Where Are They? Where'd They Go...??!!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:     What Ever Happened to.... ??!!


It's an outrage!  Something must be done!...   Arthritis? Gout? Pustules?  Boils, pimples?  Back spasms!  Knees that sound like a chuck-a-luck game? An

elbow that's constantly being banged into hard, immoveable objects?  Pain?  LOSS!!  I mean, why is it that those of us who have fallen into the pit of advanced age...  I like to term it, "GeezerHood"!...  have to suffer so many agonies and indignities, including the scourge of Ageism itself?  

Most importantly, most significantly, where the hell are all my great and good friends and family members? I mean...  where'd they go??!!  Why!!??  

Steve, Pat, Jim, Boobers, Patty, Karen, John, Bob, Carol, Tommy, Morry, Abi...  so many others.  Where are they?  To what train, bus or duty station do they repair (meaning, report, as if commanded to do so by a kind of tribunal...  a military term I never quite understood! ...sorta like the mystery of Military Time!!)?  Where do they go once they jump off the mortal trampoline and disappear into the ether, a dense fog, mystical smoke...? 

Come back, damn it!  Wherever you've gone, they don't need you.  We need you!  We want you here, with us!  You left far too damn soon, too young!  

I remember a support group to which I once belonged.  We were discussing the existence of a deity and the possibility of an afterlife, the concept of reincarnation...

One member of our group opined that he actually did so, or wanted to believe in reincarnation.  It seemed to the member that additional lives tend to reconcile all of the inequities of human existence.  "Why are some people born rich and privileged, while others are thrust into spheres of poverty, disease, racial caste systems, physical and intellectual infirmities, to languish in sadness, mediocrity and misery?," he asked, sort of rhetorically, to no one in particular, or to the group as a whole, perhaps.

"I mean," the member continued, "why can't we come back, be reborn in circumstances that are different from those of a former life?  Poverty to wealth...  perfect health to lack of it...  Conversely, why don't the rich and privileged, those who never truly suffered, come back into a life of poverty and abuse, even a smattering of abject stupidity...?  Now that would be true equality!"  The rest of us pondered deeply the member's passionately-expressed musings! 

"I'd like to come back as a big fish," one member countered   The rest of us looked at him as if he's been suddenly lobotomized.  No one asks why "a big fish?"  (Why not a pelican...?  Just wondering...  What about a Bonobo!?....) 


I think I'm getting off the track, sort of!  I guess I mean to ask the great, unanswerable question:  "Why does it seem that, too often, the best of us die young, too young?  And why do so many 'great souls' (so to speak) leave us too soon, when their lives had so much meaning, and they had so much more to share and to give to the worlds in which they lived, and to the people and worthy organizations with whom they co-existed, or for which they volunteered?"  

I mean, there was so much more I wanted to say to and discuss with my friends, meaning the "departed ones."  So much more I wanted to do with them...  travels, adventures, and, yes, even educative activities such as reading and talking about good books, voluntarism, intelligent films...  politics, too, of course, dependent upon one's philosophy, attitudes, beliefs, values!  (Politics is tricky stuff, we're often told!)

Steve!  Patsy!  Patrick!  Booby!  Where the hell are you, and why don't you visit anymore??!!  Dreams?...  I talk to my dead loved ones in my dreams!  Sometimes the conversations are a bit silly, sometimes rather poignant!  I talked to Steve, recently, while he and I were seated on an unrecognizable concrete stoop.  "What's Sue really like," Steve asked me.  I told him my thoughts.  He looked at me for a long moment, smiled and appeared to accept my assessment.  We also talked about the haircut of an athlete we both admired.  What the hell was that about?...  I have no idea...  Oh, and Larry?  Steve never knew him, but asked his age.  "Lare the Hair" was my friend from the other side of the continent!  (I wonder if HE's still with us??!)  

I keep pictures, images, of two of my dearest friends on my computer desktop.  One or the other pops up unexpectedly, every so often, when I turn the thing on in the morning.  I talk to the "popped-up" one for a brief time when that happens.  We smile at one another, and then go on with whatever tedium commands our attention at the moment, content, I suppose, to have had a brief encounter!  

Not a real photo, but an artists's depiction of spectres,
or ghosts, rising from tombs, or some such,
preparing to visit the living...  maybe??!!

