December 4, 2011
answering machine message

It's me, Bomp.  You don't have to call me back.  I'm driving through Northeast Colorado on my way to Milwaukee, Wisconson with a load of--listen carefully Matt Brannon (that's my husband)--Miller Beer!  That's right!  Ha ha! (My dad doesn't drink at all--he has never been interested in alcohol.  But he knows Matt likes beer.) 

And I'll tell you this: the Miller Beer area of Milwaukee is pretty interesting.  It's like a perfectly restored, I don't know, turn of the century kind of place.  If you ever go to Milwaukee, it's worth a tour just to see all the old buildings and stuff.

Alright, so I am signing off. 

Just tooling along through the snow, listening to my Christmas records.  I've decided the best of the three--and they're all kind of crappy--is the Burl Ives.

Thanksgiving Highlights

My dad was deeply disappointed when he learned he would not be able to make it to my house for Thanksgiving.  I felt sad at the thought of him spending another holiday alone in his truck.  Then things turned in his favor.  Suddenly there was a load to drop in Seattle, so Dad would get his home time after all.  On his way here he discovered a route that took hours off his drive time, so he arrived early.  My neighbors said it would be fine for him to park his truck right outside my house (I live in a sort of wooded neighborhood with wide streets, and on a corner, so he could park Big Blue out of the way.)  So, to our mutual surprise and delight, he pulled in just an hour after my sister and her family arrived, surprising them all.  It was a happy way to meet.  In the last couple years I have seen him only for brief periods of time at the truck stop 40 minutes away.

Here are some of the things Dad did during his visit:

1.       Played Barbies.  I’m not crazy about those half-starved, spiky-heeled creatures, and yet they have infiltrated our home.  Most of them have been to the kid-scissors hair salon, have had permanent ball-point makeup applied and are looking a little worse for the wear (why should I protect them when I dislike them so?).  Dad got hold of an old, beaten-down mermaid doll with matted hair and a scratched fin.  He named her Barbara and made her an antagonist.  “Oh it’s OK,” he said, “She’s just got a few hard miles on her.”  He gave her a rough, gravelly voice.  She shouted, “Where are my cigarettes!!!”  This has become one of my daughters’ favorite new phrases.  He also had her do a lot of cussing.  I could hear the string of kid-friendly profanity from three rooms away: “Manure, diaper, droppings, underpants, bottom!”  My girls thought this was the best game in the history of the world.  I muttered things like, “Oh dear.”

2.       Got Choked Up.  At Thanksgiving Dinner he started to say something about how glad he was to be with everyone, and then paused for a moment.  I figured he had lost his train of thought, when he said, “Boy, I’m getting a little choked up, here.”  He then managed that this was the best Thanksgiving he can remember since the last Thanksgiving before his mom died. 

3.       Placed his Order.   Dad’s a big fellow and, I’ll say, no longer spry.  When he finds a comfortable spot on the couch, he is likely to stay there for a spell.  The morning after Thanksgiving Dad was comfortably sitting and called out to my sister and me, “Excuse me, don’t bring me any coffee.  I don’t care for any, thank you.”  Shan said, “Oh no, Dad, did I forget to take your order?”  “I have been sitting here for nearly four minutes,” he said.  Shan poured him a steaming mug of black coffee and delivered it to him at the couch.  He said, “Couldn’t I get some kind of English tea biscuit to go with this?”  Shan came back to the kitchen and told me, “Dad wants an English tea biscuit.  That means he’ll take anything sweet.”  We looked around and found some leftover pumpkin pie.  Shan delivered the plate of pie, along with a napkin and a fork.  Dad said, “Now, can I get a little fork?  I like to take tiny little bites, so my pie will last for my whole cup of coffee.”  Shan dug around until she found the largest, heaviest serving fork I have, and brought it to him with a smile.

4.       Told Stories: He told me about the foundered horse his dad bought for cheap at an auction, and how they spent months caring for her and nursing her back to health.   She turned out to be a wonderful animal.  He told me a story about truck-driver coffee that he was certain would make his “yuppie children…swoon with hatred.”  He talked about the first time he visited the Grand Canyon, and the excruciating donkey ride down that sounded to me like a metaphorical trip into his own, personal deep canyons. 

5.       Disappeared Into the Night:  At about 9 p.m. on Sunday Dad, or “Bompa” as my girls say, fired up Big Blue and drove off into the mystery of the darkness and the road and the vastness of the country’s great territory.  My four-year-old, taking a short break from cussing and shouting out for cigarettes, started to cry.  “Where does Bompa live?” she said.  “What if he gets lonely?  What if he feels scared.”  A couple days later he assured her over the phone that he was quite happy, sitting outside in mild California sunshine and doing a crossword puzzle.  This helped her to feel a little better, though she still imagines him alone in the night and prays that he’ll be OK.

Shelter: A Tent Trailer, Sweet Butter and a Cinderblock Acky-Tack

It was the middle of July at Crater Lake, high in the mountains of Oregon.  They stopped there for just one night, on their way to someplace else.  The first thing Dad did was walk with his father, Ancel, to find the “acky-tack.”  Ancel always liked to know where and under what conditions he would be relieving himself.  After all the outhouses, bushes and dirt holes they had used on wilder trips, the heated, lighted cinderblock restroom was a palace of comfort.

His mom Ruth, meantime, was back at the campsite, standing at a picnic table with her curly hair and wide, round hips.  Maybe she was smiling.  She could have been humming.  She made some simple sandwiches, then locked the big block of commissary butter in the metal cooler.

After dinner the air turned cold and the family climbed into their snug Apache tent trailer, where a gas lantern hissed and glowed.  Wrapped in a sleeping bag with a Hardy Boys novel, my dad was happy.  I mean, so safe and happy and whole.

Sometime in the middle of the night— in the middle of July—it began to snow.  The hush of the falling flakes gave a dreamy kind of softness to the scraping, clattering noise just outside. A bear had come through the trees.  She tried in vain to reach the sweet butter Ruth had locked away.  Ancel woke, stuck his top half out of the trailer and banged a spoon against an iron skillet to scare the bear away.  That butter must have smelled so sweet, though, because the bear wouldn't give up.  Finally, in the early half-light, Ancel climbed out, trudged through the now deep snow, opened the scratched, dented, ruined cooler, tossed the butter into the woods, and went back to bed. 

When the sun had risen, Ancel and dad walked their route to the acky-tack.  There they found a motorcycle that hadn’t been there before.  It was half buried in snow and parked crooked with the front tire butted up against the cinderblock wall.  Inside a man dressed in leather lay curled on the bathroom floor, sound asleep.  He woke when he heard them moving around and explained how he had come to be there.

Seems that just the night before, the summer sky and cool air had lured him out for a ride.  He was enjoying himself so much that he didn’t even think of turning back.  He climbed higher and higher, and got farther and farther away from cities and towns when the air grew suddenly colder and the snow started falling hard and fast.  The roads were buried almost instantly and he could hardly get his bike to move at all.  It was difficult for him to differentiate between the road and the white expanse on either side.  He became disoriented and afraid, wondering if he would freeze to death, when he saw a light shining through the trees.  He didn’t know where the light was coming from and didn’t care.  He steered his motorcycle toward it, and went skidding and sliding along until he bumped into the building.  He went inside and lay down, grateful for the simple pleasures of shelter and warmth.

This is a story my dad told me, and I’m recalling it from memory.  I'm sure some of it is wrong.  I wasn’t there.  I can’t tell you exactly how life was for my dad when he was a boy.  I can tell you that his childhood memories glow like that gas lantern.  They are golden with rubies.  They levitate.  They hum. 

Hunting Krugers

Notes:
1. This is a letter my 4-year-old daughter received this week in the mail.

2. When my dad realized his father was making a joke about using pitch forks to get rid of "Krugers," he felt a great sense of relief.  See, until then Dad had always assumed that his parents enjoyed visits from the Kruger family, because of course they tried to be polite and welcoming whenever the group popped in.  Dad said it something like this, in a squeaky, mock-cheerful voice: "Oh, hi, wonderful, yes it's Sunday afternoon and we would just love to stop relaxing quietly and cook a big meal for you while your children tear our house to pieces.  Oh boy."

