The Harness

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

Long time friend G is from Israel. I’m not sure if it’s the language or his nature which when he speaks it gives Hebrew its wonderfully expressive nature. But while I am clueless what he’s saying there’s no question what he’s feeling. Down on his hands and knees in the cramped, hot, and spider infested corner of the garage he uttered something and it was not good. I was holding the flashlight and otherwise helping him figure out why there was almost no water pressure at his house. We were studying the jumble of pipes and valves and tanks and things.

“What was that?” I asked.

G looked up at me. Beads of sweat rolled off his forehead. He managed a wan smile and said, “the more things you have, the more worries you have.”

“Isn’t that the truth.” I said. We eventually figured out the bladder in the pressure tank had a hole in it. Time for a new one – the whole tank, not just the bladder.

Last weekend R and I were sitting at the table having coffee. The classified section of the newspaper from a couple days before sat there, open to the yard sales with a number of ads circled in pencil. R loves to go to yard sales and has a knack for finding very cool things for next to no money. The day before she’d found me a tart pan and yoga mat for less than a dollar. I noticed an ad for a “Man Cave” sale and one of the first items listed was a BMW R69US motorcycle.

“Wow. Sorry I missed that.” I said. R looked at me, knowing I’m generally not interested in yard sales, maybe hoping something like this would get me hooked. I told her about the bike. It is a very desirable model from the 1950’s, an iconic design and in my dream world I’d love to have one. “But…” I quickly added, “I have no desire to own one.” I once slipped into having three motorcycles and found the time and money spent maintaining the fleet could have been devoted to riding. So one summer I sold two of them. Now, with only one motorcycle, my resources go into riding it, and riding it is definitely the beauty of having it.

People with great wealth and all the trappings often talk about “simplifying,” rarely do it, and far as I can tell are typically less happy than those with much less. “Trappings” stems from late Middle English “trap” meaning an ornamental horse harness. Perhaps it is a glass half empty thing, and we are motivated by a fear of not having enough; in which case if it’s nice to have an extra, then it’s nicer to have two extra and before we know it we find ourselves with lots and lots of extras. Our possessions begin to possess us; harness indeed.

Gordon Bunker

Happy Birthday!

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

Even the Mighty Oak started out as a nut. With this in mind and 45,153 words into it typed one at a time, today this blog turns the ripe old age of 1.

Thank you readers, well over four thousand of you in 47 countries. How cool is that? And (hint, hint), if you’d like to give me a present, please take a moment to comment about what you think of this little epistle. That’d be great.

Best wishes,

Gordon Bunker

By The Road

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

Long ago I was married to an alcoholic. As a matter of routine, my now x would come home after work and dash upstairs to wash her face and brush her teeth. Then she would come downstairs and give me a kiss hello. She always smelled of alcohol (for hours) and when I asked her about it she claimed it was the clarifying lotion she used to clean her face. At the time, for a while at least, in my ignorance and naïveté I accepted the explanation. Then I learned she would stop at a convenience store after work, get a small bottle of booze, drink it and throw the empty out the window. There were never empty bottles in the car, except once.

Last Sunday, R and I went for a walk on the County Road. Like two old crows we were fascinated by the flotsam and jetsam in the ditches – the brighter and shinier the better. Alas, there were no trinkets worthy of bringing home, but we noticed and were disturbed by the number of empty, small booze bottles littering the roadsides. We were not so much disturbed by the litter factor, rather it was the implication of how much drinking and driving was going on.

After our walk we went to the Lone Butte General Store, about two and a half miles away. R put gas in her car, and then we went into the store to check it out. It is a tidy and well kept convenience store. They sell beer and wine, and behind the smiling clerks at the counter is a dazzling display of small bottles of booze; nips, half pints and pints of all types. The next nearest store which sells booze in these size bottles is in Santa Fe, better than fifteen miles away.

I got thinking about this, so the following day I walked the same section of the County Road, one and a half miles in length and counted the empties. Here’s what I found:

182 - 12 oz. beer bottles

97 - 50 ml “nip” liquor bottles

83 - ½ pint liquor bottles

18 - 1 pint liquor bottles

10 - 750 ml wine bottles

Many of these probably came from the Lone Butte General Store. It takes about four minutes to drive from the store to the area my count, so many of the bottles were opened, the contents were consumed, and the empty got thrown out the window in that amount of time, and the drivers continued on their way. To be fair, some of the drinking might have been done by passengers.

