The Class of 1989/90 Reunion was in February, but I guess I never hit "Publish Post" on this. 'Bout time!
I was pretty surprised that Michelle was willing to drive all the way out to my parents' house to practice our songs for the Reunion. Even in high school - that can't have been 20 years ago already, can it? - we lived pretty far off the beaten path, but after I left for the Air Force, mom and dad bought property even further out, nearly to Wickenburg, and added a good 25 miles to their already lengthy commutes.
But Michelle said she was used to driving all over the Valley of the Sun for her job, and didn't mind. So there we were, playing music and talking about old times and recent times, and about our apprehensions of the Reunion itself. Would we remember the people who showed up? Would they remember us? Fondly? Would our best friends be there, or would they be stuck in far-flung corners of the world?
We needn't have worried.
Even 10 years ago, documenting this would have been more difficult; putting memories down in a blog or sharing pictures on Facebook would have been either unheard of, or at least uncommon. But now, roaming through a hotel ballroom full of not-so-distant strangers is a matter of recognition more than anything; how much do they resemble their profile picture? And can you read their nametag in the dim light? Most of the ice-breaking has already happened online, after all.
So, for me at least, the evening was a stream of people who looked a lot like the parents of the kids I knew in high school, walking around, being happy to see each other. They seemed to enjoy our singing, even though the PA system we had wasn't quite up to the task of filling the room, and they seemed to appreciate our effort.
I'm still not very good at capturing details, of course. I can't tell you who all I talked to - I could try, but I would forget too many names at this point - and I can't tell you who we talked about and caught up on. I can tell you there were a few missing who are no longer with us, and a few I never would have expected to make it this far (and I'm glad you did!), and I can tell you that the overall impression I had was a joyful one.
In a lot of ways, we haven't changed. The patterns of who talked to whom, who got silly-drunk and who withdrew early, the inevitable comparisons of work/hobbies, family, successes and failures; that all stays the same. But because perspectives have shifted, I saw something reassuring in all of it. I saw a truth unfold at my 20 year high school reunion that I barely dared hope would be true all those years ago.
We really are "okay".
Showing posts with label Arizona. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arizona. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Sunday, December 7, 2008
When Things Got Serious
reposting in honor of Pearl Harbor Day
Bobby had enlisted in the Army in his hometown of Winter Park, Florida.
He did well in training, and ended up applying for a special school, hoping to become a pilot. The Army being the Army, he had to agree to taking a bunch of tests and special classes to qualify, and there was a pretty good chance he wouldn't be selected for pilot school... but he decided to go for it.
The specialty training include aircraft engine mechanic courses at Luke Field, located southwest of Phoenix, Arizona. The class was difficult, but Bobby was smart, and he didn't spend a lot of time and energy getting wasted after hours and on weekends, like some of his friends did. He preferred spending time at a church he had found. A church that hosted "mixers" on Friday and Saturday nights. Church mixers that had girls at them.
That is where he met Nancy.
Bobby and Nancy went out a few times, usually with Nancy's best friend -- whose name was Bobbe! -- and one of her boyfriends. Nancy was only 17, but Bob (it was too confusing having two "Bobbies") had also met her parents at the church, and they trusted him. Bob had even been to their house for Sunday dinner a few times.
Things were going just swell (his words, not mine). Bob and Nancy liked each other quite a lot, but she was still in high school. And being in training for the Army, he didn't know for sure where he would end up next. It was technically peacetime, but the Army was building up. There was talk of the trouble across the Atlantic, even though most Americans thought it was best to stay out of it.
They decided not to worry about it, and to take their time. It was a mature decision. And then Bob was selected for a special class he in California. He would be back after a few weeks, but maybe this meant he would get to learn to fly! So, he said goodbye to Nancy and promised to write to her often.
Not long after that, America was attacked, and everything changed.
There was confusion; there was fear. There were a lot of things happening all at once. Nancy's letters to Bob were frantic; she didn't know where he was, or if the rumors were true that California was next. She hadn't heard from her brother, a Technical Sergeant stationed in the Philippines. All she knew was that she loved Bob, missed him fiercely, and wanted him to be back safe with her.
By the time Bob managed to get a letter through, things had calmed somewhat. People at least knew the basics: the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor; the U.S. had declared war. The West Coast was not under attack. Nancy's brother, Richard, was safe for the time being, though he would be wounded in a sniper attack and end up the war as a guard at the POW camp in Papago, AZ.
Bob had also been turned down for officer training and pilot school. But this would turn out to be good news, because, as a high-scoring mechanic, Bob would spend the rest of the war at Luke Field, maintaining the trainers for the pilots of the P-38's.
And so, on the 28th of June, 1942, Bob and Nancy were married.
You could argue that without December 7, 1941, they might not have decided to wed. It's possible that without the shock of war, and the fear of losing each other, they might have drifted away and only been pen pals. But some things are meant to happen. After all, Bob did eventually learn to fly.
But that's another story altogether...
Bobby had enlisted in the Army in his hometown of Winter Park, Florida.
He did well in training, and ended up applying for a special school, hoping to become a pilot. The Army being the Army, he had to agree to taking a bunch of tests and special classes to qualify, and there was a pretty good chance he wouldn't be selected for pilot school... but he decided to go for it.
The specialty training include aircraft engine mechanic courses at Luke Field, located southwest of Phoenix, Arizona. The class was difficult, but Bobby was smart, and he didn't spend a lot of time and energy getting wasted after hours and on weekends, like some of his friends did. He preferred spending time at a church he had found. A church that hosted "mixers" on Friday and Saturday nights. Church mixers that had girls at them.
That is where he met Nancy.
Bobby and Nancy went out a few times, usually with Nancy's best friend -- whose name was Bobbe! -- and one of her boyfriends. Nancy was only 17, but Bob (it was too confusing having two "Bobbies") had also met her parents at the church, and they trusted him. Bob had even been to their house for Sunday dinner a few times.
Things were going just swell (his words, not mine). Bob and Nancy liked each other quite a lot, but she was still in high school. And being in training for the Army, he didn't know for sure where he would end up next. It was technically peacetime, but the Army was building up. There was talk of the trouble across the Atlantic, even though most Americans thought it was best to stay out of it.
They decided not to worry about it, and to take their time. It was a mature decision. And then Bob was selected for a special class he in California. He would be back after a few weeks, but maybe this meant he would get to learn to fly! So, he said goodbye to Nancy and promised to write to her often.
Not long after that, America was attacked, and everything changed.
There was confusion; there was fear. There were a lot of things happening all at once. Nancy's letters to Bob were frantic; she didn't know where he was, or if the rumors were true that California was next. She hadn't heard from her brother, a Technical Sergeant stationed in the Philippines. All she knew was that she loved Bob, missed him fiercely, and wanted him to be back safe with her.
By the time Bob managed to get a letter through, things had calmed somewhat. People at least knew the basics: the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor; the U.S. had declared war. The West Coast was not under attack. Nancy's brother, Richard, was safe for the time being, though he would be wounded in a sniper attack and end up the war as a guard at the POW camp in Papago, AZ.
Bob had also been turned down for officer training and pilot school. But this would turn out to be good news, because, as a high-scoring mechanic, Bob would spend the rest of the war at Luke Field, maintaining the trainers for the pilots of the P-38's.
And so, on the 28th of June, 1942, Bob and Nancy were married.
You could argue that without December 7, 1941, they might not have decided to wed. It's possible that without the shock of war, and the fear of losing each other, they might have drifted away and only been pen pals. But some things are meant to happen. After all, Bob did eventually learn to fly.
But that's another story altogether...
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tad's First EP Release
Long ago, in another life, I was a community college music student. One of my favorite experiences was the Electronic Studio class, which put me in a lab with a half dozen of the top-of-the-line keyboards, sound manipulators, and Macintosh sequencing programs available in 1992. Before leaving that life to enlist in my new one, I made a couple of cassette recordings. Last week, I found those cassettes, and since my sense of humor is so much more developed than my sense of self-respect, I decided to post some of those recordings online:
No One Called Larry - Old School EP
You don't need to be a Last.fm member to visit, so feel free to listen and download as much as you like. (I hope you like, at least.) And remember, I get 1/2 cent royalty on each track that you play on that site, even if you aren't a subscriber!
I'm actually most proud of the way the "Birthday Disco" turned out, and of my arrangement of DeBussy's "Beau Soir". "Manic Atari" was something I did on Emlyn's little Casio, before we started the class, and "Manic Atari II" was the version I did on the Ensoniq in the lab; the two versions of "North West Side" are the results of a project that Emlyn and I did together as a joke. Emlyn's much larger and better selection of tunes can be found on Last.fm also.
Now, one of these days, I hope to put up a "real" No One Called Larry album... but I don't like making promises, because life has a way of interrupting. But let me know what you think, and I'll keep you posted as events warrant.
PL+U!
No One Called Larry - Old School EP
You don't need to be a Last.fm member to visit, so feel free to listen and download as much as you like. (I hope you like, at least.) And remember, I get 1/2 cent royalty on each track that you play on that site, even if you aren't a subscriber!
I'm actually most proud of the way the "Birthday Disco" turned out, and of my arrangement of DeBussy's "Beau Soir". "Manic Atari" was something I did on Emlyn's little Casio, before we started the class, and "Manic Atari II" was the version I did on the Ensoniq in the lab; the two versions of "North West Side" are the results of a project that Emlyn and I did together as a joke. Emlyn's much larger and better selection of tunes can be found on Last.fm also.
