Category Archives: City Life

Mecca of narcissism

After 40 minutes, her lovely face was still craned to within inches from the mirror, with pencil in hand, as she inspected herself.

After 40 minutes, her lovely face was still craned within inches from the mirror, with pencil in hand, as she inspected herself.

by Dell Franklin

I had an appointment today to get my hair cut by Toni, the wife of my tennis partner Fosdick, who is 18 years younger than I. She called early in the morning to remind me, no doubt figuring that, at 72, I am forgetful, especially when it comes to getting my hair cut, or, as she would put it, styled. I still have a full head of hair that is naturally wavy and partially grey. I usually get my hair cut every four months or so, when it becomes unmanageable and my sideburns sprout straight out an inch-and-a-half in grey and make me look like a stupid clown, according to Miranda, my woman of 26 years. Before my last haircut, I went nearly 20 months without doing anything to my hair and she became increasingly agitated at what she claimed was the ugliness of my being and claimed I looked like an old, old homeless bum and urged me in near hysterical terms to get a goddamn haircut, but the more she urged the more I resisted, until it finally came to the point where I gazed at my drivers license picture in horror and was sick of washing it and have it tangle up in my mouth and get caught in my teeth when I was sleeping, as well as watching people who did not know me cross the street when they saw me coming.

For years, I went to standard male barbers down south in Manhattan Beach and in San Luis Obispo when I moved up here in 1986. This one guy in San Luis did a very good job and I always tipped him well because I’ve been a bartender most of my life; but all this changed when Fosdick set me up with Toni, who is a “hair stylist” and known throughout the Morro Bay and Cayucos area and beyond as THE best. She has a large clientele of mostly women of all ages and styles and fussy men finicky about their hair.

‘That pretty young girl with the nice ass, is she O-C-D? She keeps doing the same thing over and over again and looking at herself and doing it over again. What’s wrong with her?’

I walked into the salon on time. Three young girls, all new stylists, and a slender kid around 22 named Aaron, who is flamboyantly gay but personable, stood or sat around between appointments. Toni, a petite woman who, like Fosdick, is a yoga fanatic and hiking zealot and looks 15 years younger than her age at 55, greeted me with the usual uneasiness most people do and washed my hair before seating me in a position where I did not have to look in the mirror and see my sagging, rumpled, withered puss that had once been called handsome by ladies of the very dark, very late nights.

Toni does not drink, eats primarily organic, and refuses to ingest anything even minutely unhealthy and coerces Fosdick to yoga retreats for only the most limber and non averse to torture.

Facing away from the mirror, I was pleased to have a perfect view of the cute and fetching young female stylists in their tight jeans and stylish blouses and accouterments, though none of them moved with the feminine flourish of Aaron, who wore skinny-type tight jeans and a sort of midriff blouse exposing his belly. Aaron is always stylish and friendly.

As Toni snipped, these girls and Aaron were all giggling and repeatedly glancing in mirrors and kibitzing, though one was studying and wiggling her fingers upon a flat object in total engrossment. I whispered, “Why aren’t those girls working? Are they bad hair stylists?”

“No,” Toni whispered back in a manner belying her embarrassment at me fingering her fellow associates. “Shhh!”

Just then a voluptuous woman around 40 approached Aaron’s chair directly across from me. He received her with a big warm hug and oozed sincere flattery and a fool could see the kid had real rapport with ladies. I recognized this woman as an employee at the gym in town I go to, and called out her name “Gwen!” loud enough to break up the clique of idle stylists.

She was now seated in Aaron’s chair and a bit stunned but then smiled and I said in a voice that I guess is too naturally loud and always embarrasses Miranda, “Hey, good lookin’. How yah doin’, Gwen?”

She could not help but grin. “Oh Dell, you are such a flirt.” She sized me up. “You look good.”

“Thanks, Gwen. I wish Miranda felt the same way.”

Aaron spun Gwen, who has no idea who Miranda is, around and put an apron on her and I asked Toni what Aaron was going to do with this woman and she whispered, “A dye job.”

I whispered back. “Aaron does a lot of the ladies working at the gym and when he walks around shaking his ass all the old latents on their workout machines make mean faces to give themselves away.”

“Shhhh!”

Toni snipped for a while and I began to really notice one of the young stylists as she groomed herself in the mirror of her station. She did this for about five minutes and I whispered to Toni, “Why are these girls idle—because they’re bad stylists?”

“No!” she whispered harshly. “They’re young, just building up clientele. They’re doing fine. They have their regulars.”

“But not like you.”

“No…but, I’ve been here a while.”

I knew this was false modesty but let it go. Another five minutes passed and the girl, very pretty, with a short haircut like Aaron’s, continued primping her hair, shaking it out by whinnying, then combed it and looked at it and whinnied. Then she began applying eyeliner. She stepped back, gazed at herself, applied more, gazed at herself, picked up another instrument and continued grooming her face. At the 20-minute mark, as Toni snipped, I whispered, “That pretty young girl with the nice ass, is she O-C-D? She keeps doing the same thing over and over again and looking at herself and doing it over again. What’s wrong with her? I mean, nobody can look perfect.”

“All the young girls do that,” she whispered back. “Now stop it, Dell.”

I found this mild chastisement a bit hypocritical being that Fosdick, at our after-tennis bull sessions at the coffee house, relates a lot of the juicy, delicious gossip Toni collects from these women whose hair she cuts. Toni’s no angel in my book. These clients tell her everything, even deeply personal, totally bizarre stuff, according to Fosdick’s reports.

