I looked at the little weigh station, the scale house where large trucks with cargo were weighed—before the factory burned down. At an improbably idyllic setting down by the river, the whole facility was now deserted, the buildings silent, but markings attesting to the commerce that once took place there still lingered. It wasn’t that long ago that fire ended the operations here. Outside the scale house was the message, neatly stenciled in spray paint on the old bricks:
NO TRUCKS TO BE LEFT ON THE SCALE
PER DONNIE RAYE
Another piece of information, again neatly lettered on the outside of the little weigh station:
HOURS OF OPERATION
MON-FRI 7:30 AM---2:30 PM
PER DONNIE RAYE
The door had been forced open, so I went inside. The guard that watches over this place was parked down by the main factory buildings, saw no reason to linger at the little brick station that measured probably fifteen feet by ten feet. Inside was Donnie Raye’s world, left as it probably appeared the night of the fire. There had been some damage by vandals, and the place looked more than a little ransacked, but his paperwork and old metal desk stood where Donnie Raye had been a sentry—weighing trucks and logging in the numbers, then sending them on their way. His photocopier was overturned, and some other office machines had been upset as well, but there was a sheet he’d filled in, had logged the weight of probably the last truck. There, in the space for the signature of the person in charge, were clearly marked the initials: D.R.. The drab little building had been cool in the summer, with the hill and greenery just to the rear, and a large air-conditioner forced through the wall. Someone had ripped the big air-conditioner out, but had carried the project no further: It now rested in the little office just behind Donnie Raye’s worn swivel chair. A drawer had been pulled open, with the office man’s condiments and lunch fixings exposed in the metal compartments: Squeezed tubes of ketchup lay flattened in the top of the drawer. Pens and pencils and folders for the work that kept him busy were still piled where he’d left them. They had not been disturbed. The vandals had left untouched the things that I found most interesting, had focused their efforts instead on the few electronic gadgets that had made Donnie Raye’s life in the little building easier. Those people of industry who laid claim to this factory had seen it burn, had been interested in the eventual outcome—which was that the factory would be closed forever. The little scale-house held no interest for them, because no trucks would ever be weighed again. The few meager items that made up its contents were of no consequence. The activities of the man who’d so importantly posted instructions and admonitions in his little corner of the enterprise were to cease in that place, and occupy no one’s thoughts anymore.
I looked through the stacks of papers on the desk, uncovered more documents and then two license plates. One was from Maryland, the other from Maine, and had a nice green background. The two had most likely fallen off the big trucks that lumbered onto the scale in front of the tiny building. I took both of them, secured them to the bike rack just recently installed on my new bicycle, and headed for the park. The first person I encountered—a retired man with field glasses to watch birds with—had a baseball cap with the large capital letters ME. He was from Maine.
I later had dinner and drove down town, to the area I call the “quartier vivant,” which has a reputation for extreme rowdiness. So I avoid it, but on this night I wanted to hear some jazz, wanted to insert myself further into the local music scene, see what might come of it. The player I came to hear had played with another trio in another place, and had made me aware that he also had this gig in this place. When I entered, there were strange mixtures of violin, saxophone, keyboard, and stand-up bass. No drums. I listened, took a seat, listened some more, and then two people of my acquaintance showed up, were out looking around town that night, just seeing what was happening. We gathered together, the three of us—a somewhat unlikely match-up. We had drinks and then settled in to listen to the musical offerings. At some point the drummer arrived—an imposing man who pulled up to the curb in a cab and unloaded his equipment from the trunk. I thought it was kind of a stylish way to make an entrance. He paid the driver and was left with the black cases piled on the sidewalk. Getting things unpacked and set up took the better part of an hour, and my table-mates grew tired of waiting. So they left. I’d come to hear jazz, and—although the hour was getting late—decided to see what was in store.
From the first few downbeats, it was obvious that the drummer who’d just arrived by cab was a master of the instrument. The big man treated the drums before him as if they were nothing more than a child’s toy, a thing that he could pull by a string or bounce up and down or just tap on to make some noise. The delicate touch he imparted and the crashing blows were at odds with his sheer size. Okay, the hard-hitting blows I can see, but the infinitely delicate rolls and fills seemed counter-intuitive. He overwhelmed the set of drums, both figuratively and literally. Sitting back there, with an expression giving off nothing more than maybe a morning ride on the commuter train while looking at the paper bleary-eyed and without a first cup of coffee, he could have been anyone. With the addition of the big man and his little drums, the group came alive. To my great enjoyment, they played one of my favorite selections: “Have You Met Miss Jones?” Of course, in their hands, it became not so much a song as a creation—a work of art—coming together before the small gathering there in the late-night pub. What they did won’t be duplicated again—not by them, not by anyone else.
I left them after a few selections, taking advantage of a pause between numbers to exit—never an easy leaving since you have to pass right in front of the ensemble. I’d planned to stay about as long as I did, however did not count on the first set being without percussion. I’ll return, probably become something of a regular. I’m not sure what exactly they offer to eat in that place—the emphasis seems mostly on drinking.
The following day I readied myself for my weekend work, took time to fire up the vintage Honda for its maiden voyage. As I expected, it broke down after a few miles. I didn’t have many reservations about the old motorcycle as far as its mechanical condition, because Oort and I had gone through it pretty thoroughly. I’d ridden it briefly a few times, and it had held up well. Now it was legal, I had my bright orange helmet, and I wanted to hit the road. The motorcycle itself was not really to blame: It was my wedging this somewhat frivolous activity in between the many things I had to do on an already filled-up Friday. I knew from experience that it was impossible to cheat time, that if I tried to jam one more thing into the day, something would give. I gambled this time, got on the bike and fired it up—already fairly certain of the eventual outcome.
About four miles from home the bike gurgled to a stop. It would start up again a little with the choke on full, but immediately die. Within about five minutes, an old-timer named Burke stopped his vintage BSA—a British motorcycle—and offered to help. With his full leathers and worn riding gear, he was a devoted biker. His machine dated from the same year as mine—1972. Although many years separated us, he and I both enjoyed riding old motorcycles. I took the tools from the bike, pulled the plugs, saw that everything was all right there, swapped them just to make sure, and tried to start it again. Nothing. I mentioned that my house was only a short distance away, and that I had a truck there to haul the bike back home. I was wondering to myself how I was going to pull this off, had by now written off the rest of the afternoon, saw a long trek back home, tired and worn out, somehow getting the old Honda into the truck, unloading it, and so on. To my surprise, Burke offered to ride me back to my house so that I could pick up the truck, and said he’d meet me back at the bike to help load it. I hopped onto the back of his British motorcycle, directed him the few miles to my place, and got the truck fired up for the drive back down the road.
Loading the motorcycle was easy, uneventful, and Burke mostly stood by for moral support. He did offer a useful tip on loading the bike, which made it much easier to accomplish. Within forty-five minutes of breaking down, I was back home and ready for the rest of my day. He told me that those of us who rode old bikes had to stick together, that we were always there to help in case of a roadside emergency or breakdown. He went on to add that this was not always the case with the new riders, and mentioned specifically those who chose Harley-Davidsons as their mounts. Although I can’t speak to the accuracy of his observations, I can say that I dislike Harley riders as a group, view them as a moneyed and frivolous band of not-so-clever showmen who thrive on chrome and shiny things. The fact that the baubles and plasticized accessories they buy in profusion are applied to motorcycles is secondary to the need for attention: The overgrown toys they posture on could be anything—a boat, an airplane—whatever.
Burke refused any offering from me for his time and efforts, said only that I should pass along the same gesture to another in need.
