The Santa Memos

24 - XII - 2011

From: S. Nicholas-Claus, CEO, Toys ‘n  Ammo, Inc.

To: Ichiban Tanaka, Correspondence Section

I am in receipt of the letter from 10-year-old Jerome X  “axin’ for an AK-47”  that you forwarded for consideration.  While young Jerome’s motives in making such a request are unclear, I think we may assume they are not in the traditional holiday spirit of giving and goodwill toward all.  Accordingly, I have marked young Jerome down for a lump of coal in his presumably shoplifted stocking.  Please exercise some presence of mind before forwarding such requests.  Also, I passed young Jerome’s request for actual weaponry to the Charleton Heston Second Amendment “Cold Dead Hands” Foundation for action as its officers see fit.

SNC
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From: Ichiban Tanaka, Correspondence Section

To: S. Nicholas-Claus, CEO

Aw, jeeze, boss.  Nice job of passing the buck.  You know damn well those Cold Dead Hands people will probably give the kid an AK-47 with enough of our ammo to shoot up every Korean convenience store in sight.  Think of the PR implications.  Can’t you compromise and give the kid a crossbow and some rubber-tipped arrows?  Maybe a suit of cammies and a Rambo headband?  Anyway, I’m sure the kid will only use the lump of coal to break a window.  Just a thought.

IT
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From: S. Nicholas-Claus, CEO

To: Ichicban Tanaka, Correspondence Section
　
Look, Tanaka, as long as you’re thinking, think about this:  I’ve got a shitload on my plate today and don’t have time to screw around, especially with a request from some pissed off kid who wants an automatic weapon for Christmas.  The fricking elves are taking union again, PETA is busting my chops about reindeer abuse, and Mrs. Claus is taking karate lessons.  As for you, you’d better start thinking like an executive if you ever want to get out of the mailroom, otherwise you and your entire shop just might get outsourced to Bangalore and you’ll be standing in line for government cheese.  Christmas only comes once a year, man, so get off your ass and get with the program!

SNC

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From: Ichiban Tanaka, Correspondence Section.

To: S. Nicholas-Claus, CEO

I took your advice and got off my ass.  FYI  I’ve been on the blower with Sony-Halliburton-Mattel’s people in the Caymans and they’re ready for a hostile takeover of your entire operation, lock, stock and sweatshop, and you’ll be out on your fat can.  Now who’s going to be in line for government cheese, seeing as your Christmas goose has just been cooked?

IT
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From: Jean-Jacques Mountbatten, CFO, SMH Financial, Cayman Islands, WI

To: S. Nicholas-Claus, CEO, Toys ’N Ammo, Inc.

We regret to inform you that your offer of 12 tons of government cheese has been rejected by our board of directors in consideration for tabling Mr. Tanaka’s proposed acquisition of our North American operations.  However, the board is willing to reconsider this position in exchange for a squadron of F-18 fighter jets and an introduction to Jennifer Lopez.  As an alternative, perhaps you and Mr. Tanaka can amicably settle your differences in the spirit of the season.

JJM

P.S.  We would still like to meet Jennifer Lopez.
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From: S. Nicholas-Claus, CEO

To: Ichiban Tanaka, Correspondence Section.

Look, let’s let bygones be bygones.  I have no intention of arming kids with automatic weapons or passing out lumps of coal to pre-teen felons.  Now then, let’s all get back to work and put this unpleasantness behind us. Oh, one other thing:  I seem to have misplaced my Rolodex.  Do you have a contact number for a person named Jennifer Lopez?
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From: Ichiban Tanaka, Correspondence Section.

To: S. Nicholas-Claus, CEO

Who?

IT

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Comments?

My son is a firefighter/emt/paramedic in South East DC (a location where many residents demand their cheese because it's owed them from 400 years ago to the present and on into the future). He stopped by tonight to exchange gifts because he chose to work tomorrow to let guys with families stay home. As he was leaving, he commented that tomorrow was going to be busy because it's certain someone will get new bullets for Christmas, and will want to share them with others. In that case, it certainly is better to give than to receive -- Brat
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I knew you would send me something for Xmas Eve -- Fay
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Wow! Where do you get your inspiration? Nicely done! -- Gambatay

Warped mind -- MB
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My son is a firefighter/emt/paramedic in South East DC  (a location where many residents demand their cheese because it's owed them from 400 years ago to the present and on into the future.)  He stopped by tonight to exchange gifts because he chose to work tomorrow to let guys with families stay home.  As he was leaving, he commented that tomorrow was going to be busy because it's certain someone will get new bullets for Christmas, and will want to share them with others.  In that case, it certainly is better to give than to receive.  -- Brat

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I knew you would send me something for Xmas Eve -- Fay

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I enjoyed the humor.  I hope that Santa was good to you. -- Ken

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I like this one a lot, shows insight into how the psyche works! -- Ig
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I'm not much into owning guns, but then, admittedly it has a lot to do with anyone owning one and not just police officers and Bubba targit-shootin' at empty Bud cans sittin' on top o' Larry Jimmy Billy's old Buick. I'm just scared of 'em, and I admit it. Not realistic to think we can keep these things out of the wrong hands no matter how much I talk about it, so I guess I'll just curl up with my Tropical Orchid body splash and pretend I didn't hear any gunfire. -- Zoey

A Holiday Journey Into The Heart Of Darkness

Joseph Conrad

I could run but I could not hide. The relentless forces of holiday cheer, in the person of Ms. Natalie Brew from accounts receivable, hunted me down in the supply room closet where I was hunkered among the cases of copy paper trying to look like a carboard box.

“Honestly, Mike, you’re being silly.  It’s just an office Christmas party.”

Hah!  There is no such thing as “just” an office Christmas party, especially when those mailroom clowns spike the punch with high powered rum and the boss plays his goddamned accordion and leads the troops in a Christmas carol sing-a-long.  Happens every goddamned year, and every goddamned time it does I feel like the doomed Mr. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s The Heart Of Darkness when he utters, “The horror! The horror!”  I don’t think Joseph Conrad went to Africa at all.  I think he wrote those words after attending an office Christmas party.

Ms. Brew sighed.  “Mike, people will think you’re anti-social.”

Oh yeah?  What was their first clue?  The Anthrax warning I’d written on a Post-it note and stuck to my computer, which everyone ignored, or the bomb threat I’d phoned to the receptionist, Ms. Winkleman, that morning?  When she got around to putting down her nail polish and answering the phone, even she saw through my little scam.  Ms. Winkleman has the IQ of your basic turnip, but it took her two seconds to unravel my idea of a foreign terrorist’s accent.  “Zere isss a bum vich vill eggsplode in fife minutes.  Joo bedder ged efferyone oud off ze buildink!”

Ms. Winkleman sighed in her usual bored manner, and said, “Um, Mike?  You’re coming to the office party, right?”

Damn.  Damn, damn, damn.  I said I had my doubts, explaining that I had just been diagnosed with leprosy and I was afraid something would fall off if I so much as tried to pick up a piece of catered cake on a paper plate.  She was unimpressed.  “Whateverrrrrr,” she said, and hung up.

And now here was Ms. Brew, the office party’s field artillery, with me cowering in her sights. “Look,” she said, adjusting her aim for range and windage, ”Some of our heavy hitter clients are here, including the Woonsocket rep you’ve been hammering on for the last few weeks.  Just come out and make nice for awhile.”

