Tag: Cecil Bethea

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Brother Townsend, by Cecil Bethea

Twenty-three passengers on the
Mayflower were ancestors of Prescott Townsend 
ancestors. Another forebear was the only man to sign the Declaration of
Independence, the Articles of the Confederation, and the Constitution. On
almost any route that Townsend took to grade school on Boston’s Beacon Hill, he
would past a monument to an ancestor or to an event in which some kinsman had
participated
Townsend was born in 1895 when the
blue bloods of Boston still considered themselves Brahmins and felt contented.  Henry James called them, “the sifted
few”.  Besides his inherited wealth, his
father was also the head of a large coal company.  When Townsend was fifteen his father
died.  At sixteen he told his mother that
he liked other boys.  She merely
answered, “Be careful.”.
During his eighteenth summer, he went
out West to work in logging and mining camps of Idaho and Montana where he met
people unlike himself.  The International
Workers of the World, derisively called the Wobblies were trying to organize a
union amongst the unskilled workers and hobos with whom Townsend worked.  He developed a lifelong interest in street
boys and drifters, the outcasts of society.

At Harvard, he evidently was more
interested in tennis than books, but he survived.  So many attractions drew him into a very
active social life.  After all, he was in
the SOCIAL REGISTER.  Harvard was very
pro-British during the first years of World War I.  To do his part, he joined the Naval
Reserve.  After the United States had
entered the war, Townsend was called to the colors, where he performed various
duties including being commanding officer of the Naval Unit at Texas A &
M.  After being demobilized, he returned
to Harvard to finish his senior year and later to enter law school.
Law school palled, so at the end of
his first year he quit.  So many
interesting things lured him on to various adventures. In the tropics of
Mexico, he was the co-discoverer of an unknown salamander which was named for
him.  In Paris, Andre Gide recommended
the deserts of North Africa.  Townsend
organized a small caravan with willing. complaisant, or hungry young men.  During his visit the Rift Rebellion, an
attempt by the Arabs to oust the French was taking place.  One small battle interrupted the progress of
his party.  He insisted that the fight
stop because he as an American had precedent over their squabbles.  Strangely enough the combatants ceased their
gunfire while the American passed.  How
things have changed for American tourist!
Back in Paris, Townsend became
involved with the Bohemians; in fact, Bohemia became a part of him for the rest
of his life.  In Boston he was the patron
of poets and a little theater.  Actually
he owned the building where the theater had its quarters.  His house became a home for various nomads of
the artistic and Gay worlds.  Although he
bragged he had never paid for sex, it was difficult to turn down a man who is
supplying you with bed and board.  During
his later years, all of his tenants chipped in to pay a handsome young man to
supply Townsend’s needs
During the 1950’s Townsend was much
more than a horny old man.  He was a Gay
activist.  Actually one could make that
ACTIVIST.  The Boston chapter of the
Mattachine Society had him for one of his co-founders.  Just as all the chapters had strife between
the radicals and the conservatives.  The
organization asked him to make his efforts to repeal the sodomy laws of
Massachusetts a personal cause rather an organizational one.  Townsend did not want understanding and
sympathy from the public but rights. 
Confrontational was his usual means of operation. On April 17th,
1965, he was in Washington for the first Gay demonstration.  Seven Gay men, three Lesbians, and a straight
woman friend marched in front of the White House. No doubt he was the oldest.  In 1970, he drove down from Boston for the
first parade to commemorate the Stonewall protest.  Even at seventy-six, he was amongst the first
two hundred to start the parade which grew to thousands.
In his later years Townsend was not
welcomed by other Gays because he had evidently forgotten the meaning of
personal hygiene and looked like derelict. 
No matter he was a participant in Gay functions.
Prescott Townsend should be
remembered for uncompromising attitude toward Gay rights, his early organizing
of Gay, and his early participation in early Gay demonstrations.
He was a Founding Brother.
© 9 Nov
2005 
About the Author 

Although I have done other things, my fame now rests
upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together
for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18the, 2012.
        Although
I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the
Great Depression.  No doubt I still carry
invisible scars caused by that era.  No
matter we survived.  I am talking about
my sister, brother, and I .  There are
two things that set me apart from people. 
From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost
any subject.  Had I concentrated, I would
have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.
        After
the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver.  Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s
Bar.  Through our early life we traveled
extensively in the mountain West.  Carl
is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian.  Our being from nearly opposite ends of the
country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience.  We went so many times that we finally had
“must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and
the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Now
those happy travels are only memories.
        I was
amongst the first members of the memoir writing class.  While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does
offer feed back.  Also just trying to
improve your writing helps no end.
        Carl is
now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more. 
We totter on. 
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When Gay Aliens Fell on Alabama, by Cecil E. Bethea

Back in the 1960s, an incident occurred that might be of interest to the aficionados of space travel. Now, Walker County with its county seat, Jasper, is northwest of Birmingham and is primarily known for having been the home of Taluah Bankhead’s family. Actually by the ’60s, Walker County had become the site of played-out coal mines, a fleeing population, and shrinking towns.

