"Estate Sale", directed by David Lynch

I've gotten into going to estate sales.

Each weekend Jason and I check the paper and look for interesting, local sales and make a morning of it. We find excitement and wonder in rummaging through the belongings of the recently departed, and there's typically older living folks around to occupy Fox, my three year old son.

Last month on one such morning, Fox, Jason and I set out with a list of addresses of estate sales. We woke up early and wanted to get out as soon as we could because it had snowed a few inches and driving in the snow is so fun, but so rare.

The first sale was really crummy, and the next two didn't seem to be happening due to the snow. The last sale was in an area neither of us were very familiar with. I was navigating with the map, and when we arrived at the address it was a muddy, gravel drive ascending a small hill, topped with a broad, aging barn, surrounded by machinery, ladders and golf cart parts.

We figured it was the right place, though there were no other vehicles in the driveway, and the three of us approached the windowless door.

In an attempt to prevent a gust of cold air, we rushed in through the cracked door and pulled it shut in a single, fluid motion. A moment passed as our eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, and we realized that we were in a small corridor, not a vacuous expanse as we had all silently imagined.

The sound of muffled conversation and a fading, clinking noise was coming from the dark corner. Before us was a small, folding table covered with cups and statuettes with price tags attached. An old barrel-turned-wood stove blazed just inches away from the backs of our legs, so Fox naturally gravitated towards it. Jason and I exchanged looks of doubt, and we assessed the items on the table, as there were no other tables or display areas in sight. The objects were bizarre and obtusely overpriced; a leather bottle for eighty five bucks, two elephant bookends for forty five dollars each. Gourd drinking vessels painted with mineral paints, hand blown glass bottles shaped like a rainbow.... It was more like an exhibit of worldly artifacts than a Knoxville estate sale.

Suddenly, a woman with thin, white hair pulled onto the top of her head was upon us, and she greeted us in a mechanically high-pitched German accent.

"Good day to you, and this small boy who loves the fire" she said as she gestured towards Fox, quickly repositioning her hand behind the small of her back.

We said hello and introduced ourselves, then commended her table of antiques for their authenticity and quality. She willed her face to rearrange itself into a smile formation, then asked "What is it that interests you"?

Jason and I looked at each other blankly, and he blindly picked up something from the table and began asking questions about it's origins. I pretended to be concerned with Fox's proximity to the stove, and pardoned myself from the sales pitch.

As I knelt down to Fox's level I realized that there were two middle aged men sitting behind a plywood table, drinking whiskey. I smiled up at the men and asked how they were doing, Fox fully hypnotized by the dancing flames in the stove. The men smiled and asked about the roads, and I told them that they were fine and that no one much was out.

I heard the old German lady describing the Italian leather bottle to Jason, expressing her belief in it's superiority to any other vessel due to it's durability, unbreakability, and that it "WILL not leak, not EVER"

Awkwardly, I praised the strange stove's great dimensions, complaining about my own stove's size and it's need for short, little stumps of wood to feed it, while this stove could accommodate huge log sections.

As if an animation button was pressed, the younger man rose and joined Fox and I on the small rug in front of the stove and began describing how he constructed the stove from the interior of an old water heater. He showed us the door mechanism, and the tubes and dampers he inserted into the base of the barrel for air. The man was absolutely thrilled to be discussing the stove, so we continued on topic for what seemed like forever.

Jason and the old woman had made their way through all of the items on the table and had began chatting with the other drinking man, who abruptly disappeared through a back door, then reappeared carrying a small, wooden truck. The man presented it to Fox who was quickly tiring of the fire, and I took a moment to explain to Fox that he wasn't to burn the truck, no matter what.

The man smiled and pointed towards the truck with his sweating, amber-toned drink and said "Old Ricky Melton's daddy used to make them trucks. He give me two or three an they jus been out here since".

His accent was so East Tennessee that I was almost pulled from the strange, German spell cast by the woman. The woman carefully made her way over to the man, stepping gingerly around Fox and I, and putting her arm around him murmured sternly into his ear, "Did you give that truck to the boy? That your friend has made?"

