Letters from Uncle Fred

By Xlibris US

When I published Denizens of New Boston Road Fred asked me why I had listed our brother Joseph Patrick Kiley Jr. as the author. It was not a mistake on my part; it was the only way I could get on with the project because I had been badgering him for weeks to allow me to list him as the author, which he was. At that time he was still teaching at Trenton State and I assume he was reluctant to let his students and associates see his published works. He mellowed after a short time, because everyone approved of his writings. The publication of Denizens led to a discussion of his other writings and that brought up the subject of the letters which we had been exchanging over the years. He told me that the letters meant a lot to him because he used them to force him to continue writing even when the mood to write wasnt on him. He also told me that the freedom he enjoyed in writing letters was the limited audience to whom he was writing; friends and family. In this publication I am violating that limitation by allowing you to enter into the audience that can see and read the thoughts he had intended for a select few.

Fred felt that in letter writing there could be an intimate bonding between the writer and the recipient; in the best case a touching of souls.

Fred was still an innocent in many respects; even after the war had stripped him of most of his innocence. He wrote using humor, sarcasm, and other artifices to conceal his true message which was love. He had a love for natural beauty, children and animals. He had admiration for talent, honesty and integrity. I hope that you can discover that by reading his letters. He was my big brother; and I loved him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499004830

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Letters from

Uncle Fred

Frederick Spencer Kiley

Copyright © 2014 by Frederick Spencer Kiley.

Library of Congress Control Number:        2014908169

ISBN:                 Hardcover                        978-1-4990-0484-7

                     Softcover                          978-1-4990-0486-1

                     eBook                               978-1-4990-0483-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 08/01/2014

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Dear Claude and Cliff:

I thought you might enjoy something I did for Christmas last year as a bitter reaction to all those friends and colleagues who rhapsodize on the backs of expensive cards about the staggering achievements of their gorgeous children. Their kids, it seems, graduate from Yale and Oxford and Heidelberg at the top of their class and immediately become advisors to the Archbishop of Canterbury, conductors who perform Handel at the Kennedy Center, managers of the Ederville Railroad, chief brain surgeons at Johns Hopkins, or get named to head a new commission in Washington.

So, I have put together a reply, a lighthearted album of quaint household harassments and personality tics that tend to interrupt the smooth flow of domestic bliss. The exercise relaxed me and economically combined the sharing of seasonal joy with a luxuriating indulgence in unaffected vengeance. Actually, it’s what I do best. What the hell. And in my own mutilated way, I find it to be vaguely redemptive.

A Christmas Album

Yes—well. Ha ha. What do you know? Here it is again. And so soon. That time of year. Not the one thou mayest in me behold, but Christmas. Yuletide. Holly. Mistletoe. Jingle bells. Santa Claus. Happy children at the mall. Reindeer. Ribbons. Candy canes. Spruce trees. Toys. Midnight Mass. Erector sets. Sidewalks. Season’s greetings. Italian lights. Tinsel. Wrapping paper. Days off. Carolers. Eggnog. Yule logs. Long winter naps. Route I95. Star in the east. Lowing cattle. Winter wonderland. Popcorn. Wassail bowls. Three wise men. Steak. Dry cellars. Plum pudding. Bokar coffee cans. Stockings by the fireplace. Two feet of snow. Wooden giraffes. And most important of all, families. Don’t forget families. The time of year when joy o’er flows our hearts and we share it with far away friends who want to hear about our children. And they tell us about theirs. How well they’re doing, how superior and everything. The time of year when the wanderer turns his head toward home and family. Or the man who has a job in another state. And so, from our family to yours, we send our seasonal message of love. God bless us, every one.

I am glad to say in my annual report that we remain as merrily warped and humble as ever.

Their little boy, Christian, screams a lot. He refuses to go to bed. And although he can’t spell or add or read normally, he now appears to have suddenly become an expert in real estate, taxes and household economy and social behavior, and he feels it necessary to instruct and correct his mother carefully on these matters in the presence of her family and friends. He plays soccer and was chosen to be goal tender on a children’s all-star team. You probably noticed. The world stopped turning during the moment of his election. Another all-star team defeated his all-star team. I forget how old his is.