Into the 30-minute mark, while Aaron conferred amiably with the gym lady, the young girl continued her process of grooming. She now had bowls of powder out and swished them around with a brush; all this after applying several instruments to her face and doing the identical same thing to her hair over and over again and reappraising her face. Soon she was indulging in some intense powdering of cheeks, chin and forehead.

I whispered to Toni, who was closing in on my new image. “I have never seen anybody do what that pretty young thing is doing in the mirror that long, Toni. In my book, it’s a record.”

“Shhhh!”

“She’s so pretty,” I said, not in a whisper, but loud enough for everybody to hear. “She doesn’t need all that make up.”

Only the girl did not react to my outburst, so obsessed was she with applying and reapplying powder to her face and then whinnying and roughing her hair and gazing with disappointment at her image and re-powdering.

Toni called out to her, “Kyla!” Kyla turned around, licking at her enameled lips, eyes far away, not exactly vacant. “Dell here thinks you’re so beautiful you don’t need to use make-up.”

Kyla turned and seemed to be looking at me, but maybe she wasn’t. “The way it is,” she said sassily. “Live with it.” She turned back to the mirror and continued her grooming.

That ended by inquisition in this mecca of narcissism. Toni finished, swiveled me around so I could look at my improved image. “Excellent,” I said.

Nobody else said anything.

“Let’s trim your eye brows and nose hairs,” Toni suggested in a manner indicating I needed help.

“No!”

As I walked to the counter up front, the young stylist, at the 40-minute mark, was bent over, lovely face craned to within inches from the mirror with pencil in hand as she inspected herself, her blessed little ass jutted out just ripe enough for me to want to goose it. But all I did was look, even after passing her and paying at the desk as an older lady with white hair immediately sat down in Toni’s chair. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur. He’s the author of The Ball Player’s Son, a memoir about his father, Murray Franklin, and the early days of big league baseball. Visit his website: dellfranklin.com

Godzilla, wingnuts and water

CITY LIFE.GODZILLA.TROUGH COW

I take a long draught from the bottle of well water I carry with me in the field. Like all the other critters, I’m thirsty. I’m lucky to drink from a well that still runs. photos by stacey warde

by Stacey Warde

We get lots of European and Asian travelers this time of year, when summer morphs into fall and rain-starved Californians look expectantly to the season’s first downpour.

The tourists cruise excruciatingly slow along winding spectacular Highway 1, the coastal route through Big Sur; hordes of them park along viewpoints, at the cliff’s edge, laughing, taking pictures, peering down into the vast sun-burnished Pacific, then hop into their rental cars and RVs to hog the road again.

If you happen to be on the road at the same time it’s an agonizing slog behind a train of tourists who have no clue about pulling over to let others pass, or how bad is our drought or the state of the union.

Invariably, they pass through Cayucos, our little hamlet by the sea. I meet a Japanese man at a coffee shop in town who stops for the sights. “What is, ‘Wingnut’?” he asks, pointing at a “we have the right to refuse service” sign behind the counter.

I spin my index finger around my ear, “Crazy.” I show him how a wingnut works, spinning an imaginary one around my finger. “They’re spun tight.”

He laughs as though he gets my drift, and nods repeatedly, “Ok, ok, ok,” he says, heading quickly for the exit, “thank you!”

“I might have given him a few more examples,” I say to the barista, thinking of a few politicians, gun kooks, mass shooters and deniers of climate change, “but I don’t know if he would appreciate them.”

***

I spend most of my days alone, working in the orchard, a quiet working retreat away from the flow of tourists and the brutish world of American politics and wingnuts.

A lone hawk screeches in the gray distance overhead, obscured by the canopy of avocado trees under which I labor. A large dark avocado, a late ripener, drops heavily, clunking through the leaves and branches above until it plops to the ground with a thud. I’m glad it doesn’t drop on my head. It’s plump and weighty and I know how much it hurts to get bonked by one.

The only sound besides the hawk, is the breeze sweeping dry leaves along the ground, and brushing back green leaves in the trees. I stop to listen. The harvest ended several weeks ago, only a few ripe stragglers remain, like the one that just fell, hidden from view from a flush of new growth.

The leaves tremble in succession from one tree to the next, as warm air whooshes through the orchard like a twirling, invisible dancer. More fruit falls in its path. Plop, plop, plop. The season has turned ghostly. It’s fall in California, even though most days it still feels hot, dry and summer-hardened.

An abundance of lime-green bulbs, about the shape and size of small pears, grows on the trees, the promise of a new crop, next season’s harvest, food for avocado lovers, provided all goes well, no frosts, wind storms, or pestilence, and a winter full of rain.

Another winter without rain, however, will turn this semi-arid region of extreme drought into a desert with devastating crop losses, catastrophic fires, and panic for nearly 40 million residents competing with their straws for less and less of the less-than-half-full glass that remains of the state’s water.

Days like this, without the shortening and lengthening of shadows, time stands still; it’s hard to worry about shortages, difficult people, and lumbering RVs in the bleak white blanket of a thick marine layer, harder still to imagine this place without water, the only way these trees will survive or produce more fruit.

This morning’s cloud cover, the first heavy bit of moisture we’ve had in weeks, will soon give way to blue sky and sun. Until recently, however, there’s been little to no marine layer, unusual for coastal weather, the hot dry easterlies prevail, blowing like a furnace down the mountain passes and through the valleys, raising temperatures to record levels.

“This feels really unnatural. When’s it going to finally rain?” I hear people ask.

“Soon, I hope.”

Tourists—and some residents—seem to have no clue how dire things are.

Late October, and it’s still ungodly hot. Whether it’s unnatural I can’t say but the ongoing heat and sun have sucked whatever moisture was left in this drought-stricken land a long time ago, leaving plant and animal parched for precious water. Sightings of coyotes and mountain lions have become more common as they come down from the hills to search for food and water. Dried up reservoirs give the best visual of how bad it is.

