The Cavanaughs - Part II - Christmas

Note: This is the second post in an ongoing fictional series about the holidays and The Cavanaugh Family.

It was 1901 and Christmastime. I was all of thirteen years old and my sister, little Gracie, was going to be six at the turn of the year. It was our first Christmas without Ma as she died the previous January from Scarlet fever. The town doctor came out to our cabin once a week to check on Ma but there wasn't much he could do for her with what he didn't have. The doctor told Pa we should take Ma to the city but Pa said he could take care of her. Looking back, I know Pa blamed himself for Ma's early demise but really he did the best he could. For many years later on, I blamed God.

Yes'm, it was a bad start to the year. Because of the fear of catching the fever, we had to burn everything in our cabin that could hide the illness. All our linens; clothes, blankets -even that big bear rug -were cast to ashes. When all was done we were living in a shell of a cabin with only the pot-belly stove, some pots and pans and a few dishes. I think when Ma saw what we did to avoid the fever -at her expense no less -she died from a broken heart. After Ma passed the local folk kept bringing us new clothes and bedding from the mercantile in town. Pa accepted them as graciously as he could by forcing himself to swallow his pride. By summertime we had more clothes than we knew what to do with; the town folk knew Gracie and I were growing and they brought us clothes that were a few sizes too big for us, so that we could grow into them.

Anyway, it was the day before Christmas and snow had fallen all afternoon. Pa had rode our horse into town, only telling Gracie and me that he would be back by nightfall. It was the first year we had no tree to decorate. I supposed the tradition of going with Pa into the woods to cut down a tree for the holiday died with Ma. Heck, even if we had a tree we had nothin' to put on it.

Gracie and I bundled ourselves up and played in the snow. We started building snowmen in front of the cabin. Now I don't remember actually planning for our labors to become a snow-family, but that's what happened. The largest snowman was of course Pa, decorated with his favorite hunting hat and holding his Winchester rifle that I had taken down from the hearth. Gracie built her snow-girl in the likeness of herself, complete with a new bonnet that Gracie herself hadn't even worn yet. I built myself in snow, my favorite knit hat and flannel shirt adorning the flakes. Gracie and I made Ma last. One of her twig-arms was holding a kettle while her other twig-arm held our only family photograph... next to her heart. We braided some pine switches together and made a halo for the top of her head.

I was about to heat up some rabbit stew when Pa came in the door. Without saying a word he pulled up three of the kitchen chairs and faced them out the front window of the cabin. Gracie and I sat on each side of Pa and with his arms around us we stared at the silhouette of our snow-family twinkling in the moonlight. I'm not sure how long we sat there but it seemed like most of the night. I knew it best not to look at Pa but I could hear him sniffle every now and then. Gracie fell asleep and Pa carried her to bed while I heated the stew, awaiting our silent dinner.

When morning came I woke Gracie and told her -for Pa's sake -not to be upset if Santa hadn't seen our snow-family and had passed us by. We came down from the loft and saw the same room we left the night before. Gracie looked at me with pathetic eyes and I shook my head in sympathy. Gracie then looked beyond me and out the front window. Her eyes lit up and her frown turned to a beaming smile. I turned and looked out the window. My snowman was holding a brand new Remington .22 caliber rifle and in front of Gracie's was a red wagon with a sled atop it. Ma's twig-arms were no longer holding the kettle and photograph. No, her twig-arms were now lower and touching Gracie's bonnet and my flannel shirt.

Gracie let out a little scream of joy and ran into the bedroom where Pa was sleeping. The scream woke Pa but he was still half aslumber.

"Santa came Pa! Santa came!" Gracie shouted.

"Did he now?" Pa said while wiping his face awake, "Well let's go see what he brought."

Pa stood up from the bed in his long-johns and winked at me as he trailed Gracie into the front room.

With a smile on my face I turned to follow Pa... but not before seeing the corner of our only family photograph tucked beneath his pillow.

FiN.

