Christmas as a Child... enjoy THOR

In 1973 my father purchased an old three story Victorian on 7321 Takoma Avenue Maryland. A house with a history a story that started in 1878 when it was built for one of the two major land owners of Takoma Park M.D. and then transported in 1931 on logs with horse teams three blocks to it’s present location. This house would be the place where my childhood would be played out. When I first saw the house we were to live in it shot into the sky above the strange willow tree that reached to the sky in with strange arms and green tuffs like something from a Dr. Suess book. The front of the house had four great windows stacked on top of each other with a porch to our right with a white icing trim. In the middle behind a small round azalea that turned pink in the spring like I swear on of those marshmallow things with the coconut, hostess I think, lay a big red door as the center piece of a two small pillared cement porch. We entered the house into a small foyer straight ahead where the stairs to the second floor on the left hand the dinning room on the right lay the living room a room with a warning; for the 13 foot ceiling was falling in. We were not allowed to enter the room until it was finished my father decree, but you can look in he added. My father pulled back the plastic and we looked into the gloomy room. It ran the length of the house making the room now large to me now, at five years old, it was a cavern, a colossal cavern that my father, year after year, would fill with the largest Christmas tree possible. The ceiling was twelve feet eight inches which in my father’s eyes could hold a fourteen foot tree once we cut off the bottom and trimmed the top. I remember the age old battle my father a piece of twine, two nails, a Christmas tree with an average base of eight feet which could swallow a small child easily, and the ever present gravity which never seemed to change tactics during it’s run in with my father. My father did, every year he would have a new plan. My mother and I were his accomplishes, following his direction, until at least once the tree would crash into the wall, or topple on top of me or my mother completely engulfing one or the other of us. My father once brought a hammer and step stool into the mix. This was bad and my mother and I new it. My little sister Alicia was there that year so my mother was ridding herd on her at a safe distance. My father’s first foray up the step stool twine attached to the tree hammer in hand leaning in a precarious fashion and then zeroed in on his nail hook was successful. Well he picked the easy side first. The other lay in the corner behind the tree. What happened next was one of those things that I remember in slow motion. I believe it has to do with the fact that I move into an arena of heightened awareness when in danger which allows me to get away to safety before doom descends. I was tired of getting caught under the tree, and without mom’s voice and the natural maternal need to keep her child safe from harm; I might be in trouble. I’m not really sure how my father’s gyros work but some how he can manipulate hand tools or machinery with some unseen ability which I still haven’t figured out. None the less Dad began his assent up the step stool, hammer in one hand and the nail in the side of his mouth while the other side of his mouth was telling me which branches I should hold and where to stand. All this I considered dubious, yet I trusted my Dad, and the tree though large couldn’t kill me, just hold me to the ground like some great pine claw with needles for hair. I forgot to tell you in his other hand he had the twine which of course was looped around the tree I was holding, and looped around his hand. Now you are starting to see the picture. In short there where a lot of variables, making my contribution negligible at best, Dad began by pulling the nail from his mouth and while holding the tree’s weight with the hand holding the twine which worked well. He raised the hammer zeroed in on his nail, while his tongue did flips and turns in his mouth, swung, and missed catching his thumb instead. Everything happened at once, the hand holding the twine decided to take it personal that it had been hit in the thumb and quite its job post haste which included letting go of the twine and for good measure slipping off the wall towards the corner with my dad right behind it. Crash went Dad behind the tree where there wasn’t enough room for him which set into motion the law of equal and opposite action; meanwhile I am on the other side of the tree about to receive the opposite action. Everything went dark green, I herd my Mom give a little gasp and yell, “Jerry”. I was trapped, yet I had not let go of the branches I was holding like a good son. I wanted the tree up other wise no Santa and no Santa means no gifts or maybe I was just holding fast like a sailor on the stormy seas. My parents quickly pulled the tree up into the air, and my Mom grabbed my legs and pulled me out. I still had not let go and found myself with two hands full of pine needles. We got the tree up finally without any more miss haps. The next year my mom wanted a blue spruce which is an expensive tree and only comes in smaller sizes. Dad had to deal with a tree that was only ten feet tall which was a literal reprieve from the governor. The twine was there as usual for it housed all the Christmas cards we would receive; some things were not meant to change.

“Monsters" aka The Twins, Serial Killers

 

My worst nightmares are by far using nightmares, where I am in a world, where again am in the grips of some drug with mind racing as I attempt to do more or find more. All rules still apply this is a nightmare ever so more real cause I’m in a twisted state of long ago.

