journey of a baby boomer from the country to the suburbs

by:  Norman J. Olson

in 1959, at age 11, I moved from a small failing dairy farm in West Central Wisconsin to the slums of St. Paul, Minnesota’s East Side…

I went from a one room country school set in a sheep pasture, to Erickson Elementary which must have had about 500 kids….  a tough school in what today would be called an “inner city” neighborhood…   we lived upstairs from my mother’s parents in a big old house on Desoto Street (which I thought was named for the car)…  this had once been a nice house with a marble fireplace and a stained glass window over the front stairway, but had been divided into a duplex many years before and was now just another rundown house with brown shake siding on the rundown East Side of St. Paul…   the only tougher area in St. Paul at that time was the black neighborhood on Rondo Street…  which was demolished in the 1970s when the freeway connecting St. Paul to Minneapolis was by some mysterious chance run right down Rondo Street…  through the middle of the city’s black neighborhood…  so much for the “good old days…”

I remember the first night in the new apartment…  it was in late fall so cold weather had set in and the apartment had a space heater…  the farm house had been heated with wood or coal in a parlor furnace and had never been really warm in the winter…  with the natural gas fired space heater, we were amazed that you could make the inside of your house warm like summer, even in the middle of winter and for the first week, we kept it at like 80 degrees in there…  we were so amazed to be really warm in the winter… 

I also had my eyesight checked for the first time that fall and it was discovered that I was extremely near sighted…  I remember going to Dr. Shultz’s office in the old Lowry Medical Arts Building…  going up in the elevator, still a great novelty to me…  and then on the second visit, putting on the eyeglasses and having the world beyond arms reach come into focus… it was amazing to be able to see…  I remember looking out the window of the optometrist’s office and seeing a billboard outlined against the sky and being able to actually see it…  it was so amazing when the world went from being a blur to being something I could see…  no wonder I was not much good at baseball, I realized that other people could actually see the ball… amazing…

going to school was kind of a culture shock…  I was not stupid, but due to my very chaotic homelife, I was not very successful academically after the move…  the teachers were kind and told me I was “college material” if I would only do my school work…  but I just could not make myself do it…  and so was embarrassed every day to be the one in class who did not have their lessons prepared and was always on the verge of failing…  the teachers were mystified…  I think I was mostly just unhappy and depressed…  I would sit in class and draw…  pictures of ships and hot rod cars…  pictures of tough guys in leather jackets…  I was not very good at drawing, so the teachers could not understand why making those crappy looking drawings was more important than doing my school work… 

I did not have a lot of friends but I found that I was good at getting into fights…  I thought I was a tough country guy and could take any of the city slickers…  but it turned out that attitude got me beat up more than a few times…  and those little Italian, Irish and German kids were every bit as tough as I was and mostly much better fighters…  I remember this bigger kid named Karl…  he must have repeated a grade because he was a head taller than the rest of us and in sixth grade already had his hair combed in a cool ducktail…  and wore cool high school type clothes…  while the rest of us could not have combed our hair if we wanted too and dressed like little kids in jeans and polo shirts…  anyway, Karl had beaten me up without even breaking a sweat, or messing up his ducktail…  and so, I waited after school one day…  standing on the stone foundation of the school building which stuck out from the wall and made a stone platform about four feet off the ground…  I waited there because I knew Karl always walked that way leaving the school building…  and so when he went by, I jumped on his back… knocked him down and sat on him and punched for all I was worth until he started to cry….  then I got up and ran because I knew, if he got out from under me, he would kick my ass again…  but from then on, he left me alone…  I think he thought I was crazy… 

but mostly, I just got beat up…  I came home from trips to Wilder Playground with my clothes ripped and a bloody face…  my mom told me to stay away from the playground…  I did not stay away from the playground because that was where everybody went but I eventually wised up and started trying to avoid the tough guys…  I did beat up one kind of effeminate kid that everybody else also beat up…  but then I felt really bad about that for a long time…  I still feel bad about it…  so, had I won any fights, I don’t think I would have felt better about beating people up…  than I felt about being beaten… 

I had a bicycle that I had cobbled together from parts of other bicycles… and I liked to ride around…  I did not go very far, but felt that I was somehow mobile…  that I could go someplace if I really wanted to…  and I knew that someplace, there had to be a world more interesting than the Eastside of St. Paul…  a place like the neighborhoods I saw on television where everybody looked nice and had nice clothes…  where nobody got in fights and where parents were sober and looked at their kids…  I suffered terribly from night terrors, had terrible vivid dreams about being attacked by monsters, vampires and Frankenstein monsters, flying reptiles with human heads…  my mother would hear me screaming and try to sooth me by telling me that it was just dreams…  which helped a little, I think…

