Geezer Basketball

I had a friend was a big baseball player
back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
but all he kept talking about was
­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_[Glory Days]__________________________________________
Bruce Springsteen from "Glory Days"

Bruce and his buddy were about to rehash some tales—practice for passing them on to their progeny. What is the point of having memories if we can’t use them to aggravate the youngsters in our lives? They are probably just jealous anyway. Frankly, I was edified by “back in the day” tales from my parents and their peers. They gave me anchor.

Back in the day, I was a pretty decent basketball player. In college, I literally played everyday in pick up games and intramurals, and got to be one of the guys everyone wanted to have on their team. By playing everyday, a guy should get pretty good even if his intrinsic nature is to stink. This is one reason I get irritated at NBA players who play basketball everyday, and still can’t make a damn free throw. Any pro shooting less than 80% from the line should be summarily executed. Okay, maybe docked a million bucks for every percentage point under 80.

My signature abilities included a nifty hesitation move with a cross-over if needed, a sweet turnaround jumper, a gym rat’s quick first step reminiscent of Kiki Vandeweigh, and a no-look reverse layup from either side. It was a Chris Paul drive the baseline and toss it up and see what…whoop, it went in type shot. On defense, I had great anticipation: could lay off and bait a guy into a risky pass, and then pick it off for a breakaway.

Some noteworthy occasions were a couple of intramural games against a team that had Conrad Dobler. He was, at the time, diligently building a reputation as the NFL’s dirtiest player. I assumed Conie was on campus in the off season to take remedial gum chewing. He was there getting PhD for all I really know. There were a couple of Wyo. football players on my team. They were happy to measure their manhoods by getting under the basket and mixing it up with Dobler. I was quick enough and smart enough to stay clear of the whole lot. Let them have at it.
(Note: Since this time, Dobler has become a case study in the costs of a career in the trenches in the NFL--physical disability, and finacial hardship.)

I played a little with the kids a few weeks ago and stunk so badly; I determined to practice enough to get better, or give it up all together. Going down to the outdoor court at the rec center mixes up the workout routine, which has recently been 30 minutes on the elliptical while listening to classic rock on 102.5. (I have not, thank you very much, resorted to Sweatin’ with the Oldies with Richard Simmons). So here is the current state of the geezer game:

The hesitation move—if I hesitated any more, I might be taken for dead. One has to be moving in order to hesitate. The most noticeable hesitation is in getting off the couch. Once I do get moving, any attempt to slow down too fast i.e., “hesitate”, results in the knees buckling and me falling down.

The quick first step—forget about it. Any sudden movement can result in a sprain or pull.

The turnaround jumper is coming back, except there is no jump involved. “Why do you take a hiking stick to the basketball court?” you ask. Okay wise guy, it’s because when the ball gets stuck in the net, I can’t jump high enough to get it out. Poking the ball with a stick is less humiliating and draws fewer chuckles from the shirtless young studs on the next court than repeatedly throwing my hat at it.

The reverse lay up from the left side will get me out of a deficit in a game of H.O.R.S.E. if I’m playing against some kid who is about eight. In a game situation, it just gets swatted, sometimes violently. I have, however, developed a knack for getting my face out of the way, or I’d have to give up the shot once and for all.

The anticipation is still there. I just can’t do anything with it. My defense consists of fouling. Even that is ineffective except against girls.

The good news is that I still have bladder control—a good thing because the latrine at the rec center park is 200 yards (or twelve minutes) away.

I have heard rumors that there are leagues and similar opportunities for geezers to team up and play against each other. I think I saw a reference to such a game in a Celebrex or Ensure commercial. I have never seen an actual geezer game, but I can guess that it must be funnier than wino fighting or tortoise sex.

I’ve seen geezer hockey on television in the run-up to the All Star Game, and it honestly isn’t that different from regular hockey. A lot of NHL guys play until they are geezers anyway, and fouling and falling down are pretty much the game in a nutshell, regardless of the age of the players. Last year Brett Favre gave us a sampling of geezer football. It appears he is likely to give us a full dose this year, for as long as he can hold up.

