Love & Sex

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

I’m drinking coffee and mooching some high speed at Counter Culture and a young woman approaches the table next to me, arranges her latte and purse and opens up her laptop. Is it now notebook, is laptop passé? She is tall and slender and fair complexioned. In a skirt and tank top, in her natural not made up way she is beautiful. We are facing each other. With no illusions (she is all of twenty), I glance at her. If she was a painting I would treat myself to a good long look. She sips the latte and otherwise focuses on her laptop.

A young man walks up to her table. He is tall with dark curly hair and a scraggly beard. He is handsome in a no frills way. They look at each other and smile and say hi. The woman stands up and they touch each other, their embrace starts at the pelvis and continues until they are completely intertwined. They make out. As two magnets, by the laws of nature they are inextricably drawn to each other. Then they tug and push and pull apart. Their parting looks almost painful. He gets a coffee, comes back to the table and sits next to her. The embrace starts anew and they look this close to tearing their clothes off and making love. At any moment they might hurriedly gather their things and rush out the door to do just this, such is the passion.

I’m fifty-three and remember being twenty and remember my girlfriend at that time and being like this couple. My fire still burns but no longer like this, which is something of a relief. I look at this couple and smile. It is wonderful. They are, in their every youthful dimension crazy for each other. They have discovered the joy and the melting delight of being head over heals in love. Thank goodness life contains a chapter when this is the way it is.

Gordon Bunker

The Cakes Of Lewis

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

It started the better part of two years ago and innocently enough with a tray of lemon squares. They were good but Lewis decided good wasn’t good enough. Being a craftsman and self proclaimed sybarite he thus started his journey experimenting, tweaking and developing the ultimate lemon square.

When Eileen entered his life and their relationship bloomed, so did Lewis’ baking; combine this with discovering the cookbooks of ex-U.S. Marine Marcel Desaulniers, most of which having to do with chocolate, and the concept of dessert has taken new and mind blowing dimension. Goodies from the high end bakeries in town are, well, they are ok.

The white chocolate raspberry patty cake last Thanksgiving was the real leap. To the chagrin of friends, I made a break from tradition that day in deciding to not have dinner and instead go hiking. I had the mountain to myself, came home full of fresh air and not terribly hungry. I had a can of chicken soup which really hit the spot. But there was an empty little corner in my appetite, both for companionship and dessert. Lewis was hosting a gathering and had told me to come over if I wanted so I called. Dessert was about to be served. I’m so glad I made that call.

The patty cake sat on the table, glowing, a collection of colors and textures, creamy whites and deep radiant reds. My memory of the cake’s construction is fuzzy, but more or less it was two layers of pound cake with a fresh raspberry puree in between, with whipped cream on top studded with beautifully arranged whole berries. Somewhere in there was white chocolate. With all requisite pomp and circumstance Lewis served. It was quiet. All eyes were on the cake, in each of our faces shown something of the wonder and anticipation of children. It’s great to see this in adults, it so infrequently happens. The quiet extended into the first tastes and then it was delight and yum’s and oh’s and mmmm’s. The textures and flavors, sweet and tart blended in compliment and harmony. It’s remarkable how eating a slice of cake can be so full an experience. It was stunning.

Since then all who know Lewis have been treated to his other creations. It might be a special occasion or Monday night supper club or for the heck of it, Lewis bakes. With these friends I used to talk about life and goings on; now we reflect and debate on this or that cake. Everyone has a favorite, or a favorite two or three… no one is ho-hum. Some of the performances have been repeated, but always tweaked a little or a lot.

My top three? The above mentioned patty cake was and is my first. There are only a few firsts I’ll always remember and this is one of them. Second would be the strawberry desert flower cake; three layers of vanilla cake with chopped fresh strawberries, separated by a mocha butter crème frosting and topped with sliced fresh strawberries arranged in concentric rings. And maybe you were thinking “mind blowing” was taking it too far… Third, the chocolate cherry cheese cake; from the top down a layer of dark chocolate ganache, a layer of vanilla cheese cake with dark maraschino cherries, and a tart crust. I can picture different friends reading this and thinking, “oh no… it’d be the blueberry mascarpone tart…” or the “death by chocolate cake…” that would be their first.