Now, one of these days, I hope to put up a "real" No One Called Larry album... but I don't like making promises, because life has a way of interrupting. But let me know what you think, and I'll keep you posted as events warrant.
PL+U!
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Fishing With Dad
Originally posted Wednesday, August 11, 2004
I love my dad. Even better, I know my dad loves me. The only trouble is that we are very much alike.
Oh, sure, growing up I used to hear some of the "small town chatter" that people of my grandparents' generation still believed about fathers and sons. Talk of the way Dr. Eismann's boy acted just like his old man, right down to sitting on his foot when he spoke to people. The whole "he has his eyes and her nose" game they play with newborn babies. I always blew that stuff off until I saw my own sons turning into me. Then I began to look at my dad in a whole new way.
I mentioned one time how I had noticed that I was beginning to turn into him, and he blanched in horror. "I'm so sorry," he said. We laughed about it, too, but there was no denying that sense of dread that men of our line were inescapably cursed to be...well, to be like us. Easy-going, funny, amiable, and yet, hapless. A little accident prone. Somewhat likely to say the wrong thing in public when we got nervous. Nothing flamboyantly evil or wrong, but just us. Frustratingly and unavoidably passing along some kind of dork gene.
My grandfather had a history of clumsiness. He used to restore Volkswagen Beetles - the old kind that used to come to life in movies - and no matter how careful he was, he always picked up some new and unlikely injury. The trunk lid would fall on his arm when he reached for a tool. A fender would leap off the car and crush his toe. Once a tire exploded while he filled it with air. One car was particularly creative, leaving his arms all scabbed up like a nine-year-old skateboard novice: he named it Fang and painted it a horrible shade of orange out of spite.
Dad's luck was more subtly bad, and of a more self-inflicted nature. On long car trips, when we made a rest stop, he would accidentally lock the keys in the car. At church picnics, if he was asked to carry any food into the church, he would slip and drop whatever dish or pie he held top-down on the floor. (He quickly learned to only carry unbreakable things with lids.) I recall one occasion when, after locking the keys in the car while picking my sister and I up at school, we had to cross a busy road to get to my mom and her spare set of keys. Half-way across, while cautioning us to be careful and not to run, his shoes slipped on the hot tarmac. As he went down, flat on his back, he shoved us up onto the curb with his last bit of balance. That was my dad; hapless, but always heroic.
I think it was his resistance to this haplessness that made him so careful. He always had a number of little projects going on; house repair, car repair, painting, mending, landscaping. He always focused hard on things he did around the house, and didn't like it when I came around distracting him. It's not that he didn't want me around; he was just too used to doing these things alone by the time I was old enough to take an interest in them. For my part, I was perfectly content to wander about in my little fantasy world, playing "Star Wars" or "Indiana Jones" by myself. Whenever I got too close to what he was working on, he would gently mention something else I could be doing.
After he had finished the project at hand, he would always come find me to play ball, or go swimming. I think now that he must have felt bad for excluding me, though I didn't take it that way. I never felt neglected at all. Even if I had, I really couldn't blame him; after all, I am his son. I am the Crown Prince of Accidents.
I am the kid that was playing on the frame of his pickup truck while he tied down a full load of lumber the summer he built our cabin in Colorado. Just as he cinched the last knot around the last bundle of 2X4's, there was the soft but definite *POP*Hiissssssss..... of me stepping on the valve stem of his right rear tire. I am also the kid that threw a softball to him while he wasn't looking, and popped him in the nose - this happened on the same day that his bandages came off from the surgery on his "doubly deviated septum".
I think it was my flamboyant display of haplessness that led him to seize that chance to prod me into the military. Of all of the slackers in my generation, I had shown a special talent for apathy and my shoulder muscles were overdeveloped from all of the shrugging I had done.
"What are you going to major in?" Shrug. "What school will you go to?" Shrug. "How are you going to pay for it?" Shrug. "What kind of job are you going to get?" Shrug.
Dad didn't exactly call the recruiter and tell them to come and get me, but after I signed the papers, he acted like he had. His guilt was palpable. I tried to reassure him, telling him that if I hadn't thought it was a good idea I wouldn't have signed up. We weren't at war at the time, and despite the prevailing family trait, he and grandpa had both survived the Army, hadn't they? Besides, I was going into one of the more cerebral desk jobs in the Air Force. (As we were to find out later, there was no way they were ever going to let me so much as look at a weapon.)
He still felt a pang every time we talked about it, though. It was a whole long month before I was to ship out, and while I got more and more excited about the idea of moving on, he seemed more and more concerned. Until one afternoon, when he came to me with a twinkle in his eye and invited me to go fishing.
I knew he had bought a boat. I had seen it under the tarp in the back yard. I also knew that it wasn't ready; most of his projects of late had been related to boat repair. At last, he had made it lake-worthy, and was ready to go. He wanted one last father/son event before I left, and I agreed whole-heartedly.
We dragged out of bed at 3:30 the next morning, packed a cooler full of sandwiches, sodas, and snacks. He waved me off while he hitched up the trailer, so I dozed in the cab of the truck until we were ready. It was about a 45 minute ride to the lake. There were about half a dozen other boats ahead of us at the little concrete launch slip. When our turn came, dawn was creeping over the circle of low hills (we in Arizona called them "mountains") around the lake. The lake was still steely gray and in shadow, while the hills erupted with gold rods of light. Half an hour more, and the dome overhead would already be a pale blue, and the lake would already have overflowed with glare and would have started casting shards of it back at the sun. It would have been nice to see.
However, being who we were, it wasn't meant to be. Our turn came, and I stood by the water, guiding dad as he backed the trailer down into the lake. He set the brake, came back, and we shoved it off. I held the rope as he went and parked, pulling the boat along the little rocky shore so someone else could launch. Dad came down, and we hopped in. The water was lower than either of us had ever seen it, what with the drought being in its third or fourth year. Dad wanted to row out a good distance before firing up the motor. We got out about 100 yards, almost halfway to the line of buoys marking the edge of the lake proper. Dad dropped the engine down and fired it up.
Vrrrr-RRROOOMMMMM!!! *clank*
It was a small sound, like a rock off your windshield. He almost tried to start it again, but thought better of it. When he pulled the engine back up, the propeller was already ruined. It looked like a rose; all of the "petals" were folded up and in on each other. Dad looked down into the water, and saw the large, concrete block that we could see in the settling murk. He uttered the worst profanity I ever heard him use: "Crap." Then his jaw set, and he unshipped the oars.
Yeah, it was funny later. We chuckled wryly over it seven years later, in fact, after I had served my time and returned home with a growing family. He was standing on a chair, helping me put up a shelf in the laundry room. The baby-gate was up across the hallway to keep my son from getting into the nails.
"I better watch it. I'm getting to be as bad as your grandfather, clumsy-wise," he was saying.
Just then, he whacked his thumb with the hammer. Startled, I leapt forward to catch him, and only managed to upset the box of nails. Dad shook his head as they scattered everywhere.
"Well," he said, shaking his head good-naturedly and nursing his thumb, "there's still hope for the boys." The older boy chose that moment to charge around the corner, and ran headlong into the gate, which gave out. After a brief flurry, he landed on his back, blinking up at the ceiling and gripping the gate which lay on his chest.
We sat there, not wanting to laugh, and watching pained, embarrassed, or dazed expressions alternate on our strikingly similar faces. Three generations of hapless men, slowly turning into each other.
"Okay," said Dad, "There's still one more boy."
I love my dad. Even better, I know my dad loves me. The only trouble is that we are very much alike.
Oh, sure, growing up I used to hear some of the "small town chatter" that people of my grandparents' generation still believed about fathers and sons. Talk of the way Dr. Eismann's boy acted just like his old man, right down to sitting on his foot when he spoke to people. The whole "he has his eyes and her nose" game they play with newborn babies. I always blew that stuff off until I saw my own sons turning into me. Then I began to look at my dad in a whole new way.
I mentioned one time how I had noticed that I was beginning to turn into him, and he blanched in horror. "I'm so sorry," he said. We laughed about it, too, but there was no denying that sense of dread that men of our line were inescapably cursed to be...well, to be like us. Easy-going, funny, amiable, and yet, hapless. A little accident prone. Somewhat likely to say the wrong thing in public when we got nervous. Nothing flamboyantly evil or wrong, but just us. Frustratingly and unavoidably passing along some kind of dork gene.
My grandfather had a history of clumsiness. He used to restore Volkswagen Beetles - the old kind that used to come to life in movies - and no matter how careful he was, he always picked up some new and unlikely injury. The trunk lid would fall on his arm when he reached for a tool. A fender would leap off the car and crush his toe. Once a tire exploded while he filled it with air. One car was particularly creative, leaving his arms all scabbed up like a nine-year-old skateboard novice: he named it Fang and painted it a horrible shade of orange out of spite.
Dad's luck was more subtly bad, and of a more self-inflicted nature. On long car trips, when we made a rest stop, he would accidentally lock the keys in the car. At church picnics, if he was asked to carry any food into the church, he would slip and drop whatever dish or pie he held top-down on the floor. (He quickly learned to only carry unbreakable things with lids.) I recall one occasion when, after locking the keys in the car while picking my sister and I up at school, we had to cross a busy road to get to my mom and her spare set of keys. Half-way across, while cautioning us to be careful and not to run, his shoes slipped on the hot tarmac. As he went down, flat on his back, he shoved us up onto the curb with his last bit of balance. That was my dad; hapless, but always heroic.
