There is a different brand of the wild and high, white noise that starts to ring in one’s ears - especially in mine - when the brain is hit with the prospect of making a late-night, 505 mile run through three states to what I can call home.
If someone were to ask me, I would have to answer that I like the sound of the noise. It makes my body begin to buzz; my muscles go into some sort of tightly wound spool of wire and wishes - and in the moment just before I feel like I’m going to implode, I throw all of the pertinent stuff in the back of my little black Jeep and rip out of town.
Then I end up giving that pony I’m riding the ol’ over and under...and my particular pony comes with a custom six speaker Pioneer stereo system that can give every single one of Tool’s notes due respect and can go one hundred miles an hour if it wants to.
So that’s what I did. Gave respect and got out of town as fast as I could, that is. Northern Arizona mandates these types of acts after nine months. What else can I say?
I had dialed a good friend up on the phone and said to him, “I’m outta here, dude. I’ll see you in the middle of the night. Gotta fill the tank and get a cup of coffee. Then I’m on the road.”
The Varsity Gasser - great name for a college town gas station, eh? - offers free coffee with a full tank. Perfect. I took the deal and headed north.
And when you head north out of Flagstaff, you boom up over the shoulders of the San Francisco Peaks and out into a bazillion acres of high altitude grass and pinyon and juniper trees. Gray Mountain slows you down for a minute because there’s a gas station there - and that’s it - and then you run sixty-five miles north on your way to Highway 160. After passing through Cameron, you turn right and then you better go like a rabid bat on bad acid out of Hell itself through Tuuva City, across the stormy side of Black Mesa and on to Kayenta. Only because you’ve got some time to make up....and, in truth, time really doesn’t exist out there.
On that particular night, as the sun went down behind me, the lightning storms started up on the three horizons left around me. It was one hell of a sight.
I must admit that I thought it looked like everyone had summoned their own gods and, upon the decree, Mother Earth decided to talk to some of us for three hours or so - a split second at a time in blinding blue light - and as all her spirits and troubles popped out of her mind some other-worldly wraiths showed up and wanted to play. So, they all flew around with spears of fireworks to throw at the surface of Earth. It was relieving to see. A certain and persistent pressure left my chest that night.
And all I could hear was this: “Be patient. You must keep reminding yourself of this.”*
Anyway, US Highway 160 is a narrow and fast little road, full of tourists and semi trucks and crazy Natives and wild horses and - on that night - one hell of a rain storm.
It’s a different type of sensation that hits the brain from the one I mentioned at the top of this story when you realize that you are going 50 miles an hour but you have absolutely no control of the vehicle you are driving. It isn’t necessarily fear alone that you feel. It’s panic and also, oddly, adrenaline and a touch of challenge. You tuck into your seat a little lower and tighten every muscle you can control at that point for a second - or even a full three - and wonder just how quickly that damned wedge of water will get out from under your tires and quit making your rig hydroplane, combined with the next wonder of what it will feel like to barrel-roll a 2,500 pound machine across the desert at 50 mph....due to that simple wedge of water.
All of that runs through your head but for some strange and calm reason, it doesn’t matter to you.
Because a disconcerting thought pops into your brain: “Shit. That would prolly kill my dog.”
That’s the thought that matters most to you. All due to that damned wedge of water.
And just then, that wedge of water squishes out and you get control of your careening vehicle and you go: “Phew...”
That whole hydroplaning story I just told you about took about two and a half seconds in real time. But it removed six years from my life. A man’s heart can’t beat that fast and still be viable seventy years from now, in my opinion. Not to mention the fact the when a grown man’s balls collectively shrink to the size of a sun-dried prune because he reckons he’s gonna die...well, I don’t know...I don’t think that can be good, either.
And then, just as my balls began to relax and I was reaching for a cigarette, the crazy and pissed off little Honda sedan shot around me at 70 mph because, apparently, people from California enjoy driving at seventy in a 1,500 pound tin box in the pitch black during a 2 inch per hour deluge three feet from the bumper of a black Jeep with AZ plates as they ride with the brights on in your mirror.
I, at that moment, clenched and then unclenched that one muscle that controls one’s sphincter and was strangely reminded of a line my father once uttered as we were driving across the saddle between two mountains on a 12,350 foot-high-road in Colorado:
“Jesus H. Christ. You couldn’t have pounded a straight pin up my ass with a sledgehammer just a moment ago.”
Dads have lines like that, don’t they? My brother and I still laugh like hell about that one. (Furthermore, my brother and I are still wondering what the “H” stands for. We were - and still are - unaware that Jesus has a middle name.)
I laughed at the memory and I reached down, turned the stereo back up just as Maynard sang, “Push the envelope. Watch it bend.”
Yessir.
I rolled through Tsegi and down into Kayenta. I stopped at the gas station just long enough to top off the tank and buy another cup of coffee. Then I headed off to the north into the ghosts hanging around Monument Valley. Just like the pillars and curtains of rock that are up there. Under a full moon. And a quiet sky.
I had left the storm behind.
The pale white light bouncing around the red rocks and blue sage creates one hell of a crazy-cool bath of the most natural light you will ever see. I watched the storms brew up over Powell, some 50 miles - as a hawk can fly - to my northwest. I nodded at them. The moon kept splashing down on the Monuments and as I sped towards those little southwest Utah towns - drawn by some type of special gravity towards the place that has made me who I am now - I started to smile broadly.
I rolled the volume knob on the Pioneer a few notches over to the right, wound the window down, threw a naked left elbow out into the 70 mile an hour wind and still moonlight and lit one more Camel Straight.
I highly recommend the practice. It’ll clear even the most befuddled of minds.
Moab meant more coffee and another top-off of the tank and then the high speed run to Crescent Junction and, finally, I-70 West. I took the right onto it and watched another three thunderstorms bubble up and flash down around me. One seemed to be up and out over Rangely and another was down towards Gateway and the last one was right in my path, about 90 miles away.
So I drove straight into it. At about ninety-four miles an hour.
I figured I’d try to catch it.
The way I see it is such: if they always say that you can’t outrun the lightning, you might as well run right into it.
That way, in my mind, the score is even.
*Maynard J. Keenan, Tool, "The Patient," Lateralus, 2001
Friday, September 10, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Flagstaff Fires, Vol. 1.
It got me to thinking. The picture to the left was taken on January 21, 2010. We were a full thirty-six hours into what would result in - two days later - the largest single snow event to hit the city of Flagstaff in 47 years. I recorded 52” of snow in my backyard on the morning of January 24, 2010. The official count was 53.8” of snow at the Flagstaff-Pulliam Airport, 1.47 miles south from my apartment. The front page of the AZ Daily Sun announced, “One for the record books,” and then, under it, “Still digging out.”
On Monday, June 21, 2010, the front page of AZ Daily Sun read, in one-inch black sans serif, “Up in smoke.”
Quite literally, I can’t remember the last time I turned on my windshield wipers. My best estimate is that it was between 45 and 55 days ago. It’s dry. Flagstaff also sits in a part of the biggest Ponderosa pine forest on the North American continent. Not to mention the Pinyon-Juniper stands in the mid-elevations. There is a significant amount of fuel sitting around on these hillsides.
The Eagle Rock fire started about 25 miles west of Flagstaff on June 16th. They are still tending to that fire but not in the manner it took them when it started, of course. It topped out at about 4,000 +/- acres on June 19th or so. However, it has been reported that the call regarding the fire, placed by a one Mr. Bob Rike, sat in the voicemail box of the Kaibab National Forest Service office until an employee checked it twelve hours later, when, indeed, the Forest Service opened for business the next morning. The fire had grown considerably by then, as you can imagine.
