The supermarket as a window into the heart of a city

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Banderas de la República Argentina y Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires



Supermercado Coto
Avenida Cabildo, Barrio Nuñez
Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires
República de la Argentina

Item: In the 15 items or less check out line, a woman in her late 60s or early 70s removes one item at a time from the small, hand-held, blue, supermarket basket and places each one carefully in front of the cashier so it can be scanned, all the while keeping an eye on the subtotal as it steadily climbs. She has obviously calculated well in advance the precise amount of money she can spend, because when the total reaches her budgeted amount, she hands the remaining items to the cashier and asks her to please have them returned to the shelf. She then opens a small change purse, extracts two small denomination bills, and counts out small change in the exact amount. The cashier accepts the money, checks to make sure it is correct, finalizes the transaction, and gives the woman her receipt, which she then folds and tucks away in her change purse. The cashier, a young and very courteous woman, thanks the older woman with a smile, and hands her two plastic bags. The older woman then picks her way through the small group of shoppers, store employees, and security guards in the front of the store to the automatic doors leading to the very busy street.

Item: Outside the store, on the curb, just to the left of the front entrance, a short Bolivian or Peruvian woman with pronounced buck teeth, has a sidewalk display of small quantities of vegetables and fruits, of roughly the same variety and often of a superior quality to those offered in the produce section of the supermarket, but that sell for approximately 20% less, neatly arranged in wooden boxes. Three women and two men are queued up waiting for a fourth woman to complete and pay for her selection. A member of the woman's family has a display just to the side of and across the sidewalk from the produce display, against the outside wall of the supermarket. This display features DVD's of most, if not all, of the latest movies showing in the first-run theaters.

Item: Just inside and to the right of the supermarket's front entrance, numerous store employees, all young males, congregate around stacks of white plastic baskets each containing numerous plastic sacks of groceries. Each stack carries a hand-written piece of paper showing an address, with a copy of a cash register receipt stapled to it. They are organizing home deliveries, a service which virtually every retail outlet in Buenos Aires, from supermarkets to pharmacies to ice cream stores to hardware stores, provides free of charge. (Note: Buenos Aires is the ONLY place I have seen in my travels where every McDonalds offers home delivery.)

Item: Soft drinks in Coto, as in supermarkets everywhere, occupy a great deal of shelf space. In Coto, they fill full five head-high shelves that run almost the width of the store. Directly across the aisle, occupying a space of almost identical size, is an enormous variety of different brands of mate.

According to Wikipedia...

Mate (pronounced /'ma.te/) is a highly caffeinated infusion prepared by steeping dried leaves of yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis) in hot water. It is the national drink in Uruguay and Argentina[1] and a common social practice in Paraguay and parts of Chile and Brazil.

Mate gourd with bombilla

Item: A shopper, after all of his items have been rung up, produces a 100 peso note in payment. The cashier immediately asks if he has any smaller denomination bills, or, if not, the correct amount of small change. The shopper responds in the negative and the cashier reluctantly accepts the 100 peso note. After holding it up to the light and carefully examining it to insure its authenticity, the cashier rings for assistance from the supervisor who circulates among the cashiers at the front of the store. A few minutes later when the supervisor arrives, the cashier shows her the 100 peso note. The supervisor takes it and disappears into a small office just to the side of the front entrance. She returns a minute or two later with change for the note in bills and coins. The cashier completes the transaction and hands the correct change to the customer.

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Sofia from the 16th floor

The office of the project that oversees my work in Sofia is on the 16th floor of the NDK Building, adjacent to the National Cultural Center, at the south end of Bulgaria Plaza, both of which serve as the anchor for the south end of the city center. I often work there on weekends and after hours, taking advantage of their broadband internet access.

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When I was here in late January and early February, the pollution of winter, significantly worsened by the extremely cold weather, made photos like this impossible. With the arrival of spring and fresh breezes from the slopes of Mt. Vitosha, the beauty and variety of the city can be much better appreciated. The large, u-shaped white building in the second photo from the top is the Hilton Hotel. Note the still snow-capped Mt. Vitosha looming over the city in the bottom photo.

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These scenes of a bustling city contrast sharply with the locked-down feeling of just over a week ago when the NATO Foreign Ministers gathered for a two-day meeting in Sofia.



Where can you go in the world these days without stumbling over a McDonalds? Sofia is no exception. I've counted at least five franchises just in my brief walkabouts. Note the Cyrllic script version of the famous name just to the left of the more familiar version.

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After darkness fell, I was startled by a number of sudden and unexpected explosions. I jumped to the window and was able to catch the end of a fairly outstanding fireworks display.

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Sunday photo-blogging: Sofia, Bulgaria

It may have been the last day of April but it was damn chilly! The clouds and stiff breeze didn't help. Nippy weather, however, never seems to stop the good locals from getting out and about. When I was here in February, the main streets were crowded with pedestrians even at -20C! It's much easier to talk myself into a walk when everyone else is doing it, so, that's precisely what I did. Here's a flavor of the city on an early - chilly - Sunday afternoon.



Sofia Chinese Restaurant
Vassil Levski Blvd

Often when the restaurant sign contains English, it will read "Chines" food.



11th Century Eastern Orthodox Church
Vitosha Street, Sofia



15th Century Jewish Synagogue
Behind Central Hall, Sofia

The Orthodox Church, the Synagogue and an Islamic Mosque are all within three blocks of each other. I will get a shot of the Mosque and post it later.



My friend, S, writing postcards
Central Hall, Sofia

Note the Subway franchise on the second level. There's no escaping the United States no matter how far away you may go.

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The former YUGO-slavia

Without going into all of the details, for over ten years after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Republic of Macedonia was called the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), and, as far as the Greeks are concerned, that will always be its name because the name MACEDONIA, by god, belongs to the Greeks, period, end of report. Everyone might want to note, however, that there's still plenty of "YUGO" left in Macedonia as evidenced by these pictures taken on Thursday, 20 April, in Macedonia's capital city, Skopje.

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Bulgarian Martenitza

I've been sadly absent from this blog. My camera crapped out (a lame excuse) and I've been preoccupied with my news and political blog (an even lamer excuse). However, today, I received an email from a friend in Sofia, Bulgaria, and it was so nice and friendly and interesting, I simply couldn't resist putting it up to share.



Bulgarian Martenitza

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The Story of Bulgarian Martenitza

In Bulgaria we have a very interesting tradition and it is related to the 1st of March. It is not a big holiday, but it is more traditional than celebration and is based on the founding of Bulgaria, 681 AD.

The month of March according to Bulgarian folk belief marks the beginning of the springtime. Therefore the 1st day of March is a traditional holiday associated with sending off the winter and welcoming the spring.

The tradition is that on the 1st of March and the days after all people give to each other very interesting strips or small wool dalls called Pijo and Penda, or as we call them Martenitzi. They bring the name of March, in Bulgarian Mart. But according to our tradition, behind the name Mart stands an angry old lady who changes her mood very rapidly. Her name is Grandma Marta, in Bulgarian Baba Marta.

The ancient roots of this ritual honor the God Mars, who is the God of the spring and later the God of the war. People in the very beginning of our century were fighting a lot. Usually the wars started at the beginning of March, and most of the warriors had to leave their homes. The women were so unhappy, and afraid about the lives of their men. That is why they decided to give to their husbands red and white tokens, which were either red and white cloth strips for the hand, or small woolen figures of a white girl and a red boy. The colours represent the blood of the warriors, which their wifes didn't want spilled, and the white colour the pale faces of their women waiting for the warriors to come back home. The exchange of these tokens was made for two reasons: the first one was to remind the men about their families and the second - to please Baba Marta, so she would not change her mood so friquently: in other words, so that the warriors would not have a lot of problems with the weather and die because of frost.

That was remained almost the same today as it began. Today we give the red and white colours only to please Baba Marta, not to make us cold. In doing so, we hope the spring will come as soon as possible. Once we have those tokens, which we put on our cloths or wrist, we wear them until we see a stork. After seeing this bird, we have to take away the tokens, cause the stork is showing us that the spring is already here. In the different parts of the country, however, the process of taking away the token is different. Some ties it on a fruit tree, thus giving the tree the health and luck that we had while having the token. Others are putting it under a stone. The kind of insect we find right next to the token the next day will determine our health for the rest of the year. If it is a worm, it will be a very healthy year, and we'll have success. It is the same in with an ant; the difference is that we'll have to work a lot to reach success. If it is a spider, then we are in trouble and we might not have that luck with health and personal success.

The "martenitza" is also an odd artistic image of nature. At that period of the year, nature is full of hopes and expectations. It also symbolized the purity of the white snow going away and the red settings of the sun becoming more and more intensive with the coming spring. These two natural resources are necessary for the life as well as the male and female spirits.

A decoration with "martenitzi" is the most typical and unique Bulgarian tradition. Now the "martenitza" symbolized new life, conception, fertility, and spring. This holiday is for joy, health and long life. This Bulgarian tradition is pure and bright like the colours of the "martenitza". It shows us the neceessity of harmony in nature and in people's lives. This is the sincere message from the "martenitza".

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Buenos Aires classic vehicles

I am not a fanatic about classic cars but i know what i like. I think it started when my grandmother would ride me around in her 1936 Studebaker, a great silver-gray chariot with a sloping, chrome grill, headlights mounted prominently on sloping silver-gray fenders, horse-hair upholstery, a back seat area suitable for football games, and, most impressive of all to a small boy, a footrest mounted on the rear of the front seat that could be lowered up and down like a kneeler in church.

There are quite a few classic cars, trucks and other interesting forms of transportation in Buenos Aires. The predominant auto model seems to be old Ford Falcons. While I've had plenty of opportunity to photograph the Falcon, for some reason, I never have. Without bothering to get into arcana, I thought I'd offer a few of those that have caught my eye.

For starters, a classic Valiant...



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A classic old Ford pickup keeping company with a classic old Mercedes...



What can you say about this VW bus, decked out to look like a dog. I regret that I didn't get a photo of the rear which sported a tail. The sign in the window says it's for sale.



About the only place you'd see a bus like this in the U.S. these days would be in a junkyard.



A little bonus with the bus picture is the "Route U.S. 66" sign on the wall of the building in the background.



Quite a few furniture movers have their offices and live along Avenida Forest near Federico Lacroze and Fraga. Here's one of their trucks.



I've passed this car countless times on my walks, it's always parked in the same spot, and doesn't seem to be driven very often. I've noticed, however, that the owner tends to shine it up in the warmer weather.



Here's a close-up of the logo on the hood and a shot of the rally sticker from the back window.



And, last but not least, my favorite, the Citroen Charleston, obviously a well-cared for vehicle.

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October elections...? Time to fix up the city...!

Like every city government most everywhere in the world, when elections roll around, Buenos Aires starts fixing up the streets and sprucing up the parks. Message: See how well we take care of our residents and don't forget it when you go to the polls!


Production, Tourism and Sustainable Development
Government of the City of Buenos Aires
Recovery of Green Spaces
Parque Centenario
Remodeling and improving the value of Parque Centenario
You want to take care of where we live
We are doing it today

The good news is that Buenos Aires, despite the 17m folks living in the greater metro area, has a number of really terrific parks and open spaces to be proud of.

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Parque Centenario


Work underway at Parque los Andes


Plaza 25 de Agosto

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The Ohrid Wine and Cheese Festival

Ohrid, Macedonia
July 30 and 31, 2005

A happy weekend on Lake Ohrid in the Balkans, only a 30-minute drive from the Albanian border and a short 3-hour drive from Kosovo.

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Nothing about prisoner abuse and torture.



Only a boy fishing on the promenade by the lake.

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Nothing about a spiraling death toll in Iraq.



Just a chance to sample great wine.

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Nothing about genocide in Darfur.



Just a chance to taste some really good cheese.

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Nothing about demonizing gays.



But maybe some motorized parasailing in a bright, blue sky.

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No sign of a world leader shaking his fist at the rest of the world.



Celebrating instead the traditions of Macedonian folk dance.

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Definitely a good use of our time on this earth.

Wouldn't you agree?

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A sidewalk tribute to New York City

in Belgrade, Serbia...

there i was, sitting at an outdoor cafe on the pedestrian mall in belgrade (beograd), enjoying a capuccino on a drizzly saturday, when what should catch my eye


but a photo tribute to new york city featuring the lyrics of the famous song - posted on a construction fence...

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Start spreading the news,
I'm leaving today,
I want to be a part of it - New York, New York

These vagabond shoes
Are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it


New York, New York
I want to wake up in a city that doesn't sleep


And find I'm king of the hill - top of the heap
These little town blues
Are melting away

I'll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere


It's up to you - New York, New York
New York, New York
I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps
And find I'm "A Number 1," top of the list, king of the hill


"A Number 1"
These little town blues
Are melting away
I'm gonna make a brand new start of it

In old New York
And if I can make it there
I'm gonna make it anywhere
It's up to you


New York, New York

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Exploring Buenos Aires (by shank's mare and subway) - profmarcus

An unconventional guide to a fascinating city...

Getting Around
Ateneo
Buenos Aires Design Center
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
Cementerio Recoleta
Palermo Parks
Palermo Hollywood
Palermo Soho
Costanera Ecological Preserve
Buquebus hydrofoil ferry
Colonia, Uruguay
Feria Chacarita (new photo)
Cementerio Chacarita
Abasto (new photo)
Feria San Telmo
Eating (new photos)
Home Delivery
Internet and Phone
Taxis (new photo)
Language
A Typical Neighborhood (new)

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Buenos Aires - the port city


Looking out over Buenos Aires

There may be well over 15 million people in greater Buenos Aires (Gran Buenos Aires) but there is no need to be intimidated by its size. Yes, a lot of it is densely packed but somehow you never feel suffocated. The "busy-ness" is easily outweighed by the friendly people (many of them chatting on the sidewalks), the neighborhoods (Buenos Aires is virtually a city of neighborhoods) each with its own unique feel, the greenery (many streets are tree-lined and the parks are a treasure), the ease of getting around, and the many, many things to see and do. Even if your idea of relaxing is sitting around reading a good book over a cup of coffee, you will be in good company. Porteños, as the residents are known (literally, port city dwellers), love their cafés (confiterias) and their coffee and spend hours enjoying both. Needless to say, the people-watching is world-class.


Brujas ("Witches") Pizza Bar in Palermo Hollywood, a typical Porteño eatery and hang-out

My idea of getting to know a place is to jump right in to the local day-to-day comings and goings whether it be grocery shopping, going to work or school, browsing the mall, or just riding around on the subway. In Buenos Aires, there's no better way to do that than walking and using public transportation. Public transportation in BsAs (the accepted abbreviation for Buenos Aires) is excellent. Whether it's subway, train, taxi or bus, it's fast, reliable, safe, comfortable and inexpensive. Doctors, lawyers, laborers, storekeepers, professors, housewives, lovers, musicians, secretaries, schoolkids, and senior citizens all rub shoulders on busses, trains, and the subway and seem to be perfectly content to do it too.


Subte, Estación Palermo

I’ve spent many, many hours exploring BsAs. Mostly, I’ve done it by walking and taking advantage of the terrific Subte (short for “Subterraneo”) system. This is a short, illustrated guide for those who, like me, enjoy getting out and about in the company of those who know a place best - the ones who live there. The suggestions I've sketched out here would keep the average person well-occupied for about a week, more or less, and that's assuming stout legs and an adventuresome spirit.

Getting around

First of all…

Be sure to get yourself a good (detailed, not just main thoroughfares), pocket-size street map that includes the Subte system.


BsAs Microcentro/"Downtown" (sample of detailed street map)

(For ease of orientation, the center and starting point for this guide is the intersection of Avenidas Santa Fe and Pueyrredón in Recoleta, the center of most everything. This would be a good time to check your map to make sure you know where I'm talking about.)

Once you've figured out where you are, go to the Pueyrredón Subte station and buy yourself a ten-trip Subtepass. This saves you from standing in line each time you want to go somewhere. (Tip: Always carry plenty of small change - 10 and 20 peso notes and smaller. NOBODY wants to give you change unless you're buying something and even then, if it's a small purchase and you offer a 50 or a 100-peso note, you will invariably be asked if you have something smaller.)


Subtecard (This is the rechargeable Subtecard for use in the system’s electronic card readers. Note: The 10-ride Subtepass is printed on card stock, not plastic, and has a different appearance.)

The Subte fare is approximately is 70 centavos (25 U.S. cents) per ride. Subte line "D" goes up and down Avenida Santa Fe (Santa Fe turns into Avenida Cabildo as it passes through Palermo) from Belgrano to the Microcentro. At roughly Avenida Pueyrredón it jogs to the Microcentro and ends at the Estación Catedral. Your days will often begin and end with Línea D.


Subte map: Teal - Line A; Red - Line B; Blue - Line C;
Green - Line D; Violet - Line E (click on map for larger view)

The Subte has its own TV system that not only keeps you up-to-date on system status and train frequencies, it also shows news and entertainment (and, unfortunately, commercials too, although some of the public service ads are terrific - a psa on condoms comes to mind). The rechargeable Subte card can also be used to purchase goods and services in Subte stations and to obtain discounts at movie theaters, restaurants and other establishments. Most all Subte cars have scrolling marquees that announce the next stop and some even tell you on which side of the car the doors will open! It's perhaps the cleanest, most efficient, most reliable, and cheapest system I've ever ridden.


Interior of Subte car showing scrolling marquee

Things to do and see

The very first thing to do, preferably the day you arrive, is visit the Ateneo bookstore. On Avenida Santa Fe between Avenidas Callao and Riobamba, the Ateneo is splendidly quartered in a beautifully restored theater dating from the days when even movie theaters were luxury venues. Have a cup of coffee (their coffee shop occupies the former stage) while you're nursing your jet lag and bask in one of the best bookstore atmospheres to be found anywhere. Cross the street to Restaurant La Farola for a good meal.


Interior of Ateneo

Something for a long day or perhaps two...

Walk to Cementerio Recoleta from Santa Fe and Pueyrredón.


Cementerio Recoleta (area bounded by Avenidas Vicente Lopez, Junín, Pueyrredón and Del Libertador)

In Recoleta you can see the tomb of Eva Peron and the "fantabulous" tomb architecture laid out like an exclusive neighborhood in a miniature city. From there, you can walk to the Buenos Aires Design Center where beautiful, innovative and expensive home decor items are featured in numerous locales (stores) in an old but thoroughly and creatively rehabbed setting complete with outdoor cafes where you can indulge in the BsAS pastime of people-watching.


Buenos Aires Design Center

From the Design Center, cross Avenida del Libertador (if you cross Avenida Alcorta, you've gone too far), and you'll be almost on top of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the country's premier fine arts museum.


Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

Standing in front of the museum as you're facing the street, turn and walk to your right. In the next block or so to your right you will see the parks that parallel Libertador. Walk through them and when you emerge look for Avenida Aguado. Follow Aguado almost to Alcorta and then take a left on Ortiz De Ocampo and look for Avenida Castex on your right.


