Thursday, December 26, 2013

The Grubworm

I’ve written about my Aunt Kat on a few occasions over the years. She passed away a few years ago and I miss her terribly. My mom is the youngest of ten kids...my Aunt Kat was the next youngest and all my life, she lived no more than fifteen minutes away. She was a force to be reckoned with and was a jelly making, pie baking, gossiping her ass off vessel of love. She and my Uncle Jim only had one child, daughter Susie who’s about ten years older than me.
LFG has missed out on relationships with most of my mom's siblings...they've all gone on now except for one. But LFG and my Aunt Kat had a very nice rapport and I’m happy for that. The photo above is of LFG, my mom and Aunt Kat about to head out to pick strawberries in McBee, South Carolina.
My Aunt Kat’s first husband, Uncle Jim, died when I was ten years old but I loved the hell out of him for the short time that I knew him. It’s clear to me now but I was oblivious to their intent when my uncles and other dads would step in and take the place of my absent father.  And Uncle Jim was keen on high impact shenanigans. He was so damn full of love and mischief that he was just wired to be a dad and uncle and spoiler and prankster. And he loved me. That's Uncle Jim sitting beside my bow tied dad at my Aunt Inez' Sunday dinner table. My Aunt Kat, in the striped blouse is standing beside my mom. I was just a twinkle in the bow tied guy's eye when this picture was taken.
I learned many years after his death that he too was a member of the Greatest Generation. And like most veterans, he spoke nothing of it or at least very little. My Aunt Kat told me that he’d sometimes cry in the middle of the night after they were married.  She begged him to tell her what it was and he told her. Once.  He drove or was one of the crew members on those landing craft…Higgins boats…vessels that dropped Marines or Army troops off on the shores of Pacific islands during WWII. And he told my Aunt Kat that some of the boys were so scared that they didn’t want to exit the boat. He said he could see it in their eyes and he felt guilty having to help make them get off the boat.
But Uncle Jim said what haunted him and made him cry at night sometimes was the memory not of the dropping off but the picking up...Transporting the dead, including just partial bodies and the screaming wounded on the same vessel that dropped the young, scared but physically intact boys off to meet their fate. There’s so much PTSD today, my Marine nephew being one who’s challenged with it, but I’m thinking that my Uncle Jim and others like him had their own silent PTSD for decades. But I never knew it. All I knew was his love.
Uncle Jim owned a grocery store and when I was a toddler, I’d have the run of the place. But what excited me most about Uncle Jim was the Grubworm. He had a 1963-ish Econoline van that he drove on the weekends and for his grocery store tasks. And he said it looked to him like a grubworm. So he had someone paint “Grubworm” on the front and his name on the driver side door. And he’d take me to ride in it. Whenever I wanted. 
I can’t convey in words the excitement of riding in a truck whose engine is right up there in the cab with you. And when my three or four year old imagination was at work in tandem, hell, my Uncle Jim might as well have been Alan Shepard or John Glenn and the Grubworm, the Freedom 7. I mean really…how many kids get to ride in such a curious little vehicle and especially one that had a personality conveyed through its owner and painted on moniker?
So I wanted to honor my Uncle Jim by re-creating to the degree my imagination would let me, the Grubworm. And I’m dropping it off at my cousin Susie’s house tomorrow. It was a fun little project…kind of an ADG meets American Restoration…half-ass style. My first task was to find an old toy Econoline truck. I snagged one courtesy of eBay and then had to figure out how to make it less toy-ish and more faithful to the green color and blackwall tires of my Uncle Jim’s Grubworm.
Old advertisements from the 60’s helped fill the bill as well as discussions with my mom regarding what the Grubworm looked like and how the lettering was done. Of course my wild-ass imagination had an actual grubworm caricature worm on the front of it. Shut up.
And then I taped it off.
And painted it. The wrong color. Too light.
And painted it again. Too glossy and too green.
And again. Not perfect but close enough. I then had to get rid of the whitewalls.
Finally I went online and learned how to make decals. Voila…here’s the Grubworm.