Right.  Most of the hammering has been done by that Woonsocket guy.  He’s been hammering at Ms. Winkleman with flowers and chocolates for as long as I’ve been hammering on him, the horny old goat, but without apparent success.  Either Ms. Winkleman is devoutly loyal to her boyfriend, a 30-year-old bass player in a band called the Fuddpucker Express who still lives in his parents’ basement, or she’s holding out for a new Toyota.  I was rooting for the Toyota.

Ms. Brew took a seat on a short stack of boxed receipts and crossed her Stairmaster and yoga shaped legs, her pantyhose making a “zzth” sound.  Since sweet reason had failed to accomplish her mission, she was resorting to the weapon of killer sex, or at least the hint of it, which had all the sincerity of a campaign promise.  Of course I saw right through her ploy -- and fell for it anyway.  What a chump.  I wondered if she waxed those legs herself or had it done.

“Talk to me, Mike.”

Probably waxed them herself.  Saved money that that way.  I imagined her, all dewy and pink from a bath with a towel folded over her hair like a turban, applying a layer of wax and…

“Mike?  Are you listening to me?  Why do you hate Christmas so much?”

Hm?  Oh.  Christmas.  Right.  I explained that I liked Christmas as much as any other watered down nominal Christian this side of Baghdad who had not uttered a single prayer in adulthood other than “God, get me out of this one!” in moments of extreme peril, such as a flood, fire, police booking or a wedding, but actual Christmas parties at the office gave me a running rash.

“Why?”

Because of all the forced bonhomie, the hail-fellow-well-met manner of people who’d steal your biggest account and your favorite stapler if given half the chance, who’d audition their mothers as crash test dummies and sell their teenage sisters to a Saudi prince for the right commission, that’s why.  Some Christmas.

Ms. Brew sighed.  “Oh, honestly, Mike.  You need to develop a thicker skin, you really do.  It’s just business, and this is our busiest time of the year.  Now stop being silly and come out of this cave.  It won’t hurt you to mingle a little.”

No.  I’m not moving until the fat janitor sings.  Ms. Brew gave up and left to go mingle.  Mingle bells, mingle bells.  Fooey.  Maybe I’ll mingle next year.  In the meantime, I like the dark.  Maybe I have that in common with Joseph Conrad.

Comments?

You are NOT helping.  Come pack up my Christmas presents and take them to the post office. Yes, still. -- Deb
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I imagine it would be hilarious to hear a 'materMike say, “Zere isss a bum vich vill eggsplode in fife minutes. Joo bedder ged efferyone oud off ze buildink!” -- Pirate
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This piece made me roar with laughter.  "The horror! The horror!"  BTW...I don't think Conrad went to Africa either, especially after reading your insightful breakdown of the tradition of office Christmas parties.  Thanks for the smiles -- Penny

The Unmerry Christmas Of Dirty Herman

Every year about this time I pay a visit to Dirty Herman, an actual hermit who dwells in a cave and lives on a diet of bugs, bark and small animals that he kills by simply getting upwind from them.  They just keel right over the moment his scent hits their nostrils, and while his cave is in a federally designated wilderness area, his stench keeps park rangers, pot farming hippies and predatory bears away from his digs. That’s just dandy with Herman, but there is one thing he misses about civilized life: Cheetos.

Let me back up a little.  You see, I knew Herman before he became Dirty Herman The Humbug Hermit. I worked with him.  Then he was Herman Halstead, a senior copywriter for a mid-sized ad agency where we two-finger typed our way toward illusory fame.  Even then his personal hygiene was not the best.  “Soap and water only serve one purpose,” Herman maintained. “They allow evil spirits to scrub their way into your immortal soul.  Have a Cheeto.”

Now, while Herman was an exceptionally gifted ad man, his Cheetos jones interfered with his work, even moreso than his b.o.  The account execs got tired of seeing Herman’s greasy orange fingerprints on their ad copy and everywhere else; on his clothes, desk, chair and everything he touched.  Sticky orange goo on the men’s room fixtures became a hot button issue.  Some men grumbled about becoming downright constipated when seeing Herman’s powdery orange prints on the faucets and towel dispensers.  Even worse was the smelly gloom of Herman’s b.o. and Cheetos excreta that hung in the air like a toxic fog.  Especially if Herman had forgotten to flush.  Well, he didn't forget.  He just never did it.  "Why disturb the cosmos?" he'd shrug when criticized.

The account execs formed a posse and told the boss. “Either he goes or we go. You can probably buy out his contract with a nice severance package and a case of Cheetos.”

And that’s sort of what happened, but not right away.  What tore it for Herman was the Christmas season, an otherwise boom time for the ad business, but which gave Herman the worst case of holiday angst since Mary and Joseph had to sleep in a stable.

I can see why.  Herman got stuck with writing what are known as “radio doughnuts.”  That is, lines of sappy drivel with bracketed blanks where an advertiser’s message could be inserted. For example:

“In this festive time of the year, when the world rejoices in hope for all mankind, [ABC Wheel & Battery Service, 1421 Porkpie Blvd, open 'til noon on Sunday] joins the world in celebrating the birth of the Messiah [Ask about the Duraline Special] and extends best wishes for a prosperous New Year. [All major credit cards accepted.]"

Okay, into each life a little rain must fall, but to Herman, this assignment was a cloudburst.  He went postal.  Suddenly the air around his desk was shrapnel shower of paper clips, colored pencils, ad copy, a coffee mug (“World’s Greatest Golfer”) and flying Cheetos as Herman either lost his mind or had a holy epiphany, both similar conditions.

“Scrooge was right!” Herman bellowed.  “At least he was right before he ran into that goddamn gimpy kid with a crutch! Christmas is a humbug!"   He threw a fresh shower of paper into the air, then stood on his desk and harangued the staff like a sidewalk evangelist.  “A humbug, I tell you!”“

"Is the Humbug a new Volkswagen line we should know about?" asked a very young copywriter.

Herman pounced on this new thread: “Cars!  Henry Ford was right too!  Christmas is bunk!”

“Um, I think Henry Ford said ‘History is bunk,’” said the very young copywriter.

“Shaddap kid!”  Herman yelled, then paused to fish a small pack of Cheetos out of a stained pocket and ripped it open with his teeth, like he was pulling a grenade pin in a John Wayne war movie.  Rrrrrrrip rustle rustle rustle.  He shoved a handful in his mouth.  Mulph crunch crunch. The Cheetos had a calming effect.  Herman wiped his fingers on his stained knit tie and continued in a nearly normal tone:

“Look, it just gets more commercial every goddamned year, ever since those Coca Cola assholes put their goddamned Santa layout in the goddamned Saturday Evening Post.  There he was, the big fat slob, the very picture of jolly beneficence in four color majesty, holding a bottle of Coke." 

He paused for a breath.  " I mean, couldn’t they have at least hired that cornball Norman Rockwell to make Santa look ugly?  Rockwell had an absolute gift for making people look ugly.  Everybody he painted looked ugly.  Now if those frigging Coca Cola jerkoffs had had a lick of honesty, they would’ve specified a grubby Rockwell Santa wearing a green eyeshade and chomping a cigar while sitting with a hand cranked calculator figuring out ways to screw the public and the IRS." Herman pulled an imaginary handle. “Ka cha ching!”

“Herman,” said the calm voice of authority.  The Get Herman Posse had been on the move and summoned the boss.  “Is something wrong?”

