The Other Night

The restaurant closed an hour earlier. The kitchen staff wrapped up, cleaned up and left. Gone. We sat in the dying evening light on the deck next to the hotel. The air carried a hint fall. A chill. Leaves already turned on a few trees down by the lake. This was early fall in the mountains. Several of us chipped in for beer and the bag of ice that now rested in a battered blue Corona icebox, palm trees and all, on the deck. A cooler reminiscent of Jimmy Buffett, who died a few days earlier.

During dinner, my friend D had been giving the waiter a bunch grief over the fact the hotel/bar hosted a blues fest a couple of months earlier and, “Where’s the bar guitar?”

The owner, Johnny, walked up, and reaching behind the ATM machine sitting against the wall next to our table, pulled out a guitar, handed it to D, and said, “Here. Play.”

It was an old Silvertone. A Sears Special. My first guitar was a Roy Rogers version. In spite of the fact it was mass produced, cheap, and old, this particular guitar produced a remarkable range of tone. Bass to treble fully found, strong, and resonate. A pick-up crossed the sound hole with the wire lead held to the body with red Tuck-tape. Functional. A bar guitar.

D played. In his inestimable manner. While never playing “professionally,” D plays on the fringes, drops in and out. A welcome player. He’s recorded and has contacts across BC in a variety of sound studios.

So they started talking, Johnny and D.

“Oh, you know Buddy Z.”

“Yeah. I played with his drummer for a few years in a band. Blagh-Blagh. We toured. You know . . .?”

“So you must know Max. .  .”

And so it went. Back and forth. A blues riff of a tennis match populated by Canadian and American blues players, guitarists, bass players, drummers and vocalists. Back and forth.

The only real name I remember is Studebaker John because we jammed one day in front of the Valley Social on Second Avenue in Fernie pre-pandemic. D filmed it.

I sat and watched. My days of the Old Town School of Folk Music long past. My real playing long past. At the table next to me, a Marley-esk Rasta mon, E, did the same. He sat rolling joints and smoking them like they were our rolled Bugle cigarettes of the 70s. The rich sweet smoke wafted across the deck in the light evening breeze.

We drank beer. Smoked. Played. And the evening faded into the night.

There were five of us left. Johnny and D playing ‘Do you know?’ blues tennis. Dave, the waiter, silently smoking cigarettes and saying he was glad to be off. A totally silent, a second Johnny. E, the Rasta-mon, and myself.

The evening progressed. Johnny played the Silvertone. D played the Silvertone. Johnny went into his cache of guitars and brought out a 1950s sunburst Gibson. The same model that James Taylor and host of other acoustic rockers play.

“Feels like a pound of butter in your hands.”

It did. A pound of butter.

D played it. Dave played it. Hesitantly. I hefted it and played a few cords. And set it back down.

Johnny played it with comfort and ease. It was his guitar. He knew the riffs. He knew the frets. He knew the strings.

“This one hasn’t been re-fretted like so many of this age. It’s got the original frets and is easier to play.”

The sun dropped behind the mountains. We told stories of music. Of remarkable nights.

I told being a dishwasher in Vail in a long narrow basement room with a dumb waiter at one end. The  constant flow of dirty dishes dropping down over the night. Of knowing the night was coming to a close, when the sound of the dumb waiter descending and the thought of one more batch of dishes made me shrink. Instead of dishes, there was a silver tray with four lines of coke. Great coke. This was Vail in the 70s.

On several of those nights, Steven Stills came in to jam with whatever touring band played the house. He was spending much of the winter hanging with Judy Collin’s younger sister who was spending the winter in town.

Then, one night Neil Young came in and joined him.

At 1:45am, the bar owner stood on the bar, rapping on a wine glass with a fork. Silencing the bar.

“This is last call. At two we close and we’re locking the doors. Stay or leave.”

No one stood. No one left.

We started leaving with the sun coming over the mountains and lighting the valley floor. I can’t tell you more than a single moment from the night. The Needle and the Damage Done. People stone silent at the end. Other than that, I only remember the night was phenomenal.

Music.

Pure.

Essential.

And we walked out. The sun rising without a cloud in the sky. A perfect Colorado morning.

Like most of my contemporaries, I take showers. Quick, efficient and over. Turn on the water, adjust a touch and step in. Scrub, rinse and you’re done. Dry. Dress. Leave. Complete. Finished.

I now have a house without a shower. A 1910s bungalow of the Sears kit sort. In one hundred years, no one thought of modernizing. The hinges, the door knobs, even the kitchen remains in the original 1910 iteration. The plaster remains intact with a few places where the paint (all the many layers) is starting to peel. That’s not a big deal. Simply taking it back to solid adhesion, feathering in the edges, priming, painting and it’s good as old.