I think it’s easier to further explain my story by just letting you read my letter that accompanies the Christmas wrapped box containing Uncle Jim’s Grubworm. Here it is… 

December 24th, 2013
Dear Susie,
Sometimes I miss Aunt Kat so bad I can’t stand it. Mom and I say more than once a day that it just doesn’t seem right not having aunt Kat walk in the back door saying “heeeey…I brought y’all something!” I’ve loved all of the Cole sisters but it’s no secret that I was crazy about your mom. We all loved Aunt Inez to death and whether it’s true or not, I know that I was one of Inez’s favorites so I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of love from the sisters. But Aunt Inez was the matriarch and everybody had to love her! I’m especially mindful of how great it’s been to have so many loving aunts as my mom’s now amidst the last, fragile chapter of her journey.

I have five more years’ worth of jelly that your mom made and a lifetime of pictures to keep her present in my mind. And even though uncle Jim died so many years ago, I have vivid memories (or at least they are vivid in the way that my imagination can conjure the hell out of things!) of loving him too. I was only ten years old when Uncle Jim died.

I remember his tickly moustache and his pipes. Seems like there was a pipe stand with several of his pipes on it. Am I dreaming that up? And when I was a little fella and had to wear suspenders to keep my pants up, I’m told that he taught me to answer “Dusty Baggy Britches” when someone asked me my name.

And someone would give me a dollar bill to spend at Jim’s Corner and I’d get some candy or a little toy and Uncle Jim would take over the register and hit every damn button on the cash register ringing up my purchases like an orchestra conductor. He’d take the dollar from my little hand and make change…giving me more than a dollar back. And remember the little brown sacks of penny candy that he’d bring? Squirrel Nuts, Red Hots, bubble gum, Mary Janes.  And candy cigarettes and necklaces and those straws full of sugar. It’s a wonder any of us had a damn tooth left in our heads.  I might have had a shitty dad but I’ve been blessed to have aunts and uncles and grandparents who made my childhood pretty memorable.

People ask me all the time how I know so much of the early to mid-1960’s R&B and pop music. I tell them that my mom was the youngest of ten kids and that I had a zillion older cousins who, when I was just a little fella, would be playing 45s of all that great music. I remember as a teenager going through a stack of your 45s or albums that were still over at aunt Kat’s house. The Tams.

Am I dreaming this up too? Did Richard, when he was dating you and y’all were home from college, put on socks just to come in and pick you up and then take them off again once y’all got in the car? Was it Uncle Jim who would have a fit about Richard not wearing socks? And now you and Richard are going to be grandparents. Damn I’m getting old.

Oh shit, and how could I forget the “Santy Claus Trap”? Remember? Uncle Jim would take us back behind his store and point to one of those outbuildings/sheds and say that he had a “Santy Claus Trap” in there and that he was gonna catch him and not let him leave us presents. But he would let on just enough that it wasn’t true so that we wouldn’t get upset…we’d just stay curious and sceptical because I think in our little four year old minds we knew that Uncle Jim was too good a man to do something so terrible to us and to Santa Claus. But he got us wondering and worrying…just a little bit.

But my most exciting memory of Uncle Jim is of the Grubworm! Susie, I couldn’t have been more than three or four when he had that truck. “Wanna go ride in the Grubworm?” Of course I did. What little boy wouldn’t want to ride in a truck? Especially one named after a damn worm? And I remember being scared and curious that the engine was right up there with us in the cab.

My memories are vague since I was so young but I think about the Grubworm from time to time and kinda had an idea of what it looked like…at least in my mind’s eye.  And I’m sure that I haven’t gotten it just right but I loved creating my version of the Grubworm from an old metal Econoline toy truck that I got on eBay. I found some old advertisements on the internet to try and get the correct color of green, too.  It’s close but not perfect…after I painted it three different colors of green before I was satisfied! And I learned to make and print decals for the lettering.

