She looked up yet again when Burch asked her if she wanted him to clean out the microwave in the corner of her office. The month's end inventory numbers where important, but the old janitor had been trying to engage her in conversation for the past half hour while he swamped out the office. She put on her far away glasses and turned away from the computer screen.
"Burch. How's your diabetes doing?"
That's all it took for the offender to stop pretending to be cleaning and lean against his broom.
Burch has spent his life more in than out of the correctional system. And he knew every one and how the system worked. But he was a newly diagnosed diabetic and he had no clue how to manage his disease.
"Not good Munkay. Not good."
Most staff would be upset if addressed by an offender by a first name with out a title before it.
The girl did not care, she knows respect does not come from a title. Burch could be her father, if her father was a black man from the south. To her the real problem she has is not lack of respect for a title, but for age.
"Your eating desserts, aren't you?"
Burch regarded her from behind hooded eyes as he propped his old body against the brooms wooden handle.
"Munkay. I can't resist free food." They both laugh.
Everyone in the prison is hungry. All have a void to fill. The food we serve inside is plenty. It just never is what they crave.
The meals are heavy on the simple carbs that are cheap and cause the offenders to gain weight and develop type two diabetes. Unfortunately the doctors are quick with the meds, but education on nutrition non existent. The leftover desserts we cannot reuse I let the kitchen workers eat up as a perk for working in my kitchen. Burch is always first in line.
"I got ya Burch, your human. Try staying away from the rice and potatoes instead."
Burch knows she knows about such things. Tell one person behind the walls any information and the whole place hears. Men like Burch have no family left to spend their time with. Gossip is his life. He had even filled the girl in on everything about her new boss before her old boss was gone, and the owner of her company. Burch has been in every facility and took his gossip with him.
"What is that a picture of there Munkay?" he asked veering the conversation away from him self.
The pictures behind her desk are limited. No photo's of family, at least not their faces.
"That's a Scottish Highlander."
"Really whats that?"
"That's a cow Burch."
"Wasn't sure there Munkay. Thought it might be a musk ox or something. We didn't have them in Mississippi."
"Course not Burch. The south is for the weak. Scottish Highlanders are a hardy breed."
"Ahhhhh -You got other animals?"
"Yup. Got just about everything."
"You got chickens?" he asks moving closer and squinting at her desk, scoping it for any juicy details left out for his sharp eyes.
Burch knows she does. Why else would a woman carry in eggs to a prison that other staff carry out. She wouldn't put it past him to somehow know the son's name that sells them.
"So many kinds I do not know what they are."
"I worked on a farm once. Back when I was a kid, Mom sent me to a farm work house. The man there raised chickens."
Burch lowered himself into the empty chair across from her, smiling as he reminisced. She knew at that point it didn't matter if she was there or not. Burch was back on that farm.
"I'd get up early before breakfast and feed the birds. That was my job. Then I'd gather the eggs. But mostly I'd watch the birds. Birds were fun to watch, how they would get along together, interact. Sometimes I would just break the eggs. Break the eggs and the hens would come running. Oh those mama's would be mad. But they would eat those broken eggs. Eat their very on eggs..."
"Burch" she said after a pregnant moment. As long as you are sitting here you want to do my numbers and I'll clean the office?"
"I wanted to talk to you Munkay."
"You are."
"What happened to your hands?"
She stiffened. Leave it to Burch to sucker her in like this to extort the facts on why her hands were raw and cut. She knew everyone would ask, but did not want any to know of her own clumsiness. So she let people think she had been in a fight. Kicking ass is better than falling over. Respect behind bars can be earned in different ways.
"I had to take care of someone who asked too many questions."
"No one can do that to you, one of our own."
"Burch", she said meaning, "Stop."
"If someone is doing this. We have people out there.."
The girl grins and shoves her chair back away from his scrutinizing gaze hard enough to cause it to roll to a stop some distance back.
Burch had chose his words very carefully as not to self incriminate.
"You just need to worry about taking care of yourself. Leave the pie alone."
The girl chose her words very carefully as to keep either of them from harm.
Burch may have been offering her protection. More likely he was setting her up. But was probley the most fatherly thing the man had done. Ever.
Burch was released and returned in ninety days. Just in time to settle in for the winter.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Across my desk
She hears the knock and looks across the office at the wall of windows. There is Olson from the dish room. The large man does not look directly at her as he waits unlike the rudely impatient ones, but stares off across the kitchen.
Most offenders who are upset will knock repeatedly and stare in at her, expecting her to drop her work immediately to answer their trivial questions. Some try to yell from the door. The more demanding ones do not know the rules, or do not bother to play by them and they try to tell her what they want. You do not tell this lady anything if you are a prisoner, you ask. Often they will make up any question they can think up to get her attention and a minuet of her time alone. Some of these men only encounter a handful of women on a daily basis.
Olson stands, the glass of her door window only reaching up to his temple, swinging his flexed right arm in a wild circle as he holds his shoulder, his face red.
The lady smiles and gladly drops her pen. She thinks she knows what this is about. She has heard through the prison grape vine.
"C'mon in Olson", she chirps throwing open the door for the giant.
Majority of the men are screened at her door and she does not allow into her office.
Being Native Olson's face turn redder as he fills her office, still swinging his clenched fist in a circular motion.
"You gonna work for me for free today?" she teases. A part of her knows this man would do anything she asked of him. One of the only times the man worked up his courage to speak with the lady was when he came to her to apologise after he tipped the silver ware cart nervously when she walked by.
"Think nothing of it ", she had told him to stop his stammering, "I do that move myself just for fun sometimes."
"Umm about that Miss Munkay" he starts the rehearsed speech he came to her office door to deliver.
The week before he had managed to maneuver his big self past the security at break time when everyone was ushered out of the kitchen into the dining room to get counted and surprised her by the cooler when she had reached in for her daily yogurt.
"Miss Munkay?" he had startled her appearing out of nowhere from behind the stainless steel door.
"Hey", she replied not remembering his name then, and not really caring because she was hungry and just wanted to eat, knowing the camera were pointed on them and rolling just in case his intent bad.
"I need to ask you a favor."
"Mmm." she grunted non committal.
"I am scheduled to work on Labor Day and I am wondering if I can have it off?" Olson was holding the cooler door open for her with a dinner plate sized hand that draped over the top of the door as he held it from his hidding spot behind and his huge face peered around the side. The shy behemoth never looked directly at her, but stared at the little plastic container in her hands. The lady knew with the facility serving only two meals on a holiday she would have plenty of workers, but her curiosity got her and he had to ask.
"Why?"
"My unit has it's play off softball game and I need to pitch it."
She was glad that was his reason. She did not want to be lied to again. Every one's mothers die, lawyers call, or cousin visit on the week end.
"Sure. You can have Labor day off."
"Miss Munkay?"
"Your keeping my from my food," she tells Olson and looks pointedly towards the kitchen door. They both knew the security officers would burst through it once they realize a kitchen offender is unaccounted for.
"Can Tabor, Baker, and Ellis from my team have it off too?"
This game must mean a lot for this man who was too shy to approach her in front of the others to her to ask for his more boisterous team mates.
"Mmmm" she stringed him along for effect. "Ok. But you guys have to win. You lose, you work for me for free."
"Thank you, Miss Munkay. For you, we'll win."
"No Miss Munkay, we won. I wanted to thank you on behalf of my unit. It was the first time ever K4 has won the championship."
"Did you mean mug them for me then? Who did you play?"
Olsen sneaks a look from the floor up to her face. "We played the south unit, (sexual predator unit) so I had to torment them, ma'am. Every time I wound up..", Olson pantomimes a pitcher pose swinging his long tree trunk of an arm, "I would say, this is for the babies and the women you rapers."
Laughter pealed out of the lady who was not supposed to comment on any one's past or crime as not to show favoritism or distaste even though the residents of the south unit disgust her and if it were her call she would torture them herself.
"Bad enough I have to work along side them..." Olson stopped then, hesitant he may have crossed the line by criticizing his co workers and his job.
Most of the sexual predators are good employees in her kitchen. They have to be. On the outside world most hold down real job, they try their hardest to blend into society. They try not to stand out in prison, for fear of a beating. And on the most part in front of authority they portray a submissive personality. But it doesn't make up for who they are. Everyone knows the men from the south unit are the most hatted perverts in the place.
The lady walks around Olson still laughing at the image of the strong man whipping balls at the deviants and holds the door open for him, "Careful now Olson. That could be taken as inappropriate."
Most offenders who are upset will knock repeatedly and stare in at her, expecting her to drop her work immediately to answer their trivial questions. Some try to yell from the door. The more demanding ones do not know the rules, or do not bother to play by them and they try to tell her what they want. You do not tell this lady anything if you are a prisoner, you ask. Often they will make up any question they can think up to get her attention and a minuet of her time alone. Some of these men only encounter a handful of women on a daily basis.
Olson stands, the glass of her door window only reaching up to his temple, swinging his flexed right arm in a wild circle as he holds his shoulder, his face red.
The lady smiles and gladly drops her pen. She thinks she knows what this is about. She has heard through the prison grape vine.
"C'mon in Olson", she chirps throwing open the door for the giant.
Majority of the men are screened at her door and she does not allow into her office.
Being Native Olson's face turn redder as he fills her office, still swinging his clenched fist in a circular motion.
"You gonna work for me for free today?" she teases. A part of her knows this man would do anything she asked of him. One of the only times the man worked up his courage to speak with the lady was when he came to her to apologise after he tipped the silver ware cart nervously when she walked by.
"Think nothing of it ", she had told him to stop his stammering, "I do that move myself just for fun sometimes."
"Umm about that Miss Munkay" he starts the rehearsed speech he came to her office door to deliver.
The week before he had managed to maneuver his big self past the security at break time when everyone was ushered out of the kitchen into the dining room to get counted and surprised her by the cooler when she had reached in for her daily yogurt.
"Miss Munkay?" he had startled her appearing out of nowhere from behind the stainless steel door.
"Hey", she replied not remembering his name then, and not really caring because she was hungry and just wanted to eat, knowing the camera were pointed on them and rolling just in case his intent bad.
"I need to ask you a favor."
"Mmm." she grunted non committal.
"I am scheduled to work on Labor Day and I am wondering if I can have it off?" Olson was holding the cooler door open for her with a dinner plate sized hand that draped over the top of the door as he held it from his hidding spot behind and his huge face peered around the side. The shy behemoth never looked directly at her, but stared at the little plastic container in her hands. The lady knew with the facility serving only two meals on a holiday she would have plenty of workers, but her curiosity got her and he had to ask.
"Why?"
"My unit has it's play off softball game and I need to pitch it."
She was glad that was his reason. She did not want to be lied to again. Every one's mothers die, lawyers call, or cousin visit on the week end.
"Sure. You can have Labor day off."
"Miss Munkay?"
"Your keeping my from my food," she tells Olson and looks pointedly towards the kitchen door. They both knew the security officers would burst through it once they realize a kitchen offender is unaccounted for.
"Can Tabor, Baker, and Ellis from my team have it off too?"
This game must mean a lot for this man who was too shy to approach her in front of the others to her to ask for his more boisterous team mates.
"Mmmm" she stringed him along for effect. "Ok. But you guys have to win. You lose, you work for me for free."
"Thank you, Miss Munkay. For you, we'll win."
"No Miss Munkay, we won. I wanted to thank you on behalf of my unit. It was the first time ever K4 has won the championship."
"Did you mean mug them for me then? Who did you play?"
Olsen sneaks a look from the floor up to her face. "We played the south unit, (sexual predator unit) so I had to torment them, ma'am. Every time I wound up..", Olson pantomimes a pitcher pose swinging his long tree trunk of an arm, "I would say, this is for the babies and the women you rapers."
Laughter pealed out of the lady who was not supposed to comment on any one's past or crime as not to show favoritism or distaste even though the residents of the south unit disgust her and if it were her call she would torture them herself.
"Bad enough I have to work along side them..." Olson stopped then, hesitant he may have crossed the line by criticizing his co workers and his job.
Most of the sexual predators are good employees in her kitchen. They have to be. On the outside world most hold down real job, they try their hardest to blend into society. They try not to stand out in prison, for fear of a beating. And on the most part in front of authority they portray a submissive personality. But it doesn't make up for who they are. Everyone knows the men from the south unit are the most hatted perverts in the place.
The lady walks around Olson still laughing at the image of the strong man whipping balls at the deviants and holds the door open for him, "Careful now Olson. That could be taken as inappropriate."
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Across my desk
"I heard there is an offender down at Fairbault that is also gluten intolerant. I thought if I was moved down there, I would have a support system", the man with intelligent eyes asked.
"I do not know what kind of special diets are at which facility", the woman replied shortly.
"I appreciate all the kitchen has done for me, but I am having a real problem with this." He sits straight in his chair, his posture excellent from the tartaric yoga he practices in his cell. She wishes she did not know this about him. She has spent too much of her time talking to this needy man. She wishes this guy did not exist in her mind or anywhere.
The woman just sighed and looked at the waste sitting across from her. He was in her office building up for his next tirade, his next appeal. The lifer had wore through every last nerve of her staff who catered to his diet, the dietitian who block him from directly contacting her anymore, and anyone else who would listen.
"Those Rice Checks you ordered for me, they give me panic attracts. I dream I'm eating a bowl covered in the milk that makes me sick, and I wake up filled with anxiety. I do not even want to come down here for meals. It's hard on me."
"I eat cereal dry. How do you think the diabetics handle it when they see sugar?" She did not want to sit there and reason with man who looked healthier than anyone in the joint, staff or not. But if he took that as empathy to his imaginary plight, and left her alone so be it. Walbergs eyes and skin are clear, his bone structure chiseled. He is one of the few residents without scares or tattoos. He wore his long thick hair in parted in the middle tied in a pony tail that would have reached his belt, if he were allowed one. He was a man her own age and he would have made a very attractive one had prison not prematurely aged him.
"I just get ravenously hungry after I have been so horribly ill, and I feel as I am starving. I have to beg and barter food from the other inmates."
Starving. That is the one word that can get to the woman. She cannot let anyone starve. She jerks her head at that word and Walberg perceives it as his signal that he has reached her.
She has seen him trade his special diet food she orders in for him with the other inmates in the dinning hall for cream of broccoli soup and saltines. Milk and wheat. Let him shit blood she thinks.
"Again, I appreciate all the effort you go to for me but I do not know who to turn to..."
