Lilly Belle

Today Lilly gets her left eye removed, her right eye, already blind and injected with some magic solution used to keep it stable. Last year, the cornea operation on her left eye had been a failure. Now in the last few months that eye bulged and turned an ugly shade of purple, a rotting jellyfish trying to ooze out of its socket. The vet said it had to go. While under anesthesia she will be shaved clean to give the dermatitis shampoo a clean palette. Almost completely deaf, when we pick her up tomorrow, she won't know that it's me until I put my hands on her...this overweight, hairless throw-away dog wearing a clown collar, a newly concave socket sewn tightly shut as she shivers with her own nudity, I'll hold her in a blanket very close and sing loudly, directly into her ear: “Lilly Belle, Lilly Belle!”

Her truncated tail spinning, she'll love it, be comforted by it, and so will I.

Lilly's been home for almost two days now, hitting the ground running upon arrival. She's elated to be back, it's almost as if she can't believe how wonderful it is, waging her tail constantly as she takes an olfactory inventory of everything familiar. The vet's cage must have reminded her of the early years, locked in a small wire prison with only the occasional company of a stranger/rapist given access to impregnate her to create more “pedigreed” pups destined to be sold at the flea market. All of them victims of inbreeding that will leave them blind and deaf within three years, long after the puppy farmers have paid an electric bill or two. When she held no more value to them, they left her at a shelter to be adopted or destroyed, it didn't matter which. She thinks the smell of my feet, covered in sweaty gym socks, is about the sweetest perfume she knows, often just sniffing and wagging. I feed her pain pills and antibiotics in bits of hot dogs, like caviar to her. Life is good again for Lilly. The revengeful part of me kind of hopes it's not so smooth for the original owners.

RIP John...

I went all through school with John Ketchum. This picture is from 5^th grade. He's sitting on the bottom row, fourth from the left. I always knew him, but we rarely spoke. Just different clicks. I believe he lived on Hillside Avenue, between me and Tina Savage. He was a “jock” in my eyes, but a smart, upbeat, energized kind of guy, friendly, no threat. But we had little common ground. I just couldn't care less about the sports thing. Apparently he went on to Dartmouth, a business stint in Hong Kong, and wound up with a prestigious accounting firm that his dad had built. Not too shabby. I went on to a long internship in life, looking for something that felt right. He and I were on different paths, but he had always been there when we were kids. Kind of like family. After 20 years, I saw him at our 1986 WHS reunion. It gave me comfort to look two tables over and see this guy I had known forever. And he knew me. There was a strange comfort in that. Jesus, I thought. “That's John Ketchum!” Kind of like seeing Mr Robinson, our next door neighbor when I was a kid, and he had been dead for 30 years. John and I never spoke, but I hope that at some point, he, saw me, recognized me as I had him and felt that all was right with the world, taking comfort in that, even after all those years...

A golf Course View...

A “golf course view” so revered and celebrated, leaves me cold, somewhat troubled. Where did the trees go, the animals who busied themselves there, the wild grasses in shades of rust and henna... fields now turned into manicured lawns, wet with poisons and little signs. We try to do that wherever we go, seeking Disneyland heaven. So we can chase a ball? What we're given isn't enough, we need to change it, homogenize it, squeeze out all the flavor as we run unthinking after some vague need for control and familiarity...rape wrapped up in a beautiful fur coat, and called progress. I won't argue the point, it is what it is. Sometimes I just feel bad about our clueless, heavy handed stewardship, and about myself. We are our own worst enemy and I suspect our inevitable evolution to end in extinction. The ants won't care, they never even noticed our brief, Jackbooted stompings.

Till Death Do Us Part...

I told Carla that in the not so distant future when I face the inevitable decline of old age, as things break down and the end of the line is looming, I plan to face it with a good attitude. After all, I've had a great run. No, no tears or morose gatherings. I want to be surrounded by the people who have meant everything to me, the ones I love the most. I just hope we can track down all those Patel’s who ran all those liquor stores over the years...

Easy Rider

My friend, Marty Lewis, spoke of the cheers prompted by the Kennedy assassination, the attitudes he lived with at a small Methodist college in Texas, 1963...

