"In A Charitable Mood."

So, last Thanksgiving week I'm back in Rah-cha-cha.

And, things about to turn drowsy as some dimwit stuffed with Turkey, I'm down for OXFORDS on Monroe Ave the Tuesday night before the big holiday.

Y' gotta pick your nights.

Let's face it, 'Chester's a dull boy and the Avenue ain't what it was.

Y' land there, you'd better know when 'n' where the gittin's good or there is no fun in the burg at all.

All you going to get right close up t' one of these 'family' holidays is stool-sitters. Not bad if you're into sad stories. Maybe a decent bitch comes in with some guy and gives it the old try, shaking it to "All Right Now,' or some other oldie good for getting loose to a little.

Since I'm looking for a little life 'fore all these clowns go off motor-boatin' in the bosoms of their loved ones - it's Tuesday I go out lookin', the night before the night before the big day is what I'm figuring.

And, when I'm right, I'm right.

Hauling up to the Pub, something like 'leven, it's like I said. Whole length of the place, foot of the bar to dart board, is deep in young stuff. The place is rockin' out. The window front I'm coming up on is a panorama of decadence - in motion. A dark-filter, wide-screen, neon highlighted shadow play of t'day's best imitation debauchery.

I could almost be proud of those half-assed kids.

So, 'min the bar. And what do you gots?

Y' gotcha couples; y' gotcha crowds; y' gotcha regulars.

You can't say anything about yer regulars and couples hasn't been said already. Any bar the regulars are in there every night, no matter. And y' always got y' couples. Not the same ones. But couples are all the same Tolstoy's good families. They're all about the one thing, couples, and that's each other. They're not looking for anything but what each other has got.

Now, your crowds are another matter.

Crowds are a whole can of worms and snakes. A bunch of people, more or less friends of not necessarily long standing, decideto get together and go our partying in a bar. Right there that's a potent breweven 'fore you add the alcohol and stir.

Mostly, this night, y' got yet kids about to go be boring. Mom and Dad's no longer little ladies and laddies off on their own in the big, bad burg and about to be home-bound for the holiday. They're under pressure to let loose. They're feeling like they gotta go out and be wild wid their own kind this one more night.

It's like they got to put enough booze down their gullets to keep buzzed the whole coming sad ritual.

Y' know: 'over d' river end through the woods...'

Some of them, it's like, somehow, they're thinking this is thelast time they ever get to be how they think they want to be. It's like they're sure just going home will turn 'em back into what they've always been destined to be - the graying folks, shoulder-to-shoulder over the roast bird on a platter, imitation hearth behind them in a two-story Cape Cod on Accountant Lane.

It's never the gals in the fandango skinny slacks or the glitzy dresses that barely cover their asses. The few of them ain't already agents of quiet desperation know they're not skating forever from their born destiny And they're the ones really cutting it loose.

They're none of them worrying about it.

No, but - eery one of these crowds has some gloomy guy who's in that other party mood, the one where all the enforcedfun is over his head. The go-along guy not saying much and smiling less. He's even dressed for the part; like he didn't even bother to dress down for getting down. 'Cuss he knew ahead he couldn't. He's just not in the mood.

He's the guy knows things aren't working out the way he thought they would. He's the guy who's going 'over d' river end through the woods...' thinking that he's not coming back the same as he went out.

So, I'm in the bar and it's like:

"'Ey, long time no see..." to one's I've seen before.

And I'm looking at nothing special here as I've just been explaining....

'Til I see this one crowd. It's not even a crowd exactly. It's a combination. One I seen before.

Brothers. Brothers on the Town.

Oh, yeah! That's always fun.

Y' got the Older Brother, the Younger Brother and the Brother-in-law. The father, son and HOLY GHOST! of the American Family. Hell, for all I know, this happens in bars in Leipzig, Liege and Limerick, too. Probably does - with accents, a' course.

Anyhow, older brother is, and always has been, better looking, better built and is 'he who must be impressed.' Probably home from out-of-town, first time in a couple of years. He's Butch. In a charitable mood I should feel something, a kinship with the guy. Only this is an arogant son-of-a-bitch and he's on some kind of throne.

