Seasons Of Living

This is the first Christmas season without my mother and father and it has hit me hard. Granted, I am a middle aged man with a family, and there are those who have suffered greater losses while much younger. Still, my children miss them very much, and their passing left a big hole in our lives. Also, not having parents leaves me at the top of the family tree along with my brothers and sisters. I’m too young for that, I think.

My nieces and nephews are either in college or getting ready to go. My daughter is in high school and we are already picking out universities from websites and catalogs. My son will be entering middle school next September, and I feel like life is sailing past me rapidly. I’m in my forties, sliding down the back end of the hill. There’s nothing but gray hair and an A.A.R.P. membership in my future. I’m not unhappy, but I have a vague sense that I lack accomplishment.

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Public Relations & You

I’ve been asked by a professor at the college where I am employed to deliver a lecture on public relations. My speech is tailored to the young, inexperienced, undergraduates in her class. The main theme will focus on how the demeanor and appearance of job seekers influences potential employers.

In my other professional life, I am managing editor for fiction for an international literary magazine. In that role I get to read some well written stories. In many cases, however, I must turn writers down in short order. My duty is to accept only the best a writer has to offer which complements the style accepted by the periodical I work for. I am intolerant towards authors who submit poorly written query letters which do not provide a plot summary or begin with a salutation. Many of the e-mails I receive are composed like text messages and expose the authors as incompetent writers. This brings me to my earlier ideas on public relations.

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A Learning Moment

“Do you want to know what the President did today?” I asked my ten year old son. He wasn’t paying attention as he was playing Nintendo. With my laptop on, I scrolled through news websites with the TV on in the background.

He came over to see what I was talking about. There was a picture on the Drudge Report of President Obama, Vice President Biden, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Sgt. James Crowley. This was the scene which the President hoped for, a “teaching moment.”

My son asked me what I was talking about and I showed him the photo. I then explained about the arrest of Professor Gates and the misunderstanding about race, and why it became important for President Obama to preside over this meeting. My son sensed that this was a significant story. He nodded his head and listened as I spoke. “He’s doing a good thing, he’s a nice president” he said. He paused over the laptop a moment longer and I patted him on the back.

As a former New York City police officer, I can closely relate to Sgt. Crowley and his handling of the burglary investigation. I’ve never been accused of racial profiling in my career; yet, I can detail incidents where bystanders expressed antipathy towards the white officers present at the scene. Upon reading the report of the incident at Professors Gates’ home, my reaction was to side with Sgt. Crowley.

Phone Envy

My wireless carrier offered me a brand new phone if I added another line. So far, there are three names on our account: my wife, my fourteen year old daughter, and of course, me. Our daughter was the first to chime in on the topic.

She reasoned that my son, who is going into the fifth grade “needs” a phone so he can text his friends (who each have one) and call us when he want to be picked up from a play date. Our carrier would send our son the latest and greatest which technology has to offer; and, I can’t see why he would require such a gadget. I get by with my standard-issue flip phone. Why does he have to own a cell phone with a keyboard and movie camera?

The Business of Men

Mr. Hoyt’s truck overflowed with the stock of his trade: car parts of all types, tires, and occasionally kitchen appliances. He’d park his large, creaky vehicle across the street from our home near Mr. Lowman’s house. It was one of many stops he made during the course of a day to sell his goods.

Mr. Lowman was a mechanic who relied upon Mr. Hoyt to supply the components he needed to run a part-time auto repair business from his garage.

We lived in a blue-collar neighborhood, and it was necessary for many people to work more than one job in order to make ends meet.

My dad was no exception.

As a boy of maybe five or six, I’d watch Mr. Hoyt amble across the street to our home to meet with my dad, leaving his sons to tend to the business of unloading tires and other items.

Dad would greet him at the front door and invite him inside to discuss their particular deals over a cup of coffee in the kitchen. During the holidays, they’d sip whiskey in the dining room like gentlemen, as they would not drink in front of my mother.

My dad was an oil-burner mechanic.

Mr. Hoyt, being the kind of businessman he was, knew people who needed work done and found people to do the work for them. He could rely on my father to answer the phone in the middle of the night and run out to fix an ailing boiler during the cold winter months.

I am still not sure what arrangement existed between the two of them, but my father was always happy to greet him, and Mr. Hoyt always walked away with a smile and an envelope.

