Skeeter sat in his tow truck and wrote the lyrics to a country song on a ketchup-stained Bunny Burger wrapper from the Red Rabbit Drive In. Titled, “Hello Ma,” Skeeter knew the tune would hit the charts. Singing softly to himself in a voice that sounded like rust looks, he put the finishing touches on the battle ballad that honored the trials and tribulations of suffering Afghanistan-induced PTSD.

Partial to baseball caps, Skeeter planned to buy himself a black Stetson with a rattlesnake skin band when he sang onstage at the Grand Ole Opry. Skeeter would step to the microphone and say, “This is my song about my living and dying in America.” Then he’d dig into the meat and potatoes of the matter.

“Hello Ma I hope you’re well

I need a bus ticket home

My sanity’s gone and my old lady, too

Got nowhere else to roam

Hello Ma I hope you’re well.

Sorry I ain’t called you in a while

Been on a bender for 13 weeks

The sober life’s not my style

You remember my pit bull? Well she just died. My best buddy Clay died too.

Outlaw bikers want the money I owe

Looks like I’m really screwed

Hello Ma I hope you’re well

Sorry I missed daddy’s wake

Totaled my motorcycle that same week

I sure could go for a steak

When I get home I’ll make it up to you

We’ll dance two-step in the bar until dawn

I promise you my words are true

You’ll feel like I never been gone

Hello Ma, are you still there?

Can’t hear your voice no more.

C’mon Ma please talk to me

I’m wounded from the Taliban war.

C’mon Ma, please don’t hang up

Don’t think I’m gonna last”

C’mon Ma, please talk to me.

You little boy’s sinking fast”

A month later Skeeter got a letter from a small record company in Nashville telling him the song was too depressing for the current genre of country music fans. The record company vice president wrote that Skeeter would be better off staying in the tow truck business. The song wasn’t very good, either, the VP wrote.

Skeeter had to admit the song wasn’t very good.

Now he had no idea what to do with the 1,500 red, white and blue T-shirts he borrowed money to buy with “Hello Ma” printed across the front and “Remember Our Afgan Vets” printed across the back.

Guess he’d just have to wear them to work.

At least he wouldn’t have to spring for a Stetson.

Playing Chicken

John ate chicken wings until his heart blew up at the best table in the American legion. Pouring Pabst draft beer down his gullet that night as fast as sea water must have rushed into the Titanic, he only took a breath to shove one spicy morsel after another into his mouth until he choked and oxygen stopped circulating through his clogged airway.

His wife Jane jumped into action just like she learned at the YMCA CPR class, pounding on her hubby’s chest even before he slid off his chair to the dance floor. Trying to remember the cadence to the Bee Gees song, she mixed up the group’s hits and applied pressure to their first recorded song and not the theme song to the disco movie she watched every time it was on TV.

John didn’t budge. Neither did the chicken bone lodged in his throat no matter how hard Jane slammed her soul mate’s fat belly or how many times. That bone wasn’t going nowhere. John’s chicken wing eating days were over.

The bartender pulled a tablecloth over John’s head and kept serving drinks until the paramedics arrived. Three former Marines shooting pool said he had to keep up morale no matter who died on the floor.

Oorah.

Keep the juke box going, too, said a 75-year-old former M-60 machine gunner in Vietnam.

Goddamn, said the bartender, John never did that before.

Jane ordered a double tequila.

No, he didn’t, she said.

At his end of his retirement party, Shorty stood onstage at the microphone and tried to be funny.

No, he said, I’m not giving away my stock portfolio.

The crowd roared its appreciation.

Samantha and Jason, his children, clapped the loudest.

Soon they would run their father’s pea soup empire.

Soon they would know the secret.

CNN and all three networks had scheduled interviews for the weekend. Shorty promised producers to “spill the beans” even though no beans appeared in the legendary concoction he sold in stores nation-wide that drew tourists to his original restaurant location in Scranton, PA, “PeaYaay,  as Shorty pronounced his home state’s name in the crazy television commercials he made famous during his 30-year career.

