but there will always be that part of me, abject eegit that I am, that can’t stop loving her.
Elizabeth
Elizabeth was a 1979 MGB, British racing green, that I bought brand new from a high-end dealer in downtown Nashville. Elizabeth was great for a few months until a lady ran into the back of us at a four way stop, crushing the trunk and damaging the fuel cutoff control that, no matter how many times it was repaired, never worked completely right ever again. It was one of those wonderful MG things, which I came to know quite well, that couldn’t be fixed because it couldn’t be found or understood. I had to learn to live with what became a reoccurring mysterious malady.
Elizabeth would run fine for periods of time, then come to a complete halt and stoppage with no warning whatsoever.
She stranded me everywhere, in rush hour traffic, in distant parking lots, in Timbuctoo, many times in that well-known city in out of the way Egypt. I learned to hike. I learned to stand in front of Elizabeth and make threats. I learned to always take a book along with me so I’d have something to do until she decided to start up again, which she would, for no reason at all other than she wanted to.
Once I made a big play for a lady and took her to dinner and a movie on a summer night. When we came out of the movie we got in to take a nice drive beneath the moon, making it about fifty yards before Elizabeth sighed and gasped and said see you later. It was eleven at night and my date I’d tried so hard to impress had to help me push Elizabeth up a small rise to get into a vacant parking lot, then I had to leave this woman alone with Elizabeth while I trekked to a distant phone booth to call one of my grinning friends to come and pick us up.
End of romance. This woman was not in the least adventurous and had no sense of humor about being stranded in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
Elizabeth’s time was up when a tree fell on her on a calm summer morning while she was parked in my driveway, the sun shining down on her, no wind whatsoever, just a limb falling for no reason to crush her convertible top into particles resembling Chicklets. I knew right then I was beaten. I traded her in for a pickup truck that afternoon.
Martha
I waited almost ten years before I got back into the British sports car romance addiction thing again. I saw a shiny 1973 red roadster sitting in somebody’s front yard with a For Sale sign in the window. I drove by the house and gaped at the car for about a week until finally stopping and going up to the house and ringing the bell. The guy was nobody’s fool. He took my first offer.
Martha was okay for a while but was not to be trusted. It was not just her, but I had been burned before by her ilk, so I made certain to always have a second car available—a real car, loyal, faithful, trustworthy. I wasn’t going to fall prey to any British shenanigans again.
On a snowy night I got off work late and started up Martha to go home. My foot immediately went to the floorboard and I knew the clutch was gone. There had been no warning. It was as if Martha had waited until I worked way past closing and everyone had gone home and the snow was falling like runaway dandruff and ice had enveloped the earth. I had no choice but to walk home and leave her sitting there exposed to the elements.
The next day I learned that in order to replace the clutch the engine had to be pulled. Gosh, I thought, never heard of that one before. What a surprise. Then I learned how much replacing a clutch would cost me. Thank god I had no children, no college tuitions to pay, wasn’t divorced and didn’t have to pay out alimony. I finally managed to work overtime and make enough money to get Martha fixed and repaired, and after about two months in the shop I got her back and drove her to work. I parked on the rise above the store, put the gearshift in first and pulled up the hand brake. After I’d taken about ten steps I heard a clicking sound and turned around to see Martha rolling away, picking up speed as she headed through the lot toward the hilly driveway that spilled out into a suburban street. I tried to catch her. I was too slow.
She didn’t make it all the way down to the hill, but just decided to veer off a bit to her left and clip a couple of cars before running into a bascart return corral. Luckily, I had insurance, but I said some things out in that lot that day to Martha that couldn’t ever be taken back.
I’d grown smarter over the years too. I put her up for sale. I took the first offer.
Emily
I went more than twenty years before I considered owning a sports car again. I retired in 2012, and one of the first things I did was behave like an imbecile and check Craigslist to view the inventory. I was determined I wouldn’t be made a fool of again by a pretty face, I would cast my lot in the romantic wars of two-seaters with some other company, some different nation’s product. There would be no further British presence in my life.
That’s when I saw Emily.
She was shiny black. She had polished spoke wheels and her body was impeccable. Take her for a drive if you’d like, the seller said, and so I cruised the neighborhoods of Spring Hill, wandered out on 65 and watched the needle rise effortlessly to 70. She was a 1979 B; she was 33. I was 62. I figured we’d both been around some, that we would be good for each other.
One morning the key stuck in the ignition and I had to have Emily towed to get fixed. She’s leaking a little oil, I said, can you fix that too? It took almost a month before I got the call to come get her. I gave the mechanic my arm. I gave him my leg. I threw in my eyeteeth as a tip. On the way home smoke began to rise from the floorboard. I tried ignoring it, but it soon began seeping out from the dashboard making it difficult to see. A car pulled up beside me and a fellow yelled out the window, “Hey buddy, your car’s on fire.” I had to pull over to the shoulder and Emily had to go back to the shop.
Rinse and repeat.
After many ordeals Emily came home. A few days later I went to meet my wife for dinner on a Tuesday afternoon, singing along with Linda Ronstadt to “You’re No Good” on the radio. A Mercedes pulled out of a lot and I watched it come toward me from the side, figuring sooner or later it would stop. It managed to do just that when it hit me, obliterating the passenger side, knocking me twenty-odd feet, bending the steering wheel in my hands like I was Superman from Krypton set down in Music City.
Emily was T-boned. Emily was totaled. She would never be on the road again. I felt that old pervasive feeling of doom and sadness wash over me once more while I watched the wrecker haul her away.
Zelda
I found her on ebay. She was in Washington state, 2000 miles away. There was a picture and a box to place a bid. I put in a figure and waited a week. An email came and said that I was the winner.
I named her Zelda. I drove her around and waited for her to break down, to blow up, to fall to pieces before my eyes, but nothing happened. She chugged on. On occasion she needed things, a starter, a battery, a distributor, and there were times when the mystic MG part of her came and made itself known, like the way the speedometer stopped working on weekdays and then functioned perfectly on Saturdays and Sundays, but that was okay. I learned to live with her and she learned to live with me. Don’t ask for too much, she told me. I am old. I am 47. That is 329 in dog years. Ah, Zelda, I said, but I am old too. I have learned to never ask for too much and to be pleased with very little. And when a miracle comes along. To be overwhelmed.
And so we are content, Zelda and I, happy in our tiny road trip world.
And one other thing.
I found myself standing at a gasoline pump on a June afternoon, filling Zelda’s tank with high test. A beautiful girl approached me, dark raven hair, smiling blue eyes, cheekbones high and prominent, all the things a man’s dreams and visions consist of, those I carried with me all those many moons before.
“My daddy had a car like that,” she said, running her fingers across Zelda’s fender. “He used to take me for rides in it when I was a little girl. I just love cars like this!”
“I do too,” was all I said, for I was old and this sort of chance encounter and time was long ago gone. But it was nice to remember such things.
I got in the car and Zelda started up just fine. The motor made a nice purring sound as I drove away, and I knew the beautiful girl was standing back there at the station watching me and Zelda disappear down the road. The top was down and the sun was shining and it was another in a long series of wondrous days.
Halleluiah.
Five Things I Remember About My Brother
My brother Jerry died last week in a small town in Florida. Jerry was 71. He was tested a borderline genius and was also pretty much nuts 90% of the time; I don’t think anyone who knew him will argue about either of these statements. He was an electrician and a guitar player and a dog-lover when he was at his best; when he was at his worst he was a holy terror. Nobody knows this better than me. I was his kid brother.
Five things I remember about Jerry:
- Jerry could talk exactly like Donald Duck. He learned this from an early age and used to ask me questions as Donald, following me around the house and yard to make quacking noises before pummeling me into submission. I suspect if he had gone to Disneyland at an early age he would have had a nice career reading Donald’s lines for all the cartoons. To this day, I have trouble viewing a Donald Duck cartoon without flinching, expecting from learned response to get clocked by my brother any minute.
- Jerry loved dogs more than anyone I have ever encountered. He couldn’t live without a dog in his life, no matter how dire his circumstances or pathetic his surroundings. If he was short of money his dogs always ate before him. They slept in his bed and rode shotgun with him wherever he went. His dogs adored him because he understood them and spoke their language, so there were never misunderstandings or resentful feelings between him and his pack. They lived on equal footing. Unfortunately, this great wisdom with his four-legged friends did not carry over to his human acquaintances. He never could bridge the gap completely with either men or women, and I’m not too sure he tried that much. I think he was smart enough to know there was too much distance for him to travel there, and besides, I’m pretty sure he preferred the company of dogs anyway.
- He tended bar in the roughest joint I’ve ever been in down in North Miami in the 80s. When I visited him there I met a drug dealer named Duane who drove a red Cadillac Deville with license tags that said “God is My Co-Pilot” on the front. It was explained to me that the cops in Miami wouldn’t mess with someone who had religion, which seemed to make some sort of sense at the time. The walls of the bar were riddled with bullet holes, and when I first walked in about fifty people were crowded around the floor guzzling booze, snorting lines of coke off the bar, and eating grilled dolphin someone was cooking outside. Have some Flipper, my brother said, handing me a plate. I could hear Steely Dan playing on the jukebox, “Do It Again”; my theme song, my brother told me. As the evening ensued I took off with an awfully cute barmaid named Marian in a tiny rowboat with a trolling motor, and we cruised up and down the canals until dawn singing sailor songs. I woke up in my brother’s apartment the next afternoon, not knowing how I’d got there but aware that I’d had a noteworthy experience I would have liked to have been able to recall. Jerry laughed at me and for the rest of my visit told all his friends that I was definitely his kin and how such behavior as I had exhibited on the night in question ran in the family. I am still not exactly certain what it was I had purportedly done, and to this day I wonder if I will have to answer for my Miami crimes on Judgment Day.
- On that same visit Jerry and I went into the Fontainebleau Hotel, where he promptly introduced me to Jackie Gleason, who smiled and called me Pal and bought me a drink. I believe it was bourbon, but whatever it was I drank it right down, seeing that the elixir came from The Great One himself. To this date, this is the highest brush with fame I have ever been around and not one of those moments a fellow easily forgets. I did ring up a Butterfinger for Little Richard at Kroger once, but drinking with Ralph Kramden sort of makes that moment minor. So thanks to Jerry for that.
