Category Archives: City Life

IN PRAISE OF THE DRINKING CROWD

CITY LIFE.IN DEFENSE OF DRINKINGby Dell Franklin

For us frail humans on this complicated planet, drink has always been the salvation, and the curse.

Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say that WE are the curse. Booze—like marijuana and assorted drugs—is just there, either grown from the soil or concocted in distilleries, sold legally or illegally by people, purchased and consumed by people.

So what is it that drives the humans of this world to ingest into their systems just about anything that’s available? Clinical professionals blame lack of self-worth, low self-esteem, and poor self-image, and it’s hard for any of us to deny we’ve felt this way one time or another. But what about jobs? Jobs take up at least a third of our lives. We work hard, are driven, deal with bosses, deadlines, competition—it’s a constant grind. Most jobs, because of intimidation and boot-licking, carve out a bit of our pride and dignity. No jobs are easy. They cause us to have faulty nervous systems, bad stomachs, irregular heartbeats, ongoing headaches.

Is it any wonder we hit the sauce?

What about guys who slave away in the blazing sun on rooftops and ladders, inhaling tar, paint fumes and sawdust, ruining their elbows and backs, wearing themselves into arthritic conditions by 40? You think they need a brew? Try and deny them one when they drop that hammer at five in the afternoon after hacking away on a summer day. My advice? Don’t try it.

So what drives us to drink?

Having been a bartender and a totally joyous, well-adjusted alcoholic most of my life, I’d say pain, boredom, and the opposite sex. You don’t go anywhere in life without experiencing some measure of physical or emotional pain. Anybody who claims not to have felt periods of loneliness, depression, and boredom is either a liar or brain-dead or delusional.

As for the opposite sex? Well, let’s face it, damn near every song ever written concerns some guy or gal who’s been jilted, dealt a broken heart, or is in love with somebody who loves somebody else. The stuff of life. What’s more, when it comes to men and women, the common ground has always been studded like a minefield, and those rocky barriers are usually broken down in local watering holes after a few healthy belts of our evil potions.

Now, I’m well aware that a large percentage of folks out there are going to tell me people should be strong enough to deal with all these problems without resorting to booze, pot, escapism, hedonism, debauchery, and so on. That we should be made of sterner stuff, maybe even embrace religion, find a hobby, join a health club, seek professional counseling. They probably feel my way of thinking is pretty damn disgusting, weak-willed and self-indulgent.

Well, they’re absolutely right on all accounts.

But you see, there is possibly no greater rush than being a disgusting, weak-willed, self-indulgent drunkard, a real swill-hound, a barfly, a person who generally has trouble figuring out whether responsibility is more important than having a good time, or vice versa. What I’ve learned is that many of the most responsible, well-meaning people I’ve ever known are drunks. It’s a way of life. Some of us just can’t get by without the right amount of booze. During certain hours of the day (happy hour!), during certain times of the week, during birthdays, all holidays, and special occasions, it’s next to impossible for many of us without imbibing those spirits that achieve the golden glow.

It’s not any easy thing for a drunk or any kind of serious drinker to pass a local pub and not go in, especially if the pub is lined with people—people who are smoking up a storm, guzzling beers, downing shots, slapping backs, hugging, laughing hugely, dancing to music, or engaging in exultant, emphatic, totally aimless conversations that are instantly forgotten.

A lot of us are very sensitive about being the lushes we are. We don’t want to be told we’re drunks. We don’t like being told we’re impairing our vital organs and destroying brain cells and shortening our lives. We don’t like being told we’re a danger to decent society. And we don’t like being told that our behavior is embarrassing, that we are not especially amusing, that we’re actually boring, repetitious, and sometimes overbearing asses.

We are deeply suspicious of and disturbed with the sentinels of sobriety. We feel that the born-again recovering alcoholics, the Religious Right, lifetime teetotalers, and the various pious zealots of this world carry their self-esteem around like a shroud of accusatory doom, vilifying us as catalysts of our morally decayed and collapsing civilization.

Hell, we just think we’re a lot of fun. So please, leave us alone!

Certainly, as drunks, we go out of our way to leave YOU alone. We respect your desire to be sober, respectable, serious, upright, strong-willed, and constructive members of our grown-up world. We know that you mean well and want a better world. We want a better world, too, you know. The only serious problem is that we find it most ideal while totally snockered. Otherwise, it’s not the great world it’s cracked up to be.

You see, in most cases, we just can’t help ourselves. We love the sauce and almost any substance that’ll scramble or unscramble our brains, deaden our senses, impart a whiff of ecstasy, and more or less give us a reprieve from a rather thorny reality. Most of us aren’t troublemakers, brawlers, dangerous drunken drivers, wife/child abusers, sexual predators, or general nuisances. Most of us find a way to get home safely. We hate to fight, and want to be liked, want to make love, and want to be loved and soothed in return, like most people.

We are just a bunch of drunks. Our kind has been around for centuries—eons—and quite possibly we are good for the morale of any country. In fact, it is my firm belief that if you took away our booze, took away our bars, honky tonks, nightclubs, and pubs, and denied us our escapism, hedonism, and debauchery, it would be an utterly dull, joyless, empty world. It would take only a year or so to destroy it and ourselves. §

Dell Franklin writes, and drinks responsibly, always within walking distance, from his home in Cayucos, Calif.

 

Laundraland: Adventures in dirty laundry

CITY LIFE.LAUNDRALANDby Stacey Warde

I met a woman who was dressed only in lingerie while she folded her clothes at Laundraland in Cayucos.

“Hello!” she greeted me as I pushed through the door with my heavy load of soiled baby clothes and plopped it onto the countertop so I could go look for an open washing machine.

“Hi!” I responded, winded, frustrated with the necessity of washing clothes at this shithole, where the machines seldom work properly, there’s no bathroom and the dryers never get hot. 

I tried to avert my eyes from, only glancing at, her naked form beneath the sheer fabric of her bedroom attire. She was about 25, petite and dark and short-haired, tightly wound and spun, and she appeared to be a bundle of joy through her dark flower-print shift.

“Do you come here often?” she asked, smiling and neatly folding her other lingerie and panties.

“Only when I have to,” I said, “which is often enough.”

I’ve never liked this place. It stinks, the machines are always broken and unattended, they eat your quarters, and the floors are dangerously wet from leaky washers, which are often filled with towels from the hotel next door that runs the place, making it hard to find open washers and dryers.

Not much has changed since my encounter with the lingerie-clad hussie folding her panties there 25 years ago. It’s still a shithole.

I was married, raising an infant daughter and going through all sorts of turmoil in my life, wanting more than I had, unhappy in my marriage, wishing I could go home with this dish presenting her wares.

“I see you have a baby,” she offered.

“A beautiful little redhead,” I said.

“Are you married?”

“Yep.”

“Are you happy?”

“As happy as any married bachelor can be.”