Signs posted along rural roads in Paso Robles wine country tell another story, “DRY WELL.”

In some places, we’re drawing water from the Pleistocene era. Yet, we still must contend with billionaire water smugglers buying up properties in the north county so they can suck up, bottle and ship elsewhere what little of our water is left so they can get rich. I take a long draught from the bottle of well water I carry with me in the field. Like all the other critters, I’m thirsty. I’m lucky to drink from a well that still runs. I refuse to buy FIJI Water.

The sun’s intensity frightens rather than warms with its penetrating rays. I’ve already felt the knife to remove three melanomas, a skin cancer that will kill if left untreated. And these were borne from days of exposure when the sun felt—and probably was—much less intense.

Now, the sun itself cuts, its rays slashing through fiber and filament, making it unpleasant to bear more than a few minutes of exposure, as if the sun might actually make an incision and draw blood. I’m lucky to be working in the shadows of an avocado canopy that spreads out over several acres for which, thankfully, there’s still enough water to irrigate, and cover enough to stay sheltered from the direct sun.

As we head into the rainy season, all the prognosticators point to a potentially record winter with wetter-than-normal rainfall, fueled by what has been billed as a “Godzilla” El Niño. The above-normal temperatures of the Pacific  Ocean will pack our winter storms with a powerful punch, driving a flow of moisture and rain like a machine, dumping buckets as they go, forecasters say. We need the water and the snowpack to lessen the dire state of its lack in the region’s worst drought in 1,200 years, according to those who have studied the phenomenon. But even Noah’s flood, apparently, won’t fix the drought.

Farmers fret as water shortages threaten to destroy field crops and fruit-bearing trees, and land sinks from an overdraft of groundwater in the Central Valley, while rich celebrities sitting pretty in LA and the Bay Area pour tens of thousands of gallons of water on their estate lawns and gardens.

The rationale, presumably, is that they will pay the fines and rate hikes, no big deal, they’ve got plenty of money. But what happens when there’s no more water? What good will their money do then? It’s a mindset that never ceases to amaze me, the “la-de-fucking-da” attitude toward precious resources like water.

Before the West’s major water projects, many driven by greed, land values in California, where there wasn’t any water, were cheap, even beachfront property. But land grabbers like William Mulholland fixed that, securing millions for himself and his friends in one of the state’s most ambitious and notoriously crooked water projects to develop the San Fernando Valley and LA basin. Water wars are nothing new here.

Only the promise and supply of water can keep us alive, let alone wealthy, and from cutting one another’s throats.

***

For sure, as I might have informed my Japanese friend, we have our share of wingnuts in this country and, like the rest of the world, they’re either politicians or religious or angry young men intent on killing, or scientifically challenged, many with their own radio shows, unable to fathom the potential devastation—extremes in weather, for example—from climate change, and who for no other reason than lack of an educated and critical mind don’t know the difference between civil law and religious superstition.

I wonder how so many seemingly intelligent people, Americans especially, since we presumably value a good education, can be so easily fooled by the crooked and the small-minded, giving precious time, energy and money to mean and vicious people and causes.

The GOP, for example, is in disarray, hobbled by the mean and nasty, ultra-right wing rabble, mostly members of the so-called Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives, attempting to hijack the government, threatening at every turn to shut it down. I don’t understand or like this kind of thinking—if you can call it that—from hijackers and so-called “freedom” fighters. Yet, I encounter them nearly every day—not only in the news but in the coffee shops, bars and workplaces here at home.

“How come you have to be such a fucking liberal?” a local farmer and freedom fighter once asked me during a political talk. Not long after that, he cut off my water supply to a field I was tending on his farm. I begged him for water as the heat of summer intensified and the plants began to wilt and fruit was forming but going bad. He refused, the ripening fruit fell off, and we lost our harvest and all of the income from our hard  labor.

I’d rather be a liberal than someone who sabotages another’s labor or livelihood on the basis of politics and grudges, unless of course I want to start a revolution, or recklessly meddle in other people’s affairs, or become a hater and a fool, of whom we already have plenty. Only the wicked, as I  understand, seek to destroy what another has built to provide for himself and his family. Only a fool will try usurp what is not his to own or possess.

***

CITY LIFE.GODZILLA.COW IN FIELDIn many ways, I live and work like a hermit, mostly alone with plenty of—maybe too much—time to think. I like being physically active. It gets my mind off things, and that’s a saving grace out here. Still, the mind will play tricks. Maybe the world isn’t all quite as bad as I imagine, not as long as the sentient and wise prevail, who nonetheless appear to have been purged from the planet.

The only reliable witnesses to truth in this era are the modern court jesters—Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart, Matt and Trey and now Trevor Noah—the wise clowns and fools on network television, who aren’t afraid to mock and laugh at the pretenses and posturing of those who wish to put on a show and wear the emperor’s new clothes and get promoted by real fools.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling beat up from my labors, lower back complaints, hips, feet, neck and shoulders and try not to be too discouraged. But an even deeper hurt speaks to me: Where do I belong? Where’s my home? What happened to my country?

A lone plane passes overhead and the wind brushes through the leaves again. Two hawks soar silently above the southeastern hills, taking updrafts, diving, circling back, climbing, climbing, and circling closer and closer until they clip wings as they swing past each other in the late afternoon breeze, an aerial dance all predicated on food and water.

Through the long rows of trees, in the tunnel of green they form, I try to follow a light path but seem to carry a heavy burden. Imagine living fully present, I think, fully engaged. How would that look? What worries then? What difference would it make? It’s all I’ve got, really, to keep from falling into a pit of despair thinking of how far we’ve fallen as a “free” nation, where people will as quickly piss in their water as drink it.

