Over the River...

As Posted on the Well Spouse™ Association Forums, November 2010
by Railroad

It began around mid-November, meaning, about a week late, in which I realized that I had to do something about Thanksgiving. What's the right approach to commemorating a feast in which Pagans and Christians thanked each other (and God) for survival? And, oh, by the way, if the straight-and-black-suit people from England had been there for a year or so, was the feast really timed for the harvest, or for the upcoming winter in which interdependence meant throwing out pride in favor of survival?

Well, frankly, if you have time to meditate about that, please do so and let me know where you conclude things. The rest of us have to hurry up and do something, anything, even if it's stupid.

So, alright, if you look at it from a social perspective, it all boils down to (pardon the pun) feasting. Never mind the ancient feast days, this is a sit-down, get-fat thing which we have taken to extremes. And extremes are what the season has become.

On a visit to the supermarket and fighting my way past Christmas displays, I found the annual Turkey Deposit, a mound of carcasses given whatever the industry desires to entice us to pick one over the other. In reality they're all the same.

Let's look at this: If you are normal, how often do you buy and roast Turkey? My guess is, once a year, for most of us. When? Thanksgiving.

So I hoisted a medium-sized one into the cart (some of these things are so big, one wonders how they can be carved and divided among normal eaters - not gluttons).

And the menu continues. Subliminal are the thoughts that we have much to be thankful for. We flock to the stores and buy great things, and we concentrate with great genius on how to duplicate the feats of the past or create new feats to be duplicated in the future.

Of course, on The Day Itself, we officially kick off the season in which we work ourselves up to a feverish and debt- and myth-ridden crescendo. My thoughts about the "reason for the season" won't appear in this report.

The car was well-loaded when I left the grocery store, and still somehow I hadn't picked up the rest of the essential ingredients for the groaning board. Tom Turkey dripped frost on Every Day Things, and that was as far as the flavor of the feast infused the trunk as I closed the lid and headed home.

The date? Somewhere in the early November teens.

They all come out of the woodwork for the Shopper's and Glutton's festival. People you never see at any other time of the year (and some whom you wish you couldn't see now) pack the aisles and the shopping carts and the checkout lines. Some folks shouldn't be out at all, like the lady who took a full minute to back out of a parking space and begin to drive away.

There's a song out there that includes the lyric, "Ten pounds too much to the naked eye," and despite the season for fall and winter apparel, some folks just don't get it. You are not dinging around the house, you are in public, and even though your cat doesn't seem to care, if your grocer were honest he'd tell you to please shop in off hours. Speaking of dinging around the house, bedroom slippers and sweat pants are not the fashion du jour for shopping. And this is not a situation involving one sex more predominantly than another, or even one age group more than another.

And there are people in the grocery store who will take up the whole aisle, oblivious of everyone else, while apparently trying to memorize the labels of canned products and boxes while others wait. They somehow sense your preferred rhythm and route, and find a way to be there in your way, no matter which aisle you pick to enter next. It's enough to make a guy shop backwards.

ALSO, we need someone to define the source of the dysfunction that makes Mommy's Little Cutie turn into a 105-decibel screaming idiot from the moment he crosses the threshold to the minute he crosses it again. And, Mommy, I may be old-fashioned, but let me give you a clue: asking a 4-year-old to decide whether his behavior is appropriate for a public place ain't workin'. Frankly, the kid is insufferable, which might explain why he's at the store instead of at home with Daddy.

All these things are problems at one time or another, but they combine to make your "shopping experience" a journey through overpriced hell. And judging by the faces of all these ostensibly thankful people, it's affecting all of them the same way. The suggestion and comment boxes are notably absent. Store personnel are donning kevlar and taking classes on handling rabid customers.

So when Rotunda decided it was time to share my place in space and time, snapping her gum and standing in the middle of the aisle, my adrenalin flowed and it was definitely not excitement of a good kind.

By now Mr. Turkey had been hogging my freezer for a week (yes, it's true, hogs aren't the only critters capable of hogging, just cruise parking lots and you'll find that even homo sapiens can hog things). I was on the Everything Else shopping trip. Thursday loomed large on the calendar, and not because of a doctor appointment for Mrs. RR. I think of all the things I can be grateful for, surviving the Thanksgiving shopping trips might rank high on the list.

