It started sometime before the turn of the twenty-first century…. Ironically, a time, a date disputed. Exactly when did the new millennium actually begin, did it begin in 2000 or 2001? This was a pressing question debated by talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and others, hours spent on this question of great scatological significance. It really doesn’t matter much now…it was a silly, academic question anyhow.
We were lulled and brainwashed into a mindless state of acceptance by the Y2K myth… an event which never was. I remember waiting up on New Years eve for the inevitable meltdown, consuming expensive ancient champagne while the ball dropped – and absolutely nothing happened.
Meanwhile, silent and ignored, or maybe accepted as necessary, the revolution of miniaturization moved relentlessly forward, a high tech amoeba – and catapulted us into the misty twenty first century.
A host of computer driven equipment, from car ignitions to tiny MP3 players, required more and more powerful microprocessors. Inside sterile laboratories in Silicon Valley, and Austin, more and more functions were crammed onto miniscule wafers, giving birth to a host of enhancements, designed to improve the quality of our lives. We were assaulted and indoctrinated on all sides. Dell computers, Pentiums and Ipods, digital cameras and safer brakes sang us a lullaby, and we nodded off into a state of complacency.
It began innocently enough….It wasn’t long before a microchip had been developed that could be implanted under the skin of your pet. The chip contained information the same as a neck tag would on a dog or cat – immunizations and owner history, all able to be read by a remote receiving computer.
In a few years, GPS technology was integrated into the same chip, and the government saw a great opportunity to implant them in our military troops, so that they could be identified and located in battle. Pertinent information including date of birth, social security number and blood type, along with hometown, sexual preferences, school records, family members, hobbies and just about any other type of information could now be linked into a central government operated, networked GIS data base of DHS and DOD employees.
It wasn’t long before the new improved version was being implanted in all government workers, to provide a greater degree of “homeland security”. Convicts and ex-convicts got a chip, and they were added to the GIS database. Teachers, doctors and lawyers were required to have a chip implant in order to work. So were welders, carpenters and mechanics. Just about everyone in the workforce had to submit in order to work -even resident aliens.
A special chip was required for children too, to ensure their safety, in case of abduction or abuse. If parents didn’t comply, they were charged with child neglect, fined and imprisoned until they would finally relent. In short order, each and every child was implanted at birth, for their safety – by mandate.
It became impossible to buy food or clothing, to fuel your vehicle, even to conduct business at the bank without an implanted chip. This was necessary because transactions involving coin, paper and plastic became a thing of the past - for security reasons.
That’s why we’ve been out here riding the winds and the waves, staying far offshore, where the blue water is, with the dolphins and the flying fish, sometimes putting into third world ports, working for fuel and food before setting sail again further south, searching for a land of freedom.
I keep asking the question on night watches when the stars are crowding the open ocean sky and the sea is calm and quiet;
How could this have happened to the land I loved?
The question is carried on the breeze by the Frigatebirds and the Petrels, to the distant shore, and they return silent.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Joke Night
We just got back from the island. Tomorrow we have a tour to Guerrero Viejo with a load of viejitos, and our friends Don and Linda are going with us. Ought to be fun.
We decided to meet them at Fishbones, a normally innocuous bar / grill on the bay. It also has one of the only fishing piers around, so it’s always fun watching people waste money on generally unproductive waters. Mikey, our old friend from the Brewery now bartends there, and we go there sometimes on Wednesday nights while the kids are at church activities. Besides cold Shiner Bock beer (the national beer of Texas), they make one of the best burgers around.
I should’ve known something was up tonight when Mikey turned on the PA system that's normally reserved for the evening crooner who plays there. He plays about a thousand different songs, a la John Denver a real folksinger-wannabe, but he wasn’t there tonight. “What’s up with this?”, I thought to myself.
It wasn’t long till we began to find out, as a buttload of winter Texans began to stream in….this couldn’t be good.
And it wasn’t.
Turns out it was “Joke night” at Fishbones, a night when chingos of touristas get together and tell jokes to try and win a freebe dinner. Ah, the mention of anything free to a bunch of winter Texans brings out a feeding frenzy.
So we sit there trying to hold down our normally otherwise tasty food while a bunch of lutefisk eating retirees from Illinois, Missouri and Wisconsin told jokes. Terrible jokes. Where did these people learn this type of crap? We listened to jokes about transgenders, anuses’, Viagra, various bodily functions and other assorted sophomoric mouth-squirt. All the while we were snickering, not at their jokes, but at their apparent lack of shame. We began the comparison game too…..
After we hurriedly ate and paid the bill, my friend Don told us to go ahead, and we exited in somewhat, disgust. Once outside Don came up behind us, having left from the back exit, walking to the parking lot along the pier. He was snickering as he told us the following story:
“ I grabbed the Microphone and looked out at the crowd, and they all had big grins on their faces. I told them that I was from Texas, from the Island, and during the summer time, when they’re gone…..we tell jokes too".....
..... I asked ‘em “ Do you wanna hear one?” Of course, they all anxiously nodded, grinning from ear to ear".
"I said, OK, here goes":
“What’s the difference between a winter Texan and a canoe?”….
"Nobody made a guess, so I told ‘em”:
“Sometimes a canoe tips!”
Don chuckled and said; “The smiles instantly melted from there faces, and you could hear the ceiling fan, and the ice in their drinks”. “That’s when I took the exit, stage left, and went out the back, along the pier, out here”.
We decided to meet them at Fishbones, a normally innocuous bar / grill on the bay. It also has one of the only fishing piers around, so it’s always fun watching people waste money on generally unproductive waters. Mikey, our old friend from the Brewery now bartends there, and we go there sometimes on Wednesday nights while the kids are at church activities. Besides cold Shiner Bock beer (the national beer of Texas), they make one of the best burgers around.
I should’ve known something was up tonight when Mikey turned on the PA system that's normally reserved for the evening crooner who plays there. He plays about a thousand different songs, a la John Denver a real folksinger-wannabe, but he wasn’t there tonight. “What’s up with this?”, I thought to myself.
It wasn’t long till we began to find out, as a buttload of winter Texans began to stream in….this couldn’t be good.
And it wasn’t.
Turns out it was “Joke night” at Fishbones, a night when chingos of touristas get together and tell jokes to try and win a freebe dinner. Ah, the mention of anything free to a bunch of winter Texans brings out a feeding frenzy.
So we sit there trying to hold down our normally otherwise tasty food while a bunch of lutefisk eating retirees from Illinois, Missouri and Wisconsin told jokes. Terrible jokes. Where did these people learn this type of crap? We listened to jokes about transgenders, anuses’, Viagra, various bodily functions and other assorted sophomoric mouth-squirt. All the while we were snickering, not at their jokes, but at their apparent lack of shame. We began the comparison game too…..
After we hurriedly ate and paid the bill, my friend Don told us to go ahead, and we exited in somewhat, disgust. Once outside Don came up behind us, having left from the back exit, walking to the parking lot along the pier. He was snickering as he told us the following story:
“ I grabbed the Microphone and looked out at the crowd, and they all had big grins on their faces. I told them that I was from Texas, from the Island, and during the summer time, when they’re gone…..we tell jokes too".....
..... I asked ‘em “ Do you wanna hear one?” Of course, they all anxiously nodded, grinning from ear to ear".
"I said, OK, here goes":
“What’s the difference between a winter Texan and a canoe?”….
"Nobody made a guess, so I told ‘em”:
“Sometimes a canoe tips!”
Don chuckled and said; “The smiles instantly melted from there faces, and you could hear the ceiling fan, and the ice in their drinks”. “That’s when I took the exit, stage left, and went out the back, along the pier, out here”.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Krulls Research
I was an undergraduate at UTPA back in the early ‘90’s. I had over forty credit hours in geology, when the bottom fell out of the program, and I had to transfer to the Biology department to pursue a major in critter counting. During that time, I worked as a diver on an NSF grant, monitoring seagrasses in the lower Laguna Madre.
Joe and Krull were two graduates working on the same grant during that time. Both were public school teachers, working on their masters degrees. Since I was the only certified SCUBA diver, I did most of the sub aquatic work, taking core samples and setting quadrats, spending long hours on the bottom of the bay in the verdant seagrass meadows. Joe and Krull would occasionally do their own underwater work as well, holding their breaths, which is a hard way to do things. Part of their plan was to evaluate seagrass growth and population statistics by coring random areas with a homemade 6” PVC core tool, sharpened on one end, and driven by a small sledge hammer into the substrate. They’d then pull the plug out, and bag the seagrass and mud core, to be counted and chemically analyzed back at the lab. The 6” PVC tool was a bitch to pull out, especially in hard substrate, like shell and sand.
Joe and Krull were opposite personalities. Joe was a dedicated scientist, sometimes almost too much so, but certainly balanced and affable. Prone to seasickness, even in the placid bay, once he and I were out on a collecting trip during a norther, when the swell was running about two or three feet, collecting his samples. Joe would normally insist on doing much of his own work; legitimacy and integrity throughout his project held a great importance to him. Later, he gained a certification in SCUBA which made things a lot easier for him, but on this particular trip he was free diving, coming up again and again for air, swallowing great amounts of seawater in the process. After he finished his work, he crawled aboard, and while marking his samples suddenly remarked “I’M GONNA LOSE IT!” leaning over the side to bilge great amounts of seawater and breakfast at Teds in a chum slick that stretched far aft of the little Dargel scooter in the chocolate turbulent bay waters. After we got to shore and loaded the boat, we went to lunch at Blackbeards as if nothing had happened out there. My admiration for Joe that day was manifold.
Krull, on the other hand was an ill tempered prima-donna, given to temper tantrums and fits of derision to those he considered “inferior”. Krull had a penchant for fabricating things, especially the statistics and results from his own “research”. Krull decided that the 6” core tool was insufficient for his “research”, and instead fabricated one out of 24” PVC. I snickered when he brought the goddamn thing onboard, determined to use it in his “research”. So one day we were out there just west of the island in a thick Thalassia bed and Krull goes down with that big-ass core tool, with a big-ass sledge hammer and proceeds to drive the bastard about a foot into the mud. He huffs, and he puffs and strains like shit to try and get it to come loose, with no luck. After about 45 minutes with still no luck, I decided to attach the bow line to it and drag the fucker loose. A bit of reverse throttle from the big 90 horse, and the thing popped out of the substrate with a massive swirl of mud, and Krull hauled it aboard. Now he had to get that huge plug of mud out and into a waiting garbage sack so that he could haul it back to the main campus for his “research”. No dice. Even though he had engineered a plug into the top of the core tool to release any vacuum that might be trapped, the plug wouldn’t come out. I sat on the stern of the scooter, trying not to laugh as he got frustrated, taking a big flat screwdriver and attempting to dig the core out of that big-ass core tool. It came loose allright, falling apart in small shit chunks all over the deck, chunks of Thalassia and gooey mud making the core totally useless. By this time Krull was gnashing his teeth, moaning and shaking in anguish. In a fit of rage, he picked up the tool and heaved it aft, where it whizzed by my ear striking a red metal fuel can on deck, putting a sizable dent in it before spinning to rest near the rail. We sat there in stunned silence, not speaking, even on the return trip, embarrassed and wordless after Krulls infantile outburst.
After that, Krull went back to using a 6” core tool, collecting samples to take back to the main campus to sit in the refrigerator for weeks on end until he had time to do his “research”. I was doing TA work in the biology department at the time, and that refrigerator was in my office. My friend, littleman, who had the displeasure of being abused by Krull, would in retribution, periodically take out the sample bags and urinate in them.
Joe got his masters degree, and has since contributed greatly to the aquatic understanding of the Lower Laguna Madre. I often see him both professionally, and as a friend. He continues his serious, but childlike fascination of this area.
Krull eventually completed his research, after handling many core bags, laboriously analyzing the chemistry, which were never over standard seawater parameters. Krull never completed his masters degree requirements. Occasionally, when I’m in need a laugh, I’ll go into TCA’s old office at the CSL and look up over the cabinets at the big-ass core tool and remember Krulls “research”.
Joe and Krull were two graduates working on the same grant during that time. Both were public school teachers, working on their masters degrees. Since I was the only certified SCUBA diver, I did most of the sub aquatic work, taking core samples and setting quadrats, spending long hours on the bottom of the bay in the verdant seagrass meadows. Joe and Krull would occasionally do their own underwater work as well, holding their breaths, which is a hard way to do things. Part of their plan was to evaluate seagrass growth and population statistics by coring random areas with a homemade 6” PVC core tool, sharpened on one end, and driven by a small sledge hammer into the substrate. They’d then pull the plug out, and bag the seagrass and mud core, to be counted and chemically analyzed back at the lab. The 6” PVC tool was a bitch to pull out, especially in hard substrate, like shell and sand.
Joe and Krull were opposite personalities. Joe was a dedicated scientist, sometimes almost too much so, but certainly balanced and affable. Prone to seasickness, even in the placid bay, once he and I were out on a collecting trip during a norther, when the swell was running about two or three feet, collecting his samples. Joe would normally insist on doing much of his own work; legitimacy and integrity throughout his project held a great importance to him. Later, he gained a certification in SCUBA which made things a lot easier for him, but on this particular trip he was free diving, coming up again and again for air, swallowing great amounts of seawater in the process. After he finished his work, he crawled aboard, and while marking his samples suddenly remarked “I’M GONNA LOSE IT!” leaning over the side to bilge great amounts of seawater and breakfast at Teds in a chum slick that stretched far aft of the little Dargel scooter in the chocolate turbulent bay waters. After we got to shore and loaded the boat, we went to lunch at Blackbeards as if nothing had happened out there. My admiration for Joe that day was manifold.
