Rudolph at large

By Bobby Neal Winters

Those of you who follow this space may remember a report I relayed last year at this time regarding some difficulties Santa Claus had encountered during a promotional tour which took a rest stop along a deserted stretch of road between Jesse, Oklahoma and US Highway 377.  Eight shots were heard along that deserted stretch of road and venison jerky was being sold out of the trunk of a car at a basketball game in Stonewall.  There was also a report of a man wearing a red hat turning up in a Pentecostal Church with peppermint schnapps on his breath and his being taken off to jail.

Many of you have undoubtedly been of the opinion, since Christmas did come off last year and the presents from Santa were delivered on schedule, that I had made the whole account up.  While that might be an easy thing to believe in these days of rampant dishonesty, the truth is much more complicated.

It turns out that North Pole Headquarters is well prepared for situations such as this.  This is not the first time Santa has had to be sprung from jail, and there is a special squad of elves that have been trained for just such an occasion.  Usually, however, they just have to go to Vegas and spread enough money around.  The crew at the Pontotoc County Courthouse is made of much purer material however, and it took some community service for Santa this time.  If you saw an old man with a beard picking up trash on the side of the road, that might have been him. 

As for the reindeer, while their losses were substantial, they are of a military caste and took them as being a part of their duty.  New Dashers, Dancers, etc. succeeded into their hereditary positions as a matter of course. 

Duty is one thing, but, after a period of careful investigation, vengeance will be taken.  It will be quick, but it won’t necessarily be pretty.  You don’t mess with someone whose boss can get into your house at will.

You may also recall that, at the time the piece was written, Rudolph, the most famous reindeer of them all, had not yet been located, and that my old friend Bubba was searching for him.

If you are familiar with Bubba’s hunting skills, then you should be comfortably certain that, as long as Bubba is hunting for him on purpose, Rudolph is perfectly safe.  Any venison Bubba ever obtained—other than in exchange for cash from someone else’s trunk—has been a victim of his own front bumper.

“I hunted for him all last winter and into the spring,” Bubba said when I talked to him on the phone the other day.  “I never seen hide nor hair of him.”

“Maybe he flew home on his own,” I offered.

“I’d thought that myself,” he said, sounding serious, “but I heard some things that makes me think different.” 

Bubba always has some sort of theory or other to offer, so my better judgment told me to just let that pass, but I was unable to resist.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Continuing in his somber tone, he answered, “Some of my friends spend a lot of time in the woods hunting and fishing, and they’ve been seeing things they can’t explain.  One of them was out walking in the woods as saw some deer sign.”

“Well, that’s to be expected,” I said.  “It is deer season after all.”

“But this glowed in the dark,” he said.

“Glowed in the dark?” I asked.  “That’s pretty hard to believe.  Did you see it yourself?”

“No, but my friend used it to fertilize his tomatoes and when they were ripe, they looked just like red Christmas ornaments,” Bubba replied.  “He showed me one of them, and they were the prettiest little things.”

I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t feel like calling him a liar since he’d seen the Christmas ornaments and all.

“You said ‘things they can’t explain,’” I said.  “What else have they seen?”

“Well,” Bubba drawled, “a friend of mine was out deer hunting on Thanksgiving and thought he saw a red lightening bug one morning.  His eyes adjusted to the light saw a yearling deer where the lightening bug had been.  He blinked and when he opened his eyes the yearling was gone.  Then he heard rustling in the tree tops.”

“So,” I said, trying to sound as disinterested as possible, “what do you think is going on?”

“Well, you know how irresistible Oklahoma women are,” he said—and I wasn’t going to disagree with him, having married one myself.  (Some of my cousins have married several.)  “I think Rudolph has taken up with some of the local does.”

“You do?” I said this with the tone that may have started a fight if it hadn’t been muted by the phone.  Bubba either missed it or pretended too.

“Yep, I do, and you know what,” he continued unabated.  “I think it’s the best thing that’s happened around here in a long time.  Just think about how big a business deer hunting is.  What about hunting flying deer?  Think how festive a deer head with a glowing nose would look over the mantle in the holiday season.”

“I can’t imagine,” I said, and I tried not to.

 Bubba and the North Pole

By Bobby Neal Winters

Many of you have been asking me about Bubba’s doings as of late, and, until recently, the answer was that Bubba had been oddly silent.  This had worried me somewhat.  As a parent, I’ve learned that when children are quiet they are often up to something and, while Bubba is far from being a child himself, he does have certain childlike qualities that endear him so to us.

This worry was exacerbated when, not having talked to him for an extended time, I called him.

