Dec 27, 2011

In late December before the Caucus, I stopped at a small Iowa diner for breakfast. It was my first visit, as I had stumbled upon it by driving around the downtown looking for some place that wasn’t a franchise.

The restaurant was split into two dining areas. The rear, where three men and I sat at separate tables sipping coffee, and the front, which was clogged with cameramen, lighting and boom operators — all curiously dressed in suits and business attire.

A bearded, heavy-set man appeared from the kitchen, wringing a greasy towel. One of the regulars asked him what we were all wondering: “Whats going on up there?”

“Those are Perry’s people. They’re setting up for a visit. He’s coming by this morning.”

“Perry? Is he Democrat?”

I snorted, thinking of that recent article in the Atlantic by Iowa Professor Stephen Bloom, a poorly written attack on Iowa and its first-in-the-Nation status, which relied heavily on stereotypes and generalizations of the populous. But at that moment, for a brief second, Bloom was vindicated. This man wasn’t even aware of what party was holding the caucus.

“No. He’s a Republican,” said the owner. “He’s a governor of Texas.”

“They’re taking up a lot of your place,” one man said.

“Did they buy anything yet?” asked another.

“I sold one guy a Pepsi. The other five got water.”

The waitress brought out my skillet of eggs, peppers and hash browns, with a side of toast, bacon and pancakes. Large orange juice and a refill on my coffee.

“When he gets here, he’ll probably want it all for free,” said the third.

The owner chuckled, a bit nervously, and returned to the kitchen. I dug into my skillet and limp bacon. The patrons went back to their coffee and conversation about the late Winter, while the men up front continue to set up the “spontaneous” visit to this little Iowa diner.

I wondered what it would be like if Perry, or any other politician, walked unexpectedly into a diner and spoke with actual patrons rather than “plants.” What would happen if they didn’t have a team of handlers setting up the perfect scene?

I paid my bill, left a nice tip, and the next day I read the press online. The AP articles boasted of a crowd of over 100 supporters. (That diner could hold forty people, TOPS, and that’s without all the cameras and lighting.) Plus, I don’t recognize any of the earlier patrons in this picture. And none of the folks are wearing a hat (take that Mr. Bloom). None of them are eating either. All that owner sold, for giving up the front of his restaurant all morning, was a few Pepsis and coffee.

Sept 2011:

This Spring, I lost one of my best friends. His death has made me somber. Less risky. More appreciative and patient.

I think of him everyday, and wonder why it was him and not me.

We would talk about everything. About life, love and loss. Our long, inconsequential lives. The hopelessness of it all. And despite the futility, he would always try to change things. Volunteering and teaching. Changing minds and inspiring through his students. His teachings and words were powerful. But the world still ate him from the inside.

We’d talk about death as though its so distant, when it was really just a short life to be summarized in some newspaper obituary. Tossed and recycled. An end that we never see coming. And when it does, we can only hope that others will make us comfortable. Remember us for longer than it takes to drink that morning coffee.

I went to see him the day before he died. Took his dog to the hospice center to say good-bye. The same stinking, stupid dog that ran with us through the woods on the weekends. The same dog that lay with him in bed and guarded his family and home.

My friend couldn’t speak or see or move, but I still brought the dog. Grabbed his hand and set it on the fur. Moved it back and forth as though he were petting him for one last time.

I don’t know if he felt it. Maybe it was for me. Or for the dog. A way for us to say goodbye.

I like to think he would have done the same for me.

No…I know he would.

April 2011:

I got lucky and found one of those new double-wide shopping carts in the parking lot, and buckled the baby and my four-year old side-by-side. We got some apples and nectarines and some spinach bound tight with twine. We skipped over the tomatoes and pumpkins and other things I’d grown in my suburban garden.

The sea bass was on special and they had fresh grouper from the gulf. I got them both, along with some brown rice I’d steam in chicken broth. A brick of creamy havarti and a fresh loaf, and we made it to the checkout. The girls behaved well, so I got the oldest a candy bar, and let the baby chew on my knuckle. That single tooth can be surprisingly painful.

The bags were packed by a girl half my age. I smiled and wondered if I still had the stamina. She grinned. I nearly fainted. Then realized it was for the baby.

I paid and had to send back the bacon and beer because I was ten dollars short. I gave the receipt to the baby and left.

The glass exit doors whooshed open and my cart crashed noisily over the threshold, startling a man outside. He turned and put one hand on his hip and the other on his backpack. It was army-issue.  Not a plain Vietnam green, nor desert colored ink blots. It was that new camouflage with the digital pattern.

He looked right into my eyes. I’d never seen a look like that. I froze, and thought about raising my hands in surrender. But as quickly as he had turned to me, he turned back toward the parking lot. His face was as red as his hair, and he kept looking left and right, left and right. I thought he was waiting for a break in the traffic, but there was just one car and it had already turned down an aisle.

I started pushing the cart again. Slow and quiet. Thankfully, my four-year old had a mouthful of chocolate and the baby was turning the receipt into wet pulp. I passed by him. He was wearing unfaded jeans and white shoes with no grass stains. His black jacket had patches and insignias that were unfamiliar to me.

My truck was parked in the furthest space. A lame attempt at extra exercise.

A horn honked somewhere in the lot. I looked back at the man. He was walking away from the sound with his head lowered and rubbing the back of his neck.

I reached my truck. Loaded the kids and the groceries.

I took the long way to the exit and drove past the store again.

The man was still there. Pacing. Head still darting at each everyday sound. The whoosh of the doors. The crash of the carts. The cries of the young and the sighs of the elderly.

In my rearview, I saw an empty cart roll through the lot. He retrieved it and put it in one of the corrals. Then he went back to the front of the store and rolled from foot to foot.

I don’t know what he was waiting for. Maybe the bus? A taxi? Or perhaps the bravery to actually walk inside and get some milk.

I drove home. Back to the chaos. And I thought how different he and I would define that.

Feb 4, 2011:

I am now 36 years old. Officially middle aged, and dealing with people on opposite spectrums of life and death.

My grandparents, who raised me after my parents died, are both in the late 80s. Relatively fit, and lucid enough to tell me: “We won’t be around much longer.”

They are privileged to have lived this long, but cursed with that awareness of mortality. Sometimes senility can be a gift.

On the other end, I am raising three young children. One just a year old. Just starting their lives. Obsessed with knowledge and wonder and what lies ahead. Blessed by ignorance and innocence. Their antics bring me so much joy.

Dying guardians. Growing children.

Life is supposed to be more spread out.

I see the blossoms and the withering all at once…

(In memory of my friend Curtis B. The only man who would have ever helped me do this, without question or judgment.)

–

October 2006:

I went to Loki’s grave one night, swaying back and forth over his homemade headstone, weeping and wanting to pound my fist into the dirt.  To punch deep into the black soil and feel his fur for one last time. To have his smell on my hands. To bend his ears and rub them as he sighed.

I wanted him back.

So the next morning I called my friend with the tattooed neck and science degree.

“We’re going to get Odin,” I told him.

He didn’t question me. Just showed up at my house with his bucket and hacksaw. I grabbed my shovel and we went to the ravine.

“We might need to cut around the vertebrae,” he said, holding up the hacksaw. “Depending on how much he’s decomposed.”

We made our way down the hill, making guesses on what Odin might look like now.

My friend figured he’d look like a ninety-year-old smoker. Sunken eyes, parched lips, and skin barely hanging off the bone.

I said that all his flesh would be gone, except maybe for stray bits fur.

We’d learn that neither of us were right.

First we moved the logs off his grave, placed there to keep the animals from digging him up.

“Two animals are digging him up now,” he joked.

It was the only time I laughed all day.

He shoveled the first spade of dirt and pulled up a healthy worm.

It was good dirt. Full of life.

“Odin reincarnate,” I said, taking the fat worm. I set him gently on the ground.

The second and third spade brought up even more rich dirt and worms.

It was the fourth spade of dirt that made my heart sink. It held a string of blue ribbon. The ribbon I had tied around a bunch of tiger lilies and put atop Odin’s dead body. The lilies had long decomposed, but the tight, knotted ribbon remained.

One, two more spades. My friend shoveled horizontally so as not to crush the bones.

As he got closer, he pulled out his pocket knife and started scraping away the dirt like an archaeologist.

I turned my back.

“I see teeth,” he whispered. “Look at this.”

I didn’t at first. I wanted to keep the memory of my dog’s smiling face. That puppy-dog-look that Odin never outgrew. That noble and majestic beast.  A dog that everyone liked. A dog that knew more than he should. A dog that had a little something extra. Something you can’t breed or clone. Odin had that. Boy did he have it.

I slowly turned to see. In the dirt was a fang, along with a snout and eye socket. All attached to a skull  that was brown and black, like a museum fossil.

My friend jiggled Odin’s head a bit and then pulled it straight up, shaking off the clods of dirt. He peeled one small patch of fur from the cheekbone.

The skull was smaller than I expected. And it was missing the bottom jaw.

I thought about how many times I had stroked his head, felt his chin on my lap, and endured those teeth as we wrestled in the basement.

My friend pulled Odin’s bottom jaw from the dirt, and tossed the bone into the bucket.

We filled in the hole.

“I’ll clean this and get it back to you tomorrow,” my friend said.

I nodded. Not saying a word.

We split a beer from his coat pocket and went home.

Walking up my front steps, my new dog greeted me. Beyla, the Norwegian Elkhound. I knelt down, and petted her, feeling the skull beneath my fingers…our bones separated by thin layers of tissue and hair. So thin. So vulnerable…Flesh is no match for dirt.

I told her I love her and wondered when I’d be digging her up to put her skull atop my bookcase.

I wrote this about a year ago and just came across it. I am reposting it, as Border’s declared bankruptcy and closed a few months ago. Good riddance.

–

The evolution of the modern bookstore – Borders. I took my three-year old there today to spend a giftcard.  A children’s book for her, and a novel for me.I had a shortlist in my mind: “Belly of the Beast” by Jack Henry Abbott; “The Brotherhood of the Grape” by John Fante; or anything by Jim Thompson. Most were titles/authors a friend had loaned me, and now I wanted copies of my own. As we walked in, I had to stop and check the sign on the door again: Yep, Borders Bookstore — So why is the damn lobby filled with toys?

We passed islands of books by comedians and reality stars. Rows of adolescent vampire novels, celebrity memoirs, and children’s books with little toys packaged on the front.

We finally made it to the Literature section. It had all the name-brands. The classics and the commercial. Everything you were supposed to read, but nothing you weren’t.

My daughter sat in one of the big leather chairs and flipped through a copy of “The Story of Ferdinand.” I sang the alphabet song in my head as I scanned the shelves — T for Thompson, F for Fante, A for Abbott.

Nothing.

So I went to a computer. I typed my own name in first of course, Devin Hansen. The screen showed all the titles I wrote, each accompanied with the line “Not in Stock.” — I didn’t expect differently.

Then I typed in the other author’s names. Famous writers that were far more talented than I’d ever hope to be.

“Not in stock.”

I asked a clerk.

“Well, we can order them for you…”

“Nevermind.”

I sat in the brown chair next to my daughter. Next to a kiosk of bookmarks and journals. Next to a stack of David Sedaris books. Three stacks, in fact. Three piles of smug, saccharine satire. Three stacks by the poster-child for commercialized intellectualism. A pretentious, megaphone for self-important intellectuals that need constant affirmation to bury their own insecurities.

He was there, this darling of the publishing industry, among the toys, DVDs, music, and anything else you wanted to numb yourself. You could even sip a coffee while you decided. Maybe a Kenyan roast. All while surrounded by hunched-over students, attention-seeking writers, and tattooed girls talking anarchy over a plate of biscotti.

I paid for “The Story of Ferdinand.” Then gave the gift-card, still with a large balance, to some old lady walking into the store. She smiled and patted my daughter on the head.

On the way home, all I could think was, Screw Sedaris.

Three stacks of Sedaris and I had to special-order Jim Thompson…

This is what we’re up against?

This past July, 2011 I had a private clutch with President Obama. It was our third meeting actually. I’d first met him when I held a fundraiser for my friend Congressman Lane Evans back  in 2004 when Barack was running for the Senate.

The President will be a major part of my biography on Lane Evans, which I’m about 20 chapters from completing. He even said, “I wouldn’t be President if it weren’t for this man.”

Golden.

And while I’m not completely happy with Barack’s decisions, I will say, he remembers his friends. The fact that the leader of the free world took time to speak with Lane, says a lot about his character.

I was one of perhaps ten civilians invited to a ceremony on the military base close to my home. They were dedicating a building to former Congressman Lane Evans — the subject of my next book.

Attendees included Politicians in trench coats, Generals weighed down by medals, Soldiers dressed in digital camouflage….and then me, a tattooed, disheveled writer that was woefully underdressed. There was marble cake, brass music and rows of folding chairs with name tags.

I was escorted to my seat in the second row, right behind Senator Dick Durbin, and beside a four star general who kept noticing the stains on my khakis. No one sat until we were told. So I stood tall. Nodded at the right people. Shook hands of others. And felt incredibly empowered. Then I looked at the name-tag on my chair. It read: “Devin Hanson.”

Damn.

After the ceremony, I threw away the name tag and found a nice quiet corner to eat my slice of cake.