Merry Christmas before the deluge

I know, I know, I should write something.

After all, it’s three days before Christmas so something profound should be written.

Perhaps something Dickensian to keep with the spirit of the times as certain people contemplate the return of the work-houses, although the feeling may be in some quarters on Wall Street that they pay their workers too much.

Keep Christmas in your heart, as it were, but keep your hands in the till. 

What a wonderful world this will be; what a wondrous time to be free.

My wife and I sit in the living room this afternoon, both dealing with our own illnesses – hers far more severe. She has a 24-hour cough and fever and, only with the weight of medical opinion, will she be staying home the rest of the week.

Christmas, of course, is not only the time to say I love you, but the time to come down with some illness you’d never get the rest of the year.

We both look like haggard refugees from the convalescent home. She will stay home and I will finish out the week at work. Somehow, my five days off were not filled with restful contemplation of the season but at least the shopping and wrapping is 90 percent done and we have clean clothes.

You can measure your age on a continuous line where Christmas slowly changes from being the most fun time of year to a challenge to your sanity and pocketbook. Here in middle age, I only have to buy for a few grown children, my wife and my ex-wife. The other ex-wife gets the satisfaction of knowing she rid herself of me before I was diagnosed. Merry Christmas, enjoy the house.

Hopefully not that bad

As we age further, the Christmas holiday becomes, much like Shakespeare’s seven ages of man, back to people shoving rum balls down our gullet in our dotage. Older people either become festively drunk or reclusively bitter. Since I already have liver disease, I can guess where I’ll land on the scale.

Of course, there are those who will insist that Jesus is the reason for the season and they mean well until they scream at you for the temerity of saying ‘happy holidays.’ Perhaps they could start a new campaign where they get very literal about the whole thing and force people to enthuse ‘Merry Jesus’s Birthday! Hallelujah! 

Of course, even Bible scholars know that Jesus could not have been born on Dec. 25 because no sane shepherd would have been out tending their flock in the Holy Land in late December – it gets cold enough there. And, of course, the date was chosen to co-opt the Roman celebration of Saturnalia and you can throw in the Pagan celebration of Yule. The early church, concerned with converting souls, had to replace the old holidays with something to celebrate.

And yet, in America, our Puritan forebears forbid anything other than a solemn nod to Christmas until well into the 19^th century. Then, Thomas Nast invented Santa Claus (as we know him), Sears and JC Penney found a great excuse to move merch at a traditionally slow time of year, and we were on our way.

By the way, most Bible scholars believe, based on Scripture’s own recording, that Jesus, if you believe in him at all, was probably born in late April. But being so close to Easter, we couldn’t have that.

In any case, this year I am pleased to say there was less bloodshed and fisticuffs at the malls and Wal-Marts this year and the ‘hot toy’ whatever it is (something that hatches from an egg and has to be fed – good God, who would want that kind of responsibility?) has not been immortalized in videotape of young mothers and fathers beating the crap out of store managers they believe are ‘hiding some in the back.’

And yet, this is the Christmas I’ve always feared: the last one. No, not necessarily MY last one, although who can tell about these things; but the last before our country perhaps undergoes a radical transformation that leaves it looking like a day-after Christmas scene in the aisles at K-Mart by the end of the year.

Gather with your families, buy expensive toys for the kiddies, get really drunk and go to Midnight services (not necessarily in that order) and THIS year you may REALLY be praying to the baby Jesus that you get to keep your health care, job and respect for your fellow man intact by this time next year.

One of my favorite secular Christmas songs is the oft-maligned and over played ‘Little Drummer Boy,’ which the avoidance thereof has become something of a mean-spirited game. Released in 1958, my parents had the second or third reprinting of the album by 20^th Century Fox records (yes, there was such a thing) by the time I arrived in time for Christmas 1962. So I grew up with Harry Simeone and his Chorale.

This is the one we had

Many cover versions of the song have been recorded from the tender rendition of Bing Crosby and David Bowie to the more impassioned version of Bob Segar. This year I seem to hear the traditional version of the song, lilting and graceful, but punctuated by louder and louder drums in almost a martial cadence, as if something unknown is approaching, marching in unison, with a purpose that belies the lyrics’

And with that, Godwin's Law strikes

Peace on Earth, goodwill toward mankind. Yet, it seems more like Weird Al’s ‘Christmas at Ground Zero.’ What has happened in Berlin reminds us how far we've grown distant to goodwill.

On January 20, everything changes. How much, how soon and how severe one can only guess. But we have this one last holiday season whether you’d like Christmas, Hanukah or Yule (or Festivus) before the change.

Put aside your worries for a few days. Try to make this season memorable because, in the end, it may be the memories of Christmas past that will keep our psyches warm in coming times. Heck, even give your alt-right uncle a drink. Pour one for yourself – you’ll both need one eventually.

