At home again...

Desperado's Dreams

Listen.

I'm telling you the truth here.. Even though it might seem hard to believe...He came to my house every Saturday afternoon at 3 o'clock... Channel 3 ...."Stagecoach Matinee."

Every Saturday, same time... same station. Dust billowing in the living room and footprints of his horse Shiloh imprinted on the anglo -persian red rug in our parlor.

He came in a glorious fury to the edge screen of our new light blond wood Arvin black and white floor model television set, then... when mom was busily cleaning the bedroom on the second floor... he would gallop through time , space and the 12 inch tube screen and he'd sit with me watching the adventures of ...himself...."The Durango Kid."

How brave he was rounding up bank robbers and gun slingers...how macho he was in capturing the hearts of the town's women.... how fast a draw with his silvery Colt six shooter.... he was the greatest cowboy of them all...handsomer than Gene Autry, more exciting than Roy Rogers, faster than a speeding bullet, braver than Flash Gordon, more newsworthy than John Cameron Swayze...and at times, disguised as a black scarved outlaw, he would save the day, protect the girl and win the respect of the small western townspeople, not to mention the Kellog's Corn Flake crowd on mornings when nothing much of anything was happening... except maybe walking atop the wrought-iron fence circling the Ruddle Street elementary school yard.

Why he was a popular with the kids on weekend afternoons as Milton Berle's "Texaco Star Theatre" was on Tuesday nights.

The Durango Kid...the Durango Kid.....oh, I wanted so much to be the Durango Kid !

Every night before I would fall asleep I'd pray.....

"God Bless Mom and Dad and brother Chas and Grandmam and Grandpap...and please dear God, let me be just like the Durango Kid when I grow up...that's all I ask...let me be as handsome and brave and even have a big white hat like his...Please God..and if not, let me be like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, very ugly and very sad....please God. Listen to me. Amen."

Well, I wanted to be noticed in life. I wanted people to notice me, to remember who I was...who I am..

That was April 1952.

It is now April 2007.

So there you have it !

Mighty Spirits Rising

Easter. 2006.
Well, I must admit, I pride myself on getting to church ....once in a month of Sundays ....but Easter is especially meaningful to me, for many reasons.

Last Easter Kate and I spent a 5:30 a.m. Easter morning in the Moravian Church in Bethlehem and as the congregation walked from the historic church to "God's Acre", the adjoining cemetery, thoughts of Spring in ireland filled my thoughts.

Easter, 2007.
This Easter, the first in Ireland, Kate and I decided to go. 6 a.m. Mass in the open air. What a difference thirty minutes can make !

On Saturday, we saw a sign in a storefront in Oughterard announcing the 6 a.m. sunrise service to be held open-air at Bauresheen Beach just outside town.
As we drove away from Oughterard on the Hill of Doon road, we searched for signposts to the lakeside beach where the Mass was to be conducted near a gathering of currachs and sloops. About a mile down the mossy asphalt, after seeing no signs, we were about to give up !

We luckily saw someone walking the roadway and asked the lone passerby for the location. "Over there a bit between two houses you'll find a white dirt road. Take that one ," she said in a hurried mood.

Driving there, a rush of a 1949 memory filled my preoccupied mind.
****************
“Make way…prepare! For the time is coming.”
He shouted the words over and over again. I knew what was meant.
I would wait patiently.

With his hands outstretched as if preparing to fly, the black robe formed curtained wings. He shouted even more and as he did his body seemed to float upwards toward the cathedral-like ceiling.

Trinity Evangelical and Reformed Church stood on the corner of Lafayette and Washington. A long narrow brick church, with finely detailed stained glass windows and a bell-towered steeple reaching to the heavens, was adjoined to a small parking lot. A street level foyer took you to Sunday school rooms and the 1940’s kitchen.
Stairways on both sides led you up to another small foyer, which opened into the simply appointed but breathtaking church. More than 25 rows of pews, separated by a center aisle, led you to a divine emotion of comfort, safety and love. The faint fragrances of last week’s flower arrangements and the congregational mix of perfumes and face powder, with frequent odors of pipe smoke, filled the air.

