BackwaterBlog

I was gonna do a sort of rebuttal post along Christmas time, call it “Christmas Letters from Hell” since we get them every year from various siblings.  We all do.  The sort of letters that beg for a wall of enshrinement, going on for however many paragraphs that the sender has accomplishments to be publicized and rammed collectively down the maw of your concious.  You do want to be reminded of fact that our doctoral presentation was a smashing success, don’t you?  Or that Juniors wife popped out another bairne in February, while getting promoted to VP of Ops, and doing a transmission change on the collectable ‘63 Mercedes in a snowstorm and how . . .

Never mind.  It dulls me, truly it does.  Happens every Christmas.

But since Christmas is past, I have no chance for that letter.  Let’s do a New Years review, instead.  And mail it off to brother with postage due, because that’s how we hang here in the backwater.   Nobody got promoted to VP of much of anything outside of a misery factor here, in any event.

And if you are here for happy reading, you might want to pop down one post, since I did two today.  When you write a bunch of nothing for months at a time you oughta pop it all out at once.  So I’ve been told.

~~~~~

Dear Brother,

Received your fine letter of the 22nd and decided, for once, to reply forthwith, since so many notables have been tossed on the coffee table this year.  Let’s just review the year of our Lord 2008, eh?

January thru March:  We remained ensconsed at the little house in the woods, dear brother.  Have been since ‘06 in fact.  It’s winter, my work schedule is spotty but a little better than last year.  Which means I’m making subsistence money to go along with Allys subsistence money.  So, we subsisted.  When you’re right on top of aproaching your 50’s sometimes that’s good enough.

Oh, and our dog of some 15 years passed on.  That was a bad day.  Particularly when I was the one to have to lend a hand to it, so to speak.

April:  Remember that fella that I talked into moving down here next door to us, dear brother?  Yeah, the one with the bum hip, who was so excited to have a place out in the woods with a little land?  Well, he fell victim to his own sense of thrift, I suppose.  Flew over to India to get that hip replaced ’cause it would save him a bunch of fiat dollars and such.  Had a helluva time by all accounts, spoke lovingly of all those Indian nurses and all.  Trouble was, you’re suppose to keep off the hip and get bedrest and plenty of it, and old Walt was never one to listen to a whole lot of bullshit from anybody, doctor or no.  Might be a lesson there, dear brother, with a doctorate of your own, even though it’s in theology and not something useful like turning wrenches on hips or something.  But anyway.

So old Walt tossed the hip a couple of times, once in the shower for eight hours running and I had to haul him outta there nekkid and all, wound up in a hospital with more infections and assorted ailments than if he’d ate some of that good roadkill down here without boiling it first.  Seriously fucked up, he was.  And he managed to piss off just about everybody in his life in the meantime because his mind was going as just about the same rate as his body.  We all know how that goes.

So come the 15th of April, he died.  And if you knew Walt, the irony of that was just too perfect for words.  He was 8 years older tha me but it could have been thirty, to look at him.

Oh but we picked up another dog in April, we did.  So it can’t be said that the month was a total loss.  We really like Sam.

May:  Hey we picked up yet another dog!  Not a Lab like Sam, as a matter of fact we don’t know quite what it is to this day.  But we now had a crew of 4, if you count me and Ally.

Work was picking up too.  Went down to the big summer project with a new fella the company hired, a project manager.  Took him out there on his first day, in his Italian shoes.  Shoulda warned him, it was right muddy out on that school jobsite, but whatever.  Boy was he eager to learn.  Told me so, he did.  “I’m glad to have someone with your wealth of experience to help me”, sez he.  Hmmm.

Plus, May is the finest month in the backwater.  Warm to hot, fish jumping in the boat kind of weather.

June:  Sigh.

You know what, brother?  Our house burned down in June.  I know, maybe I shoulda called and let you know about this, but what exactly . . . or what would you . . . you know what I mean?

Yeah we lived, and the dogs lived.  Everybody lived.  And thank Jesus (you’re glad I’m thanking Jesus, I know) we had that big metal shop off the back.  Made a terrific storage shed all summer, for all that burnt up crap we haued out there.

Oh and that new fella, the project manager?  Called me up a couple of hours after the big burn, you know when it was still kinda simmering?  Wanted to know when I’d be back to work.  Now he never did come right out and ask, you see.  Just let it kinda hang there.  The old pregnant pause thing.

Shit, I was back in 36 hours, bro.  Dads work ethic and all.  I even had new boots and some clothes.  It was about all I had, but by golly I was proud to have ‘em.  Yep.  That was June.

July thru September:  You might be curious to know how my summer went, brother.  Well we lived in a ghetto house.  Not the sort of house you’d want to spend more time in than necessary in daylight.  We had a bed, two chairs and a TV.  One of the chairs I liberated from the backyard of that place and let me tell ye, it was a royal bitch on my back.  While I was surfin’ the net on this here laptop, looking for insurance replacement costs for everything we owned.

Work was going along pretty well though.  Between the big school project and a dental clinic I had all I wanted.  Plus, the ghetto house was so much closer to the Watering Hole than before, so their profit margins went up dramatically.  That’s a good thing, I suppose.

And hey, the new house got delivered really quick!  I mean we put in the order right around the first of July and the sumbith was on site mid-August!  Just in time for me to wrap up that school and start some serious supervision of the rebuild.