I enjoy seeing my hometown through the eyes of tourists who pass through and look with wonder upon the beaches and ocean that surround us, who are curious and wonder, “What is, ‘Wingnut’?” They keep it fresh and real.

For the first time since late last winter, I hear the sound of a tree frog in the orchard. They’ve been so quiet in the dried up creek at home. Last winter they were so loud one had to raise a voice to be heard. If and when they return, the roads will be slick and wet and the road to Big Sur much less traveled, and Godzilla will be pouring down his fury upon us. §

Stacey Warde is a farmhand and publisher of TheRogueVoice.com. He can be reached at roguewarde@gmail.com.

Lulu’s and Wilbur’s shenanigans

CITY LIFE.WILBUR & LULU

Wilbur, as he appears when he’s not chasing after Lulu or peeing on the neighbor’s house. Photo by Stacey Warde

by Dell Franklin

Lulu is a black boxer/Labrador mix who lives around the corner two blocks down and sometimes gets out and prowls our street and ignores me when I call out her name from my deck. I surmise she’s not quite sure I’m the guy who used to live one door over and across the street before I moved here a few years back, but I feel she should at least acknowledge Wilbur because when we walk past her fence on her street she goes to the gate and barks at him like she means business, and Wilbur immediately pulls me to this gate so they can indulge in a heated, vicious, tail-wagging bark-off before I can pull Wilbur, who outweighs Lulu by a good 40 pounds, away.

When Lulu sniffs out our street, never moving closer than two doors down from my deck, she totally ignores Wilbur barking at her in a manner indicating he wants to rip her apart limb from limb.

On a morning some time ago, I was walking Wilbur down the street where we caught hell for my allowing Wilbur to pee on a row of new plants in front of a recently built house by a newcomer to our neighborhood. As Wilbur lifted his leg and watered several of these plants, which are actually little trees, a blind went up and we were chastised like criminals caught in the wrong back yard. Since then I have tried to pull Wilbur’s 90 pounds of powerful bulk away from those plants on a bad knee with some success, because I know this man and his wife are on a constant lookout for our violations of their shrubbery.

On this street I keep Wilbur leashed, which I don’t like to do because his walks are the highlights of his days and he treasures these nuggets of playful and agenda-driven freedom. Of late I’ve taken Wilbur to the bluffs north of town where he can run loose and sniff and pee and shit as he pleases on anything he wants, as long as he doesn’t chase skunks.

Anyway, the other Saturday night, around ten, I walked Wilbur past the home where we’d gotten severely chastised, feeling that at night the owner would not be anticipating dogs peeing on his plants, and when I peered into the open window, to my surprise, the man and wife and a young couple I took for a daughter and son in law, sat at a table facing each other and holding hands and praying, the good book in the hands of the father, the room dimly lit by a single candle, and no sign of the usual TV one saw in almost every house in town this time of night.

I felt this was as good a time as any to encourage Wilbur to pee on the plants, and he did, with gusto, while I lurked behind a parked car to view the new neighbors continue their prayer meeting. I have no problem with this. I felt their humble lowering of heads while the father read was perhaps something miscreants like Wilbur and myself might at some point in our existences need, just for the hell of it, as our intentions were surely not benevolent or respectful or godly, especially when compared to these fine, family oriented people attempting to do the right thing and become good neighbors—except for their intolerance of my dog.

Anyway, the following Sunday morning the father was out tending to the shrubbery when I came down the same street with Wilbur on his leash. The family live on the corner, a couple houses down and across the street from where I once lived, and on this morning Lulu was out, standing in the middle of the street, staring at us, bristling to become engaged with Wilbur. Wilbur became so excited at the prospect of playing grab-ass with Lulu that he pulled hard and cried. I felt it would be unfair to deprive him of one of his favorite pastimes and unleashed him, and the two dogs immediately began moving in a circle of sniffing each others asses, and then Lulu lay on her back in a submissive posture while Wilbur pounced on her and began doing what male dogs do when they feel it is their right to deliver rough affection to a female.

I peered up and saw the man stiffen at such outlandishness. I nodded toward him in a friendly manner but he did not nod back, seemed clearly worried as Lulu nipped Wilbur on the neck, jumped up, and took off on a dead run toward the man holding a spade. Wilbur lumbered after her. Just as Lulu neared the man, and he began to move back, she took a sharp turn and headed into an empty field across the street, and Wilbur continued to give chase. At this point I limped after them on my bad knee and made a pretense of corralling them, which I knew was futile as Lulu tore across the street and led Wilbur on a series of quick starts and stops and broken-field running, again tearing past the man.

He grew increasingly nervous, even rattled, as I apologized profusely for losing control of my pet and igniting this chaos. As Lulu led Wilbur toward the man again, he jumped back, sort of hurried after them as they headed for the row of plants beside his new house, and then he yelled, as if stabbed by a huge sharp knife, and indeed looked wounded, “They peed on my house! They peed on my house!” I scurried over just as they finished and continued their chase, past the man, who turned red, and I yelled at Wilbur, calling him a bad dog and tried to chase down the two animals, but there was no use as I spotted the wife at the window, not happy.

The dogs continued their chase, but this time, to my credit, as they began again heading toward the man’s house, I headed them off and sort of herded them up the street toward where Lulu lives with Dennis and his wife, four doors down. Dennis, my old neighbor and some time drinking companion at Schooner’s Wharf, is a landscaper and as easy going a person as exists in this laid-back small beach town, and when Wilbur chased Lulu into his yard I explained with some guilt the shenanigans Wilbur and Lulu had just perpetrated against our new neighbor.

