Damn Yankee, George S Geisinger [my reading book txt] 📗

Damn Yankee, Part One
By
George S Geisinger

Chapter 1

The great Brighton Dam is nestled in a quiet country setting. The waters of an active river collect here. One approaches the dam coming down hill from either direction. It's beautiful here. The forest and hills surround the entire area, while the collective waters focus on a major city's water supply somewhere to the south of this lovely wooded area.
Then, there are the people here.
There are the three oxygen sisters, as I think of them. All of them wear cannula tubes to their eager noses, faithfully collecting extra oxygen, and catering to our senior statesman, the most honored King of the Queen's table. Two of the sisters kiss the King's bald head ceremoniously before each of our communal meals. The King tells tales of his combat tours with his machine gun in France during the great war. He says he had to get hurt more than once for the army to send him home. Now he finds himself confined to a wheelchair, but he says that when he stands up, he falls over backwards. “Can't do it,” he says with a chuckle. One of the oxygen sisters is the Queen, and particularly devoted to the King, defending his place of honor at her table against all and sundry who might sit there. The ceremony takes place regularly: two of the sisters kiss the heads of the King and Queen of the great Brighton Dam dining room, here at the senior apartments in the valley.
Then there's my neighbor, the writing professor. She always wants to talk about abstractions and depths of philosophies, or register effusive complaints about how the place is run. She doesn't like the way the water runs, either over, under, around or through the great Brighton Dam. She is the structure's greatest critic. She may forestall a flood one of these days.
Then there's usually quiet lady, who has plenty of insight to lend to almost any situation, in case it were needed at any moment. Even at that, one usually must ask her opinion; she seldom offers it without prompting.
There's the retired Gal Friday. She's been smoking some 50 years or better. Even so, she seems to suffer no ill effects from it, except that she has the most intense craving for cigarettes. She steals way during meals to go out and have a few hales on another, pleading that she has to go to the Lady's Room, but I know better. You can't fool an reformed smoker. Oh, and no one can pass any sort of untoward comprehension over on her either, anymore than one can pass one beyond the quiet one. Those two ladies are sharp as tacks. Every now and then, the one pats me on my forearm in a most maternal fashion at the Queen's table, in the dining room of the great Brighton Dam Senior Apartments, as if to reassure me somehow, in her most maternal fashion. I find her manner comforting.
An old salt here has been a near-silent, affable mystery until just recently. He's an old Navy man, no doubt, but I made a minor error in my estimation of how old he is. I'd assumed first off that he was a Baby Boomer, since he'd admitted to being stationed in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and his face is nearly devoid of any tell-tale wrinkles that I ever see. But he tells me more recently he's 84 years old! Well, he's a nice, quiet guy. It seems impossible to not enjoy his company. His age simply underscores the reason why it is he speaks and moves as deliberately as he does. He's in ho hurry. He takes his time; a charming fellow.
Then there's the retired federal employee with a familiar Irish name and the most delightfully positive attitude. He's also confined to a wheelchair, like the King, but never complains of aches or pains, and never has enough time to do all the things he'd like to do. He and I have become famous friends here.
We cannot conclude this list of notable dinner companions here at the great Brighton Dam dining room, without gathering our attentions around one, central, most honored personage.
The young and beautiful Missie, is reputed to be the sole survivor of an horrendous auto accident some unknown amount of time back. As the prevailing story goes, she was out in a car on a date with her fiance, and somehow there was a dreadful, awful crash. How many people perished, I have no idea. She alone survives. Her body is broken and contorted, and her speech is significantly limited. The poor dear young lady is positively imprisoned in a wheelchair for life, and lives a fiercely independent, solitary life in our midst, isolated by her disabilities, coming and going among us like a specter. I search my heart to find some way to offer her some sort of kindness and affection, but I seem to fall short at every turn.
From whence cometh the courage to face such a life, my dear Missie?

