a poem

girl at McDonald’s

you are beautiful
I am not speaking patronizingly
beautiful despite the dirt on your hands
beautiful though your feet are grimy
beautiful though all your possessions
are wrapped in a blanket next to you
your bed for the chilly Florida nights
beautiful though your curly blonde hair
hasn’t felt shampoo in many days
you sit there with a large coke and coffee
is there food? I don’t think to look
you sit where I usually sit watching me pass
I try not to make eye contact but your eyes
are beautiful they are dark blue and perfectly
highlighted with dark eyeliner almost incongruous
your face delicate and tanned from the harsh
Florida sun that your blanket can’t shield you from
I move on and sit two booths away you facing ahead
when the old lady has trouble getting into her seat
you are up immediately all pleasantness and warmth
helping her down getting napkins to wipe her table clean
still able to connect while I sit in watchful silence
we, of course, have met before in this place
you asked for a dollar once and I gave it to you
you asked for a dollar another time and I gave you five
you touched my arm once as you passed by
your left hand and wrist are still wrapped in the dirty
ace bandage your shit-stained dress has been changed
for dark pants and a dark t-shirt your hat gone
you leave once to walk outside and then I am done
I think about leaving a twenty at your seat but don’t
you come back and glance at me expectantly
you don’t know me or that disappointment is all
I have to give and have done so many times
I leave you there though I carry those eyes with me
hours later, as I speed down state road 7, I see you
standing in the parking lot of an I-Hop barefoot
please don’t do this to me beautiful girl
I can’t take you home
I have no home

Mean People Suck

Did you ever come across someone who made you embarrassed to be human? I found myself embarrassed by someone’s behavior tonight while I was eating dinner at a local pizza restaurant.

Service is always spotty at this place, as they often don’t put enough help on to handle the crowd. There is one young (30s?) woman there who is very good. She is also very attractive, but that’s beside the point. The tables are stuffed into a rectangular space and, as it gets more crowded, it gets hard for the wait staff to move around. There were only two waitresses on tonight, the nice one and an older woman who was wearing sunglasses because something was wrong with her eyes, which strangely, seemed to make her work more slowly, too.

It wasn’t really crowded when I first sat down. There was a woman by herself at the table next to mine who had obviously just sat down herself. Oddly, she was also wearing sunglasses. She was also singularly unattractive. The young waitress went to the woman first and asked her, “Are you dining alone?” The woman repeated it in a very loud voice. “Am I dining alone? Yes, I’m dining alone.” You know that scene in Dumb and Dumber where Jim Carrey’s character makes what he calls “the worst sound in the world?” The sound of this woman’s voice was worse. Anyone who heard her would immediately peg her as a typical New Yorker. Her voice flowed (dripped is too dainty a word for this behemoth) with sarcasm as she repeated it again. The waitress then tried to take her order. After showing her displeasure with everything on the menu, the woman made an order but at first balked at the fact that she would have to pay extra for a coke especially because they only serve them in cans with no free refills. She then wanted water but wanted an extra glass with the ice in it. The waitress then left. The one with the sunglasses then came to tell me she’d be back for me soon.

When the waitress came back with her drink and salad, the croaker had taken out her cell phone and was talking to someone loudly. “Hey. What are you doing? Yes, I’m here ‘dining all alone’ as this waitress announced to the whole restaurant. Yes, she had to tell the whole restaurant [maybe that was me—but she didn’t ask in a loud voice. I only heard because my table was right next to hers].” The young woman replied, “M’am, I was just asking so I would know to take the other plates away from your table.” In fact, they ask everyone who comes in whether they are it in their party, whether there is one person or four. It’s restaurant policy. People often come in while their mate is parking the car or people in this restaurant in particular meet their friends there. Still, Tug Boat Annie went on. “Yes, she told the whole restaurant. I’m the one who has the diamonds on. I’m not waitressing.” At that point, the girl left her alone. The last word I heard Godzilla bellow was, “Bitch.” I figure she was just reminding her caller who she was.

I felt embarrassed at that. It’s the kind of behavior that prompted John Litgow’s character in Terms of Endearment to remark, “You must be from New York.” What a miserable bitch. When a family sat down on the other side of her a few minutes later, she got up and went to another table in another corner. She left her drinks, salad, and cell phone on the table. When the young waitress finally saw that, she told her she would have to bring her things to that table if she wanted to sit there and reminded her that her cell phone was there. At that point, Gammera sauntered to the other table, picked up her cell phone, and oozed out of the restaurant.

