All I have learned of death,
I learned from a dog
When I was 14.
His name was Nic
Like St. Nicolas
Since he came to us on Christmas.
He was either a runaway
Or a drop off.
Skinny, frostbitten ears
But polite and smart.
It took a year to learn him,
His tricks,
His ways.
He loved winter
And hunting rabbits.
If it is really true all dogs go to heaven,
He’s certainly hunting rabbits
As I write this.
(I don’t know what that says for Rabbit Heaven.)
It was snowing,
I had been given new snow-shoveling duties
Near the highway.
Nic saw me shoulder the shovel
And head out the driveway.
I can’t really blame him for thinking
About rabbits.
But the guy who was driving that
Low Pontiac,
And who didn’t stop
When I chased Nic,
Sliding on his back down the highway,
Him I still blame.
I got to Nic and picked him up in my arms
To bring him back into the house,
But it hurt him too bad.
He mouthed my hand
But did not bite me in his pain.
And so I lay him in the snow
Where he finished.
I kept the flakes from falling on his face.
It was the only thing I could do.
Tag Archives: memoir
Food & Sex
(From a glossy mag quiz re: food and sex)
At my age do I have a comment about food and sex?
Does a fat old man have the right?
Am I still relevant in the final, um…quarter of my life?
What of audience for my say about food and sex?
After all, I remember the summer of love first hand, so to speak.
(Speaking of love)
I have had sex without love.
I have had love without sex.
And I have had no love without sex.
No love without sex is boring.
Love without sex is boring,
What could be worse in America?
But sex without love is like
(Speaking of food)
Steak without the sizzle–
Steak devoid of fat–
Tofu-based ground meat product–
Not even good enough to make a decent chili.
It doesn’t matter how hot you make it.
Add garlic and chilis and cayenne,
Add salsa and white pepper, black pepper, red pepper,
Add mustards, white, black, yellow,
Even oysters and a tiny bit of chocolate,
It’s still just soy
Dressed up in crotchless panties and a garter belt.
Sex without love is nice,
Nice like low-cal sherbet made from skimmed milk and xylitol,
Nice like soda with aspartame,
Nice like left-handed sugar,
Nice like microwave popcorn with shake-on artificial butter flavored salt substitute.
Fucking your way to love
Is like eating your way to thin,
Or praying your way to heaven
Because in an hour,
Or after a shower,
You just need more.
The itch remains unscratched.
The void remains unfilled.
And eventually you get some disease
Or you figure out that some things aren’t good for you:
That some sex is goofy;
That some sex is a little crazy;
It’s all fun and games
Until you break your dick.
So you lay off and try to heal,
Sitting on the couch
(Speaking of food)
Eating pop tarts,
Tater tots, fish sticks, fruit by the yard,
Wonder bread, Lucky Charms, Fritos,
Ubiquitous bean dip, candy bars,
Cup cakes, Twinkies, smokey links,
Propyl gallate, butylated hydroxyanisole
Or butylated hydorxytoluene,
Potassium bromate, monosodium glutamate,
Ascesulfame K, Olestra, sodium nitrate,
And always, always,
hydrogenated vegetable oil with
Blue 1, Blue 3,
Red 3, Yellow 6.
It’s all in there,
Like good pornography.
And eventually there you are again,
Staring at your reflection in the pool
And wondering why that erection won’t go away,
Understanding the meaning of priapism.
And clitorism,
Or why your panties won’t dry
In the middle of the swirling snow squall.
Trying to come in from the storm,
Trying to come in to the table
Trying to come in
Trying.
I’m Tired of Living in a Country Song
Let me make it clear: this is not tale of my life today. It was a time in my marriage that was much different from now. But I can’t deny it was a real time. Also NOTE, regular text is spoken, italic text is sung.
I’m tired of living in a country song
But here I am,
Sitting in my truck,
Looking down an endless highway
With less than a quarter tank of three dollar gas.
I’m tired of living a country song
So, I’ll take the truck and drive along.
I’ll let the dog ride shotgun next to me.