There was nothing peculiar about a grown man providing products and services to the mechanics and utility men of my neighborhood.

However, my childhood was in the 1960s, and Mr. Hoyt was Black.

Those were the years of the civil rights movement and the struggle against segregation and racial discrimination. Meanwhile, Mr. Hoyt drove his panel truck across town and through neighborhoods where he could conduct business but might not have been welcomed as a homeowner, providing for his family as he went.

He was a fixture in our lives until I entered high school and my dad found another line of work that was more lucrative and did not require him to break his back.

Mr. Hoyt still visited his other client across the street from us.

In his later years, his beard turned white and his body became slightly stooped. He was considerably older than the men he supplied with both parts and work.

By then, his sons did most of the driving and heavy lifting, and my dad still invited him inside for coffee whenever he came around.

In my early childhood, he was the only Black man I knew personally.

Yet, as welcome as he was in our home and Mr. Lowman’s, others were not as tolerant.

A man named Slater, who once lived in the house next to Mr. Lowman, originally hailed from Kentucky and was fond of displaying a large Confederate flag on his front porch.

Mr. Hoyt often parked his truck in front of Slater’s house and had to endure that malevolent Civil War banner staring him in the face.

Then Mr. Slater would scurry next door upon seeing him arrive in order to purchase wares from him too.

That type of ignorance was baffling to me.

Mr. Slater liked me and often waved as I rode my bike up and down the street with my friends.

One particular Fourth of July, when I was about twelve or thirteen years old, he draped his Confederate flag across the wall of his porch again.

I reminded him that Kentucky had been a border state during the Civil War and had not seceded from the Union, making his allegiance to the Confederacy seem particularly odd to me.

He didn’t wave to me as much after that little history lesson.

How he reconciled his racist beliefs with his genial yet inhibited relationship with Mr. Hoyt was beyond me.

I can’t remember when I stopped seeing Mr. Hoyt come around.

To this day, Mr. Lowman still occasionally fixes cars for pay in his garage, but the kind gentleman and his sons are no longer the suppliers he relies upon to keep his side business going.

When I was a boy, I understood something of the awkwardness of Black and white people doing business in a world of hate, mistrust, and segregation.

I remember the cold stares of people who drove past his truck piled high with vehicle parts, with his two teenage sons sitting patiently in the front seat waiting for their father.

The young men would look away or talk quietly while ignoring those who seemed unable to understand why my dad and our neighbor would invite a Black man into our little row of homes.

In the decades since those days when Mr. Hoyt took his commerce wherever he saw fit, our society has changed.

It is difficult to appreciate how dramatically different things are without having witnessed a businessman tread carefully down a suburban street simply to make a living.

And just a few days ago, our nation elected a man to become the next president who also happens to be African American.

I do not know where Mr. Hoyt is today or even whether he is still alive.

However, I believe his sons must appreciate, now more than ever, the fortitude and courage their father displayed as he drove down boulevards and across racial divides to conduct the business of men.

-Michael J. Kannengieser

My Father, My Teacher

All which I thought I knew about my father was altered in the final days of his life. I believed, correctly so, that he was a strong, powerful man, both physically and in stature; but; I was also exposed to his profound spirituality. 

In my contemptuous, youthful days, I succumbed to the teen aged notion that I was going to live forever and that God did not exist. It was easy and convenient for me to shed the faith I had instilled in me from the time I was born. I called myself an atheist. There's a haughtiness to that belief system which is attached to the inherent and natural anger experienced by those who are pushing eighteen. Perhaps this is sparked by a fear of being nudged out of the nest into the real world, and by the anxiety which accompanies making a life for oneself which creates inner turmoil. My dismissal of God from my life also came at the same time I rebelled against my father.

He raised six of us, three boys and three girls, and he tended to our sick mother. Often he would take on another job to provide for us, making sure we had the bare essentials to get through life and to keep a roof over our heads, and regretfully, I could not appreciate his efforts.

Advice came in the form of bromides and life lessons, often learned from his own mistakes, which I fended off will the skill of a fencing champ. His instruction also came in the form of actions. He led by example, and often I lagged behind not paying much attention. Only now as a middle aged man raising my own family can I understand and appreciate his philosophies of dealing with difficult bosses, unreasonable deadlines, and the vagaries of keeping pace with and eventually surpassing ones peers. I only wish I had been a better student. 

