The Circular Years

((Shannon O’Day’s Youthful Years in Sketches) (1900-1909))


There have been three books written on Shannon O’Day and some independent sketches, this is one of those sketches, for the curious reader who wishes to know more about Shannon’s earlier years especial how he came about for the liking of his most precious substance—booze!



Sketch One

The World According to Shannon O’ Day



The world, which grownups call civilization, or the city or county or country, is composed of a hazy, perhaps never-ending flow of thoughts, and to an eight-year old boy, I could say any boy, with a vast accumulation of energy, but in this case, that is, in particular, Shannon O’Day’s case, he fits the bill quite well.
They, Shannon’s nuclear family, consisted of his brother, mother and father, and they lived in the upper apartments, near the Capitol, of the inner city of St. Paul, Minnesota, between 1900 and 1909.
They only had one lamp for light, sloping crossways, giving light circular throughout the one big room they had. Although the kitchen was sectioned off, the bathroom was in the hallway, on each of the three floors. The building was old—even in 1900—an old wooden structure, perhaps built in the late 1870s.
Like all boys of his age, at his time and place in history, he wanted to travel, journey in search of adventure, perhaps to a war, yet his eyes could scarcely decipher what life was all about. He saw his father almost from birth—with his drinking daily, preparing to die daily, that is to say, coughing up blood, and hangovers, and bloodshot eyes, and reeking with booze out of his pores. Once out of madness, he nearly hurled him over the banister, from their third floor apartment. He wasn’t corrupt, just kind of disband, melted down you might say, with the winds of booze, which often swept his mind, engendered, stimulated his second self, his death’s second self, the one waiting for him, with his demons.
But Shannon, of Irish stock, had that intuition (or learned it mighty quick), that near second insight I might say, perhaps that the Druids had or Celts had; he also had that mental book, cyclical book of the devil’s, that he could see into—per near read, so Shannon knew when his father was possessed and when he wasn’t. This would suffice for his survival through those trying years.
These were the circular years for him, because he seemed to be going always in circles, especial with his father, things seldom changed, that is to say, he got drunk, they ate very little, except when their mother brought home groceries because she did some sewing for a neighbor, or cleaned a house, and so forth.

No reasonable mind can doubt this truth, whose instantaneous result would show up in the future—hence, thereafter, time without end—the curse of the world would befall him; and the theory holds true I believe, that when a boy is weaned on milk, he will grow strong boned, when he is weaned on milk and booze, he will perhaps grow strong, but also acquire a taste, a liking for the cursed substance called booze. He will—in time, have a body-chemistry change over, or if his genetic structure is likened to his father from day one, this imperfect substance, maliciously will take a voyage throughout his system, and seat itself at the helm of his being—near his soul, and forevermore, make him want more, make him come back for more, and Shannon’s father, was the organic ladder for Shannon’s demise with alcoholism, as well as his own, and the weakening of the heart of Shannon’s older brother Gus, I do believe.
It is enough to compare a drunk with a drunk, the rude unsteady hands of Shannon’s father would bring—or better put—permitted the formulation of Shannon’s future addiction to alcohol, where there would be no satisfactory resolution for him to stop its usage. This formless substance, with its chaotic nature made his father insensitive at times, and thus, would form a faithful, and catalogued character, and friend to and for Shannon.

No: 455 (8-25-2009)


The Circular Years
((Shannon O’Day’s Youthful Years in Sketches) (1900-1909))


Sketch Two

“Implacable Death”


I went to my bed, flopped down on top of my iron framed bed—I had already closed the curtains around the bed, nobody was home, just me. And there I lay on my back. The never changing world circled around me, as did the room. Everything was hazy, it was near twilight, the sun in the sky appeared to be hung onto a rope like a shadow, or perhaps it was like a cloud, it was by and large, an incredible day, a day without end, many omens, and I felt my pitiless death surround me. In spite of having been a child of eight-years old, my grandfather had died of alcoholism, and my father was on his way to such a death, and now me, at eight-years old, I was in the symmetrical gardens of the dying, or so I felt, my father allowed me enter without cost, perhaps more at coheres me to enter, to drink four-shots of 140-proof vodka—was his way of saying: welcome to the family curse.
“Was I to die now?” I asked myself.
I looked in the window behind me, it was likened to a mirror, I saw my reflection, in the midst of it all, I hated looking at myself, nearly in terror—I had a long looking horse-face.
“How does one put an end to these wandering illusions?” I asked myself, but of course, in simpler terms. Then got thinking, my father lived with these on a daily bases—by gosh, what a life.
I knew the fast moving thoughts and visions I was having were doubtless due to the alcohol, four shots in a row—it per near poisoned my system, saturated my blood stream. A bird flew across the window, unthinkingly I turned my head and waited for it to return, it never did. I had even noticed as I tried to talk to myself, my human voice weakened. I had tried to tell dad “No more…!” but he said, “Grow up you little twerp!”
And so I had two more shots, four all together. Back then, back when I was just a youngster, nothing I said reached the ear of my father; a man who is sitting in his own infinitely senseless, silence—somewhere I would expect, wanting, waiting but not getting another drink of booze, cause he’s long gone.

