The War on Drugs, on Christmas Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Frozen remnants of a deer, left by the unfriendly neighborhood poacher, meant to both sicken our dogs and disgust and intimidate us.
By Barry Crimmins
I cringe each December as I reflect on a dramatically belligerent, immature and cruel act I committed as a young man.
It was the holidays in 1980 and I was the not-so-grand poobah at the Ding Ho, home of Constant Comedy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chris Brock, spiritual leader of our wait staff along with our bartender-in-chief, the late Annie Behr, surprised us by purchasing, installing and decorating a beautiful Christmas tree on a corner of the stage. It was a gesture that came directly from their bottomless hearts to each of the various characters who helped make that little club legendary.
I was hosting a Ding-style headliner-emceed show the night they lit the tree. I arrived an hour or so early, pounded a beer or two, figured out the sequence of festivities and took the stage after an intro, more likely than not from D.J. Hazard. I made my entrance, and without so much as a double-take, grabbed the tree and hurled it, still lit and decorated, out the stage door and into the night. It struck an unsuspecting Bobcat Goldthwait as he approached the club. He assures me that it only took him a decade or so before he could again walk the yuletide streets without flinching.
The audience members, thinking the stunt was planned just for them, combusted into laughter. Others, who had had their act of Christmas generosity destroyed by a callous oaf, suppressed tears as they continued to provide top-notch service to our guests. Chris and Annie forgave me soon enough but once I realized the injury I had inflicted, auto-absolution was placed on permanent back-order.
Although I still don't buy the most wonderful time of the year propaganda (I'll take summer, please and thank you), my role of horse's ass in the manger began a gradual pilgrimage away from the predictable and pedestrian anti-holidays stance I had once thought hip. In the coming years I slowly turned to the truth -- my annual misery was a needy, narcissistic and tone deaf piece of turf upon which to stand at the end of 12 months.
With time, enlightenment overshadowed embarrassment concerning my boorish conduct. I learned that year-end celebrations proceeded unimpeded whether or not anyone realized that my background made me uncomfortable with tidings of comfort and joy. Other people had their own problems and most of them got along without making their melancholy the center of attention. It was time for me to get on board or get out of the way. A big sleigh was coming through. Too bad I hadn't learned this before violating Annie and Chris's Christmas offering.
I have reformed reasonably well since the Infamous Humbug of 1980, spreading cheer here and there while trying to maintain
patience and humility during a season that is difficult for many. This year I faced Christmas without Karen, who was visiting her mother. This sewed a bit of a dark cloud in the lining of the silver bells. Worse, as the holidays approached I was in the nasty grip of hypervigilance because a two-legged vermin had spent the past several weeks attempting to poison Lettie and Lu the Dogs with rancid meat.
This limbo king of lowlife scattered decomposing flesh (and bones) both on our property line and along the road near our home. Both of our darlings had gotten sick from rotten meat that they'd find no matter how short a leash we kept them on. So we now have to run them on farmer's fields a few miles away. Running is essential to their warding off hip problems they were both born with. The stronger their leg muscles the less prone they are to becoming disabled by their maladies. So this clown was threatening their health in more ways than one.
The verminator is a neighbor who poaches deer -- even during hunting season. He doesn't "tag" anything he shoots unless a game warden is in the vicinity. The locals, even the Tea Party flakes, have no use for him. He's a known trespasser, thief, contraband peddler, vandal and committer of evil deeds against anyone who confronts him.
He had also taken to throwing nails on our driveway, causing at least five flat tires. He had bragged to one of the Tea Partiers of employing the same tactic to drive some out-of-town hunters away from a campsite in the state forest last year. You see this land baron of ten acres feels that the 2,000 acre state property should be looked upon as his private domain.
The poacherman took out his cowardly rage on our dogs and tires because I had the nerve to inform his poaching buddy, a maggot from an upstate city, that he was not permitted to park on our lawn nor fire weapons within 500 feet of our home. Nervy, ain't I? (OK, OK, I did underscore my point by doing some chain saw work as poacher pal tried to hunt but the work needed doing and it was my Saturday morning, too! Nevertheless, I won't do it again.)
After a few weeks of assaults, my PTSD fight or flight response was fully engaged. I was in danger of unshackling the Ghost of Ding Ho Past. I fantasized about spreading tidings of discomfort and anguish -- tidings that would surely harm innocents much more than it would injure the human lint that clumps up our locality.