I miss my dead friends, and family members, too, of course, who are no longer interacting with us in the realm of the living!  Emotions boil to the surface...  anger, resentment, frustration, sadness, longing...  Resurrection of the dead is not in our domain, unfortunately, except in memory or dreams,  or perhaps the mental wanderings that seem to affect us all when a pleasant stare into nowhere and nothing becomes a reverie, a journey into a distant sphere of consciousness.  I wonder...   Maybe I'll dream about P.T. tonight!!  We'll have a fine little chin wag...  that I may or may not remember upon waking!    

(Special Dedication:  To all of our dearest dead friends and family members.  We'd like to hear from you when possible!  Give us a sign or something...  For example, when Patty died, she returned as a butterfly and landed on us, and once on Boober's golf club.  Booby came back, we think, as a house fly.  We enjoy those kinds of signs (sort of like "medium-ship" -- inter-spiritual communication, maybe?) and reappearances of the departed too, of course!!  "Hello?  Hello??...  What was that you said? What?...")  

(Another Thing -- a Definition:   dead... /ded/  Adjective
1.  No longer alive.  "a dead body"...   synonyms:  deceased, expired, departed, gone, no more, passed on, passed away...  (In Botswana, I believe they prefer "Late"!  Kind of a nice euphemism, eh??)  (I find that many people in many different societies and cultures don't care for the word, "dead," but tend to use euphemisms, such as those listed above!  Interesting, what?). Oh, what about "Past Tense," maybe "Former Person"!!  

Learn to pronounce

adjective

1. 
   

     

       

Collecting Characters with Character!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:      Collecting Characters with Character...!

Certain collections cannot easily be given a definable value, such as the remarkably interesting characters met and "collected" along one's personal "La Strada."  Unlike precious coins or stamps, we store them in a vault of memory, and bring them out to brighten a mood or relive a funny moment in time.  (Laughter is sweet music!)         

The above is an ersatz
illustration of a man
shaving his ears!

A few Illustrations:    In spite of the punishing effects of strong drink, Mac was a fine-looking man who always dressed well, and kept himself groomed right up to shaving his ears regularly.  His essential diet consisted of bourbon and an occasional imported beer.  Those who knew him rarely saw him actually consume food.  On one occasion, with a group of friends having dinner at a fine restaurant, he ordered an enormous steak, held it aloft on his fork and announced, "Now isn't that is a beautiful thing to behold."  He put it down on his plate, never touched it again, turned to his right and boomed, "Garcon, more whiskey for Table Six."  

One of his companions belched, shoved his plate to one side -- it consisting only of the juice of his own former slab of porterhouse and some terrified-looking bones -- and asked, "Gonna eat that thing, Mac?"  The insatiable companion then devoured another enormous cut of meat as Mac looked on in admiration. 

"You're like a pack of wild dogs," said Mac.  He beamed at the man and added, "Save me a

Not exactly a "pack" of wild dogs...
but maybe you get the idea, eh?! 

bone! I got a big animal at home."  

In geezerhood, I think about the characters I know and those I've met.  Often I consider the taverns I frequented and "collected" over time, extraordinary characters "collected" as well.  Some during the hard drinking days of my youth and robust middle age, some of more recent vintage. The aforementioned "Mac" was part of that earlier collection.  As was Bill H. A group of us drank frequently at his home on an Air Force base near Tacoma, WA. When the table became crowded with empty beer and booze bottles, he'd order his patient wife,  Flo, "Un-ass this rig!"  (He had served in the Navy prior to making the Air Force his final career choice, always spoke like a sailor...  or a pirate, maybe!)  She ignored him saying, "Billy, you and the boys emptied 'em, you haul 'em to the bin." He'd grin at her affectionately, and dump down another beer.  Bill had an exceptional sense of funny; he shared his gift generously.
"Jere The Hair," lived in a complex that had a large swimming pool.  He and the manager were not good chums. They'd frequently had words! About to change lodgings, "The Hair" decided he would break every rule posted on the pool's gate, and he'd do it all in one remarkable gesture of defiance...  at midnight. "The Hair" dressed in full golf regalia, including plus-fours and two-tone cleated golf shoes, a glass of whiskey and a liverwurst sandwich in hand, a golf bag full of ancient clubs on his back.  "Fore," he yelled at the very top of his voice and jumped into the pool swinging a mashie niblick as he leapt.  The manager appeared, his face a purple mask of rage, and ordered "The Hair" to vacate his apartment without delay, to which my friend replied, "I'm already packed, you miserable cesspool of a...!" (The actual language Jere included, following the initial insult, has been omitted for the sake of propriety!)

This is not the saloon of which I write,
but it's a fair representation of
"The Shootin' Star"!

