MAY 5, 2018

MEAN PEOPLE SUCK

So anyway. Birds twittered in the trees and flew here and there. Sunlight dappled the path and occasionally a squirrel's tail flicked in the air near a tree bole. The air, as yet, remained cool in the shade as the land prepared for the on-coming onslaught of dry heat. Denby walked with Marlene and Pahrump and Little Adam through Silvan Acres. Silvan Acres consisted of a scattering of houses off of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, itself a sort of two-lane highway beset with the steely eyes and hands gripping the steering wheel as people who styled themselves individuals careened at high speed from the population centers towards the still virgin coast. There was a small sign indicating the one way into the unincorporated landholding. Turning left off of the highway, one drives a long Alameda to the intersection where the lone market sits to offer exotic wines and notions, along with potato salad and antifreeze. There is spam.

You pass to the left of this bustling center of bicyclists families buying ice to pass the bus stop -- there is only one in Silvan Acres -- and proceed either right to the Post Office or left to the Improvement Center which boasts an outdoor heated pool that features a buckled subsurface and lap swimming enough and a ramshackled weight gym which is missing a few weight categories and where nothing is bolted down.

The statue of the Unknown 49'er Miner stands on a rocky pedestal next to the fire station that is the main call center for all of western Marin.

Other than the houses where people live, this is the entire description of Silvan Acres, where our Household has found itself after many travels.

Much further down the road was the Independent Hospital where Denby found himself after the the Angry Elf gang had poisoned him near unto death. The Angry Elf had been a courier for the Mob in Brooklyn and had long possessed access to the most dreadful chemicals known to man, for he had sold these powders to school children in New York, to hapless junkies on the streets and to well-heeled yuppies looking for easy highs as well as any number of strung-out people inhabiting smoky dens and filthy mattress apartments along the Brooklyn-Bronx Divide.

The Angry Elf had retained the apartment house keys after working nominally as a House Superintendent, so he had full access to everyone's lodgings, including kitchens and refridgerators.

Denby had fled that bad abode, but the consequences of having lived there had followed him and he had taken ill in a grevious manner due to the chemicals introduced to him as he had lived on the Island and all the members of the Household of Marlene and Andre were worried. "I am gonna make you sorry!" said the Angry Elf back then. It was a statement that would stick with the dwarvish thug until the day the little con-man finally eased this sweet earth with his departure.

Pahrump and Marlene had come to fetch Denby from the ER after he had spent a long day and most of the night there getting blood drawn and fluids pumped in to handle his compromised situation.

How you doing, Martini said.

I been left for dead before, but I still fight on. Don't wait up leave the light on. I'll be home soon," Denby said.

They sat beneath the shade of the tree they now called The Editor. A seasonal front had swept in and the branches all stirred with the wind.

Out on the fishing lanes a radio signal indicated that some former friend to Pedro was still active. For the past few months Pedro had been piloting his boat, El Borracho Perdido, with radio silence since his favorite radio host, Pastor Rotschue had fallen victim to the #Metoo movement as accusations of sexual impropriety had driven his former friend from the airwaves. Working the dark hours in his boatcabin with no solace of a like mind for hours on end, bumping along in his cab like any midwestern farmer coursing along in an iHarvester through the furrows of green waves, he had felt bereft of a presence that had accompanied him for some three decades of harvesting the ocean.

Pedro had been thinking about the next big thing. He was getting old and the life of a working fisherman was not an easy one. He had been thinking about going north, taking the family, to the old haunts of his family around Sausalito where surely there might remain something of the old ways. Or maybe just a place to settle his anchor.The night approached and drew its coverlet over the land with soft breezes that stirred the yellow iris blooms announcing Spring had arrived.

##

So anyway, things have been chaotic ever since the real President Ronald Rump, Chief Executive of the Bums, has left Sacremento for Russia, as pretty much everyone expected him to do. He took with him his two odious children, his trophy wife from the Balkans, and the briefcase of Special Codes. In his place he left a Dummy Rump, a person hired to look like him and attract assassin's bullets. That the real Rump has long since left town and that a dummy is sitting in his place, pretending to give orders explains a lot. Many people felt that had been the situation all along ever since that disastrous November.

