Patty Potpie and I don't care

Several days ago I had this burst of a memory thread pop into my head. I am not sure how I got drawn into that thread of memory, I just know I was suddenly thinking about Brother and Sister Mann and their two very ugly children.

For those of you not raised in fundamentalist christianity, you need to know that grown ups never have first names. They are either Brother or Sister so and so. And you address them accordingly. My mother was Sister McDonald. If someone from church saw me in the store alone, they would generally ask after my mother. No one would ever say "How is your mom?" No, they would say "How's is Sister McDonald?"  Get it?

Anyway, Brother and Sister Mann were severely unattractive people. There was nothing in the least bit attractive about either of them. Their two daughters were equally endowed with ugliness. The sad part about the Mann family is, they were also stupid. It's one thing to be homely and smart and quite another to be butt ugly and dumb as a rock.

My train of thought however did not dwell long on Brother and Sister Mann and their two daughters. No, it veered off in to memories of Sister Mann's father. Now Sister Mann's father was this old crotchety bugger (with a slight twinge of Alzheimer's) who had been given the title of Deacon in the church (mostly I think so that he would have some sense of worth and usefulness in his old age). For the life of me I can't remember his name, Brother Somethingorother I am sure. The reason I can't remember his real name is because us kids bestowed upon him a nickname that stuck forever with us.

The way he came upon this nickname went something like this:

I was studying human anatomy in art (on my own volition I might add, there was no class like that in my high school) and I had this really cool text book that had a whole section with Michaelangelo and Da Vinci's human body sketches. I loved that section, it was my favorite. There was this one whole page devoted just to Da Vinci's study in grotesque faces. In fact it was entitled "Grotesque Faces" in Da Vinci's own hand writing (only in Italian of course). The first time I saw that page I looked at this one face and exclaimed to myself "OMG! It's Brother Somethingorother!"

Well, of course I had to take that to church to show Patty Pipkin, my best friend and Pam Whittinghill my other best friend (but not nearly as best as Patty).

I showed them Grotesque Faces and said "Does that not look like Brother Somethingorother?" They of course screeched "YES!!!!!!" and proceed to fall over laughing their asses off.  From that point on he became simply known as Grotesque Faces.

OMG! You are not going to believe this! I had to go pee just now and as I was sitting on the throne it came to me, his name was Brother Ellis.

At any rate, all us kids hated Brother Ellis.  Brother Ellis's important job at church was to make sure all the doors were shut properly (and locked after church of course) and the a/c or heater was set at the right setting for services. He was also in charge of making sure we juvenile delinquents were not fucking around outside the church building during services.

When we were still in junior high school, he used to be able to catch us being in the wrong, or not being in the right place, depending on where we should have been at the moment. We despised him. He was not kind to us and came close, often, to grabbing our ears and taking us to our parents (he did grab male children by the ear btw, I watched him do it to Steve Herrman one day while Steve was blazing on acid).

By high school we had wised up. No one ever checked the alley behind and down several houses from the church, nor did they ever bother to check Aqueduct Street just a short block down Rayen from Haskell where the church was (and still is) located.  We found we could smoke Marbies (better known as "Cows") to our hearts content without being busted. (in typical teen age code, a pack of 20 Marlboros was referred to as a "herd of cows". We would "burn cows" while keeping watch for Grotesque Faces).

Brother Ellis never found us at either location. Once though, one of our parents found us in the alley. Thank god we weren't burning cows at that particular moment.

While I was having this "flash back" about Brother "Grotesque Faces" Ellis I was thinking to myself that if I don't get this memory written down, it might just actually fade into the recesses of my memory again forever.

Several days have elapsed since the poignancy of writing down the Grotesque Faces story hit me. I am not sure why I feel this lonesome sadness in my heart as I remember these days of my youth.

