Star Wars

It wasn't long after the cold dissipated that we first got word about the weird licorice smell in the air. One of the guys in the newsroom was complaining about it and just wondering what the smell was. By the time I picked up dinner and my girlfriend, the smell was a situation was a disaster and the word was "Don't drink the water unless you want to die."

Reports later reduced that to "Don't drink, cook, clean or wash yourself or anything else with that stuff," but the river has been poisoned by a local chemical company involved in business related to the coal industry. Already, my more liberal friends are shouting "I told you so" about the EPA. My conservative friends are eerily quiet, probably figuring this will all blow over once the crap in the water dilutes enough that it doesn't cause projectile vomiting.

There is some of that going on and quite a few people I know are reporting headaches and nausea, as well as itching and burning. Nobody knows what the long term affects of this shit are.

Out getting bread and paper plates last night, a couple of coal miners were laughing at the crowd who seemed to be throwing stuff into carts left and right --they were 20-ish and looked like they'd scarcely ever been in a grocery store. I figured their moms and then their girlfriends did most of that sort of work. Just a couple of good ol' boys.

They saw me by the picked over bread aisle. One of them laughed and said, "The problem is with the water. It ain't with the bread."

Remembering, when I too was a moron, looked over and said, "Without the water, you can't wash any dishes or pans. You can't really cook much. So, we're all eating sandwiches."

The guy blinked and his face fell. That hadn't occurred to him (probably, because he doesn't wash many dishes).

"People are still making way too big a deal out of it," he said. "I've seen that stuff in the mines. I got a little on me once and yeah, it raised a blister, but that was like a pretty high concentration."

I shrugged. I could explain that nobody knows much about this stuff, that the thing that concerned me wasn't whether the water is going to make me sick now, but whether it will make me sick in 5, 10 or 20 years. We got plenty of cancer here. The chemical spill probably just added another helping.

"It'll be over in a while," I said, which seemed to satisfy him.

I went on home, ate my simple dinner with my kids, watched Star Wars and thought about how when I was a kid, the future seemed so bright. It was all space ships, light sabers and ultimate good triumphing over ultimate evil.

Watching again, the movie seemed to be about the world I lived in now: a dirty, broken down universe on the verge of collapse.

Annual resolution post

Things I will do more of in 2014:

Blog: but that's not really that hard. I think I had like 12 posts in 2013. It just never caught on with me again and I never found time, but I'm looking at returning to creative writing and this is a good place to exercise the habit a bit.

Travel: I did travel a bit last year. I went to Michigan to a wedding and had a really enchanting time in Chicago. The drive was good for me and took some of the fear out of hitting the road. I'll do it some more in 2014.

Exercise: I do get in some exercise, but after a colleague passed away at the radio station, I took on a regular mid-morning shift. That's probably going to come to an end and I can put more consistent time in at the gym.


Look for a way to make some more money or get a different job: I love what I do, but the money isn't great. The radio gig isn't stable and I was flat-out turned down on a raise by the boss at the newspaper. You see, I got a small (tiny) raise last year. The hope was the raise would help with health care costs, but then the payroll tax happened and my small raise was devoured by that. In fact, I checked. My take home actually went down three dollars a week.

I could rant and rail about how the people I work for are short-selling their staff and themselves --or I can work on doing something about it. I'm willing to trying to earn a few bucks on the side with freelance work, if I can get it, but if the money isn't there, I'll need to go where I can find it.

A man has to eat.

Sell the house: That sort of relates to the above, but also, it's a lot of work trying to maintain this place. Mowing the lawn takes between 4 and 6 hours with a push mower and I don't see myself investing $2,000 in a riding lawn tractor that can handle the hill. Those aren't the only reasons, but I need to downsize.

It's too damned quiet here, too.

Write more: That relates to item one, but also to getting published, which relates to item 4. It's all one big circle.

Read more, watch less TV and spend less time on Facebook: I like books more than what's on Netflix right now and I like Facebook not all. Yet, I spent way too much time on the latter this year.

