Live People are Worse

Almost Halloween it is. I heard on the news it's now a $7 point-something billion dollar a year industry. I guess. We never had iParty around when we were kids and now you do. I suspect HazMat suits will be in vogue this year.

Some of you remember the Tylenol murders back in '82. Someone in Chicago deftly managed to replace the acetaminophen with cyanide and place them back on the shelf. It was all done artfully and the bottle nor pills looked tampered with. This was just prior to Halloween and this scared the shit out of parents nationwide after a few dropped dead from taking the altered pills. I think that ended traditional door to door trick or treating for good. Now kids attend “managed” parties at the Y or their Girl Scouts. 

At the Rathskeller at RIC, when I was a roadie for my brother's band for a Halloween party, I saw some guy walking around as a giant bottle of Tylenol. Gotta love sick humor. Hence my prediction for Hazmat suits this year.

Do cemeteries at nighttime scare you? I was of them as a kid till I was 18. At 18 we discovered it was a great place to have keg parties as the cops rarely patrolled graveyards. Ain't that a pure display of youthful smugness? A group of drunk teens, partying ontop of the graves of elders past.

None of us ever read the puritanical New England Primer meant to scare the shit out of 1700's kids.

“While youth do cheer, death may be near!”

I”ve probably walked through a couple of cemeteries out of curiosity and one I stumbled upon. None of those time was I worried about a half decomposed hand reaching out of the dirt to grab my ankle. The one I came upon accidentally was in the hills of Burrillville. There were about five headstones and all had the same family name. They were long since dead. Probably back to 1790's I'm guessing now. But what was weird, were that the death dates for the whole lot of them were days apart. Back then they all died from diseases called the flux, consumption or vapors. I'm guessing it was smallpox. That was a bit spooky, to see an entire family done in in a week and half.

Swan Point cemetery on Blackstone Blvd is pretty cool. This is where the fashionably wealthy go to die. Some of those crypts are meant to last past Judgment Day and are they ostentatious displays of wealth! Some others are artfully done with various themes. L.S Patriarca, Sullivan Ballou and the Sprague family are there.

I was dragged one time to Chestnut Hill cemetery in Exeter to see the “vampire” grave of Mercy Brown. I was incredulous about it as it was just some “story.” That was till I found out the circumstances of this poor girl's death. Then I became creeped out by the living, not the dead.

     “The Mercy Brown Vampire Incident, which occurred in 1892, is one of the    best documented cases of the exhumation of a corpse in order to perform rituals to banish an un-dead manifestation. The incident was part of the wider New England Vampire panic. Several cases of consumption (tuberculosis) occurred in the family of George and Mary Brown, in Exeter, Rhode Island. Friends and neighbors believed that this was due to the influence of the undead. Two family members' bodies were dug up, and, exhibiting the expected level of decomposition, were thought not to be the cause. Daughter Mercy, however, who was held in a freezer-like, above-ground vault, exhibited almost no decomposition. This was taken as confirmation that the undead were influencing the family to be sick. Mercy's heart was burned, mixed with water and given to her brother Edwin, who was sick, to drink, in order to stop the influence of the undead. The young man died two months later.”

Drink your sister's burnt heart ashes? The only Hocus Pocus I've played with were Tarot cards but I never went as far as BBQ cannibalism!

The last nighttime cemetery I walked through is a French/Canadian one by the river here, Notre Dame. It was part of a “dog walk” I'd do to avoid other dog walkers. What I found is that it was populated by a hundred thousand toads, a few foxes and opossums. There were no vampires, ghosts, poltergeists or slimy undead zombies wanting to eat my brains.

However, I was startled by one thing once. As we were doing our walk, I heard not too far off, the sound of someone's footsteps beating one hell of an escape. Perhaps I disturbed a local drunk or some pervert? Grave robber? I was glad to have a dog along then. I never went back after that. The living are far more scary than any corpse!

Mr. Zdrojewski and Old Guy Trivia

Once again the generation gap rears it's head. My buddy and I were sitting in Flynn's in Mansfield when the Trivia Night started. I can't avoid that game as it's like Jeopardy and it's a fun workout for your brain. The two of us M and I, are pretty good at this as we both “learnd to reed goodly in skool.”

Our partners were adopted on the spot, a group of local mid 20something guys who nailed certain questions while M and I nailed others. The way we split the questions was interesting. I call it the Pre/Post 1999 split.

