(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on November 11, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
The water is surprisingly warm as it laps against a desolate shore stripped naked of the lifeguard chairs and beachgoers of July and August. Groups of seagulls have reclaimed the sands, their heads facing into the stiff November wind that colors the Sound with whitecaps. The sailboats of summer sit shrink-wrapped on the shore, replaced by kite-surfers entombed in wet suits, feasting on the autumn gusts that whip up waves rarely seen outside March.
All of us have different ways that we try to hold on to summer, but for me, there is something magical about Stratford beaches in the fall. There is a quiet that doesn’t really exist in any other part of town, an idyllic pocket free of the white noise of the Merritt or I-95. One can hear the sputtering of plane engines as they land at Sikorsky, the click of the skateboard wheels on the ramps in the parking lot, and the ping of a well-connected drive off the tee of Short Beach Golf Course.
Others cling to other remnants of summer, such as the bird watching resurgence among the grasslands of the Lordship area. In August, bird watchers hoping for a peek at a rare white-tailed kite at Point Stratford were treated to a sighting of a rare brown pelican at the same time. Foliage fans walk through the trails of Roosevelt Forest, the only town-owned forest in Connecticut, and take in the breathtaking palette of colors that hang from the trees and crunch underfoot.
August also provided further foundation for the cyclists and hikers of autumn. Continued progress on the ambitious plan for the Housatonic Valley Association’s Greenway along the Housatonic River has allowed those traveling by bike or by foot to enjoy the beauty of the river safe from traffic. Eventually expected to stretch from its headwaters in Massachusetts to its mouth in Stratford, a group called the East Coast Greenway wants the Sikorsky Bridge bike trail to become part of a link that will connect to a railroad line in Milford before it goes through Silver Sands State Park, up to New Haven, onto the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, then through Simsbury, Hartford, East Hartford, Bolton, and Willimantic before continuing eastward to Providence and beyond. They hope to establish a bike trail extending 3,000 miles from Quebec to the tip of the Florida Keys, with two hundred miles of the East Coast Greenway to run through Connecticut.
Even with all these ways to enjoy a piece of summer long after the temperature drops, I’m still a sucker for the quiet of the beach when the weather turns. My beach blanket wrapped around me instead of under me, there’s no other place in Stratford that lends itself to such tranquility. Few of my neighbors take advantage of this getaway in their own backyard: an occasional family might brave the cold for a quick Christmas card picture, one or two intrepid dog owners sneak their dogs onto the beach in defiance of ridiculous off-season pet laws. For the most part, however, the beach is my own private patio overlooking Long Island Sound.
For the rest of the season, though, you’re all invited to join me. There’s room for everybody, but bring your own blanket.
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on October 28, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
It’s not hard to see the impact of the NFL on Stratford during a crisp autumn night under the lights. As Stratford High took on Pomperaug last Friday, the jerseys of the New York Giants, Jets, and Patriots were sprinkled liberally throughout the stands amid Devil red. Football has replaced baseball as America’s pastime, and I’m sure every young man on that field (like most of us in the stands) has dreamed of what it would be like to play in the NFL.
However, a spate of vicious hits on defenseless players has rocked the football world in the last week. Several players were barely able to walk off the field in NFL games, victims of helmet-to-helmet collisions and the concussions that followed. The NFL responded quickly with a crackdown on illegal hits through the stricter enforcement of existing rules designed to protect players most vulnerable to these life-altering hits.
Normally, this would be heartening news, as rule changes and extra provisions for player safety inevitably trickle all the way down to the level of peewee football. Unfortunately, the very players this renewed enforcement is designed to protect are its most vocal critics.
Former Denver Broncos tight end Mark Schlereth screams on ESPN, “Why not just lose the pads and play touch football?” Respected coaches like Mike Ditka bemoan the missed tackles that will result, then ruminate on the possibility of increased knee injuries as players aim lower. Even former players like Daniel Morgan, a linebacker forced from the game due to repeated concussions in 2007, rail against the stiffer penalties for the same hits that hastened his early retirement.
