What I did on my Vacation Part II

I told you that story to tell you this one.

Let me start with a brief eulogistic aside.
I've known Pat's family for almost 30 years. We are brothers and his brothers are my brothers. When we were children his family tended the S.N.P.J. Farm in Kirtland, a Slovenian cultural-heritage benefit and preservation society gathering place (no one noticed they were Polish-Irish {wait, yes they did}). The SNPJ would have public dances to benefit our Midget (Pee Wee) Football League and host weddings and they had putt-putt and a rather large collection of playground equipment. When I saw Pat get off the bus in Kindergarten and run up the drive to this compound, I figured he was the richest kid in the world. My dad was Sunday morning regular at the bar under the house of the caretaker so I met Pat very early on. His mom would tend bar. You have to understand that to our parents' generation, a bar was what a coffee shop is to us. A bunch of old brick-layers, painters and shit-truck drivers reading the paper and gossiping over a beer and a hard-boiled egg. Maybe someone would light up a pipe. It wasn't a place to get smashed or argue and loud music was not tolerated. Find a honky-tonk on Saturday night if you want that. I grew up in these shot & beer joints, where we ate lunch or unwound after leaving some construction job site. Well, Dad unwound. I played video games or at the SNPJ Farm, wandered off to the river or hung out with the kids of the caretakers.

Eventually, my parents split and I moved to Shreveport, Louisiana for a while. When we came back we moved into a house sprinting distance from Pat & his family in their new house. From age 10 until after high school graduation, I was in his house as much as my own. A handful of neighborhood kids were. Pat's mom raised me as much as my own mother did. We played Dungeons and Dragons there on Fridays (his older siblings played Saturday nights). One of his older brothers usually had a friend living there so the place was just lousy with smelly young men. Steve Somerville and I would sneek out at night sometimes and wander into Pat's house and crash in the living room at 4a.m. I'm not sure any of the parents were exactly happy to wake up and find children randomly missing from or appearing in their homes, but they sure didn't let us know if they were displeased. Pat's mom imposed no law over us. She didn't need to. She commanded no respect from us. Her demeanor compelled us to be polite, respectful and pleasant, as she was to us. Oh, sure I remember her near crack-up around the 200th D&D game within one year, but you've never seen a more civil display of displeasure. "Why does it always have to be our house, Paddy?". Still, we flushed the toilet, made local calls only and sometimes kept our voices down. And NO BLUE HUMOR, ever!

It was a bucolic existence, you know? Unlocked doors, cane-pole fishing, falling out of trees and breaking ourselves into many pieces. Some of our neighborhood parents had loaded guns behind doors (sometimes every door) and we somehow managed to not shoot the shit out of each other without the help of Ritalin. Fear and respect were healthy. We were pretty sure we actually lived in Bloom County.

After college, Pat & I worked with his dad and older brother, Mark in their heating and cooling business. I was saving money to move to New Orleans. Pat was starting a Masters program. Before I left, two more friends (Edd and {yet another} Steve) had come to work with us. Friends we'd known since kindergarten and high school. I've got to say, this is the only way I could work construction. Man, you can do anything with your best friends. Even HVAC. Sort of. We all referred to his dad as "The Ol' Man" and each had our own special impersonation if him. All endearing, you understand.

When I was in New Orleans, Pat's dad passed away. Edd called me to tell me and I tried like hell to get back up to Ohio but I just didn't have the resources in place to pull that off with a day's notice, still young and stupid. Well, younger and more stupid, anyway. Eventually the HVAC company was just Mark and Edd. Pat's mom told a great story about being on the phone with 911 when her husband passed away. They said, "Do you know CPR?" She said, "Have you ever seen an asthmatic give CPR?" Absolute candor.

Pat and I were in each other's weddings. Someone brought a female to Pat's wedding that eventually found it necessary to either partially or completely disrobe. Pat's mom wasn't fazed at all. "We had a naked Lady at our wedding? Did you have a naked lady at your wedding?" she would ask people.

