Tag Family

The Blaze of a Heart #ChristmasClassics

JT Twissel 17 Comments

Next on my list of favorite Christmas stories that have nothing to do with Santa, is this short story by Truman Capote.

It’s the story of a young boy and his elderly “friend” who set out with $12.99 to make thirty fruitcakes for people who have been kind to them or people they admire (like Eleanor Roosevelt). They are the wards of “persons” who “have power over us and often make us cry” but who for the most part ignore them and so over the years they have figured out how to entertain themselves and, at the same time, save a few pennies here and there for their Fruitcake Fund.

 "... a morning arrives in November, and my friend as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and the fuels the blazes of her heart announces: 'It's Fruitcake weather!'"

We know little else about them. The young boy remembers no other home and his friend has never traveled more than five miles from the house nor has she seen a movie or eaten in a restaurant … but she “has killed with a hoe the largest rattlesnake ever seen in the county (sixteen rattles) … tamed hummingbirds (just try it) till they balance on her finger … knows the recipe for every sort of old-time Indian cure, including a magical wart remover.”

She also knows how to make kites and fly them in any weather. The important things to a young boy.

Nor do we know much about where they live except that it is a “spreading old house in a country town.” There’s an orchard nearby where they gather “windfall pecans” from amongst the fallen leaves, a grocery where they buy “cherries and citron, ginger and vanilla and canned pineapple from Hawaii, rinds and raisins and … oh so much flour, butter and so many eggs” which they load into his baby carriage (the thing he arrived in with little else) and drag home. However, for the most expensive ingredient they must summon their courage to visit a notorious bootlegger by the name of Haha Jones. Any guesses as to what that most expensive ingredient was?

Truman Capote aka Buddy and his friend Nanny aka Sook

Okay – it’s whiskey! Any of my baking blogger buddies use hard liquor in their fruitcake? I’m thinking of giving it a try. It’s been just that kind of year!

Me … after gobbling down too much spiked fruitcake.

The Fourth Quarter

JT Twissel 25 Comments

It’s hard to believe we are teetering on final quarter of the year. For me, it’s time for reassessments. Am I going to accomplish what I set out to do in January? Generally the answer is “no” which leads to the question: What can I accomplish before the end of the year without turning into a basket case? I’ve been told that’s one of the pitfalls of being an eldest sister. Eldest sisters, particularly those with working mothers are overly responsible, goal-oriented and guilt-ridden when failing to meet their goals. But you know what? I think I’m on the mend. Perhaps it’s age.

Note the little devils I had to put up with! Forget those impish smiles. “You’re not my mother!” was the only thing they could say.

For example, this year I vowed to:

  • Collect my stories and edit, edit, edit the crap out of them
  • Get more involved with the community
  • Hire a gardener; a handyman; and an electrician
  • Bronze a few of my sculptures with money my mother left me for such a purpose
  • Republish my second book.

Of all those lofty goals, I accomplished just one. The last one.

One of the dozens of sketches for the book. I learnt this year that I am not a skilled cover designer!

I must admit, it felt good to release the story to the world. Really good, considering that I began writing about the wacky world of mein Oncle Boob over thirty years ago.

As for my other goals, well the world will not end if I don’t finish them. It might end … considering how everything is going … but it won’t be because I did not hire an electrician.

Tomorrow I flip the page to a new month on the Wasabi calendar. Any guesses as to which flowering. plant is featured? Here’s a clue: it’s native to Japan where it is considered a great delicacy.

The Most Beautiful Face

JT Twissel 19 Comments

My brother Oz got married when he was sixteen to a gal who claimed she was bearing his child. Two years later, after said child failed to materialize, Oz dropped out of school and joined the Navy. Next thing I heard, he was sailing the seven seas in a nuclear sub although technically I don’t think you sail a sub. He was still legally married but that all changed after he and a fellow seaman got drunk and destroyed a Jeep while on duty. Oz lucked out with only a medical discharge from the Navy but that brought Perma Pregnant Paulette back into the picture. She claimed to need far more medical assistance than the heap of broken bones she was still legally married to.