I think it was his resistance to this haplessness that made him so careful. He always had a number of little projects going on; house repair, car repair, painting, mending, landscaping. He always focused hard on things he did around the house, and didn't like it when I came around distracting him. It's not that he didn't want me around; he was just too used to doing these things alone by the time I was old enough to take an interest in them. For my part, I was perfectly content to wander about in my little fantasy world, playing "Star Wars" or "Indiana Jones" by myself. Whenever I got too close to what he was working on, he would gently mention something else I could be doing.
After he had finished the project at hand, he would always come find me to play ball, or go swimming. I think now that he must have felt bad for excluding me, though I didn't take it that way. I never felt neglected at all. Even if I had, I really couldn't blame him; after all, I am his son. I am the Crown Prince of Accidents.
I am the kid that was playing on the frame of his pickup truck while he tied down a full load of lumber the summer he built our cabin in Colorado. Just as he cinched the last knot around the last bundle of 2X4's, there was the soft but definite *POP*Hiissssssss..... of me stepping on the valve stem of his right rear tire. I am also the kid that threw a softball to him while he wasn't looking, and popped him in the nose - this happened on the same day that his bandages came off from the surgery on his "doubly deviated septum".
I think it was my flamboyant display of haplessness that led him to seize that chance to prod me into the military. Of all of the slackers in my generation, I had shown a special talent for apathy and my shoulder muscles were overdeveloped from all of the shrugging I had done.
"What are you going to major in?" Shrug. "What school will you go to?" Shrug. "How are you going to pay for it?" Shrug. "What kind of job are you going to get?" Shrug.
Dad didn't exactly call the recruiter and tell them to come and get me, but after I signed the papers, he acted like he had. His guilt was palpable. I tried to reassure him, telling him that if I hadn't thought it was a good idea I wouldn't have signed up. We weren't at war at the time, and despite the prevailing family trait, he and grandpa had both survived the Army, hadn't they? Besides, I was going into one of the more cerebral desk jobs in the Air Force. (As we were to find out later, there was no way they were ever going to let me so much as look at a weapon.)
He still felt a pang every time we talked about it, though. It was a whole long month before I was to ship out, and while I got more and more excited about the idea of moving on, he seemed more and more concerned. Until one afternoon, when he came to me with a twinkle in his eye and invited me to go fishing.
I knew he had bought a boat. I had seen it under the tarp in the back yard. I also knew that it wasn't ready; most of his projects of late had been related to boat repair. At last, he had made it lake-worthy, and was ready to go. He wanted one last father/son event before I left, and I agreed whole-heartedly.
We dragged out of bed at 3:30 the next morning, packed a cooler full of sandwiches, sodas, and snacks. He waved me off while he hitched up the trailer, so I dozed in the cab of the truck until we were ready. It was about a 45 minute ride to the lake. There were about half a dozen other boats ahead of us at the little concrete launch slip. When our turn came, dawn was creeping over the circle of low hills (we in Arizona called them "mountains") around the lake. The lake was still steely gray and in shadow, while the hills erupted with gold rods of light. Half an hour more, and the dome overhead would already be a pale blue, and the lake would already have overflowed with glare and would have started casting shards of it back at the sun. It would have been nice to see.
However, being who we were, it wasn't meant to be. Our turn came, and I stood by the water, guiding dad as he backed the trailer down into the lake. He set the brake, came back, and we shoved it off. I held the rope as he went and parked, pulling the boat along the little rocky shore so someone else could launch. Dad came down, and we hopped in. The water was lower than either of us had ever seen it, what with the drought being in its third or fourth year. Dad wanted to row out a good distance before firing up the motor. We got out about 100 yards, almost halfway to the line of buoys marking the edge of the lake proper. Dad dropped the engine down and fired it up.
Vrrrr-RRROOOMMMMM!!! *clank*
It was a small sound, like a rock off your windshield. He almost tried to start it again, but thought better of it. When he pulled the engine back up, the propeller was already ruined. It looked like a rose; all of the "petals" were folded up and in on each other. Dad looked down into the water, and saw the large, concrete block that we could see in the settling murk. He uttered the worst profanity I ever heard him use: "Crap." Then his jaw set, and he unshipped the oars.
Yeah, it was funny later. We chuckled wryly over it seven years later, in fact, after I had served my time and returned home with a growing family. He was standing on a chair, helping me put up a shelf in the laundry room. The baby-gate was up across the hallway to keep my son from getting into the nails.
"I better watch it. I'm getting to be as bad as your grandfather, clumsy-wise," he was saying.
Just then, he whacked his thumb with the hammer. Startled, I leapt forward to catch him, and only managed to upset the box of nails. Dad shook his head as they scattered everywhere.
"Well," he said, shaking his head good-naturedly and nursing his thumb, "there's still hope for the boys." The older boy chose that moment to charge around the corner, and ran headlong into the gate, which gave out. After a brief flurry, he landed on his back, blinking up at the ceiling and gripping the gate which lay on his chest.
We sat there, not wanting to laugh, and watching pained, embarrassed, or dazed expressions alternate on our strikingly similar faces. Three generations of hapless men, slowly turning into each other.
"Okay," said Dad, "There's still one more boy."
Friday, July 25, 2008
Part Two: Saying Goodbye
Originally posted Sunday, July 25, 2004
My recruiter told me to stay out of trouble. I was shipping out to basic training in two weeks, and all of the paperwork was done; if I got so much as a speeding ticket, it would screw everything up. I figured I was a pretty easygoing fellow, staying out of trouble should be easy, right?
I tried to have some last minute fun, went crazy and saw some concerts with my friends. Saw Elvis Costello with the Crash Test Dummies, Huey Lewis and the News, and even Kenny Loggins (thanks to the State Fair). Believe it or not, that was great. The last weekend before I was to leave, my oldest friend, Brian, came up with tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar.
Now, Brian and I had known each other since at least seventh grade, when we sat next to each other in band. In all that time, he never expressed any desire to learn to drive or to saddle himself with the expense and bother of owning a car. Until now. We were going to travel across town to Gammage Auditorium to see Jesus Christ Superstar in his brand new - to him - 1978 Honda Civic. He had, inevitably, dubbed it "The Beast."
I lived in my parents' house in the extreme northwest of Phoenix, and Arizona State University is in Tempe, located to the southeast of Phoenix. About 40 miles in The Beast.
We made it, and parked, and waded through the picket lines. Four nuns were marching with signs that said "Don't Make Fun of My Lord" or "The Savior Isn't Silly" in front of the theater. A couple of fundamentalist types were standing off to one side smoldering at the Catholics for trumping their own demonstration. It made me nervous, and I planned to head for exits on the other side of the theater if they started rioting.
The show was great, though they went a little too "campy" during Herod's big scene. It was the scene the protesters objected to, of course. Herod was dancing around in a leather S&M suit, smacking his butt and vamping around Jesus, who stood stoically at center stage. I leaned over to Brian and pointed out that Herod's mockery of Jesus is recorded in the Bible, but you never see anyone protest at the book stores. On our way out, we wondered whether the picketing nuns might have appreciated this point... but this conversation died a quick death when we got to The Beast.
The Beast had developed a problem while we were inside enjoying ourselves: three flat tires. One of them was the spare. After a bit of head scratching, we decided to limp the aged monster across the street to a filling station and try to inflate them for the ride home. Our plan was to see how far we could get before they went flat again, thinking we could leapfrog across town from air pump to air pump. The only danger there was in running out of quarters.
Alas, after filling them up, they were flat again after half a block. We debated turning around to go back to the filling station when I recognized the neighborhood we were in, and suggested that we stop at Bronwyn's place. Bronwyn was my former roommate. He had returned from his summer in South Africa to attend ASU, and set himself up in a tiny little one-bedroom place not far from the campus. We invaded his house, and tried to phone Brian's dad to come and rescue us. No answer.
"It's alright," said Bronwyn. "I'm borrowing a car for the summer. I'll just run you back to Glendale, and you can come pick up The Beast tomorrow." Brilliant!
So, we piled into a tiny little two-door contraption belonging to one of Bronwyn's classmates, an exchange student from Bangladesh, who had left the car, but no insurance or registration documents.
"Well," I said, "just don't get pulled over, because I can't afford any trouble this close to shipping out."
Brian was dejected. His "new" car was a bust, and he was fuming over the possible costs of getting it repaired, towed, and otherwise relocated back to our side of town. As he fumed, he smoked Camel after Camel, flicking the ashes carelessly out the sunroof. Most of them made it out of the car, but I had to duck a few stray cinders that blew back into the microscopic back seat, where I had folded myself up like a very heavy map.
We were cruising down the road, laughing at our own absurdity, when I began to choke on smoke. It didn't smell like cigarettes, though. I looked down, and saw that it was pouring out from UNDER the driver's seat.
Bronwyn noticed it at about the same time, and began furiously changing lanes, trying to get to the side of the road. We careened across eight lanes of traffic, screaming as thickening, blackening smoke poured out the windows. The car finally stopped, and Bronwyn and Brian leapt from the car like it was about to explode, leaving me stuck in the back. I frantically reached around looking for the latch that would release me from the charbroiler I was trapped in, and realized that there was no way out. I heard yelling from outside the car, and heard Brian fumbling around, trying to rescue me. I slipped, and landed head first on the floor of the car, which was littered with papers, and came eye to flame with the smoldering upholstery.
Then I saw salvation: a water bottle!
