My Life (part 40)

Sally and I stood just outside my old home.  I had never seen it from the outside without a mask over my mouth and nose and the times I had seen it I was in a hurry to get from the shuttle to the airlock and spent very little time looking around.  The new air reclamation system had been set up in Bakersfield over a year ago and people were just starting to claim the outside.  A few plants were planted in pots here and there.  Several buildings, including my old home, had been painted, or sandblasted, somehow they looked clean and new.  Many of the homes were painted in bright yellows and greens and reds fighting off the drab smoked gray that had covered everything.  Sally had been born on Jasper’s World and had never seen a city the size of Bakersfield with the exception of what she had seen of Los Angeles.

“And that’s an air lock like they use on space ships?”

“I’ve never seen it left open like that.  We always had to enter the enclosed space and wait for the signal that told us to open the second set of doors.  I feel like I should go up and close the doors.”

“I bet it took the people who live here a long time to get used to it.”  A small family group walked past us on the sidewalk.  Their conversation stopped, they looked away from us and walked as far from us as they could without leaving the sidewalk.  When they were a good ten feet away we heard their conversation re-start.

“I’d say they still are a bit shy of contact in the great outside.”  Sally giggled and we started to walk down the street both of us exploring a city we had never really seen before.  

“It seems busy,” I had never seen people working in yards or sitting on porches.

“How can so many people live so close together?”

“I think the domes and air reclamation moved people even closer together than they had been before the war, but Bakersfield is only a medium sized city.  People always talked about how much better it was here than in the big cities.”

We stayed on Earth ten days just to make sure everything was going as planned in the ten by twenty miles of experimental farmland.  Four of our group headed back to Jasper’s while  the other nine stayed to offer whatever help they could in teaching Earthers to farm.  Matthew and the others planned to stay at least a year, maybe two.  Some of them might never return to Jaspers, there would be plenty for them to do on Earth for the rest of their lives if they decided to stay.

Randy 6 part 11

 

“So what did you decided? I’m assuming you are deciding something,” a holo image of my sister Sally sits at a kitchen table that does not belong in the front room of my rented Cayucos home.  The holo image only includes half the table so the top balances on two legs like it should not.

“Mac thinks I should take up drinking.”  

“You’d be a natural.  I can see you sleeping under a bridge drinking from something in a brown bag.  Are you coming back to work or are you permanently retired?  I need to know.”  With the improvements Mac made to this house’s holo system Sally is life sized and there is no digitalization at all.  It it wasn’t for one side of the kitchen table hanging in space I could believe she came to visit.

“I’m coming back.  This doing nothing is about to drive me crazy.”

“I’ve got a task you might find interesting.  Let me know when you are ready.”

“Couple of days.  The next people to rent this place are going to be amazed with what Mac has done to the holo system.”

“If they can afford the utility bill.  You would not believe the energy drain.  A system like that uses enough energy to run a small town.”

“Hadn’t thought of that.  I’ll check with the owners, see if it’s okay to leave it.  See you soon sister.”  The holo disappears and the living room returns to normal.  Mac appears and plops himself down on the other end of the sofa. 

“Sorry you couldn’t pull it off Randy.”

“What’s that Mac?”

“Not everyone can be a beach bum, it takes more dedication than most people realize.”

“What could you know about it Mac?”

“I read.”

“Contact the owner of this place Mac.  See what we need to do to move out.  Mention your computer upgrades and your holo array.”

Moving out turned out to be as easy as moving in.  I don’t know if the owner is going to keep the upgrades or sell them but he was fine with us leaving them.  The first morning back in Bakersfield I have Mac drive the fifteen minutes to Cayucos Coffee, it’s a long drive for an Americano but the one thing I’m going to miss in Cayucos is Trenton.

“Thought you moved.” Trenton put my coffee in front of me on my table by the window.  He pulls out the chair across from me an sits down with his own foam and sprinkles covered drink.

“Did.” The Americano is perfect.  Mac is capable of making a perfect Americano.  

“Nice to have you visit.”

“Sally is sending me on a mission.”

“Top secret?”

“Not yet, it may get that way.  You remember A. J. Spire?”

“Perhaps the richest man in the Galaxy, I’ve heard of him.”

“You remember what I told you about his part in inventing Living Matter Transfer?”

“He paid for the whole thing.  You and your friends, in effect, stole it from him when you sent out the plans to people all over the Galaxy.”

“And he’s put a lot of money and effort into finding a way to fold space.”

“He’s the one who tried to get into the computer of that prototype you tested a while back.”

“Right.  He was very big on providing a way for living matter to move out into the universe.”

“Was?” It was just a small word but Trenton didn’t miss it, one of the reasons he’s so nice to talk to.

“He’s dead.

“That’s big, he owns a bit of everything.  Owned.  When did this happen?”

“No one knows.  I may have jumped the gun a little.  He is assumed dead.  He’s missed some important meetings and no one has heard anything from him in months.”

Randy 6 part 4

 Inside the car it’s a nice warm seventy degrees.  I watch the outside temperature gauge as it glides from fifty-eight to sixty-two.  It takes a jump to seventy as we fly over the last bit of foothills between the coast and Bakersfield and then the gauge sweeps all the way to one hundred in less than a minute and holds steady there.

“How long till lunch Mac?”

“Hour.”

“How long till Sally’s boys get out of school?”

“Three hours.”

“Do you think Sally would mind if I sat in her office some more?”

“Yes.”

“When I do nothing in space it seems okay because we’re getting somewhere.  Can you understand that Mac?”

“No.  If it helps we are hurtling through space right now.   At the same time we are circling the sun and spinning.  So we are traveling between a thousand miles an hour and just over five hundred thousand miles per hour depending on your point of view.  Does that help Randy?”

“No.”

“I tried.” For a hologram Mac has a pretty convincing sad face.

“I’m sorry Mac.  Where are we going at five hundred thousand miles an hour?”

“Over five hundred thousand miles an hour Randy.  We are either going out or in depending on your point of view.”

Mac has been locked into a loop around Bakersfield while we talk.  He’s waiting for me to give him a landing site. I let him do a couple more loops before I say, “take me home Mac.”

I sit in a white plastic chair in the back yard of my white plastic dome home drinking a lemonade from a white plastic glass.  The raised garden my wife Jill used to maintain is filled with dried weeds.  I can still see her; tall, tan, dressed in white cuffed shorts and a baggy white tee-shirt, smiling.  She knows I’m watching her every move from my white plastic chair.  

Jill’s uncle Toby Larson invented a transporter that was capable of moving living matter from place to place.  Until that time only non-living matter could be transported.  Well, living matter could be transported but it arrived at its second location dead.  Mankind instantly moved out into the Galaxy by the millions until it was discovered that Toby’s device had a flaw.  Every time a person transported it moved your insides, or rather some of your insides, a little to the left.  When the flaw was discovered all living matter transport was stopped.  People were stranded on planets that  would take a spaceship a hundred years to get to.  Non-living transfer provided a method of instant communications and supplies to the stranded settlers but they could never come back to Earth.  But that was not the worst thing that happened.  People became sick.  The people who had used the transporter the most became very sick.  By the time a remedy was created several people had died.  Toby Larson was first.  Jill’s father, Leonard Adams, was the second to die.  Leonard and Toby had used the transporter many times.  Jill became very sick and then I started showing signs of the transporter sickness.   While I was hospitalized, taking the cure, Jill watched over me and made sure everything was done to keep me alive.  Jill let her own sickness proceed unchecked and she died while I still lay in my hospital bed.  