So that little snafu, naturally, caused some complications about the matter.
Anyway, that fire burned a comparatively small amount of ground, about 350 acres, but it just so happened to be on the edges - and had the wind to help it - of consuming two schools, two historical restaurants and a hotel, two gas stations, a power substation, five fairly affluent neighborhoods, a country club or two and two resort properties - Wyndham and Marriott - and, ultimately, the Nestle/Purina Mill. That would have been the absolute worst case scenario. But, when I took the picture at right, it seemed somewhat plausible.
The ground crew was on the scene first, but there was very little information coming to us at that point so I don’t have too many details as to where they started in on it. Within an hour or so, I reckon, two slurry bombers and two Sikorsky Skycrane helicopters arrived on the scene. It was fucking bad-ass, for lack of a more inventive term. Those pilots can fly, let me tell you. I had a bomber pass not 80 to 100 feet over the top of my Jeep whilst turning that beast at a 45 degree parabolic climb out of the thick smoke over I-40 and the adjacent neighborhood. I whooped loudly and pumped my fist and yelled, “Fuck yeah!”.....and then I nearly threw my iPhone out the window at 40 mph trying to get video of it.
Alas, I managed this still as it circled away, only about ten seconds later. Still have the phone.
However, seeing a helicopter with a maximum takeoff weight of 42,000 pounds and cruise speed of 105 mph slice through the smoke a few hundred feet over your head just puts an eerie movie-script feeling to the whole ordeal. The choppers pop out of the smoke and cut the air over the apartment in half well into the wee hours of night, on a constant mission. An airborne attack, but of a benevolent nature.
They had that fire knocked back and the power shut off to the station and re-routed and the roads closed and the people out of their houses within four hours and I’ll tell you something else, to this day, with roughly 12,500 acres charred in the greater Flagstaff area and about 1,000 homes evacuated in the last five days, not one single injury has been reported nor one single structure damaged.
Now that is impressive.
So, as those 900 or so wildfire fighters took to the woods over the last 120 hours, they have done one hell of damn good job.
Because I forgot to tell you that the Schultz Fire started on June 20, Sunday, Father’s Day at about 11:00 a.m. Here's a picture of its effects, roughly two hours after it was reported.The mountain behind which it is burning (lower left) is named Mt. Elden. It's about 10,000 feet tall.
That's one hell of a plume of smoke.
It was set by an abandoned campfire along Schultz Pass Road, some 8,000 feet up in the highest, driest section of the Rocky Mountains. The winds were too much for the pilots to fly through; some fifty miles an hour at certain points.The bombers, I’ve been told by a co-worker, need to re-charge in Winslow. But, with eight of them and five attack helicopters, the cycle of water and slurry is nearly constant.
Again, very impressive.
In the end, the woods will benefit from the fires, I understand. What’s a goddamn shame is that these guys and gals have to put their lives in danger because of two idiots who didn’t know how to put out something as simple as a campfire.
Another disconcerting factor is a line in an article posted on the AZ Daily Sun website Sunday: “Coconino National Forest officials will meet Monday to consider imposing fire and use restrictions on the forest, but they have no plans at this time to shut it down.” It might be a good idea to shut down the woods just for a few days, boys, until you can get this under control. There are eight tankers and 5 helicopters working on it as we speak. 300 fighters. It’s still out of control, and zero percent contained.
It's been a crazy few days. Evacuations and late-breaking news and inaccuracies and closures and a bit of the type of thought process that I like to call, "Holy shit! Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Fuck! What should I do first?!" Then you get your shit together - in that bright moment of realization which alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity - and handle it.
Indeed, I think I got about ten emails that started with "Holy (insert your favorite cuss word/phrase here for the best effect)!" after people saw the pictures. It was a lot like that down here, too. One old timer shuffled up to me at work - as we are all standing in the middle of the street with cameras and radios and half-written text messages and children and parents and stopped cars, doors flung open, our mouths agape - and said, "Jesus Christ! Is that all it ever does around here is burn?"
But then again, I remember saying the same thing about the snow.
Welcome to Planet AZ.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Johnny Houseman, Vol 2: Permeation
"Front Desk to.....Josh," my radio spat at me, scaring me half to death. After I quit twitching, I guessed that the hesitation was due to the fact that I normally, if not a bit impersonally in my opinion, go simply by Houseman, and this call needed Josh, not just the Houseman.
Hmmm, I thought, as I scratched at my goatee.
I wonder what that means? So I allowed a few ticks before I gave an answer. Dylan was working his way through Tangled Up In Blue on KZGL, Flagstaff's only actual radio station. I reached down and turned it up. He, Mr. Zimmerman, was right at the line where he's in the strip club and he mentions that he "must have felt a bit uneasy when she bent down to tie the laaaayy-sis on my shoe....tangled up in bluuuue."
I smiled, reached over and turned it down a few clicks.
I was wary. I took a sip of coffee and I said somewhat slowly, "Go ahead, Front Desk." After nearly four months of working there, I was savvy to what the tone in the voice during these types of calls might mean. Furthermore, it was just odd timing on their part. 11:00 a.m. on a Friday is a somewhat crazy time of the day for me and they know it.
Front Desk took a moment or two for itself. Then: "Hey, Josh, um. Well, I'm sure you heard that unit number 3110 was just called out for inspection."
I looked confusedly at the scratched face of the two-way radio, with all its inertness, pressed the button on the side of it and said, "10-4."
"Stand by, please, Josh," Front Desk said.
"10-4."
That's the easiest response for a guy in my position. It cuts down on unnecessary rhetoric. However, I was still at a loss as to what the hell it was, exactly, Front Desk was getting at. I am not an Inspector.
"Sorry, for the wait, Josh," came the reply after a moment from Front Desk, "Um, the, um, we, I guess, were wondering if you could take the fogger up there and treat that unit. Thirty-one ten. The Inspector said it really stinks."
Even Yoda can't remedy something that really stinks. Jedi powers and all. Of which, I am lacking. Damn. I wanted to be somewhere else. Maybe on the precarious lip of the Grand Canyon just 80 miles away, staring into a mile-deep abyss. Or horseback on the trail, heading up to Cow Camp, moving a gaggle of cows into the shadows of Capitol Peak during sobering cold morning temperatures with my brother.
All of this was on my mind as I said, "Huh," into the two-way.
And that was all I offered. I reached down and turned up Dylan. He was at the point in the story where "she handed me a book of poems written by an Italian poet from the 13th cen-tur-eee."
Front Desk didn't push the matter on me. My concern was that no one had defined the stink but they were more than willing to send me in there to rectify what was, in my head, an encounter with a crazy putrescence - armed with nothing more than a whirring machine full of a citrus-scented oily liquid that could be sprayed about in a misty manner.
Dylan had gotten to "and every word flowed like burning coal, written in my soul from me to you....tangled up in bluuuuue."
It was a beautiful pre-Spring day. It was just after eleven in the morning in mid-March at 7,000 feet in the Southern Rockies and I was already in a t-shirt. I let Dylan get through the solo in the middle of the song; as he jangled along I let him work to his point where he tells you, "And one day the axe just fell." Contradictory to the song, there was an easiness to my day; a sense of calm that I have not felt in quite some time.
