A Utica Boyhood

[Dave]

It seemed strange to me this crew of men would continue their farce all through the work day by speaking to each other as you might imagine the Apostles did, always with a biblical or religious overtone or subtext. But at 17, I was not used to questioning the motives of adults.

“Behold, His only begotten son,” Huey said of Gordon one afternoon. And Louie would ask, “If I’m a worker in the vineyard, where is the wine cellar?” But I more often heard biblical references to forgiveness. “Stop swearing so God damned much,” Gordon told Dewey, who replied, “all blasphemy will be forgiven, except that against God.”



On a cold afternoon as Christmas neared, the pace got very hectic. I am still clueless as to why an electrical supply house got so terribly busy around the holidays …I never found any circuit breakers under my tree on Christmas morning. God was thundering around up on the top floor and bellowing down the conveyer belt shaft, damning everyone to hell for all eternity. Huey, Dewey and Louie were spatting and getting in each others’ way. Gordon called the three into his tiny cubicle. Opening a desk drawer, he brought out a Roy Rogers thermos jug, intended for milk in some kid’s lunch box. Then four shot glasses appeared and he poured a finger into each from the thermos that had Trigger’s picture on it. They all took a deep breath and let their shoulders sag. As they lifted the tumblers, Gordon pronounced, “There is a spirit here that commands forgiveness. We’re lucky to have it. It is our covenant.” As scripture citations go, that was close enough. Huey said, “Thank you, Jesus.” Louie said, “Thank you, Roy.”

[Dave]

I grew accustomed to the men’s chatter and after a while I began to discern a shape to their banter. They were certainly trying to get along with each other for eight hours a day, yes, but there was more to it than social grease.

Later in the morning on that fateful day, after having loaded the belt upstairs to the best of my lackadaisical ability, I descended from light bulb heaven back to the first floor, where I stationed myself at the foot of the conveyor belt on the indoor part of the dock. Crossing my fingers … an intemperate act for a Catholic … I pressed the button to start the conveyor belt. As I stood waiting for the first box of bulbs to come down, I heard a thump above me, followed by a couple more thumps and then a lot of thumps in rapid succession. Just as I heard the first crunch of breaking glass above me, an avalanche of boxes came down the belt out of the ceiling, breaking open and bursting out into millions of pieces of glass. It happened so fast! I stood there in shock as a Niagara Falls of florescent bulbs showered me from on high.



Gordon ran out of his little cubicle and stood with me among the destruction and debris. Mr. Lewis came running, too, slipping on the tiny particles of glass strewn across the floor.

“My fault,” Gordon said to Mr. Lewis. “I guess I didn’t load the cartons as well as I thought I had. We’ll clean this up. There aren’t as many broken bulbs as it appears.”

Mr. Lewis harrumphed and turned to regard me. I was trying to look like the most innocent of bystanders. He spun around and stomped back to his office.

“Geez, I’m sorry, Gordon, “I said.

Gordon looked at me. “Just think of me as the son of God, sent down to save your sorry ass.”

“Herb’s your father?” I asked.

“Let’s hope so,” he said. “He’s the biggest guy here.”

[Dave]

I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but these young men, who were not especially religious, were working out their personal beliefs as they improvised an on-going religious skit, performed as a rather serious joke. They had only a few years before seen their young lives through the lens of the Korean War, with often harrowing combat experiences, Gordon and his crew … sometimes with the mature leading from “God” on the third floor, when he was behaving himself … wanted answers and sought a prescription for living. Not always consciously, the men hammered out a theology … spelled with a small “t” … that made sense to them and helped to answer their questions and to ease their fears. They somehow sensed their behavior could be a sacrament … an outward sign of their regard for each other. As well, they felt the human need for the mystical. In the hurly burley of everyday work, even at home in the stressful affairs of heart and family, they yearned for peace and purpose amid the numerous klaxons demanding their attention. In one way or another, they prayed their lives would not end in desperation.

The son of God and I were down on our knees behind the conveyor belt cleaning up the debris and were unseen by Belinda, when she entered the dock area, hiked up her skirt and tugged her stocking tops up where they belonged. The most beautiful girl in the world within sight shimmied her skirt back down and then quickly returned to the telephone and desk inside, jingle-jangling all the way. We had evidently discovered her secret dressing room, and I wondered what else she fiddled with during the course of her work day.

