GIDDY-GIDDY RAH-RAH

The Democratic National Convention. It's over. Thank God, it's over.

The Democrats have packed their bags and headed back to wherever Democrats go when they go. And they are taking that Muppets-and-Teletubbies feeling with them; they are hopeful and happy. 

It did feel good. There were speeches, music, celebrities talking and singing (Oprah showed up, and Stevie Wonder), Republicans talking, Clintons talking on separate nights, white, brown and black people talking, just plain folks (where they could work them in), mayors, governors and politicians; victims in one way or another of the end of Roe V Wade brought tears to everyone's eyes; more singing, dancing, sign waving, a musical role call, and more. And the Palestinian protesters stayed outside, so the optics on the podium remained untainted.

There were Obamas talking. Both of them, ladies first. Their speeches were smart, sophisticated, urbane (except when snarky or just plain dirty where needed), stirring, energizing (and clever, God were they clever. Michelle even gouged Trump by saying he is about to discover President of the U.S. is one of those "black jobs"s he claims immigrants are coming to take away). They did their Ivy League educations proud (something JD Vance can't seem to pull off; dumb shit sounds like dumb shit even when a Yalie says it). I loved them. Everybody loved them.

It also occurred to me later that they are one of the reasons people on the right are upset and feeling everything from long left out to MAGA-ish and beyond. The Obamas spoke the language liberal Democrats love. They spoke the language of the smart and sophisticated, the erudite. And in complete sentences most of the time! They spoke a language we look up to. But it is a language that makes others feel smugly talked down to (those who are not with us, and not likely to be if we can't get past the liberal-isms -- or perceived liberal-isms -- to speak a language they understand about the things that trouble them). That can be a problem.

Biden, the old un-Trump, left to finish his presidency and he says he has lots left to do. Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in as the new un-Trump and spoke of freedom and the path to the future. Tim Walz is her running mate (the man who already introduced "weird" to describe Trump, JD Vance, Project 2025). Balloons fell. And then it was over.

"Feelin' good is feelin' good again," as Robert Earl Keen sings. Of course he is singing about wishful thinking. And the Democrats are carrying a load of wishful thinking with them as they go.

Hopeful and happy won't win elections. Neither will being appalled or offended. Kamala Harris must defeat predictably appalling and offensive people. Be appalled for Gus Walz but be appalled on your own time then get back to work. Being appalled is not the job at hand. Winning is the only job to be done.

TRUMP AND HARRIS: BALLOTS AND BULLETS

Let's talk.

Democrats have a candidate and Harris picked Tim Walz as her running mate. Everyone -- as a young child I once knew said -- is excited with joy. Kamala Harris offers a sigh of relief and a bit of hope. But she is not the solution to the Trump problem. Happy days are not really here again.

Why?

President Joe Biden is willing to say it out loud. If Donald Trump loses the election in November, Biden is "not confident at all" there will be a peaceful transfer of power. "He means what he says. We don't take him seriously. He means it. All the stuff about, 'If we lose there'll be a bloodbath, it'll have been a stolen (election).'"

It's time to have a talk. Actually it is past time.

An old friend from Texas said recently, "What you are saying is that the ideal voter will have a ballot in the box and a gun handy?" I don't think he was just talking Texas. He's right. Biden is right. I'm right.

 Donald Trump intends to be president again whether he wins or doesn't win the 2024 election. There's been lots of hemming and hawing around accepting the vote tally. If Trump wins, yes. Otherwise, who knows? That's a euphemistic "No." Threats of violence tremble over the election from Trump and others. Unpredictable but armed Trump believers wait quietly for the moment, for their moment. A man touched by God will not be allowed to lose. There is too much at stake. JD Vance (blue-eyed and fair haired sort-of-fascist family man -- a Kamala taunter with his own mixed brood) proselytizes and blathers about Trump and the wrath of God (there is a clear confusion of the two). More importantly Trump has the well-organized support of the Heritage Foundation and other groups. He has the apparent blessing of the Supreme Court and the Teamsters boss, the police unions and organizations, the megaphone MAGAs, lovers of guns, haters of women, racists, Christians and other groups. There are even outfits selling survivalist gear and food on TV.

