Despite all my links to the early Huguenot families of the New Paltz patent, I was brought up solidly in the religious traditions of my Noonan ancestors as an Irish-Catholic. This was the same with my half-Huguenot father before me. It does seem kind of funny that we went Pope like that after so many generations resisting. Maybe it’s all a wash anyway. I figure the same atrocities that were committed against my Catholic ancestors by Protestants, were committed against my Protestant ancestors by Catholics. . .
Even before all that Father Pipala mess broke, I was having issues with church. On the anniversary of Dad’s death-- Sunday after Ascension Thursday-- I decided to go to 9 O’clock Mass alone. I think Phebe was working that morning. ‘Course I showered and shaved and gussied up as I usually do. Well, maybe I hurried too much through, I don’t know now. Turns out, as the church filled up, this snooty little boy and his snooty mother sat down in the same pew next to me. A minute didn’t go by before the little boy pinched off his nose and said loud enough for most of the church to hear, Someone smells like poop!
Wouldn’t you know that mother stood up, and marched away to a different pew with the boy without as much as a word to her son or a word spoken to me.
Sometimes the smell of manure is like the sin of humanity, I said to her as she left, you can scrub as hard as you like, it’s still there no matter what.
Years ago you were strange if you didn’t smell a little like cow shit in church. It was one of those things taken as a given and no one noticed it. Only the priests were able to discern the true reality because of course most of them wouldn't do a day of manual labor on a farm if their life depended on it. That’s why priests got so much into using incense. That’s why they learned to walk down the aisle with that shit and hit everyone with it. No wonder I got male chest cancer breathing in all that shit when I was younger. It was actually an early measure to mask the foulness of the peasantry. . .
Phebe’s more Irish than me, yet she’s had less resistance to walking away from Catholicism than I’ve had. She’s been going to a Presbyterian church with a lady pastor lately. She started out going as a guest to some coworker of hers, the same lady that's trying to get her to run for the school board. . .using her maiden name! Phebe's even been singing with the choir, got all these old Protestant hymns down pat. One time I told her if I heard There Is a Green Hill Far Away one more time I was gonna run out into traffic on the Quickway. Funny it used to be the Catholic churches that had all the Democrats and the Presbyterian churches that had all the Republicans, but now it almost seems it's been turned all the way around the other way.
Just remember to vote for Phebe Noonan this Spring for the school board. Her husband and son may be felons, but she is not.
Good fucking gracious
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
01/25/01
Phebe said to cover the spools of copper back up and worry about it later after we return from Hawaii. So I covered the shit back up with the mulch hay and then went out in the field with a shovel and worked until the wee hours of the morning heaping dirt on old Yin-Yang. Then it was time to drive to the airport. I was frazzled. Sitting there in the plane on the tarmac I guess the whole thing hit me all at once. And that was before my fear of flying kicked in. Phebe kept shushing me. I guess I mentioned stolen copper a few more times than I should have.
That cop Funked is going to be back on the place today, I say all worried to Phebe, He said he was going to check to see that the bull got disposed of properly. What if he finds the stolen copper?
I made a call, Phebe says on the down low, don’t worry. Everything’s being taken care of. You don’t need to know the details.
Great, I say angrily, so now someone else knows about the stolen copper too? Let me guess, you got Stash Skim in on the secret? What are you guys having an affair or something? Reliving old fucking times are you?
That’s just over the top, Joseph. I wish you knew how ridiculous you’re acting right now. How dare you suggest I’m having an affair! You’re the one whose filming naked teenagers on the place.
Stolen copper, naked teenager being filmed, carcass being buried, cockpits being stormed in a fit of panic---no, no, there’s no reason to investigate me. I’m no criminal really. It can all be explained. Really, it can.
That cop Funked is going to be back on the place today, I say all worried to Phebe, He said he was going to check to see that the bull got disposed of properly. What if he finds the stolen copper?
I made a call, Phebe says on the down low, don’t worry. Everything’s being taken care of. You don’t need to know the details.
Great, I say angrily, so now someone else knows about the stolen copper too? Let me guess, you got Stash Skim in on the secret? What are you guys having an affair or something? Reliving old fucking times are you?
That’s just over the top, Joseph. I wish you knew how ridiculous you’re acting right now. How dare you suggest I’m having an affair! You’re the one whose filming naked teenagers on the place.
Stolen copper, naked teenager being filmed, carcass being buried, cockpits being stormed in a fit of panic---no, no, there’s no reason to investigate me. I’m no criminal really. It can all be explained. Really, it can.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
01/24/01
Yeah, I’d say the best dog I ever had was my Holstein bull Yin-Yang. He was about 15 years-old in September when he was shot dead. It was the day of Francois’ film shoot and Taciturn Vern’s heart attack.
