FATHER IN THE NIGHT

FATHER IN THE NIGHT

By Charles E. Kraus

 

Before he left the house for good, which is perhaps a strange way to describe his departure, my
father left the house for extended periods.  A month, two months at a time -- no signs of dad.  Also, no calls, cards or communications of any kind.  These parental gaps were billed as vacations.

In retrospect, my father’s vaguely explained absences, remixed to include the woman he later married, make a more complete picture.  He was not, as reported, always out on remote lakes or in forests exploring, prospecting for gold or conducting geological reconnaissance.  There were assignations. 

He did go west once without Else.  When I was about ten, he drop me off for the first day of school, offered an extended hand shake signaling, see you in a few months, then meandered down the road to meet his buddy, Eddie.   The two drove from New York to Utah to search for uranium. 

They left town in an ancient panel truck with bad brakes, my collapsible Air Force paratrooper’s bike stowed away for emergencies, a geiger counter and a scintillometer - uranium detectors, on board.  They planned to use these to find the pot of radioactivity at the end of the rainbow.  About three months later, my father returned.  No bike, no truck, no Eddie.  Eddie had decided to remain in the west, sans his wife and kids, who resided in New Jersey. He was keeping my bike.

There are other grievances, but its Father’s Day, so I want to switch gears (my fold-up bike could do that).  Whenever I have doubts about my father’s love, or my love for him, I think about the following events:

I was six-years-old, and for some reason we were taking the cross-town subway.  It departed every five minutes or so.  Dad and I entered and sat down.   After what felt like a few seconds, he said, ‘ok, time to change trains.’  The doors hadn’t closed and we hadn’t gone anywhere.  But out of the car we raced, reentering from another door.  We returned to the same seats we had just vacated, but only for a moment, before we rushed out again.  This got repeated a few more times, “time to change trains!” and soon the more sedate passengers got into the spirit.  Seemed as if everyone enjoyed my father’s antics.  That was the first time I realized he had the ability to be joyful.

I think about my father taking me along to his chess games where I got to meet his ‘down-town’ friends.  No one else in our family knew them.  They were part of his other world. 

The bird-people, a husband and wife whose parrot and vast number of parakeets, had out-of-cage privileges all over their living room, were my favorite.

The fellow with books everywhere, an entire apartment of floor to ceiling shelves, walls obscured, free standing cabinets claiming any remaining floor space, an accumulation of printed matter dominating every vista.  The chess board sat on a stack of encyclopedias.

And, I recall walking down 8^th Avenue with my father when a guy coming from the opposite direction spotted him and said, “Hi Sparks.”

“Sparks?”

Dad had been a shipboard radio operator during WWII, a Morse coder.  The nickname for these communicators was “Sparks.”  This was explained to me after he spent a few minutes exchanging pleasantries with his old shipmate. 

The thought of my father having a nickname was revolutionary. 

Contrary to his cross-town train performance, dad was an extremely shy man, reluctant to place himself into situations requiring contact with strangers.  Somehow he had been manipulated into becoming Treasure of my Cub Scout Pack, an assignment that surely intimated him.  It was to a Pack board meeting that the baby sitter called to report my particularly insidious migraine headache.  Sensing an opportunity to get away from the gathering, dad left my mother and came home to comfort me. 

You have to understand.  My father did not hug, ever.  I have no memories of him kissing anyone, ever.  I have no memories of him proclaiming his love of anything or anyone other than by bestowing intellectual praise.   And so, when he arrived in the night, placing his arm around me, pulling me close and rubbing my throbbing head, he provided a kind of unprecedented relief that has lasted to this day. 

He opened the window and suggested I take a few deep breaths of the cool evening air.  My headache subsided and he returned to the meeting.  I think about that night.

 

Notes on Father’s Day To A New Dad

 

[one of two Father's Day pieces written 2013]

 

Notes on Father’s Day To A New Dad

By Charles E. Kraus

              There are several ways to state the good news – my daughter had a baby, my wife and I are finally grandparents, my other daughter is finally an aunt, her partner is an aunt, my son-in-law became a father just in time to receive his first round of Father’s Day cards.

And his first round of fathering advice.

I’ll save the childrearing suggestions for another day.  The gist of this column is to offer a few thoughts about the benefits of turning parent, specifically, being a recipient of Father’s Day salutations.