Dennis, who was loading equipment onto his work truck, just chuckled, for in the past, when his gate was open, Wilbur has chased Lulu into the house, where he is not above peeing on potted plants and furniture. His wife quickly closed the door and I managed to get hold of Wilbur in the yard and leash him, and it was no easy feat pulling him up the street in his state of excitement as he repeatedly turned to look back, where Lulu stood at the gate, totally calm, as if nothing untoward had happened in our quiet neighborhood on a perfect Sunday morning.

Since then, taking the high road, I have changed Wilbur’s morning circuit to completely avoid these new members of our neighborhood, as there are plenty of places to pee without causing a disturbance. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur. He’s the author of The Ball Player’s Son, a memoir about his father, Murray Franklin, and the early days of big league baseball. Visit his website: dellfranklin.com

Wilbur and The Pirate

city life.wilbur&pirateby Dell Franklin

Randy Crozier, or “The Crow,” or “The Pirate,” does 98 percent of his drinking in Schooner’s Wharf, a restaurant bar overlooking the beach and pier in downtown Cayucos, population approximately 2,500. Crozier is short and round as he is tall, sturdy legged, bushy-bearded, neon-eyed, red-cheeked, hair straggling out from under sweat-stained ballcap, and known to emerge from hangovers so monstrous most people would be hooked up to an IV in a hospital room and go straight to work after his first cigarette and securing his coffee and roll at the local coffee den, where he has been observed indulging in such terrifying coughing fits some have suggested calling an ambulance.

The Crow is a stonemason/plasterer/framer/commercial fisherman/hunting guide/farmer and bass player with his own band, the Motowners, which plays in the town’s popular annual 4th of July parade and various ragged festivals in Big Sur. A brass plate on a wooden stool at a particular corner of the bar at Schooner’s Wharf has his name etched on it. He is always clad in sweat shirt with arms torn off, Levi’s faded and frayed with legitimate holes at the knees, drinking sneakers, and ballcap. He keeps a “pirate’s” treasure chest on hand in the bar to supply kids in the restaurant candy, and every half hour allows a girl to occupy his stool while he goes downstairs to stand in the alley across from the sea wall and beach to smoke, cough, and check his cell phone.

Lately Wilbur’s been in the habit of running down trucks with diesel engines and I must apologize to people who are forced to stop in fear of running him over

Photos by Stacey Warde

Photos by Stacey Warde

Until recently, before moving out into the back hills of town, the Crow lived four doors down from me on G Street, where he parked his truck, a 35-year-old wonder that sounds like a tractor and rattles without hitting bumps in the road. The paint job is peeled off, though “Pirate Plastering” is printed on the passenger door that does not completely close and sometimes flies open when he turns a corner. The bed of this truck is as cramped as the passenger seat with tools and debris that Crozier claims, “Only a lunatic would steal.” The spot where he parked for years at a hovel connected to a main house run by Tag Morely, local Everyman, is permanently oiled. To get to this particular spot, the Crow usually passed my large, railed patio before turning right. Wilbur, my 10-year-old, 90-pound Chocolate Lab, who has eaten rubber and wood and cost me hundreds of dollars in vet’s bills, can hear Crozier’s jalopy several blocks away.

The second Wilbur hears it—usually around 3 in the afternoon when the Crow knocks off and is in the process of getting ready for his drinking—he is up and scrambling to the patio, where he paces as the truck gets louder and louder. He paces in circles, then back and forth along the railing, and a touch of drool drips from the side of his mouth, since he lacks front teeth on that side. He spots the truck. He nudges up against the railing and stares as Crozier pulls up. Crozier, at 55, and looking and showing every year of it, takes a while to get out. Wilbur paces some more. By the time Crozier emerges from his truck with a couple of super-sized biscuits from a package from the Dollar Store in Morro Bay, a long strip of drool slings back and forth from Wilbur’s lips as his eyes keen in on the Pirate.

Crozier cackles and points: “Look at Wilbur drool….” He laughs like Santa Claus, and with the same glee he relishes when buying somebody a drink at the bar, he hurls the biscuits up onto the deck, where Wilbur scrabbles and devours both within seconds and returns to the railing to watch Crozier drive off.

Sometimes, in the morning, or even afternoons, I’ll have Wilbur on the street below, ready to walk him, when he hears Crozier’s truck growling toward us. He tears straight at it, blocking the driver at the grill in a frenzy, makes him stop, then lunges at the broken door, drooling. Crozier chuckles and feeds him and moves on, and I must leash Wilbur or he will chase the Crow’s truck down the street.

Lately Wilbur’s been in the habit of running down trucks with diesel engines and I must apologize to people who are forced to stop in fear of running him over and rearing back as he lunges through the window and scratches up doors with paws as he drools for a biscuit. If he sees Crozier’s truck parked anywhere he goes into a frenzy, and I must leash him as he cries. When I go to Schooner’s Wharf and sidle up beside Crozier, I always order him a beer, and he grins and laughs and coughs and says, “Wilbur…I love it when he starts drooling….”

As always, we spend the first 15 minutes or so talking about Wilbur, and laughing. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur, who the vet recently discovered had eaten an old rubber tire and gotten sick. He’s recovering well and still hunger’s for the Pirate’s biscuits. Visit dellfranklin.com for more of Dell’s work.

