The Diamond Island

Earlier I mentioned an enigmatic prize table. The prize table is a metaphysical concept expressed in real time and space as a collection of junk gifts. Whether or not there is an actual table is beside the point, what matters is the collection point. A box, a closet corner, whatever. Yes, you too can have your very own prize table. And the contents of the prize table are limited only by your cheapness and audacity.

The reason the prize table exists is because you need a source of readymade gifts for all occasions. Need to bring something over to a friend’s party? Forgot your nephew’s birthday? Co-worker you can’t stand coming back from the hospital and you have to look good in front of the office? No problem! With a fully stocked prize table, you just select whatever piece of junk you feel the twerp deserves, wrap it up, and voila! No fuss, no muss.

This isn’t to say you must always use the prize table. Save your valuable time and money for the moments and people that really matter to you. Some more generous souls may never need to call upon the power of the prize table at all. It’s just a slight reassurance in a Terminator robot-infested world to know you have a backup in the gift department. One must carry sacrifices at all times in case of ambush by chthonic beings and their minions!

So how do you stock the prize table? Well, estate sales are one way to populate the prize table. You’ll find things suitable for the prize table that don’t quite make the grade for your own personal use. Another source is gifts given to you by other people! Yes, you can take the horrible, tacky yellow rug from Aunt May and give it along to Uncle Buck. A further source of material is whatever you have gotten tired of and would like to get rid of. But keep in mind that the older and more broken down it looks, the less likely it will pass inspection. You must always tailor your choices by what you believe you can get away with.

That’s about all there is too it.  Start collecting your misfit toys now, because sooner or later you too might need the prize table!

This weekend, K and I made our way over to the Maryland Rennaisance Festival to go and see Albannach, the celtic battle music band mentioned earlier. We hadn’t been there since the time we went with Liephus and GuitarCJ, something like five years ago. It’s hard to believe I’ve been going to this thing, on and off, since 1993. As the larger than I remember crowds jostled us about and we stood in line for 20 minutes to grab a cafeteria-level packet of fish and chips, I reflected back to the first time I came here and how things have changed for me.

Mind you, this place is something of a local institution now. It’s run very efficiently and the number of “stuff” to play, buy, watch, and consume is enormous. The consistency of quality has remained at a high level the whole time, which is amazing. I’m hard pressed to think of too many other venues where people can dress up, get bombed, and generally be themselves in large numbers. It’s that last part, the “large numbers” one, that gets on my nerves. Both K and I felt we had outgrown this place, and perhaps the squalid crowd of drones and walk-ons is getting a little too authentic for our tastes.

Albannach was outstanding. Their energy and enthusiasm were at a high level, and the crowd was into it. I think the decision to place them on the Market Stage was probably not the best one. Although it probably can accomodate more people, it’s too flat and structured. I think there were several other stages they could have been placed on which would have allowed more freedom of movement and a better view. Listening to these people made you want to dance. I can only wonder what the drones sitting on the benches must have thought, surrounded by a mass of people dancing and blowing horns like maniacs.

There’s a place where you can buy coin medallions. You choose a design for each side, and the artisans use a large weight to stamp them into the metal. K bought herself a bronze coin with a black leather strap. The strap technology has improved since I first got mine, as she had a bead to adjust the front length with, and a tie to allow for a larger loop around the neck. She chose a tree-of-life on one side and a hummingbird on the other.

Seeing her wear it made me want to get mine out. Back in 1993 I bought one in silver with a black cord, with the face of medusa on one one side and the moon on the other. So when we got home I dug mine out and we compared, and wore our medallions together. I had to use some polish on mine, because I hadn’t worn it much since I put away my altar works back in the late nineties.

It turns out I spent the same amount of money on this visit as I did the first time, which brings back memories of when I got my medallion. K getting her medallion so that both of us have one feels like a meaningful coincidence, because I think this is the last time I’m going to go to the Maryland Rennfest. “The Carnival is Over”, to make a Dead Can Dance reference.

My first visit to the rennfest was a giddy and deeply meaningful adventure. I dressed as a fool, with a jester’s hat and bright colors. This last time, I looked like all the other drones, even though I could have dressed up like all the other walk-ons (having invested the requisite several hundred dollars for basic costume and accesories). K and I didn’t feel like standing in line for 20 minutes to get a drink, so we passed on the inebriation factor. That struck me as another change in the equation, as the drinking is one of the highlights. Oh well, the booze money went into the prize fund, and we bought some wonderful beeswax candles to burn while we do our various crafting activities at home.