I looked left, over the tops of the houses on the hill. A Bald Eagle was making its way quite quickly over the resort, from West to East, with two ravens in its wake.
Ravens, being large birds themselves - the largest, actually, of the Corvus genus, are regarded as one of the most intelligent birds on the planet. While also being the largest all-black bird in the world and riding on a wingspan of nearly five feet, the two I saw that morning were surprisingly dwarfed by the power, grace, and majesty of the Eagle in front of them.
We - one king raptor, two winged omnivores and a lowly, Earth-bound biped - all glided along until our paths intersected at roughly 11:11 a.m. on a tertiary street in the middle of a city mostly foreign to me, during a job that was, at most times, rewarding and highly manageable, but recently had become...cumbersome. But no matter. I was with Dylan and an eagle and two ravens. Things were good in my world.
I inhaled deeply and let out the air between pursed lips, like a tire going flat quickly, perhaps in anticipation of smelling bad stuff for the next thirty minutes or so.
"Did you copy that, Josh?"
"10-4," I said to Front Desk through the last few PSI in my lungs, as politely as I could.
"Thanks, Josh," said Front Desk. I thought I detected a bit of empathy through the static.
I guided the small pickup truck down the hill, waltzed into the warehouse, seized a fifteen pound shoebox-sized piece of equipment with a five foot hose attached to it, placed it in the truck and drove back up the hill to unit 3110.
The smell, the stink, was, in fact, the result of a skunk's bouquet. Perfect. Skunks. Now, there are a few of you who know that I have been sprayed, point-blank, by a skunk, thanks to my little red dog named Rye. All of you found this event pretty god damned funny.
On that most disappointing October night, I had opted to walk from the Shop on McCabe Ranch to my Cabin, just a few hundred yards down the road.
At the Shop, the dog thought that the red Toyota pickup would have been a wiser option. Upon her jumping into the back of it, I said, "Naw, hell, Rye, it's a nice night. Let's walk. C'mon."
She obligingly popped out of the back of the truck and took off down the stretch of dirt road, upon which we had walked maybe ten thousand times, to our house.
It was, indeed, a fine October night. Indian Summer warmth hung in the air and a prodigious moon hefted itself over the vicinity of Vagneur Mountain. We'd all had a few Coors Lights around the round table at the Shop after a day of riding as we discussed everything from politics to pipelines to music to horses to cows to trucks and finally, without intentionally making the topic lastly, women.
All that be as it may, and after we had mostly solved not only our challenges with the women in our lives but also with our respective politicians, trucks, phones, friends, tractors, ditches, brothers, bottles, computers, families, ideologies and tempers, I moseyed off down the road with my dog.
I had every piece of riding equipment I owned - except my saddle - in my arms: raincoat, chinks, saddlebags, boots from yesterday, extra black felt hat, extra gloves, sweatshirt, a rope I can't throw worth a damn and a few extra shirts.
I ambled happily, a touch inebriated, by an old concrete wall that used to serve as an abutment to a bridge that passed over the road above the Cabin. The dog, which had been at my heels, suddenly darted off into the brush on the right - maybe ten feet away - and barked twice. She presently returned to my side, snorting. I took three more steps.
The smell that hit me was, at that point, unrecognizable it was so ridiculously pungent.
Surely, there are many ingrained smells in our brains: Dust smells nostalgic if one is in an attic. A lilac smells like the repudiation of months of dormancy. Falling rain smells like encumbered love. High country January cold smells clear, harsh and calm. A river smells like motion, life and strength. A meadow smells like time is standing still. A horse smells like work and a dog smells like home. Snow smells quiet. The scent of fresh cut hay just makes you smile. The smell of a lawn mowed just after dawn may make you reminisce. Bacon smells like an available morning and a BBQ grill smells like friends and family on a Summer evening. Woodstove smoke smells like comfort and a campfire smells like well-deserved time around it. The ocean smells like all of the distance the wave that brought the scent to you has traveled. The exhaust from an engine with a carburetor reminds you of being a kid. A whiff of cigar smoke might as well put my dead Grandpa Luigi right here next to me. These are good smells. They conjure good memories. Any of them, individually or combined, could be the impetus of numerous stories.
Skunks, however, are vile, unnecessary creations, much like the human appendix. They - skunks - are an obviously god-damned, lowly, waddling, ill-devised, rat-like, poison-tailed and utterly useless rodent whose spray inflicts weeks worth of embarrassment and discontent upon the victim. To hell with Mace; spray someone with skunk piss. They are heinous creatures. I loathe their existence.
So, back to that October night:
Immediately, upon being doused with the wretched solution spewed forth from that godawful critter's ass, you curse - at length - the dog. Next, you verbally unleash on the skunk and finally, everything else - including, but not limited to: god, his supposed son, sons of bitches, and those that are sometimes known to copulate with a maternal figure.
Then, you run as fast as possible in the opposite direction, flapping your arms in a manner that would make you look semi-crazed, mostly stupid and as though you were being attacked by bees to an onlooker but with zero rate of success of outstripping the stink. During these moments, you accidentally drop all of your very important belongings for the skunk to piss upon again because your eyes are watering so bad you can't see your own feet and your nose feels like someone just stuffed it full of diced jalapenos.
Your dog is ambivalent at this time, for the skunk is a slow and very painful moving target to pursue, but a moving mark nonetheless. At this point, you startle yourself in your ability to actually take the time it takes you to painfully blink and consider how ambivalence and presumptions can lead to bad decisions.
Then your wits come about you and you realize that you've been fucking sprayed by a skunk from four arms length's away. A fucking skunk. That smell just doesn't go away by tomorrow. You, your dog and nearly fifteen hundred bucks worth of your belongings that are essential to your job are now covered in skunk's piss. At eleven o'clock at night.
Many things, at this point, run through your head. Namely, to:
1) Shoot the dog until she's very dead upon first sight.
2) Move a million miles away to alleviate the humiliation that will no doubt be supplied by those supposedly called friends and family.
3) Wish that you had driven the Toyota.
4) Wonder where the skunk is RIGHT NOW and how many times it can do such a thing.
This is what actually happens, though, if you were to be caught in such a situation:
1) The dog loses its mind and goes into a series of fish-out-of-water-esque actions and flops around on the ground, all the while pawing madly at its nose and eyes.
2) You continue to curse madly and blow poisonous, stinging snot-rockets from your nose.
3) You gather your things, half-blind, and head towards your house knowing all the time that you are just going to bring the rotten stench home with you.
4) Arrive at the house, uttering words unfit for most publications, including this one.
5) Strip naked and throw everything you are wearing in the trash can outside.
6) Take a few kicks at the dog because she is now over the entire matter and sees nothing wrong with smelling like a skunk and would very much like to tell you that she does, indeed, smell like a skunk as you tip-toe over the rocks to your front door, stark raving naked. ("Ow, fuckin rocks, ouch, shit, ouch, ow, Rye, fuck, git the fuck outta here, ow, shit, Rye, goddammit, go on, ye god damn dog, wait, come here you little bitch, lemme kick the hell out of you, oof, shit, ow, shit, dammit, fuck, fuckin rocks, fucking dog, git the fuck outta here ya little bitch, you stink like hell itself...FUCK!")
7) Immediately shower until the hot water cylinder runs ice cold.
8) Put the dog on a one-way airplane to Siberia.
9) Dress.
10) Sleep on the roof of your house in an old sleeping bag. (No shit.) Luckily, it's a flat roof.
