All Entries in the "Featured Peeks" Category

One Christmas Eve

Standing over the hot stove cooking supper, the colored maid, Arcie, was very tired. Between meals today, she had cleaned the whole house for the white family she worked for, getting ready for Christmas tomorrow. Now her back ached and her head felt faint from sheer fatigue. Well, she would be off in a little while, if only the Missus and her children would come on home to dinner. They were out shopping for more things for the tree, which stood all ready, tinsel-hung and lovely in the living room, waiting for its candles to be lighted.

Arcie wished she could afford a tree for Joe. He’d never had one yet, and it’s nice to have such things when you’re little. Joe was five, going on six. Arcie, looking at the roast in the white folks’ oven, wondered how much she could afford to spend tonight on toys. She only got seven dollars a week, and four of that went for her room and the landlady’s daily looking after Joe while Arcie was at work.

“Lord, it’s more’n a notion raisin’ a child,” she thought.

She looked at the clock on the kitchen table. After seven. What made white folks so darned inconsiderate? Why didn’t they come on home here to supper? They knew she wanted to get off before all the stores closed. She wouldn’t have time to buy Joe nothin’ if they didn’t hurry. And her landlady probably wanting to go out and shop, too, and not be bothered with little Joe.

“Dog gone it!” Arcie said to herself. “If I just had my money, I might leave the supper on the stove for ’em. I just got to get to the stores fo’ they close.” But she hadn’t been paid for the week yet. The Missus had promised to pay her Christmas Eve, a day or so ahead of time.

Arcie heard a door slam and talking and laughter in the front of the house. She went in and saw the Missus and her kids shaking snow off their coats.

“Ummm-mm! It’s swell for Christmas Eve,” one of the kids said to Arcie. “It’s snowin’ like the deuce, and mother came near driving through a stop light. Can’t hardly see for the snow. It’s swell!”

“Supper’s ready,” Arcie said. She was thinking how her shoes weren’t very good for walking in snow.

It seemed like the white folks took us long as they could to eat that evening. While Arcie was washing dishes, the Missus came out with her money.

“Arcie,” the Missus said, “I’m so sorry, but would you mind if I just gave you five dollars tonight? The children have made me run short of change, buying presents and all.”

I’d like to have seven,” Arcie said. “I needs it.”

“Well, I just haven’t got seven,” the Missus said. “I didn’t know you’d want all your money before the end of the week, anyhow. I just haven’t got it to spare.”

Arcie took five. Coming out of the hot kitchen, she wrapped up as well as she could and hurried by the house where she roomed to get little Joe. At least he could look at the Christmas trees in the windows downtown.

The landlady, a big light yellow woman, was in a bad humor. She said to Arcie, “I thought you was comin’ home early and get this child. I guess you know I want to go out, too, once in awhile.”

Arcie didn’t say anything for, if she had, she knew the landlady would probably throw it up to her that she wasn’t getting paid to look after a child both night and day.

“Come on, Joe,” Arcie said to her son, “let’s us go in the street.”

“I hears they got a Santa Claus down town,” Joe said, wriggling into his worn little coat. “I wants to see him.”

“Don’t know ’bout that,” his mother said, “but hurry up and get your rubbers on. Stores’ll all be closed directly.”

It was six or eight blocks downtown. They trudged along through the falling snow, both of them a little cold but the snow was pretty! The main street was hung with bright red and blue lights. In front of the City Hall there was a Christmas tree-but it didn’t have no presents on it, only lights. In the store windows there were lots of toys-for sale.

Joe kept on saying, “Mama, I want …”

But mama kept walking ahead. It was nearly ten, when the stores were due to close, and Arcie wanted to get Joe some cheap gloves and something to keep him warm, as well as a toy or two. She thought she might come across a rummage sale where they had children’s clothes. And in the ten-cent store, she could some toys.

“O-oo! Lookee….,” little Joe kept saying and pointing at things in the windows. How warm and pretty the lights were, and the shops, and the electric signs through the snow.

It took Arcie more than a dollar to get Joe’s mittens and things he needed. In the A. & P. Arcie bought a big box of hard candies for 49¢. And then she guided Joe through the crowd on the street until they came to the dime store. Near the ten-cent store they passed a moving picture theater. Joe said he wanted to go in and see the movies.”

