It’s an amazing era to be alive, mostly because You Tube has archived our most embarrassing moments in perpetuity. This morning I was forwarded a video of my childhood nemesis, Lawrence Welk, the man my parents chose to watch instead of “The Six Million Dollar Man” on our only TV. Welk’s wholesome blend of gospel, orchestral, and country music was inflicted on America for more than twenty-seven years before it was perpetrated again on that generation’s offspring in the form of endless syndication on PBS. The purity of The Lawrence Welk Show made Ed Sullivan look like Timothy Leary, yet clearly one of his producers let one slip past the goalie in this particular episode broadcast in early 1971. The duo of Gail Farrell and Dick Dale performed “One Toke Over The Line” as a gospel/country number… and with straight faces!
To appreciate the irony, it’s important to note that Brewer & Shipley’s song (and only hit) had just been banned by the FCC. The Vice President of the United States at the time, Spiro Agnew, had just named them personally as dangerous and subversive to American youth. On April 15, 1971, Rolling Stone magazine wrote that the song, “began a steady cruise up the charts – until the FCC issued it’s ‘reminder’ to broadcasters to know the meaning of songs that ‘tend to glorify or promote the use of illegal drugs such as marijuana, LSD, speed, etc.’ Now, at least half a dozen Top 40 stations have dropped the single.”
Explaining the meaning behind his lyrics, Michael Brewer said, “One day we were pretty much stoned and all and Tom says, Man, I’m one toke over the line tonight. I liked the way that sounded and so I wrote a song around it.” In fact, Shipley often introduced the song in concert as “our cannabis spiritual.”
How fitting, then, that Lawrence Welk looked on approvingly at the end of the song and said, “And there you heard a modern spiritual by Gail & Dale.”
There is something deliciously appropriate in seeing those who hold themselves up as paragons of virtue unwittingly switching sides for a moment. In a state of religious fervor, one of Welk’s producers must have heard the words “sweet Jesus” and “sweet Mary” and completely missed that Mary was actually Mary Jane. A song referencing pre-marital sex and smoking pot, sung by a woman dressed as a cowgirl as she bounces on the lap of a grown man? That is really “over the line.”
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on March 24, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
As the NCAA Tournament begins its second week today, so does the March Madness diet that accompanies the basketball marathons I watch on TV. With my bracket on one knee and bacon cheese dip on the other, I watch my picks implode as I wolf down an entire bag of nachos. It’s Pavlovian, an annual rite of spring that inevitably leaves me with indigestion and extra five pounds by the time they crown a new champion. Each year, though, I promise that I won’t do it again.
After two months listening to my home scale groan under my weight while it answered only with an endless series of error messages, I knew it was time to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the local gym. Like most gym memberships, I kept mine because not paying for it would be an admission that I’d given up. However, other than flicking the card out of the way each morning to find my house keys, it wasn’t getting much of a workout. Unfortunately, it seems this year’s “New Year’s resolution exercisers” are still hanging in there and clogging the gyms with the same regularity the bacon cheese dip is clogging my arteries. I needed something new.
On my lap this afternoon is something called the Beach Body P90-X, and the box states that Tony Horton (whoever he is) is going to provide me with two “extreme workouts” using “the science of Muscle Confusion.” It will get me absolutely ripped in 90 days. While it sounds painful, the people on the box look really happy. Evidently, if I’m good, I’ll also get a chance to buy Tony’s Ab Ripper. Granted, when you’re as overweight as I am, “extreme workouts” seem like a one-way ticket to the emergency room. Ripping your abs loses its appeal when you’ve already ripped a hernia through your stomach wall.
This box comes courtesy of my older brother, a well-meaning attempt to “confuse my muscles” into losing some weight. It’s the latest in a long line of boxed hope that has blighted my doorstep over the years. When it comes to yo-yo dieting, I am the Duncan Glow-in-The-Dark Deluxe Yo-Yo.
The Zone Diet promised to retool my metabolism with a balanced diet that would hold off heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. It left me pining for carbohydrates and so hungry between meals that people began looking like big hot dogs. The Atkins Diet promised to change my body from a carbohydrate-burning engine into a fat-burning engine, albeit an engine evidently fueled by incessant constipation. Dr. Phil’s Diet Solution promised to change my negative thoughts to positive impulses, but he lost me when he said to substitute old habits (like eating pizza) with new ones (a nice shower or a good book). Doc, if I showered every time I wanted to eat ice cream, I’d have scraped off all my skin by now. My mom even tried to send me her old copy of “Sweatin’ To The Oldies” with Richard Simmons. I sent it back; I have my pride.