There are lots of them and that's scary. But the frightening thing is how well organized they are. Thousands of members of this-or-that disgruntled group are simply awaiting marching orders.

What will happen, especially if it comes down to Harris and ballots and bullets? It's a clear people-get-ready moment.

But when I mention the idea that it could take more than a vote to right the ship and put it back on course, my fellow Democrats and various other un-Trumpers don't want to talk about it. They look down and mumble, "Nah" or "I hope not" or "That won't (or can't) happen" or "I don't want to think that could happen" or they resort to "We're not that kind of people."

There is no discussion of the idea that it could or might or will happen or that we might have to become "that kind of people" or live with the consequences. There is some good old dysfunctional family denialism, and there's can't-happen-here-ism, nobody's-that-stupid-ism, blind-hope-ism, ignorance-of-what's-at-stake-ism, no-way-ism, and some outright honest fear.

There is faith in it too. We are Americans and we've always believed that was enough to save us. I am 79 years old and it has always been there. Even in the 1960s when we were rabidly protesting the Vietnam War, the draft, the government itself, the various ills brought on by segregation, gender inequality, abortion rights and anything else we could think of (and I could be as rabid and frothing as the rest), we did it because we had a most often unacknowledged but deeply embedded faith that no matter how things were thrown off course, turned upside down, burned, trashed and smashed, the system we have known all of our lives would allow it to be fixed. That is why we could "misbehave" with such enthusiasm.

Presidents come and go, Democrats and Republicans come and go, Supreme Courts rule this way and that way but they come and go too, protests come and go too. But Americans are who we are. Things are what they are, democracy is what it is, things drift left and right but there are constant course corrections. This is our known world. It is the faith of our fathers who fought to save the world and democracy -- and told us and told us and told us they had saved it all for us. We believed it.

Now to do more than vote will require us to test it and perhaps lose it to save it.

There will be violence involved. Admit it. Prepare for it. Do it. It's an honest human response.

Kamala Harris will never get to where we want her to be if we can do no more than say, "We are not that kind of people." It is likely to take an army of "that kind of people" to save us and our democracy.

I lost my faith on the way to reality. Now, here I am. I am that kind of people. Who will give the marching orders and who will march? We must know these things before election day.

 

HARRIS IGNORES TRUMP'S FLESH WOUND

President Joe Biden bit the bullet for democracy. Donald Trump got a flesh wound.

Biden wisely and heroically decided Americans want a president who is not a president he can be. His real job is being president not running for president.

Kamala Harris is running like she means it. And the Republicans
must know it because they are calling her names. They can’t use the
unseemly N-word so they use “DEI hire.” It’s the N-word. Trump
mispronounces her name and says he is not going to be “nice.” Name-
calling won’t stop her.

Harris knows Trump is not bulletproof. It was only a flesh wound: an
oops, an owie, a boo-boo. Now he is the official Republican Party pick to
run, a convicted felon with mangy morals, a confirmed liar and instigator of an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government on Jan. 6. It’s a FLESH
WOUND. So give him a band-aid, send thoughts and prayers
(Republicans like thoughts and prayers) and get on with it. Trump got a
photo-op with a bullet. He got lucky, not because the bullet missed him but because it came close.

Biden’s response to Trump’s shooting? “This is not who we are.” He had a thermostat moment in the Oval Office and said the political
temperature should be “lowered.” He spoke apologetically, seriously,
words of kindness, conciliation, unity and peace. He responded like the
fine old liberal he is – and like a visitor from another time and place.
Harris and the Democrats have nothing to apologize for.

There was absolutely no need for Biden to kiss Trump’s boo-boo,
no need to take those campaign ads off the air for a couple of days. Biden should have used that moment to go from hoping to be the un-Trump savior of democracy to becoming the man who intended to be President again. He understands what it means to govern; he understands that the world is a complicated and nuanced place to live. But good governance, a strong record, quiet diplomacy, and let’s-get-together moments will not defeat Trump.

