Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Humanity…HOW have we survived?

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Seriously, how HAS a creature so many of whose representatives seem dumb as posts managed to survive at all? Gawd, but humans are stupid!

Out the door this morning, in an early hour of a hot, sticky morning: doggy-walk time.

Ruby dearly loves to walk around the park. The human dearly hates it.

No doubt Ruby loves it first, because our yard has no grass, so that grass stuff is THE bidness. And second, because the damn place is overrun with dogs, many of them as ill-trained as she is. Whatever her sentiment, a visit to the beloved park means an hour-long Dawg Drag for the human: she hauls me around the park at the end of her lead, jerking here and jerking there.

She arrived here at the Funny Farm just as I was getting both boobs lobbed off at the Mayo. Upshot was, I had neither the strength nor the inclination to leash-train an obstreperous puppy. Upshot of that is: the morning dawg-drag.

This would be OK if other people would keep their dogs more or less under control.

Today, for a change, we didn’t encounter any dogs off the lead over there. The “dogs must be on leash” sign at the entrance is for other people, y’know… But on-leash dawg or off-leash dawg, Ruby wants to lunge at them, yanking me with her.

And today, just barely beginning to recover from the Cough from Hell, I am distinctly NOT in the mood to be jerked around.

I should call a vet and try to get a recommendation for a professional dog trainer. My dearly beloved, now long-retired vet did that for me when I had Anna the German shepherd. The guy he referred me to was a miracle-worker. Seriously: he had that dog under control in two sessions.

Heh! Here’s a new movie series, V, which really does bring up the question of how humanity will survive — the inevitable alien invasion, o’ course. Unreality oozes out of the production room, though, and comes to visit us right here. If it just weren’t so…true to life… 😮 Substitute a virus for the aliens, and you’ve got it.

Speaking of survival — or not: This morning I felt like maybe the agèd body was begin to schuck off the Killer Virus. Now, late in the afternoon, it seems to be thundering back. Dunno about you, though, but in my case whenever I come down with a bug like this, it’s always worst in the late afternoon. It’s 4:30 as we scribble. Can’t sleep — not least because of some moron coming door-to-door trying to hustle up lawn maintenance business. If I hadn’t been busy hammering at Death’s Door, I would have taken him up on that, since Gerardo and the boys have disappeared into the forest.

While hammering, though, I spent half the day driving from pillar to post through Phoenix’s Hellish L.A,-style traffic.

Up to Young Dr. Kildare’s office. They insist I owe them $160, even though I’ve repeatedly tried to pay them. Why my payments don’t go through escapes me. And them, too…apparently.

So I staggered through a covid fog up to his place and insisted on paying the bill in person. This time they took my AMEX card, even though over the phone his staff insists they don’t accept credit-card payments.

Why? Is there some REASON to inflict a mindless hassle like this on your clients? What, really, is the point?

Then it was over to the credit union, to check in person if there was some reason earlier payments didn’t go through. Staff were as mystified as I was.

So now I’ll have to ride herd on that nonsense for a couple of weeks, But…in my covid haze, I’ll be damned if I can get through the online hoop-jumps to access my account. So that means I’ll have to drive back up there again in another ten days or two weeks. Better put that on the calendar, or I’ll forget it.

Hmmm…in other sylvan realms…

Think solar power will be our over-developed planet’s savior? Think again!  We’ve been merrily trashing the Mohave Desert, sucking up its water and blighting its surface.

{sigh}  Y’know, folks…there’s only one solution to the Kill Mother Nature problem: that’s to QUIT MAKING BABIES.

Odders and Enders

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The adorable Pool Dude surfaced (heh!) with the sun this morning. Ruby SOOOO adores that man! Instantaneously she knew he was out back, and so it was OUT THE DOOR, the better to love him up.

He’s a…distinctive-looking fella. Has a frizzy, light-brown beard that he wears halfway down his chest. This, IMHO — and certainly in Ruby’s opinion — does not make him any less adorable. He’s just one of the sweetest guys you’d ever hope to meet, and nothing about his sartorial taste changes that.

Almost 9 a.m., and I’m coughing my guts out. Just ran out of Robitussin, so I now I have to trudge down to the store and buy another bottle of it. Or two…

The ‘Hood is adorned with shopping centers north and south along Conduit of Blight. With the exception of the Sprouts, most of these contain stores I avoid, because of the crowds of derelicts and panhandlers. I REALLY do not like to be hustled!

