Smoke

He came to us as “Rufus”, a little black rescue dog with a dopey name that really doesn’t conjure any positive images. It's like calling him “Gomer”. He's a total mutt but why hobble him at such a young age? 

Rufus stops and crouches, staring at me with skeptical wolf eyes fired by the very few genes that he has left from those ancient ancestors. I want to rename him something more noble: “Smoke”... that has a certain dark mystery about it. It also honors my friend of the same name, who has a big head. Rufus has a big head too. Well I guess it's really not so big in relation to his body but more...muscular looking. Now my friend Glenn really does have a big head, any way you look at it. Maybe he could say that it houses more brain material than the average cranium and suggest some kind of an intellectual edge. But size doesn't automatically dictate any special qualities one way or the other. I mean, in spandex shorts, I look like I may be smuggling a weasel. Something large, tubular, and very much alive. But I'm old, and it's just a hernia and a piece of prolapsed bowel so don't go getting all excited.

Maybe Glenn has a big head full of encephalitic fluid and simply needs a stent to reduce the swelling. I'm just guessing here.

But the sweetest sound to man or beast is the sound of their own name, so I'll give Rufus a more mysterious name, more worthy of respect... Smoke. I mean, Johnny sang of a “Boy named Sue”, a moniker that always plagued the guy he wrote about. We can do better than that, Rufus. 

You're welcome Smoke, you'll thank me one day, but I doubt my friend will.

Gator Country...

When we take the dogs out for a run around the lake behind our house, Sasha, the standard poodle with a brain the size of a walnut, always looks for this guy (the gator, not Dale). She loves to make him jump into the water. If it’s a hot day, she also expects to take a dip. There’s a place with no obstructions, very beach like with a clear view, where I let all four dogs swim. Several years ago when Sasha went in, I saw three gators leave the opposite bank and make a beeline for the poodle buffet.  All were less than four feet, but to prevent a coordinated attack, I made her get out of the pool. Two gators sulked at quite a distance, but one got close. Thinking that the gator was her beloved throwing stick, Sasha splashed back in to retrieve it. Closing the distance and trying to bite the now magically animated stick, I heard the young gator clearly yell to his buds: “Oh shit, this bitch is crazy!” and immediately take a dive. Sasha swam in circles looking for her stick and lunged when it surfaced a few feet away. I was growing hoarse, yelling for that dog to come to shore, when she dutifully came back in, not realizing that she was lucky to still have all four legs. But Sasha already had a history with that particular gator, loving to run at him when he would sun himself on the bank. He would always take a dive. I had been afraid that one day though, he may refuse to jump and think Sasha suddenly looked like a Big Mac. So I finally called Dale, the state gator guy, to do his manly trapping act. Dale sells the meat, and someone gets a belt and a great pair of shoes.

For Sasha, Dale and for me, it’s a win, win, win.

One down, two to go. 

The Name of God...

This is a good one. It makes sense. When Bill Moyers interviewed Joseph Campbell on “The Power of Myth”, Campbell compared religion to being in a club (Campbell himself was a Catholic). He pointed out that there was great value for many in joining the club and believing in the club experience, and possibly having an epiphany by doing so. You need to try to believe in your club, be it Catholic or Baptist, Moose or Mason. Campbell pointed out that there are many roads to the same place. We get into trouble when people leave no room for differences of opinion and insist that their club is the only way, not just for themselves, but for everyone else as well. Humans fight endless wars over the name of God or for the individual right to not give god any name at all...

Memory Snapshots

Memories flow from these images, as rich and full of life as the waters rushing under that bridge. They fill me up as they do that chest, more real than the physical things that spawn them.

An image of the iconic Bridge of Lions hangs over the chest that my Grandfather made for Grandma Maverick to mark their wedding anniversary. I spent the summer of 1972 in the woods at their place in Charlottesville when he was working in his shop on this surprise for his love of more than 50 years. Watching him use his router to rough out the patterns on the mahogany panels, the smell of charring wood reminded me of a wood-burning set I had gotten for Christmas back when I was in Boy Scouts and had my own projects to fret over. Often I would ask: “What are you carving? What is that going to be?” With mock disgust he would fire back: “It's my casket, dammit! I'm going to be buried in it!”