So here’s the Grubworm for you, Susie!
Love,

Dust

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Christmas 2013

It’s almost eight o’clock on Christmas Eve morning and I’ve just returned from Dulles airport and dropping LFG and her mom off for their flight to Florida. This was my year to have LFG for the Christmas break but being the accommodating piƱata guy that I am, I relented and sent my baby to Florida for fun and frolic versus Florence where it will be a bit more of a vigil. Shut up.
So LFG and I had our Christmas present fun last night…And while the “still believes in Santa” excitement is long gone, the fun and fellowship with a young adult daughter is a new kind of bliss. It is. And luckily everything that I was directed to procure for our gal was available online and in the correct sizes and colors so my gift gathering was easy. There was no ambiguity regarding what my young’un wanted. Including this calf-foot-leg stretcher thang that dancers use to accomplish the aforementioned. And my gal has turned into a serious dancer so she needs seriously damn expensive contraptions like this one. Alas.
Vans tennis shoes? Yep. These things were popular in the late 70’s, no? And hers had to be this particular color and in the low-profile, non-clunky version seen here. Precision in preference. I have no freakin’ clue where this proclivity comes from. Shut…
A young girl’s grooming and beauty book. I read the reviews on it and it’s solid. None of this “let’s focus on what’s wrong with your body and make you yearn to be something you aren’t” caca here. Cosmopolitan magazine has a rapier focus on making women feel inadequate and yearning for more-different-better. We’re trying to avoid that over here. With one exception…
LFG wanted better-different Hunter boots. Plus, her foot is still growing and her purple Hunters from two Christmases ago are a bit snug. And yes, she got more of those inserts to go in them. These are cable knit topped. Yep.
But the big difference is the fat racing stripe on the back. This my friends is a game changer. It's all about fuzzy nuance and this is after all...my daughter. Bam!
So on to my goods. LFG took special delight in watching me unwrap my James and the Giant Peach DVD. She and I read and re-read Dahl’s book a zillion times when she was little. It’s one of our favorites and we even talked about writing a sequel together.
J. McLaughlin socks, a Barnes and Noble gift card and a cool pocket square. I’ll wear the socks and square if for no other reason than my daughter picked them out.
The best J. Mc. gift might indeed be the wool foulard scarf. I can’t describe the texture adequately but it’s kinda spongy. I’m going back after Christmas to see what other versions they might have of it and if they’re on sale, I might snag another one. Yes, it's that fuzzy.
But the epic gift that I of course arranged procurement was this set of little lead soldiers...Heyde Pensioners. This almost one hundred year old set of pot-bellied caricature soldiers is rare to the point of non-existence. I’d never seen them in situ before…having only gandered photos from an auction two years ago where a boxed set of these went for crazy money. LFG Dad was able to snag these for a considerably lower price. 

But not that much lower. I can rationalize anything. Shut up.

Christmas Morning
I began this story yesterday morning but had to hit the road before I finished it. I’m now home with my mom—where I should be and it’s humbling and instructive to once again be in her service. We had a nice Christmas Eve visit and today my brother will do the Christmas cooking. My mom is sweet and is as appreciative to be here for another Christmas as we are to have her. But last night when I was setting up my Christmas tree that I bought down for her and I wasn't doing things freakin' exactly like she would do it, she told me that I had the patience of a rattlesnake. I told her to zip it…or I’d make her sleep in her wheelchair. Kidding.
Onward. Smokin’ one of those little baby cigars from my new cigar box Christmas ornament.
And rattlin'.