Dieting is a big-money industry that keeps the B and C-List celebrities working well past their prime. Dan Marino and Tori Spelling hawk Nutri-System, Rachel Hunter sells Slim Fast, Valerie Bertinelli pushes Jenny Craig, and Jenny McCarthy shills for Weight Watchers. Of course, Trim Spa had Anna Nicole Smith, but that partnership was not quite as wildly successful as either party hoped.
In the end, those of us fighting our weight are fighting to take some control of our lives. However, the control offered by fad diets is both elusive and illusory. In the process of following the latest trend, we often give up what little control we have. Rather than taking responsibility, we are allowed to blame our genetics, our food, our surroundings, or our past. There isn’t a magic pill, protein/carbohydrate ratio, or root extract that provides a short cut to good health. Even Oprah learned this the hard way, and she can afford to avoid the hard way at all costs!
I’ve stopped looking at the flashy packaging and the fancy book covers. I’ve learned it’s not just the diet, it’s the person suffering through the diet that needs to be switched up. It’s not the newest pill on the market that will transform me, it’s lacing up the old running shoes that sit in my closet like forgotten change. Most importantly, my waistline doesn’t benefit from hours of watching basketball—it might helped if I actually picked one up myself.
What I need is a non-surgical gastric bypass, something that slaps a hand over my mouth after I finish the first helping. That would really confuse my muscles!
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on February 24, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
The onslaught of President’s Sale commercials has finally subsided. Before the craziness of car clearances and appliance sell-offs, however, President’s Day marked Timothy Dwight Elementary School’s annual spring concert. What better way to punish our parents for a hard-won day off from work than to subject them to one-and-a-half hours of pre-pubescent interpretations of our country’s most patriotic songs?
In middle school, my music class was the only place where my fellow students and I were faced with the harsh reality of our limitations. Mostly, the teachers would fall over themselves to prop us up and keep our faces out of the mud. My shoddy compositions were “an improvement.” My low math scores showed “creativity and promising thought.” Even in history, my butchering of events could be termed “revisionist optimism.” (Then again, my teachers kept referring to a President’s Day that even now does not exist as a federal holiday. It’s simply Washington’s birthday with Lincoln tagging along.)
But in music, as in life, talent wins out in the end. I might have gotten pats on the back for remembering not to pick my nose in class, but by the time I got to music I knew the jig was up. To be in a room where children are playing instruments is to see God’s bias toward music. Those without talent stick out like a sore thumb—thumbs that would sound better if sucked rather than used to play the cello. I still remember how excited I was on my first day of sixth grade music class. Finally, I would get to play an instrument other than the tambourine or maracas. It doesn’t take long for the glory of a well-practiced recorder concerto to lose its luster. On that glorious day, our music teacher picked up each of the shiny, polished instruments before him and demonstrated how each sounded. I was hooked after hearing the trumpet. Even in music, I fell into line on the phallic spectrum: not quite the trombone, but certainly not the clarinet. No, the trumpet seemed “just right.” I don’t recall the exact reasoning behind this decision: the closest I’d come to a trumpet was listening to “All You Need Is Love.” Mostly, I chose it because it only had three buttons. Unlike the others, with their forest of valves and holes and strings and bows and slides to fuss about, the trumpet seemed like a scooter in a sea of Harley Davidsons. It might not get me any dates, but it wouldn’t take much to get on the road.
My music teacher told us that we should name our instruments in order to better “connect” with them. My parents refused to buy me a trumpet, instead opting to rent one from the school. My dad would sooner buy me shotgun than a trumpet because it would make less racket, and even if everything went wrong he wouldn’t suffer long.
I kept at him, however, convinced that I couldn’t name an instrument without owning it. Who goes to a pet store and starts naming the fish in the tanks if they’re not taking them home? Finally, my mom cracked on my birthday and bought me a used trumpet with a dull shine and the distant memory of chrome about the buttons. The case was beautiful, however—I would carry around the carcass of an outhouse rat if it came in a purple, velvet-lined molded carrying case!
I raced up to my room and closed the horrid box that contained John Doe, the name of my RENTED trumpet, and shoved it under the bed. I opened my new case and pulled out… Maria, sweet Maria, and gave her a quick polish. I pulled out my sheet music and began “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Twinkle I did, managing to pucker my lips in my best Dizzy Gillespie.
