Month: October 2020

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No Skeletons Celebrating This Year

2020 has been an absolutely horrible year! As proof, this is the first time in more than fifty years that I didn’t buy any Halloween candy. 

When I was raising my children, and later when I worked in public schools, the question of the season was “What are you going to be for Halloween?” I miss the excitement that marked the end of fall and the beginning of winter. I miss helping children choose their costumes. I miss hearing them scream and laugh as they run from house to house in the cold night air.

Because of the pandemic, there won’t be any children trick-or-treating in my neighborhood this year. Condos in my complex aren’t decorated with flashing orange lights or carved pumpkins. As we have for the past eight months, we are all staying home behind locked doors, keeping busy until it is time to turn out the lights and go to bed.

It hasn’t always been this way. In Mexico, my house was right in front of the city’s Dia de Los Muertos celebration. Musicians played loud, off-key music as they marched up and down the street, signaling that  it was time to open my door and join the Day of the Dead party. Skeletons, acrobats, and women dressed as in fancy clothes and feathered hats mingled outside. We waited together on the street for the beer wagon, drawn by a single sleepy burro, to arrive. Beer was free. The party lasted all night. The music went on until morning.

My favorite Halloween was 2013. I had moved back to Colorado and bought a condo near Buckley Air Force Base. I have always loved Aurora, one of the most diverse cities in the United States. Because housing prices are low, it is home to immigrants from all over the world, including many people from Mexico. I feel at home here.

As usual, the weather that Halloween was cold. But that didn’t stop children coming to my door. Children who didn’t celebrate Halloween in their previous countries, but who were eager to dress up and ask for candy now. I lived on a busy street, across from a park, so my home was the first stop for many of the children. That year, I had more than 200 trick-or-treaters. I couldn’t have been happier!

My first visitor was a little skeleton from Mexico. He was about five years old. When he saw that I was giving out Butterfingers, he was thrilled.

“I know, Butterfingers are the best,” I said, as I gave him an extra one to put in his pillow case.

“No, YOU are the best!” he replied. And he gave me a hug. Mexican charm starts early.

Then his little princess-sister, who didn’t know what to do, gave me a hug, too. It was Halloween magic on the streets of Aurora.

My absolutely favorite Halloween character from 2013, however, was an elderly woman from Korea, who was trick-or-treating alongside everyone else. I thought she was a chaperone but she didn’t have any children with her. I answered the door, expecting to see a giggling group of children but Mama was there alone, smiling a big toothless grin and showing me her orange plastic pumpkin. She wasn’t wearing a costume. I gave her two Butterfingers. Halloween was for everyone. 

I pray that someday it will be again.

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Clowns, Ninjas, and Dance Hall Girls

As a piano teacher, I was determined to find a way to get my students to practice. I pleaded to their better natures. I bribed them with candy bars. And then… Eureka! I had the answer. Recitals! My students didn’t like to practice, but they did like to perform. 

Students recitals were a tradition back when I was taking lessons from Sister Aimee. We hated recitals but Sister Aimee was determined. Our music had to be memorized. It had to be difficult. Often, it had to be boring. 

Because Sister Aimee produced the annual Christmas pageant, an over-the-top extravaganza of angels and shepherds, we were spared the ritual of a Christmas recital. But nothing could deter Sister Aimee from having us perform in May. 

My memories of being in a recital included stomach pains and anxiety attacks. Students threatening to throw up or worse. A third grade classmate actually wet her pants onstage ~ a fact that she probably hasn’t lived down to this day.

That’s not the kind of piano recital I wanted. No, I just wanted the kind that would motivate my students to actually open their books and practice their lesson. That meant having recitals not once, but four times a year. Every eight weeks my students were on stage. There was always a reception afterward, with cookies and punch, and the opportunity to bask in their parents’ proud faces.

I kept the tradition of having an end-of-the-year recital in May. Girls were happy to dress up in fancy dresses. The boys reluctantly wore something besides jeans. I let the students choose their favorite songs. I often accompanied them and together we dazzled the audience.

Of course there was a Christmas recital, with beautiful familiar Christmas songs. And again, girls in fancy dresses and boys in shirts with collars. Wonderful, sing-along music and proud parental faces. 

