The Refectory Manager

The refectory . . . A place to nourish the soul. A place to share the savory comestibles, the sweet confections, the salty condiments of the things that matter. A place to ruminate the cud of politics. A place to rant on the railings of religion. A place to arrange the flowers of sanguine beauty. A place to pause in the repose of shelter. Welcome, my friend. The Refectory Manager

My Photo
Name:
Location: College Place, Washington, United States

Friday, February 24, 2012

Idaho Driver

          His mind had gone transcendent, reflexes-only propelling him down the cement sidewalk, nose-in parked cars flanking on his right, cars patiently waiting for their drivers. The drivers in turn waiting to transact their boob-tube cable business on the inside of the Charter Communications service-center building. He did manage to perceive that the parking spot on the driver’s side of his van was empty. Cool. His reflexive autopilot could maneuver the meander across that little short cut. Instinctively he reached into his pants pocket to click the remote door-lock thingy. His mind transcendent still. Intently. Afar. Do not disturb.

Phew! Dang! That was close!

The rumpled mud splattered maroon SUV hissed and crunched to a halt. Front bumper with battered Washington license plate oscillated to immobility after the front wheels jammed the curb. The driver’s door creaked open. The old guy emerged, dogged up in dingy duds, twisted hair encapsulated by a flopped-brimmed old hat, squatly legs lurching him toward Charter’s front door.

Now fully disturbed, the transcendent one entered high alert. He could barely ascertain , because of the reflection of brilliant sunlight from off the windshield, but there did seem to be others still in that heap. To complicate the matter, the old guy’s aim was a smidgen off, not leaving a whole lot of room between their two parked vehicles.

With hesitancy he started to wedge between the two fenders. He could see that the passenger window of the beat up relic was open, and that some lady who had poured herself into a near seam-splitting T-shirt, was sitting there.

“Are you getting out?” he asked her, waiting to let her extradite herself if she should so choose.

“Growl!!!” The lunge of spitty fangs, snarl-breath, and bristled hair was mercifully jerked back. The old woman obviously knew how to handle the brute. But still, he froze his motion with visions of postmortem lawsuits now racing in his head. 

“Naw, I ain’t gettin’ out.” And then nonchalantly, “He won’t hurt ya!”

With the dog now restrained, he swiggled himself farther down between the cars, past his door, got his door opened, sucked in his gut and squished himself into the driver’s seat.

A glance to his left elicited a raised eye brow. 

Dog calmly sitting in the junker SUV driver’s seat. Paws on the steering wheel. The peaceful picture of complacent competence. To the casual observer, he was just waitin’ for the carhop to bring a bone in a basket with a side of fries.

He rolled down his window before backing out.

“You let him drive often?” He had no idea if that came across as an indictment or a hackneyed joke. Didn’t matter at this point, his car was already pro-actively in reverse.

“Oh yeah,” she says, that toothless mouth sucking in her cheeks, the rolls of ripples shaking with chuckles, “but he drives like’em Idaho drivers.”

“Okay,” he laughed, relieved that she hadn’t sicced the hound on him. “I’ll be sure to steer clear!”

“Yeah!” she giggled, pony tail bobbing in affirmation, “You better do that! And steer clear of thum Idaho drivers too!”

The transcendent mind soon found itself lost, again, this time way west of Idaho.

The Refectory Manager

Labels: , , , ,

Fires of Passion

Hell fire raged. An inferno bearing down speedily and mightily, sucking oxygen from the air, raining hot embers and propagating itself with a wake of terror and death. Carrie screamed at her older sister Mary. “Run! Run for your very life! Get into the lake! We don’t want to die!”

Gold had been discovered. The Canadian wilds of northern Ontario in 1907 were quickly transformed into a feverish rush of prospectors and fortune seekers. Frontier towns erupted with their log-pole store-front mercantiles, slash-siding rooming houses, tar-paper eateries, glittered unmentionable establishments of social need, all lining the dirt main-streets rimmed with plank-boarded sidewalks. A society banding together like spontaneously generated flies on fresh carrion. A branch of the railroad was punched through the boreal so as to maintain an umbilical cord with civilization down south. Box cars being the most practical means to transport heavy supplies snaked in, and hopefully, to haul gold bullion out. The adventuresome and desperate ‘rode the rods’ north to places like Timmons and Porcupine and Golden City. Those stalwart prospectors along with the entourage of parasitic logisticians, all with their irresistible drive for quick riches and rewards and experiences of personal fulfillment, coalesced into a concentrated economy. Two of the 5 Smith sisters from Renfrew, Ontario were smitten and caught up in that frenzy. Already they were experienced in cooking, waitressing, and chambermaiding, so they assimilated easily and quickly into the ambient passions of vocation, avocation and wilderness romance.

