J.D.’s Columns

Talking Turkey   My mind has developed a tendency to pop out of gear. High mileage, lack of maintenance, and indiscriminate use of aftermarket additives have undoubtedly contributed to the clunky condition of my mental transmission. There needn't be a heavy load on the system, like trying to determine whether the breast end or the tush end of the battery goes against the little spring for this sudden shift to neutral, this clanking and grinding and over-revolution of engine, to occur. Nope, it can, and will, happen just about anywhere at anytime. Take a few days ago. A shopping cart and I were wobbling down an over-waxed aisle through the meat morgue in a grocery store in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, when a red Magic Marker sign introduced me to the concept of “Turkey Ham” and my clutch began to slip. My legs stopped shuffling, my vision blurred, and there in the middle of the Temple of Bratwurst, I watched, projected on my own special monitor, the scene of Betsy Ross, in her understa...

Two Rural Dining Experiences Donnelly, Idaho      When I first wandered into The Club, it was not formally called The Club. That was just the local name for the establishment. The only signage identifying it as a café/bar was a plywood sign on the roof, lighted by incandescent bulbs, that said “EATS.”         It was a hot July afternoon when I walked through the beat-up front door into a white room with four small Formica tables, a dozen straight backed chairs, and six leatherette stools at the counter. The kitchen area was tiny, with a serving window ledge. I could see the top of a gray head belonging to the cook, who also acted as waitress, cashier, and busperson.      I was the only patron. It looked dark and cool back in the back room. An old-school wooden bar hugged one wall. A few round tables skirted a dance floor and jukebox. The bartender wore a ballcap that said “Clyde.” I asked Clyde if ...

Estelle Gary, Indiana       During the last great spasm of the American steel industry, a thousand of us worked under one roof, turning sheet metal into refueling lines for the Strategic Air Command and prototypes for America's infant space program.      Five days a week I fought sunrise traffic from my flat in southside Chicago to the parking lot outside Door South #l6, where I inserted a card in the time clock then faced a mountain of long, thin wall steel tubing. By fitting sizing dies onto twenty-foot hydraulic rams I pulled one tube inside another until the mountain dwindled to four tubes. Those were left for the next day, as a reminder to the time-study finks in neckties that the union was running the job.      Repetitive tasks are a machinist's yoga. While the machinery whirls the mind cruises. Those instances when attention to the job disappeared entirely are chronicled by circular scars on my palms....

When Pigs Swim        In 2006, according to federal data, the state of Iowa contained 55,869.36 square miles, 2,987,345 humans, and 16,900,000 hogs. That works out to 52.4 humans per square mile and 302 hogs per square mile, or roughly six hogs per person. Memorize these numbers.      Now, set the time machine to a few years ago, when several rivers began to flood the three percent of Iowa that lies along riverbanks and below levee height. In the interest of cheap math, let us assume an equal distribution of hogs across Iowa, meaning that about 480,000 hogs were going to get very wet.       Because today’s farmer is wired into various government GPS buoys and flow sensor devices, many hog producers had several days’ warning of what was going to happen and took preventative measures. For the most part, this involved shoring up the levees and trucking hogs to higher ground. Assuming that a hundred hogs fi...

  Getting Goosed        One evening last week, I walked out from our house to get a better view of a moon rising in the smoke and dust over the mountains. Across the face of the moon I saw the season’s first formation of geese. They were flapping along at maybe five hundred feet above the valley floor, honking directions and fast food advice to each other, sounding like an orchestra of bicycle horns.       Forty-some years ago I worked for a fellow named Shelly in Long Valley, Idaho. Shelly was one of the most honest, fair, friendly people  I’ve had the privilege to have as a boss. So friendly, in fact, that we employees had to brace ourselves when he was on the job, to keep from getting knocked off their feet when slapped on the back. His was the only outfit I ever worked for that gave each employee a turkey at both Thanksgiving and at Christmas.       We didn't see much of Shelly in the...

Slug Bug                                                                                                               A couple of years ago I visited with my wife’s Library of Congress librarian sister and discovered the particulars of a very interesting and non-government regulated hitchhiking scheme called “slugging” that currently operates around our nation’s capital.       The system of slugging is quite simple. Back ...

The Gift       The kid was twitchy in a way that was not easy to diagnose. He pushed open the double doors of the Arts Center and stumbled onto the slate floor of the foyer, eyes busy, rocking his weight from one foot to the other, wearing kneeless jeans and a dark brown Big Dog tee-shirt. Nervous. Out of place. A six-pack of Mountain Dew beyond bucket-of-hormones wired. Up to something. Stoned. Tweeked.       “Hi. You got anything for two dollars? See, like I am supposed to meet my brother out front, but he is not here yet and it is cold and I have two dollars and I thought maybe I could pick up something for my Mom who is working at Taco Bell today and we don’t have much of anything anyway and so if there was something that I could get for her it would make her happy and do you have anything for two dollars, maybe in the back room or upstairs or downstairs or something?” His speech was fast but slurry, with just a hint of Elmer Fu...