so this isn't the blog I've been thinking about posting, but, as my best friend "gouglas" in 2nd grade used to say... "I'm all thunk out" I've been a little less inclined to write here, due to having to write heavy stuff on other sites, notably a message board for the top astrologers in the country--folks, friends and foes I've been battling and conniving with for nigh onto 40 year in some cases. yeah, I'm THAT old... and one thing that's come up a lot is meditation. so I'm thinking to write something here about that. among other things, I teach a class on advanced Hindu thought, which starts with a 3 hour silent, motionless meditation (with a 15 minute break in the middle for those of weak knee). That's meditation. not humming to yourself or visualizing wonderful chakras. that's phantasy and relaxation, which is good stuff too--stuff to do before you seek true stillness, but it ain't the same. so I'm not writing about that ... yet. i might, if anyone is interested...
instead, I'm gonna write about my Uncle Bob and Aunt Barb. characters. I could write about my mom having lung cancer, but that's a downer, and no real 'story' there that's a new one by any measure. or about the board meetings and publishing dramas, but those are board meetings and publishing dramas.
I'd rather write about Bob. Old Bob is 80 years old, and surprised the hell out of me by asking me to visit when I was in Santa Fe this year. He lives 'a ways' up the road from Taos somewhere with his high school sweetheart. I have only seen the man twice before in my life, the last time was 30 years ago. that 'old thing.' oh wait, I did glimpse him in passing at my father's funeral a decade ago. but we were on opposite sides of a big church, looking for the exits.
Bob is my dad's youngest brother and the runt, or spoiled brat, of the family. my dad was born when his mom was 15, and bob is 16 years his junior, so there's a big gap, and my dad was close (duh) to his mom, did a lot of parenting as HIS dad was a railroad man on the A,T & SF back in the day. and didn't come home in a straight line, when he did come home. damn yankee...
bob learned to fly before he could drive, because he could. he is a natural mechanic, and just got in an airplane when he was 14 and took off. and landed... mostly... upside down. that earned him his first after school job--paying for the 'borrowed' airplane. but the owners also took interest in him and taught him how to fly. he taught his older sister and she taught her older brother, and my dad was out hunting for food (literally) for the dirt-poor family and didn't ever get to learn the flying thing.
Dad and his brother got caught in Bataan, and spent WWII in prison camp. nasty. maybe a blog there someday. uncle Bob was 12 at the time, so didn't get put in prison until the Korean war-and that was only for a little extra AWOL action in the DMZ in Korea. a man after my own heart.
::break to the recent past:: walked into his cabin, which was a ramshackle affair, and saw that his "library" consisted entirely of sci-fi and murder mystery paperbacks. Here's the thing. I own every one of these books! and none were on the shelves I don't own, and haven't read. cept maybe the last few 'dune' spinoffs...
so I learned a few things from old Bob. #1, that he's a rough and tumble guy, as is his wife.
::digression:: her dad had a red ration sticker on his car during WWII which meant all the gas he could buy, because he was the delivery boy for various things wanted at Los Alamos. He took advantage of this by running gold miners and their stuff up into the hills after hours. "their stuff consisted of four cases of dynamite, moonshine, and blasting caps" Old Barb's Dad would put one kid on each case of dynamite, his wife on the moonshine holding a big bowl of potato salad and the baby in her lap, and they'd go tearing off road out to the miners. "this way, if the thing ever blows up, we'll all go" he reasoned.... :: end digression.
so unlike my Dad who was a CHRISTIAN first and foremost, last and hindmost and all parts in between, Uncle Bob has a natural allergy to Churches and their contents. except maybe the wine. which I can relate to. The best day I ever had in church was the day it caught fire, and I managed to "rescue" 6 cases of communion wine before the fire department got there. kept me relaxed for several weeks thereafter in high school.. but I never did like cheap wine after that binge.
Bob spent his life problem solving for NASA; as he puts it: "when something bad happened and somebody got hurt in a lab, they'd send me in to see if whatever happened was still happening" this led to some hair raising, hair-removing, hair singeing stories, some of which might of actually happened. some of which probably mostly happened. at any rate, Ol' Bob eventually retired, and commenced to do re-enactments of the Civil War ... in New Mexcio... that hotbed of Confederacy. mostly this involved dressing up in a blue shirt, and drinking until he fell off the horse, or so it seems to me. he spoke a lot about his years in NASA and little about family. especially my parents. who, being CHRISTIAN didn't really approve of him. I wish I'd known that sooner, say, when I was 8 or 9--I would have hitched down to where he lived, instead of living a double life until I could escape the bible-belters.
the second thing I learned from Uncle Bob was that my Grandma was a tremendous cook! who knew!??! Whenver we visited her, we got the most god-awful bland frozen-thawed-frozen salty food I have ever eaten. she BAKED frozen peas IN THEIR PLASTIC BAG which gave them a certain memorable flavor and texture.
