As one wordsmith to another, I really appreciate President Obama’s use of historical echo in his speeches. Although, I have to admit, the parallels are a little unsettling.
Take, for example, his victory speech in Chicago. He addressed the 60 million people who voted against him with these words: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” Those were Lincoln’s words after he won the 1860 election. It was a little different. After Lincoln won, South Carolina seceded and the Civil War started. No sign of that yet. But does he know something we don’t?
Then there was his speech to Congress the other night. Acknowledging our national economic travails, he said: “I want every American to know this. We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.” Hmmm. That sounded familiar. Echoes again. In his famous first inaugural, Franklin Roosevelt said: “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will survive and will prosper. So, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is – fear itself.” Six more years of depression followed.
Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with following history as a blueprint. It’s just that, well, there are some parts of history I really don’t want to repeat. Depression, for one. My brother Thomas was down for Mardi Gras and kept remarking how prosperous things looked here, compared with the Chicago suburbs where he lives, which exhibit signs of economic turmoil on every corner, like closed restaurants. I’m hoping we turn this around, that our President’s confidence in the ability of this country to turn itself around is well-placed.
“Depression” is such an evil sounding word, whether applied to personal or national life. I think it means losing your way, as an individual or a society, becoming something other than what you thought you were. I just attended a seminar in Houston sponsored by the Texas Bar and was surprised to see an extra page inserted into the materials offering guidance if you or a fellow lawyer is showing signs of depression. Here are some of the symptoms to watch out for:
• Spends hours at the office behind a closed door staring out the window;
• Is confused by an inability to “snap out of it,” feels “weak,” and berates self;
• Feels overwhelmed and immobilized by indecisiveness; and
• Tries to feel better by using alcohol or other substances, including food.
This gridlock of the soul applies equally well to our society, which is why, I suspect, President Obama channeled Franklin Roosevelt. Nobody is spending money. Nobody is buying houses. Everybody’s just holding on, hoping it doesn’t get worse. It is a national loss of self-identity, which from my Boomer perspective, seems to be more widespread.
I am a father, a lawyer, a friend, a business owner, an employer, a homeowner, and a sometimes writer. I am a mostly indifferent member of several groups. That’s my identity. But my children (except Harry, bless him) are grown and on their own. My business is a constant source of intellectual stimulation. My friends have their own lives, but provide me lots of smiles and warm feelings nevertheless. All those self-identifying characteristics, and the others, are who I am. Why, then, am I still searching? Maybe it’s that old Annie Lennox line, “Everybody’s looking for something.”
Maybe we as a nation are looking for something. I remember as a child, the Cuban Missile Crisis formed the background static in my chorus of security. My brother was living in Orlando at the time, and had just recently ended his enlistment in the Air Force. I was 11 and in the seventh grade.
That summer, our family had visited Orlando, and there were fallout shelters for sale in the parking lots of department stores. It was a big enough deal that our principal pulled us all out of our classrooms the day the ships met in Cuban waters, I suppose preparing to have us “duck and cover” in the cafeteria if the worst happened. It didn’t, of course. But I spent many days in my teen years expecting a missile overhead at any minute. Knowing it was possible, however unlikely, took just enough of a chunk out of my security blanket to make things a little uncomfortable, a little unsettled.
We are in those times now. Terrorism, the sight of more planes crashing into more tall buildings and the sound of truck bombs exploding outside government offices, is the echo of today, the buzz in our ears reminding us all is not completely right with the world. The economic uncertainties now gripping us are a second layer depriving us as a society of the certainty of who we are.
Like President Obama, though, I believe depression is a symptom that can be fought with support of friends and neighbors and, to some extent, by whistling past that graveyard. Maybe it does help to say, forcefully and loudly, we will get over this.
In the meantime, go have a chocolate ice cream cone. It may not help, but hey, it can’t hurt. Cheer up, and I’ll see you guys on the flip.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Throw me a Potato, Mister!
As a sometime frat boy attending a well-known Southern party school, my undergraduate degree was in journalism and alcohol. With that background, one might assume I was prepared for anything. But my first Mardi Gras, which I saw hazily through the fog of grog, escorted by one of the most unforgettable characters to cross my path, was one for the record books.
I came late to Louisiana. Except for trips to New Orleans now and then (you might think of those as “dress rehearsals”) I had never been there, and never saw Baton Rouge until the day I moved there in 1972. Mardi Gras was not a tradition in my life any more than etouffee, gumbo, or rice and gravy. As you can see, those three are now firmly established in the Doyle family. But to this day, I have never attended a Carnival parade on Fat Tuesday in New Orleans.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t celebrated it, though. When my first Mardi Gras approached in 1974, my friend J.C. Hatcher invited me to see it with a few friends of his in Lafayette. I thought it must be a family affair, so I made plans to take along my son Jamey, then just over two years old. We drove from Baton Rouge that morning with L. K. Herlong, a friend of mine from the Advocate, where we all worked at the time.
J.C. was from Kentwood before Britney Spears was born. For those of you who don’t know the place, Kentwood is . . .how shall I put this. . .well, “country” just doesn’t do it justice, but is the best I can come up with for now. J.C. was a faithful representative of Kentwood, but he was also a dyed-in-the-wool Cajun. He loved Lafayette, its university, and its sports programs.
One of his great friends was “Coach” Blanco, husband of our recent governor. I met both of them later that day. Others in our group were Bob “Rip” Henderson, who worked at Evangeline Downs for years; Charlie Lenox of the Lafayette Daily Advertiser, later editor of that publication; and assorted coaches and athletes from USL, as it then was.
This Mardi Gras was truly a red-letter day. I learned how to catch beads without getting my hand stepped on and ate crawfish for the first time. This was a big deal, since my last experience with mudbugs was in biology class in high school. We dissected one. I don’t like crawfish.
J.C. and his wife Flo escorted me through town on a steadily rising tide of food and adult beverages while the parade passed by. As it waned, talk shifted to the next venue, and the group decided to go to a place I’d never heard of called “Sunset.” Sounded interesting to me, so we all piled in our cars and took off up the highway. Lest you worry, I wasn’t driving. I was sleeping in the back seat.
Some indefinite time later, my son Jamey woke me up to bright sunlight and the distant echo of a strange, vaguely French song. We were in the town of Sunset for their Mardi Gras parade. I staggered the couple of blocks to the parade route and found my guests, who were transfixed by a fiddle and accordion ensemble riding in a partially-covered wagon drawn by horses, playing a song later identified to me as “Lache Pas La Patate.” In true Carnival tradition, others on the “float” were throwing things to bystanders. Not beads. Baked sweet potatoes wrapped in foil. Thus I discovered Sunset’s role as the “sweet potato capital of the world.”
