Writing Oxford: Life in a Small Town

A pilot becomes a painter, documenting a half century of a small town and becomes a part of the story he is telling--community exhibits, his paintings hanging on residents' walls, the side of the market bearing a mural of his work.

A real estate agent, who sails, carves decoys and models, and writes books and poetry about his hometown, starts a tradition of decorating docks along the creek with Christmas trees, that are still lit every December. An award bearing his name is given out each year to the people who are doing the most to honor the town's past and move it forward.

A World War II photographer turns his lens to the small community he calls home and helps pen the definitive history book of the town's first three centuries. And along the way, he helps save the old school building, turning it into a community center.

Howard Lapp, Doug Hanks Jr., and Norman Harrington. Just three examples, but ones that float to the front of my mind, about how individuals can and do make a difference in Oxford, Md., and how Oxford's collective history is told through the stories of its people.

This is obviously the case with any small town or community, but Oxford is the one that I know and whose names and people I know and have seen in action. The chapters of the town's history are people and a person has the chance to be an integral part of the story.

I think I have felt that more in Oxford than anywhere else, which is maybe what keeps me close, or brings me back. Oxford's is a story that is unfolding, and anyone could play a big part in what that story is or what it becomes.

In 1704, Oxford was one of Maryland's most important cities. By 1800, it was desolate. In 1900, the town had ten general stores, five seafood packing houses, two restaurants, two physicians, two blacksmiths, two hotels, a flour mill, shipbuilder, cooper, dentist, brick manufacturer, undertaker, druggist, barber, shoemaker, sailmaker, newspaper, bank, and four churches (citing "From Pot Pie to Hell and Damnation: An Illustrated Gazetteer of Talbot County").

I'm not saying Oxford could return as a hub of commerce, nor that that would be a good thing. In my lifetime it's been a town known for boat yards, restaurants, brick sidewalks, boats, and water. A number of the people who live here found it by sailing and decided to call it home. That's pretty damn cool.

I don't claim any special knowledge or insight into Oxford's future. No predictions or prophesies here. What I like is seeing how people, individuals, have made a difference; have shaped the town and helped create what it has been and what it is. And knowing that for wherever the town goes, those people are here now, living and/or working and helping it get there. People whose vision, whose efforts, whose eccentricities, whose time, whose senses of humor, all make a difference and make up the town.

Fake Uncles and Godfathers

Beware of men you are taught to call "uncle," who aren't actually your uncle. It's likely they've got something on your parents. For my sister and I, two of those people were Doug Hanks Jr. (pictured above right, with balloons) and Artie Jeffra (above left, with laurel crown and stuffed snake). "Uncle Doug" became my godfather, while "Uncle Artie" was my sister's. These two men taught me what side-splitting, can't-catch-your-breath, damn-near-wet-yourself laughter is.

Doug died in 2003. His exploits, stories, thoughts, and memories were well documented. He wrote them down. He always had a project. He involved others and got the community excited about things. Artie died a week ago, on Jan. 25. I doubt his stories will be as widely accessible, but he has as many of them.

When we were growing up, what either of them did for a living didn't matter much to us. I knew Doug had a real estate company next to the Avalon Theater in Easton. I knew that Artie did different things, from painting and wallpaper to working with/on boats. I remember hearing that his dad was a boxing champion. My father and Doug grew up together in Oxford, and the Hanks's were cousins of ours. I don't know how Artie came into the mix.

What we cared about, is that when they showed up for family functions, the party started. Drinks and laughter started flowing. Music got louder. They were in the backyard playing wiffle ball with or against us kids. As it got dark, Artie would be karaoke singing into a lacrosse stick or baseball bat to my dad's reel-to-reel taped Motown songs. We were on the floor laughing at him.

Artie loved when I got into heavy metal music in middle school. He dug Judas Priest. For my birthday, he would give me money or a gift certificate to the local music store (Price's) to go buy a "headache tape," named for the headache it would give my parents. Like giving a Talking Elmo doll to someone's toddler.

We heard rumors of Artie's legendary antics: "borrowing" a fire truck in Ocean City or singing and dancing on tables at the Oxford Fire Department bull roast. We never tried to confirm them. What we knew is that Artie liked to have a good time, and he made everyone else's time so much better. His laugh was raucous, raspy, and contagious. It was impossible to be on hand for and not catch.

When my dad turned 70 last year, Artie couldn't make the party/roast because of the lung issues that ultimately took his life. Doug had passed away some ten years before. That night there was plenty of laughter shared, but I missed both of theirs. Doug would have been in his element telling stories at the microphone. The Artie of old would have extended the party and had people dancing.

Family parties for my daughters and my sister's children are dull by comparison. Our generation has lost some of the laughter--we don't have an Artie or a Doug that the kids can't wait to see come in the door. Both were once in a lifetime personalities, irreplaceable, but I feel like we need to channel them better.

