MAGPIE TALE: White Wash

Here is a cheerful little winter story for Mapgie #52

When visitors came to Elvin Corners during the winter and remarked how quaint it looked, Taryn Stockbridge, wife of the town moderator would snarl, "God's whitewashing. It will cover up the secrets for the season, but they'll all come out in the thaw."
Elvin Corners was a village filled with many secrets, some darker than others. Little Ralphie Dunagin was a good example. He may have looked harmless as his German Shepherd pulled his sled, but if his parents ever found those magazines he stole from behind the counter at the Rexall Drug, it would be a different story. And even worse, he had taken to cutting out the most graphic images of the female form from the magazine, pasting them on construction paper and writing notes on the order. "Hi, my name is Lulu. You may not remember that night in Hartford last June since you were so drunk. I thought this candid picture might help you remember. Leave me $100 in unmarked bills on the second to bottom shelf of the Poli-Sci stacks at the Westside Carnegie Library or I'll spill the beans to your wife and boss. No monkey business, mister. Just the dough."

Ralphie had bought himself two top of the line Schwinns before he finished fourth grade, and his parents even bought the fib that he had earned all the money from his paper route.
Then there was Herschel Hershberger. Everyone said there couldn't be a nicer guy in Elvin Corners than "Hersh", the night time and weekend pharmacist at the Rexall. Most folks in town were really cheap and hated to go to the doctor. On top of that, no one wanted to drive the 40 miles into Lowell to the nearest emergency room. So unless you had a severed hand or stroke, you went to see "Hersh" when anything came up. Always sporting a smile and free advice, he gained the reputation of being the philosophical pharmacist. He was also the most eligible bachelor in town, and the various war widows and spinsters wondered how this one got away. He always sat in the back of the Rialto and the boldest women would whisper "Maybe he doesn't like girls."

He didn't like girls, alright, and he didn't like boys or sick babies or whining old biddies. When business was slow, he'd write on his pad "I'm sick and tired of the sick and tired. I'm sick and tired of the sick and tired...."

It was Thanksgiving Day 1949 when he set his plan into motion. Angry about working on a holiday and having to hear so many stories about sore throats and joints, he swapped Mrs. Greenwood's heart pills with Mr. Norton's malaria prevention pills. Week by week, he continued his plan, most people not noticing that they now had a small oblong pill instead of a small round pill. Strange ailments started popping up. A third of the elderly population died in the spring of 1950, a perfectly warm flu free spring. When Clara Erville, only 28 years old, had a stroke at her daughter's first communion, the police started to piece the trail back to "Hersh" and the Rexall. He got wind of the cops heading his way and skipped town before sundown.

Word has it that he turned up working at a health clinic with German missionaries in Sierra Leone. That may have helped him turn his life around. He always hated the New England winters.
It was no surprise that Kyle Kuchar was a bit "off". He was the only survivor of Elvin Corners' only quadruplets. His oldest sister Kara died three days after birth in the hospital, and not too surprising since she weighed only four pounds, compared to Kyle at nine. (They were clearly fraternal not identical quads.) Then sister Kelly fell down a well in their back yard on her second birthday. Kyle was found screaming and crying when his mother rushed in horror to discover what had just happened. But he went silent the moment she arrived, clutching the Shirley Temple doll that was Kara's prized possession and that she never let him touch. Kyle and his brother Kelvin were inseparable and finished each others sentences. But when Kelvin disappeared on a hiking weekend in the Adirondacks in their junior year, Kyle seemed oddly untouched.

Though he graduated top of his class, Kyle had no ambition to go to university and worked as a stock boy at the A & P. Then he quit on his 23rd birthday. Retreating to his bungalow on Carson Avenue where the drapes were never open, the Christmas tree was up year round, and he wore his holiday sweaters well past Memorial Day and pulled them back out Labor Day weekend.

Again, no one ever knew that Kyle did anything really illegal, but they never felt comfortable around him.
L.V. and Wanda Napier were raising their grand-daughter La Rue with help from Wanda's spinster sister Verona who finally abandoned her dreams of being a Broadway chorus girl and returned to Elvin Corners. Verona had a small walk on role on in the Hartford production of "Out of This World" and was the second understudy to a dancer in "Charlie's Aunt" but lately had been working the glove counter at Stern's Department Store for $.75 an hour.

