There's a Thomas Boswell book with the title Why Time Begins on Opening Day. Get it on Amazon. 43 used & new available from $0.01. Penny for his thoughts in paperback. So you'll know why my vacation pilgrimage to the annual Fresno State Pepsi Johnny Quik Tournament means business. Drive the Big Valley from Bay to Basin. San Joaquin Valley where Lake Tulare once took first place in lakes West of the Rockies. Valley of flowers as described by Thomas Jefferson Mayfield in the book Indian Summer: Traditional Life among the Choinumne Indians of California's San Joaquin Valley. 17 Used & new from $7.45. 125 pages. 8 ounces.
"Indian Summer is a fascinating record of the beauty and biological diversity that the San Joaquin Valley has lost and the equally tragic loss of most of its indigenous people."—Wilderness Record
Drive pickup rather than fly SFO or OAK to FAT. 580. I5. 152. Highway 99. Denny's Endless Pancakes and Coffee $4.99 @ Badger Flat Road. Poverty Flat Undercrossing. Highway 233 and the Palms of Robertson Boulevard. Anderson Pump Company. Road 15 3/4 Ave. 20 1/2 Exit 147 1 1/2 miles. Fractional destinations border The California Aqueduct. Rivers dry. Canals bring water. Trucks bring bees. Commerce in Pollen Nation. Managed nature. In Los Banos, Marx sells Cadillacs. Hawks on the signs. Bugs on the windshield. Signs of times: "Food grows where water flows.", "We farm. You Eat.", "Amazing companies doing amazing things for amazing people." On Almond Avenue, trees in bloom purple and white, dropping petals like a snow day. Blossom Banks in the Irrigation Culverts. Only spray paint dustings of flowers yellow and purple on deep green hills. Flora Digs Fauna. Up in the heavens, clouds give shade and hold water. Energies hold vapors, shaping themselves in the wind. Puffy spirit manifestations: faces, dogs, birds. When bodies die, spirits rise to be clouds. Energies attract the vapors. We remake ourselves in the atmosphere or spinoff to the stars in space to live on Asimov Place. Terrestrial life separated into seasons of games with innings. Top and bottom. No clock. Joy when you come home. Make your pitch. Play the hits.
Johnny be nimble,
Johnny be quick.
Catch the ball,
Swing your stick.
Between games, the F-no Malls are F-yes! Urban Outfitters and Ed Hardy Obey Laws of Fashion Island with Bebe. Swing it at the Mall. Eat like kings at Plaza Ventana, Royal Orchid Thai, and Sam's Italian. Week of games. Hosted by Fresno Bulldogs with Charlie at the gate where Augie coached before fame. Foul ball off Steve's bat for Keven's daughter Mila. Nick hits one off the wall at 380 for a double.
Baseball gods are good to Utes. Humans not so good to each other. Ask the Choinumne. Ask the Earth Mother. Return trip In Rainbows with alternating sun and clouds. Hot sun. Thunderhead shade. Majestic thunderstorms driving the wind farms of Altamont. Back to Mom. You can work with her. You can take her out for a meal. You can give her presents of symbolic significance. But after dinner before the check she leaves and screams, "You'll pay for that!" That's Mother Nature for you.
"Is it hot in here? Or is it just me?"
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Fresh Meat
Kansas City, MO
This is a city of meat. "Have a steak," I'm told whenever I come here; "Have a steak?" I'm asked whenever I get home. And jazz: the city is famous for its jazz, something I once referred to as "the tofu of music." The last time I was here, some coworkers and I dined at The Majestic, which apparently has both good steak and good jazz, and we were seated at the table closest to the stage. My coworkers ate steak, and I ate chicken. A pianist and a stand-up-bass player entertained us with jazz. I had chicken again this trip, but not at The Majestic. Nothing bovine-like for me, even in this trip when we have lunch in a place adjacent to what were once expansive stockyards from which the occasional steer was culled and then served at the very table we gathered around for an hour or so. Fresh meat everywhere.
Enough of what I ate. Who cares, really? I don't even care.
Trains, jazz, mutual funds, meat, the Missouri River, the Hall (as in Hallmark) family.... St. Patrick's day, rainy and cold: the Power and Light District was full of drunk young people, and I felt both old and boring as I worked my way through the rain and the drunks. I stayed in the downtown Marriott, which, as in my previous visits, was filled with young military recruits destined for one service or another. A couple of years ago as I was pedaling hamster-like on one of the stationary bikes in the hotel's gym, one young army recruit asked me if I was headed into the service, as well. I told him I'd done my time decades earlier.
"Why'd you sign up?" I asked.
"The education," he said.
I said, "There are other ways to get an education." But I thought this: You are young and stupid. There is no sane reason for you to go into the army, no sane reason for your probable deployment to Iraq.
On this trip, I encounter a group of drunk and soon-to-be-drunker navy boys who are lugging several full ice chests into the elevator I had, for a few moments, treated as my own. I know they are navy because they have "U.S. Navy" on their shirts. I watch them an think: Fresh meat everywhere.
"I'm not drunk, but he is," one says to me while pointing to his friend.
His friend says, "I think it's safe to say that we're all drunk."
When we reach the lobby, they lug their ice chests out. "You should get some marines to carry those," I say, but they either don't think it's funny, or they don't get my point. Pick one....
I am on the 18th floor. Many years ago Kominski and I spent a quartet of nights in Chicago's Hotel 71, and we were treated to a corner room that had many windows. Our room overlooked the Chicago River and Marina City. The rock band Wilco's CD Yankee Hotel Foxtrot * had just been released. We kept the drapes open all night, something I've pretty much always done when staying in hotel rooms where nobody can walk by and peek into my room. In Kansas City during this stay, I do the same thing; red from Crown Plaza, blue and white from AT & T, green from Holiday Inn fill the room all night.
