"HIGH-BY-NOON"

                          BY: FRITZ VON LUDWIGSLUST



"A TRILOGY OF MEMORIES"            CHAPTER 1




  ... Sometime in the mid-seventies New York state ...

   The old tarnished ashtray was a mountain of crumpled dead Viceroy cigarette butts by nine o'clock in the morning.  No one cigarette ever went out without lighting the next one from its glowing, embered tip. She probably reasoned that she was chain smoking to save on matches. The viceroys were all washed down with a whole pot of coffee, (black, strong, no sugar) and a half eaten poached egg on a single piece of kosher rye toast. The first can of beer was cracked open by ten-thirty, (not first thing in the morning, she told herself, that would be too much). Then came the second and the third can of hops and alcohol just before twelve, and she would be ...  "High-By-Noon".
  After that she would scour the volcanic ash tray and trash bin for any butts.that were still long enough to be smoked when she ran out of cigarettes.  It had been Pall Mall filter less and Rheingold with her mother and then it was passed down to her daughter, with Salem lights and champagne hidden in the vegetable crisper or under frozen food cartons in the back of the freezer.  This bizarre behaviour pattern seemed to be handed down from one generation to the next and I said to myself... "How could she not see what she was doing to herself?"  No one ever discussed it as if it was perfectly normal daily behaviour and so it went on and on as it had throughout the years, with these otherwise beautiful, hard working and loving women.  Women who always chose the wrong men in their lives though, wrong in every possible way.  Men who were not real men, but alcoholic, physically and verbally abusive narcissistic ''boys'', who made their wives and children live in squalor and poverty.
    I often wondered how and when did it all start and with whom in the family as the cycle of addiction, abuse, denial, degradation, and co-dependency was reborn and flourished with each new generation.  I remember she told me that her grandmother banned any tobacco or alcohol from her home, even cooking sherry proclaiming that it was the Devils water and evil. What would cause such a reaction like this?  Was it possibly a result of previous family members with the same addictive behaviour and destructive traits? One can only imagine what this woman experienced to be so against any alcohol of any kind.
  Time went by and yet she still started every day with the same ritual of coffee, tobacco and alcohol  and all in excess, possibly to fill the void that can not be filled with these vices. This continued throughout all of these women's lives as did similar patterns of living in dilapidated houses, left stranded in a crumbling shack without a car to escape this prison.  They were made to live without a working hot water heater and without heating oil for the ice, cold furnace. There was always unfinished paint and repair work that never got done and no feeling of safety in the house with out-side lights that did not work, doors that did not lock properly and a man who was never really home, not even when he was there in person.



Personal thoughts ......

... "I'm going back, back in time, I keep flashing back to those memories of them now, for the first time in my life, so why now?"

  Goethe said ... "It is only in our later years, that we truly understand what we went through in our youth". Many psychologists confirm, that people frequently begin to ponder and question their youth, and what happened to them then, between the ages of 38 to 42, so why should I be any different?




...... Winter early-eighties Tri-state-area ......

  The oven was on full blast, on a frigid winter night in December. Thank God they had an electric stove, which could be left on for hours without danger (excluding the danger of having no electric). There were huge old pots of water on each burner steaming in the still chilly kitchen, as she was preparing to carry them upstairs to the bathtub to fill it up so a bath could be taken, as the hot water heater in the basement was not working again and the father was still no closer to having it fixed than he was when his mother gave him the money to repair it countless times, countless Winters ago.  It was a time consuming and humiliating task and was just one of many degrading effects of the father's selfish and almost single, bachelor like life-style.  The thermostat was also down to the lowest it could possibly go, as he wouldn't pay for a full tank of heating oil either and so this is how their lives went on with this degradation never being addressed or spoken about.  It was almost as if he was saying this is what you deserve, this is how it is, no questions asked... but he always had cigarettes, beer and Four roses Irish whiskey in the otherwise empty cabinets and money for the dive tavern that he went to every night to drink away their money and to play the numbers. The bread basket drawer had one rumpled bag of wonder bread in it, with two stale pieces inside as well as an empty opened box of English muffins, but there were always two full cartons of cigarettes, Viceroy and Marlboro. The cabinets were also mostly empty, with scattered near empty boxes of cereal and a few useless canned goods, but there were always several quart bottles of Seagram's 7 and Irish whiskey.  It was very evident what the priorities in this household were, tobacco and liquor, everything else came second or not at all.
   If this was happening today in 2014, any children in this shambles of a house would have been removed from it, until counseling, treatment and drastic repairs and changes were taken and made.  It was however a very different time then and the children suffered immensely, in terms of lack of self-esteem, direction, nurturing and a feeling of safety, leaving them to continue this vicious cycle, as lives of under-earners, victims, co-dependents and possible addicts themselves.







...Sometime in 1904, Lewis county, New York ...

  "The Mystery of Margaret"

  Daddy Jim as they called him, was raised by Florence and her husband Vern, in a village in upstate New York. They were not really Daddy Jim's parents, you see, Florence was really his Aunt, the sister of his late tragic unwed Mother Margaret. The story of Margaret was a dark secret in the family, and never, ever discussed. Margaret had been one of seven sisters born to long-time Adirondackers of solid Scottish, French and Scandinavian stock . They all knew how to fish, farm, garden, knit, can food and how to literally make something out of nothing, when needed. Margaret had been the youngest of the girls, and was a quiet and shy soul, who loved sitting alone and reading, as well as making quilts together with her older sisters.  She went hiking up in the woods often,  berry-picking and writing in her diary, sitting on the island like out crops of giant rocks  by the lake, where the family had a cottage.
  In a strange turn of events all six girls got married, (except Margaret), but only one of the girls, Lilly, actually had children, (except Margaret). The tale went, that Margaret fell in love with an American Indian-french Canadian boy, and was with child, unmarried at the age of 16. Terrified in a time where this was shocking and grounds to be thrown out of the church, Margaret took to drinking, all day everyday, in secrecy. This was an era when we did not know the real health hazards of alcohol and tobacco, and so Margaret really can not be blamed for her behavior. She must have been so scared and fearful of her unwed pregnancy, and probably went off into her own little world to escape the reality of what lay ahead. The boy disappeared on Margaret, yet she still went ahead and carried his baby for the nine months, until her son was born. Margaret died of alcohol consumption and a broken heart, shortly after Jim was born, and her sister Florence took Jim in as her own.
      Daddy Jim grew up, had a big farm outside of Gouvernour,  got married, and had two daughters of his own.  Daddy Jim was a wonderful, loving father and family member, but unfortunately, the alcohol addiction was then (unknowingly), passed down to who would have been Margaret's grand daughter, ironically also named Margaret, (who went on to run a tavern-bar in the Syracuse area, until her early death of cirrhosis of the liver like her long lost mother that she never met), and then it was passed down on to her great grandson.
      Years later, Margaret's last remaining sister Lilly lay in her bed near death, nearly sixty years after Margaret herself had died. Her niece who stayed by her side those last days, said that Lilly looked up to the ceiling, and whispered "Oh Margaret",  just as she passed away. You see, Lilly was the grandmother from my first story, who had banned all alcohol a nd tobacco from her home, even cooking wine or liquor flavored confections, and it was her own beloved sister Margaret who had perished at a young age from alcohol poisoning just a short time after the birth of her son Daddy Jim.


Copyright @  October 13 2014  AllRights Reserved.
All storys written by Fritz Von Ludwigslust.