I pull out my personal pad and open access to my bank account.  The numbers increase as I watch money piling up.  My sister Sally runs Randolph W. Owens Private Investigations very well.  The single smartest business move I have ever taken was to make Sally a full partner.  My name on the door provides much of our initial clientele but her skill keeps our customers happy and coming back.

Mac comes out the back door of my dome and sits in the plastic chair beside me.  Holo emitters  have been placed not only throughout my home but they extend to the boundaries of the property.  Mac can exist as a hologram in the backyard and all the way to where the public parkland starts in the front yard.

“Sally’s been trying to contact you Randy.  You don’t answer.  She told me to tell you.”

“Thanks Mac.”

“You’re not going to see what she wants?”

“Later.”

“You’re busy?”

“Right.”

“You’re just sitting here staring out into space Randy.”

“And that’s keeping me busy.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Can you keep quiet?”

“Maybe.”  Mac has a holo glass of lemonade appear in his hand and he takes a pretend sip.  He starts to say something and thinks better of it.  Because of my relationship with my computer’s interface my home computer is state of the art and has capabilities beyond that of many city wide computers.  Mac can think very fast when he is in the range of my home computer.  We sit together in silence until the sun starts to settle.

“I’m going to Jolly Cone for a burger, meet me there?”  Jolly Cone is one of the places on Earth that allows Mac to keep his program in their computer.   Jolly Cone does not allow Mac to work there, they did once for one day.  Now Mac is allowed to form his hologram form only when I am with him and he is treated like a customer.

The Chicken (part 1)

A chicken can be a friend.  I know a lot of people go on about what bird brains they are but people go on about all sorts of things they know nothing about.  I’ve had a chicken friend, her name was Nella.   She roamed the back yard of a small house I was living in.  I made sure she had water in one of those dispensers that would last her about a week.  She had a feeder in her cage which she almost never used (she used the cage for sleeping only).  She could catch a fly on the fly, it was quite a thing to see.  Nella spent her days walking the back yard picking up seeds and small bugs.  She took care of all the dandelions too, she loved the yellow flowers and never let one survive.  But here’s the thing, when I went into the backyard, before the screen door slammed she would come jiggle jaggle running up to me and want to be picked up.  And here’s another thing just everyone doesn’t know, chickens are soft and love to be petted.  I’d carry her around the yard for as long as I wanted.  She never tried to get away but just snuggled in all nice and warm.  There is one thing a person needs to look out for when carrying a chicken, make sure the chicken’s rear end is pointed away from you – they go anywhere and everywhere.  What comes out of the rear of a chicken, other than eggs, is good fertilizer but you don’t want it all over yourself. The eggs are a nice plus though.  How many cats or dogs contribute to your larder?  Nella offered an egg a day in her prime and then leveled off to an egg every other day for years.  Nella lived alone in her back yard so there never were any chicks but I’m sure she would have made a very good mother.  

But all that was a long time ago.  I don’t even remember how Nella ended.  She may have just got old and died or maybe some dog climbed the fence and finished her off.  I’m sure I didn’t have her for a meal.  I’ve eaten many of her kind as nuggets or drumsticks but I’m sure Nella received a proper burial.  I haven’t thought much about her for years.  I can still see her running up to me with that bouncy back and forth two legged walk.  She could fly petty well but seldom did.  I had a dog once, called him Bob.  He was kind of needy, always wanting something.

My name is Randy, by the way, short for Randolph according to my paper work.  I’ve never been called Randolph.  I’m taking the Greyhound from Paso Robles to Bakersfield California.  That’s the wrong direction, I know, but things need to be done and if you really want to get something done Bakersfield is your place.  This may be almost racist but I think pretty much any beer drinker is a better worker than a wine drinker and Bakersfield is probably the beer drinking capital of the world.  I’m not a beer drinker myself, not a wine drinker either, but I’ve hung around a lot of both and if you want a ditch dug or a roof shingled pick the beer drinker every time.  The bus floats into the Buttonwillow exit of Interstate Five.  The driver taps the air brakes making sure they are still there but then the light changes and he makes the turn onto Highway Fiifty-Eight without hardly slowing down at all.  He slides our transport container around behind an army of gas pumps and comes to a noisy abrupt halt with the buses front door lined up with the front door of the gas companies Seven Eleven.

“Ten minutes people,” he says as he locks things up and then he’s the first one out the door.  There are only ten of us on a bus that could haul sixty.  Half of us are sleeping, half of the other half are reading or taking care of a baby, I follow the other two people that choose to visit the Buttonwillow Greyhound Bus Terminal.  Outside the temperature increases a good thirty degrees.  The ten foot walk in the heat feels good.  Once I’m inside the store it drops at least thrity-five degrees.  The two others disappear into the station’s restrooms, the driver is nowhere to be seen.  There must be a special hideout for drivers.  I smell the coffee to see if I can tell how old it is.

The counter girl looks up from whatever it is she was reading and says, “It’s fresh, just finished making,”  so I pour myself a paper cup full and pull out a couple of bucks but the girl waves the money off.  “Brewed coffee is free if you come in off the bus.  We’ve got a deal with Greyhound.”

“Thanks,” I stuff the two bucks back into my front pocket and wander over to the counter to see if she wants to talk.  “So how’s life in beautiful Buttionwillow?”

“You know Buttonwillow is three miles west of here right?  This is just the Buttonwillow exit.”

“I’ve been to Buttonwillow I just figured you must live around here and where else is there?”

“There are people who drive in from Bakersfield or Shafter but I do happen to live in the nice quiet town of Buttonwillow.  

“I lived there for a year.  Had a great little dog, English Shepard, called him Bob.”

“Those are great dogs.  Real easy to train,” she put her magazine aside, “What you got planned for Bakersfield?”

“Just wanting to do some work.  I’m tired of taking it easy.”

“You like corn chips?  You could stay here, Fritos could alway use a few good men.”

“I want something outdoors that gets me all dirty and covered with sweat.”

“Not me.  This is the coldest place in town.  I run from here to my car and the AC is already on high at home.  That’s how I spend summers.”

“It takes at least a ninety degree day before my toes start to warm up but you’re right I think some people stay colder in the summer now a days.”

“And when winter comes I put the heaters all on high.”

My driver comes out of his hiding place in the back of the store and looks at his watch as he passes behind me, “I think that’s my cue.  Nice talking with you.  Stay cool,”  I think about how that sounds, “Temperature wise, you know, cool as in not hot?”

“Understood the first time.  You take it easy.”  She picked up her magazine and forgot all about me before the door closed behind me.

Bakersfield gets closer to Buttonwillow every day but the bus terminal is still in the same place.  The big B-U-S, sigh hasn’t changed in fifty years.  The nine by nine asbestos tile is still in place, nothing shines like a buffed asbestos tile.  I walk through the empty waiting room and out into the dry hundred degrees of beautiful downtown Bakersfield.  The breeze always reminds me of a commercial clothes dryer for some reason, very dry.  