Rotunda had first been glimpsed like a blimp in the parking lot; I had filtered her out until forced to share space with her in the store. Her gum snapped ominously, as she stared with something approaching an illusion of concentration on a can of beans.

Her outfit was a study in bad choices. After writing most of the details I decided to delete the paragraph. The outfit and its description are worthy of a laugh or a lawsuit, and because of the latter I took it out.

Knowing what Rotunda's system would likely do with beans was enough to make me gag. I turned my cart around and picked a different aisle to enter.

To my amazement, after being distracted by the end-of-the-aisle-you wouldn't-buy-this-but-here-it-is-anyway display, I entered my chosen aisle only to find Herself - Rotunda, regarding another object of interest while snapping her gum and rocking back in her pink rubber flip-flops.

The rest of the trip through the store was marked by repeated Rotunda-hauntings and empty places where my usual purchases would normally be located. I steered the cart in and out through tangles and wove through aisles of two-legged obstructions until I decided to forego any more supermarket fun and head to the cash registers.

At the checkout line, I, the Rotunda Magnet, was standing in carefully controlled impatience, trying to focus on an inner peaceful place, trying to think of a serenity object, wondering if I should up my dose of Zoloft, when it came again.

Snap-snap. Snap-snap-snap. I turned slowly, and there she was.

She BEAMED at me! "Hi! Sure is crowded, ain't it?"

Fifty-three years of training and the values of my parent's generation teach that you return a smile with a smile, respond to pleasantries politely, and.....why not, the person in front of me had two cartloads of beast feast to be released.

So we smiled and chatted about nothing. She smiled and giggled a lot, and she seemed truly joyful. I began to wonder why. She was going to spend the holiday alone, as always had been the case since her mother had died. She was hoping the power company would give her a break for a few more days.

Rotunda's cart was a study in what's-wrong-with-this-picture. She herself was as wide as the handles, but deep in the basket were a few cans of assorted staples, a couple of potatoes, a jar of peanut butter, a box of fake macaroni and cheese, a can of tuna, and the saddest looking chicken I've ever seen. Although it was slightly larger than a cornish hen, she had apparently placed it in the seat area of the basket, as if proud of it. A box of saltines with a torn-off corner and a few dented cans from the reduced-price shelf finished off the load of treasures.

The wagon train of the hoarder in front of us trundled off to the front of the store, and I emptied out the cart and got through the checkout quickly. Something was nagging at me as I swiped the card and signed the receipt.

I was worried about Rotunda. I was sure I was losing my mind.

As I loaded the car, I had a very strong urge to go to a shop on the other side of the bridge to pick up a little bauble for Mrs. Railroad - an angel, maybe. Not the brightest idea, with perishables in the trunk, but the urge was strong, and soon I was in traffic headed across the river on the bridge. And shutting vents and turning on the air conditioning to escape the fumes from the rust bucket in front of me.

The rust bucket was the sagging and suffering model from which cartoons are drawn, a relic from the low point in design and quality of the American auto industry. Although I think I know what kind of car it was, the corrosion and filth and lack of surviving trim actually made its age and identity rather hard to determine. Indescribable and yet a unique icon to things which have outlived all wild hopes of life expectancy, it was slow, but it was in front of me.

Laboring up toward the considerable apex of the Thomas Johnson Bridge, the rust bucket showed a kind of defiant pride, leading the parade of healthier vehicles toward yet one more hilltop. Smoking and topping a bit over 35 mph, the worst possible thing that can happen on a busily-traveled 2-lane bridge, happened.

A few yards from the apex, the rust bucket erupted. Steam and smoke boiled out from the hood and underneath the car, and struggling the last few inches of its life, rolled to a halt, with nothing left to give.

I was furious. I had plans! I had perishables! What was I going to do now!?

I turned on my hazard flashers, climbed out, and strode up to the driver's window of the rust bucket. There, slumped over the steering wheel, shaking in gut-wrenching sobs, sat..........Rotunda.

I have long maintained that in times of adversity, there is a strong reaction in people - either running to God, or running from Him.