“The worst part,” Herman continued, ignoring the boss, “the very worst part is that we, and I mean all of us, my co-harlots of commerce, are part and parcel of this this myth, this fraud, about a little Jewish girl who got knocked up two millennia ago and didn’t know who the daddy was.  And she was supposed to be a virgin?  Oh please!  What was Joseph, some kind of gong-ringing eunuch?  Can you imagine their wedding night?  'Keep your dong in your drawers, Jo Jo my boy, I'm saving my pussy for the pecker of Providence.'"

"Herman?"  the boss repeated.

Herman ignored him.  "Yet here we are, pretending this annual yuletide nonsense is not just a swell opportunity to pillage the public’s pockets.  Oh yes, oh yes, and remember this: even the Cause Of It All, this Jesus ninny who got himself nailed to a tree, chased the money changers from the temple.  I bet He would have something to say about a commercial Christmas!”

While Jesus remained silent on the subject, the boss did not.  “Herman,” the boss said.  “My office.  Now.”

Herman was escorted from the building by two fat bellied security guards 20 minutes later, carrying that sad emblem of the freshly unemployed, a cardboard box full of personal clutter.  In his case, a coffee mug and 12 bags of Cheetos, one for each day of the Twelve Days Of Christmas.  Oh, the irony!

Herman’s transformation from city dwelling ad man to cave dwelling Cro-Magnon was rapid. His loss of income ricocheted into a loss of his co-op condo, his leased BMW, a girlfriend and seven credit cards.  But he’d always been a bit of nature a boy and was at home in the woods. So he decided to go completely off the civilized grid and lead what I mistakenly called a Thoreauvian life in his idea of a wooded Walden, only with a cave instead of a pond.

“Don’t talk to me about that phony freeloader,” Herman huffed when I mention Thoreau. “Nonsense, man!  He squatted rent free on Emerson’s property and inherited a bundle from his family’s pencil factory.  Oh, he had options.  If he'd really gone back to nature, he sure as hell would not have had time to scribble his screeds.  Trust me on that one."

So I added Thoreau to Herman’s growing list of forbidden topics once I found out where he was and began visiting on a now and then basis. (He had written me a stained postcard in care of the agency. The mailroom staff treated the card like a parcel from the Unabomber dusted with Anthrax and handled it with tongs.)

In addition to Thoreau, religion and Christmas, Herman’s Pissed List included Ralph Nader, Bill O’Reilly, Mother Teresa, elderly Cadillac drivers, Greenpeace and the Saint Louis Cardinals.  He also professed to hate aging tree-hugging ex-hippies who wear Birkenstocks and still say things like “Oh wow.”

“Hmph,” he snorted. “Let them try to live on boiled bark and spotted owl stew.  In a week they’d sell their souls for a Big Mac and fries.”

Which still makes me wonder:  has Herman sold his soul to some vague Druid divinity, or has he simply reclaimed his soul from the world as he sees it?

Oh well.  Have some Cheetos.




Comments?

That could be a movie, a good one at that.  Call Depp, Brad and Norton. You have a winner there.  Thanks for the read -- Nick and Amy
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'Cheetos excreta' really cracked me up. -- Lady W
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Tomatomike: There is nothing quite like your stories...and Cheeto orange.  -- Pirate
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Aw jeeze, tomato brains.  I wish you’d a stayed in the cave, you hack! -- Zip LaPrune
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Herman makes me laugh. Where do I send a case of Cheetoes and another of stout malt liquor?  Hugs to you -- Fay
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We had a couple of foul smelling folks like that in our community, Sangho Jim and Tade Mitchell. Having encountered them made your story that much more pungent. Thank you for keeping me on your list. I enjoy your missives -- Doc
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Wonderful, Mike.  I’m thinking of making a video about the real Mrs. Claus, the power behind the global enterprise that is Santa Inc.  I'm a believable consultant in my Santa Hat and my little old grandma smart-ass.  Merry merry, honey -- Canny
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I really liked your story. Herman sounds like quite a character, to put it mildly! Maybe things would have gone easier for him if he just ate non-greasy baked potato chips and learned to love a little Irish Spring? -- Soy

Baked potato chips are girly snacks. Yick.

Oh, I agree, they're terrible but not greasy. FRITOS are my snack of choice! -- Soy

I knew I loved you.

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Still laughing here.  Oh gosh what a character.  You do a great job of describing Hermann. I love your writing, Mike. I REALLY hope that all your anecdotes are published one of these days. They are all gems. -- Peg

So are you.
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Good topic for a Hiaasenian novel! -- Gerard

Busted. I admit to being, um, influenced by Carl Hiaasen’s character of the reclusive ex-governor of Florida who lives in the Everglades and survives on a road kill diet. But I have known a Herman or two, and I became cynical Christmas when I worked in radio.
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Thank you for entertaining me
on this weary winter day. -- Mary Pat
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Do you ever get tired of accolades and unbridled admiration? Have some more. I loved your story and smiled the whole time time I read it. You are big-heap talented, cuz. :) --Sandy

Never, and thank you.
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This could be my absolute favorite of all your pieces, (though it's really hard to single one out). I can't tell you how I look forward to seeing "A Tomatoman Times" when I open my mail. Keep them coming. -- Linda

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Funny, Mike!  You really are a hoot, and this one made me LOL.
I enjoy your blogs so much. Hugs and have a great holiday. -- Ann

Road Song

Photobucket.com

I knew this day would come, a day when my mind would drift back 36 years to a lonely stretch of interstate highway at night, the receding lights of Kingman, Arizona, sparkling like fireflies in the rear view mirrors of my motorcycle, the exhaust fluttering a staccato French horn solo as the bike tilted slightly back and forth in the sidewise gusts of the desert winds.  At the time I sensed this would be a milestone moment, and so it is, as I now sit hunched over a keyboard instead of a gas tank, indulging in memories rounded and smoothed by the passage of years.

Never mind the cloud of locusts that peppered me like buckshot when I rode thorough them at 80 miles per hour on the ride east, or the swatches of rubber peeled from recapped tires littering the pavement, any one of which could have tumbled the bike into a twisted wreck and me into a permanent coma if I survived at all.  I was still immortal at that age.  Accidents happened to other people.  Still, just what the hell was I thinking anyway?

The truth is I wasn’t thinking. Well, not in words.  I did imagine there were menacing shadowy creatures flying alongside, just out of range of my peripheral vision, waiting to pounce. I also had a tune going through my mind, a ceaseless version of the Ojays singing “I Love Music” repeating itself over and over.  It could have been worse, like a chorus of children singing “It’s a small world after alllll…”  So both the imaginary flying monsters and the Ojays were not so bad. They kept me from slipping into a motion induced stupor as I sped through the warm desert night.

A pale frightened face and a parked motorcycle appeared in the loom of my headlight as I passed a rest stop by the side of the road.  I slowed, turned around and coasted back to the rest stop.  The face belonged to a young woman seated cross-legged on the ground next to a chopped Harley-Davidson, a sleeping bag wrapped around her.  She looked like a small hill with a head poking out.  I stopped a non-threatening distance away and asked if she was okay.

“I’m fine,” she said with a quavering false bravado, “We ran out out of gas.  My boyfriend is getting some more.  We left that town back there with his tank on reserve.  I don’t know what that means."

It means he had about 20 miles or less of fuel in his tank for the run across the Mojave Desert, the nitwit, and now he’d temporarily abandoned this kid to the flying shadows and other terrors while he hitchhiked back to Kingman for a can of gas.  I asked if she needed water and was otherwise okay.

