That Time of Year...

I saw the decorations in Wal-Mart the day before Halloween, snuggled back between the flimsy costumes, party favors, and orange exterior lights.  There, lined up in tight rows like a shipment of sarcophagi were the pre-lit, pretend Christmas trees.  The following afternoon, my television told me that Christmas cheer is available with Glade candles, and the new animated version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was being released on November 6th.  Naturally, that question we all hear so frequently danced in my head:

Good heavens.  Isn't it a bit too early to begin the Christmas fanfare?

The answer:  Hell no.

I'd actually prefer to have a perpetual, year-long celebration of Christmas.  You all know the moment that exists at the edge of the Christmas morning magic, as much as we all try to battle its arrival each and every year:  That we'll eventually have to move our presents into our rooms and put them away.  That effectively ends the whole damn thing.  The food starts to look a bit off, the tree is now a nuisance, and someone has to get the ladder out and take the damn lights down.  Arguably, the only thing remaining is the egg-nog.  It still looks good.  It always looks good.

No more of this "Twelve Days of Christmas" nonsense.  Let's commit and make it the "Twelve Months of Christmas."  A year of making others smile and hopeful, being cheerful and generous, eating good food, listening to the 24-hour Christmas Carol radio station, being with your family, the smiles, the lights...it's a damn good time if you ask me.  The Christmas decorations, commercials, and music can never start soon enough.  If we could only get our grocery stores to stock egg-nog year round, all would be right with the world. 

Additionally, the Twelve Months of Christmas would make it much easier to identify the truly cranky people sulking about out there.  Should you encounter any of them in your Christmas adventures...smile big at them, wish them an extra-happy Christmas, and give them a big hug if you're brave enough.

They hate that.

In Rockville: The Old Woman

He returned to Rockville some years ago with his mother and sister to see what fragments of his memories yet remained, and his family followed.  We knew the trip was his, and we were to be curious bystanders as he walked down the storefronts, wondering which memories would persist after the trip.

The town was hollow and frail.  Pale walls sagged, patched roofs crumbled, and weeds clutched the broken cement and splintered wood, pulling it all further into the cold ground.  The air was still and heavy, and there was no sound anywhere.  All that remained of this place, it seemed, were the grain silos and the family that lay claim to them.  Yet even there, behind and around the silos, there was no sound, no motion.  Nothing was happening.

The man said little as he moved down main street, looking up at the empty facades of the stores there: The billiards hall, the hardware store, the East Side Grocery, all of them ghosts.  The town jail was a pile of gray stone in the grass.  Doors were missing, dangling from the top hinge, nailed shut, or warped and tapping against the weathered frame.  The man stopped as a cat, raggedy orange and wary, hopped from his path on the heaving sidewalk to commune with three others in a copse of grass across the street.

Our eyes followed the tabby across the street, and the man turned to us and said, "Jesus.  Look out there.  They're everywhere."  They bounded with one another in the grass, howled and spat in the road, and spilled out of a darkened store ahead.  It was impossible to count the feral host, for they twined and moved and pulsed over everything, and scattered as we moved along the sidewalk towards the front door of the residence.

There was no door, jagged pieces of glass perched in the gaping windowframes, and the afternoon sunlight splayed along the floor and sliced through the black of the building.  Dust motes and mosquitos and fleas danced in the warm yellow light.  Cats padded out of the room and moved between our legs, while some sat within and stared at the intruders.  Some danced to a darkened corner to lay beneath what looked to be the ruined front door, resting on cinderblocks.

It was only when we looked atop the door-and-cinderblock bed that we saw the ashen, tattered woman sleeping there.

The man turned to his mother.  "I don't remember this.  Who's place is this?"

She reached up and patted his shoulder.  "She didn't always live here.  She used to live around the corner.  She didn't use to have as many cats..."  At that, she tightened her lips and shook her head in frustration at the ancient soul within, and called to it.  "Dony.  Come out, hun.  You know me."  The figure on the wood turned its head slowly and stared out at us, unblinking.  The skeletal hands scraped against the wood as she rose and shuffled out to meet us.  The feral horde moved as one with her.

