My wife and I are dog people. In nearly 28 years of wedded bliss (insert cackling laughter) we’ve had a dog for all but the first 2. Newlywed apartments being what they are, we had to settle for a cat during those times.
Picked up a Lab/mix in ‘83 who spent the next eleven years with us and witnessed the birth of our three children.
Picked up another Lab/mix in ‘94. Seems like he was a yearling at the time. This one passed just a few weeks ago, having lived for at least 15 years. That’s old for a Lab.
Along the way there’s been the occasional attempt at having more than one dog, or a guest dog would show up for a spell. Cats would wander in, or a lizard or hamster. When you have children and a home and a wife who can’t say no the menagerie promises to be in a state of flux at odd given moments.
But always, there was the prime dog. Given the not-so-difficult task of anchoring the home and making it his own. Growling at intruders to give me a little warning, a little head start to the Remington. The keeper of the space, a presence for the woman when I’m off down the road on some dusty jobsite for days on end. An entertainer. A lounging sloth in the workshop to serve as a sounding board, a keen observer of kitchen activities.
We keep a dog because it’s the way things are, and have always been.
People in the Backwater understand this. Rare indeed is the house down here without one, or several. They roam at large because fencing is expensive and limiting, and a dog content with his lot won’t go very far anyway.
Ally and I made the trip yesterday to a rescue shelter. It’s a strange way to add to your family, to roll dice and hope for the look, a spark, when seeing all sorts of dogs cramped behind steel and shouldering each other for a look at strangers in khaki and boots, the kennel deafening with the howl and bark of dogs in trouble. A dozen such dogs, sent to the very back edge of a backwater swamp, to a building hard to find and out of the way.
I believe in a lot of the undercurrent things that go on between dogs and the humans who attempt to herd them. Who attempt to know what’s best for them. I looked at one who huddled, shivering in his pen on a hard concrete floor. He was much older, a silvery mix of breeds and obviously new from a home of some kind, a soul accustomed to carpet and regular meals and a soft hand. He had the stare of the defeated, and the thought went through me that no, this one wouldn’t work for what we are. And he turned and slumped to a corner and would look no more. He knew, and I knew. And a hard old thing it is to know.
Just as simple or hard to reject the jumper, the loud one, the downright ugly one. I followed in Ally’s wake and she was being very slow about the whole thing. Would have taken just about all of them I’m sure. But there was one, yes, and he spoke without sound and for a wonder, he was a Lab. He tracked us with his eyes, just a couple of barks, trying to peer around the corner of the pen when we walked away. I saw all this because I was tracking him as well, and his alertness. Like I say, I believe in that sort of stuff. Just like I believe in the spark between man and wife who speak without words, and it was no surprise to me when Ally said, “Can we see that one please, the Lab?”
It was a start, the start of the first day for a dog we’ll call Sam.
There was the skittish nervousness of a juvenile Black Lab, all big feet and muscle and tail going in four directions at once. He was thin, bony even, from some never to be explained wandering before the Shelter got hold of him. Skinny or not, he pulled me to the car like a crazed mule, a rope lead digging into my hands. “Good lord”, I said to Ally. “There’s nothing wrong with his energy!” And he hauled me to the nearest big pine tree and pooped like he’d been holding it for a week.
“Good dog! Good Sam!” He was, well, like someone just released from jail, and I worried about his past, my stinging hands and the cars upholstery.
But he glided into the backseat and calmly sat upright as if he did it every day.
We stopped at the grocery and laid in food. And a proper leash. And a long training lead. And because we are foolish spoilers of grandsons and dogs, a rawhide bone.
Ally was all set to walk him when we got home, and he demonstrated no lack of a sense of equality as he dragged her around the acreage on a jailbreak flight.
But once in the house, he was mannerly and obedient. He watched my wife, he followed her, he wouldn’t let either of us out of sight.
There was an agreement made, and the proper signs were exchanged.
Right now, he sleeps and dreams on the floor alongside the bed of his mistress. There is a look about him, from his eyes, and it isn’t the look of eagles just yet. It’s a look of wanting, of course, always a dog is wanting a touch, a meal. This is a look of wanting to be part of something. He wants to join the club and we’re just as wanting that he do so.
It’s the way things ought to be. Welcome, Sam.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
There’s something very earthy and permanent about sitting down to a dinner of regional foods. Stuff that generations have worked on, tinkered with. The art of pork barbecue is strong here. Metal siding on a roadside diner with neon pigs dancing a hoedown atop the roof are plentiful. Ally and I sat in just such a place, content, and two chunks of cornbread to starboard.
“Want a shot of this mild sauce on your ‘que, darlin’?”, I asked with a grin.
My wife is a temperate sort. Her idea of a spicy dinner might involve a couple dashes of salt. She observes my experiments with food with a detached air. A kind of ”Thanks no, but you go ahead and ruin that pig any old way you please” and a stare. Haughty wench. I upended the big-boy sauce over my plate with a flourish.
One thing about pork barbeque with a proper sauce – there should be an afterburn. You don’t really get it until the third forkful or so, but then this taste starts to hit the back of your teeth and it’s like trying to scratch an itch using only your right earlobe as a poker.