Since I’d now freed up some time in the afternoon, I had in mind a drive up to the next county to visit the Friday sale. I’d not been in a few months, and decided it was time to see what was there. With the top down, it was a perfect day for driving and letting in the warm afternoon sunshine. I didn’t hurry, since Burke had saved me from a few hours of wasted time and efforts. I rolled into the gravel parking lot as the remnants of the old shed’s contents were being auctioned off. There wasn’t much there to begin with, so I can’t say that I missed so much. A man with a red pickup asked me about the car, said he’d always wanted one like it, and of course I was happy to tell him all about it and how marvelous it was to drive and what exceptionally good mileage it got. In place of the license plate on the front of his truck was a plaque that read “BSA.” I asked him about the old motorcycles and he said, yes, he had a collection of them, was always riding one or the other. He showed me an old bicycle he’d bought for two bucks, was proud that it sported a VA-ROOM!—a kind of toy that made a motorcycle-like noise back in the day. I vaguely remembered them, said that it was neat in a perfunctory kind of way, because I didn’t really care about the VA-ROOM, but he was so excited about his find that I felt I had to add something. He cranked it up so that it made the noise he remembered, and it seemed to actually work as it should. VA-ROOM.
Inside the main building I watched the dismal collection of machines and tools cross the auction block. Nothing had changed in this place, and many of the items were no doubt things that had sold before, and now were returning for another go-round. Then a worn old guitar came up for sale. As the snaggle-toothed group looked on, feeding comfortably on hot-dogs and chili, sitting under worn hats and ample dresses with faded flowers, a man approached the auctioneer. He took the guitar in his hands and began to play, while the auction man held his microphone close to the instrument for better hearing. What we heard in that place of tired and used merchandise, cast-offs, and people who were not much better, were some of the purest and most perfectly played notes of ragtime you would hope to hear anywhere. The musician, wearing a hat that advertised the brand name of a power tool, told me later that he’d been playing music since 1947. He appeared to be a friend of the man with the BSA license plate, and who was so enamored of the little convertible.
Some time ago I looked at a farmhouse up in the same county. I drove the back roads, switched back and forth, and finally got to the place—which had been advertised for sale. The owner and her dog Maggie met me, and we walked around the immense house. Up and up it went, and it had all been restored, renovated with many upgrades and nice accents. There were many bedrooms and bathrooms, but I was mainly interested in the land. Sixteen acres came with the little farm, but the layout was sadly not to my liking. The house waited at the end of a long and private driveway that descended to a hollow that was mostly private, except for some newer homes that sat on a ridge overlooking the place. Alongside the house rose the acreage, somewhat hilly but flattening out near the far end, where it met some woods. A local farmer rented the fields to grow corn, and the property owners there had the benefit of receiving an agricultural tax credit for using the land as a farm. With the owner and Maggie, I walked the land, then made my way out back, where a springhouse and an old log outbuilding still stood. The barn, which had been huge, had burned down and there was nothing but ruins and large, rough-hewn beams that needed to be moved around or made into firewood.
I entered the springhouse, a cool place year ‘round, and saw the clear stream of water enter a concrete trough that ran through it. Up in the wooden beams of the small building were the nests of barn-swallows, and one was there now, tending to her little home not more than a few feet in front of me. She looked at the trespasser that blocked the sunlight from the door, but made no move to leave. She knew that this was her house, and that I was only a visitor that had best be on his way. I walked away from the springhouse, already disappointed that this would not be my home.
I tried to envision it—erecting the huge barn where the old one once stood, using the stone foundation and making the building tight and firm against the weather. It would be more than a barn—it would be a place with a huge loft for gatherings, for space for all the things I wanted to do. And the barn was hidden behind the house; no one could see it back there—even though it would be enormous. Back there behind the barn were more ruins, and then wetlands. The owner told me that no more houses would be built in that area, that it was not allowed. I wished that the houses on the ridge hadn’t been built, although they were pretty far away. Still, the fact that I could see them bothered me. And this big house, the one that her husband the contractor had renovated—using only the very best materials and workmanship, was ill-placed. There was nothing to be done about it, the house would be there at the bottom of the hilly acres, the land around it overwhelming the place. Instead of sitting mightily in a position of importance smack dab in the middle of the sixteen acres, with a view of the surrounding countryside, the house was hidden away back there at the bottom of the long drive. The asking price was one that I could easily afford, which only added to my chagrin. I came away sad—sad about the eager dog Maggie, who was promised with the place, sad about the barn-swallows who would not befriend me, sad that I would not erect the huge barn lit with Christmas gatherings and space for my hobbies, regretting that I would not cool my summer drinks in the springhouse under the watchful eyes of the nesting birds. I said good-bye to Maggie, turned around as I made my way back up the long drive to my waiting car. There in the middle of the driveway was the long-haired herding dog, stopped, with a questioning look on her face.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Del and the Cairn
It took about two hours—the fitting of the new tank I’d recently bought. With the day’s light dimming, the sun set on my efforts and I left everything out next the tractor: The tools, the nuts and bolts, the fuel lines, everything I would need to finish up the job the next day. As these things go, the tank doesn’t look so bad there, would not attract the least bit of notice from someone inspecting the tractor, wanting to look under the hood to see what was in there. It fit like it belonged. I super-heated some scrap iron I had around, bent it this way and that, and finally came away with a passable bracket to attach the tank to the machine. I treated myself to a new fuel filter at the mower supply place, since I’d saved the enormous sum of sixty dollars on a new tank—and since the fuel filter only cost about four bucks. I assembled it all, put the new fuel line and filter and tank in place, and fired up the tractor. No leaks. At the end of the work I noticed the machines arranged in a spontaneous still-life: The two riding mowers, a push mower, and the open doors of the shed providing a backdrop. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry.
The next day I took care of some errands, told King Oort that I had some money for him, having sold a vintage motorcycle that someone had given him a while back. He was greatly excited about this, and I had to feel that his level of excitement was inversely proportional to the degree of confidence he had in my ability to sell the thing. He’d no doubt expected the old bike to molder in my shed indefinitely, while I went about my life and eventually forgot about it. It fetched a little under two-thousand dollars.
With the thought of old motorcycles fresh in my mind, I turned my attention to the old Honda I had stored away in the shed. It’s now in riding condition, and needed only the attaching of some license plates and a new registration. With the outside temperature hovering right around a hundred degrees, I drove to the department of motor vehicles.
“Oh, my goodness! I haven’t seen one of those in a long, long time!” The elderly clerk at the MVA knew of what she spoke. In front of her was the original vehicle title for the old Honda, dated from the beginning part of the 1970s.
“I believe that’s the original title, ma’am,” I said. “I’m only the second owner.”
She turned the document this way and that, looked for a place for me to sign it.
“I guess you didn’t have to sign it back then,” she said. “They just trusted you.” She looked at me, the years of her recollecting slowly rolling forward to this instant: “Nowadays you can’t trust people,” she said.
“Well, it’s a great bike,” I replied, “And it runs just fine.” I wanted to keep the conversation—which was rare enough in this place—on a more upbeat note, having decided to spend some money to get the bike legally on the road.
“I’ll be applying for historic motorcycle tags,” I said. I felt that engaging in some small pleasantries was a major coup there, where hostility and obstinacy are often the rule. She got together the necessary forms and assigned a computer-generated number that would come up by and by over on the other side of the room.
1972. It was the same year as the big flood that washed away many parts of the state, beached cars and large trucks along the riverbanks, uprooted trees and houses and demolished many businesses. I thought to those days, when the department of motor vehicles was in the nascent stages of computer technology—the large, hulking machines being carted into the facility by specialists with black, horn-rimmed glasses. Outside were Ford Falcons and Chevy Novas and larger LTDs and maybe a Chrysler Imperial for an upper-level official. The terrible paperwork generated by the people and their vehicles would be handled by the lowest of the low—the data-entry clerks. They would be handed stacks of titles and other documents, told to enter the information into the new system so that everything could be stored electronically. Someone had to do it. In the warm summer offices, mostly lacking air-conditioning, they would plod through the stacks of papers, trying to make out the incomprehensible scribble on many of the titles and insurance certificates, setting some hopeless cases aside, to be referred to their supervisor later on for a determination as to their fate. They were teenagers, working the summer away, maybe later getting a permanent job, many going off to college and then getting married. Now they come here, to this place of efficiency and modernity, and remember when they were stuffed into cramped offices and assigned endless piles of vehicle titles and documents they didn’t care about. Now they hand over their money, get a fine new car on the road, and leave. The woman over there—the old title clerk with the memories of how the documents used to look—is one of the few they remember. The others have all gone.
