Winter 1995, Tacoma Bluegrass Festival
Ralph Stanley is one of the legends of Appalachian banjo and singing. He was playing at a bluegrass festival one early winter, and after one of his concerts we saw him sitting out at the table where they were selling his CDs and merchandise. He had a bumper sticker saying Ralph Stanley for President which I bought and stuck on my guitar case. He had been selling the same bumper sticker for twenty years they told me later.
We got to talking with him and his son, a fine singer and guitar picker in his own right, performing with his daddy on the road since he was a boy. Ralph was in his late sixties, this was before his appearance in the Coen Brothers movie, when he sang Oh Death and won the grammy that year and started doing all those TV appearances.
He was only about five feet tall, coming from a long line of miners I guess. He didn’t say much, but he really radiated a peaceful and spiritual energy to all of us without even cracking a smile. Like a little Appalachian bodhisattva, we all thought he had the mountain inside him and every time he sang, the wind in the hollows blew up and through him.
Later in the festival I was talking to Peter Rowan, once with Jerry Garcia in Old and In the Way, still the highest selling bluegrass album of all time. We were talking about Ralph, and Peter told me he had been up to Ralph’s Hills of Home. Up on the hill you can hear the Stanley Brothers being played out of little speakers next to Ralph’s Brother Carter and their mother’s graves, 24 hours a day, leading them home. A little further up the hill, Peter told us, no music being piped out, but two more gravestones--father and son biker family who had loved Ralph for many years.
One day the Father overdosed on heroin and all his biker buddies, dragging the teenage son along, took him up to the Hills of Home on their choppers, propped him up against a tree next to Carter and his Mothers' graves and shot him full of holes with their various guns. They called for Ralph but Ralph was on tour in Belgium at the time. The bikers left the bullet-riddled corpse up against the tree, a note tacked to its chest with one final wish--that their friend be buried next to Carter and Mama Stanley at Hills of Home.
When Ralph got home he was told of the crazy incident and request by his family and the people who worked at the house. He just looked at everyone and said well if that old boy needs a way to find his way back home, then we ought to oblige him with a little resting place up here, but over yonder next to the hedge, not next to Mama and Carter.
Ten years later the son repeated the overdose at a much younger age than his Father had, and the bikers just made a quick call on their cellphones to make the immortal wish.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Before the Deluge
Spring 1992, Chalatenango, El Salvador and LAX
The FMLN banners were in the streets, people were waving flags, giving speeches and selling souvenirs. Way different than two years before when we had to pose as Agronomists when crossing over into rebel territory to visit Miguel Angel.
We made it up to Chalate in the Pastors for Peace Caravan and spent most of the day sorting out the donations. Garden supplies, computers and computer parts, baby clothes, school supplies, household items. We had to turn a lot of stuff away in Portland, like sweaters and electrical appliances, as you can imagine, and we thought well intentioned progressive folks were hoping to unload some of their stuff lying around.
The Caravan was a US and Canada joint effort, with 35 big cargo trucks, not eighteen wheelers, but moving van size, all crossing the border at the same time with the press and border patrol there, sometimes harassing them for hours. I went by plane and met up with everyone in San Salvador.
Because a lot of the donations were earmarked for certain provinces, we first unloaded everything from all of the trucks and then re packed it, each truck with a particular destination, like Chalatenango in our case. We did this sorting at the University where the six Jesuit priests were murdered, and countless others, many students and faculty, had been disappeared by ARENA security forces or private death squads. One guy pointed to the large silver 20 story building looming above us. It was empty, the windows were mostly shattered, and he laughed when he told me the Duarte government of the 1980’s, during Reagan and the height of the war, kept putting new windows in and the rebels kept blowing them out. It was like a game, and no one ever used it as a business or office complex. I thought of the great black obelisk in 2001 A Space Odyssey.
While we were unloading the trucks, a lot of people living in the town wanted to talk to us, and a couple people took me aside to ask for more help. Money for the family, they wanted to give me an address to send things, or just to hear their stories. I didn’t understand very much Spanish but listened intently until one of the coordinators asked me to help carry something or what have you, urging me not to give anything extra, no one was allowed because it wasn’t fair to others.
We spent a few days in the same village, and that’s where we met Comandante Maria Serrano, from Mariah’s Story the Documentary. In the middle of the village there were big trailers exactly like the ones at big construction sites. These were marked UN, and these ever present letters were on air conditioned trucks all over the country, diplomats, civil servants and office workers, swooping down in their helicopters to pour over data and coordinate the cease fire and Peace Accords agreements.
There were a few tables set up in the center of the town with UN people. Leading up to each table was a long line of ex combatants from the rebel forces, carrying a weapon to be dismantled. These were the terms of the cease fire, it had to be monitored down to every last known gun and soldier. The rebels had to give up their weapons, many of them stolen after retreating government forces left them behind. After all, many in the ARENA army were forcibly recruited, often sons were snatched off park benches or bus stops by police officers and taken to military barracks, forced into conscription under threat of death. The line of soldiers extended up the path and into the mountains behind the town. The sound and smell of soldering and welding filled the air with a metallic, sulfuric patina. Straight faced UN people, way too far from Geneva, wrote on clipboards and filled UN wheelbarrows with pieces of broken weapons to be carted off to a run down tin farm building.
They took us to the cache of dismantled weapons. Bazookas, pistols, all type of machine guns, rocket launchers and sniper rifles. Raining down death on whole families, now inert in a pile. They told us we could take anything we wanted so I scrounged around, only a couple of us did. I found a Chinese made AK47, its barrel sawed off, welded together and the firing pin pulled out. The wooden stock was intact, as well as the bullet magazine and trigger. Put a cardboard tube on the end and wrap it with electrical type and by God you’ve got a real looking machine gun. I supposed it was more memorable than buying one of the plaque mounted guns they were selling in the Zocalo, it held more personal meaning for me to select it from such a variety of choices.
When the two weeks were over, the delegation split up and went back home. I was flying through Los Angeles, LAX, and hoped I wouldn’t have any problems. I cleverly wrapped the AK47 in a towel and put it in the middle of all my stuff in a big suitcase. No radar picked it up, so far so good out of El Salvador.
Coming into customs at LAX, we were standing in line, one nervous guy in front of me, I thought he may have something in his little bag, he was getting jittery. I was not feeling nervous at all. I looked over and saw a shorter line and got into it. When I got to the desk the lady asked me if I had any foodstuffs to declare and I said no. Apparently this was the line specifically for people with fruit baskets, wine, or whatever food items you were bringing back home. She asked me to step to the side please and a couple officers would be over in a second.
I stared into space and felt two huge figures approaching me from behind. I didn’t want to turn around. They came around to my side and I was staring into the chests of two huge LAX Customs Police, fingerless gloves and looking up I saw the inevitable crew cuts. They were twins, I thought, but didn’t ask for confirmation. I heard one of them ask me to please open my suitcase.
Now I was getting a little nervous. As I unzipped the big suitcase, they asked me if I had any weapons. I didn’t flinch and said no, but I think it came out a little uneasy cause then they asked me if I had anything made of metal in my suitcase.
How could I explain, it wasn’t illegal what I was doing, check that jittery guy for the cocaine instead. I said well you know the war is over and the rebels gave up. I have a souvenir from the war, uh they were selling them as mementos you know, end of twelve years of Civil War and Communist insurrection.
They looked at me without saying anything, but one of the twins unsnapped his Glock, motioning with his chin for me to open the suitcase and remove the contents. I glanced over at the other people in line as my hand reached the towel. They were looking at me too, watching as I put both hands under the towel to lift it out, like a little baby in swaddling clothes, all the time explaining now you know its just a souvenir and its completely dismantled, you know the UN was there and they destroyed all the weapons and then gave them to people, so I just got this one…I was handing him the towel, but the other twin unsnapped his Glock, kept his hand on it and put one foot back. Open the towel sir.
The stock of the weapon came into view first and then the rest of the weapon, stark against the fluffy white towel. I saw one person in line lean back to the person behind them, eyes trained on me, as they whispered something. The customs people in the booth craned their necks to see what was going on. The twins were mesmerized. I pointed it right at them, finger on the trigger. They asked me questions about where and how did I get it, was it really a souvenir, what about this 12 year civil war I was talking about. One of them smiled and asked me if he could hold it. I gave it to him and he examined it, nodding in approval and verifying that indeed the weapon was useless and they could see no reason why I shouldn’t be able to take it home with me, just like any old basket of fruit.
I did put a cardboard tube on the end and covered it with electrical tape. Some friends rented Clinton St. Theater in Portland for ninety dollars one Friday Cabaret Night and used it in a short play they had written. I don’t remember what the piece was about and I don’t remember ever getting my AK47 back either.
The FMLN banners were in the streets, people were waving flags, giving speeches and selling souvenirs. Way different than two years before when we had to pose as Agronomists when crossing over into rebel territory to visit Miguel Angel.
We made it up to Chalate in the Pastors for Peace Caravan and spent most of the day sorting out the donations. Garden supplies, computers and computer parts, baby clothes, school supplies, household items. We had to turn a lot of stuff away in Portland, like sweaters and electrical appliances, as you can imagine, and we thought well intentioned progressive folks were hoping to unload some of their stuff lying around.
The Caravan was a US and Canada joint effort, with 35 big cargo trucks, not eighteen wheelers, but moving van size, all crossing the border at the same time with the press and border patrol there, sometimes harassing them for hours. I went by plane and met up with everyone in San Salvador.
Because a lot of the donations were earmarked for certain provinces, we first unloaded everything from all of the trucks and then re packed it, each truck with a particular destination, like Chalatenango in our case. We did this sorting at the University where the six Jesuit priests were murdered, and countless others, many students and faculty, had been disappeared by ARENA security forces or private death squads. One guy pointed to the large silver 20 story building looming above us. It was empty, the windows were mostly shattered, and he laughed when he told me the Duarte government of the 1980’s, during Reagan and the height of the war, kept putting new windows in and the rebels kept blowing them out. It was like a game, and no one ever used it as a business or office complex. I thought of the great black obelisk in 2001 A Space Odyssey.
While we were unloading the trucks, a lot of people living in the town wanted to talk to us, and a couple people took me aside to ask for more help. Money for the family, they wanted to give me an address to send things, or just to hear their stories. I didn’t understand very much Spanish but listened intently until one of the coordinators asked me to help carry something or what have you, urging me not to give anything extra, no one was allowed because it wasn’t fair to others.
We spent a few days in the same village, and that’s where we met Comandante Maria Serrano, from Mariah’s Story the Documentary. In the middle of the village there were big trailers exactly like the ones at big construction sites. These were marked UN, and these ever present letters were on air conditioned trucks all over the country, diplomats, civil servants and office workers, swooping down in their helicopters to pour over data and coordinate the cease fire and Peace Accords agreements.
There were a few tables set up in the center of the town with UN people. Leading up to each table was a long line of ex combatants from the rebel forces, carrying a weapon to be dismantled. These were the terms of the cease fire, it had to be monitored down to every last known gun and soldier. The rebels had to give up their weapons, many of them stolen after retreating government forces left them behind. After all, many in the ARENA army were forcibly recruited, often sons were snatched off park benches or bus stops by police officers and taken to military barracks, forced into conscription under threat of death. The line of soldiers extended up the path and into the mountains behind the town. The sound and smell of soldering and welding filled the air with a metallic, sulfuric patina. Straight faced UN people, way too far from Geneva, wrote on clipboards and filled UN wheelbarrows with pieces of broken weapons to be carted off to a run down tin farm building.
They took us to the cache of dismantled weapons. Bazookas, pistols, all type of machine guns, rocket launchers and sniper rifles. Raining down death on whole families, now inert in a pile. They told us we could take anything we wanted so I scrounged around, only a couple of us did. I found a Chinese made AK47, its barrel sawed off, welded together and the firing pin pulled out. The wooden stock was intact, as well as the bullet magazine and trigger. Put a cardboard tube on the end and wrap it with electrical type and by God you’ve got a real looking machine gun. I supposed it was more memorable than buying one of the plaque mounted guns they were selling in the Zocalo, it held more personal meaning for me to select it from such a variety of choices.