But any old road that I choose now,
Well, that’s a road you won’t go down.
So, we’re headed in different ways, it’s plain to see.
The only thing I know for sure
Is you don’t want me around no more
And I’m staring down a highway I can’t drive.
I’m sick and tired of mad and sad.
I’m looking hard for a little glad,
And we’re layin’ down this song in concert live.
The biggest question we have right now
Is who gets custody of the last dog,
And if I have time to get my teeth fixed
Before the insurance runs out.
Highway moves from town to town.
But staying here just brings me down.
I just can’t be the me I wanna be.
I know you know I’m not the man
You tried to make when we began,
And I can’t be the me you wanna see.
So maybe I’ll grab the dog and drive away
Drink some beer and
Learn to play the slide guitar.
Wish you luck
And catch your act in Wichita.
All duets will end one day
And each of us is less, they say,
Than half of what we were when we were one.
But less than half is more by far
Than all of any falling star
That burns completely out before it’s done.
I’m tired of living a country song
So, I’ll take the truck and drive along.
I’ll let the dog ride shotgun next to me.
But any old road that I choose now,
Well, that’s a road you won’t go down.
So, we’re headed in different ways, it’s plain to see.
[244]
Set the Nails Deep and Hard-1955
My father traded his life’s plan for a Purple Heart in Korea.
Instead, he made aluminum extrusions in a plant that was as loud as any combat.
He cut aluminum billets and fed the extrusion machines:
Loading them into the ram,
Firing them in the furnace
To something just short of 1220 degrees,
Sawing off the butts,
Attaching a new billet,
Heating,
Pressing,
Sawing,
Loading.
During smoke breaks,
Squatting against a wall
Like a Korean farmer,
He flicked ashes in his pant cuffs–
A habit he picked up in the war
to help hide his presence from the enemy.
When he was a saw-man,
His cuffs were full of aluminum shavings and ash.
He never emptied them.
Even at 5, I knew that made Mom mad;
He could not remember his cuffs full of irritation until too late.
He turned them out in the kitchen
And swept them into a dustpan with a small whiskbroom.
But even a single stray burr could hide
Beneath the lip of the heat register for days,
Guarding against glinting in the darkness,
And bite bare feet on the way to breakfast.
When he wasn’t a “feeder,” he was a “puller” on the other end,
Keeping extrusions from kinking
While they were shit out of the machine die muzzle,
Headed for the stretcher and the hardening tables,
Cutting them to length.
He came home enfogged in a layer of invisible oil
Mixed with sweat from the heat of the furnace;
He smelled sour from feet away.
His black hair,
Cut in a military flattop every other Saturday,
Gleamed greasy.
Even his breath smelled oily
Every day…except Sunday.
By the time he had bathed and washed his hair
And changed clothes twice,
The smell of extruding oil had faded.
On Sundays Dad smelled right: cigarette smoke and beer.
That’s how a blue collar Dad smelled in the Eisenhower era.
On Sundays Dad often produced a half-pound sack
Of one inch roofing nails
And my hammer.
In our small backyard kneeled a long-dead tree stump.
It had been there far longer than I.
Dad wanted me to practice driving nails into it.
By the time we left that house in 1957,
That stump was entirely galvanized—
Silver nail heads
Overlapping like fish scales—
Impervious to rot.
He had taught me how to hold the nail with my left hand,
Tap-start it with the quick hammer in my right
And to drive it
With the last strike to set the nail deep and hard.
To this day, I enjoy no job more than driving nails
And setting the nail with that last strike, just so!
I own three different nailing guns,
But when the job calls for a hammer, I know the special finality:
“Tap,” “bang, bang, bang,” “BANG!”
In the way of securing this to that and making a thing.
Dad often sat on that dead, silver stump to smoke
After I had been put to bed.
I saw him there at night,
Or rather I sometimes saw the hot orange spark,
And if it was a warm night,
I was soothed by tobacco smoke
Blowing in through the one small window.
