BACK TO
Home
C O L U M N S
Joan
Grown
According
to James
Shades
of
Pinkie
A
Short
Perspective
Blue
Bank
Woman
A
Letter
from Lea
Jots
by
Jerusha
F E A T U R E S
ClanPower
Clan Roots
Clan
Kids
Korner
Publisher's
Privilege
Benedict's
Nine
Interactive
Story
Most
recently
updated on
10-26-04
Thanks
for
visiting.
The Clan salutes
"JOSH EDDIE"
for choosing to serve
his country and make
this family proud!
FLASH!
Connor Lynn
Sweeney arrives
on August 5th—
Welcome
Clansman!
Important Dates
10.30.04 — Pond Work Party
11.20.04 — Josh heads to Fort Dix
12.11.04 — Clan Red Kettle Day
01.01.05 — Christmas Exchange
01.02.05 — Hot Wheels,
noon
01.16.05 — Clan Planning,
1 pm
MIGHTY
WAYNE VS. THE SUPER BUGS — by Bruce
Newest
Columns
Human
Being
Hornsby
Hullabaloo
Peat's
Paragraphs
Previous
Updates
Feedback
John's
Journal
The Duetsch Report
You'll
want to
read the new
poem by Uncle Bob
LEFT: Three sweet grils
at the Town House— Emily, Walie, and Hannah
ABOVE: John takes third consecutive age group
medal at the Coach Plummer Run, summer's top cross-county 5k race. Come
to think of it, so did Rita. Now that's what we call a real Three-Peat!
Class
of 2004
Peat named Casey
County Junior Miss!
Rita
Helen Dixon
. . Bellarmine University
Personal Record Set
at State Track Finals!
Hitched
on 11-26-03: Joan and Joe!
Mothers
chosen as Best Moms.
Congratulations to the Bride and Groom.
Class
of 2003
Wowee Wow-wow!
Congratulations, Grrrils!
Caitlan
Claire Adkins
. . Georgetown College
Holly Josephine Hellyer
. . Bellarmine University
Class
of 2003
What can we say about
this guy? Cool hat!
Brendan
Corey Adkins
. . University of Louisville
. . Centre College
.
. Xorph.com
Attention Clan Households
Please supply to House of John:
Spouse graduation picture
(specify "copy" or "use as is")
Clan"tiller
portraits" available.
Seitz 03/04 portraits can still be ordered.
Contact House
of John
C L I C K
if
you would like to
contribute information
T O P
Mighty Wayne vs. the Super Bugs
— by Bruce
I was a weird
kid. Maybe a weirder adult.
. . . It wasn't just the ubiquitous unhappy
childhood: divorced parents, Dad disinterested, Mom always working, my
sister into drugs and bad boys. Those are just details, not worth criticism
or commentÐthey don't matter. I suppose we were all addicted to unhappiness
in our own ways. Sometimes still are.
. . . I kept to myself. Attribute it to what you will: social anxiety
disorder, shyness, learned behavior, low self-esteem, fate, the will of
god, basic personality, astrology, numerology, oriental five-phase theory,
lassez-faire. It doesn't matter.
. . . The faeries took me long ago, maybe switched me at birth. I had
dreams: faces would linger in the air, even after I woke screaming. I
sold old newspapers, a nickel each. Everything was possible.
. . . I read a history of the Civil War by Bruce Catton at six. I remember
begging for it. Dad never thought I'd read it. He was wrong. Seven hours
straight I read, laying on the couch. He threw me off so he could watch
TV.
. . . Secret of the Andes at seven.
Mom and Dad telling us about the divorce. I just kept reading. It didn't
matter.
. . . The Hobbit at nine. I heard
the faery voices, calling from far away.
. . . People of the Black Circle
and Hour of the Dragon at ten. Grandma brought them to me in the
hospital. It's what they had in the gift shop, she thought I might like
them. Lord help us, I did. Tom Sawyer, too, from my stepmom. I liked Conan
better.