When the two weeks were over, the delegation split up and went back home. I was flying through Los Angeles, LAX, and hoped I wouldn’t have any problems. I cleverly wrapped the AK47 in a towel and put it in the middle of all my stuff in a big suitcase. No radar picked it up, so far so good out of El Salvador.
Coming into customs at LAX, we were standing in line, one nervous guy in front of me, I thought he may have something in his little bag, he was getting jittery. I was not feeling nervous at all. I looked over and saw a shorter line and got into it. When I got to the desk the lady asked me if I had any foodstuffs to declare and I said no. Apparently this was the line specifically for people with fruit baskets, wine, or whatever food items you were bringing back home. She asked me to step to the side please and a couple officers would be over in a second.
I stared into space and felt two huge figures approaching me from behind. I didn’t want to turn around. They came around to my side and I was staring into the chests of two huge LAX Customs Police, fingerless gloves and looking up I saw the inevitable crew cuts. They were twins, I thought, but didn’t ask for confirmation. I heard one of them ask me to please open my suitcase.
Now I was getting a little nervous. As I unzipped the big suitcase, they asked me if I had any weapons. I didn’t flinch and said no, but I think it came out a little uneasy cause then they asked me if I had anything made of metal in my suitcase.
How could I explain, it wasn’t illegal what I was doing, check that jittery guy for the cocaine instead. I said well you know the war is over and the rebels gave up. I have a souvenir from the war, uh they were selling them as mementos you know, end of twelve years of Civil War and Communist insurrection.
They looked at me without saying anything, but one of the twins unsnapped his Glock, motioning with his chin for me to open the suitcase and remove the contents. I glanced over at the other people in line as my hand reached the towel. They were looking at me too, watching as I put both hands under the towel to lift it out, like a little baby in swaddling clothes, all the time explaining now you know its just a souvenir and its completely dismantled, you know the UN was there and they destroyed all the weapons and then gave them to people, so I just got this one…I was handing him the towel, but the other twin unsnapped his Glock, kept his hand on it and put one foot back. Open the towel sir.
The stock of the weapon came into view first and then the rest of the weapon, stark against the fluffy white towel. I saw one person in line lean back to the person behind them, eyes trained on me, as they whispered something. The customs people in the booth craned their necks to see what was going on. The twins were mesmerized. I pointed it right at them, finger on the trigger. They asked me questions about where and how did I get it, was it really a souvenir, what about this 12 year civil war I was talking about. One of them smiled and asked me if he could hold it. I gave it to him and he examined it, nodding in approval and verifying that indeed the weapon was useless and they could see no reason why I shouldn’t be able to take it home with me, just like any old basket of fruit.
I did put a cardboard tube on the end and covered it with electrical tape. Some friends rented Clinton St. Theater in Portland for ninety dollars one Friday Cabaret Night and used it in a short play they had written. I don’t remember what the piece was about and I don’t remember ever getting my AK47 back either.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Great American Novel
1983-1988, Iowa City, Iowa
I had a friend who was related to the Governor of Texas, Ann Richards. Her name was Robin, and she played third chair trumpet with me and Chris Abbott, first and second chair respectively. Her dad was one of the first adults I remember meeting who was literary. I mean he looked and dressed literary, salt and pepper beard, dark rimmed glassed, patches at the elbows of a corduroy suit jacket. My other literary person was my dear friend Judy Atwell, who allowed me to read all her Emerson collection one long weekend sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. Robin’s father looked literary too and his daughters were all very cultured and intelligent, but with oversized rear ends every last one of them. I really liked Robin a lot, she was my best friend, and I think her dad knew that when we met. We had a short discussion at the doors to the high school, I had just finished giving a speech at High School Graduation, which he liked and commented on, and I told him I wanted to write the Great American Novel. He told me with a laugh that someone had better do it soon and wished me luck.
I chose University of Iowa for just that reason, starting with pre journalism but soon getting into the International Undergraduate Writer’s Workshop.
Flannery O’Connor was a quiet student there in the 50’s, writing her masterpieces of Catholicism and entropy. Dylan Thomas lived there a while too, drinking himself to death and pissing people off in Mama’s, where we always went for fitty cent Pabst Cans on Thursday nights. A wide array of writers came through Iowa City, though it seems to be known best for Bridges of Madison County.
Probably the most legendary figure of Iowa City was Kurt Vonnegut. He moved there in the late 60’s or early 70’s in a Volkswagen to become faculty, and wrote a lot of his most famous novels there, actually becoming famous and rich there. I lived in his house, the famous Vonnegut House, for about four years. He had been gone for a good ten years by then.
The house sat way up on the hill, just next to the woods, and we even had a barn out back you could live in. Next door, through the bushes, was Black’s Gaslight Village, a series of small studio apartments which began as a collective living idea and turned into Bohemian heaven while Vonnegut was there. Many tales of wild parties, complete with wife swapping amongst the intelligentsia still were echoing in the halls of academia.
For as many years as anyone could remember, the house had been the site of the biggest party of the year, held on May Day, complete with May Pole, bands in the barn all day and all night, endless kegs, usually New Orleans style food for some reason, and lots of psychedelics and anything you could get your hands on. People had free run of your house, everyone could be trusted, even my friends who shot up in the basement were careful not to put their needles in the common trash, they always put them in a separate bag. Divin’ Duck and Totem Soul, the band I was in, played endlessly from the barn to hundreds of dancing hippies.
We also had John Irving during the World According to Garp and Hotel New Hampshire days. I saw him speak and he had this really thick upper body from being a medal winning wrestler, but he was really smashed and gave a horrible speech and reading. After twenty minutes he was gone.
I also took a creative writing class with James Alan MacPherson. He probably doesn’t remember me, I was always really stoned. I tried really hard but didn’t quite get it. I didn’t get his class either, he read from Appolinaire or de Maupassant or something, some stories about Farmer’s Wives and stuff like that, trying to tell us where it all came from. We had to sit for hours and listen to him read before we could get to our stories. He was really shy too and didn’t say much about the work, like he hadn’t read it. I don’t think he read mine. I guess it was for us to do, it was a workshop after all, and we had to give each other constructive criticism. He didn’t win the Pulitzer for giving speeches I suppose. I finally read the award winning stories years later that he wrote of life in Chicago 1968 and was blown away they were so great.
I wrote my final story and got a C. I went to his office and he looked at me like I didn’t have a clue, and he was right about that.
A few years later I had a Modern Literature class in Ames, during a time when I moved back there for a year, when I was 22 or so. Jane Smiley came to the class and spoke to us about how to be a writer. She was really tall and lanky, and was eating a Snickers bar, apologizing because she hadn’t eaten that day. She seemed really nice, like her name implied. She talked about the two books she had written, saying they were in her and the story was just waiting to be told. It isn’t work, it’s like going on a journey, you sit down and your mind takes you to new places and you meet new people. The job of the writer is to introduce those people and places to people you never really meet, making them feel like they are there with you. She won the Pulitzer a few years later for an epic tale of Greenland, a really big book that you wouldn’t even be able to take on a short holiday.
I had a friend who was related to the Governor of Texas, Ann Richards. Her name was Robin, and she played third chair trumpet with me and Chris Abbott, first and second chair respectively. Her dad was one of the first adults I remember meeting who was literary. I mean he looked and dressed literary, salt and pepper beard, dark rimmed glassed, patches at the elbows of a corduroy suit jacket. My other literary person was my dear friend Judy Atwell, who allowed me to read all her Emerson collection one long weekend sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. Robin’s father looked literary too and his daughters were all very cultured and intelligent, but with oversized rear ends every last one of them. I really liked Robin a lot, she was my best friend, and I think her dad knew that when we met. We had a short discussion at the doors to the high school, I had just finished giving a speech at High School Graduation, which he liked and commented on, and I told him I wanted to write the Great American Novel. He told me with a laugh that someone had better do it soon and wished me luck.
I chose University of Iowa for just that reason, starting with pre journalism but soon getting into the International Undergraduate Writer’s Workshop.
Flannery O’Connor was a quiet student there in the 50’s, writing her masterpieces of Catholicism and entropy. Dylan Thomas lived there a while too, drinking himself to death and pissing people off in Mama’s, where we always went for fitty cent Pabst Cans on Thursday nights. A wide array of writers came through Iowa City, though it seems to be known best for Bridges of Madison County.
Probably the most legendary figure of Iowa City was Kurt Vonnegut. He moved there in the late 60’s or early 70’s in a Volkswagen to become faculty, and wrote a lot of his most famous novels there, actually becoming famous and rich there. I lived in his house, the famous Vonnegut House, for about four years. He had been gone for a good ten years by then.
The house sat way up on the hill, just next to the woods, and we even had a barn out back you could live in. Next door, through the bushes, was Black’s Gaslight Village, a series of small studio apartments which began as a collective living idea and turned into Bohemian heaven while Vonnegut was there. Many tales of wild parties, complete with wife swapping amongst the intelligentsia still were echoing in the halls of academia.
For as many years as anyone could remember, the house had been the site of the biggest party of the year, held on May Day, complete with May Pole, bands in the barn all day and all night, endless kegs, usually New Orleans style food for some reason, and lots of psychedelics and anything you could get your hands on. People had free run of your house, everyone could be trusted, even my friends who shot up in the basement were careful not to put their needles in the common trash, they always put them in a separate bag. Divin’ Duck and Totem Soul, the band I was in, played endlessly from the barn to hundreds of dancing hippies.
We also had John Irving during the World According to Garp and Hotel New Hampshire days. I saw him speak and he had this really thick upper body from being a medal winning wrestler, but he was really smashed and gave a horrible speech and reading. After twenty minutes he was gone.
I also took a creative writing class with James Alan MacPherson. He probably doesn’t remember me, I was always really stoned. I tried really hard but didn’t quite get it. I didn’t get his class either, he read from Appolinaire or de Maupassant or something, some stories about Farmer’s Wives and stuff like that, trying to tell us where it all came from. We had to sit for hours and listen to him read before we could get to our stories. He was really shy too and didn’t say much about the work, like he hadn’t read it. I don’t think he read mine. I guess it was for us to do, it was a workshop after all, and we had to give each other constructive criticism. He didn’t win the Pulitzer for giving speeches I suppose. I finally read the award winning stories years later that he wrote of life in Chicago 1968 and was blown away they were so great.
I wrote my final story and got a C. I went to his office and he looked at me like I didn’t have a clue, and he was right about that.
A few years later I had a Modern Literature class in Ames, during a time when I moved back there for a year, when I was 22 or so. Jane Smiley came to the class and spoke to us about how to be a writer. She was really tall and lanky, and was eating a Snickers bar, apologizing because she hadn’t eaten that day. She seemed really nice, like her name implied. She talked about the two books she had written, saying they were in her and the story was just waiting to be told. It isn’t work, it’s like going on a journey, you sit down and your mind takes you to new places and you meet new people. The job of the writer is to introduce those people and places to people you never really meet, making them feel like they are there with you. She won the Pulitzer a few years later for an epic tale of Greenland, a really big book that you wouldn’t even be able to take on a short holiday.
Lumerians
Summer 1994, Mt. Shasta, California
Some friends told us they saw a woman down there dressed like Jane Fonda in Barbarella. She was hiking on the icy trail coming the other way, asked a couple questions and then disappeared. When they saw where she had gone there was just a cliff into a deep ravine. On the way home they mentioned it to the Parks guy, concerned that she may have fallen in, but he just said oh yeah that was a Lumerian, they live inside the mountain, you can go look it up in the public library.
We didn’t go looking for Lumerians, but one summer me and my girlfriend Maya went to Mt. Shasta on fourth of July weekend. Sure enough in the parade through town, a bunch of people dressed in purple robes, their banner reading Welcome Lumerians as if they were the Rotary Club. I guess they were actually giants when they lived inside Mt. Shasta, but assumed human form when surfacing above ground. They built great big cities underground with everything the giants needed, modern sewage, shops, great big houses that looked like the pueblos of New Mexico. They had tunnels going from Mt. Shasta to other power centers around the globe like Joshua Tree, the Pyramids of Egypt, and Mecca. The giants could go back and forth underground, engaging in trade with other Lumerians, or conspiring the peaceful transition to extraterrestrial rule of the earth in the next millennium.
