Tow Truck
Hero On the way over here I
drove by the parking lot on Soquel by the new Whole Foods grocery mega store has
replaced the Albertson's mega store. And with millions of dollars of renovation
they did not fix the gutter in front of the parking lot on Soquel. To cross the
gutter into the lot you've got to slow almost to a stop. You can see deep scars
in the pavement from cars that bottomed out. That gutter is the center of this
story. I had forgotten the hand
painted sign over the house garage car repair shop up in the redwoods outside
Felton. And I had forgotten the old tow truck in the weeds that also had the
same hand lettered sign on each door, "Let me fix your car once and you'll never
go anywhere else again." It's 2004 and my '94 T-Bird
sputters, coughs and continues belching smoke even after I turn off the ignition
and walk into the two car garage, stepping around a piles of rusted transmission
parts, stacks of rear ends, and tubs of worn out brake
cylinders. Three men in overalls sit
on oil barrels with their eyes closed. Two rock gently to the music. On the
middle barrel a gaunt body is wrapped around an autoharp, his thick, oil stained
mechanic fingers carefully touching the keys and stroking the strings to the
redemptive wail of Wayfaring Stranger. The song ends and all three
men let their breath out slowly, like they are ending a meditation. The man in
the middle uncurls his lanky frame from his instrument and looks at me, "Your
carburetor is shot, man." He squints at a pile of disassembled, grease covered
carburetor remains, "And I don't believe I have that particular model in stock."
I stare at a movie poster
on the back wall, it's The Creature From the Black Lagoon showing the beast
carrying the beautiful blonde in his scaly arms. The mechanic's eyes sparkle,
"The Creature From The Black Lagoon is my spirit monster." A hand rolled
cigarette of something referred to as "local" is passed around and next thing I
know I've got my old Martin guitar out and we play the afternoon away. We never
did get around to looking at that carburetor. I had forgotten the hand
painted sign until the Santa Cruz flood of February 12th, 2006.
It has not stopped raining
for a month and the monsoon has made my T-Bird organic. Mushrooms are growing
out of the floor mats. It's late Sunday night and
I finish my standup comedy set at the Crow's Nest. The crowd smells like wet
dogs and sheep and are talking and drinking hard to get laid. How low does it
get? I get paid and wade through ankle deep water in the parking lot. As I
fumble with my keys the pounding rain bounces off the car so hard it stings my
face. After twenty years of doing standup I have successfully clawed my way to
the bottom. The inside of my car is so
rank and moldy it's hard to breathe. I crank the T-Bird. Please, please don't
leave me here. It roars to life. Ford products... at least they start. F - O - R -
D... Ford Owner Really Depressed. I'm thinking food might
make me feel better so I turn in the upper entrance of the Albertson's parking
lot. What's happening? The gutter is so full of water it comes halfway up the
side of my car. I hit the gas and push on through, the old T-Bird shakes like a
drenched dog. The grocery store has been
closed for five minutes. I turn around. The water is deep at the upper entrance,
it's got to be a blocked drain. I aim for the other exit, forgetting a
fundamental physical property of water, it runs downhill.
I drive toward the lower
exit and into a lake that begins two hundred feet from the gutter. How deep
could this be? My belly twists with fear. Need momentum. I hit the gas and the
powerful little car leaps into the water. I floor the accelerator and hit the
deepest part of the lake so hard that water rushes over the hood, over the
windshield, over the roof and the car falls silent with one violent death
rattle. The Ford does not start. My Bird is dead. I've heard that a man who
drives like hell is bound to get there and my front wheels are resting in the
lake on Soquel Avenue, the rear of the car is submerged in the gutter. F - O - R
- D, Found Dead On Road. I see the water rising,
steadily climbing up the side of my door. I remember telling a Native American
Shaman that to me F E A R means Fantasy Experienced As Real but this does not
look like a fantasy and I remember the Apache Chief saying, "We say that F E A R
stands for Fuck Everything And Run. And on my God my seat belt is stuck, I can't
get loose. A spotlight hits me in the face. The cop doesn't even roll down his
window, he barks at me through the loudspeaker on his cruzer. "Stay in your car.
Guy in the T-Bird, stay in your car. I'll try to get a tow
truck." What would Jesus do? I'll
tell you what Jesus would do, he's stand up on this swirling water and walk his
ass out of here. The black, foamy water is
rising, slowly coming up the side of the car. I imagine the Obituary Page of
tomorrow's Santa Cruz Sentinel, "Local Comedian Drowns In Albertson's Parking
Lot." The flowing water is
getting closer to the window. "Oh God. Dad was right, I'm
gonna die in the gutter!" Sometimes F - E - A - R means "Fuck everything and
run." Suddenly an old tow truck
backs up to the edge of the lake. Covered with yellow rain gear, the tow truck
driver pulls a cable with a hook on the end from his towing boom, wades into the
water and dives into the lake out of sight. I watch the taut cable coming
closer, he's swimming under my car. I hear the clank as he hooks the cable to my
frame. He swims out of the lake, winches my dead T-Bird onto his tow truck and
motions for me to join him in the cab. As I step up to the truck, headlights
from a passing car hit the door so I can see the hand painted letters, "Let me
fix your car once and you'll never go anywhere else
again." I climb in the cab and it's
him, wrapped around his steering wheel like he had cradled his autoharp. "Triple
A never calls me, they say my rig's not legal." I shake my head in commiseration
as I watch the water pour off his clothes and run through the holes in the
floorboards. "But the cops call me when
there's no one else." He answers his cell phone.
