Shea's Story Creek Star

The Placebo Effect

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:45:00 -0500

The Placebo Effect
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The amazing power of the human brain
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By Charles Shea LeMone
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This morning while washing the breakfast dishes, my inner-dialogue got hooked on placebos and couldn't shake free. It all started during a conversation with a cashier at the local market telling me her doctor wrote her a new prescription to fight off episodes of depression. It is an ongoing subject with us and our exchanges flowed on track as she bagged my goods.
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Back home--way back in the woods on a dirt road off a dirt road where a bear once got lost in my backyard--the writer in me replayed the conversation through again as I'm apt to do. Dialogue fascinates me. That’s even true when I’m alone and doing all the talking, especially when I am attempting to gain a glimpse into any of life’s mysteries such as the wonders of the human brain.
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Specifically, today, it’s the placebo effect.
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"So what does any of this rambling have to do with placebos?" I asked myself.
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"Well, a whole lot to me," I responded defensively. "Each of us is equipped with more brain cells than stars in the universe. Therefore is it possible that some of the world’s greatest artists, philosophers, scientists and other mental giants--of the past and present--are able to tap into metaphysical forces that are part of the unseen world, like taking a bite out of the legendary fruit of life to gain the knowledge and wisdom contained within?"
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I made no reply.
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Another question, though, might be: Do we all possess a connection to the collective subconscious, sometimes called ESPN? I mean, ESP? That’s another question I would bet yes to--going so far as to believe that clairvoyance, sometimes coming in dreams, is as natural a brain function as helping us breathe. Premonitions and hunches may merely be road maps the mind paints as guide posts.
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For instance, a study concluded that people with life threatening health problems do comparatively better when they have friends and family praying for their recovery--unlike people in similar conditions that don't have the same well-wishing support system. Maybe the prayerful visions of good-health work exactly like a placebo someone swallows having faith that it’s the exact medicine they need and then the belief factor takes over?
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If so, I applaud to the placebo effect and hope whatever the cashier's doctor prescribed this time around works. Furthermore I wonder if maybe what we all need is the right prescription or a good placebo now and then. For eventually we all must realize that life is a series of challenges and reprieves from adversity, mountains to ascend and vast valleys as well as grassy plains and hot desert stretches and rivers and streams to cross, metaphorically speaking.
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That is why I suppose Buddhists believe life is suffering and pray for Nirvana while rejecting worldly possessions--or something like that. To a point I accept the blossoming lotus way of viewing the world. However, I also like having a roof over my head and indoor plumbing, too.
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Those possessions and the surrounding sacred Cherokee land I live on allows me the privilege to rejoice in every sunrise and every new self-discovered nugget pertaining to how to live life in harmony with the expectations of love and joy in the future--even if those moments come disguised as a placebo-like prayer or two. For if given a choice, I'll be lining up at the placebo dispenser.
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I reason that if I am going to use my God-given seven pounds of brain matter I should reserve a fair amount of time to process positive thoughts. After all, it's not as though I have anything better to do today or any other day. More significant to this present train of thought: What if everything is placebo effect and nothing works unless we think it will?

SUNRISE SHOCKS..By Charles Shea LeMone..As usual I...

Wed, 9 Mar 2011 11:00:39 -0500

SUNRISE SHOCKS

By Charles Shea LeMone

As usual I was up with the sun this morning. While sipping my first mug of coffee, and checking my email, I heard the loud sputtering engine of an approaching car. Glancing out the front window, I saw a vehicle I did not recognize--an old model, severely dented, paint-faded red Ford. Going too fast for the road, at about forty miles an hour, it sped by kicking up a cascade of loose gravel and dust.

Seldom do strangers come up to my remote mountaintop. So deciding I should investigate, I slipped on a pair of shoes to step outside on my front porch. By this time the driver was backing the car up even faster than it had arrived.

Bang!

The old Ford crashed into a thick tree stump so hard the hood of the trunk flew wide open. I continued to watch as the driver put the car in the proper gear and tried, over and over again, to pull away from the stump. I stood there dumbfounded, shaking my head, noticing that one of the rear wheels was tilted off the ground and could not gain traction.

Meanwhile my dog Tasha, an Alaskan Malamute, ambled up to the car--most likely hoping the mysterious driver had brought some tasty treats for her to snack on. She was sniffing near the driver’s side door when the man stepped out of the car.

The best way to describe the driver is looking as though Central Casting had called on him to play the rustic role of an insane, white-bearded, lean and scruffy hillbilly redneck--wearing frayed and soiled coveralls. The moment he saw Tasha sniffing near his feet, he reached inside the Ford and pulled out a double-barrel shotgun.

Aiming it directly at Tasha, he yelled, menacingly, "Back off you mangy ol' dawg!"

"What the heck're you doing!" I shouted, feeling all the hair standing up on my neck and back.

When the man turned his hateful gaze my way, I wished I’d gone inside for my own shotgun before making my presence known. Stricken by a rationally inspired panic, I sized up the situation. He looked crazed and on the verge of snapping into a violent rage directed at me. Sensing the danger, too, Tasha was smart enough to back off and trot toward me. All of that took place within a few fleeting seconds.

Then the man confronted me angrily, "What the hell’s it look like I'm doin' to you!?"

Shocked and jolted by an electric pulsing fear that surged through my mind and body, straight down to the tip of my toes, I backed into the house. All the while I kept my eyes on the obviously unbalanced man with the shotgun. Safely inside, I grabbed the phone and dialed the police to report what was happening. While doing that, and peeking from the window, trembling, I saw the man frantically trying to push the Ford free of its perch. He alternated between doing that and trying to drive the car off the stump.

The Ferrum College police department also handles local matters. In less than five minutes, after calling for help, a officer arrived. I went outside to greet him while the crazed hillbilly was inside the Ford, trying, unsuccessfully, to start the stalled engine.

Quickly I informed the officer about what had happened to that point. Gathering what I'd told him, he pulled his revolver out of its holster and cautiously approached the car just as the hillbilly climbed out, cursing and ranting, fists clinched, punching the air in front of him.

"Put your hands up!" The cop commanded. "Right now!"

"Why for!" The hillbilly appeared truly confused.

