Dumped to Zero

I’ve driven to my dad’s many times now, with varying results.  This year I had Natalie with me.  We planned to first visit her family in Chicago before continuing to the Upper Peninsula.  That meant day one would require nearly 800 miles in the car.  We made it out of the city easily enough, and soon we were zipping through Pennsylvania with Joss stretched out in the back of our rented red Ford Focus.

Past noon we paused to pick up a terrible lunch at Arby’s.  We chose that establishment over others, I guess, because of the jamocha shakes, though I also ate one of those 99 cent chicken sandwiches, thinking their smaller offering might do less damage to my arteries.  The product leaked a gelatinous mayonnaise-like concoction onto my fingers, wrists and even forearms, and soon I was driving with my steering wheel greased to a high shine.

The miles fell away, and darkness arrived.  I was estimating in my head our remaining mileage for the day when a pickup truck in front of us drove over an 18-wheeler tire “retread” – 5 or 6 feet of steel-belted, hard rubber.  It was tossed into the air in front of us and cracked into our grill, before falling under our own tires.  It made quite a sound: Natalie let slip a small shriek, and Joss stood up in the back.  “We’re fine,” I said, because it’s in my nature to say such things, though I was not sure if we were or not.  

We weren’t.  Ten seconds later the ‘check oil’ light came on, and I began looking for an exit.  But a furious buzzing sound filled the interior, and the battery light lit up on the dash.  The engine strained and our speed dropped – 60, then 50. I pulled onto the soft shoulder just as the on-board computer warned of a dangerous temperature under the hood.  All dashboard gauges dumped to zero and the engine died; we rolled to a stop.  I put on the hazard lights and got out to take a look, traffic whooshing past.

Using the light on my phone, I could see the passenger side front panel was torn away, and fluid hissed out of the gaping hole in the body by the tire.  I got back in.

“This car is totaled,” I said.  Natalie squinted at me in silence, not wanting to believe it.  

I called Dollar, and a representative told me a state trooper would soon arrive.  Meanwhile, she’d work on getting us another car, she said, suggesting we might need to backtrack in the wrecker some 50 miles to Cleveland for it.  “OK,” I warned, “but this car is loaded with luggage and has a dog in the back seat.”  

Shortly a state trooper pulled up behind me.  I’m a reasonable adult now and hardly trouble, but still a surge of panic went through me as the lights blazed in my rearview.  He walked around the vehicle, inspecting, then asked me to sit in his squad car.  It’s been probably 20 years since I’ve sat in one, but apparently the nervous feeling it generates never goes away.  What does this man know about me, I wondered.  Is he going to call my parents?

We filled out an accident report, and he gave me everything I’d need to pass along to my insurance company.  Turns out that when you haven’t done anything wrong, cops can be really helpful and professional.

Next, the dead car.  What can I say about Rick’s Towing, and Dean, the driver called out to the I-80 turnpike on a cold Wednesday night?  He spoke little, other than to ask me if Joss bites and to then inform me she’d need to ride in the car on the flatbed as he towed us.  He pulled the Ford onto his rig and we climbed into his cab.

He looked to be in his late 50s or early 60s and wore a thick mustache and a scruffy beard.  A ballcap sat atop his head.  We chugged down the interstate toward the next exit.

As we turned off toward Norwalk, Ohio, he spoke: “Well, you both have colds.”  

We pondered this for a bit -- we felt fine.  “Do we?” Natalie asked.

“Well, I do,” he said.  “So I guess you’ll be getting it, too.”  He reached over to shift gears, and Natalie noticed the tattoo across his knuckles.  I assumed it read Kill or Deth, but when she asked, he said it was the name of his brother, died years ago.  “I got another tattoo on my shoulder,” he said.  “A girlfriend’s name.  And I got a spiderweb on top of my head, just because I’m bald, I guess.”

It took us 20 minutes to drive to Rick’s lot, during which time we learned that Dean has four kids – two from a first marriage, one from another woman and a final from his last wife, recently divorced after 24 years.  Both wives had been named Robin – a calculated decision, I think, related to that shoulder tattoo.  He was still in love with his second wife, he said, and aimed to remarry her in June, which would have been their 25th anniversary.  I asked why they got divorced in the first place, and he said they used to fight “all the time, over small things,” but since they’d been apart their affection had sprouted fresh.  The conversation moved to his grandkids, and how he’d spent $700 on his favorite for Christmas.  His phone rang.

“Hello,” he said.  There was an unheard question, to which he responded “missing you.”  He followed that with, “I’m working right now.  I’ll call you later.”  

He hung up.  “That was my ex-wife,” he said.  “She still calls me.”

