fountains and fountains

In the land of yard art, yard sales and the torch of independent spirit nothing seems to surprise me much. Everyone in my neighborhood has something extraneous in their yard, be it a makeshift water fountain, multi colored bottles poised on tree limbs, non-functional vehicles, or "sculptures" consisting of household refuse. The degree of the typical Tennessean's "mark" on their yards is exclusive to this place and time.
Since moving to my neighborhood in spring of 2006 I've kept an extensive mental journal detailing the most interesting yards in the area. Today I would like to investigate the two most notable water features.
I noticed the first case over a year ago when there was a warm spell in early March. There was a guy out in his yard lugging bricks to a section of his yard that bordered the busy, semi-retail/commercial street. He was thin and wiry with skin the color of a hot dog despite the season. His hair was long and stringy kinda like a metal front man's, and he was wearing women's, boot cut jeans. I saw him as I drove down the street going 35 mph and had just enough time to remark on the mysterious project he was hard at work on, and the extremely obese woman sitting on the front porch of his house.
The next day I took Fox to the park in his stroller. While he played I could hear someone tink, tink, tinking away at a masonry substrate, and the faint sound of rock music. Fox was getting sleepy and began to whine about chocolate milk, so I decided to treat him to a Mayfield Chug at the Handy Dandy Market. We strolled in and got the milk and Fox settled into the stroller with his treat. As we exited the store, I remembered the guy with the bricks and decided to walk another block so I could pass his yard. I slowed my pace to a hobble which would both make me look more authentically SoKnox (as most pedestrians hobble), and allow me a longer view of the yard without revealing myself as a Looky-loo.
The guy was out with his brick pile and a hammer and chisel removing cement from the bricks with meticulous care. His aviator glasses were dark and mirrored so I wasn't able to tell if he saw me coming; just to be safe I gave him a nod. He paused for a moment, then assuming he had just imagined my signal, looked back at the lumpy brick in his hand. He had started stacking the cleaned bricks in a rectangular column which was roughly two feet high. There were lots of PVC pipes and connectors laying around, and a large, blue tarp anchored by two orange traffic cones. His house looked like it was about 600 square feet, which made me understand why he wanted to maximize his yard by flexing his home-making muscles in the out of doors, and there was no sign of the big woman.
The entire scene was effectively burned into my mind-journal, and I started imagining what he was working on.
The next day Fox and I didn't go anywhere, and that night our friend and neighbor, Dan came over for a visit. "Have you seen that guy on South Haven?!" was the first thing to come out of his mouth!
Relieved that I wasn't becoming a socially deprived stalker, I excitedly compared notes with him and we shared our theories regarding the form and function of the dude's project. We were equally tantalized by this mystery, again, much to my relief.
Dan's wife Adrienne and I called or emailed each other daily with progress reports or interesting sightings at the man's home, and we finally realized what he was creating; a water feature.
He had lined the interior walls of the rectangular column with the tarp, and used extra bricks to weigh it down on the top rim. A water hose had been run through a PVC pipe with an "elbow" joiner on the end, so the water came out at an angle. The pressure was a bit too high and it looked like a geyser on the end of a stick, or a plumbing blow-out accident. In fact, I noticed a few of the bricks were pushed out from the pressure.
The following weekend Dan, Adrienne and I talked at great length about the fountain and it's attributes. The next day I drove by and the entire thing was disassembled! The bricks were all back in a tidy stack, the tarp back on the ground with the cones, and the piping on the tarp. I was more than disappointed. While shopping at the grocery store I thought about the fountain and how it hadn't been so bad! Just a little off! What possessed him to take the thing apart?
Driving home from the store I saw the man hard at work rebuilding the fountain, only this time he stacked the bricks side to side instead of end to end, and had painted the interior pale blue like the inside of a swimming pool. As soon as I got home I called Adrienne at work and told her about the progression. She promised to take that route home to see.
The next day Fox and I walked by the house and beheld the magic! The column was three feet high and the PVC water pipe was sticking straight up in the center of the basin. The pressure was still too high so now it really looked like a geyser! At 20 feet away on the other side of the road we could feel the over spray! Cars driving by were creeping by to get a look!
Over the next two weeks many revisions took place; two flood lights pointed at the water spray, a coat of blue enamel on the exposed PVC, and finally some orange and white "go vols" pom poms attached to the corners. It was almost more than I could bear; I had to meet this man.
We left for a long weekend in Asheville and when we returned everything was different, again. The column shape was gone and in exchange was a low, wide basin similar to the dimensions of a koi pond, and the pipe was so low to the ground it couldn't be seen by passers by. The flood lights had been mounted to two tobacco stakes placed behind the fountain, and the stakes were painted blue. The flood lights provided an interesting effect on the water, but a blinding one on my eyes when I was driving by after dark.
Each day was something new with the fountain. It provided us with tons of conversation and anticipation all summer long, then one day it was gone, replaced by the blue tarp and cones. By winter time there was no trace left of the fountain, neither brick nor pipe.
I had almost forgotten about the fountain till the other day when I saw it.

