Doc Essays

Portland wrestling

Ahhhh… Saturday. In my entrenched middle age, Saturday means taking Griffin to a Little League game, maybe renting a movie, washing the car… general old-dad messing around. I like Saturday.

But, you know… I used to LOVE Saturday. I used to live for Saturday. Not because of the lack of school; I liked school all right. Not because of the ability to sleep in. Not even because Saturday was allowance day and I could go feed my sugar jones with a furtive run to the Meister’s Buy-Rite candy department (another story in and of itself).

Nope. I loved Saturday because it was WRESTLING DAY. 

The late 60s and early 70s had a lot of things going for them, including the Amazin’ Mets, naked hippie chicks, and the Meister’s Buy-Rite candy department. But that paled in comparison to the luminescent glory that was Portland Wrestling. Living in Ashland, we beheld the magnificence via cable TV. Channel 12, I think but that hardly mattered. What mattered were the 90 soul-consuming, mind-inflaming minutes of epic grappling.

Sure, we knew it was fake. We knew that Lonnie “Moondog” Mayne didn’t really eat that turnbuckle. We knew that the matches were rigged. We didn’t give a fuck. We just wanted to see some action. We were in early adolescence, with hormones raging and a taste for the old ultra-violence. We wanted fake blood!

If you worked it right, you could build your Saturday around Portland Wrestling. Jeff Miles, my next door neighbor, had a perfect yard for whiffle ball. We’d play a half hour or so of Whiffle Ball, just to satisfy our moms that we had not spent the entire day inside watching TV. Then, we’d go inside and spend the entire day watching TV. Japanese monster movies were first — Godzilla, Rodan (not Rodin… that would have been a leeetle too much culture for us) and Mothra. Tiny Japanese twins, caged and singing to a nuclear mutant to provoke him to emerge from his slumber and fight another nuclear mutant… is there any wonder my generation grew up so WEIRD?

And, is there any wonder my generation can actually pronounce the word “nuclear?”

Be that as it may, we’d soak up some monster movie action. Then, kung fu movies. Always, always, ALWAYS an old guy with a pointed hat and a long beard, flying, disappearing, kicking the ass of some other guy. This is how I learned about world culture, from kung fu movies and Godzilla flicks.

By then, we hadn’t moved for several hours. It was wrestling time. Tom Peterson’s grim visage filled the screen, telling us to wake up and buy a lot of crap merchandise from his store. “Free is a very good price!” Frank Bonema came on, looking like an unhealthy version of the Cigarette Man from the X-Files. Chaos ensued. Chairs were bashed over heads. Ringside ropes were leapt from. Commercials were run. Ice cream was consumed. Dreams were filled with the screams of overweight, hairy men in tights.

They didn’t have steroids back then. They had beer, and bad road food. Instead of lifting weights, they lifted each other in death spins. They climbed ropes to jump on necks. The Portland Wrestling workout.

Diversity was the theme. Peter Maivia; Samoan. The Soul Man Rocky Johnson; Black. Haru Sasaki; Indeterminate Oriental Descent. Lonnie Mayne; Cracker.

So we sat, we watched, we learned. The lessons are with me to this day. Never turn your back on the ref. Move away at the last second if someone is trying to jump on you. If things get really bad, grab a steel chair and beat the living shit out of someone. And, whatever else you do, always stay within tagging reach of your partner.

Sure, wrestling is still around. But, all the good stuff happened 30 years ago. Just ask Frank Bonema.

Customer service at the bottle return.

Way back in the halcyon days of 1971, when I was an erstwhile 8th grader discovering the joys of onanism and the hideous perils of acne, the reign of famous maverick Oregon governor Tom McCall was in full swing. McCall, famous for imploring people to “visit Oregon, but please don’t stay,” influenced many progressive acts of legislation including land use planning and a bill to keep our beaches forever open to the public — all 300+ glorious miles of them.

He also had a hand in another landmark act, one that impacts all us Oregonians every day. He was the impetus behind Oregon’s first-of-it’s-kind “bottle bill.” Oregon was the first state in the nation with a mandatory deposit on beverage containers. Our streets are cleaner because of this. We recycle millions of tons of glass and aluminum every year, thanks to governor McCall’s foresight.

