The thin line between hiking and cooking

 I knew I should have prepped the cabbage last night. Instead of razor-thin shavings of bright green cabbage, I opened the cooler and there they were, two green bowling balls without the holes. But, hey, I am good with a knife. I am not stupid-fast, more like efficient. I got this.

My one-hour lunch excursion into the culinary burst of what I view Fight4Taste to mean could happen. Right? All along there was a song playing in the background, come on Gen-X sing it if you know it..."A THREE HOUR TOURRRRRRRR!"

Once the cabbage is shredded, it is evident I am in that episode of the Twilight Zone in which time is moving at 6 times its natural speed. I note to myself, that the next time my hands are clean, there is an important call that I need to make. I step off the curb to work on the rest of the build and then, I am again transported 37 minutes into the future.

If I were home, the projections meet the reality and simply translate into a hungry family eating later, a kitchen being cleaned later, going to bed later, and perpetual tiredness. All in the name of a fantastic meal. Oh, and the learning thingy. That part is moderate when you are in your own kitchen.

When I set foot in a public kitchen, I unpack and in short order, I set out to put something great to waiting diners, it is so different. Every unanticipated tactile experience burns the fingertips. It is like steering a very large lifeboat with oars that are the wrong size. I know I can do it, but my mind is spinning like a computer that is running models of every potential move, mapping out the best move to make next.

As I crossed the finish line, the signs of what I should have done differently jumped out at me like giant billboards that were brightly lit and could not be missed. It was then I thought, this reminds me of something.

When you get to fill a backpack with everything you think you need, for an overnight backpacking trip after what feels like years of study, you think you have anticipated everything. There is no way that there could be a great need for something you did not think of. But, the black forest at night declares its dominance and declares otherwise. It is then, that you are small. You are disadvantaged. Most importantly, you are learning, and absorbing lessons with a porousness like you have never known.

Cooking for others in a public kitchen is just like that. What I can absorb is incredible. It actually amazes me. It makes sense that I love the pressure of it because in doing so my eyes are wide open. There is no safety net, just me and the finish line, period.

The silent warnings

 I woke up in the morning. The gravity was inconsequential. I stepped out onto the porch and looked off into the distance and I owned the land as far as I could see. It was mine and it always would be mine. I went out and navigated my day. I saw it but did not see it. All of the people around me were dealing with challenges and realities that were different from mine. They were not the same.

The advice of the previous generation was offered heavily and I did not understand why they thought they needed to give it. I was different and they could not see it. Walking down the road confidently I would suddenly hear a man speaking. His words spiked doom inside me because I knew that he used to own the land I now called my own. 

Photo by Ashlee Brown on Unsplash

As time passed, I met more of these travelers frequently. I learned to respect them. I also realized that I had been seeing them all along. They had been in my life all along, but I was tuned into an arrogant frequency. The foolishness of youth supported my ignorance.

I remember running the annual Army Physical Training test every October down at Morningside. My defiance was so blatant that I actually carried a cigarette and lighter one year so I could run across the finish line, smoking. Mortal stupidity wished to rub in the faces of those who were further down the road of life from me that I could be an idiot. No matter what I thought, I could do nothing to force them to accept my self-inflicted lie.

I woke up this morning, and the gravity was much heavier. I slowly walked out onto the porch and looked out over the railing and I could only see a couple of feet over it. Even that would be gone soon unless I took drastic measures. The fact is, I was warned about this, and I was not listening.

1985: Chapter 6: Let's drive that old Ford to Mexico boys

With the addition of Brooke to the household, things did shift. When we did want to go out for a beer we did less Sail Club and Gaff. We began to frequent Mariner's Inn on the beach. Everyone still called it Beach Lodge because that is what it had been as long as it had been there previously.

The Inn was owned by a couple from Wisconsin, Rick and Sherrill. They were wonderful people. Sitting at what was perceived as the main table with them was more like a kitchen table in a big house with a large family. It was that warm and as a result, this became a regular stop. Tom from Island Retreat would hike through the dunes and also hang out with us as well as our neighbor Jim, who worked at the University of Texas. 

The hours of conversations that happened at that table were wonderful. It was a group of people from many different places in the world all congregating here as friends. A Lone Star Beer long neck was $1.25 and we always carried our darts with us. There was no air conditioning in Mariner's. It enjoyed that offshore breeze that kept the air moving and several ceiling fans working overhead.

Towards the tail end of Spring Break, Dad, Brooke and I went down to Mariners around 1 p.m. on a Saturday. We were joined by Harry and Steve. Steve was a core member of the Sunday Morning Gentleman's Club, our Sunday morning dart games at the house. Harry, who lived over in Rockport, frequently came over to play.

We were all sitting around the table and it was pretty harmless. At some point, however, it seemed like Steve may have argued with his wife, which explained why Harry picked him up and got him out of the house. Other than the dart games on Sunday, Steve never left the house.

Then Steve said the words that dissolved the group at the table and set into motion a very crazy idea: "Hey, let's go to Mexico."

Dad looked at Steve like he had lost his mind. Harry just about jumped out of his chair to go. I, at 19, who did not get to go to Costa Rica suddenly saw an opportunity to go to this wild and crazy place I had only heard stories about, I was in. 

Let me just say that my ability to make intelligent decisions was next to nothing at this point. I was so spontaneous and someone just laid out an adventure. I volunteered to drive and not drink another drop of alcohol until we reached Mexico. Drinking and driving was still legal in Texas in 1985. You could legally drive, with an open container but God help you if your blood alcohol was over the legal limit. I was certain that Harry and Steve would likely drink all the way to Mexico.

When I asked Dad to come, he made it clear to me that there was no way he was going. He even pointed out to me that maybe I should not go. He reminded me who I was going with. Steve was the guy who would fall asleep on the couch while his two-year-old son was randomly walking around the neighborhood 2 1/2 blocks away.  Harry had so many DWIs that he served time in the state pen at Huntsville last year. He was the one who made the front page of the Toast of the Coast Herald last year. A photo of officers trying to cuff him and him waving his fist in the air at the paper cameraman as he kept screaming, "I'll remember you!!"Above the photo a bold headline: "MEMORIES". Deep down inside, I was wondering if I was going to end up in one of those Mexican jails I had heard so much about. But, I just had to go.

We left Mariner's Inn. There was still a lot of activity on the beach so driving on it was stop and go. Dad and Brooke were in the Chrysler in front of us, and Harry, Steve, and I were in Harry's 1970 blue and white Ford pickup. I was sitting in the middle between Harry and Steve. As the beach traffic kept stopping, Harry thought he would be funny and started racing the truck and making it jump up close to the back of Dad's car. I could feel my Dad's annoyance back here in the vehicle behind his. This was a mistake.

The one thing I knew about my father was it was never a good idea to call his bluff. He would make you own whatever was used to mess with him. Harry persisted in his antagonizing by stomping on the gas pedal and bouncing up right behind the Chrysler, stopping just inches from it. The traffic line moved and we stayed back as Harry shifted the truck back into 1st, revving the engine, making his intentions known.  I kept warning him. "You know he is going to rub your face in this Harry, you should know better." Harry, obviously a person who did not know how to learn from his mistakes just laughed.

The retaliation suddenly came, in the form of backup lights on the Chrysler. Dad stomped the gas pedal of that 440 and it screamed through its way undersized glass pack muffler. The car lurched towards us and made contact with a crash. Dad kept the pressure on. Harry thought he could push back with the truck but that was like trying to push an oil tanker, it was no match. The rear tires of the truck just spun in the sand. This demonstration of opposing force lasted for what seemed like a couple of minutes. As we sat in the seat of the truck, I noticed that our view was transitioning from a straight-on look at the back window of Dad's car to the roof to more of the sky. Harry had buried the truck up to the body at the back wheels. 

