Retail Medievalism

Retail is medieval: a corporation (the Kingdom) is spread out in fiefdoms (regions), supported by individual bergs (stores and outlets). Never is the kingdom in danger of complete revolution, because the council above the King is untouchable. The fiefdoms may get bigger or they may shrink, but usually not enough to unsettle the corporate order of things. Bergs are occasionally wiped out for relocation or to cut costs, but the biggest upheaval in retail is at the slave level... because your boss is out to "kill" you. I use kill as a metaphor for termination, a retail procedure done for many reasons, and not always on the up-and-up. Sometimes a minimum wage slave is sacrificed just to set an example for the folks who will most likely be disappeared from the berg at some future time. When wanting drama and intrigue, your boss might "toss you in the dungeon," making you sign a bad performance review with certain conditions that must be met you if you don't want to be killed. Such a document is something done often as a definite means to set a berg-wide example, and in most cases to create a document your boss can present before the King to show things are happening in the berg. 

Not all retail managers are evil, but don't be fooled; even the friendliest of us will kill you at the bequest of the King, or to symbolically reiterate that we remain loyal to the crown and the corporate Kingdom. Even your fellow slaves, the ones with whom you banter on the sales floor, or gulp down lunches with in the break room will sometimes tattle about you to the boss with a hope to make you dead, because some may think with you out of the way they will ooze further up the shit heap, not realizing the pinnacle smells just as bad as the bottom. 

I was second-in-command of a small berg in a global retail chain, but one day another berg in the fiefdom blew several large holes in its management, and the manager of my little space got tagged to plug the holes. That made me top turd of my little shit pile. 

No one asked if I would assume the position, and not once did anyone offer compensation for the overload of work. My contract allowed the Kingdom to simply assume I would carry its banner into battle. I knew if I did not, my days were numbered. 

Yes, your manager wants to kill you, but only because each of us is waiting around to witness our own death, and we need something to do in the meantime to make it look like we're doing something productive. Within the entire realm, retail managers receive no better consideration than the slaves below them. 

My manager was incompetent, possessed less than a fraction of the retail management experience I brought to the table when the King hired me. My predecessor couldn't calculate sales-to-budget figures to save his life, and preferred to antagonize our patrons rather than help them find the right products. He had been with the corporation for only a short while, but long enough to nearly burn his little fiefdom to the ground. My store was all but left for naught. Those higher up in the kingdom wanted to see if my store could be salvaged. I stepped into my new office with grave reluctance. All the feelings of my previous management experiences came flooding back as I sat in my new chair at my new desk. The King was looking for something—was hoping I would do well enough to make him look good to the corporate overseers. 

My little berg was nowhere close to being a gem of the crown, and I knew why. I also knew how to remedy a prognosis of doom. My first order of business: kill two slaves and replace them with fresh, trainable meat. The two slaves were shocked to have been thrown to the wolves by the "nicest" assistant manager they had ever known, and even begged to remain. Second order of business: decrease the hours of several other slaves, and see who would begin to ooze toward the top. The several tossed in the "dungeon" whined and moaned at my ankles about their inability to pay rent and their power bills—their struggles to feed their pets, and their kids. 

I felt bad about it all, and at times felt bad about myself acquiescing the King's wishes. But I wanted the experience to be able to write about retail and middle management intelligently for any digital marketing company that would hire me. I had promised the King a full year of service, and throughout my tenure he would expect results—if not increased profits, at least a few killings and maybe an overcrowded dungeon. Any of those options can go a long way to ensure a retail manager will live another day. 

The kingdom in which I manage demanded the monthly achievement of more financial metrics than I have fingers and toes, but in just my second week, with two new foot soldiers and several newly promoted generals, I presented the King with higher metrics than thought capable of my little berg. 

My first mistake. 

I repeated the increases in my third and fourth weeks as manager. 

My second and third mistakes. 

Once the boss of the berg does well it becomes expected. Trouble is, you cannot always do well in retail, particularly when selling tech, which I did. I had raised numbers by selling enough computers, printers, printer ink, and extended warranties to lift the numbers of my berg higher than they had been in years. But week five approached, the population surrounding my little berg would not sustain the metrics I met in the previous weeks. Something had to happen... so I killed another employee. 