The only thing that might compete with geezer basketball in degree of silliness is geezer dancing. This last weekend, Kristin and I went to the Meeker Days celebration in downtown Puyallup. It is a big deal with all manner of booths for everything from time shares and insurance, to funnel cakes and glass blowing. There were a couple of bandstands, one right near the beer garden. The rock ‘n’ roll and CW was surprisingly good. During one song I said, “That guy has a really good country voice.” We later learned “that guy” was former Alabama member Jeff Cook. No more surprise, and a confirmation of my keen eye for the obvious.

When we walked up, they were doing a fantastic rendition of Johnny B. Goode, and we commented that it was odd that nobody was dancing. We heard other people say the same thing. Several of us in the crowd were rhythmically moving one leg up and down, and looking nostalgic. We looked like old hound dogs that lie down to sleep on their sides with their legs extended out. Every now and then the legs twitch, and you can tell they are dreaming about back in the day when they could chase cats.

There were bicycle police keeping an eye on the beer garden and crowd, so none of the geezers who identified with Chuck Berry hits got drunk enough to risk the humiliation of dancing in the boogie style where you don’t get to lean on each other. Any geezer attempting to swing or jitterbug on that asphalt would have experienced the “hesitation move knee buckle". I suppose the younger folks just didn’t think the music was that cool. They’ll dig it when they become geezers. Johnny B. Goode has a timeless quality I just don’t see in contemporary whatchamacallit music. And a few of us will always remember Kiki Vandeweigh.
Still chasing cats.

What does John Wayne have to do with it?

Washington has the John Wayne Pioneer Trail mentioned in the previous article. It also has John Wayne Marina near Sequim. I figured there must be some John Wayne/Washington connection, like he was born here or something. This is apparently not the case. Cursory investigation reveals that people just decided to name some stuff after The Duke.
Next: Geezer Basketball

North Bend and the Snoqualmie Valley

An informational sign at Rattlesnake Lake near North Bend, Washington, asks the question that must be on the mind of anyone who visits here or sees it on a map for the first time: How did a lake on the west side of the Cascades, a reputed rattlesnake free zone, get Rattlesnake for a name? To paraphrase the answer, “We don’t have a clue.”

I have heard that Rattlesnake Lake is a good float tube lake, so we took advantage of Kristin’s midweek day off and checked it out. There weren’t many people there, but you can tell that it gets pretty well populated on the weekends. It is the head of the Cedar River, and the watershed that supplies Seattle with water. It was opened to special regulations fishing some years ago and is stocked annually with rainbow trout. On this day it offered proof that just because a lake is stocked does not mean the fish are competing to leap into your net. I just waded out and cast a nymph rig into a substantial wind while Kristin walked a trail in the park. I did not catch any fish, and I didn’t see the fellow in the float tube or the two guys in the boat catch any either. It is a pretty location, and I’m sure I’ll take the float tube or drift boat up there and try it again someday. It’s open until the end of October, and I suspect fall is a good time to fish it. We’ll see.

There is a neat interpretive center at the lake. It tells the story of how and why the lake is a good municipal water supply, and gives some history of the area. There is a library, the ubiquitous novelty store, and some research presence. It would be a great place for a middle school field trip. Across the road is Iron Horse State Park, which is a developed section of the John Wayne Pioneer Trail. The trail runs nearly all the way across Washington following the route of the old Chicago-Milwaukee-St. Paul Railroad. Literature says there are trestle crossings that offer fantastic views. All the tunnels are closed for safety reasons, but they are working on detours. A warning sign at the trailhead says there is a closed tunnel in 52 miles. That’s far enough for me anyway.

North Bend is a tidy little town that is essentially a bedroom community to Seattle, only 32 miles to the west. North Bend has a rich railroad, timber, agricultural (hops), and even mining history. It has the main North American manufacturing and distribution center for Nintendo whose American headquarters is in Redmond, Washington. Mainly, from what we experienced, North Bend has Twede’s Café.

Twede’s starred in David Lynch’s bizarre television series Twin Peaks which aired for two seasons starting in 1990. One of the stars was Lara Flynn Boyle whom we recognize as a very handsome cast member from The Practice, and other roles. The “complimentary collectors menu” notes the café as, “Home of Twin Peaks Cherry Pie and a “Damn fine cup of coffee.” I tried both, and they were both damn fine. The soup of the day was homemade vegetable beef; the BLT was better than average. Kristin had one of the 53 burgers on the menu—more if you count the fact that all of them are also available in garden veggie and black bean patties. She had chocolate cream pie. I stole a couple of bites, and consider it to be damn fine. The café is decorated with all imaginable examples of stuffed Twede Birds: fireman Twede, police Twede, beach Twede, and so forth.

