Coal Country Shack

“We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout...” That was January 15, 1978. I turned 30 eight days later and Carla baked me a cake in our funky antique stove. She was 21 and I whisked her off to a remote shack in the woods near the huge metropolis that is Chauncey, Ohio. Population: no more than a handful of stragglers, left over from when coal money was mainlining into the veins of the local economy. Thirty years prior, the Mill field mine disaster had forced the shutdown of the Sunday Creek Coal Company and put a period at the end of the death sentence for coal mining in that area. Our shack had been built on stilts in a three day frenzy of alcohol and hallucinogenics, or so I'm told. No pluming, no problem. I like outhouses better anyway. You know, sitting among the trees, bird calls and fresh breezes while adding to the pile below, lightly dusting each new contribution with lye... powdered sugar on an inverted chocolate cone. Carla screamed from there one fine Spring day when it seems that a snake had managed to slither up to the top of the pile and get within ass striking range. Good thing she looked down before she sat down. I quickly went into waste removal mode, no problem. All in all, it was a great year. She did typing at home for The University of Ohio, I went to grad school to study Interpersonal Communications. Mostly though, I studied Carla, and the THC content of various strains of Columbia ganja that I got from my brother. Our dirt driveway was deeply rutted from the tire chains that were standard equipment in the winter. Most cars couldn't make it. Almost no visitors was fine with me, but when the Jehovah Witnesses made it all the way up to our house, their car lumbering and shaking with age and the demanding load of four, very large ladies, they were welcome. As the first Witness put her heavy leg out, planting a too tight shoe and badly swollen ankle on the ground, I went inside to roll them a doobie, just to be hospitable.

  

Knock if You Dare...

It's said that you can never go back again, but in dreams and memories, we do it all the time.

When I look at this old door knocker, I become that six-year-old boy, looking up at the massive front door of my Grandparents cavernous Victorian home. I strain to get up on my toes high enough to lift that heavy clapper and let it fall. Again and again.

Their street was lined with mature Sycamore trees, the bark mottled, flaking off in irregular patches like the skin on the legs of my ancient Aunt Jeedie. Her bark was flaking and peeling too, made worse as she absent-mindedly reached down to scratch. Her room there at the old people's place, heavy with the dank smell of dirty laundry and human decay. But those trees were still youthful and strong, shading the street from all but the most persistent sunlight that managed to run the gauntlet from the canopy top, to the ground, once there, it would do a celebratory dance on the well-manicured lawns, like a thousand flashes of light from a brilliant mirror-ball suspended above.

Many years before that time, my Grandfather had worked in India for the Standard Oil Company. That's where my Mother was born and that's where the door knocker originated. It was more than just a way to announce visitors, it guarded the house with a grotesque grimace, daring people to knock. But I just liked to flip it and wait for Grandma to open the door to a house that felt like the setting of an old Basil Rathbone movie. A cornucopia of wonders spilled out from every room throughout that voluminous old place.

Just inside, guarding the front door, stretched out flat on the hallway floor, was the pelt of an adult Bengal Tiger that Grandpa had shot on a hunting expedition. The whispered backstory was that he hadn't actually shot it himself, one of the guides had, but in those days, the bragging rights were part of the package for the " Great White Hunter" to take home. The skull had been removed, cleaned, and inserted back into the head, forever threatening, caught in mid-attack, mouth open wide, deadly fangs ready to grab anything that moved. Bright glass eyes followed me in the door, waiting for just the right moment to pounce.

I immediately flopped down, pointing my Keds in the opposite direction and kissed his nose, rubbing the stiff bristle of whiskers that no longer moved on their own. “Hello Tiger” I cooed lovingly as if to my best buddy, Roxie, the fat beagle who was probably asleep right now on the living room couch she was forbidden to mount. She would be right there, defiantly waiting for me to return home.

Roxie was stuffed too, but it was with food scraps and dog treats, and she never even once tried to look scary.