His breath quickens, his hand scrabbles through the ashtray. He pulls out a
cigarette butt and with the burnt end writes an address on the dashboard. "Two
jobs in one night!" Now it's 2010 and the new
Whole Foods mega store has replaced the old Albertson's mega store. When I
drive down Soquel Avenue past the
parking lot I see that the gutter has not been changed and I look to the sky for
black clouds. Heroes only get the shortest moment of cosmic storm, like the
moment when the most un-ambitious mechanic in Santa Cruz County became his own
spirit monster, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, to save a dead T-Bird from a
parking lot gutter, locally still known as "Lake
Albertson."
In a time when my fellow
Planet Cruzans lament about the corporate takeover of America, I offer a true
story, a historical account of ranchers who took on a corporate power to save
their ranches.
My great-grandfather was
Christopher Columbus Stockton, born in the back of a Conestoga wagon shortly
after an attack by Blackfeet Indians on a wagon train going from Virginia to
California in 1856. His father Issac Denton Stockton was leading the train and
chose to name son number twelve Christopher Columbus in honor of the explorer
who had once sailed west to find a direct connection with India. Everyone knows
that if you want a direct connection with India you call tech support.
Young Christopher Columbus
Stockton prospered as a rancher and became widely known throughout the lower San
Joaquin Valley and the Greenhorn Mountains as CC Stockton. His courage and
straightforward demeanor were respected by his friends and neighbors and his
anger was feared by his enemies. CC was a friend of the ranchers and a sworn
enemy of the railroads. The railroads were the same rich, powerful, corrupt,
ruthless, lowlife thieves and murderers as corporations continue to be today.
Haliburton has deep roots. The railroads frightened
the poor and weak into giving up their land, used lobbyists, crooked judges and
extortion to displace the stronger ranchers, and when that failed, they hired
thugs to murder the rest. The very term "to railroad someone" means to force
someone to do something in great haste, without due
consideration. On a blistering July
Bakersfield afternoon Christopher Columbus Stockton sat with his neighbors in
the Kern County Courthouse watching the trial of a fellow rancher. The rancher
was on the stand, the prosecutor and judge clearly working together to twist the
rancher's testimony. It was obvious that the rancher was being framed for a
paper crime he did not commit and that he would lose his property to the
railroad. CC left the building,
mounted his horse, rode up the steps into the courthouse, pulled his rifle out
of its scabbard and used the muzzle to push open the doors to the courtroom.
With his rifle level and his finger on the trigger, CC Stockton rode to the
bench and announced that the trial was over and he was taking the defendant with
him. His neighbor rose from the witness stand, climbed onto the back of CC's
horse and they rode out of the Kern County Courthouse to the Stockton Ranch
House where well armed ranchers from all over the county came to circle the
house and protect the man from further harassment by the railroads and the
law. That house where the Kern
County ranchers stood up to the railroads still stands on A Street in
Bakersfield, my great-grandfather's neighbor never went to court again and
railroad tracks have never crossed his
property.
Standing
Up To Big Money... Nineteenth Century Style
The Flight Of Timmy Two Socks
Street philosopher Timmy Two Socks tells me that in his wheelchair he tried to outrun a cop so he could finish his beer.
Chestnut Street coming down from Mission is one of the steepest streets in Santa Cruz and at the bottom of the hill a chestnut tree root has pushed up the pavement in the bicycle lane. When the street crew goes out to cut the root someone asks if that might hurt the tree. Immediately a tree preservation committee is formed, environmental impact reports are started, then traffic flow studies, code compliance meetings, historic preservation reports, a curb and gutter analysis, two City Council resolutions, and three Public Works meetings, frequently called the Public Never Works meetings. And the root continues to push the slab of pavement up like a ramp to the sky.
Timmy Two Socks looks at the slab of pavement jutting upward and comments, "The pavement wants to buckle there." Timmy Two Socks looks like an old tom cat who's won-lost record is in decline. His grin gives you two gold and three missing teeth and he laughs so deeply his body bends forward over his knees. He lives in a wheelchair in downtown Santa Cruz because arthritis has seized his legs. He wears no shoes but maintains yellow flowers on the brim of his squashed cowboy hat.
I ask Timmy Two Socks where he sleeps.
A doctor at a VA hospital tells Timmy that the shrapnel in his body from Vietnam is poisoning his liver and the old vet laughs because he knows there is a lot more working on his liver than shrapnel. Ask him what he wants when he drinks and he'll say, "More." When he can drink six beers the pain in his legs stops, the memories of explosions go silent, he can sleep and dream he is Superman, his tattered Army Surplus blanket turns into a red cape, his cracked glasses turn into contact lenses and he flies over Santa Cruz, protecting the city all night long.
