THE BARN COAT

 …a retelling of an actual event…

 

The green barn coat I’m wearing I’ve had through three or four moves; far longer than anything else in the closet. I’ve swaddled infant grandkids now enrolled in college in the old thing and comforted a dying black kitty in it for his last trip to the vet. I seem to recall purchasing it at an outdoor goods store adjacent to the Arcata town square. Last time I checked, the store was no longer there. 

         I bought the coat because Dad had a barn coat: a big blue denim garment that hung on him like a blanket. He wore his while doing chores out in the orchard in the winter: hacking suckers off almond trees or knocking down the winter grass with a disk pulled by an old Ford tractor. Never laundered, it carried the odor of everything he’d ever done in it – sweat, dust, Zerk grease from lubing the tractor, rancid pipe tobacco smoke. The aromatic essence of Dad.

         My now-forty-year-old coat has a bit less history. I used to wear it while raking leaves in our suburban back yard, until I got too hot and steamy inside the thing. I’d drape it over a rhody or a rose bush and often forget it was there. Eventually we moved to a place with fewer leaves. I remember taking it camping – back when I was still comfortable sleeping on the ground – and let sweet and pungent campfire smoke wash over it. Haven’t felt like sleeping on the ground since I can’t remember when.  Generally, it now simply hangs on a hook in the mud room to be worn only when there’s the rare outdoor winter chore and the weather’s really dank.

         Made of heavy cotton canvas and lined with some sort of wool or flannel, the thread and woven practices that were employed when it was manufactured have been replaced by all manner of lighter more insularly efficient fabrics with labels from The North Face, Hi-Tek or Gerry. I was wearing one of those recycled soda pop bottle sweaters one night when, while sitting next to the fire, a log popped and a spark landed on my belly. Within seconds, the pleasant aroma of the Cohiba Robusto I’d been enjoying was overwhelmed by the chemical-rich odor of a refinery fire on my lap. I dropped the new age wrap on the ground, stomped out the ember and went inside the house to retrieve the barn coat. 

 

 

Today was one of those last-minute-before-Christmas days when I needed to make the rounds downtown to pick up stocking stuffers that would garner a laugh and then end up in the kitchen junk drawer for eternity. I parked a block or two away from the main drag and, as I exited the car, snapped the top snap of the barn coat and pulled my felt hat down tight against my forehead. Passing through the town plaza – a meager space this time of year when the holiday lights are doused and the area is cloaked in a gray fog – one of the denizens there greeted me: “Merry Christmas, man.”

         Our homeless population is fairly small and quite benign, yet on many days, I’ll simply nod – maybe not even that – rather than further engage but, on this day, I responded, “And to yours.”

         He roused a scraggly mongrel whose head had been resting on his lap, “This here’s all the mine I got.” The gent smiled a gap-toothed smile and rubbed the dog’s ears. “Had him the whole while.”

         “The whole while?”

         “Yep. Ever since the rent went up.”

         I couldn’t help but stop.

         “Damned rent went up and up, and with the drought and the pandemic, my lawn care business – cuttin’ grass, fixin’ sprinklers, takin’ out dandelions – sorta crapped out. Had me sixteen, sometimes twenty regular customers ‘fore they turned the water off.” The little dog licked at his fingers. “The wife and the boy moved in with her mom down to Stockton, but I thought I should stick by my clients if I could.” He offered a wry grin. “Didn’t work out all that well, I ‘spoze.”

         I thought about the money I was about to waste on triviata that would occupy the junk drawer. “Need anything?” I asked, reaching into my pocket.

         “Honestly, man, nothing. Just a Merry Christmas from a passer-by.”

         His request was easy to grant and – holiday spirit and all – it made me feel good.

 

I hadn’t walked fifteen steps when the door to an office building opened and a well-dressed man stepped out. Shined shoes. Creased pants. Silk, I’m thinking, tie. “Happy holidays,” I said with a wave and a smile.

         The man quickly glanced down and grunted something as he walked past.

         As it so happened, the next business up the street was the little sundry store I’d planned on visiting. It was fronted with a plate glass window. Holiday goods were displayed on the other side of the glass, but they didn’t matter. What mattered was the reflection in the window. It was of a skinny, bearded older man in faded jeans with a slouch hat pulled low across his forehead – wrapped in a weary green barn coat. All that was missing was a scrawny little mixed breed cuddling in my arms.

         I turned back toward the square, but the homeless man and his dog were gone.

