The kind of youth I was
came from many antecedents — meaning “I didn’t get it off the grass” to quote a Dublin-born grandmother, Margaret Powers Mycue — and here is a rough little sketch written 5 yrs back. I’d guess that others of my time had much the same kind of varied mix of history.
ONE
i start telling about cars: cars those old muscle cars and dogs in them cars with rumble seats the mid 1940’s they were old then and guys back from world war II had them cheaper then and old old. we loved them. you could duck down under and into the space inside if it got to windy or cold or you were afraid –or my dad and the guys were worried abt us as we bounced over potholes and bumps heading down to the river. but I don’t remember what river i remember 2 guys lived down there after/back from the war and the one had a leg off and he used to grab me up haul me over obstructions blondhaired hunk with the missing leg but some replacement that kinda worked (my first crush on a guy) maybe in his 20’s who my dad used to play baseball with and the other guy was my dad’s buddy from boy scout days or from the tuscarora reservation or both where dad was half raised by those old indians when his dad william oliver mycue had left
TWO
–well booted out by margaret powers mycue his wife my dad’s mom who from ireland came down the erie canal to buffalo/niagara falls and somehow met grandpop william oliver mycue in his shop where he made cars and invented and innovated. later called mycue autoparts and repairs. that my grandmother took over. she ran it with the girls, my dad’s 4 sisters while my dad and uncle harold worked in back. until dad became the salesman outside. margaret powers mycue didn’t trust men at all and to her william oliver was a dirty damn protestant, drunk, whore monger (he’s been discovered keeping a woman in the apt over the repair shop on pine street). and so margaret powers (my dad’s name full is john powers mycue–being the second son just as i am edward delehant mycue, second son also, named after my mother ruth taylor delehant’s father and just as my nephew is john mycue mcgaha, second son of agnes second of my sisters) found william oliver drunk, kept him drunk for 3 weeks confined by her and her older daughters possibly marguerite and evelyn until she got a church separation through her priest and papers signed that the business was then hers and then william oliver mycue was history: my dad was 7 then.
THREE
william oliver mycue back from mille lacs, minnesota area in 1946 when i was 9 when i got to know him. he would buy me a coke after school if i wandered that way to the crystal cafe where he was with his cronies. he’d spin me stories about the mycued past–not the getting dumped part–new france quebec city and its dispersal into the new england usa and then in 1863 w/a land grant (signed by abraham lincoln HIMSELF who signed all that stuff in those days) to an area known as “lake vivian” in east central minnesota. my greatgreat grandfather and his son age 12 who became william oliver mycue’s dad went there to the parcel next to the harmon’s and who married the harmon girl the mom of my grandfather william oliver (and not telling me the story of who died this mom in nebraska where she’d fled to her sister–and when he heard this great grandfather went behind the barn blaming himself for something lost in the mists of the past shot himself: and: that is why the family dispersed so that when william oliver came back, 18 or 19, from spanish-american war in late 1890’s with the family scattered) and that he went onto buffalo and set up an engineering/car making and repairing shop. he told me tales of way back to the sixteenth century, of intermarriage with indians and it seemed like one of those jeff chandler movies of rapine and violence and the adoption of the boy in the tree surviving the indian raid that itself was a response to the white people’s murders and boys love these stories, i know i did how’d this start’s a thread unbroken to this day as i tell my brother dave the historian (who i don’t think ever listened to grandpop) and have told to my late brother pete and my sisters margo and agnes and jane and gerarda–who have poopood these stories.
