Canine and the Crone

      He remembers something, but whatever that something is he no longer remembers what. These days the step from the back patio to the threshold into the house seems higher, untraversable in the dim light of a frozen white morning, and it confuses him, so he stands in the center of the backyard and barks, not seeing me until it's too late for him to escape as I scoop him into my arms. (It’s always best not to sneak up behind him, because that scares him.) Once I've cradled him in my grasp, the five-pound Chihuahua immediately relaxes and tucks his head into my armpit. He knew I would arrive. I always do. Safe in my arms, I imagine he dreams of the days when he was the most feared Chihuahua in the redwood forests of northern California. He and one other little dog—his sister-of-another-mother—were the only Chihuahuas in Humboldt County when we rescued them.

      Bluto was once a svelte, ten-inch-long Bruce Lee. From the first moment I saw him the little fella dared me to enter his cage. I broke the rules that day and did confront him head-on, where he and a solid black, emaciated female deer-legged Chihuahua huddled in a corner. She was the puppy my wife and I fell in love with after seeing her in an internet ad. In the shelter, Swee Pea was a sad, submissive little waif, but she was damned cute, so much more resonant in person. My wife and I knew we would not leave the shelter without her. But there was Bluto. All five pounds of him stood between us and the dog we had come to rescue from a shelter that "terminated" dogs after a certain length of stay. The intrepid tiny boy in the cage who had taken it upon himself to serve as the protector of the pup we had come to rescue held his ground, even as scores of Rottweilers and Pit Bulls paced their kennels with anxiety, wondering whether I would feed them two little snacks. I put my hand on the floor, palm up. Bluto came at me, fangs bared. The moment he clenched his teeth upon my hand I clamped his snout closed, and quickly clutched my free hand around his belly to stuff him into my armpit. Little fella didn't know what happened. He sat stunned in my arms and stared up at me. At that moment he became daddy's dog. We both knew it. Still, that awareness did not alter his personality.

      Bluto, for whatever reason, had acquired a testy little temper during his days of living in the streets and redwood forests of Humboldt County, California. Just a few weeks after we rescued him from the pound, the little monster drew blood from the son of our dearest friends. Not a good thing to happen, and several dog trainers suggested my wife and I put down our recently adopted fella. But that wasn't going to happen. I had not saved a dog just to kill him. I grew up with Chihuahuas, so his sudden tantrum did not surprise me. The young human had shoved his face too close to the face of a tiny, scared dog, and a dog struck with fear is fierce, particularly a Chihuahua who does not give a damn about the physics of variances in weight, size, and teeth. (I have always thought a Chihuahua would take on a gator in the Louisiana Bayou.)

      My mother-in-law does not bite, but she does bark quite a bit, and about a lot of different topics of which she really has no clue. She has a testy little temper, and usually complains about her phone and her tablet. She keeps breaking Google and the internet. Without fail, whenever my wife and I travel two hours down the interstate to visit, one of us is asked, immediately upon entering the door, to reconnect her internet connection, and reset all the sign-in and auto-pay passwords we configured during our previous visit. To elevate ourselves to superhero status in her eyes, one of us resets her hearing aid app so she can once again hear her television. When the repairs are complete, we take her to the grocery store.

      She teeters like a toddler when she walks, and I'm afraid one day she will fall when she turns the corner to wibble-wobble down the baking aisle. Like Bluto, she too gets confused, and sometimes stands frozen amidst the produce and stares at something inside her head, or stares at nothing at all. And as she stands frozen near a bin of avocados, it’s not hard to decipher from her body what’s going on. She harbors a fear that lifts her shoulders to her ears and shortens her breath. She freezes, and stares at nothing at all. When she disappears like that, she trembles slightly, because even after so many years she still has no faith that my wife and I will come to rescue her. I suppose when you’re eighty-nine years old it’s hard to trust anyone, even yourself. One of us, my wife or I, is always there, immediately, because we never let her get more than two feet away from us. We lean her against one of our armpits until she becomes coherent again, and stable enough to begin a new adventure toward the cheese department.