No doubt the reader will remember that, during those years, Alabama was infiltrated by the media, both foreign and domestic, covering the racial problems and incidents. Strangely enough, these people didn’t cover an event that took place in Walker County near the Strangelove Coal Mine. The reason now muted about is that the Kennedys and Johnson had enough on their plates what with the goings-on in Birmingham to pay any attention to Walker County. The solution to the problem was that the F.B.I., C.I.A, and any number of other acronymic governmental organizations, put the kibosh on any news coming out of Walker County. At least this was the explanation I heard on my next trip back home. Remember that all those people who had emigrated from Walker County still had kith and kin living there who kept them posted on the news. My information trickled down from these sources.

One night at about four, there was a very loud noise up near the moldering remains of the Strangelove Coal Mine, which was located at the head of Strangelove Hollow. Down the creek about a mile is the town of Sweet Home, whose men had worked at the mine. Actually, it is more a hamlet than a town. The people there were knocked out of their deep dreams of peace by the noise. As they could neither see a fire nor hear anything, they decided to go back to bed. They probably didn’t call the Law because those hills and hollows were peppered with moonshine stills.

The next morning, some of the men from Sweet Home drove up to the source of the noise. There lying along side of the mine-till was what looked like a stainless steel railroad passenger car but 1½ times as long and with no windows. Walking around was a bunch of humanoid creatures. The biggest difference was the color their skin…red. Not flag-red or sunburn-red but hues varying from maroon to claret. They were dressed in something somewhere between a Speedo and skivvies. Later, the men discovered the aliens had several evolutionary adaptations. These were for living in the ferocious wind and sand storms of their planet. The most notable was a transparent secondary eyelid beneath the first. Also, they had little flaps over their ears, which they could open and close at will. Their feet were a minimum of six inches wide. The aliens’ nasal hair could be described only as magnificent. In fact, it looked like a tail of a jack rabbit.

But, to get back to my story. The creatures from the silver thing approached the Alabamians with their hands stretched out and palms up…not in surrender but in greeting. Their headman stepped forward and, in a passable English, asked, “How far to the Mojave Desert?” The natives explained it was a far piece culturally, geographically, and meterologically. The aliens said that they were from the fourth planet from the sun and were on an expedition to colonize the Mojave. This navigational error killed that canard of visitors from other planets having technology superior to our own.

Of course, the rocket had been followed by the men inside Cheyenne Mountain down in Colorado Springs. After the rocket had hit near Sweet Home, Alabama, the Security establishment just knew that, with all the other more fruitful targets available, this rocket had no hostile intentions. Nevertheless, the Army at Ft. Benning, the several rocket types at Huntsville, the Air Force in Montgomery, plus several plane-loads of experts in Washington were notified, and probably even the Navy in Pensacola. By the time that first-comers of these contingents had arrived, Southern hospitality had already come into play. Some of the men from Sweet Home had gone home to collect styrofoam cups, ice, and lots of moonshine.

Now, that liquor might gag you at first, but later it loosens the tongue mightily. Soon, the Martian tongues were just flapping. They told not only all but also a little bit more.

About forty years before, one of their nuclear power plants had blown up, scattering radioactive dust from hell to breakfast all over their planet. Twenty years later, they had discovered that a third of the boys born since then were Gay as blue-suede shoes. Conditions had worsened since then…worsened to the extent that the Martians wanted to export a least some of their Gay brothers. Of course, the leaders weren’t so blunt. They had let it be known that “they wanted to share the benefits of their civilization with more benighted planets. That all the colonists were Gay was merely a statistical aberration. The rocket had been the first of a planned flotilla.” After this explanation, Simon Brewster, never known for his reticence, asked, “Do you mean to say that you all are a bunch of queer Martians? God knows that we’ve got enough of your sort here but not in Walker County. They all live in Birmingham.”

