Monk In The Cellar

[dave]

Here's a shameless plug in Brother Jesse's memory ...

Come join Bouncer as he takes on the lead of the remaining monks. They've had quite a year, from the destruction of their decrepit monastery by fire to the loss of their leader on Steuben Street in Utica by a man discharged from the Psych Center too soon.

A few of you may recognize parts of the story from other blogs that fizzled out. Now's the time to join Bouncer as he is interviewed by someone who will stir a few of his juices, a bombshell of a police woman from the Utica Police Department.

"The door opened and in stepped Lieutenant Linda Rossfaber Panzierone, Syracuse University 1995, captain of her basketball team, six feet 3 inches in height, platinum blonde hair and built like she could be Merlin Olsen’s sister, so said Mort afterward. She did kind of look like the FTD spokesman, if you visualized her in shoulder pads and jet black skid marks under her eyes."

Monk In The Cellar:

monkinthecellar.blogspot.com

Scroll down to post no. 172 to begin this segment.


I'll use this thread to cross-post selections from Monk In The Cellar from time to time for those who don't feel like leaving the ClipperShip for their morning entertainment.

[dave]

173. Grief


Bouncer's Tale


www.windsweptpress.com/TEMP/st eliz.jpg[/img]


I still wake in the middle of the night thinking of that blood. Jesse's blood. I've never been squeamish ... when I was a kid I always wanted to wring the neck of a chicken just like Grandma did, like she was wringing out one of Grandpa's old blue workshirts ... but all that blood keeps coming to me.

I used the small bathroom adjacent to the examining room at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Now, what? I remembered when I had been on my way out the door of the motel room we called Gryfyndor, after Harry Potter's living hall and also after Jesse's late Uncle Billy The Traffic Cop, Harpo stopped me and said, "Don't let anything happen to our abbot."

I thought that was a strange comment and when a week later I asked Harpo about it, he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "I had a feeling. It's not your fault, Bouncer. It was his time."

But as I made ready to leave the hospital on the day of the shooting, it occurred to me that I knew absolutely no one in this city and had no way of getting back to Saugerties. I didn't even have a dime for a telephone call, the cost of a a public phone the last time I had used one. After a walk down one hall and then another, I saw a door to the outside and walked through it, exiting what was probably the old front door of the hospital and evidently kicking off a silent alarm. I stood looking across a great swath of grass that reminded me of a cemetery. When the armed rent-a-cop found me, I was sitting on the stairs silently crying.

Art Garfunkel and James Taylor - Crying In The Rain

[dave]

174. Wanted





When he asked, I told him my “form of identification” was the robe I was wearing, admittedly now muddy and already crusting with the rusty color of blood.

“Are you a priest?” asked the uniformed guard. I noticed he was wearing a holstered gun.

“No,” I replied, “I’m an archangel and I just clipped the earth on my way to Uranus* and got a bit dusted up.” Maybe I didn’t say it with sufficient levity, because he didn’t laugh.

“Sir, I think we need to go to the Emergency Room,” he said.

“I just left there," I said. "Oh! Here’s the paperwork they gave me.” I quickly reached under my robe, but slowed my movement down when his hand moved toward his pistol, a Glock semi-automatic, probably a nine millimeter by the size of it.

"Is that a Glock 17?" I asked.

"No, a 19," he said.

The man seemed unfamiliar with the forms and took a few moments to look through them.

“Mr. Dempsey,” he said, glancing up from the 5 or 6 pages, “it says here you were involved in a shooting? The police will want to talk to you.”

“They did,” I replied.

“When did this happen? Just a couple of hours ago? I think they probably want to spend some more time with you.”


”We do, yes,” interrupted a voice from behind me at the top of the stairs. “Brother Bilhild, we’ve been looking for you,” said the plain clothes detective I’d spent the last couple of hours with in the Emergency Room. “He’s not my brother, I do not know this man,” I had explained to various doctors and nurses who tripped over him while attending me. Even "He's my husband. Isn't he sweet? We plan to adopt," didn't drive him from my side.

“Master Sergeant,” I addressed the guard, “meet Detective Mort Schecter of Utica’s Finest. He is impossible to lose.”