Other times, if the wind was blowing too hard,
Or the weather was poor,
He cupped the cigarette to shelter it,
And to guard the telltale glow from the enemy.
He smoked them unfiltered, far too short
Until the pads of his middle finger and thumb
And his too-long fingernails
Were stained brown.
He knew.
He called them coffin nails.
In the end, I didn’t make my father’s coffin,
Although I would have found it an honorable labor:
Sawing and planning,
Joining and setting screws.
Somewhere I would have found a way to use some nails–
Maybe roofing nails for a simple pattern on the lid.
A fish-scale, perhaps.
Tap, bang, bang, bang…BANG!
He chose cremation, returned to the furnace,
Much hotter even than for extruding aluminum billets.
[243]
Nine Nights on Prednisone
The great sin of my life
Was committed out of greed.
Because I wanted it.
I lied to all of us about it.
Dressed the lie up in glittering raiment
To disguise its petty nature.
Called it Love.
But it could not last.
It could not hold.
No plan was forged in the long nights.
No sacrifice on my side
To offset the gains I lusted for.
And so I lost,
Our way.
I stumbled over miles and acres,
Tore flesh and clothing
on rocks and brambles
And psychic snags.
Fell full-faced into debt-sodden mud,
Caked and sticky for decades.
Lost my shoes and then the path.
There is no gift after sorrow.
There is but greed with grasping.
There is no holding–no caress.
And every gain is met with loss
And every hope is dashed by retribution.
Guilt fails,
And fails again to re-prove itself.
I am diminished.
I am smaller than I might have been.
I tell you a true story.
[201]
Why the Distlefink?
When I was 14 (or near that) our family took a trip East. A little piece of Pennsylvania made a pretty big impact on me. I think it was the first time I was exposed up-close to a culture other than what was offered in Charlotte, Michigan and greater Eaton County. They have been referred to by others as the “Pennsylvania Dutch.” In a broader sense they are Amish. So much of this culture is interesting to me and the memories from the trip are strong so to pass a little of it along, I’ve been doing a series of “Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Symbols.” (Surprise: They don’t have any thing with the Dutch or Hexes.)
This offering is a popular representation of the “Distlefink.” The distlefink legend, as I understand it, began with the early immigrant farmers who had new fields infested with thistles. The goldfinch’s appetite for thistle seed, helped with this problem. The story goes that the farmer called it the “Thistlefinch” and due to his strong German accent it sounded like “Distlefink” to others. This symbol, often painted on barns represents hopes for good luck and good fortune.
[137]
What a Ride: A Proposal
Looks like we might have made it to the finish line.
At least we could walk it from here.
Well, you could. I have some doubts.
And it wasn’t like it was a smooth ride.
Lots of couples hit some bumps in the road,
But we skidded out more than once,
Saw the ditches way too close
When I was driving a while ago,
And I know we caught air this last time.
You were driving.
But I think I can see the route ahead
And now that we know we don’t speak the same language,
But we think we’re heading the same way,
I’ll try to navigate if you’ll do the steering.
Deal?
[44]
Admonition
My elders were very poor teachers,
Or I was a piss-poor student.
So much about aging was left unsaid
Or unheard:
That pain is ugly
But it’s only pain.
That your heart will heal
But it might be a little crooked afterwards.
That the injuries from the Spring of youth
Return in the Winter.
That you can weep when one who cares
moves on—
And still wish them every goodness.
They also didn’t mention that
Mentors grow in age,
That gardens aren’t about vegetables,
That owning a dog isn’t about owning.
And shame on them for not telling
How an old heart can swell,
not just with edema,
But from the full panoramic view of life
As it plays out on the faces of children
And then the Elfin magic of grandchildren.
I’m writing this down today
So no one else forgets to say
Or hear.
[43]
What Was Your First Big Trip?
Our family never got to take many trips. It was outside the budget to travel, so, as a rule we didn’t do it.
I can think of two early exceptions that I will write about today and another bigger vacation later that I will write about tomorrow.