The Lamp and a Timorous Boy


The lamp lit the room, and after I sobered up I got thinking, no more faces remained or shadows. They had all gone a good distance away, without waiting for my head to produce questions and answers, there I laid in bed thinking….

I was a timorous boy, to say the least. I can say it now, but wouldn’t have back then, now that I have entered—and seem to be in the middle of (looking back), entered I say, into carrying out a life of drinking, that alcohol had degraded me by making me become shy. Furthermore, it made me an over unassuming man—, as a boy, I took leave of myself, went looking around for pa’s booze, sneaked it, quiet like, even took a few dollars out of his pocket when he was passed-out, and bought corn whiskey with it. The truth is that, I felt too often, and perhaps most often, too visible and vulnerable. But vainly, I kept my drinking under some kind of control during those youthful years.
At age ten, I had already told myself happiness had ended for my youth, no accident of fate. Somehow I thought in my head, or foresaw, that humanity had two regions that he could dwell in happily, one being a soldier, the other a bandit. On the other hand, a lifetime job seemed to me, whosoever would undertake it that is—it would impose upon him a future as atrocious as trying to find your way through a labyrinth. So I hoped and prayed there would be a big war, and there was, they called it, The Great War, and I told myself that was my cup of tea. For as I grew older, I drank more, and the more I drank the more the eyes of men looked dead to me. Anyhow, so war was my forte for when I’d grow up.


A Blurred Young Soldier’s Vision


Under the trees of our apartment building’s backyard, I meditated on this loss of youth I felt surrounded me one summer afternoon when I was ten-years old, ready to go and move in with our Uncle Hawk, and perhaps try to figure out the plan mankind had for an extended life for a human being, for a labyrinth that produced an everyday job for every solid citizen, in the country. I imagined it was under the control of some secret society, on top of some far-off mountain, and that they could escape if need be by some underground tunnel beneath the mountain that lead into the sea, and came up and out, somewhere else right out of a river, what a thought, and want a maze, growing out of a ten-year old mind. Yes I was lost in these imaginary illusions, for an undetermined period of time, youthful time. By observing my father, I got the impression men might be enemies of other men, depending on the simple differing of opinions they shared. But all men seemed to share the same understanding, and loyalty to the one country they lived in, perhaps that is why I figured being a soldier inspired me—filled my mediating days back then. I could see an avenue of escape, a strange destiny and course. Now looking back, I know the blood and tears that are required for a war, the madness, the shapeless mass of contradictory words that float across oceans and continents and other large land masses.

No: 456 (8-25-2009)

Yesterday

(A Shannon O’Day Story)


Gus O’Day had not always been a Minnesota corn farmer. But the time when he had not been, his neighbors, or even his brother Shannon could not remember, it was more than forty-five years ago, and it was such a short period of time in his life that only the old men at the County Old Folks Farm could recall it, and to be quite honest, in 1956 (several months before he’d die of a heart attack), it was hard for them to even recall it, and most of them did not, because in that time he was not yet even twenty-years old.
He was a young man then, working at a pawnshop (His Uncle Hawk Gordon O’Day owned it, down on Wabasha Street by the Lyceum Movie Theatre, across the street from the World Theatre. Hawk Gordon was a man of a small figure, with red hair, always having greasy looking hands and shirt and face, wiping his hands constantly onto the back of his trousers—), he worked there at his mother’s request and done so voluntarily when asked, he even tried to persuade his mother (Ella Teresa Cotton O’Day) to let him do it alone, which she refused because after his father departed (dropped them off there), left them to go to who-knows-where, he knew this part of his life—with his younger brother but ten-years—was a mere formally, and a fragment in the span of a life time.
So Gus did what he felt he had to do. Years after (after the death of his mother, and his marriage to Mabel Foote, and taking in his younger brother, and buying his farm), years after that, he still said it was the only thing he could have done, or do; that is, to put up with the situation, and the drunkenness of his uncle in which he was convinced he was taking advantage of his mother, of which she insisted he remain neutral, because he provided a backroom for them to live in, and food—room and board.
Actually he did not overlook it, several months after his mother had passed on—that following winter, having saved enough money in the past two years for a down payment on a small farm, he bought it, and left that part of St. Paul, and moved twenty-miles outside of the city in what was then a remote section of the outskirts. He left his uncle with a taste of his fists, the night he left, and just like they had appeared one night from nowhere, he left the whiskey soaked uncle, the sole owner—promptly, and dignified, with a bill of sale for the farm in his pants pocket and his name signed to it.

