The Perils of an Eager Young Mind

                                                            “Kent had to be ‘sawed out’ at neighbor’s today.”

                                                                -          journal entry of Clarence Stolt, April 16, 1966

     Some memories just stay with you. There’s one in particular I've hung onto for some reason, like an old snapshot pulled from a box full of memories. In fact, the more time goes by the more it seems like it never really happened. But it did.

            It’s more than a little hazy now, but I still remember the time my father took my mother and me to see a re-release of Gone With The Wind that was showing in theaters in 1966. Dad was something of an amateur historian and a bona fide Civil War buff, and from him I picked up a playful boy’s interest in soldiers and battles of that era. So, being all of six years-old at the time, I gladly tagged along when they told me it was a movie about the Civil War.

            What they didn't tell me was that it was a four-hour marathon bore with too much talking, kissing and crying. Where were all the battle scenes? The cavalry charging and the cannons blazing? Neat stuff like that. As for the troubles of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, well, I didn't much give a damn either.

            However, there was one scene in the movie that did stick in my mind. It takes place during the siege of Atlanta and starts with a panoramic shot showing the streets literally covered with the dead and dying men of the Confederacy. Cut to a crowded hotel lobby serving as a makeshift field hospital. Surrounded by stretchers and the anguished cries of the injured, a white-haired doctor stands with sleeves rolled up and his shirt smeared with blood; haggard and helpless to stop the suffering. He says he hasn't been home to see his family in days. As for treating the men around him, they're out of bandages, anesthetic and hope. When yet another young soldier is brought before him the doctor takes a weary look at the wound, sighs, and declares that the leg will have to come off.

            What? Sitting there in that dark theater my eyes grew wide.

            The soldier lets out a blood-curdling scream, followed by a plea for mercy. "No, not my leg. Don't take my leg." Two attendants hold him down while the doctor shakes his head, picks up a bone saw and pours some whiskey over the blade. He bends over and there's another long, horrible scream as the camera pulls up and the scene fades away.

            Well…talk about horrified. To these young eyes that had never seen anything of the horrors of war, it was a new experience, to say the least. Finally the ending credits rolled and the house lights came up. No doubt by then my butt was plenty stiff and sore from having sat through four hours of a love story.

Fast-forward to a warm Saturday afternoon a few weeks later – April 16, 1966, to be exact. I was goofing around with my next door neighbor in his front yard. For some reason, or none at all, we were climbing around the wrought iron hand railing near the front door and I happened to stick my skinny little leg between two of the bars. Putting my weight down my left leg sank in further. Then I decided to twist my foot back so that the toe would catch behind another bar. I wish I could say there was a logical reason for doing all this, but it escaped me then and it certainly escapes me now.

            Anyway, my leg was wedged in there pretty good when I decided it was time to untangle myself.

            Hey, wait a minute. Something's not – this doesn't feel right.

            The more I struggled, the more a fear started to grow. I couldn't get any leverage to free my foot or my leg. I was stuck!

            Fear was in my voice and in my eyes. My friend stared at me rather dumbfounded before he finally decided that he better go get his dad. So his dad comes outside, probably not understanding at all what his own son was trying to explain. What do you mean Kent is stuck in the railing outside?

He comes over and very gently tries to pry my limb loose, but no luck. By now my breathing was raspy and the tears were rolling.

            Not wanting to risk further physical damage, our neighbor decided this was a matter for my dad to deal with, so off he went to fetch him. An eerie minute or two passed. Meanwhile, I kept wiggling my leg in a desperate attempt to free myself, which only made the situation worse because my leg was starting to swell up. Finally the two fathers turned the corner. Dad took one look and shook his head, no doubt thinking something along the lines of “how the hell did the kid manage to do that?” He came over to take a closer look, tried to pry me out himself, but my tears and fear dissuaded him from going too far with that.

            Like surgeons the two men conferred briefly out of earshot, then quickly decided on a course of action. Dad said he’d be right back. He headed back over to our house and returned a minute later. Now there was something in his hand.

            Sweet Jesus, he's got a saw!

            I'm wailing now. Wailing and blubbering at the same time so that none of my words are coming out as actual words. I'm trying to say, “No, don't do it. Please don't do it.” But they don't hear anything but the crying and the blubbering. Dad comes over and tries to calm me down, but to no avail. He gently puts a hand on my thigh and brings up the blade. And he's not even going to use any whiskey to sterilize the blade.

            Finally it comes out: "No, not my leg!"

            Suddenly the two guys start to laugh. I can't believe it. My mind is pulsating with visions of torn flesh and naked bone, not to mention a lifetime of hobbling around on a wooden leg, and they're laughing at me?

This can't be happening. Dad could be temperamental from time to time, but this was ridiculous. He put his hand on my leg and I closed my eyes in anticipation of the first searing jolt of pain.