But…the AJ’s is way to Hell & Gone down on Camelback Road, and getting there entails a trek through rush-hour traffic. The Safeway, adorning the neighborhood where DXH and I lived (to the east and the south of the ‘Hood), requires two left turns across homicidal thoroughfares. Half the time they don’t have what you want. Granted, there’s a Walgreen’s across the seven-lane street (another left turn!) ….but really. Covid-smacked as I am, I would prefer to drive to ONE store, even if one with considerable, daunting drawbacks, than to Store 1 (nope: no cough medicine), Store 2 (nope), Store 3…and on and on. The Albertson’s at Blight and Main Drag South will have the gunk, and if they don’t, the Walgreen’s right across the street will.

Despite the nasty hack (which was expected), I’m actually feeling noticeably better (which was not expected). That’s not to say I feel good….but, surprisingly enough, I’m not utterly out of it. At least not yet.  And I think I’ve had this thing long enough to be feeling really, really sh!tty, if that’s what’s gonna happen.

A-a-a-n-d…that’s probably one reason (if not THE reason) this damn thing is spreading far and wide. People tend to power on through “just a little cold” — and nevvermind that whoever you infect with your “little cold” could end up flat on their back or even in the hospital. And of course, every time they tromp around in public when they’re sick, they disperse their germs far and wide.

No kidding. I picked up a really fine bug from some nitwit who showed up at choir practice, stood behind me, and coughed on the back of my neck through the entire three hours. People are so stupid…I know the public schools teach the basic facts of infection and contagion, because I remember reading those facts in our biology text. I guess if it’s a fact that doesn’t fit their convenience, though, they just put it out of their mind.

Welp! It’s after 9 a.m. Better go out and spread a few germs of my own…

 

 

GAAAAAAHHHHH! Life in the ‘Hood….

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So…how would you like it if you got a call from the kid’s grade school while you were at the office:

“Please come pick up little Ignatius. We’ve had a murder here.”

Noooo kidding. That’s just about what parents here in the’Hood and environs heard today.

La Maya and I met for lunch today, at an old favorite Phoenix standard, a place that We Who Were Parents used to frequent when our urchins were preschool age. In the course of conversation, she remarked that Feeder Street E/W, which runs from Main Drag West through the ‘Hood to the freeway, is said to be closed, because there was a murder just outside MittelAmerica School, which sits on the Hood’s western border. The corpse was found outside the blocks of prison-gray apartments that border the school on the its south side, a few yards west of Conduit of Blight Blvd.

Eeep! thought I. But then not much more of it, since…yeah, that’s life in the Big City.

An hour or so passed as we munched and socialized. Then she went on her way.

I took my ailing laptop over to Best Buy (again!!!!!) and forked it over to the techs. So often do I surface over there at the service desk that His Cuteness recognized me. Alas, though: he was born about 20 years too late.

From there I drove homeward (and homeward…homeward…homeward…) through the unholy surface-street traffic. Made it back to the house. Having no pistol in the car (GOT to fix that little lapse!!!), I inspected the doors and windows before entering the Funny Farm. No sign of any fleeing murderers.

Thank Heaven for small favors, hm?

The school — a grades 6-8 middle-school campus — was roped off with yellow crime-scene tape. So was Feeder Street E/W, which east of Conduit of Blight leads to the Post Office (so much for mailing your bills today, eh?).

Just imagine:

  • Your child’s school wrapped in police crime scene tape.
  • A dead body right across the street from the campus, next to the slum apartments that border the school on the south.
  • Cops ambling about here and ambling about there…

For the love of GOD!

 

 

Brave New World, Indeed…

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Sunnyslope rock garden, one of the many eccentric sights in those parts

{snort!} Living in a place where you need to have heavy-duty deadbolts on all the exterior doors AND, while you’re at it, on the back bedroom that serves as your office is for the birds. Not to say a PITA. This state of affairs is hugely exaggerated by encroaching senility: you can’t remember your name, to say nothing of what all the fistful of keys are for.

First off, I misplaced my key ring, the one with the keys to all the exterior doors, the mailbox, the garage side door, the car’s ignition, the car’s doors, on and on: SEVEN KEYS!

You realize, I have to have all seven keys. Otherwise I can’t get into my house, I can’t drive my car, I can’t get into my office, I can’t unlock the yard gate padlocks, I can’t get into the garage…on and on and endlessly, aggravatingly on.

They couldn’t have gone far. I knew I hadn’t left the house since the last time I saw the monster keyring. But “far”and “near” are basically the same when you haven’t a clue where something is.

Finally found them. Added the mailbox key to the key ring. Put them down. A-n-n-d…lost them again!

I.

Can.

Not.

Remember.

ANYTHING!

No matter how trivial or how significant.

This stuff is getting very frustrating and very scary. What else have I forgotten…well….

  • Have I paid the bills this month?
  • Have I gone into battle to figure out where a spurious bill of something over 5 grand came from?
  • Have I refilled the gas tank?
  • Have I fed the dog?
  • Have I walked the dog?
  • Did I water the plants?
  • Where’s my grocery list?
  • What groceries do I need?
  • Where did I decide to get gasoline, since Costco is now kinda out of the question?

Yes. Get gas. One of the consequences of deciding to quit arguing with Costco over their annoying shopper card is that one has to find some other station to refil the gas tank.

Headed westward out of the ‘Hood , by way of visiting the credit union and thence the high-voltage Sprouts out by the university, I stopped in a Circle K gas station. HO-lee mackerel!

You forget how creepy this part of town is.  A panhandler is stumbling around the gas station — fortunately he doesn’t importune me. A weird guy is also wandering through. The damn gas pump tells me I have to go inside to untangle some kind of mess.

Dodge the weirdos, get into the Circle K, and am told, no, nooo, nothing is wrong, all is well.

On my way, wondering WHAT is going to show up on next month’s AMEX statement.

Trudging across the city toward the ASU West campus and its branch of the credit union, I notice an odd thing: Once I get a couple of main drags past the freeway, I see many, many fewer transients and panhandlers. They cluster around the freeway overpasses and the signals a few blocks on either side, but once you reach about 35th Avenue…well… Nary a bum!

WTF? I never noticed that before. There’ve always been transients along that route…everywhere.

Not today. No one standing at the intersections, set to pester you when you stop at a red light. No one pushing stolen grocery baskets full of their worldly goods up the sidewalk. The mile-on-mile tracts of bland, cheaply built working-class and middle-class housing over there are effectively FREE of transients!

I will say, that has not always been the case. If you’d asked me before today, I’d have told you the population of panhandlers was pretty constant between here and the campus, especially the further south you go on the west side. But today…where were all the bums?

In our neighborhood, that’s where! 😀

Brought back to the repeating rumination that if it weren’t for my son’s strenuous objection, I would would be OUT of the ‘Hood by now. Long gone. The dust shaken from my high-heels. Never to be seen again!

Ohhhh well.

West-side errands completed, I cruise eastward, ever eastward across Thunderbird, a main drag that proceeds all the way west across the Valley from somewhere in Paradise Valley or Scottsdale to the sprawl out by the Air Force base, halfway to Yuma. Drop south on 19th and then, to avoid some of the heavier traffic and also to sight-see a bit, cut through Sunnyslope, a historic slum.

Sunnyslope has always been fairly dank, but as the years pass it merges into dire. More than a slum, it’s a central Mexico barrio brought north. It’s hard to imagine poverty of such depth in this country. Yet…there it is. People living in lean-to’s cobbled together with boxes and old boards nailed together. Ancient apartments that look like crumbling fire-traps. Once cute little houses tumbling down into the dust. And dust is what it is: precious few lots have grass ($$$) or gravel ground cover.

That notwithstanding, the staidly middle-class ‘Hood itself is officially regarded as part of Sunnyslope. This would be the result of canny map-drawing by our city parents, who have divided the burg into so-called “villages.”

Har har! Normal folks would call those “districts.” But whatever works for your PR campaign works. I guess.

Historically, Sunnyslope was a TB refuge. Until antibiotics were developed, about all doctors could do when you developed tuberculosis was advise you to betake yourself to a warm, dry climate. Arizona has plenty of that, and it was to provide the same that Sunnyslope came into its own. But of course, if you’re at death’s door with a lung infection, you’re not in any shape to found and build a business or to take on a steady job. So a lot of that population sank into poverty. And the poverty has remained.

So now it’s where your yard dude and your cleaning lady live.

Gerardo the Yard Dude lives in Sunnyslope…he’s sending his Eagle Scout son off to the UofA this fall. Not bad, eh? He and his clan — cousins, wives, mothers — own a row of houses up there, so the whole clan has cordoned off its territory.

Things, I suspect, could be worse.

 

 

 

Where Ya Gunna Go?

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So I’m visiting the Albertson’s down at the corner of Conduit of Blight and Main Drag South. Normally I won’t go in there because I don’t enjoy being panhandled in the parking lot (once I had a bum actually chase me, at a dead run, across the parking lot). Yesterday, though, I wanted a roll of masking tape and, the Albertson’s being a huge general store as well as a grocery store, figured I could find it there.

Plus the store (or maybe the mall owner) has hired an armed guard, who’s posted outside the market’s front door. So I feel fairly confident that if I park close to the front door and walk directly in — and do not carry a purse slung over my shoulder! — I’m probably going to get in and out with a minimum of pestering.

My father would’ve liked that Albertson’s. Because it’s fairly huge, it carries a vast array of products, from pharmaceuticals and personal care products, to house and auto care products, to…of all things…food. But I can tell you for sure he wouldn’t have shopped there, because of the number of black folks who habituate the place. He was, as he liked to crow, “a bigot and proud of it.” The vast blocks of working-class apartments across the street are very similar to the ones where we lived in Southern California…well, except for the black folks. My mother would’ve been outta there like a rocket the instant the first dusky face surfaced. Whereas my father openly bragged about his expertise as a hater, my mother generally kept her mouth shut about her bigotries. But like him, she also lived by them. She wouldn’t have moved into our lily-white neighborhood because of the number of African-Americans dwelling right across the huge main drag that separates the ‘Hood  from the apartment blocks up here.

So as suggested, my father would’ve loved that store…it would have appealed to his workin’class genes. But my mother?… She probably would have thought of it as I do: fine in a pinch, but lacking in some aspects that one would like to have for shopping on a regular basis. Nevertheless, neither of them would have shopped there (or lived here, we might add…) because of the number of black folks among the customers.

My problem with that store, though, is that even though it’s huge and even though it carries most things you’d like to have, its offerings are kinda boring. Prepared foods are by and large additive-laced schlock. AJ’s, it is not. And…if there’s something you want right now and you went there because you were pressed for time and didn’t want to drive halfway to Timbuktu to get it at a Walmart or the Safeway, you can be sure they won’t have it.

On this particular trip, what I wanted was a roll of masking tape.

How hard is this? Masking tape.

Searched from pillar to post.

No masking tape. Picked up a couple of incidental items, though — a chunk of cheese, some fresh produce. But having found no masking tape I was flying down an aisle toward the checkout where…hallelujah! There on a bottom-most shelf next to the floor was one, count it (1) roll of masking tape. Not the blue type that I favor. But was I going to drive across the city to score a role of BLUE masking tape?

Grab!

Out the door, much relieved not to have to schlep to the paint store.

Albertson’s armed guard lurks outside the door, where he oversees the customers’ and the bums’ comings and goings. This is a considerable improvement — in fact, it is THE reason I will go into that store these days. Once a panhandler actually chased me across the parking lot there, at a dead run. With a hired cop-like creature out front, that kind of thing is a lot less likely to happen.

Though…well…yeah. The last time I was there they had a shooting in that parking lot, in front of the block of buildings that houses the T-Mobile store.

Guess you can’t have everything, hm?

Key Shopping Accessory

Disappeared

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Yesterday in an antique online copy of the old ARAMCO newsletter Sun & Flare, I came across a photo of my grade-school pal, a boy named Ennis, one of the very few kids who was friendly to me when we lived in the dreadful oil company outpost called Ras Tanura.

Ennis! What a nice kid. Last time I saw him, he and I were pushing adulthood. It was someplace north of Santa Barbara, where his parents had gone when they retired. How fun would it be to track him down and say hello?

Well. None, as it develops. I could NOT find him for love nor money. Nor could I find any trace of an obituary. So, dead or alive, he’s nowhere to be unearthed.

In fact, his tracks are so thoroughly covered, it’s hard to escape the sense that he had a professional hide his identity and location. I’m pretty damn good at navigating the Internet and finding folks who think they can’t be found — as a researcher, that little skill comes with the job. But there was NOTHING, not a single mention anywhere.

On one level it’s interesting and reasonable — how much would you pay to bring an end to the blitz of advertising and spamming email messages? Just this morning, I’ve already deep-sixed seven nuisance messages in 45 minutes or so that I’ve been reading the news, and that doesn’t count the spam that’s automatically sent to the trash.

On another, it’s alarming…why would you care enough to erase yourself altogether? Is he a federal agent? An international spy? Maybe a crime boss? Or…a nut case?

I block phone calls from most area codes but my own, by way of limiting the number of nuisance phone solicitations. But erasing your identity altogether? That’s different from blocking those who pester you.

Could he have died? Possibly. He was only two or three years younger than me. And as a male: yeah, he could have keeled over from a heart attack by now. Plus the very air in Rasty Nasty was carcinogenic: filled with fumes from the refinery, long before anyone thought about limiting air pollution. Stinking air was just part of life, back in the good ole’ days.

But there are no obituary notices for him: not that I can find. No home-town papers or remarks in the Aramco Brats pages to the effect that he croaked over. Weirdly, I found an obituary for his father Tom, which goes on and on about the family members…but does NOT mention the son. WTF?

Nor does it mention his stint in Arabia…it mentions his wife and provides her photo, so yeah: it’s the same Tom. But an entire era of his life — including mention of the son who made up part of that era — is missing. And the obit was written by his niece, who surely would have known the family members.

Weird!