"You’re causing a disturbance here on private property. That’s why!"

"I made a wrong turn." The man eyed me with contempt lacing every word as he spoke to the cop. "That's all's goin' on here, sir!"

"So you say! But I still need you to put your hands up high." With a two-handed grip on his weapon, the cop trained the gun on the bulk of the man's body. "If not, you will end up in more trouble than you can handle and maybe not walk away."

Reluctantly the hillbilly did what he was told. Following the cop’s further instructions, he allowed himself to be patted down thoroughly and then handcuffed. He grumbled incoherently the entire time while eyeing me over a shoulder with undisputed hatred expressed on his wrinkled old face.

That’s when I walked closer and looked into the trunk of the old Ford.

"You got to come take a look at this," I said to the cop, pointing at what I saw exposed inside the trunk of the car.

Question: Can guess what was in the trunk?

Scroll down for the answer.

Answer: All of the above bullshit I’ve been feeding you!

One Millennial's Major Complaints

Mon, 10 May 2010 08:21:00 -0500

One Millennial's Major Complaints

By Charles Shea LeMone

Twenty-two-year-old Russell Weldon's fingers tapped at a steady rhythm. With his laptop resting on his thighs, he listened to Jay-Z rap through his I-phone headphones, composing a letter to his psychiatrist.

To Dr. H. W. Moorehouse

Saturday, May 8, 2010 -- Noon-ish:

I am writing in response to six-months of you hounding me to open up and tell you what I think my problems are. So I will school you here in print. Most of my problems start and end with my parents. Is that what you've wanted me to admit for so long? Well, to start, let's make it clear in no uncertain terms. I hate them!

My mother is the born liberal, tree-hugger type, as you may have already suspected, a college librarian, who is still trying to worm her way into me considering her my best friend. She is thick-skinned, determined in this lost cause. Nevertheless, I have to give her an A for effort. She likes repeating, “I just don't want you to make the same mistakes I made.”

Often I want to shout back at her, “Then give me the space to make my own mistakes. Okie-dokie?”

Various forms of this conversation have played out over the last eight years. That's when she caught me smoking a blunt in the garage one afternoon. And I'd be puffing on a big fat one right this instant, too, if my contact hadn't grounded me for two days running while waiting (like all the other pot dealers I know) to replenish his stash.

On the other side of the parental coin, my father, the junior partner corporate accountant, earns a D- for having tried to understand me. Lately, though, the only thing he'll discuss is why I've been unemployed for so damn long? Or how hard am I trying to find a real job and keep it for more than a couple of weeks.

About once a month, almost as regular as a woman's menstrual cycle, he lets off steam and threatens to physically kick my ass out the house. It's almost amusing the way his bifocals practically steam up; and his face turns so red it's almost blue. And dear, old dad also likes blaming me--his one and only child--for his high blood pressure and other health related issues. It's times like these, I wish I'd been born twins or maybe quadruplets to see how he'd like dealing with that.

If they think I confuse and frustrate them, it's only because they have no idea how much they have confused the hell out of me ever since I began forming my own opinions. So what that I could not stomach college life for more than a year-and-a-half and can't keep a job? Do they have to broadcast it whenever I'm in earshot of their telephone conversations with concerned friends and relatives. Talk about being an invisible man, sometimes I feel less than zero. That's why I stay in my room most of the time. It's off-limits to them with it's own bathroom, too.

You may ask: why am I so angry and choose to be distant and selfish? I could write dissertations on those topics as thick as redwood logs. For one thing: look at the world they--and their generation--are leaving young people like me and any children we might have. They've polluted the skies and oceans and the land under our feet. So tell me who inherits those problems? From jump street, they've misled us about everything, duty, responsibilities, religion, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, too.

Let's not even talk about the national deficit. I'll be lucky if I ever earn enough for a down-payment on a house, which does not get foreclosed on leaving me homeless with nobody to give a shit and without a pot to piss in. It's my brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan whom I feel the most pity for; killing and being killed and maimed, and getting psychologically screwed up for life because some politicians gave them the green-light to fight and kill. And who, but my generation is going to pick up the tab when Social Security and Medicare--and so many other entitlements--run out of dough? I'll answer that question. It'll be the suckers my parent's generation gave birth to trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I have a cousin who is only twelve years older than me. For three years his widowed mother, all crippled and shriveled up, has been living in a cramped little house with him and his wife and three children. At the turn of the last century, life expectancy was 47 point something. Now people live forty years longer and more; and it won't be too long before every day of the week more and more people will be seeing their hundredth birthdays. As much as I try avoiding it, I can easily imagine tripping over a bunch of old prune faced people and their walkers—while trying to take a leisurely stroll in the park. Although I have no intention of ever getting handcuffed into maaried life, merely imagining myself in a similar situation, as my cousin, taking care of my mother, is a nauseating thought.

If everything I have written so far was all I had to complain about, I'd still be in college with all kinds of normal goals and plans that would please my old man. But that would be unrealistic; because all the complaining I've done so far pales to near non-existence, petty annoyances, really, next to my fears, the motivating factors that stir my life. My parents had contagious germs and the Russians and nuclear war to fear, the possibility of total extinction measured in odds. More and more, though, it has become clear to me that the doomsday scenario they feared so deeply is far less horrific, and all encompassing, as what I see coming our way in about two and a half years.

There is a big secret that governments, the NSA, and everyone in the loop do not discuss with regular people like you and me. But Nibiru, a planet the size of Jupiter, is hurtling through the cosmos closer and closer to our solar system day-by-day. Signs of it's approach are the increasing prevalence of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions--and a long list of lesser noted, yet, unprecedented natural occurrences and uncommon weather phenomena.

Coincidentally, the arrival of Nibiru, as a true, next-door neighbor in the sky coincides with the end of the Mayan Calender. Biblical passages also sagely predict lightening and thunder in the sky, a scorching of the earth and a cleansing by fire of the impure. Well, guess who the impure are according to the Anunnakai, the 80 to 100 foot warriors, set to swoop down and invade us during the mop-up process. And that, Dr. Moorehouse, in case you don't already know, will be our fate one day in mid-December 2012.

And all my father wants to talk about is me finding a job?

There are those I know who believe the Anunnakai created us with the advanced scientific knowledge they inherited from their creators. What sets earthlings apart is our ability and our willingness to kill our own kind and everything around us; and even though we have been informed of our fate we remain firmly indifferent to the outcome.

It is also believed, by some, that there was one scientist, I shall call the Prince of Peace, who lobbied on our behalf many eons ago, which prevented another scientist, I will call the Prince of Darkness, from destroying mankind long ago. In an effort to save us in an allotted period of time, the Prince of Peace sent (what he thought to be) his healing messages and his wisdom by way of a long series of prophets, who attempted to teach homo sapiens to love and have compassion for one another. The Prince of Darkness scoffed at the notion that man could ever change his savage nature but consented to the experiment knowing in his heart that the Prince of Peace would fail.

If any of this is true, and I am a microcosm of mankind, the Prince of Peace, indeed, accepted a doomed mission. I know enough psycho-babble to realize that the label psychopath fits me like custom made armor. Because I know I could kill. Though I’ve never have done it, I know I'd kill if I was confronted with harm. I'd do it in an instant with no remorse. In fact, if I could, I'd kill the Anunnakai. What's more, if it was me against Him, and I could, I'd kill God.

Russel reread what he'd written twice while chuckling to himself each time until he came near the end of the message. Then he said good-bye to it before deleting the file—meant for his eyes only--with a click of a forefinger and a wry smile on his curled lips and a glint in his blue eyes. So far, he thought, the day had started out pretty well.

Now if his contact came through, Saturday night would be another blast. Once again he'd convinced himself that the best he could do was enjoy whatever life he had left to the max of his ability.

Irony to the Ninth Degree

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 07:13:06 -0500

Irony to the Ninth Degree

By Charles Shea LeMone

Karen Maloney was fuming as she composed an angry e-mail to her husband and noticed a Facebook message notification pop up on her office computer's monitor.

“How’s it going today, girlfriend?”

“Mad as hell!!!”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Yesterday morning Tim left the apartment without his cell phone. When it rang, for some reason I was curious who might be calling at such an early hour because it was only 7:30, and he was on his way to the airport to attend a business conference in Denver. Turns out it was a hang-up from an unfamiliar area code. That’s when I decided to check his recent text messages. Boy was that a major wake up call for me! They were all from the same phone number.”

“From who?”

“Some woman named Nina. According to the messages sent over a two-day period, they have known each other for about three years.”

“I take it that they have more than a friendly relationship, eh?”

“I’m not sure if they have ever met face-to-face. But she did write she LOVED him too.”

“Where does she live?”

“In Wisconsin. I doubt if he has ever been up there that I can recall. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean she has never come here to New York to be with him. Or maybe they met somewhere during one or more of his business trips.”

“What does Tim have to say about all of this?”

“His story has changed three or four times since we talked on the phone. At first he denied he was doing any more than having a little fun, playing around and fantasizing with her. Then later he admitted he would like to meet her. That’s what bothers me so much, him changing his story from one conversation to the next. And that makes me wonder what else he may have lied to me about over the years… or if I can ever trust another word that comes out of his mouth. Also, he has been treating me so good lately, which has me thinking it’s out of guilt on his part and not because our marriage means a damn thing to him.”

“You two have been together, if my memory serves me correctly, for about 20 years?”

“Come June, it will be 21 years. But this could be the beginning of the end for me. I’m so pissed I can’t even begin to concentrate on a proposal due by the end of the day. I swear I feel as though my insides are rotting away from disgust and my skin is crawling. Just when I was thinking things were going so well in my life, too, with the promotion to sales manager and my wrists and elbow feeling so much better since I started acupuncture.”

“Remember the conversation we had last week about objectivity and how sometimes we can let our emotions cloud our reasoning powers and cause us to make faulty decisions we later regret?”

“I hear you. But what really upsets me so much is that Tim said he got involved with this woman out of boredom. I bit my tongue and didn’t respond to that remark. But I was thinking that no one could possibly be more boring than he is. He never wants to do anything new. We’re stuck in a routine, especially true when it comes to sex. It doesn’t take anything to get him excited, and it’s usually all over before I get warmed up right.”

“I have made suggestions to you in that regard. How about the books I suggested or video support?”

“Like I said, Frank, he is not into anything new. If he had his way we’d be eating pot roast and mashed potatoes with gravy every night of the week, watching an occasional movie and the same old TV shows until the late night news is over.”

“I still think you should ask yourself a series of questions before you make any hasty decisions. As a sex therapist, I will write some off the top of my head, maybe ten or more, and e-mail them to you. Okay?”

“OK. I just hope I’m in the mood to follow through with the rendezvous plans we made for the start of weekend. That is, if you can still get away from home.”

“I told Margie I’d be staying over in town late Friday, so she has made plans to take the kids and a couple of their friends to see How to Train Your Dragon. And not realizing you would be facing a crisis situation, I already made reservations for our favorite room in our favorite hotel. So please let me know if I should cancel.”

“Maybe what I need more than anything is what you provide me with so well, the way you make me feel so hot and shivering and trembling all over for so doggone long.”

“I’ll leave that up to you, dear. But merely reading your last words back has me stimulated in a most taboo, loving and sensual way.”

“In that case, I’m sold. Two hours with you would be far too good an opportunity to pass up just because of Tim being such a stupid jerk.”

“You do think he might have learned something from the Tiger Woods fiasco, huh, girlfriend?”

“Exactly! Oh, by the way, I will be bringing a new toy with me Friday night that just arrived in the mail, batteries not included, of course.”

“As Al Pacino said in the movie Scarface. ‘Now you’re talking to me, baby. That I like!’”

A Meteor Shower

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:07:53 -0500

A Meteor Shower E-Mail to My Loyal Muse

Q: Did you remember to watch the meteor shower Wednesday morning?

A: Yes, Barbara, I saw the show. I woke up at about 5:00 a.m., which is pretty normal for me. While the computer was booting up and a pot of coffee brewing, I stepped out on the back porch. Here on my mountaintop with no neighbors or roads within a quarter-mile--in a cloudless sky--all the constellations were amazingly bright with clusters and clusters of smaller stars packed between them, especially directly overhead. I found myself wishing you were here with your knowledge of the heavens to point out the major constellation. Right away, I saw one meteor streak by from east to west and burn out as it neared the horizon, and I made a wish.

