I Miss Mom...

Me and Mom and what I call my "Forrest Gump Moment":  

"What do I do with my life, Momma?"

"I don't know, Forrest. 

You're going to have to figure that out for yourself."

South Florida circa 2001...

The night before my mom died I had fallen asleep in my recliner.  I was awakened by the ring, a long ring, of an old-fashioned telephone.

I don’t have an old-fashioned telephone hooked up.

The ringing was in my head.

“What time is it?” I asked The Lady of the House.

“10:30,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, “I want to remember that time.

The next morning I woke up to find my phone had “blown up,” as they say, with calls and voicemails.

I turn my phone off when I sleep.  Family had called in overnight.  Mom died around 1230 Eastern Time…1030 in my time zone.

In my way of thinking, that old-fashioned phone ring was Mom letting me know she was leaving.

I mean, I know my mom, the greatest mom ever, couldn’t stay around forever.

She had a good journey, 95 years worth.

She was a teacher, she taught business stuff:  Typing, shorthand and things like that.

Mom may have found her toughest student in me.  When I took a typing class in high school she wondered why I couldn’t teach myself, I reckon because she…a typing teacher…was my mom.   Why didn’t typing just come naturally to me?  She couldn’t understand why I didn’t “get” Algebra and she threw her hands up in frustration trying to teach me how to dribble a basketball.

My mom was always there for me.  One of my earliest memories is Mom sitting in the sun reading a book while I rode my tricycle round and round the base of the McKinley Monument in Buffalo, New York.  There was  the sun, the gleaming stone, the water fountains, the tall monument pointing to the sky, me riding round and round and there was Mom reading with her sunglasses on.

Where I once rode my tricycle.  

McKinley Monument, downtown Buffalo, New York.

Mom took me fishing, dropped me off for Boy Scout stuff and so much more. 

I mean I’m my mother’s son.  I’m not a “momma’s boy” but it was Mom who raised me, my dad was too busy with his career.  I don’t lament about it, my mom did what a lot of mid-20^th Century Moms did…they were in charge of raising the kids while “Big Daddy” went out and “brought home the bacon.”

Mom was all about the pushing forward in life.  She wasn’t one to linger in the past.  Nothing showed that more to me than the time I was listening to the 70’s rock band Pink Floyd when she came into my room and said, “I like that.”

Years ago I would tell her about my latest personal trainwreck.  She would laugh, say it was all part of life then repeat a line from an old song, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.”

One of my favorite memories is of Mom waking me up on school mornings.  In our house my room was upstairs.  She’d stand at the bottom of the stairs and say in a loud voice, an old Longfellow quote:  “Let us be up and doing with a heart for any fate!”

Thinking of Mom I remember all the good things she did through my life. And I think about the things I did in my life. I think about the stupid things, the disrespectful things….all the things I told Mom that I was sorry for.

“Hey Mom, I’m sorry for all the stupid things I did when I was a teenager and stuff,” I told her once when I was visiting her.

“Don’t be silly,” she said and smiled. “It’s all part of growing up, part of life.”

Mom caught me swiping some change from her purse when I was 10 or 12. Yeah call it what it was, stealing. I did it and mom caught me. She didn’t say much. It was the look on her face, the disappointment. I never did it again.

There was a time I had to pay a fine and I was going to come up short by the deadline. Mom stepped up and gave me what I needed. I sat in her dining room holding the check and basically being angry at myself for being so stupid and getting a ticket. “Don’t take yourself so seriously,” she said. “It’s all part of life. Now don’t do it again.”

One time I had about given up on everything and I told that to Mom.

That’s when I made Mom cry.

Not a wailing, dramatic crying fit…no, she just got these big ol’ tears in her eyes, looked really sad and didn’t talk for a bit.

“You NEVER give up hope,” she said finally, looking at me right in the eyes.

I was so ashamed I made my momma cry I did an about-face on my attitude.

I was out for my usual morning bicycle ride a few years ago and it dawned on me to tell Mom about a thought I had.

“Hey Mom,” I said when I got her on the phone. “Thanks for bringing me here to this life, thanks for being my mom.”

She laughed. “I’m glad I did,” she said.

Mom’s “done gone on to Glory”…I miss her.  But she did come visit me in a vivid dream a few months after she died.  I was walking with her to a bus station in some big city.

“Where are you going?” I asked her.

“Montreal,” she said.

“How come?”

“I’ve never been,” she said.  “But I have something to tell you.”

“Yes?”

We stopped walking, she turned and looked me right in the eyes, there in that dream world.

“Stop taking life so seriously,” she said.  “And tell that to your oldest too.”

Then she was on the bus, smiling and waving goodbye.

Off to Montreal, I reckon.

Or as my youngest told me, “Off to the land of sunsets and rainbows.”

That’s what Mom told her.

Maybe “The Land of Sunsets and Rainbows” and Montreal are on a package tour.

The Empty Quarter

  I had to go to Roswell the other day for a fancy eye appointment.  Part of the “adventure” was getting a hypodermic needle to the eyeball.  Yeah…that’s another story.

  When I go to doctor’s offices for  I like to shoot the breeze with the staff…where you from, stuff like that.

  A portion of the folks were from Roswell but there were people there who came to Chaves County to work at the eye clinic for just a couple of days a week from Albuquerque or Santa Fe. 