“Do you mess around?”

“No.” I lied. I’d had a fling with an Austrian woman who’d come to visit a friend. We petted, kissed. She blew me but we never fucked, which I feebly used in my defense when my wife later found out, pummeling me with her fists and horrible epitaphs. With the exception of my daughter, my life felt lacking.

“Do you come often to the laundry dressed like that?” I asked.

“No,” she said casually, not the least embarrassed, “all my clothes are dirty and this is the only clean bit of clothing I’ve got. My husband hates this outfit so it’s usually the last thing I have to put on.”

“You’re married?”

“Been married one month,” she said proudly. “My husband loves when I wear lingerie. So I wear it pretty much all the time.”

“Your husband’s a lucky guy,” I said. 

“He sure is,” she responded. “I keep him pretty happy.”

“Well, he’d be a fool not to keep you happy,” I said lamely, feeling myself going over the edge.

“Oh he does,” she said, “but I’m not sure how it’s all going to work out. We hardly know each other.”

“And you got married?”

I’d put my daughter’s soiled baby clothes with my other laundry into several washers with no quarters lost or eaten, with no mechanical failures, no catastrophic slips or falls because of water on the floor and sat down on one of the joint’s three chairs available near the glass door entrance.

She stood some distance away, at one of the washing machines on the other side of the place, filling her laundry basket, far away enough for me—or her—to avoid getting into trouble.

“Well,” she began, “we met in Las Vegas. I was having a drink and he introduced himself. He wanted to know if I’d sleep with him.”

“And you did?”

“No, not at first. I told him if he could tie a cherry stem with his tongue, not only would I sleep with him but I’d marry him.”

“Are you serious?”

“He took the cherry right out of my drink, ate the cherry, and put the stem in his mouth. A few seconds later, he pulled it out tied neatly into a knot. So I married him. We moved here to Cayucos about a month ago.”

“So how’s it going?” I asked. 

“OK, I guess. I kind of miss messing around.”

She gave me a look across the wall of washers. I knew that look, even though I’d not seen much of it since I’d married.

“We don’t have to go anywhere,” she said, indicating with a nod that all I’d have to do is step behind her.

“I’d love to but this isn’t the place or the time,” I said, standing, reaching for the door. “I gotta go now. I hope things work out between you and your husband.”

“Thank you!” she responded, again cheerful, folding the last of her clothes. I knew that when I came back for my clothes to put them in the dryer, she’d be gone.

Not long after that, I vowed never to return. I’d gone back to do a load of laundry, secretly wishing to run into the mystery girl dressed only in lingerie. I never saw her again.

I put a handful of quarters into the washing machine and nothing happened. “Goddammit! Fucking machines!” I opened another machine. It reeked, sour and putrid from the stench of green-grey swamp water that filled the basin, and I nearly passed out. “Fuck! I hate this place!”

I walked out in a fury, swearing never to return, but I did return years later only to find that little has changed, except for the faces. Laundraland is still a shithole, but you do meet some interesting people. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.com and air dries his clothes whenever he can.

Embrace the shining sea

CITY LIFE.COPS.SMILEY FACEEditor’s Note: In the wake of several instances of police brutality and the militarization of law enforcement in the U.S., as reported in the news recently, we decided to revisit Steven Bird’s essay about brutality of a similar sort here on the Central Coast, this from our own Morro Bay Police Department. Abusive police actions are not just a big city problem. This essay originally appeared in the July, 2008, print edition of The Rogue Voice.

By Steven Bird

You can’t see the open ocean from inside the harbor behind the windblown peninsula of sand dunes. You don’t see it until you’re already making way into the humping turbulence of the bar at the harbor entrance — between the rock jetties — and there it is, the shining sea spread like eternity opened to receive you. You head her into the swell both hands tight on the tiller surrendering your connections to dense land, afloat, at the mercy of the sparkling vicious loving void, indefinite rhythms, foam, angles of sun…yet all seems secretly well. And perhaps this is how we are received in death. Or maybe, the way we enter into living. Ah well. There it is.

The boat rocks gently, tied against the north T-pier.

Take care of the boat and the boat’ll take care of you. Been fishing hard all week and, well, stink accumulates — soon as I’m done cleaning the boat and squaring the gear away for the next go-round I’m out of here. 8:30 already. Hate to say it but my ass is dragging. Would’ve been done an hour ago except for the four Fish and Game cops waiting over at the receiver dock when I unloaded my fish. They’re checking every day lately. More of them than there are fishermen, really. You barely have time to fish you’re so busy being boarded and checked out — Coast Guard, Fish and Game, Homeland Defense, MPA cops…as if commercial fishing, regardless how innocuous the method, is somehow a nefarious activity…and these guys aren’t your old-fashion, pipe-smoking, friendly ranger game wardens in green Smokey Bear suits. Nossir. They’re the new breed: slit-lipped, stone-faced, black and blue S.W.A.T. uniforms, pants tucked into their boots, guns that look like Uzzis, radios, belts, bulletproof vests…all business. Held me up for an hour while they checked the fish, the boat, my paperwork…just like they did yesterday, and the day before that. Oh, I know their names; they know mine, they’ve talked to me a hundred times but always act like they never saw me before, demanding to see the same paperwork…I guess it’s a way to create jobs. But it smells like warfare. I don’t know who’s really behind it, or what it’s for, but it feels like I’m going down, no question.

‘My pickup truck is well used and unavoidably rusty, the bed filled with fishing junk, and I know this makes me a target for the cops who profile scruffy characters driving older vehicles.’

A chill breeze courses from the northwest; flags on the moored boats snap in full salute.

The Harbor Folly cruises by, a fake riverboat, artificial stem wheel churning the oily bay. Tourists sipping wine on the top deck, realizing that this is no tropical cruise, pull sweaters over their Hawaiian shirts. I bet they wish they’d worn long pants. (Utopian Cali is a land of denial and delusions. Weather Denial is a tradition. And a favorite delusion is that coastal California has a climate similar to Hawaii.) The usual crowd strolls the pier and embarcadero, mostly apple-shaped women from Fresno and Bakersfield, laconic husbands in tow. A local mermaid wiggles through the pokey couples, a different species, almost. Just folks enjoying themselves ordered and behaved.

You don’t see people raising hell in this town. People come here to fuck in the motels and dawdle through the bayside shops—you know, the usual beach town tourist stuff. It’s 8:45 p.m., I’m just about finished with the boat.

A patrol car slides down the embarcadero. Up on the pier a fat kid sporting a black T-shirt advertising MEGADEATH throws French fries into an agitated mob of seagulls. Another squad car slips by the kite shop at the entrance to the pier.

Nine o’clock straight up, and the cops are getting busy…looks like the town’s entire fleet of patrol cars swarming the waterfront street, cruising like bat rays, chrome flashing shifting shapes. I wonder what’s going down.

