I will be shooting video at the upcoming PGA Greenbrier Classic for the Charleston Gazette, my first visit to the Greenbrier v2.0 since Jim Justice, bless his millionaire Mountain State soul, rescued the place from insolvency. I must admit to having no special feelings for golf perhaps because I have only ever successfully thwacked a golf ball a half-dozen times so that it went any appreciable distance. (‘Thwacked,’ by the way is perhaps the most splendid onomatopoeiac golf adjective ever).

I don’t believe natural selection or God, should she exist, ever intended for the human animal to take a rigid, thin reed and attempt to bat an object the size of a walnut vast distances into a hole you can’t even see. Makes no sense. It’s no wonder Tiger Woods carried such stress around with him that he needed a cavalcade of bimbos just to cope.

But my feelings re: golf are nothing in comparison to this ravishing raking of golf from a bog post titled “Why Does the World Contain Golf?” by Glen Newey, which is a good question:

Why does the world contain golf? The question is strictly analogous to asking why it contains evil. Like chess or darts, golf is clearly not a real sport, which I define as an activity that you can only be any good at with a BMI of less than 35. At school, golf was offered to us as a ‘games’ option in the sixth form. Then, as now, I had no interest in bashing a dimpled pill towards a tiny and distant hole. But it looked less nasty than waddling through sludge in frozen mist after a leather ball, or getting the club-end of a hockey stick in the nuts. I was beguiled by the golfing scenes, in TV soaps as much as sportscasts, where the players were conveyed between strokes in electric buggies, alighting only to swoosh a lazy approach shot to the green. Reality bit when I found that I had to lug the bag of clubs myself, blasted by wind and rain, for a nominal five miles – a purely theoretical figure, bloated by the constant need to divagate onto the beach or into tussocks of marram to track down my wayward ball. It was with relief that I switched the year after to another non-sport, snooker, where you could at least stay in the warm and get a drink.

'Red Heel' | w.va. | may 2010 | douglas imbrogno

UNDRUNK

Is how
I prefer
you.

I’m just
saying.
Nothing

more than
that,
my dear.

This is
no judgment.
Nor, god

knows, an
argument.
We, too, after

all,
were
intoxicated

with our
usual
emendation.

It’s the
sloppy talk
that makes me

want to slouch
outside in
streetlamp calm.

Fixing on
the crescent moon.
Its mouth agape

transfixed by Venus,
a pale fire flickering
the darkling heaven.

from “What I Meant to Say,” by Cardinal Crowe (The WestVirginiaVille Press)

mechanics' helpers | huntington w.va. | douglas imbrogno

“800 MILES: Rounding Third”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | PART 6

NOTE: Getting here late? Read the whole piece in a single blogpost here.

—–

There comes a point driving 800 miles in one day hauling a dead Honda homeward when your consciousness begins to resemble that of  a certain person. A person who has gone without sleep for several days on cocaine while the Columbian drug lords who’ve taken you hostage march you mercilessly through the jungle, lashed by whips to keep you stumbling down the narrow mountain path despite your feeble-minded exhaustion. And if you stumble, you tumble into the 800-foot gorge below and are never heard from again.

I hit this point about mile 697, somewhere in the late-night darkness of Interstate 64 after the turn-off from I-75 at Lexington, Ky. Problem was if I stumbled or fell asleep or strayed into the next lane, I would not disappear. I’d end up in in the local news: “U-Haul truck hauling Honda crashes into Dominican Mission bus, all perish. Film at 11!” So it was only through an act of will, intense concentration and yogic eyeball exercises that made me look like Rodney Dangerfield behind the wheel of a Ford truck that kept me focused on the white center lines dashing by through the night.

Also, there comes a point in the consumption of massive injections of caffeine when the caffeine seems to shift into reverse. It starts to make you tired as your body says, ‘Whoa, Charlie, that’s a wee bit too much, now. We are hereby refusing further stimulation. All systems on overload. Shutting down. Yo, Self, your endocrine system is taking a siesta …”

More stressful yet, I was in a race against time. My mechanic had promised to stay up until I got back to his small Cabell County shop, to help me offload the car from the dolly. I was not at all sure I could do it alone as the engine was dead and I had to do a gravity roll off the dolly into his lot, located up an alley on the edge of town. But it was now 12:05 a.m. and he said he could wait only “a little longer” as we communicated via phone. Then, in the wilds of eastern Kentucky, somewhere between the towns of Mt. Sterling and East Jesus (just across from West Jesus, Ky.), the signal dropped out on my iPhone back to town. I was alone with my addled thoughts while still more than an hour from the end of this infernal haul. Right then, I glanced up at my rear view mirror. Who was tailgating me! There was a car RIGHT on my bumper, out here in the middle of nowhere. Damn it, WTF?!! (more…)

hazelwood place | december 2009 | douglas imbrogno

…………………………..