My wedding was one of the last times I saw Pat's mom. I lived and got married on a property where we rented a cottage that was two doors down from where Pat's family lived in the mid-1970s before the SNPJ Farm. After that I think I only saw her at a Baptism or two. It wasn't a shock to anyone when she passed away in the middle of September. Honestly, we were all waiting for her to keel over and die right there in front of us while watching Jeopardy on any given evening in 1984. And 1985. And 1988. We watched a lot of Jeopardy. Look, she smoked and coughed like a person who has certainly breathed her last- always. It's the real reason we were all so well-behaved. No one wanted to trigger it. But she had been dealing with multiple myeloma in the last few years. Sometime in the past 5 years or so, she moved to Florida with her daughter. So I had certanily made my peace. As had Pat and his brothers. Of course it didn't make it easy on any of us. The funeral was September 22nd and Mass & interment the 23rd, just hours before the 6th annual Somerville pig roast (that's another blog entry). Pat originally wasn't going to make it down from Buffalo, New York where he lives for the pig roast, but we joked that his mom really wanted him to be there. We spent the night before drinking Manhattans "Up" in her honor (good Irish lady).

Obviously, then, we weren't all there just to support Pat in his loss. It was certanly our loss, too. She taught us, fed us, put up with us and entertained us and we will miss her terribly. I'm honored to have been a satellite of the family. Ok, it wasn't such a brief eulogistic aside.




Flash forward four weeks. None of us who trade emails regularly really put it together when we hadn't heard from Pat for several days after Buffalo, where he lives, was hit by a major blizzard on October 13th. We had planned to meet up and go see Iron Maiden in Toronto on October 16th and he hadn't responded to my Email to start coordinating the evening. Finally he Emailed, saying that he was in a bad way. He hadn't had power or phone or heat or hot water for 3 days, he sent his wife and four children to Mentor, Ohio to be with her parents. There was water in his basement, his food was out on the now-warm porch and he had sent his cell phone through the snow blower. I said, "Good. Sounds like you're ready for a concert and a beer."
Somerville and I drove up to scoop him up for the show. We were not ready to see what we saw. Buffalo looked like a class 3 hurricane had hit it. It was bad enough that they got 18-24" of snow in a matter of hours, but the real problem is that the trees still had their leaves and caught all of it. And then cracked and collapsed in a heap. My understanding is that it fell so quickly, people were trapped on the Interstate and had to be brought water and gasoline by snowmobile. I'm pretty sure every tree in Buffalo is splintered.

I do not know who these people are but this
is a pretty good representation of the situation

Pat actually lives in Clarence. We turned down his street and it was even worse. At the front of each and every yard was a 6 to 8-foot tall pile of tree branches that spanned the entire yard. It was just a giant wall of wood and leaves down both sides of the street. Pat's yard was in ruins. A large old maple in his front yard was split right down the middle. The Peach tree has one branch left. His apple tree was uprooted.

The Willow is splinted in every direction

And the Maple in the back of the house has pulled every wire from his house in a very mesy fashion.

there are wires in there

Pretty incredible, Actually. Pat had procured a generator by the time we got there Monday. The sump pump was plugged in in the basement, but water was still coursing in at an alarming rate. I will guess about two gallons an hour. We spent a while looking at the carnage, then headed off to Toronto.
We had a good time and Iron Maiden KILLED. Maiden suffer a big problem that only really old, really popular, really good bands suffer from. What to play in the setlist. They simply can not please anyone. This is my 20th year of attending Maiden concerts, and look, man, I love "The Number of the Beast" as much as the next guy. But I think I will still die happy if I never hear it live again. But they are not a band like Jethro Tull, who also has been making fine music for many thousands of years, but has a fan base that doesn't want to hear anything but "Aqualung" and "Locomotive Breath". They whip into 1995's "Roots to Branches" and everyone leaves for a beer.