If any question that referred to anything past 1999, we handed  that to the younger guys as M and I have nearly given up on popular culture that occurred after that. Anything pre 1999 was ours, as that part of Americana is completely relevant and everything else isn't. We adhered to that split except on one question.

“New Direction? You know of New Direction? What? You listen to it?” I say, ribbing M.

“I have a NINE YEAR OLD daughter! That's how I know about that!” he says, defending himself from that accusation.

“Yep, (and imitating his girl's voice I say:) 'Daddy! Daddy! New Directions is on! Watch it with me like you did the last time! Which one do YOU think is cute Daddy?”

The one category he and I killed at was the music one and  being half in the bag as well, we were commenting on the younger ones inability to know such great songs.

“You don't know 'Don't Fear the Reaper' by Blue Oyster Cult? It's the one song that makes the best use of a cowbell!”

They stared at us two, wondering what band would name itself after a gooshy oyster.

As we were nailing question after question, one of the younger guys became miffed and started shooting some barbs at us. I tell him, “Hey, don't worry, he and I will sit here, dumb and deaf if they was any questions about the Zombie Apocalypse or...(snickering and aiming it at M.) New Addition!”

(As I'm writing this, I heard the plumber say “Goddamit!” That doesn't bode well. It probably means I'm writing a larger check. The plumber is this huge Polish guy, square-headed with a buzz cut. He's a perfect stereotype. I bet he can pull his own plow in his cabbage fields. OK, I'll leave the Polarks alone.)

What amazed M and I was that we were completely duh-duh when it came to most recent of Americana. We just don't know it anymore. Ah, well. I guess that what happens. I gave up on “new” music when grunge faded into the twilight. Since then there hasn't been any real new movements in music, or anything I liked to boot.  And the two of us don't watch the “View” as that was one of the questions. What the hell is the “View?”

We are both, and an entire generation of Boomers, are slowly on the way to becoming irrelevant. 

How is it possible that “Don't Fear the Reaper” is 38 years old now? It felt like it came out yesterday.

Anyways, it was fun and we won. Our entire bar bill was halved with the gift card we won.  I like half price anything!

(And to boot! My Polish friend charged a simple $90 to rip out those old faucet stems from 1973. The things were encased in calcium.  If I had tried to fix it, it would've cost an additional money, as I would have f'ed it up then slip in the tub breaking my hip.)

Immigrant Child.

“What? Were you raised in a barn? He asks.  “Ah, I already know that answer.” he finally says.

“Yes, I was. And you know why.” I told him.

“Yeah, I know, but even so,  you aren't even close to Lace Curtain Irish, you're pure Shanty Irish.”

That old comment reminds me of a joke and I tell it to him.

“Hey! What's the difference between Lace Curtain Irish and Shanty Irish?” 

He stares, waiting for the zinger.

“Lace curtain Irish wash their hands after they piss in the sink!”

“Haw, haw, haw...that's YOU.” he jokes.

I retort..a bit late. “Hey....no...that ain't right!”

I had watched him “double bag” a pillow with two pillow cases.  “Why do that?” I asked.  I'm told it saves the pillow from being destroyed by hair oils.  I had never seen that before. 

“You know, at Great Lakes, the Naval Boot Camp, they teach you these domestic, house-wifey things.  I bet you don't know how to do a hospital corner?”

“Nope...”

So I'm showed how. It's easy enough apparently.

“Now flip a quarter on it.” he goes on. God, I had heard of this naval trick to find out if you can make a bed. So I flipped a quarter into the air, and the damn thing did bounce off the sharply made bed.

“You make your bed everyday? Why? It's only going to get ruined later.” I tell him.

He just stares at me, again.

****

As to the charge that I was raised in a barn, it's true. I plead nolo contendere with extenuating circumstances.

I have alluded to the fact my Mom had battled severe depression most of her life. It came and went, like the seasons.  If you've never seen someone with it, it's astonishingly crippling.  Back in the 60's and 70's the treatment regime wasn't developed well enough so the success of pulling people out of those black depths didn't always work. It wouldn't be till the early 80's where a drug regimen was concocted that did stabilize her.   One of the great symptoms of depression is that you don't want to do anything...especially housework.

I was born and grew up into this so my idea of a neat home was different from of the others. That was until I saw the inside of my friend's homes.  Their homes looked like museums to me, when in fact they were just normally “neat” and not some aberration that I thought they were.  Why was ours like a hurricane had it it? Why was the dirty laundry piled up to the moon? Why were the clean clothes piled up to the moon?  Why were we out of food again?  How come their Moms vacuumed nearly daily when mine vacuumed  if there was a New Moon?  The last time my Mom ironed any shirt was in 1973.  For some reason I remember that. 