I had a similar experience in a little spec of a North Alabama town in 1969. Athens College had recruited hippies from the Northeast to enroll there two years prior in order to pay for the new dorms they had just finished building. If you had money and could fog a mirror, you were in. Mostly we stayed on campus, smoking pot and drinking beer smuggled in from the only “wet” county within driving distance, just over the border in Pulaski, Tennessee. Proud to be the birthplace of the KKK. Long hair was a call to arms for locals when we ventured out beyond the campus, so we mostly circled the wagons and stayed close. But when “Easy Rider” hit the musty old movie theater three blocks up from campus, so did many of us. Filling the first several rows, staring up at the big screen, ramped up on pot and horse tranquilizers, we owned that flick. Although we were used to the whistles from the crowd of good old boys behind us, taunts for guys who “looked more like girls”, the rift was never more clear than when a huge roar of applause shook the back of the room. Dennis Hopper got what he deserved. Shotgunned into oblivion, by a squirmy little redneck sporting an untreated tumor on his neck and a nasty grin. Pointing his double barrel out of the passenger window of his buddy’s 56 Ford pickup, he blew that particular easy rider off his chopper and into movie history. That blast was cathartic for the boys in the back, one orgasmic, celebratory exclamation point that sent a strong message. We knew that the shared sentiments uncovered in Woodstock, NY earlier in the year were still light years and a decade away from walking openly in the light of that little town.

Six Things of Many...

Six things about me no one knows:

1) If you asked me to name the thing that I feel most guilty about, I would probably tell you it was the time I killed a goose in San Miguel, Mexico. We spent summers there when I was a young teenager. While out walking the grounds of the Institute where we stayed, a goose came at me from behind, flying up at me in attack mode. Never having been around geese before, it scared me and I just reacted. Grabbing a heavy stick from the ground, I bashed that white blur squarely on the top of his head and he dropped like a stone. I didn't mean to kill him and I'm sorry.

2) The first time I saw what a woman’s vagina looks like, I was 9 or 10. Certainly I had seen naked women before, like when I was over at a neighbors house and her mom rushed out of the upstairs bathroom, wet and dripping from her shower, to get a towel from the linen closet in the hall. But no one shaved in those days so there was little to see. That changed when Bill Rosenving brought a very crumpled page torn from a medical book to choir practice. A line drawing, with arrows that named each part. The fact that he had it at all seemed terribly dangerous and exciting. Not because of the actual image of that unappealing and almost alien line drawing but because I thought it was so forbidden, like having a loaded gun or a human toe in his pocket.

3) When I drink liquids, I always count the gulps as they go down, and I always inadvertently skip gulp #12, going straight from 11 to 13.

4) I collect high-end fighting knives: neck knives, automatics, assisted openers, fixed blade, punch knives, armor piercing, carbon fiber to go undetected through airport security, hand hatchets...and many custom tactical knives made with beautiful Damascus steels, carbon fiber, and rainbow anodized titanium. Many are stashed all over the house and in my car. I always carry and feel truly exposed and vulnerable if for some reason I have to be without one.

5) If our house started to burn down, the first material thing I would try to save are two oil portraits of my fifth great grandparents. They've been in our family since they were painted in 1852. I don't particularly like them, especially the one of great, great, great, great, great grandma. She looks so sour and nasty. But the paintings aren't mine. I'm just the current caretaker and I take that responsibly very seriously.

6) I've never been scared by monster movies or fictional characters that defy logic, but I'm very frightened by my own over-the-top reaction to bullying of all kinds. Sometimes, I'm scared of me.

Yes please...

Carla and I drove South down the coast yesterday, A1A blacktop stretching out to the horizon, a thin black line sandwiched between breaking waves to the East and beach houses, huddled close, silhouetted by the sun to the West. An exceptionally clear, perfect day with sunshine so bright it stabbed my eyes with each explosion through an oak canopy. A thousand flashbulbs, paparazzi shooting down from overhead, their red carpet a mottled stretch of blacktop tunneled through massive oaks, arms intertwined, a roadbed slashed cleanly through dense Florida hammock. 

Our destination was the Flagler Fish Company, a laid back seafood joint, one block West of the beach. 

