All posts by X Teri

Saturday Morning Considerations

11/04/2017 X Teri Leave a comment

The fog was thick this morning, enveloping everything. It looked like a 1970s bingo hall – and just as promising. The hilltop towers seemed to be just floating red orbs, blinking their presence. For November, I was once again pleased to see that I didn’t need a jacket to walk in comfort. I had on pants, though, for the comfort of any potential onlookers.

Leaving the house, I toyed with the idea of pranking one of my neighbors. He came home yesterday afternoon, probably under the influence again, and sat in his vehicle in the road, windows down, radio blaring at an insane volume. His issues aren’t limited to alcohol, though. I have an ongoing bet with myself regarding how long it is going to be before he kills someone, and I’m not referring to his poor fashion choices, either. At least I haven’t seen him urinating in broad daylight in a few days. I keep an eye on him because I hope to be as classy as he is one day. It would have been so easy to startle him awake at 4 a.m., the stupor of bad choices and a mean spirit still thick in his eyes. PS I did confuse him yesterday. I exited the house through the back door, went around the opposite side of the house and entered my car from the passenger side. I then hit the horn a couple of times, holding it for a few seconds, dipping my upper body below sight as I did so. It amused me but also made me a tad sad because, in a just world, I would have been able to fling open the front door, aim a bazooka, and launch the raucous neighbor into the stratosphere.

I added a couple of versions of the theme song to “Stranger Things” to my playlist, knowing the eeriness of the music would be perfect for this warm November morning. I wasn’t disappointed, either. As I walked along the Razorback Greenway, I looked up at the largest of our local cell towers. It loomed like an alien monolith, partially obscured by the fog. I had parked at Lokomotion, the only car within sight, and walked from there. As I often do, I paused in the middle of 71 below the mall, the neon promise of a slow death by grease flashing behind me in the guise of a Golden Corral sign. I just can’t help myself. There is something sublime and glorious about my solitary status in the middle of such a major road, absent cars, people, and the demands that will choke the pavements as the day progresses. I stood there a full minute, looking both directions and only chose to move along when headlights crested the hill between the Mall and Zion Road.

I walked a long distance on the portion of the trail intersecting 71 near Golden Corral. It’s a beautiful stretch. At 4 a.m., when you start walking, the building on top of the hill at the edge high above the trail looks like an imposing modern castle. The light emanating from the commercial behemoth above is surprisingly filtered, yet somehow casts an eerie light across the trees, creeks, and brush below, similar to a surgical room with a dimmer set to “starting anesthesia,” if such a setting were possible. I laughed when I encountered the “Speed Limit 15” sign along that section. I could have been riding a rocket through there this morning. The only thing to slow me would have been the mass of spider webs I collected as I walked. I managed to get several in my mouth, too, which is always a surprise. As far as I know, no spiders were present. As for the speed limit, I vote that we allow cyclists to go 40 mph if they can. The dropoffs on the other side are spectacular and I can think of nothing more amusing as a careless cyclist flings himself off the side to the creek far below, the theme song to “Dukes of Hazzard” echoing in the leaves as I laugh.

“Welcome to Johnson” the concrete inlay indicated ahead of an elegant bridge near the creek. I looked around, half expecting to see one of their finest on a small bicycle, loaded with a million dollars of hardware and 3 radar guns, just waiting to issue me a ticket for having sunglasses too tinted or failing to indicate a turn by morse code. The one good thing about getting a ticket in Johnson is that it invariably is written in crayon and in the language and font most commonly used on Chik-Fil-A billboards. I’m not bitter about the Johnson police; likewise, though, they shouldn’t get defensive when I use satire to mock them. They should have thought of that while submitting me to the shenanigans of their playbook. “Never start a fight with an ugly person,” and “Don’t argue with someone who buys ink by the gallon” are both true for a reason.

The trail section through the area, though, is hauntingly pretty. Oddly enough, though, I’ve never seen it in actual daylight. There are a few trees along that mile stretch which should be removed. I’m glad they haven’t been, though, especially now that they’ve dropped their leaves. Their limbs now reach craggily across the trail, wide and expansive. They are a sight to behold in diminished light of early morning. I’ve always loved the look of leafless trees, even those already dying. If I could afford it, I would have a tree similar to the one gracing the entrance to Crystal Bridges Museum.

