The Sound of Silence

After an emotionally charged visit with my Mom and Dad in warm and sunny Southern California, I headed back towards the cold foggy grayness of Northern California where I make my home in Sacramento. Weaving my big gray Dodge “cowboy truck” through the LA freeway system, I charged up and over the Grapevine, a climbing and twisting road that snakes through the Angeles National Forest and divides the North and South parts of the state. I really don’t know why they call it a forest; it has no real trees just millions of little bushes and rocks. As I began my rapid descent into the southern end of the Central Valley, the all too familiar foggy grayness of Northern California’s “Tule fog” was stretched out before me like some cosmic size gray comforter.

Descending the steep grade, my ears and head began to fill up with cotton, from the rapid change in altitude, and the all too familiar sound of waves softly crashing on the cotton beach, began to roar in my head. When I got to the bottom of the hill I pulled into Bill and Joe Bob’s Travel Center, the sign near the off ramp promising that Bill and Joe Bob really do have it all, “IF WE DON’T HAVE IT, YOU DON’T NEED IT!”, the sign read in huge block letters.

Pulling up to a front parking spot I could hear the music piped out to the fueling islands, and despite the roar in my head being near deafening, the tinny sounding “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” seemed to permeate the air, birthing an image in my head of car hops and greased hair, being eerily reminiscent of the old TV show “Happy Days”.

Stepping down out of my “cowboy truck”, something was very out of place that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, like stepping through a worm hole, only I didn’t go anywhere. People were busy gassing up at most of the twenty-four pumps and at the one nearest me, a young pretty lady in jeans, sweater and high heels, was having some difficulty getting the modern gas pump to work right. She was clumsily putting the gas nozzle into her car’s gas tank, banging it against the metal filler tube and trying to get the tangled hose to cooperate.

Now the thing that I couldn’t quite put my finger on before had suddenly become blaringly quite obvious. All that movement, banging around and clumsiness, and there was not even the slightest little sound. It was completely silent except for the music coming from the gas islands speakers, which was now playing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. Instinctively, I stuck my fingers in my ears and wiggled them around hoping vainly to un-pop my pressure clogged head, still not a sound. I began to gawk at the young lady pumping the gas, not because she was so pretty, but somehow thinking that if I stared harder I could hear what she was doing. She scowled back at me, and interpreting my befuddled stare as a leer, she flipped me the bird. I jerked my head so hard and so fast the other way that I might have pulled a muscle in my neck.

My attention swung towards the other side of the gas island with other young ladies, old balding men, bikers and cowboys all fiddling with the pumps trying to get their cars, trucks and motorcycles filled with gas, oil checked and windshields cleaned for the next leg of their trip. The islands were alive with people but still not a sound except for the piped in music. In addition to this weirdness, it seemed as if the normal speed and motion of every movement had been turned down one click, not quite slow-motion but enough to be very strange indeed. Perhaps it was merely the absence of the normal sounds that caused this slowing effect. Anyways, it was still very creepy.

I scanned once again across the islands straining and hoping to hear just one sound amidst the bee-hive like activity, and everything was still eerily silent. The piped in music had now switched songs to Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’”. My mind was telling me I could hear because I was seeing, but there still was no sound except the oldies playing through the speakers on the gas islands.

I tried to shake off the oddity of this scene, and explain it away by blaming it on my plugged up ears. As I opened the door to walk into “The Store That Has Everything”, a trucker looking guy who was just exiting passed me and he was wearing a ball cap embroidered on the front with the words “Make It Loud!.” He was eagerly tearing into a plastic package with a new cell phone holder that looked like Gumby, but the sound of the tearing plastic was conspicuously absent. I held open the door as I let an elderly couple go in ahead of me, and as if the outside scene wasn’t strange enough, what I found as I walked through the door completely baffled me.

