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Letters From Little Rock |
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a semi-regular column
Letters From Little Rock is my column on whatever topic strikes my fancy at the time. Check in as often as you like, but I make no promise as to when new columns will appear. I hope to add a column on a weekly basis, but honesty compels me to admit that I might not even maintain a monthly schedule. September 5, 2004 September, eh? Well, I did warn you this would be an irregular column. I didn’t expect it to be quite this irregular. Like a lot of poets I work a full time job in addition to being committed to writing poetry as often as I can manage. Unfortunately, my day job likes to schedule overtime for whimsical reasons. Like, for instance, “It’s July.” Seriously. We got off for the Fourth of July and then proceeded to work twenty-five days straight. I just don’t get it. At any rate, once again, I’m trying to commit to updating Irregular Thoughts more often. I’ll fill you in a bit on how things have gone so far this summer: As per my usual my burn pile got the better of me. I suppose I should explain for all of the urbanites out there that a burn pile is an accumulation of hedge trimmings, tree limbs, leaves and such that has to be disposed of somehow. Ordinarily a little gasoline is part of the process. I sometimes throw on a couple of cardboard boxes or something to help me get the fire to catch. I have kind of geared back on the paper products though. Last fall, I put a box on top of the fire, roughly suitcase shaped, except it opened at the narrow end. Somehow that narrow end caught fire and as it burned it filled the box with hot air and—sure enough—it took off like a hot air balloon. I always have a hose handy just in case, so knocking it out of the air was not too hard. But it was a pretty near thing anyway you look at it. I’m not too sure what the law about burning yard trash is around here. I’m in the city limits, but the custom of my neighbors is to burn if they want to. And custom trumps law in practice so I burn when it seems appropriate. Even so, I get the feeling that releasing a burning box like a helium balloon is not customary and might have caused me some legal problems if it had landed someplace flammable and inhabited so I’m a little shy about what I burn these days. Not that it really matters. There’s a legal grey area concerning things you don’t get caught at that I intend to exploit to its fullest. And if I do run afoul of the law I intend to stand on my constitutional right of complete and total ignorance. But as a fire bug I am a poor example. This particular pile proved to be nearly impervious to fire. It was mostly limbs I trimmed off my plum tree in the middle of December. The tree is doing just fine. Fairly bursting with new growth. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, the burn pile sprouted new growth too. I attempted to burn the thing about once a month. I didn’t finally get it to burn until late June. In my defense some of the limbs were as big around as my leg so they took a little more heat than usual to really catch fire. And the wood was green, the sun was in my eyes, my shoes were untied,
I had a Southern education, and—oh who am I kidding? Anybody should
have had that thing torched by January 1st, I was just too cautious with
the gas. Actually, and I hate to admit this, this isn’t the longest
I ever let a burn pile sit. One fall I made a fair sized pile and gave
it a week or two to dry out. Blame it on global warming or El Nino or
blame it on fickle old Mother Nature. Whatever the cause, bird’s
nested in my burn pile and laid eggs. I didn’t have the heart to
burn them out so between one thing and another, that pile survived about
eight months. I never did figure out why little tweety-birds (finches?)
were doing laying eggs in October—it hasn’t happened before
or since—but I take comfort in knowing that when I did light that
pile up it burned to ashes in less than five minutes. On the other hand my workplace skills seem to be atrophying. I was led to believe I was in the running for a promotion earlier this year, but the spot went to the dark horse candidate. I’m not even sure I had a shot at it, but it did make me consider what I would do if I had a little more money. Actually, it would have been a lot more money, but who’s counting? I’ve always told myself that money is irrelevant. If you can’t live with the job for ten dollars an hour, fifteen shouldn’t make a difference. In practice, that isn’t quite true. I know I could have stuck with my warehouse job several more years if they had been willing to pay me better. I’m not entirely satisfied with the job I have now, but it pays well enough that I’m not inclined to leave it for less money. I’m sure I’d be happier sticking it out for the next thirty years if I were making more money. But I’m not sure if I wouldn’t be happier quitting altogether. Some of the politics of the job are typical of any workplace, but some of the others have been particular to this group of people and it’s weakened my confidence in the goodwill of the majority of my coworkers. The person that did get the lead spot is a black man and to a lot of my coworkers, it made a big difference. To tell the truth, it is better to have those people show their true colors than to have them walking around undercover, but I was taken by surprise to find out several of them put such an emphasis on race. I like to think of myself as a fairly good judge of character and I guess I’m more pissed off at myself for letting them get past my radar than anything else. There may be another lead spot opening up in the next year or so, I’d like to think I’ve earned some consideration for the job; I’m just not sure I want it anymore. The only other news around here is that there’s been no news around here. I bought a new car, a Honda, and it is exceeding expectations, I had a visit from an old friend I haven’t seen in years (hi Shelley), and that was really the extent of my summer. Summer is usually my fallow period anyway, but this has been an unusually quiet year. I don’t know why, but autumn is always my most fertile season.
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