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I've moved all the existing posts (but not Double Exposure) to Word Press and that's where you'll find me from now on. Send me your thoughts on the new site. Thanx!


Dave

If you've read my profile, you know I've been a teacher for forty-plus years, all at the elementary level. I've had the joy of spending my adult life doing something I love and it's kept me young in heart, if not in body (I never used to be able to hear my knees). Here are a few things I've collected over the decades (more to come in later posts - after all, I've got three scrapbooks full of cards, photos, drawings, notes and other school memorabilia!) And, speaking of notes, here are a few I either intercepted or found on the floor. I've transcribed them just as they were written:

From a 5th grade boy:

Dear Michelle –

You know I have a crush on you and if you were my girlfriend I would give you everything I got. I would like to date you. I am smart but in school I’m OK. If you agree to be my girlfriend I will give you all the money I got.

            From your boyfriend

                        Jason

Hey! Be careful what you promise!

I've no idea what this is about; sounds like something from the Seattle Weekly:

Dear Killer –

Can’t we talk about it over smoaking

            Love,

            Sad Girl

Here's another from a 5th grade girl: 

Dear Aaron –

I am sick and tired of you not treating me with respcet. If you loved me so much than you would spen more time with me. But you don’t so I don’t care. Do you want me to DUMP you?

            Yes____        No____      

             

                      Act Rite

Be careful what you wish for . . .

My favorite, an exchange between two third grade girls: 

Dear Katherine –

You hate me and I know that and you hate me sow I hate you. You like Martha more thane me. I do not wont to hate you but you hate me.

            From Wendy

PS: Write back

Dear Wendy –

I’m glad that you don’t like me any more stouped. Because Christine was write about you. You have me traped in my minde and if you don’t know what that means, it meins that you are tring to make me your only friend. So why don’t you shut up Wendy. Ha ha ha! Your stouped your stouped and you better not tell.

I loved teaching creative writing. Here are some examples of student (from 2nd-5th) exaggerations:

A hole so deep you could stop and eat with the devil.

   Popcorn so salty no slugs were seen for miles.   

      Fog so thick God couldn't see.

         His clothes were so ugly his shoes ran in fright

            A day so long I went to bed on my own.

               The night was so low you could touch the sky.

                  A knife so sharp and a butcher so dead.

                     He was so shy his family couldn't find him.

                        It was a day so wonderful the birds sang opera.

                           He was such a good mechanic, his tools worshipped him.

                              His garden was so beautiful the weeds died on their own.

                                 She had so many enemies even the devil wanter her in heaven.

I've collected a lot of student art over the years. Here are some examples:

I photocopied a large paper clip and asked the kids
to create something. These are some of what they came up with.

Actually, it was only late Friday
afternoon that I was like this.

No comment needed.

Henry Gay is a name almost certainly not known outside of Washington State, probably not known east of the mountains and maybe even little known or remembered here in our own backyard. For many years before his death in the 90s (I believe), he was the editor/publisher of the Shelton/Mason County Journal and he wrote a weekly syndicated column that was picked up by the P-I. I remember him for his outspoken criticism of the Vietnam War, unusual for the publisher of newspaper in a rural, conservative area, as well as his sense of humor. Here are some tidbits from Mr. Gay.

Life without death would be like a freeway with no off-ramps.

   Men make war because they do not have to shave in battle.

        A nuclear physicist’s calendar has a half-life of only six months.

            Re-election means never having to say you’re sorry.

In one column, he had this to say about our government:

When opposition to the war mounted in the United States, the people were misled, lied to, and manipulated by jingoistic leaders. Citizens who actively opposed the war were unlawfully harassed and slandered by their own government.”

He concluded that particular column with this description of a 1968 Christmas card sent by George S. Patton III, a regimental commander in Viet Nam at the time:

From Colonel and Mrs. George S. Patton III – Peace on Earth 

Attached to the card were color photographs of dismembered Vietnamese soldiers stacked in a neat pile.

Every now and then he'd make a list of country-western song titles he'd made up. Here are some of them:

              We’d Have Another Baby But the Pickup Truck Is Full.

