Yes, I saw Santa!

     I saw Santa Claus. Oh yes, I did. He was tall but portly and he moved slowly but smoothly so that you really didn’t know if he had moved at all …

     See, it happened this way, on Christmas Eve, many years ago.

     I had gone to bed after being read a story, sitting on Mom’s lap. Dad was sitting nearby, listening and nodding and sometimes smiling. I don’t remember the story, but since it was Christmas Eve, it probably had something to do with that. What stories tell about Christmas Eve, after all? “Rudolph” hadn’t been written yet. It surely wasn’t “A Christmas Carol.” That is much too long, and beyond my, I’m sure, tender years (I mean, I was sitting on my mother’s lap, for Pete’s sake.) It was probably ”A Visit From Saint Nicholas,” which we kids all knew as “ ‘T’was the Night Before Christmas.”

     The story no doubt set the scene for my dreams and, ultimately, my vision of Santa Claus. Did I say “vision”? I meant, “Sighting.” That was no vision, no figment of fancy. I saw Santa, I tell you!

     My bedroom door opened to what was the dining/family room in that tenement apartment where we lived back then – 27 Felton Street, as I recall. Beyond that room was the parlor, the front room that looked out onto the street and from which a door led you to a small hall and the stairs to the second floor, and to the front door that opened onto the front porch.

     Since we had no chimney, that was how Santa would come with his presents, my Dad explained – up the front stairs, across the porch, through the front door and into the parlor, where Dad had placed our Christmas tree.

     The head of my bed was up against the wall to your left as you entered my room. That meant that I could see out the bedroom door and into the parlor while lying in bed. Which is what I planned to do when I went to bed, so I could see Santa deliver my presents.

     I was going to stay awake all night, or as late as I needed to, so I could see Santa. That was my plan. Reality has an inconvenient way of interfering with our plans, though. So I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, I’m sure.

     But before I fell asleep, I looked out into the parlor to be sure I had a good view, and I could see clearly almost the entire room, just the part on the left, behind the doorway – those parlors had large, glass-paned  doors to separate them from the dining/living room, for privacy – being out of sight. But that was enough of the room to assure me Santa could not be there without my seeing him. I mean, I could seer most of the Christmas tree, and that’s where Santa had to go with the presents, didn’t he?

     I slept soundly, as most young children do, so I didn’t have any idea what others – my parents, specifically – were up to. And I’m sure I dreamed, although I don’t have any memories of whatever I might have dreamed. But whatever it was, it woke me. You know how you’re having a dream, and the dream morphs into consciousness? That’s what happened.

     And that’s when I saw Santa Claus.

     Half awake, I looked out through my bedroom door and saw this tall, portly figure hovering just beyond our Christmas tree. I couldn’t see what he was doing. As I already told you, he moved slowly but smoothly, almost imperceptibly, as  he went about his happy business. He was setting up something, perhaps putting something down, or maybe arranging packages; I couldn’t tell.

     But Santa was definitely there. It was not quite dark – perhaps it was the hour or minutes before daylight, I don’t know – but I could see him almost clearly enough to make out his features, his nose, his cap, his beard. I saw Santa Claus!

     I didn’t dare make a sound or a movement. I was afraid to let him know I had seen him. So I lay quite still, breathing shallowly and evenly, and, sure enough, in a few moments, fell back asleep.

     You know how even the most vivid dream fades so quickly when you wake up? This sighting didn’t; that’s how I know it wasn’t a dream. Heck, I can still picture what I saw, these seventy or so years later.

     No, that was no dream. I saw Santa Claus!

     Morning came. And with daylight, I truly saw Santa Claus – that is, at last saw him for what he is: a spirit that spins itself around reality to fulfill our fantasies and fondest hopes, or perhaps wishes.

     Daylight showed that the figure I saw at work in our parlor was a tent.

