The Beach in Three Flavors a story about accidental plastic'six-pack rings suffocating pelicans . |
My grandfather, the "late famous rodbuilder". His brother Ben Young co-founded the National Bank of Detroit. You can find all this on my SITE |
A writer to Time magazine in July said "why should we give those families making $10,000 a year $400? Then they have no incentive to do better with their lives." WRONG!!! Some of us families living on $10,000 a year came from a much higher income bracket and have a zilion incentives to do as well and one incentive to stay dirt needy--we'll lose all health care including medications keeping us alive and a heart transplant in the works if our income exceeds $10,000 a year.Neither is anyone allowe to help us out--that counts as income or assets. |
House I grew up in. 5 beds, 3 baths |
Our vacation home--cabin on 35 acres in woods on trout stream.4 beds, 2 baths |
Me learning in my woods |
.No incentive to do better? Think I like my 9 year old's ceiling looking like this? No program repairs the roofs of the poor, let alone the interior damage of leaks |
American teen living without running water looks over yard of home she is about to lose over back taxes. |
Same teen wins award for 2nd place in poetry of 9th graders in entire school district |
These are the poor that writer thinks just don't get off their butts and work hard. Please refer to other parts of this site to see how hard the dad has worked all his life making church windows .This Viet Nam vet is now disabled with emphysema and the mom with need for a heart transplant. |
My first 2 boyfriends. I don't know what became of John, left, but Dennis is a lifeguard on Miami Beach. |
Third boyfriend Jack plays pedal steel, was on Letterman, lives in Virgin Islands with attorney wife. Male friend and date Robert is dead. |
Left, Faith Evans is my old friend Helene's daughter. Right, Shanna's prison photo. She is the daughter of a freind who dropped me because I was needy too long. |
Joanna Garcia from the Reba tv series on WB is the daughter of my ob-gyn who brought my daughters into this world |
5th boyfriend jay, now a middle school assistant coach. |
My grandfather, the "late famous rodbuilder". His brother Ben Young co-founded the National Bank of Detroit. You can find all this on my SITE |
We have met America's poorest citiizens and they deeply aspire to the security of being able to pay their utility bills, repair their oven and roof and house, get dentures to chew food with. But Medicaid won't let them. They aren't all the worthless bums you're thinking they are. Some are bright kids. Some are terminally ill moms from the middle-class. |
I don't come from people with a history of being on the dole. I am a Daughter of the American Revolution. |
What is the use of me living as long as I can for the kids when the life I can give them is so awful? I can only grow more holy and live the example of a spiritual person who does not place her treasure on earth. But the life I had has given me so much pleasure. Can't I let them peek into the pleasure of living, ever? |
As I am not allowed to publish my stories or I'll loose my Medicaid, I just have to give them to the world free |
Deer and Woodcock Star Deanne Young 2003 |
It rains daily all summer in Florida and fills pans with dirty red water from my ceilng. A dangerous huge limb overhangs my house with no leaves on it. We have no oven or stove, i can't get infected teeth pulled because they won't be replaced and I'll have no teeth, , and we've had no water for 7 weeks. I tried to get a mortgage on my home to take care of all this but after the $300 appraisal, Chase Manhattan said I had to fix my roof and put siding on my house before they'd give me a mortgage to fix my roof and side my house.. We have no running water. Soon, no phone or electric. And no way to get back on track with roof repairs and back taxes being top prioity on an income that doesn't allow for taxes and repairs at all. |
Deer and Tiger Stars 2003 by Deanne Young |
"La Vie du Christ," the musty-smelling little book said, it's spine peeling like old waxed paper. "Dan Les Chefs-D'Oeuvre De la Pienture." He was trying to reproduce a face by Nicolas Froment, "1461-1482:La Re'surrection de Lazare." Personally, he liked another face in plate 37, that of Lazarus himself : half skull, with a huge mouth of teeth including the parts usually hid beneath the gums, deeply-socketed eyes.But his father /boss wanted the apostle next to Christ, who resembled cheery chubby Brother Nick, a friar up at the client church.Big eyelids, lots of curly black hair, shapeless robe concealing the condition of the body. As he worked, he looked again at the cover art, faces looking as if lifted with silly putty and then stretched vertically to draw the mouths down in grotesque imitation of humanity.The Virgin's baby had the wizened face of an ancient soul, and the five digits of his right hand clung to the Lady's unproportionately large thumb . He wanted a face like these, but a full-frontal was what the approved sketch had, and the Brother Nick fellow was one of the few full-frontals in the library. Not being a portrait artist, giving this church one of their own friars in glass intrigued him. He used pencil first, filling in the blank face on the full-scale layout on his light table with an enlargement of the tiny face from the slim book spotted with yellow dots of fungi , with roach poop stains in the centerfolds.He 'd erased and redrawn the droopy eyelids when his father stopped at his back, looked over his shoulder, patted it . Said he did good work. "Thank you, " said the teen. "I've got some bad news for you, I'm afraid," said his dad, the hand still on him. "Yeah? What's that?" "I want you to finish this character," the father said."He's looking great. But. But . But you have only 6 weeks, I'm afraid." "I got a letter." "It's too bad you're so damn healthy," the father said , heavily."That I didn't have the money to send you to college, get a deferment like the better-offs They say it's a poor man's war." "I passed the physical," the boy said dully.He erased a perfect eyebrow, mechanically. "Basic training, son, December 8." "Before Christmas?" The father watched him enlarge the bridge of the nose. Then he said,"You want to go to Canada? I can ask for a draw, fly you up there." The son was silent. "We wouldn't blame you." "It's too damn cold up there , Dad. " "And it's too hot in Viet Nam, kiddo. Think about it. We're behind you, whatever you do." "No," said the boy."I wouldn't be able to come back ." He closed his lazy eye to see one nose. "I don't know if you mean from the war or from Canada , but you alive means more to us than no you at all. See here? So think hard about it." Immortalizing a friar lost much of its appeal about there. The 18-year-old lit a Marlboro, lead dust on his hands be damned. He stood back to see the mural effect it would have from the back of the sanctuary. "I thought your eye would keep you out of this mess," his father said, reeking of depression. "They don't," the son said. "I gather that.I know this won't be an easy choice for a boy who's never been out of Florida. I can't tell you about the northern climes myself. Been here my whole