They kill us. We kill them.

There is so much political news.  We’re drowning in it.  If I’m not careful I am grabbed by news stories out of Washington first thing in the morning and they stay with me all day.  My thoughts are taken up by what I read on illuminated screens rather than what I see in the real world around me.  I’m trying to find a balance, to inject humor, to turn my attention to other, perhaps smaller, less contentious topics. 

But I can’t ignore this.  Bill O’Reilly, while interviewing America’s recently elected president, called Vladimir Putin a killer.  He was referring, I think, to the particular mean spirited practice widely believed used by the Russian president of knocking off his critics and rivals by, among other things, fatally poisoning them. 

The President of the United States, a position which, up till a few weeks ago, was also considered the leader of the free world, as if to defend Putin, said in response, making a non committal face before answering:

“A lot of killers.  We’ve got a lot of killers.  What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

He is catching a lot of hell for that.  Senator John McCain was seen on video tape at a lectern in the Senate stiffly waving his arms, broken and badly healed in a North Vietnamese prison fifty years ago, denouncing Trump’s comments, saying in effect “how dare he equivocate American government and its values to Russia and its corrupt leader.” 

I didn’t take it that way.  Though I don’t for a second believe the United States government compares to Russia, a country that punishes, imprisons and yes kills journalists, dissidents, activists, and political foes who threaten those in power, neither do I believe our country is innocent.  I think we’re overlooking something. 

I failed to write the date on this clipping, but it was buried somewhere in the Tribune one day in this new political year which has started so badly.  I never heard it discussed on television news, no one shared it on Face Book, and if I’m not wrong it was not widely tweeted.   That, in these times, makes it obscure and overlooked.  I cut it out and put it in the shack, not knowing when or if I would use it.

That’s hard to read so let me summarize.  The U.S Central Command released an estimate of the number of innocent civilians killed since the U.S. began striking the Islamic State group.  The most recent deaths of innocents were eleven civilians that were “inadvertently killed” in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria that targeted Islamic State militants and equipment late last year.  Since August 2014 that brings the total to almost 200.  The U.S. military reviews reports of civilian deaths and deems them credible or not credible.  Four recent reports of deaths from such strikes, one near Raqqa, Syria in December and three in Mosul, Iraq in October and December were found to be credible, seven reports were deemed not credible, and ten reports are still being reviewed.  Because the reviews are not complete, the 200 figure is likely low.  This was before the recent attack, some say botched attack, in Yemen in which a U.S. citizen from Peoria lost his life, the first serviceman killed under our new president’s watch.  Independent monitoring groups and activists, whose estimates of those killed tend to run higher than official U.S. sources, agree that coalition airstrikes and other actions have killed hundreds of civilians.

Our country has been killing people in foreign countries regularly, both enemy combatants and innocent civilians, since 9/11/2001.  I remember naively saying on that day in the YSB office, after the second tower went down,

“We may go to war over this.”

My fiscal person, herself an Army veteran, said

“Well I certainly hope so.”

And we’ve been at war, a war against terrorism, and terrorists, for sixteen years.  This is our third president to be briefed by generals, learn of both overt and covert operations, and be asked to approve them.  I imagine it is an eye opener for the commander in chief.  Actually there are a lot of killers, us among them.  Our American presidents, our American government, our American servicemen all involved in killings in the name of national security. But then of course they have killed us.  We blame them for lives lost in this country, live lost to terrorism, often justifiably so.  They kill us, we kill them, they kill us, and so on.

Our methods are different.  They kill us crudely, with explosive devices, with automatic weapons aimed at soft defenseless targets; randomly it seems, in Europe and within our borders, for effect.  Crowds of young people were killed at a crowded music venue, such as the attack in Paris, gunned down while the band played.  It works.  Terrorists strike terror, and we are terrified.  We hit back.  We go after what we believe is their command structure in countries where they hide.  Or perhaps that is where they live.  In any case we do not respond in kind.

We claim to target chosen individuals.  We engage in tactical killing to weaken the terror organizations.  It has changed over the sixteen years.  We began with the Taliban, switched to Al Qaeda, and killed their leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, ostensibly a country allied with us.  We did all that, concentrating on Afghanistan first, the Iraq, and then the battle changed.  ISIS became the organization we now target, Syria and parts of Eastern Iraq the principal battlefield.  Names of new leaders emerge, but we cannot keep them straight.  We have few if any journalists on the ground and the military releases little information.  Occasionally there is an article like the one above.  Not often.

