Takes a Village, #4

Boom fairly early on,
without eye make-up.

Maybe a year after our Mongolian exchange student had gone back to his country, the exchange program people called again. They had a student from Thailand who had been placed in Mississippi. A few weeks after starting high school there, he had "come out."

Bad move, kid. The school and his host family "just didn't think they could keep him safe." Well, it was clear he shouldn't stay there then. The program asked us to take him for the interim while they found a permanent host home. But within a week of his arrival, we told them to consider him permanently placed.

And so Thanapol Ekatanachokul, a.k.a. "Boom," would be with us for the year. Mariah, 8, was still here with us; Asa was 6 or 7; and Boom was 16. With the two mommies, we had a full house.

Asa, Thanapol, Mariah

Boom had one of the more... enthusiastic personalities I have ever come across on the planet. Boom would cook, Boom would help clean, Boom would pull the kids around on a sled until I made them all stop. He became one of the most popular kids at his city high school in a matter of months. Yet, he was never loud or obnoxious or exhausting to be with. I don't think I could come up with a single bad thing to say about Boom. I wish he could have stayed forever. So did everyone else in the family. And a little bit, so did Boom.

Boom fairly late on,
in eye make-up.

He couldn't, though, and just as well. Boom was ready for the world. He had been just a boy when he came to us; he was a young gay man when he moved on.

Boom learned about and experimented with his gay identity while he was here. He became very sophisticated about such matters, but stayed true to his Buddhist faith. He did not drink, do drugs, or smoke--nor did he have sex while he was here. How do I know this? Because Boom told me and I have no doubt that he was honest and sincere.

Boom doesn't stay in touch with us. It doesn't surprise me. I'm sure his life is full and he is very busy with it, bringing light to any dark corner he finds. I think that someday we'll hear from Boom again. We were the first gay people to nurture him and he turned out marvelously.

Overheard on the Phone:

"I've been on police 'ride-alongs' in three different cities," I was telling a friend.

"'Ride-alongs,' she said. "Is that a euphemism?"

Who Doesn't Love SkyMall!

Hey, don't fall.

Imagine having a party where the men dress in tuxedos. People chat, with drinks in hand, on the veranda. (See background.)  Then imagine having two of the men get into human hamster balls. Somehow I doubt that would be as much fun as it seems here.

Some details of note:
•  the price (but you do get two human hamster balls)
•  the "helper" who tops off your bubble (laughing like a jackal all the while)
•  the reassuring fact that your bubble zips closed from the inside (please god, from the inside, god)
•  the weight capacity of 300 lbs (I'd like to see that; or, maybe not) and
•  my favorite line: "Not for use on or near water" (please god, no, not on or near water)

Remember When? No.

They won't tell stories. None of them ever lapses into, Remember when Lucy did this? When Bobby did that? 

I'll start with the nine girls, see if I can name them:  Ethel, Lucille, Mildred, Erma Irene, Eileen, Nellie Lou, Margaret, Mary Belle (my mother), and Carol Sue. And the three boys, that's easy:  Bill, Donald, and Bobby.

This is the one photo
I have of my grandma.

My grandma raised all twelve kids, working as a psychiatric aide in a series of "State Schools" (mental institutions) in Ohio from the 1920s to the 1970s. (Not pretty work.)

My grandfather, part-Cherokee and part coal miner, came around often enough and just long enough to get my grandma pregnant those twelve and probably more times. I heard 16. 

After the youngest, Carol Sue, was born in the 1940s, no one heard from my grandfather again until 1968. I forget why he came, but I met him. There were dozens of us cousins--literally dozens--running around and he didn't know any of us. How could he? He didn't know his daughters until they told him their names. Even then, did he know them?

My Grandma Myrtle was there the day he showed up, too. She'd never had much to say for or about him, and on that day she had absolutely nothing to say to him. But then she wasn't one to pitch a fit. 

The three boys didn't speak to him either. They kept a neutral countenance although I remember thinking that my Uncle Don's face looked very dark that day, like it was all closed in on itself.

There are almost no photos of my mother's family until well into the 1960s. Of course with twelve children, my grandma couldn't afford to keep them fed, let alone develop pictures from the camera she didn't own. I think my mother had one or two pictures, one where she was combing out my Grandma's hair, and--like my hair--it stood straight out on all sides of her head. I should try to find those pictures.

So I understand why there are no family pictures; I'm disappointed that there are no stories. Not one of my aunts and uncles brings out an anecdote from the past to share, to tease about, to lament, or to mourn. Are the memories so consistently terrible? Does a deep, dark cloud cover their childhood? Others tell stories about horrifying childhoods in times of poverty and war. Why are my many relatives afraid to stir it up? Is it to protect themselves, or one another? I'm afraid to stir it up, too, but I want to hear their stories. I want to know them.

The Dead Body I Didn't Find

I was living in Monterey, California. Yeah, life was rough. With a view of Monterey Bay from my front porch, the typical California lifestyle that you can’t really appreciate until you leave it.

Never look up photos of this.
Never.