I returned from my weekend work, my clothes sticking to me in the blistering and sodden heat. I told the man interested in Oort’s bike that I would need a little time to get myself together, so maybe we could meet in the afternoon—in an hour or two. He’d agreed to this on the phone. To my surprise, he arrived at my house about thirty seconds after I pulled into the driveway. Great. We exited the bike from the shed, got it fired up, saw that something was amiss, fixed a dead cylinder, which turned out to be a bad plug, and got the Kawasaki loaded into the back of my Dodge truck. I’d told the man on the phone that I would not be swayed from the asking price, but that I would help him get the machine back to his place. He agreed to this, and we were soon on the road, headed up to an area north of Baltimore.
We drove and drove and drove. I thought I’d heard mention of Bel Air, but knew that this town wasn’t THAT far. Now in farm country, the roads were absolutely beautiful, with everything taking on the hue of a steamy deep-south tableau. There was a lot of stillness, as not many people wanted to be out and about in the extreme heat. I followed the man in his Volvo, with the bike strapped securely into the back of my truck. Recently I’d made the salvage-yard radio work, and had connected it and fitted it into the dash of the old dirt-truck, so I had a nice stereo system to while away the time. This radio was made specifically for this truck, had come out of a similar vehicle, so it was an exact match. The man who’d driven the old Dodge for many years before me had installed a CB radio, had ripped it out unceremoniously from the dash, and had left only a gaping hole with some dangling wires where it used to be. It looks much better now.
In a town called Whiteford, about sixty miles from my house, we finally drove down the deserted main street. The heat and the buzz of insects was all that cut through the thick air, and I did not linger. We got the bike unloaded, said our good-byes, and I was off. At the next crossroads I stopped for gas and a hot-dog and chips, eating the warm bun and its unusually good meat while the hot countryside of Harford County passed by. Secretly, I was pleased to be putting the old Dodge into service, because I felt that every mile I extracted from the old truck was like driving for free. And it doesn’t get awful mileage, either.
At home I looked out back, saw the little wren perched just outside the birdhouse I’d built last year. Her small home was filled with the sticks of her mate’s bringing, making the insides furnished to her taste, and now she was out front, taking in the day. The heavy air thundered with the sound of distant rumblings, and the sky—recently clear—gathered together the makings of a storm. She stood on the peg, just in front of the hole that served as the entrance, and looked skyward, blinked, made no move to leave, and looked at the sky again. Her house was sturdy and safe, would be dry inside when the storm hit. She could weather the wind and rain, and she knew it.
Just across the weedy patio are the stairs I built a few years back. So proud of them at the time, they are completely overtaken with poison ivy. I’ve never seen such a vicious infestation of this weed, can’t help but take it a little personally. It is so severe that the noxious greenery edged out any other weed that might want to make its life there. I look at the place where the wooden steps should be, am seized with thoughts of extreme bumpiness and itching. It’s just all too much. I’ll wade into it with long pants and gloves and clippers and hack away at it all—will eradicate everything that grows there, and replace it with something that likes to cling to hillsides, wants to thrive with as little care and attention as possible. This juniper plant that people put around seems to fit the bill. Everyone I have talked to suggests hitting the hillside with “Roundup,” a chemical that kills weeds. As usual, being resistant to conventional thinking and techniques, I’ll avoid the chemical treatment and simply chop away at the overgrowth, chop chop chop some more, and eventually have things under control. For a while, anyway.
I returned from my weekend work, heard music at the biker bar next door to where I park the truck, recognized a band of some talent playing over there. I wandered over to have a look, see if I recognized them. Under a cheap white canopy played a threesome, with a talented guitarist in cowboy boots and long black braided hair. Atop his head was a white cowboy hat, and it seemed likely that he was from Texas. They played a mix of music, including some selections from Jimi Hendrix, which the booted guitarist covered well, but the young drummer was not familiar with. The three of them pulled it off, however. They played to an asphalt parking lot with maybe a dozen people scattered here and there, some of them standing at enormous tables that had been made of the giant rolls that power cables come spooled on. These huge spools were bigger than the ones you usually see, and weighed probably a few hundred pounds each. The people who run that place had plopped them down for the customers to use, and I went to one that had no one standing next to it. It was actually a convenient mark on the landscape for me to appear less conspicuous, owing to the lack of people appreciating the music. I listened for a few songs, saw that the little trio’s talent was wasted here, and moved on. Out front, most of the business was centered around the roadside bar, where the bikers could sit and drink and look at their machines and discuss them—a source of endless fascination for this group.
At the house I have made great progress—not from my own sweat and efforts, but from the freeing up of thousands of dollar bills to pay someone to do it. King Oort recommended a fellow of his acquaintance, skilled in this kind of work, and with many contacts to get the job done. We went over a few things together, looked at the house and what I had in mind, and a few days later he arrived with a helper and got started. In the space of one day, the bathroom floor is in place, the framework for the wall between the bathroom and the kitchen is erected, and many of the pipes that will serve that little room are already installed. “When we’re done, you will have a working bathroom,” said the man, who’s name is Del Rio.
“Thank you, Del,” I said. “Much obliged.”
“There are a few things we have to get out of the way before we start work,” he added.
“Such as…?” I asked.
Del squinted into the afternoon sun, setting over the green and closely clipped lawns of the neighboring houses, looked past the weeds and long-reaching grasses of my own yard, said this:
“Do you have faith in this house?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, after considering his question for a moment.
“The work you’ve done, the end that you see—can you believe in these things?” I had to admit that I wasn’t entirely happy with the house or much of what I’d done in the way of improvements. Since the bulk of my work had entailed ripping the place apart, I had to tell him that I was resigned to whatever end result came to be—good or bad.
“You need more than that,” said Del.
“Ok,” I said.
“The ancients used a stone cairn to gather around, to cement their beliefs by focusing on this object. And they said things around the cairn, things that helped them to believe, to focus their efforts.”
“The ancients?” I asked. “Where are we going to get a stone cairn?” I added, hoping this would put an end to the discussion.
“I have one in the truck,” he said.
Del went to his work truck, opened one of the side compartments, took out a cairn that looked pretty authentic, except that it was made of some modern material, like those artificial fireplace logs you see in peoples’ houses. These were imitation stones. He edged it out sideways, where it had been lodged against a power saw and some hand-tools.
“Here, hold this,” he said, handing the cairn to me. “Set it over there in the middle of the lawn. Do you have an extension cord?” He asked.
“You have to plug it in?” I said.
“Yep, this one has a simulated fire that glows inside.” He explained that the ancients liked that. “They don’t all have that—I paid extra, but you have to plug it in so it lights up.”
I brought around the extension cord, the one that had been powering up my demolition tools, handed him the end. He plugged in the black power cord from the cairn, and the little simulated stone pile glowed faintly from within. The sun, although setting over the horizon, was still pretty bright. This diminished the overall effect of the cairn and its light.
“Now we kneel before it,” said Del. I didn’t think too highly of the idea, wanted mostly to watch my evening television stories, but guessed that this was part of Del’s overall approach to home improvement. Further, I hadn’t thought to ask how long our activities with the cairn would last. I looked over at his helper, a man named Ryan.
“Doesn’t he have to kneel, too?” I asked, indicating the man with the large gut, peeling back the wrapper from a pack of Marlboros, and resting his foot nonchalantly on the front steps. He appeared to take no notice of us there on the front lawn. I felt, however, that he should have to join in as well.
