O, when I was eight
I remember
How I dreaded getting old!
I had heard of teen-age
kids, visiting the dentist
or the doctor, and
getting wisdom teeth pulled
or shots...
(I didn't like the clinky chrome
devices lying around on
slinky trays--then-- in doctors'
offices--and I still don't.)
When I was eight, I wanted a
birthday party, like
Joe, Bob, Charles, and Mary---
One where you drop clothespins
into a milk bottle, like a bombing plane!
But my parents worked, and
there was no time for parties.
Now it is seventy-two years later
and I'm ten-times-eight old.
I have lived 26.280 days since
that eighth birthday.
Yes, the earth has rotated countless
times since then.
Since then I have---
worked many days, driven many
miles, met a lot of good people,
met some strange ones, too---
I have mowed many lawns, I have
cooked many eggs, eaten a lot
of hamburgers, directed children's
choirs, directed adult choirs,
sung solos...
I have watched many movies,
read scores of books...I have tried
to do good deeds and set
an example.
Now tomorrow is my eightieth birthday---
Ten times when I was eight...
I no longer ride a bicycle, roller skate,
read comic books, see double
features at the Lyceum on Saturday
afternoons, or get a 20 cent ham
salad sandwich at Woolworth afterward---
I don't play cowboys and Indians anymore,
in that neat alley behind our Reid house...
or play Sergeant York with my Daisy
Red Ryder BB gun...
I don't hunt for "translers" or shoot basketball
goals with Country Boy Bob...
I don't, when I'm sick, stay home from school,
dump my Tinkertoys and Lincoln Logs
in the floor, drink a Delaware Punch and
listen to "Queen For A Day" on KICA Radio.
I don't read "Dave Dawson In the R.A.F."
anymore, and tho' I have the complete
set of Zane Gray, I mostly only pick up
"Riders of the Purple Sage"---
now and then.
Yes, I'll be eighty tomorrow and I'll admit,
I do a right smart of remembering
old days, old times, old friends.
After all, wasn't it in that wise and
pithy show, "Downton Abbey," that
Carson, in his deep bass voice
said: "The business of life is the
acquisition of memories. In the end
that's all there is."
I write about those things and find that
others write back about them.
We wonder: Why We here? After all,
in the great cosmic scheme of
time with no beginning and no end,
we're certainly the late-comers on
the scene...and ever since we got here,
we have been considerable
trouble for the Creator.
He must have really loved and
wanted us.
Anyway, eighty tomorrow and the
Beloved Editor said: "Well, for
sure, you're a gonna have ONE
birthday party in your life. I'm
gonna see to it!"
"No, No," I said. "I wanted one when
I was eight...but not now...
It's too late."
But maybe...could we make up a big
pot of chili tomorrow...
and have some good old Oscar Meyer
HOT DOGS!" (with onion)
*********30*******
BY MIL
01/30/14
Thursday, January 30, 2014
O, WHEN I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD!
Monday, January 27, 2014
THE PLEASANT INN
There was once a little place in Clovis
called "The Pleasant Inn."
It was right across from Clovis Memorial
Hospital, on the east side of Thornton...
Up there toward Todd's house.
It is an important, likely-overlooked piece
of Clovis history, as well as
Americana.
Its main efficacy to us kids was---that it
was close to our homes---
(There were far more places with better
selections of candy!)
But Pleasant Inn was quick and handy!
If you scrounged a dime from your mama
on a hot summer day,
Or found a nickel in the alley---
(It happened...there was money on the
ground in the forties)
You could be over to the Pleasant Inn
in nothing flat!
I found more money (in life) in that two
block area
than anywhere else---even walking the
hospital's low rock fence...
or at that corner at 12th and Reid
where the asphalt was badly patched---
and bumpy, there seemed to always be
coins there.
I don't know who all lost 'em,
but I know who found 'em.
Now the Pleasant Inn was not conceived
nor established as a candy store
for little kids...