Matter of fact, come first of September that new project manager said he didn’t have much for me to do the rest of the month.  Why, it was perfect!  I sez to him “Shucks that’s okay!  I’ll just take an unpaid sabbatical ’til October and ride herd on this house, right?  Works out good for both of us.”  And I got to tell you, it was a relief, ’cause Ally was all kinds of ready to be in that house by October, the ghetto being what it is.

You remember Maggie, right?  Our Middlest child, who being great with child lived with us for a spell?  Long story, I know.  But hey!  She moved back down from the great frozen North this month with grandson and boyfriend in tow, and there was the backwater equivilent of slaughtering the fatted calf!

It meant the very world.  We’re selfish like that.  And they’re doing mostly fine, truly they are.

That little project manager and I had been fueding.  Mainly because he was an inexperienced little asshole with passive/aggressive written in 2,000 watt neon on his forehead.  Blinking neon, even.  The Old Man at the firm was trying to ease out and retire, see, and needed a replacement body.  I don’t know what he was thinking, fact is he even told me that PM boy “Already went through 2 bankrupt firms, wonder why, sure hope he doesn’t do it here . . . hehheh”.

Heh, indeed.  So maybe you can see what was coming next month.

October:  Got back into the house just in time for Allys birthday, go us.  Spent all manner of money getting new everything, of course, because who doesn’t need a new china cabinet and a leather recliner and flat screens (strictly under 42″ flat screens though, to mount over the fireplace).  And sofas and stereo receivers and flatware and software and bedsheets and shampoo.  You see?  Lotsa stuff.  Thank you Mr. Insurance Man, sincerely.  Why, you didn’t even blink when I sent you a bill for dirt!  Dirt from the torn up front yard!  Why, I suspect you’d have paid me for the two days it took to push the dirt around on my tractor, if I’d asked.

Matter of fact we were having so much fun spending that sweet insurance dime that we spent darn near all of it.  Didn’t get us back to square one, ‘xactly.  Close enough.  Besides which, it was time to get back to work, right?  Earn something.

Uh . . . no.

Fact is little Pass/Agg PM boy with the neon thing called me up just about the day we moved.  Cunning, I know.  He sez, “Hey, we’re going to all subcontractors to install what little work we have.  You want in, you need to start your own gig up”.

Now, I know you follow world events and politics and such, dear brother.  I do too, I did more reading in that ghetto house about world events than ever before.  Got a feel for how the construction industry is doing?

Well I’ll tell ye.  It sucks, and has been sucking for a whole year.

So I went in and talked to the Old Man and was encouraged, you know?  Spent a fair amount of time with him and his son.  Talked a lot about little PM boy and how we could improve the company, work on limited margins and so on.  Walked out feeling pretty good about it, heard very distinctly the whole “We’ll call you, sure.  Coupla weeks, tops”.

It’s been a hella long coupla weeks, bro.  I ain’t heard back from ‘em since.

But I imagine little PM boy got what he wanted.  Saved a boatload of money by not having me around I’m sure.  Why, he never even had to hire any subcontractors.  Just promoted a couple of kids from his past job to do what I did.  Got rid of Tommy, my old helper, too.

Yep, that worked out pretty swell.

November thru Right Now:  I sit in the house and fill out online job applications.  Got a heck of a resume, stands to reason I would after 30 some years in the same field.  Funny thing about online resumes though.  You can send in a hundred of ‘em, and I just may have by now, but there’s always somebody cheaper or younger or more networked than you.  If you can even get a response, which most times ye don’t.

The Watering Hole network and Knock On Doors method is more encouraging if only because of the immediate feedback and folks holding out hope for you, but I’m not scoring any touchdowns yet.  And if you recall anything my brother, it’s that I don’t function well when not earning.  It’s been four months and the kitty is running on fumes.

Oh, I’ve done some side work. Some.   But it’s funny.  We’re about down the toilet economically in this country.  You have to be either really rich or really desparate to want the services of a carpenter right now.  We’re about as popular as a new car salesman from what I can see.

Beth the Eldest is working, thank God.  Maggie too, but the boyfriend just got chopped a couple weeks ago.  Ben the Youngest?  Hanging on, by a fingernail.

I think back on this year of 2008, dear brother, and you know what?  I want this year in my rearview mirror so fast, and with so many flingings of the middle finger(s) on its demise that it would blow your Presyterian vestments clean off.

There hasn’t been much mention of Ally in this missive, has there?  Maybe it’s for the want of sparing her as much of this as possible.  She had a nice Christmas with the kids and family and friends and it was . . . like normal.  Like life ought to be, and what she surely deserves.  Not this gnawing, and waiting, and looking at the suck of the news every waking minute.

It ain’t pretty, is what I’m saying.  I look at the dogs all day.  After Ally leaves for the subsistence job, it’s me and “the boys”.  I stuck a picture of them down at the end of this New Years Letter for ye.

Oh, and sorry to be so negative in this letter.  Don’t mean to be.  I reckon that after a year of death and dismemberment I’ve just gotten more cranky than usual.  And I really ought to have cheered up quite a bit from your Christmas Letter from Hell, but frankly, when you got to writing about having to put your purchase of a vacation home in the fucking Poconos on hold “Due to the temporary economy problems”, and that after 14 successful births you hadn’t seen any new grandchildren this year, and that everybody was getting raises and new advanced degrees or considering hearty retirement I had to resist giving you one of those rare phone calls.

You know, the commiserating ones.  I’m about running out of commisery, bro.  Matter of fact?  Fuck you and your vacation home problems.

I’m well and truly on the road to losing the only one we’ve got.

Your loving and distant brother,

Jim

PS:  Next time, I’ll write something more pleasant.  Asshole.  Have a pithy 2009, okay?

It truly is getting to the point . . . where I’m no fun anymore.