AN OMEN OF GOOD CHANGES

 Outside my bedroom window is this amazingly colored tree.  

Why hadn't I noticed it before?  I have lived here for several years!  I must be slipping in what I consider to be the first "commandment" of "my religion", which comes from Alice Walker and her glorious novel, The Color Purple.  It comes from the line, I think it pisses God off in you walk past the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."  Well, now having noticed this tree, I purposefully look at it every morning when I open up my blinds.

About a month after my seeing this tree, I was looking out the window at it and saw a black woman sitting on the grass under this treet.  The ground was heavily covered with leaves that had fallen and shared its color with the green of the grass.  In all the years I have lived here, I had never ever seen anybody sitting down on the grass here.  But here was this woman doing just that, adding her colors with those of the leaves and the grass.  I literally said outloud in my solitude, "How beautiful that is!", because the whole tableau truly was glorious.

 

This was the kind of view that would stimulate taking a photograph, but I was a stranger three stories up above and hidden behind her, which would be creepy, so I did not.  I didn't want to sully the atmosphere by assentially being a spy.  But I did have the idea of going downstairs and around to tell her how beautiful she was in that setting.  I kind of laughed at the boldness of my thought, but in addition to my "God wants you to notice," another of my aphorisms is if you see something good about a person, then you tell them if you can.  Rarely have I ever come upon a person who did not like what I was saying to them, but there have been some and that's too bad for them.

I can remeber one time I was on a trip and was having lunch in a Dennys.  In the booth in front of me there was an elderly couple, a large man whose back was facing me and his wife who was across from him.  The man was doing most of the talking and the woman was listening and nodding as the man talked.

Let me tell you, that man..the most glorious voice he had!  It was deep and strong and had a powerful timbre.  It was a voice of great knowlege and the power to educate you with valuable truths.  Just based on the sound of that voice alone made me think he would be one of the most important sound casters in our day.  If he had a podcast that aired even deep in the night and lasted for three or four hours each night, I would nevertheless get my earphones, get into bed, and listen to him every single night.

The man and woman ate slowly and so I finished before they did.  I was eager to get back on the road.  All I knew about this man was his back and his voice, but there was no way I was going to leave that restaurant without telling him how I felt about how great his voice was.  So I walked over to their booth and I simply said to him, "I was eating in the booth behind you and I couldn't help but notice that you have one of the most wonderful speaking voices I have ever heard, people would fall in love with the power of your voice; if you aren't already on radio, I think the sound of your voice alone would make you a huge success on radio or anywhere else you could use your voice."

That was all, just my observation.  I wasn't going to stay beyond that, just tell him this and then leave.  He looked up at me with his mouth handing open and I smiled and then walked away to the booth where I could pay my bill.  As I walked away, I could hear him say to his wife, "What cheek!  Did you hear him? That guy said that I should be on radio", like that was the farfest thing he had ever thought of in his life.   I thought to myself, "Well, you lose some," yet somehow, I bet that guy rolls that thought around in his head and things start to change in his life in various beneficial ways.   I hope so!

So, I went down stairs and round the building and walked up to the woman sitting under the tree and simply said to her that I had seen her sitting there among the flowers, I had seen her from my aparment upstairs and thought the whole picture was so beautiful that I had to come down and tell her.

She was so gracious, accepting the compliment and appreciating my sharing that with her.  This happened to be a bit after the start of the New Year, so I said that she was a sign that we were going to have a very good year this year, she was a good omen, and with her being the bearer of that good message, she herself would find all sorts of good things happening in her life as well this year.  She smiled groadly and said, "Thank you so much, I like what you are saying!"  I said, "Well, the thanks go to you, and enjoy this year!" and then I left her.

Since I was now downtairs, I decided to go get my mail, so I walked over to the vicinity of the manger's office where all our mail boxes are.

I got my mail and then walked back to my building, climed up to the third  floor and then walked along the walkway to my aparment which is at the further end.  I heard a bisy-boddy little girl down on the ground below talking with a friend of hers.   She was saying to her friend, "Yes, I saw that homeless woman here again, let's go tell the manager to him to kicked off."

Homeless woman?  Could that be the woman who had been sitting under the tree?  I went into my apartment and looked out my bedroom window, but the woman was gone.  Come to think of it, every single apartment in this gignatic complex has either a large balcony (the upper units) or a gated patio (the ground floor units).  Generally speaking, there would be no reason to be sitting down on the grass if they lived here; they would be on their valcony or in their patio.  Even the numerous childred don't sit down on the grass--they're up and about playing, or if they are resting but not in their apartment, they sit on the seats and tables in the large barbeque area.

It hadn't occured to me that the beautiful woman sitting among the fallen leaves was actually homeless, finding a quiet place to sit and rest for a while.  Instead, there was someting regal about her.  Nobody homeless could come here to camp, as the complex has armed guards who patroll the grounds.  (My premious blog engry was about our new nighttime guard.) 

All that was near the beginning of 2022 and now it is early February.  Here is what that tree looks like now.  Instead of covered with ORANGE leaves, now the tree is dense with WHITE leaves!  You have the photo proof!

What kind of tree IS this, anyway?  It must be magic, the way it completely changes the colors and tells a story using its leaves.  When I told that woman who had chosen to repose under the tree that she was an omen of good changes, I utterly believed it.  I think she did, too.

God wants you to notice, because it is yet another way that He will share his promises with you, and when you know them, you can manifest them. 

YOUNG SECURITY GUARD

I had a little bit of fun satisfaction tonight.  We have a new nightime security guard here on the complex where I live.  He parks his car in the spot that had been mine for two years before our underground parking space could be fixed from all the sludge that had been dripping down from the parking above.  My car was the worst hit by all this, so I am extremely thankful that that situatiion is now finally fixed.

One of the complex's managers had called me last month and asked me if I would go back to using my old underground parking space even BEFORE it being fixed.  She said that it would be finished befor the rains became.  Actually, it actually DID rain before that it happened, but I covered the car with a cover that I have, so that was okay.  I just don't want to have to put it on every day (it takes a while), that is why I have an underground parking garage.

Well as soon as I was no longer using the temporary spot--that is meant for maintainance workers--somebody else started using it, but only after the normal working hours.  From my spending a lot of time out on my balcony that looks out onto the parking entrance and the maintenance parking spots, I figured out that who was using it late at night now was the new security guard.

As you can imagine, I am totally in favor of secure guards.  And I could see that this one was a very young man, and it reminded me of myself when I was going to Law School, a very expensive private law school that in order to be able to afford if one's parents weren't paying for it, students had to get financial aid (which I did and it took me several years to pay back and I had NOT become a lawyer), the only other or supplementary way was to have a part time job or be already rich.

