Scenes from Silver Creek: Mrs. Blakey and the Amazing Disappearing Joint
Mrs. Blakey was the least popular teacher at Silver Creek High.
Junior high students were told horror stories about her by their older siblings and went into Freshman Social Studies with severe trepidation. She was like our own version of the boogeyman. Only in polyester pantsuits and a beehive hairdo about 20 years out of date.
She ruled her classes with an iron hand wrapped in an iron glove. And room 402 always smelled of her personal combination of baby powder and chalk dust.
To give you an idea of what a martinet she was, on my first day of her class (my very first day of high school) she gave me detention. Her reason? My older brother, Peter, had earned it but graduated without serving. In her power-mad world this made sense, even seemed fair. But to me it just served to make me loathe her as much as I had been warned I would.
Mrs. Blakey was approximately 137 years old and, it was rumored, had actually always lived on the site of Silver Creek High even before it was built. She was some sort of ageless, eternal evil siren and her lore only increased once you realize that nobody ever saw her outside of room 402. Ever.
She was never seen in the grocery store or the library. Nobody ever saw her walking across the parking lot in the morning. She was never witnessed going into the teacher’s break room or the cafeteria. I always supposed that she hung from the ceiling at night.
Because I have always had awful luck I drew Mrs. Blakey every single year. And by senior year she and I had reached an understanding: she would ignore me and I would stick pins in my Mrs. Blakey voodoo doll while she wasn’t looking.
Scene: room 402. I’m sitting in the last row of the classroom, trying to be invisible and counting the minutes until lunch. In the desk next to me Ricky Garcia is trying to be invisible and practicing his joint rolling technique while hiding behind his textbook. Out of nowhere, Mrs. Blakey calls on Ricky to answer some lame question about the Continental Congress or the Gross National Product of Peru. And Ricky, in a cannabis haze, panics and throws the joint into my lap.
Mrs. Blakey, seeing something flying across the aisle, stomps back in her Frankenstein shoes, her lime green polyester pantsuit making sparks as she walked. And there I am, all bored innocence, with a joint in my lap.
Thankfully, at that moment, Grace Minolli (always a kiss up) starts to answer the question about the Continental Congress or Peru and Mrs. Blakey is momentarily distracted. So I did the only honorable thing: I throw the joint across the aisle to Liam O’Connor. Who throws it to Andrew Neison. Who tosses it to Laura Fontaine. Within minutes this become the most well traveled doobie in the history of drugs. In an informal debriefing in the locker corridor after the Social Studies period it was decided that out of a class of 28 students, at least 17 had at one time had this joint on their person.
The only problem was that at this same debriefing it was also discovered that nobody walked out of the class with the contraband. Or at least nobody admitted to it.
At the end of the school day, when my friend Sean and I walked past the closed door of room 402, it was noticed that the room had a certain aroma surrounding it.
And that day Mrs. Blakey was finally seen off of the school grounds. Buying Hostess Twinkies at the 7-11.
Showing posts with label Scenes from Silver Creek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scenes from Silver Creek. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Mission Summer
California history is very strongly tied into the Catholic Mission system. The 21 adobe missions built by Father Junipero Serra to bring Catholicism to the indigenous people – whether they wanted it or not.
Like all California school kids, I did my fair share of visits to various missions, mostly Mission Dolores in San Francisco and Mission Carmel. I even did an “art” project where I built a mission out of sugar cubes, complete with ice plant “cactus” and paths made out of kitty litter. The ants loved it and played invasion all over the walls Mission San Juan Bautista (the one I drew from the “Mission Hat”).
But between my junior and senior year at Silver Creek High, on the advice of my guidance counselor, I got more involved in Mission history than I really wanted to.
It was called the “work summer” and pretty much every kid in my class was advised, guided, guilted, or bribed into doing something “good” for the summer. Partly it would look good on a college application. Partly no parent wanted their kid to be the one who would choose lounging by the pool over doing something worthwhile.
That’s how it was for me. I didn’t particularly want to spend my summer helping to paint the senior center or providing free day care to low-income kids. I wanted to read trashy romance novels, eat popsicles, have pizza nights with my friends, and generally enjoy the summer.
My parents had another idea. The only saving grace was that my best friend, Sean, had equally persuasive parents and he had to be good all summer too. Since we had both been raised at Our Lady of Angels (whose slogan we decided should be “Eight years of school, a lifetime of guilt!”) we received notice through the church that there was an archeological site going on at one of the Missions and they were looking for summer interns.
It was Mission San Antonio de Padua, built in 1771 an located in a valley southeast of Monterey. Average summertime temperature is roughly that of the surface of the sun. Only without the cooling breezes.
Some random, third class California University was excavating the site of the Spanish garrison. They had grad students doing all the interesting things, and wanted free grunt work to do all the hard stuff. You got room and board, no money, a promise of a letter of recommendation from the site director for your college packet, and they even supplied the sunscreen.
Since the opportunity to be away from our parents for a while was more appealing than staying home and singing show tunes at the senior center, we both signed up. And since they were hardly flooded with applicants, we were both accepted.
So we went. Sean and I. In his root beer brown Capri, the trunk stuffed with shorts and brand new hiking boots that never did break in and caused our feet no end of misery. We listened to “Frampton Comes Alive” endlessly, stopped at every Foster’s Freeze we passed for frosty cones and pee breaks. We planned our glorious futures (I was going to win a Tony Award for Best Actress on Broadway. Sean was going to win the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes and live in style). And we never envisioned what was ahead.
We only got lost twice. Ended up at a dead-end private road where we asked a cow for directions. But we eventually found the Mission, our summer project, and Dr. Edward Calkman.
The crew consisted of the Dr. (who everyone called “Doctor” and never anything else), 6 grad students, 4 other high school students from around California, and a wonderful cook named Belen. She was the best thing about the gig. Every meal included hand-made tortillas and mouth-scorching salsa.
Wake up call came at 7 am every day. Which to high school students is one of the lower circles of hell. We were on the dig by 9. We worked from 9 to noon and then had from noon to 2 off for lunch and a bit of a break from the heat. Then back on the clock until 6, dinner at 7. Just how I wanted to spend my summer.
The work itself was miserable. Either we shifted huge shovelsful for dirt into sifters, or we crouched in backbreaking positions with hand trowels and toothbrushes (toothbrushes, for god’s sake!) for the detail work. I was there exactly 32 days and in all that time I found only one thing: squirrel bones. That’s it. Squirrel bones. Sean at least found a button. And the way he gloated over it all summer you’d have thought he found the body of Junipero Serra himself. But I was the squirrel bone queen. The first one I found I thought it was yet another onion root. But one of the grad students enlightened me. By the end of job I was extremely proficient in the classification and identification of squirrel bones. I could have majored in them.
The entire dig seemed to me to be a big bust. We had the walls of the garrison, which we already knew. But in terms of artifacts, we didn’t find much. Sean’s much-heralded button. Some old strips of leather. A few old bottles and a knife or two. Hardly the lost treasure of the Sierra Madre. From a historical standpoint it was important. But to two 17-year olds who were tired, sunburned, sore, and longing to have some fun it was hardly the Summer of Love.
The grad students wanted nothing to do with us, being extremely superior in both age and education. The other high schoolers actually seemed to enjoy themselves and were excessively Catholic and, therefore, lame. So Sean and I bonded over our shared misery and blisters. Doctor never did learn our names. For the entire summer Sean was “Sam.” He never even got close to my name. I was just a mumble.
We did learn basic archeology techniques – something that has proved to be an utterly useless skill in my life. Sean got sunstroke and had to go to the hospital one afternoon for fluids. We both got fed up one night, broke curfew and drove into the nearest town for burgers and onion rings. Nobody noticed we were gone so we made it a regular thing. Once a week we’d take off, in spite of the fact that Belen’s enchiladas were the best thing going.
But we got up with the dawn every day, put on our Frankenstein boots and our Gilligan hats and picked up our toothbrushes. We sifted dirt under the melting sun until the sweat and dirt ran in muddy tears down our faces. We found the remains of every squirrel that ever died in California. We worked ourselves into exhaustion and fits of giggles. We told lame knock-knock jokes to relieve the boredom and made up rude limericks about the Doctor.
And we counted off the days until we were done.
On our last day, I think we were actually sad to say goodbye. At least to Belen, who gave us a doggy bag of tortillas and black beans & rice for the road. We pulled out of the compound without a backward glance, eager only for the roadtrip and the chance to sleep past 7 am in our own beds.
Looking back on that summer, I wish I could say it’s now colored in the pale rose light of all good flashbacks. But I can’t. It was hot and miserable work with unfriendly people. But it did give me a new appreciation for the eternal hardiness of squirrel bones.
California history is very strongly tied into the Catholic Mission system. The 21 adobe missions built by Father Junipero Serra to bring Catholicism to the indigenous people – whether they wanted it or not.
Like all California school kids, I did my fair share of visits to various missions, mostly Mission Dolores in San Francisco and Mission Carmel. I even did an “art” project where I built a mission out of sugar cubes, complete with ice plant “cactus” and paths made out of kitty litter. The ants loved it and played invasion all over the walls Mission San Juan Bautista (the one I drew from the “Mission Hat”).
But between my junior and senior year at Silver Creek High, on the advice of my guidance counselor, I got more involved in Mission history than I really wanted to.
It was called the “work summer” and pretty much every kid in my class was advised, guided, guilted, or bribed into doing something “good” for the summer. Partly it would look good on a college application. Partly no parent wanted their kid to be the one who would choose lounging by the pool over doing something worthwhile.
That’s how it was for me. I didn’t particularly want to spend my summer helping to paint the senior center or providing free day care to low-income kids. I wanted to read trashy romance novels, eat popsicles, have pizza nights with my friends, and generally enjoy the summer.
My parents had another idea. The only saving grace was that my best friend, Sean, had equally persuasive parents and he had to be good all summer too. Since we had both been raised at Our Lady of Angels (whose slogan we decided should be “Eight years of school, a lifetime of guilt!”) we received notice through the church that there was an archeological site going on at one of the Missions and they were looking for summer interns.
It was Mission San Antonio de Padua, built in 1771 an located in a valley southeast of Monterey. Average summertime temperature is roughly that of the surface of the sun. Only without the cooling breezes.
Some random, third class California University was excavating the site of the Spanish garrison. They had grad students doing all the interesting things, and wanted free grunt work to do all the hard stuff. You got room and board, no money, a promise of a letter of recommendation from the site director for your college packet, and they even supplied the sunscreen.
Since the opportunity to be away from our parents for a while was more appealing than staying home and singing show tunes at the senior center, we both signed up. And since they were hardly flooded with applicants, we were both accepted.
So we went. Sean and I. In his root beer brown Capri, the trunk stuffed with shorts and brand new hiking boots that never did break in and caused our feet no end of misery. We listened to “Frampton Comes Alive” endlessly, stopped at every Foster’s Freeze we passed for frosty cones and pee breaks. We planned our glorious futures (I was going to win a Tony Award for Best Actress on Broadway. Sean was going to win the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes and live in style). And we never envisioned what was ahead.
We only got lost twice. Ended up at a dead-end private road where we asked a cow for directions. But we eventually found the Mission, our summer project, and Dr. Edward Calkman.
The crew consisted of the Dr. (who everyone called “Doctor” and never anything else), 6 grad students, 4 other high school students from around California, and a wonderful cook named Belen. She was the best thing about the gig. Every meal included hand-made tortillas and mouth-scorching salsa.
Wake up call came at 7 am every day. Which to high school students is one of the lower circles of hell. We were on the dig by 9. We worked from 9 to noon and then had from noon to 2 off for lunch and a bit of a break from the heat. Then back on the clock until 6, dinner at 7. Just how I wanted to spend my summer.
The work itself was miserable. Either we shifted huge shovelsful for dirt into sifters, or we crouched in backbreaking positions with hand trowels and toothbrushes (toothbrushes, for god’s sake!) for the detail work. I was there exactly 32 days and in all that time I found only one thing: squirrel bones. That’s it. Squirrel bones. Sean at least found a button. And the way he gloated over it all summer you’d have thought he found the body of Junipero Serra himself. But I was the squirrel bone queen. The first one I found I thought it was yet another onion root. But one of the grad students enlightened me. By the end of job I was extremely proficient in the classification and identification of squirrel bones. I could have majored in them.
The entire dig seemed to me to be a big bust. We had the walls of the garrison, which we already knew. But in terms of artifacts, we didn’t find much. Sean’s much-heralded button. Some old strips of leather. A few old bottles and a knife or two. Hardly the lost treasure of the Sierra Madre. From a historical standpoint it was important. But to two 17-year olds who were tired, sunburned, sore, and longing to have some fun it was hardly the Summer of Love.
The grad students wanted nothing to do with us, being extremely superior in both age and education. The other high schoolers actually seemed to enjoy themselves and were excessively Catholic and, therefore, lame. So Sean and I bonded over our shared misery and blisters. Doctor never did learn our names. For the entire summer Sean was “Sam.” He never even got close to my name. I was just a mumble.
We did learn basic archeology techniques – something that has proved to be an utterly useless skill in my life. Sean got sunstroke and had to go to the hospital one afternoon for fluids. We both got fed up one night, broke curfew and drove into the nearest town for burgers and onion rings. Nobody noticed we were gone so we made it a regular thing. Once a week we’d take off, in spite of the fact that Belen’s enchiladas were the best thing going.
But we got up with the dawn every day, put on our Frankenstein boots and our Gilligan hats and picked up our toothbrushes. We sifted dirt under the melting sun until the sweat and dirt ran in muddy tears down our faces. We found the remains of every squirrel that ever died in California. We worked ourselves into exhaustion and fits of giggles. We told lame knock-knock jokes to relieve the boredom and made up rude limericks about the Doctor.
And we counted off the days until we were done.
On our last day, I think we were actually sad to say goodbye. At least to Belen, who gave us a doggy bag of tortillas and black beans & rice for the road. We pulled out of the compound without a backward glance, eager only for the roadtrip and the chance to sleep past 7 am in our own beds.
Looking back on that summer, I wish I could say it’s now colored in the pale rose light of all good flashbacks. But I can’t. It was hot and miserable work with unfriendly people. But it did give me a new appreciation for the eternal hardiness of squirrel bones.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Mambo Contest
Between them my mother and father were on every church committee in town. Dad ran the Our Lady of Angels bingo game every Monday night for at least 5 years. He was president of the father’s club. Ran the concession booth at the fall festival. Drove the mini bus for the senior trip to Reno.
Mom was equally busy over at St. Edith’s Episcopal. President of the ladies guild. Did the Sunday flowers every second weekend of the year for a dozen years. Co-chair of the St. Edith’s fashion show.
And, of course, they went to every dinner, dance, and pageant that both churches threw.
And while the adult in me applauds their community spirit, the kid I was cringed as we got roped into yet another horrible job of busing tables, making cotton candy, running a spotlight, and generally used as slave labor for God.
But, in many ways, I was repaid for all of this on the night my parents entered the St. Edith’s Valentine’s Dance Mambo Contest.
As usual I’d been volunteered by my mom for something. I tried to argue that dad was raising me Catholic and my allegiance was to OLA and I had proved that allegiance the previous month by getting up at 6 am on a Saturday to pour coffee at the pancake breakfast.
Mothers do not accept arguments. And so the day of the dance I spent hours climbing ladders (which I hate) and scotch taping red construction paper hearts all over the walls of the St. Edith’s cafeteria. Fun! I also had to sweep, set up roughly 347,000 folding chairs, and frost 8 million cupcakes with Pepto-pink frosting.
And then she dropped the bombshell….oh yes, she had also volunteered me to pour punch at the dance itself. There was I, stupidly thinking that working all day got me out of having to go to the dance itself. Silly me. Nope. She did give in and take me to McDonalds for dinner, but then it was straight back to the chain gang.
No greater hell exists than being 14 years old and being forced to watch your parents and your friends’ parents dance.
But it was actually pretty funny. I mean who would have known that Mr. and Mrs. Foster, owners of Speedy Dry Cleaners, would turn out to be the Fred and Ginger of Silver Creek? They did moves I’d never seen outside of the late-late show. And all without ever looking the other in the face. The looked at the floor, at the other dancers, at my crummy construction paper hearts, but never at each other. It was the weirdest thing.
Our neighbors, the Blocks, turned out to have four left feet. And the Reverend Polehouse and his wife did a fine job of turning every single dance into a foxtrot.
But the big surprise was when they announced the Mambo contest and my mom and dad got onto the floor. Really? My parents could mambo?
Mr. Lucas, who was acting as DJ and master of ceremonies, put on some classic Perez Prado and the couples began to move. Reverend Polehouse seemed to recognize the futility of trying to turn his foxtrot into a mambo and volunteered to be the judge. One extremely apologetic tap on the shoulder and a couple was eliminated.
The Blocks were the first to go. Not surprising considering the fact that before the vocals even began they had bumped into each other and Mr. Block’s glasses had fallen off. But as couple after couple were scuttled, my parents danced on. My dad, who I’d never seen do anything more athletic than mow the lawn, was Mr. Smooth out there. He did this hip wiggle thing that was so hilarious even my mother laughed. And mom….well mom was more uninhibited than I’d ever seen her. If I hadn’t been serving the punch myself I would have thought it had been spiked and she was dancing under the influence.
But nope, she was just having fun. I was so unused to it that it took me by surprise.
But what was more surprising was the fact that my parents, my staid and conservative parents, won the St. Edith’s Valentine’s Dance Mambo Contest. Dinner for two at Mariani’s Steak Pit.
Between them my mother and father were on every church committee in town. Dad ran the Our Lady of Angels bingo game every Monday night for at least 5 years. He was president of the father’s club. Ran the concession booth at the fall festival. Drove the mini bus for the senior trip to Reno.
Mom was equally busy over at St. Edith’s Episcopal. President of the ladies guild. Did the Sunday flowers every second weekend of the year for a dozen years. Co-chair of the St. Edith’s fashion show.
And, of course, they went to every dinner, dance, and pageant that both churches threw.
And while the adult in me applauds their community spirit, the kid I was cringed as we got roped into yet another horrible job of busing tables, making cotton candy, running a spotlight, and generally used as slave labor for God.
But, in many ways, I was repaid for all of this on the night my parents entered the St. Edith’s Valentine’s Dance Mambo Contest.
As usual I’d been volunteered by my mom for something. I tried to argue that dad was raising me Catholic and my allegiance was to OLA and I had proved that allegiance the previous month by getting up at 6 am on a Saturday to pour coffee at the pancake breakfast.
Mothers do not accept arguments. And so the day of the dance I spent hours climbing ladders (which I hate) and scotch taping red construction paper hearts all over the walls of the St. Edith’s cafeteria. Fun! I also had to sweep, set up roughly 347,000 folding chairs, and frost 8 million cupcakes with Pepto-pink frosting.
