Light in the world

Hi readers, I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I didn't get around to it this year, but when Walmart has sales after Christmas Day, I'll buy a small tree and ornaments to place in my apartment next year. I'll also buy the Christmas cards I'll mail next year. I have my kids with me right now, which is the best Christmas present I could ever get.

Last week I rang the bell for Salvation Army -- a Christmas tradition for me that started when my ex-wife took our son out to do it when he was 5. He's 16 now. Our daughter is 13. I was assigned to stand outside a Dillons store from 4 to 7 p.m., but the preacher relieved me at 6:30 p.m., for which I was grateful. I was freezing ass cold -- actually my feet were freezing. God bless you, Commander Johnson.

On Christmas Eve night, I went to the candle light service at church. My belief is that the birth of the Christ child was like light breaking through a world of darkness.The pastor, Neal and his wife, Jayme, are good friends of mine. They've supported this blog and encouraged me in all my writing endeavors. I never thought I'd be buddies with a pastor. Thought I was too much of a rebel, but Neal and I -- we get each other. Lately, we've taken to trading theology books with each other. Oh, and Jayme gave me a bunch of crockpot recipes after my dad and step-mom gave me a crockpot last Christmas. They knew I was without some essential things and gave me a special present this Christmas, said I didn't need to give them anything, but I'd already gotten them a Christmas card. Neal lost his mom to cancer this year. (His dad died around 12 years ago.) Several of my friends lost parents this year.

Among other supporters of this blog, there's my friend, Stan, who serves on the Wichita Board of Education and ran for a state legislative seat, but unfortunately for Kansas, he lost. I wrote some PR material for Stan, much like 19th century novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter, House of Seven Gables..) wrote a campaign biography of his college friend Franklin "Handsome Frank" Pierce -- one of the worst presidents ever. He was an anti-abolitionist. Anyhow, Stan is a super guy. I can bounce writing ideas off him and he always listens and offers advice and encouragement. Unlike Franklin Pierce, Stan is all for good causes like racial, gender and socio-economic equality.

Then there's my friend, Alana, whom I've known since junior high, but we were more acquaintances than friends in school. More recently, through the blog and sharing stories about our kids, she's become a friend. Her husband, Craig, also went to school with us. He's been serving the country for years in the military, which I respect. Alana was a PTO (Parent Teachers Organization) dynamo, raising money for her kids' public schools. Her daughter is now a realtor. Son is a rock guitarist who can play Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir."

Among people I've known since I was a kid, but only recently became friends with, probably none is more surprising than my friendship with Dawn. In junior high, we hated each other. Don't know why. That's just the way it was. We were cruel to each other. One day I said (this is so juvenile), "Dawn, is that mayonnaise on your lip or are you back in business?" In junior high, I projected a certain stupid no-holds-barred vulgarity like I've never exhibited before or since. I'm glad the profanity gene missed my kids. Anyhow, Dawn is now a stalwart reader of this blog, which makes her a friend. She's worked for years, making airplane parts and has a daughter who got a degree in marine biology from some university in Oregon. I think she has a son who's a high school wrestler.

My friend, Jeannie, in Michigan, is another faithful reader of the blog. She's a good hearted person who takes care of people in her home. She lost her brother this year in an accident, which sucks. Her father died in 1969. But I'm happy to say her mom, who's in her 90s, is still alive and doing well.

Then there's Denyse in New Mexico aka Inciting a Riot. She has regularly read the blog for years. Life has been up and down for her, but I hope and pray her fortunes soon take a turn for the better. Denyse is, like, 10 years older than me. I saw a picture of her, taken in the '70s, and all I can say is "Foxy lady."

Yeah, most of my friends are chicks. Sorry, they make up most of the audience for my blog. Maybe they're more in agreement with my somewhat liberal views, I don't know. (Well, not Alana.) It seems like if I say something liberal on Facebook, Stan and maybe one other guy will "like" it and I get eight or 10 "likes" from women. I don't know, I guess if you have a cock and balls, you gotta be a big tough conservative.

A new year is fast approaching and I plan to do all I can to make it a good one. I've had my share of being depressed the past couple of years. Who needs it? Things will always get better and no matter how far I may be into darkness, I'll never stop striving to be happy.