Inside the store, all of the sounds that I expected to be there came rushing into my confused and deprived senses. Everything was absolutely as you would expect it to be. The room was filled with a huge variety of wide-ranging sounds. Cash registers were ticking, soda machines were slushily dispensing and workers at the counters were shouting orders back to the kitchen. Believe it or not, the “We Have Everything” store had a Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Subway and even a Popeye’s Chicken. I guess they did have everything. I could hear every little sound as crisp and clear as you would expect.

I very noisily purchased a 64 ounce diet Coke and a Five Dollar Foot Long Subway sandwich, extra jalapenos, and I relished every clink of the ice and crunch of the paper.
Quickly forgetting the creepy soundless incident outside, I browsed through the five-dollar trinkets just to see how carelessly five dollars could be squandered and for what. Making my way out through the doors, Sub in hand and noisily sucking Diet Coke through a bendable straw, I stepped through the door to the outside and was snapped back into that same creepily muted environment.

Abruptly, the silence was broken by the rough and awkward cranking of a large diesel engine springing to life. The cab of the large tractor was unevenly vibrating from the running engine and sooty black smoke was pouring from the twin stacks at the back of the cab as the driver warmed the engine. The gears ground together trying to mesh, and then finding their place with a solid crunch, the truck moved forward with a lurch. The large truck and 53’ trailer, emblazoned with its colorful and catchy ad for “Noise Cancelling Headphones” passed in front of me headed for the highway. The rig obscured the gas island scene in front of me like the curtain at a theater.

The instant the truck passed, the curtain opened on the same hectic scene as before, and suddenly, as if a huge volume of air violently rushed into an empty space, there was a well-defined and sharp POP! The sound of gas nozzles clanking back into their holders, and engines revving came in to fill the empty space. Kids were crying for sugar and trinkets, parents were yelling back and people were talking and singing along with the song by Simon and Garfunkel

“The Sound of Silence”

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

Garbage

An eerie, dusty smell filled the air, and a rotting shredded curtain waved behind the cracked window that was half-heartedly covered with masking tape.
I‘ve seen way too many homes like this while working for the local gas utility.
I was there to turn the gas off for non-payment. Oddly, this customer had a great history of paying on time, but recently payments had been sporadic and for the past three months no payment had been made. The meter was around back, but I could not get through, because the rotting gate, which was hanging by one and a half hinges also had a broken latch. I had been getting a lot of assignments like these since the downturn of the economy. Unable to get through the gate, I went around to the front door.
The front walk was littered with faded dirty scraps of old paper and dead grass. Kicking a crusty old can off the sidewalk, I carefully wound my way around the coils of a very aged, worn and seldom used garden hose lying across the walk.
I knocked on the peeling skin of the front door, half hoping that no one would answer and someone else would be sent to do this job later. Despite my pleas to the powers that be, a desperate yet manly voice answered “hold on, be there in a minute”. Several minutes later a man, with two days growth of beard, pulled open the sticking door, with a squeak, and with a disinterested shrug, looked at me through listless eyes. No greeting was offered just a vacant look waiting for whatever bad news or sales pitch I might have for him. “Are you Jim Clark?” I said with the warmest, caring voice I could muster and yet maintain some form of authority.
Peering past Jim and into the house I saw carelessly stacked piles of old and yellowing newspapers. Jim answered with a drawled and defensive “OK…?”
“I need to get to your gas meter in the backyard” I said, hoping to get away without explaining that I was turning it off for non-payment, hoping to just hand him the notice and run. The words I dreaded to hear floated grimly out towards me and hung in the air. “What for?”
“Well” I nervously stumbled to get the words out, “the bill hasn’t been paid in three months”. Jim just stood motionless and looked at me like a kid that had been disappointed so many times that one more didn’t really matter. Shrugging his shoulders he pointed towards the back door and shuffled towards a well-used and very old recliner with stuffing sticking out of the tears and a half broken footrest leaning sideways.
The stacks of papers I saw were just the tip of the iceberg. Stacked on counters, floors and tables was a huge assortment of papers, cups, old magazines and discarded old parts to various gadgets and old electric appliances. The smell was fairly tolerable, for the garbage that was more susceptible to decay was stuffed in a number of actual garbage cans on the side of the house. There were no rotting bodies that I could tell of anyway.
Walking towards the back door I asked the question, that everyone asks when they have no idea what else to say, “How are you doing?” It seemed as the words escaped my lips that the answer was obvious, even to the mangy cat curled up on the trash strewn kitchen counter. But ask it I did, and I even waited for his reply.
“Well” began Jim, “it’s been a rough year” and he began to tell me his story “Just when I thought things were starting to look up and my life was starting to show some signs of improvement. My wife grabbed the kids and left, I thought all was going pretty well, but about two years ago my wife Eunice just picked up and left. That tipped me over the edge. Every girlfriend I ever had ran out on me the same way. Now it was my wife and kids that I lived my life for.” I guess Jim just needed someone to listen, so I pulled up a milk crate and sat down next to him as he settled into his too well-used recliner.