However, it smells like a skunk even on the roof of your house because the whole event happened not 75 yards from your house. And as I laid there in an old sleeping bag, I could imagine other inhabitants of the ranch saying to those around them, "Damn skunk sprayed out there; stinks like hell," having no clue that the damn skunk sprayed ME.
All of this was running through my head as I toted the little whirring machine around in unit 3110 and sprayed the drapes, the beds, the sofas, the bathrooms, the stairs, the carpets, the chairs, the ceiling fans, even the damn door knobs. I was going to defeat that little Pepe La Pew sonofabitch if I had to go buy more citrus-smelling shit myself. It was at vendetta stage. I was at DefCon 4.
I spent forty-five minutes in that cursed unit.
The guests checked in the next day.
"Front Desk to.....Josh," came the call.
"Go ahead, Front Desk."
"Hey, Josh, um, the guests from unit 3110 just called down here and said that their unit smells like a skunk. Do you think that you could go in there and treat it?"
I just laughed.
At that point, I wanted to say, "10-4, Front Desk. I can do that with no problem at all. Then it will smell like a skunk pissed all over a fucking lemon tree and a grapefruit tree and an orange tree and maybe even a rose shrub in there because IT'S A FUCKING SKUNK!!"
But I didn't. I reached up to the radio in the truck, rotated the volume knob to the right as Dave Lowery worked his way through Cracker's Euro-Trash Girl. "Took the train down to Athens and I slept in a fountain. Some Swiss junkie in Turin ripped me off of my cash. Yeah, I'll search the world over for my angel in black," Dave sang.
No eagles; just two pairs of two ravens circling high above me. Laughing, I think, at me in that call that should be a "caw-caw-caw" but on that day I think it was "Ha-Ha-Ha." I sighed.
"10-4," I said very politely, " I'll be there in a minute or two."
Within a minute or two, I fogged unit 3110 again. Rod, the Maintenance Supervisor, who had just cut the end of his thumb off with a table saw (and has the severed bit in a jar of formaldehyde on his desk for reasons unknown to all of us) showed up, placed a live trap under the unit, cursed quietly to himself and zoomed off, muttering, "Fucking skunks."
How true.
Thirteen minutes later: "Front Desk to Josh."
Front Desk seemed to have repudiated its months-long impersonal manner towards the Houseman in less than twenty-four hours.
"Go ahead, Front Desk."
"Hey, Josh, we have an insurance vendor down here who would like to meet with you."
Hmmm, I thought, as I scratched at my goatee. I wonder what that means. Dave Lowery sang, "I sold my plasma in Amsterdam, spent it all in a night. Gotta tattoo in Berlin and a case of the crabs. It was a rose and a dagger on the palm of my hand."
I love that song. I turned the truck stereo down again.
"10-4, Front Desk," I said, "I'll be there in a minute."
I walked in to the Front Office and this guy was standing there. I just laughed again.
Two skunks in one day?
I wonder what that means? So I allowed a few ticks before I gave an answer. Dylan was working his way through Tangled Up In Blue on KZGL, Flagstaff's only actual radio station. I reached down and turned it up. He, Mr. Zimmerman, was right at the line where he's in the strip club and he mentions that he "must have felt a bit uneasy when she bent down to tie the laaaayy-sis on my shoe....tangled up in bluuuue."
I smiled, reached over and turned it down a few clicks.
I was wary. I took a sip of coffee and I said somewhat slowly, "Go ahead, Front Desk." After nearly four months of working there, I was savvy to what the tone in the voice during these types of calls might mean. Furthermore, it was just odd timing on their part. 11:00 a.m. on a Friday is a somewhat crazy time of the day for me and they know it.
Front Desk took a moment or two for itself. Then: "Hey, Josh, um. Well, I'm sure you heard that unit number 3110 was just called out for inspection."
I looked confusedly at the scratched face of the two-way radio, with all its inertness, pressed the button on the side of it and said, "10-4."
"Stand by, please, Josh," Front Desk said.
"10-4."
That's the easiest response for a guy in my position. It cuts down on unnecessary rhetoric. However, I was still at a loss as to what the hell it was, exactly, Front Desk was getting at. I am not an Inspector.
I am Johnny Houseman.
All of this was on my mind as I said, "Huh," into the two-way.
And that was all I offered. I reached down and turned up Dylan. He was at the point in the story where "she handed me a book of poems written by an Italian poet from the 13th cen-tur-eee."
Front Desk didn't push the matter on me. My concern was that no one had defined the stink but they were more than willing to send me in there to rectify what was, in my head, an encounter with a crazy putrescence - armed with nothing more than a whirring machine full of a citrus-scented oily liquid that could be sprayed about in a misty manner.
Dylan had gotten to "and every word flowed like burning coal, written in my soul from me to you....tangled up in bluuuuue."
It was a beautiful pre-Spring day. It was just after eleven in the morning in mid-March at 7,000 feet in the Southern Rockies and I was already in a t-shirt. I let Dylan get through the solo in the middle of the song; as he jangled along I let him work to his point where he tells you, "And one day the axe just fell." Contradictory to the song, there was an easiness to my day; a sense of calm that I have not felt in quite some time.
Ravens, being large birds themselves - the largest, actually, of the Corvus genus, are regarded as one of the most intelligent birds on the planet. While also being the largest all-black bird in the world and riding on a wingspan of nearly five feet, the two I saw that morning were surprisingly dwarfed by the power, grace, and majesty of the Eagle in front of them.
We - one king raptor, two winged omnivores and a lowly, Earth-bound biped - all glided along until our paths intersected at roughly 11:11 a.m. on a tertiary street in the middle of a city mostly foreign to me, during a job that was, at most times, rewarding and highly manageable, but recently had become...cumbersome. But no matter. I was with Dylan and an eagle and two ravens. Things were good in my world.
I inhaled deeply and let out the air between pursed lips, like a tire going flat quickly, perhaps in anticipation of smelling bad stuff for the next thirty minutes or so.
"10-4," I said to Front Desk through the last few PSI in my lungs, as politely as I could.
"Thanks, Josh," said Front Desk. I thought I detected a bit of empathy through the static.
I guided the small pickup truck down the hill, waltzed into the warehouse, seized a fifteen pound shoebox-sized piece of equipment with a five foot hose attached to it, placed it in the truck and drove back up the hill to unit 3110.
The smell, the stink, was, in fact, the result of a skunk's bouquet. Perfect. Skunks. Now, there are a few of you who know that I have been sprayed, point-blank, by a skunk, thanks to my little red dog named Rye. All of you found this event pretty god damned funny.
At the Shop, the dog thought that the red Toyota pickup would have been a wiser option. Upon her jumping into the back of it, I said, "Naw, hell, Rye, it's a nice night. Let's walk. C'mon."
She obligingly popped out of the back of the truck and took off down the stretch of dirt road, upon which we had walked maybe ten thousand times, to our house.
It was, indeed, a fine October night. Indian Summer warmth hung in the air and a prodigious moon hefted itself over the vicinity of Vagneur Mountain. We'd all had a few Coors Lights around the round table at the Shop after a day of riding as we discussed everything from politics to pipelines to music to horses to cows to trucks and finally, without intentionally making the topic lastly, women.
All that be as it may, and after we had mostly solved not only our challenges with the women in our lives but also with our respective politicians, trucks, phones, friends, tractors, ditches, brothers, bottles, computers, families, ideologies and tempers, I moseyed off down the road with my dog.