I unscrewed the cap, and tried to dump the contents on the glowing edges of the carpet, but couldn't fit the bottle under the seat. I tried pouring the water into my hand, but there just wasn't enough room for maneuverability. Somehow, though, I managed to soak some of the papers and stifle the flames. The thick, plastic-smelling reek began to clear, and Brian finally managed to work the latch and hauled me out by the ankles into the relatively fresh air along the side of the highway.
We sat on the berm looking down at the car for a long time, making sure the smoke didn't start up again, and watching for emergency vehicles. Four cops passed us, and didn't notice three smoke-streaked college guys with panic-stricken eyes sitting there on the side of the highway.
Then, since these tragedies happen in threes, Brian asked, "Where are my keys?"
After a brief search of the car, he looked down at the road... And saw there, eight feet down in the only sewer grate for ten miles, the glint of metal from his keys. There was nothing that could be done, but pile back into our illegal firetrap and make our way north.
By the time we got to Brian's place, we were dirty and desperate. We only wanted a drink, and a soft couch to collapse into. My plan was to crash there and call my folks for a ride in the morning.
Except that we couldn't get into the house. Brian's parents were gone, the house was dark, and not one car sat in the driveway. We just looked at each other for a long minute. Both of us were probably thinking the same thing: This will be funny in a few years.
Fortunately, we didn't get caught breaking into his house, since I was supposed to be staying out of trouble.
Next: Six Little Words
My recruiter told me to stay out of trouble. I was shipping out to basic training in two weeks, and all of the paperwork was done; if I got so much as a speeding ticket, it would screw everything up. I figured I was a pretty easygoing fellow, staying out of trouble should be easy, right?
I tried to have some last minute fun, went crazy and saw some concerts with my friends. Saw Elvis Costello with the Crash Test Dummies, Huey Lewis and the News, and even Kenny Loggins (thanks to the State Fair). Believe it or not, that was great. The last weekend before I was to leave, my oldest friend, Brian, came up with tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar.
Now, Brian and I had known each other since at least seventh grade, when we sat next to each other in band. In all that time, he never expressed any desire to learn to drive or to saddle himself with the expense and bother of owning a car. Until now. We were going to travel across town to Gammage Auditorium to see Jesus Christ Superstar in his brand new - to him - 1978 Honda Civic. He had, inevitably, dubbed it "The Beast."
I lived in my parents' house in the extreme northwest of Phoenix, and Arizona State University is in Tempe, located to the southeast of Phoenix. About 40 miles in The Beast.
We made it, and parked, and waded through the picket lines. Four nuns were marching with signs that said "Don't Make Fun of My Lord" or "The Savior Isn't Silly" in front of the theater. A couple of fundamentalist types were standing off to one side smoldering at the Catholics for trumping their own demonstration. It made me nervous, and I planned to head for exits on the other side of the theater if they started rioting.
The show was great, though they went a little too "campy" during Herod's big scene. It was the scene the protesters objected to, of course. Herod was dancing around in a leather S&M suit, smacking his butt and vamping around Jesus, who stood stoically at center stage. I leaned over to Brian and pointed out that Herod's mockery of Jesus is recorded in the Bible, but you never see anyone protest at the book stores. On our way out, we wondered whether the picketing nuns might have appreciated this point... but this conversation died a quick death when we got to The Beast.
The Beast had developed a problem while we were inside enjoying ourselves: three flat tires. One of them was the spare. After a bit of head scratching, we decided to limp the aged monster across the street to a filling station and try to inflate them for the ride home. Our plan was to see how far we could get before they went flat again, thinking we could leapfrog across town from air pump to air pump. The only danger there was in running out of quarters.
Alas, after filling them up, they were flat again after half a block. We debated turning around to go back to the filling station when I recognized the neighborhood we were in, and suggested that we stop at Bronwyn's place. Bronwyn was my former roommate. He had returned from his summer in South Africa to attend ASU, and set himself up in a tiny little one-bedroom place not far from the campus. We invaded his house, and tried to phone Brian's dad to come and rescue us. No answer.
"It's alright," said Bronwyn. "I'm borrowing a car for the summer. I'll just run you back to Glendale, and you can come pick up The Beast tomorrow." Brilliant!
So, we piled into a tiny little two-door contraption belonging to one of Bronwyn's classmates, an exchange student from Bangladesh, who had left the car, but no insurance or registration documents.
"Well," I said, "just don't get pulled over, because I can't afford any trouble this close to shipping out."
Brian was dejected. His "new" car was a bust, and he was fuming over the possible costs of getting it repaired, towed, and otherwise relocated back to our side of town. As he fumed, he smoked Camel after Camel, flicking the ashes carelessly out the sunroof. Most of them made it out of the car, but I had to duck a few stray cinders that blew back into the microscopic back seat, where I had folded myself up like a very heavy map.
We were cruising down the road, laughing at our own absurdity, when I began to choke on smoke. It didn't smell like cigarettes, though. I looked down, and saw that it was pouring out from UNDER the driver's seat.
Bronwyn noticed it at about the same time, and began furiously changing lanes, trying to get to the side of the road. We careened across eight lanes of traffic, screaming as thickening, blackening smoke poured out the windows. The car finally stopped, and Bronwyn and Brian leapt from the car like it was about to explode, leaving me stuck in the back. I frantically reached around looking for the latch that would release me from the charbroiler I was trapped in, and realized that there was no way out. I heard yelling from outside the car, and heard Brian fumbling around, trying to rescue me. I slipped, and landed head first on the floor of the car, which was littered with papers, and came eye to flame with the smoldering upholstery.
Then I saw salvation: a water bottle!
I unscrewed the cap, and tried to dump the contents on the glowing edges of the carpet, but couldn't fit the bottle under the seat. I tried pouring the water into my hand, but there just wasn't enough room for maneuverability. Somehow, though, I managed to soak some of the papers and stifle the flames. The thick, plastic-smelling reek began to clear, and Brian finally managed to work the latch and hauled me out by the ankles into the relatively fresh air along the side of the highway.
We sat on the berm looking down at the car for a long time, making sure the smoke didn't start up again, and watching for emergency vehicles. Four cops passed us, and didn't notice three smoke-streaked college guys with panic-stricken eyes sitting there on the side of the highway.
Then, since these tragedies happen in threes, Brian asked, "Where are my keys?"
After a brief search of the car, he looked down at the road... And saw there, eight feet down in the only sewer grate for ten miles, the glint of metal from his keys. There was nothing that could be done, but pile back into our illegal firetrap and make our way north.
By the time we got to Brian's place, we were dirty and desperate. We only wanted a drink, and a soft couch to collapse into. My plan was to crash there and call my folks for a ride in the morning.
Except that we couldn't get into the house. Brian's parents were gone, the house was dark, and not one car sat in the driveway. We just looked at each other for a long minute. Both of us were probably thinking the same thing: This will be funny in a few years.
Fortunately, we didn't get caught breaking into his house, since I was supposed to be staying out of trouble.
Next: Six Little Words
Friday, July 11, 2008
Part One: How did THAT happen?
Originally posted Saturday, July 17, 2004
I'd had a terrible year. 1993.
It might have made a great country song if I had changed a few of the details. My girlfriend completed a rather drawn-out breaking up process, my roommate went home to South Africa, I lost a great job, and my Datsun's transmission failed on the way home from Tucson (where the now-ex-girlfriend had given me the boot). I ended up moving back into my parents' house, which seemed to have shrunk a bit in the 9 months since I had moved out. And, most telling of all, walking the five miles to work at the Wards department store in the mall was the best prospect I had going.
Things dragged on, and steadily drifted downward over the course of that summer. I had a brief affair with a girl I didn't like, which alienated my best friend because he DID like her. My parents anxiously brooded off-stage, hoping I would pull my head out and grow up. I took small comfort from the small friends - one of the Southern variety, the other of the Philip Morris variety - which I pretended not to have, and my parents pretended not to notice. School started, and for the first time since I was five years old, I wasn't going.
Basically, I could do nothing right, and wasn't sure how to turn it all around.
I still had my dignity, though. Well, maybe not. But, as the song says, Ob-la-di Ob-la-da... and something about a bra. I mustered what professionalism I had, and tried to figure out how I was going to pay for the next semester of school while working in housewares. The job itself wasn't bad. It was a step and a half up from the bottom-feeding drudgery of telemarketing, or the series of grocery stores I had been working at for seven of the eight preceding summers.
With a little effort, I was able to deal with people cheerfully day after day. After a while, I became the "problem" guy; which didn't mean that I was the one causing trouble, for a change. Any customer that one of my co-workers couldn't handle would be thrust my way as though I had some imaginary authority. If I may brag a little, I was good at it.
One lady, for example, was a regular problem; she would bring in all of the junk mail she had collected every two weeks like clockwork. Because she had a store card, a large portion of that mail was from Wards, and she seemed to think that we were personally stuffing all of the envelopes there in our housewares department and sending them to her as some kind of personal attack.
She was wheelchair bound, immensely fat, and also a victim of throat cancer - which had left her with one of those voice boxes that generates a horrible mockery of human speech in lieu of an actual voice. Her husband acted the part of the tall, gaunt, and silent valet who propelled her wherever she wanted to go under a fusillade of unintelligible, computer-generated barks from the voice box. Whoever was at the counter when she arrived would be met with his blank, fishy stare and her robotic tirade compounded by the added assault of stacks of unopened fliers, circulars, coupon books, pre-approved applications, and full-color advertisements being hurled at the counter top. Invariably, they sent for me, because I could understand her.