That miserable excuse for a human being diminished us all tonight. I’m sure she left feeling justified in her actions and will recount how she showed that waitress what her place was. I know what that woman’s place is though it would probably befoul my septic tank to stuff her in there.

Generations come, and generations go, but the earth lasts forever.

Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force, fascination!
Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?
"Youth, Day, Old Age and Night." --Walt Whitman

The Buffalo News contained the news that my Uncle Richard passed away January 11th. Though I hadn't seen him in many years, nor had I heard from him in several years, I have a great deal of sadness about his passing.

He is the last member of my grandmother's generation. He was her youngest brother and my great uncle. My grandmother was part of a huge family. Besides her, Amelia, there were her sisters Anna and Georgina, as well as her brothers: John, Joseph, Andrew, Martin, George, and Richard. I believe there was also a child lost early. Richard was the baby, born almost at the same time my grandmother's children were.

My earliest memories of him are of a gentle, funny, and kind man. He was soft-spoken and loved his family. He lived in an old apartment on Chenango Street, for which he paid almost nothing to live for years even after the neighborhood changed. My Aunt Anna lived with him for a long time. She was briefly married to a much older man who died early in their marriage, and then she lived with Uncle Richard until she died very young, at least in terms of that family. Early memories are of a player piano in their house. Uncle Richard loved to take pictures. There are thousands of family pictures he took over the years. He loved gadgets, too. He had a record player that actually cut recordings. He made a record of me singing "Jingle Bell Rock." I wonder whatever happened to it. I always enjoyed going over to his apartment. My memory of it is a place where my mother and I were always welcome despite being ignored by so many other family members (at least that's my memory). He was at both of my weddings and always had some witty comment to make about life in general.

Even after I moved to Florida, he never forgot my birthday, either sending a birthday card or a St. Patrick's Day card (the day before my birthday) on which he wrote happy birthday. He called me "Paddy." He had a funny habit of sometimes sending cards to me or my mother (he never forgot her when she moved to Florida) that might be for one season but intended for the actual season. So, it wouldn't be unheard of to get a Christmas card for Easter. He would sometimes send pictures he had taken over the years if he thought it would stir memories or might be something we would find interesting. My favorite was when he sent my mother a picture of a vacant lot and said it was of her old elementary school (they had torn it down). Though spelling had never been his strong suit, it and his handwriting got more and more interesting as the years went on. My mother would ask me to try and translate or decipher the words. Because he had such a dry sense of humor (something I think runs in our family), it made it even more interesting to read because we never knew if he were kidding or not.

After my wedding, I only saw him two more times. He came down here with my Uncle Norman to visit my grandmother when she had been in the hospital. I remember his wondering why we didn't use our air conditioning when it was so hot (we couldn't afford it then). The next time I saw him was at my grandmother's funeral when we brought her back to Buffalo to be buried. I remember him sitting there, shaking his head, saying how sad life was. Aside from his cards and letters, he sometimes called my mother, too. I remember one year when my mother had retired and was feeling particularly sad as her birthday was nearing. Other than Uncle Richard and her sister, my Aunt Florence, she never heard from people up in Buffalo. I wrote him and asked if he could get relatives up there to write to her. He did, and they did. It boosted her spirits a lot. Several years ago, we got a Christmas card which was a picture of Uncle Richard, sitting in a chair with a Santa Clause hat on. He was in a nursing home. I never found out much about him after that as the people who were "taking care of" him didn't communicate with us. We got the same card the next year but nothing else. By that time, my mother was in the last stages of her Alzheimer's. I never forgot him but didn't really have a way to find out about him. Well, I probably did, but I guess I didn't really want to know anything else unhappy. My mother died, and then my wife was in the final stages of her 17 year struggle with cancer.

I had been telling a friend a story Uncle Richard had told me several times just the day before I saw the death notice online, so he was always on my mind. I hope his last years were happy. He was a wonderful, funny and kind man. I'm sure he's making my grandmother and mother laugh right now.

God bless you, Uncle Richard.



Uncle Richard about 1922









Uncle Richard on the left. My grandmother and Uncle Norman on the right. 1943






Uncle Richard about 1984 or so.