     Mom and Dad had bought me a tent – a caravan style tent like those you would see in a desert oasis, with a pyramidal top and four equal sides. To surprise me, Dad had put up the tent as best be could in our parlor, so it stood there, tall and, well, portly in my view, just beyond our Christmas tree. You know how, when you stare at something intently enough it can seem to move? That’s why I saw Santa moving slowly but so smoothly and deliberately as he brought my toys.

     So I stood there in the parlor, gaping at my tent. Mom and Dad would never have guessed what was going through my head as I stared. But the no-doubt expected whoop of delight never came. It couldn’t. I was going through the inevitable process of disenchantment, of facing reality … of growing up. But that process (was it painful? I don’t know. Probably  not) could not take from me this one crucial fact of my life as it was, and still is.

     I really and truly saw Santa Claus!

Dog-gone it!

     Anybody want a dog?

     I have a dog. Or should I say, a dog has me (apologies to Lennon/McCartney).

     I didn’t want a dog. I still don’t, really. And I really never did want a dog.

     But …

     Well, that’s not quite true. When I was a boy, about 5 or 6, I wanted a puppy. But Dad still so keenly felt the Depression, not to mention his hard-scrabble days on the small family dairy farm, that the idea of paying for a dog never occurred to him. I mean, there was always a dog on the farm, bought and paid for, but it was a working dog – escorted the cows to and from pasture, guarded the place, chased chickens back to their coop environs, and kept the varmints at bay. But pay for a dog, just to play with, in the city? I’m sure he thought the idea plain silly.

   But one day, he surprised me – and how! He brought home a dog. Not a puppy, the cute, furry, soft, bouncy, happy, tail-wagging, tongue-lolling little lovable guy I had in mind, but a dog – a stray of indeterminate age that had been hanging around the shipyard where Dad worked. It was free, you see. He wanted to surprise me, so he held it under his coat as best he could as he walked into our apartment. But as soon as Dad came in through the door, the mutt wriggled out from under his coat, jumped to the floor and ran all around the room looking for a way out. That was a surprise, all right. Surprise? I was scared white! So was Mom, who screamed.

   After a few minutes of bedlam, to the tune of Mom’s shouts and my wails, Dad let the dog out to make its way back to the streets. That was the end of my shot at getting a puppy. “I brought you a dog. You didn’t want it,” he would explain every time I asked again.

    But my son, Ron Jr., had a dog. Well, he had one as a boy, too, a dog we rescued from the local SPCA, whose name was Brownie, and who was the family dog until she died of old age. But this dog, like the one Dad brought home for me, was a stray, abandoned by some callous lout along one of our backwoods roads not far from where Ron worked. Ron said she looked so bedraggled, he called out to her: “Come here, roadkill.” She came. He took her in and had her for three years. He kept her well, raised her well and trained her well. They were a pair.

    But three years ago, there was an upheaval in Ron’s life and he moved to the West Coast with a duffel bag and the clothes on his back. But there was no room for the dog so, well … for the last three-plus years, I have had a dog.

     This dog’s name is Gibbous. Ron named her that because of a white patch on her snout that reminded him of a gibbous moon – you know, the one that’s less than full but more than half full. A female – the proper term is “bitch,” but that sounds so harsh – she is an American Staffordshire terrier, with a brindle coat … well, let me show you:

                                                 Gibbous waiting for a stick to swim for
 

     You can see, she is a reasonably good-looking dog. She must be, because people keep telling me so, men and women, boys and girls. “How cute!” they say. “What a pretty dog,” they say. Interestingly, some of those who are most approving not only tell me she’s good looking, but also look at me with approval. They will sometimes call me Dude, as in, “You got a real nice looking dog, Dude.”

     Gibbous, it appears, is a Dude dog. Not only do I have a dog, I have a Dude dog, which puts a little spring in my step as I guide her – or let her guide me – around town, sniffing and – well, you know -- as she goes.

     Gibbous is a good dog, with one big failing: She’s too energetic in her fondness for people. She is a type called pit bull, however, so she doesn’t like other dogs, except as sparring partners. But people …. She’ll sniff at them and if they show interest, such as petting her, or even speaking to her in warm tones, she’ll jump all over them, trying to lick their faces – a dog kiss. Vigorously. She scares some people, especially kids, with her kisses.

