Dear Dad (5 page)

SITTIN’ IN MY DAD’S 356

James Dean drove one. This is a different model, but the idea is the same, a rebellious Existentialism. The Masses crowd around the rock stars and movie stars and even the fallin stars to try and witness a glimmer of hope and to experience a vicarious celebrity. The stars on Hollywood Boulevard are worn down by millions of sneakers just like a monument is worn away by weather, even our memories fade and transform into fable and myth. Oh well, this is my dad's car anyways.
 
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THE UNABLE BODY

I arrived at Job Corps in a smoking, gray Army bus. There were a bunch of teenagers watching us get off who wore Rock shirts, had long hair, and smoked as if it were their only true talent. This was the “B” version of the Prison movies, where new inmates arrived as “fresh meat” and were hand-selected to be raped, killed, or left alone.

Fortunately, I was left alone. Besides, I was 24, had just survived my own war in the confines of a turbulent courtship with a woman twenty years my senior, had been arrested for pushing her in a “blackout”, and lost all my belongings and was squatting on a little shitty live-aboard boat, that was partially sunk with 200 gallons of bile seawater in the bilge.

I had come to Job Corps to take advantage of the Government funded Seamanship program to get my “Able Body” license, so I could work on Tugboats. It was an elite, sought-after program which was the only one offered on the West coast. The other courses offered at Job Corps were a joke in comparison. Some kids were there to learn how to be Apartment Managers or a Culinary Specialist, which was an invisible invitation to work in the cafeteria slopping mash on trays and pretending your just a tough gangster doing Community Service.

In the Seamanship program, I became part of a group of strong young men who were jocks in High school and many became loggers, fishermen, or had just finished their AA degree in college. Working on tugs was the next best adrenalin inducing and adventure-fueled quest many of these Rednecks craved. I perceived myself as the quiet journalist on the frontlines of war, not fighting but writing about fighting.There were men big and small, with ten thousand shades of personality. In the cafeteria our group sat alongside the Russians, who studied Drafting studiously; there were the Vietnamese, who did everything quickly and were bored already with the curriculum and wanted to play Ping Pong all day; and there was the American, 80% there because they had to be. When our group walked to the cafeteria everybody watched us. We wore striped Railroad shirts and steel-toed boots and our shoes clapped on the ground like Clydesdale horses. Girls wanted us, guys hated us.

The Columbia River was a powerful force of moving water. On a sunny day, freighters broke through large white caps as if in a storm. When our group wasn’t in class learning Morris Code, we were in eight man rowboats, practicing maneuvers and learning to handle the ten foot long, forty pound oars. The coxswain was the person in charge, yelling out orders and trying to win favor by letting us rest when the instructors weren’t looking.

During training on the rowboat one day, another weaker oarsmen, named Greenwell, dropped his Oar on my shoulder. I lost control of myself and knocked his cap in the water. We were under a lot of stress to perform and succeed.

Another time, the guys were unusually quiet. They acted preoccupied during class but had one eye on Greenwell. Greenwell occasionally got answers wrong which made the class have to do pushups. So, Greenwell became a target. It was a quiet, subdued afternoon during routine checks for leaks on the cargo vessel. The Rednecks watched Greenwell, like a tiger focusing its intense stare on a wounded animal. One by one the men followed behind Greenwell as he performed his checks while whistling carelessly. He walked down the ladder into the Cargo “hold”. The guys acted as if they were checking for leaks also. More guys came down the ladder until most of the class was there. Two Alpha Males grabbed Greenwell, as everyone flew past him like a Tornado, hitting his legs as He screamed. I was paralyzed with fear and awestruck, as I and another non-violent student watched. The tornado of violence played on every chord of my vulnerable Being. Everybody left the Hold quickly, as Greenwell whimpered and resembled the rusty coil of wire lying next to him.

It was now nearing Christmas, and everyone was smiling. I was more contemplative and asked myself: “Do I want to work turning a wrench in a hot, greasy engine room for a living?” I lagged behind the Pride, as they trolloped to the cafeteria for the last meal of the year at Job Corps. I later resigned. But, before I did I became a Coxswain on the rowboat. And, as I yelled at the oarsmen to row towards the freighter lanes, with a devilish smirk I said, “smoke ’em if you got ’em.” There was a sense of Oneness with everything. The guys laughed and brushed the water with their free hands, as I looked out at the freighter that was pushing white water over its bow and felt ultimately free.

