A Fork in the Road -Marc

 A FORK IN THE ROAD

 

So long ago, through a fog

​I recall

My love of music and performing

​Their applause and compliments 

Had I forgotten what could had been

​If I followed that road

Or why I laid down my sticks

​For a girl who would betray me

 

Into a life of Science

​Which was never enough

Something always missing

​But I would never allow

That part of my heart to surface

​To get in the way of the script

 

But, miracles of miracles

​They put the sticks back

Into my hands

​And it all came rushing back

An avalanche of emotion

​And my heart broke once again

 

But I know that I would have never met you

​My love of loves

Without the road I traveled

​So I gladly lay down

My sticks again

​And mourn what might have been

Weebles - Marc

                                               WEEBLES

 

Once I knew a Weeble

​His name was Joey G

He was the largest Weeble

​In his Weeble family

 

We played cards and Parcheesi 

​Outside his bungalow

And when he got excited

​He would roll to and fro

 

I met him through a girl 

​Whose face I don’t recall

But when it came to me

​She was quite the carnivore

 

One day he took a tumble

​It was some sight to see

Sixteen straining Weebles

​Trying to upright Joey G

 

The girl just disappeared

​Simply walked right out a door 

And from that day forward 

​I saw Joey G no more

 

I heard that he fell down a hill 

​While staring at his phone

And no one could upright him

​So he lay there all alone

 

Years later I would see him

​At a restaurant

I think it was in Hollywood

​Or perhaps in Vermont

 

He was all deflated

​It was quite sad to see

But his wife was still a Weeble

​As she stared angrily at me

 

So if you meet a Weeble

​Please listen to what I say

Always stand beside them so

​They don’t roll down your driveway

​

​

Clan Condition - Nez

 

After a playground game of basketball Wayne quickly sat down and removed both shoes. His feet hurt. A lot, and he didn’t know why. They didn’t burn or sting like needles or spikes. They just hurt. His shoes still fit, and he’d been wearing them a couple of months. He had played several basketball games over that time. This was the first time his feet hurt though. He took off his socks and rubbed both feet and didn’t see anything unusual. He tried standing on his bare feet and the pain wasn’t as sharp as it had been. He sat back down and put his socks on and stood again. Still, not as sharp as before. He sat down again and tried putting his shoes back on and stood. Sharp pain was back. So, he sat down again and loosened the laces. That was better, so maybe it was the shoes after all. With loose laces he could walk so he limped home and told his mom he needed new shoes. That would not be the last time Wayne’s feet were that painful. No.

Lillian enjoyed writing stories and was excited when her sixth grade teacher gave the class a short writing assignment about animals. Lillian had a couple of pets, a cat, a hamster and a parakeet and telling stories about them was one of her favorite things. She took paper and pencil and began to write, except that her right hand was painful. The more she wrote the more it hurt and now the pain was moving up her arm. She put down her pencil and cried out. Her teacher came to Lillian to see what the matter was. Through tears Lillian tried to explain her pain. Her right hand was very painful and now her left arm was also becoming painful. The very concerned teacher took Lillian from the classroom and called her mother. Lillian’s mother came and took Lillian home and to the doctor. And that was not the only time Lillian’s hands and arms would experience excruciating pain. No.

One Sunday morning Judy was singing for the church congregation when her left eye began twitching painfully. By the end of the song her eye was twitching so painfully that she ran tearfully off stage. Judy’s mother noticed her sobbing exit from the stage and went to her. After Judy’s explanation and showing her Mom her twitching eye, they went home and made a doctor’s appointment. And that was not the last time Judy’s left eye twitched so painfully. No.

Terry and a buddy were riding bikes when Terry’s right foot suddenly and painfully cramped up. He tried braking but the pain was too much and his left ankle was hurting too. Terry couldn’t pedal and he couldn’t stop so he coasted and simply fell off his bike. His buddy came to his aid but there wasn’t much he could do to ease Terry’s pain. But, he helped a sobbing Terry, up to sit on his bicycle seat, and with Terry’s feet dangling, his buddy pushed him home. Terry’s mother helped him inside and called the doctor. And that was not the only time Terry’s feet and ankles would hurt so painfully. No.