Krull, on the other hand was an ill tempered prima-donna, given to temper tantrums and fits of derision to those he considered “inferior”. Krull had a penchant for fabricating things, especially the statistics and results from his own “research”. Krull decided that the 6” core tool was insufficient for his “research”, and instead fabricated one out of 24” PVC. I snickered when he brought the goddamn thing onboard, determined to use it in his “research”. So one day we were out there just west of the island in a thick Thalassia bed and Krull goes down with that big-ass core tool, with a big-ass sledge hammer and proceeds to drive the bastard about a foot into the mud. He huffs, and he puffs and strains like shit to try and get it to come loose, with no luck. After about 45 minutes with still no luck, I decided to attach the bow line to it and drag the fucker loose. A bit of reverse throttle from the big 90 horse, and the thing popped out of the substrate with a massive swirl of mud, and Krull hauled it aboard. Now he had to get that huge plug of mud out and into a waiting garbage sack so that he could haul it back to the main campus for his “research”. No dice. Even though he had engineered a plug into the top of the core tool to release any vacuum that might be trapped, the plug wouldn’t come out. I sat on the stern of the scooter, trying not to laugh as he got frustrated, taking a big flat screwdriver and attempting to dig the core out of that big-ass core tool. It came loose allright, falling apart in small shit chunks all over the deck, chunks of Thalassia and gooey mud making the core totally useless. By this time Krull was gnashing his teeth, moaning and shaking in anguish. In a fit of rage, he picked up the tool and heaved it aft, where it whizzed by my ear striking a red metal fuel can on deck, putting a sizable dent in it before spinning to rest near the rail. We sat there in stunned silence, not speaking, even on the return trip, embarrassed and wordless after Krulls infantile outburst.
After that, Krull went back to using a 6” core tool, collecting samples to take back to the main campus to sit in the refrigerator for weeks on end until he had time to do his “research”. I was doing TA work in the biology department at the time, and that refrigerator was in my office. My friend, littleman, who had the displeasure of being abused by Krull, would in retribution, periodically take out the sample bags and urinate in them.
Joe got his masters degree, and has since contributed greatly to the aquatic understanding of the Lower Laguna Madre. I often see him both professionally, and as a friend. He continues his serious, but childlike fascination of this area.
Krull eventually completed his research, after handling many core bags, laboriously analyzing the chemistry, which were never over standard seawater parameters. Krull never completed his masters degree requirements. Occasionally, when I’m in need a laugh, I’ll go into TCA’s old office at the CSL and look up over the cabinets at the big-ass core tool and remember Krulls “research”.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Sirens Song
Each wave spends its energy after traveling from some distant point, to die on our shoreline leaving us with memories only.
Bowling for Fuselages: Invasion of the Saudimizers
“Life’s a dance you learn as you go
Sometimes you lead…sometimes you follow
Don’t worry about what you don’t know
‘Cause life’s a dance you learn as you go”
-John Michael Montgomery
It was 1981 and I was going to school in Waco, at Texas State Technical Institute (TSTI) getting certified as a gen-u-wine Aviation Mechanic. I moved there in August. Waco is a weird place, in the buckle of the Texas Bible belt. Its much bigger brother is Baylor University, a Southern Baptist college. On the cusp of the Texas hill country, Waco remains something of a holdout. It is much closer in nature to a town of the old pre civil war South, and in fact even had its share of slaves prior to the great war of Northern aggression.
The Campus of TSTI Waco is northeast of the town (which barely has any sort of recognizable nucleus in itself), and is near to the infamous David Koresch Branch Davidian compound. Religion plays a big part in these folks lives, no matter how cultish.
I was going to school with a lot of rather intelligent individuals, including my flying instructor, a 23 year old hotshot who had already amassed well over 3000 hours in the air, a lot of them as a flying hearse, shuttling bodies all over Texas and Oklahoma. Some of the other guys were college grads with degrees in fields like engineering, who for one reason or another decided that working on aircraft might be a lucrative means of earning an income. We were given to smoking giant Sherlock Holmes Meerschaum pipes and acting like avant-garde intellectuals instead of wrench turning grease monkeys.
The hanger where we all worked was filled with vintage, donated aircraft. There was an old DeHavilland Beaver, with an ancient Pratt and Whitney R-985 radial engine, a MASH era Bell 56 helicopter and various other salvaged pieces and parts. The hanger was a dirty collection of bird shit covered antiques, splattered with much excrement by the pigeons who had taken up residence in the rafters of the yawning cavernous old structure.
Outside resided an ancient DC-7 complete with engines and flight controls, where we’d disappear on breaks and smoke giant spliffs of bad ganja, pretending to be flying the ancient hulk, smoke billowing out of the hatches, windows and doors like there was an on board fire going on. I once saw a group of mechanic wannabes trying to hammer easy-outs into stripped screw heads on the wing panels, and it was at that time, like a revelation, that I made a conscious decision not to fly on commercial aircraft, unless under the direst emergency, knowing the quality of mechanics who happened to be headed for that field, a promise that I’ve kept for myself to this day…
Another aircraft sitting forlornly chained, like some sort of metal convict was the forward section of an old DC-3 sans wings and aft fuselage. This bird had killed a student just prior to my arrival in Waco when he leaned against the landing gear (which folds forward) while working in the wheel well, extruding his head though the nacelle firewall.
Around the back of the hanger were nine fuselages from old Cessna 150 trainers that the flight school operated, brightly colored little aircraft fuselages only, no interiors, engines, wings, or tail sections. The 150 is a tiny bird to begin with, and these sections were about 14 feet long, and 48” in diameter at the widest point, the engine firewall. They weighed less than a hundred pounds each.
One day we got the bright notion to set them up on end, on the firewall and arrange them like giant bowling pins. We’d take turns using an old tail wheel tire for a bowling ball, situating ourselves about fifty feet away. When the fuselages would fall, they made the most satisfying whack on the concrete, writhing and rocking in great metal anguish till they finally lay still on the hot August tramac, only to be picked up, re-set and bowled for by the next man up. Bowling for fuselages became a favorite pasttime along with hackey sack and copious ganja consumption which we did to alleviate some of the boredom of day to day life at TSTI, which could often resemble some sort of military training without the discipline.
Bowling for fuselages ended almost as soon as it began, when one day I launched a perfect strike ball, which, unfortunately took a hard hook after hitting an errant piece of two by four lying on the deck, bounced up and hit my friend John, who was the pin attendant, square in the nuts, causing him to immediately fall over in the classic Beavis and Butthead kicked-in-the-nads fetal position. The instructors decided to shut down our game then, before another lawsuit befell TSTI.
During that time, there were a number of Saudi Arabian guys going to school, taking aviation mechanics and flying. It was always a challenge being in the pattern with these guys. I was flying a lot too, and my flight instructor and I would often imbibe in a bit of ganja and then go out in the 150 aerobat to punch holes in the sky, doing screaming stalls, wing-overs and other fun maneuvers high above McLennan Community College, swooping down under the power wires that spanned the Bosque River, hoping that the pretty girls who went there would notice our valiant efforts. This all came to a halt one day too, when some shitstick decided to remove about six inches off of the top of the vertical stabilizer by flying too high under the wire…..fortunately he made it back, but the airspace around MCC was deemed off-limits for TSTI pilots. For our safety though, on the big flight board, whenever the Saudis were flying, there would appear in the Notice to Aviation Mariners (NOTAMS); “caution, Saudis in pattern!”…..
We renamed ‘em “Saudimizers” after the energizer battery, which just keeps going an going….Like the battery these fuckers would keep going and going allright, screwing up everything in their paths. You can’t polish a turd.
One day one of the Saudis walked in all covered with bandages, all black and blue bruises. Turns out that he’d crashed his new custom van (the old shag-vans from the ‘70’s and early 80’s) when he turned on the cruise control, and went to the back to mix a drink. Seems like one of the American students had told him that cruise control is just like having an autopilot.....
Because we’ve been in bed with the Saudis as a nation for a number of years, and due to the fact that they are a rich bunch of bastards from all of their oil and gas revenues, they were never failed in any aviation classes. I remember when we were all rebuilding engine magnetos, a complex job at best and damn near impossible without some sort of higher intelligence, the Saudi students couldn’t follow the directions, and got frustrated. Instead of reassembling the thing correctly, they just lobbed the parts inside and screwed the case halves back together. One of the instructors held up a Suadimized mag, and shook it like a fucking maraca before signing him off to go on to the next section of aircraft repair.
I enjoyed my tenure at TSTI Waco, and spent a good deal of hours flying, smoking ganja and in general having a good time. I finally graduated and passed my FAA exams. Later, I worked in San Antonio for Dee Howard Aircraft, modifying a giant 747 into a flying palace for the king of Saudi Arabia. I wonder if they allow Saudimizer mechanics to service it?
Sometimes you lead…sometimes you follow
Don’t worry about what you don’t know
‘Cause life’s a dance you learn as you go”
-John Michael Montgomery
It was 1981 and I was going to school in Waco, at Texas State Technical Institute (TSTI) getting certified as a gen-u-wine Aviation Mechanic. I moved there in August. Waco is a weird place, in the buckle of the Texas Bible belt. Its much bigger brother is Baylor University, a Southern Baptist college. On the cusp of the Texas hill country, Waco remains something of a holdout. It is much closer in nature to a town of the old pre civil war South, and in fact even had its share of slaves prior to the great war of Northern aggression.
The Campus of TSTI Waco is northeast of the town (which barely has any sort of recognizable nucleus in itself), and is near to the infamous David Koresch Branch Davidian compound. Religion plays a big part in these folks lives, no matter how cultish.
I was going to school with a lot of rather intelligent individuals, including my flying instructor, a 23 year old hotshot who had already amassed well over 3000 hours in the air, a lot of them as a flying hearse, shuttling bodies all over Texas and Oklahoma. Some of the other guys were college grads with degrees in fields like engineering, who for one reason or another decided that working on aircraft might be a lucrative means of earning an income. We were given to smoking giant Sherlock Holmes Meerschaum pipes and acting like avant-garde intellectuals instead of wrench turning grease monkeys.
The hanger where we all worked was filled with vintage, donated aircraft. There was an old DeHavilland Beaver, with an ancient Pratt and Whitney R-985 radial engine, a MASH era Bell 56 helicopter and various other salvaged pieces and parts. The hanger was a dirty collection of bird shit covered antiques, splattered with much excrement by the pigeons who had taken up residence in the rafters of the yawning cavernous old structure.
Outside resided an ancient DC-7 complete with engines and flight controls, where we’d disappear on breaks and smoke giant spliffs of bad ganja, pretending to be flying the ancient hulk, smoke billowing out of the hatches, windows and doors like there was an on board fire going on. I once saw a group of mechanic wannabes trying to hammer easy-outs into stripped screw heads on the wing panels, and it was at that time, like a revelation, that I made a conscious decision not to fly on commercial aircraft, unless under the direst emergency, knowing the quality of mechanics who happened to be headed for that field, a promise that I’ve kept for myself to this day…
Another aircraft sitting forlornly chained, like some sort of metal convict was the forward section of an old DC-3 sans wings and aft fuselage. This bird had killed a student just prior to my arrival in Waco when he leaned against the landing gear (which folds forward) while working in the wheel well, extruding his head though the nacelle firewall.
Around the back of the hanger were nine fuselages from old Cessna 150 trainers that the flight school operated, brightly colored little aircraft fuselages only, no interiors, engines, wings, or tail sections. The 150 is a tiny bird to begin with, and these sections were about 14 feet long, and 48” in diameter at the widest point, the engine firewall. They weighed less than a hundred pounds each.
One day we got the bright notion to set them up on end, on the firewall and arrange them like giant bowling pins. We’d take turns using an old tail wheel tire for a bowling ball, situating ourselves about fifty feet away. When the fuselages would fall, they made the most satisfying whack on the concrete, writhing and rocking in great metal anguish till they finally lay still on the hot August tramac, only to be picked up, re-set and bowled for by the next man up. Bowling for fuselages became a favorite pasttime along with hackey sack and copious ganja consumption which we did to alleviate some of the boredom of day to day life at TSTI, which could often resemble some sort of military training without the discipline.
Bowling for fuselages ended almost as soon as it began, when one day I launched a perfect strike ball, which, unfortunately took a hard hook after hitting an errant piece of two by four lying on the deck, bounced up and hit my friend John, who was the pin attendant, square in the nuts, causing him to immediately fall over in the classic Beavis and Butthead kicked-in-the-nads fetal position. The instructors decided to shut down our game then, before another lawsuit befell TSTI.
During that time, there were a number of Saudi Arabian guys going to school, taking aviation mechanics and flying. It was always a challenge being in the pattern with these guys. I was flying a lot too, and my flight instructor and I would often imbibe in a bit of ganja and then go out in the 150 aerobat to punch holes in the sky, doing screaming stalls, wing-overs and other fun maneuvers high above McLennan Community College, swooping down under the power wires that spanned the Bosque River, hoping that the pretty girls who went there would notice our valiant efforts. This all came to a halt one day too, when some shitstick decided to remove about six inches off of the top of the vertical stabilizer by flying too high under the wire…..fortunately he made it back, but the airspace around MCC was deemed off-limits for TSTI pilots. For our safety though, on the big flight board, whenever the Saudis were flying, there would appear in the Notice to Aviation Mariners (NOTAMS); “caution, Saudis in pattern!”…..
