Category Archives: Culture

Behind the Orange Curtain

Where cars and Costco rule the day

I transitioned from small-town America to a flat endless horizon of surging traffic, a snarled madhouse of giant shopping centers, one residential neighborhood after another, intertwined with high-end condo retirement complexes the size of most towns. Photo Stacey Warde 

By Dell Franklin

I took the Amtrak train from San Luis Obiso south to visit old friends who live in Orange County and it’s taken me almost one week to digest the horror of it. I was too dazed to be overwhelmed at first as I transitioned from small-town America to a flat endless horizon of surging traffic, a snarled madhouse of giant shopping centers, one residential neighborhood after another, intertwined with high-end condo retirement complexes the size of most towns. 

And strip malls. 

I felt so small and insignificant, like an invasive germ.

My friend Angus picked me up at the Anaheim train station adjacent to the stadium where the California Angels call home. Angus lives in a Huntington beach grid among many grids of homes that have no front porches and are walled in so that the only time people see each other and have little visits with dogs and so on is when they are out and about, which is seldom. There are no lawns. The streets are idle and inert. Like a ghost town.

Angus and his wife Dot have lived here for 47 years. They are retired school teachers. Angus also coached baseball and football and was once an All League athlete. They have a pleasant home with modern fixtures and appliances and furniture and a swimming pool and jacuzzi that neither use. 

They know when I make one of my generational visits that it can be an ordeal absorbing my comments and picking on Angus, whom I consider a person 100 times more virtuous and valuable than I am; which is why I make it a point to pick on him constantly.

He took me to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He drove me to Huntington Beach’s main drag that was studded with Miami Beach-like luxury hotels that go for a grand a night and are always booked full. Where does the money come from? We parked and walked. I splurged and bought my first T-shirt not from a thrift store in possibly 40 years just for the hell of it—50 percent off and beachy.

Later, Angus, who is 82 and has two knee replacements, two shoulder replacements, one hip replacement, and spent a year of chemo fighting off cancer, forced me to go to Costco with him to purchase some medicine for Dot and for a few odds and ends. It was hot out, and we had to park a long way away. He commandeered a shopping cart and began pushing it around.

“Why do you need a cart for a few items?” I asked.

“Be quiet.”

“I’ve never been in a place this big with so many people buying a bunch of shit,” I said.

“Stop it.”

“It’s obscene.”

He refused to react. I made fun of his painful, shuffling walk. He ignored me. He needed help in the cavernous immensity of this particular Costco, and a little cheerful Asian lady pointed him in the right direction. More than half the people pushing carts appeared to be Vietnamese American women. They pushed their big carts with grim, get-out-of-my-way determination. I took over Angus’s cart in a move I felt would relieve his being miffed at my condemning Costco and making fun of his walk. I suddenly became pleased as I picked up the pace and played chicken with aggressive and tiny Vietnamese grandmas. I know how to adapt.

I did not see one even slightly portly Asian but a lot of overstuffed white people stacking their carts to the brim as they waddled about.

Angus was looking for plain white T-shirts like the ones we wore in the 1960s but they didn’t have those, although Costco is supposed to have everything. The T-shirts they had were not white and were too small. 

Angus needed raspberries, and as we passed the salmon he bragged about how delicious and easy it was to prepare. He does a lot of cooking since Dot would rather read. When we came to the vodka, I urged him to buy a half gallon of Gray Goose since he could not spend all the money he had, but he did not like Gray Goose and preferred Absolut. I told him that although I was poor I insisted on luxury vodka and he should too since, like me, he was a lifetime boozer. 

I informed him that he was institutionalized to inferior vodka due to growing up poor, and needed to break out. He stuck with the Absolut.

We came to the wine section. I asked him what he knew about wine and he said not much and that most wines tasted the same and he and Dot liked a certain white which I pooh-poohed. I explained I did know a little about wine because my brother-in-law and nephew spent hours on their computers studying wine and various vineyards and were experts, and when they visited me up in Cayucos they spent whole days wine tasting in Paso Robles and bought crates of top-shelf wine. 

When I spotted a Dou Chardonnay from Paso Robles that my nephew bragged about, I informed Angus this was an excellent wine for the price and to buy it, and insisted that Dot would like it, and though I could see he was as usual leery of my opinions and exclamations, he gave in and accepted two bottles I dropped in the cart.

After that I felt rejuvenated and became more aggressive with the cart, feeling like a teenager in a bumper car at a county fair. When we finished finding raspberries and other crap, I sprinted my cart to an open checkout station and cut off a Vietnamese woman with a packed cart. She sped to another check out station without reaction, cutting off another woman.

Later, the three of us sat out in the coolness of Angus and Dot’s little sheltered patio after I shoved the chard in the freezer. Angus opened it. Poured out three glasses. He and Dot sat across from each other and sipped. Dot nodded. “This is really good, Angus,” she said.