And then she dropped the bombshell….oh yes, she had also volunteered me to pour punch at the dance itself. There was I, stupidly thinking that working all day got me out of having to go to the dance itself. Silly me. Nope. She did give in and take me to McDonalds for dinner, but then it was straight back to the chain gang.
No greater hell exists than being 14 years old and being forced to watch your parents and your friends’ parents dance.
But it was actually pretty funny. I mean who would have known that Mr. and Mrs. Foster, owners of Speedy Dry Cleaners, would turn out to be the Fred and Ginger of Silver Creek? They did moves I’d never seen outside of the late-late show. And all without ever looking the other in the face. The looked at the floor, at the other dancers, at my crummy construction paper hearts, but never at each other. It was the weirdest thing.
Our neighbors, the Blocks, turned out to have four left feet. And the Reverend Polehouse and his wife did a fine job of turning every single dance into a foxtrot.
But the big surprise was when they announced the Mambo contest and my mom and dad got onto the floor. Really? My parents could mambo?
Mr. Lucas, who was acting as DJ and master of ceremonies, put on some classic Perez Prado and the couples began to move. Reverend Polehouse seemed to recognize the futility of trying to turn his foxtrot into a mambo and volunteered to be the judge. One extremely apologetic tap on the shoulder and a couple was eliminated.
The Blocks were the first to go. Not surprising considering the fact that before the vocals even began they had bumped into each other and Mr. Block’s glasses had fallen off. But as couple after couple were scuttled, my parents danced on. My dad, who I’d never seen do anything more athletic than mow the lawn, was Mr. Smooth out there. He did this hip wiggle thing that was so hilarious even my mother laughed. And mom….well mom was more uninhibited than I’d ever seen her. If I hadn’t been serving the punch myself I would have thought it had been spiked and she was dancing under the influence.
But nope, she was just having fun. I was so unused to it that it took me by surprise.
But what was more surprising was the fact that my parents, my staid and conservative parents, won the St. Edith’s Valentine’s Dance Mambo Contest. Dinner for two at Mariani’s Steak Pit.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Santa Factor
In the wonderful world before mega malls and Walmarts, towns like Silver Creek had one-off so-called department stores where most people did their shopping. Ours was called Brightman’s and, yes, it was owned by a family of that name.
On the day after Thanksgiving Brightman’s would always open their Winter Wonderland. This spectacle, rivaled only by the Rockettes, consisted of a badly-painted North Pole backdrop and a moth-eaten red throne where Santa would sit while legions of Silver Creek’s kids poured out their desires for Red Flyer wagons and Malibu Barbies.
In my senior year of high school I applied at Brightman’s for the Christmas rush. I really wanted to work in the gift wrap department. What I got was elf duty. Oh god, no. Appearing before all my friends in a red and green elf costume, complete with turned-up shoes, was a trauma from which I thought I’d never recover. But I needed the money and I had just enough of a weird sense of humor to see the lunacy in it all. So I took the job.
Santa was played by Major Thackerman. Retired Marine. He didn’t so much ho-ho-ho as order kids to tell them what they wanted and then get the heck off his lap. He asked “have you been a good little boy?” in such a way that the child felt a “no” would result in having to drop and give him 50 pushups.
My fellow Catholic sufferers from OLA always had a bit of confusion going on about Santa and the confessional. So when Santa would ask about our naughty or niceness, we’d take it as instructions to get our sins off our chest, not a yes or no question. And any kid who felt honest enough to fess up to tiny infractions like “I suppose I could have been nicer to my mom and cleaned up my room before she asked” received a stern lecture on obedience to authority that would lead the child to feel so unworthy of receiving Christmas gifts as to render the very act of asking Santa irrelevant. Usually we’d slink off with our tiny cellophane-wrapped candy cane with a firm determination to be a better person and to suck it up on Christmas morning when all we got was new socks.
But I was a teenager then and no longer afraid of Santa, though I was still kinda freaked out by Major Thackerman. On those days when the Major was off, he was replaced by Waldo Hicks. Mr. Hicks ate more candy canes that he gave away because he mistakenly thought they masked the intense scent of scotch that emanated from him. Waldo was, of course, an alcoholic. But back then we would just say he drank. He was a happy drunk, not a maudlin one, so his ho-ho-ho was genuine. As was his red nose. And, unlike our retired Marine, Waldo needed no padding.
Children weren’t afraid of Waldo the way they were with the Major. And the Waldo Santa as fun. He told silly knock-knock jokes and bad riddles and laughed a lot. Sure he once got in trouble for telling Billy Morrison that he deserved the 10-speed bike he wanted because Billy’s mom was a fine-looking woman. But hey, the kids liked him and he fit the suit.
So there I was, mostly mortified by the costume. Working with General Patton and Foster Brooks. It was my job to stand by Santa’s throne and help the kids on and off his lap, helping to position them correctly so that Sandy (photography elf) could get the requisite shot of terrified kid meeting Saint Nick. Oh yes, and I handed out candy canes.
It was quite an education, I must say. Mostly cementing my conviction that I had no maternal instincts and never, ever, ever wanted to have kids. All that screaming and crying. The ear-splitting shrill cries that only kids can achieve.
But there was one perk to the job and that was working the Brightman’s employee Christmas party.
The best thing about it was being in on it when the employees, exhausted by a long season of long hours and crazy customers, got looped on the contents of an open bar and spilled their secrets to our crazy Santas.
For that party, Waldo was always in the chair because (between you and me) the Brightman’s were just as terrified of the Major as the kids were. (Antlhough the major was always invited.) But the combination of drunken Santa and drunken adults telling him their wishes was ripe for blackmail material. Too bad I didn’t take notes.
There was Mrs. Linker, who managed the cosmetics department, asking for a date with James Garner. (Who knew she had a thing for Rockford?) And Mr. Leary of the sporting goods floor who said he wanted season’s tickets to the 49ers and a date with Mrs. Linker. (Sadly, Mr. Leary looked nothing like James Garner.)
Marian Franklin, sister of my Chemistry teacher, asked Santa for naughty underwear in a voice that made poor Waldo blush under his beard. (I later learned that Miss Franklin and Waldo had a thing going on.)
In between tipsy wishes, Waldo refreshed himself from his thermos of “coffee,” which amused me because there was an open bar and he was still hiding his liquor. And since I didn’t have to do much that night but stand around in that stupid elf suit, I was able to raid the dessert table for chocolate éclairs and buttery Christmas cookies.
My friend Sean was working that year in the men’s department and aside from deriving years of inside jokes about how I look in red and green felt with a pointy hat, having him at the party was golden. The rent-a-bartender was pretty lax about IDs so Sean and I got pretty hammered as well. And with free food, a DJ, and endless freedom to mock all the people we’d had to put up with over the past two months, the night was pretty damned fun.
Until Major Santa realized we’d been hitting the free booze. Unsurprisingly, a hard-assed retired Marine had little patience for underage drinking. “I want your names,” he commanded in tones that booked no question. But hey, I never was good with authority.
“You jerk,” I said, “I’ve been working next to you for two months now and you don’t even know my name?”
And then Sean, never one to leave well enough alone, felt compelled to add. “I think you mean Major Jerk.”
At which point, we both ran.
The next day I burned the elf costume. When I had recovered from my hangover, that is.
In the wonderful world before mega malls and Walmarts, towns like Silver Creek had one-off so-called department stores where most people did their shopping. Ours was called Brightman’s and, yes, it was owned by a family of that name.
On the day after Thanksgiving Brightman’s would always open their Winter Wonderland. This spectacle, rivaled only by the Rockettes, consisted of a badly-painted North Pole backdrop and a moth-eaten red throne where Santa would sit while legions of Silver Creek’s kids poured out their desires for Red Flyer wagons and Malibu Barbies.
In my senior year of high school I applied at Brightman’s for the Christmas rush. I really wanted to work in the gift wrap department. What I got was elf duty. Oh god, no. Appearing before all my friends in a red and green elf costume, complete with turned-up shoes, was a trauma from which I thought I’d never recover. But I needed the money and I had just enough of a weird sense of humor to see the lunacy in it all. So I took the job.
Santa was played by Major Thackerman. Retired Marine. He didn’t so much ho-ho-ho as order kids to tell them what they wanted and then get the heck off his lap. He asked “have you been a good little boy?” in such a way that the child felt a “no” would result in having to drop and give him 50 pushups.
My fellow Catholic sufferers from OLA always had a bit of confusion going on about Santa and the confessional. So when Santa would ask about our naughty or niceness, we’d take it as instructions to get our sins off our chest, not a yes or no question. And any kid who felt honest enough to fess up to tiny infractions like “I suppose I could have been nicer to my mom and cleaned up my room before she asked” received a stern lecture on obedience to authority that would lead the child to feel so unworthy of receiving Christmas gifts as to render the very act of asking Santa irrelevant. Usually we’d slink off with our tiny cellophane-wrapped candy cane with a firm determination to be a better person and to suck it up on Christmas morning when all we got was new socks.
But I was a teenager then and no longer afraid of Santa, though I was still kinda freaked out by Major Thackerman. On those days when the Major was off, he was replaced by Waldo Hicks. Mr. Hicks ate more candy canes that he gave away because he mistakenly thought they masked the intense scent of scotch that emanated from him. Waldo was, of course, an alcoholic. But back then we would just say he drank. He was a happy drunk, not a maudlin one, so his ho-ho-ho was genuine. As was his red nose. And, unlike our retired Marine, Waldo needed no padding.
Children weren’t afraid of Waldo the way they were with the Major. And the Waldo Santa as fun. He told silly knock-knock jokes and bad riddles and laughed a lot. Sure he once got in trouble for telling Billy Morrison that he deserved the 10-speed bike he wanted because Billy’s mom was a fine-looking woman. But hey, the kids liked him and he fit the suit.
So there I was, mostly mortified by the costume. Working with General Patton and Foster Brooks. It was my job to stand by Santa’s throne and help the kids on and off his lap, helping to position them correctly so that Sandy (photography elf) could get the requisite shot of terrified kid meeting Saint Nick. Oh yes, and I handed out candy canes.
It was quite an education, I must say. Mostly cementing my conviction that I had no maternal instincts and never, ever, ever wanted to have kids. All that screaming and crying. The ear-splitting shrill cries that only kids can achieve.
But there was one perk to the job and that was working the Brightman’s employee Christmas party.
The best thing about it was being in on it when the employees, exhausted by a long season of long hours and crazy customers, got looped on the contents of an open bar and spilled their secrets to our crazy Santas.
For that party, Waldo was always in the chair because (between you and me) the Brightman’s were just as terrified of the Major as the kids were. (Antlhough the major was always invited.) But the combination of drunken Santa and drunken adults telling him their wishes was ripe for blackmail material. Too bad I didn’t take notes.
There was Mrs. Linker, who managed the cosmetics department, asking for a date with James Garner. (Who knew she had a thing for Rockford?) And Mr. Leary of the sporting goods floor who said he wanted season’s tickets to the 49ers and a date with Mrs. Linker. (Sadly, Mr. Leary looked nothing like James Garner.)
Marian Franklin, sister of my Chemistry teacher, asked Santa for naughty underwear in a voice that made poor Waldo blush under his beard. (I later learned that Miss Franklin and Waldo had a thing going on.)
In between tipsy wishes, Waldo refreshed himself from his thermos of “coffee,” which amused me because there was an open bar and he was still hiding his liquor. And since I didn’t have to do much that night but stand around in that stupid elf suit, I was able to raid the dessert table for chocolate éclairs and buttery Christmas cookies.
My friend Sean was working that year in the men’s department and aside from deriving years of inside jokes about how I look in red and green felt with a pointy hat, having him at the party was golden. The rent-a-bartender was pretty lax about IDs so Sean and I got pretty hammered as well. And with free food, a DJ, and endless freedom to mock all the people we’d had to put up with over the past two months, the night was pretty damned fun.
Until Major Santa realized we’d been hitting the free booze. Unsurprisingly, a hard-assed retired Marine had little patience for underage drinking. “I want your names,” he commanded in tones that booked no question. But hey, I never was good with authority.
“You jerk,” I said, “I’ve been working next to you for two months now and you don’t even know my name?”
And then Sean, never one to leave well enough alone, felt compelled to add. “I think you mean Major Jerk.”
At which point, we both ran.
The next day I burned the elf costume. When I had recovered from my hangover, that is.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: Busing Tables for God
Our Lady of Angels, like most churches, was constantly having fundraisers. Monday night bingo was a staple and my dad was the caller for many years. The annual Fall Carnival. Selling Christmas seals. Selling candy bars. Selling Christmas trees. Car washes.
And, of course, food.
The St. Patrick’s Day corned beef & cabbage dinner.
The 4th of July pancake breakfast.
The Columbus Day spaghetti dinner.
The end of Fall Carnival bar-b-que.
The Easter brunch.
I swear I spent my entire childhood waiting tables. Because, of course, all the kids were free labor.
The parents did all the cooking, of course, but us kids got roped in for everything else. We swept and cleaned the cafeteria. We set up the tables. We made centerpieces and laid out silverware and glasses. We took tickets. And we schlepped food for hours. Delivering endless plates of food to people who were used to dealing with actual waiters and waitresses and expected us to behave in kind.
We cleared the dirties. Brought coffee and dessert. Fetched and carried. And hated every minute of it. We grumbled about child labor laws and wondered if this would cut our time in Purgatory. But we were not allowed to back out. For days before these events every Catholic kids all over Silver Creek would come down with mysterious illnesses. A combination of flu-like symptoms and scurvy. Perhaps gout. Maybe a touch of the plague.
But their heartless parents would accept nothing less than loss of limb as an excuse to get out of serving duty. In spite of our protestations and our no-doubt wildly contagious illness would infect the entire population of Silver Creek, mothers would deliver us to the cafeteria on time and tell us to behave ourselves.
We’d say goodbye our families with a note of “I’ll never see you again as I’m going off to be a Catholic martyr since serving spaghetti to the pious is just the same as being burnt at the stake” and off we’d go to do our duty. Sadly the parents never gave us the goodbyes our sad state deserved and we were left with the feeling that they didn’t actually care about us.
Sister Luke always seemed to be in charge of the children’s waiter corps and would check our names off on an ancient clipboard. Then she’d hand us aprons so big we’d have to fold them over three or four times so we wouldn’t trip on them. Then she’d give us a crash course in how to deliver food (“crash” being the operative word as someone always managed to drop an entire tray of whatever the night’s meal was) and set us loose.
The parental cooking staff always seemed to be made up of the bossiest people in the parish. Looking back I’m sure they were exhausted by the weeks of planning and days of cooking. But as a child they were something out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and we lived in fear of being noticed. God forbid you should actually make eye contact with one, they’d take that as free reign to make you their personal child slave and you’d spend the rest of the night being ordered about by Mrs. Cruson or Mrs. Peterson.
Consequently the children of OLA were notorious for their bad posture as we all developed a habit of looking at the floor and not actually at anyone. Being repeatedly told to “stand up straight” was better than having Mr. Freire say “You! More garlic bread on the table by the Virgin Mary.” (Invariably your personal slave driver called you “you.” On the nights of fundraiser dinners, every child became “You.” We even had name badges on our aprons. But the cooks were too busy slicing and stirring to read.
I remember one night, I think it was the corned beef & cabbage dinner, when You McKay, You Carpenter, You Folsom and I were on salad duty. We’d walk around the drafty room with huge wooden bowls of salad. These things were the size of taiko drums and weighed a ton. And they were filled with a gourmet mix of iceberg lettuce and an oil and vinegar dressing that slopped over the rim and stained our aprons with a pink tinge. In the middle of serving one us hapless kids, I think it was Marty Carpenter (Sorry, “You” Carpenter) tripped over an untied shoelace and sprayed salad and dressing over half of the women’s club table. There were screams. There was iceberg in the bouffant. And there was Father Sheehey throwing napkins into the fray and muttering “Jesus, Mary, and all the saints!” repeatedly under his breath.
The background accompaniment to all this chaos was the song stylings of Tony Cavalerro and the Cavaliers.
How do I describe them?
Well, “bad” pretty much sums it up. But they really achieved impressive nuances of bad. First off Tony C (as he liked to be called) couldn’t sing. But he insisted on belting out “Volare” every single show. Followed by “That’s Amore” and, of course, “Volare.” No, that’s not a typo. He always sang it twice. Tony C always wanted to be Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Vic Damone. But he was more like the sound I’ve always pictured a cow made when stuck in them mud.
Adding to the merriment was the Cavaliers. I think the rule was if you owned an instrument you could be a Cavalier. Didn’t matter if you could play it. Mattered less if your instrument went with the rest of the band. So at any one time the Cavaliers included an accordion, drums, guitar, violin, trumpet, French horn, bagpipes, triangle, more drums, clarinet, cello, dulcimer, drums, another accordion, tuba, and marimba. We lived in fear of the Cavaliers.
The only good thing about them is that about the third rendition of “Volare,” people actually hope the child waiters spill salad dressing down their dresses so they’ll have an excuse to leave early.
Our Lady of Angels, like most churches, was constantly having fundraisers. Monday night bingo was a staple and my dad was the caller for many years. The annual Fall Carnival. Selling Christmas seals. Selling candy bars. Selling Christmas trees. Car washes.
And, of course, food.
The St. Patrick’s Day corned beef & cabbage dinner.
The 4th of July pancake breakfast.
The Columbus Day spaghetti dinner.
The end of Fall Carnival bar-b-que.
The Easter brunch.
I swear I spent my entire childhood waiting tables. Because, of course, all the kids were free labor.
The parents did all the cooking, of course, but us kids got roped in for everything else. We swept and cleaned the cafeteria. We set up the tables. We made centerpieces and laid out silverware and glasses. We took tickets. And we schlepped food for hours. Delivering endless plates of food to people who were used to dealing with actual waiters and waitresses and expected us to behave in kind.
We cleared the dirties. Brought coffee and dessert. Fetched and carried. And hated every minute of it. We grumbled about child labor laws and wondered if this would cut our time in Purgatory. But we were not allowed to back out. For days before these events every Catholic kids all over Silver Creek would come down with mysterious illnesses. A combination of flu-like symptoms and scurvy. Perhaps gout. Maybe a touch of the plague.
But their heartless parents would accept nothing less than loss of limb as an excuse to get out of serving duty. In spite of our protestations and our no-doubt wildly contagious illness would infect the entire population of Silver Creek, mothers would deliver us to the cafeteria on time and tell us to behave ourselves.
We’d say goodbye our families with a note of “I’ll never see you again as I’m going off to be a Catholic martyr since serving spaghetti to the pious is just the same as being burnt at the stake” and off we’d go to do our duty. Sadly the parents never gave us the goodbyes our sad state deserved and we were left with the feeling that they didn’t actually care about us.
