Oct. 01, 2004 - 19:20 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Some Good

Less than a full block from our house on the alley was the flagpole on the school grounds of the junior high where I would go when I got to that age.

That flag pole was a point of interest to me from the first time I ever saw it, even before I began elementary school. Early on we would pass it, Mom and I on our way north on Pearl Street to the novelty store. Then school was in session and I would see the flag so high up there undulating in the breeze, snapping in a wind, my heart thrilling to the emblem of my country.

Later on in time, my pants flew from the top of that very flagpole. Never did get even with the guys who did that to me -- actually I didn't even know who they were, just some birds who went to that school and wanted to torment a little boy.

Whether the flag was up or already taken inside in the afternoon the halyards had something metal that would clank against the pole. Rapidly in a wind, slowly in a breeze. That sound was a part of my life.

Stage set now. One afternoon in the late fall I went to the store across from that school and with my hoarded pennies, bought me a bag of Golden Grain tobacco, headed toward my house less than a block away, hoping to roll a cig or two. Wind blowing, halyard clanking on the pole, my teeth gritting on the dust that was in the air. Gum wrappers, cigarette and cigar butts, empty packages and the occasional condom in the gutters of which the light stuff was fluttering back and forth in the gusts.

Of course there was no one at home to greet me, Mom and Dad both worked -- it was in the Depression. At the time my pals all had to be at home and I was forbidden to bring friends home to our empty house.

It was weird and disquieting to me that halyard tapping out a dirge for me and my condition. I had to go home and start a fire in our coal range to warm our little house to a livable temperature. The thought of going into a cold, empty house that would have only myself in it there for several more hours was not appealing to me at all.

Times were hard, but I think to us boys that was just normal life, that was what we knew, so we were not pouting about things like that.

But that day I think I realized that winter and pre-winter would always be hard times for me whether I was flush or not. Like the icy fingers of death itself, a cloud came between me and happiness for a short time. Which later became a longer time each year.

I had good times in the winter as well, but its cold tendrils invaded my psyche in between laughs and glee. I guess it was some years later that ailment became known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD for short, which it is.

As the year wanes, more lights stay on in our house, and our visits are to brighter places. A loving mate rooting for me helps immeasurably, of course.

As we have been settling in to our new abode and the fatigue and discomfort of trying to make sense of things, that clank, clank of the halyards on the flagpole in the schoolyard seem to sound as of yore.

So in my life, like in the life of others, there has been some bad, Some Good . . . . . . . . . .

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