  What I found interesting was that out of nowhere they’d mention “I HATE that drive from Vaughn to Roswell.”

  “Why?” I asked, “All that wide-open rangeland, the Golden West.”

  “Exactly,” said one young woman, “There’s nothing out there.  And my cell phone doesn’t work out there.”

  Then there was the tech from Roswell who said her work took her to Albuquerque from time to time.

  “I HATE that drive from Roswell to Vaughn,” she said.

  “Because…?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing out there.”

  Well, there’s truth to this:  There’s a whole lot of nothing between Roswell and Cline’s Corner out on the Eastern Plains of New Mexico.

  Or is there?

  If you live in Roswell and you need to get to Albuquerque or Santa Fe you have to traverse this great wide open to get to I-40 at Cline’s Corner….about 140 miles…2 hours…of the highway, grassland, pronghorn antelope or mule deer.

  Check it out.

  Look at a map.

  There’s nothing out there.

  It’s a big, wide-open quarter of the whole state of New Mexico.

  Well, actually there ARE ranches there:  Cattle ranches, sheep ranches.  It’s wide open rangeland, shortgrass prairie, mesquite, cholla, juniper.

  I learned this when I lived in Roswell almost 30 years ago.

  The vast emptiness is really driven home if you go to the higher reaches of the Capitan Mountain Range west of Roswell and look north…it’s really impressive at twilight.  As the night starts to spread from the east to west you look out over a vast sea of dark land that spreads from horizon to horizon and to the north until it flows into the sky.  There’s a dot of light there, probably a ranch house.  Another spec of light that seems to be moving, probably a car or 18-wheeler headed south to Roswell on US 285.  These bits of light are miles away from the mountain slopes.

  There ARE towns out there.

  Well, not all of them are towns, they’re points on the map.

  Heading north out of Roswell you’ll encounter Mesa after about 20-25 minutes.

Actual factual photo of Mesa, New Mexico 

courtesy of Rhonda Hill-Reed, The Remarkable Roswell Radio Receptionist...

  All that was at Mesa was a gas station and a pay phone.  I know there was a pay phone there because that’s where my ex-girlfriend stopped to call me on her way back to Albuquerque in September 1990 BCP (before cell phones).

  After we broke up.

  I had watched her drive away from my groovy bachelor pad.

  There's an old tradition that you're not supposed to watch someone drive away until they're out of sight because that means you'll never see them again.  Tradition says you wave goodbye then walk back into the house.

  I watched her drive away until I couldn't see her car anymore.  

  I never wanted to see her drama queen ass again.

  Yet less than a half-hour later there she was on the phone.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Are you at Mesa?” I ask.

  She gasped, “How did you know?”

  “You’ve been gone about a half-hour so I reckoned you’re calling from the pay phone at Mesa,” I said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Not that it’s any business of yours but I’m having a beer and cleaning my apartment,” I said.

  There was a pained wailing sound on the other end of the line.

  “YOU’RE CLEANING YOUR APARTMENT???” she yelled over the phone with dramatic sobbing.  “WE BREAK UP AND YOU CLEAN YOUR APARTMENT?????”

  “Not that it’s any business of yours but pray-tell what am I supposed to be doing?”

  “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE SAD,” she screamed.  “I’M COMING BACK.”

  “Oh JEEZ!” I said, “Don’t….”

  *CLICK*

  I held the phone back from my face and looked at it.

 “Damn,” I said.  I finished my beer and reached for another.

  It would be another 3 months before she and I would be done…for the most part…but that’s another story.

  Go another 40 or 50 miles north of Mesa and you used to come up on a small building that once housed a little bar and standing outside the building was a pay phone stand…the pay phone disappeared probably 28 years ago, the stand is gone now too.

  This is Ramon.

Ramon, New Mexico

  Ramon is a dot on the map out in the middle of nowhere.

  When I was a DJ on the Country radio in Roswell I used to have great fun with Ramon, talking about “The Ramon Hilton” and on snow days flights being delayed or cancelled out of “Ramon International Airport” but there was probably plenty of room for stranded travelers at “The Ramon Marriott.”

  That’s when I discovered there were actually-factually people in the area of Ramon, you just couldn’t see where they lived because they were over the hill from the highway.  They were folks who ran sheep ranches.

  The folks in the Ramon area listened to our station out of Roswell because we were blasting across the whole southeast quadrant of New Mexico with 50,000 watts of Country music radio. 

  The Ramon sheep people were such good sports about fun being poked at their little corner of New Mexico that they even invited me up to be Grand Marshal of their “Ramon Daze” parade.  It’s something that they never did before and probably haven’t done since. 

  I couldn’t make it to their parade.

  They mailed me pictures.

  The parade was made up of a fellow on horseback, a couple of kids pulling little red wagons and some border collies on ropes for leashes.  It was a grand affair.  Sorry I missed it.

  It seems like no matter how fast you drive it takes an hour-and-a-half to get from Roswell to Vaughn…98 miles.  Vaughn’s the only real sizable, functioning town between Roswell and Cline’s Corner.

  Vaughn has a few motels, a truck stop, a diner, a convenience store.  It sits at over 6,000 feet above sea level in the middle of the last swatch of un-overgrazed shortgrass prairie in New Mexico.

  It seems like if you speed, it takes an hour-and-a-half to get from Roswell to Vaughn, if you go 55 it takes an hour-and-a-half and if you’re riding a bus it takes an hour-and-a-half.