* I pronounced it the way God intended when he named the planet, before Carl Sagan and a few silly twits at NASA got all giggly about "Yer Anus" and gave the planet's name a British cachet by mispronouncing it as Urine ess.

Allison Kraus - Missing You (I think that's John Waite.)

[dave]

175. Sprinkles





The policeman motioned me up the stairs and, oblivious to the guard’s admonition, “No! Don’t open that door again! The alarm …” he reached for the large brass escutcheon (I know my hardware!) and pulled on the handle to open the door. Once inside he motioned me down the hall to a meager little office where we sat on either side of a small grey metal desk.

“I thought I was allowed out for recess,” I told Sergeant Mort.

“Maybe in a little while,” he said. “I want you to meet my boss. The Lieutenant will be here in a moment.”

“Then can we go get ice cream?” I asked.

“You’re pretty chipper, considering what you’ve been through,” he said.

“I wasn’t kidding,” I replied. “I never have ice cream and right now I’d give everything I own … which is what I’m wearing … for a double dip chocolate.”

“Maybe …” he began.

“… with sprinkles,” I said.

The door opened and in stepped Lieutenant Linda Rossfaber Panzierone, Syracuse University 1995, captain of her basketball team, six feet 3 inches in height, platinum blonde hair and built like she could be Merlin Olsen’s sister, so said Mort afterward. She did kind of look like the FTD spokesman, if you visualized her in shoulder pads and jet black skid marks under her eyes. Without even a nod to Mort, the woman took two strides to my side and stared down while restraining any movement by me with a firm hand upon my shoulder. A lady might have said, “Please, don’t get up.” Linda did not need to verbalize her total physical control over me since her steel-beam arm kept my head from anywhere higher than her belly button. So, I may be forgiven for thinking about her belly button.

“How are you doink, Mr. Dempsey,” she asked with no indication of warmth. Her scent was that of dinner in a wonderful restaurant.

“I’m fine and you may call me Brother,” I said, a little piqued to have my habit so easily dismissed.

“You need to tell us more about why you were on Steuben Street this afternoon,” she continued.

“Not unless the United States Constitution was just abrogated,” I said.

“Ah Hah,” she said with no surprise at all in her voice, “a liggel biggel.” Linda had a strange accent. It might have been eastern European.

“We NEED to know each of all the details,” she said in a more reasonable voice, “so we could successfully aid in the prosecution of the person who killed your brother.”

“He was my abbot,” I said.

“Even so, the more,” she said, but I wondered if she knew the concept of an abbot.

“Even so, the more,” was all I could think to say in response, as I gazed upward over the front of her uniform into her grey eyes.


Long Tall Sally - The Beatles

[dave]

176. Supply and Demand





Sergeant Mort’s unmarked car was in reality well marked by a paucity of any redeeming aesthetic value that could have been provided by even the most minor of options. It’s a wonder the UPD had ordered motorized windshield wipers. No trim, no chrome and certainly no sex, I wouldn’t be surprised if the dark blue vehicle cost more when all the conveniences of modern transportation were removed before delivery.

We sat in the parking lot of a popular carry-out diner and munched on hot dogs. Sergeant Mort had lectured me on the advisability of remaining in the car and not leaving it when he left me to get our late lunch. I was surprised he didn’t cuff me to the arm rest. I hadn’t realized I was starving until I smelled the food when Mort brought the sauerkraut covered dogs back to the car. After I devoured what tasted like manna from heaven after rice and beans, I begged him for money … easy for a mendicant … to go get us ice cream for dessert while he watched my progress through the windshield to ensure I didn't run off.

Returning to the embarrassingly cheap vehicle with a double dip Chocolate Fudge Swirl Peanut Butter Cream for me and a boring vanilla for Mort, we settled down to leisurely eat our ice cream cones. I didn’t take long to finish mine.

“What’s up with your boss?” I asked as I sat wondering if I could talk Mort into buying a second round of cones.

“A very dedicated professional,” he deadpanned.

“Not the cute-as-a-kitten type,” I said.

“That isn’t really a requirement for most police work,” he said.

A few moments went by while Mort passed the half way point of eating his ice cream and I sat waiting for him to finish so I could ask for more.