And, my fucking basement is usually full of old empty six packs thanks to that son of a bitch.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a hardcore recycler. I’m happy to do my part. But bottle recycling has changed over the years. I can clearly remember taking a shopping cart full of bottles and cans to the back of the grocery store. Friendly, helpful store employees counted the bottles and handed out a little slip of paper for you to go cash in. It was a dignified transaction. And, back in 1971, a can of pop didn’t cost much more than a quarter, so that deposit was worth something. Especially to an eighth grader in desperate need of more mass-marketed candy. 

If the bottle deposit of five cents had kept up with inflation, we’d be paying about 85 cents per bottle these days. THAT would encourage recycling. You’d see executives wandering the freeways in suits and ties, rifling the bushes for cans. Stockbrokers would be going through garbage containers at TriMet stops downtown.

Times have changed. No longer are you met by Jimmy the Helpful Assistant Store Clerk when you bring your bottles back. Now you are faced with the twin hounds of Hades: the Can-Do machine, and the All In One machine. Designed by former Nazi engineers as a cruel psychological experiment, these machines are supposed to do what Jimmy used to do — count your containers and give you a little slip with a dollar amount on it. The advantage to the machines, as far as the store owners are concerned, is the advantage of all people-replacing work machines. They won’t ask for a raise, they’ll work stupid hours out in the rainy parking lot without bitching, and you won’t catch them reading the latest purloined issue of Juggs Magazine back in the sorting room.

I ventured to the Hollywood Fred Meyer last weekend to take the bottles back. There’s a whole subculture built around those machines out in the parking lot… several down-on-their-luck guys lurk hopefully, waiting to see who will get frustrated and leave a whole cart full of bottles just waiting to be scavenged. I usually give these fellows a buck or two while I’m there, so my trip usually nets about 45 cents when all is said and done. Then there are the anxious housewives, kids running around reveling in the old beer and broken glass, wandering out into the parking lot. There’s usually one old man, confused by the machines, thinking back to the days when everyone just drank out of the same earthenware jug and “pop” was something you did to the guy that tried to court your girlfriend. And, of course, one comically disdainful store employee, his Saturday ruined by having to unclog the infernal machines all day. 

Because, as any bottle-returner will tell you, those motherfuckers DO clog. They clog early, and they clog often. They clog in rain, sleet, snow, or sun. They clog arbitrarily, and almost mandatorily. They CLOG.

Mine clogged a lot last Saturday. I almost abandoned the bottles. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a ghostly figure, perched on the hood of a 1993 Toyota Corolla, and smoking a cigar. It was the specter of Tom McCall. I knew it was him, because he looks just like the guy who plays Frazier’s dad on TV. He nodded, pointed to the machines, and said, “it’s your duty, son. Keep Oregon green.”

I flipped him off and gave all my bottles to the nearest homeless guy. As I drove off, the homeless guy was yelling something about a clogged machine. I didn’t stick around to hear what he was saying. McCall looked pissed.

Sated

Guinea pig graves are, by default, shallow. My shovel easily pierces the soil of the back garden plot, and I start to dig. I have yet to share the news of Max’s passing with Riley. Still in bereavement for her bunny, who died a scant two weeks earlier, she might not take this news so easily.

In the morning, I arrive at my first day back from my gloriously extended wedding-break. I’m greeted with the shocking news that a former graduate-school classmate has taken his life. Like me, he had taken his degree from our school, and returned to our school to work - in his case, as a well-loved professor.  In an instant, my wedding stories are shelved, and we begin to plan for the inevitable tsunami of grief that is heading our way. I decline an assignment that would send me to the graduate school campus to confront his death through the faces of his students. I want time to untangle my own feelings before helping others with theirs. I know it will be a matter of one day before I am scheduled with my own clients who will want to process the loss of their favorite teacher. I can’t tell them that he was a friend. This is about them. My time comes in private.

The grave takes no time to dig. I chose a spot next to Max’s long-since-deceased cage-mate and companion. Together forever, just like on the hillside at Sunset Memorial Gardens. Mere feet from their resting place will grow fresh shoots of green onion, and big leafy heads of lettuce. Guinea pig paradise.

I sit in my office, door closed, taking a moment to reflect. I can’t figure out how I feel. The shock, of course, has yet to wear off. My former grad program, as it is wont to do, is bungling the delivery of the news to students. Just two days earlier, my mother’s husband had passed on. Then Max. Now my classmate. What does one do with all of this mortality?

