Baboon in the Bluegrass, Part 3: Morehead, Kentucky

NO. It's not a sexual request.

It's a city... well, more like a town... a town that will, undoubtedly, be swallowed by the monolithic beast that is Morehead State University (Curse it's name!) and become a plaza shopping and living pavilion... with oodles and oodles of parking, of course. (They really did bulldoze a park once, and put in a parking lot. Well, it was more like a grassy knoll. Ok... more like an abandoned field by the side of the road. But it WAS green space.)

The nice thing about being gone for so long (George and Laura and I decided that my last visit to the area was maybe 8 years ago.) is that there's hardly anyone around who might remember me. At least, no one hanging around on the street or in the coffee shop. This is to my advantage; I wanted to walk around, see what changed, and take things in without people asking How I Am or What am I Up To. I could walk around, be perceived as slightly creepy, take pictures with my cell phone, and slip back out of town again without raising too many eyebrows.

But where to begin? 

One of the problems I have in coming back here -- other than a the fairly good chance of running into some ghost of my old self -- is that when I think about the place, image in my mental map of the place is a bit dated... circa 1995 or 96. When I think about Morehead, I think about driving into town on KY-32 and seeing the mountains on fire the year there wasn't much rain, black smoke blocking out the sun for what seemed like an entire summer. I think about the year there was too much rain and the whole North end of town flooded -- including a house of Melissa's Theater Department friends who were too stoned to realize they needed to leave. That happened when I was in graduate school, around 2001... but it's still part of the elemental 1995 map.

There are houses gone that I expect to be gone, and houses gone that I expect to be there. Every single structure I lived in with my daughter's mother, Anna, is gone. It is as if our marriage -- brief and ridiculously dramatic as it was -- has been erased from the landscape. To be honest, I find it oddly comforting. The number of people who have any memory of that botched disaster of a relationship is shrinking. Even my daughter -- the only good to come out of my first marriage -- has no memory of her mother and I ever being together. For this, I am eternally grateful. Anna's parents are dead. Her grandparents are dead. My mother isn't, thank god.

But she has the courtesy not to bring up my early marriage as one in a catalog of mistakes I made In Spite Of Her Telling Me So.

Morehead has more parking lots than I remember. The Fuzzy Duck Coffee Shop, once located in what was once the back store room of Coffee Tree Books, which was located in a nominally interesting shopping center, is not located -- along with Coffee Tree Books -- in the building that was once the movie theater downtown.

(This was replaced by a six screen multi-plex out on the by-pass. More screens for more lousy movies. And really expensive popcorn. But the bubble gum under the seats is more fresh, at least.)

 It's theoretically more space. The coffee shop takes up what was once the concessions and lobby. The problem is, that it still looks like a movie theater, only with no popcorn, Ike&Mike's, or stale Reese's Pieces and over priced watered down pop. They do the whole coffee, soup and sandwiches thing, along with all the usual coffee boutique items... coffee mugs (though not ByBee Pottery... a travesty, as far as I'm concerned.) froo-froo coffee contraptions, French coffee presses, ground and whole bean coffee, and a plethora of teas.

"Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has NO IDEA what it means to have a plethora."

But if ever there was a town that needed a bar... it would be THIS one.

The problem, however -- at least according to conventional wisdom -- is that no bar in downtown has ever succeeded for very long.

Scratch that. No downtown bar has ever been ALLOWED to succeed for very long.

At least, that's the assertion of an old friend, Clark. Back in the day, Clark was one of those Those Guys. He played guitar. Girls liked him. Generally people thought he was something of a pretentious ass... but he was still likable too. Clark has been living in Morehead almost exclusively for the past 20 years. One of the things we sat and talked about -- in the newish location of the Fuzzy Duck/Coffee Tree Books was how much town had changed since the last time I was here. The new Wal-Mart. The new Public Library, which, while it's not in the middle of town anymore ... which is decidedly inconvienent if you don't have a car... is a much nicer, much bigger space.