I really did not have any friends so would ride my bicycle around by myself…  this bicycle did not have any brakes and so whenever I was on a hill, I had to drag my feet to stop and it really is a wonder that I never was run over… because coming down the Desoto street hill, I could not have stopped for cross traffic under any circumstances… 

I had a cousin who lived in St. Paul, who would take me around to see the sights…  we would take the bus downtown where we would climb up all the steps to the dome of the state capital to see the gold horses…  there was an old mansion across the street from the state capital  that housed the Science Museum…  they had a mummy which we thought was really cool that was kept in a turret at the corner of the old sandstone mansion…  which was kind of creepy but cool in a way that sixth graders could understand…  we liked open stairways and knew of buildings downtown that had open stairways where you could look down over the stair railing and see the floor far below, once you had climbed to a high story… 

I liked to make kites and made box kites out of paper or plastic wrap and lilac sticks… the kites flew very well…  I once made a huge kite in the attic of the house on Desoto street out of a big sheet of plastic I found and some boards…  I had big ideas!!!  but I never tried to fly it…  maybe I realized that it would have taken a hurricane to lift that stupid kite off the ground… and it would not have fit through the attic door anyway…

we lived on Desoto street for two years and then moved to suburban Oakdale…  using my dad’s GI loan, to a housing development that was just being built up in an old farm field…  the contractor had set up model homes and built basements on all the streets and then when a customer came, the contractor would build a house on one of the basements to the plan of one of the model homes…  we used to find salamanders in the basements…  pretty little wet, green lizard like creatures…  and I buried time capsules all over the area…  putting drawings, coins etc. into a jar and then burying the jar near one of the unimproved basements…  this was very much a working class suburb and the residents were mostly people joining the “white flight” from the Eastside of St. Paul, to the bucolic semi urban fields of Oakdale… 

so, my parents went, in about three years, from poverty stricken farmers to working class suburbanites…  and I was along for the ride…

1959 – age 12 in St. Paul, a different (indifferent) universe

summer was sidewalks and

mostly empty streets…  no

more trilliums

and violets…  my own war

had finally begun…

and there I was

unarmed,

nearsighted, confused by

touches

and smells…  sad, frightened and always

in those days, feeling that all I saw

and felt and touched

was like a poorly done theater flat… 

garish…  phony…  too bright

in sunlight…

the entire city scene

and the crowd of people, especially the crowd of people,

was a papier-mâché, plastic, or even gold and ivory mask…

maybe somebody’s gentle

Protestant god hunkered

behind

the mask…  waiting to jump

out at the last minute…  like

some fool

at a lame surprise party…

or maybe nothing…  or maybe

deep wells of space and

time…  a cosmos

of galaxies spinning like

pinwheels

above a black and

            bottomless

            abyss…

or maybe just the gray/black

streets of St. Paul…

Mark A. Murphy

The Ambassadors

 I am the most melancholy, weary and wearisome ambassador 

in the world. — Jean de Dinteville, 1533

‘O wretched mortals,

open your eyes…’

So pleaded Leonardo,

one time for every day.

*

(XLIX)

Of course, the verdant floral 

curtain

deserves another look,

dominating the backdrop. So we step

into Holbein’s puzzling

oil on oak,

painted in the old Flemish School style.

Not only a full length double portrait,

but a meticulously rendered

still life.

An anamorphic mystery,

and rendezvous with death, or memento mori.

A repository of secrets,

and morality tale

memorialising the two childhood friends

and diplomats,

Jean de Dinteville, on the left,

and Georges de Selve, (Bishop of Lavaur)

on the right, posed

amid the chaotic curios of the day,

showcasing two immaculately conceived globes:

One celestial, shows the mythological

constellations

where Cygnus the swan faces the viewer.

One terrestrial, shows Rome

at the geographical centre of the world.

On the higher shelf, we are witness

to a mare’s nest

of astrological and astronomical instruments,

intellectual/revival objet d’art

represented

by the cylindrical shepherd’s dial, a quadrant,

a torquetum,

and a polyhedral sundial.

All devices, for the revelation

of time and cosmos, and still, we are not sure

of the time of day.

Then, on the shelf below,

worldly concerns: A mathematics book

open at the page on division,

one Lutheran Hymnal, one compass,

one set-square,

one lute with a snapped string

and five bundled flutes,

all clues to the pursuits of man. Lower still,

under the bottom shelf,

a discarded lute in full shadow

turned upside down, another signifier

of the earthly life.

*

Have we missed anything, Hans?

