Vi Chronicles: I Found This Bunny For You

Vi lived in the moment, and in all those moments she lived, her goal was to have a good time as often as possible.  On Fridays, this generally involved an evening at the local Amvets, feeding quarters into the slot machines and sipping sombreros made of Allen's Coffee Brandy and milk.  When the bar closed, whichever family member had delivered her to the Amvets would drive Vi home.  On the way, she would keep her eyes peeled for stray animals.  If she found one she would bring it home and give it to me.

Thankfully, after an oil burner tank's worth of Allen's Coffee Brandy and milk, it wasn't all that easy to spot stray animals on the side of the road in the middle of the night.  Still, twice, she succeeded.

The first time, she gave me a baby bunny.  It was adorable.  I must have been around 8-years-old. When I recount my childhood, age is often determined by which house my mother lived in at the time.  This house was not the one by the lake.  It was the ranch, surrounded by woods, on a lonely stretch of road.  They must not have lived there long because I couldn't drive you there if I wanted to, but it is the house where a lot of my Vi memories took place.  Maybe it was a particularly good year for remembering things, or maybe it's just that a lot of memorable things happened there.  I don't remember.  At any rate, a bunny was a delightful gift to receive in the wee hours of the morning.  Vi didn't believe in waiting 'til the sun came up.  Surprises were best delivered, warm and cuddly, with much hilarity, in the middle of the night.

The bunny slept in a box next to my bed for the rest of that night.  The next day, my Step Dad, Tony, built a hutch  in the backyard where the bunny lived happily ever after, until the great bunny massacre, which happened a couple days later.  I wasn't there at the time-I only lived with my mom on weekends-but when I came back the next weekend the bunny was history.  My family didn't sugar coat things.  There was no farm with other baby bunnies in an idyllic bunny environment, nothing like that, just the stark reality of the situation, which was that some fucking raccoon ate my rabbit.

The second time Vi found a wild animal after a night at the bars and brought it home at 2 am, I was 20.  The house was in Portland and my college roommate, Jeannie, and I were living with Vi and Tony for the summer, spending our days at the beach, hitting the clubs at night, and waiting impatiently on Sunday mornings for Tony's mom to deliver her regular spaghetti and meatballs special.  It had been a splendid summer and a wild animal arriving at two a.m. only made it better.  This time, the animal was a baby skunk whose mother had been run over.

I know it doesn't seem like a good gift, but baby skunks are adorable.  They haven't developed their sprayers yet, so they are a lot like kittens.  We kept our skunk in the bathtub and named him Pepe.

It wasn't long before we realized that we were not well equipped for skunk care. We set about finding a new home for Pepe, and when I say "we", I mean Jeannie and me, as Vi had already forgotten we had a pet skunk.  Eventually, we found a nice farm in the country that adopted wildlife found on the roadside and we sent Pepe there to play in green pastures with other orphaned animals.

At least that's the story I tell myself.

Chicken out

See?  Like a cute little kitten

If I Hadn't Been So Focused on Becoming the First Taylor Swift, I Might Have Invented the Internet

When I was 13 and firmly in the clutches of that ultimate mean girl, puberty, I discovered poetry. Months were spent producing emo ballads exploring my obsessive crushes on various high school seniors, pop stars, and, bewilderingly, MacGyver.  It eventually occurred to me, probably during a lucid dream also involving a Maxfield Parrish painting and a unicorn, that these poems should be set to music and shared with the world.  That's how good they were.

But how to do that? How does one reach out to the Titans of the Music Industry when one does not know who those Titans might be, nor their mailing addresses?

If only I had focused on that problem and invented the internet, this tale might be very different.  For one thing, I would be writing it from a much warmer locale while my good friend, Richard Branson, orders another round of tropical rum beverages with a mere twitch of one blond hairy eyebrow.

I decided to shelve the accessibility issue for the time being and set myself immediately to writing a hit song,  The  lyrics roughly matched the rhythm and word structure of, "Leaving on a Jet Plane".  This  song was, to me, the ultimate in romantic sophistication.  In my imagination I was at times the leaver and at times the left, depending on my erratic emotional state.  Mostly I was the leaver because I had never flown in an airplane and badly wanted to, plus I liked the idea of someone keening over me, for a change; someone handsome, resourceful and mature who always had an extra stick of gum to share.

After a few late nights, fueled by root beer and Hershey bars, I finished my masterpiece. My song focused on a lover reminiscing over trips to the zoo and holding hands on the train.  How could that once colorful love-filled world have become this barren, lonely landscape with only one sad-eyed gorilla and some screeching monkeys to bear witness to his brokenness, asked my MacGyver, as he walked along singing softly to himself while a solitary tear rolled down his stubbly cheek and into his popcorn.