The trail was mine this morning, as is usually the case. I saw no one and found the tranquility so compelling that I removed my headphones for almost all of the walk. It’s still hard for me to believe that other people aren’t out there in the dark. The trails are such a treat and the world is a different place during those hours.

On the way home, I stopped at the neighborhood market, the one which looks like it is being redesigned by an expert on urban torture. Dawn and I went to Harps yesterday afternoon. I had to dig in the freezer section for her to reach a few Lean Cuisine pizzas. (Which, by the way, are exceedingly good.) I didn’t check the dates. Dawn had already wisely decided to ignore the yogurt selection, as it suffered from the “O Brother Effect,” meaning everything in the selection range was at least two weeks out of expiration. When we arrived home, Dawn discovered that Harps had once again punched us in the face with poor inventory control. Harps is a place we want so much to love – but we can’t. The location near us is like a brother-in-law with a heart of gold but also suffering from a massive heroin addiction. (He’ll give you the shirt off his back but sell your dog.) The Gutenshon location is such a massive upgrade from our branch. Dawn was surprising her mom with a cake, though, and she had ordered one from that location.

As I wandered around the market, I had several encounters which amused and confused me. Several areas were roped off due to store redesign and I stopped to ask a question. The employee looked at me as I asked and just walked off. I laughed at his brazenness. He might not have spoken English very well but I’m not sure walking away without comment is the correct choice. I could be wrong though. Maybe my picture was on a “Warning” sign in the breakroom?

The next question I lobbed at two women holding either scanners or stolen Star Trek phasers. It’s tough to know that early in the morning. “Where are the canned vegetables?” They looked at one another, spoke a few quiet words back and forth. One of them said, “We don’t know.” They turned and walked away. I made a mental note to write J.D. Powers and nominate them for some kind of award.

I went around past the hideous meat section and found a small cadre of employees in front of a massive stack of supplies on the floor. The younger male was a few feet away, watching a video on his phone. Just because I was now in a mood to engage in tomfoolery, I stepped slightly behind him, acted like I was looking at his phone and said, “PORN?!” in a very loud outdoor voice. Everyone froze and looked at me, standing behind the young man holding his phone out. I pantomimed and pointed at his phone and laughed. He jerked the phone in the other direction and put it in his pocket.

“I wasn’t looking at porn. This guy is crazy,” he told the other workers.

“I know what I saw!” I said, jokingly.

Still laughing, I asked them where the canned vegetables were. One of the girls pointed back behind me and I walked away. I could feel the porn guy’s eyes drilling holes in my backside as I sauntered away.

I left the store without any canned corn. But I had something much greater: a great story to amuse myself with.

Humor, Music

Don’t Take Notes! A Cautionary Tale

11/03/2017 X Teri Leave a comment

When I attended the University of Toledo I took 4 semesters of music theory. It’s a world-renowned musical arts university, eclipsing even that of the famed Cincinnati Arts College. As part of the curriculum, I was required to attend several lectures by prominent composers and music composition experts. I considered opting out for religious reasons, as the university adopted a policy that stipulated that music theory was just a theory, like evolution, and if you wanted to pretend it wasn’t a real thing, no one would stop you. Even percussionists were allowed to invoke the rule but due to their chronic lateness, we couldn’t be sure they ever heard about the exemption.

Before each outing, the professor would always look at the students sitting in front of him and insist that we take notes. It was a refrain we heard as often as “good morning.” I knew he was going to be a pain in the ass the first time I heard him speak, right after he told us that he started learning music on the clarinet. Reed instruments are the byproduct of devilish design – a fact well-known in music circles but seldom expressed so as to not harm the delicate feelings of those unlucky enough to have been cursed with reed instrument afflictions.

In my last semester of music theory, I was lucky enough to get an invitation to Fred Winnebago’s solo performance at the Nancy Drew Arts Project. Fred had just had his 6th major symphony recorded and was doing musical presentations around the country. Interestingly, his prosthetic leg didn’t slow him down very much.

Before the performance, Fred Winnebago took 30 minutes to lecture the audience about his musical methods. My professor had already done the introduction and once again reminded us to “Take notes!”

As the curtain opened, Fred sat at an ornate piano. The lights dimmed. As Fred’s fingers began to press the ivories, no sound emerged. Fred seemed confused and removed his hands from the keyboard. After a moment, he once again dropped his fingers lightly to the keys and began to move his fingertips over them. No sound whatsoever.