That left two more recitals to schedule, one in the fall and one in the spring. I had to be creative with the spring recital. One year we had a Teddy Bear’s Picnic. Students brought their favorite stuffed animal to sit on the bench with them. One year we had a Celebration of Spring ~ with songs about flowers and kites. 

The best recital of all, however, was the first recital of the year. The Halloween Recital. Just think about it. We all came in costumes. Teacher included. Ghosts and vampires, clowns and ninjas trooped into the piano store, up to the large performance stage at the top of the stairs. Parents smiled as they were seated, ready with their cameras. Students were giddy with excitement. Best of all, no one threw up or wet their pants.

I taught piano lessons for seven years. I had a lot of students and I was more or less successful. By the end of that time, however, I realized I was ready for something else.

“I’m going to be ninety years old, someday, still sitting on this piano bench trying to get these students to practice their lesson,” I thought one rainy day. I looked outside, just as lightning hit a tree in my backyard, knocking out my power, and ending lessons for that day.

The next day, I met a friend for lunch. 

“What’s new?” I asked her.

“I’m doing the craziest thing,” she announced.

“What?”

“I’m moving to Mexico.”

“Really?” A lightbulb went off in my head. “I’m coming with you,” I declared. 

I moved to Mexico. Some say I did it on a whim. Maybe the lightning strike was a sign that I needed to shake up my life. Or maybe, I had just run out of Halloween costumes.

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Here Comes The Bride!

Twenty years ago today, my son, Jason, married his sweetheart, Kortnee Conway, in a chapel on the campus of Loretto Heights College. It was a lovely Colorado Fall day, much like today.

All brides are beautiful, but none more so than Kortnee. Jason was handsome, of course. Their girls, Devon and Tyler, were lovely ~ Devon, as a bridesmaid in a stunning, dark maroon dress, and Tyler, a junior bridesmaid, dressed all in white with a string of pearls around her neck.

Jason’s brother, Garth. was his best man. The bridal party, friends of the bride and groom, were young and carefree, eager to celebrate and wish Jason and Kortnee a long, happy life together.

People came from far away for the wedding. Both of Jason’s grandmothers were there. Kortnee’s family came in a caravan from Missouri. Jim’s family and my friends were there, too. We all stood outside the church before the ceremony, waiting to cheer Kortnee and the bridesmaids as they arrived in a white limousine. 

I would like to tell you that the wedding went off without a hitch. That wouldn’t actually be true. It was my fault. 

It was my responsibility to arrange for the music at the church. Jim hired Stacy, an extremely talented soloist from his church, to sing. She was awesome. 

I hired a pianist I didn’t know. He came highly recommended but he was fussy about what he would and wouldn’t play. Under no circumstances was he going to play “Here Comes The Bride.”

In the hustle and bustle before the wedding, I forgot to clear that with Kortnee. She had her heart set on “Here Comes The Bride.” I remembered there was a problem when the pianist started to play. No one knew the song he was playing but the bridesmaids came up the aisle and took their places anyway.

Meanwhile, Kortnee’s father was in the back of the chapel, waiting for Kortnee to appear. But there was no Kortnee. She was behind a door, waiting for her cue. She wasn’t coming out until she heard “Here Comes The Bride.” 

At the last minute, Stacy realized what the problem was. An experienced musician, she always carried a copy of “Here Come the Bride” in her briefcase, for moments like this. She grabbed the music, plopped it down in front of the pianist and hissed, “You’ve got to play this. Now!”

Mr. Pianist played beautifully, if somewhat reluctantly. Kortnee came into the hallway, met her father, and walked radiantly down the aisle. I took a deep breath and knew that everything was going to be ok.

After the wedding ceremony, Jason and Kortnee, Devon and Tyler, got back in the limo for a ride to the reception. The rest of us carpooled to a charming restaurant in the Denver foothills. There was music. There was an open bar. There was a full buffet. There were toasts and dancing and children chasing each other around the room. 

Outside there was a pond, with live fish and rocks painted with good wishes. It was a perfect beginning for a loving marriage surrounded by family and friends.

As I write this memory, my heart is filled with both joy and sadness for Jason and the girls. Jason and Kortnee had fifteen good years together. They had two children, Connor and Max, who grew up in a house filled with love. They went on day trips to the mountains and family vacations. They traveled to the East Coast to see both Devon and Tyler graduate from college. 

