A Bumpkin Unhinged Sulking Smugly
EZ and I entered The Woods road about 9 p.m. Prismy new snow twinkled in the headlights and a narrow moon deepened orange in the southwest. The sky had cleared an hour earlier and the temperature was plunging; the heater lever in the truck had been nudged hotter, hotter, then fully open as I drove.
It was cold.
Hard to tell how deep was the snow. The road had been plowed a week or two earlier and the ridge needed shoveling for passage into the clearing. That done, I got out, locked the front hubs, climbed into the cab, levered the differential into four-wheel and plunged through twelve inches of snow, aiming the headlights at to the cabin door to illuminate unloading. The outdoor thermometer read minus two.
Having forgotten to bring the Sorrels into the cab to pre-warm, I trudged in street shoes to get the key, cursing a pinwheeling Frankenstein dance through animal tracks. I unlocked and stepped into ten-degree air, heat (relative term) retained by the day's warmth.
It was very cold.
I started a fire, turned on the propane, and yelled a sharp "NO" at EZ who'd taken interest in a mouse-poison cake on the kitchen floor. It had been placed on a high shelf near the paper towel rack. How it found its way to the kitchen floor I can only surmise: earthquake, high winds, shifting foundation, but surely not mice which I am sure have been banished.
The mouse condominium gas stove--featuring split-level atriums and community rooms, back bedrooms and family entertainment dens--was removed years ago. As it was trundled out mice leapt off in droves. A few escaped inside the cabin, others vaulted in arcs with babies dangling from their nipples and landed in the leafy ground. Whole families fleeing into the woods, some wearing only socks and expressions of homesteader's indignation.
Pulling everything away from the inside perimeters while painting the floor this summer, I sealed every crack which could possibly permit entrance. I think I've secured the cabin from outside migration and expelled or killed every mouse. All eight mouse cakes, except one seriously gnawed specimen, are gone. The D-con box is half empty. And, the most promising indicator: the defenseless paper towel has not been nibble-shredded since six weeks ago. Now, if I could only eliminate the red squirrel from inside the airbed.
The woodstove began to huff and whoop, heating the cabin interior to fifty degrees within a half-hour. The outside temperature continued its descent and the stove worked a toilsome chore to raise the inside warmth. I fed it sticks of oak and birch. It gobbled and creaked, moaned, belched, and demanded more. The stove pipe glowed orange as flames poured up the chimney.
By ten-thirty the cabin had warmed to sixty-two and I began to question coming. I could go straight home, now, if I wanted. I'd left the motor idling while unpacking the truck, so it would still be cozy if I decided to leave and resented how the warmth flowed out at me each trip back to the cab. And, I was planning to sleep in this uninsulated, half-glass place where the fire needed stoking every few minutes during the night? I suffered a sermon to myself, chiding the cowardice. Then--following a rebuke from EZ--gave a rousing speech about courage and character, so bucked up and stiffened my lip. I apologized to her for being a cowardly milksop.
So, here I still am nearly two days later. It's Tuesday, a day past New Year's. I haven't died of frostbite. The bedding was actually too heavy, smothering. More danger of being crushed under mountainous weight than freezing to death, I'd carried it atop my head from the sleeper in one trip: three sleeping bags, a baby blue thermal blanket, and a comforter.
The night was not bad. I fed the fire three times before dawn. EZ shared the loft of covers, arising periodically to wake me so she could spin circles and jostle me side-to-side before settling down in exactly the same position where she'd slumbered minutes earlier. I've begun training her to stoke the fire. She's having trouble lifting the hot door from its notch, although doing fine picking up wood with her teeth and placing it through the stove doorway and pawing each chunk in. She's practiced using a stick to push the heated door shut when she's done. She's on first fire duty Wednesday night and has been given an ultimatum: she can be on the bed with me only if she keeps the fire fed during the night.