The professor stepped out from backstage, tentatively, holding a microphone up so that he could speak.

“It seems as if we are having technical difficulties,” the music professor began.

“Yes, you shouldn’t have told us to take notes – now there aren’t any left to play,” someone shouted from the back.

After a long, loud collective groan of mock disgust from the audience, we broke out in applause.

Even the professor, who now seemed uninterested in anyone taking more notes.

Death, Whimsical

Goodbye, Butterfinger

10/31/2017 X Teri Leave a comment

It’s befitting that I stand here now on a diminishing Halloween afternoon. Hours ago, family and friends hovered near, all collectively somber and looking for solace in the dried grass and impervious headstones. There’s nothing more dangerous than the familiar terrain of the faces of friends and family while we are gathered to dismiss someone from this realm. It’s easier to look away or to retreat inside oneself.

I didn’t even know of your death until today, when someone said, “X, you’re not going to believe this. He died. Butterfinger died.”

We weren’t friends in the traditional sense. But we shared some outrageous moments, most of them fueled by your ability to go places most people would hesitate to cross. There were times when our shared laughter lifted us up to heaven, raucous and not befitting polite company. Life, though, it thrived in those moments. It had no choice and I couldn’t help except to laugh harder as you dared to strangle the oxygen from around us.

After a death, we think we know a person or have gauged the sum of what they were. No matter who you are or who they were there is no escaping that we are simply floundering around with our presumption of knowing them. It is a rare thing for people to congregate after a death and all agree that they share a clear picture of who someone was while they walked amongst us.

As we often do, we personalize a death and transpose ourselves, wondering how wrong people will have been about us. It’s a human tendency, one powered by the relentless ticking of the clocks we all pretend to not hear. I think of all the hats I’ve worn and of the distinct ways I’ve touched people, for good or ill. Depending on your perspective, you measure me with hate, admiration, humor, seriousness, apathy or total disregard. We all leave different maps behind us, often several of them; often, many don’t align. Our friends and family are left to conjure some semblance of reason from the mismatched versions of ourselves in the puzzle pieces. It’s not so much a question of who is right or wrong. Rather, it is one of the complexities of our lives and personality as we overlap with differing groups: work, church, family, and friends.

While I can’t speak for everyone, I honestly mean it when I say that I pass inordinate amounts of my life without sharing anything essential of who I am. Of course, I can explain it away by using words such as “business,” or “work,” or whatever other label excuses our inability to properly enjoy our lives as the human beings we are. People who know me in these moments of expected impersonal interactions will have no means to measure me, though they struggle to do so.

Having the reputation of being someone with an exaggerated sense of dark humor, I swear an oath to you that I don’t use these words accidentally or lightly. While I am no speaker for the dead, I am not one who enjoys the idea of failing to pay homage to the totality of all the people who lived inside a single person. I embrace the idea of the breadth of someone’s life, even if some of it doesn’t lead to the glorification of our potential. We all know and recognize that almost all of our life is comprised of little moments and many of those most enjoyed in retrospect are not ones we would wish everyone to see.

Butterfinger, though, he was a strange creature, powered by the touch of the strangest humor and affections. Because I didn’t have a Venn diagram between the sliver of life I shared with him and his other realms, I can’t speak to those other spheres. But I can say without qualification that in the sense that I knew Butterfinger, he was alive in the truest sense, though many would not understand him in this regard. Were he an angel, it would be one prone to mischief and fun-loving devilry.

I’m not here to argue about who he was, what motivated him, or even the significance of his relatively short life. I’m here to tip my hat at a crazy angle toward his outlandish laugh and smile.

Goodbye, Butterfinger. May your first night in the soil bring forth the warm remembrance of all the zaniness that I remember you for. May your memory be confirmed and conformed to each of us, all of whom knew a piece of you as you ambled about on the surface of this planet.

I’ll stop by another day and place a Butterfinger on your little piece of the earth. And I’ll probably laugh like a dark bastard as I do so.

No disrespect – only remembrance. In a life of small moments, it is more than sufficient.

Ancestry, Biographical, Brinkley, Personal

Family History is Literally What I Choose To Make It

10/30/2017 X Teri Leave a comment

This post has no point, no moral or objective. It’s just a fact.