I place a concrete block over Max’s fresh grave. On the block, I put a sprig of lilac snapped from a nearby branch. I pause. This is when my own collection of loss, both old and new, finds me. This moment of peace for a tiny brown guinea pig is weighted with a million pounds of long-carried sadness. I don’t cry, because that crying has been done. I think about how we carry joy in the same little box that holds our grief. All these deaths are a part of me. All the loss. All the gains, the perfection of tiny sparkling moments of light. All of it. When Max’s companion Fuzzlow died, the kids and I had a little ceremony. We poured a beer on his grave, Compton-style.

When it’s time to open my door, I stand and stretch for a minute, and breathe in whatever extra tolerance I can muster. As the week goes on, as I sit with crying students, my energies directed to them, as I struggle find sleep at night, I think a lot about life. We do that when someone leaves us, and we talk about how we should always appreciate our friends and our lives and our kids and our pets and our ability to breathe, because we truly don’t know when those things will be taken from us. Or, when we are ready to give them up. My classmate made his choice on his own.

I wipe my hands together a couple of times, and shake off the dirt from Max’s final resting place.

There’s a student in our waiting room who needs to talk about the death of his favorite instructor. As full as I am, as topped-off with mortality as I feel, I will put myself aside.

There’s always room in the garden. There has to be.

Lucky in love

                    

For Boog Powell, it was pulling the inside fastball - whipping around, wrists snapping through the zone like lightning, hips turning like a lathe, eyes following the rotation of the red Haitian-sewn seams - the inside fastball was his and then it was gone.

For Ken Jennings, trivia. For Dave Navarro, notes shredded like frozen steel. For Admiral Perry, ice. For Satan, fire.

For me, love.

We’ve all got that thing. Born with it? Maybe. We labor at other tasks. I can’t garden so well. My sewing skills falter. Socially, I’ve been grinding it out since Tammy Hald asked me for a homework answer in the fifth grade and I couldn’t hear her voice, just my heart trying to pound my eardrums into pulp. I could hear the blood rushing through my veins, carrying my self-confidence away to some distant planetoid within my scrawny pale ten-year-old frame. My knees shook so hard that the needle moved, almost imperceptibly but scientifically valid, on a seismograph somewhere.

I’ve come around as a communicator, with work, and now if asked a question by an attractive woman I can represent my species in a relatively decent way. I no longer sweat at the thought of all those x-chromosomes in close proximity. I can maintain an even strain without going insane in the membrane. But, it’s been a grind.

Love’s no grind.

A few days ago, in a sizable hotel room perched atop the fancy Mandalay Bay casino/resort in Las Vegas, deep in the the brutal/reclaimed Nevada desert, I had the good fortune to marry the woman of my dreams, that girl that boys spend their lives wishing they were with, the tan and gorgeous sunshine of my soul. The room overflowed with love. Friends had flown in from all over, including some I had met in person for the first time a scant 24 hours earlier. They were all there to celebrate the existence of love. My heart did not pound, nor did sweat or shake. I am at my best when I am the epicenter of a universe of love. I am the king of the vast realm of the heart.

Love is what I do.

I can wax rhapsodic about all of the facets of my love-blessed relationship, and trust me, I will. But, it comes down to the ability to give and receive the most beautiful gift of all, and that ability was handed to me, carefully and casually, by my mother. I learned from the day I was born that all of the money and cars and wars and deceptions and executive jobs and washroom attendant slaveries in the world would not hold up to love. I learned that most of the fun of getting there is getting there and that love poured generously and willy-nilly into a hungry world would return, a zillion-fold, before the earth had cooled as they day’s sun set. You give it, it comes back, and if you believe then it will always be.

I’m lucky in love. And love is lucky in me.

Some people are scholars, or poets, or mechanics, or mobsters. Some can carry a tune. Some can make fancy things. Some sleep better than I do. Some are taller, and more beautiful. Some people are achievers.

I’m a lover. And that, my dear loves, is it’s own reward, sustainable and perfect. And that’s all I want or need.

I’m lucky that way.

sunlight

There are cloudless days now, from time to time, and those bring a little mustard-squirt of bright direct early yellow sun under the broken blinds on the east side of the room. She faces me when she sleeps, often, and one of the jobs I’ve assigned myself is to keep that direct light from her eyes. I move my pillows to block the light as I quietly get out of bed. This act of care is how I choose to start my day.