Perspective arrived in the person of an old friend at Thanksgiving. She was in the region to visit her daughter, who is a POW of the drug war and currently wasting away in one of upstate New York's innumerable human confinement facilities.
Realizing that I best stay busy so as to not fall prey to rage and/or melancholy, I volunteered to visit our friend's daughter on December 25. Armed only with seasonal good intentions, my fantasies now refocused on bringing cheer to the confined rather than mayhem to a camouflaged coward.
To doubly ensure my good behavior, I filed a report about the would-be dog assassin with the State Police. They said they "could have a talk with him but that would probably only make matters worse." Yeah, we wouldn't want to aggravate a terrorist or anything. This, after all, was still the good old U.S. of A! In any case, I'd put myself on the map with the authorities and in doing so, removed even the remote possibility that I'd act on a desire to go pound on the fucker's door and give him an excuse, however weak, to shoot me.
After tracking down a few prison-approved items as a Christmas offering for the dearly detained, I got out of my own way and gleefully anticipated the big day. I planned to bring Lettie and Lu with me, figuring that it was better to leave them in the car in the prison parking lot for a few hours than to abandon them all day, particularly with the creep poacher looming in the neighborhood.
The dogs and I arose before dawn on Christmas. I walked them, fed them, packed them in the car and piloted it to a county park, where they celebrated by romping through several inches of white powder on a frigid and very windy morn.
Lettie and Lu then slept almost the whole way to an upstate town that remains on the map due largely to the men's and women's prisons that take up dozens of acres of real estate just a few miles south of Lake Ontario. I found the woman's facility, drove past, and got a couple miles down the road, where it was rural enough to give both hounds a chance to decorate the cake one more time before they settled down for a long winter's nap in the prison lot.
I bid farewell to the girls and left them in a relatively abandoned portion of the lot. Considering how many guards and cameras there were watching the area, I felt as good about abandoning them as I could. Maybe I'd finally get conclusive proof that Lettie is the culprit who shreds the contents of the litter bag. But I could count on nothing because she's much better at covering her tracks than the evil neighbor, who dumped rancid chicken just past the end of our driveway before making a three-point turn and driving directly back to his house in a couple of inches of fresh powder. The cops weren't interested in the photos I took documenting this crime. Such evidence might only serve to agitate!
I remained preoccupied with my adopted daughters as I entered a small building outside the prison walls that is devoted to the first part of a two-step process all visitors to the medium security prison must complete before visiting a detainee. My parental concerns for canines were put aside as I settled into a large waiting area full of friends and family of convicts. It was astounding was how many children were there, spending their Christmas morning waiting in an area where there was very little of interest for a youngster.
The kids were amazing! They made the best of a sad situation by playing with the toy or two the authorities permitted them to bring into what was a poorly retrofitted holding area. The small building may have once been some sort of administrative facility but it certainly wasn't meant for throngs of people who won't give up on loved ones, no matter what. The place was nothing more than an overrun mudroom with a few restrooms tucked away behind doors decorated with generations of scratches and gouges. The doors were operated by greasy doorknobs that served as unsubtle advertisements for Purell.
The waiting area contained a few too-large tables, a scattering of chairs and many more people than could be accommodated by the ratty furniture. It was SRO with little room for standing in the "L" shaped space. At the crotch of the "L" was a desk where a competent, kindly African-American woman did what she could to provide hope to those who were receiving a taste of this society's disregard for the unfortunate.
I thought to myself, "Welcome to steerage, oh man of the people." Because that's what it was, a place where poor people suffered and waited until they could cross over to somewhere wild and unknown. (Of course most of them were veterans of several crossings.) Like the kids, the adults made the best of things, conversing furtively about the common enemy of all who had signed in to visit -- an endless wait. Everyone, including the staff and especially the children, behaved wonderfully. I can't imagine a lousier place for a kid to spend a Christmas morning but in four hours of waiting alongside these sweeties, I didn't hear so much as one whine, much less a crying jag. Believe me, they had every reason to weep.