The old library is being adapted into the new home of the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music, which now occupies a Main Street storefront location.

The new space will have class rooms, recording studios, and will generally be a  nicer space. 

The other advantage of the new space is that it won't be owned by this guy... the biggest, sleaziest slum lord in town.

The Dixie Grill... one of the downtown townie restaurants knowns as much for the oderiferious air as the cheap food, is now a hair salon. Main Street Records is now a bakery. One of the bars where I used to go for dime drafts on Thirsty Thursdays is now a church children's youth center. (I blame the Bapists.)  The other bar -- the one with multiple names and multiple owners -- is now a Thursday night Karaoke /Dance Club. (Not sure if the Soot Scootin' Boogie or the Macarena is still in vogue.

When I told Clark that I didn't know how I felt about the coffee shop residing in the lobby of the old movie theater he nodded, but said "It grows on you."

As we continued our conversation, he admitted to a certain ambivalence regarding his life in town. "I don't know," he said," whether I'm really stuck here or whether I stay out of a sense of obligation."

The obligation he meant was his the obligation he felt to his children. He has a son, who is 13, and a younger daughter. Both of his children are with different mothers. Both mothers still live in the area, and he has to see them on a regular basis. But he also seems to understand that a parent is more than provider, protector, soundboard, bank, and bed and board landlord. He also knows that maybe the best function a parent serves is an object lesson.

Clark told me a story about taking his son, at the time 12, with him on a road trip to a city. Clark, who's early drinking experience was made up of house parties and music gigs (with him on stage); he admitted that to not really ever having a bar experience until the Buffalo Wings and Things, took his son around to different bars in the city they were in. Clark sipped on drinks while his son took in the general atmosphere.

This is BW3's. It's too bright, too plastic, and costs too much.
Oh yeah, and the bartender, who looked 10, didn't know how to make a proper Bloody Mary.

This sorority girl and others like her,. who will probably be praying  for forgiveness on Sunday when they go to church, is one of the things that makes BW3's entirely too loud to be a place worth drinking in.

"He was loving it," Clark said. "And that was the point. I told him..." he paused briefly, as if he were gathering the words, or maybe thinking about his own life for split second. "I told him if he ever wanted to DO anything, that he needed to get out of here."

That pesky left foot is always late.

Morehead is the kind of place people go, stay for a specific but undetermined period of time, and then leave. It's like most college towns in that way. For that matter, it has always been a suitcase campus -- students would pack up and go back home for the weekend, and I saw nothing that made me think that had changed. It's easy to think it's almost planned out... that the university Board of Regents, the Chamber of Commerce, and the town council all got together with the cops and decided to make the town as unappealing to college age people as possible without being too overt about it.

There are other, less subtle but nonetheless accepted forms of creeping fascism. Yes, I call it fascism. When the corporate institutions intermingle interests with the political and financial life a community, the prevailing system becomes something like a a slightly more benevolent form of fascism. It may not be too intrusive, and certainly not enough to upset the too young to be paranoid college age kids who, by their silence, accept the rule of the regime.

Don't even get me started on what's wrong with this... I would like to point out, however, that tobacco money built the fucking campus. It's the #1 legal cash crop of the state. I'd also like to point out that there's a Taco Bell in the student center.

This is the entrance to what used to be  the English  Dept. Building. Now  it's the College of Business, which is kind enough to allow the English Department to say. See the sign? English Majors are people too!

This is one of the places we used to stand and smoke... before the  fast food financed fascists took over.

And this, dear readers, is where all the money really goes.

The new and updated Adrian Doran University  Center (ADUC) Your tuition and tax dollars at work.

There are still a few remnants of my past here, though. And some aren't even all that depressing.

The front door to 122 W. Second Street. The house I shared with  Jared, Bobby, Dave,and  sometimes, Eric. My primary function was to screw over the landlord, who charged per student rather than a lump sum of rent.