That satellite dish that you see there was inverted, forming a basin in the brick part and the water pipe was in the center. It was a-m-a-z-i-n-g! I was thrilled not only to see the fountain again, but to see the MORTAR between the bricks! It sure seemed permanent! When I took this picture I figured that he was working on the plumbing and was going to replace the satellite to it's original position.
Then the man exited his house with two mousy shi-zus trailing wearing his tight girl jeans, a baby doll midriff-bearing shirt, and carrying a bunch of junk.

It was then that I noticed something about this man that I never had before. He looked like a lady in the face.

"Ladyface"

I have studied these pictures at great length and magnification and I can't figure it out; is he a masculine lady or a soft-featured man? I can gather from the photos that there are: zero breasts

zero package bulge

there are lady jeans

scoop neck, midriff-bearing babydoll tee

manly back but without hair

lap dogs

biceps

has a lady face

As you can tell there are a few questions left unanswered.
While I was out I decided to check out the other contender in the "best water feature in SoKno" contest. Although it does deserve mention with it's mini Christmas tree and garland, it pales in comparison to the satellite idea. I will make an official decision when ladyface gets finished.

baseball lesson

This morning while Fox and I were outside pulling weeds in the warm spring sunshine, Lee invited us over for strawberries. Fox took off running towards Lee's house and I thought about his inability to resist strawberries, chocolate or any other treat, and decided that it was time to have the "strangers with candy" talk with him.

We sat down at Lee's table as he moved about his small kitchen adding dashes and splashes from various bottles into a mixing bowl. He placed the bowl of shiny berries directly under my nose and listed the ingredients as he squeezed pancake syrup; "bout a quarter cup uh that cran grape juice, uh couple uh squirts uh 'at lime cocktail mix, three or four uh tablespoons uh sugar, an dis maple toppin'.

He set the syrup down and franticly spun around, bumping the table as he violently swung open the refrigerator door, and emerged with a container of berry flavored cream cheese. "Now dis is at bagel cream 'cept it's got berries in it an at's why it's purple" Lee scooped three ice cream sized scoops on top of the berries instructing me that "they jus needs a tablespoon er two to coat 'em", then proceeded to stir the lumps around and around through the sticky berries. He put three saucers down and three berries on each saucer and gave Fox and I the go ahead look before he ate his using a knife as a spear. They were delicious and Fox quickly became sugar wild.

Lee has a bumper pool game in the corner of his living room and Fox began removing the balls from the shelf and rolling them across the floor. We rolled them back forth for a while before Lee said "HEY Fox come out here an try dis baseball game I made"
The game consisted of an electrical cable wrapped around a branch of a tree with a wiffle ball and rope tied to it. He gave Fox the handle of a pool stick to use as a bat, and told him to hit the ball. Fox set the handle on the ground and started smacking the ball around and laughing hysterically, until the ball hit him in the chin. After trying to explain the game with no luck, Lee gave him a few lessons.

It was then that I decided to run and get my camera.

While in my house getting the camera I remembered that Fox had a bat, so I got it out of his room and headed back to Lee's.