Now I know why. My mom complained in her dainty way, that the food was too spicy for her and her children. My Grandma by the way always said "chillrn" when referring to us; JJ Cale almost says it right.
when I told Bob of my efforts to find a restaurant that serves a fiery and respectable chiles rellenos in SF, he was surprised to learn of my preference. years of drinking, dousing everything in tabasco and 14 years of Camel Straights will do that to a palate. I love hot food, albeit not habenero hot; about 1/2 that hot, but more than jalapeno--usually a LOT more. So when I was eating these NEXICAN meals in SF, looking for NewMexican food or even real border TexMex, and getting touristCheese instead, I was not a happy diner. I did find a few places, but none that I lit candles in front of. So I told Bob all this and he said that my Grandma and my Aunt make full on 3-alarm water-won't-help chiles. all the time. and that the only time she cooked bland food, or used frozen products is when my mom and us visited, because of my mom's first remarks to her. DAMN I wisht I couldve known my Gma's real cooking. I bet I would like it.
So I already knew a bunch of tales about my grandparents, about how my Grandma only got spanked once because when her dad hit her, she bit him and said she'd do it again if he hit her again, and about how she cussed out my Granpa for being drunk again, and how he was growing petrified wood for the family, which now my nephew has--we figure in about 10 generations we'll have our our personal petrified wood stick, and about how my granpa drove the last steam engine in NM, and about how my granma made amazing (and untasted by me) pies, and about how my dad nearly blew his brother's head of with a shotgun when they were 3 and 5, and how a meteor really did hit the garage (and I have a peice of it) and like that.
the new stories weren't about family so much, except about bob and the airplane and about the job he got at the railyards greasing axles that got him enough money to get some new boots that let him go on a date with Barb and how that was that. it was the retelling of them, the gestures, the smiles and faint southern tingles and jangles in his voice that echoed the long lost accents and language and motions of my grandpa and grandma; that's what I wish I knew how to write about. seeing him was seeing not my father, who was a righteous, good man, but a perfesser, and not a man of the earth as was his father, and his father before him. that gnarly stooped hard-bitten, bad-languaged straight shooting (bear, elk, squirrel, road signs) often taciturn backbone and hipbone of my family was good to touch, for good luck for my own aging. for I am aging, and to age into the kind of weatherbeaten old tree with a few good fruit still coming forth each year until the last, that was what I learned from Uncle Bob
instead, I'm gonna write about my Uncle Bob and Aunt Barb. characters. I could write about my mom having lung cancer, but that's a downer, and no real 'story' there that's a new one by any measure. or about the board meetings and publishing dramas, but those are board meetings and publishing dramas.
I'd rather write about Bob. Old Bob is 80 years old, and surprised the hell out of me by asking me to visit when I was in Santa Fe this year. He lives 'a ways' up the road from Taos somewhere with his high school sweetheart. I have only seen the man twice before in my life, the last time was 30 years ago. that 'old thing.' oh wait, I did glimpse him in passing at my father's funeral a decade ago. but we were on opposite sides of a big church, looking for the exits.
Bob is my dad's youngest brother and the runt, or spoiled brat, of the family. my dad was born when his mom was 15, and bob is 16 years his junior, so there's a big gap, and my dad was close (duh) to his mom, did a lot of parenting as HIS dad was a railroad man on the A,T & SF back in the day. and didn't come home in a straight line, when he did come home. damn yankee...
bob learned to fly before he could drive, because he could. he is a natural mechanic, and just got in an airplane when he was 14 and took off. and landed... mostly... upside down. that earned him his first after school job--paying for the 'borrowed' airplane. but the owners also took interest in him and taught him how to fly. he taught his older sister and she taught her older brother, and my dad was out hunting for food (literally) for the dirt-poor family and didn't ever get to learn the flying thing.
Dad and his brother got caught in Bataan, and spent WWII in prison camp. nasty. maybe a blog there someday. uncle Bob was 12 at the time, so didn't get put in prison until the Korean war-and that was only for a little extra AWOL action in the DMZ in Korea. a man after my own heart.
::break to the recent past:: walked into his cabin, which was a ramshackle affair, and saw that his "library" consisted entirely of sci-fi and murder mystery paperbacks. Here's the thing. I own every one of these books! and none were on the shelves I don't own, and haven't read. cept maybe the last few 'dune' spinoffs...
so I learned a few things from old Bob. #1, that he's a rough and tumble guy, as is his wife.