It had only a small wire rack for holding
kids' stuff...with Tom's peanuts, Tom's
peanut butter crackers (4), a few
candy bars, and I remember Bit 'O Honeys,
and there was a five cent
potato chip rack.
But they had a coke box, and with an empty
bottle, and five cents, you could
walk out with a big twelve ounce Pepsi Cola!
("Rubi-da-dot-ta...rubi-da-dot-ta...
Pepsi Cola hits the spot...twelve full ounces
that's a lot...") Remember that jingle?
The Pleasant inn had two or three dining
tables, and a little grill, for cooking---
I once saw a guy eating a hamburger
in there...but it never occurred to us kids:
that place (it had a second story) was there
for people to stay, who had sick family
members, across the street
in the hospital.
(The Clovis Memorial Hospital, two blocks
from our house, was built about '39.
With its nice white brick, it was
an imposing building of
four or five stories.)
A lot of small things---people, buildings,
places, events go into making up
history, and I judge that more of
them are lost...than ever recorded.
So this all happened to little kids, in
a small town, in the forties---
A favorite place of ours,, in a quiet
neighborhood... a place even
today, fondly remembered...by us,
The Pleasant Inn, on Thornton,
up there toward Todd's house.
*******30******
BY MIL
01/26/14
Sunday, January 26, 2014
WYLIE DROPPED BY AGAIN
Wylie came by again,
yesterday.
We were glad!
He had coffee and pecan-
swirl toast (buttered),
with me, and the
Beloved Editor.
We talked about
everything.
Wylie reads. He knows
a lot of stuff.
He's down-to-earth,
a non-pretentious
fellow...
Told us about that
massive candy/gum
drop, on tiny
parachutes
to hungry little German
kids
during the Berlin
Airlift, 1948.
They're making a
movie about it.
We talked about
old Clovis times...
and all the farm kids
out north of
town.
the Taylors, the Collinses,
Jennings, Goars,
and others,
who lived along the Frio
and Running Water
Draws...
And yes, the Frio did
"run backward"
once
when debris stacked up
for two miles during
a heavy rain and
hailstorm---
trees, limbs, bushes, weeds
against the highway
bridge...damming water...
hail was two feet deep
in spots..
The subject of long-lost
schools came up---
Pleasant Hill
and Claud...
"Country Boy" once sold
a photo of the school
at Pleasant Hill...for
quite a bit.
We discussed F-80 jets
and rabbit-hunting
in an F-100.
There was patriotic talk
about our men
during Viet Nam
who were imprisoned
in the Hanoi
Hilton...
How each one was
a "professor" of
something, and
taught it...
Logarithm tables were
compiled using
splinters of wood
for pens
and ground up pills
and water for ink,
and TP for writing...
One used the tap code
to write a whole
book of poems...
remembered by many
and compiled after
release. We have it.
A former captive told Wylie:
"In that situation,
all you have
is time."
Fitting, I think, to
remember our heroes
and talk about them
often.
Along that line, the
Beloved Editor just
read
"A Higher Call," a B-17
story and we discussed
that wonderful book,
and those men.
We talked about
so many things...
You want to have a good
talk...about things
American---
Invite Wylie over.
Alas, the time flew,
the coffee was
all gone...
and so was Wylie...
until the next time.
(Wylie writes for
MIL'S PLACE.)
********30******
BY MIL
01/25/14
Monday, January 20, 2014
AH...WHY DIDN'T THEY TELL ME?
These past months I've been reading
POETS...
Robert Hass, Mary Oliver, T.S. Eliot,
Marianne Moore, Emily Dickenson,
Robert Burns, William Wordsworth,
John Donne, William Blake, and
taking a course in Shakespeare!
Have I understood all I've read?
No, not all...
But that's not the point, is it?
I must tell you…
There are some poets
that I simply cannot fathom.
