FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

Following the yellow brick road isn't always that wise. I did it this weekend. I'll tell you about it when I can wrap my head around it. If I ever do!

Intuition!

Albert Einstein

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

And I've got it!

m.m. sugar

Ah! Spring!

The Breakup

Now come on, you knew that it had happened didn't you? No long-winded reminiscences about cooking together and walks along the sea!

No tears about the lonely trip home and the plans to return.

She couldn't live with me. She couldn't share her space, I was too demanding! Too much of a free spirit. Our cultures were too diverse. She absolutely hated that I wore my pj's till noon! And, I .................Oh well!

So she went and got a puppy, who, she says is worse than me!

The puppy appears to have a mind of it's own!

My house is no longer for sale as I am not moving to Scotland.

Hmm....

My house and I are renewing our vows next week!

The truth is-we are perfectly fine. Love does not die-it is simply transformed!

We know you wish us well.

Daddy Local Man..... The End

Jimmy had appeared at my window. That meant he had to have sneaked out of his house, sneaked into our yard, let down the fire escape ladder without making noise, climbed up and waited. I had no idea how long he had been there and I had no idea what he had planned to do.

When I saw him at my window, I was just falling off to sleep. I was so scared! I could never tell anyone what happened.

The next day was Sunday. We went to church on Sunday, not Daddy, but Mom and my sister. I had no choice otherwise, my father would kill me. By this time, I couldn’t figure out who I wanted to kill me. Who would do it the fastest and the most painlessly? I figured my father was a better choice because Jimmy would skin me alive.

But why?

I sang in the choir. I was the soloist. The problem was that one of Jimmy’s sisters also sang in the choir. We got through the mass and though I tried to leave with the other choir members the two amazons, Jimmy’s sisters, one fifteen and the other, sixteen, cornered me.

“Excuse me.” I said to Siobhan the eldest. “I have to go to meet my mother right now.” Her sister stood in front of me. “Don’t tell.” she said with her chin leaning into my face. I ran passed her and flew down the stairs.

The next day Jimmy's father was arrested.

This is what my father told me.

It started before I was born. It was 1942. War. Though we were essentially safe. Daddy said that each neighborhood nevertheless took precautions. My father, the electrician, became an Air Raid Warden. He served quite honorably until June 1945 by which time he was an established member of the local police precinct’s poker games. He was tight with the cops. This was the thing Mom was alluding to when she said,” Some things are best left unsaid.”

“But, you see I did not want to concern mother with such issues. It went beyond poker. You know how things are at home.” He lit up a ciggy, blew into the air, widened his mouth till I thought that it would break while the cigarette rocked precariously on his lips, rubbed his large nose with his left hand and put up his collar around his thin neck with his right hand all while puffing away.

We were sitting in the backyard. It was a windy day. The story had come out but not in the newspapers because the cops at the precinct would have gotten hell for it. If it had been in the paper, it would have read:

Local Man Felice Zucchero Undercover Narc Foils Drug Gang and Prevents Murder.

Daddy was a thin man of 5 foot 6 perhaps a little taller with a small potbelly. He had thick salt and pepper hair, a small ruddy face and a five o’clock shadow that came out before he got off the train in the evening. He had small brown eyes, a huge nose and ears to match.

Daddy didn’t look like a narc. Well, he wasn’t exactly a narc but he wasn’t a stoolie either, he was quick to point out, because he took no money. He was a rather simple man who had gone from helping his community during the war to now doing his civic duty in another way.

They called him ‘ears’.

I was not breathing: could not take the chance. Sure, it was an incredible story. However, what was more incredible was the fact that my father was talking to me: in full sentences.

“It started with small stuff. I would go to play checkers or play cards and one night the lights were out in the Captain’s quarters so the Captain naturally asked me to fix it: Me being an electrician and all. I figured I had the privilege of hanging around the precinct so it was like paying dues. I made my way to the basement where the electric fuse box was located and in a few minutes the Captain’s quarters were fine.”

Daddy looked at me. I didn’t know what to do. I froze and tried to smile and I remember that I had to blink but was too afraid. I wasn’t going to be the one to break the spell.

“Well,” he continued, looking rather concerned at me, “that’s how it really started. It was the usual checker game and I was hunched over the board. I had to win this game. Captain Walsh had won the last round and I didn’t want to lose face. The room was tense as I contemplated my next move. Walsh maintained his calm. His wide amiable smile taunted me. We had known each other back to the war days before you were born.”