It seems every girlfriend, and some that turned wives, eventually had rejected and pushed him aside. I must tell you, after listening to Jim, that this was not all their fault nor was it all his. It seems that Jim lived with a constant fear of never measuring up. This colored every word that he heard, every action and deed, that as nice as he was, no one not even him could stand up to it very long.
So, he just gave up and sat down. It didn’t happen all at once, but slowly, bit by bit he gave away pieces of his life to apathy and resignation.

Jim lost hope, and for one reason or another he chose to keep the garbage.

The garbage collectors came by every week to pick up the garbage ,and all he needed to do was take it out to the curb, simple enough.
But he didn't…
Day after day he just sat in his house and the garbage began to grow. First it was just papers on the counter that somehow seemed important. Then it became the stacks of old newspapers, you just never know what you might need them for. Soon, every broken and cast off old appliance and gizmo found it’s way into the house. It didn’t stop there. Before long, the yard started to fill with broken down lawnmowers and old cars that would never run. The house and yard began to seriously deteriorate, and his neighbors began to complain, and when Jim did venture outside he could see their looks and only guess what their whispers could be. This only made Jim more withdrawn and he collected more garbage. Even for all this, Jim couldn't understand why the neighbors had stopped being friendly.
As Jim continued his story I could feel the pain in his voice, and I believed he really wanted things to be different, but some unseen force seemed to hold him to that garbage. As bad as it all seemed to everyone around him, it became his normal,.

Somehow, the mayor of the city Jim lived in found out about his plight and even took an interest. One day he just showed up at Jim's house, and he even stayed for dinner. He spent time listening to Jim’s story just as he was. The Mayor seemed not to even notice the garbage, nor was he taken aback by Jim’s lack of care for anything.
The mayor obviously cared about Jim, garbage or no.
When they were done eating the Mayor asked, "Would you let me get rid of all this garbage for you?" warily Jim said "yes if you really want too,"
The mayor, still in all his fine clothes, rolled up his sleeves, and worked all that night and into the next day, until all that garbage was stacked in cans out by the curb.
The Mayor thanked Jim for allowing him to help him, and gave Jim his card and said if there was anything else he could do for him, all he had to do was call. Jim warmly shook his hand and choked back tears and even thought about hugging him but decided against it. Taking the mayor’s card, he went back to his old recliner and sat staring at the card the Mayor gave and pondering why anyone would do all this for him, especially someone so big and important.
Jim Clark sat back down in his house,
He enjoyed the clean feeling in his home, for a while.
As the days went by Jim got bored and lonely again,
He actually missed the garbage,
Jim went out to the curb sifted through his old garbage,
He found some that “just wasn’t that bad”,
Then Jim brought that whole can back in the house,
and over time opened it up and soon it ended up scattered around the house,
Thinking just a little garbage wouldn't hurt, he added some more.
After all, even his neighbors had some……
Time went by, and soon enough, Jim had even more garbage than before,
The neighbors began to complain again,
Jim became sad and lonely again…
Matthew 12:43-45
43 "When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none.44 "Then he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order.
45 "Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.