Arcie said, “Ump-un! No, child! This ain’t Baltimore where they have shows for colored, too. In these here small towns, they don’t let colored folks in. We can’t go in there.” “Oh,” said little Joe.

In the ten-cent store, there was an awful crowd. Arcie told Joe to stand outside and wait for her. Keeping hold of him in the crowded store would be a job. Besides she didn’t want him to see what toys she was buying. They were to be a surprise from Santa Claus tomorrow.

Little Joe stood outside the ten-cent store in the light, and the snow, and people passing. Gee, Christmas was pretty. All tinsel and stars and cotton. And Santa Claus a-coming from somewhere, dropping things in stockings. And all the people in the streets were carrying things, and the kids looked happy.

But Joe soon got tired of just standing and thinking and waiting in front of the ten-cent store. There were so many things to look at in the other windows. He moved along up the block a little, and then a little more, walking and looking. In fact, he moved until he came to the white folks’ picture show.

In the lobby of the moving picture show, behind the late glass doors, it was all warm and glowing and awful pretty. Joe stood looking in, and as he looked his eyes began to make out, in there blazing beneath holly and colored streamers and the electric stars of the lobby, a marvelous Christmas tree. A group of children and grownups, white, of course, were standing around a big jovial man in red beside the tree. Or was it a man? Little Joe’s eyes opened wide. No, it was not a man at all. It was Santa Claus!

Little Joe pushed open one of the glass doors and ran into the lobby of the white moving picture show. Little Joe went right through the crowd and up to where he could get a good look at Santa Claus. And Santa Claus was giving away gifts, little presents for children, little boxes of animal crackers and stick-candy canes. And behind him on the tree was a big sign (which little Joe didn’t know how to read). It said, to those who understand, MERRY XMAS FROM SANTA CLAUS TO OUR YOUNG PATRONS.

Around the lobby, other signs said, WHEN YOU COME OUT OF THE SNOW STOP WITH YOUR CHILDREN AND SEE OUR SANTA CLAUS. And another announced, GEM THEATRE MAKES Its CUSTOMERS HAPPY – SEE OUR SANTA.

And there was Santa Claus in a red suit and a white beard all sprinkled with tinsel snow. Around him were rattlers and drums and rocking horses that he was not giving away. But the signs on them said (could little Joe have read) that they would be presented from the stage on Christmas Day to the holders of the lucky numbers. Tonight, Santa Claus was only giving away candy, and stick-candy canes, and animal crackers to the kids.

Joe would have liked terribly to have a stick-candy cane. He came a little closer to Santa Claus, until he was right in the front of the crowd, And then Santa Claus saw Joe.

Why is it that lots of white people always grin when they see a Negro child? Santa Claus grinned. Everybody else grinned too, looking at little black Joe-who had no business in the lobby of a white theater. Then Santa Claus stooped down and slyly picked up one of his lucky number rattlers, a great big loud tin-pan rattle such as they use in cabarets. And he shook it fiercely right at Joe. That was funny. The white people laughed, kids and all. But little Joe didn’t laugh. He was scared. To the shaking of the big rattle, he turned and fled out of the warm lobby of the theater, out into the street where the snow was and the people. Frightened by laughter, he had begun to cry. He went looking for his mama. In his head he never thought Santa Claus shook great rattles at children like that – and then laughed.

In the crowd on the street he went the wrong way. He couldn’t find the ten-cent store or his mother. There were too many people, all white people, moving like white shadows in the snow, a world of white people.

It seemed to Joe an awfully long time till he suddenly saw Arcie, dark and worried-looking, cut across the side-walk through all the passing crowd and grab him. Although her arms were full of packages, she still managed with one free hand to shake him until his teeth rattled.

“Why didn’t you stand where I left you?” Arcie demanded loudly. “Tired as I am, I got to run all over the streets in the night lookin’ for you. I’m a great mind to wear you out.”

When little Joe got his breath back, on the way home, he told his mama he had been in the moving picture show.

“But Santa Claus didn’t give me nothin’,” Joe said tearfully. “He made a big noise at me and I runned out.”

