The Pleasures of Eastern Washington 1: The Mountains

I’m a city kid, ah, but you gotta have some wildness too.  Doncha? Preferably, with plenty of splashing.

I’m cooling off in Lake Leo, named for our trusty correspondent and great friend of Jinx The Cat, Leo Sadorf.  It’s a trout-filled little lake hidden in the Selkirk Mountains of Northeastern Washington, just two hours from our home in Spokane.

If you’re scared of fish nipping your toes, or Grendel maybe, you can go hiking…

That’s my 89 year old mother-in-law beside me. No joke - this lady keeps up with the Pondering Pig on the trail any day and she ignores the doctor’s pleas about osteoporosis.  She can trip over a root, get up, grin and keep going.  Never broke anything yet. What a lady! My Patrushka comes from sturdy stock.

Ah, the August mountains. If you’re a photographer you can wander around and just look through your viewfinder…

We get long winters up here in the North Country, not far from the Canadian border, but the summers are divine and the mountains are near. They’re one of the pleasures of eastern Washington.

Fiddling While America Burns

My plan here at The Pondering Pig is to resolutely continue to fiddle while Rome burns, even though it didn’t work out that well for old Nero.  I’m trying  to hold the hopelessness feeling at bay one more day.

You know the feeling?  It whispers at you like this: “It’s too late for democracy, too late.  The will of the people has been corrupted, they can’t see beyond the end of their nose any more.  The super-rich with pockets deep as mineshafts influence (buy) our representatives to do their corporate bidding.  Our economy is dependent on waging war,  Dwight D. Eisenhower’s nightmare about the rise of the military-industrial complex came true.  Our educated class never studied the Constitution and can’t defend the Bill of Rights because they don’t know what it says.  Our telecommunication industry slathers for profits that will come from spying on citizens for the US government.   Our well-spoken Democrat golden boy candidate - the one so many put their last hope into - voted to exonerate the telcom execs who violated the Bill of Rights by spying on citizens without a warrant.  And on and on.  I could do this for days once I get going.  I haven’t even started on our besieged planet.  It’s that hopeless feeling!

Where’s Abe Lincoln?  Could someone tell him to come up front?  He’s wanted onstage.  Or better yet, where’s Jeff Smith, the idealistic boy scout leader who took truth, justice and the American Way so seriously that he managed to bring down a state’s corrupt political machine through the force of his belief.  (If you’ve never seen Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes To Washington,  or if you saw it a long time ago - it speaks to the moment, believe me.  Worth a fresh look.)

Here is one of Jeff’s key speeches , which, courtesy of IMDB, I quote in its entirety:

Jefferson Smith: [His voice very hoarse] Just get up off the ground, that’s all I ask. Get up there with that lady that’s up on top of this Capitol dome, that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see something. And you won’t just see scenery; you’ll see the whole parade of what Man’s carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. Fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so’s he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed. That’s what you’d see. There’s no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties. And, uh, if that’s what the grownups have done with this world that was given to them, then we’d better get those boys’ camps started fast and see what the kids can do. And it’s not too late, because this country is bigger than the Taylors, or you, or me, or anything else. Great principles don’t get lost once they come to light. They’re right here; you just have to see them again!

Go look for them yourself, and let me know what you find.  Meanwhile, tomorrow we’ll be back with more on Mick and His Mates or somethng equally inane.

Sixties Survivors #2: Mick’s Mates

I used to read Variety regularly when I was in my show business phase, and I always turned to the obits.  I loved finding out about people I never heard of and their interesting lives.

It seems like show business people fall into two camps - either they die of a heart attack in their forties or they live on forever and die when they fall over the wash pail during the big Follies Hanukkah Show  at the Home for Aged Actors in Poughkeepsie or Sherman Oaks at the age of 103.  Either the pressure and the booze gets to you or it doesn’t.  Take your choice.

