All Entries Tagged With: "San Juans"
Holiday Schnapps…
Santa Pledges to Modify Guilt Trips in 2020
In closing up shop for yet another Yuletide, the jolly old elf reflected on Christmases gone by and those yet to come. Overwhelmed with emotion he bid a tearful goodbye to several retiring reindeer and elves and promised to make Christmas 2020 the best ever!
“One category that needs help is the persistent guilt related to the naughty or nice restrictions that have been firmly in place since the turn of the last century.
“These Victorian principles of trust and honor have no place in out modern world of baggy boxers, aging baby boomers, Boneland Security and video game massacres,” said Santa. “If we are going to keep pace with this whirlwind world we must adjust our parameters and see that our traditions continue to reflect a meaningful experience for all. Within this framework we must never revert or retreat from our stated goal – which is happy children all over the world!”
In closing Santa reiterated his views adding that he will simply leave the guilt trips up to the churches, television and government, three failing institutions that create fear within the population.
“These entities are performing quite crisply and do not need any help from our sector at this time,” he said. “Negative is contagious. Most people are guilty enough and afraid of a bundle of superficial bugaboos. Anyone laying guilt trips on my elves or reindeer will be cut off from the gifts parade, if you get my drift.”
– Tommy Middlefinger
Colombians Wake Up The Baby Jesus
(Jardin) While enthusiastically celebrating Christmas, my neighbors here have succeeded in waking the Baby Jesus from his slumber. The noise, somewhat deafening at times, began on the 24th and continued well into the night only to be continued early the next day.
“The only reason there was any peace on the morning of the birth was because most of the people were either in church or behind closed doors hiding from the local priest who counts heads in the pews,” said Pilar Chevere who takes to hiding in caves during the holiday season (aka “the most wonderful time of the year”).
In addition to the rumba, church bells chimed loudly; leading the town’s agnostics to blame the entire incident on the intrusive and poorly timed ecclesiastical ding-dongs.
The parents of the child, Joseph and Mary, allegedly from nearby Ciudad Bolivar, were not particularly happy about the turn of events but they said their son was muy tranquilo and that he was coaxed back to sleep with traditional carioles in both Hebrew and Spanish.
Three Wise Men, who arrived in town today, marveled at the attentiveness of such a small infant. They had missed the actual birth due to the fact that they were visiting several very profitable children’s prisons near the US-Mexican frontier. They had initially feared he might be incarcerated in one of them.
Gold, frankincense, myrrh and earplugs, given to the baby as baptismal gifts, caused quite a stir in this coffee town while farther north these commodities finished well on Wall Street sending the daily stocks index through the roof. Although some 20% of the children in the US do not get enough to eat the economy is booming.
The visibly worn out parents, exhausted after the long trip from Medellin, asked for quiet, hoping that things would settle down after the New Year.
-Dolores Alegria
Many plan to leave decorations up all year
(Manana) Many residents here say they will leave their Christmas lights up until next holiday season despite wavering public opinion and long-held traditions to the contrary.
“It’s just easier to leave everything where it is than monkey with lights, wreaths and even Christmas trees,” quipped one reveler whose yard features three Santa Clauses, eleven elves and eight tiny reindeer. “Back in the days of real trees this was an impossibility but thanks to chemical advances in the petroleum industry we now have fake trees that do just as well in the living room as in the closet.”
It was not known if these improvements would affect county tax appraisals and property values soon to be established in early 2020.
– Fred Zeppelin
A BEAT NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
‘Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the castle
Not a digger was stirring
It was just too much hassle.
(Most of us had been down at Golden Gate Park diggin’ the music and were wasted.)
The stockings were flung on the floor and the chair
Grab me my pants, there’s a party up there.
(Despite chronic fatigue the cat upstairs was making some kind of racket but soon he’ll be cool since his woman gets off work by seven.)
The horn men were nestled with notes in their heads
While visions of reefer waltzed with second hand threads.
(The North Beach Good Will has just scored new duds, the kind afforded by clotheshorse jazz musicians who seem to be between gigs.)
And momma comes home to see all this crap
She settled his brains and I don’t hear a rap.