  Back in the day that’s how I used to take trips to Albuquerque, I figured my old Dodge might break down out in the middle of really nowhere.

  This was back when the TNM&O bus line was still around…TNM&O stood for “Texas, New Mexico & Oklahoma,” a division of Greyhound.

  There’s a certain luxury to hopping on a bus and letting someone else drive.

  So it was that I paid my money…was it 9 bucks…19 bucks…and took my seat.

  We passed Mesa.  Take a right there and you head off to Fort Sumner…I had listeners out that way, cattle ranchers, a few weeks earlier they’d come back from an African safari.  I reckoned there was money to be made in cattle ranching.

  Some miles later there was the turnoff to Corona, 48 miles to the west.  Me and my buddy Wayne had driven over there with the station music setup and disc jockeyed dances over there.

  We passed by Ramon, the old bar still empty, the pay phone still missing from its stand.

  And then an hour-and-a-half later we rolled into Vaughn.

  “We’ll be stopping here for 20 minutes folks,” said the bus driver over the intercom.

  The driver pulled off the highway right up to the restaurant on the west side of the town.

Where the TNM&O bus used to stop in Vaughn, New Mexico......

  All of us passengers, 12 or so of us, filed off the bus.

  I ordered a bag of fries and a Coke.

  Is it any wonder I have The Sugar (diabetes) now.

  Anyway, I took my bag o’ fries and drink and strolled outside and stood by the bus.  The driver was standing a few feet away enjoying a smoke.

  I like traveling by bus.  It’s from when I was a kid, my parents would put me on a Greyhound bus and ship me off to visit my aunt and uncle in North Carolina, or when we moved to Baltimore they’d put me on a Greyhound to Roanoke, Virginia to stay with my grandparents.  I think I was 11 when they first put me on a bus all by myself.

  I had been pondering riding the bus from Roswell back east to Florida to visit my momma.  The fare was cheaper than flying but the trip would take like, a day-and-a-half.

  I thought about stuff like sleeping and eating and needing to go to the bathroom.

  “So,” I said to the bus driver, “You get many cross country travelers?”

  “Nah,” said the driver taking a drag off his smoke.  “You know buddy, I work for this company, I drive for this company, but I wouldn’t ride one of these damn things across the country if you paid me.  Too damn uncomfortable.”

  I smiled and nodded and put another fistful of fries in my mouth.

  It would be 12 years in the future that I would ride a Greyhound across a big chunk of America.  I learned that you drink water or tea, leave the sodas alone, don’t eat salty snacks, try to eat fruit, take your own pillow and watch your luggage.

  The time had come to get back on the bus and finish the trip on in to Albuquerque.

  Yep, whether you’re driving it or looking at it on the map, it looks like there’s a whole lot of nothing between Roswell and I-40, but there really is life out there.

-30-

Ode to an Old Honky-Tonk

  

   It was a pretty good yard sale.

  The Lady of the House found all sorts of old crap priced cheap and there were a bunch of old CDs for me to go through at 50 cents apiece.

  I finished up going through the music and looked up to see where The Lady of the House had wandered off to.

  I saw her in a back room of the house looking over a bunch of kitchenware.  I headed her way.

  That room didn’t have much light.  I stood there for a bit.  As my eyes got used to the dimness I saw that there were all kinds of coffee mugs on shelves all around the room.  One shelf had a handmade sign that read “CUPS 25¢/6 FOR $1.”

  I was looking for something unique, something different.

  There were matched cups, odd cups, cups from restaurants and fast food joints.  There amongst all the different kinds of cups was a plastic cup shaped like a tall daiquiri glass.  There was writing on it that brought back a bunch of memories….

BOOT SCOOTERS

COME SCOOT YOUR BOOTS ON OUR DANCE FLOOR

#1 FUN SPOT

ROSWELL, NM

  I have been to Boot Scooters once upon a time, long ago. 

  I always remembered the place for a couple of reasons.  One was, if I have the story right, my buddy Wayne K…legendary Pecos Valley radio personality…came up with the idea for the name for the club.

  The other reason I remember it was because I made an ass of myself there about 28 years ago.

  But one thing at a time.

  As I remember there were a few places to “get yer drink on” in Roswell back when I lived there at beginning of the 1990’s, working at a country radio station.  There was a bar on North Main where the hometown country folks went, another one in the big motel near New Mexico Military Institute where all kinds of folks went and another one down near The K-Mart that catered to folks in town who fancied themselves as someone else besides themselves.  Oh yeah, there was that one at the steakhouse and another at another motel not far from there.

  I don’t know the whole story but part of my buddy Wayne’s job at the radio station was to call on accounts around town for radio advertising.  It was during his rounds he caught wind of the folks who were firing up a new bar in town.

  It was 1990 and the western swing band Asleep At The Wheel had come out with a new album with a song “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” which no doubt brought in a chunk of grocery money for Texas songwriter Ronnie Dunn.  He and a fellow songwriter named Brooks would get together not long after that as the duo Brooks & Dunn.  Their version of the song a couple of years later would be a big country hit.

  Anyway, the way I heard it, taking a cue from the song Wayne suggested “Boot Scooters” as the name for the new club.  The owners mulled it over and went with it.

  I probably wouln’t’ve made it over to Boot Scooters if Wayne hadn’ta insisted I come on to the south side of Roswell and try out the new club.