. . . Lord of the Rings at twelve.
And every month thereafter for eight or nine years.
. . . War and Peace at thirteen.
War and Peace? Come on. I guess I thought I should read it.
. . . Friends would come over. They left, the books stayed. Sometimes
I got thrown out of the house. Sunshine, fresh air, all that.
. . . The reports came in.
. . . "Good student, but sometimes inattentive."
. . . "Bruce seems to spend much of his time in a fantasy world."
This at six, mind you. Where the hell else would I be?
. . . "Space cadet." That was
my father— and George's. No wonder we became friends. Though George
was overbearing, if anything.
. . . I was quiet. Too quiet, they tell me. I still don't say much for
the most part. What is there to say, anyway? Distant as I am, I sometimes
think I'm closer to others than myself. It doesn't matter.
. . . As a teenager it was Dungeons & Dragons, Tolkein, sci-fi and fantasy
novels by the cartload. In class, at home, in bed, always reading. Not
in the car, I get sick. As an adult, I discovered serious literature.
Also oriental medicine, chi-kung, psychic phenomena, talking to the dead.
Anything's possible. Even in the car. I skipped school to read. I attended
one day in five my senior year. My teachers thought I was into drugs,
I'm sure. Wasn't interested in drugs, never was. My sister talked me into
hitting a roach when I was fourteen. First toke, Mom pulls in the driveway.
The roach went over the fence, my sister followed it like an Olympic vaulter.
Half an hour stumbling around in the backyard pretending to look for the
cat for me.
. . . Long time before I tried that again, five years probably. Not much
then. Just makes me sleepy.
. . . Another time sis took me to a "party." She seventeen,
I fifteen. Couple of her friends, an older brother, some dude that was
way too old to have us in his home. They took downers. I watched TV and
sipped orange Crush. They slept.
. . . Never did drugs.
. . . Didn't even get drunk till I was seventeen.
Two beers. Me and George giggling like schoolgirls under a picnic table.
Can't claim I didn't do that again. Girls? I was weird.
. . . But I'm writing this because of Wayne. Ivan really, but I didn't
know that for years. Thought it was a nickname. They all have nicknames,
my step-family. Mombo, Dadbo, Bimbo, Jimbo, Jeffron, Jerome who is Jaybo,
Jay who is Bubba (two years to straighten that out), the Grils Jeannie
and Joanie.
. . . I was fourteen when I met them all. Down in Kentucky, even though
they were all from Ohio, like me. They'd bought a farm, a big farm, and
that's where we'd meet. They liked me. I don't know why. They just did.
The sunlight seemed different.
. . . And then there was Wayne. We recognized each other, me looking forward,
him looking back in a way. We didn't look like each other, or act like
each other. Not at all the same really, except for that one thing. Don't
ask me to explain it. I could, but that still wouldn't be it. It doesn't
matter.
. . . Wayne wasn't weird like me, not immediately
detectable. He liked sci-fi, but I suppose it was a habit he acquired
riding around in nuclear submarines. I still don't know what he did for
Johnson Controls— electrical engineering, programming, systems analysis?
Never mattered.
. . . Wayne liked my writing.
. . . That's another thing I always was, a writer. We wrote Halloween
stories for Ms. Dilly in second grade. I wrote "Too Much Soup."
I didn't want to eat the Mulagitawny soup the night before. I don't know
what I wanted, but it wasn't that. So, being seven, I threw a fit.
. . . The doomed protagonist of that story died of a soup overload, forced
on him by his cruel mother. People laughed at the story. I laughed at
it. Something real, something unfair and horrible, was now laughable.
Life wasn't so bad after all, at least after it was filtered through my
pencil.
. . . My writing as a young adult wasn't great. Maybe it showed promise.
I got a really nice rejection letter once. But it was so derivative. I
mean all artists steal, but I could've been hung for unoriginality. I
guess that's how it starts. Now I know I'll never come up with anything
new. Maybe I can entertain.