life, too." "I guess I'll go." "Where?" "The Army.I want to be able to come back , Dad." His father left him then, walking through the office brightened with stained glass windows and into the yard of sunburnt grass. The boy stood, staring at the beginnings of a church window that could last a thousand years.It's perfection was no longer high on his list. His list no longer existed at all. For the next six weeks he grappled with the window, cutting glass to the pattern sheets, laying it over the design, now retraced in India ink. Tracing it with paint. Firing a few pieces on the asbestos block --head, hands, toes--in the floor- to -ceiling kiln, cooling them, adding matts, firing again, modeling and shading, until he had flesh-looking arms, leather-looking thongs.He worked over the curly hair , highly stylizing it . The curly -ques were soothing to make, took no thought.He painted stylized tree canopies and trunks so worsted they looked wrestled from ropes. He made the distant mountain tops a soft purple, gave the sheep the curliest wool ever seen in church art, but their faces looked real. He was best at faces.His sheep had mournful eyes. He worked so hard his right hand began to cramp on him . He'd never worked so long, so hard, on anything. After work December 6 he tried to cup Sheila's breast with his cramped hand but she called him a pervert and pushed him away. It surprised him , because she'd initiated it all by placing that rough paw on that very breast a year ago.He didn't understand. Not until the letter came a week after he'd arrived in Nam. She must have written it the moment she'd seen him off, standing there with his family, pretending she was his girl still. She didn't want to give up her youth waiting for someone who might not return . The very reason he hadn't chosen Canada, so he could return, and then this. She was sorry. Vietnam . He'd spent 8 weeks in basic at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, doing more brass polishing and boot shining and training to look sharp than he'd expected and 8 more in AIT learning combat engineering --disassembling mines, clearing mine fields, building bridges and expedient roadways, and demolition with C-4 and exploding detonator cord,which they'd line up across the length of a football field on poles with the one cord going through all the poles and the cord exploded so fast, all the C4 seemed to go off at the same time (which you could show to captured VC before wrapping one around their necks so they knew they were'nt going anywhere) at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri, which was ,just out of St. Louis, and which they called "Fort Lost in the Woods". The soldiers sometimes found snow outside their tents when they awoke. Stateside, the Army gave them bacon and eggs from a mess tent; which they did not get in Viet Nam--just C-rations on the road ( a can of turkey or spaghetti and meat balls and a can with a biscuit, a can of fruit) and B-rations( dehydated eggs, dehdrated potatoes) in the compound. His first view of Viet Nam was at Cam Rahn Bay, gorgeous country with picture-perfect sandy beaches and prettier palms than those that grew in central coastal Florida . Double-bowed sampans with thatched round huts and ocassional Navy destroyers and aircraft carriers replaced the sailboats , yachts, tankers, tugs, barges and freighters dotting the seascape of Tampa Bay. Before his parents could develope his photographs and send copies back to him a jeep came for him, four men , to take up A1 to Nin Hoa.The men looked like they'd just crawled out of a desert and sand-blasted their boots --shirtless, they held dusty old M14s and M79s, one M60 machine gun laying across a dude's knees. The Florida teen thought, What the fuck did I get into? Where am I going that will make me look like these guys?They all sized him up and one said,"Hey, Cherry, where'd you get the tan?" In Nam, he learned, tans sweated off too fast to keep. "How long willl it take me to look like you guys?" He said.They laughed and one said "Not long" and another said "A lifetime." Going through his first roadside vill was a cultural shock. The homes were crude hootches ; old women walked down the road with long poles balanced on their shoulders with fruits and vegetables tied to one end in a basket an chickens in little cages on the other end. Almost everyone wore pointed straw hat. Old and young men sat on a little open porch at a table drinking tea and smoking and looking very solemn as the Engineers drove by them. A boy no older than ten stood by the porch smoking. Bicycles and motorcycles flew past the jeep both ways. After a long time the jeep pulled onto a two-track about a furlong in length that went past a Korean infantry compound and an American guard house with a bunker behind it ending where the 14th Combat Engineers were building barracks while sleeping in tents, 13 soldiers to a squad , dozens of squads in the company called Charlie. The latrine, the messhall, and the CO command post were the only solid structures. He met the Captain and First Sergeant and collected a rifle, flack jacket, poncho, helmet, and ammo from the supply tent . Each tent had a wall of sandbags around it at chest level .His first job was to fill sandbags along the river to fill up the compound area. It was a Sunday so they worked a half-day. The Sarge, called "Sarge", saw the newcomer eye bridge abutments on either side of the rive and said,"You'll be working on that tomorrow.But right now you guard while we fill sandbags. By the way, lock and load your rifle and keep it that way, always.One in the tube with the safety on for as long as you're in this part of the world." The Floridian said, " Uh, Sarge, How do you tell the good guys from the bad guys?" "When they start shooting at you, " Sarge said and walked away. Isn't that a little late? the teen said to himself. He was in the middle of a trail with villagers walking past him both ways and he had no idea what to do about it. When a half-crazed soldier had cornered him in the latrine his first day ,the Flrida kid made his eyes bug out like the ones in the Christian art book, and, since his lazy one was going in a different direction than the other , the soldier backed off , dropped his shovel, and said "You a blue-eyed devil!" So here, he tried glowering at the passersby. The 14th Combat Engineers , Charlie Company were a Brotherhood. The stained glass artist was quickly in it. It was a tight thing--all these Americans, afraid and homesick, together. The kid wanted to feel his girl in his arms , see his mother cooking supper in the kitchen, run on the dunes with his dog . So did all the others have preferences. Everyone smoked. The Army sold Camels and Marlboros for a dime a pack. Vietnamese boys on bikes and foot approached the soldiers on guard duty offering marijuana cigarettes already rolled in sealed cellophane packages , five joints for 500 p. It was so crystal-packed, the soldiers didn't care what it looked like. It blew them away. There were stories of kids approaching convoys as if for handouts, then tossing grenades, but the ones the engineers saw brought only good things. The Vietnamese people, the Florida boy decided, were respectable, although they'd relieve