Sister Luke always seemed to be in charge of the children’s waiter corps and would check our names off on an ancient clipboard. Then she’d hand us aprons so big we’d have to fold them over three or four times so we wouldn’t trip on them. Then she’d give us a crash course in how to deliver food (“crash” being the operative word as someone always managed to drop an entire tray of whatever the night’s meal was) and set us loose.
The parental cooking staff always seemed to be made up of the bossiest people in the parish. Looking back I’m sure they were exhausted by the weeks of planning and days of cooking. But as a child they were something out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and we lived in fear of being noticed. God forbid you should actually make eye contact with one, they’d take that as free reign to make you their personal child slave and you’d spend the rest of the night being ordered about by Mrs. Cruson or Mrs. Peterson.
Consequently the children of OLA were notorious for their bad posture as we all developed a habit of looking at the floor and not actually at anyone. Being repeatedly told to “stand up straight” was better than having Mr. Freire say “You! More garlic bread on the table by the Virgin Mary.” (Invariably your personal slave driver called you “you.” On the nights of fundraiser dinners, every child became “You.” We even had name badges on our aprons. But the cooks were too busy slicing and stirring to read.
I remember one night, I think it was the corned beef & cabbage dinner, when You McKay, You Carpenter, You Folsom and I were on salad duty. We’d walk around the drafty room with huge wooden bowls of salad. These things were the size of taiko drums and weighed a ton. And they were filled with a gourmet mix of iceberg lettuce and an oil and vinegar dressing that slopped over the rim and stained our aprons with a pink tinge. In the middle of serving one us hapless kids, I think it was Marty Carpenter (Sorry, “You” Carpenter) tripped over an untied shoelace and sprayed salad and dressing over half of the women’s club table. There were screams. There was iceberg in the bouffant. And there was Father Sheehey throwing napkins into the fray and muttering “Jesus, Mary, and all the saints!” repeatedly under his breath.
The background accompaniment to all this chaos was the song stylings of Tony Cavalerro and the Cavaliers.
How do I describe them?
Well, “bad” pretty much sums it up. But they really achieved impressive nuances of bad. First off Tony C (as he liked to be called) couldn’t sing. But he insisted on belting out “Volare” every single show. Followed by “That’s Amore” and, of course, “Volare.” No, that’s not a typo. He always sang it twice. Tony C always wanted to be Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Vic Damone. But he was more like the sound I’ve always pictured a cow made when stuck in them mud.
Adding to the merriment was the Cavaliers. I think the rule was if you owned an instrument you could be a Cavalier. Didn’t matter if you could play it. Mattered less if your instrument went with the rest of the band. So at any one time the Cavaliers included an accordion, drums, guitar, violin, trumpet, French horn, bagpipes, triangle, more drums, clarinet, cello, dulcimer, drums, another accordion, tuba, and marimba. We lived in fear of the Cavaliers.
The only good thing about them is that about the third rendition of “Volare,” people actually hope the child waiters spill salad dressing down their dresses so they’ll have an excuse to leave early.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Pilgrim’s Progress
In the childhood oddness of growing up in Silver Creek was the annual Thanksgiving pageant. Unlike the all-inclusive Christmas festivities where all the local churches participated, the Thanksgiving pageant was all Our Lady of Angels.
Which is weird, because the pilgrims weren’t Catholic. But Father Sheehy decided to opt it as an OLA holiday and so the pageant was born. Father Sheehy didn’t actually claim that the pilgrims were Catholic, but he did rewrite history somewhat to have them saying the Hail Mary every time someone turned around.
I was in 7th grade and really wanted to be one of the Indians. Which meant, of course, that I was cast as 4th Pilgrim from the Left. In retrospect, considering that the whole event was about as politically correct as a Nuremberg rally, I am so glad that no blackmail photos exist of me as an Indian. But back then I was pissed. The Indians had all the fun. They got to whoop around and say things like “White man need food. We give cranberry sauce.” No….really….that was in the script.
Meanwhile, as a pilgrim, my sole contribution to the event consisted of a lot of nodding as the boys had all the good lines. Other than that, nothing except an itchy costume that smelled like last year’s pilgrim and was so tight at the collar that it left a red line around my neck when I finally took it off. I also had the requisite white pilgrim hat and black shoes with buckles.
I woke up Thanksgiving day wanting nothing more than to watch the balloons in the Macy’s parade on TV and was immediately roped in to my mother’s usual holiday panic. Every year she’d by some poor turkey the size of a Volkswagen and every year she’d have no clue how long to cook it. It would be 9 am and she’d be there with her arm up a turkey butt shoving stuffing into it and telling us not to fill up on corn flakes as dinner would be early. In her mind, nobody should be allowed to eat from noon on Wednesday until Thanksgiving dinner itself. And, given her cluelessness on turkey cooking, that dinner could be anywhere from 1 pm to 10 pm, depending upon when she panicked and put the bird in. Invariably she’d look at the turkey at some point, typically two hours before she thought it would be done, and pronounce the turkey cooked. Then we’d all be shanghaied into frantically mashing potatoes, making gravy and, of course, opening a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup for the dreaded Green Bean Surprise Casserole with Canned French’s Onion Rings on Top. I lived in fear of this dish every year. I still do. Oh yes, and the last thing on the table was always canned cranberry sauce. The kind where you can see the rings of the can on it when you tip it into the dish.
That year I’d hoped pilgrim duty would get me out of KP. But the 47-pound turkey was upsetting mom’s delicate equilibrium, which meant all hands on deck. I was set to peeling potatoes – not wanting to point out to my already mad mother that we wouldn’t be boiling them for at least another four or five hours. But I was able to snag the one seat at the kitchen table that afforded a view of the TV in the living room so I did get to see Smokey the Bear float along Broadway. But I couldn’t hear the marching bands – just mom muttering to herself weird alchemy about poultry pounds, oven temps, and timing. When she was so distracted by advanced math that she couldn’t pour on the guilt, I told her I needed to get into costume and head down to the church. She nodded. I ran.
I would have preferred to put on my costume at OLA, but it was a two-people job and I’d rather get help from Kathleen or Diane rather than one of the church ladies. They always smelled like dead flowers and I was vaguely afraid of them.
Diane was looking for an excuse to get out of celery chopping (celery being the only fresh vegetable anywhere near our Thanksgiving table). So she volunteered to tie me into my pilgrim suit and walk with me to the church. But she lied about the church bit. As soon as we were out the door she dumped me to go flirt with Keith Vandersloot and I was left to walk the few blocks to the church alone. Ridiculous in my pilgrim costume.
Old people smiled. Everyone who was in school with me but not in the pageant laughed. I tried to swallow in my tight collar and found myself daydreaming of wild ad-libs during the play. I had a big crush Timmy Ryan who played the Indian chief and envisioned myself saying “Screw the Hail Mary, I’m running off with Chief Blue Eyes Like the Sky in Spring. (OK, he was just called “Indian Chief” in the program, but Timmy did have great eyes.
Mrs. Murchison was, as usual, in her garden and told me I looked just like Priscilla Alden. Which confused me because I thought she meant I looked like Vicky Templeton (the bitch), who was playing Priscilla in our show. And I looked nothing like her.
Shannon Carey was sympathetic enough to my plight to not say anything when she saw my pilgrim self walking down the street – but I did hear her laugh as I went by. And even one of Silver Creek’s police cars slowed down, perhaps making sure I wasn’t hiding a bootleg turkey under that black dress.
By the time I got to OLA I felt like an idiot and had no good thoughts about Father Sheehy, Thanksgiving and, especially, the pilgrims. The pilgrims were all idiots who didn’t know how to dress and who ruined a perfectly good day by giving us canned cranberries and making small children put on silly costumes to recite embarrassing lines.
Not even the thought of pie (Sara Lee, of course) could redeem the day for me.
But then I saw the god that was Timmy Ryan. And even though he looked wild and romantic in his Indian costume, he also seemed to be as uncomfortable as I. Our eyes met over the baptismal fount. “This is it,” I thought. “This ridiculous costume will be worth it if it finally brings Timmy and I together as we should be.” But all he said was “hey” before walking on and talking to…..Vicky Temple (the bitch).
Sigh….there’s really nothing to be thankful for when you’re in 7th grade.
In the childhood oddness of growing up in Silver Creek was the annual Thanksgiving pageant. Unlike the all-inclusive Christmas festivities where all the local churches participated, the Thanksgiving pageant was all Our Lady of Angels.
Which is weird, because the pilgrims weren’t Catholic. But Father Sheehy decided to opt it as an OLA holiday and so the pageant was born. Father Sheehy didn’t actually claim that the pilgrims were Catholic, but he did rewrite history somewhat to have them saying the Hail Mary every time someone turned around.
I was in 7th grade and really wanted to be one of the Indians. Which meant, of course, that I was cast as 4th Pilgrim from the Left. In retrospect, considering that the whole event was about as politically correct as a Nuremberg rally, I am so glad that no blackmail photos exist of me as an Indian. But back then I was pissed. The Indians had all the fun. They got to whoop around and say things like “White man need food. We give cranberry sauce.” No….really….that was in the script.
Meanwhile, as a pilgrim, my sole contribution to the event consisted of a lot of nodding as the boys had all the good lines. Other than that, nothing except an itchy costume that smelled like last year’s pilgrim and was so tight at the collar that it left a red line around my neck when I finally took it off. I also had the requisite white pilgrim hat and black shoes with buckles.
I woke up Thanksgiving day wanting nothing more than to watch the balloons in the Macy’s parade on TV and was immediately roped in to my mother’s usual holiday panic. Every year she’d by some poor turkey the size of a Volkswagen and every year she’d have no clue how long to cook it. It would be 9 am and she’d be there with her arm up a turkey butt shoving stuffing into it and telling us not to fill up on corn flakes as dinner would be early. In her mind, nobody should be allowed to eat from noon on Wednesday until Thanksgiving dinner itself. And, given her cluelessness on turkey cooking, that dinner could be anywhere from 1 pm to 10 pm, depending upon when she panicked and put the bird in. Invariably she’d look at the turkey at some point, typically two hours before she thought it would be done, and pronounce the turkey cooked. Then we’d all be shanghaied into frantically mashing potatoes, making gravy and, of course, opening a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup for the dreaded Green Bean Surprise Casserole with Canned French’s Onion Rings on Top. I lived in fear of this dish every year. I still do. Oh yes, and the last thing on the table was always canned cranberry sauce. The kind where you can see the rings of the can on it when you tip it into the dish.
That year I’d hoped pilgrim duty would get me out of KP. But the 47-pound turkey was upsetting mom’s delicate equilibrium, which meant all hands on deck. I was set to peeling potatoes – not wanting to point out to my already mad mother that we wouldn’t be boiling them for at least another four or five hours. But I was able to snag the one seat at the kitchen table that afforded a view of the TV in the living room so I did get to see Smokey the Bear float along Broadway. But I couldn’t hear the marching bands – just mom muttering to herself weird alchemy about poultry pounds, oven temps, and timing. When she was so distracted by advanced math that she couldn’t pour on the guilt, I told her I needed to get into costume and head down to the church. She nodded. I ran.
I would have preferred to put on my costume at OLA, but it was a two-people job and I’d rather get help from Kathleen or Diane rather than one of the church ladies. They always smelled like dead flowers and I was vaguely afraid of them.
Diane was looking for an excuse to get out of celery chopping (celery being the only fresh vegetable anywhere near our Thanksgiving table). So she volunteered to tie me into my pilgrim suit and walk with me to the church. But she lied about the church bit. As soon as we were out the door she dumped me to go flirt with Keith Vandersloot and I was left to walk the few blocks to the church alone. Ridiculous in my pilgrim costume.
Old people smiled. Everyone who was in school with me but not in the pageant laughed. I tried to swallow in my tight collar and found myself daydreaming of wild ad-libs during the play. I had a big crush Timmy Ryan who played the Indian chief and envisioned myself saying “Screw the Hail Mary, I’m running off with Chief Blue Eyes Like the Sky in Spring. (OK, he was just called “Indian Chief” in the program, but Timmy did have great eyes.
Mrs. Murchison was, as usual, in her garden and told me I looked just like Priscilla Alden. Which confused me because I thought she meant I looked like Vicky Templeton (the bitch), who was playing Priscilla in our show. And I looked nothing like her.
Shannon Carey was sympathetic enough to my plight to not say anything when she saw my pilgrim self walking down the street – but I did hear her laugh as I went by. And even one of Silver Creek’s police cars slowed down, perhaps making sure I wasn’t hiding a bootleg turkey under that black dress.
By the time I got to OLA I felt like an idiot and had no good thoughts about Father Sheehy, Thanksgiving and, especially, the pilgrims. The pilgrims were all idiots who didn’t know how to dress and who ruined a perfectly good day by giving us canned cranberries and making small children put on silly costumes to recite embarrassing lines.
Not even the thought of pie (Sara Lee, of course) could redeem the day for me.
But then I saw the god that was Timmy Ryan. And even though he looked wild and romantic in his Indian costume, he also seemed to be as uncomfortable as I. Our eyes met over the baptismal fount. “This is it,” I thought. “This ridiculous costume will be worth it if it finally brings Timmy and I together as we should be.” But all he said was “hey” before walking on and talking to…..Vicky Temple (the bitch).
Sigh….there’s really nothing to be thankful for when you’re in 7th grade.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Hiram House
I think every town has, or should have, a haunted house. With Halloween approaching, it seemed fitting to tell you about Silver Creek’s.
It was called the Hiram House and, sadly, it is no longer there. With typical Silver Creekian respect for the past it was torn down to build a picture-framing store. There was a movement to save it, but it was so dilapidated that it was deemed a fire hazard and, in spite of some civic spirit, there was nobody willing to fund a restoration. And, really, no point. It was just a shell. A shell with an interesting history, and some weird architecture, but beyond hope really.
Hiram House was one of the first five buildings in Silver Creek. Part of the original Spanish land grant to a man named Israel Hiram who did some dubious service and was rewarded with a plot of land in an as-yet-unnamed part of what would be California.
Hiram brought up a fat wife and some skinny cows from Mexico and started a dairy. And he built a house. It was just a square of four rooms at first. But as the dairy grew, and his fortunes along with it, he added rooms and kids at regular intervals. Eventually it was two stories with porches all around and mismatched windows. Some tall and skinny. Some arched. Two in one room. Three in another. Nothing matched and yet it all seemed to fit somehow. As if their disunity was what united the whole.
But, as with all good ghost stories, there was a tragedy. In this case an influenza epidemic that wiped out the fat wife and the numerous children. Only tough old Israel was left. He lost interest in the cows and stopped building the house and grew old and died. End of story.
But Hiram House sat there while Silver Creek grew up around it. The building falling apart. The land that the dairy was on turned into subdivisions and fast-food joints. And the old building of adobe and pine settled into lumps and ruins; an anomaly in suburbia.
As a child I lived about four blocks from Hiram House and walked past it on my way to Our Lady of Angels or the library. My friend Sean, however, lived on the same street, Hiram Road (imaginatively enough) and could see the old place from his bedroom window.
Being imaginative kids we, of course, invested the place with all sorts of specters. Not content with old Israel wandering about the place mourning the loss of his family, we came up with everything this side of Anne Boleyn wandering the place “with her head tucked underneath her arm.”
But we didn’t really believe the place was haunted. Not really. Sort of.
It was a hot August night when Sean, his elder brother Nick, and I were walking home after a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We were in high school and not afraid of anything. Certainly not walking past the Hiram House at 2 am.
We’d sort of run out of conversation by then and were just enjoying the warm night and good friends. I was walking in-between the brothers, holding Sean’s hand. Nick was whistling "The Time Warp" quietly. Then we walked past the overgrown lot where the Hiram House stood. And we saw the man.
He was pale and scrawny. Seemed to be covered in dust. And was illuminated perfectly by the blue light of the moon as he stood staring at the empty house. And I stopped. And I looked. And then we all looked. And then he turned from the house and stared at us. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. Sean, always a chicken, made a sound like a wounded spaniel and high-tailed it for home. Nick and I took off after him without thought.
And once in the safety of the Logan house, we said nothing. And we never did. Not to each other. Not to anyone else. We all three saw him and all three knew the others had seen, but it was never spoken.
About six years later Hiram House was torn down. The only reference we ever made to that night was that Sean always referred to “The Haunted Picture-Framer” as the business that moved in.
I think every town has, or should have, a haunted house. With Halloween approaching, it seemed fitting to tell you about Silver Creek’s.
It was called the Hiram House and, sadly, it is no longer there. With typical Silver Creekian respect for the past it was torn down to build a picture-framing store. There was a movement to save it, but it was so dilapidated that it was deemed a fire hazard and, in spite of some civic spirit, there was nobody willing to fund a restoration. And, really, no point. It was just a shell. A shell with an interesting history, and some weird architecture, but beyond hope really.
Hiram House was one of the first five buildings in Silver Creek. Part of the original Spanish land grant to a man named Israel Hiram who did some dubious service and was rewarded with a plot of land in an as-yet-unnamed part of what would be California.
Hiram brought up a fat wife and some skinny cows from Mexico and started a dairy. And he built a house. It was just a square of four rooms at first. But as the dairy grew, and his fortunes along with it, he added rooms and kids at regular intervals. Eventually it was two stories with porches all around and mismatched windows. Some tall and skinny. Some arched. Two in one room. Three in another. Nothing matched and yet it all seemed to fit somehow. As if their disunity was what united the whole.
But, as with all good ghost stories, there was a tragedy. In this case an influenza epidemic that wiped out the fat wife and the numerous children. Only tough old Israel was left. He lost interest in the cows and stopped building the house and grew old and died. End of story.
But Hiram House sat there while Silver Creek grew up around it. The building falling apart. The land that the dairy was on turned into subdivisions and fast-food joints. And the old building of adobe and pine settled into lumps and ruins; an anomaly in suburbia.
As a child I lived about four blocks from Hiram House and walked past it on my way to Our Lady of Angels or the library. My friend Sean, however, lived on the same street, Hiram Road (imaginatively enough) and could see the old place from his bedroom window.
Being imaginative kids we, of course, invested the place with all sorts of specters. Not content with old Israel wandering about the place mourning the loss of his family, we came up with everything this side of Anne Boleyn wandering the place “with her head tucked underneath her arm.”
But we didn’t really believe the place was haunted. Not really. Sort of.
It was a hot August night when Sean, his elder brother Nick, and I were walking home after a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We were in high school and not afraid of anything. Certainly not walking past the Hiram House at 2 am.
We’d sort of run out of conversation by then and were just enjoying the warm night and good friends. I was walking in-between the brothers, holding Sean’s hand. Nick was whistling "The Time Warp" quietly. Then we walked past the overgrown lot where the Hiram House stood. And we saw the man.
