Category Archives: Personal

Biographical, Personal, Springdale

Pat Ellison, A Living Eulogy

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PAT COLLAGE.jpg

 

Perhaps it is a macabre thing to eulogize the living; yet, it’s oddly satisfying. It’s the chance to whisper softly, “Thank you for what you did for me.” As we recognize the truths that others attempt to reveal our eyes and hearts will turn inward, sharing similar memories and thoughts. Recognizing a person through other eyes is a precious joy in life, and I am sure that as other people who shared time with me in band read this, they will be held captive for at least a brief moment, recalling days long past. Trying to pick the words that convey the march of time and emotion is both a chore and an act of respect. All too often, we hear speakers exhort others to plant the words of appreciation and respect into the lives of those who are still living, so that they might feel the soft comfort of being remembered. As much as I have written about a soul named Barb who pointed the way for me, Pat Ellison was her counterpart for me in school.

If we are lucky, we each have a few people who define our nascent ideas of character, intelligence, and charisma. While we might not even recognize them as such at the time, as we grow older, life tends to grab our shoulders and turn us back to them, teaching us, revealing things that should have been manifested earlier in life. Perhaps those students lucky enough to have amplified homes with loving parents will not see the past as I did. After having known so many people who were in the military, I’ve discovered that some elements of my respect for Ms. Pat Ellison are exactly those that allow recruits to grow to love their drill instructors. No matter how irritated she would sometimes be, it was a frustration rooted in things I could understand, which was markedly different from what I might experience outside of school. I know for a fact that she wanted to throw a tuba at me a few times; if she had, I would hope she would have extracted the tuba player from inside it first. She told me that she remembered my sweet smile, and I joked that I remembered the time she was vainly trying to teach me to play a solo for a concert in the park. (Hint: neither one of us was smiling for the first hour.) One year, she picked a marching song with “Malagueña” in the title. That song was more complicated than calculus. The only reason I learned it was so that she would not throw me off the marching observation tower. I’m not sure I’m kidding. Any honest student will tell you that Ms. Ellison had her moments of intense frustration. In her defense, I’m not sure how any teacher confronted with 1 to 200 students might not claim criminal insanity multiple times a year. Let’s not even start considering the lunacy of trying to be a calm, rational person on a bus ride to Washington D.C. with hundreds of kids intent on finding the most fun possible.

I sat and talked to Pat Ellison on a Monday morning last year. Even though I see her from time to time, I haven’t interrupted her regular life to share moments and memories. As is always the case with her, she hugged me and talked as if the intervening years were a figment of our imaginations. She told me she had heart surgery a few years ago and back surgery later; at 71, her pace might be slower, but she is still a force of nature. She uses a flip phone and is not a fan of technology. She loves golf, but I don’t hold that against her. I did my best to convince her that so many of her former students would love to share with her as adults and that she was a huge impact on all of us. She humbly denies that any of my flattery could be true. Even though her eyes still light up when someone makes her laugh, you can tell her humility isn’t false. I can only imagine how full her memory must be from the countless people she’s known or how sore her knees must be from the million hours of marching and standing at the podium exerted upon her.

We have Pat Ellison at a great disadvantage: almost everyone remembers her. She has touched so many lives that her list of students and friends must be at least as long as a metropolitan phone book. Her connection to us and to others is immense and monumental. (For any teachers reading this, you at times have the best shot at immortality, being etched into your student’s minds and words for decades to come. Many of us are merely memory footnotes to others; some teachers are the thesis and anchors in so many kids lives.) Undoubtedly, there must be people who didn’t appreciate her – because I’ve also learned that good people must accumulate those who don’t understand them. Being great necessitates not being appreciated, too. I’m glad that I fell onto the side of right in regards to Ms. Ellison.

I told her that I was at a graduation a few years ago when she gave the “Tag-You’re-It” speech. She admitted to being terrified at the idea of giving such a speech. I would have never suspected her to experience stage fright. She was surprised when I told her that I had seen her speech on a blog a few years later, from someone who only knew her through another band member. While she thought her speech was uninspired, it had, in fact, reached many more people than she had imagined possible. Her legions of students and admirers hadn’t forgotten her. Even if her efforts hadn’t been inspired or creative, her commitment and persistence at showing up and working toward a goal, day in, day out, year after year certainly would’ve earned her recognition. I had also seen her at a British Brass Band concert many years before, and the familiarity of her expressions took me back a couple of decades.

She genuinely is both unaware and humbled at the idea that she sits at the nexus of several thousand people who have such great memories of her. For those who know me well, you know that band is one of the few things that allowed me escape from my home life and opened the world up to me. Without band and without Noel Morris and then Pat Ellison, I am certain that my life would have taken a more sinister turn. I stayed in band through the generosity and kindness of both Noel and Pat. By being in band, I stayed connected to the world at large and remained able to convince myself that I was more than the circumstances of my youth. Unlike the cases of many of my contemporaries, band was almost my sole window to the world. I learned things in band that dwarfed the concept of simple musical notes or technical ability – that is what a good teacher and great human being seems to do naturally.

