Francis Phelan explains how he wound up a bum in Albany. (Apologies to Jack Nicholson, William Kennedy, and “Ironweed.”)
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, via Michael Corkery and The New York Times, gives Duck! City Mayor Tim Keller a little sumpin’-sumpin’ for Christmas.
The New Mexico governor’s mansion sits on a hilltop in Santa Fe, roughly 7,100 feet above sea level.
The air smells of pine needles and sweet meadow grass. An original Georgia O’Keeffe painting greets visitors as they enter the foyer of the elegantly appointed home.
Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat entering the final few years of her governorship, has been spiffing up the grounds of the residence to showcase her state’s rich culture and immense beauty. But for all its splendor, New Mexico faces some grave problems, she said. “Have you ever been to Albuquerque?”
Hoo-boy. And you thought socks from grandma were bad. I wouldn’t expect a thank-you note.
“Our special correspondent in the day after tomorrow reports,” the journalist was saying. … — H.G. Wells, “The Time Machine.”
We traveled back in time for a while yesterday. Seemed appropriate, given Tuesday’s events.
Instead of tapping, tapping like a stately Raven upon the keyboard after the power went out at 12:53 a.m. Thursday — and stayed out, for nearly 15 hours — it was scribble, scribble, scribble like Mr. Gibbon, recording my little fragments of history with pen and paper.
When your entire life has been light on calamities, save those self-inflicted, it’s illuminating to see just how far up your ass you’ve been storing your head. The things you don’t think about until circumstances insist.
Let’s begin at the beginning.
Campfire coffee, but indoors.
First, when the indoors feels like the outdoors you dress like the homeless, albeit with a dash more style because you and your spouse scored some killer deals while doing time in the outdoor industry. When I hit Keller’s for tortillas as the storm began rolling in on Wednesday the two dudes I saw using Heights Cleaners as a windbreak were not outfitted so handsomely.
Next, an electric gooseneck kettle is great for making coffee when there is electricity. Without juice it’s the battered old blue enamelware pot, gas cooktop, and butane lighter.
Speaking of heat, we have two fireplaces that we haven’t used in 10 years, because fireplaces are basically heat pumps that run backwards and messy to boot. O, for the highly efficient wood-burning Lopi fireplace insert of good ol’ CrustyTucky. But when the power failed there we had to break out the Coleman camp stove to cook because the range-oven combo was electric.
Let there be light.
We have a portable propane heater suitable for emergency indoor use, but like the fireplaces, it’s never been put to the test. I envision the headline: “Carbon monoxide blamed in couple’s death.” The cat ate their lips. Safer to add layers.
Light, too, was an issue at dark-thirty in the icebox. Instead of flipping a switch we were flipping our wigs as we tracked down the battery-powered flashlights, lanterns, and headlamps we haven’t used in the better part of quite some time. Some were charged; others were very dim indeed, like their owners, who had neglected to stock actual candlepower.
Once the issues of coffee, heat retention, and illumination had been resolved, the next hurdle was finding out what the fuck, etc.
We are, as you know, in the information business, Herself and I. She gets paid to find it, but I am no longer a meat hunter. I’ll track the wily news items, but only for sport. Shooting off my mouth for fun instead of profit.
For a change — ¡Que milagro! — both our iPhones were charged. So we quickly learned that about 50,000 of our fellow New Mexicans were shivering in the dark alongside us, and that it would be something like 2 in the morning — on Friday — before we could expect any relief.
As you might expect, I had a few thoughts about this, along with many other things as well. And as a scribbler emeritus and amateur podcaster I like to share my musings with this small, deeply disturbed audience while they’re fresh. But I can’t do them justice on an iPhone, not without a magnifying glass and a lot of bad language. I deal in emotions, not emoji. I demand at least an 11-inch display and a physical QWERTY keyboard.
The 15-inch 2014 MacBook Pro I’m using now was literally a non-starter. Ever since the “Geniuses” at the local Apple Store buggered its display while replacing the battery it needs an external display to function, and the external display requires (wait for it) electricity.
So I booted up my 11-inch 2012 MacBook Air, which — untouched by “Genius” — still gets excellent life from its battery. When it’s charged. Which it was not. Ten percent and dropping faster than the temperature.
That left the 13-inch 2014 MacBook Pro. Boom! Fully charged. Using the iPhone as a hotspot I popped up some notes about the power outage and a link to the latest episode of Radio Free Dogpatch. Behold, the mountain labors and brings forth a mouse.
Then we waited.
We took a bit of indoor exercise, Herself doing calisthenics in her office, me riding the Cateye CS-1000 trainer as a warmup for some light weightlifting. There was lunch.
Snowpocalypse. Or not.
As the phones slowly lost juice we went on another scavenger hunt, unearthing a handful of portable power banks and lanterns with charging capability that kept communications alive until the power suddenly returned at 3:12 p.m. yesterday, well ahead of schedule.
We were a little worried about losing it again — the forecast called for 5-12 inches of snow in the foothills — but at a glance I’d say the weatherpeople missed their guess by, oh, let’s see here, about 5-12 inches.
So don’t call FEMA. We don’t need a trailer or anything.
As for the political news — well, our special correspondent in the day after tomorrow has yet to file his report. But his friend had some thoughts.
He I know — for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made — thought but cheerlessly of the advancement of mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.