He was pale and scrawny. Seemed to be covered in dust. And was illuminated perfectly by the blue light of the moon as he stood staring at the empty house. And I stopped. And I looked. And then we all looked. And then he turned from the house and stared at us. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. Sean, always a chicken, made a sound like a wounded spaniel and high-tailed it for home. Nick and I took off after him without thought.
And once in the safety of the Logan house, we said nothing. And we never did. Not to each other. Not to anyone else. We all three saw him and all three knew the others had seen, but it was never spoken.
About six years later Hiram House was torn down. The only reference we ever made to that night was that Sean always referred to “The Haunted Picture-Framer” as the business that moved in.
Friday, September 03, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Silver Creek Series
As mentioned earlier, not much happened in Silver Creek in the summertime. A high school musical. Band concerts at the park. Fireworks. But the big social event of the season was the Garcia vs. Fire Department softball game.
It started when I was in 4th grade. Mr. Garcia, who owned a local insurance business was best friends with Chief Nettles, who was then chief of the fire department. After years of mini golf games, pub trivia nights, and one memorable donkey baseball event they decided on full on softball.
If you were a friend or relation of the Garcia family, you were a Garcia Giant. If you were an employee or family member of the Silver Creek Fire Department, you were a Hydrant.
Since Jessie Garcia was one of my dearest friends, I was always on the Garcia team and was considered something of a secret weapon. You see, don’t tell anyone, but I could hit anything you threw at me. Fast balls. Sliders. Curves. Didn’t matter, I’d smack ‘em out. I could be counted on for at least a single and usually a double or triple every at bat..
That was the good news. The bad was that I couldn’t field to save my life. I’d see a ball coming at me and all I could focus on was the word “Spaulding” coming ever closer to my forehead. Twice games were stopped while the EMTs (on the Fire Dept Team) checked me our for possible concussions. Once asking me who was president. When I refused to say “Reagan” he passed me as being OK. After twice being bonked out of left field they took me out of the game, debated the merit of the designated hitter, and put me in from time to time.
After a hotly contested game there were hot dogs and lemonade, beer and bratworst, and lots of lying on who played better.
To this day I still swear you can read “Spaulding” on the top of my head . Husband says it isn’t obvious if I comb my hair right.
As mentioned earlier, not much happened in Silver Creek in the summertime. A high school musical. Band concerts at the park. Fireworks. But the big social event of the season was the Garcia vs. Fire Department softball game.
It started when I was in 4th grade. Mr. Garcia, who owned a local insurance business was best friends with Chief Nettles, who was then chief of the fire department. After years of mini golf games, pub trivia nights, and one memorable donkey baseball event they decided on full on softball.
If you were a friend or relation of the Garcia family, you were a Garcia Giant. If you were an employee or family member of the Silver Creek Fire Department, you were a Hydrant.
Since Jessie Garcia was one of my dearest friends, I was always on the Garcia team and was considered something of a secret weapon. You see, don’t tell anyone, but I could hit anything you threw at me. Fast balls. Sliders. Curves. Didn’t matter, I’d smack ‘em out. I could be counted on for at least a single and usually a double or triple every at bat..
That was the good news. The bad was that I couldn’t field to save my life. I’d see a ball coming at me and all I could focus on was the word “Spaulding” coming ever closer to my forehead. Twice games were stopped while the EMTs (on the Fire Dept Team) checked me our for possible concussions. Once asking me who was president. When I refused to say “Reagan” he passed me as being OK. After twice being bonked out of left field they took me out of the game, debated the merit of the designated hitter, and put me in from time to time.
After a hotly contested game there were hot dogs and lemonade, beer and bratworst, and lots of lying on who played better.
To this day I still swear you can read “Spaulding” on the top of my head . Husband says it isn’t obvious if I comb my hair right.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Girl Who Was Lost
Silver Creek was, and is, a safe town. Growing up we had little crime, and what there was wasn’t serious. Cars being broken into. A little vandalism. That sort of thing. But in 1976 we had a murder. And it hit pretty close to home.
Paula Bradley was only two years ahead of me in high school. She was a cheerleader and sang alto in the choir. She lived two blocks away on Alder Street and I used to see her in the evenings walking a very yappy beagle.
She dated the brother of my best friend, Sean. She was whatever the female equivalent of an Eagle Scout was and every year my family bought Thin Mints from her.
She had long brown hair, parted in the middle, and so straight it looked like she ironed it in the morning. She had blue eyes and a small constellation of freckles on her cheeks. She collected blown glass animals and shy male admirers. And when she sneezed it sounded like a cartoon character.
Paula was one of five girls of similar appearance who was killed between 1975 and 1977. She was last seen leaving choir practice at school and was found three days later in what was then an empty field behind the local Mormon church.
Back then there was more privacy for grief. The news didn’t push microphones into the faces of devastated parents, and the papers didn’t publish all the grisly details. All we knew was that Paula was dead and we were stunned.
Silver Creek High was small enough that pretty much everyone knew her, at least by sight. So we shared a quiet, shocked sorrow that, in retrospect, caused irreparable changes in my town. We didn’t have grief counselors back then, no canceling of classes for the day while we dealt with the news. In fact there wasn’t even an official announcement. It was just a word whispered between classes in increasingly quiet hallways. I’m sure the parents knew a lot more than they told any of us – but we who knew her, even slightly, were kept mostly in the dark.
There was no public assembly. No huge, publicized funeral. Those who were close friends went to a service – those who were merely acquaintances stayed away because it seemed intrusive back then to go to the funeral of someone you barely knew. Back then sorrow required a degree of familiarity. Today if someone in a high school dies the entire school, whether acquainted or not, shows up in some TV-covered service; usually wearing homemade buttons with photos of the deceased. But in 1976 it wasn’t seen as support for the family, it was seen as mere vulgar curiosity to attend unless you were related or deeply close.
So we had no acknowledgement of her. She was a solo photo on the back page of the 1976 yearbook. The only “official” sign of her loss at school was a dramatically empty chair in the alto section at the year-end choir concert. And by silent agreement of the manners of the mid-sixties, she was a subject you didn’t talk about because it was scary or rude or mean.
She was, both physically and emotionally, lost.
But she was never really forgotten. And her killer was never found.
Silver Creek was, and is, a safe town. Growing up we had little crime, and what there was wasn’t serious. Cars being broken into. A little vandalism. That sort of thing. But in 1976 we had a murder. And it hit pretty close to home.
Paula Bradley was only two years ahead of me in high school. She was a cheerleader and sang alto in the choir. She lived two blocks away on Alder Street and I used to see her in the evenings walking a very yappy beagle.
She dated the brother of my best friend, Sean. She was whatever the female equivalent of an Eagle Scout was and every year my family bought Thin Mints from her.
She had long brown hair, parted in the middle, and so straight it looked like she ironed it in the morning. She had blue eyes and a small constellation of freckles on her cheeks. She collected blown glass animals and shy male admirers. And when she sneezed it sounded like a cartoon character.
Paula was one of five girls of similar appearance who was killed between 1975 and 1977. She was last seen leaving choir practice at school and was found three days later in what was then an empty field behind the local Mormon church.
Back then there was more privacy for grief. The news didn’t push microphones into the faces of devastated parents, and the papers didn’t publish all the grisly details. All we knew was that Paula was dead and we were stunned.
Silver Creek High was small enough that pretty much everyone knew her, at least by sight. So we shared a quiet, shocked sorrow that, in retrospect, caused irreparable changes in my town. We didn’t have grief counselors back then, no canceling of classes for the day while we dealt with the news. In fact there wasn’t even an official announcement. It was just a word whispered between classes in increasingly quiet hallways. I’m sure the parents knew a lot more than they told any of us – but we who knew her, even slightly, were kept mostly in the dark.
There was no public assembly. No huge, publicized funeral. Those who were close friends went to a service – those who were merely acquaintances stayed away because it seemed intrusive back then to go to the funeral of someone you barely knew. Back then sorrow required a degree of familiarity. Today if someone in a high school dies the entire school, whether acquainted or not, shows up in some TV-covered service; usually wearing homemade buttons with photos of the deceased. But in 1976 it wasn’t seen as support for the family, it was seen as mere vulgar curiosity to attend unless you were related or deeply close.
So we had no acknowledgement of her. She was a solo photo on the back page of the 1976 yearbook. The only “official” sign of her loss at school was a dramatically empty chair in the alto section at the year-end choir concert. And by silent agreement of the manners of the mid-sixties, she was a subject you didn’t talk about because it was scary or rude or mean.
She was, both physically and emotionally, lost.
But she was never really forgotten. And her killer was never found.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Party of the Century
Screw Truman Capote and his star-studded epic, the REAL party of the century took place in Silver Creek at the home of Riley and Kat Logan.
The Logan’s was my second home, and Sean Logan my “brother from another mother.” No matter how dull things were at my house, Casa de Logan was always happening. Impromptu croquet tournaments. Games of Risk complete with fake military uniforms and European accents. Homemade cookies, warm from the oven. And the parties. Every month an epic party.
Riley and Kat met in an acting class at university and never lost that delicious spirit of play. They passed it on to their kids and, in some way, to the whole town through their parties. They were just evenings, they were events. You had to work, or you weren’t invited back. So in some ways Silver Creek's social schedule was dictated to by Kit and RIley's monthly inventions.
Take something simple, for instance, Chinese Night. For weeks every Chinese cookbook in town was poured over while people prowled secondhand stores for suitable costumes. And when the night game we were surrounded by Mandarins and slaves, peasants and paupers. I dressed entirely in gray and went at the Great Wall. Sean dressed in red as the little red book. We ate delicious crispy-fried duck and had a man-johng tournament. The whole night was illuminated by paper lanterns and the sounds Chinese music played on the Logan’s excellent hi-fi. The Logan's even insisted on teaching us an easy folk dance and we all slithered and slide underneath their paper lantens to the sounds of pipes and gongs.
Some parties, however, took a great deal of trouble. The gam-themed party threw many into confusion until they got into the gist of it and began creating giant papier mache chess set heads or painting playing card for costumes. We had shuttlecocks dancing with bowling pins and something of a scandal when a backgammon board was found in the corner with a hungry-hungry-hippo. My little green army man was no match for the large top hat (Sean's favorite Monopoly token) but we both laughed at his parents as Ken and Barbie. Scarily so.
The most famous party of all, though, was the celebrity party. The rule was simple: no one allowed in unless escorted by someone with a famous name. That’s it. You didn’t have to actually bring a famous person, just the name. Once word got out, one of our local dentists, John Wayne, got a lot more business and was snapped up quick. Consultation with Kit Logan expanded our horizons when she allowed for spelling differences. Thus Glen Miller (from the local Ford dealership) and Vivien Lee (of Lee’s Lovely Nails) were both permissible.
People began looking through the yellow pages and rifling through old year books. Total strangers were cold called with invitations to parties with people they didn’t know. And a surprising number said yes. But for most of is, it was an uphill battle
Eventually Kit relented and allowed famous fictional characters to be in, so Perry Mason and Peter Parker showed up on the guest list. The Logan’s next-door neighbors had it easiest of all. Dr. Raymond Charles went as himself, Ray Charles and his wife brought their Doberman, Prince Charles. They even brought a letter from their vet addressed to Prince Charles to prove his name. Kit accepted the letter but banished Prince back to his own home, being familiar with the dog’s tendency to pee when excited.
I was really struggling until the day before the party when I got a flat tire. I went to A-1 Auto Parts for a new one and Mr. Carson, who I’d known forever, waited on me. But it wasn’t until I saw him standing there in his black and white striped uniform shirt with “John” stitched onto the name patch that I realized all these years I had been buying oil and wiper blades from Johnny Carson. He quickly became my date for the party.
It was an amazing night. Betty Davis danced with John Adams. A female Jackie Robinson flirted with a male Dale Evans. Our youngest guest was a 4 month old Bruce Lee and our oldest at 90+something Tina Turner. We had Paul Newman, Jim Morrison, Mary Martin, and Debbie Reynolds. A few of the more obscure “celebrities” had to prove not only their name but also their fame. My father brought a man and an encyclopedia to probe that Robert Borden was prime minister of Canada in the 1920s. Thanks to Brittanica, Robert Borden (dad’s insurance guy) got them both in.
Everyone from George Patton to Martha Washington was there, and had a fabulous time. And the great thing is nobody was in costume, so you had no idea who they were. You’d just walk up and introduce yourself and find yourself talking to Sammy Davis or Jackie Kennedy. That night Kit posted a huge piece of white paper on the wall of her living room and asked all the guests to sign in. If it had been a real gathering, this document would be worth a fortune. She let John Adams (an orthodontist) sign first, and then everyone else dug in. Even Mother Theresa from OLA came over for a bit and got into the spirit of things, She signed right next to Pat Garett,credited with killing Billy the Kid.
It was an epic party, one talked about for months afterwards, People bragged about their "celebrity" others laughed at their 15-minute of fame. But it was defiitely one for the books. To this day, however, the thing that never fails to make me laugh is the one guy in town who, try as he might, could not find anybody with a famous name to take to the party. His name was Harry Potter.
Screw Truman Capote and his star-studded epic, the REAL party of the century took place in Silver Creek at the home of Riley and Kat Logan.
The Logan’s was my second home, and Sean Logan my “brother from another mother.” No matter how dull things were at my house, Casa de Logan was always happening. Impromptu croquet tournaments. Games of Risk complete with fake military uniforms and European accents. Homemade cookies, warm from the oven. And the parties. Every month an epic party.
Riley and Kat met in an acting class at university and never lost that delicious spirit of play. They passed it on to their kids and, in some way, to the whole town through their parties. They were just evenings, they were events. You had to work, or you weren’t invited back. So in some ways Silver Creek's social schedule was dictated to by Kit and RIley's monthly inventions.
Take something simple, for instance, Chinese Night. For weeks every Chinese cookbook in town was poured over while people prowled secondhand stores for suitable costumes. And when the night game we were surrounded by Mandarins and slaves, peasants and paupers. I dressed entirely in gray and went at the Great Wall. Sean dressed in red as the little red book. We ate delicious crispy-fried duck and had a man-johng tournament. The whole night was illuminated by paper lanterns and the sounds Chinese music played on the Logan’s excellent hi-fi. The Logan's even insisted on teaching us an easy folk dance and we all slithered and slide underneath their paper lantens to the sounds of pipes and gongs.
Some parties, however, took a great deal of trouble. The gam-themed party threw many into confusion until they got into the gist of it and began creating giant papier mache chess set heads or painting playing card for costumes. We had shuttlecocks dancing with bowling pins and something of a scandal when a backgammon board was found in the corner with a hungry-hungry-hippo. My little green army man was no match for the large top hat (Sean's favorite Monopoly token) but we both laughed at his parents as Ken and Barbie. Scarily so.
The most famous party of all, though, was the celebrity party. The rule was simple: no one allowed in unless escorted by someone with a famous name. That’s it. You didn’t have to actually bring a famous person, just the name. Once word got out, one of our local dentists, John Wayne, got a lot more business and was snapped up quick. Consultation with Kit Logan expanded our horizons when she allowed for spelling differences. Thus Glen Miller (from the local Ford dealership) and Vivien Lee (of Lee’s Lovely Nails) were both permissible.
People began looking through the yellow pages and rifling through old year books. Total strangers were cold called with invitations to parties with people they didn’t know. And a surprising number said yes. But for most of is, it was an uphill battle
Eventually Kit relented and allowed famous fictional characters to be in, so Perry Mason and Peter Parker showed up on the guest list. The Logan’s next-door neighbors had it easiest of all. Dr. Raymond Charles went as himself, Ray Charles and his wife brought their Doberman, Prince Charles. They even brought a letter from their vet addressed to Prince Charles to prove his name. Kit accepted the letter but banished Prince back to his own home, being familiar with the dog’s tendency to pee when excited.
I was really struggling until the day before the party when I got a flat tire. I went to A-1 Auto Parts for a new one and Mr. Carson, who I’d known forever, waited on me. But it wasn’t until I saw him standing there in his black and white striped uniform shirt with “John” stitched onto the name patch that I realized all these years I had been buying oil and wiper blades from Johnny Carson. He quickly became my date for the party.
It was an amazing night. Betty Davis danced with John Adams. A female Jackie Robinson flirted with a male Dale Evans. Our youngest guest was a 4 month old Bruce Lee and our oldest at 90+something Tina Turner. We had Paul Newman, Jim Morrison, Mary Martin, and Debbie Reynolds. A few of the more obscure “celebrities” had to prove not only their name but also their fame. My father brought a man and an encyclopedia to probe that Robert Borden was prime minister of Canada in the 1920s. Thanks to Brittanica, Robert Borden (dad’s insurance guy) got them both in.
Everyone from George Patton to Martha Washington was there, and had a fabulous time. And the great thing is nobody was in costume, so you had no idea who they were. You’d just walk up and introduce yourself and find yourself talking to Sammy Davis or Jackie Kennedy. That night Kit posted a huge piece of white paper on the wall of her living room and asked all the guests to sign in. If it had been a real gathering, this document would be worth a fortune. She let John Adams (an orthodontist) sign first, and then everyone else dug in. Even Mother Theresa from OLA came over for a bit and got into the spirit of things, She signed right next to Pat Garett,credited with killing Billy the Kid.
It was an epic party, one talked about for months afterwards, People bragged about their "celebrity" others laughed at their 15-minute of fame. But it was defiitely one for the books. To this day, however, the thing that never fails to make me laugh is the one guy in town who, try as he might, could not find anybody with a famous name to take to the party. His name was Harry Potter.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Summer Musical
There was never much to do in Silver Creek in the summertime. Growing up, I mean. It was, and is, hardly a hotbed of excitement and without school the days tended to be a bit dull.
When I was in high school the first week of summer was always heaven. Sleeping until noon. Reading whatever I wanted, rather than what I had to. Endless TV, root beer popsicles, and hanging out. But by the second and third week I was usually so bored that I actually cleaned my room.
But between my freshman and sophomore years the high school instituted the summer musical program. It was actually a summer school class, for which we got three whole credits. But it lasted all day, was insanely fun, and resulted in two whole performances of a badly produced, directed, and choreographed musical that the entire town went to.
The choice was South Pacific. All the sailors were 15 and hearing them sing “Nothing Like a Dame” was nothing like a sailor. All the nurses were taller than the sailors. Our male lead was a tenor instead of a baritone, which made all the duets sound like two female cats competing over the sexiest tom in town. And the female lead weighed close to 220.
The “uniforms” were salvaged from local thrift shops or made by local moms and made the US Navy look like a ragtag bunch of munchkins. The pit orchestra had no string section and fourteen trumpets. Every overture sounded like a fanfare. People kept expecting royalty to show up.
But it was so much fun we didn’t care.