We drove to Minneapolis yesterday, New Year's Day. I'd been needing a reminder why I prefer not living in a big city and thought a day trip there would be fun. Break out and again experience true life; return to my childhood neighborhood for look around where I'd spent fifteen years during the fifties and early sixties in the northwest reaches of Minneapolis, two blocks from the suburb named Robbinsdale. It was a neighborhood where retired old people lived in big solid houses three feet beside other big solid houses, where boyhood friends lived with drunken parents who slumbered on sofas in early evenings and hollered, "Stop it, Goddamn it," at us laying on the carpeting fifteen feet away in the dining room, drumming lightly with our hands to the rhythm of "Sounds of Silence." I wondered what the alley looked like, how the Dairy Queen next door was doing, whether the funeral home across the street was still there; if Cleveland Elementary school was still in business, half-a-mile away through infinite residential streets.
So, we headed off in bright cloudless sun. Exited Sandstone, turned left onto the interstate entrance ramp, accelerated down, and merged violently into another way of life, where everybody was hurtling three octaves higher than us. Hurrying to get elsewhere and fleeing unshakable hardship.
Speed Limit 70. So I set the cruise at 64 and sulked smugly as a steady stream of gypsies--quietly cocooned inside Lincoln Navigators and Lexus trucks towing fishtailing snowmobile trailers flapping brightly colored nylon covers like broken limbs, whizzed past barging bundles of air.
I settled into the hundred mile ride with Bill Bryson's audiotape Neither Here Nor There.
We missed the turn off highway 100 when I refused to accept that County 52 had been turned into 81 (though this was an intersection I knew by heart from years turning through it on the way out of the city). So I proceeded another mile south, speed limit 55. The artery circled and whizzed past houses quite nearby and signs poorly alerted motorists to stop for this intersection NOW! I slid left into the turn lane and waited, and waited, as onrushing traffic rocked the truck side to side with 70 mph concussions of air.
The left arrow turned green and I let out the clutch, cursed, dopily shifted from fifth gear to first and shrieked the tires in haste with feelings of bumpkin unhinged. EZ and I (she rode up front to stay warm and see better the big city sights) curved through new roadway construction and entered residential stolidity, unchanged since the 1950's. Headed east for a mile, then stopped at the corner where, in fourth grade, I'd been taught to squawk clarinet at Schmidt Music Center across from the Terrace Theater. It was gone. A tattoo parlor selling psychic services and cat essentials struggles there today.
Through the green light and a glimpse at the Terrace Theater--a grand old movie house in the early 60's, with a broad red-carpeted lobby and wide sweeping stairways, and a curving balcony. It's where I saw The Longest Day (twice on one ticket), Cleopatra (I was transfixed by Liz Taylor's fabulous cleavage), and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Today the vast parking lot was snow-bound and the marquee along the street said "NOW R NTING." A strip-mall grimacing in the lower half of the parking lot offered the conventional services: pizza and pawn, check-cashing and liquor, and a furniture rental concern alleging, "No Payments Until 2002."
We turned onto 81 and aimed south into the city. A five-story parking garage constructed to accommodate the swelling demands of North Memorial Hospital patrons now crowds the highway, shading it from afternoon sunlight. Crowning the overpass above West Lowrey Avenue, we crossed into Minneapolis and County 81 became West Broadway.
In the 50's, before a complete reworking of this intersection, a traffic circle sorted out the confluential strife of six or eight side streets. Motorists approaching the circle lurched into the flow, much like a hobo running to catch a speeding merry-go-round. Drivers would zoom into the fray counter-clockwise then veer off smoothly onto their favored route. During rush hour the traffic circle became more stimulating. The rules warned motorists to stay in single file and to proceed sedately, but this was rush hour in the 50's and the automobiles were more ungainly than now, and drivers were eager to brandish their gyrating missiles.
Once caught up in the orbiting festival of inches, with other drivers merging grimly and Dad blaspheming brightly, it was possible to circle endlessly, missing our exit because of the rocking rear end of a big-finned Cadillac obstructing our way. To a five-year old boy, whose seating was assigned behind Dad, this was an entertaining event. A carnival ride with smudgy dead grass and dirty litter of the inner circle blurring outside my left window, neon chicken stands and sun-glinting chrome blurring on the right and Dad Goddamning the bastards who kept hemming him in. Too bad the traffic circle was removed in the late 50's.
