SWEAT: Global Warming in a Small Town & other tales of The Great American Westerly Midwest Read online



  SWEAT

  … global warming in a small town and other tales

  of The Great American Westerly Midwest

  by Mike Palecek

  Copyright 2013 Mike Palecek

  Original artwork copyright Monty Borror

  It’s about a hundred degrees out here.

  Hundred and five by the bank.

  I’m riding my bike, sweating like a pig. It’s a sting-ray, they used to call ‘em, about a hundred years ago. My mom got it at a garage sale. I said Dad would get me a twenty-speed. She said your dad’s not here.

  The bike’s too small. She knows it, and it makes her feel bad I can tell, so I just shut up about it.

  Hundred and six.

  My shirt is wet. So is my face and my arms. The breeze feels good, so I keep pounding.

  I have to mostly stand up to peddle or I’ll knock myself out with my knees. I hit my nose once.

  I love summer. I like warm weather. Fall is cool, but it reminds me of school.

  I like snow, too, sometimes. The first snow is awesome. It’s like you can’t remember ever seeing snow before.

  I don’t think it snowed last year. I’m not one of those who can tell you what the weather was like this time last year.

  I can tell you who won the NBA or baseball. Not the snow or rain as much.

  I’ve lived in Jennifer Junction my whole entire life. My name is Tommy. Tom. Thomas Michael Moskowitz. I used the whole thing at confirmation. Mom uses it sometimes.

  Tommy.

  I think I probably know everybody here. Maybe not the Mexicans who just got here, maybe the last three … months. The rest of them I all know. They all know me, too. Ask any of ‘em if they know me.

  They’ll prob’ly say, yeah.

  I know Jan, Janice, who runs the homeless shelter. There aren’t any homeless people in Jennifer Junction. Everybody’s got a house.

  But Jan says it’s her sacred calling. Her mother says she shouldn’t throw her life away, because there are no homeless here, but Jan says get behind me Satan. She’s not going to hide her light under a five-gallon bucket.

  Steve’s the pizza dude. He’s about twenty, no, more than that. He’s out of high school. He drove pizzas all through high school, on his bike, then his car.

  He likes it, that’s what he told me. He lets me go with him sometimes. It gets pretty crazy when they get busy, three, four pizzas in the back seat.

  I might run one up to a house, he goes and does another and then comes back to get me. I think people eat about as much around here in warm weather as cold.

  You wouldn’t think so.

  Nona’s the waitress babe. That’s what Steve calls her.

  Her real name’s Wynona.

  But she says parents should not name their children after famous people.

  It’s a burden to bear.

  She gives me free stuff.

  Not always.

  I’ve seen her without her shirt on. She doesn’t even know it.

  Gutner’s the city guy. There he is.

  Not the city guy, like Nona’s not the only waitress, there’s Nina, but the one you see the most in the city truck. Blue pickup. It seems blue. Ford, maybe Chevy. I’m not great at cars.

  Gutner’s his real name. His parents came here from somewhere.

  There’s more. People. A lot.

  You ever see how I can pull wheelies?

  Watch.

  Watch me.

  Watch.

  Well.

  Good day.

  If you will allow me to introduce myself.

  My name is Robert.

  Robert S. Thompson.

  I will not be called Rob or Bobby.

  I have lived in this hamlet for nigh on seven decades. I have all manner of relatives, friends, acquaintances, enemies, lovers, up and down these lanes and drives, as well as up and down both the Catholic and Lutheran as well as the Reformed cemeteries.

  Ahem.

  Well.

  Yeah.

  It’s not a bad town. As towns go, I guess. I like sitting here.

  I suppose I am an anomaly, quite the character.

  People who knew me in high school kind of wondered what happened. This is what happened.

  I do like to wear a suit, if necessary a wool top coat. And I enjoy observing and talking to whomever happens past.

  We have a variety of benches in the town square. It’s not really a square, but the stop light and the four corners surrounding it, that’s a square.