The atmosphere distorts the light coming into the world—the dying red sun flattens against the seaward dunes beyond the harbor. Gulls call from a purple sky, lift on the hysterical breeze, heads tilting, alert for scraps.

I have to drive through the dragnet to get home. Though legally operative, my pickup truck is well used and unavoidably rusty, the bed filled with fishing junk, and I know this makes me a target for the cops who profile scruffy characters driving older vehicles. I’m extra cautious, don’t want to give them the slightest excuse—I pull up to the one stop sign I have to get through on my way out of the kill zone, and stop, while signaling a left turn.

A patrol car pulls up to the stop facing me. Another unit pulls up behind me.

The farthest thing from my mind is the idea of running the stop sign. Only a moron would run the stop with the cops right there watching. I know that there is a three-second interval that one must be stopped for. I give it a five-count just to be sure. Light a smoke—and okay, here we go—put the rig in gear and proceed through, around the corner and up the hill leading away from the bay—

God I am hungry—

The unit facing me at the stop lights up and comes after me. The cruiser behind me lights up too, swerves by in full-tilt pursuit of somebody else while I pull over to the curb.

The searchlight trained on the rear window lights up the cab bright as an operating room. I roll the window down….

‘The cop rips at me like a jackal trying to extract a turtle from its shell.’

“Good evening sir, see your license and registration please.”

Young guy, shaved head, seems friendly, “perky” you might say—he leans in close, sniffing while I hand him my license and insurance proof. “Sir have you had anything to drink tonight?”

“I don’t drink. Just got off my boat from fishing—and, ah, by the way, uh, what’d you stop me for?”

He stiffens, “Sir you ran that stop back there.” He pins me with his eyes making sure I’m on the hook, turns and marches back to his car with my papers to check for warrants. While he’s back there he writes me a ticket for running the stop—

He hands it too me, wants me to sign it—“Waitaminit! You and I both know I didn’t run that stop sign…I know you’re fishing for drunks and need an excuse to make the stop, I’m cool with that…you can see I haven’t been drinking…so why do you have to write me a bogus ticket, anyway?”

He counters, presents an inarguable logic—“I stopped a guy going 100 miles an hour last night. How would you like it if I hadn’t got him off the road…?”

I can’t stop myself—“What has that got to do with our situation? And you lying?” I hear myself saying, trying to remain pragmatic, and believing I will prevail because Truth is on my side.

“You don’t like the police…do you? I think you have a problem with the police,” he tells me. His hand in the window frame squeezing the top of my door is tight and wary and ready to spring.

“No,” I say, “I don’t have a problem with the police. But I do have a problem with you abusing your function as a civil servant.

One hand clenches, unclenches, close to his gun.

I’ve heard stories recently about a cop in town who entertains a fondness for squirting his mace can in folk’s faces at the slightest perceived provocation…. In addition to hungry, dirty, tired, on another level I’m feeling profiled, disenfranchised, disappointed, disrespected, desperate, mad and about to go off like a fuck you machine gun and martyr myself for the cause.

My family, my friends, they probably wouldn’t want me to martyr myself…their mournful angelic faces attend me.

But the inertia of events is too compelling, too intriguing, too exhilarating, I have broken free of my mooring—“This is bullshit.” And I can’t stop the emphasis—“Fuck you. I’m not signin’ this.”

“ALLRIGHT SIR GET OUT OF THE VEHICLE!” He yells at me taking a step back releasing the safety snap on his holster.

“I don’t think so,” I say, holding the ticket book out the window, blithely opening my fingers—it hits the pavement with a sad rustling sound. I don’t know what I plan to do now….

He charges the door—it’s locked, but the window’s rolled down—he can’t get the door open so he reaches through the window, grabs me and he’s trying to rip me out of the truck through the window—I resist, struggle, kick the ashtray out of the dashboard—he’s got his arm around my throat trying to pull my head and shoulders through, bending me while twisting my head, he’s trying to break my neck—I’m holding on to the door frame—he frees one hand to pull something from a holder on his service belt—

At pointblank range a cool mist wets my face, eyes, mouth, soothing, like rain, or a gentle friend applying a healing unguent—something explodes—an agonizing red curtain falls—a molten death mask clings to my face—my face is burning—the cop rips at me like a jackal trying to extract a turtle from its shell—the nice hooded sweatshirt Ariel gave me for Christmas catches on something, tears open—the ridges along my spine saw against the window frame on the ride through—I hook my knees over the door—he jerks harder—I straighten my legs, come loose right when he jerks—he loses his balance, stumbles backwards and we go down on the pavement together. We lay in odd juxtaposition. I’m blind. He’s got me in a choke hold. His heart’s pounding against my back. H’e’s afraid. Relax…he’s tensing…here comes the flip…the pavement…. He is wheezing with fear—his knee grinding into the center of my back—furious fingers dig the back of my head—he’s forcing my face into the asphalt…merciless gravel teeth of blacktop…. The pavement under my face tastes warm, wet, salty.

Lights. Peripheral RED WHITE BLUE flashes, doors opening, metal jangling, radios, shouts, shoes scraping—sounds like two units…must be four cops…here they come…the boots—my buddy already has my top half covered, they work on what’s exposed—feet, legs, knees, thighs, lower ribs, they keep kicking me in the kidneys—there is a curious rhythm to the kicking, the guys are in sync—one cop chanting….

ASSHOLE ASSHOLE ASSHOLE…A couple of the other cops take up the chant, they’ve got the rhythm going—kicking and chanting—and it’s going down. The kicks produce a numbness, I feel the weight of the boots’ impacts but not the pain, and 0 that there would be pain to shield me from this sickness of heart, this raging and howling desolation of spirit more terrifying than pain—I pray—I pray…0 God…help me…help me make it through the kicking…if l can just make it through the kicking…if I can just make it through…0 God where is the thundering iron shield of your love…?

The cop on my back yells “GIVE ME YOUR ARM!” He’s got a hold of it, I don’t feel myself resisting, but that is not enough, he wants me to give it to him while he is in the process of trying to twist it off—a flurry of kicks comes hard and fast—the rhythm again….

They bend my arms to an impossible angle and put the cuffs on. Now the cop sitting on me starts yelling, “GET UP! SIR?…GET UP! SIR?…YOU GONNA GET UP MOTHERFUCKER…?” But he’s sitting on me. I can’t respond. His body turns to stone…he throws an astounding punch to the side of my head—I can’t protect my ear from the blow—the watery burst inside my head heralds a vision of verdant fields of changing shapes…like flowers within flowers, within flowers…there is a faint buzz…a bee…a bee coming to pollinate the flowers…the volume increases to a despairing roar setting the synaptic flowers atremble in the forlorn gardens.