The man drunkenly shrugged and turned his face away from the woman. She continued pressing the question until it became louder and unavoidable to the rest of us.

Feeling an uncomfortable escalation in emotion, I nervously blurted, "Hey! We'll leave the truck here when we leave! We don't want to take it from you"

The two pairs of eyes seemed to snap up at me at the same moment, and the man said, "waail. I'll take five dollar for it", as if he were doing me a great favor.

There was no part of me that wanted to buy the truck. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but I knew that we would bring it home, then Fox would put it with the other million trucks he had and it would soon be forgotten.

"No, I couldn't! It's an heirloom from a family friend! I couldn't take it" I attempted.

"Five dollar's fine" He said without any trace of a smile.

I knew for a fact that we didn't have any money. Typically when you go to an estate sale it is held by an estate-handling company, and they are A-OK with accepting checks. We just don't take cash around much.

The more time elapsed the more I wanted to grab Fox and bolt, leaving the truck on the rug in front of the stove, but Jason began fishing around in his pocket. At that exact moment the barn door swung open and three college students sauntered in carrying suspicious-looking, "go vols orange" insulated cups.

The younger man stood up and welcomed the trio in, and one of the college kids asked about the golf carts he saw out front. Jovially, the man directed the student through the back door and I caught a glimpse of a john boat on a trailer, and another intact golf cart. The drunk man engaged the other two students, one male, one female about the game and who was winning.

I wanted to leave that place so badly. Jason knew it and he bent down to parley with Fox and I. He held out his hand showcasing three one dollar bills, three quarters, two dimes and four nickles. Hmmmmm. Will this be seen as an affront? I wondered. Will this be the gesture that turns this intoxicated man into a kidnapping, killing machine?

Jason sensed my concern, and as he squatted in the cramped area the seam in the seat of his pants tore. Loudly. Alarmed, I looked at him, then casually reclined myself to access the damage, then narrowly avoided a panic attack by visualizing myself back in my car, driving away, eating chocolate.

The two men burst forth through the back door, and Fox got a better look at the boat, then started harping about wanting to go look at it. Hoping for a distracted exit, I said no, but the younger man heard him and said "Aww! He can go take a look at that boat! Come on!" He reached over to direct Fox towards the door and I glanced at Jason, who simultaneously rose and followed, discreetly pulling his sweatshirt over the seat of his pants.

The college threesome were laughing riotously as they left the building, expressing thanks about something unknown.

Fox, Jason and the younger man reemerged from the back room where Fox was running and squealing, clearly over the scene and ready to move on. Jason had a few bills in his hand and explained our lack of funding to the man. The younger man smiled and looked at the other man and the old woman and said "He wants that wooden truck but all he's got is four dollars an fifteen cents"

The drunker man looked at the old woman with a thoughtful look, and she nodded with closed eyes and her lips pressed firmly together. Neither seemed pleased with the deal.

We gave them the wad of money, Fox grabbed the truck, and we got the hell out of that place.

Stupid ass commercials

I hate people in jewelry commercials.

The wives, husbands, even the sleeping children; why don't they all just shut the hell up and rethink their cultivated existences. Get over yourselves! Then go to hell!

The manipulative tone of expectation and praise for choosing a particular store or stone is offensive. The woman's reaction is nothing short of Pavlovian in these scenes. Teary eyed and sentimental, she seems to have reached some sort of goal she set long ago. Life is finally paying off for her, and she repays her husband's "expression of love" with physical affection. You know, like a prostitute.

