Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love, and Death in the Kitchen--A Book Review

Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love, and Death in the Kitchen

                                                                                                By Jason Sheehan

If you ever had a notion to find out what goes on behind those swinging doors that lead toward the kitchen in your neighborhood family restaurant, don’t. What goes on back there isn’t what you might think. Jason Sheehan however does. He is a cook and the author of Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love, and Death in the Kitchen. Cooking Dirty is a memoir outlining Jason’s journey first as a kid growing up in Rochester, how he began a career in cooking, and how he regained a foothold on life with a girl he would marry and how she prompted him to become a writer. What is of special interest to me, he is, or was, my neighbor; his mother still is.

Cooking Dirty is hilarious and riddled with the smart-assed wit of Jason Sheehan. His escapades behind the closed doors of kitchens across the country, of how he survived, drank, screwed, lived, worked, and generally existed in an environment where five or six cooks served up three hundred to a thousand dinners a night, gives the reader a glimpse into who he is a person. He tells how he started by learning to keep a dilapidated dishwasher from flooding a local pizza shop when he was only fifteen and how he came to bartend, underage, at a local Chinese restaurant. He learned what the back alleys were used for, the drug dealers, the black market food sources, and a home to those just too tired to make it any further. Jason worked and moved up in the pecking order of kitchens the hard way; by slicing fingers along with filets, by leaving burnt skin on the handles of fry pans, by collapsing from 140 degree heat, and getting back up, falling into line, never giving up, never giving in, always for the food and the other guys in the kitchen…his friends and family. Yet he, like most cooks, the ones who didn’t commit suicide, overdose, get mugged for 9 bucks an hour, or end up in the psycho-ward, eventually burned out. His girlfriend Laura, who he married, was as ill-tempered as Jason, but wittier, showed him the way to a successful career as a food critic, a food writer, and now an author. As Jason remembered:

Laura and I are two angry, opinionated, stubborn, smart, and damaged people who have never backed down from a fight in our lives, never able to leave well enough alone, never had a scab we didn’t pick at until it scarred. And yet through it all, we’ve loved each other with a fierceness born of absolute honesty. She knows I’m never going to leave her. And when I come home at night, stinking of cheap beer and salami. It’s to a woman who knows exactly what kind of a broken, fucked-up, beaten-down, ill-tempered asshole I am and stays with me anyway.

Until you get there yourself, you have no idea how reassuring a feeling that is. I know what true love is now. True love means never having to wonder who’s going to be with you when you die.

She'll probably be standing over your corpse with a smoking pistol and a really good reason.

This particular argument led Laura to ask Jason why he didn’t just start writing about food since he couldn’t cook any longer. In a quip he explains, guys just cannot keep up with an angry female:

“No, Jay. I mean really write about it. Like somewhere that someone other than you will see it. Because really? I’m sick of hearing about it but you’re obviously not sick of talking about it. So why don’t you look for a job as a writer?”

“I…Uh…”

The argument ends with Jason wondering why she could be right and what he could do about it. Laura popped open another beer, sat on the couch with her legs folded under her and a Jason put it, “…signifying that the discussion was over.” And Jason became a writer.

Although Cooking Dirty is one of the funniest and provocative memoirs I have read, the book in paperback form is 355 pages long. In my opinion, and I’m sure Jason wouldn’t care for my opinion, since my life about mirrored his in the good-for-nothing asshole department, the text could very easily have been pared down at least 50 to 75 pages. Every chapter goes into a repeated list separated by a mountain of commas about cooks, the low-down drunks who step outside during a Friday night blast or to shoot-up, or have a smoke and a warm beer in the alleyway, and through all this cooks are dedicated to the only thing in life they are good at, cooking food. While he most generally uses rants and lists to set the reader up for a rib splitting punch-line, the constant exposition gets redundant and burdensome. One such rant comes just as the cooks at Jimmy’s Crab Shack beat the snot out of the kitchen boss, the wheel man, for pushing a waitress:

There are many ways to offend a cook and inspire him to violence. We are, as a rule, a passionate and fiery people prone to the expeditious use of fists to settle our disputes. Mostly it’s done in high spirits and good humor. I’ve been punched by more good friends than I can count and rarely held a grudge. But if there is one thing you do not want to do in front of a cook, it’s hit a waitress. For that, we’ll just fucking kill you.

