Stupid Human Tricks - 7/2/2011

When I was in high school, my dad bought a brand new 1968 Mercury Montego MX Brougham. It was bright orange with a black vinyl top. It was very sleek and sporty, very out of character for my dad, who was a pick-up man. On rare occasions, I was allowed to drive it to school. I had a 55 Chevy, but by then, it was pretty much a rust-bucket that spewed smoke and backfired at the most inappropriate time. I ended up driving it, unsuccessfully, in the demolition derby. The Montego was way cool. With anyone else behind the wheel, it would have been a babe magnet. For me, not so much.

When I drove to school (about 3 miles), I would wait until the school bus had entered Interstate 90 and whiz by it at a high rate of speed, honking my horn like a moron (actually, exactly like a moron). This maneuver was designed to impress a girl that I had a huge crush on, but whose parents, wisely, did not allow to ride to school with a miscreant such as me. Actually, I paraphrased. I am pretty sure the word miscreant has never been uttered in Smelterville, Idaho. I should add here that this particular girl was so far out of my league that she didn’t even know my league existed. That did not stop the ever-hopeful me from the futility of trying. Her parental excuse was just to spare my feelings, she would not have ridden with me if I had duct tape and chloroform.

I usually had a couple of fellow miscreants riding with me, even though my parents had strictly forbidden me from “running up and down the road” wasting nineteen cent per gallon gas. I was supposed to drive straight to and from school. In retrospect, I am sure that my dad realized that was never going to happen. On those days when I had the Montego, lunchtime was miscreant cruise time, sans girls. It was not like the lousy schools now with their closed campuses, metal detectors, and armed security. About the only controls put on us were that the teachers took roll sometimes.

One cold Idaho winter morning I set off chasing the school bus. Just as I accelerated past it I hit a patch of black ice. Many southern readers (as if I have many readers from any region)probably have no idea what the heck that is. Let me just say that once you have experienced it, you will never forget. A few hundred yards in front of the bus, I went into a flat spin. I did several 360s and miraculously stayed on the Interstate without hitting anything or rolling over. It was totally luck, as at 16, I had zero driving skills under normal conditions, let alone careening down the highway at 80 MPH, with two caterwauling passengers. Luckily there was no traffic other than the school bus.

When I had spun to a complete stop, so did the school bus. It had to stop relatively short in order to avoid t-boning me, as I was sideways in the road. There were 55 faces staring straight at me. I don’t think the girl was impressed, nor was the bus driver, who happened to be someone that knew both me and my parents well. Needless to say, I rode the bus every day for the rest of the school year.

The race-car driver of the day was a guy named Parnelli Jones, who had just won the Indianapolis 500. This was back when the Indy 500 was a big deal and everyone knew who won it (and could pronounce their names). I know it is hard for young people to believe, but once upon a time the Indy 500 was bigger than NASCAR. Now I am not even sure if it is televised. My reason for this diversion is that calling a driver Parnelli was like calling a total moron, Einstein. It was not a compliment. That was my moniker until the event was forgotten and I earned more permanent and vile nicknames, based on other stupid things I did later in my high school career.

Laundromat - 11/1/09

There is no rhyme or reason as to where my writing inspirations come from. It just happens, like shit. Today I felt compelled to talk about Laundromats.

Those of you who have always lived a privileged life will not be able to relate to this posting. This is a story written from the bottom of the economic food chain.
When I was very young we had an old type wringer washing machine. It was located outside of the log cabin that we lived in. Yes, a real log cabin, just like Abe. (No, I did not walk to school uphill both ways.) We didn’t have a dryer. My mother hung the clothes out to dry. As we lived in northern Idaho, there was a large portion of the year that neither the washing nor the drying was possible without ice becoming a factor in both activities. As a side note: line-drying generally gives the clothing a freshness. Not so much in Smelterville Idaho, where the air was toxic with lead refinery smoke.

When the weather made it impossible for outside laundry, my mother would take our dirty clothes to the Laundromat. And since my dad worked in the mine, they were truly “dirty” clothes. The Laundromat was my favorite place in the world. It was a white trash amusement park. It had vending machines that dispensed candy and soda pop as well as a machine labeled change, which dispensed quarters and dimes. Incredibly, in those days, dimes were useful. The dryers took dimes as did the candy and soda machines. Pinball machines also took dimes. Now they take debit cards. For those of you not familiar with dimes, they are worth more than a nickel but much smaller in size, go figure.



Prior to the establishment of Walmart, Laundromats were where kids were allowed to run amok. It was anarchy. They rode in and raced the laundry carts, roamed the facility checking coin returns for loose change, and alternated between screaming at the top of their lungs and begging their moms for money. (A dad would not have been caught dead in there. The only men in the Laundromat were single miners washing their work clothes) For some reason nearly every child came equipped with an openly runny nose, adding to their appeal.