Iron Maiden have a good mix of fans of every age. They are not lacking in teen age fans that know all of the words to the album that came out two months ago. It's not a bunch of fat, bald old bastards yelling, "Play 'Run to the Hills', Dude!" But they are there. So Maiden have fallen into the trap of 1.) Play some songs from the new album 2.) Play these 4 songs every show, ever 3.) Select and play 4 songs from a group of 16 songs that never really retire. But they are always trying something new. They are not afraid to grow. Therefore they are always pissing someone off. So this tour they are playing the new album in it's entirety (not a terribly new or original idea, but new to them). Personally, I loved it. To me it was a breath of fresh air. I thought the new album was damn good, not spectacular. But every song was great live. I had a whole new respect for the arrangements and came away liking every song more than when I went in. I heard the guy next to me, who was apparenlty introducing the band to a buddy, say, "This is the last song on the new record, they'll start rocking out the old stuff next". He was probably upset that they only played two more songs berfore encores. Some people, however were fit to be tied. They just want to hear the Classics.



Before we left for home, I told Pat we should come back up with boots and chainsaws and
help clean up this mess. He eventually conceded and Steve and Janine and I came back up on Saturday. I brought Pat a cool old copy I found of Emmanuel Ringelblum's Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto. You know, to cheer him up.
The four of us cleared away pretty much all of the dangerous stuff from his yard. Andy was out of town but sent a chainsaw with us which was good. We had three and couldn't keep them running worth a damn. It took all three to always have one that wasn't flooded. It took me all of 20 minutes to climb a tree and twist my shoulder so badly I couldn't pull the pull-starts on the saws. But eventually the yard looked pretty clear and at least nothing else was in danger of falling out of the trees onto the house or children. He's still going to need a professional service to come out and get the trees healthy again and remove some. It was really good to feel like I had made productive use of my time on a Saturday instead of sitting in Yours Truly, eating potatoes smothered in cheese & eggs, then hitting a bookstore.

Then, just a week later, I lost power at my house. for 30 hours or so. When I called the electric company's 800 number, they hoped to have everything on line by monday night. And when they read off the hardest hit areas, we weren't on it. That tells me we're not a priority and I had better get a generator. But I also know they overshoot the time estimate so people are happy when the power comes back "early".
Believe it or not, I got a generator with no problem. Well, I had to swallow my pride and buy it from Home Despot, with whom I practically have a blood feud going on now
.
The time change actually helped us. We forgot about it and were driving around Sunday morning, wondering why all the stores were closed. We'd call each store and get the message: "The Store is now closed; our Sunday hours are 8am-6pm." We were like "Well shit, they must not have power. What a way to serve the community! They should be out here with a pile of generators, taking cash and swiping credit cards the old fashioned way! Assholes!" So we headed west. So we figured we could drive to Detroit if we had to. Lowes was already open but the guy on the phone said they they had been sold out since Buffalo got buried. And they're tightly allocated. They only get 2 or 3 generators in at a time, anyway. So things were not boding well. I figured if worse came to worst I'd call Pat and see if I could borrow his. At least I'd have power by evening.

But we only got to Mentor when I realised there had been a time change, so we rolled into the parking lot right at 8 and went in as they were unlocking the doors. There were a few of us there for generators (which they actually had in stock), but the other people were looking at the more expensive/powerful ones. I was all ready to punch a Grandma in the face all Tickle-Me-Elmo style. So we paid for it (don't know how, the cat just spent another 3 days in the ICU- I haven't even started writing about that yet.) and went home. I just powered the Fridge, space heater in the bedroom (where Gillan was confined as he was so weak he'd probaby fall down our stairs) and the animal room in the basement. If I lose my Parrot cichlid because I was an idiot and I knew the day I moved in that we would definitely need a generator, but couldn't get one when I needed it, I would never forgive myself. So here were are, broke idiots, already out of power trying to get a generator while everyone else is, too. I made a pigtail out of a heavy-duty extension cord to wire the boiler or water pump, but it never came down to needing to.

So here's to winter just starting.