The Cavanaughs - Part I - Thanksgiving

Note: This is the first post in an ongoing fictional series about the holidays and The Cavanaugh Family.  

This happened back in 1894, although I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 6 years old and my family lived in a cabin in the north of Michigan. A few days before Thanksgiving, Pa set-out to hunt a turkey for our special dinner. He took his double-barreled Winchester down from it's place over the hearth, and I held the rifle as Pa bundled himself up with layers of flannel and fur. Ma wrapped a scarf around his face, all the way up to his eyeballs. 

"Can I go with you Pa? I begged, "Please?"

"Next year boy. You're too young and it's too cold outside—you'll turn to ice."

I'm not sure if Pa knew it or not, but it was the same answer he gave me the year before.

The door to the cabin opened and Pa stepped outside, the howling wind and chill greeted him. I watched as he disappeared into the woods, surely to return with a huge tom that Ma would cook. The leftovers would feed us for a week.

A good thirty-minutes later we heard the echo of gunshots. First there was one, followed quickly by another. After a pause, two more shots rang out... and then another two. Ma had a concerned look on her face. Pa was a good shot, and no turkey needed to be fired on six times with him behind the stock.

Twenty minutes later Pa came out of the woods—empty handed. He opened the cabin door.

"Boy, come with me, and hitch up the horse with the flat-sled."

I knew it best not to ask why and really, I was just excited to finally be a part of something, whatever it was.

Ma's concerned look caught Pa in the doorway. He gave her a wink as he turned around, closing the door behind him.

I sat on the horse and hung onto Pa tightly, as the sled dragged behind us. We made our way through the woods and down the hill of the gorge into the clearing. 

Then, there it was, laying motionless with buzzards already circling overhead.

"That's one huge turkey Pa."

"Ain't no turkey. That there is the biggest, meanest black bear this side of Mackinaw."

"Why'd ya kill it Pa?"

"Had to. He charged me. Son-of-bitch was rabid—he should've been hibernating."

"Are rabid bears good eatin' Pa?"

"Don't reckon so, lest you want to go mad."

We tied ropes around the bear and had the horse pull it onto the flat-sled. Pa and I rode back to the cabin in silence, our rabid, dead bear in tow.

Later that day, Pa went back into the woods and got himself a nice tom with one shot.

Thanksgiving came and we had a feast that couldn't be beat—turkey with fresh maple syrup is heaven sent. The evening was spent sitting around the fire, Pa cleaning his rifle, Ma knitting baby boots.

I sat on the floor, drawing on paper with charcoal. Underneath me was a huge bear rug... a bear rug that had a scowl on it's face that proved it was the biggest, meanest black bear this side of Mackinaw.

FiN.

Confessions of a Bellman - Oh Sheet!

A few days ago I checked a German lady out of the hotel. When I got to her room she was sitting in an electric scooter waiting for me. She was fat. Obese actually. What's the difference? Cankles.

As I picked up her luggage and carried it out of the room to my cart, I noticed a large green sheet hanging over the shower door in the bathroom.

"Ma'am, is that your

 green sheet hanging in the bathroom?" I asked.

She looked at me puzzled.

"There's a large, silk sheet on the shower door." I clarified.

She thought for a few seconds and then her eyes narrowed in my direction.

"No sheet." She said with a sharp German accent, "Das mein nightgown."

"And a very nice one at that!" I blurted without missing a beat.

She didn't tip me.

FiN.

Death is Certain, Life is Not

It was seven years ago that Johnny and I rode our motorcycles to Sturgis, South Dakota for Bike Week. Johnny has been a bellman for over 42 years at the hotel where I work. When I was hired in 1997, Johnny and I instantly became friends—partly because of our similar Irish last names and partly due to our love for motorcycles.

We referred to our trip as "2001: A Sturgis Odyssey." In addition to both of us being Irish and loving motorcycles, we're also fans of Stanley Kubrick films. If we go to Bike Week in Florida in a few years, no doubt our trip will be known as "2010: The Year We Make Daytona."