We renamed ‘em “Saudimizers” after the energizer battery, which just keeps going an going….Like the battery these fuckers would keep going and going allright, screwing up everything in their paths. You can’t polish a turd.
One day one of the Saudis walked in all covered with bandages, all black and blue bruises. Turns out that he’d crashed his new custom van (the old shag-vans from the ‘70’s and early 80’s) when he turned on the cruise control, and went to the back to mix a drink. Seems like one of the American students had told him that cruise control is just like having an autopilot.....
Because we’ve been in bed with the Saudis as a nation for a number of years, and due to the fact that they are a rich bunch of bastards from all of their oil and gas revenues, they were never failed in any aviation classes. I remember when we were all rebuilding engine magnetos, a complex job at best and damn near impossible without some sort of higher intelligence, the Saudi students couldn’t follow the directions, and got frustrated. Instead of reassembling the thing correctly, they just lobbed the parts inside and screwed the case halves back together. One of the instructors held up a Suadimized mag, and shook it like a fucking maraca before signing him off to go on to the next section of aircraft repair.
I enjoyed my tenure at TSTI Waco, and spent a good deal of hours flying, smoking ganja and in general having a good time. I finally graduated and passed my FAA exams. Later, I worked in San Antonio for Dee Howard Aircraft, modifying a giant 747 into a flying palace for the king of Saudi Arabia. I wonder if they allow Saudimizer mechanics to service it?
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Remembering Gabe
Winter on the island and the wind kicks up, the beach gets narrow, cold front born combers march in from the distant north-northeast, dying on the chilly wet sand, spending their energy without telling their tales.
Even the winter sun isn’t all that warm. It mimics its summer twin, shining limited sickly yellow light on the dunes forming damp, salty shadows where the beach plants, railroad vine and sea purslane struggle to survive the all too short South Texas winter.
Sea oats nod in the wind on the tidal flats, nodding in agreement that natures season will be replaced soon by the parched and sandblasted winds of summer. Days are short, and the water is cold.
The island hibernates for a little while, and the beach resorts and palapa bars only open on nice weekend days, hoping to snag a stray off season tourist or two for a cutesy rum drink and maybe a greasy burger. The madness of spring break is still months away, and the ugly island infrastructure that caters to that time of year is still dormant and buried under last years plywood and rusty nails, now sandblasted gray and weathered.
I’ve always loved winter on the beach. It is one of the few times when I’ve found some sort of solace. While my mother died back in ‘95, I came to the beach, sometimes neglecting responsibility in order to recharge and escape the horrors of the cancer that consumed her being piece by piece. I spent a great deal of time in the water, surfing, sometimes just sitting out there beyond the cold lumpy breakers, clearing my mind in the zen rise and fall of the swell. On certain occasions, ladies would accompany me to the winter island and we'd hole up at my favorite port-o'-call, the Yacht Club. Angelic, they'd mother and smother me with exotic perfumes and gentle embraces, another sort of wave, energy spent on an internal beach, on the coastline of the soul, leaving me filled with life.
On Tuesday the police recovered the body of Scarlets oldest son, Gabe from the dunes between highway access five and six. In one final and absolute act of utter desparation, he parked his car along the side of the road, walked west out onto the wind tidal flat and committed suicide, choosing to take his own life, for reasons only he could comprehend.
I knew him well. During that same horrendous period of my life, after my Mom died and at the same time, my marriage fell apart, I moved to the Island and met Scarlet, her then husband Tom and their kids. Scarlet home schooled the kids and they were far advanced, well beyond the average in terms of education and understanding. Scarlet and the boys volunteered at the lab, keeping the aquaria spotless and gloriously stocked with a wide assortment of local sea critters that they collected during that warm and magic summer.
I was taking care of lots of things at the Lab, including keeping the computer network running. Back in ’95 it wasn’t an easy task, and lots of the equipment was crude by today’s standards. It was the heyday of the 486…. I had just enough computer savvy to get me in trouble. Gabe taught me to write web pages (a difficult task in those days, pre- Front Page), troubleshoot the system, teaching me the finer points of computer maintenance. He was 14, I was 40.
I worried over Gabe that summer. His dad was working out of town a lot of the time, and so I took him under wing, shuffling him outside, away from the nether-world of silicon and data transfer, to the real world of surf, sand and sea.
I tried to teach him how to surf, pushing him into endless waves, only to have him get pounded in the shorebreak, skinny legs flailing one direction, board whipping the other. He returned time and again to the take off spot, determined to slide down the wave. Other times we’d go out collecting sea creatures for the displays, and sometimes we’d just hang out on the beach. I tried to visualize what sort of person Gabe would become. After I left in the fall, I frequently worried over Gabe. He was an enigmatic child, fragile and different from the rest. Hyper intelligent, I knew that he’d never find a way to totally fit in with the mundane masses. There was an ineffable yearning in him to be accepted and loved, vulnerable and gossamer. The world doesn’t provide for that sort of need.
I returned to the western side of the valley for awhile, and moved out here about six yeas ago. During that time, Gabe had left. He lived with his dad for awhile, and I heard that he’d moved up to Austin after a time. I had also heard that he’d found a bit of trouble, and knew that it was his rudderless nature, his intelligence and youth, and I prayed that he’d find his way.
He returned to the island a while back, and one day appeared at the lab, sitting back in one of the big rooms like the old days, working on a defunct laptop, trying to repair some sort of esoteric mechanical problem. He hadn’t changed a bit. Just gotten older. I’d see him periodically, and was proud and content. It seemed he’d finally found his niche, he had learned the locksmithing trade, and in his brilliance invented all sorts of gadgets and methods to get locks unlocked. I’d see him around town, and we’d always talk, with the connection of time between us.
Yesterday, we all remembered Gabe at the Island Traders bookstore, one of his favorite spots on this earth. It was a bittersweet moment, and Gabe was the cement holding us all together. The gathering, like Gabe himself was a collection of eclectic people, from the remember Che Guevara crowd, to the middle aged like us, family and friend holding hands - sometimes crying sometimes laughing. The day was as brilliant as Gabe too, bluebird sky and light warm wind, soothing us all in our grief. Afterward, we boarded a boat, spreading a bit of his physical being in the cool waters of the Brazos Santiago Pass, along with Dr. Pepper, cigarettes and flowers- all things that he loved.
Then we remembered him in the past tense.
I crossed the causeway after it was all over, brooding about life and death, youth and age. I headed over to Le Menagerie along with CB and two of his friends who had known Gabes father, and attended the memorial. Firing up the 9.9, we untied the boat and motored slowly out past 17, where we raised the main, set the full genny, sailing quietly, lost to ourselves.
I looked up past the top of the mast, to the heavens and gave thanks for finally having found my place after more than 50 years of living.
A dolphin rolled to our starboard, and I gave thanks for the community that I've adopted, the community that's adopted me.
As the big sails fluttered lightly in the gentle breeze I silently gave thanks for knowing Gabe.
As the water slipped laughingly past the hull, gurgling and speaking of things long ago, I prayed for Scarlet, George and Tom, Seth and Heather and everyone who were touched by this tragedy.
I thought about all of my friends and family and gave thanks for them, they are the cement that holds this crazy life all together.
Even the winter sun isn’t all that warm. It mimics its summer twin, shining limited sickly yellow light on the dunes forming damp, salty shadows where the beach plants, railroad vine and sea purslane struggle to survive the all too short South Texas winter.
Sea oats nod in the wind on the tidal flats, nodding in agreement that natures season will be replaced soon by the parched and sandblasted winds of summer. Days are short, and the water is cold.
The island hibernates for a little while, and the beach resorts and palapa bars only open on nice weekend days, hoping to snag a stray off season tourist or two for a cutesy rum drink and maybe a greasy burger. The madness of spring break is still months away, and the ugly island infrastructure that caters to that time of year is still dormant and buried under last years plywood and rusty nails, now sandblasted gray and weathered.
I’ve always loved winter on the beach. It is one of the few times when I’ve found some sort of solace. While my mother died back in ‘95, I came to the beach, sometimes neglecting responsibility in order to recharge and escape the horrors of the cancer that consumed her being piece by piece. I spent a great deal of time in the water, surfing, sometimes just sitting out there beyond the cold lumpy breakers, clearing my mind in the zen rise and fall of the swell. On certain occasions, ladies would accompany me to the winter island and we'd hole up at my favorite port-o'-call, the Yacht Club. Angelic, they'd mother and smother me with exotic perfumes and gentle embraces, another sort of wave, energy spent on an internal beach, on the coastline of the soul, leaving me filled with life.
On Tuesday the police recovered the body of Scarlets oldest son, Gabe from the dunes between highway access five and six. In one final and absolute act of utter desparation, he parked his car along the side of the road, walked west out onto the wind tidal flat and committed suicide, choosing to take his own life, for reasons only he could comprehend.
I knew him well. During that same horrendous period of my life, after my Mom died and at the same time, my marriage fell apart, I moved to the Island and met Scarlet, her then husband Tom and their kids. Scarlet home schooled the kids and they were far advanced, well beyond the average in terms of education and understanding. Scarlet and the boys volunteered at the lab, keeping the aquaria spotless and gloriously stocked with a wide assortment of local sea critters that they collected during that warm and magic summer.
I was taking care of lots of things at the Lab, including keeping the computer network running. Back in ’95 it wasn’t an easy task, and lots of the equipment was crude by today’s standards. It was the heyday of the 486…. I had just enough computer savvy to get me in trouble. Gabe taught me to write web pages (a difficult task in those days, pre- Front Page), troubleshoot the system, teaching me the finer points of computer maintenance. He was 14, I was 40.
I worried over Gabe that summer. His dad was working out of town a lot of the time, and so I took him under wing, shuffling him outside, away from the nether-world of silicon and data transfer, to the real world of surf, sand and sea.
I tried to teach him how to surf, pushing him into endless waves, only to have him get pounded in the shorebreak, skinny legs flailing one direction, board whipping the other. He returned time and again to the take off spot, determined to slide down the wave. Other times we’d go out collecting sea creatures for the displays, and sometimes we’d just hang out on the beach. I tried to visualize what sort of person Gabe would become. After I left in the fall, I frequently worried over Gabe. He was an enigmatic child, fragile and different from the rest. Hyper intelligent, I knew that he’d never find a way to totally fit in with the mundane masses. There was an ineffable yearning in him to be accepted and loved, vulnerable and gossamer. The world doesn’t provide for that sort of need.
I returned to the western side of the valley for awhile, and moved out here about six yeas ago. During that time, Gabe had left. He lived with his dad for awhile, and I heard that he’d moved up to Austin after a time. I had also heard that he’d found a bit of trouble, and knew that it was his rudderless nature, his intelligence and youth, and I prayed that he’d find his way.
He returned to the island a while back, and one day appeared at the lab, sitting back in one of the big rooms like the old days, working on a defunct laptop, trying to repair some sort of esoteric mechanical problem. He hadn’t changed a bit. Just gotten older. I’d see him periodically, and was proud and content. It seemed he’d finally found his niche, he had learned the locksmithing trade, and in his brilliance invented all sorts of gadgets and methods to get locks unlocked. I’d see him around town, and we’d always talk, with the connection of time between us.
Yesterday, we all remembered Gabe at the Island Traders bookstore, one of his favorite spots on this earth. It was a bittersweet moment, and Gabe was the cement holding us all together. The gathering, like Gabe himself was a collection of eclectic people, from the remember Che Guevara crowd, to the middle aged like us, family and friend holding hands - sometimes crying sometimes laughing. The day was as brilliant as Gabe too, bluebird sky and light warm wind, soothing us all in our grief. Afterward, we boarded a boat, spreading a bit of his physical being in the cool waters of the Brazos Santiago Pass, along with Dr. Pepper, cigarettes and flowers- all things that he loved.
Then we remembered him in the past tense.
I crossed the causeway after it was all over, brooding about life and death, youth and age. I headed over to Le Menagerie along with CB and two of his friends who had known Gabes father, and attended the memorial. Firing up the 9.9, we untied the boat and motored slowly out past 17, where we raised the main, set the full genny, sailing quietly, lost to ourselves.
I looked up past the top of the mast, to the heavens and gave thanks for finally having found my place after more than 50 years of living.
A dolphin rolled to our starboard, and I gave thanks for the community that I've adopted, the community that's adopted me.
As the big sails fluttered lightly in the gentle breeze I silently gave thanks for knowing Gabe.
As the water slipped laughingly past the hull, gurgling and speaking of things long ago, I prayed for Scarlet, George and Tom, Seth and Heather and everyone who were touched by this tragedy.
I thought about all of my friends and family and gave thanks for them, they are the cement that holds this crazy life all together.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Diversity Training
I received this email from a friend of mine the other day. I felt obligated to pass it along:
JW:
I DO hope you have enjoyed the enlightening and informative training video, "Diversity: Every Officer's Responsibility," that was filmed and produced by members of the San Francisco Police Department.
