The Ghost of Norman Rockwell

                                                                                            

There was art hanging on the walls of the houses that I knew as a boy: my parents’ house and the houses of my grandparents. My family was not New York intellectual: there were no abstract expressionists, no prints of the energetic squiggles of Jackson Pollack, no copies of the brown squares of Mark Rothko. My fathers’ family was from the fishing towns around New Bedford, and so nautical themes dominated. There were journeyman depictions of clipper ships under full sail, and simple paintings of little Grand Banks fishing trailers tied up two or three abreast at the local docks - names like Mary Jane or Sarah Ann painted prominently on the bows. In my father’s study was a piece of high art: a print of a Winslow Homer painting, an image of a menacing sea (complete with sharks,) a dark stormy sky with a waterspout in the distance, and a lone man in a small sailboat, helpless against the elements, the mast carried away by the storm.

My mother looked for a different vision in her art. She loved the prints of Norman Rockwell, whose beautifully detailed pictures of American life graced the covers of the Saturday Evening Post during the decades of my parents’ young adult life.

My family had a bit of a connection to Norman Rockwell. In their later years, my mother’s parents lived in a part of rural Western Massachusetts called the Berkshires. There, small towns, villages really, looked exactly like what a dream of rural New England would be. Whenever we would travel to my grandmother’s house, we would pull off the Massachusetts turnpike in Lee, then head down a narrow road to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Norman Rockwell’s long-time home was in Stockbridge. There in the middle of Stockbridge was the Red Lion Inn, a long white four story wooden building dating from the 1890’s. A covered porch extended the entire length of the front of the inn, full of rocking chairs and white wicker furniture. We children would stare out the window as we passed the row of shops that made up Main Street in Stockbridge, then marvel at the flock of people lounging on the front porch as we turned left in front of the inn, headed down to my grandparent’s little hamlet of Mill River.  A print of his painting of this Main Street, with the Red Lion Inn at the corner, hung in my offices throughout my working career, and his studio was right behind the storefronts that you see in the painting.

So Norman Rockwell was the painter of my childhood. His depictions of the idealized joys of family and the simple pleasures and pains of America seemed to embody the optimistic vision of a middle class post war world that I felt as a pre-teen white boy in the fifties.

My childhood was a small bubble of a world, and I was soon sucked out into the chaotic whirlpool of teenage hormones and struggle for identity, fed at the same time by the cruelty of the Vietnam War, the bloody history of America played out again in the assassinations, bombings, riots and turmoil of the sixties. I no longer had much use for my childhood Norman Rockwell.

This summer I went back to the Berkshires. I stayed for three nights in the Red Lion Inn, an experience beyond the wildest dreams of the boy staring out the side windows of my parents’ old car. I also know a lot more about Norman Rockwell now. I have come to enjoy the love and connection he felt for world that he saw. I realized that his world extended beyond idealized sentiment into the hard realities of America. I have come to appreciate him again.

Leaving Stockbridge, we stopped at a rest stop on the Mass Pike. I watched a mother walking away from us on the sidewalk. She held the hand of her six year old son, who held the hand of his younger brother. They were both wearing matching yellow tee-shirts in the afternoon heat.

I heard a diesel truck start up behind us. The semi rolled slowly through the rest stop, and came up to us as it was gathering speed to head back out onto the Pike. The two boys turned and waved, and, as the truck passed, the driver sounded two quick blasts of the deep, sweet air horn. The boys held their hands in the air, the mother waved too, and the ghost of Norman Rockwell snapped a quick picture on his cell phone, an image soon to be featured on the next cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

© Frank Kearns 2015

Noon on the Rio Hondo

out on the wide spread of the West

the line between the earth and sky

seems so thin      and we so unprotected

here in the Rio Hondo wash

the sun teases out bits of mirage

from the hot bottom of the concrete channel

while under the Montebello bluffs

a wooden roof and benches form

a place to hide from endless sky

where a clump of men sit in the shade

some homeless      some have just come down

to pass the empty middle of the day

what to say about these men

who have no work to call them back

from the quick breath of a forty minute lunch

flap meat and onions sizzle

on a little grill

lunch preparations     but other than that

they meditate beneath their tree

on an airplane headed to LAX

and the march of sun down to the coast

while on a distant overpass

trucks and cars slow    then stop   then start again

radios play and air conditioners hum

and on this warm day when a beer will feel good

their friend approaches on a bike     a cool case of Modelo

balanced on his handlebars

© Frank Kearns 2015

Another Failed Career

Now that I am retired, I can look back with fondness … or amusement … or embarrassment at some of the jobs that I have had. Some have been interesting, but I have had my share of spectacular failures.