I had every piece of riding equipment I owned - except my saddle - in my arms: raincoat, chinks, saddlebags, boots from yesterday, extra black felt hat, extra gloves, sweatshirt, a rope I can't throw worth a damn and a few extra shirts.
I ambled happily, a touch inebriated, by an old concrete wall that used to serve as an abutment to a bridge that passed over the road above the Cabin. The dog, which had been at my heels, suddenly darted off into the brush on the right - maybe ten feet away - and barked twice. She presently returned to my side, snorting. I took three more steps.
The smell that hit me was, at that point, unrecognizable it was so ridiculously pungent.
So, back to that October night:
Immediately, upon being doused with the wretched solution spewed forth from that godawful critter's ass, you curse - at length - the dog. Next, you verbally unleash on the skunk and finally, everything else - including, but not limited to: god, his supposed son, sons of bitches, and those that are sometimes known to copulate with a maternal figure.
Then, you run as fast as possible in the opposite direction, flapping your arms in a manner that would make you look semi-crazed, mostly stupid and as though you were being attacked by bees to an onlooker but with zero rate of success of outstripping the stink. During these moments, you accidentally drop all of your very important belongings for the skunk to piss upon again because your eyes are watering so bad you can't see your own feet and your nose feels like someone just stuffed it full of diced jalapenos.
Your dog is ambivalent at this time, for the skunk is a slow and very painful moving target to pursue, but a moving mark nonetheless. At this point, you startle yourself in your ability to actually take the time it takes you to painfully blink and consider how ambivalence and presumptions can lead to bad decisions.
Then your wits come about you and you realize that you've been fucking sprayed by a skunk from four arms length's away. A fucking skunk. That smell just doesn't go away by tomorrow. You, your dog and nearly fifteen hundred bucks worth of your belongings that are essential to your job are now covered in skunk's piss. At eleven o'clock at night.
Many things, at this point, run through your head. Namely, to:
2) Move a million miles away to alleviate the humiliation that will no doubt be supplied by those supposedly called friends and family.
3) Wish that you had driven the Toyota.
4) Wonder where the skunk is RIGHT NOW and how many times it can do such a thing.
This is what actually happens, though, if you were to be caught in such a situation:
1) The dog loses its mind and goes into a series of fish-out-of-water-esque actions and flops around on the ground, all the while pawing madly at its nose and eyes.
2) You continue to curse madly and blow poisonous, stinging snot-rockets from your nose.
3) You gather your things, half-blind, and head towards your house knowing all the time that you are just going to bring the rotten stench home with you.
4) Arrive at the house, uttering words unfit for most publications, including this one.
5) Strip naked and throw everything you are wearing in the trash can outside.
6) Take a few kicks at the dog because she is now over the entire matter and sees nothing wrong with smelling like a skunk and would very much like to tell you that she does, indeed, smell like a skunk as you tip-toe over the rocks to your front door, stark raving naked. ("Ow, fuckin rocks, ouch, shit, ouch, ow, Rye, fuck, git the fuck outta here, ow, shit, Rye, goddammit, go on, ye god damn dog, wait, come here you little bitch, lemme kick the hell out of you, oof, shit, ow, shit, dammit, fuck, fuckin rocks, fucking dog, git the fuck outta here ya little bitch, you stink like hell itself...FUCK!")
7) Immediately shower until the hot water cylinder runs ice cold.
8) Put the dog on a one-way airplane to Siberia.
9) Dress.
10) Sleep on the roof of your house in an old sleeping bag. (No shit.) Luckily, it's a flat roof.
However, it smells like a skunk even on the roof of your house because the whole event happened not 75 yards from your house. And as I laid there in an old sleeping bag, I could imagine other inhabitants of the ranch saying to those around them, "Damn skunk sprayed out there; stinks like hell," having no clue that the damn skunk sprayed ME.
I spent forty-five minutes in that cursed unit. The guests checked in the next day.
"Front Desk to.....Josh," came the call.
"Go ahead, Front Desk."
"Hey, Josh, um, the guests from unit 3110 just called down here and said that their unit smells like a skunk. Do you think that you could go in there and treat it?"
I just laughed.
At that point, I wanted to say, "10-4, Front Desk. I can do that with no problem at all. Then it will smell like a skunk pissed all over a fucking lemon tree and a grapefruit tree and an orange tree and maybe even a rose shrub in there because IT'S A FUCKING SKUNK!!"
No eagles; just two pairs of two ravens circling high above me. Laughing, I think, at me in that call that should be a "caw-caw-caw" but on that day I think it was "Ha-Ha-Ha." I sighed.
"10-4," I said very politely, " I'll be there in a minute or two."
Within a minute or two, I fogged unit 3110 again. Rod, the Maintenance Supervisor, who had just cut the end of his thumb off with a table saw (and has the severed bit in a jar of formaldehyde on his desk for reasons unknown to all of us) showed up, placed a live trap under the unit, cursed quietly to himself and zoomed off, muttering, "Fucking skunks."
How true.
Thirteen minutes later: "Front Desk to Josh."
Front Desk seemed to have repudiated its months-long impersonal manner towards the Houseman in less than twenty-four hours.
"Go ahead, Front Desk."
"Hey, Josh, we have an insurance vendor down here who would like to meet with you."
Hmmm, I thought, as I scratched at my goatee. I wonder what that means. Dave Lowery sang, "I sold my plasma in Amsterdam, spent it all in a night. Gotta tattoo in Berlin and a case of the crabs. It was a rose and a dagger on the palm of my hand."
I love that song. I turned the truck stereo down again.
"10-4, Front Desk," I said, "I'll be there in a minute."
I walked in to the Front Office and this guy was standing there. I just laughed again.
Two skunks in one day?
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Worth a Thousand Words
It has been a while. I would apologize for my absence but that would incorrectly imply that I am taking this whole endeavor - and myself - far too seriously. I have been spending my keystrokes on matters of the political ilk at school. I'm sure my professor tucks tail and runs when she sees my name pop up on her screen. So be it.
In my free time this morning, I was reading about pictographs. You know, the little signs that depict handicap access or which toilet is for which gender or if one can smoke a cigarette or not.
So, in the spirit of an image-based world, I am offering a visual installment today of the LECR. I hope you enjoy.
In my free time this morning, I was reading about pictographs. You know, the little signs that depict handicap access or which toilet is for which gender or if one can smoke a cigarette or not.
So, in the spirit of an image-based world, I am offering a visual installment today of the LECR. I hope you enjoy.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Precarious Adventures of Johnny Snowbank
Then it snowed.
It snowed for five straight days and when all was said and done, I had 54" of fresh snow outside my windows.
It rained somewhere in there, too, for about three hours. That was a nice added bonus. I drove to the grocery store that night through about a foot of melted snow and rain water.
It was raining pitchforks and hammer handles when I took this picture. As you can see, neither me nor my little four legged friend were very thrilled about the situation.
The snow shut down everything and anything. It collapsed some buildings around town, it caused flooding down valley, it was even snowing hard enough at one point that they closed the, um, ski resort. Now that's some snow. It was the biggest snowstorm to hit the City of Flagstaff in forty three years. I do have to say that it was impressive. A few degrees colder and we would have had another couple feet.
At any rate, Johnny Houseman forged on, for Wyndham Resorts stayed on its A-game, even though there was not a single road open in any of the cardinal directions to get in or out of Flagstaff. (I guess no one really thought about that.) Johnny Houseman became Johnny Cabdriver because nobody wanted to drive in the snow. Someone said, "Hey! Isn't Josh from Colorado? Have him pick everyone up."
