Maybe a Daily Journal ISN'T So Do-able

essay

Wednesday July 21 2010


Until now, I have been alone. Alone in my thoughts, alone in my actions. It's an experience I have to recommend, at least for the experience of spending that much time with yourself -- you can learn something about your passions and fears and tolerances when you have an uninterrupted stream of alone time.
On the other hand, when you are a guest in a house with kids, a dog and another adult, things can get BUSY. And my last two days were a nonstop flurry of busy… the parental kind. You find yourself in the middle of an endless array of needs presenting itself as children. Is there food in the house? Is everyone safe? How do we get these kids off the bigscreen for a few hours? And what the hell is that smell? I get ahead of myself.
Monday was mostly alone time. I touched up the house again, making sure it was perfectly clean -- to show my host he was right to trust me with his home, and to present myself in the finest light possible, because observing a man in tattered and stained road clothing hardly inspires a white-glove test. I picked up some caulk and filler in local McKinleyville to make the wood repair that much closer to finished, and of course to walk down the aisles of a huge box store. Well, it turns out there's no Home Depot or Lowes or even an OSH (Gosh, no OSH?) for a hundred miles in any direction. And while traveling that distance to pick up a pipe wrench doesn't seem to faze anyone up here, for me it's comparable to going to San Diego from LA, just to eat at a Pick-Up Stix. No thanks, I'll jump across the street to get a spring roll at Johnny Wong's instead. So I walked up and down the aisles of the biggest hardware store I've ever seen, a thing called an ACE. Box stores, move over! It was so much fun there I went down EVERY aisle, every row, and every shelf. Man, were they detailed in their inventory -- for example, they have an entire section dedicated to charcoal! A quadrant in a section for just hunting supplies! And the whole back wall was reserved for tent pegs! Okay, I lie. But they had eight different types, and that's nothing to spit-shine at.
I walked out of there with two big bags of stuff. Nothing I needed now, but you know, I'd use them at some point, right? Scented lamp oil has a multitude of uses... even without owning a lamp, can I get a hullo?
Polished and gleaming, I waited. And hung out. And waited some more. I remember they said they'd be gone for a couple of days. A couple is two, right? No, actually a 'couple' is an imprecise term used for when you don't want to be nailed down. I realized I could be waiting a l-o-o-n-g time, up here where time moves at a different rate and the guy who got married a 'couple' of times actually had EIGHT ex-wives (not my friend, just an example).
Fortunately, for him a couple meant two, and they pulled up to their home, 'the lumberyard', around 5. General greetings ensued and I helped them unload. I find it interesting that the first person to notice my handiwork was the sweet little 8 year old girl. "You straightened up!" she said, and I swelled with pride.
"Yes, I did. And that's not all--"
"I know because now I can't find my Crocs. Where are my Crocs?" she finished scathingly. Sheepishly I pointed to her new section, feeling a mite foolish. Why should they notice? I was just being self centered. But then the compliments really started pouring in.
"You threw away my torn cloth? I've had that torn cloth for ten years!"
"Does this repair seem discolored to you? Why is it discolored?"
"You used all of my Pledge? It was supposed to last all year!"
I was bursting with pride. Then my friend said "Thanks." That, or, "Thanks but no thanks." Either way, I was in my own little world of appreciation, and they were spreading rose petals before me as I walked.
"I can't believe you touched my stuff!"
"What are you, a girl?"
"Dad, make him leave!"
I swelled with the touch of love.

Our first outing together was lunch, and for that we travelled to nearby Eureka, to the Chinese restaurant Gonsea. Pronounced 'Gone Sea', we were told it meant 'congratulations'. Whether for picking a fine restaurant or for surviving the food I couldn't be sure yet. My past experience with small town Chinese places have left me wary. I remember Beef with Broccoli which was served with asparagus and hominy. I remember something called fried rice which was actually brown rice and paprika. Worst of all I have experienced duck sauce made of ducks. So I was justifiably concerned.
The rule of thumb when visiting restaurants featuring foreign food was to check the clientele for faces of the region. A mexican restaurant filled with whites and asians bode poorly, for example. So I looked around. Not an Eastern face anywhere. Not even in the wait staff. Uh, oh.
The food came. Well, it mostly came… three of the four meals showed up… and the last one arrived halfway through the meal. It was the starving teenage boy who had to wait, and watch us eat, and drool. To torture him, we wouldn't give him any samples off our plates -- that's how you're supposed to treat teenagers, right? Eventually his lunch arrived, and in true teenage form he was done before the rest of us anyway, begging for more food. He concluded by eating half of his sister's plate. And I do mean the plate -- he bit into the china.
By the way, their menu featured both Chinese and Japanese food. I guess they figured asian was asian. They'd likely put pizza and gnocchi on the same menu because white is white. So the kids had sushi while the adults had more traditional Chinese fare. Paid half of what the kids meals were, and had leftovers to boot. Not being smug -- just pointing out value to our age-restricted brethren.
Next was the obligatory walk through 'old town'. There were beautiful old buildings built at the turn of the century for, I'm told, the timber barons of the day.

