Ghost in the Glass Jar. by Steven Donnini
Content
Ghost in the glass jar.
By Steven Donnini
Copyright 2010 Steven Donnini [email protected]
1
One day last summer I was walking through the cool morning mist in a parking lot at WalMart store in the East Texas town of Mineola. Suddenly two local boys approached me one They were brothers The oldest
was carrying a 1/2 gallon glass jar.
buy the looks of them, just a few years apart.
about 13 was the gloomy one with a look of shame on his face. Someone in the family must have suggested that the The younger
brothers go to a Walmart and ask for money.
boy about 9 years old stood before me holding the glass jar with a color snap shot of an old man dressed in coveralls standing in front of a farmhouse. I could see in the photo
there were junked cars, household appliances strung across the lawn and an American Flag posted on the front porch. The photo was taped to the inside of the jar facing out at me like a captured ghost trapped inside with loose change and paper dollars floating behind in the background. youngest said, “Grandpa just died. We need money to bury him. Can you help us?” The
I couldn’t stop myself from searching the boys eyes for hints of authenticity. A local would never have done that. The older boy glanced away without a word. I guest the
tears had dried up and given way to situation.
2
I was stunned and dismayed at the circumstances.
In small
towns all across America people are living and dieing in desperation. Their stories are plentiful and pass as
gossip or rumors told in gas stations, lumber yards to the deserted small town side walks. The words blowing away
with the wind through the piney woods. Who was this man in the coveralls? begin to fill my eyes. was he? I could feel the tears
I wanted to ask, what kind of man
He looked like a hard working farmer who had never
gone anywhere except off to fight in a war only to return half broken to tending to the peach orchards and dairy cows. That’s what men do around here. Although I don’t
I’m very intuitive about these things.
talk about things that pop into my mind, it can happen and did. In a breakfast joint with a friend our waitress a 45 I said,
year old biker chick came over to take our order.
“You hit your boyfriend over the head with a cast iron frying pan. popped out. You hit him so hard the bottom of the pan He ran off without his chopper.” To my
amazement she sat down across me and said, “Yeah, that son of a bitch went to the ground. across the living room. The bottom of the pan flew My friend
I’m keeping the bike.”
“Bear” said, “What the hell?” breakfast.
I nervously ate the
I looked around the room to see if anyone had
3
witnessed the psychic outburst.
But in these parts you’re
a wielder, plumber, mechanic, farmer or all in one handy man. A respectable honest life for most who do it. In
Miniola, psychic activity is limited to elderly women with worn out deck of cards. In fact, my grandmother on my Moms side was a psychic. Violet was her name. After Sunday She
dinner, there were several requests to read the cards. would gather a group in the kitchen table. me” was the operative phrase. “Please read
She would shuffle the cards
and lay them out in front of the person she was reading. Her readings were incomplete because anything that was bad was omitted. There was just enough forthcoming to keep Sometimes she would cry. “What’s the
your attention. matter Vi?”
“Nothing” she would say.
I have learned to do
the same thing. The restaurant was full of men. The young ones are
vulnerable to farm accidents that can take your life or a leg. The old guys seem indestructible. They are the Steel toe work boots, Dickies coveralls, tThey’re able to withstand
survivors.
shirts and seed company hats.
fowl weather, bio hazards and hard times. But when you need one of these guys you’re happy to see them. I was staying in a lake house 10 miles from town while writing a book and the septic tank overflowed. It was January cold and the
4
ground was frozen mud.
I called the plumber a 70 year old
man named Jim Anderson who came out in the freezing rain in his utility truck, backed up the driveway, walked up to the spot where he had worked on it before and started to dig to find the tank. Battling a cold running nose he had to dig
down about three feet before he found the pipe that entered the tank. He explained, “This here tank has a crust The
floating up, cause it ain’t been used in 5 years.
other thing is these trees will grow up the pipes looking for water.” He took his hammer and hit the pipe so hard it “See the root in
punched a 4 inches round hole in it. there.”
He reached in and grabbed the root and started His gloves were covered with what they
pulling it out.
call black water that had splashed up at him covering his boots and gloves. But that didn’t stop him from wiping his
dripping nose with a glove. I thought the old men in these parts are tough. Anyone who can snort bacteria like that The man
and live another day has my everlasting respect.
in the jar was cut from the same cloth. After 70 years of hard farm labor, what finely got him? I couldn’t help but wonder who else he had left behind. Most young people in rural towns don’t go to collage. Instead they join the Military. Some join the rodeo circuit or get football scholarships and go to Texas A&M in Collage
5
Station.