- My cousin Loretta, who walked on herself a decade ago, always baby-sat Jerry and me when we were little kids, on those occasions when my parents stepped out for the evening. Loretta, thirteen years my senior, always said I was the one who was the little angel, quiet and respectful and self-entertained, but that Jerry was the ultimate handful, possessed, she ascertained, by some form of demon from a far-reaching hell and always trouble in the most bizarre and unsettling ways. How many times I wanted to kill that child, she’d say, rolling her eyes and looking up to Heaven, wondering how she’d managed in those days to not club my brother like he was some murderous life-threatening baby seal. Loretta never fooled me though; I knew different. Just last week, while digesting the news of my brother’s passing and pondering how I was suddenly and for the first time in this world brother-less, I passed by Loretta’s gravestone during my daily walk through the Spring Hill Cemetery in Nashville. I’d already told my departed parents—buried on the northern opposite hill--the day before about Jerry’s death and how they should probably be looking for him to show up sometime soon, since I somehow take for granted he will be allowed inside the Pearly Gates (perhaps on Probation), and so I told Loretta what to expect.
I knew eventually she’d be smiling. I knew that despite herself she wouldn’t be able to keep the little corners of her mouth from turning upward.
That’s the thing I remember about Jerry the most, that talent he had of making you smile even when you wanted to kill him. He had this way of doing that to you.
Intoxicated Basketball and Scrumptious Splendiferous Fare-Thee-Wells
(A few words of wisdom from my fickle friend, the Summer Wind)
Back in the 80’s (that horrendous decade where culture took a nosedive and what was bad was suddenly deemed fairly good by people who had no notion of what was good in the first place) I spent a lot of afternoons after work (Kroger Company, 38 years on the ol’ rockpile) playing basketball in my driveway with a fellow who worked with me a lot of years and a guy who delivered Krispy Kreme doughnuts to our store three times a week. Danny (not his real name, but I’m trying to protect the innocent here, even though this fellow never qualified as innocent by any stretch) was a high school dropout who was a pretty smart dude underneath it all, even if he always tried to present himself as a first class dumbass to the world. I’d worked with Danny for years, since the day he got hired at age 16 and I got assigned to show him how to bag groceries. That was the day he told me he needed a job because he was getting married the next morning. His bride-to-be was as pregnant as a girl could get, he told me with a smile, so it looks like I need a job. Immediately, then, I knew he was crazy. This meeting was in the late sixties, so we flash forward a decade and a half to our after-work basketball days. Danny is now on wife #3, two kids toddling around he calls the dwarfs (the 3rd wife is of course Snow White) and things are not looking good domestically for him. He is having trouble with Snow White in the same manner he had trouble with wives #1 and #2. He is also having trouble with his girlfriend. And her husband. Danny always had girlfriends through all his marriages. His girlfriends always had husbands. There was always a lot of drama going on, which always seemed to make Danny smile and emit chuckles. He was so screwed up I couldn’t keep from smiling and chuckling either. It’s true I wasn’t exactly sane then either.
I never knew the Krispy Kreme salesman’s complete name—he was just Big Bill to me. Big Bill was about 6-7 and a few years younger than me (I was suddenly at the age where everyone I met was younger than me) and had once played basketball for one of the area high schools that maybe won the state tournament—my facts get muddled over time. Big Bill was also black, which tended to make my white neighbors look out their windows to see what the three of us, two honkies and one brother, might be up to in my back driveway on those afternoons.
What we were up to was shooting ball and drinking vodka and Irish whiskey until we couldn’t stand up anymore, then leaning up against the garage and laughing our posteriors off at the stories Danny would tell about his affairs and marriages, and then we’d discuss how many women Big Bill went to visit when he was supposed to be running his route, and then we’d talk about how my old half-breed hound walked sideways and looked like Fred MacMurray in the face. We would whistle the theme from “My Three Sons” every time he ambled by and collectively fall over in a heap like nothing in the world much mattered to us…which it didn’t.
I mention all this rigmarole because the other day I drove by my old house from those days and it didn’t look the same to me anymore. At least it didn’t look like I remembered it back in the day. It seemed like it was smaller, like it had shrunk or withered some, and I couldn’t imagine how some of those large strange puzzling wild events that had transpired there during my sojourn could have occurred in such a cramped space. I looked at the front door and couldn’t imagine Big Bill even being able to fit through, and the back driveway seemed way too small for three drunken men to shoot three pointers or chase after balls that bounded into the backyard where a creek ran and legions of black snakes wrapped around tree limbs and hid in the weeds. Intoxicated basketball, I remembered, always had its moments of dodging reptiles. Spirits and snakes had a way of mixing together and raising the old pulse rate.
I drove away down that historical street and pondered the shrinking of my old abode. It came to me then how my house and the current state of the world I found myself stumbling through were tied together in their own weird way and were one in the same if you cocked your head and looked at it at precisely the right angle. I thought about how for months now I’d been seeing places and buildings and items I’d once had memorized just up and pull the abracadabra change on me. I would come up on something from the way back when and suddenly get a little jolt for my eyes and other assorted brain matter. The building wasn’t there anymore, the business had closed, what used to be a store was now a condo. Churches my friends had attended had For Sale signs sitting at the front door, car lots had no cars, vacant fields suddenly had sprouted buildings. My high school looked like it had been bombed, but it was only new construction. I knew from the look of it with its holes and gaps and rubble it would be built back as something unrecognizable to me, so it might as well be it had never truly existed.
But hey, I’m a big boy. I’ve learned a few things in my time. I know nothing lasts forever. I know how eventually change has got to happen, even if I am an old dinosaur and I’m not really appreciative of that comet circling overhead that’s heading my way. A person has got to accept these things, I tell myself. A fellow—even an old relic recently on Medicare like me—has to adapt. This is nothing unusual, I think. It’s just like a lot of things in life. You’ve got to learn to go with the flow. Heck of a river this is lately, though. It’s hard enough paddling through all these dark waters without all those lurking monsters and demons of the deep circling the ship and waiting on the opportune moment to jump into the boat.
Still, I probably wouldn’t have voiced too much protest if this matter of altering shapes and disappearing landmarks had only confined itself to inanimate objects, but like it seems in the day to day grand pageant of life, circumstances and events soon began to tackle matters of real import, like life and death and love and the lack of it and all that jazz.
Folks started expiring, dropping out of the Big Parade like cicadas in the swelter of summer. First, it was an acquaintance from high school (cancer); then the Doom Express persuaded an old pal to fall off a tractor and have it run over him, which was certainly proof enough that accidents do happen and a fellow can check out just like that with no fanfare at all. Then a guy, who once was a best friend but had disappeared just like that way back when within himself via drugs and personal woes and tragedies and just a general descent into an existence which was not really life or death but a puzzling combination of both, decided to forego the art of breathing too. I found myself on the funeral circuit all at once with a bad case of the Bye Byes, a visitation here, a burial there, so much so my social calendar seemed to teem with signing registers and viewing the remains of people I knew while noticing how odd and strange the hue of death looked on them.
I did a lot of viewing and listening and watching and thinking during those celebratory grieving days and nights devoted to the departed. It came to me during one of those visitations how these excursions to funeral homes and drives to graveyards and daily consultations with the obituaries were beginning to have an effect on how I was looking at things here still above ground.
The Dead Game, I call it—it’s where I start alphabetically and look at last names in the morning paper and see if any of them ring a bell. Do I know any of these people? Are they related to somebody? If I know them or they’re related, it’s a point for me. If they’re strangers it’s a point for the other side. Lately I seem to be winning the daily Dead Game, knowing more dead people or dead relations than perfect strangers, which is a little unsettling.
I studied my pals and their poses in their caskets and decided they didn’t look a bit like their old selves but mainly resembled crap and ruin and the beginnings of decay which was not the least bit attractive on them or to have to look at either. I arrived late for one visitation and found myself alone with the deceased. We’d been tight back in the day, but that night I found we had little to say to each other. Those days were gone. So I busied myself studying the register out front to see who’d come by earlier I had missed, old friends male and female I’d grown up with back when there were phone booths and gas was about a quarter a gallon. Not too many people had shown up I saw, but I told myself it was a holiday weekend. I figured they’d all come for the funeral the next morning. I was wrong. During the service I could count everybody on two hands and have a couple of fingers left to scratch my noggin and wonder why.
This sort of stuff just kept on happening. Folks ceased to be, nobody took much notice, life went on, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. I was all of a sudden beginning to get accustomed to it.
The last engagement on my social calendar came a couple of weeks ago as a visitation and funeral doubleheader. I had tickets to see the Reds and the Tigers in Cincinnati during that time, but the rains came and washed out my plans, and I had no excuse but to attend another ceremony. This time it was my long lost best friend from early childhood, who had stopped being my best friend four and a half decades before when drugs, alcohol, marriage, and a general form of madness led us down different paths.
It was a strange gathering, this visitation and funeral, strange in the sense that this person I had known so well so many years before now rested before me as an utter and complete stranger. I thought about how many times I spent the night at either his house or he at mine, the bicycle rides we took as kids all over creation and East Nashville, swimming, playing basketball, smoking our first cigarettes together on a school playground. I looked at him reposed there and I didn’t know him either in the real world or in an imaginary one, and I knew that wherever he was and from whatever venue he was watching from that moment he didn’t know me either. We were strangers, he and I, but it didn’t stop with us. All the old faces I saw shuffling through to view him were in the same boat, glancing at him, noticing me, nodding to each other. Words were said and stories were told, and sometimes there were smiles and instances of recognition and memory.
But not really.
The thing of it is we remember so little. We forget so much.
The next morning that room for the funeral was maybe half full. I sat in the back and tried to determine who I knew and who I didn’t. Something about a person here and there looked familiar, but I didn’t know their names. They were so few. The people I would have known from the days of youth and shared moments were not there, not present. A few had wandered in the night before to pay respects, out of decency or obligation or maybe even curiosity—who knew? They were absent for the funeral that day though, gone back to the lives they lived now, no more akin to the past and the way time swallows lives up and makes them unrecognizable, indescribable, foreign, as if what went on in that lost time before had never truly happened at all. I listened to a preacher describe the life that had passed. It came to me the preacher didn’t know this man either, like I didn’t know him, like any of us don’t know anybody else when it all comes down and the curtain falls.