    Not just kids, either. Shortly after I inherited her, my daughter and family visited from their Maine home. My son-in-law was ready to adopt her when she greeted him with her patented leap-and-lick, and in her enthusiasm, nipped and nicked his nose. It bled, and so did Gibbous’ chance to be adopted. I don’t think she would have cared, but I did. I was hoping for that adoption.

     Things like that keep happening. From time to time I would contact a pet adoption organization to see about finding her another home. Each time, there would be a problem – the shelter was closed because of rampant kennel cough; they were not accepting any more animals because they were full; the person who was to meet me and Gibbous for an adoption assessment fell ill and couldn’t make it ….

     Time went on and Gibbous stayed and made herself at home, finding her favorite place to sleep and snuggle down and before I knew it, we got into a routine of walks and exercise. People got to know the two of us as master and pet, and … I had a dog.

     People also got to know of us because Gibbous has another quirk: She loves to swim. Well, not swim, as such, but swim after sticks. (My son showed me this trick). I live alongside a creek with a deep pool not far downstream from my apartment. I take her there twice a day, summer and winter (in winter we sometimes break up inshore ice so she can get in). I throw a stick into the pool. She dives in and swims after it, and swims back to shore, stick firmly gripped by her powerful jaws.

     “Firmly”? You just try to get that stick from her. You’ll see “firmly.”

     That would be good, if she dropped the stick at my feet for another toss. But that isn’t her way. She is playing a game, acting out a fantasy: The stick is her prey, and, having caught it, she it taking it to her lair. She will find a spot under a bush or in thick weeds or grass and carefully place the stick there. And after every three or four such forays, she will begin to chew vigorously on her latest stick “prey.” I have to discourage too much such chewing, though, or she’ll swallow the splinters and get sick. I don’t want to clean up too much of the result. In fact, I have had to pull long splinters out of her mouth when they got stuck and she couldn’t spit them out. Besides, she is wearing out her teeth with her chewing.

     But the swim game is good for her health. She’s in wonderful shape for an eight-year-old. And the exercise tires her; it expends enough of her energy that she is content to lie and rest for two, three, even four hours before wanting out again. That’s my release. I can shop, visit, eat out, or get out to do my “I wanna” list, especially golf.

     You see, that’s the downside of having a dog – the time, the time. Everything you do has to factor in the dog. Every excursion, no matter how mundane, has to be timed to account for seeing to her needs. Oh yes, I could simply pop her into her kennel. But I’m too soft-hearted, empathetic to a fault. I think, “How’d you like to be cooped up like that for a couple hours?” So I let her lie in bed after exercise instead. That’s OK as long as I’m not gone too long. But if my golf round runs long, or my shopping trip becomes exhaustive, she’ll lose patience and express her disapproval by tipping over her food dish … or, sometimes, peeing by the front door.

     As I’ve told friends many times, a dog is like a perpetual 2-year-old – it needs constant attention and care, must  be fed, cleaned and cleaned up after (you know what I mean) and wants to be petted and cuddled and just have attention paid.

     And the money, the money. A trip must include the cost of a kennel while you’re gone. Her welfare requires a veterinarian’s  visits and fees, and occasionally vaccinations. And did I mention she has been spayed and is current on all her shots? I saw to all this, and I’ll bet it has cost a couple of thousand to see to it.

     An appointment has to be scheduled to include her walk time, her swim time, her you-know-what time. Anything I want to do has to begin with planning for Gibbous. And I’m tired of it.

     Oh, she’s smart enough, and good enough. She obeys reasonably well, if you speak in a forceful enough voice. And she has an assortment of tricks my son taught her. She will stay, for a while; sit, for a bit; lie down, roll over, go to her bed, fetch her leash and, a cute one, sit up and beg for a treat.