Wanda had many wrenching stories about Verona's early days and was fond of showing pictures of her from the 1930s "before the accident". Exactly what the accident was, no one fully understood. Rumor had it that she was hit by a bus while on a drunken pub crawl with a sailor from Topeka in Elizabeth, New Jersey. When Verona would come to the breakfast table in her tight fitting night gown, Wanda would turn to La Rue and say, "Baby, look across the table. That's why you should always do your exercises and never eat processed meat."

Surely there could not be anything that more embodied the innocence of childhood and the awe of winter than little Annadelle Axtell. That porcelain face, those fragile lashes, her golden locks.

She was a curious child and one who found great delight in play and pretend. Though only six, she was well aware that Mrs. Greenwood, three doors down, was suffering from dementia and had spent the past four decades mourning the loss of her husband Everett who died early in World War I and their lovely daughter Eva Belle whom Everett never lived to see but was the light of Mrs. Greenwood's life -- until that day in 1918 when her nightgown caught fire from the candles on the Christmas tree.

Mrs. Greenwood always blamed herself for both tragic losses. Late at night, Annadelle would tiptoe to the kitchen and cover her face in flour and then walk down Archer Avenue in her night gown and bare feet and entered Mrs. Greenwood's back porch through the screen door that was never locked. With the flashlight below her chin to give effective lighting, Annadelle would begin softly. "Mommy...Mommy..." And then she would tiptoe to Mrs. Greenwood's bedroom and scream "Why did you let me die!" and then would drop the flashlight and run back home, snug under the covers of her bed seconds later.

The Dwindling Lines of Late January

Only a month ago, she was the belle of the ball,

strewn with dangling jewels and twinkling lights.
Even at Epiphany, she continued to dazzle and delight.
Now, after a run of not even six weeks, here she has come
to rest -- wrapped in a pathetic shimmering, black girdle
and nestled in a bed filled with regrets and bad memories.
January is fading to February, the naked limbs
reaching towards dark, smudged windows.
A lonely satellite dish reaches towards the heavens,
dutifully searching for the informational and
entertainment beams its family so fiercely desires.
Our city is showing its age, its face marred by the
dark lines of the past in this, the wireless age.
The lines darken even the hill where they found
Patty Hearst 35 years ago in a bungalow kitchen where
she was sipping green tea and eating lemon wafers.
Many a drama ends with similar whimpering
banality. The lonely duo of chimneys grimace at the
heavens, ready to spit out smoke were there any
remaining embers to fuel their eager, empty lungs.

What the Hail?

It lasted for a matter of seconds and produced only a few pea sized nuggets, but we had a hail storm in the back garden this afternoon. The sound definitely grabbed Bow's attention. Perhaps she feared the chilly blasts of Chicago had followed her to the West.

Yes, But What About Bow?

I've heard several folks ask why there haven't been many recent photos or blogs about Bow, so here she is just a couple of minutes ago in the front sitting room. Longer days, more than a week of uninterrupted sunshine and temperatures in the 70s have made her decide "winter" in northern California is a relative term. I've warned her that this is not normal, and next year may not be as gentle. She's anxious to see more sun and fun in the west and says she'd be happy to go with me to Palm Springs soon.

January's Circle

A good friend of mine, who I only see every three or four years because she lives in Cairo, is in town to see her mother through the final stages of terminal cancer. The last time I saw her and her mother was Thanksgiving two years ago when I'd recently lost my father. Over the past six weeks, I've had close to casual acquaintances and relatives lose spouses, parents and children. That, of course, becomes a reality at a certain age. It reminds me to take stock of likely losses and blessings in my own life. I know there will be more, but not in the immediate future I hope, seeming to have lost all that could be lost in the past five years. Sometimes it feels like a clean slate, and for the first time in years I feel that I can be of support and instead of the one needing support but retreating from it.

I thought of five years ago, the last time I saw my mother before she was gone a few weeks later. As I heard about others losses, that so typically come at the very end and beginning of the year, I didn't feel contentment in knowing that it was not my own loss but a certain relief in knowing you can lose a parent only once but sustain the loss forever.

On a day like today -- when the weather was gloriously perfect -- it was hard to think that anyone was in pain or experiencing loss, but a quick scan of headlines or e-mail quickly shatter that reality. Having a couple of walks with Bow in the sun, neither of us needing a jacket, it was a pleasure to be removed from that reality, even knowing that a glorious day like today is an omen of drought, heat and water rationing in the months ahead. But it was pleasant for that moment.

Interactive Thursday: How's Your Weather/Cold?