Wilbur’s Reckless Peeing Habits Come under Attack

CITY LIFE.WILBUR'S PEE HABITS

Wilbur, who has his favorite spots to pee, has admittedly developed habits unbreakable. Photo by Jason Vest

by Dell Franklin

Just about every weekday afternoon, at around 3 o’clock, Wilbur, my 10-year-old, 95-pound chocolate Lab, sunning himself on my spacious terrace, hears Randy Crozier, otherwise known as “The Pirate” and resident boozer at the downtown Schooner’s Wharf, returning from work as a builder and approach our residence in his loud, growling 25-year-old truck. Wilbur immediately tears to the railing, tail wagging frantically, drooling, pacing, as Crozier pulls over, steps out and lobs a couple biscuits up on the terrace, which Wilbur instantly devours and returns to the railing to watch Crozier turn down the street below us and park three doors down. Wilbur rewards Crozier for his generosity by peeing on his tires when we walk down that street.

Wilbur rewards Randy Crozier, also known as "The Pirate," for his generosity by peeing on his tires when we walk down that street.

Wilbur rewards Randy Crozier, also known as “The Pirate,” for his generosity by peeing on his tires when we walk down that street.

Wilbur has admittedly developed habits unbreakable. I was walking him the other morning around the corner from Crozier and along the same route I’ve been walking dogs in this neighborhood for 17-plus years when the blinds went up at a new residence and a stern voice blurted, very curtly, “I’d appreciate it if your dog didn’t pee on my bushes, thank you.” His “thank you” was very dismissive and condescending, as if Wilbur and I were trash when for years we’ve been regarded as harmless if a little eccentric and unruly of appearance due to the gentrification of Cayucos.

I paused after Wilbur peed on the bush and faced the narrowly opened blinds and laughed in a jeering manner as the blinds snapped shut. Wilbur and I continued on past signs on some yards of a dog squatting to shit and a red arrow running through it. I try and refrain from allowing Wilbur to shit on any lawn, but in case he does I keep plastic poop bags like a thoughtful neighbor. This little grid of a neighborhood is rife with dogs of all sizes and we’re all pretty respectful and affectionate toward each others’ dogs. So far no signs have popped up of a dog lifting his leg to pee with a red arrow running through it. As far as I know these signs don’t exist. Dogs here and everywhere are hard pressed NOT to pee on every fire hydrant they pass, as well as  plants, bushes, mailbox posts, fence posts, tires, trash cans, or any object other dogs have peed on, and if you try to stop them they fight hard and become confused and perhaps unhappy.

This is THEIR time.

Wilbur and I continued on past signs on some yards of a dog squatting to shit and a red arrow running through it.

Wilbur and I continued on past signs on some yards of a dog squatting to shit and a red arrow running through it. Photo by Stacey Warde

I’m concerned about this guy who lurks near his window so early in the morning laying in wait for miscreants like Wilbur and myself who are used to roving around with impunity. Has he maintained this vigilance with all the tiny dogs and pretty pedigrees walked by ladies wearing designer sunglasses and toting Evian bottles of water? Does he have it in for Wilbur and me? I recall him glaring at us and issuing a muttered, grudging “hello” when I greeted him with an ebullient “hello” one afternoon as I allowed Wilbur off the leash to indulge in some frenzied sniffing and peeing. Since then, I’ve made sure to leash Wilbur and wonder: Has this guy employed a hi-tech surveillance system to catch dogs peeing on his newly planted bushes so he can gather an enemies list and confront them, too?

My problem with this guy is he’s the first person ever in all my 71 years that I’ve ever heard of having a problem with dogs peeing on his or her bushes. What he needs to understand is that before he moved here Wilbur had already established territorial rights on his property and has no inclination whatsoever to relinquish them. Wilbur jerks and pulls me to that bush, threatening my bad knee, hip and shoulder. It is a vital part of his peeing grounds, just as he leads me invariably to the same shitting grounds and shows displeasure if another dog has violated these grounds. And this is all set off by his sniffing mechanism, which controls his every instinctive action and reaction.

The blinds went up at a new residence and a stern voice blurted, very curtly, “I’d appreciate it if your dog didn’t pee on my bushes, thank you.”

Anyway, I’m in a quandary about this situation. One friend warned me about pushing it and advised me to avoid this street, home and bush so as not to trigger a confrontation, which in my past history has led to threats and violence and the police called in. “Be big,” he said. “And let this asshole be small.”

Another advisor said “You’re too old to get worked up and involved over such a petty predicament. And besides, you’re too crippled to fight like in the old days.”

Sorry, but I just can’t get over this. I’ve always hated authoritative tight-asses trying to control my behavior. I’ve got a good notion to purposely have Wilbur pee on his putrid little bush and wait for him to snap open that blind so I can explain to him that Wilbur cannot live without sniffing this bush every day to find out who else has peed on it and then pee on it himself, and if he doesn’t like it, well, build a goddamn fence to keep all the goddamn dogs in the neighborhood from peeing on his goddamn bush!

Or, I could come by without Wilbur while he’s obsessively maintaining his vehicles or premises and explain very diplomatically that it is the destiny of every living dog to pee on any bush any other dog has peed on and if this is interfered with it destroys the harmony dogs have brought to this and every neighborhood in America and perhaps the world.

Is his precious bush so important it antagonizes the entire neighborhood, especially when I’ve lived here so long and know everybody on HIS street as well as the surrounding grid and will soon inform all of them about his antics regarding Wilbur and myself? Does he realize that in a case like this EVERYBODY is on Wilbur’s side and that automatically puts them on MY side? Does he know that his immediate neighbor, Crozier, has lived here since he was a child and loves Wilbur as his own and has a history of unchecked vengeance when he feels his friends are being wronged?

Maybe I should leave a business card from my lawyer, Gifford Beaton, Esq., a heavy hitter who resides in San Luis Obispo, on his bush, with these words, “I am Wilbur’s lawyer and anybody trifling with his peeing habits will be taken to court!” §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he and Wilbur spend their days when not peeing on bushes in the neighborhood. He’s the author of The Ballplayer’s Son.

