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Cancer Chronicles

I found another picture I took of my wife Janet the first year we were married 44 years ago. She was in the kitchen. I think this one was posed instead of me catching her in the act of cooking. She usually didn’t dress up to make dinner.
Everything she cooked was delicious; however, it usually was a full afternoon operation. She concentrated on one dish at a time. When she had one done, she moved on to the next. Janet preferred casseroles where everything went into the same pot at the same time. She appreciated when I helped out on my days’ off. My mother had died of pancreatic cancer when I was 14 so I had to learn to cook early. Sometimes I even sent her in the other room and told her to read or watch television while I surprised her with something special.
She had her degree in journalism like I did but half a century ago newspapers didn’t like to hire couples unless they were willing to buy the business. Besides that, the only job a woman could get was on the women’s page writing about weddings. Janet hated that; she wanted to be on the police beat. A few years later she found out about probation officers, got her master’s degree in criminal justice and was happily employed for the 30 years or so.
When she retired she went back to cooking and was good at it again. This time she liked to wrap rice topped by chicken or fish, then green pepper, tomato and onion in aluminum foil. She slid it into the oven at a low temperature, sat down and read a book. She also had a way with Alfredo sauce over just about anything. These dishes created smaller individual portions and healthier meals.
I learned her recipes and I now cook them for my son and me. He’s a corrections officer, following in his mother’s footsteps. If I could get him to cook like his mother I’d have it made.
But instead I think about how cancer can affect every aspect of your life if you let it. Pancreatic cancer took my mother and I had to learn to cook. Breast cancer took my wife and I returned to the kitchen. I would gladly have cooked all the time if I could have Janet back, but that’s not possible. At least I can cook for our son who looks so much like his mother.

Toby Chapter Ten

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Previously in the book: Harley bought his own show to travel the plains of West Texas. Their daughter Gloria was now a beautiful teen-ager, and Billie was sinking into alchoholism.