themselves roadside without hangups; resourceful, they re-used everything broken for something else.The girls on bikes in cone-shaped straw hats were fine creatures, essential to the boy's desire to save their country and earn their respect. Every engineer pulled guard duty once a month, sometimes for a couple of days straight. When his turn came, he joined 3 soldiers in the barracks on the far side of the motor pool , far from the CO, mess tent, and new barracks. Even the maintenance bay of the motor pool was on the far side of it from the guard shack, leaving the guards the closest Americans to the Korean camp sharing their two-track. The Americans worked all day building barracks and then the bridge over the river , and now , at 7:30 p.m., the Florida kid and the other engineers on guard duty took turns sleeping four hours, serving two. The Florida kid was exhausted as always by nightfall. Convoys had hauled in wood from mountainous Delot, a pine forested area that reminded him of South Carolina. They brought creosote poles, 2 by 4s, 6 by 6s, 12 by 12s of fresh pine. The engineers drove the poles into the river bed with a piling driver to be the main support for the bridge. That day a guy was on a 12 by 12 extended over the water from the bridge when a pin broke on the crane and the whole pile driver came down and broke the 12 by 12, sending engineer, pile driver, and 12 by 12 into the water. The Florida boy, who'd done cave-diving for years with his older brother in Crystal River, Florida, and found mastodon teeth and wagon parts diving in the Hillsborough River in Tampa , dived into the 20- foot- deep water and pulled the other man out, earning his first of three bronze stars , maybe; nobody ever explained why he got three bronze stars. He had to guess. Now , his first guard duty that night was uneventful, except that he and the other 3 guards became closer, playing a card game called Budman. Tree was a skinny fuck from Alabama, Rooster a chubby , naturally happy guy from Atlanta, and the other guy was a Samoan from Hawaii . The Florida boy, on guard alone, could hear everything around him, see up close and far away, pick out shapes, colors, anything that didn't belong. There was a haze over Nin Hoa, a glow over the village across the rice fields while the Florida kid sat on a 2 by 6 as his three mates slept behind him in the bunker. He could hear his heart beat. He couldn't believe he was there. They rose at 5:30 and ate as usual and worked on the bridge again all day. But today a unit was sent to Delot, including the Florida artisan, whose brother had just shipped him a Gibson folksinger guitar. The engineers sat on a ridge when the work was done and played and sang what they knew, " The Sounds of Silence""Green Backed Dollar", "500 Miles",. It was the age of acid rock, and the sergeants played soul music real loud at night , so they didn't know they had a cache of folksingers in their midst til now. And then the Samoan took a turn , playing songs he'd learned from guitar masses back home.They were startled by the sound of a chopper in a sky empty as far as they could see. Then it appeared, coming up out of the ground below them . At the same time, an old steam engine pulling about ten cars chugged into view as it wound up the mountain like a garland going around a Christmas tree. The smell of pine intoxicated the Florida kid. As the Samoan , a guy with an extra dollop of spirituality , sang "Today" ...."Today is my story and now is my moment , I'll laugh, and I'll cry, and I'll sing..", the Floridian recognized that tommorrow and yesterday could not really be savored--only now. This lusty moment was to be never again. He felt a deep down sadness, for this was now him, soothed by pineywood smells but never to sleep again without a loaded gun under his pillow.How could he ever leave this and resume watching The Beverly Hillbillies? He could not percieve it. He was afraid to go home.He'd changed too much. He belonged here.So when Tree and Rooster and a few other dudes invited him to sneak into town with them, he went. They had a brand new sargeant whose unfamiliarity gave them the edge they'd gotten the year before from substitute teachers in high school. As the sarge yukked it up with some lutenants and the ancient first sargeant in the EM tent over some brews, showing off his pet mongoose which rode on his shoulder, the Spec 4s sneaked into Nin Wa on foot and had their first taste of genuine Vietnamese cuisine--dog in an excellant sauce. But the local young men harassed them into leaving before they could visit a hooch , and they left quickly after dining except for a fellow who refused, saying he had a girl to see. As they walked up A1 the four American soldiers were aware that their Vietnamese hecklers were sneaking up behind them. A language barrier to their advantage, they made a plan and fanned out across the road and, at the count of three, turned and bent down on one knee and took imaginary aim with imaginary rifles. Their only real weapon was the pistol the dude who'd stayed behind had brought. But it worked--the Vietnamese men split for the rice paddies and swamps to either side of the road even as the Americans vowed that their rifles would be body appendages from that point on. The Americans ran. They ran to the 2-track and up it , until they heard safetys click on both sides of them in the dark. Tree put an arm around the Florida kid's shoulder and the other around the fellow on his other side and began tripping, as if needing their support, and singing "God Bless America" offkey and loudly, as though he were drunk. They weaved and stumbled and belted out the song until they reached their compound safely. The next morning the sergeant pulled one of them from a line-up --the one who'd stayed behind--he'd raped a woman.It was a relief for the others , who thought they'd been busted. The new sarge then somehow got movies sent up from Da Nang every Saturday . The platoon built an outdor screen and opened the suds( warm beers and cokes, 10 cents each ) and watched flicks , except those with guard duty. Which was ,soon enough, the boy from Florida's turn again, and two others, who slept in the barracks while he sat alone in the guard shack in front of them. A little after 2 a.m. he watched a weather balloon rise slowly to the east of them , by the coast, that outshone the stars.It had gotten very quiet, and time seemed to stand still. He heard the tiger about then, a low growl that could only come from a mother of an animal, an animal about ten feet away in the darkness. He'd been sucking on one of the ready-rolls the kids sold so proliferately, cupping the flame so as not to be seen by his own people or others, in an instance where all were temporarily enemies. Back home there was always a big cat of some variety at the pathetic zoo a mile from his house , and he'd heard such a growl while walking his tri-colored collie behind the animal compounds in the park part. it freeked Rex right out, as though the dog, which must have smelled the dander, had not sized the animal until he'd heard the size of the vocal chords. The young Floridian had been so certain of a generous privacy there on watch that he'd gotten good and stoned and been off in a day