The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: Inventories

  • Pip Pip at the Pub

    Toedeloe to the floor of the Vespa scooter, I cruised north up Hwy 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, in real time, present time, though I wasn’t always sure what week I was in or even what day it was, and guessed the time of day from the position of the sun in the sky and its shadows on the ground. I had no plans, no expectations, great or small. I had no doubt the locals I passed along the way had some, if only to make it to and from work without going stark staring bonkers, mad as hatters, excited as the March hares, gaga and crackers, freaked out. I wondered how it all held together, the daily commutes, full of horrible honks and screeching brakes, from the kid who was off walking and whistling to school homework in disrepair but excuse at the ready, to the CEO rolling off in his Rolls to explain to his Board of Directors the various whistleblower reasons for the latest decline in stock value, still revising his business plan, the new crew hired yesterday to be let go tomorrow. The buses jostling stop to stop, the big box ambulances curling their way noisily through a mess of traffic, the delivery trucks, 18 wheelers, pickup trucks, station wagons, hot rods, muscle cars, convertibles, vans, bicycles, skateboarders, walkers, and scooters all sharing the same roads. But unlike a schoolyard where the chaos of recess empties like a beer bucket with a bell the yard quickly returning to the quiet of pigeons descending from classroom roofs to snap up the crumbs of snacks, the kids all back inside heads on desks for a rest, their teacher reading aloud a short story, or his head too on his desk for a rest, and all is quiet – unlike the school yard, the road never fully empties, all day long, every day, vehicular traffic moving like the tides, in and out, up and back, to and fro, stop and go, this way and that, all manner of folk crisscrossing at the crossroads. Back in the 1950s, hitchhiking was more prevalent than today, and a military uniform and duffle bag in hand almost guaranteed a quick ride. In the 1960s and early 70s cardboard signs signifying destination were popular with travellers on street corners seeking long rides: Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Portland. So I was surprised when I rounded the Long Beach Traffic Circle on Hwy 1, on my way to Redondo Beach, and I saw a bald man in a Franciscan robe holding a sign saying El Segundo / Mission San Buenaventura. I glanced at him and shrugged my shoulders, as if to say no room on the scooter. But I was even more surprised when, a few hours later, having cruised leisurely through the beach cities on a solid gold weekday, and again stopping at Wormy’s Orange Tiki Room in El Segundo, where I planned to spend a few nights out back, working some maintenance to pay for my stay, Wormy planning a weekend long Pip Pip at the Pup in celebration of a local annual surf festival, and who should be there standing in his brown robe at the Orange Tiki Room bar, but the Franciscan I’d seen back at the Traffic Circle. You made it, I said. Pip pip, he replied, picking up his beer and taking a long gulping drink. Ah, he said, that’s the ticket to the pip pip. Wormy came in and introduced me to the monk, a Brother Juniper, a regular, apparently, who never failed to make Wormy’s annual fundraising Pip Pip at the Pub, this weekend being the 12th year in a row, all proceeds going to help fund the surf festival. Late afternoon now, evening glassoff in the offing, but I sat with Juniper in a corner of the bar where we both relaxed after our harrowing commutes from down south through the beach cities up to El Segundo. Wormy’s place gradually filled with pip pippers, a three piece country swing band showed up, a dart tournament grew some serious competitors, and out back a dunk tank was busy with dollar a throw chances to dunk a few local celebrities. The sun went down and the tiki torches came on and the festival was going, the street blocked off, the band now playing some straight ahead surf riffs. Out in the street a travelling carnival with rides for the kids started up. Face paintings. Balloons. Arts and crafts tables. Booths for local businesses and churches to pitch their stories. A police car parked at each end of the block.

    “Pip Pip at the Pub” is episode 49 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.