Smoke had been in the air for some time. It was beastly hot for that part of the world. It had been months since the last rain. The conifers were tinder-dry and formed an arsenal of nascent explosive torches. There was a fire out there somewhere to the southwest. Actually, several small fires. Even so, the franticness of gold fever suppressed any notion of eminent danger. Wood smoke mixed with main-street dust was the new normal for the villagers of Porcupine. 

Porcupine, a rough town on the northern side of Porcupine Lake, a town in the height of servicing hundreds of prospectors in the surrounding hills. The constant stream of newly arriving optimistics needed to be outfitted, fed, quartered, entertained, soused and loved. Some of the long-timers now had built houses and had imported their families. There were now kids and cats and dogs and horses and men and women and priests and pimps and miners and surveyors and hucksters and traders and swindlers all choreographing a feverish economy of hope eternal. Carrie and Mary were caught up in the ferocity of supporting that logistical mission.

Baptized into the Church of England twenty one years prior, Carrie was now a-religious. It was the here-and-now that was important. Life was vibrant, free, open, and filled with adventure. The neophyte prospectors and miners and surveyors with puffed egos and ambitions of riches and glories, all cast spells of promise and enticement on the giddiness of single girls. In time, Carrie accepted an engagement ring. When that guy’s stake was to be mined, she would be in her heaven on earth. No more the days of tables and dirty dishes and stained sheets and pinches and insults and forcing her exuberance of faux excitement for bristled faces, bourbon breath and puke. Rather, she thought that one of the better ones had snagged her, or was it she had snagged him.

Alas, familiarity breeds contempt. The lover’s quarrel erupted into spiteful hate. Off to the bridge spanning the Porcupine River, jerking the engagement ring from her finger, then mightily throwing it far into the raging tumult below. 

There was not only fire in her heart, there was fire in her wilderness.

Spring had come early to northern Ontario in 1911, and now in July, there had been months of tinder-dry heat-driven drought. On July 11, a hurricane-force wind picked up from the southwest and combined several small fires into a raging conflagration, some 20 miles wide with a horse-shoe shaped frontal assault aimed squarely for the west end of Porcupine Lake. Flames, a hundred feet in the air, were driven fiercely toward the small town of Porcupine on the northwestern shore. By evening, the air was filled with blinding and choking smoke and soot and ash. It burned the eyes and fouled the lungs. Visibility collapsed. The sky was billowing in blackness. Tinder-dry roofs were bursting into flames. The only route of escape was to get into a boat and sail east on Porcupine Lake to the far end, to the village of Golden City.

With no boats of their own, and only a few boats still available anyway, terrified people ran into the water. One boat, significantly overloaded, hit a log and dislodged the propeller. It drifted into the smoke. A big Newfoundland dog with 9 pups had found a floating log and lined up all the pups alongside the log with their paws clinging for security. As baby pups slipped off, the mother dog somehow fetched them back up. They were found the next day. All had survived. 

Mary, 5 years older than Carrie, took charge. Under typical circumstances, both were headstrong, belligerent and dogmatic. They had nothing but the sack-dresses on their backs. They pitched into the tepid water, water warmer than it would otherwise be, except for the prolonged heat. Their granny-shoes sinking into the mud floor of the lake. Pinned-up hair unraveling. Dresses becoming thoroughly soaked, translucent and clingy. 

“Carrie, get down, get your head down,” screamed Mary. The blast-furnace wind raged along the surface of the lake, parching their air. They ducked down into the water, only to be forced up again every few seconds for air. The surrounding area was confusion and panic. Choking. Crying. Praying. Cursing. The hours went on. Porcupine burned. Night fell.

The fire roared up the south flank of the lake. It lit on fire three rail cars parked on a rail siding between Porcupine and Golden City, cars filled with dynamite for Philadelphia Mine. The dynamite exploded, knocking people flat to the ground in a camp 3 miles farther south, and causing a 9 foot tsunami to race across the lake. The steel rails beneath those box cars coalesced into twisted spaghetti.

Early in the morning of July 12, it started to rain. Real rain. Real water. The wind was stilled. Embers were getting soaked, the fire now arrested.

Carrie and Mary crawled out of the lake. They were exhausted. Terrified. And now destitute.

It was never known how many died. The official count was seventy one, perhaps seventy three. Unofficially, it was put in the hundreds. No one knew how many prospectors there were out in the surrounding wilderness.

The rest of Ontario quickly heard about the disaster and shipped bales of clothing and supplies on the train as far as the rail line was passable. 

