Melbo Miller

I am afraid of railroad tracks. I get the chills when I even see them. Feeling that gruesome double bump when I drive over the tracks makes my skin shiver. I've got Melbo Miller to thank for my phobia.

Melbo was a typical junior hi kid. The type the other kids called a geek, although he'd be labeled a dweeb or a nerd these days. Not that Melbo was particularly smart when it came to his school work. He was an indifferent student. But he had hidden passions and a wealth of secret knowledge.

Melbo was the definitive expert on plastic toy soldiers and Revell model warships. Melbo could quote serial numbers and ship displacement. He knew the difference between a 30 mm cannon and a 16 inch gun. He knew how to follow a model's complex schematic. He had 1/125 scale down pat. Melbo had fought all the major battles of WW II in miniature in his backyard. He was a toy soldier Patton and war was his obsession.

Melbo was an odd looking adolescent, big for his age (13), with grossly over sized feet and ape long arms. He was big, but he wasn't flabby. He consistently beat me in arm wrestling. I was awed my his biceps. He could make them bulge and twitch. He'd put one of these green plastic mine sweeper soldiers on his forearm (he used mine sweepers because they had a broad base and were easy to balance( and twitch the little green guy off through space.

Melbo had a complexion like a battle scared mine field, pitted bumpy discolored, his skin was a teenage mess. It drove me crazy that his nose and chin would be covered with blackhead, huge ones ready to burst. How could he stand it? I spent a good deal of every evening squeezing and swabbing, using hot wash clothes to open up the pores and pushing at the nasty little volcanoes with pinching fingers. I'd follow up with then a hot stinging alcohol rub and the Clearasil treatment. But not Melbo. He didn't care about his complexion and you could tell.

All Melbo cared about was building models, playing army, and running his trains. Melbo was real interested in trains.

When my folks said I could spend the night at Melbo Millers house, they'd made a big mistake but I didn't realize it at the time.

Melbo told me a lot about his army battles, but I'd never been a combatant. Now I had a chance to see his army in action. We set up the army men in the back yard, working them into the cover of the shrubs, making dirt walls for the riflemen, setting up the green plastic troops in defensive positions. The kneeling bazooka man was next to a rock. A line of mine sweepers were on the edge of the lawn. A crouching radio man made his report to headquarters from a blackened rose bush. Melbo had legions of the little soldiers; their arms spread, tiny plastic faces grimacing under the strain of tossing a grenade at the enemy.

He carefully dug a trench out of the lawn with a kitchen spoon. We placed each of the grenade throwers in the trench, about 6 inches apart. They became our first line of defense. Scattered behind the lines were numerous jeeps with officers on board. Finally we laid out a line of tanks and howitzers. The heavy guns covered us from sneak attack, the tanks were hidden in the weeds to turn the flank of the enemy force.

Melbo was every inch the general while we laid out all these troops, I was a lowly lieutenant. Rank didn't matter; after all it was his house, and we were both lost in the fantasy of charging troops and toy war heroism. I remember Melbo's intense concentration as he balanced an officer on a rock. The figure was looking through field glasses. It was one of the soldiers that had a small base and would always fall over. Melbo's eyes were magnified behind his thick horn rim glasses. His eyes crossed and the tip of his tongue darted lizard like from his lips.

"Richard! You and Dennis come in now, it's time for dinner."

Melbo's mom never called him by his nickname. In fact she hated the name Melbo, which made it tough when she was around, You could slip so easy and call him Melbo. She'd grimace. "His name is Richard. Remember that! Richard! " Mrs. Miller always seemed like she was in pain, like she'd just heard something that had hurt her. She had a whiny voice. I asked Melbo once how he got his nickname but he didn't know. Melbo had been Melbo for as long as he could remember.

After dinner we went into the backyard to play with our setup. It was getting dark the best time of day to play. The heat is starting to fade. The sky turned colors, and the low sunlight made everything a luminous muted tone. The army was casting long shadows, they looked cool dug into Melbo's back yard. We made air raids with rocks, dropping stone bombs on the troops, rattling machine guns trilled off our tongues. We flicked soldiers down and scored the battle with muted screams and death cries. The battle wore down. Most of the soldiers had been knocked over. It got dark and we went in the house to watch T.V.

***

Later that night Melbo whispered " Let's go out and finish the battle." He had a crazed look in his eyes. His voice quavered a bit. I didn't get what he was so excited about, but it was Melbo's house so I went along. It was dark out now, just a thin slice of moon showing in the sky. As we walked across the dark lawn I felt and heard a squishy crunching sound. Ugh snails! If you held your head at an angle you could see the silver of their tracks. Melbo just laughed and stomped on several more. He grinned as he ground them into the grass. The snail shells snapped in the moonlight. Melbo laughed again.

The snails had moved in among our troops. Their tracks crisscrossed a fallen rifleman. A Snail oozed over the hood of a jeep. The slimy things had rolled right over the tanks. Melbo looked at me and giggled. His glasses reflected back the crescent moon. "Looks like we got infiltrators!" There was an urgency in his voice. He ran for the back door of the garage, returning with a long aerosol can. "Hairspray" he whispered. A flame jumped out of his hand. He held the lighter up in front of my face and flicked it on several times. "Have you ever made a flame thrower out of hair spray?" I shook my head no in open mouth wonder.

Melbo got down on his hands and knees, carefully positioning himself in front of the line of grenade throwers. The snails were in the trench. A dozen oozed along the scoop in the lawn. Melbo flicked the lighter and held it in front of the spray nozzle. Two feet of roaring blue flame jumped from the can, bathing the trench in fire.

I jumped back, scared. "Jeeze Melbo, your mom is gonna catch us." I was scared of the fire. Kids weren't supposed to play with fire. I glanced at the sliding glass doors on the other side of the patio. I could see the blue rectangle of the flickering T.V set. His mom and dad had to see the flames.

Melbo didn't say anything. He was concentrating on smoking the snails and troops with repeated bursts from the flame-thrower. A grenade man's arms were beginning to bend and melt, already the strained look on his plastic face had dripped away. The snails curled up into their shells when the flames touched them. Then as the water inside their bodies boiled, the shells snapped apart in a black ooze.

"Knock it off Melbo." I felt very uneasy. It was a mean thing to do. But Melbo just kept blasting the snails & melting his troops. The bursts of flame were so large I couldn't believe his parents were still in there in front of the TV. set. "Melbo! Your folks will be out here and catch us any minute. "

Melbo breathed through his mouth. "My parents don't care. I do this all the time."

Flames jumped from his hands, setting a few blades of grass on fire while the soldiers melted. "You wanna try it? Its fun."

I shook my head no. The air was heavy with the sickly sweet smell of hot hairspray, burnt plastic and roasted snails. I didn't want to watch anymore and went back into the house. Melbo came to get me when the hairspray can was empty.

"Come on, let's put some ships out on the pool!"

Melbo was good with models. He'd built several destroyers, a flattop and a battle ship. The guns were all painted silver, the bottoms of the gray boats were painted black with a red stripe at the water line. He had the decals on straight and there were hardly any glue smears. It had taken time to build these models.

We took the ships out to the edge of the pool. Melbo flipped on the pool light and the water turned pale blue. Normally Revell ship models were lousy for floating, they were top heavy and would capsize immediately. But Melbo had weighted the hulls with clay and heavy washers. The boats dropped down in the water and sailed across the pool with an easy shove. I got on one side of the pool, Melbo was on the other. We cruised the ships back and forth over the pool water.

We talked about school, and T.V., models and which boats or planes we wanted to build. Melbo had built the Visible Man. The man stood in a corner of his room. You could look through the clear plastic skin and see all the internal organs. " My mom's gonna get me the visible woman. She's about two feet tall and 'anatomically correct'... " He said that last part like he'd memorized the pronunciation. "You can see everything,." Melbo was looking kind of dreamy.

"You're a goof Melbo, you just want to look at her things!" I laughed at him and shoved the aircraft carrier at him. It swerved half way across the pool and drifted side ways in the middle of the pool.

Melbo was embarrassed for a moment. To cover his thoughts he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flat square package. He motioned me over. He covered the package in both hands and made a big show of revealing it.

"Firecrackers!" Melbo laughed. The crackers were wrapped in a dark waxy paper. All of the fuses were twined together. Melbo looked at me and then ran back into the house. This time he had scotch tape. "Let's see how the Navy takes a bombardment."

I couldn't believe it. Firecrackers! My folks would kill me for having firecrackers and Melbo was talking about shooting them off in the back yard at night with parents just a few yards away. "Don't worry about it, I do it all the time. " He was so casually sincere I knew he wasn't bluffing.

We taped a bundle of firecrackers to the deck of a destroyer. The thin paper tube was placed just behind the forward turret. Melbo lit the fuse and shoved it into the center of the pool. The fuse sputtered and smoked but the firecracker didn't go off. The destroyer was just floating there in the center of the pool. "Rats!" Melbo muttered as he reached for the boat with the leaf scoop.

Just as he got the net on the destroyer it blew. The explosive cracking sound punched the water. The turret tore through the scoop net and flew fifteen feet into the air, splashing down in the shallow end of the pool. Over the next hour we destroyed the whole fleet. Just as Melbo had promised, his parents never came to investigate the explosions and bursts of light that rocked backyard far into the night. I couldn't believe we were getting away with this stuff.

The evening ended, predictably, with a bang. We'd already destroyed about three quarters of his toys when Melbo returned to his room and brought out a big rubber band powered balsa wood plane. It had wide wings and a red plastic prop. Wire struts with black rubber wheels poked out of the nose. We took turns winding the propeller until the thick brown rubber band was a mass of knots. I held the nose of the plane in one hand and the propeller in the other. Melbo taped the biggest of the fire crackers to the body of the glider, up near the propeller. "This way it will be balanced for a good flight."

Melbo lit the fuse and I threw the plane into the air. It took off with a whir, climbing fast up toward the top branches of the big walnut tree near the house. Just when it seemed the plane must crash in the branches before it could explode the plane banked sharply, twisted and headed back at us.

We ran for it. The aircraft honed in straight and true. I heard the whir of the propeller, the balsa wing brushed my ear, then the explosion flashed in my eyes. I felt stinging and flying pieces of wood peppered my cheeks. I opened my eyes and saw the front wheels and propeller flying alone across the patio. It so amazed me that I forgot my fear and pain in the wonder of the sight. The prop still spun and the wheels rolled on across the lawn, past the charred ruins of a dozen snails, crashing into the line of tanks with a clatter before it came to a rest.

My ears rang, and I had to pick a couple of slivers out of my cheek. My mom's remembered warning, "You'll put your eye out someday .." played across my mind. But my eyes were okay. We both laughed when it was clear that I wasn't hurt. Melbo laughed a little harder than I did. We retold the flight of the prop and wheels across the grass several times before falling asleep that night.

I fell asleep wondering at all the stuff we'd gotten away with. What did his parents think when they scooped broken plastic from the pool filter? Weren't they bothered by the sunken hulls of shattered war ships drifting among the leaves at the bottom of their pool? Didn't the blobs of melted soldier and roasted snail gum up Mr. Miller's lawnmower? I'd never get away with this stuff at my house.

