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Excerpt from Weasel - Growing Up Magicial and Musical Family
Current mood:  nostalgic
Category: Writing and Poetry
Where does your father work? This is a question young men are asked all the time. Young women are likely to ask it, I imagine, in the spirit of a secular kind of astrology. Who will you be in ten years, and do I want any of that? Conventional wisdom is that every young man, like the weeping Jesus Gethsemane, has only two choices when it comes to his father: rejection or emulation. In some ways my father and I could not have been any more different. While I inherited his sense of humor, his loyalty, and his lycanthropy of a hairy back, I was my mother's son in all matters of creativity and emotion. I write fiction, sing in the car, and often feel before I think. As a child I could anticipate my mother because her heart was mine. My father remained more mysterious.
Where does your father work? I had always answered thus: "My father is a Salvation Army officer." This typically resulted in bewildered looks. "He's a what?" I'd repeat it and add, "My mother, too."
"How can you stand it?" was one of the most typical questions.
The truth was, however, that my parents and I got along very well and a liked that they were in the Salvation Army. I maintained a mostly B average in high school and although I think they may have regarded my determination to be a novelist as a dreamer's errand, and lurking in our history were my various uncovered beer, cigar, and marijuana caches – even so, we have always been close.
As I grew older, I noticed the troubles many of my friends had with their fathers: the animosities and disappointments, held so long in the arrears of late adolescence, suddenly coming up due on both ends. But my father and I, if anything, had grown closer, even as I grew to be more and more like my mother.
Where does your father work? This is a question that firmly resided at the top of the questions I hoped the other kids at school wouldn't ask. My answer inevitably led to two or three follow up questions that seemed embedded on the collective psyche of junior high school society. "Do you get all your clothing there?" Certainly not! I knew that they were referring to the Salvation Army thrift stores that were peppered across northern New Jersey.
Second, "Do you keep the money that people put in the bucket?" My response was always a resounding NO, which is also quite was true. Besides, it's called a kettle…. Hello. It didn't matter how many kids asked me that question I was always insulted and a bit angry when they asked. And it wasn't that I was mad at them for asking but more for the fact that I'd recite off a laundry list of things the Salvation Army did with the money to help people in the community and the fact that the Army is a church. This was followed by more bewildered stares. Unfortunately, I fell into this trap more than once. Informing them of the work of the Army was one thing. Telling them that it was a church effectively marked me as the preacher's brat, Jesus freak, the Bible-thumping church kid, and ever the teeth-clinching insult of God Boy. "Jesus freaks, out in the street, handing tickets out for God." Thank you, Elton John.
The third question – one I particularly dreaded – was, "Do you where one of funny uniforms?" In this case, the answer was yes, I did. In fact, at one time all of my brothers and one sister wore those funny uniforms when we attended Sunday services - called meetings in the Salvation Army - and when we took part in band duties such as outdoor services (open-air meetings) and while staffing one of the red kettle stands at Christmastime.
Yeah, I wore the uniform, went to the meetings, and played cornet in the band. That brings me to what would become a lifetime struggle.
I was growing up magical in a musical family. My brothers and sister played in the band - trombone, Bb flat bass, E flat alto horn, and cornet respectively. My mother played the baritone horn and my father played the cornet… well. They all played well for that matter. My parents and my brothers play to this day! Then there was me. I took some early cornet lessons when I was seven or eight and was able to rise to a level of competence to sit in the coveted second chair in the middle school band. Could have ended there but for a few misguided years of actually practicing for an hour or so every day to the point where I was accepted into college as a trumpet major in the music department of Jersey City State College. But I digress.
When I say that I grew up magical it is necessary to go back to the very beginning.
It was early December in 1974 in the city of Waterbury, Connecticut when I first discovered my love for things magical. I was helping my father man one of those Salvation Army Christmas kettles on a sidewalk downtown. He was paying me the rich sum of fifty cents an hour for my work (?). We were directly in front of a Woolworth's Five & Dime display window and while ringing the bell or playing cornet duets with my father, I was spying all of the most wonderful gifts that I could buy for my family.
There was a hand-juicer for my mother and a red, blue, and gold striped tie – a bit loud but it only cost $1.25. I knew my father would love it. I began to scan the veritable treasure trove of perfect gifts for the rest of the family when I saw it - Marshall Brodien's TV Magic Set.
I stopped breathing and could only stare at the gleaming black box with Marshall Brodien's smiling face – actually he was laughing as he pointed a magician's wand mysteriously at photographs that promised the magic inside. There was a bottle suspended by a rope, and a pitcher that caused milk to vanish, a vase that never ran dry, a wand that stuck to your open hand (Ohmygod!) and two rainbows held side by side – which one was longer? I didn't know - but I was going to find out!
I knew that I was going to buy that magic set but at fifty cents an hour and nearly all my Christmas shopping still unfinished I was going to need a plan. [to be continued]
8:50 AM
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