There is a heat vent at the bay window that looks into the back yard, as crowded with life as one of those deep-sea vents in a National Geographic special. Cats, not strange sea creatures, but just as in the sea they gather and hope for food. My arrival bodes well, for nutritional purposes.

I look into the back yard and my gaze is captured by a squirrel meandering across the power lines that run parallel 15 feet or so above the back fence. It’s a lazy high-wire act, this tiny Wallenda just taking his damn time traversing the 75-foot aerial superhighway. How tenuous his life must be, up there in sky, or darting across the street out in front of my house, or avoiding the gathering predators. His tiny heart beats a mile a minute up there as he keeps his eye on the prize, a return to his family, a few moments stolen in the safety of his lair.

The cats rub up against my feet. They depend on me. The ecosystem of my house, while partly interdependent, would collapse without the two responsible adults at the helm. We’re surrounded by lives hanging from a thread. We’re providers, stabilizers, the givers and the blockers of light, preservers of sleep and safety. Each act within this system is a measured effort to keep the system alive.

As I write this, the sun has slowly crept time-lapse-style across the wooden floorboards of my living room. I sit on a sofa at the other side of the room from the bay window, and the progress of time is marked by the creeping sunlight. It approaches my bare toes, and as I watch time unfold I’m keenly aware of my momentary stasis. This is how time catches up with people - they sit on the couch, lie in a bed, living as spectators or as well-meaning people frozen in fear. They dare not reinvent their lives, as they have always been this way, worn this hair, loved this one particular person, had sex in that one position, watched that one show. They pretend like life isn’t tenuous, and linear, and flowing like a rain-swollen river toward some cold and unknown sea.

A cloud has drifted across the sun for now, and my feet are safe. The progress of the sun, though, has not been altered, but obscured. The cats, fed, search for a new place to find warmth now that their pool of sunlight is gone. I try to tell them that it will be back, but in their bones they know that it won’t be back forever.

Et Tu?

I assume the position, knobby knees in full contact with the hard floor. My jeans, a thousand times patched, seem ridiculously threadbare, so wrong for the occasion, so out of place amidst such splendor.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” Hoo boy… that’s rich. I’m eight, unspoiled by much. To the likely disappointment of the church, I have not yet begun to masturbate, to lie, to drink, to covet my neighbor’s wife and lawn mower and teenage daughter, his Corvette, his fine trimmed lawn.

Hello, my name is Jeff, and I don’t covet shit.

“It’s been, uhhhh, three weeks since my last confession.” And it has. And I didn’t have anything then, either, like an actor who keeps showing up for auditions without bothering to memorize a monologue with which to wow the casting director, who in this case was a mildly disinterested youth priest named Father Bob. Everything about the Catholic church weirded me out, from the graphic depictions of Christ tortured on the cross to the gothic Latin ceremonies I struggled through.

To this day, the scent of incense takes me back to an aisle seat in St. Mary’s, my view restricted like a 60s basketball fan behind one of those giant girders at Boston Garden, robes whooshing by, powerful incense hung by what looked like a little cat-o-nine-tails, mumbled Latin like so much smoke following the men working their way up the aisle. I didn’t understand any of of it… Veni, vidi, carpe your diem, et tu whatever. Like a young Fox Mulder, covered in nascent acne and furtively copping glances at forced virgins in Sunday school, I wanted to believe. So badly, I wanted. I wanted the Latin, the weird smelly smoke, the robes. I wanted to do things that were so bad, like murder someone in cold blood out by the big holy-water bowls, and I wanted to be forgiven. I wanted that imaginary forgiveness for my lurid imaginary sins. What a beautiful tradition of master-scam this was going to be. I needed to understand! To be IN the church!

“Father, I cursed three times, and, uh, took the lord’s name in vain.” My real confession: I had not the faintest clue what it meant to take the lord’s name in vain. I imagined veins, pulsing with holy blood, maybe the father son and holy ghost. And why was there a ghost? Was the ghost good? What was the thing with the veins?

They sent me to Sunday school, and to catechism, and to this day I had to look up catechism to see how it was spelled and if that was what is was called and I still don’t know what it meant. Still don’t know, Google and all. It hangs there, cloaked in smoke and mystery like all else Papal and non-palpable.

“Son, the lord will forgive you.” Thank Christ! I mean, literally, I guess, huh? One thing I knew about being religious was the Hail Marys. With the Hail Marys and the Lord’s Prayers, I was good and true, not to mention real damn fast.

