POOKIE’S ADVENTURES DURING THE GREAT PANDEMIC AS THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RAMBLES TO ITS CONCLUSION.

 

 

 

If I were a purveyor of conspiracy theories like Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Russia, and the Committees to re-elect Trump, I could say that Trump created and released the virus in order to decimate the minority groups who oppose him and eventually declare a state of emergency so that he could eliminate the 2020 election and rule by martial law. Of course, I would not do that. Would you? 

 

Given the number of hours Naida and I watch television news about the coming presidential election and the misadventures of our so called Commander in Chief, I, at least, seem less and less able to discern an understandable story as to what is happening except that it is generally bad and the CIC seems to be losing his bid for reelection as well as his mind. People continue to die in droves from COVID and we continue to be shackled to our homes. Perhaps the sun rises and sets over some happy place on our planet, but I have no idea where that may be. 

 

Not having had enough of politics and being addicted to watching television programs glorifying it, Naida and I tuned into the Vice-presidential debate. At the end of it I concluded I could not support the dead man with the fly on his head to be the person a heartbeat away from the presidency.

 

Sometimes I just have to agree with James Lee Burke’s opinion that:

 

If you’re lucky, at a certain age you finally learn not to contend with the world or try to explain that the application of reason has little or nothing to do with the realities that exist just on the other side of one’s fingertips.

Burke, James Lee. The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (p. 218). Simon & Schuster.  

 

Thinking about debates, I wrote a bit of doggerel about the first presidential debate a week or so ago:

 

No President stood upon that stage
nor someone of an adult’s age
but a loathsome and petulant child.
with mouth not pants defiled.

 

Biden then boxed his ear,
and said “I’m not here
to call him a liar.”
“Everyone already knows
he is a liar”.
And with that, I happily close.

 

Tomorrow, I plan to travel into the Golden Hills to visit Hayden. Because he twisted his ankle at the skatepark, was in great pain, and resting at home this will be the first time I will see him in over a week. 

On Friday, he applied for his learners driving permit, a teenagers license into adulthood — or so they think. This lead me to ponder this moment when one gains all the indicia of adulthood, the body, the hormones, the grossly expanded frontal lobe and yes, the learners permit. It is a tough time for them. There is a good chance they will not become what we expected. Their teachers, parents and others with responsibilities for them are usually presented with two questions about this often unexpected stranger — What they would say to the child who evidences behavior they do not approve of (e.g., poor marks, late hours, drugs, anger, sullenness and on and on) and what is it that really makes them upset.

As to the first more often than not we tell them it is because they will be harming themselves or others in some form. As to what makes us upset is the deep feeling that we no longer know what to do with them. They make us uncomfortable, these beings we held in our arms and watched them grow but who now we no longer know and have begun to drift from us forever. Teachers, parents and other caregivers fear they failed. The child can no linger be fixed and so we all look to pass him off to somebody we believe can — the parents to the school, the school to the parents.

Alas, they no longer need to be fixed. The child, now the almost-adult, does not need to be fixed. They just have to be ready for when we stop trying. They rarely are. Were you?

Today we washed the dog. It has been far to long. At first he ran and hid, but when he was finally put into the tub to be lathered and princes he behaved admirably. After the bath we wrapped him in towels and I sat on the sofa holding him while Naida played “How much is that doggie in the window” on the piano.

I picked up Hayden from his house. He was still limping slightly from his scooter accident. We picked up Ethan. He was on crutches. He had stepped on while clearing some brush. We had lunch a Subway’s. The conversation consisted of the usual teenage monosyllabic responses to my questions.  

— Here I erased about one weeks entries —

Anyway, to try to make it all back up from memory:

On Thursday the three of us, Naida, Boo-boo the barking dog and I left the Enchanted Forest and drove to the Big Endive by the Bay for my immunotherapy treatment at UCSH. As we drove out of the garage, Naida began a magnificent tale about her grandmother Hazel Ker Miller. She continued the fascinating story without stop until we arrived at the UCSF parking garage at Mission Bay. Hazel was a fascinating women. Her mother a school teacher from a well to do family in NY as a young women traveled to the Dakotas to teach school. While there she met an Irish Catholic stage coach driver, fell in love and subsequently married much to the chagrin of her family who promptly disowned her and leaving her and her husband to move to Idaho where they raised their family in great poverty in part because the Irishman preferred singing and drinking to working. Their daughter Hazel, a great beauty and accomplished pianist fell in love with the oldest of two sons of the largest landowner in the area but eventually due to a lovers quarrel of some sort separated from him and married the second son much to her regret as the second son was far less accomplished and would inherit much poorer land that the first son. Nevertheless, she persisted, ran the business while her husband was off in the mountains with his sheep and cattle raised a family and ignored the rumors of romantic liaisons that followed her. Hr daughter Alice, Naida’s mother, also an accomplished pianist, singer and actress fell in love with a boy who Hazel had hired to teach at the local school attended by her children. After three children were born to the couple that marriage failed and Hazel, Alice and the three children left the hardscrabble life, bitter winters and embittered families of the Mormon dominated Montana-Idaho area for pleasant weather and more easy-going lifestyle of Carmel California.

My hospital visit went as well as can be expected. The doctor said I will be  coming to the end of my treatment in April and things had gone better than expected and he fully believes at theist the specific tumor they had been treating what no more than dead tissue. Good for me.

After leaving the hospital precincts we left for Peter and Barrie’s house for a Birthday dinner. Barrie’s again prepared a wonderful and tasty dinner washed down with prosecco and a fine bottle of Brunello di Montalcino wine. All in all, it was everything one would want for a dinner good wine, good food, good conversation and good friends.

