Smelling The Ocean: Fort Lauderdale 1996

When we first moved to Fort Lauderdale, we lived at the Riverside Hotel. It was downtown, on Las Olas, and Fru's job paid for it. Next door to the hotel was a small Lebanese restaurant. I liked what they made. The owner--Lebanese--ran the place and I talked to him a bit. He was the one who directed me to Victoria Park as a place to find a home.

So, we rented in Victoria Park for one year before we bought a house in the River Oaks neighborhood..

My two girls were very little--had just turned five and three. When we moved to the rental on 10th Street in Victoria Park, I often drove Fru to work downtown--which was not far away. The girls would come with us. And after we dropped Fru off at work, I'd just head straight down Las Olas to the ocean.

This was summer. It was hot. Yes: HOT. Humid. But when we got to the beach and I drove down the road there (A1A), I rolled down all the windows. The Atlantic was to our left and I always said to the girls: "Smell the ocean."

My Job At The Original Pancake House: Champaign, 1990

When Fru and I moved back from Montana and I needed a job, I applied to be a cook at The Original Pancake House.

I got the job.

When I showed up for the job, I filled out some paperwork, stood around the kitchen where a woman was using a huge mixer. I said something to her; got a curt response. Then the manager came and took me out front and showed me how they bussed tables.

I worked my shift.

The next day I called their office and said I quit. They asked why and I said I was supposed to be a cook.

I found a landscaping job.

Still Here

I was living in Florida but am no longer there. This year I revisited New Orleans and Santa Fe and The Great Sand Dunes of southern Colorado. I've been to Des Moines and Iowa City, to Milwaukee and Chicago numerous times. Montreal and Quebec City, Baie-Saint-John. Las Vegas! Denver and Albuquerque. Tallahassee. Was in San Francisco less than a year ago, Ft. Lauderdale, Seattle--Pacific City, Bend, Oregon--and Missoula a little more than a year ago. Riggins, Idaho; Spokane.

Places.

I come and go and they remain and ultimately who cares--except me.

Bird With A Broken Neck: Key West 2001

This was about a month or more after the terrorist attacks of nine eleven and Fru and I and our two daughters went to Key West. Fru's father and his wife flew down (on a near empty plane) from Illinois and met us there. We stayed at the Casa Marina, which is an old hotel on the Atlantic side of the island (north or east or northeast--like New Orleans, I always get my compass points turned around on the island). I think it may have been one of Flagler's luxury hotels . . .So, we had a nice room on the second or third floor, though the window looked out on a lower roof and the air conditioning hardware upon it, as well as the street and the palms etc etc...But on that roof were some pigeons. No big deal, the grey/white birds were hanging out like pigeons do all over the world, whether Queens or St. Peter's Square or downtown Flagstaff or the Casa Marina roof in Key West. But, I noticed that first day, there was one pigeon that  just sat on the roof edge with its head bowed down. Okay. Didn't think much of it. But, But, when we returned to the room much later that first day, that same pigeon was there in the same position.

We stayed two, maybe three nights. Had fun. The girls were young then--not little but very young--Fru and I were young though we didn't know it. Yet each time I looked out the window that pigeon was there with his head bent down and I came to realize that his neck was broken. he couldn't fly or eat or do much of anything. He was just sitting there, in the shade, in the hot sun, in the night, waiting to die. Starving to death. Okay. What can I do?I'm no bird surgeon--bird bone doctor specializing in pigeons. We were ready to leave, drive back up to Fort lauderdale with Fru's father and step-mother in tow. Bye bye.

but I haven't forgotten it. It's not like I dwell or am overtly disturbed by the memory of the pigeon with the broken neck waiting to die, but it still comes to me now and then. Always--as you might imagine--in an unfavorable light. Subtly unsettling. Nature is tough and cruel and doesn't play favorites. So it goes, as Vonnegut would say. Still . . . My own father had died that year and I've always had a soft spot for animals, for suffering. I don't know. Not a big deal, really.

The reason why I thought of it was that I was walking my dog today in the cold of Clark Park here in this town--where I currently live--and I saw two big black crows playing with something and then I saw that that something was a smaller bird. One crow was carrying it around by its foot. I couldn't figure it out--the crow carried it and dropped it and nudged it around then carried it again and dropped it and son on. I went to investigate and as I neared the crow tried to fly away with the bird--a starling, obviously still alive--but it was too heavy and he/she dropped it. I went to it while the crows sat in the leafless tree above me and cawed. The starling (and I have no affection for starlings, really--more affection for crows) was crying and moving but could not walk. I had gloves on and I picked it up and it cried and its heart beat faster than a bird's usually beats and it tried to grip my fingers with its claws. Its neck was broken. It could not fly. I carried it a ways, away from the tree and the crows--though the crows watched and flew/followed me--but I didn't know what I was going to do with it. I though the humane thing would be to kill it. I made sure that it was too injured to live and I placed it on the ground at the base of another tree and I went and got a stick which I broke; took up the heavy end and took it back to the bird which was flapping and rolling on the frozen ground and in the leftover snow. The crows were watching. But, I couldn't do it. Wasn't going to smash its little birdbrains in. So, what's to be done? . . . Leave it for the crows.

Nature really is cruel.