Having a part time job is NOT compatable with going to law school.  All the highest scoring students in our law school were married and the "deal" was that the wives would do ALL the "family" work and the husband students would just study 24/seven.  Othewise, according to many, you could not make it. (Sadly, a common end to those situations was that after the guys passed the bar exam and get a legal job, they divorce their wives.  Or as the concept went...)

I guess if you wanted to menorize every single legal case in all of United States jurice prudence...my attitude about that was no.  My tack on the law was what really makes since, what is moral, what is just. Of course one learns that that is NOT the standard...the standard is really a lazy and frustrating one, and that was simply "what had been ruled before".  Well, that bored me; how can you ever evolve?  And anyway, my strong suit is not memorization.

So I broke all the rules in the book--had numerous dinner parties, had sex all the time (at times I could not concentrate in class because I could smell on my fingers the powerful sexual scent from woman of the night before) AND I ended up getting a NIGHTIME JOB (which I guess you figured out stopped at that time the dinner parties and the sex).

One of the jobs I had while in law school was security guard at a luxury appartment complex.  My shift was midnight to 8:00 AM, and then the first law school lecture of the morning would began.  When I had that job, after classes I would THEN have breakfast, and then go to bed.  I had to disconnect the telephone, beause now I was trying to sleep during the day.  It was a very hard way to operate.  My parents HATED it, because I was to carry an armed gun and my parents were afraid that that I would therefore get shot.  Well, I could have been shot even I wasn't carrying a gun!

The rules of that job included that every hour I was to complete a total security tour around the complex grounds.  I had a device (a watchman's clock) that I was to use to clock into various spots on the grounds that would make an imprint on a reel in the device to show a person in authority the next day that I had been to each required spot and the times I had there.  Other than that hourly "tour" duty, and being available for the needs of the tenants ("Help, I locked myself out of my aparment!"), I could sit in an office and study my law homework.

This was a terrible job for me to have...uttelry lonely, nights in Sacramento during the school year were cold and damp, and I hated being outside to walk these grounds at night. I was chilling in my thick jacket while everybody else in the complex was warm and cozy in their apartment with the flikering fireplaces and lights of their televisions taunting me through the closed blinds of their living rooms.

So now when I saw our new securty guard here, my heart would go out to him and I yearned to at least acknowlege his existence.

Late tonight, I was out on my balcony, enjoying the night air and having a delicious night cap, I saw the guard come aroud, lean against his car, light a cigarette, and talk on his cell phone (of course).

I wished I could at least say hi to him, but I was up here on the third floor, and finally I realized, "Why not just go down there and talk with him for a moment?"  So I did.  I knew I was interrupting his cell phone conversation, but I apologized for that and said I wasn't going to be long. I identified myself, asked him his name (Colby).  I said that I had seen that he was working here and I was glad to see it.  I mentioned that I knew it is a lonely job (but I guess the cell phone with a girlfriend fills in the gaps), and he agreed, yes, it was a lonely job.  He was a very beautiful young black man, and most likely not the least bit similar to me, not doing work while going to law school, etc., but that doesn't matter, I wasn't expecting to be FRIENDS with him, I just wanted to acknowledge him.

I liked it that he pointed out that he saw that our entrance gate was stuck open (that must have happened sometime earlier today), so he was monitoring that situation.  I told him that at least once a month some bozo here crashes into the gate, but that the management get that fixed as soon as possible.

Anyway, it was a satisfactory few minutes, I had gotten to do what I wanted to, and maybe he feels a bit more appreciated on this otherwise lonely and thankless job.  I can see how valuable cell phone contact is for a young man of that generation.  It would have come in handy to me when I was in law school!

The Universe Wants It To Happen

A small kitchen window screen tossed away on the front of my house alerted me that I had had a burglary. Yes, indeed, the house had been under “ransack” for an entire working day, so a thief had been looking into every single thing I had so as to determine what would be the most valuable things to take on this first pass.

 

The sheriff who came to get fingerprints showed me how easy it was to break in despite all my locks and screws and dowels in the sliding glass door runners.  All he needed was one screwdriver, the normal tool of the burglarizing young drug addict.  The sheriff said they pick them up all the time; youths with a fanny back containing a screw driver and a pair of socks, that is their burglary kit and how they keep from leaving identifying fingerprints, socks on their hands once they are inside the house.  He warned me that the burglar would see that I have quite a lot of more valuable things, so if I wanted to keep them, I needed to begin moving them away from that house that every evening.  He said the burglar now knows everything I have and where I have it, and will be back for more, for as long as I live there.

 

So I began the process of moving away from what had been the best place I had ever lived and was the happiest period in my life, now ruined forever.

 

The neighboring people who came to my “garage sale” all asked, “Did he get any guns or knives?” and I said yes to both accounts, and one knife was a custom carved and forged knife hand-made by a good friend of nine who lives in northern Sweden; that knive I consider to be priceless (among several other things stolen).  Every person said to me “guns and knives, that is a sign of a young man”.  They now knew exactly who the burglar was, someone recently released from prison for burglary, now living back in the neighborhood.  Oh, that guy?  I would give him rides into town.  So that was how he repaid me, uh, learned my work schedule.  

 

But this blog entry is not about the burglar.  It is only to explain why I ended up living with my parents again when I was 45 years old.

 

It had taken me a very long time to find the place where I was now having to move away from, including leaving my friends and income and life style and renown in theater circles…but this time, the moving had to be done in a hurry.

 

Three other times in my life I had chosen to leave California to live in the east.  Each one of those had been definite destinations that I wanted to go to.  The first time to North Carolina, the second time to New York, and the third time Alabama…only to move back to California after a while.  So here I was going to do that yet again, but with no idea of where. Nothing grabbed me, which makes sense because I hadn’t really wanted to move.  Louisiana, Florida, the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, all left me flat when I looked around them, so I tried checking out inland into Pennsylvania, but I was only getting more and more depressed.

 

As I was by this point at the end of my rope, I followed a method that always worked, called my mother from a phone booth for advice or hoping for a quick motherly pick me up.

 

She had an instant solution. She said they she and Dad were both so old now that she could hardly even cook their meals any more and there was a lot of other things I could do to help them.  Well, I had always loved our home town of Asheville, North Carolina, and if I could help them, then that would get me out this bind that I was in. So I went there.

 

Believe it or not, it was actually pretty good.  My parents were really extremely wonderful and it was interesting to mutate our roles in life from me being one of their children to us being adults together.  Despite having some duties such as the afore-mentioned cooking meals, I had gotten a full time job, had made friends, went to movies, was in a play, as well as preparing meals for my parents and helping them in other ways.  They actually loved my cooking and sometimes I could prepare some meals ahead of time that they could just microwave, so I wasn’t even necessarily tied down even regarding that.

