Joe's New Life

Hello again. It's that time of the year when I have settled into my new job, when I'm becoming acclimated to my new surroundings, when the bartenders at my new bar know me by name and drink (thanks Natalie and Amber and Cat and Dana for that on-tap IPA), when I finally started going to the gym again after five-plus months of vegetating, when I'm putting the California debacle behind me day by day by day, when it's about fucking time – in other words, Welcome to Joe's new life.

But first, a little housekeeping.

When I left California, I used the cheapest carrier I could find, which turned out to be ABF U-Pack. For $1,275 I got seven feet at the front of one of their gray trailers with the yellow-on-green lettering. For $1,275, I didn't get much room in one of their gray trailers with the yellow-on-green lettering.

So that meant leaving things behind. And by leaving behind, I mean abandoning.

Like the side-by-side refrigerator that worked so well that it would make ice in the fridge two-thirds. Whoever moved into my old apartment inherited it. Or maybe the landlord took it. I don't really know. Or care.

Like every last piece of garden and yard equipment I ever bought: cheap-ass wheelbarrow that took me a cursing hour to assemble, the piece of shit; garden rake, hoe and shovel, all cheap; leaf rake, kind of a good one; two metal plant slash bird feeder shepherd's hooks. There ain't much room for that crap in an apartment. And fuck that shit anyway.

Like a brushed aluminum hall tree. I didn't buy it, and I sure as hell didn't want it.

Like a vacuum that at one time sucked up some road-kill possums.

Like a cheap TV stand and an end table and a 12-pack cooler.

My plants and guns and golf clubs traveled with me. All made it safe if not (in my jade plant's case, the poor leaf-losing bastard) sound. As did I.

 

******

 

The Trip

Because my gray UBF U-Pack trailer with the yellow-on-green lettering didn't show up on time even though I called six fucking times that Friday, I got out of San Bernardino a day late, leaving on April Fool's Day, and you can make your own joke here. I left the city about 5 p.m. and headed east. Rolling through Redlands and out into the Southern California desert gloaming, my heart pounded and my face flushed and my palms sweated and my stomach was in knots as the reality of finally leaving gripped me and I cursed myself for being such a wimp. I couldn't seem to draw a deep breath. I played the stereo loud and didn't hear one song for miles on end. That was it. The final and irrevocable end. What a pitiful conclusion to five years of my life.

The hole in my convertible top howled and moaned as the duct tape covering it peeled back and flapped in the breeze at 80 mph. On through the evening I drove, past the Indian casinos and the Palm Springs exit and Desert Hot Springs, past the giant forest of thousands of white wind turbines. In Indio, I stopped for gas at $3.17.99 per gallon (a bargain now). When I got back on the highway, I had to turn on my headlights.

Through the dark I drove, and I spent the night at a Motel 6 in Phoenix. And the bastards didn't even leave the light on for me. Everyone I know who has been there says Phoenix is a happening place, but all I saw was the inside of my motel room. Could have been a room in BFE for all I knew.

 

******

 

The next day I drove north out of Phoenix, marveling at the giant cacti that grew everywhere, even in the highway median. At 2,000 feet, the cacti disappeared. Up and up I climbed, finally reaching 6,000 feet at the top of one pass (and who the hell knew that Arizona had hills that big? Shit, I thought it was all roadrunners and pancake-flat desert.).

At Flagstaff I took Interstate 40 and continued east. The speed limit was 75, and I did 95 all the way to Albuquerque, never once getting passed. Cops were nonexistent.

Along I-40 were all these metal dinosaurs trying to entice you to stop at some tourist trap so you could look at bones and shit. Stubby forearmed T-Rex in the classic open-mouthed pose with teeth everywhere looking mean as hell, some kind of Jurassic Park-inspired raptors, some kind of slow-footed plant eater with a long-ass tail and a vacant look in its eyes. They all looked pretty lifelike (you know, as if we have any fucking clue what these dinosaurs really looked like in their skin, but whatever. They passed the test.). But then I came upon this one dinosaur that looked like a 55-gallon drum with metal pole for a neck and some kind of bucket for a head. I would have guessed it as a peyote-designed psychedelic horse if a sign hadn't said something about a dinosaur museum.

I’m pretty sure it was made by the kids on the short bus.

On I rolled into New Mexico. A road sign advertised a DWI Super Blitz, which sounded like a night of drinking Wild Turkey and scaring the shit out of your old lady while driving swerving-blacktop 90 in your ’84 Monte Carlo with the glass packs and four-barrel Holley carb, but maybe I was mistaken about that.

In Albuquerque, I got a hotel room downtown and ran smack into some kind of biker convention. Harleys and crotch rockets were everywhere, and the bars were packed. I grabbed a seat at one and ogled the hot bartender chicks and drank Fat Tire on tap. The more I drank, the better looking they became, so finally it was get-the-hell-out or make-a-fool-of-myself time – and thankfully the latter won. I ate at an Italian restaurant, drank a glass of merlot, walked back to the hotel and crashed as soon as I hit the bed.

