The Coldest Summer

The week before I left Fresno for what is likely, the final time, the temperature hit 108 degrees.  Weathermen, trying to put a positive spin on the god-awful conditions, talked about “plenty of sunshine for rest of the week.”  Sure, there is melting asphalt and the city setting up cooling centers for the elderly so they don’t die in their homes, but at least we have plenty of light.  When it’s beat-down hot like that I often think of the part of The Grapes of Wrath where Tom Joad is thinking of a single tree where he can stop and sit in the shade for a moment on his long walk home, but when he gets there finds the spot is already taken by another man.  The preacher I think.  Something like that can make you curse the heavens, and stalk TV weathermen with extreme malice.

 I’ve gotta tell you, those killer temperatures didn’t make it difficult for me to move to a City where the fog routinely sneaks over the hills to invade the streets and wade around the buildings, in July.  On my forth day it did just that.  The window behind my cubicle looks down on Highway 80 where the traffic ramps up for the final push to get on the Bay Bridge to head to the East Bay, and that window also looks over at a hill full of buildings stacked up like stadium patrons, where I couldn’t name a single one, but collectively convey what could be described as the San Francisco look.  That morning those buildings sat in fog like cardboard boxes sitting in water in a flooded basement.  I didn’t check the weather in Fresno that day; that would have just been cruel.  Mark Twain probably never said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” but it’s still a quality line.  After a lifetime of triple digit summers (and springs lately), bring it on.

                The building I currently work in is a big, grey, flat-faced and has been the San Francisco Hall of Justice since the early sixties, and frankly has all the charm of a Soviet DMV office.  It is the County Jail, headquarters for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, Courts, the California Highway Patrol San Francisco headquarters, but most importantly to me the San Francisco Police Department headquarters.  My current employer.  Surrounding it are bail bonds offices, tow yards, and parking lots that look like they might hold 10 small cars but usually “fit” about 100.  It’s not the cleanest part of the city but it’s a short walk to the train station I use for my commute, and there are cops of different flavors everywhere.

                I’ll work in this building until the new San Francisco Public Safety Building is completed in July, November, December, well it will be completed someday.  When it is there will be new cubicles, in new offices, with a view of new apartments and million dollar condos in the Mission Bay part of San Francisco.  I won’t see the old buildings marching up the hills but I’ll still see that fog sneaking over those hills into the City. 

            I’ve finished two weeks at the new digs now and so far so good.  I’ve spent some pretty cold winters but cold summers are new to me.  I no longer have to worry if I’ll find someone else in the shade of that single tree on that long hot road.  The preacher can have it.

*Photo is from my cell phone of San Francisco on June 25th.

A Central Valley Hick in St. Francis' Court

                From 1985 to 2011 I worked at two places.  For 14 years I was at a paint manufacturing plant (Duncan Enterprises) and for the other 12 years a telephone company / Internet service provider (Sebastian).  Starting on Monday morning, June 16^th, I will have had three employers in the past three years; Fresno County, Community Hospitals, and at 9:00 am that morning the San Francisco Police Department.  I never meant to be a person who jumps from job to job, and in fact I’m hoping my newest employer will be from where I retire. 

                I’ll start my new career working in the San Francisco Hall of Justice.  Home of Dirty Harry, Karl Malden, Michael Douglas on TV and Michael Douglas in the movies, Steve McQueen, and the real cops who hunted the Zodiac.  Then in November they’ll (we’ll) move, lock, stock, and barrel, to a new building south of the ballpark, in an up and coming area called Mission Bay.  The name is old but the construction is new.

                There are a million things I’ll need to do.  I’ll need to learn the Streets of San Francisco.  I’ll need to find a place to live in a place with some of the most expensive housing in the country.  I’ll need to configure a commute that will not shorten my life through stress.  I’ll need to learn the systems and procedures for yet another IS team.  And the list goes on.  Every day may end up being a learning experience for me.  I probably should have done this at 22 and not 52, but men plan and gods laugh.

                I guess this will also give me an opportunity to reboot my blog.  I can chronicle my journey from a Central Valley hick to a sophisticated and urbane San Franciscan (at least during the workday).  Although I don’t consider myself the former and think there are other goals to shoot for than just the latter.   

                So wish me luck.  Drop by if you’re in The City and I see if I can’t find a decent restaurant for lunch.  Maybe Italian?

 

Extra:  The motto on the SFPD shield is oro en paz fierro en guerra, which translates to "Gold in Peace, Iron in War."  I didn't realize they were so much into geology.

What's the Word?

Why is there no word for the feeling you get when you finish a good book?  Nothing that captures that feeling of accomplishment and loss.  Reading a book is like being in a relationship really, and finishing it can sometimes fell like a breakup.  You meet these characters and places early on and you’re not sure if you’re going to get along.  You experience their lives as if they were real people.  You grow to like, or maybe hate these characters.  You feel like you’ve been to these places; even those that are fictional.  Characters live and die, they commit great feats of kindness or unbelievable acts of evil and everything in between; they generally behave as real flesh and blood people do.  Then it's over.  Shouldn’t you feel “something” when, as you turn the final page of a book, they are simply…gone?

Years and years ago I read the book The Bastard by John Jakes.  It was about the American Revolution and came out right around the time of the Bicentennial.  Not Steinbeck to be sure, but not among the worst wastes of Canadian timber I’ve slogged through.  Somewhere in the middle of the book a man’s wife dies.  Just up and dies at a place where he’ll never know what happened.  I remember thinking through the rest of the book that he’ll eventually find out and heap vengeance upon the man who was responsible for her death.  He never did.  I finished that book realizing the husband would go to his grave not knowing what happened to her.  Unfair!  I didn’t lose any sleep over it but I remember it nearly 40 years later.  That seems somewhat powerful.

But what is the feeling?  Can you feel nostalgia about something that you just lost a minute ago?  Can you mourn for the death of someone who never existed?  Finishing a book, and I’m talking a good book here, a book that really engaged you and swallowed you into its world, that emotes a variety of feelings.  There’s sadness along with fulfillment.  There’s perhaps satisfaction at making it to the end tempered by the loneliness of losing all these new “friends” in a Band-Aid rip finality.  There can be a lot going on.

                There is a specific word for the action of throwing someone out a window.  There really is.  One word that means throwing someone out a window.  It’s defenestration, from the Latin for down or away (de), and window (fenestra).  I can see a couple of cops standing over a body in the street and one says to the other, "Cause of death?" and the reply is "defenestration."  The word was coined in Prague a couple few hundred years ago when it was, apparently, all the rage to toss civil servants with which you were unhappy out of windows.  That’s probably why there are few windows in legislative chambers.  Those Pragainians, Praguenosticators, Praguers?, what a bunch of kooks.  So it’s nice that throwing someone out of a window has its own word, which is probably used worldwide, outside of the Prague City limits, about once every hundred years or so.  But how often does someone, somewhere finish a book?  A lot more often.  We can’t take defenestration because of the Latin root words only makes sense when the local mayor is flung out into the rose bushes.  So we need to build our own.

                The Latin words for finish and book respectively are consumo and libri so the word could very easily be consumolibri.  Okay but that’s a sterile and emotionless creation.  The Latin words to describe the feeling one might experience when finishing a good book are sadness (tristitia), contentment (contenti), satisfaction (plenus), lonely (sola), and happy (felix).  (Felix, really?)  Anyway, cramming those words together gives you tristiacontentiplenussolafelix.  Sounds like the guy at the Vatican who sets up dates for the local cat population.  If I had to say that word I'd probably toss myself out a window.

                What about saying that you know there is a feeling but words can’t describe it.  You could always throw in the French phrase “je ne sais quoi” which I believe literally translates to “shrug.”  Brilliant if you think about it, but kind of like surrendering. 

                Or maybe…over in Hawaii they have something they say that means hello and goodbye.  But it also can mean affection, peace, compassion, and mercy.  Since it’s is already carrying half the Hawaiian dictionary, why not toss a few more words on the pile and have it also mean the feeling of finishing a good book.  So from now on, that feeling you get when you turn the final page of a really good book will be called, “Book ‘em Danno.”

Clubbed

“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.”

-Groucho Marx  

 

Her cheeks were rosy, her attitude was cheery, but her customer was wary.  "Would you like a bottle of wine for five cents?"
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth* I said, "Yes," and grabbing a $30 bottle of zinfandel said, "I'll take this one."
The rosiness dropped from her cheeks and her attitude took a downturn too.  "No, you buy one bottle and get the second for five cents."
I grabbed a $6 bottle of Gallo something-or-other and setting it next to the zinfandel said, "I'll take these two for six dollars and five cents."
Again she said, "No.  The second bottle must be the same wine."  Then she hit me with, "You also have to be a member of Club Bev."  She held up a little red card.
 

                Everywhere I go I’m bombarded with offers to join this club or that just to get past the checkout.  There’s ExtraCare Rewards Program (It’s at CVS Pharmacy, as if to suggest if you’re not a member that you only get regular care), Club Orchard-Ace Rewards-True Value Rewards (all hardware stores), Balanced Rewards, Prescription Saving Club, Vons Club, and Save Mart Cares (I’m curious what Save Mart cares about.  Other than having little selection and higher prices that is), the aforementioned Club Bev, Frequent Car Wash Club, Customer Loyalty Club, Office Max Rewards (where I shop maybe once a year.  Maybe.), and Subway Club (for sandwiches not trains).  If I joined every one of these clubs, and was issued a card for each one, my wallet would look like the shoe at the two dollar blackjack table in Caesar’s Palace.  (Pictured above)

                Also, what makes them clubs?  Is there a clubhouse for Orchard Club meetings?  If there is then I wonder what it’s built out of since the Orchard “hardware” store doesn’t sell lumber anymore.  What are the bylaws of the Frequent Car Wash Club or Office Max Rewards club’s secret handshake?  If I only get club sandwiches from Subway would that make it the Subway Club Club?  Is there drinking allowed at Club Bev meetings?  Encouraged?

                So I finally broke down and joined Club Orchard at OSH, which stands for Orchard Supply Hardware.  The girl at the checkout counter said that if I joined I would get $5.00 off.  All she needed was my name, phone number, and e-mail address.  Since I was buying what added up to about $1.50 worth of PVC, which stands for polyvinyl chloride, I figured I’d join, get my discount, and not only walk out with my sprinkler parts, but an extra $3.50 in my pocket.  “No,” she said like the girl at the top of the page, “you get the discount on your next purchase.  You’ll get an e-mail where you register for the $5 coupon.”  So I gave her my real e-mail instead of a fake one, and left with my PVC from OSH, but as far as she knows that mailbox belongs to Jethro McHappymeal whose phone number is (123) 456-7890.  When the e-mail showed up there indeed was a $5 coupon, but only for purchases over $25.  Now, along with job offers for jobs that don’t exist and messages saying that I’ve won a cruise, my inbox is stuffed with weekly communications from OSH telling me what an awesome hardware store they are, sans lumber that it.

                I’m thinking of making my own club and printing up cards.  I’ll call it Club Friends of Mark Rewards Loyalty Club Cares Savings Club Club.  Then, the next time I’m asked at a store “Are you a member of our club?”

I’ll answer, “No I’m not.  Are you a member of mine?”

I could really use that wine. 

 

*I would never look any horse in the mouth, gift or otherwise.  Horses kind of creep me out and I find their mouths and teeth just this side of terrifying. I’m pretty sure that if it wanted to, a horse could bite my arm clean off.

Middle Man

                “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you.”

                                                                                                 -Stuck in the Middle by Stealer Wheel

 

When I attended middle school, middle schools didn’t exist.  There were schools between elementary school and high school but back then they were called junior high schools.  At least where I was they were.  Perhaps back East or down South things were different, but here in the Big Valley there was no middle.  My school between elementary and high was grades seven through nine.  When I finally entered high school I strode through the gates as a sophomore.  There were about as many freshmen in Fresno as there were Fremen outside of the Dune books.

                Recently my younger boy had some trouble at his “middle” school.  He was being picked on by a bigger kid in gym class, and also the target of verbal bullying in the classroom by others.  He told his mother and me about the former but we were ignorant about the latter.  We told him to stand his ground and let this kid know, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t going to take it anymore.  His mother and he notified the vice-principal, the counselor, and the gym teacher about the first bully and after that the kid left him alone.  But I guess the boy who was leading the teasing in the classroom didn’t get the memo, because when that started up again one day, our boy decided he’d reached his limit and punches were thrown.  Three punches to be precise, all by my boy and all in the face of the other boy.  The results of this episode were; he got suspended for three days, the other kid came by a week later and apologized, his mother and I while not happy violence had occurred were happy he stood up for himself, and most of the people I’ve talked to have come to the agreement that middle school sucks.

                Maybe therein lies the problem.  Maybe it’s the “middle” in middle school that makes it what it is.  The Middle Child Syndrome suggests that older children are given more freedom while younger children are fawned over more, and given more attention if you will.  This can create a middle kid who grows resentful of those kids who came before and after, causing him to act out negatively; like climbing on the roof of Cedar Lanes Bowling Alley or spending so much time playing around an old abandoned milk truck near Chestnut and Weldon in Fresno that his parents come this close to calling the police when they’ve become convinced he’s been kidnapped.  Just to name a couple of completely random and generic possibilities.

Could the same behavior be happening in our school system?  Do high school kids have less restrictions and do elementary school kids enjoy more protection and attention than middle school kids?  Seems so.  Is middle school where those kids start feeling their wings and testing what they can and can’t get away with?  Yup.  The name “middle,” to me anyway, comes across as more of a dumping ground or holding cell than a place to transition from one school to another. 

In the naval services, officers are ranked as follows; ensign, lieutenant junior grade, lieutenant, lieutenant commander, commander, captain, and then a smattering of admirals.  Notice how one rank leads to the next.  You have to be a lieutenant junior grade before a lieutenant and a lieutenant commander before a commander.  It’s almost as if each rank is and encouragement to gain the next.  I particularly like the “junior” in lieutenant junior grade, as if they are saying, “You’re not a lieutenant yet but you’re on the right path.”

Why don’t we take a cue from our find naval services and switch middle schools back to junior high schools?  Instead of making kids feel like they are “stuck in the middle” as Stealer Wheel sang above, we instead tell them, “Hey you’re not in high school yet, but you’re on the right path.”

An Open Letter To...

An Open Letter To…

…Auto Manufacturers. 

Dear Sirs,

Please go ahead and make the keyless remote open all the doors of my vehicle when I press one button, once.  I can’t seem to get the cadence of the double press.  Does the second press count as a second press, or does it count as a new single press, or is it the first press of a double press, or does the car think I’ve pressed it three times now and has somehow reset to no presses?  Pretty soon it’s like I’m out in my driveway clicking away on it like some kind of deranged flamenco dancer with his castanets.  I know the odds of a hook-handed ax murderer jumping in the other side of my car, because all the doors are unlocked, are slim.  So I can pledge right now that I will not sue you if by chance I get ax murdered. Even if it’s in a hook-handed way.

…On-air Radio Personalities

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Nobody, absolutely nobody, likes it when you talk over the first, instrumental, part of a song and only shut up one beat, or less, before the singer starts.  I think the guitar at the start of Ohio, by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young is one of the best of the 70’s, or all time, so I’d like to hear it without your “We’ll take caller number seven for tickets to Wrestlemania” voice.  We don’t listen to a music station to hear the DJ, we listen to hear the music.  That would be like going to an airport to listen to the announcements of arrivals and departures and never getting on a plane.  Oh, and update your play lists.  I believe I’ve heard Ted Nugent’s Stranglehold at least twice a week on my daily commute over the last year, and that just on the way home.  Oh 2.0, traffic reports work in L.A or San Francisco, but in a town with three freeways, everyone knows ahead of time where and when the traffic is going to bunch up.  So drop the traffic report and perhaps, oh I don’t know, play a song.

…The Fresno Bee

Dear Editor,

Why is it that I can read the online versions of The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News, and even the L.A. Times without having to login as a paying reader, but can’t do the same with The Fresno Bee?  I understand that you don’t make a lot of money when you give your product away, but all those sites, and The Bee’s, have banner ads across the top and other ads along the edges, and I’m pretty sure someone is paying you to put those there.  But The Bee adds a screen for paying customers to login when ever I try to go to any article.  Plus, to add insult to injury, you have more pop ups than a Whack-A-Mole game.

…M&M/MARS, Maker of M&Ms

Dear Sirs,

You’re doing God’s work.  That is all.

…Baseball Writers of America

Dear Sirs,

First of all, understand that the Baseball Hall of Fame is a museum, not a cathedral.  The cathedrals are AT&T Park, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and all the other ballparks hallowed by their congregations… um fans.  You created the Frankenstein’s Monster that is the steroids era when you ignored the obvious enhancements to Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa when they were “saving baseball” from the ’94 strike during their homerun race, likely to also save your jobs, so drop those pitch forks and torches and let that monster out of the windmill.  Museums should have everything related to their subject in them, good and bad.   By your criteria you’d have an American History museum that makes no mention of slavery, a European History museum and leaves out Hitler, and a Rock and Roll museum that has absolutely nothing related to Madonna.  I mean seriously, have you heard her rendition of Don Maclean’s American Pie?  It’s really awful stuff. 

…My Fellow Motorists

Dear Drivers,

You suck.  You’re not paying attention.  It’s not all about you.  There is a device on your car, and it’s been there since day one, that you can use to indicate a turn or lane change.  It’s called a “Turn Indicator.”  Freeway traffic has the right of way when you are merging, so you, yes you, have to adjust your speed to that traffic.  Anyone who slows down (dangerous) or changes lanes (equally dangerous) to allow you in is doing it as a courtesy, not because it’s the law.  By the way, I suck at driving too so watch out for me.

…Me.

Dear Mark,

Let it be.

Home By The Sea

    Have you ever sold a house?  Have you driven by the home where you grew up and mourned at the loss of the trees you climbed as a kid?  Or have you further looked up the old homestead on Google Maps and dropped yourself on “street view” to have a look at the new siding, the dual-pane windows, or the swing-set peeking over the backyard fence that the new owners installed?  Sure, probably.  But I bet you’ve never found out that a former home had been given to another country, and that that country repainted it, and moved it 7,700 miles away?

                My “home” from July 1981 to May 1983 was in Honolulu Harbor but it wasn’t a building.  It was a ship.  I spent the majority of my hours, both awake and asleep, on the cutter Jarvis.  And when it wasn’t in Hawaii, say in Alaska or the middle of the Pacific, I spent pretty much every hour there.  My bed, my meals, my work; it all took place in a metal box 378 feet long and 50 feet wide. 

                The Jarvis was named after David Jarvis of the Revenue Cutter Service, a forerunner of the Coast Guard.  Lieutenant Jarvis became a hero when he led an overland expedition 1,500 miles to deliver food, in the form of 382 reindeer, to stranded whalers in Point Barrow Alaska in 1898.  Why they weren’t eating whale remains a mystery.

                I’ve never returned to Hawaii to revisit her although I’ve thought that it would be pretty cool to show my two sons where I stood bridge watch and how we lowered boats over the side to take boarding parties to foreign fishing vessels.  Google Maps will not allow me to “stand” on the wharf where the Jarvis is usually moored.  I am restricted to the road outside the gate where trees and buildings block my view.  The terrorists win again.  But neither of those issues matter now because if I do return to the Aloha State or even if the Google car is allowed to drive on to military bases, I’ll never see my Hawaiian home again.

    Because…

                earlier this year the Jarvis was decommissioned and then “given” to the Bangladesh Navy.  Gone is the bright red stripe on the bow; which was actually international orange, the same color as the Golden Gate Bridge.  It’s been painted over white.  Gone are the large black COAST GUARD letters painted along her hull; like a black Hollywoodland sign.  A plain F28, which has some meaning to her new crew, has replaced it.  Gone are the American flags, the Coast Guard flags, and the Coast Guard personnel.  Replaced I suppose by Bangladeshi flags and people.  Gone is the “Jarvis” painted on her stern, replaced by the name Somundra Joy.

                I tried to find what Somundra Joy means but was unsuccessful.  I guess there are some questions even The Google can’t answer.

                There are basically two ways a ship ends her life; she is either cut up for scrap or finds the sea floor.  The Somudra Joy, now the largest ship in the Bangladesh Navy, will patrol the Bay of Bengal.  In fact she arrived in her new home port of Chittagong two weeks ago today.  She will live to fight another day (another decade?).

Maybe it’s a good thing.  While not a living thing, she is still “alive” and she is still doing what she did 30-plus years ago when a young man from Fresno who had never spent one minute at sea came aboard her.  On the way to Chittagong the Somudra Joy delivered 40 tons of relief supplies to Manila for the Philippine typhoon disaster victims, although I doubt any of it was reindeer. 

In other news; Bangladesh has a navy.

*The picture above is the former Jarvis leaving San Francisco Bay on a foggy morning.