Sunday, June 10, 2012
Dear Me Letters and Postcards by Annie Arkansas
Below are a few Dear Me Letters and Postcards that I've written under the name Annie Arkansas, which I consider appropriate since I am from Little Rock, Arkansas. These are whims that came to mind for no reason than to enjoy writing them.
Dear Me Letter: The History of Beverly's Hills
Dear Me,
Being a died-in-the-cottonfields Arkie, I normally wouldn’t admit I’ve lived in L.A two years short of the years I lived in Arkansas. But sometimes shallow secrets should surface.
And like everyone else here, I thrust myself through its streets to get where I’m going. It’s the only city I’ve lived in where you need a map book called Thomas to guide you around. I never use maps much. I depend on gas stations if I get lost, which prickles the heck out of some practical folks. But one can be practical and not use maps. Chalk it up to sense of adventure or no sense at all.
Anyway, when you leave a town in Arkansas to get to the next one, you’ll drive past farmland and Burma Shave signs then you see the welcome signs of the next town. But L.A.’s so big for its britches that it has to be divided into pockets so a person knows where he’s putting himself. Each pocket has a name and its territory is marked by a sign shoved in gray concrete with no green grass or Burma Shave signs in between. It’s like someone just took some giant scissors and clipped all that out and shoved a bunch of little towns together.
Living in all this bulky gray matter one gets into its rhythms. And once you’re in it and moving in tune with its motion, it can be a fight to hoist your eyes above its cogs and wheels to see what’s really there.
Well, today, two weeks before Thanksgiving I was driving through Beverly Hills in my robotic mode, eyes dug into the car-studded black street, ears cuddled into music on the radio, when I noticed the street’s Christmas decorations were already up. This perked me a little out of the gray but when I saw a decoration that had a street sign as part of it that said “Beverly Hills,” it hit me. I have never seen a hill in Beverly Hills. But I don’t get over in that neck of the concrete much so I could be out in left field. And who’s Beverly anyway? A wild hair told me the Beverly Hills library might have an answer so I whipped on over there.
Miss Chalmers in the reference section turned out to be very helpful. But at first, when I said I was looking for the history of Beverly Hills and drew a blank in the card index, her face flushed. For a long minute she sat with her eyes aimed at a spot on the desk, apparently watching some thoughts fight. A small sense of adventure came over me when she slipped on a starched attitude that said, “What I have to do in the name of duty!” and motioned me to follow her.
She stopped at a door marked “Private” in a discreet corner in the shadows near the shelves marked “Mystery.” With key in lock she turned to me and in a brisk bandsaw whisper said, “I’ve been here since the library opened its doors and you’re the first person I know who’s asked about the history of Beverly Hills.”
Once inside behind the closed door she walked over to a small oak rolltop desk charmed with age, unrolled the top, unlocked the right-hand drawer under the pigeon holes and with a slight hesitation lifted from it a small plain wooden box. She placed it on the desk and invited me to sit down. As I reached to open it she handed me a pair of thin white cotton gloves produced from the center drawer. She stated in a low librarian voice tinted with a touch of school teacher, “Wear these to protect the book from skin oil and acid. And please handle it with great care. It’s as old as Beverly Hills.” I thought, “What hills?” Then added, “And may I also suggest you be discreet about what you read in these pages.
She asked me to lock the door when I finished and to stop by her desk. I wondered if this degree of security protects Fort Knox.
As she closed the door her glance left me with the uncomfortable sensation that I was an uninvited outsider who was about to rudely intrude into a book sealed with family secrets.
The box was apparently Ponderosa pine and except for its fine finish could be thought to have held small cigars. Branded inside a circle on the top was a small “b” and a capital “S.” Tarnished brass hinges creaked slight resentment at my invasion and a musky odor only owned by old leather pounced its pungence in the air. The gold filigree-like border seemed out of place on the book’s scuffed cowhide cover. The one small heart-shaped scar on its face, off center to the right, somehow seemed intentional.
I gently lifted the thin leather tongue folded across the top meant to pull the book from the snug fit of the box.
Opposite the cover page was written in brown ink with eloquent hand: “Sedgwick Bitt, Entrepreneur of Stature, English borne and bred, I enter these pages a Midget and exit a Giant in the end. April 1, 1888.”
Mr. Bitt “dated” his entries by event rather than by month, day and year. The first one was entitled “Voyage To” on the upper right of the page.
Up to now there was no hint of the contents. The filigreed cover was untitled except for the heart scar. The cover page also bare of words but bore a small hole in the shape of a heart the same size and in the same spot as on the cover. Perhaps a symbolic peek into Mr. Bitt’s heart.
The next words would have prevented me from going on had its age been younger. But I figured secrets of the dead are past embarrassment.
“Dear Bitt,” (Odd that one would write to oneself but makes more sense than “Dear Diary,” whoever that is.)
“I shall forever be true to England. Had her tall people been true to her smallest, I would not be enpassage to the Colonies aboard this grand ship, The Queen’s Quest. But for the good fortune of the heritance from my beloved father, the late Lord Bitt, Duke of Sedgewick, would I be bound to roam Britain’s countryside as a freak of nature in a circus.
“This is a voyage to my dreams. Foremost, the hope to discover amongst mankind the truth about the distinction between body, mind and spirit. Another hope is to find a good wife.
“While alone for lengths of time in places free from other people or mirrors, I was never intruded upon by the thought that I have a three-foot, three-inch high body. And alike, whilst reading the Classics, studying the languages and mathematics, did I ever consider I have a mind lesser than my most prominant and learned acquaintances. And upon careful reflection, perhaps greater than some. The part of my mind containing unexpressed emotions and reactions I bear as I have observed others must also do. I hope one day to be rid of those impediments. They weigh too cumbersome on a soul.
“The most elusive to comprehesion, particularly to some of those entrapped by wealth and position, is realization of the spiritual nature of man. I myself was startled into this realm of thought while gazing upon my father who died in his sleep in the prime of his life. I gazed upon his dead body and thought, ‘That is not my father. He left his body. It is he who animated it. If he left the body, could he go to another and live another life? But if he could, why would he? Life can be a hell enough well out of balance with its heavens.’ I left it at that. How could such be proven anyhow? Perhaps one could if one dared look beyond one’s trappings. But that seemed quite impossible.”
I was relieved to find the subsequent entries lighter, less tedious and philosophical.
The next one, entitled, “Family Tree of Offshoots” spoke of Shrood Bitt, a cousin who as an artist rebelled against “the restrictions of wealth and position by denying our family name and heritance thereof,” assumed the name of Shrood Witt and moved to a small cottage in Northern England which he dubbed Witt’s Inn. He married a young lady by the name of Nettie who, to help expenses, opened a small knitting shoppe dubbed Nett Witt’s Knits.”
I was becoming suspicious as I went on as to how much of these entries were truth and how much a fertile imagination. The puns were a bit pungent. But then one expects a certain dry wit from the English. Possibly their way of sopping up some of their dreary moist climate. And how would this very personal log tell me the history of Beverly Hills? I impatiently but delicately flipped the pages and stopped when the word Beverly bounced at me. This entry’s title: Beverly’s Hills.
Gold fever hadn’t cooled much since the Rush of 1849. But gold wasn’t Mr. Bitt’s interest. Having made profitable investments in the East, he was attracted to California by “the vast land” and “a wife who fits me like a glove.”
In a few paragraphs I had my answer, told better by Mr. Bitt:
“Well into the eighth month of my journey from the East, the last month spent roaming California in search of my dreams, my body not yet acclimated to the heat, I sought a comfortable resting place with water for my pony and me. I was relieved to see a sign posted ahead. Having the affliction of nearsightedness and having had the misfortune of losing my spectacles, I had to place my nose nearly against the sign to read it. ‘Bar-B Ranch Ahead’ it said.
“A short distance up the road I arrived at a substantially large ranch house. As I dismounted to water my pony at the trough, the only thing moving was a very light, very hot breeze. I would have thought the entire establishment deserted but for the distinct feeling of a live presence and, oddly, faint snort sounds like pigs.
“I softly walked up the porch steps, startled to hear an abrupt short snort then a longer one to my right. In the dusk it was difficult to see the source. I stepped quietly toward the sounds hardly knowing what I would discover. Certainly pigs would not be inhabiting a porch corner, but this country is chock full with unexpectances. I stopped short at eye level with what appeared to be three hills slightly undulating. Only after turning my head slowly to the right then the left did I realize I was looking straight on to the horizon of a very large stomach. I peered past the two hills to the left to discover the proprietor of this portly bulk was a woman enjoying a nap. I was attempting to fathom her vastness, as I had never seen such in all my extensive travels, when a gust of dust blew up, causing me to sneeze with such violence that my head was thrust into the side of her belly. The floor quaked from the jerk of her startled body awakening. Yet for an instant she lay stunned stiffly still, her eyeballs slamming around in their sockets like billiard balls searching for their pockets.
“My instinct told me to remain alert and stay hidden from her sight by crouching beneath her two mammoth hills above her belly. The next moment, fear apparently loosening its grip, her bulk jackknifed upright in stiff rigormortis fashion, her legs still outstretched flat ahead on the couch. She caught sight of me from the corner of her eye, shrieked, jumped up on her two feet, her arms flailing like giant tree limbs in a storm in attempt to whip her body into a stable stance. As she lost her balance and started to fall toward me, it appeared my doom was imminent. My entire life flashed before me as her huge torso enveloped my body as if it were a sausage in a dumpling. Before I was smothered to my death she managed to thrash and throttle her body off of mine, shrieking all the while as if I were some obnoxious rodent who had found its way upon her person.
“When I had regained my breath and put my wits back in place, all I could think to say was, “May I kindly have a cup of water?’
“Obviously mortified at coming a gnat’s hair from crushing my last breath from me, compounded by the likelihood she had never set eyes upon a midget, she not only brought me water but cooked the most delectable supper I’d eaten in months.
“Well, one bite led to another, as did the following days. I learned she’d been searching for a husband as I had been searching for a wife. Persons of our exaggerated sizes find it hard put to find a mate who fits each other like a glove in important respects. But we have the cornerstone to build our years together: respect and admiration combined with a mutual aim to flourish and prosper.
“And as I make this entry on this our first anniversary, our aim has come to be. It is our good fortune to have acquired the canyons and hills to the rear of our vast flatland. Tomorrow the new sign befitting its grand size will be raised dubbing our ranch a more appropriate name and one I am proud to have authored: Beverly’s Hills.
“Now as her six-foot, three-inch frame sleepily sinks into our featherbed, the most cherished moment of the day is upon me when Beverly beckons me as ‘Mr. Big Bitt, my giant of a man' to nestle amongst her hills.”
In the back of the book was a small loose document officially changing the name of the ranch. For some unknown reason the Recorder omitted the apostrophe “s” and so erased forever any conjecture that might arise to embarrass the image of Beverly. (Unless this account becomes published which may be highly unlikely.)