“Oh Man!”, I breathed. Or tried to, as the fumes steamed up from my plate. “The sauce! It’s just about as close to old Jed’s stuff as anything I’ve ever had!” I shoveled in another bite and blissfully closed my eyes, savoring the cayenne, the vinegar and that elusive something . . .
“Uh oh.” My wife was staring at me.
“What?”
She delicately nipped a toothsome morsel from her fork and looked at me oddly. “It must be good. You’re already sweating like a hog.”
It was true. The good stuff makes me break out in a fine sheen of perspiration, the sort of sweat that an air conditioned diner has no chance of helping. Just to make sure, I squirted some more sauce over the heap of french fries to my right, much to Ally’s distress. Hell she doesn’t even do ketchup on hers, can you imagine?
At any rate, the game was on. I tore through that platter with the joy of the zealot coming home, the elusive condiment at hand, the roar of battle in my ears. The sweet young waitress thang wandered by (a little cautiously, I thought) and I nodded (or grunted, mayhap) at the empty longneck and Ally smiled yes for more sweet tea.
It was over eventually. I had slicked my platter, some of Ally’s as well, and sat pondering the bottle of sauce, resisting the urge to stuff it in Ally’s purse just out of good manners.
“All done here folks?”, from the waitress thang. “How’d you like the barbecue sauce sir?”
“I want it,” from me, which got the expected giggle.
“Look at him, “said my wife. “He’s still sweating. He’ll be raving about this stuff for weeks.”
“Why sir, (except she said “suh” which is what people do around heah) you do know that we sell this here sauce right up at the counter don’t you?”
She was tipped well. Let’s put it that way. She won’t soon forget me. And I went to fetch my prize from the lady at the counter.
And in short order, once returned to the shack in the woods I had this:
There are distinct layers to that gallon jug (yes, I bought a gallon. I don’t fool around when on a mission). Progressively darker toward the bottom, and you shake it up to mix it and steal your wife’s best cooking funnel, snatch a nearly empty ketchup bottle from the fridge (along with another longneck) and steam-rinse it, carefully pour off a bottle full and sit back, chuckling evilly as the open jug causes your pores to open yet again.
http://www.scottsbarbecuesauce.com/
Yeah, they have a website. And I do want the T-shirt. They’re only a couple hours ride downstate so a pilgrimage may be in order.
And yet another one of those things to do in life has been accomplished. Build a boat, write a book, find the one true sauce.
Best part of it is? My wife won’t be borrowing any. That gallon ought to last a right good while.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
A good many years ago I was invited to a fraternity get together.
This wasn’t the sort of thing involving kegs and young men in stovepipe hats, either. None of that college-aged kid stuff. The lads throwing this gig were considered young if their first born was attending college, for heavens sake. I think the eldest member of the group was pushing 90, and he blended in nicely with a crew given to cigars and a vasting sweating array of cheap beer in a cooler full of ice.
(You can read all about the fraternity itself here, http://www.hoo-hoo.org/, if you’ve the time and inclination. Don’t look at the pictures. Don’t look at the pictures regarding the embalming thingy they do every year. I haven’t been to a meeting in far too long but oh . . . the memories.)
Part and parcel of this club was the food and the place. The place was a genuine southern Roadhouse, the sort of thing you see very infrequently now. Not quite a bar, not quite a restuarant. It was actually suppose to be the kitchen for a far flung catering business but there was always beer on hand and a large room with folding tables and hundreds of grainy pictures on the wall. Pictures of men in creased slacks and pork-pie hats guzzling drinks in mason jars, mostly.
But the food.
Oysters, fresh from the river nearby and served any way you could imagine. Virginia ham, thinned sliced, salted and culled from a hog just down the road, Smithfield being but five minutes away. Boiled peanuts, grits and more. None of it had ever seen the inside of a grocery store either. Straight from the field or slaughterhouse and done up right there. An amazing feat, and probably subject to all sorts of fines by the powers-that-be, if they hadn’t been right there alongside you with a mouthfull of fried oysters and a plate loaded with ham.
Then there was the barbeque. A high holy grail of barbeque. Carolina style of course, pulled pork steamed fresh in a vast stainless steel vat and simmered until tender. Fresh, oh how fresh it was. There was always a que formed for the barbeque, a line of grizzled men snaking through the kitchen awaiting their turn, and inevitably the shout would ring out. “The Sauce! Jed forgot to put out the Sauce again!”
White haired and genial Jed. I suspect he did it on purpose, for this was his moment of glory. He would affect a look of surprise, hand to mouth, and scamper to the storeroom with an empty box. Coming back laden down, thrusting a bottle of something high in the air to the roar of a hundred voices. “The Sauce! We must have the Sauce!”, and setting a few dozen bottles of it randomly about.
Now the barbeque itself could stand alone, but with a dash of the sauce? My God.
Vinegar based, to be sure. But there was mystery there. Cayenne, salt, a hint of something . . . no one ever could be sure, and Jed wasn’t telling. “Family recipe,” he’d beam. “Been making it that way for a hundred years.” If pestered (and given $5), he’d even let you take a bottle home. A clear bottle with no labeling whatsoever. I got a bottle more than once, and for weeks thereafter I could be found dosing every last thing on my plate with it. Eggs, beef, broccoli. Mattered not, the Sauce was the thing. A gateway to culinary heaven.