EZ and I continued south and suddenly, there it was. The house, the alley, the Dairy Queen (renamed Ronnie's Rib King), the intersection and the funeral parlor across the street, now a Laotian outreach center. I veered onto Upton Avenue North, drove slowly up the hill, gaping at houses I should've remembered well, off to the left where a small woods separated two gas stations. The woods always stunk like humid human shit when I walked through it to Snodgrass's corner grocery for penny candy). One gas station is gone, the other is battered and boarded. Turn right at the corner, past the house where a boy who used to organize and stage garage shows got sick and died under hushed circumstances in 1959. Turn right into the impossibly narrow alley. Half-car garages butt against each other with only tiny whiffs of air between. Snow piled high, deep ruts down the center. Past Ganjer's and Moos' and Hanson's and Van Heel's and there's the house. The garage and the yard, the breezeway, small and crowded.
And so meaningless. Could this be where I spent my first fifteen years? Is this tiny extent where I bounced basketballs and tried to lift wheelies on my sister's three speed bicycle, heard cicadas without knowing it on hot summer days, ran in the rain, and learned to lust and swear? Was it here I erupted in screams over a gashed knee when tipped from a tricycle and smoked cigarettes between garages, and drove Dad's '56 Lime Green Oldsmobile in the dark night after stealing the keys from Gramma's purse while Mom and Dad were out of town? Is this the spot where Bill Knotz got perpetually maltreated by thuggish older brothers? Is this the yard where my sister--after an afternoon of neighborhood publicity--beat me up under the swingset, before a crowd of jeering neighborhood children? Is this the same secluded backyard where I pounded two sticks into the ground eighteen inches apart, fashioning a slingshot from strips of inner tube from which I launched stones over the hedge and into the busy street below? Is that the roof where I strung an extension cord through a kitchen window to power my new plastic radio (earned from neighborhood lawn cutting jobs), and laid high up with Herb Carneal and Halsey Hall calling the Minnesota Twins. And watched the weather ball visible miles away atop the Foshay tower in downtown Minneapolis; green meant good, yellow indecisive, red meant bad, but, due to weather, we rarely saw the weather ball from the house when it was red.
Is this the back yard where Bill and I slept out and stayed up all night, stealthing through neighbor's yards in the dead of night? There was the time when we extended our range and, crossing under a street light, were caught by a cop who honked and shined his spotlight on us. Bill ran away. I stopped, figuring it better not to look guilty. The cop pulled over, showed poked his gun from a side window and wanted to know, "what the hell I was doing out at 3:30 in the morning?"
I told him the runner and I were sleeping out in my back yard, and were just out walking. He scolded me, retracted his revolver, then instructed resolutely that I return to my yard and stay there until daylight. I assured him we would.
It's all gone. These neighbors. I'm sure most are dead; those that aren't, do not matter.
I idled on. Past the house on the left where a family of Christians moved in a year before we moved out. The dad was a preacher and both boys became indignant and never spoke to me again when, the day they showed up, I went across the alley to welcome them and, after a time of getting acquainted said I needed to "take a piss" and did so, quite politely I thought, behind their garage. They didn't come back outside that day or any other, at least to socialize with the likes of me. They were busy with clean pressed shirts and youth activities and saving those who had half a chance. (Later that fall the older Knotz brothers beat them up behind Ganjer's garage)
Onward past the Knotz' house. Mrs. Knotz, a beauty shop receptionist, spent her evenings on the sofa drinking Grain Belt beer, intermittently snoozing and bitching, could still be attached to her couch, surrounded by empty bottles with a discolored catheter trickling into a basement drain and shrilling at disturbances to her life.
Eagons moved to a new housing development of hollow glens and curving mud streets and upheld the catholic tradition of forging new babies annually to fill future positions in the family plumbing empire.
