CONTINUED: Government BarBQ

We bought a new gas grill in 2011 when we moved south and dealt with its flame baffle for over a year.

Because the baffle prevented the flames from searing the food, meat cooked up just like indoors in our oven.  This incensed Mrs. Dave, marking the first time I'd ever seen her so upset with a government policy regarding the environment.

After a year of un-blackened meat, she brazenly ripped the baffle out of the stove one night as she prepared to cook a steak.

"I threw it in the pond," she said.

"Did anyone from another back yard see you do that?" I asked.

"Who cares?" she said.

"Well, hon, I'm sure this is a breach of a federal statute."

"Who cares?" she repeated.

"Well, hon, it could be a felony to remove a government sanctioned safety device, surely at least a misdemeanor."

"A safety device, huh?" she said.

"Yes, the baffle prevents the burner flames from igniting the steak," I said.

"I like my steak ignited," she said.

"But that's dangerous. It could start a fire and burn the house down."

"I'm not dumb enough to use the cooker so close to the house. That's why the cooker has wheels on it," she said.

"Not only is there a fire hazard," I said, "but burning the meat’s fat can produce carcinogens."

"That must be what tastes so good when the meat gets flamed." she said.

"I think you should give more thought to what you're doing here," I said. "The breaking of the penal code, the sullying of your debt to society by refusing to fall in line and do what everyone else should be doing, even if they're not doing it."

"Are you serious?" she asked.

"I’m always serious,” I said, “… on weekdays.  What day is this?”

“Monday,” she said.

“Do I sound convincing?"

"Not really."

"I'll take mine medium rare," I said. “Burn the hell out of it.”

copyright 2015, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Gifts

Maggie doesn’t see much difference between herself and humans, except she can run faster.  And she would never waste all that energy standing on two legs.  It’s nice to drop down on all fours and take it easy and enjoy life. Her nose is closer to her world.  She looks ever so cool on all fours. And she can run faster.

Maggie is served only the food she likes and laps it up with gusto, feeling blessed to be fed so well by her servants.  The dry dog food on special this week at the supermarket is the best she’s ever had.  Of course Maggie forgets what she eats from meal to meal and can’t recall her last.  There is a hazy memory, however, of the time she feasted on a hot juicy pork chop stolen from the kitchen counter.

Maggie does remember  she cannot take telephone messages and so she never tries.  A classic lady, she waits patiently for doors to be opened for her.

She’s proud of her special talent for keeping the ball when it’s thrown to her.   Most pets return the ball to whoever threw it so the game might continue, but this dog understands that a gift is a gift.  And besides, keeping the ball leads to another game called tug-of-war, which feels good to her teeth.  When the old man she chose as her servant tells her a turtle could  play catch better, she takes it as a compliment.  She takes anything said softly to her as a compliment.  She wonders what a turtle could be, but is nevertheless impressed anyone can do it better than her.

The old man who waits on Maggie is pretty pleased with himself, too, just like his dog.  He thinks he has always made the right decisions and done well.  He can’t run as fast as he used to but he believes he still looks pretty cool.  He has many misconceptions.  Like his dog, he has trouble appreciating someone has watched over him and coaxed his circumstances to bear fruit. 

It’s easy to see life as a series of accomplishments, more difficult to see it as a long line of gifts. The old man sometimes camps out in the center of his own universe,  minimizing the Author of all that is good and not recalling the free gifts bestowed.  Or forgetting everyone who ever helped him or was patient with his stupidity.  Or encouraged him with their praise.

When he forgets these things, he might as well drop down on all fours, harking back to the distant past he came from.   Before he first stood up on two legs long ago and began to act like he knew what he was doing.  Or could figure it out if he had to.  As if such were possible. 

Maggie would never act like that.  She may think highly of herself, but she knows her limits and knows to wait for help when she needs it. She’s never tried to figure it all out. She may be smarter than we think. 

David Griffin, copyright 2013

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

dave@windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Hoot

Hoot was two years older than I, but only when we were boys did our age difference matter much.  I naturally acceded to his leadership when I was ten years old, but I was beginning to question why his two year head start in life allowed him the respect he demanded of me.

“If he can go, I should be able to,” I persisted.  “He’s no one special.”

“He’s twelve, and your older brother,” she said, looking up at the ceiling, exasperation showing on her face.

 “So? I won’t bother them.  I probably won’t catch up with them anyway.”

She turned from me to the kitchen window.  On tiptoe, she leaned in over the sink and tilted her head up to see how much light was left in the patch of sky between the houses.

“Can you get up there and back in a hour?” she said.

“Sure, yeah.” I ran out the back door of the house.  I flew down the driveway on my bike and turned up the street, pedaling like mad.  I sure as heck would catch up with the boys.  And then thumb my nose while I zoomed past like they were standing still. That would annoy them and allow me to feel just as special as them.

My parents never called my brother Hoot, of course, but out of their hearing I did.  He insisted his friends call him Hoot and he carried the name all through his life without ever explaining where it came from.