Street mystic Rising Moon stares at the Goodwill Store spoon in her hands, thumbs sore from struggling to bend the flatware. She trudges up Cathcart Street, her yoga toned body bent and knotted in frustration. When Rising Moon asks Timmy why she cannot bend a spoon no matter how hard she focuses her energies on softening the metal, he tells her, "Rising Moon, you need to find a spoon that wants to bend." In return for this insight Rising Moon gives Timmy a ten dollar bill for a six pack and pushes him all the way up the sharp incline of Chestnut Street to the Valero gas station on Mission. Timmy thanks her for the push up the steep hill, thanks her for the ten dollars and thanks God for the powerful thirst to spend the money on.
As Rising Moon leaves Timmy to buy his beer, Officer Dick strides down Mission Street, feeling powerful in his crisp new blue uniform, swinging his massive billy club. He'd always dreamed of a military career but his right leg is one inch shorter than his left. He's learned to hide the hitch in his gait when he walks but running is difficult. He had bribed a doctor to lie about his leg and with a cocktail of cortisone, Vicodin and morphine he passed the police test and now patrols Mission Street.
Officer Dick hates Timmy Two Socks. Once he made Timmy blow up a balloon and Timmy handed the balloon back to him in the shape of an animal. The Timmy Two Socks of the world won't follow rules and rules are what keep the world safe. Protocol will keep his little brother safe in Iraq and this wheelchair bum does not deserve to breathe the same air as men in uniform. As Officer Dick marches down Mission he imagines that he is beside his brother, patrolling the streets of Baghdad.
As Timmy Two Socks wheels out of the Valero gas station he can smell the beer through the six sealed aluminum cans in his lap. He pops a top and drains a can in one throw. On the corner of Mission and Chestnut he drinks three more, wheels behind a tree, grabs a limb and pulls his body up to relieve himself. He collapses back into his chair and pops the top of the fifth can.
Officer Dick yells from the opposite side of Mission Street, "Guy in the wheelchair, Timmy Two Socks, put down the beer. Freeze. No... hands up." Timmy Two Socks exhales, opens his throat and pours the golden liquid into his stomach. Giddy with anesthetized power, his eyes shining with alcoholic euphoria, he spins his wheelchair around and heads down Chestnut Street, his arms pumping like pistons. He hears the uneven lope of Officer Dick gaining on him but the street begins it's steep descent and the wheelchair picks up speed. Timmy takes his right hand off the wheel, pops the top of the sixth beer and as his left hand pumps the wheel, pours the final beer down his throat. His nerves go numb as the chair speeds down the steepest part of the slope. Both hands grip the arm rests, the wheelchair vibrates violently like the Space Shuttle in liftoff, shooting down the street, lifting off and touching down, faster and faster.
Officer Dick sees momentum shifting to the criminal and raises his billy club to smash the crumpled cowboy hat. As the club starts forward, the wheels clang against the pavement that the root has pushed toward the sky and Timmy Two Socks, clutching his wheelchair, careens at an acute angle away from the earth. Down the street Rising Moons turns and mutters, "Now there is a man who has found a wheelchair that wants to fly."
Officer Dick looks up at Timmy Two Socks, rising higher and higher in his wheelchair like a hobo ET flying in front of the moon and he sees, dangling on a chain behind Timmy's neck, the unmistakable flat, silver rectangles of Army dog tags. The billy club clatters on the sidewalk and Officer Dick crumples to the pavement in stunned confusion.
As Rising Moon decides to go to the Thrift Store to find a spoon that wants to bend and as Officer Dick kneels to shed hot tears of prayer for his brother in Iraq, Timmy Two Socks, a veteran of battles he cannot forget and of dreams he cannot remember, stretches out his hands holding an empty beer can and flies over Santa Cruz like Superman.
"A field."
"Which field?"
"The nearest one. I'm not homeless, I'm an outdoorsman."
He is a man who truly wakes up in the neighborhood of his choice.
