October.

While autumn is, in general, a bleak and joyless season, I've got a sneaking fondness for the month of October. It's the month when ghouls walk abroad. That in itself is fun.

In one chapter of Ray Bradbury's magnificent "From the Dust Returned," the Elliott family, a collection of undefined spooks, ghouls, and ghosts who live in a big rambling farmhouse in northern Illinois, are wracked by an identity crisis. Who, or what, are they?

They are, they finally decide, in need of no better nomenclature than "The October People." "We are the October People!" they exclaim triumphantly, and, having laid that question to rest, move on to other matters.

And we've all got a bit of October People in us, don't we? Well, the baronial Palmers of Palmerwood sure as hell do. 

I'm always somewhat inconvenienced when the Palmer Family Curse rolls around this time of year. Why, I've already had to decline invitations to three chic, swank, celebrity-studded soirees this week alone. And the Diddies, the -Z's, and the Albrights will be so disappointed.

However, our "October malady," as my grandmere delicately referred to our condition, is no reason not to indulge in a little father-son male bonding in the wild and far off reaches of the estate.

And then there's the Annual Halloween Pilgrimage to Palmer Gardens, the Palmerwood private family cemetery. 

On that night, we wake the children at midnight and we all traipse merrily, still in our pj's, down to this rather unkempt and somewhat eerie corner of the estate to see the ghosts of the ancestral Palmers rise from their graves and walk freely through the wind-lashed October night. 

Those passing through the grounds on that wicked night report strange sights and sounds. And if you listen carefully, you just might hear spectral voices complaining about politics, lying through their teeth about their exploits, telling raunchy jokes, and fighting about politics.

Death can but remove our carnal forms. It cannot excise our basic nature. 

Autumn And Its Discontents.

Autumn brings with it few pleasures. One of those very few is the sort of grudging realization that, since there's not much to be done outdoors, one might as well curl up in one's sumptuous oak-paneled library with a Cohiba, a bottle of something peaty, amber-colored, and aged not less than 18 years, and a good book while the storms rage outside. 

Not, however, are these pleasures for the scions of the ancient Palmer dynasty: Intrepid Stella A. and Young Leo J. The passing of the Paradiso of summer into the Purgatorio of fall and the eventual Inferno of winter (sounds counterintuitive, I know, to refer to winter as an "inferno," but who am I to quibble with Dante?) occasions something worse than grief in them. The passage of the seasons engenders ennui. 

Gone are the days of chasing the giant squid around Palm Lake, the days of tearing recklessly through the woods, the days of croquet and Lawn Darts. It's cold, wet, and joyless outside. And now that the rain and gloom of a Midwestern autumn have descended upon stately Palmerwood, they're bored out of their socks. 

"There's nothing to doooooooo," grumble the Palmerlets bitterly."I'm booooooooooored. Boooooooring." 

This portends no good. Idle hands, so they say, are the Devil's playground. And fewer sets of mitts on the planet are, at the moment, idler, or, in general, more prone to deviltry than those of JP's adorable lil' moppets. Evil gestates in their tiny brains, and mischief will soon be abroad. 

In desperation for distraction, the Palmerlings decide to explore some of the lesser-known reaches of Palmerwood in search of distraction and havoc. 

They find themselves in a dusty, ill-lit, and long untraversed corridor on the first floor of the far north-northwestern wing. Portraits of some of the less savory Palmer antecedents grin malevolently down upon them. And they discover, under the Persian-silk Kerman floor-runner, a trap door. What, oh what, could possibly await them beneath it?

The fearless lil' poppets descend an ancient stone stairway into a cavernous--uh---cavern yawning beneath the stately halls and teak floors of Palmerwood above. A vast cathedral-like space opens above them--bats flutter in the darkness. Armed only with a guttering candle and their infinite capacity for mischief, the Palmerlings venture deeper into the Mysteries of Palmerwood. Whatever, oh whatever, shall they find?

In a chamber just off the main space at the bottom of the stairs, a wondrous sight meets the small Palmerkins' eyes: the fabled Palmer Treasure Room, long thought to be no more than a legend. Sacks of gold doubloons sit like fat, drunken pirates--treasure chests piled up like children's building blocks line the walls. Art treasures from around the world are scattered hither and yon, and great amphorae overflowing with jewels, gem-studded gold chains, crowns and tiaras, and other priceless adornments of royal princesses long gone stand like sentinels.

