A Memory of Some Memories

“My brothers and I pored over volumes of collected Peanuts long before we could read them and we wondered what they said, often making up stories of what we thought was going on. It was a great impetus to us to apply ourselves in school, so we could read them. Anyway, remembering it got me thinking about our early reading resources and prompted me to jot down a few notes and memories.

 

Pop would sometimes bring home paperbacks of collected comics to give to us after one of his long hauls at truck driving. There were volumes of Peanuts, of course, and some Don Martin collections where we were introduced to National Gorilla Suit Day (which has since become a real holiday; Jan. 31st, look it up!), Fester and Karbunkle, and Captain Klutz. Long before there was Gahan Wilson and Edward Gorey in our lives, there was Don Martin. Now that I think about it, I bet Pop must have bought those books to read himself before passing them along to us. I don't think that he would ever have admitted to reading "funny books", as they were considered too childish for grown serious men.

 

But by far the biggest supplier of reading matter was Mom. There wasn't much money to go around in those days, what with four kids and a truck driver’s pay, but she got us what she could. Gold Key Digests (both Disney and Ripley's Believe It or Not), Classics Illustrated, and the Whitman Classics books that came as premiums with Folger's Coffee were all bought at the local supermarket, Baenziger's. The first copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz I ever got was with a can of coffee, and it's the first "chapter" book I remember reading on my own.

And of course, there were Weekly Reader book orders, if you could pry the one or two dollars out of your parents to get a few precious volumes. Thus, Harvey's Hideout, The Mystery in The Night Woods, 101 Dalmatians, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks were obtained. And Homer Price books. Does anyone remember Homer Price? And The Man Who Lost His Head, and Ben and Me, and Georgie (the ghost), and Norman Bridwell books.

 

Most of the books I read at the time were in the school library. I had always kept an eye out for favorite volumes since school days, with little success, until the internet time. Since then I've been able to get The Visitors from Oz, Witches, Witches, Witches, Uncle Wiggly books, Thornton Burgess animal books, and Walt Disney's Toad of Toad Hall. Right now, I have on order Donald Duck Visits South America, Thaddeus Jones and the Dragon, and The Nip and Tuck War. I remember The Nip and Tuck War fondly because when I read it in 4th Grade I performed my first act of literary criticism on it, as I demonstrated the parallels between it and The Jungle Book.

 

Then there are books that I remember much of the story, but neither the title nor author. When I was a kid the least important words in a book were the author's name. There was a book on sea serpents [The Sea Serpents Around Us, by Lois and Louis Darling] that we all remember fondly, with wondrous black, white, and charcoal illustrations. It starts with an old sea serpent putting its head on the boat of the artist/illustrator man and wife team and telling them the story of various historical sightings. Then there's the story [George, by Agnes Sligh Turnbull] of a brother and sister who find George, a talking rabbit with glasses, who helps them and then leaves in best Mary Poppins' manner. And there's the book [Cinders, by Vera Bock] about Cinderella's footman (was he a rat? or a mouse?) who only half-way transforms back and is left a little ratty man with no history to deal with the ordinary world. I remember he helps Cinderella in some post-ball adventure having to do with the glass slipper." 

-         Power of Babel; July 3, 2008

 

Action Figures to Be Noted

Action Figures to Be Noted: Christmas Bonus

My Life on Cards

(Pretentious, no?)

[In 1995 I started to take notes on file cards for a possible autobiography. Here they are.]

First Grade 69-70

I cried on my first day at school. I'd never been left alone before. I hadn’t gone to kindergarten. Mrs. Roberts was the teacher, but it was Mrs. Dalman, one of the kindest, ugliest women I've ever met who comforted me, calmed me down. I'm grateful to her still.

Mrs. Roberts. D'Layne Langlenais. Keith Farrel. Brian Meuth. Byron Zip. Dorothy. Adam Patterson.

I remember when Adam read the "Tip" books, he said "Teep, Teep. Run, Teep, run." I remember Daniel Handy showing me a magazine that had the new cars for '70 in it.

It was a few (2?) weeks before the end of school. I had finished my whole workbook ahead of schedule; I always did extra work. I turned it in to Mrs. R. with great satisfaction; workbook time would now be free time. It was the afternoon and very sleepy. Lots of people had their heads down on their desks. End of school/end of day feeling very great (as in big).

Second Grade 70-71

Most people learned how to tie their shoes in kindergarten. I hadn't gone, didn't know. Mrs. Nowotney made it her special project to teach me. She even put up a Peanuts poster with Linus: "Happiness is knowing how to tie your own shoes." It worked. I always was a sucker for Linus.

Nobody checked books from the room library. I noticed cards in the back and asked Mrs. Nowotney if I could, then did. Checked out a book about a Sea Captain and his little boat, the "Tidly-Idly", who put a bandage on a whale's tail, then all the other whales wanted one. Books on water drops and rain.

A recruiter from the Girl Scouts came and made a speech, then handed a pile of forms to be passed back, each girl in the row to keep one. Since it was for girls, I wasn't listening and passed back automatically, keeping one by habit. When the girl at the back didn't get one, and people realized what had happened, everyone laughed.