I'm reminded of Winston Churchill, whom Gary Oldman portrays in the now playing biopic, Darkest Hour. Churchill had terrible depression (he called it "the black dog") and he was an alcoholic, but he was exactly the right man to lead Great Britain when Adolph Hitler and the Nazis threatened Europe and virtually the whole world. Churchill lived to be 90-years-old. Anyhow, despite all his problems, he said, "I am an optimist. There does not seem to be too much use being anything else."

One of my favorite writers, J.D. Salinger, who participated in the D-Day invasion and came back from World War II with PTSD, battled depression. He wrote about people having nervous breakdowns and captured what in the '50s was called "middle class neurosis." Salinger's weltschmerz has influenced my own writing, but I don't think I have to be in misery to write well. Ideas can spring up any time, any place, in all kinds of weather. Some people may think I can't be happy and creative at the same time.

Well, watch me.

                            "December" -- Teenage Fanclub

Christmas parody letter 2017

Dear _______,

My good friends Davey and Goliath

Greetings to all friends, kith and kin & Christmas fans throughout the world. It's that time of year again for watching reruns of Santa Claus & Kakeman (those of you who grew up in the Wichita Metropolitan Statistical Area in the 1970s know what I'm talking about), drinking egg nog shakes from McDonald's, eating tacos and gazing at the rich people's Christmas lights when you're out cruising through the fancy neighborhoods with your girl. Imbibing an English porter with cheery friends while taking in the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Christmas 1977

Sir Paul McCartney

So what's happened in the big wide J. Guy world this year? It's been an interesting year to say the least as I severed ties with the Underground Writing Society I had been afiliated with for several years, I had a bout of homelessness (well not literally homeless, I lived in my car, but it was all right) and saw...can we get a big Ringo Starr drumroll here? Sir Paul McCartney! Yeah, I saw a Beatle live in the flesh. The man is still a force  for rock n' roll and all music, love and peace the world over and has lost nothing to age. I brought my son, Max, with me so he could see history. Would've brought my daughter, Gabby, but she doesn't like noise. "Oh shit!" I exclaimed as the arena went orange with the booming explosion accompanying "Live and Let Die." But it was all right. And no, I'm not going to play "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time."

When I hear music like the Beatles, I think of how we need to get back to good old fashioned basics. Didn't America (well, actually Alabama) have the chance to do this by electing a good Christian man to the U.S. Senate? How Christian is he? As a judge, he posted The Ten Commandments on his courtroom wall. Sure, he got in trouble because they said he violated the separation of Church and State, but isn't that just like a lot of godless liberals to pretend such a separation exists? We all know our Founding Fathers built this country on good ol' white male evangelicalism. Some said the good judge preyed upon teenage girls 40 years ago. But hey, as his Good Christian supporters said, he was a "man's man." Furthermore, didn't the Gospels say Mary was a teenager and Joseph was 35 when they got together? I'm sure it must have. Our glorious President (take it easy on him, he's a new Christian) campaigned for the good Alabama Republican. After all, the senate candidate shares the president's goal to Make America Great Again. Yes, he did say the last time America was great happened to be during the era of slavery. You know when people, due to their skin pigmentation, were beaten, tortured, murdered, separated forever from their families and women were raped by slave masters and their sons? But hey a few white people had it good so it's all right.

I'll have to admit in some ways, things are improving. Men can no longer get away with being dirtbags. Those rich, powerful men who sent x-rated videos to female co-workers and subordinates, locked them in rooms and flashed their dicks at them -- they're being held accountable. Karma has got 'em by the balls. All the bad guys are being held to account. For example, if you walk in on young ladies undressing because you own the Miss USA pageant or brag about how you're a celebrity who can "grab em by the ____" --- you -- uh, well -- shouldn't you be nailed to a cross by the media? -- uh, well I guess if you're loved by Jerry Fallwell, Jr. and Franklin Graham, you're all right.

But if you sleep with the Russians in order to win a Presidential election, well then...Oh, not then either? Never mind, he's a good Christian. A good pussy grabbing Christian who might be into golden showers.

Best kids in the world. Right here.