Daddy turned to me and smiled gently. “He has deep green, understanding eyes you know and your Mom has told me that he sometimes takes his elderly mother to church.”

He took a puff. This was my father?

“The constant tingling of the hourly precinct reports came pouring in, but I won the game.” He straightened up in the chair and wiggled his shoulders to unkink the knot about which he often complained. “I was quite pleased with myself but I knew it was time to leave. It was apparently a busy night in the neighborhood. I stepped out into the rain under the big green light above the precinct signpost and quietly felt proud. I had beaten Walsh but I had been coming and going through that door with the men's respect for years. Then the Captain’s car stopped in front of the precinct door. ‘Hop in Phil.’ He said. ‘But keep your shirt on, understand?’

‘Sure!’ I said.”

“I am not quite sure what year it was, but it was the beginning. After that, I often rode with them. I was quite useful because as an electrician I was able to get into places: Official ID shirt and all. ” Daddy looked at me with an apologetic look. “I began to get what you would call assignments-you know, at Russo’s poker game and listening to things on the street. As far as anyone knew, I was just a leftover air raid warden who had made friends with the cops. No one took me too seriously.” Daddy inhaled deeply, smiled ironically and said. “Jimmy Flynn’s father was already in the picture: just doing punk things. Unfortunately for his family, he moved up last year.” Then Daddy’s face turned stern and he looked down, shaking his head as he stomped on the ciggy. “Bastard should have never gotten his kid involved.”

He quickly turned his face to me. “Do you know why I am telling you all this?” I said ‘no’ with my eyes and a shake of my head. But I did perk up a bit. I was not only supposed to be listening, I was supposed to be understanding! Dad stared ahead, thought for a second, lit up, and inhaled deeply. “There was a make on big Jim. It was me who talked him into going to the Captain." He looked into my eyes. "I took him in myself. It saved his life-he was as sure as dead: now his family can visit him instead of bury him.”



Though he enjoyed a new quiet respect in the neighborhood, Daddy was now ‘made’ and never again walked through the precinct door.

Captain Walsh’s son was stabbed in the schoolyard. Walsh left the force to protect his family.

James Flynn went to jail.

Jimmy Flynn went to reform school.

I was to meet another Jimmy Flynn in my youth.

But, that is another story.

The End



Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar

Daddy Part III Local Man.....

I was very scared of Jimmy and his threats. However, I figured that as long as I was with someone all the time and kept volunteering for the nuns, there was always something they needed or wanted, I would be safe.

I decided that I had to get my father alone. The best thing to do was follow him the next time he said he was going out, but only when my mother responded with, “I’ll take the kids to Moms.”

Oh my god! That had been happening my entire childhood and it took me until thirteen to figure it out? It was one of those, “Some things are best left unsaid,” things.

It was a Saturday afternoon. I was sitting out on the fire escape looking at the Pastorrini brothers playing ball two backyards away with their girl cousins. There were advantages to living on the second floor. I could feel something in the air. I didn’t know what. I figured I would prepare.

I made my way back from the fire escape through the window into my room. “Mom, I think if it’s ok, that I’ll go meet Marlene at Barbara’s house. They’re working on the paper and invited me but I wanted to do it myself, but I guess we could fool around and get some stuff done.”

“Oh?’ Ok, when?”

“Oh, I’ll call Marlene and see.” Better to be laid-back with Mom. You never knew.

Jackpot!

“I think I’ll go out for a while,” said Dad.

Bingo! What timing! I just knew that my father was gonna do something today.

“I’ll take the kids to Moms.” That was the cue!

“Mom I’m gonna call Marlene now.”

“You go ahead honey.” She yelled to my sister to pack up her books. My sister acquiesced. Grandma had a new, larger than life TV. It was called a console. Though she would bring her books upstairs, we all knew that she would watch the boob tube while Mom, Grandma, and my fake grandpa played cards. She was sixteen but never went out with friends because she was practicing being miserable because she intended to enter the convent the next year if she failed algebra, which we all knew would happen.

It was the gutsiest thing I had done in my life. I called Marlene and told her to pretend that I was there if anyone asked. I didn’t give her a chance to say no. I just hung up and started out the door.

“Young lady where is your book?”

“I really don’t need it Mom and Marlene has paper.”

