Half Past Awesome

Everyone needs inspiration. Bones is inspired by cleanliness and germ-eradication. The Heathens are inspired by Transformers, The Dirtbag is inspired by architectural innovation, Fury The Landscaper is inspired by a Subway sandwich done right and I’d venture that RoJo is inspired by the recent birth of his son. Artists get inspiration from pastoral landscapes and runaway flights of fancy within the reaches of their imagination. Some folks on the northside are inspired by a good meth rush, which in turn inspires them to stay up all night and peel insulation off of copper wiring so they’ll have a way to fund their next inspiration. Our kids inspire us to be better parents, our spouses inspire us to get off of our asses and do something with the day, and I would argue that coffee can provide some of the greatest inspiration of all.

But, like all creative types, I need to constantly hit my mental “refresh” button in order to feed the flow of ideas that come spilling out of my mind. Often times, this comes in the form of the neighbors, Truck 2 antics at the fire station, The Heathens or the myriad folks who play supporting roles in the comedy that is my life. I believe with all I’ve got that you can find all the material you might need right in front of your nose, if only you take the time to open your eyes and see the ridiculosity for what it is. But.

But…..once in awhile a change of scenery is in order, if for no other reason than to throw your chaos into perspective and give you an appreciation for little things like, say, the Amish out on the state highway. Sometimes I achieve this with a trip to the Northwest to visit The Dirtbag, I’ve found it on a road trip to a music festival in Steamboat Springs, Co and it’s been had floating down a river on a lazy summer day with a motley crew of amigos. The common denominator is that travel is the impetus for my inspiration. I may not be as worldly as I’d hoped to be by this age, but in my limited travels, I find it to be a crack cocaine of sorts: I always want more and more, there’s always more to see, more to experience, more to drink in and enjoy.

The corollary benefit to me traveling around more is that it also provides much more material to write about, and thereby gives you moments of levity (in the form of this site) from time to time. The reason I bring this up? I am in deep negotiations with The Wife as to the purchase of a dual sport motorcycle, which would give me access to a whole new range of material and inspiration. You may argue that you can hit the road in your truck just as easily, and it would be hard to counter that, but there is something about traveling by bike to small town festivals, redneck jamborees and different little hamlets around here that really appeals to the wanderer in me. To take a dusty county backroad with an amigo or two just to witness all that is offered for my visual consumption would border on a spiritual experience for an old heathen. You know, like my own version of  Zen And the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance kind of thing.

And while she may have safety statistics, economic limitations and virtual practicality on her side of the argument, I’ll be utilizing divine inspiration as the cornerstone of my reasons to buy a motorcycle. I am also going to be relying heavily on needing to keep posts on this site fresh and funny, that you the reader have high expectations of low humor and that in order to accomplish this, I’ll need two wheels, a motor and a weekend here or there. I can’t let you down, and I won’t.  It’s going to prove a tough fight, my friends, and her ability to be all “rational” and “level-headed” is going to work against me  in ways I can’t even anticipate. Although it shouldn’t be necessary, I’ll even resort to guerrilla tactics such as…..well, I can’t say here, because she’s been known to read this once in a while. But trust me, it’ll involve behavior I am not used to, such as reining in some of my erratic ways. Hopefully the result will be a newly found sense of inspiration and a 650cc motor.

After all, who can argue against Zen and small town tractor pulls?

Here’s a random one: can we be nostalgic for a time that we never knew?

I would argue that this is a completely possible scenario, one that I am guilty of engaging in from time to time. I have enough books on steam locomotives to warrant engagement of the Dewey decimal system; one of the post-firefighter scenarios playing out in my mind involves moving to Scranton, Pennsylvania in order to work at Steamtown and hang out with dudes that are like, 50 years older than me. Like every other obsession that’s possessed my psyche from time to time (wanna be a firefighter? Sounds AWESOME!), I am sure that the reality would lose it’s luster after a relatively short period of time. Case in point? Said fixation on becoming a career firefighter morphing into the phenomenon known as “The Grind“. Sure, riding the rigs is great, and I love the lifestyle, but the reality is, it truly is just a job, one that demands the same kind of sacrifices as any other. Maybe it would be best to leave the steam fascination just that: a quest for something I never truly will realize, because the truth will inevitably be annoying as sand in the shorts. As I read in a selection from my own loco-nerd library: “The only people nostalgic for steam engines are those who never had to operate one for a living”. Well put, disgruntled railroad guy. Doesn’t mean I can’t still wonder, though.