I was sure we'd get caught eventually. There was big trouble coming to Melbo Miller and anyone who played with him. I was sure of it, absolutely sure, but I still agreed to go down to the rail road tracks with Melbo the next day.

***

"I play down here all the time" he laughed as he showed me down a path through the high weeds. The tracks were about a mile from Melbo's house. The whole rail bed was elevated, we had to climb up a steep bank to reach the tracks. The tops of the rails gleamed like polished silver making a long curve back into a tunnel. The tunnel was a black round mouth yawning in a concrete enforced wall. A few cars and trucks moved over the bridge above the tunnel. The odor of tar and burnt steel radiated from the black dirt crusted gravel hugging the thick square ties.

Melbo pulled a handful of pennies out of his pocket and began to lay them out on top of the tracks. "A big train will be through pretty soon. We'll smash these pennies flat!"

It was a hot day and I was sleepy. I never got much sleep when I went to visit a friend overnight. I felt fuzzy and dull, being on the track was dreamlike. Watching Melbo prepare the pennies consumed all my attention. He was meticulous. He laid them out one at a time, six inches apart. Each penny was aligned with Lincoln's head facing back down the tracks toward the tunnel. Each new penny gleamed in brassy contrast to the silver rails.

"You can tell when a train is coming by touching the rail. It tingles and shakes for a long time before the train is in sight. "

I touched my hand down to the rail. The wheel burnished rail was hot to the touch and absolutely still. No train was coming.

"If you put your ear on the rail you can hear the train from even farther off."

Melbo laid his ear down on the rail. I expected him to jump up burned, but he just winced and stayed down there listening.

Several minutes passed. A breath of air stirred some dust on the bank. Melbo had that dreamy goofy look on his face again. He was breathing through his mouth and humming to himself. He had the same thousand yard stare I'd seen when he was roasting snails and toy soldiers. "Come on, give a listen. I think one's coming."

I shook my head no.

"Come on I dare you. I dare you!" his voice had an edge. Melbo wouldn't let up and my uneasy shame at being chicken drove me down on the tracks. The gravel poked my knees. The hot rail stung my ear, but as the pain faded I could hear and feel something different. It was a faint keening. The tar and metal smell was overwhelming down near the ties. The rail started to tremble and hum. "Its a train, " Melbo whispered.

I jumped up and stepped off the track. Melbo stayed down low, on hands and knees, with his ear to the track. "Its a train..."

I was feeling really scared now. A hollow place had opened up in my stomach. This wasn't any fun at all. I could tell that Melbo had something in mind. The thought made me ill.

Melbo jumped up and began walking down the tracks. We turned our backs on our pennies and the tunnel. If you set your pace the right way you could step on every other tie. The bank was steep tumbling down into weeds and rocks, the rail bed was the only flat place to walk. About a hundred yards beyond the pennies Melbo stopped. Turning to face the tunnel he jumped up on one rail, flung his arms out and started to balance walk it.

"You ever played chicken? It's a great game. You just stand on the tracks and wait for a train. The first one to jump is chicken."

"You're crazy Melbo, we could get killed. "

"No way man, I do this all the time."

"No way, you're full of it!

"Oh yeah? Well you just wait and see chicken boy, you just wait! You're chicken alright. Chicken through and through! Bawk, bawk, bwaaak!”

Melbo walked up the rail, head swaying, arms flapping like wings, dragging out the chicken call and sneering at me. It was the worst thing in the world to be called chicken. "Come on Dennis I double dare you, chicken!!'

"Okay, Okay. We'll see who's chicken!"

I stood up on the rail. By now I could feel the rails telegraphing up through my Keds. I was trembling. The train was coming. Melbo walked back and stood next to me.

"The game really begins when the train rolls over the pennies. The first one to jump off the track is a chicken." Melbo looked at me like I was one of his toy soldiers. There was both a challenge and the plain assumption that I was going to take this risk. It seemed extra hot all of a sudden.

"Did you ever see that story about the kid in Life Magazine?"

"Come on Melbo, knock it off." Everybody in school knew the story. We'd passed the magazine with its gross photographs around during lunch period. The kid had been doing just what we were doing standing on the rail road tracks playing chicken. Only he'd jumped too late and the train had clipped him. Somehow this kid managed to straggle back to his house. When his mom came to the door she saw her son with his arm just hanging on by a thread. The doctors sewed the arm back on. But the kid could only move the arm a little bit now, the fingers were almost useless. I remembered the picture of the kid laying in a bed, the whole top of his body in a cast.

"Yeah I got that magazine in my room. The arm was just hanging by a thread."

The train was getting closer. An angry scream came from the train. The whistle yelled, "Get of the track, get off the track you idiots!" I lost my balance and stepped down from the rail. The train must be just on the other side of the tunnel now. The rails were beginning to rumble. Melbo looked over at me with a really stupid grin.

"Don't worry I do this all the time!"

The train came through the tunnel slowly. It seemed to be going no faster than a car in light traffic. We both stared at the train as it got closer. We were on a conveyor belt rolling toward the train. The whole world was rolling toward the train. The headlight on the nose of the diesel grew bigger and bigger. The headlight was bright even in the full daylight. The whistle blew a bellow again. The monstrous red diesel was getting closer to the pennies and to us.

"Come on Melbo let's quit this damn game. It's dumb."

"You chicken out if you want. I'll win."

The rails were really shaking now. The diesel ran over the pennies and let out another blast from the whistle. It was just too close. I jumped to one side, tripped and slid down the gravel embankment. I shoved my hands out trying to balance. My palms scraped and burned across the rocks. I stopped stumbling down in the dust and big rocks at the bottom of the bank. Melbo still stood on the rails laughing down at me, shouting, "I Win! I Win!".

I slipped again and when I looked up the train rumbled past, it was moving faster than I thought. The engineer and brakeman shook their fists at me and shouted something that was lost in the noise from the engine. The big wheels clacked along, clicking over the rails, nicking at the spots where the rails met. The cars rolled from side to side: Pacific Northern, Cotton Pacific, Northwestern, steel pipe cars and open bins. The train was a long one. I tried to look through the wheels to the other side of the tracks.

There was no sign of Melbo.

I scrambled back up on the tracks well after the train had passed but the rails still rumbled when I stepped on them. "Melbo! Where are you?" I felt kind of silly, and kind of afraid calling out his name. But I couldn't see him anywhere.

"Hey Dennis!"

Melbo was down by the pennies. As I walked up he was squatting by the rails, holding his glasses on with one hand. The ear piece on his glasses was broken. His shirt was torn and the knees on his jeans were both blown out. " I really tore up my knee when I slid down the bank, see...." The knee was badly scrapped, bits of black grit were pushed into the skin which oozed red blood.

"You're gonna have a big scab on that."

"Yeah... Catch a penny!"

Melbo flipped a quarter sized piece of flashing copper at me. I caught the disk. It was hot! I bobbled it and dropped it in the dust. Melbo grinned at me as he played hot hands with another penny. The thin disks of copper didn't look anything like pennies. They were smashed into something entirely different.

I thought about the guy in Life Magazine, and what could have happened to both of us. I felt sick. I tried to not let Melbo see how badly I was taking it. Melbo didn't seem to notice.

****

"Richard! What's happened to you?" Melbo's mom was really upset. "Your new jeans...they're ruined!" I'd never seen her so mad. She got even madder when she spotted Melbo's skinned up knee. I got my stuff out of Melbo's room. I waved at him as his mom closed in. Then I left. Mrs. Miller was still yelling when I shut the door.

I called Melbo the next day to see how it had gone. Mrs. Miller answered the phone.

"Is that you Dennis?" Mrs. Miller's voice sounded sort of mean.

"Yes ma'am."

There was a sharp sound in the background. It sounded like a small explosion.

"I don't want you playing with Richard anymore. I'm afraid you're a bad influence on him."

******

A memory from 1961.

~ Written 1990

The Kitchen Table

A kitchen table is a magnet for memories. Especially a table that's grown old while the family grows up. Our family's maple table served through a lot of our lives. I remember it first in our kitchen at the Callahan House. It must have weighed a couple of hundred pounds. It was huge, oval, long enough for a big man to lay on top and still not have his feet dangle. It was a table that made a room seem small, a table that the whole family sat at through a thousand meals.

I see that table in your house today. The drop leaf sides are folded so it can fit against the stair well. The table is too big for your house now, and you are thinking about getting rid of it.

I run my hand over the surface. Like everything, the top is clean and well waxed. The window light catches the surface just right and I can see through the polish to the dents and dips that speak of a lifetime's use. The whole family grew up around this table. Here are the thousand nicks and gouges of growing up, dropped plates, pencils pushed through homework papers, perhaps these two dents were caused by Paul's kiddy seat. He used to reign from the center of the table back when we called him the fat man, and you couldn't talk to him direct.

This is the spot on the table where I wrote my times tables. I see the tracings of my pencil, faint veins sketched forever in the surface. It's easy to remember sitting at this table, 10 years old, copying over the awful 9 tables. 9x1=9, 9x2=18, 9x3=27, over and over again, drilling and drilling. I'm preparing for the quiz that dad will give me when he gets home from work.

Mom's cooking fills the kitchen with dinner's almost ready odors. I'm trying to lock the numbers into my mind. The times tables are a sing©song chant. I think I know them, then they fade.

Dad drilled me on the times tables endlessly. We used flash cards bought in a teacher's supply store. He prompted and I recited. We quizzed out of sequence and in order.

Up the ladder, "9x1=9, 9x2=18, 9x3=27"

Down the ladder, "9x9=81, 9x8=72, 9x7=63".

I'd pass my school test, usually missing one or two, and promptly forget them all until the next drill session. Dad was very patient, explaining, (like I now do to my kids and students) the importance of having the times tables down pat.

Too bad it never really stuck; I've never been much with rote learning. To this day I only remember the states and capitals and times tables while I'm drilling my classes. The unit changes and it all fades away.

This table that's too big for just the two of you, is also the table where we set up the electric trains that Christmas at the Callahan house. The layout was fastened to a half sheet of plywood, it covered most of the center of the table. In the middle was a snow topped mountain with tunnels. We glued down flock grass, and painted a mirror blue to create a pond. The H/O gauge track was pinned to the board with small brass nails. Spongy green lichens were glued in clumps like real shrubs. There were houses and a train station. Some of the houses had lights that really worked.

The railroad on the kitchen table was powered by a big black transformer with red handles. Cranking on the power the transformer hummed and vibrated, throwing off electrons and sweating ozone. I had a red and silver diesel, the Santa Fe Express, with a head light that flashed through the mountain tunnels. John had a black locomotive. A few drops of mystery liquid in the smoke stack and the thing would huff its way around the track, belching tiny puffs of smoke, giving the air an oily tinge.

The layout stayed on the kitchen table all through Christmas vacation. We ate breakfast, lunch and dinner seated at the edges of a miniature universe. It was the essence of Christmas to see the trains all over the kitchen table every morning. I'd have my bacon, peanut butter toast, and milk not far from the tracks. I sat there to chew, swallow, and watch the trains go round and round.

There was lots of room at the big maple table for a special guest the night Mr. Brown, my grade school teacher, came to dinner. I was proud and amazed that my teacher was going to come to my house and have dinner. The kids at school didn't really believe that the teacher would actually be there." No way, you're making it up!" Maybe inviting the teacher to dinner was old fashioned even then.

