Old Farts Reunion: Phart One

Attention! The fifth annual meeting of the Yorktown Youth Hostel Club is now in order, 45 years after the fourth. It's an experiment. Take a couple dozen nerds who went on what was essentially an extended mass date in high school, scatter them across the map, wait a very long time, and then throw them into the same pot again and see what cooks. We all showed up with plenty of seasoning and some of our bits were crispy, but boy howdy if we don't still make a tasty stew.

Photo by Bill Priedhorsky

It was an outdoor club. No surprise our current lodging is festooned with vintage bicycles and canoes. We're on a lake in the Adirondacks, laughing so hard we've humbled the loons. We're all in our sixties, so we know that life spools out like a bolt of fabric, unrolling faster and faster as the bolt gets smaller. But it turns out you can pause for a moment and fold that fabric. You can line up 2015 with 1968, say, and that pleat will hold, at least for a little while. Then all you need to do is hold both ends and shake it to unload all the intervening years, the careers, the triumphs, the losses. For hours we stood and nattered like magpies on espresso, and continued over dinner on the deck, but the next day it was time to get moving. The Hostel Club is not a group of fanny-sitters. We decided to climb Crane Mountain.

Photo by Bill Priedhorsky

We should have been ready for anything. We had an emergency room physician, and if he couldn't handle anything that came up, we had a backup hospice nurse and, um, a coroner. We had an electrician and a poet and a real estate agent and a geologist and a psychologist and an occupational therapist and a marine biologist and a physicist and a mathematician, and figured we could cover any contingency shy of voting Republican (or, as it happens, working the microwave). So off we went.

Crane Mountain is a 3200-foot pile of boulders that the state of New York gets a civic kick out of calling a "foot trail." There was the occasional trail marker, but we could navigate just as well by keeping an eye out for the fingernails of earlier hikers embedded in the rock. We had three stents and six heart bypasses among us, unevenly distributed, plus an assortment of herniated disks and grumpy joints, some hiking poles of which much was demanded, and an unreasonably sunny attitude. We were going to bag that

summit and collect all that scenery if it killed us, which was no longer just an expression. Maybe our short-term memory isn't as good as it was, but we're pretty sure the head counts at the beginning and end of the hike matched up.

Is he dead?

In the 'Sixties, we had fun and movement and laughter and all of it thrummed with an undercurrent of youthful hormones that most of us weren't sure how to get into gear, and now we were having all of it without the hormones, I think. We're not that much different. The former smart-asses are now merely smart. Teenage psychic pain has been replaced with the mature version: pain pain. But we're cool with that. There might be pizza and ice cream tonight, and we have a whole week, and there's probably more stuff to shake out of the fabric.

Photo by Tom Boothe

The Fright Stuff

Astronaut Receptionist Training

In July of 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to plant a foot on the moon. By most accounts he was just the dude for the job but it's not like they exhausted the possibilities. John Kennedy had made the call to put a Man on the Moon in 1961 and I was not even in the running. I might have had a shot at being an astronaut's receptionist. Which is not fair. Also, I was eight. Which, the way I see it, meant I was all potential.

By 1961 Neil Armstrong had been a test pilot flying faster than the speed of sound for several years, and I was still asking the kickball pitcher to roll it Slow and Smooth so that I would not be knocked over at home plate. It is worth noting that prudence is a virtue in space travel. I was already beginning to sense my powers. For instance, merely by stepping up to the plate, I was able to make the entire outfield come forward ten feet.

Kennedy worried that, as a nation, we were not most of us astronaut material, and were instead heading toward doughiness. At the time, you could count on finding one roundish kid in every class of thirty, and not the 25 you see today, but for him that was one roundish kid too many, and he vowed to get us off the green bean bake and marshmallow salad and out into the playground. The President's Council on Physical Fitness got us all out there doing sit-ups and chin-ups and shuttle runs and the 600 Yard Dash, later renamed the 600 Yard Walk And Run because of kids like me, who disturbed a minimum of dust for 300 yards and then straggled to the finish line gaping like a landed guppy. Girls didn't do chin-ups. We hung from the bar for as long as we could, in my case approaching five seconds. It is worth noting the the ability to do chin-ups is of no value in space.

Meanwhile, Neil Armstrong got slotted right into the astronaut lineup before anyone even got my phone number, which even NASA didn't want to dial because it had two zeroes. He did well. Armstrong had lightning reflexes and a cool, clear head in moments of crisis. He once coaxed a spaceship out of a death spiral by reaching over his head and flicking all the pertinent switches in a precise order whilst tumbling end over end once a second. I feel woozy if I look up into a tree too long, I still listen for a dial tone on my cell phone, and sometimes I tip over while putting on my sock because it never occurs to me to let go of the sock. It is worth noting that I have never been given the benefit of astronaut training.