I drove home the long way after that funeral. I thought about how I had been this man’s first best friend when he was a boy, and I thought about how I, as his first best friend, had a few moments before been his last best friend who had come to say goodbye. I thought how that sort of fact ought to mean something, but it didn’t. I was just another stranger he had encountered along the way. In the end it hadn’t made any difference whether I had made an appearance or not. I kept remembering that line in The Great Gatsby when Jay Gatsby got buried and nobody showed up.
I shifted gears and said it out into the air. It just seemed to fit with everything in my sound and sight these strange no one remembers your name days.
“‘The poor son-of-a-bitch,’” I told the sky. I wasn’t sure the sky was listening.
Visit my website http://www.ralphbland.com
From the Piker Press (2/9/15)
You Can't Sit Down Ralph Bland
I'm not even going to go into why I'm where I am for all this, because it's for sure I could brainstorm all day and still never come up with a clear-cut answer. The thing of it is I've got to where I've taken up the habit my late mother once reveled in, that being, reading the obituaries in the morning newspaper every goddamned day. It used to drive me crazy how, back when Mother was alive, poring over the death notices to find out who'd succumbed over the past twenty-four hours provided her the most enjoyable opportunity to get her rocks. I mean, some folks like the comics, some people the sports, some even like to read about local and national happenings, no matter how bad and depressing all that might be, but very few rational human beings find pleasure in discerning who's bitten the dust in the past day. Maybe it wouldn't have bothered me so much if my mother hadn't started engaging in this grisly practice until she got up in years and had death looking over her shoulder, or she needed to keep up with who of her friends she didn't need to send a Christmas card to anymore, but that wasn't the case. I can recall being a little kid and watching her spread the newspaper out on the kitchen table with her trusty scissors by her side, ready to clip out an eye-catching obit the second it presented itself. It was almost like an early variation of the Kevin Bacon game, where Mother searched through all the names to find some survivor or organization or area in some dead person's life that in some far-out way somehow or another related to her. I thought it was sort of sick then and I still think so in a way, yet I invariably catch my eyes running down the columns just like she did once I arrive at the obituary page. I have to admit there's something sort of addictive about the process. Anyway, that's how I came across Rebecca's mother, or the person who used to be Rebecca's mother, as the death notice indicated. I always skim over the last names and don't stop to read any of the gory details unless one of them rings a bell, because I'm trying my best not to make a science of all this, and just the act itself makes me feel a little guilty, like I'm doing something I should be ashamed of and don't want anybody catching me doing it. Unlike her daughter, Donna Williams always seemed to like me. Rebecca's father, Charles, I was certain despised me, while the family dog, Dolly, a black mutt who resided in the back yard, wanted me dead along with the rest of the human race. Rebecca fluctuated somewhere in her feelings toward me from occasional high-voltage desire to low-grade contempt, but Mrs. Williams always smiled and was polite and offered courteous conversation whenever I came over to pick up Rebecca for a date. We shared snippets of conversation while Rebecca finished doing whatever it was she did to appear ravishing, and as I look back now, the only times I actually sat down in a chair in Rebecca's house was during those chats with her mother. Rebecca never invited me to dinner or to come watch TV or listen to records. It was always me picking her up and taking her somewhere to spend money, and as I look back now, that utter lack of ever being seated should have indicated to me that my relationship with Rebecca Williams was never going anywhere -- except to dinner, or concerts or movies -- only to places where I could blow lots of cash I didn't have on a girl friend who really wasn't in actuality my cut and dried girl friend at all. So Donna Williams was dead now, all eighty-one years of her, and when I ran across her name in the paper I felt the wave of recognition pass through me like a mild electric shock, a slight tingle just strong enough to jog my memory and spur my brain into gear. I spent a couple of hours thinking about Rebecca and Donna and Charles and Dolly the dog and the relationships we once had with one another, and I knew I had to go by the funeral home or suffer the possibility of going bonkers from the curious voices whispering in my head. What I really wanted to do was pull in the funeral home's parking lot and case the place, just sit there with the motor running and the heater keeping me warm and watch who went in and out the front doors of the building. I've always opted for the chicken's way out. But I finally convinced myself there was nothing really to be afraid of. Donna and Charles were both dead, Dolly surely had been put to sleep by this time, and Rebecca could be nowhere near the ravishing dish she once was. I could go in and pay my respects without suffering any pangs of regret and loss. Times have changed, I told myself. Years have gone by. Nothing is the same as it once was. There are a lot of things to worry about these days but the past isn't one of them. The past is a long time gone -- long gone like Donna and Charles and Dolly. It has no say-so over what goes on now. I'd never been in this particular funeral home before. Most of my prior experiences with bereavement visitation had occurred over on my side of town, in my neighborhood, in areas where I felt slightly comfortable, and most of the time I'd gone to those places because someone in my own family had died -- someone older, someone who had already run the gamut and had been leaning toward extinction for quite a while. I usually knew the crowd I was walking into. They were relatives, aunts and uncles and cousins and such, and though I may not have cared for them that much or been close with them, I at least knew their names and faces and had a general working idea where they were coming from. But walking into this new unfamiliar place I didn't know what to expect. To be truthful I was just there to check out old Rebecca. I wondered what the years had done to her. Mostly I wanted to know if I could still spy something in her that would tell me I was right in my feelings back then and the way she looked would show that now. I didn't want Rebecca to be just another middle-aged woman no red-blooded male had not in the past and would not now ever so much as give a second glance to. I've always liked to think that the women who spurned me in the past did so because they were so wonderful they weren't allowed in the Wonderful Handbook to have anything to do with a mere mortal like me. I like to think I had good taste back then. Inside there were three men in suits and a couple of blue-haired white women standing in a group beside the pews. Some of these people were so old it made me feel young again, like I was a college kid once more with my entire future in front of me, which was one hell of a stretch of the imagination. I'm fifty-plus, just so you know. For me to feel fresh and youthful takes a lot of liberal inspiration and boundless imagination. I walked down about three-quarters of the aisle and just stood there trying to determine if there was anyone in this room who'd ever possessed the spark to ignite the sexual fire that had at one time singed my soul thirty-something years ago. I wasn't even sure I was in the right place until I spotted Rebecca at the front corner of the room, talking to a bunch of grandmas. It had to be her. I had to look real hard and close and tried to remember her as she was and imagine her as she would be now. Then I tried to resolve if this woman twenty feet away from me was indeed the same person. The hair was shorter with some gray in it, and it was tough to tell from where I stood. Then I heard the laugh and saw the smile and I knew it was Rebecca. There are just some things that never go away. She spotted me and her eyes grew wide. I guess she couldn't believe what she was seeing. "Is it really you standing there?" she asked. "I never expected to see you again. I thought you'd disappeared off the face of the earth." "I saw the notice in the paper and thought I'd come by for a minute." I'm telling you, Rebecca didn't look bad for an old woman. I mean, she wasn't old -- she was a middle-aged woman, okay? She just wasn't a chick anymore. She wasn't a college girl of the sixties with her hair trailing down her back wearing faded jeans walking across a red-gold autumn campus with my eyes trailing after her and my brain telling me simply, I have to meet this girl, no bones about it, no matter what. This girl I have to meet. And here I am again. And I'm not a boy anymore. I'm a grown man. A year older than her. There are parts of me that don't feel like an old man, but I'm getting there. Maybe I'm not all the way in the autumn of my life yet, but the Fourth of July's a long time past. "It's hard to believe I'm seeing you," she said. She hooked her arm through mine and pulled me close, an act I never remembered her doing before. "Come on," she smiled. "There are some people here I'd like you to meet." She led me around the pews and began introducing me to a lot of little old church ladies who were present to soak up everything they could from this important social event. Each one of them gave me a Polident smile and looked at me like I was something far more interesting than I'd previously assumed I was. One woman -- eighty if she was a day -- grasped my hand and solemnly told me she was very glad to see me, for poor Rebecca had certainly been through a lot and needed someone to help her along. "You haven't told me about him," she said to Rebecca, holding up my ringless hand. "Where have you been hiding him?" Everybody in the vicinity thought this was real funny, and titters leaked out from a bunch of wrinkled throats. It was the kind of humor Rebecca had always liked, bland and uninspired with no cutting edge wit behind it at all. And it was the kind of moment that made me recall the way I had always felt around her, that we were at different levels looking and talking about different stuff, finding something interesting or funny that the other couldn't have found any less stimulating. It was the sort of moment that had always separated us, that had prevented me from ever telling her anything the least bit personal about myself. I sensed how I had never told her anything really, nothing other than constructed scenarios I wanted her to believe belonged exclusively to me, and I had never learned anything much about her either, other than the fact she grew up well-off (compared to me) and liked to swim at the country club. I had never been to a country club in my life, unless you wanted to count the YMCA in that category. But then, I doubted Rebecca had ever gone to the library to check out a book. I doubted she had ever drunk illegal alcohol when she was a minor or taken a toke from somebody's nickel bag. It didn't matter how much time had passed -- we still didn't have a whole lot to talk about. The only person in the building I could possibly converse with for five uninterrupted minutes was incommunicado now, resting in a casket and bound for a place I hadn't had my ticket punched for yet. So I was led around with Rebecca's arm hooked through mine and shown off, judged by strangers like I was in a dog show competition or something. Every elderly lady asked the same questions, wanted to know at the gist of it if I was married or not. The prevalent mood seemed to indicate that Rebecca should have a husband and I was the best candidate to come along in a while. This puzzled me, Rebecca not being married, so finally I couldn't help but pose the question to her. I just decided to get right to the point. "You mean to tell me you've never gotten married?" "I almost did," she said, choosing her sentences in her careful way, like she was afraid she might be eternally typecast if she slipped up and said the wrong thing. "I was engaged about six years ago, but my fiancé died on New Year's Day. He was in a terrible automobile accident. Maybe you read about it." I thought about the thousands of folks who'd died in car accidents over the past six or seven years and wondered how I was supposed to recall one particular fatal crash that had occurred. I thought about how that one incident meant the world to this woman from a long time past but didn't matter a thing to me now. It could be none of what went on with Rebecca ever really mattered too awfully much to me back in the past either, for it could have been Rebecca had been nothing but a trophy I tried pulling out of the world at large to fill a space in my life, to take care of a need I had. Maybe I needed