EMBER POEM

In the light given
all the light this
night, iridescence
of a bronze shield

hair drawn off cheek
pulled back to reveal
Artemis. Or is it Selene?
Crescent moon

tumbling like a stone
in a roil of black-purple
clouds over head.
Don’t doubt, although

I know you must. A hundred
times, the gods say – don’t
go to the hilltop. But you do,
which is, of course,

their point. A deer,
white as Carrarra marble,
on the lip of the
pine-scented woodland

incantatory, whispers:
‘Artemis Agrotera,
Potnia Theron.‘
Flees into the dark.

“800 MILES (or Parenthood is not for Wusses)”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | PART 5 | Part 6

Seriously. Lou Gossett Jr., is standing in the parking lot of this Chattanooga U-Haul. Or maybe what the Lou Gossett Jr., of an “An Officer and a Gentlemen” would look 25 years after the cameras stopped rolling and the film’s  young star Richard Gere went off to become one of the Dalai Lama’s peeps.

This guy, a lean, gimlet-eyed Gossett-look-a-like in blue jeans and a dark shirt, has skin resembling blackened beef jerky, lightly oiled. He looks to have been baking in the Tennessee sun for the last 50 years. And since he is the go-to-guy at this U-Haul for car dollies, he has me squarely in his sights, scanning me closely like radar. “You’ll want to see Alonzo,” said the woman at the U-Haul counter. And here’s Alonzo, seconds after he’d rolled out from underneath a trailer and stood to face me.

“Help you?” Alonzo says. And less in the remark but in his appraisal of this frazzled white guy who just got out of a U-Haul Ford is written about 200 years of history. Alonzo is one of those guys that knows what’s going on, has always known it. Maybe he lives in a middle-income black neighborhood in Chattanooga or — depending on U-Haul’s pay structure — a lower middle-income borough somewhere. But wherever he tosses his sweat-stained shirt after work, I bet his yard and house are neat as a pin and that he maintains his late-model car in pristine working order. I’ll bet he can fix a washing machine when it breaks.

I’ll also bet that for much of his career he has had to deal with frazzled white-collar guys in a hurry who couldn’t fix a washing machine if their lives and the lives of their cats depended on it, calming them with his amiable, no-nonsense, can’t-rattle-me demeanor. For while he shares Lou Gossett’s thin mustache, he has none of that character’s angry vibe. Quite the opposite, he exudes pure equilibrium.  This is the guy, I think, who should be running U-Haul. (No offense, Ed. I like you and all, but just think how cool it would be to have the U-Haul CEO be named ‘Alonzo’?)

I give him the scoop. Car dolly. Hauling a Honda 400 miles back home.  I tell him I’m a little crazy-anxious about hauling a car that far. Never done this before. Don’t want to screw it up, you know (ha-ha-ha). “This heat makes everyone a little crazy,” says Alonzo, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. He doesn’t smile, but does cock an eyebrow. “We’ll get you fixed up. You bring your truck around, now,” he says, donning some work gloves. And a few minutes later he has joined truck, hitch and car dolly, bouncing the hitch up and down noisily to make sure it’s secure.

“Now, you’ll want to pay real good attention,” he says stepping back to the car dolly. I hunker down beside him, resisting the urge to ask if wouldn’t mind coming along with me on the ride back home just to make sure I don’t do something brainless? (“Hi, honey! I’m back! This is Alonzo, he’s going to be staying with us tonight!”) As it is, Alonzo walks me through how you roll the tow-car up onto the two-wheeled dolly, how you strap and crank this webbing tight onto each of the car’s front tires, how you hook a set of bulky chains to the front axle, in case, God forbid, the car should roll off the dolly and into traffic behind you.