Do I yell at her for being such a loser? Or do I help?

"Hey," I said, "Hey. And I touched her shoulder. She turned to look at me, tears streaming. "Let me help," I said, and out came the cell phone.

Before long a couple of cops were there directing traffic. A tow truck was on the way, but who would pay for it? A cold rain had started, ahead of a cold front that was moving in quickly.

"Thank, you, oh thank you so much!" she sobbed.

No sweat. I'm in it now, and you have more coming. I'm gonna fix this mess. Who could let you get into so much trouble? I'm gonna help you out of it. I feel a little guilty, but if that helps put teeth in my sense of fairness and charity, then so be it.

The first thing was to get this poor young lady in out of the rain. Sitting in the front passenger seat of my VW wasn't easy, but she got there. Next I grabbed her groceries from her car and put them in the back seat. About them, The Mighty Hook arrived to extract the rust bucket.

There was no need to ask, but I did anyway.

"Any idea where you'd like to take your car?"

As the tears rolled, I instructed the driver to take it to my favorite mechanic, and I let him swipe my credit card. Soon, the truck and rust bucket rolled away, as we followed.

"What's your name?" I asked. "Carol," she said, "it's short for Caroline. Mrs. Kennedy, you know, back in the last century." I decided that she didn't mean to make me feel old, so I asked her where she wanted me to take her.

So she told me about the beautiful place where she lived, and before long we were at the back corner of a trailer park, where 6-foot-tall reeds threatened the patch of ground where her rented trailer sat.

I helped her carry in the groceries. The place was clean enough, but cold and dark and empty.

"Sorry it's not ready for visitors," she blushed. "One thing at a time."

"So," I asked, "You have no family? Anywhere?"

"I'm adopted, I mean, I WAS adopted, until momma died." She looked at the cracked floor.

Okay. Time to take the next step.

"Would you like to come to our place for Thanksgiving? No tricks, no gimmicks, no evil intentions. My wife and kids and I would love to have you come and spend a while with us."

She stared at me for a moment, then stared away, at the opposite wall, and a tear or two fell from her cheek.

"We understand, from years ago, what it is to be alone. We know what it is to have nothing. We know what it is to be hurt by somebody. I know that my wife will welcome you."

Being out on a limb is quite an experience; the wind makes it rock you.

"Okay, gimme a minute," she sniffed, "I'll be right back." And she walked back into the darkness where her bedroom might have been.

It took maybe 30 seconds. Out she came with a black trash bag.

Out we went. Soon we were crossing the bridge, headed for Railroad Manor.

Lenny, as we know, is a genius judging human character. He devoured Carol with kisses and caresses, writhed in her lap with pure joy, and licked anything she would let him lick. Carol was definitely no longer anybody named Rotunda.

And so began the evening before Thanksgiving. Mrs. Railroad gave me a special kiss at bedtime. "I understand - good job," and she kissed me.

With Carol settled in the spare room, I toddled off to my own room and crashed hard - forgetting that our perishables were perishing in the trunk of the car outside.

Yikes!

Carol snores.

To say that the walls vibrated a bit might be an understatement.

And so, at 4 a.m. or so, I got up.

I have a favorite brand and blend of coffee, under the brand of a popular pastry shop chain, in whole bean form. I love to grind it and immediately thereafter brew it, and it usually comes out so very well that it's hard to stop sipping and start into the day.

But the grinder, kids, could wake the dead. And the wonderful hand-crank jobs of which I should know nothing if trying to deny my age, aren't around anymore.

So, the obligatory grinder session began the day I waited an hour or two before lighting off this piece of electrical violence, but even at 5 I'm sure it was too soon for everyone.

Except Rotunda - sorry, Carol.

Shuffling and dragging the comforter clutched around her, Carol came into the kitchen. "Smells so good, slept so well, can I hug you?" she said.

"Yes indeed, have a seat, sweetie. I hope you slept well." I was pulling out cups and creamer and things. The hug was as brief as it should have been.

"Sure did. THANK YOU again for bringing me in, to be with you guys, I can hardly believe I'm here!"

The process of bringing a rogue spirit home is complicated. Things are not as simple as they seem. You should understand and enlist help as appropriate.