Kills me to recount this one. . .
Francois paid me, Taciturn Vern, Stash Skim, Porch Rot and Starvin‘ Marvin--- foul, simple-minded woodchucks all--- a hundred dollars each to stand along a split rail fence out in my pasture and bullshit away as farmers do while he filmed us.
He kept yelling that he needed our best Delbert Ward. He keeps yelling, Just give me Delbert Ward, God damn it, that’s all I’m asking for people!
I knew from the start that some deception was involved. I’m ashamed I ever agreed to play along. If there was a crime in anything that I did it was that--- going along with that shitty stunt. I knew that Francois’ whole point was to catch a genuine look of astonishment on our faces as gawkers. But I didn’t know Francois would take it as far as he did. He told me beforehand he planned to have pretty girl gallop by us on a white horse, but he didn’t say she would be that supermodel from Kazakhstan they want beheaded for immodesty. Francois certainly didn’t say she would be completely naked.
The site of that girl's bouncing breasts, her flowing hair, her taunt limbs---her luscious, Allah-insulting forbiddance----my fucking goodness--- that sublime vision which has replayed innumerable times in my head since that blessed moment--- proved too much for Vern, who crumpled up on the ground as if struck by a bolt. Francois got exactly what he wanted, I guess. Of course I felt terrible for what I helped do to poor Vern. Thank God he survived.
911 was called. Chaos continued. Never did see the girl leave. It was like she existed for a glorious instant, and then she was gone. Call her naked singularity. To this day I’m still left wondering whether she was real.
Yin-Yang was only approaching the crowd because he was curious about what was happening on the place, with all the sirens sounding and the lights flashing-- not because he had any intent to attack anyone. On first glance you might take him as a menace, but in reality he was so arthritic he couldn’t even mount cows anymore. Well, in actuality he was the last bovine the farm has seen. I couldn’t bring myself to put him on the truck after Cornelius’ attempt at farming crashed and burned in ‘99. Centuries of continuous cattle keeping on the farm ended in that blaze of gunfire from Officer Funk. As the joke goes with him, he Funked up again with that one.
Yin Yang was something else, I tell yah . When it came time to bring the herd in from the pasture, no dog could have done a better job of rousing the cows from their slumber to drive them in towards home. He seemed to know what the deal was on the place and was willing to do his part, just like any farm dog. When he was born I had no intention of keeping him, thought I’d put him on the next truck to market, like all the other bull calves I didn’t need, but then I noticed that he had the perfect black and white markings of a yin-yang symbol on his scrotum, and I thought maybe I could get a few extra bucks for him from a novelty hunter some day. Well, a year came and went. And then another year came and went. And by then I thought for sure he’d turn ugly on me. But he settled all the cows, and even threw nice small calves with the heifers, and I thought, hell, let me see if I can get another year out of him. Wouldn’t you know the damn thing stayed docile. And then another year passed and then another year passed, and still he stayed as quiet and calm as could be.
The cops were annoyed with me for a lot of reasons that day. They weren’t showing much sympathy for the situation I was in, mourning a geriatric pet bull minutes after setting up my old friend for a heart attack. I was sternly told by Funk Face to make sure the carcass was properly disposed of or else I could expect a summons. Meanwhile I had the flight out of Newark the next day to contend with. Couldn’t get Cadaver Dog to come out on short notice. You tell me all that money from his windfall didn’t go to his fucking head! Couldn’t get Smokey the backhoe running. I had used him earlier in the summer on a hot day and got him vapor locked. Tried blowing through the fuel line to prime the carburetor with gas but I couldn’t muster the PSI. Phebe doesn’t believe me, but I think my lung capacity was diminished from all the chemo I got in ‘98 to fight the male chest cancer.
My daughter has always had the best luck with that chore blowing the fuel line. I always say to her for some reason, I don’t even want to know where you developed that skill.
‘Course that would be right about the time she would tell me to go fuck myself.
Somehow we missed out on all that good Puritan ancestry from New England.
So anyway, I just started heaping up brush and debris on Yin-Yang’s carcass as best as I could. Then I thought to haul out some years old mulch hay bales from the chicken house and heap that on the carcass too, and lo and behold what do I find hidden beneath the bales but a whole shit load of stolen copper--- spool after spool of copper cable. Probably $20,000 worth. I don’t know why Rocky never mentioned it to us after his arrest for all the other stuff. Maybe like Claudius Smith’s gang of Tory bandits and the cache of silver they planted on the farm during the Revolution, Rocky had plans of coming back and retrieving that portion of copper---secreted so considerately on my side of the property line--- after he got out of the pokey.