Angus took a sip, nodded. “It is good,” he agreed.

“Is it better than what you usually get at Costco?” I asked Dot.

“Yes. Definitely.”

I turned to Angus.“What’d I tell you, huh? Aren’t you glad I made you buy two bottles?” 

“I said it’s good.”

“For the price, it’s better than good.”

He wasn’t biting.

“You should stock up on it. That’s what people do at Costco, right? Stock up. Because there’s never enough of everything and anything in Orange County. They all gotta have it all or there’s no life.”

His phone rang. It was Stacey Warde. My old partner with the Rogue Voice literary journal I once published in SLO County. Stacey once wrote for the local Tribune and was managing editor of New Times, where we first met. He now lives in Tustin and was to show up at Angus’s around 4:30 p.m. Another friend from around Mission Viejo named Sean was also to join us and then we’d retreat to a bar.

After Angus hung up, he said Stacey was on his way. Tustin was only half-an-hour away.

“You don’t know Stacey,” I said. “We ran that paper together for four years, and my guess is he won’t get here for at least two hours. He’ll get lost—even in his own backyard. He’ll call again. You’ll have to talk him here. Trust me.”

It took him two-and-a-half hours, although he grew up in the OC. He called several times for directions and stayed on the line. He dealt with horrendous road rage. When he finally arrived one could see how the OC takes its toll. 

(To be continued…).

Dell Franklin writes from his home in the lovely quiet beach town of Cayucos, Calif. This column first appeared on Cal Coast News, an online publication. He’s the author of The Ballplayer’s Son, a memoir about his father’s years as a pro when baseball was still a working man’s game.

Living too small?

I’m finally beginning to understand

Diogenes the Cynic could rock the boogie, once telling Alexander the Great to “please step aside; you’re blocking my sun.”

By Stacey Warde

Since arriving here two months ago to take refuge at mom’s I realize how small I’ve lived: Feeling watched, under a microscope, careful not to err. Forming unclear, fluid boundaries. Staying small to avoid upsetting others. It’s all coming clear. Is this where it all started?

Finally, at 65, I’ve realized, “Wow! I gave up a lot, mostly my own soul, power and dynamism, to please people who were never going to be happy with me, no matter how hard I tried.” Early on, I adopted the “good Christian” approach to life, which made sense, given the culture in which I grew up: Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Give until you lose yourself. Which, I’ve learned, is bad, really bad. The flip side of that equation, of course, is not giving enough. Which is also bad.

And what did I accomplish with that approach? Not much. Lots of lost time, toxic heartbreak. Redundancies, not the most favorable kind, mistakes, mostly. Some luck. Yes, a lot of the good in my life came solely from luck, and a little bit from making healthy choices. Also, from pursuing what I love, even when material rewards were limited.

I’ve heard it said that the way to success comes by welcoming failure not by actively pursuing success; “fail as often as you can,” the saying goes, “until you get it right.” If nothing else, I say, be persistent and learn from your mistakes, which is really the same thing. So what if you’ve little to show for it? The important thing is effort, and endurance (in today’s vernacular, “resilience”). That’s how one lives large — by enduring, putting in the effort, no matter how seemingly impossible the task, and keeping one’s wits, not falling into the trap of emotional attachments to “success” as defined by others.

My ideal life at this late stage would be to become a sage, though by most measures that’s impossible. Diogenes the Cynic is my primary model of the day, but I would not live entirely as he did, taking shelter in a massive wine jug that was popular some 2,500 years ago, parked in a public place, defecating and masturbating there with little care for or acknowledgement of community standards; however, I do embrace calling out, as he did, all the posers who think they are something when they are not, and seeking out honest people, those who live according to nature, and who don’t subscribe to the false coinage or customs of the time but according to their own deeper thought-out purpose.

Apparently, Diogenes, a sage by any standard and who held up his own character, virtue, and self-sufficiency against any and all who might challenge him, could rock the boogie, once telling Alexander the Great to “please step aside; you’re blocking my sun.” Alex, a protector of the Greek city of Corinth where Diogenes held court, had heard of the wise curmudgeon’s exploits and wanted to see the man for himself. As he stood there, likely expecting to be worshiped as a god, Alexander asked the old man, “Hey, you know me, conqueror of the known world. Is there anything I can do for you, bro?”

“Yes! Absolutely! Please step aside!”

How does one “get it right” in a world changing as rapidly as this one, when more and more of what we know to be true gets tossed aside for the latest fad in technology or social media? When all the world seems riveted by celebrity, wealth, and fame?

I’m still adjusting, reinventing myself with what little time I have left, stepping aside whenever necessary to let the warming light shine through, focusing on what is most essential and real rather than getting lost in the detail of false narratives and the conjured morality and supposed superiority of con artists and “influencers” who do not contribute to the overall well-being of those they influence.

