APPALACHIAN TALES: LEGEND OF A MIND

Actual factual photo of the hotel where I worked one summer.  It's in the mountains of southwest Virginia.  11 years in the future from then they would film "Dirty Dancing" there.  The natural lake has since dried up...

By Grant McGee

                It’s a Sunday morning.  It has rained.  The clouds that brought the rain are drifting off to the northeast, going wherever clouds go. 

                I’m remembering  summer mountaintop mornings, mornings after a rain, how the clouds hugged the ridges then lifted off to give way to a bright, sunny day.  I remembered one place where I saw such mornings, a mountaintop hotel where I had a summer job as a desk clerk.  That’s when I remembered Bob.

                I remember Bob because he was probably the first guy I’d ever met whose nice “American Dream” life had turned into a giant train wreck.  He may have been derailed but he kept smiling and would tell those who would listen how great it was to be alive.

                Bob was the groundskeeper at the hotel.  He mowed the grass, trimmed the hedges, swept the driveway.  Just like me, he was working six days a week for a room, three meals a day and probably less than $75 a week for pay.

                After a day’s work most of us who’d put in a full day would kick back on the front porch of the employee’s bunkhouse, talk about the guests and shoot the breeze in general.  Most of us were just out of high school or on summer break from college.  Not Bob, he was probably approaching 50, his age revealed by stories he told of days gone by and his grizzled salt-and-pepper beard.

                “I had it all,” Bob said one evening.  It was just Bob and me watching the sun go down on another day.  “Three beautiful daughters, married to my high school sweetheart, my own business, nice home in the suburbs, country club membership.”

                Bob went on to tell the story of how his business partner had siphoned off money from the business leaving him bankrupt.

                “I lost it all,” Bob said.  “I couldn’t touch my ex-partner, I couldn’t find work, I lost the house, my wife packed up the girls and moved back with her parents.  Then I started drinking.  The turning point came when I was hiding in the bushes of my ex-partner’s house with a pistol in my hand.  I was going to shoot him.  Then I heard his kids inside his house.  I thought, ‘What am I doing?’  I walked away.  The next day I started hitchhiking.”

                Bob had been to a lot of towns and worked a lot of jobs.  His free and easy drifter’s life had gotten him in trouble with more than one small town police chief or county sheriff.  “I have a great collection of books at a widow’s house in a town on the state line.  Maybe on one of your days off you could run me over there and we could load them in your trunk.”

                I smiled at the prospect of a road trip.

                “But then the town police chief said if he ever caught me there again he’d find some way to lock me up for a while.  He said the inmates could teach me a lesson or two about ‘real life.’”

                My road trip dreams quickly vanished.  I figured the guy who brought Bob back to town would be in just as much hot water as Bob.

                Bob became resident psychologist, poet, singer, storyteller and all around good guy for us that mountaintop summer.  Some folks wondered if Bob’s stories were true.  That seemed to be answered on day when his daughters and wife showed up to visit him on a day off.  A few days later I found him on the front porch of the bunkhouse, one of the rare times he looked down and out.  In his hand was a sheaf of papers.

                “I’m supposed to pay alimony and child support,” he said, staring off into the distance.  “Every month, four times what I make here in a month.”

                “What’re you gonna do, Bob?” I asked.

                “Well, I heard there’s good work in Louisiana in the Gulf on the oil rigs.  What they want here,” he shook the papers, “is about half of what I’d make there.  I could get by.”

                I saw he didn’t feel much like talking and as a guy who hadn’t even reached his 20^th birthday, who had no concept of lawyers and such, I didn’t know what to say.  I turned in for the night.

                The next morning I opened the door to my room and a paper that had been stuck in the latch fell on the ground.  I opened it up.

                “For my idealistic friend,” it read.  “Here’s a poem for you.”  It was a short work, the opening said it was written by a schoolboy in the 14^th century and was titled “A Wistful Boy’s Dream.”  I held on to that piece of paper for years, even kept it locked up with my important papers.  Then wouldn’t you know it, some burglar swiped the box in a break-in in Roswell years ago.  All I remember is some reference to “gilly flower” and the phrase “…and every lad shall have his lass.”

                Bob was gone.  I never heard from him again.  But from him I got brief lessons on surviving, doing what you have to do to get by and ultimately doing what’s right.

                And so I stood in the early morning with my hands in my pockets and remembered.  I wanted to remember Bob, remember him by writing about him.  And so I have.