Well, so am I - 'n' mine's higher!

So - still tryin' to be charitable - maybe he's put there. It's the Younger Brother, the Kid, who's paying and playing up, and showing off the old home-town's latest best to Butch, the Lone Wolf. Or, at least, he's trying awfully hard to, not that Gary can show Butch anything he hasn't seen before and better.

And the Brother-in-law? Stan or Steve or Sean? He doesn't belong. He shouldn't even be there. He can talk. But nobody's really listening. Whose ever shoulder he stands next to or ass he runs into, he's outside the circle.

Most of the time, when I'm near enough to catch their act, they're standing at the one place on the bar puttin away bottles fast enough to grow a crop of empties every little while. It's Gary does most of the talking. And, ever' now and again, Stan chimes in - that it matters.

And that's how it goes - 'til it's about half-past one.

Ole Butch is back to the bar with elbows behind him. Gary is talking still and standing sideways to his big bro with the back of his broad white shirt to Stan who's foot ont he rail and elbows beneath him on the bar no longer even chiming.

I can't see, at that moment, younger brother, Gary's face, but I can imagine.

Gary's looking up at Btuch and he's talking worried. His big brother, the Handsome Devil with the lean and hungry look, has a bit of smile cutting back into his jaws and he's not looking back and he's not listening, either. Gary's talking, butits about nuthin' Butch has in mind.

Ole Garr's not even looking in the right direction Butch is.

And, what's he looking at.

There is this crowd just there off the bar, just opposite where Ole Butch is lounging like he owns the place and is about to claim his birth-right.

And one of the glitzy-dressed babes is feeling 'Alright, Now,' full body. So much so, she's flashing the occasional sliver of tightie-whitey nylon where the flashy hem of her dress stretches more than it should while she swings it this way and that with her hair and boobs whipping that way and this.

The couple of other gals in the crowd she's with are all smiles and feeling a bit of 'Alright, Now,' themselves. They're moving with it a little but mostly just admiring Veronica and her action. And there is a couple of three of the well-dressed down boys got their arms up and shoulders swaying along with her.

To the far side, their gloomy guy just watches and mopes.

I don't know.

Maybe Butch figures Ronnie's action would be improved if she had a bit more freedom to swing it out there his way and the other way. Anyhow, with his conceited leer, he goes off the bar. And, leaning over, he extends the old middle finger to assist the next time she throws it in his direction.

Call it the 'Hemlift Maneuver.'

WHOA! WHOA! WHOA!

HEY!

That whole crowd is suddenly seriously upset.

None more so than the gloomy guy who shoves Butch's shoulder before he can straighten back up laughing.

All in one motion, Butch swings that shoulder round this way and his fist round the other clocking the gloomy guy in the upper lip and nose. Gus goes down a bloody stain on his face.

Y' gotta admire those bouncers they got at Oxfords. Two of them move right in. And three and four others follow right after. The whole lot of them move the American Family out the front door of the place in another all-in-one motion.

Now, I know what's coming and I'm near enough to the door, myself, so I'm outside just ahead of the rush - always a pretty thing to see.

No fuss; no fight. Just out the door with the two brothers. The one that's just grinning it off, shining it on and the one tha's saying that it's all a big misunderstanding, his big brother didn't mean any harm. Long Stan, now, not even included in the family ouster, comes along behind.

I've gotten off to the side of thelot of themn on the sidewalk. Okay, maybe just a little slow in going and having to step back a little awkward to keep my toes from being trampled on.

Butch is, at first, left just standing there in his leather jacket, grinning and with his back to the doorway. Ole Garr' is the worried looking one who wants it understood:

"We weren't looking for any trouble. Guy shove my brother and - "

A-n-n-d -

"Y're out...."

There is only the one bouncer still. The others have gone back to the kid with the bloody nose and lip and to the crowd he's with to be sure everything's calmed on that end. But he is one big bouncer. Big as a door and he's making a face as closed as a door would be shutting those guys out.