Avenidas Aguado, Ortiz De Ocampo and Castex

Walk along Castex (the street takes a jog in the middle) and you will come to more parks. At that point, you can literally walk through parks all the way to Avenida de Los Incas, not on the maps here but, trust me, quite a hike.


Palermo parks and attractions

Along the way, you will pass the Japanese Garden (Jardín Japonés), the planetarium, the zoo (Jardín Zoológico - as you're walking, the zoo is a fair walk off to the left in an adjacent park), the Botanical Garden (Jardín Botánico, again to the left, beyond the zoo), the rose garden (Rosedal), the Hipodromo, the horse club, the golf club, and people walking, talking, sunning, picnicking and, of course, playing fútbol.


Japanese Garden (Jardín Japonés)


Rose Garden (Rosedal)

Along the way, there are statues, small lakes, fountains, plazas, plenty of open space, lots of greenery, and the ubiquitous paseaperros (professional dog walkers) who may have as many as 20 on the leash at once, all happy and wagging their tails. (Watch your step, always - parks, sidewalks, everywhere...!)


Paseaperro

At any point you can break out of the parks to your left and get refreshed at an outdoor cafe along Libertador or on one of the side streets. When your feet have had it, break out your Subtepass, locate the nearest station on Avenida Santa Fe/Cabildo (be sure to take the direction "Trenes a Catedral") and head back to your stop in Recoleta.


Avenida Santa Fe/Cabildo

Some Friday or Saturday night...

If you have the adventuresome spirit, take Subte Linea D to the Plaza Italia station (direction “Trenes a Congreso de Tucuman”). Cross Avenida Santa Fe and continue on Santa Fe in the same direction the train was heading (Congreso de Tucuman).


Avenidas Santa Fe, Godoy Cruz, Honduras and Juan B. Justo

After a few blocks, you will see the club, "New Metropolis" (Avenida Santa Fe 4389). This is one of several popular venues for the music that virtually every Argentine teen-ager listens to and goes wild over - Cumbia Villera (literally, "ghetto cumbia"). It has some of elements of rap but I find it a lot more enjoyable, a lot more musical, and have even picked up some cd's.


New Metropolis

One of the most interesting things, to me at least, is just how much fun these kids have. They don't have the angry, belligerent facade of so many American teens. They're a bit more relaxed and seem to be generally happier. Don't even think of showing up before 11 p.m.


Cumbia Villera group at Fantastico Bailable, another Cumbia
Villera venue

If you want to notch up your adventure a bit, before you go to New Metropolis, stay on Line D to the next station, Palermo. Intersecting Avenida Santa Fe at the Palermo station is Avenida Godoy Cruz. If you walk up Godoy Cruz without crossing Santa Fe, you will see old, graffiti-covered walls on one side with the up-and-coming trendiness of Palermo Soho on the other. If you time it right, between 9:30 and 10 at night, before you tackle New Metropolis, you will witness one of the best transvestite street shows anywhere. I accidentally stumbled across this interesting scene one cold (for BsAs) winter's night in July and was quite astonished. They’re out for pick-ups, of course, but they’re polite, funny and definitely having a good time. To be sure, this isn’t something you'll run across just anywhere. (If you’d rather not get hit on, you might want to consider a taxi rather than walking. You’ll be hit on in a taxi too but escape is quicker. Please note - I’ve never, ever had personal safety problems walking in BsAs but, as everywhere, dress like a local and act like you know where you're going and what you're doing – even if you don’t.)


La Chochona Restaurant in Palermo Soho

If you keep walking up Godoy Cruz until the walls end, there’s a street where you can turn right (Avenida Honduras) that will take you across the commuter rail tracks and to the major street that parallels Godoy Cruz on the other side, Avenida Juan B. Justo. Cross J.B. Justo, staying on Honduras, and you will be in the thick of Palermo Hollywood, even trendier, believe it or not, than Palermo Soho. Palermo Soho and its upstart sibling, Palermo Hollywood, are both great fun if you like nifty little bistros, art galleries, unique designer clothing and mingling with the BsAs “in” crowd.

Any day...

Take Linea D to the end, Estación Catedral (direction "Trenes a Catedral"). When you emerge from the station, you will be across from Plaza de Mayo. From there you can see the "Pink House" (Casa Rosada), the seat of Argentina's government and, of course, the expansive plaza.


Casa Rosada

Keep walking toward Rio de la Plata, cross Avenidas Madero and Goritti. To cross Goritti, you will have to walk either left or right along the causeway until you reach a bridge. Once across the bridge, you will be in Puerto Madero, an area reclaimed from the river by dumping Subte construction debris.


Avenida Madero appears as Avenida Huergo
on this map. Goritti runs parallel to Madero
on one side and to the river channel on the
other. (See following picture.)


Downtown Buenos Aires viewed
from Puerto Madero

If you keep on heading toward the river, you will come to the Costanera ecological preserve, a terrific natural area with lots and lots of hiking paths, wildlife, birds, trees, pampa grass, and other native flora and fauna all of which colonized the area on top of the debris. With commendable foresight, it was declared a preserve rather than handing it over to developers.


Costanera Ecological Preserve


Costanera Ecological Preserve

Any day...

Take the Buquebus hydrofoil ferry to Colonia, Uruguay. (Note: The round-trip fare isn’t in the bargain category.) You will depart from the Buquebus ferry terminal at Darsena Norte on the western end of Puerto Madero, about 8-9 blocks from the Catedral Subte station.


Darsena Norte denoted by *

The ferry leaves about 11:30 a.m. and you should be there by 10-10:30 to get a ticket. The hydrofoil (made in Australia) is a marvel and it flat-out FLIES. It shaves the regular ferry ride from 3 hrs to 1 and is a most pleasurable experience.


Buquebus Ferry "Atlantic III"

There's a buffet restaurant onboard and the duty free shop would put a lot of airports to shame. Try to be one of the first onboard so you can get a window seat.


Passenger seating area, Buquebus
Ferry "Atlantic III"

Colonia is a great walking town and you can walk from the ferry terminal into town and back without breaking a sweat. There’s some great eating along the main drag and the UNESCO World Heritage site in the old town is definitely worth exploring. If you want to return to BsAs that day, the ferry leaves at 5:30 but keep in mind that Uruguay is one hour ahead of BsAs. There are some nice-looking hotels if you want to spend a night or two.


Decorative bus bench
Colonia, Uruguay


UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site
Old town, Colonia, Uruguay

For a Saturday or a Sunday...

Take Subte Linea D to Estación 9 de Julio and follow the signs for Linea B, direction "Trenes a Los Incas." (Pay close attention. It’s a bit of a walk and it can be confusing.) Take Linea B to Estación Dorrego. When you emerge on Avenida Corrientes, you will be across the street from the big Chacarita Saturday fair (Feria Chacarita) in Parque Los Andes.


Parque Los Andes with
Cementerio Chacarita in
upper left

This is a bona-fide BsAs flea market and a gringo is a rarity. Just walk around and enjoy. There’s everything from genuine antiques to fishing equipment to cell phone chargers (along with batteries to fit every model ever made and probably some that haven’t been invented yet), artisan items, food stalls, on and on.


Feria Chacarita

If you continue walking up Corrientes and follow the street that jogs to the left, you will come to Cementerio Chacarita, bigger than Cementerio Recoleta, and great for strolling. You can visit the tomb of Carlos Gardel, the famous tango singer, whose life-size statue often features a lit cigarette between his fingers.


Cementerio de la Chacarita

Across the street is the Federico Lacroze Subte and commuter train station where you can catch the Subte back to Estación Carlos Gardel (direction "Trenes a L.N. Alem"). Estación Carlos Gardel has direct access to the Abasto shopping center, a magnificent structure that, after being empty and neglected for many years, was completely re-done by investors (one of them being George Soros). It used to be the central vegetable market for BsAS. Be sure to go outside and walk around it to get the full benefit of the splendid architecture.


Abasto at night

Abasto has a great food court, a multi-screen cinema, a first-class arcade, and even amusement park rides. In the surrounding streets, you can find everything related to Argentine tango, Argentine crafts and Argentine artisan items including leather goods and accessories for the culture (and obsession) of maté. (Maté is a hot drink similar to tea and requires a much lengthier treatment than is possible here. Besides, a much better and considerably more pleasant way to learn about maté is to engage a Porteńo in conversation.)


Abasto looking down on food court

When you tire of Abasto, you can hop on the Subte and re-trace your morning journey back to Recoleta. (Direction "Trenes a L.N. Alem," change for Line D at Estación Diagonal Norte, direction “Trenes a Congreso de Tucuman.”)

For a Sunday...

Take Subte Linea D to Estación 9 de julio (direction "Trenes a Catedral") and follow the signs to Linea C (direction "Trenes a Constitucion"). Get off at Estación San Juan. When you exit the station, you will most likely be disoriented but that's ok. Just be sure to consult your map. Do NOT cross Avenida Bernardo de Irigoyen or the huge street that runs next to it, Avenida 9 de Julio. Instead, find Avenida San Juan (it runs at a 90-degree angle to Irigoyen) and walk down it AWAY from Irigoyen and 9 de Julio until you reach Avenida Defensa where you will turn left until you run into Plaza Dorrego.


Avenidas 9 De Julio, Bernardo De Irigoyen,
San Juan, and Defensa

You can't miss Plaza Dorrego because that's where the San Telmo flea market (Feria de San Telmo) will be in full swing. Unfortunately, that's also where tourists tend to congregate but it's still a must-see.


Plaza Dorrego and Feria San Telmo

If you keep walking down Defensa one block to Carlos Calvo and take a left, on the opposite side of the street almost at the next corner is the Mercado San Telmo, not so many tourists and loaded with all kinds of interesting things. It's an original but, then, so is San Telmo.

Eating…

Breakfast –

• cortado (small espresso cut with hot water and a little sugar), café con leche, cappuccino, doble espresso, café frappe, or you-name-your-coffee, all rich and full of flavor…
  
• medialunas (half-moons) are basically croissants (but substantial, not fluffy) that come in two varieties, grasa (literally, “grease,” signifying ingredient rather than mode of preparation) and manteca (butter)…

Most confiterias (delis, coffee shops, cafes) offer some kind of combo deal on coffee and medialunas.

Lunch –

Many restaurants and confiterias offer a “menu del dia,” the daily special, usually good, filling and cheap. Be sure to check the menus too because they’re usually extensive.

Dinner –

There’s no end of restaurants and they range from local, family-type establishments to the big, fancy and expensive. I prefer the former. You can always tell a good place to eat the same way you pick good eateries everywhere else in the world - by how many people are inside. A national dish, ñoquis, flour dumplings served with a rich sauce of your choice, is delicious, hearty, and deadly for the waistline. The locals love pizza and there are more pizza places, both eat-in and carry-out, than you can imagine. Again, the rule of thumb: the more heavily patronized, the better. Note: Porteños have a horror of eating dinner before 9:30-10 p.m. and many don’t even head out until after 11. The good places are packed on Friday and Saturday nights.

Ice cream –

I would be terribly negligent and probably also in denial if I didn’t mention the abundance of excellent heladerias (ice cream shops), featuring the real homemade stuff, that are everywhere, often two or three to a block.


A sample of ice cream flavors

Cooking for yourself –

Go crazy. The big supermarket chains (Coto, Norte, Plaza Vea) have everything imaginable. The bigger stores are European-style hypermarts with clothing, hardware, and just about everything else.The Coto on Cabildo just down from Avenida Federico Lacroze is a real adventure as is the one across the street from the Abasto shopping mall. There are smaller, mom-and-pop supermercados on every block. Immigrant Chinese and Koreans have snared a chunk of this niche market. And, of course, there are specialty meat and vegetable markets, fresh pasta stores, and wonderful bakeries.


Coto at Abasto

Unsolicited restaurant recommendation –

For a place that has genuine Argentine parillada and asado (mixed grill and barbecue), a friendly neighborhood atmosphere, local (as opposed to gringo) prices, no gringos, good food, and a nice selection of Argentine wines, Restaurant Don Lechón can't be beat. (By the way, if you enjoy good wine, Argentine wines are one of the better-kept secrets and ridiculously inexpensive!)


Restaurant Don Lechón

Don Lechón sits where the Villas (city government subsectors) of Colegiales and Ortuzar come together. Just give any taxi driver the name of the place and tell him it's at the intersection of Avenidas Elcano and Alvarez Thomas. Go after 9 p.m.


Restaurant Don Lechon denoted by *

Home delivery…

Note for the couch potato: Literally EVERYTHING that is available for purchase in Buenos Aires can be ordered via phone and delivered to your door. It doesn’t matter whether it’s fast food, restaurant food, groceries, pharmacy items, hardware, or anything else, EVERYBODY delivers “sin cargo” (“without charge”).

Internet and phone…

No problem here. Particularly when you get out of the Microcentro (downtown), “cibers” (internet cafes) and locutorios (telephone storefront businesses that often have internet available and, frequently, bill-paying services as well) are omnipresent. The cibers often cater to kids and teens and feature a huge selection of juegos en red (networked computer games) and sometimes arcade games. The locutorios tend to draw a more adult clientele and consequently are a bit more expensive than the cibers (1.5 - 2 pesos per hour vs. 1 peso per hour for the cibers). For the most part, if you patronize an internet business in one of the more upscale neighborhoods (Palermo, Belgrano, etc.) and/or downtown, you will pay more (2 - 2.5 pesos an hour). Phone calls to the U.S. are roughly 1.5 - 2 pesos a minute.


Locutorio with internet

Taxis...

The black and yellow BsAs taxis are terrific. They cruise the streets in packs, looking for fares. The drivers are often older gentlemen, friendly and helpful. All taxis are fare-regulated and the most I ever paid was 13 pesos ($4.50 U.S.) and that was to go from one end of town to the other. You can flag them down anywhere and you know they're available when the red "libre" (“free”) light on the upper passenger-side windshield is lit. No need to tip but if you get in or get out somewhere where someone is waiting to open the door for you, give him a peso - that's how he's making his living.


BsAs Taxi

Language...

Note: In BsAs, it's not Español (Spanish), it's "Castellano." Argentines pronounce the double-“ll” as "sh" instead of "y," so it's "Cas-ta-'shano" instead of "Cas-te-yano" and "'Vee-sha" instead of "Vee-ya" (villa). An "s" is often pronounced "sh" as well - "mash-o-'nesa" instead of "my-o-'nesa" (mayonnaise). If you've learned Mexican Spanish as I have, this takes some real adjustment. Besides all that, Porteño speech is very unique in its idioms. "Che, boludo!," which means literally, "Hey, turd!" is often used with close friends and NEVER with casual acquaintances. "Fua!" is the Porteño expression for "wow," "amazing," "holy cow," etc. Hand gestures are also interesting and most of the time don't mean what you might think. In all seriousness, I have found that the more I slur, lisp and mumble, the better I'm understood.

A typical neighborhood...

No two neighborhoods in Buenos Aires are the same. They may have a lot of the same kinds of stores and services but they all have their own unique feel. Here's a sample of a typical neighborhood in the same general area as Restaurant Don Lechón (see above), spanning Avenidas Forest, Elcano, and Alvarez Thomas.


A montage, clockwise from upper left: the pharmacy, the grocery store, the pizza parlor, and the laundry.

For some reason, the logo of this poultry shop caught my eye. The name of the store is, in English, "This is my chicken" or, in Castellano, "Este es mi pollo."


Este es mi pollo

The proprietor is in the background, waving hello.

You occasionally run across some wonderful classic cars in Buenos Aires. This old Citroen has obviously received a lot of TLC.


Classic Citroen

Argentina has a world-wide reputation for manufacturing outstanding fireworks and producing world-class displays. One of the best, Jupiter, sits on the corner of Virrey Loreto and Alvarez Thomas.


Fuegos Artificiales Jupiter

What would any neighborhood be without an occasional scene like this - a cable tv installer, trying to untangle the cable wire from a tree so he can attach it to the cable box on the upper line while leaning his metal ladder against the lower wires?


Cable installer

And, what better way to end a nice afternoon of walking around the 'hood than watching a glorious sunset from the park.



(more to come)

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Eurofest 2005

Reno, Nevada - The 'Biggest Little City in the World'

The Rail City Casino played host to Eurofest 2005 this weekend.

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Standing sentinal over the festivities.


First you had to exchange your currency.


Name me one person who wouldn't DIE for
an exotic European sports car?


There was plenty of continental cuisine from
many European countries,


as well as exotic treats hard to find in this
part of the world.


Something for young adventure-seekers


and, for the adults, a beer garden complete
with oom-pah band playing "Take me home,
country road" to a polka beat.


But, when all was said and done, there were
the grandsons.

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Connecting with your Angels

One of the Manitou "springs"

A highlight of my early childhood was the annual trip to the penny arcade in Manitou Springs. It was usually a day outing, complete with picnic lunch or dinner to eat in Ruxton Park and empty jugs to fill with mineral water from the springs to take back home and make lemonade.

Well, both the springs and the arcade are still there, relatively untouched by the development insanity that is taking place a few short miles east in Colorado Springs. Many of the original arcade machines are still functioning and the atmosphere is just as funky as ever, right down to the biker bar that still shares the front-and-center streetside spot with Patsy's Original Popcorn and Salt Water Taffy.

As so often happens, however, it was the signs that caught my eye.

(more)



looks good so far...



yes, that's me in the reflection...













please note: the angel is NOT wearing shoes...

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In-flight entertainment

Well, ya gotta do something when you're trapped for 3 1/2 hrs. in an aluminum can...!

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*******



The new trend in hybrid vehicles is simple: all of the power, all of the luxury, none of the guilt. Just think. No more nagging doubts about hogging a disproportionate share of the earth's resources to make your car or SUV go vroom in the passing lane of life.

*******



No federal agency has judged the merits of value, if any, of this property.

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Enjoy the fun, sun and nightlife. Unlimited imported alcoholic beverages. Unlimited use of in-room minibar and liquor dispenser.

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Wheel of Fortune - by profmarcus

(more)

The line at McDonald’s was short. The only full breakfast advertised on the sign was the deluxe with pancakes. He had thought for a long time that the only items fast food places offered were the items on the display board behind the counter until someone told him that they didn’t always put everything on the sign.

“Do you have the breakfast platter without the pancakes?” he asked the short, round Hispanic woman who turned to him expectantly after handing the previous customer a large cup of coffee.

“The Big Breakfast? Sure. You want the Big Breakfast?”

“Yes, please, with a large coffee and a large orange juice.”

“That’ll be $7.85.”

“Damn,” he thought to himself as he reached for his wallet. “$7.85 for breakfast at McDonalds.”

Every time thoughts like that crossed his mind, he only succeeded in reminding himself that, like it or not, he was getting old. Just last night at dinner, listening to his son and his wife talking about the cost of putting a concrete pad around the rear patio deck, he remarked that his mother had purchased her first house for that amount. Following the blank stares and conversational lull, he pushed back from the table to begin the task of sorting, rinsing, and readying the day’s accumulation of dishes, utensils, pots, pans, glasses, coffee mugs, and the dreaded na-na’s for the dishwasher.