Walberg has threatened her staff with law suits. She knows he wants to contact another offender who will collaborate his story.
"So anything you could do..." he fishes.
She had considered hiring Walberg to work in the kitchen just to try to shut him. Maybe work the piss out of him so he had something to really complain about. But Walberg, scoring higher on his intelligence tests than any of his teachers combined and probley the warden, got a job over in education as a tutor. Until he hacked into the state website and was sent to treatment for selling porn.
"Walberg. I am not going to ask for you to get moved. The only reason I would have your meals sent to your unit is so you stop bugging me and my staff. But that is more work for them."
She is relieved at last when he leaves her office muttering and wonders when he ate his best friends fingers if it gave him diarrhea.
"I do not know what kind of special diets are at which facility", the woman replied shortly.
"I appreciate all the kitchen has done for me, but I am having a real problem with this." He sits straight in his chair, his posture excellent from the tartaric yoga he practices in his cell. She wishes she did not know this about him. She has spent too much of her time talking to this needy man. She wishes this guy did not exist in her mind or anywhere.
The woman just sighed and looked at the waste sitting across from her. He was in her office building up for his next tirade, his next appeal. The lifer had wore through every last nerve of her staff who catered to his diet, the dietitian who block him from directly contacting her anymore, and anyone else who would listen.
"Those Rice Checks you ordered for me, they give me panic attracts. I dream I'm eating a bowl covered in the milk that makes me sick, and I wake up filled with anxiety. I do not even want to come down here for meals. It's hard on me."
"I eat cereal dry. How do you think the diabetics handle it when they see sugar?" She did not want to sit there and reason with man who looked healthier than anyone in the joint, staff or not. But if he took that as empathy to his imaginary plight, and left her alone so be it. Walbergs eyes and skin are clear, his bone structure chiseled. He is one of the few residents without scares or tattoos. He wore his long thick hair in parted in the middle tied in a pony tail that would have reached his belt, if he were allowed one. He was a man her own age and he would have made a very attractive one had prison not prematurely aged him.
"I just get ravenously hungry after I have been so horribly ill, and I feel as I am starving. I have to beg and barter food from the other inmates."
Starving. That is the one word that can get to the woman. She cannot let anyone starve. She jerks her head at that word and Walberg perceives it as his signal that he has reached her.
She has seen him trade his special diet food she orders in for him with the other inmates in the dinning hall for cream of broccoli soup and saltines. Milk and wheat. Let him shit blood she thinks.
"Again, I appreciate all the effort you go to for me but I do not know who to turn to..."
Walberg has threatened her staff with law suits. She knows he wants to contact another offender who will collaborate his story.
"So anything you could do..." he fishes.
She had considered hiring Walberg to work in the kitchen just to try to shut him. Maybe work the piss out of him so he had something to really complain about. But Walberg, scoring higher on his intelligence tests than any of his teachers combined and probley the warden, got a job over in education as a tutor. Until he hacked into the state website and was sent to treatment for selling porn.
"Walberg. I am not going to ask for you to get moved. The only reason I would have your meals sent to your unit is so you stop bugging me and my staff. But that is more work for them."
She is relieved at last when he leaves her office muttering and wonders when he ate his best friends fingers if it gave him diarrhea.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Across my desk
He sits back and smiles a comfortable smile. She could tell this is not the first time he has told anyone of his secret. But it is the first he has shared his colorful past with her.
"I wasn't your typical..." and his voice fades away as if you could not admit aloud the name of what he had been before the girl had met him.
The well groomed man cleared his throat to buy time in place of unspoken words. She recognizes his habit and raises an eye brown and cocks her head smiling most encouragingly as she continued to grip the state issued radio.
"I always drove the speed limit and kept my car in good repair. I made sure my tail lights were working. I gave the cops no excuse to pull me over."
"Ralph. You surprise me."
"Depending on where the drugs would come from, I would drive for hours. Days if I had to go all the way to the coast."
She nods, exterminating his profile, knowing all criminals exaggerate and glorify their crimes. No one wants to be a two bit convict busted for doing something stupid. His silvery hair gives him a distinguished appearance that she admires. Unlike the others histories, she wants to hear his.
"At first I would just supply my boss. Buying for him, I could afford my own. Then I used the opportunity to make a little money. "
His blue eyes glisten with his memory and his soliloquy stops. He wants to be high right then, she can tell.
Ralph clears his throat and continues. The security check on her as inconspicuous as they can. They themselves a nosey lot, always looking to stir the pot and cause some excitement. She has long since stopped pretending anything else matters. Her computer chirps with incoming mail, the phone ignored.
"I worked down town then at the Hilton."
Most of the offenders claim to have job experience at fine restaurants. Closest the majority of them had was eating out of the dumpsters in back of the upscale establishments. But she believed Ralph. He had no reason to lie to her.
"I could really produce when I was tripping. That was the only way I could work so hard so fast and for so long."
"I drink a lot of coffee", the blushing girl injected trying to relate but unsure of the tone the conversation was heading.
"Until one night I was working a buffet and Donald Duck walked up to my station and I almost lost it in public."
"Donald Duck?"
"Yes. I saw Donald Duck but knew it could not be Donald Duck. He started out with a mans body and Donald's face and kept turning more duck like. But I saw him in a crowded people filled banquet and knew I had to keep my head straight and not freak out. I got through that night and driving to my friends house after work the city lights seamed wrong, way to bright. The city too big. I curled into a ball under the table at my friends and he helped me through it. I knew I couldn't drop acid anymore. I stopped the coke and weed after that."
"The girl took a drink from the Styrofoam cup and the man resembling Bill Clinton mimicked her action. The sound of the offender workers outside her office seamed farther away then. The curious faces that would peer in at them occasionally more distant.
"I would drive all the way home up north after I came down so my wife would not know. Mary would have left me had she known."
The girl knew it was against all policy to be drawn to a person of his standing, but she was a little disappointed he had a wife to share this intimacy with.
"But that was a long time ago. A lifetime." Ralph smiles and nods, ending his account, his eyes twinkling.
"Ralph. You do realize we are in a prison and I used to work in a rehab?" she teases.
"Yes, he replies standing and gathering his things. "Just be ready on Monday when I stop by in the morning and pick you up before we head out to train the Rush City facility.
"Can we light one up on the way over boss?" she asks the mans Stefano Ricci clad back.
"I wasn't your typical..." and his voice fades away as if you could not admit aloud the name of what he had been before the girl had met him.
The well groomed man cleared his throat to buy time in place of unspoken words. She recognizes his habit and raises an eye brown and cocks her head smiling most encouragingly as she continued to grip the state issued radio.
"I always drove the speed limit and kept my car in good repair. I made sure my tail lights were working. I gave the cops no excuse to pull me over."
"Ralph. You surprise me."
"Depending on where the drugs would come from, I would drive for hours. Days if I had to go all the way to the coast."
She nods, exterminating his profile, knowing all criminals exaggerate and glorify their crimes. No one wants to be a two bit convict busted for doing something stupid. His silvery hair gives him a distinguished appearance that she admires. Unlike the others histories, she wants to hear his.
"At first I would just supply my boss. Buying for him, I could afford my own. Then I used the opportunity to make a little money. "
His blue eyes glisten with his memory and his soliloquy stops. He wants to be high right then, she can tell.
Ralph clears his throat and continues. The security check on her as inconspicuous as they can. They themselves a nosey lot, always looking to stir the pot and cause some excitement. She has long since stopped pretending anything else matters. Her computer chirps with incoming mail, the phone ignored.
"I worked down town then at the Hilton."
Most of the offenders claim to have job experience at fine restaurants. Closest the majority of them had was eating out of the dumpsters in back of the upscale establishments. But she believed Ralph. He had no reason to lie to her.
"I could really produce when I was tripping. That was the only way I could work so hard so fast and for so long."
"I drink a lot of coffee", the blushing girl injected trying to relate but unsure of the tone the conversation was heading.
"Until one night I was working a buffet and Donald Duck walked up to my station and I almost lost it in public."
"Donald Duck?"
"Yes. I saw Donald Duck but knew it could not be Donald Duck. He started out with a mans body and Donald's face and kept turning more duck like. But I saw him in a crowded people filled banquet and knew I had to keep my head straight and not freak out. I got through that night and driving to my friends house after work the city lights seamed wrong, way to bright. The city too big. I curled into a ball under the table at my friends and he helped me through it. I knew I couldn't drop acid anymore. I stopped the coke and weed after that."
"The girl took a drink from the Styrofoam cup and the man resembling Bill Clinton mimicked her action. The sound of the offender workers outside her office seamed farther away then. The curious faces that would peer in at them occasionally more distant.
"I would drive all the way home up north after I came down so my wife would not know. Mary would have left me had she known."
The girl knew it was against all policy to be drawn to a person of his standing, but she was a little disappointed he had a wife to share this intimacy with.
"But that was a long time ago. A lifetime." Ralph smiles and nods, ending his account, his eyes twinkling.
"Ralph. You do realize we are in a prison and I used to work in a rehab?" she teases.
"Yes, he replies standing and gathering his things. "Just be ready on Monday when I stop by in the morning and pick you up before we head out to train the Rush City facility.
"Can we light one up on the way over boss?" she asks the mans Stefano Ricci clad back.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Excuse me.
Top ten excuses I have used to get out of work:
10- "I have to go shoot my porn video now".
9-"My brother in law is laying on my porch roof with a broken ankle".
8-"I have a job interview I gotta sober up for."
7- "My alien baby is giving me the vapors."
6-"I can't tell you what happened this weekend. But I gotta be in court on Thursday."
5-"I broke my eye glasses and have to wait for a ride in to the optometrist. His office is in Green Bay,"
4-"Today is my kids concert. I am the one who video records it for all the poor parents who miss their children's concerts. I gotta leave early cuse I do not know how to run the camcorder."
3- "The bar down the road is having happy hour prices all day long. I can fill my purse with cheap chicken wings and not rely on the pittance you pay me for showing up here. "
2- "I left 'Dude looks like a lady' on repeated when I left the house. I don't want my cat suffering gender confusion.
1-"Zombies took over my town. You are welcome to barricade yourself in my house with me now, or this is good bye."
10- "I have to go shoot my porn video now".
9-"My brother in law is laying on my porch roof with a broken ankle".
8-"I have a job interview I gotta sober up for."
7- "My alien baby is giving me the vapors."
6-"I can't tell you what happened this weekend. But I gotta be in court on Thursday."
5-"I broke my eye glasses and have to wait for a ride in to the optometrist. His office is in Green Bay,"
4-"Today is my kids concert. I am the one who video records it for all the poor parents who miss their children's concerts. I gotta leave early cuse I do not know how to run the camcorder."
3- "The bar down the road is having happy hour prices all day long. I can fill my purse with cheap chicken wings and not rely on the pittance you pay me for showing up here. "
2- "I left 'Dude looks like a lady' on repeated when I left the house. I don't want my cat suffering gender confusion.
1-"Zombies took over my town. You are welcome to barricade yourself in my house with me now, or this is good bye."
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Depression has it's signs.
When two burglars jimmy your lock and come creeping into your house today, they won’t know that you’re home at first. All the lights will be off and the shades drawn, and it will be so musty and dank inside that they’ll assume the place has been left empty for a while. They’ll go about burgling without even worrying about the noise they make. They’ll even turn on the HDTV and check out the picture before they decide to unhook it.
It’s only after they’ve finished gathering all the electronics that they’ll make their way into the bedroom for the jewelry and find you stretched out face down across the wifth of your bed. They’ll freeze, unsure of whether you’re awake or asleep.
They’ll shine a flashlight on your back and watch it shiver as you release your peel of muffled sobs.
“Hey lady,” one will say.
“Just go away!” you’ll shout, without rolling over.
“We don’t wanna hurt you,” the other will say.
“Go ahead! Everyone else has!” you’ll shout back.
The burglars will be thrown. They’ll argue in whispers about what to do with you. Until you interrupt them.
“I said get out! Leave me alone!” you’ll shout, still not rolling over to face them.
They won’t say anything at first. Then:“We’re stealing all your stuff,” one will say.
"Yeah,” the other will add. “Don’t you wanna stop us?”
This will send you over the top. You’ll spring to a half-sitting position, place your reddened, tear-stained face directly in the beam of their flashlight and you’ll scream, “I SAID LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”
The scream will make each of them remember their own big sisters as teenagers. They’ll remember being concerned, listening at the bedroom door to the rejection tears coming from inside, then they’d get up the courage to shuffle in and ask what’s wrong, only to be commanded to leave with the most blood-curdling screech they’d ever heard.
You’ll fall back on the bed and the burglars will back-step out of your room, pulling the door part-way closed behind them.
They’ll argue in louder whispers in the living room, then they’ll gather up their loot and get ready to leave. Before they go, one will lean back into your bedroom.
“Hey,” the man who is about to take off with all of your valuables will say. “It’s gonna get better.”
It’s only after they’ve finished gathering all the electronics that they’ll make their way into the bedroom for the jewelry and find you stretched out face down across the wifth of your bed. They’ll freeze, unsure of whether you’re awake or asleep.
They’ll shine a flashlight on your back and watch it shiver as you release your peel of muffled sobs.
“Hey lady,” one will say.
“Just go away!” you’ll shout, without rolling over.
“We don’t wanna hurt you,” the other will say.
“Go ahead! Everyone else has!” you’ll shout back.
The burglars will be thrown. They’ll argue in whispers about what to do with you. Until you interrupt them.
“I said get out! Leave me alone!” you’ll shout, still not rolling over to face them.
They won’t say anything at first. Then:“We’re stealing all your stuff,” one will say.
"Yeah,” the other will add. “Don’t you wanna stop us?”
This will send you over the top. You’ll spring to a half-sitting position, place your reddened, tear-stained face directly in the beam of their flashlight and you’ll scream, “I SAID LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”
The scream will make each of them remember their own big sisters as teenagers. They’ll remember being concerned, listening at the bedroom door to the rejection tears coming from inside, then they’d get up the courage to shuffle in and ask what’s wrong, only to be commanded to leave with the most blood-curdling screech they’d ever heard.
You’ll fall back on the bed and the burglars will back-step out of your room, pulling the door part-way closed behind them.
They’ll argue in louder whispers in the living room, then they’ll gather up their loot and get ready to leave. Before they go, one will lean back into your bedroom.
“Hey,” the man who is about to take off with all of your valuables will say. “It’s gonna get better.”