Spend a little more time with friends: I still haven't caught back up to speed with everybody.

Keep doing the things I already do right: A lot of resolutions are about corrections. I don't feel like I need a lot of repairs to my life. I'm a decent guy who does quite a bit with limited resources. 

Bumping donuts

The lady at the donut store looked at me and said, "And then her little boy pushed a screwdriver up his nose until it bled."

Her co-worker, appalled, just shook her head in disbelief, but looked like she could believe it.

They were both young women; in their early 20s, menthol-cigarette thin and looked a little road worn. You don't get a job at the donut store if you're breaks up to this point have been good ones. I guessed one of them was in cosmetology school or a recent grad.

Her hair and makeup didn't match this type of work. She looked a little too clean and well-manicured to be slinging donuts.

They both looked out of place, like they could at least get a job at Sears, but I supposed somebody has to make donuts. Donuts must be made and this was there fate --at least for the time being.


The other woman seemed familiar. Lots of people look familiar to me now. I blame Facebook. I take pretty much everybody except obvious con-jobs (that is internet prostitutes and scam artists) and people previously distantly related to me through complex legal framework.

"How'd a two-year-old get a screwdriver?" the one I sort of recognized. "That's what I want to know. When you've got a kid, you gotta child-proof your house."

She looked at me for confirmation. I selected two French Crullers, two peanut butter iced donuts and one of the red velvet cake donuts with the white, presumably cream cheese, frosting.

"Those are real good," the woman said. "Very popular."

And it's always good to be doing what the popular people are doing. I also got an apple fritter, which was about the size of a house cat.

"She doesn't care," the woman with the expertly highlighted hair explained. "She didn't even take him to the hospital."


"But he could have punctured a sinus or something." Her face was pained.

I nodded. Yes, this was awful.

"First thing, before I even had my baby, I got all that stuff out of there. I put things up," the woman I maybe knew said.

"But she don't care. That kid can pick up a screwdriver or a wrench or a hammer anytime he likes," the other said.

I wondered how it was the kid was being raised in a garage, but then remembered all the shit my father used to keep lying around. Hell, he used to melt lead wheel weights on the kitchen stove to turn them into fishing sinkers. I have no idea what was in half of the stuff he used to make fishing bugs in the living room. It's a wonder he didn't kill us all with some of that shit.

"If it were me, I'd be calling CPS," she added finally and for a moment I wondered why she hadn't.

But I knew. If you've ever had Child Protective Services breathing down your neck, you know. That's something you invoke lightly. They're the angels of darkness. Calling upon them can bring ruin down on whoever is named and even if it doesn't, the process is agony. It's fear.

You only bring them in when there is no other option, only if you truly believe the parents are worthless fuck-ups or degenerates and the child is in actual peril.

A two-year-old poking the inside of his nostril with a misplaced screwdriver was bad, but it was more lazy than evil --and the mother in question might be a lot of things (an asshole, for instance), but when the numbers got added up at the bottom of her card both women still considered her sort of a friend.  

"That'll be $7.11," her partner said and smiled.

Tabula Rasa

The neighbor next door keeps the shade drawn on her kitchen window. I think that's because she caught me taking a leak out on the lawn --a couple of times.

In my defense: It is my lawn.

In my defense: It was dark and there are trees separating our properties.

In my defense: I never did it very often. 

In my defense: I tried to be discrete.

But at three, four or five in the morning, with two dogs taking their sweet time to pinch one off (the little one is the worst), I've occasionally made for the back corner of the house and a well-placed shrubbery. There might have been a time when I didn't even make it that far, but I've always turned my back to the light.

I suspect she thinks I'm a drunk. Who else but a drunk would piss out in his front yard?

A guy with two dogs.

To be sure, there was no going to the bathroom before the dogs went outside. If you did that and you'd be sponging up a puddle from the carpet or ,just as bad, one of them would make a run for the back room and take a dump on whatever looked particularly inviting --the stone floor in front of the fireplace, the laundry stacked in a basket, the couch.


It's better now. The little dog has gained some measure of control and can now wait those important 30 seconds it takes for me to empty my bladder before going outside.