Ally would often look on, alternately amused and horrified as I sat to dinner and contemplated hamburgers or steak or fish with the familiar botte at my elbow. “Getting kind of low on your ambrosia there, aren’t you?”, she would ask. “Be a shame to run out before you tried it on your Frosted Flakes tomorrow morning.”
I’d give her the look, of course. The ‘Don’t bother me now with the future, I’m having an affair with a barbeque Sauce’ look. She tried the stuff once, maybe twice to humor me. On barbeque. Once she drank enough sweet tea she was fine afterwards, too.
Now all of this is the precursor to recent events, which I ought to entitle ‘Whence I rekindle My wasted Youth’ or something. I haven’t been to the Roadhouse in a good while, don’t know if the fraternity is still active in this area. But I still like a good barbecue once in a while, and here in the Backwater there is a relatively good place to go and get you some. Ally and I went late of a Saturday evening, too hot to cook sort of day.
She ordered first. “The pulled pork plate, please. Fries and slaw on the side. Sweet tea.” A Southern sort of thing, the staple of good eating, and it sounded pretty darn good to me. Make it two, with a longneck if you please.
The waitress brought the drinks and cornbread and a surprise, a basket of plastic sauce bottles (Mild, Hot, Hotter). “Y’all need sauce for your barbecue, ‘course?”, with a look to me. Oh indeedy yes, we need some sauce, and I reached for the premium bottle with a crafty look. “Heh. Bet they wish they could copy out that Hoo sauce that Jed used to make. Why, I’d give my eye teeth if could just get one more . . .”
Ally sighed. “Will this never end? You’ve been on this crusade for the past ten years. Just stop at the Roadhouse one day and see if he’s still in there. Buy a damn case of the stuff if you have to.”
“But he’s all the way up in Virginny, babe. Awful long way to go. Just for some sauce, I mean.”
She snorted. “Yuh. That’s my line, isn’t it? You don’t want to go up there ’cause you know if you did, ya might not ever come back, isn’t that it?”
“Suspect you’re right, darlin’”, and I got a little dreamy eyed. Those boiled peanuts. And an oyster stew. All capped off with a steaming plate of . . .
“Here we go folks!”, and the sweet young thang swished to the table with a pair of heavy platters, an impossible amount of pork and a mountain of fries. “Y’all need anything else now?”
“Elbow room and another longneck, hon”, I said calmly.
To be continued, I swear it.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
In due course of time, the house that Ally and I had envisioned arose from the clay of the backwater. The masons were summoned, and the electricians and plumbers. As my personal contribution I rejected the deck builder and chose to put my own in, a grand and luminous affair involving the erection of the finest material and the dogged pursuit of finishing before the next phase was to start.
And personally recording every brick and stick was my own personal site historian, Walter.
For someone who loathed a cell phone in every way, Walter was an absolute beast for the making of long term calls, often in the middle of a work day, detailing the nuances of laying buried cable from pole to house, and the depth of the cable, and the color shirt the man digging the trench happened to have on that day. He did this simply because he felt led to visit the property every day, a round trip of 90 minutes, because it was his mission. Interested in the process, you see.
I was swimming in minutiae for a time there. As opposed to now, when I’m absolutely drowning . . . . but wait. Am I getting ahead of myself?
By the time Ally and I moved in last November, Walter had made his deposit and his house was underway. A flurry of work took him out of town on week long trucking runs and the number of phone calls dropped considerably, although it was not unusual for him to need detailed progress reports at 8 pm on a Sunday night.
“Hey chief, I’m sitting at a truck stop in Kansas City. Did the gas man get by with the gas tank yet?” I’d stumble out to the back porch and peer through the gloom to Walter’s backyard. “Doesn’t look like it, Walt.”“Huh. Wonder what’s taking them so long?”“Well, that’s . . .”
“EH?”
I’d long since learned that to talk to Walter, on the phone or otherwise, was an exercise in patience that would tax the very life out of you. And believe it or not, it wasn’t a hearing problem, he could hear a pin drop. He simply had an inability to listen unless he was ready to, and would turn your conversation on and off in any way he could until that particular recording head in his brain swung into place and was pressed to the ‘on’ position.
So unless I was in a hurry, I got used to pausing after every phrase and waiting for the engagement of the Walter Recording Studio.
“Walt, that’s the way things work down here. A little slower.”
“Oh. That’s what I thought too.” Which was another favorite trick. He’d ask a question, get an answer and make out as if he knew the answer all along. Cute, the first few times. After the forty-’leventh?
Still, he was a neighbor-to-be. I kept an eye on his place as it developed. We’d tip a beer at the end of the day, or he’d drive out of his way to check out prices on lawn tractors for me. Little stuff, companionable things. Toward the end of January his place was finished and he moved on in. Why, we even had him over for supper a couple of times.
But there was this constant little hum in my head, coming directly from next door. “You gonna buy that lawn tractor? Grass is gonna be gettin’ pretty high here in a month or so, you know?”
“Yep, that’s a fact Walt.”
“Too much yard to mow with a push mower.”
