My
grandmother, Carmen, was a bit of a self-proclaimed gypsy. She traveled a lot, stole sugar packets from
restaurants, and saved boxes and anything with an Owl on it. She
worked hard, she drank hard, and she loved hard. She had five husbands, and one she remarried
at the end of her life. When I was five,
though, she married Hiram Benjamin Bentine, or Bennie. He was a dear, fussy old fellow, with a lemon
yellow El Dorado, a good palate for food, and similar drinking and talking
habits. We moved in with them to help
everyone out a bit – them with money for the house and my mom who was working
nights -- with me. I remember Saturday
night bowling. Lanes for kids were free
after midnight – if you could stay up that long. I did, and after bowling, we’d pile into the
car and go to Sambo’s. It was a very
non-PC breakfast joint that stayed open all night. We’d eat breakfast, drink coffee or more
cocktails (mine was a Shirley Temple for which with copious amounts of pancake
syrup I account my late-night stamina). Bennie was good to me, spoiled me, let me
climb into his lap and poke at his fancy buttons and shirt pockets. I don’t remember what brand of cigarettes he
smoked, but that he did so copiously. He
drank Old Granddad on the rocks, which I remember from a photo taken in Mexico
of him (Old Granddad) sitting on some rocks (on the rocks). It was the 70’s before we all became so self
aware about the drinking and smoking we were doing. We had a pool with a changing room, a great
slide, and a wonderful overhung patio full of ivy. We had horses. They had a big house, a great
entertainment space, and catfights at night with flying shot glasses. That was
my grandmother. She could hit any man
running or walking with a shot glass at 30 paces. She was a pistol.
Bennie
was the cook at our house, and he was good at it. He also did a lot of the shopping, as none of
the rest of the adults were to be trusted with the selection of decent
perishables. He and Carmen were both
newspaper people and gone all day during the Summer, when his daughter and I
lounged by the pool with her friends while I fetched them sandwiches and
sodas. The weekends were lively parties
with everyone home, including my mother, by the pool with the dogs, and
barbeques, salads, and yes, more drinks.
One day I was invited to the shopping expedition for ribs and
briquettes. It was a short trip, and for
some reason, I was invited along. Maybe
my Grandmother and mother needed to talk, maybe he needed to get out of the
doghouse for something, or maybe I was annoying everyone underfoot as being the
only five year old in the house will do.
But he brought me and we took off in that lemon yellow El Dorado to the
store. We wound through the affluent
neighborhood, listening to the radio, with Neil Diamond, Roberta Flack, and
Elton John. “Bennie and the Jets”
played, and being five, I thought it amazing that I was currently riding with a
Bennie. I thought the song was about
him. We said so, and sang along even to
the piano parts “Bennie and the jets, duh, da, da, da, da, Dum, dum, dum. Bennie!!”
if you’re five and in the car with a beloved grandparent, it doesn’t get
any better than this.
It
was years before I figured out which one of our albums was Elton John’s, I
loved his flashy clothes, and his cool lyrics, and his mojo. It was the theme song of the summer. The pool, the ivy, the drinks and cigarettes,
Elton John, and those mad, mad riffs, “Hey, kid!”
40
years later, I’m back in California after a Big Move. That’s one where you give up your job, your
life, your big house in the South, and move to a small Northern California town
to raise your child and reclaim your family, sense of self, intellect, time,
and your sanity. I am procrastinating
from approaching the local district office for substitute teaching work and the
local colleges for adjunct teaching. I
just want to hold onto Summer for another week before I dive into remaking my
professional self, the self that cares about grading papers, making money, and
maybe writing an article on how we are or are not Academically Adrift. I don’t want to do this just yet. I want to think, I want to write, I want to
go to Farmer’s markets, and I want to play with my child. I am carefully pulling out of the parking lot
onto Main Street, when “Bennie and the Jets” comes on the radio, fuzzy, a
little distorted, as if the song had to come through from 1974 and land like a
faded and exhausted butterfly in the cab of the olive green Honda CRV. For a moment, I am five again, fearless and
without worry, singing with a single tear trying to leak through my utmost
bliss.
My
grandmother died about two months ago from fatigue, loneliness, and a bit too
much Vodka of a few too many evenings.
She was 85, though, and had a good run.
I didn’t always call her back, or friend her on Facebook, or write her
enough notes, I know. Her life was rough
at the end. She remarried husband number
three, the tall, big, charming but terribly immoral Sean Connery looking fellow
at whom she’d thrown a number of shot glasses in her stunning 30’s. He’d died and left her the house that they’d
shared, but being broke she’d taken in lodgers, including an aunt with
questionable pharmaceutical habits, and a few of her friends. It wasn’t pretty, and it probably wasn’t
nice. I sent her red Christmas gifts of
silk and good perfume, but wrapped up in my own petty dramas, little else. Bennie died of lung cancer years before and
left her to rely on her friends and family.
They are sometimes fun, great in a crisis, but everyday life confounds
them. When I am here, I can forget for a
moment, so much that I neatly sidestepped when I went to Grad School. But I’m always going to think of Sir Elton
John’s Bennie as my Bennie. Oooh, you’re
so spaced out.
Perhaps,
but time is starting to do this weird thing where it folds in on itself. Supposedly, this is how wormholes are
created, and the universe bends, but for mere mortals who are not scientists,
it’s also how memories survive over 40 years of Lacanian theory and
childrearing to become important about what has made up our imaginations. One day, I’ll look up Elton John’s Bennie to
see who he was, but for me, he’ll always be Hiram Bentine, cruising in a yellow
El Dorado, with a borrowed grandkid, who thought he was so very, very electric
cool.
