February Is Here Already?

Wow! I have been so busy getting things ready for the Utah Educational Library Media Association (UELMA) conference that I haven't had time to do anything that I want to do. That is the way of the world-you always have to do the things you have to do before you can do the things you want to do, or something like that.

I won't go political today except for two comments: The regime that was to bring us change certainly hasn't (same old/same old - politics as usual); and the regime that was to unite and bring us all together certainly hasn't (the divide is wider). Of course, it has only been a couple of weeks, so any time now we may have change and unity.

Memoirs

As I continue to write memoirs for the class I take every year, I have decided to group my memories around the places I lived. That gives a loose chronology to what I have written to date and will focus future writings. The sections would then be: 1) Clarksville, Indiana and Clovis, New Mexico, 1947-1951(mainly my memories of what my parents told me about the time); 2) Lordsburg, New Mexico, 1952-1954; 3) Roswell, New Mexico, 1955-56; 4) Hobbs, New Mexico, 1957-59; 5) Westminster, California, 1960; 6) Huntington Beach, California, 1961-70; 7) Provo, Utah, 1971-72; 8) Sandy, Utah, 1973; 9) West Jordan, Utah, 1974-until too old to write.

This memoir sample is from the Lordsburg period, 1952-54, and is the last one I wrote for my class:

The Old Green Chair

What I remember as the “old green chair” wasn’t really much older than I was. It was one of the first pieces of furniture my parents bought after they were married in Clarksville, Indiana. It was a bulky, hardwood and steel wired, over-stuffed living room chair covered in a soft, velvety, “true-green” colored material and had a solidly-built, matching ottoman. My dad said it had a long seat that was just right for his long legs. It was his newspaper-reading, radio-listening, and storytelling chair. I assume my mother curled up in it under a comforter when she was expecting, feeding, and holding me as she later did with my sister and brother. Sitting in that chair, I held my baby sister for the first time. Whenever I was near that chair, I would slowly rub the palm of my hand over the soft material and watch it change to light or dark as I reversed the direction of the fabric nap with my hand.
My folks hauled that chair and the few other pieces of furniture they owned in a makeshift trailer across the country to Clovis and Portales and Lordsburg, New Mexico. In Lordsburg, the chair ruled the living room sitting a foot or two away from the tall, narrow window that overlooked the east side yard of Bermuda grass and bottle brush trees.
Mornings, the warm, sun-bright space between the chair and the window was a delightful place to play. The window sill, wider than the thick adobe wall and only a couple of feet from the floor, held an army of small toys and was completely shielded by the chair. The dust flap at the bottom of the chair back was a perfect hiding place for contraband.
When I was four or five, all the kids used to buy little six packs of candy cigarettes at the ramshackle grocery store around the corner from my house. They were hard, white sticks of candy like peppermints are made from, about a quarter inch thick and four inches long, with one end dyed bright red. We practiced holding the candy between our fingers like we had seen our dads hold the real things and pretended to puff out clouds of smoke. A few practiced holding the “cigs” lazily out of the corner of their mouths like the grizzled old-timers and leather-skinned ranch hands we often saw lounging on the sidewalks down town. I usually just chewed mine.
My father’s real cigarettes were much more fascinating than candy, so one morning I took a couple from his pocket before he left for school and hid them behind the chair. The pungent, earthy odor of the shredded tobacco smelled much better unlit than when my dad was actually smoking. Behind the green barricade, I was pretending to blow smoke rings like my dad when my mother appeared next to the chair.
“So,” she said, “think you want to smoke?”
“Sure,” I said, elated and excited about entering into real adult activities at the age of five.
She plopped me down in the chair, slipped one of the cigarettes between her lips, struck a match and “lit up.” She handed me the cigarette and said, “Puff away.” I managed two, maybe three, drags before I became violently miserable and threw up on the polished, hardwood floor. Without comment, my mother extinguished the cigarette, picked me up and carried me to my bed, cleaned up the mess and never mentioned it to me again. However, from my bed that night, I heard her have a laughingly good time telling my dad all the sickening details. “That’ll be a lesson for him,” she declared, and it was; I never ever had a desire to smoke again.
After she painted the living room orange, my mother decided the green of the chair didn’t harmonize. While recovering the ottoman with a print fabric, she determined that she wasn’t up to a full re-upholstery job on the chair. She told my dad to move it out back for the trash men. So my dad muscled the green monster out of the living room, down the hall, and through the big kitchen, being careful not to gouge or scratch the wood floors or rip a hole in the kitchen linoleum. He had to turn it on its side to angle it top first through the back door and inch it onto the small open porch. Then he dragged it down the steps, across the gravel path, and through the gate to the trash cans outside the back fence.
Some neighbor kids were playing on the old buckboard by the barn, and they immediately ran over to watch. The chair was larger than either of the metal trash cans or the burn barrel, so it had to be broken down to either burn or cart away. My dad figured he could use some of the wood and nails and wire, and he set himself to carefully taking the chair apart. With all us children close up watching his every move, he carefully loosened the chair back-panel with a screwdriver and popped it off the chair.
Everyone jumped back a few feet with a horrified shudder. There, infesting the yellowed padding of the old green chair was a writhing colony of at least a hundred, huge BLACK WIDOW SPIDERS. We strained forward to examine this awful sight. A breathless moment passed before spiders on the perimeter of the undulating mass dropped to the ground and wobbly walked toward us.
Then all was pandemonium. Girls screamed and ran to the buckboard. Boys picked up sticks and rocks to pound the ugly creatures or stomped on them with their boots before they could escape to a dark hideaway. My dad grabbed a gas can from the shed by the back gate, sprayed the wriggly mass with gasoline, and flicked a flaming matchbook on the ground under the spiders. The chair exploded in flames and black, acrid smoke mushroomed into the warm afternoon like the atomic bomb on Bikini Atoll. The cremation of the old green chair and all its poisonous cargo was an exciting end to an old friend.

Musings for a dreary January day:

1) I was watching one of my favorite movies last week, which I haven't seen for a couple of years. A real schmaltzy melodrama from 1936, staring Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper, and Freddie Bartholomew: The Devil Is a Sissy. Rooney was 15, Cooper 13, and Freddie 12, but by 1936 they were all experienced, veteran movie stars. The boys end up in trouble with the law, but haven't broken any big ones, and have to meet with a juvenile court judge played by Jonathan Hale, who has a beautiful speaking voice by the way. He tells the boys that the devil is a "weak sister" a sissy because he can't take the heat; he causes trouble and runs away. A real "tough guy" takes his medicine, takes responsibility for his actions, fixes his mistakes. It seems to me that there are an awful lot of sissies in the U.S .of A. today. The slightest bit of rough going and they run away, or if they are big shots with huge screw-ups they run to the Federal Gummit to bail them out. Then there are all the "weak sisters" in the congress who are directly responsible for such things as the housing market collapse because they strong armed lending institutions to make home loans to minorities who had no conceivable way to make the payments. They whine and blather on and run away from their responsibility for the collapse by blaming others who had no hand in the sordid affair.
Anyway, I really like the movie. You can watch the whole film on you-tube starting at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ4Coolb8F8&feature=PlayList&p=DC4658260FF5DBCA&index=0&playnext=1


One small section of the film is missing from the clips, but it doesn't hurt the story line.

Here are Mickey, Freddie, and Jackie from a production still of the film.

2) I watched the coronation of the new messiah on Tuesday. After the inaugural speech, I thought maybe we were all supposed to quit our jobs and let the Great Gummit take care of us. I was disconcerted by the hate and disrespect that was shown to President Bush by the peace, love, tolerance and diversity crowd. Is it not strange how liberal socialist/progressives who preach love, tolerance, and diversity, not to mention environmental "green," spew forth such hate, close-mindedness,and utter contempt for opinions not their own, not to mention leaving the mall looking like a county garbage dump. Yes, I know that there are some conservatives who can be close-minded, hateful, and litter-bugs to boot, but conservatives don't claim, as liberal socialist/progressives do, to being THE party of love, tolerance, diversity, and uber protectors of the environment. So, it is difficult to over look when they are joyfully hateful and intolerant, and act like a bunch of "pigs." Oops! I shouldn't say that; it's not fair to the pigs. And who pushed over the porta-potties anyway?