      It is necessary to approach her on the right side. She is blind in her left eye, and coming at her from that direction only scares the bejeezus out of her, because it seems to her as if someone has simply appeared out of nowhere. Sometimes, when we've returned my mother-in-law to the familiar surroundings of her small apartment, my wife will mess with the old girl and approach her from the blind side. Everybody gets a laugh when my mother-in-law squeaks with surprise. Still, the slight fright takes a little bit out of her; she heads immediately to the bathroom, then heads to her favorite of the two recliners in her living room. If we've brought the two Chihuahuas with us, my mother-in-law calls for her "little buddies," and all three geriatric souls sit together in the old gal's favorite chair to fart and trade other smells, and then fall asleep in a people-puppy pile.

  

      The only difference between my two Chihuahuas and my mother-in-law is that my wife and I have the means to care for two little dogs. We lack the financial means and the physical property needed to care for a beloved human ― her mother. 

My wife and I lost most everything we had in California trying to stay afloat during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The business lock-downs took their toll on my wife's yoga studio. Working twelve hours a day, often seven days a week trying to keep a 16,000 square foot, corporate office supply store open seven days a week with nothing left but a skeleton crew of seven employees during the pandemic, I decided enough was enough. My wife and I made a decision. We packed everything into a seven-foot-by-seven-foot POD and returned to Colorado, where my wife was born and where we met. We had to start over. Why not go back forty years and return to our real beginnings.

      And now, having moved back to the town where we met, got married, graduated college, and became parents of a now grown and married daughter, my wife and I make just enough to get by. Some months we dip into our decimated savings to make it until the next paycheck. Other months we're able to return back into our account what we borrowed from ourselves the previous month. It's always nip and tuck, give and take, sigh a little, sweat a little, enjoy a few more beers at our favorite breweries than we did the month before, or suck up and settle for the six-pack of corporate fermentation we can afford this week. When you're forced to start all over again the flow of money changes like the seasonal current of a river. 

  

      We rent a house at the top end of what we can afford, in the state where my wife's family lives. The house, however, is not conducive to the needs of a frail, eighty-nine-year-old woman. The bathroom does not have a walk-in shower, and my mother-in-law cannot step high enough to get over the side of the tub in our house. She will never again be eligible for a Colorado driver's license. All her friends live an hour and a half south of where my wife and I live. My mother-in-law would have to start over again if she moved to Northern Colorado with us. Starting over from zero is not all that easy. My wife and I know that first-hand.

But it goes beyond what my wife and I can afford to take care of her mother. No one can foot the bill to be old in the United States. We throw our elderly to the curb in this country that touts itself to be the greatest in the world. My mother-in-law is close to needing an assisted living facility. Medicare does not cover the cost of assisted living, in-home care, or long-term care. Pathetically, according to Medicare, the average annual cost of assisted living is $48,000 which is nearly a whole year's pay for too many folks. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2022 that the median annual salary in the country hung somewhere around $53,490. 

      The greatest country in the world... yeah, right.

      The two Chihuahuas who have enjoyed a life of canine luxury could not care less about political boundaries and delineations, or the state of human turmoil in the world. They have their choice of five comfy beds positioned throughout the house. They get breakfast and dinner everyday, and they get to snarf down treats of organic chicken and bison after every visit to the backyard for a poo or a whiz. They have two loving parents to tuck them in every night. They have a trailer attached to my bicycle so they can accompany my wife and me when we shop downtown or visit one of our twenty-four local breweries. I'm not sure Bluto can see where we're going, but when we arrive at some of his favorite places he barks up a storm until I release him from the trailer and walk him into a store or to an outdoor table beneath a cottonwood tree where he begs for chips while I down a few stouts or porters. He always accompanies me to the tap line for another pint. Sometimes I let out the leash and let him lead the way. When he becomes discombobbled, loses his way, and gets worried, he stops and waits. He knows dad will be there within seconds.

      My mother-in-law was once a teacher, and now she sits alone in her apartment and wonders if and when her second-born daughter and favorite son-in-law will have time to drive more than one hundred twenty miles south on a dangerous interstate to take her grocery shopping and treat her to lunch at one of her “ten thousand” favorite restaurants. She doesn’t trust that we’ll be there, for one because she chose to live so far away that often we are not there, and second because even when we are there she forgets that.

      My mother-in-law is adamant about living independently in her own home, which I suppose is all right for awhile longer. But I’m a content marketing writer, and five of my accounts are in-home care facilities. Every so often, when the SEO team loads my work into the back end of a website, I ask one of the folks to check pricing for me. Fifty-five dollars an hour, with a four-hour minimum, that’s $440 a week for two days of care, which is $1,760 a month, culminating in $21,120 a year. Cheaper than the $48,000 estimated by Medicare, but still out of the ballpark for my wife and I. We lose a lot of sleep mulling over how to get my mother-in-law the care she will need very soon.