A multi-millionaire ten times over, Shorty looked forward to retirement.

He had wanted to get even for years.

His kids needs a good kick in the ass and Shorty looked forward to the long-overdue comeuppance. Maybe he should pull the rug from under them on national TV in one last over-the-top commercial as he exposed the secret recipe to the world.

But why wait?

“C’mon up here you two,” Shorty announced from the stage.

Pea soup aficionados in the crowded theater erupted in cheers, applause, hoots and whistles.

“Pea soup, pea soup, pea soup,” they chanted.

Oh my God, Samantha said.

I am not ready for this, Jason said.

But up they went into the spotlights that bathed their stylish finery in hues of blue and soft amber. Hipster Jason wore a custom-made green tuxedo with stripes down the leg that looked like flames. Sultry Samantha wore a see-through gown that made her breasts look like jumbo water balloons. Both siblings stunk of alcohol. Jason rubbed specks of cocaine off his right nostril as he climbed and tripped o the steps to the stage. Samantha scratched inappropriately.

Let’s hear it for my two little sweet peas, Shorty said.

He cleared his throat.

When I started this company I didn’t have a pot to piss in, he said.

All I did was work. My wife Midge died when an early batch exploded because the kids were both stoned and left the gas on in the kitchen before they lit another joint. Of course they escaped unharmed.

Samantha blushed.

Jason chuckled.

Nobody wanted to buy our soup. I was pissed. Then one night I stood on a chair and peed into the kettle. Don’t ask me why. The release just felt good. For some reason that batch took off. So I peed into the next batch. That shipment did even better. For the next three decades I peed into each shipment. Nobody knew which one got my salty surprise seasoning. But the soup got me on the cover of last month’s Grub Magazine as the most famous “souper” chef in America. The rest is history. Or shall I say “pisstory?” People don’t realize how accurate my motto “Real P (with a capital P) Soup” really is. The moral of the story? It’s always better to be pissed off than pissed on.

Take it away, kids, it’s all yours.

Dear Seamus,

My father “Shamus” Corbett, your great-grandfather’s brother and the man after whom you are named, lived during a changing time. Born in 1919, he experienced untold advances in the world before he died in 1997 at age 78.

Shamus knew, as the proverb teaches, that “time and tide wait for no man.” He knew we should bide our time and not waste time on senseless pursuits.

Paddy Gallagher’s watch helped Shamus remember those timely lessons of life.

Paddy’s pocket watch still glistens.

About 92 years ago, Paddy drove a laundry truck from one end of Scranton to the other. Stopping at countless fine houses in the Hill Section of Scranton to collect shirts from the stuffed bunch that could afford to send out their cleaning during those hard years, Paddy did an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.

Hunched over the wheel in a crisp, clean deliveryman’s uniform and cap, he’d sail the streets of his Minooka neighborhood, blowing the horn and waving at the army of kids who cheered his truck rolling down Birney Avenue.

One of those kids was my father, Shamus.

To him, the great Paddy Gallagher was a huge smiling hero steering a great moving machine. To Paddy, young Shamus was a good lad to whom he had granted the occasional prized ride.

Headstrong even as a kid, little Shamus was polite, gutsy and dependable. So proud of the name his father Pa’s greenhorn Irish immigrant friends called him, James in Irish, when he first signed his new name he misspelled the title. Stubborn Shamus refused to change the spelling even when he knew better.

That’s why, when company bosses told Paddy he could choose a partner, Paddy asked a determined 10-year-old Shamus to ride with him during the yearly contest to crown the best laundryman in the city.

Paddy knew Shamus would never give up.

Rushing from truck to house and back again, Shamus clutched as many bundles as his bony arms could carry. At the end of each hot summer day, he’d go home buoyed by the spirit of the day.