The summer after my sophomore year in college, I scored a great summer job as a concrete inspector. A twenty year old kid, pretty wet behind the ears, I would drive sometimes 60 miles to a construction site to perform a simple test, called a “slump test,” on the concrete from each truck before it was poured. I would get a pail of concrete from the truck, and fill a slightly cone-shaped foot-high tin cylinder. Then I would slowly lift the cylinder, leaving the pile of concrete unsupported. If the pile saged three inches, the concrete was good to go. If it didn’t sag enough, the driver would add more water into the truck, then I would test it again.

A brief discussion of concrete and water: water is essential to a good concrete mix. Too little water, and some of the cement is not dissolved, leaving dry cement powder and weak spots. Too much water, and the cement paste becomes runny. The sand and gravel start to separate from the paste and settle out. When the cement truck is initially loaded at the plant, the right amount of water is added. But as the concrete is turned in the big round tub on the back of the truck, water is lost due to the heat of the sun and chemical reactions in the cement. So the driver often needs to add more water at the job site. Also, the concrete workers much prefer wet concrete that will flow easily into the forms. So there is a constant tension between the need for water so that the concrete flows well, and the need to keep excessive water out so that the concrete is stiff and strong.

So I would perform my test. If the concrete was dry, more water was added. If, however, the concrete sagged too much, the concrete in the truck is too wet, and there is no way to dry it out. I got to tell the driver, the foreman, and anyone else who cared, that the truckload is rejected and has to be sent back. Picture a cement truck driver. Picture a construction site foreman. You can imagine how well that goes over.

One hot summer day I was sent out to a construction site, an addition to the library in Lynn Massachusetts. Nine foot high plywood forms for a new wall were baking in the sun, waiting for the concrete. I tested the first truck that pulled up. The slump test passed: good stiff concrete. They maneuvered the chute over the forms and started pouring.

Almost immediately the foreman stopped the pour. “We’re going to have to add more water.”

“Can’t,” I replied. “the concrete is perfect right now.”

The foreman paused for a minute. “The forms are so hot,” he said. “The moisture will evaporate as soon as it hits the walls. We’re going to get bubbles unless we add more water.”

I had been a “concrete inspector” for all of two months. Judgment calls were out of the question. I had done my test, and that was that. “Can’t add any more water,” I repeated.

“Ooooh Kaaay,” the foreman said slowly. “Let’s pour it,” he hollered up to the truck driver. The big drum turned, and the concrete poured out into the tall forms.

A week later when I called in for my daily assignment, my boss at the testing lab told me to meet him the next morning at the library. As I parked across the street I could see the wall. They had pulled the forms off the day before, and even from a distance I could see that the surface of the wall was covered with bubbles and pockets, some of them as big as a fist. There standing in front of the wall was my boss and the same foreman from the week before.

“What happened?” my boss asked. I explained that the concrete had tested perfect. Something told me that it was also important to explain that the foreman had predicted problems if they didn’t add more water, and that I had refused to allow it. My boss just nodded his head a bit as I spoke. “Well,” he said finally, “better get on to the next job,” and he gave me the address. As I turned to go, the foreman said “It’s OK, kid. You did what you had to do.”

I walked to the car, feeling like a failure, but also feeling like I had passed some other test that I couldn’t quite explain.