It was Mrs. Ellison who told me that the only thing keeping me from making All-State band was ‘me’ and to set aside who I was going into the audition room. It worked. “They don’t see through the curtain. Play like you just did for me and you will leave smiling.” She was right. Noel Morris had said, “Practice, you fool!” when I said I’d never even learn how to make a sound emanate from the mouthpiece. (It took me 2 or 3 days just to ‘buzz’ the mouthpiece, a bad omen. I think Mr. Morris thought I might have been soft in the head.) Between the ritual of books and practice, I advanced. Ms. Ellison told me the same thing over and over: practice. When I failed my senior year, it was her I let down. But I had those 2 years of All-State, all because even if Ms. Ellison didn’t really believe I could make it, I believed her when she told me I could. That confidence from her propelled me. Even though I didn’t take advantage of either, it was Ms. Ellison who gave me the option of both a music scholarship in college and a free pass into the U.S. Army Orchestra.

It is one thing to ponder in abstract the moments from over 30 years ago, reminiscing. It’s another to sit and share moments that Monday morning with someone who has lived such a rich, full life. It was a pleasure to share time with her and I think we all might be missing the chance to continue to learn from someone who probably could teach us all a few lessons in compassion and hard work. (All of these things are held in common by great teachers, of course.) Pat Ellison’s impact seems to echo and flourish as I age. The primary lesson I come back to is one of insistence on looking toward the goal and practicing enough to see it move a little closer. So much of what we excel at is due to simple persistence. Ms. Ellison certainly believed in persistence; at times, we played certain bars so many times I felt as if we were in the movie “Groundhog Day.”

When I was younger, there were times I didn’t understand Ms. Ellison. All I wanted to do was the play music, interact with people, and avoid being the center of attention. I didn’t enjoy some of the monotony of group practice, especially marching. (I still believe marching might be the only genuinely demonic force in the universe.) However, band allowed for travel and banter, though, and those things are what melded us into a loose group. I was able to be in a group of people and enjoy a huge slice of life that would have been otherwise mysterious to me. Maybe no one will understand it when I say that a great deal of life would have been hidden behind the curtain if it weren’t for band and Ms. Ellison. I’m certain that she had been exposed to enough of life to suspect how severe my circumstances sometimes were, yet she was also able to not press too closely. That’s another skill that is probably difficult to hone as a teacher and even more unlikely for the average human being.

Ms. Ellison had her own reasons for the things she did, some of which we weren’t invited to be a part of – and with good reason. Times were different and things that are easily accepted now weren’t met with the same casual indifference. Ms. Ellison was a complex person and not understanding those complexities back then diminished my ability to look past any frustrations I might have had. She made choices and did things precisely because of her own life exerting its pressures.

Now that I’m older, I can appreciate her as a music teacher and as a person – and my heart grows a little. For so many of the people in my list of notables; among them, Barb, Willie, Pat, or Nellie, they all share one thing in common: I wish I could live a part of my life again, as their contemporary, to see who they were and what made to be the individuals they became by the time I came along. Pat is now in her early 70s. Just thinking about how many people she grew to know in life since she graduated college in 1966 makes me feel both old and tired.

If she were standing here listening to me read this aloud, she would shift her weight from one foot to another, looking toward the ground and smiling. As I finished, she would deny that she had done anything special, other than work and try to finish what she started. But the flicker in her eyes would belie the notion that she probably does see the incredible line of students standing in single file behind her, all looking back to the times they shared with her. It is the earned legacy of a great teacher.

Thank you, Ms. Ellison.

 

 

Personal, Whimsical

An Unintended Dinner Joke

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Normally, I’m the one accused of improperly putting my foot in my mouth. I’ve argued in favor of my relative innocence over the years, indicating that my wife Dawn is as likely to commit a social faux pas as I am. Since she has a normal reputation, anytime she deviates into my clown forest of verbal missteps, it tends to be much more pronounced and noteworthy.

This week, Dawn had me chauffeur her to Hot Springs for a technology conference. She’s shortened her stern lecture about me not being crazy or saying anything too far off the wall.

Last night, Dawn’s company treated about 20 professionals, employees, and customers, to a delicious dinner at the Brick House.

Typically, I order strange menu selections and most often avoid meat. Usually there is enough meat on the table from the other guests to cause the president of PETA to have a coronary. That night, I had an order of fries, an order of asparagus, and an order of broccoli – and of course a superb salad. I had an array of sauces: A-1, Heinz 57, anything I could steal from those around me. (Asparagus might look like boiled snake throats, but it is a food from the heavens.)

We were engaging in witty back-and-forth banter, anecdotes, and typical supper conversation as we began to inhale our various selections.

Oddly, the entire table seemed to experience a unifying lull in conversation. It was if the Pope had wandered into the room playing a banjo or a unicorn had magically appeared on top of the table – and we all noticed and stopped talking simultaneously.

Dawn had been eyeing my menu selections, probably pondering the gastronomical consequences and symptoms I might later experience.
Into this previously cited lull, Dawn hollered these words, probably as the volume of talk to that point was high:

“Who wants to sleep with my husband tonight?”

Dead silence.

Then cacophonous laughter.

PS: There were no takers, in any case, so my wife Dawn rode back to the hotel with me, mentally flipping a coin as to how accurate her intended joke might turn out to be. As for who ate the largest selection of their own foot on this trip, I think Dawn earned her award this time.

Brinkley, Monroe County, Opinion, Personal, Politics, Social Rules

A Personal Story About Guns

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This story is intensely personal, one involving guns, domestic abuse, and biography. It’s not what I started to write and it certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s honest and reflects much of who I am. Apologies for any errors and I tried to avoid the mention of real people; however, it is just as much my story to tell as theirs.