a girlfriend back then so I wouldn't glimpse how empty the future might become if I wasn't somehow attached to someone. And maybe I needed this ex-girlfriend right now so I wouldn't have to look back at my golden youth of the long ago and far away and admit how empty and dull it had all actually been, have to face up to how this whole existence hadn't been very exciting or lyrical and anything near what my memory had cranked it up to be. In a fleeting instant I saw the both of us in this moment and in the past, and I saw Rebecca using me to fill up her big emptiness too. I was the one taking her to movies, feeding her at restaurants, picking her up in a car and driving her places. I was the one she needed to have as a representative of her past, a guy she could hook her arm around at moments like these and introduce, but the guy had to be one who couldn't stay, see, who couldn't sit down because he always had to be going. I wondered if it was forever that way with her, if perhaps the dead boyfriend of seven years past had been going somewhere too on that night he crashed, and if just before his farewell trip he'd had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Rebecca's mother, her father? Knowing Rebecca, probably not. Probably the poor stiff had to be going somewhere too and couldn't just sit down and take a load off his feet. Maybe he learned -- like I had now-- that he was only there to be Rebecca's boyfriend, her escort, and his role was to simply be a prop. I wasn't in a car accident, but I was just as dead to her as he was. I don't think she really wanted to let go of my arm. I'd met all her mother's friends and exchanged pleasantries with her sister and there for sure wasn't anything left to do but talk to her lawyer slash brother, who I'd met before he was a lawyer and was only a brother I hadn't liked much then, so I figured now that he was a lawyer and still her brother the chances were excellent I'd despise him as fervently as before. I supposed Rebecca and I could walk arm in arm up toward the casket and look at the flowers and look at her mother and blab for a minute about how this woman came to be today not alive, but that would have not been for me and Rebecca to do together, since an exchange like that was real and serious and not the kind of thing we had ever done before, and there didn't appear to be much sense in changing our itinerary at this point in time. So I left my old flame Rebecca with a kiss on the cheek and a slight hug. Her body elicited a vague response in me when it brushed against mine, but that was only because old Rebecca still looked good and I was between women at the moment and my imagination was trying to convince me here might possibly be a sure thing for a night or two. I decided my imagination might be a good thing to ignore for a change. Rebecca was okay on the outside, but in the end she was still Rebecca and I was still me. There were some things that couldn't be moved out of the way even with a heavy-duty two-wheeler. If I wanted to I suppose I could have slipped right back into being Rebecca's boyfriend and nowhere in the world would a heart have skipped a beat. After all, she seemed to need me in that role now more than ever before, what with everybody she'd been bolstering herself with all slipping into the deceased category. I would have probably done fine sitting in her living room, sitting at her kitchen table, sitting around and existing in all those places I'd never sat or been an entity in before. I bet I would have fit right in, like a comfortable old piece of furniture. But hell, I couldn't do it. Rebecca was really never my girlfriend. I'd been more than glad to use her presence to fill up those evenings all those years ago, but nothing was of such high importance today. Everybody had girlfriends back then, and I didn't want to be the only guy who didn't. See, a fellow had to be in college, he had to have a car and a little cash in his billfold to spend on that girlfriend, so with all that in the mix the world could see he was doing okay and wasn't a total screwup. He wasn't going to get weird looks from people because something was lacking in his life. But everyone was gone now. Everyone had vacated the premises for their own lives, where they married and owned houses and sired kids and then maybe gave it all up in a moment of reconsideration. I know because I'd done the same thing. I'd married and divorced, raised a couple of children and been hired and fired a couple of times. And yeah, I was still around and ticking along. I even have the numbers of two or three women to call if I need company for whatever reason that might be, but the fact is I don't really need a girlfriend or a companion too much these days. It's not like I have to be anywhere, you know. It's not like I truly care about where I'm seen or who I'm with. On the average I'd just as soon go home after work and watch TV. I know what I was doing with Rebecca and her mother was simply checking in. I guess seeing that obituary in the paper set off some sort of whistle in my head, and it became a drill like the old swimming pool game Find Your Buddy. I'm sure I only wanted to feel Rebecca's hand on my arm so I'd somehow know she was still out there and had been out there for me before. It wasn't like I was thinking about anything too serious. The sun was setting and the rush hour was in full force by the time I finally pried Rebecca's fingers from my arm and made my way across the pavement to my car. Because it was close to suppertime the cars in the lot were sparse and I didn't have to worry if anybody was parked too close or blocking my way out of there. I was free to go and join the swarm on the streets. What I did was stand there for a minute or two with the car door open and the keys in my hand. I wanted to leave and go through a drive-thru somewhere and go home to my ESPN, but I sort of didn't want to leave old Rebecca just yet. I knew that once I drove away that was it. I'd never see or hear from her again. She had no more parents around to die, and her brother and sister looked fairly healthy, or at least healthy enough to outlast me. I couldn't see myself running across their names in the obits anytime soon. I thought about going back inside and sitting down in one of the pews and staying a while, but there was something in me that knew that would never work. I'd never sat down before and there was no good reason to start thinking about starting now. So I stood there listening to the sounds of traffic. Brakes squealed and a horn honked. Radios blared way too loud. After a minute or two I came back to who I'd become and where in god's name I was, and I got into my Camry and drove away.
Article © Ralph Bland. All rights reserved.
Published on 2015-02-09
1 Reader Comments Anonymous
02/10/2015
11:58:54 PM
It's good to see you here again, Mr. Bland. Another beautiful and intimate story. I almost identify with Rebecca, wanting to take your arm and walk you around to my friends. Excellent work.
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Not Dead Again
I look at the timing of my last post and it occurs to me how sometimes it
takes a while to say something that just might possibly be worth saying. I’m
hoping this is one of those times, but one never knows these days until plunging
in headfirst and finding out if the waters are shark-infested or
not.
LONG LONG TIME is finally out in an edited version, unexpurgated for sure
but as error-free fact wise as I could persuade the publisher to get it. I won’t
go into any tirade about how in my advancing age the world certainly doesn’t
operate on pride and trust anymore, but let me say I am not impressed with the
work ethic of folks I’m encountering these days. I mean, I’m retired coming up
on two years now and so feel entitled to being lazy and worthless and no count
personally, but come on world, we can’t all behave like me. Somebody’s got to do
their job and correct my mistakes. I only write this drivel. I can’t be
entrusted with editing it too.
Seriously, LONG LONG TIME is out at last, and I am pleased with it. I
didn’t expect it to linger at the publisher’s for 14 months, but now that it’s
arrived I am glad to see it in print and in eBook so I can move on. I am
expecting novel #6 to be forthcoming in a matter of months. I am also working on
a pair of novellas, which I hope to publish as a joint volume in 2015. A long
novel is planned after that, providing I don’t expire in a mine shaft explosion
or have further possible deadly encounters with crazed hell-bent Mercedes Benzes
while toddling down the highways of Music City
USA.
Since the demise of Emily, my 1979 MGB, in April, I spent more than two
months convincing the insurance company represented by a lizard that they owed
me more than just a passing trifle for having one of their clients destroy my
car. It took quite a while to persuade them to see things from my point of view,
but I took the advice of one of my wiser friends and uttered the magic words of
“litigation”and “arbitration” and “court dockets”, and, lo and behold, suddenly
these claim folks couldn’t seem to pay me enough. I mean, the till was open and
the golden goose was flapping its wings. I honestly was overwhelmed. I didn’t
know Emily was worth so much, but I kept my trap shut and smiled and took, my
friends, the dough they were clamoring to give
me.
This is when I went crazy, but craziness, as most of you are well aware,
is necessary and comes in handy sometimes. I went on EBay and found another MG
in Renton, Washington, bid on it, won, and had it shipped to Nashville. This is
the first time I’ve ever purchased a car without touching it or test-driving it
first, an act which caused tremors and acute trepidation initially, but which
now has proven to be a better way of doing things than having me act like I
know what I’m doing while I look under a hood or kick a tire or drive around
the block. This act removed all my knuckleheaded self-posturing and reduced it
all down to the pure luck of the draw, and as fate has seemed to deem it thus
far, it was about time I had a little good luck. So I have a 1971 MGB now, and
she seems to start and run and not be prone to sit at the side of the road with
its trunk raised, which is certainly unique and refreshing and
new.
So far. (Knock on a Redwood).
She is green. Her name is Zelda. She is my 4th MG. Hopefully, love is lovelier the fourth time around.
Heck, it can’t be any worse.
OCTOBER 2, 2014: Summer, You Old Indian Summer
Indian Summer, the almanacs tell us, is that period of time at the beginning of fall when the temperature is warmer than usual. It is that period in the year when the light and the dark share equal time, when the stars appear brighter and the sky is bluer and the grass and the leaves are the richest finest green they will ever be. Grace Metalius says in the first line of PEYTON PLACE that Indian Summer is like a woman. The old song of the same name says it is the ghost that comes after springtime’s laughter. All of that is true and more. It has always been my favorite time of the year.
Because of many things. All this, perhaps.
On September 27, 2003, one of the dearest friends I will ever have departed this earth in a sad untimely fashion. Three days later he was buried on a hill in a country cemetery in a small town outside Nashville. No one could understand why he was dead. His widow rode with me to the gravesite. She was a dear friend too, and I didn’t realize at the time this would be the last time I would see her too. She disappeared from my orb, probably because seeing each other would only remind us of the husband and friend who was gone from us, and it was our business to forget such things. Neither of us did. For eleven years I made an annual journey to the small cemetery to stand and think and wonder, looking, I suppose, for some answer out there in the quiet solitude of the country. After eight years, the widow died. Maybe it was from a broken heart, I don’t know. It seems pretty to think of it that way sometimes.
On September 27, 2014, my daughter married a young man in a field on a farm way out in the middle of nowhere. All her friends made the journey to be there; they danced and laughed at the reception in a beautiful barn amid flowers and wedding cake and moonlight. I have never seen my daughter so happy. It was strange to me to think of how different the same date can be, how it can mean one thing to one group of people and something completely different to another. I thought back eleven years to that Indian Summer of 2003, thought of my friend’s death and burial and how that very same day my beloved cat disappeared and I never saw him again either. I thought of how four days later I married my wife on a Saturday night and how there was music and friends and moonlight there too. I brought myself back to where I was in 2014 this September 27, this Indian Summer, sitting in my new suit with beautiful girls in their bridal party dresses flitting around me, while I, accustomed now to my antique status, watched them all and thought about how I could write a book about this night, about them, and then laughing to myself at the thought, because it came to me I already had.
