CONTINUED: Carolyn

Carolyn was a beautiful young woman whose life was touched by remarkable waves of fortune and tragedy.  Blessed with brains and good looks, she contracted polio in early adolescence and forever carried herself with a limp that disturbed the symmetry that marks a lovely woman.  Married at a young age to a wonderful man with education and promise, she gave him four bright and beautiful daughters in quick succession. But Carolyn’s physical history and personal demons rushed her to an early grave in her forties, the  victim of  poor health and worse habits,  too soon gone from us who miss her still.

I remember her at age sixteen, during the summer she spent working as a doctor’s receptionist.  In the 1950’s, every woman in a medical office wore a white uniform.  Invited by my mother to lunch with us at our home, Carolyn swept through our front door, a vision in white, an angel incarnate.  I was eleven years old and if it matters, this was the first time I fell in love.

I may have been an easy mark, but I wasn’t the first little man to fall for a starched white dress and a winning smile.  What a change they made to the girl who had a year before chased me through her house, ready to scratch my eyes out when I made an unkind comment about her pimples.   She caught me, and beat me up before her mother could intervene, thereby earning my eternal enmity and my fervent wish that she would collide with a train the next time her father gave her a driving lesson.  But the white dress and a radiant smile caused what a modern might call a paradigm shift of my feelings.  A poet would call it something better.

A few more years brought her wedding.  I could not know the fate awaiting her on that cold sunny morning inside the small church as the organ began to thunder out the Bridal Chorus.  The music swelled out across the congregation and rolled up against the walls, rattling the thin stained glass windows.  Her father turned to her with his huge smile, squeezed her hand and led them down the aisle to where I waited with the man she would marry.  On that morning, Carolyn carried with her the promise of a full life with children and grandchildren, accomplishment and eventually happy memories to spare, when far off in the future she might die peacefully of old age.  Now at age 21 she came down the aisle to her beloved,  the man who had swept her off her feet.  I waited with him at the altar.  I was the altar boy, an arrangement I had been able to make the day before, hoping to pleasantly surprise the couple.  Although they would later deny it, I think neither recognized me, so nervous were they during the ceremony.

Shortly after Carolyn and her husband began to build a family, I started my own adult life.  We lost track of one another, except for news passed back and forth by the older generation about all us kids, our comings and goings, and odds and ends of lives begun and some cut short.  But our Irish family was secretive, and especially so about problems.  I never knew what Carolyn was dealing with.  And she never knew of my trials.

When I visited home, my father would have photos of Carolyn and her babies, snapshots with her husband, in the yard, at the beach.

The pictures showed Carolyn growing to be a mature woman, the mother of four girls.  But I could see changes in her eyes, too.  I’d be lying to say I sensed trouble, I just noticed she was different.  The camera may have caught a reflection of her suffering.

And then came her funeral, at which I learned very little.  My Irish uncles and even my father were reticent to speak of her torments.  My most vivid memory of that day was of four young daughters standing near the casket, a lost look about them.

Decades would pass before I saw Carolyn’s family again, this time at the funeral of her brother.  He had been a man of special gifts, and yet I know she worried about him and with her husband’s help had been protective of him. 

I walked into his wake that evening and as I made my way forward through the crowd of visitors, there sat Carolyn near the casket of her brother, seemingly still watching over him.  I stopped and took a breath, waiting for the vision to evaporate, but it refused to do so. 

In a moment, I realized it must be a daughter, and in fact it was the eldest, very much a look-a-like, although prettier than her mother.  

I was almost ready to believe that Carolyn had come back to sit with her brother, and maybe to annoy us.  I half expected her to look up at me and again announce that I was an ugly child, as she had done a half century before.  But there was a serenity about the woman that was palpable.  I began to convince myself that in some way or another I was approaching  Carolyn.

I went up to her and could not stop myself from asking, “Is everything all right now?”  No doubt thinking it a silly question to be asked, the daughter replied, “I am just fine.”  I believed the woman when she answered. I also believed her mother had answered me too.   Her eyes spoke to me.

And I believe that somewhere Carolyn’s soul has the will to live again.  And somewhere it breathes again.  Somewhere she runs across a field of grass and sits by a stream.  She holds all of creation in her eyes, and her soul is at peace.

