The Retiring General

Civil War era? I couldn't quite telll. The vibe was there, but the uniforms weren't quite right. The way we interacted was different, not temporally appropriate, and I could swear I was seeing electric lights and fax machines in some offices as I moved through the mansion.

The General was mustering out. I didn't know if we were in 1862, 63, 64, 65, or when, but the guy had had enough of it all, and he was done. He'd submitted his paperwork, a simple and surprisingly short letter. I'd delivered it to the superior, and it had been accepted only hours later. So now it was time to move the general on out. Time to update his awards and decorations, and it turned out he was a good five years behind on wearing and accounting for all of the medals and such he'd earned in the war, on the frontier, all of that stuff. As they were read out and confirmed, I helped the general pore through the little partitioned box of pins and badges and medals and ribbons. A lot of them were service oriented awards, so the medals just got update stripes or stars or number, tiny little devices that had to be punched into or stuck onto his existing awards. The goddamn things were so tiny it was infuriating. Sure, it's great to get a military decoration, but to go through all of this shit just to show you've been in 18 battles instead of 15? I didn't see the utility in any of that.

No one seemed to care about his replacement, either. I guessed the deputy, the assistant general guy would step up and take over, as is usually the SOP. There didn't seem to be any drama about the guy leaving in the middle of a war (the apparent war, that is), no anxiety about finding a man as able and enthusiastic as him to lead the men. Me, I didn't really care either, and apparently I was the aide de camp, or at the very least on the adjutant's staff.

And out the door he went.

Scummy Caribbean

The path down to the beach area, and the actual beach area itself told me enough about what I was in for. It was like the Spanish Riviera coast I'd been to as a kid, so many visitors for so many years that the underbrush was a web of interconnecting trails, around big bushes and trees, all headed more or less to and from the beach. Lots of trash around, old and new, big and small. And move to far into the woods in any direction and you're knee-deep in the urine and excrement of 200 years of bathers. I was not impressed with this opening salvo of the vacation experience.

So it was down the dusty/sandy trail, and a little rancid lagoon of water filtering through the sand, maybe 100 yards from the actual beach. Little open patch of sunlight streaming down, highlighting the discarded plastic. Not a total dump, but more than enough trash to ruin the image completely. A small rock outcropping, with the standard international grafitti, more reasons to be depressed.

And through the woods to the old red brick building. The windows and doors gone years and years ago, sand moving in and out with the tide. The placid sea lapping right up to the threshold at the far double-door opening. And inside, a huge open room, wide and long, with no columns inside. The guys were in some kind of small cars, zooming around on what looked like an amazingly smooth and preserved wood floor. Impossible, sure, given the conditions, but there it was.

Out through the door and into the warm, ankle-deep water. Across the bay we could see the drunken motorcycle soccer match going on. The locals on big powerful bikes, street bikes, scooters, dirt bikes, all with one hand on the gas and the other gripping huge magnums of pink champagne. I could see the pink froth and mist as they struck at the ball, as they spilled their drinks down their fronts, onto their already filthy t-shirts. The sound was overwhelming, amazingly loud for being a few hundreds yards away. To our front, coral and sandstone rock outcroppings as far as we could see, making it all picturesque; all I could think of was how much of a hazard to navigation all of the rocks would be.

And there was Art McWinkle. I knew the guy, and knew this to be a pseudonym. I had no idea whether I was to call him Thom (the name I originally knew him by) or Alexander DeLarge (a past pseudo I'd heard him use), or Art, the apparent current moniker. So I just sat and watched, looking for a cue.

Art hopped on a bike and sped around the inside of the room. He was nuts, out of control, knocking into people low and hard, like a soccer slide-tackler, going in to take the person out. I could see legs buckling and hear the bones breaking. Lots of screams of pain, and I just got out of his way. No one made a move to stop him, only hushed complaints of how they wished he wouldn't do what he was doing. No confrontation, no direct action against him, all of it instead subdued and quiet, respectful and indirect.

I didn't like the whole setup, and was ready to end this sunny climate holiday right now. I turned for the trashy walk back up to the road.

Steam Cleanin' in the House

I was at home, but it wasn't my current home. It was my dream home, but not in terms of HGTV 'dream home,' but just my home in this dream. Nothing like I would think it would be, but that was the way it was. Whatever.