That sweet potato was welcome. I was hungry, and wasn’t about to eat any more crawfish.
The queens of any parade, of course, ride on floats. Not in Sunset. They were on the back end of a series of Corvettes. The one I remember most was an ample girl who had been (ahem) well-raised. The car leaned a little to the rear, if you get my drift. As she passed by, I could see the name of the commercial enterprise sponsoring her on the side of the car, taped in place on a poster board: “CORMIER’S FEED AND SEED.” Hmmm.
Sunset is a small town. The parade was fun, but short. So, they ran it through town over and over, three times, so everybody could get a potato and a look at the queens.
In Sunset, I also got my first look at the Courir des Mardi Gras, cowboys on horseback chasing chickens. The chickens were long gone by this time of day and tempers were getting short. The cowboys were blocking our entrance to the four-lane highway between Opelousas and Lafayette, leading to an exchange of pleasantries between my host J.C. and the riders. And that was the first time I heard the phrase, “(BLEEP) YOU. AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON!”
My brother Thomas and his wife Nancy are fleeing the Chicago winter for Fat Tuesday, and I hope I can show them how we celebrate it here. Any of you guys who ride floats—throw me something!! I’ll be the fat guy with the Yankees.
So Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler, mon amis, and I’ll see you guys on the flip.
I came late to Louisiana. Except for trips to New Orleans now and then (you might think of those as “dress rehearsals”) I had never been there, and never saw Baton Rouge until the day I moved there in 1972. Mardi Gras was not a tradition in my life any more than etouffee, gumbo, or rice and gravy. As you can see, those three are now firmly established in the Doyle family. But to this day, I have never attended a Carnival parade on Fat Tuesday in New Orleans.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t celebrated it, though. When my first Mardi Gras approached in 1974, my friend J.C. Hatcher invited me to see it with a few friends of his in Lafayette. I thought it must be a family affair, so I made plans to take along my son Jamey, then just over two years old. We drove from Baton Rouge that morning with L. K. Herlong, a friend of mine from the Advocate, where we all worked at the time.
J.C. was from Kentwood before Britney Spears was born. For those of you who don’t know the place, Kentwood is . . .how shall I put this. . .well, “country” just doesn’t do it justice, but is the best I can come up with for now. J.C. was a faithful representative of Kentwood, but he was also a dyed-in-the-wool Cajun. He loved Lafayette, its university, and its sports programs.
One of his great friends was “Coach” Blanco, husband of our recent governor. I met both of them later that day. Others in our group were Bob “Rip” Henderson, who worked at Evangeline Downs for years; Charlie Lenox of the Lafayette Daily Advertiser, later editor of that publication; and assorted coaches and athletes from USL, as it then was.
This Mardi Gras was truly a red-letter day. I learned how to catch beads without getting my hand stepped on and ate crawfish for the first time. This was a big deal, since my last experience with mudbugs was in biology class in high school. We dissected one. I don’t like crawfish.
J.C. and his wife Flo escorted me through town on a steadily rising tide of food and adult beverages while the parade passed by. As it waned, talk shifted to the next venue, and the group decided to go to a place I’d never heard of called “Sunset.” Sounded interesting to me, so we all piled in our cars and took off up the highway. Lest you worry, I wasn’t driving. I was sleeping in the back seat.
Some indefinite time later, my son Jamey woke me up to bright sunlight and the distant echo of a strange, vaguely French song. We were in the town of Sunset for their Mardi Gras parade. I staggered the couple of blocks to the parade route and found my guests, who were transfixed by a fiddle and accordion ensemble riding in a partially-covered wagon drawn by horses, playing a song later identified to me as “Lache Pas La Patate.” In true Carnival tradition, others on the “float” were throwing things to bystanders. Not beads. Baked sweet potatoes wrapped in foil. Thus I discovered Sunset’s role as the “sweet potato capital of the world.”
That sweet potato was welcome. I was hungry, and wasn’t about to eat any more crawfish.
The queens of any parade, of course, ride on floats. Not in Sunset. They were on the back end of a series of Corvettes. The one I remember most was an ample girl who had been (ahem) well-raised. The car leaned a little to the rear, if you get my drift. As she passed by, I could see the name of the commercial enterprise sponsoring her on the side of the car, taped in place on a poster board: “CORMIER’S FEED AND SEED.” Hmmm.
Sunset is a small town. The parade was fun, but short. So, they ran it through town over and over, three times, so everybody could get a potato and a look at the queens.
In Sunset, I also got my first look at the Courir des Mardi Gras, cowboys on horseback chasing chickens. The chickens were long gone by this time of day and tempers were getting short. The cowboys were blocking our entrance to the four-lane highway between Opelousas and Lafayette, leading to an exchange of pleasantries between my host J.C. and the riders. And that was the first time I heard the phrase, “(BLEEP) YOU. AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON!”
My brother Thomas and his wife Nancy are fleeing the Chicago winter for Fat Tuesday, and I hope I can show them how we celebrate it here. Any of you guys who ride floats—throw me something!! I’ll be the fat guy with the Yankees.
So Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler, mon amis, and I’ll see you guys on the flip.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Songs of Love, but Not for Me
Well, Lake Chuckers, spring is in the air and the sound of love is all around. Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. I don’t know this from personal experience, you understand, only the odd movie and catchy tune.
There is a scene in “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” one of my all-time favorites, when Hugh Grant realizes he will probably never get married. In the background Elton John is singing: “They’re writing songs of love, but not for me. . .”
Yeah. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Even though I’ve been married all but about six months of my life since I was 20 years old, now that I’m not, people all of a sudden are trying to pair me off. One of my friends hopefully tried to play cupid the other day, leading me to believe word had spread that I wasn’t going on a date with anybody absent a threat to shoot an arrow in my butt. Gee, you’d think those three divorces might be a hint that . . hmmmm. Let’s just say I am as good at relationships as Dick Cheney was at open government.
Music choices might give you a clue. No Paul McCartney silly love songs for me. I like that angry woman music. Mary Chapin Carpenter used to be my favorite, until the Dixie Chicks came out with a song that contained these lyrics: “Like a fool I lent my soul to love, and it paid me back in change. God help me, am I the only one who ever felt this way?” Now that’s a sing-along I can relate to.
