The Bonsal Blues Hobo Band Throw Down

Here's an out of focus shot of the infamous battle of the bands, mid parade. Note the contrast between the militaristic Bonsal Blues and the Hobos. My brother Ted was weeping.

The Glorious Fourth

Well, I spent most of the day in Wenonah. It was, as always, a treat. I saw many old friends and passed the word about the blog. Dottie Chattin, Barb Conway, Chris DeHart, Suzy Parker, Doug, Jack, and Dick Wesh, the giant Seville clan, Margie Loving, my brother's friends, my step brother's friends, Richie "ratkid" Young, Paul and Dave Earnhart, Carey DeGeer, my sister's friends, my parent's friends, Ralph and Rachel, Dave, Steve, Helen, and Mr. O'Connor, Mrs. McQuaide, Victor Anderson, so many, many good friends and so many memories.
Too much to deal with today but next week should spawn a host of posts. Dottie and Barb have said they'll help id the girls in the photos, Chris and Dottie both provided me with mucho grist for the mill, from the Wildcats to the Bike Game to Who Looks the Deadest. It was a long, long day.
Suzy and I drove down at six am from Jersey City and arrived at my brother Mick's at 8am. We jetted over to Wenonah with a brief stop at the Hollywood Diner for sustenance and arrived just as the flag and Uncle Sam and his nephew arrived at Jefferson Ave. As we were parking we ran into Debbie Mix, ne Lake, and her husband Mike.
I grabbed a small beer at the O'Connor's blast and the hunt was on.
I know for now I've neglected many, many potential memories but they will have to wait.
Tomorrow I leave for work at 7am and at noon leave for scenic Portland, ME and the Stonecoast MFA. For some reason they have hired me to sound my barbaric yawp from their stage. I'm psyched, tired, and anxious. It's all a wild ride Mr Toad...hold on to your hats!

An apology

Dear readers,
I guess there are ten or twelve of you. I apologize for my lack of posts over the past several days. The death of Divina was devastating to us both and we've been struggling to rejoin the real world.
Now the real world drags me in whether I want to go or not. I'm off to Wenonah on Wednesday early in the morning with my friend Suzy Parker. We'll watch the parade and drink some beers at the firehouse and visit my friends and family. No doubt I'll say hello to my old landlords Ralph and Rachel and stop by the O'Conner's for a beer during the parade.
I'll say hello to many old friends and fail to recognize far more.
From there it's down to Suzy's parent's house in Townsend's Inlet and then for me...back to NYC on Thursday. Friday I go to the Stonecoast MFA program in scenic Maine to read my poems and talk about poetry. I'll see my dear friend Baron and some newer friends and perhaps drink a bit too much. I'll yell and scream and raise the roof.
Then back to home Sunday and off to work again
I'm going to read some poems I've written about Divina in Stonecoast and hope I make it through them without embarrassing myself. We shall see.
Have a wonderful 4th of July! It's my second favorite holiday and I'll be in the town where it's done right. The Pitman Hobo Band and the Bonsal Blues will play their tunes, the children will amble down Mantua Ave and for a few moments it might almost be 1959. It's been like this for so many years. What a rare joy! What a deep pleasure!
God Bless America and for what it's worth screw Dick Cheney!

Divina

You know how stuff sneaks up on you. How you know something but don't know something. Today Johanna and I got the deeply sad news that her friend Divina had died. Johanna had known Divina since they were teenagers in El Salvador. She was a strong and real presence in our lives. When Johanna's father passed away this February Divina was here for her. She passed away in May and no one knew how to get in touch with her friends or family. What a great land America is...we got a call from an investigator from the hospital today telling us the news. Telling us Divina was gone. I can still picture her whistling Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, It's off to work we go to get the dogs to go for a walk. They loved her. They knew she was here before we did.
Now she won't be here except in our hearts. Divina was a joy and a friend and gave Johanna a deep connection to her home. We both miss her with all our hearts. It's so sad that there is so little words can do when you lose a friend.

Gone Daddy Gone

I haven’t posted in nearly ten days. Mostly since I ran out of pain killers. I spent a few rough nights trying to gut it out and finally on Thursday, slept through the night. Johanna and I spent the weekend enjoying the beautiful summer weather and yesterday, late in the afternoon, I went to the Bowery Poetry Club to honor one of my heroes.

Hersch Silverman, the bard of Bayonne, was the subject of a loving tribute by his poetic children. As Danny Shot said in his promo piece…”he’s the Grand Daddy-O of us all”. For us New Jersey poets that’s especially true. Danny and Eliot and I as well as many of our friends were all fans of Ginsberg and Kerouac and Corso and to be able to hang with Hersch was like being with them. But like us, Hersch stayed home. Instead of following his muse Hersch stayed in Bayonne, running the Beehive, and raising up two great kids. In the early eighties, following the death of his wife, he re-entered the world of poetry and we met him seemingly everywhere.

Danny and I published a lot of his work in Long Shot. Danny put out his volume “Lift Off” and Hersch was always a featured reader at our benefits. Listening to that man swing with words was just a rare joy. And he worked for a living! Not a bad thing to do cuz we were all working for a living. He was and is the man!

The night was great! Jazz and the poetry of jazz, Bob Holman’s wild words and music, a gorgeous duet with Hersch and Danny. Wild reworkings of Hersch’s words and Joel Lewis telling Hersch’s story. Of course, this being a gathering of New York poets there were poems that had nothing to do with Hersch and bad work and strange dissonant moments. But Steve Cannon was at the bar heckling with his little blonde helper and the bartenders were swift and the beer was cold and Danny’s sons Casey and Levi were hiding in a corner. It was a night of beat poetry in the most gone town on the south side of Jupiter, man. It was gone, daddy, gone. Like so many people that should have been in the room.

So, here’s a toast to Hersch and Bayonne and the Beehive. Here’s a nod to Allen and Gregory and Andy and Jack. Drink up my friends and drink deep!

Clay Hill

I've said we played in the woods at the end of Lincoln Avenue. But mostly we spent our time on Clay Hill. Clay Hill was the remnants of a washed out railroad trestle. At it's base in the Mantua Creek were the worn stumps of the railroad trestles. Where the railroad went and what it was for were long forgotten. It was just a hill in a small woods at the end of our street. Most of the forest there was new growth. The trees were less than twenty years old. We raced through them as though we were in a forest in an ancient world. To the left of Clay Hill were the swamps of the Mantua Creek. They resumed again some hundred yards away to the right till they reached their largest point right by the bridge between Wenonah and Mantua.
The swamps were filled with cattails and skunk cabbage and muskrats. I suppose there was other wild life but we paid little or no attention to it. The creek had catfish and some sunny's and a few smallmouth bass. It meandered it's slow way to the Delaware from a point a few miles from Wenonah. Once it had been larger but it had been dammed off by various developers over the years to make lakes and ponds and now was largely ignored by everyone but children.
For us it was heaven.
It was a world without parents or rules or a point. We fought wars on Clay Hill. We refought WWII. We fought WWIII. We saved the world from alien invasions. We eventually got up the courage to run through the swamps. We'd leap from hillock to hillock all the way to the railroad trestle by the Parker's house. We braved quick mud and mosquitoes and we were rangers in a guerilla war. My favorite Christmas present for many years was hip boots so I could run through the swamp.
We'd come home and my mother would send us into the basement to strip and clean. We smelled like swamp.
We smelled like skunk. All within two hundred feet of our homes. No adults went into the woods. No teenagers went into the woods. Just us and our ilk.
One day in a pitched battle between Chris DeHart and my friends I found myself staked out and had ants dropped on my chest. I was petrified with terror. My brother Ted raced home to get my father to save me. From what?
Terry nearly had his ear blown off by a firecracker on Clay Hill.
Kids were shoved from the top of Clay Hill on bikes and narrowly avoided spilling into the creek. For some reason none of us would swim in the creek. We'd sit for hours at the base of the hill and talk and talk and talk about bullshit. We speculated about everything. Where babies came from, what sex was, would we kill a man in battle. We argued about baseball and football and organized our mad events. Our theatrical presentations, our athletic games, all were hatched here or on my porch or in the DeHarts house or in Terry Flemings basement.
Clay Hill was as large as the world got at that time and place. It was huge and seemed to go forever. It had mystery, access, and privacy. It was perfect. We built forts in groves of sticker bushes. We made tree forts and dug foxholes. We dammed a stream further down by the old dump and flooded the woods for hundreds of yards. We were very busy but of course told no one about any of it. Till we were older, with kids of our own.