Hoot’s life was beginning to puzzle me at that age.  He was the smartest kid I ever met, until we ended our boyhood years and the world’s measurement system took over.  He could take down a bicycle to its hundreds of parts, but never did very well in school.  He would eventually memorize the words to every song ever recorded by Bill Haley And His Comets, but flunked a grade at school when he did horribly in English. He was a loyal friend and advisor to many of the neighborhood kids, but he could not accept authority and would never get along very well with employers. 

I was the family whiz kid who succeeded, and I think he sometimes resented it.  But at home when we were boys he was able to answer all the questions of a little brother when he had the time for me, which as we grew toward our teens wasn’t often.  He even taught me my first prayers, and I can’t imagine how that happened.  To get to me before my overly religious parents must have been pure luck. 

As a younger brother I sought his approval most of the time and although we often wrangled over one thing or another, in the end he was the brother with the biggest heart.  And that continued into his manhood.  Quite simply, even when I didn’t like him, I loved him.

Despite what I told my mother, I would have trouble catching up with Hoot and his friends.  Their paper routes had made the older boys independently wealthy, enough to purchase their new bikes.  The kid’s bicycle given to me a few years before was an old Columbia of the style popular in the 1940’s and early 1950’s, before the lightweight “English” bikes became popular in America.  It weighed twice as much as the new bikes that Hoot and his friends had bought with their earnings earlier in the summer.  The lightweights had three speeds, including a high gear that allowed the rider to pedal in a slow luxurious manner while the bike sped along at over twenty miles per hour.  I could barely reach 10 mph while my legs furiously pumped as though I was trying to escape from a swarm of killer bees.

Hoot and his friends’ new bikes had a low gear that allowed them to pedal up the steep hill through the cemetery on the road that led to the statue of the Eagle.. Even when I stood on the pedals of  my old Columbia, the road was too steep and the bike too heavy to pedal up to the top.  I had to get off and push the old bike. 

Terribly out of breath., I got the bike up the hill.  I jumped back on and rode along until I reached the little circle of pavement where the monument to the Eagle stood.  The three boys were nowhere in sight.  As the sun dropped toward the horizon in the west I felt a twinge of disappointment in my chest.  The trio would have just enough time to get down the other road and arrive home before dark.  Even if I flew down the hill at top speed, I’d never catch up with them.

 Unless.

I knew of a short cut that would allow me to beat them to the boulder by the side of the road where the park ended at the edge of the city.  It might even put me in front of them, in which case I planned to be casually lounging on the grass next to the huge rock  

when they came around the turn.  They’d be shocked to see me, like I’d come out of nowhere to beat them to the bottom of the hill.  It never occurred to me they might not care at all and would ignore me, even had I descended from the sky in a balloon.

I looked out over the city from the hilltop and considered my shortcut.  I had tried it only once with poor results, but I was quite sure I could sail down the grassy slope of the hill without killing myself and barrel into the trees beyond  the field.  Once inside the woods I’d follow a narrow deer path through the trees, slowing my descent down the hill only slightly as I weaved between the pines and spruces.  On an earlier attempt my front tire slipped on a tree root crossing the trail and sent me headlong into a bushy young hemlock.  I sustained cuts and scratches, but at least my head wasn’t slammed into the trunk of a tall pine.

I began to fervently recite a Hail Mary.  When I realized I was stalling more than praying, I launched the old Columbia off the road into the field and headed downhill.

The evening dew had settled on the grass and the bike tires slid to the left and right.  I held on and rode the foot brake as I sat high in the saddle.  There!  I could see the slight break in the tree line coming fast toward me and at an ungodly speed I steered between two trees into the gloomy woods.  It was darker than I had anticipated.  I slowed, very afraid I would hit a tree and crack my skull  open and lay all night dying while my family wondered where the hell I was.

 I lost the deer trail in the darkness and was soon crashing over rocks and debris on the forest floor.  I’ve never had a great sense of direction and could easily get lost in the woods, but I was capable of telling which direction was uphill and which was down, even in the dark.  I got off the bike and walked it downhill.  After what seemed an eternity I came out of the woods into the open to see that wonderful pink glow from a summer evening sky.  Another expanse of grass lay before me with a narrow old cow path meandering down to where I would intercept Hoot and his friends. 

I stood still and held my breath, listening for the boys.  I heard nothing.  They had either not yet arrived at the boulder or had been there and gone.  In the latter case, I might have a chance to catch up with them from behind.

The pink and blue sky began to darken and for an instant I wished I was home on the front porch sipping a cool glass of lemonade, enjoying the sunset. Later I’d go inside and continue reading my Boy Scout Handbook.  I would have most of the 400 pages all but memorized by the time I was old enough to join them in the fall.