 
One evening, right after Halloween it was, I was walking my two dogs around the blocks that step up from the bay's edge and give every street full of houses a view of paradise. 

I was half a block over from my street, which ran level along the hill, and half a block up on the cross-street that climbed to the next block. Suddenly the dogs went blood-crazy. 

I'd heard of dogs going blood crazy, but never seen it. It was like: 

We got us a sniff of a dead squirrel rotting away here somewheres and by! god! we! will! find it!

But it was magnified to Cujo proportions. Or 200 dead squirrel proportions, if that helps you imagine it. Those dogs’ eyes showed more white than iris. They were nothing you wanted to be on the other end of a leash with.

So, two sets of steps like this.
One leading up to the other.

 I looked up the steep steps to the house above us. That’s where the dogs were focused. I didn't see anything. 

The stairs along that street scale the steep slope to the houses and break into two flights. I could only see to the top of the lower flight. 

Meanwhile, the dogs were inhaling the concrete. I hauled their asses home, my arms aching from pulling them. It took them a while to get their hackles down, too. Very strange.

 ********

The description I’ve given, of these perpendicular streets--mine and the one on the side street--was important to set the scene for what must have happened next.

As is common in California, the two streets that formed the top and bottom of the block shared an alley that ran between them, onto which opened the garage behind every house on both streets. So each morning a string of cars would come out of the garages, go down the alley, pause at the end, and turn right to head down to town.

As I paused at the mouth of the alley, I must have seen the Halloween dummy that sprawled on the top stairs of the house that faced the alley. Do I remember seeing the dummy? Vaguely... yes. Okay, no, not really. I don't.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

I later told myself that I must have noticed it. I came down that alley all three mornings that the dummy lay there. So had dozens of others just like me, on their way to work, thinking about whatever. 

Understand: This is a very sheltered community. Everyone is Jimmy Stewart and owns the corner pharmacy. Everyone gets into the holidays, "for the kids," and they decorate like crazy, and, quite often, they put out Halloween dummies.

Mid-afternoon of the third day, the letter carrier discovered
that this dummy wasn't a dummy, as I'm sure you've guessed.

********

She was an elderly lady, 80 years old. She lived in that house and had since the 40s. She'd been married 60-plus years to the man who killed her--her husband, age 82. His body lay around the corner and next to the house, where he had shot himself after shooting her.

Mrs. M had been playing cards that night at my next-door neighbor's house. Four old friends playing there every week together, god knows how many years. Mrs. M walked home afterwards on a clear, beautiful October night in coastal California. It was just half a block uphill to her steps. Mrs. M's husband--presumably watching her--let her climb those steep stairs, and when she got to the top he shot her.

Mrs. M, after the 60-plus years with her husband and the father of her children, had just the night before told him she wanted a divorce.

That's the end of the story, really, for the main characters, of which I am not one. I’m not even a minor character. Would I have been if I’d seen her and recognized that she was dead--and been the one to find her? Not really. Anyway, she's the dead body I didn't find.

There were newspaper articles with half a dozen neighbors explaining that they thought she was a Halloween dummy. There were tearful stories, recounted by their adult children, of the couple's decades-long, abusive marriage.

After a few rains in November, my dogs stopped being drawn to the stairs beneath where Mrs. M had lain. My eyes eventually stopped being drawn to the top steps as I drove out of the alley. Mrs. M’s family dropped into the background; they presumably went on with their lives.  

60-plus years of marriage, though. Isn't that something?

Si-las...

Low Tide 

photo by
asa burgess-spahn

A Dramatic Presentation

The Real Nicknames of Guernsey County, #3

not the real Byesville, but like that...
street not so wide and well paved, shorter buildings

At Byesville Elementary, they let the 5th and 6th graders go downtown for lunch. Downtown was a block away, turn left and that one block there in front of you was downtown. Both sides of the street.

There is no longer a downtown Byesville. The buildings are still there but they're boarded up or window-waxed. Back in the day, my dad's grocery store was there in the middle of things. I still look at the building when I go past. I worked for my dad from age 8 to age 14. I was a kick-ass cashier at 10, and that was back when you had to make change.

In the 60s and 70s, downtown was booming in our little village of a thousand. All us kids went to the "Cue Stick." I can't remember if there was a pool table there. It has only just occurred to me that there must have been. I probably didn't notice because I classify pool as a sport and block it out.

The Cue Stick offered pool (assumed, see above), pinball machines, probably some other stuff, and a lunch counter. Behind the counter were Pops and Mom Daniels. I know Pops' real name was Vince, Vince Daniels. I never heard Mom called anything but Mom, even by Pops. Mom was nearly blind and had glasses so thick that her eyes were like fish swimming in there. Mom really deserved her nickname. She bustled about and mom'd us all a lot. And she always had Pops' back at the counter.

Pops and Mom mostly sold candy at the counter, which I felt obliged to buy in copious amounts because, hey, they had to make a living. They also offered hot dogs and some other food things I can't remember.