These were not particularly happy days in my life (who's teen years are ever truly "happy"?). But the memories I have of Patty Pipkin, Pam and Diane Whittinghill, Lura Bennett and Sue and Debbie Winchester are always golden in my mind.

We all had so much fun together, that gang of ours. The 7 of us were hell to pay when we were all together. We laughed so hard at things and pulled so many fucked up funny pranks on other people and even ourselves. It's probably the only thing, other than my youthful strength and health, that I actually miss from my misspent youth.

I miss Patty the most. The last time I saw her we were around 26 years old. Right after Debbie (Winchester) and I got together, her mother (the ever lovely Sister Carol Pipkin) refused to let me know how to get in touch with Patty siting my relationship with Debbie as a valid reason. Even my own mother to this day won't give me information on how to get in touch with Patty. I haven't tried asking Carol in 15 years, it hurt too much the last time.

See, Patty was my first real love. Now I had had several "crushes" on other girls, but Patty became my world, my life, my everything at age 16.  We were "best friends". We spent every moment we could spare with each other. And when we weren't together, we were busy writing witty notes to each other all week long which we saved up and put in small amusingly decorated paper bags and gave to each other at Friday night church services. We then spend that entire service reading the notes we had written all week long to each other.

I loved Patty, probably because she was one of the only people who ever actually "got" my droll sense of humor. We got to the point in our relationship where we didn't have to even talk anymore. Someone would walk by us and we would take one minor glance at one another and bust a gut laughing.  Simply because we knew what the other one was thinking about what had just walked by us.

Patty was witty, clever, extremely talented and had an incalculable IQ. She became the Valedictorian of her senior class and graduated at 16 having skipped a grade or two. Patty was actually 6 months younger than I was and still graduated a year ahead of me. Patty was actually off having a lovely time at Pepperdine when I graduated 300 and something out of my class of 700 and something.  I never understood why she was my friend. I actually couldn't understand what it was she saw in me.

So I asked her one day, "what was it she saw in me that made her want to be my friend"? She just looked at me and said "Because you make me laugh".  At 16, I didn't understand the importance of laughter in a relationship. Now I do, but back then it was beyond me.  The funny thing was, aside from her other outstanding qualities, the real reason I loved Patty was because she laughed at my jokes.

Patty also attributed me with greater talent than her, but that simply was not true. I could sing better than her, but then I could sing better than almost anyone when I was young. Patty on the other could do something that very few people can do. She could listen to a musical piece and recreate it verbatim on almost any musical instrument without benefit of a score in front of her.

It had been requested of me to sing Morning Has Broken (the Cat Steven's version) for my high school graduation. It had just been released maybe 2 weeks before my graduation and there was no sheet music available for it yet. There wasn't even a record (yes they still only had records back then boys and girls) out yet. They were just playing it on the radio at that point in time.

So I recorded it off the radio on my nifty little Sony cassette recorder and high tailed it over to Patty's house (a mere 25 miles away) and we sat down and listened to it together while sitting at her piano.

Patty listened to it one time and then began to play. It was amazing to watch her effortlessly pick those notes off without a mistake. I was simply dumbstruck. Now I had watched Patty transpose from one key to another many times before, but I had never witnessed anything like this before in my life (and frankly I never have again and I have been around some pretty awesome musicians in my day). I was absolutely in total awe of her ability.

She then sat there and corded the song out for me for guitar. When we discovered I couldn't play in the key CatSteven's had recorded the song in, she simply transposed it into a key I knew well enough to play in and then taught me how to kaypo up at the key change on the last verse (I was a piss poor instrumentalist and musician to be sure, I still am).

Patty simply amazed me period. She spoke French and then eventually, after a year or so in college, German, fluently. She was (and I am sure still is) brilliant. Patty had her Ph.D. by the time she was 24. At 24 I was still struggling to get an AA degree. But then school wasn't my life. At that time sex, drugs and rock n roll were my life.

I miss her.

I miss laughing like that with someone.