       David Griffin                          copyright 2010

  

Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Angel

The shoot-em-up was silent, except for Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow Waltz, but I could tell by my older brother’s face exactly when Dad gave him the off-stage order to shoot me.  There stood the boy on Christmas afternoon dressed in his new cowboy suit, pistol pointed at his little brother, when Dad said, “OK, Shoot him.”  As the film rolled on Paul looked up at his father with real doubt in his eyes. He knew it was a movie and the gun was a fake. But with much more sense than even the adults of that period in our social history, he was reluctant to fire upon the little guy he normally took great care to protect.  After a few seconds, he brought his hand up as if to salute me, but instead covered his eyes.  With his other hand holding the gun, he shot me dead on, succumbing to a spirit of cinematic excess he was evidently unable to watch.  After one more change of costume, I enthusiastically fell dead on top of  Grandma’s hassock.

Watching the films of me and my big brother when we were so young spoke of a time I can’t find anywhere in my memory, probably because I was too young to remember.  Mostly I recall the two of us not getting along. But that was when we were older, maybe beginning around ten years of age.  The gift from the film was a set of memories I’d forgotten or in any case could never recover.

In many of the clips and photos of Paul and me before we reached the age of 7 or 8,  he is often a guardian angel, always making sure I’m safe. I have to admit discovering his care of me in the films at that early age caused me to wonder if he might assume that role again, now that he’s once more an angel.

In one film clip he ran after me down a snow covered hill when my sleigh flipped over and I went flying off into the brambles by the side of the path.  Dad kept filming and the camera lens rose and followed the action down the slope. I wasn’t hurt, but one could see the look of real concern on Paul’s face as he pulled me from the bushes and brushed the snow off me.

And there’s a clip of us where he’s probably four years and I’m 18 months.  I sat in his lap and he was smiling.  We played on the floor in our living room and he pulled me up and away from interfering with the mechanical train as it traveled around a circle of track.  Not annoyed with me, he was instead protective as he saved me from getting hit in the face with a tin locomotive.  Dad’s film was testimony to our brotherhood,  shown anew three quarters of a century later.

Paul took care of his little brother. There’s no question he was an angel to me.  I wonder if he is now.

copyright 2015, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

dave@windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Listen

I thought back to all the times as a boy I had come awake on this day,  sure that a surprise gift or two waited for me under a glorious tree festooned with colored lights.  There would be no tree or gift this morning and I felt lonely and rather sad, even at age 24.  I switched on the lamp and beneath it on the bedside table sat a small box wrapped in Christmas paper. Opening it, I discovered a pine cone,  round and open with square woody sprigs sprouting out.   The touches of pine sap had dried to a white frosting, making it very Christmas-like.  It was beautiful.  It was wonderful.  I’ve kept it for years.

The pine cone is an ancient symbol of enlightenment and no doubt one of the nuns  believed I was in need of a good measure of it  I laughed to myself.  She was probably right. 

     A half hour later I stood next to an old priest on the altar as he said Mass and I functioned as the altar server.  I looked out at the forty women in their religious habits and saw one who might have been the oldest smiling at me.  She was beaming and her hand gave me a little wave.

     Later at breakfast, I spoke to her.  “Thank you so much for the pine cone. Why did you do that for me?”

“You’re the youngest here,” she said.  “You would miss Christmas presents the most.”

I was embarrassed.  “I guess I’ll get over it someday,”  I said.

“Oh, you needn’t rush,” she said. “Embrace that longing you have for a gift from under the Christmas tree.  Feel it and let it remind you that something deeper in you is longing for Him."

“Longing for a Christmas present and longing for God are not the same,”  I said.

“Are you sure?” She laughed.  “Don't be so holy.  Let your desires show you what your soul already knows to be true."

"I'm not sure I know what I want," I said.

"You will know when you listen," she said.

 When I listened, I found strength to live by, and coincidentally the meaning of Christmas.  It is Emmanuel, the name that means He is with us.   There is someone who walks the path by our side throughout our lives, who shows himself at the oddest times through a variety of people.  It turns out our salvation is worked out among our friends and neighbors. And all we need to do is what that little sign tells us … the one we often see at this time of year hanging in a store, a bar, an office, a dorm room or a home.  It explains everything in one word, "Believe."  It's all we need if we want to see miracles happen all around us.

You know, I can't give Kickstart his faith.  But I can give him a symbol and pray that he listens.  I can give him my pine cone.

Listen and you will hear what’s inside you..

 Believe and He will be with you..

 Emmanuel.   Merry Christmas!

copyright 2014, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Mom and the U.S. Constitution

Mom would have no problem running a prison. She knew how to call 'em and she knew what you were thinking and she knew what hurt and what didn't and she didn't give a rat's ass if your best friend Tommy got away with murder. But if you said "rat's ass," you got another night of jail at home with no TV.

