31 January 2009

Dodo

Seven and a half years older than my mother, her brother Joe was always known as 'Dodo.' One supposes a childhood mispronunciation which, coupled with the fact that his father's name was Joe. Anyway, he was always 'Dodo.'

Peter has talked a fair bit about Dodo and family here, and told things that I did not know - or knew only vaguely. I did not at all know that Cleo was Dodo's second wife. Perhaps Peter can fill in here. According to the researches of "Annie from Minnesota," another spouse was 'Carl Godwyn' - one supposes that's a typo for 'Carol.'

I remember only two children of Dodo and Cleo: 'Jody' (evidently short for 'Joel' according to the records) and Debbie. But Annie has turned up:

  • Joel Herriott Thayer (24 July, 1945)
  • Judith Kae Thayer (28 November, 1946)
  • Debra Lynn Thayer (29 July, 1952)
  • Michael Bliss Thayer (18 July, 1953)

so I guess that shows how unreliable memory is!

Dodo and Cleo lived in Los Angeles and we did not see much of them, really, I suppose it is not too surprising. What I do seem to remember, again, is Jody and Debbie being Catholics - or at least going to a Catholic school. There again is this odd Catholic connexion, which my father appears to have known nothing about. Or perhaps it just shows once more the unreliability of my memory!

What Susan remembers about Cleo is that we visited her in her Beverly Hills apartment in 1972, shortly after we were married. Cleo had a small dog, which showed its affection for Susan - by piddling on her foot.

Dodo was a doctor - and owned one or more hospitals. Perhaps he was the doctor who delivered me, by Caeserean section? My mother tells the story about the time Cleo agreed to lie about Dodo's income - or something of that nature - in order to keep from prosecution for tax evasion. Her price: he was to give her some - or all? - of his hospitals.

No doubt Peter can fill in here, as well :-)

26 January 2009

Freedom

This is Auckland Anniversary week-end. Each of New Zealand's original provinces. From 1841 until 1876, we had official divisions called "Provinces". Since 1876 they have been notional, but it is still the case that each province gets one holiday a year - and Auckland's is on the Monday of the last week-end of January (not sure about week-ends with five Sundays or whatever).

And on Auckland Anniversary week-end a Christian pop music festival, called the Parachute Festival, happens near Hamilton.

And Eddie is a security guard at the festival (and also plays his guitar). So that Eveline can go down for part of it, Sue and I go up to their house on the Saturday and stay with Robyn, Jonathan, and Julian until Monday. Their birthdays cluster around this time (one in mid-January and two in early February) so it is also their 'birthday present' from us.

We went to a movie on the Saturday (Bolt) - which was fun - and swimming yesterday - which was productive of sunburn - and generally have the standard grandparents-indulging-grandchildren sort of week-end.

Back to work tomorrow, and so I am not going to write anything much, but will cheat (this time) by pointing you to an article that I think expresses a reality for modern voluntarist society. It is entitled "Religion, the Church and Politics in America."

For those of us who are not (or, as in my and Susan's case, not functionally) Americans, is this relevant?

We are all - at least, we speakers of English are all - part of the same culture. We are all Americans now.

To quote the provocative last bit of the article:

It may sound strange to say that the most important thing we can do politically in America is to strengthen our families and strengthen the Catholic Church. But because of the critical political nature of intermediary and countervailing institutions, it is also true. Though such a statement does not begin to exhaust the value of either family or Church, strengthening the family and strengthening the Catholic Church are profoundly constructive political acts.

The full article is here. The article is about freedom - political freedom, to be sure, but that is not a small thing.

Until next time!

20 January 2009

Uncle Peter - post from my brother Peter

My brother Peter comments (sent to me via e-mail) - 'Dodo' is my Uncle Joe - more about him in a later post. Quotes from my original in italics; Peter's comments in ordinary type; a couple of comments from me in bold:

Nevertheless, my mother said that she and her brother Kenny were very close, and that when she was in high school, the two of them used to enter - and win, apparently - dance contests. I had never heard of such a thing as a dance contest! How did you win? By finishing your dance sooner than everyone else??!!