“Oh.”

Off I went down the stairs to follow my father. My heart was in my mouth because Jimmy could appear at any time. At least I could yell for my father if I was really desperate.

This was the cagey part, following my father in the light of a summer day. I had an advantage because our blocks were slightly hilly going down so sometimes you could easily hide: duck into a drive way, something like that.

Then I almost dropped dead –what if he took the car?

I saw him ambling down the hill with the proverbial cigarette in his hand. He smoked like a chimney and often lit up one ciggy after another.

We ended up at the library! All of this for the library? Daddy spent time in the library? He stood on the corner, took a last puff, stomped it out, and proceeded to the backside of the library. I almost dropped dead when he went in the door under the large signpost that read 47th Police Precinct.

I ran to Barbara’s house and spent the rest of the afternoon managing to keep my secret even though they both threatened me with telling my mother that I had had a cigarette two weeks before. I knew that that would never happen because they had also smoked Marlene’s father’s cigarettes. After all, it was her idea. However, it was worse for me because I was a trained singer. No kidding!

I was safe for now because Barbara’s father would drive me home.

I couldn’t tie it together. Was my father in trouble like Sister St. Mary Elizabeth? Was he alphabetizing stuff because he had committed a crime? Were they letting him off the hook because he was a family man? God, he cursed a lot, smoked, drank, gambled and never went to church!

Is that why Jimmy pointed to the police precinct sign?

When I got home, I laid down in my bed. Thinking!

Daddy came home before Mom and my sister came back downstairs.

The lights were off and my door was partially opened. I heard him come in the door light a cigarette from the stove and empty the ashtray into the kitchen trash can so my mother wouldn’t yell. He walked past my door and stood for a moment and the smoke from his cigarette flew into my room like a pretty cloud. I was just about to shout “hi” when he said “nuts” real loud and then ran and picked up the phone, put it down again and said aloud, “Better go back.” I do that sometimes when I say, “Oh shit! I left my notebook home!”

I sat up in bed. He was going back? Did I dare follow him again? The moon was out. I was afraid that he might see me. However, I was afraid that Jimmy was out there loose and looking for me.

This time he raced to the precinct, he threw one cigarette into the street yet didn’t take the time to light another.

I was thinking that my mother was gonna kill me if I ever got caught and then my father was gonna kill me and then Jimmy would finish the job.

He came out so fast that I almost screamed as I hugged the corner of the building.

“Great game of checkers said a uniformed officer.” “Great game,” repeated Dad. “I always pay my debts.”

They both laughed. They laughed a lot! Then they shook hands and Dad started walking up to the avenue while I took the family house route. I just had to be sure not to let my cousin Frankie see me. I would go west and cut at 222 street then run for my life to beat him home.

Checkers?

Well, there was a sense of relief, but that night in bed, I kept thinking and thinking. So Daddy played checkers with cops? How much can you lose in checkers? He went back, for what? Why is that something not to be spoken about? I was thinking and thinking. Everyone was asleep. I was looking at the glare of the street lamp on my fire escape. The moon was very bright, and the breeze felt good. But, I couldn’t sleep so I got up to pull the curtain to hide the light when I almost dropped dead as Jimmy appeared on the fire escape, poked his head half way in my window and blew smoke in my face and hissed a "hey, hey, hey," laugh at me.

I slapped my hands over my mouth tripped backwards over my slippers, bumped into the doorway, and ran to the bathroom, sat on the cold tile floor and at thirteen years old: I wet myself.

No! This was not about checkers.

The End-tomorrow

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar

Daddy Part II Local....

“You better tell you father to lay off. He ain’t got no authority anyway!”

I looked at Jimmy Flynn in stark terror. Though we were only around thirteen he was six feet tall just like his father and two older sisters.

He was especially intimidating because he was the only boy in the family much to his mother’s shame and father’s chagrin; however, that meant that he was next in line.

I know that my mouth was open but I did not know what to say. We were in front of the library. I had just finished reading Leon Uris’ 1958 bestseller, Exodus and still had tears in my eyes.

It was the longest book I had ever read and my sister was trying to get my mother to make me report the story to her every day because my sister wouldn’t believe that I was actually reading it.

“What? What are you talking about Jimmy?” I said in genuine confusion.