“If people would rinse them when they put them IN the sink,” he thought as he scraped nearly petrified egg yolk from a mixing bowl. He used to be vocal about such things, sometimes to the extent of being grouchy, nagging, and, in the bad old days, verbally abusive. Now, he just mentally shrugged, relieved to have that behind him. He had always taken pleasure in cleaning up and leaving things looking nice and neat. To simply allow himself to feel good about what he was doing without indulging the other never failed to give him a lift. It was times like this that he knew without a doubt that all the pain had been worth it. “I wouldn’t turn back the clock for anything,” he thought, watching through the kitchen window as the stiff evening wind pushed a tumbleweed repeatedly against the fence. Another thought quickly followed. “I sure do hate wind.”

But now, here he was, out on his own again, traveling alone, enjoying a leisurely breakfast, and taking his time before going to the gate. Airports had been the milestones of his existence for a long time, going on at least twenty years, ever since getting out of his marriage and starting to live his own life rather than trying to be a pale copy of someone else’s.

From previous trips, he knew without looking that the TV in the seating area would be tuned to Fox News. Standing in line, he had heard the announcer mention Norm Coleman. “Of COURSE, Fox would be interviewing Norm Coleman,” he thought. “Another mouthpiece of the administration.” He glanced at the screen and grimaced when he saw the Senator’s face. “He even LOOKS like a stooge,” he thought. The next story up was on the Minutemen featuring the Minuteman leader, the crusading newspaper editor from Tombstone. “I can’t fucking believe they are giving this much airtime to a quasi-racist militia.” He shook his head as he reached for his pen and notebook.

After making a few notes and realizing he couldn’t hear well enough to get the full drift of the story, he turned back to his eggs and sausage. “I wonder what these other people think about what’s going on in this country,” he asked himself. “I wonder if they even think about it at all. They look just like ordinary folks, the kind you see everywhere.” He sipped at his coffee, sweet and hot, just the way he liked it. The six empty bags of sugar lay next to the cup, casualties of the morning. Fox droned on, a happy dog-saves-baby story followed by almost five minutes on a whipped cream cake-eating contest where one of the participants was overweight and yet another was downright obese.

He patted his own stomach and felt once again the tightness of the jeans around his waist. A stubborn litany of thoughts raced through his mind with the speed of computer code that had been programmed in over a lifetime, so fast they didn’t even consciously register: the uncoordinated-chubby-little-kid-and-the-butt-of-the-playground-bully thoughts. “I weigh more than I should. I don’t exercise. I don’t watch my diet. I don’t like how I look, I look even worse now that I’m getting older.” He glanced once more at the TV as he drained his coffee. “I wonder what a REAL news program would look like,” he thought.

He was the first to take a seat in the gate area. He hauled out his laptop and began writing. Slowly the seats around him started to fill and a group gathered on the seats to his right. They were obviously an athletic team headed for an event and one of them, possibly the coach, was passing out white envelopes.

“This is for dinner tonight, breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and breakfast and lunch on Saturday,” she instructed as she passed among the women. “They have that breakfast at the hotel,” said a tall blonde in running shoes and blue shorts as she adjusted the elastic holding her pony tail. “It’s pretty good too,” said an equally tall black woman in a burgundy jogging suit.

There were about eight of them and they were in high spirits. “Is that a BOOK, you got, girl?” one of them asked, peering into the knapsack of the woman seated next to her. “It’s a pleasure book,” the other woman said, laughing as she pulled it out of her pack, waved it briefly back and forth, then dropped it back in. “I had my last final yesterday. I’m through with them OTHER books.” “Girl, I ain’t never read no book for FUN in my whole life and I sure ain’t startin’ NOW,” the first woman declared, rolling her eyes and shaking her head.

The man fidgeted in the black vinyl seat. “It’s firing off already,” he thought, trying to ease the complaining sciatic nerve in his lower back and thinking of two flights and the seven more hours of discomfort that lay ahead. He had come to realize, slowly and with a certain degree of fascination, that his back eventually adapted to whatever chair he sat in most regularly but until that adaptation was complete, he could expect nothing but grief from his sitting apparatus. He was always learning something, he thought, and even though it often came wrapped in pain, he guessed, once again, that having knowledge was generally preferable to not having it.

After offering a smile and a good morning to the flight attendant at the front door and being rewarded with a curt nod, on his way down the aisle, he managed to grab two blankets, one to carefully pad the offending area of the aircraft seat and the other to serve as a headrest against the window frame. He was surprised to see the blankets. Since the airlines had announced that they would no longer carry the pathetic little wads of fiber-fill they had the nerve to call pillows, he assumed the blankets would be gone too. “They’ll probably be next,” he mused.

The women’s team picked its way carefully down the aisle in a bright bubble of laughter, friendly taunts, bright colors, and multiple packs, purses, sacks, gym bags, and audio devices, all in rhythmic, swinging motion. I’ve got jerky, guacamole, and chips for later,” one of them announced. “I don’t want to sit next to YOU!” said another with a big grin.

The man adjusted, re-adjusted, and re-re-adjusted the blanket, trying to find the right fit between his head and the window. He hadn’t slept well the night before. In fact, he hadn’t slept very much at all. This seemed to be the case more and more these days. The medicine the doctor had given him helped enormously but it evidently was still not enough to conquer the night before a trip. “Well,” he reminded himself, “there were extenuating circumstances.”

The brother of his daughter-in-law had flown in the evening before and the man had been recruited to mind the grandchildren while the parents went to the airport. By the time they got back and the excitement had died down, it was late and he lay in bed listening to the blood rush in his ears, trying without success to turn off his interminable mental chatter while his 4 a.m. start lay silently on the nightstand, forming and re-forming digital seconds in the dark.

The brother had been discharged from the Navy that day in Virginia. He had been plucked from his ship off the coast of Italy over two months before and shipped to Germany with a diagnosis of acute depression. Nearly a month in Norfolk followed, during which time his diagnosis was amended to “acute depressive disorder.”

The man was on intimate terms with depression. It had hung around for many years as a stranger before he recognized it for what it was. Even now, though, he found it still had a few tricks up its sleeve. A master of disguise, it could buddy up to you and, before you knew it, you were fully engaged in that same, old, totally familiar, deadly conversation. “Oh, it’s YOU again,” you would say when the realization finally hit, but by then it was already too late. “I wonder what it’s like for him,” he thought.

He had had only a few moments to chat with him the night before and now the man would be gone for a week. He did manage to squeeze in that he could use help on his blog. If the blog was to amount to anything, it required near constant attention. It was already consuming the better part of the man’s waking hours, so much so that, sitting on the airplane, he already found himself anxious for the airport layover so he could jump on the wireless internet and catch up. He needed someone to back him up and he thought that the brother, who shared both his political views and his interest in computers, might be a good fit. “Besides,” he thought, “it might help his depression.”

The man stared out the window. Below, the neat squares of farming landscapes, many inlaid with the circles produced by agricultural sprinklers, drifted slowly by under thin, hazy clouds. “How quickly it changes,” he thought, remembering the rust-red moonscapes and jagged snow-capped peaks that had already slipped out of view.

For some reason, the only gambling machine that had ever attracted the man’s attention was “Wheel of Fortune,” built around the theme of the TV show. The machines were always placed in groups of two or more and were programmed to endlessly play the show’s signature audience response theme, alternating with ringing bells and flashing lights. It seemed that no matter where you went in Nevada, you would hear “W-H-E-E-L O-F F-O-R-T-U-N-E” piping out of somewhere.

He wasn’t attracted to it because he wanted to play it, he certainly wasn’t attracted to it because he was a fan of the show, and the tacky recorded theme tended to stick in his head and drive him to distraction. He found the multi-colored flashing lights and screens garish and the whole aspect of the machine and its squatting clones seemed vaguely akin to gaudily over-painted prostitutes trolling for customers.

In his fitful sleep of the night before, the idea had barely flitted across his mind before he thought, “Why not?” Maybe it was the very “American-ness” of it all. Maybe it was the slightly twisted perspective he had of the world in general. Maybe, he thought, it would make a good illustration for a story.

That morning, as he gathered up his last travel items before leaving for the airport, he retrieved his camera from the one bag to be checked, replaced its batteries, carefully re-stowed it in his briefcase, stepped back and smiled. In the final moments of packing, he often forgot one or two small items he had pledged to remember. “This time,” he thought, “I think I’ve got ‘em all.”

Quietly closing the bedroom door, he rolled his bag down the hall, through the living room and up to the front door. As he peered out the window, he flipped on the porch light and watched as, almost immediately, the driver of the waiting cab snapped on his headlights in response.

“What fortune will THIS trip bring?” the man asked himself as he stepped out into the chill, pre-dawn darkness.

[Permalink]

Veterans Day - profmarcus

ok, it was only a half-day...

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The glass doors slid apart with a quiet swoosh. Three men walked in, one after the other and lined up behind the log-in desk. They backed away briefly in unison as another man who had just finished maneuvered his electric cart away from the counter with practiced, back-and-forth bursts of motion.

When it came his turn, the third man set down the briefcase containing his laptop computer and files and handed his card to the desk clerk.

After scanning the card, the clerk squinted at his computer screen. "8 o'clock, blood work in the lab. 1 o'clock, Green Team on the 4th floor."

"I was supposed to see the pharmacist at..."

"That was cancelled," the clerk interrupted.

"Yeah, it was cancelled and then it was re-scheduled," the man said, reaching for his appointment sheet.

"Yeah, it was cancelled and then it was cancelled again," the clerk said, dismissively shaking his head.

"Nobody told me," the man muttered, taking his card back from the clerk, slipping it in his shirtfront pocket and turning to walk down the hall to the blood draw area.

"Tonight, President Bush holds his first prime time televised news conference in nearly a year," the television newscaster intoned as the man found a seat in the waiting area.



"I didn't sleep worth shit last night," complained the scrawny man in the brown, knit stocking cap as he leaned over to another man sitting in a wheelchair in front of him who was concentrating on flipping up the footrest with his foot. "How did you sleep?"

"I woke up about 4," the equally scrawny man in the wheelchair said. "I'm really tired of their bullshit here, you know?" he continued. "I'm just not going to cooperate with 'em any more, you know what I mean?"

The first man nodded. "I told my doc, 'This must be as good as it gets 'cause it don't get no better.' Screw it."

"If I had two legs," the man in the wheelchair said over his shoulder to the man in the hat, "I'd get me a horse and the equipment and head into the woods. Only come out when I needed more meds."

A man in a white lab coat appeared in the doorway with a clipboard and started calling names.

"See that guy?" the man in the wheelchair said in a voice meant to be overheard. "He's one of the assholes."

Hearing his name, the man with the briefcase picked it up and headed across the hall, retrieving the card from his shirt pocket and handing it to the lab technician as he went.

"Wait right here," the technician said as he took the card to a computer and ran it under a scanner.

The man leaned against the door jamb, watching as lab technicians scurried to and fro with stoppered tubes full of thick, dark red liquid.

"Take chair number 4, there on your left," the technician said.

The man walked down between the row of stations, put down his case, settled into the chair and pulled the arm rest across in front of him. As he rolled up his sleeve, he watched as a woman tech drew blood from the man across the row.

"It's hard to find a good one on you," the tech said to the man as she rubbed her thumb around on the inside of his elbow, probing for a good vein.

"I've been pricked so many times I'm not surprised," the man chuckled.

"There's one," she said as she slid the needle quickly and carefully under the skin.

"Good for you," he said.



The technician with the clipboard reappeared, laid it on a table with a clatter and walked over to the man with the briefcase.

"Your full name? Your full social? Ok, good," he said. "You from Colorado?"

"You recognize the first three numbers, I see," the man said. "Yeah, I'm from Colorado. You too?"

"Nah, but I see so many I start to recognize where they're from. Now that this state's grown so much, they've added some numbers and I'm not sure I know about Nevada any more."

"Yeah, I've got a head full of trivia myself," the man said. "Area codes, zip codes."

The technician laughed and nodded vigorously, obviously pleased to meet another collector of odd information.

"I've expanded, though" the man said. "Country codes."

"Wow," the technician exclaimed in unconcealed admiration. "Country codes. Never thought of that." He paused as he wrapped a blue elastic pressure strip around the man's arm and over the small ball of cotton he had placed stragetically over the tiny puncture. "Well, there you go. You have a good day, sir," he said.

"You too," the man said as he lifted his jacket and briefcase off the floor. He looked at his watch. "Hmmm. 8:30," he thought to himself, "and I should probably be back by 12:30. I wonder what time Borders opens. Oh, well. Starbucks has wi-fi and they're right there too."

[Permalink]

Reno Earth Day 2005 - A Photo Essay

Sunday, April 24, 2005, Idlewild Park, Reno, Nevada

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A PHOTO ESSAY



Reno Earth Day Poster



Reno Earth Day Banner



Bear League



Listening To The Blues Band



Dr. Earth



Everything Begins With Mining



Spring Is Here



The Air That We Breathe



Making Decorative Cement Stepping-Stones



Star Seeds Play Cottage



Long May They Live



Stop Bitching



Full Circle Compost



Please Leave With As Many Kids As You Came With



Nevada Is Not A Wasteland

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Friday, September 19, 2003 - by riverbend

in keeping with my belief that we need to be more aware of what it is like to live on a day-to-day basis in countries other than the u.s., i am re-printing riverbend's september 19, 2003, entry in its entirety...

(to visit riverbend's blog, baghdad burning, click the title above)

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Terrorists...

The weather has 'broken' these last few days. It's still intolerably hot, but there's a wind. It's a heavy, dusty wind more reminiscent of a gust from a blow-dryer than an actual breeze. But it is none-the-less a wind, and we are properly grateful.

The electrical situation is bizarre. For every 6 hours of electricity, three hours of darkness. I wish they would give us electricity all night and cut it off during the day. During the day it's hotter, but at least you can keep busy with something like housework or a book. At night the darkness brings along all the fears, the doubts and… the mosquitoes. All the sounds are amplified. It's strange how when you can see, you can't hear so many things… or maybe you just stop listening.

Everyone is worried about raids lately. We hear about them from friends and relatives, we watch them on tv, outraged, and try to guess where the next set of raids are going to occur.

Anything can happen. Some raids are no more than seemingly standard weapons checks. Three or four troops knock on the door and march in. One of them keeps an eye of the 'family' while the rest take a look around the house. They check bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms and gardens. They look under beds, behind curtains, inside closets and cupboards. All you have to do is stifle your feelings of humiliation, anger and resentment at having foreign troops from an occupying army search your home.

Some raids are, quite simply, raids. The door is broken down in the middle of the night, troops swarm in by the dozens. Families are marched outside, hands behind their backs and bags upon their heads. Fathers and sons are pushed down on to the ground, a booted foot on their head or back.

Other raids go horribly wrong. We constantly hear about families who are raided in the small hours of the morning. The father, or son, picks up a weapon- thinking they are being attacked by looters- and all hell breaks loose. Family members are shot, others are detained and often women and children are left behind wailing.

I first witnessed a raid back in May. The heat was just starting to become unbearable and we were spending the whole night without electricity. I remember lying in my bed, falling in and out of a light sleep. We still weren't sleeping on the roof because the whole night you could hear gunshots and machinegun fire not very far away- the looters still hadn't organized themselves into gangs and mafias.

At around 3 am, I distinctly heard the sound of helicopters hovering not far above the area. I ran out of the room and into the kitchen and found E. pressing his face to the kitchen window, trying to get a glimpse of the black sky.

"What's going on?!" I asked, running to stand next to him.
"I don't know… a raid? But it's not an ordinary raid… there are helicopters and cars, I think…"

I stopped focusing on the helicopters long enough to listen to the cars. No, not cars- big, heavy vehicles that made a humming, whining sound. E. and I looked at one another, speechless- tanks?! E. turned on his heel and ran upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. I followed him clumsily, feeling for the banister all the way up, my mind a jumble of thoughts and conjectures.

Out on the roof, the sky was black streaked with light. Helicopters were hovering above, circling the area. E. was leaning over the railing, trying to see into the street below. I approached tentatively and he turned back to me, "It's a raid… on Abu A.'s house!" He pointed three houses down the road.

Abu A. was an old, respected army general who had retired in the mid '80s. He lived a quiet life in his two-storey house on our street. All I knew about him was that he had four kids- two daughters and two sons. The daughters were both married. One of them was living in London with her husband and the other one was somewhere in Baghdad. The one in Baghdad had a 3-year-old son we'll call L. I know this because, without fail, ever since L. was six months old, Abu A. would proudly parade him up and down our street in a blue and white striped stroller.

It was a scene I came to expect every Friday evening: the tall, worn, old man pushing the small blue stroller holding the round, pink, drooling L.

I had never talked to Abu A. until last year. I was watering the little patch of grass in front of the wall around our garden and trying not to stare at the tall old man walking alongside the tottering toddler. Everything my mother had taught me about how impolite it was to ogle people ran around in my brain. I turned my back to the twosome as they came down the street and casually drowned the flowers growing on the edge of the plot of grass.

Suddenly, a voice asked, "Can we wash ourselves?" I turned around, stupefied. Abu A. and L. stood there, smeared with enough chocolate to qualify for a detergent commercial. I handed over the hose, almost drenching them in the process, and watched as the old man washed L.'s sticky, little fingers and wiped clean the pursed lips while saying, "His mother can't see him like this!"

And after handing back the hose, they were off on their way, once again… I watched them go down the remainder of the street to Abu A.'s home- stopping every few steps so L. could look down at some insect that had caught his attention.

That was last year… or maybe 9 months ago… or maybe a 100 years ago. Tonight, the armored cars were pulling up to Abu A.'s house, the helicopters were circling above, and the whole area was suddenly a mess of noise and lights.

E. and I went back downstairs. My mother stood anxiously by the open kitchen door, looking out at my father who was standing at the gate. E. and I ran outside to join him and watch the scene unfolding only 3 houses away. There was shouting and screaming- the deep, angry tones of the troops mixed with the shriller voices of the family and neighbors- the whole symphony boding of calamity and fear.

"What are they doing? Who are they taking?!" I asked no one in particular, gripping the warm, iron gate and searching the street for some clue. The area was awash with the glaring white of headlights and spotlights and dozens of troops stood in front of the house, weapons pointed- tense and ready. It wasn't long before they started coming out: first it was his son, the 20-year-old translation student. His hands were behind his back and he was gripped by two troops, one on either side. His head kept twisting back anxiously as they marched him out of the house, barefoot. Next, Umm A., Abu A.'s wife, was brought out, sobbing, begging them not to hurt anyone, pleading for an answer… I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I saw her looking left and right in confusion and I said the words instead of her, "What's going on? Why are they doing this?! Who are they here for?"

