The First Family Secret

Family Secrets - Aunt Daisy

Aunt Daisy lived alone.  She was born the same year that President Truman was and out lived him by ten years.  Daisy never married and was the only non retarded daughter in a house hold of 6 boys.  She was 21 years older than my grandfather and was responsible for much of his parenting. 

Daisy outlived all her family even my grandfather so therefore she was the recipient of all the collectables that the family acquired through the years.  Daisy never married because the family, so my grandfather told me once, never thought anyone was quite good enough for her.  She never worked at a paid job in her life so had no social security and no visible means of support.  My grandfather helped a little in paying for a one room apartment close to where we lived and for a time being she lived with the oldest brother, Frank, a not so nice guy so it was said, who had a wooden leg due to a rail road accident.  She took care of the youngest boy at the beginning of his life and took care of the oldest boy at the end of his life.  Daisy never had a life of her own.  Some how she managed to survive through some sort of old age pension and a rail road pension that some how her brother or father, who had also worked for the rail road once, had managed to arrange.  Her limited income and survival technique was never really explained to me but that is not the family secret.

When Daisy died she left nothing to anyone, basically because she had nothing.  There were some knickknacks around the apartment that were sort of interesting and held some memories for me due to the fact that I had seen them all my life. 

It was left to my grandmother to get rid of anything that was left including Daisy who was buried in the family plot.  My grandmother asked me what I wanted and I said I liked the picture of the Gilded Age lady in the oval frame with the bubble glass.  I use to think it was a picture of Daisy when she was a young lady and when I asked as much she would laugh in what can only be described as a little embarrassing giggle with her hand placed over her mouth and mumble “no.”

Wife Marty wanted the frame with the bubble glass and was not interested in the picture, I was interested in the picture but not the bubbled glass frame.  

I extracted the picture and dutifully gave Marty the frame. (Which she has hanging in her house today, picture being replaced by a McAnally original of some sort.)  After the extract I noticed that on the reverse side there was in inscription in what I recognized as Daisy’s hand writing – “Charlie as Woman.”  I was a little puzzled.

I asked my grandmother about it and she said that was a picture of Cousin Charlie who was a female impersonator some time prior to the 1920’s.  He was an actor but specialized in playing a woman on stage.  “We never really talked about him much, I sort of figured he was just a little strange,” my grandmother said.

I have recently looked for the picture but some how have missed placed it, but the one that appears here is close to how I remember it. 

 

There will be more family secrets shared from time to time.

The Steam - Alaska

The following is based on a story told to me by Morene Lamont of Pitka’s Point, Alaska.  A similar version was first printed in Whispering Wind, American Indian: Past and Present Vol.  35  No. 5,  2006

             

The Steam

“There wasn’t a breath in that land of death…”   Robert W. Service

There was a whispering wind that entered the village but stayed.  Not the kind caused by a fluke in the atmosphere but the kind that settled in the soul.

No one was as they had been and the elders said that this type of feeling was common in February, but the intensity was uncommon however they all admitted.  People tried different thing to alleviate their situations but such relief, while welcomed, was only fleeting for the individuals and did nothing for the collective community. 

The elders said that some One in the village would eventually be able to counter, what the local Shaman claimed was a curse, but that some One had yet to make them selves known.  The village was dark, gloomy, and stagnate.

One day a mother decided that she and her son needed a steam.  She had not had one for awhile and thought that it would at least temporally take away the feeling of despair.  She felt the despair of the village but she had a private despair also.  She had no husband to provided for the two of them this winter.  Although her neighbors had helped her out in the past, there was no guarantee she could expect the same this winter given the circumstance, and they, the neighbors, would be facing their own hardships though out this particular Arctic night.

As she entered the steam she was excited to see that the stones were blazing red hot and ready to have water thrown on them to cause the healing steam to fill her and her son’s lungs and skin.  She tossed water on the stones with the scoop that was used for such things, but instead of the crackling and steam vapor erupting from the stones there was nothing but a hiss, a little sizzle, nothing like the color of the stones indicated there should be.  “I am wrong,” she said, “the stones are not ready.”  They left the steam, fueled the fire underneath the rocks and waited.  Eventually she felt like the time was now right and re entered the steam, threw the water on the glowing stones but the same thing happened as before.

Two more times she repeated this procedure.

On her fourth attempt when all she received for her efforts was a cackle and small sizzle, she decided to wait it out inside.  It was warm after all and she was afraid that by the constant in and out she would catch cold or even worse her child would catch cold.

