POEMS AND PROSE - by Charlie Becker

CHARLIE’S POEM – By Charlie Becker

On the occasion of My 81st Birthday

I was a Minnesota Boy

Immersed in Irish joy

An Irish son of an Irish Clan

Today is my birthday

It’s all part of the plan

I was born to be an old man

Hooray for you

And friendship true

Hooray For me

A wordsmith wannabe

An old timer

A midnight Rhymer

I do like having my say

Happy to be alive each day

So it’s a day to dance and sing

To my foibles I cling

Curious what the day may bring

All the while a sly smile

I’ve reached the age of 81

Time for fun

Been a pretty good run

Ding … Ding

Surely a bell must ring

For battles lost and battles won…

My how we do all age

Wise and sage

We’ve heard the news

We’ve paid our dues

Earned our wage

Let’s turn the page

Find a garden to tend

A hand to lend

And let’s hoist a toast

To dear friends we’ve loved the most

Let it be known my friend

We sought beauty to the end

What have I done with this fine life

In a world of chaos and strife

There’s time for plenty more

before knock knock knocking

on heaven’s door

Time to tally up the score

I don’t want much

I just want more

And so the years pass by

In single file

And none has escaped

My smile…

HIGH WATER … KING TIDES AND GINGER TEA – by Charlie Becker

And it’s cold and chilly in Old Astoria Town And the breath of heaven

She looks down with a frown,

Hope she mellows out and doesn’t blow down

This gritty

Old Astoria Town …

And it’s chilly days and chilly nights

In Old Astoria Town

And the wind it howls

Whistles and moans

And the Old Wood Windows

Rattle the Doug Fir Bones …

And I wanna go to Coffee Girl

For a double expresso

And a blueberry scone …

And the wind it blows

And it’s an Arctic Blast

Don’t know about this…

Looks like it’s gonna last

Looking kind of dicey

Getting kind of icy

Think I’m going home

Gotta finish this poem

Skip the scone…

And the Icicles grow longer

Just above the door

And warm sunshine

We sure could use

A whole lot more…

We got King Tides and High Water

King Tides and High Water…

And when the old men gather

They like to tell their tales

Of time before the jetties

When snow once filled

The Tall Ships Sails…

And on a Moonless night 

When the snow flies on the sea

The old fishermen say

That a Ghost Ship Sails

These waters cold and free...

And the Icicles grow longer

Just above the door…

And warm sunshine

We sure could use

A whole lot more…

We got King Tides and High Water

King Tides and High Water…

So, when the Moon is dark

And the snow flies on the sea

Let’s chill out at home just you and me

We’ll warm a pot of sweet Ginger tea

And we’ll pour a cup of love...

One for you and one for me…

LITTLE BROWNIE FROM KALAMAZOO – by Charlie Becker

I always enjoy walking through music stores, checking out the string instruments, and playing the Guitars, Banjos, and Mandolins, especially Mandolins, the vintage, rootsy American-built Mandolins made by

Harmony, Martin, and Gibson. Of course, Gibson … Gibson string instruments have an informal elegance, and the tone—ooh, the tone. Vintage Gibson Mandolins have a dark, woody, warm voice that I have always loved.

In the early 1970s I was perusing a music store in Medford Oregon when I saw a Mandolin hanging on a wall. It was a peasant model Gibson A with an oval hole and black face. It was unusual, and I knew right away that I wanted to play the Mandolin.

While living in Hood River, I traded my concrete mixer and $100 with a friend for an old Gibson Mandolin, a peasant model Sheridan brown Kalamazoo Gibson … the “holy grail” of Mandolins. I named my Gibson Mandolin from Kalamazoo “Little Brownie.”

Little Brownie had high action and was a bit tough to finger a note, but it had the tone I love; that tubby, woody low-end that old Gibsons are known for, so Little Brownie and I quickly bonded, and Little Brownie has seen me through thick and thin.

Of all the inanimate objects in this world, string instruments are the most lifelike, the most alive … sentient beings of wood and wire and my quiver of Mandolins ring softly on the wall of my living room.

I was a guitar player familiar with making music on strings. I found Mandolin tuning agreeable as the patterns on the fretboard have a certain symmetry that lends itself to finding the notes for chords and melodies intuitively by ear. With its symmetrical tuning, in parallel 5ths, equal intervals between the four voices of the eight strings, melodies jump out of a Mandolin … and you never really know a melody until you know it by heart. Soon I was playing many melodies on Little Brownie, learning them by ear, and coming to know them by heart.

