The Power of a Lie

 

Dad taught me to create fiction, to tell a lie in order to reveal a deeper truth.  At the time, his method seemed less a blessing, more a curse.  No matter.  He taught me well.

Or, as my niece insists, “Of course you write fiction, you’re a big fat liar, just like Grandpa.”

Liar, writer.  Potato, potaaato.

I appreciate this gift of Dad’s more now than I did as a child.  It took me forty years to paw through all the truths I accumulated in my youth, asking myself, “Wait now.  Where did you gain that knowledge?”  If the information came from Dad, I looked it up.  Sought verification.

Which is the other gift Dad gave me.  I have a finely tuned bullshit detector.  That’s no small blessing.

But, I digress. 

Dad would tell about some incident that happened in his life and when he got to the part that was the equivalent of, “So, I said to the guy on the polka-dot elephant, roll that purple parasol up real small, and stick it. . .”

 I’d interrupt.  “Dad!  I was there.”  Meaning, I saw with my own eyes that not one word of this story actually happened.

Dad wouldn’t even blink.  He’d grin wide.  “Well, then,” he’d say.  “So you know I’m telling the truth.”  And he’d go right on with his story as though I had seen the same events as him.

Thanks, Dad.  You taught me the power of fiction.  It’s served me well.

Black Salve and Jerking Knees

 

The NaBloPoMo blog question I’m going to look at today is:

How much does your culture come into play in your day-to-day life?

Well, first off, take a good look at the picture of me at the top of today’s post and then remember that, to answer this question, we’re going to have to define culture in the broadest sense of the word. 

I come from a family that assumes that the little guy is always right and the big guy is wrong. 

That anyone with more money than they can easily carry in a bucket got that money by cheating someone else, probably one of my ancestors.  

My grandparents claimed, until the day they died, that Grandpa invented the formula for Coca-Cola.  Swore Grandpa was cheated, by desperate times and the need for money to pay a hospital bill with a baby on the way, into selling the recipe for the equivalent of a handful of magic beans. 

Grandpa told the story of knocking on a rich landlady’s door during hard times in the hopes of moving into one of her run-down rentals across town. 

The landlady took one look at the baby in Grandma’s arms, my dad who was three-years-old at the time. “No.” The old biddy stood in the doorway of her fancy Victorian and shook her head.  “I don’t rent to families with kids.”

“Okay,” said Grandpa.  “Don’t rent the place to nobody else.  We gotta have someplace to live.  I’ll just go on and drown the boy in the bay, and the wife n’ me’ll be right back.”

The landlady rented them the apartment.  My best guess is that fear of crazy people was the motivator.

The same grandpa swore up and down and sidewise that he was given the formula for magic black salve that could cure cancer and bring back the dead by an Indian who saved Grandpa’s life and soon thereafter died in his arms. Some rich, educated crook of a doctor stole the recipe from him and left town.  Didn’t leave Grandpa so much as a wooden nickel.

Dad’s favorite saying was, “He’s so crooked he has to screw his socks on.” 

Followed by, “He’s got more money than brains.”

And let us not forget, “He’s nothing but an educated idiot.”  Usually in reference to one of his bosses.

When, in the fifth grade, I sold one of our Siamese kittens to my teacher and then, six months later, the teacher asked for her money back because the kitten had died, Dad made me give her another kitten. 

“‘Course she’s cheatin’ you,” he said.  “But, two wrongs don’t never make a right.”

So, coming out of this culture, guess which way I lean on any political issue?  Oh, I do my best to be logical and keep that knee from jerking so hard it tips me from my comfortable chair.  But, really, what can I do?  Once a redneck, always a redneck. It’s not like I had a lot of choice in the matter of who I grew up with.  But, it should also be clear by now that, coming from my family?   I am one story telling mother of a redneck.

What’s in a Name?

Several friends are participating in NaBloPoMo.  A commitment of a blog post each day of the month.  No.  I am NOT doing this.  Not again.  The theme of the blog challenge is genealogy and I have always said that no good can possible come of me finding out even more about my ancestors than I already know.

However, I AM intrigued by some of the prompts.  What I’m going to do is choose my favorite prompt of the week and use it in my usual Monday post.  Cheating.  I know.  I own it.  I come from loose women, liars and all around interesting folks.  As my dad used to say, “The acorn don’t fall far from the tree.” 

Which brings me to my chosen prompt:  Are you named for someone in your family tree? 

Here’s my answer.

No. 

I once sat in on a training meeting, one of those let-us-all-share-until-we-cry type of deals.  The facilitator asked this same question. 

Who were you named after?

Unfortunately, I was last to share. 

After the women who was named for her ancestor who died while giving birth in a log cabin in a blizzard. 