by Richard Stockton on 05-Oct-09 01:13
Ear For Love Folk singer Santa Cruz Sid tells me his apartment is so small that when he bends over to pull his banjo out from under his bed he turns on the gas stove in his kitchen with his ass. Few show up for his Tuesday night gigs at Bocci Cellars to put money in the tip jar. One is the tall, pale, deaf girl who stands against the big PA speaker cabinet, feeling the speaker vibrations with her body and reading his lips as he sings the old songs. She puts in a dollar and leaves before Sid finishes his set. Jennifer lays out her yoga mat and as she sits cross legged runs the words of the folk singer through her head, Freight train, freight train, going so fast, Freight train, freight train, going so fast, Please don’t tell what train I’m on So they won’t know where I’ve gone. She’s never heard a train, only felt the power as they pass. She’s never heard music but with folk songs she feels the smoothness of the lyrics, these words passed from mouth to ear over and over, slightly changing with each passing until they are polished by the retelling, mouth to ear to mouth to ear. She’s never heard Sid’s voice but smiles when she thinks of how the low tones feel coming out of the speaker cabinet. And then the vibration of the Om stills her mind and though she’s never heard the sound of her own breathing, she rides the wave of her breath. One Tuesday Sid finds her email address in his tip jar and by Friday she is in his tiny apartment. She lifts her dress and sits down on top of his bass amp, turning the volume knob to ten. She points to his bass guitar and says, “Blay. Blay fo me.” He plays a bass line and sees her spread her legs wider, pushing her vulva down against the amplifier. He walks a bass line, the entire house pulses with each note. Her smile turns more inward to her pleasure and he changes to a harder faster rhythm and her eyelids lower slightly. Her breath becomes short and she pulls him towards her and kisses him so hard their teeth grind together. Her head rolls back and she cries, “Buck me. Buck me.” As she pulls him down on top of her Sid lays the bass guitar against the speaker cabinet and bass feedback vibrations rattle the old Victorian house. Jennifer knows from her job at The Hearing Center that Sid will probably never learn to sign well enough to talk to her. To the Hearing deafness is an inconvenience, only the Deaf know about the isolation. So she and Sid talk to each other by text messaging. She calls him Hot Thumbs, “I’ve been a bad girl so text dirty to me…” When Sid talks to a friend about the frustration of being a musician with a deaf girlfriend his friend points out that having a deaf girlfriend may be the only way for a banjo player to have a long term relationship. Sid thinks of her sitting close to him as he practices, her eyes locked on his lips, reading the words, her hand on the head of his banjo. At first it was exhilarating, but now too close, too intimate. Sid wishes they had the distance of sound between them. The Ukulele Club replaces Sid on Tuesday nights at Bocci Cellars and his two banjo students quit to take up rock climbing. After Sid applies for a job at New Leaf Community Market and sees his application go to the bottom of a pile of applications he walks down 41st shouting at the sidewalk, “I can’t get work, can’t find people to listen to my music and I have a girlfriend who cannot listen at all.” When he tells her that he doesn’t want to live in a silent world she leaves him with a note, “I am a silent world.” Maybe it was the need for structure in his life, maybe his uncertain direction, maybe even having a girlfriend who cannot listen to his music, but he abandons her, he abandons his music, he abandons every instinct in his body, walks into the Army Recruitment Center on 41st Avenue and signs up. In ten weeks he is in full battle gear in Fallujah, Iraq, crouching behind a stone wall surrounded by the explosions of the battle. A landmine explodes under the wall, the stones lift up and curve over him and Sid feels the explosion hammer into his ears, he feels the delicate bones in his inner ears shatter and as the ancient Persian stones drop around him and he sees his platoon firing their weapons, he hears absolutely nothing. He lies in the rubble and watches the battle rage in complete silence. The Army discharges him “for medical reasons” and the Veterans Administration informs him that his first appointment for evaluation will be next spring. Back in Santa Cruz his guitar picking buddies hold a welcome home party but they get tired of writing notes and become more distant with each awkward moment. He thinks of the last text message he got from her, “No one listens to deaf people. We’re too much work.” His buddies try playing Freight Train but he can’t find the beat. He thinks of the song’s lyric, When I die just bury me deep, down at the end of Chestnut Street, So I can hear old number nine as she goes rolling by. Dead people listen. Even dead people hear. His world is silent. He runs from the party through the streets of Santa Cruz. It’s not until he drops to his knees in exhaustion that he sees the text message from her. Like a lifeline sinking out of sight the phone goes black even as he reads that she is living in the Edgewater Beach Motel on Second Street. The parking lot is full and he does not know where she is. The air empties from his lungs and in despair he bends forward until his forehead lies on the center of his steering wheel. The vibration of the horn feels good and he presses down harder. He feels the car shudder from an impact, then another and sees a man in a bathrobe beating on his window, the man’s face distorted with anger, the veins purple in his forehead. He sees lights coming on in other rooms, people pouring out of the motel into the parking lot. He presses the horn with his hand now and out of the corner of his eye he sees the Santa Cruz Police Camry Hybrid Squad car pull into the lot when a man from Room Two runs out the door and around the side of the motel carrying a flat of marijuana seedlings, one policeman running after him while the other storms into the room to stop a man who is flushing plants down the toilet. Sid sees every room in the motel light up except one. She has left the door unlocked and he sees her black eyes wide and shining in the dark and they fall together, unable to hear their own heartbeats but feeling them like hammers in their chests. As they ride out their passion she cups her lips around his outer ear, presses hard with her mouth and screams her pleasure into his head. Maybe it is the air pressure from her cries into his ear. Or maybe it’s the pressure of her lips against his head, but the shattered bones in Santa Cruz Sid’s inner ear touch together and receive her cries of ecstasy. He hears her. He listens to her like it is the first sound he has ever heard and he listens to her all night long.
by Richard Stockton on 18-Aug-09 14:38
Everyone hates the sign. It is insane to put a stop sign on the road coming across the mudflats into our high school, but they’ve put the sign on the paved driveway to stop cars leaving school for a dirt road that is used by the janitor twice a day. Some say the highway department needs to satisfy an insurance regulation, some say they bought too many signs and have to use them. But the sign is wrong, and everyone knows it. It is asinine. We can hear the teachers asking each other, “Who the hell asked for the sign?” .