Our godfathers, our fake uncles, taught us how to laugh. Deep belly laugh. That's a gift to pass on.

Christmas Passed; Good King Wenceslas

I'm not much for Christmas. That hurts to say, but it's been a few years coming. It feels tired, forced, fake. Blame Walmart and Target, for putting Christmas shit out in September next to the back to school shopping. Blame consumer America for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all the other fanfare and crap that killed Kenny and Christmas all at once.

How about we blame Charles Dickens? I mean I'm a Dickens fan, but you tell me if you could pick between what Christmas is now, and this:

... in medieval times, peasants and lords alike celebrated Christmas with a twelve-day rager, glomming the Nativity onto the pagan feasts of Saturnalia and the Winter Solstice to create a super-holiday full of carol singing, gift-giving, raucous game-playing, the burning of Yule logs, and a whole hell of a lot of drinking.

Sign me up. That sounds like Festivus before the Costanza's came up with the feats of strength. In the fantastic article quoted above, Richard Michael Kelly connects the publication of "A Christmas Carol" to the lame popular public celebration of Christmas we have today.

Nostalgia at Christmas time isn't a new thing. Dylan Thomas felt it too. His "A Child's Christmas in Wales" is the one story I read every year. To myself, mind you. Thomas connects history and his memories in recalling:

Years and years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and snowed... Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely white-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards.

Get a poet reminiscing about snow, and let him/her roll.

I'm not Charlie Brown here, wondering about the true meaning of Christmas. I've born witness to folks and communities that get it. Doug Hanks Jr. and the town of Oxford with the dock trees in Town Creek come to mind. Going down there last year with Joel Shilliday to get photos of the lit up creek, or talking with Henry Hale about how and why the trees continue to get out there and how so much of the town is into it. That's a bit of what Christmas is, or should be.

My favorite part of Christmas every year growing up was the fact that my grandparents from Towson would drive down and stay Christmas Eve, wake up with us on Christmas morning, and sometimes stay the next night. Sure, presents rocked, but seeing their car turn onto E. Division Street in Oxford, and helping them unload the car, that is Christmas to me as much as anything will be.

I'm not sure what traditions my girls are inheriting. Each year, the three of us have gone to Hutchison's Christmas Forest and cut down a tree, but this is their last year. We don't go overboard on Christmas gifts, but I guess there is the stress of gifts, followed directly by January and February birthdays. But Christmas feels like a fake facade town, set up with just the building fronts leaning against two-by-fours, that a strong wind will take down.

Christmas, even in sight of what it is all about, feels like a going through the motions and has for the past few years. The girls are super excited Christmas morning and day, they spend time with family, eat, play with their booty (toys people, their loot, come on ;), but I need to get myself back in the spirit.

For me, the solid memories of Christmas past, seems heading firmly in the direction of Christmas passed.

I don't have an answer. Maybe it's a search. Maybe a quest. But if you will indulge me with letting Dylan Thomas ramble again, he has something of it here:

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts wooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs where the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house.

"What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"

"No," Jack said. "Good King Wenceslas. I'll count three."

One, two, three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round that house that was occupied by nobody that we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door.

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen...

And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.

A group of boys go caroling on a completely dark night, to a house they don't know. They are afraid. They bust out an old song they know. They connect with a total stranger, which may well have encompassed his whole Christmas. They run like hell back home and all is right with the world.

Unscripted. Spur of the moment. Out of the comfort zone. Spontaneity, fear, human connection to a stranger. Merry Christmas.

Riffs for a Tuesday morning

Language is a monkey wrench. -Charles Simic

If I'm wondering what I think, what I have to say, I can always turn to Simic to ask me the right questions. To make pronouncements that remind me both that: 1) language is just a tool, not an end in itself, and 2) I don't like the Foo Fighters.

Being a man among words, it's sometimes easy to get so hung up on finding just the right word, that I am left sitting, silently, with something to say.

Employ the right tool. You could try to cut down a Christmas tree with a monkey wrench, but you better have a lot of time and a big tree skirt.

Sometimes, a smile is the right word.

Philosophers who seek those moments in which the senses, the mind, and the emotions are experienced together. -CS

There is no instruction manual for that kind of integration. Or if you find one, let me know. Maybe just sitting for long stretches in front of a bowl of gumbo at the dinner table, pausing between spoonfuls to look at my wife and daughters. Eating and being, mindfully in love.

Laughter undermines discipline and leads to anarchy. -CS

Some of my favorite memories are filled with fall-on-the-ground/spit-take laughter. Playing wiffleball in our back yard with my godfather, Doug Hanks, Jr., who could break up a game at any minute with a pronouncement at the plate. That's something he could do, and did, throughout his life.

If philosophy, cosmology, poetry, life--if the big, noble pursuits don't include, seek out, or make room for laughter, then I'm not playing. That's maybe why I'm drawn to those folks who think, who write, who live, or try to, with a smile.