I regain consciousness down at county. I’m alive. Somebody is trying to take my thumb print, but I can’t make my body work to do what the moving mouth is requesting. Moving Mouth punches me in the face—the cops pile on me—must be three or four cops—they’re hitting each other in the frenzy to get me—the souls have vacated their flesh—their eyes glisten, fierce, delighted—0 sorrow of their eyes—couple of detectives come running from their desks—savage smiles—they get their licks in—shirts and ties mixed with the uniforms—they break something—I hear laughter—something inside of me is broken—I don’t feel it like regular pain.

They throw me in a small concrete holding cell.

I lay on the rigid floor in the void gray cell. A subtle vibration resonates through the concrete. Machinery throbs somewhere. The walls and ceiling are the color of fog. The floor is the same gun barrel blue as the sea after a storm. I like the cool floor, let it receive my watery cheek. My swollen eyes shed a continuous flow of tears from the mace. I sight down the silver rivulet beginning to form a lonely stream flowing away from my face seeking a path of least resistance, this way, that way, as nuances of concrete surface dictate, until the tear stream becomes lost in the shining expanse. There are no walls, no edges, only clean distance. Light comes from all angles. The surface shimmers, turned to water. Ocean of serenity, joyous sun, I commit myself to you. I embrace the shining sea surrendering. I head my boat into the wind and swell. §

Steven Bird writes from his home in Morro Bay where he can avoid the clutches of rogue cops.

Night life in Happy Jack’s: A dog and fish story

by Dell Franklin

IMG_6070A packed Friday night, the band’s cranking, the fleet’s in, the crowd’s juiced just enough to release inhibitions but not yet stuporous or apeshit, a magical time for a bartender, and then this wolfish-looking guy in a hooded sweatshirt and knee-high rubber boots comes in with a pit bull and not just any pit bull. He’s a fisherman, no doubt, but I’ve never seen him in here before and right off my fellow emotional tyrant of a bartender, Jessi, is hysterical at the sight of his dog, both of them wedging into the crowd as those well-behaved dogs of several local fisherman perk up under the feet of their masters along the bar, between stools and under tables. Jessi, known to tongue-lash and punch out guys, quails like a terrified kitten.

My policy is to allow dogs in Happy Jack’s. Though the county has banned dogs in bars for health reasons, supposedly, it’s my contention the dogs owned by violent prone patrons of this particular bar work as a calming affect, like a tranquilizer, and, since all their dogs get along splendidly, it gives them a chance to compliment each other and brag about their dogs, all of them ideal companions on the high seas.

I ask Mel Sylliphant if he knows the guy dragging his pit bull toward the poolroom, freaking out all the women, of which there are plenty. But no, Mel, who’s from up north, has never seen this guy before.

“Look at the balls on that pit,” he says with awe and respect. “Those suckers are fuckin’ tennis balls!”

The dog is black with a spiked collar. The fisherman is built like a barrel and, after pulling down his hood, sports a watch cap, his beard is red in an angular hawk face encasing two fierce eyeballs surveying the crowd.

Jessi, vibrating with paranoia, jabs me. “Dell, we gotta get that dog outta here. Please, I’m scared!”

I go out from behind the bar. A path is cleared. A space is between the crowd and the fisherman and his pit bull, and when he spots me coming he grins, displaying two incisors and no front teeth. I stop before him while his dog eyes me with keen vigilance. The fucker could take off my calf with one chomp.

“Pal, I suggest you take your dog outside,” I say. “He’s freaking everybody out. Why don’t you tie him up somewhere and come back in for a drink. That’s all I ask.”

He peers around. “Folks got dogs in here. Spike ain’t gonna attack nobody ‘less they attack him.”

“No human or dog’s gonna attack your dog—they’re all scared of that monster.”

“That ain’t my fault. Spike goes where I go. I don’t like my dog bein’ discriminated against cuz he’s a pit. At the Bear Flag in Moss Landing, they let me bring Spike in alla time.”

“Well, this ain’t the Bear Flag.”

“What is this—a pussy bar? You head pussy?”

“All right, that’s enough outta you. If you’re gonna pull that shit, YOU’RE outta here.”

“What if I ain’t leavin’, boy?”

Boy? I’m 53 and he’s at least 15 years younger than me. “I can call the cops.”

“Ooooooo, I’m so scared. ‘Sides, they ain’t gonna do squat for bringin’ my dog in. So go on an’ call the motherfuckers.”

“That’s a last resort. I don’t want the cops in here. It’s your dog I’m concerned about.” I fold my arms. “I don’t know your dog. I KNOW the dogs in here. They’re not fighting dogs. They’re scared of your dog. That’s why they’re not out here sniffing. Fear leads to fights among dogs…”

“What’re you, a dog shrink?”

I sigh. “I don’t want a dog fight with this place packed. This is business, man. People’ll walk out of here or they won’t come in when they see your dog, and it’s my responsibility to keep this crowd and do a big business. This is a good night. Everybody’s having a great time. Your dog, even if he’s a peaceful dog, which I trust he is, is still a pit bull the size of a fucking mastiff, and he’s gonna run everybody out of here. It’s business, not personal. I got nothing against you or your dog. Okay?”

He stares at me, eyes empty. “I want a beer.’

“I know you do. I’ll gladly serve you a beer, but not until you get your dog out of here. Okay?”

“I don’t like bein’ away from my dog,” he explains. “The Bear Flag in Moss Landing, the Buena Vista in Eureka, LaRocca in ‘Frisco, they all let me bring Spike in. What’s wrong with this dive? I heard this was supposed to be a man’s bar, and Morro Bay was a tough town. Why are all these pussies afraid of Spike?”

I unfold my arms. “You want a beer, take Spike out.” I reach down and pet Spike’s massive cranium, for he’s gazing up at me with a benign, hopeful look, like he’s been through this before and wants no trouble. “Good boy,” I coo. “Look, I don’t wanna separate you from Spike, man. I can see you two are tight. It’s my opinion a dog like Spike is a far better companion than any woman. You can’t trust a woman like you can a magnificent specimen like Spike.”

He’s still gazing at me with those empty eyes. But I see a glimmer is registering. “Well…” he says.

“You see, the rest of these dogs, well, they’re just ordinary run-of-the-mill mutts. They’re not exceptional studs like Spike. With a dog like Spike, we have to make an exception. The other dogs are spooked by his superior physical gifts. Okay?”

“Well…okay,” he says, not happy. “But this dive, Happy Jack’s, I’m real disappointed. I heard this was a man’s bar. Looks to me like a bunch-a cake-eaters.”

“I gotta get back to work now. You go ahead and take Spike outside, guy, and come on in for that beer.”

I walk him out the front door and watch him continue bow-legged down the street half a block to his pick-up with camper shell. He deposits Spike inside and stands talking to him. He’s got Oregon plates. I return to the bar and Jessi heaves a sigh of relief and we catch up because she fell behind while I conversed with Spike’s master. We do a shot of Crown Royal.