But the lil' Palmerels' eyes are drawn like bees to honey to a strange, rather Egyptian-looking headdress perched on an old steamer trunk. And next to the headdress lies a mouldering old book on the cover of which is written in fading, spidery handwriting, "THE JOURNALS OF FFOULKE GRYMCROFT-SMERTHWICK PALMER, OBE."

Intrepid Stella A. and Young Leo J. open the old book they found lying beside the odd Egyptian headdress and begin to read its yellowed, crumbling pages. 

Great zounds! It's the journal of JP's great-great-great-granduncle, the famed explorer Doctor Sir Ffoulke Grymcroft-Smerthwick Palmer, Baron Palmer, OBE, who discovered the tomb of Pharaohess Khol-Dah-Nom-Khamen outside Qasr-Farafra in 1862! Fascinating!

In it, they learn some interesting facts. First, that Sir Ffoulke Grymcroft-Smerthwick preferred to employ belly-dancers instead of ordinary Egyptian laborers (which really wasn't much of a surprise); and secondly, that the strange headdress that Sir Ffoulke Grymcroft-Smerthwick discovered inside Khol-Dah-Nom-Khamen's sarcophagus has some... some rather interesting powers.

Now, my children, while charming, well-mannered, extremely clean, and undoubtedly very highly gifted, are sometimes possessed of less than superb judgment.

When one comes across an ancient artifact from a lost civilization--a thing redolent of mysterious occult power and positively dripping with ominous supernatural puissance--one might hesitate before putting it on one's head.

However, that's precisely what Stella did.

Having observed the somewhat uncanny effects on his elder sister of donning the ancient Egyptian headdress in the Fabled Legendary Palmer Treasure Room, Young Leo J., one would think, would be a little hesitant to slap it on his own gourd.One would be wrong. Young Leo J. also puts on the ancient Egyptian headdress, although he's a little more Zen about the process.

The precious, precocious progeny, the Palmerwood poppets, race madly back up the ancient, winding stone staircase. Have their wishes come true? Was the account they read in the Journals of Doctor Sir Ffoulke Grymcroft-Smerthwick Palmer, OBE, of the old Egyptian headdress's strange powers true? Whatever, oh whatever, shall they find waiting for them upstairs??

Meanwhile, back in the library, I greeted the sudden appearance of the world's largest fishtank (Stella's wish) and my own somewhat precipitate transformation into the DaddyMonster (a creature that appears out of nowhere and chases the children around when they've been rotten) with little more than a quirk of my eyebrow and a sigh.

"Cubbings," I growled, "be so good as to call Dr. Pooley, Rabbi Felsenfeld, Father O'Herlihy, and whichever other experts in healthcare and supernatural afflictions and ailments you can think of, would you? The children appear to have found that $#@&ing old Egyptian wishing-hat that my great-great-great-granduncle, Doctor Sir Ffoulke Grymcroft-Smerthwick Palmer, Baron Palmer, OBE, brought back."

Soul.

Although Palmerwood, naturally, maintains an on-site string quartet to play the regal baroque music I require whenever I walk into a room, I've got a real thing for rhythm and blues. REAL rhythm and blues. Not that lousy shlookh they play on the radio these days. But the real stuff, like Otis Redding, Maxine Brown, Sam Cooke, Booker T & the MGs, and my all-time favorites, Sam & Dave.

The kind of stuff that the Stax label put out in the 60's. Real rhythm and blues.

In fact, I love it so much that I myself, in my younger days, played the prodigal son, abandoning my hereditary aristocratic responsibilities as the Baron of Palmerwood, to hit the road as the frontman of a little-remembered act called "Little Jimmy Ray and the Bagelles."

Here's a photo of one of our gigs. I believe this was taken in Mobile, AL, in 1981.

That's me in front, my backup singers, the Bagelles, to the left, and my band to the right: Lou "The North Suburbs of Texarkana" Tubbs on the trumpet, Isaiah "The Illinois Central & Southern Railway Line" Dubuchet on the saxophone, and Yarnell "Shecky" Robinson on the triangle.

Boy, did we have some wild times. Actually, the band and the backup singers had some wild times. None of the Bagelles seemed particularly interested in me, except for Miss Berthella "Foghorn" Washington. Miss Berthella checked in at around four bills. She generally sat backstage, where no one could see her, and belted out the backing vocals. The rest of the Bagelles couldn't sing. They just stood there and looked good. And let me tell you, they did that job pretty darn well.