Lounging on the outside patio, a cold Anchor Steam Beer dripped sweat rings onto my napkin as it flapped white edges, and the hair tumbling down Carla's back, in unison with each hurried gust. Salty winds dancing excitedly, circling and chasing, spawned by the back and forth battle line where surf meets sand, just a block away. Hot seafood chowder, chunky with bites of shrimp and clam, lightly browned crab cakes, fat with fresh-picked lumps of savory white flesh, crisp fried spinach leaves freckled with toasted garlic, warm Asiago potatoes, melty with cheese...all trumped by Lobster rolls, heavy with pink meat that had been chilling in the cold algae coated tank only moments before, pressed up against large swordfish and tuna, frozen forever in a blue mural that covered the wall, floor to ceiling. A side of real butter, humble and perfect, sat quietly at the ready.

We talked excitedly, as we often do, 38 years and still learning who we are with each other. She looked much younger than her chronological age, natural, oblivious to her own beauty, long hair streaked with sunlight, waving in the wind. Growing quiet as she continued with great detail about an observation her friend had made, my gratitude for all of it was every bit as palatable as the dinner itself, now a scattered scrum of food and drink paused at halftime on the chaotic field of the paper covered table. That moment spoke to the essence of our years together, side by side, itself, an amazing meal of shared celebrations. And I knew that I was still hungry... for dessert, yes, but mainly for an ever evolving “more of the same”, for us, and this, together...yes please!

A Morning Woodie...

This morning, Woody and I got together in the back yard. I drank coffee, he ate grubs. 

I complained: “You know, sometimes it feels like I'm just beating my head against a wall!” 

He looked at me like I was crazy: “You talking to me? I've got a headache 24-7 and you're crying to me like some little girl?” 

He was right, of course, a good lesson in perspective. I made a silent vow to buy him a nice cup of meal worms next time so we could sit and talk quietly, without all that banging...

Live!

You can travel the world, go to the places of your dreams, see barriers as bumps...It's not a concern when your bags are packed with little more than confidence and a smile.

I'll Drink to That...

Like many of my guy friends, I never met a beer that I didn't like. No confrontational personalities, no unwelcome discussions of politics or religion. Beer is generally friendly, comforting, and it has alcohol in it. We all know that alcohol is good as an antiseptic before or after an event. I figure the best way to use it is internally, as a proactive line of defense against all kinds of evil parasites and germs. I'm just trying to be practical here. So beer and I have been good friends since we used to hook up in college, driving from a dry county in North Alabama to a wet one in Tennessee, just to be together. But, unlike my friend Mike, I do have a few conditions.

You see, Mike and I were out in the middle of a parking lot one particularly scorching summer day here in Florida. The asphalt was starting to melt and grab our shoes. And there in that desert sat Mike's old junker resting on three wheels. The right rear was a rubber pancake and we needed to make it work so we could get the hell out of there before we melted too. Mike opened the trunk, leaned in, and did his impression of a dog digging a hole. Stuff flew out behind him as he threw out junk that had been hitch-hiking along in there forever. Somewhat surprised, he found a spare and it wasn't flat. But there was something else too. Rolling around on the inside of the tire, bouncing from side to side for the last 60,000 miles or so, was a very dirty can of Old Milwaukee Beer. An unopened can, a hot, very shaken can. Without hesitation, Mike yelled: “Look, my second favorite kind of beer!” he grabbed the beer with a rag in his hand in case it was too hot to handle directly, popped the top, threw it back in a slurping power chug that he had perfected many years before, and drained it. Hot foam dripped from his chin. He immediately put the can on the ground and with one definitive stomp, flattened it like the tire on his right rear. A huge belch punctuated the coup de grace. Turning back to the business at hand I said: “OK, I'll bite, what's your favorite kind of beer?” He confirmed my suspensions with his answer: “Cold beer!”

So although I admit that I won't drink Mike's second favorite kind of beer, all others are fair game and have stood with me through all the chapters of my life. In my bachelor years, we considered beer to be a balanced meal. We would no more forget the cooler when going on an outing than we would forget to wear pants. And sometimes, the beer would cause us to not wear pants. But I've never gotten a ticket, had a beer on the job, or ever had any problem with beer, until recently.

