Friday, November 19, 2021

A Strange Family History

She was only seven years old when it happened. It was in the summer, a dreadfully hot day. The breakfast dishes had been cleared off the table and piled high in the sink, flies buzzing around the table as her mother wiped it clean with a dishcloth. Edna Taylor was a large woman with an unruly head of hair which defied all attempts to keep it out of her face. Long strands fell this way and that as she cupped all the crumbs into her hand at the end of the table after a final swoop. Her seven year old daughter looked up at her from the door to the back porch, sensing that something wasn’t right. Edna looked worried and weak. 

“Lizzy, go on outside and play. Your mother needs some time alone. Run along!” Elizabeth heard the tone of her mother’s voice and understood it to be an order, not a suggestion. She bounded down the back steps and ran around to the front of the house where it was cooler. She looked down the field that sloped away from the great, white salt box house that went by the name of Blue Hill. The field of brown straw, scorched by the relentless summer sun, stretched all the way to the river. Elizabeth sat herself down on a stump of a tree that had been cut down earlier in the year after it had been struck by lightening. Edna had thought it a bad omen, a sign that her sick boy wasn’t long for this world. But that was months ago, and lately Chesty had seemed to be getting better. Elizabeth sat and watched the water drifting by slowly in the distance. She heard the whistle first then saw the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad train coming up from Gladstone on the other side of the river. She could smell the smoke from the engine some days, but today the wind, what little there was, was headed in the wrong direction. Still, she watched the train until it disappeared, worrying about her mother and her sick brother. 

It was just the three of them this morning. All the men were working and wouldn’t be back until lunch when the kitchen would come alive with noise and fuss as her father, three brothers and older sister came back to the house to eat. It always irked Elizabeth that her father wouldn’t allow her to go with them. “You’ve gotta stay with Momma, Lizzy. What’s gonna happen if she needs help with Chesty,” he would explain. 

Chesterton Taylor had been born in 1925 and had surprised the doctors by surviving his first year, then surprised them every year since. He had been born with what they called a weak heart and wasn’t given much of a chance. The fact that he was now twelve years old had been a testament to either God’s grace or an extra helping of the famous Taylor stubbornness gene. It hadn’t been much of a life though, he having spent much of it bedridden and weak as water. Elizabeth loved him, felt sorry for him, and on some level envied him their mother’s attention, But even a seven year old knew not to admit to such a thing. 

Suddenly Elizabeth thought she heard crying. Had the sound of the train drowned it out? How long had she been crying? Where was she? She ran around the house and saw her sitting on the steps holding her head in her hands, sobbing, great anguished cries of despair and heartache. Elizabeth ran up and wrapped her tiny arms around her inconsolable mother. “What’s the matter, Momma? Is it Chesty?”

Edna buried her face in her apron, wiped away the tears then lifted Elizabeth into her lap. “Chesty passed away, Lizzy. His time for suffering is finally over, he’s gone home.”

“But, this is his home,” Elizabeth cried.

“No Lizzy. This is just our earthly home.”

Thus went the strangest conversation of young Elizabeth’s short life for fifteen minutes or so as she rocked back and forth in her mother’s strong arms, not understanding but taking comfort in her odd words. Then they both saw him.

Blue Hill was a house that rested at the end of a two mile one-lane dirt road that slithered down the middle of the 700 acre farm like a serpent. To the north lay cow pastures, a couple of barns and on the highest point, the family cemetery. To the south, fields of corn and soybeans and more barns. From the back steps of the house you could see a car approaching from half a mile away, a tail of dust billowing behind it with the soft rumble of a distant engine. Neither of them saw or heard him approach. They just looked up and there he was, the morning sun shining off his white three-piece suit. He wore a white boater hat and his brown wingtip shoes looked like they had just been buffed clean. Not a trace of dust. Sitting at his feet was a Jack Russell terrier, his pink tongue bouncing up and down. Neither Elizabeth nor her mother felt any fear at the strange sight of a man in a clean suit who seemed to have arrived out of nowhere. When they looked up at him he tipped his hat and smiled down at them. 

“Good morning, Mrs. Taylor. I can see you’ve been crying. What’s troubling you?”

Elizabeth had never seen a kinder smile or heard a more soothing voice. She felt warm inside as he spoke. She heard her mother’s anguished answer, “It’s my boy. He’s dead.”

The dog walked forward, jumped up in her lap, curled around and laid down. The man took off his hat as if to acknowledge their loss then said, “I know, Mrs. Taylor. I’m so sorry. It’s a terrible thing to lose a child, especially one who has been sick for so long.” He then walked over and sat down beside her on the step, he on one side and Elizabeth on the other, both holding on to her. They rocked back and forth together while the dog slept peacefully in her mother’s lap.

Elizabeth couldn’t remember how long he was there. Time was a difficult concept for a seven year old. It felt like a long time but it might have only been a few minutes. Regardless, his presence had a calming effect on her mother. She had stopped sobbing, was no longer shaking with the force of her grief. The tears had dried up by the time he left. He had stood up slowly. The dog jumped down from her lap and joined him. His parting words were simple, “The men will be back soon.” Then the two of them walked back up the road. Elizabeth watched them get smaller and smaller, noticed the dust that their feet kicked up as they walked along, saw the sun shining off his boater hat. 

When her father, brothers and sister returned for lunch, they all began crying at the news. They gathered around Chesty’s bed and wept. Rosemary, Elizabeth’s only sister, was particularly distraught, draping herself over his dead body while she wailed. Her brothers mostly stood at a distance, arms crossed stiffly over their chests, eyes rimmed with tears. Her father held his filthy hat in both hands, lower lip trembling for a minute until he got a hold of himself. Then he said, “Ok, that’s enough of that,” as he gathered everyone up, led them out of the bedroom and closed the door. Edna served lunch. Everyone ate slowly, in silence. Elizabeth had never seen her family do anything quietly. They were loud people, always hollering and screaming about one thing or another, not with anger or malice, they were just loud. They spoke to each other loudly, worked loudly, even ate loudly. The clatter and tumult were an incessant part of Elizabeth’s life. Now, the seven of them sat around the long oak kitchen table so quietly you could hear the stirring of fly’s wings.

“Did ya’ll see the man wearing the white suit?” Edna asked, breaking the silence. They all exchanged glances. Her father answered, “What man?”

“You must have passed him on the road,” she insisted. “He just left us thirty minutes before ya’ll drove up. He had a little dog with him.”

