My Dad was a Cop

​​

While corresponding with a remote friend, this subject came up: 

 

>>   (sorry, my dad was a cop, and these things kind of rub off) 
> Updated, and that is super interesting. I bet that must have been quite interesting, and also nervy at times with your dad being a cop. I bet you heard loads of fascinating stories.

I tried to think of interesting and harrowing stories, but couldn't.  I was a kid, and not thinking about it, plus he faced far fewer dangers in our relatively small town.  It mostly affected my life by teaching me how to be quiet, as he worked graveyard for quite a while.  Also, he drank too much while he had that job.  I suspect that there were a few issues he tried (and failed) to keep from the rest of the family.

 

I do have one story, though.  It was about his first "arrest."  He was sent to respond to reports of a piglet which had escaped its farm enclosure and was seen wandering around the town square.  He had a picture framed, which he called "Pig arrests pig"  (the local paper didn't use that headline).  He had a watch with a revisionist message:  "Pride, Integrity, Guts" -- sort of an attempt to "own" the term.  Later, he quit the force because he was passed over for a promotion that he felt he deserved.  

 

John Lee Payton, Sr.

His Missouri accent was stronger than mine, and sounded a bit more southern.  I think he tried to look like Dean Martin and sound like Andy Griffith.

He was a strict father and discouraged "feelings," which served to estrange his artistic son and discourage questions about his day.  I inherited his temper, which threatened to do the same with my family.  I hope it did not.

2022 Hogswatch Letter

Dear friends and family,

I did not see this year coming.

Early in January I decided that it was time to get back into  theatre.  After a few auditions, I was cast in a minor role for “Harvey,” at the Lofte, and enjoyed it so much that I was back soon after, for the show “Remembering Carol Burnett.”   Re-discovering my place in this community was the best thing I could have done.  

I’ve also continued with my weekly Bedtime Reading livestream, picking up a few viewers.  I also have a number of new Librivox projects underway.  I’m hoping to eventually produce voice projects for pay.  To that end cleared out my “hobbit room” upstairs and converted it into a studio.  It’s amazing how quiet it is up there.

Still working at the railroad.  Less said about that, the better.  Four years to retirement; can’t come quickly enough.

Went on an Alaskan cruise with Arthur & Anita & grandkids.  Lucian performed at karaoke night for the first time, and he was great!  The kid’s coming out of his shell.  The cruise was not quite as healing as our previous one – we all caught Covid on the last day, delaying our trip home by at least an extra travel day.  A minor strain, fortunately, but it did ruin a 3-year record.  

One of my cats scared me this week by slipping outside & running off (R-U-N-N-O-F-T).  She was only gone a day before realizing that the cold wasn’t going to get any better out there, even with the home-made shelters that I’ve placed  under the porch.  It’s a good thing she came back on her own.  Apparently she’s sly enough to get food from a live trap without setting it off.

In October, I started seeing an old college friend, Cinthia Pitcher.  We quickly bonded over our shared experiences (including, sadly, the loss of a spouse).  Within the month, we were engaged, and we are now getting a new house together for when she moves to Omaha in 2023.  We are planning a wedding for next October.

So, by this time next year, I’ll be sending these from a new address.

Stay safe, everybody.

Would You Like To Be A Cleric For Dunstan?

This happened in Robin's game, while we lived in Denver in the early 80's

 Our gnome cleric (who went by “Twit”)  had just discovered that he could gain experience by converting folk to his religion.  Eager for an easy 50xp, he accosted a random npc on the street.  

“How would you like to be a cleric for Dunstan?” he opened.  “It’s really great!  You get to adventure everywhere!  I’ve even been to the ninth circle of Hell!  And treasure like you wouldn’t believe!  I’ve got magic swords coming out of my ass!”

Now, one thing you must understand:  In our game, you just don’t say random crap like that in character, because you never know who might be listening.  Twit wasn’t kidding about the wide variety of adventures he’d been on, but he kind of left out the many powerful entities who still held grudges, and could bestow curses.  

The next couple of rounds were painful for Twit, but he survived.  And he earned the 50xp conversion bonus.  

The pile of swords all had “Nystuls’ Magic Aura” on them and a somewhat disgusted merchant offered fifty gold for the lot.  

The curse could have been removed - Twit himself was high enough level to cast the spell - but he never did.  

A couple of years later, I heard that another DM in Denver used Twit as a random encounter - but with a weaponized version of the curse.   Apparently a party encountered a gnome who merely turned around, dropped trou, and uttered the phrase:

“I’ve got magic swords coming out of my ass!”

May Baskets

 NPR called May baskets a "forgotten tradition."  No one at NPR ever met Robin.

In the very simplest of terms, a May basket is a basket of "goodies."  Think, Little Red Riding Hood's basket.  You fill a few of these up, and hang them on your neighbors' doors early in the morning of May 1st.  If you had a secret crush, this was a perfect time to be daring and take a chance on getting caught leaving a present.

This used to be done all over the country.  Not so much anymore.  But Robin, with generosity oozing out of her pores, loved any opportunity to give gifts.  And she loved the impish spirit of doing it anonymously.  She'd spend all of April gathering up inexpensive goodies and filling the May Day baskets, often to overflowing.  The night before, or early that morning, she'd send me and the kids out to drop them off all over whatever neighborhood we happened to be living in.

