July 15, 2004
The past few nights I’ve worked on a short story, went to a park ranger party and passed out exhausted, so I’m abandoning chronology in favor of topic for now.
Rabbit
You know Rabbit. He’s talking to me while half asleep right now. He goes to work soon.
Digger
Digger is my neighbor, mentioned above. He lives with George, to be introduced later. Digger’s a line cook, and George is moving out soon because Digger is a difficult roommate. He’s talking to Rabbit about it right now. "He’s a slob, though, look at all this shit. Wrappers everywhere. Geez, look at all those beer cases."
"Damn," Rabbit says.
Stacey
Don’t have much to add except that she has another sticker that says, “Enjoy life, eat out more often,” with two stick figures locked in 69 position. Who would buy such a thing? Stan told me that one time a troop of Boy Scouts came to the lake and took turns posing for photos next to the eat out more often sticker.
Stefanie
She likes to sing Queen while we work. She went to school to get a degree for her parents’ approval, but got one in theater. She likes odd numbers and the number 5, excusing even numbers divisible by five, and peanut butter. Peanut butter pancakes. She’s broken out in hives since moving to Crater Lake. She doesn’t want a real job. This is the farthest she’s ever been from her parents. On her 21st birthday she worked 13 hours at the docks and didn’t have a drink. She likes vodka, because it doesn’t taste strong.
Tim and Stan and the keeping up the rangers
“She’s a big lass she’s a bonny lass and she’ loves her beer, and her name is Cushy Butterfield and I wish she was here,” The three of us sang, egging along the 20 or so temporary park rangers who invited us over for a weekly pasta party.
Tim knows about 100 sea shantys, working songs, drinking songs, showtunes, song parodies, and when he’s had two drinks they all come out just about until he’s had his fill. Tim worked in the Navy as a young man, then went on to the Coast Guard where he worked for many years. He looks back fondly, but never forgets the names of the people he lost or couldn’t find. Then he worked at Portland city parks for nearly 20 years before retiring. He likes his job and has many stories from the bathrooms at city parks alone. Like the time a co-worker tried to get a man to leave the bathroom, only to have to force her way in and discover a 300-pound man riding a counter-mounted vibrating dildo. Or the fact that when junkies finish in public bathrooms, they don’t leave needles out in the open. They tuck them away in crevices for unsuspecting city employees to stick themselves on. Tim is living away from his wife this summer. He’s retired, and seems to be enjoying the freedom from home. He obsesses over the romantic lives of the rangers, and the fact that handsome Dillon is sleeping with Jane, who has a great navel and a slender body. He’s into “homosexual women,” as Stan says. He’s always ogling some young woman or commenting about some cleavage or nipples. This isn’t creepy in a dirty old man kind of way. This is a military man of the sea, cherishing lecherous sex talk in absence of a wife he’s been around way too long. He’s like a little kid discovering boobies for the first time. It’s inspiring really. Tim has a big bushy moustache.
“Fill the pot Annie, fill the pot Annie, Hey Ho nobody’s home, no eat nor drink nor money have I none.”
I think maybe the manliest thing I’ve done is sit around drinking more and later than any of us should have, singing sea shantys and dancing and stomping. When I compare the experience to sports or fishing, or whatever masculine posturing you can come up with, it’s a far more honest expression. When you can drink in the company of other men and sing dirty songs with endless verses about fat women, cabin boys, twats and cunts, and not be self-conscious, that’s manly. It’s soul bearing to sing songs together. Fearless and freeing.
Stan is learning more and more songs, and more and more knots. He’s been bouncing back and forth from nautical misadventures and earning degrees (he’s got four: Classics, History, Fisheries, and I can’t remember) at small colleges across the country. He’s very soft-spoken, but a learned conversationalist when you get him out of his shell. he has a large dark beard and moustache and long hair tied up behind. He thinks the 40s were the peak of the American drama. He considers the United States the best thing to come out fo Europe, not because of its success, but its epic tragedy and drama. He speaks as though it were a century earlier. He’s worked in living museums for years. He loves Dharma Bums and hates On the Road. He appears to have read everything. He says he knew Jerry Garcia and Ken Kesey and I believe him.
We left the party at the ranger dorms (which are palaces compared to our humble rooms) a bit after we were told that we could sing, but please don’t stomp. The three of us got fairly drunk and drove very slowly back to Mazama dorm. Tim went to bed and I went up to meet Stan's wife and have another beer. When I left, they and another woman were all practicing a certain technique with string. I’m pretty sure Stan was drunk the next morning.
George
George is my other neighbor. The Rim dorm is full of young people, who all seem to criticize Mazama for having so many old people. But young people and nothing but is really so much style with no substance. For example, George is a tiny man who speaks quietly and scares a lot of younger people. He’s 80, chain smokes and often hacks up god knows what in our shared bathroom.
Once I set my glasses down in the boat shed, and when I went to put them back on they were thick bifocals. Nobody could find the owner of the glasses, or my sunglasses, so the park ranger took them to bring them to lost and found. As the ranger was walking away, I looked at George, who appeared to be wearning my glasses.
“George, are those my sunglasses?”
“Heh, no.”
“Are you sure?”
He pulled them off and looked.
“I was wondering why I wasn’t seeing so well on that last tour.”
That’s the kind of thing you have to deal with at 80, even in George's amazing condition. For all he knew, it was just another sense, another part wearing down, failing slowly. His two possibilities at that point were: 1. His vision had just totally failed, despite bifocals, or 2. He lost his glasses and would have to pay 300 bucks to get new ones. But he lauged it off. George reads a book about boat captains during our drive to the dock.
If you can crack him, you’ll find that he’s sharp as ever. He’s a Pacific Ocean boat captain normally. He was a Marine in the Battle of Guadalcanal, one of the bloodiest battles in World War II. He’s funny, and quick and for an 80 year old man, is easier to talk to than most 20 somethings. He works 12 hour days, and his only handicap allowed is that he rides the tractor up the hill with our packs instead of hiking. I like George a lot and I’m sorry he’s moving. I’m also sorry that people see him as a novelty instead of a person to talk with and actually meet. I’m sorry I see him that way a little bit.
Roger, another boat captain: “You know that commercial with the two squirrels, crashing the cars as they come down the road. That’s a funny commercial.”
George: “De best commershel I seen in a long time is that one with the two lizards.”
Roger: “Lizards?”
George: “It’s two lizards, sitting there. Talking lizards. And de small one, he’s always getting into some kind of trouble.”
Silence.
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