Douchebag apartments next door. They weren't there when I was  a student. Merely  pointing out that they're a blight. And Douchey.

I did more drinking than I can remember here. Really.  Pictures would  be appreciated. Really. Or... you know, forget it.

When I started here as a Sophmore, these two urinals was  a single long narrow trough. Keep your eyes on your own winkie, dammit.! God is watching.

I just think this is cute. Like those poor dumb kids are really going to find JOBS.

Oh, and see that diminutive bell tower behind the signs? Once upon a time, there was a tall, healthy, beautiful pine tree there, that had stood for as long as anyone remembered. It was cut down because someone with money wanted to put up a bell tower with her name on it.

 Did I mention diminutive? It's more like a vibrator for a hollowed out porn star. It plays show tunes sometimes, too.

[I need to extend my thanks to Paul V. Christensen, Mike Frazier, Brian Parsons, and Dixie Parsons for some welcome donations. Thanks to you, I've bought my train ticket from Ashland and expect to be in Norfolk on THURSDAY FEBRUARY 9th.

If you like what you read here, you can help by:

1. Passing the link around.
2. Graciously donating to the cause using the button on the right hand side of the screen;
3. Contact Catherine Sellers at Greyhound, 415-331-6049. Tell them you are asking about a sponsorship when the operator picks up. I write about them enough. They should be helping me help them. Right??

Thanks for reading.]

Porkopolis, Part 2: The Return of Creepy Louis

"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." - Albert Camus.


"You call that an argument?" - The Cincinnati Kid  (1965)

It took me three runs, but I FINALLY got us out of the storage locker. We (Melissa and I) have been paying the monthly rent on that space since 2005. Being out from under it feels like Sisyphus rolling the stone over the top of the hill.

There's something odd about sifting through the remains of a life; because that's ultimately what I've been struggling to do this week. Sift through and try to learn to let go.

And it's not easy. I can't help but remember that once upon a time, we were happy.

There's a point, though, when all that memory becomes either nostalgia or absurd. There's a point where you can either laugh about how ridiculous it all is or being dragged under weight of memory.

So I spent last night with friends -- finally catching up with Aaron K. He, his girlfriend, and once again with my friend Eric M, who was gracious enough to drive through a torrential rain to pick me up. We were, once again, down at the Cock and Bull... because not only was it Pint Night ($5 Peroni and you get to keep the glass), but because it was Aaron's birthday. He turned 38, which is one of those years that means nothing other than you're creeping perilously close to 40. And 40 is one of those ages that men tend to view as some sort of mile marker on the road of inevitable decline.

Aaron's been teaching at the University Cincinnati as a part-timer. That was after being a full time instructor and not having his annual contract renewed. I first met Aaron when I started teaching at UC's University College and he was the embedded tutor in my class. (In what can only be consider karmic fate, I ended up being the tutor in one of his classes at the CAT. He was, true to form, very gracious.) In talking to Aaron, I was once again struck by his dedication and his continued passion about teaching. And although I'm certain he's being screwed like a drunk co-ed on wet t-shirt night at the frat bar, he still goes in and gives it his best.

As a matter of fact, he told me the that the couple of weeks he wasn't teaching were awful. Talking to him about teaching was just one more indication to me that I did the right thing in walking away from it. If Aaron can maintain the passion to teach, in spite of the egregious treatment he receives at the hands of the weasels who run that place, then he is the kind of person who needs to be there. And I am the kind of person who needs to be somewhere else.

Sifting through all crap in the storage unit and deciding what to keep and what to throw away was in itself an absurd exercise. It made me think about leaving on the Greyhound Bus to go to Arizona... my big chance at a full time teaching gig. I left Melissa behind to take care of things... pack up and scoot out. She had some help moving things into storage... one of the guys I worked with at the CAT, someone I considered (and still do) a friend, Kyle D... helped move my boxes of books.