“No, really, I’m fine,” she said, adding that she had a gun for protection, which may or not have been true, but which served as a warning in case my intentions were less than helpful.  I paused, giving her time to reconsider, then resumed my journey, preferring to take my chances with the flying shadows instead of a frightened kid armed with a gun.  Being a Samaritan can be a dangerous trait.

Not always.  On a previous trip I’d misjudged the weather and the Arizona geography, stopping at a Denny’s restaurant in Flagstaff, my body shaking from the high altitude chill. I could barely hold a cup of coffee.  A man about my age was seated nearby.  “Is that your 550F parked out front,” he asked.

It was.

“I’ve got a 450 myself.  Good bike.  Where you headed?”

I told him, saying I’d hoped to reach Albuquerque that night, but that didn’t seem likely. He thought about that.  “Hey, look," he said, "if you’re not in a rush, you can bunk at my place.  My wife just left me and we've got a spare room."

We?

"Me and my beagle.”

I accepted his offer, but before heading to his place he led me to a bar called The Widowmaker Lounge, where he said a lot of girls from Northern Arizona State went to dance.  But it was a weeknight.  Any college girls enrolled for the summer session were probably cocooned in their dorms with their noses in books and eating leftover pizza.  The other drinkers looked like morose cowboys as they nursed their beers and listened to Patsy Cline signing about crazy love on the jukebox.  We had two beers and retired for the night to his newly wifeless home where the beagle checked me for weapons or maybe a treat, and I slept the sleep of the slightly drunk.

I stopped at the same Denny’s in Flagstaff the following year.  A college age boy seated at the counter next to me was talking with a young waitress who seemed to be his girlfriend.  I asked them if there was a campground nearby. They gave me appraising looks.  The boy asked where I was from and where I was going. I told him, showing my photo ID issued by the governor’s office in Sacramento and stamped with Jerry Brown‘s signature, hoping these kids were Democrats in a state full of cowboy conservatives. The boy glanced up at the girl, who gave a slight nod. “A bunch of us have a house we rent," he said. "You can stay with us if you don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”

Not at all.  My hosts were students at Northern Arizona State. The boys were musicians with a country and rock repertoire. The girls formed the core of their audience and, I suspected, supplied the bulk of their communal income with clerk and waitressing jobs.

My contribution to dinner that night was doing the dishes, answering questions about Jerry Brown, who was making noises about his presidential ambitions, and letting a bike-savvy lad take a quick spin on my motorcycle when he asked, which I did after thoroughly grilling him about his riding experience, but still feeling like a husband compelled to entrust his wife to the care of a sex offender on parole.  I relaxed when he safely returned with my bike intact.  That night I unrolled my sleeping bag, bedded down among a cluster of sleeping-bagged forms on the floor, and was back on the road at first light.

I got lucky on my next pass through Flagstaff, stopping again at the Widowmaker Lounge where I met an ample woman seeking company for the night, on the condition that I be out of the house before her 10-year-old daughter awakened early the next morning.  She and her former husband were law partners in separate towns and still amicable, a situation she did not want to jeopardize with the 10-year-old carrying tales back to her father.  The next morning she fixed me a cup of instant coffee.  We chatted quietly in her kitchen, where she sat wearing a yellow terry cloth bathrobe, and then she politely shooed me out the door.

Back on the road, I deeply inhaled the brisk morning air scented with pine from the piñons dotting the lava red hillsides along the highway.

A phone call brings me back to the present.  The VA hospital wants me back for some tests. Seems I’ve got emphysema. The doc wants more blood samples, chest x-rays, etc., and I’m reminded anew of a quote by novelist John Barth: “Self knowledge is always bad news.”

Makes me wish I had another motorcycle, one that could take me on a ride back to the little mountain pines of northern Arizona on a crisp summer morning, a thousand miles and 36 years away.
　
Comments?

I like your writing -- Thea

I like you for liking it. -- MB
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The piece had a late '70s feel. Reminded me of all that, and compared to now, that's a nice feeling, place to be.

Do you have emphysema? I'm curious, I've smoked 40 years and you’re so vital. Anyway, one never knows how autobiographical things are. Although you do say true story at the end.  Have you read much John Barth? I used to really like him.  Thanks Mike -- Smirks

I read The Sot Weed Factor and John Barleycorn, but it's been over 30 years. Yeah, I've got emphysema. Doc said so and showed me the funky x-rays and grim results of my breath tests from a 50-year tobacco habit. Tain’t pretty. -- MB
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Thanks, Mike.  It is lovely to read your work.  Every once in a while I think back to road trips with my family (but in a car) and think about what might have been against what was.  Nice memories to be sure. -- Peg
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I rode out of Colorado Springs (Ft Carson) in August 1970 with orders for Vietnam. I was on a Triumph 500cc and made it back to Kentucky via Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota etc.  Great missive. -- Glo

How much oil did that British iron leak? -- MB

A lot. -- Glo
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Ooh such a good one.  I myself was just thinking today about a road trip I took from St. Louis to Denver in a Corvette in 1977 or so.  I think a bike like yours would have been a much more comfortable form of transportation, though maybe not in the ice storm that assailed us near Kansas City on the return trip. -- Sum
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Great story.  Funny how as we get older we remember the good times, mostly it would be nice to have that good health back. -- Mary Pat
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Lovely, Mike! -- Julisari
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LOL @" the cloud of locusts that peppered me like buckshot when I rode thorough them at 80 miles per hour,"  and "where the beagle checked me for weapons or maybe a treat.” -- Pirate
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This held my interest to the very end. you're good!  As for the emphysema, had a similar (hyper-inflated lungs) diagnosis not long ago, and quit smoking in October.  So far, so good, and I really do feel better. So good luck! -- E.O.
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Mike !!! I just bought Amy and I a Pace Arrow, a 40 footer!  I’m so excited!  I can sleep late, eat what I want and fart without public humiliation wherever I travel and still be home!  How great! Amy likes it too.  See ya on the highways. -- Nick

Try not to run over any motorcyclists with that beast. -- MB
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That was the BEST Tomatoman Times I have ever read!  (Have probably not read them all, but still....)  I have never been on a road trip on a motorcycle, but I have been on so many road trips in cars that I cannot count them all (I turned 69 yesterday).  I love road trips.  I suppose you have read Steinbeck's Travels With Charley and Peter S. Beagle's I See By My Outfit? (motorcycle road trip back in the day). I am a sucker for any road trip movie too. "Road Song" was VERY good and I loved the details.  I agree with whoever liked the beagle bit.  I liked the bit about the lady sitting in her yellow robe in the morning too.  Good detail.  I am so sorry to hear about the emphysema diagnosis and will be praying for you. Merry Christmas! -- Eve

Both those books, and Robert Pirsig’s In Praise Of Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, nudged into buying the bike. -- MB
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When I was fifteen I had a boyfriend that rode a Harley. It was a magnificent, huge, rumbling thing covered in chrome and leather, and its rider, named R.R., was a guy my father wanted desperately to punch in the jaw, but restrained himself. I was his baby and I could do no wrong, and Mr. R.R. was someone he couldn't bear to think ever touched me. Dad believed R.R. would spoil my innocence, though little did he know it had been spoiled a year before.

Anyway, R.R. and I traveled one Saturday afternoon to an old fort, refurbished for tourists, and we spent several hours on a blanket. On our trip home, I burned my bare leg on the exhaust. We were miles from any help and we didn't even have any water, so I endured it untreated until we got back.