Last Saturday the phone rang and it was Lewis. Friend Patti was coming over for dinner and would I like to move Monday night supper club over and join them? I was delighted, it’s a special treat to see Patti. The photo above is the chocolate fudge cake. The cake is extra rich and extra moist and the dark chocolate Lewis chose included a hint of espresso. The frosting is chocolate butter crème. When Patti took her first bite she tipped her head back and I swear she had a personal moment.

Gordon Bunker

Pump Gas

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

Pumping gas was my all time favorite job. People would come in, I would give them the red carpet treatment and, invariably happy they would leave. A week later they’d come back and we’d do it all again. I made people happy by giving them something simple and good in a complicated world. What could be better than that? And my co-workers were characters who I loved and had a lot of fun with on and off the job.

This was a Texaco station in the north country of New Hampshire in the early 1980’s. Full service stations were quickly becoming a thing of the past and this was one of the last holdouts. I was the guy in the olive green Texaco uniform (they never could get me to wear the hat) who would come running out, “fill’er up?” And I would always ask if I could check the oil. The station had a policy if I failed to ask the customer to check the oil, they got a free quart. In my year working there I gave away two quarts. On these momentous occasions the rest of the crew would give me a good roasting. We roasted one another whenever we had the chance.

Of the hundreds of customers I served quite a few stay in my memory. The same bunch of college kids crammed into the same beat up car would roll in and ask for some odd amount of gas, “we’d like $3.64 worth please.” Gasoline had only recently gone over a dollar in price and the pumps couldn’t be set for anything over 99¢. We would set the pumps for half the current price. Then, in this case I put and indicated $1.82 in the car and of course asked if I could check the oil. Nope, no oil, and then the driver would hand me a large plastic cup filled with change most of which was pennies. I stood there and looked at it and then him. “There’s $3.64 in here?”

“Yup.”

“Ok…” and off they’d go. I went inside and counted out the coins and there was $3.64 worth. This was their routine and there was always the amount of money in the cup they’d claimed.

A woman driving a VW Rabbit would come in. It’s never a good sign when a car sounds like a diesel but isn’t. “Can I check the oil?”

“Yes please.” Her smile was faint.

I was scared of what I would find under the hood. I checked the oil. There wasn’t any on the dipstick. I would put in a quart. Still none on the dipstick. I would put in another. It just started to show on the very end of the dipstick. I would put in another and then a little extra and it would be full. That’s three and a half quarts in an engine that held four. I explained to her running an engine with so little oil was really bad for it. She would look a little sheepish and thank me. A month later she would come back, same routine. I suggested if she wanted to stop by more frequently I’d be happy to just check the oil and top it up but she never did. I felt sorry for that little car.

In the dead of winter, four extremely well coiffed people showed up in a Rolls Royce with Quebec plates. For them, if it warmed up to anything above zero probably felt like the tropics. After filling it up I asked the dignified looking man behind the wheel if he would like me to check the oil. He smiled and said yes. When the hood “popped,” it didn’t so much pop as open like the door to a bank vault. I searched in vain among all manner of beautifully finished machinery for the dipstick. One of my most embarrassing moments in life was to tell the man I couldn’t find the dipstick. He was very gracious. “It’s probably fine. Please don’t worry about it.” I closed the hood, “ka-thunk… click.” He gave me a $5.00 tip. They whispered away.

A local guy who had a logging business would come by in his logging truck when it was stacked to the gills with logs. It was probably twelve feet high and weighed God only knew how many tons. I think he just liked to drive the fully loaded truck through town. There were a number of small raised man-hole type covers in the pavement near the pumps for access to the underground tanks. He would arrive and ever so slowly wheel the truck around the lot, it would creak and groan and rock over the covers with its towering load swaying and I would stand there only a few feet away. He’d hop out of the cab all grins and full of life and got a kick out of it when I asked if I could check the oil… it was kind of a pun as the fuel the truck burned, diesel, is technically oil.