The house had white plantation columns out front, a swooping blacktop approach and a yard full of new toys and swings, and even a ground-level trampoline.
I Exited the alley and headed east across West Broadway, past a hedge out of sight of the house where I'd stash my overshoes after lunch on warm melty spring days when Mom refused to let me go without boots, to run fleet-footed back to school.
Cleveland Elementary School no longer stands on the site along Lowrey Avenue. A post office is there now. Two blocks northeast is the new Cleveland Park Community Elementary School. What about Jordan Junior High, further east and slightly south? I headed through the intersection of Lowrey and Penn and its dingy commercial cluster. The corner where Len's Diner used to stand (fifty cents got me a cheeseburger, fries, and a root beer) is a vacant city block across from Jackie Ann's hair salon. Turn left onto Lowrey, then right a few blocks beyond. The old Jordan Junior High is gone, replaced by a new brick school building a block further east, surrounded by a spacious campus, new tree plantings, and an air of optimism coaxed from a neighborhood in decline.
We retraced west, back through the familiar but foreign neighborhood,
arriving at Sunset Hill, a great sledding slope where I spent snowy winter
days chasing blue shadows uphill and down. Sunset Hill overlooks Golden Valley,
the first suburb west of Minneapolis. The lip of the hill is fixed with a
semicircle parking area. Today Moms and Dads lined the hill's brink, helping
children with sleds and scarves and soothing sudden apprehensions, then launching
them downward, coffee cups steaming in silhouette against the low January
sun.
I circled around and parked at the base of the hill with the sun at my back. EZ vibrated and grinned out at the party. Her ultimate fun scene. A mob of children shrieking and running on a sun-brilliant slope, hoping she'd soon show up. Colors streaked, chased by snowy swirls. Kids hollered and screamed frightened fun. Small children were helped uphill by attentive adults, others sheered past low and fast. Forty years passed but nothing had changed at that wonderful place.
Down, deeper into the city, uneasiness stirring. West Broadway is four lanes of street snaking into the city, a main artery designated by Eisenhower's 50's for quick and efficient urban evacuation in the event of a snow emergency or nuclear attack. Within a mile of the Robbinsdale/Minneapolis border it evolves suddenly and bleakly from middle-class to dispirited defeat and dreary dark poverty with jailbars on stores fronting the street. Rounding a bend, West Broadway aims directly at the IDS building gleaming of blue-green glass, a towering Oz shining at the center of the city. It's the tallest structure there and still commotes an intake of breath dwarfing the Foshay tower, which used to be the big deal downtown.
I stop at the intersection of Penn Ave., a skewed meeting of tributary streets. Madrelle's sewing center used to stand on this corner, today it's untenanted and decrepit. Just south was Hom's Chow Mein, where we used to pick up take-out on Sundays after church. Today it's Lucky Garden, or so a spray-painted window claims.
I turned around in a neighborhood of houses dripping icicle glaciers attached at the ground, past a large brick church building with a hand-lettered sign: "Miracle Tabernacle." Back onto West Broadway and a slow ascent out of the gloom.
A stop light. To my right a black youth, about seventeen, with a pierced
nose and sullen disdain exits a jail-barred storefront. He struts to the curb
beside me and stands unmoving, staring into our space. EZ grins. I turn away
and look ahead, uneasy. EZ likes him. The stoplight stays red. EZ sneezes,
as she does when grinning too hard. The world is motionless, tense. Will EZ's
bared teeth be mistaken as a menace or unfriendliness as is often the case?
What have I gotten myself into? An exploding side window, glass shattering
inward with no clue for why, other than it's what happens to naive white people
who trespass?
EZ sneezes twice more, then starts shuddering for this person's affection.
The light changes.
I ease away, imitating nonchalance. Side mirror shows the youth still standing
beside the street, head turned, following my escape.
Another two blocks.