After grinning a bit at Monroe, at the Avenue he's back out on, Ole Butch turns it around and, standing off about the middle of the side walk, grins, too, watching a bit longer while Brother Gary explains things.

Like it matters, Stand comes up on Butch's shoulder half pleading,

"Come on. We can still get in another bar. There's time. We can still get in another bar, guys."

Then, for a time, Butch, himself, steps up to the Closed Door, saying, all grinning and calm like,

"I got a beer on the bar."

"No y' don't."

"Yeah, I got a beer on the bar - and a guy I gotta see."

"No y' don't."

"Yeah, I got a guy I gotta settle with."

"No y' don't."

And Gary touches his brother's shoulder, saying,

"It's no big deal. It's almost closin'. There's no point -"

Butch knows what he's about.

"Guys gotta come out," he says - not to Garr' even now. "And I got something to settle with him."

The Closed Door doesn't even bother to say, no, he doesn't. He's just a closed door and doesn't even look down. And, then, another big face looks out, around the Closed Door. Tater, with his big moon face, grins a look that wonders, is there a problem here?

And Gary says,

"Come on, it's almost closin'. We'd be going, any way."

And Stan says,

"We got time. We can get a beer. We can get a carton of beer. There's still time..."

Like it matters.

"This guy I got something to settle is coming out," Butch tells the Door and Tater.

And so it goes a while longer.

If no body else is, I'm looking around. It is getting down to closing and, sure enough, the cops are pulled up across the street at the Gulf, one of the places they like to pull in and sit at waiting on the turn-out at two.

So, when Btuch tells them,

"I got something to settle- and I'm going to be right here."

I'm the one walks by him saying,

"No you're not."

Tossing my head the Gulf of Monroe ways with a grin of my own right back at him, saying,

"'Cross the street."

He might, in his way, just grin back my way. But Brother Gary doesn't. And he actually takes a look.

Anxious, now, he says,

"Come on, come on, we'll just get busted, man!"

And Stan chimes, pleading,

"We'll be going any way."

I walk myself right on out of it. I walk on down to the corner of Wilmer, almost across from the two cops in cars and turn to stand there and watch.

Ole Butch is still grinning. And for a while its myway he's lookin. It's that same stoned out wolfish grin he's had all along. But he isnot saying anything, now. It's the other two who are saying. They're up around him on both sides and Gary has his hands on Butch's shoulder and back and, I suppose, he's cajoling his big brother.

Like that, they eventually move Butch off to the side, move him up the avenue. They msut have parked further up toward Oxford Street, or around in the back, down the alley at Poster Art. Because that is the way they move him off to. They get him to go up a couple of doorways though he won't go any further. He's probably saying how he still expects that guy he's got something to settle with has got to come out. Like that guy hasn't already been either hustled out the pub's back door or invited to stay t' the party that always goes on past closing inside once the front door is locked.

Myself, I could go back inside, too. A familiar face, all I'd have to do is go up and knock.

But I hang around. I'm curious how long Butch can keep grinning and waiting for what isn't going to happen.

Closing comes and goes and Oxfords empties out everybody who isn't staying after hours. The Bros 're still there 'side the second doorway above the bar. So i go and stand up in the doorway between.

Some crowds come out of the bar and stand about in front of the doorway ahving those conversations about going on to here and there. Where we going? Going to Gitsis'? Smoking cigarettes and making cell calls. Looking for cabs to flag down - and, then, having those conversations about where they're going and who's going and who's got cab fare.

None of those groups of people have that guy who's probably already out the back door in them, by the way. And, probably, even the Lone Wolf doesn't any longer expect him to be. But he's still there, in that door way up from me. He has still got what's left of a hard grin on his chops. But the other two have relaxed. They know there's ntohing going to happen, now.

Everything quiets way down. Even the sound of the music of the party in the bar is quiet now that the front door is locked and isn't opening to let out fresh crowds.