Frank Kearns

May 2015

Common Things

On our first morning in the house

our new home not yet cold

from its last abandonment

we tiptoed on our thin young legs

down to the cool cellar

heavy with the scent of stone and earth

we found a workbench with a few hand saws

tinged with rust in this electric age

and on the floor a 12 pound sledge

useless      with a splintered handle

that could have easily been replaced

if anyone had cared

half way down the basement was

a heavy timbered room

about ten feet on either side

whose door barely responded

to the pull of a ten

and an eight year old

but when it did and when we groped

to find the switch

a single hanging bulb lit up

to reveal a large square chest

a room within a room

a poultry incubator six feet tall

varnished oak with frame and panel doors

drawer after drawer of wire mesh

brass hinges and latches with long thick handles

handles that pulled easily

handles cast without a care

for a bit of extra metal

handles as long as a young boy’s arm

with graceful curves to welcome the hand

and a thickening at the end

to signify nothing but the maker’s sense

of how such a simple metal piece

should look to the eye and feel to the touch

good for nothing now except

to fasten closed a wooden door

if there was something left to seal inside

good for nothing but to teach

a little boy the feel of common things

and help him understand what beauty is

© 2015 Frank Kearns

Basement Photographs

In the cellar

you      and I your older brother

construct another project

the trains of childhood

replaced with a model race car track

built by us from wood and foil

in the picture you and I

heads bowed in concentration

don’t seem to feel the need to talk

but as we planned

the roadway slope

and the spacing of the track

we must have talked

and though I never was a dreamer

we must have talked of dreams

the photographs

are black and white

like shadows     like my memories

and I have spent a lifetime

searching them

for fragments of your voice

©2015 Frank Kearns

Matilda Jane Dunbar 1845-1934

What’s a mother to do

with a son as precocious as this

what’s a freed slave woman to do

but smile at a son who poured out words

in stories      on paper        in print

what’s a mother to do

but swell with a bit of maternal pride

her son a leader of literary men

what’s a mother to think

her son out traveling the world

introduced to presidents and kings

while Jim Crow churns old hatreds

what’s a mother to do but hope

that after the searing civil war

her country will come to embrace her Paul

and all of his brothers and sisters

what’s an old black woman to do

but wake in the night terrified

as footsteps and fires still hammer and cleave

the fate of his brothers and sisters



----------------------------------------

Matilda Jane Dunbar was the mother of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906).

Born in Dayton, Ohio, and schoolmate and friend of Orville and Wilbur Wright, Paul Laurence Dunbar was one the first influential black poets in American literature.

National Park Service: Paul Laurence Dunbar's life story

The Poetry Foundation: Paul Lawrence Dunbar

-----------------------------------------

© Frank Kearns 2015

Mortality and Canned Peas

Mortality and Canned Peas

It may sound heartless when I say

that my first memory of death

is tied to the taste and texture

of green peas from a can

When I first recalled all this

I was sure that these disparate thoughts

had accidentally bumped together

in pre-dawn mind meander time

so I circled back

around my first remembered home

first memory of mother sitting

on the low back stoop in summertime

then on to Maine and my first schools

box after box of feelings to sort through

or more like stacks of wrinkled paper

to be examined each in turn

and here it was        the classmate

disappeared from school one day

my parents told me

as supper sat untouched on plates

told me heaven makes this all OK

and so began digestion of

life and tuna casserole

and soggy tasting green peas from a can

© Frank Kearns 2015

My Father’s House

My Father’s House

The house of my memory

is a semi-rural farm house

with musty smells of

old wall paper and indoor plants.

You              retired

sitting at the dining room table

in pajamas and bathrobe

cigarettes and coffee

AM talk radio

KFWB Boston

daily pleasure

at the agonies of the traffic report.

The house of my dream

is a different house

on a narrow fishing-town street

before great grandmother’s knick-knacks became

a part of frozen memory.

You are a boy

entering the magic door

winding up the attic staircase

the wood a lighter brown with hints of red

the steps twisting and so narrow.

The photograph is yellowed.

You are so delicate in your uniform

your China Burma India Theater patch

jumping out from small shoulders.

Your eyes are feeling something,

seeing something beyond you and me.

In the attic

rubber band model planes

delicate balsa stringers

with tissue paper skin

light as the still air.

And a homemade short wave radio set.

You hear the news

open that high peak window

lean out

and shout to the neighborhood

Pearl Harbor has been attacked!