— Of course, we have

missed de Dinteville’s

golden ceremonial scabbard,

and gold medallion

featuring the Arch-angel, St Michael,

‘defender of the church,’ killing

the serpent with his spear.

*

In this arcane panel, heaven and earth vie

for our attention.

Even the Cosmati floor

tiled mosaic

with its geometric motifs and Star

of David, boasts

of its ancestry, placing

the two Renaissance men at the centre

of the cosmos.

Now de Selve’s gloves are off

in the battle

between the faiths. He looks suspiciously

at the painter, almost squinting to see

which way he might fall

in the antagonism between King, Emperor and the Holy See.

*

We might conclude, a religious man,

however defensive

in his long damask robe and cleric’s biretta

(like the closed book

he leans on

with his right elbow)

might well have more secrets than the French

Ambassador to England,

who dares us to guess his thoughts

in his salmon satin shirt,

and expensive silk gown lined with lynx fur;

his outfit for the coronation

of Ann Boleyn. Poor (devout) Catherine

of Aragon, ‘humble

and loyal,’ soon to be divorced.

*

What else will we remember of this

Good Friday portrayal

of two young noblemen, landlord

and churchman,

the last entreaty before the great schism

with Rome

putting a brave face on it?

*

At last, in the top left corner of the painting,

we find the last piece

of the puzzle

half concealed

by the closeted green curtain —

the crucified Christ,

God’s gift

to man, awaiting

all believers

in the one true faith, despite the April freeze.

Skeptic

Because you see the skull

glaring back in the mirror

like a traffic light,

you think you see

beneath surfaces.

You see yourself a visionary.

If I try to look

beyond the skull,

you think I’ve missed it.

I look out my office window

and all I see are skulls,

even in the daylight. You

wait until it’s dark,

and miss the gray redundancy 

of funerals while you squint

in the yellow haze

of your cheap electric light.

But that’s your way.

You walk into a churchyard

with your plastic sack

full of straw-men and equations

wrapped around your neck.

You smell dirt,

so you think the air

is made of dirt,

and you leave,

afraid to breathe.

Hildegard von Bingen Consoles a Skeptic

Line the decomposing days up end to end

across the velvet dusk. Burn the brickwork

of the tower, and the spiral stairs

to the finite clouds.

(Ash in the earth. Ash becomes the earth.)

Burn the sound, the air, the light that burns

within your head, that bursts the skull

apart with pain, with vision. Burn

until the smoke and ashes

red the coming dawn,

then breathe it in

so it becomes your air, your life.

(Ash in the earth. Ash becomes the earth.)

Separate dead ash

from what has died, and remember

that what burns to ash

cannot be burned again,

that what is earth was once of blood and flesh.

Flesh took form from ash

and then consumed itself with fire

of the soul within. Ash

in the earth. Ash

returns to earth.

What has burned returns, and what returns

will rise again.

Three Days After

The city gleamed on the horizon. The sky

was an impenetrable gray. You did not speak.

An angel stood between us – flaming sword,

glimmering gold armor, face concealed in fire

as we tried to face each other standing

on a charcoal-colored slab of rock in the Nevada desert.

Since your burial on Friday, I had prayed

to see you any way I could, but when I closed my eyes

and waited for a vision or a visitation, only darkness.

Now here we were, and I could barely see you past the blaze

of this imposing force, the fire and the terror,

the metallic glare of blade and armor, the blinding sheen.

I longed to touch you, but I could not move

except to tremble, tried to speak to you, to ask you, why

must it be here, like this, why can we not see each other,

why do you not say a word? but an inarticulate dry gasp

was all that left my burning throat. The angel answered

in an ageless, sexless voice as cold as lead:

From this point on, you will not see her anymore

except like this, with me, a wall of fire separating day

from darkness of the living flesh. And if you see her,

you will not recognize her as she is until it is too late

and she has vanished back into the realm of light.

At that he stepped back, pulled up his sword

so I could see you better. You looked at first

much as you always had, your black silk dress,

your shimmering gold scarf – but your face looked empty,

motionless, pale, your eyes as if stitched shut.

The angel came again between us, his fire

eclipsing you completely. He stood silent, blazing. And I

stood back against the gray,

and cursed his brightness.

The Death of Saint Joan

I.

You did not see a win. The voices blazed brighter than the fire that burned you. Then they stopped. You did not see a win, but waived your shimmering sword against the glare of sun, crown, miter. Fire. The black smoke from your burning body fouled the dimming sky before your dying eyes. You did not blink, but watched in front of you the beggar’s cross, two fastened twigs held skyward by a shaking, unseen hand. The fight was over. All the guiding voices, silenced. Men who held the keys to England’s throne and heaven’s gate had signed your writ. You could not have seen a win.