“Sometimes Ryan ignores the ways of the ancients, takes another path,” replied Del. Ryan’s path at this moment included taking huge gulps from a green bottle of Gatorade and lighting one of the fresh cigarettes. He sat down on the first step and turned his gaze towards Del and me. Raising the green bottle, he offered this: “Might as well get it over with.”
“All right,” I said, and continued to explain that I felt rather foolish, couldn’t we maybe do this out back—where it was a little more private?
Del looked at me blankly: “The cairn’s already plugged in,” he said.
We held hands around the faintly glowing cairn, with Ryan swilling Gatorade on the front steps and idly pulling on the freshly-lit smoke. It would have been preferable to have a third man to round things out, as the two of us—Del and I—didn’t seem to impart much importance to the proceedings. While Del mumbled some incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo that he said originated from the ancients who came even before the regular ancients, I looked up towards the road. A bus was passing at that moment—one of the shuttles that carries the aged around the neighborhood. This bus was marked “Sunshine Acres Retirement Community.” Most seats were empty, but those windows that showed a person displayed mostly drooped heads, with chins resting on frail chests. A few of these windows rolled by, then one with a wild-haired man, his expression one of sudden electrocution, and his white hair jutting out at all angles as if excited by great jolts of current, came into view. His face was pressed against the glass, and the unexpected appearance of this unsettling visage made me jump and almost upset the cairn. Del took this as a sign that I was moved by the little ceremony.
“The ancients have spoken through you—to you?”
“Huh? Oh, yes…yes, I think they have.”
“Good. Go ahead and unplug the cairn,” said Del. “Put it back in the truck with the other tools; I need to go over some things in the house with Ryan.”
In a little less than three days, Del and Ryan have fixed up the bathroom so that you can almost use it. The floor and tub are in place, the pipes that lead to the different fixtures are also ready to be hooked up, and there is some preparation for adding another bathroom upstairs. During their work I have continued to demolish more of the house, take away pieces that are no longer needed, return the basement to something of a clean slate. I also cart away the debris that their efforts have generated. Overall, I am very pleased with the results so far. Three days. This is easy—I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
The next day I took care of some errands, told King Oort that I had some money for him, having sold a vintage motorcycle that someone had given him a while back. He was greatly excited about this, and I had to feel that his level of excitement was inversely proportional to the degree of confidence he had in my ability to sell the thing. He’d no doubt expected the old bike to molder in my shed indefinitely, while I went about my life and eventually forgot about it. It fetched a little under two-thousand dollars.
With the thought of old motorcycles fresh in my mind, I turned my attention to the old Honda I had stored away in the shed. It’s now in riding condition, and needed only the attaching of some license plates and a new registration. With the outside temperature hovering right around a hundred degrees, I drove to the department of motor vehicles.
“Oh, my goodness! I haven’t seen one of those in a long, long time!” The elderly clerk at the MVA knew of what she spoke. In front of her was the original vehicle title for the old Honda, dated from the beginning part of the 1970s.
“I believe that’s the original title, ma’am,” I said. “I’m only the second owner.”
She turned the document this way and that, looked for a place for me to sign it.
“I guess you didn’t have to sign it back then,” she said. “They just trusted you.” She looked at me, the years of her recollecting slowly rolling forward to this instant: “Nowadays you can’t trust people,” she said.
“Well, it’s a great bike,” I replied, “And it runs just fine.” I wanted to keep the conversation—which was rare enough in this place—on a more upbeat note, having decided to spend some money to get the bike legally on the road.
“I’ll be applying for historic motorcycle tags,” I said. I felt that engaging in some small pleasantries was a major coup there, where hostility and obstinacy are often the rule. She got together the necessary forms and assigned a computer-generated number that would come up by and by over on the other side of the room.
1972. It was the same year as the big flood that washed away many parts of the state, beached cars and large trucks along the riverbanks, uprooted trees and houses and demolished many businesses. I thought to those days, when the department of motor vehicles was in the nascent stages of computer technology—the large, hulking machines being carted into the facility by specialists with black, horn-rimmed glasses. Outside were Ford Falcons and Chevy Novas and larger LTDs and maybe a Chrysler Imperial for an upper-level official. The terrible paperwork generated by the people and their vehicles would be handled by the lowest of the low—the data-entry clerks. They would be handed stacks of titles and other documents, told to enter the information into the new system so that everything could be stored electronically. Someone had to do it. In the warm summer offices, mostly lacking air-conditioning, they would plod through the stacks of papers, trying to make out the incomprehensible scribble on many of the titles and insurance certificates, setting some hopeless cases aside, to be referred to their supervisor later on for a determination as to their fate. They were teenagers, working the summer away, maybe later getting a permanent job, many going off to college and then getting married. Now they come here, to this place of efficiency and modernity, and remember when they were stuffed into cramped offices and assigned endless piles of vehicle titles and documents they didn’t care about. Now they hand over their money, get a fine new car on the road, and leave. The woman over there—the old title clerk with the memories of how the documents used to look—is one of the few they remember. The others have all gone.
I returned from my weekend work, my clothes sticking to me in the blistering and sodden heat. I told the man interested in Oort’s bike that I would need a little time to get myself together, so maybe we could meet in the afternoon—in an hour or two. He’d agreed to this on the phone. To my surprise, he arrived at my house about thirty seconds after I pulled into the driveway. Great. We exited the bike from the shed, got it fired up, saw that something was amiss, fixed a dead cylinder, which turned out to be a bad plug, and got the Kawasaki loaded into the back of my Dodge truck. I’d told the man on the phone that I would not be swayed from the asking price, but that I would help him get the machine back to his place. He agreed to this, and we were soon on the road, headed up to an area north of Baltimore.
We drove and drove and drove. I thought I’d heard mention of Bel Air, but knew that this town wasn’t THAT far. Now in farm country, the roads were absolutely beautiful, with everything taking on the hue of a steamy deep-south tableau. There was a lot of stillness, as not many people wanted to be out and about in the extreme heat. I followed the man in his Volvo, with the bike strapped securely into the back of my truck. Recently I’d made the salvage-yard radio work, and had connected it and fitted it into the dash of the old dirt-truck, so I had a nice stereo system to while away the time. This radio was made specifically for this truck, had come out of a similar vehicle, so it was an exact match. The man who’d driven the old Dodge for many years before me had installed a CB radio, had ripped it out unceremoniously from the dash, and had left only a gaping hole with some dangling wires where it used to be. It looks much better now.
In a town called Whiteford, about sixty miles from my house, we finally drove down the deserted main street. The heat and the buzz of insects was all that cut through the thick air, and I did not linger. We got the bike unloaded, said our good-byes, and I was off. At the next crossroads I stopped for gas and a hot-dog and chips, eating the warm bun and its unusually good meat while the hot countryside of Harford County passed by. Secretly, I was pleased to be putting the old Dodge into service, because I felt that every mile I extracted from the old truck was like driving for free. And it doesn’t get awful mileage, either.
At home I looked out back, saw the little wren perched just outside the birdhouse I’d built last year. Her small home was filled with the sticks of her mate’s bringing, making the insides furnished to her taste, and now she was out front, taking in the day. The heavy air thundered with the sound of distant rumblings, and the sky—recently clear—gathered together the makings of a storm. She stood on the peg, just in front of the hole that served as the entrance, and looked skyward, blinked, made no move to leave, and looked at the sky again. Her house was sturdy and safe, would be dry inside when the storm hit. She could weather the wind and rain, and she knew it.