What’s the next step in evolution for a young fool? Old dope? Looking back, it’s nice that this place has been a rock of dependability when so many other fun places turn sour. Good times. When I think back to the young man wearing the image of medusa and compare him to the person wearing it now, there is sorrow for me in leaving the place behind. I’m just uninterested in going back now, which has an unexplainable sense of the inevitable to it I never would have guessed at the start.

If it’s a story, it resolves. So what comes next, right? A door closes, a door opens. I bring my new Albannach CD home (I support artists I like with the cash on general principle) and K and I listen up. The stuff with the vocals blow, but the other two-thirds with the rumbling drums and the piercing bagpipe is pure chewing satisfaction. I’ll tell you what time it is! Time to get up and dance like a stupid fool. Because at the end of every story the fool shows up again to get you going on another madcap adventure.

Nowadays, it seems like everybody and their posse are busting a move on what used to be my secret escape on weekends. Programs such as the Antiques Road Show are to blame, giving people the mostly false hope that all they have to do is go to some garage sale and they can find a forgotten sketch by Rembrandt and make fifty thousand dollars on something they paid ten bucks for. I figure my gig is up, and I’ll just have to consent myself with people enjoying the newly appointed fad for the next ten years. So now is the time when the truth can be told!

You start by looking in the Friday paper under Estate Sales, Garage Sales, and Auctions. We’ll stick with estate sales for the purposes of this post. Look for things that are close by where you live, of course. Read the descriptions, and if something reads the right way for you, then by all means drive the extra mile. But the point isn’t necessarily the prize, but the ability to hit 2 or 3 places to maximize your chances and to get as much fun as possible out of the experience. I go on Saturdays and Sundays, but there’s no reason you couldn’t do the duty on a Friday if you hustled, or took the day off.

Descriptions can be misleading, however, so always measure how the ad reads and feels to you. “Lots of collectibles” can mean “piles of unrelated stuff we couldn’t identify”, and “Vintage furniture” can mean “broken down junk we found in the attic”. Avoid any sale that requires you to stand in line and take a number, or charges you a fee. Those are the rackets, and you won’t find squat there, maybe the occasional high priced piece of tasteless furniture selling for hundreds of dollars because the owners really don’t want to part with it.

Take cash, forty bucks is optimal, but twenty will do fine. What, you thought you were going to be getting new furniture for your apartment? That will do you for the first one or two runs, but then what? This is a regular diversion, not a bargain hunt per se. Look to do this long term, for laughs. Carry your checkbook if you want, but I never carry more than a hundred, and that only on the days I “gots me that lovin’ feeling”. Also, make sure you have a vehicle that can handle a small piece of furniture or a few boxes of junk. Ideally, it’s fun for the entire family, but make sure you can bring back the loot. My Tardis go-cart hatchback, Micro Blue, does the trick nicely.

Crack out the road maps, Google Maps, whatever you need to find the place, and go. Carry some water or a coke with you, it can be thirsty work. Make plans to stop for lunch, or carry a picnic in the back. The last thing you need is a car full of crabby patties, or a grousing driver. This is an adventure into the dungeons! Load up on supplies accordingly.

Once you get to the location, there’s always the issue of parking. Sometimes it’s easy, other times it can be tricky. Some of the places I’ve been to have had the strangest access, from one way streets into a small cul-de-sac, to a tiny dirt hill with no place to turn around and nothing but cars behind you honking for their chance to risk running over the edge to let them pass. I’ve had neighbors scream at me for parking on a public street because my car was “an abomination”. 90 percent of the time it’s not much of an issue, but you will come across the strange ways, my friend, oh yes, you will come upon them.

There are a lot of estate sale companies managing the things these days, and you start to know them on a first name basis. You walk in the door and you go, “Oh, I didn’t know you guys were involved, how ya doing?” And “Oh, hello dear, yes it’s us. The ad messed up and didn’t get our logo, kind of a last minute thing.” My schtick has always been, be polite and keep it loose and easy with these outfits. Yes, you can bargain with them, but if you cop an attitude they will crack the whip faster than you can say “Captain Thunderpants.” And if you offend them, well do you really want to search a house while they give you the evil eye?