A picture rail rings each room a foot and a half down from the ceiling. The baseboards are 10 inches. The floors intact old growth vertical grain fir. They glow golden in the evening light.

Most of the windows open. A couple are painted shut, but that’s an afternoon project with a utility knife and a bit of sandpaper. All the widows have traditional storms.

There was a time when “spring cleaning” meant a household turned over at the same time the lake ice melted and the water roiled from the bottom to the top. Beds flipped. The storm windows taken down. The carpets beat. The basement vents opened. Everything brushed down and settled for the hot days of summer.

In the fall, the process reversed. The beds were flipped again. The carpets beat. And the storms replaced to hold the cold of winter at bay. And the lake froze for the winter.

The glass of my windows, and of the storms, is the old drawn glass. Ridges and vertical inconsistencies abound. On the window toward the field with the apple trees, one window has a broad vertical stripe a third of the way across from the left that forces you right. The apple trees are just fine, you simply need to move a little to the right.

The bathroom is as original as the rest. A sparkling clawfoot tub with the original brushed nickel taps. Behind the bathroom door is a floor to ceiling built-in linen closet. The medicine cabinet and mirror are built in, too.

I’ve found a welcome slowing in taking a bath. You draw a bath. You turn on the tub taps, adjust the water a touch and let it fill. It takes time. Minutes. Maybe fifteen minutes to fill. And it’s hotter than you can stand. You slide your feet, your legs and finally your butt into the hot water. Japanese hot. Wait a minute to let the heat settle and slide the rest of the way in.

Tonight, as I drew my bath, I listened to Jazz24, a Tacoma internet jazz station. I know it from the original on air KPLU. A few years ago, Pacific Lutheran University quietly decided to sell KPLU for seven million dollars to the University of Washington. The listeners revolted and in a few short months matched the seven million offer, competed the sale and continued broadcasting, now as KNKX. The KPLU DJ’s remained.

Years ago, maybe twenty-five, I remember driving along the Hood Canal on a wintery Monday morning. I’d flown up from Santa Barbara to visit my parents in Gig Harbor and snatch a bit of steelhead fishing.

My mom, knowing I paid little attention to weather reports, called the night before I left Santa Barbara. “Don’t wear shorts.”

“Yeah, right. Why not?”

“It’s going to snow.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. And wear shoes, not flip flops.”

My dad, a die-hard skier, firmly believed in winter tires and came to pick me up at SeaTac.  No cabs, no shuttles, no busses, nothing operated. Six inches of snow paralyzed Puget Sound. On the drive from SeaTac to Gig Harbor, we were one of a few moving cars. The rest were scattered in the ditch. Literally.

It continued to snow off and on and remained around freezing. I wore long pants. I wore shoes and socks, too.

On Monday, I headed up to the Olympic Peninsula to fish for a couple of days. I left the house before dawn. Still cold, maybe five or six inches more snow fell in the days after I arrived. Puget Sound remained paralyzed.

The road north to the Olympic Peninsula held a stripe of dirty slush in the middle. Once on the peninsula, there was no traffic. Narrowing, the blacktop lost the shoulders and wound between groves of hemlock and cedars hugging the edge of the Hood Canal on a narrow flat bench cut out of the steep forested slopes dropping into the water. Occasionally, a river rolled out of the mountains to the left. An old-style bridge would carry the highway over the water. The openings in the forest, the estuaries flowing into the canal, broke the monotony of endless dark trees with snow drooping branches.

I listened to KPLU. At 9AM the NPR news came on blurbing about whatever.

This I remember like it was yesterday.

When the news was over, Dick Stein came on.

“Good morning, jazz-oids. Here’s one for the day.”

He spun Stormy Monday with Dexter Gordon. The music blended perfectly with the road seeming to carry the same beat, the same roll into each corner, then the next. I drove north to my rendezvous with steelhead carried by Dick Stein and KPLU.

He’s still with the station today.

And so am I.

So, as I pull my bath, I think of pacing. Of slowing down. Of taking care. Of being aware of the present. Listening to jazz, undeterred by the hurry of those around. Simply listening. I wait for the water to fill. Adjust the temp with a bit of cold and slide in, slowly, slowly, thinking of Stormy Monday and a day on the Hood Canal.

(August 2019)

Late last night I sent an email with three attached poems to three friends. As with so many writers, I have a small group of peers I pass on words for critique. An approaching lit journal deadline (two days) prompted the email and I hastily decided to submit a batch of three connected poems. The email (with attachments) asked for comments on the poems, the order and any other thoughts.

One email. Three attachments.

Sent without thinking. A click of the send button. Gone. Off.

Even later last night, I received the first response.

“Sand in my toes, listening to Mexican music and waves on the beach. . “

Three recipients to a single email. And I thought about the distance. And time.

One recipient will be ensconced in 901 Fernie, comfortable condos in the re-purposed old school in the middle of town. Another recipient is visiting family in London (the original in England) and the last (first to answer) is lolling around on the beach in Mexico.