Boy, I sure wouldn't want to go to the Jingle Bell Ball with that guy. Speaking of which, my teenage son, Max, went to such an event at the high school. Max is a good boy in every sense of the word -- recognized for citizenship at school, a respecter of all races, genders and creeds who loves Minecraft, Star Wars and playing Cards Against Humanity with his buddies at lunch. My boy would never light a joint in the school cafeteria like that dumb ass from his shop class did. (I mean, hell, if you're gonna light a joint, you don't do it out in the open.) Kid got kicked off the football team for the dumb stunt. Max, of course, is smart. He's even into smart human tricks. For example, there's this 300-pound kid named Kian who's on the wrestling team with my son. Max, like the other boys has experimented with getting on all fours and seeing how long they can last with Kian sitting on their backs.

Then there's my daughter, Gabby. She's into decals, making cartoons on the computer and anything Harry Potter. In another sign of the shifting times, my baby, my princess -- the little girl who wanted to grow up to live in a "magic castle" -- turned 13 just this month. My baby girl is a teenager now. (I guess I'm getting to be an old man.) She got a ukulele and a guitar this year. She's as bad ass as Patti Smith Carrie Fisher Erin Fitzpatrick and as sensitive as Stevie Nicks singing "Landslide." If any guy tried that sexual harassment shit with Gabby, she would, like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, go medieval on his ass.

Along with the other changes in my life, I entered a relationship this year. My girlfriend, Kayla, writes me love notes and sends me sweet text messages like this one: "Come over if you feel like it, but you can't do what you want, I'm on my period."

Kayla's brother, Townes, had a bout of anal fissures this year. Anal fissures, in case you don't know, are splits or cracks in the lining of the anal opening. This can result in the passage of very hard or watery stools. Townes had the hard kind. He told us all about it during a high fiber lunch at one of Wichita's trendy health food restaurants. Guess the plumbing was a-clogged-up at the sewer down Townes. (Ha ha chortle chortle). But I want everyone to know that Townes and his anus and bowel movements are now doing A-okay.

Well that's about all my news. And remember, Christmas has done good things for me and it can for you as well. Think about that as you feast upon the cooked goose and potatoes at your family dinner table. I mean, think hard about those things that truly matter in life. The Screw You Party is giving the tax system and internet to the oligarchs and maybe President Grinch has no respect for women as he all but admitted once to Howard Stern, but by God, he'll make us all say "Merry Christmas" and isn't that what this special time of year is all about? No Ebenezer Scrooge, that guy.

As I alluded to before, I better get my white ass 'outa here. But, let's keep the joy that is Christmas in our hearts all year. Oh I'm as happy as an angel, merry as a school boy and giddy as a drunken man just thinking about it. To my friends, I say I get high with a little help from you. To my kids, you're the reason I exist. You complete me. And remember, no matter what your faith, God is. So have a good year and, with regard to your personal plumbing, may you pass no hard stools. And if you start feeling too high, straying past yourself and thinking you're all about something, get back to where you once belonged.

God bless us everyone,

Jeff

P.S. I have long labored over writing at my local hamburger establishment, McDonald's, from which I've talked to my friend Joel who keeps the dining area crisp and clean. Joel is a retired guy, a Navy veteran with a tattoo and a white mustache that sets his smile aglow. Here's to Joel and that lovely yuletide poem he wrote many years ago, ending it on a sensitive note: "Shove that Christmas tree up your ass."

           The Yeah Yeah Yeahs -- "All I Want For Christmas"

The Big Garage

"We got Bo Didley playing & Leslie the announcer at the cash machine. The garage is rock'n and NO PARKING IN THE DAMN YARD!"

So she said on Facebook that Saturday morning. The day was bittersweet for her, but she'd face it with the courage of someone laughing so much, it would almost drive away all today's tears. She'd escaped to the back porch for coffee and a cigarette, and that's where I caught her. Slyly sitting back in her chair around the patio table. Her face, rosy in the gray morning, was cool as Kentucky Derby Days. Her kid sister, Amy, a younger forty-something, provided sweet comic relief.

Then they saw me.

She jumped up. We hugged. People tell me I give good hugs and I guess I do. Can anyone underestimate the power of a warm, tight hug in these days when we're just trying to get along?

 "Oh Jeff, thanks for coming to the freaky damn backyard," Suzanne said.