I’ve seen it happen. Guy tries to haggle a pile of nice metal tools in a toolbox, tries to diddle the price down to a dollar (hey, it can be done, and for less than that!) when it’s clearly marked five. The outfit says three, and the guy cops that attitude. Starts arguing with them about ripping people off, ratcheting the tension up in a line that’s already as tense as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I stifle a laugh. Dude! This a zero sum game, are you kidding me? Come back on Sunday when they won’t care! Snap goes the trap, and the giant clams have denied you! Guy leaves everything on the table and leaves in a defeated huff. I could only shake my head at the guy and sadly mourn his removal from the list of “almost unworthy to view the wares but if we must grant you access I suppose we must”.

Me, I used it to my advantage. Bought my stuff and didn’t haggle. I already knew the lampshade was a bargain (which surprised me, given the high prices of this outfit). I sympathized with them and chuckled at their well-played snap. Out of the blue, they say, “take that shelf, we can’t use it.” I’m like, “Whoa.” Genuine cherry wood three tier sub-shelf with original varnish and almost completely intact!? I’m there, dude. You roll the dice and sometimes you get a surprise. But you won’t get it by being a jerk. But hey, you wipe out, I’m taking your boots and leaving your corpse by the wayside. This ain’t no disco. I trust you get my point. Stay calm. You lose a lot, you sometimes make the play. That’s how it works.

Now, you should be aware of a certain kind of “estate sale” known as the “bogus estate sale.” I don’t run into them often, maybe three times in the past ten years, but you will encounter them. And when you do you will be outraged by the complete waste of time they are. The “bogus estate sale” is a tactic used by dishonest furniture dealers to sell their products under false pretenses. You’ll walk into a house, and there will be nothing in it except lots of high-priced furniture, often it’ll be covered in plastic wrap because it hasn’t even been completely unwrapped from the wholesaler. There will be a lot of “helpers” walking around asking you if they can help you, like its some kind of freakin’ store or you might walk off with their high-priced tacky junk.

Ohhh! It burns my bunions when I walk into one of those things. Just be aware they exist, and realize that no, you aren’t hallucinating. This is a scam, get out now before you waste any more time. Sometimes you’ll walk into an estate sale with nothing left, but there will still be that smell in the air, or some crud in the corners, like the Grinch has just passed through on one of his runs. The scam will be instantly recognizable by the “cleanliness” of the house and the abundance of nice furniture without the signs of anyone having actually lived in the house.

So, where’s the fun you ask? Well, there’s the excitement of not knowing what you will get, or what kind of situation you’ll find yourself in. After all the preparation and hassle of getting there, after the maneuvering of the obstacles, nothing beats the moment of truth: The moment you walk through the door. You get to explore someone else’s house and pick through their things. That’s what I call the sordid angle. And, every now and then, you come across and object that wants to come home with you. It’s like scratching lottery tickets. You’re hoping for the jackpot, but when you win that one-dollar, you feel like a million bucks. Dreams are what this is made of.

Sometimes you walk into a house and it’s full of nothing but junk. All of it is cheap and the right price, but you don’t want any of it. Other times you’ll walk into a house and it’s crowded to the gills with people fighting over piles and piles of towels, curtains, and used clothing. K once had to flee a pile of used clothes because two women were literally pushing her away to fight over who would get what scrap! Then there are the times you walk into a person’s house and you get insights into how they lived, but don’t come away with anything.

For example, I went through the books and diaries of a housewife who had passed on, and the husband had been moved to a nursing home. The woman had lived a life of constant worry over her religious devotion, her weight, and her attractiveness to her husband. She had gone from religious study, with tons of appropriate knick-knacks, to diet and nutrition with cookbooks and health regimens, and finally to ahem, more modern seventies books on “how to do it” and how to be both religious and uhm, “adventurous”. It culminated in a light interest in mysticism, with astrology books and “spiritual renewal” manuals.

The husband, meanwhile, had gone from mathematics with calculators and slide-rules for a navy engineering job of some sort, to fiddling with electronics and do-it-yourself household fixtures in the basement (I never saw so many transistors and vacuum tubes next to wiring and plumbing projects in my life), and ended up with an extreme interest in National Geographic and travel. There were countless artifacts from Asian vacations, from Thailand to New Guinea, and on into Hong Kong. It’s as if the guy had decided numbers and electricity didn’t measure up to going on expeditions to bring back the goods.

