July 7, 2004

• Civil Disobedience
  (see my July 4 blog for the backstory.)

  
  …but first, littlemissscatterbrain
  wants to know how to make Dr. Pepper hot.  No, it’s not a sexy
  joke, but response to a comment on a comment about caffeine delivery
  systems.  When I was in active addiction (to sugar), I’d never
  turn down a Coke, and I’d often go out of my way to get one.  The
  red and white logo sometimes still will set off the same sort of nostalgic musings
  I go into over meth when my needle tracks itch.  (Diet pop is like
  buying meth and discovering you got baking soda.)  But from the
  first time I tried Dr. Pepper, I liked him better than Coke.  I
  especially like my Doctor hot. 

  That
  started in Wichita, Kansas in the early 1960s when I worked as a car
  hop in wintertime at a drive-in restaurant.  They would fill a big
  old aluminum coffee urn with Doctor and get it hot for us to serve our
  customers and ourselves.  Customarily, a lemon slice was floated
  on top.  If you don’t want to do it on such a large scale,
  scatterbrain, you could pour some in a saucepan or zap it in the
  microwave (but take it out of the aluminum can first).   If
  you want a hint of what Dr. Pepper tastes like, without having to cross
  the border, add a little prune juice to a Coke. *grin* (no foolin’…
  honest: prune flavor!  YUM!)

  
  That pic up top is one I forgot to save and post last month when I made
  a short trip up the Talkeetna Spur Road to pick up some meds at
  Sunshine Clinic.  It’s Denali, the Great One, AKA Weathermaker,
  and called Mount McKinley in official U.S. publications and the
  journalists’ stylebooks.  It is about 140 road miles from where
  the Spur Road joins the Parks Highway, I don’t know how far
  straight-line.  The next shot, to the right, is part of
  the line of cars that followed me from Wasilla to Houston for the
  fireworks show on the Fourth.  The one below, on the left, is the
  way the road looked heading into Houston when I pulled off at the edge
  of town because the already crawling traffic had come to a stop. 
  That was about 11:30 PM, just before the fireworks started.
  
  
  The
  fun started for me when I read the news story about the fireworks
  vendors threatening to put on illegal fireworks shows because the burn
  ban prevented them from selling their merchandise.  I am my
  father’s daughter.  He was a gawker at roadside wrecks, and a
  chaser of sirens who listened to shortwave police and ambulance calls
  and went to the scenes to gawk, when they sounded interesting.  I
  knew that no matter what happened, there would be a crowd.

   When Doug got up I asked him if he wanted to go see the fireworks
  show.  He asked what time it would happen and I said no time had
  been announced, and then explained the situation.  He was game for
  it.  We left early enough to let me catch my favorite meeting,
  Double Trouble.  On the way to town we saw several hand-lettered
  signs posted on bridges and light poles.   They said “Fireworks
  Show–11:30–Mile 57″  So that answered the kid’s question.
  
  I did some shopping, went to the meeting, then Doug and I killed the rest of the evening watching Ash’s second film, Bang, with
  Greyfox at his cabin.  After the main feature we had time for some
  short subjects, an episode each of Buzz Corey and the Space Patrol from
  ‘fifties TV (complete with commercials), and the old Green Hornet
  serial from the late thirties/early forties.  The old fart scored
  a bonanza of old video recently.

  As
  soon as we started across Wasilla to pick up my friend Amy, I
  laughed.  The old fart asked me, “What?”  I nodded toward the
  endless line of traffic coming from Anchorage.  I reminded him
  that the show had been publicized as news in that morning’s Anchorage
  paper, and that there were signs everywhere.  We started
  speculating about what we’d see, whether troopers would stop the show
  and start a riot… what fun, even before the show had begun.  It
  had been raining off and on for two days, so fire danger was minimal.