When I hit the Texas state line the next day, the highway began crawling with state troopers and county mounties and town cops out to make a buck. Because my Washington plates (never gave California my money) were, oh, eight months out of date, I slowed down.

 

******

 

I finally stopped for the night in Elk City, Okla., and stayed at a Super 8 or Days Inn or something like that. Whatever it was, the place had a Denny's and a bar attached to it. The bar was one of the grungiest places ever, dark as hell with low ceilings that had about 20 years worth of smoke stains on the drop-ceiling tiles. The bartender was cute in that slightly overweight, tattooed biker chick kind of way. She wore a sleeveless shirt and a skirt, and I counted at least 13 tattoos on her from the back of her neck all the way down to her calves and ankles. Forearm tattoos only look cool on dudes who have been in the armed forces special ops, and those need to be small. Apparently this chick didn't get that memo. Besides having Bud in a can, the best thing about the bar was a sign that said "If you are kicked out for fighting, you are not allowed back in that night." (Which was the policy of the Boiler Room in Owensboro, Ky., the night in of my last full-on bar fight in 1997. Marcinkowski and I were there drinking out on the patio and watching and making fun of the karaoke singers when this guy began giving us shit for no reason, making snide remarks and just generally being an asshole. I'm sure I probably told him to fuck off or called him a cocksucker at one point, but the exact memory escapes me. Anyway, Marcinkowski and I got drunk enough that we decided it would be a good idea to try to sing Sam Sham and the Pharohs hit "Wooly Bully."

Well, it was a complete disaster, mainly because being half drunk I couldn't keep time with the music and finally gave up and just started shouting "wooly bully!" whenever I felt like it. Ungrateful bastards, nobody applauded when we left the stage. Anyway, we go back to our table and resume drinking. Maybe 30 minutes goes by, maybe another hour, I don't really remember, but Marcinkowski decided he wanted to sing "Sixteen Tons," so he went back on stage. And at some point during Marcinkowski's song, the guy said something and that was it. The next thing I know, we're rolling around on the ground and the bartender is pulling me off him. Marcinkowski says he saw me go after the guy and yelled "Get him, Joe!" from the stage, dropped his microphone and came running, but I don't remember any of that. All I know is that I cut the shit out of my left index finger on something, which bled like a bitch. They kicked us out of the bar. We drove around for 15 minutes or so and went back. They kicked us out again, so we went to my apartment and polished off the rest of whatever beer I had in the fridge. I think Marcinkowski might have crashed on my beloved – and now late lamented – orange couch that night, but you'd have to ask him.)

 

******

 

I spent the next night with my aunt Edmond, Oklahoma, which is a suburb of Oklahoma City. A professor at Central Oklahoma, she was there when the Timothy McVeigh rained death and destruction down upon America with his bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building. A former nurse, she heeded the call for trained, professional help and went to the site. Glass, broken concrete, shattered bricks, smoke and choking dust. She helped pull people from the rubble.

We went to see the memorial, all the empty chairs – smaller ones for the children killed there – and the reflecting pool. The chain-link fence outside one section of the memorial continues to have teddy bears and flowers and notes left there, woven or tied among the links, a continuing outpouring of grief and sympathy. I found it both solemn and morbid. We walked around for a while and then went home.

 

******

 

That night I ate the worst Mexican food I’ve ever had.

We were supposed to be going to a catfish place, which sounded great because I hadn’t had catfish in about forever. But my aunt hadn’t been there in months, and to say we had trouble finding the place would be kind. We drove and drove and drove and drove, 30, 40 minutes, looking for the place.

Finally, we found it.

I thought it was strange that a catfish place would have a giant red plastic hot pepper above the entrance, but what the hell. It was Oklahoma. Maybe that’s the way they do things there. It wasn’t a catfish place, of course. Since the last time my aunt had been there, it had turned into a Mexican restaurant.

Our hearts were set on catfish, but our stomachs were set on eating. So we stayed.

At least the place had cold beer and plenty of it.

Because it was the single worst Mexican meal I have ever had. I’m convinced the food was pulled from a freezer, popped in the microwave and served. I’ve had better taquitos by putting some on a cookie sheet and baking them in the oven. The salsa for the thick generic chips was ketchup with a dash of off-brand hot sauce. The disappointment was written on our faces, and my aunt was mortified that she had driven around for 40 minutes only to wind up at this place. If she apologized once, she apologized 20 times.

I’ll let her live it down. Some day.

 

******

 

I spent most of a day with Willy, and then I drove to my sister’s house. We hadn’t lived together since my penultimate college summer break, so it took a little – OK, a lot of –  getting used to. I had stayed with her and her kids (14-year-old Hilary, 8-year-old Brett) for five or six days upon occasion, but never for an open-ended period. I didn’t take long to discover just how different we are.