  • Used to It

    Revving up the time travelling scooter I pulled away from Tin Can Beach and 1954 and the veterans I’d met and spent a few days and nights with hanging out and drinking beers listening to stories they’d brought back with them from Korea. I drove into the traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway heading north in present time. I thought I might continue north on Hwy 1, camping out nights, and see what more I might experience along the way, moving back and forth in time as suited my mood. I had thought about spending some more time with the veterans, maybe even putting up a shelter of my own on the beach. The cold water in the morning a short walk away provided the kind of wake up call one yearns for without knowing what exactly it is until you’ve hit the water a few mornings running. There are two ways of jumping into the ocean. One, you wade in, gradually getting used to the cold temperature until you’re out far enough to dive under a wall of white water. The other way is how I learned and preferred. You start at the top of the berm above the water line and dash down toward the water high jumping the waves until you’re deep enough to dive under one, come up, and keep swimming out, fireflies buzzing on your skin, biting, until they all wash off under the waves and you’re suddenly used to it. But Tin Can Beach was rife with disadvantages. My second night, sleeping in my bedroll in the sand outside the vet’s hut, we were wakened by a woman’s scream out on the beach followed by the sound of someone running clumsily through a pile of tin cans. We got up and walked about a little ways up and down the beach, but it was dark and quiet and still, and what we’d heard was apparently not that unusual. We went back to sleep, and in the early morning were again wakened, this time by an early surf fisherman who had stumbled across the body. It took the cops almost an hour to finally show up. One of them questioned us, but they knew the woman, and they already had a warrant out for her partner in crime. The interview cop wanted to know our addresses for his notes in case the authorities might need to get ahold of us later, and as we all tried to explain this was it, Tin Can Beach was our address, he shook his head and said, I don’t get it. I don’t get how you guys get used to it, living like this. We got to talking with him. Turned out he too was a Korean War veteran. Funny how we all seem to turn down different roads he said, but no one laughed. It wasn’t that kind of funny. But you get used to it – a war, sleeping out, incarceration in a system job, ticketing people, retreating far from some madding or smug crowd, time travelling. And I didn’t want to get used to it, used to anything.

    “Used to It” is episode 48 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.

  • Hobo Poop on Tin Can Beach

    Pete, a veteran with nightmares of night problem patrols, spoke of the snow of his time in country, how the snow melted in the winter firefights, how it sucked up red light like a county fair snowball. For guys like Pete, Tin Can Beach provided paradisiacal possibilities after bouncing around in troop carriers in the war zone off the Sea of Japan. The beach was a haven where you could talk about your predicament without being asked a bunch of silly questions, without wondering what the daze of the days was all about, tin cans strewn across the beach a way of counting and recounting. And Tom spoke of his Engineers unit. They mainly put up and took down their pontoon bridge, and he was a fording expert. Jack operated a compressor truck. Air tools. He made compressed air, engine tank on the back of a deuce and a half frame. Attached to air hoses, the construction platoons worked jack hammers, saws, drills, picks, shovels, drivers. Built road culverts, shelters, cleared paths through the wilderness. Moved villages. Pete, Tom, and Jack lived in a makeshift shack near the back of Tin Can Beach. I asked could they keep an eye on my scooter while I went in the water for a fresh soapless wash. Tom said not to take a shit straight out, but move north or south down or up the beach a good hundred yards or more. They’d been having problems with swimming into hobo poop in the water when they went in for their morning dip. Later in the day, a meeting was held to discuss the problem. Someone suggested they put up a sign down near the water line: No Shitting in the Water. Discussion followed as to the best way to word it. Pete said it sort of sounded like there was no shit in the water, worded that way. Don’t shit in the water, followed, an improvement, but still they didn’t feel they were there yet. Don’t sounded too informal. Do Not Shit in the Water. Was there a more polite term for what they were talking about? Do Not Poop in the Water. What water? Wouldn’t ocean be more specific? Do Not Poop in the Ocean. Tom suggested Not be underlined, for emphasis. And By Order of the Mayor of Tin Can Beach should be added, for officialdom. Approved plan in mind, we set about constructing the sign, and when it was finished, we walked in a group down to the water to erect the sign on the berm up from the high tide water line, on perpendicular line to the shack up on the beach. Everyone stood back to admire and critique the sign and saw that it was good and headed back up the beach to sit out in front of the shack to drink beers out of cans. In the morning, we awoke to the smell of Jack’s coffee in an open gallon can boiling over the fire pit, and watched a hobo walking along the berm, in a predawn mist, and stopping and reading the new sign, drop his pants down around his ankles and squat, facing the ocean, his back to us. We’ll never know the winning tale, Tom said. The next night, the tide came in higher than expected, and the sign washed out with the tide. I found it washed up surf mangled about a hundred yards down the beach.

    “Hobo Poop on Tin Can Beach” is episode 47 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.

