The.First.Words.She.Spoke.

The Tip Top Deluxe is in a westside neighborhood on the border between a blue collar neighborhood and a bit of industry. Down the street past some older houses is a sprawling iron and metal recycling facility. There’s a city maintenance yard and a Coca Cola bottling plant nearby, each two blocks in opposite directions.

The building must have once been a neighborhood store. Today, the exterior is plain; solid, but not fancy. The door faces the side street and above it hangs a jaunty sign sporting the retro Tip Top logo. Just inside is a small room that functions as a vestibule with the johns off to the right. On a music night the band’s merch table takes up most of the space. The bar is through a door on the left; past the doorman who’ll take your money and stamp your hand.

The night Deb and I went to see Sarah Borges open for The Bottle Rockets, we parked along the curb nearly under the sign. And as we arrived at the stoop, Sarah and a couple bandmates burst out the door.

“Oh, my goodness,” I said in an exaggerated way, but she didn’t recognize me yet.

I had met Sarah through my brother. I think he is practically a patron and has been a fan since he was going to M.I.T. and she was a local phenom. She has done a couple crowdfunded albums in recent years. As a poor vagabond sailor, I chipped in just enough to get the music.

The last five summers or so, when Tim and his family are back in the States for a visit, Tim has hired Sarah to perform at a garden party on Boston’s south shore where his family reunites with their Boston friends and former neighbors.

Deb, Sarah, The Bottle Rockets and I

A few years ago, Tim dragged me to a recruiting event for his company. I was visiting out east on a vacation. Though I had resisted doing anything work-related, Tim finally insisted that I go. As we set up an ice cream social in a room at M.I.T.’s student union, Sarah walked in with her guitar case! Tim, ever the patron, had hired her for the event. It was gourmet ice cream and acoustic rock and roll.

As she walked in, Sarah apologized that she hadn’t had enough change for the parking meter and the time allotted. As if by magic, Tim poured an amazing number of quarters into my cupped hands.

“Go fill Sarah’s meter,” he said, “I’ve got to go pick up the ice cream.”

Thus, I found myself walking across the quad at M.I.T. with Sarah to find her car. She was dressed for a casual afternoon acoustic jam in a mini skirt and cowboy boots. We must have been quite a sight mingling with all the future engineers and computer scientists but had a nice walk and a pleasant chat about music and family.

Back at the Tip Top, Deb and I found a booth and as Sarah passed by, Deb pointed to me and asked her: “Do you remember this guy?”

“Hey, um …  your brother is … Dawson-Townsend, in Switzerland. And you’re just Townsend” Sarah declared.

Sarah’s latest album was produced by Eric “Roscoe” Ambel. He also produced the last couple Bottle Rockets albums. Roscoe has an amazing musical pedigree; including having been Joan Jett’s original lead guitar player in the late 70s. Roscoe was playing for Sarah on this tour and the Bottle Rockets’ rhythm section, bass and drums, were the rest of her band for the night. Apparently, they had all met on an Outlaw Country Cruise, Sarah had been scheduled as a solo act, but a borrowed pick up band -- these same guys -- was organized. She and her gathered crew put on a killer set of rock and roll. They played a lot of Sarah’s new music; peppered with old favorites and the go-to songs from her back catalog. With a short break after Sarah, The Bottle Rockets took the stage and after two or three songs, I wandered out back to find Sarah.

“Do you smoke?” Sarah asked and I shook my head. “Well, if you can hang out a minute, I want to chat.”

Sarah took care of her business with the club as Roscoe sat near the merch table eating a sandwich. Soon Sarah and I went outside to the crisp air on the sidewalk. She lit a smoke and ...

“So, how’s the boat?” she asked! The.First.Words.She.Spoke.

Suddenly I was lost. Disoriented. Blood thrummed in my ears as my heart pounded. Misty stars floated in the air. Seagulls cried. Waves crashed and hissed against a beach. The.First.Words.She.Spoke.

Now, I wasn’t on the make that night. I was honored that she even recognized me. But Men are often ridiculous about inappropriately projecting our affections on any woman who is remotely nice to us. We are even worse about imagining that woman is projecting affection in our direction. But when a woman asks a sailor about his boat -- FIRST.