She wore a threadbare pink nightgown, her white hair was cut very short and curled about her ears.  Her nails were yellowed, and she had no teeth.  She raised one sharp arm to shield her eyes from the glare of the light and peered at the man, his sister and his mother, who now stood resolutely in front of us all.  The words creaked and crawled from her mouth, and her eyes widened with familiarity.  "Well, my goodness.  That pretty face is a lovely sight!  If I knew'd you'd be comin' I'd a put on somethin' nicer that mah gown."  She looked down at the fading fabric and shook her head sadly.

The man's mother smiled and stepped forward.  "It's okay Dony, hun.  We're just passing by to see things again.  You remember my son and daughter, don't you?"  She crept out of the store to stand on the sidewalk to look over those faces from her past and in the full light looked very small and very alone.  Dony gave each of them a hug, and the group stood for some time talking.  She would wave her arm at a part of town, point with her curled, arthritic finger into the past at different places, and everyone's gaze followed.  She smiled, chuckled, and once stooped to run her hands along the back of a dirty gray cat that passed her way.  It smiled.

Soon , they were saying their goodbyes.  "Sure was kind of ya to stop and see me."  Her eyes glistened a bit as the tears began to creep in.  "I'm feelin' a bit tired, I'm afraid...I need to go lay down for a bit."  The man and his mother and sister rejoined us as the old woman turned and moved back to her bed in the darkness with the cats.

We moved through the town for another ten minutes, and no one spoke.

(Photo borrowed from www.raccoonvalley.com)

The Dream Child Adventure

A Nightmare on Elm Street V: The Dream Child  was released in 1989, and I had to see it.  Nevermind how cumbersome the title was.  The poster looked beautiful and terrible and exhilarating.  I was nine, and I knew that my only realistic chance of going was to convince to my brother to take me.  He had to.  He was reliable.  In the previous years, I had sobbed and pleaded for him to take me to two other epics of widespread critical acclaim:  The Wraith in 1986, followed by The Garbage Pail Kids Movie in 1987.

The Wraith was some sci-fi mess about a kid who was murdered by a gang of ruthless bikers and returned from the grave as a mysterious, black-clad racer with an invicible car with a glowing ghost engine.  Or something like that.  And there my brother sat, shaking his head throughout the experience, muttering "This is ridiuclous."  But come on, brother!  That car's engine is glowing!  And it's invincible I think!  An IMDB search turns up some character names.  With bad guys the likes of Packard, Skank, Gutterboy and Rughead, how can you go wrong?  The next movie I would scream and throw a fit about was only a year away, and by then, I'd be so much wiser in my choice.

Alas, my mind was none the sharper, and the TV Guide review summed it up quite well:

"A stunningly inept and totally reprehensible film...Haphazard scripting and editing give the movie a jumbled, confused feel.  Apparently the public concurred about the film's repulsiveness, for outraged parents forced the distributor to pull television commercials for The Garbage Pail Kids Movie off the air, and the film died an incredibly quick death at the box office."

I remember being utterly confused at what was going on, and now feeling slightly bad for forcing my brother into this farce.  However, a mere year and a half later, the pleas, tears, and convulsing would redouble when Freddy Kreuger made his triumphant return.


Yes, I was allowed to go to an R-rated horror movie when I was nine.  I was familiar with the series from the VHS library of a neighbor, and we watched the third installment, The Dream Warriors, once a week.  It was funny, horrifying, and clever, and Freddy always got the piss beat out of him in the final showdown.  The following days in school, those who didn't know about Freddy during our lunchtime rounds of 'Raise Your Hand If' were a pitiful lot who had no idea how many astounding things they were missing.

My parents always warned that if these movies gave me nightmares, and came shrieking to them afterward, I wouldn't be allowed to watch them anymore.  Needless to say, I suffered in silence.  Freddy terrifed me.  But, when talk of Part Five of the Greatest Movie Series Ever began, I informed my friends that I was going to see it.  So there.


In retrospect, my brother must have been getting paid for this.  I can't imagine he would agree to my nonsense a third time of his own volition.  It was a weekend afternooon, and we entered the Cooper Five theatre as the previews were coming to a close, and everything was already dark.  We found our seats in the oddly sparse side theatre ("Why aren't there more people here?  They're all missing the best thing ever!").  The music started, some credits rolled, Robert Englund, Wes Craven, etc., etc.