              Born Out Of Wedlock, Raised Out Of Spite

              He Said He Wasn’t Chicken Just Before He Flew the Coop

              Credit Cards Don’t Help None When Your Heart Is Broke

              I Was All Ears and He Was All Hands

              He Left With My Heart and the Color TV

              He Pays the Rent, I Pay the Price

             I’m Just a Road-Kill On the Highway of Life

             Our Bed of Roses Is Kitty Litter Now

             Just a Beer Drinkin’ Slob In a Wine Cooler World

             Address it to “Pregnant, Dallas,” and It Will Get to Me

             Swallow Your Beer Nuts Then Whisper In My Ear

And I have to add here a few I found in The New Yorker:

            Ain’t No Trash Been In My Trailer Since the Night I Threw You Out.

           You Want to Get Hitched But My Heart Is Filled With Whoa

            Baked My Sweetie a Pie But He Left Me For a Tart

           Now That We’re Miserable, I hope You’re Happy

This week's post is a short story, one I wrote a few years ago. Although it's essentially fiction, it is based in part on some things I saw during the years my wife and I volunteered at our local food bank. Be warned, however: there is graphic language ahead. Also, Animals In the News!

COMET

They were siblings, both in their late twenties, about as well  matched as skim milk and vinegar. His face was bland, flavorless, practiced at revealing nothing. He wore light khaki pants, a short-sleeve pale yellow shirt with a button-down collar, light brown Hush Puppies and a green sweater-vest. To her, there was a hardness, a sharpness, to the way she looked out at the world from behind eyes that had long ago taken in the welcome mat. Her attire was at once street casual and armor against the world: an old army fatigue jacket with a Big Red 1 patch and sergeant’s stripes, two buttons missing. Doc Martens. A pair of loose-fitting pants that had survived the eighties: thin material, elastic waistband, colors that were together only because they were compelled to be. They had come to the food bank, but not together. She had arrived several minutes before him and stood in line, agitated, talking to herself, muttering and gesturing, angry. A space opened up between her and those around her. When he arrived she immediately accosted him, picking up the thread of an earlier conversation, just as if there had been no interruption. “Mitch wasn’t even there, asshole! He left before Mama went to bed.” Her voice was low, harsh. Her eyes tried to aim resentment at him, but she was having trouble focusing.

His face was passive, betraying nothing beyond the fact that he was used to this, had been through it before. “Claudia, . . . “

“Don’t call me Claudia, asshole! You know I hate it. Goddammit! My name is Comet. Wait here.” She stomped over to a volunteer sitting behind the sign-in desk.  “What the fuck is that?” she asked loudly, pointing at the frozen hamburger patties in a box on the table. Then, seeing ‘Claudia’ on the woman’s name tag, “Don’t you hate that fucking name? It’s shitty.”

The woman turned and opened a door behind her. “Erin!” she called out in a thin voice. “Erin, can you come out here? Now?” An uneasy silence replaced the animated talking that had been going on among the people waiting for food. Some pointedly ignored Comet’s outbursts, looking around the food bank as if for the first time, taking in the beat-up wooden shelves along one wall that held the boxes people used to collect their food, or looking down at their feet shuffling across the cold concrete floor. A little girl peered out at Comet from behind her father’s legs, where she had taken refuge.

Comet had returned to her place in the line when Erin, the food bank manager, appeared. She talked briefly with the woman behind the desk and then walked over to Comet. “If you continue with your inappropriate language you will be asked to leave and not allowed to return. Do you understand?”

“Who the hell are . . .” began Comet but she was interrupted by her brother who put a hand on her shoulder and stepped in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “my sister is having some problems today. I’ll try to keep her under control.”

“Shit,” Comet said and turned her back on Erin and her brother.

“I’m warning you,” said Erin.

“OK! OK! I heard you! Now leave me alone. I’ll be a real good girl and you can give me a lollipop when I leave, OK?”