. . . Wayne liked my writing. It didn't matter.
. . . Wayne liked me. I know because he
was patient with me. He never lectured me, not once that I can recall.
I was often an obnoxious kid. Hell, an obnoxious adult. Angry, disdainful,
only seeing bad, except for Wayne and my stepfamily. I drank, I stole,
I lied— well, that's all you need to know. I never killed anyone.
I laughed at life, but I didn't like it. The only indication I gave of
liking anyone was to heap sarcastic barbs upon them. Love hurts.
. . . Wayne took it. Maybe he'd done the same thing. Maybe he understood
it. Maybe it didn't matter.
. . . I got him when he was on prednisone, though. David Letterman spent
a summer making fun of that Atlanta Braves pitcher, the "tub of goo."
I saw Wayne at a family gathering, he had a "Turb-O-Motion"
tee on. Need I say more?
. . . Even then, tears in his eyes, he didn't yell at me, didn't explain,
didn't complain. Just said my name. It was enough.
. . . I take prednisone now. People make comments. Sometimes I laugh.
Sometimes I bite back the anger. It doesn't matter. Karma.
. . . We got sick at the same time. Kidney failure for me, Hodgkin's for
him. I'm still alive. Wayne went down. Not quick, but all of a sudden.
He worked pretty much right up to the end. I wish he hadn't. Sometimes
I think if he'd done some things different he'd still be around. Probably
not. See paragraph three, sentence two.
. . . He's resting in the apple orchard now, next to Dadbo. It's peaceful
there, on the hill, at the edge of the woods. I don't go there too often.
It doesn't bother me, but it seems like he's closer away from there.
. . . Wayne was an anchor for me. He understood. I wouldn't hold a job,
didn't want a job. I just wanted to live, listen to music, hang out with
friends, write a little, sleep a lot. I hadn't read R. Buckminster Fuller,
hadn't heard of him yet, but his words were stamped on my soul: "Man
is the only creation of nature that has to earn a living." Something
like that. I wanted to do what interested me. Not what anyone else said
I had to do. Still pretty much insist on that. Wayne got that. "Life
is an adventure, you've got to live it," he wrote me. I don't think
he was telling me I had to do something: I think he was telling me I wanted
to do something, but I had to have the discipline to do it. But Wayne
was not presumptuous, not that I ever saw.
. . . I used to disappear from Dayton, just
hop in my '76 Celica (I miss that car, too) and fly down to Kentucky.
When life seemed empty, I went. Not that life was so cruel to me: I made
most of my trouble. I just never liked it— living —that much.
. . . We were all from Ohio, but my step-grandparents had bought this
spread in Kentucky. I didn't think I was an outdoors person, a country
person.. But I don't living in cities, never have, and I can walk in the
woods all day. Not to hunt, not to explore. Just to see. And the hills
on that farm, they're magic. Even now, when closeness has been partly
replaced by business, those hills retain their glow. Nothing changes,
not there.
. . . Today I thought about Wayne and the VW Beetles again. I still see
a snapshot of his face at that moment regularly, mashed into my mind.
. . . Maybe I find it funny because it was so humiliating for him. My
humor's always run that way. Was it Mel Brooks who said, "Tragedy
is when I sneeze: comedy is when you fall in a ditch."? Something
like that. Maybe he was quoting someone else.
. . . It wasn't much really. Wayne took me with him to log a tree or two,
get some firewood. Chain saws and everything. I'd never used one: I didn't
want to go, knowing I'd come back missing an appendage or two. But he
insisted. He had a reason, I'm sure, but I don't know what. It doesn't
matter.
. . . So we're cutting down this tree maybe ten feet up the slope, just
off the road near the old barn halfway to the back. Or Wayne is. I stand
there, waiting to finish it when it's down.