Third Grade 71-72

Mrs. Davenport put strips of blue tape on the desks. If you misbehaved the tape was removed; if you were especially good, you got a gold star. At the end of the year if you still had your tape, you got a quarter and an extra nickel for each star. I lost mine not for being bad but for unconsciously kicking my desk.

At the back of the room behind the bookshelves there was a little alcove where the games were kept. A boy named Gabriel was the only other one who liked to play checkers so I usually wound up playing with him at break time, though I don't think he really liked me.

Mrs. D. had one of the best room libraries in the whole school. Big well-illustrated books like Disney's "The Wind in the Willows", a big anthology of Uncle Wiggly tales, illustrated anthologies of cat and animal stories.

Fourth Grade 72-73

Mrs. Bratton had a pretty good room library. I read The Nip and Tuck War; George, a bespectacled rabbit; the story of a half mouse/half man in the aftermath of the Cinderella tale [Cinders]. Some books I got at the time were 101 Dalmatians, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days, and The Three Musketeers. Mrs. B. read us James and the Giant Peach.

This was the year Susan was born. I kind of had a crush on Mrs. Bratton because she was new. She had round blonde hair and black horn-rim glasses. When discussing Mom's expectancy, I casually remarked, "Mrs. Bratton had a baby."

I was always fidgeting. One time during a film strip I was rolling the cord to the projector under my shoe. It passed right by my desk. Suddenly there was a pop, and the projector blew out. The cord had frayed. Luckily it was in the dark, so no one knew it was me, but I felt guilty anyway.

Jerry Williams had the freckliest face and the greatest collection of comic books I'd ever seen. He showed me the first MAD magazine I ever remember seeing and issue #1 of a comic called "The Demon" that was interesting. It had Merlin and Morgan le Fay in it.

Fourth Grade 73-74

Mrs. Harris' cat had kittens and I got one. I named her Rosemary, after the girl in Carbonel. She was, I think, a tortoiseshell-type cat, with green eyes.

Mrs. Harris had a statuette of a squirrel or a chipmunk on her desk called "Chippy". It was kind of a sporting tradition to take it and hide it somewhere during lunchtime. Then she had to find it. Once it turned up wrapped in rubber bands.

Mrs. Harris read us Misty of Chincoteague. No-one read much of her room library, but I remember I read Mrs. Pickerel and Miss Pickett books in her class. Miss Pickett was a cheap Mary Poppins clone.

McQueeney 5th-6th Grade: The older grades played out front on breaks. There was a concrete ledge along the wall that was fun to balance along. It was boring and you couldn't go to the back where the playground was unless you played sports and you couldn't mingle with the smaller kids.

McQueeney Library: The Visitors from Oz. Donald Duck Goes to South America. Sea-Monsters. Werewolves. Uncle Wiggly. Thornton Burgess/The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum. Dudley the Dragon [Thaddeus Jones and the Dragon]. The Lollypop Dragon. Aquarium with Creature from the Black Lagoon (or was that the city library?). Mrs. Reese.

Sixth Grade 74-75: A. J. Briesemeister Middle School was the great divide. Kids you'd been together with for five years were dispersed among hundreds. Kids you never knew were suddenly cheek by jowl with you. There were lockers and showers and changing classes ten times a day. All rather hellish.

Omi's House: In the hall there was a little niche for the telephone. In her bedroom was a night-light of a bouquet of flowers in a white wicker frame; in the middle of each flower was a little red light bulb like a Christmas light. Her Chinese jasmine bushes and the tunnels within them. 

Uncle Marvin's: The sheep. The barn. The dogs under the porch. The boxes of toys: teddy bears, the monkey, little animals, etc. The crucifix on the wall, the Last Supper, Guardian Angel. The Schmidt's. Bottle cap collecting in the driveway.

Uncle Monroe's: Big Tex sodas in the outdoor garage fridge. The vise. Deer heads in the living room. Swings, trampoline, the old witch's cauldron. Mo-mots. Pecan trees. SHS in the background. The side porch where you counted cars. The cactus Mike tripped over. Crawling under the table while they played cards.

Uncle David's: The barn. The horses. The old trough. Chickens everywhere. The window seat. The scary bathroom. Hand drawn poster "The Devil Made Me Do It". Toys and little animals. The board over the septic tank.

Nanny's Old House: Bamboo stand. Open garage. Old Santa sign. Big wooden spoon and fork. Bar with purple stools. Big S-shaped chair. Poodles. Part of the house rented out that we never went into.

1995: Nov. 28. A beautiful day weatherwise; at night it dropped to 34 degrees. Read Popism by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett. Worked on the Great Garage Cleanup [never accomplished] with John. Watched Poirot and Marple. Read Andy Warhol bio by Bockris. Started these cards. Had talk with John about life and goals. Nov. 29 John made new recordings of a bunch of old tapes and played them for us. From internal evidence they date from before Susan's birth and include the infamous "Racquel Welch pillow" and "I don't want to change diapers!" Nov. 30 More old tapes, Rich Little show, "Paparelli's Pizza Man." Ate the last butterscotch from Kenny and Kaye's wedding.