Tragically, the act didn't last long. Greil Marcus of "Rolling Stone"described Little Jimmie Ray's songs as "long, irritating, offensive, and overly wordy monologues mostly about politics and religion. Also he has a kind of fixation about comic books. And other stuff no one really cares about. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that he's really white."

Dispirited, I trudged back to Palmerwood. But I'll always have the memories of those halcyon days on the road. 

From the Archives: My Heart's in the Highlands

In September of 2014, the people of Scotland, fed up, presumably, with close to 300 years of rule by the effete crumpet-monkeys of Buckingham Palace--the descendants of some minor German princelings who, through sheer luck, stumbled into the greatest gig known to mankind--decided to hold a referendum on Scottish independence, and whether or not to dissolve the Act of Union of 1707, which brought Scotland under English rule.

You can't blame them. Elizabeth II doesn't seem like a bad sort. Nice enough lady. But she's no spring chicken. Teeth, as they say, lengthen. And the notion of the bum of her likely successor, Prince Charles--once aptly described by the immortal (although tragically dead) Christopher Hitchens as "that jug-eared, slobbering, weak-chinned dauphin"--occupying the throne is enough to make the blood of even the boldest Highlander run cold.

And if you're telling me that a country that gave the world Adam Smith, David Hume, and Sherlock Holmes* can't run itself, you're crackers. Barmy. Or "meshuggeneh," as I believe it goes in Gaelic.

Filled as I am with a detestation of hereditary privilege, colonial exploitation, and the imposition of the will of the few upon the many, naturally, I wholeheartedly suppo--what? What's that? You ask how I could espouse such noble sentiments while living on a luxurious country estate and plantation, supported by the labor of uncounted numbers of peasants? You ask how on earth I can truly detest such advantages as the Royals enjoy while maintaining my baronial existence at Palmerwood?

Well,

1) I believe 'twas Emerson who said "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

2) Shut the &$%# up.

As I was saying, I enthusiastically supported Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party and the cause of Scottish independence. But then, we Palmers always have. While the referendum was going on, I dug out of the archives of the Palmer Portrait Gallery this magnificent representation of my great-great-great-great-great granduncle, Angus Hamish Shlomo Alasdair MacPalmer.

Palmer family legend has it that this stirring portrait was painted just before the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the last bold attempt at Scottish independence, in which Angus Hamish Shlomo Alasdair was supposed to have commanded the MacPalmer of Monaltrie's Regiment.

He disappeared in battle (some cynics wonder whether he actually took part in it at all). No one knows this brave highlander's fate. But we do have it on good authority that his last recorded words were, "Aye, lass... 'tis a mighty big sporran indeed," to a barmaid in Drumnadrochit the night before the battle.

Sadly, the Scots were to fare no better in 2014 than in 1746. The Referendum was defeated 55%-45%. But so long as the desire for freedom burns bright in the breasts of all true Highlanders, hope remains. As the great Highland poet Robbie Burns wrote, a man's a man for a' that.



*Sherlock Holmes? A Scot? Why yes indeed, folks. A well known bit of Sherlockiana is that Dr. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was once asked if there was a "real" Sherlock Holmes. "Most assuredly there was," he answered. The model for Sir Arthur's Holmes was a professor of the good doctor's at the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Joseph Bell, a dour Scots Presbyterian physician with an aquiline nose, piercing eyes, a decisive manner, and, like Holmes, an almost uncanny knack for observation and deduction, which made him one of the most gifted diagnosticians of his time, or any other. 

From the Archives: The Big River

I despise autumn, and I'm bewildered by the vast hordes of humanity who claim that it's their favorite season. I just don't get it. How can anyone get excited about the days getting progressively shorter and the weather getting progressively colder? How can anyone look forward to the ebbing away of light and warmth?

Or maybe it's just that I'm completely indifferent verging on hostile toward fall stuff that other people seem to enjoy, like football (literally couldn't care less. It wouldn't bother me in the least if football and everyone who played it disappeared into a black hole tomorrow), colored leaves (I like flowers better, and you don't have to rake them), and pumpkin flavored everything. Blech.

I will admit to liking tweed. I like tweed a lot. However, I'd give it up in a minute for the non-necessity of wearing it.

Times like these, when autumn raises its withered hand over the Midwest and starts killing everything that I will drive my sleek European roadster down to the riverfront, get out, and stare down at the Mighty Mississippi churning its way inexorably south, and I think to myself, "You know, if I just sailed down it, eventually, I'd hit the Gulf of Mexico. Where it's warm. And if I kept going, eventually I'd hit the Caribbean. Which is a little less oily."