When the weeklong competition ended, the judges presented Paddy with a stunning, top-of-the-line Elgin pocket watch. Paddy took Shamus to a restaurant and bought him all the chocolate milk he could drink and a fat, precious hamburger that would have elated any Depression-era child.

When Paddy died 50 years later, he willed that watch to Shamus. The Hope Diamond wouldn’t have meant as much to my dad. I inherited the treasured ticker as Shamus’ time on earth ran out.

That cherished pocket watch stayed with me until the day two years ago when a burglar broke into our Hill Section home while we were away and stole heirloom jewelry that belonged to my wife Stephanie’s family. Paddy Gallagher’s watch disappeared as well.

Yesterday, while I sat writing a different letter to you about a different gift I planned to give you on this wondrous day of your baptism, Stephanie’s soft voice sounded over my shoulder. While looking for that other gift, she found a rolled up sock hugging a corner of a drawer at the back of the dresser. Inside she found Paddy Gallagher’s watch she had tucked away for safekeeping before the burglary.

We both were sure the thief got the watch.

But time was on our side.

Shamus Corbett’s spirit still rises as strong as ever.

This morning I ran my fingers across the watch’s smooth surface. I thought about the human cadence by which we measure our stay on this planet and how in the mad rush of this wild world it’s easy to forget how much each second counts.

I wound the pocket watch and marveled at the moving hands that point toward the future.

Your time has come, Seamus Corbett.

Welcome to the world.

Love,

Your cousin,

Steve Corbett

August 7, 2021

On the very day Pennsylvania’s COVID cases screamed from 200-a-day to 1,000-a-day and the CDC issued desperate new masking guidelines to save lives, the director of the airport President Joe Biden flies into when he comes home to Scranton sent me a thank you note.

Frankly, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport Executive Director Carl Beardsley’s message is more of a screw you note to me and the president.

After a recent cross-country trip that took me and my wife to five major airports, we returned home July 20 at 11:30 p.m. to our local airport known as AVP, the professed gateway to Northeastern Pennsylvania and the Pocono Mountains. The next day I telephoned Beardsley to alert him to serious public safety violations of federal mask law my wife and I witnessed after we landed.

Beardsley said he was “very surprised” and “not happy.”

But he quickly disagreed and took offense at my observations that he and his staff failed at enforcing the federal law that his counterparts at every other airport I visited stringently enforced.

“You have a major problem,” I said.

“We don’t have a major problem,” Beardsley said.

Nothing like what we saw at AVP occurred in Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles or Washington, D.C.

As we waited for our luggage, four unmasked men lounged in chairs along the wall. Three of the four wore fluorescent T-shirts Beardsley said identified them as airport workers.

A single uniformed Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) officer stood by the upstairs escalator. The TSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that has authority over the security of the traveling public in the United States. We saw no other security or law enforcement officer patrolling any public space at the airport.

Too many travelers from our flight pulled off their masks as they waited barefaced and breathing for their bags. People arriving to pick up passengers also entered airport property without the required masks.

Wearing a mask or face covering in airports and on planes became federal law in February. The mandate came after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a mask-wearing order that built on an executive order Biden issued in January. The mandate is enforced through a Security Directive issued by the TSA and applies to customers and employees.

Based on what we saw at AVP you wouldn’t know a national health care emergency exists that has already killed more than 600,000 people in America.

With restrictions loosening, people get lax when they go to Walmart or to restaurants, Beardsley said.

Walmart and restaurants are not under a federal law requiring masks, I said.

Beardsley told me he planned to write a memo to all airport employees. He also complained he felt under attack and that I was “rude.”

Beardsley seemed oblivious to the potential life-threatening attack against me and anyone else at AVP facing potential COVID carriers who might infect us, making us sick enough to die.

Officials in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties who run the airport hired Beardsley in 2014 at a salary of $115,000 a year. Back then Beardsley also received a $400-per-month taxable car allowance.

Board members in May extended Beardsley’s contract for three years beginning July 1, 2021, at a salary of $130,520.00 with two potential extensions. Beardsley also received two additional PTO (paid time off) days.

