Kids is fer killin'

"Get in there. Go on! Right there in the grass by the fence."

I inched closer to the patch of grass in the backyard pushed by the eggings-on of my old man. He spoke in a tone so excited anyone would guess the hidden surprise in the weeds was an easter egg light years before considering it may be an angry diamondback rattlesnake, coiled and ready to sink its fangs into any part of my body, preferably my face. Pa, calm and collected as a holy-rolling snake handler, urged me to creep closer. Closer still. My heart sat in my throat and threatened to tear its way out until I realized I wasn't sent into battle empty handed. Dad gave me a B.B. gun. So I shot the rattler in the face. Three times.

Several occasions throughout my childhood mirrored this same situation in danger level. On a terrorist threat level color chart, they were orange at the very least. Some, if I cried hard enough, crept into red territory. At such times, I convinced myself he wanted me dead. Any venture out of doors took on a dark tone laced with what I was sure had to be bloodlust. The thirst for some sick form of delayed infanticide.

Every summer, our family trekked to northern Arizona, southern utah, or somewhere in the Rockies. There, my parents proceeded to put my sister and I through a host of perilous trials I would later associate with challenges on extreme reality shows. Only instead of a cash prize, the only reward for our survival was a pat on the back and a tent to sleep in. Maybe we'd some mystery meat from the Navajo taco stand on the side of the road if we were lucky. In Zion National Park, they led us along a slippery trail covered in fine sand. To our left was a sheer rock face. To our right, a vertical drop of multiple hundreds of feet and no railing in between. At the Tonto Natural Bridge, they scooted us along a pathless trail underneath the bridge where the slightest misplaced step surely would have sent us screaming and flailing down the rocks into a freezing pool of murky water. Time after time we were forced into situations that made me want to run sobbing back to flat, solid ground and bury myself in a Goosebumps book. But of course, we lived.

In hindsight, I'm thankful for each of these scenarios. Not only did they give me a view of what I now consider some of the most gorgeous landscape I have ever seen, but also a good laugh. They got me out of the house. They cured me of my junkie-like cravings for Mortal Kombat and sour gel candy in a tube. They got me out onto the cliffs and into striking distance of poisonous pit vipers, but never without a hand to grab onto or a Wal-Mart caliber child's gun to keep me safe.

The Easter Raid

On Easter Sunday, Shawna and I went home. Dinner was in Hayden, in the very house adjacent the house occupied by the artist formerly known as Melva. The eerie emptiness called to us and all it took was a short jaunt around the house to realize no intact door or window existed to keep us from some Scooby-Doo-gang type snooping...

Once we moved the large sheet of whatever shoddy material the ceiling was made out of from the doorway, all it took was a hop, skip, and jump through a rusty nail littered minefield to make it into the inner sanctum. Every room looked precisely as if a psychotic cat lady had been plucked out of it 20 years ago and given a thick dust coating. Otherwise untouched.

The floors were covered with clothing and knickknacks. Bra here. 1963 essay contest award certificate there. Book entitled "The Problem with Crime" underfoot. But what initially drew me in sat patiently on a coffee table in the front sitting room: a Mead spiral notepad filled with maniacal scribbles. Further investigation led to the discovery of another. And another. Altogether, 4 little notebooks and an inbound letter. We gathered them and passed through the tetanus minefield to the (mostly) asbestos-free air outside...

Now once I wrangle up a few pairs of rubber gloves, I begin to crack the code of Melva. Notepad one I tackled bare fisted and it left me with a whirlwind of unanswered questions. What money are you talking about? Who are you begging to release you? Why was it so important to you that Henry Mancini died? All questions I hope to answer after thumbing through the remaining three...

Also, I mowed down the legendary domestic desert cat of AZ Highway 177 that night. Hate to say it, but it was you or me, buddy. You or me.