You sometimes come into the houses of specialists. People who devoted their entire waking lives to one thing. I once explored the home of a guy who had worked in the state department with literally, thousands of books in his home. Piles as high as a human being, one after the other up and down the stairs, on numerous shelves or on the floor, filling entire rooms, on every conceivable subject, though mostly having to do with economics, philosophy and ancient history.

There was the woman who had converted her entire enormous home into a yarn depository. It was like being in a store. Shelf after handcrafted shelf of patterns, balls of yarn, and knitting books. The workshop had every arsenal of knitting tool known to humanity, and it all looked used and lovingly attended to. K, being a knitting and spinning artist, had a nervous breakdown at the sight of it, and I almost never got her out of the labyrinths of knitty goodness. I think we spent over an hour lost in that place.

Then there are the houses that aren’t right. An ex-diplomat’s house filled with hard-to-find side passages, hidden attics, and labyrinthine basements. Regular old houses on joe-blow street that look normal on the outside, but are put together funny on the inside. Doors that go nowhere. Basements you can see but can’t get to anymore. Twisting and turning hallways that force you to always go in one direction, in a circle. And farmhouses that have layouts that allow women and men to live separate lives, with sewing and bridge club rooms with easy access to the root cellar and kitchen in one area, smoking/sitting rooms and workshops in the other, meeting only in the dining room around a large long farm table for meals.

I’m only scratching the surface, and I don’t want to make this into a manifesto. You get the idea. You usually walk into a generic place, but might find something interesting that teaches you about people. Oh yeah, the stuff. Anything’s possible. Most times, a place is cleaned out. I have a set range of things I’m looking for, mostly books and toys, and sometimes a good knick-knack for the prize table. I’ll have to explain the concept of the prize table in another post. I won’t turn down a bargain if I see it, and I’m not looking for furniture, though I might pick up a shelf or rug if the price is right. Everybody has their focus.

I was in a McMansion once, totally filled with bad taste in furniture. One thing that never fails to amaze me is how in the new big houses, say post 1980, the people who once lived in them always seem to have spent all their energy in obtaining the dream house, but never have the life-force left to actually fill it with what feeds the soul. The furniture is tacky, or out of a crummy catalog, and doesn’t look like anybody has ever used it. There’s very little clutter, just a lot of the basics such as shelf for entertainment electronics, couch to enjoy said electronics, and some accessory pieces like a lamp on a pedestal. No posters, maybe one lifeless piece of framed art, no colors in the wallpaper or bric a brac in a corner to indicate even the slightest interest in obtaining mementoes or fetishes for a healthy functioning psyche.

But I digress. House is a typical lifeless shell, when I get down to a single room in the basement, and pow. Apparently the housewife was a teacher, and clung to that part of her life tenaciously, and this was her space. She had a mobile shelf made of high quality wood and constructed to withstand long-term exposure for kids. I get it for five bucks. Holy moly. She has a box of wooden blocks of the kind you never see anymore. I pick it up for another five bucks. As a kid, I had the companion set of blocks to this set, so here I am, years later, completing the set of blocks. The one with the solid round pillars and the arches to go with the squares and rectangles of the other set. I’m out of my mind with disbelief. I buy a pile of kids books that are long out of print for a buck. Those will go on the prize table and will end up in the hands of my younger cousins, who might never get a chance to know some of the classics I grew up with. It’s a humbling experience.

Sometimes you walk out with one thing, but it’s a prize. I go into a huge old house where somebody (I can’t tell who) does a lot of cooking. The basement has every conceivable appliance, dish, pan and accessory you can imagine. Mixed in with someone else’s Matchbox Car collection of rare and expensive die-cast metal cars from the sixties and seventies. I can’t touch that stuff, it’s way too expensive for my tastes. So I look under all the tables and boxes in the basement, just to see what’s there, and I pull out a cast iron pot, complete with lid and handle. I’m stunned; this has got to be pre-fifties stuff. I can hardly lift it, but the outfit lets me have it for a buck. I hand it over to the folks, who know how to revive iron and care for it. We now have a large pot, the kind you might find in the wild west, capable of cooking a huge amount of food, say chicken and dumplings or beef stew on an open flame in the wilderness. That’s exactly what we end up using it for. Talk about cool.