As I grew toward puberty and asked Mom who gave her the authority to Lord it over me, her answer snapped back without hesitation. "GOD anointed me. Now go clean up your room!"  At age twelve I was almost as tall as the little woman.  When I offered to arm wrestle her to determine if it was really my turn to do the dishes, she accepted.  And won.

     The United States Constitution would not allow my mother’s brand of punishment to violate an inmate’s  human rights. Mom might do a great job running the State Prison, but she would eventually spend all her time in court defending herself against civil rights suits.

The Constitution also serves to prevent the practice of Mom-ism outside prison walls by those who want to control us as though we are children.  Laws  said to protect us continue to whittle away our freedoms.  Rights are demoted to privileges and whatever is dangerous becomes licensed. We see this over-protective attitude in the public sphere’s fixation on safety and security.  Often the new laws and regulations seem very practical.

But that's the great thing about America.  Sometimes we’re willing to replace practical wisdom with impractical abstractions, because without an impractical idea like freedom our personal abilities could not unlock our promise.  We wouldn’t live up to our potential nor mature as a nation. 

My mother knew when to stop acting like a Mom.  It was probably difficult for her.  Allowing me to follow my own paths as I grew up may have seemed impractical to her at times.  But she knew I would in some ways be rid of her in the future, as she had grown beyond her parents.  I would build a worthwhile life based on my freedom rather than another person's wisdom, even hers.

The power Mom wielded over me as a child was long ago replaced by a mutual respect, built brick by brick while I advanced to maturity.  Mom became important to me as a person and not as a set of rules.  I was free to do as I pleased, to enjoy the fruits or accept the consequences of my actions.  She might have continued to insist I obey her, but she was smart enough to know that seldom succeeded.  Instead she let the reins slacken a little at a time while she rode herd on my adolescence and I galloped toward my independence.  I arrived there certainly not without her help, but without her holding my hand.  But I suppose that’s just a son’s opinion.

copyright 2012, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Fiction

I suppose Mom could have made a few lame decisions based on my cut-rate knowledge.  Luckily our home life wasn't complicated and we seldom dealt with situations in need of critical analysis.  So, any decisions we made seldom hurt us. 

And as Catholics we were encouraged ... at least by fifth grade teacher Sister Wilomena ... to ask a priest for advice on our daily dilemmas, although none of us would have been crazy enough to do so.  We’d discuss it from time to time ... we were Irish, after all ... but I don’t ever remember any of us seeking counsel from Father McKulky.  Maybe Dad did so in the years before Prozac was invented and Mom began to use it to ease her bewilderment.

Mom was never a great student.  She had been brought up by parents from another century ... she never said which.  The  scientific marvels that thrilled us Moderns as we watched the Jetsons on television in the 1950s often left Mom uneasy, as though the world she grew up in was trying to sneak out the back door without warning her.  The times were changing.  Dad had already begun to use her antimacassars for rags  and us kids had dragged the curtain stretchers down from the attic and used them to start a bonfire in the back yard during a neighborhood Elvis record hop.

Mom absolutely could not understand why mankind wanted to go to the moon.   She told me there was nothing there to eat and probably not much to do for entertainment.  She said traveling to the moon would be like a journey to Herkimer, but it could take longer.  Mom had never been farther from home than New York City on her honeymoon, an event that blossomed into a nightmare when she became separated from my father and lost on the subway.  Her rescue was rather routine, but she sent a Christmas card each year to the policeman who reunited her with my father.  Asked if he thought Mom had changed after New York, he said “Well, I wouldn’t trust her travel notes.”

As I grew  older and looked at my parents with a more critical eye, I began to wonder if Mom was more likely than me to misunderstand things.  Dad said anything was possible. It occurred to me that people don’t always consciously make things up.  Sometimes  a strong need for something to be true will convince a person it was true. 

Of course, facts are not always factual.  I don't remember being particularly interested in literal truth in my boyhood days.  Perhaps television was responsible for my attitude.  After listening to hours of laughable advertising  copy,  I formed the opinion that anyone could say just about anything they wanted and most of the audience would believe it, whether they were my family seated around the dinner table at home or kids playing in the baseball lot up the street.

In school I was more careful about the knowledge I claimed in regard to one topic or another.  The nuns were astute women and dealt severely with kids who tried to deceive them.  At home, I could get away with more stories, and I spun them at will just to see the reactions. 

