May flowers bring tears in many ways

As the May flowers just begin to slightly open their buds and release the powerful fragrance in the air, my eyes begin to tear...both from the allergens produced by the beautiful creations but also from the memories of my mother's own tears.


It seems like our backyard on Sandhurtst Drive in Dayton, Ohio always seemed to be the scene of some kind of escapade the caused my sainted mom to just shake her head and try to smile as her Little Skeeter boy caused  yet another reason for the moist twinkles in her blue eyes. The backyard was where we dug up our dead dog, where we ran around all nekked around the tent after losing playing strip poker and where I cut off all of the branches of my mom's favorite red bud tree. It was also the site  of mom's peony bushes that separated our yard from our neighbor behind us.


Having recently acquired slingshots from Northtown Sporting Goods "The Jer" and I were looking for some more ammunition since we had spent most of the rocks and pebbles we could find in the street. We shot at everything including each other. The rocks always hurt so as we looked to find a less lethal projectile, ...we spotted mom's peony bushes.


I never thought much of flowers or bushes back in those days and heck, how could anything called pee-o-knee mean anything special. We even laughed at the silly name, never really giving any thought to how beautiful the flowers would be until decades and decades later.


So we descended on the peonies like locusts on fresh crops and began to stuff our pockets pulling each bud off the stem with the perfectly formed spheres. The buds that were slightly opened made for the best "bullets" because as they hit their targets they would explode with juices, tiny flowerettes and an aroma.


I guess mom came outside either because she heard the excitement or laughter and felt like perhaps we were up to something once again.


She saw the remains of all of the buds from her more than ten peony bushes scattered around the yard and the helpless naked stems each standing bare on the bush.
A few tears began to flow, she shook her head slightly back and forth, she reached out to me and said, "Tommy, one day you will remember what you did here. It will make you sad, but at least it will help you remember me".


She was right. I'm sad for destroying mom's favorite flowers and that brings me tears but I am happy that she loved me and understood me.  And that brings tears as well as I do remember my mom and her love and patience with her little Tommy boy.

Our Grandmothers are also Special on Mother's Day

Grandmas, G-Maws, Nanas, or Grandmothers... whatever you call them...they are special. And on Mother’s Day, it too is their special day.

Although I never had a chance to know either of my grandfathers, I did get to spend a little time with both my grandmothers before they left this earth. 

One grandmother, my Dad’s mother, I’ve written about before in a previous blog.. http://ireadthenews.blogspot.com/2011/11/over-river-and-thru-woods-to-grandmas.html .

 We didn’t talk much since she didn’t speak a word of English. She owned a bar over on the West Side of Dayton, Ohio and every weekend Dad and I would drive over to the bar and I would watch while sitting on my perch on a bar stool drinking my “Roy Rodgers” as Dad slipped her a wad of cash to help her along the way. 

She later came to live with us, which was the normal thing to do back in those days. Heck, I don’t even think nursing homes had even been invented yet. Parents came and lived with their sons and daughters until they failed to wake up the next morning.

My Mom’s, mom, we all called Nana. She was a little feisty, and lived with my Aunt Bab’m, a nickname for my Mom’s sister. They lived together in a small, white frame house only a few houses away from my childhood friend, “The Jer”, who I have also written about many times. Aunt Bab’m and “The Jer” got along well enough but Bab’m always would say to “The Jer”, “ I’ve got your number, buddy”, and “The Jer” would just kind of shy away. Bab’m would smile and give him a hug. 

Me and Nana fishing at Grand Lake in Celina, Ohio

Nana didn’t do much except sit and knit, at least when I knew her. She grew up in what I always thought was a mansion at the corner of Ridge  Ave and Main Street next to Winters Bank that served as both their residence and a funeral home, at least I think that is the story. 

My Dad moonlighted as a undertaker there in order to get a chance to spend more time with mom, his future bride. One of the stories that is now fractured by the test of time is that Nana had some relatives named Okla and Homa, named after the great state where I would later attend college. Also, there was a story that Mom was named after a small town north of Lubbock, Tx. called Idalou where some other relative drove cattle....who knows, but I like to tell it . 

