The Man I Never Knew

I occasionally post essays from my never-to-be-published book, Soul Songs, and I believe this is one of the best I have written. I was thinking about him yesterday and, when I shed a tear, either for him or for me, I thought it apropos to post it.

THE MAN I NEVER KNEW

I called him Dad, and when I was little, Daddy. But those were names mandated by tradition rather than by love or affection. The Dickensian “Sir” would have been more suitable, an address that denotes respect without familiarity. My father, you see, was a total stranger to me, the man I never knew.

In 2004, he died in a warehouse for old World War II veterans. He died alone and angry and soul-sick, which was only fitting for a man who, for eighty-three years, lived alone and angry and soul-sick. The only comfort he ever found in life was not from people, not from his wife or his daughter or me, but from alcohol. Alcohol relieved the pain, but the reason for the pain is something no one will ever know.

His physical death was a blessing because, sometime back in his life, he died inside. He lived on the planet for nearly a century, but he was rarely present on it; he existed, but his participation was minimal. He was a taker but rarely a giver. He subsisted on secrets that both fed and haunted him, and only death could finally, and thankfully, exorcise them.

So I have not grieved for my father The Invisible Man, The Shadow, the man who never was, because he is much better off now. I have grieved for me, though, for the things he could have, and should have, given me as a Dad. Like encouragement when I had doubts. Comfort when I was scared and when I had physical and emotional pain. Companionship when I was lonely. Answers when I had questions. Direction, boundaries, and a swift kick when I needed direction, boundaries, and a swift kick. Most of all, he should have given me a role model and a hero, someone his little boy could emulate and worship.

If grieving for me seems selfish, it isn’t. My father is gone now, and I can neither bring him back nor change the past. Grieving is a process for the living, of forgiving the hurt and the disappointment and the regret, of going forward with the remainder of my time on earth.

The Commandment tells me I must honor my father and I believe I did that. For the past thirty-five years I was my father’s keeper, his caretaker and his worrier, although I was often derelict in my duties. But as angry and as frustrated as I often was, especially during the years of dementia and contrariness, I never abandoned him. Or dishonored him. Or forgot him.

And maybe, someday, I will be able to shed a tear for him, for the man I never knew.

Charles Joseph Callahan
1921 — 2004
May you finally rest in peace

Review: Collected Short Stories of William Faulkner

Collected Short Stories of William Faulkner, William Faulkner


Vintage Trade Paper, 1995
912 pages


The score on LibraryThing is 1,124 reviews for Stephenie Meyer's Twilight to 3 reviews for William Faulkner’s Collected Stories. To add insult to injury, the latter hasn’t had a review since 2007. What a shame—a Nobel Prize winner whom hardly anyone reads. And shame on me for not reading him until my 61st year; I too bought into the myths that "He is too hard to read," "I don't understand him," and "He doesn't make any sense" before I ever tried to read one word.

When I expressed a desire to read something by Faulkner but had no idea where to start, a wonderful woman on LibraryThing readily agreed to mentor me through the labyrinth. After five of his lesser (but hardly forgettable) novels, I turned to these short stories.

I admit that he is difficult at times and I don't understand every line he writes, but reading Faulkner is a moving experience for me, both mentally and emotionally. His stories are to be savored like a pot set to "simmer" on the stove—as opposed to Meyer's read-it-and-forget-it microwavable pop.

This collection includes 42 stories spread over 900 pages, many of them forerunners to future novels. Every one of them sucked me in from the first sentence, and I wasn't able to close the book until I had finished the story. Some stories had neatly tied-up endings, but many did not—a frequent Faulkner device that requires the reader to create or imagine the ending. I suspect it is the latter that frustrates people: unwilling to use their imaginations, they ask, “What in the hell was that all about?”

Many of these stories take place in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. But Faulkner was a master of the war story too, and the effect war has on an individual—both soldier and civilian. I liked these best. My favorite is "Two Soldiers," a poignant tale (and title) of an eight-year-old boy who tries to join the Army and ship out to Pearl Harbor with his beloved older brother. On the flip side is "Victory," a WWI horror story (and title) of a Scotsman who shoots and machine guns his own troops in France—receiving in turn medals for valor because, in war, events happen with lightning speed and few remember exactly what happened.

A complaint I have about the Viking edition is the stories have no dates, so obviously there is no way to tell the order in which Faulkner wrote them.

I recommend this book highly with reservation; if you are brand-new to Faulkner, start with his short novel The Unvanquished. My mentor in beautiful northeast Pennsylvania will agree.

Looking for Mrs. Goldfish

One would think that after nearly thirty-five years of marriage (August 23) I would have learned something about my wife.

Well, I did. Finally. She has very sharp fangs, even sharper claws, and a vocabulary of expletives that would make a sailor on shore leave from the South Seas blush like a Jane Austen maiden.

All because I made a comment similar to Jim Unger’s Herman© cartoon. I didn’t say shopping “cart” because our drugstore doesn’t have them. What I did say was shopping “basket,” which to her thinking was no different than suggesting an empty 55-gallon drum.

Boy, you should have seen her reaction to my little faux pas. Her transformation was swift and dramatic: fangs, claws, the whole thing. Vampire? I thought, especially since they’re so in vogue. The store had all its lights on, though, so I was safe. Except from her caustic tongue.

I’ll be spending a lot more time now bonding with the hounds, and I might just as well throw my crotchless Peter Pan outfit in the trash. Oh, Martha talks to me, but in brief, clipped sentences like “Yes,” “No,” and “Not in this lifetime, buster.” Maybe I'll get a goldfish to keep me company.

I do have a legitimate question, however, if any of my female blogger buddies are still commenting to me. Martha loves nail polish and has a shitload of little bottles, but every one of them is a shade of red. Whimsical names maybe, but red is red, and I think one is called “Just Plain Red.”

The question is, why does she need so many bottles of the same color?

Review: The Lovers

The Lovers, John Connolly


Atria Books, 2009, 352 pages


John Connolly (not to be confused with Michael Connelly) is a very funny Irishman who, among other things, writes a series of very dark thrillers featuring Maine P.I. Charlie Parker. The Lovers is the eighth in the series and is Connolly's darkest one yet.

In the first installment, Every Dead Thing, we learned that Parker's wife Susan and tiny daughter Jennifer were murdered and horribly mutilated by someone who could hardly be called human. Parker, who was drinking with his cop friends at the time, resigned from the NYPD, both to grieve and to keep from falling over the mental edge. Haunted by the gruesome death of his family, Charlie set out to find the murderer called the Travelling Man.

The darkness? As the series has progressed, the antagonists have become increasingly more hideous. There is something cold and otherworldly about these people . . . something supernatural. They are connected somehow, by something not alive, something somehow connected to Charlie . . .

And in The Lovers, he is determined to find out what the connection is.

Switching between the present and the past, Connolly gives us backstory, a prequel to the series that has Parker retracing his life looking for clues. When he was fifteen, his policeman father shot to death two unarmed teenagers and then came home and committed suicide. “Why?” Charlie asks his father’s aged partner, but no answer is forthcoming. And why, he wonders, are there two strangers following him in the present, leaving hideous and horrific bodies in their wake? There are answers, but I can't reveal them because that would be spoilage.

I have met Connolly twice at book signings and he is very accessible to his fans. The critics dislike him, he said after the publication of Black Angel, because they feel the element of the supernatural has no place in the crime genre. "Those same critics don't have a problem with cats solving crimes [Lilian Jackson Braun], or even writing them [Rita Mae Brown]," he added, laughing but not truly amused.

Judging by The Lovers, John has embraced the supernatural anyway: his lovers are of the undying—not the dead—but the undying. We see a glimpse of evil in the raw, unspeakable evil, evil that the human mind cannot comprehend.

The fact that Connolly is different is the reason why I like him so much; he is at the top of my favorite thriller mystery list, and I give him 5 out of 5 stars for his latest book.

* * * * *

Here is the Charlie Parker series in order from my Listmania! page on Amazon.com.



And hot off the email from John's website is The Gates, to be published in October by Atria Books (he dabbles in horror stories, too). This is the U.K. cover, so the U.S. and Canada cover will be suckage.

Kids as Homicide Bombers

FROM CNN.COM, July 7, 2009:

Pakistan: Taliban buying children for suicide attacks

A top Taliban leader in Pakistan is buying and selling children for suicide bombings, Pakistani and U.S. officials said.

Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has been increasingly using the children in attacks, the officials said. A video released by Pakistan's military shows the children training for the task.

In the video of a training camp, children can be seen killing and going through exercises.

Mehsud has been selling the children, once trained, to other Taliban officials for $6,000 to $12,000, Pakistani military officials said.

Some of the children are as young as 11, the officials said.

The young suicide bombers may be able to reach targets unnoticed, the military said.

Meanwhile, in Afganistan, 11 NATO troops have been killed in the last two days—8 Americans, 2 Canadians, and 1 Briton—while fighting the Taliban.

I realize that also today, July 7, 2009, the memorial service for Michael is being held in Los Angeles. He was a huge star, and he deserves a huge sendoff. As a peformer, he was one of a kind: I've loved his music from the days of the Jackson 5 until the day (whenever that was) he quit writing, singing, dancing, and fell off the face of reality.

The problem I have is with priorities. Michael and his parents have dominated the news since his death, and all the dirty-laundry-details of child custody and his tangled estate are yet to unfold.

So, while we mourn Michael with almost maniacal passion, the Taliban maniacs are not only using children in an unspeakable manner, but are also killing our collective troops—eleven in two days (and another one kidnapped).

Which makes me wonder: what will it take, or what will have to happen, for people to protest our years-old wars with the same passion they're showing Michael Jackson today?

I Saw Trees!

Martha, my beloved diehard desert dweller, was in Pennsylvania this week—Nazareth, Bethlehem, Easton—on business. As a high-powered accountant for the company where she works, she had the high-powered task of observing the counting of inventory at the Nazareth storage yard: thousands of pieces-parts that make up forms for pouring cement. Can you say high-powered glamorousness?

While the job part was a bummer, she told me all about some really nifty things she saw:

1. Hills! You know, the kind where you start at the bottom, climb a grade, reach the apex, and then descend on the other side. On the way back you do the same exact thing, only backward.

2. Trees! BIG old trees (oaks? maples? chestnuts?) that make beautiful canopies over two-lane byways. A lot of HUGE evergreens too.

3. Green! See number 2, plus add lawns, parks, ivy and other climbers, bushes, hedges, and weeds. Green doesn’t apply to desert dirt, which is pretty close to Crayola color #2,356, "dirt."

4. Rain! She woke up around two a.m. to a pounding rainstorm, something that occurs in the desert about twice a year and for three minutes or less in duration. She laid there listening and loving it until the rhythm lulled her back to sleep.

5. Fog! What fun, driving through thick mist while looking for street signs and landmarks that no longer existed which would lead her to the work site she’d never been to.

6. Wal-Mart! An emergency stop between the Allentown airport and the hotel in Easton upon her arrival. The temperature was somewhat below 95°, so she was frozen to the bone and needed a jacket with a hood. She never took it off until she arrived back in Phoenix where she could finally warm up.

Geographic shock: noticing things that the residents of northeast PA take for granted because they see them every day. Like established neighborhoods. Houses with covered porches for sitting and rocking. Houses that have more than one story. No cheap-ass stucco. Streetlights. The little things.

Martha doesn’t want to live there—one winterish day would do her in—but because she was told New Jersey was just six miles to the east of Easton.

Playing for Change

Playing for Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music.

Music. It may not show up in our DNA, and there probably isn’t a gene for it, but music is inside every single one of us—way down deep inside, in what many call our soul. Or our spirit. Music transcends race, and nationality, and culture because it speaks to the soul, to the spirit, to our shared humanness. It speaks to our unremembered memories of the womb, to our heartbeat beating along with our mother's.

Our shared humanness.

Can a group of people, then, bring us all together through videos and concerts of street musicians who play for change? Probably not, but it feels good to hope, and to dream, and to spread the music around on this blog.

Please take 10½ minutes and watch both of these incredible videos. And make sure that you turn the volume to LOUD.




Back in January, I posted this next video because it blew me away; it affected me in a way that brought a tear to my eye. And it still does, every time I watch it. The footage of Grandpa Elliott, the loveable fellow with the fluffy white beard from New Orleans, was shot after Katrina.