Independence Day, MMIX.
Independence Day is always interesting for me. In 1995 I finally decided I'd had quite enough of the fucked-upness in Seattle and abruptly left, bound back for Texas in the middle of the night upon a Greyhound bus. That trip in time led to still further cross-country Greyhound bus trips. I can honestly say I have been from coast to coast on Greyhound busses at various times before they did away with all their small-town "local" stops and started running more and more on freeways between cinderblock stations in the "homeless" zones of big cities. You might even say that I saw some trends coming, before they blossomed into full maturity.
Uncomfortable travelling, yes -- but what a place to gather up an invaluably rich collection of others' stories, the likes of which you *know* are true from the intensity in the voices and the fire in the eyes the fire in the bellies of all your other road-weary, sleep-deprived strangers telling you *their* lives knowing full well they will *never* meet you again, once they get back on their feet and don't want to be embarrassed by the tales of their youth, or their madness, or both.
What better way to hear about salmon fishing in Alaska from teenaged men who had been poisoned for life by their boat's fiberglass? What better way to see the stars in Death Valley, to swat poisoned mosquitos in Louisianna's summer heat, to feel still-present racial tensions in Alabama, to see the remnants of the glowing civic pride of now-forgotten farming towns through the midwest, to recognize poverty-stricken attempts to gloss over our nation's legacy of segregation, only to finally arrive in some still gleaming but still deeply ashamed and angry city through its most overcrowded tunnels just to see the gaping holes where once two gleaming towers stood? That all I've done, over the years, and it started on Independence Day.
This year, not near so ambitious, I casually rode out with Remo in his clunker of a minivan to Edgewood -- a semi-rural, super-far-flung exurb, or so it might be if it weren't forever isolated from Albuquerque by the deceptively not-quite-towering Sandia and Manzano mountains lining the North and South sides of Tijeras Canyon, through which you take your life into your own hands driving if you *ever* want to pass into that world. From Albuquerque to Edgewood, it's just something like 38 miles, but the people are quite undeniably *different* there.
To most of the rest of the country, Albuquerque residents are weird. To most resident Burquenos, East Mountain folks are *mighty* weird. Maybe that's why I like them.
They do things like routinely "not evacuate" when forest fires come burning right up to their homes. This sort of inexplicable behaviour tends to inconveniently drive down the numbers for big national do-gooder organizations like the Red Cross, who wind up with perhaps a handful of only the most truly desperate people in their shelters, pissing off the people who run such organizations, since they wind up wasting money, but somehow, nobody dies, which (if only the non-evacuating weirdos would kindly oblige) might in turn drive some more people to the shelters, and doubtless help increase reven--ahhem--donations.
They live in all manner of housing from down-and-out trailers to historic ranch houses to miniature mansions to ranch-house-styled McMansions. Unlike in the city, where each of these kinds of housing has a whole neighbourhood (complete with neighbourhood association) associated with it, in Edgewood they're all scattered amongst eachother and just spread enough apart -- generally accessible only over long, barely-graded dirt roads that each neighbour has, to some extent, a sense of privacy from their neighbours' unwelcome weirdness -- even in a "small town" (although a sprawling one) far from where the *true* mountain men live -- just far enough that during "normal" times, a sense of "this is mine" seems *always* to prevail.
They love the peace, they love the quiet, love the solitude. But I am guessing that most landowners in these parts do own guns, and will not hesitate to use 'em if someone comes prowling 'round, completely uninvited, doing things on private land that they should not be doing. And that's not to say that gun violence reigns. No -- for that, you have to get down to Belen. (A whole other story.)
Not so much in Edgewood as further out into the less densely populated places (where tiny, sparsely-scattered general stores are *still* the gathering places for locals), but people here do seem a *bit* insctinctively distrustful of outsiders and random passers-through in general. At least, until they get to know you.
Which usually entails looking you in the eye and having an honest conversation about *something* substantial. About what? Doesn't fucking matter. You can talk for a couple of minutes with the clerk in the Wal-Mart in Edgewood about which counter you have to go to in order to buy cigarettes. But if it goes beyond "oh, counter 19, fine, whatever", and turns however briefly into a discussion about how her husband died ten years after quitting smoking from emphysima and your own father's now on Oxygen for COPD, then yes. The clerk now not only *knows* you but suddenly gets downright courteous. *Not* familiar, but *courteous*. This is a vast difference between the two which easily gets lost on *anyone* who lives too long in the City. (Especially, perhaps, if they come from the vast city known as California.) Try striking up a conversation of any kind with anyone in almost any Albuquerque Wal-Mart and you're likely to get security called out on your ass.