I want to tell you now. I have seen and been close to real dark people, big and small, but I never seen what my mind showed me. I do not like even writing this one down, but am just the …….sleep please……

 

It was Mount Vernon Baltimore Maryland area one of those back ally apartments near student housing on St Paul street about 13 blocks up. The School had several apartments they used as student housing in the old brown stones and huge historic houses with twists and turns for three or some five floors. I knew the guy hadn’t been seen and we thought he was busted. We had got coke from him before while at college. I was in Baltimore, a crack head near the end of my second year. I stopped, but those months were hard, hard lessons in life to a young man in his twenties to learn when he should have been a student.

We entered into the house and we going through things, but the house seemed to have been tossed all ready, things lay about in disarray. I was looking for a score, cocaine, or cash for coke. I was high and it mattered for about four hours real bad to get more when you have been smoking. Some people went to lengths, some massive and on the news as car jackings, muggings, robberies, shootings and I was doing my length not much in balance entering this house looking for drugs, twisted. Not by any means a criminal, really just twisted in my nightmares need to find the drugs, and to out and get high. I counted the minuets home once we found his stash of coke. I was all set up my little station for cooking, clean again waiting. We were on different floors the girl was downstairs; I up in his room the top floor where the room was dashed to and from and trampled and a book shelf three feet high recessed in the wall had a few clothes thrown against it, but a shape immerged as I reached for it a camera hidden by the mess, it was his camera and video recorder pointing into the room. It was like mine; I turned it on, just to see, if it worked, I thought. I saw, his face but not, it was the face of a dead man, eyes with no life, they held him by a big hand compared to his light frame by one big hand and two men big tattooed, with masks like wresters or some cheap fetish movie red and blue on naked next to the body as the last picture of the camera was like a trophy shot. It doesn’t come fast enough, or too fast horror. I clicked to into the video in the menu, seeing some-what the same shot as the last frame. I pressed play. Why?

            The men in masks had the young man down on the floor he was just some young kid in his twenties who worked as waiter dealing drugs. He was so scared. You could see it, and he wanted out. He was not a fighter, not built for it, not of temperament he was not tall a little lean and maybe medium strength. All this did nothing for him. I was transfixed at first watching in the why, then things became unreal as they began the taunting, the beating, the sexual violence as they forced things into his mouth and anus, as the his screams and weeping got more intense so did their fever beating him as he followed their commands or was just a taunt that they might just leave him and go as he begged. I could hear little muffled far away yells breaking through the camera’s speaker as he pleaded them to stop. I watched, fast forwarded and watched, I was going forward and had just stopped, in an unimaginable place, a place of monsters. A nightmare captures our essence and rips it along a journey like a loose tread of palatable existence in a reality, in horror sometimes we wonder if it’s just a film this nightmare or life.  I watched as they both attacked him sexually at once, beginning to choke him and pound on him as they attacked in sexual frenzied madness, animal lust… until the girl I was with said, “What do you got there?” taking the camera away. I reached, horror builds in the mind. It had replaced the need for drugs, my twisted high. I was still in shock and the camera slipped from my hand and she looked at the little screen.

Like I said, it takes real horror to sink in. I saw in my few seconds of video which seemed to share more than possible of this vile looking glass featuring a last night of a mans life and, them doing things to him, that are stuck in my mind. Awful things, that a normal human could not withstand much, and then others worse with the warm body, in their lust, and madness, this thing I was forced to watch, on the video. It went for another second and a grabbed back the camera. It was too late. A nightmare scream, the one that lasts on and on as the bits of the video played in my mind, a scream of pure terror from the girl, she had seen that much. “Monsters” two men, lovers, went out looking for their sexual primal lust, boosted by the drugs, and found… The scream woke me, as I still watched the video and slowly everything became white, blinding with the scream being the only thing left, and the want to leave this horrid place.

I woke. I stood, and walked in seeming way to get away from the images in my head, but they kept repeating.  The real story was too vivid, too visceral to explain in detail, flashes of him pleading as they first began getting hi, and then his screaming as the men the monsters with no masks, tortured and used the young man as a sex toy, just look of animals with their prey was left, Monsters that walk among us.  

 

Thor

I fucking hate this one.

It doesn’t need to come back. I work with cameras all the time for the last couple years, the horror of this dream is in the camera when I hold it, shadows somewhere in my mind of another camera linger.

 

 

Letter to Snoop Lion from THOR Peace-UP

Do you see?

Mandela walked out of 20 years of Jail to become the president of a country. What are you willing to sacrifice? Now you walk this new path, you are becoming a beacon. Why do you think I stayed quiet when Eminem trash talked me in 2005, well I did flow for three days straight, but the higher reason, the same reason when Black Eyed Peas gave me shout out; I stayed quiet. I passed on Hells Angels Club prospect for alone this road I walked. The road of Peace-UP.