Maya and I luckily found a nice remote place away from all the hordes of campers. There was an old trailer in an open field, but it looked like no one had used it in a long time. We parked the car and set up camp. It seemed like I could hear drums on the other side of the valley, but Maya could not hear anything.
As the sun was setting, we went out to the end of a fallen tree and looked out at the field and the changing colors. I didn’t see any Lumerians, and that trailer looked way to small for a giant, so I began to relax.
I had a bright tie dyed tee shirt on, and a butterfly started flying around me. Pretty soon a whole flock of them started lazily swooping and hovering around me like I was the king of the butterflies.
Some friends told us they saw a woman down there dressed like Jane Fonda in Barbarella. She was hiking on the icy trail coming the other way, asked a couple questions and then disappeared. When they saw where she had gone there was just a cliff into a deep ravine. On the way home they mentioned it to the Parks guy, concerned that she may have fallen in, but he just said oh yeah that was a Lumerian, they live inside the mountain, you can go look it up in the public library.
We didn’t go looking for Lumerians, but one summer me and my girlfriend Maya went to Mt. Shasta on fourth of July weekend. Sure enough in the parade through town, a bunch of people dressed in purple robes, their banner reading Welcome Lumerians as if they were the Rotary Club. I guess they were actually giants when they lived inside Mt. Shasta, but assumed human form when surfacing above ground. They built great big cities underground with everything the giants needed, modern sewage, shops, great big houses that looked like the pueblos of New Mexico. They had tunnels going from Mt. Shasta to other power centers around the globe like Joshua Tree, the Pyramids of Egypt, and Mecca. The giants could go back and forth underground, engaging in trade with other Lumerians, or conspiring the peaceful transition to extraterrestrial rule of the earth in the next millennium.
Maya and I luckily found a nice remote place away from all the hordes of campers. There was an old trailer in an open field, but it looked like no one had used it in a long time. We parked the car and set up camp. It seemed like I could hear drums on the other side of the valley, but Maya could not hear anything.
As the sun was setting, we went out to the end of a fallen tree and looked out at the field and the changing colors. I didn’t see any Lumerians, and that trailer looked way to small for a giant, so I began to relax.
I had a bright tie dyed tee shirt on, and a butterfly started flying around me. Pretty soon a whole flock of them started lazily swooping and hovering around me like I was the king of the butterflies.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Good Guys vs. Bad Guys
1983, Nevada, Iowa
Our high school was so small you could be the good guy and the bad guy. In other words, if you had a good enough reputation with the other students, if you were popular, being a good athlete was a big plus, then you could practically get away with murder.
One way of being popular was to have a car. I had an Econoline Van that would seat up to 12 people, tinted windows and card table in the back complete with drink holders for the long hauls. We spent hours and hours driving around and drinking, I was like chauffeur to the stars, cruising around the loop or heading over to Ames to see what was happening in the big city.
The night before graduation we loaded up the Econoline for the biggest night of our adolescent lives. We wanted to do something big, make an impression, leave a mark. I drove, as always, but this time I put an American flag on my head, trying to emulate my hero Abbie Hoffman. No check points or cops to stop us, we headed over to the school armed with dozens of cans of spray paint.
I waited in the Van while the others attacked the school with aerosol. Class of ’83 rules, Mr Ball Sucks Balls, Stop the War in Central America, written all up and down the announcer booth at the football field, all across the front doors of the school, over the windows to the cafeteria. Graduation was only a few hours away, the misty solvent still pungent in the morning air.
No sleep and it was time to go to the graduation rehearsal ceremony. I was playing in the concert band as well as giving a speech because I was student council president and it was customary to give a short speech to sum up our careers at Nevada High. Mr. Ball, the principal, was at the podium testing the microphone when I walked in with my trumpet, and he looked right at me across the auditorium, saying some vandals attacked the school last night and he would find out by the end of the day who was responsible and they would not graduate.
I couldn’t tell if he was eliciting my help, thinking I might know something, or if he thought maybe I was one of the spray painters too. Hey I just drove, what my friends did with those cans is none of my business.
For graduation we had planned a big surprise, everyone put me up to it, and expected me to unofficially graduate those friends who had dropped out or had been kicked out during the year. I was to stop in mid speech and call the five or six names, handing them a rolled up piece of paper when they came to the podium amidst thundering applause. To make a long story short, I chickened out but half of them didn’t show up anyway.
I wanted to say something profound and leave an impression on the townspeople. I basically said not to expect much from a generation grown up on Brady Bunch family values and Ronald Reagan’s sense of right and wrong and what the truth is. Overcoming all the brainwashing would not be easy, and standing up to the powers that be, whether they be your teachers when they try to feed you the Myth of America and expect you to swallow it, or your president when he gets on television and tells you the Sandinistas are coming through Texas any minute now, would be a life long challenge. Some of us would be up for the struggle while others would swallow the pill, sedated by the false dreams of consumer culture and war mongering in the name of democracy and the American way of life. The class of ’83 might not change the world, but some of us were going to try.
The spray paint had all been removed by the time the townspeople filled the auditorium, and Mr. Ball never mentioned the incident to me again.
Our high school was so small you could be the good guy and the bad guy. In other words, if you had a good enough reputation with the other students, if you were popular, being a good athlete was a big plus, then you could practically get away with murder.
One way of being popular was to have a car. I had an Econoline Van that would seat up to 12 people, tinted windows and card table in the back complete with drink holders for the long hauls. We spent hours and hours driving around and drinking, I was like chauffeur to the stars, cruising around the loop or heading over to Ames to see what was happening in the big city.
The night before graduation we loaded up the Econoline for the biggest night of our adolescent lives. We wanted to do something big, make an impression, leave a mark. I drove, as always, but this time I put an American flag on my head, trying to emulate my hero Abbie Hoffman. No check points or cops to stop us, we headed over to the school armed with dozens of cans of spray paint.
I waited in the Van while the others attacked the school with aerosol. Class of ’83 rules, Mr Ball Sucks Balls, Stop the War in Central America, written all up and down the announcer booth at the football field, all across the front doors of the school, over the windows to the cafeteria. Graduation was only a few hours away, the misty solvent still pungent in the morning air.
No sleep and it was time to go to the graduation rehearsal ceremony. I was playing in the concert band as well as giving a speech because I was student council president and it was customary to give a short speech to sum up our careers at Nevada High. Mr. Ball, the principal, was at the podium testing the microphone when I walked in with my trumpet, and he looked right at me across the auditorium, saying some vandals attacked the school last night and he would find out by the end of the day who was responsible and they would not graduate.
I couldn’t tell if he was eliciting my help, thinking I might know something, or if he thought maybe I was one of the spray painters too. Hey I just drove, what my friends did with those cans is none of my business.
For graduation we had planned a big surprise, everyone put me up to it, and expected me to unofficially graduate those friends who had dropped out or had been kicked out during the year. I was to stop in mid speech and call the five or six names, handing them a rolled up piece of paper when they came to the podium amidst thundering applause. To make a long story short, I chickened out but half of them didn’t show up anyway.
I wanted to say something profound and leave an impression on the townspeople. I basically said not to expect much from a generation grown up on Brady Bunch family values and Ronald Reagan’s sense of right and wrong and what the truth is. Overcoming all the brainwashing would not be easy, and standing up to the powers that be, whether they be your teachers when they try to feed you the Myth of America and expect you to swallow it, or your president when he gets on television and tells you the Sandinistas are coming through Texas any minute now, would be a life long challenge. Some of us would be up for the struggle while others would swallow the pill, sedated by the false dreams of consumer culture and war mongering in the name of democracy and the American way of life. The class of ’83 might not change the world, but some of us were going to try.
The spray paint had all been removed by the time the townspeople filled the auditorium, and Mr. Ball never mentioned the incident to me again.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Malecon Romance
March 2000, Havana, Cuba
On our first trip to Cuba, Arthur was hoping to get to know his wife Sady a little better. They had only been married a few months before we arrived, tying the knot after three days on Arthur’s first trip down with other friends.
Actually, it was an accident that they met and got married in the first place. Initially Arthur was going to meet another woman there, and had seen pictures of her and everything. Kind of like a mail-order bride. On the way to Cuba, in the plane, his friends told him oh by the way Art, she’s pregnant. Of course he flipped out, stuttering angry words through his gaping, toothless mouth, drool spilling on the food and drink tray. This is how I imagine the situation, I wasn’t on this trip. When he and his friends arrived, they definitely understood that he wasn’t going to marry a pregnant woman. Apparently he was hoping, at the age of sixty, to have a child of his own. Or maybe it was just more complicated for the U.S. Special Interests Section in Havana to deal with. The pregnant woman’s replacement was another friend of this group, and actually had experience with disabled people, so she was brought over to meet Arthur.
It was love at first sight. Sady was thirty years younger, a big woman, like his ex-wife, and I’m sure he felt like she could take care of him. He told me they had sex a few times, the first time in seventeen years for him, and he was madly in love and couldn’t wait to see her again.
The first day they were alone for quite a long time, but I sensed something was wrong. Sady didn’t look too happy and basically treated Arthur like a baby. She paid more attention to me than to Arthur, and she hooked me up with her sister Loida in the meantime. It seemed like Arthur wasn’t having his honeymoon revisited like he had hoped, and things were getting tense between them.
I acted like a marriage counselor for them, but it was really not going anywhere. I couldn’t be a shrink for them and offered no advice. I simply interepreted. We sat on a park bench together and Arthur explained how he wanted to have a baby. Sady looked at me for some validation, some comprehension of how ridiculous it sounded. I offered none. She told us that it would be dangerous, the child could be born with defects. It could get passed on. This was refuted, but she said when an old man comes, it doesn’t go up as far so this can also lead to defects. We were going round and round. In the end, he conceded to the fact that, at least on this trip, he wasn’t going to have sex with his wife unless a dramatic change of heart occurred.
It wasn’t part of my job description, but the next thing I knew I was wheeling Arthur downtown looking for hookers. Maybe this was the caregiver part of the job, or the intepretation part. In any case, it wasn’t my suggestion. We went down to the sea front wall known as The Malecon, dozens of young women with their uncle-pimps lined up all along the long walkway, waiting for the American Dream to arrive. Arthur was a blue-blood American, that’s for sure, but not exactly a woman’s dream come true.
The moon reflected off the water as we wheeled along, looking at the girls like they were in a shop window. When we stopped in front of two girls it was as if we had put a coin in the slot, because suddenly they came to life, acting all flirty and nice. They couldn’t quite figure out who was the John, or maybe both of us were looking. I explained Arthur was my Uncle, it was his birthday and we wanted to do something extra special for him. We decided he would have both girls for an hour for fifty bucks. That’s two girls, one hour, fifty bucks. I don’t know what the prices are like in other parts of the world, but Arthur and I both thought this was a good deal. I wasn’t going to participate because I had to guard all the stuff hanging off Arthur’s wheelchair, the digital camera and booze and other things we were carrying around.
The uncle-pimp took over once the deal had been set up. He directed us across the road to a waiting car, a 1960 Bel Air with Soviet tractor parts to keep it going. We climbed in and drove a couple blocks to a little house. A woman in full Santeria priestess white dress and yellow beads met us at the door, as if she had been called in advance. I didn’t see anyone make a phone call, maybe Santa Barbara told her. We wheeled into the living room and went to close the deal. I gave the uncle-pimp two 20s and a 10 and he put it in his pocket. I told him I was going to wait outside while Arthur and the two girls spent an hour, not half hour or forty-five minutes, together in privacy. The girls were flanking Arthur, who was in drooling ecstasy, one of them sitting on his lap. The priestess whispered to the two girls and they all shot me glances. They must have thought I was going to be next because they still couldn’t believe Arthur could possibly perform anything more than slumping over and shitting his pants.
