Rising at 4:30 a.m. to get the plane back to Boston was not difficult. I went to bed at eight after reading Les Mis for half an hour and told myself it really was 11 p.m., as I had had less than 36 hours to adjust to the time difference between Massachusetts and California. And as I closed my eyes and let myself drift, I told myself, I am really getting up at 7:30 tomorrow morning, almost like sleeping in, if you will.
I did wake up around 2 a.m. for a brief encounter with porcelain, routine, and then sleep was on and off until the alarm on my watch sounded.
A short Lenten devotional online. Thank God for bytes and bits. I packed my suitcase with Van Morrison and then a jazz band playing on Cinnamon Rainbows website. “Sold me out for a few shekels, then divided up my robes…they sold me out…” Ah, the essence of true Christian music. Music with soul, that has integrity and can be called art.
Downstairs, I asked a white guy at the front desk if there was a breakfast place open at that hour. It was about 5:15; my flight was at 7:30. He suggested a Denny’s in the direction of Anaheim; I told him I was flying out of Long Beach and was taking the 22 to the 405. (Why do they put the definite article in front of highways only in California? Others have wondered this; surely there is an answer. Wikipedia, the authoritative and unauthoritative source of most knowledge, doesn’t even have a reply other than to note its idiomatic usage.) He said, Oh, there’s a Denny’s down on the left before you hit the 22. On Harbor Boulevard. But not the Harbor Boulevard.
I walked to my car in yet more rain. This was two days in a row of precipitation, and the DJs on Go-Country 105 said that this constituted a “measurable rain event” for southern California. I love euphemisms and technical language; they make the mundane arcane. The DJs even laughed at the phrase. They had been playing appropriate “weather songs” like Garth Brooks’s “And the Thunder Rolls,” and Eddie Rabbit’s “I Love a Rainy Night.” They avoided George Strait’s “Clear Blue Skies.”
Denny’s would not be in my short list of restaurants were I to have more of a choice. In fact, I barely consider it a restaurant, because their food is barely considered food. It is to breakfast what a McDonald’s Big Mac is to dinner. Maybe one step up. Though arguable. I saw the sign and pulled across Harbor and around back of the restaurant into the lot. I was only the second car. Still raining, kinda hard in fact, so I dashed in after making sure the rental car’s headlights went off automatically after I locked the vehicle.
I was the only customer, and a man whose skin was deep brown-grey greeted me. For some stupid reason, I offered to sit at the counter (which had three spots), to save a table for someone else. There was no one else, nor would there be. It was freakin’ 5:20 in the morning. Sometimes my politeness and deference borders on the bizarrely oblivious. He sat me at a four-top. He looked Indian or Pakistani, black-grey hair combed back carefully over his scalp. Perhaps in reality he was highly educated and back home had been a math teacher or a civil engineer or prime minister. Here, he worked at Denny’s at 5:20 in the morning. I asked for coffee and orange juice. I read the frilly paper placemat which touted how Denny’s had scoured Latin America – “one of the premier locations for coffee beans: Columbia, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala” – for the best cup of coffee, so that “my second cup would taste as good as my first cup.” After I tasted my first cup, I felt they had some catching up to do for the second cup. I ordered country fried steak, with grits, scrambled eggs and wheat toast.
Two men came in, looking awfully transient-like. One used a crutch/cane and had a fisherman’s cap on. The other had on a soaked, blue football jersey with the name “Manning” in white block letters wearing off the shoulders. It hung on him like on a bent metal hanger. This man had two beaten plastic hospital bracelets on his right wrist. Had he both from one visit? Had he been out long from a first visit before landing back in for a second time? I knew his kind. Psych wards were filled with his type. I felt sorry for him. He had a week’s facial growth and blue eyes that pierced but did not focus.
My food came and I started to devour it, knowing I had a good 25-minute drive to the airport and had to gas up before I returned the car to Enterprise. There was a drop box for the key, and I could be on my way. Long Beach airport is small enough that I knew I wouldn’t have a long security line.
As I ate, I spotted to the left a large blonde woman with enormous breasts going behind the counter. She wore a red sweater, and her hair was dyed. She had a deep voice as if she really were a man – a transvestite or a transgender on a financial installment plan with a few months left to go. I could only see part of her profile. She addressed the prime minister and laughed, saying she had been a server there once.
They laughed and chatted, as Manning stared at the ceiling at the other end of the room and bit his fingernails, his bracelets frayed as though he had been discharged some time ago.
# # #
For more stories like the one above, remember to get on the mailing list for a pre-publication offer of Lullabye: Memories, Madness and Midnight Snacks, due out in Spring 2007. Linda, a business owner in New York, wrote after reading it, “I just blew off three hours of work to read every single one of your essays. Many of them made me laugh, some of them made me cry...and I recognized slices of my own life in your writing as I'm sure others will too.”