One afternoon, while helping two flamboyantly homosexual men in matching ruffled leisure suits select throw pillows for their couch, I heard the bi-weekly cyber-attack starting up on Michelle, our newest employee. "Chintz!" I said, tossing an armful of pillows at the indecisive couple, and whirled to Michelle's rescue, leaving them to argue in lisping Spanish over the relative merits of magenta versus burgundy.
"NGET UZ OVF YERR GODDAMNG NGAILING LISZT!" I heard, followed by the soft thump of mail on formica.
"Let me help you, Mrs. Foster," I said, smoothly. She wouldn't be happy until I "called corporate" and set them straight. I dialled Gary, the owner of the tobacco shop next door, and told him in no uncertain terms that if he didn't remove Mrs. Foster from our mailing list, I would testify in court that he wore women's undergarments and abused zoo animals. Or something like that. Mr. Foster nodded solemnly and eyed a pile of toaster ovens.
Meanwhile, a man had wandered over from the lighting department with a set of almost-matching lamp shades. I tried to ignore the brewing storm as Michelle began to argue with him about the price that came up on the register. I had my hands full appeasing the Robot Queen.
"You got the cyber-twins over there?" Gary was asking on the phone.
"Yes, sir," I replied in my sternest tone, "And if you don't stop sending them our fliers, we will lose their business forever!" (They had never bought a single thing from us that I was aware of.)
"Hee hee, thanks for the warning!" Gary said. "I'll take my break before they get here! Even I don't feel right selling her all those cigarettes!"
"But the sign says '20% off', and it's sitting there with these shades," the other man was insisting to Michelle.
"Well, it's ringing up at $10 each, that must be the sale price," Michelle said. She was casting me anguished looks, begging to be bailed out.
I hung up the phone, and turned back to the Fosters. "If you get any more mail from them, you let ME know," I told them, and sympathetically dumped their letters into the trash bin. They rolled away, satisfied... until the next mail delivery.
"Help me get rid of this guy," Michelle whispered at me behind her hand.
"Why don't you just give him the discount?" I asked. "It's only two bucks."
She paled at the suggestion. "Not on MY account! Won't they fire me for that?"
Not wanting to argue in front of him, I turned to the man with the shades. "Where was the sign, sir?" He showed me; it wasn't supposed to be there. It wasn't even one of our signs; some joker had brought it over from another store. This guy didn't care about that, though. He by-God wanted those lampshades, and he by-God wanted a deal! I just wanted him to go away.
So, I logged in on a register, rang him up - with the discount - and took his money. "You have a nice day, sir," I said, as sincerely as I ever say it. Just between us, whenever I say the word "sir", it has a special meaning in my mind; an acronym suggesting a profane act combined with criticism of the mental capacity of the one being "sirred." Unless, of course, I respect you.
The man smiled, and cocked his head to one side. "You know," he said, "that showed a great deal of professionalism and leadership. Have you ever considered a career in the military?" I demurred, without laughing. He handed me a business card. "I'm an Air Force recruiter down at the Processing station in downtown Phoenix. Give me a call sometime, and we can talk about getting you out of retail." I politely tucked the card into my breast pocket.
Dad picked me up from work that night, and asked how my day went. I was dying for a cigarette, but didn't want him to know I had ever so much as seen one lit. I reflexively brushed the breast pocket of my shirt, where my smokes had formerly resided, and remembered the card.
"I was offered a job in the Air Force," I said, laughing.
Dad didn't laugh.
Next Week: Saying Goodbye
I'd had a terrible year. 1993.
It might have made a great country song if I had changed a few of the details. My girlfriend completed a rather drawn-out breaking up process, my roommate went home to South Africa, I lost a great job, and my Datsun's transmission failed on the way home from Tucson (where the now-ex-girlfriend had given me the boot). I ended up moving back into my parents' house, which seemed to have shrunk a bit in the 9 months since I had moved out. And, most telling of all, walking the five miles to work at the Wards department store in the mall was the best prospect I had going.
Things dragged on, and steadily drifted downward over the course of that summer. I had a brief affair with a girl I didn't like, which alienated my best friend because he DID like her. My parents anxiously brooded off-stage, hoping I would pull my head out and grow up. I took small comfort from the small friends - one of the Southern variety, the other of the Philip Morris variety - which I pretended not to have, and my parents pretended not to notice. School started, and for the first time since I was five years old, I wasn't going.
Basically, I could do nothing right, and wasn't sure how to turn it all around.
I still had my dignity, though. Well, maybe not. But, as the song says, Ob-la-di Ob-la-da... and something about a bra. I mustered what professionalism I had, and tried to figure out how I was going to pay for the next semester of school while working in housewares. The job itself wasn't bad. It was a step and a half up from the bottom-feeding drudgery of telemarketing, or the series of grocery stores I had been working at for seven of the eight preceding summers.
With a little effort, I was able to deal with people cheerfully day after day. After a while, I became the "problem" guy; which didn't mean that I was the one causing trouble, for a change. Any customer that one of my co-workers couldn't handle would be thrust my way as though I had some imaginary authority. If I may brag a little, I was good at it.
One lady, for example, was a regular problem; she would bring in all of the junk mail she had collected every two weeks like clockwork. Because she had a store card, a large portion of that mail was from Wards, and she seemed to think that we were personally stuffing all of the envelopes there in our housewares department and sending them to her as some kind of personal attack.
She was wheelchair bound, immensely fat, and also a victim of throat cancer - which had left her with one of those voice boxes that generates a horrible mockery of human speech in lieu of an actual voice. Her husband acted the part of the tall, gaunt, and silent valet who propelled her wherever she wanted to go under a fusillade of unintelligible, computer-generated barks from the voice box. Whoever was at the counter when she arrived would be met with his blank, fishy stare and her robotic tirade compounded by the added assault of stacks of unopened fliers, circulars, coupon books, pre-approved applications, and full-color advertisements being hurled at the counter top. Invariably, they sent for me, because I could understand her.
One afternoon, while helping two flamboyantly homosexual men in matching ruffled leisure suits select throw pillows for their couch, I heard the bi-weekly cyber-attack starting up on Michelle, our newest employee. "Chintz!" I said, tossing an armful of pillows at the indecisive couple, and whirled to Michelle's rescue, leaving them to argue in lisping Spanish over the relative merits of magenta versus burgundy.
"NGET UZ OVF YERR GODDAMNG NGAILING LISZT!" I heard, followed by the soft thump of mail on formica.
"Let me help you, Mrs. Foster," I said, smoothly. She wouldn't be happy until I "called corporate" and set them straight. I dialled Gary, the owner of the tobacco shop next door, and told him in no uncertain terms that if he didn't remove Mrs. Foster from our mailing list, I would testify in court that he wore women's undergarments and abused zoo animals. Or something like that. Mr. Foster nodded solemnly and eyed a pile of toaster ovens.
Meanwhile, a man had wandered over from the lighting department with a set of almost-matching lamp shades. I tried to ignore the brewing storm as Michelle began to argue with him about the price that came up on the register. I had my hands full appeasing the Robot Queen.
"You got the cyber-twins over there?" Gary was asking on the phone.
"Yes, sir," I replied in my sternest tone, "And if you don't stop sending them our fliers, we will lose their business forever!" (They had never bought a single thing from us that I was aware of.)
"Hee hee, thanks for the warning!" Gary said. "I'll take my break before they get here! Even I don't feel right selling her all those cigarettes!"
"But the sign says '20% off', and it's sitting there with these shades," the other man was insisting to Michelle.
"Well, it's ringing up at $10 each, that must be the sale price," Michelle said. She was casting me anguished looks, begging to be bailed out.
I hung up the phone, and turned back to the Fosters. "If you get any more mail from them, you let ME know," I told them, and sympathetically dumped their letters into the trash bin. They rolled away, satisfied... until the next mail delivery.
"Help me get rid of this guy," Michelle whispered at me behind her hand.
"Why don't you just give him the discount?" I asked. "It's only two bucks."
She paled at the suggestion. "Not on MY account! Won't they fire me for that?"
Not wanting to argue in front of him, I turned to the man with the shades. "Where was the sign, sir?" He showed me; it wasn't supposed to be there. It wasn't even one of our signs; some joker had brought it over from another store. This guy didn't care about that, though. He by-God wanted those lampshades, and he by-God wanted a deal! I just wanted him to go away.
So, I logged in on a register, rang him up - with the discount - and took his money. "You have a nice day, sir," I said, as sincerely as I ever say it. Just between us, whenever I say the word "sir", it has a special meaning in my mind; an acronym suggesting a profane act combined with criticism of the mental capacity of the one being "sirred." Unless, of course, I respect you.
The man smiled, and cocked his head to one side. "You know," he said, "that showed a great deal of professionalism and leadership. Have you ever considered a career in the military?" I demurred, without laughing. He handed me a business card. "I'm an Air Force recruiter down at the Processing station in downtown Phoenix. Give me a call sometime, and we can talk about getting you out of retail." I politely tucked the card into my breast pocket.
Dad picked me up from work that night, and asked how my day went. I was dying for a cigarette, but didn't want him to know I had ever so much as seen one lit. I reflexively brushed the breast pocket of my shirt, where my smokes had formerly resided, and remembered the card.
"I was offered a job in the Air Force," I said, laughing.
Dad didn't laugh.
Next Week: Saying Goodbye
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Coyote Falls Again
"Most people leave in the summer, you know," Dad said with a grin.
"But it doesn't feel that hot," I told him. And I meant it, too. It was 115 degrees Fahrenheit, but I didn't feel hot. I could feel the pressure of the heat on my arms, but that was all it was - a little pressure.