So on the last day of September in 2014 I stood at a gravesite and somehow it finally came to me. The sky was the deepest blue with nary a cloud and flowers of yellow and pink and red bloomed all around me. I thought of how there was peace for my friend here, peace he didn’t have enough of when he walked among us. I wondered if he understood it all yet, and if we ever met again, would he sit me down and explain it all to me so that even a knucklehead like myself might comprehend. I wondered if he’d met up with his wife, if this peace and understanding was shared by them both. I thought about how we the living who are yet here on earth could be ourselves happy enough if we came across this peace and understanding. It is like there is a link, if you look at it the right way. There is death. There are beginnings. Entrances and exits. Night and day and day and night until it ends, and maybe that’s when you get it, if you’re not smart enough to get it sooner. Me, I’ve never been that smart.
I was the only person in the cemetery. I stood thinking and waiting for everything to settle for quite a while. Then I drove back to Nashville. When I got home I sat on the patio and watched the birds and the squirrels. I drank a cup of coffee and talked to my three dogs. I petted them on the head a long time. It was a really nice day. It was Indian Summer. I couldn’t have asked for a whole lot more.
Visit my website http://www.ralphbland.com
May May 17, 2014 On the
day I turned sixty-four years old, rather than going out for lunch or buying
myself a present, I instead chose to mow my yard, since all the smiling
meteorologists on the local stations had repeatedly assured me for a week the
rainy season was coming and the next several days promised nothing but storms
and wind and slow-moving cold fronts, with the possibility of a tornado not to
be dismissed. Under such warnings, I decided to perform my three hours of manual
labor on this day of my birth, rather than to feel guilty and ashamed at the
length and overbearing lushness of the property as I watched from my window
later and felt like the lazy good for nothing welcher I truly am but strive to
keep hidden from my wife and the world. Also, because I have three dogs, it is
no fun walking in the backyard among tall grass and not knowing what I might be
stepping in.
If I stay out till quarter to three, I sang to myself under the mower’s
roar, would you lock the door?—all the while considering the myriad of events
that had preceded this morning of toil, not only back to my wild boy innocent as
strawberry days as I am prone to peruse too often, but truly just mainly to the
last few months that, as the Kingfish once observed, have had me running into
strings of bad luck lately. The Kingfish invested a bundle of money in a pumpkin
farm, then Halloween got called off. The Kingfish took a trip to see the Grand
Canyon, but it was closed. I. like the Kingfish, have tried to be careful, have
attempted in my limited erring manner to get somehow ahead of the game by
scheming, pondering, thinking, considering all the angles of each particular
move I might fancy to make here in the smack dab of my golden years, to just
keep from getting clubbed like a baby seal for a change. My fifth novel, long
delayed, showed promise of being released. All winter long, amid frosty
mornings and bone-chilling afternoons I made certain my precious MG was
started, taken for rides, had its oil checked, was just generally stroked and
rubbed and talked to and paid attention to in a manner I have never attempted
to lavish on a true to life woman before—not even my wife, who, were I to act
this way toward her, would quickly be wondering what exactly I was up to this
time. March came and I made certain I bewared its Ides. I knew already April
was the cruelest month, yet I tried my best to be polite to it anyway. Things
were looking up. I thought I not only knew the score but could name that tune
in one note just by laying low.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, I sing to the blades, now
that I’m 64.
The novel came out and appeared as a real thing. Then it disappeared.
Where did it go, I wondered? I don’t know, said my publisher, then he
disappeared too. For two weeks there was no sign of my book. Amidst this tumult
I backed my MG, my darling Emily, out of the garage on a Tuesday afternoon. The
sun was shining, the temperature oh so seventyish. I drove in the afternoon to
meet my wife for a free dinner. We were going to listen to someone from a
funeral home tell us all we need to do and have in place before we croak. I
wondered to myself, it is rush hour, I am going a long way, should I take my
other car? But, friends, the sun was shining, the temperature was oh so
seventyish. I drove with the top down and the south wind caressing my hair.
Linda Ronstadt was on the radio.
God, I thought, this is great.
So I’m going down Lebanon Road singing “You’re No Good” when a Mercedes
Benz barrels out of a parking lot and rams me like I am a tinker toy and he is
A.J. Foyt on steroids with the world’s most powerful vehicle. I see him coming
toward me and know I am doomed. My life passes before my eyes, and I think how
sad it is I didn’t get to attend the estate planning dinner first. It would
have come in handy. But somehow or another I survive the crash. My wrist is
sprained from bending the steering wheel but I am mobile and alive, but my
mechanic calls me the next day to tell me poor dear Emily is dying and we have
to pull the plug. I need to say last rites.
And so I mow and cut and trim these three weeks later like a good boy,
although the Ides have roughed me up and April was not only cruel but downright
vicious and May so far has not been merry whatsoever, but I am, as Steve McQueen
remarked in “Papillon”, still here, still around. Yes, the novel reappeared.
LONG LONG TIME was a long time coming, but it is out. I await still the
settlement of Emily’s demise. Insurance companies take their sweet time when
they are paying out. When I finish the yard I take myself to lunch at one of my
favorite dives. I rebel against
all the doctor has told me recently and have a thick dripping steak sandwich, a
basket of fat greasy French fries covered with salt, and a large fountain Coke
that stings my taste buds and makes my eyes water. I find it strange to be this
age of 64, but amazing that after all the bumps, bruises, sprains, and assorted
mayhem visited upon both my body and soul there is actually someone feeding me
and needing me at this crazy age when sometimes I feel like dancing and have to
find out if this is one of those times when I can or I
can’t.
Yours sincerely. Wasting away.
January 21, 2014
So the holiday season has passed in a whirl, and I'm a liar if I say how much I enjoyed the time. The truth is I found most of the experience overrated and not so much worth the effort. I spent a few pensive moments of the time attempting to retrieve some warm and golden holiday memories from my Norman Rockwellian past, but, like Rockwell's art, most of the memories were mythic and psuedo in nature, nice and fuzzy but nothing to be held in the hand, because how can one hold something that was never real in the first place? The best that I could conjure from all my 63 Christmases before was getting my first stereo system--a miniscule GE turntable with two detachable speakers. I spun "Rubber Soul" on it twenty times a day between sledding down the hill in front of my house. It snowed like we were in the Yukon that year and Christmas vacation from school got extended for almost three weeks. I never wanted to go back to school at all after that, which was the same way it was this year. I didn't want to go back to real life after the new year either. I wanted to sleep late and eat a ton of food and gain weight and never write and take two or three naps a day. The first three weeks of this year have not been pretty with the efforts I've had to make to sling myself back into the mainstream.
But life goes on. My new novel remains in limbo at the publisher, perhaps appearing soon, but maybe reposing dormant until after my demise, wherein the publishing house may figure they might make a little money on the sympathy dollar. Vanderbilt basketball--long my saving grace from the vileness of the world--has been none too enjoyable but indeed downright cursed. The weather has been frightful--gray, dull, bitterly cold with frigid winds whipping and howling at most opportunities. My precious MG, Emily (yes, I have named her as a sign of eternal affection) has done her best to withstand the artic blasts and driven admirably on our many excursions out into the world, but the fact is Emily is 35 years old and has no heater and there are passageways in the convertible roof for various cruel gusts to make their way inside and hover around my toes, so sooner or later we both have to come home to the garage for her and the rocking chair by the window for me. When I was young I loved the winter; now in my sunset years I long for summer again, the beach, the patio with music and beer, the top down with the wind blowing my hair or what's left of it, and the sun making me squint even through dark glasses.
We have a new dog in our family. She is a rescue from Mt. Juliet, a border terrier who looks like Toto from "The Wizard of Oz" if one were to take Toto and dip him in a vat of caramel. We named her Anna Grace after some deliberation, but she will only be called that when she is naughty. Most times she will be Gracie. She and Phoebe the yellow Lab have become fast friends already. Otis the Corgie/ Beagle is still somewhat wary of this newcomer, thinking she might be a food threat at some point. I wondered for about a week if the two of them would ever get along, but yesterday I came across the two of them sleeping together on the same doggy bed. Dogs are great!
Last Friday night I returned to Stratford High School--scene of many crimes--for a Friday night basketball game. With me in attendance were eight or nine old classmates. We had a good time catching up with a lot of laughs and memories, but in the end I imagine most of the guys present felt the same way I did driving home. I'll bet they thought how small everything had looked, how long ago and far away the world we inhabited then was now. I looked at that gym and the hallways and the corners and crevices where so many youthful dreams went to die, and I kept hearing that old Peggy Lee song in my head all the way home.
Was that all there was to all that stuff that seemed so important back all those thousand dreams ago? And what does any of that stuff mean now?
Is that all there is to high school? To glory days?
Is that all there is?
July 3, 2013
Back from a week at not-so-sunny St. Petersburg, but despite periods of rain and arriving in the middle of a waterspout, a good time was had. I got the opportunity to see the Tigers play the Rays three times, and my suspicions were confirmed as to the Tigers being a bunch of under-achievers and not truly baseball savvy. Good players, but seem to be missing something upstairs and in the motivation department. Still, it was a good opportunity to see my two favorite teams play. As my friend told me, bad baseball beats good anything else. Food and the Gulf were available every day, but I have to admit I sure missed my dogs and Emily, the MGB. Oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home.
November 8, 2013
My Beo Girl
She trusted no one there at the
beginning, not until she came to realize there was love in this world even for
her. Sensing this, she approached it the way she did all things in life,
cautiously, slowly, using her every sense to determine if this love was an evil
trap or not.
She was a librarian and she wanted things ordered. She
disliked doorways and corners and places where she could be trapped. It was
always dodge and run, dodge and run for Beo Girl. She felt she had to be fast to
get away from the harm that might want to come her way.
When she was
outside she looked up at the sky like dogs never do and smelled flowers with her
pointed nose. She told the starlings and squirrels what would happen to them if
she ever got close enough, and she shook stuffed animals with her teeth to show
how she’d been bred to kill. Later she moved into a house with a strange man and
his annoying pup, and after some snarls and nips she allowed the pup to become
her little brother. He followed her and idolized her and messed with her the way
a brother does his sister, and through him she learned a little more about love
and how to be a dog.
Some man had harmed her long ago as a puppy, so she
was wary of this man and the new house she and her mother inhabited. It looked
for a while they would never accept each other, but then the day came when her
mother was away and a thunderstorm came up. She didn’t like storms. They made
her tremble and pant. Before she considered her actions she came to the man she
had never trusted and climbed in his lap for protection. He held her in his arms
and told her it would be all right.
