I'm not sure if ever you are here in the blogosphere
I'm pretty sure that you don't really know
You see, although I may appear quite comfortable and confident
When I feel I should tell you I tend to disappear
You probably think I was there for you
When in truth all along it was you who was there for me
So if by chance you stumble across this
From the bottom of my heart, a huge thank you
Well for those of us in the northern hemisphere spring has arrived (although here in the upper midwestern states of the U.S. it hasen't felt much like it!)and that usually tends to change a person's ideals about how to spend one's time.
For some spring brings thoughts of romance and or that wich goes along with it (he said with a devilish grin
) or gardening, maybe playing golf esp since the Masters started today.
For me it's baseball...whether it's the sights and sounds of a major league game or the youth team that I coach...there's always been something magical about the new season...the smell of your glove as you treat the leather to soften it up after a long winter, the crack of a bat and watching the ball soar...ahhh the memories of my youth and days gone by!
So anyway that's my spring thing...what's yours?
It's been quite awhile since I've posted anything here but this morning I was inspired to write about friendship. I have from time to time I must admit questioned whether or not the friendships I have made here are "real".
Please don't misunderstand I value them just the same but there was always a little part of me that wondered if it was really friendship. Having never met someone face to face I questioned the sanity of feeling close to someone.
Well, those questions went away this morning when I looked at my inbox and had a message from someone that I had not heard from in over two years. My heart swelled with joy as I read the words of this wonderful person and I realized just how much I missed her.
With that being said Hello again to all my wonderful friends here on CS. If anyone knows what happened to Parti, Golden, or Non...let me know. I was digging through the blogs and couldn't find a trace of them.
Have a great day CS!
I've been hit by friendly fire
Spent nights on end with friends for hire
Fought off sandman til morning light
Lept from bed, screaming terrors by night
Playing scenes back in my mind
Paths not taken constant grind
Each new day a constant fight
Bootless errand, no wrongs made right
On the morrow try again
Wash my feet, confess my sin
Face in the mirror behind my mask
Quietly go about my task
I am sorry
Wake up CS...wake up world. Aliens have and continue to walk among us...Oh they are clever at disguising themseves but make no mistake they are here and they are trying to take over the world.
So you think I'm nuts? you want proof? Go find a rebroadcast of any of the Ameican presidential debates
especially the one I just watched tonight....those two cats definately ain't from the same planet I am!
My great grandfather of paternal lineage was a butcher by trade. Everyone refered to him as Papa Louis, everyone that is except for the men in the fancy black sedans who occasionaly stopped to pay a brief visit to Papa Louis. The men didn't look or dress like folks around Buttholeville. They wore tailored pinstriped suits and fedoras on their heads. I was quite young so I don't remember all the details but a few things have stuck in my mind over the years.
I remember the cars always had Illinois plates and the men who got out of the front of the fancy black sedans weren't always the same, but the man who got out of the back was. He always had a big cigar in his hand, an overcoat draped over his shoulders, and was the only other man I ever saw who's hair was as snow white as Papa Louis...not grey but literally as white as virgin snow.
Papa Louis was a man of large stature, a stark contrast to the diminutive figure that was my great grandma Rose. They lived on an acreage just off the edge of buttholeville. At the back of the lot was a tall oak tree with an old tire tied from a branch for a swing that overlooked the barn and a small fenced in pasture where Papa Louis' one black mare lived a solitary existance. I remember everything always seemed a little greyer and a little colder during the winter time behind Papa Louis and Nana Rose's house...I'm not sure why.
When the men in the fancy black sedans would come to visit, Papa Louis would take them out to the barn to talk in private. I asked who they were but the only answer I ever got from anyone was that they were businesmen from Chicago. Once I snuck out to the barn and peeked through the weathered grey barn boards while they talked. I couldn't hear what they were saying but I noticed Papa Louis thumbing through a thick yellow envelope before shaking the hand of the white haired man with the big cigar. This man always referred to Papa Louis as Louis the Butcher.
Later in life I learned that as a younger man in the late 1920s and early 30s Papa Louis was what was called a bootlegger during the prohibition era, running illegal alcohol out of the back of his butcher shop in Chicago. Apparently he was arrested and given a choice of going to prison or testifying for the government against a particular Chicago area businessman by the name of Al Capone. Papa Louis relocated to Buttholeville in the middle of the night before Mr Capone was to stand trial.
From what I understand Papa Louis knew several "Legitimate Businessmen" who appreciated his willingness to quietly relocate in the middle of the night. We all have skeletons in our closet...this is one of mine.