On the stage Harley was in his full regalia as the old Southern gentleman sitting in his rocking chair and reading the newspaper. If members of the audience had been able to read the front page, they would have seen that it was the Sweetwater publication which would have been at least a month old. Even if they could have seen the writing, they would not have cared. It was Harley they came to see.
Billie, made up like a sweet grandmother, rocked and concentrated on her knitting. The telephone rang and Harley answered it.
“Hello, Byron!” he exclaimed. “Byron, is that right? You don’t say, Byron. Well, Byron, see you later. So long, Byron.” He hung up and turned to Billie. “You’ll never guess who that was. It was Byron.”
The audience had heard that joke many times before in different plays and by the many characters that Harley had created. Still they laughed and applauded. Even the family who had fussed a bit as they rode in its wagon on the way to the tent was relaxed. The husband and wife held hands. The children sat still, their mouths agape. The parents didn’t know how they were going to pay the bills tomorrow, but they laughed tonight. It was Harley.
After the show and when most people made their way home, a few desperate farmers lingered to talk to Harley in his dressing room. In the outer room Charlie sat at his desk. He shook his head when Jim Bob shyly stepped into the dressing room. Billy and Sammy, the same boys who had tried to sneak into the tent earlier in the evening, wandered over to Charlie.
“What’s your papa saying to Harley?” Charlie really did not have natural grace around people. He knew how to count money and how to save money. He did not know how to make small talk with children nor did he have any desire to acquire that ability.
“I don’t know.” Billy looked over the desk.
“I can imagine,” Charlie muttered. “Things pretty rough on the farm?”
“I don’t know,” Sammy echoed his brother.
“Well, what do you know?” Charlie demanded.
“Somebody told us you keep gum in one of the drawers in your desk.”
Charlie grunted. “I guess you wouldn’t want any, either, would you?”
“Yes sir!” Sammy answered with a smile.
Charlie opened a small drawer and took out a stick for each of them.
“Thank you, sir,” Billy whispered.
After squinting at the boys a long moment Charlie reached back into the drawer and pulled out two packs of chewing gum.
“You can have a pack each if you promise two things.”
“You bet!” Sammy grinned.
“First,” Charlie began ominously, “Only chew one stick a night. That’ll make it last longer.” He paused to make sure the boys understood. “And second, don’t tell where you got it.” He looked up to see Harley and the boys’ father come out of the dressing room. “You two better skedaddle. I got a feeling Harley wants to discuss business.”
“Yes sir!” Sammy saluted and then dragged his brother outside.
Harley ambled up with a hand carelessly draped across Jim Bob’s thin shoulder.
“How much?” Charlie kept his head down.
“Oh, I think three hundred, don’t you think, Jim Bob?”
“Three—“Charlie froze, flabbergasted, shook his head and counted out the bills from the till. “Three hundred.”
Charlie began to write out a loan agreement, but Harley grabbed the pen from his hand.
“Don’t bother with that, Charlie,” Harley muttered. He took the cash from the desk and thrust it into the farmer’s bib overall pocket. “We don’t need any paper with ol’ Jim Bob here.”
The farmer hung his head and shook Harley’s hand. “Harley, I don’t know how…” his voice trailed off.
“Now don’t you worry about a thing.” Harley guided him to the tent flap. “We can settle up when we come through next fall.”
Jim Bob tried to speak again, but Harley shook his hand and turned back to his dressing room.
“Saw your two boys earlier tonight,” Harley called out over his shoulder. “Really growing like weeds.”
Shaking his head, the farmer left the tent and disappeared into the night. Charlie tightened his lips in disapproval and went into the dressing room. He marched over to Harley who continued to take his makeup off.
“And do you mind telling me, Mr. Loan Officer,” Charlie began in his best sarcastic voice, “how are we going to bankroll that show in Dallas now that you’ve given away three hundred more dollars?”
He rubbed a towel over his face. “Aww, he needed it more than we do.”
“Nobody needs it more than we do, Harley. Do you know how many unsecured loans we have out there on these dirt farmers?”
“Oh, a couple of thousand, maybe.” Harley concentrated on looking in the mirror as he combed his hair.
“I stopped counting at $80,000.” Charlie paused hoping the amount would sink into Harley’s skull. “I figured it wasn’t worth keeping up with anymore.”
“That much?” Harley began to wrap his tie around his collar. “Oh well, Sam and I are going to a hot poker game tonight. We’ll win enough to bankroll Dallas.”
“And what if you don’t?”
“Why, Charlie!” Harley exclaimed with a laugh. “Don’t you read your Bible? Those who do good unto others have good things done unto them.”
Charlie raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever read the book of Job?”
“Never heard of it,” he continued with a laugh.
“And—and it isn’t just Dallas.” Charlie stammered as he tried to find the courage to confront his boss with the cold hard facts of their financial situation. “It’s our other debts.”
“What other debts?”
The bookkeeper could not tell if Harley was feigning innocence or if he had submerged himself into the fantasy world of the theatre or if he consciously chose to play the role of savior to the floundering farmers of the dust bowl.
“San Angelo, for one,” he whispered.
“Oh.”
“Remember last December?” Charlie decided to forge ahead. “You took off to Big Spring where Goff’s Comedians—our number one competition—was stranded, and you gave them the rent money we owed the San Angelo civic auditorium so Goff could move on.”
Harley put on his coat and checked his wallet for poker money. “Aww, the civic auditorium people understood. Said we could pay it back a little at a time.”
“And that’s what we’re doing every month—a little at a time.”
“Well, Charlie,” he replied with a sigh, “I guess I’m just not as tough as you.”
“You can say that again.”
Harley turned and was about to leave when he stopped. “By the way, did the boys get a full pack of gum each?”
“What’s the use of trying to reason with you?” he growled as he returned to tote the numbers for the night. “Hmph. Don’t remember.”