I left the confessional booth. In line behind me was a group of people who looked as though they really needed to be there - like if the church had been closed for repairs, a couple of them would have just been swallowed up in the hellish asphalt of the parking lot and called on home. I was happy to give up my spot, but part of me wonders what they did. As I write this, I think about those people in line at confession, and I imagine all kinds of stuff.

Adulthood finds me in a career that consists of hearing all manner of confession, from all manner of people. The way we work, there’s no expectation that anyone will be swallowed up in the parking lot, and although we have an urn of water in the waiting area, it’s for drinking in small paper cups.

You have to wonder, though, about this career choice of mine. No Latin, but there sure is a lot of faith to go around.
—-

Here Comes Rusty

Today is Sunday, as many of you may realize after shaking off the effects of last night’s wild debauched carousing. For some, this means a day puttering around in the yard, trimming plants and mixing up large vats of Miracle-Grow in order to make your tomatoes look like they survived, nay, thrived following a nuclear holocaust. For others, Saturday means a trip to the movies after finding a cosigner to finance the cost of a couple of tickets and a large vat of Miracle-Grown movie popcorn with “butter flavoring.” And some of you may just stay home, trapped in the house with a few kids, SpongeBob blaring on the TV as you contemplate jumping out of the window.

Sure, that’s all a lot of fun. But, back in my day, we had a better alternative. Back in my day, there was greyhound racing right here in Portland.

Travel back with me in time, if you will, to the halcyon days of Murray Kemp Park, now known as the Giant Useless Stadium Formerly Known As The Multnomah Greyhound Track. We always used to wonder exactly who Murray Kemp was. I used to speculate that he was the winningnest jockey at the track. Sure, horse jockeys have to keep their weight down, it’s a tough life, blah blah blah. But imagine the strain of staying under 40 pounds in order to ride a winning greyhound! That is the stuff of legend, my friends.

Be that as it may, and it may well not be… the greyhound track was where the action was. The routine was simple: round up a few friends who shared your status of not having a life, hop into the appropriate car (late-70s American tuna boats were the choice at the track… nothing gained you greyhound cred like showing up in a dented 1974 Buick Electra 225), and stop at the liquor store for a few pints of something that would make you forget that you were hanging out in the equivalent of a smoke-filled barn with degenerate gamblers wearing pinky rings and Aqua Velva.

Once at the track, it was important to buy a copy of the program so you could have something to focus on if your head started spinning from too much cheap alcohol. The truly adventurous greyhound afficianado would smoke a couple of bowls on the way to the track, just to add to the surreal quality. Trust me, if you DIDN’T have bloodshot eyes you were regarded with a not-inconsequential amount of suspicion by your fellow seedy types. The program was packed full of numbers and information, none of which was useful at ALL. These were DOGS. Let a pack of dogs loose to chase something at top speed, and all mathematical probability went out the window.

The cool thing about the programs, though, were the little narrative blurbs describing how the dogs had done in their past few races. “Started strong, faded.” “Out of it from the beginning.” “Jumped fence and ripped throat from small child.” These narratives, while as useless as the numbers (45:04, 77, 98759839348.we==x ???) were fodder for entertaining parody between races. There was always time between races, because the actual race took about two minutes. You’d peer at the program, make funny remarks (“started strong, took out four dogs in a flaming 3rd turn wreck, lost endorsements”), get another beer, try not to stare at the degenerate gamblers (“wow, that’s the biggest goiter I’ve ever seen!”) and listen to the conversations. The track was apparently the first-date launching point for many a Gresham High student, and there were some awesome haircuts to be seen, and some awesome conversations to be filed away for future reference.

You’d place your bet by going to the parimutuel window. If you were still able to spell or pronounce parimutuel, you were required to buy another beer before you made your bet. Many, MANY people bet on the dog who took a crap during the ceremonial pre-race parade. I am not making this up. A dog would stop and by the time he was fully hunched over and doing his business, his odds would drop from 45-1 to 3-2. People would knock each other over running to the windows to make their bets.