Dad had always assumed that he alone dreaded the Kruger visits.  On that day he not only figured out the grown-up joke on his own, but came into a sense of common understanding with his mom and dad.

3. "Unga" is a nickname we grandkids developed for my dad's father, Ancel.

The ol' Fig Newton

November 15, 2011

7:30 a.m.

I’m in Andrews, Texas.  That’s in the panhandle.  Last night I slept in Lubbock, Texas, birth place of Buddy Holly.  And speaking of that, on another occasion I slept in Clear Lake, Iowa, where Buddy Holly passed into the arms of Jesus, as they say, over an abandoned corn field.  I was parked along the same corn field where he was killed.

It’s like I told your brother, Chris: it’s just another Mike Dugan Brush with Greatness.   I could write a whole book about it.  It would be all about me standing in a ditch or me with a bunch of shopping carts or me next to a corn field, but it all ties in with famous people one way or another.  Hey!  Remember the time I almost ran over Bill Nye the Science Guy on his bike and he gave me the Fig Newton?

No, I told him.  I don’t remember.

So he told me about a trendy little pub near the Fremont Bridge in Seattle where famous people like to have their lunch.  It was years ago.  He had just left work in a company pickup, and was only blocks from this trendy pub when he realized he had forgotten something.  So I wheeled into a parking lot to turn around and I’ll tell you (here his voice gets a little small and squeaky when he says) I was being a little bit aggressive with my driving.  Anyway, in comes Bill Nye on a ten speed.  We were on a collision course.  I had to slam on the brakes and kick up all kinds of gravel just to avoid killing him.  He probably talked about it on the David Letterman show later.  Brush with greatness.”

Also there was the time Curt Cobain was in my insurance office.  This was before they got super famous.  I was chatting with him about how he and his associates had been on this tour of the Deep South, wearing their grunge style clothing and whatnot.   You can imagine how that went for them.  You know, “Hi.  We’d like to order some hamburgers, please.”  “Get out of here you hippie, faggot communists!  Go eat your hamburgers in your home country of Russia!”

Note: "Fig Newton" is my dad's word for "finger."  When I was a child he might have said, "Poke it with your fig newton," or "Come here and hold onto Dad's fig newton."  Of course, in Bill Nye's case, we're talking about one Fig Newton in particular.

P.S. I learned today that Dad wasn't able to get home time for Thanksgiving Day.  So, think fondly of him as you sit down to feast.  He'll be alone with Big Blue, eating truck stop nachos and hard boiled eggs.

The Moon's Healing Nectar

4:30 p.m. on Thursday

Dad says, "Livvy, the full moon in North Dakota is beautiful.  Yesterday, in Nebraska, I took a picture of the full moon at dusk.  I used my little camera phone.  I don't know how the picture turned out, or if it's even still on the phone somewhere.  But the moon was perfect.  Now, tonight, it's full dark in North Dakota, and the moon is shining."

Sidebar from Spokane: last night late I walked into the dark kitchen and saw the world outside the glass door glowing with a kind of translucent indigo.  So of course I walked right outside in my bare feet and pajamas.  The ground beneath me might as well have been the surface of the moon--that's how cold it was.  I stood there, shivering for a moment and whistling for my dog Ginger, who bounded cheerfully through the sea of soft light and warmed me with a flurry of unsolicited licks. 

I'm glad I don't have to travel all the way to Nebraska or North Dakota to get a look at the full moon.  What a generous body it is, to share its light so freely.  I'm glad my dad receives moonlight for free no matter where he is, and that he drinks it up like nectar, growing strong, a god of the highway on his throne, looking down with benevolence on all the little Fords and Chryslers.

The Record Player

I called my dad and, as usual, he was driving.  The rush of road noise mixed with a blaring radio made it difficult for him to hear me. 

"Hello?  Hello!  Oh, Olly!  Hold on a minute, let me turn down the record player."