  • Tin Can Beach

    I rode into a fog, thin at first, the coolness refreshing, but visibility continued to reduce. The ray from the lamp on my Vespa bounced back at me. Visibility soon reduced to virtually zero, and I pulled over to the side of the road and rolled into the trailer park at Bolsa Chica. No tent camping. No sleeping on the beach. I tuned the time machine on the Vespa to 1954, the fog lifted, and I saw a few firepits spitting light in the darkness down on Tin Can Beach. I found a place in the sand off the road where I could park the scooter and spread out my cowboy bedroll. Some crooner with a banjo sang folk songs in the distance. I covered myself with my space blanket and fell asleep to Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene,” this crooner’s notion to swim out into the ocean and drown.

    “Tin Can Beach” is episode 46 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.

  • Don’t Try This at Home

    One should not time travel, nor play or work with the gods, unless fully qualified and experienced. One should live in one’s own moment, in one’s ongoing present, which is fully developed and capable of satisfying all one’s present needs. The reason we are unable to travel forward, into the future (with the exception of being able to travel forward to the future present we were in when we exited to travel into the past), is that the future consists of too many variables, too many possibilities, too many uncertainties – and no way of managing the risk. There’s only one door into one’s past. There is an infinite number of doors into one’s future, and picking the wrong one is almost certain, and will lead to couch surf zero. Two exceptions to one should not time travel: 1, we can still prepare for any uncertain future; and 2, we can visit the past to learn from our errors, as long as we don’t try to rewrite the past (while at the same time being mindful that we may not have understood at all what was happening when our past was present). Still, it’s also useful to remember that time is always under construction, and deconstruction, at the same time. In addition to travelling backward or forward in time, one might be inclined to want to stop time. I can often hear the click of time slow to a rest while time travelling on my 1972 Piaggio Vespa Super 150. One wants to travel through time in the slow lane of life. It should come as no surprise that by the time I made it down to San Diego to meet up with Cagetan, as we had planned, I had missed him. Apparently, Sot showed up, and he and Cagetan are presumably somewhere now travelling south through Baja. I’m not sure where that leaves me at this point in time.

    “Don’t Try This at Home” is episode 45 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.

  • Riding the Tide of Time

    I kicked my separation bonus from Minerva over to Cagetan, enabling him to make some repairs on his van, and we planned to hook up in a few weeks down in San Diego for a trip farther south into the Baja Peninsula. In the meantime, I purchased a 1972 Piaggio Vespa Super 150, and set out for a slow cruise down Highway 1, through the beach cities along the coast. I would spend a few nights at the Moro primitive campground at Crystal Cove, between Corona Del Mar and Laguna. I wasn’t sure what year yet. The Piaggio came equipped with a Time Machine. I could move back and forth in time, though not, of course, farther than the present. Like the movement of the tides, rising and falling under the influence of the moon and other gravitational energies, the Piaggio Time Machine came with a tidal time range. I could move back in time, but only to about 1960, at which point the scooter started to overheat. I could move forward in time, but only to the present time I had exited to move backward. And I could only time travel at dawn or dusk, during the Terminator – the grey line, the Twilight Zone. Any trip in time occured like a dream. I could travel years in seconds, but once landing, the material reality was diffused, poured out in a fuzzy, bent light, a narrative broken and full of surreal images like those sometimes appearing in the desert or over the ocean in an early morning or evening, a pause in the character of the light and air. I had not gone far when I decided to stop at the Pike Amusement Zone in 1963 Long Beach, where I parked and walked down to check out the roller coaster.

    “Riding the Tide of Time” is episode 44 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.

  • Love with the Proper Structure

    Zeroing in on the yawing wound of her loss, Minerva had said she had loved Hotel Julian. There are lots of other buildings in Los Angeles, I offered, to assuage her pain – penalty, I thought to myself, for not taking better care of what she claimed to love. But it wasn’t the building she loved, the structure, all those parts lovingly dismantled and carried out by the scroungers, scavengers, salvagers. To love a plate of hot salty fries cooled with catsup, the same love as for a Coney Island hot dog and a cold beer at the ballpark on a summer afternoon as the crowd settles in to a quiet fourth inning, is not the same love one might feel for a fearless fox terrier, or an alley cat rescued from a winter rain, or a baby of necessity given up by its teen mother, or the love for an abusive father or mother whose needs can never be satisfied by the child. Jesus said to love the Father with all your heart, soul, and mind; he didn’t say you had to be happy about it. Likewise, he said to love others as you love yourself; but he didn’t say what to do if you don’t love yourself, if you suffer from anhedonia, if your self esteem has been lowered to the level of a creeping worm. But a worm will turn, as the saying goes, and pressed to love, will. Love is desire that never dies. We often want something that may not be good for us, and the satisfactions those loves might provide quickly peter out, but true love (to coin a phrase) is a want for something that is always good for us, even if that good does not produce the same kinds of satisfactions or gratifications we’ve come to enjoy and want again and again, and which we eventually might come to realize are actually insatiable, and we can only want more. To love is to want less, not more, to be fulfilled, not emptied. To structure is to build, compose, make up.