As they moved back into line, she tapped the shoulder of the man in front of her. “Got a match?” she asked, taking a cigarette butt from her jacket pocket and putting it between her lips. The man pointed at the No Smoking sign on the wall and inched away from her.

Comet replaced the butt in her pocket and turned to her brother. “Mitch wasn’t even there,” she said again. Her voice had lost some of its edge and she sounded almost mournful. “He wasn’t even there.”

“Clau--,” her brother stopped abruptly, then tried again. “They found Mama’s disability check on him. He took it. He stole it from her. Why do you keep defending him?”

For almost a minute there was no reply from Comet. Emotions flitted across her face in the same way colors flit across a cuttlefish, one replacing another, abruptly, unpredictably. “Eugene, couldn’t you talk to Mama? Ask her not to press charges? She’ll listen to you. Mitch isn’t really bad.” She tried to sound conciliatory but it came out cloying.

Eugene’s face and voice both dropped their veneer of detachment, taking in their stead a look and a tone of disgust. He turned on her and in a low, harsh whisper told her, “He stole Mama’s disability check! Of course I’m not going to ‘talk to Mama’. Mitch is a thief, a jerk, a parasite. He’s worthless.”

Comet understood now that the war was lost but not necessarily the battle. She slapped Eugene, hard, the sharp sound of skin on skin slicing through an atmosphere already thick with tension. Without waiting to be told, Comet left, sending the little bell flying across the room as she jerked open the door. Once outside she turned, flipped everybody the finger and started yelling, her eyes bulging, the muscles in her throat knotted. “FUCK YOU! FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOU! ALL OF YOU!” She ran off.

Once again Eugene’s face was impassive. Nothing was there other than the red welt on his cheek. And the tear making its way down his cheek.



A common writing exercise is to spend five or ten minutes writing without stopping, a kind of free association writing or stream of consciousness. That's what this week's post is. The picture to the right, BTW, of Fnu Lnu? Read on.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM A WANDERING MIND

Pop culture. Pop Culture. POP CULTURE. Pop culture. Popculture. Nike.  Mikey. ABC. Bart Simpson. Big Mac. Old Navy. Super Bowl. Malls, malls, so many malls. Walls, walls, too many walls. Rama-lama-ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead. Out of the dead come the mouths of babes with fleet-footed, quicksilvered oratory sufficient to charm a day off with pay from Ebenezer Scrooge. King of beers. People magazine. The Yankees. Starbucks. Hip-hop. Coke. Coke? Coke. Which one? Either. Both. Pop Culture likes ‘em both. Lotsa Grammys, never any grampys, though. Grampy? How about Gumby? Nimby?  As in “Jack be nimby, Jack be quick,” just not in my backyard! Not with Super Bowl commercials costing as much as the GDP of three small countries or two large states. (Or is it the other way around?) Old McDonald had a burger, E-I-E-I-Ohiowa! Celebrities. TV. Celebrities. Politics. Celebrities. Sports. Celebrities. Movies. Celebrities. Religion. Weather. Criminals. Food. Holidays. The Wealthy. Sleaze. The Military. Consumerism. Celebrities X 10 to the nth power. Does anyone have a life anymore? A life they can call their own? We hitch ourselves to events, fads, people. We allow the purpose, the tempo, the direction, even the intensity of our lives to be determined by forces wholly external to ourselves. We receive daily instruction: What to wear, drive, eat, watch, listen to, like, feel, fear and believe. Is it really that difficult to leave the beaten path? Or is it that frightening?

Pop Culture uses us and abuses us. He plays to us and on us. He identifies our deep-downs and gives us what he has made us think we need. He has become our pop, our parent, and he runs our lives for us and shame on the one who has a different way! Pop knows what’s best for us. (Or, at least, what’s best for him, and, of course, what’s good for General Motors is good for the country.) Of course it’s important to have watched the last Seinfeld, to be reading Steele’s or Grisham’s or Clancy’s latest, to go to Disneylandworld, to drive an SUV, to be online, to have at least X number of credit cards, (where X  is a number greater than 5) and to know all the characters on at least four sit-coms and three cop shows. And after all that, who has time for anything more?

IF ONLY I COULD DRAW...

Cartoon #58: Nine black-robed judges are walking through a park. Caption: “Supreme Court Justices out for their morning constitutional.”

Cartoon #68: A pickup truck driving down the street. On the side is the name of the business: Cobb Construction and Salads.

BTW, the gentleman pictured up top was wanted by the Feds for failure to pay income tax. He is/was one of those who believes the income tax is unconstitutional and, as I recall, encouraged others not to pay. He refused to give his name so was identified simply as Fnu Lnu: First name unknown, Last name unknown. 

Reminds me of the story (apocryphal, I'm sure) of an army recruit named R.B. Jones. The initials were his name; they didn't stand for anything. Told that in order to be paid he had to have something other than the initials, he dutifully filled out the form: R(only) B(only) Jones. Sure enough, his first check arrived made out to Ronly Bonly Jones. Ain't guvmint great?

Until next week . . .

Those of you who have read my other blog about my teen years growing up in 1950s Mexico will recognize the essay that follows, although it's in a slightly different form here. If you've not read it, I invite you to do so: www.dbl-exposure.blogspot.com.

Spider Webs

When you’re sixteen, parents don’t always make sense under the best of circumstances. This was incomprehensible. I turn slowly, looking at our newly redone living room. Yesterday it was pristine with its polished granite fireplace, new furniture, rugs, drapes, and newly tiled floor. The freshly painted pale yellow walls had added warmth and cheer to the room. Now, there are sloppy swirls of black paint on the walls and black streaks where the paint has run and there’s black paint all over the floor. A large paint brush sits in a can of black paint. I know who did this: Mom. But why?

As I stared at each wall in turn, I saw what Mom was trying to do: paint cobwebs on them. Her mother, who had died when Mom was nine, had been very artistic, a poet, a painter, and a writer. Mom may have been inspired by this memory, may have visualized lacy, delicate, symmetrical black strands gracefully adorning the walls. But the only

brush she could find was a painter’s three-inch brush. And she was drunk. Again.

She had gone on a drinking binge late the day before. My nine-year-old sister Valerie, and I had long since learned to make ourselves scarce when Mom started drinking heavily, which was most of the time now. So when she started her binge, we retreated to our bedrooms. She continued drinking all evening and I could hear her crying at times and at others, singing along with records and music that she and Antonio, the lover who had jilted her, used to dance to. Sometimes she would sing a song she made up, “Pass Around Girl.” I’m sure Val heard all this also but neither of us ventured out of our rooms all evening, not even for something to eat.  

Only those who have been through it, children who have watched a parent do this to themselves, can understand what it’s like. I experienced fierce, conflicting emotions, and Valerie must have, also. For years we had been targets of Mom’s harsh and unrelenting criticisms, her verbal and emotional abuse, the occasional physical abuse. But in spite of this, I still loved her. Somewhere inside of me I recognized that she was struggling against all the pain in her life: the loss of Antonio; her perceived failure as a parent; her isolation; the recent loss of Felice, our cat who had accompanied us four years before on our move from LA to Guadalajara, where we now lived; and a future that was bleak and discouraging.

Loathing was also present. I couldn’t stand what Mom had become. In my harsh, all-knowing, unforgiving teenage certainty, I hated her for being weak. Why didn’t she just put Antonio behind her and get on with her life? Why did she have to drink so heavily? And take so many pills? And stay in bed until eleven, twelve, one o’clock in the afternoon? Why couldn’t she just be like other kids’ moms?

I felt embarrassed whenever Mom, drunk, tried to talk to me about these things, or anything for that matter. I felt embarrassed when she yelled or cried or I heard things crashing. I felt embarrassed when she started singing or when I would find her dancing clumsily as I tried to make my way to the kitchen without being seen.