Oz, after being released from the Naval hospital

Flash forward a few scant years (maybe it was only one) and Brother Oz was again called to the altar to “do the right thing.” Only this time, not at city hall. Oh no. Bride Number Two was the gregarious daughter of the biggest Harley Davidson dealer in Southern California. This wedding would done right with Daddy renting an entire Ramada Inn for the reception. Due to LA traffic, I missed most of the actual wedding ceremony, arriving just after the “I dos” had been said and the bride and groom were exiting the church on a pair of matching white Harleys. I kid you not. As they burst into the blazing sun, their guests rushed past us to leap on their own bikes (most but not all Harleys) to follow the bride and groom to the Ramada Inn. What a sight that was. The bride in her fluffy white gown and veil, and the groom in a white tux, roaring down the freeway followed by various representatives of the many biker clubs in SoCal all proudly wearing their insignia.

“Pigs in a blanket!” My step mother said derisively as she examined the table of refreshments. The bride’s parents had not asked for her expert advice on the proper finger food to serve at a reception. “Did you make sure to lock your doors?”

For you non-foodies, Pigs in a Blanket

“I doubt anyone is going to steal our old, gutless Toyota in a parking lot full of Harley Davidsons.” I replied. Did I mention that Oz is technically my step brother?

K in her pearls listening to Born to Be Wild at Oz’ s wedding. The only picture I have of the event.

With nary a concern for protocol or ceremony, the blossoming bride and her daddy soon kicked off their shoes and took to the dance floor for a sentiment rendering of Born to be Wild. Well, as sentimental a rendering as could be performed by weekend musicians kicking around empty Budweiser cans on the stage.

I had three young children with me and so, after a few rounds of Born to be Wild (the only song the band knew how to play), we congratulated the bride and groom and left to find a quiet place offering a bit more than pigs in a blanket and ice-cold Budweiser. I felt a bit guilty leaving my poor father behind. He’d begun chatting about the constellations with some bearded fellow wearing dungarees and a sleeveless tee that exposed all his tattoos while my step mother sipped her tepid water in sweetly smiling disgust.

Anyway the point of this story is: the bride really was pregnant this time and delivered a boy they named Hawk. I’m sure he was riding Harleys before he could walk but his life took a different path. He’s now a social worker married to a sweet looking chap who works in a similar field. Yes, they are gay. A fact which cemented in my step mother’s mind the ugly truth that her sweet, gullible youngest had once again been taken advantage of by a female.

Not long after Hawk arrived, they welcomed a daughter. A beautiful child who so resembled my step mother that there was no doubting who her father was this time.

And so you ask … is there a point to this story? Here is my niece:

I think she has the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. I’ve tried many times to capture what it is about her that makes her so beautiful but I think it is beyond the skills of any artist.

Perhaps it’s because she lives in her own world. In our world, she will only say “I love you.”

From her HS graduation card. Oz and his wife are making sure she has as many normal experiences as possible.

I have only met her a few times and generally at sad events but… I always get a familiar hug.

My mother, who heard everyone’s confessions in the end, told me Oz often complained that all he wanted a son he could fish with and a daughter he could walk down the aisle. But he has caring children and that’s about all any of us could hope for. Don’t you think?

The Anchor

JT Twissel 14 Comments

In honor of my mother’s birthday, a post from a few years back.

Mother and Sally exchanged Christmas Cards for over seventy-five years. For most of those seventy-five years, they lived four hours from each other and could have easily visited, but I didn’t meet Sally until Mother’s ninetieth birthday.

They grew up in the same small town in New England. They were the same age, went to the same schools and the same church. And … both moved far from that small town after high school graduation. But those are the only things they had in common. Teenage Mother liked to party but did well enough in school to earn a scholarship while Teenage Sally apparently never rocked the boat. While my mother was at college, Sally met a soldier returning from the war with only one hand, married him and left for the West Coast.

Sally’s husband worked for the Post Office until his death. They bought a house just south of San Francisco where they raised three children. After his death, the oldest daughter moved in down the street to take care of Sally. According to the daughter, Sally’s children all did well and produced equally successful children.

In December 2019, after baking Christmas cookies for her neighbors, Sally sat down at the kitchen table and died. I can’t imagine a more pleasant way to go.

Mother somehow graduated from college although to hear her reminisce about those days it’s hard to understand how. She started her career in Hartford Connecticut, about thirty miles from where she’d grown up, and soon got married. My father spent about seven years trying to survive in the corporate world … jumping from company to company all over the states. And Mother went along with him having children and attempting to be a housewife. After they settled in Reno Nevada, Mother gave up the charade. She divorced my father and went out and got the career she’d always wanted.

For some reason through all of the turmoil — and it was turmoil — Mother always looked forward to Sally’s Christmas Cards. I imagine they contained a synopsis of Sally’s year. Or perhaps they just contained holiday greetings. None survived the final move she took.

I finally met Sally during the year that Mother lived with us. Her daughter contacted me and we got the two ladies together, coincidentally on Mother’s 90th birthday. They sat together mostly in silence, affectionately touching and gazing into each other’s eyes and when the restaurant closed to prepare for the dinner rush, there were tears. On all our faces.

Christmas 2019 Mother called to tell me she had not received a card from Sally. She said something must have happened because Sally would never forget to send a Christmas card. Since both ladies were now approaching 94, I thought perhaps Sally’s mental state was slipping and so I contacted her daughter and heard about the Christmas cookies.

Telling Mother that Sally had died was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Mother died in August 2020. I wish she’d exhausted herself making cookies and sat down to die, but it was during the pandemic. Residents of her assisted living facility were basically prisoners in the their rooms with only remote entertainment which I’m sure aided in the decline of many of them. I played her music from the 30s and 40s on my iPhone and read aloud from a book until finally in the morning her spirit escaped. She just didn’t want to go through another Christmas without getting a card from Sally. From what I know, the two ladies probably wouldn’t have enjoyed going on a cruise together but they anchored each other to this world. Some old friends are like that.

Bruce is beyond reproach

JT Twissel 45 Comments

Good Friday always reminds of the Seagrass family under whose wings I spent my high school years. They celebrated every holiday to the max, unlike my family. Easter we might get dressed up and go to church. Or we might not. One year we went to the Lutheran Church because my paternal grandparents were visiting and grandmother insisted that we not only go to church but that we look respectable.

My brother still hates wearing a suit! But my little sister has become quite the fashion plate. Don’t show her this picture. She’ll really pitch a fit!

The cheerful couple in the above picture, Myrtle and RB Senior, met in Fargo North Dakota and spent twenty-five years working on Indian reservations. I never really understood why until I recently discovered that RB Senior was a descendant of White Elk, aka Colonel Alexander McKee and Nonhelema, aka Grenadier Squaw. So living amongst the Native Americans was in his DNA. Unfortunately it was a life that hardened my grandmother to the point that she made RB Senior’s later years miserable. I only remember the quiet, taciturn man who died when I was twenty. But recently, via the miracle of the internet, I discovered he wasn’t always that way.

Oh Bruce, we never knew! Why didn’t you marry Katherine Ladd, whose “winning countenance never fails to influence the judges in forensic contests”? Or her twin sister, Rizpah, the laughing twin, who “plays gentleman friend to all the spinsters on the faculty.” A good laugh is indeed sunshine in a house. Or both sisters! You could have done it Bruce! Although, what was this Ford’s establishment on North Broadway you famously frequented?

Once again I have the ancestors in an uproar! But it is the holiday for forgiveness, right?

Happy Easter all.

Happy Hour and Other Sorrows

JT Twissel 28 Comments

I haven’t been around lately because I’m planning to re-release two books I wrote over ten years ago. The first one Flipka has a modified ending but otherwise is the same wacky tale described here. The second book has undergone a different POV and will get a new name. Readers had complained they didn’t know what the heroine would do next. That’s not an issue any more!

Rough draft for the cover. Do you think it needs more color?

Many decades ago I spent the week before Christmas hanging out at the Officer’s Club in Worms Germany with military personnel, primarily civilian, who’d opted not to return to the states for the holidays. The club had been decorated for the season with plastic poinsettias and cinnamon scented candles. Canned Christmas carols played. Drinks and bar food were half off but it was still a dreary place. One evening I sat at a table with a be-speckled young man who barely looked up at me as he scribbled on a notepad.

He was a cartoonist for various publications distributed to military personnel.

It was fascinating to watch him work. But eventually Happy Hour was over. I told him how much I loved his work – having spent many a Happy Hour waiting for my uncle to finishing schmoozing with his co-workers so that I could drive him home. And he handed me the drawings.

I wish I’d caught his name but I was so young. At least I had the sense to hold onto his scribbles and the memory of that evening all these years ago.

When I was thinking of a new title, those cartoons came to mind. And a record my uncle used to play …. every damn evening! Stanyan Streets and Other Sorrows by Rod McKuen. And every damn evening it got stuck on the same song:

For a while the only earth that Sloopy knew was her sandbox
Two rooms on 55th Street was her domain
Every night she’d sit in the window among the avocado plants
Waiting for me to come home
My arms filled with canned liver and love
We’d talk into the night then contented but missing something
She, the earth she never knew, me, the hills I ran while growing bent
Sloopy should have been a cowboy’s cat
With prairies to run, not linoleum
And real live catnip mice
No one to depend on but herself
I never told her but in my mind I was a midnight cowboy even then
Riding my imaginary horse down 42nd street
Going off with strangers to live an hour long cowboy’s life
But always coming home to Sloopy who loved me best
For a dozen summers we lived against the world an island on an island
She’d comfort me with purring
I’d fatten her with smiles
We grew rich on trust needing not the beach or butterflies
I had a friend named Ben who painted buildings like Rouault men
He went away
My laughter tired Lillian after a time
She found a man who only smiled
But Sloopy stayed and stayed
Winter 1959 old men walk their dogs
Some are walked so often that their feet
Leave little pink tracks in the soft gray snow
Woman fur on fur
Elegant and easy only slightly pure
Hailing cabs to take them round the block and back
Who is not a love seeker when December comes?
Even children pray to Santa Claus
I had my own love safe at home
And yet I stayed out all one night and the next day too
They must of thought me crazy screaming Sloopy Sloopy
As the snow came falling down around me
I was a madman to have stayed away
One minute more than the appointed hour
I’d like to think a golden cowboy snatched her from the window sill
And safely saddle bagged she rode to Arizona
She’s stalking lizards in the cactus now perhaps, bitter, but free
I’m bitter too
And not a free man anymore
But once was a time in New York’s jungle in a tree
Before I went into the world in search of other kinds of love
Nobody owned me, but a can named Sloopy
Looking back perhaps she’s been the only human thing
That ever gave love back to me

What’s in your Bible?

JT Twissel 34 Comments

I am in possession of three Bibles.  Four if you count The Book of Mormon, which I do not. 

The first was sent to my mother by the State of California after her elderly cousin passed away while under their care.  “Cousin Gloria” loved animals (elephants in particular) but couldn’t stand most people.  She smoked unfiltered cigarettes and lived on a diet of cookies and soda.  She was obese, diabetic and towards the end, violent.  Mother tried, Gloria didn’t. And so when she stated her intention to leave all of her estate (including land in Hawaii) to the Elephant Assistance League, Mother threw up her hands in defeat.

This Bible was given to Cousin Gloria in 1935 by “Grandma” which would have been my great grandmother.  It’s the smallest of the three bibles, only about the size of my hand.  In Deuteronomy there’s a pressed leaf of some sort.  I have no idea what, if any, significance it had to her. 

In Job there are what remains of Tweedy, Cousin Gloria’s beloved parakeet who lived far beyond its normal life span. 

The bookmark will forever be in Psalms Prayer of the Poet in Affliction.

There is a slip of paper in Ephesians that reads Ephesians 4:32 “Be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

My mother’s Bible looks like it was put through the washing machine, which, knowing Mother, is probably true. It was given to her by Mrs. Rufus Cushinau in 1936, a woman I have never heard of.  Inside of Psalms is the home schedule for the Reno Renegades which is a mystery as she is not a sports fan. I’ll have to ask her about it. There are few special passages marked, most notably Thessalonians 5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Mother is not one wit sentimental. But of the three bibles, I like the illustrations in this one the best.  Unfortunately they are all damaged.

Whoever Mrs. Cushinau was, she knew Mother.  This is the only Bible to contain Cliff Notes.

My Bible was given to me by the Methodist Church which I went to sporadically growing up.  It’s much larger that the others.  About the size of the one Trump held the other day in his photo op. Being quite sentimental, my bible is jammed with things.  A letter from my grandmother wishing me a Happy New Year and letting me know that, even though it was a Monday (her usual wash day) she would be postponing the wash because of cloudy skies. 

There’s a birthday card from years ago, someone I sadly lost contact with and later found out was going through a very rough time.

Pictures of my children, memorials, postcards … it’s just stuffed. In this version, revised in 1952, Jesus is a hippie who apparently likes to sit under trees and chat with his followers.

And my parents wondered how the hippie movement ever came to be!

Like the Hippie Jesus, I prefer to seek solace in nature. I do not believe God wrote the Bible up in his office in the sky and then transmitted his “orders” to a council of “holy” men sitting in the desert. But it is a work of prose and poetry that has evolved over the centuries to reflect human experience and, to many people, it provides solace. Even to those who aren’t believers, it is a necessary reference to understand many of the great works of literature. To use the Bible as a symbol of one’s political power is worse than burning it.