History is written by those fools, the winners. How they’d love to sanitize you, make you sane, prop you up as practical, mainline. Pragmatic farm-girl with a social worker’s sense. Civic minded. Middle-class. You and I know better. You, my beautiful and butch protectress, my warlord of the gallows and the sanitarium, with sharpened blade, with glimmering quixotic drag, screaming at the sun your stubborn creed, your visionary doom. You, who did not see a win, but leapt, soul first, into the fiery arms of darkness, waiting for an unseen light to catch you.

II.

Chain, embers, shadow. Ashes

on the ground.

Soot and bone dust on the ground.

Dried twigs and branches

singed to scattered fragments,

black and brittle on the ground.

Here the heretic of voice and metal

burned in the waning daylight

while collaborator churchmen, stunned,

watched in muffled horror flesh

reclaimed by fire to eternal void.

Now, the silence of the dusk.

A dagger of white stone

stands up out of the heap of cinder

and charred shackles.

A long dagger of breastbone

sharpened by the flames,

flanked with ash in the growing darkness.

Night. All that is left – heart

become bone, become sword.

III.

I will not see tonight. I will not raise a blade

to silence and the moon of black unseeing fire.

I will embrace the ashes. All I know

is dust that stops all speech, the choking silence

of the final flames, the heart that would not burn,

the desecrated ashes scattered in the unclean river.

My voices are the heretic, sealed

in a metal crypt beneath a sanitarium,

the shrinking daylight screamed to silence

by the burning of the keys, the beggar’s cross.

The fight is over. I do not hold a key

behind the black sky in the smoke of silence

and the burning gallows of the body.

I will embrace the ashes on the ground.

Consubstantial

I was eating one clear night on the hood of my ’83 Buick the Body and Blood of Christ. Not some bowdlerized symbol, mind you, I mean the fleshy substance of the soul in all its agonizing glory, body of unending matter, and of spirit without start or end, and of time collapsed into eternal light beneath the steely moonlight of December in Las Vegas, frozen night pierced with light that poured through stippled punctures in the fabric of the dark. I had not planned it. I only wished to drown the garish noise left from the day. I needed a drink. I drank the wine I found, and that was all. All that is seen and unseen, maker of all that is seen and unseen, burned and trickled down my throat; throat, soul, and self-transformed into the Mother of Creation’s womb as that dark penetrated me, consubstantial with the flesh and fire she bears, Buick rusting and ephemeral beneath the weight of earthbound flesh. I saw that the food was good, the wine as sweet as blood, as thick and effervescent with the heat of life.

When I got back, I found the only one awake, beyond her recent death, the dying light of her apartment burning through the pre-dawn dark, sitting up in what was once her deathbed, golden scarf around her neck, drinking brandy-and-espresso as she waved me in. I told her everything and took a drink. She told me, what you saw is what you’re drinking now, no more or less, and what I drank before your birth, before my own. The wrinkles on her face looked chiseled and eternal. You do not know what you have drunk, she said, but you will die from it with gratitude. Tell anyone you want, but it will only sound like silence of the dark. I tried to ask her what she meant, but all that came out was the shimmering dark music of eternal silence as she slipped back into her celestial night.

Alone and drunk, I stepped back out into the growing dawn and climbed into the shadow of my Buick, a symphony of darkness on my trembling lips.

I completed my MFA in poetry at Syracuse University. My poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Gargoyle, Pensive, SurVision, Maintenant, Zymbol, Poetry is Dead, ABZ, Fjords, San Pedro River Review, Four Chambers, Snail Mail Review, Enizagam, and The Café Review. I teach creative writing at Scottsdale Community College.  

The loving light of our Lord is being sent 

to bring renewed health to you.

You are His people and He wants your healing

And salvation through your prayers and

Confidence in His Holy Works.

We pray God will lighten your burden and

will help you to spread the Word and Love

of God to those who call upon Him.

Festival Of Masqueraders In Takoradi – FOMIT, Ghana.

In the south-western part of the nation, many are the events, activities and programs which are organized to bring about entertainment as well as socio-economic developments. Although, there are several traditional festivals which are celebrated across the length and breadth of the nation. It’s quite obvious the ‘Kundum’ which is connected to the tribe known as ‘Ahanta’ and ‘Nzema’ in the Western Region has lost its consistent patronage by the people of this setting, viz over the past couple of years, probably by virtue of modernity. However, most of the festivals are associated with certain dances, songs and dresses which create an atmosphere of fancy and ecstasy to lots of the people living within this region of the nation.