    “Love with the Proper Structure” is episode 43 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.

  • Deconstruction

    Vulnerable was the word Minerva used to describe her building. To keep Hotel Julian afloat, keep up with increases in taxes, licenses, and fees, increases in costs of goods and services, including even a bare bones health care plan for her full time employees, would require new investment, resources, growth, but how would this tired, effete old woman grow an old hotel, expand its business? There was some discussion of building an aggressive, improved business plan, and buying used properties in affordable areas and copying the Hotel Julian model, creating a chain, a brand. That was a pipe dream. The building was wounded, noncompliance its Achilles Heel. We had 30 days to get out, before This Building Condemned notices were issued and displayed, the building then boarded up, sold, and handed over to a commercial developer. But as word of Minerva’s terms of surrender got out, and even before all the current residents could vacate, any number of contractors, recyclers, restoration businesses, carpenters, dismantlers, collectors and antiques dealers, inquired about purchase then invaded to carry the building off in parts. Clearly the hotel was not a sum of its parts. A kind of emergentism became evident. The value of the parts, extracted and made independent of the whole, could not be predicted by appraisal of the whole. A careful, observant, respectful deconstruction started, workers carrying off solid panel doors, and separate from the doors their hardware, glass door knobs, brass hinges. And clear fir sills, window casements, iron weights, leaded glass windows, double hung windows with sagging glass. Radiators, moldings, paneling, chandeliers, bathroom fixtures, porcelain tubs, tongue and groove hardwood flooring. Copper and galvanized pipe. The entire fire escape apparatus. Wall hangings, pictures, rugs, tile, railings, steps. Furniture: walnut bed frames, roll top desks, tables and chairs. The lending library of books from the fallout shelter with the bookcase – purchased and hauled off by Father Juan for Xavier’s school. Full dimensional lumber: 2 by 4’s, 4 by 4’s, 2 by 12’s. Huge basement beams and solid wood headers, the building by then hurriedly vacated. Another staff meeting was called, this one held across the street from the hotel in Minerva’s backyard. She handed each employee an envelope containing a severance bonus made possible by the sales of the individual parts of Hotel Julian, sweetening just a bit the bitter goodbyes.

    “Deconstruction” is episode 42 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.

  • An Air of Bad Ease

    An Air of Bad Ease

    An air of bad ease descended upon the rooftop gathering as employees of Hotel Julian listened to Minerva explain her predicament, and, by process of detrimental reliance, their own. Commercial buildings, particularly those housing paying guests, were subject to strict codes designed to protect the public against construction dangers inherent in aging and disrepair of physical systems that might result in unforeseen and unexpected loss to property or life. The purpose of updated codes was to minimize the uncertainty of loss. While Minerva tried to focus on the cost of updating, including the interruption to business, which would probably put the employees out of work long enough they would have to find work elsewhere, Julian argued the building should qualify for state and national historical interest and preservation. Either way, Minerva countered, the costs would be a show stopper. But there might be preservation funds or grants available for which they could apply. But the project would require neighborhood support, and that was certainly uncertain. Besides, current guests could ill afford future rates required to sustain a renovated project. Would there come a new clientele? In this neighborhood? Did Julian want to participate in a gentrification project? Dour looks and quiet space filled the conversation, which was, for the most part, between Minerva and her son. Hotel Julian was, after all, a family owned business. And there was the problem of the tunnel, built under the public road without permit or any kind of engineering approval. The tunnel coming to light had afforded the inspectors no end of curiosity and enjoyment. At that, faces with frowns glowered in my direction. Prior renovations to the building, particularly the one of the late 1940s, adulterated its original character to a degree it would be difficult to argue its historical nature or value. And now an elevator would need to be installed. The fire escape ladders could no longer be used to access the rooftop for public tavern use. There wasn’t anything about the rooftop bar that met any kind of code, license, or fee requirement. Seamen had been berthing in the hotel since the late 1800s; surely that provided some proof of historical interest. There was no business plan. They had, in a sense, been stealing from the business, letting the building deteriorate from improper maintenance. They had let it go, much as a person aging might be prone to let their own body go, ignoring exercise, diet, health care. Not that they didn’t care for their body, or their mind, but that the maintenance and upkeep became too much to bear. The old building contained a history of stories few today cared about. Neighborhoods change, and they had simply gone with the flow, in part, though, responsible for the direction that flow had taken. They were not slumlords, but a low rent district had evolved over time in their surrounds. They had adapted. Minerva asked for suggestions and questions. What about turning the building into a maritime museum? Find a new owner, one willing to invest in the old. The air on the rooftop, rarely used during the day, the sun rising, warming, then heating the tar roof, became too hot without umbrellas, and Minerva adjourned the meeting without ceremony or decision. I stayed on the roof, still nursing my morning coffee, walking the perimeter, watching the yachts come and go down in the harbor, and saw a few sailors dressed in white pulling detail on a distant Navy Destroyer deck. I was thinking about what might come next, while the others climbed down to go to work. I felt at ease, even as I felt somewhat bad about that easy feeling that comes from an ability to both care and not to care when presented with a prospect designed for either.