Then he returns. And now he’s holding a fish skeleton about a foot and a half long, at least. This fish skeleton has immense jaws, like a barracuda. The sight of this skeleton is terrifying and women are squealing and edging away into the crush as the lunatic walks with the skeleton thrust out in front of him as if to pave his way. Christ! Again, Jessi is quailing.

“That dude’s crazy!” she cries. “Look at his eyes!”

Though fishermen in the bar are not even slightly aroused, they are also aware of being in the company of a madman, whose goddamn fish skeleton, with its soccer ball-size head and massive jaws, looks prehistoric, like it was manufactured in a Hollywood special effects studio for a horror movie where a blown up version of this fish skeleton prowls the earth and gobbles up a panicky stampede of humans.

And now, as a girl moves gingerly away from him, he thrusts the skeleton at her and she shrieks and flees, pushing through the throng toward the band area up front. Now the maniac is thrusting the fish and clacking its jaws at every woman in the vicinity and grinning, his incisors flaring, having a big time. The fishermen clustered in or near the poolroom seem amused, their dogs out of danger. Most of them have been to the Bear Flag and other dangerous dives in various ports, and so it’s I who must calm down Jessi and restore order in the bar.

I go out front, out of range of the fucking fish. “Hey, you gotta get that fucking thing outta here,” I tell him. “That is the most evil-looking specimen I’ve ever laid my eyes on, dude.”

“It ain’t like it’s alive, boy. It don’t bite. They let me bring it in the Bear Flag in Moss Landing and LaRocca in…”

I put up my hand. “I want that goddamn thing outta here, bub.”

“Yer getting’ huffy with me, boy. I don’t like that.”

“Yeh, well, tough shit. Every girl in here’s freaked out with you thrusting that ugly fish at ‘em.”

“Fuck ‘em. If they can’t take a little joke, tough titty.”

“I’m gonna ask you one more time—get that fucking ghastly fish outta here.”

“And if I don’t?” He regards me with utter disrespect. “What yah gonna do about it, boy?”

I step forward. I take a deep breath. “I’m gonna kill you.” I say it as quietly as possible in the din, without emotion. I do not mean to say this; it just comes out. I realize I mean it, too.

“You’re gonna…KILL me?”

I nod, staring into his eyes, which for the first time show some recognition of what is going on.

“That’s a pretty drastic reaction to my goddam fish,” he says. “Yer gonna kill me over a fish? A dead fish?”

I nod. “This bar is MY territory. I make the rules, and you’re in my territory breaking my rules. This bar is also my livelihood. You’re driving people out, fucking with my livelihood. Those are grounds to kill you. Men have killed over less. I will kill you right here and sleep like a baby, and my only regret will be making poor Spike an orphan. Go ahead, try me.”

My spiel is registering. “Jeezus, yer serious, ain’t yah?”

I’m still staring into his eyes, having moved closer, giving him the same look my bad-ass father gave any threatening person before kicking their ass, a look which in most cases paralyzed them if they had even a shred of sense and self-preservation.

“All right, all right.” He’s backing up. “Jeezus, and I heard this was a cool bar. Settle down, man.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, motherfucker, I’m ready to kill!”

“All right. I’m takin’ my fish back to my truck. It was just a joke. Don’t know why everybody’s uptight over a dead fish. Up in Alaska…”

“Get the fuck outta here. You’re eighty-sixed for life, motherfucker.”

“All right. Jeezus.” He leaves with his fish. People make a path. He doesn’t return, but a few minutes later, after I’ve shared another shot of CR with Jessi, somebody tells me to look out the window and when I do, there he is, across the street in front of Legends, along with a crowd of regulars out on the sidewalk, trying to get in with Spike, and the bartender, Lou, is in the doorway pleading with him and seeming to get nowhere, and in Legends, of course, no dogs are allowed, period. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he shares his beach shack with the million-dollar view with Wilbur, a rescue dog. Dell is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad who played professionally in the early days of baseball, The Ball Player’s Son.

Walking Wilbur in Carmel-by-the-Sea

CITY LIFE.WALKING WILBUR II

When a friend visits, he tries to climb atop them, lay his head on their chest, and gaze up with sad, needy eyes, a shameless glutton for affection.

by Dell Franklin

My mostly part-time woman of over 25 years, Colleen, and my full-time dog, Wilbur, and I made a getaway two-day trip to luxurious, upper-than-up-scale Carmel-by-the-Sea to celebrate our birthdays. I found Wilbur in a Labrador rescue shelter down south last Thanksgiving. He’s a hefty, floppy Chocolate Lab with a white beard. He was around 8 when I got him, had been in the shelter over seven months, weighed around 63 pounds, his coat more dun than brown, and he was wild and suspicious of strangers and dogs, with a left front fang pulled, his fleas so bad when they found him abandoned in San Pedro that he had chewed off his original coat and grown a new one.

When I brought him to sleepy, dog-crazy Cayucos, he was hyper-vigilant, and so aggressive (like he’d been in prison) I couldn’t take him to the Morro Bay dog park, where he fought, and had to walk him in places where there were no dogs. His abandonment issue was so severe he wouldn’t let me out of his sight. But eventually he calmed down and adjusted and became a model citizen at the dog park. He now weighs 85 pounds and his coat is a rich chocolate and he nuzzles strangers and plays with other dogs and goes out of his way to make friends with neighbor cats. When a friend visits, he tries to climb atop them, lay his head on their chest, and gaze up with sad, needy eyes, a shameless glutton for affection.

After we settled in our cozy third-story room with private balcony and an ocean view of Carmel-By-The-Sea, I decided to take Wilbur for a walk before a sauna, swim in the pool, shower, and booze hour. We started off down San Carlos Street, headed for the main downtown drag, Ocean Avenue. An athletically thin woman in designer sweat suit, ball cap and shades headed toward us on the same side of the street. She began looking nervous as we approached, Wilbur pulling because he wanted to nuzzle and sniff her two immaculate toy poodles who looked to have come from a dog show. The woman hastily, one hand holding cell phone, the other a double leash, dragged her yipping dogs across the street like a frightened hare as Wilbur quickly dragged me to the tree where the poodles had pissed and lifted his leg. I waved to the woman, but apparently she was no longer aware of my presence and skittered away.

CITY LIFE.WALKING WILBUR IIWilbur dumped a good load into a bush so dense I could not recover his turds, which was just as well, because I had no intention of toting around a bag of shit in trendy Carmel-By-The-Sea.

We continued on. A slender man around my age with a mincing walk, whose sparkling leash pulled a small pedigree of Asian extraction, saw me coming and darted across the street as Wilbur continued to pull me along like a cork, even though I weigh 190. I finally reached the main drag, which was a-flow with Asian and European tourists, a few American tourists and locals, flawlessly tanned, sporting $200 haircuts and a thousand bucks of casual wear, who carried tote bags, cell phones and walked manicured mini canines almost as spiffy as their masters. 