As our eyes followed her back through the door to the office I whispered, “Does God ever grant wishes?”

“Tomorrow,” Gordon said, “take him two jars of marmalade.”



copyright David Griffin, 2007

[Dave]

I heard a lot of scripture from the men on that job, but I never trusted quoting them. My Catholic schooling had concentrated more on the lives of the Saints and Holy Land Geography. I could tell you the quickest route from Nazareth to Capernaum, but I couldn’t narrate very many bible stories, aside from a few parables.

The Biblical bits and bites the men used no doubt came from Sunday mornings, when their wives dragged them off to church. They may have been unable or unwilling to accept the proclaimed precepts heard there, because these were often molded into a feminized Christianity by 19th century sensitivities, especially the music. A real man didn’t ”lay his head tenderly on Jesus’ breast,” in the words of the hymn. So the men cobbled together their own theology to suit the world as they knew it, a process not entirely different from that used by better known theologians.

[Dave]

Confidence


“There is no deeper principle in human nature than the craving to be appreciated" ~ William James, 19th CenturyPsychologist


Any dead hero will tell you that youthful overconfidence and a craving for appreciation can be fatal. I find myself overjoyed to have muddled through my younger years without anyone killing me, although a few friends and relatives may have given it a thought from time to time. Unrestrained and unwarranted self-certainty happily leveled off a half century ago at the end of my teen years. Had it followed a natural arc of ascending absurdity, I would have been impossible to live with today. As it is, I’m only annoying.

All I ever wanted to be was a man. My earliest memories as a child are filled with instances where I tried to be a man, long before I was able. As I grew older, I stumbled forward on the narrow boards of my ego.

In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I thought I was the world’s next genius. But I failed tests at school, thinking I knew the material well and not bothering to study. A quick tempered insolence got me into trouble with neighbors, alienated teachers and often caused my father embarrassment when I would mouth off in front of his friends. My mojo knew no bounds.

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[Dave]

My driving was particularly irksome to Dad. It’s safe to say he feared for his life while riding with me, so it is to his eternal credit that he even allowed me to drive his car. From his point of view, I needed to learn the rules of the road and I required a high degree of supervision behind the wheel. To me, I was chauffeuring an old fuddy around town, regaling him with solid driving tips while the poor man thought he was teaching me to drive. Had he been a mean person, he might have told me what an old girl friend once said to me: “You may not be much, Dave, but you’re all you ever think about.” And in fact that was the key. There was nothing more important to me than Dave. But Dave wasn’t doing so well.

I remember myself as a teenager, sitting lonely in the center of my own universe, writing the script so my future would turn out the way I wanted. But in the staging of the scenes, I was a second-rate actor who often forgot his lines or stumbled while crossing the stage. And in playing the main character, I was just trying to become someone I had invented. I could act my heart out, impersonating the successful bon vivant I wanted to be, but I was unable to master the real roles in my life … student, son , brother, friend. I risked failing to become a real person because I was trying to be someone I wasn’t.

The cock-sureness of my youth masked my natural feelings of inferiority. As I stumbled through my high school years, I began to know the disappointing truth that like many other teens I had never really accomplished anything, had never formed a truly selfless relationship with another and never stood up to honestly take my own measure. Since I was too young to admit it, I was left to cover my confusion with a blanket of arrogance. That covering wouldn’t last forever. Eventually it would shred away, and underneath would be found either a boy simply getting older or a man in the making.

I don’t remember how it happened. I know the process wasn’t clean and precise. A woman played a significant part in it, spending most of her life with me on the path. For her, maturity was inevitable. For me, it was a long road with uncertain directions and a changing landscape. But I eventually got here, and today I can say with confidence that I am indeed a man. But I am only a man. And although I will sometimes sit in the center of my own universe, I seldom set up camp there. It’s too lonely a place. In the wider universe … the real one … I am not alone, I am not in charge and I am no more important than anyone else.

[Dave]

It's A Boy!

Creeds are made by men for children.

I suppose men in today's society must choose whether to be a man or a child. I would choose to be a man, but in many ways that's been chosen for me. If I really had a choice I'd choose to be neither. I'd choose to be a boy.

It is good to be a boy. Boys are interested in experience, not creeds. Boys are at home with uncertainty and surprise, and so are more likely to find their own guidance. As boys, we easily sense wisdom, and at the same time wisdom can make us boys.