It worked. It deferred attention from my numbers, and in the nick of time. A new manager was assigned to my store, which meant I could go back to being second from the top of the shit heap. It also meant the fella I replaced was not coming back. The new fella would now be taking any heat for future missed metrics. 

And he knew it. His first day in the berg, the new "boss" asked me into the office. He closed the door and we sat. He leaned forward in his chair and looked directly into my eyes. 

"We got anybody out there we can kill?" 

No... No... Not Again

Monday, July 29, 2024

The little corner of the world where I live is on fire again, up the Big Thompson Canyon, less than 30 miles from my home. Damn. Not again. It's been only four years since the 402,805-acre devastation wrought by the Cameron Peak Fire and East Troublesome Fire.

Twin Fires: July 30-2024

As I sit here in the backyard of my new house in Countryside Park, bits and flakes and chunks of ash fall all around me—and on me. I look up and feel the squeeze of my heart and lungs as the smoke from the Alexander Mountain and Stone Canyon fires wafts toward the east. My memories of the near merging of the Cameron Peak Fire and East Troublesome Fire of 2020 still raise my hackles, and tonight as two new fires threaten to join one another, I feel the prickle in the nape of my neck.

Earlier today, riding my bike home from work along four miles of the Poudre River Trail, the smoke, tinted dark orange from the backlight of the afternoon sun, chased me from behind. The sky above the Northern Colorado section of the Front Range glowed like hellfire, and though not a Christian, I felt as if the Devil had saddled the wind to chase me home. So I rode faster to see if I could outrun him and make his damned fire disappear. But I am no magician, and when I made it home I walked fifty yards to the southwest and stood at the trial head of the River Bend Ponds Natural Area near my new home. Looking at the two massive billows of smoke over the western foothills of the Rockies, I shuddered. I could see the flames of the Alexander Mountain Fire, just as four years prior I could see the flames of the Cameron Peak Fire just behind Horsetooth Reservoir, less than a 20-minute drive from the house where I lived back then.

Twin Fires Plus Two: July 31-2024

I stood for awhile after I shut down my laptop and looked out the patio door. I could smell the 920 acres that had burned throughout the the day. Two o'clock this morning, when I took my sixteen-year-old, blind and deaf Chihuahua out for his first potty of the day, the smell was no longer woody. It was a stench of dead trees. My little five pound dog had no idea what was happening, and I felt jealous of that.

My wife and I met here in 1981. We married that same year. Four years later we had a daughter. We lived our lives outside—winter, spring summer, and fall. We camped Poudre Canyon, fished and rafted the wild and scenic Poudre River several times each year during whitewater season. We often took the forty-minute ride up Big Thompson Canyon to spend an afternoon in Estes Park buying taffy, eating pizza, and buying new Colorado T-shirts and sweatshirts, or we'd hike a “new-to-us trail” through the stunning beauty of Rocky Mountain National Park. In the winter we would sled and toboggan at Hidden Valley inside the park, or sometimes we would take a kick jaunt farther up Highway 7 to ski Eldora Mountain in Nederland, or even farther into the Rockies to ski Winter Park.

State Highway 34 from Loveland to Estes Park was closed this morning, leaving no access into Big Thompson Canyon or Estes Park that did not require a two-hour detour. The fires crews are doing their best to keep the canyon from burning. But it is literally a craggy uphill challenge, made even harder by the encroachment of the Stone Canyon Fire toward the Alexander Mountain burn area. This afternoon on my bike, I could not see the foothills, just 7 miles away. Smoke from two other wildfires along the Front Range—Lake Shore Fire and the Quarry Fire—has blended with the smoke of the two Northern Colorado fires to blot out the Rocky Mountains. The lives my wife and I and our daughter lived forty years ago is being burned—6700 acres as of tonight.

In the wee hours of tomorrow morning, when I take my little dog out for his first potty, I sometimes sit in a patio chair for a spell and envy his ignorance of the world burning around us.

Burn, and Burn Again: August 1, 2024

The month of July ended with my town receiving 0.92 inches of precipitation. Not much when you consider most of that fell as ten-minute torrents in just a few days scattered throughout the month—lots of rain at one time each time, but not enough overall to make a difference in the skin-searing dryness that plagues the Rocky Mountains this summer.