For one thing, she has a cat. For another thing, I’m allergic to cats. So that was nice.

Also, she and the kids are hooked on “American Idol.” The only way I could enjoy that display of glorified karaoke singers – which was on two nights a week; shoot me – would be to drink heavily and turn it into my own personal “Mystery Science Theater 3000” episode. So I went to the bar, watched the Cardinals, lusted after Dana and her amazing posture (no, really) and waited until the craptacularness at home was done.

At 9 p.m., I got the TV because Beth and the kids headed to bed.

I also got the Internet, and not a minute before that. That’s because as soon as Hilary got home from school, she was on it for hours, rooting around Myspace.com or whatever 14-year-old girls do. When Beth got home, she commandeered it. After supper, she was a multi-tasking fool, simultaneously on the computer and her cell phone, fielding calls on the land line and flipping the TV to another one of her reality home shows. And there she stayed pretty much until bed time.

Look, I like having a computer, but the only thing I want to be doing for three hours straight starts with an “F” and ends with “ING.” That’s right, fishing.

 

******

 

My default TV stations are ESPN and its assorted kin that show the Cardinals, A&E, Bravo and USA (for the Law & Order franchise), Comedy Central for “Chappelle’s Show,” “South Park,” “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” Maybe The History Channel or Discovery. I’ll watch WGN if the Cubs are losing. And that’s about it.

My sister’s default settings begin with HGTV and end with TLC – and if it weren’t for those two, she wouldn’t watch TV. She can watch hour upon hour of “House Hunters” and “Flip This House” and “Hey, Look At Our Rock Garden” and “Here’s Some More Shit You Don’t Need And Can’t Afford.” Hour upon mind-numbing, spirit-killing hour.

Beth never knows what TV opportunities are coming up.

“Hey, what’s on next?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t looked. I’ll look when this show is over.”

Good god, it drives me crazy. I can’t stand not knowing what my choices are in the next half-hour, part of my OCD (and those “Monk” commercials are funny, but I still can’t watch that show). Beth will sit and watch commercials instead of taking advantage of her red-blooded American right – nay, her duty – to flip through the channels to see what might be coming on next, because lord knows she’d be crushed if she missed seeing how a couple reacts to this cute little bungalow with the deck and hot tub out back.

I think she does it just to spite me, a passive-aggressive way of getting me back for punching her in the gut as a kid.

 

******

 

I went to the driving range once. Because my golf glove is boxed up somewhere, I wore a blister on the thumb side of my left index finger. Although that might have had something to do with dancing with myself a little too much.

 

******

 

During the time after working construction for my uncle and starting my latest newspaper job, I took a trip to Champaign to see friends I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. Wayne and Barb’s three cats nearly killed me, and I set American, Olympic and world records for phlegm production as my allergies kicked into overdrive. It’s tough to sleep when you’re choking on your own snot.

It was nice to see everyone … but the trip was oddly unsatisfying. There was a veneer of change around town with new businesses and new construction, but stripped of its façade it was the same place I had left three-plus years before. I don’t know what I expected, but that wasn’t it.

It rained all weekend.

I did a drive-by of my old house on Edwin. A mistake. It looked like flowers were planted in the front flowerbed, but I couldn’t see if the yucca plant on the house’s south side was still there. I wondered if all the plants along the back fence remained behind the rock border I made, but it’s tough to see much when you pass by in three seconds.

Anyway.

 

******

I read obituaries at work. I see many women who die with their maiden name intact, and that just didn’t happen if you were born 70 or more years ago. It puts to lie the rumor that there’s someone out there for everyone.

From Dr. Donohue, I have learned more about shingles and herpes and diverticulits than I ever wanted to know.

From Annie’s Mailbox, I learned that everybody cheats. Oh, wait. I already learned that one.

 

*******

 

There’s a farmer’s market here in town, located right across the street from me in my new apartment. A couple of months ago, while still living with Beth before her and the kids moved to Mississippi, I went to the market. I bought black raspberries and tart cherries, and as I said something to the woman during the 15-second transaction, a little wad of spit flew out of my mouth and landed smack on an open bag of cherries. I was nonplussed for a second, but the woman never blinked.

That was bad, but what I saw a couple of days later at a gas station was worse.

So I’m in there buying a six-pack of Boulevard Pale Ale, and there’s this fairly cute chick in front of me in line (blonde, blue eyes, decent legs and other assets), packing a couple of 20-ounce Gatorade bottles. It’s hot outside, and as people are wont to do, she opens one of her Gatorade bottles – orange – and takes a swig of it. Hell, I’ve done that, you’ve done that – people do that all the time. But as she gets near the counter, she sees a little stand-up cooler in which 32-ounce bottles of POWERade are selling for 99 cents, the same price as the Gatorade. She opens the cooler door, grabs two POWERades, slides the two Gatorade bottles inside, pays for her stuff, walks out, gets in her car and leaves.

And I have nothing else to add.

 

Till next time,

Joe

August 13, 2006