The legal limit for DWI in New Mexico is .08% BAC. According to an online blood alcohol calculator, a half pint of 80 proof liquor consumed by a 160 pound male in four minutes will give him a BAC of approximately .15%. The FAA states a .12% BAC leads to, “mild euphoria, talkativeness, decreased inhibitions, decreased attention, impaired judgment, (and) increased reaction time,” and beyond this up to .25% BAC, “emotional instability, loss of critical judgment, impairment of memory and comprehension, decreased sensory response, (and) mild muscular incoordination.”

A couple of years ago, I was having dinner with friends shortly after a ghastly car crash occurred in Santa Fe, where one vehicle driven by a man with .16% BAC broadsided another driven by a teen who was sober. The teen driver was severely injured and her four teen passengers were killed. The intoxicated man suffered bruises to his chest and knees. We got talking about the accident, expressing outrage and sadness over the tragedy.

The host, a pilot, pointed out, “these kinds of things will continue to happen until we get serious about drinking and driving.” He went on to explain how considerably more strict DWI laws are for pilots and that alcohol-related aircraft accidents are extremely rare. But then typically pilots are a different breed. They are more “by the book,” and given the dire consequences of errors, very safety conscious.

As we sat around the table having this discussion and hoisting glasses of wine, we also recognized most of us would be driving home under the influence. The use and abuse of alcohol in our society is indeed a fuzzy topic and full of double standards.

According to The New Mexico Department of Public Safety, “New Mexico has enacted some of the toughest DWI laws in the nation.” The Department also claims, “Alcohol is involved in 40 percent of all fatal traffic crashes in New Mexico which makes alcohol-related traffic fatalities the single largest factor in this state's traffic deaths.”

Obviously police cannot be everywhere all the time to arrest drunk drivers and judges hand down sentences based on complex sets of circumstances. But it seems there’s a disconnect between tough laws and the likelihood of alcohol-related accidents. Forty percent is terribly high. I wonder, is this the best we can do? You’ll be hearing more from me on this subject.

Gordon Bunker

The Ancient

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

R was telling me about her trip last fall to England, when she spent time with friends in a remote part of Cornwall. There was no phone or internet to keep her in touch with her world in the U.S. She spoke of waking in the mornings and taking good long looks out the window at the sea. She spoke of picking apples and then spending hours in the kitchen making apple sauce. R and her hosts would gather in the evenings and cook and dine together. The rhythms were different, she felt grounded and connected to real, basic life.

The day in and day out reality many of us face includes many disparate demands on our attention; the tasks before us, other’s needs, phones and cell phones ring, paper mail, email, voice mail, text messages come at us requiring replies. We drive back and forth and back and forth, and fly around the world. We eat foods prepared for us, often entirely by machines in factories. We often feel frazzled, disconnected and alone.

A cold front recently passed over the southwest, the temperature plummeted and we had high winds and rain which in the desert is always an event. It was the middle of the night and the house creaked and whistled. I held R close and listened to the rain on the roof, we were warm and snug. The next morning we were talking about the storm and R said, “thanks for holding me.”

Cooking a meal, taking a moment to look at the land or sea, holding the one we love close in the night; these are simple things, these are things we have been doing for a long, long time, and so they touch something deep within us.

Gordon Bunker

Washing The Car

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The biggest challenge of being a writer is coping with the days, weeks or months I have nothing to say. And then there’s rejection. So yesterday afternoon, when yet another rejection letter (to the sample chapters of a book I’m schlepping to publishers) appeared in the mail I decided to wash the car. For those of you who find cars as interesting as toaster ovens, please pardon me but I have nothing else to say.

To a point, whether a car is dirty or clean has no effect on how well it performs. Sometimes a filthy vehicle is purposely left so and paraded around as a macho badge of courage – guys drive their 4x4’s after a rainy spell literally covered with mud proclaiming, “my truck (and by extension the driver) can handle anything! Whoo-hoo!” Macho however, is merely a ruse to conceal the lack of courage. Be that as it may, I’ve found a clean car improves the performance of the driver. This one at least.