By and large the people stayed and regained their optimism. One of the numerous dynamite explosions opened up a powerful new spring of fresh water. The log store-front mercantiles were rebuilt. The rooming houses, the eateries, the saloons all mushroomed back into existence.

The Smith sisters did not stay for long. Within months they headed out west. Headed to Port Arthur, Ontario [now named Thunder Bay] at the west terminus of Lake Superior. Port Arthur was another booming frontier town in the height of railroad construction. Manufactured goods had to be moved west. Grain and cattle from the prairies had to be moved east. Port Arthur was the gateway to the vastness of western Canada.

Carrie was hired on as a waitress at the hotel on main street. The bantering with the bartender bubbled. 

The memory of an old fire was squelched with the reality of a new one. Things with Carrie and the bartender progressed. Flames of a new passion. But the stories were sketchy and secretive. A few documents have recently emerged citing names and dates and places and occupations. Circumstantial census evidence has been pieced together although not conclusive in confirmation. 

Perhaps my grandfather was a bartender. For certain, my grandmother Catherine was a survivor of the Great Porcupine Fire of 1911. 

The Refectory Manager

Labels: , ,

Howard

There was the sound of silence in that classroom. Except for the noise of the pounding of thirty or so fear-driven hearts.

The minister, with his Brylcreem coiffed hair, his rimless glasses fogged over from condensation resulting from frigid glass hitting that blast of heated air, his taking off his black great-coat thus revealing the garb of his only dull black suit and that yellowed-white shirt providing background to his shiny black tie, entered. But there was an expectation that was different this time. He had come before, often. But now, there was an electrified tension that something was dreadfully wrong. Mrs. Burgess*, the teacher of the upper-grade room of the two- room parochial school was now hovering near the back of the room. The minister singled out one of the Hitchbothom boys and ushered him into the little office off to the side of the classroom.

Silence. What seemed to be forever.

Crack!  

The shriek of pain!

Crack!

A cry that sounded nothing like what an 8th grader boy should ever emit.

Howard was a good looking kid. No facial pimples. His blond hair combed over from the part on the right side of his head, originally originating from his left-handed mother. Typical of him, he was wearing his rough dark-green work pants, a variations-on-the-theme-of-red plaid work shirt and heavy leather boots. He was usually adorned with a shy, sly grin, and for the most part, congenial. His father was a long-distance trucker. Recently his dad had taken his two boys on a trip across Canada, from Calgary to Montreal and back. This was in 1959, still a time of two-lane inter-provincial highway travel. Howard provided an oral report of their adventure to the class. He saw that having to get-up-in-front-of-the-class thing as his punishment for skipping so much school. My recollection from his oral report, was his excitement in describing the restaurant cuisine that they had discovered somewhere back east, the novel presentation of “half-chicken in a basket.” A serviette lined basket holding a battered and deep-fried half-chicken accompanied with a mound of chips [what Canuks call French Fries], and a buttered dinner roll. This before the onslaught of ubiquitous COL McFish’n Chips. Howard, and his younger brother Frank, were already saddled with the reputation of being juvenile delinquents. There had been run-ins with the law, usually involved with petty thievery and shop lifting. A police officer, on more than one occasion, had visited the school. Even I got sucked in, unwittingly once, as the recipient of a mechanical coin-changer device that Frank had snitched from a Calgary Transit bus driver. Frank wanted the coins. I was enthralled with the device. Then there was the time, years before, when Frank snitched a Dinky-Toy truck from a display in Chesney’s Hardware on the corner of Center Street north and 16th Ave., tucked it against his belly under his shirt, feigned a stomach ache, and bolted out the door. 

I had admired Howard. He had a magnetism about himself. Frank was my friend. My father and Henry Wells, a young-adult from the church, took a bunch of us boys on an over-night camping trip out at Priddis one Saturday night. It was cold. We were so ill-equipped. We camped on a gravel bar at the side of Fish Creek. The water was low, cold, but inviting enough that two or three boys wanted to go swimming. Howard stripped naked. I had never seen a boy like that before.

Crack! Again! That curdling scream of pain!

Followed quickly. By seven more.

The minister came out of the side room. Marched to the back of the classroom, grabbed his coat and abruptly left.

Howard emerged.

His face contorted in pain. Flushed. Tears streaming down his cheeks. Wet stains on his plaid shirt. His eyes were red and swollen. Snot dripping from his nostrils. 

His right hand was purple, swollen and blistered. He gently cradled it in his other hand.

Somehow, through the horror of his public shame and humiliation, he found his desk, and slipped mercifully into his seat. 