-30-

TWO TRUCK DRIVERS TALKING ABOUT RACE IN THE USA

Well, I was gonna do some writing but I'm just not feeling it tonight. Shift change. Today I worked from 4a to noon. Tomorrow it's 11a-7p. Tonight's chapter was to be from the upcoming tome "Truckin' Days: The Black Man from Trinidad, Part 1." It's about Frank my co-driver from my trucking days. Frank's ancestors came from India, he grew up in the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad where whether folks' ancestors came from India or Africa they were all considered black. Frank was quite convinced that Americans had it in for him, this came to a head one day when he and I stopped at a truck stop between Austin and San Antonio, Texas and some dweeb passenger in a car passing through the parking lot flipped me the bird and yelled "N***** LOVER." I looked the jerk in the eye as he drove away and made a motion with my arm for him to come back. He didn't.

"SEE? SEE?" Frank stopped and yelled at me. "Americans don't like me because I am black."

I stopped and looked at Frank in the eyes.

"Dude," I said. "How often has that happened to you?"

Frank just stared at me.

"Yeah," I said, "Like I thought. Not often if ever. Look, I dare say 99.9 percent of the people don't give a rat's ass that you're black or Trinidadian. We're all here working on our hopes and dreams. And you came here because you're working on yours. Most people are too busy to care about the dude walking into the truck stop to pay for his fuel except for THAT asshole who drove by whose momma probably beat him, he probably doesn't have a girlfriend so he's not getting laid and he probably doesn't have a job. So get over it, dude."

And so Frank and I walked in to the truck stop and paid for our fuel.

TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: WHAT DO YOU SAY TO A NAKED CO-WORKER?

            I have returned to working in talk radio.  Last time I worked in that format was 23 years ago in Phoenix.

            If you're not in radio, to understand the job I had then..."board operator," think of the TV show “Fraser.”  You know the character “Roz?”  She’s Fraser’s board operator.  That was my job in Phoenix talk radio…I sat in the control room peering at the talk show host through a plate glass window, talking to them via intercom, operating the console, answering the phones and engineering the sound of the show. 

            It was pretty intense work.  There was no room for mistakes.  Board operators who couldn’t run a tight, error-free radio show quickly found themselves looking for another gig.  One of my favorite sayings, “Without mistakes there can be no progress,” was quickly quashed by stern looks and terse words warning of dismissal.  This wasn’t small town radio like I was used to.  Just like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” I would tell myself from time to time I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, or in my case, eastern New Mexico and west Texas.

            Phoenix is a hot crowded big city.  I like what the late. great writer Hunter Thompson wrote about it:  “If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix.” I had no concept of current events or recent history in “The Valley of the Sun.”  That’s why when Sally* came to work at the station to be part of the morning show I just regarded her as someone else who was on the air staff.  She was possessed of model-type good looks.

            I didn’t know a few years earlier Sally had caused a bit of a stir when she posed for naked pictures in a magazine.

            But I’m getting ahead of myself.

            After the morning show her first morning Sally came into the control room and introduced herself.  She was very personable and approachable, not at all like the other talk show hosts.  We talked about things co-workers talk about when getting to know each other; she lived in Phoenix, had been there a long time.  I told her I lived in one of the suburbs, Mesa, and made my daily commute on a Honda 150 scooter (hey, it got 85 miles to the gallon).

            A couple of days had passed when the late night talk host dropped by one afternoon.  Johnny Nyle the Nightfly was his name.  He was the last of the “old school” late nighters, old dude, still smoked in the studio when it had been banned in the building.  “What’re they gonna do, fire me?” he’d say. 

            “How ya like working with Sally?” he asked in his gravelly voice, wiggling his eyebrows to finish his question.

            “She doesn’t really do much, just makes comments.  Big Bill handles all the heavy stuff,” I said.

            “That’s not what I mean, man,” he said with this weird ‘wink-wink-nudge-nudge’ look on his face.

            “What, is she running around with someone here?”

            “No, man, she was in ‘Playboy.’”

            “Really.”

            I thought it was kind of funny.

            “Why’d she do that?”

            “Who CARES why she did, she just did,” he said.  “She used to be the newscaster on channel 10, she posed in ‘Playboy’ then she was gone from TV.”

            “I don’t reckon I’ll ever make a buck that way,” I said.

“So,” he said, cigarette dangling out the side of his mouth, smoke making him squint, “Didja ever see that issue?”

            “Well, I…”

            He opened his briefcase and tossed a magazine in my lap, “Check her out.”

            He left the room.  I set the magazine aside.  Did I want to see this?  I left the magazine there for a while until, during a commercial break, my curiosity got the best of me. 

I opened the magazine.

And lo and behold there was Sally in all her “nekkid” glory.  It was 5 years earlier, she had different hair, looked younger, but it was Sally.

A bit later I looked up and Johnny Nyle was back in the room. 

“Well?” he asked.

“Well indeed,” I said.  “Like they say back home in the mountains, ‘She’s a healthy gal.’”

I handed his magazine back to him.  He winked and gave me a thumbs up.

            From then on when I worked with Sally it wasn’t like I was thinking wild thoughts or anything.  It was like I was sort of embarrassed.  I kept wondering why too.  Why would someone bare themselves to millions of people.