Fox got tired of the baseball thing, and wanted to play with the pool balls again, so we went back inside and rolled those around a little bit more.

Then Fox took a few pictures:

spring in my yard

My yard is so nice in the spring time.



We have really old bulbs that the original owners planted, and they still provide a dazzling display when the weather warms.





Nothing is more satisfying than working in the garden!

Lee hadn't exited his house in four days when I saw him draw back the hot air balloon-printed curtain and peek out his front door at Fox and I, quickly releasing it when he saw my glance. Three minutes later he stepped onto his front landing wearing an unbuttoned shirt and a knit toboggan. The shirt seemed like a tiny rag hanging from his shoulders, gathering under his arms framing his protuberant belly.

A week ago his hot water heater stopped working and he came over to my house to take a "whores bath", which we called a "bird bath" in my house, but when you think about the key body parts in the process, "whores bath" is a more apt title. After he had rinsed his hair and put his clothes back on, Lee opened the door while he shaved and chatted. He hadn't put his belt back on yet, and I was shocked to see the impossible angle his belly created where it returned to his hip. The bottom of his overhanging belly was parallel with the floor, and created a sharp, right angle with his hip bone. Don't worry. I didn't stare. One glance and I will never forget the sight. Even when I was carrying a nine and a half pound baby Fox in my belly it wasn't that big. Why do some men have such off the chain bellies?

Lee scratched and stretched, then disappeared back into his house, reemerging with a steaming cup of coffee and a "rolly", which is a hand rolled cigarette. He slowly approached Fox and I, stopping here and there to look around at the wind blowing the trees. He had buttoned his shirt and I could tell that that particular shirt was soon becoming an openly wearable only type; the buttons were all mismatched colors at the midsection and they seemed to be under a great deal of strain.

I was pushing Fox on his swing and he was screaming so he didn't hear Lee approach. I noticed that Lee had something shoved in his back pocket that was making him walk funny.

"So do yall have one uh them VHS players or what?", Lee barked as if he had already asked me twenty times before. He pulled the item out of his pocket and it was a cover less VHS tape entitled "Winterland Scooby Doo" I told him that we did, and he went on to explain that he had bought that tape from "a guy who was hurtin with his rent" for Fox.

"It's pretty cool. I done watched it. Thares a few stories on 'at one tape an one's a Christmas-type story, an the rest are, well I wont give it away. It's CLEAN anyway"
Well that was a relief! I was wondering if he meant that it was a physically clean tape and relatively germ-free, or if he was referring to the content of the movie.

Fox had realized Lee was amidst and had began yelling Lee's name over and over. Lee pushed him for a while, then proclaimed, "I sware I could'uh cut'chore hair straighter with uh pan-knife than what 'at woman did! An how much you paid'er?"

I told him that we had traded goods for services, and he seemed satisfied. After I got my hair cut he started calling me by a different name. Something that sounded like "Asian-ninine". I had no idea what he was saying, and he was drunk. After realizing that he was doing it on purpose, not of disorientation I finally asked him why.

"You look like 'at spy Agent 99! You know! From 'at ol spy movie Get Smart!?" I lied and told him that I knew what he was talking about, relieved that he wasn't being derogatory towards Asian people.

Lee asked us what we were going to do today, and I said that since we were both under the weather that we would likely stick around the house and enjoy the warm temperatures. He said "em doctors say y'need at least fifteen minits'uh sunshine per day or you'll get all..." Lee was making the universal sign for crazy; winding his finger around and around right beside his head, and I told him that I believed it whole-heartedly.

sicko

I'm sick. I'm ill. I'm spent. I'm all blah.