After putting the book away exactly as it had been and tucking the gloves in their place, I locked the door as Miss Chalmers had instructed and stopped by her desk. With acidic warning in her eye, tempered with a knowing smile, she reemphasized: “Now you see why utmost discretion is vital to this privileged information.” Then for some reason - maybe it was my attentive interest that did it - she shed some of her rigidity and relaxed into explanation:
“Some years ago we acquired this book as a donation from the son of Mr. Bitt who had the unusual philosophy that invasion of his family’s privacy fell secondary to exposing the truth of the founding of Beverly Hills. Further, he felt that his father would have been proud to have his contribution to history made public. Of course this philosophy isn’t held by everyone. (I didn’t ask who “everyone” was.) Therefore, we have decided to treat the matter delicately to avoid bitter tastes.”
I thanked her for her help and drove home through Beverly Hills’ new and very refreshing light.
Once home, happy as a hog wallowing in fresh mud after a drought, I verified on a map that north of Sunset are in fact the hills as Mr. Bitt had entered.
Daddy told me more than once that I go off half-cocked. He would’ve said, “If you’d looked at a map in the first place you wouldn’t have had to go to all of that trouble to find those hills.” But in the other half of the cock is adventure. And today added the flavor of intrigue as well as endowing myself with the honor of being one of the few privileged to discover the truth behind Beverly('s) Hills.
Being a died-in-the-cottonfields Arkie, I normally wouldn’t admit I’ve lived in L.A two years short of the years I lived in Arkansas. But sometimes shallow secrets should surface.
And like everyone else here, I thrust myself through its streets to get where I’m going. It’s the only city I’ve lived in where you need a map book called Thomas to guide you around. I never use maps much. I depend on gas stations if I get lost, which prickles the heck out of some practical folks. But one can be practical and not use maps. Chalk it up to sense of adventure or no sense at all.
Anyway, when you leave a town in Arkansas to get to the next one, you’ll drive past farmland and Burma Shave signs then you see the welcome signs of the next town. But L.A.’s so big for its britches that it has to be divided into pockets so a person knows where he’s putting himself. Each pocket has a name and its territory is marked by a sign shoved in gray concrete with no green grass or Burma Shave signs in between. It’s like someone just took some giant scissors and clipped all that out and shoved a bunch of little towns together.
Living in all this bulky gray matter one gets into its rhythms. And once you’re in it and moving in tune with its motion, it can be a fight to hoist your eyes above its cogs and wheels to see what’s really there.
Well, today, two weeks before Thanksgiving I was driving through Beverly Hills in my robotic mode, eyes dug into the car-studded black street, ears cuddled into music on the radio, when I noticed the street’s Christmas decorations were already up. This perked me a little out of the gray but when I saw a decoration that had a street sign as part of it that said “Beverly Hills,” it hit me. I have never seen a hill in Beverly Hills. But I don’t get over in that neck of the concrete much so I could be out in left field. And who’s Beverly anyway? A wild hair told me the Beverly Hills library might have an answer so I whipped on over there.
Miss Chalmers in the reference section turned out to be very helpful. But at first, when I said I was looking for the history of Beverly Hills and drew a blank in the card index, her face flushed. For a long minute she sat with her eyes aimed at a spot on the desk, apparently watching some thoughts fight. A small sense of adventure came over me when she slipped on a starched attitude that said, “What I have to do in the name of duty!” and motioned me to follow her.
She stopped at a door marked “Private” in a discreet corner in the shadows near the shelves marked “Mystery.” With key in lock she turned to me and in a brisk bandsaw whisper said, “I’ve been here since the library opened its doors and you’re the first person I know who’s asked about the history of Beverly Hills.”
Once inside behind the closed door she walked over to a small oak rolltop desk charmed with age, unrolled the top, unlocked the right-hand drawer under the pigeon holes and with a slight hesitation lifted from it a small plain wooden box. She placed it on the desk and invited me to sit down. As I reached to open it she handed me a pair of thin white cotton gloves produced from the center drawer. She stated in a low librarian voice tinted with a touch of school teacher, “Wear these to protect the book from skin oil and acid. And please handle it with great care. It’s as old as Beverly Hills.” I thought, “What hills?” Then added, “And may I also suggest you be discreet about what you read in these pages.
She asked me to lock the door when I finished and to stop by her desk. I wondered if this degree of security protects Fort Knox.
As she closed the door her glance left me with the uncomfortable sensation that I was an uninvited outsider who was about to rudely intrude into a book sealed with family secrets.
The box was apparently Ponderosa pine and except for its fine finish could be thought to have held small cigars. Branded inside a circle on the top was a small “b” and a capital “S.” Tarnished brass hinges creaked slight resentment at my invasion and a musky odor only owned by old leather pounced its pungence in the air. The gold filigree-like border seemed out of place on the book’s scuffed cowhide cover. The one small heart-shaped scar on its face, off center to the right, somehow seemed intentional.
I gently lifted the thin leather tongue folded across the top meant to pull the book from the snug fit of the box.
Opposite the cover page was written in brown ink with eloquent hand: “Sedgwick Bitt, Entrepreneur of Stature, English borne and bred, I enter these pages a Midget and exit a Giant in the end. April 1, 1888.”
Mr. Bitt “dated” his entries by event rather than by month, day and year. The first one was entitled “Voyage To” on the upper right of the page.
Up to now there was no hint of the contents. The filigreed cover was untitled except for the heart scar. The cover page also bare of words but bore a small hole in the shape of a heart the same size and in the same spot as on the cover. Perhaps a symbolic peek into Mr. Bitt’s heart.
The next words would have prevented me from going on had its age been younger. But I figured secrets of the dead are past embarrassment.
“Dear Bitt,” (Odd that one would write to oneself but makes more sense than “Dear Diary,” whoever that is.)
“I shall forever be true to England. Had her tall people been true to her smallest, I would not be enpassage to the Colonies aboard this grand ship, The Queen’s Quest. But for the good fortune of the heritance from my beloved father, the late Lord Bitt, Duke of Sedgewick, would I be bound to roam Britain’s countryside as a freak of nature in a circus.
“This is a voyage to my dreams. Foremost, the hope to discover amongst mankind the truth about the distinction between body, mind and spirit. Another hope is to find a good wife.
“While alone for lengths of time in places free from other people or mirrors, I was never intruded upon by the thought that I have a three-foot, three-inch high body. And alike, whilst reading the Classics, studying the languages and mathematics, did I ever consider I have a mind lesser than my most prominant and learned acquaintances. And upon careful reflection, perhaps greater than some. The part of my mind containing unexpressed emotions and reactions I bear as I have observed others must also do. I hope one day to be rid of those impediments. They weigh too cumbersome on a soul.
“The most elusive to comprehesion, particularly to some of those entrapped by wealth and position, is realization of the spiritual nature of man. I myself was startled into this realm of thought while gazing upon my father who died in his sleep in the prime of his life. I gazed upon his dead body and thought, ‘That is not my father. He left his body. It is he who animated it. If he left the body, could he go to another and live another life? But if he could, why would he? Life can be a hell enough well out of balance with its heavens.’ I left it at that. How could such be proven anyhow? Perhaps one could if one dared look beyond one’s trappings. But that seemed quite impossible.”
I was relieved to find the subsequent entries lighter, less tedious and philosophical.
The next one, entitled, “Family Tree of Offshoots” spoke of Shrood Bitt, a cousin who as an artist rebelled against “the restrictions of wealth and position by denying our family name and heritance thereof,” assumed the name of Shrood Witt and moved to a small cottage in Northern England which he dubbed Witt’s Inn. He married a young lady by the name of Nettie who, to help expenses, opened a small knitting shoppe dubbed Nett Witt’s Knits.”
I was becoming suspicious as I went on as to how much of these entries were truth and how much a fertile imagination. The puns were a bit pungent. But then one expects a certain dry wit from the English. Possibly their way of sopping up some of their dreary moist climate. And how would this very personal log tell me the history of Beverly Hills? I impatiently but delicately flipped the pages and stopped when the word Beverly bounced at me. This entry’s title: Beverly’s Hills.
Gold fever hadn’t cooled much since the Rush of 1849. But gold wasn’t Mr. Bitt’s interest. Having made profitable investments in the East, he was attracted to California by “the vast land” and “a wife who fits me like a glove.”
In a few paragraphs I had my answer, told better by Mr. Bitt:
“Well into the eighth month of my journey from the East, the last month spent roaming California in search of my dreams, my body not yet acclimated to the heat, I sought a comfortable resting place with water for my pony and me. I was relieved to see a sign posted ahead. Having the affliction of nearsightedness and having had the misfortune of losing my spectacles, I had to place my nose nearly against the sign to read it. ‘Bar-B Ranch Ahead’ it said.
“A short distance up the road I arrived at a substantially large ranch house. As I dismounted to water my pony at the trough, the only thing moving was a very light, very hot breeze. I would have thought the entire establishment deserted but for the distinct feeling of a live presence and, oddly, faint snort sounds like pigs.
“I softly walked up the porch steps, startled to hear an abrupt short snort then a longer one to my right. In the dusk it was difficult to see the source. I stepped quietly toward the sounds hardly knowing what I would discover. Certainly pigs would not be inhabiting a porch corner, but this country is chock full with unexpectances. I stopped short at eye level with what appeared to be three hills slightly undulating. Only after turning my head slowly to the right then the left did I realize I was looking straight on to the horizon of a very large stomach. I peered past the two hills to the left to discover the proprietor of this portly bulk was a woman enjoying a nap. I was attempting to fathom her vastness, as I had never seen such in all my extensive travels, when a gust of dust blew up, causing me to sneeze with such violence that my head was thrust into the side of her belly. The floor quaked from the jerk of her startled body awakening. Yet for an instant she lay stunned stiffly still, her eyeballs slamming around in their sockets like billiard balls searching for their pockets.
“My instinct told me to remain alert and stay hidden from her sight by crouching beneath her two mammoth hills above her belly. The next moment, fear apparently loosening its grip, her bulk jackknifed upright in stiff rigormortis fashion, her legs still outstretched flat ahead on the couch. She caught sight of me from the corner of her eye, shrieked, jumped up on her two feet, her arms flailing like giant tree limbs in a storm in attempt to whip her body into a stable stance. As she lost her balance and started to fall toward me, it appeared my doom was imminent. My entire life flashed before me as her huge torso enveloped my body as if it were a sausage in a dumpling. Before I was smothered to my death she managed to thrash and throttle her body off of mine, shrieking all the while as if I were some obnoxious rodent who had found its way upon her person.
“When I had regained my breath and put my wits back in place, all I could think to say was, “May I kindly have a cup of water?’
“Obviously mortified at coming a gnat’s hair from crushing my last breath from me, compounded by the likelihood she had never set eyes upon a midget, she not only brought me water but cooked the most delectable supper I’d eaten in months.
“Well, one bite led to another, as did the following days. I learned she’d been searching for a husband as I had been searching for a wife. Persons of our exaggerated sizes find it hard put to find a mate who fits each other like a glove in important respects. But we have the cornerstone to build our years together: respect and admiration combined with a mutual aim to flourish and prosper.
“And as I make this entry on this our first anniversary, our aim has come to be. It is our good fortune to have acquired the canyons and hills to the rear of our vast flatland. Tomorrow the new sign befitting its grand size will be raised dubbing our ranch a more appropriate name and one I am proud to have authored: Beverly’s Hills.
