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.