Monthly Archives: May 2020

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Time Man Alarm Clock by Miriam Fotos Pixabay

Harry realizes he’s going to be late for work yet again. Jack Loman, his boss at Berkeley’s Department Store, is going to fire him for sure. Harry already has three warnings.

He jumps out of bed and dashes into the bathroom. He quickly washes his face and hands, brushes his teeth, and runs a comb through his overgrown hair. He needs a shave. But no time for that. No time for a shower either. He pulls on yesterday’s clothes that he had tossed over the shower door last night. Checked his pants pockets for his wallet. Grabs his shoes and dirty socks and runs out the front door and slams it shut, and quick steps it to his car. He pulls on the door and realizes it’s locked, and he doesn’t have the keys. “Crap.”

Harry considers putting on his shoes and socks but decides to forgo it. He runs so fast toward the door that he thinks he might have been lifted off the ground for a few moments. He jerks the doorknob hard and nearly dislocates his shoulder. He realizes the door is indeed locked.

Harry thinks,” What now? What now?” He screams a thousand expletives in his head and jumps up a down a few times for good measure. He knows, at some level, he is acting like a five-year-old having a tantrum. He has lost it. He is going to be late again. His boss warned him the next time he was late, his goose is cooked, and he was getting fired. There won’t be any other chances. He’s done; no going back from fired.

At that moment, he realizes that he left the kitchen window open last night. If he is able to boost himself up somehow, he can get his keys. And it isn’t totally impossible that he might just make it to work if he drives like a demon. He decides to go for it.

He double-times it to the back of the house, blocking out the pain of stepping on sticks and stones the whole way. He sees the window. He decides to take a flying leap by running at top speed and propelling himself through the open window. He makes it, and then he realizes there is a full sink of dirty dishes in the sink. He hits the dishes and cups and forks and spoons head first. Luckily there aren’t any steak knives in there.

“Shit.” He screams at the top of his voice. His face feels like he got hit by a Mach Truck. He rolls out of the sink headfirst and lands on his back with his legs splayed out in front of him. He doesn’t know how he even accomplished it. But it seems like a ray of sunshine in the middle of a hurricane. He feels his face; there is some bleeding but not too bad. He might look like he got into some kind of brawl at a biker bar. At least, that’s what he plans on telling everyone.

He pushes himself up off the floor. And limps over to the hooks by the door and reaches out to grab his keys. They aren’t there. He has a strong impulse to jump up and down again. He manages to suppress it.

At that moment, he pats his pants pockets. And low and behold, his keys are in his pants pocket. If he weren’t sore all over, he would do an Irish Jig. Instead, he heads out the back door towards the driveway, keys in hand. He slams them home in the door lock and yanks the door open. This hurts his arm and shoulder.

He gets in the car and starts it up. The engine grinds a little but doesn’t start up right away, and then it suddenly catches. As the engine catches and Harry backs out of the driveway like a bat out of hell. And he puts the peddle to the metal and is finally on his way.

He takes Main Street to Poplar Avenue and sees the turn for Interstate 40, and enters the highway without really looking. And he nearly hits the guy in front of him. He shoots him the bird. Harry keeps going; barring some unforeseen event, he should be getting off the 40 in about six minutes. And that is when he realizes that the red warning light is telling him he’s out of gas. His car stops as Harry pulls it to the shoulder of the road. Harry repeatedly bangs the steering wheel with his open palms. A tear rolls down his battered cheek. He pulls the keys out and stuffs them in his pocket.

He slams the door shut and starts walking off the ramp onto Mt. Ephraim Blvd. As he walks, he sticks his thumb out, hoping someone, anyone, will take pity on him and give him a ride.

After about five minutes of walking down the busy road, he is covered in dust and even managed to step on a dead animal of some kind. He doesn’t bother to take a closer look. He hears someone beep at him, either telling him to move or offering to give him a ride.

He looks back at the car beeping, and he sees some fat guy gesturing at him to get in his car, which he has slowed down to a halt. He walks over to the car, and the guy gestures at him to get in. He does. Harry is about to say,” Thanks, buddy,” when he realizes that the fat guy in the driver’s seat is none other than his boss. He doesn’t know if he should cry or laugh, so he does both.

His boss leans over and says, “Rough morning, Harry?”

Corona Virus- May 2nd, 2020

Another week has passed, and I’m still here, and so are you if you are reading this. I ‘m glad for that. May is my favorite month. Probably because my birthday is May 24 and it’s Spring. The season I love the most.

Photo by Bob Culver

Early Spring – our small Koi pond

As I look out my kitchen window, I see our little pond that we made three and a half years ago when we first moved here to North Carolina. The Irises and Peonies are in full bloom, and I can see the Koi swimming happily around in a circle. Their world is small, but they never knew any other life, and so they are content.

Unfortunately, none of us can say the same. It was such a short time ago that our lives were so different. I wake up every morning and remember again that my life and yours and everyone’s has changed perhaps forever. We will probably never feel the same again. We will never feel completely safe or that our loved ones are safe either. On the news, on the internet, we are reminded that this Virus will probably return every winter to threaten our very lives and way of life.

This fact is a reminder that we humans never had control of many things in our world. We all believed that we were in charge, but we are not. We live on this planet, but it does not belong to us. We have not respected it, we have polluted the land, the air, the water. We are steadily depopulating our world of hundreds, if not thousands of species that shared the earth.

We are greedily killing them by deforestation, or murdering them as a recreational activity. We have polluted the ocean with our plastics waste and garbage and trash. We have caused the climate change that is occurring as I write this.

The weather here in NC is schizophrenic during this past winter we had days when the temperature was 87 degrees and then the next it dropped down to the mid-thirties. We were inundated with rain and wind. You never knew what the next day’s weather would be. Last summer, the heat was unbearable, and the hottest Summer ever recorded. Natures way of reminding us that we are not in charge. And that actions have consequences.