In the city at stake, particularly Takoradi which has continually become the hot-spot of various activities in terms of sport, music and other fields of Arts. In actual fact, one unique festival which has been in existence for about hundred years since its inception by far the oldest club which is known as ‘Anchors’ takes it root or foundation from a suburb in the city known as ‘Amanful’.The call of leadership is termed ‘Officer’ who often is in charge of most duties ranging from the sewing of the fancy dresses to the meeting which comes on weekends. Apparently, there is no age barrier or limit and trend with regard to who is to join whichever club of choice. For this reason, even babies or toddlers are some-times part of the on-the-road movement from one place to another.

 In relation to the list of the club name, it includes ‘Tumus, Sunato, Justice, Crench, Millionaires, Holy, Cosmos, Valencia, USA, Sambot, just to mention but a few. More often than not, the masquerader clubs have peoples or friends living abroad and so they make provision of exotic masks, little bells and other attires which bring about certain differences among themselves. Although, some are virtually new ones on the day of events one can see that the number of registered members are few unlike the older clubs. In terms of location, one may think they ought to get offices so as to operate and communicate effectively with peoples of different classes and origins. Come to think of it, is there any club with social media pages?

In recent years, the association and sponsorship by a certain media organization within the Western Region has brought about a fiesta known as ‘West-Side Carnival’ which has made it possible to assemble majority of these masqueraders across the length and breadth of the region. During, this period brass-band of trumpets, percussions and other musical instruments makes it lively as they match from one end of the street to another. This becomes a contest to know which of the clubs has better dancing styles and antics to entertain participant or by-standers of the events .As a matter of fact, there are ‘MCs – Master of Ceremony’ who mention names of the clubs through the microphone via the public address systems displayed at the venue of the event.

 In conclusion, on 24th December every year members of the masqueraders clubs get the sewn dresses which prepare them ahead of the Christmas celebration as it coincide with diverse activities they’re being invited to attend as a means to entertain people from all walks of life. Obviously, most of the masqueraders spend times of rehearsals in terms of different kinds of matches on the street coupled with the kind of songs which will suit their performances. Believe it or not, there are times some of the Masqueraders go from house to house in order to play drums to solicit funds for the purpose of managing their clubs. It’s also believed that they operate under the system of Non-governmental that’s why they get donor funding. Suffix it so say, festival of masqueraders in the city of Takoradi at the heart of the Western Region of the nation, Ghana is one cherished and adored festivity which bring people from different regions and all walks of life together. Sometimes, various Masquerader clubs celebrates till the end of year, thus annually.

Written By Ike Boat.

My Childhood Butterflies

The colors of the butterflies

Still now after many years I can see on my fingers

The loving butterflies, the sweet butterflies

Still now flying on the eyes in the morning or afternoon

Every now and then

The garden smiles on 

My childhood attention glows with such lights

Tinged in the life’s color

Bleed with the experiences in every ups and downs

But the sweetness of the glow

Never allows ringing the bell ‘Out’.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
16/11/2019

Resurrection

The leaves of the lemon tree fall down

It’s just before the winter though not encircled with mist

Travelling on the wheel of time

Makes them leave and a chance for the new

The yellow dry leaves scattered on the ground

The green new beams on the morning sun

One by one it covers the braches

It mixes with the blue to the sky

What a matching color of the earthly bound

The yellow bids adieu

And the green starts

Even thousands of years later.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
16/11/2019

Pumpin’ 4 The Man by A. Iwasa

While working on the ‘zine Clevo Style, I read Good Trouble by Joe Biel, and was inspired by everything he wrote about dead end jobs to write about the crappy jobs most scenesters I knew worked in the mid-to-late ’90s.

My first job was completely steeped in the party and music scene I had been in the midst of for a couple years by 1996:  a fast food job at Parma Town Mall.  It had its pros and cons, but it was there, watching food float in the fryers, where I decided I needed to take a vocational class in case the whole music thing didn’t work out for me.  I suppose this shows a lack of dedication, making a Plan B.  But considering how The Revolution hasn’t been happening since 2001, perhaps I was smarter then!

None of my coworkers were in the scene, but tons of the other mall rats were.  Some friends, others?  Enemies.  There were rockers who we shared mutual hatred for us that rivaled the intensity of our conflicts with some white hip hop kids and jocks, who sometimes made walking to-and-from the mall dangerous. 