Solstice, from the Latin solstitium, which means, “Aw, shit, here we go again. …”
The Duck! City is foggier than the deets about Rudy the Mook’s bank balance this morning.
Alas for The Mook, a judge has ordered that a hard cold light be directed upon his finances in order that at least two of the people he’s run his Scotch-addled yap at may be compensated for the damages they have endured. Like, immediately, as in now.
The judge may have to send over a team of marshals to beat it out of him, like loan sharks collecting from a deadbeat horse player. Sell the footage to ESPN and the ladies might yet get a little sumpin’-sumpin’ off the top. Beats spending the next few months digging holes in his yard looking for moldy shoeboxes stuffed with fat stax wrapped in plastic.
Shortly after we settled here back in September 2014 a handyman told me that The Duck! City was a much smaller town than one might think on short acquaintance.
On the surface, it seems a lot like Bibleburg or Tucson: All three are sprawling, medium-sized Western cities dependent upon military installations, universities, and tourism, with transient, ever-changing populations.
But dig a little deeper and The Duck! City feels more like Pueblo, where some folks really put down roots.
I don’t know that I ever met a native Tucsonan, and born-and-bred Bibleburgers were likewise rare. But in Pueblo, and The Duck! City, it’s easy to meet people whose attachment to location runs generations deep.
Longevity breeds networking, and this can work for you or against you. I took the handyman to be hinting that outlandish douchebaggery gets broadcast faster than a triple murder on local TV.
More often it’s a case of meeting some rando in the course of doing a bit of business and finding out that he or she knows everyone you know, and probably a whole lot better, too.
This was the case with the landscaper we engaged to tackle our back yard. North Valley guy, of an age with meself, and in one of our first chats it turned out that he knew more than a few of the guys I used to race bikes with when we lived in Fanta Se back in the late Eighties and early Nineties.
Then last night we’re chatting about the final touches to the project and learned that his mom saw the same doctor as Herself the Elder, lived in the same assisted-living home (albeit a few years earlier), and passed on there, just like HtE.
He knew the owner of the place, and the staff, and also was familiar with the operator of HtE’s previous digs, noting with discretion that he decided against housing his mom there.
A small town indeed. In a town this size, there’s no place to hide. Everywhere you go, you meet someone you know.
Mostly winter, with a hint of spring at lower right.
The weather is a tad confused. Is it spring? Winter?
Maybe we should call this between-times season “Sprinter.” I’ve been seeing a lot of its four-wheeled namesakes lately.
And while ordinarily this would lead me to reflect that this violates O’Grady’s First Law of Economics — “Anybody who makes more money than me makes too fucking much!” — I don’t really care.
I don’t have lust in my heart for a Sprinter. Even if I did, I have no place to park one. Anyway, I live in New Mexico, where nobody knows how to drive but plenty of people know how to steal.
Maybe once a Sprinter collects a few whiskey dents, parking-lot sidewipes, and improvised cardboard windows it becomes a less attractive target? Who knows?
A sampling of the APD’s Twatter feed.
Not me, Skeeter. My RV is a scratched-and-scraped 18-year-old ’Roo with a tent, sleeping bag, and two-burner Coleman in the back. Also, and too, AWD for when the weather finally makes up its mind and decides it’s winter again.
Which it was, on Wednesday and Thursday. And I only went outdoors to broom snow and buy soup fixin’s. No cycling, not even running.
But on Friday Herself and I managed a couple miles of jogging along the foothills trails — not too cold, but squishy underfoot — and yesterday I sacked up, dragged out a bike with fat tires and fenders, and went for a 90-minute spin.
I’m always amused to see The Duck! City’s response to a few inches of snow. God love ’em, the road crews spread more sand on one day than Bibleburg has used since my family moved there in 1967.
And of course it all winds up on the shoulder, in the bike lane. Hence the fat tires and fenders.
It must be frustrating, trying to save Burqueños from themselves. The road crews know these people can’t drive a straight line on dry roads at high noon on a sunny day. Building speed humps and roundabouts, installing traffic cameras and radar trailers, spreading sand over ice and snow … this is like trying to teach a bullfrog to sing “Ave Maria.”
Burqueños have better things to do. And they will do them while they are driving.
Some leadfoot passed me at warp factor five or so on Juan Tabo the other day. In the right lane. The right turn lane, to be precise.
I saw him coming up fast in the passenger-side mirror and thought, “OK, here we go. …” And sure enough, my man rocketed straight through the intersection at Montgomery and just kept on keepin’ on. I kept the mirror on, but only just.
No idea what the rush was. The liquor stores weren’t about to close, and nobody was chasing him that I could see. No sirens, no gunfire. Maybe he’d just stolen the SUV from the Lowe’s parking lot and wanted to see what it could do.
One hopes he got a chance to test-drive the air bags and found them inadequate. And by “one,” I mean “me.”
So, yeah. No Sprinter for Your Humble Narrator. I know in my heart of hearts that as I was driving the shiny beast off the lot with the dealer plates still on I would hear a thunderous bang at the rear, pull over and stop to see what the actual fuck, and find a stolen Honda Civic parked on my sofa bed, leaking oil all over the Pendleton White Sands quilt.
The driver would be polishing off a tallboy and a text while his lady friend had a wee in the toilet-shower combo. Tugging a Sig Sauer from his waistband, he would mumble, “Shit, out of beer. Take us to the liquor store. There’s something wrong with this car.”
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