What I did on my Vacation Part I

By the second week of October I have to say I felt pretty violated. In the beginning of August, I finally started my project of trying to grow a really nice Brugmansia at work. It was beautiful. I have three cultivars. One was started from Edd's old plant that introduced me to the genus. I have been babysitting her since he went into the Air Force six years ago. Her blooms are peach in colour and in the evening, the perfume of the giant trumpets makes you dizzy from across the yard. You would be convinced Messerschmitts were descending upon your property if you heard a giant bumble bee felching nectar from what is basically nature's RCA Victrola Horn (Jimm ponders his verbiage).

click photo to enlarge

In 2005, while visiting New Orleans, I got cuttings from two more: an Ecuadorian Pink at the corner of Louisiana and Tchoupitoulas and a yellow from uptown near Magazine & Jefferson. They are very dear to me.

These are the Parents of my cuttings.
click photo to enlarge

I selected a choice cutting from each of the three and took them to work where I had a 24" pot filled with three types of potting soil. One was a constructed mixture my sister made from a Martha Stewart recipe, the other was a Perlite-heavy mix and the other was Miracle Grow. The plant was nothing short of spectacular. The first few days were touch and go as they didn't seem to want to come out of the post-transplant droop and wilt. Then they went absolutely insane with growth.

click photo to enlarge

The light indoors was nothing to match the July sun they had just left, so they generated huge leaves to catch more light. Each leaf was a giant, lovely, quilted emerald blanket with the finest hairs and deepest, darkest creases. I was actually pretty cranky because the ones at home didn't look nearly as good. And this was was air conditioned! It didn't seem fair.

click photo to enlarge

There was one problem: it had a few aphids. Well, these guys are notorious for having bugs once you take them inside no matter how hard you try to clean them. Nine out of ten times it's whitefly. Give it a few squirts of some horrible insect-killing compound and they're right as rain through winter dormancy. The next spring when you fire them back outside, they come back as if nothing happened. I've been doing this for years now. So a few aphids were odd, but hell, they were in my garden, after all. I talked to a few people who were of the impression that Miracle Grow is often buggy. I have no idea if that's where they came from, but I was certain that if I kept the plant healthy otherwise and picked off what I could while spraying regularly with a soapy alcohol & water mixture, we'd get it under control. This was working just fine until Edd got out of the Air Force the second week of September.

click photo to enlarge

Long Story-short, I took a week off from work when Edd moved back from Missouri to help him move back in and generally lay around drunk and smoke cigars for a week. I vowed to come in and tend to the plant every few days but it didn't happen. When I came back, the poor damn thing was absolutely decimated by the bugs. I applied some other horrible chemical but it just made the thing stink like Hell. Well, my fault. I knew this would likely happen. I had remained fairly optimistic because it was such a robust beast of a plant. No such luck. Then I figured: well, this happens when they come inside. Why don't I kick it out the door for a week? So I wheeled it out through the garage of the Biomedical Research Building and placed it in the Southern sun. The weather is still nice and it should come back like a champ as long as no one screws with it.

Well, that was folly. It took approximately 15 hours for someone to turn the whole damn thing completely upside down and kick a hole in the side of my new pot. Now, I have no illusion as to the risk I take when I take stuff to work and leave it within the grasp of the general public. I will not use this as an opportunity to spout a diatribe against the human filth that seems to surround me every time I venture out from home or work into any part of society. But, c'mon now! One night? Bunch of savages in this town! I really just couldn't be mad. I couldn't. Whoever did this surely suffers enough just being the kind of person he or she is. There is no beauty in their world. They will never respect anything that is not theirs and therefore will never have the ability to have any self respect. Good. They will never even understand the way they suffer or that their acts broadcast this fact so surely. Or whatever those pronouns and stuff are supposed to be. This is what I get for trying to make to world a smidge more beautiful.

So I just left the damn thing. The pot disappeared shortly thereafter and the frost that came the next week took care of anything that was left of the plant. Maybe I'll try again in the spring.
Maybe my co-workers will lynch me.


