My New Pal

My grandfather passed away after a long, troubled relationship with lung cancer, and the sick old man used to call it "his pal." "Private Ass Licker, Scotty, that’s my ‘PAL.’ Don’t waste your time getting friendly with him, kiddo. He’s a prick."  I’m not sure why I know so much about him, considering I didn’t know him well at all. Most details are from secondhand sources, and he usually talked at me, not to me. At the age of 47, he stopped smoking abruptly after keeping up the habit for 32 years. I know that until the day he quit, he had a violent temper, and once broke my uncle’s arm after my uncle talked back to my grandmother. "She was my wife before she was your mother, buddy-boy, and nobody talks to my wife like that," is the way my uncle tells the story. Grandpa was 82 when he died 16 years ago, and was one of a handful of people who raised me.

I was only 9, but I know he cried like a baby when they buried Mom and Dad after the Tylenol fiasco in 1982, and I know that’s why he refused any pain medication stronger than aspirin until his own passing. I know he also enjoyed a good inside joke, and "his pal" helped him deal with the news that he’d gone terminal. Without his sense of humor, it would have all been too much for him. His pal was the reason he was so worn out at the end of his life. "Gotta go see my doc, Scotty. My pal filled my lungs with root beer again." Or, "gimme a hand up there, Scotty. My pal is kicking my ass around the block this morning." One thing Grandpa always had was a way with words.

As much as he joked about it, I could see worry in his eyes after he got the news. He didn’t really care about himself, he was just concerned I’d be taken care of and could get by all right. I know he didn’t worry about himself because he told me repeatedly that he’d made his peace with death. Before my Mom passed, she’d cornered him and wouldn’t let up until she’d said her own peace.

"Your mother gave a damn about me for some reason, Scotty. She was a royal pain in the ass most days–damn women preachers always are–but she gave a damn about me and wanted me to know it." Grandpa never really got over Dad’s decision to "let" Mom go to a Lutheran seminary and become an ordained minister, but at least he eventually learned his opinion didn’t matter. She let up only after letting him know that even though he was a stubborn prick, God had seen His share and worse, and loved him anyway. I guess that’s why they got along the way they did–she demonstrated the love she preached.

My grandpa’s sense of humor matched his health–sick. He wrote into his will that he wanted to be buried with an ugly embroidered pillow he’d skillfully stitched together during one long weekend. It was a "manly throw pillow", if such a thing exists, and said in bold block letters, "MY PAL." The pillow personified everything he hated about being sick, and I’d often find it tossed out into the yard or kicked across the room when he’d had just about enough of his pal for the day. He’d added a diagram to his funeral arrangements, showing him in a casket, fingers lace together over his chest holding the bright blue pillow, and a big smile on his face. I didn’t need to ask why he’d drawn himself smiling–he figured he was burying his pal alive with him, and finally getting his revenge after years of suffering.

I got a call from my new doctor last Friday, and it turns out I’m not well. I guess I liked the old doctor better; at least he would’ve lied to me and not ruined my weekend. So in honor of my Grandpa, I welcome my new pal into my life, but for how long, I just don’t know. He’s not kicking my ass yet, but then again, we just met. Already I can tell he’s gonna be a prick.

Nanyo's Oyster

Part One:  Nanyo's Oyster

"Nanyo, show me how to open the oyster again."

"I won’t do it, Keho. I have shown you too many times. It is time for you to do for yourself."

"Nanyo, if you show me how to open this oyster, I will watch closely and not ask you again."

"Keho, I have heard these words before. I will not show you."

"Nanyo, I am an old man, and hungry. If I cannot open this oyster, I will become weak, and will not have strength enough to feed my children."

"Keho, I have seen your children. They have know the way to open an oyster for many years. It is you who must learn for yourself now."

Keho set his catch bucket between his feet and looked down, rocking back and forth on the flat sandy shore ledge. "Nanyo, this is a little thing I ask. Show me again and then we can part company."

"Keho, we will surely part company, but you will depart with only your refusal to learn. I will not show you something again which I have showed so many times before."

Keho’s right hand reached up and rubbed his neck below his long grey ponytail and squinted far out over the waves with a worried look. "Nanyo, may I watch you as you open your own oysters?"