As she sat there waiting, her son said to her, “Momma, don’t let the man touch me this time.”  She asked him what he was talking about.  “Every time we walk in here a hand touches my head and runs his hand down my body onto my feet.”  Just as he finished saying that the woman started throwing up, uncontrollably so.  She could not stop.  She held her hand out to her son and gestured that she needed water.  The son provided a tin can full of water from the steam bucket.  She knew what to do.  She drank half of the can and threw out the rest.  She did this three times.  She stopped throwing up; she then urinated in the can and threw it on the fire.  She then took the scraping knife hanging on the wall that was used to scrape bad skin off when having a normal steam.  She scraped her body and then the body of her son.  She took her towel and rubber he body down then the body of her son.  She took her son and ran outside naked to the elements.  Stunned by the cold, she forced herself and her son to stay there as long as they could.  They both reentered the steam and noticed the embers looked different.  She wrapped herself and son back up in the towels, tossed more water on the glowing embers and the steam erupted into a familiar cleansing vapor.

They stayed in there for an appropriate time.  When they left the steam the sun was shining, there was a raven calling from somewhere and she felt as if the gloom of the earth had subsided.  People started coming out of their dwellings and it was apparent that the whispering wind of depressions was no longer there.

The village was blessed the rest of the winter with full beaver and rabbit snares and over flowing fish nets.  The moose from across the river were more prevalent than normal and even caribou were seen in the area, an event that had not happened even the eldest of elders’ memory.  In deed the village had returned to normal, perhaps life was what it seemed.

It was a good steam.  The shamans said that these things happen.  The lady and her son were given extra portions of each hunters catch that winter to help them through the Arctic night.

                                                           

More Pictures from Alaska

Ted Stevens International Airport

Anchorage
Cook Inlet
Turn Again Arm
Seward
Willow
Talkeetna
Mt McKinley

The County, Chapter 2, Part 2 of 2

                                                                   

                                           The Doodenville Men's Club 

                                                                   

They don’t talk about who has the best dog in town anymore.  No sir, not since last December.

It was the middle of December and cold, gosh it was cold, and snow, I mean you couldn’t see from the window of Jessie Miller’s General Store to the street side of the wooden planks that make up our sidewalks here in Doodenville.  Everybody’s always said that it was the worse snow storm ever to have hit these parts.

Even though it was plumb miserable out, we all showed up about the same time we always showed up at Jessie’s place.  We had what you might consider a men’s club.  We didn’t call it that, but every Saturday about sundown, or perhaps a little later, Steve Branson, Digger Johnson, Judge Johns and myself would get together and play checkers, tell stories, and more or less just brag to one another - which some might say was stretching the truth.

This one December evening, the bragging turned to our dogs.  No man in Doodenville went anywhere without his dog.  A man is judged somewhat on what kind of dog he has and how he treats it and it him.  Now everyone cannot see how one is treating his dog all the time nor he him so we felt like it was our duty that night to tell one another.  That is where the others always get into trouble because they exaggerate a mite and this night they exaggerated a lot.  Not me, of course.

The checkers match had gotten over and we began to sip a little of the stuff behind the counter that Jessie kept for snake bite.  Jessie was always there but he seldom joined in because he was too busy keeping track of how much we were sipping and eating from the cracker barrel.  Anyway, we were doing what we always did when Steve Branson popped up and said during a lull in the conversation, “Now we have been talking about our dogs for nigh onto three hours and Lord knows how many nights we have been doing the same.  Let’s settle who has the best dog once and for all”.

Everybody seemed to think it was a pretty good idea because each man thought he had the best dog and would win any type of such a contest.  We all thought a little and tried to come up with some sort of criteria that could determine who had the best dog.

Steven Branson suggested that we could have them run a race but that idea was scuttled because there was too much snow on the ground and too cold.  “And besides,” Digger Johnson said, “being fast don’t mean nothing anyway”.

He was right, of course.  We all knew that Crazy Jimmy Twofoot’s oldest boy, Jimmy J., was the fastest thing on two legs in three counties and the boy couldn’t find his way to the outhouse without someone helping him.  At least that is what Crazy Jimmy always said.

Then Steve came up with another idea (he was always coming up with ideas, being an engineer and all.)  He suggested that we have the dogs bark real loud and whose ever dog barked the longest and loudest would be declared the winner. (I didn’t say all his ideas were good, though.)