"Jesus P. Christ," I mumbled.
Driving through a blinding blizzard in a frigging Ford Minivan full of Mexicans and Navajos is not necessarily my idea of a whopping great time but when life gives you lemonade...you thank the lemons.
A Navajo: "Is Mary der?"
Johnny Cabdriver: "Yeah."
A Navajo: "You should call her. Tell her we got stuck. We'll go cruise around."
Johnny Cabdriver, waiting before responding to see if the Navajo was, indeed, serious. He never offered any information to the contrary. So, I said: "In the company van, eh? The one that has Wyndham Resorts, Flagstaff painted on both its sides in four inch letters? In the worst blizzard in over forty years?"
Another Navajo, laughing: "Yeah. Real smart, Derrick. Steal the company ride and go cruisin'. What are you, an Indian?"
Everyone - Mexicans, Navajos and the one white guy - in the van had a good laugh at that one. And on we went.
The real excitement came, though, on Sunday evening. I had made it through the blizzard, made it through 95% of the work week, dug myself out of the snowbank only to find out that due to all of the snow and rain, the antenna on my Sirius radio at home was done for. (I have eschewed television since moving here.) I wanted to listen to the Vikings/Saints game but, alas, could not. I checked NFL.com and discovered that the game had already started.
I debated for a moment or two and then decided what the hell. Go have a couple beers, maybe eat a burger, watch the game and come home. Off I went.
The Collins Irish Pub in Flagstaff, AZ is a good bar. Possibly incongruously named but that's the way it goes. It was the first and only place I went to back in September because it looked normal from the outside. I was hungry and frustrated that night and just wanted a drink and some real food. It surprised me when I did, in fact, get both.
It sits on the corner of Leroux Street and Route 66, in the literal heart of Old Town, about a hundred feet from the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe railroad and the original, still functional train depot of Flagstaff. It has the typical red rock construction of the Mountain West with hardwood floors throughout; the whole building shakes when the freight trains rumble by; they have a good but not confusing selection of beers on tap; and reasonably priced food that is not your typical bar fare. One can order corned beef and cabbage for about eight bucks or a bread bowl full of beef stew or a Shepherd's Pie sort of thing for nine bucks. A teeth-shatteringly cold Coors Light in a glass will cost you two bucks during happy hour. It's my kind of place.
And the waitstaff is 99% sizzling hot chicks.
Okay, that may be an exaggeration. But not too much of one in my head, at least.
At any rate, I ordered my beer, squeezed through the crowd and found a table meant for four people and seized it. I set my beer on the table, reached in my black leather jacket pocket for my pen and promptly realized that I had forgotten my notebook. Damn.
Just then, one of the waitresses swooped down on me from out of nowhere.
"Would you like to see a food menu, too?" she asked.
"No, no thank you. Not yet. I was wondering, though, if you could bring me a piece of paper of some sort?" I drew the outline of piece of paper on the tabletop with my finger tips. Like an idiot.
She smiled. "Sure. Would a kid's menu be okay?"
"Perfect."
And so I made my notes in tiny print on the back of two kids' menus.
The problem with doing that in a bar during a pretty good football game is that people seem to feel the need to comment about it.
"What are ya doin, cramming for a test?"
"Sure am. With no books or computer in the middle of a packed
bar during the NFC Championship game. I figured it would be the perfect time and place."
"Boy, that sure is some tiny handwriting!"
"It's a small space and I have a lot of thoughts."
"What are you doin, writing a book?
"Yep. Do you want the part in it as the person who always asks that stupid question?"
And so on.
What I was actually writing about was how interesting it was to watch the dynamics of a room full of people who were, in fact, watching another event. It's like sitting in an airport for an extended period of time; you're not just people watching. You're watching people people watch.
So when the 300 pound lineman landed on Favre's ankle and people cheered, I got a little pissed. "Hurt him again!" "Ha ha! The old guy's done for!" I swiveled my head around with a puzzled look on my face. I scribbled a note on the back of my kid's menu: "Pro sports turns people into pricks."
I sipped my beer. It was a good game. And I have to admit that ruminations and misty reminiscing had me silently pulling for Number 4. I mean, the guy defies a lot of odds and I like that. I never uttered a sound in either team's favor and I only applauded the good play, lamented the blown call. I enjoy watching Adrian Peterson just run right the hell over would-be tacklers. Drew Brees is amazing to watch. (Plus, the huddle breakdown he comes up with before every game is pretty damn cool.) I like sports. I like watching professional and amateur athletes do what they do. They are finely tuned machines meant to do one specific task: win.
A nondescript and slightly overweight man moved past the back of my chair. He was having fun, it seemed, and he precariously navigated the narrow gap between the chairs draped with jackets and scarves and my table. He turned, presumably, to have his picture taken by an acquaintance for he gave the camera operator over my right shoulder the double thumbs up.
Just then, I heard a small noise; the nearly airless gasp that is the combination of surprise and pain. Not five feet away from me, the man started saying, "Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Oohhhhhh. Ow! I think....ow, ow, ow, ow, ow."
I looked over my shoulder to where I thought his buddy would be, the guy with the camera. He was there and did have his camera but he was showing another guy at the table some pictures on its screen. I turned back to the man who kept saying, "Ow."
"Hey, man. Are you all right?" I asked. Dumb question, I know, but how else do you go about it?
"Ow. Ow. Ow. Oh my fucking god! Ow. I think I broke my fucking ribs. Oh my fucking god." His breathing was heavy.
"Broke--how the hell did you--? What?" I was confused.
Then he moved. When he moved, I saw what he meant. When he had bent down to get the double thumbs up in the camera shot, he backed up quickly and right into the very corner of a 2-inch thick slab of marble that was the bar top for a second, smaller bar in the corner of the room. It looked like it would hurt like hell to crash into it the way that he did. But I wasn't convinced anything was broken. Besides, it was the last drive during regulation for the Vikings. Buck up, man, quit being a distraction.
"Here, dude, just come sit down," I said. He tried moving but seemed like he was in considerable pain. He stumbled. Hell, maybe he had broken something. I was on my feet. "Do you want me to have the bartendress call an ambulance or something?"
I wondered how, in the name of all that's holy or even unholy for that matter, do I manage to be involved with these types of things?
It's been a strange week: last Tuesday, I saw a girl wipe out on the ice outside the bookstore and crack her head open on the concrete steps. Firefighters and stretchers and shit like that. Neck braces. Impending lawsuits. (Just guessing.) It was the first time I had ever set foot in the University bookstore. Then Monday morning I watched this hotshot biker haul ass around a hairpin corner and completely lose it on the ice. It was funnier than hell. Splattered himself all over the road. Made my morning, that's for certain. Later that morning, a gal at work went down on the ice outside the warehouse. Again, I heard the distinctive "Ow! Oh. Ow. Oh, shit! Ohhhh...." And now this guy. What the hell?
At that point, many things happened at once. The man sort of went down into a half-kneel, half-crouch sort of position, wheezing, at my feet. I glanced from him up to the television. Favre rolled right, pumped, threw back across his body towards midfield and the Saints intercepted the pass. The bar was dead silent. Right up to the point where the other team caught the ball.
I don't know what happened. I involuntarily flinched. Well, it was more like a four-limb spasm - when I think about it - as though I had been electrocuted. It must have been caused by the memory of the last time he did that. In Green Bay. In the NFC Championship game. The inadvertent, uncontrollable convulsion caused my right foot to fly outward and kick the poor bastard at my feet right square in the balls.