Actually, Mom was living in L.A. for a while when she was pretty young, while Kenny and Dodo were in college. Part of their college support $ came from selling newspapers on choice street corners, which they secured by beating the hell out of competitors. They then put Mom in charge of selling the papers while they went off and conquered more choice corners. Mom also “worked for” Dodo, during the days of his acquisition of real estate around L.A. and Palm Springs. Mom told me Dodo would send her off to the County Recorder’s office to check on the tax status of various properties during the 1930’s, find people in trouble, and then come in to buy ‘em out on the cheap. Mom said she would often go finalize the deals with “cash” money which she would pick up from various Safe Deposit Boxes that Dodo had set up all over town to hide money from the IRS!

Kenny was a lawyer. Well, actually he did several things. He was a major stock player and I think made a lot of money that way. And he owned and operated a car wrecking yard. But he was indeed a lawyer. His children - our cousins (mine, my brother's, and sister's) were 'Little Kenny,' Bobby, and Terry.

Kenny was an “attorney” and practiced attornment, not law. Can’t license a common law activity, but the state can license a “public”, protected, privileged activity, such as attornment. As he tired of the practice – his biggest complaint was always the moron and crooked judges – and as he accumulated $ from his corporate attorney business, he bought up thousands of acres of land throughout Kern and adjacent Counties, and eventually the 94-acre Valley Auto and Truck Wrecking yard on old Highway 99. The agricultural land gave him big write-offs against his attorney income, while the wrecking yard made big income, most of which involved cash transactions which could be “laundered” via the stock market and additional land acquisitions.

As have said, I am certain that they - at least our cousins - were Catholics.

Heathens!

Practically speaking perhaps, but can you confirm (or deny?) that they were formally Catholics? I have never been sure of my memory here since Dad told me that he knew nothing of it.

Until we left Bakersfield, in June of 1954, we had much to do in the ordinary way with our cousins - particularly with Bobby and Terry, for Little Kenny was significantly older than I, the oldest in our family. After we moved to Oroville we saw little of them.

However, Bobby did spend three summers in a row living with us in Oroville, during the heyday of the vending business. Those were the summers that he thought that he was as good a ‘hustler’ and gambler as his older brother Kenny, and would go with Jeremiah out to Cadillac Flats to “see and be seen.” He had his clocked cleaned by W.C. and the other boys that ran the “nightclubs” and brothels.

Interesting that I have no memory of this

Both 'Big Kenny' and 'Little Ruth' are dead now. Well, I know 'Big Kenny' is dead because I remember when he died. I think Ruthie is dead. After she was widowed she used to go to Hawai'i and spend time with my mother. I think she and 'Big Ruth' bought a house there at one point. But I think she is gone now.

It wasn’t “Big Ruth” and Little Ruth who bought the house next to Mom on Hilo Bay, but Little Ruth and Cleo – Dodo’s second wife, aka “Queeny.” Queeny sold out to Little Ruth after Mom turned Cleo down on her offer to fly Mom over to Paris on the Concorde out of L.A. to shop with Cleo and Judy! Mom had told Cleo that she wasn’t interested because she couldn’t take her bird – Pinky – with her, and besides there was crap for Mumu selection along the Champs-Elysees!

Bobby is dead, too. He appears to have got drunk one day and decided to dive into the Kern River. Unfortunately there is almost no water left in the Kern River any longer so he hit bottom and broke his neck. Kenny became a fisherman (big time - I think he owned a fleet of fishing boats),

Kenny fished tuna off the California, Mexican and South American Coasts between about 1973 and 1978. His dad, Big Kenny, put up the cash to have the 65-ft big cargo fishing boat built at Wilmington, which Kenny then operated until he go “captured” by government gun boats off the Ecuadorian Coast. Local “customs” were trying to extort money, so they escorted him to an Ecuadorian harbor and held him there for a couple of months. Big Kenny negotiated and finally got him free – don’t know what it cost but I know it cost something. When he got back to San Pedro, Little Kenny settled up with Big Kenny, and then went back to Santa Barbara to the commercial roofing business, where his hustle and hard work earned him pretty good money during the days of booming development through the 1980’s. After Big Kenny died, Kenny took over the wrecking business, which he now leases to some local Hindu guys for about $20,000/month.