You do a lot of dues paying in the form of wasted effort. A lot of times you go to three sales and they’re all a bust. For weeks you get zero return. But then the clouds part, and something gets revealed to you, making it all worthwhile. In some small way I’m paying my respects to these people who have passed on, by bearing witness to their passing and making out of the ritual a way for life to improve and move forward. Gotta drink to that!

The garden continues to wither away. Each time K and I come over, we have to pull some poor plant up by the roots and deliver it unto the compost pile. K has planted some lettuce for the autumn, so this year’s garden is not quite through yet. But the end is definitely in sight, I’m afraid. Today, we actually needed to buy tomatoes from the store. That’s how bad things have gotten. The potato harvest we took hold of in early August is nearly spent. I’m making a beef-vegetable stew right now that puts us one charge from empty. The herbs are looking lean and crummy now too. I have to do a harvest soon to save most of them for winter. The sage, lemon verbena and sweet basil need to be stored stat!

It’s a communal garden we labor in, so one of my garden neighbors comes over and asks me if I’ve had some tomatoes stolen. Yup, I says. A half dozen beefstake level goodies ready to be plucked the next day, and when I show up the next day, they gone. I tell the guy everybody wants their cut – the bugs take their cut, the birds and gophers take their cut, and now the hungry people take theirs. What can you do? I can’t complain though, I says. I got 2 or 3 bushels of bounty, and that’s not considering the non-tomato cut I got. The guy laughs and gives me four Juliets, tomatoes to keep for seeds, since we’re talking about getting seeds ready for next year. We talk shop a little, and he takes off. I feel like I got the level up, it’s cool.

I finally got the pictures developed from the demolition derby of Big Blue I mentioned earlier. As you can see, Big Blue has had all windows removed and chains run through the doors to keep them from bursting open. The front hood has a hole cut into it to allow the fire department ample access to put out any engine fires that may develop. I’m sniffing, as I know Big Blue looked so good for the debut, it’s a crying shame that the glory was denied my loyal automobile.

During my book revisions, I’ve been studying numerous editing articles on the internets. I want my book to conform to grammatical standards of some kind. I don’t think I’ve found my writing “special sauce” formula, exactly, but I’m learning everything I can get my hands on and doing what I can to craft my book into a finished piece that I’m satisfied with. As a result, I’m taking out books at random from my shelves, and when I encounter them in public, to study the composition.

At the grocery store I picked up a copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I’m not a fan of the books, but I figured this would be a good example to pick up and examine. Late in the series, the author should have everything about their special sauce figured out.  All the things I read about not doing are there. Passive voice, check. Heavy reliance on –ing verbs and –ly adverbs, check. Excessive use of “was” to be verb tense, check. Crumbs! This book violates just about every standard of editorial checking you could think of. Now, I’m not saying I’m any better – my own writing has needed some tough work to beat into shape. But it just goes toward proving my point that your success as a writer has much to do with luck, and little to do with standards of writing, talent, or what you write.

And, on a final note, I’ve been compiling a wish list for music to get a listen on. I’m still short two Lustmord albums, there’s that Skids album by the lead singer of Big Country, before he was the lead singer of Big Country, I’m hankering to get a hold of The Ocean Blue’s Cerulean, Concrete Blonde’s Walking In London, The Verve’s A Storm In Heaven, and of course Sia’s new album, whatever it’s called. I’m gathering soundtrack for book number 2, which will be digging deep into the ground for rocks and minerals to play with.

Hearkening back to the old days, when I was a wee lad. There were many toys of great inventiveness that passed by my small hands. I recalled a visit to the parental units and my old closet of “potent archaeological relevance” earlier this year, where I sighted the old Strange Change Machine from days of yore. Since I’ve been pondering the effects of exposure to “ancient artifacts of alien training” on my brain’s development, I figured I ought to consider this interesting tool.

The machine is this square piece of metal, basically a heating unit, with a thin wire grille over the dark recesses of heat that emanate from the depths of who-knows-where. A hard plastic capsule with a sliding door covers the grille area, and there are three vents at the top to allow heat to escape. To the side of the capsule/grille is a small metal compactor area, like the kind used to crush cars into squares of metal, with a sliding plastic panel to seal it off and a crank that screws the compactor wall in and out.

The machine’s design suggests an infernal time machine created by some mad scientist not eating with both hands. Accompanying the machine you get a set of plastic tweezers, a plastic play-mat illustrated with a gorgeous “dinosaur era” landscape, and a number of green, pink, red and yellow plastic squares, all blazoned with the Mattel brand logo on them.

