The Time of Our Lives - 1

As Time flies by—The years. 

My father died when he was my age, should have  lived another decade. Heart attack. Maybe good he left a bit early. Maybe there was nothing left for him to do. He had physically run out of things to do, things that he was capable of doing. I remember us in the back yard, him with a slingshot, trying to pull the rubber back. “Can’t even do this,” he told me . . . weakened by time, and hard work—blue collar. I remember my last visit, in their garden. I was pulling weeds. My dad, of course, had to help. I couldn’t stop him . . . would have been an insult. He knelt down facing me, pulled a few weeds, the stopped for a moment as if frozen. “Wait,” he says. With dog-like devotion I stay put, no questions. I say nothing as he gets some pills from a container in his pocket . . . takes one.  We kneel in silence, still for thirty heart beats. Then he moves again.

            “That nitro,” he says. “Good stuff.”

            Not a good sign. I’m not sure that one day he decided not to take the pill, let the heart attack do its thing to him, in the garage, by his workbench and tools of use for the time that was left. Also had emphysema—welder, thirty years.

            I think there was never a time that you or I or any of us did not exist. In past and future. I am not the first to say this, but if you believe, perhaps it’s time to think about what’s really going on. I think about it . . . sometimes, and made some modest efforts these last more than forty years. Means nothing of course, but when we shed the body. What is left? A lot of theories on that subject. Many answers. There might be a place some Buddhists speak of—Timeless Awareness. A primordial space where sound does not  exist, nor sight, or time and distance. Words as well—no more. All that gets left with the skin. And what are we now? With all these senses gone, somehow there is awareness of our selves . . . beyond thought. Beyond words, which make it very hard to describe. To describe it would be to disprove its existence.

            We spend our lifetimes thinking, about things.  To not-think, that’s the trick. We are bombarded by thoughts. They never stop . . . inspired by things, experience. There’s so much going on. Our work and wives and children, houses and TV—the obvious. There are few days I don’t spent at least a couple hours watching TV shows that slightly irritate me. Incredible ads . . . condoms and dildos and Viagra . . . erectisizers—drugs that make one hard as steel. Be a real man, we are told. Be all that you can be. A lot of magic lose-fat ads, machines and programs . . . guaranteed.  More advertisement time than movie minutes. Crime shows and cartoons. Why am I here?

            I'm rambling. Nothing more to do this rainy afternoon.

Downsized at 50+ Temp Jobs No. 2

                                                          The Bindery

On The Line

I am enthralled at first

In awe of this great space

The clatter of dark green machinery

Metropolis of movement

Long conveyor belts with snake-like curves

Rattle like dominoes.

The whine of forklifts

Clattering of printing presses

Night-shift workers

Moving at top speed.

At three of fourteen stations

I load pages into hoppers that are quickly emptied

Needing more . . . insatiable

A warning buzzer sounds

Go faster . . . faster!

Sweating on this concrete floor

Under a grid of bare fluorescent lights

No mercy

Eight hours of running back and forth

Between the pallet loads of printed pages

And the ever-hungry hoppers.

On my way back home

At dawn

Ears ringing.

Downsized at 50+ Temp Jobs No. 3

                                                          The Bindery

On The Line

I am enthralled at first

In awe of this great space

The clatter of dark green machinery

Metropolis of movement

Long conveyor belts with snake-like curves

Rattle like dominoes.

The whine of forklifts

Clattering of printing presses

Night-shift workers

Moving at top speed.

At three of fourteen stations

I load pages into hoppers that are quickly emptied

Needing more . . . insatiable

A warning buzzer sounds

Go faster . . . faster!

Sweating on this concrete floor

Under a grid of bare fluorescent lights

No mercy

Eight hours of running back and forth

Between the pallet loads of printed pages

And the ever-hungry hoppers.

On my way back home

At dawn

Ears ringing.

Crows

Seventies: Part One                                    

Crows

            One of the first things you notice after being retired is that you have time to notice things. There is time. Not as much as I thought there would be, but time enough. I have begun to notice crows these last three years— an interesting bird. Some people are against them. They rob nests when they can find them, eat the young. I watch them walk along the fence and scan the evergreens for nests. Not nice. But then we all kill something. I remember an old Buddhist thing: “We are all food, and the eaters of food .”         

            I have digressed. I tend to do that.

            I want to talk about crows. They fascinate me, so damn smart, so cautious. After three years some now dare to stand their ground some ten or twelve feet off, watching my every move— poised for a quick escape. A burst of flight. One hangs around, keeping an eye on a crow feeder I made—an aluminum baking  pan in a wood  pole about four feet off the ground. Should have made it higher by at least a foot. Dogs get into it sometimes.

            It’s still mid-winter and the gulls have come in shore to plunder. They are a much larger bird, but fewer. Fighters and bombers. Gulls chase crows only if one’s found something to eat something it cannot quickly swallow, trying to steal it away. Sometimes the drop their prize. A band of crows can drive a gull or two away . . . but not so far away.

Beauty Changes - Photo

Downsized at 50+ Temp Jobs No. 3

The Time of My Life

Hot summer afternoon

It’s ninety-seven in the shade

And more

Inside my gear

White paper dust mask

Padded rubber on my ears

To stop some of the noise

A pair of safety glasses

Dark blue coveralls on top my clothing

Heavy leather gloves

Thick socks and steel toe boots.