Then, the two minute flurry of action. A large fake bone rode along a little conveyer thing alongside the track. The track announcer would intone “heeeeeere comes RUSTY!” and the crowd would go wild. When the bone got to the starting gate, the dogs were released. 40 or 50 addled fans would yell “release the hounds!” and the race would be on. The bone was named “Rusty.” I’m not making that up, either. What a lot of latecomers to the track don’t realize is that Rusty used to be a large fake rabbit. Too many people got offended by the use of a cloth rabbit to make dogs run in a frenzied circle while legions of drunk people shouted, so the rabbit was replaced by a bone. Rusty the Bone. Mmmmmkay.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, the race was over. You stared at your ticket until the numbers came into focus and then tore it up, resolving to never, ever bet on a dog just because he had taken a crap before the race. I mean, YOU took a crap before the race, and what had you won? Nothing.

It continued for 13 glorious races. If you were way into it, you could catch the matinee (kids allowed!) and the evening races on Saturday.

I tried the horse track, but it just wasn’t the same. None of the horses relieved themselves before the race. I had no idea who to bet on.

Here Comes Rusty

Today is Sunday, as many of you may realize after shaking off the effects of last night’s wild debauched carousing. For some, this means a day puttering around in the yard, trimming plants and mixing up large vats of Miracle-Grow in order to make your tomatoes look like they survived, nay, thrived following a nuclear holocaust. For others, Saturday means a trip to the movies after finding a cosigner to finance the cost of a couple of tickets and a large vat of Miracle-Grown movie popcorn with “butter flavoring.” And some of you may just stay home, trapped in the house with a few kids, SpongeBob blaring on the TV as you contemplate jumping out of the window.

Sure, that’s all a lot of fun. But, back in my day, we had a better alternative. Back in my day, there was greyhound racing right here in Portland.

Travel back with me in time, if you will, to the halcyon days of Murray Kemp Park, now known as the Giant Useless Stadium Formerly Known As The Multnomah Greyhound Track. We always used to wonder exactly who Murray Kemp was. I used to speculate that he was the winningnest jockey at the track. Sure, horse jockeys have to keep their weight down, it’s a tough life, blah blah blah. But imagine the strain of staying under 40 pounds in order to ride a winning greyhound! That is the stuff of legend, my friends.

Be that as it may, and it may well not be… the greyhound track was where the action was. The routine was simple: round up a few friends who shared your status of not having a life, hop into the appropriate car (late-70s American tuna boats were the choice at the track… nothing gained you greyhound cred like showing up in a dented 1974 Buick Electra 225), and stop at the liquor store for a few pints of something that would make you forget that you were hanging out in the equivalent of a smoke-filled barn with degenerate gamblers wearing pinky rings and Aqua Velva.

Once at the track, it was important to buy a copy of the program so you could have something to focus on if your head started spinning from too much cheap alcohol. The truly adventurous greyhound afficianado would smoke a couple of bowls on the way to the track, just to add to the surreal quality. Trust me, if you DIDN’T have bloodshot eyes you were regarded with a not-inconsequential amount of suspicion by your fellow seedy types. The program was packed full of numbers and information, none of which was useful at ALL. These were DOGS. Let a pack of dogs loose to chase something at top speed, and all mathematical probability went out the window.

The cool thing about the programs, though, were the little narrative blurbs describing how the dogs had done in their past few races. “Started strong, faded.” “Out of it from the beginning.” “Jumped fence and ripped throat from small child.” These narratives, while as useless as the numbers (45:04, 77, 98759839348.we==x ???) were fodder for entertaining parody between races. There was always time between races, because the actual race took about two minutes. You’d peer at the program, make funny remarks (“started strong, took out four dogs in a flaming 3rd turn wreck, lost endorsements”), get another beer, try not to stare at the degenerate gamblers (“wow, that’s the biggest goiter I’ve ever seen!”) and listen to the conversations. The track was apparently the first-date launching point for many a Gresham High student, and there were some awesome haircuts to be seen, and some awesome conversations to be filed away for future reference.

You’d place your bet by going to the parimutuel window. If you were still able to spell or pronounce parimutuel, you were required to buy another beer before you made your bet. Many, MANY people bet on the dog who took a crap during the ceremonial pre-race parade. I am not making this up. A dog would stop and by the time he was fully hunched over and doing his business, his odds would drop from 45-1 to 3-2. People would knock each other over running to the windows to make their bets.

