CONTINUED: Glamorous

I decided to probe gently but deftly.  Willard would surely be aware his spouse required a hefty investment, that she would need sprucing up before she glided out on that runway of broken dreams.  A few more teeth, at least.  Some extra hair on top would help, plus a new “do,” and more than just a shave and a haircut down at Pete’s. Also,  a beauty contest is probably the wrong event to be obvious about always presenting only one side of her face as she does around the neighborhood, often walking backward to do so.  Gladys is still sensitive to the missing ear lobe O’Reilly’s dog tore off, although  the red scar down the neck could be disguised with makeup.  The earlobe itself would need professional plastic surgery. Willard’s attempts with chewing gum never really worked.  O’Reilly has never offered to help with any expense.  He just complains  about Gladys’ sleepwalking.

Willard can be sensitive, so I did not want to be obvious with my concerns.

“I suppose,” I said, “getting ready for a beauty contest can entail some cost.”

“How do you figure?” Willard replied.

“Well, you know … uh … Gladys may want to get her  hair done.  And a new dress to wear, instead of that “I Love My Laxative” sweat shirt.”

“Nah, I don’t think so,” said the old guy.

“What about a new body brace to straighten her up, Willard?”

“Oh, I think we can get along by bending her old brace back into shape on the fence post.”

“What about travel, Willard.? Where’s the big event, Las Vegas?”

Willard looked sheepish.

“No, in my hometown.”

“That is still a bit of a distance, Willard.”

“Ain’t goin’,” he said

“Who’s not going, Willard.  You are not going?”.

“No need for either of us to go.  It’s all done with pictures.”

“Huh!” was all I could think to say for a  moment.  Then I thought … of course!  What better way to conduct a beauty contest of aging daffodils.  Through the mail!   Why bother with lost old ladies who can’t remember why they got on the airplane or their cranky husbands who can’t find any event but the pole dancing in the bar?   And this was no doubt why I hadn’t heard Willard complain about the cost of teeth and hair and all the expensive  beauty aids that make up supporting a glamorous woman like his 87 year old wife.  He had no doubt discovered the least expensive solution to making Gladys glamorous … Trick Photography!  The simplest trick being to get Betty Lou down at the coffee shop to pose as Willard’s wife for the photo session.

“Still,” I said to Willard without waiting for him to speak, “incidental expenses can mount up.”

“Sure,” he said, “Any investment requires an initial outlay.”

Willard’s vocabulary doesn’t ordinarily include these terms, so I was immediately suspicious about what he’d been reading.

“Oh, I get it,” I said as I rocked back in the porch chair. “They come by and take pictures for a fee.”

“Ain’t no new picture taking needed,” said Willard. “They have all they need from the yearbooks.”

I let that remark hang in the air for a while.

“Willard,” I said after a moment, “tell me what you’ve gotten yourself into now.”

He shifted around in his chair and then said, rather quietly, “Well, you know me and the boys back home get arguing and bragging on the Internet forum we started, ‘The Big Ones.”

“Uh-huh,” I offered.

“Albert is the town librarian now … only ‘cause he works for free … and he suggested a … well, a little wager.”

“Wager, Willard?”

“Like a wager.  More like a beauty contest, of course.”

“Of course, Willard.”

“Anyway, we all decided to kick in $500 each for a $10,000 pot.”

“And …” I said, expectantly.

“Bill Boron, the town mayor, was supposed to look up each of our wives in the 1940’s yearbooks after we paid in our $500. He’d choose the prettiest.”

“What could possibly go wrong with that?” I said with the heaviest sarcasm I could muster.

“He went through all the yearbooks from the 40s and chose Betty Coutant. No one could argue with him.  She was dead to rights the prettiest girl of the decade.”

“But …” I said, with even heavier sarcasm.

“Yeah, ‘But’ …” said Willard, with a forlorn face.

“Let me  guess, Willard.  Betty wasn’t married to any of The Big Ones.”

“She wasn’t married at all,” he said.  “She became a nun.”

“So who got the money, Willard?”

“She did,” said Willard. “She still runs an orphanage in Toledo, and she’s pretty persuasive.”

“You must feel blessed your money went to a good cause.”

“I guess so …”

“But now you’ll have to tell Gladys she won’t be hobnobbing with the Miss Universe girls.”

“That’s the only good part to  this story,” he said.  “I never told Gladys nothing about it.”

“That was smart,” I said. “Nothing?”

“Mostly nothing,” he said. But now she’s wondering why I straightened out her back brace on the fence post.  She thinks I’m taking her out to the movies.”

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David Griffin           copyright 2016

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptrpess.com

CONTINUED: Dragon Breath

A fellow student named Burton was Sister Mary Anthony’s pet and the keeper of all the locked-up chemicals in the lab.  I can’t really tell you how we bribed him into giving us a pinch of the powder because, even years later he would be so embarrassed by the subject of the blackmail that he would probably sue me for writing about his crime of nature.