In 1970, I lived near Rich, Arkansas, near the nexus of Highways 39 and 49. It was a swampy place, surrounded by farms and mosquitoes. My family lived for a brief time slightly up the hill to the East, on the south side of the road. It’s easy to remember, because in March of that year, my dad killed a cousin of mine while drunk driving. Growing up, I thought my cousin Donald Wayne Morris was an uncle, as we called his wife Aunt Elizabeth. Like most family lore, it wasn’t accurate and caused confused conversations. After my dad was released from prison for, among other things, armed robbery, he came back to Monroe County, Arkansas to continue his wild ways. One of the ways he chose to do this was to have an affair with my “Aunt Elizabeth,” the widow of the cousin he had killed in a drunken driving episode. I was at home in the little white house near Rich the day my dad killed Donald Wayne. As I remember it, his wife was with us at the house, too.

But this story isn’t about Aunt Elizabeth, drunk driving, or armed robbery.

Despite having an extensive criminal record, my dad always had firearms around the house. Being a quintessential redneck, he believed that all guns should always be loaded. He would brag, “You’ll be careful if you know that all guns are always loaded.” Had Bill Engvall been around back then, he would have paid for a “Here’s your sign” tattoo to be emblazoned on my dad’s forehead. My dad also didn’t believe in keeping guns hidden or under lock and key, even if toddlers or small children were around. After extensive research, the word that best describes him in this regard is “moron.”

Growing up, there were a couple of notable deaths resulting from children getting their hands on guns and shooting themselves or each other. Some family members wanted to scream and get angry about such easy access to guns – but were silenced by the withering collective stare of the culture that considered any questions about gun access to be a treasonous breach of their rights. There were angry shouts about it sometimes, but they were rare and quickly subdued. In pockets of society all around this country, men will grow angry at any mention of responsible gun ownership. They are not likely to understand nuance and the greater collective good. The words evoke a threatening aura of loss, or make them feel like they are quite wrong about the idea that not all guns and gun owners are created equal. It is an ‘all or nothing,’ scenario, without regard to a safer middle ground.

I’m not certain how old I was, but somewhere before my fifth birthday. One early Saturday afternoon, my mom and dad were screaming at one another, planning to escalate to blows at any moment. It was a familiar and constant ritual – and they knew the steps as well as any dance. I went into their bedroom and the longest rifle I had ever seen lay across the bed. It was sleekly black, with a surprisingly long silver barrel. There were others guns in the room; there were a couple of shotguns and pistols under the bed, a few in the closet, and one leaning in the corner for quick access. It was the black one on the bed calling my name, though. Without hesitation, I went up to it, put my hand across the trigger guard, and squeezed the trigger. The gun leaped from the bed, thundering like an exploding gas tank in the bedroom. I felt my ears pop inward.

I’m sure I started crying – and not just because of the painful gunshot inside the room. I knew my enraged dad would be coming in to exact his revenge. I wasn’t disappointed. I suppose he forgot his mission to scream at my mom in the kitchen when the gun fired, because he backhanded me so hard I thought the back of my head was going to touch my shoulder blades. Although mom denied it, dad kicked me more than once as I curled against the dresser near the bedroom door. Mom would find it hard to believe I could recall an event from such an early age. I used to point out that it was more traumatic than a typical memory, as it involved firearms in closed spaces and being kicked like a coffee can along the sidewalk.

Later, I looked through the round hole in the bedroom wall to see that the line of fire went straight to the next house along the road. It turned out that the bullet had pierced through the siding on that house, too, although no one was hurt. I often wonder if anyone from the other house still tells this story.

At the time, I couldn’t understand how stupid my dad sounded, screaming at me that I could have shot someone – and that I should never touch guns. Part of it was that he was constantly handing them to me or doing ridiculously stupid things with them as he drank. Often, he pointed them in anger at other people, including his own family. He shot at several people when I was growing up. He fired guns from inside moving vehicles, shot propane tanks, poured ammunition into both open campfires and fireplaces, and did just about every idiotic and unreasonable thing possible with a gun.

But this story isn’t about how I could have killed someone when I was very young.

All through my youth, my dad had guns everywhere. Guns, knives, crossbows – of all kinds. He had a violent temper and a lengthy history of domestic violence and criminal behavior. Anyone who knows me also knows that while I came to terms with my dad before he died, the truth is that he had no business being allowed to touch guns or own them. Police in Northwest Arkansas and in Monroe County knew dad’s criminal history and love of hitting people in anger. They also knew he had an arsenal pretty much his entire adult life. Dad had more than one gun given to him by members of law enforcement. Is it hard to see that he felt somehow empowered to continue the same wayward behavior?

Part of the reason I’m telling this story is to shake my head that people seem surprised that just about anyone can get guns and commit horrible acts of violence. I acknowledge that it was a different time even a couple of decades ago. The truth, though? People haven’t changed. Right now, in places that might surprise you, there are people are thinking of doing crazy things. Many of them are surrounded by people that don’t think their friend or family member is going to be the one who loses it and goes on a rampage. The gun buffet is at their disposal, if they want it. It’s true that a person so motivated isn’t going to be limited by a lack of easy access to guns. Don’t try to weaken my story by implying otherwise. If the guns are military grade automatic weapons, though, we are treading into the less reasonable realm of gun ownership. As I might have mentioned, my dad had access to explosives, too, despite his criminal record.