America does its killing outside our borders primarily with drones.  Pilotless aircraft controlled by remote operators and armed with cameras and missiles, swoop in, eliminate their target, and fly away.  We, America and countries allied with us, do use manned aircraft occasionally but our preference is to minimize or eliminate the possibility of casualties.  And so we use drones. 

Can you imagine anything more terrifying than to learn of, or worse yet watch, the killing of a family member in the country where you live by a flying machine operated by a country thousands and thousands of miles away?  We are haunted by the possibility of terrorism.  I think of how those drones must haunt our enemies.  I think what it would be like to be attacked by one.  I would be such an easy target.

They would fly over my house plotting the attack.  It wouldn’t take them long.  Imagine the report being discussed by those planning and ultimately authorizing my death.  I don’t know why anyone would kill me these days, unless they violently disagreed with a blog.  Maybe years ago but not now.  However in the unlikely event I was a target, the conversation would go like this.

“OK, what do we know about this McClure guy.”

“He’s retired and pretty predictable.  Every morning around dawn he walks from his back door, across the patio, and into a little shack in the back.”

“Is it open?”

“There are a lot of trees.  You could best take him out close to the house, but there’s a narrow window.  Did you look at the pictures I sent you?”

“Yeah, I got them up on the screen.  How about the front of his house, the street side there?”

“He’s not there much.  On Wednesday morning he takes out the trash, but sometimes it’s his wife.  It will be like that till lawn mowing season.”

“He’s got a mailbox across the road.  You telling me he never picks up the mail?”

“Yeah, from inside his car.  Pulls up and reaches out the window.   Lazy bastard.”

“How about away from his home?”

“I’m telling you, he drives everywhere.”

“So?  We could take out his car.”

“Yeah, well that could be messy.”

“OK, where does he go when he leaves?”

“He goes to the YMCA.  Building downtown near where the two rivers meet.  Pulls in the parking lot about 10:35 on Tuesday and Thursdays mornings, about noon on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Not always though.  Somewhat erratic.”

“So how about there?”

“Lots of cars in the parking lot.  Mom’s putting kids in car seats.  It’s open. But there’s a good possibility of collateral damage.”

“Anywhere else?”

“Hardly.  He goes to a church on Wednesday night and Sunday morning but parks close and ducks in quick.  Same way at the liquor store.  Always the same one.”

“Doesn’t this guy ever walk anywhere?”

“Not much.  He’s got a limp.  That must be why he’s at the Y so much.  He’s not getting any exercise walking.  The most he walks is from one end of the Kroger parking lot into the store on a busy day.”

“Where’s that?”

“Just across those two ravines east of his house.  See the big building south of the main drag by the interstate?”

“Oh Christ, that’s no good.  Look.  We have to make some choices here.  How about we just take out that whole shack?  How big is it anyway?”

“Just shy of 12 by 12.  A little under 144 square feet.”

“What’s it made of?” 

“Wood.  His shack is made of wood,  he burns wood, there’s wood stacked outside.  The guy is surrounded by wood.”

“Is there anyone else in there with him?”

“We’re not sure but we don’t think so.  I mean, it’s so small.  Who else is going to stay in there all day?”

“Wait.  Did you say he burns wood in there?”

“Yeah.  We see smoke soon after he enters.  Appears to be heated with a little wood stove.  Look at that third photo.  See that skinny chimney coming out the roof?  In the winter he burns wood all day.”

“I see it.  Yeah, that’s perfect.  We can use one of the old heat seeking missiles.  Let it loose and it will go straight down his stove pipe.  He’ll be blown to bits.  Mission accomplished.  Big fire.  No problem.”

See how it might go if we were hunted by a foreign government as we hunt others?  Surveillance, then data, after which a plan forms, the order is given, the plan is carried out.  Cold calculated killing.  Their killers crudely confront us and yell slogans before killing us and nearly always dying themselves.  American killers calculate coordinates and guide soulless machines that swoop in, kill, and disappear.  Same result however you cut it.  Death.  They kill us.  We kill them.  And so it goes.

During the reign of George W, I used to print and post information on my office door regarding the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq because it seemed so seldom reported and repeated.   Do you know those numbers?  They are at best estimates.  One with some credibility is the Iraqi Body Count project, which collated deaths reported in newspapers.  They counted 174,000 Iraqi deaths between 2003 and 2013 with 112,000-123,000 being civilian noncombatants.  That was count the count four years ago.  The number continues to grow.

