This was once the largest chest of drawers in the world. Built in 1920, it stands 38 feet tall in High Point, North Carolina. Now the tallest stands at another end of town, at 80 feet. As of this writing, I haven’t seen that one yet.
I walked up to him, a complete stranger, in the parking lot as he pulled out his knife. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
I realized about halfway into my drive to the airport that I hadn’t packed any dress socks. I arrived late enough that I just wanted to grab a quick bite to eat and then settle into my hotel room.
On the walk to the hotel’s front desk the next morning, my feet felt cool and free inside my stiff dress shoes. It was quite liberating. The cuffs of my pants bunched down over my shoes just enough to conceal my socklessness. I had a secret.
Sitting in the car, however, I could plainly see my bare ankles.
At the store to buy socks, I parked next to a man standing next to a pickup truck. He sported a salt-and-pepper ponytail and wore wrap-around sunglasses that hid the direction of his gaze. I ignored him and wondered how closely he watched while I secured my laptop bag in the trunk and went in the store.
Back out in the parking lot, socks in hand, I saw the man in the same spot. I sat in the driver’s seat, door still ajar, and quickly realized that because TSA doesn’t let passengers travel with handy things like keychain pocket knives, I had nothing to cut the confounding plastic filament that bound the socks together. It was so tight I couldn’t get my teeth around it to bite it off. Man living in the South, standing beside a pickup truck parked at Wal-Mart? Yep, it’s a guarantee.
I looked over at the man standing next to the truck. I stood. “Excuse me. You wouldn’t happen to have a pocketknife, would you?”
“You know what? I do,” he said.
He reached down below his waist, an area that the side of the truck concealed from my view, and then pulled up a blade about four inches long. It was slightly curved and part of it was serrated.
I approached the stranger wielding a knife and held out the socks. “See? I don’t really have anything to cut this.”
He reached out with the knife. “Here, why don’t you hold it,” I said. “I don’t want you to worry about cutting me.”
His calloused, sun-baked hands pulled the “T” at one end of the plastic filament to make room for the blade. “Well, I’m just worried I’m gonna cut your socks.”
A moment later he was successful, but that’s not really the point of this story.
While I was putting on my socks and shoes, driver door now wide open, the man struck up a conversation. It turns out he was born and raised in the area, but his son went to college at a small, distinguished, private university about 30 miles from where I grew up (and about 800 miles from that parking lot), and the same son went on to a Kentucky seminary that one of my best friends attended, in a tiny town I visited more than once. I didn’t ask how he started in a predominantly Church of Christ four-year college and ended up in a mostly Methodist seminary.
I tied my laces and looked at my watch. “Well, I better get going. Thanks again. Good talking to you,” I said.
“You, too. Have a safe trip.”
Thanks to his sunglasses, I never looked him in the eyes, but I think they would have been kind.
“I don’t like going to the beach,” my son said.
Start the sound clip below and then click the thumbnail image to get an idea just how much he ended up hating it (earbuds will immerse you, but speakers will work):
I didn’t specify when he said it, because he told me that more than once during the first several days of our Sanibel Island vacation.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, son,” I said. “I would like for you to go with me in the morning. It’s my last day here, and on Saturday mornings you and I always have our father-son time.”
“Okay,” he said.
On top of that, he had another incentive.
The young woman in “Sweeper’s Peepers” was an amalgam.
Yes, on my last work trip I saw someone with very dark hair and blue eyes; there was a Subway employee sweeping the floor while I ate; and there was a woman who somewhat comically heard me wrong when I mentioned her eyes.
Rather than write separately about all three, I decided to combine them into one person. I hear “real” writers do this all the time, which is one way they are able to put the disclaimer in their books saying, “characters depicted in this work of fiction… not real people… blah blah blah.”
On the plane ride into the customer site (or the nearest airport, anyway), I saw a little girl, maybe about four or five years old, sitting directly across the aisle from me. A scruffy man I guessed to be her grandfather sat next to her. Her hair was very dark — almost black, yet she had pale skin along with bright blue eyes that nearly glowed.
At the Subway, which was the only fast food establishment in the customer’s town or within 15 miles of it, I saw a young, hefty woman sweeping the floor, and except for the parts about her eyes and my getting between her and the Thank You trash can, that scene went down exactly as I described it.