FOUR
maybe some truth. my cousin richard mycue san antonio architect, grandson of lester my grandfather’s brother (who went to texas with his son roger about the same time as us–1948–we not knowing of them until dad on his brake-lining salesman travels heard that in seguin south of san antonio some mycues were there). Richard found another story and a name “mique” who was architect of quebec and son of the french king’s architect. from there over a couple of centuries mycues moved into new england and the land grant in 1863. Grandpa’s stories to me had them coming from near toulouse near yquem (thus the mycue eventually after the french & indian wars when the english won and we were by then still yquems but the conquering officer reassigning land said there was no name that started w/a y and that we half breeds were ignorant and illiterate – which we may have been in the conquerer’s language and culture, but grandpa said that they our ancestors could sign their own name but in the end accepted the new spelling along with title to our rightful land. grandpa say the french king henri of navarre , who’s mom marguerite had been queen of Navarre when it was a country half in modern france and half in modern spain; & when he became the big king of france and took the roman catholic religion as a condition of that sent as many of his old protestant cavalier supporters to the new world in early 17th century i think partly to get them out of his hair and not interfere with henri’s medici wife and partly to save them from her; they went as explorers—protestant one and not the catholic jesuit ones they make all the noise about in schools—and that these men married with American indian women and thus were halfbreeds and a good thing is more.
FIVE
but this is not a blog. it is a story of sorts i call ‘cars’ to begin with like hounds and dreams.
JOSEPH DUERMER on & EDWARD MYCUE’S commentary
Duemer writes: “Dear Readers, if you have not clicked through already to read Ed’s comment to my Chicken Shawarma post, click here. You owe it to yourself to do so. In reading Ed’s comment you will be introduced to a fine poet, a great soul & a man old not only in years but in wisdom. I only know Ed by way of correspondence–we met when I was Poetry Editor of the Wallace Stevens Journal & Ed submitted envelopes stuffed & over-stuffed with his poetry & cover letters as poetic as the poems themselves.
Here are a couple more Mycue resources–a video & selection of Ed’s poems.
I continue to be astonished by the poet’s hard-edged realism expressed in the humane language of one perpetually love-struck by the world. I Am a Fact Not a Fiction: Selected Poetry by Edward Mycue. Posted on May 30, 2016
Duemer’s address: 38 Mill Street, South Colton NY 13687
Edward Mycue says:
May 29, 2016 at 2:41 pm
i LOVE toast. When Richard and I were in Dublin 1985 our only time staying in this cheap place downtown in a b&b over un-connected stores below (and the halls so trampoline-uneven) (it being for the Irish from the provinces) the bread racks were LOADED with all sorts of breads THAT you could toast if you wanted and BUTTER and cream and those almost hardboiled eggs and other stuff. That was TOAST. And you know that bread is the staple of life, at least i learned then. And included no ‘bubble’ breads.
As to your swarama chicken sandwich posting, Joseph, this morning we had tamales brought up from McAllen, TX by my sister in law Elena De Los Santos Mycue (late bro Dave’s wife). She hauled those frozen from the Valley to Austin (for nephew Alfredo Mycuye’s 2nd masters at ut and then up here for niece Victoria Mycue PhD from CIIS in clinical psychology.
We had some last night and more just an hour or so. These were chicken tamales. Usually we get nonmeat tamales from the Seventh Day Adventists, which are smaller but OH SO WUNDERbar wonderFUL.
These were good too.
I agree that food is “is” just by itself and that to commune with your food –food not fodder–is soaring into the Sequoias.
Yr lucky with yr Carole. Richard and I, 45 years ago, met in the Sunday classical afternoon music that Donald Pippin presented in the Old Spaghetti Factory right off Grant Ave and Green, 45 years ago TODAY on Memorial Day the Sunday that year was 1971 and i have it written down as May 30 that year. So I am a day early in this date reckoning. AND AND WE GOT MARRIED in San Francisco City Hall on May 3, Monday, of this year 2016 at noon. We have been thinking of it for so long and just put it off, but he’s in his 73rd year now (1943) and i in my 80th (1937) and we are not tottery or such but there are issues galore. ISSUES GALORE. GLOROSKI. wE HAVE not told about it (we didn’t want to dim Toya’s (Victoria) and Alfredo’s achievements. Toya lives with her wife Diane Alcala (she’s from Del Rio up river from McAllen half way to Laredo where the De Los Santos’ come from) and is 2 blocks away from us.) Diana is a mft & social wkr across the Bay in Richmond. Yesterday in Berkeley at Moe’s I whispered (mouthy me) it to Owen Hill, poet, novelist, and bookclerk there for maybe 30 years now and in his 50’s. You are the next. (What’s after ‘next’? the old answer is ‘next’ and that after that is ‘next’.)
I am having all sorts of aging ills including spinal (at the bottom tip) stenosis. Need to have sleep apnia machine. My skin is funky. And there is a narrowing closing uretha that has to be poked with a nylon stick to get it to open. PLUS my rearflow is almost constipated all the time and i need more fiber that seem possible mostly esp since we go to seniors lunches as we are close to broke (we survive on our soc sec — mine 1003 a month and Richard’s 1100 something or close to that– and we pay 815 a month rent plus tel, tv, computer, and utilities. so we make it but my senior advantage at Kaiser costs in copays for visits (a lot recently) and copays for pills — and while this recent spate was 206 there will me a lot more to come. (forgot a job? no. i had one.) (we are doing ok nonetheless: Yale money is gone now they paid for my papers 6yrs ago and i hope to try to get Bolerium Bks to broker & shift the remnants that include a lot more poems. Not so many snail mail letters nowadays. So maybe a few more beans that way.
NOT counted OUT. YET. i wobble and tottter once in awhile but that’s be left for some other day. SO YOU SEE JOEY JOSEPH my friend, we are so doing better on our end COMPARED YOU YOU THE KING OF THE CASTLE CALLED IMPAIRMENT we are ok and I’ll bet you’d take our situ if you could.
Yet even YET IS ALWAYS EVEN A LOT and even though there are no miracles there is still hope and so you are there doing the next and the NEXT AND THE NEXT in your nest on the river with Carole and your dogs and nature.
You did get your second-taste back (cf to the ‘second-sight’ events that happen) back. KEEP ON KEEP ON this noting recording exploring.
I went to a lecture a week ago on the JAINS in the Cultural Integration Foundation ashram about 6 blocks away on Fulton and 3rd Ave across from GG Park. My goddaughter niece Toya (Victoria who got her PhD from California Institute of Integral Studies: it grew from the CIF first as the Calif InstituteofAsianStudies begun from Dr Choudry & wife 60+ years ago –followers of Ananda somebody) anyway Toya told me about some pgrm there and I began going 11am sundays in January. Week after next more on Tagore. plus Joseph they have lunch afterward and it is so good with curry(s) and salad and rice and treats all vegetable.
Love, Ed P.S. I have been thinking of you. what songs do you love still? you know ones with lyrics and melodies that saved you when you felt alone and not lonely really but the solitary you happy at your core?
This is from Joseph Duemer’s personal weblog about poetry, teaching, terriers, Vietnam & life on the Raquette River in way north New York state, near Potsdam. 38 Mill Street , South Colton NY 13687
cowpunk
(Caleb 1981 comes to San Francisco from Montana)
Red.
Don’t miss out. New. Eligible. Knows what he wants. Can’t describe it.
Hippie-yuppie-redneck. Reads, raises chickens. Needs a memory going somewhere.
The “real” him in power colors is not-so. The “real” him in gray is the reverse.
Caleb needs derma-cate, absorbent under-pants, harmonious inner scenes. Caleb needs a Jane Singer dress of beige and white rayon with a lace collar.
No cameras.
Caleb needs to take it to the streets in silk and open-toed opera pumps, and a fox.
But Caleb looks
rugged in red:
a tomboy kinda boy who wants an unsuitably ex- citing rhythm.
He wants more flesh, bare guts, heart like a tempest and a dick like
the spout on the big Irish company teapot. Caleb wants class, wants to be ass, wants a serious dance of love: wants to be different.
© copyright EDWARD MYCUE
SHIPS SAIL INTO A NIGHT
Past and future is now.
Dance, words, music led us here.
Summer’s over.
Past has never left —
a bird seen from a corner of my eye.
Blue gets washed from the sky.
We re-experience it as new.
Watching feet when walking,
not able to triangulate all sounds,
hearing rumblings low tones may make.