Demographically the crowd consisted of Latinos, African-Americans and poor white folks -- each group making up about a third of the constituency. There were no well-to-do people waiting in purgatory for a chance to visit Hell on Christmas morning. The individuals waiting it out with me had decorum and manners not found among people of privilege. They knew when to take "no" for an answer -- particularly when it came from the decent soul who was doing everything she could to goose an unresponsive system into showing some holiday spirit by speeding up the processing process. Again and again she called the main gate, asking when another group might be allowed to make its way to see a loved one. Again and again she hung up the phone and sighed.
At one point I overheard a woman speak glowingly of the attendant, saying. "She don't have ta come in here on Christmas and if she don't, our asses is out there, waiting in the cold. Oh, it's happened!"
From this I built a theory that the prison had a skeleton staff working on Christmas thus the glacial pace of visitor processing. Even though the prison guard organizations put more lobbying money into perpetuating the war on drugs so that we can punish people for attempting to self-medicate despair and keep the jails full, the guards don't have to work on Christmas -- at least in the screening areas where visitors are processed. But to consider things in a positive light, this meant that most every prison staffer I did deal with that day was at least decent enough to be there. Good on them.
I had no kick coming. I was a rookie and had to put aside that I was feeling a bit woozy from the not-so-pleasant fragrance of the place and weary from standing for several hours. It wasn't about me. It was about the kids waiting to see their mothers. It was about the people who had taken a bus all the way from NYC to spend a few moments with an exiled loved one at the holiday. It was about the poor souls rotting behind those walls. It was about the staff members who were there doing what they could on what was also their Christmas. So I maintained good behavior and hoped for parole from purgatory into Hell.
After arriving and filling out a few forms, it was two hours before I heard the kindly woman suggest to others that there would be at least an hour delay before anyone else was brought to the actual prison for security screening. It was lunchtime and there'd be no new visitors processed until it was over. I slipped out and drove the girls back to their rural rest area. They drank water, tinted the snow and had a few dog biscuits. We walked maybe a mile or so.
Upon returning to the prison, I waited for better than an hour until I was finally handed back one of the forms I'd filled out. The kind woman then instructed to join an odd parade of maybe a dozen people that snaked along a sidewalk and up to the main entrance of the prison. We were buzzed through some locked doors. I took my care package of tobacco and magazines to a table where two trustees stood collecting the little treasures.
I brought my photo ID and form to the officer who sat behind a large counter. He gathered my items politely and asked me to take a seat. I did so thankfully. It felt good to sit. I did so patiently while they processed a few large families through some questioning and then a metal detector. One of the families had to leave a bunch of stuff behind in bus station-type lockers because it somehow violated the rules of what could be brought in. They were told that they could buy food from vending machines inside. Their crestfallen looks betrayed that they didn't have much disposable vending machine moola.
I was brought out of a contact funk by a tug on my sleeve from a kid wearing a comical foam cowboy hat. He announced, "I'm Woody!"
I said, "Well, hello, Woody! I'm Barry and it's nice to meet ya!"
The child of maybe five or six repeated, "I'm Woody! Woody from Toy Story!"
"What an honor it is to meet you, Woody! I like your movie!"
"You saw it?" asked Woody who was now beaming with a grin larger than you could find on any child under any tree in America.
"You bet I did!" I said, simultaneously lying and thanking the gods for ubiquitous advertising campaigns.
He then mimed shooting me with his thumb and index finger.
"Be careful with that thang in these here parts, pardner!" I advised.
"OK, I will!" said Woody as an elderly female relation took him away.
Just then the guard behind the counter motioned to his compatriot manning the metal detector to bring me over. I didn't need to be asked to comply.
"Mr. Crimmins, there's a problem. We're going to process you through screening but we don't know if we can let you in yet," said the counter guard.
I tried to remain calm as I passed through the metal detector, even though I made it beep. I removed my shoes and got through without tilting the machine the second time. I was wondering if the delay was because I'd set off a Crimmins detector. Had my political activities caught up with me? Was I being kept out of prison for being too dangerous?
Of course not! The delay, much like the holidays, was not based around me, much less my paranoid, self-aggrandizing theories.
The screening guard confided to me, "We got word that the woman you're here to visit is in the hospital. You'll have to wait until we find out whether she can have a visitor."
A few minutes later I was told that she could not see anyone. That was all the information they could give me due to privacy laws.