Citing lawyer/client privilege, airport co-solicitor Don Frederickson, who also serves as Lackawanna County general counsel, declined to answer my question about whether he communicated with Beardsley about illegal behavior I witnessed on the night I returned to AVP from Washington, D.C.

Here are the questions I emailed to Beardsley about his promised solutions to the negligence I observed:

“Have you yet met with members of your team to discuss the violation of federal law requiring people to wear masks at all U.S. airports including AVP that we discussed on the phone yesterday?

What if any other action did you take regarding this failure to enforce federal law?

Did you write and circulate a memo as you said you planned to do?

If so, when can you email me the memo?

Did you write and send any emails to any government official regarding our discussion?

If so, when can you send them to me?

Will you discuss this matter at the next Bi-County Airport Board meeting?

When, where and what time is the next meeting scheduled?

Are you still director at the Aviation Council of Pennsylvania?”

This is Beardsley’s response:

Mr. Corbett:

“Thanks for your comments about your recent experience at AVP.  We strive to provide the best customer experience at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport.

We’re mindful of your concern and the other comments we receive on various topics.  We are always working to achieve positive results for everyone. Reminders of mask mandates are certainly a part of this and are handled through our regular in-house communications and updates.

The next time you find yourself at AVP and are faced with a similar situation, please don’t hesitate to visit the Airport Security Office or the Ambassador desk to report it.  I am confident that they will help you anyway that they can.      

As for the next board meeting, it is scheduled for August 26th at 10:30 a.m. and my term as president of the PA Aviation Council has concluded.

Thanks for using AVP.”

The only good news in Beardsley’s responses is that his taking up space on a statewide aviation council has concluded.

My wife has already filed a formal TSA complaint.

I plan to file mine soon.

An otherwise excellent airport my wife and I have used for decades whenever we can is now an embarrassment Beardsley is too inept to fix. Taxpayers don’t need local political provincialism to get any worse than it already is.

Next time Biden comes to Scranton for an event he might want to land elsewhere and drive the rest of the way home.

Political germs are bad enough.

Killer germs are far worse.

Killer sword-wielding Samurai no longer exist.

Brutal unarmed combat rarely erupts, either. Most men and women rarely get physically attacked or fight in the streets, bars or elsewhere.

Ego stalks humanity as the most feared enemy of our mortal development. Ego interferes with our better selves, threatening the existence of our planet.

Nature, human and otherwise, is at greater risk than ever.

At 70, my path now takes me to another realm, one where cosmic consciousness looms more important than the macho pursuit of violence.

I never wanted to fight.

I felt I had to fight.

Fifty years ago I beat another first year Penn State student so badly during a drunken fight that university officials evicted me from the dorm. Several years later I beat a man into unconsciousness during a 4 a.m. brawl in a nightclub parking lot.  I thought he had a gun. I worried he might die.

Eventually I channeled my rage into decades of martial arts discipline and practiced potentially deadly techniques of controlled violence. I understand the dark appeal in the justifiable destruction of a dangerous attacker who deserves to get hurt and maybe even die.

Some violence is valid. I will fight if I must and try to help whenever I can, but only as a life-and-death last resort. At this stage of my life I no longer want to teach or drill in battle-tested ways of bloodshed and pain. I need to discipline my body and mind at a higher level of perception.

After many years of aikido, aikijujutsu and other martial arts training, I’m bowing out of the dojo, taking sacred lessons I learned from my arts to apply in defense of our tiny living speck of a marvel that hangs in the infinitesimal beyond.

I stand with Mother Earth against increasing and ongoing deadly assaults of greedy, carnivorous capitalists who rule the world while destroying air, water and species that make us a beautiful, living globe.

I will face the enemies of existence and live my life as a defender of the environment until I one day return to the source – not Heaven or Hell, but the source from which we all sprang, that magnetic place of pure creative energy that one day returns us to the nothingness from which we came.