I am writing this on National Michigan Day, that is the anniversary of the date of admission to the Union for our lovely pair of peninsulas. If you have read “The Great Toledo War” by Harold “Swampy” Marsh, you know that the only war fought between states other than that other Civil War was fought between Ohio and Michigan. Ohio won and got Toledo and we got stuck with the Upper Peninsula. But it wasn’t until my lifetime that Michiganders could even get to the U.P. without a boat.
Sometime in what was probably late summer of 1956, or early summer of 1957 Mom and Dad bundled us into the car and we headed north. The reason I know the approximate timeline is that the object of our wandering was the car ferry at the Straits of Mackinac. It was the last year the ferry operated before the Mackinac Bridge opened on November 1, 1957. I can’t say for sure why I remember that date. It must have been strongly impressed on me as a kid, probably by my Dad. He had a head full of historical minutia.
The bridge had been a huge capital plan since about the birth of my great-grandfather. In fact, the research I did today, mostly from the Mackinac Bridge Authority https://www.mackinacbridge.org , indicates the first meeting that discussed the need for a bridge spanning the Straits was held at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in 1888! By 1934 the first price tag on such a project came in at $33,400,000. But no plan came to fruition until 1953 when bonds totaling $99,800.000 were issued and the Bridge was on its way to reality.
I believe we took this boat ride to the U.P. so that I could remember a time before the direct route. It seems to have worked.
Michigan was home to the Motor City. The entire state’s economy and culture was built upon names like Ford, Olds, Chevrolet and yet no person had ever driven the length of Michigan without that 5 mile boat ride from Mackinac City to St. Ignace. In 1956 or 57 Harold and Joyce set out to do it again.
I remember nothing from the drive up to the ferry. We left very early in the morning and all three of us kids slept much or most of the trip to the top of the Lower Peninsula. But we were awake and anxious as we waited in what seemed like a huge line of cars and trucks queued up to board the boat. I feared we were too far back in the line and we would have to return the next day. The ferry itself was the biggest boat I had yet seen in all of my 6 years. The photo above is the ship we rode in 1956. “The Vacationland” could transport about 150 vehicles at a time. I do not remember a thing about that time in the Upper Peninsula. I don’t know if we stayed a day or a week, but I remember that boat ride (and the horrible stink of diesel fumes in the hold). The ride seemed like an ocean voyage.
Fast forward to some date in 1958. The Marsh family was off to make that trip again. The “Mighty Mac” had opened the previous November and thousands had crossed the Straits by passenger car. I remember this trip much better. There are some old black and white photos somewhere that support my memories.
It seems to me now that the original goal was to drive across the bridge and so we went there apparently without stopping. I don’t think we had bought the almost new 1957 two-tone Chevy. (I’d give an arm for that car today!) So we must have been driving the old ’53 Plymouth. Either way, I was old enough to have a window seat in the back and I was subjected to my first taste of vertigo as we drove across the steel grid of the inner lane on the bridge. I could look out the window and all the way down to the Lake, 199 feet below. Neither of my sisters would even look out the window.
I’m not sure of all the places we went in the Upper Peninsula. I am certain we saw the Tahquamenon Falls, referred to sometimes as the Root Beer Falls because of the unique amber colored water. They were cool for about 15 minutes to a 7 year old, but it seemed to take a very long time to get there (not far from Paradise).
The Toonerville Trolly, was a big hit on that trip. It was (and still is) a steam powered, narrow gauge train that takes you through Black Bear country to a riverboat landing. The boat is called the Hiawatha today, and it may have had the same name back in the 50s. That is a longer ride. When you arrive there is a longish hike to see the falls. (Today I discover the hike is 5/8 of a mile each way with a lot of stairs to climb. I’ll bet there was a lot of complaining from people with short legs.)