I had a huge blister on the inside of my leg, and it stung like nothing I had ever felt. R.R.'s mother put butter on it, which did nothing but make it greasy as well as painful. That blister was like an invitation for my father to kill R.R. Dad was furious. R/R. was apologetic, but unrelenting in telling my father he intended to see me again. We did, in fact, see each other several more times.

Time passed and R.R. went down the road with someone else on the back of his Harley. I do recall with a smile though that big, shiny piece of chrome and thunder. I felt like a part of it when I rode on it. It was a fun few months for the most part, tearin' up the countryside and city streets with my thighs wrapped around a black leather seat and my arms around a devil in dark hair and a bushy mustache. There I was, long blonde hair, my peace sign headband, short shorts and long black boots - Queen of the Thundering Hog. Yep. Good times. - Zoey

Queen of the Thundering Hog? I’m going to steal line that for a title. -- MB
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Is that a true story? You are lucky to have such fascinating memories, Mike - that is a life well-lived. Your loyal readers are lucky to get to relive some of your past with you. -- Sandy

Your check is in the mail. -- MB
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Well done, Shorty.  Of course, I expect nothing less from you! -- Linda Fields

Shorty? <sigh>
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The Man Who Fought No More Forever

University Of Wisconsin photo

The other day my friend and I were talking about Native Americans in the Northwest, where we’re both from. She told me a story about her great-great-grandfather, a white settler who’d been given 160 acres of government land in Idaho near the Colville Indian Reservation in the late 1800s.

The settler and his family were cutting logs for a cabin when an Indian -- okay -- Native American, emerged from the woods and watched the family at work for awhile, then, without a word, pitched in and helped.  He shared the family's lunch of venison stew and biscuits, after which everyone returned to work until darkness fell.  Then the Indian faded back into the forest, returning the next day and every day after that until the cabin was built.

My friend said her great-great-grandfather eventually learned the Indian’s name, which translated as Thunder Rolling Down The Mountain. He was better known by another name: Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.

He was one of the chiefs who had led a band of 900 men, women and children on a 1300 mile chase to freedom in Canada after escaping from a reservation in 1877, being captured 60 miles short of his goal by a cavalry unit under the command of General Oliver Howard.  Howard was the ultimate liberal of his day, having founded the Freedman’s Bureau to assist former slaves and was instrumental in establishing Howard University in Washington D.C.  But he was also a career military officer sworn to obey orders, including the pursuit and capture of a man he knew and admired.  Howard was not the only one sympathetic to Joseph’s flight.  A New York reporter accompanying Howard’s troops told Howard that his editor telegraphed “Our readers are rooting for the Indians.”

Joseph’s actual surrender was made to Howard’s subordinate, General Nelson “Bearcoat” Miles.  A lieutenant on Miles’s staff, Erskine Wood, wrote down Joseph’s words when the surrender was signed:

“Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

Joseph and 200 of his followers were incarcerated in federal prisons for 10 years.  He returned to the Colville Reservation upon release and led a quiet life until his death in 1904, helping the very people who believed in the Manifest Destiny of taming the west, but often at the cost of their own humanity -- and a lunch of biscuits and venison stew.

Comments? 

Thank you, Mike.  What a great man he was, unlike those who reside in Washington right now. -- Shannon
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Mike,

A nice piece, and as always, one which makes me think about things in life, and the people who come in and out of it.

I grew up on the Yakima Indian Reservation. From birth to seventeen years old, I lived on a big farm with my father and mother and brother. My father farmed 300 acres of sweet corn, field corn, wheat, alfalfa, sugar beets and spearmint. We raised a lot of black Angus cattle, a few lambs, several pigs, rabbits. chickens. It was a typical farm life.

I went to school in a little Indian town - no, we didn't call it a Native American town - and on the streets it was common to see brown-skinned men and women dressed in traditional fringed, beaded buckskin shirts, vests, dresses, and moccasins. It was not uncommon at all to see long-haired men and women with braids, leather headbands and hair ties. The town was about 4500 people, diverse - whites, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, and Mexicans. There was no stigma it seemed, being any of these, seemed everyone was treated the same if you behaved yourself.

When I was about seven I would sometimes sit in a little park in a nearby town populated with the same cross-section of people while my crazy mother would spend money in several of the nearby shops. In those days it wasn't unusual to leave your kid somewhere like that, though my father never would do that. Sometimes in the park a few older Indian men would be sitting on benches on warm days. I'd sometimes sit down next to one, feeling pretty safe, stranger though he might be.

One day I sat down next to an old man with buckskins on and he had two feathers in his headdress, hanging down in the back. We sat without words for several minutes, and then very quietly he asked me if I wanted some buffalo jerky that his mother had sent him from Montana. I took a piece and thanked him. It was thicker than the beef jerky one could buy in a store, and it was smoky and rich. I sat there tearing little strips of it off and eating them, and he asked me if I lived in town. I said no, that I lived on a farm.

He asked me if my father had taught me about nature. I looked at him, not answering because I wasn't really sure what he meant. I said "About trees and stuff?" He said yes, about trees and animals and the earth and the people who live on it. I told him that my father took me on walks in our fields and tell me how things grew, and he'd take me in the forest when we'd go camping and tell me what kind of trees we saw, and what kind of rocks and wild flowers and he'd talk to me about how bad he felt when loggers would cut all the trees off a side of a mountain.

The old man smiled. He stared up at the blue sky and asked me if my father or any of my people thought of what Spirit watched over the forest. I thought he was going to start telling me to go to church like my father's mother always did - a religious fanatic of the first order I thought even then - and I almost got up and moved to another bench. Then he said Mother Earth watched over the forest and that my father must be one of Mother Earth's messengers, one of her teachers. I still wasn't sure what he meant, but I thought it was really cool that my father must be somebody important and that I hadn't known until that moment what a special guy my daddy must be. For all I knew he was a Chief who was schooling me in important matters rather than just an old man in buckskins reminiscing through my childhood about matters of his own heart.

I moved with my family off the reservation in 1968. It took me a while to stop missing the big farm and my trips to the park where old men in buckskins sat. I learned in school about the lives and plight of many Native Americans in history. I don't know to this day all I might about their lives and the lives of the Indians in my life in the fifties and sixties. I got all wrapped up in the hippie life and other beads and trips of a different kind that didn't surround me in evergreens.

All of my thoughts these days are wandering around in a bigger field of whys - why people of any color treat each other like they do, why Mother Earth gets short-changed at the will of the Immediate Man. I am sad sometimes when I think of all the potential we have for good, and torn when I wonder why we all don't seem to have a tolerance and ability to do better.

I wonder what the old man in the park would say to me today? -- Zoey

Well, he’d probably ask if you wanted some jerky. -- MB

Injury Free Dating & Mating

Photobucket.com

Dating and mating need not occur on a battlefield, although a good fight can often have some amazing results during peace negotiations.  However, a lot of conflict between genders can be avoided if each side understands what the other side wants.  It's simple:  A woman wants just one man to fulfill all of her needs, while a man wants all women to fulfill just one of his needs.

There.  I've stated the problem.  Now for the solution.  It's compromise. 