Most of downtown was built in the fifties. In nineteen-fifty-two an earthquake knocked down about half the buildings and then bulldozers knocked down the rest.  People wanted new modern buildings and this was their big chance.  Penny’s, Newberry’s, Woolsworth’s, See’s, Kress’s, their trademark structures are all still here but with new occupants.  Inside they are offices, art stores and used things.  Mom and Pops own downtown Bakersfield.  It’s about three city blocks to the coffee shop; well I walk past two coffee shops to get to the one I want.  The heat that comes up from the concrete sidewalk is like nothing any other town has to offer.  The joke is that a guy remarks that it’s a hundred and fifteen in the shade in Bakersfield and then the other guy says, “but it’s a dry heat.”  It’s funny enough but it really does make a big difference and right now it is just about as dry as air can get.  It’s only about a hundred degrees today and, believe it or not, that’s pretty comfortable with almost no humidity.  The biggest problem with the temperature in a Bakersfield summer is that some of the stores are kept so cold you see dark spots until your body adjusts to the change.  

The coffee shop is only about a third full.  The same group of people sit around the small tables and I haven’t been here in almost two years, they may be animatronic dummies built to make it look like the place is doing business but if they are they’re very good.  I haven’t been here in two years, like I said, and the lady making the coffee calls me Randy and knows I want an Americano.  How do they do that?  Unlike the big corporate chain, they let you sit down and bring the coffee to you.  Explain this one.  The corporate chain has a line of cars waiting at the take out window.  The corporate chain hands out your coffee and says “next” on the inside.  The corporate chain charges thirty-five cents more for an Americano.  This Mom and Pops has the time to chat with you, bring your coffee to your table and has ten people it calls customers sitting around writing, reading and talking.  On top of that this little Mom and Pops has stood the test of time for twenty-five years.  Anyway.

“There you go Randy.  Have a nice day,” she sets the ceramic mug down at my table and walks back behind the counter.  A light brown creama almost completely covers my cup; you can’t get that at the corporate stores either.  The first sip of really good coffee always reminds me of my Grandmother on my father’s side.  She made coffee in a percolator on top of a gas fired stove.   I take a few minutes just to sit and watch the town out the plate glass windows that make up two of the coffee shop’s walls.

“Jill.”

“Randy, you’re in town?”

“Just got in.  I’m downtown sipping some coffee.  You want a cup?”

“I’ve got the mother in law house all set up for you.  I’ve still got thirty minutes before I can leave work.  You be okay that long?”

“Sure, all I’ve got planned for today is to finish this coffee,”  I hold up the cup to show her even though she can’t see it.   “Looking forward to seeing  you again.  You sure the mother in law house is okay?  I could still find a place.”

“Silly, I’ve been looking forward to your visit ever since you said you were coming.  It’s going to be fun.”

I stuff my little flip phone back into my pocket and go back to watching the town outside the windows.  The coffee is cold but still good.  

Ducky’s

Ducky’s

He wasn’t tall.  He wasn’t short.  He wasn’t fat.  He wasn’t skinny.  His hair was brown, not sandy or dark.  His skin was white but with just enough brown pigment to give his heritage away.  His clothes were simple but clean.  His eyes were a piercing blue, totally blue, they could look deep into your soul and find the part of you you had forgotten.

He stood at the center of the bridge, on the sidewalk provided, his piercing eyes looking south.  Three rows of cars beneath him on his left moved at seventy miles per hour to the north.  Three rows of cars beneath him on his right moved at seventy miles per hour to the south.  One out of every one hundred cars would honk a horn at him.  He failed to notice.  He was not looking at cars.  He was looking at the South.  He wanted to look into the south until he saw his own back but he could not, things are not that simple.  And so he stood.  He felt the sun shift from his left side to the top of his head.  His brown hair felt warm to the touch.  The cool ocean breeze from the west became welcome so he turned into it and walked toward it.  The smell of fish pulled at his nose.  All the way to the wooden pier he followed it.  The shop was busy but not full. Three piece or two?   Before he had always asked for three but he was alone now.  He almost said two but for old times sake he continued with three, he could skip dinner.  Stools with round red plastic covered seats had been planted into concrete  next to a counter that surrounded the building.  A table for four was just too intrusive, a table for two too lonely, he sat on a high stool and looked out the window at the pier and at the Pacific Ocean beyond.  He tried to see as far west as he had seen south but could not.  Young girls in bikinis interrupted his view.

A short story by david blankenship, completed February 8, 2019, 10:10am while sitting in Dagny’s Coffee Shop, one block east of the Fox Theatre at the corner of 20th & Eye street, Bakersfield, California.

Bakersfield

The door shrieked as it closed, closed is the wrong word. slammed is better.  With a hard jerk he double checked the handle to make sure the lock had been activated.  He turned and looked toward the house at the end of a red brick walkway, took two steps and then paused, shook his head and spit into the perfect grass that lined both sides of the red clay path.  Free from the air conditioned car sweat formed in beads on his forehead.  Under his breath he cursed the summer’s heat, took out a napkin from Starbucks he had saved, knowing this moment would come, and wiped the moisture before it had a chance to drip into his eyes. He took another step toward the house.  He had no desire to cover the forty feet from where he was to the red painted wooden door.  Four four seven.  A wrinkled bit of paper taken from the front pocket of his jeans compared to the number on a rural route style mail box confirmed this was the right house.  He dug into his pocket until he found the key.  He turned, retraced the few steps he had taken and inserted the plastic topped Ford key into the lock under the door handle of he black car, the engine still ticked as it tried to shed the heat from recent combustion. The air inside the car was still cool.  He clicked the key in the ignition and waited for the engine to fire.  The front tires squeaked as they grabbed at the hot oily black asphalt.  The AC, on full, hit his wet face and produced the first smile of the morning.  One hundred forty miles away even now there is fog and a cool breeze.  He looked at the gauge on the dash, there was plenty of gas, he wouldn’t need to open the door or even roll down the window before he could be assured of a temperature below seventy degrees.

Bakersfield

The bus screeches to a halt its air brakes screaming. The door stays shut for a few seconds while the driver gives the trash in the tail wind time to settle. By the time the door squishes open I’m waiting at the front steps with my green duffel over my shoulder. I bounce down the two steps and onto the tire-blackened concrete of the bus barn. A bright light comes through double glass doors that lead into the bus station’s lobby so I push through one of them. In the harsh white light of the lobby the black and white-checkered vinyl floor tiles hold a high polish undamaged by the day’s first arrivals until my tennis shoes leave a faint path in the now past perfection. Lots of empty blue plastic chairs cry out for occupancy but I’ve been sitting all night. I let my rubber-soled shoes leave a dim but noticeable trail all the way across the lobby and to the double glass doors that open to a wide concrete walkway next to a wide but lightly traveled, at this hour, city street.
It’s not yet daybreak and it’s already warm, ninety degrees? Wearing my shorts and tee shirt I froze when I boarded the bus in a coastal fog. My apparel is no longer a problem. Downtown is dirty, years of old gum have become thin gray dots on the sidewalk, yesterday’s paper wrappers float about and there is the occasional smell of the homeless in doorways that had hidden them from view during their morning ablutions. Downtown is dirty but not any dirtier than any other downtown. The shops are all still quiet, their doors still locked. A few of the less trusting shops have expanding steel grates pulled across their entryways but most trust the dead bolts on their glass doors. Crime is not a major problem here and the homeless must be showing some discretion. The homeless seem to be the only ones about at this hour and I blend right in in many ways. The green duffel bag on my shoulder puts me into the club, my smell doesn’t. I smell like strawberry Sauvé shampoo. Most of the homeless smell like dirty sweat. Showers are expensive.
I lived here. Not downtown but in this town. I grew up here. About six miles from where I’m standing. I remember visiting these stores with my older sister, mostly window-shopping; we never seemed to have much money. My sister would always come to the same store window and look at the same display. In the window eight people all about ten inches high stood in a circle watching a single egg. I remember the first time we went into the store. She had saved her money for months. She purchased one of the figures and the egg. We came back many times and once, every six months or so, she would purchase another of the egg watchers. I think she stopped looking into the window when she had five of the people watching the egg she had purchased.

Fog

Gray sky from top to bottom, people from the outside call it fog some call it smog, but it’s just a gray sky. Later in the day a spot of yellow may or may not appear suggesting something exists outside this dome of gray mist. There are days when the grey comes in close, where the universe is reduced to a bubble of visibility fifteen feet in all directions. It’s nice to be alone. But today the cars pass at full speed on the elevated freeway to the south. People in a hurry to be west of here, another group of people in just as big a hurry to be east, and I sit, without effort, at the spot they all pushed hard to reach.   Confidence in the continued spin of the Earth, our track around the sun, and our hurtle from the center of the universe keeps me from being a vagrant.

Wheat #27

“Good kid, I think you’ve chosen wisely,” Toby said to himself as the old truck rattled its way back home.

“Hey kid! Get out of that bed,” Jack’s mother pushed on his feet and pulled on his big toe.

“Sleep,” Jack answered from deep within his pillow.

“It’s ten, your father is almost ready to take you into Bakersfield.” Jack rolled over in the bed keeping the pillow over his face not ready to see his mother’s perky morning face. She gave him one final shake and left him alone to deal with the morning. Jack sat up slowly, slid his feet over the edge of the bed and looked down at the floor next to his bed. His clothes lay in a pile. He had slept without taking a shower. His sheets would need to be washed. He notice a slip of paper peeking out of the top of his shirt pocket and bent down to see what it was. The check Toby had given him was a full third more than he had expected. The quality of the car he would drive to and from school just took a leap toward decent. Jack, inspired, hurried through his shower, got dressed and dumped his bed sheets where he knew his mother would find them in the utility room next to the washer.

“Ready,” he said to his father who was sitting on the sofa hiding behind the morning paper.

“Ten minutes,” his father said without putting down the paper but taking a sip from his coffee cup.

“Look at this,” Jack dropped the check over the top edge of the newspaper.

First a grunt and then the paper lowered. Jack’s father picked up the check and looked it over. “Uncle’s a decent guy. How many hours did you work?”

“Not that many. I think he padded it a bit,” Jack took the check back and pushed it into his shirt pocket. “We can look at that Midget.”

“You’ll wish you had a real car when winter gets here,” Jack’s dad paused and then added, “but it’s your money. Sure we can look, but dependability is still the most important factor, right?”

“Right,” Jack could see Ellen’s red hair flying in the wind as the Midget hung to the curves in the road, the top down and the engine winding out between shifts. “It’s got to be dependable.”

If Kelcy’s Restaurant Was In Bakersfield CA.

A short story by david blankenship.

“Pass that”, my best friend Matt said still chewing his mouth full of eggs, pointing with his pinky finger and waving his coffee toward the plate of bacon just a few inches out of his reach.

I push the platter filled with hot, greasy pork a few inches closer to him and go back to pretending I’m sipping my coffee alone. “That stuff is going to kill you.”

“But I will have lived, Mr. Toad. I will have lived”. Only Matt calls me Mr. Toad, it’s a long story. We’ve been friends for a long time. I think sometimes that’s the only reason we are friends, because we’ve been friends a long time? He sits there in his stained, faded blue jeans, his knobby knees showing through holes, an over-sized tee shirt with matching stains and happy for no reason at all. Hasn’t had a thought in his head for years. He can dress however he wants, he could buy and sell me without emptying his petty cash drawer, if he were organized enough to have a petty cash drawer. (The only place I’ve ever seen him go to in order to replenish funds is the old hide-a-bed sofa in his one room apartment.) He can always come up with enough loose change from between the cushions for a meal.

“That,” he motions toward the catsup bottle that’s been sitting on the edge of the table since the beginning of time. I slide it next to the platter of bacon and turn away, not wanting to know what is going to be covered with the red slime.

We were four years old, unknown to us, the two youngest kids in a classroom full of kindergartners. I watched the door of the room close leaving my smiling mother on the other side.

Before I had time to shed tears Matt hollered, “hey you, bring those bricks.”

As I entered the room Matt was in charge of half the group of post toddlers. He had them building walls out of cardboard bricks, no one knew why but it was something Matt felt must be done.

One team of small children built a wall on one side of the room. One team of small children built a wall on the other side. Matt instructed each team to stockpile small wooden bricks he called ammunition. Our teacher sat at her desk enjoying her creative, well managed, group of special people.

With walls completed and stockpiles piled Matt stood tall and shouted with his short arm extended toward the opposite side of the room, “War!” and lodged a wooden brick toward the far wall of cardboard bricks. The children, with an innate sense, understood and wooden bricks filled the air but the cardboard walls held. Matt pointed to me and to the opposing wall. I understood without explanation. I prepared for the consequences and started my run across the room yelling the whole time. I plunged into the cardboard wall of the opposition and, in giving my life, destroyed the defenses of the enemy.

Matt and I sat on the bench outside the principal’s office swinging our short legs in the air. Neither of us knew what to expect but both of us felt just in our actions.

Matt cleaned his plate with his last bit of toast as I took another sip of coffee from my half filled cup. The waitress, a girl we had grown up with, along with everyone else in this small town, laid our check down at the edge of the table and smiled at Matt more than she smiled at me. Matt did the expected and slid the bill toward me giving me his sad, hound dog look that meant all his money was in the sofa at home. I put cash on top of the slip of paper without bothering to enter a fruitless discussion over my having had only a cup of coffee.

“Got to go, Mr. Toad”, Matt wiped his greasy fingers on his stained pants and headed to the door without looking back. I watched him hurry past the plate glass front of the restaurant.

The energy in the room shifts to a gentle heartbeat without Matt’s bright-eyed eagerness in the mix. The coffee is good; I hold the oversized cup in both hands and keep the mixture near my lips in between sips. Most of the booths are empty, where there are customers their sounds are contained, I can see mouths forming words and hands adding emphasis but the only sound is the soft instrumental music coming from speakers hidden in the ceiling. The girl comes back to the table and offers more of the black blessing, she knows my name and I know hers but she just smiles and I just nod. The idea that I could spend the day here, watching people pass on the sidewalk outside, while I drink coffee doesn’t sound like wasted time at all but possibly redeemed time. What is incorruptible? What has worth? I know the guy who spends his days teaching small children to sing. Their notes are not found on keyboards but he smiles and encourages until they at least have a discernable direction and then they move to another teacher who reaps his crop. He has a list of silly songs that make each new group laugh. I search out seven year olds and ask the question, “how come six is afraid of seven?” The answer means nothing to the average six year old but to seven year olds it opens windows and floods their world with light.

Two half inch thick, plate glass windows, tilted out at their tops, have stood the test of time for at least seventy years. They cover the front of the restaurant from corner to corner, two feet from the floor and three feet from the ceiling, leaving room between them for a single, wood framed, glass door. Medium brown real wood siding with rounded joints running from ground to ceiling every six inches covers the rest of the walls. In memory I know a counter with red cushioned stools runs across the back of the store defining the line between the territory of customers and the kitchen workspace. The high back of my place in one of the booths that line each sidewall prevents me from seeing the back half of the building, but I’ve seen it before and the plate glass windows offer more entertainment. Outside the plate glass window six feet of concrete, marked when poured with two foot by two-foot squares, fills the space between the building and the curb next to the road. The road is well used. The sidewalk gets some use.

A very young mother (Very young being anyone under thirty.) walks slowly, allowing her daughter to walk at a normal pace. How differently will this child progress for not having been pulled by the arm and dragged from place to place? Will she be more prepared for life? Will she be less likely to pull and push others as she makes her way? At this point she looks a bit smug, like she expects to be treated well, like it is nothing special.

My older sister is such a person, naturally assuming she is entitled to a proper life. We were sitting in her room, a rare moment in my life, most of the time her room remained strictly out of my rights. We were sitting on the floor, on hard nine by nine asbestos strengthened tile. My sister Martha read from a fiction book about the famous Mickey Mouse Club’s Annette. It was a very odd day indeed. As she read I listened. I became a part of the world of a mouseketeer.

“You’re looking at her!” my sister shouted, dragging me from my place in the fiction world. I was dumbfounded; who could I be looking at?

“I saw you. You were looking at the picture of Annette on the cover. You think she is prettier than I am!” No such thought had crossed my mind but I could think of no words in my defense. I wanted to get back to the world of fiction. “If you must look at something, look at me.” After this proclamation she went back to reading as I took great care not to look at the cover of the book she held, no longer in comfort. At the end of each page she would peek over the top of the book covered with Annette’s face and find my wide-open eyes looking anywhere but at that face. If she thought she would catch me at any time looking where I was forbidden to look she misunderstood my need to know what Annette would do next.

“Are you spending the day here, Todd?” My diligent waitress, Susie, stood at the end of my table with a pot of black coffee in one hand a white cloth for wiping tables in the other. “Where were you?” she asked letting me know she wasn’t rushing me off.

“A long time ago,” Susie and I had known each other forever but had never gotten to know each other. She’s a good person; we had never been in the same circles, different tracks at school, and different parts of town. “Should I have some pancakes?” thinking the rent on my table might have become due.

“You’re fine, as you can see this is not our busy season,” she waved a hand toward the rest of the restaurant that now catered to only me.

A wild thought crossed my mind, “would you sit with me?” offering to bring her into my world for the first time. She turned and left. A few seconds later she returned without the pot of coffee and cleaning rag. She slid into the bench seat opposite me and looked straight at me, smiling, waiting for my reaction. One of the reasons we have never become friends has been she is prettier than a girl I expect to give me a second glance. And while she is no longer young she still has eyes that capture, like Annette’s.

“So, how’s business?” it was lame but it was all I could think of.

“Fine,” she answered, still smiling, enjoying my predicament. “I had a crush on you in the third grade,” she was just trying to make things worse, but I rather enjoyed the electricity that went up my spine.

“I was pretty cute that year,” it was an honest reply; third grade was one of my best years.

“I tried to get you to watch me on the monkey bars.”

“The monkey bars were the cultural center of the play ground.” A group of people pushed open the door and started finding places in booths before I could think of more to say.

“Got to go,” Susie slid out of the booth and turned back into a middle-aged waitress. “Hang around, I’ll be back,” she gave just a taste of Schwarzenegger.

The new comers are out-of-towners and need menus and explanations; she will be busy for awhile.

The oversized, plate glass windows still offer a view of life, like the guy in the cave watching shadows passing by I watch for clues. A small gang of mostly boys – the word gang softened by their all having matching Razor scooters, rolls by.

When I was nine an overpass was built between my home and my school. It meant we would not have to wait for trains or run across four lanes of traffic; so it was never considered a bad thing even though my father had to buy a different car as his would not make it up the man-made hill without smoking out the neighborhood. (Take a breath.) At that time skateboards were made out of steel wheeled roller skates attached to a board. Great care was given to picking out the right board; wheel alignment was secondary as the bent nails that held the wheels in place never held that well. I painted and pin striped, Matt just used any old board and left all its imperfections in place, but he was the better skateboarder. Kids today jump, get air, spin around, ride handrails I’ve even seen some do hand stands; our goal was to stay upright and rolling. The gang of Razor riders wouldn’t pause at coming down an overpass and while technology may have changed, being kids we knew it would have to be done. And we tried. Steel wheels nailed loosely to two-by-fours lack stability and short thick posts with guardrails bolted to them hurt when you land on them. Matt’s solution was to nail, with two nails, a two by two four-foot length of wood to his skate board. He nailed, with one nail, a cross piece at the end and attached (with what we described as big nails) two four-inch wheels one at each end of the crosspiece. Matt’s plan was to lie down on this modified skateboard/go-cart and navigate down the overpass. He may be the inventor of the first street luge. We carried his invention to the top of the overpass. It was a long, high overpass with a narrow, four-foot walkway. The first half of the walkway had a short concrete wall with a pipe handrail attached to protect cars from pedestrians and pedestrians from cars. The last half of the walkway had short eight by eight posts six feet apart with galvanized steel railing bolted to them. There was no pushing off. The garage- built luge, made using half rotted lumber nailed together using rocks for hammers gained speed slowly, its well-oiled steel wheels finding their own alignment as speed increased. Matt laid back on the skateboard part of his contraption and made minute adjustments with the cross piece using his feet. The rest of us ran after him loosing ground quickly. He almost made it.   I’m not sure we ever considered he would make it all the way to the foot of the overpass because in so doing he would have plunged into cross traffic with no way to time his arrival, but he stopped short twenty feet from the base of the man-made hill when one four inch wheel caught the base of one eight by eight post. The two by two post broke in the middle sending the half with two four inch wheels out into the road and leaving Matt still lying on his skateboard. He pretended to be knocked out for a few seconds and we played along asking things like, “is he breathing?” And saying things like, “He was a good guy.” He pretended to come out of his coma and we all agreed that the Street Luge was ahead of its time.

The clock on the wall reads nine am. I’m sure there is something somewhere that needs my attention but nothing comes to mind. I was brought up to work hard, “by the sweat of my face”.   I sought out hard things to do, lived in a hot industrial part of the country, which provided a well taken care of family and many years of health without health clubs. I’ve never enjoyed riding a bike that goes nowhere or cross country skiing in the comfort of a room filled with sweating people. Today, sitting in this booth, I have no desire to sweat either to create something or to feel good about the way I take care of myself.

I started out as a small guy and eventually grew into a medium guy. My first day of high school I weighed in at one hundred twenty nine pounds, counting blue jeans, a white tee shirt and slip on white tennis shoes. I should note; the blue jeans were flared bells, not the wide bells the hippies wore, just a bit wider than boot cut jeans (it was, after all, the sixties and I’m not a nonconformist).

