“Special Delivery” by Jason T. Powers
The middle of the night is a time for sleep and dreams and repair of whatever ailed you during the waking hours. The place to give away stresses and stirrings of unfortunate tidings and brash assertions that I am supposedly nicer than the next person, if only for a alleged gain in self-esteem, or upward mobility in a career. It also shouldn't be spent dwelling on the mistakes and missteps and the disenchantment of being alive while buttressing a bruised ego with wisecracks and crooked smiles. This practice is done to give enough us time to figure out how to escape whatever jam we've managed to put ourselves into once again. (I do this on a biweekly basis: it's called payday-to-payday living.) But in throwing yesterday's news on the stoops of your everyday man, the world does not work quite so neatly. The world reminds me nightly of the misdeeds, drudgery, hardships, tragedies and downfalls of people just like me, only different: they are the news. “Hey buddy, you're driving on the wrong side of the road.” A 20something cop with a day's growth surmises I am an inconsiderate clod, looking for death via a Who made Who, Stephen King confrontation with a semi. “Getting out of the car 250 times a night and crossing the street would be dangerous too.” I retort with 200 friends in the car waiting on me. Cops don't like retorts. With all their higher education and law enforcement codes, they assume that anything a person responds with is a lie. Meanwhile, they are more than capable of immorality as a few angry ex-wives can attest to their ex-cops' late night
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extracurricular activities. “You gettin' smart with me?” The cop correctly assumes the smartness of staying in the car. “No, sir,” I reply. “Well, if I see you doing it again, I will impound you.” “Yes, sir.” Meaning: Cocksucker, if I could do anything else in life, like be a porn star and screw all day the young version of Jenna Jameson (you know, before she put the Titanic life boat around her mouth), and you (the cop) weren't 'roughing up the suspect' while dreaming of 'dunkin' your donut' in her Heartbreaker-tattooed butt, I would do that job with a smile-if-your-horny-and-know-it attitude. But alas, I get to listen to a lecture from a bottom-rung dolt that will (if the stars (dis)align) become a local police chief. And the world will be a more screwed up place for it. “You've been warned.” And rightly so. In the four years hence, Mr. Police Chief wanna be is still out on patrol, and says nothing. And so am I.
The news from across the pond brings home how unfortunate America is. Every night, BBC World News comes on the radio at 4AM, mid-route. That Americans are seen as stupid, ignorant, and selfish without a discernible hint of a smidgen of regard for where the rest of the world's inhabitants duly go about their daily tasks of living and dying. The not-so recent events of 2001 clouded and mired what little judgment remained in American politics and government.
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“Another day that is the nightmare of Darfur...Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe refuses to step down...Rebels in Thailand are seeking help...Pakistani leadership barely functions...Russia has an interesting power-sharing deal...China is growing at 9% a year...Iran has a $50 Billion infrastructure deal with China to build oil pipelines...Venezuela is holding military exercises with Russia and exporting nearly half its oil to China...Britain no longer has it own independent currency...America's financial sector collapses due to their own misguided attempts to buttress economic growth through debt-laden investment vehicles that were spread like a virus around the world...8 Trillion dollars in investments and stock prices have been lost.” The hours of U-turns, backing up, and driving 5 miles out of the way to a farm house in another state gets you thinking weird. In this particular area code where skunks, raccoons, foxes, rabbits, deer and a huge barn owl are the only friends a paper carrier has, a certain oddball task focus over assembly line repetitiveness is promoted. Even if a delivery route is just a really, really long assembly line of sameness like Henry Ford's Model T miracle meeting the stale assemblage of news. The latter is just a bore. So instead of any singular focus, I defend the actions of Americans instead. Hey, we were attacked. We got to do something about these Cretans. There isn't anyone else to be the world's cop. We were just spreading Democracy using Capitalism. But the logic breaks down. We shouldn't go it alone. We shouldn't attack a country that had no hand in our security breach. We failed to take harsh stances on banana republic dictators, and gave away nearly all our industry for zero Democratic gain in the largest populated country. We failed to regulate an industry that worked well since FDR was our President.
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The sun slowly sets on a once indomitable nation while a rising sun comes into view. China. The route is nearly done as the sun creeps slowly into view. I was late again today – as our business is failing under the pressures of competing online media that doesn't have those pesky mechanical problems fixed by Snyder from One Day at A Time (if you haven't watched it, you are a lucky, younger soul) – and my customers frown at my seemingly cavalier attitude about getting them their hard-to-pay-for news that they could have all ready known for free. I cringe the day they figure that out because I'll be unemployed. But then again, it is Americans we are talking about.