I was beginning to think he had a solid chance at remarriage.  Once at Rick’s, Dean lowered the car while I started making phone calls.  Dollar said a new rental was being towed to us from Cleveland, and we sat down to wait.  The guys in the shop offered us leftover food from a holiday party, and they brought Joss a bowl of water. A half-hour later, a wrecker pulled in and dropped off a Chevy Cobalt (also red).  We packed up that car in the dark, Joss jumped onto the backseat, and were set to start again.  But we paused and pooled our cash, pulling together $10.  I went back into the shop, where Dean and a coworker stood around the deli tray.  “We don’t have a lot of extra money,” I said, and it’s still not clear to me who I was comparing us to, or if it was true or not.  “But we wanted to give you this.” I extended the wadded bills.

“That is not necessary,” Dean said, holding up his hands.  

“I know,” I said.  “But this could have been a lot worse, and you were really good to us.”  He nodded and took the money.  “You have a nice Christmas,” he said.  

Outside Rick’s lot, we pulled over to feed Joss her dinner and think.  It was past 9 pm and we had a long way to go.  The prospect of getting back on the highway, where busted tires leap up off the road and destroy your engine block, did not excite me, and we still had more than 250 miles to go.  But we decided to keep at it, and the miles clicked off, one by one, as they always do.  We rolled into the Windy City past 1 am, about 16 hours after we left New York.  

We spent a day and a half in Chicago, before heading north to Milwaukee and Green Bay and beyond.  While we hiked in the snow up there, and opened gifts and made afternoon Manhattans, Dollar and American Express went about settling the score behind the scenes.  Here’s a photo of the car taken by the insurance company.  

And here’s a list of the damage that tire did.  

Note the nearly $4000 for engine block replacement. The total bill, with towing, comes to more than $6200.  This wasn’t my fault, of course, and many accidents are not due to driver error, but it reinforced a lesson for me: have insurance for your rental car.  In the past, I’ve gotten behind the wheel of rentals thinking maybe my credit card was covering me, or maybe my own car insurance extended to rentals.  But since I’ve been in NYC and have no car, I’ve been using a premium insurance through American Express, $20 per rental.  What that means, I now know, is that when you kill a car on the side of an interstate highway, they simply bring you a new one while everyone else figures out how to pay for the damages.  

8-12 inches

I like fall: the heat of New York City summer departs, the sleeping weather improves, out come the sweatshirts, craft brewers start making autumn beers.  It’s Natalie’s favorite time of year, though she likes it for pumpkin and apple picking, the fall foliage and haunted houses.

So we planned an overnight trip to Warwick, NY, to hit a local winery, a pumpkin patch, the Forest of Fear haunted house, maybe some apple picking.  We got reservations at a bed and breakfast that allowed dogs and I borrowed a car from a friend to make the trip.  I was pretty excited about it.

My excitement might have clouded my judgment.  A freak fall snowstorm was aimed at New York, with a forecast of 8-12 inches for Warwick. “That’s OK,” I said, rather stupidly.  “We’ll just get there before the snow starts.”  I figured we’d at least be able to walk the sidewalks of this quaint town, have a nice meal.  We aimed to leave at 9 am, before the storm hit.

But time slips away, and we ended up leaving at noon, walking to get the car through fat, ominous flakes.  On the other side of the GW Bridge, the snow piled up.  Soon we were climbing into the mountains at less than 30 mph, and what should have taken about an hour and a half took us three.  The roads looked like this.

We had wanted to visit the winery for lunch, but the roads were bad enough that we settled for some pedestrian pub fare on the main street.   We told the B&B we’d “check in” by 4 pm, so we paid the tab and then grabbed some local wine from a liquor store across the street, as a replacement for not visiting the winery.

The B&B was located on Old Country Road – a name that didn’t conjure up easy driving.  Limbs, heavy with snow, bent over us as we picked our way five miles through an approaching dusk.  At the B&B, a small tree already broken over in the front yard, I dropped the Jeep into 4-wheel drive and burst through a snowdrift onto what I assumed was the driveway.  We went up onto the porch and banged on the door.

Dogs barked inside, and after a good bit the front door was opened by an older woman wearing a questioning look.  We explained who we were, and her expression on her face suggested she was either relieved we’d made it, or annoyed we’d kept our reservation – I couldn’t tell which.

The farm itself was smaller than I’d imagined, given the photos I’d seen on the web, and its insides were cluttered.  Three dogs greeted us – two of her own and one puppy she was dog-sitting.  She forced this incredibly rambunctious creature into a crate, where it barked incessantly as we brought in our bags and Joss.

Our room upstairs was small – it fit just the bed and a whicker entertainment unit.  The thought of possibly being snowed in there moved the walls closer.  Dorothy looked at us.  “Oh, why don’t I just give you the biggest room?” she said.  “No one else is coming here tonight.”  A significant upgrade: a bed, a coffee table, a futon and TV, our own bathroom.

The view from the front window was this. See the sideways tree?

We relaxed for an hour or so, but when I heard a plow go by it seemed like a good time to try going back into town for supplies or dinner.  We took Joss and told our host we were going out. 

There were now big branches down in several places along our route.  I drove carefully, watching for fallen power lines and drifts.  On main street, we stopped at a big CVS to pick up snacks.  I had just gotten money out of the ATM, Natalie had chosen some pretzels and water, when the building lost power with a dull, crackling thud. 