She was wearing faded blue jeans with the pocket ripped on the left cheek of her ass. Purple K-State T-shirt (her alma mater), sleeves pulled up to the elbows, revealing the fiery serpentine tattoo on her left arm. (Some 50 years ago, her dad, a young ensign, got a tattoo, while in the Navy. Anchors aweigh.) Blonde hair tied back in a pony tail and jet dark glasses that made her look like a nerd even though back in school I always considered her one of the "cool kids." That was the pedestal people put her on, but you always caught the sense of resistance in every way she walked. In every damn thing she said. There's a photo (circa 1994) of her in khakis in some train, revealing a window to mountains in Germany. Mischief in the black pipe hanging from a corner of her mouth. Fun emanating from the beer stein in her hand.

Somewhere in the middle of life, I would discover that Suzanne was in many ways, a product of her parents' coolness.

When she'd posted to Facebook about the garage sale at her parents' house, she said it all with such fun, I knew I had to come. For as long as I'd known Suzanne -- since third grade, actually -- her parents had lived at 409 Akron, a red brick house in Jett, Kan. (pop. 4,000 in the 1970s).

But they didn't live there anymore.

Suzanne's mother, Madelyn, went for a walk as she did every morning around 5 a.m. in their suburban neighborhood, and had a heart attack. She died right there on the sidewalk. An unexpected death.

With Madelyn gone, there was no one in the house to take of Keith anymore. For the past year and a half, her husband had become increasingly more forgetful and disoriented. The love notes, the drawings he was always making for his wife -- had become a thing of the past. He could no longer drive. For years, through the decades actually, he'd restored old cars. Suzanne and her sisters placed him in a home with a memory care unit. Her dad had Alzheimer's, my mom has it. Suzanne and I relate to each other.

Car show. Movie show

Restored (or in the process of being restored) Thunderbirds, Corvettes, Impalas and my personal favorite, the sleek, black GTO. All of them for years parked in that driveway, in that garage. Paraded in the Classic Car Club show on State Street on sticky, summer days. It's good to live. And to bring disparate parts from the car graveyards, piece them together with precision like the supernatural and there they are -- touching, rubbing together, glistening as if rolling straight from the factory floor. Just resurrecting that baby.

"Come on inside," Suzanne said, motioning to the house. "It's kind of freaky and surreal right now."

I followed her in, past the now stark living room, into the kitchen, loaded with boxes. She introduced me to a woman -- I think it was an aunt from Colorado -- there were so many relatives at the house that day, it's hard to keep them straight.

Then she poured me a cup of coffee. It was a black hole sun-colored mug with a crude white cartoon drawing of a hot rod on it. "Cream or sugar?," she said. "Are you kidding?" I answered. "Black, no riff raff." I also chose a black doughnut from the box she offered me. Chocolate glazed. Coffee and doughnuts. Couldn't refuse.

I so wanted to come over and take for my treasures a piece of her family and heritage. At the same time I felt like an intruder. A vandal. I said as much, expressing my ambivalence.

"It's okay, Jeff," she said. "It's only stuff. I'd like to see you have some of it."

"That black jacket hanging up there looks about your size," the aunt from Colorado said. It was Keith's leather jacket.

"You can just have it," Suzanne told me. "You don't have to pay me anything."

But that didn't seem right to me. "I'll tell you what. You're asking $10 (which was a steal) for it. I'll give you five." So I handed her a five from my wallet and she placed it in the cash box.

Of course I had to go through the boxes of books. Most of them were stuff like How to Draw Cars. I didn't buy those. Felt I should leave them for some aspiring artist who might saunter in. Let that person connect with Keith's artistic genius. And the old Rodder's Journal mags. Let those go to a true car enthusiast. I'd just seize on some of the rock n' roll.

Everything we have here is on loan and we just pass through it, make it a part of ourselves until we check out and pass the cool vibes on to others, which will always include people we never knew in this life.

"I know it's weird, all these strangers going through your family's stuff," I said. "We had the estate sale at my grandpa's place when he was still alive. It paid for him to live in the nursing home."

"It's hard, but it's gotta be done," she said. (My God, it sounded like something I would say.) "Last night I was going through these old drawings my dad made. Some were for my mom. She had this big piece of his heart."