And here we have yet another shining example of how the right focus-connecting music to video-could have landed me in an exclusive gated community saying things into my phone like, "Get me Bono!", instead of the more pedestrian, "Yes, half cheese, half pepperoni, please.  Yes.  I'll hold."

Now that my  hit song was ready for delivery, I began my search for Titans.   I remembered that in the back of my mother's True Confessions magazines there were ads inviting people to get rich submitting their stories for publication.  I pilfered an old copy and found what I was looking for; a company looking for people who wrote lyrics, music or both.  I submitted my song and waited.

Now, you might be thinking, "Oh God, how good could it have been?  The kid was thirteen!", and I wouldn't blame you, although I might remind you that Taylor Swift got her start at around the same age.  A few weeks after I sent out my inquiry I received a response from Nashville.  They wanted to publish my song!  Truth be told, I was a little surprised. I didn't know things worked that fast in Nashville. You can't blame me for assuming that they must really be in a hurry to sign me on.  There was just one teeny problem-Nashville needed a hundred dollars in up front money.  There were logistics, you see.  They needed to find someone to write the music, find a top notch vocalist to record it, and circulate copies to all the radio stations to get the word out.  If I would just send them $100, they would take care of all this for me and then forward a copy of my record for personal use.  Once the radio stations started playing my record, the dough would  start rolling in and we would have to move to Nashville, probably, so that I could be closer to my people.

I'm not sure exactly how this happened-I believe there may have been a lot of back room negotiations to which I was not privy-but my step mom and father actually pulled together $100 dollars and sent it to Nashville on my behalf.

Thankfully, my parents were not taken advantage of and just one month later my record arrived in the mail. We put it on the record player in the living room and listened.  I was disappointed in the music.  It wasn't what I would have chosen. The clarity seemed a little off, too. Maybe they actually recorded it at the zoo for authenticity?

Once I heard my song, or Nashville's version of it, rather, my ever objective inner voice said, "No one is going to pay for this record except your mother", so I gave Vi my copy to save her the expense and decided to become an artist.  I began creating complicated wall-size murals, copying the style of Maxfield Parrish but adding unicorns.

It wasn't the first time my parents supported one of my dreams nor would it be the last.  I may not have become the first Taylor Swift or the inventor of the internet but I have been lucky in love.

MacGyver aside.

Chicken out

A real hit song:  Little Feat singing Dixie Chicken

Vi Chronicles: The Portland Strangler

Vi went out and left Bonnie in charge of Victor and me.  I would not have left Bonnie in charge of a pet rock.  If my mother had said to me, "Chicken, I'm going out.  Do you think Bonnie would make a good babysitter?", I would have replied, "Hell no, woman, are you mad?" but she never asked me.  She just ordered us a pizza and left.

I wanted to play Monopoly but Bonnie and Victor wanted to watch the 8:00 p.m. movie.  Did you ever see the "Boston Strangler"?  I did.  I don't remember it, of course, because I've suppressed it.  Occasionally one of the other personalities I developed that evening will bring it up.

About three quarters of the way through the movie, when victims were still piling up, the papers were having a field day, and the police chief was looking foolish (or so I imagine) Bonnie and Victor got hungry.  They asked me if  I wanted ice cream.  I allowed as how I could probably choke down some ice cream.

"Wouldn't you know it", Victor said, "We're all out. One of us will have to walk to the store."

I was too young to be out on the streets alone so late at night, and Bonnie was the babysitter, me being the baby in question, so it only seemed logical that Victor, a bona fide teenager, should go.

Logic not being the available muse that evening, we drew straws. I drew the shortest one.  I waited a couple of seconds for someone to come to her bloody senses, but Bonnie handed me a fiver and turned back to the movie.  "Get me a Pepsi, too, k?"

The closest store was at the end of our block. It was where the bad boys hung out at night, smoking cigarettes, selling joints and harassing women.  I walked  fast down the sidewalk, sticking to the shadows.  When I got to the store I put my head down and scurried past the hooligans, trying not to draw attention. Inside I gathered our ice cream, the Pepsi and a bag of barbecue chips for my trouble.  I paid and headed back home, my heart pounding.  I was almost there.  Just five houses to go. Now four. Sweet Jesus, I was going to make it.

I sensed movement to my left.  I looked over and caught a glimpse of shadow moving fast between the last two houses.  I started to run but before I could get into full stride, the Portland Strangler jumped out of the shadows.  He ran at me, screaming, "Where's my ice cream!!!!!"

And that's when Mary Catherine was born.  Mary Catherine is a young girl who talks with a cute lisp and carries her stuffed donkey everywhere she goes.  No one would ever hurt Mary Catherine or send her to a store alone at night.   If they tried she would make them burst into flames with her eyes.

Bonnie sat on the back steps of our house laughing her ass off.  "Poor Bonnie", thought Mary Catherine. "Her lookth cold."