I’m still failing in these attempts at living well and being free. And, I hope, I’m learning. I’m lately discovering the deep dark world, as we’ve been informed by the experts, of things like AI and other promising yet untested new technologies. Lessons can be painful. As I imagine it was for Alexander when he learned that he stood in the “great” man’s way. Alexander, we are told, when his soldiers laughed at the foolish old man living in a wine jug, supposedly hushed his men and said, “If I were not Alexander, I would rather be Diogenes.” Me too.

And, as some other wiser folk have said, what good comes of boasting, especially when boasting of things that were not earned, things like good looks, old money, health, and other inheritances that came merely as an accident of birth? And, even if you worked your ass off and acquired by your wit and luck more wealth, celebrity, or fame than you could ever possibly use, what good does boasting prove? It accomplishes little, and shows that one has not yet really “arrived,” or become a sage — which we all need in our lives — or found any lasting freedom. Yet, boasting and “influencers,” people on the make, trying to be “successful,” are everywhere we look.

I watched a YouTube video of a half-naked “influencer” dressed in a skimpy cheerleader’s outfit attempting to justify her slutty presence on a high school campus by pulling the old “do you know who I am” trick? The people shooting the video didn’t know and didn’t care, and instead tried to persuade her that she was in the wrong place (in view of the high school football team) to broadcast her sexy influencer status. I would not put her in the class of iconoclasts like Diogenes, protesting false coinage or tired old maxims, but would question the value, as does commentator Joey B., of her contribution to the betterment of the world.

I want to boast too, but can’t find a place for it, not in my past or even so-called accomplishments, which will soon enough be forgotten. What are they, exactly? Just stuff. I have stuff. I’ve done stuff. SO. WHAT. The devil’s in the details, and there’s plenty of detail in me that doesn’t amount to much, certainly not for boasting. I excel and often go overboard while attempting to please others. I guess I can boast about that; the devil, however, appears most often when I lose my sense of self in the effort to “be” somebody, and liked by others.

I’m codependent, meaning I have acquired and mostly lived a toxic approach to life, depending on others for status, connecting with them by doing more than is necessary to get their attention and approval. I have little to boast of because I haven’t been very good at setting clear boundaries to keep the meddlers and naysayers (the most annoying creatures I’ve ever met) at bay, holding them at a distance, creating a safe space for myself, to do what I love unmolested by those who think I should be doing something else.

I spent most of my years growing up seeking approval instead of persisting in my own particular and/or peculiar interests and curiosities, which weren’t always in alignment with my parents’ 1950s outlook on life. For the most part, I did not share my parents’ traditional values or interests like cleaning the car every weekend. Another example, when granola became a popular food item in the 1970s my parents thought it was weird and gross, and I loved the stuff, even if most people associated it with “dirty” hippies and annoying whiny tree huggers. I found my way, slowly, laboriously, learning to love what others decried as deficient or “weird.”

Traditions and values come and go. Granola is everywhere now. So, I guess, are half-naked “influencers” who claim to make a living, and the world a better place, by taunting perverts.

Growing up and during my years as an adult, not aspiring “influencer” status, I hid myself, the part of me that dreams and wonders, the part that wants to scream and shout and play music and dance and fuck and act silly. I hid because I needed to be practical in this “practical” world and, as dad would say, use good common sense to navigate its often treacherous obstacles. (By “good” I think he meant not criminal. By “common” he’d say, “It’s not so common.”)

I’ve been busy since relocating to this concrete jungle, from which I fled almost 40 years ago, working in mom’s yard, attempting to garner some appreciation and love from mom, who’s in her 80s and appears generally happy, though she seems to “putter” less in the yard and reads more books on the porch these days.

I set out each day to do what I love, starting with meditation and gardening, sometimes yoga, and recovering from the culture shock of moving here after nearly three decades of a quiet rural life.

Yes, I’ve returned out of necessity to what is referred to in the neighborhood as the “Concrete Jungle’’ (Orange County, Calif., where my family first settled more than 150 years ago, and agriculture ruled. My great-grandfather, Joseph Smith Thurston — was there ever a more Mormon name than that? — grew and sold the popular “Thurston” watermelons at Laguna’s Main Beach on hot summer days, long before the automobile became the predominant OC archetype).

I try not to be a “people pleaser” any more, hard as that is to avoid, and hope instead that what I’m doing now, limited as it seems, is ok. I have yet to fully reacclimate to an Orange County that feels like a foreign country with its endless freeways and rush to go nowhere in the most expensive cars money can buy.

Mom’s garden is tired from the neglect that comes with age. I’m happy to give it a new life. It makes her happy too.

Stacey Warde has returned to the Concrete Jungle, where he was born and raised. This essay appeared first on Medium.