Even mid-summer – with the seventy degree temps and warm invigorating breezes – I can only encourage so much escapism while I drive. The curvy waitress with brown eyes and curly hair that caught my eye as she smiled her way through another $2.13 per hour shift plus tips. This realization I am 34, not 24, and she's 20, not 30. My thoughts of her kisses and softness, the beauty (and scent) of a woman desirable in her fragility and innocence. (Even when she is not so pure.) I remember being 16, and another young lady, only 15, who put the X in sex, as I put the Y in pussy. I was lost without an apple, or a road map to her vaginal treasures. (And she was only padding (her bra) and her resume that soon included two divorces, two brats, infrequent child support/alimony payments, and flavors-of-theweekend that she gets the bang for her buck out of in some coked4
out way.) There in lies the rub: to want to be that Romeo, but lacking those abilities to be the “Where for art thou” for the hopeless romantic, Juliet. The passion of a lifetime drilled down to a series of seemingly inconsequential acts, words and after thoughts lived over (and over) again in the hopes of resorting them out, only better. It is to be or not to be while all the world is a stage where we are but merely sad (and lost) players. Just give me my skull back, Hamlet. But oh, how the mid-summer night's dream also brings you back to those lost adventures of being a teenager. John Hughes films, slow songs sung by guys with girlish curls, your first car with dirt and dents and a too small back seat. Cruising some strip of town over and over again. Short shorts. Drive-ins. Malts and shakes. Malls and letterman's jackets. Even a ballpark, or football field bleachers for a make-out session blend into the montage of images of teenage tomfoolery.
The weather makes or breaks the route. Your delivery time goes as the road conditions and wind conditions go. In an ideal place, like a Tahiti or Bermuda, an idyllic setting would exist for slinging the good news. To compose the best of weather and places, anyone could enjoy a night putting out papers, adverts and other ink products for the rustics. I'd move to anywhere near the equator to make a buck doing the tropical news shuffle. Hurricanes? They just interrupt work for a while. Like a vacation where you have to become a Gilligan to survive a 3-hour tour. I'll bet you need a little buddy during a Cat-2
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dilemma. Going native, would be my cup of Corona. To have a daily taste of warm weather, Tahitian tans, bananas, coconuts and no snow ever, that, my friend, takes away many a stress, even in a whirlwind, now and again. (With sincere apologies to those that have lost the most from names they will never forget.)
No matter the night sky, lunar eclipses or the Leonide meteor shower, you can never resist thinking about new career options. The soon-to-be life work of a crazy paper person is to figure out how to make more (while doing much less) in their day in, day out profession without a holiday. (I haven't had one in 4 years.) Most often, the theory of writing flits into view. Ideas of screenplays – “Madoff” Ponzi schemes gone bad, lottery fixes, a Caribbean-to-LA adventure, mayhem, murder and money, ah, that's the $10 movie ticket – are slow burning under a nearly eternal sun that hides half the time. Books – sports, biographies, scandals to expose, fictions of mean people beaten by heroes that aren't always – blur, at first, into view, become clearer, but then inevitably evade your mind for just another night. Poems – ah, there's enough bad rhyming and reasoning to go around in music – no need to add to that. I'm not Maya Angelou, Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsburg or Sylvia Plath. (Sadly too, there is no money, Honey to support the baloney, Maloney.) ) I think again of practicality. Warehouse supervisor. Systems manager. Bartender. Bouncer/Muscle. Singer/Songwriter/Musician. Entrepreneur a.k.a. struggling, small business person with anemic sales that mean you must work another job too.
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There just too many things that don't really require education, but do require a bunch of years grinding it out, and a serendipity that ain't exactly been apart of my resume on the boulevard of broken dreams. (Apologies to Green Day – if you are older, they are a rock band with an album titled, American Idiot.) The boulevard is a place I drop two papers nearby the home of another struggling writer/songstress/waitress. She must type out a novel a night by my rough estimation. Hopefully she sells one soon. The boulevard is an ugly place.