  I’m retired, from the food industry.

  For thirty-one years and before that I was a security guard at Kriegers.

  Then they layed off and I went to work at Lots Of Food, on Seventh Street and Buffton.

  I cut meat, stocked shelves, checked, unloaded trucks.

  Then The Foos took over. Nice Chinese couple. I have nothing against the Asiatics. It was just my time.

  It’s Foo in the singularThey say that’s like Smith in China.

  I have never actually met a Smith, but they say it’s a common name and I would not be one to disagree. I have met a Foo. The Foo’s, plural. Whether that apostrophe is correct I could not say.

  They might be Korean, or something. People just say Chinese and that seems to cover it.

  Oh, well, if you’re new here, then you don’t know about what’s been going on.

  The radio station, KJEN, started this promo. They’re calling it “The Great Global Warming Cover-Up.”

  They’re encouraging everyone to buy a pair of those grey sweat pants now filling the front window and racks at Rick’s Sporting Goods.

  The morning DJ, the guy who has the farm report, the school lunch report and crossing guard live report, the airport wind direction report, Ron — who is Rick’s brother, older, I believe, apparently does not believe in global warming, and in order to tweak the liberal noses of the UU crowd, would like everyone to adopt sweat pants as the official attire, as it were.

  KJEN is quite unique, I would suppose. It’s publicly funded, by nickels dropped into two two-liter Coke bottles at the Cenex station on the highway.

  It’s a sort of cooperative they might call it. They decide as a group by consensus when to poop and to piss.

  I do not believe Rick to be one of the inner circle.

  They have your Marimba Moment every Sunday night at eight. Eight-ten sometimes by the time they get it going.

  As well as Africa Hour, Pacific Rim Saturday Morning, Cuba Libre Hour, LGBT Hour.

  It’s all quite leading edge stuff, is one way to look at it, I would imagine. Since one hundred percent of the listeners live within fifteen miles of town.

  Though I’ve heard you can get the LGBT show on the western edge of Justin Junction. That’s Friday noon, and that would include Jake’s Grill, so that would be about twenty more, but still.

  I have been reading in the paper that The People’s Committee For Community Radio wants to find room in the schedule for North of the Border Hour and South of the Border Hour, to feature music from the North and South Poles, which I’m certain the cooks in the school cafeteria and the construction crew putting in the sidewalks on Seventh Street will find a breath of fresh air.

  Jesse, our minister of fire, the lone member of the volunteer department, was the second to leap onto the sweat bandwagon, is what I have learned. Gutner was the first. Those two compete quite viciously at most things, quite the joiners, for one thing.

  There are no fires in Jennifer Junction.
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br />   Not historically. That’s just the way it is. Some towns have bowling alleys, some don’t. Some have summer band concerts … in others those band shells sit empty forever. That’s just the way it is, different towns, different things, ways, mores.

  The truck had to be turned over to the library for the bookmobile. That was quite hard on Jesse.

  He now runs the whole operation out of his ’86 brown Honda Accord. He owns attachable magnetic signs that he slaps on the doors to haul the school children around in October during Fire Month. It’s a difficult time for him, you can tell. He takes it quite stoically.

  Jesse’s forever searching for talent, mining the church bulletins for new couples in town. They start out all excited and eager, but then they all quit when they find out there are no fires, no equipment, no uniforms, and all they get to do is sit in Jesse’s car, in his mom’s driveway, once a month, with the heater on and the windows up, signifying “hot,” practicing holding their breath for if there was a lot of smoke.

  Well, this Ron … actually, I’ve known him most of his life, ever since his family moved here from Jason Junction so that his father could escape the Immigrant Mongol Horde is how he termed it. I have been meaning to ask him how that is working out.

  Ron Waters In The Morning, Clear Waters, Muddy, Deep, Shallow, you get it, depending on his mood, a gimmick, a strategy to get seventeen hundred people to tune in who would tune in if the only thing on was static, so accustomed are they to being team players.