A male member of the crestfallen family who'd been left behind to check the goodies for the family's holiday celebration, cleared screening just as I got the bad news. I stopped him and handed him a wad of singles I had with me for the vending machines.
The man spluttered, "But I couldn't…."
"Sure you could but just do me one favor -- get Woody whatever he wants."
The man knew Woody or had at least caught his act because he smiled broadly at my one qualification.
"Merry Christmas, sir!" said I as sincerely as ever in my life.
"Yes, Merry Christmas!" said the now less crestfallen fellow.
"And thank you and Merry Christmas to you two gentlemen, as well!" I said with both sincerity and resignation to the guards as I turned and did something I suspect most visitors do when they walk away from a building that has warehoused generations of forgotten souls: I felt sad, but not for myself. I felt sad for my friend and her daughter and all the people who have to deal with a system that distributes alleged justice in such an uneven manner.
As I walked toward the car I thought. "Well, at least she's in a hospital, which is where a civilized nation should confine and treat a drug addict. So they finally got that right, if only temporarily and by mistake."
I called her mother who called the prison and got through to a kind soul, who got word back to her that her daughter had been taken down by an awful flu. The daughter spent the rest of the holidays in sick bay. I hope to visit her soon.
As I drove home with Lettie and Lu, I counted my great fortune to have such loving and loyal canine friends. I couldn't remain glum in their presence.
I smiled at my good girls and then had a vision of them sprinting down the corridors of the prison, joy blossoming behind them as the inmates and guards were infected by the delight that emanates from a couple of hounds who just don't know any better than to make the woeful somehow wonderful -- much like children waiting to see their moms on a Christmas morning in prison.
As we drove home through the beauty of rural Western New York, I got to wishing that prison guards were instead well-paid, unionized hospital workers in a state-funded health care system. Imagine how they could spend their lobbying money! They could push for a war on despair, making a war on drugs unnecessary. Think of all the lives that could be saved rather than wasted if those acting out their self-loathing by despising the holidays, or self-medicating their anguish with ever-larger yet progressively less effective dosages of drugs and alcohol, or even those who lash out at a world that restricts the maiming and killing of innocent animals -- could be caught early on and shown the redemptive qualities of compassion.
I know such positive change is unlikely but even now, as the seasonal celebrations have come and gone and 2011 has arrived to do its worst, I remain imbued with enough holiday spirit to hold within me the light my friends Chris and Annie lit all those years ago - a light that due to mercy and good fortune, I have never been able to extinguish.
I cringe each December as I reflect on a dramatically belligerent, immature and cruel act I committed as a young man.
It was the holidays in 1980 and I was the not-so-grand poobah at the Ding Ho, home of Constant Comedy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chris Brock, spiritual leader of our wait staff along with our bartender-in-chief, the late Annie Behr, surprised us by purchasing, installing and decorating a beautiful Christmas tree on a corner of the stage. It was a gesture that came directly from their bottomless hearts to each of the various characters who helped make that little club legendary.
I was hosting a Ding-style headliner-emceed show the night they lit the tree. I arrived an hour or so early, pounded a beer or two, figured out the sequence of festivities and took the stage after an intro, more likely than not from D.J. Hazard. I made my entrance, and without so much as a double-take, grabbed the tree and hurled it, still lit and decorated, out the stage door and into the night. It struck an unsuspecting Bobcat Goldthwait as he approached the club. He assures me that it only took him a decade or so before he could again walk the yuletide streets without flinching.
The audience members, thinking the stunt was planned just for them, combusted into laughter. Others, who had had their act of Christmas generosity destroyed by a callous oaf, suppressed tears as they continued to provide top-notch service to our guests. Chris and Annie forgave me soon enough but once I realized the injury I had inflicted, auto-absolution was placed on permanent back-order.
Although I still don't buy the most wonderful time of the year propaganda (I'll take summer, please and thank you), my role of horse's ass in the manger began a gradual pilgrimage away from the predictable and pedestrian anti-holidays stance I had once thought hip. In the coming years I slowly turned to the truth -- my annual misery was a needy, narcissistic and tone deaf piece of turf upon which to stand at the end of 12 months.
With time, enlightenment overshadowed embarrassment concerning my boorish conduct. I learned that year-end celebrations proceeded unimpeded whether or not anyone realized that my background made me uncomfortable with tidings of comfort and joy. Other people had their own problems and most of them got along without making their melancholy the center of attention. It was time for me to get on board or get out of the way. A big sleigh was coming through. Too bad I hadn't learned this before violating Annie and Chris's Christmas offering.