"Keho, yesterday I watched a mother bird and her baby in the village. The baby was old enough to leave the mother and to begin to feed and hunt for itself. The mother had a large fat worm which it dropped at the baby’s feet, but the baby would not eat for itself. The mother made motions to the worm with its head and beak, but the baby would only cry at her and crane its head to the sky above its mother. The baby only needed to bend down and eat, but it would not. The mother took the worm in its beak, and the baby cried louder, expecting finally to receive its meal. But the mother only dropped it again at the baby’s feet, and flew backwards away from the hungry baby. It flew to a branch above the baby for a moment, and then it was gone. When I left that place, the baby still cried to be fed, though it only needed to bend its head down and try."

At this, Nanyo picked up his bucket of oysters and began to walk away down the beach in the gathering wind. "Nanyo, would you please show me one last time?" Keho called quietly to him.

Nanyo slowly continued to walk, following the coast and listening to the rhythmic thump of his heavy sun-bleached bucket as it beat against his thigh.



Part Two: Nanyo's Exile. This is a follow up from an earlier post entitled Nanyo's Oyster
Many months after Nanyo and Keho parted ways, Nanyo still refused to learn the methods of harvesting from the sea. He continued to take his seat each night in the village longtable, but brought no harvest forward to share with the village elders and children.

Keho moved his nets further down the coast, and began recording the ocean’s temperaments and yields. Each day before casting his nets, he prayed that God would bless his efforts and allow his village to flourish, but he returned many days with very little to share. In a break with tradition, he launched a small raft each morning past the breaking waves, and cast his nets into areas further and further offshore.

Through it all, Keho knew he could only continue to try each day, and to remain faithful.

Many days passed, and summer’s unblemished mornings became mixed with fog. The village elders met more regularly now, and Keho waited quietly for news of a Kuthari, or exile. He’d lived through three, and each had driven away good men and women whom the village could no longer feed, and who no longer contributed to the nightly longtable. With winter approaching, Keho there was a very real chance he could be sent away.

Nanyo foresaw no such news, continuing instead to dig in the sand and gather shells, though his village no longer traded shells, nor had for many many seasons.

When the Kuthari was announced, Nanyo pointed to his many shells, but the elders pointed to their own piles, discarded after harvesting their oyster meat.

“Nanyo, all this time you have sought these shells, while it has been the meat we have needed so desperately needed at our longtable. Go now, take your shells and depart, and may you find a village which still values these shells as you do. Then you may find others with whom you may trade.”

Keho awoke the next morning and looked out from his small village hut. He’d made several small traps which he planned to test that morning, and weighted them down with crushed shells to ensure they’d settle quickly into deeper waters.

Waiting Room

You really have to like the Grateful Dead to stomach their music. Their performances wander all over, their vocals aren’t too tight, and their creative catalogue is pretty limited. You have to truly buy into the idea that they’re a great band and want to like them, because when you listen closely, their music begins to suck pretty fast.

I’m told that if you’re stoned, the Grateful Dead don’t sound so bad. When touring fans gathered to follow shows until Jerry Garcia died in 1995, the stoned ones experienced the shows in a completely different way. Since the recreational drugs dismissed functions like critical thinking and objectivity, a Dead set took on religious and near-mystical undertones. I can empathize with a sober fan listening to one of their less polished performances, because of the church I attend.

For the last year, I’ve been visiting a local congregation, who remind me recently of stoned fans at a Dead show. I’ve been told their current preacher is "powerful, inspired, and moving," but as a sober fan listening objectively from the audience, I don’t see it. I see a preacher who tells cute stories and spends over 80% of his teaching time speaking as if to a child, but I see no substance. It is deeply depressing to watch people eagerly nodding their heads, when he’s not really saying anything.

In the public speaking world, the best presenters always do three things: educate, entertain, and inspire. After attending the funeral of a close friend’s father, I’ve seen this model even applied appropriately to a eulogy by both a skilled pastor and a grieving son–each delivering their messages in a way far more meaningful than the Deadhead pastor. Educate only, and bore the audience. Entertain only, and wear the shoes of a clown. Inspire alone, and get a spot on Dr. Phil. When all three are appropriately in balance, a good public speaker can change people’s lives.

I recently sat in a specialist’s waiting room before a blood test and overheard an incredibly unsettling conversation. A telecomm technician was there on a service call and briefly triggered the intercom, clearly broadcasting my doctor’s private argument with an unknown colleague. "I have NO IDEA, all right? YOU try to figure out what’s killing the poor bastard. I’M–SIIICK–OF–GUESSIIIING." The volume on the intercom dropped quickly when the tech realized he’d crossed lines, but not before I heard my Doc tell the other "I’ll figure out something convincing to tell him." I got up and left. The receptionist didn’t seem to blame me.