I saw them disappear into the room. The uncle-pimp then tried to trick me. He pulled out the money and showed me the 20 and 10, claiming I still owed him another 20. I was drunk, but this was no time to get into a fight. I gave him the old swindler’s knowing smile and told him it was a good try, but I had seen him pass it to the priestess before she went into the room with Arthur and the girls. This was true, I was expecting something to come up, but they couldn’t do anything no matter how hard they tried or how drunk and stupid we seemed. He didn’t let up, getting in my face and saying he was going to stop the girls, this was robbery. We call them sinverguenzas, a true rascal this one. I couldn’t keep from laughing it was so obvious, this high handed caribbean way of getting a gringo’s money. I guess they think eventually you just give them the money to shut them up and get their stinking breath off your face.
Coming out of the room, the priestess produced the nefarious bill from her bodice, waving it in the air. She had heard us quarreling through the wall and guessed I couldn’t be taken for a ride this time. The uncle-pimp’s memory came back to him when he saw the 20 and we both chuckled. He put his arm around my shoulder and lead me outside to a couple milk crates in the alley. I kept my eye on Arthur’s wheelchair and all our stuff just inside the open door. The priestess came out to join us, and the uncle-pimp walked a few houses down, saying he’d be right back with something special for me.
I asked the priestess to order a bottle of rum for us and she sent a young girl scurrying to the store with a crumpled up ten dollar bill, promising to bring back change. She was back in a couple minutes and I offered the priestess a drink, pouring her half a plastic cup full of the two dollar aguardiente. I followed with a burning shot straight from the bottle. We sat and chatted and waited. She asked me why I didn’t want to go with the girls, they are very nice and good price. I told her it was a birthday present for my uncle Arthur, maybe we’d come back another day for me. Not likely with Loida around, I thought. She hardly let me out of her sight.
The uncle-pimp came up the street with a young girl and told me I could take her for 15 dollars one hour. We didn’t look at each other. She must have been 16 years old. I repeated that this was a birthday present for my uncle and I wasn’t going with any girls tonight thank you very much. He was insulted and called me maricon, faggot. I could see the girl looking up at the moon, giving a little bite of her lower lip, a little hip jutting out. I just said no thanks, your cousin is nice, but no thanks. She hit the uncle-pimp on the shoulder with the back of her hand, clucked her tongue in disgust and skipped back down the street. He glared at me like I was costing him money again by not playing along.
Again the priestess intervened, shaking her head at us and saying they were all open to whatever preference people had, it was okay. I tried to explain that I wasn’t homosexual, but accidentally said amiga to the uncle-pimp instead of the male amigo and his eyes bugged out, pointing and saying now you see, its true, maricon. I let him run with this idea and figured Arthur was just about ready to pop out and we could just get the hell out of there.
Which is exactly what happened. After only about twenty five minutes Arthur appeared in the doorway with the two girls. He was smiling as they held his hands and rubbed his bald head. I asked him if everything was good, you still got a good half hour if you want it. He groaned a satisfied no that’s okay lets go and we thanked them and wheeled up the alleyway toward Calle Obispo to get some pizza and recount another conquest.
On our first trip to Cuba, Arthur was hoping to get to know his wife Sady a little better. They had only been married a few months before we arrived, tying the knot after three days on Arthur’s first trip down with other friends.
Actually, it was an accident that they met and got married in the first place. Initially Arthur was going to meet another woman there, and had seen pictures of her and everything. Kind of like a mail-order bride. On the way to Cuba, in the plane, his friends told him oh by the way Art, she’s pregnant. Of course he flipped out, stuttering angry words through his gaping, toothless mouth, drool spilling on the food and drink tray. This is how I imagine the situation, I wasn’t on this trip. When he and his friends arrived, they definitely understood that he wasn’t going to marry a pregnant woman. Apparently he was hoping, at the age of sixty, to have a child of his own. Or maybe it was just more complicated for the U.S. Special Interests Section in Havana to deal with. The pregnant woman’s replacement was another friend of this group, and actually had experience with disabled people, so she was brought over to meet Arthur.
It was love at first sight. Sady was thirty years younger, a big woman, like his ex-wife, and I’m sure he felt like she could take care of him. He told me they had sex a few times, the first time in seventeen years for him, and he was madly in love and couldn’t wait to see her again.
The first day they were alone for quite a long time, but I sensed something was wrong. Sady didn’t look too happy and basically treated Arthur like a baby. She paid more attention to me than to Arthur, and she hooked me up with her sister Loida in the meantime. It seemed like Arthur wasn’t having his honeymoon revisited like he had hoped, and things were getting tense between them.
I acted like a marriage counselor for them, but it was really not going anywhere. I couldn’t be a shrink for them and offered no advice. I simply interepreted. We sat on a park bench together and Arthur explained how he wanted to have a baby. Sady looked at me for some validation, some comprehension of how ridiculous it sounded. I offered none. She told us that it would be dangerous, the child could be born with defects. It could get passed on. This was refuted, but she said when an old man comes, it doesn’t go up as far so this can also lead to defects. We were going round and round. In the end, he conceded to the fact that, at least on this trip, he wasn’t going to have sex with his wife unless a dramatic change of heart occurred.
It wasn’t part of my job description, but the next thing I knew I was wheeling Arthur downtown looking for hookers. Maybe this was the caregiver part of the job, or the intepretation part. In any case, it wasn’t my suggestion. We went down to the sea front wall known as The Malecon, dozens of young women with their uncle-pimps lined up all along the long walkway, waiting for the American Dream to arrive. Arthur was a blue-blood American, that’s for sure, but not exactly a woman’s dream come true.
The moon reflected off the water as we wheeled along, looking at the girls like they were in a shop window. When we stopped in front of two girls it was as if we had put a coin in the slot, because suddenly they came to life, acting all flirty and nice. They couldn’t quite figure out who was the John, or maybe both of us were looking. I explained Arthur was my Uncle, it was his birthday and we wanted to do something extra special for him. We decided he would have both girls for an hour for fifty bucks. That’s two girls, one hour, fifty bucks. I don’t know what the prices are like in other parts of the world, but Arthur and I both thought this was a good deal. I wasn’t going to participate because I had to guard all the stuff hanging off Arthur’s wheelchair, the digital camera and booze and other things we were carrying around.
The uncle-pimp took over once the deal had been set up. He directed us across the road to a waiting car, a 1960 Bel Air with Soviet tractor parts to keep it going. We climbed in and drove a couple blocks to a little house. A woman in full Santeria priestess white dress and yellow beads met us at the door, as if she had been called in advance. I didn’t see anyone make a phone call, maybe Santa Barbara told her. We wheeled into the living room and went to close the deal. I gave the uncle-pimp two 20s and a 10 and he put it in his pocket. I told him I was going to wait outside while Arthur and the two girls spent an hour, not half hour or forty-five minutes, together in privacy. The girls were flanking Arthur, who was in drooling ecstasy, one of them sitting on his lap. The priestess whispered to the two girls and they all shot me glances. They must have thought I was going to be next because they still couldn’t believe Arthur could possibly perform anything more than slumping over and shitting his pants.
I saw them disappear into the room. The uncle-pimp then tried to trick me. He pulled out the money and showed me the 20 and 10, claiming I still owed him another 20. I was drunk, but this was no time to get into a fight. I gave him the old swindler’s knowing smile and told him it was a good try, but I had seen him pass it to the priestess before she went into the room with Arthur and the girls. This was true, I was expecting something to come up, but they couldn’t do anything no matter how hard they tried or how drunk and stupid we seemed. He didn’t let up, getting in my face and saying he was going to stop the girls, this was robbery. We call them sinverguenzas, a true rascal this one. I couldn’t keep from laughing it was so obvious, this high handed caribbean way of getting a gringo’s money. I guess they think eventually you just give them the money to shut them up and get their stinking breath off your face.
Coming out of the room, the priestess produced the nefarious bill from her bodice, waving it in the air. She had heard us quarreling through the wall and guessed I couldn’t be taken for a ride this time. The uncle-pimp’s memory came back to him when he saw the 20 and we both chuckled. He put his arm around my shoulder and lead me outside to a couple milk crates in the alley. I kept my eye on Arthur’s wheelchair and all our stuff just inside the open door. The priestess came out to join us, and the uncle-pimp walked a few houses down, saying he’d be right back with something special for me.
I asked the priestess to order a bottle of rum for us and she sent a young girl scurrying to the store with a crumpled up ten dollar bill, promising to bring back change. She was back in a couple minutes and I offered the priestess a drink, pouring her half a plastic cup full of the two dollar aguardiente. I followed with a burning shot straight from the bottle. We sat and chatted and waited. She asked me why I didn’t want to go with the girls, they are very nice and good price. I told her it was a birthday present for my uncle Arthur, maybe we’d come back another day for me. Not likely with Loida around, I thought. She hardly let me out of her sight.
The uncle-pimp came up the street with a young girl and told me I could take her for 15 dollars one hour. We didn’t look at each other. She must have been 16 years old. I repeated that this was a birthday present for my uncle and I wasn’t going with any girls tonight thank you very much. He was insulted and called me maricon, faggot. I could see the girl looking up at the moon, giving a little bite of her lower lip, a little hip jutting out. I just said no thanks, your cousin is nice, but no thanks. She hit the uncle-pimp on the shoulder with the back of her hand, clucked her tongue in disgust and skipped back down the street. He glared at me like I was costing him money again by not playing along.
Again the priestess intervened, shaking her head at us and saying they were all open to whatever preference people had, it was okay. I tried to explain that I wasn’t homosexual, but accidentally said amiga to the uncle-pimp instead of the male amigo and his eyes bugged out, pointing and saying now you see, its true, maricon. I let him run with this idea and figured Arthur was just about ready to pop out and we could just get the hell out of there.
Which is exactly what happened. After only about twenty five minutes Arthur appeared in the doorway with the two girls. He was smiling as they held his hands and rubbed his bald head. I asked him if everything was good, you still got a good half hour if you want it. He groaned a satisfied no that’s okay lets go and we thanked them and wheeled up the alleyway toward Calle Obispo to get some pizza and recount another conquest.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Wanikiki
Spring 2000, Portland, Oregon and Havana, Cuba
My friend Arthur was married for twenty years in Portland, the last 17 of which were celibate. When his wife asked for a divorce, he was crushed and went into a fit of depression, starting to drink again after 15 years of sobriety. In the midst of his rise to the depths of the gutter, his great Aunt, a benefactor and philanthropist and friend of Oregon National Parks, bestowed One Million Dollars to Arthur in her will. The party had just begun.
I had just got back from one year in Costa Rica and everyone supposed my Spanish was pretty good. My friend Derek knew Arthur and told me he was looking for someone to accompany him on a trip to Cuba, all expenses paid, to act as interpreter and caregiver. I had never done either, but decided to meet Arthur anyway and see if there was a good rapport between us.
I didn’t realize how severe his Cerebral Palsy was. Some people have only a dignified gait, or you can see it in their hands and mouth, the signal from the brain to the muscles choked off, like there was a short in the line somewhere. For Arthur, this little glitch in his brain messages caused him to stutter and at first he was unintelligible, I couldn’t understand a word and Derek had to interpret for me. My first thought when seeing him was as long as I don’t have to wipe his butt, I’ll do it. Talking to my friends and mulling it over, I came to call it Doing the Deed.
Arthur had a big jug of Carlo Rossi red wine on the table at all times and three glasses, water, coffee and wine, each with a flexi straw popping out. He sidled up to the edge of the table and miraculously wound his Gene Simmons tongue around the straws, alternating between the drinks as we talked. I had also stopped drinking in Costa Rica during the last few months, but it was becoming apparent to me that if I was going to go to Cuba with Arthur, I was probably going to have to start drinking again, just to be on the same wavelength and have the same excuses. I was hoping the drink would make me into some pickled Buddha, able to withstand the many difficult situations that surely were to come on our adventure. Besides, he was going to pay for all of it, so drink up snakes, as I always say.