They are unanimous in their refrain: That’s just the way football is played. We shouldn’t penalize players for doing what they were taught to do. These same plays are celebrated on highlights and in team meetings with the coaches. In a split second, you have to rely on instinct. James Harrison, the 2008 NFL Defensive Player of the Year, is the current poster boy of those who feel the NFL has gone too far, turning the game we love into flag football. Of course, in less than eight minutes last Sunday, Harrison knocked two players out of the game with concussions after aiming at their necks and heads, then made post-game comments that he tries to hurt, not injure, opponents because it increases the Steelers’ chances of winning. The next day, he threatened to retire because of the new penalties that he played a major role in instituting.
Do it, Mr. Harrison—I dare you. You signed a six-year, $51.175 million contract after the 2008 season, and I’d love to see you take your high school diploma and try to make up the rest of that money while the rest of the NFL moves out its dark ages. The game cannot be hijacked by knuckle-draggers who view head injuries as a rite of passage. These are elite athletes. If they can’t manage to stay away from someone’s head on a tackle, find someone who possesses the talent to do so. Like the institution of the helmet itself in 1941, it won’t take away from the violence of the game as much as prevent that violence from needlessly taking someone’s life.
I admit that I have selfish reasons for hoping the NFL maintains its hard line: as a teacher, I’d like the brains I instruct at school to continue working into adulthood. A middle school student once shared how his parents were scrambling to find another doctor to write off his latest concussion so he could get back on the field. “We’re going to buy some kind of expensive helmet so they’ll get off my back,” he said. He figured it was his third concussion, but he hadn’t told anyone about the first, nor the neck pain that had been bothering him for weeks. I hope he saw a different game last week that didn’t get as much press, a game where Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand was paralyzed when he rammed the top of his helmet into an opposing player during a kickoff.
The truth is that the NFL’s attempt to protect its players truly does affect our kids, and the culture has to change at every level in order for player safety to be taken seriously. The NFL’s impact on Stratford must not come from the top of a helmet; one hopes they will use their heads before some of our kids lose theirs on a senseless hit.
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on October 14, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
The Town for All Seasons showed its furry side during the wildly successful Dog Walk & Festival held on Paradise Green this past Saturday. The fifth annual benefit for homeless animals packed the green with dogs of all breeds as they led their befuddled owners around Stratford’s largest canine meet ‘n’ greet. The free admission and fantastic weather combined to provide hundreds of happy families the opportunity to imagine life with a dog park, if only for one magical day.
We Stratford dog owners rarely get the opportunity to socialize in large numbers, instead reduced to small packs scrambling to throw on clothing for morning “constitutionals” around the yard, fumbling through pockets for baggies to pick up what remains of last night’s dinner bowls. It’s at times like these that many of us secretly yearn for the simplicity of cats, but those moments are fleeting. Festivals like this allow us to find comfort in the fraternity of dog lovers.
My wife and I packed up our pups and arrived an hour into the festivities, hoping to miss the initial wave of dogs who were shuttling out for the one-mile walk. Unlike their owners, our spaniels are incredibly social, and the sight of even one dog or child sends them into spasms of joy. Our “middle child,” ZuZu, also happens to be our “special child.” Hobbled by a myriad of mysterious ailments that reduce her to the ZuMobile (like the Pope Mobile, only without the bulletproof netting), she shudders and yelps out greetings to any form of life at eye level. Because she so desperately wants to play with anything in sight, sometimes less is more.