Dad, seeing that he had made his point, took off like a rocket and left us there on the beach, in the middle of the roadway where there was a line of cars behind us. We were angled as if we were going to launch into space on a vertical trajectory.  Realizing that since I was riding with these two, I was going to need to help them dig the truck out. "Satisfied?" I looked at Harry. He laughed his crazy laugh, he loved this. Yeah, going to Mexico with a guy who was on the outs with his wife and this guy tonight. I started to think, I am so going to Mexican jail.

We briefly stopped back at the house, mostly to get music, I cannot deal with lots of miles and no music. I kept getting the "this is a bad idea vibe" off of Dad. Of course, mindless 19-year-old, and zero dollars in my pocket, I was going to do this.

In 1985, this was about a 4 hour drive since it would be another year and a half before the federal government decided to repeal the 55-mile-an-hour national speed limit that had been in effect since 1973. The road from Corpus to Laredo is a long lonely one. We talked and listened to the music that I brought. Of course, Steve and Harry drank from a cooler that was in the bed of the truck and wiped out the better part of a bag of pot. I could never be bothered with that stuff, I never cared for it. In Port Aransas, that and a 12 pack were the most common legal tender on the island.

As we drove west towards Mexico, the sunset and the most amazing moon rose from the horizon. I recall it was one of the most beautiful moons I have ever seen. We made a quick stop in Laredo to eat at a Mcdonalds drive-thru, then drove across the international border. I noticed the Mexican border agent just waved hello and smiled at us as we drove through his booth. That surprised me a bit, I always thought entering another country would be more complicated. I was unaware that the real trick was getting back into the United States.

It was definitely a shock entering into Nuevo Laredo. We went from one large city, and immediately right into another, but more 20 years ago and more post-apocalyptic. The potholes in the roads were larger than the truck we drove, people drove so much more aggressively. I told Harry that I needed him to drive because I did not want to be responsible for damaging his truck and at this point, some kind of damage seemed inevitable. 

He told me where to go and we ended up in a parking lot of a rough-looking 2 story motel. It reminded me of something you might see in Beirut in the movies. We got a room for like $15 US. The exchange rate at this time was 4100 pesos to 1 US dollar. Once we secured that we headed back out to the street and got a cab, by which I mean a 1968 Plymouth Valiant that barely had an exhaust and a suspension that was seriously fatigued from the ridiculous conditions of the roads. The driver drove it hard, like a Chicago Cab driver would. You could tell he was not worried that he could potentially fly the car apart. Harry and Steve seemed to know exactly where we were going. I just went with the flow. I did notice as we navigated the city, Federales with automatic weapons were everywhere. 

When we arrived at the club we were attending I could not help but notice, like so many properties in this area, it was surrounded by 6 to 10-foot concrete walls, except this one, when they poured the walls, they placed glass liquor bottles upside down and then after they dried, the bottles were broken leaving jagged glass across the tops of the walls. This was designed to keep people in just as much as it was to keep people out.

I had no money, I was not sure what Harry had, and Steve had a pocket full. This was ironic because Steve did not work, only his wife did. Once we got inside it was clear that even though the alcohol was flowing, alcohol was their second best-selling commodity. There was no doubt in my mind, that alcohol was as far as this went for me, I had heard too many awful stories about these ill-fated trips over the border. Steve bought me a beer, and in a short time, he disappeared. Harry was talking to different people. A man sat at our table and started talking with me. He was a middle-weight boxer. We had a long conversation and I actually felt better hanging out with him in a place with glass-topped barrier walls and Federales outside with rifles.

I was not very old, but I was already developing expedient survival skills in thick situations, a skill I would really develop later on. Steve arrived back at the table, he was different. A very dark case of regret and obviously buyer's remorse had set in.  On the ride back to the motel he was lamenting out loud about coming down here, leaving his wife at home, taking the money, everything was a disaster. I would not want to be him for anything.

He was difficult to be around, so Harry and I walked away from him as he headed into the motel room. We hit the streets of Nuevo Laredo. It was about 2 AM. The city was alive, people everywhere, some in the light, many others just inside the shadows of doorways and alleys, all seeming suspicious of us, Federales also looking at us, waiting for the reason. The city was so broken everywhere, the roads, the sidewalks, the faces of the buildings. At one time all of this was new, and now years of neglect were everywhere. The night was hot and full of fumes from cars and food.

We walked into this little shop that was bright with yellow light, fans blew loudly, and skinned animal carcasses (allegedly goat) hung from the ceiling.  We sat down at a little square table in the middle of the shop, as we seemed to be the attraction of those people sitting in the perimeter seats.  We ordered two Carta Blanca beers and Harry ordered tacos.

He talked and talked, the whole time eating like he was Andrew Zimmerman.  Beer after beer, taco after taco, and an hour passed. He kept offering me the goat taco but I held up my hand, "Oh, I'm good, I ate at McDonalds, what, only 8 hours ago?" At this point in my life, I was very closed-minded when it came to food. Pizza at the time was non-existent on the island, which I would have eaten frequently so that only left McDonald's when off the island and Whataburger the rest of the time. That was how I rolled back then. I was not about to eat a taco when they waved the flies off the raw meat hanging from the ceiling before putting it on the fire. Nope.

When we neared the two-hour mark, I really started to grow concerned.  "Did Steve give you any money?" I asked Harry. He shook his head no. "How much do you have?" I carefully asked. He reached into his pocket, "11 dollars." I told Harry that I appreciated the several beers I had, but with all the food he had eaten, we were either going to do dishes and mop the floors or the more likely outcome. The proprietor would bring in the Federale who was standing in the street just outside the door, and we would go to jail. Harry, was nothing short of amused and irreverent. He just shrugged his shoulders and kept shoveling those insane tacos into his face. He loved this.

Finally, he had enough, and he said, "Let's get out of here." He asked the man at the counter how much, $7.75. Obviously, Harry knew we were fine all along. I was absolutely stunned at the cost of this outing. We walked back through the dark streets, up to our room, and went to sleep.

Because Steve was so full of remorse when the sun rose, he was like a drill sergeant, making us get up and get moving. No coffee in Mexico, and no breakfast either, he wanted us on the road. We quickly got down to the truck, got in, and headed for the Laredo border.

There was no nice smiling American border patrol person waving at us as we went by. No, in fact, they thought it was a good idea if we pulled off to the side into one of their more intensive inspection areas. We had to leave the truck and sit in a holding area. They took off door panels and checked under the truck and under the hood too. After something like an hour, we were allowed to return to the truck and enter the US. We went right to the McD's to get a coffee and then travel that long barren road back to the Coastal Bend. Steve was super quiet, Harry and I listened to music and talked about it the whole way.

When we pulled into Avenue J, my Dad was pleased I made it home. The only casualty for me was the Wings At the Speed of Sound tape. Harry's tape deck ate it. Steve had sold this trip as showing me the ways of the world, not that I would be so foolish as to accept that, but in the end, I learned that this was about his own selfish impulse. It was deep enough for me at 19 to pull a significant life lesson from.

I am thankful that his life was not mine. They later that year moved off the island and later that year his wife and son went to the store for milk and bread and never returned. She drove until she was at her parent's house in Pennsylvania, rightly so too.

Harry was an interesting person to spend time with, he knew the rules and and knew them better than he let on. He always made it seem like all caution was disregarded, but to some degree, it was a façade. Later that year he had a girlfriend named Linda. She would come around to the Sunday Morning Gentlemen's Club dart games we held. Our friend Bob for some reason did not like her. She had been all over the world, living in tents, Peace Corps in Africa, and who knows where else. Bob always called her Bazimba. Never figured out what the deal was.

 

1985 - Chapter 5: The learning season

 I did not know it at the time, but the breakdown of my vehicle was one of those events that exploded in slow motion regarding how it affects other things in your life. Through the grapevine, I had heard that a person I knew on the island had a 73 Dodge pickup for sale for $75. I bought it promptly. 