Friday, September 18, 2009
Goiter Fear
I have always had a horror of goiters and been troubled by bad dreams of getting one. I have nothing against the goitered, so if you happen to have one and are reading this, I don’t mean to be insulting; I’m sorry for your troubles and that being said, I just have an unholy fear of them, and this is why:
One day, when I was a little girl, I was at Curtis Drug with my mum. It was still an old-fashioned chemists soda-shop at that time. Curtis's store had huge apothecary jars, a great big marble counter, two spinning slushy machines and a bizarre collection of various stuffed or pickled albino animals on display behind the cash register along the back wall. If you were lucky you could sit on one of the shiny silver and red vinyl stools, as you waited on your medicine, with a rootbeer float in hand and divide your time by staring at the colorful twirling frozen drink machines or the freaky menagerie of dead animals as the comforting smell of menthol eucalyptus and floor wax filled the air.
I was pretty darn new then, maybe five or six on that day when I had mustered up the guile to walk around the end of the counter to the corner shelf to peer closer at the small oddities like the snow white weasel as I nursed my float and tried to ward off the impending brain freeze that was sure to follow.
Then I spied the old peanut butter jar labeled "albino dung" and ventured timidly closer.
I was busy coveting this treasure of critter poo that looked surprisingly similar to marshmallows floating in water when my mum concluded her business at the counter, said goodbye to Mabel Sweetock and turned to go.
I looked at the bizarre turds a fraction longer and then, turning to catch up with her, bumped right into the stomach of a purple old man. Not even purplish. Purple. With a pitted, veiny drinker’s nose and whorl wind teeth. And right there on his neck was a huge and shiny goiter. I froze in utter terror. I had never seen anything like it, even in a book. What horrible, terrible thing did this man have on his neck? And his nose! He must be very wicked indeed.
Then I ran to my mum's skirt and hid my face. I was all of a sudden ashamed of myself because I knew I must have hurt the old man’s feelings, but it was the most vivid moment of raw, bulbous terror I’d ever had in my short life.
My mum flapped me out of the shop and, as it was obvious I’d taken a real fright about something, she left me be once we got home and I had put my older brother Butch's insulin in our old Frigidaire.
The handle had broken clean off our refrigerator's solid door so dad had wielded a big heavy rebar triangle onto the latch forming a new handle. To open the door I had to brace my feet wide and tug with both hands repeatedly with all my weight. Maybe dad had that planned when he designed the new opener, as us kids really had to be hungry to open that metal Behemoth. I'm sure in the long run it had saved our family a tidy sum in grocery money.
I hid for the rest of the waning afternoon under the willow tree at the edge of our yard as the root beer churned in my belly and I lost myself in thought about that grotesque monster cleaving to that man's throat. Glimpses of the Jethro Tull Aqualung album hidden away from my tender eyes in the back closet filtered through the slim green leaves, mixed with images of my new nameless fear and caused me to clutch Goldie the Tom cat too hard for his comfort until he wrangled out of my arms.
I was straddling Goldie probing his neck with my finger tips when Butch's GTO crawled into our dirt drive.
Butch always drove slow on the gravel so as not to chip The Judge's glossy silver paint, even though he washed his pride every day.
Knowing I had a better chance staying safe and finding answers with my big brother than alone with an uncooperative cat, I scampered over to the side of the house where Butch was filling a soapy bucket from a hose and sat on my haunches pointing out spots as Butch scrubbed.
"Butch?"
"What Squirt?"
"You know Mr. Dallahyde?"
I had heard the clerk address the deformed man as Mr. Dallahyde before mum brusquely ushered me from the drug store.
My brother knew everyone. After all he worked in the big window factory twenty four miles east in the next town over. The next county even.
He tried to reassure me that Mr Dallahyde, the owner of the goiter, was a very nice old man who’d lost his wife (where?); that it was not anything very terrible at all; and that it wain’t a separate, living demon latched on to the poor man’s throat.
But I wasn’t listening because I’d heard, for the first time, the name of the swelling. Goiter. The ugliness of the word made me shudder. Goiter-goiter. Goiter!
Butch handed me the little wire brush when he finish the body of The Judge and my slim fingers worked the bristles around the hub cap spokes as my mind worked around my brothers explanation.
I was not sure I believed him.
When mum had caught me flipping off our sister she had asked Butch to have a talk with me.
"You do not show your middle finger to your sister", he had said in his I mean business voice."
Why? Can I show it to mum?"
"You do not show your middle finger to anyone."
"Can I show it to Goldie?"
"Little girls do not show it to anyone!"
"Can I show this finger?" I asked holding up my pointer.
"Yes. That finger you can show."
"Can I show this finger?" I asked holding up my pinky.
I then proceeded to ask after each of my digits before I changed my venue after I flipped off my mum who was scowling across the kitchen at me in the next room.
"Why?"
"It means something bad" Butch said in a serious whisper.
"What does it mean?" I whispered back holding up my middle finger at my big brother but cupping my other hand around it just to be safe.
"Eagle."
"Eagle?"
"Stopping flipping people the eagle ok?"
Butch left at that point having done his duty but not explaining any further why a bird that was on money was such a bad thing I could not show anyone.
But on that traumatizing day Butch had yet to apply the turtle wax and buff his prize Pontiac so I had his time.
"But why do people get a gggoiter?" When I had to say that repulsive word, I cleared my throat with it, as if by doing so I would expel any beginning of unsightly tumors.
"Lack of iodine, little one. People need iodine in their food or they grow bumpy. Now clean The Judge faster or I'll give you some bumps to worry about.
"I had never noticed any iodine in mums kitchen cupboards.
I had considered telling Butch we hadn't picked up his insulin so he would let me ride The Judge with him all the way back into town where he would buy me goiter repellent at Curtis's, but I didn't.
At the dinner table that night I scrutinized my family's Adam's apples as I rubbed my tingling neck. They all appeared normal. None of the garden vegetables or the venison tasted like the dark foul smelling medicine mum would dab from the little glass bottle on the scrapes from that I would bleed when I crashed the rattle trap bike dad had made for me from various pieces of others rides and junk yard finds. I had meant to ask dad if my brothers iodine theory was right, but he had asked me to get the milk out, which led to a quarter hour tug of war with the fridge door so I missed my opportunity.
I would have asked my sister in the big bed we shared later that night but but she was the sort who smugly knew everything and hold it over me so I would have to flip her the sign of money to set her right. In the darkness she might miss my slam.
So I sat on the toilet with my peddle pushers pooled around my ankles swinging my legs before bed while I studied the skull and cross bones on the side of the iodine bottle mum kept in the chipboard cubby dad had built into the corner of my bedroom he had turned into the family bathroom after he had been paid by the Gillie family with their out cast stained porcelain fixtures for fixing their potato harvester.
Knowing I had to do something that would keep me from frightening my self and cause strangers to hide their eyes from my countenance I threw open the door that led from the bathroom straight into our bedroom and snapped on lights. That was easy to do, as the switch for our bed room was still in the bathroom.
"Read this ", I demanded of my literate sister who probley was just laying there solving math problems and practicing next years spelling words in her head instead of worrying about the impending doom of all our pie holes.
"Do not take internally."
Not knowing the difference between internal and eternity, I vowed to myself to stop drinking iodine tincture as soon as I felt safe from the evil of goiters.
I have never suffered from any physical malformations before of after that night I threw up all the bathroom sink, and then later on my sister tucked snug in our bed - aside from a hive or too, and that one thing the good doctor's caustic acid made disappear. But now and then when my husband is on the road and I know not where, those dreams come back.
One day, when I was a little girl, I was at Curtis Drug with my mum. It was still an old-fashioned chemists soda-shop at that time. Curtis's store had huge apothecary jars, a great big marble counter, two spinning slushy machines and a bizarre collection of various stuffed or pickled albino animals on display behind the cash register along the back wall. If you were lucky you could sit on one of the shiny silver and red vinyl stools, as you waited on your medicine, with a rootbeer float in hand and divide your time by staring at the colorful twirling frozen drink machines or the freaky menagerie of dead animals as the comforting smell of menthol eucalyptus and floor wax filled the air.
I was pretty darn new then, maybe five or six on that day when I had mustered up the guile to walk around the end of the counter to the corner shelf to peer closer at the small oddities like the snow white weasel as I nursed my float and tried to ward off the impending brain freeze that was sure to follow.
Then I spied the old peanut butter jar labeled "albino dung" and ventured timidly closer.
I was busy coveting this treasure of critter poo that looked surprisingly similar to marshmallows floating in water when my mum concluded her business at the counter, said goodbye to Mabel Sweetock and turned to go.
I looked at the bizarre turds a fraction longer and then, turning to catch up with her, bumped right into the stomach of a purple old man. Not even purplish. Purple. With a pitted, veiny drinker’s nose and whorl wind teeth. And right there on his neck was a huge and shiny goiter. I froze in utter terror. I had never seen anything like it, even in a book. What horrible, terrible thing did this man have on his neck? And his nose! He must be very wicked indeed.
Then I ran to my mum's skirt and hid my face. I was all of a sudden ashamed of myself because I knew I must have hurt the old man’s feelings, but it was the most vivid moment of raw, bulbous terror I’d ever had in my short life.
My mum flapped me out of the shop and, as it was obvious I’d taken a real fright about something, she left me be once we got home and I had put my older brother Butch's insulin in our old Frigidaire.
The handle had broken clean off our refrigerator's solid door so dad had wielded a big heavy rebar triangle onto the latch forming a new handle. To open the door I had to brace my feet wide and tug with both hands repeatedly with all my weight. Maybe dad had that planned when he designed the new opener, as us kids really had to be hungry to open that metal Behemoth. I'm sure in the long run it had saved our family a tidy sum in grocery money.
I hid for the rest of the waning afternoon under the willow tree at the edge of our yard as the root beer churned in my belly and I lost myself in thought about that grotesque monster cleaving to that man's throat. Glimpses of the Jethro Tull Aqualung album hidden away from my tender eyes in the back closet filtered through the slim green leaves, mixed with images of my new nameless fear and caused me to clutch Goldie the Tom cat too hard for his comfort until he wrangled out of my arms.
I was straddling Goldie probing his neck with my finger tips when Butch's GTO crawled into our dirt drive.
Butch always drove slow on the gravel so as not to chip The Judge's glossy silver paint, even though he washed his pride every day.
Knowing I had a better chance staying safe and finding answers with my big brother than alone with an uncooperative cat, I scampered over to the side of the house where Butch was filling a soapy bucket from a hose and sat on my haunches pointing out spots as Butch scrubbed.
"Butch?"
"What Squirt?"
"You know Mr. Dallahyde?"
I had heard the clerk address the deformed man as Mr. Dallahyde before mum brusquely ushered me from the drug store.
My brother knew everyone. After all he worked in the big window factory twenty four miles east in the next town over. The next county even.
He tried to reassure me that Mr Dallahyde, the owner of the goiter, was a very nice old man who’d lost his wife (where?); that it was not anything very terrible at all; and that it wain’t a separate, living demon latched on to the poor man’s throat.
But I wasn’t listening because I’d heard, for the first time, the name of the swelling. Goiter. The ugliness of the word made me shudder. Goiter-goiter. Goiter!
Butch handed me the little wire brush when he finish the body of The Judge and my slim fingers worked the bristles around the hub cap spokes as my mind worked around my brothers explanation.
I was not sure I believed him.
When mum had caught me flipping off our sister she had asked Butch to have a talk with me.
"You do not show your middle finger to your sister", he had said in his I mean business voice."
Why? Can I show it to mum?"
"You do not show your middle finger to anyone."
"Can I show it to Goldie?"
"Little girls do not show it to anyone!"
"Can I show this finger?" I asked holding up my pointer.
"Yes. That finger you can show."
"Can I show this finger?" I asked holding up my pinky.
I then proceeded to ask after each of my digits before I changed my venue after I flipped off my mum who was scowling across the kitchen at me in the next room.
"Why?"
"It means something bad" Butch said in a serious whisper.
"What does it mean?" I whispered back holding up my middle finger at my big brother but cupping my other hand around it just to be safe.
"Eagle."
"Eagle?"
"Stopping flipping people the eagle ok?"
Butch left at that point having done his duty but not explaining any further why a bird that was on money was such a bad thing I could not show anyone.
But on that traumatizing day Butch had yet to apply the turtle wax and buff his prize Pontiac so I had his time.
"But why do people get a gggoiter?" When I had to say that repulsive word, I cleared my throat with it, as if by doing so I would expel any beginning of unsightly tumors.
"Lack of iodine, little one. People need iodine in their food or they grow bumpy. Now clean The Judge faster or I'll give you some bumps to worry about.
"I had never noticed any iodine in mums kitchen cupboards.
I had considered telling Butch we hadn't picked up his insulin so he would let me ride The Judge with him all the way back into town where he would buy me goiter repellent at Curtis's, but I didn't.
At the dinner table that night I scrutinized my family's Adam's apples as I rubbed my tingling neck. They all appeared normal. None of the garden vegetables or the venison tasted like the dark foul smelling medicine mum would dab from the little glass bottle on the scrapes from that I would bleed when I crashed the rattle trap bike dad had made for me from various pieces of others rides and junk yard finds. I had meant to ask dad if my brothers iodine theory was right, but he had asked me to get the milk out, which led to a quarter hour tug of war with the fridge door so I missed my opportunity.
I would have asked my sister in the big bed we shared later that night but but she was the sort who smugly knew everything and hold it over me so I would have to flip her the sign of money to set her right. In the darkness she might miss my slam.
So I sat on the toilet with my peddle pushers pooled around my ankles swinging my legs before bed while I studied the skull and cross bones on the side of the iodine bottle mum kept in the chipboard cubby dad had built into the corner of my bedroom he had turned into the family bathroom after he had been paid by the Gillie family with their out cast stained porcelain fixtures for fixing their potato harvester.
Knowing I had to do something that would keep me from frightening my self and cause strangers to hide their eyes from my countenance I threw open the door that led from the bathroom straight into our bedroom and snapped on lights. That was easy to do, as the switch for our bed room was still in the bathroom.
"Read this ", I demanded of my literate sister who probley was just laying there solving math problems and practicing next years spelling words in her head instead of worrying about the impending doom of all our pie holes.
"Do not take internally."
Not knowing the difference between internal and eternity, I vowed to myself to stop drinking iodine tincture as soon as I felt safe from the evil of goiters.
