Journal from the late summer of '02

4 September 2002

Summer Vacation


What summer vacation means to me…hmmm…which story shall I tell? Tempt me to paint a Norman Rockwell family gathered around their Thomas Kincaid cottage thrown in the middle of a Hobbiteville countryside will you? This seems like a good time to stop and recall the time I went to Disneyland, and Knott’s Berry farm. Man, my first time on an airplane and all the way to California…I was scared and nervous, but my father gave me some timeless advice about fear that I will never forget…Wait, reality time, wake up and smell the coffee little Lou, you had never flown on an airplane, and had surely never seen the money for an airline ticket or admission into those rich folk’s tourist traps until you had the Air Force’s tentative stamp of approval, in the person of a big hypodermic needle full of wonder drugs tattooed on your left buttock, and you were on your way to the hot dry hell of San Antonio, Texas.


And summer vacation? What do you mean vacation? Vacation is what rich folks do when they have too much time on their hands, and not enough responsibilities to fill them. Summer, in my formative years was a time to earn the room and board that Mom’s welfare check and food stamps, and dad’s sullen refusal to waste his time at a “real job” had provided for me for the last nine and a half months.


When I say, in my straightforward way, summer was no vacation, I mean, summer was two and a half months of the worst sweat, blood, spit, mud, bruises, calloused cracked hands, sore backs, bad smells, and manual labor thrown onto the backs of a passel of the thinnest, barefooted, dirty faced, patched torn clothing wearing kids you have ever seen.


Summer was a good time to tie a bandana, or old thread barren off white t-shirt around your mouth and nose, and go clean out the barn with a pitchfork, or outhouse with a shovel, saw and split enough firewood to burn all winter in the furnace and woodstove, or tend the garden in a blazing August sun, with barely a mid day break for peanut butter on saltine crackers or dry homemade bread. Yes, I knew the miseries and blood sweat and tears of manual labor at 95 percent humidity under the unforgiving sun.


Under the lower surface of hell sun in summer, I have run a chain saw, double blade axe, shovel, splitting maul, and just about every kind of tool or implement you can imagine seeing in a museum, instead of on a modern farm. I have milked cows and goats, and but by God’s grace and my agility I escaped getting run into the ground by about the biggest, meanest bull you have ever seen, all without the thank you, or pay check I always dreamed of, but an assurance of food, lodging, and maybe if things were looking up sometime in the future, new clothes for school. Honest to God new clothes, with a price tag on them, not hand me downs from much larger, older brothers, or moth ball smelling used clothes that some other poor kid’s parents were more than happy to give to the Salvation Army, because he was too proud to be seen wearing them. To whine, or lament my place in life, or to complain about the burden I was forced to shoulder meant yet another lecture about who was providing a hot meal and a roof over my head for another long cold winter.


While summer vacation means many things to many people, including bar b que, lakes and beer, trips, 4th of July, and holiday cheer, it meant, to me, not getting a free hot lunch from school, sun up to sun down labor, and working my fingers to the bone. It also meant dreams. I dreamed more in the hot summer sun, or lying in bed in the room I shared with three of my brothers, watching a thunderstorm rend the night skies than I ever did sitting in a classroom. Yes I dreamed, those Kincaid Cottage dreams, I spoke of while trying to come up with a happy summer story. I dreamed of playing baseball with those damned Rockwell painted kids, and wandering far off Hobbiteville with Bilbo, who had a much cooler name than Frodo. Mostly though, when I dreamed, on those late summer nights, I dreamed that when I awoke, I would have a big breakfast waiting for me, the kind of breakfast that would make me full for a change, maybe something crazy like a fruity cereal, with real milk out of a cardboard milk box, not still warm from the cow with thick cream on it. Then maybe just maybe, I would be allowed to just sit around and watch cartoons all morning, because sometime in the night the powers that be, had paid a visit to the backside of Patch Mountain, Maine, snuck in and installed electricity and brought one of those damned television things right into our living room.

6 September 2002

Dew On the Window


Early this morning, feeling chased by the very daemons of hell themselves, I ran out the front door of my trailer, juggling a battered gym bag, seam challenging stuffed backpack, 3 CD cases and a stack of overdue bills. I was trying to push the unlock button on my car key fob without dropping anything when I noticed the front and rear windows of my car were covered with the morning dew. I stopped to think; wouldn’t it be nice to put everything in the car, and draw a smiley face on the back window, so I can look in the rearview mirror and see it as I drive along the highway to work?


Funny stuff this dew. I often wonder where it comes from, and where it goes? It’s very hard to capture dew. Mostly my hand, leaving little more than water and a sense of nostalgia, smears it. It sure is handy for leaving a smile, or brief note on a window though.


Okay, all my gear is in the car…Oh crap! I forgot my hat, and the envelope with my rent money in it. Ah well, the door is unlocked anyways, I can just start the car and let the defroster run for a little while I scurry back in to get the envelope off the countertop.


Okay last check, and with a simple word to God to get me through the day, I do a U-turn in the street and head out into the predawn-working world. I make one quick stop, this time to drop my rent into the landlord’s mail slot. Eventually I am going to stop and inquire about the likelihood of ever getting the oft-promised new screen door before winter. I wonder if he has a stack of receipts for my rent payments for the last six months. It’s all really just worthless paperwork to me.