Living in exile

Where on earth a person belongs

I think of those condemned to die. I would, at this point, choose exile over death.
Photo by Stacey Warde

By Stacey Warde

I have lived in exile most of my life, self-imposed, no ruler or tyrant but me.

I put myself in the place that doesn’t feel like home, not unlike standing on the edge of a cliff or sleeping with the enemy. I like testing myself that way apparently.

Musonius Rufus, banished into exile by the Roman Emperor Nero, said one may as well make himself at home wherever he lands. Those who loved you, he says, where you once lived will love you still, no matter where you are now.

I think of those condemned to die. I would, at this point, choose exile over death but leaving, departing, any place can feel so final, the door closing, putting an end to thoughts and ideas about where one belongs.

In exile, you may actually be better off, Musonius says. You may come out on top of the world. Stronger, more resilient, better trained and equipped for the hardships life brings, whether at home or on the road. Exile will turn you into a philosopher, or make you stronger by demanding only what is essential to live. What need is there of luxuries and sweets? The good life is the hard life, the one that challenges you.

At war with myself, the hearth I long for — the warm place of welcome and rest among friends and family — eludes me, always a pilgrim, a wanderer, in exile, seeking a landing and finding none, wanting someone or something along for the journey, a familiar, like the sweet aroma of a good strong cup of coffee or a quick sloppy blowjob.

“You don’t want to be alone,” Faith said to me once, long before she died. She too was searching for home, and did her best in an old folks’ trailer park, where she served the finest dinners with her best friends and silverware properly set, a habit she acquired as a debutante in a grand house of great influence many years ago.

No rest for the wicked, she’d say, poverty stricken and happy in her own way.

I’m in “transition” and have always been, I told her, moving from birth to death, as so many of us do, seldom stagnant, game for the thrills, without the phone, eager to eat ass. She’d laugh. I identify as he/him and prefer to eat women’s asses. Faith loved to laugh and laughed best at bawdy humor.

My home, sort of, is my body, which is its own type of exile. Everything changes, even and especially the lines on my face and skin. No roof repairman or plumber can fix those, the sagging and aging skin, the march toward the end.

WHERE does one actually live? Where does one go to see the movies or to see visions and to meet with old friends? When leaving jobs, family, or the familiar? On the way to the gallows? Or on the way to the desolate island of Gyaros?

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice. This article first appeared on Substack.

On the train

Trump country

The land we are burrowing through is the land of the forgotten. I have never observed such an amazing amount of junk along the edges of towns. Photo by Stacey Warde

By Dell Franklin

We are rolling along, through the high desert, headed for Denver on my second day on the California Zephyr and words cannot describe how soothing it is to sit in the observation coach watching the country flow by – clickety-clack, clickety-clack – a sort of mesmerizing effect unrivaled for whatever ails a human being: restlessness, boredom, a mind-deadening rut bordering on depression….

The world is reawakening before me, like a flower blooming. It is all the same yet different. I am surrounded by people who eschew normal modes of transportation, and savor the train.

The land we are burrowing through is the land of the forgotten. We are in the middle of Nowheresville, approaching Grand Junction, Colorado, and I have never observed such an amazing amount of junk along the edges of towns, piles and piles of steel and ancient rusted debris, wind blasted tractors, various farm equipment and cars, adobe huts in ruins, long faltered prefabs and trailers, mangled furniture of every type, on and on until we are in Grand Junction.

Slowing down, we pass through dilapidated outskirts of broken fencing and small square nondescript homes with old dusty pickups in back, and into the drab horizontal sprawl of Pilot Gas, John Deere yard and building, Steel Supply, Red Roof, Conoco Station, Tractor Supply, Outback, Dairy Queen, Mesa Mall, a bowling alley, Hobby Lobby, Walmart, etc., etc. 

And, finally, a small dusty train station.

I think to myself, this place has to be a cultural wasteland in which I’d be bored to tears. What do they do around here, and in the surrounding mini-bergs? I envision scowling MAGA Boomers—instead of the more sophisticated Wall Gang in Cayucos of educators, entrepreneurs, artists, a lawyer—ensconced in coffee shops, clad in plaid flannel shirts, ball caps, and baggy Levi’s hitched up over proud pot bellies by suspenders.

What are they talking about? Trump. What else is there in this isolated desolation? He came into their lives in 2015 and has been there for them ever since on their TVs, which have to be on Fox News night after night, nonstop—a jolt of joy, excitement and reaffirmation as their charismatic idol sticks it to the woke, kale-munching coastal elites, those promoting queers and commies and minority mooches and immigrant parasites from shit-hole countries, and wanting their fucking guns!

Every night an anticipation of genuine, enthralling reality TV, and not those goddamn Beverly Hills and New York housewife bitches throwing food and expensive wine at each other while their rich, entitled husbands cower in fear of a lucrative divorce payoff.

