Dave Blodgett

I sit on a warm flat rock ten feet above the sea with a short length of broomstick wrapped in fish line, dangling a spoon-shaped silver lure armed with triple barbless hooks and no bait into the blue-green water. Instantly, a two-pound rock cod chomps down on the lure. As I haul it in, a sea gull dives at me trying to steal my catch. I quickly flip the thrashing fish into a gunny sack half full of flopping cod. The sea gull screams its frustration.

Bounding behind me in a thick grove of twisted red madrona trees is a an enormous Belgium blue hare I shoot with my .22 caliber rifle and later skin, gut and impale on a spit over an open campfire. With no predators on this horseshoe-shaped island, the hare population is dense and needs thinning.

An inquisitive harbor seal with its bulging eyes breaks the surface and into my gun sights. I wait patiently until if fills it lungs with air before driving a bullet into its skull, so it will float, not sink. As I am about to pull the trigger a violent explosion of salt water drenches me as a huge black and white Orca killer whale swallows the seal in one gulp and disappears into deep, black water.

On a nearby sandy beach huge geoduck clams are pissing and inviting me to dig them up, toss them into a bucket of salt water for shucking, boiling with corn meal, tenderizing, slicing into thin strips and sautéing as an appetizer for a rabbit roast and a cod feast.

At 16, the first time away from the landlocked state of Minnesota, I get my first intoxicating taste and smell of salt water and its bounty on this enchanted Orcas Island tucked in the upper reaches of Puget Sound. I climb 2,400-foot tall Mt. Constitution. From its pinnacle I look down. I can’t believe my eyes. Below me is a lake. In the center of the lake is an island. In the center of this island is another lake, and in the center of this other lake is a little island. It’s magic.

STUFF
TIMOTHY GLASBY/ASSIGNMENT 4

The clutter amasses around me as if I’ve stumbled on an accident of a bizarre freighter that has run aground. It carries a mixture of all of the goods that Americans had or will soon be using as daily entertainment or novelty. I look at all the paraphernalia and realize that there is no way to catalogue or organize it. It is just free-form consumer junk that we could live without but society demands we own, nonetheless. It will end with the whole world being able to delight in looking at and, if it strikes anyone’s fancy, to bid on it and make it their very own from an internet auction site.
A large box directly behind me holds a collection of delicate glass, china, and pottery items. Some pieces are delicate like Belleek china. This Irish china with the tell-tale clover pattern is crafted so, if it was only slightly thicker, it would be the same as spreading a coating of Vaseline upon a surface and then removing it. Holding it up to the light you could see the translucence of its’ delicate sheerness. A china so ultra thin that it reminds you of holiday candy that you can bite into and taste sweetness so sugary it makes your teeth hurt.
This box also holds a set of Disney collector plates. All are adorned with the images of the characters that kids know and love so much. The Mickeys, Plutos, and Donalds, as common as their colors, seem to pop off the plates because of the high luster in the glazes they used to make them. All of them are printed with theme park junk-foods of one kind or another that look so edible you want to lick the plate to savor the tastes of the cotton candy, hotdogs, or popcorn to grab kids eyes, hearts, and imaginations and the filthy lucre from their parents wallets.
Across the room are two vintage, balsa wood airplane models. They were manufactured in Sweden and have great names; HELL CAT and SLY BOY. Assembled they have wingspans of over six feet wide. Gazing at the pictures showing them assembled it makes me wish I was small enough to climb aboard and set off for the heavens, but I know, the only flight they will take is when they are packaged and sent off to someone who cares enough to take the painstaking time and meticulous effort in turning the hundreds of pieces of lightweight wood into the flying, avenging commanders of the skies pictured on the boxes.
The planes are piled atop two nearly new turntables. I imagine the original owner’s idea of spinning all the old 45 r.p.m. records he has saved from his youth. Hoping to fill the room with the sounds of the rock, jazz, or swing that used to influence the beliefs and loves of his youth. But then, after setting up all the electronics, and spinning a few of the records on the heavy platen, realizes that the vibrant clean sounds of CD’s, that replaced the scratchy dead sounds of these old records, is so much more convenient. In his mind, he was sure these large, hard discs of vinyl, would invigorate him to a time when life was new and fresh, but now only burdens him with the antiquity and labor involved in playing them. The turntables as well as the LP’s will end up at the church bizarre or a yard sale.
On the other end, supporting the airplanes are stacks of books. Many I have read, many not. They are collections of books, some gay themed, some collections on collecting, and some war related. They will enhance and fill someone else’s head with the words, paragraphs, and stories that I have already found such great succor in. The newer ones are fresh smelling and give off an aroma of new paper and ink. The older permeate the air with a sour odor of mildew and age.
Had I a castle, I could keep all these books and be surrounded by them as they give me such a feeling of safety and serenity knowing that I will always have something to read. When I run short on things to read, I get apprehensive and nervous. I understand how a junkie must feel when they are getting low on their drug du jour. Fortunately my fix is only as far as a bookstore or library and I will be saved the withdrawals and side effects of not having my fix at the ready.
At the end of each objects time spent with me, I am not sure whether I am happy for having been allowed to enjoy them, albeit a short span of it’s actual life, sad because I will never get to gaze on it again, or just ambivalent because I paid a quarter for it and will sell it for much more and I, again this month, can pay my rent and not be homeless.