Look, reconciliation requires compromise.  Not just compromise, but creative compromise. For women, maybe adding testosterone supplements to your girl-food salads is the answer.  For men, strategically applied Novocaine after taking Viagra could prove beneficial in the short term, so to speak.  [Note:  men might also become adept at fixing hair-clogged plumbing, changing flat tires in the middle of the night and killing spiders in bathtubs on a moment’s notice without complaining.  But be careful.  Being known for such skills can permanently exile a man to the non-sexual Alcatraz of being "Just friends," where no self-respecting male horndog wants to be.]

Another thing: compromises never make both parties happy.  Worse, a compromise may engender a new set of problems.  Testosterone therapy for a woman, for example.  While testosterone may increase sexual desire in a woman, it may also cause her to grow a beard, spit whenever and wherever she feels like it, and to scratch her privates in public.

As for Novocaine with Viagra, a man is going to be vaguely uncomfortable packing an erect pecker around that has no more feeling to it than a socket wrench, especially if he follows the advice to seek medical attention if the condition persists beyond four hours.  How would you like to explain such a thing to a pert young female receptionist in a room full of patients, many of whom are already staring at your pants with looks of disbelief, envy or outright loathing on their faces?

So, bearded women and pointy-pants men are not visions that inspire falling in a flesh-colored heap of erotic frenzy, now are they?

Didn't think so.

Now then, here’s what you fellas can do.  Forget about any chemical enhancement beyond chocolate to woo the fair lady, or 151-proof rum diluted with Pepsi in case chocolate doesn’t work, and whatever you do, don’t grope.  You might wind up in traction like my friend Charley did when he put the heavy moves on a date he thought was just playing hard to get.

“I was actually fighting for her honor,” he said. “She wanted to keep it.”

Not only that, she was an off duty cop and martial arts instructor and now Charley faces some sticky legal entanglements as well as steep co-payments on his medical coverage. So, instead of trying to fight your way into paradise, take a more passive role and just listen.

That’s it in a nutshell.  Listen to her when she speaks.  It also helps to look in her eyes and not at her breasts while listening.  Staring at women's breasts only seems to irritate them.  I don’t know why.  Women support entire industries to improve the appearance of their breasts.   It only seems natural to admire the results, but that’s not the case, and such admiration may prove counterproductive to your immediate interests.  Instead of staring, try listening.

You see, women complain all the time that men don’t listen to them.  And you know what?  We don’t.  So surprise her and listen. I mean really listen without thinking of some fabulous fib to impress her.  Limit your spoken responses to “um hm,” or “really?” or “imagine that,” or “please continue” and she’ll think you’re the most brilliant conversationalist since William F. Buckley instead of the dirty-minded horndog you really are.  Oh, and don’t forget the chocolates.  Or the 151-rum as the last resort.

As for what women can do to minimize disappointment during dating and mating season, the same suggestion applies, only use beer instead of chocolates as an incentive, and otherwise just listen to what he has to say, assuming your fella speaks in a language beyond grunts and whose interests are not limited to sports scores and NASCAR events.

I guess I don’t have to caution women about not staring at men’s breasts.  Most women don’t do that, and those who do just make men nervous.  Instead, if you want to accelerate your horizontal agenda, again, just listen to him.  Even better, put a rapt expression on your face as though he’s the most fascinating male on the planet this side of Bradley Cooper, Bruce Willis or the late Mohandas Gandhi without Gandhi’s weird little loincloth.

I don’t mean to seem like an expert here.  Other than chocolates, high octane rum and a functioning set of ears, I really have no better idea of what women want than Sigmund Freud did when he posed the question, “What do women want?“  Hell, I don’t know, but I’m absolutely delighted when I meet a woman who does not think of me as a complete reclamation project.   Maybe just one whose personality just needs a little nip and tuck here and there.  Most of my brethren feel the same way.  Many of us have not fully recovered from the Andrea Dworkin-Susan Brownmiller epoch of gender relations in the 70s and 80s when strident feminists seemed to think the only good man was a good and dead man, so a lot of us just keep quiet and mentally wear beige during our dating and mating phase.

Okay, so we are beyond that now, in an uneasy armistice that permits dating and mating, and compromises are in order.  Men:  Treat women the same way you want your kid sister treated when she reaches dating age, God help her.  Women:  Even if your man’s interests do not extend beyond sports scores or NASCAR trivia, you can always learn to answer in affirming, ego-boosting grunts of agreement. 

See how easy that is?  And don't forget the chocolates and rum.  One final piece of advice I learned the hard way: Twenty minutes of begging is not considered foreplay -- at least not in most dating and mating situations, unless….oh never mind.

Comments, Critiques & Snippy Notes:

I just walked in from work.. read this.. and LOL. A big "THANKS" for sharing. -- Pirate

A bigger thanks for reading.  -- MB
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Dear Abby: Who knew your personal relationships would lead you to a whole new career?  Find a newspaper column and spread the wisdom. -- Beaty

Newspapers editors stifle creativity with their annoying inisistence on separating fact from fiction. This medium is loads more fun. -- MB
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For the record, that 'putting men in just friends category' isn't the conscious fault of women. It's all chemical. We don't decide that. -- LadyW
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My wife of 37 years seems to think the only good man is a handyman. -- Gerard
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If you make the chocolates See's Dark Chocolate Blueberry Truffles, so much the better for you.  Good stuff, 'Materman!  -- Shannon
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Mike -- my husband has found out just what I will do for a Klondike bar -- Mary Pat.

I'll add Klondike bars to my list, along with See's dark chocolate blueberry truffles. -- MB
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For cryin' out loud. I only wear really pretty, girlie foo foo bras around my ample breasts, and I purposely make it impossible for a man to ignore my them. I also expect a man to stare at them, but what I want besides that is for him to occasionally look up into my eyes and respond to anything I said in the last fifteen minutes. It's not a lot to ask. -- Zoey

Yes, it is. -- MB
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Short Changed At The VA Clinic

Union drummer boy - Matthew Brady photo


"You’re late!" snapped the receptionist at the VA clinic.  I was there to keep an appointment with a respiratory therapist.  Late?  Hell, I'd shown up 30 minutes early from the time scheduled on my appointment card.  I showed her the card.

The receptionist sighed, perhaps thinking she was dealing with yet another Vietnam-era vet who'd lost his marbles. "The time is right," she said, "but the day is wrong. Today is Wednesday. Your appointment was yesterday."

Oh.  Now it was my turn to sigh, envisioning a two to three week postponement before I could get another appointment.

The receptionist looked at her computer terminal.  "Maybe we can still squeeze you in. Have a seat. I'll check with the therapist," she said, and left her desk.

My experiences with the VA have always been positive.  Unlike some government agencies intended to serve the public, where the staff would be a lot happier if the public would just go away, VA people make an effort to extend help, especially to vets with CRS.  Can't Remember...uh, something.  That receptionist could have just rescheduled me and barked "Next!" but didn't. Instead, she tried to patch up my screw up. Not only that, she would have to reshuffle people as well as her schedule.

Some of those people were already in the waiting room.  On time and on the right day.  This was not my finest hour.  I slunk to a chair away from the TV which was tuned to Fox News, which makes me mad, and cracked the book I brought.  I always bring a book to goverment appointments and cattle call job interviews.  I don't know why.  I'm usually too keyed up to read, preferring to people watch if I'm not filling out the inenvitable form.

The waiting room was wall-to-wall vets who may have served during the last ten of America's armed conflicts: Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Gulf I, Panama, Gulf II, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and one gray eminence in a wheelchair who could have landed with Patton at Anzio.  He was telling lies to some relative whippersnapper in his 70s who'd probably served in Korea.