On more than one occasion, I fantasized about taking one of the guns and killing my dad. He deserved it on several different nights. For those unfamiliar with anger and alcohol, the nightfall has always brought with it a greater likelihood of violence. For all of you who’ve never been put in the position of wishing you could kill your own father to protect yourself, I can only say “you’re lucky.” People around us and certainly some family members knew how likely it would be to get a call informing them that my dad had killed one or all of us, finally. There would have been tears and the usual, “We could have done something”nonsense. Yes, they could have done something – they could have knocked my dad silly and taken all of his guns. There were a couple of times I regretted not killing my dad because the lesson of not doing so was followed by him beating my mom so violently that it was difficult to get the sound of her head bouncing off the metal bed support frame from my mind. It would not have been the gun’s fault had I grabbed a pistol from under the table and shot my dad. It would have been his fault.

It is true that it’s not the gun’s fault. People commit crimes.

It’s also true that the gun crowd is a little too zealous; playing the role of society that surrounded me while I was growing up. We can all be reasonable without resorting to exaggeration. Our collective future society is not going to look like it does today. It’s inevitable, because the problems we are dealing with are complicated.

It might be an easy thing to say that my dad was an aberration from the normal; he was aberrant, that is true. He also was representative of many in our society, those who secretly know that having access to any gun they want is probably a bad thing for most of the rest of us. We blithely wander through our lives, hoping that anger or mental illness doesn’t propel someone to kill us or someone we love, all the while uneasily thinking of the millions of complex firearms sitting in closets, under beds, in attics, within reach.

As I walk the streets, I don’t worry about getting shot or protecting myself. It’s a fools errand. There is no guarantee of safety, no matter how many guns I carry or how many take up space in my home. From my experience, if everyone is carrying around sticks, the likelihood of someone getting clobbered is 100%.

I don’t own any guns but shooting at a firing range is entertaining. If you’ve never done it, you might be surprised how enjoyable it is. I don’t hunt, though, mainly because I would be a vegetarian if I weren’t so damned lazy. The idea of shooting animals for sport or food is strangely exotic to me. While I would do it to survive, it would be a lesser choice for me. (You’d find me eating stale prairie grass before you’d catch me skinning a hog as an appetizer.) For our own sake, we have to figure out a way to separate the exaggerated claims of gun ownership for hunting and basic personal protection from the one the fringe continues to impose on us all – the one which commands us to pretend that all guns and gun owners are the same.

Most gun owners are responsible, reasonable people. Contrary to what the NRA would try to tell us, most people don’t want automatic weapons or the ability to buy literally any firearm they want. They think gun locks and safes are reasonable. Most want responsible controls in place for everyone. It’s the way society works when it works well.

The shadow in the back of my mind, though, is the one created by people such as my father.

Personal

Why Think?

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manure managers

A satirical nugget of truth I wrote for someone needing anecdotal evidence. If you spew it, you don’t notice it coming or going.

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Shielding my eyes from the onslaught of the descending summer sun, I ran as fast as my middle-aged body would grudgingly allow, my arms pistoning in an obscure pantomime of speed. As I neared the open sliding door, I dove into the sleek helicopter, hands stretched in front of me. A button ripped off the collar of my shirt as I skidded across the soft rubbery floor. I sat up, grabbing the lanyard hook next to the open door, looking down and to my left as the helicopter rapidly lifted away from the parking lot. Lines and arrows on the pavement blurred quickly, and passersby shrank rapidly to the size of toy figurines below. Within seconds, I was several hundred feet above the ground and the whirling ferocity of the helices of the helicopter finally reached my ears, the adrenaline-fueled deafness relenting only slightly. I smelled the sea, calling me forward on the winds that now swished across my smiling face. I knew that a bonfire would soon be ferociously consuming a mountainous array of driftwood along a nameless beach, unknown faces surrounding the ember-laden air near it, as if giving homage to an ancient god. So it begins, so it begins.

(I wrote this in an attempt to accurately describe one of those crazy dreams that possessed me around 3 a.m. this morning – the kind that most love having but detest hearing about from others. I woke up feeling as if I had just dived inside the helicopter and as if there were such a beach waiting beneath the dusky sky. Reluctantly, I went about my day, waiting for the feeling of ‘next,’ the anticipation of a thing to come, to dissipate. Like an impending sneeze in the back of my nose, the tickle of the dream left me disjointed.)

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“The rumors of his demise are greatly exaggerated but the likelihood of such isn’t.” – X (My apologies if this is too dark.)

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“Trump is pro-gun, as he is always shooting off his mouth.” -X

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“Be your own boss,” they advise me. I’d rather be the boss of my boss for fifteen seconds. Please, dear Aladdin, lend me your lamp that I may make it so.

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My publicist messed up badly. It wasn’t until after the ceremony they told me it was a eulogy rather than a motivational speech. But I totally killed it, so to speak.

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I knew my friends and I probably weren’t going to finish our first movie, mainly because we are lazy. So lazy, in fact, that every time we’d start a scene, the director would grab the megaphone and yell, “Nonaction!”

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Personal

Typically Atypical

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If you come into work early, no one ever notices.

