Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Duck and Cover - Fate Fairies - book version

4 October 2011

Duck and Cover - Fate Fairies - book version


This entry was posted on 10/4/2011 1:30 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version.

Periodically in grade school, we were herded into the basement of my three-room Wisconsin country school for "Duck and Cover" drills. Some drill! Sit under a table for what seemed like hours and tell jokes and giggle. My wife's little school did not have a basement. She was ushered into the hall way. They were to huddle near their respective rooms as so if the "big one" dropped, the recovery crews could link the bodies to names and ages. Like there would be a recovery crew and if there was one, like they would have time to check on one of hundreds of schools. 


When the Cuban Missile Crisis happened some 50 years ago, for us kids, it was hard to tell if it was "drill," or a real alert. We were sent home early one day during the Crisis. The buses waited as we exited the school in regimented columns.  Through the open door, the lady bus driver gave me an impatient glower as she sat with her hand on the door lever - she wore a well-worn off-white sweater with gold glitter.  Her cat-eye-rim glasses had like glitter. Now in retrospect, what an odd silhouette she portrayed while the world came rather close to becoming a scorched moon-scape.


"Run Bobby, run!," my teacher yelled to me from the school steps. "You are not taking this serious." 


"Why? We would be incinerated soon enough. No need to rush." I was six years old. 
It was collective child abuse on a macro scale. A few years later, in high school we had to take a class called "Medical Self Help." It taught us how to treat wounds and burns from a nuclear blast. I am told we were the last class to take it in my school. It was determined that it so depressed the students, the cost benefit analysis dictated it be canned. Besides, we all hounded the math teacher with comments like, "So why study for the algebra exam, we are all going to be incinerated anyway soon enough, right?."

Long before the long and odious "Cold War" fizzled away around 1990, nuclear fallout shelters were no longer maintained.  There became a quiet collective consciousness that the notion of trying to survive a war where the combatants could easily destroy the greater world several times over, was folly, silliness, and probably..., insanity.  

There never was any type of "official proclamation."  Something like, "Oh, fuck it people; if the bombs start a'flying, just bend over, reach up, and kiss your citizen asses goodbye."  No, instead, symbols of the mighty silent war quietly began to fade. The odious and ubiquitous yellow signs above the basement doors to heavy steal and concrete buildings became collector items. 

We weren't obliterated in a fiery implosion. The world survived. The paradigm that insists we are too smart to incinerate ourselves stands tall. And, we take great comfort in our clever survival. 

Society smugly proclaims, "We must be smart, see, we are not shadows on the sidewalks. We ain't blowed ourselves up at all!" 

I see it as a date-with-fate on a colossal scale. Millions of people were not incinerated. At least so far. The fate fairies were otherwise preoccupied for the last 60 years. 
But again, regardless of fate - you know what "They" say?  You know those slippery and Orwellian "They" us rabble always refer to as experts.  The same creepy "They," Stanely Milgram determined guides the darkest recesses of our psyches.  You know, that "They" we all so willingly defer obedience to.  

You know what "They" say? 

"We as a people, are too smart to blow ourselves up."

 ...right? ...right? 

Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).

Monday, October 3, 2011

Pipe in the Stomach; "Walk it off Punk!" - Fate Fairies - book version

3 October 2011

Pipe in the stomach; "Walk it off punk!" - Fate Fairies - book version

This entry was posted on 10/3/2011 2:00 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version. 

I must have been in First or Second Grade. John F. Kennedy was still President.  A heavy set kid named Jacky who was in the Fourth Grade was a bully of sorts. He and his thin and lanky red-headed neighbor Dave would chuck rotten apples at us little kids as we rode our bikes home. The three-room school we peddled to and from was in the village of Lima Center, the type of place that struggled to maintain a population of 90 even in a better economy. There were about 60 kids in the six grades. We did not have kindergarten in those days.  

Some of the kids came from the village proper.  A few more lived in rural houses; usually old farmstead houses that no longer supported farm buildings. The lion's share of the kids came from a plethora of family farms. There seemed to be a distinct demarcation line in the personality traits of the village kids versus the farm kids.  The village kids and especially the boys, were tough cigarette smoking children of factory working parents. They seemed to play the roll of perennial pranksters and relentless purveyors of shenanigans. The farm kids however, often came to school wearing their barn chore work cloths.  They were usually more preoccupied with all things agriculture in nature.   

One interesting, or perhaps better described as mysterious village family, lived across from the school in a basement of an unfinished house.  A recent drive back out to the old village, revealed said lot is now abandoned with brush and trees growing up through that old basement foundation; the house never did get built.  The school still sits across the road now functioning almost half a century as a ruddy apartment.  At the property line, an old heavy iron swing frame still sits firmly anchored in with the same cement poured probably now well over a century ago.  
Jacky came from a humble house on the edge of the village. He and his confederate Dave firmly fell into the village kids' category.       

One day, Jacky manifested his brand of chicanery on the playground. It was basically an old farm field. The baseball backstop was some chain-link fence stretched between a couple of old telephone poles. There was a couple of rusty swings, a creaking merry-go-round, and a couple of monkey-bar climbers. The skeletal framework of one of the climbers looked like the capsule of the Mercury space vehicles. We were after all in the "space race".  