"There I was, all alone and surrounded by the entire Wermacht, armed with only a mess kit fork and a can of Spam..."

Yeah, well, I bet even he knew what day of the week it was.

A middle-aged woman about five-feet-nothing tall appeared in a doorway and called my name. She turned out to be my respiratory therapist.  Name's Dianne.

"You're a day late and dollar short," Dianne said as she escorted me to her torture chamber. She was a fine one to talk about short, but then I was about to get a real comeuppance.  She measured my height. "Five feet six inches," she said.  More of a comedownance than a comeuppance.

Whaaa?  Was she sure about that?

"Yup, five-six. Now step on the scale."

Holy crap!  What happened to the other two inches I'd been claiming on DMV forms for years?

"People shrink," Dianne said altogether too pleasantly while making a note of my weight: 120 pounds.  About the size of the average seventh grader.  I was getting depressed.  Five-six. Really?

"Oh, don't worry about it. A lot of famous people are short."

I checked.  Turns out I'm the same height as Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Bob Dylan and Lawrence of Arabia.  What's more, I'm taller than James Madison, Dudley Moore, Aristotle Onassis and Truman Capote, and I remembered reading that the height challenged explorer, Captain John Smith, whom Pocahantas saved from becoming even shorter, was called "Captain Shrimpe" by the Jamestown colonists.

Next was the respiratory test.  Dianne had me breathing into a plastic tube with the results graphed on a computer display.  Seems for a ninety-year-old, my lungs are in pretty good shape.  Thing is, I'm a few decades shy of 90.

"Are you a smoker?"

I am.

"Stop smoking," she said.

I'll said I'd think about it, but the only thing I thought about was being five-six.  I also remembered a girl I'd broken up with because she kept humming the melody to that loathsome Randy Newman song, "Short People."

I needed a cigarette.  I mean, if a camel was good enough for Lawrence of Arabia, then a Camel was good enough for me.

Comments?

Hey Mike:  A very nice piece about the VA.  At least you had some inches to lose.  At 5.2, I am one who won't be able to see over the dashboard when I shrink. -- Choxi

Then you can join the legions of senior citizens whose heads are barely visible as they drive their Cadillacs at 35 mph on freeways -- MB

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Another winner, but remember, Mike, nobody likes a quitter.  -- Sunne

But nobody quits a liker, either. -- MB

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I guess if I could shut the hell up a lot sooner than I do, a comment of mine might appear at the bottom of one of your brilliant writings.  My brother has jumped through the hoops of the VA since Viet Nam, getting help with his knees, his back, and his head full of too many thoughts. He's never complained much.  I trust that when it gets right down to it, in many regards the VA does care about those they send to god-knows-where and those who are lucky enough to come back, however damaged they might be.  I'd hope that no one has given a vet a cross look or an unkind word too often.  Nice stuff again, Mike.  And for god's sake, you aren't short - you're a full inch taller than I am.  And for cryin' out loud, eat something. -- Zoey

Doncha like being on top? -- MB
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Please consider quitting smoking, so you'll be around to write us lots more Tomato Times in years to come! Because I doubt you're gonna run out of stories to tell!  -- Tab

What a nice present.  Thank you, Tab. -- MB
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It's frightening how many venues are 'tuned to Fox news'. It was one once when I was at jury duty. I asked that the station be changed to CNN. The clerk gave me a disbelieving look and then said okay. The station was changed. But it's horrifying that Fox is always 'the default station.' They just consent to the brain-washing.  - Ldy

Faux News or ESPN seem to be the favored settings on waiting room TVs. But it could be worse. Think of an endless loop of the Barney Song. -- MB
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 I ordinarily LIKE Fox News, but that's because I lean Right rather than the Other Way. The only time I don't like Fox News is when they are being danged "fair and balanced" showing people saying things that make me furious, why do I have to listen to such stuff?!  You all might be delighted to learn that even Fox News is leaning further Left these days than a lot of Righties would prefer. They are losing some of their Right Thinkers as a result.  In the meantime, my cat is trained to jump on the mute button whenever Obama speaks. -- WishLady

 If Faux News is annoying the Tea Baggers, then there is a God in heaven, despite what the Right Thinkers and your cat may think. -- MB
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Wonderful one, Mike. My experiences with VA clinics and hospitals has been overwhelmingly positive... the staff is unerringly patient and cheerful, in spite of a way-too-heavy patient load, and the system makes so much sense. (And you WILL quit smoking, won'tcha?) -- Sum

Nag, nag, nag. -- MB
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Great title for a once again brilliant bit of writing. -- Galen
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Lawrence was probably closer to the 5ft4 - 5ft5 range than 5ft6 he tried to pass himself off as. It's one of the reasons he got rejected from the military to begin with in the first part of the war. -- Madi

Oh. Maybe the Turks beat him down when he was imprisoned, no?  Anyway, he should have stuck to riding camels instead of the motorcyle that did him in. -- MB
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 So wonderful and pitch perfect...loved it! -- Julisari
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I like it when you have time on yout hands.  I, too, am an inch shorter than I used to declare, or so the nurse told me. -- Fay

Painting Rides On The Roadway Canvas

Benjamin Yeager - "Peaks To Craters Highway" - artrising.com

Death was the first of three rites of passage I attended in single day as a limousine chauffeur. The funeral was on one of those hellishly bright mornings we get in the California's central valley, with a cheery little wind teasing the leaves of the Dutch elms and sycamores of East Sacramento, the old money section where the day’s mourners lived.

I waited by the limousine for the mourners to emerge from the house. There were four of them; a widow, a brother, a daughter and a son-in-law. Their black clothing seemed odd at that time of day. Funerals should be held in the long shadows of late afternoon when the light resembles the muted shades of an Edward Hopper painting. The black clothes were blots on the morning’s fingerpaint colors, as if death was a mere dark spot being overwhelmed by light.

A wedding was next. The families were Mexican with an affinity for flash. The bridesmaids wore scarlet. The father of the bride wore a shiny maroon tuxedo and a gold necklace. The groomsmen wore long black tuxedoes reminiscent of zoot suits, but with red vests, red neckwear, and their shirttails out.

The bright morning sizzled into a hot afternoon, and there were no cooling Dutch elms or sycamores in the neighborhood bordered by Martin Luther King Boulevard. The wedding party waited in groups for the bride to show up.  She was late.

One of the groomsmen blended some marijuana into the tobacco of a small cigar, but saved it for later. Others drank from bottles of Corona beer and talked quietly. Then the wedding day rowdies arrived, their junky, pull-me-over-car weaving and tilting at high speed down the residential street, stereo throbbing, occupants flashing gang signs and shouting obscenities in two languages. One of them was drinking whiskey from a half gallon bottle by holding it over his mouth like a wineskin.

They set the tone for the rest of the run, their weaving and tilting car chasing the limousine to the church and then the reception like a sparrow harassing a hawk. The bride wore scarlet. If this was her special day, I hoped that today was its nadir and the years, if any, of her marriage would only improve.

Two hours after cleaning up the post wedding mess in the limo, I was parked in front of a new home among the stucco McMansions of the El Dorado Hills development overlooking the Sacramento Valley. I was waiting for the evening’s passengers, ten girls aged 17 and 18 celebrating a birthday, and yes, to me they were girls. I’m at an age where I can get away with calling any female under 21 a girl, and political correctness be damned.