I was now unsure why I wanted to be with the three boys who surely didn’t want my company. And I felt Hoot’s friends were complete idiots, frankly. But I wanted to impress my older brother and to show him .... something.  I think I wanted to show him I was better than him.  Finally, competitiveness was winning out over brotherly love.  I knew I could take care of myself, and I didn’t want to ask him questions all the time or depend on his approval of me.  I resented him being older, though it made no sense.

I heard the boys coming and I got going.  On my way to the boulder, I passed beside a reedy marsh that separated the cow path from the park road by about fifty feet.  Pedaling like crazy I drew up even with the boys across the marsh.  They didn’t notice me through the tall grass as they laughed and joked among themselves.  They rode slowly as they talked, and I furiously pedaled toward the boulder to beat them. I moved ahead and looked back over my shoulder to see how far behind they were and drove my bike right off the  cow path into the marsh. 

I don’t know which laws of physics were in play that evening, but somehow I wound up flat on my back in about three inches of water with the old Columbia completely upside down on top of me, perfectly upright, as if someone had decided to change a tire and to hold me captive at the same time.  The old-style wide handle bars spanned my chest and pinned me to the wet ground.  With all the strength I had left, I pushed the bike over on its side and crawled out of the marsh, sopping wet in a T-Shirt now torn completely down the front.  The boys kept going and may not have even noticed me.

I sat crying. My heart was broken.  I had owned the T-shirt only a week, a souvenir from an amusement park we visited on vacation.  I loved that T-shirt.  I still think of it.  If it had survived my childhood, today my seventy year old wife would come across it from time to time in my dresser and ask if we had a ten year old living with us she hadn’t noticed.

I pulled my bike out of the marsh and rode off, dejected.  The trio had to cross the lower part of the cemetery again to get home and maybe they would stop there.  I might catch up with them after all.  When I reached the cemetery the boys were not there.   I got off my bike and sat down on a convenient headstone.  I tried to repair my special t-shirt by tediously tying some of the loose threads together.

On the front of the shirt was a pretty girl standing next to a huge cigar.  A stylized owl perched on the cigar leered at the young lady, his huge eyes devouring her.  “You’re a HOOT!” was emblazoned in large letters across the scene.  The word “Hoot” stood out much larger than the rest.  Mom had at first said No when I asked if I could buy it with money I’d been given for vacation.  After my whining and carrying on she finally relented and said I could have it if I promised to never wear it in the vicinity of the nuns and our Catholic school.

At ten years of age I wanted my older brother and I to always be close, and I’d planned to have the T-shirt with his name on it for the rest of my life. But any closeness we had would not outlast the summer of our youth.  As Hoot and I grew older we saw each other dimly, like colors fading away in the sunset, leaving only shadows. We kept in touch but we were never confidantes.  We were too different. 

We would have a disjointed relationship all through our lives. He would never acknowledge my worth and I would never ask his advice.  His life did not go well.  We loved each other and visited, but we could never bridge the divide that began to widen as we entered our teens.

On that evening long ago, as the sky darkened to black and the stars came out, I continued to sit on the headstone, not far from where we stood in the same cemetery last year when we buried Hoot.  I will always feel the loss.

Soft summer evenings don’t come often enough.  At night I sit out back and watch the sky darken  to indigo and then black.  I feel the warm breeze hug me with memories of days long ago.  I try to remember the feeling of a full heart, when love could hurt, but hope allowed that more love would heal. 

Tonight I think of all the summer evenings that went by and the relatively few times Hoot and I had the opportunity to share them.  Nothing special prevented us, just a lack of awareness their number would be limited. 

We regrettably walked through our lives on different sides of the marsh.  I remember there were reasons for that, but I can no longer bring them to mind. In a way we were quite different.  But in other ways we were quite the same.  We were, after all, brothers.

Rest In Peace, Paul G. Griffin,  

May 18, 1941 – September 13, 2013

 Copyright 2013, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

dave@windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Soppin A Possum

On one such occasional when making my afternoon rounds I noticed a tripped trap, the door closed. I peeped inside and found a very ugly and hissing possum grinning back at me. I called my friend, Sylvester Burton and asked if he would like me to bring him this nasty looking critter and he expletively turned down the offer. He suggested I give Melvin Peterson a call, remembering he did partake of the possum cuisine. Now let me clarify that Sly, my rabbit box buddy is black as is Melvin and I am white. Sly nor I would consider eating a possum but Melvin, born of the old school, had lived through hard times apparently, and eating often meant you couldn’t be choosey. Papa and Melvin could have been best friends for sure.

I gave Melvin a call and he chuckled on the other end of the phone saying he would be there in ten minutes to take old fuzz face off my hands. I swear I heard him smacking his lips anticipating the forthcoming meal. Let me clarify that Melvin eats chicken feet or footsies as he calls them. They do sell them prepackaged in some grocery stores; I’ve seen them.