I never sent my father a Father’s Day card.  Only my mother did that, and I was under the impression he found the sentiment excessive.   His generation of dads considered any expression of sentiment excessive.  When I verbalized my best wishes, he nodded and went on with life.  I’m betting he thought formal Father’s Day endorsements, the specific setting aside of time and focus for what he rationalized as just another part of life, was yet another commercial intrusion into one’s personal affairs.

My take on Father’s Day initially mirrored dad’s skeptical view –  Hallmark expanding its market.  Such proclamations were not from the heart, they were from the store.  You bought a few nice generic words and sent them, as society and custom required, to your father. 

But then, I added a new entry to my resume.  I was no longer just a son.  I became … a father.  Moving up the ladder this way can change your perspective.   Everything I’d ever thought about for-profit holidays remained a part of my Father’s Day assumptions.  But I supplemented the research and revised my conclusions.

I realized that when my kids were little, they didn’t know anything about greeting card sales or Amazon gift certificates.  They knew about terrific art projects, about hands-on gift making that involved a lot of marking pens, glitter and glue.  About using their energies to craft more than what was in the gift wrapping, to create happiness.  They used Father’s Day as an opportunity to share love.

Suddenly, receiving Father’s Day acknowledgments felt great.  And the converse was also true – just the thought about not receiving them, foretold despair.  Would the day come when the cards, or the phone calls, would cease?  When that last minute, end of the day, just under the wire, email or text would not arrive, and a rush of dismay would wrench my stoic resolve?

Stand-by Thomas.  Little Alice Zarin is going to smile at you, and you will be under her spell.   I see you looking into her eyes, and I see her looking right back.  The two of you are beginning a dialogue.   It will be comprised of happy moments.  Sad ones.  Of joy, anger, encouragement, concern, appreciation, and a feeling so deep that calling it love is barely doing it justice.  This conversation is communicated with the eyes, with the heart, in silence, with gesture, with mysterious unexplainable perceptions, with the spoken word, and with written words such as “Happy Father’s Day..”

Welcome to the club.

 

Details from Dreamland

Details from Dreamland

By Charles Kraus 

For the first many decades of my life, I didn’t dream, or at least, I woke with no recollection of having pushed imagined casts, plots and hidden agendas around in my subliminal subtext.    Slowly, over time, the wall between here-and-now and Freud’s playground diminished.  Not completely.  But gaps appeared in the bricking, and I began waking up recalling details from dreamland. 

I am a thematic dreamer.  My protagonists are circumstances. The guy who plays me puts up with a hell of a lot of frustration.  I’m certain that if Sigmund had a link to my subconscious proceedings, his interpretation would depress the hell out of me.  When wide awake, I look at my life and am pleased with what I observe. My assessment is that I’m a rather lucky and contented individual.  A great many of the items on my life-time to-do list have earned check marks.  OK, I’ve yet to produce that best seller, and only hot water flows from the hot water spigot.  No liquid gold.  At least, there is hot water.  Ultimately, I find it remarkable that the world has made room for the likes of me.  I’m thankful.

It is difficult to square the results of my self-appraisal with the dreaming that takes place in this very same head.  Therein is promoted a minority report composed of moody, disquieting sleep-time adventures.  “Lost-my-way” sensations build throughout these escapades.  When dreaming, I misread my bearings.  I don’t know where the hell I am.   Commonly, I have a goal and am experiencing difficulty achieving it.  Mostly my objective is to get somewhere.   I’m late, you see, and doing my best to reach an unspecified place by an appointed hour. 

 

I’m unsure of the route.  Not that it matters, as trudging towards what I’m sensing is the appropriate general direction, my progress is thwarted by misunderstand and happenstance.  I end up experiencing all the acuities you might encounter if you were trying unsuccessfully to cross a busy intersection.  I mean, if you were attempting this endlessly.  Looking for openings in the traffic, waiting more and more impatiently for the light to change in your favor, searching in vain for alternative routes, underground passages, pedestrian bridges, traffic cops.   The hour grows late, then it grows later, and still I stand there, cold, tired, hungry, but more importantly, upset that I am a no-show, disappointing people who are counting on me, whoever they are, wherever they are.  They do not understand why I’ve failed to arrive.  No cell phone, no pay phone available to transmit the explanation, or relay my good intensions, bad luck, and apologies. 

Psychologists might find my subconscious meanderings symptomatic.  I see my dreams as sore losers and under appreciators.  I may just send an intervention into the depths of their origination.  Grow up!  Don’t you know there is a real world out there?  Don’t you understand that some goal posts are aspirational?

 You learn that during visits to the lucid light of day. 

 

On Not Being Interested In Sports

On Not Being Interested In Sports

By Charles Kraus

 

I don’t speak the language of sports.  Though I am not exactly shunned for my sacrilege, many consider this gap when sizing me up.  I am other.  I am incapable of appreciating athletic contests, and do not understand the fuss, the excitement, the heartache, the nuances, rules and jargon associated with tossing the old pig skin.  When such subjects are the topic of conversation, I often feel I’m a visitor to some exotic land where natives are trying to speak to me about urgent matters, only to discover I am unable to comprehend.  Pretty soon, my associates wander off, a little frustrated, somewhat bemused, often irritated.  I’m the fool who has not been capable of grasping the significance of yesterday’s player trade.

This is a life-long problem.  In school, teachers and students often discussed sporting events.  They seemed equals – 12-year olds advancing facts and opinions with conviction never displayed when class was in session.  The dumbest kid in math class might have been the smartest, or at least most compelling, when talk turned to baseball statistics.  I remained silent until the subject changed.

In the military, enlisted men and officers lived in different worlds – separate clubs, separate dining facilities, strict rules segregating swabbies from officers and gentlemen.  This firewall prevailed during war and peace, but not during sports-focused bull sessions.   I recall that during my Navy days,  a certain mess cook was encouraged to walk the golf links with the brass, speaking his mind about Monday Night Football.  I was ordered to remove cigarette butts from the field so the game could progress.

Sports are a great equalizer.  People of all ethnicities, religions, economic circumstances, sexual orientations – opposing counsel, political polar opposites – call time out from conflict to chat about Rose Bowl predictions.

“How about them Sea Hawks?” defense counsel said to plaintiff’s counsel during a short recess in what might otherwise be a contentious morning.  Overhearing the discussion, the judge offered a nonbinding non-judicial opinion.

I was going to be ironic by calling this piece Strike Five, my thought being that since there were only four strikes allowed to the fellow at bat, adding that extra one would quell any doubts regarding my noncompetitive naiveté.  My wife pointed out that four downs was the rules in football.  Baseball allowed three strikes.  We are very compatible.

There is a perverse pleasure, a snooty one, no doubt, in my aloof attitude.  I don’t participate in games – neither as a player nor a fan.  It’s a defect.  I’m baffled by the intensity of enthusiasm sparked by recreational competition. 

As we journey through our lives, we learn about a ourselves, our likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, interests, fears, joys, opinions, passions.  Early on, I realized I was klutzy.  That when I intended to throw the ball to my father, it would land in the bushes.  That when Dad threw it back to me, there was a good chance it would avoid my hands, but not necessarily my head.

I anticipated liking baseball.  Little boys were supposed to like it.  Heaven knows, I tried to like it.  But I did not succeed.  The very first book I recall reading – way back in the early 1950s, was Lucky To Be A Yankee, by Joe DiMaggio.

The truth be told, I did not find Mr. DiMaggio interesting until a few years later, when he and the playwright Arthur Miller vied for the affections of Marilyn Monroe.  That was quite a game.

 

 

////

SIXTY ALBUMS

 

 

SIXTY ALBUMS

By Charles Kraus

 

1980 -- We were living in LA at the time and meeting our expenses felt more like a theoretical exercise than a probability.  It often involved borrowing funds. Upon occasion, it meant selling possessions.  Even, if absolutely necessary, portions of my record collection.

Our existence was middle-class bohemia interwoven with the prospect, or at least desire of ‘making it’ in the entertainment industry. Being young, and therefore equating our circumstances with the dues-paying portion of life that one goes through at the beginning of a journey, we had the energy, optimism and fortitude to experience all this as an adventure. Still, parting with 60 albums was a big deal.