That idea was ignored because everyone knew that Jessie’s wife was sick with the virus and noise would wake her and cause some discomfort.  Steve must have gotten the point also because he snapped his fingers like something had just occurred to him and mumbled, “oh, yeah!” and sat back down.  It seemed as though in all the years that I had known Steve he was always snapping is finger about something.

We all sat around the stove and thought some more.  Then Judge Johns cleared his throat.  Now when a man clears his throat, those in hearing distance don’t pay much attention, but when Judge Johns cleared his throat you knew he had something important to say.  He was also real smart so naturally we all started paying close attention.

“It seems to me,” he began, “that we want to find out which one of us has the smartest dog.  The smartest dog, gents, not the fastest nor the loudest, but the smartest.  Intelligence, friends, is the true test of greatness”.  Judge Johns could always be counted on to get right to the heart of the matter.  “So it seems to me,” he continued after grasping his lapels and clearing his throat again, “that each dog ought to be judged on his reaction to a single command and whose dog reacts in the most intelligent manner will be considered the best dog in Doodenville”.

We all thought about that for a while and by and by it seemed fair enough.  But then Digger said, “You know each man here might think that his dog done the best no matter what the other three dogs did.  If that happened, we would all be in a stalemate and be right back where we were.”

That sounded kind of correct.  We knew we were all men of integrity, but we also knew each other and understood how sometimes a man’s judgment could get clouded in important matters like this one.

“Well,” Judge Johns said after he cleared his throat, “it seems to me we need an unbiased judge”.  You know, to this day, I get plumb amazed on how the Judge could always grasp things and have a solution so quickly.

The natural judge, of course, was Jessie.  I say ‘of course’ because Jessie didn’t have a dog.  At least not since last spring when Old Clem Thurman’s horses kicked Jessie’s dog Cracker in the head.

Jessie agreed to act as the judge and took charge right away.  “Since there are four of you,” while grasping his suspenders, “one of you will have to go first and one will have to go last, and two of you will have to go in the middle, one ahead of the other”.

I sat there and blinked because he had lost me at first.  I did not think that was possible because we always thought Jessie was a mite slow.  He continued: “So it seems to me we ought to go by age, starting with the youngest man.  I will give you all five minutes to decide what you want your dogs to do”.  He fixed his one good eye on the clock that hung over the Buster Brown sign that hung behind the counter.

After about three minutes and seventeen seconds I could tell everyone was done figuring what their dog was going to do.  Steve snapped his fingers and smiled, Digger slapped his knee with both hands, and Judge Johns clutched his lapels and got that paternal courtroom smile on his face, next to clearing his throat he was famous for.  I had known right off what I was going to do.  “Times up! You first, Branson, you are the youngest.”

Steve sprang to his feet, snapped his fingers and said. “Bridge, get that dollar bill off Jessie’s ceiling.”  Jessie had nailed a dollar bill to his ceiling years back because he said it was the first dollar he had ever made.

After hearing his master’s command, Bridge got up, shook himself off, took hold of an empty chair with his teeth and pulled it over to the potbellied stove.  Then he looked at the dollar bill, back to the chair then moved it a little towards the counter.  He did this procedure about three or four times.

Then before any of us, except Steve, knew what was happening, Bridge ran to the door of the store, opened it and ran outside.  We could not tell how far he went because of all the blowing snow.  It must not have been too far because all of a sudden he came racing into the room, leaped on the chair and bounced at least ten feet to the ceiling, snatched the greenback with his teeth and did a perfect three point landing.  I say three point because his left front leg kind of cracked like a stick.  He was a mighty brave dog though because he didn’t even let out a whimper.  Steve claimed later that it was because of Bridge’s sensitivity to Jessie’s wife’s virus.

We all agreed that it was a mighty fine trick.  Jessie pursed his lips and made a mark on a piece of paper.  We all chuckled beneath our breath because we knew he couldn’t write a lick, but he was a good counter because he ways seemed to know how many crackers we had taken from the cracker barrel every Saturday night.

“Homer.”  I was next.  “Lock,” I began, “Go down to the jail and let Samuel Horn out and bring him here.”  Now, Lock had unlocked that jailhouse door I bet a hundred times.  I was always sort of afraid of getting myself locked in a jail cell accidentally, so I had taught Lock how to do it.  I also knew that Lock knew who Samuel Horn was because he was our best customer.  Lock laid there by the potbellied stove and did not move.  That did not concern me because I figured Lock was just stretching internally or something.  Pretty soon however it became apparent to me and everyone else that Lock wasn’t going to do anything except move a little closer to the stove.  I felt panic creep up in my throat and started to give the command again, when Jessie, with his thumbs around his suspenders said very authoritatively, “Only one command, Homer!