My paternal grandmother had just turned 14 when she was married. When she married, my grandfather was much older than her. Grandmother had just turned 14 and although she needed a signatory to marry, even the marriage license states she was older than was true.

Even in Arkansas, it seems, people were always concerned about a scandal. When I was very young, I knew my dad wasn’t in Alaska, even though he told me this more as a drunken joke than an explanation. He was in prison in Indiana, for what amounted to a minor crime compared to a few things he had done, one of which resulted in someone’s premature demise. The amusing thing is that my Grandmother Terry was petrified of gossip about her and her family.

I’ve written from time to time about it and other family stories. Like so much of the family lore, I learned of the existence of hidden secrets via hushed silences, sideways glances, and anger when direct questions were asked.

As I grew older, I knew that one day research and DNA would ‘out’ much of the stories some family members didn’t to be revealed. Most of those family members have died, leaving a tantalizing list of questions that might never be answered.

But I do know this: much of what made them nervous under scrutiny were legitimately embarrassing stories and behavior. Their refusal to be honest is a much bigger problem than anything they tried to conceal.

Lately, I’ve seen so many stories which skirt the edges of my grandmother’s story. Some of the same people who seem shocked by the revelations in the public realm are the very same who worked so tirelessly to conceal the truth in my family’s foggy past. They “cluck” at others, all the while knowing their own past is littered with much worse.

Isn’t that the way it always seems to be?

The danger some of my departed family seems to not understand is that by failing to divulge some of the family secrets, they have left their legacy in the hands of someone like me.

If I don’t get answers, I’ll make it up, based on what most likely happened. Given the trajectory of what I do know, that gives me license to go in any direction, no matter how dire, without possible complaint from those who constantly shouted, “Hush!” at me.

Family history, it seems, is literally what I choose to make it.

Humor, Uncategorized

A Humorous Anecdote

10/29/2017 X Teri Leave a comment

My cousin Linda went to college for two years and then dropped out when she had her child. Years later, she went to Cosmetology School and acquired her license to practice. A few months after she started doing hair, another family member died, leaving Linda with more than enough money to open her own shop.

After renovating the storefront for her new hair salon, Linda had several of us over to finish moving a few things and to have an impromptu celebration lunch there.

As we were standing around chatting, Linda approached me and asked if she could pick my brain.

“X, you love this sort of thing. Given the type of person who will visit my shop, I need some ideas to name it.” She asked me to go outside on the street-side and pointed up to the mostly white sign.

On it were the words B E A U T Y S H O P in evenly-spaced black letters.

I went around back and retrieved a 6′ ladder. I climbed up to reach the sign and made my changes to her current sign.

It now read “B E A U T Y” S H O P

The black eye will heal sometime in the next few days.

Whimsical

An Assortment of Nonsense

10/26/2017 X Teri Leave a comment

We drank so much that we accidentally tried to order a sandwich from the “Disclaimer” section of the menu.

“He dances to the beat of his own dumb.”

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A review: this review is for those detractors who claim I use 43 words when 2 would suffice. Ladies and gentlemen: a dollar floating in a urinal.

Regardless of decorum, manners or common sense, “Yes,” I am the one who placed it there. It seemed like the most befitting exclamatory expression of my displeasure with the experience to which I was being subjected to.

It’s hard to argue with a dollar floating in the urinal. Or with the person who chooses it as the expression of one’s opinion. 🙂

The movie about the restaurant was good but not as good as the cookbook on which it was based.

I knew he had ordered the Caesar Salad because I saw the prep cook repeatedly stabbing the romaine lettuce.

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I entered the Denny’s at about 5:05 a.m.

No hostess was in sight. As I peered around I noticed a sign indicating “Welcome. Seat yourself and make yourself at home. At Denny’s we’re all family”

I found a table near the bathroom and sat down, taking a few moments to make myself feel at home.

From nowhere came a deep, commanding voice: “Sir, you’re gonna need to put your pants back on!”

What a picky family I have at Denny’s.

I invented a device to stay in the same time: the nonflux capacitor.

As many of you know, I’ve spent years searching for the best, or any, great recipe for Turkey Gravy. I’m proud to announce that I’ve finally found the perfect one:
“Don’t.”

I knew our choice of eateries was suspect when I noted that they only offered a list of Unappetizers.