Chapter 2

I've been doing some crocheting for some of the residents here, mostly hats and scarves. It ain't much of a living, but it keeps me busy and helps make people happy. It especially helps me relax, which is my major object. I'm in it for the pleasure.
Then there is an old school marm here, who marvels at the display of respect her students paid her by the time she approached retirement. They would rise to their feet at her entrance or departure, in her classroom, like the people did with Atticus, the attorney, in his courtroom, in the old movie, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” starring Gregory Peck.
The old gal crochets beautiful throws and afghans, but wants to learn my technique for crocheting hats seamlessly, in the round. I should be able to communicate my technique in a hands-on practicum class easily enough, though I'm not certain I want to betray my secrets. I figured it out for myself after I'd been crocheting for quite a few years, so I've got the background of my own trial and error to fall back on. My work has been popular from years of practice.
I have two different patterns for seamless hats, a stocking cap and a tam.
The retired school teacher has an elegant wardrobe, though not ostentatious. She dresses as though she has some taste, as well as some means. She's modest enough otherwise, in spite of the fact that she also claims her students responded to her simple act of merely putting her hands on her hips, on the playground, as an apparently effective disciplinary act. She also reports that her very presence could quiet the assembly at her school without further measures being taken. She says these things repeatedly. She seems lost beyond her classroom.
She must have become somewhat diminished by her years, by her own measure, honestly enough, because she is not so dynamic an individual at this late date in her life, but is a delightful person to know nonetheless, and very friendly. I find no fault with her.
I marvel at the idea that she cannot seem to maintain a balance in the temperature of her apartment here at the Brighton Dam Apartments. She keeps her door open to the public hallway most of the time, complaining of the heat in her apartment all summer long, though she's in as much possession of an air conditioner in her apartment as the rest of us, and has plenty of access to the maintenance man of the property, as we all do. But she seems to always have her life open to whomever passes by, craving companions. One of the gentlemen here is appearing to respond to her apparent loneliness, and she has at least the one friend, obviously enough. Never let it be said that my elders are without sympathy toward their peers. I'm one of the youngest residents in the place, myself.
The remote nature of the great Brighton Dam Apartments affords all of us here a security one might not expect in other places in this world. We never need to lock our doors, particularly, but I lock my own out of habit whenever I go out, more than out of necessity.

Chapter 3

There is a middle aged fellow here at the great Brighton Dam Apartments, who is first and foremost a friend to our community's pet dog, Bailey.
We have a wonderful, white Labrador to comfort all of us here, who is an absolutely harmless animal. Bailey will bark in full voice as he pleases, and charges and cavorts around the place whenever and wherever he likes, whether he knocks one of us rickety old geezers down or not, or wantonly making his harmless messes for people to clean up after he plays, being a dog, after all, but bites no one, and means no one any harm.
The man gives Bailey his treats daily, to the animal's great delight, and keeps a bed for the dog to sleep in at night, in his own apartment.
The man also administrates his own, community 'hard rock cafe,' so to speak, as a part of his belongings in his apartment. He has his own personal collection of hard rock recordings, and has opened his door to me in friendship, to come listen whenever I like.
He offers a sound I savor from such electric guitar greats as Jimi Hendrix, BB King, Alvin Lee, and Stevie Ray Vaughn, on DVD and CD. Similarly, he offers other hard rock I've barely begun to hear about, or know about, which is such delightfully good stuff, I need to take it bite-sized pieces, time-wise, in order to digest such heavy listening fare, fitful enough to keep it from overflowing in my very sensitive musical ear.
I might overwhelm myself listening to such serious music, and I do not reach for such a point facetiously. In fact, I'm as overwhelmed by such music as I am from almost any other masterful style, and I've heard almost every style of music on the market, with a schooled ear, I hasten to add.
My university major as a young man was music education; I studied to become a high school band director, and failed to finish the training for health reasons. I've heard everything from Medieval chamber music to the sounds I'm writing about here, at some great length over a lifetime of being fascinated with music.
From my point of view, the experience of listening to such a sound as hard rock, heavy metal, funk rock – call it what you will – is so delightful to my ear that I'm overwhelmed, in a relatively short period of time, and run away from it, fearing the return of the acid trips of scores of years past.
One would think I'm referring to classics, and indeed I am. I can't keep still and listen for a very long period of time, but I always want more later.
I'm never quite finished with it, as if I'm almost frightened by the power and authority of it while I'm listening. Being a composer of