Flip Phone

“Laura Stewart's eyes fluttered open to see Charlie Adams' hand hanging limply from the side of the examination table. She was still huddled on the floor, one arm gripping the pipes below the sink as if they were a life preserver. For a second, she had no idea where she was or how she had gotten there. She looked at the hand with confusion. His index finger was extended, reminding her of that painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was at this moment, with Charlie's finger pointed delicately toward the tiled floor, that Laura remembered George Rayburn. He had disappeared, sucked into the mini-universe that had unfolded across Charlie's body.”

                        --From my novel, “The Secret of the Sky”

 

I own an old Razor3 flip phone. It’s about seven years old, has the original battery and refuses to die. I have a love/hate relationship with cellphones. My wife insists I have one. I drive down a lot of isolated country roads on the way to work and back. I also have some physical problems that make it necessary that I have one with me at all times. But other than that, I hate the suckers. A couple of years ago I thought I had lost it. My first emotion was one of relief, but then I found it the bottom of my backpack. Bummer.

Why would I feel this way about cellphones and electronics in general? I mean my writing obsession depends upon a computer and the Internet access. I’m using my computer now to write this spectacular piece of prose. Yet a part of me hates it.

I like to say I’m an analog guy in a digital world. Chevrolet says I should have something called a tablet. Oh, they love tablets, that General Motors. They harp on it continually in their training videos. They assume that all the Chevy salesmen out there want one or already have one. It’s one of the conceits that show how out of touch they are with the guys on the front line selling their iron.

 

But that’s another story.

This whole thing with Smart Phones bugs the crap out of me. I cringe when I see one. I was at the doctor’s office the other day. There were twelve people sitting in the waiting room, and seven of them were staring at their phones. Six of them were women. Can someone tell me what they hell are they looking at?

I suspect that my old Razor has lasted so because I don’t use it much. At one time I had 4000 unused minutes in my ATT&T account. I don’t like talking on the phone. I have a nephew that will confirm that. The battery always goes dead on me because I forget to charge it. It usually gives up the ghost when I’m driving down one of those country roads I mentioned earlier.

I miss party lines. (Look it up.)

This brings me back to my writing. Without a computer and a little help from Microsoft Word 2010, I would still be dreaming of red ’57 T-Birds stuffed in the corner of my backyard on Lark Street. The magic of a keyboard opened something up in me I didn’t know I had. To be honest, it gave me a reason to struggle on when times were at their roughest. It’s doing the same thing for me now. I am eternally grateful.

But I refuse to ever consider a Smart Phone. I don’t want to check my email, go on Facebook, surf the net and whatever the hell there else there is to do while waiting to see the doctor. That’s why God invented books and magazines. My good friend Scott McDonald bought me a Kindle, and I’ve never used it. Here I am hawking to anyone that will listen to buy my books, but I don’t participate in the process at all. As I said, I’m an analog guy in a digital world.

There’s something sick about that, isn’t there?

Keep Reading

There is more than meets they eye at the 4Corners Cafe. I encourage you, dare you to read my older posts. You may find something interesting there. Maybe even a story of sorts--or is it real? I have recently rearranged them in ascending order. Try it, if you dare.

David

God, the Universe and a '57 T-Bird

“Liz knelt and carefully picked it up. It was heavier than she expected. The edge of the glass had a delicate bevel that highlighted both the wood and the mirror itself.  She looked at her reflection and an older woman stared back. Not old, just older. Her youthful face, the face she had known for all these years, the one that carried the horror of pimples as a teenager and later beguiled Burt Smith was gone. In its place was another face, a face still pretty but one caught in the apex between youth and middle age. Fine creases were starting to appear on her forehead and around the corners of her mouth that no amount of Oil of Olay could banish for long.”

 From the story, Mirror, Mirror, from my upcoming story anthology “unexpected pleasures”.

  

As it happens my first experience with storytelling coincided with the discovery that the Universe was not what it seemed. I was eight, the youngest member of a loving but insulated Portuguese family from Hawaii living on the “Mainland” as it was called, a place so very far from home.