You plug in the machine, it heats up, and you pop a square into the capsule. As the square heats up, it unfolds and changes before your eyes into a monster! Cool, huh? You then take him out with your tweezers, let him cool (as he is a bit soft and very hot), and set him aside to work on the next one! Pretty soon, you’ve got a whole slew of characters for use on your play-mat, and its time to have them battle for supremacy and your amusement!

Some of the monsters included, a scorpion, a snake, a spider, a mummy, a brontosaurus, a tyrannosaurus, a winged mothman demon of some outlandish sort, and a pterodactyl. When you were done, you put them in the capsule to heat them up, and then you jammed them into the compactor, which was also hot, and gradually squished them back into a square! You plucked them out, let them cool, and had a pile of squares again!

I’m not exactly sure such a toy would pass safety standards today, since it’s really easy to leave the machine on and go watch cable and forget about it. Hey, what’s that smell? Oops, left the mummy in the compactor too long! I looked the machine up on the internets, and learned that the secret to the magic of the monsters is that they are made of a special kind of plastic, that when passed through a special chamber and bombarded with radiation, the molecules of the plastic are set into their current shape, and thus they will always try to reconfigure themselves to that shape even when squished into a hard square!

That was I as a kid, handling irradiated super-plastics and playing with high heat to make characters for my latest play-set. Was it the toys that made the adult, or did the child summon toys suitable for their own development? I wonder if natural selection favors those children who are able to acquire the right toys for their training. Is the future creating the present by manipulating the past? I start to get flashes of that old horror classic, Children of the Damned. Parents have every right to be concerned over what their child is playing with, because those toys are the symptoms of their own destiny!

What does it mean then, that so many toys with lead in them are being recalled? On the surface, it could easily be explained as despicable carelessness and reckless endangerment of the young. Is there some collective unconscious fear of the new breed of little monsters? Is the greed and unconcern for our children symptomatic of a sick desire at self-preservation against the future? Is it a mere obstacle of natural selection to be dodged, like so many things in life? Is it an experience summoned by the unconscious to test a new generation of children? Lead is not conducive to good health in reality, but in the dreamworld, lead is turned into gold. Or it could be a vital element in some great task – used in the building of a new shielding against hostile radioactive mutants, for example.

I think about Black Sabbath’s old classic, Children of the Grave, where Ozzy Osbourne sings, “Children of tomorrow live in the tears that fall today” and “Can they win the fight for peace or will they disappear?” The kids are training; their story has only just begun.

Today, the Terminators, Destructoids, and jack-bots are really gunning for small fry. Crumbs! And my super-zapper recharge ain’t got that swing. Forgot to load up on torpedoes or re-energize the shields. I may as well leave the door open for the droids looking for live-brains! Thank goodness for cloaking devices. Sometimes you need to keep a low profile to avoid being seen. And you Monty Python freakazoidals know what I’m talking about! Do not stand up when your name is called!

On the sensor arrays, my science officer, Kool Kat, informs me that you can adopt a Nauga. I’m surprised, I thought the program had been shut down by the Empire a ways back. Not quite as ferocious a breed as those 60’s versions of the Nexus-6, I imagine. But there’s no telling what a plastic-harvested anipal might get as a random power during the transfer flight through the radiation barrier. You pick up these things when you’re running silent past the Gamalons.

In other news, stocked up on supplies for the cat colony. The high end food particles must be made from quadro-triticale grain to cost so much in the way of Ducats, but I guess its for a good cause. The catazoid power hour does sweep the neighborhood free of meeses and hostile organism globules. Maintenance costs if you want to live in the rebel base. It’s a way of life and it freaks me out! Yea, baby!

Programming the food banks to have me manufacture some chili, lasagna, and BLTs in the next few days. At times like these, the crew gets nervous when the food supplies have to be made to order during the actual increase in hunger levels, and I don’t want to risk getting fleeced out there in the communal food bank kiddie pools. You just don’t know whose DNA you’re ingesting these days when you get it to go. But its all in a days work for, Duck-and-Cover Man. I just need to decipher the name of that manga I overheard this morning on the internets. You never know what kind of goodies are out there! They might save your life/sanity/soul, or even reveal a powerup. Need the Mario double-up stat!