If you leave early, everyone thinks you’re a slacker. – Reddit

Sincerely, (Someone who is at work before you even think of hitting ‘snooze.’)

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Yesterday, I put my foot in my mouth on purpose, just to demonstrate that hypocrisy has its limits, only to find that the hypocrites own about 400 shoes.

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Constantly overheard quote at work: “At ____________, we are family.” If that is the case, you won’t mind if we pop open a few cold ones and proceed to scream at each other about things we did to each other 10 years ago?

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“Faith is knowing that the stairs are still there at 4 a.m. Experience is not running down them three at a time in the dark. Wisdom is not pointing at your spouse at the bottom of the stairs and laughing.” – X

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“You can choose your own opinion, but not your own facts.” The contradiction of this cliché is what leads so many not only to walk the path of willful ignorance, but to prance along its way. Or, as a scholar might say, “The reason it smells like flowers to you is because you are mowing your neighbor’s petunias.” ‪

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That moment of sublime perverse celebration; seeing the blue sky above and knowing that although you might not be here in 10 years to see it, someone else will gaze up and notice.

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Saturday Night Fight = Arkansas Theater

(Just asking, after a friend posted about yet another brawl where she lives.)

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When you’re hungry, you hear weird things. Watching HGTV – and I was certain the voiceover person said they were buying a property on the island of Santa Marinara.

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Here I am again, wishing I had been a pro football player; at least with a history of concussions, all of this nonsense might seem more reasonable – or I could forget between days.

(A brief commentary on a Monday workday…)

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The most accurate and stupidest picture I’ve yet created. Unfortunately, not only is the circus mine, but I’m one of the monkeys. Millions of years of evolution has led us to these ill-devised systems that mulch us like discarded leaves.

x monkey 2

(No matter how weird your friends are, I’m fairly certain that none of them have made a picture as ridiculous as this one.)

Personal

Thursday de Almost Friday

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burn at the stake.jpg

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Normal moved out of my house – and I kicked it in the butt as it tried to leave gracefully. Me and weird are now sitting comfortably on the couch.

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Mary had a little lamb, but after a while, she also had a really dirty carpet.

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They said a storm was brewing. I hope it’s not decaffeinated. (My apology to yet another cliché…)

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I hope that if a SWAT team ever breaks into my house to arrest me that I am on the toilet. That way, it will be awkward for all of us – and not just me.

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With apologies: That awkward moment when you look at a picture of a posing couple and momentarily think “Is that a before-and-after picture?”

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The secret to musical harmony is to hear the other notes even when the trumpets fall silent. The secret to feeling connected in life is to picture the orchestra when all you see is an empty podium.

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“I wrote a letter to all my fans. It was returned as undeliverable.”

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We have a budding tradition at my house: as the likelihood of visitors increases, my wife begins the primarily-female ritual of “straightening up,” which now leads me to hang underwear on the front door hook outside. Invariably, everyone’s first reaction is now one of “Ha, ha – Look, there’s underwear on the door!” – and subsequently forget to measure the apparent dust found everywhere. I’m considering buying a colorful assortment of undies to better match the occasion. (In this picture, you can see our faithful cat, seated, awaiting n̶e̶w̶ ̶v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶s̶ new visitors to the house.)

If enough people show interest, this might be something I could market to husbands/boyfriends, and other idiots.

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Personal, Washington County, Arkansas

A Possible Story to Frighten

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jay hill

(This is a story I wrote for a friend of mine. Some of it is true, some of it is embellishment to amuse and delight him.)

I am telling you this story so that you can better understand Jay Hill. Like all interesting people, he has some history that he keeps well-guarded; not just from fear of being judged, but as a sort of superstitious protection. Sometimes, giving words to fears grants them life.

Years ago, Jay lived in a house that had been abandoned for 13 years. A new owner spent the minimum necessary to get it habitable again. Jay’s family rented it for much less than they would have paid anywhere else.

The lady who previously owned the house, Marjorie Wilson, died under suspicious circumstances. Even though the police investigated the adult children of Marjorie twice for suspected foul play, they could never bring charges. Within a year, both of Mrs. Wilson’s children disappeared after having last been seen inside the residence. You might be able to google the mysterious death, as a semi-famous investigator spent months trying to unravel the mystery. He wrote a story for the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette – and that story was later loosely used to make a movie. The house no longer exists, having been torn down two years after Jay moved out. It was once known as the Fuller House, sitting slightly off West Center Street.

Jay’s family had lived in the house for only about two weeks when he began to experience sleepless nights, imagining a figure at the foot of his bed. He would wake suddenly, thinking he could feel fingers slide across his feet. If he covered his head with a blanket, he could hear a female voice, softly asking him to go downstairs. Jay’s sister teased him mercilessly about it, accusing him of claiming there was a ghost in his room in order to get more attention. After a month in the house, Jay began to feel himself being pulled in the direction of the windowless wall on the East side of the house. He would wake up, hearing the irritated female figure demanding that he get up and leave with her. In two months, Jay began sneaking out of bed and sleeping inside one of the two closets in the bedroom, curled up with his feet bracing against the door. He could hear the ghostly figure scratching relentlessly. No one else in the house could see or hear any of it, which only worsened Jay’s already frazzled composure. He lost several pounds and his hair started falling out around his temples.