  I had been going to the bar at the motel and having beers.  Hell, it was just a short walk or bicycle ride from my groovy bachelor pad on the north side of town. 

  The more I hung around the motel bar the more I got to learning more about Roswell.  Over time I was finding folks recognized me from being “that guy on the country radio in the morning.”  Folks were buying me beers and I was waking up at 5 the next morning still feeling the effects of the free cold ones.

  Then there was that one night that some drunk lady with a German accent came right up to me at the bar while I was enjoying my beer…

  “I know who you are,” she said getting right in my face.  “You don’t know who I am.”

  “No ma’am, I don’t know who you are,” I said.  “I just know you have a store downtown.”

  “Well,” she said.  “You better not talk about me on the radio.  If you do my husband will squash you like a bug.”

  I don’t know what I did to irritate the sensibilities of this woman but somehow I had.

  I seemed to have that ability with the fairer sex at bars.

  After all, there was that time that I was challenged to my first and only bar fight…by a woman.  I was at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida…just minding my own business…picking out some tunes on the jukebox when “BAM” an empty bottle exploded next to me.

  “YOU BETTER PLAY SOME GOOD SHIT,” came a woman’s voice.

  I turned around to see a woman whose leg was in a cast, her crutches next to her as she sat at a table.

  “I’M TIRED OF LISTENING TO BAD SHIT,” she yelled.

  I saw the bartender pick up the phone.  A few minutes later she got a free ride in a police car.  I reckon the bartender was ticked off that he’d have to clean up her mess.

  I took the angry German woman as a sign that it was time to take Wayne up on his invitation to come get my drink on at Boot Scooters.

  I think I can even remember the month and day I first went to Boot Scooters…Saturday, June 27, 1990.  Now let me type that date into the internet and see if I got it right……..nope….June 27, 1990 was a Wednesday…so it was Saturday, June 23, 1990.

  My girlfriend at the time was off on some business conference somewhere so I didn’t have anything to do BUT get my drink on.

  So my buddy Wayne came on by my groovy bachelor pad and picked me up…we were off to Boot Scooters.

  We walked in the bar and it was everything I expected a place like Boot Scooters to be:  A DJ booth, DJ playing good country music with a beat, a big wooden dance floor with folks line dancing and lots of waitresses serving lots of refreshing adult libations.

  There were Mexican beers to be drunk and I drank ‘em…I don’t know how many.  After a while a couple of things happened:  Every time our waitress walked by I yelled “WOOOOO-HOOOOO!”  I don’t know exactly why I yelled “WOOOOO-HOOOOO!” every time our waitress walked by, I just did.  The other thing was I started dancing with varied and sundry women in the club who were in a varied and sundry state of attractiveness…and dancing barefoot too….barefoot on Boot Scooters wooden dance floor.

  I regaled Wayne with stories, jokes were told, assessments on the attractiveness of the available women were expounded.  

  And then before you could say “Jack Robinson” me and my bare feet were off to the dance floor to dance with Raynelle who worked at the farm supply store.

  Then I was back in my chair at our table, drinking more beer and here came our waitress again.

  “WOOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!” I yelled.

  Oops!

  Waitress stopped and turned.

  It was only then that I noticed she had a nametag:  Sue Ellen

  “Okay asshole,” she yelled, dropping her tray and pointing at me, “that’s your last woo-hoo tonight.”

  “I…” I started to speak but Wayne put his hand on my shoulder.

  “We’re just leaving,” said Wayne.

  “We are?” I turned and looked at Wayne and he was giving me a raised eyebrow face that said it was time to go.”

  I put my boots back on, grabbed my hat and Wayne and I headed outside.

  “Bro,” said Wayne as we walked out into the parking lot, “She was about to have your ass thrown out.  You don’t want to be on their shit list, that ain’t good for your reputation around town.”

  “Well,” I said looking at Wayne,  “You know what my ol’ buddy Wayne would say, ‘OH WELL.’”

  As the years went on I would say that a lot, “You know what my old buddy Wayne would say.”  When I moved away from Roswell people thought Wayne was an imaginary friend.

  Anyway, I woke up later that morning with an odd condition…the whole world was sideways.  I couldn’t figure out how that worked.  I looked in the mirror and I wasn’t holding my head sideways so I don’t know what that was, I didn’t know how I achieved that, forgot how many beers I drank…but it was weird.

  I decided to go back to bed until I didn’t see things sideways.

  The phone rang.

  And rang.

  And rang.

  I didn’t answer it.

E P I L O G U E

  Yeah, that was a long time ago.

  I was a different person then.

  The Lady of the House tells me it was a good thing we didn’t meet in 1990…

  “For one thing I wouldn’t’ve lived in Roswell,” she said, “For another you were a COUNTRY DJ and for another I believe you were a bit obnoxious.”

  I posted a picture of the Boot Scooters cup on The Facebook. 

  Later I got a message from Rhonda in west Texas.  We used to work together at the Roswell radio station.  She wrote that Boot Scooters was closed, closed since a summer storm blew the roof off a few years ago.

  Rhonda sent me a picture she took of the place as she drove by.

The Hippie Chick

  I don’t know what happened to The Hippie Chick.  I looked her up on The Great and Powerful Internet and found nothing.  Of course I was looking her up by the name that came to her in a dream, not her "real" name.  I reckon she doesn’t use that dream name any more.  The Internet Great and Powerful came up with nada.  And I never knew the name her mama called her.