That's all--the tofu of writing.
* Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot: If you were talking over a radio on the military, those are the words you would use for Y-H-F.
This is a city of meat. "Have a steak," I'm told whenever I come here; "Have a steak?" I'm asked whenever I get home. And jazz: the city is famous for its jazz, something I once referred to as "the tofu of music." The last time I was here, some coworkers and I dined at The Majestic, which apparently has both good steak and good jazz, and we were seated at the table closest to the stage. My coworkers ate steak, and I ate chicken. A pianist and a stand-up-bass player entertained us with jazz. I had chicken again this trip, but not at The Majestic. Nothing bovine-like for me, even in this trip when we have lunch in a place adjacent to what were once expansive stockyards from which the occasional steer was culled and then served at the very table we gathered around for an hour or so. Fresh meat everywhere.
Enough of what I ate. Who cares, really? I don't even care.
Trains, jazz, mutual funds, meat, the Missouri River, the Hall (as in Hallmark) family.... St. Patrick's day, rainy and cold: the Power and Light District was full of drunk young people, and I felt both old and boring as I worked my way through the rain and the drunks. I stayed in the downtown Marriott, which, as in my previous visits, was filled with young military recruits destined for one service or another. A couple of years ago as I was pedaling hamster-like on one of the stationary bikes in the hotel's gym, one young army recruit asked me if I was headed into the service, as well. I told him I'd done my time decades earlier.
"Why'd you sign up?" I asked.
"The education," he said.
I said, "There are other ways to get an education." But I thought this: You are young and stupid. There is no sane reason for you to go into the army, no sane reason for your probable deployment to Iraq.
On this trip, I encounter a group of drunk and soon-to-be-drunker navy boys who are lugging several full ice chests into the elevator I had, for a few moments, treated as my own. I know they are navy because they have "U.S. Navy" on their shirts. I watch them an think: Fresh meat everywhere.
"I'm not drunk, but he is," one says to me while pointing to his friend.
His friend says, "I think it's safe to say that we're all drunk."
When we reach the lobby, they lug their ice chests out. "You should get some marines to carry those," I say, but they either don't think it's funny, or they don't get my point. Pick one....
I am on the 18th floor. Many years ago Kominski and I spent a quartet of nights in Chicago's Hotel 71, and we were treated to a corner room that had many windows. Our room overlooked the Chicago River and Marina City. The rock band Wilco's CD Yankee Hotel Foxtrot * had just been released. We kept the drapes open all night, something I've pretty much always done when staying in hotel rooms where nobody can walk by and peek into my room. In Kansas City during this stay, I do the same thing; red from Crown Plaza, blue and white from AT & T, green from Holiday Inn fill the room all night.
That's all--the tofu of writing.
* Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot: If you were talking over a radio on the military, those are the words you would use for Y-H-F.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Beachcombing
A couple times a year, if I play my cards right, I'm fortunate enough to spend some time on the Mendocino Coast in northern California. At different times of the year, I'm less fortunate and spend a few hours in my dentist's office where the woman who cleans my teeth not only tells me to floss regularly, she tells me of how her marriage is going and how her husband still hasn't found work. She asks me about my sons and wife, though I usually answer with only minimal detail. She has been cleaning my teeth for 13 years. At some point during my last visit she mentioned something about telling her husband that she thinks of some of her patients as second husbands, and that I was one of the good second husbands.
Before I saw her last week, though, when I walked into the small waiting room, I saw that there was a new photograph on the wall, a photograph of Balling Ball Beach on the aforementioned Mendocino Coast. I've been to that beach, where at low tide boulders shaped like, well, balling balls are visible. Seeing that photograph made me remember my last visit there, during high tide, unfortunately, and my encounter with Ann, an encounter noted in my trusty Moleskine. Here's what I wrote.
And, yes, I know that is not much of a story. I probably did have something on my mind that day, maybe memories about looking out over that same ocean from the opposite direction. I do hope her husband found a good boat, and I hope Ann writers her blockbuster. I also hope that my dental hygienist's husband finds a good job sometime in the next six months.
Before I saw her last week, though, when I walked into the small waiting room, I saw that there was a new photograph on the wall, a photograph of Balling Ball Beach on the aforementioned Mendocino Coast. I've been to that beach, where at low tide boulders shaped like, well, balling balls are visible. Seeing that photograph made me remember my last visit there, during high tide, unfortunately, and my encounter with Ann, an encounter noted in my trusty Moleskine. Here's what I wrote.
Walking on the beach, I encounter Ann, a woman whose first words to me are, "Do you have something on your mind, or are you just walking?" She is, she says, here with her husband, and they plan to move to the area from Southern California. He is an oceanographer who wants to buy a boat and is somewhere looking for one; she is a writer who dreams of writing the next Disney blockbuster.... She comments on my wedding ring and does not seem surprised that I am allowed to "wander," and she says that her husband does not mind if she wanders now and then. She seems to be about 60, though she says her husband just turned 50, the age at which she "met her true love."There was more to the encounter, certainly. She had been walking her 2 dogs and approached me as I stood looking across an ocean; I am not sure of why she bothered to speak to me. Somewhere in our conversation we spoke about the difficulties of trying to write, so I must have mentioned that I've had some experience with both difficulties and writing. We shook hands early on, probably when we shared names. I doubt I shared any information about my wife.
And, yes, I know that is not much of a story. I probably did have something on my mind that day, maybe memories about looking out over that same ocean from the opposite direction. I do hope her husband found a good boat, and I hope Ann writers her blockbuster. I also hope that my dental hygienist's husband finds a good job sometime in the next six months.
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