Abu A. was out next. He stood tall and erect, looking around him in anger. His voice resonated in the street, above all the other sounds. He was barking out questions- demanding answers from the troops, and the bystanders. His oldest son A. followed behind with some more escorts. The last family member out of the house was Reem, A.'s wife of only 4 months. She was being led firmly out into the street by two troops, one gripping each thin arm.

I'll never forget that scene. She stood, 22 years old, shivering in the warm, black night. The sleeveless nightgown that hung just below her knees exposed trembling limbs- you got the sense that the troops were holding her by the arms because if they let go for just a moment, she would fall senseless to the ground. I couldn't see her face because her head was bent and her hair fell down around it. It was the first time I had seen her hair… under normal circumstances, she wore a hijab.

That moment I wanted to cry… to scream… to throw something at the chaos down the street. I could feel Reem's humiliation as she stood there, head hanging with shame- exposed to the world, in the middle of the night.

One of the neighbors, closer to the scene, moved forward timidly and tried to communicate with one of the soldiers. The soldier immediately pointed his gun at the man and yelled at him to keep back. The man held up an 'abaya', a black cloak-like garment some females choose to wear, and pointed at the shivering girl. The soldier nodded curtly and told him to, "Move back!". "Please," came the tentative reply, "Cover her…" He gently put the abaya on the ground and went back to stand at his gate. The soldier looking unsure, walked over, picked it up and awkwardly put it on the girl's shoulders.

I gripped at the gate as my knees weakened, crying… trying to make sense of the mess. I could see many of the neighbors, standing around, looking on in dismay. Abu A.'s neighbor, Abu Ali, was trying to communicate with one of the troops. He was waving his arm at Umm A. and Reem, and pointing to his own house, obviously trying to allow them to take the women inside his home. The troop waved over another soldier who, apparently, was a translator. During raids, a translator hovers in the background inconspicuously- they don't bring him forward right away to communicate with terrified people because they are hoping someone will accidentally say something vital, in Arabic, thinking the troops won't understand, like, "Honey, did you bury the nuclear bomb in the garden like I told you?!"

Finally, Umm A. and Reem were allowed inside of Abu Ali's house, escorted by troops. Reem walked automatically, as if dazed, while Umm A. was hectic. She stood her ground, begging to know what was going to happen… wondering where they were taking her husband and boys… Abu Ali urged her inside.

The house was ransacked… searched thoroughly for no one knows what- vases were broken, tables overturned, clothes emptied from closets…

By 6 am the last cars had pulled out. The area was once more calm and quiet. I didn't sleep that night, that day or the night after. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Abu A. and his grandson L. and Reem… I saw Umm A., crying with terror, begging for an explanation.

Abu A. hasn't come back yet. The Red Cross facilitates communication between him and his family… L. no longer walks down our street on Fridays, covered in chocolate, and I'm wondering how old he will be before he ever sees his grandfather again…

[Permalink]

Recalling Vietnam - by profmarcus

For a few short years, several lifetimes ago, I wore a uniform.

(more)

PLEIKU

The Axe Falls

Shortly after the first of the year, 1968, the axe fell. Hard on the heels of my 1-A draft status came a notice to report for a physical. I wasn't drafted yet but the hounds were sniffing at the door. Being as how, at the time, they were drafting for the Marines and, being as how there was absolutely no way in HELL that I was going to be a Marine, I took myself down to the friendly Army recruiter to see about enlistment. Since I had been working part-time as a radio announcer and tv cameraman, I had this wonderful mental picture of information specialist school at Ft. Benjamin Harrison followed by a fabulous career on Armed Forces Radio. HA! I was not the only one with that idea, it seemed. The best I could hope for, I was told, was clerk school. "Oh, well," I thought. "At least I'll learn to type."

Basic

In early March I kissed my mother good bye, got on the bus to Denver where I was sworn in, spent the night at a cheap hotel on the Army’s nickel, and flew off the next day to Army basic training in Texas. Eight weeks of what was, for me, total hell followed. The training regimen and barracks life were twin nightmares. I had never been in the best of physical shape so, besides very real physical pain, I also had to endure outright humiliation like the time I was dragged along between two lieutenants on the mile desert run. Or the night I instantly jumped up from a dead sleep about two a.m. blinded by the pain of a cramp in my calf. Severely slamming my head on the upper bunk in the process, I then proceeded to jump madly around on one foot, all the while trying to pound out the cramp and shrink from the snickers of those I had awakened.


Basic training field site

As if that wasn't enough, the constant verbal abuse from the drill sergeants pushed me to the edge of desperation. I needed to get OUT and fast. Maybe others could shrug it off but I was dying inside. I went to see my company commander and told him I was gay. To this day, I haven't the slightest idea what possessed me to say that. If I had said I was contemplating suicide, I would have very likely been home within days. I certainly can't claim I was thinking clearly. I just wanted a ticket outta there. I detonated my little bomb with the Company Commander, a captain no more than three years my senior, after telling the Drill Sergeant that what I needed to tell the Captain was "too private" and "too embarrassing" to share with him first. Within what must have been record time, I found myself in the waiting room of the Mental Hygiene clinic. (Leave it to the military to coin a term like "Mental Hygiene!") The therapist subjected me to what I later learned was the MMPI, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a pathology-focused assessment instrument, and a series of Rorschach ink blots. I have no idea what they found out nor do I have a clue about what they were looking for. All I knew was that, in an era long before “don’t ask, don’t tell,” I was whisked back to my company where, instead of cleaning latrines, I was assigned to read the newspaper every morning in the dayroom, cut out articles I found interesting and post them on the bulletin board. With the speed of the jungle telegraph, I became the most envied man in the company. Yeah, Ok, I lied. And since I had told them I was aroused by watching the other guys shower, they must have figured out that this would keep me out of harm’s way. What tangled webs we weave!

A major realization dawned during those sand-blasted eight weeks, so major that it forever changed the essence of my world view. The entire purpose of military basic training is to remove everything that marks you as an individual, to break you down and then build you back up as a "soldier," someone who will take an order and say, "Sir, yes, SIR!" Your hair gets cut off, your clothes are taken away, the uniforms all look the same, you can't wear anything that isn't "authorized," you all eat the same food in the same place at the same time, you all sleep next to each other in rows of identical bunks, you all speak the same lingo, you all shit and shower together, you all follow the same rules, you all complain about the same things. There's only one way to tell people apart and that is to pay attention to what's coming from the inside - how they talk, how they think, what they say, what they laugh at, what pisses 'em off, what they get passionate about, what they regard as fun, how they treat other people. Up to that point, I had, without thinking, made most of my judgements of those around me based on externals. In basic training, that was no longer possible. The "externals" were gone. I had to find another way.

Advanced

Clerk school in Arizona followed. I had made a few good friends in basic, hippie wannabes, and it was with them that I was introduced to getting high. Since the base was only a stone’s throw from Mexico and with weekends free, two months of training drifted by in a cannabis haze. Flirting with severe punishment for AWOL, I even flew home for a weekend. Most distressingly, however, my friends were all national guardsmen. I had no doubt been attracted to them because, among the other recruits, they were clearly the more intelligent ones. They were getting their training before heading back to school, jobs and normal lives. They knew that, when the training was through, they were going home and I wasn't. They felt bad for me, sure, but... I was terrified that Vietnam was going to be my next stop. The suspense was unbearable. Three weeks of school left, two weeks, one week. When the orders finally came down, my friends looked at me like I had just received a death sentence. "At least I'm not in the infantry," I consoled myself.


Arizona sunrise, advanced training

On the Way

The events surrounding my departure for Vietnam are as clear to me now, thirty-seven years later, as though they happened yesterday. As with most memories, they seem to come bunched in little packets, miniature vignettes that somehow capture the essence of the moment.

• My mother and brother drove me to the Denver airport. I was excited because I was going to be flying on a TWA Boeing 707, the flagship of the new jet age. I was even more excited because it was coming from Zurich via Washington D.C. and on to San Francisco. I was going to be flying on an international airline onboard a plane that had just flown across the Atlantic Ocean!

• My good friend, Bruce, met me in San Francisco. We had decided we would spend a few days together before I took off to that dark place where people were dying. We ate, drank, and laughed. It was especially poignant when we said our goodbyes as he dropped me off at the Oakland Army Base.

• The Oakland Army Base was little more than a giant warehouse where wet-behind-the-ears army boys, fresh from hugging their mothers and kissing their girlfriends, were stacked, awaiting the call to the bus that would take them to Travis Air Force Base and the flight to Vietnam. I located a friend from advanced training and, true to form, we somehow managed to collect enough dope to smoke a giant number rolled in toilet paper. From this drug-addled, surreal view of our surroundings, the following image was burned into my brain: two friends, sitting side-by-side on a bunk, one reading Bible verses to the other in an attempt to ease the fear of what was to come.

• It was almost midnight when my group was called for the bus. Tired, tense, frightened, wired, and still high, I remember running across the tarmac at Travis at 2 a.m. under the moon and stars with a warm wind blowing, yelling and whooping, racing for the stairs of an Evergreen DC-8 that would take us to our fate. The plane was minus a first class section; only open seating, six across from front to back. Ironically, I noted that officers and senior enlisted men were already on board, seated up front. They could have been creatures from another planet as far as I was concerned. I dashed for and got a window seat.

• After re-fueling stops in Anchorage and Yokota Air Base, Japan, each equally and enticingly foreign in its own way, we crossed the coast of Vietnam in late afternoon. Everyone was jockeying for a view out the window. There it was, strange, mysterious, deadly, the stuff of Time Magazine and the evening news. What would befall me there? The plane descended from cruising altitude in steep circles that we speculated made it less of a target for anti-aircraft fire. Oh my god, I thought. I am landing in Vietnam!

Long Binh

Long Binh Army Depot was the major Vietnam arrival and departure point for Army personnel and supplies. I was completely unprepared for what met me there. I had fully expected to step off the plane and into knee-high mud where I would remain for twelve months. Imagine my surprise when I found myself in an honest-to-god city, replete with gift shops, snack bars, American television and radio programs, post offices, even laundries. Sure, you walked around on pallets of wood scrounged from under shipping containers to stay out of the mud and, sure, you stayed in barracks that had canvas walls instead of stucco and drywall and, sure, there were new and distinctly different smells and, sure, once in a while, off in the distance you could hear the sound of artillery fire and, sure, choppers shuttled back and forth overhead and, sure, at night you could watch flares dropping and, sure, everyone was wearing jungle fatigues. But it was still a far cry from what I had been led to believe. It was positively civilized!


Long Binh

The shit-burning detail was no doubt contrived to dispel any illusions new arrivals might have about finding themselves in “civilization.” The non-coms in charge took great delight in picking the newest of the new and informing them exactly how they would be passing the time while waiting to be assigned to a unit. They described it as a rite of passage and I suppose it was. I did not escape. My first morning in Vietnam was spent going from outhouse to outhouse, raising the hinged, wooden flap on the rear, dragging out a sawed-in-half fifty gallon drum full of human waste, pouring gasoline into it, and setting it on fire. When it had burned down to cinders, I carefully replaced each drum back under its cargo chute ready for another day’s business. The plumes of greasy, black smoke that rose each morning above every U.S. camp became the routine signs of another day in progress. Since I had no idea how long I was going to be at Long Binh, as soon as I had finished that morning’s job, I set off in search of something to take its place. The second morning in Vietnam, I handed out clean sheets from the supply room, a job considerably more to my liking.

After breakfast and the usual morning details of sweeping the barracks, burning shit, handing out sheets, picking up cigarette butts, etc., all new arrivals had to stand in formation for roll call followed by the reading of assignments. We all listened intently as foreboding names like 101st Airborne, 1st Infantry Division, 1st Air Cavalry, and 4th Signal Group were read off and sighed with deep relief when our names were not mentioned.

One morning, about the third day, my name came up. I was to be assigned to the 4th PO Group. What in the hell was the 4th PO Group? Post Office was all that came to mind. We were directed to a deuce-and-a-half (Army lingo for a 2 ½ ton truck) for transfer to our unit. As we climbed aboard and settled into the plank seats in the open rear, we discovered we were now members of something called the 4th Psychological Operations Group. How exotic! But my idea of exotic would quickly be stretched beyond anything I could have ever imagined. It started immediately on the drive down the Long Binh highway to Saigon. With one hand on the horn, the other banging loudly on the outside of the door, foot firmly pressing the accelerator to the floor, voice yelling hoarsely, “Get out of the way, you fucking gooks,” and the vehicle seemingly steering itself, our driver easily took us beyond the thrills of any amusement park ride, all the while forcing wide-eyed Vietnamese on foot, bicycle, and motor scooter to leap for the ditches on the side of the road. As if this wasn’t enough, I then came face-to-face with Saigon.


Deuce and a half

Saigon

There are no words to describe my first impression of that city: the sights, the sounds, the people, and, oh yes, the smells. I used to tell friends in a feeble attempt to portray the flat-out assault on my senses, “All my meters redlined at once.” Thirty-seven years later, that is still the most apt description I can think of. At a stroke, my entrance into Saigon was the most foreign, overwhelming, intense experience I had ever had. If someone had taken a picture of me then, I am sure it would have shown a bewildered, gaunt (during the rigors of basic training, I had lost considerable weight), white boy, wearing glasses and jungle fatigues (still showing the creases of first wear), his jaw dropped, his eyes as big as dinner plates, nostrils flared, clearly and completely stunned at the chaos taking place around him.


Saigon 1968

A few days later, my level of astonishment reached new heights as I stood at a window in the 4th Psyop Group and watched the comings and goings at a community water tap out on the street. It was mostly women and children, hauling buckets of water back to their homes, doing laundry and dishes, bathing, and washing and preparing food. A woman with a green plastic tub filled with what looked like a large, round, long, pink chunk of meat spilling out over each side arrived at the tap and began carefully washing what was obviously going to be dinner. I watched with some fascination until it slowly dawned on me what I was witnessing. The big, pink piece of meat, the size of a small dog, was nothing other than a skinned rat. Leaping ahead more than three decades in slang and behind three decades in cinema, how fitting it would have been to say, “We certainly aren’t in Kansas any more, Toto!”

My hopes of remaining in Saigon were dashed when I received orders for the 8th Psychological Operations Battalion in Nha Trang. It didn’t matter that Nha Trang was supposed to have a nice beach and to be about as close to a resort area as Vietnam offered. It was “up-country,” a term I quickly learned meant everywhere north of Saigon. The sub-text of course was that Nha Trang was dangerous and could possibly be detrimental to one’s health.


Nha Trang Beach 1968

Nha Trang

Three days of surf, sand, and sun on the South China Sea in Nha Trang, punctuated by touristy strolls around town and souvenir shopping at the PX came to a screeching halt when I found I was to be further assigned to (spoken in a hushed, sympathetic tone), Company B, in (uttered with a quiet gasp in a nearly inaudible voice) Pleiku. Ok, Nha Trang wasn’t entirely paradise. On one of my beach days while advancing my sun exposure from a mere 3rd to a more respectable 2nd degree burn, I narrowly missed being hit by an enemy mortar that landed not more than 100 yards from my beach towel. I took my cue from the other sunbathers and raced to the bunker. No one seemed particularly traumatized and less than twenty minutes later, we were all back on our towels in wartime homage to George Hamilton.


Nha Trang Cathedral

I first met Peter in Nha Trang. Peter was intelligent, funny, loaded with charm and good manners, easy to talk to, interested in me, and a great conversationalist. We hit it off from the start. I was amazed when he told me his job. His entire work in Vietnam consisted of traveling around II Corps (the area consisting of Nha Trang, Pleiku, and the bulk of the Central Highlands), showing Walt Disney movies translated into Vietnamese to children in orphanages. He would usually spend a week or so in each place and since the actual work took up little time, he spent the majority of it doing whatever he wanted. Could this be for real? Had I permanently entered the realm of the absurd? Evidently so. As anyone who has been in the military can attest, even the most seemingly far-fetched accounts like Catch-22 and M.A.S.H. often don’t come close to capturing the bizarre reality. As it happened, Peter was a regular visitor to Pleiku and always stayed in the Psyop barracks. He calmed my jitters with stories of the MACV pool and the nearby steam bath. Knowing I would be seeing him there gave me something to look forward to and I left Nha Trang a bit lighter in spirit.


Camp Schmidt, Pleiku and Bien Ho Lake

Welcome to Pleiku

The rain was steady, not heavy, but not a drizzle either. The clouds were low and dark. Moisture hung in the air like a living thing. You could almost hear mold and fungus growing and the smell was thick and fetid. It was getting on toward dusk and I was putting things into my locker after eating a tasteless dinner at a drab little mess hall. I was feeling a million miles away from anything warm and familiar and the weight of the year to come hung on my shoulders. My barracks-mates, still strangers, trooped silently back from dinner and sat glumly on their bunks. Daylight faded but no one made a move to turn on the lights. There were occasional whispers of conversation up and down the row but they slowly drifted away until, except for the constant grumble of the electrical generator across the street, the silence became complete. I sat on my bunk too, watching the others look at their feet with empty gazes. “Hmmm,” I muttered to myself. “This is gonna be worse than I thought.” Suddenly a yell: “THERE GOES ONE!” followed by a loud thud. “YEAH, I SAW THE LITTLE BASTARD!” erupted from elsewhere followed by another thud. The after-dinner ritual, as I discovered, was to sit quietly until complete darkness took hold, wait for the rats to come out, and then try to bash them with 2x4’s as they ran by.

With the rat-bashing portion of the evening’s agenda complete, the lights came on, all types of music began to blare, beer, soda, and hard liquor appeared, care packages and snacks were opened and shared, the dopers adjourned to the back porch, and the pleasant sound of laughter rang out. Welcome to Company B! Never were the words of my deceased hero, Hunter Thompson, more fitting: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”


Camp Schmidt, Pleiku (view from guard tower)

Psyops

Yes, weird is one word that described Company B, if not the whole of Psyops, quite well. If I was talking to what my Grandma would call “polite society,” I might say eclectic. Other terms that spring to mind are: assortment, diverse, odd, mixed-up, cut and paste, mis-matched, unique, unusual, distinctive, and just plain peculiar. What else could you call a group of people culled from the entire spectrum of social classes, professions, income levels, and ethnicities who had backgrounds or training in: gathering military intelligence; translating English into not only Vietnamese but also multiple indigenous Central Highlands languages and dialects; designing graphic products for printing, writing copy according to rigid propaganda guidelines; creating and producing radio programming and operating and maintaining a radio station; creating huge varieties of leaflets and brochures and the occasional magazine; operating and maintaining printing presses and equipment; creating flight plans for optimal aerial distribution of leaflets; creating and implementing civic assistance efforts for local villages; training local Vietnamese and Montagnards on civic leadership; building awareness in local Vietnamese and Montagnards of personal health and safety issues; promoting and running a Viet Cong defection program; maintaining an inventory and logistics system for propaganda materials; and a host of other odd little specialties that comprised the strange world of psychological operations? Fortunately, most of them liked to party. There were those who drank, there were those who smoked (dope and/or cigarettes), there were those who drank AND smoked, there were those who whored, there were those who drank AND whored, there were those who drank, smoked, AND whored, and, of course, there was always the odd vice, fetish, or addiction that would jump out of the woodwork from time to time.