Silver Creek High has an impressive auditorium, allowing for huge sets and lighting. Of course we had neither, but we had the space for them. And when not plunging head-first into rehearsals, we’d all sit on the stage painting flats and making a huge cardboard cannon of which we were so insanely proud that it was in the background of every scene – even the interiors.
We’d throw open the huge doors big enough to drive a truck through and let the warm wind blow across the stage while we sang our little hearts out to the hard work of our one and only rehearsal pianist. Mr. Lang, the choir director, stepped up to take the helm. The fact that he had no dance experience at all made the choreography consist of lots of walking aimlessly around the stage and making huge arm gestures as if everyone was directing everyone else to a different part of the island.
Rehearsals started every morning at 10 am and we’d all show up early because we were so darned bored. Since it was technically a class, we’d have to line up on the stage while Mr. Lang took role, then he’d actually leave – go have breakfast at Missy’s Diner – and leave us with the run of the place. We’d play tag in the curtains, do each other’s faces with outlandish paint in the make-up room, and eat our PB&Js. Then Mr. Lang would stroll back in at about 1 and we’d finally get some work done. Until 3. Then he’d leave again. But still we hung on. The custodians finally kicked us out at about 5. You’d never seen such a dedicated cast. Nobody wanted to leave.
There were romances, with the kind of instant, desperate passion only horny 16 year olds can achieve. There were huge, teary fights worthy of any Opera diva. And there was absolutely no talent whatsoever.
Actually, that isn’t true. The girl who plays Bloody Mary (who sings the lovely “Bali Hai”) really had a gorgeous voice. Her name was Rebecca Su and she was the shiest girl ever. She never talked to anyone and the only reason anybody knew she could sing is because she had a horrid stage mother who paid for punch sold at intermission in exchange for her daughter getting a solo. Rebecca, poor thing, would sit in the fourth row reading Harlequin romances and not speaking to a sole until called upon to burst forth with her song. Then the stage would resound with the one good voice in the cast, before she’d leave and go back to “Love’s Captive”. We all tried to be friends with her, but she never friended back.
At the end of the summer, giddy with anticipation, we opened on Friday and closed on Saturday. Every bored mother and father, and every reluctant sibling in town had to go to one of the performances. There was, of course, thunderous applause from indulgent parents and a town starving for anything to do in the heat of a boring summer.
And then it was over. The place we could go. The something we could do. And we went back to our sleeping until noons and our root beer popsicles.
To this day, whenever South Pacific is on TV, I’ll watch it and think of our 15 year old sailors and overweight nurses. And wonder how the hell we got away with anybody left in the audience at the end of the show.
It’s a pretty good indication of city-wide boredom when a town will sit through such dribble because it’s better than nothing. Ah…show business.
There was never much to do in Silver Creek in the summertime. Growing up, I mean. It was, and is, hardly a hotbed of excitement and without school the days tended to be a bit dull.
When I was in high school the first week of summer was always heaven. Sleeping until noon. Reading whatever I wanted, rather than what I had to. Endless TV, root beer popsicles, and hanging out. But by the second and third week I was usually so bored that I actually cleaned my room.
But between my freshman and sophomore years the high school instituted the summer musical program. It was actually a summer school class, for which we got three whole credits. But it lasted all day, was insanely fun, and resulted in two whole performances of a badly produced, directed, and choreographed musical that the entire town went to.
The choice was South Pacific. All the sailors were 15 and hearing them sing “Nothing Like a Dame” was nothing like a sailor. All the nurses were taller than the sailors. Our male lead was a tenor instead of a baritone, which made all the duets sound like two female cats competing over the sexiest tom in town. And the female lead weighed close to 220.
The “uniforms” were salvaged from local thrift shops or made by local moms and made the US Navy look like a ragtag bunch of munchkins. The pit orchestra had no string section and fourteen trumpets. Every overture sounded like a fanfare. People kept expecting royalty to show up.
But it was so much fun we didn’t care.
Silver Creek High has an impressive auditorium, allowing for huge sets and lighting. Of course we had neither, but we had the space for them. And when not plunging head-first into rehearsals, we’d all sit on the stage painting flats and making a huge cardboard cannon of which we were so insanely proud that it was in the background of every scene – even the interiors.
We’d throw open the huge doors big enough to drive a truck through and let the warm wind blow across the stage while we sang our little hearts out to the hard work of our one and only rehearsal pianist. Mr. Lang, the choir director, stepped up to take the helm. The fact that he had no dance experience at all made the choreography consist of lots of walking aimlessly around the stage and making huge arm gestures as if everyone was directing everyone else to a different part of the island.
Rehearsals started every morning at 10 am and we’d all show up early because we were so darned bored. Since it was technically a class, we’d have to line up on the stage while Mr. Lang took role, then he’d actually leave – go have breakfast at Missy’s Diner – and leave us with the run of the place. We’d play tag in the curtains, do each other’s faces with outlandish paint in the make-up room, and eat our PB&Js. Then Mr. Lang would stroll back in at about 1 and we’d finally get some work done. Until 3. Then he’d leave again. But still we hung on. The custodians finally kicked us out at about 5. You’d never seen such a dedicated cast. Nobody wanted to leave.
There were romances, with the kind of instant, desperate passion only horny 16 year olds can achieve. There were huge, teary fights worthy of any Opera diva. And there was absolutely no talent whatsoever.
Actually, that isn’t true. The girl who plays Bloody Mary (who sings the lovely “Bali Hai”) really had a gorgeous voice. Her name was Rebecca Su and she was the shiest girl ever. She never talked to anyone and the only reason anybody knew she could sing is because she had a horrid stage mother who paid for punch sold at intermission in exchange for her daughter getting a solo. Rebecca, poor thing, would sit in the fourth row reading Harlequin romances and not speaking to a sole until called upon to burst forth with her song. Then the stage would resound with the one good voice in the cast, before she’d leave and go back to “Love’s Captive”. We all tried to be friends with her, but she never friended back.
At the end of the summer, giddy with anticipation, we opened on Friday and closed on Saturday. Every bored mother and father, and every reluctant sibling in town had to go to one of the performances. There was, of course, thunderous applause from indulgent parents and a town starving for anything to do in the heat of a boring summer.
And then it was over. The place we could go. The something we could do. And we went back to our sleeping until noons and our root beer popsicles.
To this day, whenever South Pacific is on TV, I’ll watch it and think of our 15 year old sailors and overweight nurses. And wonder how the hell we got away with anybody left in the audience at the end of the show.
It’s a pretty good indication of city-wide boredom when a town will sit through such dribble because it’s better than nothing. Ah…show business.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: Sister Cities
When it comes to historical importance, Silver Creek has none. We couldn’t even borrow any glory.
For a while in the 70s and 80s it was a big thing to become a sister city with someplace distant and/or impressive. Santa Pura, which is just to the south of Silver Creek, is sister city with some ancient village in China. In their central park they have a red pagoda as a sort of gazebo. It’s painted with fierce gold dragons and fat chrysanthemum blooms. Rather lovely, really, especially in the spring when the area around it is rich with irises and tulips.
To the north we have Lombards, which has as its sister city a distinguished Flemish town with an unpronounceable name. To show its fondness, the village gave to the town a gorgeous suit of armor worn by some medieval soldier with a truly historic codpiece. The armor is a marvelous piece of workmanship with bronzed vines and a truly panic-inducing helmet with tiny eye slits. There’s even a shield with a strutting red rooster prancing on a field of blue and white chevrons. The armor has pride of place in Lombards library and is actually something of a tourist attraction, being one of the finest pieces of Flemish armory in the U.S.
And then there’s Silver Creek and its sister city…Hoboken, New Jersey. God help us. Yup, that’s the best we could do. The gift from our sister city? A framed black and white photograph of three members of the Hoboken City Council shaking hands with three members of the Silver Creek City Council. Two of the three New Jerseyians later disappeared under mysterious circumstances and one was associated with that grim phrase, “dental records.”
We also had an autographed photo of Frank Sinatra inscribed “to the Hoboken of California.” God, what a phrase! An we had Sinatra’s movie camera. Or at least what purported to be. We knew because there was a blue and white Dyno label with “Sinatra” on it. There was no film, just an old Super 8 camera and case with his name. I always loved the label….like if he didn’t put his name on it, Joey Bishop would steal it without permission.
Hoboken…we couldn’t do better than Hoboken?
The only even vaguely historical item we had in town was three old bells that hung in an 8-foot high mock church steeple. The bells were said to commemorate Father Junipero Serra’s journey to bring smallpox and Catholicism to the pagans.
With typical modern scorn for anything worthwhile, this fake steeple, ended up in the parking lot of the Silver Creek McDonald’s. The McDonald’s people got tired of drunken kids trying to ring the bells, so they put a chain link fence around it, which looked incredibly hideous. So they asked the city to move it to the park.
And, in the half mile between McDonald’s and the park, the bells disappeared. That pretty much sums up Silver Creek. It’s the kind of place where three 100 lb bells can vanish in an afternoon and nobody thinks to notice until a year later when someone actually asks in a City Council meeting “hey, whatever happened to those bells?”
When it comes to historical importance, Silver Creek has none. We couldn’t even borrow any glory.
For a while in the 70s and 80s it was a big thing to become a sister city with someplace distant and/or impressive. Santa Pura, which is just to the south of Silver Creek, is sister city with some ancient village in China. In their central park they have a red pagoda as a sort of gazebo. It’s painted with fierce gold dragons and fat chrysanthemum blooms. Rather lovely, really, especially in the spring when the area around it is rich with irises and tulips.
To the north we have Lombards, which has as its sister city a distinguished Flemish town with an unpronounceable name. To show its fondness, the village gave to the town a gorgeous suit of armor worn by some medieval soldier with a truly historic codpiece. The armor is a marvelous piece of workmanship with bronzed vines and a truly panic-inducing helmet with tiny eye slits. There’s even a shield with a strutting red rooster prancing on a field of blue and white chevrons. The armor has pride of place in Lombards library and is actually something of a tourist attraction, being one of the finest pieces of Flemish armory in the U.S.
And then there’s Silver Creek and its sister city…Hoboken, New Jersey. God help us. Yup, that’s the best we could do. The gift from our sister city? A framed black and white photograph of three members of the Hoboken City Council shaking hands with three members of the Silver Creek City Council. Two of the three New Jerseyians later disappeared under mysterious circumstances and one was associated with that grim phrase, “dental records.”
We also had an autographed photo of Frank Sinatra inscribed “to the Hoboken of California.” God, what a phrase! An we had Sinatra’s movie camera. Or at least what purported to be. We knew because there was a blue and white Dyno label with “Sinatra” on it. There was no film, just an old Super 8 camera and case with his name. I always loved the label….like if he didn’t put his name on it, Joey Bishop would steal it without permission.
Hoboken…we couldn’t do better than Hoboken?
The only even vaguely historical item we had in town was three old bells that hung in an 8-foot high mock church steeple. The bells were said to commemorate Father Junipero Serra’s journey to bring smallpox and Catholicism to the pagans.
With typical modern scorn for anything worthwhile, this fake steeple, ended up in the parking lot of the Silver Creek McDonald’s. The McDonald’s people got tired of drunken kids trying to ring the bells, so they put a chain link fence around it, which looked incredibly hideous. So they asked the city to move it to the park.
And, in the half mile between McDonald’s and the park, the bells disappeared. That pretty much sums up Silver Creek. It’s the kind of place where three 100 lb bells can vanish in an afternoon and nobody thinks to notice until a year later when someone actually asks in a City Council meeting “hey, whatever happened to those bells?”
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: Rufus and Mr. Goldman
Rumor had it Rufus was part bear, part German shepherd. His actual parentage was a mystery known only to god. Equally mysterious was where he came from. He showed up as a huge puppy one day, sleeping on the steps of city hall. When someone tried to pick him up, he gleefully decided it was a huge game and ran away, disappearing for a few days and then showing up again in the park.
From then on, he belonged to the town and the town belonged to him.
Everybody loved Rufus, even dog-haters, and he happily lived wherever he wanted. Any open door was an invitation and it wasn’t uncommon to look up and see him walking into your house. Half the businesses in town had bowls of water or food either on the sidewalk or just inside the door.
Rufus would frequently adopt people or businesses for a while. He’d decide to live at one house for a few weeks and then suddenly his gypsy would kick in and he’d be off somewhere else.
The Silver Creek Police Department, oddly enough, seemed to be his unofficial home. They set up a doghouse in the garage and that was his default shelter on rainy nights or when he decided he’d like to rough it rather than sleep on someone’s sofa. It always amused me that the never took him to the shelter or tried to reign him in. They let him come and go like the rest of the town. And occasionally they took him for a ride. The most un-K9 cop of them all. He’d sit in the passenger seat, head out the window, tongue hanging out, barking joyfully.
Rufus remained the town dog for about three years when he adopted Mr. Goldman.
Mr. Goldman was a locksmith who lived next door to my best friend, Sean. Rufus lived with Sean’s family for a week and then wandered out the door and into Mr. Goldman’s house. Like most of the city Mr. G welcomed Rufus with a fond scratch on the head and some leftover meatloaf. It must have been some great meatloaf, because Rufus never left.
All of Silver Creek, including Mr. G, expected Rufus to decamp after a week or so, but it never happened. Every time Mr. G let Rufus out he’d think it would be to move on, and yet Rufus stayed. And stayed.
After three months, Mr. G bought a collar.
After six months, Mr. G got Rufus a license.
It still wasn’t uncommon to see Rufus trotting down the street as though he owned it. But now it was in tandem with Mr. G.
And Rufus never left. He stayed with Mr. Goldman for the rest of his 12 years and when he died, the whole town held a memorial for the brown shaggy dog that everyone loved.
There’s still a plaque with a photo of Rufus on the wall of the Silver Creek Police Department.
Rumor had it Rufus was part bear, part German shepherd. His actual parentage was a mystery known only to god. Equally mysterious was where he came from. He showed up as a huge puppy one day, sleeping on the steps of city hall. When someone tried to pick him up, he gleefully decided it was a huge game and ran away, disappearing for a few days and then showing up again in the park.
From then on, he belonged to the town and the town belonged to him.
Everybody loved Rufus, even dog-haters, and he happily lived wherever he wanted. Any open door was an invitation and it wasn’t uncommon to look up and see him walking into your house. Half the businesses in town had bowls of water or food either on the sidewalk or just inside the door.
Rufus would frequently adopt people or businesses for a while. He’d decide to live at one house for a few weeks and then suddenly his gypsy would kick in and he’d be off somewhere else.
The Silver Creek Police Department, oddly enough, seemed to be his unofficial home. They set up a doghouse in the garage and that was his default shelter on rainy nights or when he decided he’d like to rough it rather than sleep on someone’s sofa. It always amused me that the never took him to the shelter or tried to reign him in. They let him come and go like the rest of the town. And occasionally they took him for a ride. The most un-K9 cop of them all. He’d sit in the passenger seat, head out the window, tongue hanging out, barking joyfully.
Rufus remained the town dog for about three years when he adopted Mr. Goldman.
Mr. Goldman was a locksmith who lived next door to my best friend, Sean. Rufus lived with Sean’s family for a week and then wandered out the door and into Mr. Goldman’s house. Like most of the city Mr. G welcomed Rufus with a fond scratch on the head and some leftover meatloaf. It must have been some great meatloaf, because Rufus never left.
All of Silver Creek, including Mr. G, expected Rufus to decamp after a week or so, but it never happened. Every time Mr. G let Rufus out he’d think it would be to move on, and yet Rufus stayed. And stayed.
After three months, Mr. G bought a collar.
After six months, Mr. G got Rufus a license.
It still wasn’t uncommon to see Rufus trotting down the street as though he owned it. But now it was in tandem with Mr. G.
And Rufus never left. He stayed with Mr. Goldman for the rest of his 12 years and when he died, the whole town held a memorial for the brown shaggy dog that everyone loved.
There’s still a plaque with a photo of Rufus on the wall of the Silver Creek Police Department.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Fortuneteller
Sometimes I think the oddest thing about Minerva Gosgold was her name. I was never sure if she grew into the name or the name was what defined her. But I suppose if you’re saddled with a name like Minerva you have no choice but to grow up to be a fortuneteller.
A professional psychic was something of an anomaly in Sliver Creek. It was, and is, too prosaic a town for palm reading or crystal balls. It was considered a bit strange to read your horoscope. But Minerva somehow managed to make a living from her tiny shop on Ascot Street, sandwiched between a dry cleaners and a Chinese deli with chickens hanging in the window. When you walked down the street you got an interesting blend of starch, incense, and hot sauce.
Minerva was an interesting mix of contradictions. She had short hair and long legs. She had a big noise and small eyes. She was a psychic and also, most unexpectedly, a Catholic. Whenever Our Lady of Angels had a spaghetti dinner or bingo night, Minerva was first on the list of volunteers. She proclaimed this duality by always wearing both a crucifix and ankh pendant and she saw no strangeness in going to confession every week and then spending her afternoons reading other people’s auras.
Minerva’s family was riotously normal – the only unique thing in their lives being the name of their daughter. For a couple named Mary and Ralph, the name Minerva seemed so unexpected. I don’t believe anyone ever had the nerve to ask them why, and Minerva never said, so the origin of her name always remained something of a mystery. For a while during my childhood the Gosgolds lived directly behind our house. We shared a back fence and occasionally we’d find one of their cats lazing on our back lawn. I remember going into their house for some reason and being intrigued by the orange shag carpeting and autographed picture of Rudolph Valentino.
Nobody could ever understand how Minerva made a living as she never seemed to have customers and I don’t recall anyone ever going into her shop. But she made enough to stay in business and was even president of the Silver Creek Chamber of Commerce for a time.
Her shop looked the part with a purple bead curtain in the door that clacked in the breeze. And that curiously charming dichotomy of faith was illustrated by a giant neon eye in the window, with a poster of the Virgin of Guadalupe underneath. Truthfully that poster always freaked me out as the Virgin was surrounded by disembodied cherub heads with wings. No bodies, just heads with wings. To this day thinking of that poster gives me the creeps.
Minerva certainly looked ever inch a fortuneteller in flowing caftans and long crystal earrings. But then, on Sunday’s, she became a proper Catholic woman in a dark dress with a scarf and a garish set of bright green rosary beads that she held even when no rosary was being said. And in spite of having no musical talent whatsoever she was an enthusiastic alto in the congregation, usually singing just a few seconds ahead of everyone else and reducing those nearby to giggles.
Yet it was hard to make fun of her because for all her eccentricities she was a sweet and kind woman who always had a smile and frequently had hard butterscotch candies that she’d slip to the kids. She was also quite sincere in who she was. Being a psychic was just part of who she was, like being left-handed and tall. She never talked about it. Never said proclaimed that she believed she could tell the future and predict fortunes – she just was.
After her parents died she lived alone with two cats. A Persian and a Russian blue. Abdullah and Leopold the Great. Leopold was, of course, the Persian and Abdullah the Russian. She never dated, although she had many dear friends. But no man was ever seen to cross the threshold of her tidy house on Locust Avenue.