After the late lunch at Twede’s, we went and checked on the prospects for fishing the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River. The river was still a bit high, so I didn’t fish it. We all know that fish don’t disappear during high water, and the fishing can be good in the eddies and calmer pools. After the pie, I just didn’t feel athletic enough to go out there and leap from rock to rock, and wade in the strong current. The Middle Fork is another opportunity for fishing special regulations water, and when lower, a great example of classic pocket water fishing. It is a refreshing retreat from the hustle of the city, rarely crowded, and less than an hour away. The relatively light pressure comes from the fact that the fish are small for guys who are hooked on steelhead fishing, but the resident coastal cutthroats are fun and beautiful. Snoqualmie Falls isolates this water from the cutties, steelhead, and salmon that run to the sea.

We looked at the impressive Snoqualmie Falls, and watched a guy on the river below the falls fight and land really nice fish. From that distance, all I could tell was that the fish was at least 24 inches, and bright silver. I’ll not hazard a guess on the species. In my ideal world, the guy would have turned it loose—no such luck. He strutted around showing it to everyone in his area, chucked it up in the rocks, and went back to fishing.

The Snoqualmie Valley has a number of golf courses including Mt. Si, and Twin Rivers. Cascade Golf Course is very close to Rattlesnake Lake, and a very attractive nine-hole public course. With the extra long summer days at this latitude, I could envision a day incorporating a round of golf, lake fishing, stream fishing, some fat tire riding, and a damn fine slice of cherry pie—all within 30 to 40 minutes of Seattle or Tacoma. We will turn in a report after we give it a try.

Our last stop was at the new Snoqualmie Casino. Kristin lost ten bucks on the nickel slots. I won about twenty on a dollar machine. We figured that paid for the gas for our adventure, and we headed for the house.


Next: What does John Wayne have to do with it?

Kindred Spirit

Addendum to Work

Shortly after my last posting, I received two opportunities. One was an offer from a big Weyerhaeuser mill on the Olympic Peninsula to tail the green chain. The other was an invitation to compete on the reality show "So You Think You Can Dance." I declined both. The decision confirms two adages--that paper never refused ink, and that discretion is indeed the better part of valor.

"Work" Part II

An idea came up in a beer driven conversation with a former construction partner. I don’t know whether it was an original thought that Josh had, or if he got it from someone else. It seems a little deep for Josh, but beer does that. Josh’s idea was that society ought to be set up so that we all just party and have a good time until we’re, say 55, and then work our asses off until we drop dead. This idea warrants some consideration. George Bernard Shaw said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I would agree, and add that work is imposed on the young. Think of all the youthful creativity and energy wasted on the drudgery of “making a living”, when what we are really doing is making a slow death. Think of the money that would be saved on health care for the aged. If an old fart gets senile, he just stumbles in front of a bulldozer, and that’s it. There would be no drawn-out humiliating existence in a care facility that takes up valuable resources and wastes the talent of nurses and doctors—no more images of emaciated, bed-ridden grandpas with sunken eyes and tubes going in and coming out. The possibilities for societal improvement seem endless. The economic stimulant implications are immense. The young do not take the senior discount, and are less likely to skimp on tips. Like most utopian solutions, this one has some flaws, but it should be in the conversation.

Another possible solution to the problem of work would be to increase pay based on the degree to which the work is disliked. The obvious problem with this idea is that it probably wouldn’t change things for most people. The office administrator who spends the day licking the shoes of some self-important personification of the Peter Principle would still make more than the house painter who will walk off the job and straight to the bar at the merest hint of bullshit from the boss, reeking of satisfaction all the way. An even greater problem would be the need for some device for measuring discontent. We certainly couldn’t just hand out money to the biggest whiners and starve the stoics. There would have to be a brain implant, or a periodic test similar to the personality profile questionnaire you answer when you apply at Home Depot.