Timothy Glasby
Week 3/Setting

“That’s okay Mrs. Decker, I’ll get off here at the Strobel’s house. I have to baby sit so you won’t have to make another stop,” I inform the bus driver.
It is still a half a mile to my house but, getting off here, I won’t have to listen to the other kid’s remarks. Remarks of how poor we are and what a run down old trailer we live in.
A few years ago we had a nice house in Bridgeport, just fifteen miles north of where we now live in Birch Run, Michigan. After Dad died Ma moved us to California where we lived with my older brother but that didn’t work out, so we moved back to Michigan and lived in a trailer park in Bridgeport.
Ma has bought two acres of land in Birch Run next to an eighty acre woods with five hundred more acres of woods across the country road. She paid $500.00 for it, had the front part of the lot cleared, bought the trailer, and had it moved onto the lot. The trailer, certainly not nice enough to call a mobile home, was twenty-five years old and was only 8 feet wide by 40 feet long with a bedroom in the back. The middle bedroom has become a pump room to bring water in from the well and a small loft area like a train berth was built on top of the pump and I sometimes sleep there. It is private but the pump comes on at odd times and is really loud but it is my own space and, being fifteen years old, I need the privacy.
The trailer is an old silver painted tin can with rounded sides from the early 50’s. Not shiny or upscale like an Airstream or dressed out in new aluminum siding that is bright white. It is a relic from years past and even a fresh coat of paint doesn’t disguise its antiquity or ugliness.
Ma’s brother, Uncle Bob, built a small building that attached to the side of the trailer. It is 12’ wide by 20’ long and works as the entry. It is painted brown with no fancy trim color or gutters and inside it holds an old space heater, a clothes closet, and the cage for the six doves that I use in my magic act. Not big or fancy enough to be called a foyer it is more like a mudroom.
The back part of this extension, divided by a wall that stops before the ceiling, houses a single bed and a set of bunkbeds plus a couple of dressers. It has a closet along one side, but it is not deep enough for a hanger to fit in properly.
Helen, my older sister, takes the trailer bedroom, the twins and I share the large bedroom when I can no longer stand the noise of the pump, and Ma, always giving up something for her kids, sleeps on the sofa. It is very confined living.
Before sundown, I leave from Bobby’s house as I am very afraid of the dark and the half-mile trip to my home seems like ten miles because of my phobia. When I get home I notice the ugliness of the trailer and the front yard. It is a collection of dirt and weeds. The singular piece of beauty is an eight-foot tall Scotch pine tree that thrives despite, or maybe, because of the unkempt lawn and the scraggily woods that surrounds our home.
I see Ma's Chevrolet station wagon in the drive and I know she is home from work at the hospital laundry. She is making dinner for her kids. She sits and asks, “T.J. would you please rub my feet? The concrete floor at the laundry makes them so sore.”
I agree to do this without any gripping. I never bring up the fact of how embarrassed I am of our home, as I know that Ma, almost sixty years old, works so hard for her children and it would make her sad to learn of my feelings.
I have been in the car with Ma many times as we pulled into the drive and note her embarrassment and sorrow for her lot in life.
She covers her feelings with a comment, “At least its paid for. I don’t owe anyone anything.”
She smiles and takes my hand as if to ask me for some kind of forgiveness for her mistakes or bad choices. I smile back at her, as I love her so deeply and would never do anything to hurt her.
I also know that she knows how I feel about this house and I think to myself, “At least its paid for."

I hesitated as I reached for the phone to call the sister of my girl friend of forty-five years ago. I learned she had died in 1985 in Southern California. She had lived in Denver until her marriage.
Also I only recently learned that the person that I had known for only four weeks while I was in Army basic training had died in Southern California in the same year with a gun wound. This person had been instrumental in helping me find a direction in my life.
While I knew each of them for a very short period, months for the person in Denver, and weeks for the person in the Army, the former had introduced the latter to me via her correspondence with him. He had come to my barrack to introduce himself and to talk about his love in Denver. He wanted to know if I had a photo of her. I said yes and I gave it to him. He was so pleased that he spent the last few weeks prior to his departure from this Army base teaching me how to pass the oral exams leading to an invitation to Officers Candidate School in Engineering. He himself was on his way to Infantry OCS.
Since they both lived in Southern California for many years, the possibility that they knew each other following their respective marriages had made me wonder if there was a possible relationship between the two later in life. Did I want to know? Yes! Did it really matter to me? No! The number of unbelievable coincidences in my life made me ask the questions when another such event seemed to occur.
When I phoned the sister, she recalled who I was and exclaimed: “She should have married you.” Then she went on to tell me that her sister had a very unhappy marriage and that she had gone to Southern California with her husband. She said she had died of a “brain tumor” operation in the hospital in 1985.
A buddy of mine from college days had gone off to war and returned to California after successfully dodging the bullets in Europe in World War II. We met again during a World War II Japanese-American veterans get-together in Las Vegas after fifty years. I was lamenting the fact that I had questioned dozens of vets if they knew this person who had helped in the direction of my career. Without a moment of hesitation my buddy said: “Yeah, I knew him. He was my roommate in an Army base in France. He went to law school after the war and practiced law in Los Angeles. He got into some trouble and committed suicide in 1985. He shot himself.” I WAS SPEECHLESS.
The succession of coincidences was too much for me. I really did not want to know anything more.

Sensual Lady

Touched inappropriately she awakened early to the desire
Of pleasure.
To be aroused so young she hid these natural desires
Because of guilt and shame
Feelings she suppressed.
How could a child sort through these conflicting feelings?
Guilt and pleasure?
Shame and desire?

These feelings lay hidden deep within and only during years of peeling away the layers was she able to discover the sensual lady
Buried within.
She began to trust her heart, her intelligence and knowledge of herself.
Soon she was able to dig down and recapture her own womanly desires.
Only as she learned to trust one man, then two was she able to embrace her womanhood and explode freely with number three.
Long dormant, deeply buried, yet retrievable.
At long last
Woman restored.