Just across the weedy patio are the stairs I built a few years back. So proud of them at the time, they are completely overtaken with poison ivy. I’ve never seen such a vicious infestation of this weed, can’t help but take it a little personally. It is so severe that the noxious greenery edged out any other weed that might want to make its life there. I look at the place where the wooden steps should be, am seized with thoughts of extreme bumpiness and itching. It’s just all too much. I’ll wade into it with long pants and gloves and clippers and hack away at it all—will eradicate everything that grows there, and replace it with something that likes to cling to hillsides, wants to thrive with as little care and attention as possible. This juniper plant that people put around seems to fit the bill. Everyone I have talked to suggests hitting the hillside with “Roundup,” a chemical that kills weeds. As usual, being resistant to conventional thinking and techniques, I’ll avoid the chemical treatment and simply chop away at the overgrowth, chop chop chop some more, and eventually have things under control. For a while, anyway.
I returned from my weekend work, heard music at the biker bar next door to where I park the truck, recognized a band of some talent playing over there. I wandered over to have a look, see if I recognized them. Under a cheap white canopy played a threesome, with a talented guitarist in cowboy boots and long black braided hair. Atop his head was a white cowboy hat, and it seemed likely that he was from Texas. They played a mix of music, including some selections from Jimi Hendrix, which the booted guitarist covered well, but the young drummer was not familiar with. The three of them pulled it off, however. They played to an asphalt parking lot with maybe a dozen people scattered here and there, some of them standing at enormous tables that had been made of the giant rolls that power cables come spooled on. These huge spools were bigger than the ones you usually see, and weighed probably a few hundred pounds each. The people who run that place had plopped them down for the customers to use, and I went to one that had no one standing next to it. It was actually a convenient mark on the landscape for me to appear less conspicuous, owing to the lack of people appreciating the music. I listened for a few songs, saw that the little trio’s talent was wasted here, and moved on. Out front, most of the business was centered around the roadside bar, where the bikers could sit and drink and look at their machines and discuss them—a source of endless fascination for this group.
At the house I have made great progress—not from my own sweat and efforts, but from the freeing up of thousands of dollar bills to pay someone to do it. King Oort recommended a fellow of his acquaintance, skilled in this kind of work, and with many contacts to get the job done. We went over a few things together, looked at the house and what I had in mind, and a few days later he arrived with a helper and got started. In the space of one day, the bathroom floor is in place, the framework for the wall between the bathroom and the kitchen is erected, and many of the pipes that will serve that little room are already installed. “When we’re done, you will have a working bathroom,” said the man, who’s name is Del Rio.
“Thank you, Del,” I said. “Much obliged.”
“There are a few things we have to get out of the way before we start work,” he added.
“Such as…?” I asked.
Del squinted into the afternoon sun, setting over the green and closely clipped lawns of the neighboring houses, looked past the weeds and long-reaching grasses of my own yard, said this:
“Do you have faith in this house?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, after considering his question for a moment.
“The work you’ve done, the end that you see—can you believe in these things?” I had to admit that I wasn’t entirely happy with the house or much of what I’d done in the way of improvements. Since the bulk of my work had entailed ripping the place apart, I had to tell him that I was resigned to whatever end result came to be—good or bad.
“You need more than that,” said Del.
“Ok,” I said.
“The ancients used a stone cairn to gather around, to cement their beliefs by focusing on this object. And they said things around the cairn, things that helped them to believe, to focus their efforts.”
“The ancients?” I asked. “Where are we going to get a stone cairn?” I added, hoping this would put an end to the discussion.
“I have one in the truck,” he said.
Del went to his work truck, opened one of the side compartments, took out a cairn that looked pretty authentic, except that it was made of some modern material, like those artificial fireplace logs you see in peoples’ houses. These were imitation stones. He edged it out sideways, where it had been lodged against a power saw and some hand-tools.
“Here, hold this,” he said, handing the cairn to me. “Set it over there in the middle of the lawn. Do you have an extension cord?” He asked.
“You have to plug it in?” I said.
“Yep, this one has a simulated fire that glows inside.” He explained that the ancients liked that. “They don’t all have that—I paid extra, but you have to plug it in so it lights up.”
I brought around the extension cord, the one that had been powering up my demolition tools, handed him the end. He plugged in the black power cord from the cairn, and the little simulated stone pile glowed faintly from within. The sun, although setting over the horizon, was still pretty bright. This diminished the overall effect of the cairn and its light.
“Now we kneel before it,” said Del. I didn’t think too highly of the idea, wanted mostly to watch my evening television stories, but guessed that this was part of Del’s overall approach to home improvement. Further, I hadn’t thought to ask how long our activities with the cairn would last. I looked over at his helper, a man named Ryan.
“Doesn’t he have to kneel, too?” I asked, indicating the man with the large gut, peeling back the wrapper from a pack of Marlboros, and resting his foot nonchalantly on the front steps. He appeared to take no notice of us there on the front lawn. I felt, however, that he should have to join in as well.
“Sometimes Ryan ignores the ways of the ancients, takes another path,” replied Del. Ryan’s path at this moment included taking huge gulps from a green bottle of Gatorade and lighting one of the fresh cigarettes. He sat down on the first step and turned his gaze towards Del and me. Raising the green bottle, he offered this: “Might as well get it over with.”
“All right,” I said, and continued to explain that I felt rather foolish, couldn’t we maybe do this out back—where it was a little more private?
Del looked at me blankly: “The cairn’s already plugged in,” he said.
We held hands around the faintly glowing cairn, with Ryan swilling Gatorade on the front steps and idly pulling on the freshly-lit smoke. It would have been preferable to have a third man to round things out, as the two of us—Del and I—didn’t seem to impart much importance to the proceedings. While Del mumbled some incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo that he said originated from the ancients who came even before the regular ancients, I looked up towards the road. A bus was passing at that moment—one of the shuttles that carries the aged around the neighborhood. This bus was marked “Sunshine Acres Retirement Community.” Most seats were empty, but those windows that showed a person displayed mostly drooped heads, with chins resting on frail chests. A few of these windows rolled by, then one with a wild-haired man, his expression one of sudden electrocution, and his white hair jutting out at all angles as if excited by great jolts of current, came into view. His face was pressed against the glass, and the unexpected appearance of this unsettling visage made me jump and almost upset the cairn. Del took this as a sign that I was moved by the little ceremony.
“The ancients have spoken through you—to you?”
“Huh? Oh, yes…yes, I think they have.”
“Good. Go ahead and unplug the cairn,” said Del. “Put it back in the truck with the other tools; I need to go over some things in the house with Ryan.”
In a little less than three days, Del and Ryan have fixed up the bathroom so that you can almost use it. The floor and tub are in place, the pipes that lead to the different fixtures are also ready to be hooked up, and there is some preparation for adding another bathroom upstairs. During their work I have continued to demolish more of the house, take away pieces that are no longer needed, return the basement to something of a clean slate. I also cart away the debris that their efforts have generated. Overall, I am very pleased with the results so far. Three days. This is easy—I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
"I already have a vise."
“That’s my mower,” I said, looking wistfully at the machine neglected over in the corner of the storage yard. “Same color, same model—everything.” I made for the riding mower, the one that matched mine in every respect, with the young mower man following. I opened the hood. “You can’t just sell me this gas tank?” I ventured. It seemed a reasonable request, owing to the fact that this machine looked as though it would never be repaired or put into service again. It just had that look. For those who keep track of such things, you’ll recall that squirrels ate a hole in the top of my gas tank, then started on the fuel line, and nibbled a bit on the gas cap itself, but stopped for some reason. Now the fuel line leaked and the tank had a big hole in it. I’d tossed the tank into the trunk of the little car and drove over to the big mower repair facility nearby. I knew that they kept quite a few machines around, and knew also that they would want to see my old tank to make an exact match.
The young man looking at the neglected machine, its seat missing and its cosmetic parts not winning any beauty contests, seemed doubtful of my proposition; it’s not that they didn’t sell used parts, it’s just that he felt that this mower would be fixed up and sold to someone down the line.
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he said. “See, the engine turns ok, even if the mower don’t look so hot.”
A third character arrived, having been summoned by the young man in the shop. He added to the young man’s assertion that this mower would be a good candidate for repairing and then selling.
“Without the gas tank, we’d just end up ordering a new one, and they cost about sixty bucks,” he said. I knew they were probably expensive, but didn’t know just how much they cost. In any case, this third character to our one-act play wasn’t helping my case much. Then, unexpectedly, a plot twist. A fourth man entered the scene, a man of my acquaintance, named LaFontaine. He worked at the tire shop down the road for many years, now worked someplace else. Here is what he had to say, when I made feeble noises about maybe repairing the nibbled tank on my own:
“Listen,” he said, “I’m about the cheapest guy in the world, but I’m going to tell you this: Pay whatever they want for a new tank, and move on. Leave it alone.”
I knew his words for the truth, for the path that I should follow; knew that what he’d uttered didn’t even hint at the endless frustrations, the sweat and cursing and twisted thoughts and metal and hurt and pointless fatigue that lay ahead. He didn’t need to say these things: I knew them already. We were both on the precipice, and he was trying to hold me back, to get me not to jump. But he didn’t know this: That I’d recently bought a used tank on the online forum for ten bucks—one that was intended for another machine entirely--and it was one that I could modify to fit my tractor. It would entail exactly the things I just mentioned, and many more that I can’t even imagine at the moment. Realistically, with all things falling precisely into place, with the meshing of my efforts and the materials I was working, it would take about an hour. With the catastrophes that usually befall such projects, however, it could be the better part of a whole workday. I was off the edge, already into that bewildering and mad world of tinkering that always beckons, seeing if I could somehow streamline the fitting of the ten-dollar tank to cut down on the time and the number of disasters involved. It was then that Greybeard approached, materialized as if out of nowhere.
“Squirrels been at it again?” he observed, eyeing my nibbled plastic tank dangling from the bit of fuel hose like a plaything on a string. It had been twenty-nine years since I’d seen Greybeard, had known him even before I really knew him, and now here he was. This rounded out our cast of characters: Now there was the young man from the shop, his long-haired and bestubbled boss, LaFontaine, Greybeard and of course, me. My shorts were tattered and poor-looking, having left the house in haste to arrive at the mower place on that hot Friday afternoon before closing. I hadn’t counted on Greybeard being there.
“It seems,” he said, “that one might ponder loftier pursuits than this quisquilian affair you address here in your little group.” The young mower man, of about twenty years, stared at Greybeard. His boss, divining that Greybeard somehow knew me, looked to me for a response. LaFonaine was getting on his motorcycle to leave.
“Buy a new tank,” he said.
“Wouldn’t your time be more well-spent discussing, say, Sophia Loren?”
The young mower man, his ample tee-shirt clinging to his more than ample chest, came to life, as if sparked by a sudden jolt.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
Now it was LaFontaine, who hadn’t yet started his machine, was astride the large Yamaha, listening to the final words of his leaving. He said to this to the group:
“Sophia Loren is the greatest woman to have ever lived. Period.”
I explained, for the young man’s benefit, and possibly his boss’s, that this was a screen star of unrivalled beauty, charisma, elegance and talent.
LaFontaine was still astride his machine.
“There will never be another like her,” he said. “Best goddamned actress ever.”
Greybeard was silent, taking in the most recent words. Now he spoke up.
“She certainly deserves better than to be discussed by this group of ragamuffins.”
“But you said we should be talking about Sophia Loren,” this was the young mower man with the sweaty tee-shirt. He had a valid point. Greybeard scowled, as only he could.
To ease the tension, I asked LaFontaine, who appeared to have strong feelings about this woman, what films he liked.
“I cannot name a single movie she appeared in,” he said. “I have probably not seen any.”
“Exactly! Exactly!” Came Greybeard again. “Now we are getting somewhere.” He continued, elaborating a bit: “To confine her to the boundaries of a few pictures, moments of fleeting images flashed on a brilliant screen while the hoi-polloi quaffs popcorn and Milk Duds by the bucketsful, would be to ignore the overall monument that is this woman.” He let the words sink in, while the young man, his boss, and LaFontaine and I listened. “Tell me,” he said, “Do you go before a great work of art, stand humbled in front of it, and pick it apart, as if it were some kind of machine to be dismantled?” He gestured at the abundance of machines that surrounded our impromptu stage. “Do you gaze upon the Mona Lisa and say, ‘Nice elbows,’ or ‘good job on that chin?’” He looked about, the group wanting mostly to disperse at this point. “NO!” he thundered, “You do not, you cannot! Doing so would only ignore the masterpiece, the whole work. So it goes with the woman whose name has just now passed our lips.” My gas tank dangled still by its little bit of fuel line I’d cut off—like a little umbilical cord.
“For this occasion I have composed a poem,” said Greybeard finally.
“Oh god, not that,” groaned LaFontaine. The young man’s boss wandered off, getting the shop ready for closing, telling his youthful worker that he could stay and listen to the poem if he wanted, but that the customers’ machines had to be locked away for the night before he went home.
Bands of black
Streak across
Your eyes
Frightful beauty
Tickets’ numbers
One-Two-Three
Say
You’re a cutie
Aisles of roses
Winding through
The eggs
Could not impose
Even a gate
A threshold
To you
I suppose
There was silence then. The boss who’d just left started a green John Deere garden tractor near the shop’s bay door, and this broke the quietude of the poem’s finishing. He was running the machine slowly up the ramp and into the shop. I stood by, in my tattered shorts. LaFontaine started his engine.
“Is that it?” said the young man who’d helped me with my search for a gas tank. And, as suddenly as he’d appeared, Greybeard was gone again. He was funny like that.
The other day I mucked around in the basement, dismantling yet more useless stuff down there. Away came a brick enclosure for an old potbellied stove that had been converted to gas. I’d done away with the stove long ago, so there was no reason to keep the brick thing around. I also cut away the old workbench to free up space in the little room where the furnace would take up residence. I tried to imagine the people down there, long ago, using this as a living space, enjoying the warmth of the little stove, the kids playing on the floor with their toys, maybe some carpets covering the cold, hard plastic tiles underfoot. It couldn’t have been all that nice, even back then, and the years had transitioned this place into a state of such horrible neglect that it made me sad to think that anyone once enjoyed being down there.
I ripped out the old wood paneling, revealed yet more minor termite damage underneath, piled everything out back for a trip to the waste station in the Dodge. The bricks I also loaded into the truck, made a run the next day to the place that recycles them, gave the yard girl ten bucks for the privilege of unloading this unwanted material. Yes, many of the bricks were good, were ones that I would even consider using for another project around the house—maybe a walkway. But I had enough bricks already, didn’t need more. Besides, these were strange bricks, having been painted red for some reason. The glossy red color made them look like they were gaudily dressed up for Christmas. “Christmas bricks,” I called them. I chucked them out the back of the truck, while large dump-trucks rumbled by and concrete-crushing machines ate at the loads of concrete and pavement that had been deposited there. Later, I loaded up the paneling and the cut-up workbench and offloaded the stuff at the waste station. I have the luxury of these places being within four or five miles of the house. I posted a photo of the small bench-vise I’d taken from the workbench, put it up for sale at an offering price of ten bucks. That would pay for the waste disposal fee for the bricks. Someone responded immediately, came over the next day and handed over the money, while we talked about the vise and its various attributes.
“It’s a pretty nice vise,” I said. “I just don’t need it—I already have a vise.”
The young man looking at the neglected machine, its seat missing and its cosmetic parts not winning any beauty contests, seemed doubtful of my proposition; it’s not that they didn’t sell used parts, it’s just that he felt that this mower would be fixed up and sold to someone down the line.
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he said. “See, the engine turns ok, even if the mower don’t look so hot.”