Some twenty-odd years ago Johnny was in a bad car accident. He had been camping in Utah and was driving his Jeep CJ5 down a winding mountain road late at night.  The CJ5 was notoriously known for rolling-over with only the slightest over-correction from the driver—and that was something Johnny didn't know at the time. Approaching a curve too fast, the Jeep flipped. It went off the road and over the edge, throwing Johnny and all his camping gear down the hillside.

He broke his neck. And collar bone. And ribs. There was a lot of blood too.

The worse part, besides breaking his neck, was nobody saw the accident happen. He vanished from the road with barely a trace. While fading in and out of consciousness, Johnny could hear cars passing on the road above, driving by without a hint of someone stopping. He told me his worst fear was not dying—he had already accepted that as inevitable. No, his worst fear was having a coyote smell his blood and then find him. He feared, in his own words, "that a wild animal would chomp on my brain before I died." Egads.

But help did arrive. A man driving down the mountain saw Johnny's red Coleman cooler on the side of the road and thought it was rather peculiar. Pulling over, he saw freshly scattered gravel. Looking down the hillside he saw the wreck of the CJ5 and a lifeless body.

Johnny was air-lifted to a nearby hospital. The doctors took one look at him and said there was nothing they could do—he needed to be flown to Carson City. He spent months in traction at the hospital. Six-months after his release, he was still wearing a halo-brace mounted on his shoulders, the bolts screwed into his skull, keeping his neck straight.

Johnny did make a full recovery though—at least physically. The ordeal definitely changed Johnny's outlook on life however. He now tends to see beauty in everything, and he cherishes, questions and argues all that is around him. You can't rush him. He's soft spoken and very articulate. For those who knew him prior, they say he wasn't like this before the accident. He once told me, shortly after we met, "If you don't stop and smell the roses, the roses will end up on you." Very true my biker brother, very true.

Greg J., the man who found Johnny that late night on the mountain, now lives in Seattle. Johnny doesn't remember him from the night of the accident, but still makes it a priority to keep in touch with him. Over the years, he's talked with Greg on the phone—thanking him a hundred-times over. They exchange Christmas cards. Johnny has invited Greg and his wife to Las Vegas—to stay as his guest at Caesars—but Greg, although thankful, always declines.

So it was seven years ago, with these thoughts in mind, that we found ourselves leaving Sturgis a few days early to head back to Las Vegas—but not before taking a detour. It would be a detour that would take us 1000 miles out of our way and westward to Seattle. You see, Johnny had gotten word that Greg had accepted an overseas job offer, and would be in Abu Dhabi—in the United Arab Emirates, for the next three years. And Greg was leaving in 4 days.

We rode our bikes across Big Sky Country, also known as Montana. It's a strange phenomenon, but you really do feel closer to heaven in Montana. Between the cities of Great Falls and Missoula, we rambled along Highway 200, the most beautiful stretch of state highway I've ever been on. We crossed the panhandle of Idaho and wound down the Cascade Mountains toward the Pacific. We cruised through downtown Seattle and rode directly to the Marina on Puget Sound where we met Greg and his wife, Delanie, for lunch.

I don't remember much about that afternoon, I just know it was all about Johnny and Greg. We laughed a lot, even when talking about Johnny's accident. I'm glad they finally got to meet. I think it gave Johnny a sense of closure, and for Greg, well, I think he was surprised at how fabulously well he got along with a couple of road-rashed bikers from Las Vegas.

The next day Johnny and I left Seattle, and Greg for his new job in the Middle East. The events of September 11th were less than a month away, but at the time, as Johnny and I rode down the Pacific Coast Highway with Seattle in our rear view mirrors, everything was right with the world.

FiN.

Didn't Quasimodo Play Hunchback For Notre Dame?

"A room without books is like a body without a soul." ~Cicero

For the past ten years I've been adding to my book collection. I buy 99% of my books at secondhand shops and happen to live directly behind a Savers thrift store.