© 2023

Church of the Open Road Press

JOY

 Church of the Open Road Holiday Greetings for 2022

A week or so before Thanksgiving I am confronted with one of those mid-November days when a low sun peeks above the rim of our surrounding hills just long enough to raise the temperature to the mid-sixties. It had been a while  since I’d straddled my Moto Guzzi and, I decide, whatever else I actually need to do this afternoon can wait. A few minutes from home I am slipping under and through tunnels of black oaks and maples with their glittering gold leaves and entering into gently rolling expanses of harvested vineyards, blocks of foliage now purple and crimson and orange and rust and brown. The sky is cloudless, as blue as it’s ever been. Ever. And the pavement is dry and smooth. The curves are sweeping and gracious.  The speed I am traveling is not heart-poundingly fast. Heart-poundingly fast is not necessary. No. The speed is just right for carving wine country by-ways. And, along with that just right, the emotion I feel is joy.  Not thrill. Not danger. Joy.  

 

We find ourselves entertaining deeper, different thoughts under various conditions. While walking a forest path in the rain. Standing atop an ocean bluff.  Peering into the night sky. Or, for some: looking into the dancing eyes of a grandchild. Or massaging the belly of a loyal, snoozing pet, or, better yet, the shoulders of a beloved partner.

 

How frequently, I wonder, could that deeper notion be defined as joy? What makes a circumstance joyful? And not thrilling or dangerous or silly or sad?  Just as we can drive to the coast or the trailhead or to a starry night sky viewpoint, can we somehow drive our minds to the place where the aroused emotion is delight or bliss?  (Meditation comes to mind, but I fidget way too much to be successful at meditation, so that’s off the table; and my long ago staff at Maidu School more than once, in meetings I was conducting, held up a sign that simply said, “Focus!”)

 

I suppose that I, for one, must do something or go somewhere in order to get to that point.  Good thing there are trails through our neighboring woods for walking.  Good thing it’s a short drive to the ocean.  Good thing that little motorcycle is available for a late-autumn escape.

 

With apologies to Jackie DeShannon, may I posit that joy, like love, is something that ‘there’s just too little of.’ Perhaps it’s because we feel we have to go looking for it. Or we expect to get it from somebody or something else. Perhaps we don’t embrace that joy is not something you get; it is something you have. It’s internal. And it shines through when conditions are just right. 

Like when the kids are tearing through Santa’s gifts on Christmas morning. Or when the fragrance of a freshly carved turkey wafts across the table. Or when a satisfying dusk settles over a tender and cluttered day-long gathering. I’m prompted to think that while love often takes two or more – you know, something folks share with one another – joy, equally appealing and fulfilling, can ride solo. And that’s okay.

 

Sitting in front of the fire with a mug of something warm after everyone else has toddled off – just before the lights are doused on the tree – that joyful feeling visits. 

 

It has been a holiday and it has been just right.

                    The Church of the Open Road

                    and Edward, our beloved pooch* 

                    wish all a joyous noel.

                    Cheers!

* He’s such a good boy.

THE CHURCH OF THE OPEN ROAD’S WINTER SOLSTICE WISH

1942

 

Consider this early encounter at Rick’s Café Americain…

 

Ilsa            I wasn’t sure you were the same. Let’s see, the last time we met…

Rick          It was “La Belle Aurore.”

Ilsa           How nice. You remembered. But of course, that was the day the Germans marched into town.

Rick          Not an easy day to forget.

Ilsa           No.

 

Rick          I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.

Ilsa           Yes. I put that dress away. When the Germans march out, I’ll wear it. again.

 

2021

 

A long-held view of the Church of the Open Road is simply this: Many things in life can be related to one scene or another from the film Casablanca.  

 

In keeping with this belief, the “church” not offering a misty-eyed holiday tale or recapitulation of the family year in review.  Rather, this year, we submit simply the hope that in our country, one day soon, the seeds of representative democracy will again be nourished to grow and bear their luscious fruit; that our great experiment in self-governance will revive itself and again flourish; and that Ilsa Lund will feel compelled, once again, to wear that blue dress. 

 

Only together can we ensure that this will indeed happen as time goes by…

 

© 2021

Church of the Open Road Press

CHRISTMAS THROUGH THE KEYHOLE

…a cautionary tale about the office party

circa 196x…

CHICO’S KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS HALL, even fifty years ago, was a cavernous old building. Exterior walls were washed white and the window trim was black. Inside, bare floor planking was worn from decades of dance events, potlucks, receptions and various and sundry gatherings. All the corners of the great hall were dark, especially those back of a stage partially hidden by an ancient maroon velveteen curtain.  

Or was it forest green?

The doors from the main floor were white with blackened metal doorknobs, knobs that were always locked no matter how many times a curious little hand twisted and pulled to gain entry or simply peek inside. To be sure, looking through the skeleton keyholes, everything in the chambers beyond those doors was dark, mysterious and therefore, wonderful.