  All the women played volleyball for Mrs. Sox.

  All the men played basketball for Mr. Sox.

  And all the children are playing for the Sox’ as well, as will their children and their childrens’ children, no doubt.

  Well, Ron, he and Rick. They are not twins, not that I recall, but they look incredibly alike, with their thick, black hair. It’s quite full.

  Ron graduated from JJHS, he was a starting guard for Mr. Sox and the Fighting Angus.

  He chose to attend Carl’s Community College, as do a goodly number of local young people, to get some credits taken care of, save some money, while deciding what to do with their lives.

  Something they and their parents might have considered in the previous eighteen years, but I do also understand that all those television shows are not just going to watch themselves, either.

  CCC operates out of Carl Radish’s home at the end of the cul de sac on Northwoods Document Drive. Carl was the principal of the middle school for years and years until tragedy struck.

  He was run over by the local Schwann’s route driver.

  Both feet, actually. He was home for lunch, actually had a clandestine appointment with the Schwann’s truck for frozen apple pies, pocket sized.

  The driver was sitting in the truck, doing logs I guess, orders, what have you, the usual. Carl walked up, reached up, stepped up to the side window, one foot on the running board.

  He slipped.

  The driver heard something, backed up to see if there was something by the truck and ran over Carl’s foot, then the other one.

  Carl was sitting on the curb, both feet under the fully-loaded Schwann’s truck, in pure agony from what I have heard.

  The driver can’t hear because he’s got all that necessary refrigeration stuff running. He doesn’t see Carl around so he decides to settle in and take lunch to wait.

  So, Carl had a long time at home to sit with his feet up, bloated to the size of two Toyotas.

  He decided he was not going to spend the next ten months watching The Price Is Right, so he sends the wife downstairs with the set. Shutting it off would not have been sufficient, I guess.

  So, she sweated and bled and ruined her knee getting that thing down the narrow wooden steps.

  He had her run down to the library with one of the kids’ old toy wagons and her crutches to haul back loads of books so he could make use of this opportunity for growth.

  She he became a para-expert on many subjects and began teaching, offering courses in his basement, sectioned off into cubicles.

  He reasoned that he knew more than most in town, especially with the daily discourse commonly centering upon American’s Funniest Home Videos and grass. That’s a rather pedestrian, pessimistic way to look at it, but actually, I think it motivated him to really putting himself into his college.

  The school’s motto, “Soon To Be Accredited,” is on all the stationary and Carl’s coffee cup. His personal license plate is STBA098, for what it’s worth.

  I went there myself, to study Renaissance Architecture. I never tried to transfer the hours, but I have never felt the time in Carl’s basement was wasted.

  In fact, I feel it broadened my worldview and gave me confidence and perception that my associates without post-secondary experience seem to lack.

  In any case, I’m proceeding to Rick’s myself after I complete my lunch here, to get my sweat pantalones. Global warming is a famous fraud, promoted by wackos for whom knows what reason, in my opinion.

  Ron says we can still wear whatever upper torso garments we wish, T-shirt, pullover, cardigan, suit, jacket, what have you.

  The idea is conveyed quite adequately with the sweat grey bottoms, with the script Fighting Angus neatly portrayed on the hip.

  I fully agree.

  Good day to you.

  Please, stop by again.

  I am here most days.

  This gum is good.

  Makes my jaws strong.

  Larry likes that I have strong jaws.

  I try to chew each stick a hunnerd times on one side, then a hunnerd on the other and back and forth.

  You know?

  A’kshly.

  Actually.

  I don’t like gum, especially watermelon, and I do not know anyone named Larry. Anything that tastes of watermelon, especially watermelon.

  But I think it helps me get inside my character, my Nona the waitress persona.

  It’s not that hard. I love listening to coffee chatter. I think it’s the most subtle, intelligent discourse invented by man since Hammurabi’s Code, the Socratic Method, since third base coach signals.