Not that being single is inherently bad. In fact, I’m enjoying every minute of it. Hell, I just bought a new car and didn’t ask anybody’s opinion first. I looked for reasons not to buy it. Tried real hard to think of more practical uses for the money. Bought a beautiful, black car with a push-button ignition.
Doing the single thing, I first looked at a sporty car, the one on the commercials during football games with a push-button ignition and the David Bowie background music. Couldn’t get into it. Too tall (yeah, right). The salesman came up with the line of the month: “Doyle, I can probably get you in that car, but it would take the fire department and the jaws of life to get you out.”
Since I needed the jaws of life to extricate myself from at least one marriage, that wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat.
But every experience is a teacher, and as a newly single guy, I have learned a few things:
• You are never too old to enjoy the freedom of throwing your underwear on the floor when you’re through with them. I presume this applies only to men.
• If you use a really sticky dish on top, there is almost no limit to how high your stack can build up in the sink until you remember to buy dishwasher soap.
• Never have company more than one day after the maid comes to clean.
• If your maid speaks only Spanish, it’s helpful to learn certain words. “Socks” are “calcetines.”
• Empty bedrooms attract adult children.
• Never leave a teenager in charge of a litter box.
• Potted plants and kittens don’t mix, particularly when the litter box is full.
• As a general rule, never date outside your generation. Either way.
• If you ever give in to the temptation to join a computer-dating site, even “just to see who’s out there,” you will inevitably be matched with at least one of your exes.
• One of the great rewards in life is becoming friends with an ex, particularly if you share children. Really. Men and women get along much better without the interference of sexual tension.
• Poetry and dreams are sweeter in my position, because they contain at least the promise of redemptive love. Here are a few stanzas from a good one by James Fenton, as published by Garrison Keillor in Good Poems for Hard Times. It is the favorite of a new friend of mine.
In Paris With You
Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful
And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.
I'm one of your talking wounded.
I'm a hostage. I'm marooned.
But I'm in Paris with you.
Yes, I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess I've been through.
I admit I'm on the rebound
And I don't care where are we bound.
I'm in Paris with you.
Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There's that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I'm in Paris with you.
I talk a good game, as most of you know by now, but I am truly a cockeyed optimist about all things. There is no better wish to leave you than a trip to Paris with a new love for Valentine’s, wherever Paris may be for you.
Go do it. And I’ll see you, smiling, on the flip.
There is a scene in “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” one of my all-time favorites, when Hugh Grant realizes he will probably never get married. In the background Elton John is singing: “They’re writing songs of love, but not for me. . .”
Yeah. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Even though I’ve been married all but about six months of my life since I was 20 years old, now that I’m not, people all of a sudden are trying to pair me off. One of my friends hopefully tried to play cupid the other day, leading me to believe word had spread that I wasn’t going on a date with anybody absent a threat to shoot an arrow in my butt. Gee, you’d think those three divorces might be a hint that . . hmmmm. Let’s just say I am as good at relationships as Dick Cheney was at open government.
Music choices might give you a clue. No Paul McCartney silly love songs for me. I like that angry woman music. Mary Chapin Carpenter used to be my favorite, until the Dixie Chicks came out with a song that contained these lyrics: “Like a fool I lent my soul to love, and it paid me back in change. God help me, am I the only one who ever felt this way?” Now that’s a sing-along I can relate to.
Not that being single is inherently bad. In fact, I’m enjoying every minute of it. Hell, I just bought a new car and didn’t ask anybody’s opinion first. I looked for reasons not to buy it. Tried real hard to think of more practical uses for the money. Bought a beautiful, black car with a push-button ignition.
Doing the single thing, I first looked at a sporty car, the one on the commercials during football games with a push-button ignition and the David Bowie background music. Couldn’t get into it. Too tall (yeah, right). The salesman came up with the line of the month: “Doyle, I can probably get you in that car, but it would take the fire department and the jaws of life to get you out.”
Since I needed the jaws of life to extricate myself from at least one marriage, that wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat.
But every experience is a teacher, and as a newly single guy, I have learned a few things:
• You are never too old to enjoy the freedom of throwing your underwear on the floor when you’re through with them. I presume this applies only to men.
• If you use a really sticky dish on top, there is almost no limit to how high your stack can build up in the sink until you remember to buy dishwasher soap.
• Never have company more than one day after the maid comes to clean.
• If your maid speaks only Spanish, it’s helpful to learn certain words. “Socks” are “calcetines.”
• Empty bedrooms attract adult children.
• Never leave a teenager in charge of a litter box.
• Potted plants and kittens don’t mix, particularly when the litter box is full.
• As a general rule, never date outside your generation. Either way.
• If you ever give in to the temptation to join a computer-dating site, even “just to see who’s out there,” you will inevitably be matched with at least one of your exes.
• One of the great rewards in life is becoming friends with an ex, particularly if you share children. Really. Men and women get along much better without the interference of sexual tension.
• Poetry and dreams are sweeter in my position, because they contain at least the promise of redemptive love. Here are a few stanzas from a good one by James Fenton, as published by Garrison Keillor in Good Poems for Hard Times. It is the favorite of a new friend of mine.
In Paris With You
Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful
And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.
I'm one of your talking wounded.
I'm a hostage. I'm marooned.
But I'm in Paris with you.
Yes, I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess I've been through.
I admit I'm on the rebound
And I don't care where are we bound.
I'm in Paris with you.
Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There's that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I'm in Paris with you.
I talk a good game, as most of you know by now, but I am truly a cockeyed optimist about all things. There is no better wish to leave you than a trip to Paris with a new love for Valentine’s, wherever Paris may be for you.
Go do it. And I’ll see you, smiling, on the flip.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Fierce Urgency of Now
By Jim Doyle
As those of you I’m proud to call my regulars know already, I grew up in Bolivar, a town of just over 3,000 in southwestern Tennessee about 16 miles from the Mississippi border. I have been known to tell Louisiana natives, particularly here in Lake Charles, that I grew up in “the real South.” This is often expressed by us Southern chauvinists as having been raised in a place “where there is blood on the ground.”
I have maps of the Shiloh battlefield in my office because it has a reference to “Duncan’s Field,” a major field of fire in that spring battle that was owned by one of my relatives. We’re not proud of the war so much as of the history--the type of angst that fueled Faulkner novels of mixed race and old grudges. At Shiloh, for example, more than half the troops from Hardin County, site of the battle, fought for the Union. Nothing was cut and dried except the tobacco.