I’m reminded of a dream I had in my early twenties. In it, I was with a group of men as we crossed a bright green pasture. Coming to the edge of a wood, we entered on a path we hoped would take us to a refreshing waterfall we’d heard about and wanted to explore and enjoy. I felt awkward and a bit guilty, thinking I should be busy with men’s work, with aims more serious than rambling through the countryside on a summer day. Then I looked around and saw we had all become boys.

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[Dave]

An intriguing object lay ahead, just off the path and next to a tree. It seemed a marvel and totally captured our imaginations. I could see only small areas of it in my dream, never the whole. Its bright metal parts and latches and gears and small wheels appealed to my young boy's heart, more so than a treasure chest of gold and silver. But when we began to excitedly speak of it, I found that none of us saw exactly the same thing. Wondering what the object was, we began to guess who made it and what it was used for and how it got there. Anyone’s opinion was fair. Some ideas were serious, some quite funny, and we found ourselves laughing both in agreement and in disagreement. We’d seen nothing like it before. No one claimed any special knowledge of “the Wisdom,” for that’s what we began to call the object, because boys name things with words that sound important and with phrases that pop into their heads. Of course, some boys were adamant about the purpose of the Wisdom, but we recognized that none of us knew for sure.

When we had conjectured long enough and the sun reached its zenith high above us, it was time to get on with the journey. No boy in the dream thought to take the thing for himself, to own it and keep it on his dresser or next to his bed at night like a favorite baseball glove. It was somehow apparent the Wisdom belonged where we found it, by the wayside on the journey, always there for anyone who would appreciate it. The Wisdom appeared to have no purpose, and seemingly nothing to reveal, except to awaken our wonder, and certainly our delight. And one more thing. Wisdom had made us boys again.

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[Dave]

Eventually, I left Utica. Like many young people of my generation I can't say I really wanted to, but opportunities beckoned elsewhere. I thought I might return some day, but I did not. I lived in Syracuse ... twice ... but found myself returning to Utica only infrequently. I certainly left a measure of memories behind.


The Good Shepherd


She said his name was Harry and when she told me I had to believe her because I never doubted anything she ever told me. She was the most honest person I had ever met. We worked together in the college library in my hometown in the early 1960’s during my last year before graduation. She was the first girl I ever met of whom I could honestly say I loved her mind. And yes, I know the phrase is almost never used seriously.

Life was more often puzzling to me back then. Maybe Mina (she pronounced it My-na) was the sister I never had or maybe she was my Anima, thank you Carl Gustav Jung. She was two or three years older and we would talk of books and ideas and plans and honor and beauty and duty and all those things young people just know they will do right and never screw up. Never hurt anyone or lose anyone or certainly never get sick and die. Maybe die in a flaming plane crash as it explodes into a Himalayan mountain side where people are waiting for you to heroically rescue them while the cameras from CNN are rolling and Wolf Blitzer is saying, “what an almost terrific rescue!” But never just get sick and plain old die, vomiting and choking and crying, for chrissake.

So in the library we talked and talked ….. actually, whispered… as we rolled the book cart among the stacks and returned texts and tomes and James Michener best-sellers to their rightful Dewey Decimal homes on the shelves. Sure, I would try to kiss her back there in the stacks. After all, she was a girl and I was a certified idiot. She seemed to understand and simply move out of the way.

When I thought of it, I would wonder about the two of us, how a boy and a girl could just click so completely on an cerebral level and seemingly not have a romantic interest in each other. Or maybe that’s just my memory fooling me again.

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[Dave]

I wasn’t inexperienced with women. I’d had a girl friend in high school, after all. But Mina was really different. For one thing, she never looked at me like I was crazy. She thought what I said had value. And she always said the neatest things. She had the deepest thoughts and the coolest ideas about life and stuff.



Harry? Oh, yes. Well, we’re getting there. I’m trying to tell this in chronological order and she hadn’t mentioned him yet. Mina was an orphan. She had no family of any note. She had spent a few years in the 1950’s at an orphanage just south of the Parkway. Each morning before breakfast, the children would be given a lecture about the Good Shepherd. He was the grand and beautiful one who took care of his little sheep. He loved them and was always there for them.