As the line cooks calmly continued on with the never ending food orders, stepping over Jimmy as he lay unconscious, bleeding into the drain, Jason was promoted to the wheel man.

Our memories are fluid; what we remember, how we remember it may not be fact. What Jason Sheehan writes, considering the many times he couldn’t remember his name, where he was, or who is was sleeping with, may not be entirely fact either. He does an excellent and seamless job at alerting the reader to these possible inconsistencies. For instance, early on, he “remembers” Angie, who owned the pizza place around the corner from our street, Belcoda Drive. Later in reflection of that place: “Maybe I’m over-romanticizing my time at Ferrara’s—remembering it as better, sweeter, more moving and affecting than it really was. I don’t think so. I look back now from a distance of about two decades…” Another, “The way I remember it…” And when remembering Laura accepting his marriage proposal: “Which isn’t to say she stopped trying to dump me or anything. In fact, she threatened to divorce me the very first time she read those last couple paragraphs, claiming that it didn’t happen that way at all…something I forgot? And she said that, yeah, I fucking forgot something. I forgot that there actually were rings.” While we don’t really know what the real facts are, Jason tells us that he might not be a hundred percent accurate. It doesn’t matter; it is his story the way he remembers it.

There is something eerie and strangely possessive seeing my street named in print, to read about a neighbor, the woman I know as Cindy Sheehan, Jason’s mom, about places I know and drive past every day. A great story draws a reader in by creating visions that the reader says: “I know that place,” “I know her,” “I’ve been there,” Hey, that’s my street,” or “I know how he lived, I lived just like that.” I can say that with conviction since I do know those people, those places.

Jason Sheehan lived in some of the rattiest places in America, drunk or stoned, dead tired and beat up. He worked his ass off doing things most will not do and did it for less money than normal humans would accept. He went to work hung-over, drunk, high, beaten-up and bruised. He crawled to the edge of Hell, fell in…and climbed out. And why? Because as he bluntly exclaims, “I couldn’t remember wanting to do anything else.” And for me, I can well relate. My life would read much the same as Jason’s in Cooking Dirty. In reflection, I have to wonder how my family, friends, ex’s, and enemies would react to seeing their name in print, to remember and read about places and events from long ago and perhaps wanted to forget. How would they react by reading my side of the story, or at least how I remembered it--in fact, I wonder if would care.

The Holidays

I had to get out of that store. Holiday rage, or anti-holiday rage was about to set in. I say anti-holiday rage in regards to the rage and sometimes violent behavior in response to the rage and sometimes violent behavior exhibited by mostly, and I hate to do it, but i must stereotype, mostly...soccer-moms. You know who they are; those perky and bouncy moms with the blond pony-tails sticking out of the back of pink ball-caps. They have black work-out pants with the white stripes, sneakers, a half-baked smile, and glassy eyes. Their mini-van has those white stick-figure families on the back window. There is no dad there, or the dad stick figure is relegated to the position behind the family dog. On the back door is always the white soccer ball sticker.

It all started when I drove through the Wegmans parking lot close to my house. Ok, I procrastinated about buying veggies for a tray to take to Mom's for Thanksgiving, but I am a guy and that sort of behavior is acceptable. The store was busy, real busy.  I spotted a car backing out of a spot in front of me and waited of the old guy to finish. I moved up to fill the hole and around the corner at the far end, one of those mini-vans, you can spot them a mile away, wheeled around the end and like a vision from a magic carpet, she was in that spot. I rolled down my window with my best "what-the-fuck" look, and promptly got a "fuck off" and a one finger salute from the driver. The shoping trip didn't get any better.

Inside, another one (yes, I'm stereotyping and will continue to do so), was running though the store, running, pushing the cart and tossing this head of lettuce, that bag of chips, a live lobster, I didn't see what else, she was out of sight in a flash. Another, that damn pony tail bouncing double time, it would be worn out before she got done, actually ran into my cart and politely asked me to get the fuck out of her way. I didn't, but I smiled when I said no.