Alas, there was an ugly side to Maria. A dark place she hid to anyone who saw her, and known only to those who knew her… intimately. Maria had a spittle. A spittle is a small place where all the spit collects while you blow into the trumpet, a mucous house. Maria housed a perpetual loogie that rolled around inside her, just waiting for fumbling elementary school hands to accidentally open it in mid-tune. In fact, she needed to be emptied like a choral colostomy bag after every song! I never saw Louis Armstrong swearing because he’s just poured an ounce of his own saliva onto his pants right after “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”
In the band, I was first-chair off key. Like bad guests, my notes tended to linger a bit too long. What really did me in was my lips, however. Due to a double-cleft palate, I could not properly pucker my lips. I couldn’t kiss, whistle, or suck anything through a straw. Turns out the trumpet is for lip-guys, and that just wasn’t me. The result was that my trumpet playing was painful to the ears; it was like watching Cupid try to blow the lead off his arrows.
Much like President’s Day Sale commercials, there was a palpable sense of relief when I finally stopped playing. I traded the trumpet for a new first baseman’s glove and made my music teacher a much happier man.
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on February 2, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
The news that the first day of April vacation has already been lost due to the recent snow cancellations reminded me of a story my brother once told me after several consecutive snow days when we were kids. As I celebrated the latest cancellation, he told me we have to be careful what we wish for because sometimes it comes back to haunt us. “You think you want it now,” he said, “until you realize you have the Sword of Damocles over your head.” I’m pretty sure that’s when I threw the pillow at him that scratched his cornea, but I could be wrong. Regardless, I listened without enthusiasm while he exacted his revenge by ruining snow days for me forever.
Damocles was a courtier in the court of King Dionysius II of ancient Italy and one of history’s original suck-ups. He flattered the king constantly, raving about his good fortune, his power, and his greatness. Eventually, the king grew tired of this and asked Damocles if he’d like to switch places to sample that good fortune for himself. Damocles quickly agreed and was soon seated on the throne, surrounded by every luxury that the king enjoyed. However, King Dionysius had arranged for a large sword to be hung directly over the throne, held aloft by nothing but a single hair of a horse’s tail. Daunted by the prospect of the blade looming so precariously over his head, Damocles begged the king to release him from this “good fortune.”
As a kid, I never made the connection that my brother had hoped. I looked forward to a snow day like some look forward to Christmas morning or a parole date. There was no greater joy than hearing my mom trek down the hallway to sigh, “There’s no school today because of the snow.” I’d switch on the radio to WICC and listen to the parade of school districts cancelling classes, imagining what wondrous things I could do for the rest of the day. If it were only a delayed opening, I would listen to the roll call coming from my radio speakers and pray that nearby districts had changed from a delay to a closing. I learned more about Connecticut geography by calculating the distance between the surrounding towns and my house than I ever learned in school. “If Bridgeport is closing, and Trumbull is closing, and Westport is closing, then surely it’s only a matter of time…”
It was even worse if a storm was predicted the night before. I would scour the local stations for weather reports, hoping each snowfall would not start too late (after five in the morning) nor end too soon (after one or two in the afternoon) to merit a snow day. My dad always scoffed at how I crouched before the small TV set, waiting for the weatherman to appear. “They make more money in advertising money when they threaten hurricanes or blizzards,” he’d say. “There’s no money to be made in a brief shower or snow flurry, so don’t get your hopes up.”
But I did. I always did. So when I scrambled to the window in the morning and saw the cruel black of the roads laughing back at me, it was as if someone had kicked my puppy. I’d turn on the radio only to hear that John LaBarca was playing music rather than rifling through the laundry list of closings. Faced with the mountains of homework I’d decided against the night before, I’d keep hope alive in front of my radio until my mom screamed that if I didn’t get ready soon I’d miss the bus.
Still, it was all worth it on those glorious days that we got our surprise days off. The first thing I’d do was turn off the alarm and crawl back under the covers, listening gleefully as suckers from other districts only got delayed openings. That’s when, as my brother would put it, my dad would come in and remind me about the sword above my head.
“I have to get to work,” he’d yell to my closed bedroom door. “Get up and shovel the driveway.”
And that’s what I’ve seen all around Stratford in the last few weeks. With invisible swords hanging above their heads, school-age children bundle up and attack the mountains of snow armed only with snow shovels and a lingering resentment that they didn’t get a chance to sleep in. When the driveways and sidewalks are clear, tiny paths must be carved out of the snow for the dogs or mailman to cross. For the older kids, even the roof has to be cleared off, layer by layer, before the sheer weight of the thaw threatens collapse. For the truly unfortunate like me, imaginative moms use this time to assign household chores or take us on impromptu trips to the barber or dentist.
In short, the kids of Stratford are quickly finding out what it took me so long to learn from my brother: be careful what you wish for! We still have more than a month of winter left and we’ve already lost our first day of April vacation. You don’t have to look up to realize the tiny thread of horse’s hair holding the sword is fraying.
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on December 23, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
My wife loves me.
Mostly.
It’s the middle of December that makes her wonder.
