posted by Unknown | 9:21 AM
|
0 comments
Daves Digs
- On Tuba Southwest Fla
- A Mom's Day Story
- Daves Digs: The Cambridge Band (1853-present)
- Mayhem in Murray Hollow
- Historical Highlights of The Owlskill Valley ...
- The Bad ol' Days
- One of the colorful, 18th century mountain men of ...
- Early Days in Cambridge NY
- The Cambridge Band as it appeared in hometown Camb...
Sunday, April 16, 2006
On Tuba Southwest Fla
One of the joys of retirement is spending the harsh, Upstate NY winters south in warm, sunny southwest Florida. Down there I find a host of retired bandsmen --- old chronologically, but still potent as musicians. The ego is in most cases diminished and the competitive drive dulled. Consequently, this amateur is welcomed to play along-side some of the best. Most of the time I play euphonium, but here you see me draped around my King 4 valve, filling in on tuba with the Hafenkapelle at the 2005 Oktoberfest, German-American Club, Cape Coral, Fla.
posted by Unknown | 9:12 AM
|
0 comments
A Mom's Day Story
A Mom’s Day Story
(This story is from my days in the “cemetery” business. How I got into it is easily explained. When I retired from teaching, my young wife had eight years to go before reaching her own retirement. I resigned from teaching and settled into Cambridge, NY to enjoy myself while the wife toiled on.
(That is what made the “village elders” uneasy. My being something of a community activist and given to fanatically taking up lost causes caused some unease amongst those good souls whose duty it was to keep the “ship of state” (in this tiny, Upstate village) not just “afloat”, which was challenge enough; but steadily upon an even course. To have yours truly sitting idly among them for eight years was apparently more than they cared to contemplate. So, they set out to find something for me to do.
(“Dave,” one coaxed, “you can do this job with one hand tied behind your back.” “You’ll have plenty of time for those things (un-specified, of course) that you like to do!” added another, slyly. I had already been idle several months, and was indeed becoming restless; which is usually when “trouble” would stars. So, with the blessings of my long-suffering wife, I became the sexton; actually “manager” of the local protestant cemetery.
(And they were right. I found the management easy, the surrounds (which were thankfully patterned after the mid-19th century movement to turn staid cemeteries into inviting “parks”, instead of the flat rectangles of flat rectangular stones that cling to the butts of so many old New England churches) pleasant; indeed “restful”. The clients, as you may imagine, were forgiving and uncomplaining.
(In all, the sharp bluff that bisected the 14 acres, the steeply sloped burial plots and the dark, old growth hardwood forest that crowned the bluffs provided a pleasant contrast to the stark rooms of restless young souls with whom I had shared hundreds of stale insights, as well as countless thousands of cubic yards of stale, recirculated air.
(I have yet to write extensively of what seems to have turned out to be the “11” final years of a working life, the sweat of which began its life-long streaming at the age of seven in a dry-land cotton field in southwestern Oklahoma. Indeed, to date, this is the only story to come from that period of my life. If you haven’t already nodded off from boredom, read on.)
...The sweetest stories can be found in the simple study of Nature. As a
senior citizen I have become a devout student of Nature, often given to
hours of sitting in the shade of a Maple tree, letting the sap drip on
my balding head while I follow the exciting adventures of, say, the
carpenter ant as it busily excavates a rotten knot-hole, filling the
resultant cavity with the white maggots of its young. High adventure in my typical day; although I will admit to a tendency to
doze off during the slow parts.
Yesterday, before a spate of thunder showers moved through from the
Mid-West, I found myself down in the Cemetery watching as my crew
dismantled the set-up of a burial. This includes (but by no means is
limited to) the spreading (over real grass) of wide sheets of plywood,
over which is then draped dark green artificial grass.
In the dismantling process it is, naturally, necessary to remove the
artificial grass, shake it to remove particles of natural grass which
are naturally tracked onto it by the mourners; fold it (the artificial grass) and store it for use on some future equally somber occasion.
Yes, you are correct in anticipating that the next step is then to
remove the wide sheets of plywood; otherwise they would, under the
impact of those northeastern thunder showers, rot; the glue melt and the
wood particles decompose, thereby allowing the growth of an even richer
crop of "natural" grass; which my crew would then have to mow. So yes,
we did remove the plywood, and stack it for use on some future equally
somber occasion (I find it helpful to repeat phrases that purport to
profundity, as it saves wear and tear on the aging mind; also, I think I
read about it on an equally somber occasion in a creative writing class, quite possibly one I was supposedly instructing.
Or was it a journalism class? Yes, that was it, journalism; because the
dominant and equally somber future prospect was that we would all fail
to earn the Pulitzer Prize and ultimately have to earn our bread by
"stringing" for out of town dailies, which would then base our pay upon
the length (rather than the equally somber prospect of their supposed
depth) of our columns. This, then, is the secret of my writing style. Like Dickens, most of my work was originally “serialized” in periodicals, where the remuneration is by the “column inch”!