We are who we are. We cannot help ourselves. This IS who we are:
a nation of citizens in camo outfits with itchy trigger fingers. The violent
dimensions of the battlefield were established openly by Trump on Jan. 6, 2020, when he filled the Capitol building with his own camo-and-ammo boys with ready access to weapons, sweaty trigger fingers, blind hatred of Nancy Pelosi, a noose for Mike Pence, and a little poop to spread on the walls. They are Trump’s heroes and martyrs and he likes the way they sing. He insists these jailhouse canaries are patriots but many of them are simply his fellow felons.

Since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the Constitution there
have been acts and threats of violence against various elected officials,
election officials, their families and others. There was a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; Peolsi’s husband was smashed with a hammer; a Georgia election official and her daughter faced physical threats from election deniers. There have been hints and innuendos of violence from Trump himself. He likes to make people believe his followers are armed to the teeth and ready to save him. And that he must be saved. Will he accept the election results? Well, yes, if he wins. And if he loses? His followers agree that them’s fightin’ words. Trump encourages it. And a state senator in Ohio said it out loud at a recent J.D. Vance rally: “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.” He added it’s great to have “Bikers for Trump on our side.”

He said later he was sorry, but we all know threats of civil war mean never having to say you are sorry. Not these days.

But in the windmill of Trump’s mind bullets fly only one way. It’s
how a man who spent lots of his life staying as far from combat as
possible sees it. The truth: People shoot and other people shoot back.
Even a slightly wounded warrior should know that.

Donald Trump intends to be president again.

If he is elected it’s a problem; if he is not elected it’s another kind of
problem. But he has made his intentions clear. However it happens there
will be no logic in it. No one will come to their senses. The Trump faithful
are true believers and true believers do not come to their senses. Trump
fills up their senses. Some even believe he has been ordained by the-
God-who-fits-their-needs-these-days to be president.

Trump is a convicted felon with squalid values. Some of his followers have taken to proudly wearing t-shirts reading: “I’m Voting for the Convicted Felon.” They don’t care about his values or squalidness. He has made threats and alluded to the possibility of violence. He praises the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as heroes. Immigration and the Mexican border are a problem that needs resolution. Yes. But he has chosen to turn immigrants into a dark menace and at least twice in recent days he has warned that those dark masses are showing up to take away the jobs of black Americans. He claims to know many black people, yet he always makes sure white people (especially armed, Bibled-up white people) know that he and God are on their side. He has mentioned his fear and belief that the next election will be snatched away from him, stolen in 2024 as he has convinced followers it was stolen in 2020. He has warned that such an effort already is under way already. And if that happens? One gray-haired Christian said ominously in a recent television interview, “It won’t be like last time.” And who’s to say the Supreme Court won’t back a Trump power grab? It’s his court. Are the cops his as well? And how deeply are his loyalists embedded in the military? He says there is a conspiracy afoot. Conspiracy is lurking. Everywhere. All the time.

In a July 24 speech Trump said he’s “not going to be nice.” Harris
believes he’s not the nicest sort of felon to begin with. She intends to be
president. She has hit the campaign trail running hard and ready to
rumble. It’s clear Biden was running low on rumble. And that’s what it will
take. Harris needs to rumble toward the nomination and the presidency.
And leave the dithering and doddering to the septuagenarian candidate.

WRITING THINGS DOWN

 

I proceed into the future

One word at a time

It's only way

I know how

to do it

        8/6/24

QUITTING TIME?

I have been thinking about quitting.

I've quit many things in my life: jobs, towns, people, friends, marriages, chewing tobacco (twice), pipe smoking, North Carolina, going home for Christmas, Sunday dinners with my grandparents, the grating buzz and gossip of extended family. There were others too. Some were painful, some were exhilarating, some were necessary, some were for the right reasons, some not, some carefully considered, others impulsive, some were more destructive than others, some surprised people, some hurt people, some brought tears, others relief, some were good things, some not so good, some terrible, some untroublingly dead, others unkillable, some for unforgettable reasons, others for unrememberable reasons, some nothing but whimsy without any reason at all. I have tried to quit trying but that never lasts. It would be like quitting quitting.

The most puzzling thing I ever quit was playing the guitar I loved to play.