“You see what the neighbors put up this year in the front yard?” she’ll ask. I know where she’s going, so I feign temporary deafness. “Big ‘ol inflatable Santa,” she’ll continue (she’s on to me). “Little elves pop out of the back of the sleigh with a stack of presents. They put out three more light-up reindeer this year, too.”
“Hope Santa’s got something to help cover their electric bill,” I mutter, but she’s way ahead of me.
“You know, at 20.7 cents per kilowatt hour, it’s not all that bad. My mom’s c7 lights (handed down to us on a faux garland), plus your dad’s c9 lights (handed down from my father, quite possibly borrowed from Thomas Edison himself), the 2 strands of 150 mini-lights that we wrap around the trees, 2 strands of LED lights and 2 LED light bulbs only eat up .15730000000000002 kilowatts. That comes out to $0.0325611 an hour. That’s 18 cents a day, $5.40 for the month.”
My wife is far more intelligent than I; with a little math, she’s exposed me for the Grinch I’ve slowly become. In my defense, I wasn’t always this way. I still remember driving with my parents to church every Sunday leading up to Christmas, my brothers and I judging each house’s seasonal decorations and declaring a winner before we hit the parking lot of St. Pius. Reindeer on the lawn were nice, but reindeer on the roof? Bonus points. Each year saw more lights, brighter lights, until for those few weeks a year we were like Alaskans bathed in 24-hour light.
The history of light-up decorations is a recent one. Before the twentieth century, most people didn’t put their Christmas trees up until December 24th because of the fire hazard they represented. (Be sure to read Stratford Fire Marshall Brian Lampart’s article on holiday safety in the December 9thStratford Star.) In the middle of the 17th century, people attached small candles to the ends of tree branches with wax or pins. With the advent of electric lights, people started putting them up earlier and keeping them up later. By 1882, Edward Johnson, an associate of Thomas Edison, hand-wired 80 red, white and blue bulbs and wound them around an evergreen tree. The tradition really took off after President Grover Cleveland set up a lighted Christmas tree at the White House in 1895.
Early bulbs needed to be wired together by professionals until 1903, when American Eveready Co. came out with the first Christmas light set that included screw-in bulbs and a plug for the wall socket. Still, the person responsible for popularizing Christmas tree lighting in America was a 15-year-old boy named Albert Sadacca. After candles on a tree resulted in a tragic New York City fire in 1917, Albert convinced his family to paint and string their novelty lights together for use on Christmas trees. Albert soon became the head of a multi-million dollar company, and neighborhoods across the country began a front yard decorating competition that continues to this day.
If you need proof, walk along California Street toward Barnum Avenue at night. Thousands of blinking, twinkling lights vie for attention with inflatable reindeer and giant candy canes along a Christmas corridor that houses on both sides have spent days preparing. Notice the cars that slow down to take in the view, the families that stroll through the neighborhood with dazzled kids in tow. In a season of excess, these displays offer so much for so little.
And so I got a few more strands of light this year and strung them up with a little more care. I won’t win any contests, but for $5.40 maybe I can add some holiday cheer to my neighborhood. I wish you and yours a happy and healthy holiday season.
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on November 24, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, mostly because so little of the way we celebrate it makes much sense. In school, I learned most of the history behind Thanksgiving through a series of confusing school plays. These involved brightly colored Indians (now referred to as Native Americans), some well-dressed Pilgrims (now referred to as people who thought they were Native Americans), and large quantities of corn (still referred to as corn—evidently, this one stuck).
As far as I could tell, this guy Chris gets lost at sea (actually, he got three ships worth of people lost) and stumbles on to North America. He figures he better think of something quick, because a lot of angry sailors at that moment are trying to figure out why they aren’t looking at India. After conferring with some of the local Native Americans, he decides that he has “discovered” a “new world,” conveniently forgetting the people who had lived there for centuries who’d just told him he’d discovered it in the first place. This news takes some of the edge off of getting lost, which can be a tough thing to explain to a Queen who gave you three ships in the expectation that you would return them loaded with Indian spices.
Regardless, some years later a number of English citizens set sail for this place on purpose and they didn’t get lost—although they were forced to come ashore in Plymouth, Massachusetts, which ain’t no picnic. All I remember about these Pilgrims were the very large hats with buckles on them, which I can only assume were spares for the even larger belt buckles they wore (they must have assumed that the new world required much heavier pants). They, too, tried in the best Columbus tradition to ignore the fact that the Native Americans had already set up shop. As they began dying of starvation, however, they extended the good neighbor policy and invited the “Indians” over for supper. Since that day, every school hallway in the country is stinking with pictures of poorly drawn turkeys, tables full of food, and, yes… corn
Originally a religious holiday to give thanks to God for the harvest, it’s gradually transformed into a secular kickoff to the holiday season; just as Labor Day signals that white pants should be closeted until spring, Black Friday announces the nonstop Christmas barrage that paints discretionary spending as a national responsibility. Binge eating is not only expected but encouraged, as is the sight of your tipsy uncle napping in front of the Cowboys game on TV.