In Afghanistan, beginning in 2001 with the “shock and awe” U.S. air campaign, through 2014 the number of Afghanis killed by foreign military commands number 91,000 which includes 26,000 civilian deaths.  This does not include deaths which occurred in Pakistan, nor does it take into account the high casualties suffered by the Afghan people in their war against the Soviets in the 1980’s.

Hope springs eternal in the American soul.  I hoped that Barack Obama would chart a course for us to end the killing on both sides.  It didn’t happen.  In the recent election I saw neither major party emphasize a desire, much less a plan, for peace.  We continue to advocate for an increased more well equipped military.  Somehow I am not comforted by a military three times bigger than any other in the world.  I’m sorry, but I don’t believe it has kept us safe so far, nor do I think a bigger military will keep us safer in the future. 

Terror in our country strikes fear and influences our behavior.  Some believe the shootings in San Bernardino, which killed 14 Americans and was attributed to a homegrown American born extremist and his foreign born wife, may have been one of the factors that tipped the election far away and months later in the Midwest, where the margin of victory in key rust belt states was so slim.  It most certainly prompted the famous campaign promise, then openly called a ban on Muslims entering the country “until we find out what the hell is going on”, which has manifested itself in the fiasco executive order now on its way to our supreme court.

Emotions run high.  They kill us.  We kill them.  We ban them.  Our leaders now pledge to “wipe them off the face of the planet.”  I don’t think that is a winning strategy.  It’s been sixteen years.  We need a way out.  Killing hasn’t work.  We kill them.  They kill us.  Neither side is innocent.  We need a change.

A Visit from Basil Hayden on Groundhog's Day

My friend Basil Hayden unexpectedly showed up at my door on Groundhog’s Day.  He’s looking good.  Prosperous.  I haven’t seen him since college.  He comes from Kentucky, was in Chicago on business, and stopped by to pay me a visit on his way home. 

Basil has quite a history.  In college we knew him as Evan Williams.  He’s all different from those days.  Dropped out for years, emerged with a new name, and still won’t tell us where he was or what he was doing during his disappearance.  The new Evan changed his look, the way he dresses, everything about himself.  He’s changed completely.  Well, at least in appearance.  I like to think he’s the same guy I’ve always known.

Evan was full of stories, and used to tell them to us late at night in those cheap apartments in Normal back in the early seventies.  To hear Evan tell it, he was hillbilly through and through.  How he got to ISU was something of a mystery because his family, spread out all over the country now, was a tight down home clan from humble roots in the hills of Kentucky.  Outlaw roots even.  We had turned the stereo off and were having whiskey in the downstairs apartment on Glenn Avenue when Basil, Evan then, told this tale:

My old grand dad, Pappy Van Winkle was hunting wild turkey in the woods where Knob Creek and Rowan’s Creek meet before flowing through Noah’s Mill and on down to the Ohio River.  He was slipping through the woods on a slender path that legend had it was a buffalo trace, an old path the Indians used to follow in the early times.  He had an old rifle that held but a single bulleit (sic), which meant Pappy had to make a sure hit good and solid with his first shot.  You couldn’t just go gallivantin’ around shooting any old crow when you please.  Turkey hunting was serious business. 

Past the mill was an old cabin still up on heaven hill where the Blantons used to live.  Two families by the name of Booker and Baker still lived on places down below in the hollow.  They’d watch for out for each other, all those families, and if someone strange wandered through the woods they’d let out a rebel yell, grab their guns, and head out to their stills hidden deep in the woods to scare off the revenuers, the federal agents determined to break up their way of life.  Selling moonshine was pert near the only way to make a living in those hills but it was prohibition and making whiskey was against the law.  When Basil’s old grand dad got to that abandoned Blanton cabin he stopped for a moment and looked around.  Four roses bloomed near the doorway, and in the woodshed chunks of firewood were stacked ten high.  Seemed odd, fresh firewood stacked by an old cabin, but he didn’t pay it no mind.  He sat on a stump and was having a chew of tobacco when damned if someone didn’t come around the corner of the barn.  Pappy grabbed his gun and the old man threw his hands in the air.

“Don’t shoot Pappy it’s me, Ezra Brooks, your damned cousin!”