“We’ve had a spike in murders in Cornhill,” he said. “The Utica Police will never be able to change the bottom layers of society, but we can make a difference by removing their guns.”

“I wonder if even that is possible,” I said.

“If Linda can nail the guy who shot your abbot and bust into the gun supply chain, she’ll be a hero. Again,” he added.

“I’d never seen a weapon like that,” I said. “The last time I read a gun magazine they were talking about them coming in the future, but not even an advance picture.”

“These are modified with smooth bore barrels so a .410 load is deadly over a longer distance than what you see sold for personal defense,” he said. “Of course, if you put in a .45, it can go anywhere. How did you get gun magazines in a monastery?” Mort asked.

“From Mrs. Pace,” I said. “She lived about a half mile down the road. She walked up every few weeks and brought us vegetables from her garden in the summer and other goodies around Christmas time … razor blades, soap, that kind of stuff. And her husband’s old magazines. There was a guy named Lance who looked out for us as well, but he was rich. Mr. and Mrs. Pace were barely making it on her pension from her school cafeteria job.”

“Somehow I can’t visualize a monk in a monastery kicking back and reading gun magazines,” said Mort.

“Well,” I said, “I guess I’d appear more intellectual if I said I enjoyed Chaucer in my spare time after the chores, contemplative prayer, chapel and what we called our scholarly work. But I like gun magazines.”

I did not mention that I was the keeper of the monastery’s illegal .357 Ruger Security Six, the first object I grabbed that night when I awoke in the fire.

Love Will Keep Us Together - James Taylor Quartet

[dave]

177. Whatever Works





So, a little about me. I am assuming most of you have asked yourselves, “Who was Bilhild of Thuringia? No? Well, I wanted to know where the hell Thuringia was when my Novice Master first suggested the name to me.

You’ll remember Jesse started out as an African Missionary Brother, a mainstay occupation of the hearty and hard working Ardent Brothers of the Holy Varlet. I should say hardworking except for their betters who sat on their backsides on an estate in the west of the Emerald Isle while counting all the money coming in and sending very little of it out to workers in the vineyards.

Vineyards! There’s a joke! From what I saw on a thankfully short 6 month stint, even the best parts of Africa are like the worst I’d ever seen on the downside of Dublin town. Yes, yes, I know, I don’t have much of a brogue. Although I was born in Ireland, I was schooled by the American Brothers who were the only nationality joining the Ardents after World War II. Oh, it’s a long story, but Europe was decimated and the Order got a bad name in its own country and only Americans would join after The War. The Priestly Chieftains as we called them would send out envoys all over the world looking for recruits, but only American college boys like Jesse were gullible enough to take an offer.

Pretty soon all we had were Americans in our ranks, except for our Order’s royalty in Fermoy and a dozen or so of us Irish bad boys from the streets of a once fair city. So, in the typically efficient fashion witnessed so often among religious communities, the Ardents sent young men with college degrees in engineering and finance and accounting to dig latrines and save souls in hell-holes like Malawi while Irish boys with little more than elementary grammar school educations were assigned to manage our finances and plan more recruitment campaigns. While young men who began college with a desire to become marketing reps for IBM were shoveling sh*t in Chiradzulu, kids like me who got a D in Algebra were attending planning conferences and contributing our lame ideas on the future of Africa.

And playing with the money. Before I got a conscience and exiled myself to West Saugerties 30 years ago, I remember deciding which equities the Order should purchase on the New York Stock Exchange by calling up a psychic woman in Clondalkin and asking her to arrange ten corporate names in order from lucky to unlucky. I heard later she was read out in church by her Pastor for making book on the Sunday races.

Rock Me On The Water - Jackson Browne

[dave]

178. Disappear





Oh, I nearly forgot. St. Bilhild of Thuringia founded an abbey and became its abbess somewhere near Mainz in Germany around the 8th or 9th century. Of course, she was the daughter of a nobleman and his wife. Who else would have the ready cash to found their own abbey? Sit down next to a worn out lady on the bus some day, a black or white woman who cleans others' homes for a living, and suggest she found an abbey instead of scrubbing toilets. See what she says! Have an exit strategy in mind before you broach the topic.