Luckily, the idea of giving thanks in a palpable way is still alive thanks to the dedication of special people for whom sharing with their neighbors is a way of life. Donations of old clothes, linens, blankets or money are needed year-round at homeless shelters like the Prospect House in Bridgeport (203-576-9041), Spooner House in Shelton (www.actspooner.org), the Bridgeport Rescue Mission (203-333-4087), or Operation Hope in Fairfield (www.operationhopect.org). Soup kitchens run by organizations like Hunger Outreach prepared and served over 1,000,000 meals last year through a network of over 34 food kitchens in Greater Bridgeport, pantries and mobile units made up of mostly volunteers working seven days a week, 365 days a year. (For more information, please contact Byron Crosdale at byroncrosdale@ccgb.org.) For those who like to mix their philanthropy with exercise, the Stratford Masonic Bodies presents The Ninth Annual Turkey Day Trot on Thanksgiving Day morning at 8:15 (www.hitekracing.com/turkeytrot). The 5K road race benefits the needy in our community over the holidays.
The people that run organizations like these deserve recognition for keeping the spirit of this holiday alive. Remember Chris, the quick thinker with no sense of direction who lucked into the history books because he ignored an entire race of people? Well, he eventually got his own holiday, although (like him, ironically) it’s quickly being lost in the Federally Mandated Holiday Shuffle as “optional” in many places. On the other hand, Thanksgiving continues to be recognized as a tribute to the cooperative spirit that this country was founded upon. We celebrate this solemn ideal by floating large cartoon animals through downtown city streets, getting up at 4 AM the next day to be the among the first to shop at Target, and making cold turkey sandwiches for weeks afterwards. It might not make much sense, but that doesn’t make Thanksgiving any less special.
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on September 16, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
It was while riding atop a withered horse at a painfully slow trot through the cheering throngs packing either side of Main Street that I saw it. Leading my horse by the reins in the front of the Memorial Day Parade, dressed in full feathered headband and faux-leather Native American garb, was my dad: Big Bald Eagle.
And he was crying.
Not the flowing, girlish tears I’d cried earlier that day when I couldn’t find my 3rd Year White Feather for my headband. No, he cried the subtle tears of that lone 70’s commercial Indian on the side of the road after seeing a driver toss garbage out the window. Even in that pre-pubescent moment of drunken adulation, astride my trusty steed and waving to the frenzied crowd in my Native American splendor, this was a total shock.
This was not a man who shed tears.
Was it the culmination of centuries of pain inflicted on the once-proud Native American nation? Was it a swelling pride in the fact that his son had finally gotten a chance to ride one of the rented horses for our Indian Guide tribe in the parade? Could it have been the crushing irony of a third-generation Irishman and his son in face paint and feathers leading a parade that celebrated the military deaths of every American except the people we’d stolen the land from in the first place?
Turns out it was hay fever.
My dad was severely allergic to horses yet never said a word about it as I pleaded each year to be one of the riders in the parade. The slogan of the Indian Guides, a program for fathers and sons sponsored by the YMCA, is “Pals Forever.” My father more than lived up to that.
An operations manager for General Electric with a wife and seven kids to feed, time was a precious commodity. Still, we never missed our bi-monthly Tuesday night gatherings of the tribe, a group consisting of nine hyperactive sixth graders and their bone-weary dads. The meetings would begin with the Chief asking one of us to beat the Tribal Drum, once for each of the four directions of the earth and for each boy present. After the prayer to the Great Spirit, the Wampum Bearer collected the tribal dues from each brave. My dad, brilliant with money, was the logical choice for Wampum Bearer.
Wampum was the money we were supposed to earn through our chores for the week, a kind of kiddy tithing we offered up to the tribe. Like the real world outside the tribe, it was an imperfect system. Dave Crowe’s mom gave him five bucks allowance each week for doing nothing, while my dad parceled out my weekly twenty-five cents as if he were donating a kidney. As we placed our wampum in the Wampum Drum, we had to say how we earned it. Dave would mutter, “I took out the trash all week,” even though we all knew his younger brother did. When I got up, it sounded like a Red Cross disaster plan: “First, I repainted the bathroom radiators and put a new coat of varnish on the porch. Then, I cut up two cords of wood and stacked it under the deck for the winter. Next, I cleared the woods around our house of any fallen branches or dead trees. After that…”
My older brother, Golden Eagle, would usually interrupt. “But did you finish cleaning the woods, Little Bald Eagle?” he’d ask.