And the guy driving an Olds Toronado from Oklahoma, wearing dress western suits who would always just miss my foot when he spit out his tobacco juice… and the very proper and tweedy woman from Beacon Hill (not Boston) in the diesel Mercedes who couldn’t figure out where I was from because I had no accent…

And then there was the crew. Bless their hearts. Owner’s Mac and Louise, Delbert the book keeper, Robert aka Wawbat and Hollis the truck drivers and Dave the technician. If any one us sensed an impending dull moment we’d quickly create trouble. Delbert was getting along in years and might once in a while leave work early. We’d then sneak the extra key to his top desk drawer out of the lock box, open the drawer and spread out a Playboy centerfold, and button it back up. The next morning Delbert would come in, putter around and get himself set up… open the drawer which he thought was secure and WHOA! Hel-Looo… Miss October! The old guy nearly had a heart attack.

One blistering hot afternoon I was tired and headed home. Wawbat and Dave got after me, “C’mon Flash, how bout we go to the Down Under for a cold one?”

“No thanks, guys, I’m whooped.”

“So we’re not good enough company for a college boy, that it?”

After going around and round I got out of the place and started walking down Main Street towards my apartment. All of a sudden my feet were off the ground. It was Wawbat and Dave, they’d snuck up behind me, grabbed my arms and hoisted me up. “Flash… we’re going for a beer! Just one!” Creating quite a stir they carried me, feet dangling in the air down the street and into the pub and set me on a bar stool. I knew “one” meant just about any number greater then one, but the coolness of the pub, the coldness of the beer(s), and sitting there telling stories with my buds… it turned out a heck of a lot better than just going home.

Hornpout, pronounced “hawnpout” is the local name for small catfish found in the ponds and lakes in the area. Hornpouting, pronounced “hawnpoutin” is the activity of catching these fish, which is always… an adventure. Later that summer, “Flash, you wanna go hawnpoutin with me an Dave tonight?”

“Is this anything like going for a beer?”

“Aw, Flash… no. But you know how to swim dontcha?” Wawbat had an evil grin.

“Well yes Wawbat, I’d be tickled to go.” This made old Wawbat’s day.

Dave and his wife and two kids had a little place off in the woods, and further off from there was a pond. Wawbat would pick me up at about seven and we’d head for Dave’s. Hawnpoutin is done in the dark. We got on our way and met at Dave’s, and gathered up our equipment: six fishing poles, two coffee cans of night crawlers, two empty 5 gallon mud buckets for all the fish we’d catch and a cooler for the beer and a couple of pints of Southern Comfort. And various other bits and pieces. We trudged through the woods in the failing light. With our hands full the mosquitoes were doing a number on us. Dave assured me it wouldn’t be so bad out on the water. We found the boat, a ten foot flat bottom pram that’d been stamped out of beer cans with oars, but no life preservers.

“You fall in, any fool would know you start swimmin for shore.”

Now Wawbat and Dave were both really big guys. I’m small so they put me in the middle. This also meant I’d do the rowing, and we slithered out of harbor and into the ink of night. Flashlights?

“Nope, dontchu worry, moon’l be up soon.’

“There’s no moon tonight.”

“Oh. Guess it’s gonna be dark then.”

First order of business was to have a beer. Then bait the hooks. You pinch the madly writhing crawlers into pieces and get each piece onto a hook without stabbing yourself, and then you let the lines go overboard and let the hooks sink to the bottom. Then you wait.

“Flash. You’re the college boy. What’s difference between a loyah an a hawnpout?”

“Wawbat, I don’t know.”

“One ofums a bottom feedin scum suckah and the otha’s A FISH!”