Terry a horse and dog trainer. But I have had no contact with them. Peter may have done.

Terry works for a private outfit that contracts with several Counties in southern California, counseling “lost” and otherwise abandoned kids and tries to get them various types of assistance and placed in new homes. She’s about to or has recently retired, in Bakersfield.

17 January 2009

Uncle Kenny

Our closest relations - closest in the sense of being the ones we saw and interacted with the most - were the children of my mother's brother Kenny.

My mother was the youngest in her family; Kenny was next to her. Even then there was four and a half years difference between them. My mother was born in January, 1915; Kenny in June, 1910. Nevertheless, my mother said that she and her brother Kenny were very close, and that when she was in high school, the two of them used to enter - and win, apparently - dance contests. I had never heard of such a thing as a dance contest! How did you win? By finishing your dance sooner than everyone else??!!

Kenny's wife was Ruth. Actually, Uncle Kenny is 'Big Kenny' because his elder son is 'Little Kenny.' And Ruth is actually 'Little Ruth' because my Uncle Bob's wife is 'Big Ruth.' But more of that later.

Kenny was a lawyer.

Well, actually he did several things. He was a major stock player and I think made a lot of money that way. And he owned and operated a car wrecking yard. But he was indeed a lawyer. His children - our cousins (mine, my brother's, and sister's) were 'Little Kenny,' Bobby, and Terry.

As have said, I am certain that they - at least our cousins - were Catholics. Perhaps I am wrong. But it is odd that I should have believed that so firmly if it were not so. As I have also said, my very first - and enormously impressive - experience of the Mass was through them.

My memory is very vague as to my age, but very clear as to the experience. It must, I am sure, have been Christmas Midnight Mass - it was certainly nighttime, and what else could it have been. I cannot imagine my parents having allowed me up that late when I was very young, so perhaps I was 8 or 9, though my feeling is that I was younger.

Of course I had no context for this. I had been to a Presbyterian Sunday School a few times, with our neighbours the Deweys. I had once been taken to a Sunday Baptist service with our neighbour Mrs Langston - a service which impressed me enormously because of the singing and because of the beauty of the church. But in reality I had no slightest understanding of what religion, or church, might be about.

What I remember vividly about this Midnight Mass - and of course, this being the late 1940's or early 1950's, it would have been the old so-called 'Tridentine' Mass, in Latin - was its mystery. There were strange lights, kneelings, movements. I don't think I understood that the language was not English but then I would not have expected to understand much at all about what was said.

What filled me with a flush of awe and fear was the bells.

I could see a man, dressed in robes, with his back to us. And then a tinkling of bells of unearthly beauty sounded - and I could see nothing to explain the sound. I was genuinely struck with fear - was God's Hand ringing a bell suspended in air where I could not see it? I did not know, and am sure that I later surmised that someone I could not see was ringing the bells. But I knew with certainty that something important was meant by this. The bells must have rung three times, once for the Epiclesis, and then for the consecration of the Host and of the Cup. I have no recollection of detail, but have never forgotten my emotion.

Until we left Bakersfield, in June of 1954, we had much to do in the ordinary way with our cousins - particularly with Bobby and Terry, for Little Kenny was significantly older than I, the oldest in our family. After we moved to Oroville we saw little of them. Both 'Big Kenny' and 'Little Ruth' are dead now. Well, I know 'Big Kenny' is dead because I remember when he died. I think Ruthie is dead. After she was widowed she used to go to Hawai'i and spend time with my mother. I think she and 'Big Ruth' bought a house there at one point. But I think she is gone now.

Bobby is dead, too. He appears to have got drunk one day and decided to dive into the Kern River. Unfortunately there is almost no water left in the Kern River any longer so he hit bottom and broke his neck. Kenny became a fisherman (big time - I think he owned a fleet of fishing boats), Terry a horse and dog trainer. But I have had no contact with them. Peter may have done.