The Alexander Fire and the Stone Canyon Fire continue to "blow up" every night since their ignitions. Today the Alexander Fire soared to 8,134 acres, reported by the "epnews” out of Estes Park. More than two dozen homes have burned. The Stone Canyon Fire, which started 25 miles from the Alexander Mountain Fire has reached to within 14 miles this evening. One person is dead. I am sure countless animals are dead: rabbits, snakes, coyotes, foxes, elk, deer... .

In 2020, when the East Troublesome Fire jumped the Continental Divide and joined in adding its destruction to that of the Cameron Peak Fire on Colorado's Western Slope, Hell took control of my world and scorched 296,066 acres, every square inch of a beautiful stretch of Earth at such a temperature that there is no chance life of any kind will return to the Poudre Canyon in my lifetime.

And this evening, as I stand again just 50 yards from my home and look west, I see two massive billows of black smoke that have begun to blend into one cloud of smoky death... and I begin to wonder if Hell has returned to Earth, just as it did in 2020.

Hell has a name: climate change.

Neverending Saga: August 2, 2024

Rather eerie today with so much blue sky, and two fires burning just a stone's throw up the road. The Alexander Mountain Fire has blackened 9,375 acres, and is only 5% contained. Todays rain was not enough to even dampen the smoke, which by evening returned to its prominence across the northern Front Range.

Tonight, three fires burn along the Front Range: Alexander Mountain Fire, Stone Canyon Fire, and Quarry Fire (Jefferson County). The Lake Shore Fire has been 100% contained since yesterday. But on the Western Slope, the Bucktail Fire near Nucla stood at 200 acres yesterday, and tonight has already surpassed 2000 acres. It seems in Colorado, what hasn’t burned is beginning to burn. Wildfires pop up almost daily, and I begin to wonder, with the onset of August and the continuing 95°F+ temperatures drying out and burning the Front Range of Colorado, and the rage of the California Park Fire, if the West is once again slipping toward a flaming autumn.

The Scorch: Sat, August 3, 2024

Jumping from 5% containment to 32% containment is great news for the evening, but still 9,668 acres have burned, and I would not be surprised if the Alexander Fire reaches 10,000 acres by morning.

My wife and I have hiked many of the trails that are now charred, and we are sad to lose the beauty that drew us back to a life along the foothills of the Colorado Front Range. The saddest part is the closure of Highway 34, and the loss of income for the businesses along the highway, like the Colorado Cherry Company, a fourth-generation owned and operated business in the Rockies, and the Dam Store, family owned since 1969, and a favorite of mine since I was kid, because at ten years old I could say without getting in trouble as we passed by, "Hey, there's that dam store we should stop at." Just a year after taking three years of fiscal hits resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, both of my favorite mountain shops are dead-in-the-water, because the only access customers from Larimer County have to reach either location is closed due to the the Stone Canyon and Alexander Mountain fires.

It is said the only constant in life is change. Many times in my life I have wished that wasn't true.

Headway: Sunday, August 4, 2024

The fires abated this morning, outmatched for the first-day-in-six by the amazing folks who accept the challenge of going head on, toe-to-toe with a wildfire—with no thought they will lose. The scorch on the Earth gained little today, while 327 heroes brought the Alexander Mountain Firer to 52% containment. As a general rule, when a fire is brought to 50% containment the fire teams have everything under control and the end is nigh.

Walking to the natural area today, the sky was more clear, the air wafted with diminished odor, and the world in the FoCo foothills felt much more comfortable.

The Last Leg: Monday, August 5, 2024

I busted out in a flood of tears this morning when I pedaled my bicycle up over the ridge that borders my neighborhood and saw Longs Peak, Mount Meeker, and Mount Lady Washington burnished in golden sunlight. Seeing the sky void of the familiar fan of fire smoke, I knew all the beautiful hiking and biking trails I thought might be burned to oblivion would remain. Some of the familiar faces I pass on the Poudre River bike trail every morning on my way to work were also streaked with happy tears.

There is a reason so many of us live in Colorado, play in Colorado, and thrive in Colorado—and in my little patch of Planet Earth some amazing people made sure all of that would be saved. Tonight, the Alexander Mountain Fires smolders at 74% containment. The burned area remains at the 9,668 acres recorded this past Saturday.

