More Reimers Loose

 

More Reimers Loose
     By Leigh, the Lassoo Kid

Father sold Raleigh goods around the countryside. Mother was the only parent at home 96% of the time. She raised us and towards the end of my stay in the village of Altona, let’s say the last three years, she operated a little greenhouse that grandpa built in the backyard. Heated by an oil burner, with a chair right next to it, the place invited lazy reading and in this spot, so delicious close to the stove, I loved to sit and wile away a Saturday. The smell of the warming earth, the wet growing green leaves, the sound of rubber boots on the sand path in between the three rows of plantings, brought me as close to heaven as I thought then it was possible to get. Where outside still insisted on the presence of winter, on the tyranny of cold, inside—in my chair with the peaceful little sputtering of flame in the hot stove and just behind this a plastic barrier—proclaimed the possibilities of spring and summer. While father stepped from his warm station wagon into the cold prairie air, carrying his sample case, and knocked on another windswept door in Lowe Farm, Plum Coulee, Horndean, Letellier, Dominion city, Saint Jean or Greta, I sat in my comfy hidy-hole besotted with Warren Neale and his girlfriend, Allie Lee, in The UP Trail as they set about helping to build the Union Pacific railroad through Wyoming and into the dangerous desert canyons of the Black Hills. But….! Already I have broken my own narrative rule, that I would not dwell on any one event in the years I spent with my parents but honour them in a modest way, devoting a sentence or two to each thing so as not to make to much of it. Yet, I’ve gotten caught up in the ambience of mother’s greenhouse in late Winter. New resolve: I’ll rein in the lingering horse of my unbridled enthusiasm and chuckchuck to the sleepy one of disciplined authoring and, with any luck, I’ll speed at full gallop through the 18 years of mommy-daddy-me. Maybe in a number of segments each ending with (to be continued).
      In 1950 (two years old) I got a burn the size of a nickel right  through my hand when I stepped out of the tepid tub water in our Rosenort basement to warm myself on a glowing space heater. Wet, I stuck to it, my frightened brother Jim (seven), scared by my terror, also drenched from the tub, stuck to my shoulders with two hands and mother, hearing screams and running up, only to grab Jim and get one hand stuck, too, had the presence of mind with her free hand to pull on the long electric cord running up the stairs until it came out of the socket. And we all were released and healthy, outside of a wounded hand and, well, a lingering general limiting effect on our powers of thought and observation. The pictures of that whole hour are burned into my memory!
     1960. Dad bought 50 evergreens and planted them along the south side of our one acre yard. 1957 dad bought a half acre of pastureland just at the eastern edge of our yard. Mom made that into another garden with hundreds of tomato plants and everything else you could think of. One year, after first frost, four of us threw the thousand unripened watermelons and musk melons wherever we felt like it, loving how they shattered. Of course, we had a war.
      Speaking of war, half a dozen of my teen cousins, on a visit from Steinbach, made slingshots from lilac branches and gathered lots of stones from the road gravel. When evening came, in its moonless darkness, we warred with a half dozen local neighbours, them invisible on the opposite side of a high hedge. We fired a hundred stones in the general direction of the enemy. One rock from their war party went through my hair just as I bent to pick up ammo. 
    1959, BC.  Rudy climbed high into a bing cherry tree to postpone picking raspberries. I threw green damsons at him where he sat in a fork twenty feet up. I eventually connected, just above the eye, and he teetered, lost rigidity and fell unconscious, limp as a blanket, through the branches to the ground. 
(To be continued)

Remembered Trysts

 [circa 2001]