Gibson LGO

I bought my first guitar when I was in high school in 1963. It was a little mahogany Gibson LGO I played until it literally fell to pieces many years later. I carried the unplayable pieces around for years after that, eventually ending up with nothing but the tuners until I threw them out too. I have owned and played some sort of guitar since 1963. Some cheap, some not. I finally ended up with the guitar of my dreams - a Martin D-28 - in the 1980s. I played it nearly every day right up until the day we left New Mexico in June 2003 to move to Texas. We arrived in Austin two days later and I have never played it since.

I've tried to figure out why. No luck. I even tried figuring it out in therapy. Still no luck. I suspect it is related to the fact that when I returned to New Mexico in 1993 I felt at home (New Mexico always has felt that way) and having quit more than one "home" (usually for better, sometimes for worse), I never intended to do it again. But my wife had the chance to go to school in Texas and I thought it was a chance she deserved. I was not happy to leave New Mexico, but I said yes for what I still think were the best of reasons. She deserved it. It seemed like a simple enough choice. I don't regret it.

But somehow I violated something so deeply embedded in my subconscious that I cannot dig it out, hold it up to the light and examine it, something hidden in a dark so dark there can never be enough light to see it. Perhaps I gave up my guitar to punish myself. Perhaps it was an expression of a profound sense of loss I could not express any other way. All I know is that quitting was a decision I did not consciously make and seem unlikely ever to understand.

Neil Young playing Hank Williams' D-28.

The guitar rests unstrung in its case in my office. I clean it from time to time, take pleasure in the marks left on the fretboard by my fingers when I used to play, hold it the way I used to hold it, remember playing, even hear it in my mind, but I am not tempted to play again. Still I keep it and have no plans to sell it or give it away. Do I keep it as a reminder that some things are beyond understanding? Or because there is a chance (or is it a hope?) that some day I will restring it, tune it, strum it, pick it, refriend it, let it talk to me in an old familiar language I can comprehend, and finally understand what happened? If so it will be the only friend I ever quit and gave a second chance.

Lately I have been thinking about quitting something else important: my writing. For a man who has shaped his identity and made his way with words - if not always his living - in one way or another for his entire adult life, it is a big decision.

I do not want it to follow my guitar playing into the silent dark. Right now that is all I know.

Word Machine

 

GHOST FLIGHT

A mourning dove hit the front window in full flight. This is the mark it made.

LIFE, LOVE, DEATH, MEMORY: FOR MY DEAD NIECE WHO DESERVES MORE THAN THIS

"I said I came into this world not wanted and I will go out not wanted." 

                               Ruth Howerton-Luck, January 26, 2016.

My niece Ruth Ann Howerton-Luck died April 2, 2016, nearly two years after being diagnosed with colon cancer that had metastasized to her liver. It kept metastasizing until it was everywhere from her lungs to her brain and ovaries. She tried to stop it and lived as long as she could through the pain and the nausea, the surgeries and chemo. On Jan. 30 she told me, "I will be gone in two or three months [because] my cancer is a rapid growing kind. I want to fight a little longer so Ryan and the girls have a mom." She fought. She was valiant and courageous, but no matter what she did, the cancer seemed to do one thing more, or two, or ten. It is what cancer does. She was a long time dying, and then she was a short time dying, and then she was dead. In that same Jan. 30 conversation she said, "I am not going to hospice. I mean it may look like a grand way to die but it really isn't." She had experience caring for the dying. On April 2 she died at home a few days after leaving hospital care. Her children were there, her brother, nieces and nephews, her stepmother. Her husband was there too.

It is now April 14 and no plans have been announced for a funeral or a memorial service and her family and friends cannot understand why. When news of her death was posted hundreds of people responded. People loved her, knew her, intimately followed her pain-wracked struggle, were sad for her, hopeful for her, awed by her. Now they want to share their love for her, bid her farewell, gather around their memories of her. We need to hear each other say things about her, weep together; her two daughters and her son need to say what they must and hear what they should about their mother. When? Where? Her husband spoke vaguely of "something in a few months." He has said nothing else. We don't even know what happened to her remains.