Most thrift stores don't categorize their books in any organized manner which makes perusing them a major pain in the ass if you don't have the patience... and patience is something I lack. Forgive me Axl Rose.

I strive to buy used books but prefer to buy old used books. There's something about old books that appeal to me. Perhaps it's the fabric-like cover of the hardbacks or the musty smell of the yellowed pages. Maybe it's because an old book actually does have a soul... like an old, beat-up guitar that still has a ghost of a song in it, waiting and wanting to come out. I happen to have my old beat-up guitar hanging on the wall and one of these days I'm going to find that song; maybe as soon as I learn how to play the damn thing.

I have a lot of the classics; Huck & Tom, Pygmalion, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a few by Hemingway, Wouk, Stevenson, Steinbeck... you know, all the ones I was suppose to read in school but didn't. I've also managed to upgrade most of my Kurt Vonnegut books to hardcovers. When I replace one of my badly worn Vonnegut paperbacks with a used hardcover, I donate the paperback to the thrift store, hoping it will fall into the hands of some teenager who's struggling with humanity... like I was when I first read Vonnegut 22 years ago.

Tonight I went to the Goodwill store on West Sahara. I was looking for a particularly odd-sized poster frame and Goodwill's prices and selection beat the heck out of Savers. For some reason Savers likes to think tacky 1980's art can justify an arrogant selling price. Please... I want the frame, not the work of a Georgia O'Keefe rip-off artist whose claim to fame is having prints in the rooms of Holiday Inn.

I walked over to the reading section and found an old book about the trial of Jack Ruby. I'm obsessed with the Kennedy assassination and have eleven books on the subject; make it twelve now. I also found an amusing book by P.J. O'Rourke... I always liked his stories in Rolling Stone. Then, as the kicker, I found a 1925 MacMillan Pocket Classic of Charles Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities. The book use to belong to a certain Frank Snyder who lived at 514 Hampton. I know this because he wrote his name and address with a pencil on the inside cover. I regard this latest found book to be right up there with my 1943 edition of Hitler's Mein Kampf (purchased for $1.00 at Savers and $1.85 less than it's original 1943 cover-price). It's eerie to read the preface of that book; the writer refers to The Fuhrer in the first person because Hitler was still alive at the time.

Get this: I got all three books for a mere 99 cents. I need to start frequenting Goodwill more often on Fridays.

Want to know where all the used copies of Angela's Ashes, The Bridges of Madison County and The Da Vinci Code are? In thrift stores. Yep, it's true. Just like all those Smokey and the Bandit era Chevy Camaros are rusting on cinder blocks in Tijuana right now. How I miss seeing those t-tops and huge eagle decals on the hoods!

The secret is this: You may have to look beyond the New York Time's best sellers to find something worth reading. Look past them but also look at the past. What you find may surprise you. Want to know another secret? I haven't really read one single word from any of the authors in my collection of classics. I tried reading Hemingway once but after the third page (and the same run-on sentence) I was out of breath. You see, my lips move ever so slightly when I read to myself. I've noticed over the years this annoys people even though I don't read aloud. I should stop smoking; it's pretty bad when a book can make you winded.

Yes, I'm saving the books for my golden years. Someday I'm going to be too old to get out of the house and crossword puzzles won't be a challenge anymore. Any future wife of mine will probably go to bed early and any children involved will be grown and gone. I'm saving my books for when all that's left is myself and my soul-filled rooms... along with that wooden rocking chair I'll someday find at a thrift store.

I think it was Emily Dickinson who said, "I have traveled to many distant lands, all in my mind, from reading a book."

And where will I go first?

The Snows of Kilimanjaro sound majestic.

I hope Hemingway grows on me.

FiN.

Frank Sinatra - A Man Alone

This past May the U.S. Postal Service debuted the Frank Sinatra 42 cent stamp. I thought it was rather fitting the rate increased a penny with the new stamp --even though Frank has been gone a decade he's still the Chairman of the Board. Like the saying goes, it's Sinatra's world; we just live in it.