3) It seems to me that all past Presidents have done some good and some bad things. Some have done more good than bad and vice-verse, they are only human beings, after all. But it really worries me when the majority of the people choose a president who says and does things that are not constant with the founding principles of our country, like capitalism. That to me spells BIG BAD. We have had a few BIG BADS in the past century, and it took years to overcome the damage.

Part One:
Today is, as everyone seems duty bound to say, an historic day in the history of the United States: the inauguration of the first black President of the United States of America. Only time will show whether it is a great day or a tragic day for the country. I am not against having a black man, or woman (black or white) for that matter, as President: I am just not convinced this is the right one. There are several conservative black men whom I highly respect, and for whom I would have voted without hesitation. They have economic and political knowledge and expertise far beyond the "hope and change" rhetoric of Mr. Obama, but are not politicians, have no political machine, and could never be elected.

I hope that President Obama takes a more moderate road than the one on which he campaigned and that he will eschew the radical, far-left, socialist agenda of some of his biggest monetary supporters. I sincerely hope he will reflect deeply on the oath of his office: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."(Article II, Section 1., paragrph 7); and not try to reinterpret the Constitution by executive order or by further encouraging activist judges. I am hopeful but worried, having read many of his statements about the Constitution.

Part Two:
Here is another memoir. Background: In February, 1967, I left home as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At that time missionaries spent a week in Salt Lake City for general training and instruction before leaving for the mission field. Those who were going to non-English speaking missions were sent to Provo to learn the basics of the languages they would be speaking. There was no Missionary Training Center then: language missionaries were housed in different dormatories on the BYU campus or around Provo. I was to learn Spanish, so I was sent to Knight-Mangum Hall on campus with my companion, Elder Barker.

The Smack Heard ‘Round the World
By Michael L. Goodman

I deliberately throw back the covers, swing my feet out of bed, and slowly sit up. The pain in my chest throbs with each heart beat. The narcotic pain pill isn’t working: I feel like death warmed over, but I know exactly what I am going to do in the next thirty seconds.
I have been at Knight-Mangum Hall, the Spanish language missionary training facility on the BYU campus, for two months. Actually, two and a half weeks of that time I have spent across the street in the campus medical center suffering with a viral heart infection. My companion, Elder Barker, and I had occupied the room on the southeast corner of the fourth floor all by ourselves until the week I had my “heart attack.” That week two new greenies were assigned to our room, and we lost the convenient storage space of the empty bunk beds by the door. I remember Elder Evans’ name only because of what happens this evening.
Elder Barker and the greenies have gone down to the showers at the other end of the hall. I have turned out the lights and eased into bed after taking my pain pill. As I lie here in the soothing dark solitude wishing I were home, a rumble of voices, banging doors, shouts, laughter, and running foot-falls begins to swell in the hall. A shaving cream fight has erupted down by the showers, probably instigated by fun-loving Elder Barker, and is rolling through the hall sucking missionaries out of their rooms to join the melee.
Into the room burst the greenies; on go the lights! They are giggling and jostling and punching each other while rummaging through their things searching for ammunition. They don’t hear me asking them to be quiet or to turn off the lights as they fling themselves back into the battle. The door is open. The lights are on.
Knowing that they are just going to come back anyway, I foolishly pull myself out of bed, shut the door, and turn off the lights. I am tempted to take another pill. Happily, the noise level ebbs somewhat as the action flows back to the far end of the hall and the showers.
A few minutes after I am back in bed, the noise level drops significantly. There is only the thump of running feet and quickly slammed doors and anxious, hushed voices admonishing, “Hurry!” Move!” “Go!” The zone leaders from three floors down must have come up to investigate the commotion, and the combatants are beating a hasty retreat.
The lights flash on as the greenies rush into the room, flushed, giggling, and too doped on adrenaline to be quiet or ready to sleep. They hop into their bunks, chatting and recounting the whole history of the whom and the what and the when and the where of the great shaving cream war.
I ask them again to be quiet. “Please,” I implore, “I am still sick. I’m exhausted, and I need some sleep. Please turn off the light and go to sleep.”
Elder Evans on the top bunk, rises up on his elbow, smirks at me and then says with a simpering tone and sarcastic smile, “Tuck us in and give us a kiss, MOTHER.”
His smirky smile vanishes when he sees me throw off the covers and sit up in bed. He cowers back slightly as I approach. His eyebrows rise as his eyes enlarge. He thinks I am going to hit him. But I am not going to hit him. I deliberately take his head between my hands and plant the biggest, loudest smack of a kiss I am able to pucker upon his hot, flushed cheek.
“Now,” I say through a tooth-clenched smile, enunciating each word, “be-quiet-and-go-to-sleep.”
Without taking my eyes off his horrified face, my hand slaps the light switch by the door, and the room is plunged into dark, terrified silence. Shuffling back to my bed, I clasp my hand over my mouth to stifle a chortle. Didn’t think I’d do that, did you, Elder. Well, now you know. Don’t mess with Goodman.
When Elder Barker finally returns, he is greeted by a stereophonic “Shhhhh” from the greenies’ bunks and an urgently whispered, “Don’t make any noise.”
I smile off to sleep.