Then one hot August day when Grandma drove her yellow Nash Rambler station wagon into town to buy groceries at the Safeway store, Grandpa said: “Take a picture of me in my casket.” Morbid, I know, but he insisted that we get the shot before Grandma could pull back up the long driveway and nix the whole idea. Dutifully I helped Grandpa carry the chest out of the shop and onto the sunny path leading up to the main house. When he climbed into “his casket” and sat up all erect and picture perfect under his straw fedora, I snapped away. One of those prints is barely visible here attached to the top right hand side of the lid. I love that box, so full of memories, even when it appears to be empty.

Now the Bridge of Lions connects me to another flood of mental snapshots, happy times from when we lived on Anastasia Island and walked or rode our bikes up and over that bridge and back down again into the center of the old city. Carla, Ruth, Hannah and me peddling single file up the narrow sidewalk, often stopping at the top where the drawbridge teeth clenched tightly like a giant steel mouth, grinning and ready to open wide again very soon..

 We paused at that half-way point to fill our lungs with fresh salt air, spitting over the side rail to watch a little piece of ourselves hit and swirl in that unstoppable tidal flood only forty feet below. Conspiratorial smiles among us at the certainty of rapid acceleration and downhill breezes, we launched into winds that would blow us straight into the heart of downtown for a a family play-date. Memories branded onto our own hearts, now unleashed by these fertile images, each one spawning innumerable invitations to once again revel and play.

"Hemmingway's Whisky"

Standing in the kitchen making an unhurried lunch, listening to a Guy Clark tribute... various artists weighing in with their take on wonderfully written songs. Inserted into lulls and spaces I'm caught by the wind chimes singing clear tones out on the newly painted deck. Sunny winds heavy with the scent of Jasmine circle and play in the yard. Grouper that liked the look of a fisherman's treat earlier this morning now blackened and laid out in a casket of crusty bread still warm from the oven. Dressed up with a white coat of capers, diced pickled okra and a squeeze of lemon mixed with just enough real mayo to bind it all together. A side of new white corn scraped from the cob, microwaved to retain the natural sugars. Real butter, ground pepper. Cold light beers with lime, maybe a shot or two of vodka from the freezer. Out on the lake, Anhingas look like cartoon snakes swimming in electrified waters,  bodies submerged, long necks writhing up from the flat surface. An osprey launched from the leaning pine behind us, circles and calls before it stalls to get a better look at its own fish dinner swimming below. Squirrels run rings around the three big oaks as my dogs study them, all doing their best Moe, Larry & Curly, frantically chasing from tree to tree. Now demanding my attention,  Kristofferson sings Clark's , “Hemmingway's Whiskey”, his worn rasp of a voice carries through the open door to the deck and grabs me...insisting that I really listen.

Here's a letter to the folks from 20 years back. Ruth was 9, Hannah was 4 when a carnival came to town...

Dear Folks,

Sorry you couldn't be here to go to the carnival with us. Carla had to work so it was my responsibility as a caring Dad to take the kids by myself. For two nights before our visit, I let them do dishes and housecleaning chores to earn the money they would need to buy stuff. I lectured them on the concept of “work for pay”. They already knew about “pay for cotton candy” but at issue was whose pay...

My office partner, Jon, had said that Wednesday was the last day that the carnival would be in town so even though it was wet and cold, we went. Once we got there, once the commitment was made, we found out that the carnival would stay through what was expected to be a warm, balmy weekend.

Anyway, the first thing the kids pulled me to was the center of attraction. There stood a ride featuring two six-person cockpits at opposite ends of a 100 foot propeller. You can guess how much fun humans can have when they're locked in and the fan is turned on. The teenage operator, all self-inflicted tattoos and cigarettes, demonstrated his professional skills by stopping the fan blade so that one car hung upside down 100 feet in the air. Staring at the girls whose dresses had flipped up (down) over their heads, he was rewarded for his cleverness by the small change that rained down from inverted pockets and purses. With his body twitching as he stumbled around picking up the change, his eyes seemed to rotate in their sockets like the big fan itself. Apparently there was an ongoing power struggle in his body as drugs and alcohol each fought for dominance. I thought it best to let Ruth and Hannah pass on that particular ride.

The “Kiddie Kars” were just OK; baby cars that circle endlessly on steel rails. The working horns made Hannah smile for the first few revolutions, waving, honking, waving...but by pass number 52, Hannah was nodding only slightly less than the ride operator himself.