Seemed like everyone claimed to be Pappy’s cousin but upon closer inspection it was Ezra Brooks all right.  Pappy hadn’t seen Ezra since he’d presided over a wedding between his 15 year daughter and I.W. Harper.  I.W. wasn’t at all convinced he wanted to marry the semi beautiful and pregnant Miss Brooks but Ezra persuaded him it was the right course of action with a loaded ten gauge double barrel shotgun.  The reception went quite well. Ezra broke out his secret stash of fruit jars filled with moonshine and in the end a good time was had by all.  Ezra was a cooper, a barrel maker by trade, but he made whiskey on the side, like most of those hillbillies.

“What the hell you doin’ down here Ezra?”

 Ezra looked over his right shoulder, then his left before answering. 

“You promise you won’t tell nobody?”

“Who ma gonna tell that don’t have their own secrets down here Ezra?  You know me.  We’re kin.  You can trust me.”

“I’m working on a project for Jim Beam.”

“Jim Beam?  I thought the guvmint threw his ass in jail for running whiskey to Chicago.”

“They did but his lawyers got him out.  See Jim did so good running shine that he got money ahead and now he’s laying low with a plan.  He’s got it in his head they’re gonna repeal prohibition and when they do us Kentucky folks that know how to make whiskey are going to make a shitload of money.  And it’s gonna be LEGAL!”  Legal money for whiskey.  Government approved.  Sold in stores.  Can you imagine?”

Pappy Van Winkle thought he had landed in heaven.  Suddenly the future looked bright.

“So what’s this project Jim’s got you workin’ on?”

“Jim’s got me and some other folk making white dog and instead of sellin it we’re puttin’ it in oak barrels for the future.”

“The future?”

That went against all common sense.  The men that made moonshine in the woods put it straight into mason jars and sold it on the sly on Friday nights at the barn dances. With the money they made they bought another big bag of sugar, gave the rest of the money to their family, and went back in the woods to make another batch.  They couldn’t go putting money away for the future.

“Yeah the future, where whiskey is legal.  If people start payin good money for whiskey they’re gonna want better stuff.  The plan is to go back to keepin’ it in oak barrels for four years before selling it.  Or more”

“Four years or more?  That’s crazy talk.”

“Yeah, four years.  And get this. They got this idea that in some of those barrels, they’re gonna not blend all the whiskeys together but keep the batches separate and sell them as something different under different names.  Say you can charge more that way.  They call that the small batch business.  And what do you think of this?  Some guy been talking to Jim bout how to make the taste sweeter, and now they’re fooling around with burning the inside of the barrel afore they put the whiskey in.  Even switching it to a new barrel halfway through, burning it, and doing it all again.”

 “Burning the barrel?  What the hell?  Did Jim go crazy in prison?”

“No.  But he’s talking to people from outside the hills. They got him convinced this is all gonna work.  They’re telling him instead of selling just one kind of whiskey he should make up all kinda fancy names and sell it all kind of ways.  Says the right name gives what you’re sellin’ character.  And if people are convinced it’s got character, they pay more.”

“Different names?  What kind of names?”

“To hear Jim tell it any old names.  Names of your relatives, names of places around the stills, anything that sounds like Kentucky.”

“They really think people are going to pay more for Kentucky whiskey?  Hell it all comes from the same damn place. Same water run through the same limestone, same barley, same corn.  What kind of fool would pay more for whiskey on account of a name?”

“I don’t know but Jim Beam, he’s all set.  And I’m making barrels for him hand over fist.  We’re stashin’ them in the old limestone barns up by Versailles on the western reserve.  The stone buildings Elijah Pepper built.  He was bought out by those businessmen men, Labrot and Graham.  Been closed down since forever.  You should smell the inside of those barns.  It’s whiskey heaven in there.  I tell you the angels may get their share as that whiskey evaporates but when they taste this whiskey, hoo boy, will the angels envy THAT stuff.”

Pappy Van Winkle could hardly take it all in, according to Basil.  Well, back then he was Evan.  There on Glenn Avenue in Normal, Evan poured us another glass of fairly cheap brown alcohol. 

“And that’s the story of the Kentucky whiskey business.”

We weren’t sure it was all true.  But we were fascinated anyway.

Some forty five years later I took Basil back to show him the shack.  He was carrying a smart leather satchel.  I don’t think Evan, or Basil, even graduated from ISU.  He took some chemistry and ag classes and left.  And like I said, where he went no one knew.  A girl he used to date claimed she got a letter from him that came from an island off Scotland, but that was never confirmed.  She may well have high at the time.  That wouldn’t have been unusual, for her or for us.