I was in another room, and came into the main kitchen/dining/family area to hear a huge noise, power equipment. I look around a corner and see the old family kitchen table, the one I inherited from my grandmother, stripped bare. Sure, we'd been thinking of refinishing it for a few years, and there it was, just about there. My first impression was that of an animal without its skin. The wood was a light blond, very different than the dark brown from before, and it was some really beautiful wood underneath, still needing some detailed refinishing. But it was going to be really nice once it was done.

And the noise? Well, it seemed that it had been power-washed, right there in the kitchen. I was suddenly aware that I was in standing water, a good 1/2 inch of it on the floor. As I looked down, I could see the hardwood floor slats starting to warp and buckle, slow-motion-like, like a time-lapse of a flower blooming. Okay, I had a table ready for refinishing, and $8000 in floor replacement now. That was not a good trade-off.

It couldn't possibly have been my wife who was stupid enough to do this, right? The idea to power-wash was pretty good, I saw that, but inside? That was a bit daft.

And then the compressor started thumping again, and the hiss of the hose was going. Whoever was at it was doing it again. I stepped around a corner, and there was Teri, one of the soccer moms on my daughter's teams of which I am coach, power-blasting our antique Gulbransen piano. I couldn't really fathom what I was looking at.

She was fast, and thorough, and why I didn't jump in, I don't really know. The whole thing apparently was modular, as she just pulled parts off the piano, blasted them with the power washer, and then set them aside. Flecks of the ebony finish were flying everywhere, on the walls, floor, ceiling, all over her. The water was sloshing all over the place, flowing out the front door, down the stairs and into the basement. I had no idea what in the holy living bat fuck on a stick was going on.

Then there was the wife? What the hell? Well, she explained, Teri had volunteered to do this, and she liked doing it, and was doing it for free, and was working fast, and blah blah blah. What about the destroyed floor? No answer for that? What about the ruined piano? Refinished, sure, but the felt, the strings, the pedals, all of the internal parts? What about the ruined antique piano, the gift from my dead grandmother? No answer on that one either.

And the water just kept on a-flowin' out the door, sparkling as the sun caught it, throwing really neat designs and reflections onto the ceiling above us, the black flecks in the water like something from a Chihuly work, magnificently random flecks of color in the clear water, the light bouncing.

Back to School

I was back on campus, again, the leafy, stately campus of the undergrad alma mater, in its early fall midwest glory. Pretty much the same as it was before, 20-odd years ago, but some subtle changes. The library had gotten a pretty significant makeover, and looked like a space ship now, not the large white block that it was when I spent days and nights inside, not like that night my girlfriend and I hid in the stacks and got drunk and had deliciously abandoned sex on the reference librarian's desk, and then again (I was that quick?) way down deep in the sub-basement, on the couch outside the map collection, and then a 1-2-3 and through the break-bar emergency alarm and out into the October chill. Man, hadn't thought of that in a while.

Trying to find a place to park, and I suddenly realized that I was driving a big SUV right down campus. Good thing the place was relatively uncrowded, although we were just creeping along. Who the hell was with me? Fellow alum? At least it seemed that way. Over to the north side of campus, where the radio station used to be, the building we climbed one night like a cliff face, using the native limestone blocks as hand- and foot holds as we went right on up the outside, and in a third floor window to poke around and goof off.

So much for the parking, now we were just trying to find a way out. I just wanted to get down to the big avenue at the bottom of the hill which lay only about 200 yards behind the northern line of buildings. But how the hell to get there? Turned behind a building, the Suburban or whatever it was, huge and black and shiny, sluggish yet throbbing with power. Nope, nothing there but two brand-new buildings, with a fascinating dark brick exterior, incorporating what I thought was a brilliant and artistic flash of very subtle red, blue, white, orange, and black tiles under the windows. The building looked low and sleek, modern and sporty, but it was just a brick building. I was impressed.

So backed up and around to the other side. There used to be a parking lot here, with a road down, but no more. How the hell to get down? And then finally, around another building, parked cars and a way out. But an access control point. Not a drop-bar for smart cards, but an actual point controlled by guards. But these guards were students, or at least student-aged people. Both had their oranged vests on, but had put their heads through the arm holes, so the vest draped down their fronts, folded, like some kind of day-glo bib for idiots. I looked, and was relieved to see they had no weapons.