I miss having someone who understands me inside and out.

I miss being so innocent and uncomplicated that someone else can understand me inside and out.

I miss having brilliant esoteric conversations with late into the night with her.

I miss Pam and Diane. I miss Lura.

And I miss Debbie and Sue, both of them dead, both of them important parts of my life for many years long after we were all grown ups.

I miss Debbie because there was a spirit to our relationship that I don't think I will ever experience again with another person. We were a team, we worked well together, hand in hand we built an empire that I believe would have known no end had she not gotten sick.

I miss Sue because despite her insanity, she was often the voice of reason and sanity when everyone else around her couldn't see the forest for the trees.

I miss pure unfettered joy and laughter so hard that you cry from you sides aching so hard. I miss having lungs that allow you to laugh like that.

I miss my little brother who became an asshole when he decided he was a grown up "man".  I miss the love and friendship we once shared.

I miss you Phil Carmen, where are you?

I miss Suzanne Rush and Gina Nicoletti. I miss the truly innocent beings we really were, despite what we thought we were. We really weren't the bad asses we pretended to be my friends.

I miss themall, even as I miss innocent joy and laughter. And love, real love, unconditional love. The kind of love only a real friend can give you.

Don't get me wrong, I am not lonely, or even melancholy, I just miss the friends of my youth sometimes. I especially miss Patty and wish with all my being that we could reconnect someday.

And Brother Grotesque Faces?  He is long dead. Gone to dust. Just like the models of Da Vinci's original Grotesque Faces. They, captured for immortality by Da Vinci's hand. Brother Ellis, etched into my brain until the day it stops functioning. There as a reminder of my youth. Grotesque Faces.

I'm still looking for you Patty. I haven't given up. Maybe one day our ancient, fearfilled mothers will decide to let the secret go as to our where abouts with one another and we can at least tell one another what a great time we had being best friends when we were still kids.

I can tell you what a dear and tender memory our friendship is to me still. And thank you for laughing at Grotesque Faces.  You will never know how many times your laughter validated me in a day and age where I had very little of that from outside or within. Thank you for having been my very best friend.

Thank you for being Patty Potpie Nikpip. I understand that Brother and Sister Hguanavac are dead now too <grin>.

It's where America shops!

Sears that is..... NOT!  Since that oh so clever piece of 5th Avenus tripe was shoveled down our throats in bad advertisements back in the 80's, Walmart has far surpassed Sears as the place America shops. Not that shopping at Walmart is any better, but I thought I would point that out.

Back in my late teens, I applied for a Sears credit card. They turned me down siting my lack of credit. At the time I thought to my self that this was some kind of Catch 22 statement. You have to have credit to get credit. Right, just like you have to be working at a studio to be allowed to join the union and you have to be a member of the union to work at the studio first. Get it? I sure did. It was Sears (and Warner Brothers or 20th Century Fox or Universal's) way of saying "fuck you".

I swore back at the tender age of 19 to never set foot in a Sears again, nor buy another product they peddled.  I did pretty good with that promise to myself for close to 25 years. Then we moved to Florida.

Sue's dad Marty had a Sears credit card (who of that generation did not?). He instructed us to march straight down to the local Sears in Lake County and buy us some appliances for our new home. We did so dutifully.

We came home (well, actually they delivered it) with a fridge, stove, dish washer and a washer and dryer. The fridge didn't fit properly in the kitchen, so it went back and credit was issued. I took that opportunity to go to Lowes and buy a different fridge. The fridge has worked fine since the day it was purchased over 5 years ago. (as a side note here, the dish washer also broke down the first few months we owned it, it however remained with the house in Florida along with the stove when we sold it.

The washer and dryer are another story. The washer broke down constantly, almost since the day it arrived. The dryer followed suit a few months later. Both of them probably broke down collectively over 15 times. Sears finally replaced the dryer 2 years ago. The washer is another story.