THE SODA JERK

So, I awoke one day and had to prepare 80 sandwiches for the ravenous tourists that flooded the streets like a herd being funneled into the slaughterhouse. My parents’ experiment of operating a fifties-style soda fountain downtown had spiraled my dad into a deep dark tunnel of depression and my mom shaking from fatigue and coffee abuse. They thought it was a good job for me if I wanted it and that idea transformed into their pleading I work the next day after they experienced a week on their own, scooping tons of ice cream to the lines of people that went out the front door and around the corner of the building. My dad was introduced to Paxil by his doctor the following week and my mom drank tequila with the Mexicans. Things looked crazy when I joined and started slicing tomatoes and onions and preparing for a new day, where the marble counter-top would get sticky with ice cream by the end of the day and at least five glasses would break and two complaints and one crazy guy who looked like Joe Pesci, drove all the way from New York to have a double malted, double chocolate milkshake but only had 72 cents.

Two weeks before this, I was quitting the Merchant Seamanship program at Job Corps Two Hundred miles away and getting dumped by my long courtship with that woman. You know. . . the “One”. I went from wearing Carharts, splicing metal cables together and checking gauges on enormous Diesel engines, to wearing a little paper hat and putting a little pile of potato chips on the plate next to the B.L.T. sandwich. My co-workers were in high school and they took to “teasing me”. I was a shell-shocked alcoholic who hadn’t been teased since Junior High, so their laughing at me and joking led me to think of becoming a serial killer. The Soda Jerk serial killer would suffocate his victims by shoving their heads into the Tootie Fruity. I found myself enjoying the fast pace and got another restaurant job at night. I found myself running from one restaurant to the next, then riding my shwinn cruiser home at night. I was back at square one in life. Getting a paycheck for $250 was a lot of money for me. I had no debt and no TV. My only source of entertainment was my stereo and the typewriter that was placed in the middle of the table as if to remind me to write. Eventually, I needed more money and applied for credit cards. A girl moved into my home and we needed this and that. I got a car again and started to feel the twitches of stress. I was becoming just another worker bee. I started to look generic, just like those actresses that come onto the scene looking unique and authentic; then, they dye their hair blonde, or put highlights in just like every other actress. Or, how a Jaguar, Lexus, even a Porsche, become to look like a Toyota Camry. My only route to authentic was my poetry and maybe living in a school bus.

I found myself competing for material things just like every other guy. I couldn’t compete with a Lawyer’s salary by making sandwiches and flipping burgers, besides it was never my intention to grab a big piece of the pie when I was already full of life and light. I forgot about seeing the owls fly in and out of their holes etched into the sand cliffside next to the bike trail, or seeing the Northern Lights while riding on a back road on my bicycle and hearing the Coyotes in the distance, or hearing every little sound that pushed my bicycle forward, my lungs filling, the chain clinging, the tire’s tread meshing with the asphalt. With society at Large and on the cusp of Technological breakthroughs, I’m not going to play “their” game. The big boys can keep the treasure. I’ll find the prize in seeing truth and beauty in strangers’ eyes. The revolution out of ignorance will be when we accept everyone’s uniqueness and stop the blame game. Our egos are getting bigger along with our wallets and its sick. .

PART TWO

The town I lived in was very small. By the time I was twenty five, I had worked at most of the restaurants and construction companies. To blow off steam and forget about my meek existence and dwindling future, I drank and began to go crazy.

ENTER BIZARRO

I awoke in the middle of the night, perplexed with jaw aching from ruminating ruminations. There was a figure in the dark and there was Absinthe on my night stand, already cloudy with uninhibited spirits. I opened my mind and delved in like Kafka. How could Humanity forget about this weird pastime, creating configurations of mind and matter to reveal an answer never thought out? What?! The clock melted from the wall and my childhood was in my face, laughing loudly and disappearing behind the swing set in my favorite park, next to the Bay, where the tugboats spiraled their pretty deadly exhaust fumes into the sky.

THE BLUE-COLLAR HERO

I normally flipped burgers for a living, but during the Summer of 01', I was a Carpenter's Helper. I worked with a buddy of mine who I became friends with because we had a common thirst. The other guy was his drinking buddy. We worked  hard six hours a day pounding nails, telling jokes and sneaking tokes off the pipe in the SaniCan. I was prideful, hanging out with real men, who wore Carharts and clunky boots. It took a lot of strength to pound nails and carry lumber all day. So, at the end of the day, it felt especially rewarding to begin drinking a hoppy, malty microbrew. There was this pub right on the waterfront. We sat on the upper deck and looked down at the cars that parked and watched the people, other blue-collars, get out of their vans and trucks and file into the backdoor of the bar, where a customer could get half-gallon jugs of beer to go. It was a great setup and reminded me of some sort of lost illegal operation that I couldn't place a finger on. After a few beers and the dinner crowd settled in for a few courses, my co-workers and I would stroll past the conservative patrons eating and laugh at their food and their sweaters as we went to the bathroom. We were in our Twenties, and being cocky and intoxicated were what we did best when not pounding nails and carrying lumber.