Miss Martin is the head secretary in the office and every one of us loves her. She is high strung, nervous, and she takes care of every kid and adult in this school. From the delinquents to the valedictorians she is everyone’s mom away from home. And when she leaves school the day the stop sign goes up, she gets flustered when someone behind her honks and she lurches forward, plowing into the car in front of her. The stop sign made Miss Martin have an accident. Everyone hates the sign.
It’s 1965 and we get a cool new English teacher, Mr. Emerson. He is a thin man, strong from hiking mountains. His tan face is weathered with lines that disappear when he laughs and get deep and dark when he frowns. He has climbed Mount Everest and studied in China and he is having us read books like War And Peace and Brave New World and 1984.
I check The Biography of Malcolm X out of the library and leave it on our living room coffee table so my father can see it and in minutes we are yelling at each other about Martin Luther King and the right of people to protest and use civil disobedience to change bad laws, until finally he slams his fist down on the table, “That’s it buster! I forbid you to experiment with any new hairstyles!” And even though I quietly remove the book from the living room I am smug with personal victory.
That night I slip out of my bedroom window and join my buddies Gordon House and Lonnie Springfield. Gordon has stolen a half inch of liquor out of every bottle in his dad’s cabinet, careful to replace it with a half inch of water, and carries this precious, vile concoction as we start walking the streets of Arden Park, looking for a place to drink it. “Let’s go down to the school.” So we walk along Fair Oaks Boulevard, turn down Savern Drive past the last of the houses, past the brush and finally follow the little blacktop road over the mudflats to our school.
When we come to the sign I stop. You need to understand that I am never the leader of these escapades. Lonnie is the leader. Lonnie is one of the hard guys. Lonnie and his girlfriend go all the way. He has a part time job that will soon pay for a motorcycle. He smokes cigarettes and has a tattoo he gave himself with ink and a broken guitar string the night he spent in juvy. Lonnie is a man who makes his own way and I am a child who dances for the approval of parents. When we’re out at night Lonnie is the leader.
But tonight Lonnie just nods; he may be letting this lapse in his authority go because he is feeling the same thing, or he may be tired of walking. But tonight I am inspired, I am on fire. I feel that hot, euphoric nausea of inspiration rising in my chest. This idea is too outrageous, too wrong to speak. So I say, “Let’s drink it here, by the stop sign.”
We pass around the fruit jar with six different liquors and struggle not to puke. There really isn’t enough alcohol in the jar to get us all drunk but we start acting like what we think drunk men act like. And that’s when I hold onto the stop sign’s galvanized steel post like a Viking holding his spear and say, “Gentlemen, the sign has got to go.” I step back, look at my watch as Gordon and Lonnie bend the post back and forth and in thirty-six seconds flat it snaps at the base.
I raise my arms, “Gentlemen, we are surrounded by anarchy, chaos, and mayhem. Our work here is done.” We swear ourselves to secrecy and leave the stop sign lying in the mud.
The next morning the destruction of the stop sign spreads through the school like a cloud of nitrous oxide. Laughing voices boom from the teacher’s room, “There is a God!” When Miss Martin sees the sign laying in the mud she honks her horn and claps her hands. Every kid and teacher giggles and whispers, “Who did it?” When I walk into Mr. Emerson’s English class he is standing at the window, staring at the sign with his brown face smooth and he turns around to see us staring at him.
Mr. Emerson tells Gordon to read Lord of The Flies and asks him to reflect upon pack mentality. Mr. Emerson gives me a copy of Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience and suggests I study nonviolent tools for social change. And Mr. Emerson recommends that Lonnie learn how to read.
I see Lonnie at the bell and he whispers, “You didn’t tell anybody did you?”
“No, I didn’t tell anybody. You tell anybody?”
“No. Gordon says he didn’t tell anybody. What if the cops come out?”
“Just don’t tell anybody.”
In the afternoon a highway department truck drives up and two men in orange overalls sink a four by four wooden post in cement and bolt on a brand new octagonal stop sign. The rain that night, a torrential Sacramento downpour, makes it easy to wiggle the post back and forth until the hole is big enough to pull it out, cement base and all. We leave it laying by the side of the road in the mud.
No cops show up. No highway department trucks. But the students in the halls are cheering with their fists in the air. Mr. Emerson stares at me, Lonnie and Gordon for a long time and says, “You guys look tired. Maybe not enough sleep.” When the bell rings Mr. Emerson hands me a mimeographed quote of Mahatma Ghandi, “Do not seek to end or destroy the relationship with the antagonist, but instead seek to transform or “purify” it to a higher level.” I think that it’s cool that Mr. Emerson cares, but I am a kid who is powerless and to transform anything is unthinkable. I am nothing.
At the bell Lonnie and I corner Gordon and he starts going, “Hey, man, everybody’s talking about it. Rita Shoemaker just was sitting next to me man… hey, I can keep quiet. You guys worry about your own mouth.”
The next day two Teichert Construction Company trucks pull up to the felled sign. One is a cement truck and the other is loaded with steel working equipment, welders, and rebar. A crew of four men work for two days building a monolith of cement and steel. A massive pillar with the stop sign itself encased in steel bars. When the history teacher, Mr. Roberts, gets to the new stop sign, he stops his car and gets out to look at it, shaking his head. Everyone thinks it’s a little creepy that Mr. Roberts is a part time guard at Folsom Prison and that he enjoys ramming sharpened steel rods into the garbage to keep the inmates from hiding in the trash. Mr. Roberts walks into the classroom, goes to the window and looks out at the sign, “That’s the way they build things out at the prison.”