“You’re right about that, Walt.”
“I got a push mower but it’s too much yard by a half.”
“Same here, Walt.”
“What?”
“I said, I’m not gonna mow my whole yard with . . .”
“HUH?”
Pause. Long extended pause. Pause until you hear an audibe click! from somewhere to the west of Walter’s right ear.
“I’ll be getting a tractor pretty soon, Walter.”
“Oh. You know, I was thinking, we ought to go in for one together. No sense spending all that money for something we both need.”
Uh oh. This was the worst combination of all, Yankee thrift and the need for companionship. And worst of all, it actually made sense. Adjoining yards, one tractor to take care of both, cut the price in half.
I mentioned it to Ally and she was all for it. “Heck yeah, why not? I know you, you want to buy that expensive biggun’ thing and we could really use another couple of chairs in the family room, and . . .”
So there was that. Walter increased his visits to Sears and Home Despot and would return, fanning tractor pamphlets under my nose with a flourish.
“Here, looky here! Sears’ got this one for twelve hunnert, but there’s a floor model with a ding on it so I talked the salesman down another two, and with my Sears card I get 5% off, and . . . “
“Walt . . .”
” . . . there’s a sale going on right now so I bet we can zap him for even more! Whaddya think?” There’s something fascinating about a transplanted Yankee on a bargain hunt, the gleam in the eye, the steam from the nostril.
“Walter, that particular tractor couldn’t do much more than . . .”
“Eh?”
Pause. Click!
“That tractor is only good for cutting grass. It won’t pull a plow, or a cultivator, or a box blade. Remember? We talked about this last week.”
“That’s what I thought too. I told the guy it was too small.”
Sigh. “So why even . . .”
“Told him we (big emphasis on the ‘we’) were in the market for a biggun.”
“I see.”
“No sense foolin’ around with something that won’t get the job done.”
“Right.”
“No sense a’tall.”
It must be understood that as a carpenter, I share tools rarely. I buy them for me, to be used by me, loaned out never. Hell, I’d rather give you a tool of mine rather than lend it to you. A tractor is simply a big expensive tool. See where this is going?
When the spring came and the grass got too high to ignore, I acted. Surgically, and with great vigor. Three days of intensive internet research, a few phone calls, two actual physical tractor visits. It was brief but thorough.
A shining Friday saw me, son Ben and a gleaming black tractor on a sagging pickup truck backing into the yard, ramps were produced and a hulking monster of a tractor rolled to the backwater grass. Complete with back plow and box blade and an aerator. Walter was in my yard before the truck had come to a full stop.
He was grinning, if a bit uncertainly. “Got one, eh? Geez, that’s a beast.”
“It is that, Walt.”
“I just about give up on ye, almost put a deposit on that John Deere over at Lowe’s this morning.”
I mentally rolled my eyes, sure in the knowledge that Walter wouldn’t have put a deposit on a ball point pen without at least twenty cell phone calls. Ben heaved the box with the sleeve hitch out of the truck and it clanked a little.
“Take it easy there, Benster!”, from a concerned Walter. “Don’t need no damaged equipment you know. You got the recept, didn’t you chief? Didja get the extended warranty? How much discount on it?”
Pause. Click!
“Got a couple hundred off retail. No warranty. Cost too much.”
For a minute I thought Walter was approaching apoplexy, the way his eyeballs were a bulgin’. And I busied myself with unwrapping the stuff, trying to time it just right.
I heard the long, deep intake of breath and turned my head just as the first “But . . .” was forming.
“And the whole deal was only thirty two hunnert, Walt.”
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOF!
“Walt, you okay? I said the whole deal was only . . .”
“Eh? HUH? AH!”
“Thirty two hunnert. Why, they just about gave it to me, cut another 50 off since me and Ben picked it up.” I toed the big back tractor tire. “Good size rig, ought to pull that box blade just fine”, I murmured. “Don’t you think so, Walt?”
It was an effort. He was breathing heavily, passing a furtive hand over his back pocket where his wallet was stowed, a furrowed brow crunching numbers frantically. But at length, he spoke. “Just . . . just let me know what my share . . .”
“Oh I ain’t worried about all that just now. I’m sure we can work something out.”
“But . . .”
“I know it’s probably a little more than you were expecting.”
“It’s . . .”
“Sure is a big tractor though, isn’t it? Ought to make this place look pretty good after I get the grass in shape. Make things easier, for sure.”
“Thirty two . . .”
“Yep, helluva deal.”
It was a helluva deal. Why, I’d have cheerfully paid retail just for the chance to see that cloud of smoke coming from ol’ Walt’s wallet and wafting over the yard.
Cheerfully, I say.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
Just about a year ago, as Ally and I contemplated a move across the state line and were in fact making moves to do so, I wandered into the Watering Hole on an ordinary Thursday afternoon.
“Hey big guy!”, came the greet from the little man at the bar, and it was Walter. Balding and wizened and dentured Walter. And if you can picture the very embodiedment of lechary, skeevishness and corner-of-bar ownership with a Coors Lite hood ornament and a Yankee turn of phrase? That’d be the lad. He happened to be by himself that day which was not unusual. Walter worked well with a crowd but it was seldom the case that you’d seek out his company on an ordinary Thursday, bar or otherwise.