I know about the dangers of the heat. I grew up in Phoenix, after all. We came prepared with "camel packs" for carrying water, extra sunscreen, light clothing, hats, and plans that called for days full of swimming, hiking, driving, and fun sandwiched between days of visiting and sipping cool drinks in the air conditioning.
"And you really want to move back here?" he asked, incredulously.
The thing is, I do; but we tried it before and failed. I'll have to make sure I do it right this time, and I want to be sure that I have a job lined up - preferably one I like as much as my current job - and that all of the other things important to us are possible. I want to settle in Arizona, but I don't want to settle for Arizona.
It is a big state, and we wanted to see a lot of it. We budgeted for a rental car, and plenty of gasoline; we ran without the air on to conserve a bit, and to revel in the dryness and the scents of creosote and blooming cacti. Of course, it's a bit cooler up at the Grand Canyon, where we spent three days (two to travel, one to soak up the splendor) in the middle of the trip. Trade pine trees for creosote and lop 20 degrees off the thermometer; that definitely helps survive the heat.
Sunset was a priority at the Canyon. My lovely bride has photographic ambitions, and wanted to get some shots of the sun going down on that particular horizon. My job was to keep the children from running along (off) the edge while she focused on her task. I grabbed the two smaller ones physically, and they immediately protested.
"Wait, what do you see out there?" I asked excitedly, pointing west. "What's that?"
"It's the sun. Now let me go!" protested our little blond Hercules.
"But what's it made of?" I asked. The little princess was sulking on my lap, but I knew if I could get the boy to answer me, I'd have his attention.
"Burning hot gas," he said.
"Right, but what does it look like it's made of?"
"Gold?" answered the older boy, settling on my other side.
"It does," I said. "In fact, that's what Coyote thought it was made of. That's why he built those wings. But you guys already know about all that."
"No, we don't!" they cried. "What wings?"
I told them how Coyote, who spent most of his days trotting around in the desert, looking for something to eat or for someone to play a trick on, tried to fly to the Sun to steal the big, gleaming pile of gold when it touched the horizon. He knew he couldn't jump high enough to get to the Sun when it was high overhead, but it occurred to him that he should be able to get to it when it set each evening. At first, I had to explain, it was very frustrating for Coyote to figure out where the Sun would touch down. He would watch it set, mark the place with landmarks, and spend all the next day trying to get to the spot where it had landed, only to have it come down somewhere else each night!
He followed the Sun for weeks and weeks, until he came to the rim of the Canyon, and there - on the very spot where we were sitting! - he gave up. "I'll never figure out where the Sun is going to set if it keeps changing every night," he said, and he sat and watched the condors flying around. The next night, while he tried to figure out how to trick one of the condors into landing next to him for dinner, he noticed that the sun was setting on the lip of the Canyon across from him. And it was setting in the very same spot as the night before!
Now this is where Coyote showed how clever he was; he realized that if he tried to get over to that spot during the day, the Sun would see him, and would just set somewhere else. He would need to wait off to the side and then pounce at the last minute. But how to get across that huge Canyon and surprise the Sun?
That's when he got the idea to copy the condors. He went around the desert there, gathering sticky pitch and yucca leaves all day, and stuck the leaves together to make big wings that he could fit on his arms and back. Then he waited until the sun began to settle down on the rim across from him. He ran out to the edge and leapt high, catching the strong winds that up-drafted from the river at the bottom of the Canyon.
Coyote soared high and fast across the Canyon, startling the condors and confusing a cottontail that happened to look up just then. (The cottontail was so scared that he dove into his warren and started digging down so far that he eventually went blind and became a mole.) Coyote only saw his prize ahead of him, though. He reached out, greedily ready to snatch up as much gold as he could grab... but the closer he got to the sun, the hotter it got.
And, of course, you know what happened. The pitch melted, and his wings fell apart, and Coyote fell just short of his goal. Down, down, down into the river at the bottom of the Canyon he fell with a plop.
"Now, you would think Coyote would give up, but he still tries to get that gold. And sometimes, he thinks of a new way to make wings or some other trick to launch himself across the Canyon, so if you sit still and watch carefully, you might see him leap out there tonight."
They all looked out, just as I'd suggested; even the 11-year-old, who was still recovering from the disappointment of not being invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry last year. We all watched as tourists snapped photos of squirrels and each other, and leaned precariously over rails and ledges. We watched the birds swirl far below us, and the tiny twist of river turned into molten copper.
"I see him!" cried the little one, pointing. There was nothing there, but they all started shouting and laughing until the sun was all the way down. And my lovely bride got her few moments of peace to snap her photos.
A couple of days later, we were at the Phoenix Zoo, where we were pleasantly surprised to see most of the animals awake and roaming around their pens despite the already oppressive heat. There were two shy coyotes skulking around in their area, but the littlest one had trouble spotting them until one came right up to the front and stopped to watch the human exhibit for a bit. When she saw him, she got very excited, and leaned forward to stage whisper at him:
"Next time, go for the MOON! It's silver, and won't melt you!"
She's a wise one, that littlest little.
"But it doesn't feel that hot," I told him. And I meant it, too. It was 115 degrees Fahrenheit, but I didn't feel hot. I could feel the pressure of the heat on my arms, but that was all it was - a little pressure.
I know about the dangers of the heat. I grew up in Phoenix, after all. We came prepared with "camel packs" for carrying water, extra sunscreen, light clothing, hats, and plans that called for days full of swimming, hiking, driving, and fun sandwiched between days of visiting and sipping cool drinks in the air conditioning.
"And you really want to move back here?" he asked, incredulously.
The thing is, I do; but we tried it before and failed. I'll have to make sure I do it right this time, and I want to be sure that I have a job lined up - preferably one I like as much as my current job - and that all of the other things important to us are possible. I want to settle in Arizona, but I don't want to settle for Arizona.
It is a big state, and we wanted to see a lot of it. We budgeted for a rental car, and plenty of gasoline; we ran without the air on to conserve a bit, and to revel in the dryness and the scents of creosote and blooming cacti. Of course, it's a bit cooler up at the Grand Canyon, where we spent three days (two to travel, one to soak up the splendor) in the middle of the trip. Trade pine trees for creosote and lop 20 degrees off the thermometer; that definitely helps survive the heat.
Sunset was a priority at the Canyon. My lovely bride has photographic ambitions, and wanted to get some shots of the sun going down on that particular horizon. My job was to keep the children from running along (off) the edge while she focused on her task. I grabbed the two smaller ones physically, and they immediately protested.
"Wait, what do you see out there?" I asked excitedly, pointing west. "What's that?"
"It's the sun. Now let me go!" protested our little blond Hercules.
"But what's it made of?" I asked. The little princess was sulking on my lap, but I knew if I could get the boy to answer me, I'd have his attention.
"Burning hot gas," he said.
"Right, but what does it look like it's made of?"
"Gold?" answered the older boy, settling on my other side.
"It does," I said. "In fact, that's what Coyote thought it was made of. That's why he built those wings. But you guys already know about all that."
"No, we don't!" they cried. "What wings?"
I told them how Coyote, who spent most of his days trotting around in the desert, looking for something to eat or for someone to play a trick on, tried to fly to the Sun to steal the big, gleaming pile of gold when it touched the horizon. He knew he couldn't jump high enough to get to the Sun when it was high overhead, but it occurred to him that he should be able to get to it when it set each evening. At first, I had to explain, it was very frustrating for Coyote to figure out where the Sun would touch down. He would watch it set, mark the place with landmarks, and spend all the next day trying to get to the spot where it had landed, only to have it come down somewhere else each night!
He followed the Sun for weeks and weeks, until he came to the rim of the Canyon, and there - on the very spot where we were sitting! - he gave up. "I'll never figure out where the Sun is going to set if it keeps changing every night," he said, and he sat and watched the condors flying around. The next night, while he tried to figure out how to trick one of the condors into landing next to him for dinner, he noticed that the sun was setting on the lip of the Canyon across from him. And it was setting in the very same spot as the night before!
Now this is where Coyote showed how clever he was; he realized that if he tried to get over to that spot during the day, the Sun would see him, and would just set somewhere else. He would need to wait off to the side and then pounce at the last minute. But how to get across that huge Canyon and surprise the Sun?
That's when he got the idea to copy the condors. He went around the desert there, gathering sticky pitch and yucca leaves all day, and stuck the leaves together to make big wings that he could fit on his arms and back. Then he waited until the sun began to settle down on the rim across from him. He ran out to the edge and leapt high, catching the strong winds that up-drafted from the river at the bottom of the Canyon.
Coyote soared high and fast across the Canyon, startling the condors and confusing a cottontail that happened to look up just then. (The cottontail was so scared that he dove into his warren and started digging down so far that he eventually went blind and became a mole.) Coyote only saw his prize ahead of him, though. He reached out, greedily ready to snatch up as much gold as he could grab... but the closer he got to the sun, the hotter it got.
And, of course, you know what happened. The pitch melted, and his wings fell apart, and Coyote fell just short of his goal. Down, down, down into the river at the bottom of the Canyon he fell with a plop.
"Now, you would think Coyote would give up, but he still tries to get that gold. And sometimes, he thinks of a new way to make wings or some other trick to launch himself across the Canyon, so if you sit still and watch carefully, you might see him leap out there tonight."
They all looked out, just as I'd suggested; even the 11-year-old, who was still recovering from the disappointment of not being invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry last year. We all watched as tourists snapped photos of squirrels and each other, and leaned precariously over rails and ledges. We watched the birds swirl far below us, and the tiny twist of river turned into molten copper.