  The first time I saw The Hippie Chick she had pulled in behind me at the gas station in Bisbee, Arizona.

  I was fueling up when she pulled up in her old VW bus.  She got out and looked around.

  Hippie Chick was festooned in a long skirt, a flowsy blouse, a homespun shawl and beret and no shoes.

  “You’re an Ecotopian aren’t you?” I said.

  “Ecotopian?” she asked.

  “Ecotopia,” I said, “One of the ‘Nine Nations of North America.’  Basically from San Francisco to Vancouver, Pacific on the west, Coastal Range on the east.  The name is from a book I read once.”

  “Oh,” she said smiling, “Yeah, I’m from Portland.”

  “Bicycles!” I said.  Portland is a very “bicycley” city.  Or so I’ve heard.

“You’ll find you’ll want shoes around here in The Southwest.  We have a thing called…”

  “Goatheads,” she piped up.  “Yeah, I know.  I’m just in a barefoot mood today.”

  As time went on I’d see The Hippie Chick around Bisbee.  Then one day she was at Muriel’s dance studio.  Muriel was who I hung around with in the 1990’s.

  “Her name is Jenny Crow,” said Muriel as we watched The Hippie Chick get back into her VW bus.  “The name came to her in a dream.  It was a dream of a talking crow who told her to leave Portland, go to Bisbee and find the love of her life, he’d be skateboarding.  And to honor the crow she took its name as her own.”

  Muriel turned and went back to doing some paperwork at her desk.

  I didn’t say a word.  I just watched The Hippie Chick drive away.

  Well Jenny Crow found her man, the town’s only skateboarder….who had no visible means of support…but that was the way of a lot of Bisbeeites.

  “Jenny Crow invited us to her wedding,” Muriel said one day when I came home from work.  “It’s supposed to be when that comet is closest to the Earth and Mars is in some house or some shit like that.  Her parents are coming along with some of their other friends.”

  So we went to Jenny & Skateboarder’s wedding (I never knew his name). It was held outdoors at night under the comet and Mars and other celestial bodies.  It was a true "Kumbaya" time, what with the forming of a circle, holding hands and chanting and stuff.

  Next thing I knew The Hippie Chick was hauling a baby around everywhere she went, many a time breastfeeding while she was in motion.

  I’m all for organic and natural stuff so I’m all for breastfeeding; most of my kids got their start that way.  Being exposed to this natural nutrition source for babies I’ve come to know there is etiquette about it:  moms are generally discreet, covering the kid and the breast with a blouse, jacket or blanket.  Some women’s tops even have little buttoned flaps for easy access.  I’ve seen moms breastfeeding at malls, parks, even a couple of churches in my time. 

  But as with all things, there are people who believe they have rights to do as they please.

  Jenny Crow was one of these people.

  One afternoon Muriel handed me a list and sent me on my way to the local supermarket.  I had been in the back of the house and didn’t know Jenny Crow had come to visit.  I walked into the living room and there she was, sitting on the sofa with her top totally off breastfeeding her kid.  She made no move to cover herself.  I quickly looked down at my list.

  “Milk, eggs,” I said, confirming with the wife.  “We need some bleach and Comet too.”

  “Mr. G!” exclaimed Jenny Crow.  Back then a lot of folks called me Mr. G.  “Mr. G!  You’re not buying bleach and Comet, they’re killing the environment.”

  Oh now she wants to have a conversation with her boobs showing, I thought to myself, me and the busty, bare-chested young woman in my living room.  By this time, The Hippie Chick had stopped breastfeeding and was sitting there with the contented kid in her lap, her bust fully exposed.

  I started to laugh.  I could not have a serious conversation under these circumstances.

  “It’s not funny, Mr. G.” said Jane.  “We Americans are killing the planet.  You should go to the co-op and get some Bon Ami, it doesn’t hurt the environment.  They also have a really good detergent that’s just as good as bleach.”

  And she still sat there.  The kid was smacking its lips and looking around at the room.

  “Well, okay,” I said, stifling further laughter.  I pondered admonishing her for not being more discreet but then I thought better of it.  I knew this would open up a whole new can of worms.  My moderate beliefs and ethics were hopelessly outnumbered in Bisbee, even in my home.  Muriel often spoke of the injustice of how men are allowed to walk around bare-chested while women aren’t.

  “I’m off to get some bleach and Comet,” I said as I walked out the door.  It was my way of telling Jenny Crow she hadn’t changed my mind.

  It’s generally understood there is a decorum to breastfeeding.  You no more flagrantly expose breasts in public than you would stop at the curbside in downtown “Anytown” to urinate or cut loose with a loud barrage of flatulence in a restaurant.  All are natural processes, but there is such a thing as manners.

  Some months later I was part of a group that took Jenny Crow and Skateboarder some groceries.  Jenny didn’t work and Skateboarder said he kept getting attacked by brown recluse spiders and had to quit work....and went back to skateboarding.  He showed me the bites one time.  They sure looked like cigarette burns to me.

  Jenny and Skateboarder had taken up residence in an old school bus.  Most of the seats had been taken out.

  We sat in the bus on a hot summer night, its itty-bitty air conditioner struggling to keep the inside cool.