Then, the two minute flurry of action. A large fake bone rode along a little conveyer thing alongside the track. The track announcer would intone “heeeeeere comes RUSTY!” and the crowd would go wild. When the bone got to the starting gate, the dogs were released. 40 or 50 addled fans would yell “release the hounds!” and the race would be on. The bone was named “Rusty.” I’m not making that up, either. What a lot of latecomers to the track don’t realize is that Rusty used to be a large fake rabbit. Too many people got offended by the use of a cloth rabbit to make dogs run in a frenzied circle while legions of drunk people shouted, so the rabbit was replaced by a bone. Rusty the Bone. Mmmmmkay.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, the race was over. You stared at your ticket until the numbers came into focus and then tore it up, resolving to never, ever bet on a dog just because he had taken a crap before the race. I mean, YOU took a crap before the race, and what had you won? Nothing.

It continued for 13 glorious races. If you were way into it, you could catch the matinee (kids allowed!) and the evening races on Saturday.

I tried the horse track, but it just wasn’t the same. None of the horses relieved themselves before the race. I had no idea who to bet on.

Unmown Grass

The tree is ripe with the promising buds of spring, and its top branches are losing their grip on a fat full yellow moon slung low in the early morning sky. The moon must be a pretty desirable prize, as the tree seems to really be trying, clawing at the last buttery edge, fighting a losing battle but resolute in its desire to not let go. I descend the two slick steps from the front stoop and stride across the unmown grass of my front lawn, on a path to intersect the moon should it fall low enough to touch the horizon. Like the tree, I’m destined to fail. Like the tree, I’m resolute, and I shall make the attempt no matter how predestined the outcome. This is what I do.

There is a squirrel who greets me most mornings. I like to entertain the notion that it’s the same squirrel and that he has somehow been given the honor of guiding me to Oregon street from 108th. I envision a tiny doorman’s costume, maybe a bejeweled walking stick, toothpick-small, and a monocle. I bow to the squirrel, almost imperceptibly, but squirrels are social creatures and I know that I can see him bow back. Together we share admiration for the tree’s attempt to corral the impossible moon. I bid him adieu. There are places for me to be, and I’ve shared as much of my morning with the squirrel guide as I can. I wish good health to him and to his family.

These mornings, I can see my exhalations hanging for a moment in front of me before they dissipate. This is water, and carbon dioxide, and a thousand other things, and it’s a small miracle that an immutable law of physics can somehow render visible something so fleeting. How is breath not a miracle on any morning, though? How can we be so lucky as to possess within us a machine that is wonderful enough to pull life from the air around us? Some morning I’ll leave the house early, and I’ll stand with the squirrel, and together we’ll ponder this in full knowledge that there can’t be an answer to such questions. Not today, though. I have places to go.

Oregon street, 107th, Pacific avenue. The asphalt ribbon of 102nd awaits, stretching unbroken from the southeast almost to the Columbia river. It’s the recent recipient of beautification and fresh new pedestrian features. Street lamps, old style, with humming chemical bulbs that poorly mimic the color of this morning’s moon, stronger, harsher, without comfort. No cars at this time of day, as the only people up are the early commuters and the potato chip delivery guy I always see. We’re on the same schedule, he and I, and he pulls out of the driveway and gives me a nod. I wonder if he has a squirrel in his neighborhood who sees him to his car before he climbs into his car, and I wonder if he cares. For one minute, the potato-chip-guy’s imagined squirrel is my muse. What a sweet and complicated world it is.

Once I leave the tree-lined confines of my Lorene Park neighborhood, I’m swallowed in an endless sea of concrete. 102nd gives way to the Gateway Shopping Center parking lot, and for a while I feel as I once felt in a Greyhound bus ponderously cutting across west Texas, hours piled on hours piled on hours, no relief, no change. The parking lot never ends until it ends, and I’m nearly at the train station, and I’m a little sad that the walk is almost over, and I’m a little glad.

Here’s where you live. You live in that moment between inhale and exhale, in that heartbeat, in that acknowledgement of breath and bone. You live in the tree that grasps at the full moon. You live in a river of concrete. You live wherever your gaze takes you, to the last sideways crescent sliver of moon as it dips below the horizon line, to the faux-colonial roofline of an eastside grocery, to the indigo sky that warms as the sun slowly climbs up behind you. You live in every step I take. You live forever in every fold of my clothing, under every fingernail, in each laugh line that I’ve earned. I take you with me on my morning walk to the train station, and I bring you home, and then I find you alive and real in my warm home, and I know what real happiness is. And in the morning, as the squirrel steps out to find me and guide me to Oregon street, you live in me again.

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