The first of the government forces armed to the teeth had arrived. The tanks and some of the artillery were still en route. Evidently the military were going to put up a Godzilla- defense. Also, one of the aliens was ailing. No problem. The Army had sent not only a medical evacuation company but also a postmortem examination team. While the patient was wasting away, others were coming down sick. Everything possible was being done to save them, if not for humanity, at least for science. Anthropologists were madly recording anything the dying men could tell about life on Mars. By sundown, each and every one of the Gay Martians had gone to a better world. Why, no one knew. Later an M.D., a specialist in body fluids in Denver, theorized that the Martians had evolved during the many millennia to live in their arid Mars and just had not been able to survive all that humidity in Walker County.

By dawn the next day, all the representatives of the government had slipped away taking the remains of the space ship and those of the Martians to be distributed amongst laboratories up North. That morning, agents of the government assembled the citizens of Sweet Home and promised them fat checks if they never talked about what they had seen the previous day. But, they should’ve checked the barn: the horse was already long gone. Nevertheless, that’s why there are more per-capita wide-screen TVs, un-patched overalls, and late-model pick-ups in Sweet Home than anywhere in the nation.

Warning! You should remember that this information I heard only fourth hand and maybe even fifth. While I never saw these events, I have recorded accurately what I heard.

© 24 Nov 2013

About the Author

Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18the, 2012.

Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression. No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era. No matter we survived. I am talking about my sister, brother, and I. There are two things that set me apart from people. From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject. Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver. Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar. Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain West. Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian. Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience. We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming. Now those happy travels are only memories.

I was amongst the first members of the memoir writing class. While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feedback. Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more. We totter on.

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Falling into Unrequited Love by Cecil Bethea

Away back about sixty years ago I was in love with Hugh Stanley. He certainly wasn’t handsome; no way could he have been a porn star even had there been any porn available. But he was what I wanted in my vague, amorphous hankerings. Such were complicated by the firm knowledge that homosexual activity was condemned by my peers, my family, and my state. Remember back in those days, there were no Gays just homosexuals, queers, and cock-suckers. The result was no overture was ever made, so I at least was never rejected.
Hugh was a brain. He made practically all “A’s” at least enough to be selected to become a member of the School of Chemistry equivalent of Arts and Sciences’ Phi Beta Kappa but without the age or memorability. Unlike most scientific types, he liked to read literary novels before going to sleep. I remember in particular WAR AND PEACE, VANITY FAIR, and I, CLAUDIUS. It must [have] taken months to read the first two in thirty minute bouts. In I, CLAUDIUS, there is mention of the Spintrians, a group of Gay Romans. He referred to a similar group on the campus by that name in disparaging tones, but such remarks did not end my hunger.

He received a handsome fellowship from the Department of Defense. To this day, I remember the title of his thesis: The Synthesis and Thermal Decomposition of Symmetrical Bi-Methyl Hydrazine. The sponsorship came about because hydrazine was an early rocket propellant. I worked in the library of the School of Chemistry; actually my pay was in the form of a scholarship from the school. This method of payment didn’t bother me as long as the money came. True, you will have trouble finding someone with a scholarship in chemistry who knows less about the subject.

Meanwhile in all my turbulence, I was taking a course in Shakespeare. The test on MACBETH had a question like, “Discuss the motivation of MacBeth.” In the storm and stress of my soul, I decided that his love for Lady MacBeth drove him to all of his deeds most foul. I cited lines from the play to buttress my view. Written upon my test by the professor, Hudson Strode, were words something like this: “While some scholars accept this view, most believe that it was ambition. Also, Mr. Bethea, the character’s name is Lady MacBeth and not Mrs. MacBeth.” Every reference to the woman was at least consistently Mrs. MacBeth. It does loose something in transition.

This tale ends decades later. A letter from Hugo arrived. He had found my name on the internet. Wanting to be sure that I was the right Cecil Bethea, he recounted our friendship in school so that I could identify him, a totally unnecessary exercise. I replied with a lengthy letter. I said that I was Gay and a bit about my thirty-five years with Carl. After all I couldn’t hide him in a closet like a bastard child.

Hugo’s letter arrived sometime in August. We’d already decided to go to Alabama that October. Not only is the heat less, but Carl had never seen the fall leaves down South. Carl readily agreed to a change of route to go by Gulf Shores, down south of Mobile. So I proposed to Hugo and Laura, his wife, that we would like to take them to dinner at a place recommended by AAA. Also I stated that we’d be sleeping at a certain motel suggested by the same. 