As I continued to make up stories, something began to dawn on me.  I began to reject ideas I thought no one would believe.  And I began to see that worrying about believability was essentially lying, which is an earnest desire to convince someone of something that is not true.  That’s not fiction. Fiction is different.

Soon came a lesson.  I floated a story in our Cornhill neighborhood that newly elected Pope John XXIII was coming to Utica and we should have a special welcome for him in our part of town. The arrival of the Pope would have been a great story, but no one believed it. And there lay the crux of difference between lying and Fiction.

Telling the Papal visitation story turned out to be great fun, precisely because no one believed it.  It was so far-fetched that listeners simply fell into the comedy of it without carefully trying to debunk the story.  Some even added their own inventions to the legend.

"Would the Pontiff be staying at the city’s posh Hotel Utica?” a friend asked my mother. 

"Oh, no," said my beaming mother.  "He wants to get a place in North Utica so he can meet Annette Funicello."

Of course, Annette ... of Mouseketeer fame, and later well known for her roles in beach party movies ... spent very little time in Utica.  And no pope had left Rome in a few hundred years.  But John XXIII showed great and surprising leadership in his first year.  One never knew.  You could run into the new Pope on the Herkimer Road bus some day.  He might be sitting with the astronauts.  Or with Annette.

So for me Fiction became defined as a kind of being lied to that you could sit back and enjoy. I could further say it was dissembling for the audience’s entertainment instead of my own.

Some years later I thought I saw the Pope and the Beach Blanket Bingo girl stumble across the lawn toward me at the graveside service of my mother’s funeral. But it was a much older Uncle Jim in his pajamas and robe.  He sidled up to me, dragging along the attendant they had sent with him from the nursing home.

“Were you with her at the last?” he said.

“Yes, Uncle Jim, I was.”

“Did she mention leaving me any money?”

“No, but she did say you could have her raccoon coat, the one she wore the night she first met Dad at the campground years ago.”

“He thought she was a bear when she ran up to him,” said Jim.  “He almost shot her. There was something to be said for formal introductions in those days.”

I gave a great sigh and then said, “Her end was spectacular.”

“Oh?  Please tell me.”

“An angel with a flaming sword burst into the hospital room, but Mom resisted his entreaty to come along with him.”

“My, my ...”

“And then he ran to the window, as fast as his little legs would carry him.  He flew like a flash, tore open the shutter and threw up the sash ...”

“Was he wearing a red suit?”

“Yes!  And there was quite a commotion on the roof.”

“That’s superb,” said Uncle Jim.  “Carried off to his workshop by eight tiny thingamajigs, no doubt.  Did you make this up or did she?

“She did, about a year ago.”

“You trained her well,” he said.

“I never taught her to make up stories,” I said with surprise and an edge to my voice.

“I can’t imagine,” he said, “where else she learned it from.”

“She never told me any fiction,” I said.

“She told me she was too embarrassed to show you, but she wrote them all down.  Hundreds of stories.  Some might sound familiar to you.  Most are original.   She was quite a story teller.”

“And I never heard any of them?” I said.

“We all heard her best.  About getting lost on the subway.”

“That was fiction?” I said.  “Why?”

“When they came home two days late, your Dad was too embarrassed to admit he was the one who got lost.  Your Mom took the rap.”

Eventually I clung more solidly to Fiction and pretty much left lying behind.  Lying to others only got me into trouble.  Fiction brought a sense of being able to paint the world in my own colors.  Now all I would have to worry about when I took up the brush was kidding myself into thinking the world was as I needed  it to be.  That would be enough challenge for a lifetime.

copyright 2015  David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet,  South Carolina

dave@windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Mr. Frypan

A big man and solidly built, he had been a star quarterback at Colgate University twenty years before.   He had traveled a long and I suspect disappointing road since then.  He drove around the valley selling the money-maker fry pans to a variety of small retailers,  along with  clocks and watches and toasters and Ronson cigarette lighters, often returning to the office in a cheery disposition after a spirited lunch, his face reddened by his successes and a few drinks.  After doodling over his paper work for a while, he would wrap up the goods to be mailed out to his customers. I helped with the packing as I listened to the retelling of his exploits.  And in the late afternoon I lugged a handcart loaded with packages down to the post office. The work was easy, even for a lazy kid like me.

