Saturday Matinee
We were sitting elbow deep in the pop-corn darkness,
when his deep voice rumbled out;
“Luke, I am your father”.
I gasped…
My sister jumped up and screamed
“BULLSHIT!”
The manager hustled us both
out the side door.
Doug Mathewson
Waiting on Line
The food truck line was long, and the wait seemed even longer with no shade.
It was forty minutes before my turn, and it was the Blood Mobile!
Well, seemed silly to leave after such a long wait. If I tell them I feel faint,
maybe I’ll get a snack.
Doug Mathewson
Watching the Seasons
Him being more your uncle than mine, you’re close kin and me only poor relations, I thought it best you talk first when he began about his property, leaving a will, what would happen to the land.
Imagine you’d be thinking about horses. You aways been talking about them since you were little. Playing horses. Dreaming horses. Talking horses and living on a farm.
I wasn’t thinking about anything. Coming back and Janie being gone. I didn’t like to think about past or future, they both hurt, so I left them alone.
We signed up together right after she got out of high school. I was a year behind
and quit. So we were GI Joe and GI Jane. Come back in a couple of years, have some money, get a place. Maybe she’d go to school. I’d need a job, farm on the side for us.
We coulda been a commercial on the TV. High school sweethearts off to war, except Janie got killed. Some fool Lieutenant got them all blown up and not half of her come home. Not from the weight of that government rubber bag.
Knew you’d take more than you should from your uncle, but not in a thieving way.
More than your share, is all. You best move in now. Learn your way around, and
no lie, he needs the help.
I’ll stay on, you want. Keep to myself, and watch the seasons.
Hard sometimes, trying to forget and remember at the same time.
Doug Mathewson
Elive
Well, huh…. Well, I’d have to say it was back when we were trying to be rodeo
stars, say the second summer of the three. If you wasn’t getting drunk every night and raising hell you’d be looking for something else to do so I started going to these services they got in the back of a big old storage trailer. The guy, Reverend Bob, or Pastor Joe, or what ever the jimmy cakes he called himself back then, would talk about leading a good life, a Christian life, just a life of doing right by others. The Golden Rule and all that. Not that campfire Jesus shit my Daddy always warned against, just being honest owning up to how you carry yourself in this life. So Bob would talk some and pray some, then maybe try and get a old time hymn going.
Remember this one time, well more than the one, somebody started in talking about this reincarnation business, how it was different than the resurrection of our Lord and a different thing too than all the saved folks rising up in the final days.
Said you come back, but not as you was, or even close. Maybe as somebody else
or an animal depending. There were a fair share of jokes about who’d be what,
till I don’t recall who took offense. Some of the boys liked the idea of a second chance at things, then one old hand pointed out us being runaway farm boys, rodeo trash, and day labor we’d do all the same stupid shit all over again.
So at these trailer prayer meeting, she’d be helping out. She was just a kid back then and this would have been late for her. I remember over her pajamas she wore an apron with twin Dutch girls holding watering cans. Her mother had some sympathies with what Reverend Bobby so she and her girl, the two of them, they’d ladle out pink lemonade while the good Reverend would call for a blessing from above. That lemonade hit the spot for sure, being hot in the trailer and all, but yeah, it was all them years back, the first time I saw my Elvie.
Doug Mathewson
He didn’t really cut in front of me at the grocery check out. I was standing a
few feet out motioning to my wife that this would be a better lane, and she
should come with the cart. It was just weird how he had ducked in front of me when my back was half turned. He was about my age with a gray beard more
unkempt than mine. We both wore glasses and knit hats, his black and mine blue,
and we both wore ratty old hoodies. His had oil and grease stains, mine had wood chips all up the front. There were only three things in his basket, milk, hot dogs, and bananas so I didn’t really care if he went first, but I guess I made a face.
“Hey man, sorry I got in front of you, but you know” he said, gesturing
towards his head and widening his eyes,” I was like in Vietnam, you know.”
“Don’t matter” I said. “really don’t matter, and I know what you mean.