On this occasion, as I sat in the somber shade of this maple tree
wiping sap from my forehead as I watched my crew dismantle the funeral
site, I was (at this point in the narrative you may find this a bit hard
to believe) not so much taken with the somber removal of artificial
grass and plywood, but rather by a dramatic rescue mission, prompted by
the somber removal of the afore-said, that was taking place quite literally under our feet. It seems a deer mouse had taken up residence beneath one of the sheets of plywood.
I suppose you city folk think that this old boy has lost his somber,
story-telling mind in calling a mouse "dear"; also figuring, as does
the good (and academic) wife, that I have lost all interest in the correct spelling of the American version of the English tongue. Of course, all of this is true. But non-applicable in this particular tale, as we do have in this neck
of the somber woods, a tiny critter called a D E E R mouse.
It has a cheeky, white belly, large, black eyes that protrude from the
front of a narrow, flat face, a tiny, black nose on the end of its
pointy chin, and big ears, just like a Mule Deer. Its back is covered
with short mauve-colored fur. That is, fur that is a shade or two darker
than tan, or beige. Whatever! It's coat is deer-colored.
This particularly dear deermouse was a Mom (which is, of course, what
makes this a Mom's Day story).
We knew it was a Mom because, it did not pale (as the expression goes)
before the three really huge and really ugly human shapes that towered
over its nest. Instead, it held true to the most powerful force in the
entire universe; indeed, one must say it held true to the somber force
that makes possible future somber occasions. Which is, of course, the
Mom Instinct: The glue that connects the genes, unites the
ununitable; that can turn the average down at the heels coon-hunting
loafer into a dedicated, clean living, mostly sober, hard-working Dad.
So taken were we huge, ugly shapes by this raw and natural projection of
the fundamental force of the Universe that we stopped (actually, it was
THEY who stopped, as I--- sitting as I was under the
maple, sap dripping off my forehead onto the front of my beige (or is it
mauve) work shirt--- had never started) stacking the artificial grass
and plywood to watch, as this tiny creature, its nest disturbed, rose to
the defense of its "kinder"; indeed, risked its life to save these
half-dozen hairless, whimpering "worms" wriggling about in the tiny
exposed chamber of dried (natural) grass and mauve (or beige) fur.
The fully exposed nest was composed of two chambers, actually. One was
quite obviously the nursery and the other, more expansive and outfitted
with a large screen TV, a typical room into which it is periodically
necessary for Mom's to escape in order to recover their sanity. There
was a direct connection so that Mom could immediately respond should one
of her offspring cry out in the night or (God forbid) cough! And,
clearly illustrating that this was a mom of the new millennium, the
entire complex was encircled by this straw-lined jogging track.
And it is a good thing, too. Because with all exposed, the Mom needed to
be in top physical shape to pull off the rescue that suddenly unfolded
before us.
This should not be taken as a negative criticism, but at the first sign
of disturbance, the dear mom deermouse had taken refuge in a nearby
hole. It is often necessary for even humans to put some distance between
us (some have disparagingly termed this tendency "turning tail") and
impending disaster. But this is so that we can gain a perspective on the
calamity and decide how to respond to it.
How this mom mouse responded was to sprint at the top of her limit back
to the nest, scurry through the entrance, in her mouth grasp the nearest
blind, hairless, really ugly infant by the neck and drag it (I mean,
what else could she do? Even a super deermouse Mom lacks arms?) back to
the hole in which she had originally taken refuge. 20
While we watched, she made this trip six times, removing all six infants
to the safety of the hole. Then one of the ugly human shapes,
preparatory to resuming its labor, reached down and pulled the nest
apart to see that it was empty. It was. But so infuriated became the Mom
that any creature would interfere with her natural projection of the
fundamental force of the universe that she charged back, forcing the
ugly human shape to stumble back (almost into the open grave. We were in
the midst of a burial, remember). Then she inspected, burrowed into it
and really looked around in each tuft of disturbed nest to make sure she
had them all. I know this observation could generate a negative thought,
as we humans tend to keep track of the number of offspring we drag
around. But then few of us give birth to sextuplets! She even took time
to jog a couple of times around her track to work off some of the
adrenalin. 20
Indeed, it seemed that she was never going to abandon that nest site.
And, well, we did have a coffin to dispose of, so I stepped on her....
No, really, just a shuffle in her direction and she disappeared over the
lip of the hole sanctuary to tend to the babies she had deposited there.
Well, for so long-winded a tale, those of you still reading deserve a
happy ending. And there it is. The babies were deposited into a safe,
dark hole, the mom there to nurture them until they, too, can scamper
about the cemetery doing whatever deermice do (which is probably about
as exciting as sitting under maple tree letting sap drip onto your
head).
But this is a Mom's Day story observed in Nature, and Nature doesn't
have happy endings. There is always at the end a coffin to drop into an
open grave, so to speak. And in the case of the deermice, perhaps they
have saved us undertakers the trouble. The hole the Mom dragged her
kiddies into is a foundation hole, that will shortly become the support
for the monument that will mark the grave we were bent upon filling.
And come Monday, we will fill even that hole--- with concrete.
But then, in Nature deermice metastasize with remarkable rapidity.
Here's the glimmer you were looking for. Perhaps they will make it.
And, after a life-time of sacrifice, struggle and love, that's about the
best any Mom can hope for. dt
posted by Unknown | 8:47 AM
|
1 comments