Not the most considerate offspring that Rocky. The fuck.
Kills me to recount this one. . .
Francois paid me, Taciturn Vern, Stash Skim, Porch Rot and Starvin‘ Marvin--- foul, simple-minded woodchucks all--- a hundred dollars each to stand along a split rail fence out in my pasture and bullshit away as farmers do while he filmed us.
He kept yelling that he needed our best Delbert Ward. He keeps yelling, Just give me Delbert Ward, God damn it, that’s all I’m asking for people!
I knew from the start that some deception was involved. I’m ashamed I ever agreed to play along. If there was a crime in anything that I did it was that--- going along with that shitty stunt. I knew that Francois’ whole point was to catch a genuine look of astonishment on our faces as gawkers. But I didn’t know Francois would take it as far as he did. He told me beforehand he planned to have pretty girl gallop by us on a white horse, but he didn’t say she would be that supermodel from Kazakhstan they want beheaded for immodesty. Francois certainly didn’t say she would be completely naked.
The site of that girl's bouncing breasts, her flowing hair, her taunt limbs---her luscious, Allah-insulting forbiddance----my fucking goodness--- that sublime vision which has replayed innumerable times in my head since that blessed moment--- proved too much for Vern, who crumpled up on the ground as if struck by a bolt. Francois got exactly what he wanted, I guess. Of course I felt terrible for what I helped do to poor Vern. Thank God he survived.
911 was called. Chaos continued. Never did see the girl leave. It was like she existed for a glorious instant, and then she was gone. Call her naked singularity. To this day I’m still left wondering whether she was real.
Yin-Yang was only approaching the crowd because he was curious about what was happening on the place, with all the sirens sounding and the lights flashing-- not because he had any intent to attack anyone. On first glance you might take him as a menace, but in reality he was so arthritic he couldn’t even mount cows anymore. Well, in actuality he was the last bovine the farm has seen. I couldn’t bring myself to put him on the truck after Cornelius’ attempt at farming crashed and burned in ‘99. Centuries of continuous cattle keeping on the farm ended in that blaze of gunfire from Officer Funk. As the joke goes with him, he Funked up again with that one.
Yin Yang was something else, I tell yah . When it came time to bring the herd in from the pasture, no dog could have done a better job of rousing the cows from their slumber to drive them in towards home. He seemed to know what the deal was on the place and was willing to do his part, just like any farm dog. When he was born I had no intention of keeping him, thought I’d put him on the next truck to market, like all the other bull calves I didn’t need, but then I noticed that he had the perfect black and white markings of a yin-yang symbol on his scrotum, and I thought maybe I could get a few extra bucks for him from a novelty hunter some day. Well, a year came and went. And then another year came and went. And by then I thought for sure he’d turn ugly on me. But he settled all the cows, and even threw nice small calves with the heifers, and I thought, hell, let me see if I can get another year out of him. Wouldn’t you know the damn thing stayed docile. And then another year passed and then another year passed, and still he stayed as quiet and calm as could be.
The cops were annoyed with me for a lot of reasons that day. They weren’t showing much sympathy for the situation I was in, mourning a geriatric pet bull minutes after setting up my old friend for a heart attack. I was sternly told by Funk Face to make sure the carcass was properly disposed of or else I could expect a summons. Meanwhile I had the flight out of Newark the next day to contend with. Couldn’t get Cadaver Dog to come out on short notice. You tell me all that money from his windfall didn’t go to his fucking head! Couldn’t get Smokey the backhoe running. I had used him earlier in the summer on a hot day and got him vapor locked. Tried blowing through the fuel line to prime the carburetor with gas but I couldn’t muster the PSI. Phebe doesn’t believe me, but I think my lung capacity was diminished from all the chemo I got in ‘98 to fight the male chest cancer.
My daughter has always had the best luck with that chore blowing the fuel line. I always say to her for some reason, I don’t even want to know where you developed that skill.
‘Course that would be right about the time she would tell me to go fuck myself.
Somehow we missed out on all that good Puritan ancestry from New England.
So anyway, I just started heaping up brush and debris on Yin-Yang’s carcass as best as I could. Then I thought to haul out some years old mulch hay bales from the chicken house and heap that on the carcass too, and lo and behold what do I find hidden beneath the bales but a whole shit load of stolen copper--- spool after spool of copper cable. Probably $20,000 worth. I don’t know why Rocky never mentioned it to us after his arrest for all the other stuff. Maybe like Claudius Smith’s gang of Tory bandits and the cache of silver they planted on the farm during the Revolution, Rocky had plans of coming back and retrieving that portion of copper---secreted so considerately on my side of the property line--- after he got out of the pokey.
Not the most considerate offspring that Rocky. The fuck.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
01/23/01
I just don’t know what to say when it comes to Percy’s artistic career. I know he's got a lot of artist friends, but it's not like that stuff just rubs off on you from other people. He’s a fine writer when it comes to history and what-have you, but just as soon as it comes to creative writing, it’s just not there for him despite all his ambition. It was Percy himself who explained that creative writing comes from the right side of your brain and all the other stuff comes from your left brain. That’s why novelists can’t always do journalism so well, and why journalist don’t necessarily make good novelists. He did a fine job too laying that all out for me, ‘course what he was describing was factual material, and the factual stuff is a breeze for him. You see someone work for years on something that monstrously huge, you just can’t go and say, your novel sucks Percy. You shouldn’t have bothered. When Percy asks me what I think of the manuscript, I just say, what bit I’ve read so far seems just like James Joyce. Of course I haven’t read more than 15 pages of James Joyce in my entire life. But then I’ll add: You do know, Percy, that Nicholas Sparks sells a lot more books than James Joyce these days. Maybe you could work on a more slender follow up.
Sparks? Percy responds, all mortified and indignant and stuff, like Squidward, Are you kidding me?
My wife drags me out to every one of those sappy movies based on sappy novels. The worst part of all is that they always turn out to be written by fucking men! I mean, you’re telling me a person with testicles wrote Steel Magnolias?
Then there was that Bridges of Madison County ordeal. That was some sick dude’s handiwork. Clint Eastwood: what body-snatching Thetan did you succumb to? Then Nicholas Sparks came along. Sometimes I feel like slitting my wrists in the theater and letting them bleed dry into my mega-sized bucket of popcorn. Of course Phebe can never get enough of that horse shit.
I told Percy about this idea I had for a movie called, The Dutch Barns of the Hudson Valley. I told him it’s about this photographer for National Gigolographic Magazine who travels around upstate New York photographing Dutch barns and porking lonely inhabitants of the rural landscape. Percy ran off and told his freaky filmmaker pal--- Francois ---about the spoof, and then Francois is at my door with Percy soon afterward looking to buy the fucking idea from me for a short film.
I tell him, you can have the idea. I don’t want a dime of money from anyone who’d pay to see anything like that anyway. Francois had me sign a waiver so he could use the idea---and by damn if he didn’t!
The best time I ever had at the movies with Phebe was when we went to see American Beauty when it was first out, must have been about a year or two ago. She thought from the title it was going to be some kind of romance, so she was pretty disappointed with what she found. I’m ashamed to admit I emulated Kevin Spacey’s dinner plate thrown into the wall scene with the turkey platter this past Thanksgiving dinner. I think the lath had to have cracked from the blow. Needless to say, I began living here in this cold fucking trailer shortly thereafter.
Like I joke with Swami Hard Salami: At least I never got the Oedipus complex screwed up by killing my mother and having sex with my father.
Sparks? Percy responds, all mortified and indignant and stuff, like Squidward, Are you kidding me?
My wife drags me out to every one of those sappy movies based on sappy novels. The worst part of all is that they always turn out to be written by fucking men! I mean, you’re telling me a person with testicles wrote Steel Magnolias?
Then there was that Bridges of Madison County ordeal. That was some sick dude’s handiwork. Clint Eastwood: what body-snatching Thetan did you succumb to? Then Nicholas Sparks came along. Sometimes I feel like slitting my wrists in the theater and letting them bleed dry into my mega-sized bucket of popcorn. Of course Phebe can never get enough of that horse shit.
I told Percy about this idea I had for a movie called, The Dutch Barns of the Hudson Valley. I told him it’s about this photographer for National Gigolographic Magazine who travels around upstate New York photographing Dutch barns and porking lonely inhabitants of the rural landscape. Percy ran off and told his freaky filmmaker pal--- Francois ---about the spoof, and then Francois is at my door with Percy soon afterward looking to buy the fucking idea from me for a short film.
I tell him, you can have the idea. I don’t want a dime of money from anyone who’d pay to see anything like that anyway. Francois had me sign a waiver so he could use the idea---and by damn if he didn’t!