I had never bought a vehicle before. The couple of days leading up to picking it up were full of imagining how awesome it was going to be. My $75 purchase to me was a $2000 purchase of what I was expecting. As Dad and I sat at the kitchen table in the evenings, I talked about what I was going to do. Dad mentioned that since the transmission only had 2nd and 3rd gear, we could pull it out, bring it to Tom's Auto and he could weld the shift fork inside the transmission. That is what Cliff suspected the issue was.  No 1st and reverse was not really a big deal to him. Port Aransas was a small island that was also flat. He never saw a reason to deal with it. I wish I had felt the same way.

"What is the first thing you will do when you get the truck, Mike?" Dad asked me as though he was interrogating me. "Put a stereo in." He smacked the palm of his hand on the table, "No! You are going to check those universal joints!" I felt stupid for not thinking of that. He was right. My not taking the importance of these things seriously cost me a lot. At this point, I had no idea how much.

I picked up the truck on Thursday.  Dad told me to make sure of some basic things. At one point, he noticed a poor connection issue like a loose terminal or corrosion. He wisely told me that I needed to go over the secondary ignition system, battery, starter, relay, and cables and make sure all connections were clean and tight.

Friday night, we took the truck out and went out for a beer at the Gaff. Having only 2nd and 3rd gear and this being my first standard, I stalled it, a lot. When the truck would not start multiple times because the connections were so loose and dirty that the battery was not getting a charge from the alternator, and my Dad had to get out to push the truck each time to have me pop the clutch to get it started, by the third time he was so angry, it was a good thing he had never been exposed to an excess of gamma radiation.  

There are some things you do as a kid in which your parent's reaction "fixes" you for the rest of your life. Here at 19 years old, this was one of those times. He was so mad that he told me to clean the connections and here he was having to push the truck on the flat ground repeatedly because I did not listen and because I could not drive a standard. I was maybe 120 pounds, he could push the truck better than I could. For lessons sake, he did have me push it a time or two. Needless to say, he drove the point home about cleaning and tightening electrical connections. It was one of those moments like learning from your father when he simply asks you to hold a flashlight when he is trying to do something.

That weekend, I removed the driveshaft and pulled the transmission, with Dad's help, and brought it over to Tom's shop. A couple days later we stopped in for a beer and Tom had the transmission in a hundred pieces on the bench. It was not the shift forks, there were broken parts throughout and the transmission needed a full rebuild. It would be better to just get another from a junkyard.

The day we had waited for came in which Brooke arrived at the airport and she began her life with us in Port Aransas. We were so excited to have her come home, we had her room all set and she started school right off. She instantly made friends with so many people and just as was evident last month when she visited with Grandma, Brooke was perfect for Port Aransas.

The quest for a transmission for the truck began to get weird. It turns out, back in the '70s, Mopar had contracted parts for their trucks out to smaller manufacturers and there were actually many different 3-speed transmissions out there. Because of that, different size driveshafts, cross members, and splines were involved. I bought a transmission for $15 from someone, but it was twice as long as the one in the truck. What I should have done was bring my driveshaft to Corpus Christi Driveshaft and had one altered to make it work, but this type of problem was above my abilities at the time. I am sure I drove my father nuts by just talking about options all of the time.

There were so many junk yards in Corpus back in those days. I went from one muddy junkyard to another. It seemed like it took a month of searching. 11 years later that seems like 30 years gone by, and I will be here again, and for much more serious and devastating reasons. I finally found a transmission that was the exact same as the one that came out of the truck, it was painted safety orange and cost $150. We were all along expecting to pay about $50. That was met by a "you paid what?" moment with my father when I returned home with it. There were three of us in the house now and he was expecting me to help out at least a little with expenses as I had promised I would way back last summer when I convinced him that we needed to move out of the little cottage.

As the years have gone by, I have worked on vehicles, every aspect of them, engine, driveline, electronic, body, interior, you name it. Back here in 85, I was in my automotive repair infancy. I had a great consultant, but my confidence was null. I did not understand that when you work on mechanical things like this, it is a test of wills and that the only way to succeed, is to win that test. Not understanding this, anything I did with this truck took many times longer than it should have. In fact, I spent more time talking about what I was doing than actually doing it.

Once the transmission was in and a floor shifter was installed, I took it to work only to realize this thing leaked a great deal of oil. I set my sights on doing the oil pan gasket. I fought and fought with it, cut myself, whined, and complained. Finally, my Dad having heard this constant complaining, told me to follow him.  He was calm. He went outside, slid under the truck, took the motor mount nut off, put a hydraulic jack and block of wood under the crank pully, lifted the engine 2 inches, and slid the oil pan out. He counted the connecting rod bolts (I had found one in the oil pan and was spinning out because of it). Everything was where it should be.  He told me, that installation was the reverse of the removal and went back into the house.

I learned so much more than just the mechanical part of this. He let me complain and then just showed me how to take action and how simple that was imprinted in my brain a starting point that would help me from this point on. To this day, I don't know how he tolerated my complaining and overreaction, but he did and did it so well.

The truck always seemed to have some reason why it could not be my commuting vehicle. The long daily drives with the Chrysler with the big block 440 in it continued, meanwhile, spring break ravaged the island.

Brooke meshed into life at Port Aransas High School in a way that said still yet again, she was meant to be here. She made friends with people in her class immediately and at the time, became best friends with a girl named Sandy whom I met at the Gaff on that night we celebrated my father's birthday back in December. The night her stepfather was threatening to physically harm me if I did not get up from the table.

Brooke just fell into our "modified" routine with ease. I say modified because I was pretty much the same, but Dad on the other hand, had shifted even more into the responsible, calm, and focussed father, now that he had a 15-year-old daughter to look out for. It was remarkable. I was beginning to understand why everyone had pulled me aside last year and told me how incredibly my father had changed because I was also now seeing it happen even more so. Do not misunderstand, he was still Joe, but the calmer side in him cooked off a lot longer now and he was certainly above so much of the drama that he would not have ignored in the past.

I arrived in Port Aransas last year at the end of June. The months that followed were acclimation and getting to know my Dad and him getting to know me. Once 1985 came, the theme changed. 85 was the year I was fire-tested, in every way possible. I had missed a bunch of lessons growing up because my father was not with us. This year, I entered a crash course to make up for lost time. Work, auto-mechanics, and life, the reckoning was coming and there was nothing I could do about it except go through it all. It was only just beginning.

1985, Chapter 4: The Great Dodge space time disaster

*Note: This story appears earlier in this blog as a stand-alone entry. Because it shares such an important event in March of 1985 and a turning point, I could not leave it out of the 1985 story.

 It was affectionately known as 18 Mile Road. It ran north-south from Mustang Island to Padre Island in the South Texas Gulf Coast. Officially called Park Road 53 back then and today is known as Texas Highway 361.  I recall being on it for the first time in June of 1984.  There, a little south of Beach Access Road 1A, a large billboard screamed a happy message:  "Welcome to Miller Time!" Framed in fluorescent palm trees. Then in much smaller letters at the bottom of the full-size billboard, it helpfully added, “ and Port Aransas”. The sign sat like a guardian to the island I called home on a long 18-mile stretch of sand that had the Corpus Christi ship channel to the west and the vast Gulf of Mexico to the east. 

Here, now, I was getting acquainted personally with the 18-mile road as I walked along it picking up pieces of shrapnel with Mopar serial numbers on them, then also an entire driveshaft that will never pull duty again. I messed up.

The irony is, there was another driveshaft with a front universal joint on it sitting in the trunk of my now very damaged 72 red and black Dodge Dart. I had let it coast as far as it could after the violent storm that had ripped apart the underside of the car minutes earlier.