“I see you got a bottle of Knob Creek there.  You like it?”

“I do.  But actually Evan, I mean Basil, I like them all.”

“Yeah but when’s the last time you bought a bottle of Evan Williams?”

“Uh….”  I hesitated. 

“I thought so.  Why aren’t you buying the cheap stuff like we used to?”

“I don’t really know.  The taste I guess.  But then, maybe it’s the marketing.”

“Here, try this.”

From that fine leather bag he pulled a tall round bottle of clear brown whiskey.

I held it up to the light and read the label:

Artfully aged

Basil Hayden’s Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

When Basil Hayden Sr. began distilling his smooth Bourbon here in 1796, Kentucky was but four years old and George Washington was President.  Today we make Basil Hayden’s Whiskey using the same skill and care that made it a favorite among America’s frontier settlers.

(And on the back)

Artfully aged in Kentucky hillside rackhouses then bottled at a smooth 80 proof, Basil Hayden’s sophisticated taste remains true to the old FAMILY RECIPE.  With more rye than a traditional bourbon and its trademark spicy finish, it’s easy to enjoy Basil Hayden’s any way you like.

I put the bottle back on my desk. 

“Evan.  I hate to say it, but that story on the label is bullshit.”

“Oh yeah?  Taste it.  And by the way, the name is Basil.”

I poured a glass for both me and my guest.  It had a nice nose.  I took a sip.  Smooth.

“How much does this stuff go for Basil?”

“$40 and some change at most liquor stores.”

“Damn.  That’s a lot.”  I took another sip.  It was better than the last.

“You like it don’t you?  You’ll probably like it better than your Knob Creek, which goes for $30 something.  Am I right?”

“I’m not ready to say.”

“In fact I count on guys like you liking it.  You’re our market.”

“Basil this stuff wasn’t made when George Washington was President, there wasn’t any damned rye in it back then, and if anything made in Kentucky 200 years ago was as low as 80 proof I’ll kiss your sour mash.”

“Pretty hard to prove our story isn't true.  People have tried without success.  The lawyers tell us we’re in the clear.   Besides, that story works well for us.  Our people spent a lot of time writing it.  Surveys tell us it’s a brand asset.”

I took another sip.  So did Evan.  Basil.

“So how does the future look for you and your “product” Evan.”

“It’s Basil.  As we see it, the future couldn’t be brighter.  Kentucky whiskey has come a long way from President Washington to President Trump.  You know why guys like you drink whiskey McClure?  They drink it to relax, forget their worries, and loosen up.  All of which is needed now more than ever.  I’d say the next four years are going to be fantastic.  We may go from being a luxury to being thought of as damn near a necessity.”

Evan reached for his bag and began buttoning his coat.

“Leaving so soon?”

“Yes, I was in the neighborhood and mostly stopped in to acquaint you with the product.  Heard you were a bourbon drinker.  It was a business call actually.  I’m a pretty busy guy.”

“You heard I was a bourbon drinker?  How’d you find that out?”

“Data mining.”

He turned towards the door, then paused.

“You were an English major weren’t you?  Always wanted to write?  That appears to be what you’re up to out here.  How’s it going for you?  Sold anything?”

“Not yet.” 

Basil smiled.  “Well don’t work too hard.”

“Walk you back to your car?”

‘’Not necessary.  Take care.”

Evan, Basil, whoever he was, was halfway out the door when he turned and said

“Cute place you have here McClure.  Cozy.”

And with that my old friend was gone.  Or was he?  He left his bottle behind.  Which is good.  After all, the groundhog told us this morning we’re in for six more weeks of winter, and unless we get terribly lucky, we have to prepare for four more years of Trump.  I may need to resupply.

Glue

There are people among us that stand out.  Others gravitate to them, value their friendship, and celebrate who they are.  We feel we know these people like no other, and when in the company of others that also know them our common familiarity is like a meal shared among friends.  We count on them and they don’t let us down.  They openly and loudly stand for things we quietly believe in.  If this person is your boss you keep your job.  We admire these people.  They are bolder than us, sometimes braver.  Certain phrases are used about them repeatedly.  Something memorable one such man said, a quip or a quote overheard and remembered, is recalled and retold to a mutual friend that was not there to hear it.  The friend who hears the story shakes his head and smiles

“Oh God, that’s just like him to say that.” 