With that said, I've gleaned much from his final hours, ones in which he suffered greatly. He faced his death with dignity. His bravery came from his strong belief in God and his unwavering conviction. His only regret was leaving his family behind, of not being a father and a grandfather anymore. 

It's not easy to become a role model. Folks often claim to be one and are not up to the task. Yet, my dad was a teacher, provider, husband, caretaker, father, grandfather, friend, and a servant of the Lord for his entire life. He enlightened his family until his last breath. Dad taught me that faith is not foolish, that love exits beyond life, and that death is not the end. 

My father has left us, he's given his last bit of counsel, but I remain his son. Hopefully, with the same grace and dignity he possessed, I can guide my own children through their lives while drawing from the deep well of sensibility and insight my father imparted to me.  God willing, I may also rediscover my faith which I retain a faint memory of from when I was a boy. Dad has shown me the way.

-Michael J. Kannengieser

A Keyboard and a Knife: Editing for Blood

Since I was a child I’ve been learning to write. With some formal education and a lot of reading and research, I’ve stumbled across lessons and maxims which have helped me shape my voice and influenced my style. Some of these items which have come my way are adages, wisdom which I can no longer attribute to a particular source. Most useful to me in my endeavors is this line: “A good novel is not what you put into it, but what you take out of it.”

My first novel was written before I heard that quotation. Back in early 1991, I had the gall to think I could write a book. Like my previous short stories, I had characters in mind, a plot, and grand ideas about how to proceed. But, a novel? That is a lot of work, I thought. As I proceeded, I typed away with reckless abandon. The result was a ninety six thousand word manuscript which received dozens of rejections from literary agents and publishers alike. The common complaint was that the “pacing” was slow. Translation: It was too long.

In retrospect, I realize that I did not edit enough. Yes, I pored over the piece for typos, grammar mistakes, and punctuation usage. Yet, I declined to remove all of the excess verbiage and unneeded paragraphs. Like a cluttered room in a tiny house, much could be eliminated. There are passages describing streets, the weather, characters that appear in brief scenes and flowery prose which do nothing to advance the story. Before sitting down to write this article, I took the bulky manuscript out of its box and felt the weight of it in my hands. Examining the enormous size of this work, I surmised that I’d need an axe to chop away the excess.

It’s too late to fix that work of fiction now. I am on to bigger and better things. A lesson I took away from that experience is that I now do much of the editing as I move along. I’ll type out a page or two on my computer and hurry back to examine the length of the section which I am creating. After a break, I read each paragraph, slowly, and then hack away with the delete key. Perhaps I act hastily at times, but I write with my gut. This has become my process of authoring and maybe one day I’ll be rewarded with the so-called success of brick and mortar publishing. Until then, I am a hacker, a steamroller of an author with a sharp scalpel in my back pocket.

Yesterday I began my fourth novel. It is a story which combines many elements of my personal life; and, I am expanding those themes into a tale of a man who reaches the pinnacle of his life while at his lowest point. Having advanced a mere two pages into this outline, blood has already begun to spill. Nouns, verbs, and whole sentences are falling to their early deaths long before anyone other than the eager author, me, has had the chance to read them and make them live. It is nasty work; heartless, cruel, and very necessary. A good novel is not just what you manage to type. It is the result of some cold blooded editing.

-Michael J. Kannengieser

Threads of Yesterday

My parents took me to the doctor for an emergency examination while I was in kindergarten. They had a sense of urgency that, at five years old, I had never seen before.

Our family physician wrote a prescription and sent us home. I remember thinking nothing of it until I was spoon-fed the foul mixture and gagged before swallowing it. My parents also woke me in the middle of the night to give me the same elixir again.

Youth and the fog of memory cloud one’s perspective and make the image in the rearview mirror of the mind fuzzy.

I needed the medicine, yet I wasn’t sick.

Back in 1968, things were very different from what they are today. I didn’t even have a pediatrician. But the fact remained that something had given my parents and the doctor a scare.

A young girl in my class had died of viral meningitis.

She was five years old, and it still troubles me.

I do not remember her name or even her face.

Perhaps, as I write this, there is a mother and father who pause each day to recall her laugh, gaze at her photograph, and shed a tear forty years later. By now they are elderly. Perhaps they are grandparents.

Yet how could they forget her?