“Serves you right,” said Arcie, trudging through the snow. “You had no business in there. I told you to stay where I left you.”

“But I seed Santa Claus in there,” little Joe said, “so I went in.”

“Huh! That wasn’t no Santa Claus,” Arcie explained. “If it was, he wouldn’t a-treated you like that. That’s a theater for white folks – I told you once – and he’s just an old white man.”

“Oh . . . .,” said little Joe.

-Langston Hughes, 1933

 

Nisei Christmas

“Men speak of them well or ill; they themselves are silent.”

– Stephen Vincent Benet, Ode to Walt Whitman

One Yuletide near Granada, Colorado in 1943, two soldiers sat in a dark cafe watching the snow come down. Snow was still a marvel to these California boy transplants who would be shipping out for Italy in a few days. There was no visible sun in the sky and the windows of the cafe looked as if they hadn’t been washed since the First World War concluded some 25 years ago. One of the soldiers, Private Thomas Okamoto, would go on to be one of the most decorated fighting men in the European Theater. The other, also decorated, would serve for  two years in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and see action at Salerno Bay, at Naples, at Cassino, and at Anzio. His name was Kiyoshi Nakamura. He was killed by a German sniper near Saverne, France in early 1945.

It was June of 1944, in Rome, that Nakamura met my uncle Clifford, and shared the following story. He wrote it down soon afterwards, in an attempt to keep it all straight. Perhaps a survivor could make sense of it.

We were staring out the window onto the soggy Colorado street. The flakes melted when they hit the frozen ground. Private Okamoto was talking about his uncle’s strawberry garden back in California. He didn’t know if it was still there. Yes, we were afraid to go to war and we were afraid for our families behind barbed wire at Granada. Both of us had parents detained.

A tall, thin rancher stumbled into the cafe, ordered coffee and sent a bone chilling stare in our direction. It wasn’t a hostile look, more one of astonishment, of lassitude. He turned tiredly away from us and asked the walls and ceilings what the world had become.

Then, without warning, he approached our table. We thought he must be drunk.

“Looks like snow,” he said. “How long you been in?”

Private Okamoto answered him, followed by a crisp sir. He motioned at the chair as if asking it to dance, then sat down.

“I’ve heard a lot of you pups were joining up,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to stare but you two are the first I’ve seen in uniform. Where they sending you?”

“Italy, sir,” I answered, “for the time being. Then Berlin.”

“You won’t see much of this damned snow until way past Rome. Where are you boys from?”

“Santa Ana, California, sir. We are only here to visit our families at Granada. They were relocated over a year ago,” I answered. “We brought them Christmas presents.”

“My name is Walters, Frank Walters,”  he said, describing a cold, wet Christmas at Cambrai, in France in 1917. “I was at Belleau Wood as well, and with the Brits at Chateau-Thierry after the Germans broke through in 1918. I survived. A lot of them didn’t.

“And now our government is involved with another war with Germany…and this time with those bastards, the Japanese,” said Walters, catching himself. He looked at the floor.

“You got a lot of family interned at Granada?” he mumbled into his chest.

“Most of them,” I frowned. “The others, a cousin and Private Okamoto’s brother are in the army. We are Japanese-Americans, you know.”

“I know,” breathed Walters. “Good farmers. Good neighbors. I don’t think they deserve what they’re getting. The country’s in a panic and some are up to no good.”

“After Pearl Harbor it’s not hard to believe,” said Okamoto.

Walters returned to his previous state, not saying anything for a few minutes, just staring out the window and then to the door as if expecting a visitor.

“How old are you boys?” he asked, returning to the present.

“I’m 19 and Kiyoshi is 20,” said Okamoto.

“The same age as my Tommy,” said Walters. “He was lost when the West Virginia went down at Pearl Harbor.”

We sat there in shock. After three days visiting a deplorable Granada and 14 weeks training to kill Germans, and perhaps even Japanese, we thought we’d reached a certain sense of numbness. Now we were sitting here with a World War I vet who had lost a son to the Imperial Navy, to young men his age who looked like us.

“My name is Tommy,” offered Okamoto, stumbling over his words in some attempt to ease the pain that all were feeling by now.