 Suffice it to say that we obtained a rather large pinch and were able to keep it in a stolen test tube overnight.  The next day,  just before lunch, by which time the boys’ bathroom urinals were always dry, we carefully poured the magnesium powder  toward the rear inside of one of these  ancient porcelain monuments that looked like upended bath tubs, built wide for boys with impaired aiming ability.

"Put more in," said George as he crouched

beside me while I carefully tapped a pinch of magnesium on a dry spot at the bottom of the urinal.

     "No, that's enough, George.  We don't know what more will do and-"

     "What a chicken-shit," he said.  "Let me have the test tube.  I'll show you what a future explosives engineer can do."
     "I thought you wanted to be a car mechanic."
     "It's all about noise," he said, “loud noise.” He would eventually become a drummer in a rock band.  I gave him the test tube and he emptied the entire contents into the urinal.

 Hiding ourselves in one of the nearby pooper stalls (as we boys called them,)  George and I waited and soon our random victim walked in to use the very urinal we  had salted.  We couldn’t have prayed for a better dupe.

 Eddie was a year ahead of us in school and was an excitable kid, being Italian, and rather effeminate to boot.  He was what today one might call a drama queen, and his reaction to any upset was always sure to be over the top.

 Eddie unzipped and whipped it out.  A split second later the boys’ bathroom erupted with a clap of thunder and a blinding purple flash.  Every foot of plumbing pipe rang throughout the building.  Eddie staggered backward, fell down and peed up the wall and across the floor, he even managed to piss up his shirt and tie.  He jumped up and through the purple haze of smoke ran from the scene as if he had just been licked up the front by a fire-breathing dragon.  Not pausing to put himself back in nor to zipper up, Eddie bolted out of the bathroom and down the hall about 30 feet before colliding with Sister Mary Anthony, who was approaching the area at high speed for obvious reasons.

 “Put that thing back in your pants, Mister,” shouted the nun.  I don’t think I have ever heard  the word “thing” pronounced with such malevolence.

 Laughing uproariously,  George and I danced in the pooper stall as the nun came crashing through the bathroom door.  Our stall door opened only inward and the two of us were having a problem getting out.  As Sister’s  feet pounded toward us, George pulled down his pants and sat down on the toilet.  The stall door crashed open,  knocking me backward onto a sitting George who said simply, “He did it, Sister.”

David Griffin                                      Copyright 2007

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CONTINUED: Saltpeter

The bomb didn't work as I hoped it would. I mixed all the ingredients, poured the stuff in a foot-long mailing tube and glued an M-80 firecracker inside as a detonator. Me and my friend George  carried it behind the garage to Mrs. Malozzi’s garden, lit the fuse and ran back behind the corner of the garage. If the bomb had successfully exploded as intended, with approximately two pounds of gunpowder ripping open the afternoon sky, running behind  the corner of the building would have been about as useful as raising an umbrella in a nuclear attack. Half of Cornhill would have felt the shock wave.

The M-80 exploded with a deafening bang, but luckily the ingredients didn't ignite.  Instead, saltpeter  showered over the garden. Turns out saltpeter is also a great fertilizer.  Mrs. Malozzi still talks about how great the tomatoes were that year.

A few days after what George and I would forever refer to as the “Great Fertilization,” Dad was driving me to school  when Peggy Lee’s “Fever”  (when you touch me!) came on the car radio.  Dad reached over and turned it off.  Just to annoy him, I said,

“Nice song.”

“No, it isn’t,” he replied.

There was dead silence for a moment and I always knew what that meant.  We were going to have a talk.

“Mr. Luzeri called me,” he said.  “Seems you bought a lot of  saltpeter.”

I still knew nothing of the chemical’s  withering effect on males.

And you told him it was for me,” he continued.

Surely, Mr. Luzeri didn’t think my father was making bombs!

“But we  figured you bought it for yourself," said my father.  "And you know, saltpeter can be dangerous.”

Could Dad have heard about the explosion in the tomato patch?

“So, David,  I just wanted to say that some things in a boy’s life are very natural and you shouldn’t worry so much about it or use chemicals to ...  well, to dry it up.”

“You mean blow it up, Dad?”

“Well, yes, that too.”

“It was just an experiment, Dad.”

“I’m sure,” he replied.

“I just wanted to see if it worked.”

“Uh huh.”

“And if it did, I was going to write it up for the school newspaper.”

My father slowed the car and brought it to the curb.  He set the brake and turned to  look at me.

“You certainly don’t think they would print it, do you?”

“No, probably not. But they’re always looking for personal experiences.”

“David,” he said, “no school newspaper is going to print a story about a kid who eats a box of saltpeter to keep from having an … an …”

A great light opened in my mind and I understood what we were discussing. I was really embarrassed.  So was he.

“To keep from having,” he began again, “an … an …

I said the word for him, beating him to the punch.

“Yes,” he said, “ that’s what I was going to say.”