My life and that of this little girl crossed at one point. Though the thread connecting us was thin, there was indeed a portion of the fabric of space and time in which we shared a common patch of Earth and moved along a collective path toward maturation.

Sadly, she did not make it any farther.

To a greater degree, her parents traveled along that same path and stood at the edge of the plane of existence I had shared with their daughter.

Is the tiny ripple of one youthful life great enough to cause a wave of emotion powerful enough to continue to intrigue a grown man?

Four decades have passed, and I still think about my late classmate.

She has the effect of keeping me focused, reminding me that my life is supposed to have significance.

I will explain.

My cynicism has caused me to question my life’s purpose. I’ve rejected the idea that destiny and fate have any influence over me.

Yet, looking back, I can see how past events led me to where I am today, and sometimes it feels like fate.

The people who have accompanied me on my journey thus far—including family, friends, teachers, coworkers, and some of the victims I encountered during my years in law enforcement—have all contributed bits and pieces of truth and awareness that occur to me only when I cast off the cloak of skepticism and become open to the possibility of serendipity.

I want to remember this young girl from elementary school.

I can still see where she sat in class and the back of her head. With her brown hair gathered into pigtails, she sat upright during those first days of school and listened to Mrs. Sisti teach us the ABCs.

Is it fair that I made it this far in life and she did not?

What does it mean when a child dies?

How do I justify the additional years of life I have been fortunate enough to receive simply because I did not get sick?

My conscience cannot easily reconcile transience, the algebra of survival, and cosmic disproportion.

For that reason, I am compelled to assess my endurance and make good on an unearthed vow evoked by introspection and an unadulterated scrutiny of what I deem to be providence.

Why do I live?

How am I so fortunate?

And what is the toll for continuing along this thoroughfare—this life?

For the sake of so many who came before me, including this girl of whom I write, I will endeavor to be a good person.

My goal shall be to contribute something to the rest of us.

Each day, I give a bit more, I think, as I follow a new thread I’ve discovered with my eyes open and my mind cleared, if only briefly, of disbelief.

My children have now surpassed the young girl in age, and hopefully—God forbid—I will never mourn as her parents have.

This girl, this fleeting life, still teaches, though her responsibility was never to die.

It was to grow.

There is a photograph buried in an archive of snapshots and Polaroids at my dad’s house. Captured somewhere among those collections is an image of me in kindergarten.

I remember when the class portrait was taken.

Her mom and dad no longer brought her to school by then, and she never hung her finger paintings in the hallway with the rest of us for open-school night.

I intend to dig that picture out of the drawer where I keep memorabilia.

The will is there, but not the effort.

Perhaps I will find it one day when I sit back and consider my life and how I got here.

Sometimes, whenever I recall everyone I have known over the years, a little girl nudges me and reminds me that she once lived and that she mattered in this world.

Her parents should know that a new filament has been cast across the dimensions between life and death, and their child continues to weave herself into the fabric of someone else’s being.

I will hold on to the lifeline offered to me by my classmate and keep myself grounded in the belief that I must justify my existence by living it well.

Decades ago, a mom and dad lost their daughter. This man, once a boy in her kindergarten class, will never forget her.

Kindergarten physician viral meningitis parents space-time classmate life journey serendipity

Hold Your Nose: Here's An Old Short Story

Dear Readers,
Sometimes I am proud of my writing. Other times I cringe when I post something, unsure of how it will be received. This time out, however, I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that all of you will be appalled at what I offer here. This is a short story I wrote circa 1985, back in my very early twenties. This is the point in most writers’ lives when they are so confident that they believe that anything they produce in the form of the written word is simply wonderful and cannot be criticized. I remember working on this piece and thinking I was clever.

Two days ago, I found this story in an old notebook, read it again, and had the same reaction one has when they find a dead rat in their garbage can. With all of that said, I feel I have enough equity built up with my audience that even if I toss a stink bomb at them every once in a while some of them might actually return after the smoke clears and I hang out a few air fresheners in the form of decent posts. So now, without any further ado, here’s the dead rat I created back when I was a mere lad of just past legal drinking age.