Tommy Woods, Madelaine Pillings, and Me

I mentioned Tommy Woods several postings back. He's the odd looking kid in my first and third grade photos. He seems twisted up just looking at him. I remember Tommy not because he was my friend or an acquaintance but because he was odd. Strange. He wasn't stupid. He was in our class after all and my classes in Wenonah Elementary were the smart classes. You'd think in a town this small it would be hard to separate children based on anything but we were separated. Based on abilities. Sometimes this was obvious. I could read easier and faster than other kids my age. I might have a lot of trouble playing dodgeball but I had no problems with Dick and Jane. Other kids had problems with things that were easy for me. Schools in the fifties and sixties segregated us to make our lives easier, better. I'm still not sure if this was good or bad. It wasn't always obvious at the time, although after some years even the dullest of us could figure it out.
But Tommy Woods was always in my classes. Tommy could barely figure out how to walk and chew gum. I can't remember any examples of his intellectual prowess. I can only assume that he tested high somewhere down the pike but that the tests errered on his social abilities. That left him meat for our games. We were cruel, viscious shitheads and Tommy Woods was our prey. Even for me Tommy Woods was an idiot. He was lost in social encounters. His clothes were odd, his abilities to interact with us were non-existent, in short he was fair game for everyone. Even geeks like me. Tommy got caught in his own chair at school. He had difficulty talking. He was odd.
Madelaine Pillings was equal meat for the opposite reason. She was everything Tommy couldn't hope to be. She was bright, socially able, and knew the rules. Too well. She was, in short, a teachers pet. She would rat you out in a heartbeat. That meant she was hated with every breath we had. She was like some wicked version of a Hollywood star dumped in our laps. Like Hayley Mills or Shelley Fabares but without their cunning. She didn't know how to appease us only adults. She could pick a side and she always picked the wrong side. She assumed that since adults ruled the roost they were the ones to pay attention to. Bad pick.
We vilified her relentlessly. Her clothes, her smile, her demeanor were all fair game. We hated her. Hated her more than we hated anything or anyone. I honestly can't think of anyone who played with her or went to her house for fun. She was doomed. Doomed.
You'd think the rough tough cream puff would have an ounce of compassion for misfits like Tommy or Madelaine. You'd think that and you'd be wrong. There is a pecking order everywhere in human society and these two chowderheads were at the bottom of ours. Worse than bullies or sociopaths. Worse than kids that set cats on fire. They were neither feared nor admired. My friend Terry sent a note about Milton Webb after my last posting. He expressed his distaste for how our little world didn't allow an ounce of compassion because of it's rigid conformity. Well, Tommy and Madelaine were the bottom of that society and suffered all the pains that we could inflict in all our myriad ways.
Not that we would beat them up, or steal from them, or deprive them of food or water. Only companionship and friendship and the worlds we provided each other. They were kept apart from us with a vehemence that was surprising and viscious and real.
Ask me anything about these two children and I can at most provide you with a few anecdotes making fun of them. Even our teachers made fun of them at times.
Here in this little town, with no problems, no worries, and pleasant surroundings we found a way to punish people with a cruelty that was unshakeable and unmerciful. We were more like monsters than we could understand. I might have been Atticus Finch in my dreams but in my real life I was a nasty little bigot. Ha ha ha.
We ran through the woods defending America from German troops and invading Russians and then each day in school punished the easiest marks we could find.
And it was fun.

Public Men and Women

I talked last of Ed Campbell. One of the few public role models we had as young boys and girls. You might ask who else we saw during the day in Wenonah in 1960. Not a great number of people but several, several. There was George Bowker and his wife Jane who ran the grocery in the middle of town. There was Tony Sacca who ran the butcher shop attached to Bowkers grocery. We had one police officer. His name escapes me but he lived at the end of Jefferson Street by the lake and his primary duty was helping us cross the street by the corner of Mantua and West Street each day coming and going from school. He was a pleasant enough man with little or no crime to combat.
The firemen in our town were volunteers. They were our fathers and neighbors and so, for the most part invisible except when a fire swept through a house or yard or on the 4th of July when they had an open fire house with beer and hot dogs and gave rides on the firetruck for children at the park.
There was G. Wayne Post who ran the men's store in town. He had a small business cleaning men's shirts as well and delivered my father's crisp white shirts each week in a cardboard box. This served two purposes, one my father looked sharp and two I had ample supplies of cardboard for school projects.
There were various men running a Sinclair gas station in the center of town, though Chuck Forsman ran the more popular establishment just across the Wenonah Creek in Mantua. Chuck dressed as a clown each 4th of July and puttered up and down Mantua Avenue on a small motor bike for the amusement of the children and himself.
There was the local librarian, who beginning in 1962 or so was my mother, Louise Wiler. Later Dot Nugent assisted her in her duties. There were, of course, the teachers and administration of the school, the post men and women, and a few other local businessmen. Among them was an insurance man, Don Mawson. Don's shop was on Mantua Avenue just before the gas station in the center of town. Don's best friend was Milton Webb.
Each morning and each afternoon we passed Don on the way to school. He was, how to say it, a fag. At least, that's how we described him. Young boys and girls with no real sense of what we were saying. He was unmarried, dressed well, and lived by himself, though he had one close friend, Milton Webb. Both men seemed vaguely effeminate, though by the standards of later years hardly flaming queens.
I don't know if Don was a vet but Milton was, having served honorably in the Korean War. Milton spent several years as a prisoner of war. Both men were ridiculed by us as figures of public humiliation. Both men lived honorably and bravely in a small town with small minds.
Milton Webb passed away several years ago, shorly before I returned to Wenonah, ill with AIDS. He died of natural causes and had many dear friends in the community. He was in many ways one of the town's historians and worked with a number of people in South Jersey to keep our mostly unremarkable history alive. My landlord in 2001, 2002, and 2003, Rachel Knisell admired him and his work on the town's history. He was active too in keeping the town green, helping to establish, along with Mr. Campbell, Mr. Eggert, the Middleton's, the Lentze's, and others a band of green woods around our town in the early 70's.
I don't know for certain if Milton Webb and Don Mawson were gay or homosexual, though, if Johanna were to have met them, I'm certain she would say yes. I'm sure she would say, "I can smell my people". Certainly, all the small, little bigots of my acquaintance, including myself, thought they were and worked tirelessly to make them feel unwanted and out of place.
When I came back home, sick with a disease that ravaged the gay world, I thought a great deal about Milton and Don and their world. There were a few more gay men and women in Wenonah by then. Some of them worked hard to help the sick and damaged beginning in the eighties. Their legacy was real and brave. But I can't help but think, that like Ed Campbell, Milton and Don were heroes too.
Milton was a war veteran just like Ed Campbell. He served honorably and then faced the Chinese in their camps. He braved far worse than a dozen or so idiot children ridiculing him behind his back. He involved himself in his world though his world often turned its back on him.
Courage is a funny thing. Role models take lots of shapes. There were lots of people in Wenonah when I was growing up but only two men that I could say seemed to be gay. Only one black family. No Jews. Six Catholic families. A town where being different was a curse.
I'm off to Wenonah again this year for the 4th of July. With luck I'll return with many pleasant memories and some pictures. Here are two from my memory. Ed Campbell racing down a soccer field, laughing and screaming at a bunch of ten year olds. Don Mawson on his porch, graciously saying good morning to us as we walked each day to school. Tall, dressed impeccably, enjoying a crisp fall day in a small town in southern New Jersey.

Ed Campbell

Third Grade you'll note was taught by a woman. A woman with a young son. First and Second as well were taught by women and Fifth and Sixth. Teaching was widely perceived as a woman's job in America in 1960. It was underpaid and the women who held the jobs were considered either to be in search of a husband or supplementing a man's income in the family. My world and Mick's and Terry's and Chris' was filled with women. We left for school without seeing our fathers. We returned from school to our mothers. Many of the men in town took the train to work in Philadelphia. We'd see them walking home just before dinner in their suits and hats. They were far away figures. We had yet to participate in organized sports. We had no coaches and few if any male teachers.
Wenonah Elementary had two exceptions, my Fourth Grade Teacher, Mr. McIntyre, and Ed Campbell. Ed Campbell was assigned the problem classes. The Second and Third graders that posed a difficulty. My classes were filled with good cooperative kids. Mr. Campbell's were filled with kids with learning problems, with discipline issues. It was thought that only a man could bring them in line.
Mr. Campbell was that man. He'd served in the Korean War. He was a father as well. But more than that he was a robust, energetic man who engaged his students in ways our teachers didn't. If a kid wasn't paying attention he'd toss an eraser at his head. Mike Smith, the younger brother of Michelle, was once hung out the window till he cooled down. He played football and soccer with us on our gravel schoolyard. Especially soccer. We played a robust game with few rules and lots of contact. The only referee was Mr. Campbell and unless you were a bully or a cheat you got away with everything within the rules. It was always a joy when we were allowed to join with his classes in soccer or football.
In summers he was a lifeguard at the Wenonah Lake. He'd plant himself on the raft in the middle of the lake and take on all challengers. We'd try to take the raft and he'd toss us off. He was a war hero and a man and everything we could want to be. He was fearless. Of course, he was dealing with boys and girls under the age of twelve so it's doubtful he was physically afraid of us.
You had the sense though that he expected better of you. That you could be a better man, a better person, a better scholar, by following in his footsteps. He was, most importantly, not our father. He didn't belittle you or make you feel stupid. He simply asked you to do the work you were assigned. He was never my teacher except in the way a male role model is for a young boy. Like my Uncle Al or my Uncle Ed he showed me the way to be a man.
It was a strange world not having men in it. Your father, my friends fathers, never involved themselves in our lives the way fathers do today. They came home, had a cocktail, ate dinner, asked you about your day, chatted with our mothers and went back to work. Their life was a mystery. But Ed Campbell was there with us daily. Striding the schoolyard like the cock of the walk. Loud, boisterous, argumentative, challenging.
In my town most of the men went to war. WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War were all a real part of the landscape. The county draft board was headed up by a man who lived in Wenonah. Nolan Cox. He lived in a large, dark Victorian home off the park. He seemed to take great pleasure in sending young men to battle.
Ed Campbell was one of the men of South Jersey who served and then came home to serve again in a largely woman's world. I have no idea how he might have felt working with the women in the school. He certainly never would speak of it. He seemed to say you should live your life as though every thing you do matters. As if it could all be gone in a second. We responded to that with an energy almost unchecked. Every boy, from the smartest, wimpiest among us to the most nasty, bullying thugs, loved him. And when he brought us together we played together. The private wars we had vanished in the joy of kicking a ball or tossing a football or stopping a run. My brother Mick had a good deal of trouble as a boy with scholastic endeavors but he worked hard for Ed Campbell. His friends and mine loved the man.
So.
I can imagine Ed Campbell feeling diminished each time he saw a man step off the train at 5:40 after a days work in Philadelphia while he spent his days with boys and girls. I can imagine him trying to learn what drew him to this vocation. More than that I can remember going to his house each Halloween and having him take the time to guess who each and every one of us was beneath our monstrous masks and grotesqueries. He was never wrong. No one ever took the raft.
Maybe you think about your job and what it means. Maybe you have sons and daughters and try to raise them up right. Maybe you fret about the men and women who teach them each day.
But in Wenonah in 1960 no one worried about this. You went to work and did the work you had to do to feed your family. You came home and ate your dinner with your cold milk and bread and potatoes. You smiled at your children and asked how they were doing and probably barely listened to their half hearted recitations of the days events. You trusted your children's lives to women and a few men with little or no knowledge of who they were or what they did.
It still amazes me I know almost nothing of their lives. I know Miss Quigley married a few years after I left Second Grade and became Mrs. Scott. I know Mrs. Kaufman lived at the end of my block for twenty odd years but I never had an adult conversation with her till I was in my thirties on the 4th of July. I knew Mrs. Fuller's son Greg but nothing of her or her husband. But Mr. Campbell strides through my life like a God. Strong and brave and fierce. A man like I wanted to be. He made books seem less like the world of ladies and more like the world. Not a bad thing for a guy in a little town in South Jersey.

