Chains of the Past

The Chains That Bind Me

In June of 1967 I was released from highschool. My twelve-year mandatory sentence was over. Like a dog unchained from a tree, the frayed collor that I had worn was greatfuly unbuckled by the California State School Board. I was free at last, or lest it seemed as so.
Years earlier my father had told me how lucky I was because the goverment could no longer snatch children from their families and send them to schools in different states. Such a thing had happened to my grandmother, which had caused a sadness in my great-grandermother's heart that never healed. My great-grandmother had been lucky too, she was blind, so the goverment didn't want her. My two grandmothers didn't see eye-to-eye on most things.
All these things were passed on to me. Having two belief systems living side-by-side is not an easy thing to deal with. It had twisted my father's heart so that he drank himself to death when I was in the sixth grade. How do you make sense out of other people's nonsense?
"Pay attention Chicken", my dad would say, "It's all about how you look at things". Now I know why so many Native people's last names include the word "look", or "looking". Names that begin or end with the word "heart" have also been passed down. Some things never change. I have spent many years trying to find some kind of balance between what my eyes see, and what my heart feels.
I learned many things at school, but it was hard to distinguish what was true. My dad had discribed stories about how the U.S. Army had freed thousands of people from "Concentration camps" in Europe near the end of World War II., and how millions of good people had died because they differed in what they believed. He said that World Was II. was about the U.S. Goverment stopping other countries from doing bad things. Then he told me how forty miles away in Susanville, the Goverment had imprisoned all the Japanese people that lived along the West Coast in what was called, "Internment Camps". I ask him, "What's the difference between "Concentration Camps" and "Internment Camps?" He told me to look it up in the dictionary.
At school things were either right or wrong. Books held all the answers in black and white. "If you read it in a book, it must be the truth." My dad would say this very seriously, then he would wink and hold his hands out with one palm up and the other down, then he would rotate them back and forth several times. That hand gesture would drive me crazy for many years. I hated the fact, he would never give me a straight answer.
My dad was different, guess that's why my mother loved him so. She would always say she, "she worshipped the ground he walked on.", which I thought strange because she was a Christen. It was my father who held ground sacred.
We would sit at the kitchen table and my mother would tell me different Bible stories while she fixed dinner. My dad would say, "Now chicken, pay attention." Later he would tell me different stories, stories his grandmother had told him. He belived all things had a voice and could talk when they wanted to, one just had to learn how to listen. It was all very confusing.
At school I was taught to be ashamed of my father. He was a crazy drunken Indian, but he held my hand, and brought me to the doorway of my own understanding to the best of his ability. I can see him in my minds-eye turning with his hands out to the four directions saying, "Look, but don't get a twisted heart". I didn't have a clue as to what he meant at the time.

A character pastiche: Looking through Jo's eyes

Peddling up the steep dirt road was hard. Heart pounding, her forty-eight-year-old calf muscles burning, she said to her self, "Screw them, screw them all. I don't need any of them." Gulping air, her voice was dry, but forceful, like her dogged determination to reach the top of the hill. "Don't be that way Jo", she countered the shadow-self that follow her every step. "I'll lose another ten pounds by the end of this month, and tomorrow, I'll get my hair done. Screw the money."

The early morning was cool, the sun just peeking over the grey-green mountains to the east. If she weren't riding her bicycle, a sweater would be needed to block the chill in the air. The sky was a power blue, not a cloud anywhere to be seen. By ten o'clock, it was going to be hot, and by four in the afternoon, unbearably so.

Jo was almost to the crest of the hill, her legs screamed for her to stop. She put her head down and focused on the thick knobby front tire. One, two, one, two, over and over, the front wheel making only a half revolution for every gush of hot pain in her legs.
"Keep going, just a little future. Stop now, and you might as well eat a whole pizza for lunch, with a bag of shortbread cookies for a chaser. Stop now, screw it... No, no, NO! I can make it. Don't look up until you get to the top. I can't...You can and will. Think of something else."