You always had to tell the truth around the Sacred Circle. “I apologize to the tribe for being boastful,” I’d reply, shooting daggers at Golden Eagle. The other braves would look awkwardly away, avoiding eye contact. There but for the grace of the Great Spirit go I…
Once I asked for a raise in my allowance. “Wampum doesn’t grow on trees,” my dad replied sagely. He gave me an extra nickel a week. He could easily have caved in (like the rest of the dads), but he was teaching me something.
Next, each brave would grab the Talking Stick and give his Scouting Report, our progress toward the next bead, bear claw, or Feather Class. After the old and new business (the Indian Guide Handbook says it all: “Keep all business short”), the centerpiece of each tribal meeting was arts and crafts. Some fathers went all out, spending hundreds of dollars on drum skins and balsam wood projects that would have put the Museum of Natural History to shame. One dad provided the makings for real tomahawks, and another proud papa provided each brave with a handcrafted totem pole to paint!
My dad showed us how to make a stick that, when rubbed, made a tiny propeller spin.
Not exactly head-turner, but it fulfilled his uniquely personal tribal craft code: it took a long time to make, required little setup (and even less cleanup), and had a flashy name. The “Gee-Haw Whimmydiddle Stick” was the staple craft every time the Walshes hosted the tribe. Craft time was followed by refreshment time, which consisted of screaming kids running around the caffeine-addled dads with Twinkies in their hands—just like real Indians!
I never knew he’d spent days researching how to build this Appalachian contraption in the days before the internet.
We’d close with a final prayer to the Great Spirit. I remember asking my dad why we prayed to Jesus on Sunday but to the Native American god on Tuesdays. “In your mind, just change Great Spirit to Jesus,” he replied. Wow, I thought—if only those early Native Americans had known! This really could have saved them some trouble.
It’s only now that I appreciate how much he did for us in our time in the Indian Guides. He showed his family what true sacrifice and commitment meant, refusing to miss meetings despite his exhaustion after long hours at work. He made his children a priority, even when it meant dressing in costume and face paint with a string of bear claws around his neck. He stood by me even as he sneezed and coughed his way down two excruciating miles on the Memorial Day Parade route. He never complained, because that’s what big braves do for little braves. He did it my whole life.
I still have my headband. I still know the words to the “Pals Forever” camp song. As I think back on that day, it’s my turn to shed some tears. My dad, Big Bald Eagle, is my pal forever.
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on July 22, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
It is the day after Thanksgiving, and the masses descend upon the local retail outlets like water from a burst dam, flowing like lemmings through the aisles in a pre-Christmas frenzy. However, one woman in a lonely corner of the grocery store is not there to shop. She waits patiently at the Returns counter with a turkey, or at least what’s left of it after her husband and seven kids had attacked it twelve hours earlier. The skeletal remains were easy to slip into the small plastic bag—even the wishbone had long since been taken out and snapped.
“It went bad,” this woman says to the lady behind the counter, sliding the carcass across the counter. Only a pro walks into a store and demands her money back on a turkey without any meat left on it. Janet Walsh is a pro.
My mom understood the craftiness one must adopt when trying to feed a family of nine each day. The family checkbook was packed like a musket with coupons skinned from local newspapers. Trips to the grocery store were military operations as seven kids invaded the unsuspecting stores offering samples on Saturday afternoons—who needs lunch when you can wolf down eight tiny slices of pepperoni pizza and wash it down with a thimbleful of the newest Coke? Our family did not merely buy in bulk; we stocked up as if winter was coming to Valley Forge. Each grocery trip ended with a game of culinary Tetris, where we’d stuff three separate freezers and two refrigerators with surgical precision. There was no rummaging through the fridge in my family; asked what was for dinner that night, my mom’s answer was, “Whatever’s up front.”
It was not uncommon for a loaf of bread to lie frozen in state like Vladimir Lenin for up to a year before it was discovered in the back of the freezer. She’d thaw it like the wooly mammoth on those National Geographic specials, using a hair dryer to separate a few pieces for school lunches. These clay pigeons with peanut butter and jelly slathered all over them sat in our lunch pails like a muttered apology, still frozen by the time our class had lunch.
“It keeps the sandwich fresh,” she’d say as we showed her our chipped teeth.
What the poor lady working at the Returns counter that day couldn’t know was that my family lived on food that had long since passed its expiration date. She viewed the freezer as a time machine, cryogenically preserving batteries, cheeses, cold medicines, and milk that would make the folks at Ripley’s Believe It Or Not take notice. In fact, there were three types of milk in or refrigerator: the “good” milk (within a week of its expiration date), “mixing” milk (older, used on cereal or in recipes), and “sour” milk, which would only be so designated when something inside it tried to bite you.