The notion of a husband giving his wife an expensive piece of jewelry is equivalent to a bribe. Through out the year, most commercials depicting husbands and wives illustrate an intellectually imbalanced relationship, strained by children, responsibility, incompetence, irrational spending or obsessions with sports or technology; never expressions of true compatibility! Are there commercials featuring men and women that doesn't exploit ideas of their personal conflict and miseries? Isn't that the precedent set in these "types" of advertisements? Then WHY during the Christmas season are things so great between husbands and wives? All of the crap of the year seems to fade along with the smelly socks, the chainsaw snore, the "know it all" looks of disapproval; are consumers supposed to just forget all that stuff? All those grilling accidents? Those credit card shopping sprees and broken 52 inch plasma screen TVs cause you did it wrong? Forgetting to pick up the kids? That 30 pounds gained? That nagging depression? That humiliating erectile dysfunction?

Now that it's Christmas we are supposed to believe that we are happy after all, deserving of expensive trinkets made of minerals extracted from illegitimate governments, mined by displaced children. We are suddenly happy with our mates during this season, compelled to reward them with these tokens, knowing that if we continue faking the smile, we will either get one or get some. That's what love is, right?

I really, really hate those bastardly commercials. And almost all others, too. The day that I see myself in one of those "wife" characters is the day I sign up for the Deepak Chopra workshop tour and throw the TV in the sinkhole. I don't want to do that because I really like the new Fox show, Fringe, but it would be worth it.

Leesearch

Ever since we told Lee that I was expecting he has sorta disappeared. I still saw him around, but he was definitely keeping a distance from me and Fox during the day. Peace settled into my yard, and I relished my newfound ability to exit my home without facing an emotionally charged monologue about flying helicopters in Naam. He did flag me down one day as I was pulling out of the driveway; he handed me a change purse full of pennies and asked if I would go to the tobacco shop to get him a pack of Red Cap tobacco. I asked "Red Hat"?, and he turned and yelled;

"CAP, RED CAP, not hat, CAP"

as he pantomimed putting on and removing a hat. Other than that one occasion I hadn't encountered him on a conversational level in weeks. This all ended yesterday.

Fox and I were outside playing in the yard when I noticed smoke billowing into the tree tops around me. Since Fox has really made progress with mastering a bic lighter, and since the smoke was so near I figured Fox was responsible for the fire. I hopped up and assumed my "angry face", heading towards where Fox was huddled, and realized that he hadn't started a fire. I peeked over the shrub and saw Lee fanning a massive pile of leafy brush with a piece of poster board. It was popping and snapping, emitting opaque smoke which spanned the entire street, but was concentrated in Lee's immediate vicinity. It looked like he was in music video.

He did the thing where he just starts talking as if you were already engaged in conversation, and I smiled and nodded to keep up. I realized that he was inviting me to his house to see a clock he made out of a sprocket and beer caps. Fox was going nuts trying to get into the fire, so I pulled him away and into Lee's house to see his creation. Basically, Lee had bought a clock, removed the hands and attached them to the center of a bicycle sprocket. Sorta like this:



First he showed me the sprocket clock, then he called attention to the "parts" clock which he had painted hands onto the face frozen at 4:20. He was equally pleased with that clock.

We left his house and Fox and I returned to playing, and Lee to burning green branches.

A few minutes later Lee returned and asked me if Jason had ordered a book for him. I asked him about the book, and he told me it was written by a woman named Moore, and it was about her pictures of mystical orbs. I told him that I would look it up for him.
I was about to use that as an excuse to go inside for a while when he abruptly asked me another research related question.

"Did'jew listen to that Coast to Coast radio show last week? Tha'n bout th' Trixters?"

I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, so he started telling me about it.