There was a great saloon in a small Western town frequented by two wonderful characters -- King Arthur and Kid Shimmel, both self-proclaimed "real cowboys."  King Arthur would enter each day and hand the bartender a brown paper sack.  The "King" would drink himself into another level of consciousness, and then proclaim, "Dod a'mighty, I had me a accident." ' The "King" would retrieve his paper sack.  He'd wobble to the men's room, clean himself up, change his underwear and then return to the bar for more of the nectar that carried him away, until he, himself, was carried away by his "fellow cowboys."
  
Kid Shimmel owned the oldest pickup truck anyone ever imagined could still function.  One memorable day, driving into town for supplies, "The Kid" stopped at a school crossing.  He didn't urge the pickup forward for what seemed like half an hour.  Finally, filled with irritation he stuck his head out the side window and shouted, "Get the hell outta the road, ya damn fool kid!" The "damn fool kid," as it happened, was an inanimate "Safety Susie" stop sign used at many school crossings.  When laughter subsided after someone told of the incident, one of the saloon's fellow habitues suggested that "The Kid" might want to consider prescription glasses,

Possibly an image of "The Kid's"
Pickup truck!  (Possibly not!)

even better, public transportation. 

I want to make it clear that I use the term "character" not in any pejorative sense, but in the most respectful of ways.  I love and admire interesting and colorful people...  characters! My own parents and those of my wife were characters -- fun, colorful, ideosyncratic, eccentric. Our lives, today, are filled with marvelous characters.  We no longer "collect" them from saloons, but rather from coffee houses, private homes, movie palaces and other personal and "cultural" enclaves.     Examples!?...

See how happy the broccoli is!
I like to eat broccoli (but in
smaller chunks)!

SwH makes me laugh like almost no one I've ever known. We're dining in a fine Italian restaurant. I'm enjoying minestrone, an Italian vegetable soup that has a large portion of broccoli floating on top.  I like broccoli.  I try to cut it into pieces to enjoy with, not just one, but a few mouths-full of soup.  I use my spoon to hold the thing in place, a standard butter knife to cut. She watches me, a look on her face that suggests, "Are you a completely ineffectual buffoon?" I don't succeed in severing the mass of broccoli.  She stabs it with her fork and stuffs it into my mouth. I'm laughing so hard the patrons on either side begin to cringe away from us. I fear they'll summon the management.  Oh...  and she has a way of doing funny weird things to my ears!  It tickles! 

Alie is among the funniest, goofiest persons I've ever known.  She finds humor in nearly every conceivable thing, person, event and circumstance, no matter how mundane. We're sitting in a coffee house discussing "Buff-Colored 'White-Out' " and possible alternatives.  A friend just had a book of poetry printed on tan or ecru or buff-colored paper, and sadly found typos in the copies.  We offer to help, and try to find a product to obliterate the errors.  Our quest includes a

spirited discussion as to the exact color of the paper; it also includes a visit to our local art supply store, having been told they might offer a "buff-colored" paint-marker or some other product for our purpose. They didn't. SwH and I were walking homeward; Alie was driving. She arrived at our home ahead of us having had to pick up something she'd left there.  Upon our arrival we find the house papered with sticky notes, each carrying a message or object lesson suggestive of the elusive poetry-book paper color.  Hours later we're still finding sticky notes!...  "This is possibly ecru... This might be pale lemon... This could be a shade of light camel, or possibly timid tan...  This hat has a hue of pale gold-ey yellow..." and on and on... 

I feel I must add Rob C. and Bill W. to the list of our favorite characters.  Both have brilliant
minds. Rob is largely self-taught, a voracious reader and consumer of information, obscure and otherwise.  I ask him, to cite an example, about crisscrossed, overhead electrical cables perched over a rural roadway.  I receive an astonishing dissertation on "dirty grids," efficient rural usage of power distribution and much more!  Bill collects films, currently films that feature

Rob knows about Power and
Electrical Stuff...  like Dirty Grids!

mirrors and reflection.  He's a scholar on many levels, and happily shares his world view and esoteric ideas with those of us in his spheres of influence.  Apart from being smart beyond my poor level of comprehension, both men are exceptionally funny.  

Time to bring this edition to a close!  I'll save others for subsequent entries in these memoir postings. Here's the point: Characters -- whether or not one likes the use of the word or accepts it as complimentary and affectionate -- color, edify, brighten, even strengthen our lives.  We need them to populate our experience, to broaden our vision.  In my callow youth, I collected bars and taverns and their often rum-affected denizens whose words and deeds delighted me, though unfortunately I recall too little of their banter and behavior.  