As "Black Friday" approaches and these soccer moms, others too, take off work, lose a hundred, maybe two hundred dollars in wages to make the ultimate sacrifice for their darling little girl who is waiting at home, tapping her foot impatiently to make sure her damn mom gets the right I--PAD--PHONE--POD--PED--P--WHATEVER,  (she just knows mom will screw this up and embarrass her into becoming a recluse the rest of her miserable adolescence) and save fifty bucks. So, as this iconic day approaches and passes, I have to look forward to Christmas when each soccer mom who did screw up the Black Friday deal, panics and in desperation, runs amok and blindly smashes through the next 30 days trying to make it up to her darling "next-to-be" soccer star. Meanwhile, Dad is either living in his mother's basement, or drunk in the garage trying to stay out of the way...so am I. It's going to be a long holiday season. Good cheer, and good luck.

Not Me!

We were kids, if 25 year-olds should be considered kids. Steve had an old rusted out Buick with a loud exhaust and mostly bald tires.  All of us had long hair. Bob had the longest. We were out of the service by then and living life...enough beer to drown Otis the Drunk, Boones Farm by the case, and drugs every other night. (We would have gotten high every night, but we made a pact to drop, smoke, pop, snort, every other night just to make sure we wouldn't become addicts...and NO needles.)

One day, it was bitter cold, we were bundled up (the Buick didn't have good heat, enough to keep the frost from completely obscuring the windshield), Steve was wound tight (Steve looked and acted like John Belushi), and decided to do a few harmless donuts in the mostly empty A&P parking lot. I was in back, Bob was riding shotgun, and I got the bright idea to see if Steve could "drive with the Force", slipped over behind him, threw my scarf over his eyes, and tied it off behind his head. Steve's right foot panicked and hit the floor. That rotted exhaust belched out a roar that woke up the cashiers in the supermarket. Steve's tongue hung out the side of his mouth like a dog ready to drop, Bob roared in the front seat, I kept pulling on the scarf and the old Buick spun one way, then the other, whipping around the parking lot like a big brown turkey with no head.

Well there was one lady who deemed it necessary to shop that night. Steve finally figured out that if he held the steering wheel in one spot, the car would quit whipping wildly in ten different directions at once. Apparently his right foot had a mind of its own. Finally he hit a light pole, Bob smacked his head on the window, and I slid all the way over to the passenger side, pulling the scarf off Steve's face in just enough time for Bob to punch Steve in the side of the head. And the Buick stopped sliding right next to the shopper's car. Well this woman got out of her car and started waving her arms like the scarecrow on the Yellow Brick Road, screaming at the top of her lungs about us hippy bastards ruining the country. Strangely enough, she happened to have a "Peace and Coexist" sticker on her bumper. Steve didn't say a word, Bob got out and tore the bumper sticker off, tossed it into the snow, turned his back to us and peed on the sticker. The woman got this God-awful look in her eyes, opened her purse and stuck her hand inside. There were no cell phones then, nor was there mace sprays. there were however guns...and most people carried them and we weren't stupid. Bob leaped over the hood head first and was in the car before Steve got the Buick into gear. We backed out of there quicker than we drove in, leaving that peaceful woman to co-exist with her .22.

So that started my studies of gross hypocrisies. Over the years, my list has grown, been pared down, grown again, and pared down over and over. As our culture changes, as technologies changes, as our world spins faster and faster, hypocrisies change. Although I hadn't thought much about those double standards these days, as of late I have found it necessary to rejuvenate the list. I suppose this resurgence might have been brought about by the man standing out side of the Town Hall in my town. He was talking  about how well the meeting protesting the new Verizon tower was going. His agitation level was building as he finally pitched the phone into the brick wall and screaming about the shitty reception and how much money he pays for that shitty reception.

Then there is the cute soccer mom who lives on our street. She is a great person; loves her kids, teaches them all the right ways to live, how to grow up and get along with everyone...until she gets behind the wheel of her mini-van. Teeth clinched, knuckles white, kids strapped in, she is ready for the green flag to be dropped, unless a phone call comes in, then she will of course unclench long enough to take the call.

Hypocrisies are like a monster that feeds and grows by eating its own insides. Like the people who are adamant about finding alternative energies and protest about windmills ruining the landscape. Or the avid recyclers who are dragging bags of leaves to the sidewalk, neatly placed in Home Depot paper bags waiting for the garbage truck to carry them off to the landfill. MY favorite is the State Trooper who is topped out at over 100 mph on 390, talking on the phone, driving with his knee, and tapping on the computer looking for the guy who reportedly was driving 80 mph and talking on his phone.

While I am aware of hypocrisies around me and actually watch for them for their ridiculous humor, I am a perpetrator of them myself which is hypocritical in itself since I live in total denial of it.