As we walked around taking in the sights, I realized that the crowd was not local. Apparently we had managed to slip in on a night set aside for a group bussed in from a halfway house work release program. Examples of the down side of a severely limited gene pool were everywhere. Plus, it seemed that many of the crowd had been in serious accidents at some point in their lives and had never received proper medical care. A fault line ran through a face here, a chest there...accentuating mismatched parts like a zipper out of alignment. And much like the professionals who ran the concessions, the people in the crowd apparently all went to one guy's Uncle Bubba to have tattoos scratched into their skin. Bubba's trade is in hogs and cars but he'll do tattoos if you bring the Jack Daniels.

Having not eaten all day, I stopped at a little wooden trailer made to look like an “Old Florida” fish camp shack. They advertized conch and crab fritters. Two large black ladies toured the carnival circuit in this grease van, living for opportunities to demonstrate their undying loyalty to the teachings of Malcolm X. I thought: “Oh good! Here are some large black ladies who know how to cook a great seafood fritter, even if it is a little pricy.” They thought: “Oh good! Here's a milk toast white boy stupid enough to pay $4.00 for a fritter. We'll break out the rotting batter we haul from site to site, throw a scoop into lard hot enough to kill the maggots and serve it up with some rancid tarter sauce!” Fortunately I didn't give the kids any so I was the only one who got the explosive diarrhea. Ruth and Hannah spent their food money on the $2.00 cotton candy... four cents worth of spun sugar. No wonder the vendor was wearing a huge diamond pinkie ring.

By this time Hannah was grabbing her crotch constantly so we headed off to find a porta-potty. One look inside made me tell Hannah that we would leave after the next ride and stop at a gas station for her on the way home. But Ruth just had to peek inside one of those hot, stinking closets from hell. She was wearing sandals with socks that wicked up the black goo seeping out from under the base of the toilets so her feet became encased in carnival souvenirs that she would have preferred not to have to take home.

From there we sloshed over to “The Spider”, our last ride of the night. This beast consisted of eight cars on arms linked to a central hub. The hub spun around as the arms lifted the cars up and down. Then the cars spun and looped in erratic circles independently. My friend Jon said that his little girl loved it. We had to try it he said. “save it for last, it's the best” he said. So all three of us got into one car and braced for launch. Thirty seconds into the ride, Hannah was screaming in true terror. Ruth was swooning, turning green, threatening to faint and vomit at the same time. I was wondering just what had been in that damn fritter anyway, afraid we were going to see it again, very soon. I braced myself waiting for our car to break free in mid spin and fly into the carnival trucks parked nearby. I tucked my head and hoped that the car itself would absorb most of the impact. Several lifetimes later the Spider slowed and stopped. We declined the generous offer to ride a second time at half price.

Walking back to our car, dazed and shaken, I looked up at the top platform of the “Giant Slide”. A toothless, alcoholic, professional “Giant Slide” operator was carefully laying down a burlap bag for someone's 3 year old to ride down on. He took great care to prepare the bag just so. He was very gentle with the child too. But the platform was high and crowded and he was unaware that his large butt was squashing little kids up against the fragile railing behind him. I fumbled for my car keys as one child was pushed backward against the railing, arms extended, flapping and circling in a desperate attempt to maintain his balance 150 feet up on that platform.

I hope the kid made it.

As I said, sorry you couldn't be here to share the fun...or the fritters.

Love,

Hugh

Snapshots...

It's been more than ten years since Ruth brought Kira home, telling us that we needed to keep her for two weeks while her owner was surfing in Costa Rica. It turned out that Ruth actually paid a friend a few bucks for her pick of the litter of Rottweiler mix pups that he was parading around and of course, she has been with us since that day. Now that she's getting old and prematurely arthritic, I just hate to see her go downhill. Kira has been the easiest dog to have around that we've ever had; she always does as she is told. “Go get the paper girl” “Lie down here, I'll be right back” whatever. She understands everything. Never in need of a leash, I could walk with her down a crowded St George Street at the peak of tourist season...she only has eyes for me. She couldn't care less about other dogs or people and stays close to my legs. If I go into a store, she sits by the door until I come out. If she is in the convertible with the top down and I tell her to stay there while I go run around, that's where she'll be when I get back. She has never shown much interest in our other dogs and sleeps in her own spot away from the others at home. I believe she thinks dogs are unnecessarily loud and crude. But if she is upset by thunder or finds herself in the waiting room of the Vet's office, she gets close to me, seeking comfort. Now we're told that the bones in her right paw are fused from her severe arthritis, and she only limps outside when she has to. It's upsetting to think that only a few months ago she would walk happily around the lake with us and now she can barely walk to the back gate. I hate this. Putting down a special dog that had been my daughter's best friend and protector years ago changed me. It was the hardest thing I've ever done and I simply won't do it again. When the time comes, someone else needs to take my best friend to her last vet appointment while I go into the back yard and cry uncontrollably, some may think unreasonably. Fortunately, today is not that day. Right now Kira and I head outside to sit in the new grass and let the intense morning sun warm us to our core. She leans up against me, as I do her, both of us blissful in the moment.