A few days after our first meeting I decided to go, even if I had to Do the Deed. I still didn’t know, it just didn’t seem respectful or discreet to ask. Derek said he didn’t know, he had only seen Vicky, the morning caregiver, going into the bathroom with him, but he never saw or asked specifically about it.
We began planning. He needed everything arranged, plane tickets, how to deal with money down there, documents to present at the US Special Interests Section on behalf of his new bride, Sady. I went to his lawyers, the bank, Cuban friends of his wife, made hundreds of phone calls, and in the end if I hadn’t figured out all of this, he wouldn’t have had anyone to help him. He thought he could use his credit cards there and he wanted to buy some property as well, so the family could move out of Old Havana and for him to use when he visited. He of course knew of the US embargo, but some things just didn’t cross his mind.
At one point in all of the configurations I did indeed have to wheel him into the bathroom, he only had caregivers in the morning and at night. Once I got him on the toilet, he asked me to peel him off a few slabs of toilet paper and put them folded in his lap, then I could go out until he called me. I even heard the flush just before he grunted out OKAY behind the door. I didn’t have to Do the Deed after all, and my conscience was clear for not asking such a trite question.
Things went smoothly despite the fact that now I was full blown back into the whisky. I even got both hands on that Carlo Rossi when times got lean and slugged back a few bloody drinks to keep me blind. We hit all the bars, people knew Arthur from way back, and he paid for all my drinks. The waitresses took a liking to me as well, just for being his friend, but the whole thing was too twisted for them, I ‘m sure they thought I was taking advantage of this poor man.
We went through Cancun Mexico to change flights to Havana, and stayed a couple days there. In the Cancun airport, I forgot my wallet in the checkpoint, with $750 in cash, and almost had a heart attack before the trip had begun. I had to leave Arthur in the terminal minutes before the flight was to take off, run back and ask the girl about the wallet. She seemed disinterested and disappointed, going to a little desk, bottom drawer way in the back and fishing out my fat bankroll. She handed it over with a limp gesture and a kind of scolding look, but I didn’t count it until I was out of her view.
Horrible place, Cancun. It was like a strip mall on the beach. We tried to meet people but they just stared, and the waiters copped a bad attitude. I told everyone he was my Uncle and that worked pretty well, after all we both had blue eyes and they understood the bonds of family down there.
We finally arrive into open arms in Cuba, and after a few days in Sady’s house next to the garbage dump, we rented a nice family place on the outskirts and settled in for the month. Sady knew some musicians from the old vaudeville type variety show she used to promote and act in. They worked around this little touristy beach town, I don’t remember the name, and we heard great Cuban and Mexican music all the time from this great quintet, all singers and multi instrumentalists.
One twilight evening we were sitting and enjoying a concert on a thatched terrazza along main street. Jesus was improvising like crazy, making up verses about me and Arthur, making fun of us. I understood about half, but it was really funny and everyone was laughing. The people in the restaurant looked at Arthur in wonder and amazement, but I think most people thought he was mentally retarded, like a child. When he leaned back his head and opened his mouth so I could pour him another shot of whatever was at hand, Jameson’s or White Rum like moonshine, there was a mixture of laughter and disdain from the people.
During a break, I was talking with Miguel, the band leader and cousin from Mexico. He was really wasted and we were laughing about everything. I told him the joke about how do you make a Cuba Libre. He cringed and looked around as I gestured the punch line, stroking an invisible beard with Cuba and cutting my throat with an imaginary knife with Libre. He said when you joke I sleep. He was afraid some country bumpkin police might give him some trouble, or some overzealous patriot would put the finger on him for being anti revolutionary.
Arthur came over and laid a $20 bill on Miguel for the music. This is for the whole band he said, and Jesus and Antoine the percussionist saw what was happening. The next thing I know the other band members were having a huge shouting match with Miguel glaring silently at all of them, taking the leader stance. Jesus told me the next day that they didn’t get any of the money, but Miguel took what would be basically a month’s worth of tips and pocketed it.
My friend Arthur was married for twenty years in Portland, the last 17 of which were celibate. When his wife asked for a divorce, he was crushed and went into a fit of depression, starting to drink again after 15 years of sobriety. In the midst of his rise to the depths of the gutter, his great Aunt, a benefactor and philanthropist and friend of Oregon National Parks, bestowed One Million Dollars to Arthur in her will. The party had just begun.
I had just got back from one year in Costa Rica and everyone supposed my Spanish was pretty good. My friend Derek knew Arthur and told me he was looking for someone to accompany him on a trip to Cuba, all expenses paid, to act as interpreter and caregiver. I had never done either, but decided to meet Arthur anyway and see if there was a good rapport between us.
I didn’t realize how severe his Cerebral Palsy was. Some people have only a dignified gait, or you can see it in their hands and mouth, the signal from the brain to the muscles choked off, like there was a short in the line somewhere. For Arthur, this little glitch in his brain messages caused him to stutter and at first he was unintelligible, I couldn’t understand a word and Derek had to interpret for me. My first thought when seeing him was as long as I don’t have to wipe his butt, I’ll do it. Talking to my friends and mulling it over, I came to call it Doing the Deed.
Arthur had a big jug of Carlo Rossi red wine on the table at all times and three glasses, water, coffee and wine, each with a flexi straw popping out. He sidled up to the edge of the table and miraculously wound his Gene Simmons tongue around the straws, alternating between the drinks as we talked. I had also stopped drinking in Costa Rica during the last few months, but it was becoming apparent to me that if I was going to go to Cuba with Arthur, I was probably going to have to start drinking again, just to be on the same wavelength and have the same excuses. I was hoping the drink would make me into some pickled Buddha, able to withstand the many difficult situations that surely were to come on our adventure. Besides, he was going to pay for all of it, so drink up snakes, as I always say.
A few days after our first meeting I decided to go, even if I had to Do the Deed. I still didn’t know, it just didn’t seem respectful or discreet to ask. Derek said he didn’t know, he had only seen Vicky, the morning caregiver, going into the bathroom with him, but he never saw or asked specifically about it.
We began planning. He needed everything arranged, plane tickets, how to deal with money down there, documents to present at the US Special Interests Section on behalf of his new bride, Sady. I went to his lawyers, the bank, Cuban friends of his wife, made hundreds of phone calls, and in the end if I hadn’t figured out all of this, he wouldn’t have had anyone to help him. He thought he could use his credit cards there and he wanted to buy some property as well, so the family could move out of Old Havana and for him to use when he visited. He of course knew of the US embargo, but some things just didn’t cross his mind.
At one point in all of the configurations I did indeed have to wheel him into the bathroom, he only had caregivers in the morning and at night. Once I got him on the toilet, he asked me to peel him off a few slabs of toilet paper and put them folded in his lap, then I could go out until he called me. I even heard the flush just before he grunted out OKAY behind the door. I didn’t have to Do the Deed after all, and my conscience was clear for not asking such a trite question.
Things went smoothly despite the fact that now I was full blown back into the whisky. I even got both hands on that Carlo Rossi when times got lean and slugged back a few bloody drinks to keep me blind. We hit all the bars, people knew Arthur from way back, and he paid for all my drinks. The waitresses took a liking to me as well, just for being his friend, but the whole thing was too twisted for them, I ‘m sure they thought I was taking advantage of this poor man.
We went through Cancun Mexico to change flights to Havana, and stayed a couple days there. In the Cancun airport, I forgot my wallet in the checkpoint, with $750 in cash, and almost had a heart attack before the trip had begun. I had to leave Arthur in the terminal minutes before the flight was to take off, run back and ask the girl about the wallet. She seemed disinterested and disappointed, going to a little desk, bottom drawer way in the back and fishing out my fat bankroll. She handed it over with a limp gesture and a kind of scolding look, but I didn’t count it until I was out of her view.
Horrible place, Cancun. It was like a strip mall on the beach. We tried to meet people but they just stared, and the waiters copped a bad attitude. I told everyone he was my Uncle and that worked pretty well, after all we both had blue eyes and they understood the bonds of family down there.
We finally arrive into open arms in Cuba, and after a few days in Sady’s house next to the garbage dump, we rented a nice family place on the outskirts and settled in for the month. Sady knew some musicians from the old vaudeville type variety show she used to promote and act in. They worked around this little touristy beach town, I don’t remember the name, and we heard great Cuban and Mexican music all the time from this great quintet, all singers and multi instrumentalists.
One twilight evening we were sitting and enjoying a concert on a thatched terrazza along main street. Jesus was improvising like crazy, making up verses about me and Arthur, making fun of us. I understood about half, but it was really funny and everyone was laughing. The people in the restaurant looked at Arthur in wonder and amazement, but I think most people thought he was mentally retarded, like a child. When he leaned back his head and opened his mouth so I could pour him another shot of whatever was at hand, Jameson’s or White Rum like moonshine, there was a mixture of laughter and disdain from the people.
During a break, I was talking with Miguel, the band leader and cousin from Mexico. He was really wasted and we were laughing about everything. I told him the joke about how do you make a Cuba Libre. He cringed and looked around as I gestured the punch line, stroking an invisible beard with Cuba and cutting my throat with an imaginary knife with Libre. He said when you joke I sleep. He was afraid some country bumpkin police might give him some trouble, or some overzealous patriot would put the finger on him for being anti revolutionary.
Arthur came over and laid a $20 bill on Miguel for the music. This is for the whole band he said, and Jesus and Antoine the percussionist saw what was happening. The next thing I know the other band members were having a huge shouting match with Miguel glaring silently at all of them, taking the leader stance. Jesus told me the next day that they didn’t get any of the money, but Miguel took what would be basically a month’s worth of tips and pocketed it.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Factory World
Spring and Summer, 1996, Portland, Oregon
I got a job at the Portland Press, feeding a machine that put labels on junk mail, sorting these newsletters, monthly bulletins and catalogs by zip code and then bulk mailing them to homes across the Northwest. A noble trade if there ever was one. It was the universe’s way of telling me I needed to get my work ethic back, working for people in exchange for a place to stay was good for a year, but now was time to buck up and get a life. My only hope was a factory job and a cheap hotel until I could get enough money together for a room in a house.
The Kent Hotel was home to all different kinds of people. I think they filmed part of Drugstore Cowboy there, no one told me the history of the place. I didn’t even talk to the receptionist until I needed a new mini-fridge. The only people who ever talked to me were a couple men in long black coats in the elevator asking me how long I’d been staying at The Kent and if I’d gotten to know the fine ladies on the Seventh Floor. I lied and told them I was new and passing through, so they tipped their hats when I reached my floor.
Sixty five dollars a week for the hotel allowed me put a little aside from the Portland Press paycheck, and overtime was available on weekends, so I put my all into it and soon got to know the other people at the factory pretty well. They were all lifers on the floor and they knew this was just a temporary bump in the road for me. The office people were on another planet behind their second floor windows and cubicles.
My main trainer and workmate was Cecil. He had accidentally killed his girlfriend with one punch two years before, he told me, and was working at Portland Press as part of his probation. He got off with manslaughter as a first offense, but he really loved and missed his girlfriend. Cecil had machine intuition, talking to it as he coaxed it back up and running. I sat down and did nothing at least five times a day while he freed up some jam or adjusted some springs.
Another guy I worked with and hung out with a lot was Roger, an old radical from the sixties. Again, that’s what he told me. Was at Woodstock, all that. I always love a good story, even if I think it’s a lie. He worked a couple machines over from me and we usually took our smoke breaks together, or sat out on the dock during lunch. He was really interesting and I felt sorry for him because he had no friends. Actually it seemed like he blew out his mind along with all the buildings he presumably blew up in Columbia and other places in the sixties with the Weather Underground. I met Roger’s mom and she kind of sloughed him off in front of me, confirming that maybe he was full of it. But I didn’t care, he was an old guy who still smoked pot, knew a lot about the sixties and had a great record collection, so that was all right with me.
There was another guy at Portland Press who was always trying to get in with me, Roger, and a couple other girls we had been hanging out with. He was really hyper and skinny, he didn´t blink very much, looked you right in the eye, and it took a while to warm up to him. Not just for us, but for anyone I thought, really freaky guy. We´ll just call him Skinny Guy.