“You’re all Tommy,” said Walters, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “We were once children too and it was the same Christmas, but different. Germans and Japanese and English and French all wrapped up like the dark gifts of bitter winter. It’s insane,” he moved his head methodically from side to side. “They put your families in camps and yet you volunteer to fight.”

“What are we to do?,” said Okamoto. “Honor must override or anger, our fear.”

“Honor,” answered Walters, gathering his emotions. “You boys had better drop back a few notches on the honor thing and hold on to a little common sense when you get over there,” he said. The Germans are entrenched all the way up the peninsula. It’ll be no picnic.”

Walters smiled a shell shocked smile and changed the subject to the wine he had drank and the women he had met in France during his war. He then took us totally off guard and asked us to write him a letter saying that it would get to him in Lamar without an address.

“Just send it to Frank Walters,” he said.

We told him we’d send him a postcard from Naples and asked him to watch out for our families if he could.

“I’ll do that,” he said, getting up and disappearing into the snowstorm.

– Kevin Haley

               

Georgia Special Election Runoff To Define Senate Parameters

Current senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are some real peaches past their time.

Loeffler the Carpetbagger was appointed not elected, and is not even from Georgia. She faces Rev. Raphael Warnock, who grew up in the projects of Atlanta.

Sonny Perdue, the former governor, now insider trader with egg on his face, is just another rich Republican whose family ties bought him a job. Sonny refused to debate Jon Ossoff, his Democratic opponent who destroyed him in previous contests.

We don’t suggest that Loeffler and Perdue are rotten. We just feel that they would better serve society if they would simply stay home and count their money and leave government to someone with some integrity.

Looking and listening to these two Republican throwbacks alone should convince anyone with an IQ over 200 to quit the GOP for good.

– Kashmir Horseshoe, Fallen Away Republican First Class

Official Sipping Phase Bumped Up

Regulation cocktail hour for December has been moved up an hour to accommodate the increase in traffic expected on the bridge and the Boot Hill Ferry over the river and through the woods to some such fantasy destination.

After the Twelfth Month festivities and Solstice the more traditional cocktail hour my once again resume. There will be no exceptions. This shift is in no way intending to interrupt naps, disturb quiet time, discourage afternoon delight or pay the wages of sin. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused by the change of holiday agenda.

Thanksgiving To Be Celebrated on Mondays Next Year

(Washington) The federal government has decided to make Thanksgiving a Monday holiday in keeping with its concept of uniformity. The holiday, in which citizens give thanks for the year’s blessings, has been celebrated on Thursday since its fantasy inception in 1623. Now it appears that it will join so many Fourth of Julys and Labor Days as a Monday notation on the calendar. Thursday celebrations appear destined for the scrap heap.

In 1789 George Washington issued a general proclamation for a day of thanks. That same year the Episcopal Church announced that the first Thursday in November would be a regular holiday, “unless another day be appointed by civil authorities”. In 1855 soon-to-be Confederate Virginia adopted the custom of a Thanksgiving Day. Ironically enough it was Unionist, Abraham Lincoln who proclaimed Thanksgiving as the last Thursday of the month in 1863. In 1941 Congress ruled that the fourth Thursday would be observed as a legal holiday. In Canada the holiday is celebrated in October unless the Blue Jays get into the World Series.

“It’s that part about civil authorities that fouls up the muffins,” said one traditionalist who feels this country needs all the culture it can get.

“Why fool with a good thing like Thanksgiving. Aren’t there more pressing social issues to deal with here?” he spat.

Persons wishing to continue the Thursday celebration have been hereby informed that they are doing so outside the law.

“These rogue turkey day revelers must be brought to heel,” said Congressman Oral Noise, who first penned the proposal. “The next thing you know they’ll want to celebrate the Fourth of July on the fourth of July. Bunch of damn communists!”

Sources here feel that the population will put up a fight in the early rounds but succumb to the homogenized version of Thanksgiving before long.

“We’ll indoctrinate the school children first and then frighten the elderly into submission,” said Noise. “And if we have further problems we’ll put a tariff on pumpkin pie.”  