I noticed that the bejeweled dogs, like their masters, avoided eye contact and marched by an anxious-to-make-friends Wilbur and me as if we didn’t exist and were perhaps a plague. I admit to having worn a $3 pair of thrift store shorts and a dollar T-shirt, and haven’t had a haircut since last Christmas, and won’t shave until we go to the five-star French restaurant tonight, but still, in Cayucos, all us locals make eye contact with each other and our dogs, who are beseeching in their need for a pet, a nuzzle, perhaps a biscuit; while their masters engage in small town chit-chat, the dogs smiling and sniffing. 

Up and down the main drag we plunged, big old Wilbur clearing a path as Carmel-By-The-Sea denizens (among the highest dog owning population per capita in the country) avoided Wilbur and me and scurried to the edges of the sidewalk and sometimes into the street! When Wilbur decided to take a shit at a manicured bush on the sidewalk, I was embarrassed, quickly pulled him away, and he was docile as I explained this was not Cayucos, this was Carmel-By-The-Sea, where there were no price tags on any items in any of the myriad galleries and boutiques, not even in the drug store, and it was low class and a poor reflection on your master to shit in the street, even if I did sport a poop bag. 

Wilbur held on, though he did pee on everything (I saw no foo-foo poodles and rare breeds peeing) and we continued our prowl, making sure to journey in our rambunctious way to the end of the business section before starting back up the other side of the street, where a local cop on foot flashed us the stink eye as Wilbur lunged at a Cocker Spaniel with fur combed clear to his paws, the master wincing as I held him back. 

Finally we veered off the crowded main drag and entered a side street and headed to a residential area, where Wilbur dumped a good load into a bush so dense I could not recover his turds, which was just as well, because I had no intention of toting around a bag of shit in trendy Carmel-By-The-Sea.

We emerged near the post office, across from Friar Tuck’s diner, to the side of La Dolce Vita restaurant, and spotted two park benches in a tiny area with one tree. I was limping badly at this point from recent knee surgery, and Wilbur was winded.

“Let’s take a load off our feet, Wilbur,” I said. “We still got a few blocks back to the room.”

CITY LIFE.WALKING WILBUR IIIWe sat down, me lounging on the bench, Wilbur on his hind legs. Not ten seconds passed when I spotted a beautiful middle-aged woman coming out of the post office, perfectly coiffed, though dressed as if gardening. From across the street she smiled at us and reached into a very slick SUV and retrieved a package and headed toward us in full stride. Wilbur straightened, tail wagging frantically as the woman handed me a bag of treats and immersed herself in Wilbur, who lay his face upon her breast and gave her the needy, sad eyes. The bag held super-nutritional organic beef jerky.

“Oh what a beautiful Chocolate Lab,” she gushed. “What’s his name?”

“Wilbur.”

“Oh, what a perfect name—he is a Wilbur.” She smiled at me. “I think Wilbur will enjoy his treats.”

“Well, thank you. Wilbur’s very pleased.” I fed him a beef jerky and he devoured it.

“Oh thank you, for letting me meet Wilbur.”

They hugged some more, but then she had to leave, wished us a good day, and drove off.

Wilbur and I headed back to our room. More masters and dogs avoided us. So what. Wilbur had chewed four treats and wanted more. When we reached the hotel and our room, I told Colleen everything, ending with the wonderful, beautiful Samaritan giving us treats.

“Oh for God’s Sake,” she scoffed, long suffering. “The woman probably felt sorry for Wilbur, the poor thing being with a homeless-looking, crazy old man.” §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he shares his beach shack with the million-dollar view with Wilbur, a rescue dog. Dell is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad who played professionally in the early days of baseball, The Ball Player’s Son.

Searching for home

from the publisher.weekend!1

CAYUCOS COWGIRLS—If you ever have doubts, as we sometimes do, that we live in paradise, you just gotta know where to look, as these ladies discovered recently on an outing not far from home. Featured: Yakelin Pizano, Emelyn Reyes, Liz Herrera, Jessika Lee, and Betsy Ball. Photo courtesy of Betsy Ball

by Stacey Warde

My whole life has been a search for belonging, finding a place to call “home.”

The closest I’ve come to feeling this way is here in this peculiar beachside throwback of a community called Cayucos, a throwback to sparsely populated seaside villages along California’s rugged, magnificent coastline, a throwback to my earliest childhood memories of Laguna Beach, where my great-grandfather, Joseph Smith Thurston, and his Morman family found a homestead, settling in Aliso Canyon in 1871, before there was water, before there were multi-million dollar palaces on beachfront property that once cost $25 a lot, Old Laguna, which my cousin, Kelly Boyd, a two-time mayor there, likes to remind us, “doesn’t exist any more.”

Cayucos, when I moved here nearly 30 years ago, reminded me of Laguna Beach, a seaside hamlet tucked among the hills rising above the ocean, safe from development and money grubbers and golden boys in hot cars, at least for a while. The people here, ranchers, surfers, loners and drifters, were friendly and regular. Houses were of reasonable size and most had gardens where it was easy to strike up conversations with the neighbors.

The quaint little beach cottages have mostly succumbed to the bulldozer to make way for grotesque stucco monstrosities with little thought to impact or design, their form artless and dull, much like their owners. There are a few exceptions but the rule for development here the last three decades appears only to have been “make it ugly, make it fast and make it big.”

Gone are the gardens with fruit trees and flowers, and friendly neighbors, who actually talked to one another from their yards. Most of the homes that have been built here in the last 30 years don’t have yards. They’re all house. Ugly boxes with tinted windows, where conversation can easily be avoided, and the world, the place we call paradise, can be shut out.

To put a spin on cousin Kelly’s comment, “It’s not Old Cayucos any more.” Yet, while much has changed here, it still feels like home, even if it’s not exactly paradise.

I’ve realized over the years, however, that home is more than a place, more than what we might like to call “paradise”; it’s really what we bring to our living spaces and the ground we keep, as well as the company we keep; it’s where we feel most safe to be our selves, whole and fractured—all of it—and rest, if even for only a moment, from the the world’s troubles, of which there are plenty.

You don’t have to turn on the TV to witness another Islamic State beheading to know “the world’s a mess” right now, as so many people have said to me recently.

All you have to do is make an appearance at the local watering hole to know that there are plenty of messy situations right here at home: Addictions, feuds, excessive drug use, overdoses, suicides, and the occasional racist comment. Addictions and feuds seem reasonable; drug use and overdoses, indulgent; suicide, pardonable; but racism, why?  All it does is prove how mean you are, not intelligent or reasonable.

Author Dell Franklin, in his recent powerful account of confronting a local young man for revealing his ignorance about blacks, Obama and the “N” Word, reminds us that we gain much by setting aside our prejudices in the interest of pursuing a common goal, of learning from someone with a different value system or experience or skin color. We’re all in the same boat—as Dell was when he signed on as the only white crew member on the Delta Queen—and we really do need to learn how to get along.