The Backyard

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It was the world back then. A garden to be tilled, a home for rabbits and chickens and dogs. Oh yes, cats too.
The backyard was longer and wider than I had the breath to run around. But, of course, I was always a puny kid.
Half of it for many years was a garden—corn in the back, then okra, many rows of potatoes and tomatoes, then radishes, mustard greens and onions. Sometimes a few petunias if my mother was in the mood. They made adequate trumpets, I recall.
To keep the garden alive during those scorching, drought-tinged Texas summers of the mid-fifties, my father and mother put the garden hose at the end of a row and let it run. Much to their chagrin, I often decided to dam up the works and create a lake, with branches seeping from one row to another. This also provided plenty of mud for various products like bricks, walls and pies. It also substituted for blood for my re-enactment of the Saturday matinee war movie. Then the hose was turned on me before I was allowed in the house.
But the garden isn’t there anymore. Not since my mother died.
The other half of the yard was for play—with my dogs. I always had a couple; then when one was run over and killed—which seemed altogether too common an occurrence—I still had one. They chased me, nipped at my heels, until I fell down and covered my head. They licked at my neck and I squealed with delight.
I learned the facts of life from cats. Kittens were as common as the rain was not in those days. I can think of no better education than the excitement of gingerly crawling under the house, softly calling out the mother cat’s name and have her return with a pleasant meow. I crawled closer, she proudly rolled over to show me her babies, their eyes still closed. If I dared pick them up too much they were gone the next day. The mother moved them.
My father built a hutch in the back and tried raising rabbits once. But that was a futile venture because he wanted to eat them and I wanted to play with them. Bantam chickens were safer. We both agreed only to eat the eggs. One day, however, I came home to find dead chickens over all the yard. One of the dogs acted sheepishly. I cried and then decided to grant amnesty. The law of the backyard was based on mercy.
And the playhouse. I could never forget that. It began as one small room with tin Royal Crown Cola signs for sides and roof. That didn’t seem large enough so I added another room with a wooden roof and a second floor.
To celebrate the expansion I invited a friend over to spend the night with my brothers and me. We watched “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” and drank a concoction of mine made of Nehi orange, grape and strawberry and Upper Ten. Then we ventured out for the night. The sky was clear and the moon full. It was joyous. We danced and frolicked in our underwear at midnight. My friend’s shorts had monkeys on them. I teased him but secretly I was envious.
Somehow two rooms and a second floor didn’t seem enough. I doubled the bottom, and more lumber for roofing and even had a perch on top of the second floor.
A few years later my interest waned and my father wanted me to tear it down, but I didn’t have the heart. He relented and took it down himself. At one point he pushed apart two main posts and he bore a strange resemblance to Sampson, I thought.
Now I come home occasionally and the yard has changed. As I said, there is no garden. It is now an expanse of grass. I only vaguely spot where the rabbit hutch and the wonderful playhouse sat.
The only things that are the same are the honeysuckle vines and mimosa trees I planted for my mother many years ago. The trees are quite stout now.
It makes me feel old.
The smell of the honeysuckle is still sweet and brings back the memories, though. I have honeysuckle growing outside the door of the home I share with my wife and son. It makes me feel good. I want a large yard for my son to have adventures in, to learn responsibility in, a nice place to grow up.
But this yard, for all the world events that transpired within its reaches, seems so small now.
(Author’s note: I was twenty-seven when I wrote this commentary of growing up. I’m now sixty-nine. My father, brothers and wife have died. I haven’t seen my friend in almost fifty years. My son is forty-two. We have shared adventures and he has learned responsibility. The last time I drove past my childhood home another man was in the yard. He looked none too happy that I had slowed down to stare. How odd I felt old forty years ago. Now I feel age has no meaning. Being happy, making others happy. Being loved, loving others. That is the meaning of life.)

Cancer Chronicles

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I just had a great evening. I attended a performance of a one-act comedy I wrote as a benefit for the Crescent Community Clinic in my hometown county Hernando, Florida. This is not free emergency clinic for homeless/totally broke people. It is a free clinic that provides ongoing health care for the indigent. It keeps them from having to make a run for an emergency room where likely their condition will be beyond help. The clinic has dentists, mental health counseling and many other services the rest of us take for granted.
At the suggestion of the people in charge of the benefit, I wrote a parody of the Real Housewives series on cable television called the Realish Housewives of Hernando County. Their TV show was the Wacky Wives of Weeki Wachee. (Weeki Wachee Springs was opened as a private tourist attraction in the late 1940s featuring an underwater show with mermaids. It became a state park a few years ago.) We had five ladies who really put themselves into the roles. One of the treats of being a playwright is to sit in the audience and hear all the laughter.
The best part, however, were the donations that came from the two performances. They really went a long way in paying part of the yearly budget of the clinic. The doctors, nurses and staff all offer their services free.
I already knew about the clinic when I received their call. My wife Janet as a probation officer often recommended its services to her probationers. Even though cancer took her away from me a year ago, I find new ways to honor her memory as an advocate to the downtrodden.
Everything I do is for Janet.