He let out a strangled yelp.
I stood there, stunned. Awaiting prompt incarceration. A few people glanced in our direction but in the ensuing melee after the interception, no one had really seen what had happened.
"Oh, shit! Shit! Hey. Shit. Hey. Sorry, man. Jesus Christ. Fuck. Hey, are you okay?" I asked as I crouched down and put a hand on his shoulder. Again, dumb question. My guess was that he was not, in fact, okay. I had on my steel toe boots.
He didn't move for a few seconds. He just knelt there, panting.
Then, to my surprise, he straightened up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and slapped me on the back, wearing a crooked smile. He must have seen the look of shock in my eyes because he said, "You know that saying," he took a deep breath, winced a little and started again, "you know that saying that goes something like 'If you stub your toe, smash your finger with a hammer...it'll take your mind off of your toe?'"
I blinked stupidly.
My brain contemplated the fact that it wasn't necessary to state the obvious but my mouth had it's own plan. Consequently, I said, "Yeah, but...dude, I just kicked you in the balls."
He gave a little snort. "It's okay, man," he said. "I'm used to it. My ex-wife was damn good at it."
"Well," he continued, "I'm pretty sure my nuts are ruptured but my ribs don't hurt at all." And with that he limped off back to his table full of buddies.
"Hey!" I called out after him once I got my wits about me. "Damn, let me buy you a drink, huh?"
"Okay. Vodka rocks," he said through a groan. Then he said, "I guess it's karma. If I hadn't worn this damn jersey..."
I looked at the jersey. I hadn't noticed it until then. Known as the Vike-Pack jersey. I shuddered and struggled to keep the vomit down.
"Um, well, yeah," I muttered, "that might have something to do with it."
I scurried off to the bar, ducking under high-fives and between grumblings of discontent. I had broken a sweat by the time I got there.
The bartendress, whom I barely know, looked at me quizzically. "You okay?"
"Uh. Yeah. Well. I don't know. I, um..."
I couldn't contain myself. I lowered my voice and confessed quickly, "Shit. Look, I just kicked this guy in the nuts and he wants a vodka rocks."
"What?"
"It was an accident. Seriously. Favre threw that pick and I don't know, I just convulsed or something. Memories. That guy," I pointed, "had just thought he had broken his ribs on the corner of your back-up bar over there in the corner and I was helping him and - "
"By kicking him in the balls?" she asked a little loudly, in my opinion. We both glanced about.
"Dammit, Kristen, you're from Wisconsin!" I hissed across the bar at her. "Spooner, for shit's sake. Hell, I was born like two hours from there. You know how we get about football!"
She paused, poised to escalate the situation but then conceded, not in words, but by rolling her eyes, turning slowly and reaching for the bottle of Grey Goose. Her pace then quickened. She snatched a rocks glass off the bar back and plunged it into the bin of ice at her thighs. She silently tipped the vodka into the glass. The ice crackled and split. I sighed and pressed my left forefinger and thumb into the corners of eyes.
"Can you please pour me a Maker's in the same fashion?" I asked through my best smile.
"Do I need to call an ambulance?" she whispered. "Or the fucking cops?" She looked me directly in the eyes during the second question with the look that women unilaterally have when they are making a very distinct point to someone like me.
"I don't think so for the first question. And definitely no regarding the latter," I said.
She repeated the process for my whiskey.
I took a healthy sip of the drink she poured me. It was good. Smoky. A little sweetness to it. It stung a little, too. The inevitable fine line between warmth and burning. How women and whiskey can be the same is a mystery I'll never solve. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I picked up the vodka for the newly wounded and turned to leave. To go make amends, that is.
"Wait," she said. She turned her back to me for a moment. She pirouetted again and slid a folded bar napkin across the marble top of the bar. She darted off without saying a word to get another patron another drink. Duty calls.
To this day, I have no idea what I did with that damned napkin.
It snowed for five straight days and when all was said and done, I had 54" of fresh snow outside my windows.
It was raining pitchforks and hammer handles when I took this picture. As you can see, neither me nor my little four legged friend were very thrilled about the situation.
The snow shut down everything and anything. It collapsed some buildings around town, it caused flooding down valley, it was even snowing hard enough at one point that they closed the, um, ski resort. Now that's some snow. It was the biggest snowstorm to hit the City of Flagstaff in forty three years. I do have to say that it was impressive. A few degrees colder and we would have had another couple feet.
At any rate, Johnny Houseman forged on, for Wyndham Resorts stayed on its A-game, even though there was not a single road open in any of the cardinal directions to get in or out of Flagstaff. (I guess no one really thought about that.) Johnny Houseman became Johnny Cabdriver because nobody wanted to drive in the snow. Someone said, "Hey! Isn't Josh from Colorado? Have him pick everyone up."
"Jesus P. Christ," I mumbled.
Driving through a blinding blizzard in a frigging Ford Minivan full of Mexicans and Navajos is not necessarily my idea of a whopping great time but when life gives you lemonade...you thank the lemons.
A Navajo: "Is Mary der?"
Johnny Cabdriver: "Yeah."
A Navajo: "You should call her. Tell her we got stuck. We'll go cruise around."
Johnny Cabdriver, waiting before responding to see if the Navajo was, indeed, serious. He never offered any information to the contrary. So, I said: "In the company van, eh? The one that has Wyndham Resorts, Flagstaff painted on both its sides in four inch letters? In the worst blizzard in over forty years?"
Another Navajo, laughing: "Yeah. Real smart, Derrick. Steal the company ride and go cruisin'. What are you, an Indian?"
Everyone - Mexicans, Navajos and the one white guy - in the van had a good laugh at that one. And on we went.
The real excitement came, though, on Sunday evening. I had made it through the blizzard, made it through 95% of the work week, dug myself out of the snowbank only to find out that due to all of the snow and rain, the antenna on my Sirius radio at home was done for. (I have eschewed television since moving here.) I wanted to listen to the Vikings/Saints game but, alas, could not. I checked NFL.com and discovered that the game had already started.
I debated for a moment or two and then decided what the hell. Go have a couple beers, maybe eat a burger, watch the game and come home. Off I went.
The Collins Irish Pub in Flagstaff, AZ is a good bar. Possibly incongruously named but that's the way it goes. It was the first and only place I went to back in September because it looked normal from the outside. I was hungry and frustrated that night and just wanted a drink and some real food. It surprised me when I did, in fact, get both.It sits on the corner of Leroux Street and Route 66, in the literal heart of Old Town, about a hundred feet from the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe railroad and the original, still functional train depot of Flagstaff. It has the typical red rock construction of the Mountain West with hardwood floors throughout; the whole building shakes when the freight trains rumble by; they have a good but not confusing selection of beers on tap; and reasonably priced food that is not your typical bar fare. One can order corned beef and cabbage for about eight bucks or a bread bowl full of beef stew or a Shepherd's Pie sort of thing for nine bucks. A teeth-shatteringly cold Coors Light in a glass will cost you two bucks during happy hour. It's my kind of place.
And the waitstaff is 99% sizzling hot chicks.
Okay, that may be an exaggeration. But not too much of one in my head, at least.
At any rate, I ordered my beer, squeezed through the crowd and found a table meant for four people and seized it. I set my beer on the table, reached in my black leather jacket pocket for my pen and promptly realized that I had forgotten my notebook. Damn.