Come on.  Who needs exposition and conversation?  Let's do this thing.  Blood and claws now, please.


It couldn't have been more than ten minutes into the film when Random Jerk Athlete was on his motorcycle, and the bike comes to life.  Hoses spring out of it and start burrowing into his skin, sharp things start grasping and stabbing at him, and he's fused with the speeding machine, covered in blood.  And that was it for me, thank you very much.  I started screaming and sobbing, and my brother (smiling, of course), ushers me out of the theatre to the bathrooms to wash my face.  He patted me on the back as we walked up the ramp, consoling me as we passed the three other viewers.  He really was a good guy.  He was on my side, despite another failed venture to the movies.


I splashed water on my face and stood shuddering over the bathroom sink.  He went into a stall.  I was drying my hands, and it happened.  My brother exacted his revenge on his pitiful, quivering sibling with poor taste in film.


"Uhh...Josh?"  It was a nervous whisper.


I turned.  His head poked around the corner of the stall.

"Did you hear--"

A hand burst from behind, coiled around his neck and ripped him back into the stall and he was screaming like a madman.  Tears and snot exploded anew, and I was rooted in place, screaming for my brother's life, screaming at Freddy to stop.  The were a scrabbling, and a chuckle, and my brother strolled out of the stall unharmed.  Smiling.  I was an utter mess, and he was quite pleased with himself.


This was all Freddy's fault.  What a dick.

A Marvelous Man

Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig by Jonathan Eig left a considerable imprint on me.  It was one of the more powerful books that I have read of late, and left me completely awed by the strength, honor, and selflessness of one of the greatest players of all time.  From a letter written by Gehrig for Liberty magazine concerning his opinion of his life at 30:

"Maybe we're missing something, but I can't help thinking that people who see life through a train window must be missing something too.  They're going too fast to get anything but a fleeting glimpse of what it's all about.

I'm not rich in the accepted sense of the word, but what millionaire can buy my serentity?  What king can live exactly as he wishes, with an obligation to nothing except his conscience?  In fact, I have yet to meet the man who can look backward over his shoulder as he passes his thirtieth birthday and say, as I do:

It's all been worth the while."

Thank you for an incredible account of Lou's life, Mr. Eig.

An Important Re-discovery

A green dragon lived in the first library of my memory.

She rested in a loft set in the corner of the Children and Young Adult section and her serpentine neck routinely slid over the railing to better see the tiny creatures scuttling between the rows of books below.  She'd uncoil and test the air with her thin obsidian tongue, tick her front claws against the wood rails that bordered her pillow-and-beanbag lair, and swing her maw down over her visitors to ensure they were maintaining an appropriate voice level.  I never actually saw it happen, but I heard in later years that there was one poor bastard who failed to recognize the dragon's authority in that place, acted a fool near the Choose-Your-Own Adventure books, and was swallowed whole--curly orange hair and all.

I spent many days there with my mother, beneath the warm eyes of the great beast.  We'd pull random books from the shelves to examine the illustrations or subject (Harry Allard, James Marshall, Garfield, superheroes, and Beverly Cleary being among the more common selections), amble quietly back to the tiny round tables that smelled faintly of antiseptic and begin reading.  Ma would occasionally wander over to the opposite side of the library to look through that other junk, The Thick Books Without Pictures of Any Sort.  We'd pick out a good pile of books, check them out, drive home, and return the following week.  It was the greatest of places.

My high school library was far less whimsical.  It was cold, compartmentalized, and lonely.  Privacy desks were honeycombed througout the place, and one could disappear easily in them.  I'd smuggle my food, homework, and shitty attitude in there to commune with the high school spirits of yore, Misunderstood and his brother, Smart-Mouth.  There was no majestic dragon in this library, just a frumpish gray ogre who wouldn't stand for any ballyhoo.