It was the Gangsters who put down their guns and picked up food for the long boycott in South Africa. Do you see?

Peace-Up is the way you are walking now we are looking forward to better dayz.

Now you are in the spot light. What do you want America to really know? What great truths have you found? “A great warrior fighting for the side of good” is what the elders said. I asked Kenny A. Pimp “What is the difference between a warrior and a soldier.” While we were on the 3^rd floor, heavy custody levels. I responded, “A warrior fights because he wants to, a soldier fights because he has to.”

I am a soldier doing this alone for 13 years.

What are you? Are you the Lion.

The tooth I wear around my neck is a Lions tooth from Johannesburg South Africa.

They say the black mane Lion is the bravest of all Lions, but is often the loner, a king unto himself.    

Chef John aka THOR  

 

Letter to Michael J. Fox from Chef John the Ghetto Gourmet Show aka THOR

I am handicapped. I learned a lot over the last three years, teaching myself to walk, running 4,000 miles, learning to live and laugh at my disability. I am now realizing there isn’t much I can’t do if given a shot. I might not be at 100% but my 60% is pretty darn good and if you add a smile well as said by Jimmy Stewart in the movie Harvey, “You can be smart or pleasant and I choose to be pleasant.” I find the human condition of suffering one of the most enlightening experiences of my life time. Love got to come from inside as well as out, and that’s why I “Shine’ just as much as I can.

This little boy of three in our apartment had this thing about not paying attention, or switching his attention quickly and being herded by mom who also had his older brother a runner along made simple transits up or down the stairs. This day he was coming up the stairs very intent on eating a peach as he slowly step by step took the stairs and he being my buddy I said, “Hello”. That’s all it took and backwards he went. I dove the seven feet, and then reaching out one hand and caught him just he was about to tumble the whole stairs head first. He exclaimed, “Get my peach!” for in my catching him and his surprise he lost his peach over his shoulder. It was for most in his mind, the joy of life, innocence. I realize we lose our innocence the reality of that innocence is returned during suffering, and that is an amazing and powerful gift. To be able to give a window of it to others noble in intent, and is working. Eventually even after another saving grab by me. The little boy almost four now came home with a caste on his arm, gravity finally got him but he still had a lot of innocence left, and always a smile and talk for me. That little moment where the peach was everything I think that’s what I strive for every day.

Chef John Ernst AKA Thor

We the little people talk about you Mike, you empower us.

 

Chapter 6 Minnesota “Cousins Cousins Everywhere”

 

 

 

Chapter 6

Minnesota

“Cousins Cousins Everywhere”

 

            Forty five cousins by fourteen aunts and uncles, my father had seven siblings, and I was the first adopted mullato into a family of German Catholics. We would fly up every summer without exception. In the first years I was of course and infant and stayed with my parents the whole time. We would always stay at Grandpa and Grandma’s first in the spare bed room in the two floor cottage were I an infant and toddler would share the bed with Mom and Dad and then the basement in my early years a small cot was put in the corner. It’s a funny thing now that I think about it. I used to sleep on a lot of old army cots as a child, with adults using them as well in large gatherings where sleep over was required, and then they phased out with time. The street was a soft black asphalt street slow diving street with a driveway that went up quickly on the left side of the house under an awning. A small walkway next to the bushes that would gently prick you on the left and right with these little red berries with a very sour taste, really not to be tried just because they are red, and they had a funny little reverse nipple where the black seed lay snuggled in a sticky clear syrup with like I said It had a very red skin which I considered in the realm of good things to eat as a toddler. Cherries in the fruit can red, strawberries red, red was good, the first instance of red in berry form being bad kind of sticks in your head. The clear stuff was kind of sticky and would act as a good mini bomb in a game of War later with my cousins. My hands were always on the move as a child. There were just three steps up to the screen door which opened to the right off of the small ledge. The top of this ledge at the age of 3 and 4 was like the top of a great hill for the grass and hill stretched down to the curb which of course I had rolled down with many times an added child in tow as we flipped down the hill. The first room inside was the living room the dark Walnut organ with all its peddles and switches on top in long rows. I read each one on an afternoon, the coco clock lay above that at the far right of the room, a gentle blue carpet lay on the floor.  The house was two story Rambler with bed rooms in the back right with a bathroom and a big basement under ground. It had the most amazing wood paneling that covered the whole room, an old style round picture tube television set was actually be hidden in the wall. A huge freezer was at one end laying on top of the checkered white and pink tiled work that covered the whole floor. I was about nine and I was at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s Ernst for a week that summer until I went to see Mark and Mary at Aunt Irean’s, and John, Joe, Becky, and Uncle Jim Fisher.