We paid about $1500 for the washer and dryer. Over the ensuing 5 years, we paid close to $1000 in service contracts with Sears.  Our washer died a final, slow and painful death sometime in December of 03. Sears refused to repair or replace it as we had let the service contract lapse a few weeks before.

Now Sears believes they are within their legal rights to fuck us over that way. And frankly, they are technically within their legal rights to say "fuck you" to us. But from our perspective they sold us a pile of shit that constantly broke down. They should have replaced it 5 service trips back. It would have been the moral and ethical thing to do. But they didn't, they chose to take another road.

Our service contract renewal was almost $300. I refused to pay them one more dime for anything, let alone this contract. Not to mention we didn't have a spare $300 for a service contract for a washer that had broken down 8 times in 3 years.

Sue got her tax refund a week or so ago. She said "Let's go buy a new washer and dryer with it." I said "Hell yeah!"

So we loaded up the truck and we drove to Rogers, (Lowes that is, Bentonville, Walmart Corporate). Well, the next thing you know the washer we had picked out the week before on sale was no longer on sale (nor was the dryer). So we ended up getting just the washing machine. I need to note here that the dryer that Sears had given us to replace the pile of shit we bought originally in Florida had broken down on us 6 months after they delivered it and took the other pile of shit dryer away. That was why we thought we needed a new dryer.

Turns out we didn't need a new dryer after all. Barb Dunham swore to Sue on pain of death that we could probably repair the old/new dryer. She even gave us instructions on how to do so. Sue and I attempted to repair it and couldn't even get the back panel off let alone repair it. So Barb said she'd come over and fix it on Sunday. A miracle occured when Sue went to show Barb what the dryer was/or wasn't doing. The damn thing came on and stayed on and works now. We must have banged on the right thing when attempting to get the back off Thursday night. Who the hell knows or cares, I just know I have a washer and dryer now and I am fucking thrilled beyond words.

But I digress, sort of. I so hate Sears now that I am at a point where I actually have a vendetta against them. I not only have renewed my vow of 31 years ago, I also am going to figure out how to sue them if it takes every last breath in my body to do so.

I made the Lowes delivery guys put the crappy broken Sears washer on the side of the garage. They were supposed to take the broken one away, it was part of the delivery deal. But I wanted the evidence of Sears foul play to still exist until such time as I could sic lawyers on them.

Ok, this had an epilog when I first puiblished it last night. Now it no longer exsists. I'll paraphrase what I recall writing for your sake. It went something like this:

So that's the Sears story Ky. I wish for Sears that they go the way of Woolworths. Knowing the greed and lust for global domination of Walmart executives, they will eventually. I have no fear of that. They are next year's Kmart reorganization waiting to happen.  I wish for Sears nothing less than what they did to me.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

I have about 45 minutes before I have to take off out of here for a board meeting at Eureka Kids. I thought I would stop in here for just a moment or two and blow smoke up everyone's butt with my ramblings. Aren't you lucky?

I wanted to talk a moment about this stupid rooster that (at the moment) we have. There was this incredibly high wind that came along the other night and blew down one wall of my make shift chicken coop. Amazingly only a small handful of the chickens decided to make a break for it. We managed to recapture everyone of them except for the rooster. He has eluded capture for 3 days now. How he is alive still, I do not know.

We have a large selection of preditors that like to shop in our neighborhood for fresh meat. Chicken meat is considered a delicacy to them. I am waiting with bated breath for the squawk that ends it all for Angel (K named him, not me).  It's interesting that he will hang out near the coop (I am sure he's wishing he could get back in there with the hens) but he runs off in the woods when we try to hurd him back in the coop.  

I can see him right now even as we speak, pecking away at some unseen insect on the ground, acting as if he hasn't a care in the world. He can survive the cats and racoons, even the possums around here, but it will only be a matter of time before a bobcat or the coyotes come and get him.