[I add a few in 2023. The old green wooden folding table in the back bedroom, and Mom periodically painting it. Pop having to dock the poodle puppies’ tails on the back porch step; his whetstone and pocket knife. The webby, faded ‘dish washing rags’ that always hung on the kitchen sink, and the old radio in the window that we listened to while we washed. And, once again, the Mexican pottery lamps with marbles.]

 I couldn't imagine in 1995 how many of those books I would be able to track down and own. The internet (as far as it existed) was something other people used. It's a pure coincidence that I started those cards exactly 28 years ago. Some of those memories I wouldn't remember today if I hadn't written them down.

By the Swag Lamp's Light

 

The Lord of the Rings: The Black Gate is Closed (Part Three)

The Tale

Gollum is in a pitiable state after Frodo’s stern words, and for a while they can get nothing from him but squeaks and mumbles and begging for them to be nice to ‘poor little Smeagol!’ Eventually he calms down enough to begin revealing, in fits and starts, the alternative road he is proposing.

If they travel down the road that turns west of the Ephel Duath they will come to a crossroads in a circle of trees. The road on the right goes down to the ruined city of Osgiliath. The road in the middle goes down to the Great Water (the Sea), full of fish and ‘nice birds’; Gollum never went there, alas! Further down that road (he’s heard) are lands where the Yellow Face is very hot and there are fierce men with dark faces. But it is the road to the left that he means to lead them on.

That road immediately begins climbing up into the dark mountains. When the road turns, they will see a fortress, very old and horrible now. Smeagol heard tales when he was young (‘we used to tell lots of tales in the evening, sitting by the banks of the Great River, in the Willow Lands, when the River was younger too,’) of the Men of the West and their tall buildings and of the white-walled Tower of the Moon.

‘That would be Minas Ithil that Isildur the son of Elendil built,’ said Frodo. ‘It was Isildur who cut off the finger of the Enemy.’

‘Yes, He has only four on the Black Hand, but they are enough.’ Gollum shudders. Anyway, Sauron took that city long ago and it is terrible now, full of Orcs and ‘worse things’, and the Silent Watchers guard the road. Sam grumbles that the way seems just as bad as the Black Gate with another long march to it to boot. Gollum explains that while the Eye watches everywhere, and especially the Gate where he expects his enemies to attack his land, ‘He can’t see everything all at once, not yet.’ This way does not have his full attention.

You seem to know a lot about it, says Sam. Have you been talking about it with Him, or just ‘hobnobbing with Orcs?’

“Not a nice hobbit, not sensible.’ He has talked to Orcs before he met master, yes, but what he says many people are saying now. It’s here in the North that the great danger to Sauron is (and to them, too, while they stay) and the Enemy is always watching. But to the west He is not afraid, and He has the Silent Watchers. Are we to just stroll up to the City, then, and ask if we’re on the right way to Mordor, then? asks Sam. Or are the Silent Watchers too silent to answer?

‘Don’t make jokes about it,’ hissed Gollum. ‘It isn’t funny, O no! Not amusing at all.’ It makes no sense trying to get into Mordor, but if Frodo says he must go or will go, he has to try some way. This is where nice Smeagol helps. He’s not proposing they go to Minas Morgul. He found another way, long ago. Near the ruined city there is a path leading into the mountains, then a long narrow stair, then a long winding stair, and then - his voice drops – a dark tunnel. That is how he escaped Mordor, long ago, so long he cannot be sure the way is still there.

Sam is sure if it is there, the way must be guarded, somehow. Frodo presses Gollum on the matter: isn’t it guarded? And did he escape, or was he let loose on an errand for the Dark Lord? That’s what Aragorn thought when he caught Gollum near the Dead Marshes.

‘He lied on me, yes he did!’ Gollum has no fond memories of his captor. He did escape on his own. Of course he had been told to seek the Precious, but he went looking for it for himself. Frodo notices that he is using ‘I’ while he tells this story; this seems to mean he is telling the truth … or the truth as he knows it. The escape might have been arranged by the Dark Tower itself and allowed. And he does seem to be keeping something back. He presses him again. Is the way guarded?

But mention of Aragorn has made Gollum sullen. No really safe places in these lands; master must try it or go home. If he knows the name of the high pass, he refuses to say it, or anything more.

‘Its name was Cirith Ungol, a name of dreadful rumor.’ Maybe Aragorn could have told them what the name meant, and Gandalf would have warned them. But Frodo is alone in this decision. But even at that moment, when Gandalf is striving with Saruman in the ruins of Isengard, the wizard’s thought is seeking for Frodo and Sam over the long leagues in hope and pity.  

Maybe Frodo feels it, though he thinks Gandalf long fallen in Moria. He sits silently a while, trying to remember everything the old wizard ever told him, but none of his advice seems to fit the situation. He wonders if Gandalf himself ever had any real plan to get into Mordor; he doesn’t think he’d ever been there himself. Here he is, a little hobbit from the Shire, trying to go where the great ones could not or dare not go. It is a dark path and an evil fate, but one he chose back at Bag End at a time that seems ‘so remote now that it was like a chapter in a story of the world’s youth’.

‘This was an evil choice. Which way should he choose? And if both led to terror and death, what good lay in choice?’