We all paused, as the emergency lighting came up.  “Everyone out,” said the woman behind the register.  “It’s a fire hazard.  I can’t have you in the store.” 

Unable to pay or even properly return our goods, we put our products on the floor or the check-out counter and filed out.

We tried a gas station and managed to grab snacks and even found an awful turkey wrap.  We got back into the car.  Natalie wondered if maybe there was something to do in town?  Pass a little time?  A fire engine whizzed by, lights blazing.  We gave up.  There was no place to go and the going was bad anyway, so we dejectedly turned for the B&B.

The return trip seemed to take twice as long, and when we reached the farmhouse, tree branches leaned over the entrance to the parking spaces.   I plopped it into 4-wheel drive and plowed through them and slid into our slot.  I shut the engine down.  “I’m so happy to be off the road,” I said with a sigh. 

We leashed Joss and walked the desolate road in the black.  Heavy, wet snow hit us in the face.  Across the street, a graveyard sprawled, tombstones topped by white.  The wind moaned, all around us trees limbs portentously creaked under the weight of the snow, and for one brief moment, it was spooky enough to feel like Halloween.  “Let’s not walk too far,” Natalie said, tightly linking her arm though mine, as a stolid darkness wrapped us up.  It was just us, the snow and the moon.

And that seemed odd, as I thought about it.  No streetlamps at all?  No lights in other houses?  With a sinking feeling, I turned to look at the B&B – a shadowy structure, without power.  Things were going from bad to worse.   

We trudged through the snow to the farmhouse.  Dorothy stood waiting in the kitchen, candles burning, and took the opportunity to tell me I’d not locked her gate correctly when we’d left for town, and the puppy had gotten loose.  It had been located, but it was becoming clear she was not pleased with her only paying guests. We took two candles and retired to our room with our gas-station dinner.  It was 8 pm.

Since the heat was out, we pulled the comforter over us on the futon, me sipping a beer and Natalie having some wine, chewing pretzels and our awful turkey wrap, swapping stories.  Joss curled up under a blanket and dozed.  Honestly, once we got used to the idea, there was something cozy about listening to the storm blow outside.

In the morning, the storm had spent itself, and the sky was bright blue.  No hot water for a shower, no breakfast – no reason to stick around.  We took Joss across the street and let her cut paths through the fresh snow.

Since she couldn’t cook, Dorothy recommended a local spot for breakfast, and we headed there.  As we finished up our flapjacks and eggs, Natalie looked up at the door.  “Oh, there’s Dorothy,” she said, waving.  But Dorothy didn’t return the gesture, her eyes passing right over us as she grabbed some pick-up food and left again.  I think that was our official sign to leave Warwick.

The drive back lasted three hours, as we skirted fallen wires and were rerouted twice due to closed roads.  Back in New York City, none of the snow had stuck.  Things looked like they always did – a typical fall afternoon, with Halloween just a day away.  

One With Nature

Trav,


My dad’s house gets a lot of wildlife.  Deer come through the front yard year round, turkeys congregate at the river’s edge, rabbits duck into the brush.  I myself came face to face with a skunk while jogging there just three weeks ago.  

That wildlife often does damage to the trees and plants around the house, and my dad has raged war in particular against the squirrels, which tend to pillage his bird feeders like Vikings.  He’s had to deter wildlife from my stepmom’s garden, too.  The tomatoes, asparagus, lettuce and flowers are under constant assault, especially from deer, so my dad searched the internet and came up with a plan to encircle the plot with strung-up fishing wire to keep them away.  That didn’t work very well, and he wanted to know why.

What do we know about my dad?  He’s long suffering, for one.  But also that he’s an engineer, and he isn’t satisfied until he knows why something has occurred (I tend to suffer from this malady, too).  He has accumulated gadgets to give him all sorts of data.  He has a digital readout in his house that provides the temperature in the main room, the garage and even down by the river’s edge.  He has a device he wears to the gym to record his heart rate as he exercises.  He consistently takes his blood pressure and plots it on a graph.

So when those deer somehow subverted his fishing wire, he bought a night-vision camera with video capability and a motion sensor, and set it up aimed at the garden.  

“I just want to see what’s happening out there at night,” he said.  

In short order he’d emailed me still-shots of deer politely stepping over the fishing wire, then filling their cheeks with tomato and cabbage, sometimes looking right into the camera as they did so.

All of this got me thinking, when I went to visit him last year, that I should enliven his nightly show.  I’ll give him Bigfoot to consider, I thought.  I’ll give him Yeti.   

On my first night at their house last summer, I brushed my teeth, washed up, undressed to my underwear, and sat patiently on the edge of my bed waiting for utter silence.  
When I was sure the house was asleep, I crept down from my bedroom in the loft, then quietly slid back the door to the patio and let myself out into a very dark night.  Living in NY, I forget how black it can be when there are no lights, anywhere.  Just ink, all the way around me.  The dew had already set on the grass, and I paused in the wetness to let my eyes adjust.