“The date is only a suggestion,” my mom would say whenever we brought it up. “They just want you to buy more.”
Local shopkeepers were talked into 10% discounts for the privilege of clothing her family.
“I have a carload full of customers in this family: growing children who like to buy new clothes!”
They agreed to the discounts, never realizing that this woman put clothes into a rotation that would be the envy of the New York Yankees. Each outfit bought for my oldest brother and sister filtered its way down to the youngest in a kind of corduroy waterfall, and all our class pictures looked as if we’d just pasted a new head on last year’s set. Being the youngest boy, I was always ten years behind the fashion, a Fonzie t-shirt in a sea of Gap mock turtlenecks. You could pick a Walsh kid out of a crowd because of our awkward Frankenstein gait, a result of my mom’s decision to sew massive patches on the insides of our pants and shirts to make sure they’d last to the next sibling. Where most kids wore clothes, we wore armor of reinforced nylon and denim that restricted our range of motion to that of the Tin Man.
“You just have to work them in a bit, like your baseball mitt,” she’d say.
As we grew older and more conscious of our fashion maladies, she picked up toddler Izod shirts or tattered Garanimals attire at consignment shops and sewed the telltale lizard onto the discount shirts she’d bought at K-Mart. “That’s strange,” my friends would say, “I always thought the alligator was on the other side!”
Growing up with my mom, one learned that opened bags of candy on store shelves were considered “samples,” and that any expensive item mistakenly placed in a discount section must now be sold at the discounted price. Four-dollar wine became vintage when poured into a different bottle. There was so much bread in the meatloaf that we didn’t know whether it should serve as the inside or the outside of the leftover meatloaf sandwiches. Clothes could be “rented” from local stores for special occasions and returned the very next day as long as you pinned the tags to the inside sleeve and kept the crease. Armed with a receipt and the original bag, there was nothing you couldn’t return.
Her ability to make the most out of little is surpassed only by her incredible ability to make her family feel loved. She never missed an opportunity to tell us how much she loved us, even during times we’d given her little reason to. She made prom dresses and dozens of Halloween costumes from scratch even as we complained that everyone else’s mom bought them new ones. In an age before carpooling, she drove seven kids to tennis matches, swim practice, track meets, ping-pong clubs, soccer practice and extra help after school. She made midnight calls with a cold washcloth and Vicks Vap-O-Rub when we were sick and showed up to every banquet even if you only got the “Participant” ribbon.
How do you follow an act like this? I’ll thank her the only way I know how: I’ll allow my kids to use up all my gas when they borrow the car. I’ll remind them of the high holy days and forgive them when they forget the holiest day of all: my birthday. Most importantly, I’ll teach them about the way life should be lived. They’ll learn about laughter because they’ll grow up listening to a lifetime of stories around the kitchen table. They’ll learn about the importance of family because they will know that your family is the one place in your heart that is always open. They will learn about love because their grandparents gave it unconditionally.
And I’ll wait in line at the grocery store Returns counter with a half-eaten holiday turkey in the original bag, receipt in hand, and wonder how the heck she ever managed to pull this off.
At the dog park, it’s inevitable. “Where did you get your dog?” someone will ask as our dogs do a little butt-sniffing. It’s as if I just drop-kicked Santa when I say we got her from a breeder. My wife will chime in that we tried to find one in the pound first, but we can see the judgment in their eyes.
As a white male in America, it goes without saying that I’ve had to fight prejudice and discrimination as I’ve clawed my way up to the lower-middle. The latest obstacle the Man has placed in my path is the stigma attached to acquiring a dog through a breeder rather than a shelter. These days, skipping the local pound is akin to gut-punching a nun.
My wife and I have always looked to rescue abandoned dogs; we’ve volunteered at the local shelter, participated in supply drives, and served on the planning committee for a new shelter in town. We loved the feeling that we’d given a second chance to our dogs, and it allowed us to endure the endless airings of Sarah McLaughlin singing “In the arms of the angels…” over the pictures of neglected pets that dominate late night television commercial breaks.
Then we got ZuZu.
ZuZu is a blessing. She is also a veterinary Black Hole. Unsure of her age or her breed (mostly Cocker Spaniel-ish), our vet informed us on our initial visit that she had horrible ear problems. This was followed by a crippling skin rash that necessitated an extensive drug regimen after a blood sample yielded no fewer than three pages of things to which she was deathly allergic. The Cocker in the Plastic Bubble cheated death, and outside of the telltale baboon butt where she’d permanently scratched away her fur, her skin specialist declared her out of the danger zone. However, she could only eat dry venison dog food. Not only did this ruin any chance of her ever becoming a vegetarian like all the fashionable dogs, it also required us to order this special blend through our vet.