            I owned several thousand, but thought of them as components forming a single thing, a collection. A collection is what you get after you’ve sifted through the prospects, rejected undesirable candidates, sought out and filled in key elements so you owned Oscar Peterson’s first album as well as his latest album. Plus, the original cast recordings of every Broadway show you’d been taken to as a New York child, but not the scratched copies, those had been replaced by pristine pressings as they were discovered in various swap meets and second hand shops.  A collection included Ella’s Decca, Verve and Pablo sides.

Did you know that Del-Fi records and its sibling, Keene Records, originated in a basement in Van Nuys, California, pretty much around the block from where we lived when I sold my early Sam Cooke (Keene) and Richie Valens (Del-Fi), part of the 60, to raise the $800 we needed to pay our rent?

The dealer perused the stacks I’d designated as expendable, selecting just the albums I would have chosen, the cream, the best of the best, had I been at the purchasing end of this transaction.  Mostly he pulled from the $25 piles. A few from the $15.  Each time he claimed a record, my exasperation grew.  How could I allow this fellow to dismantle my collection?

Then came the trick.  To the fifty or so sides he’d selected, he made a show of adding a number of less desirable titles from my $2 offering -- Mel Carter, Cher, Mantovani -

albums I couldn’t actually explain or justify owning.   Finally, he reached into the  “PRICELESS – MAKE ME AN OFFER’ display, plucked a gem, in this case, the VJ No. 1001, sealed, never played, album, the El Dorados “Crazy Little Mama,” thrust it into the center of his stack trying to make the selection look like an afterthought.  It was, of course, the one album he truly desired, and to some theoretical upscale collector, worth more than the combined value of the other 59 records.

“I’ll give you $800, 60 albums, take it or leave it.”

Contrary to the prices in the Record Album Price Guide, the true value of a record is what someone is willing to pay for it.  This was easily the best offer I would be getting prior to our potential eviction notice.  It honored the music and the artists, if not the collector.  Me, the dealer dismissed as naïve.  Didn’t I didn’t know that VJ 1001 was worth a fortune?  Yep, but only to buyers offering a fortune, and they didn’t happen to be in the room

Then again, I’d paid a dollar fifty for the VJ.   I was not exactly getting a poor return on my investment.  Yea, ok, all right, you win, give me the cash and leave as quickly as possible.

We finished our transaction.   My buyer took a moment to browse through the remainder of my collect, the albums laying neatly against a neutral wall, the ones with the sign affixed reading, NOT FOR SALE. 

And then came what amounted to my real payoff.  More than the $800.  More than the comfort taken in having raised the rent by selling 60 albums that cost me about $50 to a guy who would probably pass them along to wealthy collectors for prices I didn’t want to know about.  The record dealer looked up from my NOT FOR SALE albums and said, ‘wow.’  

Wow is not a multisyllabic word.  It is not complex.

This particular ‘wow’ meant that finally, someone -- not my wife, not my neighbors, not my friends, none of whom took a particular interest in record collecting, could ever offer.  It meant finally, someone understood that the vinyl disks resting against the neutral wall were not just refugees from Goodwill stores; they formed a genuine representation of the jazz and pop essentials, a virtual history of recorded music, so far.  Wow meant I knew what I was doing.

His smile contained a certain respect.  

You could not pay the rent with a smile, but you could live on this one for a long long time.  I’m still getting residuals.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why I Decided To Turn 65

[2011]

Why I Decided To Turn 65

By Charles Kraus

 

They are about to express birthday wishes to me again. Early on in my earthly

rounds, such salutations could not come often enough, especially if accompanied by gift-
wrapping. Back then it seemed to take forever to get from one birthday to the next, and I
was quite anxious to do so. I wished to accumulate a series of hallmarks, thereby
qualifying me as an established member of the adult class.
            A reassessment of my fondness for birthdays came shortly after turning 30. Our
two daughters had captured my complete attention. One day I realized they would grow
up and move away. Perhaps we could slow down the clock, savor the family process.
Why all the rush?
            At this point in what is left of my life, I do my best to deflect birthday greetings,
trying not to cringe when these are offered. There is a certain responsibility that comes
with turning the big Six - Five. A certain plateauing.  People want to know if my aspirations have been achieved, and I don’t necessarily care to discuss the topic.

Am I not supposed to have attained something? Wealth? Stature? Wisdom? Or, how about solvency, shouldn't I have that by now? I have or should have achieved a reasonable level of maturity. I must have learned important things, things worth knowing and passing along before I become senile and misplace my findings.