On the fateful day or possibly night of the moon landing, Neil Armstrong held off near the surface looking for a good landing spot until he had only fifteen seconds of fuel left. I do not play the odds. If I went skydiving, I would pull that ripcord in the first second out of the plane. I leave so much space between my car and the one I'm following that people keep moving into the gap, until eventually I'm going backwards and discover I haven't left my driveway yet.

Assuming I had been allowed to be an astronaut, which might have occurred as long as they didn't winnow people out by popping a paper bag behind them and seeing who levitates, I could have made a significant contribution. I could have been the first person to test the on-board computers with a variety of bodily fluids. I could have demonstrated the potential of harnessing the propulsive power of panic diarrhea. It is worth noting that more is learned from the mishaps than when everything goes smoothly.

Neil Armstrong was gracious and glib when speaking publicly but ultimately retired to his farm in Ohio, preferring it to the demands of fame. That is exactly what I, astronaut-like, would do if I were famous. But the similarities stop there. I would never have left the "a" out of the "one small step" speech. Never.

A Rubber Rainbow

Some enterprising teenagers invented a new condom that turns different colors if you have a sexually transmitted disease. Isn't that festive? My guess is that it is not the condom-wearer but the condomee who would insist on this particular brand. "Put this on," he or she will say, "and let's have a look-see before we take this sucker out for a spin." This just builds on the natural tendency of a person about to be on the receiving end of a penis to want to check the item for odd coloration or accoutrements. One might not know what one is looking for specifically but it's like examining leftover meat in the refrigerator. If it's a little green or bumpy, you might want to skip it.

There are all sorts of possibilities for the condom, if you think about it. They could add a little sticky strip at the base for lice. It might turn pink for chlamydia, say. Or green for the clap, or yellow for herpes. If the condom turns black and the dick falls off altogether, you could be dealing with a zombie. If the condom bursts into song (and it's always going to be Rock of Ages, Cleft For Me), you've got a Baptist on your hands. But if nothing happens (and the condom doesn't fall off, which is a bad sign all its own), you're good to go.

Puts me in mind of the Mood Ring. This was a cheap ring with a fake stone in it that turned colors and was supposed to reveal the mood of the wearer. If the ring turned red, the person was hot to trot. Mood rings were purchased only by girls younger than 13 who wanted any excuse to giggle and point at each other and shriek. No male ever bought such a ring. Male teenagers had a much more reliable indicator of horniness. It worked something like the buttons that pop out on your Butterball turkey when it's ready, only, in many cases, a little larger.

There were all sorts of color-related things we were supposed to keep track of back then. The various colors of roses were all supposed to have specific meanings, and you'd better know the code before you buy flowers for someone. And there was a thing about wearing yellow on Thursdays, which meant you were--you know. I never knew, but I nodded as though I did.

If the boys' condom invention pans out, there's a much broader market to tap out there. They could develop party hats that turned colors. Everyone is issued a hat when they walk in the door, and folks could mingle accordingly. They could turn one color for Amway distributors. Another color for people who want to know if you've accepted Jesus Christ as your savior. A third for people with a phoneful of photos of babies, dogs, or vacations. And a fourth for folks who've had recent knee surgery.

Bottling Money

Bull Run

There's a company that's advertising its bottled water as "the best stuff on Earth." And it is. People are starting to realize that. There are a whole lot of things that are turning out to be not quite as important as we thought they were, but water is not one of them. People have known that forever. They used to distribute themselves in a reasonable way across the landscape in the olden days. If there was a spot that had water, that's where they parked their fannies. You've got a confluence of rivers, that's where the cities were.

We've got it pretty good around here. We've got a big lake up in the foothills and over a hundred years ago some folks had the bright idea of protecting the entire watershed that feeds it, and not building on it or sticking boats on it or pooping near it or anything, and they ran a big pipe from the lake to Portland. Then they dammed up another area downstream and got themselves a new reservoir and between the two of them we've got enough water to waste, even with a much bigger population. And it's delicious. Even the water that goes down the driveway is delicious.

Original water pipeline

It's pretty low-tech. Nothing but rain and gravity. No one is allowed to set foot in the hills that drain into the lakes. It's a big mass of unobstructed green up there. There are some places along the water pipeline where a few unobtrusive chemicals are added just to take care of random bacteria from elk poop but it's a very simple system. Sensible. This is exactly how people should come together to provide for the common good. Lots of folks think socialism is a dirty word but it's a lot more efficient than giving everyone a bucket and a gun and wishing them the best of luck.

You'd think we could all agree that water is a resource that should be cherished and protected because none of us can live without it, but no. The very fact that it's necessary is a lever that can be used to pry up a bunch of money. So companies are diverting public water into petroleum-based containers with a half-life of forever and marking it up by a factor of thousands and successfully selling it to people who actually have access to the same stuff coming out of their own tap. It's a mystery why they buy it, but they do.

Right here, up the Gorge a ways, they're talking about giving the Nestle Corporation the rights to some of our super-clean water so they can put it in those bottles and make us pay a ransom for it, and they're doing it because it will mean fifty people in the small town of Cascade Locks will get jobs. Shoot, we would all agree to jump in a mass grave if it meant we were fully employed digging the sucker first. It makes no sense to privatize a necessity like water, but we give wealthy people a lot of leeway. We even mistake wealth for virtue. If you've got enough money, you can buy your own vocabulary and teach it to the masses. You're not a leech, you're a job-creator, and even without any evidence, people will believe it.

If you and your friends are rich enough, you can even buy the terms of a new conversation. You can get ordinary working stiffs to believe there is something called a Death Tax, as though you can be taxed when you're dead, and not your pink, entitled heirs, with their smooth hands, who are the feckless recipients of your slab of cash.

You're in control of the lexicon. Nobody even talks about "pirates" anymore.

I'm Tripping, Man

There was a knock at the door. It was the Fuzz, but I didn't cheese it.  I'm a white girl, so cops don't scare me.

"Come on in. What can I do for you?  Ooooo, don't shake that hand. It's pretty sore. What? Oh nothing. Just a bruise on my palm, and, yes, now that you point it out, there is a little abrasion there. Nothing major. You should see my elbow!

"What? No, I just fell down again. I fall down a lot. At least I didn't hit my head this time! Nothing to hurt there! That's what my husband says! Ha ha! So what can I do for you?

"That? Oh. I didn't realize I was that loud. Which neighbor called? You're not allowed to say? That's all right. I was just trying to tell my husband to let go of me, but he wouldn't listen. He was taking a washcloth to my elbow, here, trying to scrub it clean, and I guess it's pretty bruised too, and I might have screamed a little. But that's what you want. You want a guy who won't listen to you when you tell him to stop, if you're ever going to get cleaned up properly.

"No, no, like I said, I fell down again. Right in the street! I fall down a lot. Ask anybody. I even blog about it. There was the time I whacked my head falling on the frozen lake. And the time I fell face first onto the sidewalk when I tripped. And the time I fainted and knocked myself out hitting my head on the wall of the bedroom. I could show you the divot. And all those times in the woods. I just don't pay attention where I'm walking, I guess. I'm such a clumsy ninny!

"Oh, and crazy stuff. Like when it was Leap Day and for some reason I decided to demonstrate Leaping in its honor and tried to do a 360 twirl in the air. But I can only jump about three inches and came down about 270 degrees short and landed wrong and bam I hit the pavement again. That one was hard to explain to people! Ha ha! We joke about it all the time. 'It's a good thing you're so short,' my husband tells me. 'You don't have that far to fall.' And that's true. Sure go down like a ton of bricks though. Hey, we even had 'Short People' as the first song we played at our wedding. No, really! It was my husband's idea. You know it? 'Short people got no reason, short people got no reason to live...'

"Huh? No, I wouldn't say that's how he really feels. I mean, it's just a joke. He's a big joker.

"How big? Well, I don't know--about 6'5" and

200 pounds, I guess. So, sure, he's big, but not like football-player big. Pardon me? Like Ray Rice? Don't know him. No, not really. He played a little in grade school but he's not really the football type.

"I take your point. He's a lot bigger than me. Who isn't? Ha ha! But he would never hurt me. Not on purpose. Well there was that time I got a split lip when he picked me up and turned me upside down to shake the change out of my pocket, and he lost his grip, but it was no big deal. And I totally deserved it. He kept winning in cribbage, and I'd never pay up. What? No, I wouldn't say he was angry. Just going after what was rightfully his. If I'd just paid him he would never have dropped me on my face.

"Sure, wait just a second. He was right  here. Dave? Dave, could you come here a minute?

"Dave?"

Pudding, Steak, and Cake

I've decided to devote mornings to priming the rental house. It's been close to a hundred degrees for forty-five days this month alone, and it may not pay to put off painting until it cools down, because it's possible it will remain this temperature until approximately 100,000 years after the death of Sen. Mitch McConnell (Rep--Kingdom of Coal). But it's been horribly warm in the mornings too, and that is how I discovered the precise temperature at which primer turns into pudding and slides off the house.

It's always something, with pudding. You put in all the ingredients and then you stir and stir and stir over low heat and nothing ever seems to be happening and you re-check the recipe and sure enough it does say "over low heat" but you start to lose confidence and you crank up the burner a little and start casting a longing eye toward the drawer with the cornstarch in it, and then all of a sudden, BAM, pudding. In fact, pudding that can stand up and march out of the pan. So it's all very temperature-dependent. And the primer on the rental house turned into pudding at precisely 10:38am, and when I checked the temperature graph for the day I found out that it was, at that moment, a bazillion degrees. So mark that down.

If I'd waited until afternoon, I could have stuck my paintbrush in the can and pulled out a can-shaped block of primer on a stick. It's fucking hot, is what I'm saying. Dave, as usual, went for a long walk and when he came back he was brown all the way through and his juices ran clear. I spent some time outside also, and by mid-afternoon I'd started to pull away from the sides of the pan and spring back lightly when pressed in the middle. I was a little flat, but that's because I don't have any eggs anymore. I should be presentable with a nice topping of the little crisp, crumbly bits that used to be my garden. So we're totally ready for company, if they should happen to be cannibals.

I've had some experience with this nonsense. I grew up in what would have been the shadow of Washington, D.C., if it had any shadows in the summertime. We coped. We opened up the house at night and exhausted the air out with a fan and then sealed it up tight in the morning and drew the shades, and usually we could get all the way to early afternoon before having to lie down on the linoleum in front of the little round black oscillating fan, breathing shallowly, waiting to die, and dreaming that some day someone would invent air conditioning.

And someone did, and we all love it. Even though it is helping make everything hotter, we all love it.

Lipstick In A Caulking Gun

Yes, Dave chose this angle.

I've heard it said that painting an old house is like putting lipstick on a pig, but it's not true. Pigs don't need lipstick.

It was time to paint the house, so that's what we set out to do. Not a big deal. It's a bunch of work, but there's nobility in that. In fact, the more annoying the work, the more nobility it has. It's straightforward: muscles and ladders and time-in. We're both in our sixties so I guess we could get a pass, but hey--if it's time to paint the house, we paint the house. That's who we are.

Not our house. That's a job. The last time we thought it needed paint, it had metastasized into this giant thing (actual quote heard while under construction: "Is that going to be a Montgomery Wards?"), and it was daunting. Following a suggestion from a friend who said we could probably accomplish the same result with money, we hired mercenaries. People who could dangle from a dirigible to get the top bits of the tower. People who didn't have an active acquaintance with their own mortality. People who, hell, didn't lose consciousness every time they cranked their neck up to climb a ladder. Young people.

But this house, our rental house, is only a one-story. You just scrape off all the paint that wants to come off, you prime, you caulk, you paint. And if there's one useful thing I know how to do, it's prep and paint. In fact, that is the one useful thing I know how to do. I learned from the best. Actually, I learned from Dave, but he's my best. He taught me how to decant a portion of the paint into a bucket and do the whackety-whackety with the brush to offload the excess; he taught me how to dry off a newly washed brush by slapping it repeatedly against my butt. In fact, I think that was his own idea. I am mindful of the drips. I feather. I mitre the corners of the window-frames with my paintbrush strokes. I'm careful. None of which really comes in handy with the rental house.

Its south side is a complete mess, but the same could be said of a lot of us. With this place, you could be scraping merrily away when a chunk of petrified paint and caulk comes flying off, followed by a bluster of attic bats. After a while you don't even want to be doing that good a job. You're afraid the structural integrity of the place owes a lot to modern latex paint and cobwebs. You're afraid of cutting loose a strip of fossilized goo and seeing all the clapboards slide off. There are boards up in the attic area that are relying on rodent carcasses to remain wedged together. First thing we did was get rid of some wasp nests but we probably lost some valuable biological adhesive there, too.

I'm afraid we're bothering the tenants, of course. Scraping is nasty, loud work. It can set your teeth on edge. But on the other hand, who really "works" from home? As if. Pssh. Young people. It's not a job unless you punch a clock and your boss is an idiot. And the rest of the neighbors probably got used to the rumbling of the truck that came to cannon in the fresh caulk.

Even though it's a little house, it's a lot of work. But I can't see not painting it myself. I'm just not that person.

I will be in another week.