“Hello, Bubba,” I said.  “I hadn’t heard from you in a long time so I figured I’d give you a call.”

“Hey there,” he began, but this was followed by him making the sound that someone makes with they are talking and lose their footing. This was followed by an expletive and Bubba talking to someone not on the phone, “Hey, you watch that! Are you trying to kill me?” 

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Can I call you back?” he said.

“Sure,” I replied. 

He didn’t say goodbye, merely turning off his phone, but before he did, I heard him say “Now you get back down there!” in a way than indicated he meant it.

A couple of hours later he called me back.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“So what’s been going on?  Why haven’t I been hearing from you?” I asked.

His answer was a tale that is unbelievable even by Bubba’s standards.  I will relate it now to you with the usual caveat that this is coming from Bubba.

It all began back in December of 2004 when Santa Claus made a routine landing on a stretch of country road between East Jesse, Oklahoma and US Highway 377.  As some of you may know, Santa Claus is originally from Stringtown, Oklahoma and stops along that stretch of road to tighten reindeer harnesses and fortify himself with peppermint schnapps on his way from Fort Smith to Ardmore.  On this particular occasion Santa’s routine was disturbed by some local youths who were out spotlighting deer.  At that time, all of the reindeer were killed and taken as meat with the exception of Rudolph who escaped.

After an incident with some Pentecostals and doing some community service work, Santa made his way back to the North Pole, but Rudolph, or more probably Rudolph’s offspring, were being sighted around the area during the Christmas season of 2005.  Bubba had spent some time hunting for them, but after a while—mysteriously—quit talking about it.

Three years later now Bubba made an admission to me.

“I found out how to capture them and have been holding them in a pen,” he said.

“Keeping them in a pen?” I asked incredulously. “How? Can’t they fly?”

“Fly?” he said. “You betcha they can fly.”  Bubba was a Big Sarah Palin supporter.

“I had to put a dome made out of chicken wire up over it,” he said.  “And I had to make a frame out of sucker-rods leftover from oilfield construction to support it.  I was up there working on it when you called.  One of the reindeer saw I was distracted and flew up and bumped me.  They are clever critters.  A while back, one of them got loose, flew up to around Kansas City, and got himself run over by a college professor in a Kia just south of Overland Park.  That’s when I decided I needed to reninforce my cover.”

“Wait a second,” I said, thinking I’d spotted a hole to poke in this nonsense.  “How do you know what happened to a deer south of Overland Park?  That’s a seven-hour trip from where you are.”

“Not by reindeer,” he said simply.  “I’ve been doing a lot of flying around lately.”

 “Where to?” I figured I’d let him spin his tale out and trap him in a contradiction.

“To the North Pole for one,” he said.  “The first time I did it, it was just for a joy ride, but I bumped into Santa Claus up there and we started to do some business.  He’s actually just a manager and a corporate symbol.  He farms out finding out who is naughty and nice to a security firm and then subcontracts delivery.  All he does for himself anymore is public appearances.  Since I’ve got my own herd of reindeer now, I am in the catbird seat as far as subcontracting delivery.  He even told me that I might be able to fill in for him at personal appearances if I kept my healthy appetite and grew a beard.”

This was getting to be a bit much.

“I am going to say goodbye to you now Bubba,” I said.

“But don’t you want to know about what the elves are really ...”

“Goodbye, Bubba.”

(Bobby Winters is Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Mathematics at Pittsburg State University.)

Concerning Santa

From December 2004

Concerning Santa

By Bobby Neal Winters

As many of you know, even from my place of exile in Kansas, I keep in touch with the goings-on in my Native State by talking to my brother on the phone.  This keeps me from putting on too many airs, and airs is about the worst thing you can have.

The other day I called him up, and after talking a while, I saw he didn’t seem his usual self.

“What’s the matter, Bubba?” I asked.  Even though his name is Jerry, I’ve taken to calling him “Bubba” since he started wearing that irritating goatee.

“You’ll think it’s silly,” he said.

“Ah, come on,” I urged. “What’s the matter?”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone, and I could hear the TV in the background, but then he spoke.

“I’m worried about Christmas,” he said, seeming dead serious.  I could understand seasonal blues because I get them myself.

“It’s coming,” I said.  “Not much we can do about that.”  I thought this would comfort him.

“But it might not,” came his voice, sounding as sad as a man whose wife had left him for his best friend and taken the family truck with all his fishing tackle in the back with her when she left.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.  “December 25 is right around the corner.”

“It’s not the date that I’m worried about,” he said grimly. “It’s Santa Claus.”