Now I understood.  Mr. Luzeri had indeed looked at me very strangely that day.   But  who in their right mind would want to … to dry it up, anyway?

 “David, tell me you are  not going to write it up for the school paper."

“Of course not,” I said.

The rest of the ride was silent.  I wanted to tell him I wasn’t stupid enough to eat all that saltpeter.  That we used the stuff to make a bomb.  But admitting to trying to blow up a tomato patch wasn’t a pleasant thought.

Finally, as we pulled up in front of the school,  I said, “I really didn’t eat a box of saltpeter, you know.”

“I can tell,” he said, “You’re still breathing.”

“And it wasn’t the kind of experiment you’re thinking of.  I just can’t tell you about it.”

“Or you’d have to kill me?”

“Somebody might get killed, yes.”

He sighed, “You’ll be late for school. Why don’t you go and sin no more.”

“Yup, good idea,” I said.  “See you tonight.”

That evening, I quietly marked the pages on gunpowder in the encyclopedia.  I drew a bold circle around  the ingredients list and underlined the word, “saltpeter”  twice.  Then I drew what I hope looked like a tube and wrote “firecracker” on it.  I was never sure Dad came across it as I had intended, but years later as my wife and I were leaving for our honeymoon,  he hugged me goodbye and said,  “Don’t eat any firecrackers tonight.”

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Copyright by David Griffin, 2008

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

.www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Sister Cliodhna's House Warming

Before joining her  order  of nuns she had been an iron worker on the bridges of Belfast for three years following high school, but lost her job as The Troubles in Derry swung into a higher gear. .  Cliodhna was laid off as more men became available in Belfast, men whose real motive in moving from the country had been to come to town and shoot at each other or blow up each other's families.  On the surface, the main issue between the mobs  appeared to be a  theological debate their ancestors had thought important enough to kill over.  But the real reasons lie in class and money.  Losing the job was particularly unfortunate for Cliodhna.  Her strong physique and  can-do manner meshed nicely with the welding occupation and she fit  in well with her burly co-workers.  But in addition to the loss of a career she loved, she was now broke.
     In the poverty that was Derry, Cliodhna looked in her wallet and then at the Irish boys surrounding her.  Discarding the idea of marrying any of them, she decided to become a nun.  Such was a fairly common ticket out of poverty for many of the Irish and they often worked on overseas assignments.  Shipped off to America by the Sisters of Hope (whom she often referred to as the Daughters of Drudgery)  Cliodhna came on a June day in the early 1960's to the Anglican Children’s Home of Our Savior at Utica, where Our  Savior was hopefully planning to save the building from collapse. 

When she arrived, the orphanage was in chaos,  steered crookedly by less than a  dozen nuns who were terrifically disorganized.  Younger children ran around half dressed, meals were tantamount to bedlam and the nuns had no idea who was in charge and often argued about whose job was whose.

At the sisters’ community meeting on Cliodhna’s fourth night at the orphanage, after volunteering a  particularly apt summation of the problems she saw, the ironworker from Belfast was elected Mother Superior.  “But I’ve only been in the Habit for 3 years and I’m the youngest here,” she said to the outgoing  Sister Superior Alfred who would now gladly lay down her scepter of power and with it all the complaints, petty arguments and normal bickering heard in any convent.  “Sissy-shit,” Cliodhna called it.

The nuns at the orphanage were unique in the mostly working class Catholic city.  Called Episcopalians by the townspeople, the sisters were actually professed in the Church of Ireland, a close cousin to Anglicanism.  They had been enlisted at the turn of the last century by Utica’s upper crust Protestants to run the orphanage built by a local benefactor. Though Our Savior’s charges were mostly Catholic children, the bourgeoisie had been very happy to find Protestant nuns, even if they had to be imported. 

It wasn’t long before the home was running like a well adjusted time piece.  It turned out that Sr. Cliodhna had just the right touch with people, nuns especially, knowing when to cajole and reason and when to scream and kick ass.  When the new Superior was in a mood, the sisters would step sprightly through their chores and work harmoniously together even though they had been arguing only 30 minutes earlier.

At night when she retired, the young nun worried about how she could lead the women in their care for the children, dealing with the individual tragedies that had brought each child to Our Savior’s door.   From where would the money come to fix the sagging floor under the dining room?  Was she helping her sisters to live a life of service?  And helping them to a closeness to each other and to God?

                          ==============

September always brought the bittersweet combination of  chaos and relief as the summer ended and the children went back to school.  Not that the nuns would take a vacation.  With the children no longer underfoot in the daytime,  floors were to be scrubbed and waxed, rooms painted and other chores accomplished against the coming winter.

Sr. Cliodhna  spent the final week of August ensuring each child was enrolled in either a public or Catholic school.  Sister Romula at the nearby Catholic elementary spoke of the possibility of having to charge tuition to Our Savior’s orphans in the coming years to cover expenses.  The bitch, thought Cliodhna.

