Month: January 2012

This has been an amazing day. I worked up two chapter’s worth of stories and have about four more things I think I could work on. The amazing part of that is what I’m finding to be a truism. Ever since I started writing these stories one has led to another. I’ll be in the middle of a story and I’ll think about something else. A similar incident. Similar people. There’s something about drawing those connections that is happening organically.

I already cautioned myself that I think I have two books going. One is based very loosely on my childhood. But there are other tales to tell. Some of them polished enough to let others see. I posted one on Friday and have really enjoyed the response.

Today I was writing about the Hideaway restaurant. I happened onto a job there when I was in high school. And my associations with the Montana Hotel (the Marcus Daly to those my age) just started cascading. In the short span of one story, I had four more to work on. That place is a gold mine of material. That one place.

Here’s a couple of things I remembered.

One night, I was waiting on the steps of the hotel after it had been closed for a while. My dad was supposed to pick me up there after a boys choir gig downtown somewhere. Anyway, I was standing there on the steps when three or four bricks sailed past my left ear and crashed on the granite. Literally … another inch and I would have been killed. Was someone throwing bricks at me? Or was the building falling down around me?

In the lobby of the hotel there was a display case of mementos belonging to Wayne Estes. I recall the tragic story of a life cut short every time I see a news story about downed power lines during wind storms. Something deep inside me reacts. I think it’s collective unconscious. I wonder if everyone gets a twinge of foreboding when they see a “don’t go near the power lines” public service announcement.

Shirley Moses worked in my dad’s office after the hotel was sold and renovated. But I remember her being one of the last people to work at the lobby desk. She would always let me look at the register on Sunday mornings when my mom and I would go to breakfast after church with Margaret and Cynthia Bubash.

I remember being terrified of the elevator.

I remember the blue and white wallpaper in the banquet room.

I remember wondering, but never feeling, like the place was haunted.

That old hotel. It was always old, right? How lucky we are to have such a place in our lives. We are so lucky.

We are, all of us, so very lucky.

I’m waiting for the art part.

I think I’ve got the storytelling part down. And I know there’s nothing better than a good story, but now and then I get a little sidetracked. There’s some truly great memoir out there, you know? Some of it is downright poetic. As I approach my goal I keep wondering if I shouldn’t boost stuff up with a little poetry now and then. Make things a little less clear and a little more … obscure.

I feel like the stories are pretty interesting. The stuff I’m thinking about when I’m in the midst of these situations is interesting … sometimes it’s funny, I guess, but in the back of my mind (again with the back of my mind … what is it with the back of my mind?) I ask myself is it artful?

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not fishing for compliments, but the whole question is bothering me. Is it artful? Does it have to be? Should I stray into lapses of stream of consciousness? Does it have to be so … obvious?
OK, I get it, I’m second-guessing myself. I just need to write, write, write and worry about the art part later. This is like blocking a play, really. It’s not ready to perform. There’s a bit more work involved. There’s nuance, music, lighting … oh god. The thought of it overwhelms me, but excites me. Quite honestly, I can’t wait to see the performance.

Oh … by the way … for those of you that have hung in here with me, thanks so much! If the webalysizer is any indication, I’ve had about 10,000 hits in the month of January. I know about 60 percent of that is web crawlers and spiders and the like. I am linking this everyday on facebook, but still … your support is most encouraging.

Keep up the good work!

Okay, maybe we all have cruise ships on the brain lately, but today I decided this particular story doesn’t have anything to do with the book, so I’ve taking it out. In honor of it’s extraction, I’m putting it up here for all to see.

Coalition Forces

May, 2004

“Two for dinner?” The super-friendly hostess had a nondescript European accent. I looked to my wife, who smiled and nodded.

“Two alone if it’s available,” I said.

“Sharing is okay? Yes?”

“No, two alone would be better,” I said.

“Right this way,” she said, as she led us to a table for six.

“Right,” I said under my breath, offering my wife my arm as we walked across the dining room.

Everyone we’d spoken to about taking a cruise talked primarily of two things. The first was the expense. The second was the food. No one could believe how much they fed you! The food was really good! The service was great! It was fun to dress up! The reality was there were different types of dining experiences on the ship. Our norm had become going to dinner in one of the three formal dining rooms—nice digs with tablecloths and china—where the left side of the menu had a default selection of standard dishes prepared the same way every night, and the right side had meal choices customized by destination. The wait staff was swift and extremely polite, although they knew only enough English to take orders and deliver food. We wore nicer, but not formal, clothes.

And we reconciled ourselves to eating with strangers every night for two weeks solid.

But by Day 10 of a 14-day Grand Mediterranean Cruise, I’d started to notice things. Like despite the fact that the surroundings were plush, it was loud in the dining room. Loud like a college cafeteria. In fact, I’d come to realize cruise ship dining was a lot like college, only with sport coats and glitzy earrings. The food was pretty good, but not exceptional. You could eat all you cared to eat. The menu choices were not without limits, and it was just plain hard to find a good dessert.

Our dinner table on Day 10 was partially occupied by a man and two women, all busy looking at the evening’s menu. Our waiter pulled out our chairs and laid our napkins in our laps. I sat to the right of the man, and Alana, my wife, sat on my right, directly across from the women.

We were five at a table for six at half past eight. I figured the chances of someone filling in the last seat were slim.

I glanced at the menu. The right side included consommé with tapioca pearls, crème d’asperge or duck confit in beef broth with vegetables. Arugula, mixed greens or spinach salad. Veau à la crème, roast squabs or beuf bourguignon.

“Well then, all right,” the younger of the two women said. “Why so much soup? I mean, cahn’t we have a little variety for entrée?” She was British. I placed her accent somewhere south of London. Bright and toothy, she was nibbling at the bow of reading glasses hung from a thin gold chain around her long, tanned neck.

“We’re headed for Frahnce, after all,” her husband said. He too was British, and bald by choice. He leaned back and closed his eyes when he spoke. They both laughed out loud at the mention of France.

“I was just thinking that myself,” I said.

“Oh?! My name is Jean and this is my husband, John.” The woman seemed startled to see us.

“I’m Grant and this is Alana.”

“Oh! Hallo, Grahnt!” Jean said. I tried to conceal my delight at hearing my name pronounced with a British accent. It is, after all, a very British name.

“Hallo, Alayna?” Jean asked.

“Alahna,” my wife said.

“So. This is Phyllis,” Jean said. She gestured toward a stout older woman to her left dressed in a bright caftan. Phyllis appeared not to have noticed our arrival. “She’s from Malta, I think,” Jean said, just loud enough for Phyllis to look up.

“Hello?” Phyllis asked.

“Yes, Phyllis, we were just saying this is Grahnt and Alahna,” Jean said loudly. Phyllis regarded us over the top of her menu. “They just joined us!” Jean half-shouted.

“Yes, I’d love to,” Phyllis said.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Yes, from Malta,” Phyllis said.

“Yes. Right. Nice to meet you!” I shouted.

“Oh, perhaps,” Phyllis said, and glanced back at her menu with concern. I looked at Jean who looked at Alana. They both shrugged and smiled.

“Would anyone like something to drink?” Our waiter was a small, chubby man. His name tag bore a collection of consonants and two vowels, under which read Hungary—his country of citizenship.

“Good God, yes!” Jean said.

“We’ll each have a glass of number 227,” John said. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a small token and placed it in the waiter’s hand.

“I’ll have a Crimson Royale,” Phyllis said, reaching for her cruise card—a piece of plastic dangerously akin to a credit card. She looked at both John and me as she handed the card to the waiter.

“Ah, yes, um Szabolcs? I’ll have a double Stoli on the rocks with some olives, please,” I said, and handed over my own cruise card.

“Thank you, Mr. Bringington?” the waiter answered. Touché Szabolcs, touché, I thought.

“What’s number 227?” I asked John.

“Well, it’s a lovely bottle of burgundy we brought from home,” John said, leaning back and speaking toward me. With his eyes closed, it was difficult to tell if he was being friendly, or formal. Either way, I found it unnerving.

“Yes, you pay a fee, but in the end, it’s really worth it, isn’t it?” Jean asked no one in particular, her focus remaining on her menu. I’d heard of this custom, but was daunted by the thought of carrying my own bottles of wine to a cruise on the other side of the world.

I glanced back down at the menu and quickly came up with what I thought would be everyone’s dinner choices. I’d concocted this game—a combination of intuition and culinary acuity—to help determine what, if anything, I had in common with my dinner companions. I predicted Jean would have the veal with a light soup, most likely the consommé. John seemed like a steak and potatoes man, so I’d pegged him with the beuf bourguignon (but I’d been tricked by the Brits with the beef lately). Phyllis had squab written all over her. I knew Alana would most likely go for the default salmon fillet, as French food was too rich for her.

The waiter returned with Phyllis’s cordial—a champagne cocktail with grenadine—and my cocktail. He quickly took the dinner order without writing anything down. As it turned out, I’d done fairly well: Jean would have the mixed greens (miss) and the veal (hit); Phyllis just wanted a large bowl of consommé and a diet soda (miss). John wanted a shrimp cocktail, a well-done sirloin steak, French fried potatoes, the asparagus soup and the arugula salad (indirect hits). Alana would have the salmon (hit).

“So then, tell us, where are you from?” Jean asked.

I was happy to find that Jean was perfectly content to drive the dinner conversation. We’d suffered through a few meals with people who weren’t willing to ask or answer questions, and found it to be a stroke of luck to have someone like Jean at our table. Cruise ship table talk was all about finding a common ground. Without it, you were doomed to have the same conversation every time you ate. With Brits at the table, I was hoping to get their perspective on the only current event our countries had in common—the war in Iraq.

“Vancouver,” I said.

“Ah! Canadians!” Jean and John said simultaneously.

“No, no, no. Vancouver, Washington. It’s in the U.S. Just north of Portland, Oregon.”

“Oh,” Jean said, crestfallen, “We’ve never been. We did have a lovely stay once in Bodega Bay, though. You know, where they filmed The Birds?” Jean asked John.

“Yes. Lovely,” John said.

“Oh? I thought that was filmed near San Diego. Doesn’t Jimmy Stewart take Kim Novak south to some mission and see her jump out of a bell tower?”

“Honey,” Alana began.

“I think Kim Novak has some sort of problem, like being a kleptomaniac or something. I remember there is a scene in San Francisco, but I thought they went south, not north,” I continued.

“I think you have the wrong movie,” Alana said gently.

“No, Barbara Bel Geddes is his secretary and he drives a Karmann Ghia,” I said. “I remember that distinctly. And Kim Novak is this shop girl that he dressed up to look like his old girlfriend, Tippi Hedrin.”

After a moment, Jean said, “Grahnt, I must confess I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yes. I believe you’re getting The Birds mixed up with Vertigo and Marnie, which is pretty hard to do, I must say,” John added, his eyes still closed. This retort was accompanied by an over-rotation of his head. He was clearly scolding me, but it looked like he was talking over his shoulder. I opened my mouth to apologize, but Phyllis stopped me.

“Too many blondes in green suits! It’s no wonder he can’t keep ’em straight. All those women looked alike. My husband used to make the same mistake,” she snorted, and went back to her Crimson Royale.

“Well, that’s another country heard from!” Jean said, after a moment. She winked at Alana. “We’re from Edenbridge, in Kent,” she said.

“That must be just south of London,” I said.

“Why, yes! Yes it is. How did you know that?” John seemed pleased.

“Hours with Standard British Dialect tapes,” I said.

“What’s that? Tapes? Why would one listen to tapes of other people’s dialects?” John asked.

“We’re both interested in the theater,” Alana said, somewhat apologetically.

“Oh! I see,” John said. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. His eyes were closed.

“First cruise?” Jean asked.

“For Grant, yes. I took a ship across the Atlantic when I was a girl, but that was more an ocean voyage than a cruise,” Alana answered.

“I’ve always wanted to take a cruise since I read about them years ago. We wanted to travel to as many sites in Europe as we could without having to schlep our luggage around Turkey, Greece, Italy, France and Spain,” I explained.

For us, the cruise was a way to get from city to city without the added anxiety of how we were going to travel and where we were going to eat or sleep. On a cruise you fell asleep in Naples and woke up in Rome.

“How about you? Is this your first cruise?” I asked. Jean and John looked at each other.

“Oh! This must be our seventh or eighth,” Jean offered.

“Seventh,” John said.

“Or eighth,” Jean concluded.

“Phyllis, is this your first cruise?” I asked.

“It’s champagne and grenadine,” Phyllis said.

“Oh! Uh-huh. Right,” I said.

“Look! Soup!” Jean nearly shouted.

Szabolcs arrived with first courses. My soup was exquisite. The shredded duck, braised in its own fat, was succulent and sweet. Everyone else seemed disappointed. John picked at his shrimp, Alana added salt to her salad, and Jean poked at her greens and moved the plate away. Phyllis simply smiled and sipped her champagne.

“Do you come here often?” Jean asked.

The question had an infinite variety of answers. As I pondered just what Jean could possibly mean, Alana said, “Yes. We like this dining room more than the others. Although it’s identical to the one upstairs, we prefer this one for some reason. I don’t really know why that is, but there you have it.”

“Yes,” Jean said. “We’re up on Deck 14, just one floor down from the buffet, but we hardly ever go there.”

“No. Quite. Except in the morning,” John said, carefully examining another shrimp.

“Many mornings we have to throw on our togs to pop up to grab a cup of coffee. But I must say, some mornings, the spigots are all wound up and you can’t get a drop,” Jean said.

“We call room service as soon as we get up,” Alana said. “The coffee comes very quickly, as long as you don’t order any food.”

Jean and John stopped eating.

“Room service?” John asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I must admit, I’m getting kind of spoiled by the 24-hour complimentary room service.”

Jean and John were spellbound. I thought perhaps they were fascinated by the blitheness of my comment.

“I kind of love the fact that they can show up any time with a pot of coffee. We’ve even taken to having tea in our room most afternoons,” I said, hoping this might snap the Brits back into the conversation. They remained perplexed.

“We did make it to High Tea on Day Three, but were a bit overwhelmed by the rushed service. That, and the fact that most of the passengers there were from Hong Kong,” I said. “And it made for very tricky conversation,” I added, smiling.

Both Jean and John blinked and stared.

“Because neither Alana nor I know Chinese,” I offered.

They stared even harder. In fact, John was starting to grimace a bit.

“Neither Mandarin nor Cantonese,” I said finally. Then nothing.

I’d exhausted my contribution to the topic.

I started to turn to Alana and suggest we abandon ship when Phyllis piped in, “I take tea in my room too! It’s lovely,” she said, “Though not quite a very good blend.”

That was two saves for Phyllis. I owed her a drink.

“Room service!? Whatever do you mean, Grahnt?” Jean was aghast.

“Yes,” John said, “What?”

“Complimentary room service. The menu is somewhat limited, and if you order food it takes longer, but the drinks are just fine. Although it sounds like Phyllis has some issues with the tea. It’s Lipton’s, isn’t it Phyllis?” I tried to pull Phyllis back into the fray.

“Lovely,” Phyllis said, tipping back her champagne glass to get the last drop.

“But you have to offer them gratuity, don’t you?” Jean pressed.

I was silently alarmed by the fact that I had somehow alienated the entire population of Great Britain with the mention of complimentary room service. Up to that moment, I thought the Brits invented room service. Apparently not.

“Well, the line suggests you tip everyone at the end,” Alana said, saving me. She even pressed her elbow into my side. I had hit a bit of a bad patch. “You know, a standard amount per day,” she said.

There was a moment where I simply stared back at them and cocked my head slightly. I was about to apologize for even bringing up the subject (which, of course, I hadn’t) when John spoke up.

“But, I don’t know Grahnt … I mean … ” John sputtered and stalled.

“Yes, exactly,” Jean added, “I don’t think I could let people into my room! I mean, no, I mean, I don’t like that … ” Jean said.

In the ensuing silence I contemplated what had evolved. Just what did Jean mean? Do British people change once they’ve entered a stateroom? Induced by the grandeur of the drapery and the motion of the ship, I imagined long, slender British ogres unpacking dead rabbits into the mini-fridge. No room service for them, oh no. Maybe Jean and John were closeted nudists. Or maybe they had only packed evening clothes and togs—whatever the hell togs were.

“Well, sometimes I don’t really let the steward into my room,” I said, slowing down on the last couple of words for emphasis. “I take the tray at the door,” I said, and returned to my soup.

The entrée arrived, and with it a sort of conversational détente. There would be no further talk of room service. We did, however, chat about Jean and John’s two daughters, whom I imagined to be lean, blondish and toothy, like their mum. The eldest, Delilah, was headed off to university at the end of the summer; the same school where John taught physics or something adequately remote and logical. Phyllis was a widow. Her seven children sent her on a cruise every summer. By herself. Although she was from Malta, it turned out she actually lived in New Zealand, having moved there with her husband after the Second World War. The main course came and went without any talk of Iraq, and I began to fear that I might miss my opportunity. These were obviously intelligent, affluent folks. I was interested in their position, but found the topic difficult to introduce.

The conversation took another tumble when I introduced the topic of dogs. Up until Day 10, this had been a great topic. Everyone had a dog story. All of our dinner companions either owned dogs or knew someone with a dog. It seemed a safe bet to me.

“Do you have any children?” Phyllis had asked.

“No,” I said. “But we have a couple of dogs that keep us pretty busy.”

There can be assumptions made about you when you don’t have children, I suppose. Those assumptions never seemed to bother us much. Fact is, we are more than happy to talk about people’s kids. We like it. And, as much as we try not to, when people ask us about kids, we almost always mention our dogs. We don’t think of our dogs as our children, but rather as something pleasant we can talk about instead of rehashing the story of our failed attempts to have children. The dogs are infinitely more interesting.

“Did you say dogs?” Jean asked.

“Yes. We have a couple of Soft-coated Wheaten Terriers,” I said.

“Are they brown, Grahnt?” Jean asked, her brow furrowed.

“Well, no, not really,” I said. “They’re brownish. More beige, really. The color of wheat. Hence the name. And they aren’t really terriers in the sense that most people think of terriers. They’re midsized dogs, not small and yappy like a Jack Russell or a Yorkshire.”

“What do you think, John?” Jean asked. “They have a couple of doggies. Don’t you think, after the girls leave, we could get a little doggie?”

“What’s that you say?” John said.

“We were just discussing our dogs,” I said, perusing the dessert menu without reason. By Day 10 I’d tried all the desserts and hadn’t finished any of them.

“Have you noticed something?” Jean asked. “That many of the homeless seem to have doggies?”

“Many of them do, I suppose,” Alana said.

“They always seem to have a doggie of some sort on a rope or some pitiful thing,” Jean said.

“Would anyone care for an after-dinner drink? Perhaps a glass of sherry or port?” our waiter asked.

“Chocolate mousse for me and Jean will have the petit fours,” John said.

“Could I get a dish of vanilla ice cream?” Phyllis asked.

“We’d like to split a fruit and cheese plate,” I said, wagging a finger between Alana and myself.

“I don’t know if being homeless predetermines that you own a dog, though,” I said.

“Well, I think they’re doing it to get more money out of people. You know, when they beg and such,” Jean said.

“Really?” I asked and winced immediately. I’d discovered that I often used this word inappropriately, and wasn’t sure if I used it by reflex, or if I truly needed more information. At any rate, I was trying to quit. And I was failing.

“Well, yes!” Jean said. “I’m more inclined to give someone money who has a dog to feed, I think. And most of the doggies seem to be brown. Always brown. I must admit, I find that upsetting, Grahnt.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it quite like that,” I said.

“What’s that they say? That the older a man gets, the less tolerant he becomes of talking about another man’s dog?” John asked.

I thought for a moment before I said, “Hmm. I’ve never heard that, John. Interesting.”   But it wasn’t. I’d just about had it with John. He wasn’t holding up his half of the social contract.

“Really?” John said, his eyes unusually open and bright.

That was it. He was squaring for some sort of fight.

“Szabolcs? Could you please bring me an Irish coffee?” I asked the waiter when he placed our dessert between my wife and me.

“Irish?” Szabolcs asked.

“Yeah, coffee with a shot of Irish whiskey and heavy cream,” I said.

“Certainly, sir.”

“Are you interested in Formula One, Grahnt?” John asked.

“No, not really,” I said, “For a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I have a hard time with loud things. Why, do you race?” I asked.

“No,” John said.

“Curious,” I said, doing my damnedest to peak my eyebrows.

Alana must have noticed the edge in my voice. Or she picked up on my passive aggressiveness when I ordered an Irish coffee at a table full of Brits. She swooped in and took up the talk like a pro.

“Do you go to the theater much?” Alana asked.

“Well, not as much as we should, really. We did see an excellent musical production, though, about footballers in Belfast,” Jean said.

“Really?” Alana said, I thought somewhat reflexively.

“Yes, quite. It was very good, but I don’t think it lasted very long. What was it called, Johnny?”

“What’s that?” John asked.

“That show we saw. Good God! It must have been five years or so ago. You know, in the West End that time?”

“Oh, I just don’t remember those things, you know,” John said. “It had a good woman in it, though, I remember that, but I don’t remember much about it, really.”

I knew they were talking about an obscure musical called The Beautiful Game by Andrew Lloyd Weber. It had closed shortly after it had opened. I’d only heard the soundtrack a couple of times. And although I had every opportunity to save them from conversational obscurity, I sat and savored my weak Irish coffee made with shitty whiskey and burnt decaf. Here’s to you and your snotty comments about dogs and Hitchcock, I thought. It was Day 10, and I suddenly realized I’d grown tired of vacationing.

“How is it?” Phyllis asked.

“Oh, the cheese is fine and the Concord grapes are slightly bitter but sweet in the end. Not very well-paired with the cheese, though,” I said.

“No, the drink?” Phyllis asked.

“Dreadful,” I said.

“Yes, that’s been my experience too,” she said with a sad smile that melted me.

“Did you have a good day today?” I asked Phyllis.

“Lovely, but I really did want to see inside the Duomo. I stayed in my room, working my puzzles instead,” she said.

“We didn’t see the inside of the Duomo, either. It’s Sunday and it was closed for services. But we did see the Duomo museum, somewhat by accident. The real baptistery doors are there, and they are really something.”

“Oh, I should have loved to have seen that,” Phyllis said, her eyes glazing.

“I’m so sorry it rained today. It must have spoiled Florence for you, Grahnt.” Jean said.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said, unlocking my hands and fishing my napkin from my lap. “I had a pretty good day today. Alana and I had a great cup of coffee and an exquisite pastry at a little shop off Santa Croce. Then we walked around the outside of the Duomo and spent about two hours at the Galleria dell’Accademia, staring first at the David and then watching other people’s faces when they saw the statue for the first time. We had lunch with an old friend and then took a terrifying cab ride to the Piazzale Michelangelo. They have the most unusual church there. The frescoes are downright bizarre, really. Crammed with demons and temptresses. The view of Florence is pretty cool from up there too. We took a bus down to get some gelato and then, just as it started raining, we rushed through the Uffizi,” I said.

Then I noticed that no one but Alana was listening to me. So I finished with, “All in all it was a pretty good day, I guess. I regret rushing through the Uffizi, though.”

“It sounds horridly busy,” John said.

“What did you do today?” I asked Jean.

“We bought a handbag on the Piazza della Signoria, then we came home. I don’t really find rushing around foreign cities relaxing, I must admit. Besides, the real world is so depressing, especially when it rains,” Jean said.

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Oddly enough, at that moment the only thing I could think of was the war in Iraq. But it simply didn’t exist on the cruise ship. Although we were onboard for both Memorial Day and the 60th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, the current war was a silent undercurrent, not spoken of in the laundry room or between chapters of The DaVinci Code at the Tradewinds bar on the Lido deck.

Jean was right. The real world could be depressing. Especially when it rained.

I wanted to say something, but I didn’t. Instead, I used the opportunity of an open mouth to fake a yawn, stretching my hands high above my head and settling my interlocked fingers behind my neck, my elbows pointing at both Alana and John.

“That’s true. I have to admit, some of my best afternoons have been spent at sea. Just me on the balcony in my bathrobe with a good book. In fact, on those days, it’s like I’m the only soul on board,” I said.

“Really? What are you reading?” John asked with his eyes closed.

“The Agony and the Ecstasy,” I said.

“Oh my! That’s a tedious book for a holiday!” he said.

I would have argued otherwise, but it was Day 10, so I merely pretended not to hear him, smiled and excused myself from the table.

On our way back to our stateroom, I thought about the unusually large groups of police assembled in Rome to ensure a quiet visit between George W. Bush and the Pope. I thought about the rainbow-colored flags waving from windows high above the main streets of Florence, imploring pace—peace.

I told Alana I’d prefer to eat in the room or at the buffet for the next couple of meals, as the ship sped through the night bound for Monte Carlo.

I’m one lucky duck. There’s no doubt in my mind. I get to work on my book everyday in my hermetically sealed house … away from the distractions of life. (By the way, I highly recommend a home energy audit, our house has never held it’s heat so well.) It’s a real pleasure to do this. It’s—for lack of a better word—therapeutic. It makes the process of getting these stories out and onto the page as easy as pie. But it’s also way too easy to be hard on myself.

I’m trying to do everything right. Trying to follow my own rules of the road, trying to … stay in my own lane, so to speak. The more I do it, the easier I get the that sneaking suspicion that some of these stories are only interesting to me. And that’s the hard part. That self-doubt. In the end, it’s a judgement call I make on myself.

I had a dear, dear friend who lived with me for a few months when I was alone and lonely in Missoula. One day, she flat out asked me what was wrong with me. Why wasn’t I taking people out on more than one date? Why wasn’t I participating? In a moment of utterly sincere, open disclosure (hard for me back in the day, I’m the first to admit) I told her “I think anyone who is interested in me must be crazy.” To which she replied, “You don’t have a dating problem. You have a self-esteem issue.”

She was so spot on, a kick in the head couldn’t have knocked more sense into me.

And it’s weird, years later, how that self-esteem issue comes to the fore whenever I get into the weeds writing about … let’s say … The Nixon Administration. So I kick myself in my own ass and whack away. Thinking to myself, Hmm. I wouldn’t want to read that about me if I wasn’t me.

In writing, there’s this rule called the 10% rule. I used to think it was something I only heard from my boss, but it turns out, it’s widely known. Read what you wrote, cut ten percent, then cut another ten percent. Lately I’ve been amending that. I read what I wrote, cut what bored me senseless, then keep writing. Well, for all of you that are about to get all Pollyanna on me, I got to tell you … what bored me senseless? Well, it was about eleven percent of what I’d written.

In the end it’s a good thing to do. It’s good. But it’s hard. And it’s easy.

My dad used to say, “You have a great memory. You can remember things that didn’t ever happen.” It was his way of keeping my imagination in check. I still have a tendency to exaggerate. Usually when I quote some kind of statistic with a number, my wife will say (behind her hand) “Divide everything he says by four,” to whomever is willing to listen.

But here’s my problem with remembering. It’s better in my head than it is in real life. For example, I could write a blow-by-blow account of what I was doing the day Richard Nixon resigned. But it wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining as what I remember thinking.

I followed the whole Watergate thing too closely for a kid my age—due to the mumps. The hearings were the only thing on television when I was stuck at home. From there, I developed a fascination with the story. I had a crush on John Dean’s wife. I equated G. Gordon Liddy with the devil. I thought Martha Mitchell was hilarious! And when it became possible to get a Sam Ervin wrist watch, I added it to my birthday gift list. Of course the whole thing dissolved with a week to go before my birthday so I think I settled for something stupid. (I often wonder how much that watch would be worth on eBay.)

So there you go … you have my entire fetish with the Nixon administration in a paragraph. It’s my fondness for these people that aroused my memory today. There I was, at the United Methodist Church Camp on Flathead Lake, a chubby 11-year old, watching the whole thing on a television they had smuggled into the sanctuary. It was an odd co-mingling of public and religious service. Everyone was thrilled to be watching television at camp.

I was crestfallen.

I remember one of the counselors sitting next to me and trying to console me. “Today is AWFUL!” I whined. “I want to go home!” I said, “I should be with my parents at a time like this,” I said. The counselor, I *think* his name as Kirby, but don’t quote me on that detail, said, “Today is today. And it’s not awful. This is a good thing. Nixon was a bad president,” he said. But I was sad for a different reason.

I wanted the story to continue. And Nixon took it away.

That bastard.

Four words many people dread hearing me say. I hate being cold. Hate it. I think it was probably a trait I inherited from my mother. We’re having our HVAC system worked on today and I haven’t been able to turn on the heat. Granted, it’s only 64 in here, but with the wind chill that feels like … I digress.

I’m not certain where my distaste for the cold came from. My mom was never comfortable. She was either too hot or too cold. My dad never complained. About anything. In fact, I’m betting he was in a whole lot of physical pain most of the time, and we just didn’t know. People around town would ask him how he was doing, and he’d always say the same thing, “Poorly, poorly.” He was generally a happy person, so the juxtaposition of his demeanor and his Eeyore-like response always got a smile.

But, after reading his letters about his Jeep accident, I think he was telling the truth.

At any rate, it was the cold in Montana that influenced my move to Oregon. I thought I was moving to a place more temperate, only to show up in Portland during a drought, followed by one of the coldest winters on record.
I think it’s following me. The cold. I think I’m cursed. The cold makes my mind slow down … to like … stupidity. I can’t think straight. I get distracted. I turn irritable. Let’s face it: I suck in the cold.

Today I made excellent headway, though. I knocked out another chapter. Don’t know if it’s any good. I’ll think about that tomorrow. That’s been my M.O.—I write a little every day (today I wrote a lot, because I wrote only a little yesterday … damn that football) and then I edit something different than what I wrote. So tomorrow, I’ll go back to what I wrote today and edit it. That way it has time to age a bit before I hack away.

It’s a humbling experience, memoir. You get a keen understanding of yourself. The guilt comes in waves of introspection. Too late to do anything about that now, I think, and I plow ahead.

I’m making progress, though. I’m moving on.

Those of you that remember my Christmas day post will recognize this as a continuation of a trio of pieces about my dad and his driving

1972 Pontiac Catalina

January, 1975

It was butt-ass cold outside—colder than usual for the time of year. I hated the cold almost as much as I hated the months between Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Sitting on the hassock in front of the big picture window I looked out at the hard, cold snow in our front yard. It was getting close to dinner time. The sun was long gone. I squinted and split the light from the streetlamp into a dozen multi-colored streaks. The hard-packed snow glistened, and little powdery wisps snaked their way down the front walk out to the street.

“Grantsy, call your father. Supper is almost ready and he has to pick up Honey at the groomer before 7:00,” my mom called from the kitchen.

“Mom,” I whined. “I don’t know why you don’t just let me go. I’m old enough to drive myself, you know.” I wasn’t.

“Stop it, honey. Just call your father,” she whined back. “He’s probably in the bar at the Park Café, he had to drop off the payroll today.”

I hated the fact that, somehow, the duty of calling the bar and getting my dad to come home had fallen to me. Early-shift bartenders all over town knew my voice. They’d just hand the phone over to my dad without ceremony; all of them except Gussie Lankeit at the Park Cafe. She would wait, come back to the phone, and lie to me. Dad would usually show up at home a few minutes later.

I sighed, walk across the living room into the kitchen and dialed the Park Café.

“Park bar,” Gussie answered. I could hear the Virginia Slim dangling out the side of her mouth.

“Is Bob Byington there?” I asked.   “Just a minute,” she coughed.

She dropped the receiver hard onto the bar. “Robert!” I heard Gussie yell, “The kid’s on the phone again.”

The most embarrassing part of this whole nightmare was listening to the muffled sound of my father telling Gussie to lie to me. Well, it was actually a tossup between that and the sounds of the ribbing my dad got from the other men at the bar. Maybe Gussie did this to shame me, somehow engaging me in a battle of wills. Either way, it stunk. It stunk out loud.

“Nope. Not here today,” Gussie lied and hung up.

“He’s on his way,” I said to Mom.

“Does he know to pick up the dog?”

“No, Gussie wouldn’t let me talk to him. You know how she is,” I said.

“Well darn it. You’re going to have to go out there and wait for him then. Save him the walk up to the house.”

“Or you could go get the dog,” I said.

“I can’t, honey. My check will bounce,” Mom said.

A moment passed between us. My gaze travelled across the kitchen ceiling before landing on hers. We’d come to this standoff before. I sighed again, turned and walked to the front closet to suit up.

“I can’t wait,” I told her. “I just can’t wait to grow up and get the hell out of this house.”

A few minutes later, as our big blue Catalina skidded around the corner of Tamarack and Ogden, I stood in the street and waved my arms like I worked at an airport.

My father had a problem with acceleration. He was one of those drivers that tended to push the gas pedal to the floor, then coast, then push, then coast. I never asked why he drove like that, but given his conservative nature, I thought he was trying to avoid using the power brakes. A lumbering man in general, his feet were particularly heavy on the gas pedal. His motor control was completely fouled up because of a mysterious WWII Jeep accident, so riding with him was always a thrill and a half—especially when he’d had a few. The Catalina coasted most of the way down the block, then slid to a stop in the middle of the icy street, only a few feet from my knees.

A burst of hot, sticky air hit my face when I slide into the passenger side of the front seat. It smelled like Ballantines and Pall Malls. The windows were mostly defrosted, but my dad didn’t know how to operate the heater, so hot air was being forced at my face, rather than my feet.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

“We got to go get Honey Yvette at Dorothy Johnson’s house up on Haggin Road,” I said.

“Ah. The Killer get a hair cut?”

Dad called our toy poodle “Killer” because she was fierce to anyone who came to the front door. She barked when someone knocked, but she usually made friends right away. The only people she was absolutely ruthless with were mailmen, but I think that’s just because our mailman hated dogs. Dad had a habit of saying “Kill! Kill!” whenever the front door was open and the screen door was the only thing that separated the mailman from ferocious Honey Yvette.

Dad gunned the engine, and we slid down Ogden Street. The inside of the Catalina was roomy, but I could hear the studs in the snow tires trying hard to catch some traction. The streets were completely frozen and the tires easily spun out.

“I called the Park Café looking for you,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Gussie said you weren’t there.”

“Of course I was there … earlier. Payroll today.” He hardly looked at me when he spoke. This conversation was no different. He just stared straight ahead. We coasted to the corner of Ogden and Balsam. He gunned the engine, cranked the steering wheel to the right and the car fishtailed onto Balsam Street. The second time, the car lurched toward the highway a block away. I glanced up to make sure we weren’t going to get in an accident if he didn’t get to the brake in time. A light snow began to fall.

I flipped the heat from ‘defrost’ to ‘floor’ and wiggled my toes inside my shoes. I didn’t bother to put my boots on, because I was only going to be running from the house to the car. Even in that short time I’d lost all sensation in my toes.

“I’m going to need a twenty,” I said.

“Holy oh God!” he said. As he reached into his hip pocket for his wallet, his foot slipped onto the gas pedal, causing the car to lurch unintentionally. Caught off guard, I slammed backward into the seat.

“Whoopsy daisy! Sorry about that chief,” he said. He flopped his wallet up onto the dashboard. I whipped off my mittens and pulled out a wad of bills.

My father was tight as a tick with money, but you’d never know it to look at his wallet. All totaled, there was $264 in cash and several checks written to his business. There was also dozens of little slips of paper with miscellaneous facts and figures scrawled on them in pencil—people’s birthdays, social security numbers, lock combinations.   “You’re taking too long with my money,” he said. I quickly peeled a twenty out of the wad. Before I put the money back, I sorted it by value and faced all the heads of the presidents the same way, something no one would do if they wanted to avoid getting caught stealing.

“I think it’s fourteen dollars for the haircut and we usually tip,” I said.

Dad cranked the wheel to the left, floored the gas pedal, and the car made a complete 360, stopping in the middle of Haggin Road.

“Holy shit!” I shouted.

“Good God! It’s really icy up here,” Dad said. I could tell he was out of breath.

He had a point. Haggin Road is at the base of a foothill to Mt. Haggin. When the weather hovers below and above freezing, the runoff stays on the street and freezes. Under about seven inches of rock-solid ice is a well-worn road, constantly in need of repair due to the extreme changes in temperature. Dad goosed the engine and the car turned left 90 degrees.

When we slid to a stop in front of the Johnson house, I was on the high side of the road. Because Haggin Road was tilted at a steep angle, I pushed the heavy car door uphill to open it.

“Ask for a five in change,” Dad said. I pulled myself out of the car and tested my footing. “And be careful out there. It’s slicker than snot!”

He was right about that. I should have worn boots. As I pawed my way along the car, I used everything I could to stay upright, including the passenger door handle, then the right front fender, then the front bumper. The snow fell through the beams of the headlights as I slid, more than walked, to the curb.

My family had Honey longer than I’d been alive. Although she wasn’t my dog, she and I got along better than anyone else in the house. I liked the way Dorothy cut her hair, because Honey didn’t look like a poodle, except for the bows braided into the coat above her ears. Fresh from grooming, you’d never guess Honey was a killer toy poodle. Very much her own dog, Honey pretty much did what she wanted to. She cuddled with me most of the time, and stood by my bed in the morning. I was the one who let her out, fed her dinner and gave her a daily dosage of heart medication.

“Hey there, Dorothy,” I said when she came to the door.

“Get in here,” she said. “Looks like it’s starting to come down a little heavier than before.”

Honey came over and sniffed my shoes. I reached down and patted her head.

“She looks great,” I said to Dorothy. “You look great,” I said to Honey. Both seemed pleased to hear it.

“That’ll be fourteen,” Dorothy said. I gave her the twenty and she looked at me.

“Keep the change,” I said.

“Thank you, honey.”

“You talkin’ to me, or the dog?” I asked. “It’s an old family joke,” I said. Dorothy smiled and held open the door as I scooped up Honey.

“Be careful on your way back to the car now. That damn road is so icy this time of year.”

“I know! We already did a donut at the corner,” I said.

Outside on Dorothy’s porch, I tucked Honey under my arm and pulled a five out of my own wallet. Normally, I’d let Honey walk herself to the car, but it was too cold to put her down.

Climbing up hill on a solid sheet of ice with a dog tucked under your arm and a five dollar bill clenched in your fist isn’t easy. Especially in your school shoes. Dad watched me pick my way back through the snow drifts. At the edge of the street I decided my chances for traction were better if I went around the back of the car.

I steadied myself on the trunk of the Catalina and part pulled, part tip-toed up to the high side. A thick cloud of exhaust hung around the bottom of the car, making it look like the Catalina was floating on a misty, shining lake.   When I shifted the dog and the cash from my right hand to my left, something went terribly wrong. I slipped. I righted myself. I overcorrected. In desperation, I threw Honey up in the air, as my legs slid completely under the car. The last thing I saw before slamming my head on the ice was Honey Yvette’s legs spinning out of control, dog-paddling upwards through the falling snow.

Wham! I was down. As familiar as the feeling was, it’s always a surprise to hit solid ground. A kind of huff escaped from my lungs upon impact.

Honey landed just next to my right ear.

Immediately she started to squeal. Half-crying, half-barking, her toenails clicked and scratched at the ice. I tried to pull myself out from under the car, but the more I struggled the further under I managed to slide.

In my left ear, I heard the sound of the snow tires spinning out of control. He hasn’t taken the car out of gear! I thought, and he must be mistaking the gas for the brake. The treads spun ferociously. For a split second, I thought about Batman. He was always in a similar predicament about 25 minutes into an episode. I thought to myself, but he always gets out alive.

I pounded on the car and hooted, “I’m under the car! I’m under the car! I’m under the fucking car!”

The tires slowed to a normal spin, as the rear of the car slid ever-so-slightly downhill. I saw my father’s feet land on the ice just a few inches from mine.

“Killer? Big G? Where is everybody?” He obviously had no idea what the hell was happening.

“Get back in the car and put it in park!” I yelled.

“Wha … ?”

“I’m under the fucking car. And it’s still in gear!” I reasoned.

“Christ!” The feet disappeared back into the car.

The tires stopped. The engine slowed. Honey started licking my cheeks.

Back in the car, I took a quick assessment of everything that could possibly be wrong with Honey. Aside from a light dusting of snow and a misplaced blue ribbon, everything seemed fine. She didn’t have any tender spots or obvious broken bones. Although I felt bad about tossing her up in the air, I thought she got the better part of the bargain.   My butt hurt. It was the first thing to hit, and it definitely slid the most during the struggle. Other than that, I had cracked my elbow pretty hard. It smarted when I pulled the door closed.

Calm now, the three of us stared out into the snow falling through the headlights. Dad opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. My feet were frozen.

“Here’s your change,” I said. I smoothed the five dollar bill out on the dashboard. After a minute or two, Dad put the car in gear and gunned the engine.

“Coulda killed me,” I said to no one in particular.