“Now as her six-foot, three-inch frame sleepily sinks into our featherbed, the most cherished moment of the day is upon me when Beverly beckons me as ‘Mr. Big Bitt, my giant of a man' to nestle amongst her hills.”
In the back of the book was a small loose document officially changing the name of the ranch. For some unknown reason the Recorder omitted the apostrophe “s” and so erased forever any conjecture that might arise to embarrass the image of Beverly. (Unless this account becomes published which may be highly unlikely.)
After putting the book away exactly as it had been and tucking the gloves in their place, I locked the door as Miss Chalmers had instructed and stopped by her desk. With acidic warning in her eye, tempered with a knowing smile, she reemphasized: “Now you see why utmost discretion is vital to this privileged information.” Then for some reason - maybe it was my attentive interest that did it - she shed some of her rigidity and relaxed into explanation:
“Some years ago we acquired this book as a donation from the son of Mr. Bitt who had the unusual philosophy that invasion of his family’s privacy fell secondary to exposing the truth of the founding of Beverly Hills. Further, he felt that his father would have been proud to have his contribution to history made public. Of course this philosophy isn’t held by everyone. (I didn’t ask who “everyone” was.) Therefore, we have decided to treat the matter delicately to avoid bitter tastes.”
I thanked her for her help and drove home through Beverly Hills’ new and very refreshing light.
Once home, happy as a hog wallowing in fresh mud after a drought, I verified on a map that north of Sunset are in fact the hills as Mr. Bitt had entered.
Daddy told me more than once that I go off half-cocked. He would’ve said, “If you’d looked at a map in the first place you wouldn’t have had to go to all of that trouble to find those hills.” But in the other half of the cock is adventure. And today added the flavor of intrigue as well as endowing myself with the honor of being one of the few privileged to discover the truth behind Beverly('s) Hills.
Dear Me Letter: Albino Pumpkin Moon
Dear Me,
Had to get up before the first bird to make an admission which at first may seem to be insensibly intense nonsense, but for me it was nearly a religious experience.
Anyway, how does one explain a miracle? You’re walking down the street with a windowshade drawn over your senses. Suddenly it pops up and all your favorite Disney Characters are frolicking alive in front of you. Then you take your next step and you’re in it, having a ball riding in Cinderella’s pumpkin before magic makes it her carriage. It’s like this when you create something in your mind - just make it out of the blue - then later...well, it goes this way.
I think of late September to midnight October 30th as Halloween Eve. Gives me enough time to converse with the universe of a perfect pumpkin-colored pumpkin who wears an outstanding fat storybook stem on his head and looks forward to waving his flame-flushed face from the picture window on his main night.
But this year an amused muse, who of course is me, in tune with who or whatever that pops concepts into words (also me) played a trick.
Three weeks ago in late September when I wrote in the “Halloween” letter “...on a windy night full with albino pumpkin moon,” it seemed better than “cheesecake moon” which has nothing to do with Halloween and everything to do with New York. And I’ve never seen a pumpkin-colored moon anyway. So, “albino” fit the slot logically enough, even though I’ve never seen an albino pumpkin either. But so what?
On this warm mid-October day, I was walking my sweet dog Daisy down one of my favorite islands in L.A., quaint Larchmont Village. I noticed I was looking without using my eyeballs, like putting out your third eye’s antenna while walking through the dark, when -- who else could it have been? -- the mischievous muse lassoed my attention and riveted it to the window of the Larchmont Green Grocer.
At that moment I knew completely what awestruck was. Then a one-second doubt that it was really real flashed and as quickly fizzled when I looked more closely in their window
I rushed Daisy the few feet back to the car to wait for me, ran back to the store then slowly and thoroughly looked through the bins for more of them. None were there. I stood a forever minute waiting for one of the two partners to be free. Then, walking slowly with partner Karen to the window I asked in a low voice, rubberbanded to hide my excitement, if that was an albino pumpkin. I expected anything for an answer. She said a friendly, “Yes, it is.” “Is it for decoration or for sale?” I asked, thinking how could somethig that hadn’t existed a few minutes before be for sale. It was probably the only one in the world anyway. She smiled the answer, “Oh, it’s for sale.”
That popped the cork off my consrvatism and I mentioned writing about an albino pumpkin moon, not knowing such a critter existed, then asked how to preserve him. She said that the colorful decorative gourds are dried and preserved with varnish and that may work. Then she turned to her partner Peggy and said, “We’ll order more of these” and Peggy said, “Lots more.”
I was in awe all the way home and couldn’t wait to tell this on paper. I later tuned in to my albino friend and got this:
Down the pumpkin vine the word goes that all the pumpkins were calmly growing in the patch and when they were almost at the peak of their prime, right before harvest time and when it was least expected, the Great North Wind whipped in. Dark clouds sped across the full moon and fast as a 1920’s moving picture show flickered bright moonbeams all across the patch.
Then with thundering speed a great gust yanked the scarecrow off his pole, swirled him in swoops and circles above the patch. The owl on his shoulder hung on by his toenails, franticaly flapped his wings for balance and hooted who’s a lot. A terrifying show.
The Great Wise Pumpkin of the patch, knowing how fickle the Great North Wind was, and how he used his force without much smarts, making mostly mincemeat of whatever was in his path, sent word down the vine:
“North Wind never blows as high as the moon. Quick! Disguise your skins to make him think you’re the moon.”
So the Great North Wind, confused by seeing so many moons, thought he was too high and took a dive into the crust of the Earth.
The pumpkins continue to wear their new moonskins to keep peace wherever they end up.
Had to get up before the first bird to make an admission which at first may seem to be insensibly intense nonsense, but for me it was nearly a religious experience.
Anyway, how does one explain a miracle? You’re walking down the street with a windowshade drawn over your senses. Suddenly it pops up and all your favorite Disney Characters are frolicking alive in front of you. Then you take your next step and you’re in it, having a ball riding in Cinderella’s pumpkin before magic makes it her carriage. It’s like this when you create something in your mind - just make it out of the blue - then later...well, it goes this way.
I think of late September to midnight October 30th as Halloween Eve. Gives me enough time to converse with the universe of a perfect pumpkin-colored pumpkin who wears an outstanding fat storybook stem on his head and looks forward to waving his flame-flushed face from the picture window on his main night.
But this year an amused muse, who of course is me, in tune with who or whatever that pops concepts into words (also me) played a trick.
Three weeks ago in late September when I wrote in the “Halloween” letter “...on a windy night full with albino pumpkin moon,” it seemed better than “cheesecake moon” which has nothing to do with Halloween and everything to do with New York. And I’ve never seen a pumpkin-colored moon anyway. So, “albino” fit the slot logically enough, even though I’ve never seen an albino pumpkin either. But so what?
On this warm mid-October day, I was walking my sweet dog Daisy down one of my favorite islands in L.A., quaint Larchmont Village. I noticed I was looking without using my eyeballs, like putting out your third eye’s antenna while walking through the dark, when -- who else could it have been? -- the mischievous muse lassoed my attention and riveted it to the window of the Larchmont Green Grocer.
At that moment I knew completely what awestruck was. Then a one-second doubt that it was really real flashed and as quickly fizzled when I looked more closely in their window
I rushed Daisy the few feet back to the car to wait for me, ran back to the store then slowly and thoroughly looked through the bins for more of them. None were there. I stood a forever minute waiting for one of the two partners to be free. Then, walking slowly with partner Karen to the window I asked in a low voice, rubberbanded to hide my excitement, if that was an albino pumpkin. I expected anything for an answer. She said a friendly, “Yes, it is.” “Is it for decoration or for sale?” I asked, thinking how could somethig that hadn’t existed a few minutes before be for sale. It was probably the only one in the world anyway. She smiled the answer, “Oh, it’s for sale.”
That popped the cork off my consrvatism and I mentioned writing about an albino pumpkin moon, not knowing such a critter existed, then asked how to preserve him. She said that the colorful decorative gourds are dried and preserved with varnish and that may work. Then she turned to her partner Peggy and said, “We’ll order more of these” and Peggy said, “Lots more.”
I was in awe all the way home and couldn’t wait to tell this on paper. I later tuned in to my albino friend and got this:
Down the pumpkin vine the word goes that all the pumpkins were calmly growing in the patch and when they were almost at the peak of their prime, right before harvest time and when it was least expected, the Great North Wind whipped in. Dark clouds sped across the full moon and fast as a 1920’s moving picture show flickered bright moonbeams all across the patch.
Then with thundering speed a great gust yanked the scarecrow off his pole, swirled him in swoops and circles above the patch. The owl on his shoulder hung on by his toenails, franticaly flapped his wings for balance and hooted who’s a lot. A terrifying show.
The Great Wise Pumpkin of the patch, knowing how fickle the Great North Wind was, and how he used his force without much smarts, making mostly mincemeat of whatever was in his path, sent word down the vine:
“North Wind never blows as high as the moon. Quick! Disguise your skins to make him think you’re the moon.”
So the Great North Wind, confused by seeing so many moons, thought he was too high and took a dive into the crust of the Earth.
The pumpkins continue to wear their new moonskins to keep peace wherever they end up.
Dear Me Letter: Silverlake Halloween
It’s as if someone is trying to tell you something when the electric power goes off until midnight on a windy Halloween full with albino pumpkin moon. I don’t know how the goblins felt as they made their rounds - maybe like a trick was being played on them.
But I don’t bend out of shape in October. It’s the month when I start thinking cozy. Cozy hot chocolate with oven-buttered toast, favorite sweaters and socks, baking and fattening up with creative thoughts.
I was amused by the blackout and so did the ritual of lighting candles and calling the “Electric Trouble Hotline.” This happens about three times a year in Silverlake. Probably some weak transformers or overloaded transvestites in the area. Anyway, it fit the mood of my first favorite holiday of the year. (My year starts on Halloween which could explain the life I’ve been leading.)
I had the big-toothed pumpkin I called Big Jack shouting his big mouth with ferocious light in the big window facing the lake and the street below - my silent way of shouting back at the traffic noise I’ve trained myself to ignore for the past nine years. The other pumpkin I called was on duty at the top of the outside stairs. Living one-third of the way up a 30-degree hill with the stairs facing the lake and the boulevard below,
I felt he would have more impact there. (An ex-friend told me later there would’ve been more impact if I’d put a candle behind my face instead. I warned him I can throw lightening bolts and I haven’t seen him since.)
Aside from silly insults: On this night each year I think of Halloween on Woodlawn in Little Rock when I was eight. My mother had just recently had her teeth removed, which complimented her decision to dress up like a witch. With a big bowl as her cauldron, full of candy and popcorn balls, she sat cackling for the goblins who came to our front door. One little goblin got scared and started crying when she saw “the witch” and Mom had to put on her Mom’s hat to sooth her back into the spirit. I love her zest for playing the holidays.
I was reliving this while sitting on the third step down of the thirteen front steps, a great spot to stretch into the space of the lake and sky. The Jack-o’-lantern, who I called Little Jack, glowed warm on my back while my dog Daisy sniffed relative truths of the night with her microscopic nose. I
t’s nice when it’s quiet and only an occasional car drones by. I appreciate it when someone’s pulsating car alarm isn’t pulling my relative peace out from under me. In the woods or ocean there’s peace. In smog-silted L.A. there’s relative peace to catch any way you can. Tonight I caught a piece of it, I thought.
The lake was special this night with the power off in the surrounding houses and streetlights; only the moon lit its misty face.
What I saw next must have been waiting for a blackout of this magnitude to show its scary face. I wasn’t startled by it, just very curious. Of course my skin finding its way back on my body after a perfectly normal jump was not pertinent.
Near the northwest corner of the lake, which is two miles around, a very large tubular shape surged slowly through the silver ripples then receded, cautiously rising again but much higher and receding less. The mist over the lake erased its edges so I could only see a dancing motion. Since the lake was fenced from public, I knew no human was involved. Then I heard a sound new to me, this area, and probably this planet. A loud breathy gurgle punched through the water with irregular rhythms of equally loud rude burps and belches.
I felt like all the horror movies I’d seen had come to life. Something should be done, but what? I ran in the house to get binoculars and returned to see small bobbing white lights floating above the water, slowly moving toward the shape then stopping. The shape surged higher, the burps and belches became obnoxiously louder. The lights moved back and anchored. The binoculars only magnified the thick mist, revealing nothing more, but for another very long while I persisted.
Thinking the morning would unwrap the mystery, I went to bed, leaving Jack on guard to absorb the rest and tell me its end.
The next morning the Silverlake Independent headlined; “Pop Goes the Reservoir! A gas line beneath the northwest corner of the Silverlake Reservoir burst last night, jetting water to a height of about 60 feet. Using diving equipment, a gas company crew worked through the night to contain it...
” Little Jack told me a different ending. He said the shape burst up from the water, and followed by the little lights gurgled, belched and burped all over the Silverlake sky, dumping water pellets over the neighborhood that fizzled out Jack’s candle.
Now, should I believe the reality of the press or the possible illusions of Jack?
But I did find water puddled in the top of Little Jack’s fat candle.
But I don’t bend out of shape in October. It’s the month when I start thinking cozy. Cozy hot chocolate with oven-buttered toast, favorite sweaters and socks, baking and fattening up with creative thoughts.
I was amused by the blackout and so did the ritual of lighting candles and calling the “Electric Trouble Hotline.” This happens about three times a year in Silverlake. Probably some weak transformers or overloaded transvestites in the area. Anyway, it fit the mood of my first favorite holiday of the year. (My year starts on Halloween which could explain the life I’ve been leading.)
I had the big-toothed pumpkin I called Big Jack shouting his big mouth with ferocious light in the big window facing the lake and the street below - my silent way of shouting back at the traffic noise I’ve trained myself to ignore for the past nine years. The other pumpkin I called was on duty at the top of the outside stairs. Living one-third of the way up a 30-degree hill with the stairs facing the lake and the boulevard below,
I felt he would have more impact there. (An ex-friend told me later there would’ve been more impact if I’d put a candle behind my face instead. I warned him I can throw lightening bolts and I haven’t seen him since.)
Aside from silly insults: On this night each year I think of Halloween on Woodlawn in Little Rock when I was eight. My mother had just recently had her teeth removed, which complimented her decision to dress up like a witch. With a big bowl as her cauldron, full of candy and popcorn balls, she sat cackling for the goblins who came to our front door. One little goblin got scared and started crying when she saw “the witch” and Mom had to put on her Mom’s hat to sooth her back into the spirit. I love her zest for playing the holidays.
I was reliving this while sitting on the third step down of the thirteen front steps, a great spot to stretch into the space of the lake and sky. The Jack-o’-lantern, who I called Little Jack, glowed warm on my back while my dog Daisy sniffed relative truths of the night with her microscopic nose. I
t’s nice when it’s quiet and only an occasional car drones by. I appreciate it when someone’s pulsating car alarm isn’t pulling my relative peace out from under me. In the woods or ocean there’s peace. In smog-silted L.A. there’s relative peace to catch any way you can. Tonight I caught a piece of it, I thought.
The lake was special this night with the power off in the surrounding houses and streetlights; only the moon lit its misty face.
What I saw next must have been waiting for a blackout of this magnitude to show its scary face. I wasn’t startled by it, just very curious. Of course my skin finding its way back on my body after a perfectly normal jump was not pertinent.
Near the northwest corner of the lake, which is two miles around, a very large tubular shape surged slowly through the silver ripples then receded, cautiously rising again but much higher and receding less. The mist over the lake erased its edges so I could only see a dancing motion. Since the lake was fenced from public, I knew no human was involved. Then I heard a sound new to me, this area, and probably this planet. A loud breathy gurgle punched through the water with irregular rhythms of equally loud rude burps and belches.
I felt like all the horror movies I’d seen had come to life. Something should be done, but what? I ran in the house to get binoculars and returned to see small bobbing white lights floating above the water, slowly moving toward the shape then stopping. The shape surged higher, the burps and belches became obnoxiously louder. The lights moved back and anchored. The binoculars only magnified the thick mist, revealing nothing more, but for another very long while I persisted.
Thinking the morning would unwrap the mystery, I went to bed, leaving Jack on guard to absorb the rest and tell me its end.
The next morning the Silverlake Independent headlined; “Pop Goes the Reservoir! A gas line beneath the northwest corner of the Silverlake Reservoir burst last night, jetting water to a height of about 60 feet. Using diving equipment, a gas company crew worked through the night to contain it...
” Little Jack told me a different ending. He said the shape burst up from the water, and followed by the little lights gurgled, belched and burped all over the Silverlake sky, dumping water pellets over the neighborhood that fizzled out Jack’s candle.
Now, should I believe the reality of the press or the possible illusions of Jack?
But I did find water puddled in the top of Little Jack’s fat candle.
Dear Me Letter: The Fall and Rise of Sue Flay as Relates to the Human Spirit
Dear Me,
That day in 10th grade English class at Little Rock Central High, Mr. Hudson made a comment as an example that sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be. He said, “I thought she was the ugliest girl I’d ever seen, but when she spoke, her face seemed to magically melt away and a glow took over that transmitted a different person, and she became the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”
Nothing else stuck with me from that whole year except how cute he was, that he was 28, his chestnut brown wavy hair was always neatly combed, his small mustache - and that one statement. How could a person be ugly and then at the flip of a nickel be beautiful? There’s something dark hiding in the woodpile that needed digging up. But as much as I was burning to know how that could be, I couldn’t dig up the nerve to ask. He was too cute and I was too shy. Besides, he was a teacher and teachers were hard for me to warm up to. I didn’t think of them as people as much as I did a talking textbook. I even had trouble answering roll call, much less the agony of being asked to answer a question in front of the whole world. That’s probably why I was so skinny: I tried to make my body so invisible people wouldn’t notice I was there, like air. So I didn’t ask him.
But it kept gnawing on me. How could that be?
About a week later I saw him at a Tiger football game and mustered up a shy “Hi” My eyes were pulled to his right and there she was. With a proud smile he introduced me to a lady whose face was not just plain and homely. That would have been just a bit of a skip from barely attractive. Overall it smacked me as about as ugly as one of Granny’s homemade bars of lye soap. Her skin was cousin to a pancake ready to turn over to cook the other side. Her nose was of such a shape it could’ve been inspiration for a new kind of horned instrument. Her chin was small and fit up to her bottom lip like a Siamese strawberry with double hips on the bottom. Her small ears were stuck at a near right angle about a half inch lower than they should’ve been, jutting out through straight, mousy hair that grew in such a way as to try to soften the blow of this apparent amalgamation of misfortune.
I guess she was used to first-glance reactions like mine so there was not a twitch from her that she knew the impact. That was my first hint. And Mr. Hudson went on after drinking in that last instant and said with smiling eyes, “Sue Flay is my fiance. We’ll be married next spring.” Stunned, I looked at Sue, who smiled and squeezed his hand.
Then she spoke. I don’t recall what she said because I was so astonished at the transformation. All the ugly magically vanished and a cloud of affinity flowed toward me like dandelion puffs in a gentle spring breeze. I had never seen anything like it. She glowed the ugly away and in its place was the beauty he spoke about. In fact, in an instant, my shallow opinions melted away and my eyes opened to a new level of understanding about her and anyone else I met from there on.
Thanks to Sue Flay, I found that behind any face is the spirit that is the person, which is sure different from their body and what it looks like. As I go forward, sometimes It’s a bit of a stretch to shed my blinders to see in the folks I meet that under every ugly is a beauty. After all, life is pretty good at slapping a person around enough to cover up some of the good stuff. But those moments when I meet a similar person and the sky opens with golden light and something like a hallelujah chorus, allowing me to see who they really are, the feel-good happens.
That day in 10th grade English class at Little Rock Central High, Mr. Hudson made a comment as an example that sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be. He said, “I thought she was the ugliest girl I’d ever seen, but when she spoke, her face seemed to magically melt away and a glow took over that transmitted a different person, and she became the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”
Nothing else stuck with me from that whole year except how cute he was, that he was 28, his chestnut brown wavy hair was always neatly combed, his small mustache - and that one statement. How could a person be ugly and then at the flip of a nickel be beautiful? There’s something dark hiding in the woodpile that needed digging up. But as much as I was burning to know how that could be, I couldn’t dig up the nerve to ask. He was too cute and I was too shy. Besides, he was a teacher and teachers were hard for me to warm up to. I didn’t think of them as people as much as I did a talking textbook. I even had trouble answering roll call, much less the agony of being asked to answer a question in front of the whole world. That’s probably why I was so skinny: I tried to make my body so invisible people wouldn’t notice I was there, like air. So I didn’t ask him.
But it kept gnawing on me. How could that be?
About a week later I saw him at a Tiger football game and mustered up a shy “Hi” My eyes were pulled to his right and there she was. With a proud smile he introduced me to a lady whose face was not just plain and homely. That would have been just a bit of a skip from barely attractive. Overall it smacked me as about as ugly as one of Granny’s homemade bars of lye soap. Her skin was cousin to a pancake ready to turn over to cook the other side. Her nose was of such a shape it could’ve been inspiration for a new kind of horned instrument. Her chin was small and fit up to her bottom lip like a Siamese strawberry with double hips on the bottom. Her small ears were stuck at a near right angle about a half inch lower than they should’ve been, jutting out through straight, mousy hair that grew in such a way as to try to soften the blow of this apparent amalgamation of misfortune.
I guess she was used to first-glance reactions like mine so there was not a twitch from her that she knew the impact. That was my first hint. And Mr. Hudson went on after drinking in that last instant and said with smiling eyes, “Sue Flay is my fiance. We’ll be married next spring.” Stunned, I looked at Sue, who smiled and squeezed his hand.
Then she spoke. I don’t recall what she said because I was so astonished at the transformation. All the ugly magically vanished and a cloud of affinity flowed toward me like dandelion puffs in a gentle spring breeze. I had never seen anything like it. She glowed the ugly away and in its place was the beauty he spoke about. In fact, in an instant, my shallow opinions melted away and my eyes opened to a new level of understanding about her and anyone else I met from there on.
Thanks to Sue Flay, I found that behind any face is the spirit that is the person, which is sure different from their body and what it looks like. As I go forward, sometimes It’s a bit of a stretch to shed my blinders to see in the folks I meet that under every ugly is a beauty. After all, life is pretty good at slapping a person around enough to cover up some of the good stuff. But those moments when I meet a similar person and the sky opens with golden light and something like a hallelujah chorus, allowing me to see who they really are, the feel-good happens.
Dear Me Letter: Making a Misery Happy
Dear me,
There’s a billboard across the sky written in black energy so you can’t see it but you can feel its fangs. It’s like an advertisement to make you try to buy it like you buy toothpaste or Coca-Cola. It says “No Spirit of Play Allowed Down There.” Then in parenthesis it says “Except on weekends at at parties, then only by catagories.”
So we get our playtime in categories like tennis, golf, our favorite hobby or game. Then we have TV and movie categories where we can watch other people play while we get fat and become glazy-eyed couch potatoes, which is a rung or two lower than doing it ourselves.
And work isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s against the rules to make work a playful thing to do. After all, that’s your “living” and we all know what “making a living is.” It’s serious work and mostly miserable. You get the gist of this when you see bumper stickers that say “I’d rather be (whatever)". Maybe “making a living” should be called what it is: making a misery. The rule is you have to be serious about your work if only to show the boss you’re worth your paycheck. You can be good-natured and cheerful if you feel like it. But if you feel like an old dried up leather boot that’s been kicked around and chewed up by Mack trucks, you still have to force yourself to appear to be a civilized part of the human race. That by itself is hard labor that’s worth time and a half or more.
By the way, I’ve heard some people like their job and have fun doing it. But maybe they have a purpose in their lives that fits with what they do. I’ll bet a silver dollar that’s the key: having and following a purpose in life.
Anyway, one time I was not only feeling like that old chewed up boot, I felt I was being it. On the way out the door to meet a friend for lunch, I passed by a mirror and out of the corner of my eye saw a grey reflection like a small thundercloud with a condor-like appendage. I turned to find it was my face. The strange appendage was my nose. Rather than go out and gray up my friend’s day, I decided to force myself to smile. And did it ever take force. Since I have an underbite that pulls the corners of my mouth into a natural frown, I had to practically use pulleys to crank them up even to a straight line. The effort it took to make that smile, then to cough up some semblance of a laugh was trying to get popcorn to pop over a cake of ice.
A little while later, I finally started feeling a little better, then better still, and went on to meet my friend, pleased that I’d blown that thundercloud away, plus also realized a good use for force.
If the other billboard in the sky wasn’t enough to keep us in misery, there’s another one. It says: “Do what you don’t want to do.” Among others I’ve seen, I bought this trap most of my grown-up life doing office work to make a misery, when what I really wanted to do was create. I finally filled my tank up to the teeth, stuck my tongue out at the billboards in the sky and said, “That’s it! I’m doing my art. Start.”
So I’m not making a misery so much anymore. I suppose you’d say I’m making a happy. So maybe there’s hope after all.
There’s a billboard across the sky written in black energy so you can’t see it but you can feel its fangs. It’s like an advertisement to make you try to buy it like you buy toothpaste or Coca-Cola. It says “No Spirit of Play Allowed Down There.” Then in parenthesis it says “Except on weekends at at parties, then only by catagories.”
So we get our playtime in categories like tennis, golf, our favorite hobby or game. Then we have TV and movie categories where we can watch other people play while we get fat and become glazy-eyed couch potatoes, which is a rung or two lower than doing it ourselves.
And work isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s against the rules to make work a playful thing to do. After all, that’s your “living” and we all know what “making a living is.” It’s serious work and mostly miserable. You get the gist of this when you see bumper stickers that say “I’d rather be (whatever)". Maybe “making a living” should be called what it is: making a misery. The rule is you have to be serious about your work if only to show the boss you’re worth your paycheck. You can be good-natured and cheerful if you feel like it. But if you feel like an old dried up leather boot that’s been kicked around and chewed up by Mack trucks, you still have to force yourself to appear to be a civilized part of the human race. That by itself is hard labor that’s worth time and a half or more.
By the way, I’ve heard some people like their job and have fun doing it. But maybe they have a purpose in their lives that fits with what they do. I’ll bet a silver dollar that’s the key: having and following a purpose in life.
Anyway, one time I was not only feeling like that old chewed up boot, I felt I was being it. On the way out the door to meet a friend for lunch, I passed by a mirror and out of the corner of my eye saw a grey reflection like a small thundercloud with a condor-like appendage. I turned to find it was my face. The strange appendage was my nose. Rather than go out and gray up my friend’s day, I decided to force myself to smile. And did it ever take force. Since I have an underbite that pulls the corners of my mouth into a natural frown, I had to practically use pulleys to crank them up even to a straight line. The effort it took to make that smile, then to cough up some semblance of a laugh was trying to get popcorn to pop over a cake of ice.
A little while later, I finally started feeling a little better, then better still, and went on to meet my friend, pleased that I’d blown that thundercloud away, plus also realized a good use for force.
If the other billboard in the sky wasn’t enough to keep us in misery, there’s another one. It says: “Do what you don’t want to do.” Among others I’ve seen, I bought this trap most of my grown-up life doing office work to make a misery, when what I really wanted to do was create. I finally filled my tank up to the teeth, stuck my tongue out at the billboards in the sky and said, “That’s it! I’m doing my art. Start.”
So I’m not making a misery so much anymore. I suppose you’d say I’m making a happy. So maybe there’s hope after all.
Dear Me Letter: Looking at People
Dear Me,
When I was a kid, and even now, I loved looking at people, especially old people because of the character in their faces. I’d look at them and their ways down to their bones just to see what they were like. And as a teenager, I carried a sketchbook around and would sketch them.
Once in a while I’d see one who was being someone they really weren’t, like a person who dressed up to go to a fancy party but you could tell they weren’t a fancy-party person. I knew because I’d done it. Even if I hadn’t, it was easy to see anyway. They’d put on another personality like you put on old clothes, or a mask over their whole being like Halloween. Then when they stepped in their front door at home, you could just seen them relax and step out of whoever they were pretending to be and there they stood as the one they were all the time, themselves. I guess that’s where the expression “I can see right through you” comes from when a person can see what identity another is wearing for a time.
It was this I was thinking about when I was asked to give a small talk in front of my 11th grade English class at Central High. Other than being so shy I wished I could turn inside out and pull a draw string at the top of my head to hide, the thing I remember about that talk was telling them I liked “common people.” Miss Piercy, our teacher, a tall statey pleasant-looking big-boned fiftiesh woman with a kind of Gibson girl hairdo, who filled me with the impression she’d eaten and digested every literature book there was, lifted her noble head slightly and asked me what I meant by “common people.” I think I told her “just regular people,” but if she’d ask me now, I’d say “just down-to-earth folks.”
It’s a bit off the subject, but, as I mentioned before about loving to look at people, as a student you have a chance to study the teacher for the whole class period. And they can’t leave either They have to stay there and teach. Now that I look back, I probably annoyed the heck out of some of them by watching them so intently. But I had a good time watching Miss Piercy. When She’d teach us grammar and we’d have to diagram sentences, I had less chance or interest in watching because I had to make sure I learned it for a test.
But then there was my favorite part of the class, literature. One day she was reading from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “The Bells”. Poe coined the word tintinnabulation (of the bells) to communicate the bells' sound. My memory is etched with the way Miss Piercy said that word - distinctly with the corners of her mouth moist and turning up with every syllable, especially at the “t’s.” She was as entertaining with the word onomatopoeia, pronounced ah-no-mah-to-peeah, meaning vocal imitation of a sound, like “oink” “meow” “tick-tock”, etc. - stating it slowly with round sounds.
If this hasn’t put you to sleep yet, you may be able to see why this stuck with me over the years. The point of all this is just itself. I hope I don’t have to apologize for this being as dry as a corncob pipe.
When I was a kid, and even now, I loved looking at people, especially old people because of the character in their faces. I’d look at them and their ways down to their bones just to see what they were like. And as a teenager, I carried a sketchbook around and would sketch them.
Once in a while I’d see one who was being someone they really weren’t, like a person who dressed up to go to a fancy party but you could tell they weren’t a fancy-party person. I knew because I’d done it. Even if I hadn’t, it was easy to see anyway. They’d put on another personality like you put on old clothes, or a mask over their whole being like Halloween. Then when they stepped in their front door at home, you could just seen them relax and step out of whoever they were pretending to be and there they stood as the one they were all the time, themselves. I guess that’s where the expression “I can see right through you” comes from when a person can see what identity another is wearing for a time.
It was this I was thinking about when I was asked to give a small talk in front of my 11th grade English class at Central High. Other than being so shy I wished I could turn inside out and pull a draw string at the top of my head to hide, the thing I remember about that talk was telling them I liked “common people.” Miss Piercy, our teacher, a tall statey pleasant-looking big-boned fiftiesh woman with a kind of Gibson girl hairdo, who filled me with the impression she’d eaten and digested every literature book there was, lifted her noble head slightly and asked me what I meant by “common people.” I think I told her “just regular people,” but if she’d ask me now, I’d say “just down-to-earth folks.”
It’s a bit off the subject, but, as I mentioned before about loving to look at people, as a student you have a chance to study the teacher for the whole class period. And they can’t leave either They have to stay there and teach. Now that I look back, I probably annoyed the heck out of some of them by watching them so intently. But I had a good time watching Miss Piercy. When She’d teach us grammar and we’d have to diagram sentences, I had less chance or interest in watching because I had to make sure I learned it for a test.
But then there was my favorite part of the class, literature. One day she was reading from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “The Bells”. Poe coined the word tintinnabulation (of the bells) to communicate the bells' sound. My memory is etched with the way Miss Piercy said that word - distinctly with the corners of her mouth moist and turning up with every syllable, especially at the “t’s.” She was as entertaining with the word onomatopoeia, pronounced ah-no-mah-to-peeah, meaning vocal imitation of a sound, like “oink” “meow” “tick-tock”, etc. - stating it slowly with round sounds.
If this hasn’t put you to sleep yet, you may be able to see why this stuck with me over the years. The point of all this is just itself. I hope I don’t have to apologize for this being as dry as a corncob pipe.
Dear Me Letter: Humor as Humus
Dear Me,
I get a kick out of earthy people with earthy ways and have known some of my ways to have earth. And like a lot of folks, if I don’t like the way I’ve planted them, I’ll plow them up and re-seed for a better crop. And if the crop harvests out to something I can live with, I’ll hang onto them. But sometimes it seems a crop itself could have a name that doesn’t fit it.
When you get right down to it, a crop of cotton that’s taken on so many boll weevils that you’re hard put to find any cotton left at all, it seems to me the cold hard fact is that it’s become a crop of boll weevils. And that’s the sort of way i feel about humor as I sometimes wear it. If my humor could be seen to be earthy, then I don’t think humor’s the word that says it. I think humus is the word when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it.
The dictionary says humus is the black or brown substance of the soil, formed by the decay of animal or vegetable matter and provides nutrition for plant life. It comes from a Latin word that means “ground.” If you want to twist your wit, it could fit. I take black words that are printed in the dictionary (words being a decayed kind of communication if you figure telepathy is a better way to communicate) and provide a sort of dry nutrient of amusement to some folks whose silliness has dried up for the most part like an old tree that’s lost its sap. But sometimes a person can sop up that sap of silliness again if he’s reminded. I guess that’s some of what I want to do with some of my wit: spark the sappy silly back from wherever it went (becaue I know if it was once there, it’s still there but maybe has blinders on it and has to somehow be dug up.)
Anyway, the root of the word humor, according to the dictionary, is “to be moist,” which does not fit my kind of wit and which I find is mostly dry when I hoe it up to be there at all. Sometimes i find I have to hang my humor on the line to dry.
However, you can stretch humus two more ways from Sunday - whatever that means: has more flexibility. It can be moist or dry. Besides, instead of saying “Her work is humorous” one can say “Her work is humus,” which not only brings it down to earth where it belongs and can now be put in a compost heap, but is less work for you by taking the “oro” out of the word “humorous.” And as a bonus you can put an “e” in front of the last “o” of “oro” and have a cookie: oreo. Now doesn’t this fit what they call logic? It does if you have a mind to think that you can create logic that makes its own sense, even if it does turn out to be silly nonsense.
I get a kick out of earthy people with earthy ways and have known some of my ways to have earth. And like a lot of folks, if I don’t like the way I’ve planted them, I’ll plow them up and re-seed for a better crop. And if the crop harvests out to something I can live with, I’ll hang onto them. But sometimes it seems a crop itself could have a name that doesn’t fit it.
When you get right down to it, a crop of cotton that’s taken on so many boll weevils that you’re hard put to find any cotton left at all, it seems to me the cold hard fact is that it’s become a crop of boll weevils. And that’s the sort of way i feel about humor as I sometimes wear it. If my humor could be seen to be earthy, then I don’t think humor’s the word that says it. I think humus is the word when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it.
The dictionary says humus is the black or brown substance of the soil, formed by the decay of animal or vegetable matter and provides nutrition for plant life. It comes from a Latin word that means “ground.” If you want to twist your wit, it could fit. I take black words that are printed in the dictionary (words being a decayed kind of communication if you figure telepathy is a better way to communicate) and provide a sort of dry nutrient of amusement to some folks whose silliness has dried up for the most part like an old tree that’s lost its sap. But sometimes a person can sop up that sap of silliness again if he’s reminded. I guess that’s some of what I want to do with some of my wit: spark the sappy silly back from wherever it went (becaue I know if it was once there, it’s still there but maybe has blinders on it and has to somehow be dug up.)
Anyway, the root of the word humor, according to the dictionary, is “to be moist,” which does not fit my kind of wit and which I find is mostly dry when I hoe it up to be there at all. Sometimes i find I have to hang my humor on the line to dry.
However, you can stretch humus two more ways from Sunday - whatever that means: has more flexibility. It can be moist or dry. Besides, instead of saying “Her work is humorous” one can say “Her work is humus,” which not only brings it down to earth where it belongs and can now be put in a compost heap, but is less work for you by taking the “oro” out of the word “humorous.” And as a bonus you can put an “e” in front of the last “o” of “oro” and have a cookie: oreo. Now doesn’t this fit what they call logic? It does if you have a mind to think that you can create logic that makes its own sense, even if it does turn out to be silly nonsense.
Dear Me Letter: Petting a Peeve
Dear Me,
If this were any other century I’d have no need to write these letters. I’d be venting different thoughts to friends around the fireplace after supper or in the parlor or at a Sunday picnic or by a marshmallow campfire or outside a cave while after-supper bones burn out where the dinasaurs roam.
By the way - or is it? - a crude definition of communication is saying what you want to say to someone or someones and saying it in a way they understand exactly what you say. They catch the entire picture in 3-D Technicolor that you’ve just thrown over into the middle of where they sit, usually in their heads. It’s not that people for the most part are not willing to listen. There are a growing number of very clear-minded, capable and willing listeners, which this planet needs. All of my friends fit in that slot and a few make time to patiently listen to my creative splurges. But they don’t have time to listen to a fountain or tell stories by the fireplace. They have their own lives to create in this busy culture. So I go to paper and pen and write “Dear Me’s.”
Now if I may pet a peeve. In these times a lot of heads have become numb and although you can see their eyeballs, they’re living their lives behind closed eyelids. Numbness in some comes from living life through TV; in some from drugs; some from a shrink-infected educational system where “counselors” push drugs like Ritalin on our future, the children.
Happily the shrinks have shrunk more into a greasy black dot and are withering into nothing. There will come a time when they have dissolved into their own cesspool of crimes against humanity. No one except the few numbed ones really trusts them anymore. The hook they’ve used is “help” (does a snake bite “help?) and those who bit came out zombied, numb in spirit, unable to reach for their dreams - in short, deadened or dead. Although their venom has penetrated into the culture through their drugs, electroshock and prefrontal lobotomies, some have been able to stay outside of their fangs and see the truth of the horror they’ve created on lives and so enlighten the public.
I heard they were all called to a mandatory world meeting and after a lunch of barbequed rattlesnake, were Invited to board an exclusive ship dubbed "B. Tray All" enroute to a far-off island where they will practice on each other. In fact, if one stretches an ear across the planet, you can probably hear a soft and definite sigh of relief while it goes about picking up all the shrunken broken pieces.
If this were any other century I’d have no need to write these letters. I’d be venting different thoughts to friends around the fireplace after supper or in the parlor or at a Sunday picnic or by a marshmallow campfire or outside a cave while after-supper bones burn out where the dinasaurs roam.
By the way - or is it? - a crude definition of communication is saying what you want to say to someone or someones and saying it in a way they understand exactly what you say. They catch the entire picture in 3-D Technicolor that you’ve just thrown over into the middle of where they sit, usually in their heads. It’s not that people for the most part are not willing to listen. There are a growing number of very clear-minded, capable and willing listeners, which this planet needs. All of my friends fit in that slot and a few make time to patiently listen to my creative splurges. But they don’t have time to listen to a fountain or tell stories by the fireplace. They have their own lives to create in this busy culture. So I go to paper and pen and write “Dear Me’s.”
Now if I may pet a peeve. In these times a lot of heads have become numb and although you can see their eyeballs, they’re living their lives behind closed eyelids. Numbness in some comes from living life through TV; in some from drugs; some from a shrink-infected educational system where “counselors” push drugs like Ritalin on our future, the children.
Happily the shrinks have shrunk more into a greasy black dot and are withering into nothing. There will come a time when they have dissolved into their own cesspool of crimes against humanity. No one except the few numbed ones really trusts them anymore. The hook they’ve used is “help” (does a snake bite “help?) and those who bit came out zombied, numb in spirit, unable to reach for their dreams - in short, deadened or dead. Although their venom has penetrated into the culture through their drugs, electroshock and prefrontal lobotomies, some have been able to stay outside of their fangs and see the truth of the horror they’ve created on lives and so enlighten the public.
I heard they were all called to a mandatory world meeting and after a lunch of barbequed rattlesnake, were Invited to board an exclusive ship dubbed "B. Tray All" enroute to a far-off island where they will practice on each other. In fact, if one stretches an ear across the planet, you can probably hear a soft and definite sigh of relief while it goes about picking up all the shrunken broken pieces.
Dear Me Letter: Baby Lake
Dear Me,
For nine years I’ve lived in Silverlake and from my small light blue house on the hill can see the lake which named this area. For that nine years I’ve driven down Rowena, lined with sweet houses and some small sweet businesses, to get to the health food store and other places.
On the northwest corner of Rowena and Hyperion all you can see from the street is a bank of bushes rising upwards several feet behind a chain link fence, growing one block down to the next street where only the sweet homes and trees continue pleasantly. For the past few years when passing that corner I’d hear “Find me. Find me.” I ignored it as a trick of the mind until last Friday when my dog Daisy and I were driving past and I decided to take a sudden right turn.
The next three-quarter block of ivy-hidden mystery locked me in an unexpected anticipation. Each second teased me by pretending it was a year. Finally it popped to view: a baby lake nestling in a square block.
Now the larger lake is two miles around and about a good half mile from this little one. I wondered if the little lake did something the big lake didn’t like and was spat out over that good half mile distance in the middle of a dark rainy night when no one would notice.
I shared these thoughts with my neighbor, Mr. Timms, who was known to jog around the lake in any kind of weather at any time of the day or night. After I stated my theory of how the little lake became itself, he looked at me square-on and said, “As a matter of fact -- and it’s a fact I have kept to myself -- years ago I was jogging in a downpour around the lake about two in the morning. I heard a thunder crack but saw no lightning. I looked toward the sound and saw a huge geyser shoot out from the north end of the lake and like a fat wet rainbow it arched over my head into the sky then headed northwest toward Rowena and Hyperion.”
Then he asked me how I knew. I lied an acceptable truth and told him I just guessed. I later thought he might have understood that people aren’t the only ones who communicate. I could have asked him if he’d ever heard that if people talk to their plants they grow better, or that one of the greatest pianists of our time has been known to talk to his piano.
The next Wednesday I saw a column in the Silverlake Independent, “Lake Spits Half a Mile.” The column was headed “Tall Tales by Thomas Timms.”
For nine years I’ve lived in Silverlake and from my small light blue house on the hill can see the lake which named this area. For that nine years I’ve driven down Rowena, lined with sweet houses and some small sweet businesses, to get to the health food store and other places.
On the northwest corner of Rowena and Hyperion all you can see from the street is a bank of bushes rising upwards several feet behind a chain link fence, growing one block down to the next street where only the sweet homes and trees continue pleasantly. For the past few years when passing that corner I’d hear “Find me. Find me.” I ignored it as a trick of the mind until last Friday when my dog Daisy and I were driving past and I decided to take a sudden right turn.
The next three-quarter block of ivy-hidden mystery locked me in an unexpected anticipation. Each second teased me by pretending it was a year. Finally it popped to view: a baby lake nestling in a square block.
Now the larger lake is two miles around and about a good half mile from this little one. I wondered if the little lake did something the big lake didn’t like and was spat out over that good half mile distance in the middle of a dark rainy night when no one would notice.
I shared these thoughts with my neighbor, Mr. Timms, who was known to jog around the lake in any kind of weather at any time of the day or night. After I stated my theory of how the little lake became itself, he looked at me square-on and said, “As a matter of fact -- and it’s a fact I have kept to myself -- years ago I was jogging in a downpour around the lake about two in the morning. I heard a thunder crack but saw no lightning. I looked toward the sound and saw a huge geyser shoot out from the north end of the lake and like a fat wet rainbow it arched over my head into the sky then headed northwest toward Rowena and Hyperion.”
Then he asked me how I knew. I lied an acceptable truth and told him I just guessed. I later thought he might have understood that people aren’t the only ones who communicate. I could have asked him if he’d ever heard that if people talk to their plants they grow better, or that one of the greatest pianists of our time has been known to talk to his piano.
The next Wednesday I saw a column in the Silverlake Independent, “Lake Spits Half a Mile.” The column was headed “Tall Tales by Thomas Timms.”
Dear Me Letter: Shack Come Back!
Dear Me,
I recall there were over 800 of us at Little Rock Central High School who flipped our tassles on graduation day in May of 1957. I wonder how they felt when they heard the news. Some, like me, who live out of state, will hear later. Some may not care. Some may care a lot. Then there are the others like my mother’s friends, who live in other places, will come back to visit and find just a memory.