And so we started, three guys crammed into a tiny little boat out in the middle of a pond in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night. Try as we might, the lines would get tangled and we’d get ourselves tangled, and it was dark. Really dark. And we made snide remarks and laugh and we’d catch hawnpout. At some point, not knowing what else to do, you reel in your lines and on the end would be hanging one of these slimy little fish looking like evolution skipped over them completely. They’d wiggle around a little bit and you had to be careful how you grabbed them. The leading edge of the dorsal fin had a mean spine of a stinger that you did not want to get poked with. So you grab the wiggling slippery thing in the dark without getting stung and pull the hook out. If the fish took the bait deep in it’s mouth you’d need to use needle nose pliers with your hands all slippery and try and not drop them. Things dropped into the bottom of the boat were as good as overboard.

“Wish th’ moon’d come up.”

“Won’t for two weeks, dumb-ass.”

“Aw now there’s no need gettin’ ugly about it…”

And before we knew it we were drunk and having a roaring good time out there on the water, and the mud buckets were filling up with hawnpout. About one in the morning we headed in. It was pitch black dark. We crashed through the woods with all our junk, or most of it and the mosquitoes took their share of us. Considering our blood alcohol content, it must have been a special treat. I ended up with both buckets of fish.

“Flash, doan you trip and drop them buckets.”

Ten gallons of hawnpout slithering around in the woods in the dark would’ve been a mess. “No Dave I wouldn’t think of it…”

And we got back to Dave’s cabin and Wawbat showed me how to clean hawnpout so you end up with head and skin and guts in one hand over there, and a cleaned fish in the other over here. “You cut their neck like so, cut off the back fin, stick your thumb in here and your finger here and pull. There you go.” I cleaned a lot of hawnpout. Wawbat made a fire in the stove, and dredged the fish in corn meal and fried up a mess in a skillet full of lard so hot it was about to burst into flames. Dave went out in the garden and came back with ears of corn and beets and beet greens that he got cooking and the three of us sat at the table and had a feast until nearly sun rise. Brothers.

There were somewhat more civilized gatherings at Louise and Mac’s. They had a nice place out of town and all of us would converge on them with families and all and we’d have great cook outs. Big fields spread out back towards the Baker River snaking it’s way through a broad valley nestled snug in the rock ribbed hills.

We’d frequently shoot trap out back, and there would be some fooling around. The shells used for trap are called “dove and quail load.” They’re low power and relatively inexpensive. So you’d put two of these shells in your shotgun, get ready and yell “pull!” They guy operating the sling would let it fly and off would go one or two clay “pigeons,” like small Frisbees that burst into pieces when you hit them. And we’d all get shooting and having fun and if you weren’t paying attention someone would pass you two shells to reload with and you wouldn’t notice they were duck load. Duck loads are many times more powerful than dove and quail. And you’d yell pull! and out would go the pigeon and you’d settle the stock of the shotgun into your shoulder and lead it just a bit and pull the trigger and KER-POWWW! Your gun had instantly turned into a hand held cannon that kicked like a mule and you’d exclaim, “What the hell???” And your buddies would snicker and hoot and try to look innocent. And then we’d have steaks on the grill and all sorts of other goodies and just have the best times hanging out late into the night telling stories of life and times.

When I left the Texaco, Louise and Mac and their daughter whose name escapes me had me out for dinner and we had gin and tonics and grilled swordfish steaks and salads and homemade peach pie for dessert. It was just the four of us, and their going away present to me. We sat on the back deck looking out over the fields. The long north country twilight slipped from the sky, the stars came out. It was as sweet a time as it gets and hard to say goodbye.

Gordon Bunker

Drinking Beer With My Dad

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

During my first summer of independence working at The Brook & Bridle I grew accustomed to drinking beer. On one of the weekends I visited home, it was a scorcher, I walked up to the fridge and helped myself to a cold one. I was fifteen. My mom and dad shot looks at each other.