Many distinctions evade our tastes.
Keen to dangers and still learning fullness.
© COPYRIGHT EDWARD MYCUE
PACING LIFE Edward Mycue p. 1 of 2 pages
1./
Misspelling’s legal breakdown.
Anarchy’s alteration from rules.
“Breakdown”/ change
–transformation, mutation—
–alteration as reason and result
–pink burning to purple
–the Blade Runner’s girl Rachel
while biologically-engineered gets conscious
–& Pinocchio crying/ becoming a “real live boy”
–having another being growing inside of you
–or altering molecular structure
–or learning your true sexuality :
transformations, revolutions
from accepted arrangements
umlauting “Can’t” / change.
2./
So it was
Life became irregulated.
It developed during centuries.
Therefore
It got so difficult.
3./
Three’s a crowd.
The spunky one’s the cream in your coffee.
I know I know we said.
That’s the thing!
Do it. Do it now.
Early wine is flat, dry and cloudy
and some days never end.
There is no joyous lake.
There is no incantation
that can bend the moment back
into patterns we have seen too late.
PACING LIFE Edward Mycue page 2 of 2 pages
4./
Many of us could never go home
even when we had not left it.
Home is a windsong in our hearts.
These hearts have exploded,
repositioned themselves, ending
as much the mends themselves
as the remaindered hearts.
This then is ‘home’.
5./
You don’t need contrition
for a condition.
Maybe an explanation
will do.
Maybe it’s an act–
not a crime.
You don’t need permission
to seek sublime.
It’s the condition.
Don’t ask vindication.
Brighten the dark.
No negatives first.
Follow your thirst.
Trust intuition.
It’s the condition.
6./
So live today, forget tomorrow.
Life’s not just, and sorrow’s hollow.
Anyway
That you can do it, do it
That way or you will rue it.
© Copyright Edward Mycue 13 MARCH 2017/ MONDAY 10:50am
REALLY SURPRISED TO COME ACROSS A MYCUE WHO KNOWS A LOT ABOUT SOME AREAS WHERE I CAME FROM. MADE ME HAPPY TO READ YOUR ARTICLES ABOUT MILLACA. MY FATHER’ S NAME WAS GROVER MYCUE, AND HE HAD A BROTHER NAMED WILLIAM IN NEW YORK WHO HAD A REPAIR SHOP SHAPED LIKE A TRIANGLE. I REMEMBER SEEING PICTURES OF THIS SHOP MANY YEARS AGO. ARE WE ON THE SAME PAGE? MY NAME IS BETTY MARIE MYCUE BENIKE, BORN BY WELLS, MN IN 1925. I HAVE A GENEALOGY REPORT OF THE WHOLE MYCUE FAMILY, COMPLIED BY LOWELL MYCUE OF MILACA, MN., WHO IS NOW DECEASED. I AM THE LAST LIVING PERSON IN MY FAMILY, AND LIVE IN AITKIN, MN. HOPE TO HEAR FROM YOU.
Dear Betty Benike, I am William’s grandson. 3595 Geary Blv, Apt 320, San Francisco 94118 CA email mycueed@yahoo.com tel (415) 387-2471
John Powers (Jack) Mycue was my father. I born 1937 am the 2nd of 7 children of Jack and Ruth Delehant Mycue. Both brothers David and Peter are dead but the sisters Marguerite Mycue, Agnes McGaha, Jane Mycue, and Gerarda Koehne (all in their 70’s) are living.
I am so honored to hear from you. When I was 11, our family moved to Dallas, TX where Dad’s job was to sell brake linings and clutch facings all over Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas to automobile distributors. My grandfather’s brother, Lester, Dad learned a had moved to Sequin, near San Antonio, in 1949 (I think), and went to meet Lester and his son Roger and his family. So we had contact that way as well as from the days in Denton, TX where 2 universities were–and the girl went to the one and the boy to the other. Jane and Margo went to the one called Texas Women’s University.
Sincerely, Edward Mycue (Ed)