Tag life

So long … I’m outta here and you’ll never believe why!

JT Twissel 44 Comments

The other day I received a communication of the utmost confidentiality and significance from a Mr. Pauwels Gaetan informing me that his client, Engr. Eldric Twissel, a distinguished business contractor for decades in Brussels had passed away due to a myocardial infarction shortly after the tragic loss of his entire family in a vehicular accident. In case you don’t believe me, here is that very same communication (with a bit of berry pie spilled on it I’m afraid.)

Reading further, I was stunned to learn that I am apparently the last living Twissel on the planet! And, as such, I am eligible to inherit good old Eldric’s 9,995,980.00 (Nine Million, Nine Hundred Ninety-Five Thousand, Nine Hundred Eighty Euros) which will make me – gasp – a billionaire? (I have no idea what the exchange rate is so I’m just guessing.)

After a month of fog, finally the sun! Oh, my happy days are here!

Unfortunately my friends, billionaires don’t blog. But I’ll remember each of you fondly on my yacht.

First … I suppose I’ll have to hire Pauwies to “assist” me through a “entirely legitimate” process with “no legal risks or exposure” to myself. All he expects in return is half of the 9,995, 980.00 Euros! What a gent!

Next, I guess I better head down to my bank to prepare them. Pauweis will undoubtedly want access to my account. You know, to make it easier to transfer the funds. Oh, and I better call my tax guy … perhaps I should relocate to Switzerland in order to avoid horrendous taxes? Oh dear, so many decisions. So much to prepare for!

A bench dedicated to Eldric and the Twissels?

Of course, I’ll have to do something to honor Eldric and all those poor unfortunate Twissels who met their demise in some ghastly vehicular accident. Any suggestions?

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