“What’s this?” My dad didn’t know what, but had to say something and say it with authority.

“I’m getting a beer. Isn’t that ok?”

“Don’t you think you’re a little young to be helping yourself?”

“Dad. I’ve been drinking beer all summer.”

Whether he liked it or not he knew it was true. “Well, ok, just go easy.”

I nodded agreement. At this point I didn’t think anything was wrong or unusual with my parents getting drunk every night. What was going on in their heads at this moment was anyone’s guess. If it was denial, then it would only be in keeping they not question their son’s drinking.

That afternoon, it was just getting hotter, my dad was loitering in the kitchen and drinking a beer. “Dad, could I have a sip of your beer?”

“Sure.” He handed me the bottle. It was cold and covered with condensation and about three quarters full. I took it and downed it. He stood there forlorn, his whole body drooped. He grinned. “But… that… was my beer.” This was the first time I’d ever heard my father the stoic actually honest to God, whine.

I let out a great sigh of satisfaction and set the empty bottle on the counter. “Yeah… not… any more. It was good. Guess you’ll have to get another one. Thanks, by the way.”

The next day, again blistering hot my dad was standing in the kitchen having a beer. “Hey dad, could I have a si…?”

He glared at me. “Look. You can have one sip. Do you understand what a sip is?” I nodded and he reluctantly pushed the beer in my direction across the counter top. I downed it. “… You little son of a bitch!” He was smiling. Mom was not in the room.

“Ahhh… that hit the spot, thanks.” I licked my chops and walked away.

The next time I went home for a visit and my dad was taking a beer out of the fridge, I hovered. He scowled. “From now on Chester, you get your own damn beer. And pretty soon you can start paying for it!” He said. Then he handed me the beer and got another one for himself.

A few summers later I was eighteen, the drinking age at the time in New Hampshire. I had a job at a camera shop in our home town Concord, and my dad and I commuted together to the lake in Wolfeboro. We would alternate cars and driving. This particular day my dad would come from his office at the airport and pick me up at the shop which was on Main Street. Neither of our cars had AC and it was a wickedly hot afternoon.

Just down the street from where I worked Diversi’s, a small variety store sold beer. On my afternoon break I walked there and bought myself a quart bottle of Budweiser and had the clerk put it in a brown paper bag. Back at the shop I put it in the fridge where we stored film. End of the day, dad pulled up in his little BRG Austin Marina and off we went.

“Whatcha got in the sack?”

“Oh. Sumpthin.”

“Just sumpthin?”

“Yup.” There was no more discussion on the subject. We made our way out of town and once on the infamous shortcut and into sparsely populated farm land I pulled my Swiss Army knife out of my pocket and flipped out the bottle opener. I peeled back the bag a little bit.

“Pa-fhisttt-t!” My dad, with his hands full of gear shift and steering wheel, glanced over as we careened around a corner. Driving fast was why we took the shortcut.

“What is in that sack, Mister?”

“A quart of Budweiser.”

“And you’re gonna drink it?”

“Well, yes.”

“Could I have a sip of your beer?” It was 93 degrees and humid. He was beside himself, the poor guy was drooling.

“Um, dad, I’d love to share this beer with you, but you know it’s against the law to drink and drive.” This hit him like a punch to the mid section.

“Oh! You wait until we get to the lake, and I’ll tell your mother how you treat your dear old dad! Then you’ll know the meaning of trouble.”

Grinning, smug, pleased, I drank the beer. “Mmmm… sure does hit the spot. Cold…”

He sat there, the pilot at the helm, simmering. “Every dog has it’s day my boy.”

The next time it was my turn to drive I showed up at the airport at the usual hour. It was sweltering and for some reason dad was late getting out of the office. I sat there in the sun, windows open, sweating. He came out, aviator shades on, holding his jacket draped over one shoulder and carrying his brown leather flight case in the other hand. There is something infinitely cool about pilots, masters of those great winged machines. He got in the car and we exchanged greetings, nothing out of the ordinary. Off we went.