I looked small but I had a secret. My father, while I was trying to pass the president’s eighth grade physical fitness test and failing miserably, purchased a drill. It was a drill for drilling into the earth, not for oil or for water but for drainage. My father’s bucket type rotary drill was capable of drilling a hole four foot across and thirty-seven feet deep. With a good bit of pushing the limits it could drill a hole five feet across and fifty feet deep but that was seldom called for in the world of drainage. Until late in life, my father had only enough money to find shelter and food for our medium sized family with very little extra, like much of America. There are earth drills made with the latest clutches and hydraulic arms, with rows of gages, buttons and levers. My father’s earth drill was made in Mexico with parts dating back to nineteen-o-nine. It was mounted on a nineteen-forty-nine Ford truck bed which today would be considered quite nice but in nineteen-sixty-five was just considered to be an old truck. Most people have never seen a bucket type rotary drill. I will try to explain without getting too technical. There are two types of by-hand posthole diggers. A clam type post hole digger opens and closes, like a clam, it is shoved into the dirt open, closes on the dirt, the dirt is lifted out of the hole, the clam is opened and the dirt falls out. A bucket type rotary drill does not work this way.   A rotary posthole digger turns round with two slanted blades pushing dirt up and into a steel cylinder. This cylinder with blades on the bottom is lifted out of the hole and the dirt is dumped out. This is how a bucket type rotary drill works.   The notable difference is my father’s rotary drill bucket was built of thick steel and was thirty-three inches across and thirty inches deep. When full the bucket could hold about four hundred pounds of dirt; add the weight of the steel bucket and the steel shaft needed to turn the bucket in the hole and you have my summer job. Most bucket type rotary drills made in the United States have a hydraulic arm that pulls the bucket to the side of the truck and dumps the dirt out the hinged bottom of the bucket; my fathers had a rope. A person could be enticed to pull the rope and pull the bucket to the side of the hole with the proper amount of money, or a father could tell his son this was his plan for the summer. I got pretty good at it. After the first dump legs could be braced against the pile of dirt and with the right timing and pulling with everything I had the task could be accomplished. My father and I drilled hundreds of holes all over the county. Looking back it was a well-spent summer.   My father hired a replacement for me and I started high school. The first week of school the president wanted to know if we were still healthy. I waited in line to do my chin-up; in junior high only one chin-up was needed to pass and I had done that, with a great deal of effort. My turn came. I prepared for the shame. I grabbed the chin-up bar. My body felt strangely light. I did a chin-up with almost no effort. I did another. I did ten. I did twenty. Guys in the physical education class started to gather around and count my chin-ups. Cheering was heard. Out of sheer embarrassment I stopped doing chin-ups. I have no idea how many I could have done.

Susie is standing at the end of my table. She has a coffee pot in one hand and a white rag in the other. She’s looking out the plate glass window like it might be a chain link fence with razor wire rolled across the top. My cup is empty but that could be a good thing.

After a few seconds Susie remembers her lot in life, “coffee?” she asks.

“I think I should shift to water, if that’s alright?” still unsure of my squatters rights.

“I’ve listed you as a permanent resident. This is officially Todd’s Booth now”; she smiled and hurried off to check on half full cups at tables with “on a break” customers. I can hear her speaking Spanish to a group in the booth behind me. She doesn’t seem to have any trouble at all understanding their requests and answers questions quickly. I’m just guessing they are talking about food and drinks; it’s Greek to me.

I tried to learn Spanish in high school. The cutest teacher I have ever had. She had still been in college the year before she taught us, five foot two, brown eyes, brown hair, always smiling and it was the sixties so; very short skirts. I could blame my failure to learn a second language on her but she was a good teacher and I did learn some Spanish: “O la Isabelle, como estas? Muy be in, e to? Muy be in.” It took me four months to learn that much and I’m sure it is spelled and punctuated wrong. Miss Hanna was the first older woman to capture my love. She asked me to stay after class toward the end of the semester.

I watched her lips as she asked me, “are you planning to continue in Spanish next semester?”

I could smell her perfume, as I answered, “no.”

Her brown hair fell into soft waves on her shoulders as she stated, “Okay, I’m going to give you a C for this semester, but you understand I would have to fail you if you were planning to continue in Spanish?”

I nodded trying to think of a way to prolong the conversation leaving her with finding a way to break contact with a high school freshman silently standing a foot away from her while the next class took their seats.

“You’d better be going to your next class,” she said in the softest, sweetest words. I stumbled out of her classroom and made it to my next appointment in time to get a special look from my algebra teacher.

Traffic on the road outside the plate glass windows has increased. Drivers keeping their cars a few feet from the bumper in front of them, making sure to reach their destination before the car two feet behind them. Two lines of cars moving to the east at a fast walk and two lines of cars moving to the west at the same pace. Mathematically I could be the mean. Without moving at all I may have somehow found the place on which everything balances, or not.

Honesty is a big part of proper communication. Without it everything breaks down, in my opinion. My 1960 Studebaker Lark had managed to get a carload of friends to an event and then into the parking lot of an A&W. This was back when girls on roller skates rolled from car window to car window with trays made to hang on windows rolled up one inch. We had drinks, someone may have had a burger but when we finished a pile of leftovers filled the window tray to overflowing. The girl skated by, picked up our tray and skated away – leaving the small glass mug with A&W proudly painted to its side in my hands while I waited for the last bit of ice to melt. There was only one thing I could do. I drove away with the stolen property.  The thrill of the prefect crime overwhelmed me. The A&W was not the one near my home but in a small neighboring town so there was very little chance I would ever be brought to justice. The prize was significant. These were mugs that could not be bought, as far as I knew, if you had one it proved you were a thief. But crime leads to crime and I had felt the adrenaline rush. My next crime would be premeditated. Matt agreed that it must be done. He agreed to help with the distraction part of the plan. We pulled into our local A&W. I put the window up one inch and waited. A girl on skates stopped at the driver’s side window of my gray Studebaker Lark.

“Two hamburger, two fries, and,” leading to my future prize, “two large root beer floats please.” The girl filled in spaces on her note pad and skated off. As expected she returned with our order and placed it on the edge of the window. I paid in bills and she made change from the coin dispenser on her belt. After eating we placed the papers and holders on the tray along with one large A&W mug. This is where true criminal genius is displayed; before placing the small A&W mug I had stolen onto the tray a bit of root beer and froth from my large mug was swished around in the small mug, making it look used. We even tossed a napkin into the small mug to add to the effect. The girl skated by without a pause she removed the tray and carried it to the building. There were questions asked at the window access to the kitchen. The receipt was scrutinized. I started the car, preparing to make a run for it, sad that we would never be able to eat here again. The girl on skates turned and motioned for me to wait. We were caught. I shut off the engine and waited for our judgment.

The girl skated up to my window, “I sorry, I charged you for a large float instead of a small,” she said as she counted out the difference in change from the coin dispenser attached to her belt. It was decided we should leave our life of crime on this high note, as we would never be able to top it.