“You know, you know,” he said as he flared his hand in front of my face in a Zorro-like fashion that scared me silly. The Flynn’s ‘were known’, a phrase used by my mother to indicate something that was off the beam, but I was not allowed to ask any more questions. “There are things better left unsaid.”

Jimmy walked away yelling at me at the top of his lungs.“If you don’t know you’re the only god damn idiot in the neighborhood who doesn’t!” Then he suddenly turned around, rushed at me and was in my face. He lowered his voice, stopped in his tracks, his body leaning into mine, looked around, and in a hiss said, “Liar!” while his long finger was pointing ominously in my face and then slowly, deliberately to the huge signpost that jutted out of the back side of the library indicating the location of the 47th Police Precinct.

I looked around and where there had been a bunch of kids on the library steps and a bunch on the two opposite corners, there was no one.

I was shivering. I started to walk home. I was still suffering the impact of reading the story in Exodus as well as suffering the loss of coming to the end of the 600-page book. I had used it to reward myself with reading a chapter for doing things that I didn’t want to do like math homework, going to singing lessons and going to Sunday dinner with my Grandma and her husband.

I started to trot when I realized that no one was on the street. It was getting dark. Jimmy was Irish. He had cousins all over the place. In addition, the girls were just as dangerous as the boys were. I had almost a mile to go before I got home.

I would usually go along the family streets where I could play with the dogs and visit my cousin Frankie’s rabbit but somehow I figured I would be safer walking up to the avenue where there were people shopping.

However, I did not doubt that Jimmy was right. My family always kept things from me. They had kept my sister's very formal sweet-sixteen birthday party from me. Apparently, the entire neighborhood knew about it. I found out the afternoon of the party when a girlfriend asked me if I was excited about the party and I said, “What party?” and went home to find a dress waiting for me hanging on the closet door. “Oh, well, we couldn’t let the cat out of the bag now could we?” Said Mom.

If my mother wouldn’t tell me what Jimmy was talking about I was going to go on the longest hunger strike ever!

I was skinny. I didn’t like to eat anything except sweets.

I ran the last block. It was past 5:30 so I knew that my father would beat me home.

I caught up with Daddy at the top of the hill near our house. I ran to his side.

“The book.” he said without turning or saying hello.

“Yeah, I’ll never forget it. I cried in the library and all the kids made fun of me but I don’t care because they always make fun of me when I sing in school anyway.”

“Um.”

I knew better than to say anything else. It was time for spaghetti and beer. I was busting a gut!

All evening I was trying to figure out to whom I should talk about Jimmy. I really knew that I couldn’t ask Mom. “Some things are best left unsaid!”I couldn’t talk to my sister because I hated her and she hated me more. My Grandma was now married to a man who looked like Frankenstein. They lived upstairs but I never wanted to see them again. Anyway, I figured since the whole deal had to do with my father I would have to talk to him but I didn’t know when or how.

I saw Jimmy in school every day and he glared at me with bullets in his eyes. The fact that he was wearing the St. Mary's school uniform like me didn’t matter. We were both in the eighth grade-we were adults soon to graduate. For the whole week, I volunteered to help Sister St. Mary Elizabeth so I wouldn’t have to eat in the lunchroom or go to the schoolyard for recreation.

I knew that I was Jimmy's prey.

My girlfriends laughed at me calling me a brown nose. Yet, I was safe and Sister St. Mary Elizabeth had goodies left over from all the holidays, cookies in tin cans, wrapped chocolates and soda. I helped her alphabetize loads of junk. I never saw so many papers and folders in my life. My gut told me that she was being punished for something. Why else would she be stuck with such crap to do?

All I knew was that I had to be with somebody at all times because I knew Jimmy could find me, anywhere, any time!

Part III tomorrow

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar

Daddy Part I

Please see April 17

My family lived in the same house for the first fifteen years of my life. When I was born, it was a large Victorian piece of art, which housed four families; the Fanellies on the first floor, my family and the Russos on the second floor and my grandparents on the third floor.

My grandfather died when I was seven and Grandma became the escape haven when Mom went on a rampage.

Dad was an electrician, commuted to New York City, and arrived at our train station about 5:30 every night by which time I had come home from school, taken off my uniform, put on what we called dungarees and a polo shirt and walked the three blocks down to the station to pick him up and walk him home.