As I grew up and became more aware of our clumsy looking home, I would get pissed at her. As I got older I forgave her as I learned just how life gets some people in it's teeth and shakes them around like a Raggedly Ann doll in a Rottweiler's mouth.  A bit of maturity is needed to show some compassion to others instead of being a selfish fuck.  But when you're 10, you're pretty much a selfish fuck still learning how not to be one.

So, as a kid,  I ended up doing that housework, to a point. Well, to the point where a boy who was never trained in house-wifery could manage. I learned how to laundry, cook, iron, wash windows, vacuum and all those other fun things. But, and a Big But, I had learned to do them on my own and that meant I did it either 100% right or 40% right, depending on the task.

Where was my Dad? Too busy climbing the corporate ladder and apparently the house never bothered him. He, too, was Shanty Irish I came to learn.

To this day, my house-wifery talent has some great, huge lapses in it. Add to that a single guy's idea of a neat house.  Hey, at least I don't have  fat wharf rats eating out of piles of garbage in here! I ain't that bad! But please, don't write your name in the dust stuck to the TV screen.

****
“You raised yourself you know.” LN, a co-worker, once told me.

“Yeah, I agree, which is why I don't let anyone step into my life to “help,”  I abhor it.”  This is true. I have taken the dictum of “If you want something done right or just plain done, you have to do it yourself” and raised it to a religion.

“YOU...raised yourself.” she repeats, with a knowing stare.

“Yep, I, me, mine, myself...” I say jokingly.

“...and that's why you love independence, doing things your way...it's worked for  you.”

I can have a particular laser-like stare that appears on it's own and it fixed right on her and I say: “It HAD to work.”

****

I'm still not doing “hospital corners” nor am I going to dust every day. I am quite content with “lived in” And as for Shanty Irish...yep!

Small State, Vivid Memories

“Aren't you the guy with the dog?” the plumber asks.

“Huh?” I thought.

“You know, that guy with the huge shepherd, he lived here...right? Or did he move away? The dog's not here right?”

“Noooo...no dog here."   I tell him.

“Oh...good. I worked on the house next door three years ago, each time I came around the backyard this beast kept barking through the fence. He even charged the fence so hard it swayed.”

I decide to have a little fun.

“Oh, THAT guy. Yeah. He's moved on. Never saw the dog but I heard about it. Monster...Cujo...a beast is right! The neighbors were scared shitless of that thing. Guess you didn't hear about how he ate three of the neighbor's cats, huh?"

The plumber's eyes widen. “He ate three cats?”

I lay it on...

“So the neighbors tell me. One after the other in a two month period. He didn't eat all of them. There was some fur, skin and bones left.  The guy was so scared about being sued he paid for the pet cemetery internment of one, and bought two cats as replacements for the others.”

“Damn...three cats!” the guy says.

“Anyway, the tub's over here. The piping is from 1950, the faucets from 1973...whaddaya figure? How much?”

 

 

 

1975..Or You Can Pick Whatever Year You Want.

April 1975...Pretty Much Forgotten but I remember this issue.

 

 

Maybe it's my age, but I find myself pining away with nostalgia. I can't say life was better then if you include all the shit that was going on. There were the Boston race riots over forced busing, we lost the Vietnam War, President Ford was shot at by Squeaky Fromme, the redhead from the Manson Family. The Son of Sam killings were still a year away.

So as you see, the world was just as fucked up then as it is now, perhaps more now?

Be that as it may, nostalgia never does think about the shitty times, does it? Only the good.

What I'll do at times is plug in a year into Google, hit “images” and see what comes up. Sometimes I'm shocked at the pictures and scenes I've long forgotten about. It's good for jogging the memory. I wondered at myself why I had forgotten about all that stuff but then again, how can you remember very single detail?

 

Accidentally, after searching for “Christmas 1975” I came across the toy above. I was floored. ““I had that! I had the very same toy!” I shouted this in my head. It was a silly gun gallery toy but for a young boy it was fun as hell. I have no idea when we threw it out as most kid's toys end up in the garbage anyway. I guess I became too old for it, it broke or both. It could be still in the Johnston landfill, deep down under all the other refuse.

