hearse play

What is Halloween without Hearses, Punks, and Goth Go-Go Girls? It's a very ghostly place. Fortunately, our friends at the Denver Hearse Association have produced this killer video to brighten our holiday spirit. Check out "Hearse Driver"

EJ Wells, Hearse Driver, directed by Zachary Byron Helm

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meow meow

Okay, at the risk of turning this merry go round ride into a cat blog, here's one more. My friend Will sent me this one for Serena. If she had opposible thumbs, I would feel compelled to hide the weaponry. The work is by an English animator named Simon Tofield and it is actually called 'Cat Man Do'. I've watched this several times, clearly Mr. Tofield has a cat. Or specifically, he has MY cat. Check it out.

birthday portrait

By popular demand, portrait of the kitten on her eleventh birthday, in her usual pose. Isn't she precious?

satan kitty

John and I looked into the cage at the six virtually identical black kittens. They were tiny, just barely one pound each. They all had green eyes and silky black fur. The attendant told us that they were all little girls, and speculated that both parents were in all likelihood solid black as well. They were alternately sleeping and playing. I picked one up and held her in my hand. She peeped contentedly- "mew..mew..". So tiny and innocent.

John picked one up and she ran up his sweater sleeve and began biting him on the arm. It was at that moment that I realized that not all kittens were the same. We took detailed notes on each one.

John and I had been together almost four years, the first two in Chicago where I lived and he was working on location making television, and the next two long distance when I transferred to Los Angeles and he remained with the show. We had grown apart during that time. We had both been used to certain freedoms during the two years which were now difficult to reconcile. John began dropping hints about bath houses. It was obvious that he wanted more freedom. He would soon have it.

John was concerned that I would be lonely after his departure. In all honestly, I had been so for the prior two years, but it was nice of him to at least notice. His solution was for me to get a cat. I wanted a dog, but my frantic work schedule made that impractical. I was at an impasse.

For my birthday, John gave me an "Everything But The Cat" kit. Food, dishes, litter box, play toys, even a carrying box. There was a label on the side of the box- "Kitten Not Included". That we had to provide ourselves, which is why we found ourselves at the Malibu Animal Shelter on a Saturday morning staring into a cage full of black kittens.

In Los Angeles County, you are not allowed to adopt black kittens in the month of October. I don't think I have to go into too much detail here, except to say that I was left a one day window to choose what could prove to be a companion for years to come. Not like there's pressure or anything.

Cut to the chase- the last day to adopt the little black kittens was Monday. I had an advertising meeting at 10, after which I drove to Malibu. When I arrived, a young woman was leaving with a black kitten in her grasp. I looked into their cage and there was just one bewildered kitten left, looking very scared. I checked her collar tag and referred to my notes:

"SATAN KITTY".

Yep, the little arm biter. John had liked her best, saying that she would have personality. I agreed, and then mused, so did Lizzie Borden. Well, I said to myself, I have come all this way for a cat, and technically, this IS a cat. I scooped up the little dragon and headed for the exit.

By the time I got to the car, I named the little fluff ball Serena, figuring that she would either turn out to be tranquil and calm, or Samantha in a black wig. I do not have to tell you which way it turned out.

She did not like the car ride. At all. She howled for most of the way home. Thirty-Eight miles, as a matter of fact. LOUDLY. By the time I got home, I began to wonder if I had made a most grievous error. Then we got inside the house and she stopped crying. I sat her upon my lap where she promptly fell asleep. This was my cat, all one-point-one pounds of her.

This post commemorates our eleventh year together. I can't imagine being without her. I've made her promise that she will live to be forty.

Happy Birthday, Pumpkinbunny. Daddy loves you.

Now stop chewing on my wrist.

wide stance

Great commentary on perpetual liar and antigay persecutor Larry Craig, from Seth and Amy on SNL. Gives a new meaning to the term "wide stance". Courtesy of Towleroad.

yellowed newspaper clipping

My neighbor Ron is someone I would have to describe as an Auto Rights Activist. He has personally saved more old cars from destruction than anyone I have known. Think of him as the antidote to a demolition derby, dragging home wrecks and restoring them to glistening beauty. Usually these cars represent a chapter of his youth, and lead to a story about life with his family in Lubbock, Texas. From the assemblage of veterans on the block, it appears that his family tended to favor Ford products.