Cancer Chronicles

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Recently I was going through some old files in the garage from Janet’s probation office, and I found several thank you cards.
They all said pretty much the same thing. They appreciated her help to become better people when most of the world would rather throw them in prison. These were not likeable folk—sex offenders, spouse abusers, petty thieves, drunks, drug addicts—but she made them feel accepted and liked. Sometimes they went back to prison, but they never blamed Janet. They knew she did everything she could to help them, but they didn’t do enough to help themselves.
Now these were something I wanted to keep for a while. Most people want to be remembered for making money. Janet is remembered for mending souls. But by the time I had finished and tossed a bunch of junk in the garbage cans and rolled them down to the curb, I could not find those cards. I thought I had carefully set them aside, but I hadn’t. I’ve often said I’d lose my head if it wasn’t tied on.
After going back over every place I could have placed the cards, I finally made peace with myself, like I think I have made peace that cancer took Janet away. I did not need those cards to prove what a wonderful compassionate person she was. I know it. All those probationers knew it. That is what is important.

UncaBoy

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I have a confession to make. I didn’t really like most of my relatives when I was growing up. There was this one uncle who talked babytalk to me until he died. His daughter still talks babytalk, and she’s seventy-four years old. His wife had a way of turning a positive conversation into an insult without cracking her fake smile.
The one I liked best lived in California and only came back to Texas for family reunions and occasionally for Christmas or Easter. When he did visit he always stayed with us. That’s because he was from my father’s side of the family. Dad could hardly tolerate him, but mother loved him as much as I did.
He was Uncle Eli’s boy. Uncle Eli was a train conductor in Colorado, and he expected his son Bruce to follow in his footsteps. Bruce had other ideas. He was a good looking guy and wanted to be a movie actor. One thing about my father’s side of the family—if your daddy told you he wanted you to be a train conductor, then, goshdurnit, you were going to be a train conductor. Bruce, I was told, wasn’t happy about it but started his training as a—well, whatever an entry level job was on a train.
One day Uncle Eli’s foot slipped as he was boarding the train while it picked up steam. When it pulled out of the station Uncle Eli was left on the tracks, pretty much cut in two, and, of course, dead. Right after the funeral, Bruce packed up and headed for Hollywood where he earned a respectable living for the next fifty years as an extra.
Everybody called Bruce Uncle Eli’s boy. He didn’t seem to mind it. Uncle Eli’s boy was a mouthful for me when I was three or four, so it came out “UncaBoy.” After that, the family called him UncaBoy even when I could actually say Uncle Eli’s boy.
“You can keep calling me UncaBoy,” he whispered to me one Thanksgiving when Dad was carving the turkey. “It would confuse the others if you didn’t.”
Every time Bruce showed up for a family dinner my uncle asked, in babytalk, why he never became a movie star.
“I was cast into a speaking role a few times,” UncaBoy patiently explained, “but once the cameras started rolling, I couldn’t remember my lines.” He smiled bashfully. “Being an extra was not quite the career I had wanted but I’m happy with it.”
My earliest memories of him were watching the late movies on television . He would point out himself walking behind Clark Gable in Boomtown.
“There I am. I liked being in westerns,” he told me. “It was like growing up in Colorado.” He was also one of the few extras who could ride a horse.
One time while watching The Philadelphia Story he said, “There I am, serving Katharine Hepburn a coffee at a diner. She insisted it be a cup of hot coffee too. She never drank it but she liked the warm cup in her hands.” He winked at me. “I didn’t think she was all that good looking either. Not anywhere as pretty as your mother.”
Occasionally Mother would stay up late with us and pop some corn. She always liked the movies. Dad never did. He called them durned foolishness.
“There he is.” Mother beat UncaBoy at pointing him out.
Sometimes I recognized him and sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes we’d only see his shoulder or the back of his head. Mother explained that Uncle Eli’s boy was better looking than Clark Gable and the director didn’t want moviegoers to know that anyone was better looking than Clark Gable.
The thing about Hollywood was that it needed extras of all ages so UncaBoy kept working even after the stars got too old to be seen anymore. I suppose he was in his seventies when he came for Christmas my senior year in high school. After the last of the pumpkin pie was eaten and the last of the baby-talking relatives left, he and I sat in the living room, turned on the Christmas tree lights and then tuned in the late movie. It was It’s a Wonderful Life. Mother didn’t join us. She said that movie always made her cry.
“There I am,” he said, pointing to himself during the run on the bank scene. “I actually got to say, ‘Give me my money.’ Of course, everyone else was yelling at the same time.’”
They also showed his face. I was about to ask him about Jimmy Stewart when I heard him gasp. I looked at him, and his face was pale and his lips blue. When our eyes met, I knew he was having a heart attack. I tried to stand up to get Mother, but he pulled me back down to his side. He smiled, patted my face and pointed at me.
“There I am.”