::digression:: her dad had a red ration sticker on his car during WWII which meant all the gas he could buy, because he was the delivery boy for various things wanted at Los Alamos. He took advantage of this by running gold miners and their stuff up into the hills after hours. "their stuff consisted of four cases of dynamite, moonshine, and blasting caps" Old Barb's Dad would put one kid on each case of dynamite, his wife on the moonshine holding a big bowl of potato salad and the baby in her lap, and they'd go tearing off road out to the miners. "this way, if the thing ever blows up, we'll all go" he reasoned.... :: end digression.
so unlike my Dad who was a CHRISTIAN first and foremost, last and hindmost and all parts in between, Uncle Bob has a natural allergy to Churches and their contents. except maybe the wine. which I can relate to. The best day I ever had in church was the day it caught fire, and I managed to "rescue" 6 cases of communion wine before the fire department got there. kept me relaxed for several weeks thereafter in high school.. but I never did like cheap wine after that binge.
Bob spent his life problem solving for NASA; as he puts it: "when something bad happened and somebody got hurt in a lab, they'd send me in to see if whatever happened was still happening" this led to some hair raising, hair-removing, hair singeing stories, some of which might of actually happened. some of which probably mostly happened. at any rate, Ol' Bob eventually retired, and commenced to do re-enactments of the Civil War ... in New Mexcio... that hotbed of Confederacy. mostly this involved dressing up in a blue shirt, and drinking until he fell off the horse, or so it seems to me. he spoke a lot about his years in NASA and little about family. especially my parents. who, being CHRISTIAN didn't really approve of him. I wish I'd known that sooner, say, when I was 8 or 9--I would have hitched down to where he lived, instead of living a double life until I could escape the bible-belters.
the second thing I learned from Uncle Bob was that my Grandma was a tremendous cook! who knew!??! Whenver we visited her, we got the most god-awful bland frozen-thawed-frozen salty food I have ever eaten. she BAKED frozen peas IN THEIR PLASTIC BAG which gave them a certain memorable flavor and texture.
Now I know why. My mom complained in her dainty way, that the food was too spicy for her and her children. My Grandma by the way always said "chillrn" when referring to us; JJ Cale almost says it right.
when I told Bob of my efforts to find a restaurant that serves a fiery and respectable chiles rellenos in SF, he was surprised to learn of my preference. years of drinking, dousing everything in tabasco and 14 years of Camel Straights will do that to a palate. I love hot food, albeit not habenero hot; about 1/2 that hot, but more than jalapeno--usually a LOT more. So when I was eating these NEXICAN meals in SF, looking for NewMexican food or even real border TexMex, and getting touristCheese instead, I was not a happy diner. I did find a few places, but none that I lit candles in front of. So I told Bob all this and he said that my Grandma and my Aunt make full on 3-alarm water-won't-help chiles. all the time. and that the only time she cooked bland food, or used frozen products is when my mom and us visited, because of my mom's first remarks to her. DAMN I wisht I couldve known my Gma's real cooking. I bet I would like it.
So I already knew a bunch of tales about my grandparents, about how my Grandma only got spanked once because when her dad hit her, she bit him and said she'd do it again if he hit her again, and about how she cussed out my Granpa for being drunk again, and how he was growing petrified wood for the family, which now my nephew has--we figure in about 10 generations we'll have our our personal petrified wood stick, and about how my granpa drove the last steam engine in NM, and about how my granma made amazing (and untasted by me) pies, and about how my dad nearly blew his brother's head of with a shotgun when they were 3 and 5, and how a meteor really did hit the garage (and I have a peice of it) and like that.
the new stories weren't about family so much, except about bob and the airplane and about the job he got at the railyards greasing axles that got him enough money to get some new boots that let him go on a date with Barb and how that was that. it was the retelling of them, the gestures, the smiles and faint southern tingles and jangles in his voice that echoed the long lost accents and language and motions of my grandpa and grandma; that's what I wish I knew how to write about. seeing him was seeing not my father, who was a righteous, good man, but a perfesser, and not a man of the earth as was his father, and his father before him. that gnarly stooped hard-bitten, bad-languaged straight shooting (bear, elk, squirrel, road signs) often taciturn backbone and hipbone of my family was good to touch, for good luck for my own aging. for I am aging, and to age into the kind of weatherbeaten old tree with a few good fruit still coming forth each year until the last, that was what I learned from Uncle Bob
VIEW 17 of 17 COMMENTS
kas:
ah thanks, its kicking my butt for sure, but i love it 
kas:
omg! that is terrible!!!!!