I turned the page of my coloring book and began filling in the lines with pink crayola tints. I should have been using the tan and brown colors, but pink expressed my tingly feelings welling up on this warm spring day.
Pink ears, nose and tail, seemed unnatural… but it made me happy.

The fifth pew on the right of the church, where we always sat, was hard. There were no cushions. Coloring books loved the smooth surface of the varnished wood, even though there were the occasional deep scratches which caused gaps and ridges on the page being colored.

“The multitudes gathered, and he could be seen walking down from the barren hill,” he told the congregation.
My neighborly sinners eagerly awaited the anticipated baptism.

Rev. Kleinginna paused. He coughed slightly. And after a silence of what counted as a full 60 seconds, he excused himself.
“A moment if you please. I am …I have ….… a moment.”
He disappeared from the behind the pulpit and went through the door next to the altar.
Hymn 124 and 241 remained on the plaque above the door.

Myrtle Freeh stood up. She signaled to Mrs. Derr at the organ and the Trinity Choir stood to sing hymn number 124, “How Glorious is Thy Name.”

Half way through the melody, the tenor voices blended perfectly. John Pavlick and Bruce Hartman hit the middle “c” with precision, and Chick Freeh’s eyes wandered for a moment to the pastor’s door.
Out came Rev. Kleinginna, looking a bit peaked . He smiled at the choir and stood in the pulpit until the “Amen” signaled the close of the hymn.
I was perplexed. What had just happened?
For a moment I looked at my efforts of coloring of the Easter bunny in my manila-paged book.

“He is coming,” shouted the pastor. Louder then…”Prepare Ye the Way !”

I knew the Easter bunny was coming. It would only be a few weeks and chocolate candy would flow endlessly throughout April. Thanks goodness, he is coming. I couldn’t wait!

But where did Rev. Kleinginna go? Why did he leave the pulpit? Why did he go through the Trinity Choir music room door and why did he look so pale? Minutes later, the door opened.
On his return, his balding head was no longer shiny, and his hair which tufted out on his temples seemed combed flat.
There had to be an explanation.

Herb Derr and Henry Devonshire kept looking over at the pastor throughout the very shortened sermon, as if keeping a check on the outcome of the baptism story.

“And so we, too, must be John the Baptists. We, too, must spread the word even into this day. He is coming. Be ready for any unexpected occurrences…Prepare yourself.”

The once hell-fire-and-brimstone minister’s sermons, that would bring everyone to account for their misjudgments, were quieted that day. His rocking at the altar, forward and backward, up and down on his toes, would not be as animated. His sermons seemed no longer to burst out of him. His eyes no longer were filled with fire and his arms seldom stretched out into the church universe.

Rev. Kleinginna remained long into my memory throughout the years. His presence is still with me. His force in nature is great, and his message has become even more apparent as I enter my 63rd year.

For years after the Reverend’s heart attack incident, I prided myself in being in that choir, in that chambered brick church. I joined the tenor section with John and Bruce and Henry and Chick. I was attentive to Myrtle’s direction, and occasionally would imagine John Kleinginna standing on the pulpit where Rev. Joe Miller now stood.

The church has since been demolished and replaced with a lonely parking lot. A new Trinity church towers triangularly above the town.

But every Easter season, I can see that coloring book, hear that choir and wonder where Rev. Kleinginna journeyed that Sunday….
I know now. His mighty spirit was beginning to ascend. He was prepared.
***********
We finally found the spot where the Mass was to be held. Walked around the soft, solemn area dotted with whitened cottages and lush landscaped woods. In walking, we collected a few marbeled stones, a few leaves and two twisted roots from a long dead laurel bush. A stone built pier next on the dark-browned lake waters jutted out into the waving holy waters revealing a young mink sunning and playing in the warm sunshine. We got closer to have a look and the mink, which we hoped would be an otter, stared us at smilingly. He slithered into the water and disappeared in a trail of musical note air bubbles hitting the surface of the water.

