Just Screwing Around

Our house on Rusty Hinge Road is like an unfinished sandwich. Which is to say that the attic and the basement –the metaphorical bread – still await finishing touches, while the middle two floors – the meat – have been redone.

While those last few last projects linger, I often look around and notice other things that have already begun to fall apart in the dozen years since I redid them.

For example: when I built my office, I constructed three drawers to store art supplies. Regular readers will not be shocked to learn that all three drawers now house random flotsam and jetsam.

The top drawer actually holds art supplies but they are the ones I should throw out: dried-out markers and hardened paint tubes. Unfinished, blobby modeling clay amoebas that my children crafted before they developed hand-eye coordination. I have two hot glue guns in there, twice the number I need. There's an old bolo tie with a broken cord that has needed attention since before I was born.

I looked in that drawer today searching for, of all things, art supplies, and as I pulled on the knob, it came off in my hand. This was troublesome because I labor under the delusion that I make sturdy furniture and the knobs shouldn't be coming off in my hand. Adding to the dilemma, I am lazy, and since I practically never go into that drawer, I felt obliged to fix it. That way there would be one less broken thing, right?

So, with knob in hand (I knew if I put it down I'd never find it again or a curious cat would bat it down the stairs and under the sofa) I went about fixing the drawer.

I knew I would need a Phillips-head screw driver, but the last time I saw one was in the console of my truck (there are, mysteriously, two there). Being lazy, I didn't much feel like bending down to put on my shoes, especially with a knob in my hand, so I did what anyone else would do, I looked in the pencil holders on my desk. Aside from pencils and pens, these cans, decorated by my children for Father's Day, have been known to hold the occasional screw driver. I found a chop stick, several hardened paint brushes, a fork with bent tines, a back scratcher, a tire pressure gauge and somewhere around the bottom, a U.S. Postage stamp with a picture of Harry Truman. But no screw drivers of any sort.

Down in the garage, which at the moment is serving as a combination lawn furniture storage facility and feral cat condo, is a shelf where I have, over the years, been stacking screw drivers. I don't remember ever buying one, they seem to replicate like bacteria. Somewhere in the reptilian remnants of my brain stem I have a synapse that derives pleasure from grouping like items with like items. All of these screw drivers are of the "flat head" variety. I can't remember the last time I used one of them to actually drive a screw; I use them mostly to open cans. The flat-head screwdriver is the VHS of screwdrivers. Long since outmoded by Mr. Phillip's ingenuity.

But, being lazy, I didn't put on my shoes and a sweater and walk down stairs, through the house, out the back door and into the garage.

And I had a new problem. In order to reattach the knob, I had to open the drawer. Like the drawer itself, this proved to be a bit sticky. Without a knob, I had to open the second drawer, reach under and wiggle the top drawer open.

Once the drawer was open, I was able to locate the head of the screw that is threaded into the knob and by pushing it through from the back, I was able to tighten the knob in place just enough to keep it there so the whole thing wouldn’t just spun in place.

I remember the first time I saw an electric screwdriver gun. I was a small kid and my father had tightened a handle-less, flat-head screwdriver into the chuck of his old one-speed Black and Decker drill. I don’t recall the purpose of this endeavor, but knowing Dad, it might have been some sort of prank he was pulling on our neighbor, George. I remember thinking at the time that it was a brilliant idea. It wasn't until about twenty years later that I observed some Canadian workmen installing sheetrock on a ceiling with a cordless, electric screwdriver.

They are everywhere today, but I remember the early ones were temperamental, quite expensive, and didn't hold a charge for long.

I bought one shortly after we moved here and it is never far from my side. After a few years, the batteries lost their charge, so I bought new ones on the Google. Mine is blue, and Japanese and with it, I have screwed practically every screw and drilled every hole in this house with it.

Luck would have it that Melissa, tired of seeing it on my dresser, put it on my desk by the pencil holder. I just picked up the old blue electric screwdriver, moved a bunch of stuff out of the drawer, and carefully tightened the knob, where it will stay, with any luck, for as long as it has to, provided I don't go snooping around the drawers more than once every couple of years.