MADE IN CHINA

FUCK YOU, CHINA! At first I got mad at the country of origin—there wasn’t any manufacturer’s label, just a price tag. “Fuck you, China, for your cheap consumer ‘goods!’” And: “Fuck me for being dumb enough to buy them!”

FUCK YOU, CHINA! At first I got mad at the country of origin—there wasn’t any manufacturer’s label, just a price tag. “Fuck you, China, for your cheap consumer ‘goods!’” And: “Fuck me for being dumb enough to buy them!”

 

In parched, sun-baked California, buyer beware

by Stacey Warde

I bought a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses, made in China, at the Cayucos Super Market several days ago, a purchase I’ve come to regret.

In less than a week, they broke. Of course.

The white “Made in China” small print along the inside of the temple piece began to wear off in less than two days.

The frame cracked the next day and by the fourth day the flimsy dark plastic eyepiece fell out.

Not my best purchase.

I bought them becuase the sun bears down hard lately, harder than feels normal this early in the season, mid-April, and summer still officially two months away.

Pollens and dust from swirling, drying winds fill the air. Clouds of tiny bugs drift across the dusty ranch road. They fly into my eyes whenever I drive the quad to get to the orchards I tend as a farmhand. It’s annoying as hell, and hazardous to boot.

Additionally, my eyes have been light sensitive, they hurt and they’ve been watering. When I put on scratched-up safety goggles or get sun screen in my eyes, I can hardly see sometimes. A new pair of sunglasses seemed essential.

I might have known better. Buyer beware.

***

It feels like summer already. It’s so damned bright, and hot. We’ve had above-normal temperatures for weeks now, and little of the precipitation this parched country so desperately needs. The governor has put restrictions on water, demanding reductions in residential use.

Farmers and corporations, apparently, are not subject to the same restrictions. Blame and finger-pointing have begun in earnest; last week, it was Nestle® who was most at fault, and this week, environmentalists are to blame for the historic drought.

The dust on dirt ranch roads kicks up much more easily now, and hangs in the air  longer, like a faded earthen curtain, blinding and choking, slowly drifting with the breeze, moisture and water obscured from sight and becoming more scarce.

Ticks and snakes have come out, predators and pests are more prevalent. The coyotes sneak closer to drink from the dwindling creek in front of my cabin. They nabbed a neighbor’s house cat recently.

I heard the shrill and sudden scream of the cat in its final desperate act of defiance. Wrong place, wrong time that night. Tooth and claw, foolish cat. The kill couldn’t have been very satisfying for the coyote. The cat was scrawny, no contender, and had snuck out of the house, where it was safe, and went down to the creek.

“That’s what they do,” a friend tells me of the coyotes, “they sit near the creek at night and wait for critters to come drink.”

The night cry spooked me. I thought a bobcat or young mountain lion had screamed. It pierced the night, fierce and defiant, even for a scrawny animal.

When I flashed my light across the creek, I saw the coyote chawing on the victim’s feline remains. I threw a rock at the prowler and it dashed off into the darkness with its prey.

My neighbor was grief-stricken. “She shouldn’t have gone out there,” she lamented. “She never had a chance.”

As water becomes more scarce, we’re likely to have more run-ins with  predators risking rocks, ranch rifles and shotguns to get their food and drink.

Some say the unusual brightness and intense sunlight are evidence of global warming, or of fallout from the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, or of a government conspiracy to spread mind- and weather-altering chemicals in the sky. Whatever it is, it’s rough on the eyes.

***

Barely two days after buying my new sunglasses, I noticed the flimsy dark plastic lens on the left side popping off the rim.

“Good thing I got these for eight dollars instead of the fifteen they wanted on the sticker price,” I thought.

I had plowed through the pastic-wrapped, toy-like sunglasses on a bottom shelf near the handkerchiefs and beach items and over-the-counter medicines, eager to find a protective cover for my eyes.

“Oh, these’ll be OK, only four dollars.” My eyes, tired from age, and watering from excessive light, wind and dust, missed a digit on the price tag. The nice lady at the cash register, seeing my difficulty, offered them to me at the cut rate of only $7.99 instead of $14.99.

I knew better the moment I touched those shitty, toy-variety sunglasses, that they were worthless, absolutely worthless, and I bought them any way.

At first I got mad at the country of origin—there wasn’t any manufacturer’s label, just a price tag. “Fuck you, China, for your cheap consumer ‘goods!’” And: “Fuck me for being dumb enough to buy them!”

***

I’m working in the avocado orchard today, tending 1,300 or so trees, irrigating, pumping thousands of gallons of water, installing injectors with their chemical magic to keep dying trees in production, cutting out deadwood, and pulling up suckers and sprouted seeds.

It’s unseasonably hot and dry again. I’ve put on my new sunglasses, and that helps against the intense brightness of the sun.

We’re one of the lucky few growers in California. We still have water. This season’s crop of avocados looks promising and we expect a favorable yield, so long as the water supply holds out.

Just over the hill, however, barely a mile or so distant, a friend who also farms avocados has already heard the gut-wrenching sound of gurgling from one of his pumps, indicating that his water source is running low.

“It hurts like hell,” he says, “to watch what you’ve worked so hard for just wilt away. But what are you going to do? You can’t fight mother nature.”

Some growers have begun trucking in water but that’s an expense few can afford.

The green from what little rain we got this season has begun to fade and turn shades of yellow and brown; drying grasses appear the way they usually do at the beginning of summer.

The rolling golden hills of California…are not such a pretty sight right now. It’s going to be a long, hot summer.