I would learn that this one simple thing had single-handedly cut two big holes under the floor of the front seat. Smashed open the tail shaft housing and bent the output shaft of the transmission. Broke the exhaust, and sent metal through the power steering pump and radiator. Something really bad did happen today after all. The odd thing was, I knew something was waiting today. Don’t get me wrong, this is not some weird auto mechanics 6th sense, although, in the years that followed, I can boast some car whispering credentials. No this was something else. There are just a few days and even sometimes minutes when a person stands on the brink of two forevers, completely encased in fog. You don’t really know that the tracks you are standing on are the switch, but to your very core, you can feel it. Time has gravity. I have felt this gravity manifest itself in three peculiar ways. The first, when something is about to literally explode and you are right there, time happens in choppy sort of photo frames. I believe this is because our senses naturally activate to a magnified super level that allows us to see microseconds expanded so we can read them. The second gravity time displays is the weird conduits it can draw. Noah was in the PICU in 2009 not being able to breathe, again the first time gravity was at play here too, then the conduit to my Dad telling me about not being able to breathe. It brought Noah to 1996 and my Dad to 2009. I then existed in not one time at a time, but strangely all of them at once.

The third gravity of time is what was happening on this day, March 4th, 1985. This is when you are on a pivotal day and you can feel the gravity of your different life pulling at you and the gravity of the life you have been living pulling you the other way. It is an odd but unmistakable feeling.

Something was different. For two months, I have been working in an oil refinery in Northwest Corpus Christi, on the Corpus Christi Bay. I was an instrument fitter's helper working under my dad‘s lifelong friend Jeri. The days were long and cold. Working high off the ground in hard hats and safety harnesses. Sometimes as high as 263 feet off the ground. There were fires and explosions, and the company put a $1 million life insurance policy on you when you began working there. This was a fact but I tried not to let bother me. Even though Jeri had at any given moment anywhere from 12 to 20 cars parked in his yard, I always drove my 1972 Dodge Dart with a slant six motor making it the most economical vehicle out of any that we had between us. 

 I woke up at 1:15 a.m. in my Port Aransas Texas home. I was due to pick up Jeri in Flour Bluff around 6 a.m. on my way to the refinery. Port Aransas is on Mustang Island which is in the Gulf of Mexico just north of South Padre Island Texas. It was always a very long drive to work, but back in those days, you had to do what you had to do. That morning I could feel that something was different. I was on the precipice of change although a very involuntary one.

 I wrote a piece that morning over my cup of coffee called, “Taking What is at Hand”. 

Around 5 a.m. I headed south on Mustang Island on the long dark 18 Mile Road that led to South Padre Island. When Jeri got into the car I told him that I felt like I had stepped out of bed and into the Twilight Zone this morning. Something very good or very bad is going to happen today. Unfortunately, my money was on something bad. After all, I worked as high as 263 ft off the ground and it was not exactly out of the ordinary to have accidental explosions happen at the refinery. Gravity was everything. 

Amazingly the whole day went by and nothing out of the ordinary happened. Driving away from the refinery and out onto South Padre Island Drive I breathed a sigh of relief believing that I was in the clear. I was just a weird 19-year-old with a lack of sleep and a wild imagination.

Just as I was slowing down for a traffic light however my car began to vibrate really hard. I knew that the front universal joint in my 72 Dodge Dart was close to going. I was going to change it, I really was! I had even bought a used driveshaft with a joint on it from a guy at work for 15 bucks. 

We made it to Jeri's house and normally we would have just jacked up the car and taken care of it with the one I bought.  But Jeri didn't have any tools because they were all in our toolbox at work. we made the heavy-hearted decision that it would probably make it if I took it slow.

People in our income status on the island did not have telephones. Realizing that I was going to have to drive the car back to Port Aransas Jeri wisely told me that when I got to the island I should go to a payphone call person-to-person collect and ask for myself. When he answered he would say that I was not there and he would know that I made it home safely. Anyone my age and older knows that this method of confirming info was standard procedure back in those days. Calling long distance was very pricey.

After picking up the pieces of my car all over Park Road 53, I sat back down in the driver's seat.  The realization that it could be a very long time till I drive this car again and perhaps, maybe never again.  When it is the only car you ever owned, that's huge.  I think it was the shock of the consequences that I felt as I sat there.  The shock wave was still unbelievable.  I worked like 50 miles from where I lived!  

There was more at work here.  I was miserable.  All of my youthful ignorance had been thoroughly taunted, mocked, and challenged.  "My" friends were actually my Dad's friends.  I had made none in the last 7 months that I was here in South Texas.  My days learning how to be an adult working at A Auto Supply last summer did little to break my immature defiance that was facilitated by not having my Dad during the years that I really needed him.

Working in a refinery with a bunch of construction workers as a helper was constantly like a brutal initiation.  It is a painful road to travel.  My cushy little teenage life in which I thought I had it all figured out was being smashed daily in the ring of people lining up to kick my figurative butt into something else.  I will say it was working.  The long drive back to the island gave me time to reflect on myself and slowly, I was turning dials and making adjustments to who I was.  

While working at the refinery, I was bitter and I felt broken.  I wanted to go where I felt like I used to.  Where I felt I had control, oddly, getting drunk and having no control.  I wanted my old life back, at least the fun part.  I never paid attention to what I would actually do with my life.  I was just thinking about Lone Oak Campground, partying with my friends.  As I worked high up on those metal vessels that looked like Mercury rockets with ladders, landings, pipes, and instruments on them, I kept telling myself: "I am doing this for Connecticut.  I am going back."

Of course, in my stupidity, I did not know that this was going to make my life even more pathetic than it already was, or at least how I thought it already was. But this morning, March 4th, 1985, I stood on the edge of two different lives.  I did not know that, but I knew something was amiss.  Yes, Mike, "something very good or very bad" was going to happen to me today. Check. Very bad, right?

It seemed like an hour had passed.  Then I saw it on the horizon.  A dark green storm moving at me at the speed of sound, or so it always seemed. Jeri NEVER drove slow, he totally did not know how to.  He had so many speeding tickets that now when he was getting pulled over, he and his wife would swap seats so that she got the ticket so he would not lose his license.  That one 1965 Chevrolet Super Sport coming at me at a high velocity was coming to my rescue.

Jeri skidded to a stop just ahead of me on the side of the 18-mile road.  His face fell with remorse when I told him about all of the smashed vital components all over the road.  He tied a rope from the back bumper of the 65 to the front bumper of my Dodge and towed me back to Port A on a rope faster than I have ever been towed in a vehicle before.

My first car, sat in the driveway indefinitely broken needing so much work before it would ever see the road again and my life continued.  I had to start driving Dad's 74 Chrysler Town and Country wagon, a loud, rusty, 440 cubic inch motor, 5100-pound monster of a car to work.  It was a $10-a-day trip and in 85 that was stupid money.  

The 18-mile road event was an explosion that set things in motion that from that day on, would not have happened otherwise.  Connecticut could not even be thought about as the Dodge was the only way that could happen.  I bought a 73 Dodge pickup for $75 from Cliff on the island.  It only had 2nd and 3rd gear which would have been fine!  But, the prissy little Connecticut boy in me "needed" 1st and reverse.  Brat!  So I was on a crusade to find a transmission and in 1973, Chrysler contracted these out to small machine shops which made it so there were so many different ones.  The month of looking around South Texas junkyards was amazing like a world of its own.  In the end, I found one for $150 in 1985, and since we were finding others for $15 but they did not fit, was like spending $1800 today.  

My sister Brooke had just moved in with us from Connecticut and there were more expenses.  Until now, I was really bad at assisting Dad with the household expenses, despite telling him that I would when I convinced him to move from his little dune-side cottage that was smaller and cheaper than the old 1950s mobile home that we now lived in that we rented from Jeri.  The million-dollar transmission was a pain point between Dad and me.

The truck leaked a ton of oil, so I had to fix it.  I was not always good at working on cars, and this was during that time.  It took me a stupid amount of weeks to change an oil pan gasket.  I hurt myself and threw plenty of tantrums.  My respect for my father runs very deep here.  He was quietly patient, but should probably have backhanded me several times to set me right.