    “An Air of Bad Ease” is episode 41 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.

  • Code Violations

    A supposedly random building inspection by various authorities at large resulted in a temporary closure of Hotel Julian due to multiple code violations: plumbing, electrical, health – the grammar of business, industry, and construction. Because of the hourly, daily, and weekly services the hotel historically provided, the clientele the hotel attracted consisted primarily of maritime workers or fleet members in a time of severe housing shortages, but its purpose also aided in the growth of a culture of nomadic, vagrant, loitering, independent, outlier peoples arising over the years in its immediate environs. That culture was, come and go, at times more active than others, evident in weekend sidewalk and local park arts and crafts fairs and farmers markets, music busking evenings in parks and outside restaurants and taverns, a monthly swap meet at a defunct outdoor drive-in movie theatre, a local free medical clinic, underground crash pads and overcrowding of rental houses. Also, in panhandling and promiscuous drug use, prostitution, and petty crime incidents some members of the community were alarmed by, and the hotel was often the subject of debate and scapegoating at meetings of local neighborhood and business associations who put pressure on the local government institutions to crack down on illicit behavior. Following the most recent inspection, Minerva was served papers and this property condemned was suddenly a real possibility. At the same time, local gentrification opportunities resulted in her receiving two competing unsolicited offers to purchase the hotel – for demolition. She called for an unprecedented meeting with Julian and the entire hotel staff as well as the proprietors and employees of the ground floor businesses. Rumor had it, she was going to drop out and sell.

    “Code Violations” is episode 40 of Inventories
    a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.
    (Click link for continuous, one page view of all episodes.)

    Note: With episode 30, the title of the novel was changed
    from the original working title of “Ball Lightning” to Inventories.

  • The Yachts

    The Yachts

    Before not long at all, Cajetan got caught in the capture spiral of the fancy riggings of yacht harbor life, seduced by marine varnish and well groomed boats, afternoon Long Island iced teas sipped on a securely docked deck, and untouchable ship’s daughters yearning, not to mention, to hear him tell it, a few ship’s mothers in the bounty. That some best man would certainly unceremoniously cut him adrift should his sycophant stowaway piracies be discovered only seemed to quicken his thirst to drink straight from the yacht hoses – the blower, the bilge, the drain line. He quickly promoted from cleaning boats to supervising the cleaning of boats, and with barely a month’s experience casting about the harbor for starlight opportunities, he started up his own hull cleaning diving company, a one man show, a startup enterprise he was keen to offer me a partnership in as he planned the floating of an initial public offering. All he needed was a bit more capital. I rushed to assure him he had no idea how moody a harbor could be, how skillfully the owners could cast him from dockside to a dirty ocean while they continued to hop yacht to yacht rarely if ever testing their prows against the same seas he grew up in. I told him his two weeks before the mast seemed to have netted him little more than more want, and he’d end up walking some endless plank of broken dreams if he did not soon “heel to his own keel.”

    “The Yachts” is episode 39 of Inventories
    a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.
    (Click link for continuous, one page view of all episodes.)

    Note: With episode 30, the title of the novel was changed
    from the original working title of “Ball Lightning” to Inventories.