Resurrecting a story I wrote in 1997... CHRIS STEVENS AND THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS A good ol moose-stompin welcome to everyone listening all around the USA on NPR. Just sneekin past 6 AM. Skies are clear; the moon is bright and full, just ripe for howlin. Its good to have you with us in our charming little hamlet, Cicely, Alaska. My name is Chris Stevens -- resident, deejay, keeper of the flame we call the Aurora Borealis. I want to tell ya a story about Christmas and what it all means, or what it should mean, anyway -- but first, this very important bulletin from Sleetmute. It seems that one of Santas helpers was injured and taken to the hospital when his vehicle slid off the road in the early AM. A few well-placed stitches and doctors sent him on his Merry Way. Apropos for the season, I guess. Hey, folks, a gentle reminder: If youre driving, slow down. Frozen moose dung has been known to puncture tires. Okay, well, here we are, the front end of the caboose of 2014, Christmas Day. What is it about this day that makes some people so holly, so jolly, and others oh, so sorrowful? What is it that were all looking for in the King of All Holidays? Is it that shiny new ought 6 from Uncle Roy? The one with laser sighting and wood grain finish? Is it the notion that redemption lies just beyond that biblical horizon? Drive two blocks past Genesis, take a right at Luke: Heavens Gate. Or perhaps were all just looking for some kind of clue, a beacon, that metaphysical signpost in the road of life that tells us which way to go. Happyville -- 2 miles. Gas, food, lodging, good karma. Its not always easy to see that sign. It might be lurking behind the big oak just around the bend. You may not even be looking for it and then, BAM! . . . The next thing you know, youre eating tree bark for lunch. My long and sometimes painful journey began in December of 74, Wheeling, West Virginia. Mom was doing time in Peterson Rehab after seeing Ol Skipper Noah herding a pair of pink elephants down Main Street. A couple pints of Applejack will do that. Dad -- well, Dad was fresh out of the joint -- again. Tried to explain things to Mom one too many times with the back of his right hand. I was only 11 years old, hardly weaned, just aching to become man enough for Marcia Brady. My boyhood chum, Dickie Heath, had conned his Dad into getting this awesome ten-speed Schwinn for his twelfth birthday. Me -- I was a product of the love-drunk sixties, now part of the addicted consumer collective of the seventies. And, of course, I wanted to be just like Dickie. So, I took a chance, gave the universe a spin in a game of cosmic roulette, leaving my Christmas future in the stars. I hoped to kindle a philanthropic spark during one of Cosells Monday night gospels. Dad, I said, it sure would be neat if I could get a ten-speed for Christmas. Dad looked up at me from the sofa, threw down a pack of smokes, and said Merry Christmas, boy! Leave it to Howard and Dad to Tell It Like It Is. Well, I took those smokes, went out to the back of the barn, got sick and ruined a real expensive pair of cheap tennis shoes. Ended up being an amazing religious experience, an epiphany of sorts. Could have sworn I heard the cows talk. A few days later, I snuck on over to Dickies house and stole that two-wheeler. Guess I was bent on trouble and misery -- the idea of the bad seed and all that. Pedaled across the Ohio River and ended up doing a triple-gainer into a hundred-year-old oak. I had a few cuts and bruises and the bike desperately needed CPR, but I decided to give it a new home beneath the docks near Martins Ferry. Dickie never found out I stole that bike, but Dad did. After that, I got to meet Mr. Backhand, too. Well, that first B & E led to another and soon I was liberating Billy Speers four-lug, polished-aluminum Grind King Special that was parked on his front porch. Tried to make a quick getaway to unload my stash at Trader Ricks, but that skateboard was a few horses shy of a two-bit rodeo. After the law caught up with me, I spent some time in juvvy under the watchful eye of Sergeant Duke Becker, who introduced me to the gym, Mr. Left Hook, his righteous brother, Uppercut, and his second cousin, Overhand Right. Ouch! For the next ten years, I spent my life in and out of jail -- beaten, punished and crucified. Prison was my incarcerator. But, it was also my teacher. And I? I was its student, without focus, without vision, just an empty canvas awaiting the bold strokes of the artists brush that would sweep away the blindfold that covered my eyes. And then it happened, as suddenly as an Alaskan blizzard, and as profound as a solar eclipse. While shuffling through some books in the prison library, I came upon something that would change my life. From within the narrow walls of my captors cell, in the winter of 83, on a day not unlike today, I discovered the words of my salvation within the gold-leafed, leather-bound pages of a book cured with time and wisdom: With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, as old as the breed itself -- one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when the songs were sad. It was invested in the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages. WOW! Glorious words from the Book of London, Chapter and Verse. Words that beckoned my wild heart and freed my troubled soul. Yes, my friends, at long last -- I had discovered Hope. And I had discovered Myself. And Ive been told by sources near and far that on that day, in the winter of 83, the Aurora Borealis never burned so bright. You know, folks, its a long way from Wheeling, West Virginia to the outback of Cicely, Alaska. But, sometimes you have to travel light years to discover the true meaning of Christmas, to see that giant billboard with big bright neon letters. And sometimes it takes a good ol mule kick in the solar plexus and a great Jack London novel to set you straight. So, on this most special of days, may I offer you these three gifts of prose from three wise men: Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go. -- James Baldwin. Resolve to find thyself, and to know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.-- Matthew Arnold. And on Earth, Peace -- Goodwill Toward Men. -- Linus. Gift-wrapped in a warm blanket on Christmas Day, with just a little TLC. This is Chris-in-the-Morning from the home and hearth of the Alaskan Frontier - Cicely, Alaska. Merry Christmas everyone! Now, lets all go outside. Its howlin time!
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 05:57:49 +0000
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