But I owe them the awe I still feel when I think of that first Mass. God grant I would realise that every Mass I intend should evoke the same emotion.

15 January 2009

Death

Sue and I went up, as planned, to visit David and Jodi Van Boxel this last week-end. We had a lovely time. We visited friends - I mean, friends in addition to Dave and Jodi and their younger children - whom we had not seen in quite some time. We went up on Thursday the 8th, came back home on Monday the 12th - and now Susan is in Australia, visiting (mainly) Helen in Newcastle - with a couple of nights at Johnny's in Sydney

I tended to get up a bit earlier than Sue and wandered about a bit, in prayer (sometimes :-)) and meditation.

One morning - might have been Friday - I was struck with how necessarily difficult life is.

Not life, even, really - just living.

I live in a house, with electric lights and appliances, plumbing, hot and cold water. If I wished - and could afford it - I could have the temperature controlled as well. I go to work in a motor vehicle.

Staying at David and Jodi's was just that little bit closer to uncontrolled nature to make me think. He has spent quite some time - more than two years, I think - building a new house for his family. They live in an old one that is not in good condition. Sue and I slept in this new house both last year and this.

This year it has some electricity. It still has not got plumbing - we need to go to the older house for that.

My comfort requires an elaborate exertion of effort to maintain it. The older house David is living in shows that none of this complex artificial environment takes care of itself. It must be maintained.

Whilst we were there, David got ill - not terribly serious, a 24-hour stomach bug of some sort that he thinks he picked up from one of his children. Nothing could be done about this, of course, except for him to wait until it had passed.

A couple of years ago Sue, after having had bouts of strange illness (that I never contracted) for years, was finally diagnosed with Coeliac disease. This means that she is unable to eat foods containing gluten.

A lot of foods contain gluten. All direct wheat, barley, and rye is out, of course, together with un-obvious things - beer, made from malted barley; many vinegars, made the same way; many ice creams ('thickeners' made from wheat) - and Holy Communion from the Host. Susan can receive Our Lord in the Cup, if it is not the one into which the priest has dropped a particle of the Host. Although the Host is now the Body and Blood of Christ, its 'accidental' properties - including its chemical properties - remain those of wheat bread.

Any of you can add to this list of Things Not The Way They Should Be. These is the 'thorns' and 'thistles' of Genesis 3. We live in a dying world.

This is the meaning of the Old Covenant laws regarding uncleanness. Until the Incarnation, the world was infected by death. The Law taught God's people this - and taught them that they themselves needed cleansing. A woman was unclean after childbirth - because she had just given birth to a dead thing. Touching a corpse rendered you unclean. The world was not as it should be.

Our Lord has changed all that. By uniting Himself with our flesh - with the world as it was - He, instead of becoming Himself unclean, rendered the creation clean again. By shedding His Blood on the Cross He made it possible for us to be cleansed from the deepest form of uncleanness: our sins.

He did all that ... and yet ... Susan is still coeliac; David became ill; if I do not constantly work at it, entropy will slowly cause my house to dissolve back into the elements from which it came; and I myself will one day die the death of all men.

It will not always be so.

Seeing that things were not as God intended gave me hope. It is indeed hope that causes us to look to what is not yet - but will be. It is hope that enables us to build for the future, knowing that even though these things that we build will not themselves last, yet the building itself is producing something that will last. It is producing those habits of the soul that we call 'virtues.'

And those are the things that will last. When we do the work in front of us with love, with care for those who will benefit from it, with love for God Who assigned it to us - then we are slowly reversing the entropy which devours our physical being at present. We are bringing order out of the chaos that resulted from the Fall. We are building up that which was torn down.

And one day all will be made new. The desert will bring forth the rose. The leaves of the trees that drink from the river flowing from the Temple of His Side will be the medicine to restore health to this sick world. And the fruit of those trees will be the fruit of the Tree of Life.

03 January 2009

Vacation

Vacation, not holiday!

Holidays are ... holy days! New Zealand celebrates Epiphany on the Sunday nearest 6 January, so tomorrow is the Solemnity of the Epiphany - but Christmas continues on until the Sunday following Epiphany - the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord - 11 January, this year. From Monday the 12th we return to 'ordinary time' - time in the ordo of things, the regular pattern (until Wednesday 25 February, Ash Wednesday, but that's another story).