That train of thought led to my next sub-question: if I am nostalgic about a time I never lived in, is this just a function of getting older? My conversations with The Dirtbag as of late center on career choices we’ve made, and I hear him often lamenting aspects of his former career as The Dark Overlord of The Night Shift at a poultry processing plant. Apparently, screaming at minimum wage chicken pluckers in the wee hours of the morning brought him a Zen-like sense of inner peace. In truth, I think he misses the financial security more than the cigarette-in-each-hand, five-pots-of-coffee, never-see-the-sun lifestyle. But it would be a close race either way. RoJo speaks often of his summers running a laser leveling tractor on his family’s tomato farm, as though whiling away his nights in the cab of a John Deere on the Sacramento Delta was much preferable to issuing moving violations to California drivers. I knew him then, though, and our actions were looked upon as a means to getting somewhere “better”. It’s as though we’re never satisfied: when younger, we’re dreaming of our future; when older, we’re longing for the adventures of our youth.

Here’s where I gotta give the Lyrical Jackass credit. He is one of the few people I know who has been able to live in the moment, every moment. This equates to someone grabbing life by the cajones and savoring each slice of life like your it was your last. Of course, the downside of this is that he has little past anywhere. He’s constantly on the run from one psychotic girlfriend to the next, switches jobs at intervals normally reserved for oil changes, and hardly slows down long enough for the dust to hit the furniture. He claims to WANT to “settle down”, but I think that the pandelerium dictating his life is as unpredictable and unrelenting as the tide; he’ll go wherever the next woman chases him. The chaos is what binds us, I guess, but I just happen to be a mite less unpredictable (The Wife makes sure of this).

Truth is, I’ll never play in the NHL, I’ll never fly an F-14 Tomcat off of a carrier, and I doubt that the Drive By Truckers are going to give me the call to play bass on their next tour. It’s best to focus on the myriad other things that are going on in the here and now. Little things, like, say, parenting The Heathens. Making a good pot of coffee. Being a husband that The Wife is a little less embarassed to be seen with in public. Being a friend worth having. That sort of thing. And, in the late hours, when no one else is looking, I’ll keep looking for steam engineer jobs. It never hurts to live in the past a little.

Setting: Branson Missouri, a June day with 95 degree temperatures and all the humidity of a Vietnamese jungle

Location: Silver Dollar City, aka “Steal Your Dollar Holler” (An amusement park with the theme “You Have A Great Past Ahead Of You”, meaning it’s centered on the “glorious” days of our hillbilly ancestry; blacksmiths, bloomers and Baldknobbers)

Cast: The Wife, The Heathens, myself and 10,000 tourists, 98% of which are determined to shove their elbows into my side as they waddle by me.

Somehow, I committed to taking the familia to this tourist trap of the Ozarks several months ago; chances are, The Wife sprung this question while I was in a coffee and bacon induced haze, and I agreed, most likely thinking she was asking if I wanted to die of cholesterol poisoning. Of COURSE that’s how I want to go out. To paraphrase the late, great Redd Foxx, I feel sorry for all those healthy people sitting around in hospitals, dying of nothing.

So, the wrath of the summer gods seems to have descended within the last couple of weeks, and I was beginning to regret agreeing to head south to Silver Dollar City (SDC), as I’d been sweating like a hooker on dollar day anytime I’d venture outdoors. My paranoid mind was starting to think maybe The Wife HAS been trying to kill me. A trip into a sweltering tourist mecca may well do me in. It didn’t help that she asked me yesterday where I would like to be buried, “should something happen”. She’s not even trying for subtlety anymore. My passing would no doubt please my amigos like the Dirtbag and Lyrical Jackass, since they feel I deserve it; plus, they would be here in a heartbeat to “console” The Wife, move in and raise my kids. The heartless bastards.