The best thing they had to eat, besides candy, was when they would take one of those small Fritos bags and slit it down the side and ladle a dollop of chili into it and sell it for 25 cents. Oh, man. To this day, I go get Fritos if I'm going to eat chili.

A lady who needs no introduction...
Miss! Rose! Marie!

So Pops and Mom had quite a little gig going for themselves. And when Pops was feeling particularly exuberant, he would play piano while we all milled around. (Oh, yeah. There was a piano. I block out pianos, too.) Pops told us he used to play in dance sessions for Rose Marie. We were impressed. He had a signed picture of her. (That's the only way we knew who Rose Marie was--Oh, yeah, she's "Sally!" In Dick Van Dyke! We know Buddy and Sally!)

Winding up, I see that this story is not so much about the nicknames, but about the Cue Stick and Pops and Mom and the time of Buddy and Sally. I hope Pops and Mom had a good life right up to the end. They were a helluva lot of fun when I was little.

Early Lessons, #3

(not the real jane, but like this)

                                              JANE 

Let's see... how did this unfold?  I was a freshman, 14 years old. I was anti-sports. I avoided any thought of sports. I trained myself so that if someone threw a ball at me, I just stood there and let it hit me. It hardly mattered--it's what would have happened anyway. If forced into a spectator role, I read a book. Actually, I still do. When Asa drags me to a Sea Dogs game, I read in the stands. Finally, he's stopped inviting me.

Okay, I hated sports, but I rode a motorcycle. (Is that a sport?) Sometime early in the school year, I took that bike into a long skid on a gravel road. I was riding with no hands at the time, wasn't that smart of me?

I broke a wrist, and my face and arms were covered in road rash. The next time I showed up at school I begged my way out of gym class. You'd think it would be easy given my obviously injured condition, but I had begged my way out of so much gym that Mrs. Cowgill didn't even look at me. Finally, though, she let me off. She was sick of me and my persuasive ways.

(not the real tapu, but like this)

So I sat out gym class that day,
on the bleachers, reading.





Now, in my high school, there was this senior girl named Jane. Jane was the star athlete. Jane could beat the boys at anything they dared challenge her to. Her body was like an adult man's. Her face was "chiseled." Jane could've killed me as soon as looked at me, but that day she looked at me.

She came over. She stood in front of me a bleacher or two down, chewing gum, and said, "What happened to you?" I said, "Nothing." She said, "What road do you live on?" I was like, huh?? But I said, "Buffalo Mine Road." That night, she called.

I can't remember how our conversations started out, but I know they got intense fast. Jane and I talked on the phone for over a year, nearly every day, sometimes for hours. She did most of the talking. She told me everything inside her, I think.

Everyone in our small town "knew" that Jane was a dyke.  Where'd they get that knowledge? Who's to say? No one. Not directly. But somehow or other, if you lived in Guernsey County, you "knew" that about two or three women there. I think, vaguely, it had something to do with sports.

Once or twice my dad caught on that I was connecting with Jane, or whatever I was doing. He "heard it in town." He asked, "She's a lot older than you, isn't she?" I said I was talking to her, that was all. He didn't say more because he didn't know how to talk about it. I slipped away from him each time and went and called Jane.

It was strange to see Jane at school. We didn't hang out. We barely acknowledged each other, although sometimes she'd flash me a smile as we passed in the hallway. When we did come across each other in person, she was rough in the way she talked with me, and she didn't look me directly in the face.

And now this story goes nowhere. I can't remember much of what we talked about in all that time. I can't remember how or why we stopped talking, but Jane graduated that year so maybe that was the break. I know that in all that time we never talked directly about being gay. Not about Jane being gay, or me, or anyone. We talked around it and I remember those moments as terrifically charged, with awkward pauses while we figured out where to go next, how to say things without saying them.

When I grew up and came out, I was obsessed with how Jane could have intuited more about me than I understood about myself. I guess Jane just "knew." And it had nothing to do with sports.

cinderella

i set no hard and fast rules

Social media, god love it....

I think I just broke up with somebody I never met. 

Si-las...

I kilt dis
ting for you!


(What is dis
ting anyway??)

Asa at "Mess Art"

Asa, at age 10, mentioned a "Gifted Program" at school.  

I was surprised there was one.  (And that he wasn't in it!!)

"Well," he said, "it's really for the kids who are unnaturally smart."

Wanna ride with me? I'll let ya.

Been thinking about Ford model names. Take a look at this list and see if you notice a pattern or theme. I've made some notes....

Ford Escort   what's your first thought?

Fiesta Condoms: "Safety Can Be Fun!"

Ford Probe   nota bene

Ford Fiesta   already an established brand name

Ford Mustang   as in "stallion," or "not castrated"

Ford Pulsar   as in regular or rhythmic pulses

Ford Tempo                     "   "

Ford Contour   "You'll like the way it feels."

Ford Fusion   what you do with your contours

Ford Taurus   bull, as in "intact," or "not castrated"

This is the Wall Street bull.
As in "intact," or "not castrated."

Mercury, a division of Ford, has its related entries:

Cougar

Marauder

and this one, too good to be true--

Marquis