When she was in her 50s, Minerva went to the wedding of a distant cousin and came back with a fiancé. He was a retired high school teacher named Herbert Hayes and he was obviously besotted with his exotic Minerva. Within the month they were married at Our Lady of Angels and they really did live happily ever after – Minerva telling fortunes and Herbert painting Napoleonic soldiers.
I remember a beaming Minerva at the wedding and overheard her saying to a friend that when it came to Herbert “she never could have predicted it.”
Sometimes I think the oddest thing about Minerva Gosgold was her name. I was never sure if she grew into the name or the name was what defined her. But I suppose if you’re saddled with a name like Minerva you have no choice but to grow up to be a fortuneteller.
A professional psychic was something of an anomaly in Sliver Creek. It was, and is, too prosaic a town for palm reading or crystal balls. It was considered a bit strange to read your horoscope. But Minerva somehow managed to make a living from her tiny shop on Ascot Street, sandwiched between a dry cleaners and a Chinese deli with chickens hanging in the window. When you walked down the street you got an interesting blend of starch, incense, and hot sauce.
Minerva was an interesting mix of contradictions. She had short hair and long legs. She had a big noise and small eyes. She was a psychic and also, most unexpectedly, a Catholic. Whenever Our Lady of Angels had a spaghetti dinner or bingo night, Minerva was first on the list of volunteers. She proclaimed this duality by always wearing both a crucifix and ankh pendant and she saw no strangeness in going to confession every week and then spending her afternoons reading other people’s auras.
Minerva’s family was riotously normal – the only unique thing in their lives being the name of their daughter. For a couple named Mary and Ralph, the name Minerva seemed so unexpected. I don’t believe anyone ever had the nerve to ask them why, and Minerva never said, so the origin of her name always remained something of a mystery. For a while during my childhood the Gosgolds lived directly behind our house. We shared a back fence and occasionally we’d find one of their cats lazing on our back lawn. I remember going into their house for some reason and being intrigued by the orange shag carpeting and autographed picture of Rudolph Valentino.
Nobody could ever understand how Minerva made a living as she never seemed to have customers and I don’t recall anyone ever going into her shop. But she made enough to stay in business and was even president of the Silver Creek Chamber of Commerce for a time.
Her shop looked the part with a purple bead curtain in the door that clacked in the breeze. And that curiously charming dichotomy of faith was illustrated by a giant neon eye in the window, with a poster of the Virgin of Guadalupe underneath. Truthfully that poster always freaked me out as the Virgin was surrounded by disembodied cherub heads with wings. No bodies, just heads with wings. To this day thinking of that poster gives me the creeps.
Minerva certainly looked ever inch a fortuneteller in flowing caftans and long crystal earrings. But then, on Sunday’s, she became a proper Catholic woman in a dark dress with a scarf and a garish set of bright green rosary beads that she held even when no rosary was being said. And in spite of having no musical talent whatsoever she was an enthusiastic alto in the congregation, usually singing just a few seconds ahead of everyone else and reducing those nearby to giggles.
Yet it was hard to make fun of her because for all her eccentricities she was a sweet and kind woman who always had a smile and frequently had hard butterscotch candies that she’d slip to the kids. She was also quite sincere in who she was. Being a psychic was just part of who she was, like being left-handed and tall. She never talked about it. Never said proclaimed that she believed she could tell the future and predict fortunes – she just was.
After her parents died she lived alone with two cats. A Persian and a Russian blue. Abdullah and Leopold the Great. Leopold was, of course, the Persian and Abdullah the Russian. She never dated, although she had many dear friends. But no man was ever seen to cross the threshold of her tidy house on Locust Avenue.
When she was in her 50s, Minerva went to the wedding of a distant cousin and came back with a fiancé. He was a retired high school teacher named Herbert Hayes and he was obviously besotted with his exotic Minerva. Within the month they were married at Our Lady of Angels and they really did live happily ever after – Minerva telling fortunes and Herbert painting Napoleonic soldiers.
I remember a beaming Minerva at the wedding and overheard her saying to a friend that when it came to Herbert “she never could have predicted it.”
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: French for a Day
Mrs. Clemence Chabot was quite possibly the sweetest woman ever born. She came to Silver Creek as a war bride. The first war. Jean Chabot was born and raised in Silver Creek to French parents and grew up speaking the language. When WWI started he enlisted and, due to his fluency, ended up in Paris working for the war office.
He told the story over and over. One day he was enjoying the sunshine in Parc Monceau when suddenly his life appeared. She was wearing a lavender dress and he said at first he mistook her for one of the flowers. He fell in love before they’d even spoken.
It was the luckiest day of his life, he said, and she felt the same. Within two months they were married and six months later she came back with him to Silver Creek, knowing no one and leaving all she knew behind.
I remember asking her once if she weren’t scared to leave her county and come to a strange place. She replied that of course she was scared, but with her beloved Jean holding her hand she knew everything would be fine.
Jean always promised that one day he’d take her back to Paris but he never did. Life and time took over. The chances slipped away until one day they were facing their 60th anniversary and Clemence was too fragile for the trip.
She was a lovely woman. Ladylike and petite with that enviable quality of beauty only French women can achieve. And she loved life. I’m told that from her first day in town she was enchanted with Silver Creek. I have no idea why. After a lifetime in the City of Lights, Silver Creek must have been boring as hell. And yet she was charmed. And the city was charmed right back.
In her adorable broken English, that never seemed to get any better, she chatted to everyone and embraced the world. The Chabot house was always sparkling and warm and her garden was the envy of the town. Every spring it burst out in color and scent and every winter it became a Christmas card.
Clemence and Jean never had any children and yet they never seemed to feel as if it were just the two of them. Children naturally flocked to Clemence and she reciprocated with homemade lemonade that she called “Citron Presse,” which made it seem very cosmopolitan. And she was generous with hugs to anyone who stood still long enough.
Jean and Clemence were good friends with Jacques and Emile, who lived across the street from us. They would gather once a week to play piquet and gossip in French. It was from Emile that we learned how bad Jean felt about not being able to take his war bride back to Paris for a visit. And so Jean, the most besotted man I’ve ever known, decided to bring Paris to her.
It’s a rare thing for an entire town to come together for something other than a disaster but for one beautiful day Silver Creek united in the call of romance.
The 60th anniversary celebration took two months and a great deal of whispering to plan. The amazing thing about it was that Clemence never caught on and was well and truly surprised.
Jean enlisted all of his friends, who enlisted friends, and the idea was so completely enchanting that the whole town wanted in on the scheme. It was Christmas, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day all in one.
Anyone in town who could speak French gave secret lessons in the language so that everyone could say a little something. Even just a bon jour. Men got out their father’s or grandfather’s doughboy uniforms and women worked for weeks to create as authentic an 1918 dress as possible. Tricolors were ordered and Grover Park was transformed into as Parisian a space as possible.
On the morning of the day everyone was ready. As planned, Jean took Clemence for a walk downtown, saying nothing to her about what was happening. From the first moment it was magic. People who had known the for years, but had only spoken in English, stopped to say bon jour or wish them a joyeux anniversaire. Men in WWI uniforms or dapper suites walked arm-in-arm with silk clad women with hats and gloves. Mr. Martin, who taught French at Silver Creek High and had a warm tenor, sang bal musette tunes at the entrance to the park.
Slowly Clemence caught on and her smile could have lit up the city of lights itself. Everyone from the most hard-boiled plumber to the most romantic of matrons got into the spirit of things and slowly joined the procession to Grover Park.
Jean lead Clemence to the center of the park which was brilliant with daffodils and tulips, planted specially for the occasion and all done overnight by an army of love-struck volunteers. Eventually nearly a hundred people gathered around the couple, Jean beaming like the cat with the cream and Clemence a beautiful mixture of laughter and tears.
Father Sheehy, not the sweetest of men, surprised everyone by spending weeks perfecting the Our Father in French and once the town had gathered he raised his hands and blessed the couple. He then said, “you may now kiss the bride.”
And then, as arranged, the town slipped away. Nobody said anything to indicate that it was at all unusual that we were all French for an hour. That was part of the charm, the unacknowledged whimsy of it all. As the two kissed people went on their way, as if it were any other morning in Paris, 1918.
Mrs. Clemence Chabot was quite possibly the sweetest woman ever born. She came to Silver Creek as a war bride. The first war. Jean Chabot was born and raised in Silver Creek to French parents and grew up speaking the language. When WWI started he enlisted and, due to his fluency, ended up in Paris working for the war office.
He told the story over and over. One day he was enjoying the sunshine in Parc Monceau when suddenly his life appeared. She was wearing a lavender dress and he said at first he mistook her for one of the flowers. He fell in love before they’d even spoken.
It was the luckiest day of his life, he said, and she felt the same. Within two months they were married and six months later she came back with him to Silver Creek, knowing no one and leaving all she knew behind.
I remember asking her once if she weren’t scared to leave her county and come to a strange place. She replied that of course she was scared, but with her beloved Jean holding her hand she knew everything would be fine.
Jean always promised that one day he’d take her back to Paris but he never did. Life and time took over. The chances slipped away until one day they were facing their 60th anniversary and Clemence was too fragile for the trip.
She was a lovely woman. Ladylike and petite with that enviable quality of beauty only French women can achieve. And she loved life. I’m told that from her first day in town she was enchanted with Silver Creek. I have no idea why. After a lifetime in the City of Lights, Silver Creek must have been boring as hell. And yet she was charmed. And the city was charmed right back.
In her adorable broken English, that never seemed to get any better, she chatted to everyone and embraced the world. The Chabot house was always sparkling and warm and her garden was the envy of the town. Every spring it burst out in color and scent and every winter it became a Christmas card.
Clemence and Jean never had any children and yet they never seemed to feel as if it were just the two of them. Children naturally flocked to Clemence and she reciprocated with homemade lemonade that she called “Citron Presse,” which made it seem very cosmopolitan. And she was generous with hugs to anyone who stood still long enough.
Jean and Clemence were good friends with Jacques and Emile, who lived across the street from us. They would gather once a week to play piquet and gossip in French. It was from Emile that we learned how bad Jean felt about not being able to take his war bride back to Paris for a visit. And so Jean, the most besotted man I’ve ever known, decided to bring Paris to her.
It’s a rare thing for an entire town to come together for something other than a disaster but for one beautiful day Silver Creek united in the call of romance.
The 60th anniversary celebration took two months and a great deal of whispering to plan. The amazing thing about it was that Clemence never caught on and was well and truly surprised.
Jean enlisted all of his friends, who enlisted friends, and the idea was so completely enchanting that the whole town wanted in on the scheme. It was Christmas, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day all in one.
Anyone in town who could speak French gave secret lessons in the language so that everyone could say a little something. Even just a bon jour. Men got out their father’s or grandfather’s doughboy uniforms and women worked for weeks to create as authentic an 1918 dress as possible. Tricolors were ordered and Grover Park was transformed into as Parisian a space as possible.
On the morning of the day everyone was ready. As planned, Jean took Clemence for a walk downtown, saying nothing to her about what was happening. From the first moment it was magic. People who had known the for years, but had only spoken in English, stopped to say bon jour or wish them a joyeux anniversaire. Men in WWI uniforms or dapper suites walked arm-in-arm with silk clad women with hats and gloves. Mr. Martin, who taught French at Silver Creek High and had a warm tenor, sang bal musette tunes at the entrance to the park.
Slowly Clemence caught on and her smile could have lit up the city of lights itself. Everyone from the most hard-boiled plumber to the most romantic of matrons got into the spirit of things and slowly joined the procession to Grover Park.
Jean lead Clemence to the center of the park which was brilliant with daffodils and tulips, planted specially for the occasion and all done overnight by an army of love-struck volunteers. Eventually nearly a hundred people gathered around the couple, Jean beaming like the cat with the cream and Clemence a beautiful mixture of laughter and tears.
Father Sheehy, not the sweetest of men, surprised everyone by spending weeks perfecting the Our Father in French and once the town had gathered he raised his hands and blessed the couple. He then said, “you may now kiss the bride.”
And then, as arranged, the town slipped away. Nobody said anything to indicate that it was at all unusual that we were all French for an hour. That was part of the charm, the unacknowledged whimsy of it all. As the two kissed people went on their way, as if it were any other morning in Paris, 1918.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Hemlock Viper
When we were in high school the popular make-out spot was up along Tyler Ridge Road, along the reservoir. There you could actually get away from lights to the point where you could see stars – that is if the windows weren’t too fogged up.
But it was also a popular space to just go and “be.” The spot seemed to be the sole province of the high school. We’d go up there after school with ice cream to look at the water and dream about the future. We’d go up there at night in groups to star gaze, tell stories, or drink wine we’d stolen from our folks.
Now it’s closed off to traffic and a walking trail, but back then it was a quiet spot, perfect for doing things you didn’t want your parents to see. Not necessarily “wrong” things like making out with Mike Columbo or trying your first cigarette (for the record, I didn’t like either of these two activities), but also perfectly innocent things, like talking.
Sometimes I think that we use our brains more between the ages of 17 and 20 that we do any other time of our lives. Forget college, or the rigors of the work world. But those last few year of high school and those first few years of university are when you tackle the problems of the world. Politics. Religion. Equality. You debate the responsibilities of citizenship and the importance of arts. You find yourself discussing all the serious topics of life with such gravity that you’re convinced your generation will be the one to save the world.
At that age, we were the future. And we were determined to make our mark. But you don’t want adults to hear you, because they’d only laugh. So you go up to Tyler Ridge Road with your best friends and you talk about how you’re never going to take things for granted and how you will spend a year in Africa helping them end starvation. And you eat an entire package of Oreos doing so and come away convinced you are a magnificent person.
One night I was there with the two people I was closest with in the entire world, my friends Sean Logan and Carmen Martinez. We were in the midst of an early fall heat wave. It was a Saturday evening, one of those delicious nights where the sun seems reluctant to set and it’s light until nearly nine. We were high school seniors, with all the answers to every question in the universe, plus a large vegetarian pizza and a 6-pack of Coke.
One of the reasons why Tyler Ridge is now closed to cars is because of the wildlife. There’s a lot of it up there. Deer. Raccoons. Skunks. Squirrels boing-boinged through the leaves and possums skulked shyly among the eucalyptus. And then there were the snakes. None of them poisonous, mind you, but there. And many people, including Sean and Carmen, have a horror of these critters.
Well on the night in question I was sitting opposite the two of them when I noticed their eyes straying from me to something about five feet to my right. Sean actually screamed. Carmen, if I recall correctly, started reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. “Oh God,” I thought, “it’s the Zodiac killer!”
Nervously I look over my shoulder….and see absolutely nothing. “What?” I ask as they continue to stare past me. Then I follow their gaze and saw The Snake That Ate Silver Creek.
The creature couldn’t have been more than six inches long, but Sean and Carmen reacted as if a giant boa constrictor with three heads had just slithered out of its den and was about to swallow one of us whole. I honestly thought they were kidding, so I started laughing. But no, they weren’t kidding…they were honestly terrified.
I knew what it was, a striped racer. These are dark, slender snakes with a white racing stripe down their backs. Perfectly harmless and, in fact, now endangered in California. At this point it had done nothing more than appear out of the leaf cover and make for the road and was at least 10 feet from them. We were more in danger of heartburn from devouring a large Cimino’s Pizza than we were from this poor little guy. But to my friends it was as if Cerebus had come from the underworld to slay us.
Apparently stunned into stupidity by our visitor, Sean and Carmen sat immobile for a minute starring in horrified wonder before suddenly remembering that they, unlike the snakes, had legs. So they collected their legs and ran. This just made me laugh all the harder because it was such a cartoon reaction.
“Hey!” I called after them, “come back, it’s harmless.”
“How do you know?” Sean asked. “You’re not Marlon Perkins.” But he stopped running anyway.
I walked over to the snake and picked him up. Sean screamed again.
“Put it down before it bites you!” yelled Carmen.
“Uh oh…” I said.
“What? What is it?” Sean called out in concern.
“Well, I thought it was just a harmless racer, but it’s not. The markings are wrong. I just picked up….” I paused dramatically while I thought up a name. “…a Hemlock Viper!”
This time Carmen screamed.
By now the little guy had wound himself around my hand, not too alarmed and pretty sure I wasn’t going to eat him. He was actually very cute.
Sean asked if he’d bitten me. Carmen asked if they should go for the cops. Not even my desire to tease them could survive the question. The cops? She thinks I’m holding on to a poisonous snake and her idea is to have it arrested? My sense of the absurd won over my sense of evil and I had started to laugh again. I put down our visitor and he went back to the leaves, no doubt eager to tell his pals about his adventures.
My two friends came back slowly, cautiously. And when they were close enough to gang up on me, they did.
The phrase “Hemlock viper” remained in our personal lexicon as a shorthand trigger to a wonderful memory.
When we were in high school the popular make-out spot was up along Tyler Ridge Road, along the reservoir. There you could actually get away from lights to the point where you could see stars – that is if the windows weren’t too fogged up.
But it was also a popular space to just go and “be.” The spot seemed to be the sole province of the high school. We’d go up there after school with ice cream to look at the water and dream about the future. We’d go up there at night in groups to star gaze, tell stories, or drink wine we’d stolen from our folks.
Now it’s closed off to traffic and a walking trail, but back then it was a quiet spot, perfect for doing things you didn’t want your parents to see. Not necessarily “wrong” things like making out with Mike Columbo or trying your first cigarette (for the record, I didn’t like either of these two activities), but also perfectly innocent things, like talking.
Sometimes I think that we use our brains more between the ages of 17 and 20 that we do any other time of our lives. Forget college, or the rigors of the work world. But those last few year of high school and those first few years of university are when you tackle the problems of the world. Politics. Religion. Equality. You debate the responsibilities of citizenship and the importance of arts. You find yourself discussing all the serious topics of life with such gravity that you’re convinced your generation will be the one to save the world.
At that age, we were the future. And we were determined to make our mark. But you don’t want adults to hear you, because they’d only laugh. So you go up to Tyler Ridge Road with your best friends and you talk about how you’re never going to take things for granted and how you will spend a year in Africa helping them end starvation. And you eat an entire package of Oreos doing so and come away convinced you are a magnificent person.
One night I was there with the two people I was closest with in the entire world, my friends Sean Logan and Carmen Martinez. We were in the midst of an early fall heat wave. It was a Saturday evening, one of those delicious nights where the sun seems reluctant to set and it’s light until nearly nine. We were high school seniors, with all the answers to every question in the universe, plus a large vegetarian pizza and a 6-pack of Coke.