Remembered Trysts
     by Douglas Remember-Me-Nots

Many of us humans remember our pasts with a tranquility that belies the phenomenal moment. We lie on a couch, for instance, and recall in a flash of peace and uproar that speechlessness that was the ’67 Pontiac Fury in which we and one other did not die as it plummeted over the bridge and down, near Neubergthal, into a dry creekbed twenty feet below, the shallow liquid mud with squished cattails around our nostrils, our legs pinned beneath the passenger door for two hours while we sang our pain into the night and knew our girl was dead. And, in the sleepiness of church on Sunday morning—with the preacher reminding us duly of the deadliness of pontification and the putrid flux of sexless being—there’s the deer we shot as it ran along the bottom of the ravine (on our first hunting trip). It trips through our mind once more and gambols there until the report of the .30-.30 and the dropping of the head forever. The knife from the belt, the puncturing of the throat, the glazing over of the eyes, the stiffening of the muscles that will soon be only venison, and our heart as we perform this surgery, all float about in our recollection as in a bathtub of tepidity and scum. And again, in a reverie brought on by nothing to do on Saturday afternoon but possibly the exercises we promised ourselves we’d undertake three times a week at 8:00 AM and find we have need of now to keep the stiffness from the knees, we recall Audrey in that town in North Dakota when we visited there as a 16 year old with our parents who had decided to travel south for once to see the Carlsbad Caverns. Her sister Eileen and she lured us (lured by their simply being nearby) from the park flowers, that mother and father loved and looked at and smelled hour by hour, and into the old growth where we walked and held hands, and they put theirs on our shoulders and legs in ways that made us dream later and welter. In the basement sorting screws, we remember Janet Baker-Tupper who’s upper body and lower body did not fully seem to match. They had about them a mix of colour that clashed, bland above, dark below. She graced Flin Flon, living near a lake, working in a restaurant, fighting men each and every day. Valerie Walker, the librarian from Exxton, New Mexico, met us in a bar in Brampton, Brazil, and we spoke for two hours together over millet beer and Pringles. She wore a slight dress of pale something with lace and Danish cloth above the breast. Her hair, the purple black of some birds about there, cut short and pointed at the outer extremities, remained unnoticed by us in our memories until this moment of screw-sorting. Memories fade from memory but grow in precision. Smells’ presence, especially, intensifies with the years.

Knife Ennes

 

Knife Ennes

     By Mr. Douglas

I met Reverend Henry Gerbrandt at my mother’s deathbed who had married my wife and myself. He was now 90 and tottering. He spoke in the hospital, to myself and my brothers, of a soldier who had tried to confess to him that he was a murderer and could not let it rest. Rev. Gerbrandt finally said to him, after many vain attempts at some consolation, “You know, I can think of nothing that will make a bit of difference to you. OK, you are a murderer. So am I. I murdered Christ on the cross. We are told that again and again. We all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That may not help you, but I think that is the truth you are looking for.“ When I asked the preacher if the soldier had felt healing from these words, he smiled a little smile (the same one I had seen him smile standing before my wife and myself at the altar some 35 years earlier) and shook his head. “I don’t know,“ he said
     Which reminds me of the boy from the Enns family near Winkler who chased a local preacher down the street with a knife but didn’t catch him. The boy was from a Rosetown family infamously named the Knife Ennes. The father had been known to give chase with a knife if angry enough, and the grandfather had cut someone with a one. Their history had knives in it.       

      Preacher Wiebe happened, as bad luck would have it that day, to walk by the Wesley pool hall just as Jimmy walked out of it. Wiebe had a habit of giving out religious tracts to people on the street. He flipped one out of his jacket pocket now from force of habit. A big mistake. As he pulled out the track, and mentioned that it was one, Jimmy drew a knife from his pocket and drove at the preacher with such precipitation that the goodly man fell down. That is what saved him, he later claimed. The knife missed his vital organs and only cut his skin a little at the throat. He was up like a shot running for home, Jimmy at first in close pursuit. Jimmy was a big, heavy man, and though younger, not as quick as the preacher. Jimmy had the disadvantage also of being slightly drunk and so not at his most agile best.
      Well, the preacher suddenly saw 
before him in the sidewalk gutter a stick of good heft and weight and, in mid stride, picked it up from the ground as he passed. He turned the corner of a building and waited. When Jimmy rounded it, knife first, Wiebe  let him have it right in his loins. The boy dropped the knife and fell roaring to the ground where he rubbed and twisted holding his stomach and clutching the parts just below it. He swore and cursed mightily. 
     The preacher stood over him with his stick raised, debating whether to give him some more of the same medicine. He reasoned that, since he had been so fabulously frightened, he was justified.  But also he realized that the Lord asked his servants to forgive and to love their enemies. He debated, and in a flash of insight decided upon an action. He lay a tract upon the big boy’s back, took the stick and hammered down with it six times, thinking about the sacredness of that number, reasoning that the imprint of the words would forever be burned into him and leave their spirit there as marks of wisdom if not actualizations of it.                                                

 Aging Mothers
     By Dougie Waves Goodbye

Chorus
     F.                              C
     Just now as I’m recalling
     F.                                C
     My mother when she died
     F.                          C
     I have a sudden wish
     C.                     C.                         Em
     That she was standing by my side
     C.               G.        C
     Breathing by my side




C.                       G
Pictures of my mother come
C.                         G
To memory as I wait
C.                     G
4 o’clock just home from school
C.                                       Em
I’d see her through the gate
C                     G            C
Through the garden gate

Her back all bent and hoe in hand
She’d work a row of beets,
An old dress on of dirty white
And slippers on her feet
On her aching feet

Once when the censor came around
She mentioned all our names
But when it came to Rudy’s turn
She couldn’t do the same
Calling, “Rudi, what’s your name? “

Chorus

She’d get us up at 5 o’clock
And in the dusty Ford
Muddy hoes and sugar beets
And children praise the Lord,
Oh!  we’re lucky praise the Lord!