"See they had dis guy on ere as uh guest name Chris O'Connor, or Chris O'Neal er somethin, but he got on the air an started a'makin fun uh me! Back in the 80s he was lookin' for all th' Ghost Dancers an Skin Dancers out west and he ask me t'take em, so I told em that I would do th' Ghost Dance an he could see for himself, but all he wanted t'do was all this decibel stuff with recorders an stuff. Ye'know he was like one uh these professor types not wantin' t'do the work jus wantin' tu write some big book! So I told em that I'd take him to meet some shamens and medicine men an he was givin' me a hard time, a callin' me a shafe shifter an some kinda weekend warrior an got mad an so I said "fuck this" so I went t'town tu that Goodwill store an bought $50 worth uh stuff: I got sum deer antlers an clear packin'tape an plastic wrap, so I put flour in th'plastic wrap an put it over my face real tight, an taped them antlers to my head, and got this piece of blue fabric wrapped'round my shoulders. See, I waz tryin' t'camoflage in with th'storm an fog. Then I got up on his roof with a brick on a rope an started walkin 'round the roof lettin' that brick bounce on the wall, then I stuck my head in his window an scared him so bad he come running naked out into the snow. I figgured that'n needed t'be scared."

I was thoroughly confused as to how this had anything to do with the radio show, and I asked;
"So the guest on the show talked about you on air"?

Lee excitedly replied
"Hell yeah he did! He was callin me all sorts uh shit some kind uh 'shafe shiffer' weekend indian! He was pissed off an all I was tryin t'do was help em out! After we wuz there I took em up Arizona where them people were diggen in walls makin houses, called 'cwiff dellers' er sumthin. Back when I wuz workin in commercials an TV an stuff I did all kinds uh shafe-shiptin' an was turnin into animals an doin photoshoots
an all. Hell! You SEEN one of um when I wus turned to a wolf! Remember that magazine ad I showed you? I done that an I done a car commercial as a bear that breaks in th' car an eats th' doughnuts...I don't like doin' it much though.
But I need you t'get on th'internet, look up google, an punch in Coast to Coast, and Trixters, an see if you can't get that episode loaded on a CD for me cuz I need t'listen to it again."

I was itching to go inside, so I acted real urgent-like about it and told him I'd check it out pronto:
The Tricksters - Shows - Coast to Coast AM

Shared via AddThis

I haven't had the time to listen to the stream yet, but I'm really looking forward to
putting the pieces together. I looked up the book he was referring to and this is the author, Rochelle Moore:







I'm not sure what it all means, but Lee is definitely into the mystical realm of existence. If I can pin down which book he is interested in, and it's available on Amazon I will definitely get it.

Lee cracks me up so much! He is always asking me to search for bizarre stuff on the internet for him, and he scours the South Knoxville library's adult non-fiction section, which probably consists of fewer than a few thousand books.

the most unfortunate name

Last weekend my sister-in-law came to visit and brought a big bag of VHS movies for Fox to watch. Included in the sack was Walt Disney's Robin Hood, a film that my brother and I watched millions of times during the 80s. Since Robin Hood is portrayed as a Fox, I assumed my son would love it, but I had no idea that he would want to watch the movie twice a day, starting the moment he awoke.

It has been frustrating, but also fun to relive the humor and music. Tons of details emerge which I didn't notice as a child. For instance: the name of the man responsible for the voice of the Sheriff of Nottingham's name is Pat Buttram. What an unfortunate name. What a shame that my brother and I didn't notice that in the credits, as we weren't big credit readers at that time. Buttram. That's just plain awful.

Zucchini; getting creative with

The month of July brought many wonderful blessings and experiences my way. My son turned three years old on the sixth, my dresses have been selling at a consistent rate for once, and my garden has produced enough food to make a dent in the grocery bill. As we near July's end and I reflect on the past four weeks I wonder; just how much zucchini can one plant produce?

Make no mistake. I LOVE zucchini. But damn! Zucchini has been on my dinner plate at least five times a week this month. Imagining all the stir fried zucchini my family has consumed lately makes me feel vomitous and slippery. Picking the vegetable is all fun and games, then you bring it into the kitchen and see it on the counter with the other zucchini that you picked yesterday.. . It's enough to make you want to dig a hole and bury it from whence it came.

After coming inside this afternoon, this attitude began welling inside of me and I happened to glance at my mounting collection of vegetarian cookbooks. The thought of riffling through each one's index for zucchini recipes intensified the sick feeling, so I just braced myself and started cleaning and trimming the vegetables.