The next week Carl and I, for some disremember reason, went to the Home Depot away out on North Washington with a Wal-Mart across the street. As I parked the truck, the battery died. We did our shopping and called AAA. The man said the battery was dead, dead, dead. Carl then took out the battery; he carried enough tools to make most any repair short of removing the engine. With the battery in a shopping cart, I went over to purchase one at Wal-Mart. Why this unexpected purchase at $67 should irk me more than any other I don’t remember, but it did irritate intensely. Walking in August across two parking lots on a hill, I remembered “Into every life a little rain must fall,” and other equally puerile philosophic mottoes. By the time I had reached the truck, I had reconciled myself to the notion that unexpected purchases or setbacks are part of human life.

When we reached home, there was a letter from Hugo. I fixed myself some coffee and then sat under the tree in the front yard to read it. The first sentence was disheartening. Something like: “Your visit won’t work for me,” “his being too much of a Victorian,” “I’d never displayed any such symptoms at school,” and other such statements. After reading the letter, Carl said, “Well, we can go home by Memphis.”

My problems with the battery and the resulting homilies set me up for the worse that was to come. Two, decades earlier I had learned that not everybody would love me.

Hugo’s letter was our last communication. After Katrina, I wanted to know how he had survived but refrained. There is a limit to how many lost causes one can pursue.

© 1 August 2011

About the Author

Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18the, 2012. 

Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression. No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era. No matter we survived. I am talking about my sister, brother, and I. There are two things that set me apart from people. From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject. Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver. Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar. Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain West. Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian. Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience. We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming. Now those happy travels are only memories.

I was amongst the first members of the memoir writing class. While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feedback. Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more. We totter on.

Posted on

Memoir: A Pile of Leaves by Cecil Bethea

     With the end of September comes the annual event of the falling of the leaves and the concomitant chore of raking them up and getting rid of them one way or another.  Back home we used to heap them up into piles and then set them afire.  The burning leaves produced an aroma, not a smell, that was a delight to the senses but pleasured us only once a year and is not forgotten decades later.  Since then I’ve often wondered whether a forest fire amongst deciduous trees produces so sweet a smell.  Anyhow I still have a Pavlovian reaction to burning leaves of memories from the distant past in Alabama.

     Friday I decided to start the series of rakings necessary to rid the yard of leaves.  Can’t burn them now without being inundated with police and vile thoughts of the neighbors.  Steven, who lives next door, operates a compost heap and is delighted with garbage cans of leaves.
  
     For some reason or another, I felt Puritanical and tackled the trash collected along the fence.  Pulling the leaves and other trash into a pile, I marched at a slow step down the fence.  Then it dawned that the pile had the shape of a recently dug grave.  By a quirk of mental contortions, I realized that it was also the 150th anniversary of my grandfather’s birthday.  This meant that Saturday, October 1st, would be the 77th anniversary of my brother’s.
     
     I decided to sit down and have a cigarette.  All sorts of thoughts from a country churchyard spun through my head.  Moreover I now frequently ponder matters mortal.  These two men were and still are important to me.  Papa was born in 1860 remarkably two days after the census was taken.  His entire life was spent in Meadeville, Mississippi, thirty miles east of Natchez.  The population has always been less than 500 depending upon what had happened during the previous decade.  He vituprertivly denounced Lincoln and all his works.  Years later, I could understand his thinking.  Being born when he was, Papa could not remember what life was before the War.  No doubt his elders looked back at those times as a golden era.  We know this wasn’t so because by 1860 the nation was just recovering from the Panic of 1857.  
     
     No matter, he was old enough to remember when the Yankees came.  He had learned that the blue bellies were booger men who liked to steal bad little boys.  Then suddenly one day the whole front yard was filled with blue bellies.  Like any small boy, he went screaming to his mother.  The commanding officer picked him up and tried to calm him.  The result was that they discovered that Papa’s Christian name DeMont was the same as the officer’s sir name.  Papa was convinced that the Yankees did not burn the house because of this happy accident.  Maybe.  Even the Yankees did not have the time to burn every house they ran across.  

     Papa inadvertently taught me about aging.  Dying at ninety-seven, he was the oldest citizen of Franklin County.  The men who were mere elders gave him a birthday party organized primarily by Mr. John Rounds every year.  He told me that those men hadn’t been his friends. His comment was, “Why, I danced at the wedding of John Rounds’ folks.”  A body’s friends go, then his contemporaries, and finally only memories remain.

     My brother was born in 1933 and was named for our grandfather, but nobody called him Wentworth except Mother.  Those W’s and R were too much for me to cope with, so I called him Wimpy.  Then our sister, Duane, came along nine years later and called him Bibi, which became a name limited to the family.  To everybody else, he was Wimpy.  