This is week 2 of my newest 2009 sickness and I'm fixin to loose it. Having the flu over Christmas and New Years should safeguard you from having it through out the entire next year, but I haven't so fortunate.
Last weekend the roof of my mouth started hurting and since I haven't been to the dentist in over a decade, I figured that I had finally gotten a cavity which would probably require a root canal or some crap. The pain continued, then my throat started stinging when I swallowed. Meanwhile Fox had started coughing and sneezing quantities of clear, watery mucus all over, so I thought he was having allergies, and I needed to make a dentist appointment.
The next day I woke up with the worst headache I have ever had, and my nose was entirely blocked. Fox was coughing, sneezing and acting like he was possessed by evil spirits, he was misbehaving so. Muscle pain, and the discomfort of trying to blow my nose and constant coughing kept me from getting comfortable. The sinus pressure and blockage took away my senses of smell, hearing, and taste, and made all of my teeth hurt. When I walked across the room my footsteps were silent, and I stopped eating. The sensations are similar to the effects of getting hit really hard upside the head. Poor Fox fell asleep on the couch and woke disoriented, confused by his sore body and the setting sun.

That was last week, and we haven't improved much since then. Taking Ny-Qul and sleeping is the only reliable relief of a sickness such as this. Fox seems to feel good in the bath tub so he has been getting at least one bath each day. How torturous for a small child to be so sick without an adequate vocabulary to properly complain. All he can formulate is; "Foxy sick! Got mucus up'dere"

And he can't blow his nose yet! Sometimes he will accidentally blow it when no one is prepared with a handkerchief, but never on command. There will be so much goo in his nose that it cascades out and onto his upper lip while he, evidently, has no sensation of it. I feel obligated to stand behind him and wipe his nose every three to five minutes, and he writhes and whines whenever I do as if I were armed with a weapon. Needless to say the two of us are a sorry sight.
Hopefully we will improve with the weather. We have been going outside every day but our excursions haven't lasted long in the freezing air. Fox's water table was frozen solid this morning with a bunch of toys trapped under the surface. Fox peered at the toys, then looked at me with frustrated disappointment, as if it were my fault. We decided to swing instead which thrilled Fox, but when I got him out of the swing his face was lined with channels of snot all the way back to his ears, and I felt like a bad mom. We came inside and had leftover vegetable soup and read books.

Lee saged my house

Last weekend Heather, Ella and Josh came to visit for the weekend. We were all really excited since it was the first time they had visited with baby Ella, and we always have lots of fun together regardless of what we do. As an extra bonus our wonderful friend, John was in town too, and he and his lady friend, Amy came over for supper.

Jason spent Saturday working on one of our (many non-functional) lawnmowers over at Lee's house. Lee is a wizard when it comes to small engine repair and always helps us fix stuff; as far as I can tell these times are Lee at his finest.

Heather, Josh, Ella and I were going to go to the store to get preparations for shrimp and grits while Fox was napping, so I walked across the street to ask Jason to come work in our front yard so he would hear if Fox awoke. Lee was watching Jason tighten something while he held his hand which was wrapped in dirty flannel.

"What happened t0 your hand?" I asked

"Aw nuthin! I wuz just helpin Jason get his mower fixed an I cut my hand on 'at bolt" Lee said in a sing-songy tone.

I looked back at Jason and explained our excursion to him, and immediately after the words escaped my mouth Lee assertively asked,"So whater you a-havin fur supper"

I told him shrimp and grits with turnup greens, crowder peas and sweet potato fries.

"An you ain't even gonna invite me when I'm over here a-bleedin fixin YOURE machine?!",
Lee assumed.

Quickly I asked Lee to please join us for supper, and that we would be eating sometime after seven. He accepted my too-late invite with disdain, as if he would be doing me a favor by showing up, and asked if I could pick up a few things while I was out. He ran into his house and came out five minutes later with a grocery list, his government "food stamp" card, and his pin number. Lee gave me explicit directions how to use the EBT/debit card reader, even after I insisted that I understood the functionality of the contraption, and then sent us on our way.

Josh and I prepared our supper and Lee stuck his head in when we were almost finished. I told him that it would be another 45 minutes till it was ready, and he said, "I've done ate, but thanks Jill. I appreciate it n you're a good neighbor. I'll prolly jus come back over here when Dan and John get here"

Great.

John, Amy and our friend Frank showed up, and my friend Adrienne from up the street came down. We all talked and caught up with each other. Adrienne went back home to her kids so her husband, Dan could come down, and very soon afterwards Lee appeared. He came in the door with photographs of Dan, John, and I he had taken a few months earlier.