And yet because we humans have to isolate ourselves at home, there have been positive changes. The air quality is improving all across the globe because we are not driving our cars on the roads and in our cities.

Animals feel safe coming out and visiting areas that they haven’t been seen in decades. There is a healing taking place on our planet, and it is a clear message that we humans are the cause of the problems. That all our thoughtless, selfish actions have had devastating consequences. Can we learn this lesson? I hope so. This time of loss for us has given us perhaps our last chance to change our behavior and save ourselves and our home, the earth.  We have an opportunity to look at a distance and gain a better perspective,

My hope is we do acknowledge that we have perhaps our last opportunity to save our planet, our home. And we can start making the changes that will ultimately rescue this planet and ourselves.

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LOVEY

Lovey, the circus elephant

Lovey is exhausted and anxious. She’s been cooped up in the hot, dirty van for almost two days. Her legs are restless; she’s so thirsty that she begins to tremble. She trumpets her fear and discomfort for all to hear if anyone bothers to listen. She’s angry. She hasn’t felt anything for a long time, but she feels red-hot anger now. She rocks back and forth, hitting the sides of the van so violently that the van sways and rocks with her. The driver of the van yells, “Stop Lovey, stop” to no avail. He calls his boss on his cell phone. “You have to stop, so I can let Lovey out, or she’s going to cause herself and the van untold damage.”

The owner agrees to stop in the next empty lot he sees. And stay for the night, take care of the animals, and let everyone rest before their next performance. The last caravan pulls into the deserted parking lot well past midnight. Time and the sun have faded the painting of the bearded lady on the side of the van. But you can still clearly see her glamorous figure clad in a red, white, and blue ballerina tutu. Her glorious red beard is there for all to admire.

They had driven almost six hundred miles in the last two days. Everyone in the Three Ringed Circus is extremely tired, hot, and sweaty. It was getting harder and harder to find new venues. The public wants to see the glamour and incredible feats of courage and flying acrobats, doing death-defying acts. They want their animals wild, but safe, looking healthy and happy. But they weren’t getting that from Three-Ring Circus. It’s on the last leg of a journey that began its’ history in the early 1950s. Most of the famous performers have retired or moved on, or just disappeared from sight altogether.

When Gaucho pulls open the sliding doors to the van, Lovey trumpets as loud as she can, the only thing keeping her in the van is the shackles on her ankles. Gaucho has the bullock in his hand and shows it to Lovey. Usually, this is enough to calm her down. She knows from many years of experience that if it slaps against her sensitive skin, it will sting for a very long time and might well cut her. If the cut becomes infected, the circus doesn’t have a veterinarian on staff. And certainly, the little towns that they don’t have a wild animal vet. She would be a very sick elephant and might die from a simple injury. The circus often only had outdated medications and no money to spend on the care that these animals need. In the wild,  elephants often walk up to fifty miles a day across the savanna and live as long as fifty years.

Animals kept in circuses, even the famous, moneyed ones lived an average of twelve years. Gaucho steps back, he knows this animal has tremendous power and weight behind her, but he’s never seen her like this. He has been her trainer for five years. He knows from talking to the other carnies that Lovey and has been with the circus for a long time. And that at one time, she had a mate, named Ganesha a massive elephant from India. He had sickened and died before a large animal vet could be found. Lovey had been very attached to him and mourned his death for many years. He was told that she was never the same after his death. She had refused to perform and sometimes refused to eat or drink.

She has a big heart, and the loss had broken it. Elephants are herd animals, and she was here alone with no other elephants. She was near animals that would have been a threat to her if she were still living in the wild. Her life with the circus was unnatural and very stressful for her and all the other wild creatures that are captive here.

Gaucho walks over to the supply truck and pulls out a wagon that contains water. Luckily, they had filled all the containers upon their last stop. He grabs a bucket and puts it in the wagon. He pulls down the ramp and hurriedly pulls the wagon down the ramp and over to the terrified and terrifying Lovey. He carefully slides the bucket next to her and fills it with water. Lovey’s about to kick the bucket away then, she realizes it’s water. She puts her trunk down into the bucket and sprays the water across her back and then again into the bucket and quenches her thirst. She feels momentarily relieved and quiets.

Gaucho slowly and carefully unchains her ankles. By this time, many of the circus performers and all of the grunts are standing behind Gaucho. “Stay back, fools, get away from here while I take care of Lovey. Unless you want to be pummeled into the earth.” Gaucho waits for a few moments then give Lovey the trunk-up signal. Lovey becomes enraged and begins trumpeting loudly and stamps her feet. There’s a look of fire in her eyes, and it’s at that moment that Gaucho knows to get the hell out of the way and shouts.” Run, run.” He follows his own good advice just in time,

Lovey charges out of the van and begins running, running for her life. In her mind, she sees before her the golden savanna grasses being blown by the soft breeze and the cool water of the elephant water hole of her youth in the distance. She’s determined to reach it at any cost. She will run down anything that tries to prevent her from arriving there. She’s saving her life. Her instinct for self-preservation kicks in, and she runs full tilt, there’s no stopping her.

Everyone who has been watching her now disappears into the wind, not wanting to be trampled by this behemoth that has lost her mind. Someone has called the coffer, and he arrives just in time to see the elephant charging his jeep. He quickly reaches behind him to get his rifle and aims it at her head and pulls the trigger, and then again for good measure. Lovey keeps moving momentarily before the message gets to her brain that she’s dead. And then she drops to the ground, finally free, free to travel the land of her birth, among her tribe. She sees her beloved Ganesha, she feels love fill her huge heart and then peace. __________________________________