I have never suffered from any physical malformations before of after that night I threw up all the bathroom sink, and then later on my sister tucked snug in our bed - aside from a hive or too, and that one thing the good doctor's caustic acid made disappear. But now and then when my husband is on the road and I know not where, those dreams come back.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Peace Out
I am basking in the zen from the first three steps toward becoming a hippy.
1) I renounced all my worldly possessions. Then I reneged and just put all the junk my boys never use on the porch and called the charitable donations to come pick it up so I would get a tax break for my good intent. I did however include my unused ironing board because I'm pretty sure wrinkles are natural.
2) I painted an abstract picture of a fox. You may call it a raccoon. But to me it is a fox. Then I felt almost guilty about washing the oil based paint brushes drain. So I shot some clay pigeons instead of tasty small creatures to enhance my karma.
3) I enrolled in folk school and am taking the boys with.
4) Then I called the realtor.
" Screw you guys, I'm going Hippy."
1) I renounced all my worldly possessions. Then I reneged and just put all the junk my boys never use on the porch and called the charitable donations to come pick it up so I would get a tax break for my good intent. I did however include my unused ironing board because I'm pretty sure wrinkles are natural.
2) I painted an abstract picture of a fox. You may call it a raccoon. But to me it is a fox. Then I felt almost guilty about washing the oil based paint brushes drain. So I shot some clay pigeons instead of tasty small creatures to enhance my karma.
3) I enrolled in folk school and am taking the boys with.
4) Then I called the realtor.
" Screw you guys, I'm going Hippy."
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Come to my window
Why is the window closedI do not want to share you with the masses
classless, stateless, oppressive free
my little cabbage
you can't bulldoze me
so much for my one man party
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Dictate my Lips
Kiss me out of the bearded barley
Nightly beside the green green grass
Swing swing swing the spinning step
You wear those shoes and I will wear that dress
Oh kiss me beneath the milky twilight
Lead me out on the moonlit floor
Lift your open hand
Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance
Silver moons sparkling
So kiss me
Kiss me down by the broken tree house
Swing me upon its hanging tire
Bring bring bring your flowered hat
Well take the trail marked on your fathers map
Just kiss me
99 Luft Ballons
Sure I would have put out for you on prom night.My panties would have dropped faster than A bomb.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
I can make you happier than a gymnist
I lay awake at night
and pray you may see the light
but you never do
and you've caught diarrhea
from a girl named Alina
Bitch
Monday, August 31, 2009
Beautiful music
We are taboo my Romeo
what with your troops
stealing our land
livelihood
and family
my grandfather's people going
axe murder
on your army
but on the inside
my blood runs red
and I know
we could make beautiful music
together
Munkay and Putin sitting in a tree
Because doodling you name on a note book is not enough
noone can obsess like me.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
In Soviet Union Bath Takes You
You can reach me by railway, you can reach me by trailway
You can reach me on an airplane, you can reach me with your mind
You can reach me by caravan, cross the desert like an Tzar man
I don't care how you get here, just- get here if you can
You can reach me by sailboat, climb a tree and swing rope to rope
Take a sled and slide down the slope, into these arms of mine
You can jump on a speedy colt, cross the border in a blaze of hope
I don't care how you get here, just- get here if you can
There are hills and mountains between us
Always something to get over
If I had my way, then surely you would be closer
I need you closer
You can windsurf into my life, take me up on a carpet ride
You can make it in a big balloon, but you better make it soon
You can reach me by caravan, cross the desert like an Tzar man
I don't care how you get here, just- get here if you can
I don't care, I dont care, I need you right here right now
I need you right here, right now, right by my side (yeah,yeah, yeah, yeah)
I don't care how you get here, just- get here if you can
Friday, August 28, 2009
The candle light was lovely....
You are thinking about me again
aren't you
and what we did last night
try to block out the sobbing and begging part
Send for me already
My suit case is packed with flannel-red
worked my kettle bells standing on my head
the scythe and star tattoo healing fast
passport in hand
ready to forget my past
nothing can keep me away
take it how ever you want it
Don't be so hard boiled Puty
You flipped my world
like a very beautiful unorthodox egg
why won't you stay for breakfast?
Cook you ladkas even
Wipe that look of dissent off that face young man
wipe it clean
you will grow up to be an intelligent powerful force one day
and then I will Bolskevik your heart
reform your potato loving soul
There will be vodka
Come to my dasha
Mr. KGB man
Of course it's actually a
modest suburban split level
but I will putsch your heart
like only a crazy american woman can.
Putinism
President prime Putin
Russian ladies love machine
economic reformer or fascist
I wanna touch your rod
Monday, August 24, 2009
Munkay vs The Law
I want to do a victory dance and pump my fists in the air. I won I won I won. Not only did I succeed but I burned the bad guy. To bad I have to work for these people and not be able to even smile smugly.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
I survived but only just
First I was afraid, I was petrified...
Then it got worse.
I don't know whether to give you the full anabashed account of the "solidary retreat" that was my four day weekend at the lake, or whether to tantalise you with edited highlights.
Whatever it will be, all I know is that I don't really want to think about it right now.
It's good to be back in the Land of the underachievers.
There's no place like home.
Then it got worse.
I don't know whether to give you the full anabashed account of the "solidary retreat" that was my four day weekend at the lake, or whether to tantalise you with edited highlights.
Whatever it will be, all I know is that I don't really want to think about it right now.
It's good to be back in the Land of the underachievers.
There's no place like home.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Step Back Rug
"don't jump!" i shouted to the suicidal rug. "don't jump"
a crowd gathered
i gestured to the suicide rug wildly
but it was too late the crowd had already formed
it's opinion of me
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Think before you speach
"You know once I give this shot to you there is no going back", the nurse waving the labor inducing drug told the over due woman.
Think before you speach
"You'll be like 'poof' and then you will say, "Was that a ninja just now or did I have a little gas?"", he said trying to proove himself.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Think before you speach
"Your skinnier than me" said the cubby waitress to the thin one as they both stood in front of the bathroom mirror, "but I got bigger boobs."
Think before you speach
"I can't work any overtime because the bar won't cash my check if I make a higher amount.
Think before you speach
"I need to smoke to slow me down." said the stoner as he sat in his dirty failing business. "Some people lose everything but not me."
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Think before you speach
"You would make the perfect wife" said the bachelor. "You are not wife like at all."
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Think before you speach
"In the pasted he only masturbated in front of the staff in the unit. He might behave better for you in the kitchen."
Think before you speach
"No I don't think a woman will ever go to the moon, their not strong enough" said the small minded secondary teacher to the girl who had just learned what ERA stood for.
Think before you speach
"If I get you pregnate will you marry me?" said the man with eyes the color of burnt sugar.
Monday, August 03, 2009
Think before you speach
"My beard only hates people" he bristled with a frown when asked how a facial expression may be a contributing factor to a conversation.
Think before you speach
"Jimmy Carters mother is a negro", said the woman to her daughter."Miss Lillian is a black name."
Think before you speach
"Look out so those birds up in that tree don't swoop down and chop off a piece of you man" said one offender to the other. "You know they could be those carny whores."
Think before you speach
"I know how to end gorilla warfare" said the little girl. "Just hide in the jungle and shoot them before they see you.
Think before you speach
I don't have school tomarrow. Eight to two I should get to stay up as late as I want.
Think before you speach
"When I fuck a girl she stays fucked", said Scotty the drunk at the end of the smokey bar.
Think before you speach
"I love ham", said the collage girl home for the summer as she sliced deli meat on the Hobart, "where does it come from?"
Monday, July 27, 2009
Spider Attack
Yesterday I was ecstatic to learn that I had an unexpected day to myself. Immediately I rose, showered and gathered my things in order to enjoy a splendid day out and about. Before leaving the house I stepped into the kitchen to wrap and store a bunt cake I had nibbled on the previous evening, when I noticed a small spider web on the ceiling in the corner of the room. I took a chair from the kitchen table and, stepping from it to the counter made my way past the sink towards the web. Unfortunately my dish rack was in the way, so I had to hold on to the windowsill over the sink with my left hand as I stretched with my right towards the web. Just about when I had reached the corner I felt my balance askew, and taking a quick step I found the weight of my body forcing my large and second toe deep into the toaster. With a shout I whipped the device around, feebly trying to use the edge of the counter to dislodge my digits from the device. In this process the switch somehow became activated.
Now, in a fit of urgency, I attempted to stand precariously on one foot while leaning over to fling the toaster from the other, but as I did so the windowpane I was leaning on gave way and I had to twist in mid air to avoid thumping my jugular on the shattered edge. That jerking motion, of course, jarred the sinks faucet lever which sent water directly into the toaster’s other toast-slice receptacle. The toaster’s 500 amps jerked my body in a backwards-arching motion, sending me clear through the window and hurtling through the warm summer air.
As I landed on the down-stairs neighbor’s patio furniture the sound frightened her cat, who became entangled in the toaster cord which had snapped off at the socket as I plummeted. The more it struggled to free itself the more it became entwined, and soon I found myself being clawed and bitten by the poor confused animal. While simultaneously extracting my mangled extremities from the patio furniture and attempting to pry Snickers from my face I noticed the neighbor stepping outside her door with a broom in one hand and the phone in the other.
The officer she summoned had very little trouble shackling me, as I had already turned face down to ward off the broom-handle blows to my midsection, and to tell you the truth I felt a rush of relief as he tossed me headfirst into the back of his squadcar. Snickers though, quite to my dismay, was hot on my heels, and the 185 pound German Police dog in the seat with me was fleet in allowing instinct to take precedence.
Handcuffed, I found my lap to be the venue for a life and death struggle between three species. Snouts, claws and teeth raged as the officer frantically attempted to open the door while the scene became invisible behind steamed windows. Before I passed into unconsciousness the car door was opened, and I noticed five other emergency vehicles attending the incident.
At the insistence of my neighbors I will be moving from my apartment shortly, but before I do so I will tell you this: As I tossed my head back to ingest my pain medication in the kitchen this morning I noticed that there are now two spider webs.
Now, in a fit of urgency, I attempted to stand precariously on one foot while leaning over to fling the toaster from the other, but as I did so the windowpane I was leaning on gave way and I had to twist in mid air to avoid thumping my jugular on the shattered edge. That jerking motion, of course, jarred the sinks faucet lever which sent water directly into the toaster’s other toast-slice receptacle. The toaster’s 500 amps jerked my body in a backwards-arching motion, sending me clear through the window and hurtling through the warm summer air.
As I landed on the down-stairs neighbor’s patio furniture the sound frightened her cat, who became entangled in the toaster cord which had snapped off at the socket as I plummeted. The more it struggled to free itself the more it became entwined, and soon I found myself being clawed and bitten by the poor confused animal. While simultaneously extracting my mangled extremities from the patio furniture and attempting to pry Snickers from my face I noticed the neighbor stepping outside her door with a broom in one hand and the phone in the other.
The officer she summoned had very little trouble shackling me, as I had already turned face down to ward off the broom-handle blows to my midsection, and to tell you the truth I felt a rush of relief as he tossed me headfirst into the back of his squadcar. Snickers though, quite to my dismay, was hot on my heels, and the 185 pound German Police dog in the seat with me was fleet in allowing instinct to take precedence.
Handcuffed, I found my lap to be the venue for a life and death struggle between three species. Snouts, claws and teeth raged as the officer frantically attempted to open the door while the scene became invisible behind steamed windows. Before I passed into unconsciousness the car door was opened, and I noticed five other emergency vehicles attending the incident.
At the insistence of my neighbors I will be moving from my apartment shortly, but before I do so I will tell you this: As I tossed my head back to ingest my pain medication in the kitchen this morning I noticed that there are now two spider webs.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Word Rationing
She wakes and stands groggy eyed at her kitchen window drinking her morning cup of tea as the tabby purrs and rubs it's self against her bare leg. She leans down with a grunt in place of a greeting and scratches the kitty behind it's ear. She does not sing in the shower. She leaves the house before anyone else is up.
The woman will say "good morning" an average of twenty seven times before she reaches her office. Every one wants a piece of her. After she has repeated herself around forty five time she will only nod, smile if it is staff.
"What's going on with you?", is all she will venture when conversation a necessity. Then she will sit and listen and cock her head at the appropriate times to fake interest. Words are precious to her. She does not have enough anymore to share.
In meetings she does not venture her opinion. A yes or not will suffice. They think of her as hard and decise and it works to the woman's advantage.
Driving between facilities she does not scream at traffic or lip off to the radio. Strangers are not worth her voice.
They all vie for teachers attention. Notice me. Acknowledge me. Appreciate me.
She will only stare and continue on.
Then comes the message on the answering machine on her desk.
Love me.
Late at night as they sleep she whispers in her babies ears her reserve.
Then her words flow free.
The woman will say "good morning" an average of twenty seven times before she reaches her office. Every one wants a piece of her. After she has repeated herself around forty five time she will only nod, smile if it is staff.
"What's going on with you?", is all she will venture when conversation a necessity. Then she will sit and listen and cock her head at the appropriate times to fake interest. Words are precious to her. She does not have enough anymore to share.
In meetings she does not venture her opinion. A yes or not will suffice. They think of her as hard and decise and it works to the woman's advantage.
Driving between facilities she does not scream at traffic or lip off to the radio. Strangers are not worth her voice.
They all vie for teachers attention. Notice me. Acknowledge me. Appreciate me.
She will only stare and continue on.
Then comes the message on the answering machine on her desk.
Love me.
Late at night as they sleep she whispers in her babies ears her reserve.
Then her words flow free.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Thoughts from the lake...
I stand in the sandy swallows of the lake and curse like a sailor as I rake jetsam.
Thoughts from the lake...
"Sing me to sleep loon" I whisper to the dark and drift off to an earie melody.
Monday, June 22, 2009
This, That, and the Other Thing
What has kept our beloved Munkay from writting for our entertainment you have asked yourselves daily? Get ready I will tell you now.
THIS is what K1 accomplished and I couldn't be more proud:
THAT is what I found and bought him for his achievement:
(Ok so I really only put a heavy down payment on it and set him up with a loan to pay it off himself.)
But since I was then in a buying mode I bought this OTHER THING:
This is were I am spending my time disconnected when I am not working 10 hour days to pay off my fun.
THIS is what K1 accomplished and I couldn't be more proud:
THAT is what I found and bought him for his achievement:
(Ok so I really only put a heavy down payment on it and set him up with a loan to pay it off himself.)