Even full of celebrants, the Knights of Columbus Hall smelled like old, cold dust. And once a year, just before Christmas, the place would teem with celebrants. Postal families – families of the guys who carried the holiday mail – gathered for cheer, for heaping plates of saucy spaghetti topped with a buttery slab of French bread, and for a visit with Santa.

The kids my age – sixish – and those both a little older and much younger, skated around the great hall, up and down the aisles between the alignments of oil-clothed tables sliding in stockinged feet, until one of us would pick up a painful sliver from the planking. There’d be a shriek. The injured party repaired to his or her particular mother who would remove the wood piece with surgical precision using only long, painted fingernails. Warned about the dangers of our frolic, we would not return to the skating activity for at least another five minutes.

During that recess, I would find Don VanMeter, the man who carried our mail, look up at him and say “Hello.” With a bottle of Miller High Life in one hand, he’d rub my burr-cut head with the other and say “Hello yourself.” Then I’d go find Glenn Walker, the neighbor who owned eight acres of almonds directly behind our place, also a letter carrier, and get similar treatment. Dad’s hiking buddy, Bill George responded in the same way as did the countless others who took this evening to eat and celebrate before returning to their holiday-heavy duties, ensuring that Christmas would arrive on time in Chico.

Dad’s closest work mate, Terrence, wasn’t on hand. I searched for him – he wrote little poems and gave them to kids – but I couldn’t find him.

When the bell rang for dinner, we all sat down, family style, on hard wooden benches pulled close to the long rows of tables. The postmaster stood up and offered thanks to the Lord while most of us kids nibbled at the sweet French bread until our respective mothers slapped our hands, glaring down at us as only mothers can. Next we’d dig into that saucy spaghetti having been admonished by the man who’d so recently been in conversation with the Lord: “San-tee Claus won’t come ‘til you’ve cleaned up your plate.”

An eternity passed while we ate the meal. Then, unexpectedly, the lights went out. An audible whoosh emptied the air from the room as everyone’s surprised breath sucked in. All was silent save for an infant or two. A tiny crease of light shown from beneath the velveteen curtain, and after a time appropriate for raising anxiety, the curtains split. There sat Santa. We cheered.

Santa read The Night Before Christmas. We then lined up – littlest ones first – to climb onto the stage and receive our presents from Santa and his helper: a peppermint stick, a naval orange, and a six-and-a-half ounce bottle of Coca Cola. Santa’s helper, Terrence’s “girl,” mom told us, hurried us off the stage so the line would keep moving.

Once back on the floor, the oldest of the boys would place penny bets about something embossed on the bottom of their soda bottles. I turned mine over, but was far more interested with what was inside. Some of the girls broke the ends off their candy canes and poked them through the rind of their naval oranges, using the candy as a straw to draw out the juice. The kids my age and younger just wandered about, trying to negotiate holding three precious gifts while walking across the slick wood floor in stockinged feet and grinning because we’d all just seen “San-tee Claus.”

Christmas was here.

*

ONE HOLIDAY, maybe four or five years on in this tradition, Dad announced to Mom that, “You should run along over to the Knights of Columbus and go ahead and enjoy yourselves.”

Dad wasn’t coming!

The hall was as big as ever, as dusty as ever, but somehow colder than usual this time. I sat on a bench next to Mom choosing not to ice skate on the wooden floor. I didn’t nibble at the French bread atop my mound of spaghetti while thanks was offered. I only wished that the postmaster would ask God to somehow send Dad to the party. I stabbed and twisted my dinner and let it grow cold.

Then the lights went out. When the curtain opened, before the kids lined up, I looked to my left where Mom was sitting, but she was gone.

Gone!

Now, too big to cry or yell out – the year prior, I’d won six or eight cents from the other boys because my Coke bottle had the word Louisville embossed on its bottom – I sat on the wooden bench like a stone. As the kids lined up to walk across the stage, it seemed that the room had grown colder. My eyes filmed over and I blinked to clear them. Why, I didn’t know. It’d just be a haggard procession of children getting a peppermint stick, an orange and a bottle of Coke. And Santa’s 'helper' would hurry them off the stage to keep the line moving.

Sitting among the long rows of tables, I was the only kid left on the floor. I swiped a finger across my eyes and watched. Immediately, I saw:

Mom was up there! Mom was San-tee Claus’s helper!

Like peering through a keyhole into a fully lit room, I understood a number of other things – frightening things, things steeped in a new and confusing reality.

After the procession, Mom brought me an orange, a candy cane and a Coke, which I consumed slowly but didn’t really enjoy. Once the hall was all cleaned up, we got in the car and drove home with Dad.

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press