Against the Wind...workshop essay rewrite

Against the Wind

     It was Friday night and the wind was warm against my skin. My week was done and I needed a drink. The local pub was within walking distance. I walked in, looked around, and headed for an empty chair far at end of the bar, away from the end where the waitress stands, away from the mob drooling, hoping for a wink, a smile, or a flash of skin. Sheila was young and blonde, tall and supple; her hourglass figure and smooth face sent sparks into extinguished fires that once burned inside the ancient men who flock at that end. She laughed and played with them, flirted and wiggled for them. Her breasts strained to escape their straitjacket, her slim waist and flared hips moved in opposite directions when she strutted off to her tables…her admirers leered hopelessly, their eyes glued to her, silent desires from youth cloud their vision. Beautiful losers who haven’t touched a naked female body in years; if only they were forty years younger. Sheila made them remember those days.

     The out of balance ceiling fan clicked like an old wind-up alarm clock. A layer of dust bonded to the blades with a yellow pasty crud. Distorted music floated from the speakers of the run-down jukebox. Flat screen TV’s hung from the nicotine covered ceiling; each tuned a different snowy channel. A few tables and chairs filled up the sticky stained floor in the back room. Five dark booths with worn vinyl seats and red vinyl backs lined the wall. Tattered tablecloths covered the scratches and gouges in the cheap wooden tables.

     The bar tender, Mary Lou, smiled as she walked to my end carrying a Coors. She asked how I was. She was tall and thin, older than the waitress. Her blondish brown, shoulder length hair was pulled back into a loose but sexy ponytail that flipped and danced when she walked. Her voice was gruff and scratchy from years of stale cigarettes and burning shots of whiskey. Her cheeks sagged a bit, her eyes saddened from too many punches; her left finger heavy with a ring. I told her I was fine and smiled warmly. She took my fiver, and reached for my hand. She asked if I would stay a while. She would be done in a couple of hours and had a few minutes to spare. I told her I would.

     They are all the same…neighborhood bars. The name changes, but they are the same. The same sex starved waitress, same lonely bar tender, same ancient collection of customers spewing out bullshit, same wooden bar, bar stools, sticky and filthy floor with black broken linoleum tiles, the same back door leading to a dark and dangerous alley; and the same nicotine stained mirror in back of the racks of dusty bottles of top shelf liquor that no one can afford. The mirror—every bar has one. Bob’s Bar and Grill has a mirror,  Blondie’s Beer Bar has one. The Old Coach, The Zoo, Sam’s, The 469, Anna’s, Murphs, Ollie’s, The Harvester, The Willow Bend, they all have that filthy mirror hiding in back of the bottles. And that mirror has faces; imprisoned faces, thousands of them. If you search the mirror, you will find your face in there too—right next to mine.  

     I sat quietly watching the mirror; there was my face between Crown Royal and Jose Cuervo like an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while. I smiled, the face smiled. I sipped the beer watching, listening. The waitress was laughing, her admirers hoping for a glimpse down her ever widening cleavage. Old Big Bob tossed a quarter down her bra. She slapped him childishly across the face, pulled the quarter out, licked it, and put it back in Big Bob’s hand. The music drowned out the laughter, the clicking fan kept time. The songs isolated and insulated me…the face and me. Every song summoned another face, they were mine from a different place, a different time…and I remembered.

     It was many years ago in November when I left for Denver. Leaves had fallen to rot under the snow that covered the dirt. The holidays were coming. I didn’t care. I tossed a few possessions into my rusted Chevy, loaded the bike in the back, and headed west. The radio was blasting out, the window was down, and the winter wind was rushing in. I had five hundred dollars to my name, and a heart full of scars…a failed marriage, three failed live-in girlfriends, no job, no time to heal, and running from another home.

    In Denver I found the local bar easy enough. I spent most nights until closing at the 172 Club. Lisa was the bar tender, Nancy was the waitress and the red vinyl on the booths was black. The rest was the same as every other stinking bar tucked into some shitty corner of Main Street. Nothing ever changes in there. It’s like a black and white Twilight Zone, an antiquated version of Starbucks. Three months had passed since I left New York. The money was almost gone, laid off from the job at the concrete factory, I stayed at a run-down motel and ate Caesars Pizza. I crashed with Lisa a couple of nights before it happened.

    It was late on Wednesday night, about one thirty. This big drunk guy was bothering Lisa, butt-grabbed Nancy. He was trashed; staggering, falling into chairs, he had drool dripping from his nicotine stained beard and fat hanging out from under his ragged tee shirt. Lisa told him to fuck off and He started yelling. I stepped in and escorted the guy out. Lisa yelled to toss him into the alley in back. She led the way and opened the heavy wooden door. I shoved him through the back door and into the dark and narrow alleyway. Trash cans heaped with garbage lined both sides. A stray cat howled and leapt from a can slipping in the slime covering the broken blacktop. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, adrenalin replaced the beer. My arm was all but yanked out of my shoulder as the oak door slammed on my back. That big bastard wasn’t drunk, neither was his partner. I went hard against the trash cans, smashing my head against the brick wall on the other side. I was knocked senseless, but not so much as to feel hands pulling at my pockets. All I remember before blacking out was reaching for my hunting knife tucked in my boot and swiping blindly. I heard a scream as the knife went through fat and flesh and buried deep into bone. The fat fuck went down hard on my leg. I don’t know where I hit him, still don’t. I do know I stuck him deep.

     The cop said it was four am when he shook me. He asked what happened; I said I didn’t know. He asked my name; I told him John Crow. He shined the light on a puddle of blood and looked at me for an answer; I said I had no idea. All I knew was that my head was split open, my ribs hurt like hell, my pockets were torn from my blue jeans…and the rest of my money was gone. I knew too where Lisa lived. A slit gas line and a wooden match evened that score.

     It had been three days since I had eaten last and a week since I’d slept in a bed. I found a dime buried in the glove box and made a phone call to a biker I met at the bar, he said would buy the Harley for two thousand. I dropped the dime into the slot and dialed. He was home and was still interested, but only had seventeen hundred. I agreed. I stilled looked like hell when I pulled up to his house. He asked what freight train hit me. I wasn’t in the mood for jokes. I parted with the bike, stuffed the roll into my pocket and said I was off the Vegas. I wasn’t, but he didn’t need to know what I was doing…neither did any of his friends. I stopped at Burger King and got a bag full of burgers, rented a room where I took a long needed shower, filled the gas tank of the Chevy, and headed for Dallas where fifteen hundred bucks didn’t take take long to spend. I still hadn’t learned.

     Mary Lou brought another beer. I thanked her and slid another five across the bar. I watched as the face in the mirror lifted the bottle, pulled heavily, then lowered the bottle, my lips still wet with beer. I asked the face what is was that kept me going, kept me living, trying, pushing forward when it seemed so much pushed against me. The Boss and the E-Street band wailed My Hometown. The face laughed…my hometown.

     My hometown is a shitty little village situated along the Erie Canal that long ago was a thriving farming village. Hunt’s tomato factory was the main employer with Birds Eye and Bemis Bag closely following. Soon Lipton’s built a bustling tea packaging plant in town. During WWII, German prisoners of war were transported by boat to ocean ports and distributed across the country. Albion was one of those places. Part of the barbed wire fence remains today. It stands holding up 70 years of vines, bottles, and rust. Soon, it will fall and rot like everything else. Everything dies and rots; houses, people, pets, love affairs, marriages, homes. Homes rot before houses rot. The windows grow dark at night with tears falling to the porches. Then after the family dies, the windows break, they look like hollowed eye sockets in a skull with the busted down front door for a boney nose and the falling down porch, a crooked toothless frown with one corner crumbling into the dirt…they always do, they always die and rot—just look into that fucking mirror.

     Dirty politics took root in Albion…stinking greed. They were ruthless, crooked, and filthy. A few “people in the know”, narcissistic elitists milked, stole, and pilfered the town out of millions. So deep rooted was the corruption, payoffs, bribery, favors. Like the hospital where I was born. At twelve, I lay on the operating table dying from poison surging through my body from an exploded appendix. A million dollar grant was awarded to that hospital for new X-Ray equipment. Within a few years, there was no X-ray equipment, the administrators were gone, the town lawyers were properly bribed, and the million dollars just disappeared. Soon, the hospital disappeared. Businesses and factories closed and boarded up their doors, those politicians disappeared, rich and laughing, and in the wake were poor, stunned and out of work farm families stuck living in a dead and rotting village. My first impressions of politicians wasn’t good and still isn’t.

     Yet there are roots there in Albion, history, my history. I keep going back there, to my hometown. I remember when hot rods and muscle cars cruised Main Street looking for another race, another way to pronounce superiority, prowess in battle. Fights would break out between drunken friends who would share a bottle of Boones Farm later. We hung out in Grants parking lot until the cops kicked us out around midnight. Bob’s blue ‘70 GTX would ease across the train tracks and maybe Jimmy would jump in his Mustang or I’d fire up my Z-28, follow him down Main Street, and touch one off, just outside of town. We never thought about crashing, dying. Wagering with death was easy. How fast could I go and survive? There was always competition whether it was racing or gambling, it didn’t matter. How many drugs could I do, how much could I eat, drink, puke, smoke, how many women could I seduce? We were always trying to outdo one another…or trying to outdo myself. How many homes, lives could I break? How fast could I run against the wind?

     These days I find safety within solitude, I find security within myself, I find comfort with my face into the wind. I live alone and sit at the end of sleazy little bars looking into grimy mirrors sharing secrets with the faces from long ago. Some are neither pretty, nor wearing halos. Many are ugly, fierce, and frightening. They do however, have an air of honor, honesty, and pride. As I search and remember, I think about who I am today and the faces I will look at in years to come. I ask myself why have I lived that way. The answer is always the same: There is something spiritually special about lifting my head into the wind and wiping away the tears from the biting cold, and loving my life… and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

     The silence is broken when Mary Lou slides another Coors across the bar. She asked if I was watching faces again. I laughed and nodded. She told me to gather up the faces, she would be off in thirty minutes and walked away with her ponytail bouncing along behind...God I love to watch her strut. I made eye contact with the friendly face peering from between the beer and the bottles—and  Bob Seger reminded me, though I am older now, I’m still running against the wind.

Empty Windows

She had black hair with white splotches. She sat in my back seat shaking, scared, anxious the entire time I drove. You see, for a hobby of sorts, and to get away, I deliver displaced or adopted, or new pets to families. I love to drive. It is a meditation of sorts for me. The pet delivery thing is a great venue for this. I get to take dogs and cats, puppies and kittens to their new families, their new homes. At the same time I can relax...if driving 80 or 90 miles an hour in rush hour traffic around New York City or Philly, or even worse, Boston, can be called relaxing. But it is.

So I had to take a two year old Border Collie back to her breeder in Utica. Her owner was a drunk and didn't want her any more. This dog's owner had another great family who would take her in. I love animals. For some reason I bond with them; I guess even more so than with people on some levels since I've been married twice, have had too many relationships, and not many close friends. The minute this dog and I met, there was a connection, a spiritual connection that can't be related, analyzed, nor rationalized.It just is.

She ran over to me and sat in front of me, pawed at my leg. She was about twenty pounds and when she sat, her head was about mid-thigh high. She wanted a reassuring pet. She didn't want to go. A crate was out of the question, so I picked her up and sat her in the back seat. She turned her back to me and looked out the back window. Her front legs shook the entire trip. She tried to lay down but couldn't. So she sat there, in the back seat, back to me, looking out the back window...and shook.

I talked to her, she didn't have a name. Dog was good with her since her name would be changed again anyway. A new house, another family, another name. She was going to another place and didn't have any control over it. Others always have control over it. My heart was bleeding for this dog, this life that didn't know where she was going, where her next meal was coming form, where she was going to sleep that night.

So on we drove. All the while, my mind crept into times in my life when I was displaced,  scared, didn't know where I was going to call home. I have never had a home, not a long standing home. The longest I've lived in one place has been seven years. All this dog wanted was to have a place, a home, where she could lay down at night with the same people and know she would never take a long ride again...doesn't everyone want that? Doesn't everyone want to have enough comfort to feel safe, secure, and wanted?

Finally, we arrived at the meeting place, a Burger King in Utica. It was cool. The sun shined bright and Fall was showing in the trees. The dog jumped out of my truck and I tried to lead her toward the other car. She didn't want to go. The woman took the dog's leash and walked her. The dog ran a little, but refused to get into the car. She was saying, "watch, I can run and play right here in the grass...please don't make me get into the car."