We then left to spend the night at the Mark Hopkins where we enjoyed the view, slept well and lazed around in bed the next morning. 

 

The View From My Window

Later in the day, we enjoyed a birthday lunch at the Fog City Diner with my son Jason, his wife Hiromi and my grandchildren, Amanda and Anthony. Amanda enjoyed her first raw oysters while Anthony and I gorged ourselves on them.

 

Amanda and Papa Joe

Amanda enjoys her first raw oyster with Anthony and Papa Joe at Fog City Diner.

Anthony, Papa Joe, Amanda, Jason, and Naida

After lunch we drove back to the Enchanted Forest. One the way, Naida tool a story about Vardis Fisher the famous (at least at one time) Idaho novelist. He grew up in the little town that Naida had lived in and knew her great grandfather as well as her grandfather. Fisher’s father the town ner’do well worked for her great grandfather. Fisher’s first novel and perhaps his best was entitled “Toilers of the Hills” was about he great grandfather who “clubbed the desert and made it grow.” Fisher, before beginning a novel her would write an Elizabethan Sonnet about the characters in the novel. He wrote the following about Robert Miller

 

Time built a pioneer and set him down

Upon the greyest wast of Idaho

He clubbed the desert and made it grow

In broad and undulating fields of brown

He laid his might upon it, stripped its frown

Of drouth and thistles; till by sweat and blow

He left the aged and barren hills aglow

With color — and its flame was his renown

 

Few loved him, many feared, and some would smirk

Derisively and call his mind untaught;

Of foul speech, and unclean fro head to feet,

Who poured his great dream into golden wheat;

Until his gnarled and calloused hands had wrought

A deep quiet holiness of work.

 

In her memoir, Daughter of the West, Naida remembered her great grandfather’s hands and wrote:

 

“Throughout my life I would see such hands — hands used as bludgeons and prying tools on farms back when men engaged in the “deep and quiet holiness of work.”

 

Later in his life after publishing his book Mountain Man that was made into the movie Jeremiah Johnson by Sidney Pollack, Fisher was soundly criticized for writing in the book about the mountain man considering a storm like a performance of Beethoven because it was believed that they were ignorant and uncultured. Naida, however, told the story related to her by Hazel about the night she had her piano loaded onto the back of a wagon and driven deep into the Idaho mountains where she played Beethoven and Chopin to the sheepherders at their yearly get together (The Eastern Idaho Sheepmen Convention). They, the sheepherders, sat on bales of hay and listened to the music until it drifted off into the darkening skies over the mountains. Could Fisher have been there that night? Naida thinks so.

 

Hayden called and asked for a ride for him and his friends to the go-kart track so, on Sunday, I drove into the golden hills to pick them up. When I arrived I found that one of his friends who had gotten his driver’s license and had an automobile with him. Most of the Scooter Gang piled into that care leaving just HRM and Kaleb to ride with me. When we arrived at the raceway we found that they would have to wait several hours before karts would become available so Haden suggested I drive on home and he and Kaleb will return in the friends car after the races. I mark this day as the one where H the teenager has finally severed his social dependence on the adults that cared for him. Now, and for the next five years or so, his social life will be defined by access to his and friends automobiles. Financial independence takes a bit longer.

 

This morning Naida was feeling especially good, singing and dancing around the house. I asked her what was it that made her feel this was. I feel better about myself and I owe it all to a song — Little Red Riding-hood. Here are the lyrics. If they made her happy maybe they will make you happy.

 

Owoooooooo!

Who’s that I see walkin’ in these woods?

Why, it’s Little Red Riding HoodGo-

Hey there Little Red Riding Hood

You sure are looking good

You’re everything a big bad wolf could want

Listen to me

Little Red Riding Hood

I don’t think little big girls should

Go walking in these spooky old woods alone

 

Owoooooooo!

What big eyes you have

The kind of eyes that drive wolves mad

So just to see that you don’t get chased

I think I ought to walk with you for a ways

What full lips you have

They’re sure to lure someone bad

So until you get to grandma’s place

I think you ought to walk with me and be safe

I’m gonna keep my sheep suit on

Until I’m sure that you’ve been shown

That I can be trusted walking with you alone

 

Owoooooooo!

Little Red Riding Hood

I’d like to hold you if I could

But you might think I’m a big bad wolf so I won’t

 

Owoooooooo!

What a big heart I have

The better to love you with

Little Red Riding Hood

Even bad wolves can be good

I’ll try to be satisfied just to walk close by your side

Maybe you’ll see things my way before we get to grandma’s place

Little Red Riding Hood

You sure are looking good

You’re everything that a big bad wolf could want

Owooooooo I mean baaaaaa!

Baaa?

Baa

 

Now, to tell you the truth although I enjoyed the music, the lyrics didn’t do all that much for me.

 

So, days have gone by, things have happened. There was another presidential debate. The weather has gotten cooler. I have driven into the Golden Hills and spent the day with Hayden. We ate lunch at McDonalds. The dog still barks. Naida and I spend a lot of quiet time together and at other times sing and dance with each other. Now and then we sit and watch the telly or I read or write while she plays the piano or works on her memoir. A lot has happened and little has happened. I have read a lot of books. I am reading two right now one is “The Girl Who Could Move S**t With Her Mind,” and the other, “Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick.”  I usually read about Dick punching Zoey during the day, especially while eating lunch and I read about the shit moving girl before I go to bed. Their stories are a lot alike. I often get them confused in my mind and have Zoey moving shit and the other girl punching someone’s dick. It’s always something.

 

But, tomorrow is another day and I think this is enough for today. Take care and remember to:

 

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