Nobody Reads This Page – “Friendly Flannel”

 

c. 2024 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(12-24)

 

 

The holiday season typically evokes gentle memories from past years. Most often, of Christmas celebrations or other family gatherings where a spirit of kinship made me feel emotionally warm and included. But most recently, as snow began to fall in my rural neighborhood and Thanksgiving arrived, I flashed on a personal recollection that did not involve such familiar rituals, directly. Instead, this historical footnote was connected to a gift given benevolently by friends, as I was sorting out my life in the Finger Lakes community of Ithaca, New York.

 

I had lived in that lively burgh for five years, because my father’s ministry brought him to the Church of Christ on North Cayuga Street. After serving an apprenticeship at the local cable television provider, through Cornell University, I drifted both emotionally and philosophically. Parishioners and members of the family tried to offer guidance and encouragement as I languished in futility. Yet with a teenaged perspective on reality, I did not think clearly or with much conviction. I went to concerts, drank with cohorts from Channel 13, drew illustrations and wrote lyrics, while eschewing any actual forward motion.

 

I had a jones for Rock stardom, which was both ridiculous and common among my peers.

 

Eventually, the clock ran out on this unsustainable lifestyle. I recorded a vinyl single with bandmates from Corning and Elmira, including a brother of designer Tommy Hilfiger, but it failed to produce a lasting artistic partnership. Or a dependable income. Chums from that failed project continued to keep me focused on irrational dreams of grandeur. And I willingly slipped into that vast sea of self-delusion. When by chance, one of my motorcycle stories was published in the summer of 1983, by a national magazine based in California, it came as a bonus prize. I still thought that with enough time invested, there would be a rollicking reward for my efforts to develop a persona worthy of taking to the stage.

 

Around May, my father announced that our brood was being relocated, to a new faith community in northeastern Ohio. A place with which I was totally unfamiliar, despite being a native of Columbus. This unexpected report sent me reeling. When my younger brother pilfered and ruined a studio cassette of live takes, which had been recorded as I was working on the 45-RPM offering with Absolute Zero, that provided the spark for my exit.

 

I was 21 years old by then, unemployed, broke, and socially awkward. But somehow, I found mature friends outside of the city who were willing to give me temporary status as a household guest. I had no means of support, and was unskilled at navigating the world beyond my own ecosystem. Moreover, I had begun to flirt with the idea of stardom and death as a noble concept. To negate the child I was, a product of Appalachian culture and religious dogma, seemed oddly appealing. I wanted to find myself, somewhere, anywhere. This notion that I could escape the image in my mirror was of course, a fool’s errand. But I scribbled out versions of my future self. Punk, New Wave, even Country. Biker, Boozer, or any sort of imaginary creation. I wanted to die and be reborn as something better than a bumbling novice with a Japanese guitar. Playing roles, like an actor, piqued my interest.

 

I used to tell people who would listen that, “It is so boring to only be one person!”

 

As the season changed to fall and then winter, I sometimes lived with a friend-of-a-girlfriend, while alternately staying under a bridge in our community. Someone who indulged my art and naïve perceptions. As we grew closer, I spoke of marriage and pooling our fortunes. She was a decade older, had a young son, and was more skilled at enduring the pitfalls of an urban existence. We drank gallons of wine, smoked weed, and babbled about Andy Warhol and his flock of like-minded malcontents. At some point, she had known members of the 70’s group, Orleans. And even seen Janis Joplin perform a show. Meanwhile, our neighbors downstairs seemed to be selling drugs. I saw expensive cars of all sorts pull up to the curb, exchange greetings through gapped windows, and then disappear with no obvious cause in effect.

 

It was a reckless streak of gambling that could not last. And it didn’t. She eventually hopped on a plane with her kid, headed back to the Pacific coast.

 

At some point in that heady experience, my primary benefactors had noticed that I had little in the way of clothes. A few T-shirts, two pairs of blue jeans, and a leather jacket. They must have guessed that wandering the streets of town with temperatures falling precipitously would be a challenging experience. Their remedy was simple, and welcome. From a closet in their farmhouse, a flannel garment of uncertain vintage appeared. It had a few moth holes, and was missing a button or two, along the front. Yet this frayed artifact kept me insulated, as I bounced from one venue to another, chasing ghosts.

 

When the end of my experiment finally arrived, during a frosty week in December, I wore it all the way back to Geauga County, near Lake Erie. My co-host from the TV crew provided transportation. I drank Jack Daniel’s and burned through Camel cigarettes, all the way to my origin point, the Midwestern land of Buckeye heritage. A place that I never, ever, wanted to see again. The flannel shirt was still draped over my angular shoulders as I went to work at a wholesale warehouse, in Cleveland. I wore it every day. Even on weekends when I was free from this gainful routine.

 

In modern times, I cannot name any of the Christmas presents offered during that healing moment of resurrection. I remember little, day-to-day. Other than a cold-turkey withdrawal from my whiskey habit, and puffing on smokes to stay vigilant in rebuilding the existence that I had so cheerfully destroyed. Eventually, I was discharged during a probationary period, by the employer where I first landed. A subsequent stop involved joining a remodel crew at a department store near my home. This swap meant I earned less money, but also used less fuel every day, and was able to interact with fellow employees from where I lived. A reasonable exchange, in the long run.

 

Around two years later I stopped wearing the gifted item, in favor of a sweatshirt colored with a bold swath of orange. One that showed pride in the local NFL franchise, founded by Coach Paul Brown. The flannel garment was relegated to hanging in a free-standing, metal enclosure. A movable clothes-press, bought at Sears & Roebuck many years before.

 

In a sense, it had come full-circle. Just as I had also returned to the purer self of yonder days.

 

Now, with winds whipping across the lake, and winter wrath providing a blustery retort to the campfire celebrations that went before, I find myself huddled at the keyboard. Memories are strong when distractions are few. But the mood inspired by my keepsake from New York will linger, for an eternity, to come.

 

That gift of love, in principle, still endures.