20 years ago this sort of effort would have involved separate letters to three very dispersed locations. Copies. Envelopes. A trip to the post office. Waiting in line and buying a bunch of foreign postage stamps. A week to get there and a week to get back, assuming good weeks on both ends. Today, push send and it’s literally there. The first reply dropped into my in-box less than two hours after sending the original email. Written on an iPhone. Pina Colada in one hand. Warm sand between the toes. The soft hiss of waves breaking on the beach.

The wonder of it all.

We’re back. These are the Fernie ski days we live for. When I left my house Thursday morning a few cms covered the walkway. At the end of the day, fresh snow broke my boot tops.

On the hill every run was new tracks knee deep. And light. And there was no one. No one.

Ski,

Ride up.

Ski.

Ride up.

Repeat until the legs give out.

Let’s go here. Let’s go there. Let’s just go.

This is the Fernie we love. Yahoo. Let ‘er rip.

My Year starts with the opening of the ski hill, not with an artificial, overblown and facile celebration on December 31. There’s a simple unexplainable joy in those first 20 feet sliding down the ramp at the end of the first ride. There’s a freedom. A whole new world opens in that single moment and becomes real. Tangible. A fundamental shift in the world.

We are skiing.

And underneath it all is the question, the nagging doubt, Do I remember how to turn? How much have I lost over the summer?

As with most of our fears, the answer is, Get over it. You’re just fine.

At the top of the Bear I ran into a gathering gang. As we stood talking, the group became larger as one person then another joined off the Bear. The consensus was Cedar Bowl. As they skated off, I ducked into Lizard. They’d been up since the first chair. I’d just arrived and irrationally believed I’d forgotten how to turn. A couple runs down the edges of Arrow and Cascade and I was telling myself, Get over it. You’re just fine.

Stupid me.

Life is good. It’s a New Year and anything can happen.

a poem for a snowy spring day.

tailored

old gnarled
carrying the shape of an orchard apple tree
the mountain ash across the street
stretches
spreads
naked
berries exposed

then this morning
in lieu of spring leaves
the ash accepts a suit
standing still as piles grow
on the branches
hiding the berries
and burying it’s feet
wrapped in the whole cloth
of winter

from
socks in the dryer (Salmonberry Press, 2013)

When I’ve find myself wondering what am I doing? When it seems like I’m spinning my wheels writing, I seek for immediate tangible daily gratification. Something concrete. Do it. Look at it. Be done with it.

Hard work is good. Physical work is good. Physical work with a mental component is even better.

Most of this non-writing work is carpentry. At the end of the day, you stand back, look at job that is visibly further along. Real measures exist. The living room windows are trimmed out. The bedroom doors are hung. The floor in the hall is finished.

Recently I trimmed out a house in a traditional manner. The owner wanted the finish to reflect the old school craftsmen manner and quality. In that way, it was a traditional trim job. We installed all the wood from the walls out. Trimmed the windows. Laid the floor. Hung the doors. He wanted no end grain showing, so every piece of wood was cut at a 45 on the end and another matching, short 45 piece was slid in to finish the end into the wall. The grain, the stain, all had to match so as to be un-noticeable. Each finished window required the cutting and fitting of 23 pieces. From the extension jambs bringing the window casing out to the plane of the wall to the crown molding running across the head, each piece required thought, precision and care.

And now that I think about it, the project was as mental as it was physical. Each piece became a mental challenge as well as a physical challenge.

After the windows, we laid the floor.

The flooring was re-sawn four by six larch beams re-sawn, then run through a molder to shape into tongue and groove. The beams weathered heavily before being taken down and held spike holes with black stains from the rusted materials that once held them together. When we finished the floor, the owner spent hours filling the holes, matching each with one of four or five stained fillers he mixed for the job. Three coats of satin finish topped it off. The floor became a central feature of the house, finely finished with a rustic undertone.

As we worked on the floor, at the end of each day we could look back and state, “We started there and we finished here.”

Concrete.

Measured.

No question about the worth of the day.

And then, we hung and trimmed the doors. There were a bunch. Not as complicated as the widows, but similar. Only 16 pieces per door. But then remember, there are two sides to every door, so in reality 32 pieces trimmed out each door. Lots of little pieces. Finicky little pieces.

You learn tricks. Like using tape to hold a piece is only so good. There is bound to be a little slippage. When it dries, the edges will not remain exactly aligned. The best using good contact cement. Put two coats on the face of little piece and the larger piece. The grain tends to absorb the first layer of glue. The second layer really creates the bond. Let it fully dry and then –thunk—it holds.

That’s done now.

I am back to following up with editors, sending out queries, and trying to write little essays like this one to keep me feeling like am making progress.

And there is no longer any measure.