Chicken out

Photo borrowed from Funny Chill.com
No  moronic babysitters were actually harmed in the writing of this post or ever

Vi Chronicles: Shut up Peanut

Uncle Ken was Tee's husband and CCool's father.  He didn't talk a lot unless the subject  was something that interested him.  Then he could talk the ears off a rabbit. He loved the outdoors..

Outdoor enthusiasts are typically beloved by kids because they are more adventurous than other adults. They innately understand that taking a risk and succeeding builds self-confidence, while taking a risk, failing and trying again build perseverance. Uncle Ken was no exception.  We all loved tagging along after him.

That said, there were two things you didn't do around Uncle Ken: You didn't whine and you didn't ask him a question if you weren't prepared for a truthful answer.

"Like my haircut, Uncle Ken?"

"Not particularly, Peanut."

"Oh.  o.k."

And then you'd have to walk off pretending like YOU liked your new haircut enough for the both of you.   And when I say YOU, I mean ME back in 1983.  But in the interest of full disclosure, I was an adult by then and I'm pretty sure he was busting my beans, because shag mullet hair styles are awesome.

He also was not stingy with unsolicited opinions.

I spent a lot of time at Uncle Ken's hanging out with CCool who was a year older than me. In the winter we would often go snowmobiling.  CCool had her own snowmobile, which was just one of the reasons she was so cool (she also had her own horse).  I would ride on the back of Uncle Ken's machine.  We would  be out in the woods for hours.

The woods in winter are beautiful in an almost spiritual way. They are also bloody cold.

As anyone in my family will tell you, I am not very hardy.  Being from  a cold region like Maine doesn't make you hardy.  It only ensures that you will become proficient at layering and, at some point, be involved in an unfortunate tobogganing incident, the probable cause a lack of visibility brought on by an abundance of ear muffs, scarves, hats and fur trimmed hoods.

During every ride, when I could no longer feel my extremities and my anemically thin blood had frozen en route, I would ask Uncle Ken to take me home.  "It's cold", I'd say.  "It's January, Peanut.  It's supposed to be cold", Uncle Ken would say.  "I'm hungry!", I'd continue.  "You're not gonna starve, Peanut".

"But. But......I'm COLD!!!!!"

"Shut up, Peanut".

If I wanted to hang out with Uncle Ken, I had to wear my big girl pants. I'd get to drive a ski-doo across an open field, watch a moose come down to the pond for a drink, swim past the drop off, catch a fish and shoot guns at coke cans. In return, he got to listen to me whine that I was cold, scared, couldn't swim or didn't like loud noises.  He'd smile, then tell me to shut up and do it anyway.

Clearly, I got the better end of the deal.

Uncle Ken, photo courtesy of Paula Kozinn

Chicken out

The Vi Chronicles: Peggy-Lou Was NOT a Very Good Baby-Sitter

One night my mother went out and left Peggy-Lou in charge.  Peggy was our big sister, third oldest out of seven.  She was ten years older than me and seven years older than my brother, Victor.  That night, Peggy had an excellent idea.

She was full of good ideas, Peggy Lou was. She decided we would all walk to town.  It was late-too late for a seven-year-old to be awake-but in this branch of the family only pussies went to bed at bedtime.  I might be a chicken but I've never been a pussy.  I put on my sneakers.

It was a warm summer night.  We set out walking; myself, my brother, Victor, our older brother Michael, and Peggy-Lou.  Town was about a 1/2 mile from our house.  We walked past the lake, past the bridge, past the shoe shop and past the Western Auto.

Then Peggy-Lou whispered, "That church up ahead is where the devil lives."

"Nuh-uh", we said.

"It's true.  His workshop is in the basement."

We approached the church.  Some of us faster than others.

Home of the devil's workshop according to Peggy-Lou in 1970

There did appear to be a light on in the basement....

Peggy-Lou said,  "I'm going in."

"No don't!  Don't do it, Peggy-Lou!", I whispered.  

"Yup, I'm gonna find that devil and kick his ass", said Peggy-Lou.

Mike said, "I'll watch the door."

Me and Victor didn't say anything.  I had just wanted a bag of chips from Amato's, for Christ's sake.  I had zero bones to pick with Lucifer.

"Ok", Peggy-Lou said, "When he sees me, there's going to be trouble, so get ready to run or he'll steal your soul."

Peggy-Lou eased open the side door and started down the stairwell into the basement. We could see a lone light bulb at the bottom of the stairs. The door closed behind her.  We waited.  I'm not sure why.

We didn't have to wait long.  About two minutes later she shot out the door and started running down the sidewalk. "He's coming and he's pissed!", she yelled. "Run for your lives!"

"Hey, wait for me", I yelled.  I couldn't wait for my mother to get home.  I was so telling on these morons.  