So I backed the car out of the garage. It’s been through some snow and rain and back and forth over my dirt road and is a grimy dusty mess. It looked sad and unloved. Next I emptied the canister and cleaned the filter of the Shop Vac. I wanted it to suck, and it does. Once the interior is clean I move on to washing the wheels. This is a separate job, they get their own soapy water and sponge as brake dust is abrasive to things like paint. With the wheels clean and the bucket rinsed and filled with a new batch of soapy water and another sponge I move on to the main course. Because I work outside and it’s breezy I wash and dry the car in sections and work my way top down and around. I discover a new ding in the passenger door; parking far away from everyone else to avoid such damage apparently isn’t working. I resolve to park further away, but of course this will eventually lead to leaving the car at home and walking. This may not be such a bad thing, except town in fifteen miles away.

I wash and dry to my heart’s content, oh that lovely paint shines when the dirt is gone. I open the doors and rear hatch and hood and wipe the edges and sills with the now damp towel and use compressed air to blow the water out of the front grille. It has a complex honeycomb grate which is otherwise impossible to dry. I give the brushed stainless steel exhaust pipe tip a going over with a Scotchbrite pad. Ah, the details.

I pull the car into the garage and put away the hose and bucket and other paraphernalia. The final step is to go into the house and get a cold beer and listen to the pfistt! it makes when I open it and then wander back out into the garage and stand back and admire my work. The beer, a locally brewed pale ale is cold and tasty. A buzz comes over me which is quite pleasant, and the car is clean and shiny and knows it’s loved. I admire its Germanic lines and details and marvel at how wonderfully it all works together. After dinner I go back to the garage and look at the car again. Tomorrow is another day.

Gordon Bunker

The Small House

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

The small house stands on a knoll with views of the Galisteo Basin, Cerro Pelon and the Ortiz mountains. Jay used to live here. Thirty or more years ago, it was among the first in the area, she and friends and family built it. The proportions and design clearly state the Northern New Mexico vernacular. The house doesn’t have electricity or running water. An outhouse stands out back. Inside, the first floor is open and of the space above half is an open cathedral ceiling, half is a second floor loft; a place to sit and read and think and look out the window.

The first time I met Jay it was snowing hard and the wind howled. Drifts formed in low spots and nooks of the landscape. She had walked to my place, cross country, about a half mile. She was dressed in many layers of wool and smelled of wood smoke, her long raven hair was streaked with grey and her eyes were filled with dark fire. She asked if I had jumper cables. I did not, so instead provided her with a cup of hot tea. We visited and became friends. She thanked me and went back out into the storm, her dark form fading slowly into the snow. We have since shared many cups of tea. Jay, of Hispanic heritage, her family has lived here for generations; me, an Anglo transplant from New England with nineteen years. We shared different perspectives, similar values and always lively conversation.

Later, José came into Jay’s life and now I live on the same road as the small house. José would sit on the porch, drink beer and survey the landscape on summer evenings. He would listen to Norteño on the radio in his old Ford pickup with the doors open and volume turned up. Festive voices and accordion and ooom pah pah would float and dance over the land. Jay would tend things, her hair flying about and turning more silver as time passed. Their dogs would stretch and snooze in cool dirt hollows. Occasionally friends and family would gather for a party. Elders would sit and children would run around. Tables were set and feasts had and they would sing along with the Norteño.

José always knew just how long he could play the radio and still have enough charge in the truck’s battery to start it the next morning. Just after sunrise, the engine would slowly turn over and fire and José would be off for work. He was a carpenter on his way to a construction site. José built the staircase in the small house. It is elegant and beautifully made from simple materials. A work of fine craftsmanship.

Despite having to truck water in, Jay planted irises out front. She would give them a drink and their blooms, delicately frilled puffs of lavender would float above desert grasses.

Jay and José have moved to the village. The house they live in now has the modern conveniences. The small house sits vacant. Some day undoubtedly it will change hands. I hope new owners will see the value of it and find a way to use it and maintain its simple integrity, but there’s a good chance they will not. It would be a simple matter to tear it down and build something new. The irises still come up but do not flower.

Gordon Bunker