Meanwhile people talk, they text, we compare notes and messages Ruth left behind about her cancer and the misery heaped on top of the pain of her disease in the final months of her life gather into a stormy cloud. She needed for all of us to know what was happening besides cancer and made sure we did, but begged people to do nothing, say nothing, no matter how much we knew, fearing things would become worse for her and her son. We honored her request. Some of us wish we hadn't. Now that time has passed. She is dead and we are becoming impatient. The cloud is rolling and when the storm breaks it is likely to be ugly.

Ruth Ann Howerton was born in Greensboro, NC, to a teen-aged mother who already had one child by the time my brother married her. Her father was my brother John. He was a teen-ager too. It was an inauspicious beginning that grew worse as time passed. Ruth's brother was born a year or so later. Ruth's parents were hardly parents to their children at all. It is a tired old tale. They were children themselves, etc. It is an excuse. Sometimes my brother, his wife and children stayed with my parents in a house never meant for that many people because they had no money. It was crowded, noisy, always aswirl with people (mostly relatives of one sort or another. My grandmother lived next door). Sometimes they had their own place. Sometimes they left the children home alone for hours or days at a time while they went out to do the things childless teen-agers do. Their small children were left to fend for themselves and tend to each other the best they could. Their house - when they had one - smelled of dirty diapers and cigarette smoke. It was a shitty way to live and it couldn't last. They couldn't last. The life they were living caught up with them. My brother ended up in prison for something involving a carload of marijuana and an undercover cop. His wife found her own way and she didn't want her children along for the trip. Ruth and her brother were lost in the shuffle and seemed doomed to a life in foster care. Then, because my father insisted on it ("Nobody else is going to raise my grandchildren!"), they ended up with my parents. It was official. Signed, sealed and delivered. Abandoned children taken in to be raised by their grandparents.

The day that happened Ruth started looking for love. Abandoned children do that. She found it from time to time but it didn't last. She loved my mother (Ruth's Memaw, the only real mother she ever had) and was loved in return. She loved her children and they loved her. We loved her from near and far. She was not unloved and she was not unwanted. But she wanted more than that, she was greedy for it. She wanted more love closer to home. And she didn't believe she was receiving it. In the end, her fear of love lost seemed worse than her fear of dying. It was sad to watch.

Now, after the life she lived and the death she lived, the love she had and the love she craved, she deserves more than this. Soon.

 "I can't believe my life has come to this."

 Ruth Howerton-Luck, January 30, 2016

--------------------

NOTE: Since this piece was posted sketchy plans for a memorial service in Greensboro, NC, on May 14 have been posted. No further details have been announced.

ON INSUFFICIENCY

Insufficiency. The feeling has been with me since I was a child and felt I could not do enough to be sure my mother loved me. Love was not unconditional. Being was not enough. Love took lots of doing. And even all that doing never felt like enough.

I recently received at questionnaire at my doctor's office. It was supposed to measure my sense of well-being, at least that is what they said. Lots of questions, multiple choice answers. "Have you considered suicide?" When? Never? Sometimes? Today? Yesterday? The day before that? No matter how many choices they give, how do you answer a question like that? All of the above? None of the above? How about: "None of your fucking business." Circle one.

Next question:

"Do you feel you cannot do enough?" The possible answers ranged from "Never" to '"Sometimes" to "Always." A disturbing question, but the answer to this one was easy: Always. Let's make that, ALWAYS!

Enough never happens to me. I wouldn't know how it feels.

How much is enough? People say, "Enough is enough" or "Enough already." But no matter what, there is more to be done. More work, more love, more parent, more child, more husband, more marriage, more success, more words, more books, more of everything. Do more chores! More and still more. No matter what you do. Do more.

In exchange you will what? Pay me more? Love me more (or love me at all)? Be more married? More and more and more.

No matter what I will continue to feel that I have not done enough. Never. I learned it at my mother's knee.

HEART HURT: A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

My niece Ruth died a few days ago. 

When my mother saw something particularly sad or bad - especially if it involved animals or children - she would say, "It just makes my heart hurt." There was a particular crimped and crumpled edge of sadness in her voice when her heart hurt. She could make you feel it even if you didn't particularly want to. It was a powerful thing to hear, but eventually so many things made her heart hurt that it lost its power.