When you think of it, because of the economic structure of society, most of the canonized saints came from money and probably all of our historians did. You should bear that in mind when reading the opinions of others, especially all academics born and educated before World War II and most since then.

At age seventeen Bilhild was married to a Duke of Thuringia, probably an old lecher. When he was killed while out warring on his neighbors in that part of Germany, my patron saint fled to her uncle's place and became a nun. Unkie was a bishop.

Using money saved from her husband's estate, Bilhild began her work helping the poor. With additional help from Uncle Rigibert the Bishop, she formed her convent a few years later and gathered about her like minded woman who no doubt had tired of the good life in those times when the sons of the rich were expected to advance their careers by rape and pillage and the daughters were forced to do nothing productive outside of child bearing.

Of course, many legends surround Bilhild, including the story she bore the child of her dead Duke, but the baby died soon after she arrived in secret at the Bishop's residence. Bilhild's grave has never been found, unusual for a noblewoman. No records indicate where it was. Sometimes reports are made of an eerie glow on a piece of ground at night where she may have been laid to rest in peace.

"So, you've taken my suggestion of the name of Saint Bilhild, I see," said my Novicemaster, “P.P.” (Brother Saint Lydia Purpuraria of Philippi). He was looking at the roster of new graduates from my class of Brothers, holding the sheet of paper no more than 3 inches from his face, so bad had his eyesight become since he passed the 80 year milestone of residence in this Vale of Tears.

"I like the fact that her grave disappeared," I said.

"And what do you find so interesting about such an unfortunate occurrence?" he asked.

"That she completely evaporated ... no trace, nada, zip," I said.

"You can never do that, John, although I'm sure you'd like to," he said.

"I just want to disappear into the Ardent Brothers," I said. I meant it sincerely, but was too young to appreciate the woof and warp of my motivations.

"You can't hide from life, yourself or God," he said.

"But P.P.," I said, "I don't want to be John, I want to be what God wants me to be."

"Well, so far he has wanted you to be you," said my Novicemaster. "He has no reason to change his mind about who you are. The work to be done is yours, to discover not who you will be but who you already are."



Here's a typical Irishmen's Sunday afternoon. A good reason for restricted beaches.

Hide It Away - The Retribution Gospel Choir

[dave]

179. Angels





It may not have been until I came to the end of civilization as I knew it and arrived at the plumbing purgatory of Our Lady of West Saugerties, that I realized P.P. was right. And of course, Jesse had a hand in my realization that everything God wanted me to be was already inside me. My Brother Jesse seldom spoke words of wisdom … not out loud in any case … but his behavior was often … well, bizarre. I could recognize myself mirrored in him and therefore see my shortcomings more clearly. That may be wisdom at its best.

I shouldn’t speak ill of the recently departed, but it’s true that Jesse offered negative examples as well as positive. Take, for example, his supposed secret of wanting to jump off the roof. An affront to Agnes’ sensibilities it may have been, but it was no secret. You could be anywhere on the property and look up to the peak of the Chapter House and if you DIDN’T see Jesse mounted up there you’d wonder if he were down with the flu. If he really had wanted to jump, he certainly had ample opportunity to do so. What I think he wanted was to stare into a fear (of falling) and from it derive some lesson wholly unique to him. What he taught each of us was unique to each of us. And what he taught me was to stare into my fears without jumping into them. Now, what’s interesting is that I may have learned more from all his time up on the roof than he did. But who knows for sure? Come to think of it, are we not each other’s angels? Do we need to know it when we are?


Angel From Montgomery - Bonnie Raitt ( I kinda like Bonnie with a little weight on. She was always so gaunt.)

[dave]

180. Hanging Around


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Filled to capacity by the hot dogs and two rounds of ice cream cones (two for me … Mort had only one cone), we wandered back to the police station and sat for at least two hours in another small office where the tiny desk this time was olive drab. I had no means of getting back to West Saugerties and Mort said he was working on that, so I sat around the tiny office until early evening and was asked for my blessing by one coke head or another each time I went down the hall to use the bathroom.

Just as I was about to do something desperate, like open my gym bag and fish out the little portable Chaucer, the door opened and they came into the office followed by Mort. I have to say that even Mort agreed later that they made a handsome couple.