In 1961, when I was a young 10 years old and in the sixth grade, my director recruited me for the “stage band,” which was short on saxophones. This honor meant I went to school every day in the winter at 6 a.m. and played “Stardust,” “Muskrat Ramble,” and other songs my parents dug but seemed more shopworn to me than the ragged paper they were printed on. It was fun, though. I got to stand up from time to time and play solos.
Perhaps because of where we were, our director added a singing feature to our repertoire that included what were popularly known as “Negro spirituals.” Strange because, of course, I was a student musician at a completely segregated school, performing for all-white audiences in a town where the “new courthouse” was built in 1868 to replace the one the Yankees burned in a conflict in living memory of our grandparents’ parents.
As singers, we were divided up into parts. At 10, much to my chagrin, I was one of the sopranos. I don’t remember every song we did. I do remember “Go Down, Moses,” which contained the line, “let my people go.” I didn’t get the irony. I’m not sure anybody did.
A couple of years later, that song, and others we sang, were staples of a civil rights movement fueled by one of the men we honor this month, the Rev. Martin Luther King of Montgomery. “O Freedom; O Freedom; O Freedom over me. And before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free.” The music was haunting, laden with the time and distance between us in those years when we supported with our skin color, if not our hearts, a system, which equally labeled water fountains, public bathrooms, and people.
I cannot imagine growing up black in that environment, nor the anger I would have. But Dr. King led, thank God, a non-violent movement. So anger was tamped down.
I never met him, of course. I was a senior in high school when he died. I was in Memphis that day, as it happened, on my “Career Day” visit to the band director of a state University. I remember being shocked, but – and I’ll say this carefully, but I’m still going to say it – I don’t believe more than a handful of Southern white people heard the news with any real emotion, nor could even imagine the desolation their black neighbors felt.
The riots of the summer of that year ushered in the beginning of the worst of the 60s and early 70s, when this country was divided race by race, generation by generation, rich vs. poor. More than today, even.
By 1969, I was in college and the civil rights discussion was ongoing. That summer, I played in a garage band in Alabama, several times in Selma. We stayed in a motel at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where heads rolled to state police batons as punishment for the sin of speaking out.
The next year, two of my best friends were black kids from the Delta. One night, we tried to get something to eat at an all-night diner in downtown Hattiesburg. Nobody lynched us or anything, but they sure didn’t want us there.
It is fitting, I think, for the holiday celebrating Dr. King to be an occasion to remember his role in our history, mostly because his power to convince outlived his years. Hard to believe he was only 39 when he died, 34 when he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, which included President Obama’s often-quoted point about the “fierce urgency of now,” and what I think was his greatest line: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
When I became a lawyer, I argued (in 1991) a racial discrimination case in the United States Supreme Court and quoted Dr. King’s admonition to Americans to judge one another “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” This Southern boy, who grew up where there was blood on the ground from a conflict fought to end slavery, has indeed traveled far.
And so have we all. The election of Barack Obama is much more than a political event. Bill Cosby said last week that he brought pictures of his mom, his dad, and his brother, all deceased, into the booth when he voted. I have spoken to dozens of people, of both races, who cried when they cast their ballot or watched the returns pour in. Me, too.
It says something profound about our country that a black man could reach out in 1963 to his fellow citizens, then embroiled in a sometimes vicious battle for equality, in complete faith that this nation would achieve an end to the wound which has been healing, in fits and starts, since 1776, that he could see a time when his country would “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” It says something more that, in this century, a man running for President brought us together by pointing out the obvious: E Pluribus Unum, out of many, we are one.
God, I hope so. I want to watch the next months as disagreements with the President are based on honest policy differences and nothing else. I want to see a nation at the end of his term that will promise a togetherness we’ve never had, because the division of race has shackled us all in the same chains. Maybe now those shackles will open, and in the words of another of those 6 a.m. spirituals, we will be:
“Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
God save the President of the United States. See you on the flip, fellow Americans.
As those of you I’m proud to call my regulars know already, I grew up in Bolivar, a town of just over 3,000 in southwestern Tennessee about 16 miles from the Mississippi border. I have been known to tell Louisiana natives, particularly here in Lake Charles, that I grew up in “the real South.” This is often expressed by us Southern chauvinists as having been raised in a place “where there is blood on the ground.”
I have maps of the Shiloh battlefield in my office because it has a reference to “Duncan’s Field,” a major field of fire in that spring battle that was owned by one of my relatives. We’re not proud of the war so much as of the history--the type of angst that fueled Faulkner novels of mixed race and old grudges. At Shiloh, for example, more than half the troops from Hardin County, site of the battle, fought for the Union. Nothing was cut and dried except the tobacco.
In 1961, when I was a young 10 years old and in the sixth grade, my director recruited me for the “stage band,” which was short on saxophones. This honor meant I went to school every day in the winter at 6 a.m. and played “Stardust,” “Muskrat Ramble,” and other songs my parents dug but seemed more shopworn to me than the ragged paper they were printed on. It was fun, though. I got to stand up from time to time and play solos.
Perhaps because of where we were, our director added a singing feature to our repertoire that included what were popularly known as “Negro spirituals.” Strange because, of course, I was a student musician at a completely segregated school, performing for all-white audiences in a town where the “new courthouse” was built in 1868 to replace the one the Yankees burned in a conflict in living memory of our grandparents’ parents.
As singers, we were divided up into parts. At 10, much to my chagrin, I was one of the sopranos. I don’t remember every song we did. I do remember “Go Down, Moses,” which contained the line, “let my people go.” I didn’t get the irony. I’m not sure anybody did.
A couple of years later, that song, and others we sang, were staples of a civil rights movement fueled by one of the men we honor this month, the Rev. Martin Luther King of Montgomery. “O Freedom; O Freedom; O Freedom over me. And before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free.” The music was haunting, laden with the time and distance between us in those years when we supported with our skin color, if not our hearts, a system, which equally labeled water fountains, public bathrooms, and people.
I cannot imagine growing up black in that environment, nor the anger I would have. But Dr. King led, thank God, a non-violent movement. So anger was tamped down.
I never met him, of course. I was a senior in high school when he died. I was in Memphis that day, as it happened, on my “Career Day” visit to the band director of a state University. I remember being shocked, but – and I’ll say this carefully, but I’m still going to say it – I don’t believe more than a handful of Southern white people heard the news with any real emotion, nor could even imagine the desolation their black neighbors felt.
The riots of the summer of that year ushered in the beginning of the worst of the 60s and early 70s, when this country was divided race by race, generation by generation, rich vs. poor. More than today, even.
