Tao of Scott

Hi Nichole,

Kathy got drunk.

As you know gardening has led Kathy into a depression of medium depth, however we agreed to continue with the chemical free yard so together we forge forward in futility.

The next day I look out the window and there’s Kathy, out at the rose bed, applying some kind of granule wearing a HAZMAT suite.”

“I thought we had established that we would adhere to a scrupulous regimen of purely organic fertilizers as well as pest and disease abatements?” I said sorta perplexed.

“The yard will be pretty now,” Kathy assured me.

“Oh, OK.” I buckled.

We had to get ready to go to Hailey’s high school graduation so I hopped in the shower and Kathy hopped in the de-contamination chamber. We met up with Chris (Hailey’s dad), Hailey’s sister Loren and her boyfriend Nigel. Loren and Nigel came out from L.A. resplendent in multi- colored hair, numerous tattoos, and earring holes large enough to park an AMTRAC car in. They thankfully left the ferrets at home. They were surprised to find out that they did not stand out in the crowd.

“How could this be?” Nigel queried.

“T.V.” I instructed.

We gazed out over the graduating class of 2009. About 150 students, a podium populated by sundry high school dignitaries, an open football field, open ranch land, out past a national wilderness preserve, and finally to the San Francisco peaks 70 miles (as the crow flies) to the northeast all under a crystal clear sky studded with orange, red and pink glowing desert sunset clouds. Chris said this, heart of America, small town scene was right out of “America Graffiti” (Re: the classic film by George Lukas. Breakout roles for George the director as well as, Harrison Ford and Richard Dreyfuss).

So what appears to be the principal of the school takes the podium and proceeds to read, never lifting his eyes to the audience, a speech so poorly constructed and ill rehearsed that to listen to it amounted to a torture so evil, so vile, that the CIA would have been shamed into permanent hiding for being so wimpy in their techniques. This guy seemed to believe that the word at the end of the line, you know over at the right margin of the page, was actually the end of the sentence. Every line was read accordingly. To say that this message to the hopeful students and proud parents was unintelligible would be gracious at the very least.

Then, in one of the most stupefying displays of linguistic befuddlement ever witnessed out side of a state hospital day room, the most popular teacher in the school (as the story goes) stood and ambled over to the podium. As her hair continually blew into her mouth and her green dress billowed up repeatedly, not quite but nearly pornographically I might add, she launched into a spoken word train wreck that somehow managed to dive under the snake’s belly in a wagon wheel rut standard just set by the principal. All singulars were made plural, all plurals were made singular, she couldn’t conjugate a verb with a gun to her head, and all of this punctuated by spates of sniffling and whimpering as her voice rose to the finale where she chocked her way through a bowl of verbal slop designed to rouse even the most jaded heart in support of these bright, beaming students.

There then followed three student speakers. Each delivered beautifully structured, well rehearsed speeches infused with clever humor and touching notes of longing for the wonderful memories recently shared with their fellow class mates. Each of these sturdy, confident young minds reached into a future, though fraught with potential difficulties, armed with grace, dignity, and boundless hope. Clearly these young people and all of their class mates had gotten a fine public school education in spite of the dip shit teachers and administrators with whom they had been saddled.

Handing over the reigns of the culture to these young citizens will be my pleasure. If this is the future then America is not going to hell in a hand basket.

As we were leaving the stadium we passed two perfectly spherical kids. The girl, wearing a black and white zebra striped tank top and microscopic shorts, was lying on the grass with her huge fleshy legs stuck in the air saying, “ Looky, stars!” As I averted my eyes I got a gander at her male counterpart. He was attired in a Megadeath t-shirt, covered with a vastly oversized flannel shirt, huge sneakers and the obligatory backwards baseball hat. He just picked his nose in response to his companion’s discovery.

Love dad

Hi Nichole,

God summer’s depressing.

So there I am, it’s winter, it’s freezing, nothing grows, nothing will grow, so I get to do nothing in the way of chores. “I can’t do the goddamn chores, it’s winter, shit!” I could say. And I would be right.

Then spring shows up, uninvited, and I begin to plan to prepare to peel myself off the sofa and go out and review my itinerary for the next six months. Trim all the old dead shit off the perennials, turn the soil in all the beds, go to Home Depot and buy peat, soil amendments, mulch, lots of new annuals, and new perennials. This year we (Kathy actually) are adding vegetables to the soothing recreational activity that is gardening. We have no room in the existing beds for vegetables so you know what that means, new beds. So we need all kinds of blocks and pecky cedar ties plus drip system stuff. The drip system section at Home Depot is the height and length of a rail road car. There’s the main tubing, quarter inch tubing at the end of which will be fitted one of at least seventy five different water emitting devices, there’s soaker tubing, plastic elbows, splicers, “T”s, plastic male ends, plastic female ends (not the kind purchased at Ernestos’ Adult Emporium), clips, caps, timers if you want, this shit goes on forever Jesus!

Kathy is explaining that I have no idea how expensive produce is at Safeway or even Costco and that we can save real money by growing our own vegetables.