The morning after I cut my knuckle open on the side of the sharp oil pan, it had gotten infected because it was dirty with sand and grease and my hand blew up like a balloon.  It was Sunday Morning Gentleman's Club time.  This was our excuse to drink beer and throw darts on Sunday morning between 10 am and noon or 1.  You could not do that on the beach as open containers were not legal until noon Sunday.  I could not really play that day.  Dad, in a most uncharacteristic way, looked at me and said, "Here Mike, let me look at that under the light.'  I placed my hand in his, and he gently turned it and looked at it as a concerned parent, gingerly touching my infected hand.  Then suddenly, the full force of his grip engaged and he crushed my hand in his, pulling and ripping the skin back and forth.  I screamed in agony, swearing at him as I went to my knees and yelled, "What did you do that for?"  He let go of my hand and said, "Well, you thought you were feeling pain before, what about now?" I should have known, this was a typical Joe Jackson thing to do.  Those eyes bore hard into mine, and very sternly he told me, "Now get into the bathroom and wash that cut out like you should have last night!"

My friends, if you want the definition of a real loving parent, there he was.  There is no way I could ever have done that.  There were no medical facilities on the island.  It HAD to be cleaned as it was full of car grease and sand and bacteria.  My father never backed down from doing what hurt him when he needed to hurt us for our safety. He was beautiful.

Driving to Corpus was getting old. I think I may have only driven the truck one time to the refinery, so the rest of the time it was Dad's car that was eating me alive in gas and he was walking to work, because of my stupidity with the joint. When Little Jimmy, the first person I ever met in Port A got fired from the public works department of the City of Port Aransas, Dad told me to jump, and I did.  I was a shoo-in for the job that no one really wanted, cleaning the skid-o-kans on the beach.  My dad pointed out that when you have a job like that and you do it right, no one messes with you. 

It was amazing, my life became so different right away.  I was still having my butt handed to me in my innocent arrogance and honestly, things always seemed to go better if I could just shut my mouth and listen.  I was frustrated at times, but I was not above learning from my Dad and others too.

At the end of May, I went on a date that got set up with some friends that I worked with.  Talk about stepping on the proverbial banana peel, it happened to me.  One moment I was this single 19-year-old trying to figure out who I was and who I would become.  The next moment I was living with a 26-year-old who got married when she was 14 and had 3 kids, ages 10, 8, and 6.  She had just gotten out of a very abusive relationship that had lasted 12 years.  We were definitely not what the other needed but it happened and it was a firestorm that was so out of control in a coming of age in a tornado sort of way that by the end of the year, she moved back to the travel trailer that she was living in previously.  The both of us had the good sense to realize that she needed to be an individual and so did I, and within a month, called it quits altogether.  We still loved each other like people love each other when they endure a disaster together.  We remained friends but she changed me forever like no one else ever could.  The complexities of that relationship set things into motion in me that defined who I became in the years to come.  By the time I was 22, and living many miles from here, people would look at me after I told them how old I was and they would shake their heads and just say, "Lots of miles."

Working for the city, I grew up. My Dad did great things with and for me and I made friends along the way.  Because Dad and I were best friends, our friends were usually mutual, and I was ok with that.

Somewhere along the way, with all of the fine-tuning I did in the wake of lessons hard learned and dealing with consequences, I became a different person.  At the core, there still was some me, but I shook it all down and found a much more refined person.  When my life seemed to be repetitive within the confines of my little island, I wanted to move to Maine, to start a new adventure.  I wanted to write books and songs, something I did in much of my spare time now.  I started to realize that I could have whatever life I wanted.

I left Port Aransas in October of 1986 and never did make it to Maine.  I did get stuck in Connecticut for almost 2 years before finally making a life in New Hampshire in 1988.  My previous relationship made me a daredevil when it came to relationships and my life felt like an endless barfight. I was extreme in all the choices I made and I was so impulsive in making them. 

I believe that March 4th changed my course.  Had I stayed where I was going, I would have had a pretty predictable, pathetic meh life, but I did not.  That moment on Park Road 53 changed all that.  Eventually, after more self-destruction in Connecticut and New Hampshire, I once again found myself in Port Aransas in 1989.  I had the pedal to the floor, racing into self-destruction and not caring what anyone thought.

But then, there was Joe Jackson. What is a good dad? My answer would be so appalling to the average person. My Dad loved so clearly, in a Grand Torino sort of way. In the figurative sense, his life was given so I could actually live mine. He really did not know that he was doing this. He did not even remember what he did.  That thing that saved my life he did, made him feel ashamed when I told him. But he chose the nuclear option for my life to finally begin.  I became a different person on September 9th, 1989, when that full can of Budweiser came flying from the kitchen and into the side of my head exploding all over me.  Yes, it took more than a day of absolute rage inside of me to subside, but when it did, I knew more than I ever have and more than I ever could without this brutal wake-up that I was going to die soon if I did not change.

March 4th, 1985 was a turning point in which my life turned from what would most likely have been a benign, job, home, vacation, blah, blah, blah.  It took a hard right turn into a life in which I never knew where I was going to be later that day for many years.  That is the stuff that made me.  Like it or not, this is how I arrived, waking up on the floor and not remembering how I got here.

1985 Chapter 3: The Rise and fall of the Tule Lake Lift Bridge

 February came and with it the visit of my sister and Grandmother. I had not seen either of them since last June. It seemed like much longer than that. These months that I lived in Port Aransas, I  had gotten to know Dad more than I ever have. One thing seemed clear, my being there grounded him, and made him more content and less restless and wild. Those traits rose to the surface now and then, but those were rare.  What was about to happen took this to a level that I could not imagine up to this point.

Brooke and Grandma were arriving at Corpus Christi Airport after dark. There were two ways to get to Corpus, out Park Road 53, down to South Padre Island, through Flour Bluff, and into the city. The other way was across the ferry to Harbor Island, then to Aransas Pass on the Intercoastal Waterway, Ingleside, Portland, and then into Corpus. Most going the latter way would go over the Bay Bridge which reached high in the sky over Corpus Christi Bay. But Dad had other plans.  There was an old bridge that was built on Navigation Boulevard in 1959. It was a lift bridge.  When large ships would approach, old 1950s sirens that sounded like something you would hear in a power plant if there was a radiation leak would cut through the air. Barricades would come down as the siren screamed.  Then with the utility eloquence of 1950's engineering, thousands of tons of concrete and steel would lift straight into the air to allow passage to the passing ship. The whole time the siren screamed its message of doom and warning. 

I loved how Dad romanticized this bridge. Engineering marvels like this are rarely built these days. It was something to experience for sure and because of the ship traffic that went through, this bridge was well exercised. As we sat there in the dark and waited for the bridge to come down and allow us to continue on, what we did not know was that in 278 months, explosive charges would be set on April 11, 2008, and in a sad and spectacular moment, the bridge would fall into the water, never again sounding its warning and never again causing people like us to sit for a few minutes and let their life catch up to them. All I can say is, I was glad my Dad was not here to see that.

As we drove along Navigation Boulevard, we drove across Leopard, which Navigation was offset.  The darkness and light fog made visibility a little weird. For that reason, the Dodge jumped across Leopard Ave, which was crowned. The air shocks made it feel like the car launched into the air and instead of staying on Navigation, we found ourselves landing in the dirt lot of a dumpy-looking bar. As I stood hard on the brakes and skidded to a stop,  Dad was shocked and amused, "Whoa Mike!  You need me to drive?" 

It surprised me too. I decided I was still the best one to drive. Although Dad did not have alcohol per se, he was holding a bottle of Nyquil between his legs and he would take a swig of it every now and then to nurse a bit of a cold he had. It was also the first time he had seen his mother in 4 and a half years. What is the connection? This was the only time I had ever seen him do this.

We arrived at the airport. Corpus Christi has such a nice quiet airport. As the welcoming glass doors slid open to walk in, I could not help but notice the words etched into the glass: "Sparkling City by the Sea". One of several affectionate nicknames for the city, all you had to do was take a drive by the harbor at night to see why.

