The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

Cajun John

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Henrietta, Texas, 1959: John P. was a thin, wiry guy a year older than me, with a nervous air and a perpetual smile. His family was from Louisiana, with a mild Cajun accent. John signed up for Latin class, and was forever lost. I helped him some, and we became friends, though he was alien and odd.

The story goes that one day John climbed up onto the Coca Cola truck, with the intent to steal a case of cokes, while the Coke man was inside the A&P grocery store. But the Coke man came wheeling his handtruck out the rear door, and caught John atop of the truck. The Coke man scowled.

“What are you doing on that truck?” he demanded.

John didn’t even blink. “What truck?” he said.

Once John invited me to [Read more…]

At 3304 Geary Boulevard

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San Francisco, 1980: We’d outgrown my studio apartment on Third Avenue. Network Answering Service, the operators who answered the phones, the Thumbtack Bugle, plus the bookkeeper, and me. Time to move.

I searched Arguello. I searched Clement, and Balboa. I searched California Street. I found a second-story flat on Geary Boulevard, on the corner of Parker across from the Post Office. I walked the wooden floors in the empty rooms; it was a vast space, cheery with sunlight, and smelling of new varnish.

On the street below, the phone company was digging up the concrete in the middle of the street, so they could run our phonelines. I watched through the sunny windows. Never before had anybody dug up a street for me. This must be the big time!

For three weeks straight, I built shelving and set up our new workspace. Rosie the Cat kept me company. I got new lamps and large plants.

London, Paris, Tokyo.

In the foyer at the top of the stairs, I installed four KitKat clocks, with wagging eyes and tails. On the wall, all in a row, I had three black ones, with signs saying London, Paris, Tokyo. Then a pink one with rhinestones labeled San Francisco. Oh, we had arrived.

As it turned out, the foyer lacked light for the plants, and the operators wore out my rugs. The KitKat clocks gave out over time, and heating was a problem, as the thermostat was in one room and the heater in another; adjustment was, to say the least, tricky. Operators solved it by running the heater at full blast, while opening windows to let in the cool air. In this way they made themselves comfortable.

I explained that we would not be able to heat up Geary Boulevard. This made no impression.

I tore up some twenty dollar bills and tossed the pieces out the window, just as an example. That made an impression, of a sort, but little difference.

The cats, Rosie and Cosmo, liked the new digs.Then operator Anita found Morgan, just a tiny kitten abandoned in a paper bag, to join our crew. At first I lived in the large, dark-paneled room at the rear. There it was that I asked Lori to marry me. She said yes, we got married, we moved to an apartment at the corner of Carl and Cole streets.

I set up a development lab, and began designing the Line Seizer, an electronic device that talked with the telephone company’s central office as they sent calls to our answering service, identifying for our operators which client’s phone was ringing in to us. I took to wearing overalls like I’d seen real computer guys do.

There were excitements and triumphs, troubles and despairs, dramas and traumas. The actors came and went. Along the way, Lori and I estranged ourselves, and she ran the answering service while I took a job which carried me to Newport Beach, then Texas, then back to San Francisco, where we then sold the answering service. A manager was found for the voicemail business, I became a private investigator. Rooms were rented out.

One day, a notice from the city. Zoning problem. Time to move.

On the last day, walking around the wooden floors in empty rooms, I remembered that first day so many years earlier. The empty rooms now seemed worn and friendly. We’d traveled together; we hated to part.

The Men in the Rocket Ship

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San Francisco, 1984: Back in Henrietta, Texas, the Edmonds Public Library was calm, quiet, and cool in the summer. The children’s section and the Science Fiction section had that same smell as a grade school, a scent of varnish and puppies.

I got to know those books very well. Books about secret codes, books about the Hardy Boys, and books about Rocket Ships. Those were favorites. Even today, checking the news online, whenever a new photograph appears — Jupiter, a comet, the Crab Nebula — it’s astounding, like deja vu of something never seen.

In college, I was complaining to Crazy Becky Jarvis one day, about my sorry love life. She tilted her head to one side.