He had my attention then, because Santa Claus is a fellow Okie.  He was born just south of Stringtown. He got into the Christmas business and had to leave the state, and now he’s got the kind of job that all little Okies dream of having when they grow up, working one night a year, and then running down to Alaska to hunt and fish the rest of the year while a bunch of elves work under the wife’s watchful eye.

“What about Santa Claus?” I asked.

“I’m afraid something bad might have happened to him,” he said. 

I was growing frustrated.  My brother has the bad habit sharing bad news iceberg-fashion.  He shows you a little, and then slams you with the rest when it’s too late.

“Spill it, Bubba,” I said.

“Well,” he drawled out. “I was over at the ball game the other night when one of my students asked me if I’d like to buy some deer jerky.  I said that I would and followed him out to his car where he opened the trunk and extracted a zip-lock bag of it from a brown paper sack.”

“So?” I asked. 

“He had a flashlight, and when he shined it in the trunk, I saw the brown paper sack was marked ‘Dancer.’”

“Is that it?” I asked.  I was growing just a little impatient because this was getting nowhere fast, but like I said, my brother does things at his own speed.

“Since ‘Dancer’ is the name of one of the reindeer,” he said, “it got me to thinking. Then when I gave him the money, he opened his car door, so he could put it in one of those bank bags with the zipper, and his dome light came on. When it did, I could see his steering wheel was wrapped in red felt.”

This was beginning to sound pretty sinister to me.

“What are you implying here?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “after the jerky and the red felt, I started putting a few things together.  One of my students who lives on the road between East Jesse and US highway 377 had heard eight shots one night last week.  Then I’d heard they had to cancel one of Santa’s appearances down in the mall in Ardmore.”

Now, my brother had me concerned.  In that part of the world, it is common knowledge that when Santa makes personal appearances this time of year his route from Fort Smith to Ardmore takes him over the area my brother had described.

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

“Well,” he drawled out, “Santa sometimes likes to land on that road, check his deer’s harness, and take a swig of peppermint schnapps before going on to Ardmore, or so I’m told.  It could be he disturbed some boys who were out spotlighting deer.”

“What about Santa?” I asked, very worried.  “They didn’t kill him, did they?”

“Oh, no,” he said, “They wouldn’t’ve done that. Besides it explains something. The shots were heard on a Wednesday night, and that same Wednesday, a fat man that turned up in a Pentecostal church meeting in his underwear and a red stocking hat claiming to be Santa Claus.  The folks there were scared, called him ‘Satan Claws,’ and had the sheriff come and get him.  He’s still in jail being held as a vagrant.”

“Well, why don’t you just go and bail him out?” I asked.

My brother paused for a while, and I could hear Wheel of Fortune in the background.

“Hello, are you still there?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I thought about bailing him out, but then I remembered there were only eight shots.  What about Rudolph?  I didn’t see any red nose glowing in that car trunk.  That means Rudolph is still loose.  If I could catch him before I bailed Santa out that would give me some leverage with the old guy.  Maybe I could get on as his assistant or something.”

It was at that point I hung up the phone.  Time to go deer hunting.

Piso Mojado

By Bobby Neal Winters

I can’t speak Spanish yet, but the Rosetta Stone experience has opened my eyes to a few things in the world around me.  I’ve learned lots of words, never having seen a single one of them paired with an English equivalent.  The program shows pictures of situations and one discerns from the pictures what the associated Spanish word means.

One of the positive aspects of this is that it teaches skills that are required in order to pick up a new language from one’s environment.  Part of that skill set is knowledge of the pitfalls therein. When you are seeing a picture, are you seeing what you think you are seeing?  When something is being referred to by a two-word phrase, which of the words means what?

An example of this would be the phrase “piso mojado.”  It means “wet floor.”  I’ve known this for a long time because I’ve seen it on those yellow, plastic signs that they put on wet floors.  The full sign reads “cuidado piso mojado,” which is “caution wet floor.”  One could discern that by the fact that you see these signs helpfully placed on wet floors where you should be careful, but it is most helpful that the full English is written on the other side.

He is the danger (in interpretation, not the floor).  I had thought that mojado meant floor and piso meant wet.  The fact that this is not the case is betrayed by the past-tense of the verb in that last sentence.  Many of you now have figured out why I thought that and are no doubt now pretending you never did and are feeling smugly superior.

“To piss” is the vulgar infinitive for urination.  It’s one of those English words we’ve replaced by an suitable Latin euphemism.  In my defense, “to piss” comes from the Middle English “pissen” which comes to us from the Old French “pissier” which comes from the Latin “pissiare.”  On the downside, this is vulgar Latin.  The “vulgar” here doesn’t mean what we mean by vulgar, and yet it does know the feet out from under any sort of high flown argument I might be trying to put together to keep myself from sounding like anything besides a redneck.