Today, mired in robust if hoary "geezerhood," I'm grateful for those with whom I happily interact and whose company I thoroughly enjoy.  This episode is merely an homage to those delightful and colorful characters whom I hope to continue to enjoy and benefit from as I wander deeper into advancing spheres of consciousness.  Suggestions for future topics are always welcome.  Oh, and I have a book in print...  just in case you're interested!!  Thank you, and good day or good morrow or good night!                 
Special Note:  This episode of "Memoirs of a Geezer" is dedicated to...  well, is a kind of homage to marvelous characters, especially those of exceptional character as well.  With apologies, only a very few were able to be sketched herein, but future entries may well include others who have made lasting impressions on the perpetrator.  I'll try to warn you in advance, and will endeavor to use fictitious names to avoid embarrassment and lawsuits!  Thank you!  Oh...  and Good Night to All...

Humbly Submitted 05-23-16 -- Joel K.

        

             



     



       

Dreams: A Strange and Wondrous Landscape!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    Dreams -- A Strange and Wondrous Landscape...

Dreams!  Strange and mystical.  Sometimes haunting.  Odd plunges into deep wells of unconsciousness and fantasy.  In this time of advanced age (or Geezerhood, if you like) in which I now find myself, dreams have become more and more bizarre.  I remember them upon waking, something that was not always the case in my younger years.  Although frequent inebriation and the "delicate condition" of early mornings may have impeded memory in those decades past!  

Now in this autumnal time of life, my dreams have become even more peculiar, some downright ridiculous.  Allow me, please, to elucidate, via the following example...

To illustrate the standard dress of
a typical English barrister...
Rumpole of the Bailey!

I'm driving along in a 1940s-vintage Jaguar Sports Roadster.  It has huge rounded fenders and a split windscreen, slanted on either side and divided by a grooved strip of chromed metal.  With me are two other chaps.  We're all dressed as English barristers, black broadcloth jackets and waistcoats, a gold watch chain draped along the midsection, black and grey striped trousers, a derby or homburg-style hat perched on each of our heads.

The Tailor!

    We're traveling at considerable speed.  I realize something's wrong as I cannot see the roadway properly; I'm seated too low and can view only the top portions of trees, roofs of parked vehicles as we whizz past.  I'm concerned we'll strike something.  Suddenly, one of the companion barristers says in a voice raised in anger, "This is disgraceful; here we are traversing a pleasant lane and one spies a hideous barn!  Just look at that!  Stop!  Let me out!"  

Ancient kitchen
chair...  Pictured
in tailor shop!

    He exits the roadster, crosses the road and knocks at the wood paneled door of a red-brick building devoid of windows.  A man answers and my companion, the barrister, announces with indignation, "This is appalling!"  He enters and slams the door. 

The third barrister remains mute.  Now having parked at the side of the road, soon I'm walking along and carrying an antique wooden kitchen chair.  It has a rounded seat with curved back supports.  Quite soon I enter a tailor's shop.  I state to the three tailors in the shop, in my best faux English accent, "Gentlemen.  I cannot see properly through the windscreen of my roadster!"  I show them the chair.

One of the tailors looks up and says, "Let me just measure your trousers, sir."  I comply, and the tailor fusses with the cuffs of my English barrister trousers, using a flat piece of marking chalk.  "There we are, sir, right as rain," the tailor proclaims proudly.  

Illustrative image of a
man wearing
Striped Trousers!

"I shall return, then," I say in reply.  "I must advise you, though, I share these trousers with another gentleman.  What are your hours of operation?"  

"We're open Monday through Friday, sir," the tailor replies.

"But today is Saturday," I say.

"Monday through Friday, sir.  Trousers done in just a tick.  Right as rain, sir.  Next, please!"

I depart, carrying with me the antique kitchen chair.  I cross the lane to the red-brick building into which my companion barrister disappeared earlier.  I knock loudly on the wood paneled door.  Suddenly I wake, possibly roused by the imagined loud knocking!

Begging your indulgence, I wish to describe another odd dream, this one a recurring adventure!  In the dream, my dear and lifelong friend...  we'll call him Patrick...  telephones to insist that we play a round of golf.  I dislike golf, but I agree to meet him at a links location that remains unidentifiable in the

This image is intended to depict
"Patrick" as he and I prepare to
play backwards golf!...  also, "Plus
Fours" golf apparel!  (The bird
is probably extraneous...)

recurring dream.  Patrick wisely suggests -- to avoid an enormous crush of golf enthusiasts, comprising a great many groups of foursomes all wearing plus fours -- that we play backwards, teeing off from the greens and then putting on the tees.  I agree, as it all seems quite sensible in the dream.