In English class Mr. Emerson is staring out the window and his frown creases his brown forehead and cheeks into black crevasses. He turns to scan the class. “What makes civil disobedience successful? Gandhi rejected the idea that injustice could be fought using violent, coercive, unjust means.” Mr. Emerson looks directly at me, “Gandhi wrote that if you use violent, unjust means, whatever ends you produce will necessarily embed that injustice.” I act like I’m taking notes.
At lunch period a bunch of us walk out to look at the structure. There are about twenty kids in the group so Gordon, Lonnie and I feel OK to go out there. It is built like a safe; a pillar of steel and cement over two feet square with steel angle iron running up the corners and over the sign itself. It is over. We have lost. At first some yell at the sign when they come to a stop on their way home, but soon the grumblings turn into silent defeat. In two days no one speaks of it.
The rain is replaced by the Sacramento tule fog, so dense that sometimes you can’t see your extended hand. Walking through fog this thick, you’re a spirit drifting through time. And the Sacramento fog wraps itself around our school like quiet depression.
I’m sulking on the couch Sunday night when my mom says, “Phone honey.”
“Dick, it’s Hugh. Don’t call me back, the old man’s on a drunk. Just meet me at the sign at two o’clock.” Click.
Hugh Comstock is a close friend of Gordon’s, they are both on the football team. Hugh’s dad is a cement contractor and a notorious drunk. Old Man Comstock will be blind for days at a time. Hugh has periods of freedom the rest of us only dream about. I call Lonnie. “Yeah, Hugh called me too. OK. Two o’clock.”
The fog is so thick that I walk past the sign before I hear the guys. Now we are four. Hugh shines a flashlight on his dad’s work truck, it says, “Comstock Cement, no job too big, no job too small.” Hugh walks to the back of the truck and lets down the tailgate, “Men, chose your weapon.” The truck is full of sledge hammers.
To prevent hitting each other in the fog we work in shifts, going at it two at a time, one nine pound hammer on each side. The fog deadens the sound so we hammer with abandon. After four shift changes our initial exuberance begins to wane. We have roughed up the cement but it shows no sign of failing. Hugh urges us on. Lonnie orders everyone out of his way and rains blows upon the cement like he is a Spartan single-handedly holding back the Persian horde. He sinks to his knees, exhausted, beaten. Gordon, the strongest kid in our school, pulls Lonnie to his feet, takes the hammer from him and strikes with all his might. Where his blow lands a tiny crack opens. We howl like wolves bringing down a kill, all four of us swinging with the hammer of Thor, pounding on it with all our testosterone fueled fury. It‘s a miracle we don‘t kill each other in the fog.. A chunk of cement flies off. Then another. Steel rods are exposed and then bent and beaten out of the cement and cement is crumbling now, the sign itself is coming loose and white hot heat is radiating from my muscles and I smash and I smash and smash and now we’re tearing out chunks of cement with our bare hands. A sharp piece of rebar rips my right hand open and my blood splashes onto the cement and the guys step back so I can beat that piece of rebar out of the cement and down into the mud, driving the instrument of my wound out of sight deep into the wet earth. We beat on that structure until there is no piece of it above six inches. Never doubt the devastation potential of four sixteen year old boys. Entropy at it’s finest.
In the morning both my parents are sleeping in with hangovers so I am able to get out of the house without them seeing my bandaged hand. First period class has to be postponed because the entire school is standing outside, shouting. The chunks of cement are taken by kids as souvenirs. At lunch, Gordon breaks and tells Rita Shoemaker, hoping that she’ll let him feel her up. But it doesn’t matter because by now a dozen kids are taking credit for it. One rumor even says a teacher planned it.
I walk into English class with my bandaged hand in my pea coat pocket. As I sit at my desk Mr. Emerson holds out an assignment sheet so I have to take my right hand out of my coat. He stares at the bloody bandage, “Mr. Stockton, I hope the injury to your writing hand will not interfere with your essay on nonviolent resistance.“
The rubble from the sign lays in the mud for the rest of the week. The next Monday a highway department pickup truck pulls up to the pile, the driver picks up the steel and cement that was left. He puts up a Yield sign and drives away. We watch him from the window of Mr. Emerson’s English class.
Mr. Emerson’s brown face is smooth, like his skin is filled out with a smile, “Class, I want you to write an essay considering this question, ‘When, by consensus, a people decide that something is wrong, can a government permanently control it‘s people with barriers?’ You may want to write about the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China, or you may want to write about a stop sign.”
by Richard Stockton on 18-Aug-09 14:36
I went down to Beverley Hills for a commercial audition. I spent the entire day waiting in a line of actors to step up to a camera, deliver one line and then be told "Great-job-thanks-for-coming-next."
I‘m in hell. I'm sitting in Beverley Hills commuter traffic, I inch forward to maintain my place in line. A flashing light controls our robotic movement as we inch forward, advancing one car at a time. What happened to me? I was going to save the world. Now I save letters of recommendation, I save receipts. I save time. I save my place in line.