As we went home, we talked about Easters past, of parents, aunts and uncles, cousins and, of course, pets.
After a comfortable night's sleep, at 5:15 am Easter morning, we promptly awoke, turned off the bedroom clock alarm, turned over momentarily and over-slept, never making it to the Easter morning celebration.
Somehow we knew we had already been to the Mass the day before. Saturday was our joy of resurrection.
Our mighty spirits rose one day early this year.
-0-
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Ting-A-Ling !

The hardware store just off Eyre Square in Galway beckoned me to enter. Unknowingly of my need for number 7- sized wood screws and a roll of black electrical tape, I was under the spell of the phantom of tools. I don't know the name of the store, nor does anyone inside know my name.

Hardware stores, indeed small variety stores, did not outnumber the large chain stores in this Irish City of Strangers at they once did.

Sad to say, the corner hardware store, candy store and neighborhood family-operated shops were fading quickly ever since the 1960’s in Ireland and the States as well.
Although Galway is a city, it is not as "city-fied" as such in Pennsylvania. There has always been and remains vestiges of small stores. You know you are in the right place when you are welcomed by name by the owner. Another small store example:

“Hello, George, back in Galway again. You’ve been away to long,” he said as he picked a theatre book off the shelf.
“Hi Des,” I said to Desmond Kenny in the book store/gallery.

“Here’s the newest book on the Abbey Theatre by Chris Fitzsimon.”

Of course that was three years ago, Kenny’s Bookstore has since closed or reinvented itself as Kenny’s Gallery for contemporary Irish art. Des’ brother is there, but I don’t know him as well, I don’t feel as comfortable there anymore.
When I visited last Thursday, on opening the door I did notice a bell attached overhead which tingled when I entered.

Ting-a-ling !
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Stevie Vahovitich’s corner store, nestled on the Southeast corner of Third and Ridge Street , Coaldale, Pa., was a smaller store than most. A store in a house in fact.

A thin small built man with wire glasses appeared from the yellow flowered curtains behind the counter of the narrow aisled store. His gray and thinning hair, was neatly combed parted on the right, too far, into the top of his head. He pulled at the sleeves of his brown sweater with the quarter-sized holes in the elbows. His wife, we never knew her name, peeked around the closed curtain, and said something that sounded like “hmmarmya.”
“You want candy ?” Stevie said in what seemed to be an Czechoslavakian
American accent.
Penny candies scattered in small cardboard boxes at the front of the glass encased counter. Candies ready to jump into your pocket and awaiting the pennies in your pocket to jump into Stevie’s hand.
Pink peppermint tablets, MaryJanes, black nigger babies, and red fiery lozenges. Occasionally a square of chocolate or very small pillow like candies that tasted like licorice mints called Sen Sens.
“So,” he would say as he leaned on the counter awaiting the decision of the eight year boy from Ruddle Street.
“I’ll have….. three of those….and….one of those…no,no, those red things shaped like quarters….yeah. Ahh, that’s it.” A hungry pause. “And five of them…how much is that?”
“Nine cents, you got nine cents ?” Stevie would smile. He must have had false teeth from the same dentist as my dad had, they looked the same. Stevie’s choppers were perfect.
My God, I thought, Stevie was old, he must have been at least fifty and he had one golden incisor ! Wow !
“Ahhh, six of those there jaw breakers.”
Ahhh, the jawbreakers, round hard sugared flavors of lemon, lime, orange and cherry filled with what seemed to be plastic chewing gum. Lucky if this good cheek full of artifical flavor didn’t actually break your jaw or a tooth along the way of bubble blowing fun.

There , I did it, spent the entire 15 cents mom gave me. The change from buying milk, bread and butter at Nardini’s Market two doors away. I almost tripped and broke the milk bottle running passed the druggist store in my eagerness to get to Stevie’s.
The milk...oh for the days when we had milk delivered tio the dior.
Usually we would get our milk from Harry Boles. His red truck with the golden lettering would regularly stop on Ruddle Street on Tuesdays.
Harry, a gentle chubby Santa Claus for all seasons, would blow the old Chevy truck horn twice and walk up to the house. He always carried a wire bottle holder to our side porch door in the his left hand. In the square holes was buttermilk, white homogenized milk and an occasion, a bottle of chocolate milk.

He would leave a bottle of white next to our basement window and pick up the empties. He’d carefully jump over the chicken wire fence between our house and Buehla’s making sure his pants didn’t catch a grasping wire end, and then he’d continue his deliveries.
I never actually saw Harry do this during the school year. He’s come about 9 am to deliver, but from June to August when school was out for the summer, I’d sit and wait for him. In that summer of 1952, something happened that would have every kid in Coaldale repeat the embarassing song.

“Georgie Porgie Puddin N’ Pie, Kissed the Girls and made them cry, when the girls came out to play…”
I would repeat the last line of the well known jeer along with him…
“Georgie Porgie ran away.”
He’d laugh- a few months later later when I was 11, and all grown up, I would see him coming to deliver and shout out at him…

“Harry Boles, pudding N;’ Cakes
Kissed the ladies for goodness sake
When the ladies came out to play
Harry Boles drove away.

Okay, so it wasn’t very clever. I laughed.
Harry was not laughing. He stopped calling me Georgie Porgie after that.

“Today, I got strawberry milk,” he said showing me the pink ambrosia.
I ran into the house and pleaded with mom to buy just a quart of this dairy delicacy. She’s gave me 23 cents and I bought the pink milk knowing that would be the week's candy money. I would be happy for a full week. I’d drink only a small amount each day to prolong this rare tasty treat. One Sunday afternoon I gave Darryl Sharpe a taste and his mom ordered two bottles. His sister Connie could down a quart in three gulps !
…………………………………………
Stevie Vahoitch took the 15 cents, put it in a green jar where all the candy money apparently lived.
After I was finished buying as much candy as my change would allow, he would ask whether my mom needed thread or yarn for her crocheting.
“No, not today Stevie. See you tomorrow, if I get any worn out pennies.”

It would take seventeen steps to go back through his red painted front door centered in between two large showroom windows filled with tablecloths, mouse traps, a tricycle, tools and paints. The magic would begin when you stepped inside. The door bell attached to the top of the door would ring as you entered and when you escaped.


He never said goodbye, he just disappeared behind that flowered curtain again just like the Lone Ranger would disappear before anyone could say thank you. Back into his wonderful cabbage, onion and potatoe smelling Slovak kitchen with Helen…oh yes, I just remembered, her name was Helen.
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When Kate and I visit Kenny’s Gallery, Galway, nowadays, we can still imagine the bulging book shelves on the walls replaced now by abstract prints of Connemara. We can still hear Des’ voice and his mother as she calls for him to answer the phone. The atmosphere is different but they are still there, in our imaginations. If only there were books !

Back in the hardware store, it was 8 Euro 70 for the electrical tape and the screws. Costly , yes...but well worth knowing the store was there, at least for another two years I hoped.

The Day the Music Tried

Was that It ?
That sound..?
I'm listening to an Irish trad song on Galway Bay FM.
I don't know the recording artist nor the singer.
A solo clarinet in the background. A clarinet in an Irish reel ? I'd expect a flute, a fiddle, Ulean Pipes, a harp...but a B-Flat clarinet ?
He is singing about the trees swaying in the wind telling a story of the banshees as they whisper ancient stories to the holy Earth.
It is a solemn piece and conjures up forgotten stories from my past. Very strange, foreboding in a way. yet, comforting to me. A remembrance of my short lived musical childhood.