I made a wide circle outside the deer wire, until I thought I was behind the camera.  I primly stepped out of my underwear and left them in the grass.  I climbed over the wire and moved into the frame -- in my mind, the Yeti had suddenly appeared on screen, back to the camera, about to make himself a salad.  I took a step, turned and gave a long, feral stare over my shoulder, then ambled away.

There, I thought, circling back.  That should do it.  I picked up my underwear, put them on, and slipped back in the patio door, hoping with all my heart no one had decided to get up for some water just as I came over the threshold, nearly naked at well past midnight.

I dried my feet and climbed into bed, almost too excited to sleep.  I woke in the morning to my father and stepmom puttering around in the kitchen below, making breakfast.  “You know, I never turned that camera on last night,” my dad said, and up in my bed, disappointment seeped from my pores.  “Well, what does it matter?” he said  “I know what’s going on out there now.”

But did he?  

Given our relationship, my dad eyes me suspiciously if I ask for anything at all, and I suppose I don’t blame him.  So that afternoon I pulled my stepmom aside and told her my plan – I need him to turn that camera on and check it the next day, I said.  Her face split into a huge grin.  I was worried that she’d inadvertently tip him off herself, but that was naive – she’s spent 25 years getting him to do what she wants and he’s never suspected a thing.

That night I waited until the house was quiet, and I slipped outside, shedding my underwear outside the patio door.  On the grass, I again paused to let my eyes adjust, listening to the night insects creak and chirp, a soft wind shushing through the pines.  Across the river I heard a coyote bay, and – I shit you not – a shooting star streaked the sky.  I seemed to be one with nature, and my plan just felt right.

I used the same route to the camera:  I appeared suddenly in the frame, paused, looked back over the shoulder, ambled left off screen.

Once I was sure I was out of the lens, I turned and walked back.  This time I saw a red light blinking on the camera body.  He’ll definitely have something to look at tomorrow, I thought.  I went to my underwear and quietly went back inside.

I woke up to the smell of coffee brewing, but I stayed in bed, reading.  I heard my stepmom ask my dad to go check the camera, saying she had seen “some raccoons” the other day.

“OK,” he said, going out to the lawn for the memory card and then climbing the stairs to the loft – my bedroom when I visit, but also where his main computer is kept.  He warmed up his machine and sat at the screen just feet away from where I read in bed.  He pulled up video clips from the memory card.

“Bug,” he said to himself, watching scenes of the empty yard and noting trigger points for the motion sensor.  “Nothing.  Another bug.  Nothing.”

I just lay there.

“Whoa!” my dad shouted, freezing at the keyboard.  

From downstairs, my stepmom, “My god, what is it?  Is it Bigfoot?”

I bit my lip and didn’t say a word.  My dad hit ‘play’ again, eyes wide.  Then they narrowed.  “Brady,” he said quietly.  He turned to look at me.  “It’s you.”  I had hoped for a big grin, a belly laugh, but I didn’t get one.  My dad just looked troubled.  I got out of bed to join him at the monitor.

We stared at the screen.  There I was, ghostly white and floating across the frame.  I didn’t look like Bigfoot.  I didn’t look look menacing, or even wild.  

I looked ill.  I was hunched over in the dark, moving gingerly in my bare feet, walking crablike, almost feeling my way, like something was wrong with my legs.  The night vision lens made me look even whiter than I normally am, which in turn made me look thinner.  My eyes were ablaze.  I looked like a demonic old man shuffling toward the grave.  

He replayed it again and we both watched.  “Yeah,” my dad said, his voice low.  “I don’t think I’m going to tell anyone about this.”   

I had expected euphoria at a prank well played, but watching the clip I instead felt shame.  Who does this, I thought?  Who gets naked and walks around the yard at night?  

My sister was repulsed; even my accomplice stepmother sort of shocked at how unsettling the video was. It’s interesting to note that I myself sat on this story for a year, cowed by how unhealthy I seemed in the video.

Looking at it closer later, I could see that I’d never really known in which direction the camera was facing.  What the video actually caught was me when I thought I was off camera – walking away, out of Yeti character, turning around, leaning in to what I thought was the side of the camera.  In it, I’m no Bigfoot.  I’m a sickly apparition, bumbling through a prank in the night and exposing myself to the world.

I thought long and hard about putting the video on this blog, and I just can’t do it.  I think the idea behind the joke was funny, I think it was worth the effort, and the only way to play it was nude.  But still, the internet is forever.  I’m willing to give up only a still shot, appropriately blurred.

Brady

Friends of the Library

Trav,

In March we went down to North Carolina to look after our mountain properties, like a couple of real estate magnates, and one morning we drove to a local coffee shop.  I ordered a hot cocoa, like a child, and then noticed a flyer stuck to one of the support beams.

A simple printout, it invited submissions for a fiction contest sponsored by Friends of the Black Mountain library.  I made note of the email address, picked up my cocoa and we went out into the gray, drizzly morning, driving back to your mother’s house on the hill.