The following morning, Gus woke Shannon and Mabel up, sat in the kitchen, at their square wooden table, and Gus handed them a butcher’s knife, and said, “I killed Uncle Hawk Gordon, five hours ago.”
Mabel half awake, who had been sitting drinking coffee at the square wooden table first, before Gus arrived, perhaps had been sitting there for those hours Gus had been missing from the bedroom, whose to say, looked at the nine-inch knife, looked it over, as Gus had swayed—unnoticeable swayed it to and fro: she looked at that knife in his hands with a flat affect, “Let’s not jump to conclusions it appears no one took you into consideration yet.” And with the morning paper to prove it, she looked high and low, page after page, turned on the radio, station to station, end to end, not a word of the murder, and with that she calmed her husband down, claiming the wrong he did was so far undetected on his part, and perhaps better left alone.
I can remember the odd and surprised look that Shannon had on his face. I grabbed the evidence, and it did not take but ten-minutes to dispose of it into the forty-foot well outside near the creek.
“We’re farmers now,” Mabel said, “not storekeepers anymore.” And it would have seemed to an onlooker she had become unshakable to the incident. Gus’ voice was near silent, almost numb, she added, “There’s not going to be any court-trial over that gray and redheaded whiskey drinking pervert!” She insisted.
Only those words were harsher than the words she’d use in 1956. But even then, she’d confess, he got what he deserved. That the justice system would not consider the torment he caused his fellow man, and Gus’ mother, you’d have to be rich, or famous, or know someone—someone who could understand, and empathize, and someone who could do something about such a person, and there was no one out there like that, not even Judge Finley would have protected Gus.
“We all know in this country,” she said back then, “we all know from birth to death that justice—if you want to call it that, demands the culprit be given his rights over the victim, and it is seldom the everlasting price, mentally if not physically—or ever would be considered by the injustice system presently in place.” And as far as she could see, Uncle Hawk had only his own life to pay for the life he tormented, thus, his death, spares those who would have come before him, had he not died.

“I had felt at the time I had to take Uncle Hawk Gordon’s life from him in order to stop him from using people the way he used us!” said Gus. “I didn’t know back then it would follow me to my grave. And that is what I am talking about—somewhat talking about, not about a dead man per se, that died forty-years ago, or his character per se, nor his morality or the sexual acts he made my mother perform, that I saw from the keyhole, but that she was defenseless and he justified it in forcing the issue with our survival, and basing it on her performance. Of course, he never knew this, he slept sound with his bottle of whiskey in his hands each night, as he did when I killed him. Perhaps he still has that bottle in his grave.”
“Yes,” said Mabel, “I’ve tried to tell you this for years, she had no choice in the matter that she was just trying to do the best she could do, with what she had at the time, under the trying circumstances she found herself in. And your instincts and beliefs made his death inevitable, and caused no one any misery, and perhaps better for humanity’s sake.”

Gus had been sitting at the same kitchen table, in the same room he had sat in forty-years ago, where his brother Shannon had sat as a boy…took in that deep breath of disbelief, and everything was so quiet you could only hear the clock ticking on the wall, that seemed to go throughout the room, as if in a bell tower.
“Well Gus,” said his wife, “at least after forty-some years you’ve stopped talking about it, and now at sixty-six it surfaces.”
“That’s right,” Gus said, then corrected himself, “I thought about it everyday of my life, every time I look at that wall, I even replaced the clock so I’d not have to hear the ticking.”
His eyes no longer bright, his face thin, his hair starting to whiten, his heart weakened, “Come here,” said Mabel. “I want you over here for a moment. Ask your brother to come over, you’re feeling way down, over that perverted uncle of yours. Shannon seems to perk you up!”

They were outside now, standing on the wooden stairs, Gus stepped halfway down, his hand on his wife’s shoulder to keep his balance, his eyes half shut too weak to keep them open any wider.
“Justice was accomplished for once, if you can’t bear looking at it that way, don’t look at it at all,” Mabel said.
“Yes,” said Gus.
“Then what do you want?” or expect?”
“I can’t help it,” Gus said, and he couldn’t. Yet for him it was like it happened yesterday, not forty-years ago. Then he heard a voice, it was Shannon’s, “Stop! Over hear!” And Gus looked to the right hand side of him. He could hardly see Shannon. There he stood, benting over the railing, much older looking than he was, barefoot on his porch steps, with a haunting and fierce look on his face; his skin pale, like buttermilk; his hands shaking, as if having palsy of age.
“Come,” said Shannon “I got some homemade corn whisky, let’s sit in the cornfields and get drunk!”
“Yup!” he agreed “let’s get out of here and get off these porch steps, let’s go!” And they did.
His eyes were now eager, content and more than willing to let the dead bury the dead, at least until tomorrow, which today would be yesterday, after they finished that bottle of corn liquor.


No: 449 8-5-2009.. Independent of any other stories of Shannon O’Day