One might think these little anecdotes are unrelated. They are not. Each of these kids, that I grew up with in Lyman, was diagnosed with the same ailment, a Musculo-skeletal nerve disorder that’s a little different from most diseases. And while the condition is not unheard of, it’s pretty rare. It’s called CMT, an inherited condition for which there is no cure. Those who get it have it for the rest of their lives. It manifests itself in families or clans rather than the general population. And it passes from one generation to the next. In this family it manifested in each individual quite suddenly, yet it didn’t afflict every family member. As in this case Wayne and Judy are brother and sister. Their other sister and brother were spared. Lillian and Terry are also siblings and their two brothers were spared as well. These four are children of two brothers, one of whom had the malady in his feet, drop-foot. There was also another brother who suffered from the disease, yet none of his three children got it. Of that older generation of five kids only two had the condition. The disease is not contagious and generally shows up after puberty, and in this family’s case it was localized in each person. It didn’t spread, though it often worsens and can become debilitating. It appears in males and females equally.

All of these kids saw many specialists and the whole family became a medical case study for Seattle hospitals in the 1950’s. Several medications were tried to ease their pain, but they tended to make things worse. When ibuprophen finally came on the market in the 1960’s they discovered it eased their pain better than anything else.

Lillian and Terry suffered greatly throughout their lives as they attempted many different solutions that didn’t work. In time, Lillian had a hand and arm amputated below the elbow, and Terry had a foot amputated, and years later he had the other foot amputated, both just above the ankle. Wayne and Judy worked with their doctors, who did their research, and made personal adjustments rather than trying unproven medicines. Judy still manages to live with her twitching eye, at times quite painful. Wayne wore specially made shoes with extra-high arches. He lost feeling in his feet and walking was sometimes difficult for him.

These four kids and their four siblings produced fourteen children of their families’ next generation, yet only two have become afflicted with the disease. It’s unknown how many American families share this disease. The disease is called CMT (Charcot-Marie-Tooth) named after the doctors who discovered it in the mid-1800’s (two French, one English), and there are several forms of the disease. CMT is caused by a defect in one of the genes responsible for development of peripheral nerves. Early in its diagnosis it was thought to be a type of muscular dystrophy. But it’s an inherited nerve disorder, and not muscular dystrophy, arthritis, polio, nor any other known disease. It’s different and often painful.

The Wave - Marc

 The Wave - By Marc

Teams - Marc

 TEAMS

I quit my team yesterday

Disgusted by what was expected of me

Hate, hate and more hate of

The other team

No discussion allowed

No consideration of the other teams

Thoughts and ideas

Only hatred

And most importunately

The need to crush

Them completely

Absolutely

But now I’m free

From the propaganda that passes

As journalism

I have disconnected it

Atheists from both teams

Do not realize that they

Are part of a religion whose

Only commandment is hate

Without tolerance of

Anyone who disagrees with our

Leader or positions

Heathens they are, requiring extermination

I now see them as all fools

Zombies, lemmings

Souls filled with nothing

But hatred

All consuming

Burning away their humanity

For their team

Which always betrays them in the end

Hatred destroys souls

I would rather shake your hand

Although we may disagree

Let’s share our humanity

And learn to listen

Listen, listen and tell our leaders

To go fuck themselves

As we all quit their teams

Bob Shelman - Nez

 Bob Shelman

Saturday – Wash Day - Nez

 “Boys, this is the last time I’m telling for you to get up and get dressed. Bring your sheets and I need help with the washing. If you’re not here in five minutes I’m coming in there with a switch,” Mom yelled from the kitchen. It was Saturday, it was sunny, and it was late. No watches or  clocks in our room, but the sun had been up for a while. We slowly rolled out of bed, put our clothes on, stripped the bed and drug the sheets and pillow-cases to the kitchen. I pushed my brother Alan onto the pile of dirty laundry and threw our sheets on top of him. He squealed. Mom and I both laughed.

Saturdays were laundry and grocery shopping days in post-WWII Lyman. If the weather was good it seemed the whole town’s wet laundry was hung out on clotheslines by mid-morning to dry in the fresh air. On rainy Saturdays, the process was very different and women hung their wet laundry inside on drying racks, usually near a stove. I think it was the busiest work day of the week for most moms. At our house everyone was expected to pitch in, and Mom was busy from daylight ‘til dark. As kids we got little reprieves, and this is kind of how it went.