My uncle, Jim Teves, had a bright red 1957 Thunderbird. He was single then, and the world was his oyster, as they say. He’d come over to our house on Lark Street to visit us and park the beauty at the curb. The T-Bird mesmerized me. I remember standing on the sidewalk in front of it thinking it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Every curve and angle was perfect. How could something be so beautiful?

I wanted one.

That’s when I began my campaign for God to give me a miniature version of it. I would lay in my bed at night obsessing about it (and the actress, Sandra Dee, but that’s another story). I concocted a story about it. The government was experimenting with allowing a few select young people to be allowed to drive, and I was perfect for the project. I would have my red T-Bird. I would proudly drive it around the neighborhood, perhaps all the way to Assumption Church, were the pleated-skirt Catholic girls would greet me with love and kisses….

The plan was carefully laid. I instructed God to deliver the T-Bird to a bush at the very back corner of our expansive yard early Saturday morning. That way I’d have the entire day to enjoy it. There, next to creek where we played on lazy summer days, it would be waiting for me. So beautiful. So perfect.  So red.

I awoke that morning and announced to my parents the wonderful thing that was about to occur. I remember them laughing. I thought they might be mocking me, but I suppose now it was one of those “oh, how cute” laughs. Whatever it was, they didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation. God was going to fix me up.

I remember bounding out the back door and down the steps. It was one of those wonderful overcast Bay Area mornings; a chill in the air that made you feel so very alive. I ran toward the bush. The T-Bird wasn’t readily visible, but I imagined that God had carefully hit. But as I approached, there was a sinking feeling within me. The space between the bush and the fence was empty. Apparently God had screwed me, and I was devastated.

It was one of those “aha!” moments. A great revelation that I had no control over God, the Universe or anything else. It was at that fateful moment that I realized that life can be cruel, and as the Rolling Stones would later say, “You can’t always get what you want.” 

But I got a story about it; not written down but in my head. And over the weeks and months that followed I would lie in my bed and expand it to my own private underground subway system and a bowling alley that spit out packets of money every time I bowled a perfect game.

So God had given me something: a rich fantasy life that would stay with me throughout my childhood and into my adult years. And then, one day when I was thirty-eighty, I began to write them down.

Greetings from the 4 Corners Cafe 2.0

Starting next Wednesday, July 2, 2014, I will be starting a new addtion to this blog. It will be about my life as a writer.

I posted on my Facebook page that I would delete the old entries and start afresh. I now think I won't do that--writers don't like to delete things unless they don't work. When I looked back at those writings, I remembered what great fun I had writing them, and that's what writing is all about.

I am posting below what I wrote on my Facebook page--slightly modified. I hope you will stop by on Wednesday to see how deep I can put my foot into my mouth. I haven't even started yet, but I've already done it.

David Teves

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First entry for my new writing blog that is not a blog as of yet. 

So I’ll start from the beginning then. A writer’s journey. My journey. Call it part biographical, part bullshit. I’m supposed to try to use this to promote my writing. To get you to help me get out of my day job and have a little peace in my life. But going in I gotta tell you that probably won’t happen, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself.

This is the way it will be. I’ll write one post once a week. I could write more, but it would keep me away from the real writing—if that’s what it is. I’ll post it let’s say on Wednesday mornings. Just before I go to my chemotherapy. There I said it. It needed to be said. It would be a lie to myself and to you if I didn’t. But that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject. This is about writing, not cancer.

Next. I will go over the post one time before I publish. If I catch errors, that’s great. If I don’t, well that’s the way it’s gotta be. I obsess too much about the finer things in a sentence than to worry about it here.

Did I mention I’m a bullshitter? Keep that in mind. I’ll tell you something interesting. I didn’t discover I was a writer until I was in my late thirties. That’s a kick isn’t it? I spent a lifetime not quite fitting into things. I thought I was just emotionally flawed, but it turned out I was just—different.

Last. Despite of the heaviness of the last few sentences, I intend to keep things light for the most part. Fictions supposed to be fun, right? But still the same, I am going to try and seduce you into getting me out of the car business. That’s the price of admission.

It will start next Wednesday, July 2, 2014.

