Glad you called. I was just about to pack up the rest of the house…

 “Oh, yeah.  See that?  That’s not supposed to be sticking up that way (pointing to the jagged edge of clavicle that was darn near poking its way out of the skin).  And this (mashing on the scapula), this feels real crunchy.  That’s definitely broke, too.  We’ll have to get an MRI, just as soon as we get that leg closed up.” 

These are not words that you want to hear being strung into sentences and coming out of the mouth of the attending ER doctor who is examining your busted up mate.  But there they were, being said while the nurses took vitals and started an IV. 

Eric’s jaw was set in such a way that indicated he was in an extreme amount of pain (it would take weeks of healing and lots of pain meds for that jaw to come unclenched), but he managed to crack a few jokes, ask about his bike (without batting an eyelash, I lied and told him that his bike was fine) and explain that no, he had not been riding a motorcycle, he had been riding a bicycle (we had to explain this over and over again to the various nurses and orderlies who bustled in an out).  Evidently these types of injuries are normally reserved for folks who lay down their choppers or hogs.

What occurred then was a flurry of hospital staff shift changes, a parking lot passing-off of Eric’s injured bike to Kris Catoe (who left the well-oiled morning routine that he and Laura have of getting three precocious children ready for daycare …thank the Lord for the Catoes), x-rays showing multiple broken bones (clavicle, rib and scapula…they missed the cracked humerus, which would be discovered the next day at the orthopedist’s office), visits from well-wishers, whispers of being sent to Huntsville to see a specialist (should the scapula be as badly broken as they thought it might be) and orders for an MRI…but only after the gaping and seeping wound of Eric’s shin was stitched up.

How do you mend a piece of fabric that has torn into a V-shape?  You put an anchor stitch in the middle to hold the two pieces back together, and work from each outside edge into the middle, towards the anchor stitch.  That is basically what the doctor did to Eric’s wound, starting with an anchor stitch in the middle, then working his way from the outside edges in.  He used a couple of different stitches in his suturing, one which I recognized as a stitch that I have used in the past to close up the misshapen stuffed animals I’ve been known to make…the blanket stitch.  The other stitch was one that I couldn’t recall, even after looking up on the Internet stitches used to close wounds. Surprisingly, during this Internet search of stitches, I did discover one called the Smead-Jones/Far and Near, which sounded to me more like a long lost Tolkien novel than a type of suture. 

Once stitched, Eric was bundled off to get an MRI…and then…waiting…and waiting for the doctor to come and discuss the results of the MRI. 

With the uncertainty of the situation, and the possibility of Eric being transported to Huntsville (pending MRI results), I asked the nurse if she thought I would have time to run home to put some real clothes on and pack a bag for Eric.  She said that yes, I would have plenty of time before the doctor came back.  I gave the nurse my cell number (just in case), grabbed Eric’s bag of belongings, said an anxious goodbye to my broken cyclist and headed home in lunch-hour traffic on Meighan Boulevard.  While I drove, I planned every move that I would make in the house...how I would make a sweeping circle while grabbing everything we could possibly need in the next couple of days.  Cell phone chargers, underwear, toothbrushes, deodorant, granola, insurance card, wallet…

I hit the front door running, and within five minutes had exactly half of the house packed up and ready to go.  About that time, my cell phone rang.  It wasn’t a number I recognized and my experience of answering a call from an unknown number earlier just that morning made me brace myself as I answered.  It was the ER nurse. 

ER Nurse:  The doctor just came in.  They’re getting ready to release him.

Me:  Really?  No transfer to Huntsville?

ER Nurse:  No.  He’ll have to make an appointment to see an orthopedist, but he’s about to be released from here.  You’ll want to bring him some clothes to wear.

Me:  I will.  No problem.  I’m glad you called.  I was just about to pack up the rest of the house.

ER Nurse:  Yes, that’s what I was afraid you’d be doing. I was trying to catch you before you did.

Me:  Well, I appreciate that.  I’ll be back up there in about twenty minutes…

Eric was dismissed with a signing of papers, a putting on of his clothes (I paid very close attention to how to get a shirt on him), and a fresh dose of pain killers (these I had to ask specifically for…I told them that he was already in pain, and that they needed to buy me some time so that I could get him home and then go out for his prescriptions…thankfully they agreed before I had to pitch a full-blown conniption fit).  Yet again, he was almost impossible to get into the car.  And yet again, he was almost impossible to get back out of the car once we arrived home.  And little did we know that it would be almost three weeks before he would be able to sit comfortably, or even get a decent night’s sleep.  Glad we didn’t know all that up front.