The food was not fresh – even the lettuce was unintentionally green.

Someone I know approached me earlier.

He had his phone out and it was obvious he was about to do what he does best: be an ass.

“Not all your jokes are funny, X.” He sneered at me.

“Not everyone I know is smart or a good person either.” I raised my left eyebrow at him as I made eye contact, turned and left, leaving him with the epic struggle to figure out how I had just one-upped him.

That place was too expensive and upscale for me. My credit was so bad I couldn’t even get pre-approval to buy a house salad.

As my wife will attest, I’ve been diligent this year in reminding her of the yuletide season’s impending arrival. There’s no greater misstep than to wake up one morning in late December and discover that the Grinch has stolen your Christmas spirit. At our age, it’s difficult enough to remember to put on pants and comb our hair. (right, Darla?) Also, my wife Dawn is a Xmas Eve baby, as my mother-in-law Julia was personally attempting to recreate the nativity back in 1968 – a fact she doesn’t like to talk about. 🙂

I spent some time this morning, inside, instead of carousing around the byways of my town, as the rain howled outside.

I made a picture I’ve titled “Weird Tokyo Xmas.”

That guy was so unattractive that even the STD test didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“Don’t count your chickens,” begins the cliche. If you have so many chickens you’ve lost count, though, I bet it’s more important to count irate neighbors.

PorcuPineSol: because sometimes when you are done cleaning you don’t want people to touch anything.

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I have a friend who is currently in Norway attempting to find the most consecutive consonants in a single word. Or on vacation. I’m not certain which.

Since he snapped a picture of one of the 4 “The Scream” pieces, I thought it only appropriate to commemorate the occasion by improving it, much like the Mona Lisa would be much hotter with a mustache.

Humor

My Name is Not Bill Engvall

10/25/2017 X Teri Leave a comment

I entered the elevator and pushed “4.”

At floor 3, a younger woman entered and turned to face the array of floor selection buttons.

“Going up?” she asked me, as if the ‘up’ arrow on the outside door wasn’t a clear indicator of my usage intentions for the elevator. Not to mention that the “4” on the panel was brightly lit.

“No, I’m going down,” I replied, jokingly.

“You can’t, this elevator is going up.” She said this without a trace of sarcasm or realization that she was informing me of something I knew before I had ever met her. I was like the Nostradamus of vertical travel, I suppose.

She turned to face me and undoubtedly noticed the large “X” on the front of my name badge. It’s only called a name bag because, weirdly enough, its main function is to identify the wearer by name. Additionally, most people have their own name on the name badge they are wearing – and not simply because most HR folks are as humorless as a tribe of accountants without trousers.

“Hmm… is your name X?” She asked, without a trace of mirth or sarcasm.

“No, my name is Bill Engvall, and it is a pleasure to meet you.” I put out my right hand, and she shook it.

I don’t think I have to say it, but for those old enough to recall, I am certain you’ll know which 3 words echoed in my head.

Religion, Social Rules

The Rain Baptizes Indiscriminately…

10/22/2017 X Teri Leave a comment

The late October weather had finally succumbed to the pattern nature intended. It was raining lightly when the man started walking and the temperature had dropped to the low 50s. Leaves left in clumps would cause his footing to slip unexpectedly as he glided across the pavement. The rain had baptized everything overnight.

Although it was lightly misting when he started, the rain had strengthened as he trekked across the innards of the city on a lazy Sunday late morning. His glasses began to look like the upper glass of an aquarium, beads of water obscuring both lenses. The man removed his glasses and headphones as the heavier rain fell. He continued on his way, head up, and frequently smiling though, as the brisk walk was even more enjoyable in the rain and cool air. Except for a couple of other older people enjoying the solitude, the man was left to walk in peace.

A couple of blocks away from the main street, vehicles were hastily exiting the modern and imposing protestant church. Its structures had made tentacles toward the sky and the surrounding urban landscape. Its recent history was one of success if such things were measured by the weight of the coffers and the number of worshippers filling the seats. The local eateries would soon be flooded with those who had just finished their services. The man could almost imagine each driver licking his or her lips as their respective stomachs rumbled. (Faith is difficult with a distracting appetite.)