I especially like the part where the officer runs over a black female homeless person, who nonetheless is able to raise herself up post-flattening sufficiently to give the officer the finger.
In particular, I feel great empathy for the officer (now suspended) who stated, "This film is not offensive to minorities, women, homeless people or homosexuals. We didn't intend them to see the film..."
I am inspired to produce a similar film for our illustrious agency. I will call it, "Diversity: Fuck the White Man." There will be extensive footage of heterosexual white men, motivated by Clintonesque patriotism and politically-correct self-hatred, voluntarily resigning from their jobs to make room for under-represented Persons Of Color (POCS) and/or Persons Of Repugnant Preferences Of Intimate Sexual EcstacieS (PORPOISES). The film will also depict white men voluntarily cutting off their own organs of generation, to demonstrate their solidarity with the repressed People We Feel Sorry For and People We Feel Guilty About Having Previously Stomped On. Then the white men will allow themselves to be verbally, morally and physically abused, and finally, will voluntarily lay their unworthy necks across a rail of the Southern Pacific Railroad until a freight train comes along and chops off their heads, because they know that life should be fair and that they can't dance and have no right to exist.
JW:
I DO hope you have enjoyed the enlightening and informative training video, "Diversity: Every Officer's Responsibility," that was filmed and produced by members of the San Francisco Police Department.
I especially like the part where the officer runs over a black female homeless person, who nonetheless is able to raise herself up post-flattening sufficiently to give the officer the finger.
In particular, I feel great empathy for the officer (now suspended) who stated, "This film is not offensive to minorities, women, homeless people or homosexuals. We didn't intend them to see the film..."
I am inspired to produce a similar film for our illustrious agency. I will call it, "Diversity: Fuck the White Man." There will be extensive footage of heterosexual white men, motivated by Clintonesque patriotism and politically-correct self-hatred, voluntarily resigning from their jobs to make room for under-represented Persons Of Color (POCS) and/or Persons Of Repugnant Preferences Of Intimate Sexual EcstacieS (PORPOISES). The film will also depict white men voluntarily cutting off their own organs of generation, to demonstrate their solidarity with the repressed People We Feel Sorry For and People We Feel Guilty About Having Previously Stomped On. Then the white men will allow themselves to be verbally, morally and physically abused, and finally, will voluntarily lay their unworthy necks across a rail of the Southern Pacific Railroad until a freight train comes along and chops off their heads, because they know that life should be fair and that they can't dance and have no right to exist.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Oh No....They're Back!
It’s that time of the year again. The first cold fronts are pushing in and with it the snowbirds are returning in flocks. They come streaming in, driving great huge dullies pulling fifth wheels half the length of a normal Wal-Mart store, driving gaudily painted motorhomes the size of Air Force one, careening down the highway, a menace to innocent life and limb. Most of these overall clad, gimme hat weaing mid westerners spent the majority of their lives driving John Deere tractors in expansive prairie fields, terrorizing woodchucks and gophers, driving their new-every-year pickup trucks down to the mailbox to pick up their subsidy checks for not growing non-existent crops in the fine American farmer tradition. Getting rich off of the government tit, till eventually “retiring”, driving down to the Rio Grande Valley to be a pain in the ass to the local population. Jeezus, I’ll bet their children are glad to see them go every year. I’ve threatened the fuckers (and I’m not kidding)” that when I get old, I’m going to move up NORTH and be a goddamn pain in the ass”….
Most of them act like they’ve done something good for the world. They drive around with cutesy bumper stickers that say things like “Support the American Farmer”. Fuck you. Goddamn subsidy whores.
And they all know everything there is to know about our home. Where to get the best deals, how to “jew down them meskins over in Progreso”, where the cheapest this and that is. And the fuckers have the attitude that we just won’t make it without them, if they ever stop coming here. Screw you. We did just fine before you came here, and we’ll do just fine when you find some other cheap ass part of the world to go to and be a shitheap in. And everything’s better “back home”. Well…..fuck you again…I say, go back home then.
They pull their goddamn RV’s for six months at a time into old fart RV parks that are empty the rest of the year…just dusty cement pads waiting for the viejitos to come back with their mobile monstrosities, waiting for them to plant yard signs out front that read; “The Edelmyers / Elmer and Eunice”, “God Bless this Winnebago / Bob and Betty Niemenstrudel” and various other wellkomen crap.
No, I’m serious. Each year they get worse. Or maybe it’s just me…my tolerance level is getting less and less.
I attended a meeting last week, a winter Texan meeting, and listened to them bitch about things for the better part of an hour. Terminally unhappy people, truly concerned with only one thing: themselves. I wanted to tell them the story, wanted to shame them by making them aware of how little they really know, how truly meaningless and pathetic their lives really were. I’ll bet they couldn’t even begin to tell how they got here…how it all began. They just blindly migrate, as if by instinct, no more intelligent than the sparrow, and a whole lot less visually pleasing.
But they come here just like my grandparents did, from the Midwest. Now they don’t come following the lure of cheap land and a 365 day growing season, riding the SLB&M through the King Ranch, in a Pullman car with the shades pulled down so they wouldn’t see the barren monte, in the middle of a moonlit night, to be shuttled, sleepily to a “tourist house”, only to awaken on a warm winter morning, thinking of “back home” where snow was piled high, wondrous at the smell of orange blossom and the sound of exotic peacocks screaming and fanning along the fountain lined gardens…the winter gardens. Greedily snatching up land that was snatched from the locals in a variety of methods.
My favorite method was incorporated when A.Y. Baker was running Hidalgo county. He’d post the tax rolls on the courthouse door and then only open the door from something like two to four in the afternoon so that folks could see how much they owed. Hell, old Eulalio out on El Rancho Pequeno couldn’t even read or write in Spanish, let alone English, and for damned sure didn’t have any idea that the gringos were stacking the deck against him. He only knew how to work cattle, and that the land had been passed on to him from his ancestors, land that had been originally awarded to them back in the 1700’s by the King of Spain as a procione, for their settling this malaria and mosquito infested section of the river. Land that had withstood almost two hundred years of turmoil, the Mexican American war, protected by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, only to be lost in the early twentieth century to unscrupulous mid western carpetbagger speculators with a vision to turn the Rio Grande Delta into their own personal mecca. And don’t think the poor “land seekers”, other mid westerners like my own ancestors didn’t escape the carpetbaggers tricks either. Some of the speculators went to jail for selling the same parcel again and again, and even when there was clear title, it was a living summer hell to try and irrigate the desert in the blazing hundred plus degree days. Dennis Bangs Chapin, the County Judge and speculator who was involved in the great Hidalgo County Courthouse heist was indicted for murdering an irate land seeker up in San Antonio, one whom had been sold land that had been sold to another. Chapins’ namesake townsite was changed from “Chapin” to Edinburg” in 1912 for that reason, the settlers just couldn’t abide a murderers name on their town. Not that I blame them.
The land seekers, the first midwesterners finally managed to carve out this fetid section of river, and by the 1960’s, when I was a kid, their children were migrating down here in the winters. We called ‘em “tourists” and “snowbirds” (I still do), and they’d usually stay with their kinfolk here, a few brought early airstreams and other trailers to set up out on the farms or along old 83 where the hub of city life was at the time. Mostly they were an innocuous bunch, kept pretty much to themselves. I remember them, but only vaguely. The didn’t swell our population, and clog our roads like putrid cholesterol in the arteries of this place, like they do today.
Now it’s subsequent generations, who no longer have the attachment that the early snowbirds did. Generations removed from the early ties. Our farm fields, citrus orchards and ranches have been converted to mobile home parks, and many businesses have sprung up to cater to these people. Now they’re too busy worrying about themselves to take the time and learn who we really are, maybe lend a helping hand to one of the poorest, least educated areas of the country, a true third world. I wanted to tell them that we’re survivors, and that their measly, pinche annual contribution to our economy could be done without.
If these people REALLY knew all there was to know about this place, they’d know what the names meant, names like Donna, Winter Gardens, Edcouch and Elsa, Weslaco, Sharyland, Pharr and others. I guess they’re too busy trying to figure out how to jew down them meskins over in Progreso though.
Most of them act like they’ve done something good for the world. They drive around with cutesy bumper stickers that say things like “Support the American Farmer”. Fuck you. Goddamn subsidy whores.
And they all know everything there is to know about our home. Where to get the best deals, how to “jew down them meskins over in Progreso”, where the cheapest this and that is. And the fuckers have the attitude that we just won’t make it without them, if they ever stop coming here. Screw you. We did just fine before you came here, and we’ll do just fine when you find some other cheap ass part of the world to go to and be a shitheap in. And everything’s better “back home”. Well…..fuck you again…I say, go back home then.
They pull their goddamn RV’s for six months at a time into old fart RV parks that are empty the rest of the year…just dusty cement pads waiting for the viejitos to come back with their mobile monstrosities, waiting for them to plant yard signs out front that read; “The Edelmyers / Elmer and Eunice”, “God Bless this Winnebago / Bob and Betty Niemenstrudel” and various other wellkomen crap.
No, I’m serious. Each year they get worse. Or maybe it’s just me…my tolerance level is getting less and less.
I attended a meeting last week, a winter Texan meeting, and listened to them bitch about things for the better part of an hour. Terminally unhappy people, truly concerned with only one thing: themselves. I wanted to tell them the story, wanted to shame them by making them aware of how little they really know, how truly meaningless and pathetic their lives really were. I’ll bet they couldn’t even begin to tell how they got here…how it all began. They just blindly migrate, as if by instinct, no more intelligent than the sparrow, and a whole lot less visually pleasing.
But they come here just like my grandparents did, from the Midwest. Now they don’t come following the lure of cheap land and a 365 day growing season, riding the SLB&M through the King Ranch, in a Pullman car with the shades pulled down so they wouldn’t see the barren monte, in the middle of a moonlit night, to be shuttled, sleepily to a “tourist house”, only to awaken on a warm winter morning, thinking of “back home” where snow was piled high, wondrous at the smell of orange blossom and the sound of exotic peacocks screaming and fanning along the fountain lined gardens…the winter gardens. Greedily snatching up land that was snatched from the locals in a variety of methods.
My favorite method was incorporated when A.Y. Baker was running Hidalgo county. He’d post the tax rolls on the courthouse door and then only open the door from something like two to four in the afternoon so that folks could see how much they owed. Hell, old Eulalio out on El Rancho Pequeno couldn’t even read or write in Spanish, let alone English, and for damned sure didn’t have any idea that the gringos were stacking the deck against him. He only knew how to work cattle, and that the land had been passed on to him from his ancestors, land that had been originally awarded to them back in the 1700’s by the King of Spain as a procione, for their settling this malaria and mosquito infested section of the river. Land that had withstood almost two hundred years of turmoil, the Mexican American war, protected by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, only to be lost in the early twentieth century to unscrupulous mid western carpetbagger speculators with a vision to turn the Rio Grande Delta into their own personal mecca. And don’t think the poor “land seekers”, other mid westerners like my own ancestors didn’t escape the carpetbaggers tricks either. Some of the speculators went to jail for selling the same parcel again and again, and even when there was clear title, it was a living summer hell to try and irrigate the desert in the blazing hundred plus degree days. Dennis Bangs Chapin, the County Judge and speculator who was involved in the great Hidalgo County Courthouse heist was indicted for murdering an irate land seeker up in San Antonio, one whom had been sold land that had been sold to another. Chapins’ namesake townsite was changed from “Chapin” to Edinburg” in 1912 for that reason, the settlers just couldn’t abide a murderers name on their town. Not that I blame them.
The land seekers, the first midwesterners finally managed to carve out this fetid section of river, and by the 1960’s, when I was a kid, their children were migrating down here in the winters. We called ‘em “tourists” and “snowbirds” (I still do), and they’d usually stay with their kinfolk here, a few brought early airstreams and other trailers to set up out on the farms or along old 83 where the hub of city life was at the time. Mostly they were an innocuous bunch, kept pretty much to themselves. I remember them, but only vaguely. The didn’t swell our population, and clog our roads like putrid cholesterol in the arteries of this place, like they do today.
Now it’s subsequent generations, who no longer have the attachment that the early snowbirds did. Generations removed from the early ties. Our farm fields, citrus orchards and ranches have been converted to mobile home parks, and many businesses have sprung up to cater to these people. Now they’re too busy worrying about themselves to take the time and learn who we really are, maybe lend a helping hand to one of the poorest, least educated areas of the country, a true third world. I wanted to tell them that we’re survivors, and that their measly, pinche annual contribution to our economy could be done without.
If these people REALLY knew all there was to know about this place, they’d know what the names meant, names like Donna, Winter Gardens, Edcouch and Elsa, Weslaco, Sharyland, Pharr and others. I guess they’re too busy trying to figure out how to jew down them meskins over in Progreso though.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Trailerfest
Last week was Bikefest, an annual event on the Island where yuppies from all over with too much disposable income trailer their high end, mostly Harley scooters down here and act naughty for a few days, before returning to points north like Dallas, Houston and San Antonio to resume their comfortable three bedroom, two point five kids, nine to five lives as investment counselors, bankers, lawyers and other assorted boring corporate thieves.