Mom already had our wooden kitchen table pushed against the wall and had rolled the washing machine in from the back porch. A small hose was attached to the faucet, filling the washer tub with hot water. She added Tide, or maybe it was Oxydol, laundry soap powder to the hot water in the Speed Queen wringer/washing machine as the water rose to her desired level. She’d tell us to bring in the tub, and we’d get the big tub from the back porch and set it up on two wooden apple crates beside the washing machine and use the hose to fill the tub halfway with cold water for rinsing the soap out of the freshly washed laundry items.

The tub was a round galvanized steel tub and was used for a variety of things besides rinsing the wash. It was also our bathtub and it was used for canning, for dying fabrics, covering chickens with their heads cut off in the backyard to keep them from running around, covering undead catfish to keep them from flopping all around the backyard, and it was used for ”bobbing for apples” at Halloween, among other things. The tub was heavy and took both of us to carry it into the kitchen and set it up. In our teens, either of us could handle it alone.

After setting the tub up we helped ourselves to a bowl of Wheaties or Corn Flakes and ate breakfast at our ugly chartreuse kitchen table while Mom washed the laundry only a couple of feet away.

Mom, following directions from the soap box, always washed the white things in hot water first, then as the water cooled, the colored stuff got washed. After each load, she’d swing the wringer arm over the wash water and run each washed item through the wringer then put it in the rinse water. When we finished our cereal one of us, me, would take the wash plunger and repeatedly dunk the washed items in the cold rinse water to remove the soap. After several dunks Alan ran each item through the wringer to squeeze out as much water as possible and dropped the washed and rinsed items into a basket sitting on a wooden chair. Mom usually made us switch places because wet things were heavy and I was bigger and stronger. He was smaller and weaker.

After a few basket-loads we siphoned the soapy rinse water out through a hole in the floor onto the ground under the house, emptying the rinse tub. Then we filled it halfway again with cold water for the rest of the rinsing.

Kay, our older sister, took each basket of cold wet laundry out to the backyard and hung it all on clotheslines, using clothespins to keep everything in place. The four wire clotheslines stretched between two T-posts about twenty feet apart, with six-foot cedar beanpoles propping up each line about midway to keep them from sagging too much. Sometimes, just for fun, Alan and I would sneak out there and knock the beanpoles down and run away giggling while we got yelled at by Kay and Mom. Most laundry was dry in two to four hours, depending on the weather.

After the work in the kitchen was done, the washing machine tub and the rinse tub were both siphoned down through the hole in the floor and we carried the rinse tub and rolled the washing machine to the back porch. While our laundry was drying on the clotheslines, Mom walked to the store to do her weekly grocery shopping and pick up mail at the post office. When we were younger one or both of us boys went with her and helped bring the groceries home in our wagon. After the groceries were home we usually hightailed it out of there and showed back up around suppertime, unless we were invited to eat at a buddy’s house, which was fairly common. The buddy’s Mom let our Mom know that we were eating at their place.

After the groceries were put away and the laundry was dry Kay and Mom took each item off the clotheslines, folded it and placed each item in a basket, then brought each basket inside and put everything away, then went back out and did it again until all the laundry had been folded, brought inside and put away. Then they remade all the beds.

After supper it was time for Saturday night baths. We brought the big tub back into the kitchen, set it on the floor in front of the sink and Mom filled it with hot water. Wearing her bathrobe, her towel and wash cloth in hand, she closed all the curtains and doors in and out of the kitchen and took her bath first. Sister was next, then me, and little brother was last. The water was fairly cool and sometimes even cold by the time it was our turn. After we all were bathed for the week, and in our pajamas, we again siphoned the tub water down through the floor and took it to the back porch.

That was our Saturday. The next morning, we put on clean clothes and probably got them dirty on our half-mile walk to church.

Chapter 13 - Marc

 Chapter 13

Vacant Lot - Ralph

Vacant Lot - Ralph

Fallen Myrtle - Nez

As kids in Lyman, we knew the town had “outcasts,” people or families who somehow didn’t fit in. That “somehow” being mostly arbitrary. Several were not so deserving of that label and yet were treated as such. Several outcasts were treated horribly, and yet others were not. And since most non-outcasts were “church people” imagine how the outcasts were selected. Chatting with my sister recently, she asked if I had written an “outcast” story yet. Here is one.