My heart does not hurt. The only times it did the doctors suspected a heart attack and put me in the hospital. And I do not speak from the ragged and aching edge of sadness my mother visited more and more frequently as she grew older. But what my mother used to say makes sense to me today. And I can hear her saying it.

My niece Ruth died. It just makes my heart hurt.

MY OLD FRIEND HUGH

Hugh Merrill died in late December. We were very close friends for a few years in Atlanta in the early 1970s. We worked together at the Atlanta Journal, drank together, ate a great deal of unhealthy food, smoked some dope (pot made him go to sleep peacefully, hashish changed his personality in frightening ways) but beer was our drug of choice and the Stein Club down on Peachtree Street where the hippies came out to play was where we went to drink and talk the way Southern boys full of beer always do – truth and bullshit in equal measures – and there were lots of us around the table almost every afternoon, actors, musicians, other newspaper people and an alcoholic novelist . One of the actors ended up on Dukes of Hazard and I heard the drunken novelist died a few years later sleeping on the bar at Manuel’s Tavern where he mopped up after hours. Hugh knew about many things, but sports was not one of them.

Once he was hitchhiking in Tuscaloosa, got a ride and then was put out on the side of the road when he didn’t recognize the grinning driver. It was Joe Namath (Joe said, “You really don’t know who I am?” Hugh said no. And Joe put him out right there). Hugh was funny – and charming* too, but not everyone thought so – and did the best impersonation of George Wallace I ever heard, even did it for Wallace). We listened to lots of all kinds of music together and fooled around at the edges of rock and roll – including a scary evening spent onstage with the Jefferson Airplane that damaged my hearing and taught us we never wanted to be rock stars (from up there the crowd was terrifying, pressing, undulant, then there was an altercation with the police, settled when singer Marty Balin stopped the show, stepped to the edge of the stage, leaned down and reminded the police there were lots of us and not so many of them) and Hugh’s seduction of an actual singing star (surprised him so much he called me from her bed at a downtown hotel to tell me where he was, who he was with and how his groupie dreams just came true) – and wrote about it sometimes. He was terrible with money in those days. He probably borrowed a lot a little bit at a time, but I never added it up. I didn’t expect to see it again when I gave it to him. And I didn’t. He came from a famous Alabama family of lawyers, judges, politicians and at least one lieutenant governor; I came from a proper North Carolina family, well known in small, mostly local ways, and a busted marriage that their propriety had a difficult time accepting. I figured propriety had a lot to do with Hugh’s relationship with his family too. Neither of us wanted any part of all that. He preferred music, acting and magic tricks to a career in politics or lawyering; I preferred sin and almost anything else to the Presbyterian propriety I grew up around. We both were looking for something, someone, somewhere. What? Who? Where? We didn’t have a clue or a map or a plan. That didn’t stop us. Besides, we had Atlanta. Hugh’s turned out to be a who and he ended up marrying her and I heard he was devastated when she died, but I wasn’t around for that part. Mine turned out to be a where and I was already gone. By then we had lost touch the way friends like us often do. Completely.

--------------------------------------

*How charming was he? One night we were driving north from Atlanta to a bluegrass festival somewhere in Virginia. We decided to drop in on my parents in North Carolina. Seemed like a good idea to a couple of guys who had been driving and drinking ever since they left Atlanta. It was nearly midnight, but the lights were still on in the house, so we stopped. We all chatted out by the car in the driveway about this and that and I figured we would be back on the road pretty soon. Then food came up. Hugh got to talking about sawmill gravy and talked about it so lovingly and longingly that my mother went into the house, fried up some fatback for the gravy, made a pan of biscuits to go with it and sat Hugh down in her kitchen and let him eat his fill. He kept her laughing (he did his George Wallace, too) and she kept him eating. We didn’t leave until sometime near dawn. My mother lived until 2006 and from time to time over all those years would remember that night and ask about Hugh, amazed and disappointed when I told her I’d completely lost touch with him long ago.