I thought of the experimental zucchini concoctions, both from recipe and free form, that I had tried this season and remembered each one's qualities, both pro and con. There was the old favorite: fried zucchini sticks with horseradish dip; delicious, but hardly a meal. Zucchini fritters; good, but not quite sweet or savory enough to constitute repeating so soon. Beth's amazing Zu-canoes; a killer recipe she found in a Moosewood book that had ten too many ingredients (wheat germ, cottage cheese, cooked brown rice) AND ten too many steps for me to manage. I suppose there's no need to mention the stir fry again. What I truly wanted was spaghetti, but I felt guilty preparing a meal I consider standby when I had twenty pounds of fresh herbs and produce on my counter top, already trimmed. Feeling sorry that I hadn't planted eggplants, an idea struck me. Zucchini Parmesan.

I started by grating half of a mutant sized zucchini (the size of my calf, in length and girth) and combining it with a grated carrot, chopped, fresh basil, rosemary and oregano, and five chopped garlic cloves. Then I added a teaspoon of sea salt and a ton of fresh grated pepper. I let it rest in the wide bowl at an angle, then drained the liquid that gathered in the corner.

At this point I threw in two small eggs, stirred it all up, then added enough white flour to make the remaining liquids into more of a batter.

Before the eggs were added I poured a quarter cup of corn oil into a heavy saute pan and let it get pretty hot while I finished the batter. After stirring in the flour I used a serving spoon to scoop the batter into the hot oil.

I let them cook a while to allow them to get crunchy and done all through, but turned the pan around a few times as my stove top is at a shittious, minute angle which makes everything cook unevenly.

I warmed up some canned tomato sauce and boiled spaghetti while the cakes fried.

As I removed them from the hot oil, the cakes were placed on a cereal box to drain, and I topped each one with a bit of bland cheese. When I arranged the plates I put a scoopy-claw thing of spaghetti noodles, then a cake, then a ladle of sauce, then a ton of parmesan cheese, then crushed red pepper and an oregano flower. From start to finish this took around 40 minutes.

Going heavy on the herbs was definitely key for the zucchini cakes, particularly the rosemary, which I normally refrain from using in excess. I once took rosemary and gouda quiche in to work to share and hardly anyone touched it. Offended, I asked my safety supervisor "what the hell" and he apologetically explained "Well, see, in Mexico that spice... Uhh.....What is it?"

"Rosemary?" I offered

"Yes! Rosemary!" he happily replied, "This is what we bury our dead in. Soooo..."


Say no more.
Since then I have been reluctant of rosemary in culinary usage for fear of an impromptu dining encounter with a Mexican.

This was a great usage of zucchini in an atypical way. Try it!

Ladyface, revealed

For those of you who recall my April 7th blog post Fountains and Fountains, you may remember mention of a certain sexually ambiguous neighbor who was affectionately referred to as Ladyface. More evidence has been unearthed about this swarthy, yet delicate individual.




I apologize in advance for these uncensored images.

Sometime after posting the aforementioned blog, my friend Beth told me that she had seen Ladyface at our neighborhood store, The Handy Dandy. I asked Beth if she got the impression that Ladyface was a man or a woman, and she felt confident that it was a man in women's clothing. Clothing, dangling earrings, and platform sandals, to be exact. Imagining Ladyface in the Handy Dandy all dolled up is enigmatic. This is the kind of store where they butcher and sell their own meat, and where cops hang out. Their top selling beer comes in 40 oz bottles, and most of their customers arrive on foot. The thought of an unabashed transvestite entering the establishment seems ballsey, if not slightly dangerous.


The following day Lee and I were driving to the comic book store so he could get "dis guy tuh buy me one uh dim five dollar foot longs", and on the way we drove past Ladyface's house where the fountain was spewing.
"Do you the man who lives in that house with the fountain?" I asked Lee.