But since I was then in a buying mode I bought this OTHER THING:
This is were I am spending my time disconnected when I am not working 10 hour days to pay off my fun.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Too Much?
So I asked the world to stop spinning.
I used my most polite lady like voice.
It did not even acknowledge my humble request.
So I let the world be.
And stopped spinning instead.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
When Moma Puts her Boots On
The door opened and he quickly stepped into the office. He was nervous. Nervous for the show that would not happen. In short clipped steps he walked over and stood in front of her, his body tight and shoulders pulled up and in as if he were a turtle and would pull his head in to protect himself. The boy came over and stood at her knee. "Mom?" he said as his blue eyes darted trying to take in everything before flight was needed. The woman uncrossed her legs, closed the old annual she was paging through and smiled.
"Hey Babe", she answered in what she hoped her most reassuring voice. The woman stood up and guided her child out of the school office.
"Am I in trouble Mom?" he asked sneaking sideways glances at her as her hurried to keep up with her long pace. "You are wearing your angry boots."
She looked down at the hard sound coming from her feet. Her foot wear a solid black leather with a nice heel. She wore them when she needed to be as big as the world.
"Your not in trouble. Get every thing out of your locker. Your principal is dead meat though."
"Hey Babe", she answered in what she hoped her most reassuring voice. The woman stood up and guided her child out of the school office.
"Am I in trouble Mom?" he asked sneaking sideways glances at her as her hurried to keep up with her long pace. "You are wearing your angry boots."
She looked down at the hard sound coming from her feet. Her foot wear a solid black leather with a nice heel. She wore them when she needed to be as big as the world.
"Your not in trouble. Get every thing out of your locker. Your principal is dead meat though."
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Dear Buy the No Name Steaks From the Back of My Truck
Do not knock on my door and halfway through your sales spiel, point to one of my cows and ask "What's that?"
Dear Customer Service Hot Line Attendents
Make English your first and only language or take up factory work.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
It almost broke her heart
when he said, "Um. Your hair. It's finally growing back? It looks...ok? The dude had never complimented her since she met him. On her worse day ever he tried awkwardly.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
It almost broke her heart
When he told her the candy drawer was empty. "How can that be?" her voice echoed back from what used to be her pleasure center.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
It almost broke her heart
When the girl mustered the courage to tell about the pedophile which there after labeled her a sluty trouble maker.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
It almost broke her heart
When he snubbed out his cigarette on the night stand and asked her if she wanted to see a picture of his girlfriend.
Monday, May 04, 2009
It almost broke her heart
When she was told the extended warranty she had purchased two years ago on her new Jeep had never been sent into the Chrysler corporation before the dealership filed bankruptcy.
It almost broke her heart
And it left an impressive bruise on her boob when she walked into his back swing.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
It almost broke her heart
When she finaly opened the small musky trunk full of pictures of those she lost to give to the family that never had.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
It almost broke her heart
Watching the movie "What's eating Gilbert Grape", a life time after reading the novel, her perspective packed itself into an airstream and she cried.
Friday, May 01, 2009
It almost broke her heart
When he said, "That picture is rwelve grand, you still want it on your credit card?"
It almost broke her heart
When the boy quietly asked, "Mom why didn't you stand up for me?", and she realized she should have kicked the specialist's stupid ass twenty minutes too late.
It almost broke her heart
When she was finally able to sit down by herself on a Saturday night child free.
It almost broke her heart
When he asked her to the prom by walking up to the group of girls she was standing with and said, "Any of you not have a date?"
It almost broke her heart
When the bad Dr. said, "When I fix that chip, I can also fill in that gap of yours."
"I love my gap", she whistled.
"I love my gap", she whistled.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Coyote Wild
It had been along time since she had hear the wild cry in the dark. So long long she had forgotten. At the sound of their chorus she sucked in her breath and froze in fear. It had been a life time ago since last she felt the rush of adrenaline in her night.
"Coyote", she whispered and the joik instantly stopped.
The girl lay awake until sunrise yearning to hear the music again.
No one else hears the song. "Nothing?" she would question with a slight yelp and wait for the pack to return.
They come for her when she is in between worlds and her spirit moves free.
In her dreams she stands at her window in her night dress and her voice joins them.
The girl lost her wild, but wild remembered the girl.
"Coyote", she whispered and the joik instantly stopped.
The girl lay awake until sunrise yearning to hear the music again.
No one else hears the song. "Nothing?" she would question with a slight yelp and wait for the pack to return.
They come for her when she is in between worlds and her spirit moves free.
In her dreams she stands at her window in her night dress and her voice joins them.
The girl lost her wild, but wild remembered the girl.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter Toast
Eight years ago when our house burned to the ground and we lost everything, we lived for months without toast.
I waited for my new home to be complete before I bought anything that would be permanent so it would fit my new life perfectly.
On Eater morning the good bunny brought us a beautiful new toaster to match my appliances.
I plugged it in next to the stove top and it burst into flame from the steam of the tea kettle that very morning we had while we were making toast to eat with our colored eggs.
The horrible smell of burning plastic set off all our smoke detectors and we ran from the house in our jammies and bare feet.
I love that my toaster has a wicked sense of humor.
But this morning we played it safe and ate breakfast burritos.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Everyone wins a stuffed animal in my grey matter
There is the kind of carnival with a bright neon ferris wheel and noisy bumper cars near the a dizzy making octopus ride spinning around inside my head. It is complete with an unadvertised freak show going on behind the concession tents and peanut shells litter the ground. There is a brown bear wearing a party hat that rides around on a tricycle. He is not a very happy bear but his hat is not as hot as the one he wore back in Russia. The bear has long since forgotton the smell of the forrest or how to forage for berries. He yearns for cotton candy with a child center. And there is a wack a mole game there too, but just one.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Sometimes a girl just needs a brownie
When your story gets stolden and raped. When your wanted in court for speeding tickets. When you find out your acne medicine (generic) costs 112. You will buy a dessert that you will cook in the microwave and feel all the worse for it.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Preview
All That’s Wrong
“I’ll take you to a place like you never been before”, he said.
So I followed my co workers little grey little Mazda closely as he zipped through the early afternoon traffic across town, sun roof open.
We pulled up outside the Gopher Bar in east St. Paul and poured all the change we could dig up from the bottom of our pockets into the insatiable parking meters on 7th street before we dodged traffic into the corner bar.
From the outside the building it looked like your typical neighborhood watering hole. It is an old brick building touting Coney dogs complete with beer signs covering the windows that I have driven past a million times. The Gopher is defiantly not the kind of place a girl like me would walk into by herself no matter how hungry I was. And my stomach rules my body.
But wait, this joint has the owners names and even their kids names also on the outside. You just don’t see that on a bar now a days. This establishment is a family run business. That made it a little less intimidating for me.
I followed my buddy through the door and paused, expecting to have to wait for my eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight to the dim interior of a whole in the wall. Surprisingly on the inside we were greeted by trophy deer mounts above the bar decorated with bright strings of festive holiday lights through out their antlers and enough neon beverage advertising signage to send me into a strangely happy Vegas frame of mind. No one yelled out our names “Cheers” style when we sat ourselves at a well worn chipped Formica table adorned only with mismatched salt and pepper shakers and condiment bottles, but none of the patrons accosted us either.
I had wanted to belly up to the bar and befriend the edgy looking bartender incase a Vulcan swooped in to harass me but when my big six foot plus companion opted to sit at table close to filling bar, I followed.
I barely had time to take in much of the colorful surroundings before the waitress and co owner, Cheri Kappas was at our side taking our order.
“What will you folks have?” she asked, fake pasted on smile obviously missing from her face.
What she had meant when she asked that is how many dogs we wanted period.
“What have you got?” I answered focusing on the rude slogan printed boldly across her t-shirt.
“Coney Dogs”, Cheri answered with a laugh, placing a thin plain wax paper placemat in front of us. They do have a menu and serve other food during regularly scheduled mealtimes but they are known mostly for their Coney dogs.
So we ordered the Coney dogs with the works.
The other thing they are known for is their attitude. When they found out I had never been in the Gopher before, my plain undecorated placemat was replace with one with the title “Virgin” printed across it in large dark letters. Modesty kept off duty employee Susie, who told me of this tradition from attaching the F-bomb stickers included in this right of passage. Once Susie realized I was not so easily off put, her stories and language became spicier, and the laughter flowed freer.
While waiting for George Kappas, Cheri’s husband and proprietor of this politically incorrect Minnesota landmark to grill our dogs, we sipped our drinks. The daft was cold and the glass clean, all you could ask for in a sudsy brew. The screw driver was not as good. I didn’t see the bottle of orange juice it was poured from, but my guess was the memorvelia on the walls might not be the only thing with a light coating of dust. The drinks did get however get progressively better after a new bottle of juice was opened.
Every where I looked was wrong. Wrong on every level.
There are no velvet pictures of dogs playing poker.
The walls were covered with hockey players supporting only supporters, political genre, naked rubeniesk ladies and bullet holes. Oh there is a stain glass mural, but the image of the Minnesota Gopher hockey mascot is flicking you off.
I was about to get up from our table and causously inspect the art work closer thinking I could not be offended any further when the show begun.
Swearing between the owners in the kitchen at the end of the bar erupted loud enough to momentarily silence the pre happy hour crowd that was congregating.
Know before you go that the F- word rains down at the Gopher like a can of warm Miller that is roughly shaken before opened. The regulars at the bar barley paused before returning to their own conversations. Some of them chimed in. When I looked across the table, even my big friend was blushing.
Our food came as fast the good natured insults and teasing that was flung around the grill. This is not the place for sensitive or easily offended. Or the communist.
The only thing wrong with the Coney Dog at the Gopher name was it’s name.
It is a real deal pure beef hot dog on a toasted bakery bun covered in a thick meat sauce, the onions and cheese spilling over the sides. When I tried my best to pick it up and lady like nibble it from an end, the bad boy fell apart all over the place. But that was to my benefit. The only way I could define the taste of the pure beef frank under the mountain of toppings was to eat it with a fork. I just scooped up the remaining guts off the wax paper with the buttery grilled bun and finished them off. I’m not a hot dog fan but if they used a little fresher gooier cheese it’s deserving of it’s own name if you ask me. And if I learned anything during my afternoon in the dive bar, it’s ok if I tell you my option.
Cheri sat down with us for a few quick minutes after we had finished eating as the clientele continued to file in for a quick dog and a drink. She would occasionally throw insults directed at George behind the bar, and banter with the stool dwellers as we talked. Many of the regulars would stop to hug the foul mouth maveren or pay their respect as she told us of the history behind the place.
The original Gopher Bar was started by her father in law in 1933. Cheri married into the business after twenty three years of a volatile working relationship with George. When she spoke of the cantankerous white haired man behind the bar, it was the only time she visibly softened. One of her three kids who work there tended the bar as we talked. She lowered her voice when filled me in that the crusty old George behind the bar is not the same sweet George at home she fell in love with. I’ll take her word on it as I never drank enough courage to go talk to him before he left his bar for the afternoon.
The Gopher was not always known for their hot dogs. When they first started years ago they grilled more hamburgers, but when local business lunch hours were shortened from sixty minuets to a half hour, people didn’t have time to wait. Their Coney Dog formula as it is today has evolved more than their social reform.
When I asked Cheri how the economy has affected their business she laughed. “Even in a recession people will continue to eat, drink, and f--k.” It’s the f-ing smoking ban that has decreased our business by 40 %. People used to come in here and sit, spent the whole night. Now they are here for half and hour or so and then they go.”
The place and the language is shocking, the owners and regulars not least bit hesitant to tell you what they think. There is no insincere Minnesota nice in that place don‘t cha know.
Cost of our lunch and drinks where only a little more expensive than the funky parking meters out side. But the service and the locals were open and friendly. The environment of the place unlike and other, just be sure to turn your sensitivity filter off before you go. And do not call the bartender sir, that is wrong. Call him by his first name, Asshole.
“I’ll take you to a place like you never been before”, he said.
So I followed my co workers little grey little Mazda closely as he zipped through the early afternoon traffic across town, sun roof open.
We pulled up outside the Gopher Bar in east St. Paul and poured all the change we could dig up from the bottom of our pockets into the insatiable parking meters on 7th street before we dodged traffic into the corner bar.
From the outside the building it looked like your typical neighborhood watering hole. It is an old brick building touting Coney dogs complete with beer signs covering the windows that I have driven past a million times. The Gopher is defiantly not the kind of place a girl like me would walk into by herself no matter how hungry I was. And my stomach rules my body.
But wait, this joint has the owners names and even their kids names also on the outside. You just don’t see that on a bar now a days. This establishment is a family run business. That made it a little less intimidating for me.
I followed my buddy through the door and paused, expecting to have to wait for my eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight to the dim interior of a whole in the wall. Surprisingly on the inside we were greeted by trophy deer mounts above the bar decorated with bright strings of festive holiday lights through out their antlers and enough neon beverage advertising signage to send me into a strangely happy Vegas frame of mind. No one yelled out our names “Cheers” style when we sat ourselves at a well worn chipped Formica table adorned only with mismatched salt and pepper shakers and condiment bottles, but none of the patrons accosted us either.
I had wanted to belly up to the bar and befriend the edgy looking bartender incase a Vulcan swooped in to harass me but when my big six foot plus companion opted to sit at table close to filling bar, I followed.
I barely had time to take in much of the colorful surroundings before the waitress and co owner, Cheri Kappas was at our side taking our order.
“What will you folks have?” she asked, fake pasted on smile obviously missing from her face.
What she had meant when she asked that is how many dogs we wanted period.
“What have you got?” I answered focusing on the rude slogan printed boldly across her t-shirt.
“Coney Dogs”, Cheri answered with a laugh, placing a thin plain wax paper placemat in front of us. They do have a menu and serve other food during regularly scheduled mealtimes but they are known mostly for their Coney dogs.
So we ordered the Coney dogs with the works.
The other thing they are known for is their attitude. When they found out I had never been in the Gopher before, my plain undecorated placemat was replace with one with the title “Virgin” printed across it in large dark letters. Modesty kept off duty employee Susie, who told me of this tradition from attaching the F-bomb stickers included in this right of passage. Once Susie realized I was not so easily off put, her stories and language became spicier, and the laughter flowed freer.