     The three of us looked nothing alike.  My hair was dark brown back in those days, Bibi was early on tow headed which later became a dark blonde,  Duane was a red head.

     Bibi was six feet at fourteen and ended up at 6’2″.  His two sons grew to 6’6″ and 6’7″.  Duane’s boy is somewhere over six feet.  I just got none of the height genes in the family.
     
     Bibi deserves to be remembered by the world at large for one statement he made,  We were discussing intellectuals, what they were, their qualities, their purpose in society, et alia,  At the end of the conversation, he summarized by saying, “Intellectuals are just like Christians; many are called but few are chosen.”

     Later in his life during one week-end, one of his boys was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and the other was admitted to med school.  This would be a feather in any parent’s cap–actually two feathers.  Bibi was more modest; he asked the question “What did I do right?”  He realized that he was in as much a quandary as those parents who ask, “What did I do wrong?”  To me these questions show how iffy parenthood is.  
     
     Another more egocentric reason for my remembering him so fondly took place in Venice.  He was sitting at a table in an outdoor café in the Piazza watching the people, taking in the sights, and generally enjoying his place in the sun,  While studying the facade of St.  Mark’s, he noticed and remembered the four horses.  They were part of the loot the Venetians brought home from Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade.  I believe they were had been removed from Rome by one of the early emperors.  Anyhow Bibi said he remembered my telling him the history of the horses when he was a little boy. .  From all the verbiage that I have spewed during my years on this earth, he is the only person to say that he had remembered some of my words years later.  I did say that my reasons were egocentric.

     Papa is buried in Meadeville cemetery amongst his friends and family.  Bibi’s ashes are scattered somewhere in the Smoky Mountains.

     Life goes on at least of some sort or another.  I picked up the rake and continued my chores. 

About the Author 





Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18the, 2012.

Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression. No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era. No matter we survived. I am talking about my sister, brother, and I. There are two things that set me apart from people. From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject. Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver. Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar. Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain West. Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian. Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience. We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming. Now those happy travels are only memories.

I was amongst the first members of the memoir writing class. While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feedback. Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more. We totter on.



Posted on

The Fairies by Cecil

    Their home was sited in a burrow beside the South Platte River between 15th and 20th Streets. It was away from the river’s edge and across the sidewalk where so many of the Big People ran, walked, and bicycled. The trees. shrubbery, weeds, and grasses ensured that their door was invisible except to the most diligent searcher. Once in a great while a dog off his leash sniffed it out. Most often on those occasions , the impatient owner would call the dog away while Oberon and Puck would sit quietly and not knowing what the dog would do. If he were a digger, enthusiastic with his freedom from the leash and the confines of the small condo of his master, the animal might do some damage to the passage way. But they weren’t scared for their personal safety having planned their castle with two escape hatches opening at least ten feet away from the main entrance.

     The two had reveled in a golden day of Indian summer with the leaves like so many flambeaux. Early on, they had gathered driftwood, which had washed from who knew where in the high Rockies already covered with their first coating of snow. Crossing the sidewalk to avoid the Big People required careful planning, but years of training and experience had taught them how to avoid if not their enemies at least their adversaries. The sticks of future firewood were now stored away. A few more weeks of harvesting this crop of the river would have the wood room chuck full.

     After lunch, the two had flown over to Sixteenth Street to see the sights and doings of the Big People. Oberon had watched two men playing a good game of chess until Puck, not being a chess aficionado, pulled him away. Oberon at least once a week played chess with Old Casimir. Nobody knew how old he was. Probably didn’t know himself, but everybody knew that he was old. During their last visit the old man had told about the little steamboat that had steamed up and down the river on hot summer nights carrying some of the Big People. Usually somebody would bring a ukulele, a banjo, or a guitar -sometimes even all three. They’d sing songs like LORENA or SHINE ON HARVEST MOON not too well, but it was nice listening to them.

     Oberon and Puck had flitted down Sixteenth window-shopping. Naturally, Puck found a T-shirt he wanted.

     “I’m going to get Esmeralda to make me a shirt like that.”

     “How you going to pay for it?”

     “Oh, I’ll just baby sit Carlos; she’ll be glad to get rid of him for a day.”

     “Let me know ahead so I can escape. I’ll go fishing for minnows so we can have them for supper.”

     “I don’t understand why you don’t like children so. After all, you were once one yourself.”