Third Grade Only One Girl Left Unnamed

1960 JFK Mary Lou and more

So it's 1960 and for the first time I'm aware of a presidential election. John F Kennedy is running against Richard Nixon and we watch the news and see the Kennedy's the Nixons and more. My mother is pregnant with my sister, Mary Louise. I'm in third grade and life in Wenonah is sweet.
I walk to school each day with my friends Terry and Dottie. I go to class with children I've known now for two years. We are friends in a way I hadn't experienced friends before. After 2nd grade I'm now closer to boys and girls a grade ahead. Chief among them Chris DeHart who lives down the block from me on South Lincoln. Chris has two older brothers, Tommy and Stewart and a southern mother, Clara. She's passed along a lot of her heritage to her children and they share many of her beliefs and ideals. Chris' father is in the family business, DeHart Trucks.
Terry has two older brothers as well, Mike and Tim. Mike and Tim are smart and handsome and cool in ways a geek like me can only vaguely comprehend. They make fun of me for reading all the time. I go to Terry's house to play early every weekend, when I wake up. Terry's family does not get up when Mick and I wake up. Everyone sleeps till 9 or 10 in the morning. Mrs. Fleming greets me at the door, a vision in hairspray and gruff Irish beauty. She can't figure out why in the world I'm awake.
At school we're excited when Kennedy is elected. A new generation with new visions has taken the reins of power. At least that's the way it feels to us little kids. We have long passionate arguments about civil rights and white flight. We're in third grade or fourth grade so these arguments are stupid to say the least. Chris takes the traditional southern view. If niggers move in his family will move out. Not that there was any chance of that happening but still we discuss it at length.
Meantime my brothers and I anticipate Mary's arrival. We're hoping for a fourth boy but I can bet my mother is praying for a girl. We were a handful. Mick and I and Ted drove her crazy. She was quiet and bookish and sweet. We were loud and insistent and out of control. Years later my Uncle Ed, my fathers brother, would tell he thought my father had no control of us.
We played football, tackle, in the backyard, with only the rudiments of understanding of the rules. We watched TV from 7:30 to 8:00 and went to bed. I read and read and read. It seems to me that I read To Kill a Mockingbird in third grade. That might be historically impossible and I have no intention of verifying that. But the central theme of the book, the battle against the poison that was racism and the heroism of black and white men and women in fighting it struck me with all the force it struck the rest of the nation.
I read the Hardy Boys too. Every last Hardy Boys book. My mother's brother, Al, had some of them in his collection from the forties. I ran through them in a few months. Roadsters and gangsters and smugglers and mysteries and all in New Jersey! The Hardy Boys were from a shore town in Northern New Jersey but from my perspective they were from strange place by the shore with cliffs and caves and violence. In Wenonah the only violence was child on child violence.
I began to learn to ride my bike. It being too big I had trouble stopping it so I adopted a strategy of running into curbs to stop. Mick and I launched our sibling rivalry in earnest. Each of us was what the other wanted to be and this would extend for years.
Mick was athletic and personable and funny. I was smart and awkward and I don't know what. We began a series of battles each day at breakfast. Mick would look at me across the table and start in. Bla, bla bla bla eh eh eh. Nonsense syllables that drove me crazy. I'd scream at him to stop and he'd do it more. My mother would say, ignore him and he'll stop. Might as well ask the sun not to come up. Ignore him? How? He was relentless in picking the scabs of my insecurities. I never figured out that it was me that made him nuts. We'd end up rolling around on the floor kicking and punching till our mother booted us out.
And out we went into the extended games we all played. We discovered the woods. Clay Hill and the Mantua Creek were just two blocks from our house and all of us spent hours there each afternoon. Walking through the woods imagining ourselves assaulted by dinosaurs or Russians or god knows what. Shooting our plastic guns at imaginary monsters and rolling for cover.
Chris invented most of the games. That was his forte. He saw more movies than any of us and when he'd return he'd tell us the stories and we'd reenact them. Frankenstein or Dracula, Wolfman, Liberty Valance. All of them elaborately choreographed plays Chris would direct. The two most intense were Frankenstein and Liberty Valance. Each of us would be assigned a role and Chris would give us lines and tell us when to enter. We revelled in the detail. Liberty Valance was my personal favorite because for once I wasn't a geek. I usually played the Jimmy Stewart character, Rance Stoddard. Chris was always Liberty Valance. Terry was John Wayne's character. Gary Condell played Pompey. My brother and his friends played everyone in the town.
Years later when I saw the film in Livingston College in Al LaValley's film class I was astounded to realize I knew all the dialogue. Chris had drilled it into us. Pompey hand me my gun.
We played with our school work. Walks to school had us telling stories based on our spelling words. We each tried to use our spelling words in elaborately crafted stories. Monsters and GI's and war figured heavily in everything we wrote. We tried to top each other with the best story till we forgot about the spelling words.
A note here...I've been away from the past for the last few weeks and am just getting back into 1960. It's odd to put yourself back again, especially when you're worried about the present. Forgive the disconnect. Bob Thomas has been helping put names to the picture. I hope to be done soon. In the meantime I'm going to post his most recent reconstruction and if any of you can help fill in the pieces I hope you will.

Spleenless in Jersey City

Hello all! I'm home again and without my spleen! I was released on Monday afternoon and have been feeling good and improving daily...only one pain killer today so far! I will be returning to Wenonah and my postings tomorrow but wanted to say thank you to all the folks at Virtua Voorhees, especially my Surgeon, Dr Balsama. Also Leah, Tricia, Kusuma (hope I got that right!), Renee and all the folks on the floor! Everyone was wonderful and made my recovery a snap! I'm thinking of going back and having my gall bladder removed in a month or so.
More importantly my numbers are on the rise and soon I can move head on against the Hep C. God is good!
To all of you in New England: I'll be at the Stonecoast MFA on 7/7 for a reading and then at the Frost Festival of Poetry from 7/31- 8/5. Hope to see all my poetical friends up north at one or the other event! Lots more on the horizon in 2007!
Hope you're all writing and reading and enjoying this beautiful summer weather.
Yr pal,
Jack

Waiting

Well, I'm consumed with wait and worry, so while I'm waiting and worrying here's a poem from me and Mario:

Mario Infirme Says Wait.

He inhales his Pall Mall and holds it for what seems like hours.
He lets the smoke out slow.
He smiles just a little, he reaches into his pocket, removes his wallet
and opens it.
He says.
How long did that take?
I said,
I don’t know, a minute?
He says, I could have taken longer and the same thing would have happened.
Wait.
Wait for the bartender.
He knows you’re here.
He’ll be down this way eventually.
He’ll mix your drink and place it in front of you.
Wait.
Wait for your son to walk across the room.
Watch him wobble and lurch.
He’s about to fall.
Wait.
He doesn’t.
His sudden rush sends him the last few feet into your arms.
Put your head deep in the crook of his neck and breathe.
Wait.
Wait for the smells to rise from his skin.
Breathe them in and wait.
Wait for your wife to come.
Watch her shudder waves of pleasure or is it terror.
Wait.
Wait for the boss to bring you your check.
Wait.
Wait for the rain to reach you from across the bay.
Think of that scene in the Renoir movie where the rain moves across the water.
Think how long he waited for that to happen.
Think how it might never have happened if he hadn’t waited.
What would come to you if you’d only waited.
What have you lost by rushing?
Wait to hear what your lover is saying. Don’t start talking before they’re done.
He’s saying he wants you more than life.
If you talk before he says it you’ll never know the truth.
Wait for the truth.
Wait for things to happen.
They always do.
Wait to find out what they are when they do happen.
Wait for all the surprises that are just out of your grasp.
Wait for someone else to pick up the check.
Wait for the newspaper.
Wait for the bus.
Wait for your son to be born.
Wait for your father to die.
Wait for all the things you’re afraid of and wait for all the things you want.
There’s plenty of time for action.
For now just enjoy this drink, this quiet conversation, this soft music,
this oak bar, this cigarette.
It will all be over soon enough.