For example, one time, Ron showed up with a totally sun baked 1950 Ford sedan. The body and chassis were remarkably intact, but the car simply looked like it had been parked on the sun. This one reminded him of his Grandfather, who had an almost identical car back in Texas in the early sixties. Ron recalled how his Grandmother referred to it as the "little gray Ford". Another time it was a green and white mid-fifties Ford sedan with factory air conditioning, but that one reposed in the driveway for only a short period of time.

Ron's mother Sue passed away recently from cancer. He went back to Lubbock to the little mid-century house he grew up in, only the second house of her adult life, and began the task of sorting through belongings that had been accumulating there since LBJ's first term. Clothes, shoes, books, photographs, papers, catalogues, magazines. Some recent, some not. In the cedar chest were the family papers. His Grandfather's Military Discharge papers were there, along with his Parent's Marriage License, almost every document pertaining to the lives of her four boys, and a yellowed newspaper clipping.

He carefully unfolded the clipping. It was dated September 30, 1957. The headline read "Four Killed on Area Roads". It was published on a Monday and told how four people, three adult women and one nine year old child, were killed the previous day in three separate crashes. There was a black and white photograph of a mangled 1955 Ford sedan. One could not tell the color but Ron knew instinctively that the car was light green. It had belonged to his Aunt Patsy.

Ron does not remember his Aunt Patsy, his father's second-youngest sister. He was only two years old when she died. She was only twenty-seven years old herself. He had grown up keenly aware of her absence. He heard his family talk about her over the years, especially his Grandmother and his Aunt Bobbie. There is a picture of him on his first birthday in her arms. He does not recall this photo being taken.

She has raven black hair, dimpled cheeks, and a big smile. She is a beautiful young woman. He has seen other pictures of her also, including one of her in her casket. Her son Donnie appears in a similar photograph. Ron recalls that he knew better than to ask his Grandmother about those photos. He knew almost nothing about the accident which claimed their lives. His Grandmother was unable to discuss it. According to Aunt Bobbie, Grandmother had to be heavily sedated to even get through the funeral.

From his Aunt Bobbie, he knew that Uncle Tommy, a baker in downtown Lubbock, had worked part of the day that Sunday. His mother had offered to help the young family buy a badly needed bigger house, so Patsy and the kids picked her up at her house in Cone, Northwest of Lubbock, and drove to the bakery downtown to get Tommy. They spent a long afternoon touring and looking at potential new homes.

When the day drew to a close, they dropped his mother off at about 8:30 pm and headed back to Lubbock on Highway 82. It was a busy two lane road and Patsy was driving. Tommy was in the right front, and nine year old Donnie was seated between them in front. In fifties highway etiquette, the eldest got first dibs on the front seat. They were nearing home when a car being driven by a twenty-one year old man from Fort Worth pulled out to pass and hit the green Ford sedan head on.

For the first time, Ron was holding an article which calmly reported a family tragedy. According to the newspaper, Aunt Patsy was thrown through the windshield. Both she and Donnie died at the scene. Tommy suffered broken ribs and other injuries. Their daughter Nancy, age four, and six year old Jack were both in the back seat. Also riding in the car were two of their neighbor's children who had come along for the Sunday drive. They all survived, as did the young man and his girlfriend in the other car. He suffered a broken leg in the crash. Neither car was equipped with seat belts. The newspaper reported that the victims were taken to three different area hospitals. It then went on to detail the other two accidents, duly noting that one of the victims was, in fact, a negro.

Aunt Bobbie offered more detail. She herself had stopped by the bakery that day. She was running errands with her own mother-in-law, Lucille. Lucille was a brassy woman who was often hired by local farmers to find water on their land with a divining rod. She was known to have a sixth sense. She waited in the car while Bobbie ran into the bakery. When Bobbie came back , Lucille cast her eyes on the green 1955 Ford sedan. "That's Patsy's car, isn't it" she asked. "Yes, it is, you've seen it before" Bobbie replied. Lucille said nothing more, but continued to eye it with a troubled expression as Bobbie pulled away.

Ron admitted to me that the green and white 1956 sedan he had purchased began to remind him too much of Aunt Patsy's car. Virtually identical in styling, he believed it was even the same color. That's why it remained in the fleet for such a short time.