The local newspaper reported 929 homes in the vicinity of the fire are still under mandatory evacuation, and another 245 remain under voluntary evacuation. The fire is not out, but it will be. The 327 firefighters who battled the flames day and night to save livestock, pets, wildlife, homes, and outbuildings have, as always, gone far and above the call of heroic duty and have given their all by putting their lives in danger—have taken the bull by the horns and tamed it. They call them "hotshots," elite crews armed with axes, shovels, and hoses, who carved firebreaks through  burning trees, doused flames and embers, and beat back the relentless inferno.\

Addendum—Over and Done

The Alexander Mountain Fire in Larimer County, Colorado was declared out—100% contained—August 17, 2024, two weeks after it was first reported on July 29, 2024. The fire burned over 9,600 acres and was human-caused. 

His Best Friend

By Mike McLaren

He thinks of things, I think. It’s hard to say what goes on in the mind of a seventeen-year-old Chihuahua who is blind, deaf, and has no teeth. Bluto suffered a stroke a while back, on a Thanksgiving afternoon. My wife and I, and our daughter and son-in-law, walked into the house after a three-hour bike ride and watched our little guy fall off the couch that, at one time in his life, he could easily vault onto and leap from to get a treat. But he could barely stand, and his head hung to his left. At first we thought he’d gotten hurt in the fall, but watching him turn circles to his left as he stumbled across the backyard, we realized he’d suffered a stroke. My wife had done the research.

To our surprise, our little guy seemed to have recovered from the stroke by the New Year, but it was clear he was not like to ever regain anything close close to his his previous spryness.

These days I have to help him outside to pee—at three o’clock in the morning, then at 3:45, and again at 4:30. He usually makes his way back inside the house by circling toward the back door, some days making the leap from the patio, up over two steps, and into the mudroom. I don’t know how he does it blind, because on occasional days he misses and slams his haunches into the metal threshold.

Sometimes I intercept him before he leaps toward an unseen destination, just to ensure he doesn’t get hurt. On most days, though, I hold my breath and let him make his own way into the house, thinking the challenge is good for maintaining his cognition. But I don’t know how the mind of a dog processes the world. One of these days he may get hurt because I put too much faith in they way I think nature can take care of herself and her creatures.

These past sixteen years, my little “mighty-mite” has done so many things that have made me question whether humans are smarter than other animals on the planet. I have no idea what kinds of knowledge, ideas, and emotions run through the gray matter of a five-pound canine—though I know he loves me, and he knows I love him, because he runs to dad when he gets shook, or when his sister-of-another-mother beats him up. I also know he likes to be devious. Several times in his life he has stopped, cocked an eye toward me to make sure I wasn’t looking when he tried something sneaky, like pull a pound of cheddar from the loaded grocery bag on the floor. Poor little guy had no idea dad had such great peripheral vision I could snatch him up just as he pulled the cheese from the bag. He got away with it once, scarfed down a whole pound of cheese before I knew what was happening and before I could stop him. The delirium in his eyes for the next two days… I thought it might cure him of the habit to rifle a loaded grocery bag for a full brick of cheese. But no. He tried several other times, when I had too many bags and  needed to set a few down to get the others onto the counter; I kept my eyes wide open on my way to and from the kitchen, always getting back to the bags in the nick of time to stop him from devouring another brick of cheese.

He always seemed so disappointed to be thwarted in making off with the goods. So sometimes, just to give him a little fun, I would play a play trick on him. I would leave a grocery bag on the floor with nothing in it but a one-pound brick of cheddar. The gleam in his eyes was fun to see as he nose-dived into the bag. He did not know that, by the time he crawled to the bottom of the bag and made his way out with the corner of a pound of cheese in his teeth, I was there to snatch him up as he backed into the open. We’d wrestle for a moment, that five-pound Chihuahua and me, until I could wrench the cheese from his maw.

We no longer play that game. It’s heartbreaking to watch him try to lock naked gums in a tiny mouth onto a quarter-inch-thick brick of English cheddar. I don’t think he would stop trying if I didn’t snatch him up.

Since his stroke, he’s lost weight. His ribs are visible, and his midsection is nearly invisible. But he is familiar to me, his face still looks like my boy, and there are many times when his fear and anxiety taper off and he sniffs the air trying to find me for some good ear scritches and neck rubs. There are days, though, when I wonder if the petting I give him feels uncomfortable. I’ll start scratching his back or his haunches, and he’ll lurch spastically to get away.