One day Skinny Guy told us he knew where to get some good pot so we made a rendezvous plan for after work. We’d take Roger’s car and pull up in front of my new place, The Kent Hotel, and meet Skinny Guy there to make the deal. We had to meet our other factory girls in Forest Park soon after, so best to do it on the fly, and not have to hang out with Skinny Guy, or let him know where I was living.
We sat and waited with the engine running until finally he came out of the bar across the street, running over to us. He was now wearing blue eye shadow and lipstick and before we knew it he stuck his face through Roger’s car window. He said we had to go into the bar, his friend inside had the pot. This was not just any bar, but none other than The Portland Bathhouse, a city institution for gay men. We didn’t want to get high anymore and just said thanks but maybe another day. He said okay boys but if we needed him he’d be in the bar with a big fat joint and some big dick on the multi-screens.
The next day at work, Skinny Guy didn’t show up. Roger told me he had left his rig right on the mail sorting work table and the bosses had found it. At first they thought the syringe was a special factory tool they hadn’t seen before, but then Cecil my other workmate told them that the guy had been banging up speed at work.
A week later my doorbell buzzed at 3 in the morning in the Kent. It was Roger, my radical sixties friend, saying he had a girl with him who wanted to party with us, a little wine and a joint, come on Jay just for a bit....so I stupidly obliged him.
I opened the door and saw Roger with Skinny Guy, who was dressed in drag and drunk off his ass, wearing a big Dolly Parton wig and fake tits. Roger was laughing his ass off, so I punched him square in the nose and closed the door on both of them.
A few days later my friends Jeff and Anne told me they wanted me to help them paint their house and had a basement room available in exchange for working on the weekends with Jeff and Cosmo, another transitional friend. Purple was Anne’s choice.
I got a job at the Portland Press, feeding a machine that put labels on junk mail, sorting these newsletters, monthly bulletins and catalogs by zip code and then bulk mailing them to homes across the Northwest. A noble trade if there ever was one. It was the universe’s way of telling me I needed to get my work ethic back, working for people in exchange for a place to stay was good for a year, but now was time to buck up and get a life. My only hope was a factory job and a cheap hotel until I could get enough money together for a room in a house.
The Kent Hotel was home to all different kinds of people. I think they filmed part of Drugstore Cowboy there, no one told me the history of the place. I didn’t even talk to the receptionist until I needed a new mini-fridge. The only people who ever talked to me were a couple men in long black coats in the elevator asking me how long I’d been staying at The Kent and if I’d gotten to know the fine ladies on the Seventh Floor. I lied and told them I was new and passing through, so they tipped their hats when I reached my floor.
Sixty five dollars a week for the hotel allowed me put a little aside from the Portland Press paycheck, and overtime was available on weekends, so I put my all into it and soon got to know the other people at the factory pretty well. They were all lifers on the floor and they knew this was just a temporary bump in the road for me. The office people were on another planet behind their second floor windows and cubicles.
My main trainer and workmate was Cecil. He had accidentally killed his girlfriend with one punch two years before, he told me, and was working at Portland Press as part of his probation. He got off with manslaughter as a first offense, but he really loved and missed his girlfriend. Cecil had machine intuition, talking to it as he coaxed it back up and running. I sat down and did nothing at least five times a day while he freed up some jam or adjusted some springs.
Another guy I worked with and hung out with a lot was Roger, an old radical from the sixties. Again, that’s what he told me. Was at Woodstock, all that. I always love a good story, even if I think it’s a lie. He worked a couple machines over from me and we usually took our smoke breaks together, or sat out on the dock during lunch. He was really interesting and I felt sorry for him because he had no friends. Actually it seemed like he blew out his mind along with all the buildings he presumably blew up in Columbia and other places in the sixties with the Weather Underground. I met Roger’s mom and she kind of sloughed him off in front of me, confirming that maybe he was full of it. But I didn’t care, he was an old guy who still smoked pot, knew a lot about the sixties and had a great record collection, so that was all right with me.
There was another guy at Portland Press who was always trying to get in with me, Roger, and a couple other girls we had been hanging out with. He was really hyper and skinny, he didn´t blink very much, looked you right in the eye, and it took a while to warm up to him. Not just for us, but for anyone I thought, really freaky guy. We´ll just call him Skinny Guy.
One day Skinny Guy told us he knew where to get some good pot so we made a rendezvous plan for after work. We’d take Roger’s car and pull up in front of my new place, The Kent Hotel, and meet Skinny Guy there to make the deal. We had to meet our other factory girls in Forest Park soon after, so best to do it on the fly, and not have to hang out with Skinny Guy, or let him know where I was living.
We sat and waited with the engine running until finally he came out of the bar across the street, running over to us. He was now wearing blue eye shadow and lipstick and before we knew it he stuck his face through Roger’s car window. He said we had to go into the bar, his friend inside had the pot. This was not just any bar, but none other than The Portland Bathhouse, a city institution for gay men. We didn’t want to get high anymore and just said thanks but maybe another day. He said okay boys but if we needed him he’d be in the bar with a big fat joint and some big dick on the multi-screens.
The next day at work, Skinny Guy didn’t show up. Roger told me he had left his rig right on the mail sorting work table and the bosses had found it. At first they thought the syringe was a special factory tool they hadn’t seen before, but then Cecil my other workmate told them that the guy had been banging up speed at work.
A week later my doorbell buzzed at 3 in the morning in the Kent. It was Roger, my radical sixties friend, saying he had a girl with him who wanted to party with us, a little wine and a joint, come on Jay just for a bit....so I stupidly obliged him.
I opened the door and saw Roger with Skinny Guy, who was dressed in drag and drunk off his ass, wearing a big Dolly Parton wig and fake tits. Roger was laughing his ass off, so I punched him square in the nose and closed the door on both of them.
A few days later my friends Jeff and Anne told me they wanted me to help them paint their house and had a basement room available in exchange for working on the weekends with Jeff and Cosmo, another transitional friend. Purple was Anne’s choice.
No Jokes Allowed
Summer 1984, Detroit Windsor Border
When I was 20 I took a long road trip with my bandmate from Bob Uniform, Ben Paulos of Davenport Iowa, a great musician with a very interesting intellectual family. We took his mom’s 1977 Chevy Nova up through Canada and on east to look at Ivy and non Ivy league schools or Ben to study at in the Fall.
Within a day we hit the Canadian border at Windsor, and got in line to cross. I was driving. I had long hair and a beard back then, and Ben was sitting looking all innocent with his big square chin and child like expression of wonder. We got to the booth and they asked us the usual questions---how long are you staying, business or pleasure---on and on like at the drive-in at McDonalds.
Ben was doodling something in his notebook, probably a comic book character, but stopped when he heard them ask if we were carrying any firearms. I asked for clarification, whether they meant automatic or semi automatic. The woman stopped chewing her gum and asked me to pull over to the parking lot just up and to the left. Three other border patrol agents joined her as she squawked something into her walkie talkie.
They went through the entire car but luckily didn’t find anything. They grew suspicious thinking there would be drugs anyway, but we were straight and got off with a warning after an hour of detainment. Ben didn’t think it was funny, and held a grudge for a few days after that, doing most of the driving and deciding where to stop.
Later in the trip, I redeemed myself in Eastern Ohio, having to follow the brake lights of a huge semi through a downpour on a winding mountain road. I woke him up when we finally reached a little restaurant to wait out the rain. He knew by my shaking hands and the looks on the people’s faces when we went in that I had been through hell trying to keep us and the Nova alive.
When I was 20 I took a long road trip with my bandmate from Bob Uniform, Ben Paulos of Davenport Iowa, a great musician with a very interesting intellectual family. We took his mom’s 1977 Chevy Nova up through Canada and on east to look at Ivy and non Ivy league schools or Ben to study at in the Fall.
Within a day we hit the Canadian border at Windsor, and got in line to cross. I was driving. I had long hair and a beard back then, and Ben was sitting looking all innocent with his big square chin and child like expression of wonder. We got to the booth and they asked us the usual questions---how long are you staying, business or pleasure---on and on like at the drive-in at McDonalds.
Ben was doodling something in his notebook, probably a comic book character, but stopped when he heard them ask if we were carrying any firearms. I asked for clarification, whether they meant automatic or semi automatic. The woman stopped chewing her gum and asked me to pull over to the parking lot just up and to the left. Three other border patrol agents joined her as she squawked something into her walkie talkie.
They went through the entire car but luckily didn’t find anything. They grew suspicious thinking there would be drugs anyway, but we were straight and got off with a warning after an hour of detainment. Ben didn’t think it was funny, and held a grudge for a few days after that, doing most of the driving and deciding where to stop.
Later in the trip, I redeemed myself in Eastern Ohio, having to follow the brake lights of a huge semi through a downpour on a winding mountain road. I woke him up when we finally reached a little restaurant to wait out the rain. He knew by my shaking hands and the looks on the people’s faces when we went in that I had been through hell trying to keep us and the Nova alive.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Mariachis in Love and Death of a State Poet
Summer 1995, Mexico City Mexico
It was sad leaving Tony and his family behind in Temixco and Cuernavaca, but I had Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning to visit Mexico City before flying back to Portland.
First thing on the agenda: check in to the D.H. Lawrence Hotel, start getting loaded with the half ounce I got from Tony, and then venture out into the city. You never know what might happen with a good buzz, some intense heat and millions of crazy desperate people.
I did some writing in the hotel room while I smoked a few joints. I thought about D.H. Lawrence living here, maybe in this very room, and writing about The Plumed Serpent, Quetzalcoatl. This was the Aztec God which Hernan Cortes impersonated so well in 1521, somehow able to convince the locals that his flea bitten battalion of conquistadors were deities descended from the sky. I tried to feel Lawrence’s presence there, maybe his imaginings still lingered these halls, but his spirit had long since fled and the only thing I channeled was a splitting headache.
I rolled a couple bombers and then left the marijuana wrapped in a towel in the bottom right drawer of the desk. I was three blocks from the Zocalo, which was slowly sinking and tilting farther into the ground, and I heard there was an Anthropological museum showing a section of Tenochtitlan, the ancient city.
There was a room dedicated to human sacrifices and wax models of the priests who used the obsidian blades to cut people’s hearts out. The priests took a psychedelic derived from some plant, and they were tripping the whole time, up on the pyramid, bodies stacked around them.
There were a couple rooms dedicated to training birds of prey, a common thing for the nobles to have for hunting. Also, Tenochtitlan had a highly advanced canal system that served the people’s needs for at least a couple centuries, but then Cortes came with his fear of cleanliness and water as an agent of the devil and just paved over the whole thing. The big church in the Zocalo was also tilting and sinking, held up only by scaffolding and who knows what block and tackle system. Outside people lined up begging, a tent city was built to protest things happening in Chiapas, with vendors lining the alley on either side.
I went in to see the Diego Rivera murals in the government building and was planning to see his and Frida’s house in Coyoacan the next day, Monday. No one told me the Universal Truth that all museums are closed Mondays. I thought that was only barbers. So even though I went all the way out there on the bus, I only saw the outside of the house. The bus driver who took me back to D.F. was the first to explain the truth to me about museums and Mondays the world over.
I left the Zocalo and walked aimlessly through the streets. After about half an hour I came upon a huge plaza with pillars in it. I saw some scattered Mariachi musicians standing around chatting. A few couples were sitting together and being serenaded while others vicariously took in the songs for free, lingering in the park.
I walked on some more, the strains of Volver, Volver crying behind me, and soon came upon a big crowd of people. They were all gathered around a large building watching the coffin that was slowly, methodically being carried down the steps to the waiting hearse. Funeral music played and the widow cried. The crowd parted in front of me as I trained my camera on the procession. A man shot past me and his bodyguards brushed me aside, all captured in the photo. Someone said it was Mayor Cardenas, he had just given a speech at the Bellas Artes Building, eulogizing Octavio Paz.
It was sad leaving Tony and his family behind in Temixco and Cuernavaca, but I had Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning to visit Mexico City before flying back to Portland.
