March 14: "A Memory," Aunt Aileen, Chinook Salmon

Billy Collins recalls something . . . 

A Memory

by:  Billy Collins

It came back to me

not in the way

a thing might be returned 

to its rightful owner

but like dance music

traveling in the dark

from one end 

of a lake to the other.

I know exactly what Collins is talking about--that moment when you hear a song/piece of music and are suddenly transported to another place and time.  When I hear the Simple Minds singing "Don't You (Forget About Me)," I'm sitting in the Butler Theater in the dark with my high school friends.  We're watching The Breakfast Club, sort of, and sneaking sips of a Diet Coke spiked with Malibu.  The topic of conversation is Molly Ringwald versus Ally Sheedy.  (I am firmly in the Molly camp.)  In a week or so, we'll all be graduating, and, a few months after that, we'll all be off to college, and nothing will ever be the same again.

All that from a song, traveling in the dark from one end of a lake to the other.

When I was an undergraduate in college, I would spend about a month every summer living downstate at my Aunt Aileen and Uncle Larry's house.  My sister and I would would drive down with a pop up camper and set up shop in their backyard.  We would swim in their pond, visit relatives and cousins, go shopping, watch movies.  We rarely made huge plans.  Some years, we would visit the Detroit Zoo.  Others, we would take a ferry to Boblo Island Amusement Park for the day.

My memories of those vacations are gilded with nostalgia.  Yes, I was in college.  Yes, I was supposed to be a young adult.  Should I have gotten a summer job instead?  Maybe.  I didn't have a whole lot of money, but I did have a full-ride scholarship and was still living in my parents' house.  My expenses mainly consisted of movies, books, and clothes.

My Uncle Larry passed away quite a few years ago from cancer.  I just found out that Aunt Aileen has been placed on hospice care.  She's been suffering from dementia for a while and recently fell and broke her hip.  According to my sister, Aunt Aileen's oxygen saturation is down to 88%, and her breathing is labored.

Aunt Aileen is my dad's sister, and our two families have always been very close.  There were nine kids in our family.  Aunt Aileen and Uncle Larry had ten kids.  When our clans got together for Thanksgivings, the table would extend from the dining room out into the hall.  During my middle and high school years, we would all go camping together at a local state park.  (Some of my cousins still travel to the U. P. every year to camp.)  Like I said, we were really close.

On my way home from work tonight, I heard Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll."  One of my Aunt Aileen's favorite songs.  For a quiet, soft-spoken lady, she really dug Seger.  (And it had nothing to do with Tom Cruise sliding around in his socks and underwear in Risky Business.)  As I tapped on my steering wheel and sang along, I tried to remember the last time I saw Aunt Aileen.  

It was at least five or six years ago.  I think she drove up with her oldest son and his wife.  (I could be wrong on this fact.  Memory is a slippery thing, like trying to land a Chinook salmon.)  Aunt Aileen looked much older, but she still had the same spark and sense of humor that allowed her to survive raising a family of ten.  

Up until a little while ago, she would send me birthday cards every year, without fail.  And Christmas cards.  All written in her loopy, beautiful script.  She loved going to Dairy Queen with us for ice cream and watching Abbott and Costello movies late at night.  In a world of Donald Trumps, she was a Dorothy Day, making sure everyone was warm and fed and loved.  

That's how Saint Marty will always remember her.

September 14: Kilgore Trout, Celebrity, Selena Gomez

Trout lives in a rented basement in Ilium, about two miles from Billy's nice white home.  He himself has no idea how many novels he has written--possibly seventy-five of the things.  Not one of them has made money.  So Trout keeps body and soul together as a circulation man for the Ilium Gazette, manages newspaper delivery boys, bullies and flatters and cheats little kids.

Billy met him for the first time in 1964.  Billy drove his Cadillac down a back alley in Ilium, and he found his way blocked by dozens of boys and their bicycles.  A meeting was in progress.  The boys were harangued by a man in a full beard.  He was cowardly and dangerous, and obviously very good at his job.  Trout was sixty-two years old back then.  He was telling the kids to get off their dead butts and get their daily customers to subscribe to the fucking Sunday edition, too.  He said that whoever sold the most Sunday subscriptions during the next two months would get a free trip for himself and his parents to Martha's fucking Vineyard for a week, all expenses paid.

And so on.

One of the newspaper boys was actually a newspaper girl.  She was electrified.

Trout's paranoid face was terribly familiar to Billy, who had seen it on the jackets of so many books.  But, coming upon that face suddenly in a home-town alley, Billy cold not guess why the face was familiar.  Billy thought maybe he had known this cracked messiah in Dresden somewhere.  Trout certainly looked like a prisoner of war.

And then the newspaper girl held up her hand.  "Mr. Trout--" she said, "if I win, can I take my sister, too?"

"Hell, now," said Kilgore Trout.  "You think money grows on trees?"

Kilgore Trout is a disappointment for Billy.  Trout comes off as some modern-day Fagin, yelling at his newspaper orphans.  He certainly doesn't inspire admiration, except in the gullible children who crave what he promises--a free vacation to Martha's fucking Vineyard.  Trout is all about the money.

Sometimes, famous or semi-famous people can be disappointing in person.  I've met or seen my fair share of celebrities.  I shook Kurt Vonnegut's hand once.  Sat in the same room with Sharon Olds and talked with her about poetry.  Touched Vincent Price's back.  Saw John Cleese eating a hamburger with his wife in Big Sur.  Listened to Spike Lee give a speech about racism in the movie business.

My encounters with fame have varied from incredible (Sharon Olds) to pathetic (Bob Seger strolling through a shopping mall in Detroit).  Fame is not necessarily a gauge for a person's worth.  Some of the most famous people in the world are horrible human beings.  (Can I get a "Donald Trump!" on that one?)  Yet, our culture thrives on celebrity.  There are thousands of Syrians still starving in refugee camps, and yet one of the big news items today is "Selena Gomez Recovering After Kidney Transplant."  (Don't get me wrong.  I hope Selena does well with her new organ, but there are more important global issues that should be concerning us.  Can I get a "global warming!" or "neo-Nazis!" on that one?)

Kilgore Trout really isn't a celebrity.  His books are terrible.  Billy Pilgrim is probably one of the only members of the Kilgore Trout fan club.  Yet, certainly Kilgore Trout (if he really existed and did write 75 science fiction novels) would have his own booth at Comic-Con and a line of people waiting for his autograph.  That's the nature of celebrity.  It doesn't matter whether a person is a serial killer or a Nobel Prize-winning poet, fame will attract fans.

Of course, the best celebrities are those who use that fame for good things.  George Clooney and UNICEF.  Bono and his war on hunger and poverty.  River Phoenix and his work for animal rights.  Celebrity itself is not a bad thing.  It's what people do with that celebrity that makes the difference.

When Saint Marty wins the Nobel Prize in Literature this October, he promises to donate a few dollars toward a brain transplant for the current President of the United States.