"See them orbs all over you John?!" Lee yelled. "You got them thangs all over your house Jill. See, they ride in on other people even if your house is clean an blessed" Lee remarked with a suspicious look at our previously jovial company.

I told him that everything was fine in my house, and there had been no spiritual disturbances of any kind. Lee produced three sticks of incense and a bundle of sage and insisted that we burn all of it to "smudge" our house. He continued talking about the mysterious orbs on the photographs for the rest of the evening.

I have seen tons of these "mysterious orb photos" that Lee has taken and without a shadow of a doubt they are dust particles. Some of the photos are of people with a big spot on their face or shoulder, some are of empty areas in a bar or someone's house with a spattering of nebulous dots, all are taken with a flash. The first time Lee showed me his collection of pictures I told him that I had had that problem when using a flash, and he said

"That ain't dust!! That place was so clean! There weren't a spot anywhere!",

and then it became a personal attack on the subject's cleanliness. So I dropped it and started accepting whatever he said about these photos, but this was the first time that my complacency had led to a "smudging" of my home.

As the fragrant smoke billowed from one room to the next all of my guests looked around at each other, attempting to communicate non-verbally by making eye contact. One by one I discreetly extinguished the incense, cracked the door to the back porch and turned on the overhead fans. I could hear Lee in the other room demanding to know what Dan thought about his photos. People started dodging Lee and his strange, one sided conversations, and he made his way into the kitchen where I was cleaning up. He started talking at me without any concern of my indifference, and suddenly I realized he was swearing loudly, and the children were in the other room.

"I told that stupid fuck what he could do! I said 'Alright goddammit! Get your shit and go back to your old lady an tell her not to bother me or my family no more! We're sick uh you're shit!"

At that moment Jason burst into the kitchen shushing Lee and telling him that he didn't care if he swore but not to do it when the kids are awake and in the next room. Lee looked at Jason incrediously and slinked out of the room, shrugging.

An hour later I went outside and found Lee smoking on the porch.

Laughing, he asked "Did you hear Jason tell me off in thar? He said I was a-cussin in front uh those babies or somethin. I NEVER cuss in front uh kids, man. I know how it is. He musta thought I was Pope. You know, that big bald dude Jason plays music with? He's always cussing around the kids"

Not knowing what to say, I just stood there and nodded. Why would Lee pick Pope? Brad Pope is great with kids, and super respectful of Fox. It was so freaky for Lee to pretend like he hadn't screamed obscenities in my kitchen while I was standing beside him, just an hour earlier, then try to blame it on a guy who wasn't even there. Then the conversation shifted back to the orbs and Lee proclaimed;

"Whatever they are they're faster than anything we got! I mean military, yaknow; like 747s or F-16s or bombers or WHAT EVER man! Them orbs gottem beat. I know yall're good people an all but I'm jus WARNIN yuh that thares more than this world that'cha see in life. There's the spirit world an yuh don't wanna piss'em off none!"

I told him that I didn't want to aggravate the orbs either, but I wasn't worried about them. He interrupted me by saying "So what do you really think about them Jill; tell me thu truth!"

After a moment's consideration I said that I thought they were interesting. Lee exploded and said that I might as well have slapped him in the face, and that he thought that I thought he was crazy. For some reason Lee was putting people on the spot all that night, demanding that they tell him he's crazy. Of course no one took the bait, as tempting as it was. It felt like Lee was fishing for a fight, which became evident towards the end of the evening.

Everyone started leaving and going to bed, and John and Amy were the last two people left other than Josh and Heather who were staying at our house. Jason and I were hoping that Lee would leave so that we could talk to John and Amy a little bit before they left, but he just wouldn't budge.

Finally Amy and I decided to try and lead him outside, then return inside without letting him back in. Evidently, despite being really drunk and high, Lee was onto our plan because he acquired a sloppily hostile attitude before leaving.

Amy and I were standing beside the door forming a chute directing Lee out the door, when he stopped in front of us and said "thanks a lot Jill" charged with sarcasm.

