Reflex Unload

by

Jerry Dale McDonnell©2014

Published in MungBeing #56 (reflections)

Numbers III

1.

Ratios

Bees construct hexagon hives—6 sides—made of wax and honey.

Some brown bears have 3 cubs

if honey and fish are plentiful.

 

Everyone starts with 1 mother and 1 father

            some end with 3 or more grandfathers

                        maybe 2 or more grandmothers.

2.

Orders

17 years old. Boot camp. Herded. Stripped. Hair cut like a con.

Civvy Clothes bagged and tagged like bodies.  

New uniforms stuffed in a duffle.

Fall in. Atteeen shun! 

Our first 2 orders:

1. You will never forget your serial number as long as you live.

            2. You will only remember the good times.

We lived in our mind outside war

Like a monk in a brothel with extra cash from the poor box,

We knew we had to spend it to win and lose.

It wasn’t pro choice.

            Win, lose, a crapshoot: war begets more wars.

Lessons learned fodder strategies to fight the next one.

            My serial number laughs, finds that blotter of acid.

Drops it. It remembers the good times.

The mind is a different matter.

3.

Friends

1089-W. 

Our phone number in the 30’s, early 40’s.

A live human operator took our number

Plugged it forward with a deft hand. You could ask her

How her day was going, how her kids were doing.

She wasn’t a booked face Wi-Fied from space,

She was alive, a live breathing voice

Who had eggs for breakfast, toast and coffee.

As close to you as a warm cozy campfire

In a fall evening when the frogs were serenading.

1089-W.

                 I remember . . . a friend.

4.

Addresses

708 Acres St. Burlington, Iowa.

A tiny house, 1 barely bedroom, 3 rooms, 600 square feet . . . maybe. 

Small living room, side room a hair bigger than the bed with a double French door as bedroom, kitchen the largest room. I slept in the attic with a slanted roof like a tent, accessed it through the bathroom. A pooper, a bathtub, a sink. Dad, step-grandpa, always put the seat up on the stool and took a dump sitting on the bare porcelain. Houses close on each side. The backyard went down to a drainage that if you followed it for 1 mile or less you would reach the Mississippi River. “Can you spell Mississippi?” Dad, my step grandfather, asked. It was the first word I learned to spell: 11 letters long.

200 pounds of coal came down the chute to the basement to feed the furnace.

2 glass bottles of milk were delivered to the front door in the morning.

Played trumpet. 2nd seat in grade school all city band.

58 years later. Trumpet sits idle behind the door

5.

Formulations

Buried 1 grandmother. I called her Mam. Met my mother who took me from my Step Grandpa. Dad. Met my mother’s father (Mam’s 1^st husband) a dirt farmer in southern Illinois, who didn’t get electricity until 1944.

Stole 1 pistol, a .35 caliber 6 shooter, from an uncle.

Red Skelton on the radio made me laugh 100 times a week.

                 I joined his fan club.

One framed, autographed picture of Red Skelton today hangs on my wall.

       Uncle took pistol back in 1946.

     My first unsuccessful theft.

6.

Equations

1956. High School. Swam my last lap on the swim team. Backstroke: fitting. Played my 1st role as Mr. Marshall in The Little Foxes. Drama teacher was disappointed I was a senior. I wanted to be a Forest Ranger. Or an airplane pilot. Maybe a soldier.

“Good luck in spite of yourself,” my counselor wrote in my yearbook. Graduated Suma Dead Drunk; went to jail 3 hours after graduation.

7.

Comparisons

11-22-19 (**make sound: Bump Ba!), Birthday! Same day, different year President John F. Kenney was shot. Died. Show cancelled that night. I was playing Marco in Arthur Miller’s, View From the Bridge in the San Francisco Bay Area.

8.

Assumptions

58 years later: Last nights dinner is forgotten like a hole in a discarded sock.

       U.S. Navy Serial number 515-**-** burned on my brain

           in an easy chair floating down the Bitterroot River in Montana

                laughing, smoking a joint,

                      taking a hit of whiskey with a beer chaser,

                           would drop acid if it were at hand. 

            If God were generous acid would come by pony express.

9.

Presumptions

According to National Geographic, thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of Monarch Butterflies are missing in action and fish don’t like acid.

100 Senators and too many Congressmen are born bent with calculated calculators, reckless religions, musty morals, rusty rifles, deformed details and

I’m not allergic to bees.

I love bears.

I’m the only grandparent left.

I remember my serial number.

Some of the good times are a lie.

__________________________