 

So, (pant, pant) one morning I woke up late and didn’t have time to cook my own breakfast.  I decided to go to McDonalds for breakfast to take to work, and I chose to go to the Biltmore Forest McDonalds because it was the closest to where I worked.  Normally I would have gone thorough the drive-through, but this time the drive-through was shockingly crowded, so I parked and went inside.  Alas, they were packed solid in there, too, so I chose one of the three lines to get into.

 

Pretty soon after I got in line, an elderly man came in the door and got in line behind me.  I said something to him, like “Wow, they are really crowded this morning!” and that got us talking about who knows what…just letting the time go by faster.  When it became clear that we were getting close and I would be placing my order, the man said, “Well, it looks like you will be up there pretty soon, so let me tell you I really enjoyed our conversation, do you mind if I ask you your name?

 

I said, “My name is Tom Osborne.”

 

He said, “Oh, I knew an Osborne once.  A Bodwell Osborne.”

 

I said, “Bodwell Osborne, that is my father’s name, that certainly isn’t a common name!  Could this be the same Bodwell Osborne?  How did you know yours?”

 

He said, “I was a Mayflower moving man and in 1955, I moved Bodwell Osborne and his family from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He was going to be getting his master’s degree in Nuclear Physics at MIT.”

 

I said, “I was seven years old when we made that move.”  It was amazing to realize that this man actually had known my father from such a lot time ago.  I said, “You must have moved hundreds of people during your career with Mayflower.”

 

“No, thousands of moves,” he said.

 

“How on EARTH could you possibly remember the date of this one move, the name of the man you were moving, where you picked up the belongings, what the destination was, and the reason for the move?”

 

He said, “Oh, I would neverforget Bodwell Osborne.   Throughout the thousands of moves I had made as a Mayflower mover, your father, Bodwell Osborne, was the ONLY man I ever worked for who looked me straight in my eye and treated me as a man equal to him. Every other person treated me like somebody beneath them, to give orders to, not to consider as a full human being. No, I will never ever forget your father, who fully saw me.”

 

Now, I was way adult enough to fully appreciate the unique qualities of my father as a human being, who treated people by their soul and saw their unique value as human beings, and he had a special appreciation of hard working men as he, himself, was, despite his being a genius who had numerous patents and racked up various astounding accomplishments.

 

This experience waiting in line at McDonalds wasn’t to tell me about my father and his impact on others, as amazing as that experience was.  No, this was something else.

 

Six years later after that experience in McDonalds, my parents and I moved back to California and I was now working at a private school in Los Angeles.  Like the Parents-Teachers Associations at a Public school, our private school had something similar, the Parent’s Association that works very hard in providing various valuable services to the school and somewhere past mid-year in the school year, volunteer staff of employees at the school provide an appreciate breakfast for the members of the Parent’s Association, complete with entertainment by the staff.

 

I was one of the employees providing entertainment, which, like many others, might be singing an appropriate song, but some years, I would do something different.  One of those “something different” was that I the story I just provided here, my experience with the elderly man behind me in line at McDonalds who so cherished memories of my father from so long ago.

 

After I told the parents my story, I explain why I told it to them.  I said that I know how much they love their children, and how deeply they care about their education and hopes for a good and successful life when they grow up. And I knew they paid a lot of money when they choose to send their children to a private school; after all, they can get an education for free at a public school.  I was aware the other things they do for their children…and I pretty much bet that their children were probably too young to fully grasp and appreciate the sacrifices that their parents have been providing for them.  In short, they currently are unsung-heroeswhen it comes to appreciation from their own children.

 

But someday that appreciation will be realized and they all can count on that happening.  How do I know this?  Because my own experience led me to understand that the Universe wants it to happen, or for other goodness to come your way when everything lines up correctly.

 

Thinking back to what I experienced.  I had to be living in Asheville, North Carolina, which I normally did not; mostly I lived in California.  I had to wake up late one day.  I had to decide to go to McDonalds for breakfast.  I had to decide to go to the Biltmore Forest McDonalds.  I had to choose to go inside instead of using the drive-through like I normally would.  I had to choose a particular line.  And this elderly man had to choose to get in line behind me.  I had to have chosen to talk with him, and he had to choose to ask me my name.

 

All those unbelievable events had to come together to give me that message.  WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE ODDS?  It was astounding.  No person could make that happen.

 

What miracle lies in wait for you?

HOPING TO SEE PRESIDENT JOHNSON

A couple of days ago the U.S. Government was required by law to reveal to the general public all that was really known about the assassination of President Kennedy. (I think in general it could debunk the "lone gunman" theory.)   This led me to think of President Johnson, who had been Kennedy's Vice President and therefore took over the presidency after the death of Kennedy.

 

President Johnson was the President from when I was 15 years old all the way to my college year when I turned 21.  I graduated from Berkeley my senior year when I was 22.  Nixon was president then.  After I graduated from Berkeley, I got a job as a College Textbook Sales Representative for a company called Cummings Publishing, Inc.  I was given the "Southwest territory", a region I wanted to go to (I was born in Asheville, North Carolina and always maintained a love of that area). This mean that my job was introducing and sell professors Cummings's test books in every college and junior college in the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

 

This was the first time I would be driving across country on my own, so my mother worried about that and asked me if I could ask my good friend, Jim, if he would travel with me.  Jim had wanted to visit his sister in Ohio, so this idea of a cross-country trip with me appealed to him.  I would pay Jim's expenses from California to Asheville, which was going to be my headquarters. Jim said he would pay the expenses from Asheville to Cleveland and then back home to San Diego, where he lived at the time.

 

Having Jim along with me on my move eased my mother's concerns, and made the trip extra fun for me.  Jim could kill you with laughter, he was so funny.  On this rip, he enjoyed himself, too.  

 

I picked up Jim in San Diego, and since we were heading to the southern states, our route took us through Tucson, Arizona and Las Cruces, New Mexico (really enjoyed the Tex/Mex food!), and slid into Texas. We saw that a reasonable route across Texas would be to head towards Houston, and when we studied the map to see the way from where we were to Houston, we got a kind of silly idea that really appealed to us.

 

Both Jim and I were deeply into politics. Looking at the road map of Texas, I saw that it would be quite easy to drive to where the L.B.J. Ranch was without going very far out of our way.  The location of Johnson's ranch was not all that far north of San Antonio and west of Austin, two major Texas cities. 

Since Johnson was no longer in the White House by then, we figured he would be completely back home now at his L.B.J Ranch.  Who knows, we might actually happen to see him in town!  The idea of that suddenly became an exciting potential.  We decided we would have breakfast in some likely coffee shop that would be in whatever town was near the L.B.J. ranch.

 

When we got there, we found what we thought might be "the" coffee shop in this very tiny town, and went on in and ordered a nice big Texas breakfast (at least we would be eating good!).