The college library was apporpriately vast.  Books everywhere.  Never the one that was needed.  Irritation wafted along the shelves and mixed with the panic of those students racing to finish their papers, mid-term or final exams.  Indignant professors who sputtered to the stonefaced Reserves attendant, "Don't you know who I am?!  I work here!  I'm a big deal!"  At times, it was a frustrating place to be.  There were days, though, when I could find a quiet corner or chair, settle in, read a bit, and sleep.

The college days ended, as did my visitation of any library.  Bookstores became the supplier of words for me, and they eventually all came to a dusty rest on my bookshelves.  Last week, I culled many of them and traded them in at a local used book store for a pile of new books for my son to enjoy.  And I ventured back to the local library.  It was incredible and I was overjoyed.  It was quiet, full of thick chairs and couches, clean tables, privacy, and coffee.  All that was missing was the dragon.

In Rockville: The Hydrox Cookie Episode

The sun slid between lavender rainclouds and fell into the distant grasses and hills and the boy stood at the front door window of the East Side Grocery watching his father walk home through the thick Missouri air, one hand in his pocket, the other swinging keys against his hip.  Air hissed through the seams of the cracks in the window that was broken the night before and was now patched together with cardboard and tape until the replacement glass arrived the following morning.  Someone broke in last night with a jagged piece of cinder block, unlocked the door and made off with the store's thick, leaden receipt box.

East Side's customers routinely paid for their purchases exclusively with credit, and receipts of their purchases and total debt was accumulated within the slate-colored box.  The box was found early that morning, three miles away in a culvert off Rockville road, receipts and ledger intact.  Presumably, the thief stopped to revel in his earnings only to find his hoard consisted of a pile of paper and scribbled notes, and was not, as he had hoped, a Cashbox.  The box was found upended and closed amongst the tall stretch of crabgrass, none the worse for wear.

Once the boy's father rounded the corner, he turned and set to sweeping.  He started at the back doors and worked forward, in a bit of a rush to get home in time for dinner and The Shadow, but not in such a rush that he didn't do a thorough job, lest he be confronted with his father's glare the following day.  As he bent to the dustpan, the sound of paper crinkling skittered around a corner.

He turned.  His white Converse squeaked on the smooth linoleum.  The sound stopped, started again.  He stood and moved to the front of the store, wary of the cat that was bound to burst from whatever the hell it was doing and race for the door.  The crinkling redoubled, toppled, and spilled along the floor.  Packages of Hydrox cookies slid from the aisle, and the boy paused to cursed at this new damn mess.  He stepped over the few packages and turned the corner to the aisle and the fallen Hydrox display.

To this day, he still hopes that when he rounds that corner in his memory the Hydrox Destructor is a cat.  But it wasn't.

Amidst the shiny tangle of plastic packaging, one entire package of cookies was held fast between the jagged ivory fangs of a demon that seemed belched forth from some twisted, horrifying rodent hell.  Nearly the size of a small cat, the rat stood and stared at the boy, steadfast and evil in its ownership of that pile of cookies.  The boy stomped the floor and pounded the cookies with his broom, shouting threats at the titan, and yet it remained, defiant to this pitiful human's display.  The boy was out of his depth and had absolutely no idea what to do about this marauding rodent.  Setting a trap at this point seemed pointless, nevermind that you were putting your limbs at risk whenever you attempted to set one of the damned things.  The setting of the rat traps was a job he left exclusively to his father.

He looked about the store hurriedly for something, anything that may help.  Then, it moved.  It moved forward, at the boy, and the boy stepped back.  This contest of wills was over, and they both knew it.  The rat turned and headed along the aisles to the back door and the grain silos from whence it came, the package of Hydrox hissing along the floor as it passed into the gloaming.  The boy watched it pass in muted horror, righted the display, and finished his sweeping.  He hung his apron on the hook inside the front door, locked up, and set for home.

He walked a bit quicker that evening.

A Reason To Smile

The Rockies secured their position in the 2009 MLB Playoffs last night in a 9-2 thumping of the listless Brewers.  Additionally, they set a club record with their 91st victory, having clawed their way out of a 19-28 finish to the month of May.  Anecdotes and stories of their resurgence have been printed elsewhere ad nauseum, so I'll cut this post short with the following:

Thank you, Skip.  You've given us all a reason to smile again this season.

 (photo used from Realsportsheroes.com)