I have reformed reasonably well since the Infamous Humbug of 1980, spreading cheer here and there while trying to maintain
This limbo king of lowlife scattered decomposing flesh (and bones) both on our property line and along the road near our home. Both of our darlings had gotten sick from rotten meat that they'd find no matter how short a leash we kept them on. So we now have to run them on farmer's fields a few miles away. Running is essential to their warding off hip problems they were both born with. The stronger their leg muscles the less prone they are to becoming disabled by their maladies. So this clown was threatening their health in more ways than one.
The verminator is a neighbor who poaches deer -- even during hunting season. He doesn't "tag" anything he shoots unless a game warden is in the vicinity. The locals, even the Tea Party flakes, have no use for him. He's a known trespasser, thief, contraband peddler, vandal and committer of evil deeds against anyone who confronts him.
He had also taken to throwing nails on our driveway, causing at least five flat tires. He had bragged to one of the Tea Partiers of employing the same tactic to drive some out-of-town hunters away from a campsite in the state forest last year. You see this land baron of ten acres feels that the 2,000 acre state property should be looked upon as his private domain.
The poacherman took out his cowardly rage on our dogs and tires because I had the nerve to inform his poaching buddy, a maggot from an upstate city, that he was not permitted to park on our lawn nor fire weapons within 500 feet of our home. Nervy, ain't I? (OK, OK, I did underscore my point by doing some chain saw work as poacher pal tried to hunt but the work needed doing and it was my Saturday morning, too! Nevertheless, I won't do it again.)
After a few weeks of assaults, my PTSD fight or flight response was fully engaged. I was in danger of unshackling the Ghost of Ding Ho Past. I fantasized about spreading tidings of discomfort and anguish -- tidings that would surely harm innocents much more than it would injure the human lint that clumps up our locality.
Perspective arrived in the person of an old friend at Thanksgiving. She was in the region to visit her daughter, who is a POW of the drug war and currently wasting away in one of upstate New York's innumerable human confinement facilities.
Realizing that I best stay busy so as to not fall prey to rage and/or melancholy, I volunteered to visit our friend's daughter on December 25. Armed only with seasonal good intentions, my fantasies now refocused on bringing cheer to the confined rather than mayhem to a camouflaged coward.
To doubly ensure my good behavior, I filed a report about the would-be dog assassin with the State Police. They said they "could have a talk with him but that would probably only make matters worse." Yeah, we wouldn't want to aggravate a terrorist or anything. This, after all, was still the good old U.S. of A! In any case, I'd put myself on the map with the authorities and in doing so, removed even the remote possibility that I'd act on a desire to go pound on the fucker's door and give him an excuse, however weak, to shoot me.
After tracking down a few prison-approved items as a Christmas offering for the dearly detained, I got out of my own way and gleefully anticipated the big day. I planned to bring Lettie and Lu with me, figuring that it was better to leave them in the car in the prison parking lot for a few hours than to abandon them all day, particularly with the creep poacher looming in the neighborhood.
The dogs and I arose before dawn on Christmas. I walked them, fed them, packed them in the car and piloted it to a county park, where they celebrated by romping through several inches of white powder on a frigid and very windy morn.
Lettie and Lu then slept almost the whole way to an upstate town that remains on the map due largely to the men's and women's prisons that take up dozens of acres of real estate just a few miles south of Lake Ontario. I found the woman's facility, drove past, and got a couple miles down the road, where it was rural enough to give both hounds a chance to decorate the cake one more time before they settled down for a long winter's nap in the prison lot.
I bid farewell to the girls and left them in a relatively abandoned portion of the lot. Considering how many guards and cameras there were watching the area, I felt as good about abandoning them as I could. Maybe I'd finally get conclusive proof that Lettie is the culprit who shreds the contents of the litter bag. But I could count on nothing because she's much better at covering her tracks than the evil neighbor, who dumped rancid chicken just past the end of our driveway before making a three-point turn and driving directly back to his house in a couple of inches of fresh powder. The cops weren't interested in the photos I took documenting this crime. Such evidence might only serve to agitate!