Such thoughts put me in mind of my great-great-great-great-granduncle, Gideon DuBuchet "Ol' River-Rat-Mustache" Palmer, the famed Mississippi River Pirate. Ol' River-Rat-Mustache prowled the Big Muddy in his trusty pirogue (by sheerest coincidence, also named the "Raconteur," just like my luxurious 180-ft yacht today) with his equally larcenous sidekick Osage Phil, looking for plunder. Or booty, if you prefer. Whichever. 

Ol' River-Rat-Mustache wasn't a particularly successful pirate. Nor a politically correct one. In his declining years in the Old River-Pirates' Home, he bored his fellow retirees to tears with endless repetitions of the same story of his biggest haul: "D'I'ver tell you fellers 'bout the time me 'n' Phil took six silver dollars offa two half-breed Choctaws in Natchez?"

The Genesis of the Ongoing Jim Palmer-Bryan Adams Deathmatch

Faithful minions will know that I routinely place my life and well-being in mortal peril to battle ninjas, zombies, supply-side economists, attack-trained birds of prey, intelligent air-breathing giant squid, and any number of other nefarious threats to the Republic. But there is one foe who towers over the others in both innate malevolence and immediate threat to the values we true Americans hold so dear.

That threat is Bryan Adams.

Every hero has an archenemy. Sherlock Holmes had Moriarty. Superman had Lex Luthor. The Doctor has The Master. The Duke Boys had Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane. So naturally, it stands to reason that I'd have one as well. I hate him beyond all rationality. But how did it begin? Whence this deadly grapple that will not end until one of us is completely and thoroughly killed? To death?

The full story, even at this late date, cannot be revealed... but I can give you the broad strokes. We turn now to the dusty, moldering pages of ancient history, for this epic struggle originated in the misty past... a time when giants still walked the earth, before history had faded into legend, and legend into mythology.

The year was 1990. I and a brave band of fellow luminaries of the International Left were deep in the jungles of Ecuador on a mission the sensitivity of which, even now, prohibits full disclosure.

It was me; General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH GORBACHEV; First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of Cuba FIDEL CASTRO; and the British Socialist publisher of the Daily Mirror, chairman of the Maxwell Communications Corporation and former Labour MP for Buckingham ROBERT "THE BOUNCING CZECH" MAXWELL.

At the time, I still had a magnificent head of hair.

The jungle air was thick with mosquitoes, humidity, and international intrigue. The jungle was eerily silent. Aside from the buzzing of insects, the chatter of monkeys and the screeching of macaws, the grunting of tapirs, the occasional sound of a helicopter passing overhead, the singing from a nearby peasant village, and the constant bickering in four languages of my associates, there wasn't a sound to be heard. In retrospect, come to think of it, things were actually pretty noisy. But my finely-honed, razor-sharp combat instincts told me something was amiss, and I raised my fist in the international symbol for "shut up."

Suddenly, however, all hell broke loose as Fidel was caught up in a tree-spring noose trap; Maxwell in a net trap; a tranquilizer dart struck Gorbachev in the neck and knocked him right out. Only I had remained free--but it wouldn't do me much good.

A low chuckle cut through the shouts and grumblings of my incapacitated comrades. I spun around, my Walther PPK pointed straight at the heart of a slim, good-looking man in his early forties--Canadian singer/songwriter of terrible songs BRYAN ADAMS.

"Well, Mister Palmer, eh," he said, grinning Satanically, "the four of you, eh, seem to have stepped quite neatly into the snare I set for you, eh?"

"Bryan Adams?" I said, dumbfounded. "You're behind all this? I mean, I'm a little surprised. Your music sucks, sure, but I figured you were just profoundly untalented, not evil. Frankly, I was expecting Elton John. Or maybe Poco."

"Untalented, eh?" he said, his thin smile disappearing in a twisted grimace of rage. "And whose album 'Reckless' hit #1 on Billboard, eh?"

"I believe it was H.L. Mencken who said that no one ever went broke by underestimating the taste of the American public," I said. "Which may be true, but it's still no excuse for inflicting 'Summer of '69' on us."

"Enough of this mindless repartee, Mister Palmer, eh," the nefarious Canadian hissed. "Time for you and your fellow pinkos to see what I've got in store for you, eh."