So, with lots of help from friends bringing home cooked meals, groceries, baked goods, Thai food…friends picking Eric up and dropping him off…lots of prayers and lots of well wishes, we’ve made it through the hardest part.  Recovery has been comical while it has been hard.  We laugh when we can, and just do our best to get through one day at a time.  But short of the injuries themselves, I think the part that has hurt Eric the most is the loss of a cyclocross season, a cyclocross season that he was putting a lot of training time into.  Thankfully, the season lasts into the winter months of 2012, plenty of time for Eric to be back on the bike and ready to hit the mud.  We’ll just keep moving towards that goal.  And we’ll try to remember the words of Hemingway, “The world breaks us all. Afterward, some are stronger at the broken places.”

Chewiest Gluten-free Granola Bars

Back in 2008, a glutened-up version of this recipe acted as an urban family matchmaker of sorts for me.  At the time, I was asked by my friend Cyndi to send out a recipe as part of an email recipe-exchange.  I chose to send out my Chewiest Granola Bars recipe because it had served me so well over the years, and I thought that everyone would love it.  I believe that only two people on that list ever acknowledged the recipe, the original person who started the recipe-exchange (the pun-tastic Gadsden Times editor and writer, Cyndi Nelson), and Laura Catoe.  I knew who Laura was (we had mutual friends, and I was familiar with her graphic design work, as well as her writing, for the Gadsden Times); didn't know her personally.  But, once the recipe ended up in her inbox, planets began to align in the perfect order for us to meet and become friends.  There have been many shared recipes and many shared meals that have transpired since our first meeting (and Laura even dedicated a post to them once, which she updated when I discovered my gluten-free status), so I feel like I owe a debt of gratitude to the magic of the granola bars...

Here is the recipe, as I make them now, with a bit more gluten-free detail.  They are super easy to make:

Chewiest Granola Bars
(I recommend organic ingredients, when possible)

1c Brown Sugar
½ c Light corn syrup  or honey (I usually use honey)
½ c Butter, room temp.
2/3 c Peanut butter
2 ts Vanilla extract
½ c Sunflower seeds
1 1/2 c Bob's Red Mill Oats (or store brand oats, if you are not gluten-intolerant)
1 1/2 c Puffed Rice Cereal (I use .59 cent Walmart brand)
½ c Coconut, grated
1/3 c Ground Flax Seed (or Wheat germ, if you are not gluten-intolerant)
½ c Dried Fruit (raisins, cherries, etc.)
1c Nestle Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips (they are gluten-free)
1c Toasted Nuts (I use half pecans, half walnuts)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Coat inside of 9X12 glass baking dish with veg. oil.  In large bowl, combine br. sugar, corn syrup, butter, peanut butter, and vanilla-stir well to the consistency of a paste.  Stir in remaining ingredients and work the mixture so that several large clumps adhere together.  Using fingers, press the mixture into baking dish (be sure to mash pretty hard, or you will end up with bars that fall apart, which is not so bad, either, because they are still edible).  Bake at 350 for 18-20 min.  until golden brown.  Allow to cool completely before cutting into bars.  I wrap each individually, and haven't missed store bought granola since I first discovered and tweaked this recipe.  They freeze well, too.

Because I’m About to Break the Law

I got a phone call on the morning of July 28th at 5:52AM from a phone number I didn’t recognize.

“Hey, it’s me, Eric Wright.”

“Hey, babe, what’s up?”

“I’ve crashed the bike and I need you to come pick me up.  I’m up in Country Club.”

“Is this your phone?”  I asked, knowing that he had accidentally left his phone at the office the night before, but I never think properly before coffee.

“No, I flagged someone down and they let me use their phone.”  Nothing in his voice sounded unusual.

Eric then told me approximately where he was in Country Club, and I told him I’d be right there.  I left the house in my bedtime clothes and flip flops, left lights on in the kitchen and living room, because I figured I’d be back quick.   At least I had the forethought to take Eric’s car with the bike rack on it.  I figured the bike was banged up, and that was the reason why he couldn’t ride it back to the house.