He says things we wish we had said.

We hold these people up.  We expect them to be strong and they are.  We look to them to provide an example and they do.  It may be terribly unfair of us to lean on them so.  They come to realize the role they play in the life of a group of people, even a community, and they play it out.  For us perhaps.  We rely on them, look to them to be consistent, on the right side of the issues.  We want to know what they think.  We sometimes watch where they go so we can follow.  It must be a burden being strong, leaned on, and looked up to.  But those people wear it well.  It looks as if it comes easily.

No one can be strong all the time.  Well, maybe on the outside.  Everyone has a persona, an outside face, a set of expectations they try to meet, but they have to be vulnerable inside don’t they?  I’m guessing because the very strong never show us anything else.  They never let us inside.  We put so much on these people.  If it wears on them they don’t let us see.  But then again we don’t want to see.  We just want them close.  We want their approval, their smile, their company.  They make a difference in our lives and the lives of others.  They are the glue which holds us together.

We don’t want them to change, so we don’t notice when they do, and if by chance we would we certainly don’t acknowledge it.  We consider them rocks.  But even rocks age.   Age is the great agent of change.  None of us want to acknowledge the frailty of our minds and bodies as the years pass.  We do all we can to deny our slow mutual erosion.  To admit our diminishment, and the slow ebbing of those we love would be to accept change and even death.  It is their strength and consistency we value, and we refuse to see them, or ourselves, otherwise.  And death?  We don’t want to talk about it.


Until we can no longer deny it.  Until we find ourselves and our friends weeping at the passing of a shared hero.  How can it be?  What will become of us now that one who held us together is gone?  He was the focus, the center, the one.  To be in a world where he no longer lives is a shock.  What happens now?

We forget, or we have not yet realized, that the dead live on within us.  Not just in memory, but in spirit.  Our spirits.  Or could that be our souls?  We all give things to others, hopefully, more than we take, and the strong, the special give us more than we ever expected.  We have to hold that up.  We have to make it our own and pass it on to others as they did to us.  Like lighting a candle off another, one lit, another waiting to flame, we need to cup our hands around it till it flares and burns bright.

He was part of our old guy’s weekly golf group.  That group we had imagined for years as we neared the end of our working lives. Summer weekdays warm in the sun, nothing to do all afternoon, cheering the good shots, ignoring the bad, unless of course either shot or swing is so stupendously awful it is impossible not to mock, then beers at the end of the day before going home for supper.  The enjoyment of spending a day with friends.  I like to think he looked forward to those days.  We looked forward to being with him.

And then he couldn’t golf any longer, and the news of his illness began to filter out and he became very private and guarded.  I assumed he was dying.  There was nothing I could do.  We’re all powerless in the face of it.

And then he asked me to lunch.  He looked good and seemed happy.  We caught up.  I thanked him for helping me over the years.  We talked about our kids, our wives.  It was almost normal, and it felt so good.

In the end, the conversation turned to his illness and I tiptoed around it, not knowing what or how much he was comfortable in revealing.  He was fairly matter of fact.  He talked about his oncologist, how much he liked her, his prognosis, his future which he accepted.  I hardly knew what to say.

Across the Formica in the booth, between loud inquiries from the guy who walks around with the coffee pot asking if we want a warm-up, I looked at him and risked asking what I have only recently tried to imagine.  It’s the elephant that lives more or less permanently in every room old people occupy.

“How does it feel?”

I could see by his face he knew exactly what I meant.  He gave me a big smile along with that devilish look.  I knew he was going to give me one of those unforgettable lines, and that he wasn’t about to go there.

“I’m not impressed.  Not at all.”

It was so like him to say that.  I miss him terribly.  But I’m going to do what I can to pick up where he left off.   He showed us how.

Dago red

My Dad talked so seldom about his past that when I found him in a mood to revisit his younger days I slipped in saved up questions.  Once in the winter, before I could drive, we were finishing up the chores.  All we had to do was bed down the cows, shake straw under them in their stanchions to give them a nice dry bed for the night.  We each had a pitchfork and there were two bales of straw waiting for us.  But instead of cutting the twine and getting started, Dad sat down on his bale to have a Camel cigarette.  I sat down with him, to see if I could get him to talk.

“What about the Italian guy in Chicago you used to visit with Uncle Harry?  Spent evenings in his basement?”

“Who told you about that?”

“Aunt Dot.”