The man neared the intersection blocked by a canyon of repair and excavation in the middle of the street. He passed a beautiful vintage theatre being remodeled as he approached. Its marbled exterior shone against the graying air. A large white Tahoe SUV approached from the man’s right. As both the SUV and the man reached the intersection, the driver’s window of the SUV lowered. A middle-aged man leaned toward the opening.

The man already had his polite “No” ready, as he imagined the man leaving church was going to offer him a ride, given the weather.

“You’re going to catch a cold, walking in this rain and cold,” he said. Without further comment, he put his window up and drove across the main street, leaving the man momentarily surprised by the driver’s words.

The man shook his head and couldn’t help but laugh, wondering to himself how the driver thought he might have survived so many decades of living if he truly had no understanding of the weather and one’s health.

As the man made his long return back down the main street, he drank in the birds chirping in the newly-installed trees lining the road, the darkened storefronts, and the myriad signs each business chose to place in its windows. After passing the excavated canyon in the street from the other side of the road, he could hear voices as he approached the corner storefront on the next corner. Outside, he noticed a table placed perpendicular to the front, with a flat propane-fueled stovetop next to it. On the table were covered dishes of food, plates, and various cooking items. Even at a few paces away, the man could feel the warmth emanating from the cooktop outside. Above it, the man noted that the storefront had been converted to a Spanish-speaking evangelical place of worship. Just as he crossed in front of the open door behind the cooktop, a small older lady stepped away from the inside wall where she had been leaning.

Looking inside, he noted row after row of metal chairs, some of them occupied by people, all of them animatedly talking to one another. The small lady bid him good morning in Spanish, then English. She waved her hand across the table and asked him in the softest voice whether he was interested in fellowship or perhaps a meal – or a snack to take with him as he walked.

Despite the chill of the air, the man felt his heart beat palpably in surprise from the woman’s kind offer. He took a moment to catch up to the surprise of her offer and then declined. “No, but thank you so much. You don’t know how welcome such an offer is. If you will permit, I will drop by some other day and join you all for conversation and several bites to eat.”

The lady smiled again and told the man, “Anytime. Where there’s food, there’s always an open invitation.”

As the man walked away, his feet seemed lighter and his heart unburdened.

He wondered how such a small place could easily put into practice one of the most basic principles of all the compassionate prophets: that all religion makes its appeal through an offered hand or warm smile and never through accusation.

In peace, he went; so too, that you might as well.

Humor, North Little Rock, Uncategorized, Whimsical

Drink It Forward

10/21/2017 X Teri Leave a comment

It was dark and I was driving carefully, unlike the demolition derby driver I impersonate when the sun is shining. As I pulled in to the Firewater parking lot, I had to unexpectedly yield to an older man riding his scooter across the parking lot in order to go through the drive-through. His face was one of determination. I laughed because I imagined that he had traveled far in order to get his liquor of choice.

By way of preface, Firewater is a strange little liquor store away from any residential area. A liquor store is a place where one can purchase, among other things, alcoholic beverages. Alcohol is one of those chemicals, when taken in moderation, which will drastically improve your ability to cope with everyone else but conversely will worsen almost every encounter you engage in with another living person, all the while blinding you to your own debilitating lack of judgment. A drive-through is a window at a liquor store in which all parties legally pretend that the person purchasing said liquor doesn’t have more than a 50% chance of imbibing on the way to whatever destination awaits him. (This paragraph will never be used in a Budweiser commercial.)

As I waited at the register to pay for my poison, the elderly gentleman on the scooter was outside, looking inside at the impatient manager, trying to find change to reach his quota in order to get his bottle of flavored vodka. The manager’s face told me the unspoken story of just how many times the man on the scooter had bottlenecked the drive-through like this. It seemed to be a foregone conclusion that there was going to be insufficient change to pay for the bottle he had requested. I motioned for the man in charge to look in my direction and offered to pay for the bottle. He told the clerk helping me to add ninety-three cents to my total. I pointed out that I offered to pay for the entire bottle, not just the difference in change.

“Wow, that’s a nice offer. How do you know him? He’s a regular.” The clerk seemed to be asking out of curiosity rather than politeness.

“I’ve never met him. I almost ran him over, coming in as he drove his scooter across the street and into the parking lot. But I’ve known many, many people like him.”

“Well, he’s a character, that one.” The clerk laughed.

The manager at the drive-through window told the man on the scooter that I had paid the difference.