One of the last of those is standing around having those conversations, smoking those last cigarettes together, when this old lady panhandler comes around. She might be an old guy with her gray hair cropped the way it is and her Salvation Army clothes hanging on her the way they do. And she isn't exactly a panhandler, either. I've seen her around. She's picking up butts people leave on the street. She'll, maybe, ask for a light if she gets a good one. And she'll, maybe, ask for change if he gets the light.

She walks on by he latest crowd that's out front smoking and deciding where to go next. Wandering on, searching the gorund, she fins a good enough one to ask a light of the Brothers.

It's a no go. So, she wanders back to where the last crowd is just moving off.

"'Ey!"

Butch has his grin back in full and he calls after her.

This old lady has one of those red, weathered faces with a look on it you can tell she's not all there. She looks back at the three of them with the same wonder that is always on her face because so much that happens doesn't ge through to her.

"'Ey, y' wanted to make five dollars?"

It's a joke Butch is making. Only she doesn't know that. She doesn't know what it is yet. But she looks and wonders. She doesn't expect it is anything good. But she wonders, maybe, it is.

"'Y wanted to make dollars?" Butch asks her.

And he tells her how, too.

It's a joke; a real funny joke. Not that she gets it at first. And even when he repeats the joke, she only knows it's a joke because he's grinning at her.

"Five dollars; the three of us," he tells her.

Her faces makes her own shy smile and she tells him,

"Naw, I don't do that," a little uncertain yet.

"Come on, it's five dollars. Three more 'n it's worth!"

"Naw, I don't do that."

She has still got the good one. She wonders of me,

"Got a light?"

I got smokes; I can spare one.

"Rather have a fresh one?"

And I got a light, too.

I guess, maybe, having made his joke, Butch is satisfied. At any rate, laughing, he's letting his brothers move him on again, further up the Avenue.

Like I say, 'Chester's a dull boy and Monroe ain't the avenue it used to be.

I don't know why I go there.

If I had any place else to go, maybe I wouldn't.

They got an expression on the Avenue. Everybody says, after they or anybody else has said bad of anyone who's on the street, 'but he's an alright guy.' No matter how goofy or good for nothing a guy may be on this street, he's an alright guy.

And I'm in a charitable mood.

Last Night on Monroe in the Rain

Last night on Monroe in the rain a surprizing lot was happening.

Most of the time it was only a small rain that was falling and the things that were happening were all small things that mattered little except to the people who were doing them.

Coming out of the Gulf that would be closing in minutes, two young men with fresh faces needing shaves were returning home to Boardman Street under the canopy at the convenience pumps and making for the alley in back of the Wilmer. Perhaps they had been to one of the bars north of Goodman, O'Cal's, The Sports Page, one of those bars. Otherwise why carry home a carton of beer bought along the way and not make their last call at the Gulf nearer home. The carrying the carton before him clutched both hand holes and grinned big like at a joke anticipated or just told.

Last Call, too, was on the minds of the Runners.

These three guys came up from Goodman on a stumbling, flailing, laughing run. They were on the east side of Monroe until just before Enrights. Then they were on the west side and held up a green pick-up truck chasing one another across Amherst.

The one in the middle threw hands up on the front hood and, laughing out loud, apologized,

"Sorry! Godda make Last Call, bro!, while running off.

He stumblingly turned almost around doing it and laughed about that, too.

Crossing the same crosswalk, moments later and in the other direction, I looked around and, now, the Runners were crossing for Oxfords, the east side of Monroe, again, hollering and laughing and running, head-long black figures with arms up and silhouetted against the lights of that block.

I took just that one quick look and, then, only heard them arrive at the bar grinning explanations to the bouncer at the door and gaining thankful entry in time. I didn't much notice either the guy on his cell walking along parallel with me on the outside of the parked cars at Gitsis' across the avenue.

All my attention had turned to the girl down at Rite Aid, almost at the Goodman corner of the store. She had on a dark jacket and ws slim, five-eight, five-eight and a half. At first, and from that distance, just passed Amherst, I thought it some wide-collared or too large sweater she had on, for she seemed to be showing most of a white shoulder and the fabric dipped enough below to expose a shallow arc of back as well. Perhaps wearing a boyfriend's borrowed sweater or sweat shirt, I thought. Altogether, not something you expect to see on a night in November with rain however light, nearly not there at times.

