May 20, 2004

• Almost as good as indoor plumbing….

  
  When I take my shower before going to town tomorrow, I won’t have to go
  to the laundromat for it.  It is hard to express how important
  that is to me.  I’d rather bathe in a tub than take showers,
  anyway, and packing a bag, driving to the campground, spending $4.00,
  and then hurrying through the shower routine because the owner gets
  surly if I take too long–well, let me just say I’d rather shower at
  home.

  That had been my choice for as long as we lived here where there is a
  bathtub with a functioning drain, even if there’s no running water into
  it.  Greyfox brought with him when he moved to Alaska a Sun Shower
  a lot older and funkier than the one in this pic, but functionally
  identical.  He had gotten it from his sister as a gift along with
  a lot of other camping gear.  He used to go camping in greater
  luxury than we live in.

  My at-home showering had to stop last fall when Greyfox shut down his
  stand for the winter and moved back in here.  He had clothing and
  other gear, plus a lot of knives and other stock from the stand, and
  there was no place to put it.  When he moved out, Doug and I just
  sorta expanded into the space he’d filled.  He’d had a room of his
  own, and now Doug has it.  I had put up several big steel shelf
  units in the back room and allotted some shelf space for Greyfox’s
  stock, but he filled that space with back stock and needed a place to
  put the regular stock when he turned his roadside stand back into a car
  last winter.

  When he asked me where he could stow some stuff as he was moving back
  in here in October, I thought a while and told him to put it in the
  bathtub temporarily.  Really the only alternative was on our bed
  and I knew we’d be needing that sooner than we’d need the
  bathtub.  I just never came up with a better place to put the
  stuff, nor the energy to move it.  Now it has taken him a couple
  of months to get most of his stuff moved out again.  He says his
  little cabin in town is now in “warehouse mode”.  Believe
  it.  Under the bed, under the table, stacked in boxes in
  corners–knives everywhere.  In my bathtub he left some clothing
  and a few bags of paperback books.  Those, he says he doesn’t
  need, so I’ll have to put them someplace before I shower tomorrow, but
  it’s worth the effort, not to have to leave home to take a shower.

  The shower bag is designed to hang up in a tree and absorb solar
  energy, but we frankly don’t have a lot of that to spare around
  here.  In winter I keep water heating on top of the woodstove, and
  in summer I heat water in my teakettle to fill the bag.  There was
  no shower curtain, nor any rod to hang one from when we moved in here,
  but there’s a pair of brackets for a rod.   I bent a piece of
  clothes-hanger wire into a hook that holds my shower bag, and it hooks
  into one of the curtain rod brackets.  I fill the bag at the
  kitchen sink and schlepp it down the hallway to the bathroom. 
  Okay, it’s more work than most of you have to go to for a shower–it’s
  also an excuse not to shower every day.  All that soap and water’s
  hard on my skin, anyway.  Not that I wouldn’t be soaking in a tub
  every day if I could.  I actually did heat gallons and gallons of
  water and haul them back to the bath twice the first year we were here,
  but I’m not that energetic any more.  A shower will do.

  ————————

  I have this mischievous urge to share with you some more gossip from
  Felony Flats.  If you hate the Jerry Springer Show, just stop
  here.  State Troopers have been coming and going around there a
  lot the last few days, and it hasn’t been because Greyfox called to
  complain about the noise or to report bodies lying in the
  driveway.  It also hasn’t been because they’re busting the
  household of young drug dealers living in the shipping container at the
  other end of the strip, either.  They’re still apparently getting
  away with it.

  The cabin right next to Greyfox’s was being lived in by a man we’ll
  call “Bill.”  A couple of months ago, as I pulled in to pick up
  Greyfox for a meeting one night, there were two State Trooper cars
  outside Bill’s cabin.  Bill’s wife had brought them with her when
  she came to pick up their son.  She’d been gone for three weeks,
  just left one day and then came back three weeks later for the kid, and
  brought the Troopers with her.  While she was there, she went into
  the office for a while and came back out with Bill’s eviction
  notice.  Time passed, Bill did not comply with the eviction notice
  and the owner went to court.  Meanwhile, Bill’s cabin became a
  favorite party spot and he became more and more of a public
  nuisance.  Talk about a man whose life has become unmanageable….