  When the traffic slowed to a halt, I zipped into a “full” parking area
  and went in perpendicularly between two parallel parked cars and got
  the shot, above to the right, of my three companions before we
  scattered to catch the show.  Doug, always the backstage freak,
  went right down to the empty lot where the big bangs were set up. 
  I found a spot on the bridge approach and watched people until the
  fireworks started.  Do you suppose that if she knew what her butt
  would look like from behind, that woman would have jumped on that guy’s
  back?

  The
  show was more sound than light, with the sun barely below the
  horizon.  Doug saw a lot more than I did, because trees blocked my
  view of the ground fountains and much of the aerial stuff.  These
  were not big professional fireworks, just a big lot of backyard
  fireworks set off together.  The shot at right was near the end,
  about midnight, as dark as it got during the show.

  Greyfox
  was first back to the car… maybe he never left the parking lot, who
  knows?  Not the adventurous sort, that man.  I dawdled and
  watched the crowd.  Some people driving by called out my name and
  waved.  Have I mentioned that this big spread-out state is
  socially very much like a small town?  I’ve been here long enough
  to be able to find people I know in just about any crowd, but I seldom
  go looking for them.  They find me.

  It
  was a happy crowd, for the most part.  Some guy with a steamy
  boiling Jeep was asking around in the parking area for duct tape to fix
  a coolant leak.  Parents were looking for their kids, but I didn’t
  hear any lost kids crying for parents.  A big-tired 4-wheel-drive
  truck caused some amused comment by fording Willow Creek beside the
  bridge to get around the traffic jam.  Not that it did him any
  good.  There was just as much of a jam on the other side of the
  creek.  I suppose it released a little of his frustration, anyway,
  and got him some attention and applause.

  When
  the mother of a pack of kids with colorful hair caught me taking
  pictures of them, she said, “Let’s get them all lined up!”  How
  could I refuse?  She called them together, and they were an alert
  and quickly obedient lot except for the young man at center of the back
  row there.  I could tell he thought it was infra dig, but he
  condescended to it.

  Around
  that time, when the people in cars headed toward Houston were finding
  out they’d missed the show and the ones in Houston were discovering
  that the road back to town was choked with cars re-entering the
  highway, there was a lot of blowing of horns and screeching of
  tires.  The down-valley, city-bound flow had established itself by
  the time Doug got back to our car.  Amy had apparently been
  looking for him in Houston, because she asked him as soon as she got
  back how he’d gotten ahead of her.

  
  I put my camera away, figuring I’d gotten enough pictures of
  traffic.  That’s about the time the other show started, back at
  the Big Lake turnoff about five miles away, where the fireworks stands
  are located.  I got the camera back out in time to catch a bit of
  that show, which was shorter than the first.  Our viewpoint was
  better for this one, in terms of light, facing away from the
  sunset.  But there were more trees in the way and more miles
  between us and the show.  This shot shows pretty much the level of
  what we got to see in that show.

  Doug and Amy and I stood at the open hatch of my car Streak, ate
  blueberries and talked while traffic thinned.  Greyfox sat in the
  car and read from Book One of the Elric Saga, which Doug had brought
  along for entertainment.

  My
  stated plan was to just chill a while, waiting until the traffic
  thinned enough that I could enter the line of cars without having to
  burn rubber to avoid being rear-ended, as the other cars were doing as
  they entered the road.  It did thin some, but after a long wait
  there were still cars coming close enough together that an easy
  entrance wasn’t possible.  Doug and Amy both reminded me as I
  squealed out onto the highway that I had said I wasn’t going to do
  that.  I had been wrong, so I promptly admitted it.  I didn’t
  even get defensive about it, or claim the “women’s prerogative” to
  change my mind.  I just squealed on out of there and speed
  shifted, and soon was doing 55MPH like everyone else. 

  We took Amy home, I dropped Greyfox and his place and drove back up the
  valley.  When I came through Houston it was as dead quiet as it
  always is after midnight.  You’d never have known that for a while
  that night it had been the fourth or fifth most populous town in Alaska.
  

  • 5:32 pm
  • 7 Comments