  Hippie Chick was telling everyone about the amenities of her digs, including the self-composting toilet on board.

  “It’s not working as well as we’d like but we’re going to use the compost from it in our garden next spring,” said Jenny.

  I made a mental note to myself:  Accept no vegetables from the hippie couple next summer.

  “Oh,” said a friend putting groceries in the fridge, “It looks like you have a nice hamburger package here.”

  “Oh no,” said Jenny, laughing, “That’s Namaste’s placenta.”

  Namaste’ was the hippie couple’s newborn.  The placenta is…well, you don’t need me to explain that.

  “We’re going to cook it and have a family meal on her first birthday,” said Hippie Chick.  “We’ll be inviting all of our friends.”

  I made another mental note to myself:  Accept no dinner invitations from the hippie couple next year.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I asked.  “Why not dig a hole, put that in it and plant a tree over it.  I’ve heard people do that too.”

  “Eating it creates a strong family bond,” said Jenny Crow.  “And a bond with our circle of friends.”

  I may yet write a book about my time in Bisbee.

  Folks may call it a work of fiction.

  It seems when I tell Bisbee stories to my eastern New Mexico friends they think I either make the stuff up, that I lived in a hippie commune or spent time in an open-air asylum.

   Let me tell you something…I CAN’T make this stuff up.

She Painted Skeletons on the Walls

  I wouldn’t’ve had it on my walls.

  But someone thought it was the “hot” thing to have.

  The house was done in leopard skin wallpaper.

Actual factual pic of wallpaper in question...

  I saw it while out yard sale-ing at an estate sale.

  Estate sales afford the unique experience of just walking right into a stranger’s house to see what’s for sale.

  “What are you looking at,” asked The Lady of the House.

  “This wallpaper,” I said, “It’s intense.”

  “The word I’d use would be ‘garish,’ she said.  “I find it interesting that it bothers you.”

  “It overwhelms the rooms,” I said.

  “This from the man who didn’t mind skeletons painted on his walls or that each wall was a different color,” said The Lady of the House.

  I should explain.

  Muriel* painted skeletons on the walls of the house we lived in in the hippie town of Bisbee, Arizona back in the 1990’s.  Muriel made sure that each wall was a different color.  In the living room, for instance, there was a blue wall, an emerald green wall, the mustard yellow wall and the Chinese red wall.

  Each wall featured a full-sized skeleton painted by Muriel.  Not on canvas or in a frame, right on the wall.

  Muriel said the different colored walls in the house were for variety’s sake.  The skeletons were to pay tribute to her arthritis which had a big influence on her life.

  That’s what she said anyway.

  I had no reason to doubt her.

  It wasn’t until after Muriel and I had parted company that it occurred to me that I should’ve questioned a lot of her stories, a lot of her reasoning.

  Muriel told a lot of stories.

  Muriel’s stories weren’t about “A list” people, places or things.  Nope, her stories had more “B-list or “C list” subject matter.

  For instance, Muriel said she should’ve gotten credit, gotten paid for the Sara Lee cakes slogan, “Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.”

  “I was on a flight from Atlanta to Dallas back in the 80’s and I was sitting beside this woman who was trying to come up with a slogan for a bakery company, that’s all she told me,” said Muriel.  “So I said, ‘Most people don’t like something, but everyone likes our cakes.’”

  “Next thing I know I’m watching TV some months later and this Sara Lee ad comes on with people singing, ‘Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.’”

  I mean why would I doubt Muriel?  So what if her daddy was a Southern teller of tall tales.  It would be a few years in the future before I’d fully understand the old saying, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  Muriel said she was in a car wreck in Denver in the mid-80’s.

  “I was bedridden for a year,” she told me.  “I wasn’t supposed to walk ever again.  I willed myself to walk again.  Then a couple of years later I developed arthritis in my back.”

  The arthritis was why Muriel had me walk up and down her back from time to time.

  Yes, walk up and down her back…me and my size 12 feet and 180 pound frame.  I’d walk up her back a couple of steps, turn and walk the other way…each step brought a weird crunching sound and vibration through the soles of my feet.

  “You sure this is okay?” I asked her during one of our first “sessions.”

  “If it bothered me you wouldn’t be doing it,” said Muriel.

  So after being exposed to Muriel’s taste in art, her own art, her own projects like saving dog fur to make a dog hair sweater or broken mirrors and glass to make mosaics and stuff like that I didn’t find it odd to have her paint skeletons on the walls of our newly acquired house in Bisbee.

  This after she painted the walls all different colors.

  After she painted the metal furniture black and white striped.

  After she was done she painted individual bricks on the outside walls of the cinderblock house…one by one.

  I never knew why Muriel was always painting.  When we lived in Roswell she painted the walls of her dad’s house blue…thing was she hadn’t consulted her dad, he was not amused.  She painted the paneling emerald green in the house we rented, much to the surprise of the landlord.  The walls of the condo in Phoenix got painted bright orange...when we moved we finally sold the place when we agreed to knock off a thousand bucks for an interior repainting.

  Muriel and I hung around with each other for seven years.

  Then one day the energy ran out of our little arrangement.

  It was time for me to go and leave Muriel to do things her way in the little Arizona town.

  One afternoon my buddy Ernesto came over to help me move out.  Muriel had excused herself to her business a few blocks away while I took care of getting my stuff out of what was to become her house.