Trees have been cut down, stumped and painted white. Pests have turned up, attacking weakened trees and fruit, and will continue to be an issue as water turns more scarce.

The great California drought of the new millenium put a significant stamp on this county’s agriculture in 2014, according to the ag department, reducing yields of avocados. The drier weather was good for strawberries, though, which topped even grapes as the highest yielding crop in a region that prides itself on wine.

The wine industry, meanwhile, continues to suck up the lion’s share of North County’s water. How much more water can be squeezed out of the ground is anyone’s guess but when it does finally run out, we’ll have plenty of wine to drink.

The world-class desal plant in Cambria is a last resort as a home water source but some people still complain about and fight it, arguing they’ll pay more for their water rather than contribute to farming water from the ocean or brackish ponds. But how much will they pay when traditional water sources run out?

“This is bad, really bad,” people keep saying.

Nonetheless, even with water restrictions and hills turning brown, residential landscapes, the little slices of heaven we create to insulate ourselves from the cruel world, manage to stay green. As long as water continues to pour out of the taps, homeowners seem to think, what’s to worry about?

In the Central Valley, meanwhile, the nation’s breadbasket, some water-starved growers have shut down operations and unemployment among farmhands has skyrocketed.

***

One of the benefits of working out here is the lack of distractions from meddlesome and self-important boobs whose only apparent goal in life is to make money, or sell something, regardless of its value.

Not to say there’s anything wrong with making money or selling goods and services but some people I know—and avoid—think only of turning a buck, would sell you a bucketful of dogshit if they could, and tell you what a great value you’re getting.

I despise those people, the crafty, who lack integrity, whose only motivation is to make a fast buck, the hosers and posers, the merchants of cheap and worthless goods, whose only real interest in you is how much money they can get out of you. I avoid them whenever possible. They’re scum.

Then, there’s my farmer friend whose wells are going dry, whose one great joy in life is to put food on people’s tables. He takes pride in growing quality organic produce, and is glad to provide something of value, something that actually improves the quality of people’s lives.

If more people thought the way he did, we might not be subject to cheap imitations and bogus, worthless consumer goods, with which this culture, thanks largely to slave-labor countries like China, more than eager to supply them, seems to have overrun itself.

***

While eating lunch in front of Ruddell’s Smokehouse in Cayucos, friends of mine brought up the subject of U.S. indebtedness to China. [Disclosure: The smokehouse is a sponsor of The Rogue Voice.]

“What’s going to happen,” asks one, “when they finally decide to collect on their debt? Will the U.S. be able to pay? And, if not, what will China do, invade us?”

“I doubt it,” I say, “but if they do, the only thing that will save us will be places like this, places that haven’t succumbed to selling cheap and worthless goods.”

What drives this dependency on cheap goods? Low wages? A lackluster economy? The so-called recovery from the Crash of 2008, from which many still suffer, is being hailed as the “low-wage recovery,” meaning basically that jobs don’t pay enough for workers to survive.

There was a time when, perhaps a fool’s errand, I thought I could avoid buying anything made in China. That seems almost impossible now. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.

Time stops on the train

CITY LIFE.TRAIN RIDESby Stacey Warde

A couple of guys in shirts and ties board the train in LA.

“Yeah, sure, we could probably add another million dollars in sales if she didn’t have such a volatile personality,” says one as the two organization men take seats across the aisle. “She’s a diamond in the rough. She’ll be all right.”

“You’re too soft on your people,” says his companion.

“Yeah, well….” the first starts to hem and haw, and concoct a story.

He is too soft, I think, just as his companion says. He’s probably a lousy manager, no worse than I’ve ever been. I hate managing people. I’m too soft too, like this guy who’s trying to tell a story about giving people a chance.

His companion stops him and counters: “If you create goals, with clear-cut objectives, and set a timeline….”

“I know, I know,” the other interjects, unwilling to hear what his companion has to say.

I try to listen over the rattling of the passenger car, the frequent whistle of the engineer’s signals, and announcements from the conductor over the intercom, but it’s impossible to hear what he’s saying. It’s better, I think, that I can’t hear. It’s all bullshit any way.

My instincts tell me he’s not saying anything; he’s creating another fiction, feeding the corporate machine that will eventually eat him alive. “What a waste of time,” I think, “put on a shirt and tie so you can spend the day making up stories and kissing people’s asses.”

Time stops for me on the train. I don’t’ do business. I stop, and listen, and watch people; and daydream, and try not to pay attention to dubious talk about diamonds in the rough.

The only diamond in the rough I care about is the one who’s supposed to pick me up at the end of the line tonight. She’s not happy with me; at least she wasn’t the last time we spoke several days ago.

I’m pretty sure she wants me to move out. I’ve been gone four days and haven’t heard a word from her until this morning.

She sent an email: “I’ll pick you up tonight. Will you be buying sushi?”

For a few days, I wasn’t sure I’d have a place to call home. Maybe I don’t, I reason, but at least I’ve got a ride back from the train station. I can always find another place to live. “You fly, I’ll buy,” I wrote back.

The suits, coats thrown casually over their shoulders, jump off the train at the next station, still yakking away about money and setting timelines and goals.

I stretch back my head and arms, reaching as far back as I can with my fingertips, almost touching the panel above my head where the light and fan switches are, and take a deep breath. “Jesus Christ!” I mutter, “what a shitty fucking life those guys…”

I could argue that mine’s no better. I mean, until this morning, I wasn’t even sure that I had a home. In any case, there’s really no need to worry about that now. The train, as it runs, takes care of all my worries. What else can I do but sit back and enjoy the ride? §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice. He can be reached at roguewarde@gmail.com.