VftSW; Emperors

I noticed a couple of black guys waiting to get their hair cut.  I did not think much about it.  No saying who will come to Emperors barbershop at a Southcenter Mall.  The place was busy!  The first chair was a big black guy with a black customer. 

“Need a haircut? “ He asks loudly and cheerfully as he waves me in.

There is a black guy and dark-skinned Asian lounging at the end of a busy line of chairs.  The black guy, named Ethan, waved me back.  I asked for it short but still touching the top of my ears.  Usual chit-chat and then to business.  I relaxed and finally got a chance to look around.  The walls were hand painted with massive street art, which was then covered by the usual mirrors and equipment needed for a barbershop.  (First actual barbershop For me in twenty-five years.  Back home they are all hair salons.)  Ethan was entertaining the whole place with good natured jabs at the barber in the first chair.  Asian guy was glaring at me which is when I noticed the equipment.  Rather than the usual folksy dresser drawer to hold the barber’s equipment, it was a mechanic tool box.  That explained the compressed air hoses coming  down from the ceiling and the Checkered Flag black and white tiled floor. 

Ethan chatted away as he bounced the shears off my head, sort of like jabbing at my  hair instead of the normal long smooth sweep I am use to.  Even though he had a customer in his chair the Asian guy was still glaring at me.  I glared back for a while then glanced around for something else to look at.  They had one of those posters showing the different styles they could do.  You know, so you can just point at the one you want.  Like sixty photos.  All the models were black.  I am a little slow, I was in a Black Barbershop!  

I recalled a short article I read once about “White Privilege”. Yeah, it is a racial slur by the authoress didn’t mean it that way.  Her examples were things like, if I went to the drugstore for bandaids I could probably find one that matched my skin tone.  Not always the case for her.  She also pointed out that is she went to get her hair cut there was no promise that they would know how to  cut her curly tight hair. Apparently Ethan habitually cut hair her way.  

It was a great hair cut; shears, scissors,  razor and gel.  Then he trimmed my mustache and eyebrows something the women at the hair salon, never think to do.  He ended the haircut with a handshake and senior discount.

Best haircut in two and half decades at Emporers at Southcenter in Seattle

VftSW: PVFD

Years ago I was a member of the Petersburg Volunteer Fire Department.  I remember some big fires downtown where everyone in the department was on the fireline for days.  Here the community jumped out to help move hoses when asked and then stepped back from the scene until their help was asked for again.  (The new police chief from down south was shocked that there was no need for crowd control.)

 I remember stopping at the fire hall during those events to change out of my soaked bunker gear into something drier.  On the tables were enormous bowls of finger food and civilians feverishly refilling air tanks so we could stay on scene.

I remember working with Search and Rescue.  I was hiking home from Hammer Slough.  At that moment many people in the department and many in the community were doing the same.  My bibs and boots were covered in that slick brown mud.  My wife met me at the front door with the biggest beaming smile. She’d heard the news: we’d found the toddler.

And I worked with the Emergency Medical Technicians in so many capacities over the years: flying them out to patients too close to death to move, hoisting them over our heads to get them into the back seat of the helicopter with their patient and send them into town; holding the fire hose on the EMTs while they stabilized a patient in a wrecked car reeking of electrical fire; of them working on a fellow firefighter who had collapsed during one of those big downtown fires. But, the EMTs weren’t on their own the doctors and nurses in the community along with a dentist, as I recall, came to help those nights too.

We had, still have and are part of a great emergency services team.  I couldn’t be prouder or feel luckier to live here and be part of it.

VfthSW: The Brown Paper Bag

Thirty years ago, I lived on the highest street in the village, the house lots behind me and downhill were vacant.  Cross from them on a lonely street lived my best friend and his neighbor.  Whenever Paul’s neighbor let out the dogs, they would poop in the middle of his front lawn.  Paul had spoken to the neighbor to no avail.  

 One Saturday morning, maybe mid-morning, I finally got out of my bed.  Everyone else in our village of 100 had headed “into town” for groceries and shopping.  Either of the closest bigger towns were an hour away and everyone usually made a day of it.    My first chore; scooping dog poop in my back yard.  So, shovel and brown paper bag in hand I went out to doo my dooty.  (Ha ha!)   Not a big job.  When I finished, I looked down on Paul’s front yard.  Even at that distance I could see where the grass had been killed by the neighbor’s dogs. 