Bits and Bobs

I love the little glimpse we have of Gollum back in the days of his relative innocence, and how he knows from personal experience that Sauron has only four fingers on one hand, apparently unable to regenerate from this wound though he can rebuild another body. We also see from Gollum’s point of view his travels and how he has even interacted with Orcs and survived. His Cain-like wanderings have given him strange knowledge far beyond that of Frodo, even with all his counsel from the Wise.

Lots of travel lore here, pushing us to the edge of the map of Middle-Earth. The image of Gollum possibly frolicking at the seashore and eating fish to his heart’s content is rather delightful. The significance of the name Cirith Ungol is hinted at here; I shall not translate it just yet.

I also like the insight of where this story thread is at in relation to the one following the other members of the Fellowship. It is hinted that Gandalf’s ‘thoughts and prayers’ may indeed be of some help to Frodo, if only dimly felt as emotional support. 

Nanny’s Banner

If there was one thing Nanny could do well, it was decorating for Christmas. She couldn’t give good presents, she couldn’t cook tasty holiday meals, and when we went to visit, she was neither merry nor bright, but judgmental and rather sour. But 'she played good Christmas music' and her Christmas decorations were somehow great. There was a hanging bell that played carols, a wreath that had the front parts of a couple of deer poking out the outside door, with their hindquarters hanging on the inside, candles in wreaths, and ribbons with bells. But the one thing that always fascinated me was the Noel banner, and looking closely at it you can see why.

She had made it herself, using this McCall’s pattern. Where she got all the little things she sewed onto it I have no idea, though there are some obvious gumball machine prizes and little animals. When Nanny passed away, her Christmas stuff fell to Mom’s lot, and when Mom passed away, this is the part of the Christmas things that I got.

Looking at the ‘N’, you cannot fail to see the spot where (well-remembered from my youth) there used to be a little plastic figure of an infant, that filled the place of Baby Jesus between Mary and Joseph. How it came to be missing (and it looks to me to have been removed on purpose; no other trinket is gone) is a mystery that will probably never be answered. My own theory is that in Nanny’s waning years her Dark Master would no longer allow even so oblique an image of Jesus Christ within her cold, hopeless dwelling. But I’m open to other explanations.  

For that last statement I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused anyone or their family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

The Story of the Stockings

 

The Story of the Stockings

With the end of November and the coming of Christmas, my thoughts turn naturally to the seasonal decorating of the house. And this, of course, inevitably recalls the grim, the tragic, the character-driven fate of The Story of the Stockings. It is a saga in my life emotionally comparable only to The Mystery of the Jacques Cousteau Notebook.

It began pleasantly enough in the earliest days of the Babel Family’s beginning. Mom, being a young wife and mother, wanted to start building a beautiful base of household memories and traditions. To that end, she applied to a little old lady, a local artisan, to make Christmas stockings for each of her children.

To us they were indeed ‘wonders of rare device’. The outsides were warm, soft felt and the insides were lined with satiny smooth material. Mike’s and mine were decorated with glinting Santa Claus sequin appliques (with other smaller festive items) and John’s featured a jolly young Harlequin clown with an inset face. But most miraculous of all, at this time of community juvenile property, each boasted our own name sewn at the top of our stocking. It was a reassurance: your name was known; you weren’t just part of the herd. Santa knew you.

Why this tradition stopped when it came to Kenny, I don’t know. Perhaps the old lady who made them had died. Perhaps money was growing tight. He did get his own stocking, and while perfectly fine it was not as fancy. I cannot, at the moment, recall the pattern on it. [He has told me since that it was Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.]

But I do know why the tradition stopped and the stockings were put away. The awful years of the Jehovah’s Witnesses came upon us fully in 1970 (or so), and that, I fear, was Mom’s fault. In her innocence and wish to have friends she was lured into the cult by another nice sucker who also later left the Kingdom Hall.

That was it for Christmas for most of my childhood. The stockings, along with the other Christmas things, were packed in a box and tucked up into the rafters of the garage, which at the time was empty enough to hold the two cars it was designed for. Why they didn’t just throw it all away I don’t know, though I’m glad they didn’t. Perhaps Mom felt some sentimental attachment; I rather think part of it was they had spent good money on stuff and weren’t about to just toss it.

When my sister Susan came along in 1973 she naturally did not get a stocking, but when we finally left the JW’s (I want to say in 1976 or 77; at half our lives it had been an eternity to us) she was still young enough to benefit from the holiday and soon had her own stocking, which I believe had a teddy bear on it. We dug the Christmas stuff out, told the Elders to bite a fart, and went on our merry way. The face of John’s clown had suffered damage, but I repaired it with another face I drew on stiff posterboard. Otherwise, they were surprisingly well-preserved.

And so, we had the dear old stockings again for a while. But alas, happiness is never to last for long. As Mom’s arthritis grew worse and worse the management of Loop Drive fell more and more out of the control of her hands. I had formed a deeply sentimental attachment to the stockings and wanted to keep them safe in the old Toybox, which I had now cleaned out and was using for all my ‘treasures’. Mom would have none of that. As matriarch they were in her care, and they must reside in the parental bedroom.

Fast forward a few years. Their bedroom is now crammed with tottering piles of boxes ‘to be sorted’, and Mom is confined to a recliner in the living room. Pop (in completely understandable frustration and feeling there can be nothing worthwhile in them) moves most of the boxes out into the garage. With them, unheeded, go our precious Christmas stockings.

