Regular Life

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.

The alligator’s nostrils and eyes poked up through the water’s surface as the beast lay in wait for its next meal. Just 20 feet from us, it was as still as the glassy water.

“I’m going to get a picture just to show J there are alligators here,” J said.

“Sure. Me, too,” I said and lifted my camera to my face.

(click any pic to enlarge)

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“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.

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Four metal fence posts — the kind farmers and ranchers use to put up barbed wire fences — formed four corners of a square around a low mound of loose sand. A woman wrapped bright yellow tape around the posts to cordon off the area. She wore khaki shorts and a dark green shirt, topped off with a blue denim ball cap. Another woman, dressed similarly, walked to a small white pickup truck and climbed in through the open driver’s door.

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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.

Considering yesterday’s gold medal hockey match featured the USA vs. Canada, I found this timely.

Until three weeks ago, I had never been to a hockey game. In fact, besides back in 1980 when the USA defeated the Soviets, I had never watched one at all.

Always anxious for an excuse to take pictures, I snatched up two free tickets to the Allen Americans, a fairly new Dallas Stars farm team. The wife quickly cleared a guys’ night out and I frantically dialed up a couple of local friends. One of them is an avid hockey fan and even has his own skates and stick. Both of them are fellow shutterbugs.

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Alone in my hotel room on a rainy Monday night, I set my Canon PowerShot to manual and snapped a few pictures of my view, which for some reason garbled the Bat Signal. The following Thursday my co-worker and I saw our flights canceled due to the huge snowstorm that dumped a foot of snow on parts of the Dallas metroplex.

Finished at the customer’s site, we hit the road at about 1:30 p.m. and arrived at Dallas Love Field at 6:30 (where my car was parked). Not bad, considering we drove the final 60 miles through a blizzard.

While on the road, I missed the fun back home, wherein my son and wife made snow angels, a snowman, and snow ice cream. Their creative juices flowed so easily, no doubt, because the outside temperatures hovered just above freezing all afternoon and evening. Shannon captured a few choice pics, but I’m saving them for later.

The snow came so hard and so fast, however, that it still piled up to nine inches in our yard. The thermometer dipped below freezing for just a couple of wee morning hours — just enough to cancel area schools and give me a work from home day.

My busy day kept me from frolicking in the snow with Benjamin, but neighbors invited him to play. The following sunny day we hit the 50-degree mark and all but the shadiest of spots said goodbye to the snow. I’m talking about literal shade, not some mysterious uncle’s favorite bar.

I learned on the Houston trip not to put off taking pictures of intriguing places. The result is the opening pic and the one that I snapped of the unconventional street signs found near the Galleria. Sorry, no NASA, no palm trees, no jazz bar featuring a huge blue saxophone with a Volkswagen Beetle as its bottom “u” bend.

(Note: concluded from Part Three)

Blurry due to slow shutter speed. Click to enlarge.

 
Beginning at the third floor we get good looks at various rain forest inhabitants — exotic birds, monkeys, and lizards. The monkeys are water-bound on a small island, but the birds fly freely amongst the visitors, sometimes alarmingly near faces. I almost ask one of them if they know the Fruit Loops guy.

   

Pic on right cropped a bit for composition.

 
A three-toed sloth, true to its species, sleeps while wrapped around tree branches about six feet off the ground. With no net or other barrier between it and us, its long claws make me wonder just how fast a sloth could move if it got fed up with all the passersby.

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(Note: continued from Part Two)

At first graffiti on buildings, some perhaps gang-related, is the only obvious sign that we’ve left suburbia. When the buildings begin towering above us, whether we’re atop an overpass or not, we know we have reached the city proper.

High-rises jut skyward from the concrete jungle, reflecting one another in their shimmering glass coats. I spot the buildings — Comerica Bank Tower, JPMorgan Chase Tower, Fountain Place, Reunion Tower — that give Dallas its signature skyline.

We pass by an old building called, “Dallas High School.” Boards cover its windows, dark stains streak the exterior brick, and a few cracks run through the cement. The columns still stand proudly.

I think of how many high schools have been added since that building’s heyday, and how buildings in the suburbs are so generic that they will be razed rather than added to the National Register of Historic Places.

For this man with a rural upbringing, a visit to the heart of the city brings excitement, intrigue, and just enough fear to keep alert.

Off the train now, Shannon and I consult Mapquest’s directions from the West End Station to the Dallas World Aquarium, printed on a pink sheet of paper because we were out of white. We’re only a few blocks away. Benjamin does his best Godzilla impression on a metal sculpture of downtown Dallas.

I grab Benjamin’s hand as we make our way on foot. “Why are you holding my hand, Daddy, so nobody will take me?” Benjamin says.

“Yes, son, so nobody will take you.” I try to remember where he first got that idea.

The most direct walk leads us down what looks more like an alley than a street. “Let’s not go there. Let’s walk on down to the next intersection and then turn,” I say.

We stop at a building that must be the aquarium, but it is hard to tell. Large sheets of transparent plastic extend down from the walls to cover various tropical plants and small trees growing in soil along the southwest side.

So far it looks more like a terrarium.

A spur off the sidewalk leads us through an opening in the protective cover. Now inside the plastic-wrapped jungle with a roof over our heads, we follow the zig-zag walkway toward the ticket window.

Large, colorful carp swim lazily in a stream that runs under the walkway. I call out, “Hey, come back, Benjamin, you didn’t look at these fish.”

He runs back down the walkway, fingers tapping the handrail’s metal tubing. He looks over the edge. “Cool, Daddy. Come on.” He runs up to the ticket window, apparently confident that there are bigger and better things to be seen after we have paid admission.

The ticket lady tells us to take the elevator to the third floor to begin our tour.

Waiting for the elevator, we get our first look at the… rainforest? I thought we were coming to an aquarium.

Within arm’s reach, a small group of penguins mill about in a watery habitat with low walls. They seem ebullient. Perky, even.

Behind and below them is a vast room with a four-storey ceiling. The green of the tropics dominates the scene. A waterfall as tall as the trees cascades straight down an artificial cliff face into a small body of crystal clear water. The overcast weather allows only a muted glow through the skylights.

Notice the manatee in the water, to the right of the falls.

 
(to be concluded, with many photos)

(Note: Continued from Part One)

As we settle into our seats I notice a distinct, almost unpleasant smell — one part hospital, one part hotel room attempting to mask the fact that it once allowed smoking.

Benjamin and Shannon sit together while I settle into the seat behind theirs. A few other passengers fill seats here and there. A recorded female voice announces that the train will leave in one minute.

“I hope we go underground,” Benjamin says.

“We might,” I say. “I think there’s a tunnel.”

“I want to face forward,” Shannon says. We are facing north, but the train is going to head south.

“Let’s move,” I say.

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