I try and absorb the info. Within the hour, I am back on Interstate 75 headed north, hauling my son’s black Honda behind me. The windows are down so I can look back and see that nothing is amiss. I notice a yellow school bus behind me with a sign over the windshield that says ‘Our Lady of Sorrow Dominican Republic Mission School.’ It is full of little Dominican girl students. With the window down I can hear them singing. I think it’s “This Little Light of Mine,” though in the traffic roar it could just as well be “Kumbaya.” The bus is tailing me a little too close for comfort when I look back and — Oh dear mother of god! — the Honda is now swerving wildly, one tire popped free of its dolly webbing. No-no-NO!! I see the webbing begin to loosen off the other tire from the wildly arcing car and pray the axle chains will keep the car hooked to the truck. Then I hear a metallic POP! In my rear-view mirror, I see scores of little Dominican faces stop singing and look up in wide-eyed horror as the runaway Honda breaks loose from the dolly and …

No, wait. I am still hunkered in the U-Haul parking lot beside Alonzo. He stares at me curiously. “You gonna be alright, son? Now, listen, I am not going to let you leave this lot until you are sure you understand how this works. Okay?” Okay! I say. I ask him to run through the whole process again. After he is done, I say, would you mind showing me this part of it again, please? If Alonzo sighs inwardly at my chowderheadedness, he does not show it. “You’ll do just fine,” he says.

I am having a bromance with Alonzo.

NOTE  No. 5 TO U-Haul CEO Edward “Ed” J. Shoen: Guy named Alonzo, didn’t get his last name, who works in the Chattanooga U-Haul lot? You know, the one near that frigging roundabout? Whatever you’re paying this guy, Ed, he deserves more. Can you bring up a pay increase for him at the next board meeting when you raise the issue about adding automatic windows, CD players and dash-mounted talking-GPS to your Ford trucks? Thanks, man.

With a handshake, me and Alonzo are parted. I head off across Chattanooga rush-hour traffic. I notice what various U-Haul staff had warned me about — that without a car to hold the dolly to the road, it shakes, rattles and clanks mercilessly, thumping loudly when it hits any bump or rut. When the road gets particularly rough, it sounds like I’m hauling a set of metal trash cans behind me. Twenty minutes later, I’m more than glad when my trusty iPhone GPS guides me into the back lot of a AAA wrecker shop. This is where my son’s Honda was hauled and given its death sentence (suspected warped engine block from excessive heat) after heaving its last along an interstate a half-hour after my son and his buddies had departed Bonnaroo that Monday.

A tattooed lady in the front office cheerfully accepts the three $20 bills I’ve previously negotiated via phone for the privilege of the dead vehicle simply sitting in their garage for four days. I see the Honda when I enter the garage. A  skinny white guy with a stubbly face who resembles what chicken gristle might look like were it to stand up and assume human form looks up from the innards of a Chevy missing its engine block. I explain my mission. And that I need help getting the car onto the dolly and attached to my U-Haul truck. “Alright, let’s get this over with,” he says, eager to get back to his business. I am seriously missing Alonzo. Chicken Gristle Man calls the tattooed lady, another office woman and a fellow mechanic to the car. I put it in neutral and altogether now we get behind the car and shove it out of the garage toward the dolly. It takes three tries for all of us to roll the car up onto the dolly and into place, whereupon Chicken Gristle Man says “Alright, you’re good to go,” after briefly pulling one of the wheel holders into place. He and the others disappear into the garage and roll down the garage door down. Clank!

I am alone in the lot. I am most certainly not good to go. All of Alonzo’s hand-holding to the contrary, I would also rather have the affirmation of a seasoned, grizzled, gristly AAA-wrecker guy that I have properly attached this vehicle to the dolly. A host of Dominican school girls’ lives rely upon me getting this right. I dash back in a side door and interrupt the fellow, whose head is back inside the Chevy. “Whattya’ need?” he says. “I just want to be sure I’ve got this right,” I says, feeling miserable and angry once again at Peggy Duffy. She was the pretty classmate in high school who led me to drop auto shop in favor of the study hall that she was in so I could look at her with Moon Pie eyes. Damn Peggy Duffy! I could be changing out timing belts and single-handedly attaching car dollies with confidence were it not for her cute brunette bangs and full, sensual lips.

The wrecker guy snorts. Gathers up the lit cigarette he has perched on a nearby shelf and legs it out to the dolly where he tugs. Points, checks, connects. Then stands  up. “Didn’t they give you any schooling on this at U-Haul?” he says cantankerously. “They did, but I want to make sure it’s all correct.” Chicken Gristle Man strides off, a contrail of cigarette smoke tracing his path back to that Chevy. “Alright,” he says, “now get the hell outa’ here and on the road.”

I think he means it with affection and love. | To Be Continued

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | PART 5 | Part 6

“800 MILES (or Parenthood is not for Wusses)”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | PART 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

There are many reasons to ♥ an iPhone. For instance, being able to update your Facebook status with a photo of the devilish Pentecostal church sign you just saw while waiting at a Sheetz for your egg-and-Swiss sandwich to be made. Or the ability to document stray thoughts to yourself with the phone’s excellent audio recorder, such as: “Yo, Self, I want to say that your decision, Self, to drive 800 miles in one day to haul your son’s broken-down Honda Accord back from Chattanooga via U-Haul Ford truck was not one of your brain’s bright shining moments. I’m just saying, Self.” Or checking your Italian ‘Phrase of the Day’ app whose following entry is something I wish to tell this Honda to its face once we meet again: ‘Non sono contento di come ti sei comportato.’ TRANSLATION: ‘I am not pleased with the way you have behaved.”