dream. But now the hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention, his butt tightened. Less tan ten feet away in the ditch was an ancient monster with the strength of ten men.With one bound it could pounce on top of him.A friend of his father's had recounted one time an adventure in ndia while walking down old railway tracks, thick bush on each side, with 10 yards of clearing before it.A tiger sprang out of nowhere, landing inbetween the tracks and disappearing in a tenth of a second. What power. What speed. What stealth. The front site of the Florida boy's M14 A.R. hit horizontal , the safety clicked off and the selector switch flipped over to automatic fire as if on their own. Backing up with slowly, eyes wide, blood rushing, the boy felt every crevice, every pebble under his combat boots.When he reached the interior of the bunker he leaned up against the sandbag half-wall in the firing position and yelled for the others to get out of the bunker and atop it. "Tiger!" His voice rang out into the silent night. "Huh? Tiger?" The waking said.Tree's voice:"If he sees one there's only half a one-" The bunker was made of sandbags but had perforated steel plating on the roof , with more sandbags atop that. Everyone knew you could fry an egg on the PSP, it got so hot.But now it meant safety. The three soldiers got as ready as possible to smoke a tiger , the Floridan climbing up last. Just as the last part of him cleared the roof a small buck sprang across the two-track. Tree was looking the other way, And so it was the Floridian and the Hawaiian who saw the tiger rise out of the ditch across the 2-track about 10 feet from them and leap after the deer, both running right past the bunker , through barbed wire and over a mine field soundlessly. The Americans never for a moment expected the duo to make it but the animals breezed up and over a far hill and out of sight, , undetonated, lucky, a beautifully executed performance.The two engineers saw the respect in each others eyes for the beauteous thing they had just seen. "Damn," said Tree, looking behind them. " Not one mine went off and that field is suposed to watch our backs." The boy from Florida had had experiences in his youth that elicited accusations of daydreaming or worse, "Somebody get me a shovel". That the Samoan too had seen this impossible scene bound the two youths together as invisibly but as toughly as the shared veins and bones of the Siamese twins living at the cheap motel up the alley from his dad's stained glass shop.God had chosen them to witness the fantastic, way over in Southeast Asia. Nobody got down. Nobody moved. They were still on top of the bunker when the new sargeant came up the next morning barking,"What the hell are you doing up there? Why aren't you on guard duty?" "I am," the Samoan said. "What??!" The sergeant yelled angrily. "Tiger," said Tree. The sergeant sort of backed up as his eyes darted all around and he put up a hand to be sure his mongoose stayed on his shoulder. He looked as if he were going to join them but then scurried back to camp. The mongoose ran off that night and never returned.A few days later they moved to Phan Rang, to a big Air Force base that even had a McDonalds. Phan Rang was very hot and the 14th Engineers stayed on base, watching the jets and C130s take off and land . There was a helicopter graveyard there . They were there to do road work. The guard duty cycled until it was the Floridian's turn , this time with a fellow named Rat from Pontiac, Michigan and a heavy-set dude with inner peace like Rooster's. There was just one shack, like a miniature house with an open front and a little room at the back not even sealed off from the open front, with two cots in it. When their shift began they watched from afar as a guy came in from a canine corps with his dog. "How you like to be him," Rat said., as he and the Floridian settled into the bunks. "Them canines got to be crazy mofos, alone with their dogs alla time. I coudn't pull patrol with just a damn dog for company. I'd go insane." "They probably do,"the Floridian agreed amiably. "You gotta watch them ones," Rat said. Around two in the morning the Samoan came out to the guardpost, drunk as a skunk. "I gotta tell you sompun," he said to the stained glass artist. "Come on, get up." he pulled on his arms. They got up and listened, smoking cigarettes, as he told them his news. The guy from canine had some great gory stories, if you liked those kind, and a picture of a dead and naked VC that looked like a kid, he was so short. But the Samoan seemed to be holding in what he'd really come about . Finally he allowed as to how the canine dude had befriended him special and taken him aside and given him a grenade. Since the night the Koreans had clicked off their safetys as four of them wound through the edge of the Korean compound, the engineers always carried their rifles, round loaded and chambered. But grenades were only handed out, at two apiece, when they were on the road or in the field. The Army was keeping close tabs on them to ensure none made their way to the states.The Samoan showed the grenade to his buddies and then plunged into another story, this one obviously taking an emotional toll on him. It seemed the canine guy had passed out after a lot of boozing , leaving the Hawaiian alone with the new sarge. The sergeant then put the moves on the Samoan. The Samoan rebuffed him. The end. The Samoan was done talking ."I gotta go get some sleep," he said. "Hey," Rat said."Watch out for that homo." At 5 a.m. the Floridian was knocked out of his bunk, clean out of his bunk and onto the wooden floor, deaf for some reason for a minute or two. He and Rat scrambled out of the barrack to the pudgy cat on watch, who had no idea either what had happened, but saw smoke rising in a small plume across the motor pool so radioed the CO's office.. Everybody had heard the explosion anyway so a captain and a luitenant came up along wih the sargeant , with a flashlight, and looked about the motor pool, but all was dark--there was no sign of anything on fire. "You all go back to sleep and I'll write the report,"said the sargeant. "Williams, keep a look out." A little later that morning a fellow named Dudley went to the motor pool to work on his truck and saw what had been the Samoan beyond the enclosure, in pieces. Special Agents came then and picked up the remains.The Floridian and Tree were to report to work under all circumstances no matter what and so were at the toolbox as usual to load up for the day's work when a yellow dog ran up to them with the Samoan's brains in his mouth. Tree kicked the shit out of it and it ran squealing off. Then it was no longer business as usual. The three who'd been on guard duty, a couple of guys the Samoan had talked to in the barracks, and the gay sargeant were trucked to an office on the base and questioned. The sergeant was gone before anyone had even begun to talk of fragging him. When the boy who'd hitherto never left Florda finally returned, came back, went home, he found life there very disturbing. The lack of intense, jackknife living and feeling, the dullness over everything from busses braking on the corner to his family's glazed expressions as they watched television