            One day I was having lunch in the break room when Sally came in to kick back and have a cup of coffee.  We chatted about stuff and things. 

            And then…

            “So I suppose by now everyone’s told you about why I’m not on TV anymore,” she said.

            “Yeah,” I couldn’t look her in the eye and I had a hard time hiding a smile.  “You know, the thing that strikes me, though, is why’d you do it?  I’ve often wondered why someone would get naked for millions of people.”

            “Hell,” she said, leaning forward and thumping her finger on the table, “They paid me as much as I would make in 5 years working in TV.  If you’ve got it, use it.  Besides, it was sort of fun.”        

            I kept working with Sally until I decided I’d had enough of the big city and moved away.

            I heard Sally went to work for the city of Phoenix.

            Sally getting naked in a magazine is just another one of those things that people do that makes me wonder why.  I guess she gave me a pretty good answer, but still…

            I don’t remember many of the short stories Raymond Carver wrote, but I remember one single line from one of them: 

“Who knows why we do what we do.”

                                                -30-

*Names changed

TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: BLACKHAWKS ON THE BORDER

by Grant McGee

FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK.

It was 2 am and the noise woke me up.

FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK.

I sat up in bed.  I blinked my eyes in the dark.

FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK.

Then it faded.

Flok-flok-flok-flok-flok-flok-flok-flok-flok-flok.

I hadn’t heard helicopters in the night since I lived in Phoenix.  This one sounded different.  It sounded more serious than the cop ‘copters that buzzed the night sky in the Valley of the Sun.  Yeah, that was it, those ‘copters flew over with a “BUZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz.”

Here I was in Bisbee, Arizona, less than 5 miles from the Mexican border and there was a helicopter in the night.  Border Patrol?  Army?  Cobra?  Apache?  Blackhawk helicopter.  I didn’t know, I went back to sleep.

The answer came in the big city newspaper the next morning.  “Texas Air National Guard to Train With Border Patrol” read the headline.  A Texas Air National Guard unit had come all the way from The Lone Star State to work with the Border Patrol at intercepting illegals crossing into the U.S. just over the hill from Bisbee.

I was sitting in the office.  I put the paper down and imagined this.  Here you are, coming from a village somewhere in the Mexican interior and you’re crossing into the U.S. and suddenly there’s this angry machine with a searchlight zooming in on your ass like a chicken on a June bug.

FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK.

There you are on the ground and there’s this big booming voice from the sky, possibly in Spanish but more than likely in English, “STOP RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE” or something like that.  Then the Border Patrol swarms around you, packs you up with some more of your fellow countrymen and drops you at the border sending you back south.

At the end of the day I pulled up to the post office in downtown Bisbee to check my P.O. box.  I got out of my car and heard a shrill voice.

“SIGN THE PETITION, STOP THE INHUMANE PURSUIT OF ILLEGALS BY TEXAS HELICOPTERS,” yelled a gray-haired woman.

It was Anna Fish, Bisbee’s community activist.  I had heard of her but never seen her in action.  I walked up to her.

She had a name tag:  “ANNA GHOTI, COMMUNITY ACTIVIST.”

“Are you going to sign the petition?” she spoke directly to me, shoving a paper on a clipboard to me.

“I thought you were someone else,” I said.

“Who did you think I was?” She was direct, probably a Yankee or a former Federal employee.

“I thought you were Anna Fish.”

“I am Anna ‘Fish.’  That’s how I spell my last name.”

“It looks like it would be pronounced ‘goatee’ to me,” I said.

“You take the ‘f’ sound from ‘enough,’ the ‘I’ from the ‘o’ in ‘women’ and the ‘sh’ from the ‘ti’ in ‘action.’”

“Why not simply spell it ‘F-I-S-H’?”

“Why should I?”

Bisbee was full of characters like this.  Chips on their shoulder about something.

“Well look who it is, our friendly neighborhood liberal community activist, Anna Fish,” a man had walked up and stood in front of Anna with his hands on his hips.

“Bart Jackson,” said Anna, “resident conservative asshole.”

“Oh Anna,” said Bart, “now I didn’t call you the resident flaky liberal hippie bitch.”

“You’re a fish out of water here, Bart,” she said, “Why don’t you move to Sierra Vista where you belong.”

I should pause here and describe these two towns to you.  Bisbee is the county seat of Cochise County, Arizona.  That’s about the only industry it has.  It used to be a copper mining town until the copper company shut down mining operations in 1975.  Then a bunch of people from the west coast heard that houses could be had real cheap in the wake of the mine closing and Bisbee became a magnet for old hippies, artists and the like.  Along with county employees.

Sierra Vista is the home to a very active U.S. Army post, Fort Huachuca.  It’s a hustling, bustling little burg of 30,000 and a typical American town.

