The Anniversary Clock

I have people ask me all of the time, "Is that a real Anniversary Clock?"

I usually tell them, "No, it's imaginary."

At this point in the conversation, I actually had one girl go over and try to touch it. But then again, that's kinda why I like having her around.

Getting back to the clock. I guess it's real. It is made by Elgin. It is under a glass dome. It has the four-ball pendulum that rotates back and forth in a flat arc. It chimes every hour and I bought it for one of those big deal anniversaries. (You know, like twenty years or twenty-five years. One of the anniversaries that everyone fusses over ((except the kids)) and you are supposed to think you accomplished something other than stacking time.)

Anyway, my Anniversary Clock has a weird quirk. It chimes ten minutes before the hour. I have tried everything I know to make it chime on the hour. I have stopped it dead for ten minutes - then restarted it. It still chimed at ten till. I loosened and moved the hands to no avail. I had it in storage for six months one time and when I set it back up it chimed at ten till the hour.

I can, however, move the hands to be ten minutes fast and it will chime on the hour, but then the clock is wrong.

All of this is not unlike the broken marriage that the clock represents. I was better at keeping time and she was better at making time. No that's not it. How about: While I was counting the seconds - she was running a little fast? No that's not it. I guess the best way to say it is just that we had bad timing.

But from a distance it was all golden and shiny under the crystal globe that kept outsiders from seeing that the gilt trim was painted plastic and that the simulated movement was more the result of batteries than the finely balanced cogs of a lovingly crafted timepiece.

We have another anniversary coming up. But this year the marriage as well as the clock are on a shelf next to some dusty tomes about imaginary things that happened a long time ago and no one really cared about at the time. Part of the clock is still keeping perfect time. Part of it is still running a little fast. And I guess it still looks good from a distance.

In the mean time, my early chiming clock is a good ice breaker. Especially when they hear the early peals of the distant chimes and I can say, "Relax Baby, we have plenty of time."

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The Gift

When I was growing up I received a gift from my mother's father. His name was Merle Huselton.

My father worked a heavy construction job during those years but it was seasonal work. In the winter time we would live on welfare checks and eat government food. I remember going to the local firehall and carrying home tins of cheese and canned meat and bags of potatoes. As a child I never thought this was unusual. I thought this was the way everyone lived.

I did not know that we were poor.

Having said that, I thought my grandfather was poor.

He lived in a single room above a local bar. It was a bleak room. I remember going to visit him by myself one day. There was a door next to the entry for the bar. My father sent me up to room 11 while he went through the other door. I could hear the sound of the jukebox and someone laughing as the bar door opened and closed.

Just inside my door was a steep flight of stairs. The walls were painted green at one time but were now a smudged dirty brown. The stairs creaked under the weight of my tiny feet. I could smell beer and fried onions... and something else, I guess. Not healthy. I could feel the vibrations from the jukebox through the rough plaster wall as I slowly climbed the stairs.

At the top was a long hallway. There were battered wooden doors down both walls. These walls were painted a slightly newer version of the stairway green. My grandfather's door was about halfway down on the right. Number 11. The floor was worn and sticky in spots. Empty beer bottles littered the hall. I could hear voices arguing behind a door on my left. Further down the hall I could hear someone playing a scratchy Hank Williams record. For some reason I tried to be very quiet.

When I got to number 11 I tapped on the door with my small knuckles. I waited quietly. Then I knocked again. I was about to leave when I heard him clear his throat and spit into something. I waited a little longer and knocked again. This time I heard a chair scrape on the floor and his heavy footsteps approach the door.

As the door opened I saw that he looked very tired. He was about six-four and weighed around a hundred and fifty-five pounds. He had a full shock of gray hair and about three days of white stubble on his sunken cheeks. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. I recognized the red flannel shirt he was wearing as one my mother had given him for Christmas. It was tucked into a baggy pair of corduroy pants. His work shoes were untied.

He squinted down at me and gave me a quick smile. "Johnny!" he cried. "Git in here, you little shit!" He was happy.

"Hi Gran'pap." I said. "Daddy's down at the bar." I pointed down the hallway.

His work calloused hand guided me by my shoulder into the room. He pushed some magazines off of a wooden kitchen chair and told me to sit down. He sat opposite me at the little table. His chair was made of chrome tubing and torn vinyl. There was also a sway back bed and a night stand in the small room. Inside an opened closet door I could see a battered chest of drawers and a few shirts and pants on metal hangers. The tattered curtains were gray and dusty looking. He had a great view of the alley behind the bar.

After we made some small talk he offered me a warm bottle of orange pop. (We called it pop back then. I had never even heard of soda. I guess it was a western Pennsylvania thing.) He opened the bottle of pop with a tool on his key chain. I took a big swallow and he said, "Did you finish it?"

I looked at him with my big hazel eyes and nodded gravely.

"Well?"

"It... was... sooooo neat!" I said. "It was the best one yet!"

We were talking about a paperback western called Buffalo Wagons. It was written about five years earlier by Elmer Kelton.

This was our thing.

My grandfather was an old coal miner from the hills of Pennsylvania. He had raised his family in a series of wooden shacks and lived from pay to pay off of the company store. It was a rough life and I guess he never really got ahead. He was a hard worker and a hard drinker. By the time I got to know him he was a burned out old man, down on his luck, with failing health. I don't think he was much older than I am, right now.

But he loved to read. He always had a box of paperback westerns in the corner of his closet. The covers were creased, the bindings broken, the pages dog-eared from reading and re-reading. I guess it was his escape.