“So that’s one pallet of garden block, one pallet of pecky cedar ties, a half a mile of main drip line, an amazing collection of plastic attachments, all these annuals and perennials, plus all these bags of various dirt and shit?” the check out girl asks without even a hint of “jeez this is a lot of stuff” inflection in her voice.

“Uh, yes,” I say with a note of doubt as I catch Kathy out of the corner of my eye browsing the hand trowel, gloves, and organic insecticides rack.

“That comes to nine hundred and seventy nine dollars and sixty nine cents.” the check out girl reports.

“I can put about a third of this on my Master Card hon,” I inform Kathy.

“It’s cool, I’m pretty sure I’ve got room for the rest on my cards.” Kathy says without a blink.

I remember last year Kathy giving a friend of ours a tour of the yard, “so over here we have the grasshopper food” as she pointed out the flower gardens “and back here we of course have the squirrel food” she was directing attention to our first vegetable garden.

The primary human technological advancement enabling the population to grow at a rate that has left cockroaches green with envy has been the development of chemically and genetically enhanced industrial agricultural practices and techniques. The ability to grow food without having to factor in massive losses due to disease and or pestilence has led to the emergence of huge multi-national agribusiness corporations who, in an effort to placate their stockholders, will do anything and everything to maximize profits. Going organic will not be considered among the viable approaches to this gathering of money and power. Organic gardening implemented on a local level by local farmers, though proven to sustain the viability of the soil and provide safer (as in non-carcinogenic) more flavorful food cannot compete in the general market place against the larger agribusiness corporations with their giant land holdings, chemical and genetic engineers, and global transportation networks. This is because organic disease and pest control is, at this stage of development anyway, wimpy and pathetic. By the way the same is true for flower gardening as well.

The other day we were sitting in our rear patio watching as a fog of heinous little bugs, known as thrips, rolled onto the property and commenced to suck the life out of the very yard itself. We applied an organic pesticide which we had been assured by the manufacturer would be effective against all sorts of garden pests. Immediately after application I noticed the thrips had actually grown larger and more robust as if we had sprayed thrip steroids instead of thrip poison on them. As instructed, if this remedy did not work we would have to remove all the rose buds from the yard. As in all yards, roses are the queen of the ball. Kathy wondered why everyone else’s roses look great while we just had to destroy ours to save them. I said, “Did you smell the petroleum distillate stench of chemical pesticides wafting up from their yards?”

“Oh ya, that.” she resigned herself.

So last night we sat in our front patio area at dusk watching the stunning southwestern sunset, surrounded in the withering death that is our flower garden and Kathy wined, “How come we never get to have a pretty yard? Shit! I think I’m just gonna get drunk. Fuck it!”

“Well, as you know, organic gardening is a gateway drug to alcoholism.” I reminded her.

Love dad

Hi Nichole,

I think I’m becoming illegal.

The other day Kevin and I were scheduled to go target shooting. He has this new military rifle he wanted me to check out and I was hoping to finally get to use my cowboy style lever action rifle. So I go to one of the larger gun shops in the area and explain that I need a few boxes of 9MM rounds and a few boxes of 30-30 rounds. “We’re out” the sales person reports.

“Out of which” I ask stupefied.

“Both, everything, there’s no bullets.”

“Uh, what?” I dumbed.

“They’re all gone, all the bullets are gone.”

“Uh, how come?”

“The election.” he illuminated.

“Uh, what about the election caused all the bullets to go away?”

“Scared, every body got scared when Obama got elected and they bought up all the bullets.”

“Kinda like screaming fire in a crowded movie theater,” I thought to myself.

See, this is what happens when lobbying groups and other self interested parties become a person’s only source of “news.”

“Goddamnit, I knew it! That goddamn liberal African/Arab camel jockey lovin’ bastard is gonna steal all our guns” the cry went out across the land.

Actually I don’t remember Obama making any such threat but maybe I missed something.

So I drove over to the next largest gun shop in the area and posed the same request.

“Good luck finding any ammo of just about any kind around here or anywhere for that matter. Hell we got people coming all the way from the Valley looking for ammo it’s gotten so bad.” the sales person bemoaned.

“Shit” I said as the futility of my quest became evident. “What the fuck’s going on?”

The guy behind the counter then explained that the military has a five year fifty billion round contract basically swamping the ammunition manufacturing capacity of the country. He assured me that this was a readily verifiable fact. “Course then you got the Obama factor on top of that.” He finished.

I explained all this to Kevin as we took what ammo we had and went shooting.

“So, if it’s like the guy says, then when did this historically monstrous military bullet grab commence? Was it under the Bush administration with its resignation to the reality that we would be in at least two protracted wars for the next generation or two? Was it something new under the Obama administration with its resignation that things weren’t going to be as simple as they had appeared from the vantage point of the campaign trail and that we would probably be mired in at least one war for the foreseeable future and we had better be prepared? Plus, you know, there’s North Korea. Or was it a sinister ploy by the Obama administration to bottle up the nation’s ammunition supply in a trumped up military emergency and thereby effectively rendering the debate over the meaning and the validity of the 2nd amendment pointless by not banning guns but by starving them into uselessness?”