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”—Booker T. Washington:
This is, among other things, a paean to those who toil. Toil is strenuous labor, but not necessarily work. Work contains no dignity. Some examples differentiating work from toil are in order.
· Building fence is great sport: outside, physical, yet requires some craft—straight, square, etcetera—immediately tangible results, and can be done while having a few beers. There are many “puttering around the house” activities that are good rewarding fun. Some are not.
· Plumbing under the sink sucks, and qualifies easily as work.
· Fixing cars made before about 1980 can be fun. Working on any car that has the engine in there sideways sucks. If you look through the engine compartment and see the ground, there is potential for some entertainment. If the compartment is so packed with shit that not even light can escape, you have a black hole, which sucks in the literal and figurative sense.
· Sales, which I have done most of my life now, sucks—rejection, disappointment, catering to assholes, motels, fast food, or no food, and windshield time.
· Mining was a kick and didn’t become work until it made me sick. It was a little kid’s dream—playing with giant Tonka Toys, blowing stuff up, unrestrained cussing, and a great espirit de corps.
· Writing a poem does not suck.

One of the triumphs in my life of toil came during a summer stint at the lumber mill in Walden, Colorado. The mill superintendant was the father of a classmate. Kent was one of the class jocks, and I think looked down on me for my comparative lack of prowess in football. I suspect he and his dad thought it would be entertaining to watch me perform in exceptionally difficult circumstances. Dad put me to work “tailing the green chain.”

When a log went through the initial process after debarking, it was ripped lengthwise into flat segments that would eventually become boards. Making a round log square necessarily leaves four “slabs”, which are the ugly outside segments that have jagged limb stubs sticking out, and are often warped, hard to manage, and always pointed on the lead end. When the ripped log shot onto a chain conveyor, my job was to, by any means necessary, get the slabs the hell off the conveyor and let the future lumber go by. I stood facing the onslaught and dodged lumber while grabbing slabs and flinging them onto a conveyor going another direction. I was aided in this by a high speed roller called “the pineapple” because it had beads welded around for traction on the slabs. The pineapple would grab anything that touched it and shoot it about 20 feet. Boards get directed away from the pineapple; slabs get directed onto it, and the tender better not let his ass touch it for a microsecond. My position was on a little platform right in front of the pineapple, and I became a virtual ballerina on that deck, dodging and slinging in a rhythm matching the output of the saw, and all the time avoiding getting grabbed by that spinning pineapple.

Kent was doing a much more dignified job in the same area of the mill, and was in position to watch me all day. After about a week and a half, Kent said, “You know Grant; I’ve got to tell you I didn’t think you’d make it this long. We usually give that job to winos and bums because we know they won’t be here long. They almost always take a ride on that pineapple and don’t show up the next day.” I knew I had his respect after that, and I had mine too. I quit two days later and went to the mine for an extra 25 or 30 cents an hour.

Now that was good, wholesome, make me dog-assed tired, toil. And I’d go back to it in a heartbeat if I still had any ballerina left in me. I know some women who get turned on by the smell of pine pitch and diesel fuel.

Bad Parts II

Bad Parts
Part II

I spent two days touring the streets of Oakland, mostly in the industrial sections. My guides were constantly telling me about a shooting on this corner, or a robbery/shooting at this store. It was not quite a source of pride, but a resignation I suppose. The experience was a source of consternation for me. All of the customers and potential customers we talked to were real nice, and didn’t act at all like they were in fear of sudden death. What the hell is going on here?

On Saturday March 21, 2009, four Oakland police officers were killed. Two motorcycle officers were shot in the initial stop of Lovelle Mixon who was wanted on a no-bail warrant for parole violations. This means he was on strike three in a three-strike state. He had nothing to lose, and subsequent reports said that he was scared of prison. He shot them down and then shot them execution style in the head. Then he went and holed up someplace and killed two SWAT officers with a high-powered rifle as they approached the door he was hiding behind. Lovelle Mixon then died in a barrage of fire from the other officers on scene. It was one of the worst days for law enforcement in California history, and the deadliest incident for US law officers since September 11, 2001. Some radical groups tried to attach a racial element to all this, but the notion didn’t fly with the population as a whole. Lewis showed me the place of the original stop, traced the pursuit route, and pointed out the apartment building where the final confrontation took place.

When I was looking for a place to stay in Oakland, everyone told me I didn’t want to stay near the shop that was my base of operations because it was in one of “the bad parts”. I took them seriously and ended up in some small town near wine country only about halfway from Sacramento. It took me an hour-and-a half to get to work the next morning. The girl at the front desk had told me it was “about 20 minutes.” The next night I stayed in a moderately priced chain motel near the airport which was about eight minutes from the shop. It had a gated parking lot with a razor wire fence. I woke up alive on both mornings! Surprised the shit out of me. What the hell is going on here? I thought about another experience in a bad place. It was in the mid ‘80s.