"I hope you're hanging on to those," I said.

"Oh absolutely, I'm going to have them framed."

"And I saw these detailed diagrams of ships in one of the boxes," I said.

"Oh my God, those gotta go to Jax," she said, referring to her son. After graduating from high school, he followed his granddad's lead, joining the Navy. He's currently stationed in Yokosuka, Japan and deployed on the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan. Eerily, his first station is where the old man was stationed when he was young.

"He vacillated back and forth on whether to join the Army or Navy," Suzanne said of her son. Her ex-husband had been in the Army. She was an Army wife stationed in Germany when the picture on the train was taken years ago.

Outside the window, I saw Suzanne's teenage daughter, Karah. (Like me, Suzanne has one boy, one girl.) She smiled at me, just as she had as she walked down the aisle with her family and noticed me sitting there at her grandmother's funeral.She was a wearing KU T-shirt and shorts -- flaunting sweet rebellion at her mom. Actually, I think Karah's going to turn out tougher than Suzanne. Like my daughter, who also has a sensitive older brother, she's a take-no-shit kind of girl, the type who mentally drop-kicked teenage boys at the high school with their indecent proposals involving camera phones. "Fuck you" -- and they were brought down. But she had a sweet smile. I told Suzanne so.

"She knows who you are," Suzanne said. "You 'oughta say hi. Maybe she knows your son from school."

Outside, along the splendid driveway, I caught the young woman's attention.

"Hi Karah, I'm Jeff, a friend of your mom's.

She shook my hand, smiled that smile. "It's nice to meet you."

"Would you happen to know my son, Max Guy? I know he's a couple of classes behind you."

"I don't really know him, but I've heard the name. I know he was Student of the Week last week?"

"Yes, thank you for mentioning that. I was quite proud. His mother and I have always tried to instill good citizenship in our kids as I'm sure your parents have with you and your brother."

A few feet away, the garage started rocking again. The early Rolling Stones' cover of Chuck Berry's "Carol." Cash box shakin' like a money maker should. A group of men, young and old, some smoking, some not, were rolling it up. Leslie -- 5"1" and 118 pound of dynamite -- was like a maestro. In his dementia, Keith had forgotten his oldest daughter's name and took to calling her "The Announcer." The gray garage looked for a second like something from Grease.

When Suzanne and Amy came out and saw me in the leather jacket, it was all real. There was a red pin on the jacket that read, "Rod and Custom magazine." I'm keeping that. Suzanne had another Marlboro Light. Three months earlier, she'd been on Facebook, talking about how she'd gone 21 days without a cigarette. With all the stress, she's taken it up again.

"This is just temporary," she said. "I'm gonna quit again."

"I hope so," I answered. "We'd like to have you around for a while."

The Bridge

"Thank you so much for coming," she said, helping allay the guilty outsider feeling inside me. Then I realized my being there, whether I'd meant it that way or not, was really about two old friends facing the end of those lives that anchored us, our innocence long diminished, the fragility of our own mortality.

"Dad's not eating anymore," she said.

"I'm sorry. I wish it didn't have to be this way."

"He's turning off the lights and he's gonna do it his way."

In the garage, they were wrapping things up like a life. Impact wrench, air compressor, creeper, paint stripper, grinder, tin cutters...all the tools of auto mechanics and restoration. Being sold away (to live some more). The Announcer maintaining cool authority. She was back in town, having boarded a Boeing Jet plane from Philadelphia, PA.

They'd all be there to meet him. Just as they had for Madelyn. A caravan of classic cars lined the parking spaces outside the Methodist Church at her funeral. Keith was a founding member and past president of the Jett Classic Car Club. He wouldn't be forgotten. Some of his contemporaries are still around; some, yeah, they aren't living.

Three weeks later, Suzanne would be on Facebook again, summoning the ghost of her little brother Justin who died in a car accident when he was 21.

"Hey Justin, we know you can hear us. Get that Big Garage in the sky ready for Keith/Dad."

At last, the lights went out. The Big Garage in the Sky was open for business. The grease, soul, the rock n' roll, a revival. (Don't we all need some kind of revival today?) I think the old man's got a hold a' the keys. And he'll never have to clean the place or worry about door dings again.

                               "Road Runner" -- Bo Didley