ADG-Two

  

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Holiday Miscellany

And miscellany this shall be. Shut up.
Oh…but before you shut up and I take over; let me pop this story with something sartorial. Because it seems like that’s what this venue used to focus on. I need to confess my guilt…about over-fuzzying this jacket. I’ve taken a perfectly sublime, ain’t gonna see ones-damn-self walking down the street in the same Russell Plaid jacket, ADG tasty contrivance…and tarted it up so over-the-damn-top-ly that even I, the Potentate of P-tang, can’t wear it out of the damn house. 
So I’ll have that Velveteen Rabbit meets a Vegas hotel suite sofa cushion collar…removed. And then I’ll write a proper story about how this jacket came to be. Shut…I’m serious. I don’t want to hear it.

I’ve said it to scores of people…While my blessings absurdly outweigh my challenges, I’ll be giddy when 2013 is over. It’s been a rich year, life-learning wise and my lessons learned-humility account is filled to the damn brim. My pugnacious declarations regarding my desire for 2013 to pass are  balanced with the knowing that if I crow too much about ’13 being behind us, the karma coordinators may show me a 2014 that makes this one look like a stroll through Burlington Arcade. It’s all about balance. Or something.

And one of the most amazing blessings this year has been my mother’s decision to not yet leave us. I believe, deep, deep, down in my being, that if we; amidst chronic disease or the end of our life journey, have some unfinished something that we've yet to reconcile or say or do or experience, we won’t let go. I’m not sure why my mom didn’t die in March. All I know is that the doctors remain pretty much speechless and when science and data driven clinicians use twee-ass words like miracle, I take notice. So amidst the humbling—for her and us—duties involved with helping my mom, we are all aware that every day she remains with us is indeed a blessing.
I drove over to spend one evening with her after my uncle’s funeral the other day and she was to say the least, on her game! Sharp as a damn tack and in my grill about how I was arranging her leg pillows and her three blankets that have to be just damn right and her little footies that I put on her feet inside-out and you’d a thought that I’d chopped her feet off. And then we laughed after I finally, barely, got things arranged to suit her.
I hadn't been to the family farm in years so my trip down was filled with all sorts of memories and speculations about how I’d feel when I got there. While it’s sad to see the once bustling tobacco farms essentially idle—mainly because it’s winter—we rent the land to other sower-reapers so during the seasons, there is life and activity and the fallow fields are planted and life emanates. But I loved being there and my uncle’s funeral was sweet. More later on the farm because there’s fodder for at least one story.
Before…
After…And yes, I realize that you're doing the “what the flip is this project ‘cause I know that LFG ain’t a part of it” head scratch right now. Well just wait till I write the story. 
Socks…I told you this was gonna be a disjointed pile of irreleventia and collateralia. My latest obsession is with these oversized houndstooth thangs that F. Todd HogFarmer Howell of Coffman’s Menswear has been sending me…NOT for free. I pay the freight because my man FTH has a lovely little gal to spoil and I know what kinda dough that requires. So when I find something I like, I get duplicates and I’ve had FTHogg, the most mismatched swathier alive, supply me some spares of these babies.
And I owe my man Vinnie of DeoVeritas shirts a story and review of this bulletproof pink oxford cloth shirt that I commissioned over at his site. So until I do so, please go over to his fully automated, order with ease website and make yourself one. Please.
LFG was supposed to be over here at my Bethesda digs like every other day after I moved within five minutes of her, right? I mean...wasn’t that the strategy for moving here? Well so far it ain’t happenin’. What was I thinking? That her blessed and over-scheduled life would suddenly be less so? Christmas is in six days and we still ain’t got no tree. I’m gonna go and buy an inflatable one today.
But her holiday dance recital last weekend was just great. Surprise I know, but I’m as proud a parent when in the audience as anyone could be…regardless of how the performances go.
This year was different though. I can see real talent and I can see an incrementally more skilled and accomplished dancer in my not so little LFG. Her mother and I both marvelled at how this year’s recital showed us a daughter who’s a really talented performer. And then I went home. Alone.
Meermin…If anyone should pay me for shilling…which to-date nobody has, it should be Meermin. At $240.00 a throw, I’m awaiting pair number two. Merry Christmas. To. Me.
Let me close this one out with my mom’s next door neighbor, Harry. I shared photos of Harry and my mom when we finally got her out of the house and Harry bounded over to love up on her. I posted this on my tumblr but it’s sublime enough to share again. The best by far, Christmas card of 2013.
Onward. Randomly and Houndstoothically.


Eighty-Gee. Bofe
Oh! And one more thing. My all-time favorite Christmas song is Boogie Woogie Santa Claus sung by Mabel Scott. But her admonition for Santa to ... "run, run, run Mister Santa--jump, jump, jump Mister Santa" disturbs me. He's overweight and probably a type-2 diabetic with mild congestive heart failure. And we don't need his jolly ass on Worker's Comp. bam.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Turkey Miscellany—Conroy-Meermin-and Stein Mart Serpentining

*It’s Sunday morning December 1st. I began this little ditty on Thanksgiving morn but never got around to finishing it. I’m back in Bethesda now and LFG is again with her mom so the deafening silence of my house is just perfect for completing such drivel. Many of you know that spellcheck is the best I do with these things—clean-up wise. But I did notice that I've overused the word “ass” in this story and I’m not inclined to change it. Sometimes words…even ones that debase, cheapen or accelerate a sentence…can’t be replaced and their redundancy is immutable. Shut up.

I’ve got stuff to say. More precise stuff. Stuff that with just a bit of editorial rigor would have you in syncopating tears of laughter and joy. But precision and editorial curettage ain’t gonna be part of this pile. Mainliest reason is that it’s Thanksgiving morning and at 913am all remains quiet in my childhood home and I don’t want to be precise and rigorous. Plus I’m a little gassy.

LFG is asleep in my sister’s childhood bedroom and my big-ole baby brother is in the room that circumstances dictated I had to share with his little late to the family party ass. I’ve yet to hear my mom stir but then again, she’s been keeping late hours these days. What with all the QVC and Food Network watching and her never miss Alec’s Jeopardy and what not. My mom…this not yet finished with life gal is busy these days.
Every Thanksgiving for the last forever…forever being probably the last three or four years…I’ve said “well, this is surely the last one that mom’s gonna be healthy enough to cook her formidable spread for us”. And now that time is upon us. Kinda. I sat at the kitchen table last night watching my mom convey bark in as strong a voice as she’s ever had, all of the intricacies and process steps involved in preparing her cornbread dressing and various other loved-by-all turkey day concoctications. And she was passing the cypher not to me but to my baby brother. He was doing the doing and I was doing the watching.

And then I remembered that this reaper reprieve my mom is amidst may be temporal so I asked her to recite to me the secret code for a few of my childhood faves from her kitchen oeuvre. I jotted as fast as she would recollect and she got predictably miffed when I asked her about measures and amounts. “I don’t know. Just taste it ‘till you like it.” That’s my mom. And probably yours too…unless you had one of those mamas that didn’t cook and if you did I feel real sorry for you.
I’m an emotional coward. I’ve long since reconciled it and after fifty-plus years, have actually come to own it. Owning is stronger than reconciling for you mugwumps who have nothing better to do than read blogs with some kind of copy editor ass attitude. Ok? Ok. So I’m sitting here in the living room this morning and there’s some kinda weird comfort about reading Conroy’s book in the house where similar sounds of conflict emanated and identical conditions of gastric twisted upness escalated as my father’s car came down the driveway—usually way too late for dinner.
And the later my dad’s arrival, the more strangulated my little belly became. The strength of his whiskey breath was indexed to the lateness of his arrival. So why the comfort? Even though Conroy found some reconciliation with his father—something I’ll never have—my dad was a f_cking saint compared to this sometimes monster Santini who lorded over Pat’s life.