"I want to walk around naked in my own yard. If only we could have bought the whole mountain there wouldn't be new neighbors a quarter mile away with their snooping binoculars; I should do it anyway, it's my property, my body and my life.

She looked up, sweat rolled down her cheeks to puddle then drip from her outstreached chin. The black lab pup that had tried so hard to keep up, was now sitting in the middle of the road wagging it's fat tail in the dirt. He barked incouragement as if he understood her effort to reach the finish line. There was no yellow ribbon to break, no cheering crowds, but he was enough. She smiled as the bike stopped. "Yes!", she yelled to the open mountain sky. The pup wiggled with pure joy, and licked the salty dirt on her left ankle. "Stop that! it tickles!" She eased the bike to the ground and stepped wobble legged to pick up the dog.

"Thank you little buddy, I didn't even see you pass me." Holding the puppy close to her chest, it squirmed while licking the salty dirt from the underside of her chin. Her heart hammered loudly in her ears, the smell of puppy's breath, and pine trees over-powered her senses. Squatting to sit down she breathed deeply. The puppy gyrated, feet kicking, but she cribed it tightly. The ground felt cool on her bottom, she twisted sideways dislodgeing a small but sharp stone.

"What a wonderful morning, yes it is.", and the pup yipped in agreement. She could hear a black bird somewhere near, and the high pitched whisle of the red-tailed hawk that circled overhead. At that moment, she was happy. Her shaddow whispered, "Now what?". "Screw you", she said and laughed out loud.

Clear and crisp morning, my mind is wrapped with words and ideas, want to do's and have to do's in conflict. My chainsaw needs sharpening again. I want to drink hot cocoa and write, learn all the things I missed by putting my nose to the grindstone.
Breaking free of the chain of fear that held me.

The Road Less Traveled

Where I was born in Bakersfield, The land is hot and desert like. Then, it was bare rolling hills covered with tumbleweeds and oil derricks, it was not quiet and still but always moving. The hot winds would blow the tumbleweeds, sometimes at a lazy pace and sometimes with a fury. It was kind of like you could tell the mood of someone sweeping off a front porch, study and methodical, or fast and furious with dirt flying everywhere. That's how I became aware of the land being alive,the moveing of the twmbleweeds. When they were green and growing they stayed rooted to the soil, but when summer came they dried out, and went with the wind. Along with the movement of the tumbleweeds was the stationary movement of the oilrigs pumping oil, their pace never changed and the sound they never stopped, and they smelled bad. They were not alive like the wind, and hills, the weeds. Oil derricks had no moods, they never wavered in their mechanical duty. I didn't like them, I would watch them, but thet never changed. I didn't trust them because they weren't real, that is, not alive. My dad worked in the oil fields for a time as a derrick-man. He had followed my grandma and grandpa out from Oklahoma to work for Shell Oil Company.