Well, that was almost more than I could handle appropriately.

Despite my swimming sweaty brain, we had a nice chat. It was more than surreal standing out on the sidewalk, after just watching Sarah rock the house at the Tip Top, and talking with her about her son, life in Boston, and my niece and nephew, whom she had seen more recently than I.

Anyway, I think Sarah’s been on the road since her late teens. She has heard it all and has probably had to shut down all kinds of harassers and interlopers. I’ve seen her burn hecklers into silence from the stage. Moreover, I’m in no position to offer her anything. But.The.First.Words.She.Spoke.

And besides, I can’t decide if she and Roscoe are a couple or just musical partners. She told me, nodding to the black Suburban at the curb, that they like traveling together. I also read an article where she referred to him as her “partner in crime.” Each of these could equally refer to a professional relationship or something more.

There was a couple at the Tip Top who I know are also Michigan friends of Sarah’s. Inside, she stopped by them a couple times to chat. I really don’t know, but I think I was the only one to stand outside on the sidewalk for a chilly, extended chat.

If nothing else, I like to think that I might have made Joan Jett’s guitar player a little jealous.

Lost Dancer in Memphis

Dave was distracted, but not by all the noise around him. The grill cook rattled his utensils like a mad jazz drummer. The dish washer clattered away at a huge pile from the morning rush. Chit chat and rumor buzzed amongst the remaining booths. It was mid morning and breakfast was well over, but the regulars hung around trading gossip and bad puns. Dave’s brain swirled like the creamer in his coffee. A beige puddle collected in his spoon after he’d set it down. He looked out the window and thought, so this is North Little Rock.

He had gone to Memphis to find her, but hadn’t. In escaping with his life, he had only just kept his freedom. The jury was still out on that too. Another bad pun.

As the stoneware coffee mug touched his lip, the warm memory of her kisses swept back over him. He recognized the frosted glaze atop the brown mug; a copy of a classic pottery design that had originated in Ohio. God ... Ohio. They had fallen in love at a small college in the Miami Valley. Dave was there because of his father’s connections. Toni had enrolled because of the well known classical dance program. Her family was from New Orleans, but she had been raised in Memphis. A dark beautiful mix of voodoo and soul, she had been life changing. She had been his. And then she’d left him for New York and an Off Broadway gig.

His Mother should have loved her. Toni sang in the church choir. Her voice was beautiful, clear and strong. You could get religion just hearing her sing. But his parents had reacted in a completely unexpected and backward way. The relationship had brought up issues that he had never had to confront back home. His Dad felt their relationship threatened his position on the school board. On the phone, his Mother had just cried and cried. In the confusion and frustration, he had paused when he should have been strong. He had been weak and indecisive at the most perfectly tragic moment. That’s when Toni had left for New York without him.

She was hurt. There was more crying on phones. He had never wanted to let her go. Constraints he no longer accepted had stopped him from helping her pack, driving her to New York and staying there with her.

Soon Toni had lost her bearings somehow on the Great White Way. The demands were steep and the pace was frenetic compared to the genteel South she had known. Just as the bright white lights of the marquee never quite reach the damp grit of the street, she had never quite fulfilled her dreams. She had gone back to Memphis and had gotten into some trouble; a mistake with a local tough guy, Tavo. Now she, and her newborn child, were hiding.

In Memphis, Dave wasn’t expected in the neighborhoods where he searched for Toni. He was a pale, freckled Midwesterner. Everyone there seemed to know all they needed to know about him yet he knew nothing of them. But then he had found Toni’s sister. And he found Tavo too. The sister had told him Toni was in Texas. The tough guy had told Dave he was going to be dead.

“Is that all, Hon?”

The waitress jarred him back to North Little Rock. Dave hadn’t remembered eating the pie, or finishing the coffee, but there it was — an empty plate, a thin, cold puddle in the bottom of the mug, the messy fork draped across the plate, and the dirty spoon. He hadn’t used the knife. He hadn’t expected to use a knife. It was a deadly surprise for Tavo that he’d even had a knife.

“Yeah … thanks,” he said slowly.