About the only memory of Nana away from the house was the occasional trips to Grand Lake north of Dayton. Nana taught me to cast my fishing rod and untangle the bird’s nest I often ended up with my casting reel.  She also was the one who encouraged Dad to let me have a casting rod and reel and not a kid’s ole’ bamboo pole. She also taught me to bait my hooks and how to hold a catfish without getting gorged  by a horn.

It’s funny how now after more than 60 some years I remember those times. It makes me appreciate Mother’s Day a heck of a lot more and makes me smile as I remember growing up.

Make it your story, make it your song

Early in my professional writing career, I was assigned the task of writing a feature story about the residents of the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Baltimore, Maryland.

This Soldiers Home in Dayton, Ohio is
 one of many across the United States.

After several hours of touring the grounds and interviewing dozens of aging members of "The Greatest Generation" as some of them rocked in unison on the veranda outside their home, I went back to my motel room and wrote and rewrote throughout the night.

I returned home the next day with what I thought was to-date, one of my finest pieces yet in my new career. I anxiously went to the office and submitted the story to my editor and waited as he read through the pages and then casually he tossed my blood, sweat and tears on my desk and declared, "Kender, I have every one of these words in a book in my office, who the hell are you trying to fool."

My jaw dropped, my heart sank and my body went cold...how could that be, these were my words, my thoughts, my magic that I transposed to the paper.

He saw my bewildered look and a broad smile bloomed across his round face.

"I've been waiting to pull that on you", he said, " IT'S THE DICTIONARY, you rookie. All of those words are in my dictionary!", he shouted.

It's a sight and sound I keep with me always.

With the passing of "Prince"  and the way he always wanted to do it his way and the recent passing of other great artists, both musicians and authors, I'm reminded of how I evolved from putting words on paper to putting feelings on paper. Words are just words in the dictionary. What turns them into great stories, epics, into masterpieces, is simply the order in which they appear. I'm no where close to ever having anything of that magnitude come from my mind or soul but it does help me realize the brilliance of gifted people.

A piano is like a dictionary for music. There are 88 keys all laid out in the same continuous pattern from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs. But one note can have two different names.  "G" sharp is the same as  "A" flat yet it is the same note and sounds the same. What makes it unique is how it is played in sequence to all of the other notes.

Which brings me to the conclusion of this conversation with myself.

We all have a gift. We all have the same resources available to us. Now, all we have to do is put the words, put the notes in the right order. Not other people's order, but your order. Tell your story. Sing your song.

Saturdays with "The Jer"

Every day with “The Jer”, my best friend and the architect who would design my mind  during my young formative years, was an adventure, but Saturdays, now that day was special.


 Depending on the time of year and the weather we would have a half dozen choices of what we could get into  or out of for that matter. We always had to get started early because regardless of what we did bright and early on Saturday, we always had to get to the Ames Theater for kid’s Saturday movies that started around ten in the morning.

The Jer on the right with his dad and older brother, Denny

 March, in Dayton, Ohio, our hometown, still meant cold and blustery days but we would have an occasional warm day or two that allowed us to get outside and that meant exploring the neighborhood.


 Like many small towns across the country, you either had an alley behind your house or not. My street, Sandhurst Drive, ran from Main Street, east to Riverside Drive, but no alley. So it wasn’t uncommon whenever we were making our trek through the neighborhoods, we would walk thru the back yards of all of the houses to get to our destination. Something that today, would probably get you shot or at the least arrested for trespassing.


 We would pack up our supplies that “The Jer” and I kept in nifty leather pouches we found on another one of our scheduled adventure days, Trash Day. But, I’ll save our Trash Day exploits for another time.


 Our personal stash consisted of any cigs that we appropriated from our parents cigarette pack and an occasional butt we would sneak out of the ash traay. Dad smoked unfiltered Camels, and for a boy of about 8 or 9, you knew right then whether you really wanted to smoke or not…Sadly, I decided yes…one of the few regrets I have ever had in my life. Mom, on the other hand, smoked Salems, which tasted as bad as the Camels but from the other end of the spectrum.


 We also carried a handful of Pecan Sandies. These were kind of a short cake type cookie with pecan pieces in the dough. “The Jer” brought those. I brought Oreos. Sometimes when I would trade an Oreo for one of “The Jer’s cookies, I would scrape off the icing first with my front teeth with him not seeing me and try to pass the icing-less treat off to him. He always spotted it and threw it at me. Both of us laughing, but me still trying to sneak one by him each week.