Downtown Pleiku

Watching the War

Cookouts at the company area were popular. There was never a shortage of good steaks, chicken, and ribs taken in trade from some mess hall sergeant for our “scrounge du jour.” Beer, hard booze, soda, and cigarettes were cheap and plentiful. The dope was cheap and outstanding. At night, the dopers (I joined their ranks almost right away) would gather on the upper stair landing of the second floor of the barracks, fondly known as the back porch, to get stoned and “watch the war.” For musical background, we had the cacophony of the night insects which, amplified by a nice high, became almost deafening. Our insect orchestra was augmented at regular intervals by the booming of out-going shells fired from Artillery Hill. The light show was provided by flares and tracer rounds. Since special entertainment, by its nature, was never announced in advance, when B-52’s began carpet-bombing on the other side of ridges 30-40 klicks away, the constant muted pounding of the explosions and the faint, ghostly yellow flashes were a source of many “oooh’s” and “ahhhh’s.” Equally impressive and almost hypnotic to watch was the display put on by the so-called “Spooky” gunship. Spooky was a converted two-engine military prop plane with silenced engines and blacked-out running lights, designed to fly over suspected enemy positions without attracting attention. It fired a mini-gun at several thousand rounds a minute. Since every 5th shell was a tracer, the effect was to produce a bright red, laser-like pencil of light that appeared from an inky black sky as if by magic. The pencil would swing this way and that, bathing its target in bullets, all the while emitting a hair-raising “brrrrrrrrrrrap” noise. The Spooky was my personal favorite.


B-52 on a carpet-bombing mission

When we tired of the live entertainment, we would gather at Ted’s bunk and “plug in,” headphones and plenty of grass for all. With Ted as DJ, there was no lack of interesting music. Thanks to Ted and Pleiku, I was exposed for the first time to many of the legends and greats of that era. The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Santana, Judy Collins, Wes Montgomery, Bob Dylan, Jethro Tull, and the Beatles were all staples. Within a week after the Beatles White Album was released, Ted had the full album on tape in his hands as recorded by a friend off of a radio station in Honolulu that had premiered it without interruption. As one of those odd bits of trivia that never seem to float down the mental drain, I remember the station’s ID tag as it was intoned with gravitas by a deep-voiced announcer – “Heavy [slight pause] in Hawaii.”


Pleiku "suburbs"

Work?

My initial job in the company was Operations Clerk. The job description was simple and straightforward: drink coffee; smoke cigarettes; other duties as required. Since there were rarely other duties, I started off my Vietnam tour sitting on my ass most of the day interrupted only by a lengthy noontime break. Lunch usually meant swimming and sun at the MACV pool, zoning out in the steam bath, and burgers at the grill. Peter would materialize every few weeks and hang around for as long as he thought he could push it. The nights were a fine, fuzzy haze of music, “watching the war,” and devouring care packages. Oh, yes, the sirens would regularly announce potential incoming fire IF we were lucky enough to get advance warning. We’d don helmets and flak jackets, often over bare chests and underwear, and stroll out to the bunker in flip-flops, grumbling at being taken away from whatever vice we had been pursuing and wondering how long it was gonna be this time. When a nearby explosion constituted the “warning,” the scene changed only in that the stroll quickened to a brisk jog. I got to be so good at differentiating incoming and outgoing fire that I would awaken instantly from the deepest of sleep at the sound of a Viet Cong mortar being fired 10 klicks away. But, besides occasional guard duty, life was good.


MACV pool

Guard Duty

Guard duty. Arrrrrgh! Picture this: beams of wood, treated with creosote, form the framework of a large cube. Thick plywood is laid across the beams as a makeshift roof. Sandbags are piled at least two deep all around and more on top. There is a narrow entrance. Small rectangles on each side serve as ports for viewing - or shooting. The burlap of the sandbags quickly mildews and rots in the high humidity. Many have split open and are spilling out their contents. The stench is not pleasant. Mingling with the smell of rotten fabric are the smells of rodent excrement and, wafting up from where guards relieve themselves night after night, stale urine. There are two or three unbelievably dirty GI-issue sleeping bags on top. They exude their own strong odor, a thick, muddy, locker-room musk. The bags are there to help stave off the chill that descends on Vietnam’s Central Highlands at night. Two guards are posted on top of each bunker from dusk to dawn. The bunkers aren’t the only guard posts. If the bunkers are Motel 6, the guard towers are the Ritz-Carlton. They have wood floors, chest-high corrugated tin walls and roofs, are high above the smells and vermin, and, compared to the bunkers, offer a night of relative luxury.


Bunker guard post on the perimeter, Camp Schmidt

Psyops is attached to the 45th General Support Group for food and shelter. Since the 45th has first claim, Psyops rarely draws a tower post. When they do, the two Psyops men assigned for that night congratulate themselves on the smile of Lady Luck. The two guards at each post take turns, one sleeping while the other keeps watch, on a schedule negotiated by the guards themselves. Sometimes money changes hands. (“Money” is somewhat of a misnomer. Legal tender consisted of military-issue scrip in the same denominations as U.S. dollars with the exception that paper replaced coins and there were no pennies.) The Sergeant of the Guard makes his rounds every few hours, checking each bunker and tower along the perimeter. A guard at each post must challenge the approaching Sergeant with the traditional, “Who goes there?” and the Sergeant responds with the night’s password. Memories fail and prompting occurs. Both guards sleeping at the same time is not unusual and, if the Sergeant’s preceding checkpoint has not already alerted the sleeping pair by field phone, the Sergeant usually makes enough noise not to be missed.


View of perimeter from guard tower (2 guard bunkers and another guard tower visible in a row starting from left center toward top of picture)

Work!

Two months had passed when the Company Clerk, never a paragon of serenity under the best of circumstances, suffered a sudden late morning melt-down. With arms waving, tears flowing, and babbling incoherently about morning reports, guard-duty rosters, and rush memos, he demanded a transfer to the Radio Team where, he hoped, chaos could be held at bay and life might resume a semblance of order. First Sergeant E-7 Schneider, a hard-drinking, buzz-cut character right out of Popeye and no fan of men crying, promptly granted the reassignment. He then marched to the Operations office where I was pouring another cup of coffee and announced in a no-nonsense tone, “Come with me. You’re the new Company Clerk.” Say goodbye to the Life of Riley and hello to Radar O’Reilly.

My time with Sergeant Schneider was mercifully brief. His tour was nearly up anyway but the night he showed up at our barracks drunk on his ass, picked a fight, and got the ever-loving shit beat out of him I’m sure speeded things up a bit. His replacement, First Sergeant Shigato Tokifuji, a short, wizened Japanese who positively radiated warmth and a Zen sense of well-being, was just the ticket.

All my mornings started the same. No matter how incredibly stoned I had been the night before, I always jumped on the truck with everyone else and arrived at my desk at 8:30. I would arrange my day’s work in a large pile and, before settling down in front of the “beast” (an Underwood manual), would enjoy a cup of coffee that Toki had thoughtfully made while I was shuffling paper. I often joked that pounding on that damn machine put me in the best shape I had been in since basic training. All day - pound, pound, pound. Every so often, Toki, bless his heart, would look at me across his desk, clear his throat to get my attention, and declare softly, “Stop! You’re working too hard. Here, have one of mine.” He would then shove his pack of cigarettes across the desk and rise to refill my coffee cup. What a guy!

Did I mention that the Company Clerk was exempt from guard duty? I was not only exempt, I drew up the guard duty roster. Gradually, I probed the dimensions of my power and, as in the comics, determined I would use it only for good. The mere act of slowing down on paperwork could mean a delay of orders being cut for someone’s R & R and, of course, the reverse was also true. A phone call to Nha Trang could speedily reward a good attitude with an expedited departure that very afternoon followed by a joyful family reunion in Hawaii the next day. I made it clear that I would not tolerate rudeness or verbal abuse and, given the severity of potential consequences, courtesy generally reigned. Once in a while, some hothead would try to pull the intimidation trick, yelling about writing a Congressman, or, in one instance, making a not-so-veiled threat to kick my ass. It was then that Toki, the Zen master, would beatifically take charge and harmony would reign once more.


Artillery Hill (view from Camp Schmidt)

Donnie Dasher

How to describe Donnie Dasher? You could tell when Dasher was around because there was always somebody nearby smacking his forehead and exclaiming, “I can’t BELIEVE you just did that!” Dasher’s combination of low intelligence, outrageous behavior, and goofy, aw-shucks, ear-to-ear grin made it almost impossible to get mad at the guy but you had to wonder sometimes how he had managed to live as long as he had. Peanuts floating in a beer mug full of whisky? Donnie Dasher. A strain of venereal disease penicillin wouldn’t touch? Donnie Dasher. Putting a rhinoceros beetle on the toilet seat of the shitter at night? Donnie Dasher. I was sitting on my bunk one evening after returning from the regular evening session on the back porch, writing a couple of letters before turning in when I heard the telltale “phooomp.” “This is gonna be a close one,” I thought. An eternal split second of silence followed by a sound eerily akin to bacon sizzling preceded a gigantic explosion. My room was on the second floor street-side of the barracks and, from the shrapnel pattering against the outside of the wall, I knew it was more than just close. Without thinking, I dropped to the floor and began crawling out the door on my hands and knees, joining my fellow human cockroaches swarming down the hall, out the door, down the stairs, and around the corner to the bunker. “Jesus Christ!” “That was mother-fucking CLOSE!” “It was right across the street!” “God DAMN!” “What did it hit?” “I don’t know!” “Shit!” “It was right next to the shitter!” “Holy shit!” “Are we all here?” “Who are we missing?” “Fuck, where’s Dasher?” “He went across the street to the shitter!” “He was in the SHITTER?” “Anybody looking for ME?” Dasher said, laughing as he poked his head in the door of the bunker. “God DAMN! Are you ok?” “You fucker! Were you in the shitter when it hit?” “Sure was,” he chuckled. “Came flyin’ out that door with shit hangin’ off my ass too!” I can still see him standing there, silhouetted in the door, shit-eating grin and all, basking in the attention, regaling the guys with the whole story, and not a detail left to the imagination.

Dropping Leaflets

I got wasted on grass pretty much every night for eight months and there were few things that broke the routine. One of them was earning enough hours flying leaflet-drop missions to get my aircraft crewman’s wings. The missions were flown by the Air Force and covered specific patterns over specific targets. The type of leaflet depended on the type of target. “Friendly” villages might receive innocuous information on how to treat water to make it safe to drink or announcements of upcoming Civic Action Team visits. Suspected Viet Cong positions received endless deliveries of the famous “Chieu Hoi” or, as we liked to call them, the “Give Up You Fucking Bastards or We’ll Bomb the Shit Out of You” leaflets. These were literally “free passes” encouraging defection to the South and listing instructions about how and where. Wags in the company insisted that, outside the perimeters of firebases that had been experiencing heavy attacks, the Viet Cong no longer walked on the actual ground but instead trod on a deep carpet of leaflets.


Chieu Hoi leaflet (front)


Chieu Hoi leaflet (back)

With my limited experience and lack of actual crewman training, the aircraft I drew was the O2B, the military version of the civilian Cessna wing-over fuselage SuperSkymaster model, characterized by twin engines in a fore and aft, push-pull configuration. Besides the chute for dropping leaflets, strategically placed in front of the crewman’s seat where the suction could quickly yank stacks of leaflets out of the airplane (also well-placed for disposing of the results of airsickness), the aircraft was also equipped with a tape player (yes, reel-to-reel) and a loudspeaker for broadcasting propaganda messages. The pilot was usually a field grade, desk jockey, Air Force officer, getting in his flying hours.


02B

Depending on the mood of the particular pilot, sightseeing tours before, during or after the actual drops or even landing at other airbases like Ban Me Thuot or Kontum for snacks and refreshments might be included in the itinerary. One day as we were barely skimming a dense jungle canopy, in a moment of heart-stopping beauty, the trees suddenly gave way to a huge, grass-covered clearing where a herd of elephants broke and ran for the trees. On Christmas Eve 1968, we toured firebases in the Central Highlands, dropping Christmas card leaflets and playing Christmas music.


Firebase, Central Highlands

The guys ran out of the bunkers that served as their barracks, their bare arms, faces, chests, fatigues and boots the color of the raw and muddy dirt under their feet, waving and yelling, a few in red Santa hats. Merry Christmas everybody! I was headed back to a hot meal after which I would get high and eventually crawl into my cozy bunk where I would tuck the mosquito netting in tight to keep out the rats that occasionally fell from the rafters and drift off to sleep, hoping not to be disturbed by an alert.

Molina

There were a number of guys assigned to Company B we rarely saw. They worked on field teams that covered a large slice of the Central Highlands and they came into Pleiku only occasionally for admin reasons, to rest up for a few days, or to head to or from R & R. Some were assigned to firebases where they would broadcast propaganda by loudspeaker to unseen Vietcong in the jungle outside of the firebase perimeter or when they accompanied armed jungle patrols outside the perimeter. Others worked out of AV trucks that served the dual purpose of mobile Psyop operation and sleeping quarters. Hunting for something different to do one day, I volunteered to drive one of the field team members back to his assigned firebase, Dak To. I picked out one of the better three-quarter ton trucks, dusted off my helmet and flak jacket, scraped the mold off of my rifle, packed some snacks, and headed out. We were supposed to connect with a convoy leaving from Pleiku headed to Kontum and then on to Dak To but we missed its departure by about fifteen minutes. “No sweat,” said Molina, the field guy I was returning. “We can catch ‘em. I know the highway. We’ll haul ass.” Figuring Molina knew what he was talking about, we hit the road. Describing it as a “highway” was perhaps a tad generous. It was a wide, rutted, orange-brown slash of packed earth that, while it was obviously graded on a regular basis (the graders, to my astonishment, were left sitting, unmanned, along the side of the road), clearly showed the punishment it took from the trucks, tanks and other pieces of mobile equipment that passed up and down daily. All vegetation had been cleared up to a hundred yards on either side to prevent a possible ambush but, other than that, we were in the wide open spaces. Being the only vehicle in sight and feeling like we were nothing if not sitting ducks, I got really nervous really fast. Oddly, the cause for my anxiety was that I had suddenly remembered that we had no spare tire and, even if we had, no jack or tire iron to change it with. Molina, obviously immune to such trivial nonsense, rolled a joint, lit it, and took an enormous hit. “Hey, man,” he said, straining to talk while holding the smoke deep in his lungs. “Let’s enjoy the r-i-i-i-i-d-e!” He was right. I had soon forgotten about everything but the rush of the wind in my hair, the jungle flashing by on either side, the roar of the engine, and the thrill of piloting the truck over challenging terrain, not even minding that we didn’t manage to catch up with the convoy until Kontum.


Firebase, Central Highlands

I had driven to the company area to pick up outgoing mail and had come back to the barracks before heading to the post office. It was a Saturday and I was moving slow. I wandered around the barracks for a while, chatting with the guys, idly passing the time. I had stopped by my room for something or another when Molina, in from the firebase for a few days, stuck his head around the corner. Originally from Guatemala, Arturo Cesar Molina was short and wiry with a big shock of coal-black hair combed back from his forehead in a glistening wave. His fatigues, firebase dirt brown, were tailored and pegged in the non-regulation style that everyone knew meant, “I’m from the FIELD, mother-fucker, so don’t FUCK with me!” His dark, ever-present sunglasses conveyed yet another message: “I’m stoned.” “Wanna go smoke this number with me?” he leered, holding up a joint. “Sure,” I said. “Why not.” I didn’t know Molina very well but my impression of him was vivid. He seemed somehow to radiate evil, a palpable “badness.” Two puffs later, on the back porch, I found myself getting high with an astonishing rapidity, higher, in fact, than I had ever been before, scarily high, and it wasn’t slowing down. “Holy Christ!” I gasped as I turned to Molina. “What IS this shit?” “It’s an opium-dipped ‘j,’ m-a-a-n,” he said, laughing demonically. I was going up like I was strapped to a rocket. “You fucker,” I said. “I’m fucking WORKING! I can’t work like THIS!” “Sure you can, man. I do it A-A-L-L the time,” he said, tossing his head with crazed laughter. I stumbled out of the barracks to the truck. Somehow I managed to get it started and into gear. I was hallucinating badly. Negotiating the turn at the corner, I watched as my hands rotated the steering wheel to the left, became detached from my wrists and flew out the window. Faintly, the sound of the engine revving to dangerously high rpm’s penetrated my consciousness and I struggled to convince my foot to depress the clutch and and my hand to shift gear. As I stood in line at the post office with the other mail clerks, I was certain my eyes were melting and running down the front of my fatigue jacket. I pulled into the parking lot in front of my office in the company area, turned off the engine, and slumped over the wheel. Peter pulled the door open and helped me out. “What the hell happened to YOU?” he asked. “You look like hell.” “Somebody slipped me a Mickey,” I said. The hallucinating had stopped, thank god, only to be replaced by the mother of all headaches. Peter, bless his heart, finished up the mail chores for me and then took me over to the MACV pool where he pushed me in, clothes and all. After dragging me out, he led me like a little kid over to the steam bath where he helped me out of my clothes and proceeded to literally steam the shit out of me.

Perks of Power

Occasionally, brass would visit from Group headquarters in Saigon. They would typically arrive at Pleiku Air Base in the morning on the first flight and check in with me after being picked up and driven to the company area. More often than not, the first thing they did was inquire about any recent or expected attacks while they looked anxiously around, no doubt expecting a mortar to explode over their heads at any moment. If I had suddenly jumped up and screamed “BOOM!” at the top of my voice, I’m sure there would have been at least a few that would have gone into cardiac arrest. I was, however, regulation polite and deferential, standing and saluting, saying “Good morning, Sir, welcome to Company B,” blah, blah, etc. Ah, but power corrupts and, being a mere mortal, I couldn’t resist. The degree to which those courtesies were reciprocated, unbeknownst to the officer in question, would determine to a large extent the quality of said officer’s return trip because, you see, the second thing to issue from said officer’s mouth was most often a request for me to schedule his return flight for that very afternoon. God forbid they should have to spend a night in Pleiku. I had several options for arranging flights to Saigon, ranging from top end to what would have been known in an earlier era as steerage. Without a doubt, the prime choice was the Learjet courier that included cabin service and onboard refreshments. At the bottom of the heap was the milk run, a twin-engine C7A Caribou that lurched and swayed its way through six stops, turning the Learjet’s 45-minute run into a ghastly three hours and a half. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I meted out reward and punishment with the aplomb of a Roman emperor and the poor bastards never knew what hit ‘em.