            Of course, the blood and pain never came. (Now wouldn't this be a hell of a story if it did? But let’s keep it real, shall we?) The next sound I heard was the scratching of metal on metal. I looked down and saw not a bloodbath but the steady movement of a hacksaw cutting into the wrought iron railing.

I suppose at that moment I should have been relieved, a little embarrassed maybe, but relieved. No, all I cared about at that point was getting out of this devilish trap and running away as fast as I could. So when Dad finally stopped laughing and cut through the bar on one end enough to bend it back and set me free, that's exactly what I did. I ran like hell. On two skinny, but very sound legs.

            A big part of growing up is learning to separate the irrational fears in our head from the slightly more rational world that really is out there. Maybe this was the first step for me in that regard and that’s why I still remember it. Oh, I still harbor my share of irrational fears, even these many years later. Doesn’t everybody? They’re just not quite as irrational as they were when I was six years old.

Yes, I did learn something about the hard realities of life that day; it’s a lesson I have carried with me all these years. And I can safely say that I have never stuck my leg through another metal railing since. 

~~~

                                                           

                                                                                            

 

Character is Destiny

“Character is Destiny.”

-          Heraclitus (535 BCE – 475 BCE)

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t know about you, but as ancient Greek proverbs go that is one of my all-time favorites.

Okay, I really don’t know many other ancient proverbs, and I came across this one in a Clint Eastwood biography, of all things, but I believe my point still stands – this is a good thought to fall back on in the course of our day-to-day struggles at work, at home, and with life in general.
 

Why?
 

In three short words it offers rare reassurance to every one of us who deals from time to time with elements seemingly out of our control. It says that one’s fortune can and will be determined more by who we are on the inside than how we appear to be on the outside. It also serves as a model of conduct – do the right thing and your future will be assured – that is as good, if not better, than anything a CEO or best-selling self-help guru could come up with on his or her best day.
 

Don’t let the lofty ideas throw you off. Character, while not easy to pin down in so many words, is real, no matter what the era; and destiny is not something reserved only for the rich and famous.

Case in point – in the early 1900s a young woman named Margaret was growing up on a small farm in the rural township of Irving, Wisconsin. The daughter of Norwegian immigrants, she, like countless other girls of that time, held on to simple dreams: find a good man, fall in love and raise a family. Most likely this would mean a hard but stable life working on a farm. In those days this was a calling of the highest honor.
 

Margaret did indeed meet a good man, and in 1919, at the age of twenty-five, she married Adolph Thompson, a native North Dakotan nine years her senior. Together they took over his family’s small dairy farm in Wisconsin and welcomed the arrival of two daughters in the next three years. Everything was playing out just as she had always hoped and prayed it would.
 

But that wouldn’t last.
 

The first heartache came in 1923 when her third child, a boy, was born with a congenital digestive disorder that basically made it more and more difficult for him to digest any food. It might well have been what is known today as esophageal achalasia, a rare and potentially deadly affliction that can occur in very young children. But back then no such diagnosis, let alone cure, was known. Certainly home remedies and prayer vigils were not enough. Even doctors at the nearest county hospital in Marshfield were powerless to save him. Margaret could only watch as her son, Adolph Harvey Thompson, grew weaker by the day until finally his body gave out and he starved to death. He was four-months-old.
 

(Incredibly this wasn’t the first time Margaret experienced such grief. Twenty years earlier her younger sister, Gina, died when she too was only four-months-old, purportedly from malnutrition due to another digestive ailment.)

Then in 1937 Margaret’s husband suffered a crippling stroke that left him so weak as to be unable to do any more work on the farm. He struggled with life from then on, dying in 1946. Through it all Margaret and the children soldiered on as best they could and somehow kept the farm going.
 

A decade or so later the next calamity struck when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and ended up undergoing a radical mastectomy, the pain and scars of which would doubtless make any patient or oncologist cringe today. Still she raised her family of five children without complaint or compromise, and never gave up or stopped caring when it would have been damn easy to do just that.
 

Yet all I knew about her until later in my own life was that Margaret Thompson was my maternal grandmother, a sweet, smiling woman who always seemed to me as fine and delicate as a porcelain doll.
 

So whether you know it or not, someone in your family’s past most likely struggled more than you will ever know, and thanks in no small part to their perseverance you are now reading this.
 

Next time things aren’t exactly going your way and you think you’ve got it rough…well, think again. And trust that you are never really alone in this life because somewhere along the line you have character firmly on your side.

 

 

 

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In Memory of Charlie 'Morris' Freeze

A Lesson in Time - What One (Very) Old Book Taught Me

In my work as a writer and memoirist I have had the privilege of telling what I consider compelling life stories of some very interesting people. And in doing so, it has been my experience that what seems at first to be the littlest of stories can actually reveal a lot about the profound influences that drive us to become the persons we are. In literary terms this is called backstory.