Once home in NY, I emailed to ask about contest guidelines and deadlines, and to make sure I could submit without actually being a resident of Black Mountain.  The deadline was just a couple of days away, but there was no limit on story length so I sent in The Night Full On.  

A day after the contest deadline I had not heard anything, so I began the by-now-familiar process of rationalizing being passed over by judges.  On a Monday morning my phone rang – a number I didn’t recognize, so I let it go to voicemail and continued getting ready for work.  Then an email popped up from the contest organizer, asking me to call her.  That seemed a good omen; doubtful she was cruel enough to call and personally tell me I lost.  I dialed her.


“Well, you won,”  She said.  In my apartment, I grinned.  She went on.  “We had a lot of entries this year: 18!”  I winced.  I mean, winning is better than not winning, but first out of 18 doesn’t suggest I’m a world beater.  


She took me through the scoring process. The judges ranked each piece in four areas: voice, style, making the reader care about the characters, and grammar.  I winced again – grammar?  That was actually a category?


“You were the only one who got a perfect score,” she said, and I was back to grinning.  

“Well, that’s incredibly nice to hear,” I said.  “You made my day.”

She got my address to send me a certificate and the winner’s check – $50! – and we hung up.  

I knew the library was free to use the winning entry for promotional purposes, though I was never really sure what that meant.  As far as I know, they don’t publish a magazine or literary journal, so I didn’t expect the story to get any real visibility.  (For interested readers, I’ve uploaded the short story to the fiction tab on this blog.)

Then I got an email from a woman who lives in the house next to my mom’s.  She’d run into another friend of my mom’s, who’d been in the library and saw I was the contest winner, and had wondered if I’d moved to town.  So I know they had at least a display or something.  

Let’s be clear: the contest is no big deal.  But when I realized they’d put something up in the library, my first thought was, Ah, shit.  You know who would have been awful proud about this?  My mom.  

She went to her library a lot – for books, music and movie DVDs.  I used to kid her about it, because in this era of instant downloads right to your iPhone and streaming Netflix, there seems something quaint about her going to the library to pick up a copy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The truth is, my mom always supported my writing, and me winning this little contest in her own town would have pleased her immensely.  She would have told everyone, and I really wish she could have seen whatever it is they put up in that library.    

Brady

Buoyant Period

Drop Off Service

Trav,

You and Ridge gave me a book last Christmas – The History and Stories of the Best Bars in New York.  

A useful gift, I thought, as I thumbed the pages.  It got me thinking about the bars of my life, trying to decide which ones I’ve spent the most time in.  And then I compiled this awesome list, complete with interesting tidbits.

Winston-Salem, NC: Most of the social life at college centered on campus parties, but we hit the bars around the stadium at football season – before, after and sometimes during games, since we weren’t very good back then.  Most often, we were at On The Fringe, and it was here that I first had a horrid shot called Prairie Fire, introduced to me by a volatile South African student nicknamed Tarzan, so called because he spoke with an accent, was absurdly strong, super tan and went shirtless whenever possible.  For the heat, we used the local hot sauce, Texas Pete, headquartered right there in Winston-Salem; its product litters restaurant tables all across the South. 

In most of my memories from that bar, I’m young and hopeful, aware I was moving toward graduation and sort of proud of the way things were coming together – I was earning a college degree!  In some ways it felt like my life was just about to begin, but it also felt like a unique, buoyant period was drawing to a close.  I haven’t been back to Winston-Salem in many years, and I’ve been told the bar has changed both names and clientele.  But for me it will always be On The Fringe, so in my mind, it is always me and my friends occupying the booths.

Charlotte, NC: I lived here right after college, when Charlotte was much smaller than it is now and when the social scene was south of the city, not “Uptown.”  Hour for hour, I spent more time at Providence Road Sundries, mainly because a small group of friends rented a house directly across the street.  We used that bar as a final destination, a place we could retire to and not worry about driving.  When the bar closed, we’d all amble across the street and continue the night or crash on the sofas. 

On the weekends it was crowded with the hard-drinking young. I wasn’t there for this (I was working a third shift at the time), but one night a friend happened to bump someone in the crowd, spilling beer.  Bristling followed, and even though it was initially put to rest, later in the night three of those guys re-approached our friend in the crowd, then coaxed him outside and got him up against a car and broke his nose.  The growing mob outside was finally noticed by one of my roommates, who shoved his way past the bouncer, rushed the fracas and knocked down the first guy he could reach.  The police showed up, ending things, but the next morning my roommate’s hand swelled into a grotesque shape and he went to the hospital for a cast.

Here’s a sunnier memory: one night a big group of us matriculated to Providence Road Sundries after spending the day at an outdoor Kentucky Derby party, watching the races on a huge screen. One of us had a starter job as a pharmaceutical rep, peddling oral products.  He also had, for reasons unclear, an old University of Florida Gator mascot suit.  He left the bar, slipped over to the house across the street, put on the suit and then came skipping back into the packed bar, handing out toothbrushes to patrons – this huge green reptile lecturing us on dental hygiene.

Ah, the idiocy of youth.

Prague, Czech Republic: While teaching English there, I spent most of my time at Chapeau Rouge, which had a big ex-pat following in the cold winter months.  I could almost always find other teachers there, or English speakers.  But for my money, the bar I miss more than any other is King George’s (Král Jiřiho, or something).  Below ground, good prices, awesome Czech pilsner and big tables with benches.  It wasn’t well known to tourists, but one afternoon a huge group of young Europeans filled that place, raucously belting out football songs.  That moment in particular stands out, and I think that’s why I miss it the most.  

Chapel Hill, NC: I spent a lot of time on busy Franklin Street, and its many bars and restaurants populated by UNC students.  My go-to place for the casual drink was The Cave, a low-ceilinged dive at the bottom of some narrow stairs in an alleyway.  Apparently the oldest tavern in Chapel Hill, it had a decent beer selection, a poolroom in the back and sometimes live music in the corner.  I liked sitting at the bar, and also the fact that the back door dumped you into a parking lot – from there to my apartment it was about a five minute walk.  I can’t think of anything of note happening in this bar, except I remember one time me and a friend playing pool against a couple of Mexican immigrants. They didn’t speak any English, and we all know my Spanish is halting, but we took turns buying each other beers as we played. That was nice.

These next two are the heavy hitters, and close to my heart. 

Atlanta, GA: The Flatiron.  Located in a wedge-shaped building at the corner of diverging streets, it was named after the Flatiron building in NY.  I first went to this bar when in Atlanta on an unpaid internship between years of grad school.  The East Atlanta neighborhood was fast gentrifying back then, with a mix of white/hip/gay people opening businesses and frequenting the new bars mixed in with its older black establishments.  On that hot summer night, I sat in the Flatiron having a beer with a friend.  Across the street at the now-defunct The Village, a tremendously large African-American woman danced and repeatedly thrust her ass up against a big bay window, hard enough to make the glass bow.

When I moved to Atlanta the next year, I couldn’t wait to go back to Flatiron, since the diverse mix of punters in the various businesses meant I was never quite sure how the night would end in that part of town.  Over the next seven years or so, I spent more time in that bar than any other in my life.  My friend and I had our regular seats along the right-hand side.  I had my menu favorites, and I always knew what my first beer would be.  I knew exactly what I wanted to play on the jukebox.  I used to affectionately describe it as a place where “if you needed to put your head down on the bar for a while, that was OK,” and I admit that  late at night it could be an odd crowd, mostly sad men putting away pints, with thick cigarette smoke hanging over us all. A friend once had her wallet stolen out of her purse while we sat at the bar, though we managed to catch the guy and get the money back. 

It’s still open, though Blendz, the hair salon that used to be on top of it, has been replaced with a tattoo shop.  Every time I’m in Atlanta, I make a point of stopping in.  Maybe it was a bar for pickpockets and drunken losers, but I never quite saw it that way. 

New York City: Flatiron is still probably my favorite bar ever – it just aligned perfectly with my temperament and place in life then.  But I now think I’ve spent more time in Drop Off Service.  When I first moved to NY, it seemed like we met there once or twice a week.  You lived around the corner, and I lived down the street for two months.  I was new to town and didn’t even have Joss with me yet, so I had time to burn after work.  Even when I moved to Brooklyn, Drop Off was on my way home easily enough.  It had been your local for years and you knew almost every regular in there, so by association the bartenders eventually knew me, too (thanks for that). That made buybacks plentiful and sometimes painful – you don’t always want a free shot of whiskey placed in front of you. 

When I moved into Manhattan from Brooklyn, I started taking Joss with me to the bar as a way to get her out of the apartment and more stimulation, since she loves people so much.  But guess what?   They don’t allow dogs anymore.  Plus the place has gotten really popular and it’s harder to find a seat in there.  The reasons to go dwindle, and I need someplace new. 

So thank goodness I have this book you guys gave me.  

Brady

  

Vegas

In early March I attended a conference in Las Vegas, the first time I’d been in Sin City since a couple of bachelor parties some 15 years ago.  My memories from those trips are long nights, the incessant bonging of slot machines, the labyrinthine layouts of casino floors, sports betting and the glory of free booze for gamblers. 

I expected a different experience for my work trip.  I also expected an insider’s view: I had Natalie with me, and she’d actually lived in Vegas for a year and a half.

We arrived early afternoon on Sunday and picked up a rental car from a small company off the Strip – my first reminder that away from high rollers and the glamour of the strip, Vegas is depressing.  The shuttle driver’s salt-and-pepper hair was greased back and he wore dark glasses like he had something to hide.  As he drove he told us about his so-far unsuccessful attempts to get a bus license or a cab license or some other official document that might change his luck.  Filling out our paperwork, he regaled me with Vegas hard-luck stories and the stupidity of local thieves. The point is, the place oozed loser. 