So the rich were assholes even back then. Interesting. Lovely small shops presented themselves, hawking everything from bagels and soup to candles and crystals. The signage showed care and design expertise. Nowhere was a building permitted to fall into decay -- not in the town center, anyway. Back in the middle of farmland I saw a multitude of buildings which had had had their day in the 20's and were now all but collapsed in on themselves. Why people don't offer to dismember (dismantle?) dismantle them and utilize the ancient lumber for a thousand practical applications surprises me. Maybe that's my calling -- prettying up the landscape as a 21st century timber baron, using 19th century timber.
But not today. Instead of designing the next big business we hit a nice old thrift store (can you believe the kids had no idea what a thrift store was? The best comparison the older one could come up with was a pawn shop) and after a few minutes of pawing around all the cool stuff, both had found something they fell in love with, and were thrilled with the economy of it all. "99 cents for Nikes?" the teen exclaimed incredulously, and walked away with several pairs before I reminded him to try them on. Only one pair fit, but boy, was he thrilled! I looked for a belt to replace the one I had left back in LA but alas, my size was not to be found. Which was surprising. There are MANY people MUCH fatter than me -- how is it I can never find any belt larger than a, say, 34? And did you know that when they call a belt a 34, they are measuring from tip to buckle? A 34 can fit a size 30, tops. Where are all the normal people belts? So, no belt, no rope, not even an old wire hanger to help hold it up. I could do nothing to keep my shiny pink ass from exposing itself but stick my hands in my pockets and clasp my fingers together… and doing that looks not so vaguely pornographic, like I was valiantly working on a hopeful method of penis extension.
Now it was Northern California beach time. Sure it was 65, gray and windy, but at least it wasn't sleeting. Truly a perfect beach day. For them. Still, I stolidly joined their freezing exploits, jacket flapping wildly, me unable to secure it because my hands were performing an important task in my pockets and if I took them out, I would surely be accused of flashing and end up on a sex offender list somewhere. But we had fun anyway. There was a lot of stick throwing and rock collecting and molted crab exoskeleton crushing and sandy hill climbing and waves avoiding and dog chasing (did I mention we had the family dog with us?) Hours went by and miles passed, too. Suddenly we were just outside of the parking lot, up on a hill and I joked that my friend's car was on fire -- I could see a trail of black smoke in the sky.
Well, we established pretty soon that it was in fact NOT his car which was on fire, but one of the beachside bungalows a half mile away. A stiff wind sent the smoke almost horizontally and fanned the flame, which shot up several stories in angry orange cowlicks. The next bungalow downwind was in real trouble, and it seemed the fire engines had no idea how to get there, as the roads were narrow and unlabeled and bordered farm after farm before an occasional line of homes would appear. We watched in morbid fascination as the cottage roof went from red to black, erupting in billowing and viscous black clouds.
A pillow of shining white smoke emerged. Ahh, success! The fireman had discovered their target. Soon the whole structure creaked gratefully in the cooling flow and its structural neighbors stood smoky but strong and for the moment, safe. We departed and headed towards home, stopping only long enough to satisfy a sudden desire for flame-charred meat products.

The next two days were a torrent of activity. I remembered how my own child, now 20, needed scintillating input all throughout the day when she was a tweener. Multiply that energy by 2, add to that the factor of boy with insatiable curiosity and no personal safety zone and you understand what I mean. Imagine a gross of superballs being shot from a cannon into a small room with concrete walls. The resulting fracas resembled the infinite paths these children followed to satisfy their hungry minds. And we, their middle-aged and somewhat clueless caretakers, were dragged along for the ride, a high-speed emotional rollercoaster ranging from delighted amusement to baldfaced surprise to outright panic to catatonic exhaustion. In other words, normal life for parents.
What we actually did is a matter of some speculation, as events sometimes overlapped quite intricately. Walks became shopping events as they sidestepped into meet-and-greets; the twelve year old boy would be looking at girls while the little girl would be looking at sipping backpacks. Pizza and ice cream and hamburgers and fruit-by-the-foot fell into their mouths in regular spans; bathroom breaks meant a sometimes stressful search for facilities followed. And always we'd keep one step ahead of the chalk officer, who I guess is cheaper than a meter maid? The sign says 2 hour parking and we'd drive off as he was writing a ticket for the car next to us. There was a precision to my friend's timing which bordered on the mechanical.
And as always, evening entertainment in a modern small town usually means media. Movies, TV shows, video games, Skype, web pages, newspapers, books, cell phones, texting. A hundred years ago only one of those existed… what on earth did they do for fun back then? Tip cows?
A more lively solution for the adults presented itself last night, as my friend invited a few of his local friends and their musical instruments to come by and play for the night. Hours of fun bluesy rock ensued, entertaining as all get-out. We should've passed out handbills. We could have filled the parking lot with pick-up trucks and tractors for sure! I kid. But it was really fun, falling somewhere between a Charlie Daniels concert and that scene from Deliverance. Not the one with the pig.

Soo-ey.