commercials as avidly as the programming, discussing nothing important between themselves, pained him, made him yearn for the real world he'd been blown out of. His tri-colored collie,Rex, had died while he was overseas; they hadn't told him because they didn't want to upset him. The son had heard that the plump fellow he'd done guard duty with had gone up into the mountains with another company, pulling a bulldozer on his lowboy while a luitenant rode with him. Took a rocket hit in the door that sent the whole nine yards over a cliff.The luitenant had been brought up first and then the Spec 5 was dragged up the mountainside with a chain because of his weight, dying before he ever reached a hospital. The son tried to resume his life, continuing to paint religious scenes on glass for his father. But he couldn't talk about anything meaningful, nowadays. Years later, after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was made, a scale model called "The Moving Wall" came to Tampa, and his wife and daughters were excited, because he hadn't left Florida since Vietnam, so hadn't seen the real Wall. They coaxed him into a picnic at the park sponsering it. The lake was polluted and No Swimming signs marred the scenic vista, souring the trip for the wee ones who were hot , tired, and cranky and of a mind to sneak into the water anyway, even though there was an alligator warning sign, too. They felt, deep under, that their heroic dad could save them should a gator pop up, that Daddy could dive in and swim to them with a few strokes and wrestle the gator underwater and come up alone. It was the only tale he told of Nam, the day he saved the guy on the 12 by 12. The family tramped through a squad tent and a guard post made of sandbags and then walked their dad to the black reflective wall. But no names would come to him. He'd blocked it out --the faces, the voices, the times. Tears came to his eyes, for whoever might not have made it out of a tent by a two-track, like most of the boy from Florida. |
After you've read my fiction here , seen my daughter's original anime art, and seen my other daughter's FCAT score saying the third grader reads on a 7th grade level, I dare you to write more garbage to The Editor of Time or any other editor saying the poor would have no incentive to better their lives if someone gave them $400. All poor are not the same person. You might know someone struggling becaue of drug addictions or mental health issues but that doesn't represent every case of poverty in the U.S. |
Ninwa photo copyright Dan Myers 1968 |
Delot |
Viet Nam copyright Joseph D. Myers. 1968 |
Photo copyright Dan Myers 1968 |
photo copyright Dan Myers 1968 |
Stories by Deanne Young below photos |
My lakefront home as a teen |
My 9 year old's bedroom. |
ME. |
When I was 26 I went home for a visit and the peace I always found on the Au Sable River, which runs through little towns in the Michigan woods where few people stay through the harsh winters.My brother took the trip to the woods with my parents, grandmother, and me , him being fresh from college where he 'd just gotten a B.A. in organic chemistry.I hadn't seen any of them in several years and we were renewing our relationships as much as anything. But today was the day Dad decided to sell the cabin, although we didn't know it then. Soon as we got there Tony and I climbed out on a huge rotted cedar and sat in its pocket over the creek and looked at the clear coon prints in the fine clay near us. There were balsams an inch high growing in the wet log.Then we ran over roots to the cabin. Grandma and Mom were sitting in front of a fire in the fireplace. It was 8:45 p.m. and they said Dad was waiting at the road for us to get a load of firewood. We dragged the Sport Yak all the way to the road but Dad was off birding and there was no wood. When we got back to the cabin Tony asked me if I wanted a screwdriver and I declined. He kept persisting, "Are you sure?" and "Party-pooper." He made himself one as Dad came in. Tony and I had has a camera all over the woods and found nothing. Dad had come across two porkies on the ground ("I could have stepped on them") mating; and a third nearby eating grass. I seemed disappointed so he said, " Have you ever seen a woodcock fly up in the air and then dive straight down and just before it hits the ground, spread its wings and fly up again?" "Not really," I said. "Well, they're doing it now," he said."Come on." We went outside and Tony had set a lawn chair at the edge of the steep clay bank and was perched precariously there, listening to a tape of his own acoustic guitar playing, on Dad's tape player, turned way up, on Dad's batteries. We ignored him and went down the path where Dad thought we'd wind up on the dam path about the time of dusk that the woodcock do this crazy dive. They only do it for about ten days each spring as part of their mating procedure.We found one on our path almost immediately. You tell by this "grebe...grebe...grebe" sound from the dark forest floor.(Dad calls it a "pebe sound " but it is grebe.) After we sat on fallen birches for 15 minutes it finally flew, not up and down in the large clearing but right over us, over the creek, and off.Undaunted, we went on, cutting through the woods to hit the dam path quicker.Halfway up, walking seperately like Indians in a stop and go pattern,we stopped because we heard a whippoorwill. "Must've just arrived; wasn't here yesterday," Dad mumbled.We stood there motionless for 20 minutes . The sky was still blue although the ground was all long shadows and dark interior landscapes.The quarter moon was bright enough to reveal nearby plants. As we stood I took it all in...the moon, the loudness of the whippoorwill, the dead doe to my left with her hind legs on one side of our fence and her front legs and head splayed out on the other, half her tailbone and guts eaten out by raccoons.Dad had deduced she'd starved to death last winter caught in the fence, and lately thawed. "Must've just arrived," I started. but Dad grunted and began to say "naw, you've been seeing it for weeks, it's the same one, you're just disoriented because we came from this direction , which is different..." Does he have Altzheimers or something? I thought, used to his absurdist humor, startled that he'd take me seriously. A robin was startled too and gushed a strange, freeky black note.Mice rustled under every one of the hundreds of small pine trees to our left and right. The man in front of me in the burgandy ski jacket didn't move a muscle although the tic one in his eye moved of its own accord, making him appear to be winking everytime he said something.Years later my husband's employee would tell me he thought my dad was winking conspiratorily at him, approving a relationship between him and me, telling the hapless fat guy through his wink, I know you see her desirability and I hope you get all the way.