The game is to drink until you can't see the red stripes

More than this I cannot say. The year 2016 took from us a whole host of luminaries including the aforementioned  Mr. Bowie. In addition, Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer died as well, leaving us with, perhaps, the most perplexing secular Christmas song of all time – tinsel and fire mixed with an almost unbearable disillusionment. Such is life. I leave you with his lyrics.

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth
Hallelujah noel be it heaven or hell
The Christmas we get we deserve

How I Got My Parents to Buy A Color TV

I shudder to think of what could have happened.

What happened was bad enough.

Of course, you know I was a curious child, which has gotten me in trouble ever since.

And my dad, a Korean War Marine MP knew one thing – money didn’t grow on trees.

Put those things together and we have the ingredients for a combustible situation.

Speaking of combustible. . .

Some weekday morning in the summer of 1967, upon awaking, I went down to the basement with my sister to watch TV. We were one of those families where the TV was in the basement, which was something of a family room/den (not the richly appointed ones you’re probably thinking of) and not the ‘living room.’ The living room was NOT covered in plastic and used for entertaining only.

You had to cross through the living room to get anywhere in the house. In the beginning, my playpen was there but other than that, I don’t recall it being used for much else except to hold our beat-up second hand furniture my parents were gifted when they got married.

This would change.

So here we are watching a Woody Woodpecker cartoon and I notice one of those Tupperware cups we had so many of (mom gave and attended Tupperware parties – all the kitchen wear was Tupperware, everything else was from Sears). My parents had been watching the TV the night before and what ice that had been in the cup had melted, leaving about a half-inch of water in the bottom.

By the way, the TV looked exactly like this:

 

It was the BIG expense when my parents moved in to the new house in 1961. Every new home had to have a TV and they were all black and white.

By 1967, color sets, which would set you back about a month’s pay, were sweeping the nation as the latest status symbol/must have item. I became aware of the wonderful world of color watching local TV shows that broadcast in color like Captain Penny.

Captain Penny

Captain Penny was a kid’s show which starred Ron Penfound (warning: we’re going Deep Cleveland here), who would dress in an engineer’s uniform and show Three Stooges cartoons. I don’t think Penfound really enjoyed springing the Stooges on young impressionable kids. He used to say it was OK to laugh at them but don’t act like them. I think WEWS TV5 (“First in Cleveland”) got the Stooges stuff on the cheap so Penfound had to show them.

He had a cast of characters that would do various skit appearances and had ‘Jungle Larry’ (not Larry Fine) bring in exotic animals from his theme parlk, but the one thing everyone waited for was ‘Pooch Parade.’

Pooch Parade was sponsored by the Animal Protective League of Cleveland and featured dogs up for adoption from the kennel and other dogs which owners could not keep anymore. For some reason, our Springer Spaniel ‘Dutchie’ (God my dad had a way with nicknames; I won’t tell you what mine was but it was close to Dutchie) was on the show. To this day I don’t know why we had to give Dutchie away.

Man, this is getting long-winded. Stick with me, it gets better.

ANYWAY. . . Captain Penny would introduce the dog and then say, “for you folks watching at home with a black and white TV, this dog’s coloring is . . .”

Dad, why can’t we get a color TV?

“D’ya think money grows on trees, kid? Nothin’ wrong with that TV. Just be thankful ya have one.”

The resentment grew. One night, I was waiting for ‘Bonanza’ to start.

I beheld some weird psychedelic image on the screen.

This is what I saw. 

“The following program is brought to you in living color . . . on NBC.”

No, it’s not.

Dad, why is it not in color?

“Shut up you.”

One more aside, I swear, before we get to the good stuff.

I was notorious for getting in trouble by sticking things in places they shouldn’t go (stop with the dirty mind, I was four-years-old). Example: my favorite was sticking bobby pins in wall outlets. It’s a wonder I didn’t have the weirdest hair on Golden Gate Boulevard. So my parents had to buy the plastic outlet caps which I spent hours trying to pry off.

I was curious. If I was better at math, I would have grown up to be a mad scientist.

So, here I am looking at the TV and the water in the bottom of the cup and for reasons known only to God, I wondered what would happen if I poured that bit of water down the back of the TV set?

Look, I never said I was ever mentally balanced.

My sister was curious too but I think she was just egging me on.

I don’t remember much from when I was four but I do remember this.

Remember the opening to the old Mister Magoo cartoon where Magoo lands up driving through a power plant? Remember the noises that made?

That’s pretty much the noise that was made when the water hit the vacuum tubes.

The TV went dark.

I froze in horror.

Mom came downstairs screaming at both of us. This is the part where my memory is a little cloudy as trauma tends to do that to children.

We ran from her up to our bedrooms screaming.