  An older woman moved in with him.  We’ll call her Faye. 
  She’s a worn-out looking blonde with a lot of tacky tattoos.  Now
  I’m not saying that all body art is tacky.  I’m saying that Faye
  has a bunch of sloppy ink.  But it goes with the rest of
  her.  Faye, by the way, was the woman I mentioned a few days ago
  who was first loudly and vulgarly demanding her phone, then sobbing
  alone on the steps, then lying in the fetal position in the gravel
  while the rest of the animals partied on.  They’ve all moved out
  now, finally got the message that if they didn’t go the Troopers would
  take them.  Bill moved his stuff out one day, then the next day
  when Ernie the handyman went in to clean up the place he found Faye
  there asleep.  Apparently she’d come in after Bill left and didn’t
  know he’d moved out.  That’s what she said, anyway.

  Anyhow, all that backstory is so this part will make sense. 
  Y’see, Greyfox went dumpster diving and scored a great bunch of stuff
  including kid’s clothes, hardware, a suitcase, etc.  The suitcase
  was full of documents such as an eviction notice from some place Bill’s
  wife had lived in when she lived in Florida, Bill’s and her marriage
  license, the receipt for $50.25 for their two 10-karat wedding rings
  they bought last year.  Greyfox also found a letter from Faye to
  Bill.  Did he read it?  Of course he did.  He told me
  Faye was worried about being ten years older than Bill, afraid he’d
  dump her for a younger woman, so she dumped him first.  Moral of
  the story:  never assume that something you throw away will stay
  away.  Shred or burn sensitive documents.

  But to get back to the Troopers:  one was there searching around
  and in Bill’s now-vacant cabin yesterday.  He was dutifully
  tight-lipped about what he was doing there, so Greyfox had to go talk
  to the landlord’s wife to get the story.  It seems that Bill
  and/or others among his party animal friends had stolen some valuable
  equipment when they left.  There may or may not be further
  develoments there later on.  Now, on to the story of Gimli and
  Bluto (not, I presume, their real names).

  These are a couple, maybe a married couple.  Gimli is the
  female.  Bluto is a big guy with a loud bass voice and an ugly
  attitude.  Gimli, as Greyfox describes her, is built like a cross
  between a pekingese and a fireplug.  They have at least one kid
  and a pit bull pup.  The pup is the smartest and friendliest one
  of the bunch.  This morning, a trooper car was outside Bluto and
  Gimli’s cabin for a while.  It left and a little later Bluto
  stomped into the office and Greyfox could hear Bluto shouting, with
  lots of “fucks” and “shits” and “damns.”   Then he stomped
  back out and the landlord’s wife came out behind him with her cell
  phone.  A minute or so later, a trooper was there, cuffing Bluto
  and putting him in the car.

  Bill and Bluto were more than just neighbors.  To judge by the
  shouted argument I heard between them over whether or not to “walk on”
  the dope they’d bought for resale, they were business partners,
  partners in crime.  But it wasn’t anything to do with Bill or his
  thefts that brought the Troopers to Gimli and Bluto’s house
  today.   It seems that Bluto has been beating up on
  Gimli.  Since she’s the one who pays the rent there and she and
  the landlord both want Bluto out of there, and Bluto wasn’t inclined to
  go quietly, he’s going to jail instead.

  There’s more, but it’s not the same sort of story as Bill’s or
  Bluto’s.  There’s this young drunk, perpetually drunk and
  incoherent, guy that I made the mistake one day of borrowing a wrench
  from to tighten up a cable on Greyfox’s bicycle.  He tried to
  “help.”  He rubbed up against me, made some lewd suggestions… I
  wanted to yank his beer goggles off and tell the asshole to take a good
  look, I’m a great-grandma fercrissake! 

  And then there’s the single middle-aged female who moved in last week,
  whom we have started calling “lonely girl.”  She showed up at
  Greyfox’s door the other night to buy a lightbulb and stood there
  chatting him up even after he’d given her a lightbulb to get rid of
  her.  After a few polite tries to say goodnight, he said it again
  and shut the door.  Next day, she’d tacked up a hand-lettered sign
  with a quote from Corinthians on her front porch.  Greyfox called
  it “aesthetically and metaphysically offensive.”

  Anyhow, word around Felony Flats yesterday was that Beer Goggles and
  Lonely Girl have been seen huggling together.  Don’t ever let
  anyone try and tell you something is better than nothing… but then
  again, maybe they’re right for each other.

  So, whaddaya think… did Andy Kaufman really fake his death?

  • 12:01 am
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