These days I've got a beer gut that won't go away, and putting my time in at the gym every other morning isn't enough to fix that by itself. I need to stop drinking beer at night, or at least cut back. And that's easier said than done. Now I never have a beer until I've completed my “to do” list when I'm not working or until after work when I am. Then I get the reward. But I know that the nightly calories are no longer burned off the way they were when I was younger. Most nights I think like a cigarette smoker...I'll quit tomorrow.

Yesterday afternoon I thought maybe it was the elusive “tomorrow” and I did something different to break the cycle. I Googled Alcohol Anonymous found a meeting a few blocks away, and went to my first ever AA meeting. Curious, I thought that I could pick up a few tips on how to incorporate beer free nights into my lifestyle.

The parking lot was full and some members were walking in from cars parked more than a block away. An informal gathering of tables and chairs preceded the coffee and doughnuts in the back. Order was called and one of the men read the creed from a printed script encased in a laminate cover, opaque and scratched by the wear of a thousand hands. He looked down and mumbled through the words that it appeared that everyone in the room knew by heart, except for me. And I was unable to hear anything the guy said. The next order of business was for the new people (me) to tell everyone just why I was there. “Well, I'm off work today and after I completed all my chores, I happened to see a note about this meeting on my Facebook page and as I was driving to the liquor store for beer, I simply stopped here first out of curiosity because I like beer and it makes me fat and I am looking for some tips on how to cut back.” Knowing looks accompanied a large verbal welcome from everyone in the room.

Then we got the stories from the AA veterans. A nervous young guy recently out of the slammer and unable to exercise any self-restraint to stay that way, was up first. The once successful business owner who drank himself out of a marriage and into a lonely bankruptcy. The woman who had been in an abusive relationship where the only thing that she and her ex had in common was alcohol. On and on. Bad stories, ruined lives, very often, the wrong side of the law. Alcohol fueled train wrecks for lives. But they seemed to know each other and they counted on each other for support. Most liked the camaraderie and all were in total agreement on one thing: No alcohol, zero tolerance. Each new story had me thinking, “Wow. that’s some seriously bad stuff!” And I kept remembering that I had never had any troubles like that. In fact, I had always been successful as a father, husband, employee or boss, and as a human being. I had never known an alcohol related problem other than around my waist. I just liked beer and it made me fat.

Finally, we wrapped up the meeting with some awkward group hugs and an even more uncomfortable circle of hand holding while reciting the Lord's prayer. I squirm at the thought of holding other men's hands or feigned belief in Santa Claus. Oh, but that unpleasantness was after they gave me my first “chip” to mark day one of my sobriety.

All in all, it was a learning experience. I learned that alcohol was an undeniably a huge problem for  the people in that room, as was daily life itself, I suspect. Feeling considerably better about my own situation, I drove straight to the liquor store to get the supplies I needed to properly celebrate my new- found sobriety I kept thinking to myself: “What's a few extra pounds anyway?” I mean it's not like I'm an alcoholic or something.

Tribal Grandma...

I was standing in the Publix checkout line, waiting for the chance to load my groceries onto the belt. Once I put the divider up between the lady in front of me, her groceries and mine, I went to work. I like to be efficient and place things in a certain order and pattern.. That involves evaluating the bagger, their skill level and ability, and then feed the conveyor belt accordingly. But I did pause to admire the fact that the little old lady in front of me had a bold new tribal tat covering the entire back of her neck. She was easily 76, 100 pounds, hunched over a bit, wrapped in a faded blue dress that looked more like a robe with worn frills that hadn't looked good even when the dress was new...all of that familiarity was stamped, permanently and from behind, with a black circle of spears woven together like snakes in a mating cluster.

Say "Hello" to stupid...