Bakersfield lays in the foothills of the Greenhorn Mountain Range, on the far end of the Sequoia National Forest. I remember the name of the road that wound its way over the mountains from the desert vally floor, it was called the Grapevine, and for good reason. It was a steep winding twolane road, which took its toll on the breaks of any vehichle that tried to climb or decend its narrow path. I had no trust in that twolane road, it was dangerous and life threating. Looking down over the cliffs you could see the cars and trucks that had failed in their attempt, they lay there, unburied bodies to rust and wast away in the hot mountain sun.
One of my earliest memories is of that killer road, and how close I had come to being a dead body in a rusting coffin at the bottom of a steep cliff. I must have been three or four years old, walking, talking, and beginning to understand the dangers in life, and how you had to stay aware to stay alive. The befores and afters I don't remember, it's just a small piece, a fragment of memory which I'll never forget.
It probably means alot to who I am today even if I don't understand it all. I guess that's why I'm writing about it now, to understand how it effects me, fifty some years later. I have always had less fear of dying than most people, not that I don't understand the precious gift of life, because I do.
My dad and I were in our old nineteen thirtys pickup truck. It was a faded dark green, so old nothing of its once polish suface remained. When you looked at the doors at just the right angle, you could see a faded black bell with a circle around it, and the letters of Pacific Telephone Company. The truck had lived out its life of usefulness and when its value was next to nothing my dad was glad to get it cheep.
I remember Judy was with us, she was a Walsh Corgey. I still have a picture of me holding her as a puppy. She was my first dog and I would have given my life to keep her from harm She was mine to care for.
I don't know where we had been that day, or why mom and my little brother David were not with us, because we were always together. Guess I was just to little to know. Dad, Judy and me were driving down the grapevine. I had to stand up on the seat to see out the windows. Judy sat in the middle between dad and me. Judy would move closer to me when dad was down-shifting. The gearshift came up from the floorboard, and divided the front seat in half, the lowest gear or compound brought the gearshift knob almost into Judy's nose.
Dad said the brakes were getting hot as the old truck wound its way down the mountain. I could smell the over-worked brakes, and Judy sneezed several times not liking the smell either. We pulled off onto the shoulder of the road at what dad called a vista point. I remember thinking, vista was a Spanish word, we weren't suppose to use Spanish words. I'll explain that some other time.
You could see the vast rolling hills and the valley below, you could also see how far up the mountain we were by the winding road below us. Dad got out of the truck to take a walk he said, which meant he had to pee. Judy and me stayed in the cab of the truck. I must have grabbed the gearshift knob and moved it like daddy did when he was driving. The truck started rolling fast. Dad yelled and I could see him running for the truck. I picked up Judy and stood up straight on the seat. Dad was running at full speed reaching for the handle of the truck door. He was yelling something at me and I could see the fear in his face. All I could think of was saving Judy. With all my strength I held Judy with out stretched arms for daddy to grab. The door was flung open and dad was screaming for me to come to him. I held Judy out for him; he couldn't grab us both. The truck was rolling real fast and I could see we were going over the edge of the cliff. Somehow dad grabbed the steering wheel and jumped in slamming on the breaks. I remember the dust and the feeling of the truck as it skidded sideways to the cliff edge. Holding Judy close, I was pushed hard up against the passenger door. Looking out the window through the dust, I could see an old rusted shell of a car far below.
Daddy didn't move for the longest time, his knuckles were white and the vanes in his arms stood out as he gripped the top of the stirring wheel. Slowly he slumped forward resting his head on his hands while still gripping the top of the stirring wheel. Sweat ran down his cheeks to drip off his chin. I could smell fear, dad's fear, Judy's fear, and even my fear.
Slowly dad looked at me and smiled, "What am I going to do with you chicken?"
"Just keep me daddy." He always called me chicken because I hunted and pecked at everything.
"You and that damn dog", he said. I could feel the pride in his voice and knew if I had jumped into dad's arms as he ran along side the truck, we would have lost Judy. The truck meant nothing, it was like those oil riggs, not alive, but Judy I loved with all my heart, like the wind, she was alive and real.
Dad ever so slowly moved the truck from the cliff edge up to the shoulder of the road. We all got out, Judy had to pee and dad opened a can of beer. He took out his red bandanna from his back pocket and wiped the sweat off his face. He picked me up in his arms and we watched Judy pee, she peed along time and we both laughed.
"We really scared the pee out of her daddy." I remember dad taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly as he held me tight.
"You scared the pee out of the both of us chicken", we laugh again and stood a long time looking at the view below.
Dad walked to the front of the truck and grabbed the canvas water bag that always hung in front of the radiator.
"Give your dog some water, animals come first, then you drink.", nothing else was said. I remember how important my decision was to me and I felt it was the right one to make...me and Judy, or nothing at all.