ANYHOW, we ventured down there this morning, and, just as I suspected, it was a wild menagerie of large elderly people in power scooters (ie; Jazzy’s, Hoverounds, wheelchairs with attitude for our, um, bigger boned friends), perfectly coiffed televangelist-wannabes, mullet-sporting Dale Earnhardt diehards and some of the most drawled out southern accents you can imagine, brought to you by the great state of Alabama. I was pleased to note that the fanny pack has, indeed, NOT gone out of style here in the Midwest. I was of the mistaken notion that only European tourists were still in possession of ass bags (stylishly worn to the front, so as to have easy access to your Marlboro Reds). I was wrong. What I wouldn’t give to travel back to 1988 and pick up my old Billabong fanny pack so I could party with this crowd. On a costume related tangent, I was also made very aware of the number of people wearing tee shirts that not only proclaimed their Christian faith, but also seemed to serve one of two purposes:

1.) to show you’re one of the wittier members of the flock (ie. a “FaithBook” shirt that reads like a feed of the social site Facebook and one that said “Got Christ?”) or,

2.) to show others that you’re a not-messing-around kind of believer (“His name is not ‘The Man Upstairs’, it’s Jesus, and he will kick your ass if you keep calling him that”)

Of course, man will get competitive about darn near anything, from racing lawn mowers to building potato guns, so I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s equally competitive about religion. The only rivalry for shirt space at the park came in the form of unbridled love of country. I lost count of how many shirts I saw that informed me about colors not running or something along those lines. Many of the power scooters were customized with the magnetic ribbons that were both patriotic AND evangelical, so really, those folks had their bases covered. It would not have shocked me in the least to find someone offering up a Dixie Chick for sacrifice on a bonfire somewhere within the confines of the property, probably right next to the lye-soap manufacturer and the walking stick whittler guy. The Contrarian in me wondered what would happen if I walked around there with a shirt in Arabic script; it wouldn’t even have to make any sense…it could say something like “I love Toby Keith”. Let me tell you what would happen: I would be beat to a bloody pulp by a bunch of power Christians in power scooters wielding aforementioned hand carved walking sticks.

After a few rides and some minor heat stroke, I began to notice a swelling in crowd size, both in numbers and in terms of the sheer mass of park attendees. Ironically, I was eating out of a bag of “fresh” fried pork rinds (I kid you not) when I came to this realization. And no, it was not lost on me. If the Center for Disease Control ever wants to do a study on the obesity epidemic in this country it needs to get on down to Branson. CDC, meet SDC. SDC will show you how it’s done. You won’t find wheatgrass smoothie stands or sushi carts here; we demand vegetables be battered and fried, sausages be skilletized and heaping helpings of fried funnel cake be coated in sugar. I could only hope that, as my arteries were clogging and my dehydrated brain was convulsing, The Wife’s ultimate desire for “something to happen” to me wouldn’t be fulfilled on this trip.

I hadn’t even had a chance to get that Toby Keith tee shirt made.

** 5/20 POST UPDATE** Read the comments from The Dirtbag to this post for a hint of the madness that rules this man!

There comes a time when normal discourse between two parties reaches an impasse. How do we get past that roadblock? The more timid among us might avoid conflict altogether, while some put their head down and forge ahead through the tense times. And then there is my favorite category of folks: those who eagerly anticipate the tension and view it as an excuse to vent all their rage, related or not. It would seem that I surround myself with those who are thrilled when trouble comes knocking.

Buns lives with the outlook that everyone else’s purpose in life is to make his better; when folks don’t seem to be on the same page, he has no problem screeching at them in parking lots. It helps that he’s like 6’10″+, so there is rarely much argument when he DOES step out of the car, unless it’s from a psychotic urban outdoorsman. The Lyrical Jackass will try his very best to convince you to bend to his will, but when he has run out of patience (this takes, like, three minutes), it’s not unusual for him to start letting his redneck roots get the best of him. This involves his complexion going through several color changes, from red to purple to sheet white. Next up, if his situation isn’t resolved, is for his eyes to pop out like golf balls and then rotate independently as he rails on (think rabid gecko), enormously long arms waving around, knocking crap off shelves as his voice ratchets up a notch or three. RoJo is a “peace” officer: need I say more?

The Dirtbag brings this anger to a new level of existence, as it permeates his very core. In his opinion, they ARE ALL out to get him, and he finds this irritating. He will rotate and swivel in the seat of his truck, cursing (loudly and with his window down) people who don’t understand the fundamentals of merging onto the highway. He reserves most of his ire for the big box home improvement stores and HGTV, as he believes that they are the ruination of the trades and “real” tradesmen, and therefore in part responsible for the major decline of  this country.