I played that snippet of audio over and over in my head, and began to hear it spoken in the voice of the Deadhead pastor. Would the pastor’s intercom tell a similar story if it could, or did the pastor believe his own hype? The Sunday sermon crowd still seems hooked on every word. I don’t know if they will ever experience their own "intercom moment," but I really hope it happens soon.

I don’t hate music because the Grateful Dead are an over-hyped disappointment, but I’m a lot more likely to listen to Phish. I’m not disinterested in God because of a completely ineffective pastor who has many people fooled, but I’d really rather learn from one of my past teachers. I haven’t stopped being amazed by the ability of modern medicine to cure weird unknown ailments, but I do have a new doctor.

As I left the waiting room and got into my little car, I thumbed through my iPod to look for a song I hadn’t heard in over a decade. It never occurred to me what John Popper of Blues Traveler meant when he sang "Hook," but it makes total sense as I think of the Dead, the Pastor, and my ex-Doctor. It’s easy to fool an audience if you sound sincere, and if your audience has already decided you’re the greatest, there’s very little you can say to change their minds...unless the intercom is on.

Blues Traveler performing "Hook" may be watched at the following YouTube link...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdz5kCaCRFM

Swartswood: Four Year Workboots

At the end of my very last day as a teenage garbage man, I was emotionally composed, but my right workboot completely fell to pieces. I’d bought them both brand new four years earlier, embarrassed by how new and unused they’d looked, and eager to break them in so I wouldn’t look so completely inexperienced. That afternoon as I sat in the passenger seat of Carl’s Audi, my right boot looked sadly up at me, obviously disappointed that it had taken the last four years so much more seriously than I.

My toes quickly chilled as the air conditioning chilled the footwell, but it did little to cool the anger and resentment I felt from that boot. The left one was resigned to giving me the silent treatment, but the right one was clearly burning. Its Vibram sole had torn free from its leather upper, and its tongue was clenched in anger at the way I’d soiled its reputation.

They’d shown up each day simply to work. With little self-discipline or internal restraint, I had showed up each day only for my paycheck. It was fitting they should predict I wouldn’t be welcomed back to Swartswood, and they didn’t seem to want to return anyway. They were now the ones embarrassed of me, and just weren’t up for another season contributing to my stupidity.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if something is too "wrong" to laugh at. When I first watched the Farrelly brothers films Kingpin and Something About Mary, I wasn’t sure it was okay to laugh, even though my sides hurt and I was crying from things I’d never seen before on film. While I was a teenage garbage man, I laughed just as hard all the time, but didn’t develop the sense that it might be "wrong" except in hindsight. I watched a Junior Ranger give himself a wicked chemical burn after he mistakenly used drain cleaner to clean a toilet seat. We watched one of our own torment a middle-aged crew leader until the crew leader threatened to beat him. We watched a full time maintenance worker hoard adult magazines picked out of the trash in a locked desk drawer, then violently swear at us each morning after we urinated on his collection.

Nothing was sacred, nothing was off limits, and no weakness was unexploited. My boots knew this, but were way ahead of me in maturity. They would never have endorsed willfully jumping out of a moving pickup truck and claiming the crew leader pushed me. They were ashamed of what was poured into the coffee pot, the glovebox, and the refreshment stand snow cone machine during our shifts, but these were our milestones toward ending the summer successfully entertained.
As Carl and I pulled out of the park for the last time, I realized it was pointless to keep those worn-out boots. They were beyond repair and obviously hated me, so I hit the automatic window button and tossed them out. Let someone else pick up for a change, I figured.

Carl was surprised when I asked him to pull over just seconds after rolling the window back up, but he pulled onto the sharp gravel shoulder and watched me walk fifty yards back in my dirty socks to retrieve those boots from the weeds. For the first time in four years, I was picking up something because it was the right thing to do, not because I had to. Maybe it was just a boot, but I think it smiled at me a little, knowing there might be hope for me after all.

Swartswood: A Walk in the Park

As a teenage garbage man, I had one responsibility: pick up what other people were putting down, wherever they put it. I had three territories to practice my trade: the railway, roadside, and the park’s 2400 sprawling acres.

The railway work was regional. In the 1960's, a local rail line had pulled up track, opening the state’s longest dump along the 26-mile cinder right-of-way. For the next three decades, contractors and homeowners took advantage of the unsecured avenue, offloading small appliances on top of building materials, then soaking it all with the occasional drum of spent Quaker State. We found thousands of asphalt shingles and hundreds of bald tires. We found the remains of a Polaris snowmobile on top of a Datsun station wagon in the Paulinskill River, and we retrieved it all, loading the bed of our abused pickup with discarded archaeological finds.