Two of my band’s shows got cancelled in a row.  After dropping hundreds of dollars to professionally record at Spider Studio, we didn’t have enough cash to release our second demo.  After a particularly crappy day at work, I started kicking a garbage can in front of the mall, screaming lines from a record Schnauzer’s Steve Eggs recorded, of himself screaming on a roller coaster, that he released as Nut Screamer on a split 7″ with Pissed Off Orgasm:  “I don’t care if I’m a pea brained loser!  I don’t care if I don’t have a fucking future!  I hate everything about life!  I JUST WANT TO BE BURNED, LIKE A FUCKING PIECE OF BACON!”  

My friends laughed, some cute young women laughed at, not with, us I suppose, and a stranger yelled, “Me too!”  I quit my job, our rhythm guitarist quit our band, and that all fell apart.  School started back up, and a friend I made through the first ‘zine that published my work, Possum, started taking me to Tremont, Clevo.  My first visit to a commune, The House, and my first spoken word performance, at a cafe named Isabella’s if I’m not mistaken, were in that neighborhood that fall.  I was starting to get new ideas about creative possibilities, and probably should have dropped out of school and got on with my life before my recent relapse into drug use totally spun out of control.

Instead, after I ran out of the little I had saved from my first job, I bunkered down, got another fast food job closer to my mother’s house, and eventually worked with two of my best friends from Parma’s High, also part of the party and music scene that I was in, and worked with other new and old friends.

One was a middle aged woman who had been friends with Floyd from Floydband in the ’70s.  I also met my first two real Hobo friends who worked there while my first couple of old school friends hit The Road with dreams of doing nude house cleaning when they got to Seattle.  It was a mostly fun time, but the drugs and booze were a gnarly underside.

My favorite memory from that job was really belting out Pumpin’ 4 The Man by Ween, the kind of guilty pleasure I’d like to believe I wouldn’t dig if I hadn’t heard it when I was 14.  I was sweeping the parking lot, looked up, and realized a slightly older and very attractive woman was trying to eat in her car with the window rolled down, and was frozen, eyes bulging in abject horror as she stared at me, part way into a bite.  I quickly shut the hell up, and finished my job, praying though I didn’t even believe in God at the time, that she wouldn’t snitch on me for what she probably perceived as a vulgarity laden rant, like the woman who claimed she saw a couple of us smoking weed by the Dumpster.  Would I have been the irresponsible of a teenager?!

My nearly two year career at what I then frequently called Burger World, in honor of Beavis and Butthead’s employer, was still in full bloom when my vocational class, Graphic Communications, started at Parma’s High.

This was inspired by local death metalists, Descend, who were all printers, did their own printing, and even at one point all worked in the same print shop.
One of the really fun things about Graphic Communications, the printing class for the shared vocational system with Normandy (AKA Normally High) and Valley Forge, is that apparently if you failed the aptitude test the councilors just stuck you in printing.  Out of 20 or so kids, I was one of maybe three that actually wanted to become a printer!

Telling one of the farmers I worked for in southern Iowa about how most of the other juvenile delinquents ended up in my printing class, he said, “It sounds like you went to high school in Soviet Russia!”  I think he meant that as a bad thing, but the Communist Party was enough of a force in northeast Ohio historically that it actually owned the building Speak in Tongues, and The Pieta/The Pit were in!  Further, Gus Hall, a former Chairman of the Communist Party, USA and four time presidential candidate for The Party, had been a leader of the organization in Clevo during its glory years around 1939.

Back to class:  our vocational classes were three periods a day, five days a week, for two years.  I was one of a few students from our class who got hired to work there in my off periods, after school and some vacation days.  I went on to work there for five months after graduating, adding up to a year and a month actually working in the industry for my first bout.

We listened to a lot of great music, and had some good and bad times, some of which spilled over into or backwashed from the scene between both students in the classes and other employees of the print shop.

Matt from Abrasion/Temper Tantrum and later Crash of ’59 was one of my favorite in this cast of characters.  He was critical in helping me go my first year sober when we were down with claiming Straight Edge, and a fun game playing, drinking buddy after we both sold out.

Maria was another, who listened to a couple of my bands, and had a brother who went on to play in at least one band that did shows.  She kept a year book photo of our class in her car after we graduated.

Then there was this kid we called Hillbilly Frank or Franor…  He Loved The Cramps, Carcass, and a host of other great bands.  When he wasn’t lecturing me about my need to lay off of drugs, he was asking me when I was going to start again, when he realized what a mess I remained sober.  One of my fondest memories of high school was him spending an extended period of time trying to reason with me to not be upset about something, before he lost it and yelled, “Cheer the fuck up before I punch you in the face!”  When I moved into a Christian Compound in Uptown, Chi, my room mate their assigned to monitor me through their Orwellian “Buddy” system was called “Hippie Frank” by mostly everyone, I called him Franor since I actually did like him.