He couldn’t go back to Tennessee, but as soon as he got to Austin, he could tell Toni that she and her baby were safe.

===

Note: This is an old short story of my polished up. 10/01/2018.

The Cop and the Corn

I’ve written before about the DOT regulated hours I have to track as a truck driver. I can drive for eleven hours a day, but once I start, I have just fourteen hours of on-duty time in which to drive that eleven. A ten hour break resets these clocks.

I had just started driving again for a company where I had driven before. Its a three-beer-story, but I had three trucks in my first eight days after two of them died on me. The second broken down truck was still at the dealer in Savannah. I had to abandon that truck and got a ride from another driver back to Florida. That truck is still waiting on parts in the back corner of the dealer's lot with most of my stuff there too. I wrote about my broken trucks saga here in a post about earning boat money.

I picked up a load in Alabama and delivered in Douglas, GA.  I had just enough time on my clocks to backtrack to Albany for a load; 44,000 lbs of Coors Light bound for Smyrna near Atlanta. About an hour up the road from there, I had to stop for the night (my night is usually midafternoon to midnight). My appointment for the next morning was at 10:30; a terrible time given the usual morning traffic in Atlanta.

After checking with Google Satellite Maps, I knew there was lots of parking at my delivery location. So I left quite early to avoid the traffic and arrived at 6:00a for my 10:30a appointment. There’s lots of beer drinkers in Atlanta, so there were lots of trucks waiting to deliver to the beer distributor that morning. It was almost 1:00p by the time I was unloaded and ready to roll.

My next load assignment had two pickup stops. The first was about 40 miles away, back through Atlanta traffic -- and needed to be picked up before 2:00p. I started rolling before I had a specific address. Once I had that address I had to message dispatch that I couldn’t make it before 2:15 or 2:30p.

My truck GPS was still in the broken truck sitting in Savannah.  I was using my phone and wandered through some sketchy country roads near Hampton to get to an old, repurposed warehouse. All that rushing around for two skids of no brand windshield washer fluid.

The next stop was up near Stockbridge. I managed to find that next warehouse tucked in a suburban shopping district and got loaded with Chinese imitation YETI coolers. My fourteen hour clock was running out and I had only driven about five hours of my eleven for having waited all morning to unload the beer.  There was nowhere to park a semi in the neighborhood.

Dispatch had a grand plan to get me through Savannah to pick up my stuff. The two stop load I had was bound for Hope Mills, NC. Then I was to pickup a load in Clinton, SC to go to Fort Pierce, FL; passing right through Savannah with a stop for my stuff. The trouble was that the Clinton vendor was notoriously slow to load a trailer. Hundreds of big-but-light boxes of plastic storage bins are loaded by hand on to the trailer floor -- no pallets. I had to get there in one jump and take my break while they loaded me. Otherwise, I would not have time to get to Savannah during business hours. I had to make business hours on Friday or I would have to wait until the following week, on another load, to swing by and get my stuff.

Here’s where the fun begins. My trip from south of Atlanta to the other side of North Carolina was reasonably uneventful. There was an accident involving three semi trucks and a ten mile backup, but luckily it was on the other side of the highway. The eastbound lanes got bound up by rubberneckers slowing down to gawk at the accident but I was through in just a few minutes. The rest was not a leisurely ride, I only stopped once for coffee -- to get rid of some and to get some more. Old Trucker Proverb: You don’t buy coffee, you rent it.

I arrived at the Hope Mills warehouse and had to scramble to find an empty trailer. There were two choices: one trailer wouldn’t be unloaded for a couple hours, the other was hidden in a back corner of the lot. I had about 200 miles and little less than four hours to drive, so I had to move. When I found the empty trailer, someone had left me about 20 pounds of field corn spilled in two sprawling piles. My broom was hanging on the back of the truck in Savannah.

I grabbed the trailer and headed for South Carolina; flying. The next load was almost all the way back
to Georgia and I barely had enough time. About halfway there was a truckstop that I remembered was easy off and back on the highway, so I planned my attack. When I arrived, I jumped off the highway, ran into the store, and bought a broom, some garbage bags, some supper and a granola bar for breakfast -- then tore off down the highway again. I watched my diminishing drive time and the ETA on my phone all the way there.