I’ll never be able to explain the gut twist associated with not knowing which dad we would get when the door opened…a happy, mawkish dad with a buzz or a drunker, meaner man.  And the gut twist was an odd one. It wasn’t nausea. Nowhere near it actually. It was more of a “we better shut down your alimentary tract for the next three days as you haul ass across the savannah…zig-zag like...in an effort to outrun that big-ass cat.” Kind of a serpentine scurry while being shot at a la Peter Falk and Alan Arkin in The In-Laws“serpentine, Shel, serpentine”.  I think I’ve landed on a working title for the childhood segment of my memoirs…No Time to Dooky

And finally, let me offer an apology to Pat Conroy—as if he’s sitting there yearning for one. I flippantly defined all of his non-novel caliber books as filler and place holders for the real things…his more robust word candy stuff that a zillion of us have come to love. I was wrong. After finishing The Death of Santini last night, I realized that the book is (hopefully for the tortured Conroy) a cathartic and necessary opus that’s anything but filler. My childhood and my life journey in general has been nirvana compared to the Conroy clan. Shut the f…
Once again I’ve managed to turn this little ditty into a maudlin pile of whateverishness. So let’s go superficial. And Meermin shoes are as good a place as any to launch my shallow vessel. The first pair that I ordered…$240.00 bucks all-in…represented a curious itch that I had to scratch and at that price I was willing to gamble. Double the price and it would be fair, almost necessary, to ask the proverbial…“yeah but what will they look like a year from now?” Well I can tell you that I’m wearing the hell out of suede pair number one and I’m sure that a year from now I’ll say that I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth.
So early last week I queued up for pair number two. This time I’m sampling the scotch grained monks avec the ersatz Dainite sole. At this rate/price, my Cleverley bespoke days might be over. But not till my bespoke carpincho bluchers arrive. Hold me.
And after next week…my last billable week for the year, I’ll write a comprehensive story about my maiden Paul Stuart bespoke voyage with my buddy Mark "Puerto" Rykken. I figured a navy blazer was a good place to start since I’ve never had one.
Ok. I lied. Hell, I took two of them to South Carolina for Thanksgiving. It’s the little black dress of man clothes. Shut.
While I was home I popped over to Stein Mart and the Flusser goods have gone from tasty to just damn showing-ass-off. Paisley corduroy GTH jackets and of course, no pixie sizes for fellas like me. They know their local chubby market.
 I figure that the half dozen GTH cord jackets at Stein Mart Florence…smallest in-stock size...44 Regular…will go to the four, type-2 diabetes totin’, barbecue eatin’ (not that there’s anything wrong with that) effeminate heterosexual guys in town and the other two…well.
My phone rang recently and it was the Fluss himself. En route to Florence and a book signing at Stein Mart. I was touched that he asked about going by and seeing my mama and I was even more delighted when he asked me to put him on a lunch spot fitting for a Buddhist non-kosher Jewish boy from Gotham. So I sent him to Rogers Barbecue. That’s the Great Flusstini with my best childhood buddy AWH.
The onliest Flusser thing available at Stein Mart in my size was a cashmere sweater. I pounced at fiddy-nine dollahs. Bam.
So let me close out this turgid wad of irreleventia with an update on the ADG Cracker Code. It looks like I barely made the cut. Not that my DNA is gonna be too hard to map (I DO want my report thang to come back with a profile that has me sorted out with DNA including some Neanderthal, a dose of Ashkenazi and some sliver of African in there too. I mean really...I'm already interesting to have at cocktail parties and cookouts but damn...If I can say with DNA evidence, that I'm one of the first families of earth with a smidge of Yiddish and a dash of Zulu, I'm gonna be hard to stop.) but it appears that the FDA has requested that 23andMe stop selling their tests. I’m sure they’ll get it all sorted out and in the meantime, here’s to hoping that the 23andMeMinions are hard at work unravelling my serpentinescent code.

Onward.

ADG-Two. Serpentining.