My employer asked me if I wanted to go to a mining industry trade show in Lexington, Kentucky. I said, “You bet.” I was thinking a nice commercial flight, expense account, and the opportunity to learn some stuff and do some networking. It turns out the invitation included a flight to Lexington in a four seat Cessna with the boss and his wife who were constantly bickering. Fred hadn’t been flying long enough to have night qualifications, so we left Centennial Airport at the crack of dawn and flew on the prayer that we could get to Lexington before dark. Thanks to the prevailing westerlies, we arrived just after the automatic street lights came on. Thanks to the prevailing westerlies, it took us three days to get back to Centennial.


We had a layover in St. Louis. The plane was missing some navigation tool, a transponder. The controllers at the big airport in St. Louis told us to stay away, so we landed in the suburbs at The Spirit of St. Louis Airport. It was early in the day, but the weather forecast showed that the headwind would make the plane fly backward. We determined to give it a try at dawn the next day. We would rent a car and go do some tourist stuff, the Arch, the Budweiser Brewery, the river front… The only rental car at The Spirit of St. Louis airport was a Lincoln Continental, white.

Fred took a wrong turn between the Arch and the brewery, and we ended up cruisin’ the main drags of East St. Louis—the home of Al Joyner, Jackie Joyner Kersee, Michael and Leon Spinks. Now the intent of this reminiscence isn’t to get into a brouhaha over the pitfalls of stereotyping, or any of that stuff. Just suffice it to say these athletes didn’t get fast and tough from hanging around the country club in shirts with little polo players embroidered on ‘em, and sipping mimosas.

I couldn’t make this up. People were breaking into cars right in plain sight and others were calmly watching as if to judge technique. The only windows that weren’t boarded over had steel bars over them. Two pudgy white dudes and a loud-mouth woman have no business driving and looking lost and bewildered in a white Lincoln in East St. Louis. We made it out alive just like I would thirty some years later in Oakland. What the hell is going on here?

I started this whole thing with the notion that Oakland was a dangerous place in comparison to Tacoma, and a whole lot of other notions mixed in. Not normally one to let facts get in the way of a good notion, I ran with it. But then the journalist in me rose up and said, “Better check this out dipshit.” So I did. I got on this website, NeighborhoodScout.com. The website is pretty neat. It has tabs for real estate values, crime statistics, school ratings, and so forth. It has satellite images of the cities all color coded to show neighborhoods in relation to one another. You can select the murder rate you want and then click on a link to a real estate agent. Handy as hell when searching for an apartment in a ghetto or a penthouse uptown.

I learned a whole lot about notions: Tacoma’s crime rate index is in the 2 percentile of cities in the US, meaning that it is safer than 2% of cities over 25,000. Oakland’s index is 3. Oakland and Tacoma have annual violent crime rates per 1000 population of 12.89, and 10.49 respectively. Property crime rates are 56.2 and 86.3. This discrepancy is how Tacoma moves ahead of Oakland overall. For comparison to communities we all may know, the indexes for Cheyenne, Boulder, and Ft. Collins are 14, 15, and 16 respectively. With an index of 100 being safest, I doubt if there are any places even close. Wrong again bucko. On the list of 100 safest cities, #1 is Jackson, NJ with an index of 99. Number 100 on the safest list is Newton, MA. with an index of 71. I don’t think I’ve been in any of the places on this list unless they are ‘burbs that I’ve blown by on the Interstate. Of the 100 most dangerous places, latte and lavender Washington has eight. They are mostly depressed working class communities, and I suspect a meth presence. Florida, California, and Texas understandably have multiple listings in both safest and most dangerous categories. On the top 100 most dangerous list, Oakland and East St. Louis don’t even show up, but perceived bastions of Southern preppydom, Athens and Gainesville GA. are respectively 18 and 49. What the hell is going on here?

If any of you know where this is going please call or e-mail me. No, the point is that preconceived notions are often inaccurate, and the “bad parts” are not so bad if you don’t get robbed, raped, or murdered there, and the “good parts” can certainly warrant keeping your guard up. It’s probably best just to be scared or drunk all the time.