“We didn’t see a man or a dog on the road. Who was he?”

Edna insisted that they couldn’t possibly have missed a man with such a sharp suit and fine dog. She told them all about his visit and as she talked they all began exchanging worried glances. Finally, Edna dropped the subject and the silence returned. Later that night when she tucked Elizabeth in bed she whispered in her ear, “Lizzy, that man was an angel sent from God to comfort us. Don’t you ever forget it, ya hear?”

And, she hadn’t. But oddly, had never bothered to share the story with her son until now, the night before he was to undergo open heart surgery to repair a faulty mitral valve. As she sat on the end of his bed regaling him with yet another creepy paranormal family secret, it occurred to Montgomery Duncan that his mother’s family history was chocked full of this sort of thing, Blue Hill being a house shot through with Gothic mystery. He made a mental note that if he survived his pending procedure, he would attempt to get to the bottom of it all. There were so many unanswered questions about the Taylors, so many odd tales. The least interesting part of this particular story was the fact that the beautiful woman sitting at the end of his bed telling it had been dead and in the ground for eleven months, having died in her sleep of heart failure herself, there being two things that prominently ran in the Taylor family, bad hearts and bedside visits from the dead. Montgomery chalked this one up to the delightful drug cocktail pulsing through his veins from the shiny IV bag beside his bed. But what to make of the half dozen other stories of premonitions, warnings and reassurance that had been provided from various dead Taylor Uncles, Aunts and Cousins through the years?

“What are you saying Ma, are you an angel sent to comfort me?”

“No. I’m just your mother.”

And with that, she was gone. Montgomery drifted off to sleep thinking about his grandmother, her dirty apron, the black wood stove in the dark kitchen, that heavy picnic style table that ran the length of the room. He pictured her turning from her cooking to see him standing at the bottom of the stairs. He didn’t sleep well in the huge red bedroom upstairs, always woke up before dawn and always found her busy in the kitchen.

“Come over here, child,” she would smile. “Give your Nanny a hug.”

She would envelope him in her apron and it always smelled like sausage. She would tussle his hair then sit him down at the table and give him a hot biscuit. 

“How come you always wake up so early?”

Montgomery never told her the truth. He never told her that Blue Hill scared the hell out of him at night. The big room upstairs was painted blood red and the only light was a single clear light bulb which hung from a long chord from the middle of the ceiling. For reasons that he didn’t understand the light always swayed a little from side to side sending shadows slithering across the walls. For a five year old boy this was the stuff from which nightmares were made. But all it took to break the spell was a visit to Nanny’s kitchen and the rising sun peaking through the screen door. For Montgomery, Blue Hill was part paradise and part haunted house. The haunting always happened at night making the arrival of the morning sun feel like paradise.


A nurse with kind eyes wearing a mask asked him to count backwards from ten. He felt a soft tingle in his arm, then a blast of cold air, then nothing. When next he opened his eyes he was hovering above the bobbing head of his surgeon looking down at the bright red blood surrounded by sky blue napkins in the middle of the table. He heard the buzz and gurgle of the ventilator and picked up parts of a conversation between the nurses about the results of a football game. Then over in a corner behind a tray of instruments he saw his mother staring intently at her son’s open chest. She was swaying from side to side with one arm raised towards heaven. This had always been how it was with Elizabeth Taylor Duncan, always turning up at the oddest times in the oddest places, always knowing something she had no way of knowing, understanding things she couldn’t possibly understand. Montgomery knew at that moment that he would survive the operation going on below. He would make a full and complete recovery. There suddenly wasn’t a doubt in his mind.




 Montgomery Duncan’s mother had died in her sleep. Slipped away without saying goodbye, unexpected and devastatingly final. Like any mother and son worthy of the names, much was left unsaid and unfinished. Their relationship had been strong and stable but their last conversation had been an argument. But he had no time to mourn properly because his father and the love of his mother’s life was now 87 and without her for the first time in 65 years. Edward Eugene Duncan had left Gladstone in 1943 on a Chesapeake and Ohio troop-train headed for San Francisco and then the South Pacific to fight the Japanese. His train chugged slowly past Blue Hill where a 13 year old Elizabeth Taylor sat on the steps and watched the billows of smoke rising from the engine disappearing into the morning mist, thinking about who might be on the train. She had a dream which had convinced her that she was going to meet and marry a man who rode past Blue Hill on that train one day. Three years later on the first day of her senior year in high school she discovered that a tall black haired older boy, back from the war, had been assigned the locker next to hers. They were both almost instantly smitten. Their decision to get married was a wildly unpopular one with practically everyone in the Taylor household. Edward was the son of share croppers and unworthy of a young girl from a family that possessed 700 acres of land. Despite their disapproval, Elizabeth and Edward were married at the Courthouse with only Elizabeth’s sister Rosemary representing the bride’s family. 

All of the Taylor family misgivings about Edward had eventually been forgotten when the couple started having children. By the time Montgomery had arrived, the fourth and last of the brood, all had been forgiven. The truth was that it was difficult to find fault with Edward. He was a pleasant man, strong and dependable, not afraid of hard work and a whiz with a rifle. He made Elizabeth happy. None of them could deny that. Eventually, Lizzy’s happiness and Edward’s quick smile won the day.

But when she passed away without warning, Montgomery simply couldn’t imagine how his father was going to manage without her. In sixty plus years of marriage they had spent not one single night apart. He would be lost without her, totally useless around the house, and impossibly lonely. As he had expected, things didn’t go well. His health rapidly declined and almost two years later to the day, Edward and Elizabeth were reunited in heaven. At least that’s what they both believed. Firmly and unequivocally. Montgomery’s parents were dead serious about their Christian faith, its teachings informing all aspects of their lives, guiding their decisions, commanding them to be better people, more loving and kind, more forgiving and generous than others thought they should be. “Lizzy,” friends would say, “You don’t have enough money to be giving it away to every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes along. Be reasonable!!” Her answer had always been some version of, “Well, maybe Tom, Dick and Harry need it more than I do!”

Eighteen months after her death, Montgomery brought his father some doughnuts one morning for breakfast, hoping the sight of sweets would brighten his day. He found him reading the paper in his recliner, his face sagging under the weight of loss and loneliness. He managed a smile when he saw his son walk in but it was a weak effort, not the over the top exaggerated one he usually managed to conjure up when one of his children came for a visit.

“How you feeling this morning, Pop?”