I walk into the bank clutching my identification papers. The Beverley Hills Bank of America is plush with fake trees, a fake waterfall and red velvet ropes for the waiting lines to move through. The bank looks like a prison with velvet bars.
I think of a line in the last zombie movie I saw, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the earth." The people in this bank are the walking dead. I get in the line behind a young woman with blue hair and am followed by an elderly woman with blue hair. Their hair colors could have come out of the same box. Every time someone is finished at a window the teller, standing behind bullet proof glass, presses a buzzer, "Ennhhh," and everyone dutifully moves up one step and stands there until the buzzer sounds again and they step forward, programmed to move by the teller's buzzer in this Pavlovian goose-step. After the next buzzer, everyone moves forward as one into the next space and my right brain is firing distress bolts of agony, my identification numbers on my papers are burning my fingers. Here we go again, someone leaves a window, the buzzer sounds, "Ennhhh," I see everyone take their single step forward and I STAND STILL.
I feel the shock of two people behind me colliding, others shuffle their feet as if pawing at the ground. The young woman with the blue hair in front of me turns and glares at me for not keeping up. The tension builds.
"Ennhhh." The line moves forward as one, but I STAND STILL.
There is a six foot space in front of me that I have liberated from the corporate machine. I'm spread out between the velvet ropes and no one violates the velvet ropes. I can feel the teeth grinding and the buttocks clenching behind me. The very pressure put upon me to move makes me even more sure that my mission as a freedom fighter is righteous. Nobody said being a liberator would be easy.
Someone leaves a window.
"Ennhhh."
I center, I focus, I STAND STILL.
"What the hell....?"
"Hey, pal. Wake up."
I have never been more awake it my life. I've gone from being a number in a line of numbers to being an individual to be reckoned with. I'm even on camera.
The little blue haired lady behind me is poking me in the back with her pocketbook.
"Move up. Move up. The line's supposed to move."
"Really? I am destroying your momentum? Were you on a roll?"
The bank security guard is next to me, he looks more like Barney Fife than I do, with eyes bugged and an Adam's Apple bobbing up and down.
He voice cracks, "Boy, we got us a situation here. You‘re not blocking the line in my bank."
"I'm not blocking the line. I'm moving at my own pace."
He sets his recessive jaw. I set my recessive jaw. The bank is holding it's breath. We are eyeball to eyeball, my contact lenses are drying out. He slowly lowers his hand to his gun.
I blink. I've just become worth a bullet, but I'm not taking one, not for this.
Someone had moved the velvet ropes around me so I was outside of the velvet pathway. There is a zig zag in the line now. I suffer the humiliation of caving in and get back in line so I can get my money. But as I'm leaving the bank I notice that no one has straightened out the velvet ropes, so in their mechanized march to the buzzer, people must take a brief left turn and then back to their right. I altered the path of the consumer lemming trek. It's not a big change, but then I didn't do much, I stood still. Maybe that's why Robert The Umbrella Guy takes three inch steps. Maybe that's why I live in Santa Cruz.
- rs
by Richard Stockton on 18-Aug-09 14:33
It's the dead of winter 1968 and we‘re not stopping. The old bread van's monster heater keeps us warm until one of us has to relieve his bladder and slides the side door open. The key is to arch your back far enough so the sixty mile per hour wind does not blow the urine back into the truck.
The mission is to keep Jim's ancient, square truck rolling. When one driver starts to pass out he puts it in neutral and slides out of the seat while the next driver takes his place. The three of us are driving straight through to Bill Bagley's grandma to refresh and refuel for the push on to Colorado Springs where we have construction jobs waiting. I know we're crazy because we are driving away from our hippy paradise straight into Mormon country. Our enlightened life on the west coast edge dims with each turn of the big van‘s balding tires.
No one can lampoon the Mormon Church like a jack Mormon. Bagley was Salt Lake City Mormon born, Mormon raised, but now a long haired, pot smoking, guitar playing, anti-government -ranting revolutionary. Bagley made the complete transformation from the LDS to the LSD. Years from now he will record his country western classic about Brigham Young, "I don' care how you bring 'em, just bring 'em young."
But today Bagley holds a photograph of his great grandfather in prison stripes and leg shackles, serving on a chain gang for polygamy and Bill breaks into his Mormon preacher imitation, "Don't disrespect even number wives!"
I don't care who you are, polygamy is interesting. Living in our Santa Cruz Free Love community I have no problem with multiple partners. I do know that polygamy, being all in one gender direction, is wrong because in our hippy community when it works the other way, when a woman keeps several men, we call her "popular."
And yet Bill, Jim and I travel towards Utah seeking jobs; so tired of sleeping on floors, living off selling baggies of weed to each other and mooching off our friends for food. We creep along I-80, farther and farther from our safe hippy haven, and deeper and deeper into enemy territory, into the dominion of the Mormon Church itself.
In our slow-rolling white box we smoke dope and drink beer as Bagley lectures us on how to act when we get to his grandma's house. "She's Mormon guys. She does not know how we live and she does not want to know. She's the last one of my Utah family who has not kicked me out, so do not blow this. Do not swear or refer in any way to the supreme being and we'll be welcome there with open arms..."