 

When the waitress came to take our orders, Jim said to her, "We felt that this place would be the kind of coffee house that President Johnson would frequent when he was in town.  Does he ever come in here for a meal?

 

The sweet elderly waitress wearing a white lacy bun on her head said, "Well aren't you two boys the sweetest thang!  You hoped to see Lyndon?  Well, you almost did!  This is his favorite place to come into in the mornin' and get his first big tall cup a' coffee. He comes in pretty early... them ranch fellas get an early start, you know, and even though he had been the PRESIDENT, bless his heart, he is still a ranchin' man at heart.

 

Jim and I were eating this up!

 

The waitress said, "Where are you boys from, I know it's not Texas!" and she gave us a knowing smile. 

 

Jim said, "No, we're not from elsewhere in Texas, we're from California."

 

"California!  You boys come all the way from California to see Lyndon?"

 

I said, "I am moving to North Carolina for a new job I have, I just graduated from college this year, and my friend here, he decided to join me for the ride since this is the first time I have driven across this wide country all by myself."

 

Jim added, "We chose to come through this area of Texas with the hope that we would see President Johnson.  I graduated from college with a degree in political science."

 

The waitress's brows furrowed, "Science what?"

 

I answered for Jim, "Politics, the science of politics."

 

Jim continued, "I studied the works of President Johnson in college.  He took on a very hard task...replacing the assassinated President Kennedy, and having to deal with the pressures and horrors of the Vietnam War.  The Vietnam War is a subject that is very important to people our age."

 

Everybody was silent for a moment and I wanted to enliven the mood back again, so I said, "Beagles, I want to see him with beautiful beagles!  Did President Johnson ever bring his dogs in here with him?"

 

"Oh you make me feel happy," she said, "He LOVED them dogs! Those big ol' floppy ears.  No, he never brought them into the shop, but sometimes you'd hear them barking and yelping as Lyndon would take them down the street.  He liked to show them off.  And they made us forget about Vietnam for a moment." 

 

Then she swiveled in her chair and pointed over to a brown table in a corner of the shop and said, "Right there, that was where Lyndon was sittin' early this mornin'.  Most times when he comes in here he is happy and funny, likes to joke with who all is in here.  He says he wants to set his mood right from the very beginning of the day, but this morning as I brought him his coffee, I could hear a sigh in his voice when he said good morning.  I hate to see him down like that."

 

Jim and I just looked at her with a sense of regret on our faces...what can any of us say to cheer up a President who has carried so much of a burden?

 

Then the waitress brightened up.  She said with a sudden glow in her cheeks, "Next time he comes in, I will tell him about you boys.  I will want him to know about you, you who have the brand new job and will be living in a fresh new town, and you who studied Lyndon's 'science', you both who came all the way from California and chose a route to come here into this little town with the hope of seeing him.  Two smart handsome boys startin' out their adulthood, seein' acrost America and finding it good, I just know that Lyndon will give a great big smile at that."

 

"That is a wonderful idea, I am glad you will tell Lyndon about us, you make me feel that I really know him better now, please tell him of his importance to us!" I said."

 

“Tell him I listened to all his speeches, too," said Jim; "let him know that so many people knew that he cared about us and we won't forget that." 

 

"Okay, okay, it is settled then, you will be the boys who will make him believe again!"

 

She then said that even though we didn't have the chance to see Lyndon, there is something we can do that would be kind of close.  She told us how to get to the L.B.J ranch, itself.

 

"Someth' just good about lookin' at it," she said.

 

She drew a map and wrote down street names.  She said, "This is where he lives, you can go up and see the gate.  It is protected, of course, but you just might happen to see him out and about.  Or maybe the dogs will be runnin' around.  If nothing else, you will be able to see where the ranch is that he cared so much about.  You will have laid your eyes on it. Do you think that is a good idea?"

 

"That's a perfect idea", I said, and Jim concurred.

 

Now it was time to leave, so the waitress hugged each of us and we hugged her and she followed us out to my car.  I grinningly pointed out the California license plate and she touched it like it was talisman.  We thanked her for everything, got in my car, and sadly said good-by.  She waved good-by as we drove down the road.  “What a nice woman,” Jim said.  “Wonderful,” I agreed; “she makes you love Texas!”

 

I highly doubt that the roads and landscapes are the same as they were in 1970.  It looks to me that now the L.B.J. ranch is a museum and a park, not a place lived in as a house anymore.  A lot of things can change in over 50 years.  Jim and I are no longer those wide-eyed boys like we once were.  So many times I wish he hadn't changed.

 

The ranch was (and still in) on the shores of the Peternales River.  When Jim and I got to the river, we saw a man waterskiing!  Neither of us had ever seen anybody skiing in a river.  On a lake, yes, but a river?  Well, why not?

 

It actually looked like it could have been President Johnson himself, and beyond that, the person waterskiing looked to us that he was naked!  Neither piece was likely...or was it?  Johnson owned all that.  He could do whatever he wanted.  Now that he had thrown off the shackles of the presidency, did Johnson take on nude water skiing...because he could?

 

The waitress back at the coffee shop said that the river was like a moat for a castle.  There was a submersible bridge (the bridge deck you drive on can be lowered below the water level to allow traffic to go over the water).  Her map took us right up the submersible bridge and we could see that the bridge crossed the river straight to the entrance of the L.B.J. ranch.

 

There it was, the entrance to the L.B.J. ranch.  We were looking right at it.  This is where President Johnson lives! 

 

Did we dare drive across the bridge right up to the very front door?  Well, there was no "No Trespassing” sign, no words warning that it was "Private".  Really, there was simply a large front door and an entry gate for vehicles when opened.  And in the middle of the door was clearly a doorbell and some light fixtures that were not on as this was still early in the day.

 

There was no sign of people anywhere, things were very quiet, almost hushed. Jim and I found our selves whispering at each other.  Something prompted me to drive up onto the crossing bridge that was in what looked like raised mode; about half the height of an automobile tire above the level of the river.

 

Jim said to me, "So, we are now trespassing on a former President's private house?"

 

I said, "Probably, but where are the Secret Service?  I feel that if I had the courage to, I would just ring the doorbell and see who answers.  Something about the presence of the doorbell seems to invite me.  We might be so bold as to say to whomever opens the door, is President Johnson in, we would love to say high to him, can we do that?  Maybe we would be invited in for a refreshing drink, or to pet the dogs, to make himself feel better and know that citizens care about him."

 

But Jim just looked at me without saying a word.  He seemed to be indicating "Well, it is YOUR car, I am just her for the ride", like he really wanted to see what would happen but HE wasn't going to be the one to do it!