Vote for Trump? Hell yes! Things were so exciting when HE was in the sham of a White House goosing and infuriating the precious pussy libs on a daily basis, standing up for real men, the cops and the soldiers, the hunters and miners, by God, and never appeasing those academic mollycoddles in their ivory towers!

Oh, I could “feel” it as I stood outside, among other passengers in Grand Junction, savoring a Haagen Daz bar after visiting a small grocery during a half-hour wait. And, truly, I relished what I felt. Why would or should those who live here and work the kind of jobs available, and face the kind of stifling boredom they do, feel any other way, especially when the wife mistakenly turns on MSNBC or, God help them, Trump’s mortal enemy, CNN?

“TURN THAT SHIT OFF, WOMAN!”

Back on the train, rolling out of GJ, I observed a man whom I was sure was Chinese, dashing back and forth across seats from window to window, snapping photo after photo with his phone. Everybody but me—no cell phone—was doing the same, but this smiling man was the swiftest, and I complimented him on his agility and prowess during a lull and asked to view his photos. He laughed and showed me a long reel of beautiful pics, and we began talking.

He’d been a Taiwanese immigrant, now a US citizen. He came to the states in his teens, joined the Army, got into intelligence, earned a college degree, retired after 20 years as a major, and now works in Washington, D.C., in tech. He seemed happier than anybody I’d ever known. His wife, also Taiwanese, smiled and waved. He was intelligent and astute. Itching to inform him of what I “felt” about Grand Junction and the immense flat lands, he listened intently and nodded.

Finally, when I ended my little observation, he said, “Sometimes, my friend, a man can walk down the street and something will come down from the sky and hit him in the head and kill him.” He looked into me, still smiling, as if he was my friend. “Enjoy yourself while you can. Life is good.”

We talked for over an hour, until we hit the Rockies–where the libs populate wholesome ski resorts with gourmet restaurants and health food stores–and my new friend resumed his frantic photo taking.

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he makes time for the Wall Gang, some of whom might be considered “coastal elites.” He is the author of “Life on the Mississippi, 1969” and of the forthcoming book, “The Ballplayer’s Son,” due out in September. Dell is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice.

Cody who?

People pleasing feels so good, until it doesn’t

I was very eager to please, not realizing what harm I might be doing to myself and others.

Photo and story by Stacey Warde

For much of my adult life, I’ve felt like the local pool boy, convenient to have around, but not of much use otherwise. I’ve worked grunt jobs, and also held roles in what others might consider the “professions.”

I’ve had experience as a pool cleaner, ranch hand, commercial blueberry grower, window washer, salesman, and flockster (raising chickens and selling farm-fresh eggs in the local market), as well as in landscape installation and maintenance, mostly laborer occupations. I’ve encountered invading squirrels, rats, bobcats, coyotes, rattle snakes, vicious dogs, and threatening bosses and angry paying customers, and received plenty of scoldings, cuts, and bruises, including a dog bite in the ass resulting in a trip to the doctor; all this in the dirty grunt business of producing food, and servicing people’s homes.

I’ve also worked as a writer, editor, and publisher, and got into spats with local government officials, readers who hated my guts and threatened to burn down the building where I worked, a bishop who fired me for writing an opinion piece about favorable interfaith dialog with pagans, and I took bites all over, resulting in sessions with a therapist.

I once even had one of the area’s best female dermatologists, an attractive associate of one leading dermatologist who taught classes for aspiring skin doctors at UCI hundreds of miles away, lift my ball sack, inspect every inch of my body, for signs of skin cancer and when she found something suspicious on my right lower leg, she snipped it out and sent it to the lab. I’d already had a Stage 2 melanoma removed from my back years earlier.

When the lab results came back positive for a second melanoma, she called me at work while I was in the midst of a pressing deadline, of putting the paper to bed, a critical moment in the publishing business where all the pieces must come together and go to press, as we would say. A late fee of $400 (in the early 2000s) would be imposed for every 15 minutes we missed our deadline for which, I’d been taught, there was no excuse.

“You need to come to my office right now,” the doctor said at 2 p.m.

“I can’t come right now!” I said, exasperated, looking at the clock, with a 4 p.m. deadline. “I can’t get out of here until at least 4:30.”

Okay, she said, “I’ll see you then!” And she hung up. Serious business, I thought.

“Four-thirty, fuck!” I said to myself and arranged to have a friend pick me up from the doctor’s office. Then, I went back to work.

When the doctor was done removing the cancer, I caught a glimpse of the specimen on the tray. It looked like a small slab of veal with hair on it. I gasped. She was so deft and careful, I had no idea what she had removed. My wound healed quickly and there was virtually no scar, not like the one left years earlier on my back by a surgeon who seemed nice but had a heavy hand while tugging on my back.