      The town where I live has earmarked tax dollars for a new dog shelter just a mile from where my wife and I now live. The new shelter will be able to house 1,132 animals. It is intended to be a no-kill shelter, so the dogs will live there for free. I’m all for it, because I love dogs. My wife and I can afford to take care of another dog.

      My mother-in-law pays rent on her senior living apartment. It’s not expensive, but it’s not cheap either. We doubt the shelter would take in my mother-in-law.

To Her Last Breath

    My wife made a good run of it, but then was done. A month after the second anniversary of her yoga studio, the world shut down to acquiesce the COVID-19 virus. The government mandated "temporary" closure of her studio, along with every other business not deemed "essential."

     A damned shame, because her studio had just begun to take off: five teachers, twenty-one classes of various techniques―with plans to add more―and a membership that began to grow weekly.

     People in the area had begun to realize the benefits of yoga in their hectic, Silicon Valley lives. My wife was excited; her dream was coming true.

     Then... nope... the virus... doors closed... indefinitely.

     I continued to manage an office supply store. My work selling plastic crap that did not work long enough to invoke an extended warranty was deemed essential. Seven of us worked ten to twelve hours a day, while nine of my employees opted to use their accumulated sick and vacation time to remain at home until the end of the "Shelter-in-Place" (SIP) mandate issued by the State of California, and vehemently enforced by Santa Clara County, where my wife and I lived and worked... or rather, where she had once worked.

     The end of March, the mandate was extended to June. My wife made a decision: her studio could not last four months without income. She closed her studio permanently. We cried endlessly for several weeks.

     For awhile my wife wondered if she had closed prematurely, particularly when the State said it would do an early re-assessment of the restrictions on businesses. May 1st it did, though business owners were stunned by the restrictive restrictions that remained in place. Gym and yoga studios were not included in the re-assessment, were to remain closed until the next re-assessment the following month.

     For the next two weeks, my wife and I could not count on our four hands the number of yoga studios that closed their doors permanently. A husband and wife, who I knew, closed their gym and left town.

     June came, and "fitness" businesses were allowed to reopen, but only at a third their capacity. Once again, my wife and I could not keep track of all the yoga studios that decided to close permanently. The yoga studio owners group she belonged to online dwindled from thousands to hundreds.

     My wife and I felt sorry for how much it cost the other studio owners who thought they could hold out.

     By closing down when she did, my wife had saved herself a heavy financial loss.

     The yoga studios that remain open in California offer classes outside. It has cost them a ton to do so. Unfortunately, the smaller memberships they now experience will dwindle even more when the winds and rains of October and November remind people that yoga and working out ain't all that and a bag of chips when the temperature outside drops to 46 degrees Farenheit.

     Will the restrictions on yoga studios be fully lifted by then? My wife and I don't think so.

Ignorance

The profoundness of ignorance becomes a devastating tsunami when we look around — to the front, to the sides, then over our shoulders — and realize without having to think about it we did not know. Ignorance pervades, because, after looking around, we do not recognize where we are and have no clear recollection of how we arrived. It is our own fault for always moving. We know that, we admit that ("back in the good old days"), then we "keep on truckin'.'

Yet along the Oregon coast, islands of rock, so steadfast in their defiance of the never-ending surge of a rough sea, have stood against the loneliness of midnight for more ages than man has memory. Still, we cannot sit still in one place for more than a passing thought. Each new idea that seeps into our collective consciousness, or that strikes us like a bolt from a heavy sky, sets us again in motion, embarks us once again upon our mortal pilgrimage toward unknown destinations we hope will ease our loneliness, or will be spectacular enough to ease our pain.

How long has it been since humanity stopped to hear the song of the trees? There was a time when the people of the land understood the language of the forests and of the brooks.

It was common -- long ago -- to walk through the forest and experience things that can never happen again, or to see things that will remain eternally hidden, and for which we cannot piece together a rough recollection. Some things about the forest could never happen, though we were there and saw it, because we stood motionless in awe and wonder.

But we no longer sit to breathe, try to authenticate our existence with movement -- leaps and bounds -- which we justify as progress. Still, we ain't goin' nowhere.