Coming in here my wife told me I was driving on the wrong side of the road,
and this morning I had to return a video, and left it off at the wrong place, so
I know.”
“Some people…”
“Yeah, some people. Tell you what, you can owe me a banana.”
He looked around theatrically, pulled a banana off his bunch and went to slide it into my pocket.
“No man, don’t do that”, I said putting it back on the counter with the rest,
“what about the monkeys, don’t want them to go hungry.”
“Yeah, the monkeys, ha-good one.”
By then the cashier was getting impatient with this guy. She wanted him to take his
change and move on, and my wife who had been enjoying the show had finished loading our stuff on the belt and wanted to get going too.
My new friend turns to my wife and says;
“You better keep an eye on this guy! Ha ha, he needs help!”
“ Oh I will” she says, “I’ve been keeping hm out of trouble for a long time.”
During this he had dropped his change on the floor, then drops the rest of his money when he goes to pick it up. I help him, but he has $10 stuck under shoe
and it takes a minute for us to get that straightened out.
“Gheez, you better drive”, he says to my wife.
She laughs and promises that she will.
Doug Mathewson
High Up
Mt. Rainier snow line
hooligan crows tumbling
high, high, crystal blue skies
Doug Mathewson
Memory Quiz
Looking in the rear view
to see what color
that light actually was
Doug Mathewson
Ill Timed
Not one parking space
Monday after Thanksgiving
at the YMCA
Doug Mathewson
Long time ago, when I was first back, it was set up that I’d have this studio
apartment near the park. Just use the name “Walt Sizemore” they said, and the place was mine. It was up on the third floor and looked out over a ball field.
On Sundays, during the good weather, there would usually be a softball game.
I’d nurse my hangover and half read the paper, half watch the game.
I was spooky back then about talking to people outside the center, so watching
the game from my balcony was all the socializing I could handle.
Doug Mathewson
Maybe three hundred yards north of the police station, maybe less, there was a car accident. Nobody was hurt but the red car hit the back of the blue car hard enough that the red one now sat in the wrong lane, and the blue one was on somebody’s lawn with it’s trunk stuffed in.
It must have just happened. A few cars were stopped, pulled over to see what would happen next. I noticed that out of the nearby houses had come men, all men, and all bout my age. Retirement aged, and they were all talking on their smartphones. There were five or six of these guys and I thought it was funny,
them calling the cops when the police station was within sight. Anybody in the
parking lot would have heard the crash, and by now traffic was backed up past
their front door. Also I noticed none of these guys were wearing legitimate pants.
I don’t mean they were unclothed, just they had on pajama bottoms, lounge pants,
sweat pants, one older gent was wearing tennis whites!
So what happened to wearing pants once your retire? I’m not being picky about
jeans, or what ever constituted “business casual”, or anything but pants with a
drawstring and no zipper just don’t count.
The brilliance of my insight was dimmed somewhat when I realized I was wearing
my old dark blue sweat pants, but I have an excuse! I was coming home the gym, and did intend to change. Well, change after I run some errands, and check my email, and have lunch, and do some stuff around the yard.
Doug Mathewson
Take out
While underlining what she especially liked on the take out sushi menu, she laid out what I was to get. Then she underlined the sushi she hated, and other ones that would be poor choices for different reasons so I would know not to get them. Then she went through menu a third time and underlined all the sushi that would be okay, as backups if the first choices were not available today.
She stayed to welcome any early arrival luncheon guests, and I drove to the sushi place with the menu in my pocket.
My memory is still pretty good still, but my concentration wanders, so when I got to the sushi place and looked at the little menu and almost everything on it was underlined! I had no idea what to do.
Good thing there’s a pizza place in the same plaza.
Doug Mathewson
Tea Time
“Don’t put your tea where the cats can get it.”
“Oh, they must like the milk.”
“Yes, yes they adore having milk.”
I agreed but knew it was the caffeine they were after.
How else could they tear around the house all night?
Doug Mathewson