Rockers are different - they’re immersed in this weird macho rebel culture that revels in self-destruction.  I’d go on at length except you’ve already heard it one hundred million times.  Today I’d rather celebrate Mick and all the other rock survivors.  In fact I think I’ll initiate a new department that will be in such charge of such celebrations.  I’ll start with some other Stones: Hooray for drummer Charlie Watts - already 103 and busy practicing for their next world tour.  And Hooray for Bill Wyman, their original bass player, who makes Charlie look like a pup.  He retired like a man of wisdom and goes to the beach with his metal detector every morning, already over one million years old.  Way to go, Bill!

Sixties Survivors #1: Mick Jagger

Well, well, well - Mick Jagger turned 65 on Saturday, and so joins the rarefied crew of rockers eligible for a pension.  If the Rolling Stones gave pensions, and if Mick was ready to totter off to retirement, which apparently he is not.

Even if you don’t like his music, you have to recognize his success: over forty-five years of survival at the top of a business that, for longevity rates , makes driving a dynamite truck look like stamp collecting.

Congrats, Mick.  Here’s a penny for the old guy.

Now, in case you are wondering what all the fuss was about, here he is at 21, singing their first American hit,  Not Fade Away.

I Pay A Visit To Chet Helms

When I was in San Francisco the other day, I dropped by to visit my old friend Chet Helms.  I knew right where to find him thanks to Greg Hoffman, who is writing Chet’s biography and makes it his business to check on Chet’s whereabouts.

The job’s not too time-consuming.  In fact, for the foreseeable future, Chet will be residing with the artists,  musicians, bankers, captains of industry and possibly Emperor Norton at a swank retirement getaway in the Richmond District known as the San Francisco Columbarium.  Except no one gets away.

I stopped at the reception desk to see if Chet was in.  He was.  The receptionist was new and couldn’t tell me his apartment number, but the manager came out of her office when she heard Chet’s name.

“Are you here to see Chet?”, she asked, implying a certain intimacy.  “You can go right up.”  She rattled off Chet’s rather involved address on the third floor and I pawed for my notebook to jot it down.  She had it memorized.

As I walked up the stairs, I could hear workers below pushing a scaffold across the marble floor below and shouting to each other something about Carlos Santana.   I thought, “Oh no, what new bad news haven’t I heard?” But I checked when I got home later that day and Carlos is doing fine.  I guess they just liked Carlos Santana.  I kept climbing.

Chet’s keeping a low profile these days.  All boxed in, you might say.  Not so long and tall as the day I met him in the summer of 1962…(picture gets all misty and we dissolve through to a busy downtown street filled with gigantic cars and buses all spewing exhaust fumes into the bright air)…

That day I was hanging out at a protest on the steps of the main post office at Seventh and Mission in downtown San Francisco, tuning my Mexican guitar and entertaining the picket line with my faultless impersonation of Joan Baez singing I Am A Rake And A Rambling Boy.

I had nothing against the mail being delivered, you understand.  It’s just that the Federal District court was on an upper floor and the judge was hearing the case against the crew of the Everyman, a trimaran that had sailed into waters scheduled for atomic detonations.  Ka-Boom and all the little fishies were to receive their first dose of strontium-90.  It was the age of “atmospheric testing”, and apparently someone still wasn’t sure if H-bombs worked or not, because they kept testing them and testing them.  I thought it was a bad idea.

The story of that protest deserves to be told in detail - it foreshadows all the demonstrations and sit-ins and eventually the mass student strikes that characterized my youth.  But at the moment I’m looking across the street at the Greyhound Bus Station, watching a  tall, skinny young guy with lank hair and black-rimmed glasses come out of the depot, see the demonstration, and hop over to see what’s up.  And, well, look at that, he’s sporting a peace button.  Yeah, it was Chet, fresh off the bus from Austin, Texas.  I had the fortune to meet him on his first hour in San Francisco, scene of so many destinies, including Chet’s and my own.