Cutting Through The Past

Looking out the window, a cold grey mist raises off the mountain this morning. Memory ghosts hang on my shoulders, the coffee cup is warm, the dogs are sleeping and my hearts joy is alive. Closing my eyes I can see the falling snow of the cottonwood trees along the river. The pungent smell of weeds and railroad ties shimmers unseen. My brother hop-scotches between the rails, his head down, the sun at his back, little boy talking to me as I put one foot in front of the other and walk on greased steel. Insects humming, small birds dart through the blackberry briers down along the elevated railroad bed. Berrys as big as thumbs, the sweetest always out of reach, we mark the spot and plan, next time bring our buckets and hook-cane poles.

Momma got a job that week at the cannery, pitten peaches. Sticky thick apron, her hair snooded and those round white pins with the horses heads attached to her blouse collar. Her eyes drained of energy, to tired even to read to us before bed. Dad worked a few days making sure labels got glued to cans going down miles of conveyor belts. He preferred to drink from a gallon jug of sweet wine under the cottonwood trees with his friends; someone had to stay home and watch us kids, get us off to school and all.

I ask him, "Why do we have to go to school, the kids that live in the ambulance don't have to?" He said, "You don't want to live in a tent and sleep in an ambulance do you?" At the time I thought the ambulance was bigger than our teardrop trailer; we hooked school anyway. Living on the wrong-side of the levee in a trailer court can leave a whole lot of emotional debris that hang like plastic bags high in the tree tops. When the river floods, trailer trash packup and head for high ground, fast. The ambulance family didn't have any tires on their home. Kids at school didn't even know there were some worse off than David and me. Name calling on the play ground of life, my fists were bloody. School was teaching big boys never to push my little brother, some learned faster than others. It was peaceful walking the railroad tracks, school was for people who lived in houses.

David pointed to something bright down the tracks. "It's just the sun shinning on a tin can or something." I told him.We meandered towards the trussle-bridge chucking rocks, the birds kept their distance. Judy, our welsh corgi took off barking. I always made her stay close, so I could pick her up fast, in case a train might come along. She scooted down the loose gravel toward the river, and stood barking at some old cloths a hobo probably tossed off a slow moving boxcar. We hurried to catch-up with her, she was having a fit, making all kinds of noise. As we ran closer, I reached out and grabbed a handful of David's shirt bringing him to a full stop, he squirmed and squawked, but I held him tight. Judy ran back and forth barking her head off. That pile of cloths was occupied... with a yellow handled knife in its back. The sun reflected off the silver pommel as if it were magic. It was so bazaar, we were frozen in fear, and yet that dagger was beautiful. "Deads is dead." I said, "Go get me that knife." David took a step forward and I pulled him back, still having hold of his shirt. There is something about right and wrong, good or bad, when to stay and when to leave. Like my daddy would say, "When a little bird whispers in your ear, listen." I was and I did, somethings things are best left alone.

I could feel David vibrating through his shirt and Judy was shaking against my leg; it was time to turn and go.
We ran back to the trailer court. Out of breath, I tried to tell daddy and his friends what we had seen. The gallon jug was almost empty, it was hopeless. "Can't you see I'm talking? Go on now, go play. You can tell your mother when she gets off work." David pulled on my sleeve, "We can tell Marie".

Marie owned the trailer park and lived in a pink trailer with a white pickett fence around it. She was short and plump, had curly white hair and one eye that looked up all the time. Her English was hard to understand. She cussed at us for following the ice truck as it made its deliverers through the trailer court. Guess she thought we were going to steal, like the other kids did.