Earlier this year, I had to sell a beloved friend to the four winds. Big Blue, a 1975 Pontiac Bonneville, had finally reached the point where I was unable to properly care for him anymore. Big Blue was the second car I ever owned, but the first one I ever really drove. I’ve had my driver’s license since my senior year of high school, but I never drove until I was much older, until I’d passed my thirtieth birthday. The first car was a 1967 Chevy Malibu, called The Silverfish, but I never drove him because driving intimidated me.

I finally managed to get the driving ball rolling, and I got my hands on Big Blue. We are talking solid steel construction, with a V8 455 engine chugging out horsepower like a locomotive. Hard to get Big Blue started, but once he got going, it was hard to stop him. Driving him around, I felt I was as armored as a tank. SUVs got out of my way, and other luxury cars stayed away – with a junker like Big Blue, it must look like I had no insurance. I did, but if they thought otherwise, fine with me.

Big Blue got in two accidents, both with SUVs who were speeding, and while I was stopped at a red stoplight. Big Blue could take it from behind and laugh. The bumper, molded into the superstructure, took both hits without much ado. I had to replace the back headlights both times, but big whup – one trip to the junkyard and it was a done deal. Both SUV’s walked away with damage to the fenders. I don’t imagine they got off for 25 bucks each time.

Good Lord, the room! I could cram 7 people in my car, 4 in the back and 3 in the front if I had to. You could stretch out in the back and take a nice nap. The trunk was a gargantua of space. I carted home many an estate sale piece of furniture in the trunk, and the back seat could take medium sized shelves or bed pieces if it had to. Talk about insane; it was like Doctor Who’s Tardis. Bigger on the inside than on the outside. The family went on many an excursion with this monster, I tell you.  The perfect outing car. It was a heck of a car to park, however. Parking Big Blue was like docking the Titanic.

Most importantly, I courted K with this car. I drove the four-hour-commute-both-ways every weekend to spend time with her in this car. Big Blue earned his big daddy points getting me from point A to point B and back safely again. I owe Big Blue a debt I can never repay.

I have a new, smaller, more gas efficient car named Micro-Blue now. Big Blue was getting about 7 miles to the gallon on the open road there, and worse in traffic. I could fill him up, and have half a tank two hours later, the way things were going. This 10% ethanol nonsense was really wrecking his carburetor too. Big Blue belongs in an era of pure gasoline satisfaction, where cigarettes were mandatory and Route 66 was a test of adulthood. In the growing dark ages of energy shortage, he just can’t hack it anymore.

So it was with a heavy heart that I decided to sell him. He was stalling more and more often, and I had replaced everything except the engine at this point. I put him on Craigslist, and a demolition derby crew bought him for 100 bucks. They towed him away and I cried into my pillow. It was the end of an era.

So this weekend, I went down to the Berryville, VA county fair, to watch Big Blue in the demolition derby. I figure he’d go out how he deserved to go out – in a Viking funeral of mega-death destruction. I went with the parental units and K. They brought the camera – I hope to have pictures. And there was Big Blue, with all the windows and lights taken out. A hole drilled in his hood to let the fire department spray his engine in case he caught fire. Chains keeping his doors closed. The number 22 painted on his doors. A warrior ready to go out fighting!

The course is a field section cordoned off by concrete jersey barriers and doused with water to create a muddy track. I’m guessing it’s to cut down on dust clouds. There are tons of state troopers acting as bouncers, and a yarn rope between traffic pylons to keep the masses from getting too close. There’s a group of construction vehicles to tow/push wrecks out of the way to the “dead” field, and a dedicated group of firefighters ready to douse fires. A group of referees risk life and limb to throw flags down when drivers break the rules, such as smashing into the driver’s side door. The crowd is right up there in front, without any screens of protection, and I have to say its an awesome feeling to be down with the people watching the mayhem up close.

The cars smash into each other only a few feet from where you are standing, and pieces of rubber from wrecked tire go flying into the crowd at regular intervals. The action only lasts about 5 or 6 minutes, because the cars are soon reduced to smoking, dripping wrecks. Radiators are smashed, axles are bent at ridiculous angles and yet still operate, and trunks are distorted beyond recognition. Yet I had to admire the sometimes over-attention to safety rules and the lives of the drivers. At one point, one car was tipped over and smashed upside down by another car. The announcer was brutal with his mockery of drivers who didn’t ignore the “all stop” order.