-Mr. Grudge


The Concrete That Binds
Or: Tip-Toe through the Rip-Tide
(Copyright 1985 M.J. Kannengieser)


Alger’s murder was, of course, inevitable, and yet sickening to the many who knew him. There are some who did celebrate; but, most accepted the idea that it wasn’t his fault. Oh, Alger presented himself as a pillar of the community having finished a mail order course to become a fully certified Notary Public (though the authority vested in him made him drunk with power).

Never the less, nobody questioned why a sixteen year old high-schooler would have met with such a gruesome end.

Some would have guessed that he was shot. Former parents of his (Alger was passed from foster family to foster family, until he was ultimately taken into the care of a family of ferrets), were hell bent on seeking vengeance on him and would storm into Alger’s room at night and riddle the place with gun fire.

All of this started when Alger was small, perhaps two years old, and as a result he never learned to walk as he was constantly pressing his body against the floor and scurrying about to dodge the bullets (hence, how he met the ferrets).

Alger’s many parents were not overreacting, though they completely misunderstood poor Alger. You see, he was never given proper religious instruction; and, he merely saw murder and extortion as a means of getting close to those he loved, and not as mortal sin. Quite frankly, he thought they should simply drop the matter and get over it already.

Fortunately, Alger was never charged with any homicide, thanks to his high school principal (a closet pedophile), who graciously took the rap for him in exchange for Alger’s Polaroid’s (Oh, how Alger loved to spy!).

They way Alger died was officially a mystery until the medical examiner was able to chisel his way through to his body.

Alger had been scampering along the sidewalk one day (about ankle high) along with the ferrets when he plunged into a plot of wet cement. This particular concrete was the quick drying variety and he was became stuck right away. Certainly, the ferrets were unable to drag him out, so the plopped a straw into his mouth (the only visible part of his body) and continued to feed him Cool Whip and pistachio nuts (Alger’s favorite).

Eventually, Alger’s tremendous weight gain required a larger cement block. A local, shady contractor obliged the ferret’s appeal for help; but the ferrets, being nasty little rodents, had no money. When the contractor, eyeing Mrs. Ferret, suggested that there were “other ways” they could “pay” him, they flew into a rage, attacked the contractor, and gnawed his heels out. Fearing for his life, the contractor fled, tippy-toed, back to his office. There he enlisted the aid of his very large sons to exact his revenge on the ferrets by hurling Alger into the ocean.

Later that evening when the tide went out, the ferrets ran to the shore and found Alger in the shallow water blowing S.O.S. bubbles through his straw. As the ferrets struggled futilely to drag Alger out of the surf, Alger gave up, and he offered his last breath by whistling “Shave and a Haircut”.

The ferrets called the police who immediately tossed them into a sack and took them to the dog pound. There, they were placed into a cage with a large, German Shepard and eaten.

Eventually, Alger’s body was discovered again after several bathers at the beach dived into the surf and then floated lifelessly to the surface. This caused a spectacular news event and a police investigation.

A local contractor won the bid to haul out the concrete block which was killing off beach goers. In front of scores of news cameras, he hobbled directly to the spot near underwater slab of cement. A reporter became suspicious.

“But how did you know to look there?” he asked. All the contractor could do was stammer aloud and teeter-totter back and forth on his tip-toes.

At the police station, the contractor admitted to dumping the cement there after cops threatened to prosecute him under the a sub-section of federal RICO statutes, which, in a nutshell states “Anyone in the construction industry has be guilty of something” The contractor turned state’s evidence against his sons and then entered the Federal Witness Protection Program, where he was fitted with artificial heels so he wouldn’t stick out in a crowd when he walked.

The Medical Examiner was allowed to chisel into the cement block after paying $100 to Local 306 Jack Hammer Operators Union, for a temporary union card that gave him permission to do so without fear of having his knee caps broken.

They found Alger at the center of the slab, clutching what at first glimpse, they thought was a suicide note. A specialist (actually a janitor at the morgue, the Medical Examiner forgot his glasses) determined it was in fact a Polaroid of the contractor and Mrs. Ferret in bed together the night before his heels were chewed off. Go figure.

For Alger, an epitaph:

For Ferrets of Love
And contractors of doom
To whom insoles mean embarrassing gloom
For him, Alger never did walk
Entombed in sidewalk, the world did gawk
At the bottom of the sea,
Among raw sewage and waste
With a few final bubbles, the end did haste

The End

Okay Readers, I won't blame you if you run away and don't come back. But, please, please don't go! I'll make it up to you. I promise!