They serve their time and settle in a big city
like Dallas or Huston and only come home to the farm on holidays where Big Mama and Little Mama get together and do the cooking. Some of the men can’t make it in the city and
come home where they join the next generation of tough country men. Not long after the septic tank went haywire,
the water line to the lake house needed to be moved 400 feet up the road to a new meter on the dirt road that ran alongside the lake. We called Monty a handy man who agreed When Monty
to run a pipe up through the thick pine trees.
showed up with one arm, I wondered how he was going to dig all that way up to the house with one arm. I expected a ditch digger powerful enough to go down 18 inches through the roots. To my surprise Monty had a 5 foot steel pry bar
out of his car and within 3 hours the job was done. I asked him how he lost his arm? He answered, “I was on my
motorcycle down in Tyler speeding to a job site when I got hit buy a drunk driver in a pick up. can do all kinds of things. Tore it clean off. I
I’m a yard sculpture artist.”
Like I said, these men are tough. He had a portfolio of photos of his yard sculpture. All of it was cut,
fashioned from shovels, rakes and other found metal objects. Then wielded together to resemble frogs, birds
and imaginary country yard creatures.
6
He had dug out a life in the Piney woods with his wife an emergency room nurse. He drove me to his home on 6 acres. He had cleared it himself and run a water line under a dirt road to his new travel trailer where they would stay until the house could be built with one arm. Back in the parking lot in Miniola, the boys had more imitate needs. money. Clearly the family had sent them out to get Because
This isn’t something they would think of.
times are hard, a question came to mind.
“Do these boys
really need money to bury their Grandfather, or do they need money for food?” was the reason. I couldn’t bring myself to ask which
What had gone so wrong to put them out on
the street begging the people they saw everyday for money? They were clean cut and well mannered. That explained the
shame that covered the proud young man who didn’t have anything to say or any experience with begging. I’m sure his father showed him the virtue of self respect and responsibility. It is true we all bring our family of
origin out with us into the world where we discover or not that what we were taught rewards us or shames us into considering a different way to live that is more gratifying. age. For me shame was like an acid bath at that Can
It burns away the thin skin and scars the soul.
suffering be the only lasting reward for those virtues like
7
self respect and personal responsibility?
This 13 year old No
had been changed in a profound way by this experience. amount of reason and consoling was going to change the shame he will carry around. No closure. accomplishment. No pride of
It had gone to the marrow and was molding My
him right there in the middle of a town parking lot. wife had grown up in a small town in Kansas.
I thought she But
would have an insight into the almost empty glass jar. she had walked into the store with her shopping list without seeing what was in the jar. children selling cookies there. parents? There are always
But where were the
Were the boys just dropped off in the middle of Were they working
the Walmart lot to fend for themselves?
their way through the outer edges of the parked cars because they were afraid of being told to go away? The real good people traffic was at the front doors. Mineola is in crystal meth country. Another thing,
There are signs posted
around town and placed on the side of the road like speed signs that read “Meth Watch Area.” During our stay there
we had seen many young families in the Dollar store and around town who had the outward manifestations of crystal meth addition. The emaciated body, dark hollow eyes, Like rats running around
desperate gaze and rotten teeth.
the store they didn’t seem to care about their appearance.
8
The other towns people acted unaware of what is happening. A kind of acceptance of the disgraced who walked around them. Living in a big cities like Miami, Buffalo and Dallas, I have been approached by beggars at every major stop light and 24 hour stores. These people all have a hand written resume / short story on a cardboard box lid. food. my job. “Homeless, Please help Me! Need
Anything will help.” My husband left me.
Or a woman with a sign, “Lost Help! I have hungry
children.”
An amputee man on the side of the road dressed
in camouflage sitting in a wheelchair with a dog, “I’m a vet. Homeless. Need Help.”