But the bar was desolate, and he was in the mood.
“Just got back from a run to Ohio . . . Kathy get this man a beer wouldja hon’? So what’s been going on there, chief?”
“Just about the same old . . .”
“Oh, I tell you what, I had one helluva time going through West Virginia this trip. Truck got halfway up one mountain up there in, where the hell was it?” (A five second pause that felt like five minutes) “Aww, doesn’t matter, anyway the brake pressure started going on me and this idiot tried to cut me off and . . . wait! Bald Mountain, yeah, that was it. Anyway, I cut gears down to nothing and . . .”
I took a long pull at the longneck. This could take some time.
Walter had a habit of telling tales in a conversational way that precluded any conversation. You basically waited until he ran out of steam before trying to inject any word of your own, and then it was like lighting a fuse. And the dialouge was circular, because it always came back to a starting point.
“So what’s been going on?” Again, after big trucks has been run up and down a mountain for the better part of an entire beer.
“Well, Ally and I just made a deposit on some property. Getting ready to move out of the rental house and . . .”
“What?” He leaned closer.
“I said Ally and I are buying a place out in the country . . .”
“HUH?”
I took a deep breath. “I said, Ally and me are GETTING A NEW HOUSE OUT IN THE COUNTRY IN A COUPLE OF . . .”
“Oh. That a fact?” He calmly sipped at his beer. “Where abouts? Cost you much? How big?”
“It’s just across the state line, Walt. Save us a bundle on taxes.”
He got that look on his face, a look I know all too well from dealing with native born Yankees before. Save money, it’s a hot button. Thrift, and rock wall fences and not getting a new snow shovel because Great Grandpa’s still had plenty of life it it, and all that.
He leaned in again and got positively conspiritorial with me. “You know, I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing myself. Got this big house up here in town, too many people around for me. Traffic’s a pain in the ass, too. Need to get out away from all that while I can, before I retire in a few years.”
I nodded, it was a common theme with those I had talked with about moving south. Get away from all this congestion, country life. Funny thing, a couple had even made the drive down to the backwater for a look-see but came back wanting to talk about anything else. It isn’t for everybody. It’s a longish drive, it’s in the middle of nowhere. Wives in particular had a problem with lack of stores and that comfortable suburban buzz.
So I shrugged and said, “Well look, there’s a lot next to the one I’m getting and the same guy has it up for sale, house and lot deal. I can give you the address if you . . .”
“Yeah, yeah!”
“. . . want to go take a look.”
“What?”
“I said I’ll write down the address and the realtors name if . . .”
“HUH?”
“Here, I’ll draw A MAP TO THE PLACE SO YOU CAN FIND IT!“
“Oh. Okay, that’s just what I was thinking.”
He watched intently as I sketched a map on a handy bar napkin and fished a realtors business card from the wallet. I tossed in one of my own cards so that he’d have a number to call if he got lost.
“Just give me a call if you want, Walter.”
“Oh yeah. Don’t worry. I never bother much with those cell phones. Hate the things, really. Wouldn’t even have one if my dispatcher didn’t need to get hold of me. Look here, this is my phone.” He proceeded to pull forth a rather expensive looking unit. “Service nationwide!”, he exclaimed. “Got it a couple years ago from, uh wait now . . . (A five second pause that felt like five minutes, and I was getting ready to start screaming “Verizon? Cingular? WHAT?”) . . . Aww it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, can’t stand the thing. People buggin’ me all the time with it.”
I had to agree with him there, and told him as much.
Walter finished his beer and slowly slid off the stool. “Well, guess I’ll be seeing you. Got to get home and rest up, big trip in a couple of days. See you kids later. Bye Kathy!”, and he gave the bartender a particularly lecherous leer. “Don’t forget now!”
He shuffled through the big pine door somewhat painfully, favoring one leg, and was down the sidewalk and gone.
Kathy and I were old pals, and I imitated the cocked eyebrow and Snidely Whiplash look. ”Don’t forget, Kathy!, heheh.”
She rolled her eyes. “Good Lord, he’s been in here a good two hours. I heard that truck story every time somebody else came in for a beer.” She ran a rag over the spot occupied by Walters beer and snatched up a soggy bill. “Gee, left me a whole dollar this time.”
I snickered. “Guess that’s what he meant when he said don’t forget.”
“What?”
“I said, I guess that’s what he wanted you to remember him by.”
“HUH?”
Deep breath. “He said DON’T FORGET KATHY, AND LEFT YOU . . .“
She couldn’t hold it any longer and burst into a braying laughter, clutching the dollar bill in one hand and holding onto the bar rail with the other. I saw the light and heehawed right along with her. Kathy staggered to the till and dropped the dollar into the plastic tip mug, shoulders twitching madly. “Ohmigod that was priceless. Poor Walter!”
“Poor Walter, whattabout poor me? I’m the one hollering at him!”
She giggled, but spoke seriously. “I worry about him, you know? Living all by himself, driving that big truck for days at a time. It’s like he’s starved for companionship.”
“And conversational skills,” I added, downing the last of the longneck..