It used to be a beautiful neighborhood. There was that empty lot where the dogs and we kids played. Now, for years it was filled with stuff: first with loads of metal then loads of cement blocks with wires. It was there, years before, that my friend Napoleon, the first black boy in the neighborhood, and I, first saw what the other had. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.” The great realization was that I had seen one before, but much smaller. Mary Pecorino’s baby brother had one. I had figured it out. I was content.

However, Napoleon was ecstatic! (Napoleon was so grateful for our exchange that he told me that he would never forget me. I figured I’d return the favor.)

While waiting for Daddy I would go to the all-in-one shop. It was owned by Mr. Russo’s son who still lived on the second floor next to us with his mourning black-clad, forever-ailing mother whom Mom said had killed her husband by wearing him down through her complaining.

Ernie (Ernesto) who, though quiet and polite, possessed a good business sense and a little creativity. Daddy said, “That can take you a long way.”

When his father died, Ernie bought the building next to their family candy store and made a kind of grocery, ice cream parlor, smoke shop, and poker beer lounge out of it. In those days, kids didn’t have to show proof of anything except with whom they came. We kids played in the street, caught lightning bugs and lit firecrackers while alternately standing behind our father’s chairs making faces until being yelled at by the men across the table.

Before Daddy walked down the two flights of the subway station, it was called the ‘El’ for elevated, I had invariably managed to coerce a piece of candy out of Ernie with the promise that he would not tell my parents. He took that promise to his grave when he got hit by a church door, it was a Catholic Church, their doors are big and dropped dead of a brain aneurism leaving poor Mrs. Russo totally alone.

She wore black for the last sixty years of her life having buried her husband, both of my grandparents, my father and her son and others too numerous to count.

When Daddy got off the train, he would take me into Ernie’s store and buy me a candy bar. Then we would walk through the door into the other store and sometimes buy a loaf of bread and generally a bottle of beer. I had a stash of candy at home. Always wanted to have a little in reserve.

On Friday nights, the family would sometimes go down to Ernie’s who now had established a habit of sending out for pizza for the guys who were playing cards and drinking beer: what was called a brewski.

When instructed I would go to Ernie and say, “My Dad wants a brewski please.” Then I would plunk 25 cents on the bar.

I was known as Daddy’s pet. It was a myth. Daddy was a drinker, always had a ciggy in his mouth, and he had a reputation as a singing poker player.

He was gentle most of the time. He was known for spontaneously breaking out in song, Way Marie, Way Marie, which means Oh! Marie and Let Me Call You Sweetheart. Sometimes he disappeared for hours at a time. I never knew where he went and once with my persistent questioning my mother said, “Some things are best left unsaid.” In my house, it meant that you never asked that question again.

My mother could get pretty crazy. She and Dad didn’t talk much.

One day when I got to Ernie’s, there were cops all over the place. I was real upset and envisioned myself dramatically trying to push through the crowd like an hysterical woman in the movies crying, “Let me through, let me through, that’s my husband in there!” However, I couldn’t get to Ernie but I knew that it was just a robbery and he was ok because I heard one cop say to another, “Russo, yea you know, Russo, he’s the owner. The Captain came in. He’s talking to him now.” So I relaxed and waited with everybody else. However, I think that I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t married to Ernie.

I heard the rumble of Daddy’s train. Suddenly, there was the realization that I wasn’t getting candy from anyone today!

Then I went ballistic, that’s a term we used in the fifties. Because, as the Captain emerged, he spotted my father coming down the train stairs and waved. They walked toward each other; Daddy bent his head while the Captain whispered in his ear and then walked away. Dad lit a ciggy, his hand covering his match from the slight breeze. Then he caught my eye.

Remembering Mom’s adage that, “Some things are best left unsaid,” I kept my mouth shut. I was ten and would have to wait until I was thirteen to find out what that conversation was about.

Part II tomorrow.

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar

Off to the Cemetery Tra la, Tra la!

I went to the cemetery on Easter Sunday to visit my parents' grave. Now stay with me this is not maudlin! Big day for cemeteries! Flowers, balloons, little kids running around in their Easter best.

I saw no tears.

I spoke with my sister upon returning home. We have had this conversation many times. You see, there are only three spaces in the cemetery plot. What were my parents thinking?

One of us has to go first.

It all came down to rummaging through family documents looking for the deed to the family plot; at least one of us would know where it was and inform the kids.