 
David

Starbucks

I hate Starbucks. I say this even though I go there about once a week during the winter to order a medium cup of coffee, just a little room for cream please. This hate/like relationship with the place has been going on for several years, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. Sad thing to say, isn’t it?

The reason for all the thinking is because I have wondered if my almost phobic dislike for the place has something to do not with Starbucks but with my deep-seated personality flaws in general. I tend to be an anti-social, semi-asshole some might say. For the most part I dislike most people—especially the pompous ones, and let’s face it, Starbucks is crawling with them. Every time you go into one there they are: guys hunched over laptops of iPhones, women with their shoes off, curled up comfortably in an over-stuffed chair having meaningful conversations with their friends.

Starbucks likes to go for the ambience of a hip coffee shop. Smooth jazz lulls you over the lousy overhead speakers. Over-priced CDs are available for those gullible enough to buy them. $17.95 for a CD? Hello, haven’t you people heard of Amazon.com? Expensive coffee makers, To-Go coffee cups that won’t fit in any car cup holder designed to date, all wrapped up in a politically correct, social responsibility, let’s start tweeting package. Now I ask you, who’s kidding who?

In their view, Starbucks is not just selling coffee and coffee accessories, they’re selling a lifestyle. They call it “The Starbucks Experience”. As for me I think any title with the word “Experience” in it should have “The Jimi Hendrix” in front of it. As a still slightly rebellious child of the 60’s, that oh so pretentious lifestyle comes off as obnoxious and fake.

In my opinion a real coffee shop (as opposed to a diner) is a place filled with cigarette smoke, rude waitresses, and guys in berets reading awful poetry while the listeners click their fingers in approval. In my book that is the definition of cool. Smelly, but cool.

When I go into Starbucks I get claustrophobic with the yuppie vibe of the place. I plan the trip carefully. With exact change in hand I will only go in if I don’t have to wait in a line. I place my order quickly a succinctly. No thanks, I don’t want a brownie or a scone. Just give me my damn coffee. Then, paper cup in hand, its one package of Equal, a little half and half and I’m out of there. I don’t want to spend any time wondering as I survey the crowd if I am, in fact, just like them.

I can hear you laughing. Why the hell do you go in there in the first place if you hate it so much? It’s pretty simple. Sometimes on a cold winter night when I have to drive thirty miles to get home, it’s great to get wired up, and believe me; Starbucks is great for getting wired. One properly ordered cup can make you feel like you’re on a South American holiday. At my age a hit of cocaine would probably kill me, so this is the second best thing.

One last thing before I end my rant. I went through a period when I was fixated on not using Starbuck’s names for the sizes on their coffees. I mean, what ever happened to a simple small, medium or large? How can a small cup of coffee be called a tall? What idiot thought that one up? So one evening I ordered a large cup of Joe to go. The “barista” (another word I hate), a blond, doe-eyed young lady with a butterfly tattoo on her neck, looked at me and said. “Sir, at Starbucks we say Venti”. I was so taken aback at the thought of using that word, I was temporarily frozen. Then, after a long few seconds, I turned around and left.

I guess I didn’t need to get wired that badly.

Tee-Shirt Mortality

The other day I figured out that I had enough tee-shirts to last me the rest of my life. This revelation came to me while sitting at the edge of my bed examining my beloved “The Sopranos” shirt with the mysterious hole at its bottom. Do I wear it, or should I contemplate retiring it? God knows I can afford to part with it. I have an entire drawer dedicated to my tees in addition to the dozen or so hiding at the top of my closet.

This was when it hit me. At age 60, tee-shirt wise, I had hit the tipping point. If I never acquired another one, I had more than enough to last until they ship me off to… To where? Ah, that is a good question.

On my days off I dig around for an appropriate tee to wear that day. My current favorite is a black one that says, “Still Pissed At Yoko” in white Beatlesque letters. It gets attention. More than one person has commented on it while standing in the checkout line the Super Wal-Mart.

There are many others, of course—way too many to list here: a Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” shirt that all true children of the 60’s should own. Then there’s the Beatle’s “Rubber Soul” shirt, my son-in-law, Tom, gave me. It’s a little tight, but it works. A “World’s Greatest Dad” shirt my daughter, Laura, gave me one Father’s Day. A few more honoring local events: the Rio Vista Bass Derby held most Octobers in the town I live, Hayward’s annual Ukulele Festival. A couple more from the now defunct Isleton Crawdad Festival.