By 1969, I was in college and the civil rights discussion was ongoing. That summer, I played in a garage band in Alabama, several times in Selma. We stayed in a motel at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where heads rolled to state police batons as punishment for the sin of speaking out.
The next year, two of my best friends were black kids from the Delta. One night, we tried to get something to eat at an all-night diner in downtown Hattiesburg. Nobody lynched us or anything, but they sure didn’t want us there.
It is fitting, I think, for the holiday celebrating Dr. King to be an occasion to remember his role in our history, mostly because his power to convince outlived his years. Hard to believe he was only 39 when he died, 34 when he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, which included President Obama’s often-quoted point about the “fierce urgency of now,” and what I think was his greatest line: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
When I became a lawyer, I argued (in 1991) a racial discrimination case in the United States Supreme Court and quoted Dr. King’s admonition to Americans to judge one another “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” This Southern boy, who grew up where there was blood on the ground from a conflict fought to end slavery, has indeed traveled far.
And so have we all. The election of Barack Obama is much more than a political event. Bill Cosby said last week that he brought pictures of his mom, his dad, and his brother, all deceased, into the booth when he voted. I have spoken to dozens of people, of both races, who cried when they cast their ballot or watched the returns pour in. Me, too.
It says something profound about our country that a black man could reach out in 1963 to his fellow citizens, then embroiled in a sometimes vicious battle for equality, in complete faith that this nation would achieve an end to the wound which has been healing, in fits and starts, since 1776, that he could see a time when his country would “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” It says something more that, in this century, a man running for President brought us together by pointing out the obvious: E Pluribus Unum, out of many, we are one.
God, I hope so. I want to watch the next months as disagreements with the President are based on honest policy differences and nothing else. I want to see a nation at the end of his term that will promise a togetherness we’ve never had, because the division of race has shackled us all in the same chains. Maybe now those shackles will open, and in the words of another of those 6 a.m. spirituals, we will be:
“Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
God save the President of the United States. See you on the flip, fellow Americans.
Friday, January 9, 2009
A New Year of New Possibilities
By Jim Doyle
Now that we’re finally out of that Bah Humbug mode, I’m ready for a REAL celebration.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the idea behind Christmas, peace on earth, good will towards men and all that. But how could you not love New Year’s? Booze, parties, good will towards women and vice versa, loud music, funny hats, black-eyed peas at midnight with your scrambled eggs (when would you EVER eat that combination?), steely-eyed resolve to (a) lose weight, (b) quit smoking, or some equally unlikely self-improvement exercise. Now THAT’s a holiday.
Of course, by the time you read this, we will be well into 2009, eight years after we thought we’d be on our way to Jupiter to find the black monolith, 25 years after Aldous Huxley told us we’d be one world ruled by the thought police, nine years after people with funny hats living in fallout shelters told us our computers would crash and we’d be eating grass for months, three years before the end of the world according to the Aztecs (or was it the Mayans? Who invented tequila? Never mind).
So, how are those New Year’s resolutions coming? I decided, way back in 2008 on my birthday while writing this column, that I would make a dramatic resolution for this year, something new and different, not your father’s resolution. Something in the same category as weight loss or smoking cessation, but more likely to be achieved during the course of the year. After a lot of thought, I finally found it.
Drum roll, please. . .
I will grow hair in 2009. On my head. Nose and ears don’t count.
Resolutions reflect the meaning of the holiday for most civilizations, which associate the turn of whatever calendar they used as a benchmark for new things, makeovers, if you will. It is the oldest of all holidays, beginning with the Babylonians, who also began the practice of resolutions. Their most popular one was the return of borrowed farm equipment. Ah, you gotta admire those pesky Babylonians. The Jewish tradition marks the year with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which requires mankind to repent its sins for ten days in preparation for a new start, cleansed of the detritus of the old.
I am spending my New Year’s with my son Stratton, a musical star of no small talent. He is proud of the fact that he has been playing in bars since he was 17, when Jay Ecker snatched him into Rikenjak’s on jazz night. Stratton’s primary instrument is the saxophone, and many of you will have heard him play at some point in those seven years. He now performs all over the country and beyond with Hamilton Loomis, a Houston star who does a combo blues-funk kind of rhythm. Their New Year’s is at the Crystal Ballroom in downtown Houston.
One of the songs they will play has become a favorite of mine since Stratton picked up the keyboards and amplified his singing prowess in pursuit of his artistic vision. It’s called “I Wanna be a Better Man.” What better theme music could there be for a New Year’s celebration?
The human condition is a ceaseless search for renewal, redemption, and occasionally romance. The world is an awesome place to conduct that search, full, as it is, of the possibility of something new around every corner. The winding down of one year, with what seems like ceaseless holidays, grinds to a halt as the new dawn of possibility approaches. “A New You,” as the sign says in the beauty shop.
My favorite mother-in-law, Liz Linam, once told me that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.
Let’s see; now we have Twelfth Night, the MLK Holiday, Inauguration Day, multiple Mardi Gras balls, Fat Tuesday; Spring Break, Easter, Memorial Day; summer; and so it goes. Sounds like the roll is going pretty fast already.
I promise I will do my best to grow hair and be a better man. I wish all of you great luck, Dear Readers, in pursuing your goals and resolutions, whatever they may be.
Now that we’re finally out of that Bah Humbug mode, I’m ready for a REAL celebration.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the idea behind Christmas, peace on earth, good will towards men and all that. But how could you not love New Year’s? Booze, parties, good will towards women and vice versa, loud music, funny hats, black-eyed peas at midnight with your scrambled eggs (when would you EVER eat that combination?), steely-eyed resolve to (a) lose weight, (b) quit smoking, or some equally unlikely self-improvement exercise. Now THAT’s a holiday.
Of course, by the time you read this, we will be well into 2009, eight years after we thought we’d be on our way to Jupiter to find the black monolith, 25 years after Aldous Huxley told us we’d be one world ruled by the thought police, nine years after people with funny hats living in fallout shelters told us our computers would crash and we’d be eating grass for months, three years before the end of the world according to the Aztecs (or was it the Mayans? Who invented tequila? Never mind).
So, how are those New Year’s resolutions coming? I decided, way back in 2008 on my birthday while writing this column, that I would make a dramatic resolution for this year, something new and different, not your father’s resolution. Something in the same category as weight loss or smoking cessation, but more likely to be achieved during the course of the year. After a lot of thought, I finally found it.