The old man froze and looked inside to see who I was. “Well, thanks, Mister.” He nodded his head in acknowledgment.

“Pay it forward,” I said, and smiled.

“I’ll most certainly drink it forward,” he quipped and cackled like someone who had just discovered a free pizza on his kitchen table, after already being handed a 6-pack of his favorite beer.

I nodded back and the clerk and I looked at each quizzically for a long second and then we both laughed, too. We had taken an awkward situation and made it one of frivolous merriment.

“Hey, you know what?” The clerk asked. “IF you want to pay for a bottle, I’ll give you an extra discount and hold it for the man on the scooter for next time. It will give him such a kick in the pants to be given a surprise.”

“As long as YOU don’t drink it forward, yeah, that will be great. And do me a favor when he comes in. Ask him how fast he can go on that scooter.”

“Will do. Have a great night out there, sir.”

So, on some future night, if you see an elderly black man riding his scooter, restraining an impressive smile on his face, you can think of me. Vodka can power a few smiles, for a little while.

May we all drink it forward as we pass through our respective places.

North Little Rock, Travel

Orange, No Juice, Me, Steven Spielberg and Stephen King

10/20/2017 X Teri Leave a comment

I think Steven Spielberg and Stephen King were both with me this morning. As is usually the case, it was very early morning and most people were still dreaming of their own private universes as I meandered across a few miles of the urban landscape. Since I had such a nice adventure yesterday morning in a strange city, I had no expectations that this morning’s walk would be as interesting. The universe proved my assumption to be wrong, for which I’m thankful.

I thought that 6th Street in Little Rock, North was fascinating, coming west from Main Street. An abandoned church sat patiently on the corner of 6th and Main, and its steps were adorned with a small pile of brush and a tire. Perversely, I felt the pull to walk up the short steps and yank on the door. What I might do if it were open to me would have been an interesting conundrum. I’d like to think I would have entered.

There are so many interesting houses packed with peculiarities that it’s difficult to find enough time to swivel one’s eyes from one detail to the next. One house, in particular, surprised me due to the quantity and quality of Halloween decorations the owners had packed into the relatively narrow front yard. The porch roof even had a skeleton climbing down face-first, peering underneath the porch. I thought it possible that the owner himself might be a reaper and was using the astounding mass of decorations to conceal his identity, right out in the open. The house next to this decorated one was a beauty, too. Later in the day, I used Google Streetview to find the houses. To my surprise, the 2nd house from the abandoned church didn’t exist in 2013. Someone built it later that year; whoever did so deserves a clap of appreciation, as it is an astounding residence constructed to reflect the history found literally next door. It is a house of substance and evocative of so many elements we once loved and appreciate in our homes.

Turning south onto Orange Street, though, is where the orange glow of the morning blanketed everything. The lights in the area were dim, just bright enough to cast an eerie sheen on everything. Even the modern vehicles parked meticulously along the curb didn’t seem incongruous against the backdrop of pristinely-maintained historic homes. I felt like I’d been there before, truth be told. There were a couple of residences where the upper windows were left uncovered, as is often the case with higher floors, as people stop thinking that they could be observed through them. In one, a ceiling light was on and I could see the wide white trim and walls. As I looked, a woman passed by the window and as she did, she briefly looked down directly at me. For a moment I thought it was the actress Mary-Louise Parker. She had long, flowing black hair. The light went out in the upper hallway. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Mary-Louise had turned back to peer down at me as I walked, wondering what I made of her presence. Since I’ve acquired the habit, I waved up to the window as I walked away, hoping that if she were indeed peering askance at me that she might wonder if I could see her. Early morning hours grant magic to a select few, of this I’m beginning to be more certain.

Passing further along the street, I could feel myself going back in time as I walked along that old street. By the time I reached the area with the community gardens west of the Presbyterian church to my left, the effect was palpable. I felt like Christopher Reeve’s character in “Somewhere in Time,” after he put on his anachronism of a suit and feverishly willed himself backward in time.

In my ear, I could almost hear Mr. Spielberg and King whisper, “This is your time. Stay and drown in this moment.”

And I could have resided there, in space and time, suspended.

Whatever confluence of decisions created and maintained this neighborhood, I will remember it. I almost loathe the idea of returning and seeing it in the duller light of day. The magician of the early morning will have departed, leaving me this memory.

(I’ll put the pictures below if you are interested…)