The men don leather vests, adorned with many stainless steel chains, baubles and other assorted goodies that they think make them look tough and macho, and the women go braless, or worse yet, wear faux leather (wouldn’t want to offend the PETA members out there). Mostly they cruise up and down Padre Boulevard, a distance of something like three miles, trying to look and sound cool. They go from bar to bar drinking heavily, drinking many pina coladas and manhattans, and for the adventurous, straight shots of rot gut Jose Cuervo tequila. If they get especially lucky maybe their pre-menopausal wives will even lay a bit of pussy on them when they go back to their digs at the Sheraton, Raddison or other condos and hotels which generally are booked to capacity for the event.
The silliest thing I saw during the entire episode was a guy in shorts and Birkenstock sandals riding a fully dressed Road King. I was looking for a bumper sticker strategically placed on his fender that said something like “Visualize World Peace”, or maybe “Keep Austin Weird”.
Most of these ignorant fucks don’t even ride a bike, except on weekends, when the weather is just right….for them it’s a status symbol thing- something to take the place, or be added in addition to their Lexus’, Rolex Oyster Perpetual watches, Armani suits and Louis Vitton purses. Each bike polished to a showroom glitter, right down to the slick tire treatment. Heavy graphics on the tank and fenders, a gazillion dollars worth of chrome and steel. Trailer them to, and trailer them from the event in air conditioned “Wells Cargo” trailers.
The majority of “rally attendees” shouldn’t even attempt to ride iron of this size; instead they should stick to mopeds and little Vespa scooters.
We were staying in the Miramar, hoping to close on a house, so I was keeping the Shadow out in front, under a cover to keep the corrosive night air off of the thing. It’s hard enough to keep it clean and corrosion free when you ride everyday as transportation, and I had to leave it outside the front of the lab, exposed to the sun, sand and salt. All week long people were slowly populating the place as the frenzy of trailerfest got underway. The Miramar went from being a ghost hotel to a fully loaded parking lot for bikes, trailers and designer harleywear yuppies.
On Saturday night we decided to go and check out the Bongo Dogs who were playing one last time down at the Wanna-Wanna. I didn’t want to leave the Shadow parked at the Miramar, with all of the stupidly riding yuppies adjacent to us, so I decided to ride down to the bar, take my chances there. Due to some logistic problems, there was no one to watch the twins, so we decided to take them along with us, D and the girls took the jeep.
The Wanna-Wanna was rocking pretty good, and there were lots of yuppies in glittery steel and leather talking trash and trying to look mean. It was about ninety degrees, so leather is the first thing that gets peeled off when I get done riding. Not so with these folks, it's like a uniform. A sea of writhing sweating zeros some still even wearing their half gloves, cultched tightly around drinks in styrofoam cups, eyeing the vacuous women in halter tops, nipples erect in the hot evening air, excited by the thought of getting banged by someone that's not.
We ran into the Gib and his girlfriend out alongside the joint in the sand, and drank a few rums, and listened to the band from a picnic table in the sand on the beach, watching the show within. Later we migrated under the palapa as the drunken yuppies began to vacate, having had their fill of frozen margaritas and gin and tonics. The girls danced, with tambourines in hand to the approval of Joey Tamayo et al, and after many rumbalibres myself, I even got out on the dance floor, scooting my new big black boots along the floor to the salsa beat of tunes like Cuando la Luna and Aya por Aya. A good time was had by all, and by around twelve fortyfive the Dogs had ceased, and we prepared to go home.
D and the girls loaded up and headed for the house, and I started the Shadow, swinging my leg over the familiar saddle, heading off south down Gulf Boulevard, just enjoying the night air and the soft rumble of the engine. About halfway to the turn, two big old hogs with yuppy riders, complete with “old ladies” on the back blew a stopsign right in front of me, and careened out onto the road. I locked up both brakes, fishtailing for about thirty feet or so. As I swerved around them, I raised the single finger salute and muttered “fucking idiots”. It doesn't bother me if they want to crash their bikes by being stupid....but don't take me out.
The next day, early, before these same sort of jerkoffs were out on the road, I rode the Shadow over here to LV and put it in the garage, where it remained all week while we moved in. I had no desire to mingle with a bunch of wannabes.
On Thursday, long after the last of them left, I fired up the bike, and went for a cruise down the back road, 511. Approaching the bridge over the Resaca at Bayview, I passed a Sporty tooling along from the other direction, a guy with a woman on back. We both saluted, the salute of respect this time.
I’m sure he was glad they were gone too. The road belongs to us again.
The men don leather vests, adorned with many stainless steel chains, baubles and other assorted goodies that they think make them look tough and macho, and the women go braless, or worse yet, wear faux leather (wouldn’t want to offend the PETA members out there). Mostly they cruise up and down Padre Boulevard, a distance of something like three miles, trying to look and sound cool. They go from bar to bar drinking heavily, drinking many pina coladas and manhattans, and for the adventurous, straight shots of rot gut Jose Cuervo tequila. If they get especially lucky maybe their pre-menopausal wives will even lay a bit of pussy on them when they go back to their digs at the Sheraton, Raddison or other condos and hotels which generally are booked to capacity for the event.
The silliest thing I saw during the entire episode was a guy in shorts and Birkenstock sandals riding a fully dressed Road King. I was looking for a bumper sticker strategically placed on his fender that said something like “Visualize World Peace”, or maybe “Keep Austin Weird”.
Most of these ignorant fucks don’t even ride a bike, except on weekends, when the weather is just right….for them it’s a status symbol thing- something to take the place, or be added in addition to their Lexus’, Rolex Oyster Perpetual watches, Armani suits and Louis Vitton purses. Each bike polished to a showroom glitter, right down to the slick tire treatment. Heavy graphics on the tank and fenders, a gazillion dollars worth of chrome and steel. Trailer them to, and trailer them from the event in air conditioned “Wells Cargo” trailers.
The majority of “rally attendees” shouldn’t even attempt to ride iron of this size; instead they should stick to mopeds and little Vespa scooters.
We were staying in the Miramar, hoping to close on a house, so I was keeping the Shadow out in front, under a cover to keep the corrosive night air off of the thing. It’s hard enough to keep it clean and corrosion free when you ride everyday as transportation, and I had to leave it outside the front of the lab, exposed to the sun, sand and salt. All week long people were slowly populating the place as the frenzy of trailerfest got underway. The Miramar went from being a ghost hotel to a fully loaded parking lot for bikes, trailers and designer harleywear yuppies.
On Saturday night we decided to go and check out the Bongo Dogs who were playing one last time down at the Wanna-Wanna. I didn’t want to leave the Shadow parked at the Miramar, with all of the stupidly riding yuppies adjacent to us, so I decided to ride down to the bar, take my chances there. Due to some logistic problems, there was no one to watch the twins, so we decided to take them along with us, D and the girls took the jeep.
The Wanna-Wanna was rocking pretty good, and there were lots of yuppies in glittery steel and leather talking trash and trying to look mean. It was about ninety degrees, so leather is the first thing that gets peeled off when I get done riding. Not so with these folks, it's like a uniform. A sea of writhing sweating zeros some still even wearing their half gloves, cultched tightly around drinks in styrofoam cups, eyeing the vacuous women in halter tops, nipples erect in the hot evening air, excited by the thought of getting banged by someone that's not.
We ran into the Gib and his girlfriend out alongside the joint in the sand, and drank a few rums, and listened to the band from a picnic table in the sand on the beach, watching the show within. Later we migrated under the palapa as the drunken yuppies began to vacate, having had their fill of frozen margaritas and gin and tonics. The girls danced, with tambourines in hand to the approval of Joey Tamayo et al, and after many rumbalibres myself, I even got out on the dance floor, scooting my new big black boots along the floor to the salsa beat of tunes like Cuando la Luna and Aya por Aya. A good time was had by all, and by around twelve fortyfive the Dogs had ceased, and we prepared to go home.
D and the girls loaded up and headed for the house, and I started the Shadow, swinging my leg over the familiar saddle, heading off south down Gulf Boulevard, just enjoying the night air and the soft rumble of the engine. About halfway to the turn, two big old hogs with yuppy riders, complete with “old ladies” on the back blew a stopsign right in front of me, and careened out onto the road. I locked up both brakes, fishtailing for about thirty feet or so. As I swerved around them, I raised the single finger salute and muttered “fucking idiots”. It doesn't bother me if they want to crash their bikes by being stupid....but don't take me out.
The next day, early, before these same sort of jerkoffs were out on the road, I rode the Shadow over here to LV and put it in the garage, where it remained all week while we moved in. I had no desire to mingle with a bunch of wannabes.
On Thursday, long after the last of them left, I fired up the bike, and went for a cruise down the back road, 511. Approaching the bridge over the Resaca at Bayview, I passed a Sporty tooling along from the other direction, a guy with a woman on back. We both saluted, the salute of respect this time.
I’m sure he was glad they were gone too. The road belongs to us again.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Another Clarc-Nap Piece O' Crap
We owned a 1994 Dodge grand caravan which we bought for something like 7500 dollars back in 2000. It was a blue tonk rocket, possessed by the devil. The van was a grand piece of shit from the day we bought it and I should have had my head examined for buying it, but self flagellation does no good now, after the fact.
We had been looking for a van for awhile. D owned a reliable Toyota Corolla when we got married, and we drove it effortlessly, with no problems for hundreds of thousands of miles, until some jerkoff insisted on backing over the hood with his F-350, crushing it like a peanut under the heel of a size 12 boot. We had a Dodge Dakota, which had been my truck, but that’s another story.
Anyway, we figured we needed a van because we had been thinking about taking people on “eco-tours” of the area. That was before we knew what sort of people frequented “eco-tours”. You know the type I’m talking about. Birkenstock wearing, spinach salad eating, Perrier drinking yuppies, with lots of disposable income….unless you happen to be a tour operator. Then they could really give a shit. They always complain that they “paid too much and got too little”, as they look down their thin aquiline Anglo-Saxon noses at you like you’re some sort of servant boy son-of-a-bitch. Maybe throw a little largesse your way before they ride off into the sunset searching for more fun.
I hate used car salesmen too. The fuckers start pushing you right away, as soon as you step on the lot. Like sharks in the water in a frenzy over fresh meat and blood, they broadside you with a smooth line of crap devised to get you to buy a worthless piece of crap, so they can get their daily commission. Lord, give us this day, our daily commish…Fast talking shitpumps, I’m sure there’s a special place in hell for them too. Maybe it’s to be doomed to forever wander the earth, going from used car lot to used car lot, possessing vehicles like that Dodge Caravan, a used car poltergeist, causing the poor bastard buyer years of torture and anguish.
I know better now.
The sansabelt clad, penny loafer wearing, greasebag used car salesman assured us that the vehicle was a 1995, and after a short test drive we decided to buy it. When we started the paperwork though, we discovered that the goddamn thing was NOT a 1995 blue piece of shit van…it was a 1994 blue piece of shit van. The bank had already loaned us the money, so in order to just get on with the whole thing, I insisted that the dealership, Another Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap, give us a bumper to bumper, one year warranty. And it was a goddamn good thing I did.
As soon as we brought the blue demon home, we started having trouble with it. First, the front end started making weird noises, clattery ominous noises anytime you went over a bump, like the whole transaxle was going to fall out. We had to take it to a mechanic one cold and rainy night to have the CV joints replaced, an act that caused the dealership to gnash their teeth and threaten not to pay for. This didn't make a bit of difference, the friggin’ thing just kept making more and more noise. Finally, the entire transaxle disintegrated and was changed out, then the noises finally stopped.
Sonn afterward, it started having random starting and idling problems, and would die at intersections when the temperature was hot, not to be coaxed back to life. And when isn’t the temperature hot around here? It took about three months in the shop for them to figure out that it was some sort of computer module. By this time I was getting pretty sick of the van, and of the sleazy dealership, Another Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap, whose solution to the whole thing was to sell us another, more expensive Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap, so in disgust I just decide that we’d keep the wicked thing. What else could I do? We were already well into the first year of payments, and I figured that we were stuck with this lemon. For the remainder of the year though, I drove around with a sign in the back window that said: “Another Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap”.
Then the warranty ran out.
Just about that time, the sliding door started to fall off at certain times when you opened it up. The track had rotted out at the back end, allowing the front roller on the door to fall through, sending that big heavy bastard slamming into the ground. Then the rear hatch gas struts broke off, and the rear door wouldn’t open up anymore. And then, I got so mad at the damn thing one day, that I slammed the drivers door hard, and the hinges broke, so I shut it, never to be opened again.
Perhaps one of the most excruciating experiences was the serpentine drive belt. It’s a belt about ten feet in diameter, that snakes sinuously around nine pulleys and accessories, driving everything, including the water pump, flywheel, alternator, power steering pump, air conditioning compressor, smog control pump and other things that run with indistinct and occult operations, keeping them all alive and functioning. Around about half of its path, there is little room to even get a finger wedged between the pulleys and the radiator. And it took a fucking schematic to even begin to figure out which pulleys it went over, and which pulleys it went under. If that belt ever comes off, God help you. The vehicle has about ten minutes before everything shuts down.
Whenever water splashed up from below, the serpentine belt would fly off, leaving you just enough time to find the nearest parking lot, or hopefully the nearest taller-mechanico to charge you ten bucks to put it back on. Because if you had to put it back on yourself, oh my god, what a giant nightmare.