This day looks as much like spring as any I have seen but there must be a small cloud hanging over the restaurant I sit in. Small drops have produced dark spots on the cement outside the plate glass windows. The dark spots are still inches apart and on the dry, warm cement the spots are fading quickly. A man comes into the dining room and as the door closes it pushes the smell of rain across the room. The only time I completely relax is during rain. Rainy days, days in which the rain never stops, it slows to a sprinkle, increases to a downpour, the sun shines and the clouds darken the day but the rain continues. Living in this land of limited rainfall I have learned to enjoy the patterns of sprinklers watering lawns. The sprinkler manufactures have indulged my interest and produced a variety of pulses and sprays that are capable of keeping me entertained for hours. Today the bit of rain passes and the concrete dries quickly making the storm a memory.

Many of my memories come from dry places. The ocean is two hours and forty minutes away. A two-hour drive can be arranged but the most common drive consumes two hours and forty minutes before the gasp that comes every time I see the unbelievable expanse of salted water. Driving south on one-o-one there is a hill and then a turn and then a view of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Pismo, California, I’ve seen the view hundreds of times but I know that if I were to drive there today I would be amazed.

My oldest ocean memory is from farther north, the soft sand of Santa Cruz still between my toes as I walk down the boardwalk looking into every doorway-watching people. As a four-year-old white boy with blond hair and blue eyes I stop and stand with my nose almost touching thick glass. On the other side of the candy store window a stainless steel machine hums as it leisurely moves. The machine on display in the window has two sets of shiny arms. From each of the machine’s arms two long rigid fingers extend and turn within the same space like the machine is slowly twiddling it’s thumbs.

I’ve been watching the taffy-pulling machine for several minutes. Its repetitive motion has me hypnotized. Time after time the long steel fingers stretch the taffy. I jump back, startled, as an iridescent green fly lands on the taffy. The fly stands still and rubs his feet together unaware of the danger around him. He seems very much aware of the possibility of a feast. I watch, spellbound as the machine catches the fly and folds it into the taffy. The taffy now has a moving, struggling dark lump encapsulated. Next time around the fly parts spread out over two or three inches the struggling has ceased. I continue to watch as the line of fly parts in the taffy become a long dark brown line. Wide-eyed and fascinated I’m glued to the window as the bright metal machine folds and refolds the candy. Five minutes pass and now the fly exists as a thin brown line throughout every fold of the taffy. I watch as the brown line pales.   Fold within fold until at last the stain of fly parts disappears. A man comes and removes the taffy from the pulling machine and plops it down on a wooden topped table.

Susie slides onto the upholstered bench opposite mine and just sits waiting for me to come back. She watches my eyes until they focus on her, “How’s your day so far?” she asks as soon as she sees I’ve returned.

“I’m having a fine day, there is a great view of life from here.”

“I know, sometimes I feel like I watch too much of it go by,” she sounds tired. I suspect her shift is only half over.

“It’s the window that causes the illusion.”

“You speak strangely, old man,” she’s smiling and her eyes, as old as mine, still sparkle.

“We are not a separated bubble, it’s just a point of view. Consider the view from an airplane or the space station; we’re right in the middle of everything. We’re as much a part as anyone anywhere.”

“As you sit here and I wash tables?”

“As far as I can tell”, she just continues to be happy not letting my analyzing get in her way.

“You never had breakfast. It’s slow for a while yet. You want to have an early lunch or late breakfast with me?” I see the pretty little girl doing tricks on the monkey bars sitting across from the table. If only I had been smarter in the third grade we would be old friends by now.

“I’d enjoy some breakfast and your company”, without becoming a waitress or writing in her pad she slides out of the booth and leaves to tell the cook what she thinks my breakfast should be.

I was a witness to a miracle once, at least everyone else in the room said it was a miracle. My grandmother on my mother’s side was a great cook. My grandmother on my father’s side felt food should be drowned in hot grease. We were at my mother’s side grandmothers for Thanksgiving which was one of the few times it would have been safe to eat with my father’s mother as deep fried turkey had not been invented yet. It wasn’t the best time to eat at my mother’s mother’s because her best dishes were influenced by Mexico and Spain but with help from plenty of aunts and even a few uncles the table expressed the mass quantities of food needed to honor the Native Americans. This Thanksgiving, along with a beautifully browned turkey filled with stuffing, mashed potatoes, homemade dinner rolls, and cranberries a huge bowl of boiled sweet potatoes held a place of honor in the center of the dinning room table. Once, when very young I was tempted to taste a baked sweet potato with melted marshmallows on top. I was right. I don’t like sweet potatoes.   These sweet potatoes were something special. Technique was debated while they were made. They were talked about as they were set on the table. They even had a line in the Thanksgiving prayer. Sisters dipped into the sweet potatoes’ bowl and fished out, orange, sweet potatoes as the first item on their plate. I did not taste one but I heard expressed in several different ways that they were wonderful. The turkey was finished with and carried off. The cranberries were gone. The mashed potatoes and gravy were saved in the refrigerator. Uncles left the table to watch the game but aunts stayed around the remains of the feast and talked. As they talked they dipped into the sweet potatoes’ bowl and snagged bits to nibble at.             Everything went fine for quite a while until an aunt commented, “I was sure I got the last one!”

My grandmother searched around the bowl with the provided spoon and found another slice of sweet potato, “I must live right,” she said as an explanation of her good fortune.

“Never give up,” an aunt said as she fished out a chunk equal to a quarter of a potato. And they kept finding more. At first they laughed and made more jokes and then they grew quiet and faced the bowl with a reverent fear. My grandmother who had been raised a Catholic but converted to Baptist forgot her conversion and crossed herself. Finally, as a group, they decided to call it a miracle and no longer fished for sweet potatoes.

“Country fries, eggs over medium, bacon and coffee,” Susie said as she slid identical plates onto each side of the table.

“You read my mind.”

“Or you come in here all the time and this is what you always order”, she slid herself into the booth and started unrolling the napkin from around her silverware. “You must be hungry.”

“This looks good.”

“It looks the same as it always does. When it looks different we worry.” The late breakfast went well. Susie was good company. I already knew she had married one of the best basketball players our high school had ever turned out and I knew she had children but I found out she had two children, both grown with families of their own. And her husband still played basketball with the kids at the local boy’s club. She found out little about me but there’s not much to find out. We finished eating and talked until the lunch crowd started finding seats. After she had gone back to work I made my first major decision of the day; I moved from my booth to a stool at the end of the counter. My view changed from the street to glimpses of the crew in the kitchen, my booth had become prime real estate.

My father was not a get rich quick kind of guy. He was a work hard, do your best, take charge kind of guy. He made candy for a living. Even today when I think of making candy I think of carefully stirred pots, drops from teaspoons onto wax paper, and a quick twist with the fingers or a sprinkle of colored sugar for effect. My father was not that kind of candy maker. My father worked in a factory with twenty foot ceiling, with overhead pipes running in all direction, with a level of noise that required everyone to wear ear protection and a chance of injury that required hard hats. I was four and my sister was six when he took us for a tour. Our first view was a mountain of white Easter eggs centers that would fill several six-yard dump trucks. Men pushing buttons, calling into radios, forklifts with piles of lemon drops and burnt peanuts all in a rush to produce more product. My father held my hand in one hand and my sister’s in the other. Everyone we passed seemed to think his name was Curly and that Curly had fine looking children. My father supervised coatings, colored sugar coatings, milk chocolate coatings and shiny dark chocolate coating. Rows of what looked like cement mixers filled a corner of the plant. We walked between the mixers while my father tried to tell us what was being made in each machine. Very little was heard above the noise and through the oversized earmuffs attached to our heads and the hard hats falling over our eyes. But it was a truly amaizing thing to watch thousands of purple Easter eggs tumble in one mixer and thousands of pink Easter eggs tumble in another mixer. My father tapped a few gauges and said something in the ear of a man watching the gauges. We were taken into a room filled with tables overloaded with bags of all sorts of candy, given a large bag and told to fill it. A chocolate bunny, almost as tall as me – counting his ears, had to be carried by my father.