While waiting for George Kappas, Cheri’s husband and proprietor of this politically incorrect Minnesota landmark to grill our dogs, we sipped our drinks. The daft was cold and the glass clean, all you could ask for in a sudsy brew. The screw driver was not as good. I didn’t see the bottle of orange juice it was poured from, but my guess was the memorvelia on the walls might not be the only thing with a light coating of dust. The drinks did get however get progressively better after a new bottle of juice was opened.
Every where I looked was wrong. Wrong on every level.
There are no velvet pictures of dogs playing poker.
The walls were covered with hockey players supporting only supporters, political genre, naked rubeniesk ladies and bullet holes. Oh there is a stain glass mural, but the image of the Minnesota Gopher hockey mascot is flicking you off.
I was about to get up from our table and causously inspect the art work closer thinking I could not be offended any further when the show begun.
Swearing between the owners in the kitchen at the end of the bar erupted loud enough to momentarily silence the pre happy hour crowd that was congregating.
Know before you go that the F- word rains down at the Gopher like a can of warm Miller that is roughly shaken before opened. The regulars at the bar barley paused before returning to their own conversations. Some of them chimed in. When I looked across the table, even my big friend was blushing.
Our food came as fast the good natured insults and teasing that was flung around the grill. This is not the place for sensitive or easily offended. Or the communist.
The only thing wrong with the Coney Dog at the Gopher name was it’s name.
It is a real deal pure beef hot dog on a toasted bakery bun covered in a thick meat sauce, the onions and cheese spilling over the sides. When I tried my best to pick it up and lady like nibble it from an end, the bad boy fell apart all over the place. But that was to my benefit. The only way I could define the taste of the pure beef frank under the mountain of toppings was to eat it with a fork. I just scooped up the remaining guts off the wax paper with the buttery grilled bun and finished them off. I’m not a hot dog fan but if they used a little fresher gooier cheese it’s deserving of it’s own name if you ask me. And if I learned anything during my afternoon in the dive bar, it’s ok if I tell you my option.
Cheri sat down with us for a few quick minutes after we had finished eating as the clientele continued to file in for a quick dog and a drink. She would occasionally throw insults directed at George behind the bar, and banter with the stool dwellers as we talked. Many of the regulars would stop to hug the foul mouth maveren or pay their respect as she told us of the history behind the place.
The original Gopher Bar was started by her father in law in 1933. Cheri married into the business after twenty three years of a volatile working relationship with George. When she spoke of the cantankerous white haired man behind the bar, it was the only time she visibly softened. One of her three kids who work there tended the bar as we talked. She lowered her voice when filled me in that the crusty old George behind the bar is not the same sweet George at home she fell in love with. I’ll take her word on it as I never drank enough courage to go talk to him before he left his bar for the afternoon.
The Gopher was not always known for their hot dogs. When they first started years ago they grilled more hamburgers, but when local business lunch hours were shortened from sixty minuets to a half hour, people didn’t have time to wait. Their Coney Dog formula as it is today has evolved more than their social reform.
When I asked Cheri how the economy has affected their business she laughed. “Even in a recession people will continue to eat, drink, and f--k.” It’s the f-ing smoking ban that has decreased our business by 40 %. People used to come in here and sit, spent the whole night. Now they are here for half and hour or so and then they go.”
The place and the language is shocking, the owners and regulars not least bit hesitant to tell you what they think. There is no insincere Minnesota nice in that place don‘t cha know.
Cost of our lunch and drinks where only a little more expensive than the funky parking meters out side. But the service and the locals were open and friendly. The environment of the place unlike and other, just be sure to turn your sensitivity filter off before you go. And do not call the bartender sir, that is wrong. Call him by his first name, Asshole.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Unreasonable
Ten of my most unreasonable worries.
10-The apocalypse will come but not fast. In the end times I will run out of my sleeping pill prescription and not be able to sleep. Out of frustration, a member of my family knocks me over the cranky irritable head and kills me. No heaven for him.
9- I drive around and round and get hopelessly lost in the city near me. Then I will have to ask directions and admit I am lost. I can drive without hesitation in other states or country, but not here. Then I have to stop and ask directions in an foreign accent so as not to look the fool being lost in my own back yard.
8-I will stand up when my lawyer enters the room I am waiting in and take off all my clothes. Again.
7-I am afraid when I marry Gordon Ramsey I will dress him up like a little corgi dog and use him scare the mailman instead of utilizing his God given talent of humiliating the non postal.
6- I fear the next time I am walking by the front of a plate glass windowed restaurant and spot my wind blown reflection in the glass and pause to make an exaggerated horrible expressing while holding up my fingers over my head and wiggling them in a evil witch style, the unseen dinner sitting in the booth on the other side will take more offence and chase after me with a burning torch like I deserve.
5- I will finally locate the one gated community existing that does not allow teenagers within it perimeter. But the gate will have an electronic remote code that my teenager will have to explain to me.
4-I am stalked by a group of Morris dancers. Innocent looking and light on their feet they are never caught. Stress causes me to lose my job and I have to get homeless dude on 7th st to cut my hair for cheep. Then I get lost trying to find him and have to ask direction. "Eh mucho homeless gringo se?"
3-My laptop gets stolen. Stolen by eloquent and evocative writer who answers all my e-mail and solves all my problems caused by inertia plus enables the spell check on my computer. People will love me right up tom the time I buy a new laptop and change my password. Then they will think of me not only as lazy but rude. Wait.
2-The day will come during an emergency that my sharp shooting skills will be required and the A-squad will call me in. Calmly I stand behind the security barriers, handgun in hand, red laser guild square on target. Knowing the second I pull the trigger, lives will change, I close my eyes take a deep breath in and squeeze, unaware my kitten has spotted the laser.
1- Midgets
10-The apocalypse will come but not fast. In the end times I will run out of my sleeping pill prescription and not be able to sleep. Out of frustration, a member of my family knocks me over the cranky irritable head and kills me. No heaven for him.
9- I drive around and round and get hopelessly lost in the city near me. Then I will have to ask directions and admit I am lost. I can drive without hesitation in other states or country, but not here. Then I have to stop and ask directions in an foreign accent so as not to look the fool being lost in my own back yard.
8-I will stand up when my lawyer enters the room I am waiting in and take off all my clothes. Again.
7-I am afraid when I marry Gordon Ramsey I will dress him up like a little corgi dog and use him scare the mailman instead of utilizing his God given talent of humiliating the non postal.
6- I fear the next time I am walking by the front of a plate glass windowed restaurant and spot my wind blown reflection in the glass and pause to make an exaggerated horrible expressing while holding up my fingers over my head and wiggling them in a evil witch style, the unseen dinner sitting in the booth on the other side will take more offence and chase after me with a burning torch like I deserve.
5- I will finally locate the one gated community existing that does not allow teenagers within it perimeter. But the gate will have an electronic remote code that my teenager will have to explain to me.
4-I am stalked by a group of Morris dancers. Innocent looking and light on their feet they are never caught. Stress causes me to lose my job and I have to get homeless dude on 7th st to cut my hair for cheep. Then I get lost trying to find him and have to ask direction. "Eh mucho homeless gringo se?"
3-My laptop gets stolen. Stolen by eloquent and evocative writer who answers all my e-mail and solves all my problems caused by inertia plus enables the spell check on my computer. People will love me right up tom the time I buy a new laptop and change my password. Then they will think of me not only as lazy but rude. Wait.
2-The day will come during an emergency that my sharp shooting skills will be required and the A-squad will call me in. Calmly I stand behind the security barriers, handgun in hand, red laser guild square on target. Knowing the second I pull the trigger, lives will change, I close my eyes take a deep breath in and squeeze, unaware my kitten has spotted the laser.
1- Midgets
Thursday, March 26, 2009
So she replied,
"Learn how to program a phone and stop drunk dialing me." But it was 2 a.m. so it really soundwd like, "Go***$!! ur f$~~^% phone and stop #@!% dialing me bitch."
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
So she replied,
"No, a pink shirt does not make you look gay. The stuffed animals on your computer and the other hand..... Want to go to antiquing with me this weekend?"
So she replied,
"No I will not join you you all mouth big headed spoon lickin freak", as she threw a pot holder at Rachel's oversized noggin and turned off Foodnetwork in a huff.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
So she replied,
"That's explains things, One Eye has super advanced chicken powers", to the boy elucidating poultry logic to the baffled woman.
So she replied,
"All this stress is causing my goiter to throb and I can't read Craigslist. I'm going home Steve."
So she replied,
"I THOUGHT YOU WERE A FIGHTER!", as she bend to pick up the broken lamp he had just broke with his miss aimed blow.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Commercial Break 09
Looking out the bedroom window.
Northern beaver are extra furry and there is a reason they smell like fish.
I smell fuds
Your not a wolf are you?
Simon says one step closer
Hand fed Bambi
So she replied,
"Take the costume off for once will ya? Be a real nobody and stop trying so hard to be a fake somebody."
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
So she replied,
"Alaska has a monthly living expense allowance? That settles it- I move to Canada and become a citizen. Move back to Minnasota, apply for a small buiesness loan. Charge up a bunch of stuff-move it all up to Alaska and never work another day in my life".
So she replied,
"Lack a Punch!! We'll take the picknick out on the lake and have a boat!" When excited her brain works faster than her mouth.
Monday, March 16, 2009
So she replied,
"No mew you! Momma lurves her sweet sweet baby angle lover sooo much *smooch smooch smooch...", stopping when she saw the movement of the Culigan man who lingered too long.
So she replied,
"I like mad Bob. You should bring him out more often", to the quiet balding man in the back.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
So she replied,
"The only reason you'd take hard drugs is to lose weight? What about the trip?" to her best retarded friend who was skinny to begin with.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
On The Way To Canada
Day three on the expedition to Canada finds my party stranded. The snow covers the windows of the lodge and the tracks we made made an hour ago have disappeared.
The shelter we have has closed for the season, it is just me, my two hearty boys, and the inn keeper, Gale.
Our attempts for sustenance this morn were fruitful, providing us with four rainbow lake trout. But we have no means of cooking our dinner, as the inn keeper, a kind gentle spirit has locked himself in his quarters and the fire in our rooms, gas.
The last ting we supt on was a local dish, Goober Burgers and Moose drool. It has given us the energy to return to our base.
We have one box of Thin Mint girl Scout cookies. Some cocoa. Oh and the pie we could not finished dinner, which is not really a pie but more of a crisp.
Please please sent help soon. We have no TV. No cell phone. Our plans of being Ghost Hunters International is stymied here with the only sighting of abnormal phenomenon is the bar tender over at Gunflint Lodge's tale of the radio that does not always shut off right. No one else around here is talking and spring break may be over by the time we make it to that fort in Thunder Bay with misty solders that walk through walls and the hotel that freaks even it's oldest workers old into the night.
When I find my camera cord I will post pic's of the survivors that do not get eaten or fall along the way.
The shelter we have has closed for the season, it is just me, my two hearty boys, and the inn keeper, Gale.
Our attempts for sustenance this morn were fruitful, providing us with four rainbow lake trout. But we have no means of cooking our dinner, as the inn keeper, a kind gentle spirit has locked himself in his quarters and the fire in our rooms, gas.
The last ting we supt on was a local dish, Goober Burgers and Moose drool. It has given us the energy to return to our base.
We have one box of Thin Mint girl Scout cookies. Some cocoa. Oh and the pie we could not finished dinner, which is not really a pie but more of a crisp.
Please please sent help soon. We have no TV. No cell phone. Our plans of being Ghost Hunters International is stymied here with the only sighting of abnormal phenomenon is the bar tender over at Gunflint Lodge's tale of the radio that does not always shut off right. No one else around here is talking and spring break may be over by the time we make it to that fort in Thunder Bay with misty solders that walk through walls and the hotel that freaks even it's oldest workers old into the night.
When I find my camera cord I will post pic's of the survivors that do not get eaten or fall along the way.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Box of Monsters
June 13, 1974 was my dads 45th birthday. Mom took me to the First National Bank of Graceton that day. She went in uniform, navy pleated skirt, matching sweater set, nylons, and her pointy heeled shoes that left holes in our yard. She also curled her hair and secured it back with a head band, as was the style of the time. She wore the long chain necklace with the turquoise flower dad had bought for her when he had worked construction out the Phoenix. As if the money grandma had left her in the savings account was not enough. The necklace swung as she walked up to the tellers window.
"I'm here to make a withdrawal for my husbands birthday."
She left with an envelope containing $200. without telling me what she was getting him and swore me to secrecy during the twelve mile ride home in our old dusty blue Dodge Polara.
At home I whispered the news to my sister under the willow tree at the edge of our yard where the tall grass ended and the garden started. We wondered what she could buy with all that money. My older sister Debbie who was nine and all practical guessed it was something the whole family could use, like our first color TV with a real antenna in place of a coat hanger, or a shiny car with a heater. I ventured it must be a trip to Mexico because I had recently learned of Mexico in Mrs. Christenson's kindergarten class. "Don't be stupid", Debbie said and punched me good in the arm, because she had known about Mexico for a long time, and thought mom would not take dad to a place they speak funny. I punched her back for calling me stupid then we both decided it had to be a swimming pool to go where the rhubarb had been planted because after all we did not have rhubarb for two years. I was six but I acted like like five and a half so I had to make an oath not to pee in our new pool.
"What should we get dad?", Deb asked as Skipper our heeler and Goldie our tom shared our shade, after we had finished arguing who would do the first cannon ball into the pool. Every Christmas, birthday, or gift giving occasion she would ask me the same question. We both got an allowance. She fifty cents and me a dime for feeding the cow which wasn't at all fair. She did carry the heavy water but I was the one who walked in front of her so the cow would stretch out her neck and lick the salt off my bare legs with her rough tongue as Debbie poured the water into the trough. It was me who, when I remember too, opened the granary door and yelled, "RUN MICE", before Debbie would enter to scoop up Chrystal's dinner oats. I had a lot of plans for my cash. I wanted to save my money to buy Goldie his own cat bed so when I woke up in the morning I would not be twisted into a corner of the bed I shared with the cat and my sister.
"Lets make something" I ventured not wanting to part with my hard earned money and knowing Debbie to be the creative one would end up doing the work.
"But mom got dad something big. We need to get dad a big thing too", Debbie counter acted.
My mat buddy during nap time in Mrs Christansons room, Elaine, told me about the sea monkeys advertised in the back of her Archie comic books. She planned on growing them in shot glasses on her dresser near her bed and would tell me how big they got when we met again in the fall. I would do anything to grow a bigger sea monkey than Elaine. I didn't have a shot glass with to measure, our parents drank their whiskey from burnt orange plastic tumblers marked with imprints of Skippy's pointy teeth.
