Two Words, no, Three Words

I realized recently that I haven't lived in a town for about 17 years, and I'm here to tell ya, I hate streetlights! I have an idea to make tin shades for them with star shapes cut out directing the light down into the street instead of into my eyes as I try to find the moon somewhere behind their glare. I also hate middle aged men, or really anyone, on a Harley-Davidson.

But I love the twenty something gangsta wanna be named "Chevy" who lives up the street from me. The other evening I was walking out to the street to finish pruning some branches on the road there. As I turned the corner, there was Chevy with a small kite trying to get it to fly. There was plenty of wind, but for some reason the kite just wouldn't take off. We both shrugged and smiled at the same time at the kite's obstinate refusal to go up. It was a moment full of unspoken good will and cheer. I loved it. But wait, it gets better.

Now you have to know that where Chevy was trying to fly his kite is a small parking lot behind a four story building and near a side alleyway. Pretty tight quarters and very tricky wind wise. Also, surrounded by tall trees. When I rounded the corner and saw this man wearing a bandana and low riding baggy jeans, overweight and running up the alley with a little kite on a string that was spooling out on the ground - I was instantly in love with Chevy. All my resentment for his previous weekend's performance - ala Marlin Brando and Stella, you know the one, where he's drunk and yelling outside her window from the street - evaporated with our mutual shrugs and smiles at the sweet absurdity of this dang kite's insistence on being earth bound.

So I turned to my pruning and Chevy sort of hung his kite up in a bush next to his door, kinda like tying your horse to the hitching post, and went inside. Pretty soon he was back out in the street talking on his cell phone. He was telling a friend about flying his kite "bro, like a thousand feet up in the air, mon!"

This went on for about another ten minutes or so. Me pruning, Chevy on the phone wandering in and out of his house, the kite fluttering on it's shrub in the wind. I sort of lost track of Chevy and his story, I was pruning bro, like a thousand little twigs, mon! Anyway, I was interrupted by Chevy, cell phone to his ear, saying "excuse me sir, did you see my kite? It's gone! It must have blown away! Did you see which way it went?" And sure enough, there was the string broken in Chevy's hand. We both looked around astonished that the kite could have made a break for it while both our backs were turned. Also, the wind which had been blowing at a good pace up till now, was suddenly still. Again, shrugs and smiles, and on my part at least, wonderful cheerful love for a troublesome neighbor. No sign of the kite.

I have a postscript to this story, it goes like this: about a week later, around 3 in the morning, I was woken from a sound sleep. Chevy was locked outside his apartment again, yelling at Maria. What woke me was Chevy bellowing, "I have just two words for you: F***ING B*TCH! No, wait, thats THREE Words!"

I could just see him in the dark - fuming, frustrated, and counting fingers.....

I fell out of bed laughing.

Eighth Dolor in Las Vegas

OK, the first thing you need to know is that Dolor means sorrow. Traditionally there are seven sorrows which Mary suffers as the mother of Jesus. Hence her name: Our Lady of the Sorrows, or Dolores, or in Spanish, Nuestra Senora de los Dolores.

Now, when my parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary there was a big party out at the Hoban's lake house in Coeur d' Alene Idaho. My parents and two other couples all got married around the same time that year, so the three couples and their children got together for a big shindig at the lake. I must have been around 15 years old. Well, as you might imagine with these large Catholic families, the kids lost no time finding ways to celebrate too. The result being captured on film by my god-father Austin.

Here I am passed out from my first exposure to alcohol. Austin very sympathetically (to my mother) captioned the picture, "Eighth Dolor." And so I am.

That's my mother sitting next to me, not pleased. You had to have a sense of humor to survive raising six kids through adolescence, through the 70's no less. Austin's quip certainly helped this particular episode.

This picture and its tawdry tale drifted into blessed memory for thirty years until my pal and I decided that New Mexico was to be our next home. Specifically, the former parsonage of a church in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Here is a picture of our new home where we should be living come June.

Established by Spanish land grant in 1835, Las Vegas was originally called Nuestra Senora de los Dolores de Las Vegas Grandes (Our Lady of Sorrows of the Great Meadows)

And naturally her church is Nuestra Senora de los Dolores Catholic Church, its foundation was laid in 1862.


You are probably connecting the dots (or should I say "dolors," Dolores) quite effectively on your own. But each story beseeches its narrator to carry it to its own Golgotha, and so I continue the travail.

Of course, the church to which our new home was once parsonage, is indeed dedicated to "Our Lady of the Sorrows," aka Dolores.

You need to know that this move is something of a miracle: that we qualified for the loan to buy this place, that we survived a challenging year in Indiana intact, that we found a place that provides two studios a residence and rental income, that the world hasn't quite made that proverbial hand-basket trip to hell.... would all point to the miraculous.

I can't help thinking that Our Lady enjoyed Austin's joke some thirty years ago, and with laughter amid her Dolors, granted her "Eighth Dolor" a bit of grace, and called him to her beautiful home on the edge of the great meadows in New Mexico.

You can bet I'll be building shrines come summer!