Fast forward more years. The garage has become a black hole of hoarding; there is only a small path to the washer and dryer. This maelstrom cannot be touched without Mom or Pop’s oversight, and since Mom cannot and Pop doesn’t care, the stockings stay buried. After Mom passes away in 1999, some time goes by before Pop starts hauling stuff out to the dump indiscriminately. It is then and there, I am sure, that the old stockings met their ultimate fate. When Pop and Mike passed away, we finally got together and carefully cleared out the garage prior to selling the house. The stockings were not found in what remained.

But in the meantime, almost immediately after Mom’s death, I had discovered at Walmart a series of stockings that oh-so-closely resembled our Christmas relics. They too were made of soft, velvety felt; they too were decorated in twinkly appliques. In a surge of nostalgia, I bought five of them, one for each of the Babel kids. There’s a teddy bear for Susan; a snowman for me; green holly for John; a carousel for Kenny; and a train on a red background for Mike. For twenty-three years now I’ve been hanging them up at Christmas time as decorations in memoriam. I still call them ‘the new stockings.’

Thanksgiving 2023

 

11/23/23: Thanksgiving Day. Up at 4:30 AM. Cartoons at 6 AM; they had Holiday for Drumsticks and Harmonica Humdingers, so that’s at least two ‘holiday’ cartoons. Was afraid I’d broken off my insulin needle in my flesh, but it was only bent. 

Went in at 10 AM. Peeled and boiled for mashed potatoes; improvised a gravy with fried onions and mushrooms; buttered and heated up rolls [I'd made pea salad, deviled eggs, and pumpkin pie the day before]. Went in at 12:15 PM and took shower and got dressed. Ready to leave at 1 PM, but we didn’t until about 1:45 PM. Everybody else rode in Ryan’s truck with the food; I rode with Andy in the wrecker. Nice bleak November weather; it had dried up since morning. We had to go back and get Susan’s phone. We arrived at 2 PM (exactly at the time we were scheduled to eat). After a bit of kerfuffle, John said the prayer and the feast began.

There was ham and smoked turkey, dressing, green bean salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, pea salad, deviled eggs, orange divinity, and afterward peach, cherry, pumpkin pie and little pecan pies and chocolate cake. Tea and soda. Many of us sat at the kitchen table and ‘the kids’ (from Ryan on down) in the living room. Since I was kind of wedged into a corner, Morgandy pretty much waited on me.

After we ate there were games. The boys won 4 to 1 in Catch Phrase, Ryan and Morgandy abstaining. Then when it came to Cards Against Humanity (scandalous!) Amy’s mother also left; for a miracle, I actually won that game.

We went outside and started a fire pit and schmoozed some more (talk, of course, having gone on all evening). We left about 9 PM (I think); on the way home, we were delayed by witnessing an accident. Andy and Ryan (as wreckers) were bound to stop and report the car going off-road and into a fence, but the guys did not need a tow and drove off on their own. Home, winding down, then to bed.

[Amy's mom and step-dad should be included in that picture, but they'd already left before I thought to take it.]

Farewell, Marty Krofft

 

Yesterday, November 26, Marty Krofft (born 1937) died at the age of 86. One-half of Sid and Marty Krofft Productions, these two built sets for The Banana Splits, and completely produced such shows as H. R. Pufnstuf, The Bugaloos, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Lidsville, The Land of the Lost, The Lost Saucer, Far-Out Space Nuts, Wonderbug, Electro-Woman and Dyna-Girl, as well as other shows (mainly variety) aimed at older audiences.  These men are responsible for easily one-seventh of my early childhood. Marty began and continued as the business part of Sid and Marty Krofft, but in 1950 he took up puppetry to help Sid with the act. 

"Krofft was married to Christa Rogalski (Christa Speck), a former Playboy Playmate, from 1965 until her death in 2013. In addition to his 94-year-old brother Sid, Marty Krofft’s survivors include a brother, Harry; three daughters, Deanna Krofft-Pope, Kristina Krofft and Kendra Krofft; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild." - Variety.

Action Figures To Be Noted

 

Friday Fiction: Last Contact

LAST CONTACT

 

Perhaps the most merciless aspect of the whole affair has been my total inability to forget the incidents of that night in that lonely house off Gabode Road, and the nightmare habit that unrolls the entire event before my mind's eye when any chance association recalls it to my febrile mind. Most horrible is when I recall the last words of Herman Gatzman, and the precise voice in which they were uttered, and can only speculate about what was the truth of the matter. Speculate, but never know.

Let me begin by saying that I work on the staff of a small-town newspaper in Texas. Anyone familiar with operations of this sort will know that papers like the one I work with are mostly compilations of social events, weddings, and graduations, and the minor and trifling awards that are the Holy Grail of small town fame. As such they are monitored and edited by the socialite wives of a few local leaders of men.

It fell to me to report events that they were too delicate or unable to cope with--fires and floods and violent crimes--and in between times drum up stories of local interest to fill in my byline. It was during a particularly dry period that I received a letter from Herman Gatzman.