There was something, too, in the way she was standing, tall and slender. When I thought I saw the most of her left shoulder and that arc beneath it, she had turned to look after a number of boys who had passed her and were about to cross at the light. Perhaps they had said something.

But the rest of the time, both at first and after that, she only stood close to and facing the store window nearly to the end, almost at the corner far from the doors where people go in and come out. She wanted to be alone, felt alone and wanted to be by herself.

People were going in and coming out of Rite Aid and I might have been one.

As I was nearing the sliding doors and in-store brightness knowing I wouldn't be going inside yet, there was a clatter.

The clatter got her attention - for a moment she glanced back across Monroe not over or down her shoulder but around it and down.

A young man in a bright, open jacket and white shirt had dropped his cell taking it out of his pocket while pacing in front of the Chase parking, the ATM drive-through. Now, he was reaching for it with head pointed toward the pavement, bent at the waist and a little wasted.

The girl in the jacket - I'd already determined it was a jacket with white lined hood thrown back over one shoulder - had gone back to standing close to the window pane and looking down in her pensive, at least her waiting mood. As I passed her to the corner, she had dark hair that went down straight into her collar and hood and a narrow pretty face. She was looking at the packaged traiin sets in the window. Only something to be looked at while waiting for a boyfriend, I supposed.

Still, she might have waited nearer the doors or looked into one of the windows nearer the doors with dolls and other toys and seasonal things on sale in them. And that continued to be interesting.

I thought in passing of the train sets at - Dan's. Dan's Crafts and Things has sets with perfect in every detail miniatures of the locomotives and cars of trains from the past like the Super Chief and the New York Central's Twentieth-Century limited, sleek long passengers cars they built and repaired int he East Rochester Car Shops.

I might have mentioned them, mentioned Dan's, and had even turned and lifted a small greeting in her direction.

Only a dark young man in a brown open jacket was carrying a carton of beer with him coming down from the entrance of the store. The girl in the jacket shifted her hips and turned to join him walking, hands in her pockets and head still a bit cast down in her same unsmiling mood.

They went on around the corner, west on Goodman, in a resumed, a settled into slight bitterness conversation of short sharp words and grudging silences.

Bright jacket had found and dialed a number and was,

"Where the fuck you at...?"

...and,

"Thought you were comin' right back...."

...and,

"No, I'm not there; I lef' there. I thought you were comin' right back...!"

A wide-guy had come out of Enright's door, a few yards up the block, and ws on his cell, too.

"Guy dohn' mean nothin' by that...!"

...and,

"If y're gonna git pissed ev'r little thing guy says...!"

And a second, narrower guy comes out and paces back and forth, too, out of the doorway with cell,

"...y're on Alexander y' just kee on to Monroe..."

...and,

"Y' got a light on Monroe at Averill, a light at Meigs and just passed Goodman...."

...and,

"Enright's, y' see it on your left just passed the light...."

Short guy with bushy hair traveling fast coming out of Cornell with his head down and his cell to his ear is positive,

"I wanna shop, too!"

It's Closing and every one is on their cells. There is still half a night left to fill, Saturday morning.

At the entrance to Rite Aid's parking lot, a hot blonde with long straight hair driving a white compact has slowed to make the turn into the drive to the lot. The car cuts in across the sidewalk but, then, just sits there. The girl is well made up and wears a gray coat that looks dressy and she is smoking a cigarette that is freshly lit and long. She sat across the sidewalk more to take a logn drag or two than looking to see if the traffic behind her will let her back on the avenue to go south.

And it will and does because her pal, a second hot thin blonde who might be her sister, followed her in another white car, a match for hers and she is sitting in traffic waiting and talking on her cell. The first sister completes her turn, backing out and starting off down the avenue all the while with her cigarette compassing theway between her lips. The second white car takes longer to turn and follow, swinging off to the far curb and three-pointing once two or three darker colored cars ahve cut ahead of her.

It is closing time and she is never off her cell.