Had a whole course in
Robert Browning once-
In college. He himself
once confessed--
"When I wrote it, only God and I
knew what it meant….
Now only God knows."
There are some poets
that I simply cannot fathom.
Had a whole course in
Robert Browning once-
In college. He himself
once confessed--
"When I wrote it, only God and I
knew what it meant….
Now only God knows."
Do we understand everything
there is to know---that is
somewhere hidden in a great
painting?
Do we understand all the chords
and skill involved in the
great symphonies?
Maybe poetry is more important
than we've ever thought.
It is for smoothing out the wrinkles
in one's mind.
So that tomorrow...the thinking field
is level...
Then we can think better, work better,
write better...do everything better.
Poems will do it. Not only do they
pluck heart-strings long silent...
oft-times...
But because we are dealing with
unused, unthought of, unheard of
word patterns...
as well as unthought-of thoughts..
I say: poems will smooth
the wrinkles from our minds.
AH! Why didn't they tell me?!
Sooner.
********30*******
BY MIL
01/17/14
Saturday, January 18, 2014
"AULD LANG SYNE" FROM THE ATTIC
"SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT
AND NEVER BROUGHT TO MIND....
SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT
AND DAYS OF AULD LANG SYNE.."
******************************************************
On New Year's Day, just three days ago, I was
sitting up there, in my cozy attic---a fire was
burning merrily in the little barrel wood stove,
threatening to drive me out. Two small logs
work wonders in that stove!
I had just finished the final touches on my first
story of the new year--- "Our Stuff," and had
the old B@W TV tuned to the Rose Bowl
Parade. The parade, with all those
beautiful-colored roses was not much good in
B@W, so my mind had strayed.
I was thinking, after my "stuff" story that
maybe I, myself, should do a little New
Year's clean-up, and was digging around in
some old apple boxes, containing various
kinds of junk. This one was full of high school
stuff.
Alas, there was no blizzard, rain, snow, fog
or mist to really "cozy up" my stay in the
attic that day---but good news: a cold thirty-
five mph wind was blowing---as usual in our
city.
I always open the window a half inch at the
bottom and the wind was gusting around the
corner of the house, and making those
marvelous wind sounds...which only the wind
can make...
The old beat up apple box had held my CHS
annuals, photos, clippings, and BDC paddle
longer than it had ever held apples. The old
BDC paddle which I made for initiation, still
held its varnish job after 65 years. It was not
a happy paddle, like most of my stuff being
"happy." It had beaten me black and blue!
I went through stacks of old high school
pictures. many made with my Clix-O-Flex
$5.95 camera, purchased at Thrifty Drug,
next-door to the Sunshine Theater. (Oh,
those were two great businesses and will
ever be a part of old Clovis in our memories!)
The wind was getting up more--moaning,
whispering, and telling me, in my mind, of
old days, old times. old friends...from long
ago...it was an "Auld Lang Syne" wind...
bringing to mind good times. Simpler times--
of our home town, and the good old
USA! You know the feeling those memories
bring, and I had it in the pit of my gut.
I got my last NEHI grape out of the little
fridge--one I'd been saving for a special
occasion--pried the lid off with a rusty
old "church key" hanging there on a nail,
and went and sat by the window...musing,
and sipping on my big grape drink...the
wind moaning through the window...into
my face...and I mused...
The next thing I knew, I was walking down
the sidewalk on Clovis Main Street, marveling
at those red bricks paving the street...I was
in front of Penney's and headed south by
the Lyceum, a 5@10 store, Barry Hardware.
Woolworth's, Clovis Printing Co., and good
old Montgomery Ward.
I had passed up, in my reverie-walk, going
into Woolworth's for a 20 cent ham salad
sandwich; now I crossed Main street at Grand
and going south, passed Janeway Drug and
stifled my urge for a Coney Island hot dog,
a door or two south.