After I e-mailed my quote of the day, I took a cup of coffee back outside. That’s when I noticed private planes in the sky passing by on a consistent basis. I guess they were enjoying the show from a higher vantage point. About every five to ten minutes another meteor streaked by in the northern sky. Some came from a southeasterly direction and others from the east. I stayed out there in the brisk chill for about thirty minutes, wondering if the time you told me to expect the most meteor sightings was based on my time or yours on the Left Coast.

Then just as I began to delight in the vast, cosmic and infinite wonders of the universe, that’s when things got eerie.

Down the hill from me, I noticed a faint flickering light. The more I stared the brighter this light source became—soon clearly silhouetting the trees on the ridge directly in front of me. Before long, it had my complete attention. With my imagination working overtime, I wondered if it was a forest fire. But it was not that kind of orange, red or yellow light and there were no trails of smoke rising in the air.

Instead, it was a bright glaring blue/white light. I also concluded that it was not coming from the road across the valley, which runs east and west. Progressively brighter, this light came straight up the hill from the creek side, directly at me. To make matters more mystifying, every dog within ear reach began baying and howling.

At one point I wondered, a bit irrationally, if aliens had landed on a mission to perform all kinds of weird experiments on me. I didn’t know whether to hold my ground on the porch, unafraid, or flee inside where I would no longer have to see or fear what I couldn’t explain. I did step in and out of the house for more coffee (and to use the indoor plumbing) until the sky was too light for any more meteor viewing.

Later that day, during a hurried conversation I described the light to a friend who grew up nearby. He said, “Someone was search-lighting on your property, hunting deer illegally with a bow.”

Ahaa, I thought. That explains it!

However, I still wonder how this search lighting works. Seems the deer would run at the first sight of the light and not wait to be blinded by it and freeze in their tracks. But what would a guy like me, born and raised in North Philadelphia, know about a technique like that without asking?

I’ve given a couple of hunters I know permission to use my property during deer and turkey hunting season. They reward me with cuts of venison. But for four years running, the turkeys (often bodaciously loud whenever they are not around) have proven too clever to be bagged. I’ll have to ask the hunters about this search-lighting trick and try to get some straight answers without causing them to worry about me reporting them to the game warden.

Oh yeah, now that I’ve rambled off at the fingertips for so long, it’s time for me to ask: Did you catch the meteor shower too?

Three African-American Centric Poemss

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:41:19 -0500

African-American Centric Poems

By Charles Shea LeMone

Drum

Deep in the heart of Africa

After the fires and the chaos and the storm

All life was born.

Inside every man and woman and child

The beasts of the wild and every living thing

Inside every animate and inanimate object

From the smallest conceivable stone

Lives the magical rhythms of the drum.

Drum.

For eons we sailed the Seven Seas

We mapped the heavenly galaxies

We erected the mighty pyramids

Fashioned the dance of dusk and dawn

And sang the songs of life in hues of reds and blues

Which live on in the magical rhythms of the drum.

Drum… Drum.

We’ve been the loyal scapegoats of history

We’ve suffered the shackles and stigmas of slavery

We’ve been called many ungodly names

But fortunately our natural compassion

And our magnificent resilience

Lives on in the magical rhythms of the drum.

Drum… Drum… Drum.

Listen closely…

And you will surely hear

The original heartbeat so pure and sweet

A zillion serendipitous spirits

Ancient blessed souls

Which live on in the magical rhythms of the drum.

For deep in the heart of Africa

All life was born.

Adam Meets Eve

Adam awoke with a pounding headache

In a deep corner of his mind a misty dream lingered

He stood, yawned and stretched

Oww!! He grimaced

From a sharp pain in his rib.

Slowly his sleepy eyes began to focus

Across a clearing in the Garden of Eden

An apparition of some kind appeared

From the far edge of the lush forest

She watched him with intrigue.

Uncertainly Adam approached her

With each step he took his heart raced faster

The trees swayed and the songbirds sang

In harmony as golden rays of dappled sunlight

Graced her form and magnified her uncommon beauty.

At arms length from Eve

Adam paused as a sweet jasmine scented breeze

Whispered a brand-new name…

And despite the dry lump in his throat

Adam asked: Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?

Loretta at Serendipitous-Seventeen

Walking along Susquehanna Avenue

on our way from a late Sunday night movie,

when all the bars and other shops were closed,

I’d sing songs like Misty under the streetlights

as though I was Johnny Mathis holding her hand and

pouring out my undisputed love for her.

We would kiss goodbye on her doorstep,

ending another night too soon,

rubbing our young bodies together lustfully,

she would grow weak in the knees

in less than five minutes.

She even followed me up a stream

on more than one summer day,

all the way for two miles to reach Wissahickon Creek.

And we would be up to our knees at times

in the cool turquoise water flowing by.

She’d never be more than a few steps behind.

Through the marshes or around the waterfalls,

her chocolate-brown skin I can still see,

glowing in the sunlight and even more enticing

in the dappled shadows under the trees

we passed along our trek.

We were so alive, so natural and free and

too awe inspired to speak a word

after we made slow love for the first time

in that small clearing big enough for a cozy two.

Me and Loretta, carving our names indelibly

into each other’s open hearts.

Both of us a “serendipitous-seventeen” and so

happy to be away from the Raymond Rosen projects

for a few hours in the warm light of day.

I Can Imagine

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:24:00 -0500

I Can Imagine

By Charles Shea LeMone

With my semi-autobiographical, anti-gang novel, Corner Pride, about to be released by the Multicultural Educational Publishing Company, I see my next goal clearly defined. It’s back to the corner of Gratz and Oxford in North Philadelphia where my life and the story began unfolding. I’ll return there more than fifty-years later to write a brand-new act: the opening of a cultural arts center.

There, I said it!

It would be nice if the center is located near the corner--even sweeter if the venue was physically located right on the corner of Gratz and Oxford Streets.

Maybe that’s possible.