We lost the serpentine belt no less than a dozen times over the course of our wretched ownership of the Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap blue van. The most memorable occasion was on the way to Brownsville when an unexpected, sudden turd floater came pouring down. Immediately, and without warning we found ourselves driving through water up to the axles on the tonk rocket. I was praying and cursing at the same time, creeping ahead slowly, hoping to find a place to pull over until the rain stopped and the water receded and dried up a bit when, pow-thud!, the fucking belt disengaged. No power steering, no alternator, no nothing, just a limited amount of time to find a pull over. We finally found a spot in the parking lot of a “Dollar General” store which had become an island, and I set about the task of reinstalling the belt. After about an hour or so, with black grease all the way to my elbows, and everyone around me learning new and unusual curse words and phrases, I finally managed to get the evil belt back on the pulleys, and somehow we managed to clear out of there, miraculously making it home, where I promptly passed out on the sofa with a beer in greasy hand, still mumbling vague and phantom curses at the blue Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap van.
One day, I went to open the hood to check the oil, and the hood latch handle pulled off, the wire just broke, right at the root. So now I had to open up the hood with a pair of needle nosed pliers and a screwdriver, applied just so between the grill and the hood.
Another time the muffler fell off, and I wired it back up with a piece of a coat hanger till I could get home and tig weld the bracket. Soon, the interior began to fall apart too, with random pieces of the dashboard coming loose to ultimately be lost in the vortex of items and other parts, tubes, hoses and belts that we abandoned inside. I had fixed many problems, tig welded the broken door track so that it now worked (somewhat), and even used a broomstick to hold up the rear hatch (because it was impossible to remove the broken pneumatic struts without further damaging the hatch). But every time I chased one problem down, two more would rear their ugly heads. The air conditioner quit, the jump seat broke off, the rear quarter panel fell off…it was a litany of never ending breakdowns and breakoffs. The most recent was the sliding door, a problem which had reappeared in a slightly different form, again. Although it now stayed on the track, it had developed a penchant for tripping the latch, causing it to not shut properly. Each time it pulled this trick, we had to use a screwdriver to pop the latch back open, gently re-shutting the door, holding our breath until we heard the faint telltale click that indicated the door was properly secured.
The final straw came when Kelani broke her arm, and we were rushing her to the hospital. At the emergency room, I swung the sliding door open, and D hurried her inside. Sure enough, when I went to close the sliding door there in the emergency room unloading zone, the damn thing wouldn’t latch. In frustration, I pried up the latch mechanism, and rammed it shut. The door stuck as if welded in place, never to be opened again.
We finally paid off the Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap blue tonk-rocket dodge grand caravan van, and by then, I figured we’d have a helluva hard time selling it, and probably wouldn’t get more than about a hundred dollars trade in value on it, so perversely, I decided to drive the shit out of it until it died, and then maybe just push it unceremoniously into the bay. It certainly didn’t deserve a proper burial.
So, for the remainder of the time that we owned the Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap, we all had to pile in and out of the passenger door, a sight I imagine was a bit more than amusing to most folks. I could just hear the comments; “Hey Elvira…did you see those hillbillies in that blue tonk rocket? They all got out of the passenger door! What a piece of shit.”
By now, the van had decided that it wouldn’t simply just die; no it decided that instead, it would just fall apart until nothing was left. That’s when we decided to buy the jeep and I thankfully parked Another Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap, hoping that it would just rot away. Soon the tires were flat, and the van was covered in a fine haze of salt spray and sand, out in front of our beach house. Periodically I would start it up, air up the tires and drive around, hoping it would die in front of some rich yuppies house, where I could strip all of the ID off of it and let it become someone else’s problem. No such luck.
We just sold the Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap about six months ago. We got something like 500 bucks for it. We told the guy all of the problems, but he seemed glad to have it, and I sure as hell was glad to see the thing go.
I did hold my breath though, as he was driving off. The sky was heavy with low clouds, and the first sprinkles of rain were spitting from the steely gray. I hoped that he wouldn’t hit any puddles on the causeway.
We had been looking for a van for awhile. D owned a reliable Toyota Corolla when we got married, and we drove it effortlessly, with no problems for hundreds of thousands of miles, until some jerkoff insisted on backing over the hood with his F-350, crushing it like a peanut under the heel of a size 12 boot. We had a Dodge Dakota, which had been my truck, but that’s another story.
Anyway, we figured we needed a van because we had been thinking about taking people on “eco-tours” of the area. That was before we knew what sort of people frequented “eco-tours”. You know the type I’m talking about. Birkenstock wearing, spinach salad eating, Perrier drinking yuppies, with lots of disposable income….unless you happen to be a tour operator. Then they could really give a shit. They always complain that they “paid too much and got too little”, as they look down their thin aquiline Anglo-Saxon noses at you like you’re some sort of servant boy son-of-a-bitch. Maybe throw a little largesse your way before they ride off into the sunset searching for more fun.
I hate used car salesmen too. The fuckers start pushing you right away, as soon as you step on the lot. Like sharks in the water in a frenzy over fresh meat and blood, they broadside you with a smooth line of crap devised to get you to buy a worthless piece of crap, so they can get their daily commission. Lord, give us this day, our daily commish…Fast talking shitpumps, I’m sure there’s a special place in hell for them too. Maybe it’s to be doomed to forever wander the earth, going from used car lot to used car lot, possessing vehicles like that Dodge Caravan, a used car poltergeist, causing the poor bastard buyer years of torture and anguish.
I know better now.
The sansabelt clad, penny loafer wearing, greasebag used car salesman assured us that the vehicle was a 1995, and after a short test drive we decided to buy it. When we started the paperwork though, we discovered that the goddamn thing was NOT a 1995 blue piece of shit van…it was a 1994 blue piece of shit van. The bank had already loaned us the money, so in order to just get on with the whole thing, I insisted that the dealership, Another Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap, give us a bumper to bumper, one year warranty. And it was a goddamn good thing I did.
As soon as we brought the blue demon home, we started having trouble with it. First, the front end started making weird noises, clattery ominous noises anytime you went over a bump, like the whole transaxle was going to fall out. We had to take it to a mechanic one cold and rainy night to have the CV joints replaced, an act that caused the dealership to gnash their teeth and threaten not to pay for. This didn't make a bit of difference, the friggin’ thing just kept making more and more noise. Finally, the entire transaxle disintegrated and was changed out, then the noises finally stopped.
Sonn afterward, it started having random starting and idling problems, and would die at intersections when the temperature was hot, not to be coaxed back to life. And when isn’t the temperature hot around here? It took about three months in the shop for them to figure out that it was some sort of computer module. By this time I was getting pretty sick of the van, and of the sleazy dealership, Another Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap, whose solution to the whole thing was to sell us another, more expensive Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap, so in disgust I just decide that we’d keep the wicked thing. What else could I do? We were already well into the first year of payments, and I figured that we were stuck with this lemon. For the remainder of the year though, I drove around with a sign in the back window that said: “Another Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap”.
Then the warranty ran out.
Just about that time, the sliding door started to fall off at certain times when you opened it up. The track had rotted out at the back end, allowing the front roller on the door to fall through, sending that big heavy bastard slamming into the ground. Then the rear hatch gas struts broke off, and the rear door wouldn’t open up anymore. And then, I got so mad at the damn thing one day, that I slammed the drivers door hard, and the hinges broke, so I shut it, never to be opened again.
Perhaps one of the most excruciating experiences was the serpentine drive belt. It’s a belt about ten feet in diameter, that snakes sinuously around nine pulleys and accessories, driving everything, including the water pump, flywheel, alternator, power steering pump, air conditioning compressor, smog control pump and other things that run with indistinct and occult operations, keeping them all alive and functioning. Around about half of its path, there is little room to even get a finger wedged between the pulleys and the radiator. And it took a fucking schematic to even begin to figure out which pulleys it went over, and which pulleys it went under. If that belt ever comes off, God help you. The vehicle has about ten minutes before everything shuts down.
Whenever water splashed up from below, the serpentine belt would fly off, leaving you just enough time to find the nearest parking lot, or hopefully the nearest taller-mechanico to charge you ten bucks to put it back on. Because if you had to put it back on yourself, oh my god, what a giant nightmare.
We lost the serpentine belt no less than a dozen times over the course of our wretched ownership of the Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap blue van. The most memorable occasion was on the way to Brownsville when an unexpected, sudden turd floater came pouring down. Immediately, and without warning we found ourselves driving through water up to the axles on the tonk rocket. I was praying and cursing at the same time, creeping ahead slowly, hoping to find a place to pull over until the rain stopped and the water receded and dried up a bit when, pow-thud!, the fucking belt disengaged. No power steering, no alternator, no nothing, just a limited amount of time to find a pull over. We finally found a spot in the parking lot of a “Dollar General” store which had become an island, and I set about the task of reinstalling the belt. After about an hour or so, with black grease all the way to my elbows, and everyone around me learning new and unusual curse words and phrases, I finally managed to get the evil belt back on the pulleys, and somehow we managed to clear out of there, miraculously making it home, where I promptly passed out on the sofa with a beer in greasy hand, still mumbling vague and phantom curses at the blue Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap van.
One day, I went to open the hood to check the oil, and the hood latch handle pulled off, the wire just broke, right at the root. So now I had to open up the hood with a pair of needle nosed pliers and a screwdriver, applied just so between the grill and the hood.
Another time the muffler fell off, and I wired it back up with a piece of a coat hanger till I could get home and tig weld the bracket. Soon, the interior began to fall apart too, with random pieces of the dashboard coming loose to ultimately be lost in the vortex of items and other parts, tubes, hoses and belts that we abandoned inside. I had fixed many problems, tig welded the broken door track so that it now worked (somewhat), and even used a broomstick to hold up the rear hatch (because it was impossible to remove the broken pneumatic struts without further damaging the hatch). But every time I chased one problem down, two more would rear their ugly heads. The air conditioner quit, the jump seat broke off, the rear quarter panel fell off…it was a litany of never ending breakdowns and breakoffs. The most recent was the sliding door, a problem which had reappeared in a slightly different form, again. Although it now stayed on the track, it had developed a penchant for tripping the latch, causing it to not shut properly. Each time it pulled this trick, we had to use a screwdriver to pop the latch back open, gently re-shutting the door, holding our breath until we heard the faint telltale click that indicated the door was properly secured.
The final straw came when Kelani broke her arm, and we were rushing her to the hospital. At the emergency room, I swung the sliding door open, and D hurried her inside. Sure enough, when I went to close the sliding door there in the emergency room unloading zone, the damn thing wouldn’t latch. In frustration, I pried up the latch mechanism, and rammed it shut. The door stuck as if welded in place, never to be opened again.
We finally paid off the Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap blue tonk-rocket dodge grand caravan van, and by then, I figured we’d have a helluva hard time selling it, and probably wouldn’t get more than about a hundred dollars trade in value on it, so perversely, I decided to drive the shit out of it until it died, and then maybe just push it unceremoniously into the bay. It certainly didn’t deserve a proper burial.
So, for the remainder of the time that we owned the Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap, we all had to pile in and out of the passenger door, a sight I imagine was a bit more than amusing to most folks. I could just hear the comments; “Hey Elvira…did you see those hillbillies in that blue tonk rocket? They all got out of the passenger door! What a piece of shit.”
By now, the van had decided that it wouldn’t simply just die; no it decided that instead, it would just fall apart until nothing was left. That’s when we decided to buy the jeep and I thankfully parked Another Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap, hoping that it would just rot away. Soon the tires were flat, and the van was covered in a fine haze of salt spray and sand, out in front of our beach house. Periodically I would start it up, air up the tires and drive around, hoping it would die in front of some rich yuppies house, where I could strip all of the ID off of it and let it become someone else’s problem. No such luck.
We just sold the Clarc-Nap Piece O’ Crap about six months ago. We got something like 500 bucks for it. We told the guy all of the problems, but he seemed glad to have it, and I sure as hell was glad to see the thing go.
I did hold my breath though, as he was driving off. The sky was heavy with low clouds, and the first sprinkles of rain were spitting from the steely gray. I hoped that he wouldn’t hit any puddles on the causeway.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Word Verification
NOTICE:
I just found out about WORD VERIFICATION for comments. I enabled it. So, if you want to leave me a comment, you'll have to go through this small inconvenience of copying a few letters in order to verify that yes, you really are a human being. It's the only way that I can cut out the annoying blog spam that I've been getting recently
Thanks for your patience,
Le Menagerie
I just found out about WORD VERIFICATION for comments. I enabled it. So, if you want to leave me a comment, you'll have to go through this small inconvenience of copying a few letters in order to verify that yes, you really are a human being. It's the only way that I can cut out the annoying blog spam that I've been getting recently
Thanks for your patience,
Le Menagerie
CAUTION BLOG SPAMMERS
CAUTION BLOG SPAMMERS
I am not going to tolerate blog spam any longer. I don't care about Lesbian dating services or Internet Opportunities to get Paid to Shop.
From now on, I am going to trace any blog spam back to its source and find out who you are and come over there and kick your arse, destroy your servers and put the shoes to your CPU's.
Understand?
Thank you for Complying
Sincerely,
The Management
I am not going to tolerate blog spam any longer. I don't care about Lesbian dating services or Internet Opportunities to get Paid to Shop.
From now on, I am going to trace any blog spam back to its source and find out who you are and come over there and kick your arse, destroy your servers and put the shoes to your CPU's.
Understand?