After all, I know what's in there.

Nothing useful.

Don’t get me started on Allen wrenches. ben.guerrero@sbcglobal.net

No News is Good News

Forty years ago, with bag-less, dewy eyes, someone, somewhere was moved to plan it. They advertised– we all chipped in - probably in the Times, while local, like-minded groups organized. Then someone hired a bus and before the sun was in the sky, we climbed aboard.

Hours later in the shadow of national marble, we gathered amidst the port-o-potties. Our permits were filed and we marched.

Our full heads of hair shone in the sunshine and the PA echoed across the croud. Familiar voices sang familiar songs and we all sang along. Mort Sahl. Harry Belafonte. Peter, Paul and Mary and Pete Seeger, of course.

We were against the war. Whatever war. And I like to think we helped end it. There was a sense, as we sat together determined to overcome someday, that the songs and the signs we waved along with the two minutes we'd get on Walter Cronkite that night, would start national sentiment rolling in our direction. And while our sentiments were not popular at first, there came a day that the country changed its mind and we put down our guns if only for a while.

We went down to Wall Street last weekend to check out the protest there. When we got out of the subway car and made our approach, the population of the street thickened. At the core, if you took off your glasses, you could vibe right back to the Washington mall. Noise and smoke and signs in the air. Drums and chants. Folks of all ages and stripes.

But it was different.

In the 1960s, the marches in Washington swelled out of the grassroots efforts of organized people who believed in the uniquely American concept of free speech and our right to peacefully congregate to protest. We held a fundamental belief that if enough of us said something: our voices would be heard. But it took months to get the word out and dollars to place the ads and dimes to make the phone calls and sweat to get the job done.

The Wall Street movement, with the aid of technology and the need for the global news media to fill 24 hour cycles of news each day could have been sparked by a single well-worded "tweet." This brought the world to the park in Manhattan, before they could even come up with a clear agenda. Sure, the sentiment is visceral, but so visceral that it almost has to be expressed with a belch or a sneeze. It is not controversial to say here that the balance of wealth has tipped and it is becoming almost impossible to exist on the low side of that balance. And most of us, alas, reside there.

My children grew up with keyboards as extensions of their fingertips. They have subsequently proven to be expert typists, rattling like castanets while dear old dad hunts and pecks. I have heard that some of our youth are so facile that they can "text" on a cell phone while it is in their pocket. So the organization of this protest is topsy-turvy – where the participants show up and then the organization starts.

The crowds in Manhattan were different than the ones who sat on the Washington mall. They are pierced and tattooed and plugged in and unlike the peaceful throngs who wore headbands and bellbottoms and passed around flowers, these protestors, while peaceful, seem to have an angry edge. I don't know why that is. It may just be the times and the frustration, but I wonder if it is the fact that the information is two way and instantaneous and unfiltered by the dulcet, avuncular tone of Cronkite at seven o'clock.

I believe in social protest. I believe in the first amendment. I believe the most patriotic thing I can do as an American is to publically question the government even if I have to get on a bus to do it.

I used to watch news all day but it got be an endless loop and, if there is a breaking story, they will focus on nothing else even if there is nothing new to add to the story for hours. And if it turns out there actually IS no story, they start the loop over.

I used to have a smart phone, but I down-sized, because I realized I was a lot less stressed if every time got an email from an Ethiopian prince, offering to make me a millionaire, or a drug company promising to restore my inner stallion, my pocket ceaselessly dinged and vibrated. I cashed in built-in GPS for Rand-McNally.

I still usually have a cell-phone in my pocket, but I seldom receive a call. The kids, thumbing their tiny keyboards like African Kalimbas, communicate with me exclusively in text messages. The old flip phone, like the Dude, abides.

After we circled the Wall Street park protest, we headed back up town. We passed “Ground Zero” on the way. Suddenly, up in the sky, we saw a small airplane. That was a bit off-putting. After a moment of staring skyward, it appeared that the small airplane was writing a message.

A park of emotional placards, a place of national tragedy where planes were used, in a most violent way, to send a message, and now, while we were there, a plane in the sky over the park, over Ground Zero, writing words in the sky.