Drum roll, please. . .
I will grow hair in 2009. On my head. Nose and ears don’t count.
Resolutions reflect the meaning of the holiday for most civilizations, which associate the turn of whatever calendar they used as a benchmark for new things, makeovers, if you will. It is the oldest of all holidays, beginning with the Babylonians, who also began the practice of resolutions. Their most popular one was the return of borrowed farm equipment. Ah, you gotta admire those pesky Babylonians. The Jewish tradition marks the year with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which requires mankind to repent its sins for ten days in preparation for a new start, cleansed of the detritus of the old.
I am spending my New Year’s with my son Stratton, a musical star of no small talent. He is proud of the fact that he has been playing in bars since he was 17, when Jay Ecker snatched him into Rikenjak’s on jazz night. Stratton’s primary instrument is the saxophone, and many of you will have heard him play at some point in those seven years. He now performs all over the country and beyond with Hamilton Loomis, a Houston star who does a combo blues-funk kind of rhythm. Their New Year’s is at the Crystal Ballroom in downtown Houston.
One of the songs they will play has become a favorite of mine since Stratton picked up the keyboards and amplified his singing prowess in pursuit of his artistic vision. It’s called “I Wanna be a Better Man.” What better theme music could there be for a New Year’s celebration?
The human condition is a ceaseless search for renewal, redemption, and occasionally romance. The world is an awesome place to conduct that search, full, as it is, of the possibility of something new around every corner. The winding down of one year, with what seems like ceaseless holidays, grinds to a halt as the new dawn of possibility approaches. “A New You,” as the sign says in the beauty shop.
My favorite mother-in-law, Liz Linam, once told me that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.
Let’s see; now we have Twelfth Night, the MLK Holiday, Inauguration Day, multiple Mardi Gras balls, Fat Tuesday; Spring Break, Easter, Memorial Day; summer; and so it goes. Sounds like the roll is going pretty fast already.
I promise I will do my best to grow hair and be a better man. I wish all of you great luck, Dear Readers, in pursuing your goals and resolutions, whatever they may be.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Battlefields Made From Monuments
Great restaurants start with great chefs, one of my favorites being Patrick Gwynn-Jones, owner of Pomegranates in London. He has a way of keeping things in perspective. One holiday season, in with some friends one evening for a fairly early dinner before a play, the burly Welshman came to our table and one of my guests had the temerity to ask about his specials.
“Damned if I know, Old Boy,” the obviously tipsy Gwynn-Jones explained, “I’ve just finished lunch an hour ago. I was thinking about curried goat, but that doesn’t seem very Christmas-y, now does it?”
I still don’t have a Christmas tree, so I guess I’m not very Christmas-y either. The Immortal Tomato is doing fine, so I may reward him yet with a flocking and an honored spot by the fireplace.
This is nothing unique to me, even in Lake Charles, but the terrorist attacks in India struck a little close to the mark. Many years ago I went to Bombay (as Mumbai then was) on business. When I inquired of a friend who had been there about the hotel I had booked, he referred to it as “the second-nicest hotel in Bombay.” I stayed at the Oberoi Towers. I had preferred the Taj Mahal Hotel, but it was full. Both were the targets of attacks last week in which almost 200 people were killed.
My first view of the Oberoi was its Sikh bodyguard at the door, an imposing six-foot-plus guy with a full beard, turban, and sword. He looked fierce to my Western eyes; certainly he wasn’t; and certainly he was no match for a machine pistol. The hotel itself was okay. My best memory of it is the shopping center, which was attached. The ceilings were low to my Western sensibilities and things felt a little “close.” Didn’t see the shops mentioned in the accounts of the attack. It would have been a nightmare under any circumstances, of course, but imagining the crowd in that place and those narrow, low corridors gave me a shiver or two.
Strictly as a tourist, I did make my way to the Taj, which is next door to the Gate of India, the archway seen on television footage of the violence used by Indian soldiers as a sniper post. The Taj was beautiful. Full cricket field out back, gin-and-tonic bar right out of a Merchant-Ivory production. Now a battlefield.
My worry this season is that we will see more and more battlefields made from monuments. Like many others, my primary emotions when the World Trade Center was bombed, and the Towers fell, lay with those innocents who died in the smoke and rubble, or worse, broke high windows and jumped to avoid a fiery death. We could identify with them, in part because so many of us had been there.
I went to the WTC many times, for business and other reasons, but remember most the lunch I tried to have with Allen Gerson, a Manhattan lawyer friend, at Windows on the World. Allen is now a member of the New York City Council from Greenwich Village and bears responsibility for part of the reconstruction efforts at Ground Zero. At the time it was bombed, I had a case with a lawyer from New York who was standing in line to vote when he heard the plane go overhead and strike its target. His voting precinct was in one of the Towers. His apartment, child’s school, and law office were all within three blocks. All were closed for over a year after the attack.
I’ve been lucky to have traveled far and extensively, most of the time under a now-long-gone penumbra of protection I believed I had as an American citizen. We have gone from bulletproof to targets in the last 30 years for many reasons, some from us, some not. Clearly, the world has changed for everybody. But maybe more for Americans.
We don’t believe we should be hated. As a people, we are sure we always have the best of motives, the purest intentions, the most money to give and the loosest pockets for those in trouble, a light and a magnet for the world. That belief, it must be pointed out, is mostly generated here. As late as the end of 2006, only 20 percent of our citizens possessed a passport. Today, a year after travel restrictions tightened sufficiently to require that document to travel even within the Western Hemisphere, only a third have one. In other words, we know what we think of ourselves, but by and large, little appreciation for how the rest of the world sees us.
I was watching a comedy special last night in which Ricky Gervais, an English actor, made a snide remark about the value of the dollar and asked his American audience how they liked being a third world country. Certainly we’re not there yet, and the advantage we have over the Europeans in our current financial straits is that American ingenuity, commercial innovation, ambition, and old-fashioned hard work will get us farther along than most of the government-based solutions advocated by others. We will never be anything other than a first-rate power in the world.
But that status paints a target on our back as surely as it provided a bulletproof vest 30 years ago. I love my country, and I am proud of my countrymen, but I fear greatly for them. Let us pray, in this season of peace, for wisdom and courage for our new President to show our best face to the world and for trouble to our enemies.
And this column was about as Christmas-y as curried goat. Hope you got something out of it.
Kiss your family and draw them tightly to you over the season, eat lots of great food, and. . .I’ll see you guys on the flip.
Merry Christmas.