 

However, the truth of my cowardice was almost immediately made clear.  We had driven across the bridge over the river and now were stopped right there at the front door when suddenly a light fixture that was in the door turned on and like an all-seeing eye, began to maneuver around as if there was a brain on the other side checked us out. Somehow the idea of a person now watching us was very creepy.  Presumably that was being operated by some guard, or a butler, or maybe even President Johnson himself (back from naked water skiing?), but in contrast to the former quietness and solitude, the sudden operation of this spotlight was way too alien or frightening for my previous thoughts.  Only a few seconds previous I contemplated that I really could have gotten out of the car and boldly rung the doorbell and either been invited in or summarily sent away.

 

The determining factor was that out of the corner of one of my eyes I saw that the river water was noticeably rising up behind us, when upon a second glance I saw that what was really happening was the bridge was sinking into the river. All I knew then was that we had to get the hell out of there and get back across that bridge or else we would be trapped at the front door with its frightening eye, or worse, we would be trapped in the middle of the river without being able to proceed any further since the car would be effectively downed in the river. (My car!).

 

Whatever intelligence I had disappeared, I only knew that I wanted to be back on the original side of the river, so I floored the accelerator and proceed faster than I had ever driven before or since.  Near the end of the distance (thankfully not all that far), there was some water resistance that I had to plow through as the bridge continued descending into the river (Jim was holding onto whatever he was able to grab onto), but we made it!  Once we were on dry land, we both began hooting and hollering and laughing out so loud like out of control kids that I guess we essentially were!

 

What on Earth had we almost gotten ourselves into?  Who knows.  Jim is one who likes the keep alive the mysteries.  I think that leaves one with so many possibilities.  All he said was, "I don't know about you, but from now on, I am going to tell people that on our trip across Texas, we saw President Johnson water skiing the Peternales River naked and I will swear on a stack of Bibles that that was the total truth." I think he wanted to have Johnson be a man who was now completely free.

 

I said, "Okay, that will be our story," but here I am breaking it, because this is my Blog and I want everything on it to be totally honest and real. I am not making up stories.

 

My fantasy regarding this is that President Johnson went to that coffee shop the next morning early and the wonderful waitress did tell him about us like she said she would.  He would say, "Oh, those guys, I think they must have been the two that came to my front door!  I was excited to have the bold company and wanted to invite them in, but they got scared off.  Seems that the river monitor saw further down the river that that water skier was coming his way and he lowered the submersible bridge so that the skier could get past.  Those boys got their car over that bridge to the other side faster than I knew any car could ever go!  All I can say about them is that I wish them continued “God speed” for their successful lives; God Bless America!

TRAVEL vs RACISM

A really good friend of mine sent me a poem this morning called Travel, written by a poet named Geo Evan, translated from Italian.  She sent me this because she knows I love travel (and have done quite a lot of it) and she was sure I would like what the poet was saying about travel, and she was right--I liked it, and it also got me to thinking.

One of the benefits of travel according to the poet was that if you did not travel, then you might become racist.  I especially liked how he wrote it, that you might become racist, instead of the current short-sightenedness in the United States that all white people are born racist and there is no way to change that.  I say it is obvious that everybody everywhere in the world undergoes various experiences, events, joys, fears, frustrations, obstacles, triumphs, and let-downs, and due to all matters of varying impacts will lead to making decisions of how they will feel about aspects of the world and its people.  The point is that the exposure to other kinds of people than one's own can generate an expanded appreciation of others without negative judgments that are self limiting. 

In my response to my friend, I decided to expand the concept to an area that interests both of us, not specifically included in the poet's meaning. There has been quite a LOT of discussions recently about visiting people coming here from other planets and I wondered if the concept of racism would make "aliens" very loath to show themselves to us in the immense likehood that they will look quite different from us and that on its face would likely wreck any chance of forming an alliance with them.  A possible human response could be to kill on sight.

I realize that I am guilty of potential racism of that myself, in that I have said "If some UFO people come down among us, I want them to look much like us, not some frightening monsters."  And believe me they certainly COULD be very frighting monsters in appearance.

In that brilliant book, Life In Darwin's Universe by Gene Bylinsky, a book I read long ago and want to read it again, said that in the Universe there are two ideal body types for advanced, intelligent, technological (tool making) people, and those are the two-legged, upright, eyes in front model (like us), OR a "rotary" model with many arms all around, like a squid or octobus.  Yeah, I could "get" that, but I really didn't want to be in the presence of a human sized squid stepping out of their space craft, I would risk having a heart attack.

 

Now I have a more "accepting" view due to having read another amazing book, about how wonderful octobuses are, The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Mongomery.  I have soften my view.  Of course, that is also an ocean going type of body, not terrestrial, so we're less apt to deal with that kind of people...although in the book The Time Machine, the hero in the book at the end of the book set the time machine to the farthest future where he observed the sun dim out and the end of the Earth, the last creature alive on the planet looked like a large octopus that was terrestrial. So even H.G. Wells allowed for that body type to be the most long-lasting one.

 

All of which is to say that it would behoove us to be kind and accepting of any physical appearances, and wouldn't we all want the same?

 

Here's a kind of a funny occurence that happened to me some time ago.  You know how sometime your brain just goes out on a journey to who knows where and you lose all connection to the here and now?  (Or am I the only one?)  Well, one day I was driving my car on a very empty rural road (driving "automatically") and suddenly I saw an utterly horrendous and frighten creature standing there in a field.  The sight of this thing chilled me to the bone, what was this horrible monster?  Well, fortuantaly I "came back to my normal consciousness" and saw, oh, it is just a Cow!   I don't know why I had that experience, but I never forgot it...I saw how from a slightly different perspective that a sweet and common of a creature as a cow can be very frightening in appearance if you have never seen one before.

 

Think of all the varities of animals just here on this one planet.  Probably any of them would near scare us to death if we had not encountered them before.  Rhinoceroses, Elephants, Giraffes, Hyenas, Vultures, Buffalo, Horses, Alligators.  The whole deal has to do with familiarity.  Once we have experience with them, we come to appreciate and even love them.  (Well, maybe not the alligators.)  And the same goes with people.

 

Speaking of people, my genes include Neandertal genes and another unusual one, Denisovan.  That is not very common.  Both of those are now extinct.  I am sure we don't really know exactly what those two types of people looked like, pretty similar to humans now, but still, different enough to wonder how and why those different types of human breed together, but they certainly did.  And regarding the Native Americans (from my point of view as a white person), I think the average person thinks that most of the American Indians (so many different tribes) are gone due to "whites people" killing them all.  No, according to some studies, they disappeared into "us" (and "we" into them) via marriage and giving birth to mixed children.  I am not arguing FOR or AGAINST "mixed" marriage, only saying that it definitely existed throughout history and currently, and this is a demonstration of how familiarity can prevent racism, as the poem says, since falling in love and getting married and having children is exactly demonstative of NOT being racist.