My Grades

Well, now it's clear. I was an egghead. Although an egghead with poor cursive writing skills. And after looking at Mrs. Ferrera's handwritten notes I know I was far from her goals for my cursive writing. Looking back I was grateful for the day that I could just print in caps. I do that well. Thank God for Industrial Drawing in 8th Grade.
In the meantime we can deconstruct this relic from the past. The black and white photo of an entrance to the school none of us used. The teachers comments. Her references to me as Jackie. The fact that I read too much. Read too much! What a curse to spend my time doing what they taught us to do!
Note too the principals signature rubber stamping our efforts and the signature of my father. John M. Wiler. A signature I would use a million times as an adult as I am his namesake. Seeing it there chills the spine.
Another man signing your name again and again attesting to the scholarly efforts of his son. A man who knew little of what happened in his son's classroom. Who assumed, rightly, that the same things were happening there that had happened in his third grade classroom. Who sent me to school alone each day with barely a nod. In fact, if I remember correctly he was usually gone by the time we left. We were home for his arrival at days end. It was almost always a celebration. Of what I'm not sure. But happy we were to have him back in the house. Like dogs waiting for their beloved master, tails wagging, twitching with expectation. Oh sweet joy.
Jackie loved third grade. He loved to read. He read too much. He didn't learn enough but how much he didn't learn is for the subject of later posts.
In the meantime we'll id our classmates and talk about the impending birth of my beloved sister in the next posting. See you all on the other side of my splenectomy.

3rd Grade Report Card

More vented spleen

Hello all, I'm just back from AIDSWalk NYC and wanted to thank everyone who donated to sponsor me. Plus I have good news in that my surgery will be laproscopic and should go off without a hitch. Finally I screwed up with my 3rd Grade report card and won't be able to post till tm'w. Many apologies.
Till tm'w then.

Venting Spleen

I haven't posted in several days. Not because I don't have anything to say but more because I've been preoccupied. I mentioned needing a spleenectomy the other day. Actually I don't require a spleenectomy, instead my physican hopes a spleenectomy will allow my body to tolerate the ravages of the treatments for hepatitus C. When I take the treatment it works very well with me as far as the Hep C goes. The problem is that, like chemo, it's designed to kill fast growing cells in the body.
It also totally wastes my bone marrow. The first time I went on the treatment I required a transfusion. The second time I had most of my platelets destroyed. We won't go into the OCD aspects. The spleen removes waste products of the immune system from your blood. This includes platelets. It keeps your platelet count in balance. By removing it I should produce tons of platelets thus giving me more chance of staying on the treatment that much longer.
I'm not particularly happy about this.
I'm losing time from work, I'm going to miss Memorial Day, people are afraid around me. I have to eat hospital food. Doctors aren't real clear about what recovery entails. They just say x number of days. Will it hurt? Will I be able to walk around? Not a topic of discussion. I haven't even been able to talk with my doctor's scheduling aide. So later this morning I'll drive to South Jersey with a picture of my innards, a CT Scan, to see if my spleen is small enough to be removed without cracking open my chest.
Perhaps you can see why this means I don't particularly give a fuck about JFK or Mrs Ferrara right now.
I'm going to dutifully post about 3rd grade day after tomorrow. I'm hoping to scan in a copy of my report card because I can't remember what subjects we studied. I've forgotten what I learned. I can remember the name of Mrs. Ferrara's son, Raymond, but not whether we had Social Studies or not.
I dreamed the other night I was in an auto accident. I was waiting with my friends after the accident for the EMT's when I glanced down at my shoes and saw they were soaked in blood. I pulled my pants down a bit and saw I'd been pierced in the upper thigh by a sharp object and I'd been bleeding profusely.
The blood was warm and thick against my skin and starting to dry in some places.
I gather the dream has something to do with a sense of dread. You would think that having survived one near death experience you could gut out a little thing like a minor organ removal. I don't even want to drop off the CT scan. I'd rather talk to people about mice. The oddest thing is how much this feels like the week or two before I went to the hospital in October of 2001. Everyone is going about their normal business, including me, and around the corner is something I know is waiting but can't grasp. Quite.
In 2001 I lost everything I had except for a few pieces of furniture, some bits of clothes and my television. I woke up in South Jersey alone. I have spent the past six years recovering all that was lost. Part of me feels like this was all a futile dream. A good dream but a dream. Trying to recover your life with things seems foolish. Yet I love my new car. I cherish this little computer and my iPod and my new telephone. I relish the chance to work. I take great joy in joking with my friends at work and at home and there are moments when I'm sitting on my porch watching Johanna and her friends and the dogs that life has never been better.
So dear friends, forgive my lapses of judgement, my bad taste, my failures to properly thank you on one occasion or another. Forgive my audacity in writing this story. My foolhardy attempts to capture life. Forgive me and grant me some absolution. I promise to write again of the boys and girls of Wenonah, my brothers and my new born sister. My parents and my grandparents. But it will have to wait a few days till I know better if my chest will be broken open and my heart exposed to the air.

More News

Isn't it funny how you can leave some things out? Did any of you read Henry Adams autobiography? I did. I loved it. Then my friend Mack asked me if I noticed anything. I said, yes, the guy didn't have many girlfriends. Turns out Henry skipped over being married and his wife's suicide.
I forgot to mention in all the rush in my last posting that my CT Scan was approved and I'll be sliding through a tube on Friday to see how large or small my spleen is. Once that's done on May 25th a surgeon will remove my spleen. Hopefully nothing bad will happen.
You might ask how much else I've left out of the story of my life in Wenonah or what's not in my poems. I might tell you.
I might not.
I'm also walking in the New York AIDS walk the Saturday before my surgery. Those of you of a charitable bent are invited to go to the AIDSWalk NY site and find me (John Wiler) and donate in support of my efforts. It's my second walk. I did the first in 2003 in Philadephia.
What else am I leaving out here? I can't remember. Oh well, tomorrow's another day and I'm sure it will come to me.

1960 and News

I was going to write, yesterday or today or tomorrow, about the news that affected our little family in 1960 & 1961. I still am, a little, but for a moment I'll bring in 2007 as well. In 1960 a new President, John F Kennedy, was elected President. He took the oath of office on a cold day in January of 1961. For the young men and women of my generation he was a hero. Young, strong, committed. I'll talk later about JFK because my family had other news in roughly October of 1960; my mother was expecting a child. It had been four years since my younger brother Ted was born. Mick, and Ted, and I pranced around my Nonny Glading's kitchen chanting, Oh no, not again! We were thrilled to have a new child join our merry band. This being 1960 we did not know if it would be a girl or a boy.
But to get more to the point; last night my niece Louise had a daughter. Makenzie Marie was brought into this world sometime yesterday evening. Her mother, a young woman, is doing well. The news of this young girls birth struck me with a force I hadn't anticipated, made me feel odd in ways I hadn't anticipated. I'll explore those thoughts in my poetry and in my conversations with my brother and my niece. But last night I also had a dream.
I dreamed Acme Exterminating was moving. We had to move quite suddenly to new headquarters and when we arrived we found our headquarters had no roof. There was a storm brewing and Luis and I and Willa were hastily moving things into a small enclosed room. Some of the things were my books. Books from my childhood. We were moving not just Acme but our own possessions. The owner of the company was weeping over the death of his father many years before.
I woke suddenly and wrote this down. It's three am. Acme Exterminating is in fact moving in just a little while for the first time in many, many years. The man who founded the company, Harry Stien, will not be moving with it. He died a few years back. He was a big, ebullient man of great joy and passion. He served his country well in WWII and left his son and his employees a company with a proud record in an industry known for it's family businesses.
What does this dream mean? What do any dreams mean? John F Kennedy was a new President in a young country that had just fought a bitter war across the globe. The men and women of his generation sacrificed much, achieved much, and believed that they could do anything. They passed that belief along to boys and girls like me and Mick and Ted and my soon to be born sister, Mary Louise.
Harry was JFK's contemporary, though from a very different background. He walked out of WWII and built a business in one of the toughest markets in the world.
Bob and I and Luis are the heirs of that business. Luis and I and Willa and Bob are a family as much as Mick and Ted and Mary Louise and I are a family. There is a roof over our heads in the new Acme Exterminating. That's a bit of what the dream means.
I was wrong. There is a roof over our head in the new office. The new office is just around the corner from the old.
So Makenzie Marie...welcome to a world that is the same and different. Just a few moments ago you weren't here. Now you are. Everything we tell you, everything your mother and father tell you will be the truth. None of it will be the truth. You will wake up one day in the year 2064 and look around you and say, wait, where is the roof? Why is it raining? When did we move?
Then you'll realize, as we all do, it was just a dream. A beautiful dream we hold in our hearts for a short span of years. Like all dreams it's filled with terror and sex and laughter and tears. Cherish your dream Makenzie as we cherish you.
Goodnight Mr President. Goodnight Harry. Goodnight Luis and Willa. Goodnight Ted. Goodnight Mick. Goodnight Mary Lou. Goodnight Louise. Sleep tight wrapped in your cherished dreams.