On the infamous short cut I was giving it hell and he dug into his flight case.

“Pa-fhisttt-t!”

If ever the man sat back, relaxed and enjoyed having himself a cold one, it was then.

Gordon Bunker

Washing Dishes (And Peeling Eggs)

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

I was fifteen and this job would mean living away from home for the summer, so washing dishes for The Brook and Bridle Inn was a big deal.

The Brook and Bridle was a summer resort on Lake Winnipesaukee. The Inn was old style; situated on beautiful grounds, there was the main building with a dining room, eight or ten cottages, a private beach and a beautifully kept Chris Craft speed boat. Back in the day there were stables of horses. Some of the guests, entire families would stay for the summer. It was a lovely place, although fading. For this crowd there was a shift away from ensconcing one’s self at a grand old inn towards having a house on the lake.

The staff also spent the summer, room and board were part of our pay. There were two dormitories across Robert’s Cove Road from the inn, men’s and women’s. The women’s was a lovely house with a broad porch and stately old growth pines all around. The ground floor had a big co-ed living room and upstairs were the women’s rooms. Next door was a cottage for the men. I shared a room with the grounds guy Rico. It was the only double occupancy room, but with it we got our own small screened in porch. It was a sweet set up.

Clayton the chef and my boss, and was a raging alcoholic. He was short, rotund and had a florid round face punctuated with intense blue and bloodshot eyes. I washed dishes and my co-worker Mike was the pots and pans guy. I felt for Mike because Clayton was always burning things and he had to deal with the aftermath. Clayton was a nice enough guy, but was just keeping it together. He could be a little unpredictable and screaming raging fits were not uncommon. On top of his problems the pastry chef either quit or hadn’t shown at the start of the season and was never replaced. This meant Clayton did the baking and while he could put a meal on the table, his baked goods were awful. Mike and I would work as a team three meals a day fives days a week, and the other two days one of us would handle the whole thing while the other was off. Those two days could be brutal.

The salad girl Amy I had a crush on, but alas, she was sweet on Rico. I think they were doing it. But I still had a crush on her and we had some fun together among all the madness. A dozen at a time she would prep heads of ice burg lettuce. Amy had a neat trick to remove the stems from the heads by holding them like a ball with both hands stem pointing downward and whacking the nub of it on the countertop. Every time she would scream, HII-eee-YAH!” like she was Kung Fu. Sometimes I would help her with this and other salad prep. To this day, when I’m fooling around with lettuce I experience the distinct desire to kiss someone.

Washing dishes could be intense. The bussers would come wheeling in with big trays heaped with dirty dishes, glassware and silverware. I would scrape the various gnawed on bits and pieces off the plates into the trash, rinse them, run them through the old Hobart and as soon as they were out get them back to Clayton and Amy. At this point they were hot enough you didn’t want to have contact for long. Carrying a heavy stack of steaming hot dinner plates across a floor, wet and slippery as hell to a screaming chef while more trays were coming in and piling up - this is the life of the dishwasher. Egg yokes were my nemesis. The tiniest amount not removed from the plate before it went into the Hobart would cook on more or less permanently. A hammer and chisel would have been handy. Ragtag as it all could be, we were a team and by the end of the night we felt good about the minor miracle of pulling it off.

My hours were such that I’d be in the kitchen before and after the meal time rush to help with prep and clean up. The prep could be fun, at least when it had anything to do with salads. One morning before lunch however, Clayton pointed me in the direction of a giant kettle of hard boiled eggs. He wanted them peeled, he wanted them nice - they were for deviled eggs – and with his big ruddy face in mine he wanted them, now. These were farm fresh eggs. Peeling a hard boiled farm fresh egg without a lot of the white breaking away with the shell is almost impossible. There are a few tricks, which I was ignorant of. This set of circumstances could be used as torture, but would probably be considered a grave breach of The Geneva Conventions. By the end of it, I was a wreck. To this day, when I peel hard boiled eggs I have a short temper and tend to move on to the lettuce as soon as I can.