“That was nice of you to tell him about that lot next to yours,” and she expertly wrung the cap from a fresh one and tossed it over her shoulder to the trash. Her signature move. “What are you gonna do if he decides to take you up on it?”
“Who, Walter? Not a chance. He likes his routine too much. I don’t think living out in the swamp would ring his bell at all.”
She smiled coyly. “I dunno, maybe you’ll get a new neighbor. I imagine you’d be a blast to have next door, you and Ally.”
I grimaced. “Hell now you’re just fishin’ for a tip, Kath.”
“Bet you’re right on that, sport.” And she snapped the bar rag at me and we smiled and talked of cheap tippers and why they should be drug off and shot.
Come the very next day, as I slogged through the mornings run of making cabinets stick to their designated wall, my cell phone rang. It wasn’t Ally’s number on the screen, nor any of the kids or the erstwhile boss-of-mine. In most cases I’ll just let those calls go to voice mail but there was this nagging thought – Gee, might be Walter, lost in the wilderness – so I picked up.
“Hey, that you Chief?”
“Yeah Walter, it’s me.”
“Well, what’re you doing?”
“I’m working, Walt.”
“Oh yeah, doing what?”
Now, as I said, I’m not much for cell phones, or any other kind of phone for that matter. You’re calling me, spill your guts and let me get back to the work day you already know I have in front of me. I make this pretty clear to folks. Just as Walter had intimated to me.
“Just working, Walt. What’s up?”
“You at that school job or what?”
In my best what’s this got to do with anything? voice I said, “Nope. On the Navy base.”
“Well what’re you doin’ up there?”
I fidgeted. “Walt, are you lost or something?”
“What?”
“I said are you lost, did you find that lot from the map I gave . . .”
“EH?“
I drew a lungful. “I said, ARE YOU OUT ON THE ROAD AND CAN’T FIND THE LOT OR THE ROAD OR THE . . .“
“Oh. No, matter of fact I’m standing here with the realtor right now, taking a look at the place.” I got an instant mental picture of my realtor, a reserved country man who was as soft spoken as could be, standing next to the Cranky Yankee and answering a machine gun barrage of “HUHS?” and was instantly flooded with guilt. This was all my doing.
I sighed. “So what you think of the place, Walt?”
“Oh we’re just talking about it right now, Ron and I.” Ron being the realtor, and I wasn’t quite sure about the way Walter said ‘Ron’, as if they were life-long buddies. “This might have possibilities, chief.”
“Well good, glad to hear it. Listen I got to get back to it here, let me know if you have any questions . . .”
So whatcha doin’ later anyway, goin’ up to the joint?”
“I don’t know Walter, that’s along way out of my way today, and . . .”
“‘Cause I was thinkin’ about running up there, myself.”
“Right.”
“Seeing Kathy for a bit.”
“Yep.”
(insert five second pause, running to months, then years)
“Hello, Walt?”
“What?”
“Can you find your way back to town, or was there something else, or . . .”
“WHA?“
I mentally flicked a .308 round into a very long battle rifle, snicked the bolt closed and took very careful aim, perched atop a custom laminate countertop on a Navy base job far, far away.
“Watler,” I said very slowly, and with great firmness, ”I need to get back to work this very instant and . . .”
“Look, ol’ Ron and me got to discuss this thing a little more so I got to let you go. Maybe I’ll see you later, then.”
“Erk . . . “
“Alright! Bye!” Click
There’s times I wished my parents hadn’t raised me right, you know?
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
Folks usually talk about August as the Dog Days. A big gush of hot, moist air rolls over their particular cul-de-sac around the middle of August and the lemonade and lawn sprinklers are fetched and the hew and cry is generally “Good Lord! The Dog Days are here!”
Just a hunch, but those people must live in Northwest Pennsylvania.
Around these parts, the Dog Days might start in early May. I can assure you, they’re in full swing right now. It’s a seething, scratchy sort of heat which is accompanied by full blown humidity. Padde through the air humidity. Where the only thing moving is the horde of blackflies.
I go out the back door on any given morning to walk the geriatric Lab and start that first sweat of the day before I get to the fenceline. By 9 am the treeless jobsite resembles an outpost on Mercury, I’ve consumed at least one Gatorade and am thinking lustful thoughts about the second.
My parents raised me and three siblings in a small town outside of Buffalo. There was no such a thing as air conditioning because . . . well, some of the myths about Buffalo are true. The wintry hype is typically overdone, but the summers are quite pleasant.
So when they semi-retired and moved down here (pronounced heah, locally) in the fall, they marveled. “Isn’t it lovely and warm here in October”, my Mother often enthused. When the same could be said for November, and her first Christmas saw temperatures in the 70’s, I believe she was a bit perplexed. Neither of them wore a coat all winter. Of course, these were former farm children who barely reached for a sweater unless it dipped below 40. “Sure don’t miss those upstate winter storms, you betcha” was a frequent observation.
Then they hit July, and I never saw two people unravel so quickly.