Aunt Patsy and Donnie were laid to rest in the family plot next to her father. Her mother joined them there in 1984. Ron's own parents are a couple of rows away in the same cemetery. Uncle Tommy eventually remarried and moved out of state. Ron grew up with only a peripheral awareness of his cousins' existence. Fifty years have gone by. The babies are now middle aged. The smiling young adults are now old, and Patsy's brothers and sisters are joining her one by one. The passage of time does nothing to erase the tragedy of lives cut short on a Sunday night. The newspaper articles are clipped out and placed in the cedar chest where they yellow, but they are not thrown away.

It is all but impossible for us to understand such a loss in the context of its own time. To imagine an era where ladies wore single strands of white pearls and dainty hats, but then could be suddenly thrown through the windshields of pastel colored sedans is beyond our ability to comprehend. It bemoans the limitations of technology at a fixed point in time. And while it may seem to us to be primitive, it was the state of the art at the time. These were just the risks one assumed in daily living. Life changes in an instant, and this fact is as true today as it was in the late summer of 1957. Perhaps that is what makes the memories so precious.

On the nightstand next to Ron's bed, there is a framed photograph of a smiling young woman holding a one year old boy. She has raven black hair and dimples in her cheeks.

swedes and swish

Twenty-two months after suffering his first stroke, Michael's father Jack passed away peacefully at the age of eighty-nine. His illness was both lengthy and exhausting. We were all rather surprised by his endurance. Among other things, it outlasted my own relationship with Michael which dwindled on a parallel course but expired long before Jack did.

Finally, toward the last few days of summer, he seemed to become unresponsive, his breathing shallow and difficult. The nurse said it appeared that he had suffered another serious stroke. The family was summoned.

They accumulated throughout the day- His wife Gladys, son Michael, and daughters Peg and Patty all crowded into his room along with two of his longtime caregivers. It was not until his daughter Kathleen arrived that he allowed himself to let go. Fifteen minutes after she walked in, he breathed his last. He had waited for her to arrive. She was his favorite.

Draped in black, I found myself at the first Irish Catholic funeral I had attended since the late seventies. I walked into the funeral home and immediately spotted Delphina, one of Michael's closest friends. We approached the sign in table together. On the table were photos of Jack at the care facility with his family. Well, almost. The photos showed his wife and all his children, except Michael. Michael, who for 22 months spent every spare moment with his father, was excluded. I am reminded of why I was not particularly close with his sisters.

Gladys carried her husband's cremains in a silver urn. She was followed into the chapel by her children. Mourners on both sides of the aisle stood and followed her with their eyes as she passed. It was not unlike a wedding except there was no bridal march.

The priest conducting the mass had been acquainted with the family since he had been a child himself. His own father was a boyhood friend of Jack's. He himself had known Jack's parents, Fred and the inimitable Maud, quite well. He shared boyhood stories and observations of not only Jack but also of his parents. It was sweetly touching. There were moments where I could see that Michael, directly in front of me, was softly sobbing. It was very hard for me to see that.

One of the things the priest touched on was the immigrant experience. He talked about how Fred and Maud had both come from the old country to the new, as had many of their friends. It was something they all shared, he said. The Melting Pot. A community welcome extended to all- Irish and Welsh, Swedes and Swish. Yes, he said swish. I looked around the room at all of the blue eyed redheads. Not a sign of swedes, I noted, but with Michael's friends in attendance, certainly no shortage of swish.

At some point, sister Peg elected to narrate the twenty-two months for us in a level of detail that bordered on the excruciating. We learned the names and rotation schedules of all of his caregivers, his favorite routines, the television programs he favored, and even which nurses he developed crushes on. One mourner put his head down on the pew in front of him. The priest sighed loudly as a signal which went unnoticed. We actually began to understand what the seemingly interminable illness had been like. She staggered aimlessly as if wrestling with her grief in the improvised setting of a one woman show.

Finally Peg relinquished her seige and, after a tearful rendition of "When Irish Eyes are Smiling", we accompanied Jack to his final resting place. As it was very near to the chapel, we actually walked behind the hearse where Jack rested on his wife's lap. We read the names on the plaques in the colombarium. I noted an unusal number of plaques, including one for Michael's own brother Chris, whose inscription read "Beloved Brother and Uncle". These men were in their thirties to mid forties. The tragic early days of the plague, I observed. Again, no swedish names were evident.

I left Michael there, with his sisters and his mother. I did not stop by the family home, it did not seem like a place I needed to be. The priest's words stayed with me. I wondered, what things would have been like if the swedes and swish had truly been equally welcome.