Highball on a Roll-by

—I don’t mind hanging lonesome, ‘cause I’m a hobo myself sometimes, and it’s easier to hit the grit alone than to feel accountability for others, and jumpin’ from a cannonball ain’t no fun.—
 
12:00 a.m.
The tracks in Fort Collins, Colorado, paralleled the main street, divided the town equally between east and west. My three band mates and I lived one block west of the main drag. The rails ran through the center of our street. We always knew the time because the 2:30 northbound to Laramie, Wyoming, passed us every afternoon but Sunday’s. Funny, the whistle sounded so lonesome when the train made the city limit, four miles south of where we lived, but then sounded like a hell-chained dragon right outside the front door.
 
We spent a lot of time on our front porch, jamming and practicing for any gig we could scrape together. We got few, so we spent more time on the porch than anywhere else. We often hankered to be somewhere different, and so at 2:30 p.m. we’d step to the curb, wave to the hogger as he rolled by, and would then watch down the line for the first vacant flat, always on the lookout for the rare open boxcar.
 
The slowest man went first. If he stepped steady onto the stirrup, caught the grabiron, and made the flip the next fastest guy would go. I went last. Two hours later, we’d be in Laramie, killing time until the 7:30 southbound came rolling. Being young, we never thought much about greasing the track.
 
I’ve forgotten how many runs we made — been over thirty years since I’ve hopped a train. But every morning and every night here in the heart of the Willamette Valley, the train runs through town at irregular intervals. I hear the whine just a mile away in Corvallis, and when the train hollers that close to my house I start feeling like a hobo.

Yet, all I want is to settle down, once and for all. In the seven years since moving back to Oregon, Corvallis has never really felt like home, even though I own one. I still feel as though I'm only passing through, mainly because I've yet to find a job that suits me well enough to stick around for more than a few years, and because I've yet to meet people who can fill the shoes of the friends I left behind in California.
 
I'm on my fourth means of employment, and am hoping to find permanent employment in the Golden State before summer. (Jobs do not define a person or create friends, but they do provide a solid rail that allows one a chance to concentrate on the journey, instead of how much coal gets shoveled into the boiler.)
 
I don’t think I’ve burned any local bridges. My visits to the stations I left behind here have been enjoyable, cooperative, and productive. I was consistently upfront about my intended goal to be more than what they could offer.

And at this moment, as I listen to the whine of a midnight train, I'm hoping my hobo thoughts go away in another week. I've got my fingers crossed that I get this new job, and that it turns out to be the steady track to  a destination more suited to where I thought I would end up...

... 'cause I'm gettin' older, and it's getting harder to hop trains, though I can still shovel coal with the best of 'em.

Highball: all clear ahead, proceed at full speed.
Roll-by: means just that (and it’s a might friendly if you wave while the train rolls on by).
Hobo: someone willing to work, but only enough to get what he needs or wants, always moving down the road, looking for the next thing. Most hobos are honest and trustworthy.
Hitting the grit - to be thrown from a fast moving train.
Cannonball: a fast train.
Hogger: engineer.
Stirrup: first step on a freight car, under the lowest grab iron.
Grabirons: handholds on all railroad cars for ascending onto or descending from the car.
Flip: the motion used to hop a moving train.
Grease the track: fall beneath the train and die.
Put in the hole: when a train is stored on a side track to keep the main track clear.
Boomer: someone who drifts from one job to another, staying only a short time.
Crossover: switching from one track to a parallel track.
Ditch: jump from a moving train.
Mileposts: markers along the line (at regular or irregular intervals) to indicate where the train is at different places on the line.
Big Rock Candy Mountain: hobo heaven.

Exile on Main Street

Please allow me to introduce myself…

When you meet me on the street you might laugh, or you might feel intimidated, or will perhaps jaywalk across the busiest street in town to avoid catching cooties from the fruitcake. You might avoid eye contact. Just maybe, you might smile back. You might gawk.

I’m on the tall side, even taller in my boots. I always wear boots, one of three pair, depending upon which of my twenty-three hats I choose for the day, though most likely you’ll meet me in my Scala Dakota. Sometimes you’ll catch me in a derby, or a stetson half dome. I reserve my bowler and my porkpie only for gigs. My straw and felt Stetsons attend me at rodeos and fairs. Each of my other hats serves a particular utility.