That was a long way of saying I never had any money to spare. Debbie on the other hand was good at saving and she could make anything.
"Making him something is more better that stuff we could buy at the store", I said trying to imagine what a giant sea monkey would look like and how superior I would feel when I told that Elaine.
"What are you going to make?" Debbie asked me.
I was good at making mud pies, and drawing monsters. I was also good at pouring milk over Graham crackers on a saucer till they got just the right mushy constancy to eat with a spoon. The mud pies always crumbled away into dust. My monster where no big deal. I drew pages of different monsters constantly. I had note books of scary monsters. Volumes of gross ugly monsters. I would sit under our kitchen table and draw funny monster on the chipboard side of the Formica in crayon. I drew monsters for everyone in our family. The pad of monsters I gave dad last winter he said he liked. But I watched dad crumple up page after page of my drawings for kindling in the kitchen wood burner from the crack in my bedroom door on the cold winters mornings as I dressed for school. And only I enjoyed my mush. Probley due to the fact I had no front teeth. I had purposely worried the baby teeth out of my mouth before my permanent ones were ready to grow into their place. The tooth fairy after all paid as much per tooth as a weeks worth of cow licks or yelling at rodents.
"Enh don't know", I answered bitting on a corner of my bottom lip with my side teeth.
So we moved ourselves into our front porch. Goldie the cat lay on the warm window still. Skipper at his post of the top step outside the door. Deb covered the paint spattered table with the Sunday paper and hauled out the trove of craft items from the dime store in town. Mom was all pro arts and crafts, not wanting her daughters to waste all their time idle with our face in a book had invested in our future by providing us the tools to create. Glue, pipe cleaners, water paints left over from school were mixed in with a jumble of potholder weaving loops and a few Popsicle sticks.
"What are you going to make?" I asked my sister who was always claimed charge of the craft supplies. I also hoped she would want me to help. But I knew she would roll her blue eyes at anything made of mud or crackers.
"We should probly each make separate stuff. If can't give dad something big, then we need to make him more things."
I watched my sister try to make our balding dad a toupee out of pipe cleaners only to abandon it when she ran out of brown.
I make myself a snacky snack of sun warmed cracker mush by leaving it in the direct afternoon sunlight. Unfortunately Goldie woke up and helped himself to my saucer as I watched Debbie switch her efforts to making a cover for dads black plastic eye glass frames. I had tried to wash the wielding dust off his eyeglasses and dipped them in the boiling water mom had left on the stove as she cooked potatoes for dinner. Dad was able to bend them when they were still warm back to fit his face again, they just were no longer a solid black color. Some parts were a lighter gray, even whitish. When I looked at dad after that, especially from the side his glasses reminded me of Chrystal's coat.
I knew if I just kept quiet long enough and stayed out of my sisters way, I could add my own special touch to her project after she left it and could claim some credit.
"Make something runt" Debbie ordered me when she realized I wasn't doing anything but petting the mush stealing cat after I had changed my clothes.
I picked up my tablet and reached for my Crayolas. My choice of colors were limited as I disliked the intense purple and the drab green so much I had buried them in mom's flower bed. It was easy to shove their still sharp unused points down into the soft earth around the lillys. My red had melted over Christmas when Mrs Christenson had us push our book bags up against the radiator at school to make room for the tree. Most of the rest of my small box were broken. Yellow and brown were really all I needed, and maybe a blue ink pen to draw a bossy monster with it's hair all sticking up with glue and Popsicle sticks as I watched my sister create over the top of of my pad as I drew.
The arrival of the Montgomery Wards delivery truck backing into our dirt drive was enough to make us drop our crafts forgotton and charge outside.
Then we ran right back inside the house and hid behind the curtains when we remember how shy we were and not knowing if Tom Mosher who ran the catalog outlet store in town was a good guy or not.
After mom paid shady Tom with all the money in her envelope we stood outside squeeling with eyes large in awe of the biggest cardboard box we had ever seen.
A box big enough to hold our pool and a latter. But mom made us wait to open it with it being dads birthday present and all.
When the old yellow Chevy pick up truck pulled into the yard at dinner time we were dancing around the box.
"What my girls got there?"
"Happy birthday" said Debbie and mom who had joined us. "OPEN IT" I yelled not being civilized like a six year old who acted five and a half and was already dressed in a swim suit.
Dad slowly walked around the box, hand rolled cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth he reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife as he figured out how to best open the container without damaging whatever was inside.
Dad cut around the bottom end of the box ever so slowly pulled the box up....
over....
a large...
white....
"FREEZER?"
"It's a freezer?"
"I like this present a lot" dad exclaimed.
I don't ever remember dad saying the word love. Like was as good as it got. I did not love or even like that stinkin freezer. Never did.
But in the fall it would hold the venison and the meat from Chrystal my parents also called venison to keep my sister from crying at the table. I knew it was not deer but would not cry chosing to crawl under the table and visit my happy monsters. Meat was not as big a concern to a girl with limited chewing ability.
Dad did not let me fill the freezer up with our hose and swim in it before he moved it down into our dark scary cellar. Matter of fact that big fancy freezer had a lock and he locked it right up on me while he was trying to find a way to move that heavy thing down the rickety stairs. Nothing in our house had a lock on it. I stood in front of that massive chest staring at the lock right at my eye level, defeated in my bathing suit. We even left the keys in the Dodge.
But dad did let us camp in that big cardboard box. We slept out there in the yard where the pool should have gone for two nights. One the third night it started to rain sometime and we woke up the next morning in our bed, Goldie in his spot right in the middle. The next day our box was soaked through. Not even good enough to draw on.
The last time I was to our old house, Skippy and Goldie were long gone. The cellar didn't terrify me at all. There in a corner under the stairs that freeze did not look quite so big. After searching my parents old farmhouse I found the only set of keys were ever brought into it. The freezer void of all animals, empty except for one old shoe box. Inside were two pictures. One age yellowed crude picture of a toothless monster and one hairless with spotty glasses.
"I'm here to make a withdrawal for my husbands birthday."
She left with an envelope containing $200. without telling me what she was getting him and swore me to secrecy during the twelve mile ride home in our old dusty blue Dodge Polara.
At home I whispered the news to my sister under the willow tree at the edge of our yard where the tall grass ended and the garden started. We wondered what she could buy with all that money. My older sister Debbie who was nine and all practical guessed it was something the whole family could use, like our first color TV with a real antenna in place of a coat hanger, or a shiny car with a heater. I ventured it must be a trip to Mexico because I had recently learned of Mexico in Mrs. Christenson's kindergarten class. "Don't be stupid", Debbie said and punched me good in the arm, because she had known about Mexico for a long time, and thought mom would not take dad to a place they speak funny. I punched her back for calling me stupid then we both decided it had to be a swimming pool to go where the rhubarb had been planted because after all we did not have rhubarb for two years. I was six but I acted like like five and a half so I had to make an oath not to pee in our new pool.
"What should we get dad?", Deb asked as Skipper our heeler and Goldie our tom shared our shade, after we had finished arguing who would do the first cannon ball into the pool. Every Christmas, birthday, or gift giving occasion she would ask me the same question. We both got an allowance. She fifty cents and me a dime for feeding the cow which wasn't at all fair. She did carry the heavy water but I was the one who walked in front of her so the cow would stretch out her neck and lick the salt off my bare legs with her rough tongue as Debbie poured the water into the trough. It was me who, when I remember too, opened the granary door and yelled, "RUN MICE", before Debbie would enter to scoop up Chrystal's dinner oats. I had a lot of plans for my cash. I wanted to save my money to buy Goldie his own cat bed so when I woke up in the morning I would not be twisted into a corner of the bed I shared with the cat and my sister.
"Lets make something" I ventured not wanting to part with my hard earned money and knowing Debbie to be the creative one would end up doing the work.
"But mom got dad something big. We need to get dad a big thing too", Debbie counter acted.
My mat buddy during nap time in Mrs Christansons room, Elaine, told me about the sea monkeys advertised in the back of her Archie comic books. She planned on growing them in shot glasses on her dresser near her bed and would tell me how big they got when we met again in the fall. I would do anything to grow a bigger sea monkey than Elaine. I didn't have a shot glass with to measure, our parents drank their whiskey from burnt orange plastic tumblers marked with imprints of Skippy's pointy teeth.
That was a long way of saying I never had any money to spare. Debbie on the other hand was good at saving and she could make anything.
"Making him something is more better that stuff we could buy at the store", I said trying to imagine what a giant sea monkey would look like and how superior I would feel when I told that Elaine.
"What are you going to make?" Debbie asked me.
I was good at making mud pies, and drawing monsters. I was also good at pouring milk over Graham crackers on a saucer till they got just the right mushy constancy to eat with a spoon. The mud pies always crumbled away into dust. My monster where no big deal. I drew pages of different monsters constantly. I had note books of scary monsters. Volumes of gross ugly monsters. I would sit under our kitchen table and draw funny monster on the chipboard side of the Formica in crayon. I drew monsters for everyone in our family. The pad of monsters I gave dad last winter he said he liked. But I watched dad crumple up page after page of my drawings for kindling in the kitchen wood burner from the crack in my bedroom door on the cold winters mornings as I dressed for school. And only I enjoyed my mush. Probley due to the fact I had no front teeth. I had purposely worried the baby teeth out of my mouth before my permanent ones were ready to grow into their place. The tooth fairy after all paid as much per tooth as a weeks worth of cow licks or yelling at rodents.
"Enh don't know", I answered bitting on a corner of my bottom lip with my side teeth.
So we moved ourselves into our front porch. Goldie the cat lay on the warm window still. Skipper at his post of the top step outside the door. Deb covered the paint spattered table with the Sunday paper and hauled out the trove of craft items from the dime store in town. Mom was all pro arts and crafts, not wanting her daughters to waste all their time idle with our face in a book had invested in our future by providing us the tools to create. Glue, pipe cleaners, water paints left over from school were mixed in with a jumble of potholder weaving loops and a few Popsicle sticks.
"What are you going to make?" I asked my sister who was always claimed charge of the craft supplies. I also hoped she would want me to help. But I knew she would roll her blue eyes at anything made of mud or crackers.
"We should probly each make separate stuff. If can't give dad something big, then we need to make him more things."
I watched my sister try to make our balding dad a toupee out of pipe cleaners only to abandon it when she ran out of brown.
I make myself a snacky snack of sun warmed cracker mush by leaving it in the direct afternoon sunlight. Unfortunately Goldie woke up and helped himself to my saucer as I watched Debbie switch her efforts to making a cover for dads black plastic eye glass frames. I had tried to wash the wielding dust off his eyeglasses and dipped them in the boiling water mom had left on the stove as she cooked potatoes for dinner. Dad was able to bend them when they were still warm back to fit his face again, they just were no longer a solid black color. Some parts were a lighter gray, even whitish. When I looked at dad after that, especially from the side his glasses reminded me of Chrystal's coat.
I knew if I just kept quiet long enough and stayed out of my sisters way, I could add my own special touch to her project after she left it and could claim some credit.
"Make something runt" Debbie ordered me when she realized I wasn't doing anything but petting the mush stealing cat after I had changed my clothes.
I picked up my tablet and reached for my Crayolas. My choice of colors were limited as I disliked the intense purple and the drab green so much I had buried them in mom's flower bed. It was easy to shove their still sharp unused points down into the soft earth around the lillys. My red had melted over Christmas when Mrs Christenson had us push our book bags up against the radiator at school to make room for the tree. Most of the rest of my small box were broken. Yellow and brown were really all I needed, and maybe a blue ink pen to draw a bossy monster with it's hair all sticking up with glue and Popsicle sticks as I watched my sister create over the top of of my pad as I drew.
The arrival of the Montgomery Wards delivery truck backing into our dirt drive was enough to make us drop our crafts forgotton and charge outside.
Then we ran right back inside the house and hid behind the curtains when we remember how shy we were and not knowing if Tom Mosher who ran the catalog outlet store in town was a good guy or not.
After mom paid shady Tom with all the money in her envelope we stood outside squeeling with eyes large in awe of the biggest cardboard box we had ever seen.
A box big enough to hold our pool and a latter. But mom made us wait to open it with it being dads birthday present and all.
When the old yellow Chevy pick up truck pulled into the yard at dinner time we were dancing around the box.
"What my girls got there?"
"Happy birthday" said Debbie and mom who had joined us. "OPEN IT" I yelled not being civilized like a six year old who acted five and a half and was already dressed in a swim suit.
Dad slowly walked around the box, hand rolled cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth he reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife as he figured out how to best open the container without damaging whatever was inside.
Dad cut around the bottom end of the box ever so slowly pulled the box up....
over....
a large...
white....
"FREEZER?"
"It's a freezer?"
"I like this present a lot" dad exclaimed.
I don't ever remember dad saying the word love. Like was as good as it got. I did not love or even like that stinkin freezer. Never did.
But in the fall it would hold the venison and the meat from Chrystal my parents also called venison to keep my sister from crying at the table. I knew it was not deer but would not cry chosing to crawl under the table and visit my happy monsters. Meat was not as big a concern to a girl with limited chewing ability.
Dad did not let me fill the freezer up with our hose and swim in it before he moved it down into our dark scary cellar. Matter of fact that big fancy freezer had a lock and he locked it right up on me while he was trying to find a way to move that heavy thing down the rickety stairs. Nothing in our house had a lock on it. I stood in front of that massive chest staring at the lock right at my eye level, defeated in my bathing suit. We even left the keys in the Dodge.
But dad did let us camp in that big cardboard box. We slept out there in the yard where the pool should have gone for two nights. One the third night it started to rain sometime and we woke up the next morning in our bed, Goldie in his spot right in the middle. The next day our box was soaked through. Not even good enough to draw on.
The last time I was to our old house, Skippy and Goldie were long gone. The cellar didn't terrify me at all. There in a corner under the stairs that freeze did not look quite so big. After searching my parents old farmhouse I found the only set of keys were ever brought into it. The freezer void of all animals, empty except for one old shoe box. Inside were two pictures. One age yellowed crude picture of a toothless monster and one hairless with spotty glasses.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Out Of Love
You're all outta love and you're only 38.
"I blew my love on a whole lotta people who didn't deserve it," you say at the dinner table, eyeing your two sons with scorn. Your two sons both give you the finger in response.