“Fit as a fiddle,” he replied, his stock answer. Everyday of his life he had been fit as a fiddle to anyone who bothered to ask.

But something was wrong. Montgomery had learned to read his father’s moods, could see through his superficial declarations that everything was wonderful. Edward Duncan lived in mortal fear of becoming a burden to his children, hated the thought that they might be worried about him. So, he declared himself fit as a fiddle and hoped for no follow up questions. But this morning after a couple doughnuts Montgomery persisted.

“Pop, you don’t look like your self today. You have a rough night?”

He folded up his paper and placed it on the table beside his chair, laid his head back and closed his eyes. “I don’t sleep well some nights.”

Montgomery knew enough to not interrupt his father on the rare occasions when he offered up any information about his condition, no matter how vague. He listened quietly, hoping for something more specific. 

“Most nights I fall right asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. But then I wake up a few hours later and can’t get back to sleep.”

Montgomery noticed for the first time that his father’s eyes were red and puffier than usual. Had he been crying?

“That what happened last night?” Montgomery, leading the witness.

Edward folded his hands together in his lap and kept his eyes shut, preferring not to look at his son as he talked. “But, last night was different...”

Montgomery had always had a hard time figuring out his father. He was a man of great contradictions. He was powerfully built but as gentle as a lamb. He could be frequently eloquent but opted for silence, preferring to listen to others talk. He loved hard physical labor and had the powerful, gnarled, vice grip hands to prove it, but was as well read as any man he had ever known. Suddenly he was in the mood to talk.

“You know how your mother was. Remember how she seemed to know about things before they happened, that confounding clairvoyance of hers?”

Montgomery smiled and nodded.

“I’m not sure I ever told you kids about the time...this was before you and Diane were born. Allen and Gail were little, not more than five or six. We lived over on the south side and we would travel a lot back and forth between there and Blue Hill. We must have made the trip at least a hundred times. Well, one Saturday morning we were headed up the country about twenty minutes outside of Midlothian when all of a sudden your mother said, ‘Edward! Edward! Stop the car, pull over!!’ Well, it scared me half to death. I thought maybe she was sick and needed to throw up or something. But no, she was pointing at this house up on a hill. There was a long driveway lined with magnolia trees and a nice brick two story house with a big fancy set of steps out front. ‘That house!! I’ve been in that house.’ Well, I started laughing out loud, ‘Lizzy,’ I said, ‘We have driven past this house a hundred times in the past three years. Unless you drove out here without me or visited it when you were a child, I can assure you that you have never been in that house. You know how I know that? First of all, before you married me you had never left Buckingham County, and second of all, you don’t drive!’ But she was insistent. ‘Edward, I had a dream last night that I was in that house. I can see it as plain as day. There’s a beautiful porcelain pitcher sitting on a half circle table underneath a gorgeous gold-framed mirror right when you come in the front door on the right. Then a huge library to the left with a fireplace and leather books all the way to the ceiling all around. Oh, and a piano in the corner.’ She went on and on describing the inside of the house. Finally I said, ‘Well, fine. But why did you want to pull off the highway?’ I knew I was in trouble when she answered, ‘because I need to see for myself. I am going to go up there and ask them if I can look at their house!’ You know your mother, there wasn’t a one in a million chance that I was going to talk her out of such a foolish idea, so the next thing I know, there we are standing on this stranger’s front porch ringing the doorbell. Luckily the woman who answered the door couldn’t have been nicer and invited us in straight away. Within five minutes, the two of them were as thick as thieves! Then I noticed the library and the leather books and the piano. I turned and saw the pitcher and the mirror. Son, it was exactly as your mother had described it! It was the strangest thing I had ever seen.”

As fascinating as his story was, Montgomery had a feeling that there was something else going on with his father, something that he was working up his nerve to share. Then he noticed the tears in his eyes.

“Mother was like that, of course. She had that strange relationship with the world around her. She saw things that nobody else saw, heard things, felt things that nobody else did.”

Montgomery nodded his head in agreement. None of this was a revelation. Everyone in the family knew that Elizabeth was...different. They had all preferred to describe it as her being, sensitive to the spiritual world, carefully avoiding any suggestion that this was anything other than a finely tuned and thoroughly Christian sensitivity. His father continued...

“Well, last night when I woke up, your mother was standing at the foot of my bed over by the window. At first she was staring out the window, but then she turned and smiled at me. I didn’t know what to say or do, so I just laid there and smiled back. She didn’t say anything either.  She just glanced out the window then back at me. She was wearing a white nightgown and she looked just like she looked when we were first married...”

At this point, he couldn’t continue. Emotion overcame him and he cried openly, something that his son had never before seen. He got up and rushed to his side. “Oh Pop, why are you crying? It sounds like it was beautiful.”

“I’m crying because I miss her!” Edward seemed frustrated that his son would ask such a ridiculous question. Didn’t anyone understand the depths of his grief, the pain of his loneliness? “But I’m also crying because I don’t think it’s right, Montgomery. I’m a Christian man. I’m not supposed to believe in ghosts.”

Montgomery didn’t understand enough of the theological basis for such a statement and didn’t care to, and resisted the urge to say something snarky like, “What about the Holy Ghost?” Instead, in one of his finer moments as a son, managed to say, “Pop. Tell me something. When you saw Mom smiling at you from the window, how did it make you feel? Were you frightened? Afraid?”

“No. I was never once afraid. I felt warm all over. I was so happy to see her face again. She was so beautiful...”

“Well, how can that be a bad thing? How can that be from the devil? Seems to me that if you took comfort from her presence, maybe she was sent by God. Instead of thinking of her as a ghost, maybe you should think of her as an angel.”

It had been a invaluable gift that the son had given the father...permission to believe in the goodness of God, permission to believe that he hadn’t suddenly become a heretic, and permission to take comfort where he found it.

As Montgomery was driving home it occurred to him that when his mother had visited him bedside the night before his surgery, she had been wearing a white nightgown, and he hadn’t even recognized her at first, her hair had been so black and her face so alive with the light of youth.