You see, while coming up with the cover for the novel, I contacted a Philadelphia photographer about taking shots of the old corner. He e-mailed me back, “You can’t take pictures of what’s no longer there.” Reading those cryptic words, I assumed change had once again come to the corner of Gratz and Oxford.

My family moved to West Oak Lane in the autumn of1959. By the early ‘70s, most of the crumbling-from-neglect, three-story tenement buildings were abandoned shells, half burned down or empty lots. In the early-eighties, the entire 1500 block (the one I was born on) was renovated. I’d bet my life that a lot of crack cocaine was sold on the corner in the coming years following that.

Then, some twenty odd years later, in an article my sister sent me, I read a reporter for the Enquire or Daily News describe the block as defined by a resident, “…the most dangerous street in North Philadelphia.”

So reading the photographer’s cryptic message, I figured all or most of the buildings on the block had been leveled to the ground. It would not be the first block in the vicinity to suffer the demolition ball. From a satellite’s view, take a look and you’ll see most of the surrounding neighborhood looks bombed out. But rising up from the present day ashes and dust, from my mountaintop in Virginia, it’s easy to imagine The Gratz and Oxford Cultural Arts Center.

Hmmm! Maybe it will take up a half-block or even more.

I love the thought of a structure that can stand the test of time, stronger than flesh and bones with a sea of tears tossed in yet a monument to all the families and friends I was close to for the first fourteen-and-a-half-years of my life.

Yes, I can easily imagine it as though it already stands—that building. For I first began to use my imagination, right there, on that block. I was born in the seventh house from the corner on the west side of the street; son to Charlie (no middle name) and Edna Rose, two supplanted New Yorkers who had grown up, met and married in the Bronx; younger brother to Norma Jean and Vivian Antoinette and young uncle to Antoinette (Toni) Jean Butler—four years younger.

Vivian, Toni and I often pretended we were characters from the “Boxcar Kids” books--stories about orphans on their own in the world with a freight train boxcar as their only shelter.

How brave we were back then, I write with a sniffle.

In the streets, playing with friends, we often imagined we were somewhere else, living adventurously. Sometimes we were cowboys or Indians, riding on the dusty plains, using broomsticks for horses. Other times, we’d slip back to the days of Samson and Delilah. If I was Samson then pretty walnut-skinned Pamela Hall was Delilah. She was also Dale Evans to my Roy Rogers and Jane in the jungle when I was Tarzan of the Apes.

Wherever we imagined we were, though, we saw far past those otherwise confining three-story redbrick walls on that narrow rat and roach infested side-street. Under the bright and strong summer sun, while we played, we saw through those barriers as though they did not exist because we were too far away from them in our minds. That was the nature of our play and the potency and power of our imaginations.

And we had plenty to spare.

Beyond how to use my imagination, as I mentioned in a recently written press release, there are some major lessons learned that I still apply from those Gratz and Oxford Street days: like how to be diplomatic rather than confrontational in the face of impending violence. How to build bridges and bonds to avoid future confrontations that might turn violent. Most importantly, I learned to be there for my friends in their times of need even if that meant confronting obstacles or violence.

With all that noted, there is no more important goal for me than to see that building stand (that cultural art center I mentioned earlier) right back where it all began for me on the Corner of Gratz and Oxford Streets in North Philadelphia.

I imagine the center surviving for many years, providing an enlightening oasis for thousands of children, a place where they can learn about art, dance, music, writing, acting and filmmaking. I can almost see the faces of many of them and the sparks of creative light that can change the very way they see and react to the world around them, a more optimistic, proactive view. I’ll hold on to that vision, and corresponding ones, until the day the center opens its door to the real world.

Now a shout out to all my boys wherever they may be along their journeys, whether it be on this planet or as roving spirits in other dimensions or angelic souls in the flow of some other galaxy:

William (Monkmeat) Hall,

George (Brother) Jackson,

Raymond (Ray Ray) Robinson,

Joseph (Reds) Brisco,

Poppy,

Ernest,

Cannonball,

Coon,

Hunky,

Peachy,

Bunknose,

Andy Panda,

Boo,

Randy Pierce

Moses Pierce,

Peanut from Gratz Street,

and Peanut from Garnet Street, too, and so many more.

Most of all, here’s a special word of thanks and a respectful nod of adoration to James Garnet, who taught so many others and me how to use our fists.

“Do you remember those days when the winner of a “fair one”, one person versus another, could settle arguments and even prevent a gang war?” someone in the crowd shouted.

The guys named on the list above do? They were there in the summer of 1957, when we knew the meaning of the words corner pride.

To see the cover of Corner Pride, click: www.allwordman.com

Lessons My Mother Taught Me

Sun, 10 May 2009 09:01:00 -0500

Lessons My Mother Taught Me

By Charles Shea LeMone 5/10/09

Through her every day actions my mother taught me

Lessons I am still learning as I write this poem.

She taught me to wake up with a smile

And end each day with a prayer.

I learned to dream and respect the dreams of others;

When to speak my mind and when to bite my tongue.

She knew how to laugh at a good joke

Even when it was made at her expense;

To be tough at times and compassionate at others;

To not be ashamed to weep and to face my battles, too;

That being right was less important than admitting wrongs,

And that new days bring new rewards and challenges.

Her reading books to me are part of my earliest memories,

And she made those picture book stories come alive;

The lessons and the principles grounded in wisdom,

So I would learn to use reason and logic as tools

To carry me through the trials and tribulations

She knew we all have to accept and face as part of living.

Most importantly, she encouraged me to set goals

As high as my imagination would allow me to go;

And to climb up no matter how often I was knocked down;

To forgive and to love and share and convey sweetness

And that old age and illness are no excuses to forget

To remain young at heart and embrace the love of life.

A Pulpy Spoof

Fri, 8 May 2009 04:48:21 -0500

A Pulpy Spoof

By Charles Shea LeMone

Outside a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it is too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

The California rain beat on my office windowpane like an angry flock of Baltimore ravens with nothing better to do on a Friday night in Los Angeles than torment me. As usual I was hosting a fleet load of regrets as familiar as the nagging pain in my gut from decades of guzzling cheap whiskey and chain-smoking Lucky Strikes like I was still scared shitless in a foxhole somewhere in Normandy wishing Adolph Hitler had been born a woman bent on pleasing everyone within a twelve mile radius of her.