We made it home, our souls intact, and Peggy-Lou made some cocoa, then we watched Dark Shadows. I didn't sleep again for the next  seven years.

Which was right around the time that Peggy-Lou got married in that very same Church.  She had promised me that I could be the flower girl, but then took it back and said I had to be in charge of the address book instead, because I was too old to be the flower girl.  

I wasn't walking around with a dumb address book. There was a Devil's workshop in the basement of that church, and several bored, gullible children (including one flower girl) wandering around looking for something to do.  

Chicken out

Vi Chronicles: Charming Matty

I grew up in a family of people who love to fish.  When I was very young, I could bait a hook, catch a fish,  gut it and cook it.  And I could eat it, but that wasn't the best part. The best part was the process.  The only thing I bait now is my husband. I'm a pretty good husband baiter, to tell the truth.  But that's a whole other story.

We grew up inland, so mostly we fished in lakes.   My Mom, Vi, and her husband, Tony, lived in the city for a long time, however, and the closest water available was the Atlantic. When I would visit them in the summers, we would fish off the pier.

One summer, we spent a lot of time on that pier.  This wasn't a board walk pier, or a tourist pier, or anything romantic. It was just a pier.  A lot of people fished there and it smelled like a lot of people fished there.  It wasn't where you took a girl for a stroll and a stolen kiss.  It was where fish went to die.

One day, I was there with Vi, Tony, their neighbor Matty, and his wife,  whose name I've forgotten.  Matty had a broken leg, probably well earned.  He was reckless, impulsive, gregarious and the life of any party.  That day, he was limping around in a full leg cast, aided by crutches.  I was about 11 at the time.

My mom had given me a pole that I could use to "fish off the bottom", which  basically meant, "sit down, behave yourself, and feel important with this pole that won't catch anything,  while we adults use our much better casting rods to catch the real fish."

Or maybe I was reading too much into it.

There was talk about mackerel vs pollock and I believe it might have been mentioned once or twice that you had to use the casting rods to catch the mackerel, which were the better eating fish, but a little oily.  There was also a lot of posturing and bragging, as the cold beers got passed around from the ever present cooler. I drank my "Sody-pop", as my mother liked to call it, and kept my  eye on the prize, with my stupid ole fishing rod and no casting apparatus, while I kept one ear on the adult conversations to see what bits of grownup mystery I could capture in my net.  I can see me sitting there, all blue eyed and brown skinned, with my denim cut-offs, dirty keds, and my favorite white striped t-shirt.

At some point, I got a bite.  A big bite.  And I yelled, "Hey!  Hey, you guys, I got something here. I caught something!"  Matty came over to help me pull it in.  "Probably pollock or pickerel or something.  Maybe a shoe",  he told  the others.  Well,  we kept working on it, and we pulled that thing in, and what do you think it was?  A beautiful, huge,  mackerel.  "Well, huh.",  Matty said, "Will ya look at that!"   People made a big deal, and took pictures with their gigantic polaroid cameras of me and my two-foot fish.  It was my little moment in the sun, until Matty had to go and steal my thunder.

After I caught the big fish, everyone started fishing off the bottom, as it seemed the good fish were biting there.  Someone else caught one,  and the mood became even more celebratory.  Or maybe that was the beer.  The problem with beer is that it has a window of jolliness, and once that window closes, things can get less jolly without much warning.  Our window closed that day at about 7:30 PM.  At that point, Matty's wife wanted to go home, but Matty didn't want to go, so they had words. Bad words. Then Matty, in a fit of anger, took his crutches and threw them in the Atlantic.

"WELL, THERE!", he said, "Now look at what you made me do!"  and he turned around and limped back up the pier towards a good bar that had cold beer and no cold wives.  The rest of us were shocked into awestruck silence for about a second, and then we laughed, even Matty's wife, because Matty was such a riot.  Everyone forgot about my huge fish after Matty's display of manly bravado.  Later on he cooked my fish and he declared it the best fish he ever ate.  That was Matty's charming side.  Lucky for him, he was more charming than not, and so usually got away with his impulsive drunken acts.

The next day some guys were out on a boat in the harbor.  They saw a crutch floating around, and they pulled it in.  It had Matty's name on it.  One guy said, "Hey, I  know Matty!  He musta dropped his crutch!" He brought it over to Matty's house. Matty got 50% of his crutches back.  Everyone laughed, Matty loudest of  all.

Who do you know that's charming?  And have you ever wanted to go back in time and hug the kid that was you? What would you whisper in the kid's ear before you released her?

PS  I went fishing around for some info about fish to check my memory and I found this video.  It is so reminiscent of those trips to the pier, that I had to show it to you.  I laughed out loud when I saw it.  I believe this is the State Pier in Gloucester, MA.  We fished off the Portland Pier in Portland, ME.  I borrowed it from a guy named Joey C.  Thank you, Mr. C.!