I hate to admit it but in those days I only associated with people who passed the coolness test, and was quite ready to snub any  impostor with a Texas accent, but I could not snub this cat.  Chet’s ingratiating smile, his little heh-heh laugh, his unfeigned interest in everyone - within an hour he’d made the acquaintance of  most of  San Francisco’s peacenik community - I liked him immediately.  And he was back the next day, don’t know where he slept.  He was standing right in front that night when the real Joanie Baez showed up and sang on the post office steps to encourage us.  Maybe he tried to sign her for a gig at the Avalon, I get mixed up sometimes.

Funny - all those years ahead of him, full of friends and rock and roll and great parties and fame of a sort, but now they’re over.  Now Chet’s residing in a vase, a big doorstop.  Dust, our common fate.  To quote the prince of Denmark,

“Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”

Oh dear, am I growing grave? At least Chet has his own apartment,  not far from Harvey Milk’s place. And he’ll never have to leave San Francisco again .

So Whaddaya Think? A Legal Question

Here’s a legal question for you.  Say you buy an old house once owned by a famous artist.  While remodeling you discover an original painting behind a rack in the wine cellar.  It is signed and dated by the artist and is unknown to the art world.  It’s clearly worth a lot of money and you are thrilled to be the new owner.  But then the grandchildren of the artist learn about it and sue you.  They say they inherited all the artist’s unsold paintings and even though this one was stored in your new home, by the terms of the will it belongs to them.  Does their claim hold water?  What do you think?

I’m asking because the characters in my novel-in-progress ate faced with a similar predicament and I don’t have a handy judge or lawyer around.  Your opinion could influence the entire course of fictional history!

On To Santa Barbara, Summer 2008

We touched down at the Oakland, California airport a week ago Wednesday (July 9).  I was curious - has the price of gasoline changed California’s famously maniacal driving habits?  I was here to find out.

Actually, I was here to go to a wedding (see I’m Going To California),  but I was still curious to see how Californians, with their wondrous skewed materialism and idealism all slushed together, were facing peak oil.  The cost of housing has driven folk right out to the outer outer suburbs. Towns that used to be artichoke centers or desert spas are full of new subdivisions and professionals who drive 85 miles to work every morning. That’s the distance between San Francisco and Stockton, once an affordable community for San Francisco wannabes who couldn’t afford to buy there.  Or it was popular until their mortgage balloon payments called the game.

Unemployed writer and ponderer that I am, I can afford to sneer, but I don’t.  We’re all stuck in this shit, one way or the other.

Patrushka and I grabbed BART to downtown San Francisco - where you can rent a car for half the price at the airport, and off we buzzed towards the great Beach Boys California to the south.  Good Vibrations, here we come.

The Eyesore Freeway as far as Gilroy is still crammed with giant SUVs hitting 80 miles an hour on their way to somewhere dead important before it’s too late, leaving the Pondering Pig in his rental Dodge Caliber inhaling their carbon dust.  $4.85 a gallon?  Pigeon feed.  I got lunch with Steve Jobs.  Let’s roll!

There’s next to no clunkers on the road, so maybe the $4.85 a gallon has affected the beatniks, layabouts, and other troublemakers who know how to enjoy the coast, but now that I think about it - there never were many clunkers on the Eyesore - this piece of Highway 101 is in the land of big salaries and young cats with two Mercedes and a Hummer in their three car garages.  OK, there’s still the odd gardener burning oil down the Eyesore on his way to the next job, but that cat’s driving a gas-conscious 60.

Me too.  This rental car has cruise control, we got the time and I want to look around.

Gad, I hate to write this.  But I am sworn to the truth, no matter how much it costs: the California coast in July is just as beautiful, just as near perfect as it ever was, even looking out a Caliber car window.  Oh man, why didn’t I rent that white Mustang convertible instead?  I need the top down to watch the wind tousling my baby’s hair.  As soon as we hit the eucalyptus groves north of Salinas, the years melted away, my hair grew out down over my shoulders, the pounds melted off and I popped a Coca-Cola, the kind with sugar. And Patrushka, my gosh, she looks fab in that bikini next to me, just like she did when I first fell in love with her in the spring of 1969.

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Baby, then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do -
We could be married!
And then we’d be happy!
Wouldn’t it be nice?