When I came up the first major hill in Country Club (a hill that is also a tight curve), I saw Eric sitting on the shoulder of the road, right in the bend of the curve.  His bike was about twenty or thirty feet from him, lying among the pine trees and poison ivy of someone’s back yard.  He smiled weakly at me as I pulled into the nearest driveway, which was across the street, behind him.  He was holding his right leg at the shin, bloody handkerchief covering a cut that was bleeding enough to have soaked his sock.  He remained sitting stiffly in place, no pivoting of the body or head, as I got out of the car and approached him.  I don’t remember who spoke first or which questions were asked in what order, but I seem to recall an exchange that went something like this:

Me:  “Where’re you hurt?”

Eric:  “My left side hurts.  I think I broke my collarbone.”

Me:  “Well, we need to get you to the emergency room.”

Eric:  “Yeah, that would be good.  I think I gashed my leg pretty bad…”

Me:  “Let me take a look.” (One glimpse revealed a cut that my kinfolk would’ve remarked upon with “Well, he done laid that leg open to the bone.”).   “Yep, that’s gonna need some stitches.”

At this point, Eric asked me to move the car closer because…well, he just couldn’t really move too well.  So I pulled the car into the road, turned on the hazard lights and prayed that no one would be coming down through there too fast…then I went about the task of getting Eric off the side of the road and into the car.  The road shoulder upon which he sat was pretty steep, with loose gravel and patches of poison ivy here and there.  I could’ve tried to help him up by his right arm, but that would’ve meant balancing myself with one foot up on the pavement and one foot down in the gravel.  I might slip and take Eric with me.  So, I did what I thought was best at that moment.  I faced Eric, planted my feet on either side of him, squatted in a most un-lady-like plié, hugged my arms around his waist and lifted him to a standing position with my legs.  Still holding as tight as I dared, I talked Eric through taking two steps backwards so that his rear was within sitting distance of the passenger seat.  Two cars arrived from opposite directions just as I began performing what may have been the most difficult procedure of the day:  folding my very-much-in-pain-and-very-much-in-shock-six-foot-one mate into a sedan that all of a sudden seemed about the size of a Volkswagon Beetle.  One driver called out to me that I could use her phone if I needed it.  I said thanks, but I had it under control…that I was taking him to the emergency room…if I could just get all of him in the car…

If it had not been such a distressing situation, it would’ve been comical. Eric seemed to be made of elbows and knees that didn’t want to bend, and limbs that I was corrugating to fit under the glove compartment.  Quickly (although at the time it seemed impossibly slow), I coached and coaxed and tucked limbs until a complete Eric sat uncomfortably inside the car.  How he remained composed and cooperative as we went through these motions, I’ll never know.  All I can say is that there are times when shock is a blessing.  This was one of those times.

Now, even though I was in unknown injury territory, I was running on adrenaline and instinct.  I knew that Eric was hurt, but I felt like he was going to be fine.  My attitude was very calm until something happened that almost made my wheels come off.   When I asked Eric if he wanted me to retrieve his bike, his response was something akin to “I don’t care.”  Fear gripped me.  The hair on the back of my neck may have even stood up. Eric’s bike meant the world to him.  If he didn’t care about the bike, then something must be terribly wrong with Eric.  I had to act, and I had to act quickly.  I sprinted through the poison ivy, grabbed the disabled bike (wheels would not turn), and secured it best as I could to the bike rack.  Performing a three-point turn at record speed (thankfully, Eric’s car executes this maneuver far smoother than my car does, otherwise he would’ve been in much greater pain than he was), I exited Country Club and made my way down Rainbow Drive.  Every bump elicited either a sharp withdrawing of breath or a hiss from Eric.  All I could do was apologize in advance for the bumps I knew were coming, or apologize for the ones I had just hit.  As we came up to the red light by Applebee’s, Eric mentioned that I still had the hazard lights on, and that I could probably turn them off now.  My response was to look for any potential vehicular hindrances and say, “Well, no, I’m gonna leave them on, because I’m about to break the law.”  We went on through the red light and got on the bypass that spits traffic out on the East side of town, the side of town where the hospital is located.