(He left after that because I didn't have enough bandaids for all the slits my sword put in him.) When we walk in woods together, Dad and I, we seperate by many yards, and I stop whenever he does, to hear what he does, or so both of us can just hear. It takes awhile of silence before the forest critters begin to go on as if alone to themselves . I put my trust in his intuition ,in his freezes. When I walk with my brother, we use me as a reference point for the frozen tag.Then I trust me better. Finally Dad began the slow rhythmic padding that mostly gave off the sound of his jacket rubbing on another part of his jacket, or his Zippo lighter flicking, and no clue at all that he was maneuvering through rocks and dead leaves.It was getting pitch (opposite of rich) color out there but all ahead of us was five feet's width of of clearing for about a furlong.I followed Dad, behind enough to be a different hunting party, close enough to hear when he stopped and stop too.Just past our driveway we found two morewoodcock grebing at the road.We heard the wings of one whistle but couldn't see the dive.The other greber petered out after we waited motionless for 10 minutes. "He's already strutted his stuff," Dad said, checking his watch.Next time we'll come here first. I thought they'd be in the swamplands where they eat the worms I found in the one I cooked last night; I had no idea they mated in the dry jackpine brush." Tony was drunk when we returned to the cabin. He followed us in. playing his tape loudly. I plopped in front of the fire to read a "U.S. World and News Report"--Grandma had brought us a bundle of magazines she thought we should read.Tony asked her when her worst period was and I about died but she didn't get it wrong (only I did) and she said while her two boys were off at war. I'd never thought of that period of her life, of her as a mom worried about awful things hurting her boys. I 'd expected it to be when grandpa died. Mom was sick and retired early. I don't know why she made two packs of jello topped end to end with tiny colored marshmallows if she was so sick--because no one touched it today, she could have made it tomorrow. Maybe to show Grandma she's taking care of her son good. Should have put trout pieces across the top then, or woodcock. Grandma went to bed at 10:30 and dad at 10:40 with instructions to me to "take Tony with you" because Tony was lying on the couch, eyes nearly shut, yelling the words to a Zappa "tune." Mom gave me a valium. I think she hoped it would somehow knock her son out, not me, but she wasn't going to give him one becasue he was drinking. Maybe if I threw it at his temple just right-- Tony asked me where I thought I'd be living in 10 years, in 1990. I said I had no idea but I knew one thing for sure, and that was that Dad was going to give me the cabin instead of both of us, he'd said that day, that all Tony used the place for was to get high.It did seem to be happening like he said, like Tony just couldn't be there in that wondrous greatness created for people like us by God as a gift , a world unto itself away from the exact other world we had to brush against the sharp parts of every time we turned around, but far from vacuous---it had natural laws, life, action, adventure, cuddly photography moments, life being lived large in it. Realistic, down-to-earth life, not fantasy, laugh-tracks, and invented propietiary socializing codecs. "This will be my home,"I announced,"These woods are the back of mine hand. I know how to be here, know every tree, stump, swamp, fern, bird, rustling noise, footprint, bend of the creek.What else is the world ?Why for?" How did I know the goofy kid was tripping as I said this! Pileated woodpecker holes here, deer droppings over there.What's over and under all these fallen logs over here?And through the thicket I go. I walk hours and never tire of it. Say hi to a kingfisher. Flush a partridge.There's another world? It meets this no where; not a single overlapping circle includes aspects of them both. The other world is the only world to many , at least now, today, although they might change as they fall out of our group and marry and take their children state-hopping or locally camping or locally to slot car races or try out a horse ranch and immerse themselves deep in their escapist world as I've always been able to do, like a kid living secretly on the great Sleeping Bear Dunes and encountering stores , career holders and the movie star concept only through reading. The next day I noticed that Grandma perenially hums as she does chores, washes dishes or packs her suitcase. Lawrence Welk tunes I suppose, if one can't commonly hum opera and I think you;d have to have quite a range in your voice to.Dad cut her a spray of arbetus when he returned from the dump.It just bloomed, yesterday it was white and folded, and she was clucking "lookee kiddies, spring is almost here--this is the first flower that opens!"Today, pink and unfurled, the delicate little flower no longer dances with the forest , but goes into a hot red Buick to wilt til it gets to a little apartment windowsill where it will look old and wrinkled and then under fish tails in the trash can under the sink. As she pecked my cheek goodbye Grandma, her face all soft and velvety like the old leather change purses she keeps sending home with us kids with a dollar or a dime in them, told me to get married so she could come to my wedding before she dies. Dad(pretending it was to him):"How did you know Dorothy and I never married?" Tony followed her car out. Dad and I got in a car and went to a marsh to see a green heron but saw instead two black-tailed Virginia white-tail does and the place where beavers dam the dam nightly and the DNR has to tear down the beaaver part daily to keep the water level down proper . Beavers like the water high so they can float the logs they want , swimming underwater stealtily behind them,rather than carry the wood over land and lay themselves open to predation. When we got back to the cabin Mom was drawing a river scene (the birches all off ) , seated on a folding chair.I got this cool idea of drawing on the canvas of the chair, but she said no."zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'you're back!" She said, after 4 minutes of chitchat with me. She jumped up and rushed off to the cabin to tell Tony he needs help with his self-abusive tendancies. You could draw the bulet's projectory now--his behavior sending her to bed sick inside the night before, not even caring to offer the drunk some of the jello she'd worked doggedly on to please what he used to be.it was actually a little uglier than booze, we were getting into drugs even I knew nothing about here. He burned ether in the bunkhouse the night before he was drunk . He was releasing PCP from a 3-necked beaker they found so they think he sniffs ether . Dad and I (he approves of me when the male child acts like a horse's butt- isn't he just too dear? ) went for the woodcock dive earlier tonight--8:30 .The day birds--hermit thrushes--were still blowing their flutes . We saw 2 partridge at the top of a still bare, thin-branched tree. They looked like the drawings of the partridge in a pear tree--elongated birds, in that stylized manner of drawing that went over big in the mideival days , their tails both hanging straight down,their necks up : through the field glasses we saw their crests and that they faced opposite directions as they ate berries, As I gasped at the unique view a hermit thrush bounced up to one and sang in its face .Earlier, Dad played a tape of a winter wren