Fear was always present, fear of what Mom might do to herself, either intentionally or because of the drinking. Could you die from drinking too much? What if she decided to drive somewhere when she was drunk? What if she just decided to end it all and take all her sleeping pills at once, the sleeping pills she regularly asked me to purchase for her? As I look back, though, I think suicide was closed to Mom. Dad had already put us through that five years before and she couldn’t subject Valerie and me to that again. What would happen to us if she did? How would we get back to the States? Who would take us in? And now I wonder if the fact that that door was closed to her simply added to her misery; the pain in her life was unbearable and increasing daily but there was no way out.

There was also the uncertainty of what would happen to me. I was sixteen, on the verge of adulthood, but I was also a school drop-out with insufficient education and no skills, social or otherwise. I was locked in daily battles with Mom, battles that took a terrible toll on both of us.

Out of this particular binge, though, from the terrible black paint mess on the walls, came a revelation and hope, something that did much to begin changing the way I thought about myself.

* * *

 I don’t know what Valerie did that evening. I stayed in my room and eventually read myself to sleep. When I got up the next morning it was clear just how drunk Mom had become. Sometime during the night she got the idea that these spider webs were just what was needed, the finishing touch to the living room. Anywhere there was enough space on a wall, Mom had painted a web. On one large area she painted two floor-to-ceiling webs. Other webs were scaled down to fit the available space. She was intent on her task and oblivious to the black streaks running down the walls from the overloaded brush, oblivious to the paint dripping on the floor, oblivious to the mess she was creating.

While I stood in the front room the next morning, turning slowly, taking it all in and trying to understand how anyone could be so drunk, I heard Valerie come out of her room and turned to see her reaction. It mirrored mine. She turned completely around, staring incomprehensively at the disaster.

“What are you going to do, David?” Her voice was barely audible.

“We have to get the living room repainted. And we have to do it before she gets up.” I didn’t want a confrontation with Mom over something that obviously needed to be done. And I think maybe I was trying to spare her the embarrassment of seeing the botched mess she had made while drunk.

Two things worked in our favor. First, I knew Mom wouldn’t be up any time soon, probably not before mid-afternoon at the earliest. Second, the painter had said he would return this morning to be paid. We’d prevail on him to help us.

He arrived a little later, stepped into the living room and silently surveyed the scene, doing just as Val and I had done: turning slowly, taking it all in, trying to understand how anyone could be so drunk. He said nothing but his face wore a look of pained bewilderment that was eloquent in its silence.

“I need some help,” I told him, rather pointlessly.

“I can see that,” was his laconic reply. “Let’s get started.”

It took several hours to restore the living room walls. The painter gave Valerie a paint scraper and told her to start scraping the black paint off the floor. Then he and I sanded away as much of the black paint on the walls as we could. After we had vacuumed and cleaned the walls, I wanted to start painting, right away.

“Don’t you want to prime first?”

“No, there’s no time. We have to get this all done before my Mom gets up. If it doesn’t cover completely, I’ll put on another coat tomorrow.” I was surprising myself with an unknown ability to take charge, make decisions, act responsibly.

Four hours later we finally finished, cleaned up, and inspected our work. My sister had worked hard at her task and the floors were free of any traces of black paint. The painter left, saying he’d return tomorrow for his money. The living room looked pretty good.

Eventually, the moment I’d been dreading arrived. Mom woke up and came out to the living room. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. An old gray scarf covered her hair and her wrinkled lavender bathrobe was tied at the waist with the belt from her green robe. There were still yesterday’s Frownies in the space between her eyebrows, little adhesive triangles that were supposed to prevent wrinkles, something Mom had used for years.

My first hope was that she wouldn’t remember what she had done, that if she was drunk enough to do it, then maybe she had been too drunk to remember doing it. And if she did remember, I was braced for the worst, prepared once again to be her verbal, maybe physical, punching bag. But all she did was stand and look around her, much as the painter had done, and with much the same look on her face.

“Did you see what I painted?”

“Yes, I did, Mom.”

“You didn’t like it?”

 “No, Mom, there was paint all over everything and it dripped down the walls. It didn’t look good. “

“Did you repaint it?”

“Well, the painter and Val and I did. He came back to be paid and I asked him to stay and help me repaint. He’ll be back tomorrow for his money.”

