Trunk Full of Beer Cans: Des Moines 1975

I was seventeen, maybe eighteen, still in high school and working at Yonkers at the Merle Hay Mall. I could walk to work from my house (my parents' house) in Urbandale. I worked in the stock room and the loading dock and hadn't been there long before there was a trucker's strike--the truckers picketed behind the dock but I was not the brightest of kids and didn't really understand fully what was going on, even though they called me a scab and put a knife to the tires of the people who tried to keep the goods moving. (Later I was decent friends with most of the truckers.) Anyway, there were a number of men who wore suits that were in charge in some capacity at Yonkers, and they were ferrying things back and forth between stores in Des Moines. One such suit was a guy--nice guy but not my direct boss--who only had one arm. He came and got me and needed help moving some stuff into his car, which was parked out back on the sloping concrete that led to the dock. So I got the boxes or what-have-you and went with him to his car and he popped the trunk and it was full of empty beer cans. I mean completely full. Cans came clattering out as soon as the trunk went up and he quickly gathered them and then closed the trunk. I don't recall what kind of beer it was--not Budweiser or Miller, but of that ilk--but they were all the same brand. I mean, that trunk was chock full of emptied cans. The guy, this one-armed suit guy--he was clearly embarrassed, but I was savvy enough to say nothing, to pretend as though it was normal to have your trunk stuffed with beer cans.

Ants: Fort Lauderdale 2015

So, when I visit Fort Lauderdale--really, my home town in many ways, along with Vancouver, WA and Des Moines, IA--I stay at Billy's. I always take the back, corner room in his house. I love his house, though I suppose some people would not. Anyway. There are two windows in the room that I like to open--unless it is summer--and there are tiled "shelves" at each window. There is an outlet along the bed, which is pushed up against the wall near both windows. I plug in my phone there. I put the phone on the inner windowsill of the north-facing window. I place my glasses, at night, there also.

And when I wake up, I put on my glasses. And I always see little doglike things running across them. Ants. Tiny ants that have their run around Billy's house. And I have to clean them off. And, my phone. Little see-through ants--mini-wiggly-furious-leg-moving-insects are running across its screen.

Everyday.

Thank goodness.

The Ox: Missoula 1990

So I'm thinking of The Ox. In Missoula. Montana. That's The Oxford downtown--liquor, food and poker. And what I'm recalling are late nights, post drinking at Charlie B's and such. Stopping in The Ox for a final beer and an order of Chicken Fried Steak with Lone Star Gravy. Sitting at the counter with friends, crowded, the cook busy busy busy, the people smoking, probably us smoking, the noise of the poker games behind us, the tables full of others, the regular bar down the way full of drinkers. Noise and fried food, smoke and keno games. It would take forever to get your food. Some people would give up. But when you ate it?

The Ox. In Missoula.

Montana.

Childhood Lunches: Vancouver

I've always liked lunch--my favorite meal. I'm not certain why that is, other than I like the informality of it, the noon hour, the foods associated with lunch. Sandwiches, burgers, soups and salads and such . . . But what I'm thinking of, along with lunch, is of my mother. Of my childhood with my brothers and sister, friends and places (South Dakota, Washington, Tennessee (not so much Iowa and beyond)).

I think it was in Vancouver, Washington where most of my notion of childhood lunches comes from, from things my mother used to prepare. I was in school then, so mainly I'm thinking summer lunches, which were the usual fare: peanut butter and jelly, cold cut sandwiches, tuna salad, spaghetti from a can (Franco American), hot dogs. Nothing special, really. My mother did make one dish--Tuna Stuff Over Noodles, we called it--which was essentially creamed tuna over chow mien noodles. I loved it, though, and still make it to this day now and then. And then we had salmon from a can.

That seems strange to me now, that we, as kids, ate salmon. From a can. Sure, living in the Pacific Northwest we had salmon--my dad would grill salmon steaks now and then. But I can't recall being crazy about them. But we all liked salmon from a can (though now I doubt I would, and it--salmon from a can--has not translated to my adulthood like Tuna Stuff Over Noodles has). I think she made salmon salad or other easy concoctions from the salmon--I don't recall exactly. (Oh yes--Salmon Patties: canned salmon mixed with cracker crumbs and eggs and fried with butter and salt!) But what I recall especially is that we kids would squabble over the bone amongst the flesh in the can.

Again, I don't recall why we liked the bone. It was just a soft, very white ring of a bone that got mixed up in the canning. There was always at least one, sometimes two inside. I'm guessing it was a vertebrae-type bone, small and easy to bite through. I guess we didn't really squabble, but it was just something my mother would ask: "Who wants the bone?" It's sort of like who got the salmon patty (or tuna patty, which eclipsed the salmon eventually) that was in the middle of the pan--the one that was always fried the crispest.