Once off the lot, Natalie drove us through “Old Vegas,” what used to be the main part of the city before things got built up further down the Strip.  It’s sad (but interesting) now: dirt bag hotels, empty casinos, boarded-up houses and homeless people pushing shopping carts through the streets.  This was made worse by it being a Sunday, when the air has gone out of Vegas and everyone is a dead man walking.  You can’t drive around that area and not think that beneath all the flown-in excitement, the town is a cesspool.

After some In-N-Out Burger, we headed to Red Rock Canyon. If I lived in LV, I’d need something like this to keep me alive.  A beautiful wall of red rising out of the sand, with a paved, 13-mile loop that runs through the park.  It’s a common location for bike riders and joggers, these drained, lonely figures carrying water and making their way through the desert.

We had a huge room at Caesar’s Palace, with windows overlooking the fountain show at the Bellagio and a good stretch of the Strip. As we showered and got ready for dinner, we watched the sun go down and Vegas come alive.  I’d shaken off the dreary vibe of daylight Vegas, and I found myself getting swept up in the glitz and building excitement as we walked through the lobby and out into the crowded night.

The next day I attended the conference and Natalie went to visit old friends. In the evening we joined a couple she knew for dinner at an upscale bar – Todd English pub, the rare place with a solid beer list, located in the brand new, high-end Crystals resort.  Locals, they filled us in on today’s Vegas.  Since the peak of the housing market sometime around 2004, Las Vegas home prices have declined nearly 60% (as of Jan. 2011).  I don’t think I knew this detail, but it makes sense.  Vegas is nice for a weekend of gambling or shows, and maybe those with tons of disposable income might want a second home there. But disposable income pretty much disappeared during the recession, and that had direct effects on places such as Crystals: it was conceived before the recession and is housed in the City Center complex, an $8.6 billion, mixed-use venture supported by MGM and Dubai World.  Now on the other side of the recession, the complex is still half empty and hovering at bankruptcy.  It is not the only building like that in Vegas.

Natalie hit a spa the next day while I worked, but that night after dinner we ducked into the crappy Flamingo Lounge.  Even though she’d lived in Vegas, Natalie had never gambled.  But I usually set aside a small amount to lose, and I bought $100 in chips and we sat at a $10 minimum table.  

It was empty except for one other couple – we found out they’d just moved to Las Vegas.  I won a hand now and then to stay afloat but mostly the cards were not kind and my pile of chips shrank.  The dealer suggested I cut Natalie in to change the mood, and it worked: she turned $10 into about $60 or so, while I consistently lost money.  When I had just $10 left, I convinced her to combine chips and bet it all.  We shoved our miniscule $70 or so onto the table.

“Are you coloring up?” the dealer asked me.

“No, we’re all in,” I said.  The couple down the table literally gasped. 

The dealer had been good to Natalie, so it was her hand to lose, and he dealt her two face cards. We walked away some $40 up, after a tip. 

Natalie flew out the next morning, but I had one more day.  All week long, the city had grown on me – the lights, the dim casino floor, the hopeful tourists in the lobby.  I’d managed to embrace Vegas for what it is, and I realized I’d miss it.

After the conference ended, I needed a decent, non-casino beer, so I changed clothes and walked back to Todd English pub.  I ended up talking to a couple of traveling salesmen at the bar – salesmen have a way of pulling strangers into their circle.  The guy next to me was the youngest son of the man behind the company that distributes that famous US vs. Russia hockey game.

I was excited by this bit of trivia, for some reason, and besides, he had fascinating stories to tell, so I stayed way longer than I had planned to.  As I walked the Strip home, I warmly stared at the lights and the action. The elevator took me up to my room, and I pulled a chair up to the window to watch the Bellagio fountain do its thing one last time.   Vegas, you’re all right, I thought.  You’re all right.

I wanted to take a jog before leaving, so I got up in the morning, stretched and went outside.  I figured I’d head away from the Strip, hoping to find it quieter.  My route looked like this.

Cars, overpasses, billboards and desert.  Awful.  I jogged past deflated tourists on their way out of town, dragging their roll carts behind them, bickering and already sweating.  I jogged through intersections, cars running the light and zooming down expressway ramps.  I passed an elderly man scouring the gutters, stooping to pick up anything of value.  Immigrants emerged from under overpasses, wiping their faces, squinting into the sun, then wandering off to whatever their future held.  I tried to ignore all this and slip into the run and my music, but it wasn’t working.  I wanted to quit, go shower up and get out of town.

Vegas, I thought, at the turn-around point, you’re a cesspool.

Three Stories

Trav,

I drove to Iron Mountain for Christmas again, and had a great visit with my dad and stepmom.  While I was there, I started reading Rabbit at Rest, the last in John Updike’s great series with protagonist Harry Angstrom.

Because Rabbit at Rest shows us early on the ugly, bitter relationship between father and son, and because of the recent trip to Iron Mountain, it made me thankful for the connection I have with my dad.

When people ask about my father, there are three stories I tend to tell.  The first happens as I was middling my way through high school.  One of my chores was emptying the cat box, and at the time of this particular story, I’d probably put off the job several times before my dad reminded me of my responsibility.  Only then did I reluctantly go to the cat box and pick up my tools.  But in doing so, inspiration hit me.