Naturally, thinking along those lines summoned up the unwanted memory of Olga dumping me after catching me making a play for her burlesques dancer roommate while I thought she was conked out in the next room. Larger than the entire screen at the Chinese Theater, I will always remember the sight of her, crazed and infuriated, that night before I tried ducking under her roommate’s Murphy bed.

“Fooled again, you jackass, you!” I could also hear her saying as she swung a wrought-iron floor lamp at my head when I stuck it out to explain I’d mistaken her friend for her in the dark, a lie she was not about to buy even if I’d been offering a-hundred-thousand books of Green Stamps to top the deal off.

When the phone on the desk beside my still-aching head rang, it took a second or more to realize it was not an alarm clock—so unnatural to my ears was the sound.

“Doghouse Riley speaking,” I managed to utter after the third ring reminded me of all the bills left unpaid in the overflowing trash basket I’d stolen years ago from my first client.

“You the same Doghouse Riley private dick I see listed here in the telephone book?” a woman sounding like Greta Garbo with a mouth-full of marbles asked.

“Last time I checked I was the one and only doing business here in the City of Angels.”

“Good!” she said with a prolonged sigh. “I trust you’ve got a license to pack a rod.”

“Sure as fat hogs fart, I do. I drive a car, too, but that license expired ten years ago. But I don’t have a license to kill or maim, either. Not that that stops me when the notion crosses my mind hard enough. So how can I help you on this wet night, sweetheart?”

There was a long pause that I’d grown to expect from femme fatales whenever it came down to straight talk, especially the type with Hungarian accents.

“Do you know where Alphonzo’s Clown Den is located?” she finally inquired.

“If I remember correctly, I’ve bent an elbow in that dump more than once and it wasn’t playing a fiddle.”

“Meet me outside there as soon as you can. I’ll be the blonde standing near the corner. The tall one wearing a red dress, not the ugly midget in pink.”

I drove like the drenched streets were desert dry--pretending I was as sober as the day my mother dropped me into the world and dumped me into a garbage pail. The midget must have thought she recognized my Hudson as it peeled to the curb between a pawnshop and a greasy-spoon joint that served as a front for the mob’s gambling operations.

My blonde wasted no time stiff-arming the midget in perfect Jim Thorpe form and kicked her in the teeth while she was down. As she slid into the passenger seat, she was still cursing something about hating lousy, half-pint freaks more than crooked cops with their trouser snakes in hand. Considering how hard the rain must’ve fallen on her while she was waiting for me, I was surprised by how clean she smelled up close, like a two-week-old kitten after a big dog gives it a good tongue bath.

Peeling rubber, I swerved into traffic before the midget could get to her feet and start hurling empty wine bottles at my already dented-in-too-many-places car. It was two blocks up Sunset before the blonde spoke after wringing her long hair on the floor mat with two tight fists.

“Make sure no one follows us,” she said glancing across a shoulder.

“Is that the kind of hardboiled trouble I’ve gotten myself into even before we get to talk about my terms, dear?” I said adjusting the rearview mirror to survey the headlights behind us.

Ignoring my question, she said, “I was expecting a bigger fellow with a name like yours. What are you, about five-foot-two in Cuban heeled shoes?”

“Depends on the lighting.”

“Not that I’m really complaining or anything,” she said resting a hand on the forearm of my frayed overcoat. “Matter-of-fact, I’ve found guy’s your size have a tendency to be so much more appreciative of a full-bodied woman like me—if you know what I mean, daddy-o?”

“I’m reading you loud and clear like my favorite Sunday comics, and I like what I’m seeing of the colored pictures, too.” I said taking my eyes off the road to give her good-looking over. She was stacked higher than a longshoreman could toss coffee bean sacks in a contest of might and will. She also had a great pair of punching bags stretching her blouse taut as a battered boxer’s eyes in the fifteenth-round of a classic slug feast with no referee to impede the bloody action.

“Turn right here,” she said suddenly as I almost ran a red light and fishtailed into the turn. “I know a secluded spot on Mulholland where I can fill you in on my problems without worrying if we’ve been tailed or not.”

“Done deal,” I said out of the side of my mouth, “If you’re sure I can trust you to not pounce on my tender bones the minute we’re parked.”

“You can park the sarcasm where you last saw your wit before it wandered off and left you crying in your gin glass,” she said in that garbled manner she had of speaking—which was beginning to grow on me like an overripe wood tick in a place I couldn’t reach on my own.

By the time I parked in a turnout, the rain had stopped and the clouds had vanished like a pack of scurrying rats trailed by an pest exterminator’s flashlight. The view of the San Fernando Valley was spread out like a truckload of stolen jewels beckoning the moonlight to give them back their showcase glitter to appeal to fat women with rich, impotent husbands.

“So are you going to open up like the San Pedro fish market at the first light of day or what?” I asked her, firing up another cancer stick with the butt end of one I’d puffed into almost non-existence.

“How about a sip from that flask you carry in your overcoat pocket next to your heart, first?” she said turning her entire upper body to face me like a dare I couldn’t resist without questioning my manhood for the rest of my life.

She guzzled from the flask like a Irish sailor on a weekend pass with no concerns outside of getting so plastered he’d fall square on his face in a mound of cow poop with pleasure.

“You can really knock back the hard stuff, can’t you, angel?”

“How observant of you, Riley. Now I bet you want an Ivy League cookie with a buckle in the back for being so bright.”

She handed me back the near-empty flask and was out of the car before I could drain it dry. I caught up with her as she stopped shy of a big drop-off and spun around. Before she could make any more quick moves to elude what was on my mind, I had both arms wrapped around her in a fierce hug that would have impressed Smokey the Bear himself. Surprisingly, she didn’t try to resist as I pressed myself firmly into all her mounds of the curves I could easily imagine surrendering to my lascivious desires during a long night in a cheap motel by the beach.

“Want to give me the skinny of these problems that have you wound up tight as a high E-string about to pop?”

“Manmade problems! But are there any others you know about on this planet?”