"................Monday morning. First class of the week. 8:20 am.
There wasn't a more pleasant time to welcome the week at school than in sleepily floating up to the second floor, winding the light green corridor to the back rooms of Mr. Matrician. There were only fifteen of us chosen for this vocal class.....
The classroom was bigger than most. Not only did screeching, maturing, teenage voices cling to the walls, but treble cleffs, notes, sharp, flats and musical military marches hung from the ceiling. The Coaldale High School Alma Mater was sung and practiced so many times in that room that the song itself seemed to be etched into the north wall plaster.

“Oh the wind through the trees blows cheerful
It sways them in their glory
It whispers a little earful
It tells a wonderous story
Of spirit true and athletes too
Of deeds both brave and gory
Of courage that has been true blue
Our Alma Mater’s glory.”

Only when the large bottom-swing windows were opened would the music escape.
When we didn't practice in the music room, we would be forced to use the cloak room on the first floor, a long narrow space where some of the instruments were kept.
Mr. Matrician was soft spoken and of a good nature most of the time. He always gave us a sense of a favorite uncle, and didn't act like a teacher at all!
One October afternoon, Bobby Davis, the tuba player, failed to show up for practice. Mr. Matrician put aside his violin and attempted to "get into" the junior sized tuba. His arms flailing through the opening of the mighty brass horn, he looked like a giant octopus caught in a cave underwater. He laughed for about two seconds, became aware that he might actually be stuck in the confines of the bellowing beast, and finally asked us for help to free him of the embarrassment. It took three of us from the reed section to give George his freedom again.

I took private clarinet lessons from Mr. George Matrician in his home on Ridge Street. Each Tuesday, after school, for five years I practiced the clarinet in his living room. I was in the Coaldale High Band, although I was less than fluent in conversation with the other clarinets in the troupe.
Mr. Matrician was very gentle and kind man but did have a mean streak. When I was not prepared for the lesson of the day as witnessed by "very poor fingering", George would threaten me with playing his trumpet. He usually practiced with me on his violin.
The trumpet would make the neighbor's Irish Setter bark, stop the mahogany mantel clock, pierce the eardrums of this student and would upset his wife, who sweetly appealed to me to learn to practice at home so this sort of thing did not happen again.

After Bobby returned the following Wednesday, he gave up the tuba and started to practice on the bass drum. He said he “wasn’t gonna get into that tuba no more after Matrician abused it !”

The song's over now. My memory of that clarinet and of our school Alma Mater exposes an embarrassment and a peaceful moment of long ago.
It is as if the banshees were tapping on my shoulder again, telling tales to a long lost boy of another world, another time and place.
The boy is still within me, here, even now. Where has he been for almost sixty years ?
Undoubtedly, too busy to believe the music.

Visitors from October Places

This year, 2006, was a very special Halloween for us. Kate and I spent the evening celebrating the glorious Irish season of Samhain, summer’s end or feast to the dying sun.
This day also combined the functions of Harvest festival and the Festival of the Dead.
It was a Druidic belief that Saman, the Lord of death, summoned together the souls of the evil people condemned to inhabit the bodies of animals, including people. As the leaves fell, annual growth decayed, the sun’s strength waned and the nights drew in, the Celts prepared for winter and for the sun to rise the next day.

This Samhain, in Ireland, we realized we were at the source of the celebration. Bonfires were lit around the whole countryside and if you stood on the Lydon’s Hill you could see the glowing embers of bonfires in the fields. Orange stars on the blackened landscape.
It was a time of mischief playing, of trick or treating and you just knew the faeries would spit on the blackberries so they could be eaten by mortals.
To be safe, Kate placed some milk and bread outside our door. The faeries knew therefore we were friendly and caring of their plight and respectful of All Hallow’s Eve.

It was also conjuring up the eve of 1954.
It was a lonlier October after all.