Melvin, like most folks in this southern setting, hunted for a hobby. He raised rabbit dogs, aka beagles, and just so happened to have his beagle hauling cage on the back of his old pickup truck. He lured the possum out of the box and into the cage. He advised me to burn out the box to remove the possum’s odor. I asked him what he planned to do with the scrawny black jack possum. He told me he would clean out its system with bread and milk, fatten it up for a couple of months then have it with sweet taters and onions, a Sunday dinner set for a king so he said. I witnessed him smack his lips first hand this time. Mine remained dry and chapped. I just told him not to invite me over.

I saw Melvin from time to time and he still had that possum in the beagle cage on his truck. He had never gotten around to relocating it in a pen. The possum had definitely put on a few pounds and appeared almost groomed, not greasy like I had last remembered seeing it. After the allotted couple of months had expired, I saw Melvin at one of our local hangouts, a country store of sorts where many a yarn was spun by hunters and fisherman alike. I peeked in the beagle cage and didn’t see Mister Black Jack. The cage was empty. Destiny had run its course I suspected.

I asked him how the old boy had tasted. He stared at the ground and acted right peculiar. He he-hawed around and finally said he didn’t eat him. I quizzed him further asking why? He said he couldn’t. I asked what had happened to the critter then. He told me he had set it free. I didn’t get it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sort of glad he didn’t eat it. I just didn’t comprehend just why he had turned the critter loose after priming him for the oven.

Melvin told me that he had hauled that possum around with him everywhere and had even begun talking to it, paying it more attention that he did any of his beagles. He would share his meals with it, throwing it extra scraps. He said he couldn’t harm a pet and that is what it had become. You don’t garnish your friends with taters and onions he told me. That just isn’t right he spoke with conviction. I swear I saw him tear up just talking about that possum. I told him not to ride any chickens around in that cage or he would have to give up chicken footsies. We both laughed and I’m confident that possum is out there somewhere grinning and missing his friend too.

CONTINUED: Battle for the Marshall Islands

After boot camp, Dad’s platoon got on a train and headed towards the ocean. (Which seemed like a very fitting and proper place for future sailors to be.) Idaho hadn’t taught them a thing about the South Pacific, but what the hell, everything would work out just fine. Palm trees, naked native girls, and a few near sighted Japs they’d have to bump off.

They could hardly wait.

They had to change trains in this little mountain town and it was winter so they all headed for the only restaurant to be had. Trouble was, no colored folks were allowed. Well, the kids in that platoon were more redneck than not. But Jamie had won them over at least to a point. Anyway, a platoon is like a gang. You mess with one member, you mess with all. So the platoon formed up in front of that café and no one was allowed in. A deputy sheriff was called in, but that man was no fool. He took one look at all those uniforms and realized that his handcuffs would be staying in their little case.

In the end, everyone was allowed in, and just to pour salt onto the wound of the proprietor, Jamie was told to take a healthy dump in the bathroom so he wouldn’t need to go on the train.

On the coast, Dad had to wait for an overseas assignment along with Jamie and a guy named T.L.Cole. It was the only time in Dad’s life when he became the equivalent of a straight A student. He just loved guns, big and small. The training wouldn’t do him much good in civilian life, but he didn’t care. He was having a great time at the expense of the taxpayers.

He and his friends ended up at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard where ships were being refitted. He wasn’t there for very long, but he did have one experience that was worth passing on to me. In the neighboring city of Bremerton, sometimes drunken servicemen got a bit out of hand. The shore patrolmen would get paired up with ordinary sailors and patrol the bar areas at night.. I believe I mentioned that Dad was a heavy weight, so he didn’t mind it when he got a chance to play “cop.”

That changed forever when he followed an S.P. into a bar where a drunken marine was most definitely the center of attention. First thing Dad noticed was the man’s club. It was a crutch. The marine had half a leg missing and obviously the guy was having a bit of trouble accepting his misfortune. He kept swinging that crutch at anyone who came near him, and two service men were already on the floor.

Dad looked at the S.P. and asked, “So---do you think we could use a table as a shield?”

The S.P. ignored Dad and drew his Colt .45 service automatic. He gave the marine one chance to drop the crutch, and the marine told him to---well---you can fill in the blank. Then the S.O.B.S.P. actually went and did it. He shot the marine in his good leg.

It was at that point in his life when two very important components came together for my dad: Revulsion, and helplessness. Those were the pieces of bread that would hold the shit that would get served up over and over again. The world outside of Shakopee Minnesota could get really ugly, and young Dennis Schmitt had only taken a few steps into that world so far.

Dad wasn’t trained to be a “yard bird,” but at that stage of the game, he would do any work that didn’t expose him to lunatics. He helped re-arm battle damaged ships until he was assigned to a destroyer, and was pleased to discover that Jamie and T.L. Cole were still with him. Only one thing happened on that “tin can” that was worth relating. The destroyer sailed through a pretty bad storm that scared the crap out of Dad.

I suppose all you well educated people know who John Newton was; the man who composed the hymn “Amazing Grace.” Well, Dad felt a little like that when a mischievous sailor grinned and said, “Guess what boys, we just became a submarine.”