If you haven't yet figured it out, Remo and I showed up at the Wal-Mart in Edgewood to met NightRider. He apparently had something planned involving fireworks at his house. After more than an hour waiting in the parking lot, eating a *very* disappointing salad, drinking questionable lemonade from plastic bottles, and generally amusing ourselves to no end watching one of the more stunning wrap-around pink and orange and blue and white and grey sunsets either one of us had seen (for which appreciation, the security guard himself got out of his truck, not to tell us to move on, but to admire it for a while with us), NightRider does show up. He parks about a mile away
in the enormous parking lot, we walk over to him, ask him if he knows what's going on, he says he's waiting on a couple of the other people whom I'd only met briefly, one of them presently shows up, in fact, he'd been there over 20 minutes but didn't know that we were there, and thus, the conversation starts.
Soulcat is, in my initial estimation, an amazing human being. He probably wouldn't like being called that, and would honestly prefer to be called a crazy fur. OK then. In keeping with my long-standing policy of not calling individuals what they prefer not to be called, I will agree. He is a crazy fur.
This crazy fur served six years in the Army, including multiple tours of duty in Iraq. He was *there* at the FOB in Baghdad when the AHA got hit from a lucky round of mortar fire, resulting in a fire involving multiple explosions which lasted for more than nine hours.
He now works as a mechanic at a large-chain car-repair place. It seems to be the only job that he can get in this economy. He says he was let go for health-related reasons, despite being a good soldier. And man, not that I know jack shit about the army, much less combat, but I do believe to the depths of my heart that this furson knows *exactly* what he's saying, and means *every* single world he tells this near perfect stranger.
It's not my place to tell his story. He's still alive, and so, it's his to tell.
Suffice to say, we did go out to Nightrider's place to shoot fireworks off in the stormy desert night sky beneath a brilliant full moon which disappeared and reappeared to our eyes constantly throughout the night.
At one point someone lit one of those big ones with a long damn fuse. Somewhere near the beginning of that video, I'm sure my voice can be heard saying "long fuse!" to which some other person unknown to me in the dark says "that's never a good sign", or words to that effect. The fuse seems to burn on just a bit too long, until we start to wonder whether it's a dud. In fact, the powder meant to send it off hurtling it hundreds of feet into the sky before the charge to make it bloom beautifully and safely above our heads has simply, for reasons unkown to me, failed to go off. All of a sudden -- BOOM!!!! Brilliant white tongues of fire come racing toward us all from on the ground, as in slow motion. I wouldn't be surprised on seeing that video on YouTube (as I'm sure it will be posted, in time) to hear my own voice saying "HOLY FUCK" as I shield my eyes and run from the explosion, along with the probably fifteen or other so people then standing close around the faulty charge that went off on the ground.
It feels like half an hour -- we've all got bumps and bruises in weird places -- maybe burns -- it's hard to tell. In fact, probably not ten seconds had elapsed before we all emerged, more or less sheepishly going back from our protective cover behind cars assembled to see whether damage has been done. It is *quite* done. A mass spasm of laughter erupts from the crowd. We've all survived this much at least, if never anything more serious.
Soulcat goes on to tell me how to make an MRE bomb. I kinda dig explosives, you see, and improvised ones can be *very* clever. I never knew such things even existed.
In time, the party assembled runs out of fireworks and has to be led out back to the paved road by NightRider.
A party of six of us winds up camping out 'til near sunrise, under the stars, on a paved cul-de-sac near Albuquerque's West Mesa, sharing MRE hospitality supplied by those in the party who *have* put their lives on the line.
Over the course of the ensuing hours, we all share stories with eachother, but to those of you who *served* I thank you not only for your service, but for your hospitality, your humour, your love of life, your joy in still existing, and in sharing your existence and the stories of those you've both existed with and loved in ways that we can never know with us.
From where I stand, right now, it's *not* political whatever stupid wars we fight wherever we fight them. I still know I would *never* fight in *any* war. But to have the honour of hearing just a few of your stories, related to my own ears first-hand, is priceless. My greatest hope going forward is that you find a way to tell them to others beyond me.