“How are you, my Brudder?” asked the shapely amazon, Liutenant Panzierone. Next to her stood Lance, surprisingly just a hair taller.

“I am so sorry, Bouncer,” he said. “I feel terrible about Jesse.”
We spoke about our mutual friend for a few minutes, but I did not recount the awful details of the shooting.

“I hate to bring up practical matters,” said Lance, “but would you and the Brothers want Jesse’s funeral here in Utica or back in Saugerties?”

“I hadn’t thought of it,” I replied. “Does he have relatives here? I’m not sure he knew anyone close in Saugerties, except of course …”

“I’ve spoken with Sally,” Lance said. “She’s heartbroken and says she will attend wherever it is. Alfred is coming, also.” I wondered about Maria, but thought better of asking about her.
We would get a little advance notice of her anyway. Her orange jasmine scent would no doubt arrive five minutes before her.


Scent of A Woman - Al Pacino

[clarencebunsen]

Based on something I read today. I can't help myself, sorry. (Well almost sorry.)



Do you think that if instead of their failed adventure of operating a dairy farm on Mucky Run Road, the brothers would have been more successful if they had tried a casino designed after a medieval monastery and featuring games of Gregorian Chance?

[dave]

Hahaha! Maybe it was context, but I had to reach high for that one. Gregorian Chance. And maybe this time around, the Brothers won't fail at dairy farming. Not all of them. You never know.

[dave]

181. Tongue Tied


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I don’t think I’ve ever given a eulogy before, but when it came time for the memorial service and no one else volunteered, I took Lance aside and asked him if he wanted to say a few words.

“Yes,” he said, “I think I’d like to do that after you and Harpo speak.”

“Eulogies are not part of the Ardent Brothers tradition,” I said.

Lance just nodded and looked away.

“I’ll ask Harpo,” I said.

“Eulogies are not in our tradition,” said Harpo, “but I think Jesse’s family would appreciate us saying something at his funeral.”

I found the younger brother outside of the church.

“Micky,” I said, “would you care to say something for your brother?”
“I haven’t seen him in forty years,” said the man. “What would I say?”

”Some childhood incident, possibly?” I was trying very hard to get out of doing this. Were I the type of person who enjoyed speaking to crowds, I would not have become a contemplative monk.

I needn’t have worried about a crowd. Once inside the church it became evident the congregation would be quite small.

I was beginning to get a feeling, the same kind when one is left out of a joke. And in this case I could almost separate the group into two halves, those who were in on the joke and those who were not. But although I could tell who knew and who did not, I wasn't sure what it was some of us knew and some of us didn't.

Roy Orbison - The Three Bells

[dave]

183. Assignment





When Lance rented the mini-van to cart the brothers from the Mountain Meadow Inn up to Utica, he also made arrangements for those of us from out of town to stay in the Hotel Utica. It’s quite a nice place, surprisingly, given that it sits in the middle of a declining business area of the city. I was told it had been renovated and was now a “destination,” but I don’t know what visitors would find outside its luxurious rooms, restaurant and facilities to entice them to leave the building for any length of time. Maybe that’s the point.

I had half a mind to ask the concierge if it would be possible for one or two of us to briefly go out on the roof the hotel. I remember Jesse’s story of being a plane spotter up there when he was a youngster. In fact, it’s one of his stories that stuck with me, because I could identify with it. I didn’t have a similar experience when I was 13 years old, but I can well remember that age when life is just opening up and anything that mimics adulthood is very, very important.

During the second world war, which was of course before Jesse’s time, everyone in America mobilized for the conflict in one way or another. Jesse had heard if you weren’t fighting in the skies over France or slogging up the boot of Italy, you were back home dealing with rationing and black-out shades and air raid drills. You could have been climbing fire towers or standing on the roofs of tall buildings waiting to spot enemy airplanes if they chanced to come over U.S. territory. In Utica, the citizenry felt especially vulnerable to air attack, he said, because they were only a hundred miles from Canada and you couldn’t trust those damned Canadian Frenchies to do anything right, much less shoot down an enemy plane before it flew down the valley and dropped a load of bombs on them.