But Kortnee’s life was cut short five years ago when she had a sudden cardiac arrest.  She will always be remembered. She will always be missed.

Here Comes the Bride! A beautiful, happy bride! May she rest in peace.

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Los Tres Amigos

It was the rainy season and the roof was leaking. Water poured into the bedrooms.

“When can we fix these leaks?” I asked, as we emptied buckets of water into the courtyard.

“When the rainy season is over,” Neto insisted.

“When will that be?’

“October 15th.” 

I’d never experienced rain like this before. Certainly not in Colorado. From June until October, rain flooded the streets. Palm trees bent in the wind until they were nearly horizontal. Dogs and cats hid under abandoned cars. The humidity was stifling. 

October 15th, Neto showed up with heavy-duty metal spatulas to scrape decades of tar and styrofoam off the roof. Publio and Pepé, his best friends, were with him. They assembled a scaffold and built a makeshift ladder from 2×4’s

Laborers in Mexico earn very little money. A skilled tile-layer or carpenter earns 200 pesos for a ten hour day. When I first moved to Mexico, that amounted to $20/day (U.S.). Now, under the current exchange rate, that amounts to $10/day. It is a shockingly stingy amount of money. Food costs roughly the same in Mexico and the U.S.. Clothing actually costs more. Housing is the only commodity that costs less.    

I rewarded my workers by providing lunch for them every day. As a special treat for showing up on Mondays, I ordered tortas from Tortas Kuwait, the sandwich shop down the street. The rest of the week I cooked. I bought a Mexican cookbook and worked my way through the pages: Tortilla soup, flautas, tacos, quesadillas, rice and beans, macaroni and cheese with marlin, whatever sounded good as I flipped through the pages. The only worker who was fussy was Christina. She told me during the first week that people in Mazatlan never eat black beans. “That’s for the poor people from the South.”

The roof project took more than three weeks.

Day 1. No rain. Neto set up the ladder. It consisted of a scaffold with a long board attached diagonally to one side. Small sections of 2×4’s  were hammered onto the board, to create footholds up the slope. Neto, Publio, and Pepé ran up the ladder and started working at 9:00. By 10:00 the sun was beating down on them and sweat was pouring off their faces. They drank gallons of water and kept working.

Day 2. Still no rain. Neto hauled a big bucket of sand up the ladder, along with a beach umbrella that looked like a giant watermelon. He plopped the umbrella in the bucket of sand and now they had shade. 

Day 3. Still no rain. I was beginning to believe the rainy season was over. Neto asked if he could borrow my boom box to take to the roof, along with the watermelon umbrella and the bucket of sand. Now the guys had shade and music. They sang and laughed as they continued to scrape layers of mold and crud from the old roof. 

Day 4. Neto brought a new worker, a young guy from Vera Cruz, to help load the old, stinky roof into buckets to take to the dump. Everyone called him “Vera Cruz.” I never knew his real name. Halfway through the morning, Vera Cruz fell off the ladder and needed to be rushed to the local Red Cross. He fell on his skinny hip and was hurt badly when he bounced hard on the cement. By afternoon, Vera Cruz was back on the job.

“How can he keep working? Isn’t he in a lot of pain?” I asked Neto.

“The doctor gave him a shot of Ibuprofen in his hip. He’s feeling better now. He wants to keep working.”

And that’s the way it went for the next three weeks. After the roof was scraped clean, the men laid a fresh coat of cement before spreading buckets of waterproofing across the roof. 

My house would never have been ready for guests without Los Tres Amigos. They arrived every day with a smile. They tried to understand my English and struggled to teach me Spanish. They thanked me every day for allowing them to work and for giving them lunch. They became my good friends, as well as Neto’s.

Publio is still one of Neto’s best friends. His family became my family, too. Sadly, Pepe died two years ago, from complications of a motorcycle accident and horrible medical care. Seeing Publio again last winter was a joy. But I will always have a hole in my heart, where Pepé used to live.

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A Family In Disarray

1931. Grandpa Jones lost everything in the stock market crash. It was the beginning of the Great Depression. Prohibition was still in effect. Millions of people were out of work. Uncle Johnny went to prison for killing Frank Ventress at the Green Lantern. Uncle Frank and George Hurley disappeared. Grandma Jones’ family was in disarray. 