I arrived with just six minutes to spare. Now the trailer needed to be swept as I hadn’t been able to take the time yet. Once the trailer was swept and I scooped the corn into a couple garbage bags, there wasn’t a dumpster to be found. Many warehouses give little or no thought to the needs of drivers. Other places have grown sick and tired of messes some truckers leave behind. At least this place had an indoor bathroom that we all could use. I tossed the bags of corn on the catwalk behind my cab and checked in with the shipping office.

I slept at the dock and finally felt them start loading me. I slept some more and then woke to the metallic sound of the dock plate being retracted from the trailer; the perfect ringtone for a trucker’s alarm. In front of the shipping office, the trailer was sealed, the paperwork signed and then I moved off to a corner of the lot to sleep a little more. Now I could time my departure to hit the dealer in Savannah mid morning and reunite with my stuff.

Up at 2:00a for my morning ablutions and a pit stop, I was ready to roll at 3:00a but still had to do something with the bags of corn. I decided that since corn was natural and I was out in the country, I could just dump it. No one would be surprised by a pile of corn in the road. I didn’t want to just dump it in the warehouse lot like a bad trucker cliche, so I pulled out onto the road, stopped in the left turn lane and threw on my four way flashers.

It was still dark when I exited the cab and stepped back to the catwalk. Just as I sliced open the bags and started dumping the corn onto the road, a couple pairs of headlights passed over my shoulder heading toward the warehouse. Crap, I thought, shift change. Attention was not something I wanted just then.

The bags were almost empty. And then a sheriff squad car crept by on the other side of the truck. As he pulled in front of the truck, my heart sank. First I wondered how much a ticket for littering might cost. Then I remembered I was in the south and I might end up in front of some unamused judge after languishing for a couple days in the local drunk tank. My thoughts became a horrifying mix of Buford T. Justice, Barney Fife, and the littering trial saga in the song, Alice’s Restaurant. There was a twist of twine and a few cups of remaining corn as I struggled to wad the bags up. I leapt back into my truck and tried stuffing the mess into my little trash bag.

The sheriff that approached my door couldn’t have been 25 years old. He was squeaky clean and way too alert for 3:00a with a perfectly polished smile straight out of the Laurens County High School yearbook; probably a former quarterback. His grandfather was probably the judge I’d be seeing later in the week. My gagging trash bag finally swallowed the tangled mess of twine and corn and I sat up in the driver’s seat just as Sheriff Dreamboat stepped beside my door. 

“You good?” was all he asked.

“Yes … yessir, I am,” I choked.

He waved, spun around to his car and drove off. 

I’m still confused.

Did he see the corn on the road? Did he think it was someone else’s?

He probably thought I was taking a leak behind the cab at the catwalk; a notorious trucker peeing spot.

Looks like I won’t be having a baloney sandwich at the county jail tonight.

I’d rather be lucky than good.

This is long but it's a classic Vietnam draft era protest song:

Bonus Track from Todd Snider:

An Empty Square

[Please note, I wrote this in my journal about a year ago, I wasn't sure I would ever share it.]



Paula Hosey passed away over the weekend, just shy of her 53rd birthday. The news was difficult and a sharp pain to my heart. She was the first girl with whom I used the phrase “go steady.” It seems a little silly now using those words in fifth grade, but we did. Those were the days when anything was possible and we, and all our friends, lived with hardly a worry or a care.

Back at Galewood Elementary, fifth grade I think, for Paula’s birthday I wrote her a poem and got her a flower. It was March, forty some years ago, when I trudged through snow over to her house. When I knocked on the door, the house was filled with her girlfriends and I had stumbled into a birthday sleepover or something. I can vividly remember realizing that one leg of my pants was scrunched up on top of a snow boot. When I bent over to straighten that leg, I realized to fix it I would have to expose my long john underwear to all those girls -- a fraction of inch, mind you. I stood back up and left the pants where they were -- and I probably turned red, because that’s what I often did back then. No one else likely noticed or cared, but they did all coo about my poem and flower. I felt pretty cool and the walk back home was a little warmer.