My advice to anyone looking to make, or better understand, changes in their life is to first give some serious thought to their own backstory.

A case in point with me – one of the possessions I treasure greatly is an old book. How old? Well, in the Publisher’s Notice at the front of the book the editors proclaim this to be Volume I of a history of the Civil War, with a promise that a follow-up Volume II “will be prepared as fast as the receipt of authentic material by the Author will permit, and be issued within six months after the close of the war."

In other words, what I have is a book about the Civil War that couldn't be completed in a single volume because the author didn’t know yet how the war was going to end.

Now that's old.

And what’s more, there is an air of mystery about this book because I’m not even sure how I ever came to hold it.

Published in 1862 by Hurlbut, Williams & Co. of Hartford, Connecticut, The Great Rebellion; A History of the Civil War in the United States, Volume I, was written by Joel Tyler Headley (1813-1897). A New England Yankee, Headley was, at turns in his professional life, a clergyman, historian, author, newspaper editor and politician. In his roles as historian and author he wrote prolifically about such notable figures as Napoleon Bonaparte and Andrew Jackson. (With a few travel arrangements and a lot of luck he could have interviewed them if he wanted to.)

Headley then turned his pen to what he conspicuously refers to “The Rebellion of 1861.” Apparently it wasn’t even being called the Civil War yet, at least not by the esteemed editors of Hurlbut, Williams & Co. of Hartford, Connecticut. In 500-plus pages Headley gives his best narrative for every major battle and military commander from the time the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter through June of 1862 when General Robert E. Lee was given command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. (A little internet research verified that Volume II to The Great Rebellion was indeed published later in 1866, though all I have is Volume I.)

For all its weathered vintage, my copy of Volume I remains in remarkably good shape. The engraved hard cover is worn and cracked, but the binding remains solid. Its pages remain gilded a handsome gold at the edges and include “fine steel Engravings” which depict sketched portraits of various Generals and battle scenes. In its neat typeface, every word still holds clearly and legibly. So all in all the book is in pretty good shape for being over a century-and-a-half old.

It was almost by happenstance that I came to be its latest keeper. My father was a Civil War buff and somehow he came in possession of Headley’s book, but he passed away before I ever had any interest in such things so I never got to ask him how that came to be. I found it casually tucked in with some other books on a shelf in the basement when I was cleaning out my parent’s house for the last time. When I first cracked open the cover and saw the publishing date I was impressed, to say the least. It’s not every day that works of art and history over a hundred-and-fifty years old just fall into one’s lap without some kind of explanation. But this one pretty much did.

The only clue regarding any of the books’ prior owners is a faded, almost ghost-like name written on the inside front cover. In a delicate, swirling style reminiscent of an earlier time is the signature of I.L. Whitmore. And I have absolutely no idea who I.L. Whitmore ever was. It could be the name of a soldier who fought in one of the campaigns described in the book and wanted to relive it by reading about it years later. Not all that likely, I suppose, but still…

See, that’s one of the things I enjoy about history and writing people’s life stories. I’m drawn to the little facts and anecdotes that reveal more about people than they might have ever realized about themselves. I also like it when a little mystery is involved. I let my mind wander a bit when it comes to imagining the stories behind the bigger story. Take this book, for instance. I page through it now and then and think about my father and the untold others who must have found some pleasure in it over all those years. They’re all gone, but somehow this book still survives.

Everyone has backstories – lots of them actually – and they can tell us a lot about ourselves. I think my fascination with the history of this grand old book says a lot about me.  

So no matter where you are or what you’re trying to figure out in life, it might be a good idea to take a few minutes and think about some of your own backstories. Who knows where they might lead?

 

Next Time

(I originally wrote this in 2014)

What do you say when you’re saying goodbye to a buddy who’s dying? What do you tell him when you know – with all due medical certainty – that this is the last time you’re ever going to see the guy? What are the proper words, the right words?

            Any other time a farewell between friends might end with a simple handshake and a “Good to see ya again. Take care,” or a “Keep in touch.” Something safe and customary like that. But when your friend has been diagnosed with a class IV brain tumor and doctors have told him he won’t last the year…seriously, what the fuck do you say then?

            This was precisely the situation I found myself in this past summer. It involved a reunion in Chicago with a group of friends I used to hang out with when I lived there back in the 80s. We got to know each other through mutual friends and more so through our involvement in a fantasy baseball league that was organized and run at a neighborhood watering hole called Quenchers. That was almost a quarter century ago (where the hell did that time go?) and in the intervening years we all pretty much went on our separate paths. Then this past May I got the call from David who gave me the sad news that our friend Steve was terminally ill.