I did not care to pass along stories about flying saucers and spacemen to my readers. Such things smacked of shopping mall journalism, and at first I was not inclined to accept Gatzman's offer to interview him. But as my deadline drew nearer and my notepad looked barer and barer, I came to persuade myself that perhaps I could turn it into a local color piece, and at the very least make an ironic article at the expense of the extraterrestrial believers.

So it was that I found myself cruising late one afternoon through the under-developed no-man's-land that stretches for miles between town and town, in search of Gabode Road and the house of my potential interview.

To really see what Texas is like, one must see it near twilight on a quiet country road. It is then, in the cool of the day, that the long light gilds the dense low forests of mesquite and scrub oak, and casts a dim blue gloaming that is balm after the burning midday sun. In that shady gloom one can catch glimpses of animals picking their silent way through the sun-bleached grass: white-tail deer raising their tails at the sound of your approach and fleeing, coyotes slinking into the underbrush, or buzzards coming to rest in their dead and blasted trees, and one can hear the low of cattle or the far off, dying call of an owl as it starts its nightly hunt.

In that great primordial calm, far from the lights and the noise of the towns, the only signs of man's hand is the rocky, unpaved road, the inevitable phone lines, and the occasional sight of a weathered farmhouse, placed back from the road and swathed in trees. In that solitude even the sound of your tires seems hushed and lonely.

It was after turning down many of these country lanes that I followed the penciled-in instructions that an old gas-station attendant had marked on my map, and turned off onto a road where the telephone lines did not go. It was unusually potholed and uneven, but I had not gone a hundred yards along it when I saw the sun-blanched, worm-eaten sign: Gabode Road.

The house at the end of the trail was surrounded by a fence of cedar posts that had had little shaping from the trees from which they were cut, strung with ancient and rusty barbed wire. I backed my car around to the gate, then got out and let myself in through the simple latched railing and walked up to the house.

By now it was almost dark, and the hushed evening air was full of the hum of cicadas and the whir of grasshoppers, which would leap buzzing from the disturbed grass and land with a tick and a tiny puff of dust if they fell on the dirt path. The house seemed so still and deserted that I felt sure that I had wasted my time and come on a prank errand.

But as I stood some paces from the porch, trying to make out the dim outlines of the house, the front door suddenly swung open to reveal a tall and lanky old man, carrying a hefty, rust-covered flashlight in one hand and an axe-handle in the other.

He glared suspiciously at me, his red rheumy eyes in violent contrast to his white, tobacco-stained beard. Although his frame was stooped and his hand shook a little as he held the light, he had an air of stringy, leathern strength about him that suggested that he could so some serious business with the axe-handle if he chose.

"Well?" he asked. I assumed my best journalist's manner, designed to disarm and overawe potentially troublesome customers.

"Mr. Herman Gatzman? I'm William Eldridge from the Weekly Clarion, and I'm here in response to your letter in which you claimed you had an interesting experience that you believe newsworthy. Is now a good time for me to hear your story?"

He frowned, but relaxed his grip on the handle a bit. "Y'took y'time," he said. "I thought y'weren't gone to come at all." He gave a disgusted snort, then spat on the porch. "Come on in," he said. "I'm just about t'eat supper."

Once inside the he flicked the flashlight off, and turned a low-burning kerosene lamp up brighter. I had a chance to examine his home more closely. It was a simple board house of the type built sixty or seventy years ago, without insulation or wiring and protected by a corrugated tin roof. The large front room he showed me into had a wood burning stove in one corner, and obviously served him as both kitchen and living room.

Gatzman sat me down in a plain wooden chair next to a deal table that was laden with what I considered an inordinate amount of food for one solitary old man. One whole haunch of venison, a vast pot of boiled potatoes, another equally huge pot of green beans, and two loaves of bread next to a block of butter all shared his end of the table with a six pack of beer.

He offered and I accepted one of the beers, but I declined to eat with him, instead urging him to tell me his story while he ate. He grunted, and began to tell me about his adventure, at first sullenly, then with growing excitement and animation.

"I've lived out here all my life," he began. "And believe you me, things could happen out here and nobody would ever know about it. They's places up here and round about that a whole city-load of people could disappear in and nobody would ever find 'em. I know my way around most of my own land, and a lot of what ain't mine, and sometimes I hunt wheres you can't see nothin' human for miles about.

"It was about a week or so ago, and I was out huntin' for coons with my hound. There ain't no ways out there but deer tracks, but I know 'em all, and know how to find the way by moon and stars as well. I was rangin' pretty far from home, must have been ten miles or so from where I usually go out, when all of the sudden my dog goes stiff, pointin' off to the left of the path, her whole body just shakin' like she had a fever.

"I said 'Go get it girl!' and she took off bayin' into the woods. I could hear somethin' big go crashin' off through the brush, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I just followed the barks for a mile or so when I hear her yelp out like somethin' hit her. I listened for a few minutes then went ahead pretty slow.

"All of the sudden she comes runnin' up to me, tail atween her legs and her eyes rollin' white in her skull. I thought she might of run into one of those big cats, and I was soothin' her when I start hearin' this strange sound. Once I stepped by accident on a big old hive of bees that had set up in the side of a bank, and this sound was like that, an angry hum, but real loud. I looked up in the direction she come and saw a light way off in the trees.