Susan, whose degree in fine arts seems to qualify her only for living with her Italian sculptor boyfriend, works as a garage mechanic. They live in a quaint little house in Hopewell and keep goats and cows and guinea hens and geese, which sicken often and die. They raised some turkeys for Thanksgiving, but the creatures weren’t big enough in time. Then, when they grew big enough, they died. Someone told me once that Susan and her boyfriend had planned to get married. That was a few years ago during anon-violent demonstration in front of the state capitol. Months passed and nothing happened. So I asked Susan about it. She said that it had been true. They had actually planned on getting married someplace. But then all sorts of things had gone wrong. The car broke down, The hot water heater had sprung a leak. Two goats got sick. The dogs got into the rabbits again. And they simply forgot. Things got so hectic, she said, we just forgot.

Ricky, who not very long ago deserved mention in the Guiness Book of Records for his championship lack of personal hygiene, now works for Kodak and disapproves of my clothing, length of hair and indifference to civility. He graduated form the Mercer County Community College a few years ago, took a long bath, and emerged as a gleaming, sanitary example of Mr. Middle Class America. He has an immaculate apartment, a bank account and a company car. He intends to invest in property and is on the board of directors of the Trenton Polish American Democratic Club. He carries an attaché case.

Kate attends the Mercer County Community College, where she is studying to be a librarian. Her husband, an affable truck driver with a gargantuan appetite, recently got himself fired because of a misunderstanding during a strike settlement. Kate’s response to this was to stand in place and shriek hysterically until he was re-hired. He doesn’t really earn enough money for the both of them, and Kate has a profound contempt for part-time work. Guess who gets to pay her tuition and fees? She owns a hound named Bridget that eats furniture and then surrenders.

Deirdre and Christopher are still at home. They’re always at home. Deirdre, who has developed sulking into a fine art, attends Trenton State, majoring in elementary education. Christopher attends Mercer County. I don’t know what he studies. They go to class daily and then rush home. They seem to have no friends. Most students develop on-campus interests and have classmate friends. But not these two. They’re always here. Watching. Peering out the upstairs windows from behind the curtains. One will not leave unless the other remains on duty and vigilant, like a sentinel. They seem terrified that they might accidentally vacate the place long enough for me to sell it.

Christopher has other astonishing dimensions. He rarely talks, even to Deirdre. He depends upon others to interpret his face. When he wants something he simply stands in front of Deirdre. Eventually she notices and asks him what he wants. The car? Some food? Socks? A shirt? A record? Then a light must flicker in his eye, or a twitch disturbs his prehistoric expression, and she cries, Oh, the car! That’s it… You want the car, and hands him the keys. Christ, I have better lines of communication with Priscilla. Priscilla is the dog.

Anna’s routine doesn’t vary much. She comes home from work, goes straight to her box of crackers, and munching contemplatively, reads the paper on the dining room table. After supper and her evening flagon of wine she goes into a coma that lasts until midnight or one. Then, complaining bitterly about the lateness of the hour, as if it were someone else’s fault, she locks the house and limps off to bed, muttering to herself. Sometimes she loses consciousness in front of the television set, but the noise and her awkward position make her restless. Occasionally she awakens with a start and glares around to warn off any further disturbances or critical remarks. Then she snatches up the TV schedule to choose the program she plans to sleep through next.

When she graduated from Trenton State and began her career as a labor market analyst, she anointed herself household queen and officially quit doing all those chores she had been unofficially neglecting since 1946. I took over the job of cooking. Deirdre cleans—rarely and reluctantly. Christopher has to be whipped to take out the garbage. And the house assumes, as always, the character of a Bowery wino, slumped in stains and disarray, wearing a cocked halo of fruit flies. In the bathroom, for instance, people have a habit of spitting mouthfuls of toothpaste on the black formica counter, where it accumulates and dries. Between cleanings (two to five weeks, or the surprise arrival of company) it looks as if we were keeping a flock of seagulls.

I am continually astounded by the disorder we create. It is an avenging dragon born of our own neglect. No one picks up or cleans after himself. I once took some snapshots of our bedroom, which resembled a raging storm in the North Atlantic at the time, and Anna indignantly destroyed them. She reasons that if you don’t a picture of it, the mess doesn’t exist. The place is indescribably. Whole rooms become hampers. On the stairs leading to the second-floor bedrooms you can find, waiting weeks at a time to be put away, a half dozen rolls of toilet paper, shoes, panty hose, assorted underwear, towels, toothpaste, shampoo, odd socks, pocketbooks, spoons, dixie cups, candy wrappers and the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times. The pile often blocks the way and you have to jump over it going up or down. It’s a menace. Yet no one volunteers to pick it up until threatened. And, strangest of all, we never discuss it.