What had been a Red Owl grocery in the 50's is now an empty parking lot below
a rickety Super Valu sign. Past the house where I no longer live, past the
furniture store that's still there, across the overpass and into Robbinsdale
and North Memorial Hospital, traffic fast and quickly upper middle class.
Within two hours
I'd fled to another world and reentered the woods road. And isolated freedom.
The sky peach and glowing deep frigid blue; headlights equalizing the dusk
against clean snow. The cabin thermometer read forty, the woodstove needed
emptying. Two buckets of glow were shoveled, carried out the door and dumped
in a sizzling pile. Fire rebuilt, Coleman refilled, candles lit. A period
placed after the day.
Where is that black
youth who stood on the street corner? What is he doing? What is he thinking?
Has he eaten today? Is he afraid? Does he love? Does he have a sister or brother,
a girlfriend, friends? A mother? Where is his father? Does he know his father?
Does he have a job, or goals for 2005? Does he like school, or football? Raisins?
What was his reason for being where he was on that bleak street corner? Does
he like corn chips? Has he ever been inside a church building? Why does he
live and move and exist? What is the point?
I did not expect what I felt from today's drive.
Nothing.
Or is it all a jumble of sensations and short-circuited pathos? Just another neighborhood, unremarkable in any extent. Exactly like Cincinnati's southside where pointlessness has set in, or Montgomery's east side, but with snow."
Tuesday--
I awoke early today determined to topple some poplar and deter them from depriving other more functional trees like oak and maple and ash. The population of poplar increases toward the east edge of the acreage. Prone to cracking and crashing with minimal perturbation, they are worthless as firewood, taking twice as long to season, too quickly consumed in a woodstove, producing minimal Btu's. They are roughage trees, sapping nutrients from the soil and obscuring sunlight from more desirable species.
I chose three forty-year-olds near the road. The largest was ten inches in diameter. all appeared to hopefully tilt north into the woods and away from the road.
Good.
An intermittent stiff breeze blew out of the south which would assist their fierce fall away from the road.
Make a notch. Saw the opposing side.
Oops. It didn't fall, but leaned west, angling lightly against a maple. Let the weather work it down. The next tree was notched and the final cut begun. I rushed the last inch as a gust of wind pulled the top toward the north. But the wind stopped blowing, the tree recovered itself, and began a purposeful fall south toward the road.
Now, the moment a two ton (or four ton, but what's the difference?) tree makes up its mind which direction to fall, all human influences cease. A prudent woodsman will seize the saw from the cut, and run. This is the genesis of the cliché "to cut and run." When a sawn tree leans a fraction off-center, there's no altering its chosen course. Pushing on it won't do. Neither does swearing at it. Despite preparatory measures like notching and praying, a tree separated from it's roots goes where it wants.
I had not expected its exact perpendicular alignment south across the road, ninety degrees to the baseline of the ditch. The topmost limbs flounced into Herb's barbed wire fence and bent it against the ground and a bright cloud of snow sparkles swirled above it. Through forethought and prudence, at least I'd parked the truck out of it's way, slightly to the east.
I set about sectioning the trunk into three-foot long, hundred pound chunks, lugging them to the side, and heaving them torpedo-like into the woods under the snow. I dismantled the top limbs and dragged them off Herb's fence, which sprung up straight and vigorous. I breathed again. Herb will surely see his scuffled snow--his eyes will go straight to the fence and beyond. He'll scan for damage, certain of a compromised fence. It all looks good to me, but I don't go out of my way looking too closely for trouble. Maybe it'll snow hard in an hour, before he comes by on his daily rounds, although the sky is dry blue. Maybe I should get a pine bough and whisk my mistake clean, like bad guys do in old movies to erase their dead-giveaway footprints.
Probably not.
In these circumstances--trees with their own agendas and my arms trembling with overuse--I decided not to cut the third tree and opted instead for a sunny afternoon nap.
Wednesday--
Arising into the nighttime
cold air to restoke the fire I was seized by the stinging nuisance of virus
fever chills. The sort that don't stop even when the warmth of the bed is
pulled back over the skin. A jangling alarm.