Next: Work

Bad Parts

Bad Parts
Part I



My son-in-law Wynn was in the hospital last week getting a shock treatment for an unruly heart. The condition is called atrial fibrillation, but no matter what you call it, it’s just bad behavior. To fix it they stick an electrode into your heart from a vein in the leg or neck, induce the troublesome rhythm, find where the short is, and zap that spot into submission. It’s called cardiac ablation and has a real high success rate. It allows the patient to lead a normal life without the side effects from potent drugs. Everyone who has an unruly heart should get an ablation. Ask your doctor.

Wynn thought they should offer a combination plate on the hospital menu. You know, one stop shopping, volume discounting, kill two birds…, that kind of thing. He wanted the ablation, a vasectomy, and orthotic shoes. I would go for the ablation, bunion surgery, and a skin transplant. I’m scared to death of skin cancer.

Everybody except me had something to do that day, so I volunteered to spend part of the day waiting for what was supposed to be a quick procedure, then give Wynn a ride home. This in exchange for a couple hits of vicodin. Actually, I know that no matter how much a manly man might protest when people inconvenience themselves to be there when he is hospitalized, it would suck to be alone after a heart procedure, no matter how minor they say it is. The world is full of places you can go and see loneliness. A hospital is at the top of the list.

I took a walk in the late afternoon just to get out for a little exercise. St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tacoma is on top of a big hill right over downtown. I walked down the hill, strolled the downtown section, and walked back up the remarkably steep hill. Afterward, I overheard Wynn on the phone telling Allison that I had walked through the worst part of Tacoma. I said, “I was in Oakland last week. Tacoma doesn’t have any bad parts.”
It made me think of some adventures in the bad parts.

I was in Oakland working with a local sales representative trying to drum up business for the local branch of the business I work for. Lewis told me about a recent shooting. He said, “You know those wagons where the guys eat lunch?”
I said, “Hot dog stands?”
“No,” he said, “they’re like trucks.”
I said, “The roach coaches?”
He said, “That’s it, roach coaches.”
I could tell he was trying to be politically correct by skirting the roach coach term, so I wondered who might be offended—the roaches or the coaches. It turns out that the district around International Boulevard is famous for roach coaches with damned good food. Anyway, the story was that a few weeks prior, he was talking to a customer outside the shop when they heard four or five pops from the next block. Apparently a couple of robbers had told the roach coach guy to give them all his money. He said he didn’t have any, so they shot him.

Now I know squat about desperation on a personal level, but I figure these guys used the robbery as a means to an end separate from the act itself. They must have wanted to go to prison. Hell, I don’t know—but then why kill the guy? Isn’t armed robbery good for a decade or so of three squares and status as a badass?

Later we went and called on a car masher place. This was a veritable hive of activity for everyone except the two off-duty Pit Bulls laying in the shade. They would look up at the flies buzzing around them, and then look wistfully at the places where they should have tails. There were four or five trucks in space big enough for one or two. Some were loading smashed cars. Some were unloading cars to get smashed. Guys were slinging chains and binders and “f” bombs, and the diminutive dude on the forklift was darting around swearing at everything in his way whether it was a truck driver, a dead car, a live car, or a couple of salesmen in a van. Watching all this with a placid expression of bewilderment was a fat guy in a black polyester security guard uniform. He was sitting with his feet on the rungs of a wooden stool by a gate in the razor-wire fence. The guard had no hat, and the sun was just scorching his bald head and every other exposed fleshy surface. The backs of his hands were like freshly boiled lobsters. He looked like Andy Sipowicz having a stroke while interrogating a child molester in the sauna. Every now and then he would get up and point at something as though he was giving instructions. Nobody paid any attention, so he sat back down.

Lewis said the guard was a new addition to the scene and he wanted to know what the deal was, so he asked. Guard said there was enough money changing hands there that management got nervous and hired a security outfit. Understandable enough, but this guy had a fucking gun, and no hat! It scared the hell out of me to think that this guy was permitted to carry a loaded side arm, and didn’t have the sense to ask the boss for a flippin’ umbrella to strap to the razor-wire fence—maybe even one of those patio tables with a big umbrella stuck in a hole in the middle. I could see the headline:

“Baked Security Guard Shoots Two Salesmen and Forklift Operator!”
Admits,” I just wanted their shade."

Next: East St. Louis and some enlightening statistics about bad places that aren’t so bad and good places that aren’t so good.