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?
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
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.
Saying nothing in particular 