Then there was GI Joe with “Kung Fu Grip!” This wasn't a surprise but still, I harked back to when I played with one then. At first, you play with it as it was intended. He was to fight filthy, dirty Commies and Viet Minh. After a while, a boy's imagination takes over. My GI Joe fell to his death countless times out of my bedroom window after he was trying to scale the side of the house. He fell down the stairs too many times. A year later, he had lost most of his hair when we boys had a “dirt yard war” where we placed our GI Joes in foxholes and shot them with bb guns and finally, napalmed them when Jimmy tossed a flaming Dixie cup of Kingsford Briquette Charcoal Starter fluid at them.

 

Where were our parents? This was then kids were tossed out of the house during summer vacation because we were “underfoot.” Some of us would come home with a nice laceration, burns or some other injury. This was met with bitching and complaining and “What are you? STUPID?” comments from out parents. Not too much sympathy then. That was also met with your own parents telling their friends about the jack-off moronic things you did. The neighbor or friend would nod their heads in agreement with you Mom or Dad. So we kids finally learned not to say a damn thing. Coming home with with blood running down your arm because you decided to jump your bike over a log meant you wiped it up and said nothing.

 

 

 

Old TV shows. That's a good one I'll search for. I always prided myself, then as now, for not watching too much of it. I wasn't one of those kids social commentators said was “turning our brains to mush by too much TV.” Bullshit...I watched heaps of TV then. Those old TV's with the tube technology could heat your living room then. If you put your hand behind the set, you could feel the air currents move from the warmth. Generally, if it was winter, I'd get home from school, turn the TV to channel 38 and get a few hours of Loony Toons cartoons. Those are still the best, even with the horrific violence and racists themes they had. At night, I'd do my homework during commercials. We used to get the TV Guide and I swear it was like a social calendar in ways. I'd read it, find out which days/nights I'd HAVE to be home to watch the shows I wanted.

“No, I ain't coming out tonight...Sanford and Son is on!”

And there are times when I think I'd puke after seeing some pictures from 1975. I'll Google, 1975 Class Pictures and see the kids of that time. I then goof on the fashion they wore. Wait a minute...I wore too!

 

See that kid in the blue circle...that was how I dressed. Those plaid pants should've been outlawed. My Mom's thought was search the sales at Ann & Hope and then buy different colors of the same damn shirt or pants! A little later on, I was looking like the kid in the red circle when Mom discovered the Garanimals Kid's Clothing Line. I was sporting the outfit of a Disco Pimp then and I loved it. What's interesting about this photo is the boy's longer hair then. Mine was longer than most then, crawling down over my collar...as long as the girl in the white circle.

So, if nostalgia ignores the miserable times, just what was miserable back then?

The constant fighting with my brother was probably one. I was ten, he was 15 and in the full throes of teen angst. We traded barbs with one another across the kitchen table many nights. I found new ammunition in the new acne on his face and called him “Mountain Face” for a while till he shoved me into a rose bush when the parents weren't looking. My friends and I found his friends hideout for drinking and smoking pot and I lorded that over his head as a threat to “tell Dad.” That was met a week later with Jimmy Keough, his friend, giving me a wedgie that lifted me off the ground with the threat “NEVER tell anyone about that place!!”

I was in Miss McHale's class then. I can think of the great times that we had or I can ignore the fight I had with a Danny Greene on the way home, near Pinault's Pharmacy. The prick got me from behind and we toppled onto the parking lot and being sucker punched, I lost that fight. I ran into Greene about a year ago at my pub and thought for a few seconds...”Should I shove him out of his chair and say: 'Remember me...asshole!?'”

As in all classes, there's a social hierarchy. I'll rip off Matt Groening's humor here. “There's nothing more cruel and dangerous than a roving pack of 10 year old girls.” In McHale's class there was a girl, Colleen T. who had to put up with the guff of the other girls who just HEAPED it on her. She was at the bottom of the girl's hierarchy and was reminded of it most days. We boys occasionally got into it but since girls were disgusting, most of the time we didn't engage Colleen at all. Though I can remember I shot a comment at Colleen that was mean. Thinking on it then as now, it was unfair. I eventually apologized to her but she was sooo pissed off she didn't accept it till later in the day. Kids are NOT innocent! Neither was I.

 

**

Nostalgia is great. Pining away for your youth is too. Why? Because then, everything was new to you and exciting. Humor could be found anywhere and in any form. The energy level was great too as you could go for hours w/o becoming tired. As an adult, nothing is new to you really. Been there, Done that. I swear, as you get older, you lose that incredible plasticity your brain had then. You could pick up anything in a few hours and then shift out of that to a new paradigm just as easily. Now? Everything becomes more stiff, like hardening concrete because you Swear to God that you are RIGHT and any other way is dead wrong. I find myself quietly dismissing a younger person's opinions and giving tepid “Oh, that's nice” responses. Ack! I'm turning into my Dad.