First thing on the agenda: check in to the D.H. Lawrence Hotel, start getting loaded with the half ounce I got from Tony, and then venture out into the city. You never know what might happen with a good buzz, some intense heat and millions of crazy desperate people.
I did some writing in the hotel room while I smoked a few joints. I thought about D.H. Lawrence living here, maybe in this very room, and writing about The Plumed Serpent, Quetzalcoatl. This was the Aztec God which Hernan Cortes impersonated so well in 1521, somehow able to convince the locals that his flea bitten battalion of conquistadors were deities descended from the sky. I tried to feel Lawrence’s presence there, maybe his imaginings still lingered these halls, but his spirit had long since fled and the only thing I channeled was a splitting headache.
I rolled a couple bombers and then left the marijuana wrapped in a towel in the bottom right drawer of the desk. I was three blocks from the Zocalo, which was slowly sinking and tilting farther into the ground, and I heard there was an Anthropological museum showing a section of Tenochtitlan, the ancient city.
There was a room dedicated to human sacrifices and wax models of the priests who used the obsidian blades to cut people’s hearts out. The priests took a psychedelic derived from some plant, and they were tripping the whole time, up on the pyramid, bodies stacked around them.
There were a couple rooms dedicated to training birds of prey, a common thing for the nobles to have for hunting. Also, Tenochtitlan had a highly advanced canal system that served the people’s needs for at least a couple centuries, but then Cortes came with his fear of cleanliness and water as an agent of the devil and just paved over the whole thing. The big church in the Zocalo was also tilting and sinking, held up only by scaffolding and who knows what block and tackle system. Outside people lined up begging, a tent city was built to protest things happening in Chiapas, with vendors lining the alley on either side.
I went in to see the Diego Rivera murals in the government building and was planning to see his and Frida’s house in Coyoacan the next day, Monday. No one told me the Universal Truth that all museums are closed Mondays. I thought that was only barbers. So even though I went all the way out there on the bus, I only saw the outside of the house. The bus driver who took me back to D.F. was the first to explain the truth to me about museums and Mondays the world over.
I left the Zocalo and walked aimlessly through the streets. After about half an hour I came upon a huge plaza with pillars in it. I saw some scattered Mariachi musicians standing around chatting. A few couples were sitting together and being serenaded while others vicariously took in the songs for free, lingering in the park.
I walked on some more, the strains of Volver, Volver crying behind me, and soon came upon a big crowd of people. They were all gathered around a large building watching the coffin that was slowly, methodically being carried down the steps to the waiting hearse. Funeral music played and the widow cried. The crowd parted in front of me as I trained my camera on the procession. A man shot past me and his bodyguards brushed me aside, all captured in the photo. Someone said it was Mayor Cardenas, he had just given a speech at the Bellas Artes Building, eulogizing Octavio Paz.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Beauty and the Beast
Winters of 1978 to 1983, Nevada, Iowa
The first two llamas we bought were called Ozzie and Harriet, named after the famous 1950’s TV series. Harriet was pregnant, but Ozzie was not the father. Within a few months of bringing them home from the Chamberlain South Dakota Exotic Animal Auction, tragedy would strike and Ozzie would kill Harriet while she was giving birth to Andy.
My Dad was away on business at the time and I felt pretty guilty knowing Harriet was suffering on the hilltop while I was lying down with my headphones on a pillow listening to X Los Angeles or London Calling. The neighbor Bud, a sheep farmer, made the call to the Veterinarian but it was too late. Andy became our pet after that, and he often sat in the family room with us watching TV and humming, as all young llamas do.
After Harriet died, my dad wanted to recoup his $2,000 loss by finding another female and breeding her with Ozzie. If the baby were female, a one in four chance, then he would be on the right track. Meanwhile it was just Ozzie and Andy, two orphans ruling the pasture where horses had once run free.
One of my weekly chores was to feed Ozzie. During the winter, with the dirt road iced over or the long driveway blocked, it was easier to just cross over the pasture, take the bridge over the creek and climb the hill to the barn. Only problem was that Ozzie would be there waiting at the top.
I had to take a large stick with me and wave it in front of him or whack him in the face with it so he wouldn’t trample me down. He was a good 300 pound spitting machine with hooked teeth like a serpent, wielding his dragon neck at me with bulging eyes, hissing stinky fire. I usually could hit him squarely in the balls a couple times and he got the idea until I went in and closed the door to the barn.
We find out later that Ozzie had been raised by humans too, bottle fed just like we were doing with Andy. He imprinted humans as natural enemies, and his aggression came from being coddled by some unwitting children in a petting zoo. Andy got too big to come inside anymore, so we put him back in the barn with Ozzie. The Veterinarian told us he died of heartbreak.
The first two llamas we bought were called Ozzie and Harriet, named after the famous 1950’s TV series. Harriet was pregnant, but Ozzie was not the father. Within a few months of bringing them home from the Chamberlain South Dakota Exotic Animal Auction, tragedy would strike and Ozzie would kill Harriet while she was giving birth to Andy.
My Dad was away on business at the time and I felt pretty guilty knowing Harriet was suffering on the hilltop while I was lying down with my headphones on a pillow listening to X Los Angeles or London Calling. The neighbor Bud, a sheep farmer, made the call to the Veterinarian but it was too late. Andy became our pet after that, and he often sat in the family room with us watching TV and humming, as all young llamas do.
After Harriet died, my dad wanted to recoup his $2,000 loss by finding another female and breeding her with Ozzie. If the baby were female, a one in four chance, then he would be on the right track. Meanwhile it was just Ozzie and Andy, two orphans ruling the pasture where horses had once run free.
One of my weekly chores was to feed Ozzie. During the winter, with the dirt road iced over or the long driveway blocked, it was easier to just cross over the pasture, take the bridge over the creek and climb the hill to the barn. Only problem was that Ozzie would be there waiting at the top.
I had to take a large stick with me and wave it in front of him or whack him in the face with it so he wouldn’t trample me down. He was a good 300 pound spitting machine with hooked teeth like a serpent, wielding his dragon neck at me with bulging eyes, hissing stinky fire. I usually could hit him squarely in the balls a couple times and he got the idea until I went in and closed the door to the barn.
We find out later that Ozzie had been raised by humans too, bottle fed just like we were doing with Andy. He imprinted humans as natural enemies, and his aggression came from being coddled by some unwitting children in a petting zoo. Andy got too big to come inside anymore, so we put him back in the barn with Ozzie. The Veterinarian told us he died of heartbreak.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Weather of Oz
Spring 1979, Nevada, Iowa
There was a video camera in our Geology class, and the teacher told us we could make a video for our final project. Whatever we wanted to do, as long as it had a theme, like Rock Formations, or Volcanoes or something, and actually explained things about this topic.
I, along with Randy McHose and Mark Stefani, jumped at the opportunity. We had already made a couple videos in Ms Haas' class, doing skits from Saturday Night Live, Cheech and Chong and Steve Martin. In one, I was John Belushi, in like a lion and out like an African Tapir on Weekend Update. We reran it and watched endlessly as the white line ran down the black and white screen, Jay in glasses and a suit, flying over the makeshift table clutching his heart in a mock Belushi cocaine heart attack.
Me and Mark just figured we’d make Randy the star of The Weather of Oz, as we were now calling it, having chosen our theme. We knew Randy wouldn’t sit and do any actual writing or planning of the characters or scenes, but he would be the best actor for the lead part, and ham it up. He would still be called Randy in the video so no one would have to remember a new name. Instead of Toto we had a bean bag frog named Clyde. Mark and I would write and direct, but I did not want to appear.
So Mark and I went to his house to brainstorm and write down some ideas. Mark’s Dad worked for the CIA and Mark said he didn’t know for sure what his Dad did. I only saw him once. I remember we listened to Ummagumma a lot and a couple times we even made pipe bombs to blow up tree stumps.
I did most of the actual writing, I felt Mark was going off on tangents, not sticking to the point or being realistic with the time limit, the people's acting abilities, and the equipment we had. In the end, we decided that Randy and Clyde were to be undercover environmental agents trying to find out who was responsible for the recent, sometimes deadly, weather disturbances in the area.
An unusually long drought had caused corn and soybean crops to fail for the first time in thirty years, dust devil tornadoes were wreaking havoc on once peaceful small town life, and the coldest winter on record had made people think the end of the world was near. After a sudden air inversion over Des Moines during the six o’clock news, which caused the fatal crash of a small passenger plane, this one carrying the African Agricultural Ambassador, a few insiders thought something more sinister was happening, something the public was not fully aware of.
Randy and Clyde, the undercover environmental secret agents, had to go on foot to the weathermens’ castles and find out if which of the two men was the evil weather changer. Then when they found out who it was, they could infiltrate the TV station and pull the plug during the six o’ clock news, announcing to the viewers that all was well, right there on Prime Time.
Our good friend Kendra was the wicked witch, explaining tornadoes to the camera as a mini Lincoln Logs cabin spun on a string in front of Camera Two, eventually crushing her. Of course we edited this part. We filmed a close up of the polka dotted Barbie legs sticking out from under the mini log cabin as Kendra moaned in the background.
The Munchkins became The Doldrums, and we filmed three friends from above as they knelt and sang We are the Do Oldrum Winds, the Do Oldrum Winds, or some such thing I had written in a flurry.
Other than that, the script and story board weren’t very worked out until we got to the point of filming, and then we improvised scenes over a three day rigorous shooting schedule after school. Through the forest, by the river and along the sea went Randy and Clyde, meeting people and strange creatures along the way.
Randy and Clyde see Hal Jacobs, played by Mark, creating some strange weather pattern in his castle and realize he is the evil weatherman. They bust in and catch him redhanded as he is brewing up a crop damaging hail storm over Central Iowa.
After much debate, we decided that the evil wizard Hal Jacobs would not be caught by Randy and Clyde, but in the end the Wizard makes himself disappear, vanishing in the breeze left by Randy’s clutching arms, a trick of the video. We wanted to leave it open to a sequel, Mark's performance practically outshining the unfocused Randy.
Also, in the wake of the evil wizard's sudden disappearance, Clyde the frog is sucked up into a High Pressure stream, blowing up on camera with little Black Cat Firecrackers. We had to film this when the teacher was gone, and open the window afterwards. Randy didn’t like the way Clyde didn’t blow up so good, so he put some Ronson lighter fluid on him and lit him on fire for the grand finale, saline tears running down his cheeks as he announced to the TV audience that the evil weatherman was gone for good. By the time it was all done, there were eleven weather phenomenon explained in detail and 90 minutes of video and we got an A. I wish I still had that tape.
There was a video camera in our Geology class, and the teacher told us we could make a video for our final project. Whatever we wanted to do, as long as it had a theme, like Rock Formations, or Volcanoes or something, and actually explained things about this topic.
I, along with Randy McHose and Mark Stefani, jumped at the opportunity. We had already made a couple videos in Ms Haas' class, doing skits from Saturday Night Live, Cheech and Chong and Steve Martin. In one, I was John Belushi, in like a lion and out like an African Tapir on Weekend Update. We reran it and watched endlessly as the white line ran down the black and white screen, Jay in glasses and a suit, flying over the makeshift table clutching his heart in a mock Belushi cocaine heart attack.
Me and Mark just figured we’d make Randy the star of The Weather of Oz, as we were now calling it, having chosen our theme. We knew Randy wouldn’t sit and do any actual writing or planning of the characters or scenes, but he would be the best actor for the lead part, and ham it up. He would still be called Randy in the video so no one would have to remember a new name. Instead of Toto we had a bean bag frog named Clyde. Mark and I would write and direct, but I did not want to appear.
So Mark and I went to his house to brainstorm and write down some ideas. Mark’s Dad worked for the CIA and Mark said he didn’t know for sure what his Dad did. I only saw him once. I remember we listened to Ummagumma a lot and a couple times we even made pipe bombs to blow up tree stumps.
I did most of the actual writing, I felt Mark was going off on tangents, not sticking to the point or being realistic with the time limit, the people's acting abilities, and the equipment we had. In the end, we decided that Randy and Clyde were to be undercover environmental agents trying to find out who was responsible for the recent, sometimes deadly, weather disturbances in the area.