All I know is, I feel really bad because whatever I have can’t change things for that person. Then I wonder, “Are I always give
they for real?” Their pitch is convincing.
them the benefit of wondering how they found their way here. Then I saw a couple of panhandlers in a restaurant They walked in
who were just working on a nearby corner.
the door with a guy who was clearly the boss of a crew of beggars. That is not new, they work the corners all over There are
Austin, Texas. It’s a franchise business.
amazing stories like a homeless man who lived in a vacant lot in Austin for 30 years. In New York and Las Vegas
9
people live in the subway tunnels or storm drains. In LA they are everywhere sleeping in the bushes. say, “It’s their choice.” something like that. When people
I wonder why they would say It’s just a
How would you know that?
way to fend off the feelings one has when confronted with the reality that our city councils can’t cope with homelessness. The problem is too big. Capitalism has
failed these people.
Faith based solutions only go so far.
Like many people, I have become jaded when trying to judge beggars authenticity. Surely the boys in the Walmart
parking lot were for real. I gave them all the cash I had. I figure if it was true that Grandpa was sitting at home putrefying, it was time to help them. I thought about what Go to the
I would do if I was in the same predicament. Church elders and ask for help?
But the church elders need There’s just not
their cash for their own interests. enough to go around.
Begging from passers bye is not a bad But asking
solution if you need food, wine or cigarettes.
for small change to bury someone is going to be tough, unless there were other family members doing the same thing at every store in the area. It could take weeks to collect We’re talking at
enough money to satisfy a mortician. least $2,500.
How about dropping off the body at a
hospital emergency room door with a letter that said that
10
Grandpa gave his body for medical students to study because he had no more use for it? Surely God would understand.
I read a story about a funeral director in Detroit who had cadavers piled up in a freezer for years. At some point he
went out of business and slithered away from the funeral home leaving the mummified stiffs behind. When the police
traced him down he said, “I just couldn’t keep the doors open any more. So, I walked away. Sue me.” The City
Officials didn’t have a clue who they were and nether did the funeral home director. Or was he faking hysterical amnesia? The families believed they were planted in a
church memorial park years ago so why tell them anyways? The city didn’t have a budget to bury them but they did it anyway. They say that spirits just float around in the ether until they are buried. I went away from the boys feeling like a wet dog trying to shake off the shame that had stuck to me. Then as I walked
away, I turned to take a last look at the boys, but they had vanished into a sea of mud covered pick up trucks along with the ghost in the glass jar. to die. A tough man, but too poor
11
By Steven Donnini
Copyright 2010 Steven Donnini [email protected]
1
One day last summer I was walking through the cool morning mist in a parking lot at WalMart store in the East Texas town of Mineola. Suddenly two local boys approached me one They were brothers The oldest
was carrying a 1/2 gallon glass jar.
buy the looks of them, just a few years apart.
about 13 was the gloomy one with a look of shame on his face. Someone in the family must have suggested that the The younger
brothers go to a Walmart and ask for money.
boy about 9 years old stood before me holding the glass jar with a color snap shot of an old man dressed in coveralls standing in front of a farmhouse. I could see in the photo
there were junked cars, household appliances strung across the lawn and an American Flag posted on the front porch. The photo was taped to the inside of the jar facing out at me like a captured ghost trapped inside with loose change and paper dollars floating behind in the background. youngest said, “Grandpa just died. We need money to bury him. Can you help us?” The
I couldn’t stop myself from searching the boys eyes for hints of authenticity. A local would never have done that. The older boy glanced away without a word. I guest the
tears had dried up and given way to situation.
2
I was stunned and dismayed at the circumstances.
In small
towns all across America people are living and dieing in desperation. Their stories are plentiful and pass as
gossip or rumors told in gas stations, lumber yards to the deserted small town side walks. The words blowing away
with the wind through the piney woods. Who was this man in the coveralls? begin to fill my eyes. was he? I could feel the tears
I wanted to ask, what kind of man
He looked like a hard working farmer who had never
gone anywhere except off to fight in a war only to return half broken to tending to the peach orchards and dairy cows. That’s what men do around here. Although I don’t
I’m very intuitive about these things.
talk about things that pop into my mind, it can happen and did. In a breakfast joint with a friend our waitress a 45 I said,
year old biker chick came over to take our order.
“You hit your boyfriend over the head with a cast iron frying pan. popped out. You hit him so hard the bottom of the pan He ran off without his chopper.” To my
amazement she sat down across me and said, “Yeah, that son of a bitch went to the ground. across the living room. The bottom of the pan flew My friend
I’m keeping the bike.”