(As expected the lady upstairs arrived home at the usual time and found her man engaged in extra-curricular diversions with an assortment of new friends. A gunshot. Another.)
When out on the highway there arose Dharma batter
The straights cruised on by engulfed in their chatter.
(Why do you want to show up to work everyday when there are places in this very galaxy that you have never been?)
Away to the window I flew like jack flash
Pulled down the Venetians, securing my stash.
(I wanted to see if the cat upstairs was alive or dead but I thought I’d better hide my stash before the North Beach Gestapo started asking a lot of questions.)
The moon and the rest of the ash-ridden snow
Convinced me that midday was too late to go.
(This place is nowhere. With a little luck and the right boxcar I could be in Mexico City for the New Year.)
When what to my wandering mind should appear
But San Francisco’s finest from the front and the rear.
(Somebody in the building must have called up the heat when they heard the shots. They were everywhere, responding in their noted Zen vigor in this neighborhood infested with home sapiens of the discarded variety.)
At my door an old sergeant, with stick of the night
I can’t wait till morning…it’s exit…stage right!
(My duffel bag lay packed in the corner. Once on my back it was out the door leading me to more tolerant horizons.)
More rapid than accurate I headed uptown
Grabbed a bus for the freight yard and waited around.
(The midnight train ride down the coast to LA would be a cold one but I could sleep on the beach in Santa Monica in the morning.)
A weathered old brakeman called out in the rain
If you’ve got ample dollars you’ll be riding this train.
(The tired, old drunk wanted some bread for letting me ride the boxcar. I promised him some Mexican grass and offered him a hit off my Thunderbird and, cursing, he wandered off.)
As wilted, dry leaves before hurricanes fly
I am one with the boxcar, fused to the Pacific sky.
(Finally headed toward Southern California, I polished off the wine and fell asleep despite the chill and the cold metal floor.)
So up through the mountains steel coursers they flew
With a cargo of nothingness as their time clock punched two.
(We hit the Coastal Range in the middle of the night as the full moon made another cameo appearance.)
And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof
The brakeman, another…resenting my spoof.
(The railroad cops didn’t appreciate my travel arrangements for the evening and when we stopped at Salinas they tossed my ass off the iron beast and into an unlikely Christmas Eve.)
As I brushed my self off and was turning around
Down the tracks dragged a hobo not making a sound.
(I had just seen this bum down in the Tenderloin last week. He was snoring away in a skid row hotel lobby, too drunk to make it up the stairs to his two-dollar flop.)
He was dressed all in rags from his head to his foot
His clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
(A bad dream Kris Kringle in the freight yard of America’s last brush with culture?)
His meager belongings he’d thrown in a sack
He smelled like a junkie and let out a hack.
(His personal hygiene didn’t improve with closer proximity.)
His face was one wrinkle, all haggard and hairy
He clung to Wild Roses and a jug of sweet sherry.
His droll, little mouth was drawn up like a bow
The fuzz on his chin gray as winter’s So-Ho.
He rolled up two smokes, “To you I bequeath”
The smoke pouring out from his cave on no teeth.
(The cat had played out his future in baggy pants and shoes force-marched through an alcoholic haze.)
His poker face deluded, bad loser still game
He choked when he spoke but he spoke just the same.
Uncapping his prize he delivered a belt
And I grabbed for the bottle, in spite of myself.
With a wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Out there in hell’s freight yard the hobo dropped dead.
(Time had run out for this earth-bound angel who had never spent Saturday mornings mowing his lawn in the suburbs or driving kids around in a new Ford Station wagon.)
I picked up his dreams, locked tight with no key
Next stop: Potter’s Field for this snarled refugee.
(A watchman helped me cover him and called the cops. There would be no heartbroken relative to identify him, no one to cry at his grave.)
Then catching the time, I watched for a freight
Skillfully boarding, make LA by eight
Back on a boxcar, I slept on my duffel
Agonized at the thought of that wino’s last shuffle.
But desolation’s despots on angles take toll
One long ago Christmas deep deep in my soul.