     ‘’Yes, and I remember what a troll I was”

     “Oh! You were never so bad as Ivan under the Fifteenth Street bridge even before he became civilized. I could never have fallen in love with such a creature.”

     “Don’t try to pull your lovey dovey trick on me. I’m not going to stay around this house all day just to hear you going getchy getchy goo and Carlos shriek every time he wets his diaper which happens far too often.”

     “You’ll leave me to the mercies of Maria.”

     “What’s she got to do with anything?”

     “You know what a racist she is wanting to see that we fairies don’t all die off. Every time I have Carlos over, here she comes telling me that I should have a family of my own.”

     “Just tell her you don’t have the right machinery. With Esmeralda and Abendigo around we don’t have to worry about fairies of any variety dying out, How many kids has she produced?”

     “Lordy, I don’t know. Gave up trying to keep track after number six, the red head. Whenever she brings Carlos over, she let’s me know his name.”

     “What will you do if it’s raining outside?”

     “Haven’t done it in a long time. Go down to the Bale of Hay Saloon and hide up under the eaves. When a drunk comes out, I’ll make myself visible to him.”

     “You know we aren’t supposed to appear to the Big People!”

     “Doesn’t matter. What would you do if you saw a twelve inch fairy while drunk? True, it might scare you away from the bottle, but would you tell anybody about seeing him? Your friends would just say, “He’s finally got the DTs,” and the bar tenders would eighty-six you permanently.”

     “Why, Oberon, you sound like a one man temperance society!”

     “There’s nothing temperate about my trying to escape Carlos.”

     While Puck was cooking supper, Oberon sat in his lounge chair watching the television. Obviously, they couldn’t have a regular set down in their house. It was an Ipod that a Big Person had lost in Confluence Park. The weight was too heavy for them to fly it to their house, so they had lugged it across the South Platte, over Cherry Creek, and then down the sidewalk to their home. Vulcan, who knew most everything about the Big People’s goods, had shown them how to operate the thing. Now it was a part of their lives teaching them much about the Big People. True, the batteries died from time to time. Vulcan had taken Oberon to one of the Big Man’s storehouses and showed him how to get replacements. He had to fly out the door while it was being opened by a customer. Even though they had no money, fairies were not supposed to steal from the Big Men. Oberon paid by washing the upper windows of the storehouse.

     They had already known that the Big People came in different colors. Some dressed differently. Others lived where they couldn’t see the mountains; still others built their houses by really big rivers which had big waves that splashed continually against the bank. Some waves were really big, much taller than any of the Big People.

     After they had started watching the television, they had become almost adept enough to be considered bi-lingual. Every night after cleaning up the kitchen, they sat in their separate lounge chairs and focused upon the flickering figures upon the screen. The two had been following the Gay marriage debate amongst the Big People with a personal interest and an absolute confusion.

     Puck had declared, “I just don’t see what the fuss is all about. When we two joined, the He-She’s didn’t have a tizzie. They just ate, drank, and danced like us, the He-He’s and the She-Shes. Certainly Abendigo and Esmeralda with their ever increasing brood were not affected much less harmed.”

     Oberon joined in with, “I reckon that some Big Men always need something to bitch about. This is even better than most topics because it has nothing to do with them. If any changing has to be done, somebody else will have to do the changing.”

     “Say, I’m out of glitter for my wings and you didn’t remind me while we were downtown. You might think I’m dowdy without a full coat of glitter.”

     “To show you how I feel about your glitter let’s go to bed for a session of He-Heing.”

     They didn’t even put on their night shirts.

About the Author

          Although I have done other things, my
fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we
have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August
18the, 2012.

          Although I was born in Macon, Georgia
in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression.  No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused
by that era.  No matter we survived.  I am talking about my sister, brother, and I.  There are two things that set me apart from
people.  From about the third grade I was
a voracious reader of books on almost any subject.  Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority
by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

          After the University of Alabama and
the Air Force, I came to Denver.  Here I
met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar. 
Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain
West.  Carl is from Helena, Montana, and
is a Blackfoot Indian.  Our being from
nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening
experience.  We went so many times that
we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in
Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Now those happy travels are only memories.

          I was amongst the first members of the memoir writing class.  While it doesn’t
offer criticism, it does offer feedback. 
Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

          Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t
drive any more.  We totter on. 