The truth of the matter is that I have referred to a urinal referred to by the French pissoir.  This also illustrates a danger of learning language this way as, I am told, the French for urinal is different and pissoir refers to a particular kind of urinal.  In any case, I knew that French and Spanish are both Romance languages, being derived from Latin, the language of the Romans.  Given the wetness of urine, I figured that piso could be a reference to wetness derived from the same root.

No.

Indeed, I learned that el piso actually means floor and that mojado  means wet.  Mojado is the past participle form of the Spanish verb mojar which means “to make wet.” So, as far as I know, none of these words has anything to do with urination.  So far, Rosetta Stone has not given me the words for those things and the language for meeting those needs has all been rolled into the phrase for requesting the location of “el baño.”  (This means “the bath” too, by the way.  Even speakers of Spanish pretend that’s what we mainly want the room for.)  In any case, you ask to have your needs met by saying “Dónde está el baño, por favor.”  Maybe if you hit por favor with the right nuance and facial expression, they can guess what you need.

But I digress.

Rosetta Stone managed to show me what el piso  meant by showing me pictures of people measuring floors, sweeping floors, and vacuuming floors.  I learned mojado by seeing pictures of wet dogs, wet umbrellas, wet businessmen, and so forth.

So, imagine my confusion when I came upon la pisina.  La pisina  means “swimming pool.”  This confusion was compounded by the fact that I knew what I used to do to my Grandma Winters’ peonies when I was a little country boy and what country boys do in the swimming pool.  The word pisina just opens itself up to that sort of abuse.  Think about it: piss-in-a. It opens up images--to my redneck mind at least--of middle class parents who put on airs and refer to the swimming pool as a pisina and then coming to the back yard to see their young country son standing at the edge of the pool, making that vision come to life.

And yet--no--that would never happen.  But it does make a nice mnemonic for me with my twisted mind to remember the word for swimming pool.

All of this having been said, I am still having way too much fun learning Spanish.  That having been said, I will confess that I am not coming at it with the pure Rosetta Stone experience.  I took German in college in the traditional way.  I studied New Testament Greek with a computer program--and books--and in doing so learned more about grammar that I ever thought there was.  I also took two years of Russian about twelve years ago.  I’ve got my Rosetta Stone program, yes, but I also have some books.

But Rosetta Stone set me straight on piso mojado.

Spirits Among Us

By Bobby Neal Winters
The address 709 West First belongs to the house next door.  There was a time when it was a rent house.  There is some natural law which states that no renter will ever leave a house better than he found it.  As a mathematician, I know where this series leads.  As the neighbor to 709, I’ve seen it.
A few years before he died, my father-in-law bought 709 for us and cleaned it up.  He deeded it over to Jean, and then proceeded to make it his hobby house. He set up barrels to catch rainwater from the roof.  He planted fruit trees in the front yard.  He made a workshop in the kitchen.  Then five years ago, he died.  
I know for a fact he’s dead.  I saw the body.  I drove his ashes in a Rubbermaid container to northern Indiana where they are buried.  I saw it with my own eyes.
Yet from time to time when I’ve been over there, I’ve felt his presence.  This is most often when I am doing something for Jean or one of the girls.  Once Jean had asked me to fix her book light.  It needed to be soldered, and I couldn’t find my soldering iron. I went over to 709, looked around, and couldn’t find it.  I’d given up.  Then I looked at a place I’d looked before.
There was a nice little fishing tackle box with the words “Soldering Iron” written on the top with a black Sharpie.  In it there was--as advertised--a soldering iron with solder.  What are the odds.
Today Lydia was working on a project.  She’d been on Pinterest and had found some plans for a bench.  A part of the project required stapling the upholstery on with Bostich Staples.  I’d gone over and found Jim’s old staple gun right away and brought it back.
We got started stapling away and, as luck would have it, we ran out of staples.  I went back over to 709 and looked around for a box of staples.  I pulled out drawers.  I looked everywhere staples should be.
Nothing.
I had despaired, but then I looked up. There on a shelf where I swear I’d just looked was a white plastic canister with the words “Bostich Staples” written on it in Jim’s hand with a black Sharpie, which is apparently the writing implement of choice for the spirit world.
I felt Jim’s presence today. I miss him.  I would like to talk politics with him, as I am becoming more alienated from both political parties everyday, just like he was.
His spirit is still among us and he likes to help me help our girls.