We passed through, down the shaded way and over the speed bumps and out, and I was back up in one of the buildings, moving from room to room for a medical check-up. The guys were very thorough, with a whole team of doctors coming and going to see me. Lots of questions, all about my history, my complaints, all kinds of stuff. They were really paying attention to me.

And then a breakthrough. I'd been having some problem with my feet, and the line of questioning got very detailed, very intense. They didn't let on, but just the atmosphere told me there were moving toward something. They were conferring, nodding, an agreement being reached. Then one doc approached and told me he was happy they'd concurred on what the problem was. And he was even more happy that it could be fixed very, very quickly. Okay, that was good, but he was holding back.

Well, it seems that the nature of the foot problems also was extremely esoteric and rare, something hardly ever seen. In fact the only reason my situation had been caught was that a passing senior research physician had stopped into the doctor's lounge, overheard their puzzled discussions of my feets, and had plugged it into his own highly obscure work, and it had all fallen into place. Huzzah!

Yeah, okay . . . and? Well, what the docs wanted was for my curing procedure to take place in front of a class audience. They wanted to use me as a teaching tool. Okay, that's not a problem, I'm up for that. The doc paused, and I knew that wasn't quite it.

Well, the nature of the problem is a parasitic organism. Yeah, and? Well, it lives and breeds . . . in the rectum. Oh, so I was going to be splayed out and dealt with in front of 300 medical students, any number of doctors with their hands and feet and large, cold medical instruments up my ass? Well, yeah, most likely . . . and the chrome buttock spreaders . . . What!?

The doc intimated that they'd fix me, and quickly, and for free, if I'd agree. If I didn't, well, then they didin't know when they could fit me into their busy schedules, and that they didin't know if I'd get their full concentration on this difficult procedure and . . . Yeah, I got it, doc, cooperate or don't get treated.

Okay, I'll do it, but want to be anonymous to the students. I don't care how, just no face, no identifiers. A curtain or something. The doc volunteered: a hood? Yeah, sure, I don't care. It's not like I need to be seeing what's going on. So, he pursued, do you want to bring your own, or should we give you one? We'd probably just give you a pillow case or something. Sure, that's fine. Or maybe you could make something yourself, something customr, with some padding, maybe a nice collar, form-fitting, with some decoration on the outside, something you'd want to be seen in . . .

And I faded right on out.

Herman Munster Goes High-Tech Fred Sanford

I'm standing there in front of the grotesquely tall Herman Munster, in those ridiculous elevator shoes. He's turned into a high-tech Fred Sanford. It's a sprawling complex of piles and piles of sorted junk. Computer monitors, cabling of all sizes and color, pipes, piles of screws and nails and bolts, all of these massive and surprisingly conical and tidy piles a good 30 feet high. They're all separated and sorted, and I wonder who does all the work.

And there's Herman there in his outfit. The flat head, that bad green-black hair lookin painted on, dripping over the edge of his head, that guileless idiot smile, with 3 big black cell phones and a tool belt, all in immaculate black cordura nylon. Denim bib overalls over a red flannel shirt, work boots, all clean. He's there working with the patience of the truly ignorant, just plodding along, with no urgency, just working.

And there behind him is the (unused) receiving station for the intergalactic mothership. Built for a round ship, like Epcot was touching down, a huge base, like a ball holder, with poles and gantries and the like shooting up around the outside. I ask how he knew what their technological docking requirements, and he just shrugs, opens his mouth in that typical "O" shape, and makes his typical dopey sigh-grunt that tells me absolutely nothing. He's so friendly and agreeable I want to knock him down and kick him in the head.

A few hundred yards away near the edge of the huge cleared area of the yard is the launching ramp for jets or planes or rockets or something. It must be a half-mile long, paved in immaculate white concrete, sloping up gently to a vertical edge a good 300 feet off the ground. I think that it would be amazing for sledding in the winder, and I wonder why the local kids haven't discovered it yet.

And there's the forest of what appear to be transmission towers, a massive and complex communication array for something, out there. It's crowded and tight, visually arresting in its own way.

Farther down the yard are the cranes and gantries and derricks, all lined up, ready to go. I marvel that Herman, as dopey as he is, does all of this on his own, without any help. He just goes back to work on a portable bench, working on something throwing sparks as he grinds it with a wheel.

I wander off to explore a bit.