Thank you for Complying
Sincerely,
The Management
Motorcycle Memories
I was just outside in the garage, working in the afternoon heat with Gib. I was splicing some anchor lines for the boats, and he was fiddling with the carburetor off of one of the four wheelers, trying to get the thing to run. Bored with the task at hand, and insane with the oven like temperatures inside of the garage, it wasn’t too long before we drifted outside into the hellishly hot, red tide air day to take a look at our scooters, glossy black paint and chrome gleaming in the midday sun. I started thinking about bikes I've owned and loved.
It takes another biker to understand.
During the 1970’s I was stationed up in Kodiak Alaska at the Coast Guard Air Station. In those days, there was always a down and out cutthroat war between the officers and enlisted men …I think that in todays military where everyone is in there on a volunteer basis, the distinction between ranks is one of mutual respect and benevolence. During my incarceration in the military, which were the days of the draftee, officers were thought of as “zeros” and fair game for just about anything. We were barely past the days of fragging. There were no scruples…no honor, only abject warfare between the hierarchy and serfdom, a sense of eat or be eaten.
One time we streaked the officers club in the middle of their sit-down dinner time, penis’ painted red; ballsacks, painted white and blue. Just hauled ass through there, with paper bags masking our faces, genitalia flopping about, laughing insanely. It made the base newspapers, and I’m sure, more than one officers wifes’ evening.
My first bike was a little Honda 125 two stroke machine, custom made for zipping around the dirt roads and trails that crisscrossed Kodiak Island. My friend Martin did a lot of work on it, porting the cylinder and tweaking the carb so that it would get maximum wheelies. Then I got a DT-250 Yamaha, a much more powerful machine, and did much the same to it. I bought it fairly cheap because the previous owner had gotten the gas tank stolen by leaving it alongside the hangers where it was fair game to marauding thieves, among who were just about all of us. We ported and polished the exhaust and intake ports, sleeved and put in a new piston and rings, and bolted on a new exhaust...essential items necessary to make it stand on it's back wheel for a block or two.
Finally the time came to get the bike out there on the road and trails. I had a slight problem though, having neglected to order a fuel tank for my machine. Kodiak was, and is an island far out in nowhere, I would have had to order a new fuel tank, and that would’ve taken weeks to arrive via SeaLand. I was impatient.
In the dark and dusty recessed spaces of the hanger, sat stored until spring, a few bikes belonging to officers who thought that they might be safe from predation there. Not so. One of my friends spied a dust covered DT-250, the same vintage as mine, back among the piles of caribou antlers and spare lifejackets. It appeared to be a neglected and homeless machine, one prime for the recycling of clandestine parts. He suggested that I promptly remove the offending part, preferably in the middle of the night, and claim it as mine. I took his suggestion, it was fair game. Late one night, I carefully lifted the tank from the frame, stuffed it into a small duffle bag and smuggled it out of the hanger. Oh, consider the job done.
Over the course of the next several days, I stripped off the glaring purple paint , and primed and painted my new prize a beautiful electric yellow color. I installed it on the bike and went riding, proud of my accomplishment. Kodiak goes from the drearies of winter to the drearies of spring in a season almost unnoticable. The bears wake up and look around for the summer salmon run, and devils club and fidddlehead ferns pop out of brown barren hillsides, heralding the arrival of spring and all of its attendant mud, the time to haul out and dust off motorcycles, neglected during the long winter months.
It was late May, and the weather was improving. Everyone was starting to get out there. Everyone including the owner of the other Yamaha.
One evening he hauled the bike out of the hanger, and went blasting down to the officers club for happy hour. On the way back, the bike ran out of gas, having operated all the way down there and half the way back on a thimbleful of gasoline in the carb. As he was fiddling around with it, wondering why it didn't run…he noticed, yes, just noticed that the gas tank was missing. Jesus God, what a dumbass. And this guy was a C-130 pilot too....I couldn’t imagine taking off on my scooter and not noticing that the friggin’ fuel tank was missing. Forlornly, and I imagine more than a bit pissed off, he pushed the thing back to the hanger and back into the dark corner. The story made the rounds.
By this time I had come down with an extreme case of the guilts, hell, I’m not a thief, and was not raised to be one. The whole time I felt guilty and dirty, so I decided to return the fuel tank. One night I crept down there late and put the bright yellow tank back on.
The pilot who owned the Yamaha later told his friends; “yea, the goddamnest thing happened. I went down there to install the new tank that I bought for my bike (an oversized 2.5 gallon plastic one), and noticed that a new metal tank was back on my frame….Not the old purple one...a NEW yellow tank!!” he announced gleefully. And then somewhat glumly he added; “What am I gonna do with this plastic one?”
When I found that out, I contacted him and played stupid, and offered to buy it. I told him I was looking for a bigger tank for my Yamaha so that I wouldn’t have to refuel on the way out to Saltery Cove. He sold it to me for something like thirty bucks.
I kept that bike for about two more years, never even thinking about swiping another part, and always thankful that my somewhat compromised conscience made me (at least try) and right that wrong.
I made the mistake of leaving it outside the hanger though, when I had to fly down to Honolulu for four days, and some jerkoff stole the carburetor.
I never got THAT back.
It takes another biker to understand.
During the 1970’s I was stationed up in Kodiak Alaska at the Coast Guard Air Station. In those days, there was always a down and out cutthroat war between the officers and enlisted men …I think that in todays military where everyone is in there on a volunteer basis, the distinction between ranks is one of mutual respect and benevolence. During my incarceration in the military, which were the days of the draftee, officers were thought of as “zeros” and fair game for just about anything. We were barely past the days of fragging. There were no scruples…no honor, only abject warfare between the hierarchy and serfdom, a sense of eat or be eaten.
One time we streaked the officers club in the middle of their sit-down dinner time, penis’ painted red; ballsacks, painted white and blue. Just hauled ass through there, with paper bags masking our faces, genitalia flopping about, laughing insanely. It made the base newspapers, and I’m sure, more than one officers wifes’ evening.
My first bike was a little Honda 125 two stroke machine, custom made for zipping around the dirt roads and trails that crisscrossed Kodiak Island. My friend Martin did a lot of work on it, porting the cylinder and tweaking the carb so that it would get maximum wheelies. Then I got a DT-250 Yamaha, a much more powerful machine, and did much the same to it. I bought it fairly cheap because the previous owner had gotten the gas tank stolen by leaving it alongside the hangers where it was fair game to marauding thieves, among who were just about all of us. We ported and polished the exhaust and intake ports, sleeved and put in a new piston and rings, and bolted on a new exhaust...essential items necessary to make it stand on it's back wheel for a block or two.
Finally the time came to get the bike out there on the road and trails. I had a slight problem though, having neglected to order a fuel tank for my machine. Kodiak was, and is an island far out in nowhere, I would have had to order a new fuel tank, and that would’ve taken weeks to arrive via SeaLand. I was impatient.
In the dark and dusty recessed spaces of the hanger, sat stored until spring, a few bikes belonging to officers who thought that they might be safe from predation there. Not so. One of my friends spied a dust covered DT-250, the same vintage as mine, back among the piles of caribou antlers and spare lifejackets. It appeared to be a neglected and homeless machine, one prime for the recycling of clandestine parts. He suggested that I promptly remove the offending part, preferably in the middle of the night, and claim it as mine. I took his suggestion, it was fair game. Late one night, I carefully lifted the tank from the frame, stuffed it into a small duffle bag and smuggled it out of the hanger. Oh, consider the job done.
Over the course of the next several days, I stripped off the glaring purple paint , and primed and painted my new prize a beautiful electric yellow color. I installed it on the bike and went riding, proud of my accomplishment. Kodiak goes from the drearies of winter to the drearies of spring in a season almost unnoticable. The bears wake up and look around for the summer salmon run, and devils club and fidddlehead ferns pop out of brown barren hillsides, heralding the arrival of spring and all of its attendant mud, the time to haul out and dust off motorcycles, neglected during the long winter months.
It was late May, and the weather was improving. Everyone was starting to get out there. Everyone including the owner of the other Yamaha.
One evening he hauled the bike out of the hanger, and went blasting down to the officers club for happy hour. On the way back, the bike ran out of gas, having operated all the way down there and half the way back on a thimbleful of gasoline in the carb. As he was fiddling around with it, wondering why it didn't run…he noticed, yes, just noticed that the gas tank was missing. Jesus God, what a dumbass. And this guy was a C-130 pilot too....I couldn’t imagine taking off on my scooter and not noticing that the friggin’ fuel tank was missing. Forlornly, and I imagine more than a bit pissed off, he pushed the thing back to the hanger and back into the dark corner. The story made the rounds.
By this time I had come down with an extreme case of the guilts, hell, I’m not a thief, and was not raised to be one. The whole time I felt guilty and dirty, so I decided to return the fuel tank. One night I crept down there late and put the bright yellow tank back on.
The pilot who owned the Yamaha later told his friends; “yea, the goddamnest thing happened. I went down there to install the new tank that I bought for my bike (an oversized 2.5 gallon plastic one), and noticed that a new metal tank was back on my frame….Not the old purple one...a NEW yellow tank!!” he announced gleefully. And then somewhat glumly he added; “What am I gonna do with this plastic one?”
When I found that out, I contacted him and played stupid, and offered to buy it. I told him I was looking for a bigger tank for my Yamaha so that I wouldn’t have to refuel on the way out to Saltery Cove. He sold it to me for something like thirty bucks.
I kept that bike for about two more years, never even thinking about swiping another part, and always thankful that my somewhat compromised conscience made me (at least try) and right that wrong.
I made the mistake of leaving it outside the hanger though, when I had to fly down to Honolulu for four days, and some jerkoff stole the carburetor.
I never got THAT back.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Martin Looter King Day
At the risk of pissing some of you off, especially if you don't live in a large metropolitan area with this sort of problem, I feel obligated to pass this story along, because it represents a fundemental ill in our society, one that we are all responsible for by not holding the gum'ment accountable. Our taxes fund countless billions of social programs designed to lift people from poverty. But, as we all know, most of these problems are hand outs, not hand-ups. Hand outs are a powerful drug, as addictive as heroin, with the consequences of that addiction the loss of self respect and motivation.
My friend Sean lives up in Pasadena Texas and had to bug out for the most recent chubasco, hurricane Rita which was taking full aim at Houston, until a series of last minute joggles put it on the Texas-Louisiana border. Sean makes about the best surfboards that I’ve ever seen, and spends a lot of time between his home in Texas and his adopted home on the beaches of western Mexico, chasing the fabled swell. In between we talk a lot, and sometimes he and his lovely girlfriend Michelle even find time to come down here and visit.
Sean called from Spring Texas where they had gone for refuge during the great big evacuation of Houston last week. He said it wasn’t too bad to get there, except for a few spots, because they had taken the back roads. The worst spots were going through the ghettos he said. There, the people appeared unconcerned, and were even standing around drinking “40’s” like it was some kind of party with no consequences. At one point he said a young girl of about sixteen rode her bike right into the middle of the street and handed a package to another girl who in turn, handed her a wad of bills. A drug deal in the middle of the street, because all of the cops were preoccupied. Life as usual as the big storm approached. It was his conjecture that much the same had happened in New Orleans. And the harsh reality was that people died, and who was really to blame? Was it the government, or some infrastructural snafu that didn’t take care of the poor because they were oppressed minorities, or was the system simply overwhelmed with the stupidity and arrogance of people who have been used to being handed things for so long that they simply no longer can even think for themselves ? People who didn't care if they could get out or not. People who waited for the government to take care of them.
Sean returned home yesterday, to find his house still standing, although it sustained a bit of damage that he'll have to work at to repair this week. He called me to tell me some hurricane stories.
He told me a story about what really happened up there in Houston. It seems that the media has been covering things up in order to play down a problem that is much bigger than either Katrina or Rita themselves. He told me about a friend of his whose mother was evacuating by car prior to the storm. Unfortunately, she had not had the opportunity to fill her tank with gas prior to leaving, and found herself in much the same situation as Sean did as she was traveling through the backroads on her way out of Houston in order to avoid the massive traffic jams.
Running low on gas, she turned into a convenience store in the middle of one of Houstons ghettos, and found the store to be abandoned, but taken over by looters. Yes looters. These people were helping themselves to freebies even before the storm hit. I thought about the recent political controversy in New Orleans, the media firestorm comparing a picture of a white guy getting some food, labeled something like “man salvages food to feed family”, and a photo of a bunch of true looters, blacks, stealing TV’s and other “essentials”, and the outrage it inspired in my liberal friends.
Sean went on to tell me that somehow, the looters had found a way to turn on the gas pumps, but were only dispensing gasoline to other blacks. The end result was that his friends mother had to travel on, at the risk of running out of fuel until she was finally able to find a station somewhere in a civilized area.
So I worry today about things like this. I worry about them much more than natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods. The fabric of America is rotten, and we’re more concerned with rebuilding the buildings that house it. I see in the not to distant future, a country thrown into chaos by our own notion of survival of the weakest, the lowering of the common denominator, the guilt over things of long ago that has led us to oppress folks by making every opportunity available to them without the necessity of having to work for it, an oppression that’s enslaved them to the government.
Now, can someone tell me what a “tonk rocket” is?.......