Our first year printing teacher, Bill, was a childhood friend of Jeff Hatrix/Jeffrey Nothing from Hatrix and Mushroomhead.  He found out about Mushroomhead through me, after noticing the Hatrix graffiti I drew on a cute lady’s folder.  Bill tracked down Jeffrey Nothing through a mutual friend, and interviewed him for the school newspaper, on the condition that he not print Jeffrey’s real name.  It turned out Bill also went to grade and high school with one of my mother’s cousins!  They had nothing but nice things to say about each other.

That cousin, actually took me to see Face Value the one time I got to see them.  Luckily it was when they opened for 7 Seconds, because when they played with Agnostic Front and Ringworm, another one of my mother’s cousins went, and not being familiar enough with Hardcore to guess it was going to be in the Agora Ballroom, not the larger Theater, he just followed the trail of blood to the Ballroom… 

In her stone washed jeans and Christmas sweatshirt, a steady stream of posi Punx asked her in a friendly manner who she was there to see.  She had a blast, and actually wrote a paper about how she thought Do It Yourself (DIY) Punk was giving young people the tools they needed to advance their lives in productive ways.  She read a draft of it to two of my friends and me, asking us questions for a later version.  I have no idea what she did with it, but she was a pharmaceutical sales rep (the family joke was she was a drug dealer, my friend Sarah who she also drove to see 7 Seconds didn’t get the joke at first and was like, “She looks really conservative for a drug dealer!”) so who knows what sort of industry think tank that might have ended up in…  She also went to at least a couple of the bar shows I played at, one of my only white relatives who supported my creative endeavors over the years without any mean spiritedness about it.

One day in the print shop, while I was trying to clean out a paper jam of a press, Bill turned it on and almost ripped off my hand!  It was the first time I cursed out a teacher.  Bill smiled through the whole thing like a cat that just ate a canary.  When my shock induced tirade was over, he said, “Sorry man, I’ll buy you a Coke.”  

An odd outcome of this was that day I decided to start making playing bass a daily discipline.  I had been occasionally noodling with guitar for about five years at the time, but almost losing my hand was a real wake up!

About a year later, I reminded Bill that he never bought me that soda.  Instead of coughing up the change, he turned to Franor and said, “This kid’s going to show up to your twenty year class reunion, and still complain about not getting that Coke!”

Bill was in a barber shop quartet at the time.  We only talked about it once, but the way he described it to me was a revelation:  there was a barber shop quartet scene!  It still never ceases to amaze me that there is basically a scene around everything.

One of the only reasons I started taking classes at Cuyahoga Community College (AKA Tri-C or Try High) in in 1999 was that to keep my job at the Parma Print Shop, I had to be a student.  I dragged my feet in registering for classes that fall, and even only taking three classes ended up giving me such a screwed up schedule that the print shop job turned into something impossible to deal with, especially since I was trying to walk everywhere which meant I lost a lot of potential work time walking, also stressing myself out with my newly found sobriety’s bursts of energy and wing nut ideas like only sleeping every other day, and eating while I walked.

Luckily I had enough saved up to take most of the semester off from work, since my mother didn’t charge me rent as long as I was a student.  This also nicely coincided with a renaissance of Parma bands.  I played a few bar shows, cut a demo, supported the other local bands like Abrasion and The Getaway Drivers, and saw some great international acts such as Danzig, Samhain, Six Feet Under and Manowar.

My hair reached my waist for the first time, I got a couple tattoos much to my mother’s chagrin, this time along with much of the Parma Youth Straight Edge and Assholes, in our dude’s older brother’s 100% DIY basement tattoo parlor.

It seemed like everything was going full stride for me, but wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.  I floundered a bit in school, started washing dishes professionally at an upscale Italian place, and between semesters, quit my band.

I still haven’t seen The Godfather, so at first the joke to the name Corleone’s was lost on me.  Also, this was way before Kill the Irishman came out, so I was only dimly aware of old school mob violence, and mostly associated it was Italians in Chicago and New York.

I actually found it charming the way my boss, who was Polish and Lutheran, wanted to appear mafioso along with all his small business owner buddies.  Remember, this was in a town at least once so Italian it was called Parma.

He also had this working class hero thing going, at least in my book.  He frequently talked about working at some sort of metal fabrication factory for years, saving up to start his business.  All these years later he remains one of the most fair people I’ve ever worked for.

The thing I find weird in retrospect, is how many people his age have to remember the dozens of gangland car bombings that happened in Clevo in the 1970s.  I mean, maybe that’s why he knew the Parma Youth Straight Edge kids he hired weren’t bad, but most of his peers, how could they always talk about how violent people of color were or judge us for how we dressed when they lived through that era?!