In all, I was very eager to please, not realizing what harm I might be doing to myself and others. I failed to embrace my own true colors while attempting to “help” others find theirs. My dermatologist did more than remove cancer from my leg; she helped me understand how important self-care can be, especially when the threat to life is real.

As one committed to my job and my boss, and failing to account for my own needs, I gave what I could to be a “good” guy, a team player willing to sacrifice everything, and perhaps more than I should have, just to wear the team jersey. But that’s what Americans do, that’s what we were taught to do. We all work hard and perhaps more than we ought, more than what is humanly healthy. In the end, we might hope for some kind of reward, as I have, only to find that some individuals have far more than they should while others have virtually nothing.

Thirty years ago, the bookkeeper where I was then working as a sales associate for an extreme video producer and distributor (featuring such filmmakers as ski buff Warren Miller and ice climber Austin Hearst, grandson of William Randolph Hearst) asked me to step outside after observing my interactions with the boss.

“Are you familiar with codependency?” she asked. Cody who? Melody Beattie had recently published “Codependent No More,” which was then all the rage.

I’d heard the term and, not being a fan of what’s trendy, I dismissed the bookkeeper’s suggestion that I could benefit from some insights into what has turned out to be one of my leading toxic behaviors, so eager to please, even those who could give two shits about me, setting aside what’s best for me in order to make others happy. What a waste of time and energy! I now realize. But, how to break the habit?

I still do it; this is a very hard habit to break. Where did it begin? Probably in light of the ideal that the best life is the sacrificial life, where we endeavor to give ourselves over to the well-being and happiness of others, even to the point where it hurts and is harmful. But, who knew? Who knew that this sort of sacrifice could be so toxic? What greater way to avoid personal responsibility than to assume responsibilities that are not mine?

I wish I’d been less skeptical and paid closer attention to the bookkeeper’s concern. I might have avoided the heartache of giving in to people who pretend friendship and seek little more than to be appeased, praised, or flattered, who haven’t any real personal interest in me beyond what I can do for them, with little to no commitment to mutuality on their part.

This, I’ve learned, is a type of trauma bond, of which I’m quite familiar, having tried to establish relationships with people who were perhaps not as interested in me as I was in them. And, as so often happens when laser focusing on someone else, we hurt more than help one another. My goal now is to avoid these unhealthy bonds as much as possible, and to associate with others who aren’t afraid of intimacy and conversation, and to expend as much good energy upon myself as I try to give to others.

Giving until it hurts felt so right, until it didn’t.

Stacey Warde lives mostly in solitude, which suits him well, yet he still loves a good conversation. This essay appeared originally on Medium.

On the train: A road trip

Veterans who bonded through military service

The San Luis Obispo Amtrak Train Station at dawn. Photo by Stacey Warde

By Dell Franklin

I was at my starting point — the waiting room at the San Luis Obispo Amtrak Train Station at ten in the morning — sitting beside my lone bag and small thriftstore blanket rolled up and tied together, when I spotted two elderly gents walking into the station together, dragging two large suitcases apiece. Paunchy, graying, clad in blue jeans and heavy coats, unrecognizable in this part of the world, their ball caps and T-shirts told me they were proud Vietnam vets.

Later, we all boarded an Amtrak bus to take us to the train station in San Jose. A miserable ride. But once at the SJ station we were the only three left to take a train to Sacramento, where I was going to stay for two days and resume the rail to Denver and visit family.

We nodded to each other. I was in knee-high shorts, sneakers, a hooded sweatshirt, my usual beach garb. While they both seemed bald, I had a thatch of wild, two years growth of hair and a full reasonably trimmed beard.

We were brothers from the same generation, sons of fathers and uncles who served in WWII.

I asked the taller of the two if the train to Sacramento was going to be on time, and he said in a clipped mid-Western twang, “My guess is, it is. We were held up six hours going from Denver to LA when a rock slide covered the tracks.”“How was that?”

He winked. “Not the end of the world.”

As I stood beside him and his friend as the train rolled up, we had already established that I was going to Sacramento to play tennis and visit an old best friend I hadn’t seen in 16 years, and they were staying with family in Sac.

When I clambered onto the commuter train and sat down on one side, they saw me and automatically sat together on the opposite side facing me. The shorter man, gray, stocky, but somehow with a jaunty bounce, was from Mississippi. Tom. The bigger man was Mike. They had served together in ‘Nam in 1968 and ‘69.

“The worst of times,” I said. “Tet.”

They nodded. Mike did the talking. There was a twinkle in his eye, a wry slyness. He was from Kansas, 60 miles south of Kansas City, and owned a farm. He and Tom had met in ‘Nam and become such close friends that they met yearly and took train trips together, often visiting family throughout the country — a ritual. They had an easy camaraderie about them, unlike brothers or serious companions. Of course, they were curious whether a specimen like myself from their generation had served, and when I told them I’d been in the Army three years, everything opened up, because there was immediate trust. A bond. We were brothers from the same generation, sons of fathers and uncles who served in WWII.