As soon as we entered Paradise Green, however, our dogs were on sensory overload. It was as if a dying man, lost in the desert and wearing Spock ears, crested that final mountain of solitary sand and stumbled upon a Star Trek convention. Our spaniels set their own agenda: a sniffed butt here, a quick stop to accept pats on the head there, and then onward around the ring of vendor tents. Our girls seemed disappointed in us as they saw the many outfits other dogs were wearing as they paraded through the park. By the time we saw the beagle in its tuxedo, our spaniels ignored us completely. Two of our dogs tried out the agility training with Nikki Stollman of Four Paws Pet Services in Stratford, where we got the opportunity to see how well behaved they can be with someone who actually knows what she’s doing. We saw Rescue Ink’sNicholas “Batso” Maccharoli as he set up shop for pictures, but our dogs had already begun a new game of “How many knots can we tie in these leashes?” as they rushed after a yellow lab in a nurse’s outfit.
The North Shore Animal League brought their adoption bus, where a few confused cats looked out over the sea of dogs and wondered whether it wasn’t time to plot their escape. It was great to talk with Stratford Animal Control and the people providing the microchip clinic to get a feel for how important pet ownership is in town. I never knew how many different animal rescue groups there were that helped find homes for Stratford pets: German shepherd rescues, bulldog rescues, even blind dog rescue groups had representatives available to explain their crucial role in maintaining the special relationship with man’s best friend.
Still, the best part of the day was watching the tiny faces of children light up every time they saw a new dog. If anyone had any doubt why Stratford is finally building its new animal shelter, one need only spend a few moments wandering the grounds to see what an amazing effect our pets have on us. The sheer number of people who volunteered at this event speaks to the importance of animals in our community. For a few hours, Stratford citizens showed our best side—our furry side—on a day that could truly be enjoyed by all.
To find out more about the Stratford Animal Rescue Society and donate your time, money, or old bedding to a worthy cause, please go to: www.stratfordanimalrescue.com.
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on September 30, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
The National Weather Service recently confirmed that the summer of 2010 was the hottest in state history due to the number of days a southwesterly airflow brought up warm air from the south. This should sound familiar to anyone traveling near the construction zones in the South End these past few weeks. While the temperature might be dropping now that summer is officially over, things are getting heated in the Construction Triangle between West Broad Street, Main Street, and Linden Avenue.
The improvements to the sewer lines in this area are critically important; after a storm, drivers in this area had to take an impromptu Boston Duck Tour without the amphibious car. Town officials are to be commended for getting this project underway. Unfortunately, progress is not painless. In this case, the Construction Triangle is the place where traffic goes to die. Trying to get to the West Broad I-95 entry ramp is like trying to steer a cruise ship through the Panama Canal. Traffic lights that serve as the locks orchestrate the painfully slow shuffle of cars as they line up for hundreds of yards around California Street and Broadbridge Avenue.
While negotiating the roundabout off Exit 32 has always been an adventure, it has now been reduced to a traffic meat grinder, forcing rush hour drivers to slow from 55 (well, in theory, anyway) to a full stop a mere forty yards from the line of cars trying to enter the traffic circle. Going north on West Broad from Main Street is an exercise in negotiation. Some try desperately to establish eye contact with the driver merging next to them. Others take advantage of open windows, shouting out a plea to be let in. Others play a more dangerous game, nudging their cars into traffic until there’s no choice but to let them in. This game is followed by a round of, “How quickly can I shut my car window so as not to hear them yelling behind me at the light?”
The worst part of this is the hit to the merchants whose businesses must ride out the construction. Some owners saw business decline as much as 75% at the Main Street restaurants inside the Triangle, mostly because people have assumed these places were closed during construction. Others think them inaccessible, and yet only the northbound lane is closed. There’s never been a better time to try these places out. The Cumberland Farms gas station at the corner of West Broad and Linden is its busiest in the state, yet the lot does not appear as full as drivers are routinely orphaned in its exit lane as they struggle to get back into traffic.
I’ve seen the best and worst of my neighbors as I navigate the Triangle. While some bang their steering wheels and scream at every perceived injustice inflicted upon them, many others demonstrate the small acts of compassion (letting someone into traffic as they leave the library parking lot or waving someone through who is stuck under a red light) that speak to the best of the citizens of Stratford. It looks like we have at least another month or two to deal with these projects, but I’ve noticed a subtle shift as I wade through it each day. We’re slowly finding our way as we adjust to life in the Construction Triangle; the drivers seem a little more patient, the waits a little less aggravating, as we anticipate the completion of this phase of the project.