I remained preoccupied with my adopted daughters as I entered a small building outside the prison walls that is devoted to the first part of a two-step process all visitors to the medium security prison must complete before visiting a detainee. My parental concerns for canines were put aside as I settled into a large waiting area full of friends and family of convicts. It was astounding was how many children were there, spending their Christmas morning waiting in an area where there was very little of interest for a youngster.
The kids were amazing! They made the best of a sad situation by playing with the toy or two the authorities permitted them to bring into what was a poorly retrofitted holding area. The small building may have once been some sort of administrative facility but it certainly wasn't meant for throngs of people who won't give up on loved ones, no matter what. The place was nothing more than an overrun mudroom with a few restrooms tucked away behind doors decorated with generations of scratches and gouges. The doors were operated by greasy doorknobs that served as unsubtle advertisements for Purell.
The waiting area contained a few too-large tables, a scattering of chairs and many more people than could be accommodated by the ratty furniture. It was SRO with little room for standing in the "L" shaped space. At the crotch of the "L" was a desk where a competent, kindly African-American woman did what she could to provide hope to those who were receiving a taste of this society's disregard for the unfortunate.
I thought to myself, "Welcome to steerage, oh man of the people." Because that's what it was, a place where poor people suffered and waited until they could cross over to somewhere wild and unknown. (Of course most of them were veterans of several crossings.) Like the kids, the adults made the best of things, conversing furtively about the common enemy of all who had signed in to visit -- an endless wait. Everyone, including the staff and especially the children, behaved wonderfully. I can't imagine a lousier place for a kid to spend a Christmas morning but in four hours of waiting alongside these sweeties, I didn't hear so much as one whine, much less a crying jag. Believe me, they had every reason to weep.
Demographically the crowd consisted of Latinos, African-Americans and poor white folks -- each group making up about a third of the constituency. There were no well-to-do people waiting in purgatory for a chance to visit Hell on Christmas morning. The individuals waiting it out with me had decorum and manners not found among people of privilege. They knew when to take "no" for an answer -- particularly when it came from the decent soul who was doing everything she could to goose an unresponsive system into showing some holiday spirit by speeding up the processing process. Again and again she called the main gate, asking when another group might be allowed to make its way to see a loved one. Again and again she hung up the phone and sighed.
At one point I overheard a woman speak glowingly of the attendant, saying. "She don't have ta come in here on Christmas and if she don't, our asses is out there, waiting in the cold. Oh, it's happened!"
From this I built a theory that the prison had a skeleton staff working on Christmas thus the glacial pace of visitor processing. Even though the prison guard organizations put more lobbying money into perpetuating the war on drugs so that we can punish people for attempting to self-medicate despair and keep the jails full, the guards don't have to work on Christmas -- at least in the screening areas where visitors are processed. But to consider things in a positive light, this meant that most every prison staffer I did deal with that day was at least decent enough to be there. Good on them.
I had no kick coming. I was a rookie and had to put aside that I was feeling a bit woozy from the not-so-pleasant fragrance of the place and weary from standing for several hours. It wasn't about me. It was about the kids waiting to see their mothers. It was about the people who had taken a bus all the way from NYC to spend a few moments with an exiled loved one at the holiday. It was about the poor souls rotting behind those walls. It was about the staff members who were there doing what they could on what was also their Christmas. So I maintained good behavior and hoped for parole from purgatory into Hell.
After arriving and filling out a few forms, it was two hours before I heard the kindly woman suggest to others that there would be at least an hour delay before anyone else was brought to the actual prison for security screening. It was lunchtime and there'd be no new visitors processed until it was over. I slipped out and drove the girls back to their rural rest area. They drank water, tinted the snow and had a few dog biscuits. We walked maybe a mile or so.
Upon returning to the prison, I waited for better than an hour until I was finally handed back one of the forms I'd filled out. The kind woman then instructed to join an odd parade of maybe a dozen people that snaked along a sidewalk and up to the main entrance of the prison. We were buzzed through some locked doors. I took my care package of tobacco and magazines to a table where two trustees stood collecting the little treasures.