A school counselor pulled Jay aside and talked to him privately. Even though she didn’t believe that Jay was actually being visited by ghosts, she recommended that he wake himself up during these dreams and imagined visits. She was certain Jay was imagining it all, due to some family or personal issue that was robbing him of his ability to sleep deeply.

On April 15th, Jay awoke, feeling a face within inches of his. He was inside the closet with the door closed. He realized he could hear a low, guttural voice repeating, “We must go.” Since Jay half-believed he had been imagining it all, he reached up to pass his hand had through the empty air above him in the musty closet. And touched a face, one covered in what felt like small bristly hair.

Just as Jay started to scream in terror, the apparition grabbed his arm and took him threw the wall, into the back room used for storage. Stunned, Jay curled himself into a tight ball and rocked himself.

Before he knew how much time had passed, he woke up, feeling his sister shaking him and asking, “What are doing sleeping on the floor back here?” Jay told her the story. She of course laughed and teased him again.

Twice afterwards, Jay witnessed the female apparition walking past open doors. Once she looked his in direction and seemed to say “Some day.” Jay spent every night doing anything possible to prevent himself from falling asleep.

Before Jay could lose his sanity totally, his family had to move again, as a developer had bought the property for cash and wanted it so quickly that he paid the first and last month rent on an apartment on the other side of 6th Street.

For those of you who know Jay, he might have told you this childhood story and about the woman visitor in the Fuller House. I think he honestly sleeps with one eye open some nights, wondering if the ghost would follow through on her promise to visit him again. I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t half the reason he rents instead of buying a house.

Until this morning, I hadn’t thought about his old story for at least 10 years. He walked up to me, cup of coffee in hand, frazzled and nervous. He told me that he had awoke last night, after dreaming a female ghostly form had walked past a door in his apartment. Jay told me he lunged at it and instead of disappearing or recoiling that the ghost had grabbed him – and dragged him through a wall. Jay said he awoke to the feel of the claw-like fingers on his arm, the sensation of literally having just went through a solid wall still echoing in his body, his heart pounding like a symphony of hammers.

I could see it in his eyes. The fear. The dread. But I joked, trying to relieve the discomfort of what he was probably really thinking. That’s what people do when they are truly afraid.

The apparition isn’t waiting for him to be in a house. I think it’s started again.

I hope that Jay gets a good night’s sleep and walks into work tomorrow, tired but still there. Because I think I might be the one who loses my mind if Jay doesn’t call in and then doesn’t show up to work. I’m afraid that if I visit his apartment, I might find it to be perfectly empty, with no clue as to where Jay might be. Or worse, hear a small female voice asking me to come downstairs.

 

Jury Duty, Personal, Social Rules, Washington County, Arkansas

Jury Duty Aftermath

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As I predicted, the jury pool for the trial of Samuel Robert Hill in Washington County, Arkansas ignored his mental illness defense and threw the book at him.

Whether he was really mentally ill isn’t something I can be certain of, as I didn’t get to hear the evidence that the jury heard during trial. On the other hand, I didn’t enter the jury process with a predisposed belief that mental illness isn’t a ‘real’ thing, either, or that even though the law says juries must take them into account, that mental illness should never be used to defend someone – and if it is, it should be ignored. Also, while I didn’t hear the evidence in the same way as the jury did, I did read it, including many things which were kept away from the jury during the trial. In some ways, I had a more complete picture and better information than they did. That’s how trials, work, though. The distinction in my case is that I heard some of the potential jurors say they didn’t believe in mental illness and that it can’t be used to mitigate a crime or its punishment. While I was dismissed for some unknown reason, citizens were left to serve on the jury who legally didn’t qualify, given their beliefs and biases about mental illness. Maybe the opposing psychiatrists had different levels of credibility or the defendant’s mother was a better witness than her sister, who testified for the defendant. Truth be told, though, none of it really mattered if enough mental illness-deniers got seated on the jury. Most of them wouldn’t admit they believe such things, as it sounds stupid to admit, just as bigots know they can’t claim that certain minorities are better at sports or that some are just angrier people – they believe it in their hearts but have been conditioned to conceal these bigoted or stereotypical ideas from everyone else.

I know that there are people who don’t believe in mental illness, people who think such sufferers can just ‘snap out it,’ or just get busy to distract themselves. It’s almost insurmountable to get past that kind of attitude in people. It’s not based on evidence or science, so argument and reason won’t get you around their mental block.

Likewise, many of those in the jury pool said that they were certain that if a defendant didn’t get on the stand, that this indicated either deceit or outright guilt. Despite the judge and the defense pointing out that this attitude was not acceptable if you were going to serve on a jury, several of those people also remained and undoubtedly served on the jury. Deciding to not testify is a fundamental right in criminal trials. It’s a foundation of our system. Especially if a defendant’s case rests on the idea that he or she is mentally ill, it is ludicrous to hold that against them. The law is clear: you can’t hold it against a defendant. As a citizen, of course you can. Many of the jurors ignored the law and should not have been on the jury deciding a person’s fate. Like most people, those who believe it know they can’t just admit such a belief in the face of scrutiny; they’ll justify or rationalize their bias and tell us that they can decide a case, not realizing that such a bias infects everything that filters through their eyes and ears.