Little Men

Third grade began with a momentous Christmas. First, I caught my parents assembling bicycles for Mick and I. Then I told Mick and destroyed his faith in Santa. Actually he held on for about six hours until we came downstairs and found the gleaming new bikes. Then I got a bike! A beautiful red bike, a two wheeler, a giant red bike...so big I could barely get on it. Mick received a smaller black bike. We were both really excited but it was too cold that Christmas to do more than look at them. What a curse. Then there were little men. Army men. Plastic figurines of WW II soldiers and Civil War soldiers. Mick was entranced by the Civil War and both of us were fascinated by WWII. These were the years of war movies and heroism, japs and jerries getting blown to bits by brave GI's.
We set up our men throughout our room or the second living room or outside in the digging yard and made gun noises. I can still do a creditable machine gun. Later in life we bought Airfix HO scale soldiers from nearly every army in the world. Suaves and grenadiers and doughboys marched everywhere in the Wiler home. They were melted and torn apart and lost forever down sewers and drains and in holes. My mother and father unearthed them for years in the vegetable garden they planted in the digging yard once we'd moved out.
The figures frozen forever tossing grenades or half crouched firing tommy guns. Officers urging the GI's to greater glory, pillboxes to hide and fire machine guns. Planes and rafts and cannons and mortars and barbed wire all to serve our brave soldiers as they moved across the roots of a great black maple or tunneled deep in the digging yard.
The Airfix men became part of great tableaus we created in a box that had once been a baseball game. It had sides about two inches high and was roughly 3' by 6' and we'd fill it with dirt and rocks and create vast battlefields. We strung model planes on thread from the basement ceiling and lit them afire to have molten plastic land on our hapless heroes. All to the chatter of guns and the shrieks of children playing at war.
We played at war constantly. We invented our own game for the summers, based loosely on Kick the Can or Capture the Flag, which we called "The Gun Game". One person was it and had a gun. The others scattered in hiding to evade capture. The person who was it simply had to see you and call out your name and rough location. "Mick, behind the bush" or "Jack, in the tree" or "Chris, in the sewer" and you had to go back to the base. All the captured or basically living dead players could be freed by one person running in while the person who was it was away and touching the base. No warning or siren gave notice this was happening. This meant it could be a long night for the person who was it. Sam Stewart was our prize chump. He must have spent thousands of hours patrolling my yard looking for us in the garage or in the crawl space or up a tree or just beyond the porch. The borders could be expanded to include the McQuades yard but that was it. Even with just two yards it was tough to win. Almost like being on patrol in the Nam or walking a line in Korea. Except people laughed at you instead of trying to kill you.

Mrs Ferrera's Third Grade Class 1960-61

Termites & Decay

Today my co worker David remarked that I like to talk to people about termites. It's true. Termite treatments and termite behaviors are clear and orderly and rarely rely on anxiety.
I'm basically sick to death of talking to my clients about mice. Or bedbugs. Or unknown odors. They should man up. It's not that big of a deal but they're rich and angry and they've been on the internet or they're humanists or kind or thoughtful or decent. They think killing mice is bad but they have no qualms about killing American cockroaches or termites or ants. I'm a little tired of their speicism. Kill one, kill them all. But no, if it has fur they want to relocate it. Or worse they find it unacceptable that they're paying a gazillion dollars a month and they have mice. As though if you were rich you couldn't get the flu or cancer.
Mice in New York are most often of the genus House Mouse. That means they live in our houses. They have small territorial ranges and they like us and our meager amounts of food and water we provide. Some people want to relocate them to a more hospitable environment. A field perhaps. Sadly mice from our homes don't have the faintest idea of how to survive in a field and will come to a horrible death.
It's like Iraq. We'll fix everything by giving them democracy. And if democracy is messy and weird and involves them not being our friends we're shocked. Duh.
I don't advocate killing every mouse on the planet. I like the little guys. They provide me with a good living. But if they live in your house and eat your food the only way to get rid of them is to kill them. That's not so nice.
I love democracy. I am willing to deal with democracies that don't like the US of A. Pragmatism is both a virtue and a curse.
So, set your mice free in fields to die at the hands of rats and hawks and starvation. Grant various republics democracy and watch with horror as they act contrary to your expectations.
If it makes you feel better remember that it's spring.

My brothers and I

In the absence of my third grade class picture here are two unforgettable portraits of myself and my brothers. One is all three of us together. The second is Mick and I on the fishing pier of the 59th street pier in Ocean City. In 1962 this pier would be a part of the ocean.

Third Grade

Oh and this brings us finally to Third Grade. Mrs Ferrara. The dawn of life. Kennedy and Nixon. The birth of my sister, Mary Louise. The beginning of my rich life outside of my house. Models and games and fun! Desparate attempts at learning. 1960 and the dawn of the new decade!
Where oh where to begin. We all went to school again with just each other. In Mrs Ferrara's third grade classroom. Mrs Ferrara from Pitman, NJ. Mrs. Ferrara, loud and brassy and fun. I read To Kill a Mockingbird. I walked to school and I wasn't the rough tough creampuff. I played in a baseball league. I tried to be an altar boy. I was confirmed by the Catholic church as a soldier of Christ. I began to be me. I found Superman and Batman and the Flash! I found Aguaman and Hawkman and the Justice League of America! What a glorious time. It's true I still dressed like some awkward child of the Depression. It's true my mother still could not cook. But we began our rich life of play and imagination and creation.
Here then are the children of the sixth decade of the 20th century in all their stupid glory. Black and white and dumb but ready to learn.
God I loved this year.
Picture to follow. Terry and Bob and all my friends...let's give us all names:)

Second Grade and the Lake

I can't remember anything I learned in Second Grade. I remember Miss Quigley being beautiful. I remember learning to write and read. I can't remember a thing of arithmetic. I've asked my friends what they recall and the answer is the same. It's a strange thing to say but I passed through Second Grade as an innocent. It was the last year I believed in Santa Claus. It was the last year my parents were my whole world.
It was also one of the last years I spent at the Wenonah Lake. After school ended there wasn't much to do but play. Wenonah is a hot humid town near Philadelphia. When I was getting better and living in the Knisell's home Rachel told me that homes used to have outside kitchens to deal with the heat of summer. What we did do was go to the lake. There were several bodies of water in Wenonah. The Wenonah Lake was a community association that dated back to the 1880's when Wenonah was a resort town. There was the recently formed Wenonah Swim Club. A clean chlorinated pool with a snack bar and a kiddie pool and tennis and basketball courts. There was the Mantua Creek and the swamps. There was Parkers lake and Sinnott's Pond and another lake by one of the mansions in town. Only the Wenonah Lake and the Swim Club were open for recreation. It's a long standing fact of life in Wenonah that young families begin their lives at the lake and migrate to the pool. Young children have no sense of cool so the lake was fine. Once you were older the brown water and lack of facilities made it less than cool.
My friend Bob has many memories of play at the lake. Ed Campbell, one of the teachers in our school, was a lifeguard and regularly roughoused with kids on the raft of wood and 55 gallon drums in the middle. Kid's sold snow cones and families barbequed and there were rudimentary swimming lessons. The swim club had a world class swim team. Kid's from the Wenonah Swim Club competed in Philly and all across South Jersey. Their swimming records were all over the walls of the club. When you swam in the lake you emerged in a brown tan from the cedar water. It was neither clean nor cool. No one raced. Instead you ran willy nilly and cannon balled off the pier.
When I went back to Wenonah to recover from my illness (AIDS) I went each day to the lake. I sat there the only adult male in the place and watched mothers and young children having fun.
On the 4th of July there were competitive races at the lake. The 4th of July was the greatest day in Wenonah and remains so to this day. My friends come back year after year to sit on corners they sat on when they were children to watch the same silly little parade. It's beautiful. The Pitman Hobo Band and the Bonsal Blues Band square off mid town in a burst of John Phillips Sousa. Raggedy fake hobos and military nincompoops all playing their hearts out and everyone cheers and salutes. Politicians pay homage and walk the streets. You can say hey to the local representatives, laugh at the presumptions of small businesses and guess as to this years theme. I'll have a lot more to say about the 4th in years to come.
But always, on a hot day, when you were in 2nd grade you went to the lake. You caroomed off the pier. You laughed and scared your parents. You begged for a dime for a snow cone.
I'm going to break protocol here and put in a poem I wrote when I was stuck in Wenonah in 2002-2003. Please read it for it's great joy and nostalgia.
We’re All Going to the Lake

We’re going to the lake!
All of us.
We’re loading up the minivans.
We’re slapping up the kickstands.
We’re running around the house,
screaming about how we can’t
find our badges or our high band
or our favorite suit.
Which was right here and
we’re getting up slow from lunch
and walking out to the car.
We’re going to the lake!
Eight housewives, twenty five kids,
three lifeguards, one kid in the refreshment stand to dish up the water ice,
me and once in a while a dad and maybe some teenagers,
who are loud and look scary but
swim like shit once they hit the water
and smack!
What a lake to dive into!
A long brown ribbon of cedar water.
Trees brushing it’s sides, bright blue skies
fill it with clouds
and turtles strung out on a log.
They’re so tired from this hot, hot sun they forget to eat.
So the crappies and minnows
are all over the shallows.
Gotta get while the getting’s good.
Far, far out on the lake a big bass leaps up, flops down
and nobody sees the water ripple out.
They’re riding their bikes
down Jefferson or Monroe.
Towels over their shoulders
snapping in the rush.
A whine of spokes and muscle that’s been going on for fifty years.
Fifty years of kids hauling their
bodies trawling streams of brown water,
small muscles stretched,
yelling, running, tight little balls that
cannon into the water!
O Joy! O headlong rush to water!
O the whir of spokes!
The shrieks!
The gossip!
The affairs.
Bodies lying in beds, dreaming of other
bodies last night, last week.
Husbands, lovers.
Heat raising tiny beads of sweat,
the bathing suit tossed heedless on the chair.
The brush of finger to breast.
The wives dreaming of sweat;
muscled backs, thick bellies.
The drop falling from his chin,
running down her breast.
But then the kids are yelling!
We gotta go swimming!
Insistent!
Water calling water.
Awkward crawl
head out of water
crazy seven year old treading water.
mad dog paddle.
Mom watching, feet in water,
not really there,
but cool and wet on a hot, hot day.
O Wenonah Lake!
Canoes, boats, rafts,
big fat guy, belly up,
floating.
The only husband here today.
Me, watching housewives,
watching kids,
splashing dad,
slap of hand on water.
Ripples that go all the way to shore.
We’re all at the lake!
We’ve brought everything we need.
Life jackets, blankets, sunscreen, towels, badges, bands,
balls, rubber killer whales, sunhats, sun glasses, coolers,
cocktails cleverly disguised as lemonade, water,
watches, buckets to carry water and
desire.
All for the lake!
On a hot, hot day.
We go to the lake for the water.
Come in!
Come in!
Come in!

