Sibling Assignment #83: Glimpses of Thanksgiving

Tons of essays read, graded, commented on returned. Final grades computed. Letter of recommendation written. Electronic file organization project underway. Dog training session #1 with Snug and Maggie with the Deke's participation under out belt.

Whew. It's time to blog. I've avoided my blog. I have a lot to reflect upon and I didn't want to dive back into the deep end of Kellogg Bloggin with these other responsibilities pressing. I got them done. It's time to blog.

I know, Thanksgiving 2008 is old news. But, hey, this isn't a daily newspaper. It's a timeless blog and I hope you'll accept my invitation to go back to Thanksgiving Day and join in my family's celebration.

I hadn't been with my family for Thanksgiving since 1991. I shivered with excitement all Thanksgiving week to be with Mom and InlandEmpireGirl and Silver Valley Girl and the rest of our family.

For Sibling Assignment #82, Silver Valley Girl urged each of us to depict our Thanksgiving get together through each of our own eyes. InlandEmpireGirl's depiction is here and you'll find Silver Valley Girl's here.

On Thanksgiving Eve, travelling from Eugene to Spokane, I listened to the elderly Bob Dylan sing songs of loss as recorded on his latest album, Tell Tale Signs. Last night I surrendered again to Dylan's old, tired, ragged voice rasping these sad songs and I thought of waiting beneath the skybridge at the Spokane International Airport for the Kellogg contingent to pick me up:

I think I first saw Silver Valley Girl's smile with Sadie perched behind her shoulder when the Envoy passed downtown Spokane's Lincoln Street exit and her smile radiated still when the Envoy arrived at the skybridge.


We got settled in on the shores of Lake Roosevelt at InlandEmpireGirl's and it before long the laptops were out:



And Mother Mary held court:


Making sure her children behaved themselves:


All was not perfect. PKR was feeling a little under the weather and kept putting his magic healing mug to his face:

SilverValleyGirl would have you think she's all smiles and good cheer, but on Thanksgiving Day, she decided to warn us that she just might be Hell on Wheels:





Surely, the wine and sparkling cider/dessert table would sweeten her mood:

How could she be crabby sitting over InlandEmpireGirl lovely plates of salad?


And wouldn't InlandEmpireGirl's preparation of JBelle's Pacific Northwest Cranberry Chutney sweeten even the sourest crabby sister?

Someone got into the desserts:


Mom's sure happy:


And how about crabby Silver Valley Girl? Did we crack her cranky shell?


I think we did!

Fire

I was in the 7^th or 8^th grade when we replaced our coal furnace with a natural gas one. By the time I was about in the fourth grade, at about the time John F. Kennedy was assassinated, filling the coal stoker and removing cinders from the furnace became my chore. I remember having this chore around the time Kennedy was assassinated because it was also about the same time I could have burned the house down.

I was fascinated with matches and we kept boxes of wooden matches in the basement and they were especially fascinating because I could strike them against the basement’s concrete walls, the concrete floor, my zipper, and any other rough surface and they would burst, like a shooting star, into flame, emitting a sweet sulphur smell. For weeks, when I would go to the basement to shovel coal into the stoker and claw cinders out of the furnace, I was satisfied to experiment with different surfaces to see if striking it would ignite the match. I tried the faces of different dolls, the side of a white toy fire truck, cardboard boxes, the tops and sides of Nalley’s chili con carne cans, canning jar lids, the embossed “Ball” on canning jars, cedar and pine scraps, the side of the utility sink, the washing machine control dial, the furnace door, and countless other surfaces, teaching myself match lighting as if it were an art. For weeks, I was satisfied to light single matches, but then I became fascinated with multiple matches, two at a time, three at time, working my way to a fistful at a time, in awe of the flash of indigo, scarlet, white, and yellow, as if holding the sun.

I learned one evening, though, in November of 1963, that pride does precede the fall. I crossed over from being pleased with lighting matches to quenching my thirst to light things. Mom had a cotton stringed floor mop in the basement and I leaned it against the wall and lit the white stringy tendrils. In a flash of flame that turned fascination into panic, smoke and stench billowed around the basement and I hustled the fire into the utility sink, trembled open the tap, and killed the fire. No further harm ensued.

Dad was out that night, most likely bowling. I crept up the basement stairs. Mom was on the sofa, grading schoolwork or studying for her night class or watching “Bewitched”, and I confessed, ashamed of the pall of fear that blanched Mom’s face. After going down to the sink to survey the crisped mop strings and opening doors to air out the house, Mom held me and told me about the infamous Kellogg boy, Paul Matovich, who had had a fascination with fire and several years earlier had burned Gault Hall and killed three students at the University of Idaho. She told me that he was a pyromaniac and an arsonist and was in prison and that I did not want to be like that.