A native Chicagoan, Steve had moved down to Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife and daughter, and now he wanted to come back to Chicago for a few days and get the gang back together again for what he bravely termed would be a “living wake.” His reasoning was, why wait till I’m gone before everyone gets together?

So plans were set for everyone to meet in Chicago in a few weeks.

It was a sunny Saturday in June when I hit the road, looking forward to seeing old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen since the first George Bush was President – if that helps. In fact, I was feeling pretty good about things, even when those nagging thoughts crossed my mind about why we were getting together in the first place and, yes, what I was going to say to Steve when it came time for our goodbye. Everything else about the day was clear and open, it was only that last part that bothered me a little.

We all met at the bar early in the afternoon. Steve and his wife were already there, along with other familiar faces, when I walked in. I hadn’t set foot inside Quenchers since I left Chicago twenty-four years ago, but the place looked exactly the same, even if we didn’t. There were warm hugs and handshakes all around, and right away it was clear this was going to be a real reunion, a party, not some endless, unspoken eulogy or half-assed group therapy arrangement that might actually end up hurting more than helping.  

Steve looked pretty good that day, all things considered. He was sporting a baseball cap, as he often did, so nothing was visible from the surgery. He could still work a crowded bar room, if maybe just a bit slower. Within minutes he and I had exchanged greetings and started in on swapping a few old stories. But it was soon apparent that he wasn’t quite the same. Every so often he would have to stop mid-sentence and ask for a name or detail in the story we were just talking about.

Turns out he described it best in his own special blog that he had pointedly titled My Big Fat Greek Cancer http://zodknowsall.blogspot.com/ . In a posting dated just days before his arrival in Chicago, he wrote (with the aid of a special voice dictation app):

“Imagine dealing in complex concepts like humor, irony, tension, and the gamut of emotions that humans can experience. Now try it when you are unable to complete a full sentence….Fortunately, I am able to converse in normal dialogue. Well, close, but give me a nudge from time to time, and I will be off and rolling again. I wish I could explain how this works, but unfortunately I find myself at a loss.”

The tough part there is that the Steve we had known for years was never before at a loss for words. Never. I first met him through his old high school buddy, Jim, another friend who’s gone now but whose own life had more impact on more people than he ever realized. Now to be clear, many others knew Steve longer and better than I. But thankfully I was able to partake of enough late night/early morning bar room bullshit sessions to earn entry into the circle. Good times then, but bittersweet memories now.

Well, the hours passed quickly that afternoon and good stories were shared amongst all of us, the old connections firing up once again. Then someone announced that it was time for everyone to gather in the small outdoor patio at Quenchers and share a toast in honor of our esteemed friend. David brought in a bottle of good Scotch and, once a bartender always a bartender, he started filling tiny plastic cups for each of the thirty or so men and women, family and friends, who had come together by this time.

I suspect we all were getting a little nervous at this point, because this could have been the time for the tears to pour out, but David wisely chose not to go that route. When everyone finally had their cup in hand, he simply stood up, smiled, and said “To Steve.”

We all did the same, lifting our glasses to Steve. That was it. No tears, no shaky speeches, just a pure and simple tribute. I watched while Steve sat there stoically as all his friends paid what I like to think of as the ultimate Chicago bartender’s salute, and wondered what must have been going through his mind at that moment. Talk about strength in the face of adversity.

Soon enough dusk was coming on and we all had to start thinking about going home. Yes, at some point bar time always comes around. Now the moment of truth was at hand, and still I didn’t know what I was going to say to the guy. I had no quick remarks, no gems of wisdom. All I could think of was that I didn’t want to say anything corny or embarrassing. Folks were still mingling around as I walked up to Steve. We shook hands and that led to a quick man-hug. He told me he appreciated me making the trip and I told him I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. At that point we both seemed to be stuck for a moment.

            He looked away for a second, then came back around and in a calm, slightly upbeat voice said, “I’ll see you again.” To be honest, I don’t remember what - if anything - I said after that. My only thought was that he was simply putting up a brave front, because sooner rather than later…hell, we both knew this was our final farewell. I didn’t dwell on it, though. I stepped away to start saying goodbye to others. The way it worked out everyone else in the room was doing the same thing, as though none of us wanted to be watching when Steve, with his wife by his side, walked out the door of Quenchers for the last time.

            Somewhere on the drive home those words of his popped into my head and I couldn’t shake them. I’ll see you again. Certainly I had never before known Steve to say anything with a hint of religious or even existential overtones attached to it. Yet one thing we all knew about him was that underneath the gruff, outspoken exterior was a man with a kind, sensitive heart. So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe he had it figured out just right. Sometimes the most complicated questions do have the simplest answers. You can think about all this and decide for yourself, but when it comes to my peace of mind I know what I would say now.

Thanks, Steve. And I’ll see ya later.

 

 

 

Steve Bliss passed away on September 6, 2014.