You take a house full of young single women and put it next to a house full of young single men and tell them there’s no visiting after 9 pm and provide no means of enforcing that rule and what do you think will happen? Well, some parties happened, and some cross pollination happened, and although it was before my day for the latter I had a great time, some of which I can actually remember. It made up for a lot of the dishwashing part of the summer. There was an old bathtub in the living room we would fill with ice and beer and there were other intoxicating things and we would party. And then we’d sneak to the beach and go skinny dipping and someone would usually hide our clothes, or we’d pile into the accountant Andre’s old Mercedes and go to the neighboring cheesy tourist trap town and play miniature golf. When you’re stoned with your buds, this is big fun.

Part of my objective for the summer was to save money for a 35mm camera. By mid-August I had enough and ordered it from one of the big mail order places in New York and when the box arrived I was excited. I got some film and started taking pictures and never stopped. The end of the summer rolled around and we all went our separate ways. Later that fall my sister who was old enough to drive and I went to a New Riders Of The Purple Sage concert at Plymouth State. Amy was at school there so we got together and partied in her dorm room with her pals and went to the concert which was all very grown up and cool. This was my first big concert and the opening of another chapter.

Gordon Bunker

Picking Apples

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

We were high school kids in New Hampshire and it was fall. My best friend Dicky already had a job picking apples at Farnum’s Orchard and said I could get one if I wanted. Trips to Farnum’s to get apples were a fall tradition so I knew the place and remembered Mrs. Farnum. She was a large woman, typically wearing a gingham print cotton dress and was always on hand in the barn. Whenever we showed up she would insist each of us children look over all the apples in the wooden bushel boxes and pick out the one we wanted and take it to eat. The names still resonate; MacIntosh, Cortland, Northern Spy, Baldwin, Jonathan, Winesap.

So sure, I’d pick some apples. Dicky and I would go up to pick in the afternoons after school. That he had a Corvette convertible (old and battered but who cared?) and I’d be riding with him was a thick layer of frosting on the cake. For a high school kid, no matter where you’re going or what you’re up to, getting there in a Corvette is beyond cool. It was a beautiful fall day, crisp and sunny we put the top down and roared up the hill to the orchard.

The superintendent, a rough edged guy named Harley was all business and pretty unpleasant about it. To him, having to deal with high school kids was probably a pain, and legitimately so, considering how little work we got done compared to the migrant pickers from Canada. Having us come tooling up the driveway in a Corvette couldn’t have helped. This was my first exposure to the world of work, the world of a man’s perspective. Harley had a crop to get in, he had a crew to manage, he had trees to care for and on and on. And a boss who wanted to turn a profit. And then the guy had a life of which I knew nothing. I was a boy to whom all of this came as a shock. This was not fun and games.

Harley handed me a bucket to pick into and set down some ground rules as we walked into the orchard. Do not climb in the trees, stay on the ladder. And use a certain technique for picking the fruit so it retains the stem. This was important, twist and pull. Otherwise if the stem gets pulled out, the fruit becomes a cull and in a relatively short time will rot from the inside out. And one rotten apple will spoil the barrel.

Harley took off. Wow, it was beautiful standing there for a moment, the air was permeated with the smell of apples, the sun was shining. The trees were drooping with heavy loads of the shiny red orbs. This was nature at the height of its abundance, and to be in the middle of it filled me with a tremendous sense of well being.

Picking apples is hard work. A half bushel in the bucket starts to weigh something and it’s up and down the ladder all afternoon. We got paid by the bushel so were encouraged to hustle. In neighboring trees the migrant workers were hustling and yelling back and forth in French. My two years of (Parisian) high school French didn’t do a thing for me. These were some tough guys, sunburned and all muscle. And they could pick apples. I don’t remember the quantities, but what I picked paled in comparison. We stayed out of each other’s way. They had work to do and I was intimidated.

