So far so good. The house hasn’t driven into a tree, I haven’t gotten any visible wounds (today), the sun is shining and, as far as I know, no comet is speeding towards earth, or, for that matter, an invading alien force. I’ve spent the day living dangerously; haven’t taped bubble wrap around myself. It’s a birthday thing.
I had a request in a private note yesterday for an old odd story of mine. It feels weird to call real life events stories, like somehow it fictionalizes them. I mean mild weird, not cats growing out of damp statues of roman soldiers weird, I mean when the statues rise through the floor of your third story walk up studio. Because, otherwise, where did you think cats came from, the kitty woodpile?
So it’s like the crack of 1980 or so and I’m sweating my ass off mid day in the barracks in Fort Jackson South Carolina. That’s a long story all on it’s own, but it’s true, head shaved, bunk made, active duty for basic training. It’s a Cat IV, which means it’s too fucking hot to be outside doing army shit. The kids (I was the second oldest guy at 20) are playing this game; what’s the smallest town you’ve ever been in. Sounds stupid, but we were kids from all over tossed into a squad for the soul purpose of teaching us how to act like a team. That game wasn’t any dumber than the ones the US army comes up with.
I was only half listening and the kids drag me into it, in part, I think, because I didn’t come straight from my parents house. I thought about it for a minute and said “Browns Valley Minnesota, seven cabins on a man made lake, all belong to this one family, and they run the place like a resort. I guess maybe the lake is stocked with fish each year. I mean I don’t know why people would vacation …”
As I’m talking this one kid is getting red in the face and coming up off his bunk.
“You’re a fucking liar!”
(I’m approximating the dialogue, I mean this was thirty six years ago).
The other kids look amused and excited.
“The fuck?”
“I spent my whole life in Browns valley, I remember every motherfucker that ever staying in our cabins.”
I’d been training with this guy for weeks and never bothered to read the name embroided on his shirt; Jarmon.
I was like “You’re Phil Jarmons little brother?”
I explained stuff to everyone else and phil jarmons little brother (for the life of me I can’t remember his name) filled in the parts that might be embarrassing in the US army at some other time in history, but not at that time. It gave me even more worldly cred and did to phils brother by association.
A few years earlier, 77 maybe 78, I was hitch-hiking back from anchorage (another long story) and, cutting out a gratuitous weird ass bit, Phil Jarmon picks me up in this beat to shit Toyota quarter ton with a camper. He asks where I’m going, and because I hadn’t quite made up my mind I just said ‘ the lower 48’.
By the time we got to Plamer Alaska, this beautiful, verdant eastern end of the Matanuska valley, he had talked me into staying to help him move his wife and kids and worldly belongings back down to the lower forty-eight. I mean the stuff we couldn’t sell at garage sales or through a real estate agent. At the time Alaska had decriminalized marijuana laws, which sound quaint now, but was a big deal at the time. We didn’t sell any weed, we tried smoking it all, gave the rest of the green house to the neighbor, either a fire chief or a police chief which would have seemed ironic, but not at that time or place.
We’d get up early and have coffee and joints looking out picture window that faced Pointer glacier, an ice blue peak where the valley and the horizon met. After about two weeks we put the wife and the two oldest kids on a plane and phil and I drove with the infant, well, between 11 and 16 months, everything we could fit in the back including a bunch of WWII c-rations, a jar of pennies, and, unknown to me, the last pound or so of weed. No foreshadowing, we didn’t get caught with the weed. Just the other side of the southern border of Canada we did have to break into the pennies to get gas and most of our meals were c-rats.
That journey was a long story all of it’s own. But we made it safe to Browns Valley Minnesota, the whole extended family came out to greet us, hugs and tears and Phil and I told them stories late into the night. I stayed there a few days. The matriarch of the clan stuffed every empty spot of my backpack with beef jerky and peaches, and a day later, I discovered, slipped forty bucks into the pockets of one of my pants.
It was a strange set of circumstances. I went from Palmer Alaska to Browns Valley, met a kid a didn’t remember (though he was less than two years younger than me) and met him again two years later in Fort Jackson, Columbia South Carolina. He told me that phil had divorced, his kids growing up at the “resort” and phil had gone to cut high timber in Montana, sending most of his paycheck home. A few years ago I looked up Browns valley, the internet seems to believe more than just jarmons live there. Sometimes the internet is just wrong and sometimes things change. When I was last there Browns Valley wasn’t even on the map and neither was the road I had to take to get to State Road 12 in South Dakota (Oh, yeah, for anyone who’s interested, Browns valley is damn close to south Dakota).
My daughter called while I was typing. I stopped and let her wish me a happy birthday. She’s getting married this Fall. It’ll be the first time I’ve been back to Oregon since coming back here.
I hope I edited the story well enough to make it interesting, it’s a hard one to tell out loud because the tangents, well, some are tangents, some are integral to the larger journey, are compelling. Like I got shot at in the Yukon. Like the reason I left anchorage so quickly had to do with a girl. Like when I returned home from SC, the same day, my son was conceived. Like you have to go through an average of four boxes of c-rats to find a candy bar and that a toddler can live off of vintage chocolate for five days. Like even without the nametag once I looked at phil jarmons brother he looked just like phil the way you can tell a Kennedy or a Baldwin. Like the immense sorrow Phil had at leaving his home in Palmer, witnessing a man actually break at the soul level.
Anyhow it’s later on my birthday and still no injuries. Yay!
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