“You’re going to get a heat stroke out there” my Mother would moan as I dashed out for tennis or the beach. “Yeah, better listen to your Mother, this sort of heat isn’t anything to fool with”, from Dad. Understand that the temperature was in the mid-80’s at the time, and it was early in the day. By suppertime, the thermometer had flirted with and passed 95, the heat made your ears drone much like the sound of the cicadias at night. Inevitably I’d come back inside just in time for the ritualistic chanting from my parents about ” . . . and the humidity!”, as they discussed the impending doom of summer for perhaps the fifteenth time that day.
Mom was a very well read person, and I think she used up every available word in describing Southern summers. “Unbearable” was common, for sure, and “inhuman”. But “sticky” seemed to be her personal favorite.
“It’s so sticky outside”, she’d say, plucking a blouse from moist skin. “How can you stand it out there? You’ll roast! So sticky . . .” and I was young, and prone to try to prove her wrong as I shot hoops or worked construction and tanned.
They purchased an air conditioner and went into hibernation until late September. Every summer. For five years this went on. In 1980, I married Ally and moved out of their house and into an apartment.
Now Mom would dispute me on this, and Dad has since passed on to a place where summers are not a great concern, but it took them approximately 30 days to pack their gear and hightail it back to Buffalo after Ally and I got hitched, and I know why.
“Can’t take another summer down here, eh?” I teased, as Mom threw dishes in a box. “Just gonna abandon your last child down here to the heat, are ye?”
“Don’t be silly,” she replied. “The weather’s got nothing to do with it. Nothing whatever. Your grandpa passed away and we need to go back up there and tend to his affairs and . . .”
“Mmmm-hmm.”
“. . . there’s that cute little house Dad and I looked at with a shop for him and a garden for me . . .”
“Of course.”
“. . . and it doesn’t mean we can’t take the summers down here at all.”
I strolled to the open back door and Dad was doing inventory on garden rakes and wiping his brow. “Getting up into the 80’s today I see,” he said.
Mom put a bit more speed into the dish packing. “Yep, gonna get sticky.”
Curiously, they were never seen in the South again any later than April. Or before October.
And they left that air conditioner hanging right in the window. Dad bought a snowblower, Mom got her heavy coats out of mothballs.
I walk the dog of a morning, and pull handfuls of sticky from the air and across my shirt, wet already at 5 am. Sticky, indeed.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
If I were to leave my house and drive north for exactly 5 miles I’d be sitting in the parking lot at the mall.
Not an ordinary mall, it is.
It’s a bit downsized, as malls go. In fact, you’d be wise to mind your feet going up the steps, since Alice put the cat food dish out just a minute ago and it’s right full. If there’s more than one customer in there you’re gonna be waiting a while.
You can buy bread, but not butter. Beer, but not wine. You can get a homemade BBQ sammich if you’re in the mood (and I often am, because they’re huge and Carolina hoggish good) or a ham biscuit for breakfast (ditto). Motor oil? Got it. And a gas pump out front.
Want to slide your boat into the water? You can do that here, and take a slow ride under the bridge because it’s no wake to the headwater, here. Be on the Intercoastal in ten minutes, yes you can. Or you can sit on a rough pier and wet a line, and watch everybody else slide boats into the water. Run out of bait? Well shucks, walk inside and get some more. Shiners, worms. No crickets though.
The floor is plywood and it’s buckled a little, here and there. Fred put down some of that good red enamel paint years ago but it’s mostly scuffed off now. Doesn’t look like there’s any hurry to do it over again, either.
When I was hunting these woods it used to be a ritual to meet up here afterwards, get a coffee and one of those glove sized pastries in a cellophane bag. I could do that now, in the same way, sitting on the tailgate of an old pickup and hashing over nothing with Brad and his dog. And there would be nobody patrolling the parking lot and suggesting that we move on, to stop taking up spaces in the lot because there are no spaces. No lines and no curbs.
If you run out of eggs and it’s 6 in the morning, you come here. You could drive another mile and get them fresh from the farmers wife down the road, but probably not at 6. Might be rude to be knocking on their door at that hour, even though they’d be up and about.
Otherwise you drive another 15 miles.
That’s right, it’s another 15 miles to anything. Any place selling eggs, or gas, or a breakfast biscuit. Not to mention shiners and worms.
People coming down from the big city reach this place and believe they’re at the end of the world, and I guess I can’t blame them. It is a pretty fair drive, especially when you’re used to gas stations on every corner and a McDonalds every mile.
But really, it isn’t the end of anything. You can keep going, as I do everyday, down long roads with corn on both sides until you take that sharp left, and the shadows of trees begin and the swamp creeps close to the road.
That’s when you’re getting close to my place.
Might want to watch your speed. I haven’t seen any police down here yet, but those ditches will swallow you whole.
And pick me up a couple of those sammiches at the store would you? I mean, if you’re on your way, and all.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
I had such a wonderful weekend.
I mean it truly was. Ally and I took in a nice meal with Beth the Eldest on Friday night and went to see Steely Dan. I’ll cover the Dan another time, because they are dear to me and I see them annually. The meal was fine and the company better.
Then I got to play tractor driver and lawn maintenance lad all day Saturday. I love my tractor, it is dear to me and I’ll cover this aother time. And Ally took me out again for dinner, a nice seafood place and afterward we bought groceries and got all domestic. And stuff.