“I bet you’d like Patty L.,” she said.

And I did.

A small woman, with that hair that moves all together, she wore a plaid skirt, a white blouse, and tall boots. In those days of beehive hairdos, she was a welcome relief. An infectious smile, mischievous nature, and a cozy attitude.

On a certain day, I was to pick her up from visiting her parents in Dallas. As it turned out, I was early, and, having nothing much to say to them — or perhaps, they having very little to say to me — they invited me to watch the television, where I saw Star Trek for the first time.

I no longer recall the plot, probably it was about a terrible monster.

We left, and drove the Morgan back to Denton with the top down, always fun, but I was thinking about the guys in the Rocket Ship. And now, we’ll leave Pretty Patty and move forward to San Francisco, many years after.

In San Francisco, Star Trek is still on television, but as it begins to wind down, they begin making movies. And one of these was playing on Van Ness, so Derek S. and I went.

This particular Star Trek movie, however, had them coming back in time to San Francisco, where we are watching the movie. With their space ship in high orbit, they have beamed down, and now these men from the future are walking around the Marina Green. Now they’re downtown. And now they are walking on Van Ness.

And now they are standing at the bus stop outside the theatre where Derek and I are watching them standing at the bus stop outside the theatre where we are watching them.

Yes, that’s right, these people from my past, who are from the future, at a later time in the future have come back to a time later than my past, which is in fact now, and are now standing just outside the theatre where we are watching them from inside the theatre.

The movie wasn’t great.

The mental meltdown was superb.

Does God make up these practical jokes? Or do they just happen?

The Canyon

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Henrietta, Texas, 1952-1957: To the northwest of town, the homes came to a sudden stop, at the Canyon. We boys called it the Canyon, but our town being built on Texas rolling hills, it wasn’t exceptionally magnificent. Except to us, of course.

A stream or creek emerged from the rock, and fell twenty feet into a small pool, in which lived a legendary large fish. From the pool, when there was rain, the outbound creek trickled and cut through a wide and expanding sandy basin.

To either side, the long arms of rocky shelf stretched, reaching down to meet the plain, and beyond, a hazard of tumbled woods, open plains, and a great and empty distance.

For us boys, this was Heaven.

For one thing, no grown-ups. For another, the mind could range free, because a quarter-hour hike took you beyond civilization. That is, beyond houses, roads, telephone poles. It was wild country, and roaming free in the Canyon, we were wild creatures.

With my gang of friends, on a long Saturday hike, eventually we became lost. We’d found some burrows near the bank of a winding stream. We’d crawled into these burrows, and back out again. We’d followed a blue racer, a dark-colored snake capable of great speed upon the grasslands. It ran from us and finally glided up into an ancient mesquite tree.

We’d walked through a wood, never seen before or since. When the sun was high overhead, we became disoriented. Opinion differed as to the correct direction. Just like in the horror movies, where the incredibly stupid people decide to split up, we decided to split up.

The reason being that three of us believed that town lay over that way, and the other four were pretty sure that the town lay over in this other direction. As it turned out, both groups made their way back to town. This was just perfect for a Saturday adventure for us boys. We felt like mighty woodsmen.

In early teen years, Bobby M. and I used to head out to the Canyon after school. We were learning to smoke cigarettes. It takes a certain amount of practice. We got pretty good at it.

Then things changed. In Texas, you can get a driver’s license at age 14 1/2, if you take Driver’s Ed. That summer following, Driver’s Ed was a popular class. Most of the mighty woodmen were there, going to school in the summer, because automobiles beckoned.

With licenses, we began importuning parents to drive the family car. Some earned and bought their own. With my parents help, I managed a green 1951 Chevrolet which my mom had traded on a Chrysler. I was very proud of this green car, and managed to get into a wreck soon after, the repairs of which gave me an outstanding two-toned color scheme.

The canyon? Forgotten. Abandoned. In all these years following, I’ve never been back, and I’ll wager the others haven’t either.