This is a small, but important victory.

There haven't been a lot of victories out here in the sticks.

Muse

I find myself thinking about religion lately, but not in the sense of wondering about the existence or nature of God. It's more about how and why people come to it.

I think a lot of people pick it up because there's comfort in belief. To be certain about your role in the world, your place in a community and even what to expect from a specific set of actions is comforting. Stability, certainty are things to rely on. That might have been part of the message of that line in the Bible about Jesus building his church on a rock: this is a stable house, a reliable institution.

Actual miles may vary, of course...

Some people gravitate toward religion because of insider knowledge. They dig that --knowing what nobody else knows. It's one of the reasons why people join fraternities and secret societies, like the Masons: the promise of inside information on how it all works.

I think they're usually disappointed. I joined a fraternity while I was in college and I can promise you the least interesting aspect of that group was the club secrets. The magic words weren't particularly magical. The secret handshake didn't really make me feel like I was part of anything special. Only the costumes that went along with the ceremonies were really notable and that was only because they were fucking creepy.

Others immerse themselves in religion to make a kind of armor against thoughts and actions that repulse even them. I've heard of pedophiles, perverts and self-loathing homosexuals joining the clergy because they think that surrounding themselves with God is a way to imprison that thing in them they fear or hate.

Apparently, this doesn't work so great. 

On the other side of the spectrum, I think some people use religion to steel against their own appetites for wealth or capacity for wrath. It's easier not to be a greedy bastard if you've taken a vow of poverty. It's easier to keep your temper if you cling to a religion's message of kindness, love and charity.

They all pretty much say be nice, don't hurt other people and give what you can when you can.

The new thing, for me, is thinking about people turning to religion because maybe they're terribly shallow and kind of stupid. They pick it up because devout people are often seen as wise and they want to be taken seriously as the kinds of people they wish they were.

Preachers, priests and rabbis are assumed to live in a deeper world than the rest of us. They dwell on the nature of the soul. They plumb the depths of compassion, grief and every good and bad thing that might weigh on a human soul.

We defer to them based on this, I think. We assume they have insights we don't and grant them more credit than they deserve sometimes.

I've seen men and women, as dumb as rocks but deeply religious, who hide behind scripture rather than work out the meaning of what is in front of them. They play act and pretend to have some sort of authority on matters well beyond their very limited knowledge.

I have no idea where they come up with their shit, but they they say the craziest things, believe and spout the most outlandish lies --but they're good people. They're sweet, God-fearing/Christ-loving people.

They're just kind of shallow and stupid.  

Alpha and Omega

"You're an uncle?" The nurse asked me.

I looked up from the infant, smiled and shook my head. I was just a visitor, a volunteer: a friend.

"You look so natural," she told me and I said I just blend in with folks.

Some days I hate myself for it, hate myself for feeling like I'm as common as a copper penny. Other days it's not as bad. Today, I didn't mind being mistaken for the girl's family for a little while.

The nurse resumed her rounds, went on her way, while I rock back and forth.

The girl didn't sleep, but she wasn't awake either. She lolled in and out of the twilight, her blind eyes accidentally slipping open to instinctively follow a sound, a smell, perhaps. The mystery of what these things were didn't seem to trouble her. Always, her eyes closed again and she rested, if not dreamed.

The doctors kept her drugged. It was the right thing, the humane thing to do. Without the drugs, the pain might be unspeakable or it might not. There was really no way to know. So, they kept her pretty stoned and that was fine with everyone.

It was fine with me, too.

I held the girl to give her peace, to show her there was mercy and kindness in this world she would not long inhabit. What had been done to her was cruel only in the way gods can be cruel. It was irreversible. The best I could do was keep her company. So, I whispered to her, told her about my dog and said it was pretty outside.

"Fall is beautiful," I said. "Right now, the colors are just starting to come in."

She wouldn't know a word I was saying and might not even know what a color was. It didn't matter. I kept talking, told her I wished I'd brought a book to read to her, told her I wished I knew how to sing, but that I wouldn't wish me singing a bad pop song on anyone --at least, on nobody sober.

An old woman came in with a cup of coffee, sat in a chair on the other side of the room and told me she was the girl's great, great grandmother.

I doubted that, but she said, "I had my first baby when I was 13. I had 10 kids, six boys and four girls." She sipped from the paper cup. "I grew up with those kids, you know what I mean?"

I kind of did, though I came to fatherhood much later than 13.

"My kids had three or four kids a piece," she said. "There are 36 of them and after that, I lost track."

She grinned. She still had some of her teeth.

Surprisingly, not a local, the woman had come from up north and had decided to come south, following a funeral for a niece. Graveside, a granddaughter asked her if she wanted to come visit for a few weeks. She took them up on it and here she was.

"I came to see that baby," she said. "I mean to be here as long as I need to be: She's precious."

After she finished her coffee, I gave her my chair and lowered the baby into her arms. I offered to stick around in case she needed something.

The old woman told me she could buzz the nurses, if she needed to.

"I got nowhere else I want to be," she added.
 

Black stones

I skipped another reunion. This one was with a bunch of old college friends, most of them turned acquaintances, some of them become strangers. They'd scheduled a golf game. I don't play golf, but I was willing to ride around on a golf cart, drink beer and pretend everything was the same as it was when golf was something we only played with our fathers, if we played at all.

In the old days, you could just about always pool your money with a couple of friends for a twelve pack or maybe share a bottle of something stronger --if you weren't to particular. Golf was expensive, even when it was cheap. It required memberships and greens fees. It cost gasoline just to get to the course. You had to rent a golf cart and buy all the right gear.

The game didn't seem complete unless you had a cooler full of beer or had a few drinks after all nine holes were played.

Back then, it was just more cost effective to sit somewhere and drink.

The golf game had been scheduled on a fraternity alumni Facebook page. We'd do it on Friday, the day before homecoming at the college.

I wasn't committed at first. Travel equals money: gas and tolls and hours lost at work. But I was encouraged to go. I've become something of a draft horse, a beast of burden so used to the routine of being in a specific place to do a specific thing every day I get uncomfortable if I don't make my rounds. I'm trying to rehabilitate myself, break the habit. The trip sounded so good and I'd missed those men and the years we spent together. I'd missed those breezy friendships.

The thing was the day before the drive I noticed there were conversations going on I was only seeing (at best) half of. Jokes were made. Boys were being boys. Only, the punchlines had been obscured. From what I could tell, at least one of the people I was coming to meet had blocked me, not just unfriended me, but blocked me.

It took me a while to figure out who that was and to remember how that happened.

Social media went ape shit after the Newtown Massacre. Pro gun propoganda and anti-government spin was suddenly everywhere. I'd never seen anything like it. Every morning, when I turned on Facebook or looked in the comments section of websites and news portals, there was deliberate and calculated lie after lie. It was frightening and no worse than when I saw it crop up among the people I thought I'd known.

One, in particular, had posted some really unbelievable stuff, but stuff that was easily debunked, which I did because it seemed embarrassing to me that anyone would want to be used as a pawn. He didn't care. He thought it was interesting, even though it was complete fiction and clearly designed to promote a specific agenda. He supported what the lie was promoting. That it was a lie, just didn't matter.

Things got heated and I got unfriended and then blocked.

If it bothered me, I don't remember. I remember being appalled.

So, it turns out he was one of the people in that particular group meeting for golf and he wasn't the only one I'd had some sort of run-in with. Another had flat-out ignored me for about a year after a disagreement and it occurred to me that maybe I didn't know what I was getting into.


There is no other way to put it: Many of the guys I went to school with, we don't agree on much. We barely did back in the day and over the years, it seems to me they've become so rigid and fearful.

I went the other way. I don't know why exactly. I had plenty of reason not to.

These men I knew once are good men. Some of them are heroes who've saved lives. 

But I would not burden them with my company. They have come so far to be there and I thought it better to let them play their game together in peace. I could stay home and drink alone.