The sliding doors at the drug store sprung open and I went inside the brightness.

I figured it would be easier to scribble notes in my pocket pad in the unshadowed white light out of the rain and night. My hands would work better out of the cold.

It was the first of two trips I made into the Rite Aid with my note pad, the second to make notes from a walk north of Goodman.

There was a car lit up that pulled into the Edmonds followed closely by the blue-and-white. The car pulled into the alley behind the burrito shopand the cruiser followed him there, too.

The cruiser's overheads spun flashing a blinking rose light down the back alley that showed itself on the fence back of the Sports Page. Some guy was up close and facing the blank wall of what used to Country Sweet Chicken and Ribs sharing the building with the burrito joint. He kept looking over his shoulder but looked back toward the avenue and people passing there. I doubt he ever noticed the light of authority around in dark back of the building.

There was an altercation that begin in the Page or the Acme that flagged other RPD down. A well dressed girl with dark red hair was angry and was being walked away from the scene toward Goodman by people she was with but wanted all along to go back. It was others who flagged down the passing cruiser and reported what had happened to the officer. A man with a shaved head had begun a fight in the bar and pushed a girl around running off back down toward Meigs.

From the description the kids were giving the officer, I thought it sounded like one of a group of three or four skinheads who have been around the block between Rowley and Meigs since last summer. I have seen several incidents between them and kids on the block. The skinheads in their uniform white tee-shirts get into iwth the neighborhood kids and the altercations all end with the Whtie People's Party of Monroe retreating in a pack to their festung.

"It always seems to be racial with these guys. Whenever they get into it, it always has something to do with race, " I said to the witnesses after the cop was gone to put it out with dispatch.

The one guy, who had doen the most reporting, the guy with the back pack over his shoulder, stared thoughtfully back and nodded a bit.

"Fits," he said, seeing and agreeing to something that hadn't occurred to him before, perhaps.

Later and down at Big Deal Pizza's corner, the girl with the dark red hair was back and on her own, still looking pissed.

It took no more than a few words of recognition to put her back in the middle of the scene from before. She shouted her words out and addressed them angrily to the avenue as though broadcasting them rather than having a conversation.

"Some GUY," she gestured, "thinks he can SIT IN A BAR and ABUSE some poor girl, PUSH her around and....Y' try and tell him Y' CAN'T DO THAT. Y' can't THROW some girl around like that and.... He gets in your face, TELLS you he's going to SHOOT YOU IN YOUR FACE....

"You can't DO that. YOU CAN'T do that in a CIVILIZATION!...."

She said her name was Kelly and shook hands while all around us the RPD were prowling about. Blue-and-whites were pulling out of this side street and that and lighting up to U-turn in the other direction on the avenue; or they were turning off to patrol in to the back parking lots and alley way passages.

Before I went up for the night, I noticed the rain falling in the pools of water along the car-less curb above my building. The lakes were black crone fingers with clawed talons and arthritic joints and knuckles. But they shown just enough in the streetlight for the rain to be rippling them with incessant small rings that appeared and winked out replaced by more and more just their likeness.


Saturday night, 12:48.

HELLO-WEEN JACK

Hello-ween Jack,

Just in time for Halloween.

You wrote in your last letter of going to see a band from your rockin' days. This last Sunday my Times, the Arts and Leisure section, reviewed Keith Richards' autobiography.

The Ghost of Celebrities Nearly Departed is shown in a half-page profile with partially smoked cigarette leaning from his protruding lower lip. The photographer knew what he was about and shot with black and white film. All I can say is - three-day old corpse. Maybe any photograph of Keith would say that no matter the film, but black and white was the perfect choice.

Obviously, too, the gang in the composition department had their little joke. Keith was the half page above the fold while sweet, fresh-as-a-country breeze Taylor Swift was in the lower left corner leaning on pillows and cast in a golden glow.

I don't know but I find reassuring somehow that Keith has been noticeably decaying these past three decades and more yet still he's here smoking another fag despite the times, they be a-changing. And to imagine I'm old enough to remember when a Stones' album cover, controversial for some reason at the time and before most people alive today were born, pictured the gang and Keith as dissipated Regency Rogues sprawled about after a debauch.