"Hell yeah" Lee said in a low, "no duh" tone. "People says he's some kinda queer er sumthin. I don't give uh damn but whut th hell is he doin with that goddam warshin machine pump on thar? Can you imagine thu warter he's a waistin' jus to run that crap in his front fuckin yard"

Lee's tone and volume increased to a mid-high agitation level, and he elaborated:

"I mean, here's dis grown man spendin all his time'n money on some ugly warter pump with bricks an bullshit all over it; livin in thare with his BIG old momma! That says to me that shit ain't right with em. Them peoples CRAZY"

I was proud that Lee didn't rail the man for dressing like a woman or for his proposed homosexuality. Ladyface had logged at least 25 hours a week on that stupid fountain, and since he continually changed it, it was 25 hours a week from April to September for three consecutive summers. But the bottom like was that Lee was calling another CRAZY.

A few days later Jason and I were driving by and saw Ladyface relaxing around his house. We took these pictures.







I couldn't help but notice the pick in his pocket. I used to carry a pick like that when I got an 80s perm.

My neighborhood is the best. When a man feels this confident and natural while cross dressing, everyone else should just follow suit. No pun intended.

Lee made me a meatloaf

Yesterday while Fox and I were working in the yard Lee popped his head out of his front door and unintelligibly yelled something about meat. His tone was urgent and as he emerged holding an oven mitt in one hand and an old, wadded up t-shirt in the other, I figured he was cooking. I asked what he needed, and with an impatient gesture complete with rolling eyes, he returned into his home without a verbal reply. I continued weeding around my tomatoes while Fox was busy in the sand box, and after a few minutes Lee reappeared at his door and started my way.

"I've got'chall uh meatloaf I made; jus tookit out uh thu oven."

Without having fully comprehended what he had said, I said "Yeah. Ok", like it was the most natural exchange that had ever occurred, ever in all time.

"What I did is chop up onions, maters, sweet peppers, sum carrots n beans(?), broccoli (??) then mixed it up real good with thu meat in my bean pot, then poured pizza sauce on top of it'n baked it 'bout 40 minutes. I made two of um; a big un an a small un"

Still unclear of what was going on, I said "Mmmm. That sounds weird".

He said that it was cooled off enough to bring it over, and he turned back towards his house. A couple of steps away he turned back and yelled (as if he were all the way back at his house, and there was a wind storm or a thunder storm like that scene from Back to the Future when Marty was trying to tell Doc about his future murder) "If I bring yall one of um will you cut me off enough for a sandwich?"

I nodded and watched him disappear, then became worried when I saw him returning with his pan and a hand full of sliced white bread.

"Go in'ere an git a knife!" Lee demanded.

Fox was interested in the pan and started asking Lee for "meat please"

I handed the knife to Lee, but he just shoved the pan of loaf towards me and acted like the knife was a live snake. I sliced the loaf with Lee's explicit direction, and realized that this was unlike the dish that mamma used to make. First of all the vegetables were in huge chunks. It looked like some concoction to be stuffed into something else. It didn't slice at all, but crumbled back into it's individual ingredients, leaving the appearance of a missing main dish. The "loaf" was surrounded by a lava lamp style mix of pizza sauce and grease in the bottom of a warped, Teflon frying pan sans handle.



I arranged the heel on Lee's slice of bread which he immediately topped with another slice, then wadded with such force that when he opened his hand it looked like a hot pocket. He handed me a slice of bread between his fingers as if it were the ace of spades, and commanded me to "make 'at boy uh sammich"

Fox had been caught earlier playing with a bag containing a quarter loaf of bread. He had mangled the bread, leaving it unusable for whole sandwiches, but decent for child-size benders. I brought the bag outside to where we were pick-nicking. I used Lee's bread for myself and made Fox a sandwich from his play time bread.

Like all of Lee's creations, the meatloaf was delicious. We sat in my driveway and ate . I noticed that when Lee eats he makes pained, grunting noises much like a person having a nightmare. After accidentally staring at him for too long, Lee glanced over at me and declared "it's the broccoli that makes it"