Passing Mesa Theater (a pretty nice theater
once, with a fine concession room), I looked
up at Hotel Clovis--the defining building of
Clovis' skyline.
Seeing good old Busy Bee Cafe, there on the
corner of Second and Main, was the last
straw---how many times did a bunch of us kids
go in there after a cold football game and get
hamburgers and coffee! Once after a Rattler
game--- so Busy Bee must have stayed open
on Armistice Days.
I went in there and got a booth toward
the back, where we kids always sat, and in my
mind, spent a nice time...eating a burger
and drinking my coffee...
Now my mind was quickly brought back to
the present, as I had uncovered in my
memory box some recent photos. I was
holding one of Levi Brake, Art Snipes, and
me, made in August of 2011, when Levi
came to Albuquerque for a visit.
Here were two of my closest friends in life.
I met Art (and his little brother Bob) when
we were in La Casita. We soon moved a
block from them. We played all kinds of ball;
played army, built mud forts, played marbles,
fished for "translers," made model airplanes,
traded comic books, and eventually were
Boy Scouts together. We moved up on Axtell
about high school time, close to Levi's house.
Levi and I became fast friends. We went to the
same church, sang bass in the choir, worked
in the summers at church camp; in CHS we
were in BDC, boys' chorus, boys' quartet and
octet. We both drove tractors and wheat trucks
in the summers. He began driving a bit before any
of us and we drove all over town, dragging Main
and jumping the Santa Fe Dip west of town.
We often took in movies in Portales and Melrose
and played pool in Texico. We frequented that
little greasy spoon cafe a half block south of
Gateway Auto, drinking coffee, playing the
pinball machine, and listening to the jukebox.
These two friends and I graduated from old CHS
in the late spring of 1951. It seemed that, as soon
as school was out, we each went our own ways.
I was off at church camp several weeks and
driving a tractor and wheat truck ...and it seemed
like the next thing I knew, both of my friends had
married!
I saw both of them in later years from time to time at
class reunions or I'd drop by OK Rubber WELDERS
for a visit with Art. Levi became a world citizen,
working at various locales around the globe--China,
India, and Brazil. He'd write once in awhile, in
Spanish; it reminded me of our days in Dora Russell's
Spanish Three class.
Of all the unexpected things, Art who lived one block
from me in the forties in Clovis, in 2000 moved into
a house three blocks away from us in Albuquerque.
It was in this house that the photo above was taken
when Levi visited us in 2011. I'm glad I found this
picture! Brought back old times!
As I sat there three days ago, on New Year's ,
looking out my attic window, and thinking about
"auld acquaintances," I remembered a lot of other
fine friends from CHS---some no longer with us.
There were a lot of them---Noel, Engle, Whatley,
and so many more---I can't even begin to name.
them all...
Oops. my NEHI grape is empty...and my, I'm not
through remembering. This search through the old
apple box has been fun!
But it's getting colder and I'm kinda hungry. I think
I'll open a can of tomato soup, put it in my heavy
mug, heat it in my little microwave oven over there,
and sit and think some more---maybe about some
of the great girls we had in our class of 1951,
of the great girls we had in our class of 1951,
and then---who knows---maybe our fine teachers,
if my hot soup holds out!
Yes, that's what I'll do. Sip my hot tomato soup...
and then maybe watch some football. My, what a
great New Year's!
Levi, Art and Mil
*******30******
BY MIL
01/04/14
Saturday, January 11, 2014
"I HAVE NEVER BEEN MUCH FOND OF ANTS"
I have never
been much fond
of ants.
Yet they are
much extolled
and touted...
by people,
by cognoscenti
who know stuff
and have studied
ants.
"Ants are industrious."
"Ants are busy."
"Ants are strong."
Those little miraculous
tiny bodies
and skinny legs
are much stronger
ounce for ounce
than any human,
and what kind of skilled
Creator could devise
little brains, eyes,
digestive systems
and likely... noses!
(And let's not forget
their stingers!)