Mr. Frypan was a born storyteller, another reason why I liked him.  With just a little nudge from me, off he would go into a repertoire of yarns from his college days at Colgate.  This slowed down the pace of our work considerably, which was more than acceptable to me.  But his wife, Miz Madeline we all called her, would often hover nearby to spur us back into action, tsk’ing about the lateness of the hour and the items left to be packed for shipment.  Mr. Fry always treated her with the utmost respect, and more so the longer he had spent at lunch.  It seemed to work.  As his courtly speech and manner reached a crescendo, Miz Madeline would back off and finally leave us to our business. 

“We don’t use boxes … too expensive,” said Mr. Fry during my half hour of lifetime training for the job.  “That’s what this roll of corrugated paper is for,” he said  The material looked like what most of us call cardboard, but it was quite flexible and could be wrapped into a pocket-like container.

“I’ll show you how to make an indestructible ‘shipping carton’ with the least materials,” said Mr. Fry. 

And he did.  A few years later in a college design class,  my uncooked egg would survive a 30 foot drop, artfully wrapped in corrugated paper and shaped like a football,  folded on the ends to form bumper cushions just as I had learned from the master.

Mr. Fry’s stories always had a moral, I noticed, and most were about the challenges of growing through one’s years as a young man.  His tales often began with college freshman frolic … fast cars, beer drinking, football games, pretty girls … and ended with a thinly disguised lesson.  Not preachy, he was very good at getting his point across without talking down to me.  Had he not been Jewish, he would have made an excellent Methodist campus minister.

I thought Mr. Fry and I worked well together, even though he did most of the work.  Somewhere in the middle of a story one afternoon we were interrupted by the sound of Miz Madeline bearing down on us as her high heels clomped along the plywood ramp leading back to our lair.  I saw Mr. Fry’s mouth set in a hard line as his wife came up behind him.

“Dear,” she said, “I need David for some chores up front.”

David wasn’t doing much but listening to her husband’s stories, and we all could guess what she wanted me for … to clean the bathroom.  That had been one of the many duties I’d agreed to when I took the job, although I had not yet performed it in my three months of employment.  I guess Edna was cleaning the toilet up when necessary.

Mr. Fry was a nice guy and a terrible executive.  Miz Madeline was a taskmaster.  She would have served well  as the road boss of a South Carolina chain gang.  As far as she was concerned, I had sold myself for the minimum wage and was expected to perform the contract.  But Mr. Fry would never ask me to do anything that he would have been embarrassed doing as a teenager.

For example, I didn’t mind hauling the hand cart down the block to the post office at the end of the day, bumping the little wheels down off the curb across the pot-holed street.  But I avoided pulling the cart uptown for deliveries to the stores where I might be seen by my friends.  So Mr. Fry would often perform that chore before I came into work at three o’clock.  This act of kindness in deference to my idiotic social fears at age 15 sent Miz Madeline into a tizzy, according to Edna.  “What are we paying that kid for?” she reportedly asked.

When Mr. Fry did not turn to acknowledge his wife that afternoon, she edged around to his side and peered up at him.

 “David is busy here, Madeline,” said my savior.

“That is certainly not the case, dear,” she replied with heat in her voice.  “He’s needed up front.”

Mr. Fry’s face now reddened deeper and he replied, “I do not like having to repeat my…”

“Achilles!” his wife said loudly, and this was the first time I heard his name spoken, “send David up front. NOW!”

Miz Madeline whirled around, her flouncing skirt rising like a square dancer’s and she clip-clopped back up the ramp to the office.  Mr. Fry stood rigid trying to control himself.  Then the retired quarterback turned and with tremendous force hurled the alarm clock he had just wrapped toward the ramp.  The package, with its perfectly folded bumper ends, hit the wall like a football and bounced up to the ceiling where it smashed a 4 foot long florescent light tube and bounced down to the adjacent wall, knocking the clock to the floor behind Mr. Fry.  As the clock smashed down behind him and shards of glass dropped from the ceiling light,  the enraged man threw his arms over his head for protection and stepped backward onto the fallen clock, losing his balance and tumbling farther backward into a large open shipping box of frypans, where he finally came to rest in a seated position.

It was the funniest scene I had ever witnessed, and I started to laugh but then tried to cover it with a cough.  Mr. Fry, defeated and embarrassed, was now in a terrifically bad mood.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” he thundered as he extricated himself from the frypans and stood to his full height.

“Me?” I asked, “I wasn’t laughing.”  The man was my boss and far exceeded my years, my height and probably my strength.  I was not going to admit I had laughed at him.  I was thoroughly intimidated.

“I’m quite certain I heard you laugh, David,” he said, still with a raised voice, moving toward me.  His ire was going to be taken out on me.  That angered me and I took the offensive.