Also, Anna has become a tennis nut. She took a beginner’s course last year, and now she is in the advanced beginner’s section. I don’t know what comes next. She plays with Kate and Deirdre and sometimes Ricky, but she considers Martha Nugent, her niece, the best she has ever seen. Martha, it seems, hits the ball right back to you every time, exactly to where you stand, so that there is no silly running back and forth. You simply stand still and swat the ball. You could eat a peach at the same time if you wanted, or a chicken sandwich. Not long ago I found her sitting in front of the television set, wearing her tennis outfit—hat, sweatshirt, socks, shorts, sneakers—and watching championship matches. In her right hand she held her tennis racket aloft, and every once in awhile, during a pause in the action on the screen, she would practice her service swing. In her left hand, resting on her lap, she held a bag of potato chips.

And I, of course, humbly count my blessings one at a time. I still have recurrent memory lapses, but I have been cutting back on the pills. I don’t even bother about the blood pressure problems any longer. And that woman in Korvette’s dropped the charges.

And so from our hearth to yours at this joyous season we send our wishes for a happy Noel!

June 3, 1997

Dear Aileen and Bob,

I can’t remember the last time I wrote you, which is not terribly surprising. The way things have been going with my head, it could have been three days ago. Every Christmas, when I read your note on the greeting card, I remind myself to let you know all the terrific things that have happened to me. Then I forget—both the terrific things and to write. Anna, as always, is no help. By the time she reaches the verb in a sentence, she has forgotten the noun that sent her there.

All my children have industriously achieved indigence. They live close by because here’s where the money is. They all smoke, drink, swear, are discourteous, self-pitying, vulgar, tell lies and ethnic jokes. None believes in God. They never vote. This stationery, for instance, was produced by my son, Ricky, who quit his job with Kodak, where he was making a living, to go into the reprographics business, where he is not. A ream costs me approximately $10,875.48. I try to use it sparingly. When they are not floundering hopelessly in a financial or domestic crisis and being counseled by the local police, they are gestating a fresh blockbuster to unload on me in the future.

At least the grandchildren are near enough to be a daily nuisance. They are noisy and make it so difficult for someone who only wants to give them every goddamned thing they ask for. And they demand designer sneakers that are as expensive as a down payment on a sea-going yacht. They are all beautiful and bright and smell of shampoo and the smoke from their parents’ cigarettes.

Elizabeth, Kate’s oldest, 14, plays on the high school basketball team. Her mother and grandmother, neither of whom ever got off her ass long enough to engage in a competitive sport, have elected themselves her instructors. The child has been playing since she was seven and knows more about basketball, than these two coconuts, combined, ever will. Her presence on the court is electric—lay-ups, jump shots, hooks, three pointers, steals and brilliant assists. Former coaches visit her before and after games to pay their respects. Strange people in odd places yell out her name or number.

Hey, twenty-four, a burly woman behind a counter at Boston Chicken cried at her. Right? I saw you beat the crap out of Hopewell. l.ast week.

Pamela’s son, Christian, who graduated from UConn a few years ago, now manages a factory in Tijuana that assembles beautiful, expensive clothes for North American children. The labels are attached elsewhere. He claims that his employees, all half-starved young Mexican women, love him and don’t mind working thirteen hours a day.

They can get along nicely on practically nothing, you know, he assures me.

His mother, who used to play Pete Seeger records around the clock, can’t conceal the pride she takes in her son’s ambition to advance himself in the business world. I warn him to stay close to the nearest exit and never turn his back, because you never know when these half-starved young Mexican women might change their minds about working thirteen hours a day to get along nicely on practically nothing.

Susan, second daughter and recent widow (The story is too involved for here: long, crazy, extremely Italian) lives by a stream that keeps flooding her property. It swept a shed away and some violet ceramic eggs, contaminated the well and swamped the floor of a ground-level room. No one has seen the snakes since, and two ducks disappeared, leaving only feathers behind. The finches, rabbits and chickens survived because their cages are well above ground, although they remain nervous and shriek constantly. The rooster has matured and crows throughout the night. She maintains a vast assortment of birdhouses and special shelters designed exclusively for bats. Her garden could easily be mistaken for Rappaccini’ s. All this violates township ordinances. The neighbors, all named Ed, will not allow their children near her place. Susan teaches art at one of the Trenton public schools and has not yet been fired. She has four cats and a dog and is considering a small flock of geese to dress up the stream.