So we are on holiday at the moment, but will also be on vacation - time, theoretically, of doing nothing - from Thursday the 8th.

In particular, on Thursday morning Sue and I will drive up to Kaitaia - according to Google Maps:

View Larger Map

a trip of more than five hours - not counting stopping in Whangarei to see where Helen and Robert lived, etc. I keep wanting to go on up north to Cape_Reinga but it will not happen this year.

Instead, we will visit my old friend from University who lives in Kaitaia, then head to Opononi where Dave and Jody Van Boxel live. We will be with them until Monday; return home on Monday the 12th; and Susan will then proceed to Australia to see Helen and Robert, also Johnny and Diane - and I will be on vacation during that time - not doing nothing but rather doing Susan's paper run.

Just giving my excuse for why you won't hear from me next week-end :-)

02 January 2009

Puzzle

I was going to title it 'Mystery' but really that would be too ... well, mysterious :-) But I am puzzled.

In September, 2002 I visited my father and mother for the first time since 1980. My father had just turned 88 in August. My mother was 87. My mother had had a hear attack some years previously, and although her mind was perfectly ok (still is - and in three days from my writing this she will be 94), and her memory clear, she wasn't much interested in recalling the past.

But my father was much more actively 'with it.' And I asked him about something that I had always wondered about.

My mother had four brothers and one sister. She was the youngest in the family - born in 1915 - and her oldest brother Bob was born in September, 1896 - nearly 19 years older than my mother was. The others, in birth order were Byron (1898), Ollie (her sister) (1904), 'Dodo' (1907), and Kenny (1910).

And I am certain that at least Bob, Dodo, and Kenny brought their children up as Catholics. Indeed, I had so taken this for granted that, when I was seeking admission to the Catholic Church in 1995, I wrote to ask my father and mother if, by any chance, I had been baptised as a child. I thought it possible that - perhaps to please her mother - I had been baptised, and of course that would at least have affected the procedures for my admission. And I based my thought on the assumption that my mother's mother had been, at last nominally, a Catholic. Fairly recently Judy, Uncle Bob's younger daughter, confirmed, by e-mail, that, yes, she and her sister Roberta had been brought up as Catholics. I know that my cousins, Kenny's children, took me to the first (and only) Mass I had ever experienced as a child. Come to think of it, the reason I say that Dodo's kids were Catholics is that they went to a Catholic school - but Catholic schools, even then, accepted non-Catholic pupils as well.

In 2002 both my father and mother said they had never heard any such thing, knew nothing about it. When I explained my own experiences, my father said that he recalled my mother's brothers having a kind of romantic interest in their father's supposed Scotch background - though according to 'Annie's researches, he was born in Canada of parents who had also been born in North America - and used to be very keen on Harry Lauder. My Dad thought that perhaps they had become very interested in their mother's supposed French Canadian history.

But none of that could possibly add up to three of them rearing their children as Catholics! I don't know about Byron but for all I know his family may have been Catholic as well. My brother Peter has had some contact with Dodo's and Kenny's children. Perhaps he will talk with them and find out more.

What I do remember about Grandma Dell's religion is that my mother said that her mother - Grandma Dell - had been very taken with Aimée Semple McPherson. So the explanation may have been that my mother's older siblings had all been brought up as Catholics when quite young; that by the time my mother has any memory it was all history.

But it strikes me as odd that my other would not have known something as basic as that her brothers were Catholics. Well, she may have known. When I asked her about this in 2002, she appeared to have lost all interest in the past. And my father may never have known. He and my mother were married in 1934 - Aimée's heyday.

And perhaps this explains something else. My mother's middle name is 'Mildred.' Aimée's mother's name was 'Mildred.' Well, no doubt coincidence - though Aimée was active, together with her mother Mildred, in 1915, her real fame was in the 1920's and 1930's - but I know of no other 'Mildred' anywhere in my family.

But my mother may have been baptised a Catholic - which is an interesting thought!