This Ol' Factory

I once heard a sex crazed Jewish man ruminate on the intimacy of smell and said, “Okay, I getcha.” Parts of whatever is out there in the atmosphere jimmies open the lock to your face and barges into the holes. On the way through, one cannot help but grab hold of little parts of said airborne effluence and sample the miasma. It goes without saying scent visits ain’t always pretty. Bad smells can be lumped into three (in)distinct categories: (1) people/animals/plants, (2) food, and (3) inanimate objects/“Little”(Insert Country or City Name). Crossover happens. (Corpses-people or food? Moldy latkas- food or “Little Tel Aviv?) When it comes down to the trickies, give a description, then categorize. Or just talk about how gross they are like I do. GO!

a) stagnant water and manure: The City of Mesa

b) dog food in a cat food gravy sauce: Jack Link’s Beef Jerky

c) post-rain pile of smoldering cum mushrooms: My Neighborhood

d) skin tarred & feathered using human sweat and a bag of cigarette ashes: Tempe Buses

e) canned corn water, poop, and Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds: Old Women

f) fart and cigarettes: The Inside of My Car

g) carrots: People with really dry hands

Beware your surroundings, lest you end up like Prez no. 9, William Henry Harrison! Opium and snakeweed won’t save you. Stay in the smell and you will die. Eventually...

why are you taking pictures of peoples' houses?

2,000 people set up camp in the middle of the desert. Decided to dig up metal intended to be made into pipes and stolen by Mexicans for a quick buck. I grew up there. ... Sometimes a story surfaces that serves as a perfect snapshot of Kearny. Today I heard one of them from my sister.

Shawna was assigned a project that required her to create some sort of video presentation for an education class. She decided to center hers around the relocation of the people and towns of Ray and Sonora, the old bones of Kearny, that were home to copper miners before their jobs forced them to dig up everything beneath their feet and then some. To do interviews and get some footage for said project, she went to Kearny.

Step one led her to the resident town historian (and only dentist who managed to not commit suicide). Partially due to the fact that he was so familiar with her teeth and partially because he owned a wealth of archival photographs, the interview went swimmingly. But then came the task of collecting video. (It was, after all, a video presentation.) Step two involved driving around town, hanging out the window of the car with camera in hand. And so our mother slowly drove the car up and down the streets of Kearny, Shawna no doubt loathing every minute of it.

"Don't film these. These houses are ugly," stated my mother in observation of the peeling paint and multiple cars parked in people's front yards. "Okay. Here are some good ones."

Shawna steadied the camera outside the car and let the lens soak up rambler after ranch-style rambler. As they rolled past one house, out the corner of her eye, Shawna saw somebody come outside.

"Can I help you?" a man bellowed, obviously irritated.

In an attempt to keep the footage sound-free and useable, she said nothing.

"Can I HELP YOU?" he repeated.

"NO," she replied. "You're ruining my movie you idiot..." she muttered, the car still rolling down the road. "GOD, what a paranoid psycho."

The gals finished up and headed home. No sooner did they walk in the front door than my dad accusingly asked, "Why are you taking pictures of peoples' houses?"

"What? How do you know that?" said Shawna.

"Mark called. He was really upset."

An explanation followed which shed light on the fact that Mark did not even see the car or the camera. The house alerted to the filming process belonged to his daughter. The illegal immigrant boyfriend being harbored in the house, who did see the camera, also belonged to his daughter. While most people prepare an emergency response plan for fire, earthquake, or other disaster, this family apparently prepared for outsiders being alerted to the presence of their live-in wetback.

"You need to call them and explain what's going on," my father chided.

Welcome to Kearny! Where if you see someone driving down the street with a camera in hand, proper channels require you identify their car by sight, call the associated phone number, and automatically assume they are part of some sort of conspiracy to have your daughter's illegal whom she is living in sin with deported. Because really, that is the most logical line of thought...

melva.

She lived in conditions resembling those of the Beales of Grey Gardens in more ways than one. Yes, her abode was more shack-like than palatial, but she boasted thickets of greenery just as dense and on far less acreage. The question of her greatest achievement in this little slice of heaven boiled down to one of two things: either the world-record contending per capita number of cats OR the smell emanating therefrom. Melva lived a charmed life in her glory days. She, the master of her kitty kingdom. The cats, her willful minions.

