I read something the other day that a survey recently revealed that a good percentage of Americans do not know what the initials G.O.P. stand for. Some thought it stood for "Government Of People." I am sure readers of this blog know it stands for "Grand Old Party."
And speaking of readers of this blog, don't forget we count on you for your contributions, be they political, from the left or the right, poetic, photographic or literary! Send them to me at riart1@aol.com. Finally, for those of you who may be interested in the "dirty sidewalks" mentioned in earlier postings, the issue has been quietly and amicably resolved and I am looking forward to cleaner cement in the future.
And speaking of readers of this blog, don't forget we count on you for your contributions, be they political, from the left or the right, poetic, photographic or literary! Send them to me at riart1@aol.com. Finally, for those of you who may be interested in the "dirty sidewalks" mentioned in earlier postings, the issue has been quietly and amicably resolved and I am looking forward to cleaner cement in the future.
And here is one of my favorite short stories, again from the archive developed when I was active in the Cascade Lakes Writing Group. Enjoy it, and let's see if you can send us one of yours!
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Conklin Avenue
I walked up the stairs leading to the wooden porch of the house on Conklin Avenue. Surprisingly, it hadn’t changed much in the fifty or so years since I had lived there with my parents on the first floor in a two bedroom flat. Seated on the top step, his chin resting in the palm of his hand, was a boy of about nine or ten.
“Whatcha want, Mistuh?” the boy called out. “You lookin’ fo ma mama?”
“Not really,” I replied, “but if she’s home, I would like to speak to her for a moment.”
“Whatcha sellin’ Mistuh?” the boy answered. “Mama tole me not to let no people in selling stuff. We ain’t got no money anyhow to buy nothin’ so you might jus’ as well go away.”
I smiled.
“No, son. I’m not selling anything, but I would like to speak to your mother if she is home.”
“Mama tole me never to talk to strangers and tell them whether or not she in the house or not. None of nobody’s business, anyhow. Whadya want anyway, Mistuh?”
“Son,” I continued. “Believe it or not, I used to live in this house many years ago when I was just about your age. I happen to be in town today, and I just figured I’d drive by the house to see if it was still there, and if it had changed very much since I used to sit on the stoop, just like you’re doing now.”
“Whatsa stoop, Mistuh?” the boy asked with a puzzled expression on his face.
“That’s what we used to call the steps in front of the house.”
“Stoop,” he repeated. “That’s cool. Stoop. What’s your name, Mistuh? Mine is Winston but most everyone calls me Winny.”
I was about to tell the boy my name when the door opened behind Winny and a tall woman, wearing a floral apron just like my mother always wore when she was working in the kitchen, came out on the porch.
“What you doin’ talking to dis man, Winston? Get on about sweeping up in back, like I tole you to do and stop sittin’ on the steps dreamin,” and turning to me as Winny scampered off down the stairs and disappeared around the side of the house, continued, “What do you want, Mistuh? If you’re sellin’, we ain’t buyin’.”
I explained to Winny’s mother how I used to live in this house, and because I was in the neighborhood, I wondered how it looked half a century later. Actually, the neighborhood looked pretty much the same as it had then. The two family houses had held up well, and you could see from the roofs, painting and siding that had been done, that the current residents of Conklin Avenue took pride in where they lived. To the side of the “stoop,” where we had hydrangea, there was now a neat rose garden in front of a row of yew hedges.
Winny’s mother, seeing me admiring the roses, smiled and said with pride, “I put those in myself. The pink ones on the left, I jus’ put in this year. The others we put in a couple of years back, but they keep comin’ back nice if the black spot doesn’t git them. Takes a lot of spraying to keep them nice. Ya wanna come in for a cuppa coffee and look at the house?”
I nodded affirmatively.
“Winston,” she called out. “You come in and sit down with this man and yo mama and have your lunch.”
After lunch, we took a quick tour of the well-kept house which hadn’t changed very much from what I remembered, except for different pictures on the walls, most strikingly the one of Jesus in the place where my mother had a sepia toned picture of her grandparents posed for a wedding or some such occasion back in Russia. Winny’s mother took pride in her housekeeping, and it showed.
“Mrs. White,” for that was what she had told me her name was, “Would you mind if I went down to the basement?”
“Why would you want to do that? But we got nuthin’ to be ashamed of. No bodies down there. Winston, you take the gentleman down into the cellar and show him what’s down there. There’s nothin’ much but a storage bin, the furnace and hot water tank, but watch out, sometimes there’s spiders and bugs and crawly stuff down there so I’ll stay up here.”
Winston led me to the door off the corridor leading to the bedrooms at the back of the house. I remembered it well. The light switch was on the right side at the head of the stairs where it always was. I remembered it as being a bit higher, but I guess things always seem higher when you’re a kid.
The old coal furnace had been replaced by an oil burner, and the coal bin, into which the coal delivery man had poured half a ton of coal down a shiny chute they carried on their truck once a month, was gone. I walked over to a brick wall, behind where the pile of coal used to be and counted the bricks on the wall, starting at the bottom.
“Whatcha doin’ Man?” Winny asked. “Yo gonna get your hands dirty.”
Ten bricks up from the bottom and two bricks to the left from where the masonry protruded, I nudged a worn brick, many times painted over in shades of gray or rust, which to my pleasant surprise moved under by thumb’s light pressure. Excitedly, I turned to Winny.
“Son, you wouldn’t happen to have a screwdriver or a penknife handy, would you?”
“Sure, Mistuh. Take my knife,” said the boy, pulling a two bladed pen knife from the back pocket of his jeans.