The undisputed king of the realm, at least in terms of my friends, has to be Fury the Landscaper. I met him during a construction trade show, when we had booths opposite one another. Soon Fury became a customer of Pacific Excavating (my former outfit), in part because he seemed to appreciate attention to detail, something that is often overlooked in construction. We hit it off immediately, he benefiting from my obsession with digging ditches “just so”, me benefiting from getting a chance to work with a real-life Soup Nazi. This aspect of his persona is never more evident than the lunch hour. Being someone who is adverse to change, Fury almost ALWAYS takes his lunch at a Subway, but he is running out of Subways who are “doing it right” in the greater metropolitan area. You see, it is imperative that they slice his sandwich EXACTLY in half. It is even more important that they NOT use a knife that has been used to spread something as vile as mayonnaise on someone else’s order. I have been with him when he declared a Subway on the Forbidden List because they “spread his vegetables all wrong”. The difference between Fury and most of the general public is that instead of just taking the guff off of some poor slob who chose to work at Subway, Fury will DEMAND a new knife be used, or a new loaf be cut. To quote the stoner/prophet Tom Petty, he won’t back down. There is always the moment of incredulity on the employees face when Fury insists that they get a different piece of bread; THIS is the awkward moment I live for. (I also make sure that I order before him, so that I don’t get a sandwich laced with spit). He just wants the people to do their damn job, as he has said on more than one occasion. I have also been witness to his furiously punching his steering wheel hard enough that I was reasonably sure that it would somehow set off the airbag and we would both die soaring off a bridge; it took all I had not to laugh out loud, both out of a sense of respect and of self-preservation.

At the end of the day, I am thankful for people like Fury the Landscaper and The Dirtbag; they bring a little order to not only my own chaotic existence, but also to the general unruliness of this world. If some punk with three pounds of jewelry in his face wants to get a little surly while almost throwing change back at the customer, you can bet that it won’t stand with these gentlemen. When an entitled cell phone yakker barrels through a construction zone at 100 mph (true story), RoJo will be there to give them the law enforcement slap down. Buns will always be around to argue with the bums on a street corner if that’s what he deems they need. Those closest to us help keep it all in perspective. Here’s to hoping they don’t turn that furious perspective against us.

Do you ever wonder about the appropriate age to transition from one generational club to another? I do. We can all remember that guy who was, like, 26 and still lurching around high school bonfire parties. While he served a definite purpose (being of legal age), it always seemed rather awkward and creepy to have him hanging around. I am curious to know if he is now, at age 43, still buying the cheapest beer known to man for hormone ravaged teens. God, I hope not.

On the other end of the spectrum, I also dwell on when I’ll be allowed to join the crotchety old curmudgeon set. My application has been in for years, and, according to The Wife, was accepted from the moment we had kids. I’ll admit to righteous fury when one of her salon clients takes liberties with parking on the lawn as opposed to the driveway; even after widening the driveway several times, SOME folks seem hell-bent on destroying my attempts at a nice yard. I have angrily concluded that this is the result of trying to navigate destroyer-sized SUV’s while chatting merrily away on cell phones.

My descent into a crab-ass state of mind was no doubt aided by the fact that 90% of my neighbors are  grouchy old farmer dudes who love nothing more than bitching about the current state of affairs. On top of this heap resides Burl. Burl looks to be around 90 years old and drives up and down the state highway that is our road at a blistering 16mph. You can always tell Burl is coming from a long way off, because there will be an overwhelming din of car horns blaring from a stack of enraged drivers piled up behind him. This means nothing to him. He’s usually too busy eyeballing everyone else’s property for dogs he can shoot later on; in his mind he has NO DOUBT those damn dogs are running his cattle in the dead of night. Burl has absolutely no problem telling you about it, either. This man is both endlessly comical (to me) and insanely terrifying. Most people (particularly dog owners) loathe him which is how he likes it, thereby explaining why I am drawn to his presence. That, and the fact that he INSISTS on calling me Julio, no matter how many times I correct him.