Other than the Bridge and the Falls, I only remember one more significant event from that trip. We had stopped somewhere near Lake Superior in Christmas, Michigan. This is the kitschiest Christmas town in the world, complete with a 35 foot Santa Clause standing out by the road. I remember sending a postcard to a friend from the post office (with Christmas stamps and a Christmas, Michigan post mark). We met the “real” Santa and got to spend a good amount of time with him. As I said, I was 7 and had been clued in to the real meaning of Santa, but both of my sisters believed in the conventional children’s way. What poor Santa didn’t know (but my parents did) was that Karla had an active case of the mumps. (When we got home, both Crystal and I came down with the mumps too. She was definitely contagious.) To help disguise her ailment, Mom had put Karla in a hat that tied under her chin with a wide ribbon. I’m still not certain it did any disguising as much as it accentuated her condition but when Santa met my sister, he leaned over and said to Karla, “Ho Ho Ho! You have some cute, chubby cheeks, don’t you?” Karla was over the moon that her hero spoke directly to her. The rest of us hoped Santa had already had the mumps as a child, otherwise he was in for some hurting.
A quick search today reveals that there is a distance of 376 miles between Charlotte, MI and Christmas, MI. That’s how far we spread the mumps virus that summer. Karla was our own little 3-year-old Typhoid Mary. That’s the story of how the Marshes made an impact on the health history of the great State of Michigan.
[5]
How Did You Get Your First Job?
The short answer is the typical one. Privilege. Smith’s Men’s Wear had been a fixture on the first block of South Cochran in Charlotte since 1934. (Smith’s is on the right end of stores in the picture above.) They had always had a part-time position for a high school boy. The job was not exciting, but it was public. Sweep the floors, sweep/shovel the sidewalk in front of the store, wash the windows once a week, constantly polish the glass display cases, break down boxes, empty the trash. But once in a while, if all that other stuff was done and everyone else was with a customer, I got to work on the sales floor.
For several years, Smith’s had hired the high school “Mayor.” The Mayor was the equivalent of President of the Student Council. That was the job I had coveted since the eighth grade. I didn’t know it came with a cash-paying job too. But it did.
The election took place in the late spring. That should be a story of its own. I won. The guy who had the jobs (Smith’s and Mayor) before me was Val Nelson. He got ready to go off to college and he was the one who told me to go in and talk to Mr. Smith. I did and I was hired.
It paid 90 cents an hour. That was minimum wage in 1967. Actually, it wasn’t minimum wage. It was the minimum they were allowed to pay to hire a minor for less than 20 hours a week. Since I was working an hour and a half each day after school, four hours on Friday night and 8 hours on Saturday for a weekly total of 18 hours, I met the standards to pay a sub-minimum wage. I also got a 20% discount on anything in the store. That was the whole package.
I liked working there. Mr. Harold Smith (always Mr.), Dick Cooper, and Russ Last name I can’t recall (maybe Barnhart or Bernard, can’t recall) were the staff. Later, they would add a woman, Chris (Crystal) Taylor who brought a certain talent in dealing with women customers that the men didn’t seem to have. Every person on the sales floor could sell anything in the store except suits. Suits were sold by the men. I suspect there was a commission on suit sales for everyone but me and they didn’t trust the big sales to a kid.
I had a knack I discovered early. It was a narrow niche but no one on the floor could sell more men’s underwear to older women than me. We even had a contest one weekend. Starting Friday afternoon when I came in until we closed the store at 5 pm Saturday, I sold more underwear than everyone else in the store combined! I cannot explain this talent, but women, especially older women, displayed a moment when they were buying a present that seemed to say “but what else?” My immediate answer was underwear. And they almost always they said yes. We are a collection of weird talents. It got to the point that anyone handling an older woman customer always finished up by handing them off to me to ring them up and add some boxer shorts to her order.
I wish I could say I held that job through my Senior year of high school, that I passed it off to the next Mayor the following summer as I got ready to go to college. It didn’t work out that way. Instead I quit Smith’s to go to work across the street at some chain discount store. There I became a union member for the first time (much to the chagrin of my Dad) and made $1.40 an hour (the actual minimum wage). But I never felt a “part” of something at work again until I started teaching at Ithaca High School, eight years later.
[3]