I was looking through some transcripts of tape recordings I have made of my father for family history. He has told a few stories about things that happened when I and my sister Jill and brother Mark were little, as well as stories that happened long before we were born. I go through them occasionally when I am trying to jog my memory or am needing a topic for a memoir. He was born in 1923. I found this little fragment that happened in about 1928. I don't know if I should call it: "Song and Dance Man" or "Father, Dear Father, Come Home with Me Now."

In Detroit, when my father was four or five years old, his mother would often send him down the block to the speakeasy to tell his father to come home. My father would kick on the door, and the doorkeeper would look out the peephole. My father would continue to kick the door until the man looked down to see him and let him in. Then he would search through the crowd until he found grandpa. Grandpa would heft dad up onto the bar. The piano player would pound out a popular tune while my father danced along the bar, like a lot of street urchins did in those days to collect a penny or two from passersby. Sometimes he would sing as well, if he knew most of the words. The customers would tell him how cute he was and pinch his cheeks and buy him sodas and candy bars. He said that it sometimes took him a while to remember why grandma had sent him to the speakeasy because he was having so much fun.

For the last three years, I have been writing memoir pieces an in-service writing class sponsored through the Jordan School District. I started the class as a way to practice and improve my writing skills while, at the same time, putting my life history on paper for my children. But I found memoir to be a different style of writing about life experiences, a very different discipline than simply writing a chronological life history. I have certainly found the struggle of memoir writing to be a life experience in and of itself.
For everyone, even we unimportant people, there are hundreds of fascinating stories from and about life that, if well told, are interesting to one's family and friends. I strive to write a letter to my family and friends monthly, and I include a piece of memoir with it. My ninety-year-old mother-in-law is my biggest fan.
I am going to post on this blog some past memoir pieces that I have revised many times, and I hope that they are in their final form. By posting, they will be electronically "out there" in the ether somewhere forever. So here goes the first post.