Edna Taylor tossed and turned on the night of June 5th, 1944. It had been a rough Monday. Her knees were aching from being on her feet all day. Her back throbbed from a muscle she had pulled trying to lift a sack of flour from the truck that morning. But there was something else contributing to her insomnia. Her oldest boys were in the Army and rumors had been flying all around Buckingham County that something was up. Something over there. In all the time they had been gone she had received precious little communication, her boys not being big letter writers. What letters she did get were all weeks after the fact. They had survived North Africa. They had made it through Sicily. Still, she worried all day every day that she would get a visit from the man in the black car, the angel of death from the Defense Department. Every time she would see dust rising on the road in the distance her heart would skip a beat. Her husband would tell her, “Johnnie and Billy can take care of themselves. Rest easy, Edna.” But, at night after he had fallen asleep she was left in the bleak darkness of Blue Hill to battle her doubts and fears alone.

She wrapped her gown tightly around her shoulders and walked downstairs to the kitchen. Even though it was summertime it was still cool in the house late at night. She lifted a biscuit from under the checkered cloth of the bread basket, spread some jam on it and ate while she stared off into the distance. She thought about how painful it had been to lose Chesty. She tried to imagine if she had it in her to survive losing another. The tears overcame her quickly. She threw the biscuit to the side and buried her head in her hands, weeping like only a grieving mother can.

She felt a warm hand on her shoulder. She immediately regretted her outburst. Her husband needed his sleep more than anyone and all of her blubbering had woken him up. But when she looked up she felt a rush of cool air. Her heart raced. She could feel the hairs on her neck standing up as she looked into the face of her oldest, Johnnie. 

He smiled down at her, his wire rimmed glasses shimmering in the lantern light. He was in his dress uniform, medals on his left breast pocket, boots sharply polished and gleaming. He spoke, “Hello, Momma. It’s me, Johnnie. I don’t have much time but I wanted to let you know that me and Billy are going to be fine. We don’t want you worrying yourself to death, you hear? We love you and we promise we will be back before you know it.”

And just like that he vanished and she was alone in the kitchen, her heart pounding but now filled with joy. When weeks later word came that both of them had been on the beaches at Normandy, Edna Taylor, like Mary the Mother of Jesus 2000 years before, pondered these things in her heart. It would be years before she told the story.

By the time the story got told to Montgomery, his mother had been a bit foggy with the details. Did he appear in the kitchen or at her bedside? Was he wearing his dress uniform or his bloodied and stained combat clothes? But in every iteration he had heard, the consistent facts were that on the night before the D-Day assault in France, her tank-driving, war hero son had made a visit to Blue Hill to reassure his mother that he was going to make it.

But as Montgomery wrote the story down it occurred to him that the Taylor family lore wasn’t just stories of comforting visitations. Like all family histories, it’s a mixture of comedy and tragedy, ghosts from the past who bring both life and death. Just four years after D-Day came such a story.

Uriah Madison Taylor was the one and only lawyer in a family of farmers and builders. He had attended the University of Virginia and gotten a law degree while his brothers and sisters stayed put at Blue Hill. He was a giant of a man, physically imposing yet gregarious. He practiced law at his office in Charlottesville during the week then came home to his farm adjacent to Blue Hill which he ran along with his sister. Elizabeth remembered how her Uncle would always bring her gifts from Charlottesville, which to her might has well have been from the ancient marketplace in Algiers. Uncle Uriah was the Taylor family exotic, the farm boy who made good in the big city.

Uncle Uriah also had a soft spot for bad men. His work put a lot of them in jail, but he believed in second chances and redemption. As a result he worked to establish a work release program for first offenders, a first for Charlottesville. From time to time his soft-hearted disposition led him to hire these work released men to work on his sister’s farm. He ignored the warnings of his legal colleagues, refusing to give in to their world weary conclusion that some human beings were beyond redemption and that his kindness and compassion was at best misplaced and at worst, dangerous.

One particularly cold December Friday evening when Uriah got back to the farm, his sister complained about one of his “convicts” being excessively lazy, repeatedly refusing to do what she asked him to do. Uriah called him into the main house to talk with him and hopefully appeal to the better angels of his character that Uriah insisted lived somewhere within every man. An argument ensued. The man stormed out of the house and headed back to the small barracks housing building that Uriah had built for the workers. Uriah, against his sister’s warnings, insisted in pursuing him. When he walked through the front door of the barracks the man shot him in the chest with a double barrel shotgun. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Uriah Taylor’s death caused a sensation throughout the polite society of Charlottesville. Montgomery’s father had attended the trial and told of the heightened emotional rhetoric and the fierce, unrepentant heart of the killer. Although Uriah’s belief in redemption had ultimately cost him his life, people who knew him believed that if he had it to do all over again...he would have. It was not the first tragic death to occur on the farm at Blue Hill, and it was not to be the last. But Uriah’s murder was to be a reminder to the Taylor family that the world could be an unforgiving place.










Montgomery took a break from his writing, poured a cup of coffee and picked up the gold framed portrait of his parents from the gallery of pictures stacked across the top of the spinet piano in his library. Elizabeth’s smile was gentle, understated, as if she knew not to get too complacent. Life had a way of ambushing happiness. Truth be told, life as she had experienced it, was a series of shocks, unforeseen body blows administered by either providence or fate, that were meant to be overcome by force of will and unquestioned faith in the sovereignty of God. There was no room for bitterness, no time for selfishness and no point in questioning one’s lot in life. You get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit, she would say. Montgomery placed the picture back on the piano, sat back down and begin to think about what was perhaps his mother’s most difficult body blow. 


He had been eight years old. He was alone with his mother in their tiny cramped apartment in New Orleans, the result of her husband’s midlife religious conversation. In five short years since he had seen the light, everything about their lives had changed. Edward Duncan, with a wife and four kids, had quit the best job he ever had, enrolled in college and taken the graveyard shift at a factory in town to pay the bills, all in obedience to what he claimed was the audible voice of God calling him into the ministry while driving to work on Jefferson Davis highway in his beat up Plymouth Fury III. New Orleans was home to the Seminary to which he was accepted as the oldest student of the class of 1968. Now, six Duncans were shoehorned into a two bedroom apartment in the hottest, most humid place in the world.

It was another June 5th, a momentous date in Taylor family history, this time in 1966 when a sharp knock on the door surprised Montgomery’s mother. She had been cutting up vegetables in the kitchen and dropped the knife on the tile floor at the sound of it. She quickly dried her hands on a towel and opened the door. A tall dark haired man in a stiff black suit and a Bible in his hands stood in the doorway. He looked to be sweating around the collar of his stiffly starched shirt. His eyes were thin and glassy, his extended hand ghastly white and shaking. The angel of death.

“Elizabeth Taylor?” He asked politely.