Winter’s Bone

By Bobby Neal Winters

Reason is a servant of the passions, but at certain times there are those who can put the passions aside to take care of business.  In the 2010 movie Winter’s Bone, Ree Dolly (played by Jennifer Lawrence) is one of those people who can set aside her passions and take care of business.

The business has been, of course, set for her by her passions.  In this case, it is the love she has for her family.  Ree’s father is a marijuana grower turned meth cook.  He’s been arrested but has bailed himself out and then disappeared.  The family--Ree, her younger brother and sister and mentally ill mother-- is running low on money.  They are gnawing on their last bone in the absence of the father.

Bad matters turn to worse when the bail bondsman arrives to tell Ree that her father put their whole place up for security on his bond.  At that point, Ree’s business is set out for her.  In order to keep her family from being put out on the street and scattered, she must either bring her father to stand trial or prove that he is dead.  This business puts her on a journey that--while not taking her out of the boundaries of her home county--takes her a great distance within herself.

Winter’s Bone is set in the Ozarks.  Those of us around Pittsburg, Kansas don’t have far to go far beyond our own city limits to know that this movie presents the real deal.  There are rusty cars up on blocks in the yard.  The neighborly women are fat.  I have a pet peeve of television shows portraying poor people as living in two-story, well-kept houses that are clean, have every appliance, and all of those appliances are new.  

Winter’s Bone does not fall into that trap. It tells Ree’s story and at the same time provides a window on a culture.  It is a culture that hunts and fishes; shoots and prays; plays the fiddle, guitar, and banjo.  And sometimes it makes whiskey and cooks methamphetamine.

That last part hurts me.  Rationally, I know that whiskey has killed more men over a longer time and over a greater geographical distribution than meth ever will. I know that more women were beaten senseless and worse by their drunken men than ever will be my meth-heads.  But there is something worse in my mind about meth.  Maybe it’s the snaggled teeth.  Maybe it’s the sores on their arms.  Maybe it’s the fact I have to jump through hoops to buy decongestant.  

I am trying to be careful to avoid spoilers.  Even though the movie is rich enough to provide enjoyment upon multiple viewing, it does have some surprises the first time through that I wouldn’t rob you of.  This doesn’t prevent me from highlighting a few points that it does get right.

In one scene, Ree is teaching her younger siblings how to shoot.  She takes her brother and sister out into the back yard with the twenty-two and lines up some bottles.

“Get down on your knees just like you are praying,” she says, and then goes on to instruct them in the niceties of aiming and squeezing the trigger.

In my mind, tt is no accident that Ree’s big dream for getting out of poverty is to join the army.  

Legal scholars, perhaps on both sides, may disagree with me here.  The second amendment reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  Am I over-reaching here to believe that the founders had in mind a culture wherein there would be children taught to hunt from the moment they could hold a gun and that such a culture would provide a reservoir of people capable of carrying out the business of war?

In any case, I’ve have private conversations with army recruiters and have been told the Ozarks are prime ground for recruiting soldiers.  I’ve seen ‘em with my own eyes.

There is a scene in which Ree has been beaten for pursuing the search for her father too ardently.  She’s gathered in by her uncle and taken to be cared for.  They don’t take her to the emergency room of course.  If the thought even crossed their minds, the doctors there would’ve asked too many questions.  She’s taken home and cared for by the women-folk.

The neighbor-lady brings over some pain meds--there is no way that it’s not hydrocodone--and instructs her how to use it.  This is the way it’s done. Whenever someone does go to a doctor, they don’t necessarily use all of the prescription themselves.  They save it against the day they--or a neighbor--might need it.

I know that this is wrong.  I know you should flush it down the toilet or, better yet, take it to the hospital and let them get rid of it.  But I’ve seen my momma do it, just like the lady in the movie.

And by the way, the neighbor-lady has exactly the right shape for a neighbor lady.  She has successfully avoided the trap of anorexia.

In a journey like the one Ree is on, it is important to watch for what changes or what character trait is highlighted.  Here it is instructive to observe the bailbondsman. He is only in two scenes, but he provides a means for Ree to measure herself.  He is a mirror that shows her a reflection of herself.  At the end, what she sees is respect and this leads her to self-respect.

My final word is caution.  You should see this if you can take it.  There is violence, but not enough for me to discourage your seeing it.  The most disturbing scene is near the end and you don’t really see anything yourself. It’s worse.  By this time you are so bonded with Ree that you see it through her eyes.  For this reason, I’ve seen it twice but I’ve never shown it to my wife.  

Make up your own mind.

But they got it right.