We’ve ripped on the notion, commonplace in this town, that we live in paradise, among the bigots who like to say bad things about blacks and Mexicans, and the intolerant who throw newspapers and magazines in the trash because they don’t like what’s in them, but we do an injustice to our fair haven by not recognizing the elements that really do make this paradise, and there are plenty of them.

You just have to know where to look, like the women in the photo at the top of this page who have found their little weekend slice of heaven during a recent outing somewhere in the hills not far from our town. What more do you need than a place to park above the ocean with guns and beer and a thirst for adventure? We like to be reminded of what really does make this paradise. Thank you, ladies, for showing us the way. Oh, and the gal with the gun, I don’t believe her name really is Jessika Lee with a “K,” but what do I know?

IMG_7383Meanwhile, Hoppe’s restaurant and the little bistro in back of the Way Station mysteriously shut down recently, putting a dozen or so employees out of work and leaving the town without the world-class fare we’d grown to expect.

Way Station owners Henry and Mary Ellen Eisemann lamented the situation by posting a note on the door that informs potential patrons that for the first time in 41 years they will not have a restaurant at the location, at least until they can find a “suitable operator.”

It goes along with what I’ve said earlier, things change, even the place we call home. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.com

CARPENTER ON THE ROOF, 1991

CITY-LIFE.CARPENTER

I smash a fingernail, yelping in pain. Curt walks over, asks have I ever done carpentry before, and when I admit I have not he scowls and kicks at some rubble and paces around, muttering aloud.

by Dell Franklin

My woman is losing patience with my boozing and negative attitude after being turned down for job after job, especially since I’ve quit or been canned from my last three. Finally, she suggests I ask my friend, Ethan, an accomplished and fully equipped carpenter, if he can find me a gig pounding nails. Whenever something is amiss in our cottage, she calls on Ethan to fix it before I try—and destroy things.

“You sure about this?” Ethan asks me. “It’s hard work, especially in the beginning. Tough on the old body—like boot camp.”

“I’ve been to boot camp, boy. You haven’t.”

“Dell, this is a different kind of boot camp. You’ll use muscles you never worked before, and you’re almost fifty years old.”

“I’m stronger than you, and I’m not afraid of hard work.”

He flashes a knowing grin. “Oh yes you are, and you know it.”

Within a week he has me hooked up with a man named Curt who needs somebody to help him in the hills around Paso Robles, 25 miles from Cayucos, Calif., where I live a block from the beach. I call Curt and he says we’ll be putting on the finishing touches of a structure and gives me directions. His right-hand man is out with an arthritic elbow from thirty years of pounding nails.

I drive my 1950 Chevy pickup and find the structure on a knoll surrounded by oak-dotted hills. Curt drives a big, dusty pickup stacked in the back with ladders, cabling, power tools, cans of nails, every hand tool imaginable. He explains that the structure is to be a large art studio/rec room for the wife of the owner of the Taco Bell-like mansion atop another knoll a hundred yards up a driveway, where a huge pickup, Mercedes and SUV are parked out front.

Curt sizes me up. “So where’s your tool belt?” he asks.

“I don’t have one.”

“You don’t have one,” he repeats to himself. A lean, weathered man with a brush mustache, huge veins popping from wrists and forearms, he wears a neoprene sleeve around his right elbow, is perhaps 40. I’m 47. “What about tools? Are you equipped?”

“I have no tools at this time,” I confess, feeling sheepish.

He sighs. “Jesus Christ, who recommended you?”

“Ethan Pearson.”

“Okay, follow me.” He leads me to his truck, where he rummages about and tosses me a tool belt. “This was my first tool belt. Don’t lose it. You can return it when you buy your own.”

I wrap on the belt, but it hangs awkwardly to my knees. Curt adjusts it, hands me a hammer, which I shove in the belt. Wearing shorts and a sweatshirt, I shiver in the morning cold, fingers already numb. Curt hands me some long nails, which I stuff in pockets of the belt, and he leads me to the side of the skeletal structure, tells me to pound nails along the side to further strengthen the frame. I bend most of them and have to pull them out. I smash a fingernail, yelping in pain. Curt walks over, asks have I ever done carpentry before, and when I admit I have not he scowls and kicks at some rubble and paces around, muttering aloud.

“Bill Bright told me Ethan was sending me a goddamn carpenter, not a fucking novice. I can’t train you. I got to get this fucker built, so I can move on to my next job. I got mouths to feed. I got two boys eatin’ me outta house and home and a wife wantsa new car….” He comes over and shows me how to hammer correctly. I watch him closely, nervous, wanting to please Curt and keep my $12-an-hour gig. He observes me hammer a few nails, nods, walks off, goes to work. He hammers fluidly, nails in mouth, an effortless human assembly line, like myself tending bar. I go up and down the side frame, lost in a daydreaming zone, pounding nails until Curt returns to check my progress and throws a fit. “You pounded the wrong goddamn side! You didn’t listen to me!”

“I thought….”

“You thought? That’s the problem. Just do as I do, go where I go, don’t fucking THINK!” He glares at me, incredulous, then stares at the ground. He meditates a few seconds, then points to a pile of rubble off to the side and orders me to go over there and find lumber, mostly two-by-fours, and extract nails from them, then pile the wood in a wheelbarrow and move it to where the good lumber is stacked. Can I do that? I nod. He warns me not to walk on any nails, glancing sourly at my sneakers and snorting.

“Why you wearin’ them goddamn things?”

“They’re all I have. I play basketball in ‘em.”

“Basketball,” he grumbles. “I hate basketball. Buncha niggers jumpin’ around. I’m a stock car guy.”

Instead of telling him I hate all auto racing, I walk over and begin rooting around in the pile, painstaking labor. I bruise my knuckles. My hands turn raw and ache. I struggle extracting nails, jerking, rooting, cursing. Soon my knuckles bleed. My lower back pinches from the hammering. All my joints are stiff and arthritic from years of sports. I bungle on. By lunch time I’ve de-nailed every last board and wheel-barreled them to the lumber site.

Curt won’t look at me. “Bring your lunch?”

I shrug, having only a power bar and banana.

“Figures. You got half an hour. Ain’t enough time to go into town. Where’s your water? Gets hot in the afternoon and you need a gallon of water. I don’t want you passing out on me.”

He climbs into his truck and turns away from me, opening a big cooler and turning his radio to country western. I sit in my truck, bone-weary, dehydrated, starved, sore, dazed, resisting a strong urge to punch out Curt and flee. After my meager lunch he has me toting double-door-size slabs of siding to the lumber area. These slabs are a mix of plaster and paper and whatever, and heavy, cumbersome, unwieldy. As I haul them I have to peer down at the rocky, irregular terrain to see where I’m going, so that I am like a blind Tom careening and lurching about with these sidings, falling down several times, scraping and gouging my arms, hands raw and bleeding because I have no gloves. Each trip to the lumber area is a perilous ordeal; Curt, up on a ladder, pounding furiously, peers at me occasionally. My sweatshirt is torn and filthy and my knees skinned.