"Are you sure you didn't leave some of your love in your other pants," your husband says pointedly. He knows about the affair with the guy who sells you your soft serve.
"I should have been more miserly," you say, ignoring your husband. "What kind of woman am I going to be now?"
Everyone sits and waits for you to do something that a woman who's all outta love might do. Nothing happens. They get hungry and start eating again.
"Pass the salt," your son says.
"Nope," you say.
Everyone drops their forks to their plates and gasps. You realize what you've become and you drop your face into your hands and wail.
"I blew my love on a whole lotta people who didn't deserve it," you say at the dinner table, eyeing your two sons with scorn. Your two sons both give you the finger in response.
"Are you sure you didn't leave some of your love in your other pants," your husband says pointedly. He knows about the affair with the guy who sells you your soft serve.
"I should have been more miserly," you say, ignoring your husband. "What kind of woman am I going to be now?"
Everyone sits and waits for you to do something that a woman who's all outta love might do. Nothing happens. They get hungry and start eating again.
"Pass the salt," your son says.
"Nope," you say.
Everyone drops their forks to their plates and gasps. You realize what you've become and you drop your face into your hands and wail.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Face The Wall
That’s her. Her.
That’s who I want to be today. Her. The one who could kick your ass, fuck you up and fuck you over. And then fuck right off. Hate on her right knuckles, hate on her left. Bile in her heart, with her blood running poison and her mind running on empty. That one, please.
Unless. Unless, no. Not her. Her. The other one. That’s who I want to be today. Her. The one up there on the center stage. The one with the boisterous voice and smile like a magnate. The one for whom even the sun cannot out shine. The one whose heart is never full, she salivates with positives. Give me her outstretched hands and her warm embrace. Yes, absolutely. I understand it all now, thanks to her. So her, please.
No. No, I’ve changed my mind. Sorry. I want to be her. Right now, this minute, this second. That’s who I want to be today. Her. Make me her, please. She walks the walk and she talks the talk. She's got her ducks in a row and is a woman of the world. She’s got the salesman’s patter, the gift of the gab, the words at her fingertips. I’ll take that one, please.
But, oh, I don’t know. What about her? She’s got her head in the clouds and she’s not coming down. Not for anyone. She’s lost and she doesn’t care to be found. She’s seen it all and done it all. She’s gone. Well and truly. She’s stepped off. Risen to a higher plane. She’s all over. All over and out. Make me her, please. Please make me into her. That’s who I want to be today.
What? What do you mean I can't be exchanged. Here's my ID badge, take it. And my drivers licence, it's yours. Sorry about the tickets. You can have my credit cards too.Those girls on the line there, they can't see me right? Doesn't matter. I don't know who I am either.
That’s who I want to be today. Her. The one who could kick your ass, fuck you up and fuck you over. And then fuck right off. Hate on her right knuckles, hate on her left. Bile in her heart, with her blood running poison and her mind running on empty. That one, please.
Unless. Unless, no. Not her. Her. The other one. That’s who I want to be today. Her. The one up there on the center stage. The one with the boisterous voice and smile like a magnate. The one for whom even the sun cannot out shine. The one whose heart is never full, she salivates with positives. Give me her outstretched hands and her warm embrace. Yes, absolutely. I understand it all now, thanks to her. So her, please.
No. No, I’ve changed my mind. Sorry. I want to be her. Right now, this minute, this second. That’s who I want to be today. Her. Make me her, please. She walks the walk and she talks the talk. She's got her ducks in a row and is a woman of the world. She’s got the salesman’s patter, the gift of the gab, the words at her fingertips. I’ll take that one, please.
But, oh, I don’t know. What about her? She’s got her head in the clouds and she’s not coming down. Not for anyone. She’s lost and she doesn’t care to be found. She’s seen it all and done it all. She’s gone. Well and truly. She’s stepped off. Risen to a higher plane. She’s all over. All over and out. Make me her, please. Please make me into her. That’s who I want to be today.
What? What do you mean I can't be exchanged. Here's my ID badge, take it. And my drivers licence, it's yours. Sorry about the tickets. You can have my credit cards too.Those girls on the line there, they can't see me right? Doesn't matter. I don't know who I am either.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Hiring Day
Friday is hiring day. Eight job openings I had to fill today. Positions in the kitchen come open due to mostly terminations for theft. Or Fighting. Some times treatment or education failure. Least often when I have to replace offender workers who get to go home. As much as I hate the crimes that these guys commit that put them into my prison, I am glad for some people when they do get out.
I sit at the metal picnic table in chow hall with my stacks of paper work in front of me and shuffle through the applications. Times are tough and even jobs are hard to get behind bars. Some of the names I have to sort though are made up names, a throwback from the time when the state would pay for any legal document changes. Action Jackson. Federal Murder. Judge Dis.
A lot of the names are native. Whitetaildeer. PierceArrow.
Then there are the Asians, the Hispanics. I have hired and fired a million Yangs and Lees and Pedros.
And not a one of them skilled. Unless stealing me blind and lying through their teeth are qualifications.
I hand the guard the the stack of the best of the worst I have sorted through and wait for him to call the hopeful perspectives into the dining hall. I look at the list of experiences on their applications. Some leave it bare. They are often the ones who get their celly to grudging fill out the form for them, when the applicants are unable to read it themselves. Payback for resume writting is food smuggled out of the kitchen. Job seekers have gone so far as written child care and taking out the garbage for job qualification.
Offenders rarely list the outside restaurants they have worked at, if they do have any real experience. Like I would call anyone one the street for a reference for inmate 1662438 anyway. Once and a while they will name a place I have eaten at. Sometimes I know the chefs they have worked under. I hate it when they have cooked at better places than I. It happens.
"I see you down you were a salads prep on the outside. What was the name of the place?"
If they were fired, which most of them were, they will be vague.
"It is closed".
"Really? I've been around awhile. Maybe I'll remember it."
"Aquvit."
"Who was the executive chef at the time you were there?"
"Ummm it's been so long."
I wait looking at the inmate fidget and just stare. And think of the cookbook on the top shelf of my cabinet at home. It is written by Marcus Samulson. The most famous black chef in the cities.
"Marcus", offender bouncy leg stammers. He stutters because he needs the twelve cents an hour he will receive for employment. He will be paid a quarter but the state will automatically take half for child support and victim retribution. His share of the check will go for laundry soap, toiletries, and much needed calling cards to keep in touch with loved ones on the outside. Some, if there is any left will go for canteen, for the something they crave to fill the voids. I am happy when they can buy their own food. They steal less from me.
Some don't need a job. They have family one the outside to send them money. Or women they play who will pay for long distance affection.
"Marcus Sam..." I give him.
"Marcus Samulson", he finishes proud of himself and feeling like he has made a connection with me. I do not want to connect with these guys. But they do work harder for me if they think there is a bond. Most of the time I do not care. Every one of them is replaceable.
"Ok", I answer not at all believing the guy in front of me ever worked in any kitchen before. Dude might have watched food net work back at his unit. Or he detailed Samulson's car. "I have a job for you scrubbing pots", I tell him. "We all gotta start somewhere." I do not tell him it doesn't matter if he can cook. If he can shut up and work hard without causing trouble he will make his way out of pots. It is cheaper to pay this social reject two bits an hour to scrub than it would cost me to buy Pam to make washing stainless easier.
Occasionally they will have worked in places nearby that my family has eaten and I think of the days when I could have turned into the one sitting on the other side of the table. My time working late nights and the adrenaline induced stress, the availability of drugs and drinks and the push to fit in, even at the treatment center where the stoners twisted their own in the parking lot on brake.
In they come and one by one I start my questions.
"Are you in school?"
"Treatment?"
"IFI?"
"When will you start and how long are you in for?" I never ask why. Sometimes if they are not a pedophile, they tell me anyway.
"I was just driving drunk and I'm in with murders and baby rapers. I wasn't even driving a car, I was on a four wheeler."
I do not blink I just go one to the next question.
"Are you a release violator?"
Then I ask about experience or skill. Most of their food service experience comes from other correctional facilities. Today the man I was interview listed every prison in the state. Plus outside restaurant experience.
"You ever work here?".
"Yes. 1998-2001 here. I was a table wipe and line server."
"You worked for Gerald."
"I don't remember."
"Don't matter." I have a job for you in dishroom."
"My son worked here for the past three years. I hadn't seen him in four years."
"Really", I ask what did he do? Sometimes they try to name drop to get a better job.
"Jermey cooked." Cooking is a respected job here.
I glance down at his application. His last name is Allen.
"I remember him. He just whent out to minimum." I fired his son for arguing with staff and hooking up his friends. He sat in IFI bawling for forgiveness afterwords. Even the pushover Chaplin saw though his act.
"Yeah. I got to talk with him before he left. Jermey is a good kid." Inmates think I do not know their crimes. I try not to know.
I remember the birthday cake that the bakery made for Jermey last year, before he was fired. It was a chocolate cake. I had to discipline the bakers for baking what was not on our menu. I remember because they did it on my kids birthday, the same as Jeremy. I was skiing with my son at the time.
I had to look up Jeremy's crime when food disappearing from the cooks area.
Jeremy Allen was given a life sentience for beating his own baby to death.
My new dish washer is proud of his son, his old brown eyes sparked when I remembered Jermey's name. He tipped an imaginary hat and addressed me as ma'am when he returned to his living unit. His walk was lighter leaving than entering.
I looked old Allen crime up after I added him to my roster.
He does have food service experience on the outside. He knocked over Subways.
I sit at the metal picnic table in chow hall with my stacks of paper work in front of me and shuffle through the applications. Times are tough and even jobs are hard to get behind bars. Some of the names I have to sort though are made up names, a throwback from the time when the state would pay for any legal document changes. Action Jackson. Federal Murder. Judge Dis.
A lot of the names are native. Whitetaildeer. PierceArrow.
Then there are the Asians, the Hispanics. I have hired and fired a million Yangs and Lees and Pedros.
And not a one of them skilled. Unless stealing me blind and lying through their teeth are qualifications.
I hand the guard the the stack of the best of the worst I have sorted through and wait for him to call the hopeful perspectives into the dining hall. I look at the list of experiences on their applications. Some leave it bare. They are often the ones who get their celly to grudging fill out the form for them, when the applicants are unable to read it themselves. Payback for resume writting is food smuggled out of the kitchen. Job seekers have gone so far as written child care and taking out the garbage for job qualification.
Offenders rarely list the outside restaurants they have worked at, if they do have any real experience. Like I would call anyone one the street for a reference for inmate 1662438 anyway. Once and a while they will name a place I have eaten at. Sometimes I know the chefs they have worked under. I hate it when they have cooked at better places than I. It happens.
"I see you down you were a salads prep on the outside. What was the name of the place?"
If they were fired, which most of them were, they will be vague.
"It is closed".
"Really? I've been around awhile. Maybe I'll remember it."
"Aquvit."
"Who was the executive chef at the time you were there?"
"Ummm it's been so long."
I wait looking at the inmate fidget and just stare. And think of the cookbook on the top shelf of my cabinet at home. It is written by Marcus Samulson. The most famous black chef in the cities.
"Marcus", offender bouncy leg stammers. He stutters because he needs the twelve cents an hour he will receive for employment. He will be paid a quarter but the state will automatically take half for child support and victim retribution. His share of the check will go for laundry soap, toiletries, and much needed calling cards to keep in touch with loved ones on the outside. Some, if there is any left will go for canteen, for the something they crave to fill the voids. I am happy when they can buy their own food. They steal less from me.
Some don't need a job. They have family one the outside to send them money. Or women they play who will pay for long distance affection.
"Marcus Sam..." I give him.
"Marcus Samulson", he finishes proud of himself and feeling like he has made a connection with me. I do not want to connect with these guys. But they do work harder for me if they think there is a bond. Most of the time I do not care. Every one of them is replaceable.
"Ok", I answer not at all believing the guy in front of me ever worked in any kitchen before. Dude might have watched food net work back at his unit. Or he detailed Samulson's car. "I have a job for you scrubbing pots", I tell him. "We all gotta start somewhere." I do not tell him it doesn't matter if he can cook. If he can shut up and work hard without causing trouble he will make his way out of pots. It is cheaper to pay this social reject two bits an hour to scrub than it would cost me to buy Pam to make washing stainless easier.
Occasionally they will have worked in places nearby that my family has eaten and I think of the days when I could have turned into the one sitting on the other side of the table. My time working late nights and the adrenaline induced stress, the availability of drugs and drinks and the push to fit in, even at the treatment center where the stoners twisted their own in the parking lot on brake.
In they come and one by one I start my questions.
"Are you in school?"
"Treatment?"
"IFI?"
"When will you start and how long are you in for?" I never ask why. Sometimes if they are not a pedophile, they tell me anyway.
"I was just driving drunk and I'm in with murders and baby rapers. I wasn't even driving a car, I was on a four wheeler."
I do not blink I just go one to the next question.
"Are you a release violator?"
Then I ask about experience or skill. Most of their food service experience comes from other correctional facilities. Today the man I was interview listed every prison in the state. Plus outside restaurant experience.
"You ever work here?".
"Yes. 1998-2001 here. I was a table wipe and line server."
"You worked for Gerald."
"I don't remember."
"Don't matter." I have a job for you in dishroom."
"My son worked here for the past three years. I hadn't seen him in four years."
"Really", I ask what did he do? Sometimes they try to name drop to get a better job.
"Jermey cooked." Cooking is a respected job here.
I glance down at his application. His last name is Allen.
"I remember him. He just whent out to minimum." I fired his son for arguing with staff and hooking up his friends. He sat in IFI bawling for forgiveness afterwords. Even the pushover Chaplin saw though his act.
"Yeah. I got to talk with him before he left. Jermey is a good kid." Inmates think I do not know their crimes. I try not to know.
I remember the birthday cake that the bakery made for Jermey last year, before he was fired. It was a chocolate cake. I had to discipline the bakers for baking what was not on our menu. I remember because they did it on my kids birthday, the same as Jeremy. I was skiing with my son at the time.
I had to look up Jeremy's crime when food disappearing from the cooks area.
Jeremy Allen was given a life sentience for beating his own baby to death.
My new dish washer is proud of his son, his old brown eyes sparked when I remembered Jermey's name. He tipped an imaginary hat and addressed me as ma'am when he returned to his living unit. His walk was lighter leaving than entering.
I looked old Allen crime up after I added him to my roster.
He does have food service experience on the outside. He knocked over Subways.
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