Posted on

The House on the Plains by Cecil Bethea

Out
east of Denver, off the Interstate and
about twenty miles south on state road 95 stands the house.  Being two storied sets it apart from most
houses of its era, about World War I. 
The others were usual one storied with some Victorian trappings: a tower,
a bit of stained glass in the front door, fancifully turned spindles in the the porch’s bannisters.  This house, facing east, stands off the
highway about a hundred yards amid three thirst stunted cottonwoods and some
desiccated shrubs unwatered for years. 
Off to the left runs a rutted road that leads to the back.  Recent tire marks suggest a rendevous for
teen age frolics in illicit drinking or couplings.  The yard was naked except for weeds dead from
the December cold. 
No
mailbox stood out front — not even a tilted post remained although the ground
was still compressed by the wheels of the R.F.D. drivers making their daily
stops.  Steps leading up to porch are
rickety at best even without the three missing treads.  Also gone is part of the porch
bannister.  An empty space is agape where
a door and sidelights had once stood possibly the result of a midnight raid of
a homebuilder with not quite enough money. 
The two story porch is supported by square columns made of six inch
planks still showing a few splotches of white, perhaps the remains of
plantation pretensions.  Boards long gone
from the porch floor make like miniature moats to the trespasser.  Probably this area had been furnished with
caned-back rockers, benches, a glider, a porch swing, maybe even a hammock.

Inside
the dust driven by the winds has accumulated in whirls.  Of course the kids years ago had come for
miles to pleasure themselves breaking out the windows .  Each of the four downstairs rooms has a
fireplace that had been sealed up with holes for the pipes of the heating
stoves.  Even though every room has two
windows, at least the occupants had some heat. 
A dozen or so recent Coors cans attest to a rustic bacchanal.  Evidently once there had been a built in
sideboard because its alcove is an ugly void. 
Attached to the dining room is the kitchen which juts out west toward
the mountains.  The sink is long gone
with only a hole in the floor which had held the drain pipe.  Probably pried out for scrap and sold by some
desperate soul to feed his family during hard times or to slake his thirst with
a six pack of Coors or maybe even two.
The
northwest room downstairs has a built-in closet added later.  This was probably the bedroom of the parents
or maybe the grandparents so that they could avoid the stairs.  Upstairs would be the sleeping quarters for
the rest of the family.  Four rooms seems
a bit excessive even for the fecund families who lived on the plains but were
also frugal.  Even if the parents did
sleep upstairs with the grandparents down below, two rooms could have easily
held eight children with two to the bed. 
Maybe the spare room was for a spinster sister or aunt who had no where
else to go.  It could have belonged to a
bachelor brother who owned a piece of the farm. 
We’ll never know.

No
doubt at least four generations had once called this place home, a place to
cherish or escape.  Today we can only
imagine the love and hate that strutted through the rooms, crises that waxed
and waned, problems that bubbled and boiled. 
Love of a parent for an unworthy child. Brothers vying for
anything.  Sisters comparing boy
friends.   Fighting amongst the kin over
an inheritance.  A wedding for love or
necessity.  The death of a grandchild
from whooping cough or the death of a
grandparent from old age.  The parties on
a summer Saturday.  Christmas
dinners.  The prayers for rain.  The worries about making mortgage
payments.  If we knew such tales as these, we could embody the ghosts that drift about the place.

The
house is blasted by the winter winds and broiled by the summer suns. the boards
are warped with protruding nail heads. Each year it weakens.  Finally one winter worse than those of past
decades will pile snow upon the roof.  A
blast will descend from the ice caked banks of the Yukon and blow the house
down.  An alternative is that on a hot
summer’s day a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand will grow into one that’s as
black as a mother-in-law’s heart and stretches from here to yonder.  Darts of lightening will spark down to
earth.  A funnel will form and
metastasize hitting the house with one wild eddy of wind and scattering the
shards all over the plains. A more realistic expectation is that some liquored
up teenagers, seeking new thrills, will set it afire to see a really big
fire.  They will dance to rhythms
unconceived and the sparks will soar into the purple night of the plains.

As
yet, the house still stands moldering away out on the emptiness of the plains,
a mute Wurthering Heights waiting for a Bronte to tell its tale.

About the Author

My Biography in 264 Words

          Although I
have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership
with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months
as of today, August 18th, 2012.

          Although I
was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great
Depression.  No doubt I still carry
invisible scars caused by that era.  No
matter we survived.  I am talking about
my sister, brother, and I .  There are
two things that set me apart from people. 
From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost
any subject.  Had I concentrated, I would
have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

          After the
University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver.  Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s
Bar.  Through our early life we traveled
extensively in the mountain West.  Carl
is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian.  Our being from nearly opposite ends of the
country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience.  We went so many times that we finally had
“must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and
the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Now
those happy travels are only memories.