Nowadays, I suppose, I wouldn't much care to eat a salmon bone in a can. Or even the canned salmon itself.

I've had the real stuff. And I like wild salmon very much.

Okay. That's it. A salmon bone from my childhood.

The Bearded Arctic Seal: Ft. Lauderdale 2007

I was working as a bridge tender on Las Olas Boulevard, above the Intracoastal and near the beach. I'd been there for quite a while by the time I saw the Bearded Arctic seal.

It was evening--my regular hours, if I remember right, were 4pm to 11pm--and I looked down in the waters below me and saw something swimming. This thing was big, dark colored, and it would come up and down out of the water. It looked like a manatee that swam like a dolphin. It didn't really look completely like a manatee, but I could not figure out what else it possibly could be in South Florida.

At my bridge the dinner cruise boats would pass through each night--ah, what were their names, names like Celebration, Carrie B, others of varying sizes (and dispositions of their captains). One of the those vessels called in (as required) to pass through the bridge and I told the captain that there was a manatee in the waters and he acknowledged that and said he'd be on the look out. I hadn't seen the "manatee" for a little while, though they were creatures who didn't travel very far very fast. And after I raised the bridge and the party boat passed, I didn't think much of it--other than it was a strange-looking manatee that I had seen.

And then, later in the week, it hit me.

That had been no manatee. That was a Bearded Arctic seal.

Now, I didn't come up with this revelation all on my own, out of nowhere, out of the blue, from the recesses of my mind. No. In the newspaper and on the television, there had been reports about a Bearded Arctic seal that had swam way, way, way too far south and was in Florida waters. In fact, they were trying to catch it because it wouldn't survive in the warm waters.

So, I put two and two together and realized that that was what I had seen. Even when I first saw it I had thought: a seal! But I'd never known South Florida to have seals. That's why I had dismissed it and gone with my manatee theory.

But, yes, I saw the lost Bearded Arctic seal.

And, by the next week, it had died.

Senior Year: Urbandale 1976

I disliked high school. Disliked it very much. The thing is, I had friends--good ones, close ones. I played football. I had fun times. I had good teachers and even enjoyed learning (despite myself)--was even, somewhat, close to a handful of teachers (Mrs. Lien for sure, Mr. York, Mr. Cedarquist, others). I also skipped a lot of days all through high school. I also hated it at times. I never quite felt that I belonged. certainly I was not among any particular group or clique--not a jock or a smacker or a nerd or, I don't know, not even an outcast--just one of the nameless numbers of people who filled up the roster of Urbandale High in the 1970s. It really wasn't that bad. Maybe I just hated myself, really, more than I hated high school. maybe not.

All I know was that by my senior year, I was ready for a change.

I quit football that year. Instead I went to work after school--Yonkers department store at the Merle Hay Mall, the stockroom. I quit my friends for the most part as well. Oh, I still saw them around, my regular group of pals, but I did less and less with them and shut myself off as time went on. I'm not sure they really noticed--they had their own lives and senior years to contend with after all . . . I was on the outs with Bob Mauk, who lived a few houses down from me and had been my first friend when we moved into the house on 65th Street (moving up from Tennessee). My best friend at the time was Kevin O'Malia, but he was in the class above ours and had graduated. I think I still hung out with him at times. I made new friends at work (Jim, Cisco, Mark, Lobsinger and more) and started to hang around with them a bit and also hung out with some new people from school--Dennis, Stokes, others--but only rather half heartedly.

A lot of the time I just hung out with myself.

I sold off my little TV that I'd had in my room. I began reading more--novels, politics. I began to take my writing more seriously and worked on it, refined it, explored it. I was sad a lot. depressed. Self-pitying, no doubt. I just wanted to get away from Iowa, from Urbandale in particular. I yearned for something more, for somewhere exotic or visually intoxicating: tropical islands, Greece, Africa, the mountain states of the West. I was frustrated. Ironically, I was doing much better at school--my grades vastly improved junior and senior years--mainly just because I found that I liked to learn.

So, senior year was one of change, of self-assesment, of desire for more. And I tried to bring that change about, even if I didn't quite know how. I was lonely yet relished that solitude. Felt sorry for myself, yet was also determined not to be like my fellow Urbandalites. Urbandalians? Urbandaleese? And really, I forged a life outside of and separate from high school my senior year. Tried new things. Came to understand myself better and, really, found a pathway that allowed me to continue, to find some value in myself.

But, eventually, before graduation, I came back to my main set of friends. I'd known them for most of my years in school. They were good guys (and they were guys all--their were few girls involved in my school days (and no doubt that had something to do with my misery)). But I reconnected with my group of friends--Larry, Dave, Bill, Randy, Jim, Bob and some others who came and went within that core circle. And later--in the years to come--I achieved some of my desires. Found, to a certain degree, what I was looking for.