And if we only ever came to meet because we're furries (whatever the fuck *that* means!), then so be it. I'm proud to have just that much in common with you, my freinds.
Be well,
xeltifon
Uncomfortable travelling, yes -- but what a place to gather up an invaluably rich collection of others' stories, the likes of which you *know* are true from the intensity in the voices and the fire in the eyes the fire in the bellies of all your other road-weary, sleep-deprived strangers telling you *their* lives knowing full well they will *never* meet you again, once they get back on their feet and don't want to be embarrassed by the tales of their youth, or their madness, or both.
What better way to hear about salmon fishing in Alaska from teenaged men who had been poisoned for life by their boat's fiberglass? What better way to see the stars in Death Valley, to swat poisoned mosquitos in Louisianna's summer heat, to feel still-present racial tensions in Alabama, to see the remnants of the glowing civic pride of now-forgotten farming towns through the midwest, to recognize poverty-stricken attempts to gloss over our nation's legacy of segregation, only to finally arrive in some still gleaming but still deeply ashamed and angry city through its most overcrowded tunnels just to see the gaping holes where once two gleaming towers stood? That all I've done, over the years, and it started on Independence Day.
This year, not near so ambitious, I casually rode out with Remo in his clunker of a minivan to Edgewood -- a semi-rural, super-far-flung exurb, or so it might be if it weren't forever isolated from Albuquerque by the deceptively not-quite-towering Sandia and Manzano mountains lining the North and South sides of Tijeras Canyon, through which you take your life into your own hands driving if you *ever* want to pass into that world. From Albuquerque to Edgewood, it's just something like 38 miles, but the people are quite undeniably *different* there.
To most of the rest of the country, Albuquerque residents are weird. To most resident Burquenos, East Mountain folks are *mighty* weird. Maybe that's why I like them.
They do things like routinely "not evacuate" when forest fires come burning right up to their homes. This sort of inexplicable behaviour tends to inconveniently drive down the numbers for big national do-gooder organizations like the Red Cross, who wind up with perhaps a handful of only the most truly desperate people in their shelters, pissing off the people who run such organizations, since they wind up wasting money, but somehow, nobody dies, which (if only the non-evacuating weirdos would kindly oblige) might in turn drive some more people to the shelters, and doubtless help increase reven--ahhem--donations.
They live in all manner of housing from down-and-out trailers to historic ranch houses to miniature mansions to ranch-house-styled McMansions. Unlike in the city, where each of these kinds of housing has a whole neighbourhood (complete with neighbourhood association) associated with it, in Edgewood they're all scattered amongst eachother and just spread enough apart -- generally accessible only over long, barely-graded dirt roads that each neighbour has, to some extent, a sense of privacy from their neighbours' unwelcome weirdness -- even in a "small town" (although a sprawling one) far from where the *true* mountain men live -- just far enough that during "normal" times, a sense of "this is mine" seems *always* to prevail.
They love the peace, they love the quiet, love the solitude. But I am guessing that most landowners in these parts do own guns, and will not hesitate to use 'em if someone comes prowling 'round, completely uninvited, doing things on private land that they should not be doing. And that's not to say that gun violence reigns. No -- for that, you have to get down to Belen. (A whole other story.)
Not so much in Edgewood as further out into the less densely populated places (where tiny, sparsely-scattered general stores are *still* the gathering places for locals), but people here do seem a *bit* insctinctively distrustful of outsiders and random passers-through in general. At least, until they get to know you.
Which usually entails looking you in the eye and having an honest conversation about *something* substantial. About what? Doesn't fucking matter. You can talk for a couple of minutes with the clerk in the Wal-Mart in Edgewood about which counter you have to go to in order to buy cigarettes. But if it goes beyond "oh, counter 19, fine, whatever", and turns however briefly into a discussion about how her husband died ten years after quitting smoking from emphysima and your own father's now on Oxygen for COPD, then yes. The clerk now not only *knows* you but suddenly gets downright courteous. *Not* familiar, but *courteous*. This is a vast difference between the two which easily gets lost on *anyone* who lives too long in the City. (Especially, perhaps, if they come from the vast city known as California.) Try striking up a conversation of any kind with anyone in almost any Albuquerque Wal-Mart and you're likely to get security called out on your ass.