From that day forward he became her
father.
She was an Italian rat terrier and she liked pizza and spaghetti.
She liked walks and perimeter checks in the yard and basking in the sun. She
liked listening to her mother talk and helping her to make decisions. She had a
big cozy bed in her den where she smiled at her parents in the evenings, and
when one of them was gone she knew they were coming back three minutes before
they arrived. She was a meteorologist and uncannily knew when a storm was
coming, and she slept with her brother and her parents and another added little
sister who came later on, in a regal bed where she rested her head and she and
her mother formed a duet on snoring.
Her dad called it her pig noise. He
used to wake in the night and lay in the dark and listen to her make her sounds.
It was then he knew he loved her and his life very much.
She never lost her
inner wariness of what life might bring her, but she trusted and loved so much
she allowed herself to believe in her parents and to have faith. Her father
could never stop her from jumping from the third step down into the den, a leap
she made for ten years because an air vent was by the bottom steps and she knew
it was something bad. But she climbed those steps with her father behind her,
two paws forward, one paw back, the cha-cha-cha as he called it, as he told her
“Let’s go nighty-nite, cha-cha-cha,” and this was the way her evenings always
ended.
She was a girl who never wanted to be hemmed in, trapped, or
enclosed, yet in the mornings and the afternoons and the evenings she came to
her father and stood between his legs and endeared him with her trusting eyes to
scissor his legs around her and rub her back and forth. He would rub the top of
her head and she would make her pig noise.
They learned to love each other
very much.
Our Beo Girl (short for Beowulf) departed us yesterday to go
where the sun always shines and there are no storms and the squirrels and the
starlings are continually sorely afraid. There are doors and steps she can go
through and climb without the cha-cha behind her, and there is no such thing as
pain.
When Beo grew ill and I knew her time as an angel on our earth was
over, I made her three promises. I told her I wouldn’t let her suffer, and
though it broke my heart, she didn’t. I told her she would never leave us, and
she won’t. She will be in a different state, but she will be home for always.
And when storms arise and the days and nights are filled with crashing and evil
noise, I promised there would be nothing for her to fear, for I would always
have her in my arms.
Thank you, Beo, for loving us. Thank you for letting
us love you.
Maybe it’s been too long for me to remember about love and how
it’s something God gives you. Maybe it’s an angel like Beo who helps me and all
who knew her remember how in the darkest deepest journeys of our souls the river
of God is always flowing.
Nighty-nite, Beo Girl.
Work continues on my newest novel while I await publication of #5, probably toward the end of the year. Two previous novels- PAST PERFECT and ACE--will hopefully be available at my Amazon bookstore page in the next couple of months at reader-friendly prices.
OCTOBER 24, 2013
The week before Halloween finds me finishing up a 3rd draft of a forthcoming novel, bracing for the outset of cold weather, and awaiting the publication of LONG LONG TIME in December. I just finished one of the busier months of my year,i.e., celebrating my wedding anniversary, my daughter's birthday, attending both the Southern Festival of Books and my newest obsession, the British Sports Car Festival. I don't know what I enjoyed more--hearing Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle or oogling Sunbeam Tigers and Austin Healeys and MGBs and TR-4s in Centennial Park. The weather was beautiful and I ended up going home and taking my MG for a ride through East Nashville on Saturday night. What a wonderful ride it was!
The year flies by. In November I am traveling to Johnson City for a friendly reunion of sorts. Basketball season approaches, and with it the promise of heartburn and impending agony with my beloved Vanderbilt Commodores. Of course I have season Tickets once again, so I can witness tragedy and defeat firsthand. Once again it will be strange to go through the holiday season without having to work in retail grocery. It felt so weird last year to be off with the rest of the world rather than locked in an office counting money and balancing books for others. Perhaps it is true I have already died and gone to my own version of heaven: sweetie, dogs, writing, reading, sports and movies to watch, and not being on anybody's schedule but my own.
Halleluah.
The Last Week in August
Ralph Bland
In
the cool white blanket of the fog and the night the boy took his evening walk.
The sound of the river comforted him and made him feel at ease as he strayed
from the dormitories and the streetlights and the sound of the harsh cruel
laughter that always seemed to him so threatening. He walked into the darkness
past the cafeteria toward the silent dark swimming pool that sat behind the long
green field. The river and the fog were his
friends.
He
was here at this place for six days because he was thirteen and because he had
to be here or risk never being a part of this group he was among. Though he
secretly despised the entire scene he knew how important it was for him to fit
in. He shared none of these people’s interests in playing softball or swimming
and he had no call to be saved by God or Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit or
anybody, which, he figured, was not truly in keeping with what this week was all
about. This was Church Camp. Kids were here to have fun in a wholesome Southern
Baptist manner and find God, but he had failed in those pursuits. All he had
garnered from the week was what he already knew on arrival; he was a skinny
insignificant soul who was intimidated by all the life that swirled around him
and there was nothing he could do but last this week out like he lasted
everything else out and pretend he was one of these people and hope no one said
otherwise. It was necessary that he go through this, necessary like the high
school football games were necessary to attend, like the sock hops afterward
were necessary too, even if all he did was stand and look and hope he wouldn’t
be noticed. He had to do these things because he knew if he didn’t and his face
was not a part of the scene the chances were good he would start to not exist at
all.
So
for five mornings he had risen from his bunk and trudged to the cafeteria for
breakfast and started the day with fifty other of the Camp Linden youths and
done his best to give the impression to everyone that he was having the time of
his life. He kept this small smile in place and constantly tried to position
himself just enough in the background so that none of the attention would ever
be focused upon him. He was in constant fear someone would notice, and he knew
if he was recognized for what he was it wouldn’t be long before everyone would
know he did not belong here. The best thing, he thought, was smile. He had
already taught himself how to act.
He
went to the Bible studies and the Morning Sings, showed up for the lunches and
the suppers, and even forced himself to swim and play ball with all these
strangers just like a normal person, though the truth was he hated those times
when the opposing team would move in when he was at bat, when he wondered if
anyone would make fun of his bony arms and legs at the pool. And when the
Evening Service was over and the Campfire was through he mercifully allowed the
smile to creep from his face.
Then
he would walk.
It
was all very easy. He was not recognized so he was never missed. Late at night
the fog would roll in off the Buffalo River and all he had to do was take a
backward step and he could vanish from every eye. Disappearing, he’d begun to
learn, was one of his major talents.
For
five nights he had pulled this magical act, and on this Friday he waited to take
his final walk, this final escape, yet midnight had arrived and Campfire Service
had gone on, continued with no sign of ending. During the week, he thought, we
were all in our rooms by this time. Lights would be out but conversations would
be going full-blast—boys leaning on elbows in the rooms exchanging secrets,
whispering low about the older guys and the counselors and sneaking crumpled
Winstons from twisted packs someone brought along. And when the boys thought no
one could possibly be listening they talked about the girls. There was so much
to say and learn about girls.
It
was the final hour that Friday night for Camp Linden in that year of 1963. On
Saturday morning the campers would depart and by the end of the next week Linden
would be closed until the next summer.
Finally
all the testimonies were spoken and the Holy Spirit finished moving among the
youth. Campfire was over. Free time was granted for an extra hour so everyone
could mingle on this last night and discuss the way Jesus had come into their
lives. Groups huddled on porches and in the lobbies of the dorms, and
conversations began about the coming school year or the beginning of football
season or—more importantly—what would go on next year when everybody returned
here to Linden.
The
boy felt outside all this. He wished sincerely God had spoken to him as He had
all the others. He felt admiration for those older than he who had announced
that God had called them to do His work and how they would now devote the rest
of their lives to following His will. The boy could only shake his head at the
magnitude of it all. If only I could be like them, he thought. If only I could
be so assured of the future and be so noble to give up the pettiness of this
world and spend the rest of my life too in this calling that is so substantial.
Perhaps I too would be real. Perhaps I would be just like
them.
As
he walked he thought about the coming year and attempted to imagine things as
they were now. His good sense told him such a scenario would never be, that in
one way or another events would make things different. One or more of this group
he was among would not return here, and of those who did there would be a
different viewpoint in every eye, a year-experienced influence of looking at
this world. In twelve months everyone would
change.
As
he walked he realized this was a unique moment he was inhabiting. He was
standing on the brink of childhood and his teens. A year would pass for him
too.
The
silence of the night intensified and the fog became a comforting quilt as he
left the zone of Christian civilization. He felt the dew on his ankles and knew
even in the dark he had arrived at the softball field. His only point of bearing
was a distant streetlight shining dimly from the main road, but other than that
he could see nothing but a gray-black void and hear only the gurgle of the
river. A few more steps would put him where he wanted to be, alone and hidden by
the fog, displaced from all laughter and tears and separated from the contact
that was never meant for him. And in that silent rushing moment he somehow knew
this was the way it would always be and, yes, perhaps this was the way he wanted
it. He was with them and he was not. And there in the clarity of the fog he
could see that no matter what he attempted in this life or where he went there
were always going to be these moments of stepping off into the black, that he
would never be able to join in on this business of life completely. Somehow he
was certain he would always be off in the darkness some way somewhere composing
new soliloquies.
In
right-centerfield he stopped abruptly. For a time he thought his imagination had
made him jump to attention so, but then he heard the voices, the tiny laugh
followed by silence. He didn’t allow himself to move, but stood frozen in the
fog by curiosity.
What
was happening?
The
voices weren’t aware of him. He felt a Victorian rush of guilt sweep over him
for being an eavesdropper, then rationalized it away by reminding himself that
if he moved he could possibly walk directly into the realm of these voices, and
then he would truly be discovered. He peered into the fog trying to strain his
vision enough to distinguish where the voices were and who they belonged to. If
he was successful, he told himself, it would be forever his
secret.
More
whispers carried through the darkness, then silence again, then breathing, but
in the silence the boy identified the invading voices. Only minutes before he’d
heard these two voices testifying at Campfire. The male voice had spoken of
entering college to prepare for the ministry and that how from that moment
forward he was giving his life to God. He was eighteen. The other voice belonged
to a girl of fourteen. The boy knew her voice too. She too had felt the Holy
Spirit on this night.