On a happy note, we finally have a new washing machine. I think I am personally going to take the old washing machine and shove it up Sears' ass. It's almost a foreign feeling to be able to do laundry at our leisure. I am washing throw rugs right now. It's feels strange to know that I can have a clean rug any old time I want now.

Angel just crowed a moment ago. He sounds lonely. Not at all as cocky as he does when he is in his little kingdom, sitting on his throne as king of the roost. If he would just go in the coop when we open the door, life would be good all around.

Sue is coming home with some more Rhode Island Reds and a few other chicks in a little while. These are unsexed chicks. For all we know they are all males. Really, you only need one rooster in a hen house. There could be complications if they are all males, if you know what I mean.

Btw, Angel looks like the rooster on the Kellogs Corn Flakes box. He is one hell of a big ass rooster. Probably around 4 pounds. He is a handsome devil as roosters go. He's just really stupid.

Oh well. It's his life. If he wants to throw it away being the gormet supper to a pack of coyotes who am I to say different?  I am sure as hell not willing to get pecked to death trying to save his life.

Sue just called. The board meeting was called off. Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy. I surely wasn't in the mood to get all dressed back up and go induct new boards members tonight anyway.  Catching Angel sounds like more fun, hell a root canal sounds like more fun.

Ciao!

Off we go into the wild blue yonder.....

I was trying to Google my paternal grandmother just a bit ago and I came across this:  Google Search: "Fred Kjer" That is my Uncle Fred. I learned something new about Uncle Fred tonight. This I will share with you in a bit.

Uncle Fred is my dad's youngest brother. He is 14 years younger than my dad. So by the time my dad was dropping out of planes behind enemy lines during WWII, Uncle Fed was barely 4 or 5 years old. By the time Dad got home a decorated war hero, Fred was like 6 or 7. I have this great picture of my very black haired dad when he was around 15 standing there holding up an old bike with a grinning blonde baby boy sitting on the handle bars obviously enjoying the ride of his life. That baby was my Uncle Fred.

My first real memory of Uncle Fred was when he came to visit when I was around 6. I just remember him being a tall, handsome, happy fellow who looked nothing like my father. They told me he was Dad's brother, that he was Grandpa and Grandma Kjer's son (I had met them the summer before in Nebraska). Still he looked nothing like any of these people, Dad included. He grinned a lot. He had Dad's dimples. A huge infectious grin with those twinkling blue eyes and those deep, deep dimples.

At the time I met Fred (and Grandpa and Grandma for that matter) I had no idea that Grandpa Kjer was not my dad's real father. I had no concept at that time about people dying and people remarrying and having more children by the second spouse. It never crossed my mind that Dad and Fred did not share the same last name. It never crossed my mind that Dad's parents should also share his last name either. After all, Mom's parents didn't have the same last name as us. Why should Dad's?

Our last name was/is McDonald. Dad was born of my Grandmother' marriage to a hard drinking Irishman named William Edward McDonald. She had 3 children by Mr. McDonald who swore that the baby in his wife's womb was his long awaited son. William never got to find out if the gestating offspring was his son as he died 2 months short of said offspring's birth in 1923. W.E. McDonald died of liver failure, the result of drinking himself todeath, literally.

He had black eyes, black hair and was dark in only the way the black Irish are dark (think Pierce Brosnan). As my father was growing up, his sisters told stories to my father of how their dad loved to sing and play the piano. Grandma was a Beneke. Her family was from Germany. She had blue eyes and black hair, something not very common amoung Arian stock. She also had dazzeling deep dimples.

When my father was around 5 years old, Grandma married John Kjer, a tall blonde man of Norwegian decent. They had 4 more children, Uncle Fred being the last, all of them very blonde and very Nordic looking. All of them with deep, deep dimples.  