“Damned if I know, Old Boy,” the obviously tipsy Gwynn-Jones explained, “I’ve just finished lunch an hour ago. I was thinking about curried goat, but that doesn’t seem very Christmas-y, now does it?”
I still don’t have a Christmas tree, so I guess I’m not very Christmas-y either. The Immortal Tomato is doing fine, so I may reward him yet with a flocking and an honored spot by the fireplace.
This is nothing unique to me, even in Lake Charles, but the terrorist attacks in India struck a little close to the mark. Many years ago I went to Bombay (as Mumbai then was) on business. When I inquired of a friend who had been there about the hotel I had booked, he referred to it as “the second-nicest hotel in Bombay.” I stayed at the Oberoi Towers. I had preferred the Taj Mahal Hotel, but it was full. Both were the targets of attacks last week in which almost 200 people were killed.
My first view of the Oberoi was its Sikh bodyguard at the door, an imposing six-foot-plus guy with a full beard, turban, and sword. He looked fierce to my Western eyes; certainly he wasn’t; and certainly he was no match for a machine pistol. The hotel itself was okay. My best memory of it is the shopping center, which was attached. The ceilings were low to my Western sensibilities and things felt a little “close.” Didn’t see the shops mentioned in the accounts of the attack. It would have been a nightmare under any circumstances, of course, but imagining the crowd in that place and those narrow, low corridors gave me a shiver or two.
Strictly as a tourist, I did make my way to the Taj, which is next door to the Gate of India, the archway seen on television footage of the violence used by Indian soldiers as a sniper post. The Taj was beautiful. Full cricket field out back, gin-and-tonic bar right out of a Merchant-Ivory production. Now a battlefield.
My worry this season is that we will see more and more battlefields made from monuments. Like many others, my primary emotions when the World Trade Center was bombed, and the Towers fell, lay with those innocents who died in the smoke and rubble, or worse, broke high windows and jumped to avoid a fiery death. We could identify with them, in part because so many of us had been there.
I went to the WTC many times, for business and other reasons, but remember most the lunch I tried to have with Allen Gerson, a Manhattan lawyer friend, at Windows on the World. Allen is now a member of the New York City Council from Greenwich Village and bears responsibility for part of the reconstruction efforts at Ground Zero. At the time it was bombed, I had a case with a lawyer from New York who was standing in line to vote when he heard the plane go overhead and strike its target. His voting precinct was in one of the Towers. His apartment, child’s school, and law office were all within three blocks. All were closed for over a year after the attack.
I’ve been lucky to have traveled far and extensively, most of the time under a now-long-gone penumbra of protection I believed I had as an American citizen. We have gone from bulletproof to targets in the last 30 years for many reasons, some from us, some not. Clearly, the world has changed for everybody. But maybe more for Americans.
We don’t believe we should be hated. As a people, we are sure we always have the best of motives, the purest intentions, the most money to give and the loosest pockets for those in trouble, a light and a magnet for the world. That belief, it must be pointed out, is mostly generated here. As late as the end of 2006, only 20 percent of our citizens possessed a passport. Today, a year after travel restrictions tightened sufficiently to require that document to travel even within the Western Hemisphere, only a third have one. In other words, we know what we think of ourselves, but by and large, little appreciation for how the rest of the world sees us.
I was watching a comedy special last night in which Ricky Gervais, an English actor, made a snide remark about the value of the dollar and asked his American audience how they liked being a third world country. Certainly we’re not there yet, and the advantage we have over the Europeans in our current financial straits is that American ingenuity, commercial innovation, ambition, and old-fashioned hard work will get us farther along than most of the government-based solutions advocated by others. We will never be anything other than a first-rate power in the world.
But that status paints a target on our back as surely as it provided a bulletproof vest 30 years ago. I love my country, and I am proud of my countrymen, but I fear greatly for them. Let us pray, in this season of peace, for wisdom and courage for our new President to show our best face to the world and for trouble to our enemies.
And this column was about as Christmas-y as curried goat. Hope you got something out of it.
Kiss your family and draw them tightly to you over the season, eat lots of great food, and. . .I’ll see you guys on the flip.
Merry Christmas.
Monday, November 24, 2008
You Say Tomato, I Say…
By Jim Doyle
It dawned on me last night, floating in my hot tub, smelling the smoke from one of my neighbor’s wood fires, alternately warmed and chilled by the 50-degree variation between my water temperature and the air, that we are closing in on winter. Winter in Lake Charles, of course, means thoughts turn to idle consideration of when, or if, a freeze will kill my banana trees, and whether I should cook some fish (maybe even some pork) in those gorgeous leaves before that happens.
And if it’s getting colder, then the Megaholidays are on the way. Remember when the Macy’s Parade was the traditional start of the Christmas season, Santa Claus and big balloons with turkey roasting in the oven? Now we’re lucky to get past Halloween before the trees are for sale. I actually saw potted pines with ornaments in my grocery store last week. My staff has already placed a rather generous holiday schedule on my calendar. Soon, we’ll have one seamless celebration from Labor Day to Mardi Gras to Easter.
Harrumph!!!
This may be the year without a Christmas tree at my house. I’m down to one teenager and one returnee, and as for me, I’d be satisfied decorating my immortal tomato plant. Hey, at least it would be a “live tree.” This is, of course, a fantasy on my part. My son Harry would like to have the house decorated in National Lampoon mode (Clark Griswold and the many mini-lights). Probably should put something up.
Now, about my tomato plant.
I began gardening this year. In pots. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to commit actual labor by digging a garden; pots just seemed so much more, I don’t know, portable. Then there were the birds. An unguarded garden in my back yard would be vulnerable to all kinds of casual eaters, and since I planned to have a bounty of fresh, organic vegetables available, I wanted to keep them on my patio where my various domesticated animals, including five grandchildren, would likely shoo them away.
So, with optimism, I ordered tomato plants and other seeded mini-pots from some anonymous ad on the back of a Parade magazine. You know the type. They arrived a couple weeks later in a box, which someone helpfully deposited on my breakfast table, where they stayed for a couple of months until one of the members of the Former Mrs. Doyle Club opened the box and took a couple of the plants to her house. This was, I don’t know, maybe April.
By June, I figured I had to move the box. Looked at the seed pods. Didn’t seem too complicated. Bought some bags of dirt and planted them in the pots, and lo and behold, Magic! Green sprouts! I never knew I could do that!
Now I was hooked. I called over my yard guy and got him to transplant my then-dying banana trees, left there by another Club member, into my yard. As I watered them, an amazing thing happened. They grew! By this point I was out of control.