Myrtle Daves

In Lyman Tavern with a brown paper sack, cradled like a baby in her arms, Myrtle Daves should have already headed home. Bundled up in her black winter coat and gloves, she’s not wearing a hat or boots or galoshes. Myrtle doesn’t drive. It’s cold, windy and snowing outside and she has about three-fourths of a mile to walk in heels and stockings. Now hours past noon she’s drunk and wobbly. Declining an offer of coffee, she steadies herself, tucks the paper bag under her arm, and shuffles toward the exit.

Myrtle dresses her best whenever she goes uptown, which for her is really, really rare. In her younger days, with her short slender build and cold black hair Myrtle had been quite attractive. You wouldn’t know it now. Years of booze and abuse have robbed her of many things, as well as her looks. Now at middle-aged she is haggard looking with a permanent scowl, though her hair is still black. Myrtle is a recluse, who only leaves home when she is out of liquor (her medicine) and there’s no one else home to get it for her. Her husband, or one of her two sons, usually keeps her supplied, but they’ve gone to work and she ran out of “medicine” at breakfast. So, she got herself dressed up and made her way to town. It wasn’t snowing when she arrived at the tavern’s front door before it opened at ten. It’s almost three as she finally leaves the notorious establishment. She wants to be home before dark, which is a little after four.

Through snow, wind and cold Myrtle makes her way down across the tracks, crosses over to the sidewalk and trudges up past the Mobil station where the terrain levels and on past the Baptist Church. Nearing the intersection with her dead-end gravel street, of which she lives at the very end, she approaches the end of the sidewalk. At the drop off from the sidewalk down to the gravel street, she gingerly steps onto the short slippery embankment, loses her footing, slips and falls backward. She lies there with her upper body on the sidewalk and her legs splayed out on the sloped ground. The fall must have been painful as Myrtle doesn’t seem to move. Finally rising up on one elbow she realizes her bottle broke during her fall when it hit the sidewalk. The contents of her brown paper bag are soaking the inside of her coat and dress. She sobs and swears, and vomits, and realizes that she might have hurt her back during her fall. Crying she hoarsely calls out for help.

The Dietz kids in their yard up ahead are watching her. She sees them and cries out to them for help, but the they ignore her cry. Instead, they ridicule her. They point and laugh while singing, “Myrtle the turtle, Myrtle the turtle, fell and broke her bottle.” “Myrtle the turtle, Myrtle the turtle, fell and broke her bottle.” This brings Mrs. Dietz, a “devout Baptist” lady out onto her porch to see what the commotion is about. She spies the fallen drunk. Myrtle, sobbing, again cries out for help, but Mrs. Dietz simply ushers her kids inside, steps in and closes her door.

Because of where she’s fallen Myrtle is having difficulty getting her legs under her so she can rise up onto her feet. The house that she has fallen in front of, ironically, is the Baptist Church Parsonage. Even though some of the preacher’s kids are watching her from a window they don’t intend to come to her aid, nor do they make any attempt to get the pastor or his wife to help. They only see Myrtle as a fallen-down drunk. To be pitied, yes. To be helped, no.

Myrtle time and again struggles as she attempts to get to her feet. Finally, she manages to wriggle her way from the sidewalk into the yard of the Parsonage where she eventually rises to her feet after losing her balance three more times and vomiting again. Sobbing, cold and wet and now without her medicine she musters up the little pride she has left, straightens herself up, smooths her dress and coat as best she can, and painfully hobbles out to her gravel road and hobbles on toward home in her high heels, torn stockings and bruises. Muttering to herself, she curses those kids and Mrs. Dietz.

Epilogue

Myrtle Daves and her family were among the “outcasts” in the Lyman area. As far as anybody knew they didn’t have friends or relatives nearby, yet they had been in Lyman several years. And since arriving in Lyman none of the family had ever participated or contributed to the community. They didn’t attend church and were not known to help others. In addition, both Myrtle and her husband, Berle, were heavy drinkers. And Berle was often seen beating Myrtle or one of their sons in their front yard. Thus, the Daves were deemed “outcasts” by most of the town. We all avoided them.

Yet, there were others in town who were as bad as the Daves, maybe worse, but if they were community participants and/or contributors with friends or relatives they were deemed “acceptable”. The difference being who they were, who they knew, and in whose closet their skeletons resided.