That's my lake. That's my town. Soon it will be summer and the snapping turtles will be on their logs, the bass will be leaping from the middle of a small brown lake and children will be screaming at their friends. Oh God. This is a beauty that can never be recovered.

Television and my world

There were three channels. 3, 6, & 10. We went to bed each night at 7:30. That meant television had it's greatest impact in the morning. Like most cities Philadelphia had children's televsions progrms week days between 7am and 9am. I'm not talking about national programs like Mickey Mouse Club or Howdy Doody or programs of their ilk. These were cheaply produced programs primarily designed to bracket either cartoons or filmed material readily available to their libraries.
If you are from New York you watched Officer Joe Bolton and the Our Gang movies. We had our own bizarre programs. Sally Starr, Chief Halftown, Pixanne, Gene London, Uncle Pete's Gang. Bizarre not because of the bulk of their content but because of the odd sketch material that was created to bracket the content. Sally Starr wore cowgirl clothes and Chief Halftown American Indian Garb. Pixanne was of course a pixie. Whatever the fuck a pixie was. Gene London was his own version of a pixie. If pre 1970's Philadelphia was ready for a gay man Gene London gave us all he had. In 2007 he lives in New York and presides over a collection of movie stars and theatrical gowns. Guess where his sensibilities lay.
That said the content was brilliant Warner cartoons and MGM cartoons and the Max Roach Our Gang series. No one could complain about the genius of what we were shown. And being children who could complain about context. Fake cowgirls and Indians and Pixies and a shop keeper with a gay streak a mile wide.
Our Gang movies were my favorites. Rich, multi ethnic movies about wild children. I loved them and their anarchic spirit. How glad was I to read about them later in Ragtime. Alfalfa and Whitey and Froggie and Buckwheat. My dearest friends. Constructing crates of junk and careering down the streets. Lost in fantasies only children could understand. You can imagine my delight later in life when I learned Roach said to them... just do what you like and we'll film it. No plan, no ideas just children being idiots. Like me, like my friends.
And Bugs and Daffy. And all the Warner brothers cartoons. Adult beyond my measuring. Smart and cool and suave and wild. Who wouldn't love cartoons like that.
That was the morning.
In the afternoon there was only one show. The Early Show. A movie program that showed films of the 30's, 40's, & 50's. We lived for monster movies, for horror movies. For "The Thing", for "Frankenstein", for the "Mummy". We'd all sit in my second living room in terror at 4 in the afternoon watching monsters.
How much better to watch an alien possess and devour men on an arctic outpost then to deal with the problems of flowering plants in Wenonah. Or more appropriately the negroes next door. But in Our Gang the black kids and white kids played together and the jews made the movie. Go figure.
As we got older we made movies a richer part of our lives. For now our gal Sal was the best part of the day.

Sleeping Beauty and the Starlight Drive In

The first movie I saw in a movie theater was Sleeping Beauty. My grandmother Glading, no my Nonny Glading, took Mick and Ted and I to see it in late 1959 in a theater in suburban Philadephia. I was amazed. The witch was terrifying, the screen was huge and all of us could talk of nothing else for weeks.
We rarely went to movies when I was young after that. Not until the end of 2nd grade and on into my early youth did we routinely visit movie theaters. When we went to indoor theaters we usually went to one of two movie theaters in Gloucester County. The Wood Theater in Woodbury or The Pitman Theater in Pitman. Both were old vaudeville playhouses that had been converted to movie theaters. When I was under 17 we went primarily for Saturday matinees. A feature, a B movie, cartoons and a theater filled with screaming children, tossed popcorn, and enough sugar to power a small nation.
Birthday parties were the primary vehicle for these jaunts. Parents would gather a group of us together on the pretext of celebrating one of our birthdays and schlep us off to the movies where for three hours we'd be happily ensconced in the rich glow of cinema.
Our parents, when they took us to the movies, took us to the Drive In. South Jersey was the place where the drive in movie was invented. No shit. A drive in in Pennsauken NJ was the first drive in in all of the Americas. My father and mother's favorite was the Starlight Drive In. We could see the screens of the Starlight and other Drive In theaters as we rode home from my Nonnies house in Pennsylvania. We could imagine the dialogue and guess at the action and then we were by and the images were gone.
A drive in was a crazy experience. You paid by the car and by the number of people in the car. You'd drive in, pay your admission and proceed to a spot where a sound device was hung on a pole. This device was then moved from the pole to your driver or passenger side window so you could hear the movie. Drive in's were made for two groups of people. Young adults with cars and young parents with children.
My parents in the 60's were the latter group. We'd load up the family wagon, the Plymouth or the Chevy depending on the year, fill it with blankets and pillows and head to the Starlight. They'd be showing some great epic. Spartacus or D Day or whatever. We'd sit rapt for perhaps a half hour then fall asleep. My parents would have an hour of peace, we'd have a treat, and maybe they'd neck.
Teenagers only went to drive in's to make out. For further information on the uses of drive in's and the middle of the 20th century see any number of horror movies made at the time. Only bad things could come of this.
You got refreshments from a stand in the middle of the vast field of cars. Otherwise it was a movie theater with beds.
The movie I remember most was the Guns of Navarone which was released in 1961 so I know I'm cheating here but still.
I'm going to have my spleen removed on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. I'll spend the three day weekend eating jello and bantering with women from South Jersey, some of whom may have visited the Starlight. Maybe their children were conceived in the Starlight. I'll lie in bed and watch bad television and read and think.
On the way home from my grandmothers we were always in a fugue like state. Half full of energy, nearly asleep. We lay with our heads on the car cushions and looked up to the stars. We'd pass a field with a huge screen filled with movies. The movie had no sound and was gone in minutes. It was the way you experience adults or nature when you're young. One moment you're transfixed, the next moment they're gone. My parents were young people with desire and needs. They worked hard raising us and making money. They came home and acted as they thought parents should. What did they do when we weren't around? What were their desires? What were their needs? They were young and beautiful and passionate and we cared nothing for that. We glimpsed their lives for just a second. A flash as the car passes a drive in movie screen.
Perhaps you remember a moment of anger or a hated chore. Perhaps your parents were monsters that lurched in and out of your life like Frankenstein or Barbara Stanwyk. Perhaps you cherish a few moments cuddled on a couch with a book open and the drowsy drone of your mothers voice. Images on a large screen on a hot summer night. The words unknowable. The context unreadable. All we have is that.

Cemetery Hill

Christmas 1959 passed with no ill effects. It was the last year I believed in Santa Claus. The winter of 1960 was mostly unremarkable except it began my practice of sledding at Cemetery Hill. The winters of the 1960's were above average for snowfall in South Jersey. South Jersey normally gets perhaps one big snow a year that melts within a day or so. The 60's were filled with snow which for a young boy was a god send. With the first great dumping of snow our father took us to Cemetery Hill to go sledding. After this year we went on our own.
My birthday had a tenuous relationship with snow and winter. My father insisted I was born in a blizzard though the NWS shows only a five inch storm that day. It really doesn't matter. Winter isn't winter without snow and the removal of snow and playing in snow. My father loved shovelling snow and he instilled that love and it's precision in his sons. It may be that when we were very young we thought he was nutty as a fruitcake but now whenever it snows I want to shovel. I'll clear any walk, anywhere, for free. I never hurt my back or over exert but my walk is clear throughout a storm. My father was a guru of two things. Snow removal and lawn mowing and I share both.
He was also a man who loved to play in snow. In Woodbury when I was in kindergarten there was a huge winter storm. He helped us make an igloo and showed us how to make snowballs. In Wenonah he grabbed his childhood Flexible Flyer from the garage and dragged Mick and I across the Mantua Creek to Wenonah Cemetery (in Mantua) to go sledding. Wenonah Cemetery is where my mother's bones are at rest. It overlooks the Mantua Creek, a thin ribbon of swamp water where over the next nine years I would spend most of my best moments. They all began that first winter's day.
There were basically two hills in the cemetery. One on the south side and one on the west. I think. You'd start at the top of a hundred foot hill and hurl yourself down on your sled. Then you'd trudge up from the bottom to do it all again. You'd get wet and tired and sweaty and cold. You'd try dumb things like sled surfing (standing on your sled holding onto the rope to maintain balance and stance) or practice sled battles with other kids. You sledded between row after row of tombstones. Remember my mother is buried there and not without deep sentiment. Not for the place but for the sledding and the creek and the swamp.
On the one side, I believe the south there was a large statue over one grave of a doughboy. It was once featured in Weird New Jersey. I knew the names of most people in the cemetery, if not the first, certainly the last. I can remember kids in a toboggan toppling more than a few headstones during one heady Saturday run sometime in the mid 60's.
If it was cold and icy and really snowy you could hurl yourself down the road of the cemetery. This was a quarter mile run of great peril given that some person of sorrow might be driving up to visit a loved one. Nonetheless it was a heady rush of speed and cold and ice and joy.
As we got older we went on our own. In the years to come we got our own Flexible Flyers. Short or long. But always sturdy and dependable. We'd wax the runners and trudge the half mile or so to Cemetery Hill. Chris and Terry, Gary and Robbie, Mick and I. Ted and his friends Joel and Robbie and Evan. We shared the hill with kids from Mantua and the smell of new snow and the feeling of frozen toes was univeral.
Fuck problems. Who cared about homework. Who worried about being odd or not fitting in. We just stood on top of the hill and threw ourselves down. Like small rockets in blue jeans and hooded sweatshirts. Sledding was a complete joy. There was no competition. There was no status. There was no position. The snow would be there for only a day or two and you had to sled while you could.
Among the graves and decaying flowers and lost loves we hurtled down small hills in a town without hills screaming with joy.