A third character arrived, having been summoned by the young man in the shop. He added to the young man’s assertion that this mower would be a good candidate for repairing and then selling.
“Without the gas tank, we’d just end up ordering a new one, and they cost about sixty bucks,” he said. I knew they were probably expensive, but didn’t know just how much they cost. In any case, this third character to our one-act play wasn’t helping my case much. Then, unexpectedly, a plot twist. A fourth man entered the scene, a man of my acquaintance, named LaFontaine. He worked at the tire shop down the road for many years, now worked someplace else. Here is what he had to say, when I made feeble noises about maybe repairing the nibbled tank on my own:
“Listen,” he said, “I’m about the cheapest guy in the world, but I’m going to tell you this: Pay whatever they want for a new tank, and move on. Leave it alone.”
I knew his words for the truth, for the path that I should follow; knew that what he’d uttered didn’t even hint at the endless frustrations, the sweat and cursing and twisted thoughts and metal and hurt and pointless fatigue that lay ahead. He didn’t need to say these things: I knew them already. We were both on the precipice, and he was trying to hold me back, to get me not to jump. But he didn’t know this: That I’d recently bought a used tank on the online forum for ten bucks—one that was intended for another machine entirely--and it was one that I could modify to fit my tractor. It would entail exactly the things I just mentioned, and many more that I can’t even imagine at the moment. Realistically, with all things falling precisely into place, with the meshing of my efforts and the materials I was working, it would take about an hour. With the catastrophes that usually befall such projects, however, it could be the better part of a whole workday. I was off the edge, already into that bewildering and mad world of tinkering that always beckons, seeing if I could somehow streamline the fitting of the ten-dollar tank to cut down on the time and the number of disasters involved. It was then that Greybeard approached, materialized as if out of nowhere.
“Squirrels been at it again?” he observed, eyeing my nibbled plastic tank dangling from the bit of fuel hose like a plaything on a string. It had been twenty-nine years since I’d seen Greybeard, had known him even before I really knew him, and now here he was. This rounded out our cast of characters: Now there was the young man from the shop, his long-haired and bestubbled boss, LaFontaine, Greybeard and of course, me. My shorts were tattered and poor-looking, having left the house in haste to arrive at the mower place on that hot Friday afternoon before closing. I hadn’t counted on Greybeard being there.
“It seems,” he said, “that one might ponder loftier pursuits than this quisquilian affair you address here in your little group.” The young mower man, of about twenty years, stared at Greybeard. His boss, divining that Greybeard somehow knew me, looked to me for a response. LaFonaine was getting on his motorcycle to leave.
“Buy a new tank,” he said.
“Wouldn’t your time be more well-spent discussing, say, Sophia Loren?”
The young mower man, his ample tee-shirt clinging to his more than ample chest, came to life, as if sparked by a sudden jolt.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
Now it was LaFontaine, who hadn’t yet started his machine, was astride the large Yamaha, listening to the final words of his leaving. He said to this to the group:
“Sophia Loren is the greatest woman to have ever lived. Period.”
I explained, for the young man’s benefit, and possibly his boss’s, that this was a screen star of unrivalled beauty, charisma, elegance and talent.
LaFontaine was still astride his machine.
“There will never be another like her,” he said. “Best goddamned actress ever.”
Greybeard was silent, taking in the most recent words. Now he spoke up.
“She certainly deserves better than to be discussed by this group of ragamuffins.”
“But you said we should be talking about Sophia Loren,” this was the young mower man with the sweaty tee-shirt. He had a valid point. Greybeard scowled, as only he could.
To ease the tension, I asked LaFontaine, who appeared to have strong feelings about this woman, what films he liked.
“I cannot name a single movie she appeared in,” he said. “I have probably not seen any.”
“Exactly! Exactly!” Came Greybeard again. “Now we are getting somewhere.” He continued, elaborating a bit: “To confine her to the boundaries of a few pictures, moments of fleeting images flashed on a brilliant screen while the hoi-polloi quaffs popcorn and Milk Duds by the bucketsful, would be to ignore the overall monument that is this woman.” He let the words sink in, while the young man, his boss, and LaFontaine and I listened. “Tell me,” he said, “Do you go before a great work of art, stand humbled in front of it, and pick it apart, as if it were some kind of machine to be dismantled?” He gestured at the abundance of machines that surrounded our impromptu stage. “Do you gaze upon the Mona Lisa and say, ‘Nice elbows,’ or ‘good job on that chin?’” He looked about, the group wanting mostly to disperse at this point. “NO!” he thundered, “You do not, you cannot! Doing so would only ignore the masterpiece, the whole work. So it goes with the woman whose name has just now passed our lips.” My gas tank dangled still by its little bit of fuel line I’d cut off—like a little umbilical cord.
“For this occasion I have composed a poem,” said Greybeard finally.
“Oh god, not that,” groaned LaFontaine. The young man’s boss wandered off, getting the shop ready for closing, telling his youthful worker that he could stay and listen to the poem if he wanted, but that the customers’ machines had to be locked away for the night before he went home.
Bands of black
Streak across
Your eyes
Frightful beauty
Tickets’ numbers
One-Two-Three
Say
You’re a cutie
Aisles of roses
Winding through
The eggs
Could not impose
Even a gate
A threshold
To you
I suppose
There was silence then. The boss who’d just left started a green John Deere garden tractor near the shop’s bay door, and this broke the quietude of the poem’s finishing. He was running the machine slowly up the ramp and into the shop. I stood by, in my tattered shorts. LaFontaine started his engine.
“Is that it?” said the young man who’d helped me with my search for a gas tank. And, as suddenly as he’d appeared, Greybeard was gone again. He was funny like that.
The other day I mucked around in the basement, dismantling yet more useless stuff down there. Away came a brick enclosure for an old potbellied stove that had been converted to gas. I’d done away with the stove long ago, so there was no reason to keep the brick thing around. I also cut away the old workbench to free up space in the little room where the furnace would take up residence. I tried to imagine the people down there, long ago, using this as a living space, enjoying the warmth of the little stove, the kids playing on the floor with their toys, maybe some carpets covering the cold, hard plastic tiles underfoot. It couldn’t have been all that nice, even back then, and the years had transitioned this place into a state of such horrible neglect that it made me sad to think that anyone once enjoyed being down there.
I ripped out the old wood paneling, revealed yet more minor termite damage underneath, piled everything out back for a trip to the waste station in the Dodge. The bricks I also loaded into the truck, made a run the next day to the place that recycles them, gave the yard girl ten bucks for the privilege of unloading this unwanted material. Yes, many of the bricks were good, were ones that I would even consider using for another project around the house—maybe a walkway. But I had enough bricks already, didn’t need more. Besides, these were strange bricks, having been painted red for some reason. The glossy red color made them look like they were gaudily dressed up for Christmas. “Christmas bricks,” I called them. I chucked them out the back of the truck, while large dump-trucks rumbled by and concrete-crushing machines ate at the loads of concrete and pavement that had been deposited there. Later, I loaded up the paneling and the cut-up workbench and offloaded the stuff at the waste station. I have the luxury of these places being within four or five miles of the house. I posted a photo of the small bench-vise I’d taken from the workbench, put it up for sale at an offering price of ten bucks. That would pay for the waste disposal fee for the bricks. Someone responded immediately, came over the next day and handed over the money, while we talked about the vise and its various attributes.
“It’s a pretty nice vise,” I said. “I just don’t need it—I already have a vise.”
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
"It's a DELUGE!"
I ran my hand across the bent and crumpled metal, the large tanker not having moved in thirty-six years, lying along the now-placid river where it had been deposited all that time ago. It looked much like a twisted and smashed beer can. Now on its side, with pieces of trees having casually dropped onto it, there was still lettering visible. It had carried oil or gasoline—some kind of fuel that people used to heat or make things go. The park’s visitors had taken their toll on the heavy piece of metal, as people will do: They’d tried to tear at it, yank it apart, use whatever puny destructive power they had available, but to no avail. The thing would not budge; it had been a heavy tanker truck and still was heavy—although its trucking days were long gone.