"I figured there was somebody out there, and I wanted to have a word or two with 'em for hittin' my dog, so I set off that way. At first the hound didn't want to come with me, but I drug her on, though she was shakin' all the way.

"I got closer and closer t'the light, and I started t'see that it was a lot bigger than I first thought. I couldn't figure what the hell it was, so I went up a lot quieter until I come right up on it in the trees. Even when I could see it clear I din't know what the damn thing was."

I looked up from my notes. "Can you give me a detailed description of how it looked?"

Gatzman took a deep swallow of his beer and wiped his beard.

"Hell, that ain't too hard. There weren't no detail to it at all. I heard tell of these flying saucers before, but this one didn't look like no saucer. It was round like a ball, and I suppose it was about as large as a pretty big house. It glowed inside itself but it didn't shine, and it was a kinda milky color. The ground under it was all black and burned, with some charred stumps.

"It wasn't standin' on nothin', it just sort of floated there. I was scared, but kinda curious too, and I just stepped into the clearin' to get a good look at it when I saw somethin' else comin' out from under the trees."

"The alien?"

"The first one. God, I don't know how to describe it so y'could really know what it was like. It was all black, for one thing, and shiny and hard like some kinda bug. Its body was like a snake, but it's head weren't much bigger than its neck, so first I didn't think it had one. It had four long spindly legs and was just about seven foot high or so, but it must of been at least twice that long. It came stalkin' into the clearin' like a cat sneakin' along, and it saw me right away.

"It hissed at me, in surprise I guess, then yowled, and that's when I first saw where its head was. I didn't have time t'even raise my gun when a whole bunch of other ones come boundin' out of the trees and surrounded me. The first one hitched back onto his hind legs and pointed at me, and I felt like I was stung all over. That must have knocked me out, cause when I come to, I was in the ship.

I couln't move and they had me up on this table and were pokin' and shinin' all sorts of godawful stuff at me, and all I could do was lay there and watch as they worked. They was hinged in the middle somehow, and could stand up or run around on all fours, just as they liked, and they had hands or somethin' like 'em on the end of their front legs.

"At last one comes up and pokes this long needle in from here---" he pointed to just above his collarbone--"right down to it felt the bottom of my back. I thought I was gonna die the pain was so bad, but when he pulled it out there weren't no blood, not even a mark where it gone in. They let me alone a bit and the pain went down, then they carried me to another room.

"I suppose the one in that room was some kinda leader. I don't remember the others wearin' much of anything, but this one had silver wires laced up its arms and things that looked like diamonds set along its back. They must know our language or read minds or somethin', cause this one talked to me."

"What did it say?"

Old Gatzman's face had an insane look of senile conspiracy as he leaned eagerly forward. The flickering lamplight cast deep shadows across his furrowed cheeks. He spoke with barely contained gleeful vanity.

"He said I was lucky to be the first to come across them on their trip, and that they were sorry that they had to hurt me. He said than now I am a part, an important part, of a new relationship between his race and ours, and that I'd be famous. I told him I was too old to do anythin', but he said that they'll make me young again and take me to learn the wisdom of the universe. I'm to be a go-between, a bridge, for both sides. He said for me to go home till they come back for me again, and that I'd know the time to return to them at that spot.

"Those others come back in and took me to another room, and next thing I know I'm out in the woods again, and I see a light streakin' off in the sky. I looked around for my dog and called, but she didn't come, and when I went up the trail I tripped over her body. Died of fright, I guess. There weren't a mark on her. After that I come home and just been waitin'."

I made a few last notes, careful to avoid his eye. I thought I could read his entire story: age, loneliness, and obscurity had combined to make Gatzman a little crazy. His madness had supplied him with what he felt he desperately needed: attention, importance, a new life. I was sympathetic, in a way, but distinctly uncomfortable to be in a distant country house alone with a man who so obviously believed in his unbalanced imaginings.

With studied neutrality, I asked him, "Why do you think people should be told about this now? I mean, wouldn't it be better if you waited until these aliens returned to announce your story? Without any physical evidence most people won't consider this revelation easily credible."

"Folks oughta be tole,” he said pleadingly, with a sweep of his arm. "Something this big that's gonna change all history gotta be prepared for, whether some folks believe it or not. When I'm young again I'll..."

His last words were choked with a croaking gargle. His frame stiffened and he tried to rise from the table convulsively, as his arms jerked and his eyes screwed up in anguish. I leapt up in alarm, just in time to avoid the crash as he overturned the table and fell to the ground in a writhing heap.

"Oh, God!" he whimpered. "The pain--!"

I hastily righted the table and tried to lift the agonized man up on it. I had scarcely succeeded in getting him placed when his entire body shuddered violently, then went perfectly still. His mouth howled, the expression totally devoid of mind, in a long painful wail of expiring breath, and his eyes sank deep into their sockets.

Frantically, I tried what few life-saving techniques I know. Ten minutes of heart massage and nauseating mouth-to-mouth resuscitation failed to evoke the slightest signs of life. I gave up and slumped into my chair and began to recite to myself what I would have to do to contact the proper authorities.