Ed Sullivan and life in 2007

My apologies for not posting over the past week. Life has a way of intruding into writing lives that we don't often anticipate. My young niece, Louise, had a party on Saturday to celebrate the upcoming birth of her first born and her engagement. I had the occasion of talking with my doctor regarding a medical procedure he's advised I undergo. Some of you know I'm HIV positive but I'm also positive for the virus that causes Hepatitus C and it's been wreaking havoc on my liver since the HIV virus roared into high gear. Twice in the past four years I've attempted the cycle of drugs to control the virus and each time have had a difficult time dealing with the effects. Basically I take a drug much like a chemo therapy drug that acts to destroy fast growing cells in the body. There are several fast growing cells in your body. Hair. The virus and it's ilk. Bone marrow cells. During my last round of treatment last year I achieved great reductions of the Hep C virus but unfortunately my red and white cells and my platelets also tanked. I kept my luxurious growth of crewcut hair. Once before I required a transfusion to deal with the near complete extermination of my red cells. This time it was my platelets that were a concern.
My doctor has suggested a spleenectomy to allow my platelet count to rise. Your spleen and mine has little to do with actual spleen. It does however remove some old immune cells from the body. By removing the spleen they hope to allow my platelet count to rise to a level at which I may tolerate a vicious assault on my bone marrow cells and by coincidence the virus that causes Hepatitus C. So Wednesday I'm going to see a surgeon to determine if I'm able to endure this surgery. What an odd operation. They're going to remove a perfectly healthy, functioning organ in hopes of saving a damaged, dying organ so they can save my aging husk of a body. To say this concerns me would be an understatement.
Nonetheless it has helped propel me once more to Wenonah in 1959 and 1960. Dwight David Eisenhower is our President. Soon to be replaced. I am small. Negroes are relegated to the outer darkness. My friend Bob writes to remind me the pig farms were in New Sharon, not Jericho. How nice to note small errors. There were still no white folks there. He also notes the origin of the term "shotgun shack". A shotgun shack was any building you could discharge a shotgun in the front door and the shot would pass through the back door with no damage. Some anthropologists suggest it's older origin lies in West Africa with the term Shogun or the word for house. The long nature of the structure is analogous to the structure of the building in the US. Note my odd use of locution.
What is more pertinent to my previous post was not the West African or Southern meaning of the term but the adjacent outhouse. The lack of good schools. The lack of choice in job advancement. The fact that Mrs Irene Smith had to purchase a home in the oddest corner of my town in order to say she and her children lived in Wenonah and to allow them to attend our little school. This understatement is consistent with my refusal to confront my own current fears regarding my possible death during surgery. The spleen is connected intimately to the heart. You take it out and you may rupture the heart. Break it. You fuck with a system of life that has been in place for many years and you can break it. All hell might break loose.
Dwight Eisenhower, unlike our current sitting President, was a war hero. He'd actually served in real wars. He knew the cost of aiming a gun at someone. He wasn't all comfy with that. He made, like Harry Truman, hard choices regarding that.
He grew up in Oklahoma where black folk were regarded pretty much like they were in Wenonah. In the Senate, Lyndon Johnson was presiding over legislation to change the ways we allowed black people to vote. He grew up in Texas. With brown and black people. With poor white people. They probably lived in shotgun shacks. They most certainly worked at the only jobs people would let them work at. This is poor grammar but fact.
The wind that was bringing the stink of the pig farms to me, the wind that my mother asked me to cover my face for to keep out "the polio", the wind that kept queers and niggers and spics at arms length was still strong. But there was another wind growing. It seems odd to say Lyndon Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower were helping to make that wind but they were. So were gentle men and women throughout the South and the country. Brave men and women who were taking courage from the struggles and victories of WWII to make a change here in the United States. Me, I was just a little boy. My friends and I were playing games and learning arithmetic. But every night we watched the news.
On Sundays we watched Ed Sullivan. What an odd show. A variety show. Like vaudeville but on TV. Jugglers and circus acts and comics and musicians all performing for a few moments under the auspices of a bland host. I hated Ed Sullivan. My parents and grandparents loved him. So every Sunday after Lawrence Welk we sat down to watch a succession of crazy quilt entertainment.
I share my home and heart with Johanna, a transsexual from El Salvador. All her friends are undocumented aliens. Their favorite show is Sabado Gigante. It's Ed Sullivan in spanish. It's real message is home. They hunger for it's tales of families reunited, of lands they can no longer visit, of music they all share. It's as hokey and odd as Ed's show was. Reggaeton mashes up with Mariachi much like Ella Fitzgerald would share a stage with Elvis.
There would come a time in the next few years when the winds of change would sweep Ed Sullivan off the air. New music and attitudes and power would show him to be the vaudeville act he always was. A quaint reminder of a long gone age. Someday Sabado Gigante will seem equally quaint. Different winds blow at different times but they blow hard and long and they don't stop till they're done.
Let's leave this post with Jackie and Mickie and Teddy all clustered on the floor with their parents and grandparents watching Ed. Senor Jimenez is making jokes in some fake Mexican accent or Jackie Mason is telling cleaned up versions of oft repeated dirty Catskills jokes. A troupe of Russian acrobats is twirling in the air. They will defect the next day, never to return. Kruschev is pounding his shoe. Missiles are poised at the ready. Men are boarding unmarked planes for southeast Asia to control the uprising of the Vietminh. Life is about to change. Someone is holding a shotgun and aiming at the front door. It's not the shot that carries the charge it's the blast and the powder. In ten years no one will be home.

Rain and water and steam and pigs

I was going to talk today about rain. About what we did when it rained. It rained hard in the spring and early summer in Wenonah. Thunderstorms were a regular feature of life. Sudden rushes of heavy rain and then we'd run out to the curb to float boats made of popsicle sticks or logs in the torrent by the curb. We'd run down the street following our boats and I was going to say something meaningful about that.
Then my friend Bob Thomas reminded me about Pig Farms. All around the northern boundaries of Wenonah in Deptford, really, in Jericho there were Pig Farms. Lets just un cap that. pig farms. They were owned by Italian families and worked by black families. The black families lived close by the pig farms. The garbage came from all the adjacent towns. Bob reminded me that the garbage came from Wenonah. Or Woodbury. Or Sewell. In our back yard you'll remember there was a can for garbage only. That garbage was collected by garbage trucks and it had a destination. The pig farms.
The last stretch of my rides home from my grandmother's house in Pennsylvania was always through the pig farms. The stench was ungodly. Newark had nothing on this. There were miles upon miles of pig farms. Butted up against them were the homes of the black people that worked the pig farms. Their shacks, really. Shotgun shacks in the parlance.
The garbage trucks were outfitted to process the garbage for the pigs. They were designed to collect, process, cook and deliver our garbage to the hungry pig population. The trucks could be heated with steam and then the garbage fed to the pigs.
On the one hand this was an entirely eco friendly way to process organic matter. On the other hand the workers who handled the pigs lived a hundred yards from the stench of garbage.
There were no white families so far as I know that lived by the pig farms. One family in my town owned one of the biggest farms. The Villari's. Good people with a nice home in the newer part of Wenonah.
Their children worked in the farms the same way the black people did. They learned their trade. From the pigs came sausage and offal and food. For the Italian Market in South Philly, for meat processing plants across the country. I only knew how bad it stunk.
I only knew that the shotgun shacks didn't resemble the Victorian homes in my town. We'd pass through in the night and say ooh hold your nose. It's the pig farms. The wind never wafted over Wenonah.
Maybe it did. Maybe you could think lots of things about this way of doing things. Farm workers using organic materials to make home grown pork. Local people employed in natural ways. Maybe that's just pig shit.
Maybe it's easier to pretend there aren't any pig farms outside your town. Maybe it's easier to ignore the shotgun shacks and outhouses. Maybe it's simpler to say black people are animals and they can't do anything else but this.
But then I had Michelle Smith and her brother Mike in my school and they didn't seem to have anything to do with pig farms. And when I got older I met people from Jericho and Hammond Heights and it turns out they had a real town with dreams and aspirations. There are lots of questions you can ask about where your food comes from. I know that when I was young any Italian sausage I ate came from a pig farm that stunk to high heaven in Jericho. It didn't seem very cute or nice or organic. There's a good chance it wasn't.
There's every chance that just like every farm stinks a bit these farms stunk a lot. Right now in South Jersey there is a big argument that farms make the neighborhood less attractive. The fertilizer. The machines. The dirt. Back then I'd say the dirt was the laborers. The men who had no other options.
We almost always forget what it was like in 1960 in the USA. How black men could only aspire to be railroad porters or garbage men or pig farmers. We make jokes about Mexican laborers and how they're taking work away from people but I note that the pig farms are gone. I note that black men and women can aspire to be President. That's a far cry from the cry of crows over a stench filled farm in South Jersey.
The really sad thing is that even though I have lots of nice photos of Wenonah with it's lovely homes and lawns there are no photos of the shotgun shacks. No photos of the men who worked the pig farms. I drove through when I was sick and getting better hoping to see things as they were but they were gone. That's the way it is America. We love the invisible. It makes life seem nicer somehow.

