Month: August 2022

And it feels so good

In September of 1976 i dropped out of college and spent the next 2 1/2 years traveling around the US, working a series of menial jobs on assembly lines, in tourist hotels, and tending other people’s yards. Like many people in their early 20s, i had the time of my life, formed the basic tenets that would see me through to my dotage, and acquired a good number of stories that, as the telling has gotten refined over the years, still generate laughs and head shakes, even from people who have heard them a few times. Did i brush up against my mortality on occasion? Well, come to think of it …

The first town i ended up having an extended stay was Phoenix Arizona. (How and why Phoenix is an amusing tale in its own right, but irrelevant here.) I think we arrived very early November. One of my first memories there is watching election returns on the cheap TV in the fleabag hotel we were staying in on East Van Buren across the street from the prison/mental hospital complex. Looking at Google Maps, i believe it is now called the Paradise Motel, and looks to be slightly more upscale than 46 years ago.

We (my college roommate and traveling companion) had used a Super 8 movie camera as collateral on the room for 2 weeks until we could find jobs and scrounge up some cash. After we’d been there about a month, the proprietor said he had a 1 bedroom “house” that he would rent to us for $85/month a few blocks away, on Fillmore St. I want to say it was between 10th and 11th streets, but i could be off a block in either direction. House is a generous description. The place was a shack, no larger than a medium sized toolshed you can buy nowadays at Home Depot for a couple of grand. We had to take the refrigerator outside for a bleach bath before we could use it, as the previous tenants had left a bunch of vegetables to rot while the electricity was turned off. The bathroom, surprisingly, contained a fabulous enameled claw-foot tub. The bathroom floor, however, wasn’t strong enough to support it, so, through several holes punched through the floor boards, the tub rested on stacked cinder blocks. We had a removable cassette deck in my van, and hooked it up to a spare car battery in the living room and played it through i don’t know what kind of speakers we could get for 3 bucks a pair.

Sometime around Christmas, possibly as late as the second week in January, i made the best purchase of my time in Arizona. A well used 9 inch cast iron skillet from the flea market, for 50 cents. After 45+ years, i think i’ve finally gotten it seasoned. It’s partner, a flat skillet that i inherited from a couple of roommates a few years later, also got packed up and sent to Ireland with the boxes that were intended to arrive here at the beginning of July, but which ended up sitting in a FedEx warehouse for over a month while various officials in both the company and Irish customs passed the buck back and forth for getting these things cleared and delivered.

Anyway, my cast iron, and a few other choice goods, arrived this week, and i couldn’t be happier. Might even make some corn bread soon.