and got one chirping up at the bridge to come the furlong to our cabin and sing on our log rail a long time , looking everywhere for his rival with his super x-ray vision. But now, at dusk, there were people shouting--these geeks who come up to fish, males of course, banging on something, then, carrying a mile no sweat, "Disha git any fish yet?" "NO!" But I heard a grebe under their yelling and we heard his flight and while he flew we ran to his clearing. When he landed we froze until the next set of grebes terminated with flight, during which we ran again. This time we outshot our mark, because we couldn't guess where he was and had not yet seen him. He landed nearly ON us --flew like 4 inches over our heads to a spot about 10 feet from me. "GHrebe, grebe..." Countdown had begun. I was on one foot's little toe and the side of the other foot, in mid-run, when he froze me there. For 10 minutes. Then he just shut up. Dad got mad. "Fly, you son uvva..." he cursed, and then said,"Aw cripes, let's flush the dam thing ." So we stomped all over where we'd heard him rustling and clucking and grebing but never stepped on him. Although it's possible I guess we smashed him flat as he said"gree-"like half an hour before. Dad guessed we'd scared his female off and, getting no response, he'd canceled his show.Or else we were still getting here too late and he'd done his 4 dives for the day (we'd heard two). As we walked home Dad lit a Kool and said, the smoke bandying about his head, mosquitoes all around him like flies follow a bleeding animal," Saw a coon and a skunk cross the road together today." "I never see anything,"I complained. "Two years ago I found a nest of baby coons with their eyes still closed ." ."Why didn't you tell us ? Where?" "In a hollow log ." "Why didn't you bring one home?" "You don't want to bring one home," he said sharply, looking at me as if I were trying to talk him into smoking out of a 3-beaker apparatus."Their eyes weren't even open. What would you have done with it?" "Opened its eyes?" I said. "The mother --who has one heck of a bite and strong nasty claws--was looking down at me." "Did you go back again?" "When your mother came with me the next day the mother coon wasn't around and the babies, hearing us climb the log--me climb the log-- --they thought we were their mother and started pushing each other around to get to the hole first." He's like that, keeping discoveries secrets. My other life I have to get back to has too many words, too many cars, too many of us pushing everyone else out of our way to be first. The next day we heard , instead of birds, artillery, artillery, from 7:30 p.m. past 11:30 p.m. Our cabins both shook. The National Guards of five states practice here. When I awoke a mouse had eaten, I saw right off, half my cigarette pack open. I froze in the night and my leather watch strap broke. I had 6 cups of coffee while Tony asked me 6 times if I wanted to go for a walk, showing me a joint ("My last one"). Finally I went with him. We went to the crater but he didn't like it,saying it was too planetarily alien, a meteor crater in virgin woods showing who's the big guy anyway--not the biggest trees, nor the biggest mammal, or the biggest weather event--but events from other planets, interstellar space, the place where God hasn't taught the brains there yet about his rules and fashions. Out of bounds ! God only rules the earth people! Be afraid!. So we went to my cedar swamp where fragrant incense of cedar oil and sunlight dappling fallen leaves choking the warm pool rule.Right away Tony creatively turned on the tape of his guitar playing. "Great move!" I said crabbily. "Dad's looking for birds--he's close enough to hear the tape--he'll be mad." Tony just sang loud with some song he was a bad player on.He lit the joint and a second later Dad was on the dam path going "Shhh!" I ran quietly to his side to tell him we'd flushed a partridge. He said,"Tony just wants to get high," and walked away, kind of stumbling in his rush. I was hurt and when I reached Stoney he'd smoked half the joint already without me. He had it unlit in his mouth and kept saying,"Listen to this--I made it for you," and rewinding the tape. Poor kid, like the cat I never have time to pet and it keeps coming to me and I keep shoving the damn thing away. He's thinking of me, jamming, getting up to start recording when he feels I'll like it, thinking of me, making it good, turning off the recorder, thinking I'll like this. And I don't even hear anything in it, nothing special, nothing I can be proud about, I am so unimpressed, and he wants my pleasant, encouraging, attentive companionship. He asks me where I think he'll be at age 85 and I snort "dead." "I need some family history to tell my grandchildren," he says."Too bad grandma didn't stay." "I don't think she could take you," I say. "I didn't do anything,"he says languidly, hiding his sensitivity if he's tuned into it .I got antsy about Dad around , all around, who knew where the fed-up head would pop up at, and I took the j out of his mouth and lit it. One toke and I threw it at him, spitting,""There's PCP in it!" "There is not," he said. So I took another hit. There was no mistake about it then.. I couldn't move for 20 minutes. I got mad--real mad.No one could have gotten me to do PCP for a million dollars and here it was in me, sneaked on me through lies and subterfuge,by my own bro, and no million. I made it home and collapsed on the floor and told Mom.It wasn't like I could help it--she could see the wasted person on her kitchen floor and I really had no imagination as far as cooking any other reason for it up..Tony came in shortly, wearing sunglasses and tripping over his feet. I was so dizzy I couldn't go out and enjoy my last day in the woods. I had to sit in one spot from 2 to 5 p.m.(Tony, astutely::"Dede. doesn't the river look crooked to you?" )It's what they stun horses and tigers with to give them dental surgury or whatnot. You might get your arm to respond to a command, like throw the coin in the fountain;; your arm might hold a coin out., but it doesn't let go, rev up, pitch the coin into the fountain. You just keep standing there holding the coin, unable to go to the next step. Dad seemed mad at me for toking off a joint. But I got ok after supper and ,figuring our woodcock thing was rained out by drug abuse, went for a walk alone at 7. I saw a robin's nest and a partridge and then Dad at 8:10 (he'd gotten 2 turkeys and a loon) but he kept walking. I saw the 2 partridge in the usual tree and flushed 2 more. At quarter of nine saw Dad on the road being followed by a puppy, He was rid of it when I spotted him again around 9--later than our woodcock dive--and we made our way slowly toward each other and our woodcock's clearing. The partridge in the tree were eating birch shoots, I saw with his field glasses. The hermit thrushes were still going. We saw Woodcock take off, fly in a circle over his clearing, and land.We moved in when he went back up and he landed right by us--finally, we were seeing him on the ground. He glides soundlessly the last few seconds, like a baby owl I released from a cardboard box that just vanished without a sound .The woodcock flew right in front of our faces at face level. He flew about 7 times but must have seen us because everytime we heard his wings (him going up) we;'d move to a tree by where he was taking off, only to have him land elsewhere behind us.Oh for the one moment where he flew straight down, spread his wings moments before his streamlined dive-bombing body splattered with his beak stuck in the earth, and sailed back up gracefully, slowly , like he'd just pulled his fine ripcord. I knew when I got back to Florida male friends with large egos were going to snort,"No bird flies straight down til it almost hits the ground and then spreads its wings and stays aloft. You saw a duck fishing in the bay or a heron and you dreamed the rest!" I realized I'd hear it anyway, even if I'd seen the display. It was a male thing, the demonstration of daring and skill and wild beauty and ability. The only female thing going on out there at that time was the dead doe offering herself up to be seen at her very worst,making the ultimate in sacrifice by letting the male does--deer,ok?