I brought my photo ID and form to the officer who sat behind a large counter. He gathered my items politely and asked me to take a seat. I did so thankfully. It felt good to sit. I did so patiently while they processed a few large families through some questioning and then a metal detector. One of the families had to leave a bunch of stuff behind in bus station-type lockers because it somehow violated the rules of what could be brought in. They were told that they could buy food from vending machines inside. Their crestfallen looks betrayed that they didn't have much disposable vending machine moola.
I was brought out of a contact funk by a tug on my sleeve from a kid wearing a comical foam cowboy hat. He announced, "I'm Woody!"
I said, "Well, hello, Woody! I'm Barry and it's nice to meet ya!"
The child of maybe five or six repeated, "I'm Woody! Woody from Toy Story!"
"What an honor it is to meet you, Woody! I like your movie!"
"You saw it?" asked Woody who was now beaming with a grin larger than you could find on any child under any tree in America.
"You bet I did!" I said, simultaneously lying and thanking the gods for ubiquitous advertising campaigns.
He then mimed shooting me with his thumb and index finger.
"Be careful with that thang in these here parts, pardner!" I advised.
"OK, I will!" said Woody as an elderly female relation took him away.
Just then the guard behind the counter motioned to his compatriot manning the metal detector to bring me over. I didn't need to be asked to comply.
"Mr. Crimmins, there's a problem. We're going to process you through screening but we don't know if we can let you in yet," said the counter guard.
I tried to remain calm as I passed through the metal detector, even though I made it beep. I removed my shoes and got through without tilting the machine the second time. I was wondering if the delay was because I'd set off a Crimmins detector. Had my political activities caught up with me? Was I being kept out of prison for being too dangerous?
Of course not! The delay, much like the holidays, was not based around me, much less my paranoid, self-aggrandizing theories.
The screening guard confided to me, "We got word that the woman you're here to visit is in the hospital. You'll have to wait until we find out whether she can have a visitor."
A few minutes later I was told that she could not see anyone. That was all the information they could give me due to privacy laws.
A male member of the crestfallen family who'd been left behind to check the goodies for the family's holiday celebration, cleared screening just as I got the bad news. I stopped him and handed him a wad of singles I had with me for the vending machines.
The man spluttered, "But I couldn't…."
"Sure you could but just do me one favor -- get Woody whatever he wants."
The man knew Woody or had at least caught his act because he smiled broadly at my one qualification.
"Merry Christmas, sir!" said I as sincerely as ever in my life.
"Yes, Merry Christmas!" said the now less crestfallen fellow.
"And thank you and Merry Christmas to you two gentlemen, as well!" I said with both sincerity and resignation to the guards as I turned and did something I suspect most visitors do when they walk away from a building that has warehoused generations of forgotten souls: I felt sad, but not for myself. I felt sad for my friend and her daughter and all the people who have to deal with a system that distributes alleged justice in such an uneven manner.
As I walked toward the car I thought. "Well, at least she's in a hospital, which is where a civilized nation should confine and treat a drug addict. So they finally got that right, if only temporarily and by mistake."
I called her mother who called the prison and got through to a kind soul, who got word back to her that her daughter had been taken down by an awful flu. The daughter spent the rest of the holidays in sick bay. I hope to visit her soon.
As I drove home with Lettie and Lu, I counted my great fortune to have such loving and loyal canine friends. I couldn't remain glum in their presence.
I smiled at my good girls and then had a vision of them sprinting down the corridors of the prison, joy blossoming behind them as the inmates and guards were infected by the delight that emanates from a couple of hounds who just don't know any better than to make the woeful somehow wonderful -- much like children waiting to see their moms on a Christmas morning in prison.
As we drove home through the beauty of rural Western New York, I got to wishing that prison guards were instead well-paid, unionized hospital workers in a state-funded health care system. Imagine how they could spend their lobbying money! They could push for a war on despair, making a war on drugs unnecessary. Think of all the lives that could be saved rather than wasted if those acting out their self-loathing by despising the holidays, or self-medicating their anguish with ever-larger yet progressively less effective dosages of drugs and alcohol, or even those who lash out at a world that restricts the maiming and killing of innocent animals -- could be caught early on and shown the redemptive qualities of compassion.
I know such positive change is unlikely but even now, as the seasonal celebrations have come and gone and 2011 has arrived to do its worst, I remain imbued with enough holiday spirit to hold within me the light my friends Chris and Annie lit all those years ago - a light that due to mercy and good fortune, I have never been able to extinguish.