But by the spring of 1976, I was back in the fold. I was with my pals . . . Like I said, I don't think they even knew I was gone.

Lonely Day: Seagrove Beach 1987

This was when I returned to the Florida panhandle for the last time. I had been back and forth to that place--South Walton County, Grayton Beach, Seagrove, Seaside, Gulf Trace, you name it--since the late summer of 1985. In that short span, I'd come to Grayton from Los Angeles, then left when things closed up for the winter, then returned in the spring instead of going to Oregon like I'd planned, then left in the fall to attend the Iowa Writers Workshop, then came back after quitting the Iowa Writers Workshop to live with teresa on the beach, then left for Seattle after quitting Teresa on the beach, then returned late summer because I could think of no where else to go.

When I came back that last time, I lived with Brad for a while. He had a place on 30-A, east of Seagrove Beach with an extra bedroom and I slept there while I looked for work. Brad, whom I had met through the job at the Paradise Cafe, was a nice guy. Funny, smiling, good-hearted and generous (yes, sometimes to a fault). I always got the sense that, inside himself, there was something to be wary about--a mean streak or simmering violence--but I had no evidence of it and, compared to anyone else in my circle (including myself) he was as nice as they come. Anyway, Brad put me up until I found work and then I moved in with Dave--whom I did not know very well--in Seagrove and then I found new work as a painter in Seaside.

Though I lived with dave, he was rarely there and he lived upstairs while I occupied the downstairs and so I essentially lived alone. Most of my friends from a year or two ago had moved on--went back to Pensacola or lived in other areas of the county or coast and had other jobs in their lives. I had yet to meet Mike and Jimmy (who would become my friends for that time period) and sometimes the lonliness would get to me.

I had my car--the much maligned powder blue Maverick--and so I could get around when I wanted to. But my problem was, I had really nowhere especially to go.

Okay--cut to the chase:

So, I was out one day, being sad and lonely, and I decided to see who was around. Now, Brad was still around and Brad's love-in-his-life was Mary. I knew Mary, but had never known her all that well. But, I did know where she lived, which was in a trailer off one of the many red dirt roads between 30-A and the bay (Choctawhatchee Bay). My understanding was that Brad and Mary had a sometimes volatile relationship (which must be where I got the sense that Brad could have something explosive within him--despite the lack of any empirical evidence; that and also the fact that his father was in prison). Anyway, I'm getting off track. Brad and Mary were sweet lovers.

So, I pulled my ugly car up into the grass at Mary's trailer, saw that her car was there. Brad's car was there. In those days, not all that many people lived in South Walton County. (Nowadays it's packed with humanoids.) You knew people by their vehicles. So, I knew they were there.

Now, I don't recall if I got out and knocked on the door, or if I just honked my horn. I do remember that I sat there in my car after trying to get them to come out. I don't know. I was bored. Lonely. I need to talk to someone, I guess. But I just sat there after a number of tries to see them. Either they weren't home or--more likely, more obviously--they wanted to be alone.

So, I continued to sit there in my car, looking out the windshield at the trailer. Waiting for what? I'm not sure, really. I mean, by now it was obvious even to me that they didn't want to come out. That they hoped I'd just leave. I knew this. Yet, I couldn't quite bring myself to put it in reverse and drive off. Again, I was lonely. So, there I sat. Doing nada. Looking. And that's when I saw the back curtain move.

Oh, it's pretty terrible--on a very small scale--but i was glad to see that curtain move.

I knew I was intruding. But I saw the curtain and then I saw Brad's face, Mary's eyes. They were checking to see if I had gone. But, like a troll, I was still there. And they knew that I had seen them.

So what could they do? They were nice people. Polite Southerners. So, they came out the door and invited me to talk to them. Or, maybe I waved to them and got out of my car. Either way, I got out and we chatted. I don't know if they invited me inside or what--can't recall. But we had a nice chat as people down there were wont to do. And then I left.

And that was it. I felt kind of badly--interrupting them, catching them hiding from me, or forcing them to acknowledge me. I was self-aware of what i was doing as I sat in my car, aware of what i had done, yet I couldn't bring myself to extricate myself from it. I was bad. Though it was a small thing. But in knowing this small thing, it let me know how pitiful I was becoming. I was the unwanted pest, it said. Pariah. Though, really, I don't think I was a pest. I doubt Brad and Mary saw me that way--they just wanted to be alone. Still, it was my self-knowledge while I sat there that gets to me--just a little bit. I laugh at it, too. No, not a pariah. Maybe not even a pest. Except maybe a little bit on that lonely day.