After all, who else but an hired dummy would claim that a wall between California and Nevada will help the Golden State in any way, especially since Nevada will pay for its construction.

When pressed on the issue of immigration, the Dummy has said, "CANADA. WE WILL BUILD A WALL BETWEEN US AND CANADA AND CANADA WILL PAY FOR THAT ONE TOO. THE CANADIANS NEVER SEND THEIR BEST."

And when gently suggested that the idea is a tad preposterous, the Dummy only gets infuriated.

"I AM NOT A RACIST! THOSE KANUKS HAVE BEEN SNEAKING OVER THE BORDER FOR YEARS AND TAKING JOBS. LISTEN, NOBODY LOVES CANADIANS MORE THAN I DO. I REALLY LOVE CANADIAN BACON AND BACON, IF YOU BIASED LIBERAL AGENDA PRESS PEOPLE WILL NOTICE, IS NOT ON THE TARIFF LIST I JUST DEVISED. I ALONE CAN FIX THE PROBLEM!"

Since the dummy inhabiting the Oval Seat of Porcelein is not the real President, we can all relax, get through the midterms that promise to correct some of the worst abuses and advance to the next General Election when Ronald Rump, running his campaign from his Moscow dacha, is sure to lose to just about anybody or anything that runs, whether it be Donald Duck or Mason Reese, both of who are slated for big come-backs.

On more local news, there was a minor contretemps at the new Homestead run by Marlene and Andre when Pahrump innocently parked his scooter on the gravel in front of the house. A man across the street ran out of his house, jumped into his truck parked in the entrance to an immense concrete pad up in front of his own house and screamed out to slam on his brakes and howl down at Pahrump, still on his scooter taking off his gloves.

"That thar spot be mine buddy! You people go away and die and be never born and I hate you with all my middle fingers you hippie types go park in your driveway. WE WAS HERE FOR ALL TIME AND JUST ABOUT FOREVER!"

Pahrump, a native Modoc, stood there confused.

The angry fellow, not getting an immediate response, backed up his truck to block the house front gate behind the scooter and jumped out to run up to his yard and fire up a chainsaw.

A neighbor named Dave ambled up the road at this point, taking his ratdog for a walk. "Hoddy." said neighbor Dave.

"What gives with this jerk?" Pahrump asked.

"O them Smellings. They bought that house in 1987 for about $175,000 and been pests ever since. Old timers, some call them although that is hardly an excuse. Sure got a whale of self-entitlement for sure. I think the old lady got something wrong with her head."

"I never seen anything like this," Pahrump said.

"Welcome to Marin," said Dave. "We got a load of it here. Ya oughta bring yer missus down for tea some time. My old lady makes honey from the bees she has going out back. We are not like the Smellings; we prefer to get along."

"No old lady any more," Pahrump said. "But thanks."

"I advise you to move your scooter. No telling what them Smellings will do to it. They imagine they own the whole mountain here."

Pahrump decided there is virtue in non-contention and moved his scooter with difficulty down into the steep cut that passed for a driveway and right away the chainsaw stopped and the Smelling boy ran over to move his large pickup truck into the spot he considered his own.

That night the Household discussed the Smellings -- Martini found they had misdemeanors for weapons charges on them and punative liens owed off of property they owned elsewhere.

Pedro talked about how he had gone over to be friendly and they had slammed the door in his face, ordering him off the property there.

Tipitina said the old woman had threatened that her car might get hit if she parked anywhere near the property, no matter they were on the opposite side.

"I think these people are to be avoided," Andre said. "Keep away from them. If their house burns, let it burn. We keep a distance and they seem to want a large perimeter for some reason."

After dinner, a group of the Household took a walk in the bright moonlight -- it was a full moon and all the glades were silver and black and deer moved with assuredness through the trees. They paused before a house where Missy Moonbeam twirled and leapt and flung her long hair while her phonograph inside the house played a jazz tune. She appeared to be celebrated the lunar cycle. Or something.

"Dad, that lady gots no clothes on," little Adam said.

"That is right," Andre said. "Pay her no mind; she is a freak just like us."

"Okay," Little Adam said.

A pair of black-tail deer bounded across the road at that point.

"Marin sure is a mixture of things," Pahrump said.

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