  “Dios mio!,” said Ernesto as he walked into the house.  He crossed himself in that old school way that some religious folks do.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You live in a house of death,” he said.

  The two of us stood in the living room.  We were both looking around.  I was looking at the place now with I reckon what you could call “new eyes.”

  “Well damn,” I said.  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “How could you live here with all this death around you?” 

  “I never saw it as death,” I said.  “I saw it as Muriel’s creativity.  I saw it as art.”

  “Oh, you didn’t paint this shit?  She did?” asked Ernesto, “Bro…I want you to imagine a realtor coming in here to show this place.”

  I laughed.

  “Well,” I said, “That sort of happened in Phoenix with orange walls.”

  “Orange?  Dude.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “Orange like road construction orange barrel orange.”

  Ernesto laughed.

  “Damn, bro.  This chick has issues.”

  “I didn’t see it before,” I said. 

  I looked around and smiled.

  “I see it now.”

 

*Name changed

The Dead Guy at Work

  I saw a post on social media the other day…

  BOB:  I just heard a man die on the air today.  

  Bob had been listening to a sports talk radio station in his town.

  He continued...

  .It made me sad.

  Then the comments started coming in…

  RAY:  This, of course, would make it no longer “live radio.”

  TOM:  That’s how I want to go...doing what I love. Don’t give me any warning.

  JORDY:  Live radio in Heaven.....

  AVERY:  … but he still hit the traffic & weather on the 8's...

  ANDY:  For real? Died on the air?  What did it sound like?

  BOB:  He stopped mid sentence and you could hear the chair fall over. Then the guy with him started asking "are you all right?" Then commercial.

  FAT MAN:  This must be fake news. There's no mention of it anywhere.

  BOB:  Keep checking, Fat Man, it happened.

  HARRY:  It just seemed odd that someone would drop-dead on the air and nobody would report it anywhere. In this day and age, you can’t take anything at face value. It’s truly nothing personal. Condolences to all those who knew and worked with the deceased.

  BOB:  Well, it happened.  I was listening.

  IRENE:  Anything to get ratings!

  BOB:  Not funny, Irene.

  IRENE:  Bob’s a snowflake.

  HARRY:  Sorry for doubting you, Bob. I spoke with people at the station where you said it happened, and they confirmed that a member of their staff passed-away on-air yesterday.

  BOB:  Thanks for verifying that I'm not a liar.

 

  We die.

  It’s part of the deal of coming to Planet Earth…we live, we die.

  People die in many ways…some people would like to die in their sleep, others surrounded by family and friends, still others would like to check out doing what they love doing.

  Me?

  I love my job but I sure as hell don’t want to die at work.

  I know of three guys who did.

  There was that guy at a radio station across town…it was just another morning…this particular dude was the news guy and he was in the news studio so when it came time for the morning show guy to go to news there was silence.  The morning jock put on a song and ran down the hall to the news studio to find the news guy slumped over the control board.

  Another one I heard about from co-workers.  He was a radio station advertising salesman sitting at his desk when he suddenly pitched forward, head hit the desk and didn’t move….dead from a massive coronary.

  The third fellow?

  I was there.

  I won’t tell you where or when it happened out of respect to the dead guy.

  It was just the beginning of another day at the radio station.  I had ridden my bicycle to work, came through the door, put my bike up and was ready to get ready for the morning show.

  I had seen that Boss Man was already at the station, his car was parked out front.

  “LET’S RADIO,” I yelled so Boss Man could hear it on the other side of the building.  Boss Man did a radio show on the other side.

  Wait.

  No response.

  Usually he’d yell something back once I yelled, “LET’S RADIO.”

  This morning…

  …nothing.

  Then I heard someone coming down the hall.

  It was Boss Man.

  He stopped and looked at me.

  “Grant,” he said, “I think Dave* is dead.”

  A weird shudder rolled over me.

  Boss Man turned and motioned for me to follow him back to the other side of the building.

  I rounded the corner and….

  …there was Dave, lying on the floor.  I reckoned Dave had had a seizure or heart attack and pitched off to the side out of his chair and on to the floor.  His legs were in his cubicle and the rest of him was sprawled out in the hallway.

  I walked around and looked at his face.  Dave’s eyes and mouth were open.

  “He was working on a project late last night,” said Boss Man.  “I talked to him around 10 last night.”

  I bent over and put my hand on Dave’s shoulder.

  I shook him slowly.

  “Dave?” I said.  “Dave, come on buddy.”

  But I felt a couple of new things…his body seemed loose, no tension.

  And Dave was cold.

  I was looking at my first real, live dead guy.

  Well, okay, I’ve seen dead people at funeral homes.  But dead people at funeral homes aren’t quite the same as a real, live dead guy.  Funeral home bodies don’t look real, they look like something between a mannequin and a person.

  But Dave looked real.  Thing is if his mouth and eyes were closed he probably would’ve looked like he was asleep.

  I stood up.

  “I called the rescue squad,” said Boss Man.

  I stood and looked at Boss Man.

  “Well, there’s nothing else for me to do,” I said.  “Reckon I’ll go start the show.”

  I’m the kind of guy who would’ve like to’ve told my listeners, “Hey, y’all know what’s going on here at the radio station?  One of our guys died and he’s out here in the hallway.”

  But I didn’t.

  I played music and really didn’t have much to say.