Everyother saturday morning my dad would dissapear for a few hours. I always wondered where he went so one day I asked my mom. "Your dad is going to get a haircut" she told me.
I found this odd and for a year I wondered to myself such things as why did dad go somewhere to get a haircut? My mom afterall was a liscensed cosmetologist and did a fine job of cutting my hair. Why did it take so long? Did they cut each hair individually?
Finally around the age of six I decided that it was time to satisfy my curiosity about Dad's bi-weekly saturday morning ritual so I did the unthinkable...I asked to go along. My dad chuckled and said "Well, you could stand to get your ears lowered a bit (a common phrase for the time apparently meaning that my hair was getting long) and I suppose it's time you see how a man gets a haircut. C'mon." I was ecstatic. Dad referred to me as a man! I'm pretty sure I grew a couple of inches that day in my mind.
We pulled up to Rocky's on North Hale St just in time for Dad to get "the last good parking spot". Dad checked the rearview and backed 181 inches of American Motor Company's finest engineering into a 190 inch parking spot...Dad was a master of parallel parking! As we walked up to the door I looked up at the dizzying barber pole, a never ending swirl of red and white. The sign on the the steel framed glass door was still swinging back and forth from being flipped to the side that said open when we walked in. I was greeted by a large wooden Indian and a 12 inch black and white Philco television complete with balls of tinfoil wrapped around the rabbit ear antennas hung in the corner. The Great Outdoors World of Virgil Ward was just coming on. I can still hear the theme song in my head sometimes "From the lakes of Northern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico...wherever fish are biting that's where I'm gonna go..."
"Mornin Rock" my dad said. "My boy needs a cut". That was the day I learned of the wonderful feeling of a steaming hot white towel on your face and although I didnt even have peach fuzz on my chin yet I had my first shave too! Different men began coming in sitting in the waiting area...drinking coffee and sayin how if they had all the fancy equipment that Virgil had they'd be catchin fish like that too. It was an ice cold Royal Crown soda for me in a 10oz glass bottle while my dad took his turn in Rocky's chair. I argued with a man named Chester over which was better for catchin Northern Pike, a Johnson Silver Minnow with a pork trailer or a Red Devil spoon in red and white...we never settled that one.
All too soon 3 hours had passed and Dad said it was about time we were gettin on home. Two weeks from saturday could not come fast enough. I had been introduced to "How men get a haircut" and I was hooked.
Growing up in a small midwestern town may have led to me being a little niave when I went off to college but I would not have traded it for anything.
As I continue my trip down memory lane the next stop is Max and Helen Goodheart's neoghborhood grocery store.
Next up the street from my grandparents house was Goodhearts grocery store. A place that holds some of my earliest memories. Dad worked at the Oliver tractor factory a few blocks the other direction on North Grand Ave. so I spent a lot of my early childhood basically being raised by Grandpa Gilbert and Grandma Jean. It was a magical time in a land of adventure and some of my favorite adventures of all were my forays into Goodhearts grocery.
Being all of 5 years old Goodhearts was one of the few places I was really allowed to wander off to unsupervised since Max and Helen were friends of my grandparents. If I close my eyes and let my mind drift back in time I can still see it.
A late summer afternoon, I pushed open the single door as the bell attached to a piece of spring tension metal rang as it was struck by the doors frame...ding ding ding...it announced my arrival. Rays of sunshine penetrating the artificial light and dust in the air like an otherworldly sign pointing the way to my destination.
"Well good afternoon woodchuck" (Grandpas knickname for me) Mr Goodheart exclaimed from behind the meat counter wiping his hands on the front of his white buthchers apron. "What are you up to today?" Mr Goodheart knew why I was there...the same reason I was always there. In my pocket was a shiny new quarter that I had earned helping to water the garden driving my craving for penny candies.
I stood there nearly trembling with anticipation in front of the rows of jars filled with candies of all shapes and colors....root beer barrels, red hots, lemon drops, peppermints, watermelon sours...the choices seemed endless. My head began to spin contemplating the possible combinations. I was intoxicated with sugar lust...intoxicated I tell you. I reached for a sack and began picking out 25 pieces of heaven in a clear plastic wrapper. Mr Goodheart always reached in the jars and threw in a few more pieces for good measure.
Goodhearts grocery, my grandparents and I , and Max and Helen had all survived an F5 tornado the year before, a bond that even after their passing still exixts to this day.
Yesterday I drove back there to reminisce with them and laid flowers on their graves. I drove to Goodhearts Grocery on North Grand Ave. The building is still there. It's a cabinet shop now, but when I stood outside and peered through the window all I could see was Max behind the counter and all of those rows of magical jars filled with candy.