Halloween.
Cool evening. Dark, small glitters of stars. I was coming home from my cousin Cookie’s house on Earley Avenue.
I crossed Third Street. Began to step into the alley next to Pohlod’s house. A warmed feeling hit me in the face like a beam of sunshine.
Down at the end of the alley, what amounted to 40 car lengths away I saw a beam of white light. The light began to get larger and brighter. I was mesmerized but I kept walking toward the light.
The closer I walked the larger the light grew and the warmer I felt.
Half way day the alley was our garage and our back yard. If I only could get there I would be safe..I’d run down the yard to the house about 150 feet into the comfort of safety of our kitchen.
Could I make it ? What was that at the end of the alley ?
There was street light there, I knew that. But this strange ghostlike vision stood next to the street light. The light pole was about 14 feet high, but the ghost seemingly shrouded in a flowing white sheet in the form of a human person, stood next to the light pole and towered over it by about 10 feet. There seemed to be the form of a man with a horse like head through the glowing shroud.
What could be that be ?
I was almost at the our garage, and the vision about 20 car lengths away, the figure in yellowing white moved toward me.
Closer and closer, warmer and warmer until I started to sweat.
It was about 40 degrees outside. Crisp October weather, but I was getting hot.
I closed my eyes and kept running toward the wire back garden gate.
Peeking only momentarily to see if I was going in the right direction I shut my eyes again.
I felt something brush by me, a hot touch on my left shoulder. With my eyes closed I saw a red glow through my eyelids and felt my hair rustle.
I burst thru the gate almost ran into one of the peach trees and ran faster and faster toward the house.
The back door to the side porch was open, I ran inside completely out of breath.
Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table.

“What’s wrong,” my mother said in a panic.
“I just saw….I just saw…” I cried as drops of sweat ran down my forehead.
“What…what,” Mom ran toward me and held me close to her flowered lilac aproned dress.
“It looked like….a….” but I couldn’t tell her.
“Were you hurt, Did somebody hurt you,” my father demanded.
“No,” I said quickly,”
“Come on , tell me… now !” he scolded.

At the top of the alley, next to Pohlod’s house, was Russell Griffith’s garage. The garage and adjoining building was at the rear of the Griffith’s Funeral Home.
Russell and his sister were well known in the town for their gentle understanding personalities and were the most popular people to visit on Halloween. Their treats always consisted of a few pennies and chocolate peanut butter cups. Although no one knew exactly what went on in the garage, we all suspected it was the embalming room for clients no longer with this world. More than often, a black hearse sat quietly in the alley. Death was of little concern to a nine year old, but it still had a mysterious, Bela Lugosi spine tingling effect when you walked past it.
In those days, very seldom did one actual use the funeral home to lay out the deceased, especially in Coaldale where many of the families came from the “old world”…Ireland, Wales, England, Slovakia.
Most “wakes” were still held in the parlor of the deceased family home.
To me this was still another memorable paradox of feelings.

I was so out of breath, not from running but from fear, I could hardly get the words to fall out of my mouth.
“A ghost…I saw a ghost.”
They laughed.
Dad got up from the plastic yellow-white and chrome kitchen chair and came over to hug me. That was one of the few times in my life that my Dad actually hugged me. It was the perfect time as far as I was concerned.
“There are no ghosts,” he said
“But..but I saw this white big glowing thing coming towards me,” I trembled, “ and it brushed my shoulder right here.”
I showed them the spot. It seemed to have left a black mark on my coat.
“It looks burnt, “ my Mom said. “Were you playing with matches ?”
“What did you do to your coat George !” my father shouted. “Dammit ! This is your good coat !”
First they comforted me, then laughed at me and now I’m being yelled at.
But I was safe.
I couldn’t sleep for two weeks after that without seeing the ghostly figure. I certainly would not walk down that alley at night ever again.
No, I don’t know what it might have been.
I still fear black hearses, and whitened alleyways.