I remember that night when the rains came and wouldn’t stop. My mother had gotten someone on the phone and was frantically describing what was happening.
“It’s a DELUGE!” I remember her saying, over and over, to the unfortunate official who’d had the bad luck to pick up the phone that night. Yes, it was a deluge, but it’s not as if it were raining only at our house. The local official on the other end of the old-fashioned rotary-dial phone stayed on the line, listened to my mother’s repeated descriptions of what was happening outside. All over—including no doubt at his location—the rain and wind were relentless. Out front the creek had risen, had taken big bites out of our driveway, then had started on the little bridge that crossed it. Taking everything way too personally, the young boy that was me had had enough, went to bed as much of the state became submerged. Only less than a mile away, the river was taking what it wanted, whatever it could get hold of. Whole houses were swept away, never to be found again, cars and trucks and whole eighteen-wheelers were gushed down the angry torrent like sticks in a fast-moving stream. The neighboring town, which straddled the scenic river, got mired in muck up to its second-story windows—with everything in the homes and businesses ruined. A few days later we would go out, us kids, and see what havoc that night had wrought. With the muddy water receded, we marveled at the cars and other vehicles poking out from unlikely places; we picked through the cheap toys that sold for about a buck in the stores, but now gaped from a loaded semi-trailer washed up on the banks of the river. These things were not interesting enough to go out and buy, being mostly novelty items you see hanging from hooks in the grocery store, but the fact that they were there and free was the most marvelous thing. I loaded up on the most useless junk: Plastic pop-guns, little toy horns, other things wrapped in cheap cardboard and plastic, and greedily slogged through the mud with my looted treasures. I was not aware at the time that there was such a demand for these items, but my recollection is that the whole truck—measuring about forty feet in length—was jam-packed with these things.
On this day, with the river quiet, the crumpled metal of the tanker was a reminder of that time—a giant key-chain souvenir of the catastrophic flood—but one that would stay always in the gift shop, never to be moved. You could go and visit it, but don’t try to buy it or take it away. I’d gotten on my bike for the first time this season, rode leisurely to this location, saw the big thing in the woods. I hadn’t stopped in to look at it in years, so I paused for a few minutes in the shade, with my bike plopped over in the weeds. The river at this location had had an indescribable fury, had probably been witnessed by no one, as even the railroad tracks—which were quite high above the river banks--were torn away at and ended up sagging down the embankment from up high. Even up there, about thirty feet above the river’s normal level, you weren’t safe.
The only thing threatening me this day was a group of geese that had set up shop along the river. They were banded there, with their growing goslings still downy with the fine feathers that make them look a little bald. As I rode past, one of the larger adults reared back his long neck, made as if to peck at me. I know from experience that these geese can be formidable opponents, not hesitating in the least to make aggressive moves towards unwelcome visitors or passersby. Get too close and they will beak you something fierce. I gave the big Canadian wide berth, thought to throw out some words about his being in my country now and maybe he should mind his manners, but he didn’t seem to want to hear it. I rode on.
I need to buy a special saw for the home improvement work that continues at a snail’s pace. There is much to be done, even without this saw, but I’ve used the lack of a miter-saw or “chop-saw” to halt all activities over there. I’ll head over tomorrow to see what can be done. It’s likely I’ll find something to putter away at. The hedge that was once over at the side of my house is gone completely; the trash people came and hauled away my many bundles of twigs, branches and hedge clippings on the designated yard waste day. It was voluminous. But there is still more that I hadn’t bundled up then, but that is now ready for taking away. Yet more bundles, waiting for the next “weed pickup,” as the half-wit refers to it. She and the band of folks who wander about over there never avail themselves of the recycling services—no cans or bottles are ever set out, no cardboard or newspapers or anything else for that matter. It all goes in the trash.
“You should put something out for the weed pickup,” I say to her. “They’ll take yore weeds and it don’t cost nothin.’”
I remember that night when the rains came and wouldn’t stop. My mother had gotten someone on the phone and was frantically describing what was happening.
“It’s a DELUGE!” I remember her saying, over and over, to the unfortunate official who’d had the bad luck to pick up the phone that night. Yes, it was a deluge, but it’s not as if it were raining only at our house. The local official on the other end of the old-fashioned rotary-dial phone stayed on the line, listened to my mother’s repeated descriptions of what was happening outside. All over—including no doubt at his location—the rain and wind were relentless. Out front the creek had risen, had taken big bites out of our driveway, then had started on the little bridge that crossed it. Taking everything way too personally, the young boy that was me had had enough, went to bed as much of the state became submerged. Only less than a mile away, the river was taking what it wanted, whatever it could get hold of. Whole houses were swept away, never to be found again, cars and trucks and whole eighteen-wheelers were gushed down the angry torrent like sticks in a fast-moving stream. The neighboring town, which straddled the scenic river, got mired in muck up to its second-story windows—with everything in the homes and businesses ruined. A few days later we would go out, us kids, and see what havoc that night had wrought. With the muddy water receded, we marveled at the cars and other vehicles poking out from unlikely places; we picked through the cheap toys that sold for about a buck in the stores, but now gaped from a loaded semi-trailer washed up on the banks of the river. These things were not interesting enough to go out and buy, being mostly novelty items you see hanging from hooks in the grocery store, but the fact that they were there and free was the most marvelous thing. I loaded up on the most useless junk: Plastic pop-guns, little toy horns, other things wrapped in cheap cardboard and plastic, and greedily slogged through the mud with my looted treasures. I was not aware at the time that there was such a demand for these items, but my recollection is that the whole truck—measuring about forty feet in length—was jam-packed with these things.
On this day, with the river quiet, the crumpled metal of the tanker was a reminder of that time—a giant key-chain souvenir of the catastrophic flood—but one that would stay always in the gift shop, never to be moved. You could go and visit it, but don’t try to buy it or take it away. I’d gotten on my bike for the first time this season, rode leisurely to this location, saw the big thing in the woods. I hadn’t stopped in to look at it in years, so I paused for a few minutes in the shade, with my bike plopped over in the weeds. The river at this location had had an indescribable fury, had probably been witnessed by no one, as even the railroad tracks—which were quite high above the river banks--were torn away at and ended up sagging down the embankment from up high. Even up there, about thirty feet above the river’s normal level, you weren’t safe.
The only thing threatening me this day was a group of geese that had set up shop along the river. They were banded there, with their growing goslings still downy with the fine feathers that make them look a little bald. As I rode past, one of the larger adults reared back his long neck, made as if to peck at me. I know from experience that these geese can be formidable opponents, not hesitating in the least to make aggressive moves towards unwelcome visitors or passersby. Get too close and they will beak you something fierce. I gave the big Canadian wide berth, thought to throw out some words about his being in my country now and maybe he should mind his manners, but he didn’t seem to want to hear it. I rode on.
I need to buy a special saw for the home improvement work that continues at a snail’s pace. There is much to be done, even without this saw, but I’ve used the lack of a miter-saw or “chop-saw” to halt all activities over there. I’ll head over tomorrow to see what can be done. It’s likely I’ll find something to putter away at. The hedge that was once over at the side of my house is gone completely; the trash people came and hauled away my many bundles of twigs, branches and hedge clippings on the designated yard waste day. It was voluminous. But there is still more that I hadn’t bundled up then, but that is now ready for taking away. Yet more bundles, waiting for the next “weed pickup,” as the half-wit refers to it. She and the band of folks who wander about over there never avail themselves of the recycling services—no cans or bottles are ever set out, no cardboard or newspapers or anything else for that matter. It all goes in the trash.
“You should put something out for the weed pickup,” I say to her. “They’ll take yore weeds and it don’t cost nothin.’”
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