– Paradise Stolen, 1959
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 that 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, December, 1933
Rediscovered at Busboys and Poets Restaurant
Tacoma Park, Washington DC, December 2019
Christmas Eve On Lonesome
It was Christmas Eve on Lonesome. But nobody on Lonesome knew that it was Christmas Eve, although a child of the outer world could have guessed it, even out in those wilds where Lonesome slipped from one lone log cabin high up the steeps, down through a stretch of jungle darkness to another lone cabin at the mouth of the stream.
There was the holy hush in the gray twilight that comes only on Christmas Eve. There were the big flakes of snow that fell as they never fall except on Christmas Eve. There was a snowy man on horseback in a big coat, and with saddle pockets that might have been bursting with toys for children in the little cabin at the head of the stream.
But not even he knew that it was Christmas Eve. He was thinking of Christmas Eve, but it was of the Christmas Eve of the year before, when he sat in prison with a hundred other men in stripes, and listened to the chaplain talk of peace and good will to all men upon earth, when he had forgotten all men upon earth but one, and had only hatred in his heart for him.
“Vengeance is mine! saith the Lord.”
That was what the chaplain had thundered at him. And then, as now, he thought of the enemy who had betrayed him to the law, and had sworn away liberty, and had robbed him of everything in life except a fierce longing for the day when he could strike back and strike to kill. And then, while he looked back hard into the chaplain’s eyes, and now, while he splashed through the yellow mud thinking of that Christmas Eve, Buck shook his head; and then, as now, his sullen heart answered:
“Mine!” The big flakes drifted to crotch and twig and limb. They gathered on he brim of Buck’s slouch hat, filled out the wrinkles in his big coat, whitened and his long mustache, and sifted into the yellow, twisting path that guided his horse’s feet.
High above he could see through the whirling snow now and then the gleam of a red star. He knew it was the light from his enemy’s window; but somehow the chaplain’s voice kept ringing in his ears, and every time he saw the light he couldn’t help thinking of the story of the Star that the chaplain told that Christmas Eve, and he dropped his eyes by and by, so as not to see it again, and rode on until the light shone in his face.
Then he led his horse up a little ravine and hitched it among the snowy holly and rhododendrons and slipped toward the light. There was a dog somewhere, of course; and like a thief he climbed over the low rail fence and stole through the snow-wet grass until he leaned against an apple-tree with the sill of the window two feet above the level of his eyes.
Reaching above him, he caught a stout limb and dragged himself up to a crotch of the tree. A mass of snow slipped softly to the earth. The branch creaked above the light wind; around the corner of the house a dog growled and he sat still.
He had waited three long years and he had ridden two hard nights and lain out two cold days in the woods for this.
And presently he reached out very carefully, and noiselessly broke leaf and branch and twig until a passage was cleared for his eye and for the point of the pistol that was gripped in his right hand.
A woman was just disappearing through the kitchen door, and he peered cautiously and saw nothing but darting shadows. From one corner a shadow loomed suddenly out in human shape. Buck saw the shadowed gesture of an arm, and he cocked his pistol. That shadow was his man, and in a moment he would be in a chair in the chimney corner to smoke his pipe, maybe – his last pipe.
Buck smiled – pure hatred made him smile – but it was mean, a mean and sorry thing to shoot this man in the back, dog though he was; and now that the moment had come a wave of sickening shame ran through Buck. No one of his name had ever done that before; but this man and his people had, and with their own lips they had framed palliation for him. What was fair for one was fair for the other they always said. A poor man couldn’t fight money in the courts; and so they had shot from the brush, and that was why they were rich now and Buck was poor – why his enemy was safe at home, and he was out here, homeless, in the apple-tree.
Buck thought of all this, but it was no use. The shadow slouched suddenly and disappeared; and Buck was glad. With a gritting oath between his chattering teeth he pulled his pistol in and thrust one leg down to swing from the tree – he would meet him face to face next day and kill him like a man – and there he hung as rigid as though the cold had suddenly turned him, blood, bones, and marrow, into ice.
The door had opened, and full in the firelight stood the girl who he had heard was dead. He knew now how and why that word was sent to him. And now she who had been his sweetheart stood before him – the wife of the man he meant to kill.