The orphanage was torn down in 1954 and replaced by a regional office of the New York Telephone Company and a bowling alley. The children were placed out, mostly to foster families. Young Mina was taken in by an older childless couple on Kensington Drive. She was thrilled to have her own sunny bedroom and to sit down each night with “Mom and Dad” and have dinner and talk about where they would go on vacation come summer. His vacation at the insurance office would be in August this year. Everything was perfect and each night she would kneel down at her bed with her new doll and look around her room and thank the Good Shepherd for loving her so much.

One afternoon she returned from school to find her suitcase on the front porch. There was a note attached saying to wait there and a social worker would pick her up. The couple had changed their minds. The doll they had given her was not in the suitcase. She banged on the front door until her hands bled and she screamed into their windows and she cursed them and she vomited and she choked and she cried until she almost died, for Chrissake. Plain old died.

She told me this one night in the book stacks and it was the only time I ever saw her weep. Just tears now, there were no sobs. They had gone off and hardened somewhere.

“How could she have done that?” she asked of no one in particular. I reached out to her, but stopped midway.

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[Dave]

In the summer of 1963 as my graduation approached I got a job offer in New York City. It was a great opportunity and, truth be told, probably better than I deserved. Mina was happy for me. Attending college part time, her graduation was probably a couple of years away. She told me everything she had read about that one could see and do in New York. One evening as we wheeled the book cart back into the stacks, I told her I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go. She looked into my eyes and I could feel her peer everywhere inside me.

“Well,” I said, “New York seems awfully far away.”

“So is the rest of your life,” she said.

“And I would miss our…..times together,” I said.

She continued to peer into me. After a moment, I relented and said, “I’m afraid, Mina. I’ve never been anywhere and I’m afraid. And…I would miss you.”

I knew she knew it. She took my hand and brought it to her, opened my palm and kissed it.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat, “ I’d be home some weekends. I’d come to see you. Maybe we could actually go out on a date. Or something.” She returned my hand, tenderly, and placed it against my chest.

“But,” she said, “I’m seeing Harry.”

Harry? Who the hell was Harry? She said his name was Harry and when she told me I wanted to believe her because I never doubted anything she ever told me. But I couldn’t believe her.

“Who is Harry?” I almost shouted. “I’ve never heard you talk about him.”

She looked up from my hand and said, “You could say he’s the Good Shepherd.”

Mina never mentioned Harry again and neither did I. I tried to, but like the time I had reached out to her and stopped midway, I knew there was something I didn’t want to touch or couldn’t touch. It may have been her strength. More probably, I didn’t want to hear a tale and I certainly didn’t want to hear the truth. To this day I don’t know what I wanted to hear.

In two weeks the final semester ended and I was headed down the Thruway on a Greyhound bus. I was excited and gloomy and scared all at once and I thought of Mina. She had been right. The rest of my life seemed a long way away.

I called her once from New York in late October. She was civil, but distant. I felt like I had lost my shepherd, but I could wish Mina the good fortune of finding her own. I never saw or spoke to her again.

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[Dave]

In the 1970’s the newspaper viewing room at the Utica Public Library was located on the second floor, hidden away in a corner and piled high with old papers and boxes of those little coils of microfilm. It was easier back then to find a parking space near the building and then make one’s way through the ornate and beautiful lobby up the staircase and toward the front windows overlooking Genesee St.

Each week or so I would drive in from Syracuse where I was in graduate school working on my final project. Sometimes I would bring my wife and two children and drop them off at my parents’ home on my way to the library.

Rolling through the microfilm of the past 3 years’ newspapers and taking notes was tedious. If I had known someday there would be an Internet and Google I would have seriously thought of delaying my thesis for 20 years. For a break, after going outside for a smoke, I would often look through obituaries for the fun of it. Not because death is humorous, but the family names and street names mentioned would often bring back memories and take my mind away from the task at hand. On page three:

Shepherd, Harry Brent, age 72, of Kensington Drive. At rest on September 23, 1973. Devoted husband of Mina Hurley Shepherd. Mr. Shepherd was a retired insurance broker and had previously been married to the late Irene Lassely Shepherd, who died June 12, 1958. There were no children.

copyright David Griffin, 2007

[Dave]

Most of my stories are embellished memories, and the last one, above, was a compilation of a few true circumstances, but the story itself is fiction.