You cannot be buried without an official stamped deed. Did you know that? You just cannot point and say, “Well that one is mine. After all my parents are there you idiot!”

Just what you want to read about, right?

When mom died in 2000, I gathered all of the family documents and categorized them by year.

I sat there for hours looking through my grandparents' citizenship papers, baptismal papers, etc and then I found something that, immediately upon seeing, brought back a childhood incident concerning my dad that has been totally out of recall for more than fifty years.

My dad’s Anniversary is April 19. He will be gone almost forty years! Of course, I thought that finding this paper was a sign from the celestial heavens. I figured after all of these years he’s made it to that Big Tent in the sky and is thus free to make contact with us mere earthlings.

Dad wants his due; at least it is comforting for me to believe that.
I have often written about Mom, though there is far more to write, but have seldom touched on Dad.

The found item was a commendation from the then Mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia to my father for being a Deputy Sector Commander in the Civil Service of the City in The Air Warden Service. It was not an uncommon document. Daddy had been an Air Raid Warden from 1942 to 1945. Air Raid Warden’s were responsible for gathering people during the war in case there was a security threat, direct them to the air raid shelters and provide for the safety of the elderly and infirm and myriad other things.

The document was simply the trigger to my reliving this incident about my dad, which I remember as if it were yesterday. I am trying to get it down on paper and share it next week, the week of his anniversary.

I hope that you will join me.

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar

The Smoke Shop

My maternal grandfather emigrated from Italy. He was granted citizenship in 1938.

I have a picture of him in hunting cloths in his hometown on the southern coast. A rifle hangs from his right arm as he looks down while caressing the face of a dog whose paws lean heavily on his chest. It is an old picture and sometimes I think I see the dog’s tail wag.

He had been a prominent lawyer in Italy. However, he was unable to pass the law exams in New York which led the reticent man to be known for a humble exterior protecting a quiet rage. Grandpa was a man who wore double-breasted suits when he wasn’t hunting upstate.

Grandpa smoked.

I don’t remember too much about him. Two things stand out: our regular visits to his smoke shop and my being forced to kiss him, as he lay dead in his bed.

It was an old bed, very high with multiple down mattresses. My father’s right arm swept me up by my waist and propelled me onto grandpa's body and my cheek was pressed hard against his.

Every Thursday afternoon, I don’t know why it was Thursday, but every Thursday afternoon my mother would say, “I think I hear grandpa coming down the stairs. Oh, no that wasn’t him, because I just heard their door close. Now that’s him!”

Once, in a school play, I had to say, “Wait, I just heard the upstairs door close.”

My mother would help me with my coat or sweater. When you were that young, you had to be helped with outerwear. Grandpa, “Went to rest in God’s arms,” when I was almost seven. Our ritual was of a three to four year duration.

We took a trolley to the smoke shop. I had a favorite seat and I got it every time. It was the seat in the back that was right at the door. Actually, there were no doors on trolleys. I secretly enjoyed the breeze on my legs even in the winter.

The smoke shop was on Arthur Avenue,a famous place in old New York where a man could have his shoes shined and his hat steamed in the front of the shop while in the back his wife picked the chicken for that night’s dinner. Tools, pictures and dresses hung on the sidewalks and you could buy, hot out of the oven, bread filled with meatballs that were cooked in a family size pot and made fresh hourly with new veal, ground beef, basil, garlic, onions, grated parmesan, bread crumbs and pieces of mozzarella.

The smoke shop was dark even on the sunniest days. It had wall-to-wall wood paneling. It stunk because there was a smoking room in the back where men played Briscola, an Italian card game. I remember the anticipation of my eyes burning and was never disappointed.

It was a maze of smoke.

There was a room lined with shelves of boxes. The owner and grandpa went in while I stayed leaning at the doorway pondering the mystery of cigars. The two men stood close to each other while grandpa toyed with his large signet ring. Their bodies shifted, grandpa rested on his walking stick, taller than the owner, he looked down at the man’s face with great respect and near intrigue as the owner alternately spoke and grunted while rolling a large cigar between his thin smacking lips.

Cigars were serious business.

There was a room that I saw just a few times during the ritual between ages three and seven. There were men; sometimes one, two, or three sitting at small tables with large, dry, dirty brown leaves in front of them. One day one of the men looked up at me, smiled, and tipped his knife to his forehead in salutation.