“Maybe you’ll be obliged to be more specific after we do the do a couple of times like wild jungle animals in heat.” I sucked on the side of her neck, which I found to have a plastic feel and taste to it. Maybe it was the suddenness of it all, I told myself, in the intense heat of the moment.

However, as my hands got more familiar with her bodily moldings, feeling a slight sense of de ja vu come over me, she shoved me back with amazing strength I’d only imagine a professional weightlifter possessing.

“You didn’t even ask my name yet,” she said, no longer doing a Greta Garbo impersonation and sounding more like John Wayne in drag. “And you’re trying to mash me up like you’ve already wined and dined me and laid your cash on the nightstand, too?”

“If you want me to recite a line of poetry or two before you give it up, darling, I’m game,” I cracked without a pause. “Roses are red. Violets are blue. I think I like you, babe, so let’s cut the crap and screw.”

It was then she ripped off the mask she was wearing—one her Hollywood makeup friend had obviously fixed her up with to trick me. Then there was no denying it, once again Olga had caught me—metaphorically speaking—with my pants down around my ankles for the umpteenth time.

“For a so-called private eye, Doghouse,” she spat each word out contemptuously, “you’re dumber than a box of rocks.”

“Olga, darling” I tried recovering my composure by feigning elated glee. “Of course I knew it was you all the time. But I know how much you like surprising me, so don’t blame a fella for going along just to see how far you’d take this elaborate charade of yours.”

“Sure, Buster Brown, I’d believe that line of baloney if I lived in a shoe and couldn’t always tell when you’re lying straight through your lil’ chipmunk teeth.”

“Me…” I said with an exaggerated shrug, “try pulling the wool over your beautiful all-knowing eyes?”

Before I realized she was winding up, and too late to duck, she connected a Brown Bomber right hook with the same side of my head that was still recovering from the floor lamp she’d crowned me with a few days earlier.

Now that’s real love, I thought wistfully as I shook off the punch and sat up to watch her roaring away in my Hudson.

“What a broad!” I marveled, spitting blood, as I began making plans to win her back one more time. “My sweet Olga, the one true love of my wretched life.”

Down in the Well

Mon, 4 May 2009 10:17:19 -0500

Down in the Well

By Charles Shea LeMone

Roger Grant owned 42 acres of remote hillside property in Southwest Virginia—which he’d purchased two years prior when living in Washington, D.C. became too stressful. At least twice a week he explored new corners of the land with his German shepherd, Ginger. On one of those cold spring mornings the sun was still low in the sky and masked by dark rain clouds as Ginger bounded ahead on the return hike. Using a walking stick to aid his ascent, Roger followed her up a steep incline that cut through a stand of birch trees. It was a deer path he’d never traversed before; and the surrounding oaks were tall and massive. He made a mental note of each one of them.

Straining from the physical demands of the climb, and short of breath, he finally neared the ridge of a plateau and the gravel road leading to his split-level house. An old wooden palette covered the abandoned water-well located in the middle of a patch of tall saw grass. By the time Roger noticed it he’d already taken the step he would later regret. The moment his full weight came down the rotted wood gave way. A cry of despair escaped his lips as he plunged down the hole too fast for his grasping fingers to cling to an edge.

The long fall he expected was broken by the protruding roots of two old oak trees. The immensity of his shock was momentarily mollified. Then a few planks from the broken pallet slipped through the joined roots. Several seconds passed before he heard them splash into the water some three-to-four-hundred-feet below. Clutching an arm around one of the mighty roots, and telling himself not to panic, he evaluated his situation. The opening to the well was about twelve feet above. Ginger stared down, barking.

“It’s okay, girl,” he said in a calm voice that, under the circumstances, surprised him. “I’m all right!”

Unabated by his words, Ginger began digging frantically. Then Roger noticed a rock not too far above his head. It stuck out of the earthen surface like a huge Pinocchio nose. Carefully, he found footing on what was left of the pallet. Daring to reach up, he gripped the rock with the intention of pulling himself up, praying he’d find more footing at a higher level to climb to the rim of the well where Ginger was still digging. But as soon as he lifted himself off the pallet the rock became dislodged. It fell to his left and crashed through the roots, mangling two of them.

The passage of time it took until the rock splashed down seemed even greater than the rotted plank’s descent. Anxiously, Roger turned his attention to the roots that had offered him a safe haven to that point. The rock had created a larger opening as it crashed through, making his position on the remains of the pallet more precarious. Meanwhile, Ginger had obviously realized that digging her way to him was futile. Instead, she gazed down at him whimpering.

“Too bad you’re not Lassie,” Roger said. “I’d tell you to go find help.”

Time slowed in the dank hole. With each passing hour Roger tried to imagine someone coming along to rescue him. However, he knew the possibility of that happening was remote. About noon, torrential rains slashed down from the sky. Soon his clothes were soaked through to his skin and the ever-present thought of dying in the well, thirty-two-years-young, made him shiver even more than the cold weather.

How ironic, he thought in a maze of fleeting and jumbled reflections, moving away from the city to be safe only to die hopelessly alone in an abandoned well. It would have been better to chance getting robbed again at gunpoint—shot in the heart instead of conked over the head by his assailant and dumped unconscious in an alley. Then his mind leapt back to a conversation he’d had with the realtor on his first trip to inspect the house and land. She’d told him there was once another home on the property that was razed after a tree fell on it during a thunderstorm.

“But,” she’d added, “you’d be hard pressed to find any evidence of that place still standing.”

More irony at work, he thought, having stumbled upon the former home’s well opening.

“No,” he declared to himself, “no evidence still standing.”

When the faint light from the circular shape above him grew murky with the coming of night, the rain slackened. Occasionally, Ginger looked down then backed away. He feared falling asleep only to slip through the opening in the roots and go crashing to the very bottom of the well to drown. Maybe that would be a better fate, he mused, wondering if hypothermia was affecting his thoughts almost to the point of giddiness.