Damn, too tight to turn my car all the way around in his driveway, Ah well, no one will see me run over the corner of his lawn (again). Down the dirt drive, turn left onto the tar road, dodge and avoid a few crater-sized potholes, left and up onto the highway. Sure would be nice to see some light over that farmer’s field. It must mean that summer is rapidly coming to an end. Seems like just last week I was dreaming of past summers…


Every morning I feel like I am almost on the home stretch with my car facing north on Highway 83. Just three miles separates me from home and work. Passing sleeping farmers fields, early morning birds, stray cats, and other small creatures, as my speedometer creeps slowly towards 70, I contemplate a day at work. Will the students be eager to learn aircraft fundamentals and components? Will I be eager to teach them? What gem will my boss come up with today? Sure is hot in here…I better shut the defrost off. I pause at the base main gate turn off for a car coming south from Glenburn way. Hmm…blinkers must have been optional that year…a second to show the gate guard my military ID card, a quick scoot across base, and I’m in the parking lot at work already. I am an hour and a half early, but ready to get in the ring so to speak. Time to do battle for my congressionally approved paycheck.


Damn, I forgot to draw a smiley face in the dew on my car window. Funny stuff this dew. I wonder where it comes from, and where it goes?

10 September 2002

Weekend/Weakened

I wonder how Mondays can creep up out of the muck, ooze, and slime of a metaphorical far off swamp like a B-rated movie monster and grab the start of the week by the throat. Yes, in one half hour of consciousness, between morning coffee and a hot shower your average human being’s life can easily be dragged kicking and screaming from potential greatness into misery that it takes most of a week to overcome.


We have all had those metaphorical non-alcoholic induced Mondays that defy even the most brilliant ray of sunshine. Honest to goodness revolting, sour milk for my cheerios, burnt my hand on the toast, forgot to set the coffee pot, radio station won’t come in, the neighbor’s cat peed on the newspaper, Monday mornings are the hardest to bear. I don’t believe the problem with getting moving on a Monday morning rests with the person at all, but with a combination of society and the calendar.


Metaphorically speaking, society and the calendar show a happy place between Friday afternoon and Monday morning specifically designed for relaxing, recharging, and showing the working world that we are on a mini vacation designed with the sole purpose of spending time with family or loved ones, or staring vacantly at NASCAR, the NBA, or NFL on our wildly overpriced big screen televisions.


Consider the co-workers on an early Friday afternoon, standing around the metaphorical water dispenser, discussing weekend plans. “Hey Bill, what do you have planned for this weekend?”


“Emma and I are going to go to Fargo to catch the Bee Gee’s 14th annual reunion tour. What about you?”


“Me and Rae are going to go up to New Town to do a little gambling, I guess.”


“Sweet.”


Now, consider the same two bosom chums on a Monday morning. “Hey Bill, how was the concert?”


“Go to hell.”


Yes, Mondays, in their current format are indeed a tough way to start a week, but society has the antidote neatly wrapped in a pure angelic white pill available over the counter and known by the trade name, “weekend.”

12 September 2002

Happy Place

Where is your happy place? Find your happy place. Tell me what makes you happy. My happy place, come on Doc, this isn’t Psychology, and this seems like a lame thing to write about. I’m not a self-help guru, and this feel good stuff usually makes me feel sick. Hmm…I’m sure there are people in the world who can reach down, not too deep, and without much dredging come up with a handful of sunshine to spread around.


They appear not to live in the real world, at least not in my reality of the world. Happy place my butt, it’s only Tuesday, and this week is dragging. I’m not at all sure I can make it all the way thru the week. I’m sure my boss will go out of his way to find something that will ruin the week.


The only consolation on slow lithium hazed weeks like this is Friday evening. No matter how slow, maddening, or downright terrible the week, no matter how tired and grouchy I am, I have to turn my car north on Highway 83, just after I leave the main gate to appease the powers that hang around the child support office in Bismarck.


After roughly 13 miles north by north east, in the village of Glenburn, North Dakota, I pull into my ex-wife’s driveway, and after brief exchanges of forced pleasantry, I am once again headed south with Emily strapped firmly in the back seat of my sports car.


“Daddy I missed you so much.”


“I missed you too Emmy.”


“Daddy, am I still your princess?”


“Yes little fella you are.”


No matter what the weekend brings, the maelstrom of emotions and outpouring of love that accompanies my daughter makes her my sunshine place.

14 September 2002

Summer Without a Vacation


It seems when the cherished season we gleefully refer to as summer begins to slowly wind down, or in North Dakota, abruptly ends, we stop to contemplate what summer vacation means, and make excuses why we let the daily grind once again cheat us out of the opportunity to dream in the hot summer sun. Or contemplate, while staring out a midnight window, the power of the thunderstorm that rends the night skies, like the flash bars of a million Polaroid cameras capturing the landscape in non-permanent Ansel Adams dreams of bucolic perfection. Excuses help cancel missed dreams of teaching a seldom seen stepson to pitch a fastball, while mindful of playing baseball with a rag tag family much like Rockwell’s painted kids, in the far off Hobbiteville of boyhood.


Summer vacation I miss you when I stop to dream away the reality that is adulthood.