The Names of Children

My thanks to Bob Thomas and Terry Fleming for their help with the names of my fellow 2nd and 3rd Grade classmates. This one was smoother but we're missing two names. If anyone can help it would be much appreciated. My time in South Carolina was well spent. I talked with my father and Uncle Ed at length about our family and their memories. It was a lovely time and made me regret all the times I hadn't spoken of those memories. Maybe you have parents or relatives still with you who can share their memories of their youth with you. It would be wise to take the time to ask. To bask in their memories. We all spend too much time in our own skins and not enough in the skins of other people.
Bob has particularly rich memories of Wenonah, Terry and I have shared memories that are a joy to share once again. To hear my father talk about my Aunts and his mother and father was like taking a sip of rare whiskey. Intoxicating, sharp, frightening.
Memory is a heady drink but one we rarely lift to our lips. We watch our children grow, our loved ones sit in the chairs opposite us, the men and women we work with grow old and never take the time to savor those moments.
I think what I'm saying is that this attempt to talk once again about my childhood has been an experience that I didn't expect. I'd bet you might find the same thing about your own. Our parents are soon to leave us and we our children. Now is the time to talk about the times we spent together. Good or bad.

Miss Quigley's 2nd & 3rd Grade Class w/names

Cigarettes, Pipes, and Smoke

It was legal in 1959 to burn leaves. My father would rake the leaves from the lawn to the curb in a series of small piles and then set them on fire. He'd tend them for an hour or so till they were ash. In 2001, 2002 when I was in Wenonah leaves were collected by huge machines. Back then their smoke filled the sky with a rich, pungent odor. Fall was a time of burning.
While my father burned our leaves he'd smoke a cigarette. Usually then it was a Kent. He'd change brands over the years but only a grown up could tell the difference. it was all cigarette smoke and it filled the air as much if not more than the burning leaves.
Everyone smoked. My father, my mother, my Aunt Gersh, my grandmother Wiler, my grandfathers, my uncles, my friends parents. Ashtrays were everywhere and smoke was everywhere. While it was true people knew in their hearts it could kill them they still took long drags of their favorite brands.
Pall Mall, Chesterfield, Winston, Kent, Camel. TV was filled with ads for cigarettes, movies and tv were rich with their tracings in the dark. Cigarettes were the transition from youth to adulthood.
My grandfathers both died from emphysema. Part of their disease began when they were young in the mines but really it was cigarettes that killed them. But it was tobacco that gave them succor and cool and calm.
In Second Grade Chris DeHart and Terry Fleming and Gary Condell and my brother and I went down to the dump at the end of Cherry Street to smoke cigarettes Chris had stolen from his mother. We didn't do well and my brother Mick ratted us out and that was my last cigarette save a puff or two holding someone else's cigarette year later.
My father periodically would try pipes. His paraphenalia would litter the end table by his spot on the couch and the smell of pipe tobacco would fill the house. The smell of old pipes and the oil of old tobacco were everywhere. Since I was asthmatic this was not an easy row to hoe. Since I was a strange little boy with his own angers and fears it was even harder. Still, my father was cool with his Kent in his mouth. My mother and her friends were beautiful at parties with their heads tilted back, exhaling rich tobacco in the night.
Aunt Gersh tried to stop for many years. When she finally succeeded in the late sixties she always told us of her dreams of smoking.
Dreams like movies.
Dreams like fantasies.
Dreams with piles of leaves smoldering on Lincoln Ave with boys running up and down the sidewalks laughing. Dreams with parents at parties laughing. The wild sound an adult woman makes when she's a little drunk. Crazy. Me and Mick upstairs in bed listening intently to a world we only were privy to the next morning when we'd walk among the half empty glasses of cocktails and overflowing ashtrays. The cherries still sweet and rich with whiskey.
The ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts and an adult world we didn't, couldn't understand.
Later we'd stand by our father as he raked the leaves into the fire. No talking. Just the smoke from the leaves and his Kent filling the air.
Think of a room filled with women in dresses and men in dress pants and LaCoste shirts. Think of crewcuts and tans and one piece bathing suits and whiskey.
This was one of the scariest, most beautiful parts of my youth. Breath deep. When you pass a girl smoking a cigarette on the street as she exhales, breath deep. It's memory you're inhaling.

Pest Control/Poetry Month

Just so you all know; this is National Poetry Month. Us poets are all making hay while the sun shines with gigs in high schools across the land. Yippee! And in an interesting twist it is also National Pest Management Month, so I'm doubly honored. All praises then to poems about ants and termites, mice and rats! Archie and Mehitabel are rising up from their graves in joy! The Conqueror Worm and the Worm Ourobouros all say thank you!
God Bless the US Government for having the foresight to honor two of the most despised professions in America in the same beautiful month! You'd have thought they'd give us February but no, we get April! Wan that Aprile with her shoures soote hath pierced to the roote and please forgive my old English! It's a great month for verse and a worse month for bugs and mice! All across the land guys with bait guns and termite rigs and B&G tanks are whistling and thinking about Ogden Nash...Spring is sprung, the grass is riz, wonder where the birdies is?.
Keats and Corrigan, the Pied Piper and Ozmandias, Shelley and mus musculus! O what a wonderful month! O what a beautiful season! O what a grand cacaphony of nonsense! Elegies and bait trays, villanelles and rodent proofing, a snappy turn of the phrase butts right up to a well placed glue trap! It's April, it's Spring! Finally!
Remember your local poet and don't let the bedbugs bite. Ha ha!

Back From Bluffton

Hi all! I've returned from Bluffton and three days of fun in the sun. My brothers and I golfed, played putt-putt golf, kayaked, drank way too much beer and toured scenic Savannah. We also almost got popped touring a wildlife preserve outside Savannah. Fortunately my nephew Mark tossed the beers and weed before the Feds could catch us (outright lie! No beer or pot were anywhere near us).
We had a great time and it was a good chance to talk with my father and my Uncle Ed (Dad's brother) about my youth and their own. More on that to come in the days ahead. Until then stay warm on these Spring nights. Tomorrow will be my next official Wenonah post so stay tuned Wenonah heads, more to come!

Miss Quigley's Second Grade Class (w/3rd Graders)

Easter in the South

I'm leaving for South Carolina early Wed morning so no more posts till early next week. Hang in, they'll be there. I'm going with my brother Mick and his son Doug to visit my Dad and Mother. They live in Bluffton South Carolina. I hope to get in a little swimming, a little golf, and a little socializing. I'm also hoping to pump my Dad for more info about my youth. More to come my friends, more to come.
Till then have a Happy Easter or Passover and enjoy the first stirrings of spring!

Dr. Seuss

This was the year of Dr. Seuss. My mother and father gave me books by Dr. Seuss to read. The first was The Cat in the Hat, then the Cat in the Hat Comes Back. For my birthday in 1959 I got Happy Birthday to You. I loved these books. First because I could read them, second for the wild world they painted. I hungered for them. At Christmas in 1959 we got Green Eggs and Ham. This became my brother Mick's favorite and then my brother Ted's. They loved this book. My mother read it to them each night.
I do not like them Sam I am. I do not like green eggs and ham. My brothers sat on the big couch in the living room next to my mother as she read the books. I loved them too and I too hated green eggs and ham.
I did not like them in a boat, I did not like them with a goat. I was thrilled by the cat and his improprieties. I was glad when all was restored.
We began to go to my Uncle John's house at Thanksgiving and Christmas. My Uncle John was my father's mother's brother. His name was John Murdoch. My middle name. Murdoch. He had an immense house outside of Philadelphia where he and his wife Eleanor and their daughters, Molly, Peggy, and Alice all lived. We ate wonderful meals there served by colored people cooked by colored people in a kitchen ran by colored people. We children ate in the kitchen away from the grown ups.
I love my aunt and uncle and they gave me my most cherished Christmas gifts. Books. Every year they'd come to our home on Chrismas day with a gift for each of us. Mine was always a book. Ghost stories and mysteries. The Hardy Boys. Places to run to when life was grim. Not that life was ever truly grim but for a small boy a place to hide was a blessing.
Alice was twelve or thirteen years my senior and I thought she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. An Irish beauty like Grace Kelly. I loved her small attentions and craved the times we had together.
At times we'd visit my father's parents house outside Philadelphia and they would be there along with my father's brother Ed and his lovely wife Simone. Simone was French Canadian and was the first person we knew to wear a bikini. She was witty and sophisticated. Dinner was almost always a wonderful roast of beef. There were whiskey cocktails and talk and we children were shunted to the outskirts.
My father's father, Poppy Wiler, was becoming ill with Emphysema and we were a distraction and a curse. Or so I felt. They had a ranch house with apple trees. We'd play in the back, pelting each other with fallen apples. Yellow Jackets would swarm around us and at dinner we'd run in to sop our bread with the blood of the roast. Rich roasts deep with blood and flavor.
A meal that would never leave, like the sting of a bee that hurts for days afterwards.
Like the smell of cigarettes and whiskey and the distant murmur of adults in talk. Like the perfume of Alice and my mother.
Lingering still. Even here in Jersey City while I type. I've never eaten or prepared a roast that tasted as good. No matter how I try.
I have my grandmother Wiler's cutting board for roasts. It has grooves cut for the blood to run off. We dipped our buttered bread in the blood at the far end. Maybe you can taste it. Maybe you dislike the taste of blood but for me it's a good taste. Like love withheld but always there.