THREE LETTERS TO NANCY REAGAN

 The death of Nancy Reagan didn't affect me much one way or the other. But a character in one of my short stories once tried desperately to reach the First Lady. The character is named Hazel DePugh and she is trying to understand what really happens when a girl just says, "No!" Nancy Reagan is no help, which surprises Hazel but shouldn't surprise anyone else:

...she just said no to drugs because Mrs. President Nancy Reagan asked her to. What else could she do? Hazel was raised to respect her elders, salute the flag, stand up for freedom, obey the law, follow the leader, pray for guidance, save herself for marriage, vote Republican, do or die, choose life, and praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. Some of those things didn’t make much sense to an eighth-grader but Hazel got the overall point. So, when (a videotaped) Mrs. President Reagan said, “Just say no,” at the school assembly, Hazel proudly said, “No!” And that was that. A few of Hazel’s friends didn’t say, “No,” some said, “No!” but kept their fingers crossed and didn’t really mean it and some of them lied. Hazel meant it. Cross her heart and hope to die. She wasn’t about to lie to Mrs. President Reagan. She was raised to know better than that.

That was back in middle school, but high school is hard and it is harder without drugs. Mrs. President Reagan didn’t tell Hazel that part, but that’s what she learned when she got there. And she didn’t tell Hazel how her friends would abandon her for the simple reason that nobody in high school likes a goody two-shoes, especially one who might narc them out to Nancy Reagan or their parents or a cop or whatever. At first Hazel didn’t care about any of that, but it didn’t take long for her to become so lonely she sometimes regretted her promise. The days at school were one thing, but the midnight misery of her drug-free, hormone-bathed solitude was worse. Her phone never rang. Her life became so quiet her ears hurt. Her parents didn’t seem to notice. They enjoyed the quiet.

Hazel finally wrote to Mrs. President Reagan and asked for her advice

Dear Mrs. Pres. Reagan,

My name is Hazel DePugh and I just said ‘No!’ to drugs last semester at Judith Sussman Middle School. It was easy to just say no to drugs but that was last year. Now I am in high school and sometimes I think drugs might help, especially like tonight when I am sitting here crying about it. What should I do?

Love ya, Hazel.

 P.S. I am not an ugly person or a retard or anything.

 Nancy Reagan sent her an autographed eight-by-ten glossy photograph of herself dressed in a red suit and signed, “Just say NO! Very Best Wishes, Nancy Reagan.” Hazel bucked up and said “No!” again and again. She was proud of that photograph, even when it turned out Nancy Reagan didn’t really sign it. Her name was part of the picture! Hazel was disappointed but she stuck the picture on the wall and still didn’t try drugs. Nancy Reagan’s eyes were awfully far apart and they always seemed to be watching her.

When high school didn’t get any better, she wrote again:

Dear Mrs. President,

My name is Hazel and I wrote you a while back. Remember? High school is still terrible and I am still very lonely, but don’t worry, I would still say No! if somebody offered me drugs, but they don’t. Nobody ever offers me drugs!!! Do you know how that feels? Sometimes it makes me want to kill myself or get a tattoo. Have you ever seen those tears Mexicans tattoo on their faces? Maybe like that because I am so sad. And I have to do something. Please help me.

Love ya, Hazel.

P.S. I am not a Mexican or anything but sometimes I wish.

She mostly made up the part about killing herself, which was a good thing because all she received this time was an eight-by-ten glossy photo of Mr. and Mrs. President Reagan (she had on another red suit and he had on a cowboy hat, she was smiling, he looked a little confused). “Very Best Wishes, Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan.” She was just about to rip the photograph to pieces and quit saying “No!” to drugs when her mother came in and asked her to walk to Fat Sammy’s Mini-Mart and buy a gallon of no-fat milk.

Luckily the milk cooler at Fat Sammy’s Tip-Top Mini-Mart was at the back of the store because that’s where Hazel was when her former friends came in the front door. She heard them laughing, chattering as they bought Slurpies and munchies. Wasn’t that what stoners needed? Slurpies? Munchies? Hazel wanted to need them, too. She really did; she peeked around the shelves and wanted to run to her old friends shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” to drugs and everything else but she knew they would smirk and turn away. “God damn you, Nancy Reagan,” she said under her breath, then ducked and flinched half-expecting God to strike her dead on the spot. He didn’t. So Hazel hid at the back of the store and started thinking about her next letter:

Dear Mrs. President Reagan,

It’s me Hazel. You know that milk cooler in the back down at Fat Sammy’s Mini-Mart? Well here I am hiding out from my ex-friends that I wish were still my friends but they aren't my friends and you know why. So I have a question. If drugs are not the answer, what is?