C7A Caribou

R & R

I spent my R & R in Hawaii. I had any number of choices ranging from Bangkok to Sydney to Singapore to Hong Kong to Taipei. But, again, being the good boy, I paid for my mother and brother to fly to Honolulu where family friends who used to be next-door neighbors back in Colorado had warmly offered their home. Short as it was, R & R remains somewhat of a blur - except for two things.

I had only experienced blind rage once before. When I was about ten or eleven years old, I played quite a bit with two friends, David and Scott, fraternal twins from up the street. For the most part we enjoyed each other’s company. David tended to be somewhat of a bully and, no doubt sensing my vulnerability, would sometimes amuse himself by picking on me. He was going at it full tilt one afternoon in the side yard of my house when, suddenly, I snapped. I was all over him, blazing with anger, shaking him, screaming for him to knock it the hell off, that I’d had it, no more, etc. I know I scared him badly because I could see it in his eyes. “Whoa, take it easy!” he said as Scott pulled me away. But as much as I had scared David, I had scared myself even more. Erupting like a volcano was new to me and I was frightened. So, after flying many thousands of miles, there I was in Hawaii, fresh from the war, watching people go about their daily lives, doing errands, going shopping, driving to work, spending time with their families, when, without warning, I became choked to speechlessness with rage. “LOOK at them!” I thought. “They’re acting as if everything is just fine! It’s NOT fine! Don’t they KNOW what’s going on? How DARE they?” The sheer power of the anger was staggering and I had no idea what to do with it. So I did what I always did with my bad stuff. I sucked it up and buried it with everything else somewhere deep inside.

The second thing I clearly remember, I laughed off at the time. We were all sitting around in the living room, talking. I was watching TV, catching up on the new shows in the current season. Our friends had a very nice, typical-to-Hawaii, semi open-air house across the pass from Honolulu, not far from the beach. They were lovely people, hospitable to a fault. Their cat, Piawaquet, that I remembered from Colorado had been sitting on top of the television, surveying his domain. Something must have startled him because he suddenly leaped down sending a heavy vase crashing to the floor with an audible thump. Without thinking, I dropped to a prone position on the carpet between the coffee table and the sofa. When I looked up sheepishly, all eyes were on me. They had no clue about what to say so, ever the care-taker, I chuckled as I got up. “Yeah, well, remember I told you we had been getting some mortar attacks last week. No problem. It’s just a habit.” Ha, ha.


Leaflet "they" dropped on "us"

Moving Downstairs

When I returned to Pleiku from Hawaii, I impulsively packed my things and moved downstairs to the dead zone of the barracks, the party-free area where the readers and those who just wanted some peace and quiet congregated. After once again experiencing in Hawaii what it felt like not to be stoned out of my mind every single night, I had a need to put distance between me and the nightly getting-high sessions. Something had changed but I didn’t know exactly what. I only knew this was something I needed to do. At first, my former party-mates grilled me thoroughly. Was I mad at them? Had they done something wrong? No and no. For a while, every evening one or two of them would stop by to announce that “We’re out on the back porch if you wanna join us.” Eventually, to my relief, they figured out I was serious and left me alone.

Extending

What prompted me to make the decision to extend my tour? Clearly, no one in their right mind could possibly want to spend another six months in Vietnam. Well, it wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. I figured that, with more than a year and a half left of a three-year enlistment, doing my remaining time in the Stateside Army after the relatively lax atmosphere in Vietnam would be hell. Sticking around in Pleiku, however, seemed too much like courting a death wish. But all was not lost.

Peter of the incredibly cushy job had inevitably pushed things too far. He had had his knuckles rapped and was subsequently relegated to office duty in Saigon. Interestingly, it hardly qualified as punishment. As one of two assistants to the Chief Chaplain Advisor to Vietnamese Chaplains, he had almost as much free time as he did previously with the added bonus of being able to check out all the good Saigon restaurants and take advantage of all the other pleasures Saigon had to offer. Listening to me talk about my dread of returning to an assignment in the States, Peter offered a suggestion. His tour in Vietnam was almost over as was his time in the Army. His colleague, the second assistant (they needed only one), was going home at the same time. If I put in my application to extend and specified I wanted that job, Peter would work the angle from the other end. “Wow,” I thought, “living in a hotel, eating out, soft job! What’s not to like?” It would buy me an extra six months of freedom from the mind-numbing, infuriating rigidity of the Stateside Army and give me a nifty new experience to boot. With Toki constantly repeating in my ear, “Don’t do it,” I commenced to jump through the hoops.


25-cent MPC (Military Payment Certificate) - used in lieu of actual currency in Vietnam

Good ol’ Toki! He really turned up the heat on me. He was convinced I was making a terrible mistake and pulled out all the stops to keep me from going through with it. “Now, stop and think for a minute,” he would say. “Can’t you see it? You are driving in your car, your OWN car, your very own NEW car! You see an ice cream stand. You stop and order a big, thick milkshake. Chocolate. With whipped cream on top. Mmmmmmm! Think how good it’s going to taste. You can’t get a milkshake in Saigon.” “Oh, c’mon, Toki,” I would say. “Stop trying to get me to change my mind.” But nothing was going to stop him. “Wait! Look! There’s your mother. The bell rings. She’s walking to the door. She opens it. Two men in uniform are standing on the front porch. Oh, no! NO! NO!! It just CAN’T be! Not my son!” Three whole weeks I had to put up with that before the paperwork was all signed off. But hey! Ya know what? He may have been right.

Saying Goodbye

My last night in Pleiku happened to be Toki’s as well. He knew how much I liked to drive the deuce-and-a-half so he arranged for me to drive him and a few others to the Pleiku Air Base NCO Club where he was buying. Many beers were consumed. Many, many, many. Raucous laughter was the order of the night. As we were preparing to leave, through a blurred haze I saw Toki gathering up empty bottles and stowing them inside his fatigues. He must have had several dozen, crammed in the big pockets of his jacket and pants, clutched under his arms and against his chest. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked. He smiled his Buddha smile and headed for the door. Given my advanced state of intoxication, I was working hard to stay on the road while making sure to shift gears before the engine wound out to dangerous rpm levels when I oh-so-slowly became aware that Toki, riding shotgun, had the right-side door open and was standing on the running board. His beer bottles were stockpiled on the seat and, swinging back and forth, holding on to the the door handle with one hand, he hurled bottle after bottle against the walls of the military wood-frame buildings as we passed. Catching me looking at him open-mouthed, an evil grin spread across his karate master face. “Now, see!" he said. "Isn’t this fun?”


Pleiku Air Base 1969

Nothing would do after dropping Toki at the NCO barracks but a joyride. I sped directly to the broad, open, rutted parking area next to the PX, an area, I thought, perfectly suited to spinning doughnuts, never mind that the vehicle in question was a quad rear wheel, six-gear diesel truck. In a master stroke of stupidity, I neglected to remember that the parking area was located directly between the PX and the MP station. With only one doughnut to my credit, an MP appeared, looking vastly amused, and why not? It was probably the only time in his career that he was able to get up from his desk, go outside, and apprehend a driver for a moving violation – on FOOT! My friends and I found ourselves seated in front of the MP’s desk, thoroughly abashed and shit-faced drunk. “I’m going to have to call your First Sergeant,” he said. “We’ll see what he says about this. What’s his number?” Thoughts raced through my head as I spouted the requested digits. It took Toki a long time to answer and, for a minute, I thought he wasn’t going to. When the officer explained the situation and stopped to listen to the response, he held his face blank. “Good night, First Sergeant,” he said, putting the phone back in its cradle. He looked at us, still expressionless. “Ok, you can go,” he said. “But it better be straight back to your barracks.”

The next day’s hangover was monumental. My head felt as big as Kansas, my stomach was considering relocating somewhere outside of my body, cotton filled my mouth, and I was unsteady on my feet. Toki looked as bad or worse. As I have gained in years if not wisdom, I have come to realize that my karma is never more than a few paces behind me. Toki and I laughed, painfully but genuinely, recalling the night before as we were driven out to the 4th Infantry Division airstrip at Hensel Field for the flight to Nha Trang. Waiting for us in all its glory was none other than a C7A Caribou. “It’s not too late to change your mind about Saigon,” Toki said, nudging me as we climbed on board, lugging our gear.

SAIGON

My boss, the Chief Chaplain Advisor, an ordained Methodist minister, was a jerk, something I can now say with authority. But back then, my first tendency when things didn’t go well was to blame myself. Perhaps once or twice a week, the Major would make an early morning cameo appearance in the office. The rest of the time I had little idea either where he was or what he was up to. I later learned that he was very active in the black market in U.S. currency so no doubt he was up to plenty.

At the time, I was not only on my own; I was also very much alone. The office was in a Vietnamese military compound, 33 Hai Ba Truong St. There was only one other American who maintained an office there and I think he showed his face a grand total of three times the entire time. In effect, I was not only the only American but also the only English speaker there all day. The Major rarely gave me anything to do but, with crystal clarity, he made quite sure I understood my principal responsibility was to “man the office.” This I correctly interpreted as answering the phone so that when the head shed called, appearances would be preserved. Sometimes he would leave me the jeep so I could make the rounds of the Vietnamese Chaplain Directorates, picking up and dropping off various pieces of paperwork that had made their way through the myriad channels of two vastly different systems. Loneliness descended like a pall.

The Press

Let me digress for a moment. In the acknowledgements, I mentioned my senior year high school religion teacher. Saigon was where the seeds he planted began to push their green shoots above the soil. Each afternoon, upon leaving work, I would walk from the office to the bus stop on the way back to my hotel. My route took me past the veranda of the Continental Palace Hotel, an open-air bar complete with potted palms, rattan furniture, and ceiling fans turning lazy circles, the very bar used as a setting by Graham Greene who spent long hours writing there over gin and tonics. As I passed the whitewashed balustrade, various snatches of conversation in English would drift my way. The same group of men was often present at the same time each afternoon. Eventually, as I pieced things together, I learned that they were the news team from Time magazine presided over by Time’s then-Saigon bureau chief, Marsh Clark, not an unfamiliar name to me.


Continental Palace Hotel

As a budding news junkie, I had already been reading Time magazine for years. Staying informed in Vietnam presented a difficult challenge since I was generally restricted to the military daily paper, The Stars and Stripes, and the news broadcasts of AFVN, the Armed Forces Vietnam Network that was memorialized in the movie, Good Morning, Vietnam. When I could, I read Time’s international edition, a rare commodity in the Pleiku PX but often available in Saigon. I had formed my perspective of Vietnam well before arriving there, largely based on Time’s reportage, thus one of the reasons for my initial astonishment at experiencing the vast difference between that perspective and the reality of being on the ground.

Time’s coverage, even then not substantially different from how today’s media cover any significant event, tended toward the “big” stories, a euphemism for news that would attract the most readers. For a news crew in Vietnam that meant an early morning check-in with the various unit public relations officers often followed by a chopper ride to firebases where nasty firefights had occurred the night before. Anybody associated with the news business knows how it goes. Zip, zip. Get some good pictures, maybe an interview or two, stroke the officer in charge, tsk-tsk, wish ‘em all good luck, get back on the chopper for the ride home, whack out some lines in the bureau office, phone it in, and head for cocktail hour, leaving the staffers to pick up the loose ends. But readers like me ended up forming their entire view of what was happening based on accounts of bullets flying, close air support from jet fighters, artillery shells exploding, human wave attacks overrunning concertina-wired perimeters, body counts, and blood-spattered U.S. troops being medevac’d to field hospitals from jungle clearings. It was impossible to know that those occurrences, although certainly tragic and newsworthy, were often isolated instances in a fairly large swath of real estate where a great deal more legitimate news took place unreported every day.

While my Vietnam included that particular slice of reality, it was also considerably larger and, the more I read what I and the rest of the world assumed was comprehensive reporting, the more frustrated I became. Why didn’t they wake up and look around? I could show them a lot of news they were missing like, for instance, the time I accompanied local workers from the Vietnamese Catholic Chaplain Directorate with two flatbed trucks to Long Binh Army Depot to collect damaged and scrap material to use in a church construction project which, once we returned to Saigon, was promptly driven to the Cholon district and sold for ready cash. Or, how about the CIA agent who sometimes stopped by the barracks in Pleiku for a few beers? “So, what is it exactly that you DO?” we naively asked. “Ice picks and cotton balls,” was his enigmatic reply. Many beers later he volunteered that his job was to “neutralize” the Viet Cong infrastructure. How he went about that was, based on intelligence gathered over days and weeks, to sneak into a village late at night, creep into a suspected Viet Cong leader’s hut while he was sleeping, plunge an ice pick into his brain through the ear, dab up the resulting small amount of blood with a cotton ball, and quietly leave. In the morning, the body would be discovered and the cause of death would be unknown. How about the Montagnard plan, code-named FULRO, to overthrow the South Vietnamese government in the Central Highlands? How about the black market and American’s who were amassing small fortunes in currency swaps and getting it to bank accounts in Switzerland? But, to my increasing anger, what I would overhear Marsh and his buddies talk about was an air-conditioner that wasn’t working at the Ritz (the correspondent’s hotel), where they were going for dinner that night, how much they had had to drink the night before, how they disliked having to get early up in the morning, or how rough the chopper ride was. Ok, they were human too, just like the rest of us. But it didn’t seem right then and it still doesn’t. I have never viewed the news media in quite the way same since. One of my many de-flowerings, I guess you could say.


Monument in central Saigon

Gloom

My vision of a cosmopolitan experience, rich nightlife, a cool, almost diplomatic level job that didn’t demand too much, and a fascinating new city to explore collapsed under the weight of loneliness followed by what I now see as a deep depression. It started with physical symptoms: constriction in the sinuses, a post-nasal drip that wouldn’t go away, pain in my neck when I would turn my head, upset stomach, and what felt like swollen glands in my throat. There was a military clinic directly across the side street from the hotel. Numerous visits later, I came away with the same diagnosis I was given on the first visit – nothing wrong. “C’mon, doc,” I thought to myself. “I KNOW something’s wrong. Why can’t you figure out what it is?”

Day after day, I would sit in the office, reading and staring out into space. As was now my habit, at 8:30 I was at my desk. At 11:30, I headed back to the hotel mess hall for lunch and then to my room for more reading and a nap. Back in the office at 2:30, I’d then retrace my steps to the hotel at 4:30, read some more and go downstairs to dinner at 5:30. Sometimes on evenings and weekends, I would take long walks, exploring various parts of the city. Cholon, the Chinese quarter, was where the big military PX was located and it always warranted a trip. I visited the zoo which actually wasn’t in bad shape, all things considered. I stood outside the Presidential Palace, hoping to see Thieu and speculated on what went on inside. I watched helicopters fill the sky during Nixon’s visit and, later, McNamara’s. Once in a while, I’d pay a visit to the enlisted men’s bar, grill, and nightclub atop the Palace Hotel. More often, I would drop by the bar at the American Embassy which featured (imagine, right there in Vietnam!) ice-cold Heineken - on TAP! (I’ve since learned that correspondents, contractors, diplomats, and other foreign mission personnel never, ever forego their accustomed standard of living. Live like the locals? War zone? Please.)


A Saigon hotel used by U.S. military (not U.S. diplomats)

Two Taiwanese Army colonels occupied the office next door. They must have taken note of my plight and began to invite me over for morning tea. They were very nice guys and the tea, my first exposure to genuine jasmine, was wonderful and the smell intoxicating. They took me out for dinner a couple of times to their favorite Chinese restaurant where I experienced oriental hospitality at full throttle – a table groaning under the weight of a dozen courses and two pairs of eyes making sure that I ate until I could not manage another bite, all the while keeping the waiter on the move replacing every empty dish with a full one and making sure the beer in my glass was never more than a few centimeters from the top.

Back Up-country

I truly do not know what I would have done from that point had not my fortune taken a rapid and unanticipated turn. My Chaplain, the jerk, reported in through the operations directorate of the U.S. MACV Command. This reporting relationship paralleled the Vietnamese structure which considered chaplaincies part of operating units. (In the U.S. command, the Chaplain Corps has its own separate structure. There was another largely irrelevant difference. The Vietnamese Chaplain Directorates were organized by religion - Buddhist, Catholic, and Protestant. The U.S. Chaplain Corps is organized by service - Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.) The MACV Command Chaplain, somewhat of a martinet, was unable to get over the fact that there was a U.S. Chaplain in the MACV structure that didn’t report to him and was constantly trying to get my Chaplain to agree to take steps to move under the Command Chaplain’s structure. (I’ve learned over the years that these are the REAL battles. Everything else is footnote.) My Chaplain, for good reason as I came to later learn, was very resistant to the possibility of having someone watching over him that might want him to account for his time and/or whereabouts. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the political wheels continued to turn.


MACV Headquarters

It was a mere two and a half months after I started in Saigon that the first U.S. troop cuts were announced. The Command Chaplain pounced. Summoning all of his full-bird colonel huffery and puffery, he marched over to the Operations Directorate where he suggested that they remove the chaplain assistant position from the Chaplain Advisor’s TO & E (Table of Organization, Manpower, and Equipment). The head of the Operations Directorate, himself a full bull, was delighted. He could now earn untold brownie points by demonstrating his willingness to support the troop cut directive by offering up the very first sacrificial lamb – ME! The consequence for my boss was that he was then forced to obtain his administrative support from the Command Chaplain’s office, making reporting to the Command Chaplain a moot point. “Sorry,” I was told. “You’re going to Danang.” Somewhere, I just knew Toki was smiling to himself and saying, “See. I told you not to do it.”

“DANANG! Oh, no,” I thought. “The MARINES are there! THAT’S where lots of people DIE! Can’t I please stay in Saigon? PLEASE? Anywhere but Danang.” I wrote my Congressman, citing the signed agreement under which I had extended my tour. My mother got in the act. I wailed. I complained. I begged. It was no use. With a terror-stricken heart, I boarded the C-47 at Tan Son Nhut, bound for Danang.

DANANG

Without a doubt, Danang was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. After reporting in at MACV Advisory Team I, I was at once assigned to be the second of two chaplain assistants to the I Corps Chaplain, a pleasant, funny, and caring Anglican priest right out of the pages of an Agatha Christie novel, complete with pipe. The Marines, I was told, never send out even a two-man patrol without a public relations guy in tow; one of the reasons, I was assured, why “Dateline: Danang” had etched itself into my consciousness and my impression of Danang was so off the mark. China Beach was a marvel.


China Beach, Danang

Danang Bay was enormous and surrounded by beautiful mountains. Monkey Mountain, at the end of the China Beach peninsula where the river joined the bay, stood magnificent guard over a place to rival any setting anywhere in the world. My quarters, a former hotel, was in a residential district slightly to the south of downtown. Across the street and down a half-block, the Chapel was white-washed clapboard with a lawn and a free-standing bell tower in front. It might have been transported directly from the English countryside or possibly a movie set, so cozy and inviting did it appear. The other chaplain assistant and I quickly became fast friends. Duc, the Vietnamese woman who cleaned the chapel, was a delight. All of us were always teasing and joking. Duc’s husband was off somewhere serving in the South Vietnamese Army and she and her four children lived a few blocks away with her parents. Every other Sunday afternoon, after the morning round of services, we were all invited to dinner at her folks’ where the men sat around the table and the women shuffled to and fro with dishes of food or shyly peeked around the corners of doorways with children clinging to their skirts. The nightmare of Saigon ebbed away like a bad dream. Well, not quite.