I said to myself, “What the hay! I already have a bag of dog poop.” 

So I marched down the hill and shoveled up the poop in Paul’s front yard.    

I swear by God Almighty what happen next was not premediated.  I had the brown paper bag half full of dog poop.  What was I going to do with it?  I walked over and placed it in the middle of the neighbor’s front lawn. 

I don’t know what I was doing when the neighbor came home from shopping.  The Judge was visiting and she saw it all real clear through the window at the kitchen sink.  The neighbor parked on the street.  The dogs jumped out of the truck with him and ran off to Paul’s yard, while he carried in arms full of groceries in brown paper bags.  Apparently the dogs distracted him further when he walked to the truck for the second load.  Returning to the house with his arms full of bags again, he noticed the brown paper bag I’d left and apparently assumed a bag had slipped out of his arms on the first trip.  So after depositing the second load of brown paper bags in the house, he returned to the middle of his front lawn for the one he thought had slipped out of his arms.  The Judge couldn’t tell, but she was pretty sure he didn’t suspect anything when he opened the bag to see if its contents were broken.  Apparently the aroma of dog poop and the visual hit him at the same time.  He slammed the lip of the bag shut.  The Judge had tossed down her dish towel and stepped back into the shadows of the kitchen.  So when the neighbor looked about, he saw no one watching and Paul’s truck still clearly absent.  Embarrassed he hurried around to the side of his house and buried the brown paper bag in his garbage can.

VftSW: He is Going to Leave his Wife for Me.

Kathy said, "He is going to leave his wife for me."


My grandmother had heard this so often from Kathy, that she just nodded, smiled sweetly and changed the subject.  Kathy didn't appreciate it when my grandmother pointed out that she'd been hearing this for years, that Kathy never spent Christmas with him, Thanksgiving, vacation, Valentine's day and only occasionally did he celebrate Kathy's birthday with her.  I think what really aggravated my grandmother about the whole thing was the number of times that she and Kathy had plans that abruptly got cancelled because he was suddenly available. 


In retrospect, maybe that was the kind of relationship Kathy wanted.  Clearly she wasn't good at making commitments to her friends, maybe she didn't want to have to commit to a man. 


I once referred to Kathy as my grandmother's best friend.


"She's not my best friend. "


"You two spend all sorts of time together.  You probably hit the town twice a week together.  How is she not your best friend.?" 


My grandmother sighed, as though a little disappointed that she had to explain the concept of a "best friend" to her college age grandson.


"So say I have an emergency in the middle of the night and I call Kathy to come over.  It will take her two hours to show up.  Cause first she'll shower, pick out an outfit, fix her hair and put on her make-up." 


I nodded, seeing how that was possible.


"Now if I call Marjorie, (Another friend she spoke of fondly and often, but not someone she hit the bars with.) Marjorie will show up in five minutes; wearing her robe and slippers, hair in curlers and shotgun in hand."


So,  who is your best friend?

VftSW: Free Beer

Thirty years ago someone in the front of the hotshot bus yells out, "Does that say Free Beer?"

He was referring to one of those big signs on the big hotels as you enter town.  We were coming back at the end of the day from working on a Forest Service trail over-looking Santa Diego Pueblo.  Sure enough is said, "Free Beer, Thursday 5-7".  It was Thursday and we got off at five.





We thought about car-pooling, because there would be no place to park, right?   The parking lot at the hotel had plenty of cars but not so many we could not find places to park.  There were a lot of people in the hotel-bar, but the typical number for a week-day afternoon where people were stopping for a cold one after work.  We crowded into an empty booth.  What there wasn't plenty of, was waitresses.  So being the take charge kind of guy I am.  I stomped down the steps in my dusty boots and dirty work clothes and ordered, "A vodka Collins with a double twist and seven free beers."


Barkeep said, "Coming right up."


There were three people sitting in the bar and they said in this order, "They have free beer here?", "Yeah." and "It's Schlitz." 