Unfortunately my father can’t remember the name of the ship. He told me the name about thirty years ago, and now I can’t remember it either. Anyway, he and his buddies became part of something called “Task Force 51,” which was sent to capture the Marshall Islands at the start of 1944. That Island group is over 1000 miles long and located halfway between Hawaii and Australia. The Islands of Majuro and Kwajaline had airstrips built by the Japanese so those were primary targets.

Dad rode shotgun on a landing craft called a L.C.I. It was 160 ft. long and about 23 feet wide. They carried 200 men and could sail between 600 and 900 miles depending on their speed and prevailing currents. Majuro was where they would land, and while it wasn’t as bad as Omaha beach, that wouldn’t make any difference to the dead and wounded.

Dad didn’t give me any details, he just said that once the beach was secured, they spent a long time transporting wounded men to a hospital ship. That went on until the airstrip was secured. Then Dad was given the job of bore sighting machine guns in the wings of fighter planes as they were brought in. It was hot work and everything had to be done “yesterday,” but it was a damn sight better than watching guys bleed to death.

I remember Dad once saying, “If a guy is yelling bloody murder, he has lots of time. But if he’s being real quiet and peaceful like---keep an eye on him.”

Yea, that makes sense.

Anyway, eventually it was time to get served another shit sandwich, so Dad, Jamie and T.L got on another LCI and headed for the Island of Kwajalein. The invasion was over, but like Majuro, there were still many things for a gunner’s mate to do. But first they had to get there. So they put together a small fleet of a dozen landing craft, a few P.T. boats, and a corvette that broke it’s own trail.

The plan was to land at Kwajalein at daybreak, but the Japanese sort of messed that up. You see, those boys were really sore losers. When they would lose an Island or a shipping lane between Islands, they would leave just a few mines behind, to keep the Allies nervous. At about 0230 hrs Dad’s LCI hit one of those mines. Fortunately it was a small one that had probably been dropped by an aircraft. It tore open the bow and turned the landing craft into a crash diving submarine.

About two-thirds of the men went under. Dad, his buddies, and about fifty others floated clear of it. Somehow they call grouped together and concluded that no one was hurt bad. The water was warm and everyone had a life jacket, so all they had to do was wait until daybreak to get picked up.

Piece of cake.

Then someone felt something bump up against them. Next time it happened the sailor probed with his hand and felt something that was like sandpaper. That was not a good thing. But the main problem was ignorance. Those Midwest farm boys wouldn’t learn anything from Jacques Cousteau for another thirty years so they were plenty scared of any kind of shark. In fact most sharks are like vultures. They won’t bite you unless you’re dead. But there have been many exceptions to that rule, as we all know.

I recall the scene in “Jaws” when Robert Shaw says, “I’ll never put on a life jacket again.”

You’re in pitch black water up to your shoulders, and there’s nothing under you except the fear of teeth. 

 

Jamie said, “Wonder if them fish know the difference between white meat and dark.”

Anyway, the dawn always comes, and when it came that morning, all arms and legs were still where they belonged. They got picked up by the corvette and once on Kwajalein, they received some thrilling news. They would be working with the Seabees. (Construction Battalion) That meant that they would learn skills that would carry over into civilian life. Gunner’s Mates were wanted because they had some training with explosives, and the main job would be to break up the now useless Japanese bomb shelters.

Dad didn’t know it, but it was time for another shit sandwich.

You see, those bunkers were not empty. Do you know what happens when you fill a bomb shelter with men, then kill them, then let them rot for a few days in tropical temperatures? You grab an arm or a leg and it comes right off. You can’t blow the bunkers while the bodies are still in them so you gotta get them out the hard way. They gave Dad a gas mask but after puking in it a few times he decided that he really didn’t want it.

For three days Dad went without eating. (I miracle for him.) Then things started getting squared away. But that only meant that Dad would be moving again. This time to an Island called Ebeye, which had been a Japanese sea plane base, and would also serve the U.S. Navy in that capacity. The Navy Brass would soon make this small Island their home because a PBY Catalina (flying boat) is a great way to Island hop if you are an admiral.

Now the trouble with admirals is that they make junior officers kind of nervous. It’s no fun working under a J.G. who’s nervous, especially when it’s 100 degrees in the shade. You gotta learn how to conserve energy in the tropics. Everyone one learned that except Jamie. 

The kid from Georgia was an eternal optimist in the sense that he was always looking around for a samurai sword that some careless Jap officer might have dropped.

Well, eventually he did find something that the enemy had left behind. He stepped on a land mine and it took every bit of meat off one femur bone. Dad and a few other guys called for the officer in charge but got no answer. That’s when a decision had to be made. There was an open boat on the beach, and an auxiliary hospital ship just a few miles away. So they put Jamie on the floor of the boat and Dad sat on the wound. As far as they could determine at the time, there was no way to apply a tourniquet .Dad was the heaviest guy there, and it just seemed like the only thing to do. 

