Small Kindnesses

I don't know, it's a strange day here. Turbulent. Windy, cold, not sunny but not cloudy, not spring but not winter either. It's nothing. Or is it everything? I had a steak last night, medium Delmonico with fresh mushrooms. Maybe that's it? It's been a day for small kindnesses, small blessings. My mother unexpectedly invited me to the movies when I went over to borrow a chain saw sharpener. While I was waiting for her to finish up the breakfast dishes dad gave me a pair of old work gloves he'd been sheltering, the leather kind with wide wrists. They were brand new. You could tell because they were still stapled together with cardboard at the fingers. New, but old. Like the movie we saw,The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. There's one that will make you think. How did they make Brad Pitt look so old? How did they shrink him down to look like a little baby? Twice! After the movie I re-filled the large $7.50 popcorn bucket to bring home for the kids. The middle-aged woman at the counter stopped me from leaving with the piled-up bucket. She was worried that I'd spill it in my car on the way home. She dug into the drawer under her register and pulled out a yellow plastic garbage bag for me. But she went even further- watching me clumsily try to put the bucket into the bag she said "Here, let an expert do it for you," and she took the bucket from me and quickly secured the popcorn. I told her that was very kind of her.

As soon as I got home I took Levi to get an X-Box 360 for his birthday, but TARGET only had one left and it had been returned. We decided to go to WALMART instead, despite my 3-year boycott for the way they treat their workers and the rest of the world. The clueless kid in the electronics section asked me if I wanted the one with the hard drive or the one without. I didn't know, Levi didn't know, and the assistant couldn't tell me why one was better than the other. There was a gansta-looking young man in the aisle with us, however. I didn't like his looks, but, as he heard the sales associate fumbling for an answer he spoke up and told me, in thoughtful, perfect English, why I should get the one with the hard drive. He said it would save me money and aggravation in the long run, because he himself had made the mistake of going without the hard drive. He even wished us well as we walked off to pay for it! I thanked him for his kindness.

Please understand I've done nothing to deserve this.

Then, when I got home, my brother-in-law Matt called to invite us to his house for the Siena vs. Louisville "March Madness" game. Shortly thereafter a friend called with a similar invitation. Twice invited in less than an hour! Walking into Matt's I was offered cold beer, hot chili, and I'd not yet even said hello. Siena, the local Division 1 school with only 3000 students, very nearly beat the best team in the nation. Nearly.

In summary: I was given a chainsaw file, a new pair of work gloves, admission to an outstanding film, popcorn wrapped by an expert, gaming advice from another expert, food, drink, and friendship- all in one day. Oh, and a great basketball game too.

Like I said, it was a day for small blessings. Maybe there's more of them than we realize?

Missing Things

It's the time of year for missing gloves and mittens. Walk nearly any roadside, parking lot, or sidewalk and you'll find them, squashed and soggy, naturally dirty, but clearly still mittens and gloves. I don't understand this. How could you not know that a mitten had fallen off? Didn't that hand feel cold? And if you knew it was gone, why wouldn't you go back to get it? I can understand children's wear, but I'm seeing a great number of adult items this year. Soon it will be the time for glasses. Three pair(s) I found last summer. This too is a mystery: do you not realize that you can no longer see? And wouldn't you go back to that line in your mind where all of a sudden the world got fuzzy? In all honesty, I have lost some glasses in my lifetime, but each involved special circumstances: my first two pair(s) were intentionally ditched over the side of the Patroon Island bridge some years back coming home from a Pentecostal healing service. Listening to the evengelist I became convinced that glasses were like a sharp stick in God's eye. Good lord, if we had faith the size of a mustard seed we could not only move mountains but alter the shape of our eyeballs, yes? Of course faith demands a sacrifice, a sign that you truly believe, so mine flew out the window at fifty miles per hour, followed almost immediately by the spare pair(s) in the glove compartment. Had I clung to those as a fallback position God most surely would not have honored my faith and I would remain half-blind. It was a long summer of squinting and bad driving. I did, in fact, lose the third pair but that was during near-hurricane conditions while running the Point Pleasant marathon, and I was in so much pain that I finished the race not knowing I no longer had them. So that doesn't count, not like all these other idiots that have no excuses. Fall seems to bring out stray nuts and bolts. Everywhere I look there they are. I actually found three pair(s) of them while raking leaves last year! Are you kidding me? NO! Something is completely falling apart on my lawn. Must be late at night when everyone's asleep, so I am always very careful now when operating any of my own machinery. You can't be too careful.

A Man Named Clay

Birthing a song is like passing a stool after a long week of constipation. I started this song in the parked car of a suburban YMCA lot just last Sunday morning. While my wife sweated with all the pretty people of East Greenbush I stayed alone in the backseat with my guitar and a notebook, jumping out periodically to turn the car on for warmth. Yeah, a few cars stopped to observe before moving on to look for parking spots. But they hadn't spent time with Clay... (You can listen to this song at the following address: http://www.acidplanet.com/components/embedfile.asp?asset=1240733&T=6121

This is the story of a man named Clay
And the things he did for the USA
This is the story of a country wide
That sent its Clay to a countryside
That was long and thin, it was cut in two
It was hot as hell and rainy too
Clay was long and thin, only seventeen
And he wore a gun as a young Marine

In Sixty-Nine while Woodstock played
Vietnam had it in for Clay

He left his home when his country called
And he went alone, two tours he hauled
A pack full of memories that were sharp as steel
Like shrapnel wounds that would never heal

'cause Clay took point near the DMZ
He took it for his friends, for you and me
In a war he won on the battleground
But the White House lost, it was never found

Clay returned to a country wide
That was split in two like a great divide
He went to that wall made of polished stone
Where for eighteen months he remained alone

Standing watch, standing guard
Eighteen months but it wasn't hard
As the twenty-four he did in 'Nam
As a Clay Marine for Uncle Sam
Had Semper Fi stamped on his chest
And the men he led were among the best
Now they're dead and gone, names on a wall
Near the iron gates of the White House lawn

That was long ago but the Clay remains
Walking point alone on the western plains
His battles rage nearly every day
Chasing ghosts of war and the NVA

This is the story of a man we lost
In a war we planned but didn't count the cost
To the men like Clay, a quarter-million more
Who made it safely home but never left the war

Hush little baby don't you cry
Nixon will sing you a lullaby
Hush little baby don't say a word
Westmoreland will get you a freedom bird
The Commandant made you a tough Marine
Now Congress will buy you an M-16
Your left, right, left
Your left, right, left
Your left, forever...left

A Dangerous Game

Mike Riese's son Josh wrote this for his brother Kyle after Kyle had a close call. I think it's a great, heartfelt poem, and am very pleased to put it out here, with permission.


Every afternoon we play games with Death.

Daring him to grab our hands as we climb higher.

Laughing with him as we sled down ice covered roads.

We taunt him as we hang upside down over the quarry.

Cause every afternoon as we grow older we know.

We know that some afternoon Death will find us,

Finally catch up after years of hide and go seek.

But I never knew how Death would come dressed to meet us.

Whether he'll be wearing his cancer tee

Or maybe his heart attack sweats.

I always pictured him in his brain aneurism cap

Smiling like he knew all along.



Never did I think you were still hanging with him.

Daring him to beat you to the bottom of the bottle.

Never did I think of Death as a drinker.

And who knew that he was any good at playing asshole.

But, the truth of the matter is that he does drink,

And he nearly killed you with those bottles of Jack.

Six breaths a minute are only a few away from a free ride

in Death's pick-up truck.


But you won.

You won little brother

And not by much.

Even though I don't like it I know

You will continue to hang with him.

Continue to play games.

But just because he isn't around one night

Doesn't mean you have to go out and meet up with him.



Joshua M. Riese

Hamburger Helper and Syd Vicious

As most of you know I have five children, ranging from ten to twenty-one. Sydney,the middle child, is eighteen, a senior in high school, and a pretty good athlete. Her teammates sometimes refer to her as "Syd Vicious," but I never quite understood why. I do now.

Jen was doing a 12-hour shift at the hospital yesterday, so I was on dinner duty after work. She had laid out for me all the fixin's for Hamburger Helper: Cheeseburger Edition (HH:CE), at Sydney's request. But Syd wasn't home come dinner time. She had lacrosse practice, and none of the other kids wanted Hamburger Helper. We took a vote and decided on regular hamburgers instead. They came out nice. Taylor, the nineteen year old, made them, caving in the raw meat centers as per Martha Ray so that the burgers don't hump up in the middle. Nice touch. As we were all basking in the afterglow of our burgers, Syd pulled in, Starvin' like Marvin, as they say. Turns out she'd been telling her whole team about how she couldn't wait to get home from practice because hot HH:CE would be ready and waiting for her.

It wasn't pretty.

Levi (the boy, age 13)and I hid when we heard her coming because we knew what she was capable of. We scrunched down in the dark on the far side of my bed, over by the wall, hoping she wouldn't find us. We could hear her tearing the place up out there in the kitchen, yelling and punching the wall. We could see her shadow passing by in the hallway under the closed bedroom door, back and forth, hunting for me. Our luck finally ran out and the door flew open. I think the dog gave our position away, cringing with pathos from the bottom of the bed. I got up on my knees laughing, trying to explain, trying to find some lie that would work. It felt like I was in one of those hostage videos, on my knees begging for mercy as Syd, in her fuzzy green bathrobe, loomed over me:

"DAD! I JUST GOT FINISHED TELLING MY WHOLE TEAM THAT I COULDN'T WAIT TO GET HOME AND HAVE HAMBURGER HELPER! MOM TOLD YOU TO MAKE HAMBURGER HELPER! WHY DID YOU MAKE HAMBURGERS? I HATE YOU!!!" And then she stormed off to take a shower.

Sneaking back to the kitchen once it was safe, I asked Taylor what we should do. She's an Actuarial Science major at college, good with numbers, able to lay out the odds of my rehabilitation with Syd Vicious. She suggested we take the one and a half remaining hamburgers and chop them up, allowing us to make a modified HH:CE. "Do you think it will work?" "Yes dad, it will be fine. Let me handle it." Within ten minutes we were good to go. Syd had stormed into her room and slammed the door. Taylor, Levi, Madeline and I crept down to her door with a hot bowl of HH:CE, flung open the door, threw the bowl on the floor and slammed it behind us, like when you feed a lion at the zoo or something. We were laughing our rear ends off, of course, and then ran down to the kitchen.

"Syd Vicious." Yeah, I can see it now. It fits.

Death of a Legend

I received word yesterday that a Marine had died, a very good Marine. That's not so uncommon these days, since they're dying in two countries at the present moment. But this one didn't die in combat, though the Vietnamese gave it their best shot many years ago. The Marine who couldn't be killed had three purple hearts. He was a big, tall man, long and lean, a machine gun squad leader. That made him an especially ripe target, and three separate times between 1969 and 1970 the enemy hit that target, but they never scored a bulls-eye. I met him when he was thirty, ten years after his first war, but I thought he must have been fifty because I was only nineteen and scared to death of him. He had scars. He swore. He had medals, lots of them, and a rare, threatening smile set beneath sad, scowling eyes that I could tell had seen things I could only guess at. He was never personally mean to me, or cruel, but always, always demanding, as a good company gunnery sergeant should be.

I have many memories of him, but the one that stands out most is of the day he inspected the guard shack as I trailed in tow, praying for a positive outcome. I was the Corporal of the Guard, and it was my guys who had done the cleaning and now wanted to go off duty. Everything was going well until he got to the urinal. I knew we had brushed it out and wiped it off, so I wasn't concerned. The gunny knew all the secret places, though, the real heart-breakers. I stood mortified with my little clipboard at my side as he dipped into the bowl and plucked out the urinal mint with his bare hand as casually as if he was reaching for popcorn. Didn't he know you're not supposed to touch those things? I mean, you just don't know where they've been! Yes, there was hidden filth under that mint. As I recall, the gunny never even said a word. He just looked at me with those hound dog eyes, holding the mint up for me to see before tossing it back in disgust. I was disgusted, but he was just having fun. I think only a man who had repeatedly cheated death could have done such a thing. And yes, we went on liberty late that day.

I last worked for the gunny in the fall of 1981, but I saw him many times over the next 30 years. He came to me often at night, in my dreams, knocking at the door of my house to drag me back into his Corps. I always tried to explain that there must be some misunderstanding, that I was out, discharged, civilian, but he would have none of it. He'd just give me that smile and say I must be wrong, and away we would go, into the night. I didn't like him much as a young man, and I didn't like him coming to my house. But when I found out recently that he was well aware of many of our foolish antics up at Camp David, things we thought we'd kept hidden, well, I started to see him differently. And when I found out that it was Lou Gehrig's Disease that finally felled him I began to mourn. It seems a particularly cruel end for one who'd given so much to this country over more than three decades of service. I hope that he comes back one last time to visit me. I think this time maybe I'll welcome him... So goodnight, Louis Goodman, wherever you are, and Semper Fi. You will be missed.