The last speaker didn't say it in disgust, but in was in a judgmental enough tone of voice that the other two nodded in understanding and agreement.


They weren't big glasses, but they were a cup (literally; small transparent plastic cup) of ice-cold,  free beer.  We went back to the bartender for round after round of free beer until was time to go home or time to go eat dinner.   The hotel never did it again as far as we could tell.


Here's my thought after all these years.  My boss drank a Vodka Collins with a double twist?  And he did it so often I still remember his drink after all these years?  Back then people drank Tom Collins!  And a double twist?  

VftSW: Don’t Bring Your Girlfriend Home

Long ago I worked with this guy Blake and his brother, fighting forest fires. They were young and still living at home.  I stopped by the house once for a beer and noticed the lack of a woman’s touch, definitely a bachelor household.  I made some comment about that to Blake.

“Oh, mom ran off ages ago.” He said matter-of-factly.  “Dad raised us pretty much by himself.”

That set me back a bit.  Blake’s dad and I had friends in common.  I had never heard this story.  Not knowing what to say, I said, “That must have been hard on your dad.”

“Ya, especially because she ran off with my grandad.” came the matter-of-fact reply.

Okay, I never heard that bit of gossip before either.  Again not knowing what to say, I said, “That must have been hard on your grandmother.”

“Nay, she’d already run off with my grandad’s father.” 

“Blake!” I said, “Let me see if I have this right.  Your great-grandad ran off with your grandad’s wife?”

“Uh-huh” he nodded

Then I said, “And your grandfather ran off with your dad’s wife?”

“Uh-huh.” he nodded.

Then I thought, “So your dad is going to steal your wife?”

And without me asking the question out-loud, Blake responded with a nod and an “Uh-huh.”

 

VftSW: Lympias

Writing about Julie C the other day got me thinking about “lympias”; Pilipino eggrolls. I made some at the party Julie and I attended.

My brother and I use to cook them up as hors d'oeuvre at parties. (Eventually, we discovered we could cook them ahead of time and warm them up in the oven.  As in the picture.)  It was so frustrating.  It took hours and hours to make and they were gone in seconds.  Once the first batch was ready, we would scoop them out of the grease, load them into the bowl and send some little cutie off to the buffet table with them.  She never got, literally never took a step, just turned around and they were gone.  Towards the end of the second batch people would start snatching them out of the boiling grease with their bare fingers!

Usually we’d cook them up about an hour into the party.  So at that party I attended with Julie C, I was thinking it was about time to cook them up.  I wandered into the kitchen and found three really stoned guys.  “Wow, man.  I don’t know what these are but they are really good.”  “Well, if you like ‘em now just waiting until I cook them.”  I don’t know if you’ve made lympias, but eggroll skinned that have been wrapped around raw hamburger and stored in the refrigerator for a couple of hours do not look appealing.  I’ve seen wood maggots on the fireline that looked more appetizing!

 

VftSW: God Bless Julie C

Back in the college days I had a good friend named Patty.  She and I shared a birthday. It was like double the gifts, double the parties, double the dinners, a week of “non-stop wine, women and cootchie cootchie coo!”  Time passed. I graduated and went on my way. 

Years later I am back in town for our birthday week.  Of course, like me, all my friends had graduated and moved away.  Patty on the other hand had been a working-girl as were most of her friends, so they were still all there.  They were all really nice people most of whom I knew from the good old days, but after a while I tired of telling the same introductory stories over and over again.  I went and sat down next to Julie a great friend to me and Patty. 

Julie was sorting thru the pile of record albums on her lap figuring out what to play next.  (Record albums at a party!  How old am I?)  We picked one out.  She vacated her seat and squatted to place the record on the turn table at the end of the couch.  As she did someone plopped down into her spot next to me; an acquaintance of Patty’s.

“So, Bill I noticed that pretty much everyone here at your birthday party is a friend of Patty’s and not friends with you.”

I did not know what to say to that.  Julie did.  She’d risen from the record player to find someone in her seat and belittling the birthday-boy.  Towering over the seated guy she says, “Well, you know how Patty is, she likes everybody.  Me and Bill not so much.  The people we like: we like a lot.  Everybody else, we just spit on.”   

God bless Julie C.