So how did Big Blue do? Well, his turn came, and he rolled right into the lineup with the other cars. The match started, and Big Blue…stalled! Yup, Big Blue choked. If a car doesn’t stay in action for more than a certain period of time, the referees rule him out. “Number twenty-two, you’re done.”  Big Blue lasted less than 10 seconds before he choked. He got banged around a bit, but the metal chassis held really well. They dragged him off the field of battle. The driver didn’t look too happy. I felt for him. Big Blue should have owned the battlefield, he was bigger than any of the other cars, and I know his toughness. It was very disappointing.

But fear not. He gets to compete in the next qualifying heat, this week in West Virginia. I probably won’t make it, but I know he’ll bust some chops in that match! For now, Big Blue lives to drive another day.

I’ve been a big fan of the bigfoot phenomenon since I was a wee little lad in the backseat, watching out the window to see if I could catch a glimpse of that elusive creature. Missing link? Friend of Elvis and the Loch Ness Monster? Scary monster that chases you through the woods screaming? Yes I’ve got my field guide to identifying and reporting bigfoot. Movies with bigfoot in them? Check. Eaten a bigfoot burger in a northwest restaurant with a seven foot tall scale model greeting the customers? Uh, okay now I’m getting embarrassed. I won’t mention the tee-shirt.

So yes, I’m a Level 1 bigfoot hunter. And you know what we noobs at the bottom of the bigfoot searcher chain do to keep our miserable skills in practice? Yup, we do the “hunt for bigfoot”, 101 classroom style. It’s simple, really. You pretend bigfoot makes occasional pit stops in the wooded areas of your local neighborhood, because everyone knows bigfoot is sneakier than a master ninja, and he has to be pretty crafty to avoid all those higher level hunters jonesin’ to get Da Photo. You get that picture, I tell you, you’ve arrived. But I have to remember to carry a camera, doh!

Personally, I think bigfoot has hyper-dimensional powers, and has to teleport into wooded areas to recharge his batteries. So your best bet is to get him while he’s reloading the hyperdrive in his thalamus gland. Of course, there’s always the danger that you’ll run into a rogue bigfoot, one who has had enough of us humans destroying his beautiful migration corridors. Like Charleton Heston in Planet of the Apes, sometimes bigfoot loses it, and starts screaming, “It’s a mad house! It’s a MAD house!!!” You don’t want to be there when bigfoots go wild.

So, it’s a risky job, but if you want to get some experience points and move up to Level 2, you got to do it. I slap on my fatigue pants and desert storm boots – very handy for protecting you against thorns, bugs and general injury in the rough terrain. Plus they let your feet and legs breathe too! You need a walking stick to look official. A small pack with some water and snacks might not be bad either. But this is the super-duper preparation version. Sometimes I say, “let’s do this”, and step into the wilderness on a hope and a prayer. It’s only a fifty feet from the mall, anyway.

It’s also a great way to keep the young cousins occupied, and wear them out if you’ve been stuck with that wonderful family volunteerism because “everyone loves your zany adventures”. Grumble, grumble. Well, if we run into a rogue bigfoot, I can run faster than the cousins. Off into the woods! You’re looking for signs of bigfoot, because you’re only Level 1 and Level 1 hunters never find things like lairs or have encounters with bigfoot. At least, they won’t admit it, because the one thing higher level hunters hate, it’s a lucky beginner.

Signs include, but are not limited to: pieces of unidentifiable fur stuck on tree bark, patches of crushed plants, eerie sounds such as a lack of animal or bird noises (you’re getting close!), and the half eaten remains of berries or nuts. You pick up the trail, and follow it until you think you’re red hot, and big foot is about to burst out at any moment and begin chasing you. It helps if you’ve built up the paranoia in your mind, easy to do when you’re by yourself, or you act scared in front of the kids. “I hope we make it out of here guys” kind of stuff.

When the fear is so thick, you can taste the hot dog you had for lunch trying to come up for air, that’s when you flee for your life! Rogue bigfoot! Rogue bigfoot gunna get you! Aieeee! So you scramble out of the woods, and hopefully live to tell the tale of your near-fatal encounter with bigfoot. Time to pop open a soda and tally up the experience points. Think about hitting the big time, next time, and congratulate yourself on your efforts to push forward the field of bigfoot exploration.