My friend Sean lives up in Pasadena Texas and had to bug out for the most recent chubasco, hurricane Rita which was taking full aim at Houston, until a series of last minute joggles put it on the Texas-Louisiana border. Sean makes about the best surfboards that I’ve ever seen, and spends a lot of time between his home in Texas and his adopted home on the beaches of western Mexico, chasing the fabled swell. In between we talk a lot, and sometimes he and his lovely girlfriend Michelle even find time to come down here and visit.
Sean called from Spring Texas where they had gone for refuge during the great big evacuation of Houston last week. He said it wasn’t too bad to get there, except for a few spots, because they had taken the back roads. The worst spots were going through the ghettos he said. There, the people appeared unconcerned, and were even standing around drinking “40’s” like it was some kind of party with no consequences. At one point he said a young girl of about sixteen rode her bike right into the middle of the street and handed a package to another girl who in turn, handed her a wad of bills. A drug deal in the middle of the street, because all of the cops were preoccupied. Life as usual as the big storm approached. It was his conjecture that much the same had happened in New Orleans. And the harsh reality was that people died, and who was really to blame? Was it the government, or some infrastructural snafu that didn’t take care of the poor because they were oppressed minorities, or was the system simply overwhelmed with the stupidity and arrogance of people who have been used to being handed things for so long that they simply no longer can even think for themselves ? People who didn't care if they could get out or not. People who waited for the government to take care of them.
Sean returned home yesterday, to find his house still standing, although it sustained a bit of damage that he'll have to work at to repair this week. He called me to tell me some hurricane stories.
He told me a story about what really happened up there in Houston. It seems that the media has been covering things up in order to play down a problem that is much bigger than either Katrina or Rita themselves. He told me about a friend of his whose mother was evacuating by car prior to the storm. Unfortunately, she had not had the opportunity to fill her tank with gas prior to leaving, and found herself in much the same situation as Sean did as she was traveling through the backroads on her way out of Houston in order to avoid the massive traffic jams.
Running low on gas, she turned into a convenience store in the middle of one of Houstons ghettos, and found the store to be abandoned, but taken over by looters. Yes looters. These people were helping themselves to freebies even before the storm hit. I thought about the recent political controversy in New Orleans, the media firestorm comparing a picture of a white guy getting some food, labeled something like “man salvages food to feed family”, and a photo of a bunch of true looters, blacks, stealing TV’s and other “essentials”, and the outrage it inspired in my liberal friends.
Sean went on to tell me that somehow, the looters had found a way to turn on the gas pumps, but were only dispensing gasoline to other blacks. The end result was that his friends mother had to travel on, at the risk of running out of fuel until she was finally able to find a station somewhere in a civilized area.
So I worry today about things like this. I worry about them much more than natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods. The fabric of America is rotten, and we’re more concerned with rebuilding the buildings that house it. I see in the not to distant future, a country thrown into chaos by our own notion of survival of the weakest, the lowering of the common denominator, the guilt over things of long ago that has led us to oppress folks by making every opportunity available to them without the necessity of having to work for it, an oppression that’s enslaved them to the government.
Now, can someone tell me what a “tonk rocket” is?.......
Friday, September 23, 2005
The Osprey on the Post
This morning as I was riding to work, I passed by the large intertidal area just south of the Causeway. It is an area filled with mangroves and salt loving plants with exotic sounding names like Salicornia, Borrichia and Batis. The wind was from the northwest, and there was a feeling of something in the air. Further west the bay glimmered sparkling blue as little whitecaps began to form on its otherwise placid and expressionless surface.
I ride this way almost everyday. During times of big tides, when the water laps around the prop roots of the mangroves, tiny shorebirds; plovers, killdeer and Dunlin forage along the margins of the wetlands while secretive night heron peer from behind the foliage, oblivious to the traffic speeding over the bridge, on the ribbon of blacktop, well on their way to another day of work, people just filling in time before they die.
I always pass the “for sale” sign planted out there, advertising this acreage as prime real estate, and to contact so-and-so reality company for more information. Someday probably, someone will buy this piece of land. They’ll fight and wrestle with the various agencies who administer the regulations which make it difficult for any self respecting developer to “improve” this wetland he now owns, and if and when they finally get their appropriate permits, gleaming buildings will rise up out of the primordial muck, like giant excavated fiddler crab burrows and docks and piers will jut defiantly out into the bay and the developers, investors, buyers and town fathers will all grin a smug self satisfied grin, satisfied in the knowledge that they have “improved” this formerly worthless piece of real estate.
Today I saw an Osprey sitting on an old broken post in a clearing in the middle of the mangroves, watching the water which had inundated the area because of a recent storm far up the coast, watching for mullet or other small fish to prey on. I see this same bird often, sitting on his perch. This is his sanctuary, his kitchen, dining and living room. When the “improvements” inevitably come, he’ll simply fly off and occupy another space, until that one inevitably gets improved, until inevitably, there are few sanctuaries left, and those that do remain will be far back in areas that are worthless pieces of real estate, waiting patiently for the chance to someday be “improved”.
Undoubtedly it will be an area filled with Mangroves and plants with exotic sounding names like Salicornia, Borrichia and Batis. Little plovers, killdeer and dunlin will work along the shoreline, bills bobbing and dipping, foraging like miniature sewing machines, and night herons will peer secretively through the foliage at the whole scene, oblivious to the relentless march of civilization.
I ride this way almost everyday. During times of big tides, when the water laps around the prop roots of the mangroves, tiny shorebirds; plovers, killdeer and Dunlin forage along the margins of the wetlands while secretive night heron peer from behind the foliage, oblivious to the traffic speeding over the bridge, on the ribbon of blacktop, well on their way to another day of work, people just filling in time before they die.
I always pass the “for sale” sign planted out there, advertising this acreage as prime real estate, and to contact so-and-so reality company for more information. Someday probably, someone will buy this piece of land. They’ll fight and wrestle with the various agencies who administer the regulations which make it difficult for any self respecting developer to “improve” this wetland he now owns, and if and when they finally get their appropriate permits, gleaming buildings will rise up out of the primordial muck, like giant excavated fiddler crab burrows and docks and piers will jut defiantly out into the bay and the developers, investors, buyers and town fathers will all grin a smug self satisfied grin, satisfied in the knowledge that they have “improved” this formerly worthless piece of real estate.
Today I saw an Osprey sitting on an old broken post in a clearing in the middle of the mangroves, watching the water which had inundated the area because of a recent storm far up the coast, watching for mullet or other small fish to prey on. I see this same bird often, sitting on his perch. This is his sanctuary, his kitchen, dining and living room. When the “improvements” inevitably come, he’ll simply fly off and occupy another space, until that one inevitably gets improved, until inevitably, there are few sanctuaries left, and those that do remain will be far back in areas that are worthless pieces of real estate, waiting patiently for the chance to someday be “improved”.
Undoubtedly it will be an area filled with Mangroves and plants with exotic sounding names like Salicornia, Borrichia and Batis. Little plovers, killdeer and dunlin will work along the shoreline, bills bobbing and dipping, foraging like miniature sewing machines, and night herons will peer secretively through the foliage at the whole scene, oblivious to the relentless march of civilization.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Chris' Canoe, Part Two
I got this picture from my friend Chris. He finally launched his canoe after about eight or nine years of working on it. Launched it up in central Texas in the Hill country, on the Guadalupe River.
He called and told me that everywhere he went, people asked him; “Where did you get that boat? and “Did you build it yerself?” and inevitably also “….yer not gonna put it in this river are ya?”. You see, the rivers up there are shallow and full of rocks, sharp rocks which could produce gashes of monumental proportion on a fine wooden craft like that. Up there people only float plastic boats, and they all have the deep scars and gouges to prove it. But Chris remained undeterred. He was gonna put that boat through its paces, see what it could do. It’s his boat, and torpedoes be damned…full speed ahead! The Texas Hill Country is a fine place to christen a canoe no matter what. It is an especially fitting place to take a boat like this, a craft that is more a work of art than a vessel. I can imagine the sight of the boat framed by tall cypress and oak lining a river gurgling an inviting melody, the air redolent with the incense of cedar and moss, in the hot Texas day, a canopy of blue overhead. I'm sure it was a joy that made the tedium of construction all worth it.
The years that Chris lovingly studied the plans, worked the fragile wood, and assembled the craft with all the hope and care required a place as special as the hills and the crystal clear cold streams to bring it to life.
My friend Rene and I always get a kick out of Chris' single minded dedication, his attention to some inner song that no one but he can hear. The results are things like large areas of once scarred and abused land supporting lush vegetation and life, masses of unconnected people working together to share a common vision, and things like his canoe. Chris has the training of a botanist and the heart of an artist.
So he told me “I first put the canoe in Town Lake, in Austin, and it tracked as straight and true as you could imagine, turning heads wherever we silently paddled through the water”. “Later I put it in the river and floated downstream…in some places, in the whitewater, I could hear the hull scraping against the rock, and it made me cringe”. “We portaged it a few places, and even the canoe hauler was worried that I might fuck up my new boat.” “ So what, I built it and I could fix it”. “But…. there’s nothing like the sound of wood against rock”. When he took it out of the water and put it back on the roof of his car he noticed that there was not much damage, because he had used epoxy for a final coat, and the damage was in the epoxy layer, cutting down into the mat…not the beautiful wood that he used to create the planks.
Chris’ Dad was a sailor and a man of the water. The stories he tells me, tell me of a man who loved the sea, lakes and rivers, a man drawn to the liquid element. Chris’ Dad died when he was young, but I know that he would be proud of him today, on the day he launched his boat, on the day that he took the tiller of Le Menagerie and felt the power of the wind. Chris’ Dad died when he was young, when he needed him the most, it is a lifelong heartbreak and a cruel fate for a child. I always feel his loss, and know that deep inside he’s trying to please the man, somewhere far out there in the stars. Maybe that’s why Chris is so dear to our family, he understands that value, and is reciprocal to it. He’s learning to be a sailor, has constructed his very own boat, and is listening to the sirens song of the water. It is something that runs in him and through him…not so much now to please his father, but because…that is who he is.
The genetics that rumble along inside of him were given to him by the man, and now they’re being nurtured and developed, with a life of their own – and somewhere out there in the stars his father smiles.
He called me last night with a few questions about putting on another layer of epoxy over the sanded one, to fill in the gouges and dings. He’ll be bringing it over to the bay soon to chase the fall fish, and I can’t wait to go for a ride with him.
He called and told me that everywhere he went, people asked him; “Where did you get that boat? and “Did you build it yerself?” and inevitably also “….yer not gonna put it in this river are ya?”. You see, the rivers up there are shallow and full of rocks, sharp rocks which could produce gashes of monumental proportion on a fine wooden craft like that. Up there people only float plastic boats, and they all have the deep scars and gouges to prove it. But Chris remained undeterred. He was gonna put that boat through its paces, see what it could do. It’s his boat, and torpedoes be damned…full speed ahead! The Texas Hill Country is a fine place to christen a canoe no matter what. It is an especially fitting place to take a boat like this, a craft that is more a work of art than a vessel. I can imagine the sight of the boat framed by tall cypress and oak lining a river gurgling an inviting melody, the air redolent with the incense of cedar and moss, in the hot Texas day, a canopy of blue overhead. I'm sure it was a joy that made the tedium of construction all worth it.
The years that Chris lovingly studied the plans, worked the fragile wood, and assembled the craft with all the hope and care required a place as special as the hills and the crystal clear cold streams to bring it to life.
My friend Rene and I always get a kick out of Chris' single minded dedication, his attention to some inner song that no one but he can hear. The results are things like large areas of once scarred and abused land supporting lush vegetation and life, masses of unconnected people working together to share a common vision, and things like his canoe. Chris has the training of a botanist and the heart of an artist.
So he told me “I first put the canoe in Town Lake, in Austin, and it tracked as straight and true as you could imagine, turning heads wherever we silently paddled through the water”. “Later I put it in the river and floated downstream…in some places, in the whitewater, I could hear the hull scraping against the rock, and it made me cringe”. “We portaged it a few places, and even the canoe hauler was worried that I might fuck up my new boat.” “ So what, I built it and I could fix it”. “But…. there’s nothing like the sound of wood against rock”. When he took it out of the water and put it back on the roof of his car he noticed that there was not much damage, because he had used epoxy for a final coat, and the damage was in the epoxy layer, cutting down into the mat…not the beautiful wood that he used to create the planks.
Chris’ Dad was a sailor and a man of the water. The stories he tells me, tell me of a man who loved the sea, lakes and rivers, a man drawn to the liquid element. Chris’ Dad died when he was young, but I know that he would be proud of him today, on the day he launched his boat, on the day that he took the tiller of Le Menagerie and felt the power of the wind. Chris’ Dad died when he was young, when he needed him the most, it is a lifelong heartbreak and a cruel fate for a child. I always feel his loss, and know that deep inside he’s trying to please the man, somewhere far out there in the stars. Maybe that’s why Chris is so dear to our family, he understands that value, and is reciprocal to it. He’s learning to be a sailor, has constructed his very own boat, and is listening to the sirens song of the water. It is something that runs in him and through him…not so much now to please his father, but because…that is who he is.
The genetics that rumble along inside of him were given to him by the man, and now they’re being nurtured and developed, with a life of their own – and somewhere out there in the stars his father smiles.
He called me last night with a few questions about putting on another layer of epoxy over the sanded one, to fill in the gouges and dings. He’ll be bringing it over to the bay soon to chase the fall fish, and I can’t wait to go for a ride with him.
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