I want to help the honey bees and birds. I’ll do my best to save the whales and the trees and the firm ground upon which future generations should walk without fear of contamination.

I will never give up guarding our world.

To meet that challenge, I fill each pore in my body with precious ki and expand my mind with the vital life energy the Chinese call chi and the yogis call prana. I open my awareness to the needs of the universe. And I take with me into battle the treasured lessons from all my teachers, some of whom will not understand or appreciate my decision, and apply the best care I can to preserve peace and harmony.

If I could take away guns and bombs, I would. If I could take away hatred, I would. If I could diminish America’s self-inflated sense of importance, I would.

But I can’t.

So I’ll do what little I can through increased study, diligent practice and heartfelt commitment to help make our existence better for everybody. I’ll add my breath and spirit to the wind and become one with its gifts.

I can’t do that by practicing how to kill with a sword or with my bare hands. I can only do that by calling out the attackers of civilization who threaten our precious place with fool’s gold and uncontrolled human excess.

The eternal might of the cosmos offers us a chance to survive.

My planet is my dojo.

You will no longer be teaching at Good Vibrations Montessori School, Mr. Rosen.

Because of what happened in class this morning, right?

Because of what the children say you called “the aquarium lesson,” the principal said.

The moral of the story works for zoos, too, Mr. Rosen said.

Johnny is still recovering and waiting for his mother in the nurse’s office.

The other kids didn’t disagree with me.

We notified their parents to pick them up, the principal said.

I’m surprised you haven’t called in grief counselors.

That attitude is exactly what we’re talking about here.

So in my absence will you be chaperoning the class on the field trip to the aquarium?

The aquarium trip is off, thanks to you.

Mission accomplished, Mr. Rosen said.

The children are still highly agitated.

About saving the whales, right?

No whales live in the local aquarium.

If things keep going the way they’re going, there won’t be any whales in the ocean either.

The children said you told them not to even eat tuna fish sandwiches.

Nor those Goldfish crackers either.

There’s such a thing as getting carried away, Mr. Rosen.

Free the fish.

Your liberal radical overzealous environmental activism is how this anarchy started.

No, Johnny’s rich corporate lawyer father started the movement when he gave the school free tickets to the aquarium in which he’s part owner.

That does not give you the right to traumatize the children.

You call it trauma. I call it teaching. I only told them the truth.

You told Johnny he could fully experience for himself what aquarium fish experience if he got in the backyard pool at his house and you welded a glass lid over the top. You said the rest of the class could stand at the edge watching him swim around underwater like a captive carp for the rest of his life.

A teaching moment if I ever saw one.

You were out of line, Mr. Rosen.

I was going to suggest we submerge Johnny in the hot tub but if we welded him in there he’d boil like a lobster at one of those political clambakes brought to you by the corrupt politicians his old man bribes.

Security! Security!

And it’s not just aquariums, Mr. Rosen said.

Now he stood and blocked the door.

It’s zoos, too. You realize some zoos purposely thin the herd because of budget constraints and Republican cutbacks. You know how they do that? They let the animals eat each other until the polar bears are all that’s left walking around picking their teeth with chimpanzee bones.

You’re making that up, Mr. Rosen.

I am not. I read it in The New York Times.

There is something seriously wrong with you, the principal said.

I told the kids all about the zoo cannibalism, too. You should be pleased to know I stopped them before they started chewing on Johnny’s arms and legs. They wanted to, they even moved on him, because he just refused to understand the animals’ side of the story.

So that’s how he got bite marks on his buttocks?

The kids pulled Jessica off him before she broke the skin.

Mr. Rosen saw raw panic cover the principal’s face.

I know what you’re thinking, he said.

Please, Mr. Rosen, you’re out of control, the principal said.

Mr. Rosen grinned.

Mr. Rosen showed his teeth.

Don’t worry, I’m a vegetarian, he said.