 

I felt so happy a couple of weeks ago shopping at a new gorcery store I discovered, "Q" Market that is a Pesian market...that there is a whole substantial culture of Persians here in Los Angeles.  I felt that it added to the over-all strength of our city if having communities like that were viewed as allies instead of enemies (our federal government views Persians living in Iran as our enemy).  I realize that things like that can easily go either way, but my current view is that if people from Iran chose to move HERE, they must have something very much in common with us, and that is wanting freedom and opportunity.  I know that many freedom seekers from other countries end up ruining freedom for us by voting the only way they knew back home, but still, we can hope that ultimately they will come to understand and appreciate what is really freedom.

 

I understand that there is something like 2,200 different languages being spoken in Los Angeles!  I couldn't list that many language names, let alone know where they all come from!  But it is fascianting to contemplate.  There could be a ton of growth and personal expansion combined within that many different cultures, or else it would lead to the worst example of the Tower of Babel and we all would end up killing each other instead of learning from each other.  It could go either way.  But at least from the point of view of this poet, there is a good chance of becomming enhanced.

 

There is a lot more that I can say based on that poem, but I will just add one more that is down to earth.  I had an uncle who had condos in three places, California, Sweden, and Finland, and business affairs in Denmark, Switzerland, and France.  I was the executor of his state, so when he died, I moved to Sweden to administer his affairs in Stockholm and Helsini. I was living in Sweden for severeal months (and several trips) without knowing a word of Swedish (HE never learned it!).  Almost every Swede past middle school can speak English fluently, which was a great advantage for me working there.

 

While not having to know Swedish made it easier for me to do the work there, this also made it so I had no pressure to learn some of the language.  This put me "outside" of understanding the Swedish language, and not having a positive view of it.  It looked ugly in print and of course, was meaningless noise when spoken.

However, one lucky day I was riding the tunnelba (the Swedish subway) from downtown Stockholm to the area where my uncle's condo building was, and I saw an advertisement posted on the wall in front of the carriage I was in.  I was an ad for a woman's bath product and showed a beautiful woman in a bathtub, holding up a lily flower.  I saw the world "lilje" on the advertisement and coubled that with the picture of the flower made me think that "lilje" meant "lily".  I pulled out my Swedish/English dictionary and saw that "lilje" meant "lily of the flower" ("lila" mean "lily"). Suddenly, the language wasn't so ugly, now!

 

I got off the subway at my stop and marveled that the name of that subway stop was "Liljeholmen". So there was that lily again, what must "holmen" mean?  The dictionary said "harbors", so the name of my subway stop was "Lily Harbors"...another beatiful name, and this stop was right along a series of harbors!

 

So now that I knew that "holmen" meant "harbors", so the whole name of the city, "Stockholm", must have something to do with harbors.  Well, "holmen" is hardors and "holm" is one harbor, and looking up "stock" revealed that stock is Swedish for "lumber".  Ah ha, the name of the city is Lumber Harbor, so clearly that was that city's first claim to fame, and, in fact, logging and boat making was a major industry and so trees would be cut down from the northern forests and floated down the waterways by the hundreds and gathering up in Stockholm for building things.

 

As I walked up the hill from the harbor to my Uncle's condo, I looked at the street name, yet another formerly ugly looking name:  "Grenljusbacken".  My handy dictionary helped me deciper that name.  "Gren" is a light, like a lit candle.  Grenljus is a partiucular lighted candle, the Christmas lights that the Swedes put in every window during the Christmas season.  And "backen" means "up a hill".  So my Uncle's street name was "Christmas lights in a window going up hill".  And only a few days later I had gone down to Stockholm for some errands, and by the time I was coming back home, I was walking up hill after dark, and I saw first hand all the Christmas lights glistening in the windows as I walked up hill:  Granljusbacken!

 

From then on, Swedish was one of the most beautiful languages ever.  I frequently had my nose in my Swedish/English translater book, what does this mean, what is this place really called, making the whole place a wonder.  I really recommend this exercise to anyone who is going to any non-English speaking place...the treat you will enjoy will be that much deeper.  And becaue of that, you will start to think and understand how they see things, and you will love them for the beautiful people they really are.

CUTE LITTLE DOG

There’s a watch shop that I go to.  They sell and repair watches, watch bands, and replacement batteries.  For your quick needs, such as getting a replacement battery (my usual reason to be in there), there are a couple of chairs where you can sit down and wait.  Usually they have playing on the wall a large video of a Rolex watch being completely taken apart piece by piece and then being put back together again.  Seeing all those intricate parts is astonishing. This seems to be a puzzle to beat all puzzles.

 

That watch whose innards I have now seen several times is at the opposite pole of the price realm of the watches I bring in for repair or new batteries, or to replace a worn band. Sometimes I have been embarrassed to bring in such cheap watches, but every time he or his other employees will treat it with as much respect as if they were the finest of time pieces, such as some that are in their display case or in beautiful catalogues on a table between the waiting room chairs.  

 

The owner of the shop has a tiny little light brown dog that stays with him in the inner sanctum where the owner does his work.  I have never seen in there, the waiting room is the realm for the customers.  But that little dog loves to come out from there whenever somebody comes in the shop.  He can hear when the door opens, and he immediately comes right out to see who has is there.  He is extremely cute and doesn’t say a word, no barking or panting or whining like some dogs, and he doesn’t jump up on anybody.  He will just come out, see who it is and maybe hang around their feet for a while, especially if the customer bends down to pet him, which almost everyone does, because he is so cute.  As for me, I will go sit down on one of the chairs and he will cover to where my feet are and I bend down to pet him for a long while.  He is so soft and smooth and loves the petting but never makes a noise; he just absorbs the pleasure of being pet.  In times will I have been sitting there for a while, I will stop petting the dog and will watch the Rolex video.  When that happens, the dog then lies down right on top of my shoes as if that setting was as confortable as a doggy bed and goes right to sleep!

 

I can tell you that having a very cute little dog curled up to sleep on your feet is extremely charming.  It is practically a therapy.  There have been a few times when I was disappointed that the repaired watch was fixed so soon and I had to undo the cozy situation of the dog sleeping on my feet. I would gently get up and the dog would wake up, and realizing that I am now going to be walking over to the cash register, he will go back to the repair sanctum, ready to come out again the next time he hears the sound of the door opening.

 

I went there today.  I needed a replacement watch band and while the store owner was looking through the large collection of replacement bands (I asked him for one that was the most similar to my broken one), I kept wondering when the dog would come out. The owner found the right band and I asked him if he would install it for me.  He said, “Sure” and took it back to the workplace to get it installed.  

 

He then came out with it all set and said, “Put it on to see if it fits.”  I put the watch on, everything was perfect.  I pulled out my wallet and I couldn’t help but say, “I miss having the pleasure of your dog come out and greeting me!”  He said, “Ah, yes, well he is sleeping peacefully, he is being Mr. Lazy this morning.”