One of the reasons why Tyler Ridge is now closed to cars is because of the wildlife. There’s a lot of it up there. Deer. Raccoons. Skunks. Squirrels boing-boinged through the leaves and possums skulked shyly among the eucalyptus. And then there were the snakes. None of them poisonous, mind you, but there. And many people, including Sean and Carmen, have a horror of these critters.
Well on the night in question I was sitting opposite the two of them when I noticed their eyes straying from me to something about five feet to my right. Sean actually screamed. Carmen, if I recall correctly, started reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. “Oh God,” I thought, “it’s the Zodiac killer!”
Nervously I look over my shoulder….and see absolutely nothing. “What?” I ask as they continue to stare past me. Then I follow their gaze and saw The Snake That Ate Silver Creek.
The creature couldn’t have been more than six inches long, but Sean and Carmen reacted as if a giant boa constrictor with three heads had just slithered out of its den and was about to swallow one of us whole. I honestly thought they were kidding, so I started laughing. But no, they weren’t kidding…they were honestly terrified.
I knew what it was, a striped racer. These are dark, slender snakes with a white racing stripe down their backs. Perfectly harmless and, in fact, now endangered in California. At this point it had done nothing more than appear out of the leaf cover and make for the road and was at least 10 feet from them. We were more in danger of heartburn from devouring a large Cimino’s Pizza than we were from this poor little guy. But to my friends it was as if Cerebus had come from the underworld to slay us.
Apparently stunned into stupidity by our visitor, Sean and Carmen sat immobile for a minute starring in horrified wonder before suddenly remembering that they, unlike the snakes, had legs. So they collected their legs and ran. This just made me laugh all the harder because it was such a cartoon reaction.
“Hey!” I called after them, “come back, it’s harmless.”
“How do you know?” Sean asked. “You’re not Marlon Perkins.” But he stopped running anyway.
I walked over to the snake and picked him up. Sean screamed again.
“Put it down before it bites you!” yelled Carmen.
“Uh oh…” I said.
“What? What is it?” Sean called out in concern.
“Well, I thought it was just a harmless racer, but it’s not. The markings are wrong. I just picked up….” I paused dramatically while I thought up a name. “…a Hemlock Viper!”
This time Carmen screamed.
By now the little guy had wound himself around my hand, not too alarmed and pretty sure I wasn’t going to eat him. He was actually very cute.
Sean asked if he’d bitten me. Carmen asked if they should go for the cops. Not even my desire to tease them could survive the question. The cops? She thinks I’m holding on to a poisonous snake and her idea is to have it arrested? My sense of the absurd won over my sense of evil and I had started to laugh again. I put down our visitor and he went back to the leaves, no doubt eager to tell his pals about his adventures.
My two friends came back slowly, cautiously. And when they were close enough to gang up on me, they did.
The phrase “Hemlock viper” remained in our personal lexicon as a shorthand trigger to a wonderful memory.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Night Chopin Came to Town
One night when I was about 12 or so, the family went to Johnnie’s restaurant for some occasion or other. I think it might have been my grandmother’s birthday. It was a typical night at Johnnie’s. Huge platters of antipasto and tons of garlic bread spread across the table, with Johnnie himself joining us for a glass of red.
There was an old upright piano in the corner of the main dining room, and when he was feeling expansive, or the place was quiet enough that he wasn’t table hopping, Johnnie would sit down and play one of the three songs he new. That’s Amore, Finucli Finucla, and Some Enchanted Evening. That was his entire repertoire. He once told me he practiced them over and over until he was perfect, and never learned anything else. Occasionally his eldest son, Dante, would take over and play one of his two songs, oddly enough Hound Dog or Alley Cat. Oh yeah, Johnnie could also sorta kinda play the Major General song from Pirates of Penzance but he could only play it so slow it was unrecognizable and vaguely depressing
There was a stranger at Johnnie’s that night. I don’t mean that in a Dodge City, unknown man walks into a saloon and everyone stops talking kind of way. Silver Creek wasn’t that small that you’d ordinarily notice someone new. But he was at the next table and Johnnie, being naturally gregarious, stopped to chat and we overheard the fact that he was just driving through town on his way to San Diego. Johnnie asked him what his business was and the man replied that he was a musician.
Like most Italians, Johnnie loved music. And being a professional musician was second only to being a priest in the hierarchy of Johnnie’s estimation. So he naturally exclaimed over the newcomer and started asking more questions. What instrument? What kind of music? Did he know Sinatra?
When the man had biographed himself to Johnnie’s satisfaction and proclaimed himself a pianist, Johnnie naturally invited the man to play should he feel so inclined. The man laughed, said something non-committal and modest, and turned his attention to the mushroom lasagna.
After the man had finished his complementary scoop of vanilla ice cream in a frosty sliver cup he quietly got up and crossed the room.
I distinctly recall that at the moment he began to play my brother Peter was telling an incredibly boring story about being an alter boy. I don’t know why I remember this as all of my brother’s stories were (and still are) duller than rust – but I have a clear recollection of him mercifully shutting up when the music started. I know now that it was Chopin’s Waltz in D Flat Major. On a road trip once where all we could get was a classical station, the waltz came on the air and I screamed "that's the song!" so loudly that my friend Sean almost hit a stop sign.
I’d never really heard classical music before, my parents taste running exclusively to 1940s big band tunes. But even I at the age with my untrained ear, and my amazingly dull brother Peter knew that something amazing was going on. That dented old upright had never sounded so much like Carnegie Hall. Johnnie, who had been in the kitchen, darted out as if the place was on fire. You could hear forks being dropped onto plates and conversations slowing dying until all you could hear was Mrs. Silas telling the story of how she broke her arm in Denver for the 20th time. (I mean I'd heard the story 20 times, not that she broke her arm in Denver 20 times.). Anyway, the man played as if playing for royalty instead of entertaining a houseful of white trash, garlic-scented people. And, oddly enough, the houseful of white trash, garlic-scented people appreciated it. We sat wrapped in a cloud of the most beautiful music ever heard in Silver Creek. It put Johnnie’s That’s Amore to shame.
As the last notes faded away the entire place burst into applause. The man ducked his head – half recognition, half shyness. Then without a word, he got up from the piano.
Johnnie rushed over and, in a show of Italian exuberance, pulled the man into a fierce hug. The musician hugged him back with a show of good grace and then walked to his table for the check. Of course Johnnie beat him there and tore it up. The two men exchanged a few words and then he was gone.
My father stopped Johnnie as he made his way back to the kitchen and asked him if he knew who the pianist was. Johnnie said he’d asked the stranger who replied that his name was Michael Crocker.
I have never heard that name since and always wondered who he was and why was it a musician of such talent wasn’t famous.
Every time I hear Chopin I think I smell garlic.
One night when I was about 12 or so, the family went to Johnnie’s restaurant for some occasion or other. I think it might have been my grandmother’s birthday. It was a typical night at Johnnie’s. Huge platters of antipasto and tons of garlic bread spread across the table, with Johnnie himself joining us for a glass of red.
There was an old upright piano in the corner of the main dining room, and when he was feeling expansive, or the place was quiet enough that he wasn’t table hopping, Johnnie would sit down and play one of the three songs he new. That’s Amore, Finucli Finucla, and Some Enchanted Evening. That was his entire repertoire. He once told me he practiced them over and over until he was perfect, and never learned anything else. Occasionally his eldest son, Dante, would take over and play one of his two songs, oddly enough Hound Dog or Alley Cat. Oh yeah, Johnnie could also sorta kinda play the Major General song from Pirates of Penzance but he could only play it so slow it was unrecognizable and vaguely depressing
There was a stranger at Johnnie’s that night. I don’t mean that in a Dodge City, unknown man walks into a saloon and everyone stops talking kind of way. Silver Creek wasn’t that small that you’d ordinarily notice someone new. But he was at the next table and Johnnie, being naturally gregarious, stopped to chat and we overheard the fact that he was just driving through town on his way to San Diego. Johnnie asked him what his business was and the man replied that he was a musician.
Like most Italians, Johnnie loved music. And being a professional musician was second only to being a priest in the hierarchy of Johnnie’s estimation. So he naturally exclaimed over the newcomer and started asking more questions. What instrument? What kind of music? Did he know Sinatra?
When the man had biographed himself to Johnnie’s satisfaction and proclaimed himself a pianist, Johnnie naturally invited the man to play should he feel so inclined. The man laughed, said something non-committal and modest, and turned his attention to the mushroom lasagna.
After the man had finished his complementary scoop of vanilla ice cream in a frosty sliver cup he quietly got up and crossed the room.
I distinctly recall that at the moment he began to play my brother Peter was telling an incredibly boring story about being an alter boy. I don’t know why I remember this as all of my brother’s stories were (and still are) duller than rust – but I have a clear recollection of him mercifully shutting up when the music started. I know now that it was Chopin’s Waltz in D Flat Major. On a road trip once where all we could get was a classical station, the waltz came on the air and I screamed "that's the song!" so loudly that my friend Sean almost hit a stop sign.
I’d never really heard classical music before, my parents taste running exclusively to 1940s big band tunes. But even I at the age with my untrained ear, and my amazingly dull brother Peter knew that something amazing was going on. That dented old upright had never sounded so much like Carnegie Hall. Johnnie, who had been in the kitchen, darted out as if the place was on fire. You could hear forks being dropped onto plates and conversations slowing dying until all you could hear was Mrs. Silas telling the story of how she broke her arm in Denver for the 20th time. (I mean I'd heard the story 20 times, not that she broke her arm in Denver 20 times.). Anyway, the man played as if playing for royalty instead of entertaining a houseful of white trash, garlic-scented people. And, oddly enough, the houseful of white trash, garlic-scented people appreciated it. We sat wrapped in a cloud of the most beautiful music ever heard in Silver Creek. It put Johnnie’s That’s Amore to shame.
As the last notes faded away the entire place burst into applause. The man ducked his head – half recognition, half shyness. Then without a word, he got up from the piano.
Johnnie rushed over and, in a show of Italian exuberance, pulled the man into a fierce hug. The musician hugged him back with a show of good grace and then walked to his table for the check. Of course Johnnie beat him there and tore it up. The two men exchanged a few words and then he was gone.
My father stopped Johnnie as he made his way back to the kitchen and asked him if he knew who the pianist was. Johnnie said he’d asked the stranger who replied that his name was Michael Crocker.
I have never heard that name since and always wondered who he was and why was it a musician of such talent wasn’t famous.
Every time I hear Chopin I think I smell garlic.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: The Great Hallelujah Egg Hunt
For a small town, Silver Creek sure was sanctified. In addition to mom’s church (St. Edith’s Episcopal), and dad’s church (Our Lady of Angels) we also had the Calvary Lutheran Church, the Church of Christ, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
EBC was the closest we had to a holy-roller church and it was founded and run by one of our town’s most eccentric families, the Washingtons. Here’s the picture, two extremely devout Baptists (the gloriously named Hallelujah Washington and his wife, Esther Pride-Washington) have eight extremely devout children, all of whom were given monikers that suggest all were recently-freed slaves:
Bethesda Monday and her twin brother Ezra Monday
Gideon Tuesday
Unity Wednesday
Ezekiel Thursday
Glory Friday
Shenandoah Saturday
Jubilee Sunday
None of the family was, in fact, freed slaves. They were a crop of skinny white kids with skinny white parents who really wished they had been born black so they could have a “real” Baptist church.
The Reverend Hallelujah wanted, above all things, to preach fire and brimstone sermons. He was hindered in this achievement by the possession of a damp-matches and pudding voice. Seriously tone deaf, his desire to be a great religious orator was further hampered by his tendency to put the emphasis on the wrong words in his sermon, thereby often making “the” more important than the word “savior.” He often spoke at city council meetings and other public gatherings and I never lost the urge to giggle when he’d say something like “we’d like TO commend the football team for their great win ON Friday against the Auburn WildCATS.”
I always believed that the eight Washington kids had a hard time living up to their names. I mean it can’t be easy in the modern world to be named Jubilee. But they loved their parents and were there every Sunday to help get the church ready for services. Bethesda and Glory were great at arranging flowers. Ezra and Gideon alternated playing the organ and leading the choir. Ezekiel, who was naturally outgoing, would stand on the sidewalk inviting people in. And both Shenandoah and Jubilee were ordained ministers. The one chore that all the Washington kids balked at, and that was sitting next to Miss Rose Hylam, a vinegary old virgin with a venomous tongue. A termagant with the mixed scent of self-righteousness and rosewater. Miss Rose was the kind of woman who would tell you things "for your own good" that never did you any good. But she was quite rich and the EBC’s most generous benefactor. In her opinion, her copious donations to the church entitled her to her very own Washington at every service, helping her out of her seat, finding the right page in the hymnal, and escorting her down to the social room for punch when the service was over. And, in a mixture of Christian kindness and practicality, the Reverend made sure she always had one of his children there are her personal church-going minion. It was not an enjoyable duty so the kids made sure it was fairly split up with each taking his or her own turn as the sacrificial lamb.
Reverend Hallelujah was a sweet, friendly man who genuinely seemed to like people and was honestly proud to be of service to the community. Although he was not the Martin Luther King type of minister he dreamed of being, he was nevertheless a good man who practiced what he preached. He helped the poor. He forgave the sinners. He went out at midnight to hold hands with hospital patients and got up at dawn to drive the senior club on road trips. He was also he driving force behind the Ecumenical Brotherhood, sort of a Lions Club for Christ where he’d get the priests and ministers of all the local churches to come together for various citywide programs. They would, for example, put together an all-choir sing-along at Christmas time and held annual Forth of July parties at which each church would have a booth where you could buy things that were bad for your teeth and know the money would be going to a good cause.
One year Reverend Hal had the idea to put together an Easter Egg Hunt in Grover Park. All the local churches agreed to take part and mother’s groups all over the county spent days filling brightly colored plastic eggs with candy and small toys. The idea was that all churches would hold Easter services at the same time on Easter Sunday and then the families would gather in the park to let the little ones find the prizes.
Unfortunately for Reverend Hal, and everyone else concerned, Easter weekend coincided with “Senior Prank Week” where high-school seniors at Silver Creek High were expected to play properly harmless practical jokes on the entire town. Things like covering the fire station with toilet paper or putting a fore sale sign in front of city hall.
The year of Hallelujah’s great egg hunt year the seniors waited until late Saturday night when all the plastic eggs had been hidden and then they raided Grover Park. Like the Grinch, they took all the toys and candy. Unlike the Grinch, though, they replaced the surprises with surprises of their own and let the entire town converge on the park, all innocent, on Easter morning.
The first hint that something was wrong was when four-year old Emmy Jeevers found a lovely bright pink plastic egg with a condom inside. “Oooh,” she declared happily, “I got a balloon!”
Other children opened their eggs to find bottle caps, band-aids, walnuts (in shell) and dice. Personally, I thought the dice was a nice touch. The only candy left relatively intact were the marshmallow Peeps, all of whom were in breeding position in proximity with other Peeps.
The more conservative of the town were livid, starting with my ever-self righteous and entirely humorless Aunt Camilla. How dare these high school bullies take away the innocent fun of the children eagerly hoping to find chocolate bunnies amid the wild daisies of Grover Park?
But, oddly enough, the Reverend Hal thought it was hilarious. He laughed and laughed. And when I, along with the other seniors, showed signs of coming off of some serious sugar highs (hey, we had to do something with all that candy) he congratulated us on the prank and then ordered us to rectify the situation while he took the children to a corner of the park for story time.
We quickly pooled our resources and ran hell-for-leather down to Walgreen’s where we pretty much bought out their stock. One frantic hour later the children of Silver Creek were let loose again and got their bunnies, their malted milk balls and more virginal Peeps.
As additional punishment, the seniors had to wash every church bus in town. Hallelujah supervised us and when we were done, took us all to EBC where we were each presented with plastic eggs, each containing a “chore slip” from a local business. I, along with three others, got roped into painting all the picnic tables in Grover park. My friend Sean spent an afternoon building shelves for Jeever’s Hardware. And Bethesda and Ezra Washington, whose inspired idea it was, got the worst punishment of all. They both got Miss Rose duty for the next six months.
For a small town, Silver Creek sure was sanctified. In addition to mom’s church (St. Edith’s Episcopal), and dad’s church (Our Lady of Angels) we also had the Calvary Lutheran Church, the Church of Christ, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
EBC was the closest we had to a holy-roller church and it was founded and run by one of our town’s most eccentric families, the Washingtons. Here’s the picture, two extremely devout Baptists (the gloriously named Hallelujah Washington and his wife, Esther Pride-Washington) have eight extremely devout children, all of whom were given monikers that suggest all were recently-freed slaves:
Bethesda Monday and her twin brother Ezra Monday
Gideon Tuesday
Unity Wednesday
Ezekiel Thursday
Glory Friday
Shenandoah Saturday
Jubilee Sunday
None of the family was, in fact, freed slaves. They were a crop of skinny white kids with skinny white parents who really wished they had been born black so they could have a “real” Baptist church.
The Reverend Hallelujah wanted, above all things, to preach fire and brimstone sermons. He was hindered in this achievement by the possession of a damp-matches and pudding voice. Seriously tone deaf, his desire to be a great religious orator was further hampered by his tendency to put the emphasis on the wrong words in his sermon, thereby often making “the” more important than the word “savior.” He often spoke at city council meetings and other public gatherings and I never lost the urge to giggle when he’d say something like “we’d like TO commend the football team for their great win ON Friday against the Auburn WildCATS.”
I always believed that the eight Washington kids had a hard time living up to their names. I mean it can’t be easy in the modern world to be named Jubilee. But they loved their parents and were there every Sunday to help get the church ready for services. Bethesda and Glory were great at arranging flowers. Ezra and Gideon alternated playing the organ and leading the choir. Ezekiel, who was naturally outgoing, would stand on the sidewalk inviting people in. And both Shenandoah and Jubilee were ordained ministers. The one chore that all the Washington kids balked at, and that was sitting next to Miss Rose Hylam, a vinegary old virgin with a venomous tongue. A termagant with the mixed scent of self-righteousness and rosewater. Miss Rose was the kind of woman who would tell you things "for your own good" that never did you any good. But she was quite rich and the EBC’s most generous benefactor. In her opinion, her copious donations to the church entitled her to her very own Washington at every service, helping her out of her seat, finding the right page in the hymnal, and escorting her down to the social room for punch when the service was over. And, in a mixture of Christian kindness and practicality, the Reverend made sure she always had one of his children there are her personal church-going minion. It was not an enjoyable duty so the kids made sure it was fairly split up with each taking his or her own turn as the sacrificial lamb.
Reverend Hallelujah was a sweet, friendly man who genuinely seemed to like people and was honestly proud to be of service to the community. Although he was not the Martin Luther King type of minister he dreamed of being, he was nevertheless a good man who practiced what he preached. He helped the poor. He forgave the sinners. He went out at midnight to hold hands with hospital patients and got up at dawn to drive the senior club on road trips. He was also he driving force behind the Ecumenical Brotherhood, sort of a Lions Club for Christ where he’d get the priests and ministers of all the local churches to come together for various citywide programs. They would, for example, put together an all-choir sing-along at Christmas time and held annual Forth of July parties at which each church would have a booth where you could buy things that were bad for your teeth and know the money would be going to a good cause.
One year Reverend Hal had the idea to put together an Easter Egg Hunt in Grover Park. All the local churches agreed to take part and mother’s groups all over the county spent days filling brightly colored plastic eggs with candy and small toys. The idea was that all churches would hold Easter services at the same time on Easter Sunday and then the families would gather in the park to let the little ones find the prizes.
Unfortunately for Reverend Hal, and everyone else concerned, Easter weekend coincided with “Senior Prank Week” where high-school seniors at Silver Creek High were expected to play properly harmless practical jokes on the entire town. Things like covering the fire station with toilet paper or putting a fore sale sign in front of city hall.
The year of Hallelujah’s great egg hunt year the seniors waited until late Saturday night when all the plastic eggs had been hidden and then they raided Grover Park. Like the Grinch, they took all the toys and candy. Unlike the Grinch, though, they replaced the surprises with surprises of their own and let the entire town converge on the park, all innocent, on Easter morning.
The first hint that something was wrong was when four-year old Emmy Jeevers found a lovely bright pink plastic egg with a condom inside. “Oooh,” she declared happily, “I got a balloon!”
Other children opened their eggs to find bottle caps, band-aids, walnuts (in shell) and dice. Personally, I thought the dice was a nice touch. The only candy left relatively intact were the marshmallow Peeps, all of whom were in breeding position in proximity with other Peeps.
The more conservative of the town were livid, starting with my ever-self righteous and entirely humorless Aunt Camilla. How dare these high school bullies take away the innocent fun of the children eagerly hoping to find chocolate bunnies amid the wild daisies of Grover Park?
But, oddly enough, the Reverend Hal thought it was hilarious. He laughed and laughed. And when I, along with the other seniors, showed signs of coming off of some serious sugar highs (hey, we had to do something with all that candy) he congratulated us on the prank and then ordered us to rectify the situation while he took the children to a corner of the park for story time.
We quickly pooled our resources and ran hell-for-leather down to Walgreen’s where we pretty much bought out their stock. One frantic hour later the children of Silver Creek were let loose again and got their bunnies, their malted milk balls and more virginal Peeps.
As additional punishment, the seniors had to wash every church bus in town. Hallelujah supervised us and when we were done, took us all to EBC where we were each presented with plastic eggs, each containing a “chore slip” from a local business. I, along with three others, got roped into painting all the picnic tables in Grover park. My friend Sean spent an afternoon building shelves for Jeever’s Hardware. And Bethesda and Ezra Washington, whose inspired idea it was, got the worst punishment of all. They both got Miss Rose duty for the next six months.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: My First Love
My first love and I were brought together through a combination of my father, Walter Cronkite, and Time magazine.
Sadly, like all the classic love affairs it ended in tragedy on January 27, 1967 when astronauts Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, and Ed White were killed in a fire during a test of Apollo 1. You see, I was going to grow up and marry Roger Chaffee.
I didn’t care that he was already married and I was seven. All I knew was that he was handsome and he was an astronaut. That meant he was brave, strong, smart, and being married to him would mean I would get to ride in a parade. For some reason when I was seven my big ambition was to ride in a parade. Obviously I had no career in mind because parade riding is not, as far as I know, a legitimate occupation. I was apparently a dull child. Odd too, because when it came to crushes, all I seemed to fall for was older men. Cary Grant. Gregory Peck and, my real love, Roger Chaffee.
Our love affair started when my father brought home a magazine with big color photos of the Apollo astronauts inside. My family, like most American families in the 60s was space-mad. Anything related to NASA was major news. Dad was obsessed with the space program and insisted on watching every newscast he could, every documentary shown, and every interview with anyone even remotely related to the space race.
Our coffee table was covered with the smiling, handsome, white bread faces of John Glenn and Wally Schirra. And as an impressionable young girl, with a total absence of hot men in town, I developed a wicked crush on Roger Chaffee. I was also vaguely confused because for some reason I thought we were related. This did not, strangely enough, affect our engagement. But because there were photos of him around I got the idea he was some distant, attractive, clean-cut uncle. And I’m not sure why I fixated on him as opposed to one of the other astronauts, but he was definitely the one I picked out.
To this day I still think he was wonderfully handsome. But back then I also thought he magic. Space flight as a concept was mysterious to me. Not because I was too young to understand science. But because I was too young to get what all the fuss was about.
Growing up on a diet of quirky sci-fi flicks (my brothers were addicted) I thought space travel was a given. We’d already been to Mars, hadn’t we? And wasn’t space full of amphibious monsters and cheesy special effects? What was so exciting about the prospect of going to the moon? I’d thought we’d already been there, so I just didn’t get why everyone was so excited and why it was the topic of conversation all over the world. (OK, all over Silver Creek – but back then Silver Creek was the world.)
I thought maybe everyone was in love with Roger Chaffee and that’s why the world was talking. Wow, look at this handsome man who will soon marry one of our own, going to the moon for the 800th time and fighting amphibious monsters with his bare hands. What a guy.
I didn’t understand “dead” then. My only real experience with loss was with pets or people I was not going to grow up and marry. I’d recently buried Badger, an asthmatic hamster who got a cigar-box coffin and a teary, off-key rendition of My Country ‘Tis of Thee. (Don’t ask why.) But losing my fiancée was rough.
I remember my dad turning on the TV and Walter breaking the news. Dad was stunned. Mom said a prayer. Everyone was quiet except for me asking “what? What?” And not getting an answer. Eventually dad told me, gravely, that there had been an accident and some of the astronauts had died. I asked if Roger was OK. (I figured since we were going to get married it was OK to call him “Roger” and not Mr. Chaffee.) And dad told me he was dead.
Mom had to explain dead. “Like Badger,” she said. And I pictured my handsome hero in a huge cigar box with me singing My Country ‘Tis of Thee. I think I cried. I cried harder when I asked if I could go to the funeral and mom said no. I asked if he was going to be buried in Silver Creek and got another no.
The next day I took the photo of Roger I had stolen from one of my father’s copies of Life, rolled it up in an old paper towel roll, and buried it next to Badger.
I didn’t sing anything. But I did swear I’d never fall in love. And I never did.
Until Sean Connery.
My first love and I were brought together through a combination of my father, Walter Cronkite, and Time magazine.
Sadly, like all the classic love affairs it ended in tragedy on January 27, 1967 when astronauts Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, and Ed White were killed in a fire during a test of Apollo 1. You see, I was going to grow up and marry Roger Chaffee.
I didn’t care that he was already married and I was seven. All I knew was that he was handsome and he was an astronaut. That meant he was brave, strong, smart, and being married to him would mean I would get to ride in a parade. For some reason when I was seven my big ambition was to ride in a parade. Obviously I had no career in mind because parade riding is not, as far as I know, a legitimate occupation. I was apparently a dull child. Odd too, because when it came to crushes, all I seemed to fall for was older men. Cary Grant. Gregory Peck and, my real love, Roger Chaffee.
Our love affair started when my father brought home a magazine with big color photos of the Apollo astronauts inside. My family, like most American families in the 60s was space-mad. Anything related to NASA was major news. Dad was obsessed with the space program and insisted on watching every newscast he could, every documentary shown, and every interview with anyone even remotely related to the space race.
Our coffee table was covered with the smiling, handsome, white bread faces of John Glenn and Wally Schirra. And as an impressionable young girl, with a total absence of hot men in town, I developed a wicked crush on Roger Chaffee. I was also vaguely confused because for some reason I thought we were related. This did not, strangely enough, affect our engagement. But because there were photos of him around I got the idea he was some distant, attractive, clean-cut uncle. And I’m not sure why I fixated on him as opposed to one of the other astronauts, but he was definitely the one I picked out.
To this day I still think he was wonderfully handsome. But back then I also thought he magic. Space flight as a concept was mysterious to me. Not because I was too young to understand science. But because I was too young to get what all the fuss was about.
Growing up on a diet of quirky sci-fi flicks (my brothers were addicted) I thought space travel was a given. We’d already been to Mars, hadn’t we? And wasn’t space full of amphibious monsters and cheesy special effects? What was so exciting about the prospect of going to the moon? I’d thought we’d already been there, so I just didn’t get why everyone was so excited and why it was the topic of conversation all over the world. (OK, all over Silver Creek – but back then Silver Creek was the world.)
I thought maybe everyone was in love with Roger Chaffee and that’s why the world was talking. Wow, look at this handsome man who will soon marry one of our own, going to the moon for the 800th time and fighting amphibious monsters with his bare hands. What a guy.
I didn’t understand “dead” then. My only real experience with loss was with pets or people I was not going to grow up and marry. I’d recently buried Badger, an asthmatic hamster who got a cigar-box coffin and a teary, off-key rendition of My Country ‘Tis of Thee. (Don’t ask why.) But losing my fiancée was rough.
I remember my dad turning on the TV and Walter breaking the news. Dad was stunned. Mom said a prayer. Everyone was quiet except for me asking “what? What?” And not getting an answer. Eventually dad told me, gravely, that there had been an accident and some of the astronauts had died. I asked if Roger was OK. (I figured since we were going to get married it was OK to call him “Roger” and not Mr. Chaffee.) And dad told me he was dead.
Mom had to explain dead. “Like Badger,” she said. And I pictured my handsome hero in a huge cigar box with me singing My Country ‘Tis of Thee. I think I cried. I cried harder when I asked if I could go to the funeral and mom said no. I asked if he was going to be buried in Silver Creek and got another no.
The next day I took the photo of Roger I had stolen from one of my father’s copies of Life, rolled it up in an old paper towel roll, and buried it next to Badger.
I didn’t sing anything. But I did swear I’d never fall in love. And I never did.
Until Sean Connery.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Scenes from Silver Creek: Flash Gordon
Everyone who filed through Silver Creek High eventually sat in a class taught by William Gordon. Called “Flash” by everyone who knew him, though not to his face, Flash was your stereotypical math teacher with an abstracted look on his face and a head of hair always in need of cutting.
He was a tall, gangly man whose shorts always seeded too short and whose ties always seemed too wide. He also had a good right arm, which he’d use to lob chalkboard erasers onto the head of any student caught talking in class. I suppose today it would be assault or child abuse, but back then it was jut part of life. Walking down the science hallway with a headful of chalk dust was almost a badge on honor because everyone knew Flash had caught you.
Flash and his wife, Helen, were parishioners at Our Lady of Angels, so we often saw them on Sunday mornings. He had a very special wide tie that he reserved for services and holydays, it had crucifixions all over it. I thought it was the most morbid article of clothing I had ever seen. I used to wonder, if Christ came back, what he would make of all these people with symbols of his execution lying around. People wearing crosses around their necks, stuck onto the back of their cars. Seems kind of cruel, you know. ‘Welcome back, remember what happened last time?”
We’d often end up sitting near Flash and his wife and it was always something of an ordeal because of the hymns. Flash had an enthusiastic, though unreliable voice. He’d boom his way through the songs he knew by heart and la-la his way through the rest. This resulted in sudden bursts of noise so the hymns wound sound “la-la-la-la GLORY ON HIGH la-la-la LIKE AN EAGLE la-la FOREVER…” This had the unfortunate effect of giving most people around him a bad case of giggles.
Every month Sliver Creek High School had an afternoon assembly. The whole school would gather grudgingly into the gym, sneakers squeaking across the basketball floor, and file into the bleachers to wait for that month’s useless information.
The sophomore cheerleaders bake sale raised $210 for Polynesia. The Drama department production of South Pacific was in dire need of sailors as the entire navy consisted of two awkward Freshmen and Vikram, our Indian exchange student who was to shy to sing the word “dame.” The only good thing about these assemblies (aside from getting me out of gym class) was the feature known as “Meet Your Teacher.” This was the brainchild of our Vice Principal, Lewis Hall who decided it would make student-teacher relations better if students learned something unexpected about the faculty. And it was, in practice.
We’d learned, for example, that Mrs. Favero. from the Home Ec department was 247th in line for the British throne. She was more than a bit coy about the mechanics of it, but I gathered it was the result of some ancestress having an affair with the illegitimate son of the illegitimate daughter of Henry VII. Our principal, Edward Christienssen told of his adventures onboard the Andrea Doria the night it had its great accident, complete with sound-effects and an overwrought poem about "the great lady dipping her brow unto the gray water." And hippie English teacher Mr. Carpenter told us about traveling from Seattle to Death Valley in a van with Ken Kesey and Alan Ginsburg. Unfortunately he couldn’t relate to us any of the details because I gather it was all sex- and drug-related and while the administration wanted us to meet our teachers, they didn’t want us to get quite that personal.
When it was Flash’s turn to take the podium he started by setting up clipboards covered in blueprints. Then he cleared his throat, fiddled with his fat tie, and began talking about how he’d always had an interest in architecture and also had a fascination for all things Classical.
The result was one of the oddest hobbies I’d ever heard of: designing ancient temples. It was the “designing” part that was fascinating. Because he wouldn’t just recreate existing ones, like making detailed drawings of the Parthenon. No, he would take what the ancients had done and then get all weird and make something new. Not just new buildings, but a whole new Olympian pantheon. For example, the Temple of Athena at McDonald’s. This featured Corinthian columns flanking ample parking, complete with a drive-through portico with acanthus leaves and a frieze featuring Mayor McCheese in a toga. The Banktheon was a Bank of America in a round Classical design with a sunken vault and a colossal statue of “Altus Caponus.” (Because, of course, every bank wants a statue of Al Capone in the lobby.) And then there was the Driveoseum, a classic Greek amphitheatre that was a drive-in and included a refreshment stand known as the “Popcornia.”
All of this was delivered with not a hint of how freakishly weird it was. There was no sense of whimsy behind it, no indication that he was aware this hobby was strange and his creations were frivolous and rather wonderful. I was both surprised at this hidden streak of creativity and amused that he was so un-amused. Nobody had the nerve to laugh, we all just sat there as if he were showing us designs for something serious and we had to be suitably respectful.
I have to admit that out of all the Meet Your Teacher assemblies, Flash’s presentation was the one that surprised me the most. The following month Miss Haber from the science department told us how her family kept pet skunks when she was a kid. Yawn.
Everyone who filed through Silver Creek High eventually sat in a class taught by William Gordon. Called “Flash” by everyone who knew him, though not to his face, Flash was your stereotypical math teacher with an abstracted look on his face and a head of hair always in need of cutting.
He was a tall, gangly man whose shorts always seeded too short and whose ties always seemed too wide. He also had a good right arm, which he’d use to lob chalkboard erasers onto the head of any student caught talking in class. I suppose today it would be assault or child abuse, but back then it was jut part of life. Walking down the science hallway with a headful of chalk dust was almost a badge on honor because everyone knew Flash had caught you.
Flash and his wife, Helen, were parishioners at Our Lady of Angels, so we often saw them on Sunday mornings. He had a very special wide tie that he reserved for services and holydays, it had crucifixions all over it. I thought it was the most morbid article of clothing I had ever seen. I used to wonder, if Christ came back, what he would make of all these people with symbols of his execution lying around. People wearing crosses around their necks, stuck onto the back of their cars. Seems kind of cruel, you know. ‘Welcome back, remember what happened last time?”
We’d often end up sitting near Flash and his wife and it was always something of an ordeal because of the hymns. Flash had an enthusiastic, though unreliable voice. He’d boom his way through the songs he knew by heart and la-la his way through the rest. This resulted in sudden bursts of noise so the hymns wound sound “la-la-la-la GLORY ON HIGH la-la-la LIKE AN EAGLE la-la FOREVER…” This had the unfortunate effect of giving most people around him a bad case of giggles.
Every month Sliver Creek High School had an afternoon assembly. The whole school would gather grudgingly into the gym, sneakers squeaking across the basketball floor, and file into the bleachers to wait for that month’s useless information.
The sophomore cheerleaders bake sale raised $210 for Polynesia. The Drama department production of South Pacific was in dire need of sailors as the entire navy consisted of two awkward Freshmen and Vikram, our Indian exchange student who was to shy to sing the word “dame.” The only good thing about these assemblies (aside from getting me out of gym class) was the feature known as “Meet Your Teacher.” This was the brainchild of our Vice Principal, Lewis Hall who decided it would make student-teacher relations better if students learned something unexpected about the faculty. And it was, in practice.
We’d learned, for example, that Mrs. Favero. from the Home Ec department was 247th in line for the British throne. She was more than a bit coy about the mechanics of it, but I gathered it was the result of some ancestress having an affair with the illegitimate son of the illegitimate daughter of Henry VII. Our principal, Edward Christienssen told of his adventures onboard the Andrea Doria the night it had its great accident, complete with sound-effects and an overwrought poem about "the great lady dipping her brow unto the gray water." And hippie English teacher Mr. Carpenter told us about traveling from Seattle to Death Valley in a van with Ken Kesey and Alan Ginsburg. Unfortunately he couldn’t relate to us any of the details because I gather it was all sex- and drug-related and while the administration wanted us to meet our teachers, they didn’t want us to get quite that personal.
When it was Flash’s turn to take the podium he started by setting up clipboards covered in blueprints. Then he cleared his throat, fiddled with his fat tie, and began talking about how he’d always had an interest in architecture and also had a fascination for all things Classical.
The result was one of the oddest hobbies I’d ever heard of: designing ancient temples. It was the “designing” part that was fascinating. Because he wouldn’t just recreate existing ones, like making detailed drawings of the Parthenon. No, he would take what the ancients had done and then get all weird and make something new. Not just new buildings, but a whole new Olympian pantheon. For example, the Temple of Athena at McDonald’s. This featured Corinthian columns flanking ample parking, complete with a drive-through portico with acanthus leaves and a frieze featuring Mayor McCheese in a toga. The Banktheon was a Bank of America in a round Classical design with a sunken vault and a colossal statue of “Altus Caponus.” (Because, of course, every bank wants a statue of Al Capone in the lobby.) And then there was the Driveoseum, a classic Greek amphitheatre that was a drive-in and included a refreshment stand known as the “Popcornia.”
All of this was delivered with not a hint of how freakishly weird it was. There was no sense of whimsy behind it, no indication that he was aware this hobby was strange and his creations were frivolous and rather wonderful. I was both surprised at this hidden streak of creativity and amused that he was so un-amused. Nobody had the nerve to laugh, we all just sat there as if he were showing us designs for something serious and we had to be suitably respectful.
I have to admit that out of all the Meet Your Teacher assemblies, Flash’s presentation was the one that surprised me the most. The following month Miss Haber from the science department told us how her family kept pet skunks when she was a kid. Yawn.
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