We select our drivers and tee off from the first green into a throng of oncoming golfers.  As one of a foursome approaches us, he announces angrily to Patrick, "Sir, this is not on.  One simply cannot tee off from a green into a group of unprotected players!"

"Be quiet and move aside," admonishes Patrick, "you're obscuring the landing point of my superb tee shot!"

"Scoundrel...  man must be mad!" says the offended golfer vehemently, but softly, so as not to provoke violence, or so I suppose within the dream.  (I often wonder if other dreamers muse or suppose inside a dream, locked in deep slumber!)

At some point in our round of golf, we find ourselves in the basement of a home on the periphery of the 18th fairway.  We've sought and been granted permission to play our golf balls from the aforementioned basement, through a window the homeowner has graciously opened.  We both select mashie niblicks.  (Inappropriate, perhaps, for "pitching" but nonetheless our clubs of choice.)  We both then successfully hit our balls onto a tee, where we proceed to putt for par.  (We use a beer can for putting.  It's an empty Blatz can, and we use it repeatedly throughout!)

Image of a Blatz Beer
Can into which we
aim our Putts!

 

After completing the round of golf, we decide to avail ourselves of potables at the club's "19th Hole" clubhouse.  We both order "905" Beer, and quaff hungrily, terribly thirsty after our vigorous round of 18 holes.  The bartender says, "Good day for it, eh?  You the chaps playing backwards?  Terribly clever!  Fifty-cents each, please!"  I awake as the beverage host smacks our bottles of chilled "905" beer soundly upon the bar!

One day I'll discuss the dream with Patrick.  Perhaps at some point in our  past we actually played a round of backwards golf.  Although I can't imagine why, as I dislike golf.

Above, below and to the right
are images of dreams.  I reason these
might require explanatory copy!

I know I dreamed as a youth, though I do not recall any dream of great significance.  I engaged in somnambulism as well.  My dear departed mother once told me I scratched on her bedroom door, and when she opened it at approximately 3:00 in the morning, I spat a mouthful of water upon her face and nightdress.  Later in life, my brother told me mother worried about my penchant for strong drink and its possible effect upon erratic deportment!  Alas, the foibles and follies of youth...  and dreams unremembered!

Mustn't grumble.  My dreams in "geezerhood" are quite entertaining, as I think about and relate them to my nearest and dearest.  Though some are skeptical about the veracity of my English Barrister dream and its authentic and well-remembered dialogue (though needn't be!), I suppose I hope for some sort of interpretation.  I cannot imagine what either of the aforementioned dreams might be construed to mean, if indeed they'd betray any sense of meaning to competent dream interpreters.  (I knew a potato peeler -- known as "Menominee Mary,"working at a saloon my family frequented, who was a remarkably talented interpreter of dreams.  She's long dead, but once told my father that he'd soon be taking a trip, after he'd related to her a frightening dream, something having to do with a freight train racing through his bedroom.  Verily, and soon afterward he actually went on a trip!  Although I should add, on balance, my father was constantly taking trips...) 

In conclusion, I must say I enjoy dreams --when having them, and, doubly, when actually remembering them -- particularly those in which I'm flying without the benefit of aircraft.  I don't enjoy those in which I'm being pursued by gunmen or commies or unruly gangs or scaly creatures with big teeth!  Happily the latter do not usually dominate my dreamscape.  Well, I'm off now for my afternoon slumber.  Getting on in years, you know.  Pleasant dreams!  

[ Post Script:    A Simple Quiz -- (Answer carefully; there may be more than one correct answer!)  Which of the following do you believe is a true, recurring dream:  1.)  I wake myself by asking someone to pass something...  e.g.  "Please pass the sausages!?"  2.)   I receive a telephone call from Barbara Walters (I call her "Babsy"...  we're jolly good chums!) to announce that I've been named the most fascinating person of the year!  3.)  I hit ("spike," "kill") volleyballs in my sleep, arm and hand actually flailing wildly...!  (Poor Sweetheart!) ]     

(Special Note of Attribution and Gratitude:   The perpetrator of this Blog extends enormous thanks to his great friends, Pat and Joey, Pat for inspiring this "edition," focused on "Dreams," and Joey for appreciating and encouraging the shared senses of humor and the ridiculous that P.T. and the perpetrator have enjoyed for more years than we'd care to admit.  Alternatively, sincere apologies to both for incriminating you in this latest bit of foolishness!)  

 Humbly Submitted 01-01-15 -- Joel K.