Fear from the skies persisted into the early days of the Cold War as folks continued to climb tall buildings and watch for menacing aircraft. But by 1957 damned few citizens thought it worthwhile to sit perched atop a water tower to watch a supersonic Russian bomber scream by overhead with an atomic bomb hanging from its belly. Better to be high-tailing it out of town. However, bureaucracies never die and the Civil Defense Department continued to enroll anyone interested into the Ground Observer Corps. Jesse and his boyhood friend, George, were two 13 year olds who were definitely interested. They figured a U.S. Government assignment would be much more exciting than working on their Boy Scout merit badges. (continued)

I Am A Patriot - Jackson Browne at Glastonbury, 2010

[dave]

184. Eagle Eye





The man at the Civil Defense office gave them a condescending smile, but he signed them up. He explained the Observers’ duties … report any enemy planes they might see. While on duty Jesse and George would be in telephone contact with the Strategic Air Command in Syracuse, 50 miles away. Evidently, the SAC guys would be hunched over their big radar screens and scanning the skies for “bandits,” but they needed help. The two boys saw themselves as the men on the scene, able to call out the tail numbers, or something. Jesse asked Mr. Holcomb if enemy airplane tail numbers would be in Russian, but the man appeared to not hear. Instead, he handed the boys a clipboard and told them to fill their names in any time slot they wanted to work. The schedule was empty. They were the only volunteers for that month and may have been the only volunteers all year. George and Jesse may have been the one last gasp by the Ground Observer Corps in Central New York.

Undaunted in their enthusiasm, the two walked out on the roof of the Hotel Utica the next day after school. The wind whistled around and blew stray leaves and scraps of paper up against a dangerously low wall that ran around the perimeter of our gravel surfaced aerie above the town. If not careful, they could easily trip and plummet to their deaths in the street below. They used the key from Mr. Houdini to open a grey box mounted on a pole next to a skylight glazed with whitened glass and frosted with fresh bird poop. In the box were binoculars, a booklet of silhouettes for identifying airplanes and a grey colored phone with a label above it reading “Report.”

As they discused what to do first, George picked up the phone and spoke into it with the officious voice of a junior grade lieutenant.

“Reporting for duty … Sir!! What? OK, thank you. Sir!!”

A Sergeant named Carmodelli had just said he wanted the kids to behave while up on the roof. Kids? Official government plane spotters!

Utica is ten miles from a former US Air Force base and five miles from the county airport, so the sky was quite busy with aircraft. But soon, among the commercial DC3’s and the Air Force F-86 Saber Jets engaged in training flights, they spotted a Russian MiG 15.

"We were pretty sure of it," said Jesse. "Of course, now that I reflect on the odds, it seems unlikely that a Russian MiG had penetrated the North American Air Defense Shield and was flying around the countryside unnoticed by the American F- 86’s. But George was certain the bogey he was peering at through the old binoculars absolutely matched the silhouette in the booklet. In fact, he was thoroughly convinced of it. Also, he pointed out that as duly sworn plane spotters we were not to question procedures or to analyze likelihoods, but just report our findings. And he was sure we were looking at a Russian MiG 15 fighter jet."

Trying to stall the inevitable, Jesse asked, “Does it have bombs on it?”

“Would it matter?” asked George.

“Well, yes,” said Jesse. “After all, it might be a peace mission or they might be surrendering.”

“I don’t see a white flag,” said George.

“Well, at that speed a MiG 15 can’t just hang a flag out the window, George,” Jesse whined.

“Are you refusing to perform your sworn duty as an official Ground Observer Corpsman?” George asked in an intimidating voice.

“No, of course not,” said Jesse. “I just think we should give this some thought.”

“You think about it,” George said. “I’m going to take out an enemy plane before it hurts somebody.” (Continued.)


Rascal Flatts - Stand





Background info on Ground Observer Corps

www.radomes.org/museum/documents/GOC/GOC.html

[clarencebunsen]

Is it time already to start working on out summer playlist? We had a couple good ones on the More Stories forum.

For visuals Rascal Flats beats the Jackson Browne offering.

Of course I would take Browne's "Roadie Song" over either.



But the Beach Boys remain the kings of summer