The best time I ever had at the movies with Phebe was when we went to see American Beauty when it was first out, must have been about a year or two ago. She thought from the title it was going to be some kind of romance, so she was pretty disappointed with what she found. I’m ashamed to admit I emulated Kevin Spacey’s dinner plate thrown into the wall scene with the turkey platter this past Thanksgiving dinner. I think the lath had to have cracked from the blow. Needless to say, I began living here in this cold fucking trailer shortly thereafter.
Like I joke with Swami Hard Salami: At least I never got the Oedipus complex screwed up by killing my mother and having sex with my father.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
01/22/01
There was a time when I called Percy the Attractive Nuissance. I have to say the first part of that bill doesn’t really fit anymore, but the second part is as apt as ever. When Percy was young, he looked a bit like Jim Morrison. Nowadays he looks more like Meatloaf after a full frontal lobotomy. Clara ran away with Percy when she was 16. Mom and Dad were pretty much done with her. She was always a wild child bent on getting her way at all cost. Fiery as all hell. She could drink most men under the table. . .when she was like 15! She started spouting off that Dad had--- well, done something, shall we say --- next thing she knew she found all her stuff piled out in the front yard. Percy was a couple of years older than her. They both fell in with the Hippie crowd and had all kinds of stories to tell about using hallucinogens, going to Woodstock, traveling back and forth across the country in an old bus, and whatever the hell else. Both ended up in California for some time. After they got some college credits they made their way back to New York, where they both found high-powered careers in marketing, whatever the fuck that is. They were also big into the art scene. Never had any children. Clara died in ‘87 of ass cancer. Now I have to have that camera shoved up there every year or two to make sure I don’t get it there either. Percy started having panic attacks in ‘93 after the attempt to blow up the World Trade Center. He was working in the building at the time and got a hell of a scare. He became a neurotic mess. Said he felt like New York City had become just one big terrorist target that was due to be hit again at any moment. He couldn’t get that thought of danger out of his mind. He couldn’t cope much with urban life anymore and had a couple of visits to Bellevue and Dr. Swami Hard Salami up here.
Back in ‘94, I let Percy put the trailer on the place for a weekend retreat. Town made a big stink about the trailer, of course. I made Percy a farm employee and invoked the Ag and Markets law, hauled the trailer out of view to the back end of the farm at the edge of Purgatory Swamp. Town was thrilled to get the thing out of view from the road and they eventually left me alone. Spent a fortune stringing phone and electric lines out here for him though. I’m grateful now to have the trailer or else I’d have no where else to go. It’s hard to keep warm lately though and I’ve had the pipes freeze on me a couple of times since Thanksgiving night. Anyway, it always seemed to do Percy some good to get out of the city for a while to calm his nerves. Eventually it became too hard for him to keep a job and he came back to Orange County to live full-time. At some point Swami Hard Salami told him the trailer was no good for him because it was too socially isolating. Percy got qualified for some kind of housing program for the mentally ill and ended up in the duplex in Maybrook where he’s been working on a novel for years. It’s about as thick as a phone book these days. He lent me a copy to proof read for him last year. I don’t think I’ve gotten past the 4th page yet. From what I understand of it it’s Percy’s idea of a sequel to James Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s all the same characters and setting in Dublin only it’s no longer June 16, 1904, rather June 17, 1904. Because like people really need to know what happened to that Bloom guy the next day too.
Back in ‘94, I let Percy put the trailer on the place for a weekend retreat. Town made a big stink about the trailer, of course. I made Percy a farm employee and invoked the Ag and Markets law, hauled the trailer out of view to the back end of the farm at the edge of Purgatory Swamp. Town was thrilled to get the thing out of view from the road and they eventually left me alone. Spent a fortune stringing phone and electric lines out here for him though. I’m grateful now to have the trailer or else I’d have no where else to go. It’s hard to keep warm lately though and I’ve had the pipes freeze on me a couple of times since Thanksgiving night. Anyway, it always seemed to do Percy some good to get out of the city for a while to calm his nerves. Eventually it became too hard for him to keep a job and he came back to Orange County to live full-time. At some point Swami Hard Salami told him the trailer was no good for him because it was too socially isolating. Percy got qualified for some kind of housing program for the mentally ill and ended up in the duplex in Maybrook where he’s been working on a novel for years. It’s about as thick as a phone book these days. He lent me a copy to proof read for him last year. I don’t think I’ve gotten past the 4th page yet. From what I understand of it it’s Percy’s idea of a sequel to James Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s all the same characters and setting in Dublin only it’s no longer June 16, 1904, rather June 17, 1904. Because like people really need to know what happened to that Bloom guy the next day too.
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