Wedging the knife’s blade under the brick, I was able to remove it easily. I extended my hand into the opening and felt, through years of dust and pebbly chips, for what I hoped was still there. And it was. I smiled broadly as I gripped the box which lay in a crevice behind where the brick had been and gently pulled it out, placing it on the concrete floor. Then, after carefully replacing the brick, I handed the knife back to Winny. The boy handed me a rag which he had found and we wiped fifty years of dirt from the box.
“Let’s go back upstairs, Winny. I want to show you and your mother something.”
Once upstairs, seated at the kitchen table upon which the fastidious Mrs. White had spread out the real estate section of yesterday’s Newark Star Ledger, I displayed an elongated blue Cut Rite Waxed Paper carton, securely fastened with about three feet of string which, if my memory serves me correctly, probably came from a cake carton from Megdal’s Bakery on Bergen Street. Opening it carefully, because the cover’s serrated metallic edge was rusted, I lifted an object, wrapped in a layer of waxed paper and also tied firmly with more bakery twine, from the carton. Removing the wrapping, I slowly unrolled its contents, the May 1943 issue of Captain Marvel Comics.
“Who’s dat on de cover?” Winny inquired, suddenly interested.
“Well,” I said, “that’s Captain Marvel. He was sort of a Superman type character and I collected the comic books in which he appeared. He really was a boy named Billy Batson, who turned into Captain Marvel to fight the bad guys.”
“I see from de cover dat he is flying. How come he could do dat?” the boy asked.
“Captain Marvel,” I continued, “had all kinds of super powers. And Billy Batson could turn into Captain Marvel just by pronouncing the word ‘Shazam’!”
“What kinda word is that?” Mrs. White interrupted.
Replying to her, I explained that “Shazam” was a made-up word, consisting of the initials of famous ancient Greeks or Romans or their Gods: S for Socrates, H for Hercules, A for Achilles, Z for Zeus, A for Archimedes and M for Mercury.
“Oh,“ Mrs. White paused. “I thought it was some kind of Afro name, like Shabazz, you know, Malcolm X’s widow’s last name. That would make it a lot better.”
“What do you mean,” I inquired.
“Well, dis Captain Marble, or whatever you call him, is a white man, like you. No offense intended, but I don’t want Winston here, and I see he is getting interested in dat comic book already, setting up some white man as his hero. There’s enough of that on TV already. I wish this Captain fellow was black. Now, that would be jus’ fine. But he ain’t, so you can take the book with you, an’ it’s been nice talking to you.”
“Mrs. White,” I said, “I can’t take this comic book with me. I just wanted to see if it was still there where I hid it when my mother threw out my other comic books fifty years ago. This is your house, where I found it, and it belongs to you.!”
“I tole you I don’t want my son having a white superhero to read about. So take your comic book.”
“Mrs. White, what would you say if I told you that this comic book may be worth two or three hundred dollars? Would you still tell me to take it? Really, it’s yours to keep.”
Mrs. White and Winny looked at me incredulously. From the identical way their mouths hung open, you could see they were mother and child.
“Tell you what. If you can git that kinda money for dis comic book, go right ahead. Jus’ make sure you send us some of it. Okay, Mistuh?”
So I left with the comic book, and that evening, was amazed to find that I was able to locate a buyer on the internet who was willing to pay $1200 for the May 1943 number of Captain Marvel Comics, even one that had been rolled up in waxed paper for over fifty-five years. Once the buyer’s check cleared, I went to the Young Readers section of Barnes and Noble and purchased whatever biographies they had of great, black Americans, ranging from Nat Turner to Colin Powell, and shipped them off to Winny. I also sent his mother a check for the remaining $967.
A few weeks later, I received two thank you notes, one from Mrs. White and the other from a Reverend Lewis Tillinghast on the stationery of the Mount Olivet Missionary Baptist Church, expressing appreciation for my $500 donation. Shortly thereafter, Winny called me on the telephone and proudly boasted that he had started reading the books, and already, he was wondering whether he should be a doctor or a lawyer.
Jack Lippman
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A Question for Thoughtful Republicans
Thoughtful Republicans are mulling over whom they should support for the Republican nomination to run for President in thirteen months. There have been several debates on television and the declared candidates have been traversing the country seeking support in the primary elections which will select some of the delegates to the G.O.P.’s convention in Tampa this summer.
They are asking themselves several questions:
1. Should we nominate a candidate whose chief attribute is his ability to defeat the Democratic candidate, who is likely to be the incumbent, Barack Obama?
2. Should we nominate a candidate best equipped to carry out the party’s platform, which is likely to include planks such as
a. reduced government spending wherever possible,
b. repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act,
c. continuation of tax cuts for the wealthy,
d. support of right to work laws throughout the country,
e. a restructuring of Social Security and Medicare,
f. moving Medicaid programs to the individual states,
g. reduced corporate taxation,
h. a reduction of environmental conservation programs,
i. return of the function of the Department of Education to the states,
j. solving the energy problem by allowing unlimited offshore drilling,
k. diminished regulation of industry, business and particularly of the banking and investment marketplace,
l. repeal of the Dodd-Frank legislation,
m. increased political support for the State of Israel,
n. commitment to reducing unemployment by encouraging the wealthy and businesses to use the resources developed by lower taxation to create jobs,
o. tighter control of immigration and benefits available to those here illegally, and
p. increased Second Amendment rights for gun owners?
3. Should we nominate a candidate who, while accepting the party’s platform as contemplated above, will adhere to it, but within the framework of primarily making all of his, or her, decisions based on what is best for the American people, and not for the Republican Party?
Whom do you think the Republicans will nominate? II have my opinion, but I would like your input.
JL
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