I put my head down and backed away so the closing door would hide what I thought was their secret playground. A place, about which, I never spoke to grandpa.

When the door closed, I leaned against the wall and viewed the other three sections of the smoke shop: where they bought cigars at the counter, the private sanctuary where only one man and the owner could go at one time and the smoking room where the men looked suspiciously at each other and where the only communication I ever observed was the up and down movement of thick eyebrows and smirking moustaches while they played cards.

When grandpa was done, he would come to me without a word, touch the back of my neck, and tug my red braids in the direction of the door.

I am a child. I can see this place. I can see the men's rumpled shirts hanging away from their suspenders exposing large soft bellies. I can see the growth of beard on their faces. In retrospect, I think that some stayed many hours: Perhaps days.

Did they all look at their cigars the way grandpa did? Did they too stand in the private room; run their fingers up and down the various lengths and widths of those dirty brown sticks? When they were in this sacrosanct room, did they smell the length of the cigar with intent and discernment?

Why didn’t grandpa play cards? Why did he leave with the three cigars in his shirt pocket? Why did I never see any money exchange, only quiet talking and nodding heads? Why did he acknowledge the owner and never speak to anyone else?

Emerging out into the world was a relief because I was convinced that the smoke shop was the hell of which grandma always spoke. The trolley ride home was, at all times, crowded. Why did we go at a time when he knew that it would be crowded upon return?

When we got to our stop, I was allowed to go into the candy store and was given a treat by our neighbor Mr. Russo.

Upon the return home my mother repeated her mantra, one which I adopted by pure instinct. She would take a whiff of me. Holding me firmly by the shoulders, first whiff the top of my head, then she would grab and sniff the sleeve of whatever I was wearing and repeat, “That man, that man.” Then, for some unknown reason feel my forehead as though I was feverish and then say, “Oh, now we have to bathe you.”

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar

RENOIR

MONET

Student Runs Away!

Lying, spineless scumbag gone! Couldn’t face the music. Twelve credits thrown away! How guilty can you be? Ah! Validation. The preverbal thief in the night is a no-show.

Now, I do not sound angry, do I?

Question. How do you throw twelve credits away? When you are guilty and you know that you are going to be taken to task. I cannot imagine how he feels. However, I am probably giving him too much credit.

Actually, everyone was upset with me because I would not let go of the integrity issue. I took this miscreant to task. The Administration tends to stay in the student’s corner. Unfortunately these days keeping the student=keeping the money!

I was just informed that this pathetic person, yeah, I feel sorry for him, has quietly dropped out of school completely. This boy, I call him a boy because he was completely lacking in insight and maturity, thought that he could do anything he wanted without consequences.

I believe, said person found out about all of the support I had from the students and their anecdotal offerings.

Therefore, with tail between legs he sneaked away in the night. Convenient isn’t it? I could not believe it. Yet, one cannot help wondering what he is going to do now as he will have to explain his untimely exit to his next school. There will be time and lost credits.

I tried to keep my ego out of it. I prayed, meditated and according to the Four Agreements, I was impeccable with my word. He was not.

The energy that was used on this fiasco has me spent. I am free of having to expend anymore!

Therefore, I wish everyone Happy Holidays-whatever your faith!

And, many thanks to those who kept watch with me. Your supportive comments were quite helpful.

Now let's party!

Update-Three Deans Meeting on Thursday

THIS IS ME ON THURSDAY!

Help, Help, he's after me!

Big problems in school. I have suggested to a student that he might not pass the course. He is a big guy and quite threatening. I received a threatening e-mail from him, which I had to take to the Dean.

He actually shot himself in the foot by sending that note. All he had to do was a makeup paper addressing the issues that needed improvement.

I have been teaching many years and never experienced such a thing. I have never been scared of a student!

Big comings and goings all day. I bounced from one Dean’s office to another. I haven’t been involved in this much intrigue since… well never.

Guess I have led a rather boring life.

This thing followed me home: One e-mail after another, one call after another.

Just for the heck of it I went to the local grocery store where-yup-we have a blood pressure machine.

Sky high!

Therefore, now I am in bed, in my sweats, have taken an aspirin, and am watching the boob tube with the window open.

Fresh air feels good.

There will be more calls throughout the day.

If you do not hear from me. I have either dropped dead or have been done in by this fellow.

Or, I have done him in and have taken residence in the local jail!

So how sweet is this?