Turned out I wasn’t very good at picking apples. It didn’t do anything to occupy my mind and when I did the math, the few bushels accumulating in the crate times the pennies paid for each… well, heck I might as well pick that big bright red one over there, sit in the tree, enjoy the view and have a snack. Harley would come by and yell at me for climbing in the tree and for how few apples I was picking. Within a week, we agreed it wasn’t working out and that was the end of my career picking apples.

It was however a turning point between boy and man, and taught me that ultimately work is swim or sink. There’s a world of compromise and sacrifice in work. The reward is often not commensurate with the effort and we are reduced to being a tooth on a gear in a machine. We make the best of it.

Gordon Bunker

The Sighting

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

Dinner was cooking. I looked up from trimming broccoli and saw the shape and the rolling, fluid movement in the grass. It had to be a cat. It was a bobcat walking across the landscape about fifty feet in front of the house. I’ve seen plenty of sign, and had a couple of close encounters, but far off in the woods. Never have I had a sighting even close to this. I grabbed my binoculars and watched the cat. It walked from juniper to juniper, pausing at each and looking around. It switched its tail. With a coat the color of September grass, and with broad cat face and golden eyes its stare was intense. Tufts of black fur swept up from the tips of its ears. The bobcat eventually went out of sight. I stood there for a few moments, awestruck.

After dinner I went out with my camera and tape measure looking for tracks to photograph. I found them, took some pictures and followed them. Moving slowly, quietly, I was down wind of the direction the cat was traveling. The tracks lead to the base of a large juniper and disappeared under it. The cat had crawled into the thicket of branches near the ground. I stopped, the thought it might be in there materializing in my mind. This was a good time to back off and go away.

Seeing such an animal in the landscape, knowing it’s out there, in its reality so different from my own, and then facing the possibility of being in very close proximity to it confirms the existence of another dimension to being in the world. There is still some wildness around us. There is a wholeness in realizing a meeting would be on the cat’s terms, not mine. We may think we rule the planet in our great, sweeping, and often destructive ways, but when it’s down to one to one with wildness, we do not. This gives me hope.

Thank You

About a dozen people read my blog every day; you are from the United States, Canada, Brazil, England, France, Italy and Turkey, and 80% of you are return visitors. Given all the choices you have, the fact that you’re here makes my day. Really and truly. Thank you to all of you.

Some of you have spread the word to your family and friends, which has been a great help. If there are others among you who would be willing to take a moment and do the same, I’d greatly appreciate it. I’d love to see this little thing grow and grow! Thanks again.

Gordon Bunker

Mine!

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

I recently finished reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom. Mr. Mandela’s story is one of amazing resiliency, compassion and commitment; it is a great inspiration. It is also a story of coping with and struggling against a brutal system of oppression, Apartheid, and ultimately overcoming it.

In human history oppression is a relatively new thing. The earliest societies were egalitarian, nomadic groups of hunter gatherers who traveled light and followed the resources. These groups were and are characterized as being peaceful. In response to their success (an increase in population) hierarchical agrarian societies formed in Mesopotamia around 8,000 B.C. The roots of oppression are linked to this shift in social structure. People started accumulating resources and enter greed, fear and conflict. Someone decided they would do just about anything to hog the best kamut seeds or the biggest and juiciest slices of ibex tenderloin, and here we are today.

Presently around the world there are some forty ruling dictators commonly thought of as oppressive bad dudes. They routinely commit gross atrocities against their people and stay in power for surprisingly long periods of time. Even in the relatively “free” world, we find some pretty mean spirited ways of oppressing one another. Over the past million years nature has provided extremely well for us. Only in the past 10,000 of these have we gotten ourselves in all kinds of trouble and caused one another all kinds of pain and suffering in the name of gimme - gimme! and mine!

While a lot of us agree this behavior is awful, we keep doing it. Why is this? Will we ever stop?

Gordon Bunker