– Melvin B. Toole

Tyrannosaurus Jim Bob Terrorizes Elk Avenue

Caught Between Japanese Horror Films and the Nightmare of Bud Lite Commercials

2020 Continues to Provide Surprises for Crested Butte

(Crested Butte) A monster the size of a mammoth trophy home continues to prowl Elk Avenue this morning, frightening shoppers and disrupting the cosmic flow. Dubbed Tyrannosaurus Jim Bob by local jokesters the lizard-hipped intruder resembles the much-feared carnivore Tyrannosaurus Rex, from bygone days.

Local lizard experts say the monster probably emerged from Lost Lake because that sounds about right and matches up with the Jurassic  cross-references “as well as anything else” . Other scientists, on the scene since the dinosaur’s arrival on Monday, say he might have crawled out from local sewers or even from under the melted snow. They blamed residents who often bring back baby lizards as pets from Florida then flush them down the toilet after a few weeks. Either way, the monster is here and everyone wants him out.

When asked why anyone would keep a baby alligator around town for even two weeks the source said she did not know.

“Keep in mind, we’re dealing with a creature with a brain the size of a walnut,” said one deputy sheriff, “and I’m not talking about a government official here. All the years of Free Ski

didn’t prepare my department for this kind of duty.”

“What are we going to do if he’s still lurking by Christmas?” asked one parade organizer. “We’ve tried to lure him over Kebler with prehistoric treats. We’ve tried to have him towed away. We’ve even subjected him to hours of The Tamburinda Trio*, but he’s still here.”

In just three days Jim Bob has overshadowed both the World’s Largest Elk and even Princess Vail herself. If the pace continues he will emerge as far more notable than both Pike’s Peak and the Garden of the Clods near the holy city of Colorado Springs.

He’s right up there with the Denver Broncos,” said one stool jockey.

Denver TV news professionals, who at first called the entire episode a hoax, were eaten for breakfast (SUVs an all) by Jim Bob earlier today much to the chagrin of proprietor of Soupcon, who had laid out a substantial brunch for the giant lizard.

“We had a massive feast prepared for the ungrateful freak up Washington Gulch,” according to a spokesman for the eatery. “But I guess when a dinosaur is hungry for fresh meat he will not be denied.”

Already many summer events in the town appear in jeopardy. One source with the Crested Butte Arts Festival has announced plans to combine that event with a quickstep Crested Butte Dinosaur Days celebration featuring Brontosaurus on a stick and the traditional Pterodactyl pie.

“We may have to move our arts and crafts booths over to Sopris or Maroon if he continues his preference for Elk,” she said. “His tail alone could create havoc with our electrical hook-ups and that says nothing of the pooper scooper dilemma.”

Local biologists insist that Jim Bob is simply in town searching for a suitable mate and that if he finds one he will return to the wilderness. Teams are scouring the Petrified Tourist Arches and the Edith Bunker National Forest for signs of a female Tyrannosaurus. So far they have had no luck although one local lady has offered to meet Jim Bob for a drink.

The situation has gone from bad to worse. Just last night Jim Bob was observed attempting to seduce a 65-foot RV over on Teocalli. After about an hour of suggestive traversing, the thing tipped over, instantly ending the romance and terrifying the inmates, an elderly couple from Kansas.

Architectural watchdog, BOZO, has filed a lien on the reptile saying that Jim Bob fails to adhere to building specifications. Authorities, beside themselves over the incident, hope that the dinosaur could get caught up in red tape and thus be forced to comply with the town’s many ordinances.

“Either that or we appeal to his sense of good taste and historical precedence,” said one officer.

Biologists at the Rocky Mountain Flowers and Marmots Laboratory at Gothic insist that the giant lizard is on a mission. They feel it has something to due with the dinosaur soup bones unearthed from a vacant lot adjacent to the Talk of the Town Tavern on Elk.

Most of the region’s cool heads concluded that the animal must be trapped and be sentenced to ten days in the Gunnison Jail plus 40 hours of public service. No time or date has been set for compliance deadlines and the serving of warrants. Just exactly how the who and where  cards will be played is still up in the air.

– Kashmir Horseshoe

*said the drunks over at the bar