Why are we here?

Permit me another digression. A majority of Americans who served in Vietnam rarely had the chance to talk to Vietnamese other than the ones who cleaned and did laundry and certainly didn’t get to know them and their families personally. In this way, I was most fortunate. Since Duc and her family were the first Vietnamese I got to know beyond the formal, business stage, I had a million questions. Was it hard for Duc to manage with her husband gone? Did she know where he was? Did he get to come home occasionally? How long had he been gone? What were they going to do when he got back? Would she continue to work? What did her father do for a living? What were her kids like? Did they go to school? And, of course, what did she think of the war? What did she think of North Vietnam? What did she think of the Viet Cong? What did she think of the South Vietnamese government? What did she think of democracy? What did she think of communism? What did she think of Americans? After she decided that there wasn’t much she could say to upset me or cause a big reaction, she spilled the beans. She didn’t know where her husband was; only that he was off fighting somewhere. She rarely heard from him and he never got to come home. He had been gone for over three years. For all she knew, he might even be dead. She loved her kids and couldn’t imagine life without them. She loved her parents. She not only worked at the chapel, she took in laundry on the side. Her father worked for a construction firm run by South Koreans. She thought the South Vietnamese government was full of crooks. She thought the Viet Cong were thugs. She thought the North Vietnamese were snobs. She thought most of the Americans she had met were pretty nice people although she had met some assholes (my words, not hers). She didn’t give a hoot for democracy. She gave even less of a hoot for communism. She had never lived when there wasn’t a war going on but she hated it and couldn’t wait until it was over. All she wanted was to have her husband come home so they could raise their kids together, put food on the table and have a decent roof over their heads. Right there, in one short conversation, my world view changed forever. “Isn’t that what we ALL want?” I thought. “If that’s what it’s all about,” and instantly on listening to her, I intuitively knew that she spoke a universal truth, “what in the hell are we doing here?”


Main street near hotel

Fear, Anxiety, Bob Hope and Adios

Deep down inside, I remained frightened, very frightened. I managed, finally, to screw up the courage to call the medical clinic at China Beach and request an appointment with the chief psychiatrist. Fortunately, I didn’t have to disclose a reason and nobody tried to put me off. If there was a real-life role-model for Sydney, the shrink in M.A.S.H., this guy would have been it. His looks, his mannerisms, everything was the same. Maybe that’s only my romanticized memory but I remember when I first saw the character appear on M.A.S.H., I almost fell off my chair. “So, what’s the problem?” he asked, gently but direct and to the point. I told him straight out, surprising myself. I don’t think he said “Hmmmm” or stroked his chin but he may well have. Honestly, directly, compassionately, he looked at me and said he could understand how that might be causing me some problems with anxiety. Then, equally matter-of-factly, he proceeded to say that helping me was out of the question. His voice took on a heavy, intimate, and deeply weary tone. “Do you know what triage is?” he asked. I nodded. “Well,” he continued, “there are situations I have no choice but to pay attention to. When a grunt on a firebase decides he can’t take it any more and shoots himself in the foot so he can go home, when a marine hates his first lieutenant so much that he tosses a hand grenade into his tent, when things like that come to me, I’m the first line of response. I’m the only psychiatrist in I Corps. Just me. That’s it. I wish I could help you. I really do. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait until you get back to the States and find somebody there.” To this day, recounting that story never fails to stir deep feelings, not so much for me, but for the doc. At that particular moment, with me, with what I had just revealed to him, with what he was dealing with himself, I am sure no one could have handled it better. My hat remains off to him, wherever he may be.


Han River, Danang

But where did it leave me? Nowhere, of course, the same place I had been for a long time. As the clock ticked down to my final departure from Vietnam, I began to have a recurring dream. I was in an airplane on my way back to the States. I was sitting in a window seat. We were somewhere high over the ocean. As I looked out the window, I could see that the plane was flying erratically, gaining and losing altitude, turning left and then right, but gradually sinking lower and lower until it was almost skimming the wavetops. In one of those odd scenes that crop up in dreams, the plane was also zigging in and out among military vessels as it tried to make its way through them and back to open water. Somehow I knew we were going to ditch. That was it. Night after night, always the same.

Bob Hope brought his show to Danang that Christmas. Bob Hope had always been one of my mother’s favorite entertainers and I had spent many years watching all his shows with her in front of the TV. I liked his sense of humor too and was all cranked up to go. “Here,” I thought, “is the perfect end to my Vietnam experience, seeing the Bob Hope Christmas show, live, in Vietnam.” Well, guess again. After the brass had skimmed theirs and the combat guys from the field who were being brought in special got theirs and the Marines who always got the pick of everything got theirs, there wasn’t a single ticket left for two poor chaplain assistants. And, to make matters worse, I had to listen to it on the radio.

Supposedly, as a Vietnam returnee, you had your pick of posts in the States. I briefly considered requesting the post adjacent to my home town in Colorado but just as quickly rejected the idea. My time in high school was full of derision for the Army “doggies” as we called them who would cruise up and down the main drag at night and on weekends, drinking beer, and being generally obnoxious. I couldn’t feature being a doggie in my home town so I requested a post in the Missouri Ozarks, not terribly far away. Besides, so went my reasoning, I had lived in Missouri before.

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Hopi prayer - courtesy of meteor blades

posted on daily kos by meteor blades... he read it yesterday at the funeral of his sister-in-law...

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Hopi Prayer

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there,
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight
On the ripened grain.
I am the gentle Autumn's rain.
When you awaken in the morning hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there.
I did not die.
My Spirit is still alive...


Hopi Corn Maiden

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Buenos Aires graffiti

These eleven graffiti from the streets of Buenos Aires had a strong impact on me from the moment I first saw them. The translations are approximate but, I believe, capture the essence of the message.

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While there are privileges, there will be crime.



Trapped in freedom.



Someday this life will be beautiful.



Stop suffering. (Think.)



Never again.



Lying is violence.



Life is freedom.



I have lost interest in the things of the world.



Life is a dream if you don't fall asleep.



Innocents for now.



Imagination to power.

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Notes, quotes and observations from the home show... - by profmarcus

A microcosm of the consumer society...

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Welcome to the Home Show

Two home theater dealers with booths in the lobby outside the entrance to the main hall, 15 HDTV screens total, all tuned to the NASCAR race

"I think this is why I came."

Rough count: 20+ whirlpool spa dealers

"Oh, honey, look! 'Pampered Pets!' Over here!"

"I'm right here. I can see you. Just keep walking the same way you're going right now." (man on cell phone)

Rough count: 15+ home mortgage lenders

"Mommy, mommy, mommy! I wanna go on the slide! MOMMY...!"

"It's still not warm enough to bar-be-que."

We Specialize in Jumbos. (mortgage lender ad banner)

"This is Murray. When you go to Meeks, he'll take care o' ya."

Refresh Your Mind (sauna dealer ad banner)

"You're not behaving yourself. Sit down."

$500 Puts You in a Brand-New Home (mortage lender ad banner)

"Can I steal this chair?"

The Million-Dollar Home Theater (home theater dealer ad banner)

"Are you ready to go and get some food?"

DISH - NOTHING ELSE COMPARES (dish network ad banner)

"Yeah, we're done. Let's go."

A 45mph Couch Potato (adopt-a-greyhound ad banner)

"Where you at?" (man on cell phone)

"Doo-be-doo-be-doo,
Doo-doo-doo-doo-be,
Doo-be-doo-be-doo." (man in a floor care demo booth, wearing a headset and microphone, singing into a portable loudspeaker system, nobody else around)

Black suspenders with a yellow sunflower pattern

"Exactly the same stand they had last year."

Your FUTURE Starts HERE (private, for-profit university ad banner)

FREE DRAWING (ad banner)

"Is the food any good?"

This drawing is offered for the sole purpose of soliciting potential customers for the sale of timeshare units. (fine print on back of free drawing entry form)

Spas and saunas that feature built-in stereo systems

"If they make it, we can get it."

ULTIMATE BOUNCERS
Inflatable Bounce House Rentals
Let Us Bring the ULTIMATE Fun to Your Party (ad banner)

Harley Davidson, San Jose, Costa Rica (t-shirt)

"C'mon, let's go find grandma."

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Acknowledgements (over the course of a life) - by profmarcus

Acknowledging who and what has been influential in the course of an entire life is a tad tricky. Still, it would be grossly negligent of me not to recognize some of those who have helped, sometimes kicked, and, just as often, dragged me down the untrodden path of my life.

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At the top of the list is my late mother. Sainted, she’s not. But of all the gifts (as well as lumps of coal) she gave me, foremost is the ability to laugh, without which I would already be dead.

Then there’s my grandmother, my first best friend.

The priest who taught my high school senior boys’ religion class did no less than teach me how to think.

My first boss in my first real job and the godmother of my children, a woman of unbounded warmth, intelligence, and compassion (recently deceased, god rest her soul), showed me the dignity and respect that is the just due of all working people.

My ex-wife, a tortured soul, insisted on keeping before my eyes the reality that we ALWAYS get what we need. Too bad we put up with each other’s garbage for so long.

My last therapist, a kind, gentle, and wise man, quickly heard me out, responded with, “Ok, so, now what?” and then proceeded to coax me into sanity.

My three children, about each of whom I could write endlessly, have bestowed on me blessings untold and, ironically, had I managed to pull my head out of my ass sooner than I did, would very likely not have been born.

A young friend in Mexico, tragically killed last year in an auto accident, honored me beyond words when he asked me to be padrino for his daughter.

Two good friends, one for nearly 40 years and the other for nearly 20, know me well and love me anyway.

The boss who fired me the first time and the four others who have done so since kept the ball rolling when I might otherwise have chosen to stay stuck.

There are many others, making up a crazy-quilt of going on 60 years, and a few deserve quick mention – a stern and compassionate high school Latin teacher, my deeply humane First Sergeant in Vietnam, a social worker and a probation officer both of whom thought I was worth saving, and numerous young and some older friends who, despite all, see right through me to the love inside and always give as good as they get.

An odd sort of acknowledgement must be paid to my genes. Three blood-line individuals, my father and my mother’s two brothers, even though they were infrequent and shadowy presences in my early life, are nonetheless major contributors to my mental and emotional landscape. They raise the always hotly debated issue of nature vs. nurture.

I’ve saved the biggest acknowledgement for last because it’s the hardest to convey.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I have been looked after in this life by someone or something, guardian angel, higher power, spirit guide, call it what you will. This realization has steadily grown as I’ve tapped into the enormous gratitude I feel for all the events which shaped my life and that only now do I dare call miraculous as opposed to merely fortuitous. On those too infrequent occasions when I actually remember to be grateful and can still my blithering, ever-present internal chatter, I have connected with something far larger, far greater, far wiser, and (I’m struggling for words here), immensely more vast than I can adequately describe. I’ve heard the term “oceanic” used in a way that might capture a bit of what I’m trying to say but even that fails when attempting to convey the experience of literally dropping to my knees, sobbing with joy. Never did I dream that such unrestrained happiness, however brief, could appear in my life. As the movie title suggests, I thought that “As Good As It Gets” meant ceaseless plodding, endless suffering, devouring myself from the inside with worry and fear, and rejecting the fleeting glimpse of a better tomorrow as a cruel tease. And, even though I now know how wrong I have been, I still fall prey almost daily to the dark and foreboding suspicion that the ground will gape open beneath my feet and drop me finally and forever into the pit of despair. And so I offer this pitiful recognition to the overarching entity of unconditional love, whoever or whatever you are. You have never left my side even as I continue to whine and cry every step of the way.

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Still Life at the Reno Wal Mart - by profmarcus

As one of the world's largest, most profitable, and, perhaps, most reviled retailers, Wal Mart is still patronized daily by millions of people in dozens of countries, all of whom have stories to tell.

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WAL * MART

I’ll be Back to Getcha When Ya Get Off

The late model, white pick-up pulled alongside the building a little too fast and stopped abruptly just before the pedestrian crosswalk. It was one of the big models with a growling diesel engine and oversize tires. There were two decals in the back window. On the driver’s side was an American flag. On the passenger side was the Harley-Davidson logo. A dream-catcher hung from the mirror.

The engine clanked, stuttered and finally shuddered into silence. The driver jumped out and made his way quickly through the sliding electric doors, brushing past the gray-haired woman attempting to offer him a shopping cart. He was clearly in a hurry and, the way he looked over his shoulder, maybe a little worried about leaving his vehicle unattended in the tow zone.

He had glistening black hair cut short all over and distinct Asian features. A black nylon windbreaker was open to reveal a white t-shirt. He sported Oakley sunglasses and wore tight, faded jeans and black, ankle-high boots. A length of chromed chain hung below his jacket and down the hip. At the end of the chain swung a large ring of keys.

He had barely passed through the inside set of doors when he was met by a petite young Asian woman wearing the trademark Wal-Mart employee red and blue vest jacket. She had long, straight black hair that reached halfway down her back and lovely smiling eyes. She wore a floral print blouse under the vest, jeans that looked almost new and tiny, perfectly white sneakers. She held a wireless inventory device in one hand and with the other was fastening a cell phone snugly into its holder. A tiny purse with a thin strap hung over her shoulder. Her store ID hung around her neck on a lanyard.

With the cell phone secure, she reached out and took his hand in hers. She smiled and looked into his eyes.

“I never get see you in daytime,” she said. “You call say you coming right now and wait here in front but you no say what for. You Ok?”

“Yeah, sure, everything’s fine,” he said, speaking rapidly. “Listen, I need that fifty left over from your check.”

“I give you fifty last night. What happen?”

“I’ve been out shooting some pool and I didn’t do so good.”

Her eyes dropped to the floor. “You say you stop that.”

“I know,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other and looking over his shoulder to make sure the truck was still there. “I know. I thought this was a sure thing.”

She reached for the purse, flipped it open and pulled out an even tinier wallet, brushing aside her store ID as she did so.

“You say we come here it be different.”

She pulled a bill out of the wallet and handed it to him.

“Look, I’m sorry. Really. I’m tryin’. Really. Don’t be mad. I love you.”

She looked up at him again. In place of the smile was a furrowed brow and a look of concern and compassion.

“I love you too,” she said.

He pecked her quickly on the cheek and then turned to hurry back out the door to his waiting truck. On his way, he called over his shoulder, “I’ll be back to getcha when ya get off.”

Lets Get a Wreath for the Door

“Oh, look, honey! They’ve opened their new food section. This looks even bigger than the one they had in Fargo. C’mon, let’s go see.”

She wasn’t a beauty but she wasn’t unattractive either. She had solidity, an assurance, and the can-do air of a country girl, someone raised in the wide-open spaces who would never let the runt of the litter die but who wouldn’t hesitate to give a stiff boot to an ornery horse. She pushed the shopping basket with that same authority, all the while telling the little four year-old in the seat, “No, you can’t get out! Now sit down like I told you!” The little one, however, knew it was all just hot air. He knew he was adored. Even if he did get his Mama’s goat now and then, she’d forget it soon enough.

“Let’s go, Daddy! You can look at those video games later.”

Daddy, deeply absorbed in reading the package of the latest version of Grand Theft Auto, was leaning over a second cart with its own young cargo, this one only fifteen months. Tall and bearded, showing the beginnings of a bald spot and just a tad bit of early middle age spread, he was handsome in a rugged, outdoorsy kind of way. You could tell they belonged together.

“What’s that, Mama?” he said, looking up as if from a trance.

“C’mon, let’s get over and get our groceries. You can look at those later. Now, where do you suppose Mom went?” she said, looking up and down the aisles as she passed.

“She said she had to get just a few things and would catch up with us,” he said, pushing his cart alongside hers.

“Oh, there she is!” she exclaimed.

An older woman rolled down the aisle toward her, piloting the electric handicapped cart with ease, a number of personal items – shampoo, tissue – and a few household items – cleanser, mop covers – sharing space in the basket. She was overweight although not horrendously so. She had snow white hair, longish and untamed, a very round face and glasses. A metallic blue cane hung from the cart’s basket. Her purse lay on the deck of the cart, clutched between her ankles.

“What, did you think you lost me?” she said, her entire face crinkling into a smile.

Eyeing the items in her mother’s basket, the daughter frowned.

“Where’s that diagnostic kit you needed?’

“Oh, goshdarnit, I knew I forgot SOMETHING,” she said.

“Well, you just wait right here,” the daughter said, patting her mother’s hand. “I’ll be right back. You like that one kind of blood test kit, don’t you, the one you can hardly feel, right? That’s the one I’ll get. Now, don’t you go anywhere! Daddy, you watch this one for me, ok?”

As the daughter bustled off, the mother adjusted herself in the cart and then looked appraisingly first at the younger boy and then his brother.

“They sure seem to be behaving themselves today,” she said confidentially to her son-in-law. “Usually they’d both be raising a fuss by now.”

“Oh, you just wait,” he chuckled. “We still got a ways to go!”

“That’s right,” she laughed knowingly as she reached down to make sure her purse was still there. “Say, didn’t Judy want to get one of those wreaths for the door, one of those stick and branch things? She thought maybe she could get one here but, you know, I bet we have to go to one of them craft stores. I don’t think Wal-Mart has much worth lookin’ at.”

He nodded in agreement as he reached for the cell phone strapped to his belt. “Yeah, you’re probably right. There’s a Michael’s up the road. We could try there after we go to Sam’s. They’d have one I bet. I’m gonna call about the van. If it’s done, we can pick it up on the way.” He started punching buttons on the phone as he muttered to himself, “A thousand bucks for a head gasket. Ouch!”

He’s Going to be Proud of Me

He was in that indeterminate age range, somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five. He was slim and neatly dressed in a sharp pullover, designer jeans, and box-toed black leather shoes. He wore his auburn, subtly colored hair in a crew cut. He was clean-shaven but with his fair skin and youthful face, he probably wouldn’t have been too successful growing a beard anyway. For the observant, his subtle mannerisms and the ring on the ring finger of his right hand gave him away. He was gay.

He clutched a shopping list in his left hand and was carefully studying the contents on the shelves. He didn’t have a shopping cart or basket so the list probably wasn’t very long. He picked out two or three cans and scrutinized the labels of each before putting them back. He sidestepped down the aisle, looking intensely at each shelf from top to bottom. He was just reaching for another can when his cell phone started playing an electronic version of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue.