Hot as sand fleas sizzling under a magnifying glass, Stu’s face and other exposed body parts burned from the scorching heat of the sun. His dog Riley sat with her paws stretched in front of her furry body plump as a cuddly stuffed animal on a carnival midway shelf, a pink ribbon tied into her hair that hung like a fashion model’s bangs in her face.

Stu and Riley often enjoyed lazy days bivouacked at the water’s edge. Long retired from their jobs (he as a jewelry store retail clerk, she a therapy dog for lonely old folks at the senior center) they sat and stared at the ocean, waiting to maybe see a whale in the distance as they let time sooth their aging bones.

Stu talked to his dog the way you talk to your best friend.

We’re in the fourth quarter, Riley, he said.

Riley’s tail thumped a line in the sand.

Time’s running out, Stu said.

Together they waited.

At about 9:30 a.m. the sun grew more powerful in the sky, a molten reminder of the moment rising hotter and hotter from the horizon. Stu reached into the cooler and pulled out two cold macaroons, homemade treats for him and Riley. The burnt coconut scent carried on the breeze all the way down to the water line.

Rook snapped his head their way and charged, his strong Doberman jaws already set as he ran with that same look in his eyes as when he spotted the bloody flank steak Hank fed him a few times a week. That dog ate better than his owner, partial to raw pork chops rather than beef, but willing to swallow anything Hank put in front of him.

Come to think of it, along with the macaroons, maybe Rook caught a whiff of Riley’s doggie perfume Stu dabbed behind her ear each morning before they left the apartment.

Rook, you sonofabitch, come back here, Hank said.

But the Doberman was off and running, driving forward with his head down like an enraged bull ready to gore a matador to death.

Stu gasped. Riley looked up. Rook closed the distance. Riley didn’t flinch. Rook stopped.

Riley nudged the macaroon in the sand with her petite nose, moving the cookie toward Rook whose own nose now sniffed the sweet biscuit buried in the sand. When the big dog gobbled his gift he looked into Riley’s dark chocolate eyes.

Stu smiled.

Hank hovered nearby, out of breath from the run through the sand.

You trying to poison my dog? No, no, don’t tell me. You want to breed my pedigree with that scrawny fairy princess of yours. That’s it. I see what you’re up to, you old pervert, you.

I beg your pardon, Stu said.

You heard me, bikini boy.

Stu didn’t know what to do. Nobody ever mocked his Speedo swimsuit before. Nobody even noticed. Hank snarled, spitting droplets of wet white anger like he was frothing at the mouth.

How about I dropkick that fluff ball so-called dog of yours from here to Ocean City?

You could barely hear Rook growl low and deep, bringing the slow, steady rumble of affection up from his belly, a strong yet subtle warning to the world to leave this delicate dune doggie of his dreams alone. Riley cowered crawling under torn yellow webbing on the worn seat of the rusted lawn chair Stu carried from home. Rook widened his stance, balanced strong on all fours, ready for anything as his heart pounded in his broad chest.

Hank lifted his knee to snap a karate kick like he saw the mixed martial arts maniacs deliver on the TV he watched in bed every night, cocking his leg for a front punt that would easily rupture Riley’s pint-sized kidneys. As he prepared to unleash his leg, he hit the sand hard, slamming onto his back not knowing what hit him.

Rook was on his master, digging his teeth into throat gristle like he was polishing off a full-course prime rib meal, shaking Hank back and forth around like a stinking sewer rat.

Stu picked up Riley and closed his eyes.

Don’t watch, honey, he said.

But Riley watched.

Did she ever watch her hero protect her honor from the big bad beach bully who acted like he was tougher than man or beast. When Rook finished with Hank, he looked to Riley who gently nudged another macaroon his way, a reward he hungrily accepted and gulped in one bite.

Good doggie, Stu said.

Riley wagged her tail.

Stu reached down and patted Rook’s head.

You want to come home with us, boy?

Rook wagged his tail.

Poor Hank was right about one thing: The puppies would be ugly, but when love is in the air, who cares?