As the line of passengers filed through the gate, my Grandmother and Brooke approached. My Grandmother was 76 years old now. She had lost a good deal of weight and seemed so small. A person of 76 in 1985 was much older than someone of that age today. Having lived through two world wars, the depression, and brutal factory conditions during a time in which safety and health were secondary, it took its toll on a person.  I could see the relief in her eyes when she saw us, especially Dad. It had been so long for her. 

Brooke was 15 and clearly had my Grandmother in good care for the trip. I was very happy to see them both. Dad quickly whisked us away to the baggage claim area. Grandma talked about the trip, about how Dad had filled out and looked good, and about how long my hair was. 

For the trip back to the island, it only seemed appropriate to go over the Harbor Bridge which reached high into the sky over Corpus Christi Bay to give a view of the sparkling city. As we drove home and talked, I was a little sad. I was still going to have to work the week they were here because I was still so new in my job at the refinery. 

I drove Dad's Chrysler to and from work that week so that he had the Dart which was less of an "Island Car", at least I struggled to keep it from being one, even though, I was losing ground. During the days, Dad took Brooke and Grandma around the island to show them its personality, and to introduce them to friends. My Grandmother truly loved being with Dad and being able to see his life here in Texas was the best gift in her eyes. She and Brooke met everyone they could, and Jeri and Odette came over one night from Flour Bluff.

We gave Grandma a room down the hall as she liked to go to bed early. I sat on her bed one night and we just talked and talked about my trip to Texas and other things. It reminded me of being younger when we would stay at her house for the weekend, every other weekend. Those Friday nights we would just talk and talk until about 11:30 at night until we could no longer keep our eyes open. I recall sitting at the old Formica and steel table in the small kitchen on Carol Drive laughing so hard with her because we were tired and would just get silly.

In Port A, we had 2 grocery stores. The main one was the Family Center IGA and the other one was Super S Foods.  Super S was owned by a guy named Victor. He started including a 2-cent coupon on the weekly Super S flyer. The first week, this week, that was for a 2-cent can of Tuna. In 1985, everyone in Port Aransas got their mail at the post office. Brooke and Dad went to the post office and cleaned the trashcans out of Super S flyers. I will never forget seeing my sister, sitting on the couch with a stack of those flyers, scissors in her hand clipping those tuna fish coupons. I saw something that day. It was like I saw where she belonged. I could see her future.  That future was not in Connecticut, but here on the Island. It was such a shock to my system because I never saw or thought of it before.

That Friday night, Dad was sitting at the kitchen table with Brooke and me. He asked Brooke to come back to Port Aransas to live with us. She had no trouble deciding. She was going to come back and we were going to be a family. If I thought my being in Port Aransas grounded my father, I had not seen anything yet. He was on his way to having a 15-year-old daughter as well, and that was completely different from having your adult son move in.

For me, something major shifted. I love my sisters and always have. We absolutely had the typical sibling annoyances with each other over the years.  Mostly I think it was because I was trying to parent them. On this visit, I felt it was the first time I ever really saw my sister as the person she really is. Until now, she was the kid in her ultra white hightop sneakers who just wanted to go hang out at the Plaza with her friends.  Today, she was in Port Aransas, and she just fell into its rhythm like she was born to live here, even more than me, and maybe even more than Dad. There was no denying it!

Grandma thoroughly enjoyed her visit, but you could see that energy-wise, it was wearing her down. Something was up. Dad even said to me, "my Mother has always had a bit of weight to her, she looked healthy. She seems so weak and frail, I was not expecting that." This would be the last time I would get to see the interact in the same place. 

She was one of the most amazing people I had ever known. In 1985, I could say that I still took her for granted. My 19-year-old self was still too weak and inexperienced to understand that in this woman, there was greatness. She lost her husband one day in 1958 and raised two kids, bought a house, worked in a sweatshop, and cared for her elderly mother on pennies. She did it in a world in which women were just accepted as second-class citizens. She kept her focus and did that with such grace. Yes, any man could achieve whatever in this life. We praised and edified them in society in the 1950s through the 1980s, but she did it all. Never was seen as an equal to men of the day, and yet in her heart, she knew who she was and the opinions of others did not count, because giving everyone their due, they were not relevant.  She was always respectful, always capable and she just wanted her family to have a good life. She did not ask for anything else in this life. 

She knew her son very well. She knew his struggles with his emotions. He lost his Dad at 13 and he could not get by it. She well knew the wild streak in him. She probably knew about every run-in with the law that he had in Connecticut as years later I would find clippings from the Bristol Press Police Blotter. She loved him anyway. She understood the calming effect that having his family in his life had on him. This trip was a success. Brooke had been living at my Grandfather's house in Connecticut and now in about a month, she would be moving in with us here in Port Aransas. Because of her ability to see things for what they really were, she knew this was where Brooke belonged.

The week went by quickly and the day that we had to put them back on the plane came quickly. I did not know it that day, but this would be the last time I ever saw my Grandmother in person. We talked on the phone about once a month. Any time I would ever talk about going somewhere else, she always gently said, that after I did whatever, I should return to the Island and my Father. She knew. She always knew.

What I was not expecting was Brooke's leaving, even though it was for just a month to leave me with such pain in my heart. I really missed my sister! I never experienced this before. As each day passed high up on those vessels in the refinery overlooking all the bulk oil storage tanks on Corpus Christi Bay, I counted the days. 

I was there, several miles from me sat the Tule Lake Lift Bridge, many times a day performing its important work, imprinted in my mind as timeless and eternal as the life I was living in February 1985. It never occurred to me that things even as permanent and magnificent as this bridge someday, would just not be here anymore, and that life, a different life, would go on.

Born to fight and then surrender

 I am knocking on the glass. I am making eye contact. You see me and I see you. But like a wise poetic old friend of mine has pointed out, "It's coming from the feel that it ain't exactly real, or it's real, but it ain't exactly there." Lately, this has been a problem for me.

I was 11 and an old man told me he could never sleep past 5 in the morning.  He accepted this and just moved on. You could count on him when the sun rose each day. Whether it was his paper, his coffee, or a donut, he was there. He told me that he would get up every morning and open the newspaper to the obituaries page. If his name was not there, he knew it was ok to go get coffee. That was so long ago. I miss him.

Back then, we all owned our respective ages. What I did not know was this was only a delusion of time on me. I should have known better. There was a blowback effect one afternoon on that high deck on Oleander St in Port Aransas. He gazed off towards Alister St where we could hear the sounds of a little league game intensely being played at the ball field. Friends and parents alike watch their player living in a moment that I am pretty sure will last forever, and yet disappear in a flash.

"You know", my Grandfather said quietly, "when I hear that sound, it takes me right back to when I was a boy, playing baseball with my brothers. We were a whole team ourselves. The funny thing is, I SWEAR that was just last summer!" He sighed. I shivered inside because a shock wave went through me. "Oh no, does it REALLY go that fast?" It was a few seconds in time that I knew that the words shared across the generations had made it to the other side without the trademark breakdown.

That moment was one of the deepest moments I have ever shared with him and it is one of those that I live to see unfold as the pages of the calendar turn like the opening credits of It's a Wonderful Life.

You go through life and pretty much feel like you did when you were 15.  It is in the contradictions of the physical world that we start seeing the shock to the system. There are some things we can do and other things that we cannot do. As a student of twelve-step programs, I know this and should use it to apply force in the right places. But when you have fought the current all your life, it is hard to just accept anything. 

I think it will always be there, that born-to-fight attitude. I know no other way. I am sure it has kept me alive for the last 18 years, so it cannot be all bad. I often wonder how so much time has passed by so quickly, and then I remember. My Grandfather was not only trying to tell me about it so that I could somehow slow my ride down, but he was also trying to understand how it all went by so fast himself. It is surreal when conversations I had 40 years ago start making sense today. The understanding feels a little like surrender.

Popcorn?

 It is not fair, to never know who you are until it's too late. Yes, it is ironic. Living like no one else so that later you can live like no one else definitely has its benefits. I also wonder if it makes me hold back. 