QUESTIONS

1. Who is the Mayor?
2. Who is the man?
3. What is the garbage?

Crack

I sensed this great creative surge today,
an unseen power springing from within.
Deep inside it came poking, prodding,
Beckoning to be reckoned with,
brought to life and into being.

But, alas! I’ve rugs to sell and many things,
To do, places to go and people to see.
So here I sit in traffic deep,
Brawling with my deepest muse,
to keep it quiet and quite content.

Staring through this aging crack,
That grows slowly across my windshield.

The Car

This is a slightly embellished short story about when my daughter Brandy drove the family car around the block, when she was eight years old. The true part is that she did drive the car, and she was only eight. I hope you enjoy it.

The Car

On a warm and sunny spring day, in the mid 1980's in an average middle class suburban neighborhood, dogs were barking, kids were playing and I was washing the car. How much more typically average could you get? But as you know, no neighborhood is as normal as it appears at first glance. After all, what is normal? Normal is bland, normal is boring and food needs spice to be worth the eating.

On this particularly warm and sunny spring day, normal was broken, shattered and left lying in pieces by an incredibly curious event that added some amusing spice to my life that day.

I had these neighbors; Well, I surely couldn't say they were the best neighbors anyone ever had. In fact, quite the opposite is true. They had the angry pit bull and the dead lawn in the summer that was three feet tall in the winter from never seeing a mower. The front part of the backyard fence was wired like San Quentin to keep the killer dog penned in. I watched often as the father in the house chased salespeople and postmen away with a baseball bat. There were all kinds of strange, nefarious goings and comings in the middle of the night, loud trucks, louder Harleys and assorted chopper style motorcycles. Men and women greasy, dirty, long-haired and heavily tattooed, in an era when only convicts and bikers had tattoos, were coming and going at all times of the day and night. The police occasionally showed up, and please don't tell them, but it was me that called the police a couple of times when things seemed to be a little out of hand and my wife told me to. Nobody went to jail, that I know of, but I'm sure a murder or two were prevented.
Living amongst the bedlam in that house were four very cute and pretty young girls that I remember quite clear. They had often played with my own children and that's how I got to know some of them. They seemed fairly normal for being raised in the midst of all that chaos. And it was amidst that turmoil that I did witness some of the most curious events. As I said, spice added to the food makes it more flavorful, and often that spice was salsa and Tabasco.
The father was a boisterous, loud-mouthed, tattooed and scruffy guy, the one with the baseball bat. One day, as I was washing my car in the street I heard him bragging to a friend that his eight year old daughter, Brandy could drive the car without any practice, training or help. I heard his friend tell him he was full of it (you know what “it” is, right?).
All the while, there stood Brandy, a little round-faced cherub of a little girl. Brandy was 8 years old and in the third grade, pudgy cherub cheeks, persistent food stains on her chin and Shirley temple curls. No wonder this guy doubted Mike's claims that she was probably the smartest person in the world, and I heard Mike say with a swagger, “and definitely smarter than you”.
So, there Brandy innocently stood with a dirty shirt and a bit of spaghetti sauce from lunch at the corner of her mouth. I just had to stick around to see this. Not wanting to butt in or be seen prying into this perhaps dangerous (to me) situation, I washed my car until I think I scrubbed a layer of paint off it.
I did have an idea of Brandy's capabilities, for I had watched her out in the garage fetching tools for her dad Mike. I often heard Mike angrily growling and barking at what everybody did, but when they were working together in the garage, I heard none of this, so I assume she always brought the right tool. Mike had an old scruffy looking “chopper” that he was always working on. It ran like a dream for a thirty year old motorcycle. Brandy could even remove the primary cover with it’s 20 bolts and gasket, reassembling it herself too. I have seen her remove and replace the spark plugs, nothing less than brilliant for an eight year old. Mike told me once that she had been doing this since she was four or five years old. I often saw him buried under the hood of an old, beat up, hammered is more like it, truck he had bought for two-hundred dollars. With wrenches sticking out of his back pocket and Brandy standing in the driver’s side of the truck, Mike asked her to bump the starter, saying, “now” and “now” and “stop”. I saw this many times and I never saw Mike ask anyone else help him to do this.