In fifth grade, you don’t go steady for long.  We were always friends and sang together with friends in an act that tried out for our high school band's variety show; the Band Bounce. Just after we all started high school, Paula’s family had to move. I wrote another poem for her which I don't remember besides the last line which was something creative like “I sure will miss you, Paula.”

A couple years after though, I did get to see Paula again when a family camping trip took us through Williamsburg. And recently, we had been in contact on Facebook.

For many many years I had a journal containing my poems. Most of them were not very good; either sappy and lovelorn or an obvious attempt to impress a girl. It contained that last poem I had written for Paula. On that page I had drawn a square where I was going to stick her last school picture. I never tracked down a picture and all those years later it was just a square with “Paula” written inside it.

When I got divorced a second time, I moved out of the house in a hurry. That is not a story for today, but I grabbed my possessions on the fly, deciding what was important and what to simply abandon as I loaded my car. That journal of poems, a hard bound, unlined book with no writing on it’s spine, escaped my attention. Weeks or months later, it was an abrupt, strangely physical sense of loss when I realized that I was missing all my poems.

Ever since I heard this weekend that she was gone, my heart kind of feels like an empty square with the word “Paula” written inside.

I Couldn't Find Any Sleep

I Couldn't Find Any Sleep
(first draft, incomplete?)

I tried to get too much done yesterday

And when I finally laid down

(short nap before a night shift)

I couldn't find any sleep

In the jungle that is my disquieted mind

The hurly-burly of all my schemes and aspirations

Howled like monkeys at sunset.

===
Image used without permission. Stolen here.

Vivid Un-medicated Flashbacks (and the links to prove it).

I had the strangest load last month. For those of you who don't know, my part-time gig is delivering to CVS stores. I usually have 3 or 4 stops on a trailer. This load was to Tequesta, West Palm Beach - and then, Longboat Key. If you don't know Florida geography, Tequesta is about an hour south of me here on the Treasure Coast. West Palm is a little further south, but Longboat Key is all the way across the state - on the Gulf Coast!!

Longboat Key lies off Sarasota and to get to the CVS about halfway up the island, I had to go straight through Sarasota, across the John Ringling Causeway, over Bird Key, around St. Armand's Circle, across the northern arm of Lido Key and finally over the New Pass Bridge to Longboat. These are my old stomping grounds; full of ghosts and vivid flashbacks. I didn't suspect a thing as I drove across the state from West Palm, over FL-70 and up I-75.

As I crested over Bee Ridge Road, I realized I was going to pass the original shop where I started a plastics business in the mid 90s. It's Florida, so the whole area was much more developed than it had been. Nevertheless, I went by the site where the line between right and wrong got paved over for my ex-wife. I had another plastics guy as a business partner and our financial partner had locked us out of the building we were working in. Under the cover of darkness, we stole all our stuff -- from ourselves -- and started the business all over again across town, under a new name, without a financial backer. I squinted from the highway but couldn't tell exactly where the little shop on a cul-de-sac had been, but it was definitely gone.

Next I exited at Fruitville road. This exit had been redone since my near fatal road rage incident almost 25 years ago. Just west of the highway was super-developed with retail, but the original plaza I knew appears to still be there. It was there, halfway through a long day at the shop, that my partner and I were looking for some lunch and spotted a couple ladies walking along the plaza. As we crept by, totally obviously checking them out and got right alongside them - leering - and it was my wife and a friend!! Worse yet, Don had been checking out my wife, whom he didn't get along with. And I was checking out the friend!

A little further down Fruitville Road was the apartment complex where Cindy and I lived. It was also the site where a sheriff deputy showed up and served her with the paperwork showing that I was getting sued for $600,000. We'd been married less than a year - image coming home to that kind of news!

I didn't turn up Beneva Road to see if the Circus City Trailer Park was still there. I spent about a year at the park in a little 22 foot Prowler travel trailer. However, just a few blocks down Fruitville was the gas station where I got my propane to cook.