I had turned around in my seat to look. His head was held high. He was now just quietly sobbing, shaking, whimpering, gasping for air. He cradled his swollen hand in his other hand, resting them both on the surface of his desk. He made no attempt to wipe tears or snot from his face. Fear gripped me. That portrait of acute distress is an image that haunts me to this day.

We had all seen the strap. A near inflexible band of leather about 2 inches wide, 18 inches long and a quarter of an inch thick. We had all been told that it could and would be used if necessary. My father, at the end of my 5th summer and my getting ready to start first grade, in his assumed role as a supper-table jester, told me “Every kid gets the strap the first day of school!” For the record, I did get the strap from my father on that first day of school, but that was another story. Now, nine years later, Mrs. Burgess, being the mealy frump that she was, had called the minister to execute the corporal punishment. That strap was the implementation of discipline.

What Howard had done, I have no idea. I had heard my father say more than once, that those Hitchbothom boys belonged in a reform school, not the Seventh-day Adventist church school. But I liked them. Howard was intriguing. An aura of the risqué enveloped both he and Frank. The subtle admonitions to the rest of us that we would become tainted with sin if we associated with them. Even so, Frank was my friend. In a previous year, while we were both still in the lower-grade classroom, I ached for him as the teacher in that room snapped three yardsticks, in her fit of uncontrolled rage, over Frank's head while we all watched spellbound in horror.

But on this winter day, ten cracks of a leather strap on the palm of a firmly-held outstretched hand. Ten curdling screams of agony. Thirty some terrorized kids in the classroom of a church school. A cowering teacher providing no comfort, solace, or explanation. 

Howard, undoubtedly had been guilty of something, now a publicly inflicted and humiliated young teen boy. 

The Old Testament lesson of mercy and justice inflicted on us all. 

Howard, the image you embedded in my memory that day is that you were still holding your head high.

The Refectory Manager 


*All names have been changed.

Labels: , , ,

So the assignment was to introduce myself

If pressed, I simply state that my brother is an only child. I suppose that makes me virtual. I would think so. Perhaps. But then, maybe, just implicit.

My being the virtual brother of an only child is to be able to slip out from under the shackle of fear and unfulfilled expectation. To be able to conquer the panic of the unknown. To be capable of transforming the future into the present. To relish the safety of reclusiveness. Then, at some point, to be able to look back and to be able to realistically deny that that accomplishment-conquered-fear was anything of significance. For me, to be able to minimize any legitimacy of worth. 

During a turbulent time in my life when the admission of who I am to even myself was in the pangs of emergence, I found an adapted version of the Myers Briggs personality assessment tool. No matter how I tweaked my responses to that bank of questions, the instrument identified the same conclusion over and over. An "INFJ" personality. As in introverted, intuitive, feeling, judger. Apparently, in this assessment tool, this is referred to as "The Mystic Writer."

I suppose that a Myers Briggs personality assessment is just a one-off from a horoscope and borders on psycho-babble. But even worse, it elicits the near inevitability of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I hope I have enough sense to keep things in both context and perspective. Alas, the assessment tool did resonate with me. And justified for me at least, why I simply cannot help but write as a method of both healing and fulfillment.

Apparently, to an INFJer, the written word is sacred because through it, we can understand and express the mysteries of life. [Oh, if that were even remotely possible or true for me.] When it comes to affairs of the heart, the INFJer prefers to express him/herself with the pen: poetry, journal writing, and tender notes left on the bathroom mirror. [As if there actually was someone there to read them.] When not writing, we supposedly have the gift of listening - to comfort and aid those who come to us for advice and guidance. I presume my blog The Refectory Manager, is my manifestation of that. So many of those stories were/are pointed to one specific individual or another. I suppose that is why there was such resonance with a young man in Kansas who Googled a very specific phrase and then Google pointed, as its first hit, to a story in my blog, The Refectory Manager

The realization of being a Mystic Writer frightened me. The description of INFJ included powerful words of warning. It will be lonely. A Mystic Writer is found in only 2% of the population. We are intensely introverted, our soul-mate relationships, if they ever can exist, become pathological fueled by some highly developed sense of imagination in obsession with a one-best and only-friend experience. That, so painfully describes the angst in my life from my earliest memories.

The Mystic Writer is the most reclusive of the Meaning-Seeker love types. As such, it is a burden that is both difficult to bear and provides the blessed relief of being able to be virtual.

To me, the written word is sacred because through it, I try to understand and express the mysteries of soul-mate experience. As Thomas Moore in Soul Mates [page 124] expresses it, Conversation is the sex act of the soul, and as such it is supremely conducive to the cultivation of intimacy. 

My only brother and I have never had those conversations. 

I have never left a note on a mirror.

Reality tells me I have no brother.

The Refectory Manager

Labels: ,