Mid-Winter Road Trip

Although the overnight weather report

showed that the coming cold front would stay

up in Colorado for another day

the thin film of snow that drifted

across the streets of Amarillo

told us that Flagstaff was out of the question

So we headed down toward Roswell

hoping for Las Cruces

then onto state route seventy

watching the rain freeze on the road

slowing a little more after every roadside wreck

but still going on

till out on a wide expanse of plain

at a place where a pickup truck was overturned

next to a smashed up Honda

someone else

the highway patrol

had to tell us it was time to stop

had to tell us that some days

there just is no way

to keep on heading west

© 2015 Frank Kearns

Ghost Stories

The close sun of Los Angeles

is hard on ghosts

you won’t find them as you might

lurking deep in redwood forests

or soaring on the wind

in the high sky of Mojave

In the light we tell our stories

cheerfully with bits of lunch

           at noisy restaurant tables

standing in chance market meetings

or bravely in fluorescent

          story-telling classes

The ghosts prefer to hide and wait for dark

to float down moon-lit river channels

tiptoe among the black palm tree silhouettes

echo back the words they hear

          in corners of dim living rooms

collect the things that we have hidden deep

and then explode us from our deepest sleep

© 2015 Frank Kearns

Christmas: Orono Maine 1956

The trains would roll

The streamlined F3 locomotive

would pull the Bangor and Aroostook passenger train

across Pine Street and over the Penobscot River bridge

head out of the small Maine town

and like a magnet pull us along

west across the Mississippi to

New Mexico and California   

But for now

the model train laid out in an oval

of flimsy track on linoleum floor

would have to wait the vagaries

of electric circuits in a little house

taxed to the limit by the chill

of winter air against the cracks

and fuses blowing at the demands

of Christmas lights and electric oven

glowing just above the tracks

© 2014 Frank Kearns

Ready to Go

The weathered barn

dusty bay in the far left corner

the nineteen twenty nine Essex

upright steel box of a body

yellow cracked wood-spoked wheels

the grease caked hard on the spindles

the upright bench seats

dusty seat covers somewhat worn

but still intact

the open glove box door

world war two gas coupons

casually thrown inside

plenty of gas

for next week's trip to Boston

© 2014 Frank Kearns

Image Attribution

By Lars-Göran Lindgren Sweden (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Love and Relativity

In the dark of the planetarium

I think about the rings of Saturn

and realize that when we lay together

I fit against the curve of your back

the way the third and fourth rings fit

close but with a space in which

Einstein might have talked of love

as the transition of flesh into energy

or perhaps he meant the other way

because love for us is the oscillation

the transition from the fire of passion

to the feel of the earth when freshly tilled

between the melting of touch and sound

into a glowing orange heat

and the mundane placing of a picture

just above the living room couch

all of which is much more confusing

than Einstein’s simple formulation


© 2014 Frank Kearns

Heading Toward October

They all are heading toward October

buses   planes   and cruise ships even

going to see the October of

New Hampshire and Vermont

going to see the scarlet and the

deepest color of orange and

my favorite transparent yellow

glowing in the setting sun

going to see the bed and breakfasts

the flowing expanse of folding hills

and returning hopefully to home

just before November comes

with naked trunks and twisted limbs

when all the deepest forest is revealed

Fall Tree Photo Jere Kearns © 2013

© 2014 Frank Kearns

Circling Venice

A shameless plug for my collection, available on Amazon.com. The story of my migration to California, and the story of how Carol and I came to be together. It's really inexpensive!!! Feel free to purchase, write a review, etc etc.

Circling Venice

Here is a teaser:

California Orbits

we were comets hurtling

in great eccentric orbits

so close in Venice years before

flying fast at periapsis

then speeding off again up Highway 101

distance measured by the plains of Camarillo

speed measured by the beat of the Cumbia

the trumpets blaring in sweaty Oxnard bars

finally the endless outer reaches

tiny houses by the farm fields of Ventura

searching through Kepler’s laws

waiting for gravity or stubbornness

or orbital momentum

to draw us back again

you count from 1975

I count from an airplane ride

on the way to San Francisco

window seat                       the clouds

bright behind your hair

you count from a chapel in Huntington Park

I count from holding hands again

tighter                            like we meant it

stopping each other in mid flight

in the sunshine of the Embarcadero

Learning to Fly

Once, in a dusty attic in my grandmother’s house, I saw the remnants of the model airplanes my father had made as a child. Long as a grown man’s arm, they were made of tiny sticks, lacy and delicate, covered with the thinnest of tissue paper. I could imagine them floating in an open field, like a butterfly, carried on cushions of air.

The models that we made were very different. Their construction was crude, about the size of a serving plate, made of light slabs of balsa wood for wings, body, tail and rudder. At the heart of these models were tiny gas motors which, even with an attached fuel tank, were about the size of a one quarter measuring cup. Once started, the motors screamed like a thousand angry bumble bees. Our ears buzzed, fumes flowed in the blast of air and coated the hands of the boy holding back the plane, while the “pilot” raced to where the control handle lay in the grass.

These models were called “control line” models. Two thin wires ran from one wing of the plane to a handle maybe fifty feet away. The “pilot” held this handle at the center of a circle, and turned in place as the plane flew round and round, restrained by the two wires. Dizziness was always a danger, as was wandering away from the starting place as we turned. If the pilot wandered, the circular flight path could move to where there the edge of the house or the laundry post out in the field would cause a mid-air disaster.

The motors were strong relative to the size and weight that the plane, so the models didn’t so much fly as trail desperately after the propeller as it clawed its way through the air. These models flew fast, so our learning process was about what you would expect. The plane would take off; our attempts at control would cause a few quick up and down oscillations and then finally a dive into the grass.