 

Half the guys took Jamie out, the other half went looking for the lieutenant. Jamie died on the boat, and Dad and the others got a lecture from the lieutenant, but no punishment. The thing my dad needed to remember was that there was no way to save Jamie by keeping him on that Island, and there were no seaplanes ready to take off at that time.

After that Dad just cleaned and replaced gun parts until a B-29 known as Enola Gay took off from Kwajalein with a secret weapon. Dad had been told at one point after the historic bombing mission that a very important container was being stored in the Ebeye ammunition magazine. (Which was kind of like a basement with a lot of insulation on top of it.) I’m thinking that the mysterious container might have been the bomb they tested on Bikini.

Anyway, the day they celebrated the end of the war, Dad got one more chance to end or at least ruin a portion of his life. Everyone was shooting off guns and going crazy. Well, Dad decided he could do them all one better. He knew about this Japanese anti-aircraft gun that was about the size of a German 88mm. The action had been taken out of it so there was just the barrel and the breach block. Dad got his hands on some explosives and packed it into the rear end. Then he muzzle loaded the front with ten pounds of pipe nipples.

Pipe nipples are little metal tubes and they make a shrieking sound if launched into the air with sufficient force. Dad calculated that he could get them over the Island and they would then fall harmlessly into the water on the other side. Well----his shot went a bit low. There was this officer’s tent on the far beach you see. In fact the lieutenant who gave Dad crap about Jamie was one of the occupants.

Thank God no one was in the tent when the pipe nipples hit it. All the same, there were a few less smiles after that. You know, everyone understands that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved a lot of American lives, but it also saved the sorry rear end of Dennis Schmitt. The guys who could have burned Dad had only one thing on their minds: going home. So Dad lucked out one last time.

Final Note: Dennis Schmitt and T.L. Cole went to Georgia a few months after returning home. They were house guests of the Jameson family and learned a little more about the world that Jamie had been brought up in. It wasn’t all pretty, but a great deal of it was.

CONTINUED Self-Confidence

       But I failed tests at school, thinking I knew the material well and not bothering to study. A quick tempered insolence got me into trouble with neighbors, alienated teachers and often caused my father embarrassment when I would mouth off in front of his friends.

        If Dad introduced me to an adult on the street, I’d grab the man’s hand and say, “Hi, I'm Dave Griffin. You've probably heard of me." Some of his friends laughed. I’m sure the others wished he would put me in my place, but one can tell a 16 year old very little.

        My driving was particularly irksome to Dad. It’s safe to say he feared for his life while riding with me, so it is to his eternal credit that he even allowed me to drive his car. From his point of view, I needed to learn the rules of the road and I required a high degree of supervision behind the wheel. To me, I was chauffeuring an old fuddy around town, regaling him with solid driving tips while the poor man thought he was teaching me to drive.

        Had he been a mean person, he might have told me what an old girl friend once said to me: “You may not be much, Dave, but you’re all you ever think about.” And in fact that was the key. There was nothing more important to me than Dave. But Dave wasn’t doing so well.

         I remember myself as a teenager, sitting lonely in the center of my own universe, writing the script so my future would turn out the way I wanted. But in the staging of the scenes, I was a second-rate actor who often forgot his lines or stumbled while crossing the stage. And in playing the main character, I was just trying to become someone I had invented. I could act my heart out, impersonating the successful know-it-all I wanted to be, but I was unable to master the real roles in my life … student, son , brother, friend. I risked failing to become a real person because I was trying to be someone I wasn’t.

         The cock-sureness of my youth masked my natural feelings of inferiority. As I stumbled through my high school years, I began to know the disappointing truth that like many other teens I had never really accomplished anything, had never formed a truly selfless relationship with another and never stood up to honestly take my own measure. Since I was too young to admit it, I was left to cover my confusion with a blanket of arrogance. That covering wouldn’t last forever. Eventually it would shred away, and underneath would be found either a boy simply getting older or a man in the making.

        I don’t remember how it happened. I know the process wasn’t clean and precise. A woman played a significant part in it, spending most of her life with me on the path. For her, maturity was inevitable. For me, it was a long road with uncertain directions and a changing landscape. But I eventually got here, and today I can say with confidence that I am indeed a man. But I am only a man. And although I will sometimes sit in the center of my own universe, I seldom set up camp there. It’s too lonely a place. In the wider universe … the real one … I am not alone, I am not in charge and I am no more important than anyone else.

 copyright, 2014   David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Sassafras Fortune

I had wondered why the sassafras was combined with the cypress and pine. Was it just to rhyme with “purple mass” (grapes) found several lines previously? I did some research. I went to one of my favorite books, Donald Culross Peattie’s A Natural History of North American Trees. I’ll spare you the exaltation I feel every time I read or even think of Peattie’s book, but it is full of lore about trees. Noting sassafras oil’s value as a demulcent to soothe inflamed tissue and an emollient, Peattie gives a short history of the clamor for sassafras, clarifying for me its use in Drayton’s ode. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sassafras roots were grubbed out by thousands to extract the oil. Virginia was a rich site for this harvesting. In the process fields were cleared for other crops. Peattie states that “no other American tree was ever exalted by such imaginary virtues.” The craze began in 1574 with the publication of Joyfull Newes Out of the Newe Founde Worlde by the Spaniard Nicholas Monardes, the “physician of Seville.” His claims for the substance rival the wildest pronouncements for modern dietary supplements and weight loss potions.

As those images and recollections of what I had read swirled in my mind, the perfume of the cut log lightened my head. And then it struck: my nine-acres has sassafras trees, or at least did until the previous owners cut them down. I committed myself to the quest, to search through the thousands of trees of all sizes on the property for live sassafras trees. I sliced a two inch thick crosscut of the log before me, which, by the way, is shaped like South America, and hung it on the wall of my garage as a constant reminder of my sacred search.

But first, I had to learn to identify a sassafras tree. There is no description in Drayton’s poem. The scratchboard etching by Paul Landacre (what a good name) in Peattie’s book is of a full- sized tree (without leaves) in an open field. I had no open fields. There is an illustration of the unique leaves, immature boat-shaped to mature tri-lobed, but it was still early spring with only bare limbs raised and waving around me. Of course, there was the odor, but I didn’t want to notch every unknown tree in my woods to catch a scent of the prey. However, I had taken the vow of the arborist’s quest, and like Sir Percival or maybe more like Don Quixote, I set off metaphorically on my journey.

For the next several weeks, I searched. I confess the search was not unfalteringly focused. It was spring and the woods were coming to life. At first, I did not consciously notice the delicate bluettes or white spring beauties. My springs had mostly been spent in Texas, where overnight dun stubble fields turn into ponds, lakes, oceans of bluebonnets, sprinkled with vibrant patches of red Indian paintbrush. Even the treacherous bull nettle is beautiful in massive white clusters. But here in the Missouri woodlands , the spring blooms hide among the deep litter of oak leaves. When finally I noticed those thumb-sized blooms, I spent much time getting down to eye level with them. These blooms unfolded slowly from day to day. They and all of the other quiet bursts of spring often drew my attention from the trees, and the other trees took my mind off the sassafras. The pink budding of the oaks and the brilliance of redbud and snowfields of dogwood blooms filled my eyes.

Spring turned into summer and summer into fall, and the limbs were bare again. I had not discovered a sassafras fortune nor one lone tree. Had the log I cut into earlier in the year been the corpse of the last sassafras? With the cool of autumn, I began to clear around the house again, carefully selecting the trees I left standing for shape, size, and variety. On one side of the house I plotted out a fenced yard for my dogs and a shed to store wood. There were two large white oaks and a medium-sized bitternut hickory I decided to leave. Among the scores of smaller trees and brush in the area I noticed a thin trunk with green limbs. I recalled reading that such green limbs were signs of sassafras. I cut one of the small limbs and smelled a faint sweet odor that could have been sassafras. I decided to spare the small tree, clear around it, and watch its progress.

In the medieval literature, the protagonist often has a time limit to fulfill his quest. A year fits the cyclic nature of quests. Spring came again and the trees sprouted. As that thin-trunk fledgling put on its new foliage, I studied the leaves. Some of them developed into the tri-lobed shape so distinctive of the sassafras. Here was my sassafras fortune.

A few years later, I discovered one more in another corner of my woods. I doubled my fortune. Sassafras, as most trees, do best in open fields. They can grow to a height of sixty feet with a diameter of eighteen inches. The tree pictured in Peattie’s book is large trunked and fully crowned. After thirty years, mine are still somewhat spindly with an arrow-like profile because of the larger trees that overshade them. The one in the dog-yard has grown more. For twenty-five years I fenced it off to prevent damage from the mower or deer rubbing the velvet off their antlers. Finally, it got large enough that I dismantled the fence.

I do not tramp over my woods as much as I did in my younger days, but I still have the South American shaped slice of log on my garage wall and still look for green limbs or tri-lobed leaves when I do stroll around the nine-acre woods. I may yet increase my fortune.

CONTINUED: Tiger Story

The circus loaded up and headed north in the spring.  At their first set-up north of the Florida border, on a wonderfully warm Friday evening as she recalled, the alpha tiger attacked Wesley and bit off his head in front of the entire student population of the Ellabell, Georgia Elementary School. All the kids had a good laugh, thinking it was a neat trick.

I stopped her at this point and said this was just too much.

"Well," she said, "maybe only half of the school's children."

I looked at her intently. "I mean, did the tiger really bite off Wesley's head?"

"Of course it did," she said.

"OK, then go ahead.  What happened next?"
"The tiger spit his head back out," she said.

"I hope you're kidding me," I said

"Oh no.  Spit it right out and it rolled on the ground."

“Really?”

“You didn’t think he was going to swallow it, did you?”

“I never considered whether a tiger would swallow a head,” I said.

“Well, certainly not Wesley’s head,” she said.  “He was a smoker.”

“What about the kids?”

“Even though there were no violent video games back then,” she said, “kids have always refused to believe what they don’t want to believe.”

“That just can’t be,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course, I speak only of the first few seconds after Wesley was chomped.  Then the teachers and a few parents screamed.”

I nodded.  “I’m glad somebody got it, the gravity of the situation.”

“You mean other than Wesley?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“And me.”

“Yes, I’m sorry.  That must have been traumatic.”

“I prayed so hard to St. Francis for Wesley.”

“Yes, I understand,” I said.

“He couldn’t pray for himself,”

“No, of course not,” I said.

“I’m not a very religious woman, but I picked up that whip and started praying to it.”

“I admire you,” I said. “I would have run as far away as possible.”

“But I was prepared for it,” she said.  “Wesley always told me it was a  ‘Hazard of the trade.’ He’d say. ‘No gold fillings for me. Not when they’ll wind up in Bunnie’s stomach.’”

“Bunnie?” I said.

“The alpha tiger,” she said. “She was one nasty tiger.  She’d bite your head off … so to speak.”

“I understand.”

“Or your arm. Two years before, Bunnie jumped through the hoop of fire as Wesley stood holding it up wearing the asbestos glove up to his armpit. Bunnie took his arm with her as she flew through the hoop.”

I was incredulous.  “She bit his arm off?”

“To his shoulder, asbestos and all.”

“So, before he lost his head he was a one-armed tiger tamer?”

“Pretty much.  With a prosthetic left foot.”

“That’s hard to—“

“Kind of balanced him up … no left foot, no right arm.”

“Wait a minute,” I said in protest.  “This killer tiger bites off your lover’s foot, then his arm, and he gets back in the ring and she bites off his head?”

“No, no.” she said. “He lost his foot when the elephant stepped on it.  That’s when he gave up elephant training and took up tigers.”

“I don’t believe—“

“And that’s when he bought St.  Francis.”

“—who didn’t help him keep his head,” I said.

“He never learned to use it correctly,” she said. “You never actually hit a tiger with the whip.”

“You don’t?”

“Of course not.  Are you kidding me?  You’re standing in front of a 500 pound killing machine and you’re gonna hit  it with a whip?  Not a very smart move.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“You snap the whip to the side of the tiger.  Scares ‘em.”

“I’ll bet,” I said.

“Wesley never got it right.  He hit Bunnie in the eye a few times.  Even took off a piece of her ear.”

“No wonder ….”  I said.

“Yeah, I warned him.  ‘Wesley,’ I said, ‘you gotta stop antagonizing that tiger.’”

“With St. Francis,” I said.

“He said he’d pray about it.  He was a  very religious guy.”

A man approached us wearing a dark grey suit, a black shirt and Roman collar.  Crystal said to me, “Meet Wesley, my husband.”

“Thank God you’re alive, Wesley,” I said.

Crystal smiled broadly.  “I was telling him about your life as a tiger trainer, dear.”

“I’m a miracle,” the man said.

I laughed. :”I’d say so, what with your head bitten off.”

“Took almost an hour for them to sew it back on,” he said.

“Is this an act you two practice on unsuspecting strangers?” I asked.

“I’m actually an Anglican priest,” said Wesley, “and  I’ve never even met a tiger.”

I looked at Crystal and she responded.

“The most exciting thing I ever did in my life was to become a part time court stenographer,” she said.

“Why are you here?” I said.

“I’m a new volunteer,” said Crystal, “just like you.”

“She used to dress up as a clown to entertain people,” said Wesley,  “but when her outfits wore out and the price of clown make-up just kept spiraling upward ….”

“And we’re retired,” said the woman.

Wesley nodded his head.. “Yes, we have to be careful with our pennies.

“So, instead,” said the woman, “I tell wild stories.  It’s cheaper, easier and far more fun.”

“Except for that time in Albany when you tried playing an old hooker,” said Wesley.

Crystal gasped and girlishly put a hand to her smiling mouth.  “Who knew I’d get so many offers?”

“Like the John who kidnapped you before I arrived to drive you home.”

“I was gone only for six months, Wesley.”

“Leaving me to put up with Bunnie,” he said.

Crystal’s eyes lit up as she stared off in the distance, somewhere past me and the next continent. 

“I was taken overseas on a tramp steamer,” she said to me, “to ride sea turtles in a carnival that traveled across the Baltic states.”

“You took St. Francis and left me defenseless with a tiger,” he said.

They stopped their conversation abruptly.  Both turned to look at me.

“I’m not a very religious man,” I said.

They continued to stare at me.

“And I’ve never used a whip,” I said.

They said not a word, but continued to look at me.

“Of course,” I said, “there was the time when I mapped the side of a Himalayan mountain and lived with the Sherpa alpine guides for a season.”

“Yes,” said Crystal.  “Yes, go on.”

“I had to learn to fly a helicopter all by myself and …..”

copyright 2015 by David Griffin