I remember leaning against my bedroom door, sobbing and retching, waiting for my father to get home. Because when he did, I knew, I KNEW, he was going to kill me.

It wasn’t the first time and it would not be the last.

Eventually my father came home. I was called down from upstairs (as opposed to being called up from downstairs).

I remember trembling as I came down the stairs one agonizing step at a time.

My father put his hand around my shoulder (would he crush my head?) and pointed downstairs at the dead TV and said that was something I was never to touch.

And that was it. I went back to my room believing in miracles.

It was a few years before I found out what really happened. At some dinner party at our new house, circa 1971, my dad was regaling her hosts about the time my sister broke the TV.

“Oh that wasn’t her,” I brightly said. “That was me.”

There was a moment of silence. Me and my big mouth strike again (again, not the first time, absolutely not the last).

“Wait. . . YOU?” my dad said.

My sister, hearing my screams of impending death, took pity on me for the first and last time in her life. To save me from getting my ass beat, she copped to the crime. And she got what I thought was the beating.

To this day, she has never forgiven me.

As for this revelation, the child advice columnists of the day said corporal punishment needed to be dealt out at the time of the infraction, so the child would associate the pain with the act.

It was four years later and although my father was mad for being tricked into beating the wrong child, he was not going to beat me now.

Of course, there is a bright side to this. You can tell by the title of this essay.

Originally, we were told by our parents that because of this, we would never have television again – EVER! I couldn’t fathom such an existence. Without the “Vast Wasteland,” life would be . . . a vast wasteland. My childhood would be ruined. The neighborhood kids would laugh at us.

That lasted about a week. My parents were bigger TV junkies than we were.

Dad got an estimate to fix the set. It would have cost as much as he paid for the TV originally.

Somehow, someway, dad decided to get a new TV. And it would be color. And it would be from Sears. And the only reason is because he probably got it on payments since he worked there.

I remember the day it arrived. It was YUUGE!

The photo is the 1965 model, ours was two years newer, a little longer, but still had that nifty ‘works in a drawer’ feature that refused to stay closed after a few years. It was in that ghastly ‘colonial’ style my parents loved so much. I always wanted ‘contemporary’ (being a modern, hip kid), we all hated ‘Mediterranean’ (red velvet? Really?) so we got ‘colonial.’ I had no say in the decision.

And it was placed in the living room, mostly I think so that mom and dad could make sure neither of us would approach it without being seen. It might have well been surrounded by razor wire.

It would be an entire year before I was allowed to approach King TV and only with one of my parents watching me. I always remember being allowed to switch the channel to watch ‘Flipper’ as God intended – in color.

“Everyone loves the king of the sea. . . “

I found out later that dolphins can really be bastards

Whenever I hear that theme song, I remember color TV.

But wait! There’s one more revelation – one I didn’t learn until well after my father died.

Mom knew.

“Of course I knew,” she said thirty years after the fact. “I saw you standing there with that cup in your hand and your wide eyes.”

Then why didn’t you say anything?

It came out slowly. She was afraid dad would kill me and she knew dad wouldn’t kill his little ‘peaches and cream.’ I don’t know what he did to her and I never asked.

And my mother spent the rest of her life trying to make it up to her.

So she knew it all along. As Captain Penny used to say at the end of every show:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool Mom. She's pretty nice and she's pretty smart. If you do what Mom says you won't go far wrong."

Requiem for my father

I think in a way my father was lucky to have succumbed of lymphoma at 51. Never mind, for the time being, that he was grossly misdiagnosed by a doctor who said the painful palpable lump on his neck was just fat from . . . well being fat. Our doctor did not like fat people. He tried to get me on a diet when I was 11.

Ignore for now that my father’s cancer went through at least two stages until a biopsy stunned hospital personnel who could not believe a patient would have waited so long before being biopsied. What was my dad supposed to think? His doctor was giving him cortisone shots in the neck and he must know what he’s doing, right?

Also ignore that after my dad died fighting a hopeless rear guard action against the cancer, that the same doctors who were so ‘aghast’ at the obvious malpractice, zipped their lip when my mother’s attorney came calling.

In the end, it all may have been a blessing in disguise.

When they looked like this. And were great.

See, dad was a Sears man. It was the only job he’d ever had in his life; stretching back to 1962 when it was made clear to him he did not have the skills to create a career in art. It must have been a crushing blow to someone who studied with diligence for several years at the Cleveland Institute of Art to be told: you’re good, just not good enough. Dad, a Korean War Veteran, went to school on the GI Bill.

His parents thought it was a waste of time and money but dad had to know. 

Once he was disabused of the notion he would be the next Currier and/or Ives, he had to find a job. Straining to make mortgage payments and with a son (me) on the way, he turned to Sears’ salesman training program.

They made an interior decorator out of a Marine. That must have hurt too. 