"You should not
carelessly step on an
ant," it's been said.
Mea culpa, for when
I was five...
back then
there were ants everywhere
in the forties
(things were wilder),
I'm talkin' about big beds
of ants, hundreds...
big red ones!
Yes, when I was five
in Clovis, on that hot
sidewalk on West Grand,
all summer long,
I squashed them...
with the big round front wheel
of my jumbo
lime-green tricycle!
For when I was three years old
living down there in
sandy Dawson County.
south of Lubbock
I blundered into a big ant bed,
"working alive" with
big red 'uns...and
they ate me up!
My little body was all swelled up,
I had red "cure-chrome"
spots all over, like I
had measles,
and I was sick.
So I got even, with my tricycle...
many times over! Though
they were different ants
it didn't matter to me. After all,
don't they say: "Revenge is
best served...as a
cold dish."
You see, I hadn't yet learned
the big lesson of life...
and the hardest----
Forgiveness.
********30******
BY MIL
01/11/14
Thursday, January 9, 2014
OUR "STUFF"
"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US;
LATE AND SOON, GETTING AND
SPENDING WE LAY WASTE OUR POWER."
-----William Wordsworth
Little folks arrive here on this planetwith absolutely no stuff.People who love them in theirinfancy and helplessness,awed by their cuteness,help them along byproviding themstuff....like Pampers and PablumGerber's and pacifiersand little pajamaswith feet, called"onesies."and little cribs to sleep in,cozily.At age six we visit Woolworth'sand see stuff thatwe wantand at school,stuff the otherkids have...It's the beginning of our life-longdesire and driveto acquire"stuff!"And it's not just that wewant it---it's thatwe need it...like it always is in life...we must have it!(We think)As a boy...I needed a football, a ball glove...and al least one baseballnot wrapped in blackfriction tape.I needed a little pair of lace-uphunting boots...withthe cool knife pouchon the right boot!I needed some "Dave DawsonIn the R.A.F." books---some model airplanes:P-40's, P-38's, andthe new P-51.I needed some new skatesso I could skate byPriscilla Lane's house,the movie star,who livedfour doorsnorth!One learns at an early age,To get stuff, you musthave a "cash flow..."flowing toward you....a major thingyou find outin life.I'd push my push-mower allover the neighborhoodhoping to mowa lawnand earn a Walking Libertyhalf dollar! My reader---did you also keepyour eyes openfor jobs......when you were a kid?As we get older, and have familiesour need for stuff onlyincreases! We have towork all the time.We have learned: nothing is free."There is no free lunch."No work---no stuff!The comedian joked about it:He said: "You have to havea house with a roof---just to coveryour stuff!"One wonders---about Thoreauat Walden Pond...andWhitman, the poet,and Edward Abbey...did they have muchstuff?As one gets older, he begins tothink: what would it be likenot to have any stuff?Maybe for a man: couple pair ofLevi pants....two shirts...a denim jacket, with anold blanket lining---a big pile of books,your leather notebook,your Churchill penand your iPad?Would you missyour "stuff?"There is a character in literature---Jack Reacher---who has no stuff!No home, no car, no payments,No insurance, no bills,No bank account, no fridge,No washer and dryer; hehas no credit card, nochange of clothes...and no suitcase!He changes his clothes every three days---Buys new ones at surplus stores,Tosses the dirty ones...into thenearest trash bin...livesin cheap motels, andhas only one bit of"luggage..."a toothbrush.Can we assume: The more stuff weacquire, the happier we'll be?Where does all the stuff on earth comefrom? "Oh, from China," you say.No...isn't it from out of theEarth, itself?At the beginning of 2014 may be a goodtime to inventory our stuff andsee what new stuffwe need...or maybe give away some...and to think of values which may bemore important, like Love,Duty, Service, Charity,Unselfishness,and Sacrifice,*******30*******BY MIL
01/03/14
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)