“Hard telling.” Kevin shrugged. Kevin is aware for my penchant for paranoia.

Don’t ban tobacco just make it illegal to smoke it anywhere but your yard. I smoke cigars so I can’t leave my yard.

Don t’ prohibit alcohol just set the threshold for legal intoxication so low that to simply say the word beer puts one over the .08 blood alcohol limit. I do way more that just say the word beer so I can’t leave my yard.

“God, with the rate of medical advancements these days we could live to be ninety or a hundred years old. But with the ever increasing weight of the hob nailed boot of cultural oppression pressing down on our freedom loving throats the prospect of living another forty years looses its appeal. Well, guess you better wash up, dinner’s gonna be ready in few minutes.” Kathy said.

Love dad.

Hi Nichole,

I can’t leave my property.

I think the community at large would prefer that I don’t leave my yard. Actually, I think my immediate neighbors would hope that I remain indoors. I cannot accommodate this wish however as I am claustrophobic and the fear of enclosed spaces is just too shattering for me to bear. I consider open air football stadiums to be enclosed spaces. So, you know, there’s that. Needless to say this claustrophobic tendency along with my anxiety issues, the insipid, clawing, “please love me” begging puppy dog, monumentally embarrassing behavior precipitated by my over arching feeling that everybody knows or will soon discover that my existence is without merit, and the fact that I have not one tooth which would be considered “good” by anyone living outside of Britain, keeps me out of the local societal soup for the most part.

Kathy and I were invited to our neighbor Ron’s house for a Memorial Day barbeque the other day. Memorial Day actually. For the reasons alluded to above (and others as well) this act on Ron’s part renders his judgment, sense of decorum, and concern for his other guests suspect. However everybody loves Kathy and Ron may have invited only her. I, awash in my utter obtuseness, tagged along and once on the scene could not be expelled without the designated bouncer appearing cruel.

“Oh hi Kathy, (hug hug kiss kiss) how are you? Jeez it’s been so long. God you look great. Well, come on and get something to drink. Everybody this Kathy. Kathy this is everybody.” Ron would say.

“Oh, hello Scott I didn’t realize you were coming so yah, well so OK, hmmm.” Ron would add.

So we’re all standing around next to our respective plastic picnic chairs (of exceptional quality I assure you) and my friend Don is dominating the conversation with tales of greatness and wonder referring, of course, to his greatness and wondrousness which is allowed because Don is really interesting, has seemingly done almost everything interesting a body could do, and tells his stories in a very entertaining fashion. Out of nowhere this huge, absurdly handsome guy, accompanied by his painfully attractive wife (they’re baby boomers just really good looking baby boomers), says to Don “hey you got a brother named Ronie?”

“I do have a brother named Ronie as a matter of fact” Don confirms.

“Yah, me and him used to race cars together down at Ascot and out at Riverside.”

“Fuckin’ A.” Don says in a lightly amazed inflection. “Shit, small world isn’t it?”

The conversation turns to the ins, outs and what have yous (Re: “The Big Labowski” a film by the Cohen Brothers) of small time auto racing. I must admit I was somewhat incredulous at the number of baby boomer men at this barbeque who had some kind of auto racing story. Of course you put a bunch of old men together with copious poundage of meat and seas of beer and the personal real life accounts can reach mythic proportions.

The other thing was that, of the twenty or so people attending this Memorial Day barbeque, at least sixteen were either born and raised in, or spent the entirety of their adult lives in southern California.

When I moved to this area in 1977 there were eight hundred people living here. Most of the land in this community was devoted to ranching or under production as farm land. I had ditched southern California in 1970 for the four corners region of these here United States and the solitude, simplicity of life and truth of spirit it promised. (Re: the first leg of the fateful journey taken by Denis Hopper and Peter Fonda in the seminal film “Easy Rider”). Now there are something like fourteen thousand people living in the community and it’s immediate environs and the only thing they’re growing is stucco, asphalt shingles, oversized three car garages, and most recently “for sale” signs.

I was whining to Kathy for the millionth time about my consternation over this deeply disappointing turn of events and that “the only way to get out of the line of fire of this cancerous, insidious, ugly, cookie cutter, expansion of cheezy big box, metal sided, architecture, we don’t need no stinking architect, neon signed, storage bin for mountains of absolutely useless shit which must break and cease functioning within ten minutes of getting it home, soul eating suburban style progress is to move to a place where no one would ever chose to live. Like Montana or something.”

“Hmm hmm, could you bring in the groceries please?” Kathy asked in a soothing “yah well what are going to do” tone.

“Ok” I said. “Honey?” I whimpered.

“Yes, baby?” Kathy said rapping me in the swaddling clothes of her emotional grounding.

“Can we just stay home next weekend?” I damn near sniffled.

“Sure sweet heart.”

Love Dad.