The owner of the estate pulls up in a gigantic pickup, a broad, bulge-gutted, beef-faced man in boots, western shirt, Stetson. He talks in a jovial, familiar manner to Curt, whose attitude becomes solicitous. A school bus pulls up on the country road below and deposits two young girls who walk toward the mansion toting book packs. They are nattily dressed. A young, pretty mother meets them at the door. Minutes later they all pile into the SUV, clad in white tennis outfits, carrying racket cases. After the owner drives off, a rugged-looking guy in a ball cap drives up in another pickup with WALT’S ROOFING on the door. As he and Walt visit, the roofer, from time to time, glances over at me as I stumble along with the siding as if I am a zoo animal. As I try to reach down and snare the belt, it slips to my knees and I go down, landing on my back, gouging my buttocks on a sharp rock, the siding atop me like a triumphant wrestler. I quickly shed the siding and jump to my feet and adjust the tool belt while the roofer and Curt watch me, shaking their heads as I try to balance the siding. I make it to the pile. The roofer drives off. It takes me most of the afternoon to move all the siding.

“Do you know how to operate power tools?” Curt asks me.

“I’m willing to try.”

“Okay. Tomorrow. You look pretty beat. Let’s call it a day.”

I can hardly move. My lady meets me with a beer and a kiss when I return home, and asks me about my big day, and I tell her I’m learning and she says she’s proud of me. “Look at me,” I say. “I really paid. It was like boot camp.”

Ethan calls to ask how my day went. I tell him okay but for the tool belt and Curt. He says he doesn’t know Curt, got me hired through Bright. I tell him Curt’s an asshole, bossing me around, treating me like a moronic peon, sapping what little confidence I have left. Ethan explains that carpenters are proud of their profession and disdainful of novices, an impatient, intolerant lot. I tell him I’ll endure anything, even Curt, because I’m broke.

I have trouble sleeping at night because my arms and face are on fire. At dawn I pack apples, oranges, bananas, power bars, a gallon of water. Curt is waiting when I pull up, and right off he begins showing me how to cut lumber with a power saw, but the loud, rackety saw terrifies the shit out of me and after he watches me nearly saw off a toe he takes it away from me and hands me a power drill and instructs me to drill holes in the cement floor inside the structure, and I do as best I can, feeling my arms and shoulders vibrate while dust flies in my face. Curt asks do I have goggles and a bandana to cover my mouth as I sneeze and cough. I ignore him and when I’m finished drilling holes he has me assisting him placing windows in frames. This is touchy work and I follow his instructions carefully, begin to feel somewhat worthy and competent as we fit in window after window. Then we climb a second-story scaffolding to fit in more windows. The scaffold is uneasy, tilting this way and that, and at one point Curt has to reach out and grab me to keep my ass from pitching off.

Later he has me downstairs and inside on a ladder, pounding nails. The owner shows up and they talk, glancing at my progress. As I turn my head to observe them, I lose my balance and fall backwards off the ladder onto my tail bone, bruising it, but I spring right up as the two men hurry to my aid, insisting I’ve taken many a fall playing basketball. At lunch, Curt marches silently to his truck while I go to mine. He will not look at me.

After lunch he orders me to the roof to pound more nails. I take the ladder up, climb on. The roof is slick, sheet-like wood, and steeply pitched. The roofer drives up, dropping off tiles similar to those on the hilltop mansion. The two converse while I crawl like a crab up the roof, afraid to look back, afraid to get up on my feet. As a kid, I ran along roofs with abandon, jumped off as if my legs were elastic, but now I am petrified, stuck halfway toward the peak, unable to find anything to hold onto for leverage, wondering how the fuck I have ended up here after all my years of avoiding such situations, already dreading my move DOWN the roof to the ladder.

Then I find myself sliding back. I grapple for anything to dig my nails into, gaining downward momentum as I claw frantically for anything, anything, and then I am grasping madly for the edge of the structure and plunging over the ladder and hurling through space, cushioning myself for the crash as I luckily land sideways, cocking my shoulder, in a scrap heap of dusty boards, wiring, tar paper, etc. I am not hurt! I jump off the heap and hug my limbs while Curt and the roofer dash over, concern and shock written all over their faces.

“You all right?” Curt asks, eyes wide with disbelief.

I dust myself off. My arm is cut and bleeding. “Yeh, yeh, I’m fine. I know how to land. I’m an airborne army veteran.”

Curt rolls his eyes. “Looks to me like you’re scared of heights.”

“I’m not scared of shit. Fuck heights.”

“Okay, calm down. Get back inside and nail some of them beams. The high ones. Be careful on that ladder, ey?”

I’m on the verge of punching out Curt and the smirking roofer, a mustachioed muscle-head with an NRA sticker on his bumper. Instead, I slog back to the structure, tool kit again hanging at my fucking knees, hitching it up, hammer falling out, bending down to snatch and shove it in the belt. I climb the ladder and commence hammering big spike nails. By now I am a decent hammerer. But I begin to feel a gnawing soreness in every crevice of my body, and especially my lower back, wondering how the hell guys like Curt and Ethan survive such strife, deadening the mind, pulverizing the body, killing the spirit, and I have to grudgingly respect a bastard like Curt, though, if he, at this point, so much as looks at me wrong, I will beat him into a bloody pulp and make him beg for his meager life.

Back at the cottage, I sit in the shade on my porch and guzzle a six-pack while Miranda, home from work, dabs at my cuts with cotton and peroxide and icepacks my swollen bruises. Ethan calls around seven with the bad news—I am fired!

“Fuck, E-man, I gave that prick everything I have.”

“I know. But he found somebody else. He says you’re too inexperienced.”

“What else did that lowly sonofabitch say about me?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

“I got a right to know. I wanna hear it.”

A pause. “He said if he gets a new man, an experienced framer, he can finish the job in two weeks. If he goes alone, he can finish in three weeks. If he keeps you, he said he might never finish. He doesn’t wanna be responsible for you maiming or killing yourself.”

“Very fucking funny.”

He’s laughing. I curse him. “Listen,” he says. “I take full responsibility. It wasn’t fair to have you start out with that guy, knowing what a demanding prick he is, and you having no experience. If you want, on my next job, I can take you on and train you. You’ll need tools and a belt.”

“Fuck you. I’m fed up. I’m thoroughly humiliated. This is the third straight job I’ve been fired. I’m bordering on suicide.”

I hang up. Miranda massages my stiff neck. “You tried,” she says soothingly. “I’m proud of you. You didn’t quit.”

I know it’ll take me a week to recuperate from my experience in carpentry. It isn’t boot camp. It’s war. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.