 

As he was running my credit card, I said, “It is so comfortable to have an animal with you when you work.  There is a bookstore I know in another town where the owner has a cat that has the run of the store and her customers love petting the cat when they come to buy books.

 

He said, “Everybody loved coming in here and enjoyed seeing my dog…except the mailman.  He told me that he didn’t like dogs.  The next thing I knew, without any warning, he stopped delivering my mail.  I just wasn’t getting any for several days, so finally I called the post office and they told me that due to regulation bla bla bla, they don’t have to deliver mail if there is something dangerous there.”

 

I said, “Dangerous? Dogs and mailmen, classic enemies…but your dog was no trouble at all!  Very sweet and quiet!”

 

“I know it,” the owner said. “Everybody loved seeing my dog. But now I had to fill out an affidavit swearing that I would not allow the dog out where it would be a danger to the mail carrier, or else they would refuse to deliver my mail.”

 

I was flabbergasted at the unreasonableness of it…he didn’t have a Pit Bull or a Rottweiler or a pair of Dobermen Pincers, his dog was no more dangerous than a stuffed teddy bear.

 

I said, “These days it is the lowest people taking advantage of some miniscule power that they can grab to hurt other people.”

 

As I said this, he nodded and looked at me very pointedly.   He said, “Speak of the devil…”  At first I didn’t get what he was doing, but he nodded his head toward the door and once again said, “Speak of the devil.”  I looked and saw a mailman coming in with some mail for the owner. Apparently THE mailman.  As the mailman handed him some mail, the owner’s eyes were boring through me as if he wanted to pin shut anything that might come out of my mouth.  I wasn’t about to say anything to the mailman, I only smiled at him and said to the owner, “Thank you so much, this watch band fits perfectly!”  Then I turned and as I went out the door, I said, “You always have the things I need, I will see you next time.”  

 

I got in my car and the mailman got into his vehicle and he was out of the parking lot before I was.  No, I am not the type of person who would have put my two scents into the issue.  I do know some who would, though.  They would berate the mailman for his lack of sensitivity etc., making things worse. 

 

I am glad that the owner at least got to still have his dog back there where he worked.  But we all were harmed somewhat by this.   Yet another sweet pleasure was taken away from us due to the meanness of people who insist they are victims, but really are so weak that the drug they are on is taking away the pleasures of other people.   

DUMPSTER DIVER

One of my favorite places to be in my apartment is out on my balcony. Hot, cold, sunny, rainy (it has a roof so I don’t get wet), it is always a pleasure to relax out there, read out there, and even eat out there.  I have a three-seat iron café’ table for that purpose.  Also a chaise lounge and a swivel chair.  Mostly I am on the chaise lounge, but when the sun starts to go down through the tall thick trees that on the dividing line between this apartment complex and the condominiums next door, I sit in the swivel chair so the sun doesn’t shine in my eyes until sunset.  I had installed party lights around the ceiling overhead, enough that I can read out there after dark.

 

During the coved lockdowns (and still now), I spent a lot more time out there on the balcony than I had done ever before.  I am on the third floor of this building, which is the highest, but it is actually four floors above to the ground, because that is where the ramp goes down into the underground parking lot.  Next to the down-ramp is an up-ramp going to the upper parking lot.  This creates a somewhat steep slope down that ramp, and then a sharp left turn further down the down ramp into the underground parking lot.

 

This is a relentless magnet for the numerous children who live in this complex.  When three o’clock would arrive, every Zoom taught home-schooled child would burst out of their condo and grab their skateboard, scooter, bicycle, roller skates, or any other thing that rolled and take the thrill ride down from the upper parking lot and then maneuver a total reversal in direction into the lower parking lot, whooping and hollering the whole way down.  Each child demonstrated great skill.  I never saw any one fall off or have an accident; they were like circus performers.  All ages playing together and even little kids got in on the action, their bigger brothers or sisters would take them down with them if there was any way to have them stand on top of their sibling’s feet or share a space that could be held onto.  Laughing and screaming in delight all the way up to dinner time.

 

Of course doing all that on the parking garage ramps was strictly against the complex rules, and notices to that effect would be periodically taped onto our apartment doors.  But what was going to stop it?  These garage ramps were in a different area of the complex’s office, so rarely did anybody in authority come around to this area of the large grounds of the complex.

 

You don’t think I would tell on them, would you?  First of all, I saw that they were really in very little danger.  They certainly had the skills to do what they were doing. Also, they always sounded an alert when a car was coming in or going out.  Those who saw when a car was on the move would shout out “CAR!”, which would echo loudly in the underground garage, and every child would scoot over to whatever wall was nearest.

 

And something about what they were doing reminded me of when I was in second grade in school when we lived in Boston.  It was winter, which meant that we ice skated on a nearby frozen pond and sled down a deep snow packed hill right under the school Principal’s office window.   My parents had given we a flying saucer to sled on, which was more fun in that it flew faster and spun around wildly as I sped down the long hill.  As for the Principal there of the Baker School, near the end of the school day, he would announce over the classroom’s PA system, “Boys and girls, I looked out my window and saw on the hill there is a FRESH NEW DEEP LAYER OF SNOW all ready for you to come over and do some sledding!  If you don’t have a sled, you can check one out from the P.E. department.”

 

I would have thought he would forbid sliding down the hill below his window, but instead, he facilitated it!  Maybe something in that nice man’s appreciation of children having run had rubbed off onto me for when I grew up!

 

Also, I already know from having worked in an elementary school that you can tell kids to not do something all you want, but you will NEVER stop it.  It’s like “running”.  That’s one of the most heard sounds on a school ground…teachers yelling at some kid, “No running”!  Youknow what happens…the kid stops, and then a minute later the teacher turns her head away and the kid is running again.

 

I was amused one day (back in those days) when a little boy asked me why “I let kids run.”  I said, “Because running is your normal means of locomotion.  Kids run, that is a fact.  Why should we stop it?  It’s not hurting anybody.  And anyway, if I did stop you, you would only stop for a minute and then the moment I looked away, you would carry on running again.  Adults can’t really run any more, so I think we are jealous of you guys. If we would run like you do, we would…but we can’t, so some envious people what to block you from doing it, too.”

 

Ha ha!  He gave me that “you are the only adult here who will give an honest answer” look.  I love that.

 

But this piece isn’t about what a “bad” child monitor I am, but about some other doings on the parking drive that is right there at my balcony.

 

I had begun to notice a truck periodically up against the wall in the driveway. It is was not really meant to be a place to park, but there was room enough to do so without blocking anybody driving in or out.  It was a rather nice truck and the bed of it was packed solid with stuff, some of it tools and some of it junk.  To me it looked like a combination worker’s truck and Dust Bowl flivver, piled high by a conglomeration of various disconnected items. I assumed that the truck’s owner might be some kind of worker on the complex.  We always had those, putting in new air conditioners or painting a building or trimming trees or putting in a beautiful garden, or, most frequently, a plumber, (which meant that the water would be shut off for a period time.)

