For “Shower Customer Number Nine”

By
Glenn W. Smith
– December 26, 2010Posted in: Culture, Featured, History, Politics
christmas photo 300x224 For Shower Customer Number Nine

Photo by Elena Jefferies Whatley

You can almost hear the collective sigh. It’s the day after Christmas, and it’s Sunday, and it’s quiet.

Christmas is a funny holiday. Pegged to the old pagan winter solstice celebrations, it’s on the calendar now as the time Jesus was born. For the record, if I’d been a Wise Man I’d of brought the baby Jesus a Howlin’ Wolf record. Anyway, to his followers the word “pagan” is now a pejorative with satanic overtones. The world just goes ‘round and ‘round.

Yes it does, and no matter what our pretentious, self-important selves do or say, we don’t stop time or the earth’s orbit either and this remains the time of year our northern hemisphere is tilted furthest from the sun.

As we’ve done for years, we spent time at our friends’ farm outside Brenham, Texas. Then it’s on to Houston for more friends; a few small living- room hoedowns (yours truly pictured above, be-hatted, and I bet a lot of you had just such scenes); a Christmas Eve family reunion that has gone on since just after World War II.

A friend went caroling in Austin, an event she doesn’t miss because every year in the neighborhood a now-adult Downs Syndrome fellow waits smiling for them in the window. Steal that image of love, Grinch.

Speaking of the Grinch, this year my close friend Chris’ grandkids sang the Grinch Song, accompanied by their father and grandfather. If the Grinch could have heard the purity in their voices he would cried, “I’ve been saved,” and reformed on the spot.

Out on the road between stops on Christmas, I’m buying a tall cup of coffee at the truck stop and I hear a matter-of-fact voice on the loud speaker: “Shower customer number nine, your shower is ready. Shower number three. Shower customer number nine, your shower is ready in shower number three.”

Room at the inn, for a bath anyway. So, I’m thinking, “Who is shower customer number nine?”

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
Searchin’ for the ghost of Tom Joad

I get back to Austin and my daughter tells me Happy just died. He was an old, South Austin barroom shuffleboard king, and he made and sold Happy Jack’s Roadkill Jerky, which probably tasted about like it sounds. With patience and love of craft, sport and the friendly bet, he taught young folks, including my daughter, to play shuffleboard. She cried when she told me he’d passed.

The coming and going this time of year, the time of the long nights, seems a cruel injustice, a mockery of our stories about the birth of a god-child and life everlasting. Then I think, yea, but it’s all why we start singing in the first place.

And what about the famous Christmas Truce of 1914, when the War to End All Wars came to a brief halt as British and German troops crossed No Man’s Land to sing songs with one another? What kind of patriotism is it that leads a guy to shoot the fellow who sang the alto on “O Tannenbaum” with him the night before?

The planet makes sure we all share the long nights and the short nights too. But there’s a paradox to Christmas after all. It’s a day that fairly cries to become all days. Like the troops on the Western Front, it turns out we can stop time briefly (and gloriously) but only in the tragic knowledge that none of us can really stop it at all. You’d think we’d quit listening to the emperors and princes who claim they can if enough of us kill and die for their claims.

Anyway, all’s quiet on Interstate 10 today, the day after Christmas, and the road wraps like a ribbon around me and you and “shower customer number nine.” Christmas doesn’t last forever, and nobody’s kiddin’ nobody that it does. And that’s why the day after seems a little more peaceful than the day before.

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About Glenn W. Smith

Glenn W. Smith has spent the past 30 years in journalism and politics, where he’s made a name for himself as a writer, campaign manager, activist, think tank analyst and, as Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas says, a “legendary political consultant and all-around good guy.” “There’s no one like him,” says author George Lakoff. CNN commentator Paul Begala says, “He has unmatched experience, a graceful pen (or pixel nowadays) and deep insight into the best and worst of us.” Novelist Sarah Bird speaks of his “lucid and lyrical” prose. And, she says, he’s fun. Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington says Glenn writes with “grace and abundant humor” and “uses his colorful experiences in Texas to enlighten us all.”

Smith led Ann Richards’ successful 1990 campaign for Governor of Texas. He worked for former Texas Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby and U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen. Earlier, Smith was a political reporter for the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post. He’s coordinated national campaigns for groups such as MoveOn.org. In 2004, he authored the highly acclaimed book, The Politics of Deceit: Saving Freedom and Democracy from Extinction. He also wrote Unfit Commander, a book that detailed George W. Bush’s mysterious disappearance from military service.

In 2004, Smith was featured in the film, Bush’s Brain, a documentary about Karl Rove. Smith provided commentary on Rove’s role as then-President Bush’s senior advisor. He has made numerous media appearances with Chris Mathews on Hardball, Joe Scarborough, Brit Hume, and many others. He writes a regularly for top national web sites, including FireDogLake and Huffington Post.

As a senior fellow at George Lakoff’s prestigious Rockridge Institute in Berkeley he studied, wrote and taught on the power of metaphor and narrative in political communications. He also lectured on religion and politics at the Starr King School for Ministry in Berkeley. As a sponsor and organizer, he has pulled together numerous national events with progressive religious leaders. He also organized a celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King at Riverside Church in New York City as well as “Freedom and Faith” bus tours, which was a nationwide campaign for social justice and progressive values.

Smith’s play, Double Play, which explored American Western myths and legends, was held over to sold-out audiences. He’s even written and performed songs in the Americana tradition, such as his best-known song, “Helping Marty Robbins,” a tribute to his hometown, Houston.

Most recently, Smith is the creator of DogCanyon, a political and cultural web site covering state, national and global issues from a Texas perspective. DogCanyon is an exhilarating and unique site that gets the connections between politics and culture and explores both the personal side of politics and the ups, down, craziness and beauty of “life its ownself,” as humorist Dan Jenkins would say. DogCanyon offers heartfelt personal essays, hard-hitting political analysis, and, most importantly, laughs.

As Paul Begala said, Smith writes in “the finest, firmest, fearless tradition of Texas essayists like Molly Ivins.”