Later, the following week, John Kennedy dead, we had a mournful Thanksgiving dinner at Jerry Turnbow’s house. Jerry took me into the master bedroom by myself and told me that he heard I was having a fire problem and to cut that shit out. He asked me if I knew about the infamous Paul Matovich burning down Gault Hall and did I want to be like that and be put in prison for arson. I told Jerry I did not want to be like that.

I did not want to frighten my mother. I did not want to anger Jerry Turnbow. I did not want to be an assassin or an arsonist. I did not want to burn down a university dormitory. I did not want to destroy with fire, but I loved the way a struck handful of matches flamed out. Something in me longed to burn.

Thanksgiving Weekends with the Valley Boys....and Patty, too

Back row: Ed, Bruce, Terry, Scott, Jake
Front row: me, Mike
The serenity glowing in the center: Patty

I don't think it had to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I'd survived a 1974 Zinc Plant accident, Scott survived testicular cancer in '00-'01, Bruce is always under observation for melanoma and has been through treatment, I survived an attack of spinal meningitis in '99, and Ed drives log truck and has been speared, busted, bent, and bruised in every way possible, plus he fell off a roof in '03 and busted up his pelvis and leg. He was back in the log truck in about three months. Jake's diabetic. Terry has an ulcerous job in management at Xerox. Mike helps juvenile delinquents. He knows stress.

So, it was coincidental that this bunch of old friends from Kellogg High School Class of '72 started in 2001 getting together every Thanksgiving weekend and that it was the same year that the twin towers fell. We thought we'd better start meeting every year before 9/11 and we decided to do it not because we thought the world could end any day now, not because the 9/11 attacks "put things in pespective" for us, not because we "got our priorities straight" after the day America would never forget and that changed the course of history forever. No, we just figured any one of us could die any day now. We figured it out on our own. We didn't need 9/11.

I live a very responsible life. I worship, work hard, invest myself in my students, provide for my family, and try to do what's right by people. It's the Silver Valley way. It's also the Silver Valley way to drink hard, tell profane stories, mock sports teams, complain about how things have changed for the worse, gamble, eat bad food, and watch sports on television. Starting the day after Thanksgiving and lasting until Sunday, Bruce, Scott, Ed, Mike, Jake, Terry, and I pack all of this into a weekend. We get drunk. We get loud. We get hungover. We eat crap. We play cards. We play slot machines. We glorify the past. We complain about past injustices. We deride the way world is changing around us. We tell stories again we've told 5,000 times already. We pick on each other. By the way, picking on people is not a normal part of social life here in Eugene, Oregon. Because, in Eugene, actions are always seen as an expression of one's menacing and racist/sexist/masculinist/homophobic/enraged subconscious (known in Eugene as "issues"), it's implicity forbiddened to pick on people or get picked on. It would be seen as masking real aggressiveness toward others behind a facade of joking around. Jokes are never jokes in Eugene. In this humorless, self-congratulatory, Narcisstic town, speech is not free, but measured.

In Kellogg, I guess we never got far enough in our Freudian Studies class to recognize all the cruelty and violence that underlies flipping each other some shit. In Kellogg, we just love to pick on each other. In Kellogg, harrassment is a positive word. I go to Kellogg as often as I can so that I can get picked on. I want to wear a sign in Eugene: "Please give me some shit! Pick on me! I'll pick on you. We can do it together!" But, it ain't that way here -- although I have some fellow teachers I can pick on and who pick on me and I have found a few select students who enjoy it. By and large, in the eggshell environment of Eugene and its institutions, where being offended is a sign of high character and where anything from wine served at a function welcoming new faculty to wreaths of Douglas Fir at Christmas time (a holiday I've joined my wife in calling Winter Day) to a Poltergeist derived jokey comment can offend, it's just not much fun to be yourself. Someone will be offended and in high dudgeon.

So, you ask, what's Patty doing as the serene center of this picture? Last year, after our 40 some hours of man-fun in Lincoln City, the boys and I looked up Patty Reasor, another classmate, in Newberg, Oregon where she's a nurse. We invaded her hospital looking for her and scared the stuffings out of some nurses and desk attendants who evidently hadn't seen this kind of tonnage moving together as a merry pack before. Patty had called in sick. We reached her by phone, met for coffee, and had a terrific visit. I think all of us guys would agree that we enjoy each other's company, but that the highlight of last year's trip was spending an hour in the company of our beloved Patty.