I always regarded this with patient tolerance.  Okay, sometimes I wasn't so patient, especially on days when work took up more than its share of my time.  Now, I look upon every one of her traditions with a fondness that crosses over into desperate longing.  Because now, I think I understand.

It was always enough for me to love her, and to love the kids.  But she had so much more love in her heart than that.  She had to send little gifts into the world, at least once in a while.  

They say that grief is just love with nowhere to go.  There are 24 houses in my neighborhood.  That's a few places, anyway.

Happy May Day.

Hush!

We've always loved going to movies together.  We brought our infant son to a theatre showing Fantasia.  He was fascinated by the music and the animation, almost lulled to sleep - until the Russian thistles started dancing!  After that, we had to take him out to the lobby.

Once, at a Wehrenberg, when they played that signature pre-show clip of theirs, with the whispering "Wehrenberg, Wehrenberg, Wehrenberg," ,Robin turned around in her seat and shushed the projection booth.

When she turned back around, she had the most mischievous grin on her face. Cracked up the four rows behind us, and was forevermore a family in-joke. 

The First Airebor Game

 I couldn't tell this until I got my memory straight.

First off: This Bobby Bare recording is from a Shel Silverstein poem. Check the book: "Where the Sidewalk Ends."

Second: This was the first "official" adventure of Airebor.When Robin decided to start her game for real, she had an AD&D Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. No bloody 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5(e) edition, no Monster Manuals, and no modules. And to kick off her first "official" game (she had trial runs with close friends), she invited everyone in our regular gaming group to bring in one of their favorite characters from other games. She made up her own monsters (I recall, in particular, pillow monsters, and ambulatory pot plants, but there were many, many, others).

And she hit us with everything mentioned in this song. At the end of it, if they made it that far, the characters were transported to their new home.

Bringing Back Some Light

 Tuesday night was a rough one for me.  I put some ribs in the crockpot, went searching for our Peking ribs recipe.  Never found it, but uncovered a memory that had me on the rocks for a while.  It was a letter that Robin wrote to a Teen Moms conference, telling them about all the bookcrossers that helped her gather 600 books for the teen mothers and their kids.  I don't remember the year, and the letter wasn't dated, but I can probably find it on the BookCrossing forums.  

She was always doing stuff like that.  The world is a dimmer place without her light.

After I had hold of myself again, I did the only thing I could do to bring back some of that light:  I picked someone that I barely know -- I only knew that they needed a little help, I knew that I could afford it, and I gave it.  

That's what she would have done.

What charity is

When Robin and I were first married, we were dirt poor. I'm talking, our staple diet was plain rice, harvesting dandelions from the yard for greens, and meat only when hot dogs went on sale poor. Her parents helped, quite a lot actually...but every monetary gift came with strings attached, and heaps of guilt & judgement if we didn't behave exactly as her mother believed we ought. If we managed to scrape together a couple of dollars for entertainment, say for a movie, or an hour or two at an arcade, that bit of frivolity was worth a severe dressing-down if the secret got out. Because that sort of thing was not what dirt-poor, getting charity from your parents people, ought to be doing.

Fast-forward many years, to when we had children of our own, and income enough that we can afford to help someone out now and then. And we got a taste of how it feels to dig someone out of a tight spot, then later learn that they've spent money on something that we considered frivolous. It can be irritating. "Well," one thinks, "If they can afford to do that, then why did they need our help?"

But you see, unlike my mother-in-law, we remembered some important lessons from our lean times:

* People can't work 24x7. If you don't take some time to be a family, and treat yourselves, you're headed for some serious trauma.

* We don't see everything that's going on in someone else's life.

* A gift that is not given freely, out of love, is no gift at all.

So we learned to squelch the impulse to kibbitz by adopting this simple philosophy: "We gave this thing (money, food, books, clothing, etc.) away, because we wanted to help and we thought it was the right thing to do. This thing is not ours anymore, and we have no right to say what is done with it. We will not let it bother us if something is done with it that we wouldn't approve of."

This is what charity is.

Another Death In The Family

Tonight I received word that my Aunt Kay has passed away.

I don't know any of the details.  She hasn't been well for quite some time.  The last time she posted anything on Facebook, she thought that she was talking to my father.  Still, she was a decent and loving person, and will be missed.

Kay (Katherine May Payton) moved into an apartment before I reached my teen years.  She used to let my sister and me spend alternating weekends with her.  I think, looking back, that maybe these visits were her mother's idea, so that she wouldn't be out partying with her friends all the time.  If that was the plan, it backfired badly.  Kay turned Granny's little spies into her co-conspirators by bringing whichever kid she happened to be stuck with along for the ride.  Well, that's how it worked for me, anyway.  I can't speak for my sister's experience. 

I consumed my first mixed drinks at Kay's apartment.  I also had my first experience with weekly cleaning chores.  She never treated me like a child, even though I was one, and never excluded me.  What little social skills I gained during those years, was probably thanks to her.

Kay loved life, and I'm glad she made a family for herself.  I regret ever losing touch with her.