We all sat there in silence for about another minute and thirty-seven seconds waiting for Lock to get busy.  But ole Lock just laid there staring at the big iron stove and twitching his right hind leg occasionally.

I wanted to crawl under a chair.  Everyone was stifling a smile except Steve who was laughing his fool head off and of course Jessie who was keeping a Judge,s face.  I could really feel the blood boil and wanted to lash out and strike someone, preferably Steve.  But after a certain age you just don’t go around and do stuff like that.  So, I just sat there with all the humiliation and degradation of the world weighing me down.

“Your turn, Digger”.  Jessie said abruptly since Digger was the next oldest or third youngest, depending on how you looked at it.  Digger sat there for a few seconds, slapped one knee with both hands and stood up.  “Spade,” (Digger was the assistant to the local undertaker) “go outside and dig me a hole six feet by three feet and six inches deep.”

Spade proceeded to do just that after he opened the door with his front paws and closed it with his hind ones.  Showoff, I thought.

We all watched through the window as Spade in the freezing weather began his dig.  We couldn’t see him real good though because of the blowing snow.  Digger claimed it was because he was moving so fast.

After about fifteen minuets, Spade came back in the store the same way he went out but in reverse.  You could really tell Spade had been outside.  One eyelid was frozen shut and he was shivering like mad from the top of his head to the tip of his tail plus there was frozen mucus hanging from his nose.

Before we knew what was happening Jessie was outside with a tape measure measuring the hole Spade had just dug.  When Jessie came back in he was shaking almost as much as Spade.  “If I got to make a decision,” he chattered, “I got to know all the facts, right Judge?”  The Judge did his paternal smile and nodded in agreement.

I was still feeling humiliated and had lost interest in the whole contest.  No one was smiling or laughing at me anymore, but they didn’t have to.

“Judge!”

“Yes, your honor.”   The Judge took a plug of tobacco from his vest pocket and took a big chaw.  He just sat there for about one minute, chawing, smiling, and hanging on his lapels.  Then without a word of any kind he tilted his head back and spat, in what Steve later figured was a forty-seven degree angle.

No more had the wad passed the Judge’s front two silver teeth, when his dog, Bailiff, jumped to his feet and ran for the spittoon Jessie kept at the end of the counter.  Bailiff grabbed the brass bucket with his teeth and raced in the direction the wad was traveling and I’ll be darned if he didn’t jump four feet in the air catch the hulk on the fly right in the spittoon, landed not spilling drop, and walked sort of nonchalantly, and perhaps a little arrogantly back to where the spittoon was supposed to be and sat it down.

Jessie studied each dog, even mine which I appreciated, took a look at his “notes” and began.  “Gentleman, after careful consideration and given the parameter of the charge given me I must conclude that that the most intelligent dog here tonight and therefore the best dog in Doodenville is….”  He paused for the effect , then after clearing his throat and grasping his suspenders he continued, … “is Lock” and he slapped his hand on the counter.

“Lock!”  We all shouted.  I almost fell out of my chair.  Digger did fall out of his because when he went to slap his knees he missed and fell on the floor.  Branson started using powerful language and the Judge turned green, then red, then green again because he was half way choking on what was left of his chaw.

Everyone in the room, except the Judge who was busy turning colors, demanded to know the reason for Jessie’s verdict.

“Steven Branson.”  Jessie began.  “That was a mighty fine trick but look at Bridge's leg.  It is going to take a good three weeks or so before it heals up and maybe not then, and Digger, Spade is shaking so much he will probably come down with pneumonia or something, and Judge you let Bailiff there put the most disgusting thing one could ever imagine in his mouth, no telling what he will come down with.  Now the three of you made one command that, I admit made for some powerful good tricks, but by doing so the dogs did not act very bright or intelligently.

“Now I want you boys to look outside.  It must be eighteen degrees out there and the wind’s a blowing a powerful lot.  Now who in his right mind is going to go out there unless they had to.  Yes sir, Lock is the best, the smartest, and most intelligent dog in Doodenville.”  And with the word Doodenville, Jessie brought the flat of his hand back down on the counter again.

I then said to Jessie so everyone could hear, “Your honor, give me a can of those dog biscuits and put a few more coals on the fire, I don’t want a smart and valuable dog like Lock to catch a chill”.

Lock must have heard me mention his name because he opened one eye, took a deep breath, let out a pleasing sound of comfort and inched a little close to the potbellied stove.