  I just enjoy being around it, in its midst, within the penumbra, the glow of the embers of the cozy fire of discovery of each table and booth that are to me like a dark, welcoming road house at the end of a long, winding, dusty, road.

  I want to be an actress.

  My mother and father say it’s not dignified work, why don’t I just stick to being a waitress, if I’m not going to go to school. They would really rah-ther I use my scholarship to NYU, Stanford, Cambridge.

  If you’ve ever seen Gilligan’s Island on TV? The Howells, that’s my folks.

  I’ll go to Stanford when you pry these self-duplicate order pads from my cold, dead hands.

  Mrs. and Mrs. Sox were in the other morning, sitting in Bluebird Booth. I’ve got names. I read where the cottages of this one resort in Minnesota had names.

  Well, they were eating, with LaVerna. She had the pancakes. They ordered sausage, eggs, toast, the Hairdressers Hardy Breakfast. Coffee, juice, full-bodied creamer.

  Jim Sox was talking. When is he not. He was telling LaVerna and Bobbi what he thought of the new radio promotion with the sweat pants.

  Well, Jim and Bobbi were wearing sweat pants already, along with hooded sweatshirt, tennis shoes, you know, stop watch, whistle, ball cap.

  It’s what they wear every day anyway. For church it’s leave the ballcaps in the bus. For funerals, black, weddings, white.

  They like sports.

  I could tell Bobbi and LaVerna weren’t listening.

  Jim’s talking and it’s like wallpaper. After a while you don’t hear him anymore. He’s screaming with a red face, spitting bits of eggs, and you look around wondering who’s here, and it sure is quiet for a Saturday morning.

  Jim thinks Ron talks too much.

  LaVerna says if he didn’t, that would be weird radio.

  Bobbi wants to get her volleyball players on a stri
ct steroid diet. She’s sure that’s what’s going on over at Justin Junction.

  “I don’t care what it does to the girls in later life,” she says. “I just don’t. I want to beat the crap of Trudy Wells, no matter what I have to do, who gets hurt, and what it costs.”

  She took a long drink of juice.

  “Excuse me for caring. That’s why they keep score.”

  At the same time that Bobbi was talking to LaVerna, Jim was telling LaVerna that he had Rick and Ron Waters on his regional quarterfinals basketball squad how many years ago.

  “And they were trying to run things then.

  “Little pukes. They’ll be rich some day.

  “I’m not dressing a certain way just because they tell me to.

  “Little puke-face little shits. Excellent hair.”

  LaVerna was listening to both of them at the same time. Or trying to. Or not.

  She’s got a lot on her mind herself.

  Murder. Robbery. Larceny, she calls it. I’m not sure, maybe there’s a legal difference. She would know.

  Bad checks, that’s another of her interests.

  LaVerna used to be on the line at Krieger’s, but she quit when this opening at the bank drive-through came up.

  She took it to be in the middle of the action, where the money is.

  That’s what everyone thinks about all day, having enough money to do exactly what they want to do.

  LaVerna is no different. She just has a more direct approach. Maybe a little more honest than most.

  She told me she wants an adventure. The kids are almost out of the house and so is Bill.

  She asked me if I would go out window peeking some night. She wanted to kidnap some of the high school football players and take them out to the dirt road.

  I told her we’d go to prison for that and her eyes just lit up so nice.

  “What would that be like I wonder?” she said. I don’t think she’s been many places.

  She just smiled so wide, God love her.

  After work today I’ve got to go to my other job, at the Senior Center.

  I deal black jack. It’s a nice break from this place after eight hours. I have to be busy or I go nuts.

  When the Union Pacific shut down this spur it sent everything over to Jason Junction, which closed our elevator.

  It sat empty for a few years, collecting pigeons, rats, and Meyers brothers, then the city got corralled into this statewide improvement project, handed some money that they had to use or lose their liquor license. They had to raise matching funds, which was a huge problem.