“It is totally unfair of you,” I said loudly, “to accuse me of laughing when you could not possibly have seen my face.  And then all but call me a liar and physically threaten me!”  I declaimed this jewel in my best imitation of a dandy whose besmirched reputation had been unfairly called into question.

My little speech brought him up short and his face changed from indignation to surprise.  He looked at me as if sizing me up and sat back down on the pile of fry pans.  Then he lowered his head and covered his face with his hands.  He sat quite still and I began to feel bad for the fellow.

“I’m sorry you fell in the box,” I said.  I didn’t get a reaction.  He continued to sit with his face in his hands. 

I now felt awkward.  I said, “And I’m sorry you … broke the light and the clock and the …”  I had to stop or I’d soon be laughing again.

Time ticked away and Mr. Fry just sat there on the fry pans, hands covering his face.

“Well,” I finally said,  “are we going to wrap packages or not?”

The big man raised his head as his hands fell away and down into his lap.  He looked me straight in the eye.

“I’m waiting,” he said, “for you to apologize to me for lying.”

“I already told you …”  I began, but he interrupted me.

“I am waiting for you to be honest.  I think you can do it,” he said.  “I know you’re not a man yet, but you don’t seem to know that it takes honesty to become a mature person.”

“Look,” I said, “maybe I started to laugh, but …”

“Oh,” he interrupted, “excuses, huh?  A man doesn’t offer excuses, he owns up to his behavior.”

I knew he spoke the truth and what he said was not unfamiliar, just difficult.  I bit the bullet.

“OK,” I said, “I lied.  I did laugh, or start to.”

“Good beginning,” he said.

“But then I covered it with a cough.”

“Why,” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do,” he said.

“You’re my boss,” I said, “and I’m not supposed to laugh at you.”

“Supposed?” he said.  “What about plain old respect?  For age, for accomplishment.”

Mr. Fry got up and came over to stand directly in front of me. 

“I don’t ask for respect,” he said.  “You have to decide to give it.”

“Yes, sir,” I responded.

“When deserved,” he added.

I made no comment.

“And Madeline is right,” he continued.  “You did agree to clean the bathroom.”

“I know,” I answered.

“So, go do it.  Go do it while I sit back here and figure out how to earn my wife’s respect.”

I had never cleaned a bathroom in my life, but I headed for the office, where I could at least flirt with Edna and get her into the tiny bathroom for a lesson.

Mr. Freitag had no children and maybe he needed to offer fatherly advice to someone from time to time.  I know he liked me and I remember him often encouraging me to get better grades and to plan for college, advice he may have sensed was not offered to me at home.

While on a trip to see my parents twenty years later,  my mother showed me Mr. Freitag’s obituary that she had saved weeks before from the local newspaper.  No mention of Miz Madeline was made.  I guess he never succeeded in earning her respect.  But although I never took the opportunity to tell him, he earned mine.

Copyright 2010, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

CONTINUED: Hangin' Out

Having not checked the local website for dog law changes in quite some time, and never able to understand the Rules Board in the parking lot due to an overzealous use of abbreviations, Murphy and I hide out just inside the dune on the path that crosses from the public thoroughfare to the water.  Here we won’t be seen from a distance by any of the beach police.  I feel like an unwelcome immigrant sitting on the border about to make a dash to a new life of running from the law.

This would be a very good time for Murphy to behave, rather than start barking at passers by and bringing us the attention of the boys and girls who help make our beach safe for beer drinking.

Usually, Murphy can be a very comfortable dog to have around.  That’s more true when she’s having a good day and behaving herself.   Sometimes a streak of willfulness will blaze through her veins and she will literally start trouble.  If she had a little brother, she would get up and go over to him and slap him on the back of the head, just to start a fight.  With no little brother around, she comes to me or my wife and for no reason nips a toe or a hand with a bite not meant to injure but to inform us of her frustration.  Either way, I take exception to it and the chase is on.

She comes running through the doorway to the living room with an ardent anticipation, tongue streaming out the side of her mouth.  She has careened through three rooms to get here.  To slow down now just because she’s reached her destination would seem pointless, so still barking she circles the living room before putting on the brakes.  She sits back on her haunches, looks to the left, then right to check for any changes since she was here ten minutes ago.  Has any furniture been moved, has any dog toy disappeared from exactly where she left it on the floor … always in the middle of a human walkway?  She is looking for changes made by people or animals and she is continually searching for new friends.  Murphy is ... shall we say ... overly social.  She wants to lick every person coming through the front door.  If the entire population of the world assembled in my front yard, she would be ready for them.