And the man who was named for his civil war hero great-great-great grandpa Jeremiah who walked home after the war- a thousand miles and worth every step to return to grandma Emily. 

And the woman whose namesake raised twenty-eight adopted children and then won the lottery and retired to Guatemala where she spent the remaining years of her life building stick houses for pagan babies.

Okay, I made that last one up.  But you catch my drift.

When it was my turn to share, I told the truth.  My mother named me Pamela because the name carries well when yelled out the backdoor.  Try it.  Paaaam-aaaa-laaaa. 

See what good and wise stock I come from?

Memorial Day Musings

Today, Memorial Day, a day set aside to honor those who have died in my country’s many, many wars, I am publishing the same post on both this blog and my wounded warrior wife blog.

I grew up with images of fire hoses turned on protestors. Helmeted men on horseback beating those willing to put their bodies on the line for change. Napalmed children screaming on dirt roads. Boys who, a couple years earlier, sat beside me in Mrs. Conner’s fourth period English or Mr. Cobine’s American Civics class, returned from Vietnam as long-haired wanderers. My sisters fiancée returned from Hamburger Hill in a box. A sealed box.

It was common, in those days, to see Cronkite or Huntley report on a flag-draped funeral. God, how I hated all that fluttering red, white, and blue, lined up in a row, the snap of the bigger flag in the distance, bugles and fly-overs and folded triangles of pretend honor.
What I could never understand was why the widow or daughter or mother sat quietly in the midst of this glorification, not of her husband or father or son, but of the nationalism that killed the one she loved. As though it wasn’t enough that the military took her loved one, they even preempted the damn funeral.

Sometimes, in special cases or when the public’s attention needed to be turned from whatever crisis of leadership was happening at the moment, the president attended these glorifications. Those of you who lived through these years, watched on nineteen-inch black and white consoles, do you remember the moment when the sharp color guard handed that folded flag to the woman left behind?

Why didn’t that bereaved woman stand, walk to the president and punch him in his fat nose? Why didn’t she rip the fluttering flags from the walkway, throw rocks at the bugler and kick the holy shit out of the honor guard?

So help me God, if I never see a flag of any variety for the rest of my life, it would be fine and good with me. There’s more than one way to love your country. I live with a wounded warrior. The tattered flag that wraps his country’s glorification of war and honor of its veterans has long grown thread bare. The bloody thing reeks of betrayal.

I cannot say this enough. If you want to honor veterans, forget flags and parades. Provide troops with what they need to do the God-awful job you’ve given them in whatever foreign country you’ve decided needs invading. Cough up the money for the best care possible when they return to us with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD and do it quickly, not after they’ve spent a half-dozen years in misery while you paw through the files and hum and haw about each dollar to which they’re entitled. Give them the newest and best fake arms to hold their lovers and children. Pay to renovate their homes for that new wheel chair they’ll need.

Most importantly, if you want to honor our veterans, stop, for the love of God, stop sending them to war.

Humboldt County Reflections

A visit to Humboldt County always grounds me.  I can’t shake the feeling that the entire county exists in a parallel universe.  A better world nourished with the rich fog of light and mist and the rich hummus of a more ancient world. 

Plus, the whole damn county flourishes off-the-grid.  Oh, I’m not saying you can’t find internet connection or that young girls don’t snap photos with cell phones or text under the table.  But, at least half the people I met didn’t own a computer or a smart phone.  Mostly by choice, though economics plays a part in the decision too. 

And, those of you who live in Cutten or Lombard Hills, before you stone me, remember I hung out mostly in Old Town and come from a family of beautiful rebels and free thinkers, drunks and healers, loggers and tree-huggers.  None of whom are noted for riding future’s cresting wave.

The effects of technology and being constantly, oh-my-god every second, connected to the world did, however, jump up and slap me in the face twice during my trip home. 

My mom attended a wedding and returned with tales of the lovely bride and her dress and the lip-smacking food and something called a butt-dance that I seriously do NOT need to know about.  Mom also told how during the ceremony the guests snapped pictures with their smart phones.  Leaned into the aisles and stood up for better shots.  Moved around so as to get that perfect photo to share with the world on Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest. 

Really?  People can’t sit quietly and drink in the joining of two people in the biggest fool’s errand ever devised by man without snapping pictures to share on social media?  If a couple pledge their love and nobody snaps a picture and posts it on Facebook, is the marriage even valid?

The second time technology reared its beady-eyed, micro-chipped head, was after a day spend with my sister and her two grandsons.  My nephews.  Jake and Justin.  The oldest boy, Jake, has always been a favorite of mine.  Yes, I know.  Playing favorites is frowned upon.  Too bad.  I love and adore Justin, but Jake and I click.  We GET each other. 

So, after a day at Sequoia Park Zoo, my sister and I brought the boys back to their house where Jake immediately disappeared into the computer room.  When I ducked into the room to say goodbye, Jake shared with me a piece of music he wrote on the computer.

 Did you know a gifted artist like my nephew could compose gorgeous, wonderful music with a computer program?  Well, maybe you did.  But I sure as heck didn’t know it.  And when Jake tried to explain to me how he did it, the world became more and more dark and strange and filled with the breath of young folks who might someday set me afloat on an iceberg.

I arrived back in computer-savy NW Arkansas a few days ago.  My husband had bought me a smart phone.  Oh good Lord.  Propelled into the twenty-first century. 

Well, maybe it’s for the best. Perhaps, when the time comes, I can rally the wrinkled forces and stage a coup from the shrinking surface of my blue island.

Books by Pamela Foster

Zipper

 

In April of 1971, I lived in Munchweiller, Germany with my newly drafted husband.

My sympathies were with the love-children and hippies of that zeitgeist (another ‘Z’ word).  But my husband received his draft notice on our wedding day in ’68.  I worked a double-shift at the phone company in Red Bank, New Jersey during Woodstock while my groom received Army training at Fort Mammoth. Life got in the way of my political leanings.  I was all late-night talk and impassioned arguments and hoping to make it to the end of the month without going hungry.  Again.

So, after narrowly escaping orders for Vietnam, when my husband carried the newest Rolling Stones’ album home from the PX in Parmesan, Germany, it was an event of some magnitude. 

And the album’s cover!

A man’s crotch, penis bulging against the pants and a real, honest to God, zipper.  A zipper that opened and closed.  After you paid for the record, carried it carefully home and removed the plastic wrapper.  Like so many things in life that work too hard to titillate and tease, the zipper was a disappointment when I actually got my hands on the thing.

I’m willing to bet most everyone out there over sixty remembers slowly lowering the zipper on that album cover.  Under all that promise and sexual innuendo there was nothing but white briefs.  Tightey whiteys as they became known.

It was a different time.  Now we have nipples and pole dancing at super bowl half-time.  The internet has made erotica the most profitable book genre and the producers of Tiaras and Toddlers are rich instead of imprisoned.  Different times, indeed.

This morning, at dawn, watching the sun return color to the world, I couldn’t help but smile thinking about that innocent zipper that promised so much.  It’s been a long road since that April day in ’71.  I have three sons.  Two grandsons.  Two published books and another two coming out this year. It’s been a nice glide down the teeth of time to reveal a plain, ordinary, absolutely wonderful life.  A tightey whitey of a life.  I wouldn’t take a million dollars for any of it and, parts of it, you couldn’t pay me a million to live through again.

‘Z’ is for zipper and zeal and zany and zipitty do da.

Yaks, Yetis, and Party Clothes

A few years ago, Jack and I backpacked Nepal for a month.  We flew over Everest, that beautiful lady of a mountain, in a small plane.  But mostly we hung out in Kathmandu, and Chitwan, and Lumpini, and tried to get rid of the guide who’d attached himself to us our first day in country.  We fired him five times.  He always found us.   

Pokhara was our last stop.  We had finally escaped the guide and we were tired of travel with nothing but one change of clothes.  Besides, from our room at The Stupa, we had a brilliant view of the holy Fishtail Mountain.  We kicked back and relaxed for a week.  Climbed a small mountain.  Ate breakfast each morning beside the lake and watched little children row themselves across the calm waters in their school uniforms.  Strolled dirt streets with water buffalo.  Talked to the Tibetan women from the nearby refugee villages.

From the Tibetans we bought yak wool sweaters.  The women braided my hair like theirs with brightly colored lengths of red yarn and tied the ends off with silver.  I still see the gold light of late afternoon in that thin air, feel the warmth in the pit of my stomach as these woman giggled and played beauty parlor while I sat on a three legged stool in the dirt street, their fingers in my hair, the smell the yak wool tickling my nose.

That night, as Jack and I strolled the narrow streets in our new sweaters and my newly coiffed hair, the Nepalese smiled at us, told us we wore our ‘party clothes’ when there was no festival.  Very politely, they explained that the designs on our Tibetan sweaters were for a special Yeti festival held each year, high in the mountains behind Pokhara.  Our hotel manager asked if we knew of the sacred Yeti.

I laughed. 

We call him Bigfoot and his hair is darker where I come from.

             That was years ago.  We gave away the sweaters when we moved to the tropics, but the heavy, mountain-cold scent of yak still permeates my leather backpack, makes me think of festivals and the creatures that prowl our wild places.