My stroke of genius was to go back into the kitchen and grab a plastic baggie, then sift out a few brown turds from the cat box and seal them inside.  My dad often packed himself a lunch before going to bed at night, and left it in the fridge.  So even though he was furiously trying to balance fatherhood and running a new company – things I didn’t understand then and are still shadowy to me today – I placed that baggie into his lunch sack when the house went quiet that night.

I honestly can’t remember if I was there when he got home from work – I could have had sports practice or a game, or I could have been working – but I do remember his description of discovering my gift, which occurred as he sat in his office at lunchtime, chatting with a long-time colleague who leaned in the doorframe.

“As we were talking,” he told me, “I opened my bag and pulled out the contents to spread across my desk.  Sandwich first,” and here my dad mimicked pulling out a sandwich and plopping it down onto the desktop, “then a yogurt.” Plop. “Then this clear plastic bag.”  Plop.

When that hit the desk, my dad and his friend both stopped and stared at it for a few long seconds.

“Jesus, Charlie, what the hell is that?” the colleague asked.

“I don’t know,” my dad answered, after a pause.

“It looks like cat shit,” this guy said, incredulous.

“I think it is,” said my dad with a sigh.

*****

The second story: My dad has always been active, and I have memories of him playing tennis, being in basketball leagues and on softball teams. This meant he often was in athletic gear around the house.  One night – again, me in high school, not sure of exact age – my dad stood washing dishes at the kitchen sink.  He had shorts on, and it occurred to me that it might be funny to sneak up and whip them down, leaving him in his underwear at the sink.  I crept up and jerked them, hard, all the way to his ankles.

To my uncomfortable surprise, he was wearing bathing trunks, and my yank left him naked from the waist down, his hands wet in the sink.  “Whoa!” he yelped, flinching and twisting and trying to rectify the situation without turning around.

I laughed but backed away – I’d seen more than I wanted.   My sister also was in the kitchen, and she burst into giggles.  Together we watched his back as he struggled, and our laughter brought my stepmom into the room, who joined in almost by contagion.

He finally got his shorts up and turned around.  “That’s great,” he said. “That’s really funny.”  Joke over, I began to quiet down, but my sister’s amusement was as thick as ever, and it became clear that she was laughing at some new angle.

“What?”  My dad asked. 

“You…you…when Brady did that,” she gasped.  “You flexed.”

 “Yes, ha, ha,” said my dad, having to now reach deep down to keep his sense of humor, and only thinly succeeding.  “I’m sure I did.”

My stepmom found this especially funny, and fell against him.  “But what were you doing?” she asked, laughing the question right up into his face.  “Why were you flexing?” 

And here was the bottom of that reservoir of patience – he was getting ganged up on, and all this was undeserved.  He dropped his voice. “Well what the fuck do you expect me to do?” he said to her. “Bend over and arch my back?”

*****

Story three: My dad at night often placed in the bathroom the clothes he needed for the following day, including the bag he’d take to the gym.  This meant he didn’t need to turn on the bedroom light in the morning and wake my stepmom.  (Are we identifying a trend?  This is a man who prepares.)  I was gone at college for this story, but the way I heard it, my sister snuck into his gym bag one night and inserted a maxipad into his clean, white cotton briefs.  The idea was that he’d uncover it while dressing at the gym, and perhaps it might fall out on the floor and he’d be roundly embarrassed.

My dad took the bag in the morning, and my sister sat waiting in the kitchen the next evening for his return.  When he walked in, she blurted, “How was the gym this morning?”

“Fine,” he said.  “How was school?”

She tried again. “How was getting dressed after the gym this morning?”

“OK,” he said.  “Why?”

She furrowed her brow.  Was it possible he just wasn’t taking the bait?  Unlikely.  With a slow blooming, it came to her.

“Oh my god, you didn’t notice!” She laughed. “I put a pad in your underwear!”

My dad would tell me, years later, that as soon as she said it, the very moment that sentence completed, he could feel a clogging, cottony fullness between his legs.  What shocked him most was that he’d been living with that sensation all day long, and never once questioned it.

*****

To this day my dad will nod and say my sister holds the crown, won with the maxipad gag.  Still, the interesting thing to me about telling these stories is the response from people.  They almost all say, “I can’t believe you had the nerve to do that to your dad,” and I guess that’s a valid point.  That probably says something about me, and my sister.  But it also begs the question: in what kind of family is that behavior quasi-acceptable?

I think the general answer is, one in which the kids respect their father enough to accept his guidance, discipline and parenting, but they do not fear him.  That’s how I always felt – respect, even mutual respect, but not fear.  I can say I had a father-son relationship that never once included pettiness, jealousy, or meanness. I can say it was a relationship in which we were almost always able to communicate and understand each other.  In other words, the very opposite from what is seen in the beginning of Rabbit at Rest. 

No complaints from me, dad.  Not one. 

Brady