But then sixty seconds later he’s nuzzling my calf just to make sure it’s still me, so he can follow me around the house, the yard, the garage… .

I rescued this little fella sixteen years ago, at a time when another Chihuahua who lived with me was dying. I had emptied my music studio of all furniture to help her not get lost in a maze. It was hard enough for her not to get trapped in a corner of the room. I kept the door closed to muffle the sounds of her screaming. I was adamant that I would never put down any animal I rescued, but a guitar student of mine gave me sage advice: “the best friend is the one who can make the decision they never wanted to make.”

I swore to myself I would never “kill” a dog I rescued. But seasons change. To this day I regret making Tiva suffer my self-righteousness for so long. As she lay in my arms at the vet, and as the needle pricked into her, I will never forget the return of her little smile, and the sudden clear look that came in her cataract blinded eyes that said, “thanks, dad.”

I do not want to make the same mistake with Bluto. But for the current  moments he pees (too much and can’t hold it), poops, barks incessantly when he senses someone in the kitchen, and tucks hard into my or my wife’s chest when we pick him up and give him scritches in his armpits.

I’ve seen both sides now of  “should I pull the plug, or should I not.”

I think of Tiva and the disservice I did to her. At this very moment I see the joy in Bluto’s posture when he flops onto a sunspot in the house and hunkers down for a long, hot nap. I see his voraciousness when I bust up a treat onto his dish, and the way he attacks his breakfasts and his dinners. But that’s all he does. He lays in the sun until he becomes delirious and can barely walk when I wake him—and he eats. The rest of every day he whines as circles the expansive backyard or the small space of the living room—until he passes out right where he’s at.

This time, when the end has come, I will not yield to my own predilection. My wife and have decided we will pay close attention to what our little boy tells us. My boy will tell me when it’s time to “pull the plug.” I just need to be smart enough to listen, and to be willing to obey.

Addendum

August 6, 2024, my boy barked up a storm at 4:38 in the morning, and when I got downstairs to pick him up he plunged his head into my arms and chest and would not let me put him down. He told his dad what I needed to know. Bluto passed over the Rainbow Bridge, August 8, 2024. The vet who came to the house assured my wife and I that we had waited until the right time—waited until my boy told us he was ready.

I hope someone will do that for me when it’s time.

To Her Lost 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.

Hi-ball 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.

Bread of Fire

 I saw... The Holy Grail,

descend upon the shrine,

I saw the fiery face as of a child

That smote itself into the bread…

—Tennyson, Idylls of the King, The Holy Grail

Bread king of the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale, California, two years running, and for my trifecta I had a definitive plan: bake my crowning achievement—a personal Holy Grail that one else could ever achieve—collect another blue ribbon, then promptly retire from bread making while I was still on top.

Being raised in the south, I learned to eat spicy hot peppers and love them. All my life I've never been able to turn down thick slices of bread. Why not combine my two favorite food groups—fire and flour?

Well I did. My chef-d'oeuvre was to be a white bread with hot peppers, since one of my favorite pastimes is to eat habaneros fresh off the vine. But my wife suggested I avoid habaneros because she thought it best to not incinerate the tongues of the judges.

"That would get you a definite thumbs-down," she advised, "would probably get you banned from entering anything in the fair ever again. Stick with  jalapenos."

She had a point, and I almost took her advice. I avoided the habaneros (a Scoville heat unit of 150,000). But jalapenos rate only 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville heat units. I wanted something with a little kick, so I opted for a combination of cayenne and red chili peppers (50,000 to 65,000 Scoville heat units).

I worked my dough like a pro, with my eyes on the prize. I let the dough rise, then I worked it some more. I placed it carefully in the oven, then ran my hands across my face and eyes to wipe away the sweat of a hot summer day.

I never saw the bread. The chili oil on my hands, mixed with salty sweat, swelled my eyes closed. For days I could not stop the blur of tears that failed to soothe the burning embers in my eyes. My wife had to drive me to the fair to deliver my entry.

I did receive my third blue ribbon. But I could not focus my eyes well enough to really see it until the next week.

I retired from breadmaking.