--see her like that for hours and days and weeks much longer than she would ever let them , could she do a thing about it; or her rancid odor, her butt held indecently high in the sky by the unrelenting barbed wire that had broke her neck,her entrails gorged , like a head on a stick in a Florida dorm room.The most indelicate of wakes , she was a non-speaking performer in. See everything I'm made of all dripped out of me , my entire inside exposed in all my gross non-beautuful, wretched reality.See the male thing flash and flirt with death with a grin ( or a grebe). See the young men go off to war with their fishing poles and their dashing , medal-heavy uniforms while the mothers bleed and show their guts and their pained interior long after no one wants to smell that smell any more. And the mother protecting her babies ,then going off for sustanance while other animals trick the babes into shoving their way to the top dog position.Although raised by women, the babes are characterized by their greed before they've even opened their eyes to see what they can see here.And where's Mom fit in, taking to bed when she thinks her son is in trouble, no, is trouble itself, right around the corner ? First trying the everything is ordinary I'll make a double jello approach, followed by the "when he returns I'm giving it to him good"... We got back to see a flying squirrel in our feeder. Tony went fishing as proof he didn't just use this place to get high .All he accomplished was to lose 2 streamers.The dead deer stinks a long ways away now. Dad tried to cut her tail for me the previous day, after pulling this long yukky green stuff out, called the "insides", but it was so rotted after he slit it open that all the hair fell off the hide --the very thing you salt and sun it to prevent. It was too late. So Grandma surprised us, worried most about two soldiers that for her were little boys she'd loved. Her husband had equipped them to be hunters and fishermen, not murderers. Her father and husband had equipped them, and her, with all the outdoor man skills necessary to live alone in the woods as scary hermits . In turn we were learning the names and habits of the creatures sharing our world of woods with us, and suposed to be giving the elders some sense of pride, destiny, a hand in something way good--Dad's respect for his surviving son, Old Sunglasses ; Grandma's fear of changes to her sons as soldiers., a decade before that, her pride in her little boys alone at ther river cabin all summer at age 12 and 14, building a dock while keeping the victuals cold in the river's underground spring feeders. The determined clown antics of a male akin to one driving a jumbo jet straight into the side of the tallest building in America , the laid open, violated female violating everybody's senses on and on and on, helplessly; the no-nonesense woman who shoots squirrels at her bird feeder and fishes wading up stream at the age of 92, carefully as always wading the fast, cold Au Sable waters with rocks on the bottom she had to feel with her feet and give wide berth to or continue to climb up ever so cautiously, wader boots sideways, catching ; Grandma incrementally adding more weight, ok, I'll stay, I've traversed yet another submerged rock , feel for the next with my foot in this 48 -degree frigid stream, Tony's guitar days doing to the sense of hearing what the doe did to our sense of smell and sight . . We try to appreciate the other world given to us by God and ancestry , try to perfect it with fine magazines of the best photography of our national parks , to encourage all of us to go be in it, it's divine natural simplicity which is as unsimple as the one of auto detailing and engineered guitar solos , with ways we learned or perished from not knowing, such as taking babies from their mother. And I don't know where this fits in at all, or what I can deduce from it. But as we waited, that last day, for the woodcock to go up and fly straight down and transform back into a winged creature of remarkable dexterity just in time to save its neck,and all was deathly still and expectant and we were straining every cilia in our ears to catch the soft noise that betrayed our target's position, not really on speaking terms because of the disgusting way I took a toke off Tony's dope , but still trying to be scientists together, differences possibly able to be tossed aside, communion between father who wanted an interested son and daughter who wants an interested father , and all our personal privacy, unlike the doe we were constantly winding up downwind of , our very own secrets still, he farted. It was his destiny. It was his nature, unwrapped from fishing vests and hunting guns and snowmobiles and taking the garbage to the dump and seeing all the good things, every time he walked outside, and knowing every bird he heard by its song and being carried through his slip-ups and hard parts of life by his loving , crow-eyed, always watchful Mom. Underneath the thin veneer, he gave off his species' note, it's trumpet blast , his own tape of his own music, his opinion, if you will. His dive. I wasn't embarressed for him..I guessed his secret-he was merely human.I guessed so were we all. And we could thaw without leaving the odor of a particular white-tailed doe. Some of us, anyway. Anyway, after that, between Tony and I , who didn't last many years longer, he became "the old fart." It was mainly our anger at his selling our woodland escape . What humanized him was now what was dehumanizing him. Of course I politely kept that night's experience, the real fart, to myself. Man flashes. Artillery. artillery. Woman opens up , almost too much, to love, embrace, forgive, tolerate. . It was all there, displayed for me, that little vacation I took, my goodbye gift from Nature. |
My daughter's manga art. She's getting good! She has interests you middle class would approve of--not dating, boys, make-up, hanging out , drugs.t. |
Copyright Mary Myers 2003 |
Delot Brass Powwow copyright 1968 by Daniel C. Myers |
Above, me and Grand Canyon |
Below, photo, Paul A. Young, my father, Christmas 2002. |
The Beach in Three Flavors a story about accidental plastic'six-pack rings suffocating pelicans . |