If you haven't yet figured it out, Remo and I showed up at the Wal-Mart in Edgewood to met NightRider. He apparently had something planned involving fireworks at his house. After more than an hour waiting in the parking lot, eating a *very* disappointing salad, drinking questionable lemonade from plastic bottles, and generally amusing ourselves to no end watching one of the more stunning wrap-around pink and orange and blue and white and grey sunsets either one of us had seen (for which appreciation, the security guard himself got out of his truck, not to tell us to move on, but to admire it for a while with us), NightRider does show up. He parks about a mile away
in the enormous parking lot, we walk over to him, ask him if he knows what's going on, he says he's waiting on a couple of the other people whom I'd only met briefly, one of them presently shows up, in fact, he'd been there over 20 minutes but didn't know that we were there, and thus, the conversation starts.
Soulcat is, in my initial estimation, an amazing human being. He probably wouldn't like being called that, and would honestly prefer to be called a crazy fur. OK then. In keeping with my long-standing policy of not calling individuals what they prefer not to be called, I will agree. He is a crazy fur.
This crazy fur served six years in the Army, including multiple tours of duty in Iraq. He was *there* at the FOB in Baghdad when the AHA got hit from a lucky round of mortar fire, resulting in a fire involving multiple explosions which lasted for more than nine hours.
He now works as a mechanic at a large-chain car-repair place. It seems to be the only job that he can get in this economy. He says he was let go for health-related reasons, despite being a good soldier. And man, not that I know jack shit about the army, much less combat, but I do believe to the depths of my heart that this furson knows *exactly* what he's saying, and means *every* single world he tells this near perfect stranger.
It's not my place to tell his story. He's still alive, and so, it's his to tell.
Suffice to say, we did go out to Nightrider's place to shoot fireworks off in the stormy desert night sky beneath a brilliant full moon which disappeared and reappeared to our eyes constantly throughout the night.
At one point someone lit one of those big ones with a long damn fuse. Somewhere near the beginning of that video, I'm sure my voice can be heard saying "long fuse!" to which some other person unknown to me in the dark says "that's never a good sign", or words to that effect. The fuse seems to burn on just a bit too long, until we start to wonder whether it's a dud. In fact, the powder meant to send it off hurtling it hundreds of feet into the sky before the charge to make it bloom beautifully and safely above our heads has simply, for reasons unkown to me, failed to go off. All of a sudden -- BOOM!!!! Brilliant white tongues of fire come racing toward us all from on the ground, as in slow motion. I wouldn't be surprised on seeing that video on YouTube (as I'm sure it will be posted, in time) to hear my own voice saying "HOLY FUCK" as I shield my eyes and run from the explosion, along with the probably fifteen or other so people then standing close around the faulty charge that went off on the ground.
It feels like half an hour -- we've all got bumps and bruises in weird places -- maybe burns -- it's hard to tell. In fact, probably not ten seconds had elapsed before we all emerged, more or less sheepishly going back from our protective cover behind cars assembled to see whether damage has been done. It is *quite* done. A mass spasm of laughter erupts from the crowd. We've all survived this much at least, if never anything more serious.
Soulcat goes on to tell me how to make an MRE bomb. I kinda dig explosives, you see, and improvised ones can be *very* clever. I never knew such things even existed.
In time, the party assembled runs out of fireworks and has to be led out back to the paved road by NightRider.
A party of six of us winds up camping out 'til near sunrise, under the stars, on a paved cul-de-sac near Albuquerque's West Mesa, sharing MRE hospitality supplied by those in the party who *have* put their lives on the line.
Over the course of the ensuing hours, we all share stories with eachother, but to those of you who *served* I thank you not only for your service, but for your hospitality, your humour, your love of life, your joy in still existing, and in sharing your existence and the stories of those you've both existed with and loved in ways that we can never know with us.
From where I stand, right now, it's *not* political whatever stupid wars we fight wherever we fight them. I still know I would *never* fight in *any* war. But to have the honour of hearing just a few of your stories, related to my own ears first-hand, is priceless. My greatest hope going forward is that you find a way to tell them to others beyond me.
And if we only ever came to meet because we're furries (whatever the fuck *that* means!), then so be it. I'm proud to have just that much in common with you, my freinds.
Be well,
xeltifon
posted by xeltifon at 6:29 PM
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