In spite of our complete lack of mastery of these simple models, we began to build a larger more sophisticated version. This was a completely different project. The wingspan was the width of a kitchen table, and the construction was more like a real airplane, with ribs and bulkheads forming a skeleton which was covered by balsa sheeting. The motor was larger, and surgical tubing ran back from the motor to a separate aluminum tank, the size of a small coffee cup, nestled in the middle of the fuselage. This model took us about a month to build and paint, much longer than the simple slab models we had been flying.

The big day finally came. We had heaver control wires to handle the additional power and weight, and they were longer too. Since we were using up a lot more of the back field and there was less clearance to the various obstacles, we arranged a 4 foot diameter circle of red bricks around the pilot pivot point, so that if we started to wander as we turned round and round, the bricks would warn us and keep us in the right spot.

After a couple of spins of the prop, the motor came to life. Rather than the frantic high pitched scream of the smaller motors, this one had a more satisfactory tone, like a chain saw in full song. My brother held the tail of the model, I ran to the center of the circle, picked up the control handle, pulled the slack out of the control lines, and gave him a quick nod to release the plane.

The plane was still fast, but not as fast and frantic as the smaller models. I actually felt like I had some control, and instead of crashing after a couple of turns I was able to keep it airborne turn after turn. Finally we were really flying!

The crash was so sudden it seemed the world stopped. One instant there was the plane circling fifteen feet off the ground, its red stripe along the side clear in my memory. The next instant all sound was gone, the lines were slack, and pieces of balsa, fragments of fuselage and wing and tail, were sailing through the air. I had somehow wandered out of my circle of brick, and drifted over so that the plane had collided squarely with the six inch thick twenty foot high cloths line post. And what I remember most clearly of all was the aluminum fuel tank, free of the fuselage, gleaming in the sun, as it performed a slow cartwheel, painting a filmy arc of fuel in the clear air as it turned.

We never did much flying after that.

©Frank Kearns 2014

Mule Skinner

After five days at the fairgrounds

in Bishop California

finishing third and fourth

in a couple of calf roping events

and chatting with a small but steady stream

of strangers who strolled the rows of stalls

after days of bits of apples and carrots

for children to feed to his mule Sunflower

Henry was more than happy to lift

the heavy tongue of his dust streaked trailer

walk Sunflower up the metal ramp

turn north onto highway 395

and as the mountains began to tinge red

he looked to a summer of days in the saddle

and felt the knots in the back of his neck

two days drive to Bozeman Montana

Yearlings

we were running in the evening air

the top of the hill our finish line

both of us panting at the end

she so near to me I tingled

as a mist of breath caressed my cheek

this morning boys jog in the park

a tall girl swings on a low tree branch

yearlings        faces not yet marked

they feel the sunlight on their face

dampness of the still-wet grass

later we were together        close

in the deepest corner of the empty barn

the scents of hair and skin and earth

all the many colors

                        of the end

                                    and the beginning

Wet Bulb Thermometer

Usually it’s a dry heat here

but the last week brought humidity

and air conditioners grind on overtime

until the midnight bedroom windows

offer cooling currents of relief

side by side         the sheet pulled half way up

we search for pleasing weather words

temperature is nice       barometer too clinical

dew point has a sensuous ring

now the wet bulb thermometer

sounds a little twisted for our taste

but it offers numerical measurement

of how a casual arm would feel

laid across the arch of waist

and how a finger will glide on flesh

in a night when skin feels perfect touching skin

and gentle movements quickly leave behind

the state of the wet bulb thermometer

©Frank Kearns 2014

Words for Rain

            

Deep in a hot southwestern night

I’m haunted by the memories

that will perhaps leave peacefully

if I can give a name to each

of a thousand images of rain

a name for the driving lashing rain

that splattered on the windshield glass

in ever-changing circles and rivulets

and dodged the syncopated wipers

for one hundred turnpike miles

a name for a mist in early summer

that thickened on the canopy of pine

till droplets fell to darken and dapple

the paths which led around the pond

to the place we called Perch Cove

rain as verb    to lavish or bestow

great buckets of rain     so sudden

they absolve the layers of festering dust

and on a damp mid-summer night

break loose the clots of memory

and what name will finally satisfy

the weeks of late September rain

cold against your upstairs window

disquieting the inner cracks

threatening to freeze and split the soul

 © 2014 Frank Kearns