     Cliodhna’s conversations with various institutions in the community from whom she tried to enlist financial support became more urgent.  On a Wednesday morning she visited the middle-aged president of a local bank where she voiced a need for money to fix the sagging floor in the dining room.  Mr. Bentingham nodded his head sagely as if he had a great understanding of  floors and orphans, but didn’t appear to be forthcoming with cash.  “I’m sure it’s a struggle,” he said

      Cliodhna’s blood boiled.  A struggle?  This blue-blooded ijit hadn’t the slightest idea what happened in the real world of broken lives, orphaned children and dwindling finances.  She fumed inside.

 The nun stood and squared her shoulders, then loomed over the man.  “You’re coming with me, “she said. She took him by the ear and told him they were going for a ride.  Half laughing, he left the bank babbling about how he hadn’t been pulled out of his seat by the ear since his mother died ten years before.

In her medieval Habit with a 3 foot Rosary hanging from her waist, Sr. Cliodhna declined the banker’s offer of a two martini lunch and led him straight to the cellar under the sagging floor.  She pointed up at the steel beams that ran from the brick foundation across the expanse of ceiling above the dirt floor.

“The beams are partly rusted,  Mr. Bentingham”

she told the banker.

“Call me Brent,” he said.

“We’ve stopped the rainwater leaks.  All I need are lots of  diamond-plate steel butts to scab the beams and a few lolly columns for temporary support.”

“How much money?” asked Brent.

“About four hundred, maybe.”

“Including labor?”

“No,” she said.

Sr. Cliodhna knew she needed more than donations.  She wanted people from the community to invest themselves in the Children’s Home of Our Savior.  Not just for the money.  The home had no friends.  Sister Cliodhna looked at Brent.  He appeared in decent physical shape. 

“Me?” asked the banker.

“You could use the exercise, Brent. You do the lifting and I’ll do the welding.”

Brent brought along men friends from his club the following Saturday.  They were dressed in their old clothes, last season’s tennis tops and shorts.  Cliodhna sent them home to put on long pants, concerned about the flying sparks.  It was enough to worry about setting Our Savior ablaze while welding without having to be concerned about tender shins.  Cliodhna wore her nun’s headpiece and coveralls buttoned to the neck.  It was difficult managing the welder’s helmet, but she succeeded.   She allowed Brent to try a little welding and transferred the hood to his head, but soon realized he was messing up his lap joints and she relegated  him back to carrying steel plates.

Wives arrived at  noon bearing dishes of food for the workers.  Brent proudly told everyone of his welding work.  After the club lunched in the cellar on the dirt floor, sitting on broken furniture and overturned ash cans, a few wandered upstairs to visit with the children.

Sister Cliodhna was relieved to have the floor shored up and to have members of the community helping out.  She hoped that eventually she would attract a mix of people here and not only the tennis club.  It would do them all  as much good as it would the children.  She realized that a new facet of  Our Savior was being revealed: the orphanage as a focal point for  those who had a heart to be with the children and hopefully with each other.

Brent was quite proud of himself.   He would never admit it, but it was the first honest labor he had done in his life.  Smiling broadly, he asked Cliodhna,   “So, did I do well?”

“Yes,” she replied,”thank you so much.”

“How about my welding,” he asked, “what would the  Belfast bridge welders say about it?  Good, huh?”

The nun looked around to make sure no one would hear.

”We would say, ‘For a banker, me son, you’ve got quite a pair of iron ones.’ ”

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copyright 2007 David Griffin

The Windswept Press

CONTINUED: Virginia

Virginia

Let’s get one thing out of the way right up front.  The first thing I noticed about Virginia when she was introduced to me in the library as the new 3rd Assistant  Librarian was she was built like Sophia Loren from the neck down.  The second thing I noticed was she was at least 15 years older than me, quite a bit since  I was just turning 19.  And the next thing I noticed was she really wasn’t pretty in the conventional “cute” style of the Sixties.  Her beauty was more classic.  Such is the way young men put important things in order.

You have to remember in 1962, college librarians weren’t wearing provocative attire or showing a little cleavage when reaching over the desk to stamp a return date in the back of your book.  Virginia, who had the bearing of  a princess,  wore a modest flowery dress on the day we met, covering her from her knees to about her Adam’s apple, flouncey in the fashion of the day, with those multi-layered things under the skirt-part to add bulk and let a woman swish around like Loretta Young entering a room.  The undergarments resembled a stack of huge Mr. Coffee filters hanging upside down around the waist.  (I should have been a fashion writer.)   Her figure pushed out the top of her dress in the auto-bumper style so popular at the time. 

Do you remember when adults stood out from a crowd of kids instead of looking like them?  Well, Virginia looked like a Lady, and you could easily spot her in a library filled with younger women students who seemed never able to find any clothing but a  sweat shirt and jeans when they crawled out of bed in the morning.  My friend Bob and I were convinced  a young woman in our History of Civilization class owned exactly one sweat shirt and a pair of jeans.  We imagined she washed them out in the janitor’s sink in the closet at the end of the hall each week

. So to be among the unisex girls in my classes all day and then come to my part-time job in the college’s library to sit in a small back office inscribing Dewey Decimal numbers on the backs of books in the presence of  Lady Virginia was like being let into the castle and brought to the Queen.

I almost fell down on one knee the first time I went to meet her in her little cubicle.   Here I was, probably in my favorite outfit of brown checked shirt, prison green chinos, orange shoes my father gave me after he bought them at a discount store and decided he could live without them.  And either my absolute favorite British tan cardigan sweater with a few buttons missing or my even more absolute favorite Lineman’s Coat.  The latter wasn’t very pretty but it could withstand a jolt of 50,000 volts,  should I brush up against  a high-tension power line cable as I walked to class.  To do so, of course, I’d have to be near 60 feet tall, since the high voltage lines were at strung along the tops of the poles.

And there was Virginia, seated elegantly on her desk chair, legs crossed, back straight, turned partially toward me as I stood frozen in the doorway.  She had the best posture I have ever seen in a woman, and I’m not making a joke.  It was sexy.  If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean.

She bade me enter, take up a scriber and get to work.  As an official librarian, it was her job in that day long ago to quickly skim a book’s end covers, decide on the Dewey classification and sub-classification, hand the book over and tell me the numbers.  As an unofficial but devoted peon, it was my job to scribe the decimals on the book’s spine using a hot, pointed instrument and a special white tape.  It smelled awful when the heated scriber pressed against the tape.  I thought of it more as branding than labeling.

Virginia’s manner and movements were extremely feminine,  just short of cartoon-ish.   I’ve often wondered if such femininity is inborn or learned in a woman.  From wherever it came, it was delicious.  Just to watch her open a book, tilt her head to read the inscriptions and then push the volume across the desk to me would generate a tingle.  Unintended, she had a provocative way of pushing the book.  Or it could have been my imagination.

Virginia had a profusion of hair I wanted to wake up lost in some morning. Of course, I’d have to her explain to her husband what I was doing in their bed.  She arrived at the library in the morning with every strand in place, but as the day progressed it came slightly undone.  I loved it that way and was happy I worked with her afternoons when her hair seemed so inviting to me.  

She had in any case a regal appearance, but her manner was anything but frosty.  She was very friendly and helpful, even sweet.  I felt at ease the first time I worked with her.  She loved to talk, but more important, she loved to listen.  She withstood my dimwitted  chatter as I wielded my branding iron across the backs of unsuspecting books, scribing with my best penmanship as I held forth with one story or another to somehow insinuate my own glory.  She was always encouraging, even suggesting my piano work might be good.  She loved people.  Maybe too much, as it turned out.

In 1957, Virginia had married the general manager of her father’s large lumber company in Illinois.  Maybe it was somehow arranged, I don’t know, but I thought Ted got a good deal when he married the boss’s daughter.  Becoming a matron by definition only,  she worked for a local high school in  Alto Pass, IL near the Trail of Tears State Forest,  as a certified librarian while Ted wheeled and dealed lumber contracts and futures and got sicker and sicker of business and suits and butt-licking and quotas and sales and forest inventory and the status quo until he came home one night and told her he was quitting and was going to become a Boy Scout.  “Aren’t you too old?” she asked.

But Ted meant he wanted to become a professional administrator for the Boy Scouts of America.  Planning, organizing and executing were his métier, he believed, and he would feel better about himself if he could use those talents for a worthwhile cause, in this case the instilling of basic values in youths, which he knew to be more than just showing kids how to start a fire with two sticks.  “Where are the Boy Scout headquarters?” Virginia asked.  “Well,” said Ted, “I would have to begin in a field office and there is an opening in Utica, NY.  It’s a medium size city in the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York.”

“How much would you earn?” she asked.

“It’s a very scenic valley,” said Ted.

Virginia told me when she went to bed on the night of Ted’s announcement, she couldn’t make up her mind if she was thrilled or terrified.  She may have been brought up in luxury, she hinted, but her math skills were good enough to reckon  they would not have anything like the same life style to which they were accustomed.   She knew Ted would cope, if only by dint of his steel clad  will power.  She frankly had never cared much for the cars and toys and club memberships they had only mildly enjoyed.  Still awake at 2 a.m., she decided these amenities  had really been burdens.   By 4 a.m., she was rehearsing life with a meager income and by 6 a.m. she had begun to have thoughts about people in poverty and in trouble and how she might be of service to them in some small way while Ted worked with his Scouts.  By breakfast, she had decided to become a sort of Mother Theresa, except no one knew of Mother Theresa back then, but you know what I mean.

Virginia and Ted, leaving behind  a very disappointed father-father-in-law, arrived in Utica during the week before Christmas of  1961 and rented a flat  in a two-family house on Utica’s rapidly deteriorating Near West Side, down the street from the Tub of Suds bar everyone mistook for a Laundromat.  It was quite common to see a man or woman enter the Tub carrying a basket of dirty clothes, look around and then leave.  Ted began work at the BSA Field Office on the day after Santa Claus somehow brought a new couch down the chimney from Illinois.  For the time being, it was their only furniture, other than the bed and the kitchen table and chairs.  Ted wore his Boy Scout Uniform to work each day and to any official BSA business in the community.  Long pants in the winter, short pants in the summer,  it included a larger version of the official shirt, a bright yellow neckerchief and the Scout  “overseas” cap he seldom wore, topped by a tan raincoat with a zip-in liner for those frigid Mohawk Valley winters.

Almost immediately,  Virginia began to invite the neighbors in for spaghetti dinners and ice cream evenings.  Drunks, bums and heroin addicts mixed it up  with welfare mothers and “uncles”  while Dvorak and Mahler pounded out a beat on the record player.  After a plate of spaghetti or a Fudgesicle, many would head out to find their dealers,  pimps or children. 

At the library, Virginia took on the role of an aunt I might have preferred over those given to me in the natural course of events.  Very, very gently she began to offer suggestions to me regarding my clothing, figures of speech and other mannerisms.  These were niceties I thought were silly,  but had little understanding of their importance.  I still don’t.  But who could refuse the counsel of a real woman with such great posture?

One afternoon as Virginia and I enjoyed a nice change of scene standing guard at the checkout desk,  a young woman with flaming red hair and a mischievous twinkle in her eye approached with a book and asked if it had been me she’d seen playing in a band at a local beer joint the previous Friday night.  “What was the song you were singing?” she asked.  A bit tongue tied and embarrassed, I replied, “It’s called ’I Need Your Body’….but the song wasn’t my idea.”  Red Hair seemed disappointed I was wimping on the issue and left with her stamped book, but  not before I noticed, among other things,  she was wearing a skirt.  Virginia moved over to me and said,  “What a nice girl, do you know her?”

“No,” I said, “and she’s not my type.” 

Which could  have been true, but Virginia didn’t think so and Red Hair and I have now been married for over 45 years and she still gets a twinkle in her eye.  I’ve  come to know it means she wants to go shopping.

Virginia’s solo Mother Theresa Act came to a close just before I graduated the following year.  Not surprisingly,  too many folks took advantage of her and in a couple of instances  the circumstances got downright dangerous.  I say “not surprisingly” from my perspective of approaching old age, but I should remember we all felt the need to minister at one time or another in our lives.  Some of us still do, but we are a bit smarter about it now.

To her credit, Virginia was not in the least regretful about her Near West Side experience.  Nor did she feel awkward about her and Ted buying a modest home in New Hartford, a suburb south of Utica..  She continued to work with the less fortunate, but within the more organized framework of a Not-For-Profit agency.

I have no idea if Virginia and Ted continue to live in Utica …. I doubt it …. but I can say each was a thread in the fabric that held together those in the community who cared.  They weren’t interested only in what they could buy or sell.  They wanted to know where they could help.   And even today, there are a good number of people like Virginia who contribute where they are able without fanfare, though they’re seldom seen in the news media or discussed in the public sphere.  They live in many different neighborhoods and either work for a living or are retired.   No doubt some are at the library. 

You never know.  Look for a woman with absolutely great posture and a few strands of hair out of place.

David Griffin,              copyright by, 2007

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CONTINUED: Anthropology

 I enjoyed myself there, it’s true, but my cranial nerves don’t have the stamina for this kind of festivity.  I tried to make small talk, but I don’t do well when four people are talking into each other’s faces all at once and changing topics by the second.  

Trying to bend the subject away from why Aunt Domenica’s biscotti was  too soft,  I remarked I had noticed something in the chorus line of 5-year-old boys strumming toy  guitars back at the graduation.  Three out of 11 were left handed, but I wasn’t able to correlate that fact with how their hair was parted because they all had brushcuts.  Well, that brought a  momentary halt to the biscotti conversation, I can tell you.

Taking a seat out on the deck, I looked around feeling a bit like Temple Grandin in the book , “An Anthropologist on Mars.”  My son, who likes to play the anthropologist  sometimes,   also appeared uncomfortable.   I explained to him Italian family life, even at rest,  is  sort of like a party where someone has put speed in the punch.  I knew, because I had grown up in an Italian neighborhood.  He gave me the now-familiar look that  says, “Why do you still feel the need to explain things to me when I’m forty years old?”  Well, because I’m Irish, I guess.  I suspect he  believes there is Nytol in our family’s  punch.

My son-in-law…..who turned out to be  more than  a father-in-law could ask for….is neither noisy nor loud.  And he is the best papa I’ve ever met.  Far better than I was,  I think.  Watching him calmly grill the hot dogs while keeping an eye on his little girls, I drifted off into a peaceful state until Aunt Domenica came over to me and asked why I didn’t like her biscotti.  Not enough red sauce, I said.  That ended that conversation, I can tell you.