(PS  Another bias that I heard people admit to: people charged with crimes are overwhelmingly guilty. Which may or may not be true – but again, jurors aren’t supposed to have this bias.)

I wrote the defense attorney in the trial a couple of times, as he wanted to know my opinion as an outsider. Much of what I wrote in my previous blog post I included in my email to him. The premise of my reply was that I knew before I ever left the building that day during jury selection that the jury pool wasn’t one I would ever want on a trial wherein me or my family was a defendant. There was too much bias. I told the attorney that I guessed every major aspect of the trial and its outcome, both in its decision and punishment. I was careful to not point fingers at a specific person, but I did my best to convey the overwhelming specifics that I observed, all of which combined left me with the idea that the jury pool wasn’t one that should have been hearing that case. In sort, I told the attorney that no matter what he had said or done once the trial started, the conclusion was predetermined. Had the prosecutor been the worst to have ever served, he would have won the case with that jury pool.

Some potential jurors knew more about the case than they admitted, too, and some had access to information after jury selection started. In the age of cellphones, it’s probably impossible to eliminate such temptations. I had some recommendations for different kinds of questions to help weed out these people. I could easily sit and watch a jury pool and come up with easy questions to make them uncomfortable- and more forthcoming and honest during jury selection.

The defense attorney told me that it was apparent that I was exactly the type of juror that both sides needed.

But we’ll never know. My opinion of jury selection and trials went down a notch and I’m left with the feeling, no matter what ‘really’ was the case, that the wrong jury was probably seated.

 

 

Personal

The Beer and Pantyhose Story

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(The following story is one I was asked to write down yesterday. Please forgive any errors. It’s as true of a story as you’ll ever read and one that sometimes comes to mind when I’m driving near Noel, Missouri.)

The Beer & Pantyhose Story

Years ago, Bill Qualls needed someone to help him move some timber off his cousin’s property, near a bend in Elk River, over by Noel, Missouri. Since no one else was available, he called me and came by to pick me up. For three hours, he watched in amused irritation as I did literally everything wrong. I broke out both taillights of his pickup and then managed to crack the rear glass of the cab. I reminded him that my labor was free and kept on piling the timber across the truck.

After I dropped the same piece of wood on his hand twice, Bill decided that we were as done as we were ever going to be, and that he wanted to go get a beer. (Later, after the night’s excitement, it seemed like he was trying to get me killed – or at least get me prominently pictured on the back of some milk cartons.)

As we took several obscure turns in increasingly dark tree-lined roads, we hit a dirt road that seemed to be about four feet wide. Bill turned down the static-filled a.m. radio and said, “Now X, you gotta be careful in this place. These are deep woods folks. Don’t be doing or saying anything weird like you enjoy doing. Just keep your piehole closed and listen. And don’t ask them to play any Vanilla Ice on the jukebox, either.”

I looked at Bill as if he had just accused me of offering to kill his grandmother. “Of course, Bill, I’ll be on my best behavior. You won’t even know I’m there.” Bill cut me a look of suspicion, as if I weren’t capable of being normal for five minutes.

Bill took a sharp left and drove off into a holler, or so it seemed. There was a deep, narrow dirt road leading to a dimly-lit cabin front. I could make out a long building, probably about 75 feet long. Where the front porch should have been was a large sign with mostly burned-out bulbs, indicating “Beer Here.”

“That’s clever, Bill. Is the competition called ‘Beer There,’ or ‘Friends in Really Low Places’ or what?” I giggled.

Bill said, “That’s exactly what I don’t want to hear once we go in there. Just keep it down.”

“Calm down, you worry too much. It’s all good.” I smiled. And then added, “I hope they have Perrier water, though.”

As we pulled up, I could see dark figures sitting on old stumps, smoking and drinking. Their voices seemed to be speaking some exotic language.

Within one minute of entering the bar, we were already in danger of needing our organ donation cards.

Let me back up a little bit, though. And it was probably closer to 20 seconds, anyway.

As we went inside, I started coughing. The air was so thick with cigarette smoke that it felt like I was breathing cotton into my lungs. I followed Bill, still trying to get some clean air into my body. I leaned over, trying to get leverage to stop coughing.

“Hey boy, get your damned hand off my pool table!” I looked up to see the meanest, ugliest imitation of a man-bear hybrid I’d ever seen. At the same time, I realized that I had leaned over and put my hand directly on the cue ball, interrupting the pool game already in progress.

I don’t know what possessed me to say it, but I blurted out, “Why are you so fixated on these balls?” And I kept coughing.

I heard a whoosh go by my ear and I heard Bill gasp in surprise. Bear-Man hybrid had swung his pool stick by the narrow end, attempting to hit me in the temple with the wide end of it. He missed, either from the fog of smoke or due to the quantity of cheap beer he had already drank.

But he did successfully hit Boss, another large ugly man standing to my left, who turned out to be both his cousin and uncle. The cue stick hit him solidly on the forehead. Boss grunted and started to fall. As he did, he grabbed me and started pulling me down. I held on to the cue ball I already had my hand on and threw it crazily pass Bear-Man hybrid’s face. The ball sailed past him and hit another monster of a man seated with his back to the pool table. I could see Monster’s head turn and come to the wrong conclusion that Bear-Man Hybrid had just him in the back with the cue stick. As I fell past the edge of the table toward the floor, Monster was already out of his chair, kicking it backwards, ready to fight. I knew that half the bar was going to jump in and fight anyone already standing up. In my mind, I was already planning Bill’s funeral – assuming I survived the encounter myself.