Although we enjoyed fostering rescue dogs for several years, eventually there's no more room at the Inn. You get stuck with the ones that are just too flawed to get themselves adopted. So now we have four misfits. Blind & deaf, crippled, an incurable runaway, and stupid. Here's stupid. She and her brother, both expensive show dogs, were dropped off at the pound by a guy who was more interested in hurting his wife than in keeping the dogs. Immersed in a particularly acrimonious divorce, he knew how much she loved them and thought it was a good way for him to show just how big a jerk he could be. The two standard poodles were beautiful, but surprisingly...blank. They had been raised together and did everything in tandem, so that was fun to see. They slept together at the same time in the same position and when they ran on the beach it was like watching a skilled kite flier with two parallel kites in a celebratory, harmonic dance. But after a short spell of refusing food, the male started to drool a vile black liquid from his nose and mouth as he lay under a shade tree in our back yard. Checking on him several times an hour to see if his chest was still rising and falling, I saw bottle flies on his still open eyes the last time there was any need to check on him at all. The vet thought that it had been a breeding problem, he probably had very advanced cancer by the time anything was noticeable. We thought the female would be lost, dog devastated, But Ms Stupid was a blank, just like before. Now, three or four years later, she hasn't gotten any brighter. She sits up close and just looks at me like I'm some kind of a dog TV. I speak to her and ask her the things we all ask our dogs: “Want to go outside girl? What do you want, you want me to give you some dinner? Want a treat, to go for a ride in the car, want to chase the ball? Blank. Well, to her credit, she's got good manners anyway, she isn't any kind of a problem, and she has great lines. Some guys settle for little more than that in a girlfriend. Not me, I'm looking for some spark, a little out of the box laugh at life. But I never look to stupid for any of that. With her, I'm just happy for the two of us to sit quietly in the grass, my arm around her, as we watch the fish jump at Mayflies on the surface of the lake. I like to think she's happy with that too, but it's hard to be sure one way or the other.

Respite

Sometimes as I watch her sleep, my love for her catches me off guard, ambushing like a flash flood on a cloudless day. She looks more like a kid than a woman with 57 years behind her. That bright, unbridled mind of hers, finally at peace, letting her enjoy the stillness, the quiet. It will crack the whip again, later today, drive her too hard, to the edge of frenzy, again today. Later today.

My FB friend Brian, vented last night after his wife told him that she had made a special recipe for dinner, one from his own dear Mother's cookbook. One that his wonderful wife didn't know that he absolutely hated...the dreaded Tuna casserole.

I had to reply:

Yes Brian, My mother made tuna casserole too...and yes, I hated it. But in a particularly diabolical act one night she brought home chocolate eclairs for dessert. Early on, my Mother was something of a health nut, before such people were out of the closet. We never, I mean never, had dessert or sweets or Cokes, etc. Except for Dad who lived on Cokes, Camels, and stress from his law practice in Manhattan. But the rules didn't apply to him, he was the breadwinner (or Coke and Camels winner) So anyway, I guess Mom had been discouraged by the reaction of my sibs and myself to her “Tuna Surprise” night. The only potential surprise would have been if any of us had eaten that nasty stuff. But we didn't. And then, that one emotionally scarring night, the eclairs showed up.

Hello! Naturally the caveat was that we had to “clean our plates” before we could dig into the eclairs that spun slowly on our Lazy Susan whenever anyone passed the salt and pepper. They taunted me on that carousel, put thumb to nose and gave me the raspberries. Like a stuck-up hottie, they let me know that I would never get my lecherous hands on them. And they were right. Mom stayed vigilant to be sure that that none of us was going to slip tuna surprise to our fat Beagle under the dining room table. Dad just smoked, sipped his Cokes and could care less if we ate the tuna, the eclairs, or the candles. At dinner, it was Mom's world. And dammit, she won. I ate no tuna and no eclairs that night. Maybe that's why now that I'm even older than my father was then, I'll occasionally buy a four pack of fresh eclairs and eat them all in a disgusting frenzy before I even get out of the Publix parking lot. All I know is that way back then when I checked the frig for eclairs the next morning, they were gone, and dad looked just a little bit fatter and happier as he sat with us at the breakfast table, sipping coffee, and burning a Camel between two nicotine stained fingers. Wearing his pinstriped suit of armor with a matching tie, he was braced and ready for the commute into the city to fight the dragons and earn Mom's favor. He was well prepared. After all, he was supercharged on Cokes, Camels, and a six-pack of eclairs, at least one of which was supposed to have been mine.