Then come Sunday I puttered, and did backwater maintenance things and tipped head to the swamp breeze just because it was blowing the right way. Ally coereced me into more shopping and it wasn’t bad because she let me buy stuff too, and see, this is what makes a good weekend. When the worst thing you do turns out to be pretty much okay. I got to buy some new kitchen knives. Fellas, when you’ve been married more than 25 years and buying kitchen knives gets you excited? Well, you’ve arrived. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to know how to sharpen the knives you’ve already got, either. But new knives? Swank decadence, I tell ye.
I even got my wife to take me out for a third night in a row. Took her over to the swampland bar for the cheeseburger and fries special. And she liked it! I love that swampland bar, it is dear to me and . . .
Then, of course, reality. The reality of Monday and you’re thrust back to the head swaggling world of “Oh no, I don’t honestly have to do that in order to make a living, do I?”
I hate working for someone else. I don’t hate working at all, but doing it for someone else’s benefit makes me bereaved. It is ever so much not dear to me, but you can bet I will elaborate further. Oh yes. It too will be covered.
Ally has commented to me more than once – “Weekends seem so much longer to me since we’ve moved down here, I like it but I can’t figure out why.”
I can’t either but I’m determined to do so.
Making time stand still sounds like a pretty interesting hobby to pursue.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
I called up a random post from about a year ago, when Ally and I were just beginning to get serious about moving down here to the swamp. I believe it was the first time I used the word “backwater” to refer to this place.
Retold below, and to take my mind off the fact that I just bid my daughter and grandson goodbye, he a blur from a carseat at 9 pm, and she a whiff of long hair and waifish arms in a driveway. And gone, and I felt something like a century older without being any wiser.
“““
It was a bit overcast this morning, and we went for a drive, the woman and I.
Sometime in the next few overcast days we might come into something, a bit of dirt south of here on the fringe of a very still river. The very dirt we went to see and kick feet through today. As dirt goes it was loose and full of things more often underground, for large machines have been here recently a’tilling and a tree lay in pieces at the back end of it all, and large tracks went all around the place.
There’ve been shekels exchanged and I have signed fluidly on many longish dull forms. The woman did too. And so we went, to see what all the shekels and dirt scratching might yield up.
I walked, and played idly with a long measuring tape, and exclaimed aloud that house would be here, shop over there, this should be smooth and the oak tree was healthy and look at the shade in the corner.
Ally leaned against the car and just inhaled, arms crossed and head just tilted awry, and may have had eyes closed behind sunglasses, I don’t know. Inhaled hope, and possibilities, long summer dinners under shade and freezing mornings and boots in the hallway, and roosters across the road. Children. Many children, and their hands on the leash of a young dog who pulls them in that pin wheeling way across grass, shrieking.
I admired the large shop in the distance, belonging to he who would be neighbor, and wondered where he must have purchased such a handsome thing. And neighbor, and the neighbor of the neighbor, gathered in the large doorway and wondering loudly “No, I don’t know who those people are.”
I had to grin, sometimes we don’t quite know who these people are either.
Maybe we’ll all be finding out soon enough. When the backwater calls, and when the dirt is stilled, and Ally puts the last curtain in the new window and turns the burner on under the soup.
Soon enough, and we’ll be down home.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
So the concrete didn’t get poured yesterday for the Shop (and isn’t it cute the way Shop must absolutely be capitalized?). Reason? Mucho rain all weekend makes the backwater all the more watered. Being wet down here isn’t the opposite of being dry, it’s a state of degrees. “Boy, your backyard sure is soggy!” “Yeah, but last week the dog sank in up to his keister.” That sort of wet.
Somewhere in the middle of that shot is the homestead. All the green to the right, to the above, and somewhat to the below? Swamp. Oh sure, your odd farmer or two has carved out some high ground here and there. But it’s the swamp that surrounds and entertains, housing a few thousand snakes and enough biting flies to stave off a regiment of door to door salesmen.
On the day Ally and I bought this place, there happened to be a nor’easter a’blowin up the coast (and the coast is just a big frog jump off the right of that picture, by the way). We rode over from the Realtors office in a driving rainstorm on a series of country roads, and I can tell you this much. I put “Build a Boat” right up there on my list of things needin’ doin’.
When the water starts rising down here you don’t drive from A to B. It’s more navigating, more “Well this road’s flooded out but we can turn around and try that one, I hope” and “Charts! I need charts!”.
And yes, I still plan to build a boat. Just as soon as the Shop is built. Which will be shortly after the concrete is poured, which will be . . . I dunno. I suspect my concrete guy has no contingency plans for airlifting 14 yards of mix into the backyard. Just a hunch.
This really strikes at the heart of how things work down here. Two days of steady rain isn’t just a thing that washes off the street and makes your grass grow. You don’t roll out the next morning and fire up the mower, because the mower would sink. Quite likely, you’d sink right along with it. Down here, you learn to wait.
A long time resident at the end of my road has a term for it. “Ye need to let things settle, my friend.” He offered me this after an amusing afternoon of watching me plow and rake and maneuver fill dirt around the yard. And it took a while but I think I’ve figured out his thesis. It’s the land, it has to get wet and dry and heave and sink a few times. Settle.
Maybe then we can coat it with concrete. And build boats.