 

**

An Aside I Thought Revealing About This Whole Issue

There was a curious incident where something hit me regarding nostalgia or “love of youth.” I enjoy music and once I was listening to Paul Simon's “Live Rhymin'.” On it is a live, slightly gospel version of Bride Over Troubled Water. While I was listening to it, I found his vocals emotionally open and had incredible depth and subtlety. He sings without screeching his point across and that's what I found alluring. There are soft changes that “make” the entire song. I found out later when I thought about it, I wasn't celebrating the song, I was celebrating his youthful voice and it's fresh and tender ability to manipulate sounds when he was a young man. I was praising youth here.  There's no difference between that and older guys who sit in the stands, watching high school teens play football. They were once teen players too and they watch and relish in vicariousness

I guess you come to find out, the world really doesn't change much and people sure the hell don't. It's constant repeats like you see on TV. Each generation that comes up thinks they're the first to discover everything. Of course they do, it's New to Them like the old commercial would say. We were no different back in 1975.



So Long Ago...

To you, this guy is just an old, gray and balding science teacher. To me, it's a shock.

When I knew him, he had a full head of thick dark hair and a goatee that was similar. The only thing I recognize about him in that picture were his naturally squinty eyes. Don't take that as a insult, he was a great guy. He was one of those guys who when he took off his glasses, his eyes were even more pronounced. But today, wow...I never imagined him getting old. I didn't imagine my getting old either. How did that happen?

I had this teacher for biology class at St. Rays. It was an enjoyable class due to his love of fun and enthusiasm.  It was where I had my Irish Catholic religion crushed finally too. The scientists and the field had much better explanations about everything vs. any priest I ran into. Huh, my attendance at a Catholic high school helped to ruin my faith. Go figure. Ah, it was on it's way to desolation anyway before I got there.

Like any bio class, it was full of cabinets full of chemicals, microscopes and dead animals in chloroform. Also there was a terrarium that housed some toads, salamanders and the such. One day, we come to class to find one of the toads dead. Our teacher then says, “He'll stay there till he rots!” He was going to show us all about the  carbon and the nitrogen cycles. Ewww. We eventually asked him if the decomposition would breed disease. He then tells us as long as we don't touch it or breathe it, there's no problem.

That lasted about a day and half before administration got wind of that. Then again, they allowed a science fair in the gymnasium that featured some kid who had Petri dishes full of anaerobic bacteria. The other biology teacher, a Mr. Duluk, warned all of us not to go near it. He eventually taped up the dishes with that clear tape they use at FedEx for packaging.

Another feature of the biology classroom was a gardening shelving thingy. It had shelves with various plants on them that were bathed with grow lights that gave off a purplish glow. The only time we used the plants was to see photosynthesis in action when we plucked the leaves and looked at them under a microscope.

Being the little, asymmetrical terrorist I was (read up on how I flattened my Dad's tires!) I thought of a goofy trick I could try with that planter. I would shove marijuana seeds into the dirt and just shut my mouth.

That I did. I managed to find a couple of minutes where no one was in the room and I think I got about 15 of the seeds planted in the various pots. For a week, when class let out, we/I passed the planter and I shot a look to see if any germinated. Eventually they did.

Success!

The fun part would be how high these things would get before anyone would notice.

I was surprised, they were about two to three inches tall and still no one noticed. I finally brought attention to them because I was getting itchy for them to be discovered. What good's a punchline if you don't deliver it?

“Mr. Gray...What's that growing in there? You plant something new?” I did this while there was a clot of kids hanging by the door. You always need an audience for jokes!

He came over, looked and had a quizzical look on his face. I believe he wasn't so sure of what they were.

“They look like jungle plants...don't they? Are they from the tropics?” I continue.

Then the realization comes to his face. He then shoots me the most awful “I KNOW IT WAS YOU” look but he couldn't prove anything. I should've stood there, with a sheepish smile waving “Hi” at him. I didn't. I just over acted my astonishment as every other kid there did.

“Who could've done this?” I ask.

Mike M. who was with me, jabs me in the ribs. I deny everything, of course.

Perhaps the next story would be about the firearms I knew people kept in their lockers at good Ol' St. Rays. No, no...there wasn't about to be Columbine episode nor was anyone out to gun anyone else. It was more of show and tell. PS. I never owned a firearm then so it wasn't me! I just cultivated pot.