How's that saying go?

Friends will help you move;

Good Friends will help you move dead bodies;

Real Friends will lug your books for you.

In deciding to finally get the storage unit off our list of bills, Melissa and I decided that I would keep only what I was important. There were a few things she wanted... a box of files, her high school art. I kept my books... getting rid of the collection of textbooks... an old Royal typewriter... one what my brother would refer to (fondly) as "analog habits"... and one or two other knick knacky things.

(One of the books I saved)

Everything else -- gone. One less tie that binds.

Among the things that are gone is Creepy Louis:

(The batteries in this 2 foot tall toy are dead, but it's supposed sing and move.)

I've a been a fan of Louis Armstrong since high school because he played the trumpet. (I used to play the trumpet.) "What a Wonderful World" is probably one of my favorite songs. As time goes by, the song retains meaning for me, gains mythic resonance.... precisely because the world is NOT a wonderful place. At least, not all the time. There are moments when the world is a wonderful place. But those moments are fleeting. And we have to learn how to embrace them.

And we have to learn how to let them go.

[Special thanks to ERIC MAST for his generous donation to the re:visionary cause. And to you, faithful readers, please consider helping me in my ongoing attempt to convince Greyhound Bus Lines that they should bus me around the country, it has been suggested to me that instead of asking people to call the corporate headquarters and talk to CEO David Leach, I should direct inquires to the Marketing Department. This, based on the Executive Bios, seems to fall under the purview of Ted. F. Burk, Senior VP of Corporate Development. If you like what you read here, please do one or all of these:

1. Share the link with as many people as possible.
2. Click on the DONATE button to keep me going.
3. Call Greyhound (214-849-8000) and ask for Ted F.Burk. Tell him they need to bus me around. Tell them it's good PR. Tell the they need the help. Thanks!   

Value-Added Tax

“How much you lookin’ for?”

Not even a Hello, or a Hi how you doing. The fat man behind the counter of the Maxed Out Pawn and Retail shop wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the guitar I’d come to pawn. It was a left-handed folk-style acoustic, and I’d been lugging it around from place to place for 15 years. The last time I actually played the thing had been maybe 10 years before and even then it was simply because I was bored and just picking around. No particular tune; I had hadn’t even looked at music in so long I wasn’t sure I remembered how to read it.

I knew the fat man was the manager because the other two lackeys deferred to him when I offered them my guitar, along with some other things I didn’t need anymore: some DVDs; a few video games; a PS2 with two memory cards; a coffee grinder; a portable radio. It was time to move and I needed some more cash to make that happen; the job I’d gone to Arizona for had run out and it was time to get before things got worse. The business cards next to the register were engraved with the fat man’s name: Abe Azumouthe, Manager. He was bald with a comfortable man’s paunch and a neatly trimmed salt and pepper Fuck You goatee that barely disguised his lack of a chin. His eyes were heavy lidded and dark and his name made me think of an open air market in Tangiers, though I had never been there in my life.

“70 bucks,” I answered, trying to sound confident. After all, it WAS a left-handed guitar; 20 years ago it had cost me almost twice as much as the right-handed version of the same guitar. I knew it wasn’t a Name Brand and that I wouldn’t get what I knew it was worth; so I lowered my expectations to what I thought was a reasonable price. I tried to meet his gaze and show him I was somebody worth taking seriously, but he never once looked me in the eye. He wasn’t avoiding me so much as refusing to acknowledge my physical presence.

He arched his left eye-brow a little, but he didn’t let go of the guitar. “70?” He shook his head. “For a used Korean-made acoustic?”