But
now it was another spirit moving her, quickening her pulse and setting her
afire, something raw and lush, a thing strong and powerful the younger boys in
their cots had lain awake talking about and mulling over, thirteen year-olds
mystified by the fact they were not children anymore. And so here it was, then,
the preamble to all that wonder and awe, and to the boy it seemed so ugly and
repulsive that he wanted to break and run before the fog allowed him to see
more. A sickening wave of disgust crashed through his mind and he felt
exceedingly young and small and helpless before the onrushing relentless future
and the terrors it would bring.
After
an eternity the night was silent again and he was alone once more. The magic
sound of the river was gone from him now, and he turned and began walking the
long path back to his dorm. At the closing cabin devotional he listened as the
voice he had heard in the fog told the group of boys that God had a plan for
each of them, that as they all grew older like him God would reveal His plan for
them. The boy sat silently, keeping the same expression on his face as everyone
else. In a way, he decided, it was pretty funny. It was funny knowing something
it would take a long time for all the others around him to know. Nothing, he was
certain, is exactly the way it appears. There is always going to be something
going on out in the fog, moving under the surface, slipping around a corner,
doing its damn level best not to be seen.
It
had taken the fog to clear things up for him.
He
smiled at the thought. He understood the fog completely.
August 7, 2013
Since acquiring my MG back in May, I am certain Nashville has experienced the wettest summer in many years. What ever happened to warm dry days with sunshine and moonlit nights? There are lots of days when I don't even bother to get my baby out because of the rain. Then, again, there are also those days--in true MG fashion--when Emily refuses to budge from the garage. Oh, well. To paraphrase that old tune "The Snake," I knew she was an MG before I bought her.
Work continues on the new novel, and all four of my previous works are now available on Amazon. I am glad to be rid of my former publishing companies.
It has been a summer of mechanical and electronic revolt among my possessions. I have blown a head gasket on a riding mower, seen a dishwasher leak itself to death, had a CD recorder decide to never record again, a turntable mysteriously switch from 33 speed to 45 all by itself, effectively making Frank Sinatra sound like a member of the Chipmunks, and Emily the MG erupt into white smoke while driving down Briley Parkway, because the electric fan decided not to cool any longer. Let us not forget my manual alarm clock, which went off at 2 in the morning when set for 5, then wouldn't turn off, then would not set anymore, resulting in it being flung into the trash, and finally, my Kindle reader. I am now on my 3rd Kindle. No. 1 signed itself off in the middle of Anna Karenina and forced me to search high and low for the 2 year guarantee, which I found, which I took back to Staples for an exchange, which caused me to have to jump through all sorts and fashions of hoops to get it workable, since Amazon decided I had never owned a Kindle before and wouldn't let me purchase anything for it. After a week, No.2 turned itself off and never returned from wherever it went. I am now on No. 3. We have an uneasy relationship at the moment. Every time I turn it off I am convinced it will be the last time I get to use it.
i know that all these objects and possessions are aware of my ineptitude with anything electronic or mechanical and are using this summer as a time to party down and taunt me. They didn't much like it, though, when I threw the alarm clock in the floor and sent it to hell in the trash, but that's tough. They need to learn that I am only patient to a degree. After a certain breaking point I can get violent with the best of them.
I know how to use a hammer.
May 10, 2013
Well, it's been a while. The cruelest month (April) came and went and left me financially spent via a riding mower that needed a new engine and the IRS and some necessary auto repairs. Mean old Life, if one knows what I mean.
And let's not forget death. Two fathers of two friends passed recently, and my neighbor died in a car accident. I spent some time in parlors and graveyards.
I read WAR AND PEACE, which means I am the only person you will ever know who has done so. I have also been reading a lot of Raymond Chandler and Scott Fitzgerald. Yes, I will go and see "The Great Gatsby," but the house money says I won't like it.
I am working on a 2nd draft of a new novel, tentatively titled BRIGHT RED DEVIL, 8 months in the life of Jake Maynor, a burned-out DJ in present day Music City. So far the best way to describe it is "darkly ridiculous and laughingly sad." I am also awaiting the publication of novel #5, LONG LONG TIME, hopefully in December.
My first novel, ONCE IN LOVE WITH AMY, has been released recently by Amazon/ Createspace with a pretty new cover (if I say so myself).
After 30-some odd years of contemplation, I pulled the trigger and bought a 1979 MGB. I've owned 3 convertible sports cars back when dinosaurs walked Tennessee, but I never got the hankering out of my system, so I bought one as a birthday present to myself. Soon I will be the guy you see standing by the side of the road by an automobile with its hood off. tears, frustration, the gnashing of teeth, financial ruin--I can see it now. Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!
December 3, 2012
Three weeks and a day until Christmas, which is high speed ahead and in the sights. This will probably be my last post on this blog this year.
I find myself surrounded by death the past few weeks. I've had some bad news among the immediate family and am also--it seems, overly--aware of the pending dire straits among neighbors and friends. I don't know if I'm overreacting or just facing up to the fact that I have reached the stage of my life when people I have always been used to seeing begin to disappear. What with my current aches and pains body-wise, I wonder if I am forseeing such a predicament for myself?
I've been writing and attempting to get in the Christmas Spirit. This is hard to do when the temperature makes one want to find the nearest local swimming hole. The current performance of my beloved Vanderbilt Mens basketball team probably is paramount in my holiday distemper and physical sickness. Good for the football team, but I will always be partial to roundball. Thus, I must suffer unless a Christmas Miracle occurs and we manage to win a few games. Are you listening, Santa?
March !8, 2013
Spring is two days away, the NCAA tournament opens tomorrow night, but Vandy is done for the year. As usual, I find myself in a sudden state of withdrawal, going cold turkey over the fact there is no next game for a while. I went to the SEC tournament and the Boys State tournament last week, seeing so many games that basketballs are dribbling out my eyes and ears, but it is still not enough. Come Thursday my Samsung and I will be one until April 8.
I've finished what must be the roughest and worst first draft of a novel in the history of literature. Soon I'll begin the arduous process of editing and rewrites and adding and subtracting and sometimes totally obliterating the manuscript into something readable. If I'm lucky I can get it done in two more drafts or before I croak--whatever comes first.
I have ended my association with Publish America and Xlibris Press. Look for all my previous novels to be released on Create Space soon. The new novel is due out (hopefully) by the end of the year. It would be a nice Christmas present.
February 11, 2013
I realize by looking at the last entry in this blog that it has not even been a month since I wrote, but a lot has happened since then.
On the 25th of January the city of Nashville had a very minor ice storm, so minor that Metro schools didn't close or go in late or postpone any activities like all the surrounding county systems did. Now this really ticked me off, since I wanted my wife to have the day off and spend it with me drinking hot chocolate and talking and mutually adoring our dogs, but it was not to be. I went out on my patio to check the conditions. I walked up and down the bricks, trying to slip or slide to no avail, then went down the back steps and out onto the driveway to see if there was ice. I started her car and did not have to scrape, since it was only rain on the windows and door handles. I watched her drive away with no difficulty.
As I usually do on her departure in the mornings, I opened the front door to go out to the mailbox for the morning birdcage stuffer. Immediately my feet slipped on ice and I went down four very steep very concrete steps on my back. Believe me when I say I have never been hit so hard by anything in my life. I fell crumpled on the sidewalk in the freezing mist and lay there for approximately ten minutes, convinced I was either going to die there or be disabled forever. I finally crawled back in the house and began what has now been a 17 day recovery. I am better but still stiff bruised and sore, and I sincerely wonder if I will ever be 100% again. It took close to two weeks before I could get in a bed again, and I am still not altogether comfortable during the night. I get up and roam the house, sleep in Lazy Boys and rockers and propped up on sofas at weird angles. Moltrin and Aleve are my constant companions--I can't take the Oxicodon the ER gave me, since it makes me into a dullard and a slug for huge blocks of time and causes me to be in a continual state of freefall from room to room.
This has not been a fun three weeks. I am better, I am able to go to the Y and walk a mile a day, but I am afraid my NBA aspirations are over and done in this lifetime. Ah, well, I'll always have Paris.
January 16, 2013
The new year has come and the holidays are officially kaput and I find myself---with everyone else in the world back enveloped in work and routine--spent somewhat and empty on occasion and perhaps a trifle lazy. I have to force myself to accomplish much these days, and I'm not sure it is me personally or if it is the necessity of letting the world take a few collective sighs of relief. It was nice to celebrate the holidays, relax, have time to get doctors' appointments out of the way and such, but now I find it difficult to return to my world of order and routine and daily lists. Does this say something about my character when I would as soon sit and read and watch the squirrels and birds play outside my window? I want no music or libation or sterling conversation these days. I am happy inside my peace and silence.
I just finished reading a marvelous novel by Ben Fountain called Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. This is a scathing indictment of our sleazy corporate society I had trouble putting down once I started, and is one of those books I come across from time to time where I stop throughout and slow myself down so I won't finish too quickly, then at the end close the cover and wish it had been me who'd written it.
I had a new manuscript accepted shortly before Christmas and am awaiting word on when it will be published. Exciting news, but I am not a patient person. I hate waiting on anything.
The new year has come and the holidays are officially kaput and I find myself---with everyone else in the world back enveloped in work and routine--spent somewhat and empty on occasion and perhaps a trifle lazy. I have to force myself to accomplish much these days, and I'm not sure it is me personally or if it is the necessity of letting the world take a few collective sighs of relief. It was nice to celebrate the holidays, relax, have time to get doctors' appointments out of the way and such, but now I find it difficult to return to my world of order and routine and daily lists. Does this say something about my character when I would as soon sit and read and watch the squirrels and birds play outside my window? I want no music or libation or sterling conversation these days. I am happy inside my peace and silence.
I just finished reading a marvelous novel by Ben Fountain called Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. This is a scathing indictment of our sleazy corporate society I had trouble putting down once I started, and is one of those books I come across from time to time where I stop throughout and slow myself down so I won't finish too quickly, then at the end close the cover and wish it had been me who'd written it.
I had a new manuscript accepted shortly before Christmas and am awaiting word on when it will be published. Exciting news, but I am not a patient person. I hate waiting on anything.