The birthday girl’s mother hired the limousine.  I was to drive the girls to a restaurant and back, she said, adding, “They’re all good girls. I think two of them are Mormons.”

Good, I thought. Then I won’t have to shake backpacks and big purses for the telltale gurgle of bottled alcohol, which is standard limo procedure when driving partying teens unaccompanied by an adult.  I also check water bottles for the scent of vodka.  Not that I care if they drink,  I don’t.  I was a teen drinker myself.  But cops and judges do care.  If my limo is pulled over for a traffic or tail light violation, and the cops see a dozen or more  underage drunks in back, I may suddenly find myself in a career reversal.  Worse yet, young girls (and boys) tend to get nauseous when drunk.  So I play in loco parentis  to avoid mopping up stomach acid mixed with Captain Morgan’s spiced coconut rum at the end of the trip.

Another deterrent to teen drinking in the limo, or any out of control drunkeness, is pointed out in the contract, as I showed the mother. We charge $700 on the customer’s credit card if anyone in the party vomits in the car, as the car has to be taken out of service for three days to undergo an expensive deodorizing enzyme treatment. The charge is to make up for lost revenue.

The other problem I have with young women in the limo is making sure they keep their perky little tits from being exposed in the moon roof and their alabaster asses inside the windows. That sometimes happens when young women’s inhibitions are numbed by alcohol and when they are in a wolfpack of their peers for a night on the town.  Not that I'm all stuffy about such a display, but the flashing of teen T & A often leads to the limo being tailgated and dangerously sidelaned by cars full of horny young swains, which is just what my little cockteasers intended in the first place.

I do not enjoy such Hallmark Moments as a chauffeur.  I prefer to think I am entrusted with the care and safety of peoples' daughters and sisters and the bearers of the next generation; girls whose parents spent fortunes on the their upbringing.  I imagine those parents fall to their knees in prayer every night, imploring God to keep their daughters from falling in lust with some flashy young thug who drinks whiskey out of half gallon bottles, and whose idea of employment is picking up roadside trash in a court ordered a work furlough program. 

The evening light over the Sacramento Valley could have been painted by an Impressionist, but the girls were brightly illuminated by youth and good health. The birthday girl’s mother lined them up by the limo for the usual picture. All of them were pretty, all of them were nice, and all of them ready to make babies. They were at the height of their reproductive ability, and with an urge to do so that flashes for attention like neon in Vegas.  If they were another specie they would put off a musk.

Other than one moonroof tit exposure, the girls were noisy but well mannered. They had chosen a Mexican restaurant for the birthday dinner because the boyfriend of one of them worked there.  He’d promised them free sombreros.  They emerged from the restaurant after dinner in their south-of-the-border headgear looking like blonde banditos ready to rob a stagecoach. They may not have been drinking anything stronger than Pepsi, but they all had the high spirits of party animals who’d just slammed down three vodka shooters apiece. 

"Theeeere’s our cute little limo driver!,” one shouted. “Take us to Reno!  How much does it cost to go to Reno,  Mr. Limo Driver?"

It would cost them their innocence, maybe their very souls, and at least one thousand dollars in advance, the standard fare for a limo run to Reno and back, including time spent waiting for them to lose their shirts or win a fortune.  I would also need the written consent of everyone’s parents, guardians or adult church elders. Written endorsements from the county sheriff and district attorney might help, as I would be driving a limo-load of underage and presumed virgins across state lines, but I only quoted the $1000 estimate and left out the other requirements.

“Awww,” she said.  “Does it have to be in advance?  Can‘t we make some other arrangements?”  That caused a ripple of giggles among the girls.

My mind leaped to obvious male fantasy of being buried under a flesh colored heap of naked teenaged female attention, but I was just too damn tired to engage in double edged banter about what those other arrangements might be, let alone experience them, sadness.  Plus I’m a skinny old bat who’s learned that while age may sometimes bring wisdom, it also brings regret and a lack of cooperation in certain nether regions of my being. 

I held a door open for them and smiled and amused little smile, a tacit signal that it was time to go home.  Let someone else paint on the roadway canvas for awhile.


Comments:

You know?  I've never ridden in a limo - and your stories, descriptive as they are, don't make me want to ride in one now. However, there's a stretch limo with a phone number on it, that I see practically every day. I may just call for an estimate.  -- Beaty

 

The standard rate for a 12-17 passenger Lincoln Town Car or Cadillac Escalade varies from $75 to $125 per hour with a four hour miminum, plus at least a $20 tip for the driver if you are happy with the ride, even though the limo contract states that the gratuity is included. It isn't.  The driver gets anything from minimum wage to $9 an hour and that's it.  The company maintains that it pays the driver 20% of the fare, which amounts to the same thing, and drivers, like food servers, survive on their tips.  -- MB 

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We ladies get a LITTLE more well-mannered in limos as we age – usually because our disapproving, stick-in-the-mud husbands are sitting next to us! Left to our own devices, we still drink a little too much, are a little too loud and giggly, and require the limo driver’s amused little smile to signal us to "get the hell out, your hour is over". We banter a bit with the driver beforehand and during the ride to whittle down the fare if we promise to keep all our clothes on, as nobody wants to see that on us anymore, and we’d hate to put him in a compromising position. Irrevocable proof of our saintly qualities, I think. -- Sandy

Sandy and her drinking buddies live in Alaska. That alone is an incentive to keep one's clothes on. -- MB
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Loved the images of the bridesmaids and groomsmen in flashes of scarlet, and laughed knowingly at your descriptions of the hijinks of the vatos in the "pull me over car." I could see the exuberance and allure of the Mormon girls - thank goodness you're a sensible man with a good head on his shoulders! : ) -- Tab A

You overestimate me with kindness. -- MB
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Another one hit out of the park. You're the Albert Pujols of blogging, I tellya.  -- Sum

I had to look up Albert Pujols.  Turns out to be some baseball guy on Sum's favorite team, the Saint Louis Blue Jays or Buzzards or somesuch bird name, and I appreciate the compliment.  But I seem to have struck a nerve.  See below.  -- MB
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Hey! Hey now!  We are NOT the St Louis blue jays or whatever!  We are  the  CARDINALS and we WON THE WORLD SERIES THIS YEAR  AFTER BEING DOWN TO ONE STRIKE, TWICE!  Awesome team, great to be living in St Louis during this incredible baseball year.  I am usually not much of a baseball fan, but this year's Cardinals championship season was one for the history books.  And by the way, Albert Pujols tied Babe Ruth and some other historic dude for three home runs in a World Series game. -- Eve

Babe Ruth?  Didn't he invent a candy bar or something?  -- MB

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Loved this one too!  -- Julisari

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<3 your stories, Tomatomike -- Pirate & Pearls

I heart you for hearting them.  -- MB

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Dear Mike, this was my earliest Christmas present. I did not save it. I sat right down and read it and was late for dinner at a friend's house. It was worth the scolding. If u feel another xmas present coming on, please send it along, I love reading u. Hugs, Fay

<blush> -- MB 
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Your pieces always make me think -- never just chuckle or smile a few seconds or even just sit and see how it all fits in my head. Nope. They make me think. It's one of the best things about your writing, in case you didn't know - but I suspect you do -- Zoey
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Why aren't these in a published collection again???

Sloth. -- MB
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Hey Tomatoes-For-Brains!  Whattsa matter? Run out of ideas? Can senility be far behind? -- ZipLePrune
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Probably not. -- MB
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