BLACK ICE

I’m not a curious neighbor.  In fact, a house could burn down and I wouldn’t notice it until spring.  But this particular morning, the forecast was for black ice!  I got up early to get things done on my computer before the trees started falling on the power lines.  I opened the blinds to see the road and I saw my neighbor’s car lights across the street. 

I stayed at the window and waited.  I wanted to see what was going to happen to this fool (sorry, neighbor!) when he backed into the street on black ice. 

The scene made me shiver.  I hurried to the kitchen for a cup of hot tea.  Back to the window.  His car was still there.  In a few minutes I dashed to the living room and opened the rest of the blinds.  Came back and watched a while more. 

I cranked up the thermostat.  That didn’t take long.  Back to the window.  The car was still there. 

I headed upstairs to my computer to get that work done, expecting the current to kick off any minute.  From upstairs I had a good view of the dark, icy road.   Instead of turning on the light, I decided to watch my neighbor just a little while longer.  After all, I had invested a lot of time in this venture. 

I turned on the computer in the dark.  Every few minutes, I twisted my neck to peer out the window over my shoulder.  It got light outside.  My neck got tired, so I turned on the light and forgot about him.  Later in the day I looked out and his car was gone.  Such a disappointing end to my great expectations.  It’s just too much trouble to be a nosey neighbor!

DRIVING IN RALEIGH IN 1942

Pop left home at age 15 to work in the shipyards in Brunswick, Georgia.

I didn't know anything about driving licenses back then when I left for Brunswick, Georgia.  Didn't know you were supposed to have one.  Hell, I'd owned a car by then.  I bought an old '31 Pontiac from a fellow back there in the woods.  Way back in there.  The damn thing would run.  So that's all that needed to be.  I paid him thirty-five dollars for it, something like that.  If it ever had a title to it I don't remember it.  I finally sold it to somebody for seventy-five dollars. 

But I wasn't even aware of the fact that you were supposed to have a driver's license or that there was supposed to be a license on a car.  There weren't but about thirty-five patrolmen in the whole state of North Carolina. 

That first streak of highway out of Raleigh, old 70 highway from Raleigh to Clayton, was the first road that was paved in North Carolina.  And they paved it just the way the hog path went.  It was so hilly and crooked there won't no way in hell you could run 55 miles an hour.   But all along, you'd see the speed limit sign, 55.  And finally, on Water Creek Hill, they put up a sign at 45 miles an hour.  That was a big joke, because there won't nobody that had anything strong enough to run up that hill that fast.  Everybody thought they were going to get tickets because they couldn't run 45 miles an hour.

WISCONSIN FOLKS

In 1985 we moved from our Southern roots to the tiny town of Green Lake, Wisconsin, and here's one of the stories I wrote there.

It was a little slice of Wisconsin.  I stopped by the railroad tracks to buy some more of the best corn I ever tasted.  There it sat.  A whole bushel basket full.  I asked, "Do you have the same kind of corn you had the other day?"

"Got no corn."

"What's that in the basket?" I asked.

"That corn's two days old.  It's no good."

I couldn't believe my ears.  They could have taken my money and never said a word.  I said, "I sure wish you had some, because I can't find corn like that in the grocery store."

"No.  That's because it's two days old when they get it.  Then it sits there a day or two before you buy it."

I guessed he was right.  "It must be fresh here, because I bought some corn here the other day and it sat in my car in the sun all day, and it was delicious."

"That's why," said a fellow sitting in a chair way back behind the vegetable stand.

"What?" I called.

"It was half cooked."

I laughed.  "Well, I want to take some corn to North Carolina tomorrow.  They can't get corn like that down there."

"Can't get a lot of things down there," said the first fellow.

"That's true," I said, walking to my car, "but you can't get a lot of things up here, either.  Like collard greens."

The guy sitting in the back called out, "Colored girls?"

"No!  Collard greens!"

I laughed all the way home.  These Wisconsin people are great.  They're down-to-earth, outspoken, and they'll tell you what they think - especially if you don't rake your leaves.  They won't pry into your business but they'll ask how your sick relative is getting along.  I know people are just people wherever you go.  But in Wisconsin, they're sure easy to like.

Pink Boxes

We closed our sign shop.  For five years we had saved copies of customer invoices with the notes about their orders stapled to them.  The invoices prolifically expanded to file drawers, then to file storage boxes, then to brown cardboard boxes in the closet.

I thought I’d better keep them.  I have no idea why.  I picked up about 1000 boxes from the liquor store, filled one up and wrote an identifying description on it.  But with all the Jim Beam and Jack Daniels writing on the boxes, you couldn’t find what I wrote.

I spied a roll of gosh-awful-pink vinyl that had sat in our shop untouched for five years and I covered some boxes with it, labeled them carefully and took them home for storage.

The cleanup stretched into hours and then days.  I came across two more drawers of customer invoices.  They’re in the dumpster!

Dumpster's Full

Moving day was approaching, and a 2400-square-foot sign shop holds a lot of trash.  I started tossing rolls of useless vinyl and bags and boxes of trash into the dumpster.  Pretty soon I regretted my haphazard approach.  The dumpster was filling up faster than the shop was emptying out! 

I knew there was lots of room for more trash in that dumpster.  I just couldn’t get to it.  But where there’s a will there’s a way.  I broke down boxes.  I unrolled vinyl roles and re-rolled them together into large rolls.  I pushed small pieces of trash between tangled webs of trash into vacant abysses.  I poured boxes of small papers into the pile and let it filter down. 

Tomorrow, I’ll clean out some more stuff.  But unfortunately it will go into trash bags in my car.  The only thing I could get into that dumpster now would be pencils!

FILE CABINET

There it stood, tall and alone.  All the office furniture was gone except one five-drawer file cabinet.  It hadn’t looked so tall among the desks and stuff. 

Natalie and Tommy were coming to pick it up.  When they walked in, Natalie said, “Wow.  It’s taller than I thought.”  I remembered then that she had asked and I had given her a rough guess.

I followed them out the door.  What?  A van?  How in the world did they expect to get this monster into a van?  When I saw them open the side door instead of the back, I knew we were in trouble.  They tipped the file cabinet and aimed it at that door.  I thought of my mom trying to get into her girdle. 

It went through the opening.  Natalie works with children, so I guess she has experience fitting square pegs into square holes.  But I still fast forwarded to the scene where it would be sticking out both sides of the van. 

They shoved it in, and it kept going and going and going.  I was sure the door on the far side of the van was shut, but where was that thing going?  Before my mind could rewind and adjust to the reality I was seeing, they gave it a final push and shut the door - with room to spare!

“She’s good at packing,” Tommy said.  No shit!

BUSINESS CARD EVEYWHERE

We were cleaning out the shop.  I had a box full of magnetic business cards to throw away and figured there would be room for them in the overflowing dumpster if I tipped the box and let them fall in and sift their way down.  You guessed it.  A lot of them missed.  I angrily picked them up and tossed them up seven feet into the huge metal contraption.  Some of those missed, too, but I got them all cleaned up.

I went back inside and continued cleaning out vinyl, dusty banners, and obsolete files and hauling them out the back door to the dumpster.  A few trips later I noticed some of those magnetic business cards were on the ground.  I cleaned them up.

Back inside, I spent some time cleaning out drawers, then hauled the contents to the dumpster.  What?  More business cards on the ground?  I cleaned them up.

By the end of the day, those business cards and I were having discussions.  Tomorrow, I might find them lined up for battle!

.

Hands of a Vinyl Installer

Thirty-two degrees outside and Jason is installing vinyl on an ambulance.  I don’t go out there to watch his progress or even to say “good job.”   Brrrrr!  Too cold!

Every couple of hours he comes through on his way to the coffee shop.  He has little to say except, “My hands are freezing!” 

It gets colder throughout the day until, finally, it’s quitting time.  I’m wondering if he’ll come back tomorrow and work on that ambulance again.  He needs to be stretched out inside the ambulance thawing!  But Jason’s a determined guy. 

He stops on his way out the door to stick something down with masking tape.  Snap!  The tape breaks clean as a whistle.  I’ve never seen anyone do that. 

You learn a lot of strange things in the sign business.

THE OLD GRAY MARE SHE AIN’T WHAT SHE USED TO BE

Happy New Year!  Back in the ‘70s, our little group of 30-somethings had some crazy parties!  We didn’t go completely off the deep end, but we had fun.  And when the ball fell at Times Square every year, we all stopped our dancing long enough to scream “Happy New Year” and start kissing each other and spilling champagne.  Then everyone had breakfast.  Well, they had breakfast while I passed out on the couch. 

But that was then and this is now.  For the past several years, everyone has stayed home on New Year’s Eve and, if they’re all like me, snored through the Times Square falling of the ball.

This year an ambitious couple in our gang invited us all over.  We ate a lot and drank a little, and no one started snoring, much to my surprise.  I myself yawned from 10:30 until 11:45, then came alive when someone poured apple juice into my champagne glass.  We started counting down and when the Raleigh Acorn hit bottom at midnight we yelled and screamed and blew little party horns and spun noise-makers.  To a fly on the wall, the scene could have been mistaken for an Old Folks Home!