Montgomery had been on the floor in front of the grainy black and white television with aluminum foil wrapped around its rabbit ears, trying to watch The Lone Ranger, but the appearance of the stranger at the door had turned his head just in time to see his mother lift both hands to cover her mouth as she responded, “Oh Lord, it’s my mother, isn’t it?”

Twenty four hours later the Duncans were crammed into a 1962 Chevy Impala station wagon headed back to Blue Hill for Edna Taylor’s funeral. Montgomery had picked up tidbits of the details surrounding the tragedy but not enough to understand. But as the roar of the recapped tires against the interstate hummed him to sleep he wondered how it was that his mother knew who had died before the weary man in the black suit had even spoken.

On the morning of the 5th on Blue Hill, Edna was scurrying around trying to get everything together for her weekly trip into Buckingham Courthouse with her impatient, whirling dervish of a husband, Madison Taylor, older brother of Uriah and the clear alpha dog of his loud and boisterous clan. Montgomery’s grandfather had always been a source of fascination to him. His voice boomed out from his throat like the words had been shot out of a cannon which always startled him. He was perpetually in motion, a man of action who never slowed down for anything, even to eat. Montgomery remembered watching in awe as his larger than life grandfather devoured a bowl of cereal in what seemed to be a matter of seconds. The man was stone cold deaf and no doubt could hear very little of what his talkative grandson was saying while he followed him around as he did his morning chores in the barns at Blue Hill. This morning was unlike any other, Madison Taylor was in a hurry. He had loaded the metal jugs of milk in the back of the pick up truck and had been ready to leave fifteen minutes before Edna finally climbed into her seat. “You’ll be late for your own funeral,” he teased. “Maybe so,” she responded, “but I’ll be well dressed.”

The dirt road that split the property was notoriously hilly and narrow, its one lane barely wide enough for one car, let alone two. As it left the farm and got within a stone’s throw of the State road, there was a steep hill where if you made the trip in the morning you looked directly into the sun, temporarily blinding you until you reached the crest. At the top of the hill on this morning, Madison Taylor’s pickup truck was going fast, wheels spinning, trying to get a grip in the loose gravel. When he broke through the bright sunlight it was too late. He collided head on with a vehicle breaking through the sun at the same time sending Edna, in the days before seatbelts, headlong into the windshield. She died at the scene and for all practical purposes her death put an end to the idyllic life the Taylor family had built at Blue Hill. Within a couple years a grief stricken Madison Taylor had sold the house and land. He couldn’t bear being reminded of Edna at every turn in the great empty house. The loss of Blue Hill being the biggest ripple from Edna Taylor’s tragic and untimely death.

An eight year old’s memories are famously obscure and befuddled. Such was the case with Montgomery Duncan’s as he tried to piece together the details of the funeral. He remembered not being allowed to go inside the church. He was kept in a car in the parking lot with a group of other young cousins. It was 1966 and perhaps the thought was that young children might not be ready for an open casket. The one image that remained crystal clear was that of two strong uncles holding each arm of his oldest cousin, Richie who seemed beyond consolation as he staggered into the church. Richie was the oldest son of Edna’s first born war hero, Johnnie, the one who had appeared to her the night before D-Day twenty one years to the day of her death. As her first grandson, Richie had been particularly beloved. He had loved his grandmother back with equal devotion, so her loss had hit him especially hard. But the sight of him being helped into the church, so distraught and overwhelmed had brought tears to Montgomery’s eyes. It had been Richie who had been behind the wheel of the car that collided with Madison’s pick up truck. The trauma the accident would prove to be the most difficult chapter of the Taylor family’s history.

Richie went on to live an extraordinary life, overcoming the sort of tragedy that might have forever damaged a lesser man. Within three years he was earning combat medals in Vietnam as an Army Ranger. Upon returning to the States after the war, he married well, raised a family of beautiful children, and worked heroically in local law enforcement for years. For Montgomery, Richie Taylor would forever be a hero, a man who overcame the tragic fate that had visited him on a clear morning in the summer of 1966.






There were so many cousins. The Taylors were a sprawling clan, the family tree heavy with fruit. When Montgomery was a boy he was closest to Uncle Johnnie’s kids, particularly Anna, the youngest. They were about the same age and possessed the same propensity for mischief. As he sat at the desk in his library surrounded by his mother’s correspondence, he noticed a letter she had written to Anna in 1969 but never sent. It was so typical of Elizabeth Taylor to write such  letters. Whenever she had a thought she would write it down with the greatest of intentions of sharing, but somehow her busy life would conspire against follow through. This note was so kind and loving it brought a lump to his throat as he read. His mother was trying to encourage her niece who was worried sick about her brother Richie. Even though Anna was only ten, she watched Walter Cronkite on their grainy black and white RCA Victor every night like everyone else. She heard the dour old man give the day’s kill numbers from Vietnam and her young heart would break with worry. Anna, every night I lift Richie up in my prayers. Each night I beg the Lord for protection for your brother. And each night God answers my prayers.


Montgomery smiled. It was so like his mother, basking in her unique personal connection with the creator of the universe. Of all the millions of prayers raised each night by the dutiful and the desperate, Elizabeth Taylor’s prayers were heard and answered. It was an otherworldly relationship that defied not only logic but theological scrutiny. Nevertheless, she persisted with undimmed confidence.


As Montgomery sifted through the letters and random scraps of paper he found a faded photograph of Richie and Anna taken in 1968. There was Richie in his sharp Army Ranger uniform with it’s distinctive beret, his arm around his little sister’s shoulder. Probably a going away party from the looks of it. Anna had been crying.


He remembered a story at that moment that he hadn’t thought about in years. It had been told to him years ago by Patty, Anna’s older sister. For some unknown reason, Richie and Anna were having a sleepover in the horrid back room at Blue Hill, the sinister red sofa frowning at them through the darkness. Richie heard his grandmother’s shuffling footsteps coming from the kitchen down the dark hallway to their room. “Kids? Wake up now. Put on your shoes and follow me.”


Edna led them both to the kitchen then to the back door. “Somebody is in the pasture. See?”


Anna squinted through the window and saw a pair of lanterns swaying with the rhythm of people walking. They were half way down the hill from the cemetery on this cloudy, moonless night. 


“Who are they?” Anna asked


“I don’t know, child.” Edna answered. “But they’ve been walking back and forth out there for the last thirty minutes so they are probably lost. I want you kids to go out there and unlock the gate for them. Whoever they are, they’re going to catch their death out there.”