I sat a while, gathering my wits about me, and trying to calm myself. After Herman Gatzman's bizarre tale and horrible death the little house seemed more ominous than ever. Outside the night insects still played their idiot tunes and the black windows gaped like mouths of darkness. Deep in the woods an owl called.

At last I felt able to leave. As I got up to go, I glanced once more at the body on the table, and was startled to see movement.

In the open mouth the tongue, black and swollen, was moving to and fro over his cracked lips. In a flash I remembered that epileptic fits could lower the body's vital signs so low that only expert instruments could detect them. I recall some vagrant part of my mind thinking fleetingly that epilepsy could explain his weird visions. Mr. Gatzman still lived, and certainly needed medical attention.

I rushed to his side and bent close to his face.

"Gatzman!" I shouted, trying desperately to reach him. "Mr. Gatzman! do you have any medication!"

As if in response the tongue pushed out--and out, and out, foot after slimy foot of it. I stood transfixed in horror and disbelief as what I had thought was Gatzman's tongue oozed across his chest and onto the table beside him. It seemed finally to have stopped, when his throat bulged under his stained beard and disgorged a pair of limbs with long, splayed fingers that feebly groped the air about them, then found purchase on the old man's shirt and strained to pull more of its long black body from the recesses of Gatzman's corpse.

I backed numbly from the table until my back hit the wall of the little shack. I watched in shock the hypnotically slow struggle as the creature pulled itself free, being born backward tail-first, and could only think frenetically that Gatzman had told me the truth, but that the aliens had not told him the truth. They had planted this thing inside him like a monstrous tapeworm for their own hideous purposes, and now that it had killed Gatzman it would soon leave the corpse and be free to do whatever it wanted. And I was alone in the house with it.

I looked wildly around. For the first time I noticed that I was next to the old wood stove. And there in the corner next to it, partly covered by kindling, was an ancient axe.

The sight of that axe filled me with resolve. That monster thing may have killed Herman Gatzman, eaten him out from the inside like a worm in a bean, but it wouldn't get away with it. And it certainly wasn't going to get me without a fight. I reached over and took the weapon in a double-handed grip, steeled myself, and cautiously but steadily approached the table and its loathsome occupant.

By now the long and sinuous neck had emerged, and I saw it raise its head totally free from the dead body; it glistened wetly with thin yellow slime. It began to smack its lips and blink its eyes as it gazed near-sightedly around the room.

I tried to get closer before it could get totally oriented, but my movement must have caught its eye. It immediately fixated on me, and its eyes opened wide. They were flat yellow eyes, without iris or pupil, and they held a terrible awareness.

I raised the axe and lunged forward. It bellowed in a voice like a malborn goat, but it was too late. The blade caught it near the second pair of legs, almost cutting it in half. It coiled and lashed like a struck snake, spewing black blood.

As its convulsions lessened, I drew near to deliver a second and final blow. It looked at me with one yellow eye and said the words that haunt my darkest nightmares.

"Y'fool!" it gasped. "Y'damn fool! I'm Herman Gatzman!"

The yellow eyes glazed, the spasms ceased; Herman Gatzman had died a second and permanent death.

 

The rest is plainly told. I burned the house and the two bodies that may have both been Gatzman. As I sped over the hill I looked back and saw two lights. One flickered like flame and was certainly my handiwork. The other was steady and much farther out in the brush than any wires or electrician ever went. About that light I have a definite theory that is not too hard to divine.

About other things I am not so sure. I am not sure if I have damned mankind's chances with the only intelligent race that has ever deigned to contact us, or if the aliens ever meant us any good at all. I cannot be sure whether I have done right or wrong, but I do know that for me, since that day, neither the memory nor the horror has faded from my mind, the memory of the second death of Herman Gatzman. 

Notes

I cannot put a precise date on this story; my mind wants to say the mid-Eighties. Certainly, after I had given up on college and gone back to work at Mr. Gatti’s (The Best Pizza in Town – Honest!). There I met my friend Alan Peshke. He was a fellow who was also interested in Imaginative Literature, and we whiled away many a dull moment at work discussing Star Trek and Dr. Who, Tolkien and Lovecraft, testing each other’s mastery of trivia and the boundaries of genre savvy, and recommending new finds to one another. He tried to get me into Dungeons and Dragons, and I tried to interest him in G. K. Chesterton’s more fantastic forays. I don’t think either ever exactly took, but we were both left with an expanded understanding.

Anyway, H. P. Lovecraft was an author in the Venn diagram of our interests. We were both intrigued with the idea of producing a sort of Texas Gothic (Gothic in the old sense, not in some disaffected Urban Vampire sense), as Lovecraft had supplied an updated Gothic for his beloved Providence. Last Contact (titled of course to echo the term First Contact) was a brew of UFO lore (our little town was for a while the home of MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network – an unlikely resource I must confess I never visited while I had the chance), Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and something of an ode to the rural Texas countryside, especially as I remembered it from our camping trips along the lands around Capote Road. A brew more or less put together to appeal to Alan Peschke’s sensibilities and evoke his approval.  I was rather pleased with the results (after all, I had finished a story!) but I remember my brother Mike dismissing it with the equivalent of a snort and a ‘Heavy handed and derivative!’