Tom had just acquired his retirement home out in the country in Northern Mississippi after working his whole life in Memphis. He had a deep, slow Southern drawl. When I told him I once had a firecracker of a past girlfriend from Taylorsville, Mississippi, he pepped up, and suddenly I became Debbie Nelson of 1986: “Day-uhl, y’all such an asshole,” I drawled in my best imitation. “y’all jes’ keep pissin’ me off, no end.”

Tom laughed so hard he almost fell out of his seat. From then on it was like we were fellow soldiers at the Enlisted Men’s club, sitting at a table drinking Budweiser. There are no stories like Army stories. I told them I had joined late in 1963 and spent my tour in Europe, before the war started and the nationwide round-up of those who didn’t have the money or pull to get out of it began. 

Mike nodded. He shrugged. “You had to do what you had to do as well as you could and hoped to get out of it.”

“Seemed like it was part of the job, the duty of being an American citizen.” I said. “You expected to serve.”

They both nodded. Mike said, “That’s why I don’t like being thanked for my service.”

“Me neither.”

“But I’m proud of what I did.”

I said, “I think there’s a certain pride in doing the dirty job for your country, and the military is the dirtiest job there is.”

“It is,” Mike agreed. He gazed at me. “Sometimes, I think they ought to bring back the draft. So many of these kids seem too involved with themselves. They don’t have that feeling of giving back. Maybe they could get into the Peace Corps. Anything. Picking up trash along the highway.” He shrugged. “I don’t ever propose war, but the military did me some good. It gives you a different perspective on life. An appreciation.”

It was three hours to Sacramento and Mike and I talked and talked while Tom listened and gazed out the window at the East Bay. Mike raised emus for twenty years. The second tallest bird. A delicacy. Now he rented out his land to small farmers. The small farmer was disappearing into the jaws of the corporations. He was divorced and had six kids. He appeared farmer strong. There was a peacefulness about him, a reassurance that our country was still in a good place. 

We discussed what it was like having friends while in the military as compared to civilian life. As Tom dozed, I asked Mike if he felt the friends, or best friend you made in the military, was the best friend you’d ever make, and he nodded, strong conviction in his eyes, and said, “Absolutely. Tom and I are best friends. We are family.”

I then told him the best friend I ever had was also in the Army, John DeSimone, a gangster from Chicago. “We visited each other over the years,” I said. I was starting to get choked up. “When he died, guess who his wife called first, before his own brothers?”

“You.”

I nodded.

“He had your back.”

“All the way down the line. And I had his back.”

“That’s what it’s all about,” Mike said, that proud glint in his eye.

The trip went fast. When, after he  asked me what I did these days, I told Mike I was a writer and had a book –“Life On The Mississippi, 1969” – on Amazon, and explained what it was all about, he dialed it up on his phone, grinned, and said, after hitting a few keys, “I just ordered it.”

Dell Franklin served proudly in the U.S. Army, and writes from his home on the Central Coast of California.

Music in the Schools

I pleaded with my parents to please let me learn how to play the piano. My mother was aghast; she hated piano lessons as a little girl.

By Stacey Warde

Part I

My dad traded his used lawnmower for my first piano. I was in sixth grade.

We lived in the condos, Tustin Village, a tight mix of family units separated only by paper-thin walls through which, as children, we could listen to our neighbors’ pillow talk.

We had no need for a lawnmower.

All that grew in front of our condo, along the concrete slab for a walkway to our front door, was ugly green ivy, a great place for rodents to thrive. The few lawns that could be mowed were kept by the homeowners association in the finely manicured commons, “the putting greens,” we called them — located between two community swimming pools — where at night some of the Village kids would gather to smoke marijuana and pair up for sex for the first time.

Sometimes, we’d spend the day indoors, unsupervised, listening to early versions of Santana or Neil Young on a hi-fi stereo system that belonged to a friend’s parents.

In addition to hanging out in the putting greens and the swimming pools, we gravitated to the playground with its half-court basketball space, swings and tether ball court.

When we got bored with these activities, we’d gather in the greens to play, throw rocks and clods at the beehives hanging from a smattering of olive trees around the commons. Once, a beehive came crashing down on Lane as he rode his bicycle beneath the hive when a rock dislodged it from its place in the tree. He tore off on his bicycle toward home, screaming, covered with bees. His parents rushed him to the hospital. No one that I knew at the time had a love for playing a musical instrument.

The only public music on site occurred occasionally when someone in the Village hosted a cocktail party in the clubhouse, where kids weren’t allowed to loiter.