  I’d just seen my first real live dead guy.  It had quite an impact on me.

  I put on a long song and went to the break room to make some coffee.

  As I stepped out into the hallway and heard voices from the other side of the building.

  I walked around the corner and there was Dave, still sprawled out in the hallway.

  The Rescue Squad people had packed up all their stuff and were headed out the door.

  “Hey guys,” I called out to them.  “Just curious about something.”

  They turned and looked at me and I made a motion with my hands like I was making a presentation of Dave’s body.

  “What about this guy?” I asked.

  “He’s dead,” said one of the rescue squadsmen.  “There’s nothing we can do for him.”

  I laughed.

  “No shit,” I said.  “What happens next?”

  “Well,” said the same guy, “Deputies are coming along with the Medical Examiner and then the funeral home people will come and take the body away.

  And there was Dave, still lying there, still with his mouth open…and his eyes…

  I moseyed on back to the studio to make sure my song was still playing…it was…so I went to the break room to get a cup of coffee.

  That’s where I ran into Adelita, our DJ on the Mexican station.

  “Dios mio!” said Adelita with wide open eyes looking right into mine.  “Dave….dead…he’s just laying there.  Dios mio!  Cover him up or something.”

  “I don’t have anything to cover him with,” I said.

  “I have an old serape draped across my back seat, I’ll get that,” she said.

  Adelita turned around and went out the back door.

  I went around the corner again and there was a new guy standing over Dave’s body.  Two county deputies were standing by the door, one writing stuff down on a pad.

  “Are you from the funeral home?” I asked the guy standing by the body.

 “No,” the dude said sharply.  “I’m the medical examiner.”

  “Ah,” I said.  “Hey, is there any way we can cover the body?  Other staffers are coming in and they find him lying there a bit disturbing.”

  “NO!” yelled the man.

  Both deputies looked up.

  “I HAVE WORK TO DO,” yelled the medical examiner.  “THE BODY STAYS JUST AS IT IS.”

  I stood there and looked at him eye to eye, holding my cup of coffee.

  “Well,” I said, “That was easy to hear.”

  The man stood and stared at me for a few moments.

  “I’ve been up all night on another case,” he said in a calmer tone.  “I’m kind of tired.  Please tell anyone who’s bothered by this that when I am done taking pictures and notes I will cover him up.”

  I went back to the studio.

  While it was weird…having to act normal on the radio while a dead guy lay in the hallway just around the corner….I was learning stuff.

  I mean sure the Rescue Squad isn’t going to carry him away, the dude was dead.  Of course the Medical Examiner has to do his thing, to make sure there’s no foul play.

  A few minutes later the door to the radio studio opened up and there was Francesca.

  Francesca was the recruiter from the local university.  She dropped in from time to time and talked on the air about goings-on on campus.

  This morning Francesca walked through the studio door with eyes wide open.

  “Ah,” I said.  “I see you came in the front door.”

  “I mean, COVER HIM UP, JEEZ!” said Francesca.  “I can’t unsee that.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “sorry about that.  The medical examiner said we couldn’t cover him up til he was done.  But you know, I’m a day late and a dollar short on telling Boss Man we need to make a sign to send people to the side door and lock the front door.”

  I got up and walked around the corner.

  Two guys dressed in suit and tie were wrangling a body bag around Dave.

  “You must be from the funeral home,” I said.

  “Yes sir,” said one of the nattily dressed men without looking up.

  I just stood and watched as they got Dave in the bag, rolled him on to stretcher on the ground then raised him up to a nearby gurney.

  The guys secured Dave with some straps and wheeled him out the door.

  I stood there.

  I thought about life.

  How it really is true…any day on this side of the grass is a good day.

  I thought about death.

  How it just happens and for those left behind the world keeps on going.

  The idea that the world would do anything else BUT keep on going came from when I was an itty-bitty kid….those couple of days around November 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated.  The radio played slow, somber instrumentals…there wasn’t as much traffic on the roads.  It seemed like the world slowed down.  As the years went by I came to understand that was a unique time.

  I thought about work.

  Work is what we do to pay the bills.  Life isn’t supposed to be all about work.  I’d bet Dave would’ve rather’ve been home with his wife when his time came.

  I thought about home.

  I had a bit of a feeling that after this morning I’d just like to go home right then and there.

  “HEY GRANT,” it was Francesca’s voice from around the corner, “THE SONG’S OVER, GET IN HERE….”

E P I L O G U E

  I sat in my recliner that day after work telling The Lady of the House about Dead Dave and the parade of people who saw him.

  “I’d like to die at home,” I said.

  “Awake?” she said.  “I wouldn’t want to be awake.”

  “Yeah,” I said.  “I want to see what happens.”

  “You die,” said The Lady of the House.

  “Yeah,” I said, “But I’d like to see the transition.  I don’t think it’d be the same if I died in my sleep.”

  The Lady of the House waved her hand in my direction as if to say, “Enough of your stuff,” got up and headed for the kitchen.

  “Just don’t die in your sleep at night,” she said as she walked away.  “I can’t think of anything much creepier than me waking up next to you dead.”

  I sat in my recliner and pondered this scenario.

  The Lady of the House came walking back in the room with one of our folded old blankets.

  “Here,” she said putting it on the coffee table, “Take this to work to cover the next one of you guys who dies….because I’m sure there will be a next one.”

*Most names changed