He would get his check at the beginning of each month. He would pay his rent, give my mother some money to hold for him, go to the drug store to get a couple of dime novels and then get rip roarin' drunk. Several days later, most of his money would be gone. My mother would dole out what he needed for necessities and feed him several times a week. And he would sit in his room and ride the range with Zane Gray and Louis L'Amour and Elmer Kelton.

I honestly don't know which part made him happier. But I do know he loved to share his books with me. We would sit for hours and discuss the gunfighters, and the settlers living in the mountains of the old west. We'd talk about the Indians and wagon trains and skinning buffalo. And for just a little while we were there, too. Riding the trails, sleeping on the ground, eating beans and boiling coffee.

And I know it is because of him that I have a love of reading. He taught me how to think critically and how to look into the story, beyond the written words. He taught me that imagination and adventure are often the same thing. That your circumstances should not narrow your world. That history is not a bunch of dry facts and boring details but is the living, breathing essence of who we all are.

And he taught me that even poor people can be rich.

Thanks Gran'pap!
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The yes-no Response

I walked into the room fearful of the interview. I had just finished my basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. I was to have a meeting with Captain Goodman and my Drill Instructor. Both men were gods. Not because I worshiped them but because I feared them

What you have to understand is that basic training is designed to break you down to simple yes-no responses. However, most of the answers the military were looking for from you were of the yes type. We were just a bunch of kids from many backgrounds from across the country. We needed discipline, commonality of purpose, and a knee jerk follow-the-orders response. In combat it could save our lives and the lives of our fellow soldiers.

After eight weeks of yelling (them) and cringing (us), it had mostly taken. We marched and ran, did calisthenics, made bunks, cleaned toilets, pulled k.p., studied, took tests, and shook with fear. Our DI's name was Sgt. Dooley, a giant of a black man in starched and creased fatigues, who never smiled nor, apparently, sweated. His deep voice and rapid fire commands and questions kept us constantly off guard. If I had not been so deeply involved in the process, I'm sure I would have found some humor in it.

I was in the Captain's office because of the testing.

I have always tested well. In my pre-enlistment aptitude test, apparently, I did quite well. I enlisted in the Air Force because I had pulled a low number in the draft and because of George C. Scott's portrayal of Patton. I chose the Air Force because the infantry did not sound very appealing. I'm sort of a neat freak and did not think I would be permitted to reorganize my backpack during a fire fight.

During basic training we underwent some more testing. Again, I did well.

Which brings us to the terrified Airman, too afraid to make eye contact, being led by the most fearsome human being he had ever met, into the lair of a man who could make Sgt. Dooley snap to attention. Nothing good could come of this. I was certain.

We stepped into the office and Captain Goodman glanced up and bade us to come forward. Sgt. Dooley stepped smartly up to the olive drab desk, saluted crisply and stated, "Master Sergeant Dooley reporting as ordered, sir."

I was half a step out of pace with the sergeant and a hair behind on the salute. I held the salute tremulously for what seemed an eternity and was, in reality, slightly under two seconds.

"At ease." Goodman commanded as he returned the salute.

I had practiced the at-ease move tens of thousands of times but I could not perform it without looking down to make sure my feet were where I hoped they were. "Oh God, what am I doing here?" I thought.

After several more moments of silence the Captain addressed me. "You may be seated."

I looked at Captain Goodman, glanced over at Sgt. Dooley, and almost did one of those point-at myself "do you mean me?" moves. Finally I sat in a chair facing the desk, trying my best to be seated and at attention at the same time. Then I realized I had last been at ease and tried to formally relax without slumping in the chair or crossing my legs. I only squirmed slightly.

"Airman Bonus, you are here today to discuss your placement options for technical training."

"Yes, sir." I said a little too loudly.

He looked at an opened file folder on his desk then back at me. "You tested very well in a number of areas."

"Yes, sir." I said again.

He gave me a look that said, "Knock it off."

"In fact, we feel that you would be wasted in most of our training schools. You have excellent abstract reasoning, excellent verbal skills, outstanding associative skills and you did very well in several other categories, as well."

I remained passive. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He stared at me for a moment or two. Trying, I suppose, to reconcile the apparent imbecile sitting before him with the person represented by the data on his desk. He cleared his throat. "I would like to recommend that you take your training as a Radio Communications Specialist Analyst. It would require a Top Secret Crypto security clearance."

I continued to sit still. Finally I realized it was my turn to speak. "Ah..., sir! Thank you, sir. But... I... don't really know anything about radios..., sir."

I saw him glance at Dooley, then back down at the papers. "This isn't about radios. This is about code breaking. You would have to go to school to learn Russian and how to be a code breaker. It would mean a lengthy technical training at great expense to the Air Force. We have to make sure you want to do this."

I still wasn't completely sure what this was. As I sat there, trying to process what I had just heard, I felt a heavy hand descend upon my shoulder muscle. Sgt. Dooley's thumb and index finger probed the muscle. Squeezing. Finding a tangle of nerves. Hurting.

I sensed him leaning down, his mouth next to my ear. His voice was fatherly and menacing at the same time. "You don't need to understand it right now. What you need to do in sign the damn papers and quit wasting the Captain's time."

I was still facing forward. Looking at the Captain. I glanced sideways at Sgt. Dooley. For the first time in eight weeks I saw warmth in his eyes. "We're trying to save your life." he explained.

So I signed the papers and I spent the rest of my enlisted time in San Angelo, Texas learning Russian and code breaking and on a little military base along the coastline of Turkey breaking codes. I never went to Viet Nam and so I never really needed my basic training instilled discipline to save my life.

Except for that one time.

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