Send your email address to lullaby.book@gmail.com, and thanks for reading.
I did wake up around 2 a.m. for a brief encounter with porcelain, routine, and then sleep was on and off until the alarm on my watch sounded.
A short Lenten devotional online. Thank God for bytes and bits. I packed my suitcase with Van Morrison and then a jazz band playing on Cinnamon Rainbows website. “Sold me out for a few shekels, then divided up my robes…they sold me out…” Ah, the essence of true Christian music. Music with soul, that has integrity and can be called art.
Downstairs, I asked a white guy at the front desk if there was a breakfast place open at that hour. It was about 5:15; my flight was at 7:30. He suggested a Denny’s in the direction of Anaheim; I told him I was flying out of Long Beach and was taking the 22 to the 405. (Why do they put the definite article in front of highways only in California? Others have wondered this; surely there is an answer. Wikipedia, the authoritative and unauthoritative source of most knowledge, doesn’t even have a reply other than to note its idiomatic usage.) He said, Oh, there’s a Denny’s down on the left before you hit the 22. On Harbor Boulevard. But not the Harbor Boulevard.
I walked to my car in yet more rain. This was two days in a row of precipitation, and the DJs on Go-Country 105 said that this constituted a “measurable rain event” for southern California. I love euphemisms and technical language; they make the mundane arcane. The DJs even laughed at the phrase. They had been playing appropriate “weather songs” like Garth Brooks’s “And the Thunder Rolls,” and Eddie Rabbit’s “I Love a Rainy Night.” They avoided George Strait’s “Clear Blue Skies.”
Denny’s would not be in my short list of restaurants were I to have more of a choice. In fact, I barely consider it a restaurant, because their food is barely considered food. It is to breakfast what a McDonald’s Big Mac is to dinner. Maybe one step up. Though arguable. I saw the sign and pulled across Harbor and around back of the restaurant into the lot. I was only the second car. Still raining, kinda hard in fact, so I dashed in after making sure the rental car’s headlights went off automatically after I locked the vehicle.
I was the only customer, and a man whose skin was deep brown-grey greeted me. For some stupid reason, I offered to sit at the counter (which had three spots), to save a table for someone else. There was no one else, nor would there be. It was freakin’ 5:20 in the morning. Sometimes my politeness and deference borders on the bizarrely oblivious. He sat me at a four-top. He looked Indian or Pakistani, black-grey hair combed back carefully over his scalp. Perhaps in reality he was highly educated and back home had been a math teacher or a civil engineer or prime minister. Here, he worked at Denny’s at 5:20 in the morning. I asked for coffee and orange juice. I read the frilly paper placemat which touted how Denny’s had scoured Latin America – “one of the premier locations for coffee beans: Columbia, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala” – for the best cup of coffee, so that “my second cup would taste as good as my first cup.” After I tasted my first cup, I felt they had some catching up to do for the second cup. I ordered country fried steak, with grits, scrambled eggs and wheat toast.
Two men came in, looking awfully transient-like. One used a crutch/cane and had a fisherman’s cap on. The other had on a soaked, blue football jersey with the name “Manning” in white block letters wearing off the shoulders. It hung on him like on a bent metal hanger. This man had two beaten plastic hospital bracelets on his right wrist. Had he both from one visit? Had he been out long from a first visit before landing back in for a second time? I knew his kind. Psych wards were filled with his type. I felt sorry for him. He had a week’s facial growth and blue eyes that pierced but did not focus.
My food came and I started to devour it, knowing I had a good 25-minute drive to the airport and had to gas up before I returned the car to Enterprise. There was a drop box for the key, and I could be on my way. Long Beach airport is small enough that I knew I wouldn’t have a long security line.
As I ate, I spotted to the left a large blonde woman with enormous breasts going behind the counter. She wore a red sweater, and her hair was dyed. She had a deep voice as if she really were a man – a transvestite or a transgender on a financial installment plan with a few months left to go. I could only see part of her profile. She addressed the prime minister and laughed, saying she had been a server there once.
They laughed and chatted, as Manning stared at the ceiling at the other end of the room and bit his fingernails, his bracelets frayed as though he had been discharged some time ago.
# # #
For more stories like the one above, remember to get on the mailing list for a pre-publication offer of Lullabye: Memories, Madness and Midnight Snacks, due out in Spring 2007. Linda, a business owner in New York, wrote after reading it, “I just blew off three hours of work to read every single one of your essays. Many of them made me laugh, some of them made me cry...and I recognized slices of my own life in your writing as I'm sure others will too.”
Send your email address to lullaby.book@gmail.com, and thanks for reading.
1 comment:
Brother..
If I ever take the time to REALLY observe - and write - it will hopefully approach your rich level of observation, detail and insight into the everday...Love this....let's talk soon.
Rodent
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