nostalgic — fantastic
This is a Comics & Stories of ballads and verse. Clippings on items of interest, bits about life, outlook, and a look at nature.
What’s There is a scrapbook of ballads and tales, clippings on items of interest, bits about life, outlook, and a look at nature. As with scrapbooks, they represent a mix of memory and fantasy. The tales wrap comedy in drama, when not wrapping the other way around. When you’re a kid, you see what’s there.
Ticket Master
Cholly has a plain-soap charm. Home-spun, but savvy to influences around him. He is a local, born into a sea-side town and remains by choice, most peers having moved on to The City.
Cholly loves Port Spindrift and it shows. He is the youngest concierge at the Linger Longer, not so much a lodge as a hotel.
Anyone can make reservations, arrange transportation, answer questions or schedule events. Cholly does so with charm. Ask any patron what that means, and you will have as many interpretations. Confident, courteous, patient, professional.
But mostly, Cholly is a thief.
It isn’t long days with little pay. It isn’t the angry or inebriated guest. It is a tax on ignorance. A tax exacted on those who want directions to the carnival instead of the Arts Festival. A tax on those who bring beer rather than ordering wine. Mostly, it is a tax on those who tell him there is nothing to do in this weedy town of the newlywed or nearly dead.
Items that go missing go to a pawn shop nowhere near. More discreet that way. Monies collected help with tickets. Tickets for a bus or ferry, for the fairgrounds or arts events. Tickets to ride and rise above.
Cholly is ticket-master of making it happen under the radar. And for all any guest suspects, tickets are part of their package. Part of somebody’s package.
Cholly’s one fear came in time. Not that he was caught, but that he was made manager. A manger is too conspicuous to move about exacting taxes.
Now he buys tickets to achieve the same end. Missing only the thrill of taxing those who fall into the gap somewhere between the newly wed and the nearly dead.
Clippings
Bed Base
My bed contorts to offer support, folding me free of gravity. It uses icons instead of instructions, propping me up for TV.
It makes a beep if I snore when asleep and charts my total REM time. In lieu of alarm, it shakes up a storm. My bed may rise, but I don’t shine.
Burger Hop
The burger hop has a long line up. You’d think the cook a rock star. It’s a mom-and-pop with decent grub, but nobody there plays guitar.
With real eats, not Franken-meats, and portions sized for people, this greasy spoon is often viewed as too good to be legal.
Privacy, Maybe
A new road runs beside my house, wending to cul-de-sac. Drivers pass my bathroom window. They wave, and I wave back.
Builders promised a privacy fence, at least eventually. Instead of erecting a structure, they planted cedar seeds.
Wordlessly
When the dogs are barking, it is best to see what’s on the street. Elinor peered out.
A disc flew in, on the warm spring morning. The neighbour kids toss this saucer to one another. She tossed it back, flicking it with more finesse than she possessed. That launched the pups in pursuit, pushing open the screen door.
They’ll be back. Hunger has a way of finding home.
An envelope on the stoop must have been tucked in the screen door. It began: Dear Elinor. A letter from the pastor. Last September, when the choir was hinting at the holiday season ahead, Elinor was relieved of duties as choir master with a letter much like this.
Master of a choir from hell in a church loft. An ancient organ, baseboard heating, and a foot-crushed carpet, as if the acoustics of a T shaped hall weren’t bad enough. For all that, Elinor enjoyed directing the choir. Maybe because of all that.
It wasn’t that Elinor lacked talent, but that she had perfect pitch. Try as she might, she could not conceal the need to help others find the right note. After note, after note.
That worked well when she was resident conductor at the University, but the pastor was inclined to find a church setting more forgiving. Members of the parish were less inclined to return tolerance. Port Spindrift is a small town, and disgruntlement multiplies in a neighbour’s ear.
She’s a diva. Go back to the U. Try the elementary school. Only has the job because of Cholly. Maybe something between her and the pastor. Nobody comes to church anymore.
The spring concert did not go well. The pastor’s letter said so, though in other words. Come back, we need you.
* * *
Instead, Elinor accepted the role of cultural-exchange conductor, far from home. Through the wonders of technology, she and Cholly kept in daily contact.
Missing you, became feeling lonely, became the food is inedible and heat unbearable. Each message was wrapped in a plea to return home. The woman who left, Cholly would remark when it was over, was not the woman who returned.
Unable to care for her at home, Elinor was placed in care and her world became smaller. She knew, despite the hunger, there was no finding home.
Cholly, who had the talent for missing every note, practiced a song with her. No longer with words, Elinor tugged on his finger when a note was not on key. Her pitch remained perfect, and they practiced with every visit. The tugs came less often.
The pastor was the one who woke Cholly. Come. Quickly.
And so Cholly sang his song for Elinor. Wordlessly. Perfectly, at least to her. He sang his one love song, as full as the moon, then returned home to his dogs in silence.