What with all of the multiple surgeries my sister, dad and mom have had at that hospital, I know every bump between here and there.  And there are a lot of bumps.  I couldn’t even look at Eric the entire stretch of Meighan Blvd. between Hood Ave. and the hospital cutoff.  It must’ve been a nightmare.  The only blessing about it was the fact that it was so early in the day, there was hardly any traffic to slow us down.  So, we arrived at the emergency room relatively quickly, even if one of us was worse for wear.  The only issue that I now had to face was how to get Eric out of the car that I had just ten minutes ago pleated him into.  Could he walk?  No.  I ran in for a wheelchair.  Again, how to get him out of the car?  By this point, Eric’s entire body seemed to be giving into the trauma, so great was his pain.  I knew I would not be able to wrangle him out of the car and into a wheelchair on my own, so I ran back in and asked the nurse to find an orderly to help me with “a cycling accident victim with possible broken bones” (I wanted to sound as if I knew what I was talking about, and that they better get someone to help me, stat.  Stat, I say!).   An orderly who was blessed with both a calming demeanor and the stature of a hay-bale-throwing farmhand came to save Eric from my final attempt at turning him into an origami version of himself.  I’ve never felt relief so sweet as that I felt when Eric was rolled into the ER…

It is here that I will suspend my storytelling.  Eric has begun his account of the accident on his website, so it seems appropriate to stop at the same spot where he did.  But, I do have one more thing to add before I go:  Eric’s Garmin was still tracking speed while I was driving to the hospital that day.  According to the stats, I never went over 55 miles per hour the entire time I was driving, including the time when I ran the red light.  So, I may have been breaking the law, but I was doing it in a cautious and reserved way.  


Update:  Part Deux of this story may be found here.

We were just playin'...

About three years ago, my friend Tami Brooks and I started a fake grass roots campaign to save the Beavers of South 11^th.  It all started when I came into work one day after a great big rain, and exclaimed to Tami (who happened to be a coworker at the time), “Hey, I just passed, like, three dead beavers on the way into work today!  They were all on South 11^th, and they WEREN’T run over!”  Her response was to drop her voice conspiratorially and half-whisper, “How do you think they died?”  “I don’t know!” I said.  And then I added (obviously, without thinking), “Maybe they drowned when the creek flooded from the rain!  Maybe they need to be saved from the next flood!”  A look crossed Tami’s face.  It was a look that anyone knowing Tami Brooks knows meant, “Oh, you may be on to something,” and “There is no way we are getting any work done today, cause now we’ve got a subject to focus on that no normal person would entertain the idea of thinking twice about.”  I believe that the last words Tami said to me before we headed off to our respective offices that day were, “Maybe we SHOULD save the beavers of South 11^th…”

Now, y’all have got to understand that Tami and I can take the most inane and even insipid topics and turn them into the day’s headlining news story.  To say we are hyperbolic (in a rhetorical, not mathematical sense) is a complete understatement.  Give us a June-bug-green car with its alarm going off, and one of us'll make it into more than a June-bug-green car with its alarm going off…

So, in between program planning and readers’ advisory that day, Tami created a Facebook page entitled Save the South 11^th Street Beavers.  She also found (what luck) a cartoon image of a beaver wearing a red life vest with I Look Best In My Life Vest written underneath it.  Brilliant.  I became the second member of the group.  And then, just to give the group authenticity, I wrote the following fake meeting minutes to our fake Save the South 11^th Street Beavers meeting:  

Although there have been no new reports of beaver fatalities on So. 11th Street, there is still a concern about the health and safety of our semi-aquatic, rodent friends. Several suggestions were made for upgrading our So. 11th roadway with eco-friendly passages that would allow the safe and uninterrupted flow of beavers from one side of the road to the other: 

Beadestrian Overpass-Suggested by Jimmy Brooks, this passage would be a structure similar to the pedestrian overpasses common in big-city hospital and school zones. Pros: open to fresh air, can travel at own pace. Cons: Beavers will be at risk in inclement weather.

The Pipeline-This suggestion was made by myself. It is really a simple concept of a level pipeline that will span the roadway; beavers will be able to enter the pipeline at banklevel on one side of the road, travel at their own pace through the pipeline, and exit the pipeline at banklevel on the destination side of the road. Pros: protected from weather, can travel at own pace. Cons: poor airflow.

The Luge-Eric Wright made the suggestion of creating a beaver luge (like the dangerous Olympic sport), which would require the building of an artificial raised track that spanned the roadway.  Beavers would be allowed to take a luge sled across the roadway on the luge track. Of course this type of travel will be "timed, and the luger must depart from the start handles within a certain time once the track is declared clear."
Pros: timely travel. Cons: disqualification if the beaver pushes the sled across the finish line.

We were just having fun.  But then we had people request to join the group, which was fine, if it had stopped there.  But it didn’t.  It only stopped after a member of the local TV media contacted Tami to get the scoop on the story.  They thought it would make a great feel-good piece…until Tami fessed up that it was a fake group.  See, we never dreamed anyone would take us seriously…honestly, we were just playing.

The Bungalow: Back Garden, Then & Now

Here is a photo of The Bungalow's back yard from a little over a year ago (April of 2010), when I first looked at the property with the greatest realtor EVER, Judy Hamil (she is one of my downtown plant exchange people now, too). The sweet shrub and forsythia are the only things in the middle. Overgrown azaleas line the fence on the right. The massive gardenia is at the back gate.










Here are some photos of The Bungalow back garden now:

















The massive gardenia is still at the back gate, but I thinned it out and fertilized it this year, so it has given us a glorious show (and a great smelling yard). I hard pruned the azaleas last summer while Slim was in Africa (you can hardly see them in these photos), but they laughed at my attempt to control them and are now coming back in a more natural shape (which I prefer to a hair-cut-hedge-row shape). Sweet shrub and forsythia are still there, just cut into submission. The bargain section of the garden is to the back, and right: Seventy-five-cent-from-Lowes'-off-season-sale Red Velvet Yarrow is so big, it's laying down now; burn-your-eyes-red, Dollar Tree gladiolus are standing tall; two-dollars-a-pot-from-Lowe's-off-season-sale Russian Sage is at the back, closest to the stob (Yes, that's what I said. We have a concrete and steel stob in our garden. We found it by the back fence when we moved in. We thought to throw it out, but kept forgetting about it...plus, it weighs so much, we didn't feel like moving it. I looked at it so long, thinking, "Every Southern yard needs a stob that is good for nothing except for lookin' at. It just shows that somethin' was there at one time, but no longer is." So while Slim was at church last Sunday, I dug a hole, rolled the stob up to it, and reburied it as part of the garden. When I excitedly showed it to Slim later in the day, I explained about how it added a nice preserved-decay/architectural feel to the place...I think he just sighed and accepted it, which was real sweet of him.). Beside the stob, but behind the gladiolus is a patch of white clover that that came from the seed Susan DiBiase gave me. It is so pretty, I let it grow up a bit. Also, I let it grow up so that my sister and nephew could go through it looking for 4-leaf clover. My sister is an expert 4-leaf clover finder. And she's grooming her son to step into her 4-leaf-clover-finding shoes. He sure is patient little grasshopper...perfect concentration for a job like 4-leaf clover finding.

You can kinda see the marble question-mark path that runs through the garden, which I already mentioned in a past post. To the left of the path, you can just make out the rose bed, which is made up of all the roses I transplanted last summer from mom and dad's yard, as well as one rose that Miss Judy the Realtor gave me from her yard. I've been fighting with the deconstructive forces of sawfly larvae on the roses this year. They were stripping the leaves off the bushes, so I ended up Neeming every morning to keep them away (I also used the effective old school technique of pulling the worm off of the plant and stomping it flat...the worm, not the plant).

There are lots of other plants I've added in the back: a small clump of blue fescue, some iris, some Crocosmia Lucifer that won't produce until next year, some cosmos from last year, day lilies, lots of violets (which are wilting in this heat), some other crocosmia that our neighbor Douglas' mother-in-law gave me one morning, cannas (also from Douglas, but from his trash pile) and some spring plants that have already bloomed and died back (daffodils and crocus). We have some sunflowers growing by the house, and some Roma tomatoes. And then there are the plants that have been there for a long time, and continue to be there: hydrangea, money plant, surprise lilies, ham & eggs lantana...the works. We are NOT going to run out of plants any time soon.

To the far left of the back yard is a fence that links our back yard to the neighbor's back yard. We wanted to soften the look of the fence and create some privacy, so we started researching what types of evergreen shrubs we would like. We had it narrowed down to a particular type of arborvitae, but were waiting to order them until we could budget them in. Then, last Saturday, Kris Catoe called me saying that he had acquired a load of Indian Hawthorn, and would I like the leftovers once he planted what he needed. Does a bear poop in the woods? So, while Slim was in Anniston on a Mellow Mushroom ride, I made the executive decision to accept any leftovers that were leftover. Kris dramatically deposited five Indian Hawthorn shrubs on our porch within the half hour (he lined them along the front porch entryway so that the first thing I saw when I stepped out the front door was a glorious display of hawthorn). I proceeded to plant them as a surprise for Slim when he got home. Unlike the reception our stob would get the next day, Slim's reaction was one of happy surprise. His words were, "Our yard is coming together!" I think so.

Here is the fence side right before planting:










Here it is during the process (I forgot to take one after, but they look about the same):










Nothing is mulched yet. We're waiting until the majority of the planting is done before we borrow someone's pick-up to go get a couple of loads of mulch.

I'll post about the front yard just as soon as the stumps are ground up and out of the way. AND after we get the azalea lace bug problem under control (the drought has causes some azalea stress, which was a gate-way for the lace bug to step in and start draining the sap from the leaves. It is a sad sight, all those leaves looking so pale...). For now, that's all I have to say.

"The Truth As It Seemed"

Since we are finishing up our 2011 Gadsden Reads, I decided last week that I would go ahead and get a jump on next year’s community read by skimming through the text of the book we chose for 2012. I was unable to skim. I read the entire book, because I couldn’t put it down. But I’m not sure that I was prepared to read Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. I had heard amazing things about the book. That it was one of the most important pieces of fiction written about the Vietnam War. That it was a powerful account of what actually happened during the war. And that it was a statement to the nightmare of war.

While The Things They Carried is all those things, it is far more. O’Brian’s collection of short stories is possibly one of the truest statements to the chaos of the Vietnam War, the psychological struggles that our soldiers went through during the war, the psychological AND social struggles that they went through when they returned stateside. These soldiers had their morals and their lives jeopardized daily....no, hourly. It was a torturous existence they lived while fighting in Vietnam. Fighting an enemy that they could not accurately identify (How do you tell a North Vietnamese person from a South Vietnamese person? It would be like trying to identify a north Alabamian from a south Alabamian based upon looks…it is impossible to tell the differences in a split second, and through appearances alone), on a front that may or may not have really existed (guess it depends upon who you ask). I’m not saying that soldiers in other wars didn’t suffer the same kinds of atrocities during combat. They did. And they still do. But, I’ve just always felt that the Vietnam War was such a stinking unpopular war, such a stinking long war, such a stinking un-winnable war, that the veterans from that particular war got blamed for all of the badness, badness that they couldn’t really control. And that’s no way to treat somebody who fought for our country. But that’s just my opinion.

O’Brian’s style is approachable. He uses lists in the title story, something that reminds me of Whitman, and he uses a poetic style of repetition that keeps you from forgetting small details, details that make the stories more believable (or maybe the repetition is from the shock that he perhaps still suffers from all these years later). But O’Brian also employs the technique of the unreliable narrator. He reminds us over and over to be skeptical of war stories, thereby reminding us that he, the author, is not to be trusted either.

“In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way…The picture gets jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.” (pg. 78 from the Penguin Books paperback version). “In many cases a true war story cannot be believed.”

The book is labeled fiction, but one cannot help but get the sense that it is not. The Things They Carried is similar to, but different from my other all-time-favorite, gut-wrenching war books (Johnny Got His Gun, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Song for Night). The details are a little more raw in Things, a little too real. O’Brian sets us up, and then rips the rug out from underneath us. Not that we didn’t expect it, ‘cause we did. Who wouldn’t expect something like that from a war novel? We find ourselves lying on the floor with the wind knocked out of us, feeling a little sick to our stomachs, wondering if the passage we have just read is real, or if it is an altered version of what happened somewhere. Doesn’t matter. O’Brien got it right. So we find ourselves staring at the blurb on the back of the book, a statement from the Milwaukee Journal stating, “This writing is so powerful that it steals your breath.” Damn straight, it does.

One of my dearest friends was a Vietnam Vet. A hell of a guy by the name of Randy Dover. He was a friend of my Daddy’s through the VFW Post 8600, so I met him when I was tagging along with dad one night. Once I turned twenty-one, I became a Ladies Auxiliary member, and although I didn’t have to tag along with Dad anymore, I still did ‘cause he had a knack for attracting storytellers. Randy was just one of many storytellers there. Daddy had warned me to not believe all the stories I heard there at the VFW, and for the most part, I heeded his warning. But still, I enjoyed listening. Just as long as the story was good, I didn’t care if it was true or not.

Randy had some stories. And they were good, too. He possessed a voice that was soft and Southern, that drew you in. He also possessed an astounding ability to talk a blue streak. Told stories all the time. Simple stories with the sort of exact and crucial details that made you lean closer, so you wouldn’t miss any of them. Some of the stories were real believable, like his story about the one time he flew a small private plane under the Broad Street Bridge without being found out by the police. Other stories were maybe a little less believable (but I suppose believable nonetheless, cause with Randy, there was always the possibility that it could’ve happened), like the story he told about the song he said he wrote while he was over in Nam, a song that he said he tried to sell back in the States, but lost the rights to through his own naiveté and through an unscrupulous music industry. The song, Without You (credited to Pete Ham and Tom Evans, and made into a huge Grammy-winning hit in 1971 by Harry Nilsson), was something that Randy would on occasion play at the VFW. To this day, I can’t hear that song without thinking of Randy strumming on his acoustic guitar, singing with his eyes closed (maybe because he didn’t want us to see how everything about that song hurt him)…

Then there were the times when Randy didn’t have a lot to say, but he spoke in volumes. I remember the one night I arrived at the 8600 a little later than I usually did. The place was buzzing about a fight that had just been broken up out in the parking lot. See, a fella and his date had shared some heated words in the bar, and once they stepped outside, the fella took a swing at the lady. Now, being the gentleman that he was, Randy evidently stepped in to defend the woman’s honor. Some more punches were thrown, as well as some fine words of negotiation on Randy’s part, and then the fight ended with all parties agreeing to not hit anybody anymore (at least for that night, and in that parking lot). I went looking for Randy to congratulate him on his persuasive mediating skills, and I found him shaken-up and pale, with blood on his white shirt.

“Where’re you hurt?!” I demanded, getting up in his business. “Nowhere,” he responded. “At least not nowhere physical.” His hands shook so bad, I ordered him a liquor drink from the bar to steady them. He was not hurt at all, he claimed. He was just having a hard time with the sight of the blood. Sometimes, he said, seeing blood would take him back to Nam, and that just wasn’t a place he really wanted to go to ever again. Not wanting to pry, I didn’t question him any further. His hands kept shaking, and after awhile of things not improving for him, he asked me if I would just go on and drive him home. I wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of leaving him alone for the night, and he didn’t seem quite comfortable with the idea either. So, we sat in the car in his driveway for the longest time, talking about the kind of stuff you talk about when you’re trying to avoid talking about tough stuff. He never did talk about the war that night, but he did eventually tell me about how he would sometimes sleep walk and dream that he was back in the jungle fighting. That was the reason why one of his wives had left him. Evidently she had her fill of him late one night when the neighbors woke her out of a dead sleep to come and get Randy out of the backyard. He had been sleepwalking, and dreaming that he was fighting. The problem for the neighbors was that Randy was naked as the day he was born, and was brandishing a broom like an M-16 assault rifle. It seemed that the good folks of downtown Gadsden, including Randy’s wife, did not appreciate the situation for what it was: a soldier suffering from PTSD (even after all those years). All they saw was a buck-naked man with an assault broom within city limits…

Eventually Randy got settled down enough that night for me to feel okay to leave him alone. When next I saw him, which was about a week later, he was back to his old easy-going self. I don’t recall ever having another opportunity to talk with him about his personal experiences in the war, nor to question him for more details about the other stories he shared with us. I did get to see him months later at a VFW dance function they had over at Post 2760, but we didn’t get to talk much cause Randy made the mistake of asking me to swing dance that night. He spent half of the night fussing at me because I wouldn’t let him lead (I fussed back, explaining to him that my momma taught me to dance that way, and that if he wanted to dance with me bad enough, then he was just going to have to get used to being led…and that maybe, if he REALLY didn’t like the way I danced, he could just take it up with my momma), and spent the rest of the night trying to avoid dancing with me. Even eleven years later, when I settled back into Gadsden after living in a bunch of different places, and I looked Randy back up to help me with a music program I was working on for the library, I still didn’t ask him about his past. His health wasn’t great by that time, but he assured me with a squeeze on my arm that he was doing well and could help me out. I wish I had asked him then about the time he spent in Vietnam instead of talking to him about library programming and his new Harley. And now, well it’s too late, because Randy passed away a couple of years ago. But I’ll tell you something, we wouldn’t have had the prizes that we had for our School of Rock finale that year if it hadn’t been for Randy. See, he used his persuasive skills on a Washburn rep to score us a beautiful new guitar to give away…

Human memory is a strange thing. I’m inclined to agree somewhat with Tim O’Brian in the truth of a story being the “truth as it seemed.” I’ve had many a conversation about storytelling, and how everyone’s perceptions and recollections are different. Even as an adult, I’ve written journal entries about things that I somehow have ended up altering somewhat in my mind later down the road. I have to go back and check my facts sometimes. Sometimes I just stick with the way I remember it happening. Perhaps it is a bit of the collective memory of which poet Natasha Trethewey has spoken. We, along with others, witness something. We recount our stories to each other, and we end up sharing and meshing our memories, but they become our own. My memory of incidents from my childhood are made up not only of what I remember, but also of bits and pieces of recollections given to me from my mother, father, sister, grandmother, grandfather…you get the picture. It all gets mixed up in the brain, and then it becomes one…

So, even though this post has been terribly long, I have one more thing to say. Although the song Without You is credited to Ham and Evans, I prefer to believe that my friend Randy Dover wrote it. Nobody will ever know the truth of whether or not it was swiped from a young soldier from Alabama who fought in the Vietnam War…And, as I’ve stated on more than one occasion, and about many different things, I prefer the not knowing to the knowing.

A Mighty Powerful Porch

Eric and I knew we had a porch that was mighty powerful. And what has happened recently on that porch has solidified our belief in our porch’s power.

You may recall back a year ago when I bought The Bungalow, one of the main selling points was its deep porch with a perpetual cross breeze. I had fallen in love with it just as the previous owner Ms. Mildred had some fifty-three years before. That porch just calls to you to come and sit awhile. And the furniture upon which you sit is the same furniture that has graced the porch since around the fifties (vintage metal glider, chaise lounge and chair that I negotiated for in the closing of the house). I mean, when you’ve got something good, some mix of special, why mess with it?

So, in the past year, Eric and I have had many a meal and many a causal evening with friends out on that porch. When our friends Farrah and Jared came to Gadsden to give poetry readings and workshops, we spent a fair amount of time on the porch before they left to head back to Brooklyn. When Elisha came down from Souix Falls, we had a number of lunch-times, and after-dinner-times out on that porch (and we may have had a number of fancy beers, too).

But most recently, we’ve had some rather unusual (and truly magical) things occur on our porch. We’ve had music. Not music from a radio, but live, spontaneous music.

It started about two weeks ago when Tami’s son Zach stopped by the house after a cello performance. Tami, Eric and I were all sitting on the porch having after-work snacks and beverages, and were generally just enjoying each other’s company and the fantastic breeze. We began asking Zach about how his performance went, what piece he had played, etc. One thing led to another, and before we knew it, Zach had his cello out and was playing a piece from that night’s concert. It was surreal. There in the dark, on a Thursday evening, we were listening to live cello music on our front porch. It was a most special thing.

So, when something similar happened again last night, I knew that it couldn’t be just a fluke. Eric and I were sitting on the porch, minding our own business when, one by one, all of the neighborhood kids ended up on the porch with us (and I do mean ALL of them…five from one house, two from another, three from another, and a couple of extras who were just visiting). There was much jumping from steps and stumps (no, the stumps haven’t been ground, yet), lots of sneaking-up-on-and-pretend-shooting, some ballet demonstrations…you get the picture…we own the pied piper of porches. Then, our neighbor Adrian, whose wife and kids I know from the library, came over to formally introduce himself to us. And when he came over, all of the adults on our end of the street migrated over as well. And Adrian’s brother Tony stopped by with his wife Andrea. And before we knew it, Tony and Adrian had started singing a song that Tony had written for Mother’s Day and had sung at church that morning. They sang it to Adrian’s wife, Jessica, since she had missed it at church. It was a lovely acapella piece, sung by two brothers who had clearly sung many songs together. Eric and I were speechless. Yet again, it was most special.

A porch is a powerful thing. Eric and I know this to be true, because we recognize that we are the owners of a mighty powerful porch. And we’ve made a solemn vow to use our porch wisely, and only for good…