 “The Jer” also had a red Swiss army knife with about a gazillion different attachments to pick from including a knife, fork, spoon and a leather punch, which I don’t think we ever used.


 The last item “The Jer” always carried with him were kitchen matches. They fascinated both him and me and I guess they still do kinda to this day. We made gun matches out of clothespins that would  light and shoot  the kitchen matches at each other. We would break off the tips of the matches and put them all in a pile and toss in a lighted match that would burst the pile into flames. And, of course, there was the time “The Jer” had two of them rub together and set fire inside his pocket. He screamed like hell and layed in a mud puddle to put the fire out.


 We would leave my house at daybreak, after he showed up at my window, and letting me know he had arrived, by making our secret hoot owl call of Hoo, Hoo, Hoo repeated three times. By the third Hoot, I was already out the door.


 We would start off by hiking over the 2 foot rock wall that separated our yard from our next door neighbors. Looking back. our next door neighbors, the Norrises, had to have been the most wonderful people in the world. Never once, at least that I am aware of,  did they ever complain about anything that happened in the Kender house. Or maybe they were just terrified. They weren’t like the people who lived behind us, who called the police one time because the lady of the house saw me running around naked after losing a hand of strip poker that we were playing in our tent in the backyard. Heck, I was only  a kid. I remember when the detectives came to the house   I could see them giggling while asking me why I was all nekked.


 We would wind our way through the yards. Knowing which ones had dogs and which ones had owners that would yell at us. About half way up towards Main Street was one yard that had an item that we always coveted. It was a piece of quartz molded into a small rock wall. We would always stop to look at it. We may have been a lot of things back in those days, but we were never thieves. We loved to look at the beautiful stone, but we would never take it.


 
By the time we got to the end of our outbound trek we knew we had to be heading home in order to get to the movies. We’d share one of the smokes we had. Of course, inhaling and then blowing smoke rings and then we would walk down the street looking in the gutters with the hopes of finding a good cigarette butt that we would add to our collection.

Yep, Exploring Day, was one of my favorites.

In search of “The Jer”

I needed to bring closure. I needed to bring all of the wondering and not knowing to an end.  But sadly, in my heart I already knew the answer; it was in my head where I feared the unknown.

 If he had already passed, maybe I could breathe life into my friend’s soul through my stories about growing up together and give him a new beginning.  I dreaded what I knew would be the outcome of my inquiries.

 My mind was a whirlwind of emotions as I prepared to find the fate of my childhood companion. My best friend I hadn’t seen in over 50 years.

“The Jer” taught me everything that a young boy needed to begin his life adventure.
He taught me to spit and cuss by the time I was eight. He taught me to smoke and drink by the age of twelve.

"The Jer"

 He taught me to be fearless as we began each summer, building a raft from fallen trees along the Stillwater River. Our destination was always the same. Navigate to the Miami River, find a way to cross the spillway at Helena Street. Connect to the Ohio River and then on to the ocean, any ocean. We never got further than 100 feet from shore before every raft sank.

 He was my Don Quixote, I was his Sancho Panza. 

 “The Jer” taught me to be an adventurer, to take risks when needed and maybe even sometimes just for the heck of it.

But “The Jer” wasn’t just showing off. He was proving to himself he could challenge any gauntlet thrown before him.
 I had pledged to some
 mutual friends that I would learn the fate of my best friend. I would ask the hard questions that needed to be asked. Was he dead? How did he die? Was he alone when he died?

 I was able to find his older brother, Denny, thru social media and asked if I could call him and talk about “The Jer”. He enthusiastically replied and shared hours of stories and information including the news that made me cry later.. He was gone forever.

I learned “The Jer” was a veteran of the Vietnam War and what he witnessed there as a machine-gunner risking his life each day caused him to become a troubled soul. Periods of off and on abuse brought his demise way too soon.

 He wasn’t alone when he died, he was with people who understood his pain, his fellow soldiers at the VA hospital.

 “My Jer” lives within me now. Our stories will be your stories.

  I’m thankful I made the search.