Further down the road I went by the Office/Drafting Supply store that made copies for me of a complete set of plans for a fifty foot trimaran. One of our customers had got all misty-eyed when he discovered we had a company subscription to Multihull Magazine. My Emma is nearly the complete opposite of a multihull but I had always thought I might build one. This customer had built the 50' trimaran in California in the early 1970s. Apparently, the man's son was not happy that he had let me copy the plans.

When I got to US41, I craned my neck but it looked like Walt's Fish Market was gone(moved apparently). My business partner and a friend/consultant, who was an economics teacher at Bradenton High School, used to go there for happy hour and stuff ourselves with steamed mussels and smoked mullet. It was often all I had for supper on a Friday.

Left onto US-41, and then a right onto the John Ringling Causeway was a little tight in a semi, but I chanced a look at the docks on the east side of Golden Gate Point. I had a Southern 21, which I had bought from our cardboard salesman, docked there. It was here that I got a round of applause for ghosting into my slip under sail. A little old lady, and her very protective daughter, lived on the first floor of the building she owned and rented the adjacent docks pretty cheap.

Next was Bird Key, a gated community, hence I didn't hang out there. Yet years after leaving Florida, when my second wife and I were auction hounds, we shipped a music box to Bird Key. I had found a rare music box at an estate sale. It was lacquered brass with intricate engraving. Inside was a little, realistic looking bird. When opened, the bird popped up and the box sang like a bird rather than playing music. My wife and I sold it on eBay for about $600.

Next up was St. Armands Circle, another interesting spin in a semi. The ‘circle’ means traffic circle with a park in the middle, boutique-y shops and over-priced restaurants around the outside. I once had a terrible blind date at a little place called Hemingway's. On the way out and back, I just put my four-way flashers on and took up both lanes around the circle. (I did yield for a few pedestrians.)

Around the northern elbow of Lido Key, it looked like the Old Salty Dog bar is something else now(actually, maybe it’s still there). I did a lot of sailing by myself, but one evening with a couple guys along, we were sailing out to the ‘Dog’ for supper. A few boats beat us to the turn west toward New Pass. We followed them in. All of us were "Wing & Wing" as the evening offshore breeze was behind us. It wasn't long after we turned that the other sailors started yelling at us. They were in some kind of race back to the Sarasota Sailing Squadron and our sails were blocking their wind. We just waved and carried on. The wind was very light and by the time we actually tied up to the dock, the kitchen was closed. Supper that night was beer and potato chips.

I barely recovered from that flashback when I was crossing the New Pass bridge to Longboat Key. Just outside the bridge, on the Gulf-side, is a party cove where I spent my last Fourth of July weekend in Florida. My buddy Tom and I got out to the cove early to get a good spot, but a no-name storm was going by out in the Gulf. We spent the night in winds approaching 30 knots with just an 8' sand dune between us and the storm. The anchor line was tight like a guitar string the whole night.

On Longboat Key, I drove past all the resorts starting with the Key Club on the south end. When I drove a cab in Sarasota, most of what I did was run tourists back and forth between the airport and these resorts. Tips were good on the way out because vacation had just started, everyone was excited, and no one was counting their money yet. The way back to the airport was a little somber and less lucrative.

The CVS is about halfway up the key. After the delivery, all that travel was just reversed; party cove, Lido Key, St. Armands, Bird Key, and the John Ringling Causeway bridge. Here I could finally safely and clearly see the anchorage where I had a boat for eighteen months or so. Back then, 60 or 80 boats were anchored there for free; about a third were liveaboards. Today, it's a state-regulated mooring field. Last I heard, it's about $275 a month - not bad for a place downtown.

Sunday mornings at the anchorage meant breakfast at O'Leary's. Whoever got there first had to buy the paper. When the rest of us wandered in - rowed ashore actually - we perused the random, left over newspaper sections.

I used to tell people I was a bi-athlete. Each morning I rowed about 50 yards to shore, unlocked my bike from the palm tree, locked the dinghy with the same chain and then pedaled to work.

I couldn't quite see the park and O'Learys past Marina Jack's but my brain was exhausted from all the flashbacks. I was a little delirious all the way out of town and back on the highway. Northern Indiana and Detroit are two other places where I've spent enough time that a simple drive through can be full of ghosts.