 

But all those trucks had company names painted on the cab doors. This truck had no identification like that.  And he was here rather often, even more than the plumbing company.  So he was a mystery to me.  And the stuff that was in the bed of his truck didn’t give me a clue, either.  One of the items was a bicycle along with a spare tire.  I never saw a workman carrying a bicycle in their track.  This made me think that that the owner actually LIVED in this truck, and indeed, it was one of those that had four doors with a seat behind the front seat.  It was a nice truck, not some piece of jumk, so despite the aura of him living in it, it didn’t seem that a person having a truck quite that nice would need to live in it.

 

Well, with me using the balcony so much more than before, I began to see his truck a lot more…although so far nothing had shed any light on what he was doing.  I would see him come in the front gate, always following somebody who could get in via their clicker that he obviously did not have.  He would wait patiently until somebody would come in or out so that he could come in.  

 

He would park, take a swig of water from a large container in the bed of the truck, and then take down a child’s wagon, a stool, and a hoe, and put the stool and the hoe on the wagon, and then go off the property back onto the sidewalk and talk on down the street pulling his wagon!  What?  He parks here on our driveway, and the walks on down the treet to somewhere else?  What on earth does is he doing?

 

Week after week, I would see his truck carefully parked in or driveway, and most of the time he would have already gone on down the sidewalk to somewhere else.  There were some times when I went out onto the balcony around lunch time and he would have come back and was eating his lunch, sitting in the passenger side of his truck.  Other times, I would catch him arrive and watch him drink his water and then load the stool and the hoe into the wagon and walk on down the sidewalk.

 

Finally, one day, I went out to our row of five garbage dumpsters at the far end of the upper parking lot to empty my kitchen garbage can.  I saw this tall man standing on a stool against one of the dumpsters, the upper half of his skinny body deep down inside the dumpster, his skinny body bending almost in two.  I didn’t want to startle this person, so I said “Hello, how are you doing today?”  The person stood back upright to look at me and he had a hoe in his hand.  I saw it was the man with the truck!

 

He answered my question, “Well I’ve been better, but yesterday I was late and forget to pack my stool.  I had to climb up so that I rested my belly on the edge of the dumpster and as I struggled to get a bottle that was low down, I slid face right down into the dumpster!”

 

“Oh wow, were you hurt?” I said.

 

“Ah yeah,” he said, “I badly scraped by stomach on the lip of the metal dumpster edge and it really dug into me, hurt a whole lot.”

 

I said, “That was terrible, is it still hurting?”

 

“Well, not so ’s I would stop working, but it does slow me down some. I won’t make that mistake again, forgetting my stool!”

 

I said, “Well, you are very smart to have that stool, and that hoe, as well! You’re really quite organized!”

 

“Gotta have that to reach the bottles on the bottom!” he said with a little laugh.  

 

“You’ve got it all down,” I said,

 

“Yea, when I don’t fall in,” he said.  And then we both laughed.

 

I went over to the far left dumpster, tossed in my garbage, and as I started to walk away, I said, “I hope you get well soon” and he said, “Hope, so, hope so.”

 

So now I knew what he was doing.  And he must be doing this in all of the other complexes down the street. He would park here, and then go out down the sidewalk with his wagon and tools to the other complexes.  I admired his organization.

 

A month ago, our complex got a new assistant manager and I was on my balcony and the Dumpster Diver was having his lunch in his truck, parked at his usual spot on our driveway.  She was telling him that he could NOT park here, he had to park out on the street only. She was adamant, “It is ok to scavenge things out of the dumpsters, but in no way do you have permission to park your truck in here.”

 

It was as if the was thinking that the homeless were making inroads into our complex, ready to sleep on the lawn and bathe in the swimming pool. Well, I wouldn’t like that to happen either, and I do see her point.  However, the truth was that he was really a problem.

 

Sometimes he actually does park his truck out on the street, but street parking here is very hard to find.  So you know where he parks when there is no available spot on the street. This is his livelihood, after all. He just parks here like he always has. He is like the children playing on that exact same strip of concrete.  You can’t really stop it, and there is no reason to.

 

Yesterday early in the morning, I went out on my balcony to drink a cup of coffee.  I heard in the distance the sound of glass bottles clinking.  I realized it was him, but he wasn’t down by our garbage containers. Listening carefully, I could hear that it was coming from way down the end of the driveway of the condos next door to us.  They must have their line of garbage containers lined up down there more or less like where we have ours.

 

Later in the day, I went grocery shopping and when I came back home, the Dumpster Diver’s truck was this time parked on the street and he himself was standing on his stool and pulling up glass bottles with his body half bent over the metal edge of the dumpster, this time out on the sidewalk.  The line of five dumpsters had already been taken out one by one to the street by the garbage collector who drives the little vehicle that is a “truck” in the front half and a “fork lift” in the back half. This driver backs his forklift into a section of the dumpster that catches ahold onto the fork.  The diver lifts the rear up a bit and is then able to take that dumpster out to the street, where it will have its contents dumped into the top of the huge dump truck when it comes.  It’s a pretty fascinating operation (and very, very noisy!).

 

I went out to the sidewalk and said “hi” to the Dumpster Diver and asked him if he was now totally healed from his previous mishap.  He said, “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, although sometimes at night I feel sick in my stomach and even have to go to the bathroom to vomit.  But I am good, thank for asking about me.”  I said, “You bet, I hope that vomiting goes away, that sounds miserable.”

 

I was thinking how I admired him choosing to buckle down and do something like this instead of begging or in some other way to obtain money.  What he does is an ecological service on top of taking care of himself the best he can.

 

Just then, the driver of the little forklift truck came back.  It must be time for the big dump truck to come.  I hoped that Dumpster Diver had gotten all he wanted from the five bins.

 

The driver of the forklift truck very matter of actually handed the Dumpster Diver two large plastic bags filled with glass bottles.  As if it were a normal routine, which I am thinking it was, the Dumpster Diver immediately took the bags and put them into the back seat area of his truck. Somebody at another complex must have been saving these for Dumpster Diver, and the forklift truck driver had been a courier between the one saving the glass and Dumpster Diver.  This demonstrated a legitimacy in the position of the Dumpster Diver.  The landfill did not want the glass, which either would not be recycled or someone had to separate it from everything else. Dumpster Diver did want it because he could sell it, and where he sold it would transfer it all to a recycler.

 

Dumpster Diver was not, let us say, some kind of outcast dealing in garbage, down on his luck, but a valid participant in the whole process.  So you rock, Dumpster Driver!