I don't know if you'll find them at all artistic or interesting, but it is Halloween and I just thought I'd send you some photographs, I took myself.

I spent a certain number of mid-summer afternoons and evenings in Mount Hope Cemetery and never visited the place without clicking off dozens of these pictures. If you never heard of it when you visited here and about, Mount Hope is quite an usual place. Perhaps you can tell that from the photos alone without my writing it.

About a third to a half of Mount Hope is, in a phrase I've settled on, a cemetery in a forest. Some would say, perhaps more accurately, a cemetery in a park. It's keepers, however, seem to leave it most of the summer largely natural, as natural as such a place can be. The hill I was standing on for the shot of the wedding party being photographed, I couldn't have easily gotten my own picture from for all the underbrush that was there only a short time before that day along with the trees and fallen stones you see.

The building glimpsed through those trees in the lower left corner is the oldest of the cemetery's chapels and the lush foliage in the background of the scene mask a steep hill side known as the Indian Trail. It backs and over tops the chapel and its statuary fountain and comes around on the other, the right side of the shot to another steep sloped plateau parallel with the hill I was on at the time. That flat topped hill is so densely settled with monuments, mausoleums and obelisks that it might be a small Roman or Greek city of classic antiquity.

If I climbed left on the first hill, following a barely visible track up and around it, I'd be opposite the toga clad lady with the anchor in the next photograph taken from above on her hillside. It, too, is quite a steep and a long climb up those wrought iron steps the gate of which you can make out near the foot of her pedestal. You can, perhaps, tell just how steep from the little bit of hand rail visible. Her plot of ground is only the first of three tiers on the hill, each populated by more such large monuments topped with posed, dramatic figures. Seen from below in the vale, they go narrowly up against another green background, the trees, the forest covering the slopes of yet another hill also planted with stones and monuments in scenes hidden from view until you come to them.

There are, of course, angels everywhere and in all manner of poses. My favorite is Serena, the Angel of Peace. I took endless photographs of her and climbed all about to find every angle I could. The one I'm proudest of is this one I got during a summer evening with the sunset lighting bits of her surrounding trees and other and toppling stones beneath her. I had to climb up to Serena's crest for a close up of her, though, as she would never come down for me.

If there is one photograph that says, 'cemetery in a forest,' it is the one that shows only stones and monuments going up among trees and different angled slopes of a hill. I think it must have been taken around the same hour as the first shot of Serena and I know I was near her place. The same light suggests as much. There is a barely visible trail along the base of the slope face there toward the left and further up that trail is an especially affecting group of monuments. The father was a justice of the State Supreme Court. The parents' stones are larger but their son's is the only one with a figure carved in bas-relief. It isn't a cherub or other symbolic being but a school boy about ten. A doggerel verse declares that he isn't dead but only gone off to school, a school whose headmaster is Christ who will know to guide and protect him. The spot is secluded from any of the roadways that circle through Mount Hope. It is closed about by the angles and turns of the hill. Tree tops above shade them. The path that goes by, like all the paths among the graves, seems unmade by any effort other than the footsteps that have worn it through the years.

Some around here refer to Mount Hope as a spooky place and, I believe, there is to be some sort of Halloween affair over there this weekend. But I can't see it. Somewhere in his writings, Bill Faulkner made comment on how the Victorians, the generations that raised him, had a particular fancy for funerals and all the rites and practices that went along with bereavement. It was those same Victorians who chose this odd piece of real estate on hills coming up to the Genesee as their local place to frolic at that favorite pastime of theirs. Nothing that has been done in that line since has been as poised or as sweet and their thought to put it all down in such picturesque surroundings has just made of it something I can't call at all eerie or chilling.

It is worth experiencing and what better season than this.

Of course, Keith Richards will never be seen in such a place.

He's merely going to petrify some day over his Stratocaster, a cigarette half smoked in his lips. And, unlike the supposed Russian saint in Dostoevsky, he will corrupt no further.

How could he?