“Bear” said, “What the hell?” breakfast.
I nervously ate the
I looked around the room to see if anyone had
3
witnessed the psychic outburst.
But in these parts you’re
a wielder, plumber, mechanic, farmer or all in one handy man. A respectable honest life for most who do it. In
Miniola, psychic activity is limited to elderly women with worn out deck of cards. In fact, my grandmother on my Moms side was a psychic. Violet was her name. After Sunday She
dinner, there were several requests to read the cards. would gather a group in the kitchen table. me” was the operative phrase. “Please read
She would shuffle the cards
and lay them out in front of the person she was reading. Her readings were incomplete because anything that was bad was omitted. There was just enough forthcoming to keep Sometimes she would cry. “What’s the
your attention. matter Vi?”
“Nothing” she would say.
I have learned to do
the same thing. The restaurant was full of men. The young ones are
vulnerable to farm accidents that can take your life or a leg. The old guys seem indestructible. They are the Steel toe work boots, Dickies coveralls, tThey’re able to withstand
survivors.
shirts and seed company hats.
fowl weather, bio hazards and hard times. But when you need one of these guys you’re happy to see them. I was staying in a lake house 10 miles from town while writing a book and the septic tank overflowed. It was January cold and the
4
ground was frozen mud.
I called the plumber a 70 year old
man named Jim Anderson who came out in the freezing rain in his utility truck, backed up the driveway, walked up to the spot where he had worked on it before and started to dig to find the tank. Battling a cold running nose he had to dig
down about three feet before he found the pipe that entered the tank. He explained, “This here tank has a crust The
floating up, cause it ain’t been used in 5 years.
other thing is these trees will grow up the pipes looking for water.” He took his hammer and hit the pipe so hard it “See the root in
punched a 4 inches round hole in it. there.”
He reached in and grabbed the root and started His gloves were covered with what they
pulling it out.
call black water that had splashed up at him covering his boots and gloves. But that didn’t stop him from wiping his
dripping nose with a glove. I thought the old men in these parts are tough. Anyone who can snort bacteria like that The man
and live another day has my everlasting respect.
in the jar was cut from the same cloth. After 70 years of hard farm labor, what finely got him? I couldn’t help but wonder who else he had left behind. Most young people in rural towns don’t go to collage. Instead they join the Military. Some join the rodeo circuit or get football scholarships and go to Texas A&M in Collage
5
Station.
They serve their time and settle in a big city
like Dallas or Huston and only come home to the farm on holidays where Big Mama and Little Mama get together and do the cooking. Some of the men can’t make it in the city and
come home where they join the next generation of tough country men. Not long after the septic tank went haywire,
the water line to the lake house needed to be moved 400 feet up the road to a new meter on the dirt road that ran alongside the lake. We called Monty a handy man who agreed When Monty
to run a pipe up through the thick pine trees.
showed up with one arm, I wondered how he was going to dig all that way up to the house with one arm. I expected a ditch digger powerful enough to go down 18 inches through the roots. To my surprise Monty had a 5 foot steel pry bar
out of his car and within 3 hours the job was done. I asked him how he lost his arm? He answered, “I was on my
motorcycle down in Tyler speeding to a job site when I got hit buy a drunk driver in a pick up. can do all kinds of things. Tore it clean off. I
I’m a yard sculpture artist.”
Like I said, these men are tough. He had a portfolio of photos of his yard sculpture. All of it was cut,
fashioned from shovels, rakes and other found metal objects. Then wielded together to resemble frogs, birds
and imaginary country yard creatures.
6
He had dug out a life in the Piney woods with his wife an emergency room nurse. He drove me to his home on 6 acres. He had cleared it himself and run a water line under a dirt road to his new travel trailer where they would stay until the house could be built with one arm. Back in the parking lot in Miniola, the boys had more imitate needs. money. Clearly the family had sent them out to get Because
This isn’t something they would think of.
times are hard, a question came to mind.
“Do these boys
really need money to bury their Grandfather, or do they need money for food?” was the reason. I couldn’t bring myself to ask which
What had gone so wrong to put them out on
the street begging the people they saw everyday for money? They were clean cut and well mannered. That explained the
shame that covered the proud young man who didn’t have anything to say or any experience with begging. I’m sure his father showed him the virtue of self respect and responsibility. It is true we all bring our family of
origin out with us into the world where we discover or not that what we were taught rewards us or shames us into considering a different way to live that is more gratifying. age. For me shame was like an acid bath at that Can
It burns away the thin skin and scars the soul.
suffering be the only lasting reward for those virtues like
7
self respect and personal responsibility?