Nevertheless, he forged on selling custom drapery out of his van all over the east side of Cleveland. He worked in the Carnegie Avenue store which was then, as it is now, a pretty sketchy area. 

He got yelled at by everyone, bosses, customers, and the warehouse. Kids would take a dump on his samples. But he kept on. Even though he never made more money than my mother (a school teacher), he kept up his end of the deal working a job that must have sacked his will to live, judging by the tirades we had to endure when he got home.

I remember more than one time my father saying to all of us “my days at Sears are numbered; they have it out for me.”

This was a (meager) draw against commission. The pressure to help put food on the table and pay the light and gas bills took a toll. My parents would get into screaming matches while going over bills. As I’ve written before, sometimes the phone would be disconnected; sometimes the heating oil arrived late to a cold house.

His only real escape was the great outdoors and the hunting and fishing he so loved. Had he been able to, he would have gone into the woods with his camping gear and never come out. He could live off the land. He really could. 

All he ever wanted. Really.

“To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off.”

There was only one time I ever saw him happy about his job. We were eating dinner and the phone rang. You couldn’t make my father angrier than to call at dinnertime. Mom answered and said “Ed, it’s for you.” My father’s face went into an instant twitch and scowl. He always expected the worst.

But within a few second I saw a look of pure joy on his face I did not think possible. When he slammed the phone back on the cradle, he literally danced for joy.

“Ed, Ed, what is it.” Mom asked.

“I got the job in carpeting,” my father shouted.

I asked what that meant, thinking going from selling drapery to carpeting didn’t seem like such a big deal to me.

“Bigger commissions,” dad said. 

It was the happiest I ever saw him. 

Sad, isn’t it?

“The only thing you've got in this world is what you can sell.”

But when he died on August 11, 1983, Sears was starting to go through a transformation which would eventually turn it into the shit store it is now – complete with the death rattle coming from deep inside a once great retail empire.

By this time, some of the wonderful things that had made Sears great were gone: the cafeteria, the driving school and the candy store where dad would pick up some bridge mix for us kids when he was feeling particularly generous.

About a year after my father died, Sears slowly began converting the commissioned salespeople to hourly employees. When I would return to the store at the Great Lakes Mall in the years to come, I would notice less and less suit and tie salespeople and more kids trying to sell merchandise whose features they couldn’t sell and, in many cases, didn’t understand.

By the early 90s, all that was left of the commissioned salespeople were in major appliances. Custom drapery was gone and carpeting would follow by the mid-90s. By the end of the century, Sears looked like a somewhat neater Wal-Mart with customer service to match.

Don’t think for a second that just because dad had issues with management and had a hard time handling rude customers that he didn’t believe in Sears. 

Everything, but especially tools.

Everything in our house was from Sears. Dad always said that he was proud his company stood by its products with that ironclad ‘satisfaction guaranteed, or your money back’ promise. 

I am convinced that if he had lived long enough, in fact, not that much longer, Sears would have broken his heart. Then they would have let him go. 

“You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.”

He would have been in his mid-50s with nowhere really to go. If he got lucky, our neighbor might have been able to get him a job selling hardware to independent retailers – but that job died in the mid-90s thanks to the mom and pop hardware stores being crushed by the big boxes and Wal-Mart.

He might have sold cars. That’s about the only thing I could think of as a reasonable alternative. But the way cars were sold back then (and still today in some dealerships) would have also crushed his soul. Dad believed in integrity and that a handshake was as good as your word, which was a trusted bond.

And by that time, as it is now, companies didn’t want used-up sales retreads in later middle-age. They wanted fresh-faced young go-getters who were hungry and would work for peanuts.

My mom missed him terribly. I can remember, even moths after the funeral, her wailing in the dining room. I stayed in my bedroom listening and having my heart torn apart. There is no worse crying than that which comes from grief. 

Mom never remarried. She had one love of her life and he was gone forever. So she buried herself in her Catholic faith (with particular emphasis to charismatic practice) and changed so much that after a decade, I barely knew her anymore. 

It would have been far worse for both of them had dad lived. They had just gotten their heads pretty well above water when dad’s illness hit. His despair, I believe, would have brought the bad times back with a vengeance. My sister and I would not have gone to college for sure. The marriage may not have survived.

God only knows how he would have reacted to my two divorces, mental illness (which he didn’t or didn’t want to, understand), my sister’s issues, etc.

In the end, dad left mom with a small Sears pension and some minor investments which all added up to just enough to create a portfolio that grew steadily and allowed mom slowly begin to live off the dividend checks. By the time she retired from teaching, her pension plus the stock portfolio ensured she would keep the house and live out her last years in dignity. 

"After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive."

He never realized it, but it was truly his time to go; for mom, us kids, but most importantly, for himself.

“Nobody dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there’s no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple spots on your hat and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream boy, it comes with the territory.”