The whole shebang off to BC
Who knew where we would stay
A month of bread and pork and beans
We’d work to pay the way
Picking berries every day

Chorus

Father worked late every day
And through the raging snow
Mother at the window pane
Praying he’d come home
Midnight thinking he’d be gone

Chorus

“My son, my son, what have you done? “
She’d  sometimes say of mine
When she caught me smoking pipe
Or found my hidden wine, 
Her preserves into wine

When you were born she often said
Sun lay in the room
So thick and warm and plentiful
I had a blessed womb
You blessed your mother’s womb

Chorus

1000 stories I could tell 
of mother’s oddest ways
I leave her to the Lord she loved
In Beulah land she lays
I’m sure there she still prays

Chorus

                                                                  2006?

       

 
 Alphism in Males and Females
     By Leigh Bent PhD, D.Sc. 

I am delighted that the world includes in its welcome of variety that sub-species of human commonly referred to as Alpha, though members of that ubiquitous, self-satisfied classification hardly know themselves, let alone call themselves, by that name. Alphas self-identify as ordinary human beings. 
     By scientific consensus worldwide, according to painstaking analysis of the most recent census data available, generated by laboratories, universities and think tanks around the globe, and compiled with international oversight at King’s College, Oxford, alpha humans number 2,400,349,866 individuals, with the data skewing the numbers slightly in favour of the female sex. Publishing of these findings has so far been scant since officially agreement has not yet been reached because it is generally conceded that some claims of inaccuracy have been published by female scientists who consequently have submitted an official recantation of the finding’s conclusions, citing gender bias and arguing that the tallying of numbers typically and regularly slants information, from even controlled experiments, in favour of males who constitute an estimated 74% of scientists engaged in overseeing the myriad experiments. Boasting fully one quarter of the earth’s population, Alphism, increasing at an alarming rate globally as it is, must be considered to have become a dominant form of human psycho-evolution.           
     Research shows that, contrary to the expectations of the scientific community, both sexes rate, on the Sliding Harvard Compatibility and Authority Scale, as both equally likely to exhibit 97.6% of empirically established characteristics associated with the alphac, of which 421 such traits have so far been formally identified. And in each case, with an average intensity of expression of the trait firmly determined through controlled experimentation as slightly less equal at 95.2%, the conclusion becomes indisputable that alpha male and alpha female behaviours must be considered indistinguishable 97 times out of 100, with a statistical deviation of slightly less than 2%. 
         . 

 Song

I Looked Down in the Valley 
     by Leigh D
1.
I looked down in the valley this morning 
I looked down in the valley last night
I looked down in the valley 
Hoping that I’d see Sally
But she would not appear in my sight 
No she would’ve appear in my sight 

2.
Walking down that long lonesome highway 
Walking down that cold ribbon of steel 
I’m going away
I’m going to stay
Travelling on is the way that I feel 
Travelling on is the way that I feel 

3.
Look for me up there in the city
Look for me down there in the town
Look for me everywhere
But I won’t be there 
Cause I’m busy travelling on
Keeping busy travelling on

 4.
I looked down in the valley this morning
I looked down in the valley last night
I looked down in the valley 
Hoping that I’d see Sally
But she would not appear in my sight 
No she would not appear in my sight
                                                              2003

Learning to Think

 

Learning to Think

     by D Ougalasreimer

Imagine, if you will, you retired ones who have not had a thought in your lives but do not know that, imagine what the difference would have been between this and that, or such and such, had you not, and then again had you, lived a life in which you learned to think. What would it have been like, how different, if you had lived a thoughtful life? 

     We live one thought, we thinkers. Only one thought constitutes the difference between us and those who are not inclined to think. What does that mean, exactly? It means that, for the thinker, nothing is prohibited, while for the thoughtless one everything is entirely prohibited. Thus, thought is a product of freedom. Thoughtlessness derives from, and likely drives, captivity. What is it to be free? Certainly not Dylan’s idea that birds might not be free of the chains of the skyway. The exact nature of freedom will have to wait. I am not there yet. First, this bumbling here about thinking. And the story of the thoughtless one’s life.