“Well, she should be more careful who she’s telling stories to.”

“She didn’t tell me a story about it.  She told me to ask you.”

“Oh she did, did she?"

I thought he wasn’t going to tell me anything.  He looked down at his feet for a minute, then smiled and looked up.

“Well you don’t know anything about prohibition but it didn’t stop people from drinking, it just changed how they did it.  I didn’t drink much, but Uncle Harry missed it quite a bit.  He knew a guy who knew this Italian fella had a house on the west side in the city within walking distance of where we were living in Oak Park.  We’d go there once in a while if we had money when he was dating your Aunt Dorothy.  Aunt Dorothy and Irene, sometimes Aunt Fern, would do things together, sew and stuff, or bake, and the two of us, Uncle Vic once in a while but mostly just Uncle Harry and I,   We’d say we were taking a long walk and we’d go see our Italian friend.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Well he made wine, a lot of wine, and this stuff called grappa.  We’d walk down his alley, go to his back door, knock, and he’d look out through the curtain.   Seeing it was us, he’d take us on down to his basement.  He had four little tables down there with tablecloths.  We’d sit down and before you know it he would bring out a big pitcher of red wine and glasses for each of us.  And that was it.  We’d drink that pitcher of wine and if we thought we could handle it we’d drink another.”

I loved to hear him talk about the city.

“God it was good.  We called it Dago red.  Usually, his wife would bring down something to eat, bread with olive oil or tomato sauce or some such thing.  Cheese maybe, with olives and hard salami.  When we were ready to go we just paid for the pitchers. We’d walk home happy like we were big spenders who had just been at a big time downtown speakeasy.”

He laughed.

“Tell you the truth I’d rather have been there than all the fancy places in Chicago that were serving liquor back then.  Closest I ever felt to being back home was in that family’s basement.  We went once around Christmas and he brought out his accordion and sang songs in Italian.  Even though his English was bad we felt like he was a friend.  Then we’d get talking to the people at the other tables, telling stories, rehashing politics.  It was great.  Except for the drinking, I felt close to people like I did in Danvers.  It was the best.  Every time I’m in an Italian restaurant and have a glass of Chianti I think of that fella’s Dago red.”

“What are city people like Dad?”

“They’re like everybody else.  Don’t think because you live in a small town and they’re from the city they’re somehow different."

"Here’s the thing, though.  Here we live and work and lead our whole lives with one community.  Up there it’s different.  I’d ride the L downtown to work, spend all week with a good group of people, people I really liked, but when Friday came we all scattered.  I didn’t know where they lived, didn’t know anything about the rest of their lives really, and they knew just as little about me.  When I went home I had my family, of course, neighbors, and people at church, but they knew nothing about my work or those other people at work.  It’s not like Danvers. Up there it’s like living in two worlds, three really.  Because in between, on the train and on the street, you find yourself in a place where nobody knows you at all.  It’s an odd feeling when you're a complete nobody.”

I’d thought about that place already, where nobody knows your name.  I wanted that feeling.  I thought it would be wonderful and free. 

    

“What about the grappa?  What’s that?”

“I never knew, but close as I can figure its Italian moonshine.  White liquor, not much taste, and potent as all get out.  We didn’t drink his grappa often, and when we did we tried not to drink much of it, because it packed a punch that grappa, and we had a ways to walk home.  I’d rather had whiskey, but hey it was prohibition.  You took what you could get and hoped whatever you drank wouldn’t make you go blind.”

“Did people really go blind from drinking rotgut stuff like they say?”

“No that's just something we used to say.  I never knew anybody that went blind from drinking.  They got sick but those were mostly hangovers.  They talked about bad bathtub gin but I think those stories were Methodist propaganda.  Drinking’s like anything else, too much of it is almost always a bad thing.  But a little of its OK.”

He paused and looked at me closer.

“You’re not drinking are you?”

“No.”

“Well, I hope that’s true because you are too young.  But you probably will.  Be careful when you do.”

My Dad never tried to steer me into a career, a course of study, or a way of life.  He gave his advice on the sly.  You had to listen closely.  Mom would tell me, sometimes loudly, when she thought I was doing wrong but Dad rarely did.  I believe he thought I could learn how to best live by living.  Somehow I felt he always believed in me, and that my life would turn out all right. I think somehow he created that feeling.  I don’t know how.  He could have been so different.  I gave him plenty of opportunities to doubt that approach, but he stayed the course.   I loved him for that.