Many of my frequent readers (all three of you, as so many like-minded bloggers often say) know that I also have a Facebook presence which I refuse to completely upstage this little showcase. The challenge with Facebook is how much you want to mix the personal/professional. Everything I post there is G-rated (compared to the -- at worst -- PG rated stuff here), but now and again some of my randier friends will put something in their Facebook status that would be best shared over drinks not where anyone in my family, professional, social network can see. So I get very cautious about commenting on some of their status updates.

Perhaps the most common status updates over on Facebook this and last week have referenced either the weather (and varying comments on parts of their anatomy that are either about to fall off or have frozen solid) or dripping sinuses and more graphic descriptions of physical run 0ff.

Like clock work, I managed to get my early December cold the first week of the month, and I've been over it for about a week. This evening I was looking forward to a meet up with three of my favorite local bloggers, but it seems the pre-holiday crud has forced us to delay that.

Above is my night table with its usual winter accouterments and the lingering drip is the one thing I really hate about San Francisco "winter". The temperature doesn't really but me that much, but the dripping sinuses that seem to keep at it until June or so are no pleasure. Luckily I have Bow around this winter to take the place of a hot water bottle, and tomorrow her new raincoat is supposed to arrive. So we hope to have our winter fashion show just in time to welcome our next monsoon to greet with Winter Solstice.

Just keep remembering, come Monday there will be a little more light each day.

Miss Bow Says:

Nothing is more heavenly on a December afternoon than getting a little sun on top of the heat vent. Ah!

Today...and Most of This Week

Sunday's Stroll: Noe-Bernal-Mission

Much as I try to tune it out, northern California's perpetual rain and clouds have been getting to me even more than usual this year. So it was nice to have a day of mainly dry weather, and the sudden cloudburst fortunately hit when I was having brunch.

JTTV - Season 2, Episode 10 - Ready for the Solstice

Melies, mosaics and me. Does it make sense to you? If so, then perhaps you should be worried. We present this as a preparation for the coming Winter Solstice, a bit of light as the longest night approaches.

Oh, Boogers

In theory, the transition from fall to winter is my favorite time of year. Unfortunately, I can almost predict more precisely than i can the approach of Chanukah when my sinuses will go into seasonal shock. I've been fighting it since last Friday and endured it through turbulent flights to and from Jackson and Denver. Thus, my creative prowess have been diminished of late. I hope to be back to 100% soon. Now at about 68% compared to 28% at the same point last week.

Last plane out of Dodge

Remember all that talk last week about San Francisco being 35 degrees colder than Manhattan, and how mild it was in the upper Midwest? That wasn't the real reason I went there, and things were not quite as warm as promised, but Illinois, Iowa and Michigan were all in a range of 28-45 from Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday I flew into Oklahoma where it was 75. I was well aware of a winter storm coming in for the weekend but was advised by multiple sources that it would not come in until late, late Friday night. So I was assured that my 3 p.m. flight to Phoenix was a no brainer.

When I woke at 6 a.m., the ice (which is expected to collect 2-3 inches) was already falling, so I was at the airport before 8 a.m. I looked at every possible option as flights started being cancelled shortly before 9 a.m. The board of flights filled with red and the dreaded words "cancelled" with one little glimmer of light "Phoenix - 2:56 p.m. - on time."

A co-worker made it out on one of the two flights that made it that morning and mid-afternoon to Kansas City, delayed by four hours and after being cleared after five de-icings.

The plane from Phoenix arrived just 10 minutes late and a window of 50 minutes to clean and retool for my flight. It was literally the last flight out, as Southwest announced it would not fly until at least Monday. Others said the airport would likely close by 3 p.m. and not open until Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.

Yet our plane boarded, we were told that we'd have 15 minutes to de-ice and all our connections would be made easily. The de-icing was repeated three times and took 90 minutes. We were cleared to take off...and then there was an announcement. A few customers "had been shouting," and wanted to get off. So we had to go back to the gate and let them off. Once there, the customers raised a ruckus over insisting that their bags be removed. They were. We spent 45 minutes de-icing as the sun set and the words "We're screwed were repeated down to the 80 year old woman from Lawton two seats back.

At 6:08, we were cleared as the little Moscow on the Prairie faded as we forged through clouds and emerged into a pinkish horizion.

I arrived on another planet named Phoenix where the ground crew as in shorts and polo shirts. I made it home in ample time to sort mail a full hour before the 11 news.

And they are complaining about the "cold" in Northern Califorina!