One day at the hardware store getting copies made of my house keys, I saw a pack of squash seeds. I love squash. Bought some more dirt and a couple more pots and planted the suckers in my patio garden. Damned if they didn’t sprout, too! My plants became my afternoon companions and part of my routine: work all day, go home, feed the dog, feed the teenager, water the plants. Even though I never spoke to my plants, I now sympathized with those who do, people I had previously considered eccentric. Hell, I’m not eccentric!
Spent most of my afternoons in the garden section of Wal-Mart. Bought two lemon trees on line and planted them in pots in my house. Bought two Bonsai trees, for God’s sake, in Florida. Added some low-light (as opposed to low-life) greenery in my kitchen. Made plans for harvest.
No harvest.
There must be something about this gardening thing I haven’t figured out. One of my tomato plants did produce five or six small fruit. The squash bloomed beautifully but yielded one miserable, hard, tasteless gourd. Finally I pulled up all the offending greenery and was about to plow the pots after Josie the Dog jumped onto a patio chair and broke my biggest remaining tomato stalk. But I never got around to it.
I decided instead to do some research. My ultimate resource is Google, which gave me a clue. Seems one of my tomato plants was engineered for cooler weather, like, say, Vermont, and that’s why it grew like Topsy but never “fruited” (and I never knew that was a verb until I became a gardener). I suppose that’s what happened to the squash, too.
Right about the time I was planning to yank my old friend the tomato from his roots, he started flowering. Last week – in November! – three fair-sized tomatoes appeared. And that’s when the idea struck me. I could move it into my house and decorate it with other ornaments, maybe a full-tomato theme. Maybe I’ll even flock the damned thing.
Since the tomato plant is either immortal or undead, it’s good for any number of stops on the seamless holiday trail. Hide eggs in the Easter Tomato, symbol of everlasting life. Scare little kids with the Halloween Tomato, a zombie with small fruit. Call him Scrooge for Christmas because he’s stingy with his produce.
Harrumph!
Hope you guys have better luck getting fruited.
See y’all on the flip.
It dawned on me last night, floating in my hot tub, smelling the smoke from one of my neighbor’s wood fires, alternately warmed and chilled by the 50-degree variation between my water temperature and the air, that we are closing in on winter. Winter in Lake Charles, of course, means thoughts turn to idle consideration of when, or if, a freeze will kill my banana trees, and whether I should cook some fish (maybe even some pork) in those gorgeous leaves before that happens.
And if it’s getting colder, then the Megaholidays are on the way. Remember when the Macy’s Parade was the traditional start of the Christmas season, Santa Claus and big balloons with turkey roasting in the oven? Now we’re lucky to get past Halloween before the trees are for sale. I actually saw potted pines with ornaments in my grocery store last week. My staff has already placed a rather generous holiday schedule on my calendar. Soon, we’ll have one seamless celebration from Labor Day to Mardi Gras to Easter.
Harrumph!!!
This may be the year without a Christmas tree at my house. I’m down to one teenager and one returnee, and as for me, I’d be satisfied decorating my immortal tomato plant. Hey, at least it would be a “live tree.” This is, of course, a fantasy on my part. My son Harry would like to have the house decorated in National Lampoon mode (Clark Griswold and the many mini-lights). Probably should put something up.
Now, about my tomato plant.
I began gardening this year. In pots. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to commit actual labor by digging a garden; pots just seemed so much more, I don’t know, portable. Then there were the birds. An unguarded garden in my back yard would be vulnerable to all kinds of casual eaters, and since I planned to have a bounty of fresh, organic vegetables available, I wanted to keep them on my patio where my various domesticated animals, including five grandchildren, would likely shoo them away.
So, with optimism, I ordered tomato plants and other seeded mini-pots from some anonymous ad on the back of a Parade magazine. You know the type. They arrived a couple weeks later in a box, which someone helpfully deposited on my breakfast table, where they stayed for a couple of months until one of the members of the Former Mrs. Doyle Club opened the box and took a couple of the plants to her house. This was, I don’t know, maybe April.
By June, I figured I had to move the box. Looked at the seed pods. Didn’t seem too complicated. Bought some bags of dirt and planted them in the pots, and lo and behold, Magic! Green sprouts! I never knew I could do that!
Now I was hooked. I called over my yard guy and got him to transplant my then-dying banana trees, left there by another Club member, into my yard. As I watered them, an amazing thing happened. They grew! By this point I was out of control.
One day at the hardware store getting copies made of my house keys, I saw a pack of squash seeds. I love squash. Bought some more dirt and a couple more pots and planted the suckers in my patio garden. Damned if they didn’t sprout, too! My plants became my afternoon companions and part of my routine: work all day, go home, feed the dog, feed the teenager, water the plants. Even though I never spoke to my plants, I now sympathized with those who do, people I had previously considered eccentric. Hell, I’m not eccentric!
Spent most of my afternoons in the garden section of Wal-Mart. Bought two lemon trees on line and planted them in pots in my house. Bought two Bonsai trees, for God’s sake, in Florida. Added some low-light (as opposed to low-life) greenery in my kitchen. Made plans for harvest.
No harvest.
There must be something about this gardening thing I haven’t figured out. One of my tomato plants did produce five or six small fruit. The squash bloomed beautifully but yielded one miserable, hard, tasteless gourd. Finally I pulled up all the offending greenery and was about to plow the pots after Josie the Dog jumped onto a patio chair and broke my biggest remaining tomato stalk. But I never got around to it.
I decided instead to do some research. My ultimate resource is Google, which gave me a clue. Seems one of my tomato plants was engineered for cooler weather, like, say, Vermont, and that’s why it grew like Topsy but never “fruited” (and I never knew that was a verb until I became a gardener). I suppose that’s what happened to the squash, too.
Right about the time I was planning to yank my old friend the tomato from his roots, he started flowering. Last week – in November! – three fair-sized tomatoes appeared. And that’s when the idea struck me. I could move it into my house and decorate it with other ornaments, maybe a full-tomato theme. Maybe I’ll even flock the damned thing.
Since the tomato plant is either immortal or undead, it’s good for any number of stops on the seamless holiday trail. Hide eggs in the Easter Tomato, symbol of everlasting life. Scare little kids with the Halloween Tomato, a zombie with small fruit. Call him Scrooge for Christmas because he’s stingy with his produce.
Harrumph!
Hope you guys have better luck getting fruited.
See y’all on the flip.
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