The monkey-bars always mysteriously had some parts missing. During recess on the day in question, I looked up from a game of tag with pals to see a monkey-bar pipe spinning through the air right at me. The three-foot length of pipe rotated through the crisp fall-of-the-year, Wisconsin air, like the blades on a Huey helicopter.  As the pipe seemed to be hovering closer and closer, in slow motion, I froze in my tracks.  In the background of the ever approaching projectile, was the laughing square face of..., Jacky. His bulky torso heaved with each, "Ha, ha, ha." His face had an incredulous gleam of hopeful expectation.  Accomplice Dave stood in the background with a supportive grin of approval, white teeth standing contrast to his freckled complexion.  

The pipe hit me crossways in the stomach. Thank God! If it had hit me like a javelin it would have impaled me. I remember Jacky running up to me and saying with a snarl, "Don't cry kid, and keep your mouth shut, tough it out, you little punk!"  

My stomach hurt for a month. I didn't cry, I walked it off;  and, I have kept my mouth shut for over 50 years... 

..., of course, until I needed fodder for this vignette. 

Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).

Semi vs old four-door Ford - Fate Fairies - book version

3 October 2011

Semi vs old four-door Ford - Fate Fairies - book version

This entry was posted on 10/3/2011 1:30 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies - book version.

It must speak to the passing of reaching 50 years old. I never pondered it much 20 to 30 years ago - that slide into mortality consciousness one realizes with age. It happens one day without fanfare. You suddenly have an epiphany on some fateful moment as you step back out of an intersection to avoid a car and say to yourself, "Woe, I could of just died here." There have been so many of these instances in my life, I feel it begs revisiting them. 

Hence begins, "Fate Fairies." You know the fate fairies. Those little spiritual troublemakers that answer to what ever god you carry with you. If you are lucky they are preoccupied with minutia like hiding your car keys and wallet and other such nonsense. Mine, however seem to act as if they smoke pot and party all night - then only to show up for work and spend a great deal of intellectual resources figuring out ways to almost kill me but never quite succeeding. My fate fairies seem to bask in orchestrating perennial near misses for me with the afterlife - or what ever you would like to call the place one goes after your services are no longer needed here on earth - make up your own name for it. 

One of my first vivid memories is of Mom and Dad heading home as we drove out of Janesville, Wisconsin, on the way back to the farm. The four miles or so of Highway 26 north of Janesville has always been notorious. It must have been around 1960-61 or so. It was long before that short jaunt between Janesville and Milton had been rebuilt into a smooth, four-lane divided boulevard. The busy vehicular and overwhelmed commerce artery was so inadequate and dangerous back in the day, by the 1990s, local ambulance services began to put up crosses along the route where drivers had died over the years. As a vehicle came over the hill into the more open stretch of country heading toward Milton, drivers and passengers could see the route was peppered with the little white pieces of wood. 

Dad had to get back home to do the never ending farm chores. We had probably been to Janesville to see my Mom's mother. Grandma lived alone in the house my grandfather had started building on the near north side of Janesville. He had died in the mid-1930s back in the days of 14 hour work days at the General Motors plant; and, there was none of the modern medicine we all take for granted nowadays. Mom's brothers, my uncles, had to finish the project. My Dad headed out of town on the then narrow, two-lane, hilly, State Highway 26 - known as Milton Avenue in the built-up part of town.  The old house was just a couple blocks off said avenue. 

All I remember is Mom hollering at Dad to,  "Look out, Dearie!" 

"Dearie," is what she called my father when something discussed was serious, such as money, the farm, Dad's quirky brother, or in this case..., barreling down on an eighteen-wheeler. 

The old truck roared up the hill into town right at us.  

Dad always got hyped up when it neared chore time. He was a stickler for punctuality and taking the cows seriously - they were our proverbial bread and butter - those beasts' milk was the only source of our monthly paychecks. So, much of my memory of my father is of him working with and for, the meticulous tending of those animals. Having the chance to work along side my father on the farm afforded me the unique perspective of knowing things about his work ethic even my mother was not privy to.  But, I also got a glimpse of his more temperamental sides as well. In his predictable late afternoon hast regarding the pending "chore-time," Dad sped up to pass the slow car in front of us.  But as Mom so noted, there before us was the on-coming grill..., of a big ugly, faded-white..., Mack truck. 

In those days the trucks and cars were built like tanks - iron welded to iron. Wrecks often looked like film footage from old World War II news segments - heaps of iron and steel with a tire or two sticking out. Also, in those days the road shoulders did not always exist like today. Dad flung the old Ford four-door (we never owned a new car) into the opposite side ditch to our left. Some of those old ditches were deep. The old Ford held, the semi passed within inches, and Dad slung the car back out into the on-coming lane and then quickly veered us back into our correct lane. 

I do not remember the conversation on the rest of the 14 mile ride home to the farm. In fact, I never remember the instance ever..., and I mean ever, being brought up again as long as either one of my parents were alive. 

Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).