Prior to moving to the condos, we lived in a small rental house with a tiny lawn that needed frequent quick mowing. Since moving to the Village, however, the mower sat unused in a shed in the square concrete slab of our condo “backyard,” no larger than a prison cell with high fencing, a place that felt mostly like a developer’s afterthought, an accident or a trap, no place where kids or parents would want to spend their time, unless they were hiding, in deep depression, seeking outdoor isolation, or cooking on the barbecue.

The only person in the condos who played a musical instrument in that festering pool of latchkey children, mostly pre-teens, looking for things to do, was an older, stout, and not very popular girl whose father worked for an electronic typewriter business. He, of course, was proud to inform us that his daughter could play the accordion quite well and would love to give us a concert. Kids in the neighborhood turned down the offer several times until finally we gave in and sat for a session in which the stout girl played her accordion with verve and acumen, while her proud, beaming father accompanied her on his own accordion. I don’t exactly remember the music, only the pleasure her face showed while she played. We let her play for us only that one time.

Not long after the home mini-concert, a few of us decided to pick up guitars, it didn’t matter what kind, plastic, wood, whatever, we were gonna play. Forget the accordion! We burned ourselves out the first day and our band aspirations died just as suddenly.

As a sixth-grader, I was discovering that girls had superpowers as we hung out on bored afternoons, listening to records, watching TV, feeling the itch of pubic hairs starting to grow, and sometimes curious hands rummaging through our pants. I needed and wanted more focus, something creative, something to fill in the hours when I wasn’t at the ballpark, or throwing oranges at cars from inside the surrounding orange groves, or lounging on a Saturday afternoon at a friend’s house while his sister tried to wrestle me off the couch.

Dad traded his mower for a beautiful clunky old upright piano that barely fit into our tiny three-bedroom condo. It took up nearly half the dining area downstairs but it fit snugly where it stood against the paper-thin wall. He traded it with my beloved great-aunt Doris, an avid gardener with a big beautiful home garden in Laguna Beach where she and her sister, my grandmother, grew up. She needed the lawnmower more than we did, and she would put it to good use. I loved visiting her home and her garden, which always felt like welcome spaces to me, mostly on account of her warmth and easy Southern California demeanor and the lovely roses in her garden.

I pleaded with my parents to please let me learn how to play the piano. My mother was aghast; she hated piano lessons as a little girl.

Mrs. Boger, a classical pianist, had come to our school, the brand new Heideman Elementary School. She came to play music as part of a trio, and I was mesmerized. We sang songs in school with one of the teachers who enjoyed singing but we had never seen a live performance by real pros. I felt drawn to the mix of sound from stringed instruments harmonizing with Mrs. Boger’s piano playing.

The mini-concert was my first real awakening to live music. I don’t know whose idea it was to bring music into the school but I’m glad that it happened; it’s been a lifelong journey and enjoyment in the more than 50 years since. Music, as I understood it until Mrs. Boger came along, had mostly been sing-alongs at school or took place in the background, usually while listening to my Uncle Ron’s vinyl selection of soul, which I still love. But music wasn’t something I’d ever experienced up close, not in a personal or intimate way, not where you could actually see and hear the musicians playing, working together to create harmony.

My great-grandmother, Marie Harding Thurston, apparently could be quite dramatic; she loved the theater and she loved to sing. From “Laguna Beach of Early Days,” by J.S. Thurston, published by History Press.

No one in my family, as far as I knew, had ever played a musical instrument. Only much later did I learn that my grandma played the piano when she sat down one evening and started playing from some old sheet music we had in the house. Her mother, a pioneer educator, Marie Harding Thurston, apparently could be quite dramatic; she loved the theater and she loved to sing, sometimes embarrassing mom and her siblings in a Laguna Beach church because she sang louder than everyone else.

None of that came down to me until dad traded his lawnmower.

I marveled at this music in the flesh, Mrs. Boger and her trio, sound produced by perfectly imperfect humans keeping time and blending themselves in a mix of harmony that I found more compelling than lumbering through a bunch of reading cards, or trying to avoid falling asleep at my desk during “self-directed” exercises such as reading and math. I hated penmanship too, especially when the teacher would try in vain to force my left-handed writing style to look more like a right-hander’s by twisting my hand back instead of letting it curl awkwardly around my pen as felt natural to me.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Mrs. Boger’s hands, though, left and right, as they moved effortlessly across the keyboard, producing the most amazing, articulate sound, in a language or vocabulary that felt both familiar and foreign, in time and in sync with these other musicians. When the performance was over I ran up to the piano. How long does it take to learn how to play like that? What was she reading? Sheet music? What’s that? I couldn’t make sense of any of it. She asked me if I would like to learn how to play the piano.

Yes! I told her. She reached into her purse and gave me her business card. “Give this to your parents,” she said. “Tell them you want to take piano lessons.”

Stacey Warde writes and practices the piano daily from his home in Mendocino County. This article first appeared on Medium.