      The thoughtless one felt prohibited. Nothing was allowed. Everything was properly restricted. She could not go into town Saturday night until she was old enough for her parents and aunts not to care if she did and, in fact, for them to encourage her to finally go. “Go girl! You’re going on 22! For goodness sake, woman, when do you think you’ll get yourself a man if not now? Yesterday they wanted you, today….” Well, like that. It’s much like the joke,“You know you’ve been married a long time when you don’t care where your spouse goes, as long as you don’t have to go along.” Also, she (the person above) began to do certain things on her own, alone, when she got to be about 19. Then it was OK. Till then she recalled her mother saying, “Don’t, Veronica! People will see! That is not what ladies do!” Later on, when her mother no longer cared, and when she was older, she did same with the familiar accompanying shame, but then it was all right. Shame, and doing it, were OK, just the way that she and Armand together in bed doing whatever came to them, within reason, felt shame and relief simultaneously most of the time that they engaged and loved. Love was shame and emptying at once, always. 

     Love is just such filling and emptying for the thoughtless. The thinking ones have so long ago looked hard at shame that they defy it eventually, and try the very things that shame tells them not to try and, trying anyway, in despite of shame, to overcome shame, they become free of shame and live shameless lives in new areas, though shame is still there for them to overcome in other areas, and this is why and how they continue to think, instead of thinking only once and then leaving it all behind once and for all. This is the one thought that takes a lifetime. It is overcoming shame, resisting shame, in all the houses of Baghdad, for instance, and everywhere, slowly winning over it, over shame, in this urban warfare. That is thought.

     Nolan was a humble man. All his life he worked for Eatons. He stole almost no merchandise. He gave up his one chance for promotion in order to let another in line ahead of him. He earned a fair wage which let him have a new vehicle every 10 or 11 years. He drank a great deal, to excess, and finally attended alcoholics anonymous with success. He turned amateur golfer in his retirement and had his own golf cart. He made wine and beer at home. He did not start drinking again, however, until he was in his late 70s. By then his brew stash filled ever nook, cranny and shelf in the basement. He died peacefully in his sleep in the car on the way to the next town to spend the afternoon in the pub with friends. 

Nolan had bad breath. That bothered his wife who asked him to think about how much suffering he caused others by continuing to drink milk and eat milk products. He did not listen to her but kept at it. He was not a thinking man. Wisely, once when he drove his pick-up into the ditch near Gretna, Manitoba, Canada, he abandoned it at first, then returned and dumped a 5 gallon container of gasoline on it and ignited it. Years later, he did the same thing to an ageing Chevrolet, which he had learned to dislike with an intensity bordering on ferocity. This time he parked it under a neighbour’s bulk farm gas barrel, opened its nozzle and let the whole tank empty into the car through an open window. Then he threw in a firecracker from behind an elm where he hid. The blast toppled the elm onto him and left him permanently wounded in the thigh. This wound his wife adored, since she could trace the scars with her slim fingers and think about her hero escaped from such danger and calamity. He never explained to Rita how it was that the car had ended up under the bowser, nor how it had caught fire. She never asked. Devoted though she was, she was not a thinker.

     Lillian did not think. She once slept with a man from her hometown after she was married and had four kids. She felt shame. She asked for forgiveness in the church where she told her whole story. She wept, she got angry, she confided it to her husband and others. She told everyone. She was proud of herself and felt the shame as a product of her bad upbringing. She trusted God increasingly. She did not learn to think.

     Evangeline did not learn to think either. She curled weekends. She never got married. She did not know why she found men unattractive. She never practised anorexia but obesity came her way naturally. She made friends with other women who were also heavy. These women in groups of twos and threes accompanied Evan on summer cruise ship cruises on the Caribbean and down the Mediterranean. They had, these girlfriends of 30 and 40, summers off, being teachers. Being elementary school teachers. They did not learn to think.

     Sniggles did learn to think. He nipped his own testicles. He did learn because he kept giving himself reproachful pain. He inflicted on himself pain which he could not talk to others about. They saw, of course. They felt revulsion. There was nothing he could do about it though. He could tell no one. He could not discuss it in forums. No Dear Abbeys would have paid him the slightest attention. No priest or minister would have said, “Ah, my, but you must be sad!” to him. They would all instead have suffered him poorly. Yes, testicle-biting Sniggles was a thinker. He learned to think the one thought that separated him from the rest. He bit, he snipped, he snapped at himself, and in his shameful, visible vulnerability he became a thinker. He thought the one thought thinkers think in their lifetimes. People would say, when they saw him sneak another nip at himself, “Sniggggguuuulss! What are you doing!” They would wag their heads and make him feel so silly and so perverse. He would lower his ears and look in stupid self-knowledge at them and whine a bit his discomfort. Then, the moment they turned the corner, he would be at it again, knowing it was improper, doing it anyway, and enjoying himself in a slanted kind of way as he hurt. 

     Yes, that is the nature of thought. It has long been known to involve just such self-immolation and satisfying pain. Think not, and you find yourself in good company. Think, and you are ruined. Think and you perform shameful perversion on yourself in public which others blink at and pity.

                                                             2007