At two, she began biting mercilessly at her paws. Over time, despite a wide variety of trimming, nail clipping, and massage, we had to order special booties to keep her from nibbling them into bloody stumps. She goose-stepped around the house for a while, clearly annoyed at this 80s-era velcro fashion statement. The urge to chew on them went away after a few months, and eventually we mothballed the booties.
At six ZuZu broke her back, apparently as she engaged in the dangerous activity of… lying down. She couldn’t take a step without pain, and after much hand-wringing we agreed with her back surgeon: she needed surgery. She came through like a champ, and we learned how stupid we could feel for passing up pet insurance. At almost five thousand dollars, it was not as expensive as the years of special food or the years of extra vet appointments, but it hurt. At seven, we noticed her having difficulty holding a tennis ball in her mouth. She soon had trouble eating. Another visit to the bone specialist revealed that her jaw was locking up. Our vet revealed that her range of motion was about 30% of what it should be; in his experience, she’d eventually be able to open it less and less until she could no longer eat. He had no idea how this had started, but the prognosis was grim. He could break her jaw and see if this allowed her to eventually open up all the way, but something else happened that ruled this out.
We were scraping together some money for her jaw when she had her first heart attack. We rushed her to the emergency vet on call, put her on an IV, and waited for the cardiologist to give us the results of the tests. The good news was that she would be able to come home with us in a few days. The bad news was that this was due to the fact that she probably had around six months to live. The drugs he’d normally prescribe for her heart would seriously compromise what turned out to be an already damaged liver. In the end we settled on a cocktail of drugs that helped her heart but weakened her kidneys, then switched to drugs that helped her kidneys but failed to address her heart. We went back and forth on this in order to assure she had some quality of life in the time she had left. However, it also meant that she’d never survive a surgical procedure.
We were all surprised when her jaw magically opened wider and wider in the following weeks. The drugs pushed her well past her expiration date, and our vet asked us if he could perform an autopsy after she died to see how this dog tip-toed around Death like Ginger Rogers.
Last year she developed an abscessed tooth, but we all figured the penicillin would clear it up. Of course, it didn’t; she required surgery before the infection reached her brain. Our vet made it clear that she might never wake up from the anesthesia, and the pressure on her heart might be too much to overcome, but she faced certain death if we ignored it. I dropped her off in tears the morning of the surgery, saying my goodbyes and thanking her for all she’d done for us. Sure enough, I was able to pick her up the next day; like Tupac, she’d dodged another bullet. Also like Tupac, there were more in store for her.
Our vet showed me the piece of jawbone he’d removed; it was likely bone cancer, and there was nothing he could do if it was. For once, this allowed us to save the money on lab fees.
Having just passed her tenth birthday in June, ZuZu now waddles around on her ankles and elbows. The ligaments around the joints have completely atrophied—she can bend her paws all the way back to her forelegs in defiance of God and physics. None of her band of specialists can explain how this came about, and we’ve had to remind our vet to let us know when we were keeping ZuZu around more for us than for her.
The fact is that we’ll do anything for our dogs, including almost $200 a month in pills alone. Just like my grandma, ZuZu has a big blue pill box with fourteen compartments, two sets of pills per day. This on top of prescription food, checkups with all her specialists (she has more than we do), and the recently christened ZuMobile, her three-wheeled doggie cart that allows us to include her on our beach walks.
We could put a kid through college on the money we’ve spent on ZuZu, but we wouldn’t change a thing. She’s the best. Still, I’m frustrated that I find myself stumbling over words to justify our selfish decision to protect ourselves from another round of Kevorkian Roulette. Of course I’d rather save a poor dog from the local shelter. However, I also have to refrain from taking on the collective responsibility of all the crappy pet owners out there who neglect their dogs. Couples who arrange for surrogate parents to carry their child aren’t made to feel as if they’re kicking orphans in the nuts, so maybe you could cut us a break?
Ideally, we’d all have to apply for puppies; if you screwed up, you’d never be allowed to have any more. You’d have to pay puppy support if you lost custody. And every scum-sucking maggot who mistreated their pets would automatically be sent to the Karmic Wheel, reincarnated as a dog or cat themselves. Or, even worse, Carrot Top.
Until then, we decided to find some healthy dogs and responsible breeders so we could afford to give our next dog the life it deserves. We’re not evil. Pinky swear.
Now, can we get back to casting aspersions on the training skills of the other dog owners at the park like we used to?