"Got ya covered Wild Bill. Granny Cassie is the mother fucking sweetheart of the rodeo and we're walking the line in South Lake City. We got our fucking Mormon shit together."
Suddenly Bill stops. We're here, in front of a neat little house in the middle of an immaculate yard, terrified that we look terrible, smell worse and can not articulate anything beyond babbling panic about meeting Grannie Cassie.
"Who's got a comb?"
"Anybody got a clean shirt?"
"Mouthwash. Who brought mouthwash?"
"Swallow some toothpaste."
"Would it work to rub it under my arms?"
"Couldn't hurt bro."
"How do I look?"
"Uh... mmm..."
"OK, ready?"
"Ready. Let's go."
We fall out of the truck, our legs wobble on the frozen ground, the freezing air slaps us awake. Bill rings the doorbell. Jim and I gather behind him in the front yard. The door opens and the cutest woman to ever wear a blue gingham apron smiles at Bill, takes his hands and raises up on tip toe to kiss his bearded cheek. Her round little glasses frame her twinkling blue eyes which match her blue permed hair. She gazes at her grandson with the stillness of the surrounding Rocky Mountains.
Bagley steps back, "Grandma, these are my friends."
Never in my life have I felt so obviously... unemployed. We look like wilderness survivors; our substance abuse obvious with blood red eyes, dazed in a cloud of cannabis and alcohol fumes, the front of our ragged Army Surplus coats covered with round marijuana seed burn holes.
Her mouth smiles but her eyes flicker from scraggly beard to unwashed face, "So nice to meet you all." Her elbows bend, her hands rise in front of her as if trying to feel her way out of an unfamiliar, dark place. She takes careful, short steps, searching for safer ground. "Yes, yes, and this must be your car." We all turn around to stare at the truck.
Starting from the rear of the sliding door the white van is covered with a thick sheet of yellow ice. The ice is thickest near the door at waist level and fans out so that it covers the entire rear of the side panel. You can tell that it has been built up by many, many applications. We all stand frozen, blinking at the truck covered with golden ice.
The air is so cold I can see that all four of us are holding our breath, until the air rushes out of Granny Cassey's lungs, flowing towards the truck like a tube of smoke. She says as she turns back towards her house, "Now you boys come inside."
- rs
by Richard Stockton on 18-Aug-09 13:41
1968. One year after the summer of love. And I'm embarrassed about how little I know about love. I'm a student at UC Berkeley with hair to my shoulders. I'm eighteen but people tell me that my dewy-eyed innocence makes me look fifteen. I act fifteen. My secret shame is I feel fifteen.
My room mate, Greg, plays trumpet in a band called The Loading Zone and he takes me to one of his shows at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. I'm supposed to meet him backstage after the concert.
The Loading Zone rocks the Fillmore with soul music and then Bill Graham comes out and introduces Janis Joplin And Big Brother And The Holding Company. The band is wild, but the thing is the singer. She is so vulnerable, her voice is so anguished I imagine pieces of vitals organs coming out of her mouth. She's not pretty, but she exposes a raw sexuality, sometimes she screams with white heat, sometimes she sounds broken. I'm in awe of her. And I despise my sheltered innocence. I couldn't imagine telling someone to take another piece of my heart. I've never given anyone even one piece of my heart. And then she sings "... and then the sun comes along and grabs a hold of me, and it feels just like a ball and chain." Who lives like this? And who the hell am I? I feel like I was a feral child raised by Republicans and I'm so whitebread that I can't imagine someone feeling like the sun is a ball and chain. This must be how the real people live, this is what life is and I know that I've never lived at all. And when she finishes, I feel spent and I feel shame that I don't even know feelings that deep.
The crowd filters out and I remember Greg said to meet him backstage so I climb the stairs and step behind the curtain. I blink in the darkness, wondering how I'm going to find Greg.
And then there's the girl. The singer. The girl named Janis. And she's standing real close. She's leaning on me.
She leans against me, her voice is husky, "Want a drink?" She lifts a bottle of Southern Comfort and I take a swallow. It's sweet and hot and when I hand the bottle back she puts a hand on my shoulder, "So, what are you doing?" I can feel her body against my arm.
"Oh. Well, I'm waiting for my friend Greg. He's my ride."
"Well why don't you and I do something?"
"Oh. Well, I told Greg that I'd meet him..."
"Look, you don't have to go with Greg. Why don't you and I go somewhere?"
"Oh. Well, that would be great. But... Greg's gonna be looking for me. I told him I'd meet him here."
She shakes her head. She leans forward and kisses me on the lips. I thinking, "Wow. This girl drinks a lot of Southern Comfort."
I watch her walk into the dark.
I'm in the car with Greg, and as we're crossing the Bay Bridge, I tell him about my encounter with Janis Joplin. Greg's body contracts with such force that his head hits the steering wheel. Then he starts beating the steering wheel with his fists, "What are you doing in this car? Why are you here with me? Are you completely insane?"
I say, "You know, I think that girl likes me."
"You idiot! She doesn't like you. She wanted to have sex with you."
"Oh. Really? Oh."
- rs