An unusually long drought had caused corn and soybean crops to fail for the first time in thirty years, dust devil tornadoes were wreaking havoc on once peaceful small town life, and the coldest winter on record had made people think the end of the world was near. After a sudden air inversion over Des Moines during the six o’clock news, which caused the fatal crash of a small passenger plane, this one carrying the African Agricultural Ambassador, a few insiders thought something more sinister was happening, something the public was not fully aware of.
Randy and Clyde, the undercover environmental secret agents, had to go on foot to the weathermens’ castles and find out if which of the two men was the evil weather changer. Then when they found out who it was, they could infiltrate the TV station and pull the plug during the six o’ clock news, announcing to the viewers that all was well, right there on Prime Time.
Our good friend Kendra was the wicked witch, explaining tornadoes to the camera as a mini Lincoln Logs cabin spun on a string in front of Camera Two, eventually crushing her. Of course we edited this part. We filmed a close up of the polka dotted Barbie legs sticking out from under the mini log cabin as Kendra moaned in the background.
The Munchkins became The Doldrums, and we filmed three friends from above as they knelt and sang We are the Do Oldrum Winds, the Do Oldrum Winds, or some such thing I had written in a flurry.
Other than that, the script and story board weren’t very worked out until we got to the point of filming, and then we improvised scenes over a three day rigorous shooting schedule after school. Through the forest, by the river and along the sea went Randy and Clyde, meeting people and strange creatures along the way.
Randy and Clyde see Hal Jacobs, played by Mark, creating some strange weather pattern in his castle and realize he is the evil weatherman. They bust in and catch him redhanded as he is brewing up a crop damaging hail storm over Central Iowa.
After much debate, we decided that the evil wizard Hal Jacobs would not be caught by Randy and Clyde, but in the end the Wizard makes himself disappear, vanishing in the breeze left by Randy’s clutching arms, a trick of the video. We wanted to leave it open to a sequel, Mark's performance practically outshining the unfocused Randy.
Also, in the wake of the evil wizard's sudden disappearance, Clyde the frog is sucked up into a High Pressure stream, blowing up on camera with little Black Cat Firecrackers. We had to film this when the teacher was gone, and open the window afterwards. Randy didn’t like the way Clyde didn’t blow up so good, so he put some Ronson lighter fluid on him and lit him on fire for the grand finale, saline tears running down his cheeks as he announced to the TV audience that the evil weatherman was gone for good. By the time it was all done, there were eleven weather phenomenon explained in detail and 90 minutes of video and we got an A. I wish I still had that tape.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Hustler
Fall 1976, Nevada, Iowa
I was partly raised in bars and pool halls. On Bald Eagle Lake we stopped into a little bar almost every day and I’d get a Tom Collins with extra cherry juice, shooting pool on tiptoe while my Dad gave me little tips. We had a pool table in the basement in Ames, before Nevada, as well as a ping pong table and horseshoe pit and batting net out back. We always went to gambling night at the Elks Club where I found the pool table alone on the second floor for many a practice session while the folks played roulette or blackjack.
Going from Ames to Nevada meant I had to make new friends. At first I tried to integrate the two groups, the Ames crowd only 15 miles away, and had a bunch of guys over one day to play bumper pool, regular pool and ping pong in the new acreage my folks bought in Nevada. I felt like I was going from a big University town to a little backwater, but from the Suburbs to the country, so you could see the paradox. My city friends didn’t like Hicksville, and my country friends didn’t like the city slickers. They never really mixed and I kind of forgot about my Ames friends.
Besides the new junior high dynamic, I had to get used to a little crowd downtown and driving around the Loop. I could drive legally when I was 14 with a permit, and was the tallest kid in school until the girls passed me up in 8th grade, so no problem with the police going around the Loop in the Galaxie 500, Econoline Van with tinted windows, the yellow Fiat deathmobile, or the Lincoln with tilting seats.
The streets in Nevada are A to Z and 1 to 100. I think there’s a 121st and MM street now. The grid system, just like the furrowed soybean and corn fields being encroached upon with every unwelcome settler. Downtown was small, one main street with all the bars, shops and restaurants. When I first moved there, the main center for the youth was The Head Shop, selling bongs and other paraphernalia out in the open. And there was a pool table so I started to spend more and more time there.
Mind you, I didn’t do drugs yet. I was a drinker, sloe gin in the theater making out in the back row, whisky in the Econoline, yard surfing in the Fiat, first and last at the kegger party at the cool parents’ house. The Heads had their own thing going on, I thought they were more like hillbillies with no future. But there was a pool table at The Head Shop, so I had to mingle.
Being tall and husky, I was used to older guys picking fights, but I usually managed to stave off any violence, at least after turning 13, through my wit and eloquence. And in my pool game. In The Head Shop, regular clients hung out, pinball machines clanging and pool balls clacking, bleary eyed patrons scattered in wooden chairs, looking at no posters on the walls. There was no overhead fan like a Bogart movie, but the jukebox had the classic rock songs that served as soundtrack to our meager lives.
The daughter of the owners ran the place. Jean Ackerman. Even though I may not have known it at the time, she was a lesbian, but like one of those corn fed tough lesbians, trapped in a virgin sixteen year old body. Every time I went in there she gave me some grief. One thing sticks out in my mind for some reason. I was playing pool with one of the regulars and using the pool cue as an air guitar, jamming to Since I’ve Been Loving You. She leaned her elbows on the top of the glass case with the paraphernalia, watching me for a while.
Then she said You think you’re pretty cool doncha? My air guitar became less animated but I didn’t stop moving around the table. After less than a year in this little backwater I was at a crossroads, all The Heads looking on. So I pushed up my chin and nodded affirmatively, saying Yeah I DO think I’m pretty cool, but I’m just whistling through town honey!! I scratched on the eight ball and Jean was vindicated.
I was partly raised in bars and pool halls. On Bald Eagle Lake we stopped into a little bar almost every day and I’d get a Tom Collins with extra cherry juice, shooting pool on tiptoe while my Dad gave me little tips. We had a pool table in the basement in Ames, before Nevada, as well as a ping pong table and horseshoe pit and batting net out back. We always went to gambling night at the Elks Club where I found the pool table alone on the second floor for many a practice session while the folks played roulette or blackjack.
Going from Ames to Nevada meant I had to make new friends. At first I tried to integrate the two groups, the Ames crowd only 15 miles away, and had a bunch of guys over one day to play bumper pool, regular pool and ping pong in the new acreage my folks bought in Nevada. I felt like I was going from a big University town to a little backwater, but from the Suburbs to the country, so you could see the paradox. My city friends didn’t like Hicksville, and my country friends didn’t like the city slickers. They never really mixed and I kind of forgot about my Ames friends.
Besides the new junior high dynamic, I had to get used to a little crowd downtown and driving around the Loop. I could drive legally when I was 14 with a permit, and was the tallest kid in school until the girls passed me up in 8th grade, so no problem with the police going around the Loop in the Galaxie 500, Econoline Van with tinted windows, the yellow Fiat deathmobile, or the Lincoln with tilting seats.
The streets in Nevada are A to Z and 1 to 100. I think there’s a 121st and MM street now. The grid system, just like the furrowed soybean and corn fields being encroached upon with every unwelcome settler. Downtown was small, one main street with all the bars, shops and restaurants. When I first moved there, the main center for the youth was The Head Shop, selling bongs and other paraphernalia out in the open. And there was a pool table so I started to spend more and more time there.
Mind you, I didn’t do drugs yet. I was a drinker, sloe gin in the theater making out in the back row, whisky in the Econoline, yard surfing in the Fiat, first and last at the kegger party at the cool parents’ house. The Heads had their own thing going on, I thought they were more like hillbillies with no future. But there was a pool table at The Head Shop, so I had to mingle.
Being tall and husky, I was used to older guys picking fights, but I usually managed to stave off any violence, at least after turning 13, through my wit and eloquence. And in my pool game. In The Head Shop, regular clients hung out, pinball machines clanging and pool balls clacking, bleary eyed patrons scattered in wooden chairs, looking at no posters on the walls. There was no overhead fan like a Bogart movie, but the jukebox had the classic rock songs that served as soundtrack to our meager lives.
The daughter of the owners ran the place. Jean Ackerman. Even though I may not have known it at the time, she was a lesbian, but like one of those corn fed tough lesbians, trapped in a virgin sixteen year old body. Every time I went in there she gave me some grief. One thing sticks out in my mind for some reason. I was playing pool with one of the regulars and using the pool cue as an air guitar, jamming to Since I’ve Been Loving You. She leaned her elbows on the top of the glass case with the paraphernalia, watching me for a while.
Then she said You think you’re pretty cool doncha? My air guitar became less animated but I didn’t stop moving around the table. After less than a year in this little backwater I was at a crossroads, all The Heads looking on. So I pushed up my chin and nodded affirmatively, saying Yeah I DO think I’m pretty cool, but I’m just whistling through town honey!! I scratched on the eight ball and Jean was vindicated.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Marie Laveau´s Grave
Time of the big Mississippi flood, the whole Midwest was under water. I was riding AMTRAK All Aboard America, and made a three week stop in New Orleans.
I didn’t have any money, but I had my banjo. I already made up four songs in Berkeley, playing in front of Cody’s bookshop and eating out of a can. This time I had a room in exchange for odd jobs in a hostel on St. Charles.
I found out later one of the rooms was site of a grisly arson murder, a woman setting her husband and children on fire in the early 1980’s. I mowed the lawn, changed beds, folded sheets, whatever needed to be done in the morning with horrible humid heat. In the afternoon I went exploring and playing my four banjo songs in and out of the French Quarter for spare change.
I visited the Voodoo Museum and was invited to a Voodoo Party by the Voodoo hippy chick who worked at the front desk. Inside the museum, the wishing stump was all dusty, and the altar to Exu looked kind of kitsch, but all in all it was a good diorama of the Yoruba syncretism with Catholicism. I learned a lot, but I didn’t go to the party. One of the things I learned was where Marie Laveau was buried. You could even make a wish on her grave.
St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, closed after 9 p.m. due to drug trafficking. All the graves above ground in crypts, some empty from looters or conjurers. Marie’s grave is full of offerings, bottles of rum, flowers, food, white candles, pictures of loved ones, you can’t miss it, even though there is no name. The headstone is filled with red X’s. The tourist book said find a piece of red brick, turn around three times, make a wish and then scrawl three red X’s on the headstone. I did it and wished for a job on my next stop, Austin, Texas. In three days I was working for a house painter and had a nice wad of cash for going back up the Mississippi to the Twin Cities.
I didn’t have any money, but I had my banjo. I already made up four songs in Berkeley, playing in front of Cody’s bookshop and eating out of a can. This time I had a room in exchange for odd jobs in a hostel on St. Charles.
I found out later one of the rooms was site of a grisly arson murder, a woman setting her husband and children on fire in the early 1980’s. I mowed the lawn, changed beds, folded sheets, whatever needed to be done in the morning with horrible humid heat. In the afternoon I went exploring and playing my four banjo songs in and out of the French Quarter for spare change.
I visited the Voodoo Museum and was invited to a Voodoo Party by the Voodoo hippy chick who worked at the front desk. Inside the museum, the wishing stump was all dusty, and the altar to Exu looked kind of kitsch, but all in all it was a good diorama of the Yoruba syncretism with Catholicism. I learned a lot, but I didn’t go to the party. One of the things I learned was where Marie Laveau was buried. You could even make a wish on her grave.
St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, closed after 9 p.m. due to drug trafficking. All the graves above ground in crypts, some empty from looters or conjurers. Marie’s grave is full of offerings, bottles of rum, flowers, food, white candles, pictures of loved ones, you can’t miss it, even though there is no name. The headstone is filled with red X’s. The tourist book said find a piece of red brick, turn around three times, make a wish and then scrawl three red X’s on the headstone. I did it and wished for a job on my next stop, Austin, Texas. In three days I was working for a house painter and had a nice wad of cash for going back up the Mississippi to the Twin Cities.
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