Mr. Brown was a tall, lean man. He always had a dark tan. I was sure it had something to do with his name. He looked a little like Gary Cooper did in Sergeant York. Mr. Brown wore a corduroy coat with leather arm patches to dinner that night. He even had on a tie. He was honoring my family by wearing a tie, he never did that in class. It seemed fantastic, unreal, that my teacher was actually out of school and in my house.

But there he was sitting at the big maple table with me, my Mom and Dad and my little brother John. Mr. Brown was smiling and making polite conversation. I was mostly quiet and listening. I worked hard at my manners, taking small bites, using the napkin, trying to be mature.

I wasn't adolescent enough yet to be embarrassed by my family, I just felt proud. It was a great night. Even John was good. Mr. Brown talked about his summer job as a Park Ranger. It was easy to imagine him in a ranger's uniform and now I knew the origin of that tan. Mr. Brown got sun burnt every summer and his tan lasted the whole school year. For the rest of the 6th grade Mr. Brown had a special smile for me when ever our eyes met.

Understanding a little piece of Mr. Brown's life gave me my first thought of becoming a teacher. Summers off to be in the woods, and free meals. It looked pretty good from my side of the table.

Twenty years later Gavin, one of my students, stood at my desk, and looked me in the eye "My Mom and I would like you to come to our house for dinner." I accepted immediately. In 15 years of teaching this was the only time I'd been invited to dinner. That invitation was very special to me. It made me think of Mr. Brown. Was our dinner invitation the only one Mr. Brown's ever received?

Now, I sit at another dinner table. I'm wearing a corduroy coat with elbow patches. I have a tie on. The kids stare at me with big eyes, amazed I'm at their table, in their house. I smile, make polite conversation, watch my table manners and enjoy this rare evening. I had a special smile for Gavin for the rest of the year.

Turning the tables helps me remember that kids don't believe teachers are real people, with lives outside the classroom. No, teachers are different than other adults. They live at school and only think about the subjects they teach. Kids know that teachers spend every evening preparing tests and grading papers. Students are sure that teachers believe absolutely in the impeccable recall of times tables, have a perfect knowledge of the parts of speech, and never misspell a word. It is too high a standard.

The marks, dents, gouges and chips have been polished smooth. But I still can read the big maple table like a map. It hasn't changed that much, but we have.

It must be lonely, just the two of you, having a meal at this vast, well worn table. I know the table really doesn't fit your house now. You could find something half the size that would serve better. It makes perfect sense to get rid of it.

But I hope you don't. I hope you keep the table. Put a fresh coat of wax on it and make some more memories. Written 1990.

-----------

The table is in my house now. Both my parents are gone, but the memories scribed in the table remain. It's almost Christmas, and most of my family will sit around the big maple table in just a few days.

~ December 2008

Confessions of an American Teacher

I’m tired of saying the right thing.

I've taken too many bullets for the team.

I've been a Pollyanna with my head stuck up my ass… and a visionary that changed kids lives.

I've walked picket lines, exposed evil, compromised my integrity, and given freely with all my soul. I’ve ranted across the desks of more than one superintendent, and rolled over for others. I’ve charmed, trashed, ignored, sympathized with and bull shitted hundreds of parents. I’ve gotten up and faced surly classes and then flipped them into open minded learners. I’ve missed as many teachable moments as I’ve caught. I’ve helped some kids gain 4 years on the reading test and ignored others because they were hopeless punks who pissed me off. I’ve hung around in the computer labs and classrooms of my school weeping with inspiration and happiness for simply being part of a learning environment I’d dreamed of building, and I’ve hated the deep rut of driving back to school every morning to participate in the systematic destruction of joy and trust that small minded inane administrators and school board members call education.

I’ve been an American Teacher for 37 years and I’m sick at heart about public education. I want to tear the system down and let the ferrets run free. I want to teach skepticism and critical thinking and create a generation that will fight for their minds, fight for freedom, but I’m so scarred by tilting at wind mills that I’ve learned to choose my battles. I’m not sure how much fight is left in me.

Sometimes I just want to scream and tell it all. All the good, all the bad, the lunacy and the laughs and everything in between.

Instead, I’ll just blog.

I got my credential in 1974 in-spite of a system that kept trying to talk me out of wasting my life in the classroom. All my neurotic friends in the English Department at Berkeley thought I was nuts.

“You’re too good for teaching. Why waste your talent in a classroom?”

The application committee at the teacher’s college asked me the same thing (after beating me up for misspelling the word professional in my writing sample). “You don’t want to teach. There’s no money in it. You wont’ be able to get a job, there’s too many teachers already.”

But I was stubborn and burned out by the life I’d been leading and looking for direction.

I’d gone up to Canada found a spot deep in the woods and thought about it all. I’d spend a lot of time on mountain tops and in the wild thinking about it all. After awhile talking to fish and sitting on the high ground with a rifle gets old and you’re still left with the questions only you can answer…

It came down to law or education. I could be a lawyer or a teacher.

It came down to making a living working with people at their worst or helping kids learn. I chose teaching and despite 37 years of classroom joy and pain, I don’t regret the choice.

It was Mr. Pinto in the 8th grade that sealed the deal. Mr. Pinto saved my mind from the terror and made me want to be a teacher.

I was 14 year old living in gut grinding terror of getting nuked out of existence. The junior high I attended had me cringing under my desk, conditioned like a rat in a Skinner box by institutionalized drop drills.

Every time I curled up under that pitiful flimsy little wooden desk I could imagine the flash and blast of a hydrogen bomb taking out downtown LA and rolling hell fire over the hills to the San Fernando Valley where I’d be toasted alive.

I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, panicked adults fighting over groceries and the afternoon when everyone thought the button would be pushed.

I remember the sincere horror of thinking the whining air raid sirens were for real.

I remember just wanting to ride my bike home so I could die with my family. Instead I cowered on the floor, weeping, huddled on the dirty linoleum of the overheated classroom, backs to the wall under the windows so the flying glass wouldn’t shred us.

My teacher was crying, she wouldn’t answer when we begged, “Is it real? Is it the bomb?”

Hell the teacher was crying, kids were running through the halls screaming…it had to be real and I was going to die, away from my mom and dad and brother.

After fifteen minutes the moron who was principal got on the P.A to announce it was all just a drill.

I learned a lot that day. I learned that faced with certain death I was too afraid to get up off the floor. Nice lesson.

That’s American education: just curl up in a ball and wait for it… lay on the floor and pray… let’s spend a fortune to train kids this way… children, when it comes to fiery death, STOP! DROP! and wait for it like sheep.

In my day it was the Russians and ICBMs, overkill and nothing left but the cockroaches.

Now it’s a Stalinist Dictator with a nuke or a Jihadi hoping to pack a bomb in a suit case…or an FBI agent dragging out an 8th grader for threatening the president on MySpace… and let’s not forget the twisted 15 year old in a trench coat shooting kids in the head while they lay on the floor and pray.

After the phony air raid, Mr. Pinto gave me a way to deal with my fear.

We were debating nuclear war in his Social Studies class and someone asked him what he’d do if the air raid sirens went off for real. Just thinking about this 50 years later makes my stomach knot. Thinking about Mr. Pinto makes me smile too.

"Kids, if the bomb gets dropped we’re all finished. We’re so close to prime targets.. there’s nothing we can do. I’m not hiding under my desk. I’m getting a six pack of beer, and a folding chair and climbing up on the roof where I can see it all. It will be one hell of a light show…"

We cracked up… “The teacher said hell!”

Nuclear annihilation suddenly seemed funny. Mr. Pinto with a little smidgen of honesty, helped me vent the paranoid steam of the arms race. He gave me a way to confront my fear and begin to stand. His fatalistic and funny advice gave me a game plan.

I was 14 years old. That’s when I started thinking seriously about being a teacher. I could say things that might help people… and get summers off!

Now after decades as a teacher, it seems right that my career choice was founded on visions of Armageddon laced with fatalistic humor.

My years in the classroom have been sublime and mediocre. I love it and I hate it. I’ve gone farther and done more than I ever dreamed and I’m still dissatisfied with what I’ve accomplished.

I've met some of the finest people on the planet and I’ve uncovered power corrupted evil-doers. I’ve fought the good fight and lost.

I've stood up for my principles and been cut off at the knees.

I’m not done. I still want to break on through to the other side. If that means taking another beating… I’m going to punch back.

I’m still standing… maybe I’m standing on stumps, but I’m still upright.

... and I'm still teaching. It's how I breathe.

Dad's 1965 Chrysler Newport Convertible

The day you brought home that new, black, sleek, '65 Chrysler Newport convertible was a special one. That long machine parked out front under the shade of a walnut tree said something to the whole neighborhood. The hood polished so deep and wide the whole canopy of that huge old tree was reflected back from between the front fenders.

It was fall, the new model year just announced; the street was deep in crisp leaves. They crunched underfoot as we sprinted out to admire the enormous new car. John and I ran our hands over the convertible's long waxed flanks. We breathed deep the new smell. Sunk in the rear seat we looked up and watched as you lowered the top. The deep mechanical groan as the convertible top elegantly descended, folding itself accordion style into the boot behind the rear seat. It was miraculous.
John and I stretched the snaps of the tonneau cover into place. Then scrambled again into the back seat and sunk into luxury. The newness was overwhelming, the smell of the upholstery, the flawless flanks of the black beast gleamed and unmarked. Truck was enormous. We could almost lay down full stretch. The two long doors were heavy, solid, with heft like refrigerator doors.
Why is it that I have no other solid memory of the Chrysler? Must be that I was off to school the next year, and I'm sure I didn't get to drive the thing.

That car lasted. Morphing from a fine mid-sixty's high status Realtor's Ride into a ragged, beat, brick truck. The once pristine interior was now thrashed and coated with a fine red dust. Dad hauled load after load of used brick for one of his Great Chinese Wall building projects in the poor sagging thing.
Still, like Dad, the Chrysler had style. Even at 200 thousand miles, despite the beat down of time, with the rear end sagging low over the tires, it was a ride to remember.

Pop-on's Death

I could hear you crying mom in the other room. It scared me bad, scared John too. John and I shared a bedroom in the Callahan house. I didn't know before that night that sound traveled so well through the walls of the closet. You were sobbing on the other side of the wall. You just kept crying. John and I got into the closet and listened to the awful sounds of your sadness. Your pain came through the wall. Dad's voice was murmuring, trying to soothe, your wails came in waves, reaching a peak, splashing over us, receding, and peaking again.

We didn't know what to do. We huddled there in the closet surrounded by our toys, the clothes hanging down over us and looked at each other. We bit our lips, tears came to our eyes. We were paralyzed with sadness and fear. John and I had seen you mad before, and unhappy. But the only time we'd seen you cry was in laughter, begging us to stop some joke or monkey business. We'd never heard or seen you cry like this.

I was afraid to come out of the room. As much as I wanted to know why you were hurting, I was afraid to knock on your door. I was afraid to move. It felt like I was holding my breath for hours. I strained my ears for the sounds of doors unlocking, knobs turning, footsteps in the hall knowing that It would mean you were coming to get us, that you were ready to tell us what the terrible thing was.