I walked into my local post office branch the other day to mail some items. I noticed a poster on the wall advertising the stamp's debut ceremony at the Bellagio Hotel. Obviously the poster was almost two months old and would probably be taken down soon. My best friend is a Sinatra buff and I knew he would like this unique piece of memorabilia so I decided to ask the mail woman if anyone had dibs on the poster.

"It's MINE!" she blurted. "And I'll tell you why in a minute."

She proceeded to finish my transaction.

"Any liquids or flammables? Insurance? Delivery Confirmation? Stamps?"

"No. No. Yes. Five of Sinatra please."

"Okay young man, listen to this. In 1980 I wrote Frank Sinatra a letter asking him to help me get my job back at the post office. I sent the letter to Bally's Casino in Atlantic City because that's where he was performing at the time. You see, I was diagnosed with cancer and because of the treatment, I couldn't lift the minimum weight required to work at the post office."

I asked her why she wrote Frank instead of the Postmaster General or someone else more accessible. You know what her answer was?

"Because Frank Sinatra was more powerful than President Reagan."

I couldn't argue with that.

"So I'm not sure if it was because of him or not, but the post office had a change of heart and gave me my job back. But then I owed the hospital tons of money and since I had been out of work for so long, I was broke. I sent the hospital a $40.00 payment which was all I could afford at the time. A week or so later I got my $40.00 check back from the hospital saying my bill had been paid in full by an anonymous party. I had an idea who it was but didn't know for sure."

I nodded my head and smiled as she continued.

"Then in 1990 my cancer came back. I had just moved to Las Vegas, I didn't know anyone and there I was in the hospital going through treatment again. It was awful and I knew that even with the benefits of my job, I was still going to owe a lot of money. When it came time to start making payments I spoke with a woman in the billing department. She pulled me up on the computer and said I was covered by The Frank Sinatra Foundation and it would again be paid for. It was then I knew for sure Frank took care of me back in 1980."

Damn me. Over the years I've read plenty about the generous things Sinatra did for people but this was the first time I had actually met someone who had been directly affected by his good nature. There's a lot more people out there who have had his help while not even knowing it.

Yes, It's still Sinatra's world and we just live in it --although some people live because of it.

FiN.

Confessions of a Bellman - Now Go Get Your Shinebox!

A highroller was checking out of the hotel. His limo was leaving in an hour and he wanted his three pairs of shoes shined before he left. Time was of the essence. He gave me a $100.00 bill and said to give the shoe shiner a $30.00 tip—and the rest was for me.

I hustled to the shoe-shine stand at the bottom of the Forum Casino escalators next to the bathrooms. The shoe shiner was missing in action. All his rags, brushes and tins of polish were there but he wasn't. Thinking he was in the bathroom, I decided to wait for him... and wait... and wait. Twenty minutes later (and after checking the bathroom) I'm on the phone with the hotel operator trying to find out if the shoe-shiner wears a beeper. No such luck.

Finally a man comes down the escalator dressed in his black and whites. Our eyes meet and I nod at him urgently. His name-tag on his vest reads "Ricky."

"Dude, uh... Ricky, I have a $30.00 tip for you but I need these shoes polished in the next twenty minutes. Where have you been? I've been waiting here for almost a half-hour."

"Sorry," Ricky says, "I'll have them ready for you in 15 minutes—how's that?"

"That's perfect," I reply. Fifteen  minutes was just enough time for me to head to my secret location in the bowels of the basement and smoke a cigarette.

I return to pick up the shoes but realize I forgot to get change for the $100.00 bill.

"Ricky, are you going to be here for a few more minutes? I gotta get these shoes back to Mr. Bigbucks and get change for your tip."

Ricky points to the ceiling and says, "You can find me upstairs at the sports bar."

I look at him in confusion. "What will you be doing up there?"

Ricky smiles and says "I work up there. I'm a bartender,  but I wasn't going to turn away a $30.00 tip."

Well bless my soles.

FiN.