Lots of shirts. Lots of shirts to remind me of minor events of my past; enough shirts to remind me of the transient nature of life.

When I was a young man, I never gave the tee-shirt collection slowly growing in my dresser a second thought. The stack of Corona beer shirts building up in my drawer (Are they somehow reproducing in there?) never crossed my mind. You just threw one on after a shower and went about your day: playing with the kids, mowing the lawn, watching television, drinking a beer. Little did I know that the tees were a symbol of my own mortality.

You can’t count white tee-shirts when you noodle on this equation. With no words or images emblazoned on their cotton surfaces, they are meaningless and transitory. But my two Yosemite Mountaineering Society “Go Climb A Rock” shirts are timeless. The shirts are an identical blue; one bought about five years ago, the other circa. 1971. I have used the latter several times as proof to a person younger than myself that “I have tee-shirts older than you.”

Go now to your closet or drawer where your tee-shirts await to let you know that quite a few of them will be around after you are gone. What do they say? What do they mean?

Something to contemplate as I sit in the 4 Corners Café of my mind, drinking a cup of hot Joe.

George of the Rain Forrest

Somewhere along the line the jungle was taken from me. The mysterious, dangerous territory of my youthful imagination, filled snakes, tigers and an infinite number of dangerous creatures and foliage was high-jacked, replaced by a tedious, castrated damp place called the rain forest.

Yawn.

In these boring, politically correct times it’s not polite to call a rain forest a jungle. No, no, no. A jungle is a dark forbidding place. A rain forest, on the other hand, is a place of gentle greenery and cute, precocious endangered animals, a perfect place for your next vegan picnic. When they talk about those bad people trying to carve out a little farmland in the Amazon, they are destroying the rain forest! It doesn’t sound right if they’re destroying the jungle because the term jungle sounds like it deserves to be cut down!

So Tarzan’s parents didn’t crash in a treacherous foreboding jungle filled with dangers at every turn. Their son became “Tarzan, King of the Rain Forest”. Don’t you like the way that rolls of your tongue? Either way he was raised by apes. And what about my good friend George, the monkey of my childhood musings? Can’t you hear the children singing, “George, George, George of the rain forest”?

Speaking of songs, you all remember that classic Creedence Clearwater song. Sing it with me now, “Better run through the rain forest, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah. . .”

I don’t care what anyone says; the crew of that PT boat in the movie “Apocalypse Now” wasn’t going up the Mekong River into the depths of a rain forest. That, my friends, was a damn jungle!

I wonder do they still have the jungle cruise ride at Disneyland? If they’ve changed it to the rain forest cruise I might have to slit my wrists.

I find it interesting how our language is being subdued all for the sake of political correctness. Garbage men became sanitation engineers. Housewives are now homemakers. I live on the west coast where it’s often foggy in the mornings and afternoons. I just discovered that it’s no longer called fog; it’s now the marine layer! The next thing you know, car salesmen will be referred as transportation consultants!

They’re making a pussy out of our colorful English language!

Never again can I sing a rousing chorus of the theme from “The Flintstones” at my local bar. The ending, “we’ll have a gay old time” might be misunderstood. Someone might beat the crap out of me and dump my body in a rain forest!

In the summer it’s not hot any more. No way. Its climate change. (Climate change has replaced the term global warming, because apparently the globe hasn’t gotten any hotter in the last ten years.) Instead of just getting some lemonade or a cold beer, and watching a ball game on the tube on a lazy summer afternoon, we’ve got to feel guilty that it’s a hundred degrees outside. We’re responsible! And how can you enjoy the game anyway when there are dead polar bears out there and it’s our fault? And moving them to the rain forest won’t help!

So I say we’ve got to take a stand on this stuff, and I’m here to put forth the proposition that we start with our beloved jungles. I don’t want to go on a safari (oops, I’m sorry, I meant to say “photo Safari”) in a rain forest. I want a jungle. And throw in a little quicksand while you’re at it.

Or is it now called liquid earth?