On my way back home, at the airport security point where someone checks the travelers’ ID and boarding pass before letting them go through the scanners, an older woman checked my driver’s license and used her neon yellow highlight pen to make an approving mark on my boarding pass. I noticed her eyes were a shade of green I rarely see, and, hoping that the fact I most likely never would see her again decreased her suspicion that I was flirting with her (I was not), I commented that they were nice. Our dialog played out as I depicted it in “Sweeper’s Peepers.”
So, while the scene itself (except for my stopping Sweeper and talking directly to her) was completely real, the character was a combination of three different people — all complete strangers — whom I saw during the trip. I guess I wrote it as practice just to see how it felt.
(Previously: No Zombies)
Little did I know we would be doing all the cooking, and Simon’s wife would be doing most of the flirting with Lisa.
Lisa was our server, and from the start we all liked her. While educating us about the fondue experience, she flashed a sweet but sincere smile and said that the cook pot is very hot and we needed to be careful.
“If something happens, don’t worry, I’m also a nurse,” she said.
“When do you do that?” I said.
“Days. I left my shift and came straight here.”
(click pic to enlarge)
She uses short, quick motions to sweep the floor, ending each swipe with an upward flourish sure to send particles into the air. My sandwich and I don’t appreciate it, but the bits of dirt, about the right size for the spaces between boot treads, dutifully play along and allow themselves to be pushed into piles.
The earpieces on her glasses push into the side of her pudgy, pink cheek, but her young, taut skin refuses to wrap around them. Her tan shirt outlines the contour of skin on her back as she moves a chair out of her broom’s way. Dark brown hair, clean and neat, spills down just a few inches below her baseball cap.
Each metal chair skids across the tile floor, the heaviness of the sound belying its size. The area under that table clean, she noisily slides the chairs back into place and keeps sweeping.
She has about half the floor clean now, but a customer making her way down the sandwich line steps around large chunks of dirt.
Three men wearing bright orange t-shirts enter, welcomed by the automatic doorbell’s wordless ping. One of them stops and shuffles his feet on the welcome mat, but still his heavy boots drop tiny clumps of mud in a jagged trail to the sandwich line.
Sweeper’s expression never changes. She continues on her original course while they order, get their food, and leave. Sweep, skid, sweep, sweep.
“At least they didn’t walk in the part you already swept,” I say, and something tells me that was not by accident.
She knows the heavy traffic areas. There for my second time, even I can tell by now that most lunch hour patrons get their food to go.
A woman’s voice comes from the kitchen, where only a head of shaggy, dishwater blonde hair is visible. “That’s what you get in a farming community.” The hair shakes with each word.
The blonde head tilts back and reveals a middle-aged face. A gap-tooth grin spreads across it. “You just do what you can, when you can.” She laughs.
Sweeper remains expressionless and silent, methodically working her way across the floor. Sweep, sweep, sweep. She stops just long enough to look up and take a deep breath.
Her eyes are blue. More unexpected than fetching, they shine through her thin glasses, from below the ball cap, above those high, puffy cheeks. She looks back down and continues the task at hand.
I want to make her say something, but instead I wordlessly carry my empty sandwich wrapper to the fake wood box with the flippy door labeled THANK YOU. Out of habit from my days of wearing an orthodontic retainer, I check the tray one last time before pushing one end through the flap and sliding its contents into the shallow abyss. I stack it with the others.
Sweeper leans the broom on a chair and makes her way toward me with a full dustpan. I cross between her and the THANK YOU box and look directly at her. “You have nice eyes,” I say, trying to appear neither flirtatious nor furtive.
“You, too, sir,” she says as she looks around me at the THANK YOU.
I stand there, certain she heard something else. I raise one eyebrow.
“I mean, um, thank you.” She laughs nervously. “I just thought you said, ‘Have a nice day.’”
I smile. “That’s okay. Do that, too,” I say and turn to leave, back to my own work.
(Previously: Fireside Chat)
I tried to make a story out of our trip to the largest mall in North America, but I decided to let the pictures speak. My narrative description would have been based largely on these, anyway.
When a mall contains more than 800 stores; a replica of the Santa Maria (scale uncertain); a full-sized amusement park with the Mindbender and other roller coasters; an ice rink; and a water park complete with a wave pool as large as two (American) football fields, what exactly can I say?
Big.
That is an inept summary of the West Edmonton Mall, but the following pictures help tell the story. (click any pic to enlarge)
(Previously: Edmon’10, We Have Ignition)
I sit near a fire fueled by random bits of kindling and firewood, slowly turning my marshmallow dangerously close to the flames. It’s 10 p.m., but it isn’t dark yet. To my left sits Moksha, and to my right are Amy and Simon, our Canadian hosts.