There was disappointment reflected in her face. I know she felt that her artistic efforts were just the touch the room needed. She had emulated her mother.

I was relieved when she didn’t say anything more.

There are events in our lives where our self image comes into a much sharper focus than ever before. There’s a new clarity in how we see, understand, and appreciate ourselves. For me, the spider web episode was one such event. Like a light being turned on, one that should already have been burning brightly but wasn’t, I realized that what I had done was an act of responsibility, undertaken on my own. All the accusations Mom had hurled at me over the years, accusations that sapped my spirit while they poisoned my psyche, were proved false. Mom was wrong; she had been wrong all along. I drank deeply of this new revelation, savoring a new image of a strong, worthwhile me.

________________________________________________________________

Aren't they wet all the time anyway?

__________________________________________________________________________________

IF ONLY I COULD DRAW!

Cartoon #43: A father cabbage is having a talk with his son: “Remember, son, you have to work hard to get a head.”

Cartoon #50: Aerial view of two stores across the street from each other. The far one has a big sign advertising its name: “99¢ Store”. The one across the street has an equally big sign advertising its name: “98¢ Store”.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Finally, I invite you to take a listen to my new online program, Vintage Rock, rock 'n roll from the 50s and 60s. It's on kbcs.fm. Click on "streaming audio", scroll down to Vintage Rock, select my name, it enter and then listen. If you have a request or a dedication, email me at davesvintagerock@gmail.com.

I'm a writer, but not a poet. Poetry remains a mystery to me, tho there are many, many poems I've enjoyed, that have touched me in unexpected ways. I have tried my hand at writing poetry on occasion, a couple of which I've posted previously. This one is from 1982, during a hard time in my life.  And, following this, another episode from "Trite, of the Squad!"

The Blues aren't really mine. I just borrow them.

I call and they respond.

I use them  and they work.

I wear them. They fit.

The Blues is a fellow-traveler who knows the way far better

than I and is more than willing to be my accompanist on

long, dark journeys.

One's lonely. Two's company.

No, the Blues aren't mine. I'm just borrowin' 'em for a while.

The Blues, they know me and they listen and they nod their

blue note heads in sympathetic unison, soothing with sevenths . . .

They visit and are welcomed.

They don't belong to me, but I sure do appreciate the loan!

I met a man once who claimed never to have had the Blues, though

he looked kinda sad when he said it. No, thanks. Not for me the

"I-Can't-Get-the-Blues" Blues. I gotta have somewhere to

store sorrows, some place to hang up the pain that drops in,

sometimes often, sometimes not, and seldom calling ahead.

But the Blues, man!

Mine? Nah. They're just stayin' a spell.

The Blues is a wee-hours friend sharing dark space under an indigo

umbrella. The Blues is a friend indeed, with storage for my sorrows,

hooks for my pains. The Blues is a milk run and there are no seats on

the Blues. But everybody gets a strap.

The Blues aren't mine. Everybody belongs to the Blues.

This was in the Times some years ago. I've no idea what it's about
and I never called. It's much more fun to imagine.

THE TURN OF THE PHRASE – II

     "Whoa, big fella!" Trite gently reined in his horse. "I see smoke and where there's smoke, there's fire."  Realizing that time was of the essence, Trite had pushed on through the night after leaving Inspector Bromide. Even though it was darker than the inside of a tar-papered coal bin at midnight, he had spared neither himself nor his horse. Now he was ready to spring the trap.

     Trite dismounted and began to move forward. His years of experience had taught him that    silence was golden and he proceeded as though walking on eggs. Pushing aside a last bit of foliage Trite stepped into a clearing. There, no more than a stone's throw away, lay the man he had been pursuing so relentlessly these many months: Black Bart!

     "He's catching 40 winks, I see," Trite remarked softly to himself. "May the arms of Morpheus embrace him just a while longer, knock on wood."

     Slowly but surely he closed the distance between them. Soon, he was but a few feet from Black Bart. Taking the bull by the horns, Trite called out, "Rise and shine, Black Bart! As always, the early bird gets the worm. You're under arrest!" (To be continued.)