It’s simply not fair that a dog should always be that open and loving and happy while I occasionally sit in my human stew gnashing my teeth over some slight only a human would recognize.  So I decide to be mean and annoy her before she begins to pick on me.

I get her attention and stare deep into her eyes.  She notes my behavior while lying on the floor gnawing a rawhide bone, but goes on with what she’s doing.  I keep my stare on her and soon a look of suspicion works it’s way across her face.  I can almost hear her whine, “Wha-at?  I’m not doing anything wrong.” Her jaws continue to firmly grasp the bone, holding it down on the floor.  But now she swings her butt around 30 degrees so she can arch her eyebrows, peek up and keep an eye on my face while she wonders what I’m planning.   I continue to stare at her until something behind her eyes seems to open up and I imagine I’m reading her mind.  I know it’s my imagination, but I’ve come to understand that a lot of one’s relationship with a dog is indeed imagination.

I wonder what she really thinks about.  Perhaps she’s still miffed when she remembers my writing the "Expected Behavior of  A Currently Breathing One Year Old Dog,"  a checklist for behavior modification of puppies with implied severe consequences.  Murphy didn’t even take the time to read it.  Hell, my wife wouldn’t read it.

But Murphy knows there are limits and has to admit that where the call of nature is taken is important, as is trying to restrain herself from jumping all over anyone who comes to the door, from the UPS man to that scaredy-cat guy who mows the lawn.

But that's the discipline side of what some might expect from a one year old dog.  Certainly all of her cuddling and attention should count on the positive side of the ledger.  And what about all the entertainment she provides as she runs through the house?  Who could possibly not appreciate Murphy’s presence?

 “Sir?  Your dog is not allowed on the beach after seven a.m.”

“I wondered about that, Officer.  I didn’t bring my watch.

“It’s seven-ten, sir.  You need to take the dog home.”

“I will, I will.  But can’t we have another ten minutes?  You can see she’s really enjoying herself, Officer.”

“C’mon, Mister.  I’m just doing my job.”

Officer Ryder works for a subcontractor.  He enforces the rules among lunkheads such as me when he’s not cleaning the toilets or touching  up the paint on the hand rails leading over the dunes.  I’m sure he was uniformed by a local costume store and is the only toilet cleaner in the state to wear epaulettes and a tin badge.  I don’t want to add to his frustrations in life.

Murphy and I will hang out at home for the rest of  the day.  I’ll probably work on a writing project and she’ll work on her bone.

From time to time she’ll give up a spot on the floor she favors ... we have no idea why ... and come over to me and lay down, draping herself over my foot.  As she works on her chunk of rawhide, the sound and vibrations of bone gnawing and crunching will travel down her chest and through to my foot.  We’re communicating again, but not like earlier when I stared into her eyes and imagined a conversation of my making. This time Murphy has taken charge and I’m not totally sure of what she’s saying.  I suppose it may have something to do with her very strong jaws and her position of authority on top of my foot.  This is a dog who has something to say.

Copyright 2015,  David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

CONTINUED: Clocked

My first thought was to strangle the beast and hide the body in the basement.  Then I’d leave the front door ajar as if a thief had snuck in.  It seemed unlikely anyone would steal only a clock and leave the silver service untouched, so I wasn’t sure this scheme would fool anyone.  I could also steal our silver and even the Infant of Prague statue.  But I’d never heard of any clocks stolen in our neighborhood, and for certain no Infants of Prague ever went missing.  And come to think of it, since I didn’t have my own apartment, what would I do with a silver service and an Infant of Prague? 

The thief in the night scheme was probably no more sophisticated than simply taking my brother’s baseball bat to the clock and pleading insanity by way of a strange dream that made me do it.  Eventually I had a better idea as I lay there sleepless.  I would poison the clock, making it so sickly my father would become  frustrated and throw it out or leave it to sit quietly on the mantel. 

After everyone in the house was asleep, I tiptoed into the living room, opened the little door on the clock and stopped the pendulum.  Then I moved the hands ahead to 3 a.m. so it would appear the clock gave up the ghost long after we were all in bed.

At breakfast I could see disappointment on my father’s face as he expressed frustration over the clock’s apparent cardiac arrest.

“It never stopped during the test shot … not once,” he said.  “I let it run the entire week that I was finishing the cabinet.”

“Well, it’s old,” I said.  “Give it a rest, like Grandpa.”