At The Wall
Michael L. Goodman

It was a physically stressing position, leaning into the polished, black granite wall trying to hold the strip of newsprint with one hand snug against the third name from the bottom of the panel and rubbing the graphite pencil over the incised letters with the other hand. I could feel my face reddening with the strain of holding my body at that awkward angle. My eyes teared with a flood of sorrow, regret, anger, and maybe a twinge of survivor’s guilt as the W-A-R-R-E-N appeared on the paper. The paper shifted slightly as I rubbed the pencil over the G, but I finished the name even though it was crooked.
I took the second strip of paper and smoothed it over the letters, but this time I held the strip on the left side with my knee giving me a free hand to hold the paper straight as I rubbed over the letters again.
When I stood, my legs were a little unstable, my face was flushed, my eyes were wet, and my breathing was shallow. Looking at my reflection in the black, mirror-like stone of the wall, I took a couple of deep breaths and steadied myself. Backing away from the panel, I almost bumped into a man who had been watching me; watching me and the dozens of others along the angling gash in the grassy slope on the north side of Constitution Gardens.
“Oh, excuse me,” I stammered as our eyes met.
“No harm done,” he said with a mild British accent. He was about my height, a few years older, but thinner. He wore a brown plaid shirt, a light tan blazer, blue jeans, and a bemused smile that was very close to a smirk. “Tell me,” he said, glancing leisurely left and right along the 54,000 names. “I don’t quite understand. What does all this mean to Americans?”
Looking at him with my mouth open, I couldn’t even explain what it all meant to me, or what I was feeling at that moment let alone what all this means to millions of other “Americans.” How do you give an answer that covers ten years of friendship with the very first kid you met when you moved to California: or guilt at not having time to talk the last time you saw him when he came by the house to say good bye; or unspeakable grief standing by an ugly, black gash in the cemetery grass on a beautiful hill above San Diego Bay; or the vague thought that your name could be on that wall if an ulcer the size of a small bullet-hole in your gut hadn’t been enough for a jocular corporal to stamp your selective service papers with a 4F? How do you meaningfully answer “What does all this mean?”?
“I can’t say. I don’t know,” I said haltingly, with my pencil in one hand and two WARREN GUTHRIE HARDING rubbings, reverently held in the other, fluttering slightly as the afternoon cooled. “There’s no easy answer.”
“Hmmmm,” he said, frowning at me like a tourist disappointed with his tour guide. Losing interest, he pivoted smartly to the left and ambled down along the wall shaking his head.
Turning to the wall, I had one last, long look at myself reflected among the names; one last, lingering touch of the incised letters; one last, wavering breath and sigh before returning to the top of the slope and my patient wife.

Wow! I haven't written since November 2008. Not a faithful blogger, I! I am spending too much time trying to finish preparations for the annual Utah Educational Library Media Association (UELMA)conference in March 2009. I have had nothing but problems with organizing this conference. People sign up to help and then drop out. I had a big name author signed in 2007, but because his representative messed up, the conference date was not on his calendar, hence, it was scheduled over. I was not happy about it, but nothing could/can/or will be done about it.

I noticed an article on the front page of the paper this week that our new president, Barack Obama, wants a bailout package without any pork attached. This just proves that he is too inexperienced and naive for the job. His one, unfinished, term as junior senator from Illinois in the great U.S. den of thieves taught him nothing about how our great and abominable federal gummit works.

I really shouldn't complain about the great and abominable Congress of the United States. After all, it is the very best congress that liberal Democrats and special interest money can buy! It is a great tragedy that the American people don't have any lobbyists in Washington to protect their interests.

WELL, I haven't posted in two months. I knew this would happen when I have so many time drains with work, church, and professional organizations pulling me in ten directions.

Last week my family went to California for family visits. On Wednesday my three daughters and I left after work and drove down to Mesquite, Nevada. Thursday morning we drove to San Diego to visit my father at his assisted living center and get some legal papers signed. My wife arrived in S.D. by train on Wednesday night from Fresno where she was spending a week with her mother. My son, daughter-in-law, and grandson flew into San Diego Thursday afternoon. We had a picnic in Balboa Park, and that evening my sister provided us with a wonderful meal. We were only there for one day.

On Friday the eight of us went to Disneyland, and stayed over night at the old homestead, my father's house in Huntington Beach. Saturday we drove up to Clovis, CA, and that night my other son and daughter-in-law flew into Fresno. We spent Sunday with my mother-in-law and celebrated her 90th birthday at her assisted living center. On Monday all ten of us drove home to Salt Lake Valley.