Grey Gardens

“Two roads diverged”

I just watched a documentary film by the Maysles Brothers called Grey Gardens. It was a glimpse into the lives of Edith Bouvier Beale (Little Edie) and her mother, also Edith Bouvier Beale (Big Edie). They lived in a decaying, 28 room mansion in the Hamptons (Long Island). Abandoned by her husband in 1935, Big Edie had to fend for herself and raise her children and care for that home alone. The mother and daughter came to the attention of the world in 1972 when local authorities “raided” their home because of the deplorable living conditions. The house was very rundown, they had cats living all over the house, they supposedly had not had running water nor electricity, there was garbage everywhere, and they were told they would have to leave if the house couldn’t be fixed up. In an interview done after the film, Little Edie said that she thought someone powerful had wanted their house or their property and had instigated the whole thing. What gave this further notoriety was the fact that they were related to Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Jackie received publicity for helping to fix up the house and do some restoration, which was still going on when the documentary was made. They seemed to end up back on their own fairly quickly. I guess the millions Jackie had access to from Ari didn’t go too far to help her aunt and cousin. They agreed to the filming partly because they were to share in the profits though that doesn’t seem to have happened.

According to liner notes on the Netflix envelope, “The ladies shut out their bleak present by recalling richer times and lost loves, and while Little Edie confides that she’d like to leave, the camera captures a co-dependency destined to continue.” An interesting premise, but I don’t think it tells the true story. Little Edie came back to live with her mother in 1952 because she had no one to care for her, and it was expected of her. The mother refers to it as rescuing Little Edie from New York and allowing her 20 years or so to recover. Little Edie is 56 when the film is made in 1975, meaning, she was 35 when she came home. She had worked as a model in NY but clearly was afraid of doing too much because she was afraid of her father and his disapproving of what she was doing. Her two younger brothers, who are not in the film, did much better and struck out on their own. They had careers and married, something Edie never did. The early pictures of her show an incredibly beautiful woman, much more beautiful than Jackie O. Even at 56, she was still very attractive despite her quirky behavior and her propensity to wear scarves over her head at all times and to tie a sarong-type wrap around her hips. Articles have been written about what affect on style this had when the film came out. She keeps saying she needs to regrow her hair though it is never clear why this is so. Despite the decay of their surroundings, they both retain a sense of elegance and gentility that one associates with the upper class, to which they were born. The mother sings along to old recordings remembering her attempts at a career as a singer. Little Edie has the look, sound, and style of Katherine Hepburn. It’s not hard to see why she achieved cult figure status after this film was released.

What is never quite clear to me is why the Maysles Brothers made this film. Despite the fact that it is a documentary, this type of film still needs a purpose and point of view. Though there seems to be affection expressed on the part of the women and the filmmakers, it’s never quite clear how real that is or what the filmmakers really think about their subjects. In a voice-over from a phone interview between Little Edie and Albert Maysles in 2001, Edie is still as outgoing and larger-than-life as she was in 1975. She regrets not marrying the filmmaker and wants him to send her a letter. It isn’t clear how much contact he had had with her all those years. Her mother died in 1977, and Edie sold the house in 1979. She eventually moved to Bal Harbour, FL (not too far from here) and died in 2002 at the age of 85. Apparently, some had criticized the whole venture as an invasion of their privacy and wondered how far into someone’s life a filmmaker has the right to intrude, documentary or not. The two of them might have come across as two sad, eccentric old ladies that one hears about on the evening news just after authorities removed them and their 27 cats from their house (Eileen, this will never happen to you—I hope). What saves them from this is their innate and obvious dignity, the true affection that they have for each other, and the fact that they had survived, on their own terms, in a world that is full of lesser people who only see them as people to exploit or, as Ralph Ellison said in Invisible Man, “Who are outside of history.” As in the novel, just the opposite is true of these two remarkable women. Though this takes place in the Hamptons, it would be best told by Faulkner or Tennessee Williams. While talking about those who would deny them their existence, Little Edie says that she was a “Staunch character,” and someone that they didn’t expect to meet. Her mother looks at the old pictures of her daughter and says that she looks like, “The girl that had everything.” Edie quotes lines from Frost’s “Road Not Taken,” and maybe that is a fitting eulogy for her and her life.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

She is also fond of Hawthorne’s novel, The Marble Faun. An attempt at achieving utopia failed, but what was important was the attempt. Near the end of the film, when reflecting on her choices of life and responding to questions about her regrets, Little Edie says, “The hallmark of aristocracy is responsibility.” That, I believe, says it all.


Happy New Year!