It should be noted that the Dirtbag is also a prolific grump despite his relatively young age, and the look he puts forward is one that says “I will kill you if you come one step closer.” This is an extremely effective tool for keeping social interaction to a minimum. On one hand, I have found that behaving like an old coot can be incredibly rewarding, because when events inevitably go wrong in this life you can just snarl and tell anyone who will listen “I KNEW that would happen! Didn’t I tell you to never trust the media?!?” Also, it is a great excuse to shout at traffic, kids on the lawn, the meteorologist and rogue census takers. On the downside, it turns out nobody wants to spend much time with a person whose idea of a wild afternoon involves publicly and loudly broadcasting all the ways in which the youth of America steering this country towards Hell in a handbasket. That last statement is only subject to change when the room is FULL of angry old men, in which case it becomes mandatory discussion matter.

Turns out that most of these miserable old men generally can link their perpetual bad mood to an event, or series of events that soured them on the rest of life. Maybe they never moved off the farm in spite of a deep seated desire to travel outside the county lines. Perhaps they never DID ask that Italian exchange student on a date way back in high school. Or maybe their hip just hurts. But something I realized along the way is that this life has actually turned out pretty good, maybe even better than that, and my state of grouchiness is as seasonal as Missouri weather. I find that on balance people are reasonably fascinating. Most folks have a pretty interesting backstory if you can peel back all the layers of defense they’ve erected, especially the grouchy ones. As such, I’ll most likely keep on tolerating being called Julio by a man who is sure I am leading some sort of terrorist revolution out here in the country. And even if you catch me sitting in a lawn chair near the road pointing a hair dryer at passing speeders just to see how they react, chances are that if they stop for awhile and shoot the breeze, I’ll find them intriguing as well. They just better not park on the lawn.

Yesterday one of our shop cats took the opportunity to have a batch of kittens while I was at the firehouse. This cat, commonly referred to as SkunkButt, is an industrious little beast. She knows full well that I was aware she wasn’t just “getting fat” and that soon our place would turn into a damn nursery; with that in mind, I was making a concerted effort to keep her silly, manipulative presence out of the house. So she waited until I was gone, then slinked around and tapped into my wife’s maternal instincts and snuck in to deliver her package. RIGHT UNDER OUR BED. Complete with all the “extras” that come with giving birth. And I was rewarded with the sobbing phone call from the woman I call my wife, but who is now referring to herself as a “grandmother”. Great.

This wonderful little addition to our under-bed carpeting brings to mind all of the times in my life that, despite the best laid plans, I have been shanked by fate. Tragically,the numbers are beginning to add up. Where one party sees a “beautiful” moment when life has begun anew, I know who is going to be left to clean up the mess. I might add that it’s a little more than disturbing that I am now being outmaneuvered by felines. Apparently, our bedroom is a much more appealing place to toss a litter than a shop full of tools and machinery.

As a parent, I should know that all plans are fluid and most likely mean diddly squat when it comes to execution, but somehow this is a new low. I can really appreciate the Dirtbags’ working theory that, yes, they ARE all out to get you. He’s the worlds’ greatest conspiracy theorist, which is one reason that the number of firearms he owns is a complete secret, even to his immediate family. Of course, the downside of this is that he is the first to blow a gasket when his world of order gets compromised by anyone, his own children included. On the other end of the spectrum, my world of chaos just seems to consume any sort of semblance of normalcy at every chance. One look in my office, and most folks think that I am in the process of moving. I’m a little suprised she didn’t have the kittens on my printer just to spite me.

How we react to the speed bumps that life throws our way is one way that character is defined. Each of us has the opportunity to act as a sail in the wind, constantly adjusting to fit the situation, just as each of us has the opportunity to shoot the bird at the wind and then act indignant when the mast swings around and clobbers us right in the face. I choose the latter, time and again with predictable results. It is not a path in which I take a considerable amount of pride, but like Skunkbutt’s maniacal instinct to give birth where it will piss me off the most, I, too, am driven by forces that baffle most people. What makes perfect sense to me in an absolute fit of manic productivity can often be construed as downright insane by my peers; take my idea of moving to Alaska on a whim as an example of said behavior.

I suppose at the end of the day we are fools to think that we truly are the masters of our fate, captains of our souls. That’s just a crock sold by romantics the world over. We may make choices, and we may influence events in our lives but at the end of the day we are nothing more than the results of those choices. There are times when I wish I had made better, more sane choices. And then there are days when I come home to a litter of kittens under my bed.