I heard Bill shriek like someone had just pulled his underwear so hard that his grandkids could feel it. I could hear glass shatter and then grunting. As I hit the floor, Boss’ hand came loose from my arm. He was out cold. I crawled under the filthy pool table and jumped out the other side, standing about 10 feet from Bill, who was now engaged in fisticuffs with another bar patron. I had the impression that said bar patron was trying to use Bill’s head as a human cymbal.

I turned to run back through the fog toward what I presumed to be the front door. Just as I did, Bill’s voice rang out with an odd vibrato, probably from just recently being hit like a cymbal by a fist larger than my entire head.

“Where are you going?” Bill hollered at me as I moved away.
“I gotta go put on some pantyhose!” I screamed, in order to be heard over the boisterous crowd
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“What? Pantyhose? What are you talking about?” Bill stood up, ignoring the fist flying past him. Curiosity had taken over.

“You told me if I ever got into a fight and was gonna choke someone, I had to do it with pantyhose.” I thought this explained it all nicely. Words had always come easily to me, whether they made any sense or not.

The entire fight came to a complete standstill, and a couple of fighters literally stopped their fists in mid-air, with looks of incredulity on their faces. (Although if I had said the word “incredulity” at that point, most of the bar would have resumed trying to kill us and each other, mistaking the word for an insult. There probably was a county-wide ban on four-syllable words, anyway.)

For two infinite seconds, the bar was deadly silent. We could all hear the hum of the decrepit air conditioner struggling to run and cool the room.

As quietly as the oldest lady in church, Bill’s voice squeaked out: “No, you choke the guy WITH the pantyhose, not WHILE you have pantyhose on. That’ll give the wrong impression.”

Everyone turned toward Bill, still not quite understanding the confusion. Bill shrugged his shoulders and said, “X is from Arkansas. He’s not much of a fighter.”

The laughter erupted immediately and grew into a horrible crescendo of drunken mockery. Some of the guys who had been prepared to bite off noses and gouge eyes were doubled over, holding their stomachs, laughing like 8 month-old babies.

By the time Bill and I got out of that bar, we had bought 63 beers for our new friends. Bear-Man Hybrid actually liked the nickname I had given him, even though he told me his Christian name was Alfonso – which in no way matched his appearance. His cousin/uncle Boss showed me his library card to prove his real name was Beard. He wasn’t sure why I thought it was so funny that he owned a library card. It turned out that Beard loved reading Agatha Christie novels. As for me, I lied and told them my name was “X” thanks to the witness protection program.

As we drove away, we were both making promises to lead an upstanding life, having just come as close to death as would be humanly possible.

I asked Bill many times to take me back to that bar to relive old memories. Each time I did, he would mumble something about not having enough insurance to cover it and change the subject.

Personal

Gongzilla

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This is a true story, and my wife was a witness and/or victim to it… Gongzilla. Inside the Fayetteville Auto Park Honda dealership, there is a gong to the right as one enters the main building. That thing beckoned and whispered to me like a syringe of heroin. In my defense, I initially didn’t do it because a nice lady with a very small baby came in and sat down with her back to the door. I was afraid she would throw the baby across the room in startled surprise if I gonged her without warning. Thrown babies, no matter the circumstance, usually don’t cause the desired comedic response, despite the oft-cited “baby with the bath water” cliché.

At the right time, I casually made my way to the door, acting nonchalantly and without indication I was going to grab the hammer. Two staff members were to my right and when they were both distracted, I quickly removed the soft hammer hanging on the right of the 4-foot gong, reared back like Hank Aaron, and swung that gong hammer as if I were Thor after losing my hammer for six weeks.

I hit that gong so hard that the gentleman to the right of the door almost swallowed his dentures. It was amazing! The gong resonated so loudly that it seemed as if the windows bulged like the walls did in “The Matrix.” Even I was shocked how loudly the gone echoed. Most of the staff applauded and laughter erupted. Several people seemed as if they wished they had worn adult diapers for accidents as they turned or half-jumped up from their comfortable chairs. No coffee or soda was thrown and luckily, no one bit off the end of their tongue. There were a few curse words that drifted lazily in the air, mostly drowned out by the godlike bomb drop of the gong’s metallic thunder. Afterwards, it occurred to me that it was also nice that no one suffering from PTSD or possessing a concealed carry permit over-reacted, either.

Forget a trip to Portland or hiking the trails of Asia. For me, nothing can compare to the zeal and happiness of that Zen moment that I almost caused cardiac arrest for those people unlucky to have been in the room the day I couldn’t overcome my urge to bang the gong. Call me Gongzilla if you wish. I didn’t even know that such a bong strike was on my bucket list. Thank you, life, for giving me the chance to express myself in a way that I didn’t even know I needed! Love, X

 

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Only slightly less popular than Jason’s Deli… Jason’s Urinal.

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As John Cage from Ally McBeal often said, “This pleases me.” I know you already think I am crazy, but this made me laugh more than you can imagine. It is a picture of the urinal at Jason’s Deli in Fayetteville yesterday morning.

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Given the number of people dying at the summit of Mt. Everest, am I the only one who has come up with the idea of renaming it Mr. Foreverest?

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