In the mid-1970s, I was a brakeman on the Mount Hood Railroad, riding in the Locomotive, running south out of Hood River Oregon up into the low foothills of Mount Hood. The Mount Hood Railroad was the closest thing to a toy train that a real train could be. Each morning, in sunshine or snow, cold rain or ice, we built our train of empty flat cars, box cars, chip cars, and refers and pulled our train of empty rail cars up the steep hills and tight curves through the upper Hood River Valley, through the sawmills and pear and apple orchards, setting out empty flat cars for the sawmills and empty refrigeration cars for the fruit packing houses. We, the train crew, Engineer, Conductor, and Brakeman, had a picturesque view of snow-capped Mount Hood every day. The Mount Hood Railroad was a Mountain Railroad.

My buddy was a mainline Railroader for the Burlington Northern across the river. He was a Brakeman riding in a Locomotive pulling mile-long trains from Vancouver to the Tri-Cities. My Brakeman friend played Mandolin and sang old Train songs by Jimmy Rogers, Hank Williams, and Merl Haggard. And he wrote a few songs of his own. He lived in a modest shack in Mosier, Oregon, a one room hovel that he had bootlegged onto a patch of ground clinging to a steep hillside up behind Mosier. His little hovel was supported and held up by several rows of 55-gallon oil drums stacked just so.

It seems like the county was always after him to tear his little shack down. Local folks called my railroading friend “Digger Dan” because his modest piece of ground was constantly being dug up and otherwise completely chewed over by digger squirrels. Digger Dan’s modest little patch of earth was providence for digger squirrels, and it supported a robust community of them. The digger squirrels were always “digging it” at Digger Dan’s bootlegged digs.

Digger Dan kept a cat fetus pickled and preserved in a clear glass jar. And he kept little digger squirrel skeletons tacked onto boards arrayed to appear as opposing armies. Hmmm, make of this what you will.

Digger Dan played Mandolin pretty well in his little hovel on the hillside. I’d grab little Brownie, with its dark tubby tone, and head up to Mosier to pick Mandolin tunes with Dan. With enough of his homegrown marijuana and seriously badass coffee we did learn to play some pretty good Old Timey tunes: Whiskey for Breakfast, Morpeth Rant, Angeline the Baker, and Old Joe Clark. Throw in a few Irish tunes: Gary Owen, Red Haired Boy, and the Irish fiddle tune, Banish Misfortune.

Railroading is a curious occupation with its own culture, with its own ethos, a mulligan stew of male humanity that seemed to embrace eccentric characters of all sorts. You had trackmen working on the tracks and trainmen riding the trains over those tracks. Engineers, Conductors, and Brakemen tend to be independent iconoclasts, somewhat antisocial yet colorful characters. And men who work around one another day after day, without the influence of women, soon wear through any thin veneer of civility they may have once possessed and often they become cranky, ornery, and irascible.

Working for the railroad, you had Veterans and Harley bikers … you had Christian Railroaders, and outright Heathens—little middle ground among Railroaders. Mormons worked in the office and Heathens worked on the Trains. I knew which one I was.

We used to say that nobody but hillbillies and fugitives lived in Mosier, Oregon. But really, what did we know about Mosier. Digger Dan and I were just two Mandolin picking Railroaders, riding freight trains over the Silver Rails, and playing our tunes.

So, it’s in Mosier Oregon that I first played old-timey tunes on my Little Brownie Mandolin from Kalamazoo.

Whoo-hoo Little Brownie! Whoo-hoo Kalamazoo!

CHILLY DAYS IN OLD ASTORIA TOWN – By Charlie Becker

Well, I’m hunkered down in chilly Old Astoria Town, a little sun on the river, ships high in the water, bows up river, bows down river, ebb tide, flood tide, slack tide, and parallel ships swinging and dancing with tides and seas on the Great River. In the evening, I walk  downtown in the cold, moist fog, a miserable misty drizzle I can almost bite into, and chilly east winds that move right through me. On this evening of dark, cold rain, I’m walking by a guy bedded down on a piece of cardboard in a sleeping bag in a downtown doorway … cardboard is much sought-after in this weather … and as I walk by, the gentleman says to me in the most congenial fashion …

“Good evening” …

and I wish him good evening as well, and I walk on. The old warming center closed this year, and it’s slimmer pickins for folks on the street. A bit unsettled, I wonder how people endure in the damp, cold discomfort of the street, and yet they persist. It just seems to be in our nature to persist. And with my walking stick and a starboard list, I walk uptown a few blocks past the Liberty Theatre to my apartment, and I walk into my well-appointed man cave, snug up to the flame in the fireplace, and I turn on KMUN Jazz Radio, and my world is good, groovy tunes move through me, and I think I’ll warm a pot of ginger tea … I’ll pour a cup … one for you and one for me.