Her lips moved – he thought he could tell what she said: “GI up, Jim it up!” Then she went back.
A flame flared up within him now that must have come straight from the devil’s forge. Again the shadows played over the ceiling. His teeth grated as he cocked his pistol, and pointed it down the beam of light that show into the heart of the apple-tree, and wailed.
The shadow of a head shot along the rafters and over the fireplace. It was a madman clutching the butt of the pistol now, and as his eye caught the glinting sight and his heart thumped, there stepped into the square light of the window – a child!
It was a boy with yellow tumbled hair, and he had a puppy in his arms. In front of the fire the little fellow dropped the dog, and they began to play.
“Yap! Yap! Yap!”
Buck could hear the shrill barking of the fat little dog, and the joyous shrieks of the child as he made his playfellow chase his tail round and round or tumbled him head over heels on the floor. It was the first child Buck had seen for three years; it was his child and hears; and, in the apple-tree, Buck watched fixedly.
They were down on the floor now, rolling over and over together; and he watched them until the child grew tired and turned his face to the fire and lay still – looking into it. Buck could see his eyes close presently, and then the puppy crept closer, put his head on his playmate’s chest, and the two lay thus asleep.
And still Buck looked – his clasp loosening on his pistol and his lips loosening under his stiff mustache – and kept looking until the door opened again and the woman crossed the floor. A flood of light flashed suddenly on the snow, barely touching the snow-hung tips of the apple-tree, and he saw her in the doorway – saw her look anxiously into the darkness – look and listen a long while.
Buck dropped noiselessly to the snow when she closed the door. He wondered what they would think when they saw his tracks in the snow the next morning; and then he realized that they would be covered before the morning.
As he started up the ravine where his horse was he heard the clink of metal down the road and the splash of a horse’s hoofs in the soft mud, and he sank down behind a holly-bush.
Again the light from the cabin flashed out on the snow.
“That you, Jim?”
“Yep!”
And then the child’s voice: “Has oo dot thum tandy?”
“Yep!”
The cheery answer rang out almost at Buck’s ear, and Jim passed death waiting for him behind the bush which was left foot brushed, shaking the snow from the red berries down on the crouching figure beneath.
Once only, far down the dark jungle way, with underlying streak of yellow that was leading him wither, God only knew – once only Buck looked back. There was the red light gleaming faintly through the moonlit flakes of snow. Once more he thought of the Star, and once more the chaplain’s voice came back to him.
“Mine!” said the Lord.
Just how, Buck could not see, with himself in the snow and him back there for life with her and the child, but some strange impulse made him bare his head.
“Yourn,” said Buck grimly.
But nobody on Lonesome – not even Buck – knew that it was Christmas Eve.
Copyright 1901
By Charles Scribner’s Sons
AARP DAMNS CANDY CANES
Team Up With Toothless
(Sun City) Candy canes are not politically correct and discriminate against seniors says the American Association of Retired Persons. The powerful lobby group has petitioned Congress to outlaw the striped Christmas treat.
“Not only do these evil candies depict an immobile crew of elders but they focus on the shortcomings of the handicapped as well,” said an effervescent Jodie Twitte, a 22-year-old press secretary for the group. “In short, we don’t want children playing with the necessary tools of the aged. We don’t want them viewing their grandparents as reliant on canes to get around.”
Twitte added that the red and white colors are offensive to some older Americans who have grown bald and no longer need to go to the barber.
“What about people who don’t have teeth and can’t enjoy the candy? Who will speak up for them?” she plinked.
The AARP, recently criticized for reminding quinquagenarians of their inevitable aging, has pledged to get the canes off the market. They have already threatened to go to quart with the makers of Viagra and several RV manufacturers if they don’t get their way.
“Isn’t this a lot like throwing out the baby with the bath water,” asked fifth wheel cliché giant Melvin Toole, always a bridesmaid but never a bride. “I don’t know what that means but I love to throw metaphors around in the age of senior citizen discounts and the demise of sociable security.”
– H.L. Menoken
“They were the champs, work wasn’t for them, they lived off the rest. They emptied their glasses, and now they were ready to wiggle their asses.”
– from The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa.