The Aging of Aquarius

Late spring sits on North Texas warm, wet and heavy. Sometimes the sky is postcard blue, other times dull and benign.

Sometimes it’s black as dread and just as still.

Sometimes multi-streaked lightning bolts rifle baseball-size hailstones at us. Birds are struck dead in flight by wondrous ice ball cannonade crashing through windshields and 90 degree heat.

Sometimes funnel clouds move around like giant old men shuffling aimlessly through corn fields oblivious to the commotion they cause.

All these times will occur in a single day. Excitement is quite literally in the air.

We check the weather radar before going to bed and then sleep warily, warning gadgets next to our heads.

A few hours later it begins again. Peacefully. Quiet with promise, and just a tiny smirk.

© 2012 DL WILLIAMS. All rights reserved.

I’ve lived in Texas for almost three months now and it’s true what they say, Texans are friendly.

Total strangers strike up conversations with Carolann and me everywhere we go. This is a sharp contrast to living in California where strangers don’t generally speak to each other except rarely and briefly to request and impart some specific information such as directions to a particular street. These exchanges are always short and businesslike. They rarely blossom into conversation.

Texans don’t need any such pretense to launch into idle and often very personal chit-chat. You can be standing in a line at the supermarket and suddenly find yourself swapping family secrets with three or four people, all of you strangers to each other. By the time you leave the checkstand you’ve exchanged names and maybe pie recipes.

Texans also have a great and dry sense of humor, intentional or not.

I had only been here a couple of weeks when I went for a haircut and mentioned all of this to the very young woman cutting my hair.

“I really like Texas and the people I’ve met here,” I told her.

As she snipped around the edges of my head she gave me the following words of greenhorn wisdom in a cute and perky Southern accent:

“People say Texans are friendly,” she began, “and it’s true, we are friendly but we expect y’all to take care of y’alls own bidness.”

Then, with a drawl so sweet and thick you could pour it on a waffle, she explained, “Texans will give you the shirt off their backs or a meal and bed at the drop of a hat but if ya’ll step into the street without lookin’ we will run you over!”

© D.L. Williams 2012

The other day I Googled my RV/Camping blog, Thataway Road, searching for inspiration. Here’s what I found:

Smack dab in the middle of Arkansas there is a tiny town called Yellville, where you’ll find the intersection of Thataway Rd. and Thisaway Rd., just about a quarter mile from Whichaway Rd. Wouldn’t you love to hear somebody out there giving directions to a lost RV family? Shades of Abbott and Costello.

Thataway and Thisaway isn’t the only funny intersection you may come to. In an Arizona retirement community residents undoubtedly get a thousand laughs a day from living, as they do, at the corner of Stroke and Acoma Streets.

If you’re bored and depressed in Albany, Georgia, you can always go hang out at the corner of Lonesome and Hardup.

Presidents are apparently tempting fodder for local street namers. Folks in Houston, Texas, are keeping true to their largely conservative perspective and their well-deserved reputation for being facetious by naming converging streets Clinton and Fidelity. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, people engaged in brief political commentary by creating the intersection of Nixon and Bluett.

You have to love Americans. We don’t get as much credit as we deserve for having a national sense of humor. Just look at some of the street names scattered across our fruited plain:

There are several streets in the U.S. called Psycho Path.

In Story, Arkansas, the only way to get your truck camper to Constipation Ridge is to drive up Farfrompoopen Road.

And, while we’re on that unfortunate topic…

Folks in Central Pennsylvania can direct you to Cowshit Ln. if you will kindly refrain from stealing the street sign. It seems to happen a lot. In fact, that’s why the merchants of Amador City, California, years ago began selling copies of their iconic Pig Turd Alley sign, hoping that it would stop thefts of the actual sign. That must have worked. I bought one.

Some street namers seem to be completely baffled and give up…

Lambs Terrace, NJ

…while others just seem to lack interest.

Vallejo, CA

There are some streets you should steer clear of…

And the famous road less traveled.

Wherever your adventures take you, keep smiling. We live in a very funny country.

CarolAnn and I recently got Netflix.

As a writer of dialogue myself I’m a slobbering fan of Aaron Sorkin for his creation of The West Wing and Studio 60. With Netflix I was anxious to get another look at Sorkin’s Sports Night for the first time in a dozen years. I immediately fell in love with the show again and settled down to watch all 45 episodes in three days.

Here’s what I discovered:

I don’t care if you’re watching Sorkin or Neil Simon or William-Fricking-Shakespeare, stylized dialogue gets appallingly self-caricatured if you watch too much in one sitting. Also, like picking up a Southern drawl after spending a weekend in Atlanta it’s highly contagious.

I’ve started speaking Sorkinese.

This morning as CarolAnn was leaving for work we had the following conversation:

Me: What do you want for dinner?

CA: What?

Me: Dinner. What do you want?

CA: Tonight?

Me: Yes, tonight. What do you want?

CA: For dinner…

Me: Right.

CA: I don’t care.

Me: Maybe not now but you will. If it was dinner time right now, what would you want?

CA: Where are my keys? Hey, can you please do some laundry today?

Me: Laundry, yes, but first I want to figure out dinner. And, how would I know?

CA: What?

Me: What, what?

CA: How would you know what?

Me: Where your keys are. How would I know?

CA: Found ’em! Gotta go. Surprise me. Chicken fried steak.

(She gives him a peck on the cheek and goes out the back door.)

Me: Which? Surprise you or chicken fried steak?!

I haven’t written much about my brief time in Chicago. I’ve wanted to but have always been too busy, too tired or just too overwhelmed to make sense enough of it all that could be put into words. Being away from home and family is like that. You’re never whole. You’re always alone on a fool’s errand, or so it can seem.

Adventures almost never end as well as we dream, though there is wisdom to be plucked from every day.

So, tomorrow I’m going home to my family and tomorrow can’t come soon enough. Home and my loved ones are just about all I can think about.

But I have also thought about this a lot over the past couple of weeks and it is suddenly desperately important to me that I share it with my sons.

When I was fourteen or fifteen my dad was in Vietnam. He knew I was having trouble coming to grips with his absence, junior high, being a teenager and having the creeping suspicion that boys and girls are different and that it might be important to me someday. I was half-child, half-Martian. Life was confusing and difficult for me and I didn’t even know why.

Dad sent me a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s “If…” and these words became the guiding light of my life.

I pass it on here to my sons and theirs. Works for daughters, too.

Read it from time to time, take it to heart and walk tall. It’s a powerful philosophy that can allow you to have your head in the stars with your feet always safely on the ground.

IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more – you’ll be a man, my son.

I’m a native Californian. Until two months ago when I arrived in Chicago with no car I have never ridden a bus or train except as a rare lark. Now public transportation is my only means of getting from here to there. Fortunately, the Chicago Transit Authority is rightly celebrated as being one of the best transit systems in the world. You can get anywhere, from here to there… and then from there to there further, on to there elsely and, eventually, your destination… if you just have a map, a transit schedule, a compass, an Eagle Scout badge and a the patience of Job. Through a simple yet sometimes confusing series of transfers and queries for direction you will eventually arrive for just $2.25, total plus a quarter for unlimited transfers.

You just have think of it as an adventure.

On the CTA you can set out for a Sunday farmers market and return home nine hours later with two fully ripened avocados.

You can haul a package to the post office and have it arrive at grandma’s house in Des Moines before you reach your front porch.

One day I didn’t feel like walking the two blocks to the train station so I took another train to get there even though it took half an hour and I had to stand the entire way, crushingly, intimately close to a bunch of people to whom I had not been introduced.

I’m sure this all sounds terrible to my California friends and family but I am saving several hundred dollars a month by not buying gas. And frankly, being alone in the big city I have nothing but time on my hands. I’ve read two full books while riding trains and buses. Plus, I’ve met some — shall we say interesting? — people.

More on that later. I have to be at work in three hours and it’s twelve miles away. I must run to catch my rides!

Copyright 2011, David L. Williams

Sixteen days after my arrival in the town that Carl Sandburg dubbed the “City of the Big Shoulders” I am still fascinated; still excited.

It’s July and Chicagoans are just adorable. The blistering, humid heat makes everybody on foot soak through their shirts in less than a block, though it’s only 8 a.m.

Most of us lug computer bags and backpacks as we walk the streets of Chicago. Most of us wear loose cotton shirts and pants to work. A lot of men wear shorts. You see very few suits, sport coats and ties. That’s smart. After just sixteen days even I know those suit-and-tie guys are business travelers trying to earn their freedom, comfort and confidence.

Mid-Westerners are smart and practical. We dress as comfortably as we wish while still looking respectable; neat, clean and simple.

My wild West-Coast Hawaiian prints have no place here except in a box.

Staggering through beautiful streets in the steamy heat we mostly keep our heads down so the perspiration doesn’t drip onto our shirts and blouses. Occasionally we look up, nod, and give a pained but encouraging smile to our brothers and sisters who pass us on the sidewalk. We’re all in this together.

We have many destinations but one common goal: to just get where we’re going.

Chicagoans don’t complain.

The City of the Big Shoulders doesn’t suffer weather, it wears it with a shrug, a wink and a wry grin.

Everybody here  loves to warn me about the coming brutal winter. They tease and bait me. I think they’re trying to goad the guy from Southern California into whining about the heat and humidity; they want me to worry about snowfall and the coming icy Arctic wind.

I’m having no part of it. I have big shoulders

I’m a Chicagoan.

Songs that stick in your brain and refuse to leave are called “ear worms”. They usually drive me nuts but occasionally I get one I never get tired of.

I arrived in the Second City on a one-way ticket eight days ago and haven’t stopped grinning.

I can no sooner get this blues classic out of my head than I can stop gawking at the skyscrapers, the trains and the river that flows around me in every direction.

Like me, life in Chicago struts, hums constantly and grins idiotically.

Over the past few months of unemployment I’ve had conversations with potential employers that never quite came to fruition but got close enough to send me online to look at homes for sale or rent in other cities. In checking the real estate sites nationwide, left coast to right, I have found a common thread:

 

Nutballs.

 

I suppose that’s harsh. It’s certainly not nice though I hope it has a lovable ring to it. Maybe it’s just that some real estate brokers have no marketing skills. Not everybody does. But I have read some outstanding ads on eBay written by Joe and Jane Lunchbox that make me think this is a particularly virulent form of ineptitude among real estate agents.

 

To begin with, all real estate agents have their own pictures on everything: their business cards, newspaper ads, bus benches and websites. They all look nice and clean and happy. But you know what might make me more likely to call them? A picture of a house I know I can’t afford.

 

Show me my dream home. That’s what makes my heart go pit-a-pat, not Jack and Jill Darling freshly-showered and nicely dressed for the kill.

 

When they do give me pictures of a particular house I sometimes wonder if they asked a nine-year-old in the neighborhood to take it. Mostly, I get to see the garage door and often a tree blocking the entryway and front porch. Sometimes I get to see a car blocking the front of the “storybook cottage” which needs “just a little TLC”.

 

Just once I actually saw one I was interested in buying — the car, not the house.

 

The inside pictures are usually the most maddening. Just today I went to a website advertising a luxury townhouse in a highly desirable big city neighborhood and it included three pictures: one of the weight room, which I am no more likely to use than if the complex had its own whore house. The second was a picture of the master bedroom. Just the bed, actually. (Nice comforter! And what is the thread count on those sheets?) And the third picture was of a toilet and sink.

 

Friends, I don’t care where you live in this great land — a toilet is a toilet and 98% of them come in white.

 

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m different than everybody else. When I’m looking for a new home I want to love the location, how it looks from the outside, and I want to see the warmth and comfort of the family and entertaining areas. I want to be excited about the house and I want the house to love me back.

 

I just assume it has a toilet and a room for my bed.

 

Maybe I’m the nutball. I want to feel comfortable with my realtor but we’re never going to meet if he or she just shows me pictures of the themselves, the toilet, the kitchen sink or the absolute worst feature I have seen in apartment rental marketing:

 

A chair, half a drape and a piece of a potted plant.

 

Seriously, I pulled this picture from an online real estate ad and I didn’t crop anything out of it.

 

Nutballs.