. . . I had at least seen trees cut down before, and I can't help but
notice that Wayne's notching the tree on the downslope side. The tree's
leaning uphill, but I'm pretty sure that the gap he's making is going
to make it fall opposite the direction Wayne's apparently expecting.
. . . "Isn't that going to hit the barn?" I shout over the chain
saw and muffed helmets we're both wearing.
. . . Wayne gives me a furled brow look and shakes his head. What do I
know?
. . . Well, Wayne was right. The tree didn't hit the barn. Not hard enough
to do any damage, anyway. Can't say the same for the four VW's parked
along it, Beetle carcasses waiting for salvage. We could only watch as
the tree fell toward them, slow motion, almost a surprise when glass shattered
and metal crumpled.
. . . Nothing's funnier than someone's expression when they realize they've
just done something stupid. Wayne's face at that moment was the archetype
of that expression, Plato's ideal.
. . . I laughed till he was irritated. It didn't matter.
. . . Wayne's dead ten years now. I still get that picture in my head
pretty often. I didn't cry until after his funeral service. I managed
to ignore the thing until the night before, when I found I couldn't sleep:
but I didn't feel like crying. I tried, but I couldn't. But walking away
from his grave, my knees buckled. I can imagine Cliff's face while I clung
to his knees, sobbing, this ungodly buzzing passing through my body.
. . . A couple of years later, I was at that point again. I mean, I was
moving ahead, getting through college, taking care of myself. But I wasn't
happy, so I prayed. I prayed to Wayne, I don't know why. Nobody told me
you could do that. I told him I was struggling, I didn't know what he
could do, but if he could open some doors for me, I'd appreciate it.
. . . Two weeks later, I was in Norfolk visiting an ex-girlfriend. I should
say my exgirlfriend. I never dated much.
. . . For a lark, she took me to a psychic spiritualist church. I was
open to it, and when the service leader asked me in turn if I desired
a "reading," a communication from those beyond, I said yes.
. . . Her physical description threw me off. I didn't know Wayne had always
worn a moustache until just before I met him. But then she described his
personality, and I began to think, even though I'd never thought of him
the way she described him: quiet, sad, humorous.
. . . Then she said, "He wants you to know he's opening some doors
for you." It was a couple of years later I started to feel the voices.
I wasn't trying, it just happened, like someone knocking on the door.
Think of it what you will: it doesn't matter.
. . . I've talked to Wayne a lot since then. I suppose it's going to take
me quite a while to work off the debt I owe him.
. . . This is for you, Wayne. I can't pretend to understand where you
are. But I know you're here now, and if you can't read this, you can feel
it, buzzing through my body.
. . . This is for all the stories I started that neither of us finished.
This is for you and our circle of friends. I can only repay you by doing
what I told you I would.
. . . I still want to see you, the way a soldier overseas wants to reach
through the phone and touch his wife. I know it won't be so long till
I'm home, but it's hard to imagine now. I worry that you won't be there,
off on your next assignment.
. . . This is your reward. You were right.
. . . About everything.
. . . Not that it matters.
The
9/11 Sports Talk — by Nic
A Parent's Letter —
by Joan
. . .
The
Perquisites . . .
. . . It's
me again—
nagging you to make a contribution to this online newsletter. As they
say, it's a miserable job, but somebody has to do it. Nevertheless, one
of the benefits of this position is that I get to publish a picture of
myself as an "ickyshirt" guy. (I was told it was in my contract.
Look it up in the Dixonary, if you have to.)
.
. . Another
more important benefit is the delightful privilege of getting to be the
first to read and prepare new submissions, like the ones from Kristi and
Rita. Thanks to both of you! Please keep your column coming on a regular
basis.
Next
time I'll transfer it to the site much sooner.
.
. . Ladies
and gentlemen of the Clan, it would be my distinct pleasure to have you
join them. That would be a benefit not just to me, but to all of us. Go
for it!
.
. . John
A
. . . Web Editor