I was stationed down stairs, with a pot. A ritual I had to endure any time I stayed at Grandma and “Gramps”, that’s what all us kids called him like he was our best friend, he was “Gramps” even when we got older. I would have to wake and try to hit that pot and then bring it up in the morning; I was still a tart then. I graduated up stairs, when my other Grandma Lucile got a hold of me a few months later. It was like that, back and forth during the summers Minnesota and upstate New York. I would wake early to hear Grandma Ernst call me up the stairs to breakfast. The kitchen had glass bricks all around here and there to let in the light, intermixed with white and blue tiles and a small counter curved counter with a metal edging with little grooves in which I used to run my nails back and forth like little groove races in awaiting my meal, in need be large meals like the Christmas we spent there the leaves could be put into the main dining table in the proper dining area right behind my seat at the counter which faced the kitchen. Breakfast was always here with toast and soft boiled eggs, bacon, or oat meal, her soft boiled egg is revisited still to today, her apple pies, I don’t know if it was gathering of the apples in the morning or waiting any part of a day and as a food thought is pretty hard as a kid, just be wanting that apple pie to be done. Her crust is flakey and light holding the apples in perfect suspension. She also made these elephant ears a traditional Germen pastry brought from the old country, and pin wheels all of this fine fried dough which were browned and crunchy like a wagon wheel with high sides. I have no idea to this day how she did that.

This morning was exciting because I was going back to the pond and the raft we had been working on all of three days was almost done. We had just used junk we found around the pond to build the raft, and had lashed it together, so I finished off my egg, bacon, and toast had a few words with Grandma after washing up, and was in a hurry to be on my way. I had found the pond on my 2^nd day in the neighborhood. It was down a street or two at the end of a road by the train tracks. I was loaded with frogs, minnows, a few sucker fish and a occasional perch, sunfish a rumored bass or such, and it had turtles sunny them selves on logs, all kinds of turtles, and snapping turtles, swim with you’re a shoes on don’t touch turtles, and the biggest sunned them selves all day on a log near the center of the pond. The pond was maybe the size of a football field scrunched funny. It had its main area and lots of little swampy inlets and a few muddy beaches. I met Paul on my second day of vacation when my when I found the pond. He had called over at me while I was using the refuse around the pond to gain head over the water teetering and balancing along rocks and logs. We became instant friends, because he needed my help to catch “The biggest snapping turtle in the lake.” adding “Way out there”; he pointed, on that log. I covered my eyes and spy the log that lay near the unapproachable side of the pond.

“Out there” I asked lifting my arm and pointing, with the most dubious of looks on my face.

“Yeah” He replied “You see they way you catch a snapping turtle is you get them to grab a stick, and then you grab them, simple.” And he swung his arm and snapped which I thought was pretty cool. He wore blue jeans and a dirty old white T- shirt rolled at the sleeves. His hair was a dirty blond; he had light freckles and gray eyes seeming to be of light character which in difference to the way he carried himself.

“Hi. I’m Paul” and he shoved out his hand. We shook and that was that.