It’s June and it’s cool enough that any part of me not facing the fire is cold. Smoke rises into a sky still dimly lit by a sun I barely recognize.
In a great and unexpected finish to our first day, we’re in their suburban back yard, huddled around a fire pit that would make any state park camping spot proud.
The trio has begun the last leg of the trifecta. Three “Generation X” men — husbands as well as fathers of small children — became acquainted on the internet a few years ago after discovering one another in an online serial novelist’s comments area. Starting in 2008, we have held annual meetings for fun and camaraderie, using a different household as the headquarters each time.
I sit recalling details of their son’s soccer game, our delicious dinner, and the leisurely stroll home. Oops, my marshmallow’s on fire. Time to concentrate.
(click any pic below to enlarge)
(Next in the series: Capacious in Canada)
(Note: Written on 6/17, this is the first in a series about my annual visit to two guys I first met thanks to the Internet)
I sit in one of the largest, busiest airports in the world, located in a metro area relatively unaffected by the economic downturn that has ravaged so many other cities and countries. Big oil has held a presence here for decades, but more recently several major technology companies — Cisco, Microsoft, McAfee, etc. — have located large campuses here.
Despite all of that, I may not be able to post this before boarding my plane because there is no free wi-fi in the Dallas Fort-Worth International Airport. Is it a right to have Internet access? No. But, one would think that with all the tech-savvy people in this area the airport could get a competitive rate on implementation and management of an airport-wide wi-fi system. Other airports with far less volume (literally and figuratively) have done it.
Is that the problem? The sheer number of people who move through here each day? I wish I could find someone with the answer.
I suspect it is the same as it is in most cases — somebody can make a buck, so somebody is going to make a buck. T-mobile’s internet access points pop up as available no matter where I go in the building. They’ll gladly allow you to access the Internet — for a fee.
Sure, I could join the ranks of those who pay for wireless internet access. There are a few travellers sitting in this Samsung Mobile Travel Lounge happily browsing the web, checking work e-mail, and the like.
Stripped bare, my comments could be made to look like those of one looking for a handout. I normally don’t expect something for nothing, but with all the time to kill in this new era of arriving an hour or two before departure, this basic thing seems like a small request.
I would argue that this would benefit folks across the socio-economic spectrum, but I suppose that’s ridiculous when I’m sitting next to a Starbuck’s in a lovely air-conditioned space, iPod pumping music to my ears while I wait to fly to Canada. For fun. The most difficult task I have between here and my destination thousands of miles away is finding the cheapest place to eat in Denver’s airport.
But I bet it will have free wi-fi.
——-
I didn’t have time to test the free wi-fi hypothesis in Denver. I got off the plane at about 11:00 a.m. and had to eat before catching my next flight at 11:38.
Now I sit aboard the final stretch to Canada, the snow-capped Rocky Mountains out the window to the left, flat plains to the right.
“So, will we know when we cross the border?” I ask the flight attendant as the can of bloody Mary mix chuffs open and she hands it to the man across the narrow aisle.
She leans down next to me and points out the window, “You mean you don’t think you’ll see the big line down there?”
A few minutes later she hands me a Declaration Card. On it I divulge whether or not I am bringing to Canada any firearms, excessive amounts of alcohol or tobacco, meat, dairy products, etc., and whether or not I am not a farmer headed toward a farm. I felt rather boring when I checked “No” on all of the above. A friendly passenger informed me that I must give this to a Customs officer shortly after debarking.
So far it’s been a pleasant, uneventful welcome to the United States’ northern neighbor.
(Next in the series: Fireside Chat)
(Note: This is the fifth post in my San Antonio Riverwalk Series, shot during a recent work trip.)
(click any pic to enlarge)
Sometimes you have to look up.
My co-worker, a design major in her former life, pointed up at these grotesques while we walked along at street level. Four different faces repeated at various points, but I’m not sure how I ended up with pictures of only three.
I converted these to black and white because the color had nothing to do with their intrigue. The building’s identity remains unknown to me.
Details:
Camera: NIKON D50
Lenses: Nikkor 200mm 1:4 and MicroNikkor 55mm 1:2.8 (manual everything)
F-stop: f/4 and unknown
Shutter Speed: 1/60 second
Exposure Program: Aperture Priority
Flash: No Flash
Focal Length: 200mm and 55mm (about 300mm and 82.5mm on the digital body)
ISO: 200
Metering Mode: Manual