My sister Carol broke it to me as gently as she could over the phone, but in that next second after she told me, a lifetime of memories swiftly sifted through a kaleidoscope of emotions from grief to outrage. (human bodies should have shock absorbers built in for news like this.) I told her if I’d known ahead of time, I would’ve flown to Little Rock and done SOMETHING - even started a picket line or, if it got down to it, pled with whoever to keep it alive.
After we hung up, I recalled my first taste. I was six and it was only about 35-cents. Except for the hickory smell billowing for blocks around, the little wooden shingled building and it’s small dirt parking lot nestling in its own universe behind tall bushes on what was later a part of the State Capital grounds on 7th Street could have been missed if you sneezed while driving by. We’d be a couple of blocks away when that one-of-a-kind smell watered our mouths to make ready to send our tastebuds to heaven. It wasn’t the kind of taste as with some food that you’d eat while thinking of other things or just gaze into nowhere, not thinking of anything in particular while dutifully feeding the body. It was the kind of taste that as you took each bite, no other thought dared intrude into the experience of that moment when you were surrounded by its savory flavor and wallowing in how good that bite was. And to me, Dr. Pepper or buttermilk just seemed to have been made to go with it.
The crispy-cotton-clean waitresses who had to go at warp speed to handle all the customers, would come out to the car, write your order down on a little pad, “3 regular, 1 hot, 3 Dr. Peppers, one Coke,” and in only minutes be back to hook the tray on the window of the driver’s side. I thought the waitresses were practically goddesses as they brought us The Shack’s magic. They were always friendly no matter how busy they were buzzing.
It was about the same when they moved to 3rd and Victory in the fifties. The only difference was the sandwiches were 50-cents and the drinks a dime. On the way home from Central High, I’d catch the bus right there at the corner on Victory and, if I didn’t stop for a barbeque, I’d be fed by the smell from the pit. That was ‘54 through ‘57, the year I graduated. It was in those years after ‘57 when I’d get in a mood to be alone. I’d pick up a “regular to go” with a Dr. Pepper or pint bottle of buttermilk and park down on the side street a few blocks away by the tracks of Union Station, watch the sunset through the black wrought iron fence, and see the trains roll across the bridge over the Arkansas River, wonder what life was about and where one of those trains could take me.
One of those trains ended up taking me to Washington, D.C. in January 1963 after I got my B.A. from Kansas City Art Institute. My family came to expect what would happen when I’d fly in for a visit. First stop - always - was The Shack. I’d pick up a pint-sized Kerr jar full of regular sauce to take back with me after filling up with a couple of regular beefs. But I’m not the only one who made the Shack the first stop. Several of my mother’s friends who were there in 1934 when the Shack was born and who now live out of state are as firm believers as I am.
Now, while living in Los Angeles, I sometimes dream of a Shack opening up here. You’d think a city that size would have a barbeque that good somewhere. After so many years of living here, I haven’t found so much as a smidgen of that barbeque genius.
And over the last many years more people on my flights to and from Little Rock have heard about the best barbeque on this side of the world. Now what do I tell them?
My sister Jeannie sent me a card for my birthday which came after Carol broke the news over the phone. It says “Here’s one of the best kept secrets in Little Rock, Arkansas. ‘How to Live Forever’ ... inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale (Don’t ever stop). (Too bad The Shack hadn’t heard this.) And in the card was Mr. Leroy Donald’s article from the March 19th edition of the Arkansas Gazette: “The Shack, a landmark, now gone for good.” I appreciate that article, but more, I appreciate Mr. Donald for knowing where it’s really at with Shack barbeque.
But I may have some good news for all the Shack mourners. I won’t say how I found out about this from long distance. Just mark it up to my having a nose for some of the good things in life. (One of my mottos is, “If you find a good thing, help it survive.”) Anyway, maybe there is a happy ending after all. But you can find out for yourself, if you haven’t already, at H.B. BBQ on 6010 Lancaster in Little Rock. And after you’ve tasted it, you might agree with me that it’s that same magic taste. Authentic taste, not a copy. And if you do agree with me, let’s help them keep on keeping’ on by their exhaling those barbeques so we can keep on inhaling them. Anyway, maybe there is a happy ending after all. But you can find out for yourself, if you haven’t already, at H.B. BBQ on 6010 Lancaster in Little Rock. And after you’ve tasted it, you might agree with me that it’s that same magic taste. Authentic taste, not a copy. And if you do agree with me, let’s help them keep on keeping’ on by their exhaling those barbeques so we can keep on inhaling them.
I recall there were over 800 of us at Little Rock Central High School who flipped our tassles on graduation day in May of 1957. I wonder how they felt when they heard the news. Some, like me, who live out of state, will hear later. Some may not care. Some may care a lot. Then there are the others like my mother’s friends, who live in other places, will come back to visit and find just a memory.
My sister Carol broke it to me as gently as she could over the phone, but in that next second after she told me, a lifetime of memories swiftly sifted through a kaleidoscope of emotions from grief to outrage. (human bodies should have shock absorbers built in for news like this.) I told her if I’d known ahead of time, I would’ve flown to Little Rock and done SOMETHING - even started a picket line or, if it got down to it, pled with whoever to keep it alive.
After we hung up, I recalled my first taste. I was six and it was only about 35-cents. Except for the hickory smell billowing for blocks around, the little wooden shingled building and it’s small dirt parking lot nestling in its own universe behind tall bushes on what was later a part of the State Capital grounds on 7th Street could have been missed if you sneezed while driving by. We’d be a couple of blocks away when that one-of-a-kind smell watered our mouths to make ready to send our tastebuds to heaven. It wasn’t the kind of taste as with some food that you’d eat while thinking of other things or just gaze into nowhere, not thinking of anything in particular while dutifully feeding the body. It was the kind of taste that as you took each bite, no other thought dared intrude into the experience of that moment when you were surrounded by its savory flavor and wallowing in how good that bite was. And to me, Dr. Pepper or buttermilk just seemed to have been made to go with it.
The crispy-cotton-clean waitresses who had to go at warp speed to handle all the customers, would come out to the car, write your order down on a little pad, “3 regular, 1 hot, 3 Dr. Peppers, one Coke,” and in only minutes be back to hook the tray on the window of the driver’s side. I thought the waitresses were practically goddesses as they brought us The Shack’s magic. They were always friendly no matter how busy they were buzzing.
It was about the same when they moved to 3rd and Victory in the fifties. The only difference was the sandwiches were 50-cents and the drinks a dime. On the way home from Central High, I’d catch the bus right there at the corner on Victory and, if I didn’t stop for a barbeque, I’d be fed by the smell from the pit. That was ‘54 through ‘57, the year I graduated. It was in those years after ‘57 when I’d get in a mood to be alone. I’d pick up a “regular to go” with a Dr. Pepper or pint bottle of buttermilk and park down on the side street a few blocks away by the tracks of Union Station, watch the sunset through the black wrought iron fence, and see the trains roll across the bridge over the Arkansas River, wonder what life was about and where one of those trains could take me.
One of those trains ended up taking me to Washington, D.C. in January 1963 after I got my B.A. from Kansas City Art Institute. My family came to expect what would happen when I’d fly in for a visit. First stop - always - was The Shack. I’d pick up a pint-sized Kerr jar full of regular sauce to take back with me after filling up with a couple of regular beefs. But I’m not the only one who made the Shack the first stop. Several of my mother’s friends who were there in 1934 when the Shack was born and who now live out of state are as firm believers as I am.
Now, while living in Los Angeles, I sometimes dream of a Shack opening up here. You’d think a city that size would have a barbeque that good somewhere. After so many years of living here, I haven’t found so much as a smidgen of that barbeque genius.
And over the last many years more people on my flights to and from Little Rock have heard about the best barbeque on this side of the world. Now what do I tell them?
My sister Jeannie sent me a card for my birthday which came after Carol broke the news over the phone. It says “Here’s one of the best kept secrets in Little Rock, Arkansas. ‘How to Live Forever’ ... inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale (Don’t ever stop). (Too bad The Shack hadn’t heard this.) And in the card was Mr. Leroy Donald’s article from the March 19th edition of the Arkansas Gazette: “The Shack, a landmark, now gone for good.” I appreciate that article, but more, I appreciate Mr. Donald for knowing where it’s really at with Shack barbeque.
But I may have some good news for all the Shack mourners. I won’t say how I found out about this from long distance. Just mark it up to my having a nose for some of the good things in life. (One of my mottos is, “If you find a good thing, help it survive.”) Anyway, maybe there is a happy ending after all. But you can find out for yourself, if you haven’t already, at H.B. BBQ on 6010 Lancaster in Little Rock. And after you’ve tasted it, you might agree with me that it’s that same magic taste. Authentic taste, not a copy. And if you do agree with me, let’s help them keep on keeping’ on by their exhaling those barbeques so we can keep on inhaling them. Anyway, maybe there is a happy ending after all. But you can find out for yourself, if you haven’t already, at H.B. BBQ on 6010 Lancaster in Little Rock. And after you’ve tasted it, you might agree with me that it’s that same magic taste. Authentic taste, not a copy. And if you do agree with me, let’s help them keep on keeping’ on by their exhaling those barbeques so we can keep on inhaling them.
Dear Me Letter: Tallcupacoffee
Dear Me,
There are times when I get up in the morning that my wit’s dull so I slap it around a little on an Arkansas Whetstone and it hones it up sharp enough to wet the paper with some ink.
And to add a little edge, i pour myself a cup of coffee in what I call my Truckdriver’s Mug that I got after supper with sister Carol and her husband, Jim, at a catfish place called Grampa’s in North Little Rock. The look on Grandpa’s face when I asked to buy it said, ‘What kinda cornstalk are you cut from to want a piddly cup like this?” I don’t know if he’d have understood if I’d told him.
When I drink coffee out of that mug, I’m not just drinking coffee. I’m drinking the family driving down the old Hot Springs Highway back when roads were so skinny there wasn’t room enough for a white line to go down the middle.
I can hear the sound of dirt and gravel under the tires as we pulled off the road and parked by a couple of Mack trucks to grab a sandwich in the diner. Inside, a couple of Paul Bunyon rednecks would be at the counter chewing the fat over a cup of coffee in one of those fat friendly mugs. One had arms thick as a good sized Arkansas pine and the other one lanky like a teenage sapling. I was a shy 12-year old so just looked. The thought never entered my mind that I could talk to them. They were too big. But friendly big. Daddy would say “They’re good ol’ boys.”
And they talked with the twang of a homemade “GITtar” tuned with white lightning in a full moonshine summer’s night. I looked on them as kind of heroes. Any Arkansas traveler who could muscle around a truck that big should come out the other end with a medal of some kind.
By the way, stamped in the bottom of my mug is the name Victor. Word has it Victor owned one of the first diners in Pope County back when truckdrivers started trucking. He got fed up listening to his wife yelling about all the broken cups. So in the middle of the night he went down to Ferris Gulley, scooped out some clay, and went back to the woodshed behind the diner and made, as he put it, “a cup that would bounce off the hardest head this side of the Ozarks, or any other side for that matter.”
All I can say is this tough little mug sure holds a tall cupacoffee!
There are times when I get up in the morning that my wit’s dull so I slap it around a little on an Arkansas Whetstone and it hones it up sharp enough to wet the paper with some ink.
And to add a little edge, i pour myself a cup of coffee in what I call my Truckdriver’s Mug that I got after supper with sister Carol and her husband, Jim, at a catfish place called Grampa’s in North Little Rock. The look on Grandpa’s face when I asked to buy it said, ‘What kinda cornstalk are you cut from to want a piddly cup like this?” I don’t know if he’d have understood if I’d told him.
When I drink coffee out of that mug, I’m not just drinking coffee. I’m drinking the family driving down the old Hot Springs Highway back when roads were so skinny there wasn’t room enough for a white line to go down the middle.
I can hear the sound of dirt and gravel under the tires as we pulled off the road and parked by a couple of Mack trucks to grab a sandwich in the diner. Inside, a couple of Paul Bunyon rednecks would be at the counter chewing the fat over a cup of coffee in one of those fat friendly mugs. One had arms thick as a good sized Arkansas pine and the other one lanky like a teenage sapling. I was a shy 12-year old so just looked. The thought never entered my mind that I could talk to them. They were too big. But friendly big. Daddy would say “They’re good ol’ boys.”
And they talked with the twang of a homemade “GITtar” tuned with white lightning in a full moonshine summer’s night. I looked on them as kind of heroes. Any Arkansas traveler who could muscle around a truck that big should come out the other end with a medal of some kind.
By the way, stamped in the bottom of my mug is the name Victor. Word has it Victor owned one of the first diners in Pope County back when truckdrivers started trucking. He got fed up listening to his wife yelling about all the broken cups. So in the middle of the night he went down to Ferris Gulley, scooped out some clay, and went back to the woodshed behind the diner and made, as he put it, “a cup that would bounce off the hardest head this side of the Ozarks, or any other side for that matter.”
All I can say is this tough little mug sure holds a tall cupacoffee!
Dear Me Letter: Orient Express
Dear Me,
I’ve loved trains since my first trip to Paducah, Kentuck from Little Rock with my folks and sister Jeannie in the early forties. Carol wasn’t born yet. The smell of the diesel, the sound of the steam, of the engine and the swaying clickity-clack soothing through the night were magnified as most first experiences are at that age. And it was fun watching the countryside racing the day by. The black conductors in their flat-topped black hats clicking holes in tickets as we rolled toward the next town were probably used to being stared at by kids.
One of the best parts was the dining car: linen white tablecloths and napkins, china (or close to it)and silverware, pewter creamers, glasses made of glass and the Black polite waiters dressed as white as their teeth.
Now is now and is different on the trains I ride where you’re fed plastic on plastic with paper pull-out napkins, except this one, The Orient Express. There is a sensation of plush as we rush at an acceptable speed from Paris. And only an hour ago there was another sensation, one of a different kind of rush: the rush of fear that seems to slam invisible iron bars around one’s body and soul, surrounding them with a dark clammy dampness known only by paralyzing fear. (It’s odd how one occurrence can grab one from a free calm daydreaming state of mind into closed walls of terror where your attention rivets to the cause of this, then disburses, seeking any way out. It’s draining.)
I had the window seat in our compartment, my friend the opposite seat facing me. The older gentleman on my left was napping, as appeared to be the boy from India with a basket in his lap next to my friend.
I turned my eyes from the calming mountains outside to greet a sensation of someone looking at me. At the halfway turn of my head a thought, “I don’t want to see this” sped the same pace as my eyes, then locked. Still latched at the top, small sinister brown eyes like magnets held mine from a sliding door at the bottom half of the basket. Icy fear numbed my lax cheeks and locking jaws. “A cobra!” I thought the worst.
No speech or motion seemed possible. With frozen-zippered lips I grunted a gutteral sound to my friend to pull her from her book. She looked up, puzzled by my stony expression, then followed my eyes to the bottom part of the basket. “What is it now,” obviously thinking this was another one of my practical jokes. After I pushed out another more desperate grunt and bulged my eyeballs nearly far enough out to touch her, she moved her handbag, saw the eyes and whispered with a reprimanding grin, “Annie, it’s only a baby badger!” She reached over and closed the door it had maneuvered open. The boy kept napping and we kept his secret. And secured the basket door.
My adrenals went back to be roused another time and I went back to the window wondering what Agatha Christie would have done with this.
I’ve loved trains since my first trip to Paducah, Kentuck from Little Rock with my folks and sister Jeannie in the early forties. Carol wasn’t born yet. The smell of the diesel, the sound of the steam, of the engine and the swaying clickity-clack soothing through the night were magnified as most first experiences are at that age. And it was fun watching the countryside racing the day by. The black conductors in their flat-topped black hats clicking holes in tickets as we rolled toward the next town were probably used to being stared at by kids.
One of the best parts was the dining car: linen white tablecloths and napkins, china (or close to it)and silverware, pewter creamers, glasses made of glass and the Black polite waiters dressed as white as their teeth.
Now is now and is different on the trains I ride where you’re fed plastic on plastic with paper pull-out napkins, except this one, The Orient Express. There is a sensation of plush as we rush at an acceptable speed from Paris. And only an hour ago there was another sensation, one of a different kind of rush: the rush of fear that seems to slam invisible iron bars around one’s body and soul, surrounding them with a dark clammy dampness known only by paralyzing fear. (It’s odd how one occurrence can grab one from a free calm daydreaming state of mind into closed walls of terror where your attention rivets to the cause of this, then disburses, seeking any way out. It’s draining.)
I had the window seat in our compartment, my friend the opposite seat facing me. The older gentleman on my left was napping, as appeared to be the boy from India with a basket in his lap next to my friend.
I turned my eyes from the calming mountains outside to greet a sensation of someone looking at me. At the halfway turn of my head a thought, “I don’t want to see this” sped the same pace as my eyes, then locked. Still latched at the top, small sinister brown eyes like magnets held mine from a sliding door at the bottom half of the basket. Icy fear numbed my lax cheeks and locking jaws. “A cobra!” I thought the worst.
No speech or motion seemed possible. With frozen-zippered lips I grunted a gutteral sound to my friend to pull her from her book. She looked up, puzzled by my stony expression, then followed my eyes to the bottom part of the basket. “What is it now,” obviously thinking this was another one of my practical jokes. After I pushed out another more desperate grunt and bulged my eyeballs nearly far enough out to touch her, she moved her handbag, saw the eyes and whispered with a reprimanding grin, “Annie, it’s only a baby badger!” She reached over and closed the door it had maneuvered open. The boy kept napping and we kept his secret. And secured the basket door.
My adrenals went back to be roused another time and I went back to the window wondering what Agatha Christie would have done with this.
Dear Me Postcard: Identity Problems
Dear Me,
Streets in other cities may have identity problems. I’d have to do research to find out. But when I direct someone to my house on a about a 30-degree hill in Silverlake, I tell them, “Go up Fountain which becomes Hyperion which becomes Rowena which becomes Glendale Boulevard, etcetera.”
But identity doesn’t have to be a problem to a street or anyone or anything else as long as you know that you’re being what you’re being when you’re being it. A pizza crustmaker, for instance, while he’s tossing the dough, can end up wearing the dough on his head if the ceiling hasn’t grabbed it first, but that doesn't matter because he is a pizza crustmaker.
An exception is a shrink who drugs and coerces his patients into unwanted favors. By that act he’s being what society is growing to expect a shrink to be: a subperson to give as much attention to as you do the glue on the back of a postage stamp.
Streets in other cities may have identity problems. I’d have to do research to find out. But when I direct someone to my house on a about a 30-degree hill in Silverlake, I tell them, “Go up Fountain which becomes Hyperion which becomes Rowena which becomes Glendale Boulevard, etcetera.”
But identity doesn’t have to be a problem to a street or anyone or anything else as long as you know that you’re being what you’re being when you’re being it. A pizza crustmaker, for instance, while he’s tossing the dough, can end up wearing the dough on his head if the ceiling hasn’t grabbed it first, but that doesn't matter because he is a pizza crustmaker.
An exception is a shrink who drugs and coerces his patients into unwanted favors. By that act he’s being what society is growing to expect a shrink to be: a subperson to give as much attention to as you do the glue on the back of a postage stamp.
Dear Me Postcard: One Step Ahead
Dear Me,
As I turned left from Fletcher onto Glendale Boulevard, I saw a drunk man leading a blind man arm in arm. And in return the blind man was keeping the drunk from falling down.
On the surface one could say the blind was leading the blind drunk. Or one could say they were helping each other get another step ahead.
As I turned left from Fletcher onto Glendale Boulevard, I saw a drunk man leading a blind man arm in arm. And in return the blind man was keeping the drunk from falling down.
On the surface one could say the blind was leading the blind drunk. Or one could say they were helping each other get another step ahead.
Dear Me Postcard: Atwater Village
Dear Me,
I see one discrepancy about the delightful Atwater Village in L.A., I see no water where it’s at.
I see one discrepancy about the delightful Atwater Village in L.A., I see no water where it’s at.
Dear Me Postcard: A Great Oddity
Dear Me,
Today in a fluke of a dream I won the lottery even though there were great odds. It’s logical I would win. Some look upon me as a great oddity.
Today in a fluke of a dream I won the lottery even though there were great odds. It’s logical I would win. Some look upon me as a great oddity.
Dear Me Postcard: De-animated
Dear Me,
Some have said the eyes show the soul. What is really behind the eyeballs that expresses in so many certain ways and gives that extra zing or life to a communication is anyone’s guess. One thing’s for sure. Whatever it is, it’s not behind a dead person’s eyeballs. What makes a live body animated has gone someplace else at the moment of death: de-animated.
Maybe the truth is in the realm of something that can’t be seen with the eyeballs - the soul. That is YOU.
Some have said the eyes show the soul. What is really behind the eyeballs that expresses in so many certain ways and gives that extra zing or life to a communication is anyone’s guess. One thing’s for sure. Whatever it is, it’s not behind a dead person’s eyeballs. What makes a live body animated has gone someplace else at the moment of death: de-animated.
Maybe the truth is in the realm of something that can’t be seen with the eyeballs - the soul. That is YOU.
Dear Me Postcard: Comic Economic Toys
Dear Me,
Comic Economic Toys reports skyrocketing sales of their recently released toy puppet in the image of John Q. Public, holding a small green inflatable dollar sign in one hand and a survival kit in the other. The sky-high sales are reportedly due to an appealing pair of scissors included for snipping the FED-Manipulator Cord choking John Q.’s neck.
The “Tax Squeezer,” also being considered for mass marketing, is a green rubber dollar sign squeeze toy that emits a sound of whimpering.
Comic Economic Toys reports skyrocketing sales of their recently released toy puppet in the image of John Q. Public, holding a small green inflatable dollar sign in one hand and a survival kit in the other. The sky-high sales are reportedly due to an appealing pair of scissors included for snipping the FED-Manipulator Cord choking John Q.’s neck.
The “Tax Squeezer,” also being considered for mass marketing, is a green rubber dollar sign squeeze toy that emits a sound of whimpering.
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