The circumstances in the next story are pretty much true, but the narrator is a fictional "character."
Hahahaha!

[Dave]

To fall in love in New York City means having a lifetime of memories that include tall buildings and a zillion automobiles. But also long walks, very long walks. We walked often for entertainment because we were young and because we hadn't the money to take advantage of the wonderful but expensive plays, musicals and small clubs. Some we were able to afford, yes, but we spent most of our time seeking out cheaper venues. And happily, small gatherings in the tiny apartments of friends who were in the same stage of life ... young adult poverty.

My wife-to-be and I met at such gatherings and although I found her entrancing, I saw her as a bit beyond me. As time went on, I had no idea she was interested in me, until my roommate, Christopher, told me so. I'll never forget the feeling when I found out. It was like winning the lottery. And I suppose I had.

The memory of a few treks on Manhattan's streets on snowy evenings inspired the following story.


Guardian


He was young, barely handsome. She was very pretty, hardly twenty. They walked up to where I waited at the Horse and Carriage Parking zone at 59th Street on the edge of New York’s Central Park. I might have guessed their path would cross mine.

He did all the talking. She listened, sometimes raptly. At other times, her gaze wandered off to anything of interest, but her attention always returned to him, eyes watching him with humor, and surely with love. The girl’s look said she had decided on him, for better or worse. It’s a look I always recognize and sometimes lament.

“Oh, it’s a beautiful snowfall,” she said.

“Let’s go to Tavern On The Green,” he replied.

“Take me in the Hansom Cab,” she pleaded, her face lighting up with a smile.”



But his funds were small, and would barely cover two drinks at the Tavern. A taxi, too, was out of the question. The young man persuaded the girl to walk, and suggested a route that would take them north and then across the park on the east-west road at 65th Street. It was now beginning to snow heavily again. Four inches were already down, making the streets a mess.

I nudged the man beside me and nodded toward the young couple. He shook his head in disagreement. I put my hoof on his foot and leaned heavily. The man quickly relented and offered the couple a free ride in our carriage along the route they had chosen, “since we’re going home that way, anyway.”

I truly hoped they would ride with us. Walking on the road through Central Park in a blinding snow storm is something only an idiot would attempt, or a barely handsome young man. I suppose I shouldn’t be so harsh. In truth, I often do it myself. And after all, as the young woman said, it was a lovely snowfall. It’s impossible to describe the beauty of falling snow in New York City, but the charm in part stems from the covering of the city’s many visual sins. Then too, the mantel of pure white helps to hush the incessant noise of a million automobiles.

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[Dave]

New York City drivers ought to stay at home when the snow falls, but instead foul weather seems to bring them out. As conditions worsen, so do their driving skills, common sense and demeanor. They’re like crazed generals turning more inept as they continue to lose the battle.

I was relieved when the couple accepted our offer and climbed up into the carriage. Had they been native New Yorkers, they might have refused us with suspicion. And maybe with reason, since my partner, free on a sort of parole from a place you seldom hear about anymore, is not the most angelic looking individual. The top hat doesn’t improve him, and barely hides his horns. Myself, you wouldn’t take notice of me, unless I was standing in your living room, swishing my tail.

It was indeed a wonderful evening for being out and about in the city, but perhaps not a great night for a carriage ride through the center of the Park. Every car coming up behind us insisted on passing, swishing in the snow and slipping around, often hardly getting beyond the carriage before an oncoming car zoomed down on us like a bobsled. Cabbies tooted and swore at us and seemingly aimed at us as we tried to get a bit to the side each time a vehicle came sliding our way.

We got the young couple safely to the Tavern. Where, I’m sure, they quickly ran out of money. But that’s not my concern. I’ll come across them again. Keeping lovers safe while helping out a little is why we’re here. You could say we’re old softies, especially for the younger lovebirds.

You may call us whatever you like … heralds, guardians, cupids. We take the physical form we’re given. I’m sometimes sorry I wasn’t made an eagle. The view would be better than I have from the harness down here. And you’d see my wings spread in grandeur, rather than my backside clomping along ahead of you.

But wishes are for the young, as much as walks in the snow and the conceit of self-reliance. Only age brings wisdom, and the awareness that a carriage of benevolence often bears us through the storm. Now if I could just get this devil of a partner to put on my feedbag and brush me down, I’d be perfectly comfortable for the night.

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