I had to leave. I was devastated. I decided to not take the Thruway back and drive around in the mountains a bit. I turned off the GPS and headed North. I wound up just North of Onedia Lake and drove around on some back roads. Still upset over the dog, I couldn't shake her out of my mind. All along the roads there were empty houses. Houses that were abandoned, owners long gone. I wondered if they got old and died or just up and left for whatever reason. The houses, all of them, had windows in front, windows that people looked out at night, barriers between the terrors of loneliness outside and the security inside. Now, those windows looked dark and blank, dead, like black holes in a scull, with the front door as a nose and the rotting porches like a toothless frown. The owners were gone, left the houses alone in the night to die, rot, and crumble into compost...like all life does eventually...like I will, like that dog will.

Living alone is scary at times, mostly it is numbing. I made a comment once that I could flop over dead in the living room and no one would know until the neighbors complained about the smell. I have two cats who make my house not so empty. They know, or at least assume, that they will always live there...and die there. When I moved into my house, Frizzbee wouldn't come out from under the end table for weeks. Big Cat was pissed. He swiped at me for a week. Then they both settled down when they felt safe, like I wasn't going to kick them out again...they are both rescue cats; their original owners didn't want them either.

So I drove through the mountains looking at dead houses wondering why they were abandoned and left alone. I wondered about the dog and if she would ever get over being kicked out of her home. And I wondered about me, my house, and whether it would ever be home...and whether my home would have dead eyes for windows when I turn to dirt.

Hi, Me

It's finally Fall, not that I particularly care for Fall since Fall is a premonition of winter, of freezing cold, so cold that clouds of vaporized breath freezes and crumbles to the frozen ground. So cold that fingers and ears blacken with frost-bite, like my fingers and ears did walking home after school...like my father's did working construction, his finger tips split open and raw, bleeding and bandaged. He used to rub Corn Huskers lotion on them every night, then he would wrap them up with old socks, always out of our sight. We should never see our fathers tears.

Fall is festive; a time of ancient celebration. Today fall is a pain in the ass. Yesterday fall was when crops were harvested and stored, blessings counted along with yields; it would be a year before fresh food would be available. Fall is a paradox. Life sustaining food is gathered from dead plants. Seeds from trees mature and fall to the ground, then covered and protected with dead leaves. Things die in the fall, giving way to life. Should I celebrate the coming life or mourn over the death? Ancient people celebrated, they are dead too. Yet I am here, alive. A vicious and perpetual circle...life to death, back again to life only to die once again.

It was fall when I caught my first fish. A dead leaf meandered lifelessly on the water, carried by the slow current of the creek. The walk wasn't too bad, only about half a mile in back of the old farm house I grew up in. I was four and had a pole, a willow stick probably, with a piece of string and a hook tied to it. I was the oldest, my sister was three and wasn't interested in wiggling worms or slimy fish yet. My brother was two and my younger brother was still doing whatever it is that babies do, so it was just me and my Dad. He told me to watch that dead leaf and to toss the line in just ahead of it; a fish will get curious and nibble at it. I'm not sure if it was true, nevertheless, I did. A small Sunfish nuzzled the leaf and just downstream, I lowered a wiggling worm into the water with my line. That little fish must have figured the flailing worm was better food than the dead leaf. He was too small to mouth the hook, so I hoisted my catch out of the water while he dangled from the worm, unwilling to let go of his catch. After I wrestled with him for a minute, Dad told me to toss him back in since he was a kid like me and deserved a chance to grow up.

I remember well  that place that we called "Back West". The winding creek lined with towering trees and groves of pines, the green fields of tomatoes and the golden fields of wheat, the apple and cherry orchards, are all vivid images from a childhood time of exploration, of uncomplicated life on a farm, of meals cooked and eaten together with family, and of a time and place unique only to me. I visit there often, especially lately since my Dad passed away in March. I wonder why from his death, I have become more alive with memories of the past...perhaps because my own death gets closer to reality every day. Perhaps because I am clawing against the current, grinding my fingers raw on the rocks trying to hang on, fighting against the inevitable. Or perhaps I am not fighting the current, but rather just slowing it down in a world of time compression, of instant information and instant deletion. Maybe if I can solidify the fluidity of my memories by morphing them into some semblance of coherent sentences, not only can I slow the erosion of time past, but maybe I can place meaning on those memories, meaning with relationships of today. Then maybe I can identify me. Maybe I can figure out why I am me...maybe I can look at me in the mirror and say, "Hey, I know you. Hi, I am me. Glad to meet you."