Fuck. What did he know about value? So what if it was a Korean-made guitar? Brand new that guitar was 200 bucks; and yes, it had some wear and tear, but looking at some of the other instruments he had for sale, my guitar was in as good a shape as any of those. The problem was I looked desperate; there I was, lugging a bunch of shit into his store and it was crystal fucking clear that I needed the money. It was close to Christmas, and I thought maybe that might inspire a little empathy on his part; but it was nothing doing. Good ol’ Abe Azumouthe didn’t give a shit about Christmas, me, or the fact that he could charge three times what he paid me just because it was (after all) a left-handed acoustic. Maybe if he’d been a lefty, he would have understood how rare it is to find anything made for us; scissors don’t work. School desks are always backwards. Doors always open the wrong direction. Erasable ink always smudges. Even spiral back notebooks are made wrong when you’re a lefty. And some desperate left-handed bastard would walk into his store, see my guitar, and pay whatever he had to pay. Just because. Just like I had.

His two lackeys – who looked like they worked there to get good deals on pawned instruments and studio equipment – didn’t look at me either. They were pawing through the rest of the things I brought. I looked at them. Come on, I thought. You guys know how difficult this is; you know it’s worth more than what I’m asking.

“60.” I thought if I came down, I’d look reasonable. Ok, so I wouldn’t get what I wanted; but I figured I could get something – enough to get me where I needed to go. I still tried to look him in the eye, and he still denied my existence while he ran his sausage fingers up and down the fret board and along the body. Him doing that gave me the willies; it made the hairs stand up on my neck and made me a little stick to my stomach.

It hadn’t been an easy decision to sell the guitar. I deliberated for a week, but I had been thinking about it for more than a year. I mean, it wasn’t like I still PLAYED the thing. I hadn’t played the guitar seriously since I discovered I lacked not only the talent, but the long fingers that make for a kick-ass guitarist. I could pick around on it okay; I had a bit of an ear for music, but was by no means a prodigy. And since I’d been (un)fortunate enough to actually be around people who not only had the raw talent, but they had the KNACK for it – I understood all too well what my father had tried to tell me when I first told him of my intention to be a musician. A rock star, I told him. I actually told the old man I want to be a rock star. He didn’t laugh; that wasn’t his way. But he did tell me he didn’t think I could do it. That was the first time he’d ever told me there was something I wasn’t good enough to do; and I never really forgave him for it, even after I stopped playing and carried it around – some memento mori of a dead dream.

The fat man came back with his offer. “20.” His fat lips wrapped around the number like one of the expensive fat-cat cigars he probably smoked when he wasn’t ripping people off. The bastard was waiting for me to answer the insult; his lackeys were busy playing one of the video games I’d brought – one with an orange bandicoot trying to collect magic icons to save the world. That had been one of the few games my daughter liked playing when she used to visit; now she was too busy on the other side of the country with high school and a predatory looking boyfriend who tried to talk to me on the phone once. He asked me my name, like we were going to be friends. “My name is Rhea’s Dad.” For some reason, both he and my daughter found my answer hilariously funny.

I wanted to rip the plump  lips off ol' Abe's face and ask him how much he’d give for them. I tried another tactic instead. “It’s a LEFT-HANDED guitar. They’re pretty rare. Most people just re-string a right-handed guitar and end up destroying the bridge. 50 bucks.” After all, I told myself, money is money. All I needed was enough cash to get my ass out of the desert outpost that was Phoenix, Arizona. The land of strip malls and strangled palm trees had lured me with the promise of a job – a job dependent on the ballooning real estate economy. Phoenix was the fasted growing city in the country, and people were talking about it growing beyond Maricopa County and stretching as far north as Flagstaff and as far south as Tucson. People were moving in; houses were being built. People moved their families and those families had kids who needed teachers at state schools with an almost affordable in-state tuition.

When the balloon burst, the fall out wasn’t immediate. It started with small budget cuts: limiting printer paper and freezing pay rates. Then came furloughs. Then pink slips. The university let the part-timers go first, and then increased our class sizes. There was talk about increasing course loads, cutting back the pay. There was talk of limiting our contracts to a semester by semester basis. Then the talk stopped and these things happened – all while the department chair went on sabbatical and the university President received $10,000 bonuses for saving the university money. I decided to get out before the balloon burst in my face.