     Despite all this, I still think of adoption. Of finding her a good home. But I think along those lines less frequently, more indecisively. After Gibbous has been swimming for her stick “prey,” I have to dry her off. “No wet dogs upstairs,” is my mantra. After all those dryings, twice a day, you build a bond. It’s hard not to look into those brown eyes as you towel off her head and throat. And you can’t ignore that wagging tail as you vigorously rub her back and sides.

     We are at a point now that we have a relationship. We know each other’s desires and intents by our actions. I’m not suggesting a deepening affection here, but I’m not denying a softening in my resistance to having a dog either. Besides, I don’t like the idea of handing her over to our local shelter, where she’ll linger, caged, for who knows how long until someone adopts her. The thought of this high-energy, active dog being cooped up with but one or two little strolls a day – and no swimming – distresses me.

     But to complicate matters, a real monkey wrench has been thrown into the works. I have been diagnosed with cancer. Not just any cancer -- lung cancer. A tough one. It will require chemo and radiation treatment. I am told both will cause fatigue, perhaps fairly intense fatigue. Can I care for Gibbous, see to her physical and emotional needs, while I’m struggling with this regimen of directed poisons and radiation aimed at eradicating the cancer?

     There’s another aspect, though. Gibbous, like most dogs, senses the moods of people around her. One day, while my son was staying with me, he was lying down, feeling poorly, emotionally. And there was Gibbous, lying down alongside him. “She knows I’m not feeling well,” he said. “She’s keeping me company.” She may give me as much support as I give her.

     We’ll see. We’ll give it a shot and see. If it works out well, giving me the exercise I, too, need, and perhaps lending me comfort and companionship, then all well and good. If not, then …

     I’ll be asking once again that now plaintive question:

     Anybody want a dog?

         

    

 

    

    

A picture is worth ...

     When I created this blog, I thought it might be possible to be starting a conversation. That’s what the accompanying note at the right side says, anyway.

     A conversation is an informal talk with one or more other people. We have conversations in all sorts of circumstances. I had a light-hearted one today at the barbershop, for example. But conversation can be non-verbal, in a sense, if it is written. In truth, that is a correspondence, but with the immediacy of today’s communication, “correspondence” seems almost antiquated.

     But conversation requires at least two people, as noted. Sometimes – no, often – conversations must be kick-started. There has to be something to break the ice of gelid convention. That’s why it is so easy to have a conversation with a perfect stranger over a drink at a bar, a coffee at a diner counter. The communal sipping gives us – me and the guy next stool – something in common. Not to mention the tongue-loosening properties of caffeine or alcohol.

     But there are differences between conversations at the bar and those at the diner. The differences include those in subject matter, content and intensity. The chat over coffee is more apt to be relatively quiet, sober and somewhat more topical – serious, even. At a bar, however, well sports often is first up at bat, and if politics comes up, serious – and I don’t mean somber – consequences can ensue. Aware of that potential disaster, most bar conversations avoid the topic. Most bar talk is more superficial than not.

     What’s the point of all this? Just leading up to this wonderfully insightful cartoon from this week’s New Yorker. It says it all. So I need not “say” more in this colloquy (should someone chime in, it would be a conversation) but simply bow out on this caricaturistic note:

 

What old man?

     My father often told stories to make a point. Rather than ask me to behave in a certain way, for example, he would tell me how he or someone he knew acted in a similar circumstance, setting down an oral example for me to follow. Sometimes I would wonder if there were any truth to his stories, or were they parables created for the present need.

     But, when we were all younger, I was able to verify many of Dad’s stories through relatives who knew him when. So I have doubts about my doubts. Besides, Dad behaved  in ways that reflected the morals he was wrapping up in his stories. He lived his strongly held values out in his daily life. So I pass on this story with every confidence it happened as he related it. If not, it still is a good tale with a telling example of respect  we would be well served to emulate today. And  I’ll ask what you think – a parable, a pointed lesson, a subtle instruction on how I should behave? Or just a story about the kind of boy he was, if implicitly suggesting I do the same?