Holding this powerful electric drill

Eight pounds of heavy metal

Spinning wire-brush wheel

A blur of blue and gray

Against the rust that has accumulated

On eight tons of angle iron

My job.

Eight hours inside a cloud of dark red dust

Fire storm of sparks

Bristles fly off

Go though this fabric armor

Into sweating skin

Dust makes it hard to breath

My glasses fogged by body heat

I watch the slow shop clock

Selling the time of my life

Six-fifty an hour.

The Blue Unicorn - Part 1

I seem to get a lot of hits on 1960s stuff and thinking maybe I should do some San Francisco stories.

The Blue Unicorn

Remembering the 60s

I had a place on Oak Street--looked out on the panhandle, block east of Stanyan and Golden Gate park. Two blocks east of Ashbury. A block off Haight in 1964 I think. I’d landed there by accident, a lost lease where I’d been and lack of funds. The place was cheap. The Hippy thing was in full swing, but I was fairly straight. I’d held a steady job, the last 3 years, a good job located downtown. Financial distinct, top floor—Shell Building. One day a fellow engineer gave me Sandoz LSD to try. He didn’t like it, but I loved it and was fascinated. I was reading Carl Jung at the time and the acid took me to places that he wrote about. He was way out there. I digress.

The Blue Unicorn was this funky little coffee shop, I think on Grove Street, maybe Fulton, two or three blocks west of my place. It was run by a guy named Herb, a nice guy, honest, in his early maybe later thirties. The Unicorn was a place where hippies could hang out, leave notes for each other on a bulletin board, drink decent inexpensive coffee—sandwiches and snacks. Herb looked out for people and a lot of his customers needed that. It was the Summer of Love. Teenagers were pouring into the bus station downtown and often getting mugged, or raped or robbed before they got to Haight Street. I was loaned to Bechtel for a while, a building next to the bus station. I used to get lunch once in a while. You could see guys sitting on benches where the busses came in, waiting for prey. Pimps and con-men, watching to see who got off the bus.

            “Hey honey, welcome to San Francisco. Home of peace and love. You need a place to stay?”

            Most of them did. They came with flowers in their hair, believing in free love and expecting free rent, and food . . . and drugs. All were available, for a price.

            Herb looked out for some who had been had, or had some other problems. He also looked out for young girls, but only on at a time I think. You’d see him with the same one for a month or two, and then another. He had some kind of partner. Tom I think his name was. He played a fairly good guitar and had a motorcycle. He later broke his leg on it and was in a cast from him to ankle on one leg . . . for a long time, during which he became one of the best classical guitarists I’ve ever heard. It just takes practice. Tom had lots of time and there was not much else he could do but play guitar.

The Blue Unicorn - Part 2

Herb had a VW van. The ultimate of Hippy transpiration. There was a driveway at the side of the Unicorn that led to a double garage and some backyard space. It was wide enough for the van to clear with an inch on either side, and Herb would shoot down it at 30 MPH. Scared the shit out of me the first time I took that ride.

            I was tripping with a friend one time, Jack Tuttle. I’d been in the Army with him in East Africa. Jack was new at the drug and started getting very paranoid. I started getting very paranoid about his getting very paranoid, so I called Herb although I didn’t really know him all that well. He came and picked us up and drove us to the beach—the ocean. It was beautiful . . . the waves, the sound of surf. Jack calmed down right away and started getting philosophic. “Some say that life began in the sea....” Stuff like that. Herb was like that. He’d go out of his way to help a person if he could.

            Herb let people crash in a small loft that was over the entrance as you came in. One long timer sleeping there was an artist. He began painting the ceiling . . . on his back, on a jury rigged scaffolding. He was good, it was wonderful work. Took him months to do and was masterpiece. You could get lost in it. The bathroom walls contained some good poetry. I remember one about a guy awake, late at night, candle burning, girlfriend asleep in his bed . . . a siren in the distance. Wish I’d wrote it down. I think I did, but long gone now.

            The Unicorn itself was gone after a few years. The Haight got really rough in the late 60’s. Lots of crime. More than one storefront on Haight Street got boarded up with plywood. Cops arresting people every day. I saw them cuff a guy who was carrying a flute with a lead pipe inside it. I had two motorcycles stolen. Guys would sneak though any apartment they could get into, trying doorknobs. My door’s center pane was frosted glass. One night, around 3:30 AM I woke up and saw a silhouette cast by a hall light on my glass. I kept a Colt 1911 45 auto by the bed. Sat up and held it thinking well, if he comes in I’ll turn the light on and the gun will back him off. If not, it’s loaded. Thank God the door was locked. I have digressed again.

            One day the Unicorn was closed—no warning. Later it became a little Asian grocery store. I  lost track of Herb for a while, then rediscovered him months later. He had opened up a little restaurant on Mission Street, south or Market. Organic food, and tea. Another funky, homey sort of place. Good food. Herb was with another girl, much younger than himself, but you could he cared about her and was good to her. I forget the name of the place. Then it too disappeared, well actually it was Herb and the girl who disappeared. The little restaurant was been run by someone else. I ran into Herb a month or so later and asked him what had happened.

            There was a gang called, Tribal Thumb, ex-cons released from San Quentin.

            “They told me to get out, or get hurt . . . bad,” Herb told me. “And I did.”

            “Why didn’t you contact the police?” I asked.

            “They don’t care—a little hippy place like mine. Nobody cares.”

            That was the last I ever saw him. Haven’t thought about him in a long time, but remembering now. He was an interesting guy. 

I wonder where he is today.