I simply can't reveal any more without risking the complete and utter breakdown in flames of world civilization, but it was a rather subdued desperate band of Lefties winging its way back to Palmerwood aboard my private G-4 that evening. The celebratory bottle of Krug I'd bought in anticipation of a successful mission went unopened, but boy, did we go through a lot of Stoli. We sat and drank in silence. The hideous import of our mission's failure hung heavily on all our minds. The future looked bleak.

Well, that was in 1990. The next year, Adams would release his sixth studio album, Waking Up the Neighbours, and  "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You"  would hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and would remain #1 for sixteen weeks on the UK Singles Chart.

But by that time, Maxwell would be dead, an apparent suicide, having "fallen" (maybe) from the deck of his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, into the Atlantic ocean just off the Canary Islands amidst the wreckage of his business empire. The Soviet Union would be no more, its sterling revolutionary ideology replaced by the rapacious capitalistic anarchy of the New Russia; and as a consequence, Cuba, of course, would be deprived of its biggest trading partner, and would slip inexorably into Caribbean irrelevance.

The release of "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" and the collapse of world socialism. I can't go into the details, but I'm sure I don't have to. If you can't do the math, I can't help you.

But I remain undaunted. He may have won that battle, but the war continues. And the next time we meet, Bryan Adams, the advantage will be mine. You bastard. You maple syrup-slurping, round bacon-eating bastard.

Summer Break.

Who on earth, I can hear you asking, in his or her right mind would ever want to leave Palmerwood? Isn't living in this sprawling, rambling, super-luxurious, deeply historic country estate located in the gently rolling hills of suburban St. Louis like being on vacation all the time?

Well, yeah, sure it is. But even Palmerwood, the garden-spot of the Midwest and the epicenter of everything interesting that goes on in our benighted region, is none the worse for a change of scenery. And so, every so often, the Palmers of Palmerwood decamp for more tropical climes--places where palm trees and heliconias replace pin oaks and pine trees on the horizon, where sand replaces loam between our toes, and where soft Island accents replace the broad, flat tones of our native Heartland region.

The children were so excited! They simply couldn't WAIT to get the hell out of Dodge, and had their Lil' Louie (the junior line of Louis Vuitton) luggage packed before you could say Rock Jabinson. However, inasmuch as I am attempting to raise responsible young'uns who will, someday, shoulder their hereditary responsibilities with the noblesse oblige of those of our exalted station, I informed the lil' poppets that, prior to dashing off to the land of sun, sand, and surf, some chores needed to be done.

First, a bit of housekeeping. A few pesky zombies had managed to worm their way inside the estate's perimeter--no doubt helped by the fact that they are themselves somewhat wormy--and once you get one, then the whole bunch follows. Can't come home to a luxurious, historic country estate overrun by the Undead.



And then a quick check on some of the livestock before we go. Now, I'm the last fella on earth to get his incredibly expensive, super-luxurious, 400-thread-count Egyptian cotton boxers in a bunch over GMOs and organic yadda yadda, but I will cop to being a little dubious about the long-term effects of Monsanto's new "Yum Yum Chicken Chow."

However, we left with full confidence in the ability of our doughty and redoubtable gamekeeper, Oliver DeBaliviere, to handle any exigency that might arise in our absence.

And then we were off!



The children have always been appreciative of the wonders of the natural world, both above and below the waves. Here are the little Palmerlets doing a bit of spear-fishing and scuba-diving.

The scuba tanks and spears were a gift from Grandmere. How the old dear dotes on those imps. "Now, you little pishers get to the ocean floor and don't come back without a species previously unknown to science, and preferably quite dangerous!" she exhorted them. "Grandmere will have the help procure a lovely selection of petit-fours for when you get back."

The Palmerkins are independent little beasties, and on their own precious lil' initiative, tackled a wide range of Salt Life activities, like catamaraning...



...and Intrepid Stella A. even mastered a somewhat arcane maritime pursuit known as "shark-surfing." That child sure loves her animals. And what a way she has with them!



But all good things, like vacations, must come to an end, tragically. As we watched the sun set over the crystal-clear, azure-blue waters of our magnificent private Caribbean cay, our thoughts turned to home. Tomorrow, we'd board our private hovercraft, which our captain, Cap'n Stabbin (if he could be bothered to leave his cabin--what he's always doing in there I simply don't know and don't care to guess) would pilot north--around the Keys, through the Gulf of Mexico, and then up the Mississippi until reaching Palm's Landing on Palmer Creek.

Good-bye, ocean. We'll think of you often as the Palmerlets return to school, the leaves begin to turn, the days begin to shorten, and autumn, Satan's own season, descends upon the Midwest.