     The scene: The small dairy farm where Dad was raised. The time: Around 1920, when Dad would have been 12 years old. The action: Dad walking across the farmyard on a warm summer’s day.

     I was walking to the house (Dad told me) when a salesman came driving down the lane. He got out of his car and looked around the yard, at the barn and the house. There was no one around but me.

     “Hey, kid,” the salesman said. “Is your old man at home?”

     “Nope,” I told him.

     “Will your old man be back pretty soon?” he asked.

     “Nope,” I said.

     “Can you tell your old man I was around?” He said.

     “Nope,” I said.

     The salesman stood and looked at me (Dad told me). He shook his head and was getting into his car when my father came out of the barn and walked toward the house.

     “Hey. I thought you said your old man wasn’t home!” the salesman said.

     “That isn’t my old man,” (Dad explained.)

     “That’s my father.”

 

Yes, I remember too

     It's a cliche of journalism -- the "man-in-the-street" interview, a compilation of popular reactions to some news event of note. But as trite as it may seem, this journalistic convention has an underlying validity: What do people think about what affects them? Upon such considerations are decisions made ... and history recorded.

     Newspapers and the airwaves are full today of the recollections of those who remember the day President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated.

      Where were you, what were you doing, what did you think when you heard the news? You all have a story. Please share it.

     Here's mine.

     I was in my junior year at Providence College in Providence, R.I. A half-dozen of us were taking a creative writing class just after lunch, in a small classroom where the second-floor hall and a stairway to the upper residence floor for priests met. An isolated nook, appropriate to the moment. We were standing outside the locked door, waiting for our teacher to arrive, exchanging the usual student banter.

     The teacher was an often-surly, middle-aged priest named Father "Dixie" Walker. A conservative man, he disliked the Kennedys and the president in particular. He was a southern sympathizer -- hence  the nickname Dixie --- and disliked what the president had been saying about southern racial ways.
     Near class time, he came brusquely along the hall, nodded curtly, opened the door and led us inside. He walked to his desk at the font of the room, faced the crucifix on the front wall and started to make the sign of the cross to say the prayer that always began our classes.

     But he paused, and turned to face us.

     "You ought to know," he said, almost as an afterthought, "The president has been shot. They don't know if he will survive. Please think of him in your prayer."

     Then he turned back to the crucifix, recited the Lord's Prayer, and turned back to sit at the desk facing us, opened his book, and said something about the day's lesson ... what, I don't know. Later, when telling this story, none of us could remember what he said.

     Fr. Walker probably had asked a question, for when he looked up from his book, he seemed to expect some reply. What he saw was a group of students sitting in stunned silence, unable to say a word, let alone answer a question to start the day's discussion.

     He scowled, bringing those dark eyebrows together into a forbidding hedge of irritation.      He shut the lesson book and slammed it on the desk. "Oh for ..." he sputtered. After a pause, "I don't suppose there's any use trying to hold class like this. Go ahead; go. Class dismissed!"

     And he stalked out of the classroom and ... well, I don't know where.

     I know where we went. As did many of the students, we went to the cafeteria-student union, where we sat or stood, many sipping coffee but hardly tasting it, and listened to the radio news broadcast over the speaker system. Walter Cronkite finally, after a pause in the news chatter, told us what we most feared: the President is dead.

     The rest of that day is a blur. I had to work that night -- I clerked in the camera department of a discount store -- and couldn't stay on campus long. We talked, we mourned, we got angry, furious, at the shooter and bewailed what had been taken from us. Even those who least liked Kennedy were shocked and dismayed at this brutal act. And for many of us, those feelings, though dimmed by time, are with us yet.

     As for "Dixie" Walker, so called for his southern sympathies, he never mentioned the assassination in the subsequent classes we had with him, or, for all I know, anywhere or anytime else.

     I have but one good thing to say about Dixie. Toward the end of my senior year, he called me aside and advised me, if I wanted to write, to take a job at a newspaper. "That way," he said, perceptively, "you'll be certain to write. Otherwise, I don't know ..."