Most of her friends are funny looking, almost gargoylish, and wear outlandish costumes. Sometimes they gather by the stream and, holding hands, sing Ukranian harvest canticles to the full moon. During one heavy rainstorm they tried an Ojibway chant to hold down the water level, but when it rose above their knees, they all went home. On sunny days they come in twos and threes to look for the snakes. They are always hungry and try to bake bread on hot stones, according to a biblical recipe. I am not making any of this up.

Christopher, our youngest, 37, resembles Edgar Allan Poe and recently had to be warned by his mother not to accept candy from strangers.

Anna attends cardiac rehabilitation sessions three times a week at the Mercer Medical Center (by-pass in the early spring of 1996), where she carefully informs the attendants of the many exercises she is unable to execute because of physical limitations resulting from the woeful side effects of superior breeding. She has always suffered a weakness of the hands, a hereditary frailty she shares with queens and other nobility, often misinterpreted by the untutored as sloth. Her fingers have only enough strength for eating and for clasping her head in the classic attitude of total despair. All other uses require assistance from nearby minions. She claims that one of the women patients at the center is jealous of her; another, a male septuagenarian, eyes her romantically. This is not the same septuagenarian she stalks in Princeton. He’s an old friend from Fall River, a CEO in a modest Band-aid factory, and probably doesn’t mind too much, although a few years ago his sister cautioned Anna to leave him alone because of his age and a pulmonary disorder. (That was before she had her knees replaced.) At least he hasn’t sworn out a restraining order. Besides, she’s usually accompanied by a daughter. They limp, waddle, lean on each other, carry books and, giggling, peer at addresses, pretending to be Jehovah Witnesses.

I tell you, given a glimpse of what awaited me in the future in 1945 I might have gone looking for another war. But much of that grisly interlude came back to me in a flood recently when I realized I shared the same history as those grizzled, memory-haunted grandfathers who wept during the televised anniversary celebration on Omaha Beach, while their aged wives, in sunglasses and baseball caps, scanned the seaside horizon for something more interesting to watch.

I broke my hip in a drunken fall (May, 1993) and had replacement surgery. That same year a bureaucratic age restriction forced my retirement, although I still teach, part time. I give the money to the grandchildren with instructions to emulate their parents by spending it on drugs and cigarettes.

You can bet that when they make a movie of my life, the background music will be rendered by a flute—not, as I would like to imagine, a deluge of Wagnerian violins or baying French horns, hardly the shuddering thunder of organ chords or even heartbreaking bagpipes echoing across glens—just a solitary fucking flute.

Kilroy was here.

So, take care. It’s important. There aren’t that many of us left.

Best Regards,

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August 9, 1997

Dear Aileen and Bob,

I’m glad you enjoyed my letter, but happier because you graciously replied with one of your own. My personal mail is sparse, practically non-existent. Yours was the only one I have received this year. I get mostly bills, charity appeals, catalogs from L.L. Bean, Lillian Vernon, Land’s End, Williams-Sonoma and some Arapaho whittling society in Wyoming that carves owls and other wilderness predators out of dead trees and prices them outrageously. I can also depend upon recent issues of Modern Maturity, Arthritis Today, Varicose Monthly, Glaucoma Review and Gastro-Intestinal Quarterly. It was a genuine delight to see a return address I could identify.

In my earlier letter I mentioned the recent death of Susan’s husband, James. Over the years we’ve had our share of disasters (their wedding after twenty years of unlicensed conjugality was one) but none as spectacular, so far, as this, which occurred in the late spring of 1996. I could have sold tickets.

46 years old, he was a well-known local ceramic sculptor and pathological kvetch who considered whining a skill. His family, Colavita, so Italian they even keep the crankcase of the car (Cadillac) filled with extra-virgin olive oil, produced and directed a funeral of De Mille proportions and Fellini étalage. There was a police escort from the memorial chapel to the church and then to the cemetery, a traffic cop at every intersection. His older brother, Pasquale, mayor of Lawrence, gave a speech that included remarks about the recently rejected school budget. Then he collapsed in tears, moaning something about Christ on the Cross and children being deprived of crayons and construction paper. Sobbing, the mother, Josephine, begged God to give her little angel back, but his aunt, Angelini, who sells eggs, growled, No, no, no. That’s crazy. The uncle, Otto, did not attend. He’s in a nursing home he keeps wandering away from, looking for someone called Vinnie who owes him money. His younger brother, Anthony, ordered take-out pizza and served it from the bed of his pickup truck in the parking lot. Mobs of strangely-costumed, punctured and tattooed folk came swarming in from the provinces, some to watch, some anticipating limitless buffet, but most to engage in a carnival of mourning worthy of freshly deceased popes, kings, presidents and philanthropic racketeers. Youngest grandchild, Samantha, 2½, broke loose from her mother in the back of the church and raced down the center aisle to where we sat in front. She tripped and toppled into the metal carriage supporting the casket. The priest watched with an expression that radiated forbearance. He interrupted the Mass to say Is-a the kid all-a right?

I’m okay, Samantha chirped and climbed on my lap.

On a table in front of the altar rail Susan had arranged a few of her husband’s statues, including one of a terminally doleful crow, to let the mourners see how James had spent his time among the living. A cousin, Mario, part-time clown at children’s birthday parties arid community gatherings, gave an incoherent eulogy that blamed James’s death on all the deformed and infected animals he kept as pets, implying that the deceased’s stupidity was at the root of this avoidable tragedy.

The Requiem Mass ran late. The priest, who had another gig, a wedding, coming up right away, asked Jill Weber, Anna’s nun-niece (Sisters of Mercy), to tie up loose ends at the grave. This piece of bad judgment infuriated the Italians. They began to grumble murderously among themselves.

Jesus, I heard someone with blond hair say, I hope they don’t start throwing any stones.

Or be let near any knives or sharp stuff, his companion muttered.

Incidentally, Sister Jill, hardly the Mother Teresa type, is a chain-smoking, beer-guzzling, tree-climbing, ho ho girl who breezily shows snapshots of herself sitting on an outdoor toilet.

Susan, assisted by James’s art friends, has been cataloging his work and organizing some kind of memorial. Earlier this spring they conducted a massive auction to pay for the casting of an enormous bell to be installed at his grave site. Of course, none of this has been cleared with cemetery officials and promises unspeakable future confrontations, which will give these zealots a good excuse to protest by burning down something important.

For the past half dozen or so summers Susan has traveled with this Colavita clan to Italy. It is difficult to understand why they take such expensive trouble. They do not speak the language, have no relatives there, nor a shred of respect for antiquity, know nothing of the country’s history, and loathe the people, the cuisine, the climate and culture. And with all the paranoia and hysterical squabbling that attends anything they do together, they create new pockets of anti-Americanism wherever they go. It becomes too dangerous for them to visit the same place twice. Susan used to return with slides of the excursion, mostly of vicious facial expressions and threatening or obscene hand gestures, even with Michelangelo’s Pieta or the Sistine Chapel in the background.

They eat garlic, Anna says by way of a haughty ethnic dismissal. She still believes that her unyielding preference for bland junk food is unmistakable evidence of social and moral superiority. Her favorite meal remains a well-grilled hamburger, plain, and a glass of milk sweetened with coffee syrup.

But it has to be ice cold, she insists, one of her rare concessions to gourmet dining.

She maintains absolute faith in the pope, Oprah, Rosie, Rush Limbaugh and sometimes Regis Philbin. And as part of her struggle against relentlessly encroaching weight, she drinks ultra Slim-Fast, an expensive commercial diet mix. She finds it goes great with apricot danish, buttered Thomas’s English muffins, any species of Dunkin’ Donuts or Entemann’s pound cake. And it has to be ice cold.

No one appeared deeply concerned when, along with everything else, Anna quit cooking. We had long ago tired of Steak-Umms, frozen French fries, Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks, Birdseye peas, B&M Beans, Hormel’s corned beef and Mrs. Smith’s pies. Vitamin pills and school lunches had protected the children from rickets, pellagra and scurvy. I assumed kitchen duties and found preparing food relaxing. Everyone seemed contented with the transition, even Anna, until she began to suspect that I might be secretly tainting her meals with flavoring ingredients she felt she disliked for a variety of reasons, ethnic and otherwise. She is one of those rare human beings who can vehemently reject foods she has never tasted.

Once, in an unguarded moment, she complimented a sauce I had made for a standing rib roast.

That has to be the best gravy I ever tasted, she said. Pass the potatoes.

But when she learned that it contained sour cream, another of the countless toxins on her condemned list, she exploded with indignation, shocking everyone at the table by noisily accusing me of a deliberate deception, worse than adultery on the front lawn at noon.

Then, theatrically scraping the rest of her dinner into the garbage, she stormed to the kitchen stove and vengefully fried herself a hamburger. Another grim surprise awaited her, though, when she opened the refrigerator. The capless coffee syrup bottle lay sideways, its entire contents puddled below in a bowl of leftover pickled beets, right next to a package of discolored, liquifying celery amid a litter of shriveled tomatoes. She yelped and let out a tragic sigh, not: fully developed at the time, sounding more like an asthmatic wheeze or a country-singers sob than the prolonged bus doors closing, which has become her recent signature.

This place, she announced bitterly, assuming her standard thwarted expression, is a dump, an observation, I have to admit, of stunning accuracy.

Since then, she camps at the kitchen table, feverishly alert, watching everything I use to prepare dinner. It gets on my nerves. Still, I have managed to enjoy seeing her relish more food she hates than she will ever know.

A woman of vision and years ahead of her time, decades, really, she confronted the existential absurdity of homemaking and gracefully abdicated from the demeaning, traditional nonsense in 1957. Since then, every house we have occupied has quickly turned into the day after the Woodstock festival or an abandoned Rwandan refugee campsite. And the grandchildren, on their frequent visits, manage to give garden-variety disorder a whole new definition.

Deirdre (fourth daughter), who has an infinite capacity for anger and immoderate personal habits and attitudes, arrives periodically to denounce the appalling disarray.

Pigs, she wails, kicking aside the trail of clothes dropped the night before by her mother on her way to bed. Swine. What a disgrace. I ought to call the board of health. I ought to call the National Guard. What’s that gross smell? I think I’m going to throw up. The dining-room table looks like a vacant lot in downtown Newark. Why does it always have to look like a vacant lot in downtown Newark? It’s been that way since I was three.

Then, in a tornadic rage and armed with the vacuum cleaner, sponges, industrial-strength disinfectants, lethal insecticide sprays for the wildlife in the alcove, and a heart swollen dangerously with charity, she hurls herself at the debris-strewn rooms, howling operatically, heaving things out the window, into the attic, the cellar, or simply over her shoulder. The dog begs to go out. It takes merciless chaos to exterminate chaos.

Pigs. Filthy pigs, she screeches, trying not to cry. I don’t even know you people. Tell anyone who asks that I’m an exchange student from Tunisia.

Anna watches with faint interest over the rim of her coffee cup. Then, having finished the wedding and engagement announcement pages of the New York Times, she turns to the crossword puzzle, pausing along the way to scan an advertisement for corrective gloves.

Don’t anyone dare stop me, Deirdre shrieks at the front door. I’m going. Leaving. I’m on my way out. Although not even half completed, the breathtaking immensity of the enterprise has fractured her spiritually, and each cleaning implement gets abandoned exactly where its use expired, adding to the hopeless residual clutter. Just don’t stand in my way. I’m only a human being, not a miracle worker. This is the end. Kaput. Finis. Finito. I can’ t take it any more. I am going to kill myself. Farewell. And she leaves.

What’s a six letter word for Boeotian? Anna says in her aggravating, whispery, Jacqueline Onassis, little-girl voice.

Two minutes later Deirdre is back, staggering under the tonnage of a shopping bag crammed with ancient phonograph albums.

I almost forgot, she calls out. I’m leaving this stuff here. Okay?

The door slams and she is gone again.

What’s the name of a Mariana island northwest of Saipan? Anna says. Seven letters.

What’s a three-letter word for Deirdre?

I have to confess that, with advancing age, the quality of our life together has steadily diminished to frequent Talmudic debates over domestic issues that, instead of resolving small differences in a quiet sharing of wisdom, often climax with each offering loud, demonic insights into the other’s character, or the sorry lack of one.

I think that accepting the command of your VFW post is a good idea. For a change I would like to see someone with a sense of humor and ironic perspective take charge. I find the sobriety reflected in these guys’ faces when they pass in the Fourth of July parade ridiculous. I prefer the Little Leaguers on the flatbed truck who go by thumbing their noses and giving the finger to gaping spectators. And I find the rhythmica1 stroll and squeal of the Hibernian bagpipers enthralling. But, for all I care, they can put the goddamned hooting fire trucks back in the barn.

For the moment, my tank has run dry. I shall refuel by reading W. I. Miller’s The Anatomy of Disgust, one of the treasures I got for my birthday. Our capacity for disgust, he argues, is as significant as any emotion we possess. This seems worthy of serious consideration. Perhaps the book will offer some tips on better ways to suppress it. One can only hope.

Stay well, and spare an extra glance at Flaherty’s when you pass (if it is still called Flaherty’s). Humble monuments like that deserve to