Then,

A few weeks later we had a potluck at work. We've been doing this once a month for almost a year now and it's been a freaking hoot! Someone will come up with a theme and six or eight of us try to make a dish working with the theme. Amazing things result. Some of us are real kitchen tinkerers, foodies and what-have-you. Some of us are modest cooks, but given the proper inspiration, find a great recipe and produce something we would not have on our own. It's cool how powerful the themes are. Sometimes everyone is seemingly touched by God in the kitchen and each dish can be seemingly only described as "inspired". Other times we get a theme that we really struggle with. But I have to say I've never had a bad dish. It's either great or absolutely amazing. For the September potluck, I had purchased a counsel that houses two electric burners to facilitate food prep for these events. It was pretty damn handy since we are all dumb and make dishes that require loads of work before they can be enjoyed. No one can just bring in a tupperware container, pull the lid off and eat. Hell, no. I bought it so I could make beer-battered sausage right there in the break room (we call it the bubble). Who wants cold, batter-fried anything? Now someone wanted to use it for the current potluck. Fine with me. Except, sure e-God-Damned-nough, it had apparently grown legs and left our lives forever.
Now, .... people,
I have no illusion as to the risk I take when I take stuff to work and leave it within the grasp of the general public. I will not use this as an opportunity to spout a diatribe against the human filth that seems to surround me every time I venture out from home or work into any part of society. But, c'mon now! Ya human piece of apathy! You think I didn't need that? You think we ALL didn't need that??!! My fault. My bad. I...just...can't...get.....mad.

THEN,
Just a short time later, on Friday, October 13th, someone decided to smash up my mailbox and the one across the street. Now, I live in the country. I love it. This will happen. Either by hooligans or a snowplow. Mailboxes in Munson have a very short lifespan (sorry for the bland statement- all of the "short life span" analogies I could come up with were really, really horribly un-PC). I have friends who live in Conventry who have kids puking from their fire escape regularly. And now I'm happy I didn't buy that $200 copper mailbox I was caressing at Smith & Hawken.

"Violated" I believe the word at the top of this post was. I was just about hopping-ass mad about this when it was all put into perspective as I soon found out that as my mail box was being savaged, Pat's world was falling in around him.

If you think Pat got drunk and wrecked his car then tried to sell coke to the cops when they arrived, go HERE.

If you think Pat was being buried alive in a massive blizzard that hit Buffalo on October 13th, and was sitting there alone without electricity or his family go HERE.

Blogging is hard!

Well, the end of summer is always an apeshit-busy time for me. I'm running around like a ninny, trying to live my life in the precious moments I have left before our seven months of slush, snow and misery set in. The house and yard must be winterized. Also my cat has been very ill, so I have been tending to him (sometimes on an hourly basis) since August. That has pretty much sapped my strength for anything else creative. You'd think with all the money he's racking up in hospital fees I would want to entertain myself with something affordable (like whining on a blog). Also, I'm really going to try to keep the blog from turning into a non-stop bitch fest like so many become (If so, I hope to at least make it funny). Both are hard to do when you're cryin' over your best little buddy. As of tonight, he is doing really well and has been on an eating and pooping rampage for 8 days now. I will issue a full report hopefully soon. In the mean time, our bedroom looks like Iggy Pop's suite at the Travelodge- basically a steaming, bio-hazardous pile of syringes and pill bottles.

The trend over the years has been that in the summer, my internet usage is but a fraction of what it is when I can't go outside. This year, I started all this Blogging / Myspace / Youtube silliness in June. It had a pretty fair start, but I surmise that it won't really happen 'till I'm under a pile of snow.

So I hope to see you very soon. Please Keep Checking back. I have been updating and changing my Myspace faithfully every Sunday or Monday. It's become a pretty fun creative outlet and I'm still enjoying it immensely. So maybe give it a glance once a week in the meantime. You don't have to be a member to read the front page.

Thanks
~Jimm