Missouri Rules

 I haven't posted anything on this blog for over a year. I've been busy and not busy. I moved--twice, essentially. I had certain rules of engagement for this blog, a certain code, but now . . . whatever. I'm invoking Missouri Rules, which in essence means all the rules are breakable. Now, the main rule I'm thinking about is that I was slowly making my way through each decade--not in chronological order, mind you, but I tried to concentrate on one decade for nine months while also writing about only the one I had already written about (for nine months). But, no more of that. I'll still try to title posts in time and place, but not try so hard . . . Missouri Rules.

Now, I'm not particularly fond of Missouri, as far as states go. Sure, it's nice enough, has some decent history (Mark Twain, Gateway to The West) and a decent city: St. Louis. I've been in teh state a bit, to the Johnston Shut-Ins and the Lake of the Ozarks as well as Marysville and St. Louis and Kansas City and others, still, I mean, it's Missouri . . . It was Brock and Matt who used the term Missouri Rules--maybe from Brock--and I'm not sure of its origin. I recall it best when I left north Florida in 1987 and drove by myself to Seattle (via Los Angeles) and showed up to stay with them at the apartment on 1st Avenue West in Queen Anne. It turns out they had been having a no-smoking contest going on for months--putting money in a kitty that would normally go to cigarettes, any extra money if they broke down and had one. I think drinking had been kept under wraps as well . . . So, I show up and   !!KAPOW!!   that's the end of that. Brock invoked Missouri Rules and we went out to the bars and drank and smoked and smoked and drank. So, that's Missouri Rules.

I'm not going to drink and smoke, just write. I don't know how often or about what--other than it will continue to be my memories, boring or self-importnat or what. mainly it's just a chronicle of memories in whatever way I can remember them, or care to remember them. It's just an attempt to put it down in easy, truncated fashion. I may even change the name of this down the road, but for now, Combustible Turnip is revived...

Jimmy West's Hands: Johnson City 1969

Jimmy West was the only guy I knew in both Jonesborough and Johnson City. (We didn't really live IN Johnson City, but outside of town in a small development off Antioch Road, among the walnut trees and the tobacco farms.) He was a country boy, Tennessee style. And what I recall is a time in, I think, 6th Grade, when he had come to the county school--Cherokee Elementary--and he knew me so we hung out a bit, and I noticed his hands. His hands were--and this is a 12 or 13 year old boy--they were are gnarled and dry and full of deep creases. And I asked him about them and he confessed that the skin hurt but he didn't know what to do about it. I said, simply and quickly, put some lotion on them. He looked at me. He said that was what a girl would do. I looked at him, shrugged, saying So What and Who Cares. And he seemed to appreciate that wordless response.

Even in the small world of 6th Grade, I only saw Jimmy in the school now and then. I don't think he was in my classroom. But later I sat at lunch with him and he showed me his hands. They were no longer gnarled. They were smooth and looked like regular, comfortable hands. He told me he'd used lotion. I was glad for him.

But what this says to me is how people will harm themselves sometimes, or will follow ides or norm to their detriment, unless someone else says, C'mon, who cares. I was never a kid with a whole lot of insight, at least the practical kind, but I'm glad Jimmy realized that you don't have to give in to what other people think.

Now that I think of it, Jimmy and I had a certain intimacy because in Jonesborough he had contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. H had squeezed a tick off his dog and contracted it. He was out of school for months and--I don't know why or how--he called me on the phone a few times. I talked to him, talked for maybe an hour or less at a time, and this seemed to be meaningful to him. I can't say that's what I thought at the time, that Jimmy needed some other kid to talk to, but it's what I think now. And I guess I see the hand lotion thing in the same vein. And I think I took pleasure in being nice, or in being helpful in some fashion.

July Fourth: Ft. Lauderdale 2002

When I think of the Fourth I mainly think of Vancouver, Washington in the early to mid Sixties: Going with my older brothers up the street and around to where the little fireworks stand was, Washington an early state banning anything extreme, and getting all those snakes, poppers, Smokey Joes Cabin, sparklers, roman candles and firey cones, Piccolo Petes==loud whistling little black things that we learned if you pinched its base with pliers it would explode at the end--and those soldiers with parachutes that shot up in the air. Simple things but great enjoyment. I don't recall much of July Fourth in South Dakota. I know we celebrated, I knew of sparklers and snakes and cones but I cannot recall a specific thing about the Fourth from Sioux Falls. The same goes for Tennessee: don't really remember. Iowa, sure. I recall July Fourths in Urbandale clearly, both with family (climbing up on the roof of the house to see the suburb city fireworks) and with my pals of high school (going to Lions Park with blankets, meeting up with girls). Of course there was that Fourth in Iowa City where we all got drunker than drunk and drove around in Matt's Uncle's big work truck dumping trash around the city . . . And Fourths in other places, from Santa Fe to Missoula to Grayton Beach.

But I'm thinking of a Fourth in Fort Lauderdale, me and my wife and my kids in the only house I've ever owned. Neighbors were there with us--Billy, Michele and Silvio and Alana, maybe Abdul, maybe Marge, Cheryl and Denny were there, maybe Andy and Lisa and Dakota. I had gone to Neptune Fireworks and bought a bunch of stuff. In Florida the big bad fireworks are illegal, yet, just down US 1 in Dania Beach, there's a year-round fireworks store that sells all the illegals. Some loophole or another. That's Florida. So I had that good stuff and we had a party and everyone was happy and pleasant and excited to see the things I shot off outr in the street.

I don't really know if it was 2002. I don't know who all was there or that it was only one specific Fourth (I bought stuff from Neptune many Fourths in a row) and had a number of parties on that day. I do know it was before my wife became ill and my daughter also and we were all laughing and together and more or less happy.