Today, and for every other day until the sun remains this side of the clouds for more than a few seconds, you’ll meet me in my Carhartt and a plaid flannel shirt—always a pair of blue jeans (I have nothing else) and my light color leather belt with the guitar buckle.

You’ll meet me and the word “cowboy” will undoubtedly come to mind, maybe “redneck,” though from the years 2001 to 2007 my hair, often in a ponytail, reached my waist. From 1997 to 2002, a closely trimmed beard and mustache etched my face. Now, I just wear a permanent haze of salt and pepper stubble.

I stroll town, with thick heels you’ll hear coming from two blocks away. I will look like a cowboy. I gig, frequently looking like a Robert Crumb cartoon. I sit around the house looking like a lumberjack. I workout at the gym in a black hensley, black sweats, dark shoes, and black lifting gloves—ninja style. My wardrobe is dark. I wear a lot of black.

Chances are, you’ll meet me on the street, or at a gig. You don’t know where I live, and I’m in and out of the gym in less than an hour and twenty minutes. I walk around town a lot, because my studio sits on one of the busiest corners downtown Corvallis, near all my favorite shops.

Don’t be surprised to meet me in the little bookshop; I stop there to browse and chat three times a week. You might meet me in one of two bakeries, or walking back and forth from the coffee shop. You might see me without a hat, eating at an Indian restaurant, perhaps gigging if not eating at a Mexican restaurant. You’ll catch me without my Carhartt in one of two music stores, because I don’t play guitars wearing things with zippers.

But no matter where you meet me, you will immediately think “cowboy” or “redneck.” You might even go so far as to think “white Anglo-saxon, gun toting Republican conservative, rifle hung across the back window of his big ol’ truck, with a big-hair filly waiting obediently at the nail shop while he bellies to the bar for a Bud with some good ‘ol boys.”

It won’t matter that underneath the clothes I’m naked like everyone else, that I abhor guns and war, never cared for the GOP or Libertarians, and recently became disillusioned with Democrats. It won’t matter that I sit zazen everyday, read the dharma daily, and chant kirtan when I can. It won’t matter, if after our first meeting we become friends, that the first thing you’ll see in my house is a wall of books, mostly medieval lit, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, with lots of poetry, and a section for Earth and astronomy, all tucked, stashed, crammed and stacked with too many knickknacks, mostly little gargoyles, more Hotei than you’d want to count, and a collection of wooden Pinocchios of varying sizes. It won’t matter that my wife’s original paintings adorn the walls, or that the walls of our spare room display a Jolly Roger and an assortment of other pirate stuff just above another over-stacked bookshelf.

Nothing past or future will matter except what you think when you first meet me.

So if you meet me have some courtesy,
have some sympathy and some taste,
‘cause maybe what you think I am
is what I really ain’t.

Disappearing Dead Man

In Memory of a Friend
Dec. 2009

His stagger confessed his secret. The obsessive chatter after a night of drinking more than a few bottles of whiskey exposed the glitch in his system to public scrutiny. In the process of coming out of a boozy stupor, his temper would slip between his clenched teeth and roll off his discolored tongue. He smelled of death. I’ve heard that said about many alcoholics.

Twice during his life he awoke in a hospital. The first time he died and was resuscitated he swore off the hooch, threatened to become the cleanest, most sober hombre west of the Rockies. He died three times during his next visit, but somehow responded enough to medical treatment that he managed to escape with what little heartbeat he could muster. His new threat to become the stellar member of Alcoholics Anonymous fell far short of believability. The slackness in his tongue gave it all away.

He and I worked together, fought with one another, and played bluegrass tunes when living around town got a bit slow. Eventually, he was forced from the store. He could no longer get up in the morning.

And then the heart attack, the liver dysfunction, and the broken hip. Three months my younger, he made my fifty-one years look like youthful vigor. Old friends grew afraid to hug him, afraid they would shatter all of his bones. His occasional phone calls to me lacked conversational cohesiveness. The rasp in his voice echoed softly, with hollow exhaustion.

A mutual friend found his body this morning. Another friend emailed me the news. No one in town knows how he managed to down as many bottles of Jack Daniels as he did. Evidently, he chased all the whiskey with a bottle of tequila.

All of us who knew him expected him to pass on so many years sooner. Knowing him was simply a matter of tolerance and patience for the inevitable.

During the wait, I always called him friend.