It was the world’s slowest and most cumbersome relay. An illegal dumper would drive to the trail and roll a refrigerator off his truck. We’d show up a decade later, muscle it back up the steep bank, then shuttle it to the thirty-yard dumpster waiting back at the park. Once a week, the roll-off truck would run the third leg to a garbage barge, which would promptly drop its contents into the Hudson River. I’m certain that someday the state will pay to dredge the Hudson, and the race will start again.

Roadside was a little closer to the park. Our task on Roadside was simply picking up an endless stream of litter from the miles of frontage road owned by the park. We often worked alongside people performing community service sentences, each time insisting we were on roadside duty as hired help, not as court-ordered flunkies. Once the orange vest was on, we were all equally guilty in the eyes of the public.

The park was simple foot patrol, and our three Clean Communities crews rotated weekly to ensure the park grounds were spotless...ish. Each day was spent on foot, patrolling camp sites, picnic groves, and beach areas for all things discarded. Most patrons knew of our efforts, and contributed to our job security each day by emptying their cars in the lot and their coolers where they sat. The rules of "carry in, carry out" and "take only photographs, leave only footprints" have never applied to the dignitaries visiting Swartswood State Park.

Four years of picking up trash might tempt you to think that I believe people are pigs, but I don’t–far from it. Pigs love garbage. They eat it, roll around in it, and enjoy it. They’re intimate with their filth, but we humans are embarrassed by it. Pigs happily accept trash as a way of life, but we seem appalled that so many "other people" can make such a formidable mess. We hide it, run from it, throw it out our windows, and drop it when we think no one is looking. We pile it into great mountains (as long as that mountain isn’t in our neighborhood), and hope those mountains won’t leak into the groundwater and give us cancer. If we thought about it for too long, it might take us to places we simply don’t like.

In my final year at the park, we witnessed one of our own finally snap. On the Monday following a long Fourth of July weekend, a kid we called Beta was assigned to our crew to help us repair the damage of the previous three days. He’d graduated a year ahead of us, but still lived in his mom’s basement watching reruns of Voltron and Family Ties. He loved weed, and would show up at least 4 days a week with red-rimmed eyes and an easy-going manner. Nobody seemed to mind until our breaktime snacks began to disappear.

My friend Carl was an understated genius who had a weakness for Hostess Fruit Pies, the kind with the sugar glaze, fruit filling, and waxed paper wrapper. The highlight of his trash-picking day was the 10 am break, when he scrubbed up, chowed down, and kicked back with the flavor of the day. At 17, it was his longest standing vice, and was the single deciding factor as to whether he’d finish the day in a good mood or a sour one. Carl’s Fruit Pies were tucked away inside his lunch bag and hidden in the fridge’s crisper, and he was seriously pissed when they started going AWOL. He’d narrowed down the list of suspects to a middle aged simpleton who’d written high school ‘dilpoma’ on her employment application, and Beta.

Beta had been scheduled to work on railway cleanup, and he was looking forward to catching a 35 minute nap during the drive to the dump site we’d discovered the previous week. The normally pristine park grounds looked like a county fair had thrown up a parade, and Beta was not pleased that he’d been reassigned to help us. He was also slightly hung over, and the combination of smothering humidity and mountains of trash had left him uncharacteristically irritable.

At 10:30, Carl smelled blood in the water knowing his Fruit Pie mystery was about to be solved. His ire had been raised when he’d found six waxed paper wrappers under the driver’s seat of Beta’s unlocked Dodge Omni, but he needed hard evidence to convict. The night before, he’d spiked the filling of a Blueberry pie with several ounces of nighttime Benadryl (he said it was only Benadryl), then set the lunchtime treat in its usual spot in the crisper. The thief would be sleepy and erratic soon, and Carl would have his revenge.

The combined effects made Beta a walking time bomb. Tired, nauseous, and now drowsy with a chance of meatballs, he shuffled along swearing quietly until he came to the group picnic shelter. The remnants of streamers swayed slowly in the hazy air, flies settled on leftover chicken bones, and several overflowing bags oozed dark fluids where rib bones poked through. As the "Benadryl" took full effect, Beta dropped to his knees and began to sob. He had started his day with a simple walk in the park, but was now lost in another reality. We couldn’t be sure what he was seeing, but thought we heard him saying, "pigs, so many pigs..." over and over as he cried.

Beta stopped smoking so much after that. The fear of another bad experience weighed on him, and his appetite diminished, too. With our break time snacks secure, we enjoyed a time of relative peace until the end of the summer.