“You want to go back onto the coffee?” Susie asked with a clean cup ready in case I said yes.

“Sure,” I said thinking I should be going.

“Matt just came through the door,” she said as she filled my cup. I turn to look and see Matt and a couple of friends moving into the booth I had vacated for paying customers. I pick up my cup and head back to the familiar, more comfortable location.

“Mind if I join you?” I motion with my cup to the empty space next to Matt and slid in before I get an answer.

“How’d your morning go?” Ted, a guy I worked with when I was doing pipeline work asked.

“Good Ted.”

Matt turned and looked me over for a second, “you’ve been here all morning.” he was making a statement. He had no question.

“How can you tell?” realizing how funny it must seem to normal people.

“You just look like a bum hanging around a coffee shop, not much different from your usual look.”

Susie came to the table and took lunch orders. She didn’t ask for mine. It was nice to be sitting at a table with friends but I had little to add to the conversation and just enjoyed the background noise it provided to my restored view of the sidewalk outside the plate glass window. A tall, thin lady with very high heels, with long shined brown hair, definitely from out of town, paused for a second at the restaurant door. She almost came in. Wheather the smell of grease or perhaps the amount of grease she breathed in was all the nourishment she needed to maintain her model’s figure; she let the door close and hurried down the sidewalk.

My father was a very musical person. Before I met him, I have been told, he played guitar and sang in bars and nightclubs. I’ve also heard my mother hung around the same places but I never knew these people. The people I grew up with went to church every Sunday and never drank anything stronger than Pepsi Cola. Before I learned to walk a Greyhound bus hit my father. Curly was walking seventy-feet off the roadway in the middle of the night, he’d had a little to drink but was no-where near sloppy drunk. A bus driver went to sleep, drove off the road, picked my father up with the bumper of the bus, carried him for fifty or sixty feet, dropped him back into the field and returned to the road. My father’s arm had been almost pulled off and he was bleeding badly. He made a tourniquet and waited for help. He waited, but no help came. He loosened the tourniquet several times, for a few seconds, thinking this would help save his arm. When the bus made it’s next stop the blood on the bumper was noticed and frightened passengers told their stories. A search began. Hours later my father was found unconscious in the field and rushed to a hospital where a skilled surgeon tied his nerves back together and stitched him back together. He never played the guitar again, although he tried, and he decided there was a God and that he was in need of a God.

My father never did anything half way. Like Paul in the Bible seeing a bright light and being told of his rebelliousness announced, “I’m an apostle now!” My father announced he was a preacher now and promptly started preaching. He preached at small churches on Sunday nights at first. With his winning smile and pale blue eyes he found favor in the eyes of mankind and moved to weeklong revival services. He had a talent for getting people to sign on the dotted line and was soon being referred to as an evangelist. Many pastors, at least in evangelical churches, are mild, people loving souls that only desire to help people through their lives. In order to really change lives the pastor needs his flock to make a strong commitment to not only God but to the local church. Soft spoken, loving pastors are not always gifted in a way that brings lost souls to the altar, which in the fifty’s was just about the only way to get to Heaven from the doors of a Southern Baptist Church. This is where my father came in. In sales he would be called a closer. He could talk, yell and wave his hands, and tell jokes, speak softly like to an individual, and look a person right in the eye and they would get out of their pews during the third or fifth verse of Just As I Am and make a commitment that would change their lives. I don’t know why and I’ve never wanted the skill but it worked. I’ve seen many people leave habits and life styles that were ruining them and their families and make dramatic changes over night that lasted for the rest of their lives. So while I am not my father, I am proud of him.

“We’ve got to go,” Matt told me, meaning let me out of this booth. As I slid out he added, “Thanks for sitting with us. It’s a shame you couldn’t have been here.” I nodded and said the proper goodbyes not wanting to become a complete hermit. Today is just not an outgoing day. I watch the three good friends walk out the door and pass the plate glass window laughing and pushing each other around like they had most likely done all through lunch.

Ann leads Pico; an old, retired, pastured horse, next to a weathered wooden bench where I could get high enough to climb onto Pico’s broad back. There was no saddle or bridle. With a bit of pulling and pushing I straddled his brown back.

“He’s broke to a hackamore,” Ann told me as she pushed the middle of a half-inch cotton rope into his mouth. “I’m saving up for one.”

Holding the scrap of rope in my left hand I prepared to give Pico the kick in the ribs that would send him off at an exhilarating walk. Before I was able to signal Pico and begin our walk Pico took off at a trot. I knew something was different. Pico never trotted without coaching. And then, before I could get seated properly, Pico moved into a gallop – I had never seen Pico gallop. Pico preceded to a dead run, front feet together rear feet together; we were flying through the still morning air.   There was no up and down motion, no side to side motion it was just as if Pico had wings and could glide like Pegasus coming in for a landing. But we didn’t land; we went faster. And then I saw the fence. A narrow irrigation ditch ran along side a five-foot barbedwire fence sixty feet ahead.   I thought, “Pico is a jumper.” My second thought was, “I don’t want to jump.”   I pulled on the soft half-inch cotton rope running through Pico’s mouth. Pico paid me no notice; he had his focus on the fence remembering his glory days of competing for the blue ribbon.   I thought if I couldn’t stop him maybe I could turn him and bracing my knees against his upper legs I pulled to the right with everything I had, trusting the rope with my future. Six feet from the fence Pico turned and headed for the untrimmed dead wood filled trees of the apricot orchard. I leaned back and pulled. Dry apricot limbs scraped my arms and slapped my face. Sitting almost on Pico’s neck now I could feel our speed reduce as he changed gears and at last he achieved his familiar trot and then breathing heavy he walked. Pico walked slowly as the cotton rope in my hands guided him back to where Ann stood. Ann was amazed at Pico; she had never seen him run.   I slid off his brown back and handed her the two ends of cotton rope. Ann was asking questions but I couldn’t understand. I walked across the field and headed for home.

Later that day I went shopping at our local tack shop. I wanted to know what a hackamore is and if it would be more effective when compared to a four-foot length of half-inch cotton rope.

Susie’s shift was about to end and she needed to get paid so she came and stood at the end of my table until I piled money onto the indecipherable check laying on the edge of the table.

“Keep the change?” I ask, I’ve never been good at tipping it offers too much control. I would prefer people be paid a proper, living wage and that price be included but that’s not the system we have.

“Thanks, Todd, you have a good afternoon,” and she disappeared into the back, behind the counter.

The coffee shop is empty of customers, only I remained and I no longer have proof of my contributions. I want to be one of those people who can sit on a bench and watch the tide come in but I have no patience and the tide is a hundred forty miles away. I missed the comfort of my booth before the glass door completely closed behind me but I can’t shake the nagging feeling that there is something I should be doing.

The End.