Every once in a while, you are stopped unexpectedly to do something of service other than throw a paper that shouldn't be printed anymore. And that introduces you to an awareness of where you are at in the social strata. A woman out at 4AM trying to figure out how to get her Toyota Prius out of ditch/cornfield made for a 45-minute adventure. She was quite intoxicated, and intoxicating, and if I didn't dress like Goober (Andy Griffith, young pups) while out in winter, I would have been at the club she stumbled out of, and into that Toyota, and thinking self: “she's got it, and knows it, and I can't get with it. How about another beer instead.” She had probably about 3 hours of total winter driving time on the hybrid to go along with a penchant for tequila. Definitely, a no go. After calling her soon-to-be ex-husband, as she related, we sat, and waited while she told me she worked in the car industry as a sales demonstrator. I took that to mean she didn't drive them – just showed how the stereo and climate controls work. I was all ready behind schedule by an hour, so another half-hour did not seem problematic. She was alone in Indiana while hoping to get
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back across the border to Illinois. I tried not to judge, and she, did not seem to judge my obvious lack of skill, career prospects or ignorance in getting her out through my meager brute force. But as is the case, we made awkward small talk to put each other at ease while she sobered up, and I thought: Jesus, I am going to get done around 8AM. Boy that old fucker on Oakdale Avenue will blow his pacemaker. Hope the funeral is nice. You get in that awkwardness of knowing the other would never ever talk to you about anything at all, not even the time, or the score of a Cubs game, if they had enough sense about them. (She was a Cubs fan.) As one ex-girlfriend alluded (directly to me) about having “social superiority”, I knew from that conversation that I was not of this girl's ilk. Granted, she craps similarly to me. Knows American slang, and can't drive, but from her Cover Girl looks, she's goes by “Princess - - - - ,” when in the midst of her similarly royal retinue. Her ex finally shows, and has the straps for the tow, but doesn't know where to put them on this 'hybrid' that I know he despises as he pulls his duel-wheeled Chevy around to the back of her Toyota. So I crawled under the car to find a solid spot in the snow-packed undercarriage. It comes out fairly easy. I got snow in my pants. Anything for me lady. I served my purpose for the odd threesome at 4:30 AM. As I drive away, I all ready see them having words about something else (more or less important) while they are getting back into their respective vehicles. I guess the “social superiors” don't always have it so good.
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As the winter snows hit hard in the Midwest, and the sleigh bells jingle without the money tingle at the mall for the Salvation Army, I am reminded again why the job can be pleasure for brief moments. After putting out Christmas Cards to my subscribers, you are in the hopes they offer tips in return for a job (often) well done in the very time of year we are in. Recently, I received a bottle of wine, Poverty Road, from an Oregon winery. Talk about sending a message. Am I on Poverty Road? Is our country heading that way? Or do (they) feel that way in a 3,500 sq. ft. domicile with a pool and a full drive-through driveway? I get ornaments, candy, fragrances and money too. No Speedway gift cards this year, so far. Last year, I got 3 reminders that gas was too expensive and I was a victim of an interesting topic: oil, inflation, scarcity, alternative energy and macroeconomics. As per usual, I am on the ass-is-being-kicked end of that deal. But the holidays are allowed to be a crazy, message-filled, reflective time. Some writers even have messages in their works, my current one probably is no different. (If I qualify.) But I'll leave you with one of my favorite practitioners: Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut survived World War II, the fire bombing of Dresden, Germany, and being a prisoner at the crucial end of war when the Nazis were not particularly concerned with appearances of mercy, compassion or decency based on the atrocities and heinous actions of their entire campaign against all humanity. Vonnegut inspires some of this work. (Ok, maybe 75%. But I typed.) In Fates Worse Than Death, he relates how his mother was crazy
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and killed herself, his son, Mark, a Harvard-educated doctor was in an insane asylum for a time, and Kurt, was on the verge of suicide in his life, but yet, spoke candidly about those things. So I picked out these quotes: “Why do people try so hard to keep such things a secret? Because news of them would make their children seem less attractive as marriage prospects. You know a lot about my family. On the basis of that information, those of you with children contemplating marriage might be smart to tell them: Whatever you do, don't marry anyone name Vonnegut.” “I am surely a great admirer of AA and GA and Cocaine Freaks Anonymous, and Shoppers Anonymous...and on. And such groups gratify me as a person who studied anthropology, since they give to Americans something essential to health as vitamin C...:an extended family. Human beings have almost always been supported and comforted and disciplined and amused by stable lattices of many relatives and friends...” “I am able to follow the three rules for a good life set down by the late Nelson Algren, a fellow depressive...Never eat at a place called Mom's, never play cards with a man named Doc, and most important, never go to bed with anyone who has more troubles than you do.” As the holiday cheer rises to a crescendo, and you find yourself by a fire, or drinking a Brandy, or reading a story to the kids, or watching for the twentieth time Rudolph vs. The Abominable Snowman, or else just thinking about the credit card bills you just rang up and maxed out, remember the importance of people, whether they are your favorites or not, the importance of being open to new ideas, and where they can take you in pursuit of your
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dreams (even some ideas you have not yet envisioned) and the importance of love, with the hope it is with someone less crazy, less trouble-filled, and less neurotic than yourself. But alas, presents don't always come dressed in the packages you envisioned. And Deliveries don't always come on time. Sometimes, They're Special....
Happy Holidays!!!
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