We ran to her," almost a house". Again out of breath but on a mission, my fist felt like a sledgehammer against her pink metal door. The mid morning breeze sent cottonwood seedpods flying to cover everything in white. Bam! Bam! Bam! "Go to hella away, you come backa later" she growled. I knocked softer. She opened the door, her bloodshot eyes stared at us, at least one of them did. She groped at closing her grubby housecoat as I told her what we had seen. "Ifa you a lieing, I killa you both." Standing on her step waving away cottonwood down, we could hear her tell the police to, "comma quick". They did, we could hear the trailed doors closing as everyone outside went inside. A police siren sent everyone for cover to peek out their dirty curtain windows. Two black and whites pulled to a stop in front of the white pickett fence. Marie had changed into a dress, her car keys in hand. She leaned her head in the passenger side of the police car, then stood up pointing toward the railroad tracks that ran on another levee by the river. The dirt had hardly settled as the two police spun a billowing cloud of dust sending seedpod fluff rolling in sprawls. We hopped on Marie's running board and followed in hot pursuit. Her faded gray Dodge sucked in air instead of gas, cough and bucked like the old men who sat smoking on their trailed steps in the early morning hours.

One arm around David and the other held tightly to the Marie's open window jam, my feet planted firmly to the running board. David looked up, his blond hair I can almost smell now, his blue eyes alive with excitement, a grin wider than the river. "Do you think they'll give us the knife?"

Cigaretts And The Yew Trees

We lived in a small tear-drop trailer that my dad pulled behind our old Ford pickup truck. My parents earned a meager living by picking fruits and vegetables in California. Most people looked down their noses at us. "Migrant workers" they'ed say, which sounded bad just because of the way they said it, nasty-like. We moved around alot, up and down the length of the state following the different crops: apples, peaches, grapes and cotton, tomatoes, beans and a variety of different nut crops. We lived hand-to-mouth with nothing extra to spare. Seems like it was always about money, and we never had enouh to take away the pressure of it all. My parents fought over the fact we didn't have enough, it was the old, "Blame Game". My mom pressured my dad that us kids had to eat even if they didn't. This didn't make much sense to me then or now because they had their alcohol and cigarettes, even if it was cheap Port wine and Bull Durum tobacco to roll their own and not "tailor-made", as they called them.
I remember this time well, David and I were very little, we were in northern California waiting a few days until the grape vineyards were ready and the ranchers would start to hire pickers. I wasn't old enough for my consciousness to pickup on everything, but for my age I was aware of quite alot. We had no money at all, not even for cigarettes.
David and I were sent outside to play. There was a cheep motel next to the vacant lot where the trailer was parked, and next to it grew three huge evergreen trees, maybe "Yew trees". They were very tall and dense, with boughs that went all the way to the ground. My little brother and me walked around those trees, the branches were so thick you couldn't see their trunks. For some reason, I wanted to get inside those trees. I pulled the ground branches aside and David and me crawled in on our hands and knees. All the green seemed to be on the outside of those trees, the inside looked like three joining towers with spiral branches going up, up, up.
It was dark inside and it took some time for our eyes to adjust to the lack of light. This magic place was spacious, quiet, and best of all, carpeted with soft fragrant pine needles. David and I smiled at each other knowing we had discovered a sacred place where no grownups ever came, only us. As we looked around our living cathedral, we spotted on the spice scented ground, four whole perfect cigarettes. Our mom and dad had been out of cigarettes for sometime, which made them somewhat grouchy and easy to anger. David and I were delighted...we had found a treasure, and thought we would be heros to our parents.
I carefully held those cigarettes and crawled out of our new found sacred space. I felt pure joy running for the trailer. David, running as fast as his little legs could carry him was right behind me. We found what seemed so important to our parents,"cigarettes".
It was not joy expressed at our gift, but a bombardment of questions. There were so many questions and the stress in their tone, made me feel guilty, as if I had done something terribly wrong. "Where did we get them?" Cigarettes, new ones, not half smoked and thrown away, but new ones. We both told them but they didn't seem to believe us. Our gift was tainted somehow.

Now, as I think about it as an adult, it seems they were afraid we had either stolen them, or worse yet, ask someone, breaking the famile rule in letting someone know my parents had no money. I felt shame, their shame...it was not mine. I was probably five or so and David a year and nine months younger. We had found what they wanted most...no one knew, their secret was safe, but the fear they felt ruined our gift. It was to good to be true. I don't know if they believed us in the end, but... I am sure, they smoked the cigarettes.