Love ya, Hazel.

P.S. A picture is not worth one thousand words. Hint. Hint.

She smiled at that last part, waited until her former friends were gone, then jerked something off the shelf at random so Fat Sammy wouldn’t think she was a complete idiot or a shoplifter or something and headed to the front of the store.

Hazel eventually saves herself with banjo music only to be shot dead in a ditch outside of Nashville, TN. It's a ditch Nancy Reagan would not have understood.

YOU'RE (NOT QUITE) THE TOP - AND DON'T EVER FORGET IT!

 

A friend who knows our affinity for bric-a-brac and our willingness to clutter up the place with it sent us a box full of stuff. It was good stuff. Old holy water bottles, mermaids, do-dads, curios, whatnots, a roll of crafting foil, etc. One of the things in the box was a celluloid wedding cake topper from the 1950s.

I have real problems with frou-frou driven weddings and everything that adds to their frou-frou-ness. Fancy cakes and cake toppers usually fall into that category. Boring, redundant, unoriginal. But mostly boring, redundant and unoriginal. However, this topper is interesting. And honest in ways it probably never was meant to be.

The groom is generically stiff in his tuxedo with its creased trousers. His shirt is still white after all these years. His hair is slicked back. He's not wearing a ring, so whatever is going to happen hasn't happened yet. Or maybe it has and he is one of those guys. He stares straight ahead, as manly, upright and true as any other little plastic 1950s guy.

But the bride is a different story. It was the tilt of her head that caught my eye. She is looking down. Is she simply meeting expectations? A woman of her time? Is it a subservient he's-in-charge nod? Or maybe it's a look of resignation? Or sadness that it came down to this when she had other plans? Or that she is settling for her little plastic man when she could have done so much better? Or maybe she's pregnant and the girdle she is wearing to help hide it is uncomfortable (those were the days). Whatever it is, she looks completely miserable with what is happening to her and what will be happening to her from now on. Those thin little lips and downcast eyes. She has seen the future and it doesn't look good. 

But there is a hint that she just might have had a little fun before she headed down the aisle. It's the dress. Yellow? Off white? Ivory?  Either way, my wife has told me that in the secret code of wedding dresses (of which I knew absolutely nothing until she explained it to me) that not-white - even if it is not-quite-white - means the wasp-waisted bride with her small and simple bouquet of flowers is not a virgin.

In a time when virginity was considered a good thing if not everything why would anyone wear a dress that delivers such a message? Probably because her disappointed mom or pissed off dad insisted on it (because the wedding rulebook said that is the way it should be and people in the 1950s followed the rules. Or at least pretended to. No wonder the children of those people threw out as much of the rulebook as they could when the 1960s came around). The 1950s spawned nothing if not hypocrisy. I figure many a bride wore a white dress that really was a white lie and heard about one whose mother insisted she wear white because, "I want you to be a virgin when you walk down that aisle," even though she knew the bride was more than a little pregnant. But not this girl on the cake topper. Is she being honest or being demeaned, humiliated, punished in some way because she messed around with some guy in the back seat of his car at the drive-in movie? Maybe even this stiff little plastic guy (but I hope not). Either way she doesn't look like she wants to do it again. At least not this way.

We can only hope: 1) she enjoyed it and 2) she saw what she was getting into, left little plastic man standing there, and skedaddled before it was too late. But probably not. It was not a time of diddling and skedaddling. So who knows. Maybe she's your mother. Or grandmother. Or some other woman sitting over there with her eyes downcast and her legs crossed.

 

Cake topper confessions. Our wedding occurred during a potluck picnic at a friend's house by a lake in Minnesota, so this was the photo on our invitations, a cake topper atop an antique Dutch oven. A topper with its own kind of commentary, I suppose. We refuse to be those people, always have. Still have it.