But don’t feel bad for the Canyon. All of us had younger brothers. Some of those had brothers younger still. And now, many of the mighty woodmen have sons, and these now grown up with boys of their own. No, the Canyon isn’t lonely.

You can trust boys. They will find the Canyon.

The Abandoned Road

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Dallas, Texas, 1966: On this particular day, my girlfriend and I decided to take the psilocybin before heading out. Driving the Morgan from Dallas to Shady Shores was an odd adventure. It was about thirty miles, and seemingly many days driving.

I knew of this place from years earlier. College roommates and I had lived nearby, and some scouting trip discovered an abandoned roadway that had once run atop a dam built across Lake Dallas. In a concrete building halfway out, remnants of the dam’s machinery remained, huge wheels and vast pipes, going nowhere.

Whoever these mysterious builders were, they were fickle, for after building the dam across the lake, they’d cut a hole through it, so it was no dam any longer. Just a finger of elevated land reaching toward, but not touching, a finger of land from the other side. On the elevated crest, earth and stone and even trees, and the once roadway ran, and stopped at the cut.

Just the spot for our picnic.

I recalled a time from college when the gang of us, plus the girl gang too, hiked beyond the road’s blockade, and spent an afternoon with beer and burnt hotdogs and more beer, on the crescent moon beach that formed at the end, beside the cut.

Now, above the Morgan, the day was turning overcast, the air keen and wild. I parked beneath the trees, and we hiked. It was a strange journey. Past the old spillway’s jumbled boulders, and there among the mesquite trees, we stumbled across a horrible and alarming black and orange snake, which proved to be a fragment of nylon rope.

The ground was heaving, and the trees whispered. The sky darkened, and a breeze began to blow. As we sat beside the abandoned roadway, to the west the sun peeked out, low across the lake.

The water between sparkled with flashes of God and the unseen heavens beyond this Earth. Bright flashes, as bright as the sun, and the water’s chop swirled them round and round in a pattern we could sense, and could almost see clearly.

And then clouds came in from the northwest, and the sun was covered, and the clouds drifted, a million miles above the earth, and slowly across the lake. The breeze returned, lifting the grasses around us, whispering. Then, from the clouds, rain.

Falling in parallel streaks like a Hiroshige print, going on eternally, and the lake turned its face up to receive the gentle rain.

I’m sure we returned to our homes later; unless, of course, we are still there.

Carrie Street Station

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St. Louis, Winter 1967: I was saving up my money, so I got two jobs.

Days: Yard clerk at the Rock Island Railroad.

Nights: Night Manager at the Hilton Inn.

With different days off, only three days had me working both jobs. At night from eleven, until seven in the morning, I ran the front desk at the Airport Hilton Inn. (Usually pretty quiet, except that time the Stones arrived). In the wee hours, I balanced the NCR 1600 bookeeping machine, and in the morning …

I walked through the halls and past the aviary — a large cage with the tiniest, quickest tropical birds, bright as a paint kit, and full of song so early, with cheery quick eyes askance — onward, to the Olde Weste Coffee Shoppe for my free breakfast. Oh, that was grand!

Then, piloting the volkswagen home to my unheated trailor, just off the end of the jet runway at St. Louis International Airport. Though the planes were very loud, I slept soundly.

A quick sleep it was, as needs be I’m up and dressed in Sears insulated underwear, thick roustabout clothes, and big brogan-style boots. Off to the Rock Island Railroad, Carrie Street station.

Not a passenger stop, no. A rough-looking switchyard in a rough part of town. Here’s how it works:

There is a local railroad called the Terminal Railroad. Their only job is to go around St. Louis, to the real railroads: Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, Rock Island. Railroads hand off cars to other railroads, and Carrie Street was the Rock Island switching station.

When the Terminal Railroad showed up, I stood beside the track. They have 54 cars for the Rock, that’s us. Our switch foreman, Danny, would tell them to put the cars into our switching tracks 7, 8, and 9. As they backed the cars into these tracks, I stood alongside and wrote down the cars and their numbers, as fast as I could. (If I could write them as the cars passed me, then I didn’t have to walk up and down the tracks writing them down.)