“You have a problem with helicopters chasing the dusty-butts back across the border Anna?” barked Bart. 

Bart was a tall fellow, probably six-foot-some-odd-inches with a big handlebar mustache.  He was bent over and practically nose-to-nose with Anna, all four-foot-eight-or-so inches tall.  She didn’t back down.

I hadn’t moved, I was transfixed by this encounter.

“I suppose you aren’t going to sign my petition are you, Bart,” said Anna.

“It’s people like you who are tearing down this country like screw worms in the hull of a ship, one day we’re going to sink because of people like you,” said Bart.

“That’s a shipworm, brother,” I said.

“Who the hell are you?” barked Bart.

“Grant McGee,” I stuck out my hand and smiled.  Bart’s hands stayed on his hips.  We were now staring eye-to-eye.

“Are you going to sign her God-damned petition?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” I said.  “I’m thinking about it.”

“You’re a pussy if you do,” said Bart.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know about that.  Who’d you vote for in the last election?”

“Bush,” he said.  “I suppose you voted for Clinton.”

“Naw,” I said, “I voted for Perot.  They call it the executive branch I wondered what would happen if you let an executive run it.”

“Oh my God,” said Anna.

“So you don’t mind illegals coming into the country,” said Bart.

“We wouldn’t have a problem if business owners would stop hiring them,” I said.

“THEY DON’T WORK, THEY LIVE ON FOOD STAMPS AND WELFARE AND FREE MEDICAL CARE.”

“I don’t believe that, that’s a bunch of talk radio bullshit,” I said.  “I lived near an undocumented family in Phoenix.  The dad held down two jobs to take care of his family.”

“And you didn’t turn them in?”

“Bad Karma,” I said.

“Karma, sheesh.  I suppose you don’t even go to church,” said Bart.

I laughed.

“What does church have to do with this conversation?” I asked.  “But since you brought up church so do you suppose Jesus would support the Texas Air National Guard chasing down illegal border crossers?”

“Wh….,” Bart started to speak but I interrupted him.

“No, no, wait” I said opening my eyes wide and holding my hands up, “Of course not, there weren’t any helicopters back then.  Wait!  Wait!  Jesus and the disciples on horseback.  I can see JC now, yelling as he’s coming out of the ranch house, ‘Matthew!  Mark!  Luke!  John!  Saddle up, we’re gonna go round us up some dusty-butts.’”

“THAT’S BLASPHEMOUS!” Bart pointed his finger at my nose.

“Says who, brother?”

“I ain’t your brother.”

“We’re all brothers and sisters trying to make our way in this world, Bart.”

“Another f*#kin’ Bisbee hippie,” barked Bart as he wheeled around and left Anna and I alone in front of the Post Office.

I watched him walk away.  He stuck his hand behind his head and flipped us the bird.

“So,” said Anna turning and shoving her clipboard toward me again, “You’ll sign the petition?”

“No,” I said.

“What?  After all that?”

“Anna, seriously, where do we live?  We live in the world’s last superpower.  The military/industrial complex is all around us.  Border actions are perfectly normal and expected.  Do you really think anything’s going to change with your petition?”

“Didn’t you hear the helicopters?  In the middle of the night?  And those poor illegals, all of a sudden their night is lit up with this MACHINE hovering over them.”

“They made a choice, Anna.  They’ll make it across the border or not.  That’s life, it’s a crap shoot.  The helicopter pilots need the practice, the smugglers will keep doing what they’re doing and the undocumenteds will keep crossing the border.”

“You’re a middle-of-the-roader,” said Anna.  “And you know what happens to someone standing in the middle of the road, THEY GET RUN OVER.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

Anna and I were done

“SIGN THE PETITION, STOP THE INHUMANE PURSUIT OF ILLEGALS BY TEXAS HELICOPTERS,” Anna yelled.

I went in the Post Office, got my mail and went home.

FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK.

That night the copter woke me up again.  I listened for a bit.  It faded in and out and was gone.

The copters worked the area for about a week and then they were gone the day the newspaper article said they’d be gone.

But I heard Anna never gave up in trying to do SOMETHING about the helicopters. 

Through the local grapevine I heard she somehow managed to get through to the post commander at Fort Huachuca at 3 am one morning to complain about the choppers.

Two days later a company of soldiers, dozens of men, had their morning formation run right through the heart of Bisbee’s downtown at 6 in the morning, tromping, doing their call-and-respond thing.  They had been bussed up from Fort Huachuca.

That was the first time the Army had done such a thing as far as anyone could remember.

TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP.

I saw Anna Ghoti only one other time.  It was two days after the September 11^th attacks.  She was in front of the main Post Office again holding up a sign that read, “MEETING TONIGHT 6PM AT THE OLD CHURCH ON WARREN ROAD ON WHY THE U.S. DESERVED TO BE ATTACKED.”

                                                                                -30-