The fact fucker shook his roly-poly head, all while still not looking directly at me. Now he was looking THROUGH me like I wasn’t even there, while his sausage fucking fingers fondled my guitar like a child molester on holiday in an elementary school playground. Watching him touch the fret board gave me the willies; the hairs on my neck stood on end and I was getting sick to my stomach. I imagined popping his pudge encased head like an engorged zit. It was less than he deserved.

The lackeys had moved on to trying out a different video game – this one was a game where you car-jacked people and got points for killing cops and committing various crimes. That, beer, and pizza had pretty much gotten me through graduate school. The lackeys were laughing at how hokey the graphics were. I wondered what kind of car ol’ Abe Azumouthe drove. There was a brand new Land Rover parked out front; maybe that was his. After I popped his head like a zit, I could steal his Land Rover and drive my ass back east instead of taking the bus. All I’d have to do is change license plates every so often, and then I could ditch it somewhere in Oklahoma.

“45.” I was getting desperate.

“25.” He was losing patience with me; I could tell. He wasn’t fondling the guitar anymore and his tone, instead of sounding apathetic and heartless, was starting to sound insulted. Like he was saying You wanna come into MY store and get me to over pay for your junk? You’re the loser here; you’re the one who has to sell your shit ‘cause you need the money. You’re a bum and you want me to PAY you for being a bum?

“Come on,” I resigned. “How about 35? You know you’re going to sell it for five times that anyway.” As I looked at him, I imagined him turning into a giant cockroach. I hated cockroaches, ever since I saw those fat water roaches down in New Orleans, a strolling the sidewalks like they owned the place. As far as I could tell, they served no purpose at all. I tolerated most bugs. Flies. Spiders. Even Mud daubers, bees, and those annoying cicadas that come out every 17 years in Cincinnati. But a roach was a useless, filthy bug. And, as far as I could tell, so was Abe Azumouthe.

I took a breath and waited, preparing my next attack. I knew I wasn’t going to be walking out with anywhere near the amount of money I needed; but I wanted him to understand. I wasn’t even sure why I thought it was important he understand. But I thought maybe, just maybe, if I explained that the guitar – my guitar – was the first thing I’d ever bought with my own money. That I spent a summer working a shit job for a grocery store manager who was an even bigger fascist fuck than he was, and that I made weekly payments for 3 months until I was able to get the thing in my hands. That everytime I went to make a payment, the music store owner let me see and touch the guitar – though never for more than five minutes and never if there was another customer in the store. That the guitar – my guitar – had come to symbolize the silence that fell between me and my dad. That the silence that never lifted, even when he was in the hospital ICU dying (because I had forgotten how to talk to him), with my mother spending nights in chair next to his bed, trying desperately to talk him into being healthy again. That I was never able to apologize or tell him he was right. That even if he was still alive, I probably wouldn’t have apologized anyway, regardless of how much I wanted to.

“30 bucks,” Abe Azumouthe proclaimed. “The most I’ll go is 30. Take it or leave it.”

Sigh. “I’ll take it.”

The lackeys gave me another 30 for the other stuff I’d brought. I wasn’t in any mood to argue. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. The manager had moved on. He was talking to a customer, trying to sell him a pink bicycle for his daughter – a Christmas present. His tone was jovial, and he looked the man straight in the eye.

I signed the receipt and another form acknowledging that none of the stuff I’d brought in was stolen. Then I had to stamp it with my forefinger using one of those inkless stamp pads like they use in banks sometimes for people trying to cash an outside check. It wasn’t as humiliating as being fingerprinted – I knew the difference from a run-in with the police in Lexington, Kentucky – but it was just as dehumanizing. It’s so easy to boil people down to their finger print, their social security number, how much money they make. Or how much money they don’t make. I walked out of the store with my 60 bucks and walked back to the apartment so I could finish packing.