At least, I hope so. 2011 will see several additional projects in this same area, including the installation of a left turning lane on West Broad, the California Street condo channel replacement, and the painting of the Broadbridge and West Broad railroad bridges (not to mention the bulk of the Barnum Avenue streetscape improvements). As Stratford continues to improve, we’ll have plenty of time to practice our citizenship.
(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 August 26, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
It’s so easy to forget what it’s like to be a kid. Even as a teacher surrounded by them, I am constantly reminded how adults can forget the pain of things like the end of summer vacation. No matter how hard we try to make school fun, it’s hard to compete against the freedom and unpredictability of summer. When those first few signs that classes are about to begin start appearing, a pall falls over even the happiest of students. This year, it happened in late July as I was watching Big Brother on CBS. A George Orwell fan, I’d stumbled across the show thinking it would reference 1984, and instead I’d fallen down the rabbit hole of reality television at its cattiest. Right in the middle of my weekly fix (I’m not proud), Walmart came on to utter the summertime blasphemy feared most by children: the dreaded “Back to School Sale.”
As a kid, these commercials were nails scraping across the chalkboard of my summer vacation, the clammy hand of mortality resting on what remained of my carefree days. After those first few advertisements for school supplies appeared, my friends and I viewed everything through the prism of our impending imprisonment, a kind of doomsday clock that loomed large over each passing day. On the other hand, our parents seemed to giddily count down the days as if anticipating parole.
None of the four seasons has such a clear starting line as autumn in America: regardless of what the calendar says, children know summer ends the minute the yellow bus stops on their street. The fall season used to be the one time kids never attended classes because they had to help with the harvest; now it marks the inevitable return of the ten-month planting season of academia. This year Stratford students begin school on August 30th, with their teachers reporting five days earlier to prepare the soil.
In the last two weeks, Stratford has been alive with preparations for the Big Day. In late August, even Staples resembles the birthday room at the Discovery Zone as kids bounce around the aisles in search of the perfect notebook. Parents perform subtle acts of bribery to ease the sting: I know you don’t like math, but this calculator has a picture of Dora the Explorer. Shopping for school supplies is at once horrifying and exciting for reluctant learners: only the love for my brand new Harlem Globetrotters lunchbox managed to pull me from my mourning bed and off to the bus stop on that first day of school.
From my perch on the library bench this week I see the mad dashes of harried eighth graders rushing to the references desk in the hope that suggested summer reading books haven’t all been taken out. I overhear two of them indulging in a little summer arithmetic: “We’re expected to read 8-10 books, but we only have to complete the reading questions for two of them. With six days left, that means…” Meanwhile, the mandated summer math packets pop up like Black-Eyed Susans on the sands of Long Beach as clusters of teens put the finishing touches on both their tans and algebraic equations.
Also in evidence are the dizzying effects of a parental grapevine that’s in full bloom: “What have you heard about Ms. Record for Physics?” one concerned father asks a neighbor at the deli counter of the Pickle Barrel. Talk quickly turns to plans being made for their free time now that the kids are back at school. “I might even get to a day game at Yankee Stadium,” he adds. Off to his side, his young son glares up at him.
As I placed my order, I could see myself in this youngster. I’m sure he feels the same sense of betrayal at how adults can so callously discuss the Death of Fun right in front of them. So I was as disappointed as anyone when it slipped out, completely by accident, as I chatted with his father. “Did you see that Irene Cornish wrote the school day is going to be fifteen minutes longer this year?” Now his kid was glaring at me.
If that young man happens to read this, please forgive me; sometimes we just forget. I hope everyone has a happy and healthy start to the new academic year.
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on August 12, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
“A love-struck Romeo sings the streets a serenade
Laying everybody low with a love song that he made.
Finds a streetlight, steps out of the shade
Says something like, ‘You and me babe, how about it?'”