Back to the driving the car story, 1979 Chevette here we come. If you are too young to remember these beastly little compact cars with a three-squirrel power plant, then you really haven’t missed much. The Chevette superseded the Vega as Chevrolet's entry-level subcompact. They now have smaller cars for the environmental heroes, they call it a “Smart Car”, but this thing was like a K-Mart car versus Costco. All that aside, the Chevette was the best-selling small car in America for 1979 and 1980. I think it was the price $99.95, just kidding, sort of.

Mike pulls this little car out of the driveway and lines it up in the street, and you would imagine most eight-year-olds getting the chance to drive a car would be jumping up and down with unrestrained excitement, but if Brandy was excited, you couldn't tell. “Do you want to drive the car Brandy?” ”Sure” came the sheepish reply.
Brandy never got overly excited about anything, bubbly and effusively happy, yes; never stop talking, yes. Mike told me once that his dad calls her a gerbil on speed, but she was not always like this. Until the age of four Brandy would not even say her own name, but then a near tragic fall onto her head from a second story balcony had knocked something loose and she started talking and never stopped to this day. Even though she never, and I mean never stopped talking, she was her own woman. She was not like some crazy, hyper kid, nor was she overly mature and snobbish. She was more like your pal wrapped up in an eight year old suit.
Brandy was a true middle child stuck between the youngest, Christal, and the oldest twins, all girls. They say the middle child feels out of place and strives for attention, and this Brandy did to the “nines”. She was not necessarily a bad child but she had a dad that was prone to anger, and you could say, she was an expert at pushing those buttons. Brandy craved attention and she was often getting her fill of the wrong kind by expertly pushing the attention buttons. I think perhaps it was only her perception that she did not get much attention so she would settle for negative attention, which she got. Brandy and Dad having very similar personalities, they often butt heads.

Anyway, back to the biker, the little cherub and the '79 Chevette. Here they stood in the middle of this nice quiet neighborhood. Mike “patiently” explained, (patience being a miracle in Mike's case) what everything did. Brandy was sitting in the driver’s seat, intently focused on the instructions, and Mike was down on the ground, and I could hear him saying,” “First you turn this key and then you pull this lever until it is on the D”, “this pedal makes it go when you press it with your foot””, this pedal makes it stop”. Then Mike got in the driver’s seat with Brandy in front of him, just for safety's sake.

I silently uttered a prayer under my breath as I stood there with a river of water running down the driveway; remember, I was supposedly washing my car. Now, I remember “helping” my grandpa drive the car when I was ten, but he held his hands on the wheel and worked the pedals. This is NOT what was happening here. Brandy expertly turned the ignition key and pressed the gas pedal just right and the engine came to life and she released the key at just the right time, no grinding. She brought the shifter down into drive I assume, for the car began to roll forward with Brandy's little cherub face sticking over the steering wheel as her hands gripped the wheel at a perfect 10 and 2 o'clock. The smile on her face was worth a million and a half bucks.
As Brandy drove that car perfectly straight down the street, I almost wanted to close my eyes when she was getting near the corner. I say “she” because I knew Mike did not have his hands on the wheel or his feet on the pedals. As the car approached the corner, it expertly slowed and with a perfect arc turned the right hand corner. I couldn't see the rest of the trip, but I knew that it went much the same, for moments later I saw the Chevette coming towards me from the other end of the street, meaning that Brandy had indeed driven that car by herself all the way around the block.

When they pulled up in front of my house, they both got out with smiles and memories that I am sure would last a lifetime. Just when I thought that cherub face couldn't smile any bigger, she emerged like she was just crowned Miss America, spaghetti stains and all. Mike picked her up and held her in the air giving her his pride and respect and bragging rights. The other man Mike was bragging to earlier started to hoot and holler and I saw him pass a twenty-dollar bill to Mike.
I finally finished washing my car and later that month my water bill was double.