When Montgomery first heard the story he remembered thinking, as he did now, what an odd strategy. Two strangers trespassing on your property in the middle of the night and instead of carrying a shotgun, she sends her two defenseless grandchildren out to greet them armed only with a lantern and each other. But, such was the less jaded existence of farm life in 1960’s America.


Anna, terrified, stayed glued to her brother’s side as they walked down the back steps, through the yard and past the barn where their grandfather kept his Packard. By the time they reached the big swinging gate at the entrance to the pasture, they noticed that the lanterns had stopped swaying. Richie hollered out, “You guys lost? Nanny says you should come inside and warm up or you’re gonna catch your death!”


Anna never wavered on what happened next. Every time she told the story, she added details, changed others, but this was the one stalwart and reliable fact...the lanterns vanished.


Hogwash!” Montgomery had exclaimed the first time hearing the tail. “More like the men blew their lanterns out and ran away!”


Anna was adamant. “NO, Cousin. By this time our eyes had adjusted to the darkness. We both could see outlines of their bodies and their floppy hats. When those lanterns went out, their shadows left with them. Besides, if they had run away we would have heard those lanterns rattling. I’m telling you, the both of them vanished into thin air.”


Eventually Montgomery had stopped arguing the point, letting his cousin believe whatever she wanted to believe. Later, older and wiser Richie confirmed Anna’s version of the story, adding much needed gravitas to the tale. Many theories had sprung up over the years since seeking to guess the identity of the two lantern carriers. The most popular suggested that since Edna had seen them walking down from the graveyard, it was probably the ghost of Maggie Watson, the daughter of freed slaves who had worked at Blue Hill as a housekeeper for their Great Grandfather when he owned the place. Eventually Maggie and her husband had purchased a small plot of land just west of the graveyard and lived there until they both passed away. The small cabin they had built had been torn down years ago. It must have been the two of them searching for their old home, the only building either of them had ever owned.

Diet…Foiled

So, a couple weeks ago, Pam put us both on a diet. With only a couple of exceptions, we have both been faithful to its requirements. Pam has lost weight. I have not. This is a reversal of previous diet regimens we have done through the years where I would immediately drop ten pounds within two weeks while Pam struggled, which caused her great consternation and no small amount of personal resentment. Now apparently, my age and recalcitrant metabolism have caught up with me. So far, she has resisted gloating.

But, thanks to Gary Larson, I have stumbled upon the problem…




Tuesday, November 16, 2021

The Guest

The guest woke up five minutes before the alarm, eyes open, squinting across the way to the digital clock. 5:55 am. All of life comes down to waiting around for the next thing, he thought as his bare feet hit the floor. He liked the still hours before daylight, preferring the day before it had the chance to disappoint him. They all start out the same, dark, still and full of promise. He pressed the red button on the top of the clock as he passed on his way to the bathroom. Bending over the sink, he looked in the mirror and took inventory. Puffy, watery eyes. A three day growth of beard, spiked with white and gray. Fashionably bald head. The acne scars from forty summers ago reminding him that although he wasn’t the man he used to be, there were remnants of the younger man that still lingered. His teeth, still crooked, but no longer white.


But he was alive and reasonably healthy. Waiting around for the next thing seemed better than the alternative of having nothing to wait around for. Today the next thing was due to arrive. He would board a plane and fly back home, having spent a week scouting out potential properties for the real estate investment trust he had started and run for over twenty years. It was the sort of five day working trip that had become a customary part of his life. He would fly out on Monday mornings and spend his time driving from site to site for 10 hours a day, then collapse in his hotel bed at night. When sleep finally came it was spotty and fretful. Then on Friday he would fly home, stop by the office then drive home to his wife of 30 years, who would greet him at the door with a warm smile a soft hug and a gin and tonic. She would ask him about his week with what passed as genuine interest. She would listen to a version of the same story he had been telling for nearly half their lives together. She would nod and make the same observations she always made…that sounds like it has potential…oh for heaven’s sake, that’s crazy. Then, as a signal to her husband that it was time to wrap it up and listen while she talked about her week,  she would say…well, I’m just thankful you’re back home safe and sound.


They were both waiting around for the next thing.


But restlessness was not the same thing as ingratitude. Life was good. They had plenty of money in the bank and they loved each other. The only thing left to overcome was the nagging feeling that there was simply nothing left to do. It was the price paid for accomplishments coming often and early in life, the suspicion that you have peaked too soon, that the rest of your life will be a series of curiously mild disappointments. 


But today there was one more property to look at and a plane to catch. He stood at the window of his hotel room in his underwear watching the street lights turning red and green through the mist of a morning rain. The streets were empty except for a single white van going too fast towards the red lights at the corner below. The van skidded to a stop with its side door open, something was thrown onto the curb, then it sped away, running the red light and disappearing out of view. Probably the morning newspapers, he thought, until he took a closer look. It was covered in a long brown jacket, with two boots sticking out of one end and a head out of the other. Whoever it was wasn’t moving and the rain was coming down harder now. He looked on with detachment. Whatever was playing out on the streets below was none of his business. It was a big city. Strange things happen in the wee hours in big cities. Nevertheless, he wished he had stayed in bed a while longer and not been up to see it. Now the image would be stuck in his head all day, an image of a human being being discarded on a sidewalk in front of his hotel in the pouring rain. But, someone will walk by soon and see him, probably one of the bellmen at the entrance of the hotel right across the street. Either that or someone walking to work on the sidewalk will see him. What time was it? Five in the morning. When do city people start filling the sidewalks these days? He took one more look then stepped in the shower, the hottest water he could stand. Where are the cops when you need one?,  he thought as the steam rose around him. Half and hour later, clean and dressed for the day, he walked over to the window. It had moved, no longer splayed out on the sidewalk like it had fallen from the sky. Now, back up against the wall, knees pulled up tight to the chest and face turned skyward, a broad smile on the face. The rain had stopped and he found himself in the elevator headed down for a closer look.


The hotel lobby smelled like new things, new carpet and new furniture. A recent remodel had turned the space into something obscure and disjointed. There was a feeling that it hadn’t been used enough, too few people had spent enough time in it to make it feel human. It was too clean, felt too much like a movie set. Even the guys and girls behind the computer screens in their blue blazers and great haircuts looked brand new, like robots manufactured for this one job of smiling broadly and welcoming guests. When he walked through the massive revolving doors that led out to the curved entryway, the uniformed bellman wore the same blazer, along with a sharp and tidy cap splashed with a bright red brim and white gloves. Less than 100 feet away, sat the man who had been dumped on the sidewalk thirty minutes ago, slumped against the First and Merchants Bank, still smiling up at the sky. 