A few of us on the ground looked up. The cops and security guards seemed unimpressed.

“Last Chance.” It said finally. But what does it mean? All the news stations on the drive home offered nothing. An at-home Google search proved the stunt to be an innocent art project, but the whole thing was strange.

And it wasn’t on the news.

This is why Bob Ross should always be on somewhere.

Floss on the Mill

Listen up kids: take care of your teeth.

First and foremost: make sure you have good genes. My mother had troublesome teeth. Lamented all of her lifetime that she had worn braces for twelve years to adjust her “lantern jaw,” which, in spite of the orthodontia, went with her to her grave and passed on to me. She had a close relationship with several dental professionals and was forever trying new appliances, methods and tortuous procedures. Yowch!

My father, on the other hand, up until his mid-nineties, had spectacular choppers. He had a dentist that made him come in once in a while just so he could to view the perfection.

Brush and floss, brush and floss: I have heard it a million times. And now and then I actually do both things. As a younger person, I had my share of cavities, but generally I have had average to good dental health. In spite of my uneventful history, my semiannual trips to the hygienist are a study in nervous tension. I’m always convinced that something ugly will be uncovered.

When I was much younger, my fear was so great that I avoided the dentist chair for years. When my wisdom teeth arrived, I was lucky that they grew in without incident. Even so, all four of them had to be yanked, and that experience involved such a combination of medications that by the time the dentist was done, he could have yanked out the rest for all I care. Charlie Sheen on a Saturday night had nothing on me.

As my hair and gum line recede, I have found a dentist who keeps me in line. They call me every six months to remind me of an impending cleaning. I always leave the place with a gleaming smile and an armload of free tooth care paraphernalia.

A few years back, they noted a loose molar, way in the back. The hygienist called in the dentist and he reached in and wiggled it. Over the ensuing six month intervals, they attempted a few procedures to save the tooth. Alas, about a year ago, I was told it should be yanked.

“You don’t have to do it right away,” the dentist explained, “but it’s going to have to come out.

I was in denial. Most of the time “old uncle Wiggly,” felt as firmly attached as all the others. Now and then, though, it would become shockingly loose. But, there was no pain, so I ignored the issue.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, it became infected, painful and really wiggly. I supplemented my supplements with over-the-counter painkillers with some relief, but yesterday I called the dentist’s bluff. I rang the office and –wouldn’t you know – they had time for me this morning.

Nice fellow, my dentist. He poked me with Novocain, calmed my nerves, and after the right side of my face was numb, “lifted” the tooth. It didn’t make any champagne cork noises. There was no splattering carnage. The dentist didn’t have to put his knee on my chest for leverage. Best of all, I felt nothing except the sudden loss of a tooth that had been with me for over 40 years. I asked him to wrap it up in a piece of gauze and he was happy to oblige.

It sits, as I type this, in a bleach bath. After it’s cleaned up, I will put it in the same old Kodak Film canister with my wisdom teeth. God knows what kind of macabre art project I will create with this collection. I told the dentist I’d hold on to it and maybe if technology improves, he can put it back into my face in a few years.

I took today off to rest and catch up with a full DVR of mind-numbing television baloney. There is a hole in my head which I need like a hole in the head. The Novocain is beginning to wear off and a dull throb is filling the hole.

A few years ago, my father got dentures. It took him over 90 years to acquire them. His parents were in their 90s when they were fitted and I am thinking maybe if I save enough teeth, I can have dentures constructed of my own teeth.

Meanwhile I will brush and floss myself silly. Watch out Steve Buscemi!

Where’s the Advil?

Irene Irony

We collect a lot of things. In our basement, for example, we have a stack of grocery bags from Trader Joe’s, a bag of unused wine bottle corks and several bags of dryer lint.

Hear me out. As artists, all of these things –including several Costco empty mixed nut jugs – are of potential value, will come in handy down the road, when we are struck with sudden fits of artistic inspiration. It happens.

Meanwhile, I am forever contemplating hauling a lot of this stuff away. Not too long ago, I started tackle the garage again. There is a now pile of stuff I intend haul away as soon as I have a moment in my busy schedule.

Last week, Mother Nature had some plans of her own. Hurricane Irene was roaring up the coast. All hell was predicted to break loose. Low-lying parts of New York City were being evacuated, we were watching 24-hours of overfed Americans nailing plywood over their windows. Store shelves were emptied of batteries and water. All hell, indeed.

Our concerns on Rusty Hinge Road never change. Aside from occasional gun shots and loud arguments out on the street, it is water we fear most. The wind is a consideration, of course, and there have been quite a few large trees clobbered by previous storms, but it doesn’t take much rain to cause a flood in our basement.

We bought the house on a dry October day twelve years ago when the hole on the basement floor had a rusty sump pump in place along with some spider webs, so it seemed that, like so many homes in New England, we’ll take on some water now and then.

I can’t remember the first incident, but I am pretty sure it was because of a glitch with the washing machine control buttons. If you don’t push the “load” button just right, the washer will fill with water, overflow and keep running until one of us discovers the flood, shrieks, turns off the washer and spends the next three days cleaning up the mess.

With the storm imminent, we did all the things we thought prudent; we moved the lawn furniture to safety, made sure we had cat food, checked our supply of 10,000 candles, and made sure our one flashlight, “Abner,” had batteries. Done, done and done.

The sky darkened and the wind picked up. Rain started to pelt our new roof. The bathroom skylight, recently installed and a source of ceaseless, unpredictable dripping, held tight throughout, thanks to an expensive repair job I just hired out. When I went to bed that evening, the lights were blazing and the cable channels were predicting Armageddon.

My bedside alarm was flashing 12:00 – 12:00 – 12:00, indicating a power flicker, sometime as I dozed but assuring me that we still had power. It was raining, and the highest parts of the nearest trees were swaying back and forth with malevolence. Out on the street, crushed sprite bottles and empty food wrappers collected around the curbside grate. You could hear the water rushing into the sewers. Tiny bits of shredded leaves had coated all surfaces at ground level. The streets were empty of mufferless cars, deep, buzzy bass notes and pedestrians. A large limb was down to the north, blocking the road, but mercifully away from the overhead powerlines.

“The pump isn’t working,” Melissa announced. She had gotten up and surveyed the situation.

When the ground around the house at Rusty Hinge Road gets saturated with rain, water seeps in from under the cement floor. Tiny, almost imperceptible, cracks begin to emit water. Puddles form and the previously mentioned hole – the location of the rusty sump pump – fills up with water. Left unchecked, the basement will, even without augmentation by the washer, begin to fill up with water.

I had fashioned a pump attached to a float, to activate once the water reached a certain height. If all went as designed, the pump would empty the incoming water out a cellar window via a red rubber hose.

Still groggy from sleep, and grumpy by tradition, I came to inspect the pump and after growling like a bear, discovered that the Ground Fault Interupter (GFI) outlet, into which the pump was plugged, was doing its job and shutting itself off. After all, it was I who set up the pump system and it had been known to deliver shocks. So I found a less persnickety plug, switched on the pump, and the water was on its way out.

Unfortunately for us, so was the power – just as the water level in the hole began to recede. Powerless, the rest of the bailing of the basement would have to be done, by us, with a bucket, illuminated by Abner, for as long as the water continued to rise.

We made do. The rain slowed down. We soon figured out we only had to bail once an hour. In a few hours, the sky got brighter, the neighbors started to come out and look around and fire up their noisy lawn equipment.

Funny how we are so reliant on electricity. Every time I entered a room, I automatically went for the light switch. We have a gas stove that worked, but we had to light it with a match. It felt quaint. We had missed the worse of it. My sister in Vermont and my cousin in the Catskills had not.

At one point, I wanted some coffee. And I realized I could make it on the stove but I’d have to find the old manual coffee pot. I swore I had seen it on the cluttered shelves of the basement. I grabbed Abner and went for a look. All I could find was a bag full of lint.

Completely dry.

Irene, you rene. We all rene… ben.guerrero@sbcgobal.net

La Posada Cinta Roja

Every once in a while a reader will ask me "where do you get your ideas?” I politely inform them that everything I write is true. I can no more write fiction than I can speak Swahili, bwana.

Our adobe is in a small but sprawling town in the middle of the desert southwest. The thermometer hits 90 degrees in May and just gets hotter from there. As we were buying the property, one of the minions of town officials, that drive around all day in a fleet of brand new, air conditioned Ford trucks, informed us that, according to regulation, 234-gh22-b, (I did make that part up), our house reverted back to commercial zoning status, when the last occupants moved out. In order for us to actually live on the property, we require a zoning change.

Across the arcing summer, we have to travel out there three separate times for three separate meetings in case any questions crop up during the three scheduled public hearings.

Our new home town has a population of 21,769. 82.8 percent of the population is male. Single ladies, before you pack your trousseaus, please be advised that much of that imbalance is related to the fact that the eastern edge of town is the location of a humongous prison.

Because of this, the dwindling share of state aid allotted to our new home town, is greatly skewed by the additional inmate population. The result of this boon is that the city always has more money than it can prudently handle. In other words, expenditure-wise, if it is related to infrastructure, we got it. This proves to be ripe with irony. The town itself, at least the main drag, seems to have stopped in time, as if Alan Ladd is about to walk out of one of the colorful saloons, jingle his spurs into the middle of the street and draw a blazing six-shooter on a menacing Jack Palance. It is that quaint and cowboy. Chances are good, however, if Mr. Ladd were to attempt such a feat today, he'd risk being mowed down by a retiree on a motorized wheelchair.

One of our town's charms is the ancient adobe homes that pepper the dusty lots. With the stream of hot and cold running cash running through the municipal coffers, you' think the new civic architecture projects might replicate, or at least compliment, the old style that has been so lovingly mummified by the hot sun. Instead they are more inspired by the design of the temple of Dendur than the time-tested thick walled and rough timbered adobes. The county courthouse, a majestic, turreted symbol of Roger's and Hammerstein's American back country has been abandoned in favor of a complex of looming, brown, air-conditioned cubes. The town government, which seems to be the second largest employer in the area, is housed in a characterless, earth-toned, gunnite-encrusted town hall at the dead end of Main Street, a location ripe with metaphor.

It is through the pneumatic doors of this building that the Planning and Zoning meeting was assembling. The huge main meeting room, the grandest of grand ballrooms, spread out for miles around. The vastness is so large as to require microphones be wired onto all the participants in order that their voices reach the maximum potential audience. On this occasion I was one of five members of the assembled crowd.

It appeared, at first that the meeting was not going to happen at all. After a long, expensive flight, and the rental fee for a giant Japanese luxury desert yacht, The one commissioner necessary to make up a quorum had not showed, and bylaws only allowed for so much wait time. As the minutes ticked by, I could see my presentation in tiny pictures on a distant laptop that was wired to a projector to better describe my plans to the open meeting.

The missing commissioner arrived at the last possible minute and the two presentations in front of mine were delivered to the board. I assumed that the other four citizens were (literally) locked and loaded and ready to clamor at the dais when a public forum was opened to complain about my requested zoning change. No hands were raised. The board asked only that I describe the location of the property, by which each member had driven on the way in that night.

The P and Z unanimously recommended that the mayor and town council accept my request and off in the distance I could hear, with the aid of a modern PA system, the sound of a gavel hitting the simulated wood grain podium in front of the chairperson.

I called Mellisa with the good news from the parking lot. We'll have to show up in person at two more meetings over the summer. We are taking turns.

As I drove back to the air-conditioned safety of my father's cozy guest cottage, I went by the old adobe and basked in the evening heat as the sunset dyed the horizon an almost unnatural combination of orange and purple. The possibility of transplanting our lives to this place had moved one step further along. The possibilities were as endless as the pile of money it would undoubtedly take for us to bring it back to its nascent glory. The vision was so real I could almost see Alan Ladd lurking in the lengthening shadows.

Smile when you say that.