Having been previously committed by the state and released, Melva was certifiably crazy. She often called the police on her only neighbors (my grandparents) with reports that ranged from cat homicide to sending a plague of ants on her house. Never you mind the fact that a dilapidated hut filled with hundreds of cats is bound to produce a dead one now and again without help or that piles of meat scraps covered in cat urine might attract critters of the insect variety. Clearly, the neighbors were behind it all.

She was a filthy human being who neither I nor anyone I know ever encountered in a state worth smelling. She hitchhiked her way into town every so often, which I am sure proved to be a very difficult venture. On the occasions authorities came to escort her to jail or the looney bin, they lined their back seats with garbage bags. For a regular highwaygoer to allow her in their vehicle without the aid of large sheets of plastic liner is either saintly or fucking insane. But alas, she made it into town to load up on cat food and Spam on a regular basis.

During the summer, the 120 degree sun reached the Melva compound high on its hilltop perch before anyone else in town and continued to roast it long after night had fallen. Days such as these turned her jungle into a rotting pile of trees, her cats into a festering pile of bodies, and consequently, their waste into a lovely accscent (accent + scent ?) fully capable of singeing off ones nose hairs. None of which brought Melva down, of course. In retaliation, she dumped a couple bags of dollar store catfood onto the floor of her home and hunkered down until the sun crept behind the mountains. Then, she came alive. At first a trickle, then a stream of water flowed down from the forest on the hill every summer night. Without visual affirmation of the water's source, it was easy to assume she was watering the trees, but some moonlight and a little stroll past the place illuminated the whole situation. Wallowing in a manmade mud-hole, Melva lay surrounded by an ever present feline crowd. She covered herself in wet earth and cooled off the way any sane desert creature would. Perfectly content. In the nude...

Then there were times Melva came out unannounced to, without rhyme or reason, either make pleasant conversation or scream obscenities as people walked the steps up to the neighboring house. During one such surprise visit, Melva spoke three words that forever changed the way I thought of her.

"Hey Kent, uhhhh, what are you guys doing tonight?", she squealed in a voice far too cartoonish for her 400-plus pound frame.

"Just having dinner, Melva.", he replied.

"Must be nice."

The Sexual Advances of Octogenarians

this is a recycled post made as a guest spot on another blog (but still written by yours truly). hopefully you haven't seen it before and can enjoy it as a fresh meal for the eyes. oh, and these really are all things i have said and/or done in case you were wondering...

So now that senior citizens represent the fastest growing portion of the American population, how can we stay connected with the multiplying mobs of blue-haired toothlesses? To this I answer, gaze into their eyes and ask about their most recent medical problem. Nay, you most likely won’t have time to. Myrtle or Elvin will bring it up first. If you want to talk to them you have no choice. Disregard the discomfort the various ailments may cause you. Take heed the following appropriate reactions:

-If he/she has Frankenstein-like stitches from recently removed melanomas, tell them you once saw a man with his forehead stapled back on. It was much worse.

-If he/she tells you they are in so much pain that they can’t remember the day before yesterday and would like to euthanize themselves in Mexico, tell them to do it in Oregon. Buy American.

-If he/she brings up the lasting effects of their former/current heroin addiction, laugh at them. Really, they want it.

-Lastly, if he/she winks at you and promises to get their hair done after their long-awaited eye surgery (even when the obvious forwardness is upsetting the husband), graciously accept the personalized pumpkin loaf they baked for you.

The more disgusting the medical condition, the more they like you. Soak it in, stitch it up, savor every moment. You are now friends with the tattered remains of Rosie the Riveter. Only now she looks less like a lesbian and more like Della Reese.

tone-setter

admittedly, this is a cop-out. my first post and it's not even something i wrote. BUT, it is midnight on a sunday night and i work tomorrow. cut me some slack. i just thought this would be a good piece to introduce the sort of thing i am going for. damn funny. the things i post will carry more of a linear, true to life theme (until i run out of stories, at least), but ultimately my goal is to improve my writing skills and give at least 4 people a good chuckle along the way. so let the games begin: