18 posts tagged “arkansas”

I met Bruce in small town Paragould, Arkansas. I can’t remember what year it was, possibly somewhere between 82 and 84, but it was October. It was Halloween and I was sitting on a front porch swing wondering why I was spending my favorite holiday in Paragould. My woeful thoughts were interrupted by a loud schwack-schwack-schwack-schwack sound coming from up the street. It was the sound of big flappy shoes slapping pavement. As the sound got closer I perceived the form of a 6-foot tall bowling pin making way down the sidewalk in the dark. By the time the bowling pin reached the walkway to the house, I realized I was not looking at a bowling pin at all, but Opus the Penguin from Bloom County. Opus made it to the front door. He was cursing. “What the Hell was I thinking?” The head came off and there was Bruce.

The rest of my Paragould visit was a dismal disappointment. I thought I had been summoned as a gesture to rekindle a sputtered romance. Boy, did I misread that invite. It was a long drive for nothing but embarrassment, rejection and just a little bit of confusion. Now, in retrospect, I am convinced that the reason I was there was to meet Bruce. The rejection was worth it.

Some years later I walked into Little Rock convenience store. Bruce was working as a clerk. I immediately recognized him and after a "Hey, Opus!" and a "How would you know that?" moment, we caught up as much as familiar strangers are allowed when one of the strangers is bagging your groceries.

Bruce would come to be referred to, by the locals, as that “bitchy queen down at the Circle K.”

In the late 80's I moved to the Hillcrest area of Little Rock. It was a leasing typical of most in Hillcrest - creaky, rundown, drafty with a bloated rent - but it was Hillcrest! Old houses housing new money and well allowanced street punks. The house on Palm Street was designed similarly to the one in the Amityville Horror film. It was in horrible disrepair. Some brainiac had split it up - sloppily - to have 2 apartments downstairs and one really big apartment upstairs. I was upstairs, and now, as a surprise to both of us, that bitchy queen from the Circle K was downstairs.

When I first met Bruce his hair was full and black. Now he was thinning on top and wispy tailed in back. His eyebrows were elegantly arched. He wasn’t a drag queen, per se, but his eyebrows suggested he could be ready for drag at the drop of a roll of duct tape. Surly, sharp, and sarcastic, he could shut someone up with a look. From time to time he seemed to channel Joan Crawford or Agnes Moorehead.

Bruce was, and always will be, the best neighbor I have ever had. We were catapulted from casual acquaintance to running buddy status nearly overnight. We seemed to understand each other’s moods. As friends and housemates, we never quarreled or found ourselves on opposite ends of an issue. How rare.

We drank big bottles of red wine and wore vintage hats around the house. We had hair dying parties where all attending left with purple hair. We went out with giant chalk sticks and circled the dog poop on the Hillcrest sidewalks adding admonishments and reminders to be more conscientious. My favorite was: PICK UP AFTER YOUR DOG, YOU BASTARD! THIS AIN’T PARIS!

I never bothered to have the gas turned on in that apartment and I cooked all my meals on a hot plate. The wind whistled through the gaps in the sills. The wood roaches were so plentiful and big I could hear them rattling around at night. It truly was miserable lodgings, but I was clam happy to have a good friend a staircase away.

Then the owners sold the house and we were evicted. He moved down the street and I moved up the road and we saw a little less of each other. He quit the Circle K and took a job at Your Mama's Good Food. We were coworkers at a dysfunctional family run camera shop for a short stretch. I moved to West Little Rock and he moved to Texas.

I spent a lot of time missing Bruce. Wondering where he was, what was he was doing, was he happy?
Just when I thought I would never hear from him again, he called me. He said that he was still in Texas.
He also said that New Braunsfels, a town founded by Germans, would be a great place to live “if it weren’t for all the dust and Nazis.” Then he laughed that big beautiful husky laugh. He gave me a number to a phone that wasn’t his and we stayed in contact for a few months. Then one night the person on the other end of the line said they didn't know who Bruce was, never heard of him. I verified the number and stumped, I never tried calling that number again. That was around 97 or 98.

Several times I used Google - and an odd assortment of other Internet searches – to find any kind of contact information I could. How do you find a guy who never had his own phone? There was even a time I was driving by New Braunfels on my way to San Antonio. I detoured through the town with the irrational hope that I would spot Bruce. I would recognize him by his walk…we would have a happy reunion…
My second bright idea was to call every restaurant in New Braunsfels. He had to be working in one of them.

I then relocated to Canada. How would he ever find me now? Was he looking for me like I was looking for him? I was so excited to tell Bruce about my big Canadian adventure. He would LOVE it. He would have to come and visit and stay forever…I had to find him.

On the morning of February 13th of 2006, shortly after midnight, I started a new search for Bruce Moore. After about 45 minutes of hitting nothing but dead ends and useless links (Did you know that the city planner of Little Rock is ALSO named Bruce Moore???) I was feeling glum. It was late, I was tired and I had a sudden realization that I may never speak to Bruce again. I may never find him. Chances are Bruce isn't even in Texas anymore. Maybe he moved back to Piggott. Maybe he had found that husband he was always lamenting about…

I decided to give it one more search then go to bed, this time on Yahoo. And there he was.

I found Bruce Moore’s obituary. My beloved friend had died 11 months earlier.
And now I can do nothing but miss him every day. We met on Halloween, a holiday we both loved. This year I remember him, most fondly, on Día de los Muertos.

My mother was going through drawers, pulling out things I had seen a thousand times. She showed them to me like I had never seen them before.
"Look, remember this?"
It was a scarf my father brought back from his TDY in Taiwan.
"Look what I found!"
She held out a stack of cloth napkins.
"You should take these back with you!"
I nodded 'OK'.
"This purse belonged to your grandmother...Dad's mom."
I had seen the purse before, but I didn't mind looking at it again. It looked like crocodile skin, but I doubt it really was. The straps were long gone and there was nothing in it, not even a hair clip.

We were in my father's room.

She had moved his bed to the other wall and put up wallpaper. She had taken down the vintage photos in vintage frames of my father's sister and her husband - both dead - and put up some black velvet paintings. The painting over the bed was something else my dad brought back from Taiwan - a jungle scene with two tigers. One is perched on a log, snarling down at the other. An obvious fight for territory and alpha status.
The more I looked at this painting the more creeped out I got. The face, although tigerish and feline, sort of took on the features of my father. I had seen this thing a million times over the years and never noticed that. It made me wonder if he had this horrendous thing commissioned or if he bought it off the shelf, not knowing or realizing why he felt connected to it enough to want it. I also wasn't sure why she put it up, considering how much she hated it. Perhaps she hated his sister and her husband even more.
The other two velvet paintings were from Mexico, both bought at the Arkansas State Fair probably 25 years ago. Both were similar simple arrangements of nondescript flowers, possibly mums, created with sponged on blobs of paint.

I sat on Dad's bed. My mother handed me a page out of a book. It was a bunch of guys posed on and around an airplane. She pointed to a fellow sitting on one of the wings.
"Look at your Dad."
There he was, crouched behind a propeller. Young and handsome and looking like a movie star in comparison to some of the other fellows.
I wanted to know where the picture had come from, where the rest of the book was.
"Somewhere. I don't know. Some book. Some of his stuff." She nodded toward the bookshelf. On the lowest shelf was a stack of his things: papers, a shoe box, envelopes...
I tried to take pictures of the book page. I knew they wouldn't be as good as if I had access to a scanner.
She picked up the shoe box and opened it up and handed me a cd.
"Jimmy Reeves."
I reminded mom that this particular Jim Reeves cd was the cd I had bought Dad for Christmas.
"Oh, yeah. That's right."
I opened the jewel case and one of the discs was missing. I asked about the disc. She said she didn't know but that he had been listening to it in his car. I guessed the disc was still in the player when she gave the car to my sister.

Next to the bed was a console type table that used to be in the kitchen next to the washing machine. She used to keep the microwave oven on it, but when they got a dishwasher it became part of the bedroom decor. There was a rectangular box setting on a doily next to a wood carving of an old Chinese man. The box was covered in shiny fabric with an oriental design. It was unsnapped and I could see several little matching bags tucked inside the box.
I pointed to the box and asked, "Is that Dad?"
I was hoping that the little bags contained measured out packets of ashes. That would have been nice. Small little pillows filled with remains. Mom had said something over the phone that he was sent home in a satin or silk bag of some sort.
"That? NOoooo. Those are smelly sachets. A friend gave me those. You put them in your drawers-"
I explained that I thought she had said something about Dad being in a satin pouch.
"I took most of him out of that bag and put him over there."
On the other side of the bed was a night stand. On the night stand was a table lamp, a very nice family portrait of my mother, father and eldest sister as a toddler and in front of the photo was what can only be described as a painted jelly jar. On the jar was an address label, the kind the Veterans or Heart Foundation or other charities send you with a donation request. The label was askew. Before the idea of my father's remains resting in a white painted jelly jar could sink all the way in - she pulled something from the shoe box and held it out to me.

"Here's his wallet. Do you want his wallet?"
Taking it from her I whispered, "No".
I opened the wallet and laughed. Dad had two photos, one in each of the places where you would slide an ID card for easy viewing. They were both of him when he was in The Service. He was probably between the ages of 18 and 22 in each photo. I could see him showing these photos off to people to prove that he wasn't always an old man...that at one point he was hot stuff. I shook my head and thought, 'how typical!'
"Those pictures. Funny, huh?" She was holding up a set of curtain valances. "You need these?"
I reminded her that I had less windows in our new place, but made a point to tell her that I had bought a huge pillow covered in the exact same floral fabric at Pier One about 10 years ago.

I went back to the wallet and looked in the slots where money should go. Instead of money there were about 6 or 8 cards: Veteran stuff/Credit Union stuff/a fishing license/etc, 3 clippings from the editorial part of the newspaper and a folded up piece of notebook paper.
I pulled out the clippings. One was about, of all things, Harry Potter. I say it was about Harry Potter, but it was really about religion. Actually all 3 clippings were about religion.
I tucked the clippings back in the money slot and pulled out the folded notebook paper. Unfolding it I caught sight of the handwriting and recognized it as my own. I could feel my mouth pulling down at the corners. My dad was carrying around the last letter I wrote him. I tried to deep breathe it away. I tried to deep breathe away the fact that I was sitting on the bed in the room of the house where he died. I tried to deep breathe away the screw top jelly jar full of his remains. I tried to deep breathe away the desire I had to scream at my mother, "A screw top jelly jar??? What is wrong with you?" And then I just caved in and lowered my head and cried. I cried until the front of my shirt was soaked. I silently cried while my mother devoted her attention to old dish towels and pillowcases. She was right there, and yet I realized I was grieving alone.
I wiped my face with my hands, tried taking in air through my nose, then left her there for a box of Kleenex.

Later that day I went into Dad's room and took his wallet.

It takes us 3 nights and 4 days to drive from Vancouver (BC) to Little Rock (AR). Our car is a car, so space is precious. The other precious thing, besides space or the lack of it, is my cat. Yes, we travel with the cat. I would love nothing more than to drop her off at a friend's house to be watched and cared for by someone I know and trust, but we have been moving around so much the last 3 years that I really haven't met anyone I feel comfortable even asking such a favour. Most people like dogs...cats are a different story. Hell, a guy at a hotel wouldn't even get in the elevator with us and our cat. Was it fear or allergies? Maybe it wasn't the cat at all...

A kennel is out of the question. We were gone for over 20 days this time. There is no telling what we would be coming home to after that long in a cage surrounded by other beasts. My girl is pretty antisocial when it comes to other cats.

She has traveled the US and Canada. She is an Internati-cat. This cat may very well have seen more of the US and Canada than a good portion of Americans and Canadians! She's even been to Whistler!

I won't say she loves to travel, but she is pretty good about it and although I have a bottle of prescription knock-out pills for her, I have never had to use them.

So what is the secret to traveling long distances with a cat? I do not know the secret, but here is how we do it.

First, if your back seat area will allow for it, get a good sized pet carrier. We bought a medium sized Port-a-Crate from PetNation right before we set out on our first expedition and it has served us very well...but it does take up half the space in the backseat. It folds up when not in use and the fabric part is removable in case it needs to be cleaned. It has two zippered flaps (top and side). The only thing it is missing and really needs are handles for easier lugging.

The first trip from AR to BC, I was pretty strict about her staying in the crate. I didn't know how she would react to being in a moving car and I envisioned a freak out that had me prying her claws out of my husband's head as we sailed over the guardrails of a mountainside highway - ala Toonces. She cried and got fairly depressed and by the time we hit Seattle she had gone demented on me and began sitting in her poo box. My girl had devolved to one of those pound kitties you see curled up in the litter box. This caused me great concern.
On the trip back I waited until we were out of the shadows of Seattle and unzipped the top flap enough for her to crawl out. She did this cute prairie dog/jack in the box thing then perched herself on top of the crate and watched cars go by. She napped. She pawed at the zippers when she wanted to use the poo box. Smart Kitty!

Speaking of the poo box...One thing a dog will do (usually) is let you know when it has to...go. Cats? Hmmmm, they don't do the barking pee-pee dance like dogs. A dog will wait awhile until you can get to a secure place. A cat will use the carpeted floorboard and scratch imaginary sand over the puddle. Even if mine could (or would) do the pee-pee dance I couldn't see myself at a rest area with a cat on a leash. A litter box is essential. I got a Sterilite box that wasn't quite as big as a regular sized litter box but bigger than a shoe box and velcro-ed it in the corner of the Port-a-Crate. The Sterilite box also has slightly higher sides, which is good in this situation. This left a good amount of room for her to move around or sprawl out. I padded that area with blankets and towels - things I could shake out once we got to a stopping place for the night.
I also highly recommend investing in a small jar of Vick's Vapo Rub.

Our first drive would be a true learning experience. All packed up and on our way, we weren't at the end of the block when we heard a scritch scritch scritching in the Fresh Step. Thinking it was just going to be a nervous pee break we laughed. The laughter ended abruptly and turned into a mad scramble for the Vick's when we realized that Hindu had just dropped a "kitty bomb". Like that scene out of Silence of the Lambs, we dug blobs of Vick's from the jar and smeared it on our upper lips and nostrils. She began meowing loudly - she didn't want to be trapped in the crate with it either! By the time the Vick's stopped working the Fresh Step had taken over as a desiccant - the smell was gone - and I was able to clean up the box before lunch time rolled around. Good litter and high quality food is the key for less smelly "kitty bombs". Some foods work better than others when it comes to this and I curse  Nutro for abandoning the production of their odor control formula several years ago.

Having done the trip several times since, we have become pros. We do the same routine every time because we realized that changing the routine makes her very nervous. I hate the harness collar, I always get it twisted, but she is used to having it on in the car. Not putting it on is out of the routine. The crate is always placed in the same place and position: poo box ALWAYS is next to the window! Crate is ALWAYS behind the driver. We took a quick spin with her recently and didn't do this familiar routine - no collar, crate on my side, poo box in wrong direction - and she wouldn't shut up about it. She even gave a few anxiety pants...you live, you learn.

Hindu loves hotels. She likes sniffing around the new surroundings. She also likes to scope out possible hiding places because she knows as soon as we get up it's back in the harness and crate. We have had to move hotel beds to get her, and I can verify that the area behind the bed is rarely attended to by the cleaning staff. We have made it part of our routine to block those gaps. We let her "hide" until the very last minute and I have to say only a heartless bastard would fail to say, "awwwwww sweetie" when picking her up from her hiding hole. She makes a meek "eww" then goes limp like a furry bag of Wonderbread.

She has never made a mess in a hotel room, although this last trip she pawed a Pepsi cup of salsa from the table to the carpet in the middle of the night. I found it the next morning and luckily it had landed upright on the lid. She likes to push things off of tables. I guess she is a fan of gravity.

She is 99% an indoor cat these days. We have to watch her closer than a 2 year old or she will make a break for the door if it even appears we are going out. One time she whipped by the husband so quickly he didn't even notice until about 20 minutes later when he asked, "Where's the cat?"
I nearly lost my mind. We tore the hotel room apart like we were the Who. We looked down the halls, in the lobby and stairwells. We shook a bag of treats that any other time would have her running at us like a bull at a matador. We looked outside, even though the room was not accessible without a stroll through the lobby.
I was about to scream, "You lost my cat! I want a divorce!" when the hotel manager knocked on the door. She had found our little escape artist in the lobby under a chair.

Since we cross international borders it is really important that I have proof that she is a well taken care of cat and up to date on all of her shots. Being an indoor cat, the vet said she really doesn't need the feline leukemia shot...but being an Internati-cat who stays in strange hotels where other animals might have been...I feel better with her having it. I also make sure that before we leave she gets a dose of Revolution. The last thing anyone wants to pick up on a trip is fleas.
I have a manila folder with her latest shot records and a few pictures of her (just in case).

People look at me like I am nuts when I tell them we travel with our cat. But when I look at these pictures I think I would be crazy not to!

I have been AFK for awhile, if you didn't notice.
We planned our sort-of-annual trip from our new home in Vancouver to our old "home" in Arkansas. Somewhere in that plan was me documenting the trip with digital photos and meticulous descriptions handwritten in my travel journal. I have been taking some photos of this and that, but I haven't written down a damned thing in that journal except various phone numbers and where NOT to stay when we pass back through Kansas. Truth is, the last 3 weeks have been a blur of heat, fried food and too much coffee.

Some of the things I have been taking photos of include things around my mother's house. The following is a pastel I did around 1990. I was sitting on the floor of my crappy Hillcrest apartment with a box of chalk and a badly torn piece of Stonehenge. I was also talking on the phone with Lane Wittmayer. By the end of the conversation I had covered the paper - and some of the hardwood - with hard pastel marks. I would have considered it an over sized doodle, but my mother really liked it so I gave it to her and she took it to Hobby Lobby and had it framed. She keeps it in her bedroom.

What story from your wild-and-crazy youth would nobody believe about you today?

Hmmmm. I can't think of anything...

There was that one time I was mistaken ( along with 2 other real girls ) for a drag queen in an El Dorado, Arkansas gay bar.

There was that one time I barfed purple Cold Duck over a balcony into an open BBQ grill.

Then there was that one time I talked to Davie Jones of the Monkees on the phone...here's how it went.

me: Is this really Davy Jones?
Davy: Yes, it is.
me: Well, I didn't think the front desk would actually put my call through...I guess that's Little Rock for you.
Davy: So, are you coming to the show?
me: No. I live in the country and can't drive yet.
Davy: That's too bad. What's your name?
me: Mona.
Davy: Mona? Oooh, that is a great name.
me: I hate it.
Davy: (singing) Mooooooooonnaaaaaa. Monnaaaaaaaaa -
me: Oh, good gawd, don't make it sound worse than it already is.

(EDIT for his reaction)

Davy: MOOO- huh? What?
me: Nothing

None of these are all that unbelievable. I have failed this QotD miserably.

Tell us two truths and a lie about yourself.

1. I have never been off the North American continent because I am afraid to fly over that much water.

2. I once broke into the Criss and Shaver cement plant in Little Rock, Arkansas with a group of artists and my highschool art teacher. We climbed the cliff and hung out at a waterfall...then were escorted out by security.

3. If you ever feel like you have been suddenly kicked in the throat...I did that with my mind.

What's the story behind a time when you got locked out?

I was running late for work. I jumped in my car (it was in the garage, no need to lock it) and realized my keys were not in the passenger seat (any other time they would be there waiting for me) and that I had locked the door to the garage behind me.

What happened next my husband still refers to as "the time you got really mad and kicked in the door."

Thing is, I wasn't mad. I wasn't angry with the keys, the car or myself. I was going to be late for work and I just really couldn't seem to come up with a better idea at the time. I'm not sure if I was still working at Camera Mart (grrrr) or not, but it would explain my inability to think straight about the situation.

And I didn't "kick in the door" either. I barely nudged it with my Chuck Taylor-ed foot and the whole damn frame gave way like a worn elastic band in Delta Burke's underwear. (I love Delta, by the way.) I mean, come on...I'm 5ft 3inches and out of shape, not a freakin' kickboxer.

Having never "kicked in a door" before, I really didn't give much thought to what the door was going to look like after the foot action either, so ripping the frame from the door may be quite common and not shoddy workmanship. I never really felt as safe in that house as I did before I was able to gain entry with a gruntless nudge.

What was the worst job you ever had?
Submitted by salaryman.

I can't talk about it without triggering rapid flashbacks. The husband says I get a shell-shocked Vietnam Vet glaze over my eyes. In my head I hear the music of Platoon.

Camera Mart.