          I was
amongst the first members of the memoire writing class.  While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does
offer feed back.  Also just trying to
improve your writing helps no end.

          Carl is
now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more. 
We totter on. 
Posted on

The Last Goodbye by Cecil Bethea

The
wind blew straight down from the Yukon chilling the plains of eastern Colorado
and the town of Whitney.  Don walked past
the sere, brown grass on either side, toward the 1920’s bungalow.  After crossing the porch, he opened the screen
door and unlocked the front door.  The
living room was so empty that it looked as though a family had not lived there
for twenty-six years.  Back when he was
five, the Folks had bought the house and moved into its more spacious
quarters.  Only vaguely could he remember
running through the empty rooms which seemed so vast before Dad, helped by
Uncles Sam, Bill, and Bob, had arrived with the family’s possessions.
The
house needed a good cleaning–especially the windows.  Thank God, for the Mary and Martha
Society.  They were ladies from the
Baptist Church.  With the motto, “We make
bad times a little better”.  Part of
their Christian duty.  Actually they had
organized the auction for the all the stuff that he and the girls had not
wanted.  Tomorrow the ladies would come
to give the house a good cleaning.  Have
to send them a really nice check for all their help.

Looking
around the empty room he remembered it crowded with people and furniture.  Dad’s and Mom’s lounge chairs had sat side by
side on the other side of the fireplace facing the TV against the front wall.  The Christmas tree had always stood before
the front widows so that they could share its glory with passers-by.  Eleanor had wanted the print of Canaletto’s
GRAND CANAL.  Wonder how it would look
decorating a wall in Silicon Valley?  
Looking
back, the dining room was a waste of space considering how seldom they had used
it along with the “good” dishes.  On
Holidays, birthdays, and Sundays and from time to time.  Never would forget the Thanksgiving that an
errant football, thrown by his cousin Percy, had blasted the window to
smithereens about an hour before the meal. 
Couldn’t have bought a piece of glass in Denver on Thanksgiving.  No problem for Dad and the uncles.  They covered the empty sash with a piece of
plywood chinked with an old blanket.  All
done and over by the time the turkey was taken from the oven.
The
folks’ room never really interested him what with Mom having a strict policy of
knocking before opening a closed door. 
Besides he had checked it out and found nothing interesting except some
photograph albums inherited from his grandparents which he studied from
time.  People, long dead, posed before
antique cars. 
His
sisters shared a room which he later found more interesting.  Nothing really dirty just an interest in how
girls were different from boys.  Had to
do his snooping when alone at home. 
His
room seemed so small.  He wondered how a
chest of drawers, a desk and chair, and a set of bunk beds could crammed into
such a small space.  Here he had had high
dreams, found solace from psychic stings, and read about the rest of the world
outside of Winston and Kiowa County.
The
kitchen was the center of the family’s life and certainly Mom’s life.  She spent most of her time cooking for
us.  We ate practically all of our meals
over there at the table in the corner. 
Some kind of meat, potatoes, at least one vegetable, a salad, and some
sort of desert.  Mom liked to try recipes
from the women’s magazines.  Women don’t
cook like that any more –don’t have the time. 
He left the house keys on the mantel for Bill Roberts, the real estate agent.
Suddenly
he realized that after the house was sold he’d have no ties to Winston except
Longview Cemetery.  They still owned
three burial plots of the five that the Folks had bought years ago.  Maybe they could be sold.

He
realized it would be two o’clock before he got to Denver.  Before getting into his car, he stood
buffeted by the High Plains wind, studied the house once more ,and then drove
off without looking back.

About the Author

My Biography
in 264 Words

          Although I have done other things, my
fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we
have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August
18the, 2012.

          Although I was born in Macon, Georgia
in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression.  No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused
by that era.  No matter we survived.  I am talking about my sister, brother, and I.  There are two things that set me apart from
people.  From about the third grade I was
a voracious reader of books on almost any subject.  Had I concentrated, I would have been an
authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

          After the University of Alabama and
the Air Force, I came to Denver.  Here I
met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar. 
Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain
West.  Carl is from Helena, Montana, and
is a Blackfoot Indian.  Our being from
nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening
experience.  We went so many times that
we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in
Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Now those happy travels are only memories.

          I was amongst the first members of the
memoire writing class.  While it doesn’t
offer criticism, it does offer feedback. 
Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

          Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t
drive any more.  We totter on.