As usual some other things were lost on me at the time:  Erba, the last name of guys from a slew of local bands such as Face Value, Windpipe, the H-100s and 9 Shocks Terror, is actually the name of a city in Italy, which I only semi-recently learned while reading a collection of Antonio Gramsci’s writings on the post World War I factory take over wave that had swept Italy at the same time that much of Central and Eastern Europe was in the throes of Soviet styled insurrection.

Also, neighboring Seven Hills’ name has to be a reference to the Seven Hills of Rome, which I only learned about after a Seventh Day Adventist picked me up hitchhiking, and gave me a DvD about the Book of Revelation that I had actually prayed would be a granola bar when he started pawing around his back seat for it.  I felt obligated to watch it with a couple comrades when I finally got back to the Bay Area out of respect for the driver, and a nearly jumped out of my seat at the reference! 

Back to Corleone’s:  I believe Chris from Allergic to Whores was the first one of us to start working there.  Culinary Arts was actually his vocational at Normally High, and he cooked there.  I believe he was Lerpy from Abrasion and Striking Distance’s reference when he started working there, busting suds.

Lerp worked his was up into management, and when he became the Head Dishwasher, he called me up and offered me a job after he heard I needed one.  He also hired his band mates from Striking Distance, John and Josh.  We listened to Hardcore, Metal, Punk and the local oldies station, much to the confusion and annoyance of most of our coworkers.  I ate so much out of the bus pans that I was almost fired for it, by the Head Server who had known Floyd from Floydband in the 1980s, when he was dating a significantly younger woman.

When the spring semester ended in 2000, I hung around long enough after my last final to take my mother out for Mothers’ Day, then spent one more night at her house before actually buying a Greyhound Ameripass (as opposed to the counterfeiting scam so popular among the other Travelers of the era) and set out for my first trip alone to the west coast.  It was also my first trip to the American South West and Deep South.  I saw my hometown out of a bus window as I turned 20 On The Road.

Ex-band mates started a rumor that I went to Cali to join a cult, which sadly wasn’t true.  I was going to Phoenix to check out a trade school, and figured if I was going all the way out to Arizona I might as well re-visit the West Coast and see what else I could get into.  When I did move to Chicago to visit a Christian Compound in Uptown, I used to like to joke that the rumor became true in kernel.

I eventually wandered back to my mother’s and Corleone’s, then working in an electronics factory and taking just one class on Saturdays.  I actually started playing in a contemporary worship band at a Four Square Church, which is the only all around good experience I’ve had playing in bands.  Our guitarist, Arthur, had been part of the small but lively Christian Hardcore Scene in Clevo in the early-to-mid ’90s.  I can’t remember what band he was in, but Six Feet Deep, who was on the Dark Empire Strikes Back comp, Mortal and Forge were the cadre of that milieu.  One of Parma’s High’s marching band’s drummers circa 1995, Mike, was also in one of those bands.

As time wore on slowly, and I day dreamed about hitch hiking to Alaska, I went back to professionally washing dishes, working my way up to Head Dishwasher and my only stint in management, and took classes for two years straight including summers to finish school with my factory savings.  I did a few more ‘zines as I tried to figure out a way to relate to the people I was around, but they seemed to be more popular outside of the scene with seemingly random co-workers and class mates.

One of The Getaway Drivers started waiting tables at Corleone’s but I didn’t recognize him.  He told me he had a video of my jumping on stage at their first show, and grabbing the mic out of James’ hands and singing Skulls by The Misfits when they covered it.  I had expected half the crowd to mob the stage, but no one followed me up!

I remember James’ look of shock as he let go of the mic, eyes bulging, mouth open.  I looked back, perplexed, shrugged, and sang the song as I would since James stopped.  I felt like Henry Rollins singing Clocked In for Black Flag when he was still in State of Alert! 

Many people in the crowd also looked shocked, and I felt like Moses parting the Red Sea as kids scattered to avoid getting kicked in the face when I jumped down.  I was sort of a bloody mess to boot, and you can still see a scar on my left hand from that show.

But 9-11 was the definitive end of all that for me.  I haven’t played guitar or bass since that day, and I’m almost ashamed to write how all these years later the war is still going on, but the Afghans appear poised to end it the old fashioned way:  by winning.

But on a lighter note, if you haven’t already, next time you Consult The Oracle, please search the youtube for descend cleveland death metal demo 1995, and as Franor would say whenever a good song came on the stereo in the Print Shop:  “Make it loud!  This is the song that started it all!”