Just then, one of the waitresses swooped down on me from out of nowhere.
"Would you like to see a food menu, too?" she asked.
"No, no thank you. Not yet. I was wondering, though, if you could bring me a piece of paper of some sort?" I drew the outline of piece of paper on the tabletop with my finger tips. Like an idiot.
She smiled. "Sure. Would a kid's menu be okay?"
"Perfect."
The problem with doing that in a bar during a pretty good football game is that people seem to feel the need to comment about it.
"What are ya doin, cramming for a test?"
"Sure am. With no books or computer in the middle of a packed
bar during the NFC Championship game. I figured it would be the perfect time and place."
"Boy, that sure is some tiny handwriting!"
"It's a small space and I have a lot of thoughts."
"What are you doin, writing a book?
"Yep. Do you want the part in it as the person who always asks that stupid question?"
And so on.
What I was actually writing about was how interesting it was to watch the dynamics of a room full of people who were, in fact, watching another event. It's like sitting in an airport for an extended period of time; you're not just people watching. You're watching people people watch.
I sipped my beer. It was a good game. And I have to admit that ruminations and misty reminiscing had me silently pulling for Number 4. I mean, the guy defies a lot of odds and I like that. I never uttered a sound in either team's favor and I only applauded the good play, lamented the blown call. I enjoy watching Adrian Peterson just run right the hell over would-be tacklers. Drew Brees is amazing to watch. (Plus, the huddle breakdown he comes up with before every game is pretty damn cool.) I like sports. I like watching professional and amateur athletes do what they do. They are finely tuned machines meant to do one specific task: win.
A nondescript and slightly overweight man moved past the back of my chair. He was having fun, it seemed, and he precariously navigated the narrow gap between the chairs draped with jackets and scarves and my table. He turned, presumably, to have his picture taken by an acquaintance for he gave the camera operator over my right shoulder the double thumbs up.
Just then, I heard a small noise; the nearly airless gasp that is the combination of surprise and pain. Not five feet away from me, the man started saying, "Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Oohhhhhh. Ow! I think....ow, ow, ow, ow, ow."
I looked over my shoulder to where I thought his buddy would be, the guy with the camera. He was there and did have his camera but he was showing another guy at the table some pictures on its screen. I turned back to the man who kept saying, "Ow."
"Hey, man. Are you all right?" I asked. Dumb question, I know, but how else do you go about it?
"Ow. Ow. Ow. Oh my fucking god! Ow. I think I broke my fucking ribs. Oh my fucking god." His breathing was heavy.
"Broke--how the hell did you--? What?" I was confused.
"Here, dude, just come sit down," I said. He tried moving but seemed like he was in considerable pain. He stumbled. Hell, maybe he had broken something. I was on my feet. "Do you want me to have the bartendress call an ambulance or something?"
I wondered how, in the name of all that's holy or even unholy for that matter, do I manage to be involved with these types of things?
It's been a strange week: last Tuesday, I saw a girl wipe out on the ice outside the bookstore and crack her head open on the concrete steps. Firefighters and stretchers and shit like that. Neck braces. Impending lawsuits. (Just guessing.) It was the first time I had ever set foot in the University bookstore. Then Monday morning I watched this hotshot biker haul ass around a hairpin corner and completely lose it on the ice. It was funnier than hell. Splattered himself all over the road. Made my morning, that's for certain. Later that morning, a gal at work went down on the ice outside the warehouse. Again, I heard the distinctive "Ow! Oh. Ow. Oh, shit! Ohhhh...." And now this guy. What the hell?
I don't know what happened. I involuntarily flinched. Well, it was more like a four-limb spasm - when I think about it - as though I had been electrocuted. It must have been caused by the memory of the last time he did that. In Green Bay. In the NFC Championship game. The inadvertent, uncontrollable convulsion caused my right foot to fly outward and kick the poor bastard at my feet right square in the balls.
He let out a strangled yelp.
I stood there, stunned. Awaiting prompt incarceration. A few people glanced in our direction but in the ensuing melee after the interception, no one had really seen what had happened.
"Oh, shit! Shit! Hey. Shit. Hey. Sorry, man. Jesus Christ. Fuck. Hey, are you okay?" I asked as I crouched down and put a hand on his shoulder. Again, dumb question. My guess was that he was not, in fact, okay. I had on my steel toe boots.
He didn't move for a few seconds. He just knelt there, panting.
Then, to my surprise, he straightened up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and slapped me on the back, wearing a crooked smile. He must have seen the look of shock in my eyes because he said, "You know that saying," he took a deep breath, winced a little and started again, "you know that saying that goes something like 'If you stub your toe, smash your finger with a hammer...it'll take your mind off of your toe?'"
I blinked stupidly.
My brain contemplated the fact that it wasn't necessary to state the obvious but my mouth had it's own plan. Consequently, I said, "Yeah, but...dude, I just kicked you in the balls."
He gave a little snort. "It's okay, man," he said. "I'm used to it. My ex-wife was damn good at it."
"Well," he continued, "I'm pretty sure my nuts are ruptured but my ribs don't hurt at all." And with that he limped off back to his table full of buddies.
"Hey!" I called out after him once I got my wits about me. "Damn, let me buy you a drink, huh?"
"Okay. Vodka rocks," he said through a groan. Then he said, "I guess it's karma. If I hadn't worn this damn jersey..."
"Um, well, yeah," I muttered, "that might have something to do with it."
I scurried off to the bar, ducking under high-fives and between grumblings of discontent. I had broken a sweat by the time I got there.
The bartendress, whom I barely know, looked at me quizzically. "You okay?"
"Uh. Yeah. Well. I don't know. I, um..."
I couldn't contain myself. I lowered my voice and confessed quickly, "Shit. Look, I just kicked this guy in the nuts and he wants a vodka rocks."
"What?"
"It was an accident. Seriously. Favre threw that pick and I don't know, I just convulsed or something. Memories. That guy," I pointed, "had just thought he had broken his ribs on the corner of your back-up bar over there in the corner and I was helping him and - "
"Dammit, Kristen, you're from Wisconsin!" I hissed across the bar at her. "Spooner, for shit's sake. Hell, I was born like two hours from there. You know how we get about football!"
She paused, poised to escalate the situation but then conceded, not in words, but by rolling her eyes, turning slowly and reaching for the bottle of Grey Goose. Her pace then quickened. She snatched a rocks glass off the bar back and plunged it into the bin of ice at her thighs. She silently tipped the vodka into the glass. The ice crackled and split. I sighed and pressed my left forefinger and thumb into the corners of eyes.
"Can you please pour me a Maker's in the same fashion?" I asked through my best smile.
"Do I need to call an ambulance?" she whispered. "Or the fucking cops?" She looked me directly in the eyes during the second question with the look that women unilaterally have when they are making a very distinct point to someone like me.
"I don't think so for the first question. And definitely no regarding the latter," I said.
She repeated the process for my whiskey.
I took a healthy sip of the drink she poured me. It was good. Smoky. A little sweetness to it. It stung a little, too. The inevitable fine line between warmth and burning. How women and whiskey can be the same is a mystery I'll never solve. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I picked up the vodka for the newly wounded and turned to leave. To go make amends, that is.
"Wait," she said. She turned her back to me for a moment. She pirouetted again and slid a folded bar napkin across the marble top of the bar. She darted off without saying a word to get another patron another drink. Duty calls.
To this day, I have no idea what I did with that damned napkin.
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