November November 8, 2012
It's been two days now since I went under the knife for the clotting problem in my ankle, and I'm sitting wondering what all the hoopla was about. Since it took a year for insurance and the surgeon's office to get together and I figured Death would come before that ever happened, it comes as a surprise that all it took was ten minutes of having needles stuck in my leg for deadening and five minutes worth of laser traetment and that was it. I went home supposedly to grimace in pain and limp about for a number of days only to find that nothing of the kind was in order. I am sitting at the keyboard 36 gours away and it is like nothing ever happened. This procedure was like most things in life- overblown and overrated.
I've been busy lately trying to sell a manuscript and preparing to write a new novel. It is most strange to have time to engage in such endeavors rather than sweating out the holiday season in a retail setting! My posse (Otis, Beo, and Phoebe) are certainly enjoying it.
It's been two days now since I went under the knife for the clotting problem in my ankle, and I'm sitting wondering what all the hoopla was about. Since it took a year for insurance and the surgeon's office to get together and I figured Death would come before that ever happened, it comes as a surprise that all it took was ten minutes of having needles stuck in my leg for deadening and five minutes worth of laser traetment and that was it. I went home supposedly to grimace in pain and limp about for a number of days only to find that nothing of the kind was in order. I am sitting at the keyboard 36 gours away and it is like nothing ever happened. This procedure was like most things in life- overblown and overrated.
I've been busy lately trying to sell a manuscript and preparing to write a new novel. It is most strange to have time to engage in such endeavors rather than sweating out the holiday season in a retail setting! My posse (Otis, Beo, and Phoebe) are certainly enjoying it.
October 16, 2012
I am sitting in the aftermath of my first root canal and my 22nd attendance at the Southern Festival of Books here in my house on this foggy morning. It is funny to me how there seems to be not enough hours in the day to accomplish things anymore, how it seems I didn't have this trouble back when I was still gainfully employed. I suppose I stayed so busy then I had no time to ponder such a thing.
This, I have mentally deemed to myself, is the last week of Indian Summer. This is my favorite season of the year and it has not disappointed so far. I am grateful for the fact I am free to observe it fully. I can sit at Meditation Station--which is an old park bench scavenged from ancient Opryland-- in my back yard drinking coffee and surrounded by dogs, I can sit on the front porch and watch the afternoon traffic returning home from their day at the workplace, I can sit in my rocker by my big window reading my Raymond Chandler and counting the squirrels and blue jays visiting my yard. A new novel is formulating slowly and deliciously in my brain, Otis and I sneak away to take naps whenever we please, and music plays all day until sunset.
I can't shake the feeling I'm getting away with something.
I am sitting in the aftermath of my first root canal and my 22nd attendance at the Southern Festival of Books here in my house on this foggy morning. It is funny to me how there seems to be not enough hours in the day to accomplish things anymore, how it seems I didn't have this trouble back when I was still gainfully employed. I suppose I stayed so busy then I had no time to ponder such a thing.
This, I have mentally deemed to myself, is the last week of Indian Summer. This is my favorite season of the year and it has not disappointed so far. I am grateful for the fact I am free to observe it fully. I can sit at Meditation Station--which is an old park bench scavenged from ancient Opryland-- in my back yard drinking coffee and surrounded by dogs, I can sit on the front porch and watch the afternoon traffic returning home from their day at the workplace, I can sit in my rocker by my big window reading my Raymond Chandler and counting the squirrels and blue jays visiting my yard. A new novel is formulating slowly and deliciously in my brain, Otis and I sneak away to take naps whenever we please, and music plays all day until sunset.
I can't shake the feeling I'm getting away with something.
September 29, 2012
September is ending, Indian Summer is here, and so I head into my favorite time of the year. Were I not old and decrepit I would go on now about the great things to come this season-- the Southern Festival of Books, my daughter's birthday, my wedding anniversary, baseball playoffs and the World Series-- but I have a few things to deal with first. Monday I have a daylong appointment with the dentist to get some things corrected since the last time I visited a dental office in 1957. Yes, I know, it's my fault, but can I help it if I've been busy? Then, toward the end of the month, I have to go in for some laser surgery on my ankle. It seems that when I fractured it seven years ago I probably should have seen a doctor rather than continuing to work and letting it heal on its own; the problem now seems to be no blood wants to reside down there and my ankle looks like someone's been beating me with a tire iron. It ain't pretty when I go to the beach. I'm trying to look at the bright side of these nagging ailments--at least for a few weeks I'll be LEGALLY under the influence of drugs and will not be responsible for anything I say or do.
This could be the break I've been looking for all my life.
September 6, 2012
Tomorrow will officially be one month since I retired and I have to say I am getting quite good at being a stay-at-home husband and dogsitter. I like listening to the radio and drinking coffee in the mornings, sitting in the backyard watching the sun rise or retiring to my office to read the morning fishwrap. I get great pleasure watching the cars go by my window, knowing these are folks going off to work while lucky me sits in my Frankenstein pajamas and wishes them well on their journey. Yes, this is cruel of me to have these retributal thoughts, but I do find it refreshing to sharpen my rapier mind on unsuspecting motorists so early in the day. Perhaps I shall get over such childish endeavors eventually as I become accustomed to being a bum, but don't bet on it.
Today I am off to the library to check out WAR AND PEACE and see if this is something I actually want to read. Just finished an old novel that had been residing in my shelves since college days, BEEN DOWN SO LONG IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO ME, by Richard Farina-- picaresque 60s novel that had its moments but what was in the end disappointing. If Tolstoy doesn't do it, perhaps I'll reread LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL. One thing good about it is there's time for this and the taking of a toast and tea too.
September 17, 2012
The question arises: How did I ever have time to work? I seem to find so many things to do during the day that the end of the day is upon me before I feel like I've accomplished everything I should. Of course, eating,going to lunch with friends, going to bookstores and antique malls, petting dogs, drinking coffee and staring off into space aren't truly earthshaking endeavors, but for right now I'll take it. It's been five weeks since I've left the work force, and I am still astonished at the fact I am on no one's clock or schedule anymore.
Today I'll do my laundry, go to the grocery, and take a book to a new friend. After that it's home for music, writing, and a welcome session of sitting on the porch watching the rain, as Woody Allen said, "wash memories off the sidewalks of life." Hard existence, indeed.
September 22, 2012
I awoke early this Saturday morning to spend some last moments with summer before the official arrival of fall. Already the slant of light has changed the physical appearance of the world to one where the colors are richer and more vibrant than what the summer months have previously offered. Phoebe and Otis sat before me on the glider, and I stroked their ears and asked them how they were doing. Two nights ago I saw the picture a friend posted on Facebook of his 18 year-old dog just before he had to be put down. I looked at the anguish in my friend's face and knew exactly what type of hurt and sorrow he was feeling. See, I have lost a lot of four-legged buddies over my 62 years on the planet. Their names and sweet faces come back to me constantly, and though I miss them dearly, I smile at their memory. Skippy, Prissy, Rip, Waffles, Zeke, Junior, and my fine Tuxedo cat, Boots-- all you guys have been gone a long time in one sense, but the truth of the matter is you're all still around. I've never really let you go.
September is ending, Indian Summer is here, and so I head into my favorite time of the year. Were I not old and decrepit I would go on now about the great things to come this season-- the Southern Festival of Books, my daughter's birthday, my wedding anniversary, baseball playoffs and the World Series-- but I have a few things to deal with first. Monday I have a daylong appointment with the dentist to get some things corrected since the last time I visited a dental office in 1957. Yes, I know, it's my fault, but can I help it if I've been busy? Then, toward the end of the month, I have to go in for some laser surgery on my ankle. It seems that when I fractured it seven years ago I probably should have seen a doctor rather than continuing to work and letting it heal on its own; the problem now seems to be no blood wants to reside down there and my ankle looks like someone's been beating me with a tire iron. It ain't pretty when I go to the beach. I'm trying to look at the bright side of these nagging ailments--at least for a few weeks I'll be LEGALLY under the influence of drugs and will not be responsible for anything I say or do.
This could be the break I've been looking for all my life.
September 6, 2012
Tomorrow will officially be one month since I retired and I have to say I am getting quite good at being a stay-at-home husband and dogsitter. I like listening to the radio and drinking coffee in the mornings, sitting in the backyard watching the sun rise or retiring to my office to read the morning fishwrap. I get great pleasure watching the cars go by my window, knowing these are folks going off to work while lucky me sits in my Frankenstein pajamas and wishes them well on their journey. Yes, this is cruel of me to have these retributal thoughts, but I do find it refreshing to sharpen my rapier mind on unsuspecting motorists so early in the day. Perhaps I shall get over such childish endeavors eventually as I become accustomed to being a bum, but don't bet on it.
Today I am off to the library to check out WAR AND PEACE and see if this is something I actually want to read. Just finished an old novel that had been residing in my shelves since college days, BEEN DOWN SO LONG IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO ME, by Richard Farina-- picaresque 60s novel that had its moments but what was in the end disappointing. If Tolstoy doesn't do it, perhaps I'll reread LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL. One thing good about it is there's time for this and the taking of a toast and tea too.
September 17, 2012
The question arises: How did I ever have time to work? I seem to find so many things to do during the day that the end of the day is upon me before I feel like I've accomplished everything I should. Of course, eating,going to lunch with friends, going to bookstores and antique malls, petting dogs, drinking coffee and staring off into space aren't truly earthshaking endeavors, but for right now I'll take it. It's been five weeks since I've left the work force, and I am still astonished at the fact I am on no one's clock or schedule anymore.
Today I'll do my laundry, go to the grocery, and take a book to a new friend. After that it's home for music, writing, and a welcome session of sitting on the porch watching the rain, as Woody Allen said, "wash memories off the sidewalks of life." Hard existence, indeed.
September 22, 2012
I awoke early this Saturday morning to spend some last moments with summer before the official arrival of fall. Already the slant of light has changed the physical appearance of the world to one where the colors are richer and more vibrant than what the summer months have previously offered. Phoebe and Otis sat before me on the glider, and I stroked their ears and asked them how they were doing. Two nights ago I saw the picture a friend posted on Facebook of his 18 year-old dog just before he had to be put down. I looked at the anguish in my friend's face and knew exactly what type of hurt and sorrow he was feeling. See, I have lost a lot of four-legged buddies over my 62 years on the planet. Their names and sweet faces come back to me constantly, and though I miss them dearly, I smile at their memory. Skippy, Prissy, Rip, Waffles, Zeke, Junior, and my fine Tuxedo cat, Boots-- all you guys have been gone a long time in one sense, but the truth of the matter is you're all still around. I've never really let you go.