When I saw her standing there, with her bright eyes and shining hair,
she was looking back at me.
Some are meant to sing, some are meant to talk and some aren't meant to say a thing.
But when she opened up her mouth and that sweet voice came out
I lost track of my own name.
Now she's found herself, and I lost mine
and I'm just another guy who can't give her anything.
Well the drifter, He holds on to his youth just like it was money in the bank.
And "Lord knows, I can't change" sounds better in the song
than it does with hell to pay.
I might as well of slipped that ring on her finger from a window of a van
as it drove away.
Now she's found herself, and I lost mine
and I'm just another guy who can't give her anything.
Dreams are given to you when you're young enough to dream them
before they can do you any harm.
They don't start to hurt, until you try to hold on to them after seeing how they really are.
She used to dream them with me, every single crazy one,
until they started hurting her too, now she's got some of her own
and outgrowing me, might be the best thing for her she's ever done.
A light that shines as bright as hers can't be kept in the shadows for too long.
A heart that wants to live and a soul that wants to give
can't just sit at home alone.
Lord, she's give me everything and never wanted anything I couldn't give.
Just what was inside of me.
And now she's found herself, and I lost mine
and I'm just another guy who can't give her anything.
Today as I traveled the backroads around Buttholeville I started to feel a bit nostalgic while noticing so many closed storefronts on Main Street USA, which compelled me to wax poetic on the subject for awhile.
Everyone has memories from their childhood...favorite places, songs, people, traditions, etc. Although these are mostly fictional places they are based on a compilation of real memories that many of you will probably think "I remember a place just like that"
I miss Bucky's Fillin Station. Dad would take the family truckster in every Saturday mornin and complain that gas was too damned expensive (60 cents a gallon). Then Bucky would walk out to the car...there were no self serv pumps at Bucky's Fillin Station...faded Levis with an oily rag hanging from his back pocket, a blue denim work shirt with his name embroidered above his right shirt pocket even though he owned the place and was the only one ever working there, and a faded red ball cap with the bill curved to perfection. Fill her up my dad would say as we got out of the car and headed inside. Bucky would look at me and say "Hey Chief how's it goin?" I would just smile and watch him as he carefully inspected the air pressure and tread depth of the tires, then pulling that rag from his back pocket to wipe the dipstick as he checked the oil. "You're a quart low" (it always was) he would yell in to my Dad who was no doubt reading one of the fishing magazines from the rack that collected more dust than sales. Bucky always said no sense pulling them off the rack just because they were three months behind the current issue..."Fishin is fishin and Field & Stream never goes out of style."
After he finished cleaning the windows we would walk in together my taste buds already waking in anticipation of that ice cold bottle of Royal Crown soda that was sure to come. "That'll be sixteen big uns and fifty small ones" Bucky would say. Dad grumbled and muttered something under his breath as he carefully pulled a crisp twenty dollar from his wallet. "Keep the change Buck...lets go kid he'd say" I couldn't help but notice Bucky's daughter Becky Jean sittin on the window sill as we walked back to the car. "Dork" she would say while bouncing M&Ms from the "handful" vending machine just outside the door off my head.
When I was a senior in high school Bucky was getting older and he hired me to work some at the station part time after school and on weekends. Wonder if he ever knew about me and Becky Jean parked in my pickup with a six pack down by the railroad tracks on those hot July saturday nights?
I miss Max and Helen's corner grocery and Rocky's Barber Shop too but those are stories for another day.
A week ago it was sunny and 80 degrees F and this morning there was frost on my windshield...WTF? Now I understand that it's partly my fault for leaving my car in the driveway and not pulling it into the garage but that really isn't the point here.
I hate the cold days...the longer nights.Going to work in the dark, coming home in the dark. Trying to pull myself from my nice comfy warm bed...not wanting to get out of the hot shower.
The great outdoors begins to take on an eerie feel even if only temporary everything begins to take on a shade of grey...the leaves that were only a week ago beautifully ablaze with color appear dead and cold.
I shouldn't complain but when you need an extra blanket to keep warm it just seems to stick under my skin.
I was thinking about this earlier today. I think I have a little white trash in me. I use the plastic shopping bags from the supermarket as waste basket liners in the bathrooms of my house. I then play it off as trying to be green by "re-purposing" them.
I go into other peoples homes everyday as a part of my job and have noticed that pretty much eveyone has a little white trash in them with something they do. It kind of makes me chuckle. Yes, even people of color have a little white trash in them!
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