But you didn't come get us. Instead you cried all night, the waves pounding on our bedroom wall. Both John and I returned to our beds. I covered my head with my pillow. But I could still hear you, the awful murmur of your distant tears seemed to make the walls swell and crack. I tried not to listen, but could only hear more and more. I fell asleep to that awful sound.

The next morning you said nothing. Your eyes were red, but you smiled as much as you could, shrugging off our tentative questions. It was bad knowing something was wrong. It was worse not knowing what it was.

That night John and I were ready for you to begin crying again. We lay in bed waiting for the sound to come back through our wall.

Silence.


We quietly crept into the closet, scooting down on to the floor, with ears to the all.

Silence still.

Several days later you told us that Pop-on was dead.

I had my answer. I understood why your were crying that night. Your dad had died. I've always wondered about that night. Had you just heard he was dying? Had you seen him at the hospital that day? I should have asked these questions sooner.

When Honey died I knew I had to tell my kids about it immediately. I didn't want Brenna or Erin to know. But I knew it would be worse if they misunderstood my grief. I wanted them to know why I was sad. Waiting wouldn't help.

I told Brenna first. "Brenna I have bad news. Honey has died." She cried, we talked.

Erin didn't really understand. It was very hard to do. But better than waiting. There's never a right time to tell your children about a death.

You just do it.

Justice for Penny

"Neeyah! Neeyah! Neeyah! I'm having a birthday party and you're not invited!"

Penny stuck out her tongue, dug a few more Neeyah! Neeyahs! into my soul then flounced off head held high. Penny radiated aloof, self-satisfied disapproval. She left two little boys in her wake. We were not invited to her birthday party. Neeyah! Neeyah!

Her name was Penny. She was an enemy!

It must have been something about the soil in Encino, a lot of clay was turned up when the subdivision was graded. It clumped great. Dirt clodded into fist size chunks naturally.

I seized a coconut sized chunk and looked at my buddy Ira. He nodded in wordless agreement. “THROW IT!”

Penny was a long way down the sidewalk by now. She seemed small in the distance, an impossible distance to throw a dirt clod. She was just a silhouette skipping down the sidewalk of a 1950's middle class sub-division in the late afternoon at Encino California.

I threw the clod high, arching, and well to Penny's right. It soared upward truer than any baseball I was ever destined to toss. The clod arched slowly reaching the apogee of it's flight, just as Penny turned right on her walk. It dropped straight down, exploding on top of her head.

The clod vanished in a halo of dirt. Penny dropped instantly. A perfect hit. Ira and I couldn't believe it. I never dreamed I'd get close, let alone land a perfect hit. I looked at Ira slack-jawed. His eyes glazed behind his glasses.

"It was perfect." he whispered. "She just turned and walked right under the thing at the perfect moment and “Wham!” and she's down!"

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaady!" Penny was up and screaming. Three front-yards away and I could hear the shock, anger, and hunger for revenge in her whining, Neeyah! Neeyah! little girl voice.

The beauty of the shot was forgotten in guilty panic. Ira disappeared. I ran for home, slammed through the door, scooted into my room and slid under my bed.

I knew Penny's dad was coming for me. It was claustrophobic and quiet under my bed. Little dust balls rolled in front of my nostrils. I counted dust tumbleweeds in the high desert under my bed. I knew a storm was coming.

Thump, thump, thump! I heard Penny's daddy's angry fist on the front door. Thump, thump, thump!

I could hear the floor creak as my Dad walked to the front door. (Even then I knew you were big dad.) I heard angry voices and stayed very still. Slamming doors.

Dad came into my room and called me out from under the bed. Gentle voiced. No shaking rage, no heavy anger. In a gentle voice. "What happened Dennis?"

I told you. You listened. And as the story unwound, I know you understood the wonder of the shot, that magic trajectory, the incredible long flight of the clod as it extinguished the ringing sound of ²Neeyah Neeyah³s in my ears.

Later mom told me you'd grabbed Penny's daddy by his redneck and held him up a bit when he'd tried to pass by you to get to me.

I don't know if that really happened. But I hope it did.

Green Star

I wanted a star on my paper. The star's color didn't really matter, the size didn't matter. I just wanted a star on my paper that said I was one of the smart ones.

But I could never get one. I already knew I was one of the dumb 6 year olds, I just wasn't smart. I knew it. I couldn't read or add. The books were always too hard and directions confused me. If you weren't neat and couldn't follow the directions you didn't get a star. At least not in the first grade at Our Lady of Perpetual Yearning Elementary

I could read numbers though, and I had a theory about my situation. I was certain that the # 2 on the spine of my reader stood for second grade. I hung on to this belief as an explanation for why I couldn't read. It was my secret hope that I wasn't so stupid after all. I was convinced, despite mounting frustration and embarrassment that my problem was caused by a book that was too hard. None of my classmates bought my thinking, but I hung on to the hope that I wasn't really dumb after all.

Finally, one day late in the year, after the longing for a star had given way to hopelessness, it happened. Sister dropped my paper down in front of me.

There it was attached proudly to the top of the page near my name, the green star!

I knew that the best stars were the big golden ones. The next best were blue, still larger than the green star I'd gotten. But my first star seemed huge to me. It was a metallic, shadowed shamrock color. I traced my finger over the thin foil ridge on each of the 5 points. Points of achievement there on 'my page'. I couldn't believe it! I was reeling, flabbergasted, overjoyed,

I'd gotten a star!

I turned proudly to the kid next to me, and shoved the paper under his nose. "I gotta star!" I crowed.

As the words left my mouth a shadow descended. The tall dark habit of Sister blotted out the sunlight. She swept up the paper.

"No Talking!" Sister shrieked in a fury.

Slowly, meticulously, with a pent up frenzy that said this woman longed for a world without loud boastful little boys, Sister meticulously tore my paper into shreds.

As she swept away, Sister dropped the crumpled fragments on my desk. I searched through the remains, but I couldn't find my green star. Now I wouldn't be able to show my mom.

My green star was gone forever.

Confessions of an American Teacher: Choking on it...

I’m not supposed to talk about this.

Guilt, wrapped in denial, and re-enforced by a federal court order are powerful ingredients that still induce my silence.  These words are leaking out, extruded under high pressure that’s’ built over the years.

I have to tell. I have to face what happened. I have to get the ugly reality written.

Maybe it will stop the headaches and the sleeplessness. Maybe I’ll be able to recapture my hope again. If I can just tell it, get it out on the page and expel this evil hairball that’s clogged my teaching spirit for so long. Maybe I can believe in American Schooling and stop seeing the whole system through the lens of my own experience.

As I look back I realize I should have stood up sooner.  Oh, I took a stand and took a major hit for my ethics. It cost me my job, most of my pension, a good chunk of my self respect.  

Standing up also launched me. Cutting lose (and being cast out) made me build skills and muscle.  My life is so much better now. I’m more self realized, more articulate, better educated and making three times the money I made back in the classroom. 

Hell I should go back and kiss the sobs for kicking me in the jewels and waking me up. Ultimately they helped me find my way to a better life. As a friend told me just the other day: “..it’s an honor to be extruded from a dysfunctional system”.

But I still know that I waited too long. That when the test came, I stood and fought, but it was with an attorney and not my fists.  (And I do crave some vigilante justice.)  Instead, I fought fair.  And just like my lawyer warned me up front; I got no justice. There was no satisfaction.  Wrongs were not righted. There was a little money, but nothing was made whole.  

My hired gun, the professional cynic, the street fighter in the three piece suit was so right when he said, “Starting a lawsuit is going to war, and it’s a sin to go to war.”

It took many years to work my way out to the end of the plank. I must remember the good years in the classroom. I built a learning world I am proud of to this day. But as my school district disintegrated, more and more of my energy was spent fighting for the freedom to do the good work.  More energy went into watching my back and fighting the system until eventually, most of my juice went to just coping with the controlling, totalitarian bastards set on destroying what they couldn’t duplicate or control.

I can remember thinking first they came for the…

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

~ Martin Niemöller (more or less)

It was all gallows humor when I began thinking that way. I didn’t realize how real it would become.

I was happy in my little enclave, my realm of responsibility, my small pond where I was the big fish in a remote school on the edges of the district orbit. We were the outlier, out of the way, easy to forget. The District Office was busy way down in the valley.  They dismantled and reformed the other schools, instigating the strategic plan, rewriting the history books. Bringing their brand of conformity.  It would take them years to get to me and mine.

Still I knew that the Borg were coming… and that, by all accounts resistance would be futile.

One day I found myself holding a picket sign in front of the school board meeting. I don’t remember the cause.  Radon in the classrooms? Sick building syndrome? 0% pay raise, benefit cuts?  

I don’t remember a lot of what happened; denial spews brain fog. Regardless, walking a picket line was a futile thing to do in a ‘right to work’ state with a school labor approach that came down to, “There are plenty of holes in the desert”.

Our pictures (complete with signs) appeared on the front page of the local paper. Within a few years all of us would be gone. A combination of psy-ops, burn-out, retirement, and despair took us all. 

I didn’t see it coming.

I didn’t get it. 

So naïve. I thought doing the right thing would protect me. I couldn't believe the leadership of my district would trade the welfare, safety, minds and innocence of kids just to flex the little power they had.  

Admittedly, I’d called them fascist lemmings who worshiped at the altar of appearances at the expense of common sense.  But like a fool, I didn’t get what it really meant to be right about them.

That’s why I got my Pollyanna ass kicked by the system.  It took me half a century to grow up.

Here I am still crying about it.  At least I’m not numb any more. At least I’m finding my voice.

At the heart of my anger is the betrayal I still feel. The Assistant Ass, who eventually became the Top Ass, was an old colleague. We’d known each other for years.  While we weren’t friends, I thought we had respect for each other.  I remain amazed and infuriated that this fellow, who was one of the smartest, most able, even brilliant educators I’d worked with would sell his integrity for a little piss-pot job in a backward school district out in the sticks.  

I’m shocked and I’m angry that he became a banal, evil little man. By the time he reached the top, he was morally bankrupt. And what was he on top of?  A backwater, small town conservative, rural school district with delusions of grandeur.

So here I am again. Pleading with myself and ranting on the web about the betrayal of innocence I was part of as a public school teacher.

Why can’t I spit this out? I still can’t name it. 

Damn.

Tioga Pass

Mom screamed when the road got too steep. We didn't notice her panic at first. John and I were playing in the back seat. Rocking back and forth, pretending to go over the cliff. We laughed at it all. We felt immune, sure that Dad's perfect driving wrapped us in a cocoon of safety.

Tioga Pass was just a gravel track when we all drove over it together. It had great drops just a tire width away. To city kids the mountains were like postcards, unreal just at the laws of physics couldn't possibly apply to us because we were on vacation. To my child's mind people on vacation don't crash, but then my dad couldn't possibly crash. We had total trust with dad behind the wheel. That small ribbon of water at the bottom of the canyon is behind a glass wall, we couldn't possibly tumble down there,that only happens on television.

Then mom's fear brought a new sense of reality to the situation. The road at this point squeaked around a thin corner. A truck was coming in the other direction. The truck was coming up the inside lane, safe against a sheer wall of rock. But the truck was wide, forcing us outside, closer to the precipice. Mom's fright broke right in on our game.

"Freeze! Don't move!" there was an urgent sound in mom's voice that had to be obeyed. Suddenly John and I couldn't even turn our heads to look out the window. "Move over behind your father." she whispered, Mom thought our weight on that side of the car was dangerous.

To back up her conviction mom scooted all the way over to the left in the front seat, crowding Dad's elbow. She was going to get as far away from the passenger side door as possible. She stared in his ear and began to chant Hail Mary. I hunched down in the back seat waiting for the door to fly open and eject us all into the void. We were infected with mom's terror.

"I'll turn around if I can find a place wide enough." Dad said. His voice wavered a little bit, I could tell he was trying to pacify mom, but I could also tell she was starting to get to him as well. It's not a good feeling when you know the driver has doubts. The truck passed and we crept back into the middle of the road. Grinding along in second gear we slowly descended
from the summit. Every time we came to a steep place with a big drop off, mom would cover her eyes with her hands and mumble a prayer. John and I relaxed again in the back seat, our faith in dad's driving only slightly shaken. We began to tell silly jokes to break the tension, but we didn't try to rock the car again.

After that glorious, terrifying run over Tioga Pass, the road became a legend in my mind. We'd survived an epic adventure. We'd crossed Tioga Pass and lived to tell about it! When I need to express steep, high, and squeaky places, Tioga Pass was my metaphor. I've gotten the memory mixed up with flash backs of the the Lucy & Dezi movie about the long, long trailer. Tumbling boulders, spinning wheels over the abyss. That's what happens to epic memories,
you glue drama to them for the rest of your life.

Tioga Pass was the beginning of my mild height phobia. I'd get queasy in tall buildings, uncertain in elevators, hesitant when I approached the edges of things high up. Nothing so strong that it would reduce me to jelly, no panic or terror, just enough irrational fear to make me curious about becoming a mountaineer.

I was looking for those memories again when I took Paul over Tioga Pass summer of 1973 in my beat up Land Cruiser. The Land Cruiser was a perfect vehicle in which to relive the great Tioga Pass Trek. A beat up faded red and turquoise blue truck, it shook and shimmied when I pushed it past 35. Its head gasket was blown, causing the engine to whine and miss when accelerating, and cough and choke when I down ©shifting. There were just a straps where the doors should have been, so it was easy to lean out the passenger side for a look at the really big drops.

My brother Paul was a nerdy teenager, 14 years younger than me. He was growing up in the city while I was still trying to grow up in the mountains. I'd dragged Paul up canyon trails, subjected him to sub freezing temperatures, and waved dead fish in his face. Camped above Saddlebag lake we'd spent the night in a wet tent, bombarded with lightening bolts while thunder cannoned over our heads. It had been a wild camping trip, with more weather and exposure than usual. I'd given Paul an overdose of the mountains. At this point in my life climbing had turned my fear of heights into fascination. Like most things that scared me I was compelled to look it right in the face, to gaze with narcissistic fascination at every big drop to sudden death I could find. I was certain the High Sierra was paradise and Yosemite as the center of the universe. I wanted to share all the wonder with by city raised little brother, and like older brothers everywhere, show off while scaring him a little bit too.

By this time the Tioga Pass road had been widened and 'improved' into a great, paved, highway across the spine of Yosemite. It meant effortless access to the backcountry to me, with easy and magnificent vistas on every side. We'd driven down the gravel and dirt track from Saddlebag and joined the main the highway. Everything was fresh washed from thunderstorms. The rain steamed from the asphalt. We saw a badger the size of a golden retriever scuttling across Tuoluemme Meadows.

The light was perfect for recapturing memories. I drove the wet roads with my youngest brother looking for the place where mom and dad, and John and I had been sure we were going to die. I had to show Paul my memory. I needed to find the spot where the road narrowed, next to the mile long drop down the gorge. I fully expected to find a wide rumbling truck coming in the opposite direction. Every time it got steep I pulled the wheezing Land Cruiser as close to the edge of the road as I could. I had to get that tire hanging in the air sensation that had blazed Tioga Pass in my memory. But I just couldn't find that drop off.

There were staggering steep places. Places that caused a flutter in the stomach. Spots where a wrong turn would have killed us both. But none of these paved spots on the road were steep enough or narrow enough to match my memories. Try as I might I couldn't find the place where mom had come completely unglued. The immensity of the drop in my memory just wasn't there to be found.

I have no idea how Paul reacted to all this, but I'm sure he remembers some special place as steeper than it really is, just like I did when I was a kid. The scale of things is rooted in your size. When you're a little kid you remember big and steep with personal conviction. It can even change your life.

San Diego Christmas

Outside in my shorts, sandals, and shirt sleeves. It feels like August in Tahoe, but it's Christmas in Northern San Diego County: San Marcos to be exact. The birds are working with high pitched complaint. In the distance the faint highway sounds of 78 make me wonder if there will ever be a day of perfect natural silence. If so, what disaster will have driven the autos of so cal from the freeways?

It's still, not deep sierra, 3 days of hiking with a backpack still, but natural still none the less. I can hear a papery wind in the eucalyptus trees.. the dark trunk variety, and it's a tropical Christmas.

The puppies are goofing in the side yard. Two sparks of light that drop a plastic fist full of doglogs over the yard every day. It's past noon by a few minutes and I can see the tree shadows change on the lawn. Just a moment's image caught on electronic paper to say it's Christmas.

Flock of pigeons? no ducks? I need binoculars to be sure, but the birds are flying and they are ...ducks... about 40 in tight formation, tight turns and swoops over th the pond, not ready to settle, hard to track with the binoculars. I watch them over Jack's Pond which is hidden down the slope of the hill by a neighbors roof line. Enough of a pond to attract ducks in December. The flock disappears.

Above the pond, in the distance , the largest building to the southeast is Palomar Medical Center in Escondido. I can see it clearly from where I sit.

I can see the top floors of the hospital where Jack died this past July.

How strange that I didn't realise we had this view until after he died. We can see the hospital from the back deck & the upper deck. I can sit in the pool Jack never felt and see the spot where he died. Where we all sat with him as he went.

I wish you were here with us this Christmas, but I think we both knew that your last December was going to be your last Christmas too... It a year plus one day since we sprang you from the nursing home. I remember the joy and fear on your face when Kyle and I got you out of there so you could be home for Christmas.

My brother John and his family will be over soon to celebrate Sunday December 24th. We will laugh and talk and watch the Charger's game on Dad's big set. I've tweaked the Boze speakers and hope the surround works like it should.

Little Jackson will run the yard, float the pirate boat on the still pool, watch the dogs pay, and be in the moment, for the moment.

I've got this day, in this place, with this fine weather and the headspace to enjoy it because I uprooted the old life at Tahoe and threw myself and may family into taking care of my dad for his last year on the planet.

I'm glad we changed our lives and got so much closer to him for those last months. It was a gift to all of us.

And so, here, at the house my dad helped us turn into a home, on the day before Christmas 2006, I look out at the place where you died Jack, and hope you know how much the gifts you've given us count toward making this Christmas one that's felt with the heart more than the wallet.

Dad, you've given me the chance to be mindful of the good things around me. Merry Christmas. I miss you.

Motorcycles & Me

I'm not sure if a life long "vehicle post acquisition depression" pattern wasn't set just then. Now whenever I get something I've longed for, _most especially wheels anticipated, desired over a period of time, I find my self wondering what will go wrong to put a pall on the joy. I won't buy a new car for this reason alone, convinced that what ever I purchase will somehow sour and turn on me, causing me some particularly insidious grief. That certainly proved true of the first motorcycle I ever purchased.

I've never told you about a lot of my life after I left home. Call it honoring the O'Connor tradition of remaining silent about anything negative until well after the negative effects of the secret have been dealt with and dissipated. The thinking goes that the knowledge can only bring stress to those you love__ and the knowing provides no possibility of remedy. Seems to me there is about a 10 year stretch I held back from you under the general principles stated above. But I'm in my forties now, still alive, although somewhat amazed that I survived those times, and I suppose its safe to let you in on a few of the crazed events that blew through my life away from home, like a combination of hurricanes, earthquakes and just plain concentrated bad news.

Now that my motorcycle is long gone, (and if Jan is to be believed buried forever in my remote past) the stories can be told. I wanted a BMW motorcycle with all the passion I'd longed for that 10 speed multiplied by the money in my pocket and the strange times that were Berkeley in the early 70's.

I thought the BMW was a sleek, beautiful, majestic machine. My friends called it a big staid German dog. My biking buddies were into hot and crazy limy bikes like the Norton Commando, and Triumph. Loud flashy, oil spurting British steel that could scream up the acceleration curve with a throaty roar.

But I had my eye on a model called the R69_S, big, black, twin chrome tail pipes and huge twin cylinders that spread out parallel to the ground like thick wings. I'd found the machine of my fixation in the want adds__ $1100, it was more than I had, but I wanted it badly. The thing was set up for road touring, a sleek black and Plexiglas wind faring swept back from the headlight. Fiberglass saddlebags hung from the sides. The huge touring gas tank looked like the overstuffed thorax of a monstrous black bumblebee. I was completely consumed with the want of this machine.

I was working at the ice house at the time, living a very cash flush lifestyle, little did I know that I had more money in my pocket than at any time in my life since. I had it figured that if I spent every dime I owned, plus the rent money I could get my machine. I'd then tighten the belt to next pay day and be ahead again.

I wanted the BMW, but felt obliged to shop the field. I rode a British bike, a red Triumph that had been in storage for a few years, over the garage where the BMW was parked. The Triumph's gas tank hadn't been properly drained before storage, the old fuel gummed up the carbs causing the bike to buck, surge, wheeze, smoke, and growl. I knew I didn't want the
Triumph, but I still didn't have enough to pay for the BMW.

I drove the Triumph up to the BMW owner. "I'm going to buy this Triumph for $900, unless you'll sell me the BMW for the same amount." I was desperate, it was all I had. The conviction in my voice convinced the guy. With a muttered curse, he cut his price $200 and we made a deal. It was Christmas morning all over again. I even managed to drive the bike into the room I was living in at the time. I spent the night watching it gleam, trying the key (a spike like affair that socketed into the headlight), admiring the German chrome. I rode without incident for a week. Then it happened.

As I accelerated around a corner on to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley a small silver fiberglass sports car darted left across my lane__and stopped. I had enough time to lock up the breaks and lay on the horn. The screeching tires howled down a thick black streak of rubber as time slowed down. The passenger in the sports car watched me wide eyed as I skidded into the car. The bike slammed into the door, launching me, with my girl friend still hugging my back, up through the faring of the bike. We somersaulted over the sports car, a neat ballistic flip through the early evening air, landing in a breathless heap twenty feet beyond the wreck. I hit tail first and skidded far enough on my fanny to singe my bum. My girl still clinging to my back landed on me. I cushioned the shock of her landing and she walked away from the wreck with out a scratch.

The shock of the pavement knocked the wind from me. I sat dazed in the street, strangers suddenly surrounding us with questions.

"Are you all right?"

"You're cut!"

Blood trickled down my face from a laceration on my temple. I'd snapped the Plexiglas out of the faring with my big Irish head. We were bundled into a VW bus and driven to the University Hospital by helpful strangers. I the doctor jerked stitches through my head with a special snapping emphasis as he lectured me on the stupidity of not wearing a helmet.

The next day I awoke too stiff to move. I felt like I'd been carefully and completely beaten from head to toe with a baseball bat. Too sore to work, too broke not to I forced myself back to the Icehouse. I cripped my way through the swing shift __my body and my bike were broke. The bike was never the same after that, I couldn't afford to get it 100% fixed. The vehicular joy was burned out of me once again. I just suffered stupidly until the pain and the hassles went away. Another prime example of the O'Connor dictum of not sharing pain with your loved ones. What you didn't know couldn't upset you.

High Mountain

In the high mountains finding my way
horizon ridge vague above moving fog
alone here with forty peaks visible
sound of wind
insects buzz
the mountains are moving
a small bird hops lightly on new ice
aquamarine blue
the high lakes like Navaho turquoise
winter slips from scraped granite
creeks swell
buried trees groan under snowlode
the land is swift with change

giant mother shudder to spring

Exhibition of Speed

When I was living under your roof I was obliged to tell you when I was caught, really caught, doing senseless things. I still feel the embarrassment of having to tell you about that moronic ticket.

I'd been out cruising that night. I'd probably told you I was going to the drive-in or a movie. No doubt I'd driven by a movie theater and certainly I'd driven through the drive-in. Teenage veracity at its best.

Cruising' with my high school buddies, Big George, Danny Moore, Robby Brown, and Mark S. Letter. Robby was down, really depressed over the death of his cousin. His cousin had been a junior at Notre Dame. Suddenly we all knew someone who'd died in the parking lot at the Safeway just a few blocks from school. I stared at the death spot in the parking lot every time I drove by.

Robby's cousin had been riding his motorcycle (why do I still remember it was a blue Triumph 650?), he hit a puddle, skidded out of control, struck the curb and shot through the front window of a parked car snapping his neck and ending his 17 year old life in an instant.

Everybody at school was shocked. There was a memorial mass. Death had touched one of us, we didn't feel as immortal for awhile.

I felt a special responsibility as driver to cheer Robby and everybody else up that night. I was driving your '64 Chevy Impala. It was a two-door, metallic silver, with black bucket seats and wire wheel covers. A cool car, except for the automatic. Instead of 4-on-the-floor, there was a hand wide chrome automatic shifter, although you could still get rubber if you revved the engine and dropped it quick into drive.

We cruised the valley that night, rolled through the Bob's Big Boy in Toloucca Lake, radio blaring, goosing the engine, pounding the sides of the car in challenge to all. I was way out of myself, driven by the need to shock and elevate by pal's mood. We all were trying to cheer Robby up, trying to forget that death had taken someone we actually knew. It was all the justification we needed.

Of course we finally found some other guys out cruising in another car --they'd taken up the challenge. We drove side by side, door handle to door handle, motors roaring, accelerating briefly from light to light-- Challenging and sneering. Doing the dance, feeling the adolescent thrill of competition and speed.

I was never one to race, it scared me, I was always afraid of wrecking the car or getting caught. But tonight was different. We had something to forget. I had a friend to cheer up--all this without a thought about risking our lives in a car to forget the death by motorcycle of a friend.

We rolled to a stop side by side in front of a traffic light. I revved the motor and pounded the door, shouting a challenge to race. Strangely the guys in the other car they seemed suddenly subdued. All the bravado had leaked out of them. They sat at the light, hunkered down, engine silent-they didn't even want to look at us. I thought we'd cowed them and continued to rev the engine.

The light changed, I dropped it into drive, punched the accelerator and burned rubber. A high satisfying squeal smoked from the tires as we left our opponents standing still at the light.

"Yeeee Hah! WE BLEW THEM AWAY!" I couldn't believe I'd won!

Then I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the motorcycle cop with his lights all spinning and the siren going. He?d right behind us, watching the byplay, taking it all in.

"Don't you feel like an ass?" The cop grinned a mean, tight, strained smile down at me. It seemed like he was wiping a thin mist of exhaust and burnt tires off his mirror sunglasses. "Gimme your license and registration kid." I handed it over and slunk down in the seat -mortified, embarrassed, self-conscious, certain the whole adolescent world was cruising by us slow and laughing hard. My pals were dead silent while the cop wrote out the ticket. That little yellow official message of doom read: Exhibition of Speed.

I signed the promise to appear. I meekly said, "Thank you sir", eased the car into gear and, slowly, cautiously, checking all the mirrors and glancing over my shoulders into the blind spot, pulled away sheepishly into traffic. The cop cruised a few cars behind me for miles, while my buddies exploded with screams of laughter, howling over my grim fate, pointing, chuckling, slugging me in the arm, calling me names --and generally having a good time at my expense. I had to laugh at myself. I did feel a bit of satisfaction at having cheered up Robby.

But at the end of the evening I had to come in and face you. You had guests over for cards. I walked in, nodded hello and quickly headed straight for my room. I was amazed that you could read my face so easily.

"What happened Dennis?"

A version of the story trickled out. The ticket said it all. You were disappointed, I was grounded. I felt relieved that you'd taken it as well as you had.

Thanks again.

Jack O'Connor

Most of the writing in this blog was inspired by thinking about my father, Jack O'Connor. I've tried to catch those special moments of childhood that you remember through the filter of many decades as an adult.

I wrote the narrative pieces after learning Jack was very ill. I thought he was going to die. Since I was stuck 600 miles away in the mountains at the time, shackled to a classroom teaching job and unable to be with my folks when they needed me, I turned to writing as a way to vent the steam.

The product was dozens of narratives based on growing up in the San Fernando Valley as the eldest son of Jack and Joan O'Connor.

Both my mom and dad are gone now. Joan died in March 2001. Jack died in July 2006.

They both live in the minds and hearts of those who knew and loved them. All of the writing here is dedicated to their memories.

Dennis O'Connor
December, 2006

Automatic Writing

Insect thin grey wings wiggles black body
on my arm hair.
Thin crescent moon at noon.

Bird chirp
Flea foot on note paper
Water rumble
Nervous foot
Water bubble

Bird whistle

Mumble of kids
Brett stands on a log
Smiling Happy Boy
Rough wood on the bike bridge
Ben slaps him down now.

Skin heats under sun
Brittle pine needles
Bamboo reed like packed straw
Fingers tingle in cold water
Scrape of branches on my skull, shoes, soul?

Like chicken feet in the sand
Patterns in the stream bottom

On a wooden bridge
(Lorena shows us the moon crescent in the sky)

Birds find a way
At every sunlit moment
To whistle their lives
A fly buzzes me
Ah, So how does your skin feel?
Tangles in your hair

Lorena & Ingrid tease the whispering creek
With muddy shoes
& smile

Chatter bird
Water riffle
Sniffle of weeping bird

Squirrel whistle
Trees sign a breathing hum

Tall tree, fire hole of sun in clouds
a Butter fly
Shadows the blue
sky
Pine needle pom-poms
Shot with light.

3 dogs, splash and drink from the stream-

I’m dog thirsty and ready to shake

Wet grit of stream caught
Pine needles

I haven’t spent enough time just sitting in the woods

Waiting for God
In the breezes & squalls

To make my presence
Known to
Me.

Enjoy a moment

When the temptations
Are at bay

And the sweet Brief

Idea of poetry can
Be had...


Old grey

Fat man now

More memories than dew

drops on a bare branch.

The look in his eyes almost stopped me from punching him out.

Fighting with my brother John was second nature. We were trapped by a down and dirty, knee-jerk habit of brawling, arguing, whining, framing and ratting out each other to mom or dad. Betrayal was our daily bread. We hacked our way through growing up together with fiery accusations, roaring jealousies and cutthroat competition. We fought for space and attention. We fought for the sheer fun of it, and because we didn't know what else to do with each other.
Whining, tattling, and confrontations were the cornerstones of our relationship.

I saw myself as the victim of John's devious and sneaky ambushes. He was always setting me up and I was always falling for it. Of course I was a bully venting my rages on John, building myself up by pushing him around. I had no right to resent the sneaky survivor's personality he developed to cope with my moods but I resented him anyway.

 John lived in the shadows, scurrying behind my back knowing my white-hot rage could explode in his direction at any time. His was a bunker mentality. John would tease. I'd explode. We were trigger and bomb, caught in a need to tear each other apart__ yet depending on each other to be there as a vent for all the antsy spleen of growing up in the San Fernando Valley. We fell into the habit of sporadically torturing each other. Long weeks of uneasy truce would reign between battles. I'd swear to myself not to let it get started again. But moments of decency and tenderness seemed unnatural and rare.

At Christmas, we could create a semblance of brotherly love that would sustain a holiday mood. I'd stay clear of John. He'd play in his room. We got along by walking way around each other. The uneasy truce would break down as soon as the holiday glow began to fade.

Now I watch my own kids squabble. I see the passion and gleam in their eyes as they tear at each other's soft spots. I've been there, but it doesn't make it any easier to stand. At least my kids seem to be able to make up quickly. But they're young. Give 'em time.

"You're driving us crazy!" Jan and I scream in chorus. "I just hope that someday your kids treat you like this!" I can remember mom hollering that. Now I've said it too.

 Why do parents say things like that? Is it just desperate rambling induced by sleep deprivation, lack of privacy, and incessant bickering? The prophecy and hex have come true. Now I'm the one who has to drag himself up on weary legs and stagger towards the shrieks and screams of fighting children.

 It does no good that I now regret my part in shattering the brief bits of hard earned peace my parents managed to scrape together. John and I could turn a weekend into madness. How many Sunday mornings did we splinter with our screams and accusations?

I was talking to Dad just the other day. Talking about my memories of epic fights with John, and Dad laughed! "You two never really fought. You guys never had black eyes or split lips." I suppose compared to the beatings my dad took from his brother Tom, my fights with John seemed tame.

 My dad had been the younger brother. Tom had punched him clear through a glass door one time. Dad had an adolescence of black eyes and fist-loosened teeth.

"Tom taught me I could take a punch. I'll say that for him. He hit harder than anybody I ever faced in the ring." Dad's voice was mellow and laughing as he looked back. Did I teach John the same lesson?

I was a hitter. Perhaps not a brawling puncher like my uncle, but I liked to hit John. I usually held something back, I can only remember a few times when I really unloaded on him.

Usually I'd pop John a hard one on the back or arm, shouting in rage, my angry bellow pierced by John's high-pitched scream. He could crack crystal with his air raid siren scream. The scream was John's first line of defense. His scream made an adult's spine stiffen. I'd look at him mean barking at some taunt or smirk of his and he'd let loose with a scream that would drive any parent to their feet. His howls would haul mom and dad out of near exhaustion and drag them on a tractor beam of terror right into whatever dispute I was hoping to solve with my fists. John would poke me like a dog through a chain link fence; laugh in my face and then save his own butt with a scream.

When my folks put in their first pool they were thinking of all the positive, family centered, time we'd get lounging around the pool. Maybe they hoped the pool would absorb some of our energy. I was still going to Langdon Ave. Elementary School, sixth grade. John was in the third. The pool would mean a chance for happy family times a chance to relax and be with each other.

Maybe the Romans were thinking of the same thing when they built the coliseum. For John and me it was the beginning of the great sea battles.

Something still happens to me when I get in a pool. Chlorinated water is like Dr. Jekyll's solution. Layers of civilization peel away. I become a wild man. As a kid I lived to dunk my little brother and strip the trunks off him in the bargain. I had no restraint or remorse. If John got in range he was in for it. I simply wanted to see how close to drowning I could take him every time I could get my hands on him. The two of us in a pool for more than a few minutes meant cannon balls, splashing and mayhem.

It would start innocently enough. We'd both be hot and sweaty, ready for a swim. We'd beg mom for permission to use the pool, swear a double oath not to fight, squabble or hassle each other "Honest mom, honest, we won't fight!"

We broke all our promises as soon as we hit the water. We'd jump into the pool; angling our entries to splash each other, then jump out again and race walk (no running) to the diving board. A cannon ball contest to see how much water we could splash out of the pool would follow. Eventually one of us would tire and stay in the pool providing a perfect target for the next cannon ball.

I'd get keyed up, cranking the game up to the next level, sending walls of water out into John's face while he'd give me neyah neyahs and hyena laughs. "Didn't get me, Ha Ha, didn't get me!"

Before long I'd be chasing him down and throwing him in. Soon the line would be crossed. Adults have the ability to see the line clearly It's that act that goes too far. Older children should be mature enough to back away from the line. On the far side of the line is violence and craziness. But once I was wet I'd loose the ability to reason. The concrete edge of our backyard pool was the line for me.

Of course just as I was closing in on John, just before I could corner him and get my hands on his neck, that air raid siren scream would crank in. My hands would be on his shoulders pushing him under, dunking his head. He'd squirm like a seal, gasping for breath with panic beginning to surface in his eyes. I'd get my hand on top of his skull and push him under. We both would smile until we were right up to the line. Then the smiles would change.

Mom would suddenly be screaming at me from the edge of the pool, threatening us with Dad's vengeance. "Dennis! You stop that this instant! Get out of the Pool! How many times do I have to tell you to leave each other alone in the Pool?" 

There was a weary, desperate, near hysterical edge to mom's voice most of the time. John's air raid scream saved him for a long time. It got so he was over confident, and careless in its use. He'd sit on the edge of the pool and make faces in my direction.

I lurked in the deep end nursing a grudge.

"Just ignore him." My mom would say, "As soon as you stop paying attention to him he'll get bored and quit." It's the classic adult answer to teasing. They don't feel the acid venom of a well-targeted jibe. They have forgotten how a little bother's neyah neyhas can pierce the soul and scratch up rage.

I was trying the ignore him trick. John was making ape arms at me. He'd jut out his jaw and drag his arms low like a chimp. This routine normally drove me crazy.

Just ignore him.

 I floated on my back with my eyes closed. If I don't look at him, it won't bother me. Then I realized that a cannon ball attack could be launched at any time. I got out of the pool, not even looking at him, and walked toward the diving board.

" Dennis is a chicken! Dennis is a sissy!" John was making his shinny grin at me, jutting his jaw out and wagging his head in a way that always made me furious.

"Chicken Fat Chicken Fat!" John grabbed his stomach and pointed at me. I couldn't believe it, he was begging for it. By ignoring him I'd only challenged his god given ability to tease. My feigned indifference drove John crazy. He had to break through my act. Capering like a chimp he gave me his jaw jutting shinny grin again, rolling his eyes he laughed at me, "Chicken Fat Chicken fat, you jiggle like a girl when you walk!"

That tore it. It was the one I couldn't ignore. John sensed that he'd stepped over the line too, because he was instantly silent.

 I stopped dead. I turned toward him, looking down at the shallow end of the pool. He was twenty feet away. I stared at him furious. He began capering and crowing again, pointing his finger at me and laughing. Holding his belly and swaying his hips; John had a death wish. I was going to oblige.

I started for him and the look on my face must have cut through the fog of his teasing. John froze. I was ready to drown him. I was planning on doing him in this time. 15 feet away I raised my fist up by my head, promising him a punch if only he got into range. He began to scream. John screamed with true horror and conviction.

I figured I was doomed. Mom would be sure I was killing him and I was too far out of range to get even get a single shot in. My insufferable, screaming, ratfink of a brother was going to get me into big trouble again, and there was nothing I could do about it.

"John Henry O'Connor You Be Silent This Instant! It saw it all! Dennis didn't lay a hand on you!"  John's ear piercing wail died on the spot. He looked guilty, he was caught red handed and open mouthed.

I couldn't believe it! After all the times I'd been punished for hitting John without ever getting the satisfaction of actually beating him at all he was finally caught! 

There was justice after all.

I trapped John by himself later on. I held him by the wrist and slugged him a good one on the arm. I really enjoyed whispering "Go on, scream no one's gonna believe you this time!" He didn't make a sound. His eyes were filled with tears and desperation.

Suddenly I felt bad for punching my little brother. It really wasn't fair. I let him go. As he scurried around the corner he jutted out his chin and gave me a hyena laugh. I just tried to ignore him.

Years later when I was in high school, I just couldn't ignore him. I was out front at the Teasdale house, raking dry leaves on a fall day. Mom and dad were away. John was in the house playing by himself.

As I bent over to scrape some leaves on to the tarp John turned the hose on me. He soaked me down good, using the high pressure torrent from the brass nozzle to drive me back across the lawn. I was sopping and furious. I charged back into the stinging water and John dropped the hose and sprinted for the door, calling and laughing back over his shoulder. "You're a wet dope! Yeaaah" I charged on and reached the door just as it swung shut with a thundering slam. I could hear the sounds of the chain and dead bolt falling into place.

John looked out of the window at me, laughing and making faces. "Let me in John, and I'll let you live. Let me in Damn it!" John just laughed and stuck his chin out at me.

"I locked all the doors! You can't get in! You can't get in!"

It was his certainty that drove me over the edge. He was so damn smug. It was too much to bear. I ran for the door, kicking at it with both feet, I felt the door start to give. I kicked again and again.

John was screaming in the background. "You're gonna get it for breaking the door. Stop! Dad will kill you!"

I drove my shoulder into the door and it gave way, whipping open. The chain was still attached and tore the molding from around the door. John stood frozen in horror on the other side of the gaping door. The look in his eyes almost stopped me from punching him out.

After I dried off and cooled out I was really worried about that door. I did my best to nail things back into place. I was really sweating it, but the folks didn't seem to notice the damage. Years later Dad admitted that he was puzzled and confused by the intermittent damage around the front door. "I just couldn't figure out what was causing it. It seemed like I had to putty that door up every 3 months."

I only remember going through the door after John that one time. Maybe it became a habit.

Dad built a pool at the Teasdale house too. But by this time I was on my way to college at USC and didn't get much use out of it. By then John and I had lost interest in tormenting each other.

 In fact, things had been cooling down between us ever since I'd kicked the door in to get at him. We didn't become great buddies. We just got busy with our lives and began to ignore each other even more. But you can't just forget a history like ours and walk away. Little brothers grow up, and I suppose they all hope to settle the score.

I 'd been away from home for years. I'd transferred from USC to Berkeley and started my own life in Northern California. Then I came back home from Berkeley for a visit. John was still living at the Teasdale house.  He was living in my old room. It was a great room with a private entrance, it's own bathroom, a fireplace in one corner, and built in bookshelves. I'd spent a lot of my teenage in that room waiting for my life to start.

 John looked me right in the eyes. "It's my room now. I had to wait a long time for it." I just shrugged I was used to sleeping on the floor in a bag.

John was in the middle of his training at the police academy. We were the same size now, but being three years older and his big brother still gave me a psychological advantage.

It was an interesting trip home. The hippy son back from Telegraph Avenue and the little red school house bumps up against the straight arrow son training to be a policeman like his dad.

We danced around each other. A lot of things had changed in our lives. But one thing hadn't. We shouldn't have gotten in the pool together. The Teasdale pool was a novelty to me. I'd grown up in the backyard before it had been filled up with concrete and water. We all got into the pool together. John, me, and our little brother Paul.

Paul was about 10 at the time and it soon became apparent that he'd inherited the O'Connor water curse. John and I tossed Paul around like a beach ball for awhile. Paul wiggled, giggled, kicked, and screamed. John and I took turns dunking and tormenting Paul until he finally ran screaming from the pool. Paul had a good scream, but it couldn't compare to John's.

I can't remember who made the first move but soon we were trying to dunk each other. John had been learning some interesting wrist and choke holds at the academy. I'd been taking judo at Cal and working as a warehouseman at the Ice Company. I once figured I lifted about 60,000 pounds of ice a night working that job.

We both knew it was time for a showdown.

He kept trying to spin me around and get a hold on my back and neck. I was slapping at his head with open palms, trying to push him under like I'd done years ago.

We started out laughing. Then the shoves and slaps started to land a little harder. We both slipped across the line before we knew it. This time no one was going to scream for mom.

I slapped John hard in the face. He countered and managed to spin me around. His forearm slid across my throat. I elbowed back at him, catching him in the ribs. Then John pressured his arm up. I rose up on my toes, and then things started to darken. I couldn't move anymore. Next thing I knew I was hanging on the edge of the pool coughing and vomiting up water.

"Are you all right Den? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you." John was really upset. I was stunned and I was never going to think of John as my little brother anymore. We both grew up some that day.

 I left and lived my life. After awhile, John left home too.

John was best man at my wedding. It was a big wedding, about 150 guests I knew about 20 people. It was the night of the USC-UCLA football game, just before Thanksgiving. The ushers were having trouble getting the judge who was to marry us out of the bar and away from the game. It was a close game and a lot of people were shouting.

While I waited for the call John and I started talking about growing up. John was dressed in a sport coat and slacks. He was goofing around, laughing, trying to loosen me up. He pointed out the small hand painted Mickey Mouse on his necktie. I grinned. "John, I gained a lot of respect for you when you choked me out in that pool."

"Man, I'll never forget your face when you came through that door. I thought I was dead. I always had respect for you after that." John amazed me that day. I hadn't seen him in a long time. We never really talked much to begin with. He was standing up with me now. It helped. I was feeling nervous. It was good to have my brother standing by my side.

Finally the game ended and the call came. John was still laughing and cool headed. He was a veteran police officer by then. John pulled me aside just before I was to walk down the isle. "I can still get you outta here if you want." He said it with a grin on his face as he held open his coat to reveal a pistol in a shoulder holster. I didn't take him up on the offer.

John's my brother and I love him.  We rarely see each other.

We haven't been swimming together for years.

Learning How to Hit

My whole little league career had been nothing but strikeout after strikeout. My days as a player were an exercise in frustration, left-field daydreams, and batting practice embarrassment. 

Dad, do you remember when I intentionally struck out and took off for 1st base? I misunderstood the rule about wild foul balls on a full count (it sounds like I still don't understand that rule) and believed I could finally get on base using a little-known loophole in the game.  I took three wild swings dropped the bat, and sprinted for first. On base at last! Then a walk of shame back to the dug out everyone yelling at me and laughing. 