“Good morning Sir,” smiled the bell captain.


“I was up in my room earlier when I noticed a van speed by and dump that man over there on the sidewalk,” he replied, pointing across the way at the smiling man in the wet brown coat. “Did you see the van?”


The bell captain maintained his officious smile and answered, “I’m afraid I didn’t sir. But I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s a regular on that sidewalk. ‘Homeless but harmless’ we like to say.”


The guest looked away from the bell captain, suddenly annoyed by his smile. The sun peaked through the clouds and lit up the puddles in the street, streaked with oil, a sheen of color along the edges. He walked to the corner and even though the streets were still empty, waited for the lights to change before walking across to the sidewalk in front of the bank. The closer he got to the man the less sure of himself he felt. Why was he standing beside this poor soul this early in the morning in a city a thousand miles from home?


His eyes were closed, the smile radiant, his head turned upward, the morning sun revealing the wrinkles and scars of a life lived outside. The smell of him was bracing, something close to wet grass and empty dumpsters. To his left, hidden away in an alcove of the bank’s facade was a backpack. The guest hadn’t noticed it before. It was covered in duct tape held together with bungee chords wrapped tight around its exterior. His left hand lay on top of the backpack, his right hand closed tightly into a fist in his lap. Altogether, the man gave off a miserable appearance, looking haggard and impossibly uncomfortable. Yet, he smiled, the happiest of smiles, one that would be expected to accompany the most delightful memory brought forth from the sweetest of dreams. But he was wet, filthy and smelled increasingly like damp mown grass. The guest looked down on him with pity and was about to turn around and head back to the hotel when the man spoke.


“Anything I can help you with on this fine morning, sir?” He opened his eyes and squinted up into the sun revealing eyes that although bloodshot, couldn’t hide their bright steel blue color.


When he heard the voice he took a step back, startled by the clarity and deep baritone, then felt embarrassed by the fear. Whatever this man was, he seemed harmless.


“I’m sorry, I er…I am a guest at the Bouffant across the street and I…”


“The bank don’t open until 9:00.”


“No, I know…I mean…I don’t need the bank. I just saw you get thrown out of a van an hour or so ago from my room up there and wanted to check on you.”


“You were up early then…”


“Yes, I suppose I was.”


The sun had broken through the morning clouds and the street was awash in bright light now with only wispy thin clouds racing by against the bright blue. The light revealed more than it explained in the man’s face. But even when he spoke, the smile remained in place.


“I asked the Bellman if he had seen anything…”


“That’s Carl. Carl don’t see nothing,” then a low laugh.


“So, are you alright? Looked like a rough fall from up there,” pointing at the wall of glass at the Bouffant.


“It was nothing. Just a misunderstanding. You ever have one of those?”


“Quite a few. But generally mine don’t involve being thrown out of a moving vehicle.” 


“Well, I’d imagine you have a higher class of associates than me,” then another laugh, this one warmer and more sincere.


The guest couldn’t hide a smile of his own. He looked down at the man and felt awkward towering over him. He felt a momentary urge to sit beside him, then thought better of it and extended a hand instead.


“Look, I’ve got a couple hours before my appointment. Would you like something to eat?”


“You mean like…breakfast?”


“Sure. Breakfast.”


“I don’t know, brother. You eat too big a breakfast and by nightfall you’re so hungry you could eat your shoes…”


“ My Mother always insisted that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.”


The man reached for the guest’s hand and got to his feet. 


“Your Momma tell you that?”


“Yes, among many other things.”


“Maybe some coffee. That would be nice. There’s a Dunkin’ around the corner.”


The guest looked up and down the street, then back at the hotel where his eyes locked onto Carl’s. He didn’t understand what it was about the Bell Captain that had annoyed him so. Maybe it was the homeless but harmless remark that had seemed uncharitable and too dismissive. Now, Carl was looking on with thinly veiled concern at his interaction with one of the harmless. 


How about you come with me to the restaurant in the hotel. It’s 7:00 o’clock. They just opened.”


“You mean…the Bouffant?” For the first time the smile ran away from his face. “They won’t let me in there.”


“I’ve stayed in this hotel at least a dozen times. I’m a Bouffant Rewards member. They will let anyone in I bring with me. You are my guest this morning. And, I’m sorry…what’s your name?”


“No names, man. You don’t need to know my name and I don’t need to know yours. That ok with you?”


The guest smiled then glanced at Carl who was still watching their every move. “I’m fine with no names. Let’s go get breakfast.”


The guest noticed a slight limp in his walk as they crossed the street. He wondered how old he was. There was no way of telling, probably much younger than he looked. Carl stepped towards them as they neared the revolving door, a look of grave concern on his face masked by the most insincere of smiles. He looked at the guest and said, “I see you’ve met Phillip.”


The guest stopped to revel in the awkwardness of the moment. He had taken a keen dislike to the Bell Captain and was now enjoying his discomfort, something that came as a surprise to him, he not being the sort of man who spent very much time perpetuating or participating in drama. But, as he noticed how disturbed at the prospect of this man entering the hotel the Bell Captain was, he leaned in with great vigor. “Yes, I have. As it turns out, neither of us have had breakfast. So, we decided to have it together in the Guilford, since it opens at 7:00.”


The Bell Captain’s smile was gone, replaced with incredulous horror. “I’m sorry. Is Phillip a guest of the Bouffant?”


“No.” Now it was the guest’s turn for an insincere smile. “However, he is my guest.” Then they both stepped into the revolving door and left the Bell Captain to his incredulity. Inside the slowly moving door, the full extent of his smell was overpowering, like a dog who had been left outside in the rain all day, mixed with the body odor of a man who hadn’t taken a shower in weeks. He looked at the guest and laughed, “That Carl is an asshole. Phillip ain’t my name man. Do I look like a “Phillip” to you? I told him that was my name one time a few months ago and he believed it. Dumb as a box of hammers, that one.”


As the door finally ushered them into the hotel lobby, the man looked around in disbelief, as if walking into a fancy hotel for the first time, or so the guest thought in his ignorance.


“What the hell have they done to this place?” He asked. “If they were going for inauthentic and unwelcoming, they hit it out of the park.”