"You ain't gotta do anything! All you do is sit around here sewing in your room back'ere. All you gotta do is watch 'at kid. Yeah you got it made" Lee expressed.

Amy's eyes got huge and angry, and after taking a shocked, sidelong glance towards me she asserted "Being a mother is the hardest job in the world!"

Lee sort of rolled his eyes and continued his strutting progression to the front door.

Amy was horrified with Lee, but I felt like it was comparable to watching a really slow wreck. I can't take offense when I know he's just running off at the mouth. For god's sake; this is a man on disability who drinks moonshine and smokes dope on a daily basis, further disabling himself. It would be a wasted argument.

Despite the Lee-static, it was a great night. My only regret is that I didn't insist Lee leave a little early so I could have talked to my favorite friends about something without him screaming about orbs in the next room.

final countdown

Where to begin, where to begin?

When Lee moved into the house across the street he prefaced the pleasantries of introductions with a numerical countdown of days till he became a millionaire.

"Three hundred eighty-six more days uh this an I'll be outta here!"

I didn't know what he meant, but assumed it related to his condition of being home all the time without a car, subsiding on government food vouchers, and talking about magical orbs and spirits.
As time elapsed Lee's countdown decreased, and he explained that he would be entitled to his millions when George W Bush was no longer president. When the figure dropped below three digits I realized that it was, in fact a countdown till inauguration day; Jan 20th 2009.

After returning to Knoxville from my extended Christmas vacation I was shocked and alarmed to realize how low the countdown had dwindled. Jason and I had always chalked it up to fantasy; assuming that something would happen before the day arrived, but here we were, just days till inauguration. I decided that I would be gone that day, but the days leading up to the 20th were so uneventful I forgot to take precautions.

When the day arrived Fox and I watched the ceremonial preparations unfold on television, and occasionally glanced across the street to check Lee's status.

The only thing I noticed was an array of unfamiliar vehicles arriving and departing from the house. Lee didn't leave his house for quite a few days surrounding the 20th, which wasn't uncommon. He normally sleeps till noon, so it's possible that he leaves his house after I go to bed.

The next weekend Jason had some friends over to play music. I guess Lee suspected a party was going on so he came over with his standard mason jar of moonshine and a miniscule joint. He seemed pretty lit when he arrived, and after watching the guys play three or four songs he began asking me to google stuff for him. First he asked me to look up something regarding orb manifestations in photographs, then a ranch on the Comanche reservation in Texas, and finally the 2009 Ford dually F-350 crew cab truck. He kept making commands like, "type one in that has black interior", and "how much more is it to get REAL big speakers? I mean NICE."

I was going to explain that it wasn't possible to refine such a search, but after a couple of attempts I decided it was easier to just make up figures based on my own estimates. As soon as we had found a suitable image he said "Jill go get Dan an tell him to come over here an look at dis truck. He don't believe me when I tell him I'm gettin one. I'm makin a call tuh Lance Cuttingham an I'm gettin one uh them Monday morning. Jus wait. Tell 'em to git over here an look!"

Lee said this in a way that concluded that after seeing a picture of a truck on the internet, Dan would believe him.

Dan and the rest of the guys were in the middle of a song, so I told Lee that I would show it to him after they finished.

"He's jus right there! Jus tell em tuh look!" Lee griped in a too loud for inside voice, pointing.

I told Lee that it would be ridiculous to interrupt a band to show a guy (who couldn't care less) a picture of a truck on the internet. "I'm sure Dan knows what a new Ford F-350 looks like", I said.

"Yeah, but not like mine. Mine's gonna be top uh thu line!" Lee said dreamily.

I didn't even touch that one. I just walked away from the computer and ended the session.


Needless to say Monday came and went with no new truck. The countdown seemed to come and go, too, till the other night when Lee asked me to look up some other nonsense on the computer.

He started rambling on about someone trying to cheat him out of his money. I asked what he was going to do about it, and he said "I don't know yet. I'm gonna have to watch NCIS tomorrow night to see if I have to go out to the desert or not"

I asked him if he was referring to a television show, and he said "Yeah. See they talk to me an tell me stuff in code. Military stuff."