“Grandpa’s dead,” he said.’

“Well, that’s what I mean.  Honored in life, but more so in death.  A quiet memory is best.  Either in the ground or on a mantel.”

In the evening Dad hustled the clock over to Gene’s and the two men thoroughly inspected every tiny component and re-made each adjustment to perfection.  That night I got up and stopped the clock again, shoving the hands ahead as though it stopped sometime before dawn. 

When I rose the following morning, Dad was on the phone.

“Gene,” I heard him say, “the clock made it to 4 o’clock this morning.  We did something right last night. We’re gaining on the problem!” 

My father and Gene spent another six hours that night re-adjusting just about every tension spring and turn screw in the clock, I got up and stopped it again after midnight, but this time I set the hands ahead to only 2:30.

The next morning at breakfast my father was devastated, a haggard look across his face, full of worry and concern for his first big clock project.  Myself, I was feeling quite chipper and refreshed after a full two nights of restful sleep.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” said Dad. “The clock only made it to 2:30 last night.    Now we’re going backward.  We’ve made things worse.”

“But maybe,” I said and paused for a beat, “pendulum clocks won’t run in this house.  You know, like maybe the earth’s lines of magnetic flux just are not good for a pendulum here.  Remember the time all the apples fell off the tree out back?  Bad flux, I’m thinking, for anything hanging … or swinging.  You know?”

Dad didn’t appear to be listening.

“I’m not sure if Gene really knows what he’s doing,” he said to no one in particular.  “Maybe I’ll take it in to work.  Herbie the maintenance guy is a mechanical wizard.  Maybe he can help.”

Dad told us later that Dr. Herbie conducted an unbiased exam of the patient and pronounced the time piece hale and hearty.  But after my father’s insistence the clock was sick, Herbie thought a minute and said maybe it wasn’t sitting on the mantel perfectly level. 

“I mean perfectly,” he told Dad.  “Take this six foot mason’s level home tonight and line it up so you’re sure the clock is perfectly level.”  Herbie might as well have suggested Dad line it up with the North Star for all the good it would do.

This night, Dad performed all the checks and re-checks on the clock downstairs on his workbench.  He made no mention of Gene.  Then he very carefully carried the patient up to our living room.  On the mantel he placed the long mason’s level, a device with the width and thickness of a pack of cards, but six feet long.  Embedded in the level was a  bubble that told you when things were perfectly horizontal.  When the instrument and C-clamps and various holding tools were arranged on the mantel, he placed the clock precariously on top and jiggled it a bit to make sure it wouldn’t fall off.  Then, down at the far end of the mantel,  he very carefully slid a pack of matches under the six foot mason’s tool and moved it toward the clock until the bubble pronounced everything true.  He used the clamps to hold all the parts in place.

This was the carefully balanced pile confronting me when in semi darkness I stepped into the living room around midnight to continue my regimen of clock poisoning.

Even if I managed to not make a mistake and cause the assemblage to come crashing down from the mantel,  I wasn’t sure I could remove the clamps and then open the clock  in the dark without making a noise that might wake the household.

“You made one dumb mistake,” came a stage whisper from behind me.

I turned to see my mother sitting in her chair across the room.

“Was it the goofy theory about the earth’s lines of flux?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t hear that one,” she said, “but it sounds like something your father would believe.”

“How did you know it was me?” I asked.

“I’ve been following you around since you began to walk,” she continued.  “You leave a trail as wide as an elephant’s behind you.”

“A trail of what?” I asked.

“Everything,” she said.  “Toys, books, magazines, cookie crumbs, last week’s homework, hair combs, socks, shoes, shirts, Aqua Velva … “

“OK, OK,” I interrupted.  “What did I leave on the mantel?”

 “Nothing,” she said. “Specifically, not your car keys.”

“My car keys …”  We left our keys on the mantel at night so cars could be moved if anyone needed to get out of the narrow driveway early the next morning.

“When I didn’t see them on the mantel,” she said, “I guessed why you didn’t leave them.”

“I needed the little flashlight on the keychain to get back to bed …”

“ … without tripping over the coffee table or a hassock,” she said.

“That’s pretty smart, Mom,” I said.  “So now, how will I get to sleep after Dad finds out what I’ve been doing?”

“He won’t find out,” she said.  “You keep stopping that noisy clock every night and I’ll hold the pillow against his ear like I’ve been doing. Eventually, we’ll wear him down.  He’ll find another hobby and we’ll get some sleep.”

 Copyright 2010  David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

windsweptpress.com