The guest was surprised but didn’t disagree. “Yes, I was here about a year ago and they were just starting a redesign, but I hadn’t seen the change until I got here yesterday. Does give off a certain amount of…”


“Bullshit aesthetic,” the man offered.


“Yes. That about sums it up.” Who is this man, the guest wondered as he led them towards the entrance to the Guilford and it’s equally horrified maitre’d, who, in his defense, could probably smell them coming from across the lobby.


“Two for breakfast,” the guest said. 





The maitre’d scanned the large dining room with its square tables covered with white linen and saw only four tables occupied with guests. He handed two menus to a waiter who led them to a table in the back corner of the dining room as far away from the other guests as was possible. 


The waiter placed one menu in front of the guest and asked if the table wanted coffee. The guest answered, “Yes, coffee would be nice…along with one more menu.” The waiter smiled stiffly, backed away to make room for the coffee tray consisting of one silver pot along with a small container of real cream and a glass bowl filled with brown sugar cubes. The guest had become attached to the Bouffant over the years for this very reason, first class, old school touches of grace. He could have stayed in a Courtside or Homewood Suites for half the money, but he much preferred linen table cloths and real waiters to the serve yourself continental breakfast fare at the cheaper places. It was a life upgrade that he could afford, had earned and enjoyed. But as he looked across the table at his guest, who had taken ahold of the shiny silver pot with a gnarled and dirty hand, he felt conspicuous in the still mostly empty dining room. He watched him pour the cream in his cup, then raise the steaming cup to his lips. After taking a silent taste he set the cup down and said, “Gave up sugar years ago. Don’t usually take cream either but that’s the good stuff.”


The waiter returned with a menu, placed it down in front of him, being careful not to make eye contact with anyone but the impertinent guest who was responsible for this outrage. 


The guest carefully studied the man across the table. Despite everything that was clearly evident, there was something odd about him, something that didn’t add up. He watched him sipping his coffee, his eyes studying every detail of the room as if he were taken mental inventory.


“This place is famous for their omelettes. I am particularly fond of the Southwestern, “ the guest offered by way of recommendation.


“Not a big breakfast eater. Maybe some toast.”


“You sure? You look like you could use a good meal.”


“Not this early in the day.” Then he placed his cup on the table, leaned closer to the guest as if preparing to whisper a secret, “Looks to me like you’re just dying to ask me a question but can’t find the right words…”


“How did you end up living on the streets?” 


The man laughed and leaned back into his chair. “That’s better! Those are good words!”


“And what was the deal with getting thrown out of that car this morning? I mean, its not every day when you see something like that so naturally, I’m curious.”


“You gotta let that go, man. Sometimes you just get in the wrong vehicle, brother. That’s all that was. As far as why I’m living on the streets, that’s much more complicated. Where do you live?”


“Me? I live back east.”


“In a house?”


“Yes. A house.”


“So the only thing different about you and me is that you live a thousand miles from here, in a house, while I live over there across the street…and you smell better, and got nicer clothes, probably a fine lookin’ wife and lots of money in the bank, while I live up against a bank…so we not that different.” Another radiant smile lit up the man’s face as he poured himself another cup, this time taking it black. “That creamer gonna make me constipated if I’m not careful.”


“But when did it all start? How did you get here?”


“Got fired from the company I worked for back in the day. Same company that built this building we sitting in. It was a misunderstanding. Accused me of stealing another man’s tools. Wouldn’t give me a recommendation, so it was hard to find work. I bounced around some. Lived at the YMCA downtown for a while. Then one day I woke up and realized I liked having no one bossing me around. I kinda enjoyed the challenge of making my way day by day. Weather around here is mostly fair and when it gets too cold or too damp there’s dozens of shelters for folks like me. But I only go there as a last resort. Those bastards are crazy man.”


He nibbled at his toast like a man with a full stomach. He worked his napkin expertly, making sure no crumbs clung to his beard. After finishing his second cup of coffee, he turned to his sweating glass of ice water and downed it in one gulp. “It’s essential that you stay hydrated. That’s what they always tell us at the shelter.”


The guest finished his omelette, took the napkin out of his lap and placed it gently on the table.


“But how can you stand the uncertainty of it all? I mean, what do you do for money?”


“What uncertainty? I know exactly what’s gonna happen every day. The sun will rise in the east and set in the west. I’ll set up shop at my spot just before the lunch crowd hits the sidewalks. By one o’clock I will have picked up twenty or thirty dollars in tips.”


“Tips?”


“I tell them jokes and the nice ones give me tips.”


“You’re a pan handler.”


“Who pays his own way in the world.”


“Who relies on the kindness of strangers.”


“Yes.”


They stopped to rest. Each of them unsure what was next.


The man asked the guest, “You’ve asked all the questions. Now I’ve got one. Why are you sitting across the table at the Guilford having breakfast with a bum off the streets?”


The waiter slipped the bill onto the edge of the table without comment. The guest added the bill to his room charges, signed the receipt and placed the pen on top. Then he looked up and answered, “Because…you were the next thing.”


Monday, November 15, 2021

Pale and Pathetic

What in the Sam Hill is going on with all these people putting their Christmas trees up before THANKSGIVING?? As CEO and President of the Thanksgiving is Better Than Christmas Association, I am appalled. Before we even get the chance to be thankful for the manifold blessings in our lives, we are hellbent on erecting a Christmas tree, that great heathen symbol of excess. (Look it up).


VS.



Our neighbors had a busy weekend getting the jump on us. By the time the sun set last night, the sparkling lights could be seen through their picture windows, taunting me with their too much/too soon Christmas cheer. Its hard to fault them, what with their little ones all over the place. Kids aren’t yet old enough to appreciate the charms of Thanksgiving with its themes of gratitude and the delights of hearth and home. Especially since there are no gifts. Perhaps if Thanksgiving came with its own outlandish mythology, maybe a Thanksgiving spirit who made his appearance through the smoke of only the most sincere fires from the most appreciative fireplaces, bestowing hearts of gratitude on every boy and girl in the land. Who am I kidding? How could a Thanksgiving smoke spirit handing out gratefulness compete with a fat man dolling out toys to every kid, angel or brat?

Alas, Thanksgiving will forever play second fiddle to Christmas. Aside from the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior, Christmas is to Thanksgiving what the Monkees were to the Beatles, a pale and pathetic knock-off.

But, I have already forgiven my over-eager neighbors. It is their only real flaw.