Rural living & the FPL man...

Ruth & Hannah @ our old house in Ashburn, Va. It was built in 1859, the cabin on the right in 1729. We traced it through 31 owners. After we sold the place to the Catholic Church for too much money, they bull-dozed & buried it without a permit to alter a historic property. The whole area had always been fields & farmlands. Now it's all McMansions with two story foyers designed to impress and an identical showplace thrown up less than ten feet away on either side.

Ohio the wonder dog lived outside and patrolled the perimeter and our surrounding woods. She was the best dog we ever had and always took very good care of the girls. She couldn't have been more gentle with them, but God help the FPL meter reader if he drove onto the property and was foolish enough to get out of his truck without me around to escort him.

I was at work in downtown D.C. one day when the FPL guy intentionally pulled up close to the house,  got out of his truck and sprayed Ohio with pepper spray. Carla saw it happen and came running outside like a pissed off Wolverine wearing nothing more than a T-shirt that didn't even cover her navel... screaming and banishing my Mini 14 semi-auto with a 30 round clip. It turns out that the only thing scarier than a wildly aggressive German Shepherd mix defending her property is a nude crazy lady with an automatic weapon screaming and running straight at you.

More than a little upset, I called FPL, spoke with the supervisor and had him relay my message to the pepper spraying meter reader that I planned to personally come to his workplace and shoot a full can of pepper spray up his nose. I didn't do that, of course, but he never returned either. FPL bought a good pair of binoculars for the next meter reader so that they could pull into the gravel drive and read the meter through their front windshield. It was a smart solution that assured the continued good health of all meter readers to follow...

• Joyce Rodgers, John Myers, Jim Newsome and 12 others like this.
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  Christina Browning Hugh Maverick Haller if you haven't already done so then you MUST write a book or at the very least short stories! I love reading your posts! You are such a talented writer and story teller 

  7 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 5
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  Hugh Maverick Haller TY Christina Browning!

  7 hours ago · Like · 1
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  Penne Laubenthal Have missed your essays!!!! Keep ''em coming. 

  7 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Roberta Rinaldi crazy good story!

  6 hours ago · Like
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  Ruth Haller Wonderful dad. "A pissed off wolverine".... Good description. Look at Ohio, so young and vibrant here. She loved us so much. She was an excellent dog, and undoubtedly the last "real" dog we ever had, all we've had are over bred, genetically cursed cream puff dogs since.

  5 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 2
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  Penne Laubenthal Re: dogs. Well said, Ruth !

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  Nancy Thomas Have you quit posting these on your web site? I am among those who enjoy reading about you, your family, and your friends.

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  Hugh Maverick Haller Thanks Nancy. Here it is:http://hughmaverickhaller.blogspot.com/
  

  
  

  hugh maverick haller

  hughmaverickhaller.blogspot.com

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  Nancy Thomas Thanks Hugh!

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  Wende Devlin Gates Great story, well told!

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  Jennifer Cecil I remember Ohio!!! She was a great dog and I loved playing with her and Ruth ( I wasn't around much after Hannah was born) I remember you always had crazy nicknames for her. One being Oswio! I loved staying at that house. There was such a calmness to it, very pieceful.

  56 minutes ago via mobile · Unlike · 1
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  Hugh Maverick Haller Jennifer Cecil, that's because there was little adult supervision. I certainly didn't fill the bill and Carla was asleep. The girls learned to be self sufficient by foraging in the kitchen. Even Hannah as a baby could pull a stool up to the fridge and stick her body in to feast on raw cookie dough, goat milk or whatever Carla was obsessed with at the time, and, of course, cold, left over...something!

  39 minutes ago · Like
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  Jennifer Cecil You are so right!! And naked too!! I remember Ruth running around naked, I would find some clothes to put on her turn around to do something and she's naked again!LOL...It was fun though, great memories!!

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  Hugh Maverick Haller Hannah too. She never wore clothes and still goes for the minimum. At age 25 I'm sure the guys like it until they approach her and she bites their heads off like a Praying Mantis making a meal of it's lover's head...

  28 minutes ago · Like · 1
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