Photo by Pylz Works on Unsplash

I am sick of riding the runaway train I have been on for decades. I have bragged about my lack of planning, gliding on my extreme spontaneity, and my reckless behavior when it comes to planning or lack thereof, but it does take its toll.

I have to wonder though, does the pursuit of order and peace sabotage the greatest thing I could ever do? Are peace and order worth not taking chances? 

There indeed are desperados under the eaves my friend. Identifying all of them is nearly impossible. I know the answer lies between the risk and the momentum, to do nothing is foolish. So I will take the steps in which I know that the vacuum can pull me into the whirlwind. There is no other way. It's time.

So there I was, geared up ready for the charge. It was going to happen. I sent intelligence reports back confirming that my mission was a go. Then, nothing happened. Why?  Obviously, this is more than just popcorn, it is a tsunami and I think I know that. 

The mission was scrubbed because of three things: a supply oversight, a lack of adherence to the schedule, and a barrier of perception. That last one was enough to not carry on but in my retreat, I wonder if those points did not exist, would I have stepped off the sidewalk. I really don't know the answer to that.

That second desparado under the eave is the most dangerous.  I have not given up, I am just regrouping. The dealer knows that the rest of the players think they know what I am holding for cards, but they have no idea. Someone asked me, "What would you do if you were not afraid?" The answer is coming, I am laying down my cards, face up. They will know the answer.

Tranquility Base - The end of the innocence

I walked into the old northern bar, it had been my home for the last 6 years.  The wood in the walls is now 100 years old. The warmth of this place and its people carried me through a war, through my return home, through a breakup, and into a new life that too would also fail. I took these walls and their uniqueness for granted towards the end. It was just that comfortable.

Rumors of dissatisfaction had helped with that, but I still loved all of my friends here. The bartender was more than I ever imagined he would be. He was a true friend throughout it all and never failed to take his stand when he needed to. His raw courage would seem obsolete anywhere else in the world, but here, it was very respected. The only time he does not take a stand is when it challenges the girl. Miss Northwest Passage. He held her in the highest esteem, even to his own injury.

The girl really was something after all. Her life being only one-third of his lacked the decades of frontierism, but this did not matter because when the do-or-die moments arrived, even if the bartender did not know what to do, the girl was born knowing and when she spoke, she was an amazon, whom no one dared challenge. She knew what she wanted. She arrived with the astronaut but made her mind up on the bartender and there was no one anywhere on earth that was going to change the way that she felt.

The astronaut was shattered and therefore true to nature vowed to kill the bartender despite their lifelong friendship. The bartender made the first move, he had stared down death many times. They were friends again although at times, the lines blurred. But all the astronaut wanted was someone special in his life, and he fought over and over to have that and principles kept tearing her out of his arms. Would he ever win what he wanted so badly?

Everyone's friend, the voice on the radio, provided convenient rationalization to all of us if somehow we ended up not being enough. Then like in a dream, the surroundings changed and the reasoning behind our inadequacy took on a more deeper and intrinsic meaning. That manifests itself in twilight abstract under the aurora borealis. The best part was, we just went with it. He was never down on his friends, well rarely, and he could bring optimism to a nearby mushroom cloud sighting.

The first man I ever met in town was an inconveniently loyal friend and he grew before my eyes. I know as the years go by I will always think of him and find more depth and more treasure. He skeptically answered a call to become a shaman, and yet somehow his heart was always found in celluloid.

The wise storekeeper although a senior woman of little means, in my opinion, was really the person who had the most control over her own life and more influence than the affluent members of town. She has a very special place in my heart and she always will. I miss her.

Dearest Marilyn. In all of the time that I knew her, those words would only fill just a few pages, but she said more than many of the most outspoken people who ever lived. She is a testament to the fact that less is more. When a storm rages out of control, a quiet word from this beautiful soul sets everything right. I loved everything about her, even when her silence edified my own imperfections. She was not perfect, but she was as close to it as she could be.

I thought of the doctor and the man who was really behind him. In the years that passed after finding his jeweled city of the north, did he have regrets?  It was an important time in his life, but in taking his stand for his career, did he truncate the most amazing experience of his life? I dare say that he did have regrets, maybe not that first day as he stood on the Staten Island Ferry, but in the decades that passed, he slowly began to look in the mirror and ask, "What have you done?" I know he tried to get back, but the world flipped upside down and like a space capsule lost and floating off into oblivion, it can never be.

The last day came, and we crested the top of the hill. 6 years of solitude, and friendship closing.  I got on the bus and looked out the window as we slowly drove out of the dusty little town. It had been the mecca of the north and the mind. Along the way, I learned of their visions for the future, their hopes and dreams. I saw them grow, cry, compromise, win, and lose. 

Most of the friends in town had to take on more than they were designed to. In some ways that created a facsimile effect on their personage, especially on the last day.  Some do their last day with stellar surprise, don't you Mr. Louden, or should I say Hartley?  Others have everything change suddenly like those wayward friends outside of Uijeongbu, Korea, like our friends in Everwood, Colorado.

Here in Cicely, the change was a slow underburn that those who were only paying attention to the surface did not see. They all rolled so well with the changes. Because we loved them all so much, it was nice to see the shift and the exploration of the people. Sometimes it got weird and became a stretch that we as guests once allowed a limitless measure on, the contraction of that license became evident in the last days, especially on the last day.

As for our dearest Mary Margaret, the once decisive pilot became watered down when her tether broke allowing her to float nebulously into space without the explosive but solid connection with the doctor. She just smiled and rolled with it, like suddenly on medication with side effects that subdued one's personality, often like John Lennon during the Get Back sessions.

Holling, that great hunter turned bartender, grew so much, meeting and defeating so many demons, but on the last day was reduced to nothing. This was a reminder that we not only lost Joel but the great minds behind the magic as well. 

A thank you is in order, for allowing the astronaut to finally find love. He had to find it within what he perceived as loss. Even if his learning was accidental, on the last day he was given what he had been searching for.

Chris, that great spinner of wisdom who did not understand the words he alone spoke, but learned from them anyway was given a gift that was not his, someone who looked like someone we knew but was nothing like her. Sadly on his last day except for his last words, he was the sum total of those dark bits we had been told he had grown past.

Phil and his wife it is no fault of their own that they owned the gloom that they were forced to try to pretend it did not exist. You were invited in as a victim of circumstances. 

As the bus drives out of site and the good people of Cicely go to sleep, they all stand in their respective places where we love and remember them. The last three decades should have allowed the chance to get back together. But after 1995, something happened to the world. As the information age raced on we lost something that we could never get back. We started to see all of the ugliness that was always here in the world, there was just no conduit to make it visible.

In the years that passed things got even worse, buildings fell in fiery rage in the jeweled city, and there were even more wars. People just tried to get through the days they were in. We only lived in defense, nothing more, nothing less.

Tranquility Base was more than the end of Cicely for me, it was the end of the innocence. It was the last days of the world as it once was. We had to grow into the knowledge that we had even though it broke us. As the sun set, and the last view of Cicely disappeared in the back window I drifted off to sleep as the bus disappeared into the midst of oblivion.

 

Adapting

There is a strange connection. It lives on a level that cannot be seen. It is where the opposing forces find common ground. Absolute enemies, in a moment of personal inadequacy, find that they are the same in their loneliness. How can we be made to feel all of this?

Photo by Siim Lukka on Unsplash

She rode high, confident, and full until one moment like a rare china plate falling onto a slate floor, everything was broken and could never be put back together inside of her. Every word that followed tasted like the bitterness of rust. Every touch was like a cut.

How can we be made to adapt to this? Strength is born from twisted pain, that instant shock that changes a person in a moment and makes them more formidable than the antagonist. The internal words then spoken, are those of personal justice and reconciliation. The reversal of polarity that happens moment after moment only means she can never go home again.

As the days pass, the emotions that were once so clearly defined no longer have boundaries. She cannot tell which of those brings happiness and contentment. How did she adapt to this? How could it happen so fast?