Lenny wandered in, blinking sleepy eyes and lifting his nose to smell people, coffee, and last night's leftovers. He sniffed for a while at Carol's toes, and He looked up at her with a worried frown. "I'm sorry, sweetie," he said. "Want some lap time?" She put down an instinctive and restraining hand, and he lowered head and tail and headed back to bed.

In the pre-dawn hours, truth and dreams mix and swirl like cigarette smoke beneath the lights of a convenience store marquee. Of such wraiths popular songs, myths, and suicide notes are written; silence is golden and damned at the same time, and desperate eyes peer past coffee steam to behold their shadows.

Here at our house, at four-to-fiveish in the morning, the yellow glow of an insufficient kitchen light reflected from sleepless faces and drew new pictures of the day yet to come, cast on faces stretched like canvas prepared to receive the artist's brush.

"Um...what about my car?"

I smiled with a confidence that baffled both of us. "It'll be okay. Whatever happens, the result will be a whole lot better than you expect. That's how things work around here."

Mrs. RR gave me a call, and asked for some coffee. I grabbed the pot and, followed by Carol, went to sit by Mrs. RR's bed and table. She sipped from the straw in her cup, and she and Carol began to seriously get acquainted. When the conversation began to flow, I turned a pit stop into a kitchen session, getting the bird ready and starting the day-long cooking process.

By nine, breakfast had been served and eaten and cleaned up after, people were clean and fresh and watching the parade, and I was playing in the kitchen. That is, until I started looking for the broccoli. And the squash. And the beans. And.......

The outside temperature was hovering around 40. Thank God, although the ice cream and other frozen stuff was trash, we could still do our Thanksgiving dinner without a last-minute rush to the store.

At one point, as I passed through the living room, Carol was snoring with Lenny by her legs on the couch, Kathy was snoring with her chair tilted back, and Lenny was snoring with his head on one of Carol's ankles. All was right with the world.

By mid-afternoon, with cooking smells of several descriptions permeating the house, our kids began to arrive. Our daughter and her husband arrived with pies, and our son arrived with an appetite. Easy laughter and small talk filled the house, and Carol was being casually included in everything. The expression on her face was priceless.

There is a trigger mounted inside every tabletop; when the plates are there and steam is rising over the warm food, the trigger sends a signal to the telephone to make it ring. Thanksgiving being no exception, the dang thing rang just as we were gathering around the goaning board to stuff ourselves. Signalling for the rest to start passing food around, I answered the phone.

It was my mechanic.

"Sorry to bother you on Thanksgiving, but I saw that piece of s*** you had the wrecker drop off at the shop. So I got some good news and bad news. You ever hear of Elvira Sweeney? No? Well she died a few months back, and in her will she left me her car 'cause she liked me so much. It's the same dang thing as what you dropped off, same color, even, but it's got like twenny thousan' miles on it, about a tenth o' that thing you had dropped off. Now lissen, I need another car like I need a hole in the head. Let me sell your piece o' crap, an' I'll give you Elvira's car."

So I told my wonderful friend to swap the locks and the tags, and do the paperwork with the State, for $200. Carol was going to get back a perfect replacement for the rust bucket.

I could go on, but you know how it went already - Hallmark used to sponsor TV stories like this.

The point is this: it's easy to be crotchety as a WS or an IS or any kind of average adult. It's easy to condemn those whom you're sure have chosen to be idiots and gluttons and losers. But you know what? In the final analysis, we're all the products of origin and destiny, and that means we're all equal in the sight of the Creator.

In my stories I often lampoon people of certain eccentricities or physical characteristics that I tend to exploit at their expense. That's easy to do, too. But if it weren't for those characteristics of theirs, it would be tough to spin some of these yarns.

The story of Rotunda and the Feast of Gluttons and Shoppers is mostly fiction, with a few realistic elements we all see and experience every day. The trick here is to leave the caricatures on the shelf as you leave this thread, and feel love in place of antagonism, acceptance instead of snobbery, humility instead of pride.

If you enjoyed any part of this story, I'm very grateful; your joy keeps me going with these things, and so I'll be back with another story of high adventure or mundane comedy, if you like.