Oddly enough, he’d stayed wide-awake most of the previous night worrying about his financial security. How groundless those concerns now seemed. During his first year away from the city he was able to stay busy as a commercial artist, freelancing for three advertising agencies. Working from home also allowed him more time to devote to his abstract paintings and sculptors—dreaming of the day his eventual success would allow him to stop accepting commercial assignments all together. But he was still waiting for that day to arrive—having only sold three works in all that time. The long hike he’d taken that morning was primarily done to estimate how much the oldest trees on his land were worth.

In fact, the money he’d earn by selling the timber was exactly what he was calculating when he looked down to see the rotten pallet covering the well opening. More irony piled on irony, because it was the roots of two old oak trees that had broken his fall and were all that separated him from the bottom of the well.

He dozed off on several occasions during the night. Each time he awoke his stiff-muscles ached more from the confined position he was forced to adapt. Consequently, he preferred sleep as a willful way to avoid the obvious futility of his situation.

“There’s no avoiding it,” he said in a woozy voice. “I’m going to die down here.”

During one of the vivid dreams he experienced, he was sitting by the fireplace in his house with his girlfriend, Karen, who was also his agent. The champagne glass she held up sparkled from the firelight as she spoke with a gleaming smile and animated brown eyes, “Let’s celebrate your success with a toast and spend the rest of the evening making sweet love.”

Her hale and hearty body was so warm and willing. He caressed her closely, inhaling the scent of her lavender-fragranced soap and the brand of lemon shampoo she used to wash her soft and silky auburn-hued hair. It was as though she was melting by osmosis into his very being to become united as one with him. Then like a whiff of smoke she faded in his arms leaving him alone in a burning house. Roger shook himself awake from the alarming dream, but it lingered like a stake buried in his heart; the fresh memory of how such a divinely sensuous moment could transmogrify into horror.

He assuaged his dry mouth by sucking moisture from a shirtsleeve. For the next hour his thoughts overflowed with memories of Karen. She was so unlike his former girlfriend, Teresa, the runway model and social butterfly who was never happy unless her calendar for the month was full of cocktail parties to attend. Karen, conversely, savored the frequent weekend visits she spent on his hilltop. Diners she’d whip up and a rented movie to watch and she was more than content. She also understood the long hours of solitude he needed to create and would curl up on the couch in the living room or on a chaise lounge outside in the sun reading a magazine or book. Easy going, articulate, self-assured and witty Karen now seemed like a phantasm he’d only imagined as a real person of flesh and blood--as unattainable as the surface of the ground above him.

As the sun brightened the sky on a new day, he flashed back to a conversation he’d had with Karen the previous morning. He’d call her to find out if there was any news about a pending art show at a respected New York gallery. She was on her cell phone and the background noise of Washington D.C. traffic irritated him as they talked. More annoying was the fact that Karen directed their conversation to cover a detailed report about a friend’s illness and her long day dealing with conflicting reports from two doctors. Normally, he accepted what he labeled Karen’s bleeding-heart compassion and her overly involved concern for her friends and family’s problems. But having spent a restless night estimating how long he could survive as a freelance commercial artist without seeking full-time employment, he interrupted her curtly.

“Do you think I called you to hear all this? You’re supposed to be my agent.”

There was a long pause before Karen responded, “I’ll call you back at a better time.”

Roger squeezed his eyes tight in the well wishing he could erase the memory of that last conversation. How insensitive and selfishly motivated he’d reacted to the woman who showed him nothing but love and devotion. Was that how Karen would remember him most? Moreover, was his behavior that morning indicative of the kind of person he’d become? Those were some of the questions he asked himself. As he examined his sense of self-worth the answers he received were not encouraging. He thought back on all of the friends he never called anymore and the friends who had eventually quit calling him. Yes, he had to admit, he’d become a cold and indifferent person to any concerns that were not directly related to his success or immediate pleasure. He’d forgotten how to care for anyone but himself. That was as clear to him now as the sure death he was due to suffer, alone and regretful.

Late that afternoon he dreamt Ginger was leaning over the entrance to the well barking. The shape of a vaguely familiar face was beside hers gazing down. He smiled, relishing the moment even though he realized he was merely dreaming.

“Wake up!” he heard a voice shouting as Ginger licked his face while they were lying in his bed at home.

The dream changed and he found himself back in the well. Then a spider landed on his face. He swatted at it.

“Wake up!” the voice repeated.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the screw-on end of a water hose dangling in front of his face.

“Tie it around your waist and I’ll pull you up.”

Later that night, when Roger regained consciousness in a dimly lit hospital room, it took him several minutes to put fragments of the recent past together so that it made sense to him. Chester, a neighbor who he allowed to hunt turkeys on his property was responsible for rescuing him. He’d related the circumstances to Roger while they waited for an ambulance to arrive—moments before he passed out due to a lack of water, nourishment and hypothermia.

Lying still in the bed, he reviewed what he’d learned. Chester had driven to his house that afternoon, the first day of spring turkey hunting season. Finding no one home, he decided to wait until another day to see if he’d have any luck outsmarting the turkeys for a change. He’d ignored the presence of Ginger, barking by the side of the road when he drove up to the house. But it was impossible to dismiss her as she stood in the middle of the road blocking his truck on the way down. Having established a friendly relationship with the German shepherd, Chester correctly surmised that something was wrong. Grabbing his 30-30 Winchester, he followed Ginger straight to the well about a-hundred-feet into the woods. Seeing the predicament Roger was in, Chester ran back to the house and returned with the water hose.

“Thank God for turkey hunting season,” Roger said to himself.

From the corner of his eyes, he noticed movement. Quickly, Karen was on her feet and beside the bed.

“Roger,” she said in a reverential voice. “You’re awake at last.”

“Seems that way.” He reached out to her and they embraced for a long time in silence. Then her body trembled noticeably a second before they released each other.

“I’m still shuddering from the thought that I almost lost you,” she explained.

He gripped one of her hands in both of his and said, “I’m not the same man who fell down into that well. If you liked him, though, you’ll love the new me.”

“Then the new you is going to love the good news I’ve been dying to tell you as soon as you woke up.”

“Hold that thought.” He pressed a finger to her lips. “For the time being, let’s just celebrate what’s most important to me right now.”

She cocked her pretty head to the side and asked, “Which is?”

“You love me and I love you.”

With a smile bright enough to light the entire room, Karen snuggled into the bed beside Roger.