The next memory I have of Uncle Fred was when I was around 10. We were down in Texas visiting Mom's family and making a side trip to Corpus Christi to see Dad's older sister Virginia. Fred showed up there in a brand new 1964 candy apple red Corvette Sting Ray convertable. Us kids were seriously impressed with Uncle Fred that day. I had my first and only ride ever in a Corvette that day. I have a picture of Fred sitting in the car grinning with those dimples.

I honestly don't remember if I ever saw Fred again after that day. I saw him in pictures, but never in the flesh that I can recall. In fact, after that day in Corpus Christi, I don't think I have seen a single one of Dad's relatives again.

That was like our very last real family vacation to anywhere with my dad. My dad was slowly getting ready to disappear from our lives for almost forever back then. Between trying to work himself to death and never being home because of work, he also managed to have 3 major heart attacks and then lose his job to his employer going bankrupt, to his moving to San Jose to find work, to his finally finding a cushy, fat ass paying job with RMK (the Haliburton of it's day), personal secretary included in Viet Nam, Dad was slowly slipping away from us. (he eventually married that personal secretary btw, but that's another long story)

That's where all the pictures of Uncle Fred came from. Dad went to visit him in Da Nang while he was stationed there flying missions. In one picture, my dad and Uncle Fred are standing there (grinning of course) in front of Uncle Fred's F-4 Phantom. My dad's notation on the back says "Fred and I in Da Nang in front of his F-4 Phantom (that's the only reason I know it's an F-4 Phantom btw). Those bombs on the wings were dropped that night in a raid over N. Viet Nam." Pictures from my dad always had cute little notes on the back like that one. I also have a picture of my dad standing in a little park in Saigon (I know it's a park in Saigon cause the back of the pictures says so). My dad let us know in his notations on the back that of picture that the little park was destroyed by a bomb 2 week later in the Tet offensive. Just as an additional aside here, I have a picture my dad took during some major battle in WWII of hundreds of paratroopers landing on the background with the inscription on the back saying "I took this one for General Ike".  My dad was real big on that inscription on the back thing as you can see.

What I never knew about Uncle Fred until tonight was that he had shot down a MiG over North Viet Nam no more than a month or so after that picture with Dad was taken. I guess I thought he just dropped bombs. I never knew he engaged in "dog fights" in the air with the "enemy".

Uncle Fred was a lot of things, frankly he still is a lot of things, it's not like he rolled over and died when he retired from the Air Force. Uncle Fred is still doing track and field stuff. He holds the Nebraska State collage record for some track and field event (you can see I know nothing about track and field events). He was invited to represent the USA in the 1960 Olympics but declined to go as he did not want to break up his squad in the Air Force.

So that's the story of Uncle Fred. He's the only blood relative I can ever find anything about on the Internet. Course I am always looking for my dad's side of the family. It's like I am searching for long lost realatives or something. I never search for Mom's family cause, well, they are not lost. I know right where they all are. They're all down in Fucking Texas. Sometimes they even come up here and see me (God forbid I should go to Texas).

I wonder if Uncle Fred still has those twinkling blue eyes and deep, deep dimples?

Happy Happy, Joy Joy!

Guess who's computer I am sitting at blogging on at this exact moment? That's right, mine. On occassion, life can be soooo good.

Yes, Dave came and fixed my Internet connection yesterday. He even installed Sue's Norton anti-virus for her while he was here. Can life get any better?  Thank you Mr. David Powell, you are not only a true friend, but you are a kind soul to boot. Here's Dave's new enterprize: http://eurekaspringsweb.com/sitebody/launch.html 

He and Rick (the Hermit of Hogscald) have been working day and night on this thing for like forever.  Rick, affectionately called "Hermie" did most of the building of the site. I am proud of these boys and their work.

I was too tired to blog last night. I have too much to get done this afternoon, so I will probably not write much more than this for now.

So enjoy, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood right now (68 degrees and climbing here on March 4th, 4 days after it snowed). I am off to attempt to make some more money today (my favorite pass time).

Ciao baby!