"I see him!" cried the little one, pointing. There was nothing there, but they all started shouting and laughing until the sun was all the way down. And my lovely bride got her few moments of peace to snap her photos.
A couple of days later, we were at the Phoenix Zoo, where we were pleasantly surprised to see most of the animals awake and roaming around their pens despite the already oppressive heat. There were two shy coyotes skulking around in their area, but the littlest one had trouble spotting them until one came right up to the front and stopped to watch the human exhibit for a bit. When she saw him, she got very excited, and leaned forward to stage whisper at him:
"Next time, go for the MOON! It's silver, and won't melt you!"
She's a wise one, that littlest little.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Lb4Lb#4: Where There's Smoke There's Fire and Trouble
Just got back from 2 weeks in Arizona, and I state for the record: I'll take 99.9 F° in Phoenix over 85 in Baltimore ANY time. When they say "it's a dry heat", they ain't kiddin'.
But now we're back, and the settling in process can begin: buying groceries, finishing chores that were left hanging (like blogging and posting music journals), and trying to absorb our fortnight of adventure. This includes, of course, scrobbling the 294 tracks played as we drove all over the Grand Canyon state, and ripping the CDs purchased and - so far - unscrobbled.
Great trip, full of music and family and food, and lots of driving. The lovely bride allowed me to pick up the new Weezer (Pork And Beans seemed to be the theme song of the trip), and the recent Lyle Lovett (It's Not Big It's Large), which impressed both my father and my 5-year-old daughter with both Up In Indiana and Up In Indiana (Acoustic Version).
To visit the Grand Canyon, we borrowed my aunt's cabin, which wasn't far from the famed Route 66, a road so famous it has a song ...which is also so famous that I can't link to all of the versions that I know and love in one journal. (I highly recommend comparing the Depeche Mode and John Mayer covers for a real kick in the head.)
But it was a small bit of serendipity that brought my favorite version up on the iPod as we drove along that stretch of road in Flagstaff, Arizona (don't forget Winona): Buckwheat Zydeco's cover on his album Where There's Smoke There's Fire.
Talk about an album made for the "lb4lb" tag; from the smokin' lead off question What You Gonna Do, to the gentle reminder that It's Getting Late, Buck doesn't let up. There's a healthy dose of rollicking blues, pure bayou madness (Pour Tout Quelque'un); Dwight Yoakum shows up to duet on Hey Good Lookin', and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos fame produces the whole shebang. It's simply 11 tracks of pure love & joy being squeezed out of a flaming accordion, and it is Good.
But it's short.
In fact, I'd feel like I was cheating you if I only gave you a taste of this stuff, so I'll mention Buck's more recent release, Trouble, which I'd dare say sounds even better (though none of the tracks are yet available yet on Last.fm).
Man... vacation rocks.
Great trip, full of music and family and food, and lots of driving. The lovely bride allowed me to pick up the new Weezer (Pork And Beans seemed to be the theme song of the trip), and the recent Lyle Lovett (It's Not Big It's Large), which impressed both my father and my 5-year-old daughter with both Up In Indiana and Up In Indiana (Acoustic Version).
To visit the Grand Canyon, we borrowed my aunt's cabin, which wasn't far from the famed Route 66, a road so famous it has a song ...which is also so famous that I can't link to all of the versions that I know and love in one journal. (I highly recommend comparing the Depeche Mode and John Mayer covers for a real kick in the head.)
But it was a small bit of serendipity that brought my favorite version up on the iPod as we drove along that stretch of road in Flagstaff, Arizona (don't forget Winona): Buckwheat Zydeco's cover on his album Where There's Smoke There's Fire.
Talk about an album made for the "lb4lb" tag; from the smokin' lead off question What You Gonna Do, to the gentle reminder that It's Getting Late, Buck doesn't let up. There's a healthy dose of rollicking blues, pure bayou madness (Pour Tout Quelque'un); Dwight Yoakum shows up to duet on Hey Good Lookin', and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos fame produces the whole shebang. It's simply 11 tracks of pure love & joy being squeezed out of a flaming accordion, and it is Good.
But it's short.
In fact, I'd feel like I was cheating you if I only gave you a taste of this stuff, so I'll mention Buck's more recent release, Trouble, which I'd dare say sounds even better (though none of the tracks are yet available yet on Last.fm).
Man... vacation rocks.
Monday, December 31, 2007
In October
A couple of years ago, someone I miss very much asked me to describe autumn in Arizona. I tried to do what he asked, and this is what came out. (All of my original musical references have been linked; with my apologies and appreciation to all of the artists.)
Legal warning: all persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental.
---------------------------------------------------
In October
There was a band in the late 1980's who took their name from a US spy plane, and they put out a spare, black & white album with spare, black & white songs full of dust and spindly trees. The sky I'm looking at is a full color version of the album cover, minus the pale, blurred Irish faces. The only blurred face within miles is mine.
I'm getting into a white Datsun hatchback with automatic transmission, which I'm not far from discovering it wasn't meant to have. I'm going off to school, and the music of that Irish band is pouring from my speakers. I'm trying to sing along - I am, after all, a vocal major - but I can't duplicate the delicate pain in that voice. It galls me, because I feel so superior to the androgynous man-boy singing the words. I am so certain I could write that song myself! The jealousy burns in me, and it will be years before I can deal with the fact that it is jealousy. I will never write a song like that. I will barely manage to sing it without my voice cracking.
But I will understand it.
After school, I will head to her house. She is still in high school, but now I am not, which means our relationship is now barely legal. I doubt her parents would tolerate me chasing after their daughter if I hadn't been there almost every day for almost four years. Everyone pretends that we are not lovers. Everyone knows we are.
But this time it's not the same. There has been someone else, and I'm enough of a fool - an honest and honorable one, I think - to tell her. I haven't "done the deed", but at our age, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that she herself was only the third or fourth female to show me any kind of romantic interest, or that I am vulnerable to the very idea that a fifth would come along. How do you explain that, when you are too young to understand it yourself?
So we sit in the Arizona room - a screened in patio area with lurid green astro-turf and wicker furniture - and she smokes cigarettes in defiance of her parents. Her mother sits stoically on the other side of the glass door, watching Oprah, and her father flits about through the kitchen, occasionally pulling out a show tune from the bench of the piano and playing it. He will play a song - "
Stranger in Paradise" or "Lara's Theme" - once, and then put it away and go out to his car and leave. Two years later, she will be away at college when her sister finds what is hidden inside the piano.
We don't say much, because we know said sister is listening from her bedroom. She sits behind the screen quietly, with her stereo playing a bizarre mixture of 80's power ballads and this new kind of gritty metal music coming from Seattle. We don't want to corrupt her.
After stilted conversations about schoolwork and making half-hearted plans for the weekend, we get into my car. I have a predictable selection: Paul Simon's "Graceland",Peter Gabriel's "So" and "Us", Harry Connick, Jr.'s "When Harry Met Sally…" soundtrack, and "The Phantom of the Opera". There may be a leftover from summer, like the B-52's, and some Billy Joel, but she's gotten sick of those from driving around with me.
We drive to the new park they built in the canal. It only floods in late August and early September, if it floods at all. It is now October, and everyone feels pretty safe at the playground and on the volleyball court. It is, however, a little chilled, since the sun is blocked early down in the bottom of the canal. People are wearing sweat pants instead of shorts, and the cyclists are wearing thin windbreakers. The usual twenty to thirty degree drop in temperature at this time of year has given all of the children runny noses, and they play listlessly on the shiny new monkey bars, swings, slides, and merry-go-rounds.
We sit on the decorative river rocks that line the steep sides of the canal above the bike path. We are just under the bridge, and the traffic roaring by keeps anyone from eavesdropping. As though anyone would want to hear such whining and pleading. She doesn't. I take her to her house, and take a circuitous route home.
I end up at the park north of where they're going to build the new freeway. It will circle the whole city, they say. I don't believe it. By the time they finish it, the city will have grown around it like the belly of a fat man spilling out of his belt. I've even read articles asking for another loop even further out. You see the pattern, even if you're only a community college music student with no future.
The sun goes down slowly when you sit on top of a mountain. Even a worn and stooped hill like the one I'm on towers over the valley. If I was facing south, I could see all the way to South Mountain, where all of the radio and TV towers are. Facing east, I could see Camelback Mountain, sticking up from where it is pinched between extravagant wealth in Scottsdale and hopeless poverty in Sunnyslope. Driving around that one sorry hill is like driving from "Dallas" to "Sanford & Son" with a commercial break in between.
I am facing west, though. That's the direction I want to go. There is nothing out there, once you get past my house and the city where only the elderly live. Who named it "Youngtown", anyway? I hear that Irish band singing in my head again, and my mouth fills with a gust of dusty wind. Only two weeks ago it would have burned from baking in the harsh sun all day, but now it is slightly damp, and full of spores and pollen. No one could blame me for having to wipe my eyes and nose, and hurrying back to my car.
At home I call my friend, to see what he's up to. He's bored, and wants to go somewhere - how does west sound tonight? I am ready to agree even before he offers gas money, and I grab some supplies on the way out the door. Supplies are two sodas, and a few of mom's cookies.
We head west from his place, taking Bell Road through Sun City - which is Youngtown with a different mayor. We follow it until it becomes a dirt lined track, and then a dead end. We turn south until we find another major road. We are blaring Queen through the town of Buckeye, and stopping at the Circle K for more snacks for us and the car. We decide to head for Wickenburg, in the other direction. We've switched to Pogues, and we spit and curse along with the singer for twenty miles before the tape runs out. In the silence I tell him about her, and what I've done.