We stopped for lunch in Pismo Beach.  Is this guy still selling these things?

You know what?  I sat down to write a nice self-righteous diatribe against people still living a sybarite lifestyle with the apocalypse nearly upon us - but damn it, this is California and the myth is just too big to see over. I’m getting those good vibrations!  I can’t raise up the required sourpuss-ness.

Say, isn’t that the curve where James Dean bought it in his Porsche Spyder one  afternoon in 1955?  And isn’t that Dead Man’s Curve, that place you won’t come back from?  And look, isn’t that where that guy in the black denim trousers and motorcycle boots and a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back bought it on the railroad tracks?  And, my gosh, that’s exactly where Brian Wilson’s girl made him come alive, made him want to drive in Don’t Worry, Baby!  Hey Patrushka, stop slathering yourself with Sea ‘N Ski.  Let’s roll!  We got a wedding in Santa Barbara!

I’m Going To California

Patrushka and I leave Wednesday for California - for a week in the home country.  I’ll try to keep a record of how my homeland looks in the summer of 2008.

I’m a little afraid of what I’ll find there.  Will there be a pall of  yellow forest fire smoke over the land?  Will gas cost $5.00 a gallon?  Will temperatures away from the coast top 110 day after day?  Will the live oaks that cover the golden hills be withered and leafless from sudden oak death blight?

We’re going to fly to Oakland, rent a car there, then make our way down the coast 350 miles to Santa Barbara for a big family wedding.  We’ll stay a day, then turn around and roll back up the coast for a couple days in the City before we fly back to the North Country.

I wonder if this will be the last trip of this frivolous kind I ever take.  In a way I’m squandering resources on a trip I don’t really need to take, just as if global warming and peak oil had never happened.  Like most everyone else, I’m having trouble adjusting my worldview.

It’s only my great-nephew’s wedding (gad, that makes me feel old).  If we don’t go, we won’t be missed.  Except possibly for my sister and my niece.  I hardly even know the groom, I haven’t seen him in years.  But I want to stay in touch with that side of the family.  Family is, well family.  You only get one.  And I’m lucky enough to like mine.

Like so many Americans of my generation, I’ve spent my life wandering from place to place.  Itchy feet, I guess.  Wherever I saw a deck of cards I laid my money down.  Now my own kids are scattered all over the forty-eight.  Patrushka and I landed in an isolated little city far off in the northwestern farm country.

My older sister, on the other hand, never left home.  In 1955, she moved across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito where she’s lived in the same house ever since.  Now she is matriarch of a great tribe of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all of whom still live in Marin Country, and some of whom are probably hanging out together at this very moment.  They’re a tightly knit clan, and I, an outsider, a wandering ponderer, look at them with awe and respect.  Good going, guys!

So we fly to California tomorrow to celebrate another wedding in that noble family.  I’ll keep notes and file a report on our return next week.

Photo by Patrushka

Balboa Street, 1949

Walking past the concrete blocks, where the empty lot was, the boy looks up and clambers in, and up the concrete stairs, and sniffs the wet concrete and the concrete dust, and the sun slants, lighting the dust in the three o’clock air.  The boy is coming home from school, the men are building a nunnery.

Concrete blocks, dusty air, alone, the boy scampers across the half-built hallway and hoots through windows where stained glass will sit.  He smells another odor there, in the concrete dust, and sniffs and clicks his heels and hollers soft where black garments will rustle down polished halls in years to come.

Later he finds a teddy bear in the street with its belly torn open, its gray cotton hanging out, and carries it home.

A Birthday Party in the Haight-Ashbury, 1967

By 1967, the original hippies were already raising their kids in the Haight. Here’s documentary proof. While the Summer of Love was going bonkers on Haight Street, two blocks away Bill and Barbara Laird were cutting cake and dishing out cherry vanilla ice cream for their four year old’s birthday bash. That’s the Pondering Pig wondering what’s become of his shoes while his erstwhile wife Linda Lovely decides whether to stick him with her fork. The blondie in the flowered dress with her back to the camera is our daughter Jenny - already four years old.