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David Griffin                            copyright 2007                          

CONTINUED: Faith & Tolerance

Except for electricity and indoor plumbing,  the Ardent Brothers have owned the old mansion but never improved the place for almost 90 years. The dilapidated Chapter House is about to fall down, but the land it sits on at the top of the mountain is quite valuable and the monks’ superiors back in Ireland want to kick the monks out and sell it for cash.

By the way, when each monk professes his vows he chooses a patron saint.  It is the tradition of the order, and no one knows why, that the saint is a woman.  Brother Jesse is actually Brother Saint Jessica of Galilee, one of the women who accompanied Mary Magdelene to the tomb on Easter morning.

The monks often use male nicknames for each other, calling each other Kickstart or Bouncer or Harpo in their private conversations, whispered outside the hearing of the abbot.

Oddly enough, they employ a “cloister” of complete silence only in the daytime, from just after breakfast to before supper.  The opposite would be more useful for working together during the day.  Less confusion would ensue if they could speak to each other normally, rather than in grunts and sign language. 

Jesse writes:

When I was elected Abbot, a role I certainly did not want, I became the leader of our little band of eleven monks.  I’ve been Abbot here for only a few months and I can’t say I like it.  Our superiors back in Ireland want to sell the place to pay off their European debts.  If they do,  I think they will disband us ... kick us out on the road.  And even if that never happens, I worry about our lack of food supplies and money.  Now more than ever I need faith.

As the abbot, I find myself spending time with one brother or another who might be having  what can be called a crisis in faith.  I have spent my entire life analyzing the various doctrines of my church and for reasons I don't fully understand they have become far less important to me as I grow older.  I’m afraid I don’t have much patience any more for those who agonize over their doubts.  There are some who are in constant turmoil about   a) the existence of God,  b) God’s plans for the universe, and  c) whether He’s going to send them to hell.  That’s an awful way to spend one’s time, let alone one's life.   I think we can assume that an entity who so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son could certainly be trusted to have your best interests at heart.  Do you think Christ hung on a cross angry over your impure thoughts?

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As I age, I worry less about  my soul.  I think it will do what it is meant to do.   I am more afraid for my heart.  By heart, I mean that part of me that feels someone's agony other than my own.  It’s the only part of me that stands a chance of leaving this world in better condition than when it got here.

ven though my creeds were unraveling, The person who may have taught me the most about living a life of faith is Dolly Parton. She told an interviewer (Larry King) who asked if she was a believer that she had decided she was, but didn't feel like it every day.  But she could act like it, and base her decisions on it.  I could spend years in theology classes and not come up with a better plan for how to live a life of faith. It's not always easy, of course. I’m quite sure everyone who seeks the spiritual life runs into a brick wall now and then.  Brother Bilhilda, who we call Bouncer, and who is the  mad scientist who fixes our toilets, laughingly says most of us have a deep and abiding faith that .... comes and goes. 

0

I have been mentoring Brother Saint Winifred of Gwytherin in Denbigshire.  Since that would be quite a mouthful when cheering him on in softball game, we just call him Kickstart.

Kick  is the youngest of our brothers.  He raced motorcycles after getting a degree in Antiquities.  Seven years in a library will do that to a man.

 I once asked him if he was a Hells Angel and amphetamine distributor, but the 31 year old Brother only laughed at that suggestion.  Kick tells me he wasn't given a choice of patron saints and doesn't care much for Saint Winifred, who he says (from what he's read) reminds him of his fifth grade teacher.  Instead ... behind her back, I guess ... he prays to Saint Gunda of Sandeck.  She was a member of the Polish Royal Family a few hundred years ago.  I've never heard of her, and for all I know she is the patron saint of land taxes and public executions.  But Kick says she was also known for her patience.  Maybe I should pray to her, too.

Kickstart and I took  on the project of trying to keep the porch from falling off the front of our Chapter House.  We have no materials, but if we let it go any longer , visitors will have to use a step ladder to come in our front door.

I do not at all like outdoor chores after the first frost.  It’s damned cold out there and my arthritis is bound to flare up, as I told Kickstart.  He wasn’t listening.  He worked in a light jacket while I bundled up in a ratty old down coat.

 “Jesse," he said, "I think we’re doomed."

“You mean like we’re going to be hit by a Protestant comet or  find out Fulton Sheen came back from the dead and became Pope?”  I asked.
“You know what I mean,” he said.

“I do know what you mean, but I have no answer.”

"They're going to throw us out.  I know it," he said.

I didn't tell Kick, but that's exactly what  I worry about. 

“Where are you going to live, Jesse?”  he asked.

“Maybe I’ll apply for assistance or maybe I’ll get a job in a store,”
I said, “and get a room down in the village … I don’t’ know.  After all, I don’t have far to go.  You have an entire life ahead of you, Kick.”
“My life is here on this mountain," he said.  "I’m staying.”

“Well, you can’t,"  I told him.

“In the woods,” he said.  “I’ll stay in the woods.”

I sneered. “A real Desert Father, huh?” 

“Jesse,” he said , “everything I learned about my life and myself and God is here on this mountain.”

“God isn't just on this mountain,”  I said.

“What I know of him is,”  said Kick.

I can easily make my experience of God a head trip, purely and conveniently a construction of my mind.  I forget that he is in his creation,  which includes me, my body, my heart, everything and everyone around me and even my desires..  When I long for Grandma’s special gravy and biscuits from sixty years ago on a Sunday afternoon, God is in that somehow.  I can’t tell you how.  I only know it to be true after years of trying meditate on what’s in my heart and coming up with chicken and dumplings.

0

Even though my creeds were unraveling, I had to have a faith of some kind to become a monk, of course.  But we each get to where we’re going by a different route.  So don’t think that during college all I did was study my Bible.  I also played in a rock and roll band.  Not very well, I might add.

And I’d say I had an ordinary young adulthood. I dated girls, got drunk on occasion and eventually became a contemplative monk. I’m not saying all my brothers traveled the same route as me. Some of them never came closer to sex than Playboy magazine, that staple of young manhood that taught us what women really looked like with their clothes off. Really.

I lost my intense religiosity halfway through high school and never regained it. To this day I am not religious in that sense, nor are my brothers here at Our Lady of West Saugerties. Neither are we necessarily zealots for any given set of finely constructed beliefs. (Those are the folks we call “Jesuits.”)  We are simply men who have been chosen by a God with a sense of humor to lead a life of prayer and contemplation. And in doing so we discover our relationship with him … or her, if you want.

Many people have been given their beliefs. As a Catholic schoolboy, I received my faith as gift with strings attached. I gave it back years ago and now I have to work hard to discover my own faith, His plan for my understanding what he wants from me. It’s a job. That’s why I call it a vocation.

0

Here’s my latest heresy.

If God were a short order cook, we’d never be hungry.

If God were an accountant, everyone would get what they deserved.

If God were a doctor, everyone would enjoy excellent health.

If God were a teacher, we’d all be worried about Report Cards.  But from what I’ve seen in the world, not many are worried about their Report Cards.

If God were a policeman everyone would be in a lot of trouble and if God were a judge everyone would be damned.

But God is none of those.  He is bigger than the familiar. He’s larger than life.  So I’m thinking He must be a cowboy.  When you consider it, He almost has to be. He’s extremely courteous and won’t push himself forward unless invited.  He’s always mending fences.  I see Him out on the range  under a huge sky full of stars waiting for his doggies to bed down while he sings them to sleep. 

And only a cowboy would say, “There, there, little darlin’” when with tears in our eyes we get down on our knees to pray.  Or more often to complain

OK, you can laugh at my simple way of thinking about God, but the Truth is I really don’t know what God is like to you.  And my job in life is to find out what He is to me.

0

I have a tendency to be dismissive of anyone's faith that doesn't agree with my mental conception of God and how he operates.  I was brought up with a modern mental approach to what my contemporaries called religion.  There were these basic rules of the road concerning God and if your religion or practice didn't agree with them you were a heathen or no better than one.  I haven't the slightest idea where I got the authority to be the judge and jury of how the supreme ruler of the universe chose to witness himself to any one individual.  It was as if God had to first check with me before revealing himself to my neighbor. 

Given my  capacity  to make mistakes, I can now admit such a balance of powers didn't make any sense.  If God had to always wait upon my say-so, the creation of the world would still be a great plan that I'd look into when I found the time on my next three day  holiday weekend.  Let There Be Light might get done, but not much else.  Mountains and oceans and elephants would be still floating around the universe waiting to be attached to something.

But the Truth is God told us a long time ago He wasn’t planning on waiting around for us to catch up with Him as He continued to reveal himself.  Jesus told Nicodemus. “⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’  And then Jesus told him about the Wind.  It blows where it chooses. You can’t catch it.  It catches you.

0

You know,  I've lived for 35 years up here on the mountain the Indians called Onteora, The Land In The Sky.  So it appeared to them as they gazed up from the valley below.  Tonight it may still be pleasant down there.  But up here on the peak ... in cowboy land ... a white mantle of snow covers the blue-green hemlocks.  The moon has risen and the bare maples glisten black in the cold damp air.    Clouds scraped by the mountain top from the bottom of the sky  drift away like ships leaving without us. Tonight my brothers and I lie shivering on our cots while sleet and snow pelt the windows, and  the wind has its way with our creaking old house.

The spirit blows where it chooses and you don’t know where it’s been or where it’s going.

But I know one thing.   He is taking care of us as we bed down.  And when the wind howls past the eaves and moans down through the holes in the roof, I know that God is singing us to sleep.

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The  Windswept  Press

Murrells Inlet,

South Carolina

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