"Stop," he says, and I stop. He gets out of the car, in the dark, with the wind whipping across the flat land by the quiet road. He walks back up the road the way we came, and I get out, too. "Stay there," he orders, and I do. The car is off the road on the side, with the lights off, and I walk around it, looking up at the stars through the streaming wind-tears. I find Orion, and the Big Dipper, before I give up on keeping warm in a denim jacket and get back in the car.
When he comes back, I have James Taylor's Greatest Hits in. We ride in melancholy to Wickenburg, which is dark and empty with the hour and the wind. We feel empty, which could be some kind of hunger, and we turn around again, heading home. He wishes for the hundredth time that we were old enough to buy, and I agree. It won't be long.
I drop him off, and head back to my parent's house. It is too late, and there are words when I come in. It starts cordially - no one wants to offend anyone else. But, the words can all mean something else, and all three of us are wondering what I'm going to do, and how I'm going to do it. I can't stay a child forever. But I'm not a child. Which is why I should… But how can I when… I can feel my eyes glazing over, and I have a vision of squares talking in parallel about circles. I laugh. It is misconstrued, and I go off to bed.
I lie staring at the ceiling. The wind is still gusting, but tomorrow there will be more of the endless, cold sun. It loses some of its color along with the heat. The cold is only relative, but I think I can feel it, even though I've never lived through what some would call a "real" winter. Forty degrees is cold enough for me, and that's at least two months and twenty degrees away.
I think about something my friend said, while Shane Macgowan sang about whiskey and gutters. He marveled at my relationship. He said it gave him hope, and he hoped we would last forever. I tried not to tell him, but he could tell from my face. It broke his heart more than it did mine. It was why he had made me stop.
Years go by, with or without those you love. After a while, the songs are all that make sense. Their words aren't forgotten, though your own are. All you have left are images and temperatures, smells and sounds. They mingle with the memories, and the soundtracks take over the dialogue until you almost forget who did what to whom.
At least no matter how cold it gets, there is the sunshine, and the temptation to stay inside and pretend that it's warm.
------------------
Since I never mentioned U2's Joshua Tree album by name in the text, I thought I should do here. I resisted linking the line Under the Bridge in the text. You're welcome.
---------------------------------------------------
In October
There was a band in the late 1980's who took their name from a US spy plane, and they put out a spare, black & white album with spare, black & white songs full of dust and spindly trees. The sky I'm looking at is a full color version of the album cover, minus the pale, blurred Irish faces. The only blurred face within miles is mine.
I'm getting into a white Datsun hatchback with automatic transmission, which I'm not far from discovering it wasn't meant to have. I'm going off to school, and the music of that Irish band is pouring from my speakers. I'm trying to sing along - I am, after all, a vocal major - but I can't duplicate the delicate pain in that voice. It galls me, because I feel so superior to the androgynous man-boy singing the words. I am so certain I could write that song myself! The jealousy burns in me, and it will be years before I can deal with the fact that it is jealousy. I will never write a song like that. I will barely manage to sing it without my voice cracking.
But I will understand it.
After school, I will head to her house. She is still in high school, but now I am not, which means our relationship is now barely legal. I doubt her parents would tolerate me chasing after their daughter if I hadn't been there almost every day for almost four years. Everyone pretends that we are not lovers. Everyone knows we are.
But this time it's not the same. There has been someone else, and I'm enough of a fool - an honest and honorable one, I think - to tell her. I haven't "done the deed", but at our age, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that she herself was only the third or fourth female to show me any kind of romantic interest, or that I am vulnerable to the very idea that a fifth would come along. How do you explain that, when you are too young to understand it yourself?
So we sit in the Arizona room - a screened in patio area with lurid green astro-turf and wicker furniture - and she smokes cigarettes in defiance of her parents. Her mother sits stoically on the other side of the glass door, watching Oprah, and her father flits about through the kitchen, occasionally pulling out a show tune from the bench of the piano and playing it. He will play a song - "
Stranger in Paradise" or "Lara's Theme" - once, and then put it away and go out to his car and leave. Two years later, she will be away at college when her sister finds what is hidden inside the piano.We don't say much, because we know said sister is listening from her bedroom. She sits behind the screen quietly, with her stereo playing a bizarre mixture of 80's power ballads and this new kind of gritty metal music coming from Seattle. We don't want to corrupt her.
After stilted conversations about schoolwork and making half-hearted plans for the weekend, we get into my car. I have a predictable selection: Paul Simon's "Graceland",Peter Gabriel's "So" and "Us", Harry Connick, Jr.'s "When Harry Met Sally…" soundtrack, and "The Phantom of the Opera". There may be a leftover from summer, like the B-52's, and some Billy Joel, but she's gotten sick of those from driving around with me.
We drive to the new park they built in the canal. It only floods in late August and early September, if it floods at all. It is now October, and everyone feels pretty safe at the playground and on the volleyball court. It is, however, a little chilled, since the sun is blocked early down in the bottom of the canal. People are wearing sweat pants instead of shorts, and the cyclists are wearing thin windbreakers. The usual twenty to thirty degree drop in temperature at this time of year has given all of the children runny noses, and they play listlessly on the shiny new monkey bars, swings, slides, and merry-go-rounds.
We sit on the decorative river rocks that line the steep sides of the canal above the bike path. We are just under the bridge, and the traffic roaring by keeps anyone from eavesdropping. As though anyone would want to hear such whining and pleading. She doesn't. I take her to her house, and take a circuitous route home.
I end up at the park north of where they're going to build the new freeway. It will circle the whole city, they say. I don't believe it. By the time they finish it, the city will have grown around it like the belly of a fat man spilling out of his belt. I've even read articles asking for another loop even further out. You see the pattern, even if you're only a community college music student with no future.
The sun goes down slowly when you sit on top of a mountain. Even a worn and stooped hill like the one I'm on towers over the valley. If I was facing south, I could see all the way to South Mountain, where all of the radio and TV towers are. Facing east, I could see Camelback Mountain, sticking up from where it is pinched between extravagant wealth in Scottsdale and hopeless poverty in Sunnyslope. Driving around that one sorry hill is like driving from "Dallas" to "Sanford & Son" with a commercial break in between.
I am facing west, though. That's the direction I want to go. There is nothing out there, once you get past my house and the city where only the elderly live. Who named it "Youngtown", anyway? I hear that Irish band singing in my head again, and my mouth fills with a gust of dusty wind. Only two weeks ago it would have burned from baking in the harsh sun all day, but now it is slightly damp, and full of spores and pollen. No one could blame me for having to wipe my eyes and nose, and hurrying back to my car.
At home I call my friend, to see what he's up to. He's bored, and wants to go somewhere - how does west sound tonight? I am ready to agree even before he offers gas money, and I grab some supplies on the way out the door. Supplies are two sodas, and a few of mom's cookies.
We head west from his place, taking Bell Road through Sun City - which is Youngtown with a different mayor. We follow it until it becomes a dirt lined track, and then a dead end. We turn south until we find another major road. We are blaring Queen through the town of Buckeye, and stopping at the Circle K for more snacks for us and the car. We decide to head for Wickenburg, in the other direction. We've switched to Pogues, and we spit and curse along with the singer for twenty miles before the tape runs out. In the silence I tell him about her, and what I've done.
"Stop," he says, and I stop. He gets out of the car, in the dark, with the wind whipping across the flat land by the quiet road. He walks back up the road the way we came, and I get out, too. "Stay there," he orders, and I do. The car is off the road on the side, with the lights off, and I walk around it, looking up at the stars through the streaming wind-tears. I find Orion, and the Big Dipper, before I give up on keeping warm in a denim jacket and get back in the car.
When he comes back, I have James Taylor's Greatest Hits in. We ride in melancholy to Wickenburg, which is dark and empty with the hour and the wind. We feel empty, which could be some kind of hunger, and we turn around again, heading home. He wishes for the hundredth time that we were old enough to buy, and I agree. It won't be long.
I drop him off, and head back to my parent's house. It is too late, and there are words when I come in. It starts cordially - no one wants to offend anyone else. But, the words can all mean something else, and all three of us are wondering what I'm going to do, and how I'm going to do it. I can't stay a child forever. But I'm not a child. Which is why I should… But how can I when… I can feel my eyes glazing over, and I have a vision of squares talking in parallel about circles. I laugh. It is misconstrued, and I go off to bed.
I lie staring at the ceiling. The wind is still gusting, but tomorrow there will be more of the endless, cold sun. It loses some of its color along with the heat. The cold is only relative, but I think I can feel it, even though I've never lived through what some would call a "real" winter. Forty degrees is cold enough for me, and that's at least two months and twenty degrees away.
I think about something my friend said, while Shane Macgowan sang about whiskey and gutters. He marveled at my relationship. He said it gave him hope, and he hoped we would last forever. I tried not to tell him, but he could tell from my face. It broke his heart more than it did mine. It was why he had made me stop.
Years go by, with or without those you love. After a while, the songs are all that make sense. Their words aren't forgotten, though your own are. All you have left are images and temperatures, smells and sounds. They mingle with the memories, and the soundtracks take over the dialogue until you almost forget who did what to whom.
At least no matter how cold it gets, there is the sunshine, and the temptation to stay inside and pretend that it's warm.
------------------
Since I never mentioned U2's Joshua Tree album by name in the text, I thought I should do here. I resisted linking the line Under the Bridge in the text. You're welcome.
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