Mom would not allow me to participate in any of those fun activities. She would give me a lecture on the drive to the Laundromat. It was the same every time. I would get a certain amount of candy/pop money and that was it. If I spent it quickly, I would not get any more. It was a firm belief of my mom’s that “money did not grow on trees.” (I was not allowed to play pinball. It was evil, like gambling) I was also not allowed to run "wild" like those other “motherless heathens.” I was to sit and color, draw, or read. Are you kidding me? I don’t think the other mothers thought I was well-behaved, I think they thought I was retarded or crippled (before handicapped). I was not even allowed to go look when one of the kids found a dead mouse while crawling around behind the dryers. In spite of all the restrictions, I loved the Laundromat.

I am at a good place in my life. I have a washer AND a dryer, both indoors. But I have a large, thick, blanket/comforter that is too large for my washing machine. When it begins to smell too much like Skooter, I take it to the Laundromat. The Laundromat has large capacity washers and dryers. (I assure you that dimes do not work in them) The first time I went, I loaded my blanket/comforter into the washer and while it was washing I went home to get my gun. The Laundromats of my youth have been replaced with places that one would come to should he wish to be robbed, acquire crack, or prostitutes. I haven’t had occasion to shoot my way out with my blanket/comforter yet, but I am prepared to do so. I also allow it to smell quite Skooterlike before I take it in for a wash. Usually, the morning after I wake up with a mouth full of dog shed.

Sunday Scribblings - Phantoms & Shadows - 1/25/09

I have been blogging for nearly two years. Writing here, usually in response to prompts supplied by various blog sites, has brought to light memories from the shadows of the disturbed recesses of my mind. I try to recount and record these stories before they once again become phantoms and slip back into the darkness. This week’s Sunday Scribbling instructions brought back memories of elementary school.

For nearly all of my 6 years of primary education, I attended Silver King School. It was located in a small gulch just east of Smelterville, Idaho. A creek flowed along beside the school and adjacent to the playground area. Sounds like an idyllic setting. However any image you have conjured of a trout filled, crystal clear, mountain stream flowing down the valley is premature. Upstream from the schoolhouse was plant that refined zinc. All of the waste created by that refinery was washed downstream to us. Zinc is a heavy metal, and though our bodies require a minimal amount of zinc for maximum performance, we do not require, nor can we tolerate the amounts that oozed from that creek. When I think of this water, lyrics from an old Chris Rhea song come immediately to mind:

“I'm standing by a river but the water doesn't flow
It boils with every poison you can think of.”

The water was a color that I am certain God never intended H2O to be. It was a grayish/green opalescent liquid. We did not routinely wade into the toxic waste, but from time to time one of our playground kickballs would sail over the chain-link fence and one of us would fetch it. There was one kid that had some kind of seizures and every so often we would find him walking down the stream. Someone would go retrieve him too. This creek feeds the Coeurd'Alene River which, in turn, issues into scenic Lake Coeure'Alene, where we swam, fished, and water skied.

Had that been the only environmental issue we faced, this writing would not have the impact on the reader that I had hoped for. The school was also in the shadow of huge smokestacks (first one, then a second was built) which belched the exhaust from the huge lead and silver refinery that was on a hillside just a few hundred yards east of the school.

We were so accustomed to the “smelter smoke” that we hardly even noticed except on the days it was particularly pungent. This was long before there was an EPA. The focus of the government in those days was mutually assured destruction of the Russians and not air quality. The air we breathed on a daily basis was more toxic than any Los Angeles has ever experienced. If there were air quality warnings in 1960, we would have never been allowed outside at all. The combination of the water and the air would have made Erin Brockovich throw up her hands and run for cover. The hillsides had been choked and were devoid of any vegetation. What did our lungs look like?


Our playground contained equipment that would be banned today. Corroded from the very air that we inhaled and corrupted from exposure to too many Idaho winters, we survived playing on it. A tetherball hung from a pole. We would beat the crap out of it but I don’t think we ever completed a game. It seemed the only rule was you couldn’t grab the rope. I do not even know if that was a legitimate game or just something we had in Idaho. It was featured in Napoleon Dynamite, a film that was a pretty accurate portrayal of Idaho life.

Inside that schoolhouse, we received a quality education. Outside we were subjected to toxins, but inside we were exposed to music, art, and literature. Though I can’t recite what I had for lunch yesterday, I can recall from memory several poems that I learned nearly 50 years ago. Any aptitude I possessed for creative writing was nurtured inside that building. Though most of our parents, who were employed by the very company that was poisoning us, had not completed high school, many of us went on to earn advanced degrees. The foundation that I received at Silver King Elementary School prepared me for the future. Thank you Mrs.Woolum.