Little league was just mediocrity and public humiliation until you taught me how to hit a fastball. Dad, you taught a weird stance, with my elbows high and the bat up and behind my shoulders, almost like I was waving a flag. The stance felt funny at first. But it worked! At first, you threw easy stuff while I built confidence. I'd swing and miss. I'd slice and hit weak grounders, but then I got it. 

Every night we'd go over the field. You pitched, and I hit. I couldn't believe it; the ball really flew. By the end of the week, I could hit well even when you threw really hard. The ball would fly off your hand faster than anything I'd ever seen in a little league game. I'd swing and hit it almost every time. 

The sharp crack of the ball and bat was an amazing sound for a flubber like me. The echoes of those clean hits still chime. I was hitting long flies by now, no limping grounders, high arcs into the outfield. A few even went over the fence. These hits would make me a legend. It was a miracle!  Just four nights of coaching, and you'd turned me around! 

I knew that one good hit in this weekend's game, and I'd be in the majors. I'd jump from the minors to the majors in one great stroke! In the majors, you got actual uniforms, not just a t-shirt and hat. It would happen because any kid on our team who could hit disappeared before the next game. Inevitably we'd see the new recruit (in full uniform) show up for a major league game.  Every day for a week, you took me to the field for batting practice. By the end of the week, I was sure I could hit anything the other guys would pitch me. Come game day, I was moving up! 

 The day before the game, I was filled with keen anticipation. I couldn't wait for Saturday. I didn't say anything to my friends about my new hitting abilities. My buddies wouldn't believe me anyway. I had to show 'em. 

That day we were playing kickball at recess. The pitcher was skipping the ball over the hot black asphalt. Kids were shouting for their favorite pitches. "Bounces! Baby Bounces, Right over the plate!" 

I was in the outfield, consigned to deep left. Suddenly someone kicked a high-fly ball. I heard the satisfying ka_thonk of a well-kicked ball. The ball soared above the playground, getting smaller and smaller in the sky.  It was dropping right at me! This ball was mine! I put my hands up, spreading all my fingers wide, anticipating the catch. The kickball plummeted down. The ball fell out of the sky and bounced off the tip of my ring finger. I heard a shrill boink followed by a subtle "pop."  

The ball came down on my outstretched fingers, like trying to spear the kickball instead of catching it. Yeow the pain. I grabbed at my right wrist, instinctively knowing I didn't want to touch my finger. Hugging the hand down against my belly, I doubled over in fear. It hurt; it hurt bad. Then I forced myself to lift my hand up and look at it. What I saw shocked me so bad I forgot the pain. 

My ring finger took a 90-degree left turn at the first knuckle folding grotesquely over my middle finger. The knuckle was swollen and already discolored. I figured it was broken for sure. By now, all my buddies were crowded about me. They gazed at the twisted wreck of my hand in stunned, appreciative silence. I drew a thick crowd of kids pushing in to look. My morbidly fascinated friends hustled me into the school. I held out my mangled hand; this irrefutable hall pass took me straight to Mrs. Jorgensen.

My 4th-grade teacher, Mrs. Jorgensen, was the toughest, strictest, scariest teacher ever. I spent the whole year in the fourth grade trying to avoid her gaze. I'd slouch rigid in my seat, doing my best not to fidget, hoping she'd forget I was alive. She had a voice that would crack across your brain like a bullwhip. Her voice left a bitter taste in its wake. 

Interrupting Mrs. Jorgensen's lunch,  I shoved my mangled digit in her face. crying, " Look!" I didn't do it to shock or annoy, I was scared and sure my finger was broken. Mrs. J. was the teacher; she'd know what to do. Her stern, wrinkled face changed. Her eyes widened as I waved my right-angled finger in her face. 

Then formidable Mrs. Jorgensen cracked. She screamed before the unmitigated horror of my hideously mangled finger and ran shrieking from the room. My pals rushed me to the nurse's office. Calls were made. Both my parents came and took me to the doctor's office. 

I watched the doctor inject pain killer into both sides of my knuckle. "Dislocated, not broken," he said. Dislocated? I mulled over this new word.  The doctor held the crooked finger, pulled gently, and it popped back into place. Now that the fear and pain had faded, I liked the sound of the word: Dislocated. They taped on a smooth metal splint, and I was sent home.

No hits for me. I missed my chance.

The baseball season was over before my finger healed. 

I never played in Little League again.

Hawaiian Bumble Bee

To Bee or not to be?

One of the most vivid memories I have of Hawaii is of a huge, black bulbous bumble bee floating menacingly over my head while I listened to band playing a concert in the park.

The Royal Hawaiian Band was dressed in Gilbert & Sullivan Military cut white uniforms. Each musician sported a red Hibiscus the size of a dinner plate in the button hole of a starched lapel. The eyes of every musician locked on the conductor as he dramatically pumped his arms. Each player wore a brilliant white pith-helmet. The conductor's helmet sported a golden badge that flashed under the tropical sun. Like a marionette, the conductor stood ramrod strait, arms raised, head and hands twitching and flicking. He jerked out his connections to Souza. The conductor was high above the lazy crowd on an elevated bandstand. The lawns of the park were fresh cut, you could taste the green tang with each breath. The faint perfume of flowers was a base beat on the air.

A Polo game clacked in the background. The riders far enough away that the sound of their ponies' hooves was lost in the marching boom of Souza's tuba and trumpet chorus.

The crowd was slow and appreciative. They lay scattered about the lawns, lounging on a checkerboard of picnic blankets, sipping cool drinks and enjoying a slow lunch. The white band played on enthusiastically, Sousa's vigorous marches, a contrast with the "one, two, three days I be there" mentality of the islands. We had picnic lunched and cool drinks as the band played on.

The bee carried on buzzing through the crowd. A ripple ran through the field. The bee was huge easily as large as a small child's fist. It seemed impossible that the frantic, high rev thrumming of its tiny wings could keep that bloated body afloat. The insect staggered through the air in ridiculous counter point to the banging drums and blaring trumpet of the band.

Panicked people swiped at it with seat cushions and sun hats. The buzzing black-bomb rode the air unsteadily, banking and swooping and swooping and banking. Diamond Head was eroding quietly in the background.

A sunburned mainland matron tented in a flowered MU-MU finally connected with a folder newspaper. The bee shot in a solid line drive straight at the band conductor. The bumble bee stuck him in the neck like a well aimed dart. His mechanical interpretation of Sousa became manic. But kept tempo, and ended with a properly choreographed clash of symbols & brass.

Open Wide

Dr. Hyde, Painless Dentist

Dad, by the time you read this they'll have taken your teeth. For years we joked,  "The teeth are fine, but the gums gotta go." 

Hard to joke now. Dentists were people mom taught me to fear. My earliest recollection of dentistry is of the waiting room at the kiddie dentist. There were rocking horses, and a combination corral-play pen, the walls were covered with wild west wallpaper. The corral was full of toys, each worn down by the compulsive handling of little kids who played desperately trying to forget that they were waiting to see the doctor. 

Seeing the doctor wasn't fun. I always had a cavity that needed filling, and that meant the needle, the high pitched whine of the drill, the numbness and the helplessness. No matter how hard I brushed I always seemed to have cavities. I could sit out in the wild rest room counting the cowboys and Indians on the wallpaper, nervously thumbing through the HighLights Children Magazines, fidgeting my wait time away while hope lived that this time he'd say "No Cavities!".
Of course we found out later that the doctor had the disturbing, but lucrative, habit of drilling & filling healthy teeth. 

Of all the dentists I've had, Dr. Hyde stands out. Here was a man a young boy could hardly forget. Perhaps he was a strange man, with a name that conjured images from Robert Louis Stevenson. He was an intense, short, dark, with hairy forearms. He had thick but dexterous fingers with beautifully manicured fingernails. Hyde's bulging hyperthyroid brown eyes were usually laughing, he always seemed to be so close to your face. Inside the comfort zone, grinning as he picked and probed with those awful stainless steel hooks. His sarcastic, facetious, patter would make me laugh, even with a numbed mouth full of cotton and cavities. 

I liked Dr. Hyde, as much as any patient could like a dentist. It was mom's belief that Hyde was a "painless" dentist that made me a believer. Dr. Hyde was the only dentist mom really trusted. I just rode with her faith, accepting Hyde as a dental saint -- blind belief made it easier for me to go see him. 

Like all kids I was terrified of the needle. I noticed how it was always kept out of sight, hidden away from the patient’s eyes, kept secret and segregated from the other shining chrome picks, probes, packers and mirrors. It was supposed to dampen the patient's anxiety to keep that needle out of sight. What you can't see... I knew Hyde was preparing the syringe when he'd turn his back to me. I'd be racked out in the chair, a bitter plastic drainage vacuum hanging from the side of my mouth like a cane hung from a rack. The hollow sucking sound echoed in my ears as the saliva drained from my mouth. The acrid smell of filling compound drifted faintly on the breeze, as the hissing concentric swirl of the spit-sink babbled in my ear. 

With a few expert furtive moves, Dr. Hyde would prepare the needle, a bit of banter, his free hand misdirecting my eyes. He had a special way with the shot, jiggling the gum and cheek with his thumb and forefinger he would slip that needle in and numb the area before you could shrink from the spike. "Say Ah now Dennis, that's right, let me just grab...." and he'd begin his patented gum and cheek shake, the chrome cylinder flashed past my free eye quickly, the simple patter, the big fingers shaking my cheek, a thin cold faint pain deep in the jaw fading immediately to tongue swollen numbness. 

That's how it usually went; except for one unforgettable visit. 

It was a typical six-month checkup. I'd been through the cleaning and x-ray.
The offending bit of dark foggy decay had been waved in front of my face on the film. I was now stretched out and waiting. I'd been picked, and probed. The dreaded cavity had been found! So I lay there, open-mouthed and passive, waiting for the needle. Hyde turned his back, as usual, the nurse presented the tray. His hands moved to prepare the Novocain. 

Suddenly Hyde is in my face, we were eye to eye, the antiseptic smell of his breath predominated. With a wink, he produced the silver syringe and held it directly before my eyes. It was a huge ballistic chrome barrel topped with a hand-sized plunger. I was mesmerized, the needle was immense. 

Hyde's smile was crooked, grinning he asked, "How'd you like one in the eyeball?"
Before I could squirm my cheek and gum were jiggling and I was numb.

The doctor had a memorable sense of humor.

Tube City Chronicles II

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Here's a picture of the Nightgod, a bronze sculpture done by my father Jack O'Connor.

Check out his website at: http://indianbronze.com

D.

Tube City Chronicles

Down the tubes 

Veg in front of the tube 

Find the inner tube 

 Lots of takes on an important word: 

Tube 

 Sort of round, with meaningful content, easy to transport, daring to digest. 

Welcome to Tube City! 

The name Tube City was inspired by the family pre-occupation with hot dog consumption. 

We've been fans of Cupid's Dogs for years. At one point my dad Jack opened his own hotdog stand which we nicknamed Tube City. 

The best day he ever had was when a drive-through customer winged the side of the building and paid him 90 bucks cash not to report it on her insurance. 

 That business (like a few others) when 'down the tube'. 

 Den