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The heat of the intense sunshine was cut yesterday afternoon by small breezes rushing gently from all directions. A perfect day for the annual St Ambrose Church fair. It's a beautiful spot with huge mature oaks heavily draped in Spanish Moss. But the rib man didn't show up for me this year and the “famous” chowder made Carla wish she had a bowl of mine instead. These two ladies enjoyed it though and insisted that I mention that they are descended from the Minorcans who came into the area in the late 1700's. The lady on the right started to pose when I asked permission to take the picture. She wanted to take off her sunglasses and put her purse and plastic bag behind her and arrange her feet in odd angles only seen in the modeling 101 handbook. I asked her not to and told her that she was beautiful...just...like...this.

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I asked Ruth if she had brought any clothes that would be good for hiking in the woods...the best she could muster was leopard print tights and kid-skin boots from somewhere in Beverly Hills...oh, and all the proper accessories of course. We walked along while she spoke to her iPhone. Turns out Siri had no idea where the hell we were either.

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Spotted on a trail in the woods while out walking the dogs with Ruth. Hunters left the hide, head, and feet. The dogs thought they had found the buffet from heaven until I had to be a spoil-sport and make them get back into the SUV to go home.
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Our house sat in a low field that didn't drain well, surrounded by mature woods which had never been logged. The cabin was built in 1729, the main house in 1856. Nothing worked as it should. Pipes that had been added as an afterthought froze in the winter and the newly installed dishwasher drained out through a rubber hose that snaked across the floor, exiting the kitchen wall allowing waste to flow directly into the side yard. It formed a toxic pool of mud and dishwasher excrement that Hannah would play in when she was just a baby. Perhaps that explains a few things about her. I worked on “K” Street in downtown D.C. and had to be all squeaky clean to properly help lead the troops. Coming home after a typically long day in the city, I would pull off the dirt road into the clearing that encircled our house. Ending a 1-2 hour commute, it was like pulling into camp Waywayyonda. I could step away from the car and pee in any direction, just listening to the sounds of the cicadas, the pings of the car engine as it started to cool, and the urgency of the last couple of beers for the road as they hit the ground, as free of their sterile containers as I was myself.

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She called me Lamb chop, sweetie pie, and loved me unconditionally. Not an easy thing to do, I'm full of warts. She wasn't perfect, I don't know who is, but she was my mom. No one ever did or ever will love me like she did. Unconditionally, unreasonably,,,and ready to go to the mat for me without hesitation ...she's gone now but I still feel it, it still comforts me. Thanks Mom.
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Although the tree canopy hid direct view of the jogger on the other side of the lake, her reflection rippled and flashed with the late sun as she ran upside down along the top of the bottom of that very same canopy. Sasha lay watching, wet from her swim, enjoying her ability to control the area under the three oaks where the bird feeder hangs. That, of course, is the squirrel zone. She can relax when she's right there. Otherwise those little bastards will run all over the yard and act like they own the place.
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Unrequited love...it's a tough life lesson for a little black teenager of a foster dog to understand that I don't want him 24/7 with the same intense fervor that fuels his own overactive engines. I mean I love him and all but I don't want to French kiss and hump very much. (OK, maybe just a little.)
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We're very proud of our two daughters & who they are as people in this world. Caring, bright, inquisitive girls who laugh easily and truly appreciate a great meal in much the same way they love life itself. Oh, and it doesn't hurt to be beautiful on the outside as well.
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So what’s the lesson here? Well if you weigh 25 pounds and value your left ear perhaps you shouldn’t try to steal the dinner from your doggie housemate who weighs 115 pounds.
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