     So, thank you, Dixie. You gave me good advice, and a good story to tell.

          A little background: My mother's father, my Pepere Duval, liked to fish. And he liked to share his catch with family and friends. I remember him coming to visit bringing a pail brimming with eels he and my uncle Leo (or was it Emil?) had caught from a bridge over the Acushnet River (for locals, the Coggeshall Streert Bridge).
         We had eaten many Friday fish dinners off his generosity and skill. So when I came in from playing on a beautiful, warm spring day, I was all excited when my mother told me Pepere had come by with some great,  big fish. "We wanted to keep them alive so they'd be fresh for supper," Mom explained. "They're upstairs in the bathtub."
         Excited? You bet I was. That's the sort of thing that can really turn on a young boy, the thought of seeing live big fish up close. And in our own bathtub!
         I ran upstairs as fast as I could. I may even have stumbled a bit, I don't remember.
         And there, in the bathtub, was ... nothing.
         And there, in the kitchen, was my mother, laughing as she said: "April Fool!"
         I spent years trying to retaliate. She was always one step ahead of me, and I never did.
         But with years comes sense, sometimes, and so over time, we've had many pleasant chuckles over her successful prank and my childish credulousness ( I prefer to think of it as filial trust, naturally).
         But, for the record, I tried to pull that one on my kids many years ago, and they never fell for it. Not once, not at any age.
         Is this something I should be worried about?

In my most recent post, I referred to a type of shovel I used to shovel snow as a kid. I wrote it was a coal shovel, used to stoke our coal furnace in those good, old smokestack days of the late ‘40s.

Well, I was wrong. (Mark the date; it’s not that I’m seldom wrong; I just seldom admit it.)

The long-handled, straight-nosed shovel I referred to was actually used -- in my family, anyway -- for a more homely chore: shoveling manure.

My siblings and I were not raised on a farm, but with a farm. My Dad had grown up on this farm, in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts. It had been in our family since 1903. He actually tried moving our little family there shortly after I was born, but it didn’t work out. Back to the city we went. So I wasn’t raised on a farm.

But that farm was a part of our lives. Every Sunday, at least, we were there, for an old-fashioned farmhouse dinner -- roast chicken (almost always) with mashed potatoes and giblet gravy. But there was price to be paid: Dad put in more than enough time helping out to earn those dinners. Because Dad would often fill in for our ailing uncle -- the flu, usually -- for a week or so at a time.

Now part of helping out on a small dairy farm is tending to the cows and their basic needs. And one of those needs is … well, cleaning up after them.

That’s where the shovel came in. You wanted a long-handled, wide, square-nosed shovel to scoop the manure from the gutters behind the stalls where the cows stood. If you’ve never been in a cow barn, there were two rows of stanchions which held the cows. The cows stood on a platform that was just long enough for comfort, but short enough for their hind ends to hang over the gutters, down into which plopped their poop whenever the urge came upon them.

The shovel’s long handle was desirable for two reasons: 1. You didn’t have to get down too close to the product of the cows’ digestive processes, and 2. You could more easily swing the shovel-load up into the manure carrier that ran on ceiling tracks down the middle of the aisle between the two gutters.

Oh, Dad and my uncle didn’t miss often; an occasional splatter, maybe. But when I got big enough to help, and was given a shot at heaving the manure (or slinging the sh … you know what I mean), that was another story. Let’s say there was a fair amount of cleaning up afterwards until I got the hang of it.

You could get a fair amount of … whatever … you were shoveling into that scoop and the handle gave good leverage. And Dad was used to it. So that’s why Dad got the long-handled shovel I used to clear the snow from our walks and driveway in the city.

As for the coal pile in the basement -- yes, we had one, until we converted to oil sometime around 1947 or so -- it was flat-nosed, but had a short handle. In retrospect, that was the one I should have used to shovel snow. But it was in the basement, the long-handled one was in the garage and I just assumed it was the snow-shoveling one because Dad used it that way himself.

And you know what “assume” does, don‘t you?