“Hi! Yeah, I’m here at the store right now. Yes, I have the list. No, I haven’t gotten anything yet. I can’t find the soup. No, I don’t know what section I’m in. I’m standing in front of a bunch of cans of different kinds of tomatoes. Tomatoes! Well, how would I know that? Why wouldn’t they put tomato soup in with the rest of the tomatoes? So, where IS the soup section anyway? Hang on; I’m going to the next aisle. Cereal. No, that’s not it. Juice. No. Spices. No. Oops! Excuse me! I’m sorry! Hey, Sean, almost didn’t recognize you! Listen, Kevin, lemme call ya back, Ok? I just ran into Sean. Remember Sean? Yeah. Just a couple of minutes, ok? Call ya right back.”

Standing next to Sean who he had inadvertently backed into while trying to find tomato soup, you would think that they shared the same wardrobe. Sean was wearing a different color pullover but in the identical style, a different brand of jeans, still designer, and nearly identical black, box-toed shoes. His hair, although not colored, was cut short and he too had a ring on the same finger.

“So, Daniel, I thought you NEVER shopped at Wal-Mart! I can see SOMEBODY’S always got to keep an eye on you.”

Daniel at first looked sheepish but then rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“It’s close to Kevin’s apartment, ok, and he needs a few things for something he’s cooking.”

“Kevin’s that guy I saw you with the other night, right?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“Are you staying with him?”

“Yeah, we’re trying it out. He’s ok. A little picky about things sometimes but ok.”

“He’s a lot older than you. Do your folks know?”

Daniel laughed. “What do YOU think? You know, though, I think being older makes him more stable.”

“Yeah, that last BF of yours was totally over the top. For a while there, I wasn’t getting any sleep with you always calling me, boo-hoo’ing in the middle of the night.”

“Don’t remind me. Look, it’s great to see you but I promised Kevin I’d call him back and I know he’s waiting for the stuff I’m getting. Are you gonna be at Ken’s on Thursday night?”

“I don’t know. I think so. If I am, I’ll see you there. You like him, don’t you.”

“Maybe. See ya later, Ok.”

With the cell phone still in his hand, Daniel pressed two buttons and put it to his ear.

“Ok, I’m back. Yeah, I’m standing right in front of the soup section. Yeah, I see it. Do you want two cans just in case? Ok. And angel hair pasta? Ok, hang on.”

I Wanna Make Sure We Got Everything

They were clearly not there to shop. They both wore tool belts with cell phones clipped on, long sleeve denim work shirts with company logos sewn on the front, shirt cuffs rolled up to the middle of the forearm, heavy work jeans and roughed-out work boots. One of them had his hip parked up on the side rail of the open-top freezer that was displaying frozen pizzas. The other one stood alongside the first. Both had their arms folded across their chests.

“I been workin’ refrigeration for eighteen years,” the first one said. “Moved here from Pocatello in ’92. Reno’s not a bad place. Long’s it keeps growin’, I ‘spect.”

The second one shifted his weight from one foot to the other and moved his head slowly from side to side as if trying to work out a kink in his neck. “Well, it don’t seem to show no signs of stoppin’, leastways if ya count the number of California plates on the road. The casinos are takin’ a hit from them new Indian places the other side of Donner, tho’. With the Sundowner closin’, I wonder what’s gonna be next?”

“I ain’t never been much for gamblin’ but I sure do hate to see folks losin’ their jobs. Me and the wife are pretty well dug in. She works for the state so I guess we got some security there. But we just bought a new place last year so there’s no way I can be outta work, least not for very long.” He slid off the freezer rail, hitched up his jeans and refolded his arms on his chest.

“I know whatcha mean. This guy I know from church? He and his wife bought this real nice place a couple years ago. Heckuva deal. Big yard, landscaping all around, four bedrooms, nice part of town, schools close by, you know, the whole bit. One fifty-five! Great shape too! Didn’t have to do a thing. Both of ‘em worked. Pretty near have to, ya know? Anyway, two months later, he gets laid off. He was some kinda manager, hi-tech, somethin’ like that. You know he’s still lookin’?! They can’t leave here cuz she’s got a good job with lots of years in toward retirement but they’ve really been scrapin’. I hate to see that. The house is valued at over two hundred now but they don’t wanna hafta sell if they don’t have to. Hang on just a minute, will ya? I gotta take this call. Pro’ly someone from the front office wondering where the hell we are.” He grabbed his cell phone, looked at the screen, said, “Yep, just like I thought,” punched a button, and held it up to his ear. “Hi, Jeanine, what’s up?” he said as he turned away from the other man and hunched over the phone.

The first man turned around to face the freezer and idly sorted through the pizzas. He picked up one, turned over the box, and disinterestedly read the ingredients and cooking instructions. He put it back, turned back around, checked his watch, and then hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. That must have felt awkward because he quickly refolded his arms back across his chest. He glanced up as a paunchy man in his 30s in a white dress shirt with a store ID partially concealed under his tie, polyester beige slacks, and black, sneaker-style work shoes made his way down the aisle toward him.

“You fellas about done or haven’t you got started yet?” he said addressing the first man.

“Actually, we were waitin’ for a part but it got here about ten minutes ago and we popped it right in. Purrs like a kitten now!”

“Good, glad to hear it. Don’t wanna be payin’ you guys to be standin’ around. Not at THAT hourly rate! You better tell me this unit’s gonna be around for a while longer,” he said. “We got enough money invested in parts alone to cover the cost of a new one!”

“It’ll be goin’ long after you get promoted out of this department,” the first man snorted, “and then it won’t be your worry no more!”

Torn between taking the comment as humor or as a not-so-subtle dig, the shirt-and-tie opted for humor. “Yeah,” he chuckled. “Then somebody else can call you guys every week.”

“Ok, yeah, I’ll take care of it,” the second man said, punching a button on the cell phone and sliding it back into its holster. To no one in particular, he growled. “I swear, she’s worse than my wife with her damn ‘honey-do’ list! She always got somethin’. I think it’s a plot to keep us from gettin’ a break.” Noticing the shirt-and-tie, he turned to the first man. “You tell him we’re all done here?”

“Yep, I did. You ‘bout ready?”

“Sure am. Let’s check that work closet by the front door. I wanna make sure we got everything. I ain’t in the mood to be makin’ no second trip gettin’ what we should a got the first time.”

Cigarette Break

She gingerly eased herself down on to the concrete ledge, putting one hand firmly on the gritty surface before lowering her weight on to it. She sighed deeply, reached into the pocket of her red and blue vest and extracted a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Sticking her finger through the hole in the top, she straightened the pack out and shook one of the remaining cigarettes into her waiting fingers. After placing it between her lips, her hand went back to the pocket and emerged with a lighter.

Five boys from the cart crew emerged from the entrance to the store, circled around an illegally parked white pickup, and headed to the north parking lot, tossing various smart-ass comments at each other as they went. They had been avoiding the dreaded but necessary chore of retrieving the dozens of shopping carts now abandoned at nearly every parking space and clogging all the return areas.

“I called for you boys over ten minutes ago,” the woman called after them. “About time you showed up.”

“Don’t worry, grandma,” one called back over his shoulder. “Before you finish that cigarette, you’ll have more carts than you know what to do with.”

Crossing her legs, she drew smoke deeply into her lungs, exhaled with a long sigh and brushed her dirty gray hair away from her eyes. She hated it when they called her “grandma.” She had told them over and over again that she would like it very much if they would just call her Dodie. But, no. They knew how to get under her skin and they weren’t going to let it go. “Oh, well,” she thought. “At least they care enough to tease.”

She used to feel so conspicuous taking her break here in front of the store where everybody walking in and out could see her. It took her a while to realize that most people just looked right through her as though she wasn’t even there. “At least when I’m inside and offer someone a cart and say ‘good morning,’ most people say something back. Out here, I might as well be invisible.” She’d had these thoughts before but they always came back. Today, however, thanks to the illegally parked pickup, the people entering the store couldn’t see her sitting there at her usual spot on the ledge, smoking. It crossed her mind that she actually enjoyed watching the people come and go and the thought surprised her. She arched her back and stretched her shoulders in the rays of the sun. “Thank goodness this isn’t Minnesota,” she chuckled to herself. “I’d be freezing my ass off right now!”

She glanced at her watch. Three more hours. “I don’t know what’s worse,” she thought, taking another long drag, “this job or that empty trailer.” She had gotten satellite just last month, deciding that the entertainment value offset the impact on her meager budget especially when those Dish folks were giving such a deal. She wondered if any of the cart crew boys had ever heard of The Daily Show. “Probably not,” she concluded, as the door on the truck slammed, the engine growled to life and tiny pebbles shot from under the wheels as it sped away.

“Ah, there are you, Miss Hatton!”

She snapped back from her reverie to see Soo-Lin standing right there, right in front of her. “I must not have heard her with that truck making all that noise,” she thought.

“Don’t sneak up on a body like that!” she scolded. “You scared me half to death!”

“Miss Hatton, I tell you many, many time you tell me go on break, ok?”

Standing up, Dodie towered over the diminutive supervisor.

“Miss Yee, I plumb forgot. Every single cart was gone and I’d been hollering my head off for someone to page those worthless boys to get out there and round ‘em up. When they didn’t show, I thought it’d be ok to just go ahead and take my break and, sure enough, here they came. See ‘em, right over there?” she asked, pointing off toward the parking lot.

“Even no cart you stay greet customer. Alway you tell me break, ok?”

Dodie nodded as she dropped her cigarette to the sidewalk and crushed it out with the toe of her sneaker.

“Well, time’s about up anyway. Guess I’ll get back at it.”

“Listen, Miss Hatton – Dodie. Ok I call you Dodie?”

Dodie nodded again as they walked together back inside the store.

“You good worker, Dodie. You no make problem me. Just tell me you break, ok?”

Dodie, now back at her post just inside the door, smiled.

“I’ll do my best,” she said. Then, the silent thought: “Yes, I will.”

I Can Tell Ya What I’d Like to Do

“Why do you keep callin’ her grandma when you know she doesn’t like it?” the boy called Nick shouted at his co-worker Jared as they skip-hopped across the parking lot like caged animals that had suddenly been set free.

Jared jumped, twirled around in mid-air and landed in a wrestler’s pose, crouched with arms bent and hands extended as though he was trying to establish a hold. He had two round, silver rings piercing his right eyebrow and two more in each earlobe. His flannel shirt was unbuttoned and flapped against the red and white vest that read “Cart Crew” in big, white block letters on the back. With each flap, you could see a black t-shirt with the logo of a heavy metal band designed in the same graffiti style that decorates freeway underpasses and sound barrier fences.

“I can remember ‘grandma’ a lot easier than whatever she keeps tellin’ me her real name is,” Jared laughed. “What is it? I bet you can’t remember either!”

Nick wasn’t about to make himself appear even softer than he already had by acknowledging to Jared that he did indeed remember Dodie’s name so he laughed back, “Isn’t it something like Dopey? Hell, I dunno!”

“Look at those jerks over there,” Jared gestured to his fellow crew members pushing carts from one of the cart pens together to form a long line. “They’re actually workin’!”

“Yeah, well we better not let one of the supervisors see us screwing off like almost happened yesterday. If I’m gonna get my car, I gotta keep this damn worthless job,” Nick frowned.

Jared spit on the pavement. “Fuck the supervisors,” he said. “What a bunch of losers,” he added as he and Nick started to shuffle over to join the other boys.

Calling the Cart Crew “boys” wasn’t quite accurate but somehow “young men” didn’t exactly do the job either. They were all in their mid to late teens. Some were still in high school, some had dropped out and some had already graduated. A couple were attending the community college. Most still lived at home. A few had cars and the ones who didn’t were hoping to get one soon. None had been working for Wal-Mart longer than a couple of months. They knew they were regarded as a kind of sub-species by the other store employees and took perverse pride in it. They considered themselves as irreverent outsiders in the culture of the retail giant in much the same way they saw themselves in society in general. They were all likeable enough as individuals but collectively they could appear quite intimidating, especially to the older customers. Most of them had already been called on the supervisory carpet at least once for being late or having been caught fooling around instead of working. None of them claimed to understand why so little patience was granted by the supervisors to the daily trials and tribulations of their lives. “What’s the big deal with being a little late?” was the common refrain.

Nick was pushing carts on to the back of the line as Jared helped one of the other boys hook up the battery-powered tractor to the front of the cart train. “I’m gonna drive this baby,” Jared shouted.

“Hell you are!” another boy, nicknamed Terminator, announced. “It’s my turn, so move it or I’ll have to kick your ass.”

Terminator’s size had undoubtedly earned him his nickname. Jared paused momentarily as if to consider his retort, thought better of it, shrugged, and moved away from the tractor.

“Hey, you guys see that new babe workin’ in pharmacy? Is she hot or what?” Jared volunteered with an exaggerated leer.

“Yeah, no shit!” one of the other boys responded. “I wouldn’t mind gettin’ a look at them tits!”

“I can tell ya what I’D like to do,” Nick whispered softly under his breath, “and it ain’t that.”

The Balloon

“Ok, here we are! You just hang on for a second and I’ll get you out!”

The late middle-aged man removed the keys from the ignition, opened the door, and eased carefully off the driver’s seat to the pavement. Remembering, he flipped up the “unlock” switch on the inside of the door and, leaving it open, reached around to open and slide back the rear door of the minivan.

“Ok, you. Lemme get you all unhooked. There ya go. That’s good. Such a good boy! Hang on just a minute. Lemme get it closed up here.”

Clutching the baby firmly against his chest with his left arm, the man slid the panel door closed, checked once again to make sure he had the keys before he toggled the lock switch down, and then firmly closed the driver’s side door.

“Ok, little man! You get to go to Wal-Mart with grandpa all by yourself! This doesn’t happen every day, you know!” The man smiled and cooed as he talked to the baby in a sing-song voice. The baby, bright-eyed and very alert, looked around from side to side, taking in the expanse of the parking lot and the rush of the fresh breeze.

The man was balding on top with salt and pepper hair thick on the sides and back. He wore bifocals, jeans, hiking boots, and a brown and red plaid flannel shirt unbuttoned down the front. Underneath was a mustard yellow t-shirt that bore the legend, “Cirque du Soleil – ALEGRIA,” the tail of which was bunched up just over the top of a black cell phone case clipped to a belt loop of the belt-less jeans.

He smiled and nodded as the gray-haired woman offered him a shopping cart just inside the front door. He paused and carefully placed the baby in the cart seat.

“You got a cutie there!’ the woman exclaimed.

“He knows it too,” the man chuckled.

“As much as I hate Wal-Mart, I sure seem to come here a lot,” the man thought to himself as visions of other Wal-Marts in other places flashed through his head. “Let’s see,” he thought. “Denver, Billings, Helena, Acapulco, Trinidad, Sterling, Eden Prairie, St. Peters, Portland, Buenos Aires, Duluth, Chanute, Santa Fe - good grief!” He shook his head as if in disbelief.

“Ok, then, young man. Let’s find what we came in here for and get the hell out. Sound good to you?”

The baby smiled back at him and then turned around as far as he could in the seat to see where they were headed.

They turned down an aisle in the toiletries section and paused. The man pulled a large bottle of mouthwash off the shelf and examined it for a moment.

“Hmmm, just regular, not the antiseptic,” he muttered. “Ah, there it is,” he said, glancing down the aisle and putting the bottle back. He moved a little ways further on and picked up another bottle from a lower shelf. “Still cheap,” he thought as he noted the price and placed it in the body of the cart where the baby couldn’t reach it.

He was making his way to an express checkout lane when he noticed the baby in rapt fascination.

“Oh, you see those balloons, don’t you?” he said, smiling broadly.

The baby watched intently as the man pulled a SpongeBob, helium-filled, glistening plastic balloon tied to a rigid stick from the bunch that was protruding from a gaily-colored canister at the entrance to the express lane. Even before he had it fully extracted, the baby’s arms were out, hands and fingers extended, eagerly waiting to grasp the prize.

“I don’t know whether you like SpongeBob or not,” the man said, “but I do and you have your Aunt Kelly to thank for that. Not that you care, but Squidward is my hero,” he said, laughing out loud at his own humor.

The baby grabbed the stick and started waving the balloon rapidly back and forth.

Walking out to the parking lot, the man again held the baby tightly to him with one hand and the balloon stick and the bag with the mouthwash with the other. He noticed a long train of shopping carts lined up to be pushed back in to the store just down the row from the van. A brief moment later, it sunk in that the cart crew was waiting for him to get the baby loaded and leave so they wouldn’t block him in on their way by. He hurriedly unlocked the doors, secured the baby snugly in his car seat, and gingerly backed out of the space. As he passed the carts, he raised a hand and nodded to one of the boys in acknowledgement. Almost imperceptibly, the boy nodded in return.

He Doesn’t Expect Anything from Me

They both sat down together at a small table in the fast-food restaurant just off the main entrance. After taking food from the paper bag, unwrapping his sandwich, and taking a few bites, he looked at her inquisitively.

“What’d ya do last night?” he asked.

“Oh, I went over to Jerry’s house and hung there for a while,” she said, taking care to swallow before answering.

“What’d ya wanna go all the way over there for?” he asked, looking at his sandwich.

“They’re only down the street. I wanted to talk to Jerry about that job.”

“You HAVE a good job,” he said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I know, but this one would be a lot more money.”

“Those are some strange people. I don’t like ‘em.” A scowl crossed his face. “A job like that, you’d be doing nothing but traveling all the damn time, back and forth, all over the U.S. You don’t need that. I’d never see you.”

“There’s some things I like about it. I’d be nice to earn good money for a change.” She slid her drink to a spot in front of her and put the straw between her lips.

“Traveling all the time. Shit. That’s no way to live. You’d be gone for three months straight.” He hunched over the table and attacked his sandwich. “You didn’t get in until 1:30. That’s a lotta hangin’ out.”

“I did not,” she retorted quickly. “I was back at 11:30. I looked at the clock when I came in.”

“Well, I looked at the clock too and it was 1:30,” he said as though that settled it.

She shifted in her seat and her body language made it clear the subject was closed.

“Mark just makes me so mad,” she said. “Sometimes he doesn’t shower.”

“Whaddaya mean, ‘doesn’t shower’?” he asked. “You mean when he’s dirty he doesn’t clean up?”

“What I mean is that sometimes he just won’t shower for 2 or 3 days. He’ll wear the same clothes. He won’t shave. He starts to stink.” Her nose wrinkled as she spoke. “Can you imagine?”

“You guys’ relationship is goin’ down really fast,” he observed. “I told you that fucking relationship was retarded.” He wiped bread crumbs from his goatee.

“Shit. I’ve been thinking about maybe I could do better.” She looked away.

“So, why do you stick around?” he asked.

“It isn’t like you think. I don’t expect anything from him and he doesn’t expect anything from me.” Her shoulders tightened and she folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, he says, ‘I love you,’ and all that but I know it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Everything was hunky-dory last night. You woke me up.” He grabbed the wrappers, the drink and the sack and rose to go.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” she said.

As he walked away, he looked at her over his shoulder. “I gotta go get a cigarette.”

She stood, adjusted her hip-huggers and pulled her top down over a bare midriff. Slowly, she gathered her things and followed him.

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