Then, there’s the ability to get one’s often directionally-challenged Self all the way to the nether regions of Tennessee by hauling down a map from  satellites in outer space. I’m talking iPhone GPS, which since its advent in my life has led to a dramatic diminishment in the life-threatening behavior of mis-unfolding the directions as you drive with one hand while manipulating with the other the accordion-fold kabbalah of a map of the Southeastern states.

NOTE TO SOON-TO-BE-16-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER: The previous description is for literary and descriptive purposes only and has never actually taken place, like, literally, in any car under my command, ever, in my life. And good luck with your forthcoming application for your temps.

Yet as with many things in life (alcohol, marriage, birth) there are upsides and downsides. The upside: the cool, pulsating blue jewel on my tiny iPhone screen successfully led me to the outer burrough of Chattanooga  and within striking distance of the U-Haul shop where the car dolly awaited that I’d hitch on to haul the Honda back home. The downside: I had not foreseen to mount the iPhone on the dashboard or pay for one of the expensive apps that talk you through the directions so you can drive with two hands.Which is why I was back to map days, holding the wheel with one hand and the iPhone with the other, squinting at the blue dot and what it was trying to tell me about where to turn next as I hunted down this U-Haul outpost.

NOTE TO SOON-TO-BE-16-YEAR-OLD (AND SOON-TO-BE DRIVING) DAUGHTER: This is a work of fiction and all incidents described herein are a product of the author’s imagination. Who should have stopped to study his iPhone. But that’s why this is a drama.

My tension had diminished in the previous hundred miles on the Chattanooga approach due to the soothing guidance pouring through my iPhone ear buds of the Buddhist monk Ajahn Sujato talking me through a loving-kindness meditation. This was useful for coping with all the aggressive driving going on around me while dashing south on busy Interstate 75, a kind of slightly slower American Autobahn minus the blutwurst.

NOTE  No. 4 TO U-Haul CEO Edward J. Shoen: Hey, Ed. It’s been awhile since we talked. Hope you are well. Listen, I have three words for you (four if you don’t count the hyphen): ‘Dash-mounted talking GPS.’ It’s a winner, Ed. U-Haul’s position as a market leader in rentals to aggrieved long-haul Dads would be indomitable with such cutting-edge technology. Of course, first you might want to get around to cruise-control and lose the hand-crank windows on your Ford rental trucks. Can you bring this up at the next board meeting?

So, all of a sudden there’s a huge long bridge over some Tennessee river in front of me. Almost immediately after that my GPS shows a set of turns that looks like a Gordian knot, a veritable Buntline Hitch, upon exiting the bridge. I successfully manage the bridge, then the nasty turn-off, then …. WTF?! I’m confronted with a roundabout. Now, anyone who has ever driven long distances in Europe has encountered the roundabout. As  I have driven in Europe several times, I had roundabout experience, but it had been a decade ago. Obviously, some ex-pat Limey has achieved a position of some importance in the Tennessee Department of Highways.

As experienced Roundaboutians are aware, when first encountering one, the Self pauses, especially if it is an American Self which did not grow up with roundabouts, not to mention blutwurst or kipper and deviled kidneys. The Self ponders: What the heck am I supposed to do here and who goes first? I have  to say: the volume level on one’s roundabout cognitive dissonance cranks even higher when one is driving with one hand and trying to scan an iPhone GPS with the other. I nearly sideswipe an EED-jit (if you’ll excuse my Irish) who suddenly appears in the roundabout beside me in a sedan, though I am sure the police report, would it have come to that, might well have had something to say about who the proper eed-jit was.

Rattled and in need of a nap with my sleep-addled white cat upon my own nether regions, I finally pull the Ford truck into the lot of the U-Haul station, concluding the first 400 miles of this journey. I turn off the motor, resting my head for a moment against the steering wheel. I owe a thank-you to Mr. Christopher, the Catholic de-frocked former patron saint of travelers. I open the door and the cool air-conditioned cabin exhales its icy comforts out into the blast-furnace heat of a Chattanooga June day. I look up and there stands Lou Gossett Jr.

My saviour. | To Be Continued.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | PART 4 | Part 5 | Part 6