— Mark Knopler, “Romeo and Juliet,” 1981
Stratford has always had a complex relationship with its renowned American Shakespeare Theatre, but 1981 held such promise. Newly appointed director Peter Coe had just signed Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones to lead the Stratford Festival season productions of Henry V and Othello. The theatre seemed ready to “step out of the shade” of the previous years’ financial difficulties and into a new era. Unfortunately, 1982 saw the theatre’s last full season before the state took control amid looming foreclosure on the mortgage in 1983. For the future of this once-proud building, that season’s production of “The Comedy of Errors” proved prophetic. The next twenty-seven years played out like a Shakespearean tragedy as battles over its name (changed to American Festival Theatre in 1988), deed (finally given back to Stratford in 2005), and vision eventually erupted into the legendarily vitriolic town council debates over its latest renovation.
That the fate of the theatre still stirs such passionate debate underscores its importance to all of Stratford, embodying as it does not only our history but our noblest aspirations in the arts. It’s offered its citizens Shakespeare, yes, but also served as a gateway to the arts in so many other ways. In 1979 my dad took me to see Beatlemania there, and I still remember staring in awe as the majestic facade of the theatre emerged from the trees. After college, the siren song of the theatre was one of the reasons I chose to settle down in Stratford.
“I love you like the stars above, I’ll love you ’til I die. There’s a place for us, you know the movie song. When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong?”
While the time might have been wrong for the American Shakespeare Theatre to remain solvent back then, there has always been a place for this regal figure in the lives of Stratfordites. This Thursday, the 2010 Festival Stratford adds to the rich tradition of the theatre as the Stratford Arts Commission sponsors four days of free entertainment on its grounds. Each day the Stratford Arts Guild will showcase the work of local artists, and yoga instructor Ashley Bardugone will conduct classes each morning at 8am. “Quickies in the Park,” which showcases new works by Stratford’s SquareWrights members, will be presented along with the parody The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) more classic fare such as The Tempest. Children’s Day on Sunday begins with performances by local dance schools before Shakesperience Productions presents Rapunzel and the Interactive Shakespeare Workshop for Children and Families. (For times and other specific information, please go to www.festivalstratford.com or StratfordStar.com.)
This is Shakespeare the way Peter Coe would have wanted it: sparse, immediate, personal—how appropriate, then, that Henry V will also be performed. This festival represents Stratford in all her finery, showing off our best talent in one of our most scenic locations. Anyone that was lucky enough to attend one of last year’s performances will attest to the magic in the air as children and adults of all ages gathered to celebrate a truly unique family experience.
One can’t help but wonder if Stratford, without the constellating figure of the theatre towering over the Housatonic like the Bard himself, would feel the same pull to preserve and promote the arts as we do. Or do we reach a little higher because of it, our pride in our shared stage history pushing us to bigger and better things? I can think of no greater gift to our children than preserving the legacy of this magnificent building and allowing future generations the opportunity to experience the wonder of the theatre in their own backyard. As we celebrate Festival Stratford, let’s not forget the words of the man who helped built the theatre in 1955, Joseph Verner Reed, who said its purpose was “to present Shakespeare to young people in such a way that the plays become living, beautiful, exciting—and enduring.”
In these tough economic times, it’s hard to think of the future in the face of so many obstacles; I don’t claim to know the best way to fund the necessary renovations, nor do I know which artistic direction will best allow the theatre to become self-sustaining. I do know that the gift of Joseph Reed, compounded by the blood and sweat of countless hundreds over the last 55 years, was not a gift only for us. It is for our children and grandchildren who one day will look back and thank us for passing that gift onto them.
It’s fitting that Mark Knopler’s birthday is August 12th, the first day of this year’s Festival Stratford on the grounds of our weather-scarred theatre. The final words of his song could have been sung by the theatre herself to the citizens of Stratford, hoping that the time is right: “You and me babe, how about it?”
(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?
(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on November 11, 2010, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”)