            The paperwork says “year of birth 1946,” but I am actually a person of many ages. Upon waking, I am 18. By noon, I have reached 50. After dinner, I hover over the line of scrimmage, feeling 65 to perfection. On nights requiring me to remain coherent past 10 p.m., I glimpse 75, and have by then lost track of my comprehension and my glasses.
            I would like to sum up all that I've concluded during 65 years of trial and error. This will be short. I have two items.
            Researching this project, I reviewed many of the things I once thought I knew for sure:
That tattoos were for sailors. For a while, I was sure the planet was heading to a peaceful resolution of its differences. And anyway, wars of any sort didn't much matter because we lived in the USA – an ocean beyond the consequences of harms way. I supposed that, what with science, and literature, and advances in education, people would grow more logical, more reasonable. I even knew that because my father had his hair when he was 65, I would have mine. Myth, myth, myth, all theories and suppositions that I have subsequently discarded.
            Here is what I now know for sure:
Randomness rules. This is not necessarily a pessimistic assessment. Random
comes in good as well as awful. One reason I wish to continue having birthdays is
because, from around many a blind corner has come a pleasant surprise. Who would have
guessed that being a husband and a parent could be so wonderful? That the advent of spellcheck would change my life?
            Rumor has it I'll be receiving an I-Pad for my birthday. Once I learn to use it,
I am told, I can input my schedule, my plan for tomorrow and beyond. Fun thought. However,
the other thing I learned is:
            You can schedule anything you please, but tomorrow doesn’t necessarily work
from your notes.
            
                                                                    ////
Seattle resident Charles Kraus is a writer and performer.

Shelf life: confessions of an unrepentant book collector

Shelf life: confessions of an unrepentant book collector

By Charles Kraus. Baltimore Sun, 5/13/08

Books collect dust. People collect books. At least, some people do.

I've been one of them for about 45 years. Of course, if my wife has anything to do with it, I've squeezed my last volume onto a shelf. "One more book, and I'll call the folks in the white coats and tell 'em we have a case of bibliomania on our hands," she is fond of saying.

We are just about out of shelf space. It has become necessary for me to cram new acquisitions horizontally into those little spaces between the vertically arranged books and the shelves above. Last year, I lobbied for an additional bookcase. My wife took a slow, theatrical glance around the room, a gesture designed to say, "Where the hell would you put it?"

She'd made her point, yet we both knew I would continue buying books.

They say that parents who enjoy books end up with kids who enjoy books, so it is possible to fix much of the blame on good old father for my attempt to re-create New York City's 42nd Street library right here in my house. His was an impressive - albeit more manageable - collection, an assortment of science, pseudoscience, history and literature. It was primarily acquired from the Lower East Side secondhand bookshops that flourished from the 1940s through the 1960s.

About the only form of gambling in which my father would participate was the clearance table crapshoot. A table full of discards would be offered for $3 apiece. Next week, the remaining volumes went for $2, and on week three, a dollar. Should you purchase a book immediately, before someone realized what an incredible treasure the bookseller had mistakenly placed on the table? Or should you wait, hoping to pick it up at next week's reduced price?

From time to time, as I accompanied Dad on his book-buying rounds, I'd spot like-minded devotees rummaging through the stacks, calmly at first, but with increased measures of desperation and resignation, while trying to locate the book they now knew they should have purchased the previous week.

I own more books than my dad did at the height of his collecting days - more than I will ever read. Some, though relatively few, are investments: perfect first editions, signed, rare, ancient volumes that may eventually be transformed into part of my retirement fund. The rest, given enough time and decent lighting, I would love to read.

If you enjoy an author and happen to come across more of his work, at prices too good to ignore, or books about the author, given away on Sunday afternoons by flea market proprietors who don't care to lug them home - aren't you obligated to acquire them? If you happen to be perusing stacks of books heaped in the corner of a cluttered, marginal thrift shop, stacks not alphabetically arranged but perhaps organized there by the level of mildew implanted in the binding, should you not rescue the worthiest of the lot? Are you not required to keep one of the last copies of the 1927 first edition of Daniel W. Streeter's Camels! from reaching oblivion? And what about Treadmill to Oblivion by Fred Allen? You going to let them find their way to the trash bin?