This 13 year old No
had been changed in a profound way by this experience. amount of reason and consoling was going to change the shame he will carry around. No closure. accomplishment. No pride of
It had gone to the marrow and was molding My
him right there in the middle of a town parking lot. wife had grown up in a small town in Kansas.
I thought she But
would have an insight into the almost empty glass jar. she had walked into the store with her shopping list without seeing what was in the jar. children selling cookies there. parents? There are always
But where were the
Were the boys just dropped off in the middle of Were they working
the Walmart lot to fend for themselves?
their way through the outer edges of the parked cars because they were afraid of being told to go away? The real good people traffic was at the front doors. Mineola is in crystal meth country. Another thing,
There are signs posted
around town and placed on the side of the road like speed signs that read “Meth Watch Area.” During our stay there
we had seen many young families in the Dollar store and around town who had the outward manifestations of crystal meth addition. The emaciated body, dark hollow eyes, Like rats running around
desperate gaze and rotten teeth.
the store they didn’t seem to care about their appearance.
8
The other towns people acted unaware of what is happening. A kind of acceptance of the disgraced who walked around them. Living in a big cities like Miami, Buffalo and Dallas, I have been approached by beggars at every major stop light and 24 hour stores. These people all have a hand written resume / short story on a cardboard box lid. food. my job. “Homeless, Please help Me! Need
Anything will help.” My husband left me.
Or a woman with a sign, “Lost Help! I have hungry
children.”
An amputee man on the side of the road dressed
in camouflage sitting in a wheelchair with a dog, “I’m a vet. Homeless. Need Help.”
All I know is, I feel really bad because whatever I have can’t change things for that person. Then I wonder, “Are I always give
they for real?” Their pitch is convincing.
them the benefit of wondering how they found their way here. Then I saw a couple of panhandlers in a restaurant They walked in
who were just working on a nearby corner.
the door with a guy who was clearly the boss of a crew of beggars. That is not new, they work the corners all over There are
Austin, Texas. It’s a franchise business.
amazing stories like a homeless man who lived in a vacant lot in Austin for 30 years. In New York and Las Vegas
9
people live in the subway tunnels or storm drains. In LA they are everywhere sleeping in the bushes. say, “It’s their choice.” something like that. When people
I wonder why they would say It’s just a
How would you know that?
way to fend off the feelings one has when confronted with the reality that our city councils can’t cope with homelessness. The problem is too big. Capitalism has
failed these people.
Faith based solutions only go so far.
Like many people, I have become jaded when trying to judge beggars authenticity. Surely the boys in the Walmart
parking lot were for real. I gave them all the cash I had. I figure if it was true that Grandpa was sitting at home putrefying, it was time to help them. I thought about what Go to the
I would do if I was in the same predicament. Church elders and ask for help?
But the church elders need There’s just not
their cash for their own interests. enough to go around.
Begging from passers bye is not a bad But asking
solution if you need food, wine or cigarettes.
for small change to bury someone is going to be tough, unless there were other family members doing the same thing at every store in the area. It could take weeks to collect We’re talking at
enough money to satisfy a mortician. least $2,500.
How about dropping off the body at a
hospital emergency room door with a letter that said that
10
Grandpa gave his body for medical students to study because he had no more use for it? Surely God would understand.
I read a story about a funeral director in Detroit who had cadavers piled up in a freezer for years. At some point he
went out of business and slithered away from the funeral home leaving the mummified stiffs behind. When the police
traced him down he said, “I just couldn’t keep the doors open any more. So, I walked away. Sue me.” The City
Officials didn’t have a clue who they were and nether did the funeral home director. Or was he faking hysterical amnesia? The families believed they were planted in a
church memorial park years ago so why tell them anyways? The city didn’t have a budget to bury them but they did it anyway. They say that spirits just float around in the ether until they are buried. I went away from the boys feeling like a wet dog trying to shake off the shame that had stuck to me. Then as I walked
away, I turned to take a last look at the boys, but they had vanished into a sea of mud covered pick up trucks along with the ghost in the glass jar. to die. A tough man, but too poor
11