The conductor on the Terminal Railroad would give a thick wad of the “Bills of Lading” to the Bill Clerk. These are forms that show where the cars are going, and what’s been laeded into them, laddie.

The Rock Island Line

Me and the bill clerk sorted them, to discover we had sixteen cars for Kansas City, fourteen for Oakland, and so on. The switch foreman Danny figured how to move these long strings of cars around so as to get all the Kansas City ones together. It took most of the day.

Then, our train took off to Kansas City and points west. I think that, on the other shift, some of those cars went back east, but I never saw them, and for all I know there are thousands stranded somewhere out west.

Danny, the switch foreman, was a young fellow, and acted very sour. I think it helped him control his tough-guy crew. So I would often annoy him by striding through the bitter cold, along the track outside the switch shanty (while they huddled around the coal stove). I’d swing my arms wide, taking big strides.

In a loud voice, I sang, “Oh, the Rock Island line is a mighty fine line! Oh, the Rock Island line is the road to ride! Oh, the Rock Island line is a mighty fine line! If you want to ride, you gotta ride it like you find it, get your ticket at the station for the Rock Island line!”

Sometimes my voice cracked, but it was never less than completely chipper and enthusiastic. And loud.

This goober act never failed to amaze Danny and the switch crew, and they pretended disgust with such cheerfulness, while I in turn pretended not to notice nor comprehend in any way.

Just before eleven each night, in the office bathroom, I’d change into my suit and black shoes. Then off to the Hilton Inn, to balance those books.

In the St. Louis winter, daylight comes late and night falls early. Some cold and snowy days there were when the sun hardly showed. During one stretch it had been over a week since I saw the sun, and snow fell heavy that day.

That evening, trudging across the yard toward the office, underneath the yard’s lamps high on their poles, I noticed that all the falling snow ahead of me, and the snow upon the ground ahead, glittered in sharp bright points, so beautiful they were, glittering.

Glittering before me like gold.

A Hot Bath in the Cold Rain

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Ben Lomond, CA in the Santa Cruz mountains, November 7, 2010: So I was scheduled to assist at a Tantra Yoga Beginner’s Weekend Workshop with the SourceTantra folks, and therefore on the day after my “How to Feel Good Fast” event, I packed, kissed my dogs good bye, and drove down to the Santa Cruz mountains.

But then, as it turned out, the person with whom I’d volunteered to assist hadn’t passed on the info to the person who passed on the info to the person who coordinates that event, and so … they didn’t need me to assist at all.

But since I’d already blocked off the time in my appointment book, and didn’t want to have wasted the time I spent writing it down and all … [Read more…]

Enter Tantra Yoga

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Boulder Creek California (Santa Cruz Mountains), June 25, 2010: For months I’ve been fascinated, excited, and terrified.

It happened like this —

For three years after Adrienne and I parted, I’ve wanted no woman in my life.

And then came a day … that I did.

Well, I know what to do (http://sweetheartreport.com), and so I began the process.

I’m seeking the Love of my Life, my Beloved, my dearest lover and best friend, yet again. I’ve had a few hundred lovers in my life, and been deeply and completely in love three times. I’d like to make it four. I’m ready.

Back in San Francisco days, in addition to picking up women in the supermarket, on the bus, in classes, at a funeral, and on the street, I’d learned to use classified ads. That was the big thing, back then. And twenty-some years later, it’s online dating sites.

I tested two sites, one against the other. (Match.com wins. SeniorPeopleMeet.com works and provides plenty of prospects, but it seems to hand me more women who are being “old people.” While I know how to act my age, I also want the freedom and fun of acting like a kid, and Match.com seems to hand me more creative and vibrant women.)

One of my first dates was a small, delicate, and enthusiastic young lady of about my own age, with an endearing sweet smile, wild auburn hair, and a body that seemed both refined and indecent. And thirty minutes into the conversation she said a particular word. [Read more…]

 
 

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