That is how you park a 1963 Plymouth Sport Fury

 Sometimes the trail is all incline. It's the never-ending winded climb where you do not get to really take in the surroundings, only compensate for them. Logically the answers are easy, in reality, they are impossible. Some days, I am working in the garage to find that all the bolts in my possession are not the correct thread type.

Some days I want to help, but then find that I am the problem. I know how to win, but I haven't got the energy to do so. Looking back at the last 120 months is like looking down at Hot Springs after climbing the hill. It does not seem that far, but the elevation was rough.

I knew a man named Jack. He had a way of approaching challenges using tools that were right in front of him that the rest of us did not even see. A sacrifice of a small piece of real estate became a working instrument that could solve the problem in record time. As I think of old Jack, I wonder, is there something in my day that I could tear up and turn into a tool? Something that makes the pending tasks that rotate through my mind like space junk orbiting the planet always posing a risk of injury by way of impact or even worse, distraction.

It is the distraction that has me the most concerned. It is the deadliest of weapons that I know of. Sensory overload is coming from every direction, little do we know, we are traveling at the speed of sound into oblivion, and we don't even know it.

Time is picking the pockets of all in the room as we laugh and socialize. Those who might be aware seem strange and don't fit in. The futility of them, the futility of us, somehow looks so different, but is it?

I know why I was thinking of Jack. In my mind, I know what I want to accomplish, but the limitations that I have been fighting for years dictate what the end result is. Jack showed me that we could still take the hill, we just have to do it differently. That stark vision reads like sarcasm but isn't. 

I make dumplings a lot, but they can be a journey. I have to remember that they do not need to be. See the result, not the process, and find the path can be much shorter than anticipated. 

There is no time for the nebulae of overthinking as it is all waste. It is a virtual game of Eat This Not That, but in a much wider sense. When it came time for Dad to park the Plymouth in the driveway in March, the ice, the racing slicks, and the slope of the driveway did not deter him from what needed to happen. He saw the tool and that tool was velocity. 

It happened on a March night in 1972.  We had gotten home late on a Saturday night from my Grandfather's house. A late-season wintery mix was falling and Dad had put racing slicks on the back of the Plymouth already.  As he attempted to back the car up the driveway, it was clear, it could not be done. A coating of ice had made the driveway difficult to even stand on, let alone back a car up the small incline. After several tries, I heard him say to my mother in a low voice, "Get out."

She got me, Brooke, and Amy into the house, and I went straight to the window to see how he would get the car into the yard. He drove down Lillian Road a few houses, and then,  I saw the backup lights come on. When that 63 hit the driveway it was screaming. I would have to say that even if it would have been off and in neutral by now, it would have parked just fine on pure momentum. But this was so much like Dad, when he meant it, he meant it. The car flew up the driveway in reverse, all the way up, then passed the house and into the back yard, way into the back yard. There would be no tickets for parking on the street happening tonight. 

Yes, we did have to dig the car out of the snowy backyard in the morning, but the point was, he saw the goal, identified the tool to make it happen, and everything else did not matter. That is how you park a 1963 Plymouth Sport Fury convertible.

Bibimbap: You don't know what you got

 When I thought yesterday was tough, I had no idea that it was only the beginning. As I rode into Thursday, I had no idea what was next. No inspiration, no direction, and no clue. I brought 2 books on Korean cooking to work with me, but I was too busy to read them. There they sat on my desk, the works of Eric Kim, Taekyung Chung, and Debra Samuels taunting me. It was a reminder, that I had planned nothing in this Korean theme week.  I have been winging it. It was looking like I was out of ideas.

I chose denial as the precious hours of the day passed. We are in a state of physical transition at work which provides the perfect opportunity to hide my head in the sand on dinner ideas. I was sure of one thing, I had missed a few important household items when grocery shopping early yesterday morning, so I was stopping at Walmart before heading back over the river to go home tonight. I work well under pressure, so staring down the barrel of the imminent family requiring dinner, I just might pull something out of nothing.

As I sat in the parking lot of Walmart, my weakness surrounded me and I began to reason, "No one is going to think poorly of me if I take a break tonight, there was no time, it happens to all of us.  I will just continue Korea week tomorrow." As I walked into the store, even though I tried not to think about it, I was feeling disappointed in myself. I decided that my mind would stay open, and I would stop thinking about the big picture and stay generic. Whether you use a Korean tabletop cooker, a wok, a skillet, or the grill on the porch, thinly sliced beef is the most versatile option when planning the not-yet-conceived Korean dinner. 

Donna was still not yet home when I got there, the house was dark and cold. This is because we heat with wood and no one had been home since 9 this morning to feed the wood stove. It had been a very cold and blustery day, so getting the heat going was first. The Second was, to call my sister Amy. I donned my Aeropex headphones and dialed her number, it had been too long since we talked.

Somehow I knew that my actions would just fall into a grove.  I honestly believe that we as humans instinctively know what to do initially, but then we let our heads intervene, messing everything up. Rock on Mel Robbins!

Prepping banchan (Korean supporting dishes), sauteed carrots, spinach, bean sprouts, mushrooms, and zucchini, then the thinly sliced beef, fried sunny side up eggs, and an incredible gochujang blended sauce to top with sesame seeds can just happen as a 2-hour conversation happens with your little sister. Bibimbap is born. This is where my go-with-the-flow theory leads. It was so nice to catch up with Amy.

Last Saturday, we had a giant bowl of Bibimbap at Shin-la in Brattleboro. This, "I am out of ideas Thursday night, this I am out of time, this I am exhausted and just want fast food night's" Bibimbap was just as good if not better than Shin-la's. If this does not drive home the point to stop overthinking dinner, I do not know what does! Not only did I make Korean dinner 5 nights in a row, make giant messes in my kitchen, and clean up said messes myself, I did what I set out to do, I took the old adversary, "I don't know what to make for dinner tonight" and I punched it in the face!

Don't give up! Korean Salmon Bowl

There is always that time when we just don't know what it is we are going to make for dinner. Add this to a theme week and that is culinary paralysis. It is Wednesday. Liam and Haylie are coming for dinner. In my mind I saw us all sitting around the table, with a Korean barbeque cooker in the center of the table, super hot, around it were different vegetables and meats for us to place on the hot cast surface, searing up savory little bites to place into lettuce wraps with fermented bean paste, kimchi, samjan, chili crisp and beautiful banchan.

The reality was I had no time to prep.  I did an early morning, before-work grocery shopping which then rolled right into a full workday, then right into dinner time. So there were no meats thawed and finely sliced. The banchan prep has not even started. I had bought 2 pounds of salmon at the fish counter earlier. That is usually our go-to easy meal, salt, pepper, olive oil, and out onto the hot grill on the porch, then topped with a lemon garlic aioli. Easy peasy. Not so fast! This is Korea week and I am not getting away with dinner that easily.

Salmon is not a fish traditionally found in Korea. In fact, Korea only recently became obsessed with salmon after perfecting large farming operations. Salmon not being traditional Korean food is not going to stop me. After all, in a world where you can take vanilla ice cream, top that with peanut butter, and then top that with wasabi and have it knock your socks off, this is not a stretch.

Nice bulgogi flavors infused into chunky cubes of salmon marinated in soy, mirin garlic, and ginger, with a gochujang glaze,  air fried then served on white rice, baby cucumbers, beansprouts with a spicy and savory dressing, and kimchi.  It was true to the Korean theme for this week. The best part is that the cubed salmon cooks for 5 to 6 minutes in the air fryer.

I always get this weird sort of idea that I might fall back one night and just surrender.  I might tell myself that circumstances just were not there to do a Korean-influenced meal tonight. I am happy to report that day was not today. I have to say, that makes me feel good.  It is nice to stay the course. When I consider giving up, I cannot help but think of the late Julie Powel (Julie and Julia). She stuck with Mastering the Art of French Cooking for 365 days! There is no way that I am going to wimp out. No!