George and Margaret Hurley owned the Green Lantern. George, a man of questionable ethics, was the manager. Margaret, my grandmother’s hard-working sister, was the cook.

The night of the murder, George took off for California, leaving Margaret to raise their five children alone. The FBI questioned Margaret repeatedly about the whereabouts of her husband. She didn’t know where he was. If she did, she might have killed him, herself. 

Our family lost track of George until one day in the 1940’s his picture appeared in Life magazine. He was sitting on a boat, enjoying the California sunshine and the good life. 

“His picture wasn’t identified, but everyone knew it was him,” my mother said.

Meanwhile, Frank Fay was accused of being an accomplice in the Green Lantern murder. He was, after all, the guy who chased Frank Ventress out the back door of the restaurant into Uncle Johnny’s gunfire.

Frank and Johnny took off for Canada. Johnny came back to Minnesota to face charges but Frank hid from the police and was never charged.

Uncle Frank, the youngest of Grandma’s siblings, was tall and handsome, gregarious and generous. Frank sent money to Grandma Fay, Aunt Margaret and Aunt Ruth for years, while they struggled to pay their bills with no husbands to help support them.

Frank never drank alcohol and he was not involved in the speakeasy lifestyle of Johnny and Ruth. He was a less flamboyant Chicago gangster. Gambling was his vice of choice.

Frank married Florence Hotek, a beautiful woman from Fort Dodge, Iowa. Although they never had children, Florence had a glamorous sister with a daughter, who always lived with Frank and Flo. 

“We never knew when Frank would drive up in his big black car with those two gorgeous women in front and the little girl in the back seat,” my mother told us.

Frank and Florence spent winters in Florida and summers in Minnesota. Anyone who operates a gambling casino in the U.S. needs to have a Federal Gambling License, called a stamp, to operate legally. Without it, gambling is a federal offense. Frank almost bought the Federal Gambling License in Florida, but for some reason neglected to do so, which caused the FBI to chase him for years.

Great-Grandma Fay died in 1944. The funeral was in Minneapolis and filled with drama. Frank was Grandma Fay’s favorite. Her baby boy. Her only living son. Would he show up for the funeral? Would he risk being arrested? Or would he outsmart the FBI one more time?

The church was filled with giant sprays of flowers, sent from Chicago, California, Florida, and the Twin Cities. “For Frank’s Mom” the cards read. There was even a huge bouquet in the shape of a golden horseshoe. FBI men stationed themselves outside the church, waiting to arrest Frank if he came to the funeral. At the last minute, Frank slipped in the side door to say goodbye to his mother and the FBI never knew he was there.

Frank continued to run illegal gambling operations in Florida. In the summer he moved to Brainard, Minnesota, and ran a restaurant called The Bar Harbor. The restaurant was infamous. Frank paid off the local authorities and ran a casino in the back room of the restaurant with slot machines, Black Jack, and Poker.

Brainard was far from the Twin Cities in the days after WWII, and it was a destination for serious gamblers. The restaurant was on Gull Lake. People docked their big, fancy boats and went inside for dinner and a night of gambling. 

I remember meeting Uncle Frank twice. One time, on a family vacation to northern Minnesota, we stopped at the Bar Harbor. It was about 10:00 in the morning and our family and Frank were the only people there. Frank took us kids behind the bar and filled our pockets with candy bars. He let us have all the coca-cola we could drink. We thought he was the coolest person we’d ever met.

Another time, we met Uncle Frank at a bait shop in northern Minnesota. My dad said we were going to buy bait for fishing at Uncle Frank’s store. After we bought our worms, Frank said, “Bob, I want to show you something.” He opened a hatch in the floor and we all trooped down to the cellar, where Frank proudly showed off his casino in the basement of the bait shop. 

Uncle Frank continued his life as a successful gambler until the early 1960’s, when Miles Lord, a firebrand lawyer, was elected Minnesota’s Attorney General. Lord initiated a crackdown on organized crime and Frank’s businesses were shut down. But Frank never went to jail for this or anything else.

Uncle Frank died of natural causes in 1966. He was sixty-nine years old.