So here we are shoes muddy already, jumping on at the last second and launching our make shift raft which was not what you call meant to last, it had a shelf life, so the longer we pushed it with a long pole, paddled it out in the pond the more it strained against its bonds of plastic, rope wire, and what-evers we had painstakingly sent out to create our raft that was shaking, and pulling at its bonds from the start as we went. This was our 2^nd day at this, we had found early on that turtles spook easy and now had to almost drift when we got close to the log. The water was never clear, it had a dark green or light tan color, and it stank. Each push with the pole pulled up a gas bubble of pond funk. We had tried everything to catch a snapping turtle, everything but a good net, but what parent is going to give a kid a net for a snapping turtle, and what kid was going to tell of his secret mission for the day. Every morning I would grab a fishing pole and it would sit by the pond some of the time. In the water green patches of algae mixed with other of shades plants littered the pond, so I had been all around it’s sides. We knew we entered the deep part now. This was a mud pond there was no bottom in respects to footing all sunken logs and mud. On top of the water lay lily pads with their occasional flower bright yellow and white shinning on top of the green and dark water and the floating patches of green algae. Your eye could get lost in them for they seemed so out of place like a lone star on a hazy night with flashes of light as an occasional ripple disturbed the water and was gone. We had to paddle now, using small flat boards we pushed our craft across the pond towards the far side towards the log, and getting up speed for a second until we stopped hunkered down and stayed still allowing our push to drift us slowly towards the log where lay the sleeping turtles. It was mid-day and hot with the sun beating down. We looked across the dark water spying the snapping turtle “Big Jim” as we called him laying sunning, looking off in the distance. We drifted closer, and immobile lay upon a raft of hope. Just a few feet and Paul leans forward with the stick, now to tell you Big Jim was from where I saw a lay on the far side guiding us in looked all business even from the side, his claws noticeably gouging into the log, and his shell beginning to dwarf the other turtles still all unmoving on the shared log that stretched way into pond and resurfaced some tree a few years back that had toppled into the pond. Paul made a go for it with a quick thrust, and turtle starting diving into the water every where, Big Jim grabbed the stick, just plain bit the end of the thing, and Paul’s starts whooping and pulling and Big Jim jumps of the other side of the log right, simple story right, nope. You see while Paul was hanging on to big Jim I was hanging on to Paul and the stick holding us in place while lying on the raft, which by this time in the battle was turning into a pile of logs floating underneath my belly in sort of a square. Big Jim let go; I think it is important to explain gravity in childhood, we got the idea in school, the apple thing, but real life happens way to fast to figure much, gravity took over momentary pause where I was looking at Paul’s mad face cause he was so close, and then one of surprise as he hurtled in my direction, I was always faster than most people and new he was headed my way and had long let go his leg. I rolled side ways just as he crash landed next to me which was all the raft needed to quite his contract. It broke apart in the middle of the pond, the two of us had to swim though the long part of the pond to get to the other side a muddy bottom but no pond slim, or we could get out twenty feet away to the short side. We swam pushing the muck and pond slim a head of us; I laughing at the adventure, and Paul yelling over and over “We almost had him.” “We almost had him” in his ferocity of the battle, I took one more look at his face and went into laugh hysterics one big ball of laughing took me over and I had to fight even harder thought the muck. We made the side both covered in foul pond scum from head to toe, clasping onto the muddy bank and climbing up on our bellies using the long grass on the side of the pond we finally pulled our selves out. I was still laughing, Paul had got quiet, but the same look lay in his eye when I turned finally to look at him after my fit had subsided. He was looking out across the water, the five minuets it took us to climb out just another part of his over all battle, to get big Jim, and that same look lay on his face right now.

We got, well I got in a lot of trouble, filthy slimy, muddy I ran back to grandma’s up the street full of stories for all of it was new to me the adventure, what I got was stripped down and hosed in the backyard with cold water than right in the tub, with “How could you?”, and “I never.” As she first hosed down a child that really did not want to be, and at first darted to and fro in little moves, until standing naked in the backyard, but grandma would smile at my antics and gyrations while telling the story over dinner. The shock of naked hosing in the back yard and grandma’s ministrations having worn off, I was at it full tilt, telling my story jumping out of my seat and being generally way too much kid at the table and all around. I was wearing Grandpa and Grandma out, this would be my last year as a grandchild unattended by parents or shipped to Aunts and Uncles, like I said “Cousins, cousins everywhere.”

Station wagons, reunions, places to go, Minnesota it really has over 11,000 lakes we went to so many, and the mosquito followed. I have so many memories of this time, it was a place out of time for me, as soon as that plane took off the wild trust bearing us up in the sky, watching as I always did. The slow taxi to the run way in a major airport, the set on the run way, the slow moan and shudder from the engines as they gathered to hurdle us down to the run way at break neck speed. I would always fight as long as I could leaning forward into the old seat belts which clicked loud and were brightly colored until the power drove me back into my seat. I felt that final moment when suddenly upward as the ground leapt from beneath the plane we shot into the sky. I would watch as the world got very small very fast with my eye straining to see out the window I had pulled my self to. I had to look back, see the world shrink, know I was flying again. Joy and flying, family, critters, cousins, the river with Michael, Uncle George’s the last of the Ernst’s farm line after generations he held a farm he just wanted to do what his dad, and his before did farm. Rosie his wife who has passed she was so full of laughs all the time she could get the jokes going, when we was just plain tired Bobby, Richard, Jackie their dog a golden retriever named Thor, horses, chickens, a barn or two, rides here and there, long walks with Mary Fisher and Mark Fisher after watching Perry Mason everyday to the pool for the day one year. Lets us not forget when the parents decided different activities, and I or we at the time tagged along. It was a place so dear in my heart, it was so much of who I was, part of this big family framed me. It was a time where my skin color was washed away by love, my not being a part replaced by comfort and the warm embrace of kinship, a place where I was not so confused about life for I was just part  of everything here.